The Necessity of Mutually Acceptable Reasons
David Foster Wallace tells a story of two fish swimming down stream. An older fish passes by and greets them, ‘morning boys, how’s the water?’
They greet him in response and keep swimming until, a little while later, one fish turns to the other and asks, ‘hey man, what’s water?’
There is much wisdom in Wallace’s extended speech, but he directs the audience to one core idea: sometimes the things that are closest and most essential to us are the hardest to see. Without awareness of this we can abandon, unwittingly, that which we can’t do without. This has happened in Israel. We have forgotten the importance of what can be termed ‘mutually acceptable reasoning’ both in debate and society at large. This does, and will continue to do, immeasurable harm.
What it means, in practice, to prioritise ‘mutually acceptable reasons’ is to understand that in society and in discussion, demands made of any other, to any end, need to appeal to all parties involved.
We understand this intuitively: when somebody reaches for the last slice of pizza they can’t justify taking it simply by saying they want it. But if they say that I have had my slice, and that this is their slice, the situation is entirely different. Everybody wants the pizza, but my wants have no claim on you. By saying that it’s my slice I’m appealing to a concept of private ownership, and by extension to the notion of fairness. These are mutual concepts which protect the ownership of the others as well as myself. It is an appeal to the universal standard that protects their right to a slice just as it does yours. Another example would be asking for a raise. You cannot approach your boss and ask for a raise on the basis that ‘I want more money.’ Instead you highlight the mutual benefit, referring to the work you do and its value. You must speak to the reality of the other.
T.M. Scanlon presents an ethical theory he calls contractualism based on this very principle and grounds it in what he says is ‘the positive value of a way of living with others.’ He recognises that in order to live together pleasantly, we need to take each other into account. Scanlon walks his position back a step and asks the question ‘what could another party not reasonably refuse?’ This query and its sentiment have disappeared from the Holy land.
We’ve known the danger of such degradation for so long now that we’ve begun to forget it. Our modern conception of religious tolerance, as part of a liberal world order, is the long descendent of the treaty of Westphalia — the end to the 30 year war. There is no necessary or obvious resolution to a conflict generated by the collision of two opposed worldviews. Such wars can rage for years. This is the nature of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours — two irreconcilable perspectives in one small corner of the Middle East. Neither are willing to acknowledge each other wholly and can’t, as a result, come to a mutually acceptable conclusion about what is best for the land. The same one sided logic behind the Arab world’s unilateral rejection of Israel has sadly infected the inner workings of Israeli society itself. And it is this internal dynamic that Israelis can, and must address. This piece does not intend to discuss the myriad sins of Islamism, which are propagated and maintained by the same lack of mutually acceptable reasoning. Palestine is not a democracy, it is barely a functioning society, and so nobody is surprised that it generates antisocial attitudes and violence. But Israel is, at least nominally, a modern nation. It is prosperous, democratic, and ostensibly fully functioning. It’s failings are possibly even more embarrassing for these reasons. And it is shocking to see basic societal features so starkly lacking. Mutual tolerance is the basis for peaceful coexistence. It is the ‘water’ of the modern world. And it is drying up.
There are two groups in Israel we can identify as directly guilty of this closed-mindedness. To be direct: they are the Ultra-Orthodox, and the settlers of the West Bank. Together they form the focus of leftist ire, but much of the criticism is vague and vitriolic. As a result, it is easily disregarded. This is a problem. If we want to affect change and issue condemnation, we must be specific about what we take issue with. This complaint, then, is not intended to be comprehensive, but instead I levy one direct charge: They disregard the most basic features of society — the mutual acceptable reasoning necessary to live in a community with other people.
