The Call of History

As we enter the second Cold War, as we inch closer to the Third World War, history beckons. Russia frames its war in Ukraine as being for the purposes of “denazification” and because Ukraine was “always” a part of the Russian Empire. The history of the Holodomor, the history of Chernobyl, have all been resurrected to fight alongside the Ukrainian army. China gears up to take on Taiwan, recalling its civil war, and promulgating a sense of historical amnesia about the fact that Taiwan has never been part of China. Iran recasts itself as the innocent, not the state-sponsor of terrorism since 1979, the creator of the so-called Ring of Fire around Israel. North Korea, the hermit kingdom of horrible atrocities, has somehow become the darling of the far-left on university campuses across North America as a nation enviably untouched by American imperialism. Any history that is not favourable to a pro-Palestinian/ antizionist position is ignored or obfuscated. It is not for nothing that Adolf Hitler once described the “right history” as being worth 20 army battalions.

The weaponization of history, is of course, not about the past — it is about the future. One of the clearest ways we can understand the weaponization of our history is through the inversion of cause and effect. The polemics around the Security Wall is perhaps the biggest example of this. When people look at said security wall and the impact of the checkpoints, it is often framed as being responsible for terrorism and violence. That old “if Israel weren’t so Apartheid/ genocidal/ racist then Hamas wouldn’t need to exist” chestnut. The problem is, of course, that the wall went up in reaction to terrorism. It was Hamas’ influence that brought suicide bombings into the State of Israel during the Second Intifada, forcing a wall to be built to prevent people from being able to get into Israel’s main cities. It worked. PIJ described it as an “obstacle to resistance,” and complained that “it limits the ability of the resistance to arrive deep within Israel to carry out suicide bombing attacks.” In 2017, researchers found that not only had it eliminated suicide bombings, it reduced violence on the Palestinian side significantly as well. Terrorism reduced by 92%. But the idea that it’s the effect of violence is often twisted to put it as the cause of it. The inversion of causal relationships, negates Israel’s legitimate security concerns and rationales for their actions, and frames Israel’s reaction to violence as the justification for it. It’s becoming all too common. The inversion of Holocaust history and the weaponization of South Africa’s spurious genocide accusation is grotesque and unfortunately common place today as well.

The one positive thing about this conflict is that, as a history teacher, I no longer have to convince anyone that history is worth studying. At the heart of this conflict is the question of nationalism, the historical desire and fight for independence both Jews and Palestinians experience. Nationalism and history are the driving forces behind this conflict, particularly a history of occupation and destruction experienced by both peoples. History is invoked constantly by both as a justification for contemporary actions. For Jews, two thousand years of longing to return to the land of Israel came after the destruction of Jewish communities around the world. We look to this history and we call out for understanding: do people not remember what happened when we did not have a state? Do people not see the fact that every war has been started by Palestinian Arabs? How every time we tried to make peace, violence was started against us? For how many times we have tried to create a Palestinian state, to have it rejected by Palestinians themselves? How can you judge us for attempting to stay alive in the face of everyone who wants us dead? 

For Palestinians, history is just as fresh and potent as it was for their ancestors: they want people to understand that the State of Israel’s declaration paved the way for the destruction of their lives. Taken over by Egypt and Jordan and then by Israel, the land that was allotted to them once has been swallowed. They have seen their formerly primarily agrarian society transformed into a modern-day scientific behemoth. The Jews returned, made the desert bloom and become fertile as young Zionists once longed for, desalinated water, created a thriving society. And Palestinian Arabs for the most part watch this success from the outside. Particularly in Gaza, they live lives of grinding poverty and deprivation.

Both peoples’ histories have simultaneously supported their positions until this point and also laid waste to a shared future. In the 1980s and 1990s, many Israelis were intensely optimistic — however that future might unravel, it would be better than the present point. Peace was a possibility, however long it might take. Since the collapse of the Camp David II accords and the onset of the Second Intifada, peace has seemed far more distant. When the disengagement from Gaza happened, and Israeli society was ripped apart inside over internal wars in the search for peace, the violence only increased. Bibi’s strategy, of waiting history out, of biding his time, of waiting for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to collapse like other totalitarian states of the past, was revealed to be a failure on October 7th. Since then, the future has never looked bleaker. Surrounded on 7 fronts by Iranian-supported enemies, with much of the world compelling Israel to lay down its arms and not Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis etc., one could make an argument that Hamas and its ilk have succeeded in their war aims. Then again, the complete destruction of their leadership structures would indicate little organizational success for them beyond that of their most nihilistic tendencies.

