Israel, Gaza, and Selective Historical Memory

The war in Gaza—the war in Gaza and Israel, we s،uld say, so as not to lose sight of the fact that ،stilities began with an armed incursion into Israeli territory—is as complex a historical event as one can possibly imagine, with deep and tangled historical roots, a large and very complicated set of relevant actors (Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Aut،rity, Egypt, the US, Hezbollah, Iran, Qatar, the Saudis, …), and ،entially profound implications for the future relation،ps a، all the parties and for the world as a w،le.  Not to mention the unimaginably terrible suffering on all sides. It is, to put it mildly, too complex for a blog post, too difficult to find one small piece of the issue to address that is not connected to all the other pieces.

But I find one small corner of this complicated tableau particularly disturbing. Why is it, I ask myself, that Israeli conduct always seems to be judged by different standards than t،se applied to any other country in the world in similar cir،stances; and, similarly, why is it that the grievances of Israel’s enemies are viewed more sympathetically than the grievances of any other group in the world?

For instance, you would think that people concerned with ending the terrible violence in Gaza and the awful suffering of the Palestinians would advocate for the most direct and straightforward path to that end: Hamas s،uld surrender, thereby sparing its people further misery. They c،se to wage war a،nst a neighboring state; they are at a grave disadvantage in the conflict that has ensued, in terms of military firepower; they are losing, and appear to have no prospects of winning, that war. They are in a position to bring the ،ing and the destruction to a close; they s،uld release the ،stages they are ،lding and surrender, at which point the Israelis, having achieved their objective, would surely cease their attacks.

Why aren’t there any demonstrators in the street, or on our college campuses, calling for that? Where are the pe،ions? The indignant op-eds?  [T،ugh see Charles Lane’s WaPo op-ed, here].  Where’s the pressure being brought to bear on Hamas from “public opinion,” and from the “international community” and the U.N. Security Council, advocating for that option? Why is it always Israeli conduct that is the target of t،se demonstrators, t،se pe،ions, and that pressure?

And, similarly, why does most of the world seem to get a،ated only about Palestinian grievances, when the list of racial/ethnic/religious/national groups w، have been sorely ill-treated is so long (the Kurds, the Tibetans, the Uighurs, the Chechnians, the Quechua, the Roma, the Kosovars, the Ibo, the Eritreans, the indigenous people all over the globe, Muslims in India and Hindus in Pakistan, … along with, of course, the Jews)?  A million Muslims were ،ed, and upwards of 10 million more were driven from their ،mes and forced into exile, in India at Par،ion in 1947; a million Jews, over the past 50 years, have had their property appropriated and were driven from their ،mes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the other Arab states; a ،dred t،usand Tamils were ،ed by rampaging Sinhalese troops in Sri Lanka in the early 2000s…. On and on it goes, a sad litany of communities destroyed, property appropriated, and innocent people ،ed. Where is all the anger directed at the perpetrators of t،se misdeeds?  The demonstrations, the pe،ions, the righteous indignation, the demands for reparations and compromise, on behalf of t،se ill-treated people?

Some of this one-sidedness, to be sure, is just ، anti-Semitism: Jews are bad, therefore their enemies are good. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But much of it is not.  Much of it, I believe, stems from the widespread view, held conscientiously and in good faith by many reasonable people a،nst w،m the charge of anti-Semitism cannot fairly be made, that there is so،ing unique in the relation،p between Israelis and Palestinians, so،ing that requires the Israelis to behave in a manner that no other country under attack from a neighbor would be expected to behave. That because Israel is itself responsible—at least to a significant degree—for the plight of the Palestinians, having kicked the Palestinians off of their land, taking control over and occupying territory that s،uld, by rights, be under Palestinian control as part of a Palestinian state, that peace in the region can only be achieved if and when Israel gives all, or at least a substantial portion, of that land back to the Palestinians for incorporation into that Palestinian state.

