Context and Roots of the Israel-Palestine Conflict:

Why Israel is in the Right

These are my thoughts on current events, based on 30 years of research and reflection. I could be wrong about some details. Reactions can go in the comments or the forum

Part I.

When I was in college I had strong opinions about the world and geopolitics, and while I was a History student I knew less about the world than I thought I did. Back then, when it came to the Israel-Palestine conflict I felt a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians. This makes sense when you consider that most people feel a knee-jerk urge to root for the underdog, and during the intifadas it was clear who the underdogs were. Scenes of Palestinian kids with rocks and bottles facing off against IDF soldiers with body armor and assault rifles, it just seems so unfair. I asked, like so many young people still do, why the Israelis could be so cruel?

I think a large part of the challenge for young Liberals to understand this issue is due to how similar it looks on the surface to the kinds of colonial exploitation seen in the Americas or Sub-Saharan Africa. It is simply assumed that the Israelis MUST be a colonial power, and they MUST be exploiting the Palestinians as part of some imperialist project, assumptions that Palestinian and Islamist groups are quick to promote (and which also track to a very widespread Soviet propaganda narrative during the Cold War). Even today, decades after the end of the Cold War, every time there is new unrest in Gaza, a new offensive from Hamas or Hezbollah, you still here “the Israeli's are just trying to steal the land.” The question to ask is: What can the Israelis do to satisfy the Palestinians, that does not amount to the dissolution of the Israeli state and the deportation of the entire Jewish population?

Twenty years and a lot of research later and my views on the conflict became a polar opposite; the Israel-Palestine conflict is deeper and more complex than it first appears, and while religion is a driving feature of it, the way religion drives it is a little different than many Liberals believe. More importantly, what I found was the Palestinians are largely at fault for the conflict, and the path to peace is almost entirely in their hands alone.

The Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb

In college I trained as a Historian (although my later career path was far from that), and my particular area of focus was the Mediterranean. From ancient Egypt and the Greco-Roman world, through the Islamic Conquests and the reaction those evoked in the Crusades, and on into the age of Imperialism that set up the modern world, I explored it all. I found Islam very interesting for a time, and learned much about Judaism from Sunday School at church as a child as well as my explorations of Kabala and western Ceremonial Magic. Also, over the years I've had close friendships with many Muslims and Jews. From these experiences I gained some insight into what the real religious underpinnings of the Israel-Palestine issue are.

To most observers, both the Jews and the Muslims seem to be claiming that the land of Israel is theirs because God promised it to them, and them alone. The Jewish kingdoms in the Levant, though, were destroyed in the 1st century AD, following the Siege of Masada, and until the 8th century the area was a multicultural Greco-Roman, mostly Christian, province. The Muslim conquests in the 8th century changed the overlords, but apart from Pilgrimages (mostly Christian), Jerusalem and its environs was fairly low value, so the area remained largely Christian, even through the Crusades in the 11th through 13th centuries. The Crusades were ultimately a failure, and really had little lasting impact on the Muslim world, but something else happened in the 13th century that left a lasting scar on the Muslim psyche: the Mongol invasions, which resulted in the effective destruction of the Arab Muslim world.

In Islam, there is an important concept of the Islamic World and the non-Islamic World. The Islamic world, Dar al-Islam, is the Muslim community, but also the countries ruled by Muslims and governed by Islamic Law. As Mohammed was the final prophet of God, and Islam the final revelation, and Islam is more than a religion but a complete, wholistic model for the organization of society, it should stand to reason that, as the divinely ordained manner of living, the Islamic world should be the most peaceful, prosperous, and successful regions in the world. In contrast, the non-Islamic world is called the Dar al-Harb, the land of War. Non-Muslim regions are seen as lawless, dangerous, wastelands in need of subjugation, and being brought to the light.

