I've been contemplating all week how to say what it is I want to say on Israel and the unending conflicts that almost define its existence. Part of my reticence is the fact that I'm rather a peacenik, and I instinctively tend to avoid conflict. (Oh, the irony!) I also tend to be very slow to throw around blame, or to accept any conflict as black and white. So, although I can be rather reckless in some things (i.e. renting a car and driving all over northern Israel without a GPS), I am rather cautious in publicizing my views on really sticky, complicated issues. Perhaps this is also a self-preservation technique - a sense that many of those who disagree with me will simply belittle me rather than consider the actual issues. This seems to be a human trait, as I see it appear over and over in history, but much more frequently in today's social media climate: people rely on the tried and true method of dismissing a particular perspective they don't like by attacking the person behind the argument as intellectually inferior, pig-headed, or a hypocrite. Usually all three, or a combination, appear, whereas actual reasoning seems too difficult a task to pursue. Thus, convinced that I cannot win in such game, the risk of conflict is not worth it, and I simply remain silent. But I can do better.
Truth be told, I only enter my thoughts now because I feel I owe it to those who take the time to read my blog, with the hope of finding actual substance in my writing. I do try to offer substance, most of the time. Fewer picture this time around, I'm afraid.
I also must confess at the outset (or almost outset) that I am not an expert on this particular aspect of Israel's history. I do keep up on news reports and have heard from many experts in the field, but I myself am not one. But, like any good academic, I won't let what I don't know stop me from prattling on about what I do know, then top it off with some moralizing. First I'll give a brief rundown of the history, and then I'll give a little commentary.
The existence of a Jewish state in the land called Palestine for two millennia has never enjoyed wholehearted worldwide support. It's safe to say that, without the backing of the two new world superpowers (the US and USSR) in November, 1947, the UN vote for partition of Palestine, and therefore the creation of that Jewish state, would have been an unfulfilled dream - at least at that time. Yet, largely in the West, Israel enjoyed much sympathy ideologically. Still, Britain and the US both dithered in the 1950s - in fact, in the fateful 1947 UN decision, Britain voted against the partition that its leaders had themselves proposed a decade earlier. As far as foreign policy was concerned, maintaining good relations with the Arab states (who were, and are, major suppliers of oil) was much more important than ideological leanings that might have drawn them toward Israel. And, at least in American eyes (George Marshall served as Secretary of State in 1947), the tiny group of hopeful Jews didn't stand a chance against the entire Arab world.
Yet, Israel also enjoyed many sympathizers, particularly from the western Christian community. The tiny democracy in the Middle East garnered much praise, and its daring in the face of such seemingly overwhelming odds, along its resonance with Christian expectations of this state as literal fulfillment of prophecy, made it a popular cause. Israel was the little David who could, boldly standing against the brutal Goliath who vowed its destruction.
After 1967, when Israel beat the combined Arab forces for a second time, this time in a war known by Jews as the Six-Day war for its briefness, and took the West Bank and Gaza off the hands of Jordan and Egypt, Israel lost its privileged status as the underdog. Supported with American financing and military help, and proving its superb military intelligence and training, it became the Goliath. Of course, Israelis do not see the situation this way. Still surrounded by hostile neighbors, and haunted by real and cultural memories of the Holocaust - memories fed a gluttonous diet of Arab hatred and Iranian slogans of death to Jews that have the chilling ring of German campaigns nearly a century ago - Israelis cannot seem to escape a real sense of constant existential threat.