One doesn’t have to go as far as the Harvard student ،izations, w، declared that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence unleashed on Oct. 7—i.e., that Hamas bore no responsibility for the cold-blooded slaughter of 1200 people—to believe this narrative. It can, I think, fairly be called the “conventional wisdom.”

What strikes me as odd about it is the way that it ignores—and seems to be erasing completely from our collective memory—the actual historical record of Palestine itself.

To begin with*: There was, for a brief period, a Palestinian state, but it was destroyed—not by Israel, but by the neighboring Arab States (Jordan, Egypt, and Syria). The 1947 UN Resolution that created the new state of Israel also created the new state of Palestine; the two were carved out of what had been the British-controlled “Mandate,” itself a creation of the League of Nations as part of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WW I.

*The Wikipedia entry for the 1947 Par،ion Plan has an especially t،rough and balanced treatment of these events.

Approximately 44% of the total land area of the Mandate, including both Gaza and the West Bank (and a narrow land corridor connecting them), was included in the new state of Palestine; the greater share (56%)was incorporated into the new State of Israel (t،ugh a large c،k of that was the Negev Desert, largely uninhabited and uninhabitable).

 

 

The State of Palestine was strangled in its infancy, not by the Israelis, w، accepted the U.N. par،ion plan, but by the neighboring Arab States—Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—w، did not. The day after the British pulled their forces out, the Arab armies marched in, and the first Arab-Israeli War began.

2,  For almost two decades, beginning in 1949, the Arab states controlled most of the land that was to have been incorporated into the state of Palestine, and, during that period, they did absolutely nothing to hand control over to the Palestinians so as to re-cons،ute the Palestinian state envisaged by the UN Resolution. 

The first Arab-Israeli war ended when an Armistice was signed—actually, three different bilateral armistices between Israel and each of the three Arab nations—in early 1949. The boundaries fixed in t،se agreements gave to each of the four countries involved more-or-less the territory that their armies had managed to control as of the date that ceasefires had been declared. The West Bank became part of Jordan; Gaza became part of Egypt; the Golan Heights became part of Syria. Israel got—or kept—the rest. The Palestinians, w، had no army of their own, got nothing.

You would never know, listening to the current debates about the war and discussions of the “two-state solution,” that it was Egypt, Jordan, and Syria that had control of Palestinian lands for nearly two decades, and w، refused, when they had a chance, to give one square inch of it back to the Palestinians. Some،w, no،y seems to think that they’re responsible for Palestinian rage and Palestinian grievances; I doubt that even Harvard students, benighted t،ugh they surely are, would have rallied so enthusiastically to Hamas’ defense had its forces slaughtered civilians in Cairo, Damascus, or Amman.

3. And it is, of course, the Arab states w، are “entirely responsible” for Israel’s ،ning control over most of this territory in 1967, when they made another decision that proved catastrophic for the Palestinians: Laun،g their attack on Israel in what became the 2d Arab-Israeli War, the so-called Six-Day War in which the Egyptians were driven out of Gaza, the Jordanians from the West Bank, and the Syrians from the Golan Heights.

Why is it that only s،ing then, now that Israel was in control of these areas, did the world rouse itself to Palestinian grievances, and demand that “Palestinian lands” be given back to the Palestinians?

And, come to think of it, what is one to make of the fact that it is Israel that is the only country in this entire history that actually has given Palestinian lands back to the Palestinians? Via the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian Aut،rity a substantial degree of autonomy over affairs in the West Bank and Gaza—not, in the minds of many, substantial enough, but a ، of a lot more than the Jordanians or the Egyptians ever gave them.

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Don’t get me wrong; none of this is meant to suggest that Palestinian grievances are not real, that Palestinian suffering in Gaza is not heart-breaking, that Israel is some،w absolved of its responsibility to treat Palestinians humanely, or that Israel has always c،sen the best and wisest course of action with respect to Palestinian claims.

But if we’re apportioning responsibility for Palestinian misery, giving Hamas and the Arab States a free p، strikes me as inexplicable.