Palestine and The Elephant in The Room

Have you ever noticed that when we, Westerners, discuss the motivations behind the Israeli Palestinian conflict, there seems to be an Elephant in The Room, an awareness that hovers in the space but all pretend doesn’t exist? The elephant is the role that religious sentiment plays in perpetuating the conflict. The details of Islamic religious ideology are the most avoided. How come?

In fact, it is often the case that Palestinian Arabs and their advocates in the West will insist that their struggle is specifically not religious. They argue that their campaign is not against Jews or the Jewish religion but is rather targeted only against the Zionists. They further claim that the Zionist enterprise is an extension of historical European Colonialism. Thus, Palestinian Arab Resistance is not a religious war but a political struggle to secure their right for national self-determination in their ancestral land of Palestine.

This popular narrative of Palestinian victimization at the hands of the colonizing Zionist perpetrators seems straight forward and easy to comprehend by the conscientious onlooker. The narrative readily invokes our deepest sympathies. Restoring justice to Palestinian Arabs as well as effecting peace and prosperity for all inhabitants of the land would be a narrative worth supporting, if it was complete. 

The Elephant in our Room is the religious motivations the Palestinian purveyors of the Zionist Colonialism narrative ignore and deny when communicating to their Western audiences. Upon closer examination we find that passionate Muslim religious ideology happens to be at the core of their war. How do we know? Let’s remember that Jewish communities in the land have existed alongside Arab communities for centuries before Zionist migration began. If the Israel Palestine conflict was indeed simply a land dispute between “colonizing” Europeans and “indigenous” Arabs, it could have been resolved long ago through a compromise that adequately addressed the needs and rights of both nations, such as similar arrangements between natives and newcomers the world over. In fact, several serious rounds of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at settling the dispute, some including generous land-for-peace offers by Israel, have failed over the decades – in 1948,1993, 2000, 2008, and 2014.

The one hundred yearlong current violent conflict in Israel Palestine began under the British occupation of parts of the former Ottoman Empire, later dubbed Palestine. The reasons for this conflict between Israeli Jews and Muslim Arabs only fully cohere when viewed through the lens of Muslim history and theology. The earliest precedent for Muslim aggression against the Jews begins with the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century C.E., 14 centuries ago, which is bluntly articulated in the Quran, the Muslim holy book. This precedent provides context, and begins to explain, the ferocity of the current round of conflict between Muslims and Jews. Other more recent historical facts provide further context. The Muslim pogroms against the Jewish community in Palestine during the 1920s, long before “mass Jewish immigration”. Also the Palestinian Mufti (chief cleric) Haj Amin El Husseini’s extensive visits to Nazi Germany to collaborate with Hitler on resolving the shared “Jewish problem” during the 1930s and 1940s. The long standing Islamic anti Jewish sentiment seems to trump any anti colonialism claims, if any. 

When we include religious and historical factors into our analysis, we also begin to understand the discourse of Palestinian Arabs amongst themselves in their own language, i.e. the Hamas founding charter, the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and numerous publications and transcripts of Muslim sermons and speeches (see research by Professor Bernard Lewis and others).

As a native Israeli Jew of European origins, and once a passionate activist in the Israeli peace camp, I considered any suggestion that Middle Eastern Muslims are holy war mongers as racist and prejudicial. I believed that most Muslims, just like myself, were essentially peace-seeking good people (and indeed my experience has been that many individual Muslims are just that). I willfully blinded myself to the prevalent tenets of Muslim Arab cultural and religious ideology by projecting my Western education and progressive sensibilities onto Muslim society. 

It is hard for the Western educated mind to imagine a culture and society that moves to a tune different than its own. We, Westerners, cannot truly and viscerally grasp that a war can be fought to the death out of a deep and abiding loyalty to Allah’s command. However, when you live in Israel and reach outside of your Western Israeli urban bubble you discover that Middle Eastern Muslim culture certainly does move to its own tune, a deeply emotion-centric and religiously passionate one at that.

It is imperative that we, Westerners, educate ourselves about the full Palestinian narrative, because our Muslim Palestinian activist friend or academic associate on the college campus will not. They won’t because they know how to communicate appropriately in our language while we are deaf and blind to theirs. This imbalance renders us naïvely uninformed. 

I have found through my relationships with Muslim friends and neighbors, as well as through my studies of history and religion, that Islam holds a distinctly absolutist perception of divine reality, as well as a theology of Arab Muslim supremacy. Scholars call this Muslim worldview Replacement Theology. Muslim brothers and sisters are taught that Islam was the third and final revelation of God on earth. According to them, the first covenantal revelation was the Jewish one with “prophet Moses”. However, God terminated the covenant when the Jews strayed from the righteous path. The second was the New Testament, the covenant with “prophet Jesus”, which too ended in disgrace. Muhammad was the true and last prophet in the succession, according to Islam. 

