An American Looks At Israel vs.Palestine

a half-finished rough draft, submitted for your attention

[2359hrs, 11/17/2023: I’ve done some addition and correction to this manuscript.]

Oh man, here it is, the experiment I always dreaded…telling The Public how I really feel, about Israel and/or/vs. Palestine.

To be clear: I have no ethnic stake in this fight. I don’t even view myself as having a stance that’s dictated by some particular Christian doctrine. I consider myself to be an innocent bystander, to the extent that’s possible. (I can’t begin to imagine a non-Muslim Chinese, Indian, or Indonesian perspective on the matter.) I’m spectator, as it were. But what I’m watching is making me bewildered, and sick at heart.

To begin with, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs need to get this: most of us in the audience on the sidelines of this contest of mortal enmity can’t tell you apart. In terms of ancestry, and considered phenotypically, there’s too much overlap. However it is that you’re sorting yourselves out to tell in-group versus foreign (often for the purpose of killing each other, it seems), the defining signs must be primarily cultural. In terms of appearance, those subtleties are largely lost on the rest of us. Your cuisine is similar (although I realize that some of you insist otherwise); you’re both capable of dressing in robes and scarves, long dresses or tunics and leggings, or trousers and oxford shirts; you cut your hair, or you don’t; conceal your hair, or you don’t. If I try really, really hard, I can just about make out some linguistic differences to tell the Herbrew and Arabic languages apart, when spoken. But you even practically sound like each other. Why all the hate?

The history is where it gets weird, of course. That’s where those of us outside of the game tend to feel obligated to choose up sides- even though both sides look pretty sad and miserable, at least from the point of view of this observer. The awful fact is that this deep neutrality has gotten to be my backstop position. I can’t stand the phrase “ a pox on both your houses”- that really is a malevolent curse, and an utterly inappropriate response to this unending tragedy- but it really is tiresome to witness, and simply walking away from the entire fiasco has an undeniable appeal.

I’m not alone with that opinion, either. The best summary of the hands-thrown-in-the-air, deep neutrality viewpoint on Israel that I’ve ever read appeared as a Sunday comic strip some years ago- an episode of Candorville, by Darrin Bell. (I wish I could find the strip I’m thinking of; maybe it’s in one of the book compilations of his strips. If I can find it, I’ll post it.) It just seems so hopeless for an outsider to get into some “my beach” vendetta between two groups of locals. If only you folks weren’t my fellow human beings. If only your battles weren’t taking place on the planet that we all share. (No, I don’t think there are other options in that regard.)

This where I’ll cut to the chase, with my personal take on how to stop the madness once and for all. The way I see it, this struggle is being waged as a zero-sum cage match; one winner, one loser. That being the case, there are two endgame solutions to this conflict. Given the evident intractability of any in-between compromise on the primary goals, ultimately the choice comes down to this:

1. The Jews of Eretz Israel cede the land to the Arabs of Palestine. All 3 million of them pack up and leave the territory, returning it to the Arab and mostly Muslim population. This is a tall order, although the leaders of the pro-Palestinian side of the Social Justice Left exemplified by advocates like Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin, et. al. have given approximately no thought to the nuts and colts of carrying out that project, at least in my readings. But realistically, that would almost certainly be the consequence of dismantling the nation-state of Israel in favor of a majority Arab Muslim Palestinian nation-state. (Yes, I know that there is also a Palestinian Arab Christian population.)

I’ll revisit the first option in a little bit. First I want to discuss the second option:

2. The Muslim mullahs who currently preside over the territory of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome Of The Rock cede the buildings and the territory on which they’re built to Israel, along with the entirety of the West Bank.

It’s possible to build some compromise into this position; for example, in return for obtaining total sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the West Bank, the government of Israel might be persuaded to cede a large swath of what’s currently Israelis territory to the Palestinian Arabs,ranging from the northern seacoast at Haifa on up to Lebanon, and east to the Golan Heights (which would be shared with Israel in the interest of national security and equitable water sharing rights.) Basically, the Palestinians get Samaria, and the Meggido valley.

The Israelis might also be willing to include a substantial benefits package in the bargain. (No, not a bribe to the negotiators, don’t be ridiculous…) For that matter, a lot of people all over the world might see clear to chipping in to solve the problem. A hundred billion US dollars spent to resolve this real estate dispute to the satisfaction of both parties would be nothing, compared to what’s already been spent half-assing around.

