ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND “GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS”

AN AGNOSTIC NOTICES A BIT OF HYPOCRISY — DEPENDING ON WHOSE GOD GRANTS THE RIGHTS.

When the UN General Assembly wasn’t a tyrant’s paradise. 

(Shana tovah to my Jewish friends.)

Theology plays a big role in the Middle East conflict — obviously. What is weird is how atheists, agnostics and those who follow liberal or non-literalist approaches to religion obsess over anything with a whiff of “God-given right.” The weird part is that, when it comes to Israel, the idea of a God-given right is mocked and derided, but a God-given right by Muslims to the same land suddenly evokes a reverence for religious deference.

Because let’s be completely clear: The opposition to the existence of Israel is, and always has been, premised on the idea that Jews have no right to national self-determination in their ancient and modern homeland.

Settlements, refugees, borders and land, the control of Jerusalem and the other odds and sods that are trotted out as the sticking points preventing peace are really, at best, side issues and, at worst, total red herrings.

Opposition to Israel, from the first inkling of Jewish nationalism (called Zionism) in the 19th century, until today, has been premised on the concept in Islamic law of Dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam. Under this premise, no land once part of the caliphate should ever again fall into the hands of the infidel. (And there ain’t no infidel like the Jews.)

Note that Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were all pretty much cut from whole cloth by the imperial powers in the same general era and area in which Israel was created. No one questions the basic legitimacy of these states — even though their failed state status in most cases should perhaps draw some existential criticism. Why? Because they are not Jewish states.

That’s the nut of the problem people have with Israel.

Western activists may not know it — and if they don’t know it, they shouldn’t be making this issue their top or only foreign policy priority — but by signing on to the Palestinian cause, they are joining a movement of religious supremacism. (Seems odd for atheists and pluralist liberals, doesn’t it?)

Sure, you can criticize how Israel is responding to attacks on its civilians, or this reality, or that policy, or blah blah blah. But if you are chanting “From the river to the sea,” you are basically endorsing the concept in shariah that says every inch of land Muslims ever conquer is theirs forever.

And since this is a concept founded in religious law, you are swallowing the Muslim concept of “God-given right,” even as you ridicule the same concept in the Jewish context.

Except — it’s worse.

There are those in Israel (and among their overseas allies, Jewish and Christian) who believe Israel should (and does) exist by divine right. But Israel was founded on secularist, pluralist principles. The idea of “God-given rights” where it does exist, applies to eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, not medinat Yisrael, the state of Israel. And, yes, that differentiation matters.

If anything, critics of Israel — especially the atheist kind — might have a more legitimate claim to make that Israel was “man-given” rather than “God-given.”

Whether you date it back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the San Remo Conference of 1920, or the Partition Resolution of 1947, this was the work of humans, not of God.

But this, too, is ultimately fallacious. Because, in the final calculation, the country of Israel is a product not of God or of humans assembled in London or San Remo or New York, but rather a product of the blood of Jews, and Jews almost completely alone.

The Partition Resolution was intended to peaceably divide what was left of Palestine (after the imperial powers lopped off the country of Transjordan, about which more soon) into a Jewish and an Arab state.

Had that partition occurred as intended, it might be fair to say that the United Nations created the state of Israel. (In which case, we would say that it also created a parallel state of Palestine.)

Neither of these things happened.

They didn’t happen because the Arab world unanimously rejected compromise — because they would not tolerate a Jewish state in any form. They wanted all or nothing — and so they got nothing. Which has kind of been the Palestinian story for 76 years now. And they owe it all to their brothers in the Arab League.

But, since the Arabs rejected the Partition Resolution, and launched the war of annihilation against the Jewish state at the moment it came into being, everything that came before is nullified. All that history — the Balfour Declaration, the diplomatic works, the San Remo Conference, the Partition Resolution — if you want to go back to ancient times, go as far as you want — all of that became water under the bridge when the Arabs launched their war of 1948-’49.

The Israeli victory in 1949 represented a new status quo, the erasure of the status quo ante. You can moan and complain and stomp your feet about the injustice of Palestinian statelessness all you want. The Arabs launched a war of annihilation against the new Jewish state (ostensibly in support of Palestinian self-determination, but if you believe that, you’ll believe anything) and they failed. Compared to what might have happened to the Jews had the Arabs had won that war, the Palestinian people have gotten off remarkably easily. (I don’t suppose that is a popular opinion.)

In any event, they tried it again in 1967. Again, they lost. You can lament that history all you want. But that history was perpetrated by the Arab side. I know it drives the anti-Israel crowd nuts, after all these years, that the Jews won. But they did. And you don’t get to demand we wipe the slate clean just because a war didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to. If you start a war, you kinda take your chances.

Atheists, agnostics, progressives and a lot of others harp on about “international law” a great deal when it suits their anti-Israel agendas. But they refuse to acknowledge the concept of international law that matters most in this context: The concept of uti possidetis, which asserts that a nation that successfully defends itself and takes territory during war may retain that territory after hostilities cease, unless an agreement is made to return it.

Pearl-clutching pacifists recoil at this sort of law of the jungle. But they can keep clutching.

You might not like the fact that military victory trumps your feelings. But it does.

Israel is every bit as legitimate as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Given the massive achievements of Israel as a democratic, pluralist success story and the catastrophic history and contemporary realities of some of these other states, I’d argue Israel has a far more legit claim on validity, but this is now just my opinion, not international law. But anyways.

The only reason anyone has a problem with Israel is that it is a Jewish state. That’s what anti-Zionism is — it’s opposition to the Jewish state. Why isn’t there such a thing as anti-Iraqism or anti-Syrianism? Because nobody questions the legitimacy of Muslims or Arabs to national self-determination. That is something we hold against the Jewish people alone.

All of this prattling is intellectual onanism. Israel doesn’t need your justification and it doesn’t need any explanations. Its validity is not a matter for debate. (Except, irrationally, it is, and I stoop to conquer by engaging in it.)

Israel was not given by God. Israel was not given by man. Israel belongs to the Jewish people by moral right based on indigeneity. And before your hair bursts into flames, remember — Zionism has always been premised on the idea of sharing the land, on peace and coexistence with their neighbours. It’s the neighbours that have always been the problem.

Israel exists because — in the most fundamental sense — it has survived multiple attempts to annihilate it militarily. In other words, it exists because it defended its right to do so militarily.

In the faint hope for peace, Israelis have left no stone unturned trying to make peace, conceding, and offering compromise after compromise. Every one of these compromises was rejected by the Arabs as “not enough.” Because “enough” would always end up being Israel’s national suicide. Which, of course, is the goal.

Therefore, when I hear people questioning Israel’s legitimacy based on this historical fact or that detail, I tend to shrug.

Israel exists because it managed to keep from being massacred and, time and again, manages to keep from being massacred. That’s why it exists. And I know that a lot of people wish that wasn’t true. And to them I simply say, suck it up buttercup.

You lost.

Am Yisrael chai.