Subsequently, the ultimate religious aspiration of the Muslim is bringing about a world in which believers of Allah lead human life on earth through Sharia, Islamic law. Furthermore, Muslim believers are obligated to either convert or exterminate “by the sword” those who reject Allah, the non-believers. For a millennia, from the 7th to the 17th centuries these Muslim religious aspirations were successfully accomplished. 

One can imagine the theological dissonance and the humiliation experienced by Muslims whom, after ten centuries of worldwide dominance, have found themselves under Christian rule when Britain and France defeated the Ottoman Empire during World War One. Now, imagine the religious insult added to injury when Jewish pioneers in the former Ottoman empire (or Palestine), during the early 20th century, were building independent, Western-style, technologically sophisticated Kibbutzim (Socialist farm communes). 

The mere fact that Jews could live free of Muslim dominance while successfully asserting ethnic independence as well as economical and technological superiority was triggering immense spiritual confusion and consequent hatred amongst a broad swath of the Muslim pious in the land of Israel. This animosity had nothing to do with a contest for land or political power but rather with the severe religious crisis and disorientation that the Muslim community had been negotiating as their societies continued to deteriorate. 

What crisis? The deeply entrenched Islamic replacement theology was now under assault. Their fundamental sense of divine reality and divine preference was crashing and burning. Muslims were experiencing a mega faith discombobulation along with identity breakdown that would morph into a violent campaign, led by Muslim clerics, against the Jews, the party that initially stood most vulnerable and mythically most reviled.

Please read the Quran. Many of the Quran verses of the second Surah, Al’Baqarah, belittle and deprecate the Jews (and Christians) as nonbelievers, wrongdoers, and “rebellious against Allah”. This Surah also articulates the call for Muslims to fight and kill for “the cause of Allah”. And indeed, what is the signature battle cry of Muslim terrorists world over as they perform their murderous and or suicidal religious duty? “Allah Wa’Aqbar”, Allah the great.  

Most Muslim children in fact are taught the following Hadith, teaching of the prophet Muhammad: “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslims, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me – come and kill him” (Hadith of Abu Hurayrah). 

The Hamas Founding Charter is a deeply religious Islamic document. Here are choice clauses: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” (Article 6)… “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (Preamble)… “The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part or abandon it or any part of it.” (Article 11)… “Palestine is an Islamic land… Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be.” (Article 13)… “The day the enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” (Article 15)… “Ranks will close, fighters joining other fighters, and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty, loudly proclaiming: ‘Hail to Jihad!’. This cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah’s victory comes about.” (Article 33)

There is no room for compromise or compassion when god’s honor and his believers’ sacred “rights”, including a right to the land, are concerned, according to the Arab Islamic prevailing mindset.

Furthermore, if Palestinian grievances were simply about stolen lands, how come Muslim countries that possess no territorial claims in Palestine have over the years taken aggressive action against Israel, such as attacks from neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt? And too, how come Muslim countries that possess no shared border with Israel such as Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen have attacked Israel with deadly rockets and otherwise, ever since the foundation of the state in 1948? 

One would be hard pressed to explain these aggressive actions as merely resisting colonialism. One could claim that the non-Palestinian aggressors have been acting out of solidarity with their oppressed Palestinian brethren. If that was the case, though, where has this caring solidarity been when other Muslims have experienced troubles around the world, such as in Bosnia, China, Chechnya, India, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and more? We have seen nothing but Muslim indifference to Muslim suffering except for great concern for the Palestinian cause. What makes the Palestinian cause deserve so uncommon and such passionate solidarity? 

The only explanation is a religious ideology that calls for anti-Jewish and anti-Western Jihad, holy war. Therefore, this conflict is not an Israeli Palestinian conflict but a religiously based war on the Jews, which raises the temperature to another order of magnitude for the Muslim believer. The compelling West-facing narrative of Arab Palestinian victimization by Zionist perpetrators turns out to be a cover for a much deeper and older pan-Islamic raw nerve with Judaism as well as with Christianity. 

In fact, a significant portion of the Muslim world has chosen to handle its religious crisis, its cognitive dissonance, and its impassioned grievances by doubling down on traditional Muslim supremacy beliefs along with a return to the traditional remedy of Jihad, holy war – inevitably leading to elevated levels of Muslim aggression, both internal and external. 