The country has been able to maintain some of its victim status in recent decades, as the PLO, in the 1960s, 70s and 80s mounted increasingly internationally visible terror plots. Since the period of the Oslo Accords, beginning in 1993, and then their dissolution after Rabin's assassination in 1995, Israel has slid ever more quickly into the abyss of negative world opinion. The explanation for this is threefold, I believe. First and foremost, Israel is now undeniably the strongest power in the Middle East, and as the conflict has narrowed to a kind of guerrilla warfare between stateless, impoverished Palestinians and dominant, America-backed Israel, the Palestinians come out looking much more victimized. Second, and connected to the first, the world has changed in significant ways since 1948 when Israel was created. Whereas a century ago, nationalism and colonialism were still generally acceptable world views, the intervening decades have seen small countries fight desperately for sovereignty, and colonialism has become a byword for many of the evils of the world. And Israel, backed by colonial powers, and created, at least initially, by western Jews with some colonial tendencies (it must be noted, however, that those early Jewish settlers bore striking differences from colonialist aspirations and attitudes as well), is seen as a final colonial invasion into Arab lands. This has been accompanied by an increasingly popular notion that the big guy is always bad, and the little guy always the victim of the bad guy - and it doesn't matter so much whether he's good or bad - he's the victim. There is certainly some truth to this view, but, in keeping with human nature, it tends to be a much too simplified way to cleanly label the players in this conflict, or any conflict.
The third aspect of Israel's fall from grace relates to its retention of the West Bank territories, and the various military operations it has waged against attacks from Gaza in the south, and Hezbollah-led strikes in the north, mainly from Lebanon. I'll come back to this in a bit, but this too is a complicated matter.
While my education has been less about the Palestinian experience, I do wish to address it, since it is at the heart of the story. Truly, Palestinians are the victims of history - from all angles. I will be clear, however, in stating that to sling all of the blame on Israel is simply to ignore a great many realities - either out of a need to have a clear separation between good and bad guys, or, often enough, out of an actual refusal to accept a Jewish state, sometimes for religious reasons, sometimes due to lingering (or resurrected) anti-semitism.
Let me explain how I see Palestinians as victims. Palestine, in the last century or two of the Ottoman Empire, was a backwater, with little economic investment, and minimal government involvement. Beginning in the early 19th century, Britain, with its colonial aspirations, as well as Germany and France, all began to take on an increasing measure of local governance - through consulates, the creation of colonies, missions, hospitals, etc. Evidence of that encroachment is abundant all over Jerusalem's landscape today: Christchurch just inside Jaffa Gate - first foreign consulate, with its accompanying Anglican (and for a while, German) church and bishopric - AND, notably, the first Protestant church built inside the city, as Ottomans, ruling from the 1400s, banned any new church construction; Augusta Victoria (German - named after the Kaiser's mother) hospital and church prominent on the Mount of Olives; French blue-latticed buildings that once served as hospitals in West Jerusalem, as well as Catholic hostels and monasteries.
When Britain took the Mandate in 1919, after defeating Germany in World War I, it invested heavily in Palestine's infrastructure. Yet its foreign policy lacked consistency. Initially, they supported the notion of a Jewish homeland in Palestine - yet what that would look like was never really clear. Then, although remaining somewhat sympathetic to Jewish national aspirations, they tried to back away from that policy, due in part to sharp, often violent, Arab resistance, and due in part to their own foreign policy interests that maintained the necessity for good relations with the new Arab states. They were never able to assert real control over the increasingly intractable battle over sovereignty in the Land, and gave it up to the UN in 1947. The UN voted for partition, but the Arabs, especially the local Arabs, never saw that as legitimate.
The Palestinians had sided with the Germans in World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem famously meeting with Hitler and stirring up virulent anti-Jewish sentiment. Jews often fought back with as many terror tactics as did the Palestinians. But with the UN decision in late 1947, and unanimous Arab rejection of it, the Arab leadership all saw the opportunity to take the land for themselves. This is one of the main reasons the Jews won: whereas they were united (this is not entirely accurate, but for our purposes, it is generally true), the Arabs never fought together, and often wrestled for power in the region. The Palestinians, other than guerrilla fighting units, and a few who joined some of the Arab armies, didn't participate in the war. They had no real governing authority.
And therein lies much of the problem. They have never had much by way of stable, authoritative government. While the Jews were creating a pre-state framework in the early decades of the 20th century, the Arab world was being restructured, and the Palestinians were simply pawns on the board. Many of the Arab countries had state structure imposed upon them in the post World War I era - imposed on them by the victorious western powers, with leaders chosen for their loyalty to the West. Today's break up of those precarious states is one direct result of that attempt to manufacture western-style states. But Palestine never even had that.