The Ultra Orthodox refuse to serve in the nation’s army. This is a universal draft for universal benefit. But the issue is not so much their lack of service as the reason given. The claim that studying Torah is more important than national service is not mutually acceptable. From an internal perspective it makes sense. They hold spiritual education to be the pinnacle of human experience, and believe that it contributes both to the physical and spiritual protection of the state. After all, the Talmud affords the success of King David’s general in battle to the king’s piety. But the problem with the argument is that not everybody holds this same internal perspective, and yet the task of defending the country falls no lighter on those that believe than those that don’t. The argument ‘I cannot serve my country because I believe that my prayers are service enough,’ cannot satisfy those who do not similarly believe, and yet it makes a claim on them anyway. Perhaps, were we to travel back several hundred years, to a time where the reality of God was collectively accepted, such an argument might stand. But in the modern world, where we welcome a variety of worldviews, it falls on deaf ears. Those sent to fight for those who would not fight for them are given no acceptable justification for their abandonment.
The same logic undergirds the decisions made by the settlers that wish to annex the West Bank. It’s easy to discuss these ideas in abstract, but they guide our lives in very concrete ways. I was confronted with this exact issue recently: A few days into the 12 day war I found myself in an IDF mess hall near the Jordanian border. We were waiting for Iranian militias, from Iraq and Syria, anticipated to work their way towards us via Jordan.
‘The Jordanian military is with us,’ we were told, ‘But there are a lot of Palestinians in Jordan.’
The militias never arrived, but while we waited we talked, and I found myself in a conversation with a man who lives in the West Bank. Wearing a knitted kippah and munching on a chicken leg, he told me how he would be happy to take all the land for the Jews.
‘The Palestinians have no place here, this is Eretz Yisrael. Our land.’
‘Who gave us this land?’
‘God did.’
I sighed. I’d heard this one before. Broadly I felt there was only one appropriate course of action. But I wasn’t confident it would work. I responded, ‘You know this because it’s written in our book right? The Torah?’
‘Of course.’
‘But why should they care what it says in our book? They have their own book.’
‘Our book is the truth,’ came the blunt reply.
‘That’s what they say about their book too, you know. They’re just like you. It says in their book that this land is theirs, and that they should strive for what they see as “just” — by way of violence if necessary. And, just like you, they don’t care what your book says, or that you think their book is fake. You act just as they do.’
His answer came unfazed, ‘I do what God says we should do.’ The argument was pointless. I could not reasonably accept his perspective or his argument, and mine was disregarded by him because it did not coincide with anything he held to be true or relevant.
Frustrated and, having made my point fully, I collapsed into vulgarity.
‘You’re essentially a Jihadi yourself. If you’d been born on the other side, you’d be fighting us right now.’ He just laughed and continued eating. I had nothing left to say. The logic of mutually acceptable reasons, of living in a shared reality where the other exists just as fully as the self, didn’t appeal to him. I hadn’t expected it to — I’d seen this behaviour often enough before — faith can isolate one in a separate ontological space. There was no arguing with the truth of his reality.
This stance is perhaps more problematic than that of the ultra orthodox. While the justification given in this specific instance was similarly religious, the entire settler movement represents a rejection of mutual acceptability. The Jews that move into the West Bank do not build inclusive, integrated communities with the Arabs. Instead they take the land, bit by bit, and enforce its exclusivity. The result is a constantly shrinking swathe of land for the Palestinians to call home. Should the process continue as it has, this shrunken mass will disappear altogether. This will leave Israel in total control of all the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, and many Arabs without a home. This is a proposition that they could not reasonably be expected to accept. Ironically, it is the same maximalist position that underlines historic Arab rejections of partition and peace.
The arguments of the ultra orthodox and those of the settlers follow the same logic but they do not damage the same people. The Ultra orthodox offend their fellow Jews while the settlers offend the Arabs with which we share this land. The former promises to broaden a societal rift that will eventually bankrupt this country. The latter puts us on a course for irreconcilable conflict where one people will ultimately end up homeless. Our inability to prioritise, or even entertain, mutually acceptable reasons is the roof of both problems. These are the central issues this country faces. It accounts for the inability to progress a peace process — the same dynamic typifies the Arab position — and so it is the cause of the extended situation in which both sides refuse to to even acknowledge the existence of the other. But before we can complain about the other we must first examine ourselves. Israelis will need to fix this problem internally before they can expect to do so externally. I am not alone in identifying this issue: Einat Wilf addresses it eloquently. But identifying the problem is only the first step towards a solution.
