This is a post that I have been slow to write. I figured out a while ago what I wanted to say—a year? Two years? I forget. But actually putting my fingers on the keyboard is work; so for some time now I've told myself, "There'll be a time to do that later."
But maybe that time is now.
Yesterday, October 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant and nationalist organization Hamas launched an attack on the State of Israel out of the Gaza Strip. Today, October 8, Israel retaliated against the Palestinian population in Gaza, and formally declared war against Hamas. [As a pedantic aside, I didn't know it was possible to declare war against anything but a sovereign state, which Hamas is not. But my thinking is probably out of date.]
The news is horrifying. Whichever side you support, there is enough news about the atrocities committed by the other side to enrage you. Twitter is a complete mess.
But which side should we support? If we take a step back and look at the situation through a philosophic lens, which side is right and which is wrong? I started this blog with a commitment to the idea that philosophy can be naïve and practical, and to the related idea that the things in our world have a nature and a purpose. That should mean that we can ask questions about right and wrong. So let's ask. Who is right, and who is wrong?
Why blame gets us nowhere
I'm sorry. I wish it were different.
Partisans on each side will be furious with me for refusing to denounce the Other Side as the malicious Bad Guys who started the whole mess. But when I make this refusal, I am not indulging in easy or unthinking both-sides-ism. Let me try to explain.
In the first place, the history of the conflict is very crowded with incident and circumstance. Whatever date you pick as a starting point (the founding of Israel in 1948 is a popular choice), a lot has happened between then and now to cause rancor, grief, and rage. Any attempt to parse through this history to find the true Guilty Parties will take a very long time (because there is so much of it), but in the end the analysis is guaranteed to terminate in the following hard facts (among others).
There have been incidents when particular Israelis have treated particular Palestinians with cruelty and violence and injustice. A complete history will include many such incidents.
There have been incidents when particular Palestinians have treated particular Israelis with cruelty and violence and injustice. A complete history will include many such incidents.
When the particular Israelis that I just mentioned above mistreated particular Palestinians, they were certain that they were morally justified in what they did, because of some earlier mistreatment that had been inflicted on them personally or on someone they cared for.
When the particular Palestinians that I just mentioned above mistreated particular Israelis, they were certain that they were morally justified in what they did, because of some earlier mistreatment that had been inflicted on them personally or on someone they cared for.
A truly complete history—the kind of history that only Divine Omniscience could compile or understand—would include a long-enough train of such actions followed by such reactions that any human who tried to analyze it would lose the thread or fall asleep before he got even halfway through.
In other words, there is simply too much history here—and entirely too much righteousness—for any philosophic understanding of the recurrent claims and counterclaims to be possible. The only way anyone can extract a moral from this history is by deliberately ignoring half of it. There was probably one person responsible for starting the Hatfield-McCoy feud as well, but after enough years the identity of the varmint who started it all just didn't matter any more.*
Therefore, the Moral Framework implied by the question "Who is to blame?" gets us nowhere. Is there another framework we can use instead?
Israel as a colonial power
Indeed there is. We could use a Historical Framework, to see Israel as the very last of the European colonial powers that dominated the world in the nineteenth century. The proposal to see Zionism as a form of settler colonialism is controversial; Wikipedia states that the idea "is rejected by most Israeli Jews and perceived either as an attack on the legitimacy of Israel or a form of antisemitism."** But if you consider the question at a purely factual level, and not as an attack or a piece of propaganda, this framework does have a few points in its favor.
Wikipedia defines "settler colonialism" (in part) as follows:
Settler colonialism is a form of colonization where foreign citizens move into a region and create permanent … settlements …. The creation of settler colonies often resulted in the forced migration of indigenous peoples to less desirable territories …. Many settler colonies sought to establish European-like institutions and practices that granted certain personal freedoms and allowed settlers to become wealthy by engaging in trade. Thus, jury trials, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and electoral representation were implemented to allow settlers rights similar to those enjoyed in Europe, ….***
And can anyone deny that this exactly describes the establishment of the State of Israel inside the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine?