Throughout the Islamic Golden Age this seemed to be borne out, and Christian Europe little more than a barbaric cultural backward amongst crumbling Greco-Roman ruins. And then, in 1260, Central Asian unrepentant Pagans under Mongke, Hulagu, and other great Khans (the grandsons of Genghis) burned it all to the ground, slaughtered the cream of Islamic nobility, and carted off much of the skilled and educated portion of Islamic society to a life of slavery. So much for being the divinely ordained way of living…

An idea that remains widespread across the Muslim world, which I've even seen from Muslims that I've known in the West, and underpins the intractable conflicts on the periphery of the Muslim world today, is that: once a region comes under Muslim rule, and becomes part of the Dar al-Islam, it is to remain that way for all time. The people there have come under right rule, and for that to change would be amongst the greatest of tragedies. In fact, for many Muslims, a Muslim-majority area ceasing to be Muslim majority, or falling under non-Muslim rule, is so deeply offensive that they will be driven to take up arms to change it. Across the world, in Kashmir, Xinxiang, Kosovo, Israel, and even Spain, we see the same pattern: demographic and political change leads to Secular or non-Muslim rule, and even population changes, in a region that was once conquered by Islam, followed by asymmetrical warfare and terrorism by Islamist factions, seeking to reverse the past.

The Zionists, the British, and the Post-World War I World Order.

Ashkenazi Jews, the most widespread type in Europe, are religiously Jewish but have more tenuous ties to the Biblical Israel; genetically they do have the markers of descent from the ancient Kingdom, but mixed with much Slavic and Southern European. Still, as a culturally and religiously distinct group in Ancient and Medieval Europe, the Jews were subject to constant, brutal, persecution into the Modern era.

That said, the importance of the Jews in Biblical history, and its subsequent influence on European intellectual tradition, as well as the importance of Jewish mysticism and magic in Christian European occult tradition (the Kabbalah is foundational to most Western Christian occult societies and ritual magic), led some European Christians to nearly idolize the Jews, at least in principle. In Victorian England, not only were Jews allowed to live with less discrimination than in the past, but a British intellectual fantasy known as British Israelism came into fashion, imagining the roots of the British royal family, and of the British Empire, to lay in the line of King David, by way of the Lost Tribes. Many prominent British believed themselves to be heirs to ancient Israel, and thus lost siblings to the Jews, and British government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries could be described as philosemitic (i.e. Jewish loving).

With the increased secularization of Europe from the Age of Reason, Jews attained greater rights and could participate more fully in the economy, leading some Jews to become quite wealthy as merchants and bankers, while the rabbinical families had always valued education. Now with some means, and tired of centuries of Pogroms in Europe, as well as fired up by the Nationalist movements sweeping Europe, some Jews began looking toward establishing a new homeland, where Jews would be free of religious persecution.

In the modern age, until the end of World War I, Palestine was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and a bit of an economic backwater. By the 1890's, European Jews seeking to establish a safe enclave for Jews, began legally immigrating to Palestine, buying land to build communities and businesses, and bringing increased prosperity and economic activity to the region. They founded the city of Tel Aviv at this time. For American perspective, they were an example of the “Good” immigration that US conservatives sometime talk about, bringing wealth, initiative, and drive that creates value for the whole society. This was the beginning of the Zionist project.

Following the Ottoman defeat in World War I, the Empire disintegrated. During the war, the British had sponsored and armed a general uprising of Arab bandit tribes, to tie up Ottoman forces in Mesopotamia and generally destabilize the region. Under the auspices of the League of Nations, the British and the French divided up the administration of much of the old Ottoman Empire. Today, you often see these Mandates described as Colonialism, but with the perspective gained from the last 20 years, and American experiences with Iraq and Afghanistan, I can no longer see a colonial character to what the British were doing: the Mandate did not make Palestine and Iraq part of the British Empire; much like the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were there to maintain stability and set up infrastructure before turning those lands over to local government. And they did turn them over to local rule, in only 20 to 30 years…not really much longer than we stayed in Afghanistan.