Likewise, although Zionists for decades denied it, hundreds of Palestinians were indeed forced from their homes, and a few notorious massacres did occur, although the number of episodes and victims is often greatly inflated. (We Americans know something of exaggerating tragedies, don't we? Consider the Boston "massacre.") They left their homes and crops, and Jews quickly either demolished those homes, or re-occupied them with Jewish immigrants flooding in from Europe, and soon, from all over the Arab world. (Consider that Israel more than doubled its Jewish population in the decade after 1948 - most of the immigrants from Arab countries that erupted in violent Jewish hatred after Israel was created. Many Israelis view that as a fair trade with the Arab world - more Jews were forced out of Arab countries than Arabs who lost their homes in 1948.) When they tried to return across the 1949 Armistice line - a border they viewed as arbitrary (often it divided up families' own property), if they even knew where it was at all - in order to harvest crops previously planted, or visit relatives, they risked being killed by nervous Israeli guards. In fact, many were killed, sometimes even women and children. Little recompense, if any, has been paid, but some small recognition of such massacres, intended or not, has been grudgingly granted in recent years.
Palestinians who remained in Israel were now the minority in a country where they majority status had never been in question. They were given citizenship, but lived for the first two decades under strict military rule. They lived in fear, with occasional tragic episodes of violent exchange with the Israeli authorities. Their socio-economic standards have risen with Israel, but they have always remained, resentfully, second-class citizens with fewer resources than Jewish citizens, across the board. As I have stated before, recognizing this is not to delegitimize Israel in any way. Precious few modern states can claim a clean record when it comes to national identity and equal treatment of their citizens - and Israel gets more than its fair share of attention in that department, under significantly more challenging conditions.
But the Palestinians who lost their homes and have since lived in refugee camps (many of these "camps" are now full-on cities, still plagued with poverty and the accompanying ignorance, disease and tendency toward extremism that all this engenders). These have received almost no real help from the countries to which they fled. They have remained refugees - seldom given citizenship (that has begun to change, and Jordan's Palestinians do have a much more normalized life than do most Palestinian refugees), or government help to become normalized. This lack of government assistance was the result of various factors, but first and foremost among them was the need for these refugees to remain refugees. As such, their claim to their lands would remain unresolved, and they could retain hope for international assistance in regaining those lands. Likewise, they could be living representations of the evil Jewish state and its legacy.
Very few in the West, excepting Quakers in the early decades, took more than a passing interest in the Palestinian plight. Touting the miraculous Jewish victory, no one wanted to acknowledge the accompanying Palestinian suffering. It was not until a few (always a
few extremist, rarely with majority support) frustrated members of the second generation began to garner international attention through their terror campaigns, that the world began to take notice of the hurt, anger, and frustration that remained unresolved. From the perspective of many Palestinians, "terror" is the only thing that has actually worked.
Now, all that said, here we sit in the 21st century, with two peoples intransigent in their victimhood, but only one that has successfully built a state. Israel, in many ways, has become the whipping boy for the problems in the Middle East - particularly useful as a political rallying cry by leaders hoping to keep the people's minds off the real problems, and on the injustice done to the Palestinians - for whom none of them have done anything to actually help. Israel's lesson from the Holocaust is that the international community cannot be trusted to do anything to help Jews. Whether that is true, it's truly the belief. Thus, when under attack, they fight back desperately, like a caged cat. Often this is with little regard for surrounding civilians, who, they insist, should be stopping the terrorists themselves, so Israel wouldn't have to.