Yes, idealistic. Bliss-ninny crazy, at least on first appearance. And also unwieldy, because a lot of people on both sides have to shift neighborhoods. The players in the resolution have to accept a burden of sacrifices. But in theory, nothing forbids it.

Hear me out, Muslim faithful (and others.) I realize that it’s difficult to be so magnaminious to the Jewish and Christian demands for Zionist control of the Temple Mount, when they’re typically been so obnoxious in their advocacy. But one would have to admit that there’s a splendid opportunity to overturn their narrative and its cheap shots by acting magnanimously, and from a position of both moral and geopolitical strength. There are some interesting aspects to this gambit. First, it has to be admitted that the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock do not possess the importance of either Mecca or Medina in Islamic tradition. They constitute the third holiest shrine in the Islamic tradition, not the first. The buildings themselves aren’t the original Islamic shrines on the site, either. The original buildings were destroyed.

Furthermore, long before Mohammed founded Islam, the site was a shrine that was (and still is) sacred to the Jews. This fact brings up other little-discussed implications, of course; chief among them is the goal held by an influential faction of Jews- particularly Israeli Jews- in building the Third Temple, a project that would almost almost certainly entail razing the Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Here’s my suggestion to the mullahs: cede the shrine, and leave the controversy the Temple Mount to the Jews to decide. Give away your third holiest shrine, and make the question of replacing it entirely their problem to resolve. I don’t fear that some supernatural power will be unleashed by Jewish ritual sacrifice. Do you?

Allow me to explain how I’ve arrived at my position on the Third Temple. I had never heard of the Third Temple until around 1997, when I read a brief account of the project and its advocates in a book entitled Secret And Suppressed. Secret And Supressed was perhaps the most famous of all of the “transgressive history/cryptohistory/conspiracy” books put out by Feral House publishing press, which was run by a small group of miscreants as part of the cottage industry of Anglo-American conspiracy literature that began to flourish in the late 1980s. The ouevre of Feral house was part “hidden history”, part prank, part con game, and part trolling, like a forerunner of Internet websites like 4chan. The content value varied from article to article- and it needed to be read diligently, lest the reader get carried away with extravagant speculations. (Something along that line happened to me for a little while, although I don’t blame literary conspiracymongers; what initially put me over the edge was my abrupt acquaintance with some suppressed facts of history about my own government that I found out from more reputable sources. A story for a different post; suffice it to say that I understand how ordinary Americans of good will might be duped into paranoid conclusions by QAnon and similarly extravagant political/historical narratives.) As it happens, the Secret And Suppressed account of the 20th century advocates for the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem is a mostly accurate narrative; I was able to confirm much of it with library research. These days, information about the project is easily accessed and researched via the Internet; Third Temple Zionists have their own web pages.

To sum up the Third Temple Project briefly: Third Temple Zionists are seeking to reconstitute the original Jewish old-time religion in accordance with the 613 Laws, which require the rebuilding and re-dedication of the Temple and the restoration of the original rites of the cohan priesthood, which include ritual animal sacrifice to the God of the Hebrews. The ritual sacrifice of a red heifer, with no blemish or a single white hair.

I’m not sure whether that’s monotheism or some form of animism or pantheism. I just don’t know. For what it’s worth, it’s well accepted that the early Hebrews practiced a henotheistic religion. (“Henotheistic” is a difficult definition to place. Metaphysics gets murky when verbalized.)

When I first read about the movement to build the Third Temple, much of it sounded like the exact sort of Protestant Evangelical Apocalypticism that emphasized the paramount importance of the Book Of Revelations to Christianity, including such hallmarks of the narrative as the ambition of the “false Jews” to claim the Holy Land as the seat of a Jewish world empire ruled by their perfidious pseudoreligious power aims. And the whole animal sacrifice thing sounded so…primitive. Although, granted, as a practicing omnivore, my objections related more to performative appearances than substance.

