RECOGNIZING PALESTINE

THE ONE THING THE WORLD REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE IS THE ACTUAL ROOT OF THE CONFLICT.

Oh yay.

The contagion of countries recognizing Palestinian “statehood” is a symptom of the problem at the heart of this conflict.

My country, Canada, joined the pandemonium this week. So did the UK, Australia, France, Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Monaco.

Fair enough, I suppose. If Andorra, Luxembourg or Monaco can be states, I guess anything goes. But anyways.

This spread of diplomatic nonsense is, if you listen to the reasoning of the leaders, going to advance peace and a two-state solution.

The opposite is true. Because the very premise upon which these leaders are operating is flawed.

Devoted readers know that the fundamental premise of my writing is that “pro-Palestinians” are failing to advance the things they claim to advance because they are consistently barking up the wrong tree.

To recap: The problem is, Israel is not the problem. The root of this conflict is the Palestinian and larger Arab and Muslim unwillingness to abide the presence of self-determined Jewish people in the indigenous homeland of the Jews. That’s it. That’s the problem. And as long as we blame everything except the real cause of the problem, we will never reach a resolution.

Palestinian violence is the reason for the “occupation,” not the other way around.

When Palestinians agree to live in peace, there will be a Palestinian state. It actually is this simple.

Here’s why this is such an impossible problem: Western diplomats, activists, church leaders, commentators and others view this as a geopolitical conflict.

Most Arabs and Muslims view it as a theological conflict. (Not all of them. But enough of them.)

The Islamic concept of Dar al-Islam, classically interpreted, declares that no land once governed by Muslims should ever fall to the infidel.

There are other, less thinky ideas, like the plainly racially and religiously supremacist idea that Jews have no right to be in a position of authority over Muslims. Muslim revulsion at uppity Jews is an undeniably huge factor here.

Even if a small minority of Arabs and Muslims subscribe to the idea that this conflict will not be resolved through negotiation but that it is an existential, cosmic battle of theology (leaving aside the real possibility that a majority of Arabs and Muslims in the world believe this), it is, put mildly, not going to end in a signing ceremony on the west lawn of the White House.

Plus, we tried that already.

This is a scary thought, of course. It almost guarantees generations more conflict.

As a result, this certainly must account for part of the reason why even well-intentioned people in the West subscribe to unsustainable ideas, such as the nonsense that, if Israel would just give in to the Palestinian demands, there would be peace.

Accepting the truth of the situation is too depressing and hopeless. So we would rather delude ourselves and accept the idea that settlements or refugees or whatever blah blah that the other side throws up are the reasons for this conflict and its intractability.

If we are ever going to find common ground that results in an end to the war and dying, we need to confront the fundamentals of what is happening here.

We need to accept the possibility that hundreds of millions of people — including the frontline belligerents in this conflict — view this as a theological conflict, an ultimate battle of divine righteousness over satanic malevolence, while we continue arguing over decidedly this-worldly details like we’re negotiating a real estate deal.

To advance into a scenario where we can find any common language leading to a resolution that does not result in generations more war, we need to insist on a level playing field.

Of course, this requires us to convince our interlocutors that their god does not, in fact, have a stake in the outcome of this conflict.

There is a profound irony here — and like almost everything in this discussion, it involves a projection.

Anti-Zionists routinely accuse Zionists of claiming legitimacy for Israel based on theology, that the Promised Land of the Chosen People is what drives Zionism.

As usual, this illustrates profound ignorance of the facts. Biblical promises are the primary justification of Zionism for some religious Israelis (and some Christians). But even most of them subscribe to the (to use an agnostic term) “rational” justifications for Jewish national self-determination.

A lot of the times when Jews and Zionists evoke the Bible or holy sites, it is not to summon divine justification but simply to demonstrate something that every progressive person should appreciate without equivocation. The Bible, and every scrap of historical evidence and ancient archeology demonstrate that Jews are the indigenous people in this land. They are the only people, speaking the same language, who have been on this space in an unbroken line since ancient times. Evoking the Bible is not (necessarily) to demonstrate God-given rights.

On the contrary, it is justification for the most modern, mainstream, agnostic concept that antiracist, progressive people accept in every other instance: indigenous sovereignty and decolonization.

On the other hand, and even as Western progressives accuse Jews of claiming national legitimacy based on skydaddyism, they behave as though Palestinian, Arab and Muslim anti-Zionism is founded exclusively on rational, non-woo woo premises — when it is overwhelmingly, almost exclusively, premised on Islamic religious supremacism and Arab racial prejudice.

As long as Westerners and others who choose to intervene on this issue ignore Muslim antisemitism and Arab anti-Jewish racism as the geneses of global anti-Zionism, they will overlook the larger discrepancy: that one side is arguing facts and details while the other is fighting for what they believe to be their deity’s inflexible objective.

If you believe you are fighting an ultimate jihad, especially if your cosmology assures you that the afterlife is better than life (and may involve orgies one can only ever dream of in Ramallah), no number of lives lost, even your own, seems too high a price to pay.

If we refuse to acknowledge that Israelis (and, yes, by extension, no less than Western civilization) are up against opponents that include many (or most) who view this not as a geopolitical challenge to be negotiated and resolved but a theological conflict that can end only in an apocalyptic victory over the forces of evil, we will never understand what is happening here.

But sure.

Go ahead and recognize the state of Palestine — something that doesn’t remotely exist.

Do anything but recognize the one thing that really does exist — the actual, theological, apocalyptic roots of this conflict.

This will not turn out well.

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