The research of the late Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, clarifies the religious crisis a bit further. He describes the signing in 1699 of the Treaty of Karlowitz, which ended a war nearly half a century long. During this war the Ottoman Empire (Muslim) had lost battle after battle and ceded control of much of the European (Christian) lands previously under its control. In Lewis’ words, “The peace signed at Karlowitz (Austria) drove home two lessons (for the Ottomans). The first was military, (a surprising and unprecedented) defeat by a superior force (Europe). The second lesson, more complex, was diplomatic… (Muslims were learning for the first time in centuries how to compromise instead of dominate)” (Lewis, “What Went Wrong?”, Phoenix 2002, page 21). 

The end of this Turkish Austrian war, according to Lewis, marked the shift of power and prestige from Islam to Christendom after a millennium of ironclad Muslim cultural, scientific, as well as political worldwide dominance. At this tipping point rising Europe is taking over the hegemony as the global leading civilization. 

Muslims’ response to Europe’s ascent was blame. However, the “blame-others” approach was not the only voice during the last three centuries of Muslim decline. Openminded Muslim reformers have attempted to effect modernization and moderation and continue to publish and speak until this very day but to no avail. Indeed, the religiously motivated blame-and-aggression approach has sadly prevailed, perpetuating a steady succession of military defeats, societal degradation, and growing humiliation.  

Lewis articulates the majority opinion amongst Muslim thought-leaders about the collapse of Islam as follows: “the failures and shortcomings of the modern Islamic lands (countries) afflicted them because they adopted alien (Western) notions and practices. They fell away from authentic Islam, and thus lost their former greatness….” (ibid p. 174). This framing of the crisis leads “Islamists”, such as the “Muslim Brotherhood” in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and ISIS in Iraq/Syria (naming just a few) to battling modernizers within their own countries as well as attacking the West. These ideas motivated Al Qaida to fly planes into the twin towers and motivated Hamas to slaughter Jews in the south of Israel on October 7th 2023. Hence the real narrative of Palestinian Resistance is fueled by the pan-Islamic aspiration for a return to a lost past and a rededication to the “pure faith” that once animated it. 

As things stand today most (albeit not all) Middle Eastern Muslim societies have continued to make the destructive rather than constructive choice. They continue to instigate holy wars against the West and the Zionists, which provides a short term reward of religious empowerment and pride but ultimately perpetuates further degradation, misery, and humiliation for their own peoples. The current war in Gaza is a case in point.

Islam is the main driver of the Palestinian struggle, not a righteous claim for political rights. To Muslims, Allah, dictates, effectuates, and permeates all areas of life, private and collective, mundane and sublime. By this cultural and religious standard, Palestinian Resistance is not purely political but rather a holy war that is fully grounded in long-standing Islamic traditions. Furthermore, no part of this resistance is “Intersectional” with other oppressed groups in the West, as per Liberal academic theorizing. No part of Palestinian Resistance recognizes pluralism, diversity, human rights, human freedoms in the same way that we regard those in the West. 

The Palestinian Arabs in the West have acculturated well and have adapted their messaging to a rationalistic and compartmentalized Western mindset in order to solicit material and moral support. They have done so by leaving out the parts of their core belief system that may conflict or offend Western sensibilities, all the while plucking the Western sympathizer’s heartstrings with a firehose of embellished or false victimhood tales of woe. If you listen long enough to a Palestinian activist discussing her narrative, and you are not picking up a whiff of pathological victimhood syndrome, you are not paying attention (P.S. we, Jews, suffer from a good dose of that syndrome too).

You will not learn from your Palestinian activist friend about the ultimate Muslim supremacy agenda that considers you, Jew or Christian, a second-class citizen at best. You will not learn about the dysfunctional cultural dynamics of her Palestinian society that squashes freedoms in the name of Islam, for which reason she probably came to the West to begin with. 

The great psychiatrist and culture researcher Dr. Carl Jung taught that the mythical and the collective subconscious are a much greater force in human life and culture than the conscious and the rational. These subterranean realms shape personal as well as collective worldviews, impacting world events, and especially deadly conflict. When we accept that the mythical and subconscious are the essential building blocks of culture and religion, we begin to see how culture and religion have a commanding role over our affairs. Including rather than ignoring the religious doctrines and passions that animate violent conflict, and most notably the Jewish Muslim conflict, assures a deeper and more accurate understanding of same. Only an accurate understanding can eventually lead to a winning solution.

It seems as if our Western and progressive hyper-commitment to a secular worldview (notwithstanding its merits) has been blinding us to the Elephant in The Room. No discussion of Israel Palestine has any value without serious consideration of the religious ideologies motivating the conflict, most especially those of an Islam in deep crisis. Support for the misleading narrative of “Jewish colonialism” empowers the Muslim “blame-and-aggression” strategy concealed behind it. When we support the former and ignore the latter, we enable and perpetuate Muslim decline and Palestinian suffering. That is a shame.