Long story short, this sent me down the rabbit hole of investigating the ur-narrative of all political conspiracism, The Jewish Conspiracy. I eventually satisfied myself that The Grand Unified Theory of Jewish Conspiracy was a false account of history. I also learned a boatload of world history in the process, including the role played by various Jewish individuals and groups in its workings. (I view that role as equivalent to the role played by physicians, nurses, and other skilled medical professionals who are immigrants from overseas in the American medical system; they’re getting those jobs because not enough native born Americans (and most of us are still whiteys, fwiw) are up for doing them, or equipping themselves with the skills to do them. Not “immigrant conspiracy.”) My conclusion is that the Jews get heat because they’re foreigners who don’t stay in the subordinate lane approved by the locals. Even most Jews going along with the rules most of the time isn’t enough. Even doing cool stuff for the locals isn’t enough.

The intuition of that problem is what led people like Theodor Herzl to initiate the Zionist project of the late 19th-20th century. Not religious commitment- although the words L'Shana Haba'ah are still uttered by Jews observing holidays like Passover and Yom Kippur. Some of the Jews even know what the words mean. Some of them take the words seriously.

Incidentally, one of the foremost supporters of building the Third Temple- and, presumably, all that implies, red heifer and all- is Evangelical Christian minister John Hagee. A Bible literalist, along the lines of the Darbyites, the Dispensaltionalists, and the Fundamentalists, with their origin compilers of bound volume Bible annotations known as The Fundamentals- and also Scofield Translators, a Protestant Christian missionary organization that has sought to travel to every land and translate the Bible into every known language. As that task necessarily requires competence, if not fluency, in the language to be adapted from the English Language Scofield Bible, the Scofield translators have become famed linguistic investigators. It’s no mean feat, although I’m dubious about the involvement of some ultimately divine inspiration in the process. Bible literalism is not a tradition in the mainstream of Christianity; only a minority of Christians approach their faith on the basis of some alleged Scriptural inerrancy. Roman Catholic doctine, for example, considers Bible literalism to be heretical- the error of Bibliolatry. The quick and dirty Wiki lowdown is here. Always check your work on Wiki.

I’m not a Catholic, but being acquainted with the writings of people like Kevin Starr, Garry Wills, and Stanley Hauerwas, I’ve gained a lot of respect for the intellectual tradition and the sincerity of the Christian faith of most Catholics. I think Catholic doctrine has some valid points to make, and I don’t confuse the life role and teachings of Jesus (in the lingua franca) with some supernatural notion that the Bible- or even the New Testament- is 100% signal straight from G~d’s mouth to the translators pens.

Many Evangelical Protestant Christians are Bible Literalists, however. In fact, considered as a movement, Bible Literalist Christians are both enduring and very well-funded. They’re also the self-identified Christian sect that’s most politically active in the US, and they’re quite numerous as a voting constituency. The Literalists consider themselves as the true heirs and champions of the original Christian faith, notwithstanding the fact that Dispensationalism only goes back to John Darby and mid-19th century Scotland, and the Scriptural interpretation known as the Fundamentals were only published in 1911. Some of the Bible Literalists are attempting to fufill the prophecies of the Bible by breeding red heifers for sacrifice in the Third Temple. From Texas to Israel: Red heifers needed for Temple arrive

That’s who John Hagee is with. One of the many people who find Hagee a useful ally is Binyamin Netanyahu. Another is Donald Trump. I’m dubious that either of them share Hagee’s sincerity of commitment to the Third Temple. I think it’s all politics, they’re humoring him. But that’s merely a speculative impression.

I find it silly to accuse Hagee of hating the Jews, incidentally. He’s practically embedded with the Israeli right wing. I think he’s a nut and a solipsist, but Hagee’s historical assessment about Hitler providing a crucial motivation in the postwar ingathering of the Jewish exiles to the Holy Land has to be seen in the spirit of someone attempting to find some measure of redemptive value from the horror of a persecution that escalated into an extermination project. I think that’s a spurious post hoc propter hoc gloss, but Hagee wasn’t making it out of hatred. But absolving Hagee of “antisemitism” doesn’t mean that he isn’t pursuing the fullfillment of Bible Literalist prophecy of End Times and Apocalypse. That’s the thing about most Americans who hold with Bible Literalism: the book they focus on the most is the last one, the Apocalypse of St. John, akaThe Book of Revelations. Several early Bible compilers and Reformation leader Martin Luther expressed doubts as to whether Revelations even belongs in that compiled work. But the Literalists are convinced of its overarching importance. And people like Hagee think they have that book sussed. Phantasmagorical imagery, shifting allegorical symbolism, and all.