During the period of British administration of Palestine, Jewish immigration continued, and the new or revitalized cities continued to prosper. This lead to increasing tensions with the Arab population, who found themselves no longer ruled by Muslims, or even the economic elite in a province that had long been part of the Muslim world. These increasing tensions lead to clashes between Jewish settlers and Arab Muslims.

Independence and the Arab-Israeli Wars

Its often been talked about with regard to the roots of the Israel-Palestine issue, but it deserves reiterating. After World War II and the Holocaust, many European Jews were done with Pogroms and the endless risk that the next government would strip their rights, property, and citizenship, on the basis of insane conspiracy theories, or just plain greed. Waves of Jewish immigrants, this time largely illegal, poured into Palestine, still under British administration, and stirred up greater concern from the Arab population, and more clashes. It also didn't help that the Palestinian Arab leadership had sided with Hitler and the Nazis during the war.

The tensions reached a head when the newly established United Nations adopted a resolution dividing the territory between the Jewish and Palestinian populations, leading to the Jews declaring the creation of the State of Israel, and the Palestinians declaring war.

It should also be mentioned, though, that before all this talk about Israel and Palestine, the actual British Mandate of Palestine was actually far bigger than the tiny sliver of land on the map of Israel today. Mandatory Palestine also included Transjordan, which was gifted to King Abdullah, one of the those bandit kings the British had stirred up against the Ottomans, as a reward for his assistance. In a very real way, when we talk about dividing the land between the Jews and the Arabs, this was the first partition, and the Arabs got more than 80% of the land.

With the founding of Israel, the Arab Palestinian population, along with the surrounding Arab nations, threw their combined military might against the Jewish population (including Holocaust survivor refugees with surplus Mausers and captured Lee-Enfields), and to the surprise of the world and shock and embarrassment of the Arabs, the Arabs were defeated and driven back…in 1948…and again in 1956…and 1967…and 1973…

Why can't Arabs fight?

For students of military history, the Arab-Israeli wars creates a big question: Just what is wrong with the Arabs? The Jews in 1948 and 1956 were not particularly well equipped, in fact they were probably worse equipped than the Arab armies. Its not like the Jews were necessarily better trained; again, these were refugees from Europe. This is actually a question that has vexed military planner and geopolitics wonks for decades (see 1 and 2), but the going theory seems to be a combination of internal cultural rivalries, endemic corruption, and poor training result in armies incapable of adapting to realities on the ground, and without the morale to recover from setbacks. The result: there may have been more soldiers on the field from the Arab armies, and with better weapons, but those soldiers didn't want to be there or do what they were told, so they broke and fled when the Israelis countered.

Cognitive Dissonance and Palestinian Despair

A certain species of ethno-religious supremacism infects much of the Muslim world, telling them that Islamic civilization is superior, more just, and in accordance with the will of God. When posed with evidence to the contrary, be it the Mongol destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate, the wealth and stability of Western civilization, or the stubborn refusal of the Israelis to be defeated in war, a supremacist experiences cognitive dissonance, doubling down on ideology while becoming angrier. They look for an explanation in conspiracies, outside intervention, anything to keep from facing the truth: they really aren't superior.

To my view, the Palestinians are the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, starting a fight with a demonstrably superior foe, and refusing to back down in the face of certain defeat, even as that foe repeatedly tries to deescalate and disengage. Every time the Black Knight attacked, Arthur cleaved off one of his limbs, and still the Black Knight kept coming, until all that was left of him was a torso on the ground. Even then, he still insisted that the battle was a draw: having lost was unthinkable.