In the case of Gaza a year ago, Israel garnered an easy victory, with very little loss of Israeli life. And they took enormous precautions to guard against civilian losses on the Palestinian side. They drop leaflets from the air, do phone calls and texts warning when and where an attack (missile) will take out a building. They do a warning "knock," dropping a non-explosive missile on the house just before hitting it. And the targets are specific - homes of Hamas terrorists, or places where intelligence says there are rockets and rocket launchers. Israel cannot understand how the world does not see that these thugs hide bombs in homes, hospitals, schools - so that in destroying them, Israel has to do utmost damage. Likewise, Hamas authorities did threaten families not to leave their homes - what could they do? And with the compactness of Gaza's population, families often had nowhere safe to go. Sometimes the Israeli missile did not hit its target until hours after the given time (which is not unusual in a live combat situation), and families would return. They could not stay in a hotel, and often they were threatened by the Hamas leadership to remain home. What could they do? As the casualty numbers rose in Gaza, and none on the Israeli side, it became clear to the world who the easy bad guy was. Israel won that war, but lost, quite handily, the battle of public opinion.
Of course, Israeli leadership and the public alike cry foul, when international law is flouted by hypocritical UN organizations that call Israeli actions war crimes. On the legal side, the leadership knows full well that such self-preservation tactics have been employed by the US, NATO, and others over the last two decades, without major outcry. This is not to mention the fact that the biggest problem international military leaders have with Israel's tactics is that they do TOO much to preserve civilian life - no other country can be expected to reach such a high standard of warning civilians!
And I must agree with this Israeli frustration. Israel is not the only small country that doesn't get fair treatment in UN politics, and world opinion. That doesn't lessen the sense injustice they feel, and indeed, much of the criticism is hypocritical.
And yet I am not so quick to defend Israel either. It digs its own world opinion grave, and I struggle a great deal with certain aspects of Israeli shared cultural personality. A recent article best explains it - and the fact that it's written by an Israeli Jew lends credibility to my point. You can read the whole article
here, but I'll just quote the pertinent part. The author, Gal Beckerman, bemoans the rather schizophrenic nature of American Jewish selfhood today, but in the process, reflects my own thoughts on Israeli sense of self as well.
"All this pessimism about American Jews might imply that I think Israeliness is some sort of paragon. But when I go to Israel I feel equally demoralized, though for the opposite reasons. There it’s the overconfidence, the assuredness that does not stop to question its own actions or motives, that makes no room — even demonizes — any kind of doubting self-reflection.
If the nervousness of the American Jew saddens me, the bravado of the Israeli scares me. Combine this Israeli sense of righteousness with an embrace of victimhood — Israel having become the “Jew” of the world as most Israelis see it — and you have a people that does not feel it has any moral responsibility other than the imperative to survive."
That, my friends, is the point I wish to make here. Israel is and does try to be "moral" as it defends itself. But it does so in a defeatist manner, almost so that it can maintain its victimized status as the picked on, bullied victim of the world. “We’ve done all we can,” they cry, “and they still blame us! See, it’s anti-semitism!” And the cycle continues.
Not that I disagree - they do more than they have to, and they are careful. Because they know they have the whole world watching every second. But they also do it grumblingly, knowing they’re just going to get the scorn of the world anyway. So it becomes more of a shield, a kind of emotional self-defense tactic, with which to assure themselves (and their supporters) of their own rightness, and portray their detractors as simple racist bullies. It is a weapon, an argument for the court of public opinion, their own as well as the world’s.
And the Palestinians are generally no better. Gaza 2014 was all about world public opinion and legitimacy. The only way to be legitimate in today’s climate is to be the weaker party, the victim. The weaker is always the stronger morally - no matter what. They know it, and they use it. They perpetuate their victimhood to highlight Israel’s aggressiveness. And while I'm analyzing all this, I have to state that I find Hamas' tactics despicable, their aims untenable, and their own sense of moral righteousness darkly laughable. But, as of 2015, they have largely won the battle of world public opinion.
And Israel plays right into it - because they are likewise caught in their own victimhood cycle, and their own sense of moral rectitude in the face of evil would-be destroyers.
I have to say, as I wrap up, that Israelis are, by and large, also good. The same goes for Palestinians. They are aware and do care about (although certainly don't trust) the other side. They are tired of the conflict, but have lost very nearly all hope that an end is near. Both sides have. They simply fight on because, well, that's a story for another day.