I have to admit, the notion of a Final Showdown with Evil that leaves Good eternally triumphant has its appeal. But I worry about a flim-flam. And also about excuses for War, including thermonuclear war. You don’t have to be a con man to be a deceiver. You can deceive your self. You can talk yourself into anything. But how do you get out of it?

I also learned over time that even among the population of religious Jews in Israel, most of them are over the whole Third Temple business. A year or two after I first read about the Third Temple, some time in the late 1990s, I brought up rebuilding the Third Temple to a Jewish Israeli guy who I knew slightly, and he looked at me as if I thought Jumangi was a real place. This man was a kippah wearing Sephardic Jew, the host of a music program featuring a multicultural array of music from all over the Middle East; we were both college radio DJs at the time. A few years later, when I wasn’t working at the station any longer, he still had his show; as it happened, Ariel Sharon had just incited a riot by attempting to lay a symbolic cornerstone for, yes, the Temple Mount, near the summit of Mount Moriah, where the Al Aqsa Mosque is located. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a political leader more vilified on-air for his actions than the words of GM that day. It was the voice of honest outrage, unscripted and spoken with palpable outrage.

I can only roughly estimate how many other Israeli Jews think of the prospect of razing the Al Aqsa Mosque and building a third Temple in its place. I doubt the opponents comprise a nontrivial number of Israeli Jews. I would not be surprised to find that opposition to that ambitious project is the majority position. After all, it’s a matter of historical fact that Israeli law enforcement has already foiled at least one plot by fanatical extremist faction of Judaism to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque. If destroying the Islamic shrine had been a priority of most of the Jewish population of Israel and the Israeli government, they could have easilt simply looked the other way. But they didn’t. It’s reasonable to conclude that most Jews do not think that dynamiting the Mosque on Mount Moriah would be supported by the will of G~d. And when I think of the attitude of the feminist animal rights Jewish constituency- a vocal fraction of the tribe- toward an all-male priesthood performing animal sacrifices…well, let’s just say that such a move would prove to be controversial.

A Machiavellian would very likely view the handing over the summit of Mount Moriah to the Jews as a masterstroke of political jiujitsu. I just happen to support the move as a signal of magnaminity and open-minded generosity. (As a Christian, I’m willing to give up the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, too. Christianity has its shrines, but it doesn’t require them.)

But I suspect the heart of the practical problem there is that the mullahs responsible for the stewardship of the Al Aqsa Mosque would by immediately placing themselves in peril of their lives, at the hands of the most fanatical of their co-religionists.

That’s also a problem related to Option 2: having the Jews of Israel/Palestine simply give up all of their homes, real estate, businesses, farms, factories, physical plant infrastructure, etc. to pack up and leave for…somewhere else, as the penalty for attempting to carry out the Zionist project between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

I realize that the narrative of Left anti-Zionism doesn’t speak of that expulsion as if it were the ultimate aim of the Palestinian resistance and the opposition to Israel. Many anti-Zionists will deny that removing the Jewish population is their ultimate goal. Hold on, they’ll say: we don’t require the complete expulsion of the Jews from the territory; we only seek the justice arising from a multiethnic, nonsectarian, seculat Palestinian democracy that welcomes all people as equals.

Unfortunately, several factors make that an extremely unlikely outcome. Consider The 2017 Hamas Charter, for example. Although some of the terms of the original 1988 charter were revised in 2017, the gist of it remains clear: The Zionist Jews are an alien invader, a 20th century settler population with no historic claim on the territory they blasphemously refer to as “Israel”; the land the Zionists occupy, Palestine, requires an Islamic government; armed resistance to Zionist Israel is not only a right but a duty for all Muslims (and all Palestinians, presumably including non-Muslim Palestinians); the intensity of the resistance- its level of violence- is subject to being increased or decreased at any time, as a decision solely reserved for the leaders of Hamas; the necessity to dismantle the nation-state of Israel and put an Islamic Palestine in its place is “the central cause for the Arab and Islamic Ummah” (italics added); that armed violence to overthrow Zionist Israel is “a legitimate activity, it is an act of self-defence, and it is the expression of the natural right of all peoples to self-determination.”

There are 42 enumerated principles in the Hamas Charter- all of them available in the text link, which presents the Charter unabridged, in an English translation- but the paragraph above summarizes the core mission of Hamas, as seen be the leaders who drew up and enacted the charter. If I’ve stated any of those principles inaccurately in my summary, they’re errors of language use too trivial to alter the substance of the document and the information content that it conveys.