In America, the one thing that will drive a white supremacist crazy is a successful black man. The more successful the black man, the more the white supremacist needs to find some rationale for why that black man isn't really successful; it has to be fake, somehow…When Obama was in office there were a shocking number of Americans convinced that Obama was somehow a fraud, a Manchurian candidate picked and placed into office by some shadowy, unidentified Illuminati. They couldn't accept the idea that a black man had gone to Ivy league schools on merit, succeeded in those schools on merit, and worked his way up from community organizing, to the state legislature, to the Senate, and finally to the White House (although such a career path isn’t so unusual for Presidents). Similarly, to the Palestinians, not only the existence, but the stability, economic success, and military prowess of Israel seems impossible and unnatural. How could Jews of all people build something stronger, more vibrant, and simply better than nearly the whole of the Muslim world?

Another thing: now, 50 years after the last major Arab-Israeli war (1973), more of the Arab states are beginning to perceive the wealth and technological expertise of the Israelis to make for a valuable trading partner, while the Palestinians have been little more than bad neighbors, bringing crime and terrorism everywhere they go. With the rapprochement between Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia taking shape in recent years, the one last bit of leverage the Palestinians have is slipping away. Each war, each Intifada makes the Palestinians weaker, and costs them rights, freedoms, and territory. If the Saudis and Qataris decide they have more to gain from a friendship with Israel, the Palestinian people will essentially cease to be…that is, except for the millions of them who now call themselves Jordanians or Israelis.

Severing the Line

Why does this conflict continue to drag on and fester, year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation? Really, its because the Palestinians simply do not have the strength to exterminate the Jews, and the Jews have too much humanity to exterminate the Palestinians. But that implies something else: the ones with the power to end this conflict, and find peace, are the Palestinians, but first they need to own up to having started this war, and accept the reality that the Jews will remain, and Israel will remain. They are going to have to accept the same reality that the Germans and Japanese accepted after World War II: complete responsibility for the conflict, and a loss of territory as penance. This will also require accepting that they were never superior, and they were not entitled to that territory.

In the past, Israel has been willing to work with the Palestinians. Many Gazans and other Palestinians once worked in Israel, and there was much greater freedom of movement. The intifadas and the rocket attacks and border skirmishes changed that, and it will take a meaningful show of good will and a willingness to move on from the past to overcome the history of bad faith. The key thing that needs to happen is to “sever the line” on history; break with the past and move on. This means, also, to forge a new identity, forgetting the old.

Ultimately, it may be necessary for the Israelis to take a cue from the Second World War. Much like the United States and its campaign against Japan, the Palestinians may need to be beaten so badly that it becomes pellucidly clear to them that Israel has the ability and willingness to erase Palestine from history and existence; the Palestinian people becoming merely ashes and a footnote in history. At that point, when it is clear that continued “resistance” will only lead to the extinction of Palestine, Israel and the UN can rebuild Gaza, building infrastructure and industry, shepherd the Palestinian people in creating a new government, and implicit in all of that a kind of deprogramming/reprogramming of the survivors, like was done in Germany and Japan. In the end, the Palestinians will understand that their leaders and forebears were responsible for the Nakba and the subsequent occupation, and a brighter future for all lies in cooperation and integration with Israel and the world.

After the World Wars, German saw its eastern border shifted far to the west, first cutting off access to old German cities like Danzig and Koenigsberg, and then even losing those cities to Poland and Russia. In the decades since the Second World War, as Germany accepted the loss, and it did not become a basis for revanchism, relations with Poland and the Baltic states got better, and Germany came to be a key partner in the region. Today, Germans can freely travel in most of the lost territories, and if they so desire even buy back their old family lands. With peace and greater international integration, these old disputes are meaningless.

I may be quite unusual here, as I have spent many years studying history and culture, only to come to the realization that…its meaningless, and ultimately without value. Cultural identity is neither eternal nor timeless, as people move around old groups change to be unrecognizable, while new blended identities form. No identifiable group today existed 2000 years ago (the Greco-Roman Jews had some similarities to todays Jews, but also some major differences), and 2000 years from now no modern group will be identifiable. If none of this will last, why fight over an argument from the time of your great grandparents?

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