On Genetics and Genocide

I’ve heard it said dozens of times in conversations, and read it hundreds of times online. “They’re all evil. They’re all barbarians. Their Jew-hatred is embedded so deeply that they’ll never change. It’s in their nature.”

These sentiments about Gazans are widespread in Israeli society. The apparent truism of the Gazans’ intractable, genocidal nature has led to the dismissal of any discussion about “the day after”; the dehumanization of all Gazans (“there are no innocents”); and, of course, the responses to President Trump’s transfer fantasy, which have ranged from eager receptivity to messianic exhilaration.

The idea that any kind of political, religious or sociological context could help us understand Gazans is considered naïve at best, and justifying terrorism at worst. Gazans are, apparently, genetically disposed to be genocidal to Israelis, and that cannot change.

But context does matter. And to prove that, you just need to walk into an Israeli hospital. The doctor treating you, the surgeon operating on you, the nurse refilling your IV: they are all Palestinians.

This is confusing. The doctor is prescribing me antibiotics to cure me, not kill me. The surgeon has a very sharp knife at her disposal, but she’s using it to excise my tumor, not slit my throat. The nurse could, if he wanted, inject an air bubble into my vein and give me an embolism, but he doesn’t.

Of course, it’s not just hospitals. The pharmacist who dispenses my drugs, the supermarket cashier who gives me change, the person sitting next to me at the cafe, the taxi driver who picks me up from the airport (not to mention, of course, countless judges, lawyers, businesspeople, journalists, and politicians)… in countless everyday interactions, Palestinians – Arab Israelis – are part of our quotidian, unremarkable lives. Most of the time, the relationship between the 80% of Israeli citizenry that is Jewish, and the 20% that is Palestinian, is (while not without tensions and challenges) amicable, peaceful, and routine. Indeed, sociological studies, even more so after October 7^th, indicate that a trend of “Israelification” is under way in the Palestinian Israeli community, and that the majority desire further integration into the majority Jewish culture and society.

The vast majority of these Arab Israeli citizens are quite literally cousins of Gazans. Israel’s War of Independence led to some Palestinians remaining in Israel as citizens, and others fleeing or being expelled to Gaza and other locations. Gazans and Israeli Arabs were part of the same communities and the same families until the past few decades.

But Gazans want to kill us, while their cousins, Israeli Arabs, want to cure us, to work with us, to live with us.

So it can’t be genetics. It can’t be nature. And if it’s not nature, it must be nurture: context.

The current context in Gaza enables a disgusting, immoral, genocidal, Jew-hating ideology to flourish. Acknowledging this fact does not mean justifying that ideology; but it does teach us that in order to eliminate that ideology, we have to address the context. If we do nothing to change the environment, then the ideology will continue to flourish. Why would it not?

My novel, Perfect Enemy, a thriller set in contemporary Israel, deals with similar themes. Akiva Cohen, an Israeli scientist, clones Hitler from old samples of his DNA, and a battle ensues between Akiva and Yoav Schindler, his right-wing, Religious Zionist funder, about what to do with this reborn Hitler. Akiva is plunged into a desperate struggle to stay alive, leading to a trail of murders across the country, collaboration with terrorists, and the uncovering of a devastating conspiracy at the highest levels of Israeli society. Daniel Gordis calls it “a great, great story [which] raises profound issues about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about the moral issues inherent in Zionism.”

In one central scene from the novel, one of the characters (who I won’t name here – no spoilers!) muses about the relationship between nature and nurture that is at the heart of the novel’s plot:

“And so our hatred of the other side… becomes normalized… a fact of life. ‘Of course the Palestinians will never accept us here, of course they will never change, because they can’t change, it’s just who they are,’ we say to ourselves. And I’m sure they say the same things about us… The immutability of the other side is seen as a reality – an almost genetic reality… [But] our past doesn’t have to define our future. Just because someone has acted in a certain way until now doesn’t mean that he is incapable of acting differently. Genes are irrelevant; it’s the environment that matters.”

Changing the context in Gaza, for Gazans, will by no means be easy, and it will take time. It will require transformations in Gazan religious discourse and educational curricula; it will require the moderate nations of the Arab world, who seek peace with Israel, to be involved in the deradicalization of Gazan society; and, yes, it will require Israel to commit to a clear diplomatic horizon for national self-determination for Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.

But to say it’s impossible is just not true. It’s not genetics. It’s nurture, not nature. And my pharmacist is the proof.

More reviews of Perfect Enemy can be found at alexjsinclair.com/perfectenemy.