Tragedy in Gaza

I’ve commented before that the theological claim to the land of Israel is hard to argue with, but I don’t shy away from hard stuff, so here goes. It amounts to saying, “this is my land because my invisible friend says so”. In fact, more tenuous than that, it’s “this is my land because the sky fairy promised it to Abraham 4000 years ago and I have inherited that promise”. Obviously there are many ways in which one could take issue with this, but the principal one, for me, is that I don’t believe in the sky fairy – either that specific one, or any other. From that perspective, the book of Genesis (and Exodus, which contains God’s instruction to drive out the people who already live in the land), was clearly written quite deliberately to fabricate a false claim to the land and a false justification for driving out the indigenous people. That was bad enough, 4000 years ago, but it is extraordinary that such beliefs linger on today and provide the founding myth of a modern, nuclear-armed country.

As an atheist, I am convinced that most people are wrong (in the sense of “incorrect”). If you hold deeply cherished spiritual beliefs and are offended because I’ve said this, understand that I’m not saying it for gratuitous effect. It just seems to be the only defensible view.

I don’t mind if you believe the Earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese. You are wrong, but otherwise your life, experience and opinions are as valid as mine. You don’t have to be an atheist to have my respect, nor support my football team or like my kind of music. I am not right about everything. My ignorance is vast. But, there are no Gods.

Based on my claim that all religions are wrong, and all gods are human inventions, I claim that the Jews are wrong – at least in their religion. Included in this is the theological claim to exclusive title to the land of Israel. It’s not anti-Semitic to say that the Jewish religion is wrong and that its God was invented by people; it just follows from the realisation that all religions are wrong. But, right now, it’s Israel which is bombing the crap out of Gaza for reasons which ultimately stem from their supernatural claim to the land formerly known as Palestine.

It is the basis of the statement, in the original manifesto of Netanyahu’s Likud party, that “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable” and that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. Given the fuss made these days about the words “between the river and the sea”, it’s worth remembering that it’s the extremist Israeli government which actually makes that claim and backs it up with deadly force, and has been doing so for years.

The current campaign has cost some 15,000 Palestinian lives, and will no doubt claim many more. Over 6,000 more are missing, presumably buried under rubble. Along with the mass slaughter, the damage done to infrastructure and domestic buildings is making life impossible in Gaza. This is not self-defence; it’s revenge, collective punishment, and forced migration. The increasingly obvious aim of Israel’s campaign is to make the Gaza strip uninhabitable through an engineered famine; slaughter; disease; and demolition. It is also increasingly obvious (from the use of 900kg bombs in densely populated areas, and cutting off the water) that this is not a war against Hamas; it is a war against Palestinians. Hence the ever-louder accusations of genocide.

Why do all our politicians and media support this? Why are pro-Palestinian voices suppressed so forcefully? It seems to me that our leaders are badly out of step with the people. The current campaign, more than any other I remember, is undermining popular Western support for Israel.

This is a problem that Israel should take seriously. They probably realise that the non-Jewish world doesn’t accept the “Promised Land” argument. They can’t really count on the support of God to smite their enemies. But they have leaned very heavily on the USA, and undermining that kind of support is a much bigger deal.

US support is dressed up as concern for the “only democracy in the region”, the “rules-based order” and other flim-flam, but the reality always comes down to power politics. The US needs a reliable partner country in the Middle East. So Israel gets to break all the rules in the rules-based order book with total impunity. But the Americans don’t always get their way. Things didn’t work out for them in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq, and are not going well in Ukraine, where, despite outspending Russia many times over, they are losing. The brutal juntas and dictators the US props up – Pinochet, Somoza, Marcos, Zia, Suharto and many others – don’t last forever and their eventual fall leaves chaos and enmity. The US public eventually tires of supporting their most vicious and corrupt clients. America will not be a reliable patron forever. The USA’s “democracy and freedom” values are just cards they play in the great game when it suits them. The rise of China, Russia and the BRICS – with the US proving, time and again, unable to block them – points to a time when US support may not be the last word in any conflict. Predictions of American imperial decline are often made and have always failed, but that doesn’t mean American power will always dominate and that America’s perceived interests will always align with those of the current, extremist Israel.

Israel often claims to have a “right to exist”. But the nation-state is a temporary political construct; they come and go all the time. Did East Germany have a right to exist? Or Yugoslavia? The USSR? White Rhodesia? Should they be brought back? Not even the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland exists as of right. The UK exists because it works for a sufficient number of us, but it is perfectly possible that it will dissolve in the coming decade. There is a possibility that even the USA may split up in the coming years. Nation-states exist while they serve a purpose, then things shift and new states, new borders, new power structures and new allegiances are formed. This is natural and constant. Go on Youtube and look at an animation of the map of Europe over the last 300 or 400 years; nations flicker in and  out of existence faster than you can read their names. Continued national existence is not a right, there is no guarantee. Like the support of God, this is a comforting delusion, but a bogus argument.