- Foreign citizens (mostly from Europe) moved into the area. (Indeed, even today 50% of the Jewish population of Israel traces their origins to Europe or Russia.)****
- The settlement of these Europeans in the Levant forced the migration of indigenous peoples (the Palestinians) to somewhere else.
- And the State of Israel established political institutions that look remarkably like the institutions of the European countries that they left.
But stick with me for a minute.
If you take the framework of settler colonialism seriously, the first thing that strikes you unavoidably is how much gentler has been the Israeli occupation of Palestine than any other instance you care to name. I'm an American, so the easiest example for me to think of is how the British settlers who colonized North America treated the American Indians. Spoiler alert: it wasn't good! Earlier in this essay I alluded to the many cases of mistreatment of (particular) Palestinians at the hands of (particular) Israelis: now having said that (and I stand by it), I also insist that this mistreatment—bad as it has been!—does not even remotely rise to the level of callous brutality that marked the long wars between the fledgling United States and the tribes who were here first.
Because this is a contentious issue and it is easy to misunderstand what anybody says about it, let me be very clear about two things:
- To my mind, calling the Israelis "colonialists" does not indict them!
- And also, to my mind, saying that the Israelis haven't been as brutal as the Americans does not exonerate them!
All I'm trying to do is to get a view of what has been going on for the last 75 years. It's not easy, and I hope that this framework can help. And the answer is, well sure … maybe. But now that I've painted this picture, what comes next?
The fundamental question
It almost looks like I have stacked the argument against the State of Israel at this point. Colonialism is out of fashion these days. The polite, accepted opinion of the educated and comfortable classes around the world is that colonialism is bad. So if I describe Israel as a colonial power, somebody might think that I mean to condemn her. More pointedly, if we all politely agree that colonialism is bad … well, presumably that means we all think the colonization shouldn't have happened. The State of Israel was declared only 75 years ago, which is pretty recent in historical terms. In fact that was right about the time that European colonies the world over were getting their freedom. If the world had come to agree that colonialism was bad, why did the world allow the creation of one more European colony at that exact time, a colony which by necessity of its nature would end up mistreating the indigenous people it displaced?
Of course we all know, historically, why the State of Israel was established just then. So let me turn the question around and ask: If colonization is always so bad, what exactly was the alternative?
More pointedly: Where exactly were the Jews of Europe supposed to go after 1945, if not to Palestine?
- Their recent treatment by Hitler's Reich had made it pretty clear that they couldn't trust Europe any more, since the most civilized and cultivated country in Europe had just come close to exterminating the European Jewish population.
- And every other piece of dry ground on the planet already had other people living there!
When the Great Powers deliberated after World War Two and looked for a place that the Jews could safely resettle, suppose they picked somewhere else: Arizona, or Madagascar, or Tibet.***** Name a place. Wherever you choose, there would have been somebody else already living there. And that means that the very same dynamic which has defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have played out in the other place instead.
As soon as it became clear that the world's Jews could not feel safe among the goyyim, as soon as anyone decided that a Jewish State was the best security against the annihilation of the Jewish people—from that moment, it became certain that the new Jewish State would have to be a colonial one. From that moment, the current conflict in Palestine became inevitable. Of course it might have taken place somewhere else: Arizona, or Madagascar, or Tibet. But it was always sure to happen.
That's why I call this conflict a tragedy. It's destructive; it's inevitable; and I don't see any way out.
I'd love to be wrong, though.
__________
* You are entitled to ask, "But isn't that just both-sides-ism after all?" Maybe. Call it that if you like. But it is categorically not easy or unthinking. If this is both-sides-ism, it is nonetheless reasoned.
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism#Reception. Link copied 2023-10-08.
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Western_European_colonialism_and_colonization#Settler_colonialism. Link copied 2023-10-08.
**** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#Demographics. Link copied 2023-10-08.
***** So far as I know, nobody suggested any of these specific places in real life. They are just crazy examples that I made up. But the point is that it doesn't matter where you picked, because the same thing would have happened regardless.
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