What is very interesting about the role of history in today’s conflict is, of course, how differently histories of trauma and oppression are treated to both decry Israeli actions and justify Hamas ones. Despite the fact that both peoples’ histories have led them to the place they are in at this moment, the way in which those histories are summoned are vastly different. What’s fascinating most about the present moment is how much people look at the history of the Palestinian experience of the last 76 years and use that to justify violence and terrorism that they would never accept against themselves. Even look at SJP @ Columbia’s recanting of the sidelining of its leader who famously went online and said that “everyone should be grateful that he’s not just out there, killing Zionists.” They apologized for sidelining him this year, saying that “when all other avenues have been explored, violence is the only answer.” “Of course” they resort to violence, they have “tried every other diplomatic means.” The fallacy of this argument notwithstanding, it’s curious that Palestinian history of oppression is seen as a legitimate rationale for war, but Jewish history of oppression is not a legitimate rationale for why the state understands this war in its absolutely existential framing.

Our vacation from history is now over.

80 years out from being murdered in gas chambers for being “race polluters” and “not white,” Jews are now somehow summoned as representative of white supremacy. 79 years after returning from the Holocaust to find homes and towns appalled that “their Jew” had survived, faced with brutal violence for attempts to reclaim property that once belonged to them, forced to flee at gunpoint, Zionism is seen as an expression of “European colonialism” and “European imperialism.” 77 years after the partition of the Palestinian state — divided evenly between Palestinian Jews and Arabs — and Palestinian Arabs decided to take up arms and attempt to kill every Jew who lived there instead of declaring their own state, Jews are accused of participating in ethnic cleansing. 76 years after the declaration of the State of Israel, where Jews were invaded by 5 Arab countries in the name of genocide, Jews are accused of a genocide that’s been “happening since 1948.” 57 years since the 6 Day War, when Egypt, Syria and Jordan built up 250,000 troops, 2000 tanks and 700 airplanes on the border of Israel, 57 years since their radios rang with promises to “finish with Hitler started,” Jews are accused of fighting a war of “Zionist aggression.” 50 years to the day when Egypt and Syria invaded on October 6, 1973, once again attempting the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel was invaded again. 24 years after Ehud Barak attempted to create a Palestinian State in 98% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and all of Gaza, and it was rejected because living side-by-side in peace was too high a bar for Palestinian leadership to meet, Zionists are called out for ruthlessly “colonizing” the land and refusing Palestinian rights of statehood. 19 years after the disengagement from Gaza, Jews are called criminals for “occupying” Gaza. 17 years after the blockade began, after Gilad Shalit and others were kidnapped into Gaza, violence against Israelis is justified in the name of it. On the day of the most brutal attack on Israel in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict — it’s not just Jews who died, after all — people celebrated in the streets, for the satanic Zionists, the “racists, apartheidniks, genocidiaires” had gotten their comeuppance. 1 year after that brutal day, Amnesty International posted a toxic, vile video admonishing people that this conflict didn’t begin on October 7th; because it is not enough to celebrate the death of Israelis, one must co-opt the anniversary of a  year of suffering and existential warfare to score political points. And they are right, of course, the conflict did not begin on October 7th. It began in 1920, when the first people were killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict: Jews on a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, slaughtered by angry Arabs for the sin of the establishment of the British Mandate. 

If the weaponization of history is about the future, it is perhaps best understood as a call to action for our own future: it is time to learn. To study our history. To understand how we got here. The best advocate for Israel is he or she who understands the history in depth, warts and all. It is not helpful for us to claim the weaponization of history that we ourselves are ignorant of. If you do not know this history, it is time to learn. There a plethora of books out there, from Noa Tishby’s Israel (cute, salient, not complicated) to Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem (ideological issues of the present aside, it’s excellent), from Ari Shavit’s “My Promised Land” (lefty) to Michael Oren’s “Six Day War” (not so lefty), there are many worth reading. Follow me on instagram, I obsessively talk about history. Follow many others. But this call to action doesn’t end with Jewish history. We need to understand Palestinian history as well — their narratives, their facts and their alternative facts, and how that history informs their contemporary identity. How that history is understood and misunderstood. How that history plays into their understanding of the future. As people weaponize our history for their own ends, it behooves us to remember that we need not do the same. We cannot control the actions or reactions of others, only ourselves. Like Moshe Dayan at Nahal Oz, we must recognize the fraught history of the Palestinians. Although their suffering, unlike those who demonize Israel would have others believe, is not the sole providence of the Jewish state, we must also acknowledge the reality of their experiences. We shouldn’t do this out of some misguided belief that it will get others to “change their minds” about Israel, but for ourselves. We cannot adjust our own actions to appease those for whom no actions undertaken would satisfy except absence or destruction. But the overwhelming lack of empathy shown to us — our erasure of our history, the war on our story, the war on our existence, the praise of our enemies, the callous disregard for civilian life if it happens to be Israeli — must not mean that we lose our empathy as well. It is the call of our own history that must chart our path to the future.