The fact that states do not have a right to exist, does not mean they ought not to exist; and certainly not that they should be violently destroyed. There are various possible alternatives to the current arrangement of nation states in the Middle East, including as it does, several countries created by European imperial powers with little regard for any interests but their own – hence all those straight-line borders. Adopting one of these alternatives would not have to mean the physical destruction of any existing land or communities. Most people, including Palestinians, would be OK with the existence of a peaceful Israel which had agreed borders and stuck to them. And the absence of a right to exist, doesn’t mean that the Israelis haven’t a right to defend their country. The real question is, whether what Israel is now doing qualifies as defence, or is revenge killing, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment. By phrasing the question as “does Israel have the right to defend itself”, a question to which, on a literal surface reading, you can only answer “Yes”, one is forced effectively to buy into the assumptions behind the question; to accept the premise that nothing which occurred before 7th October matters, and that what Israel is now doing is defensive. Indeed, the word “defence” carries an implication that “the other side started the fight” which necessarily makes the history relevant; but anyone who speaks publicly about the long term history of Israel and Palestine, is silenced, or accused of anti-Semitism. In the pro-Israeli narrative currently being forced on us, the only historical events which count are the holocaust and the 7^th of October. This rather blatant spin is no longer being widely accepted.

When I was a toddler, the “War Office” was renamed the “Ministry of Defence”. Nothing had changed in its mission; we still start wars, and we invade and bomb other countries which have not attacked us. But, calling it “defence” sounds more reasonable. Hence the apologists for Israel talk of defence, and stress the 7^th October Hamas attack as if it were the first blow to be struck. Nobody is fooled; this conflict has been going on since before I was born, and “who started it” becomes a less and less relevant question over decades. Similarly, the word “hostage” is used, correctly, to describe the people abducted by Hamas on 7^th October, but not to describe the thousands of Palestinians held in “administrative detention” by Israel. No, they are called “prisoners” which, in Britain, usually equates to “criminals”. Thus is the language recruited into the fight.

There is another dispute which has been rumbling on for years with occasional eruptions into violence. This is the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. For a long time, it seemed the Armenians had the upper hand, however instead of using their advantage to reach a favourable permanent agreement over how to share the territory, they held out for everything, relying on the hope that they would stay on top for good and not have to compromise at all. Now the situation has changed and 200,000 Armenians have been expelled from the territory (an act of ethnic cleansing which went almost un-noticed in the West). The Armenians could have had most of what they wanted, but they held out to keep it all, and have ended up with nothing. There may be a lesson here for Israel; they are also holding out for everything, and have consistently refused to use their superior position to reach an advantageous permanent agreement.

Wars are expensive. The US has reportedly given Israel 12,000 bombs and 57,000 shells, as well as billions in aid, and sent a huge fleet to the region. Coming on top of the Ukraine war, also bankrolled by the Americans, even Uncle Sam’s wallet is being overstretched. The US taxpayers are not half as keen as their leaders to keep paying like this for foreign wars, and as the death toll in Gaza rises, the Israelis may find the support they have counted on for so long is no longer unlimited. Under popular pressure, President Biden is starting to row back just a little on his unqualified support for Netanyahu. This is an asymmetric war – a real David and Goliath situation – and the decisive campaign is not the battlefield of Gaza but the contest for world opinion. Having the most expensive weapons and American warships lurking nearby, doesn’t count in that contest. Israel is spending money and firepower, but may find that the real cost is in perceived legitimacy. Once you lose that perception, it’s very difficult to get it back. Even their nukes are unusable in that campaign (as in the actual fighting).

Netanyahu is unpopular and it is widely believed that he will go as soon as the immediate crisis calms down. That alone is a bad thing; he has an incentive to keep the war going. As ever, he puts his own interests first. Netanyahu has spent his political life working to prevent the set-up of a Palestinian state, through his active promotion of Hamas, and through encouraging the illegal settlements. This has been a disaster for Israel.

He has led his country into a position they will find very difficult to back out of. Even if the current ultra-hawkish government were replaced by agreement-capable moderates, it would be very difficult to get out of the position they have put themselves in. They are, once again, creating a huge number of dispossessed enemies who have seen their families killed and their homes flattened, and who will never forgive. It is a recipe for another 70 years of conflict. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the current violence; that it will engender further violence down the years.

As for the world as a whole, the current campaign is a sad demonstration that the West and its clients can do what they want with impunity. If Israel faces no consequences for the blood it is spilling now, the whole concept of international law will lie shattered and bleeding in the rubble of Gaza. The American political scientist Frank Wilhoit said that right-wing politics is based on the principle that there are insiders who the law protects, but does not bind; and outsiders, who the law binds, but does not protect. Israel has enjoyed insider status for decades; but it cannot assume that this will always be the case. The decades-long period in which the Israeli narrative dominated in the Western sphere may, at last, be coming to an end. Politicians continue to support it, but more and more people are not buying this.

Even the Americans are now reported to be telling the Israelis that they need a plan for the day after their bombing campaign; to the extent that the Israelis take any notice, they are probably thinking in terms of how to maintain control and keep Hamas from re-organising once the intense war is over. But that does not constitute winning. By their own account, the Likud party and other hawks define winning as possession of all the land, from the river to the sea, vacated of Palestinians. Perhaps they indulge in a fantasy in which, if they make Gaza uninhabitable and continue their creeping annexation of the West Bank, the Palestinians will somehow melt away into neighbouring countries and cease to be a coherent people. This definition of winning is unobtainable and if that is their goal, Israel will lose. They need a change of mindset in which winning is defined as the achievement of stability and a lasting peace. This requires allowing the Palestinians a life worth living, on a piece of land worth having. How many states are involved, and with what borders, is up for discussion. Outsiders and sponsors should not seek to define the specific outcome, only to insist that one is reached; one which we can then assist with implementing. This will require a US President who acts like the Commander in Chief of the world’s greatest superpower, and sadly, neither Biden nor Trump is up to the job.