That document is incompatible with the ideal of a secular, multiethnic democracy with the sort of civil liberties provisions found in Israel (and in many other countries in the world to a more or less similar extent, but not in any Muslim majority state.)

The prospect of the expulsion of the Jewish population presently residing on the territory is left unaddressed; many supporters of the dismantling of the nation-state of Israel would deny any ambition to remove all of the Jews from the new Palestinian state by force. The reality is that very few of the Jewish citizens of what is presently known as Israel would have any interest in remaining in the Islamic state endorsed by Hamas, in being governed under the strictures of Islamic law, or in being subjected to the conditions of dhimmitude that are to be applied to both religious Jews and Christians in accordance with Koranic scripture. Residents of present-day Israel are not even required to assert any religious affiliation at all; an Islamic regime has no place for such individuals as citizens, be they first or second-class; or even proper residents. Under sharia law, nonbelievers in any of the three certified Abrahamic monotheisms (including agnostics) are criminals, guilty of the offenses of blasphemy or apostasy. Only the most merciful Islamic regimes consider blasphemy to be anything other than a capital offense; apostasy by Muslims is always a capital crime, punishable by death.

Very few of the Jews of present-day Israel are willing to live under such a regime. Which means that they would be put in the position of de facto expulsion- to…somewhere else. As I’ve already said, it isn’t a question that I’ve ever heard given any airing.

To revisit the Hamas charter: as stated in the translation I’m using as a reference:

Article 2: “Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.”

Article 3: “Palestine is an Arab Islamic land. It is a blessed sacred land that has a special place in the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.”

Article 4: “The Palestinians are the Arabs who lived in Palestine until 1947,  irrespective of whether they were expelled from it, or stayed in it; and every person that was born to an Arab Palestinian father after that date, whether inside or outside Palestine, is a Palestinian.”

Article 5: “5. The Palestinian identity is authentic and timeless; it is passed from generation to generation. The catastrophes that have befallen the Palestinian people, as a consequence of the Zionist occupation and its policy of displacement, cannot erase the identity of the Palestinian people nor can they negate it. A Palestinian shall not lose his or her national identity or rights by acquiring a second nationality.”

Article 6: “The Palestinian people are one people, made up of all Palestinians, inside and outside of Palestine, irrespective of their religion, culture or political affiliation.”

That last article is a bit unclear. Presumably, it extends to Palestinian Jews, provided that they can trace their paternal ancestry to a time before the first settlements by Zionist Jews, a population that began to immigrate to the currently contested territory of Palestine in the late 19th century. Very few Israeli Jews can trace their lineage that far back. Which logically requires that they be expelled.

To continue:

Article 7: “Palestine is at the heart of the Arab and Islamic Ummah and enjoys a special status. Within Palestine there exists Jerusalem, whose precincts are blessed by Allah. Palestine is the Holy Land, which Allah has blessed for humanity. It is the Muslims’ first Qiblah and the destination of the journey performed at night by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. It is the location from where he ascended to the upper heavens. It is the birthplace of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. Its soil contains the remains of thousands of prophets, companions and mujahidin. It is the land of people who are determined to defend the truth – within Jerusalem and its surroundings – who are not deterred or intimidated by those who oppose them and by those who betray them, and they will continue their mission until the Promise of Allah is fulfilled.”

It should be be clear that Article 7 is an entirely, exclusively Islamic assertion. It’s basically a turf claim. (And yes, I realize that Zionists make turf claims of their own. But it should be noted that the present-day nation-state of Israel does not make a similar claim of religious exclusivity on behalf of Judaism. I realize that some Israeli Jews are wedded by their belief to a similarly exclusive claim of possession. But the 1948 state of Israel was founded as a secular nation, as is borne out by its government, its laws, and and a degree of religious tolerance and individual liberty unknown in Islamic states such as the one that’s to be accepted as axiomatic for the governance of the contested territory of Palestine, according to Hamas.

Article 8: “8. By virtue of its justly balanced middle way and moderate spirit, Islam – for Hamas - provides a comprehensive way of life and an order that is fit for purpose at all times and in all places. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. It provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation.”

It distresses me to bring this up, but that’s a false claim. National governments that are authentically tolerant and moderate in spirit do not insist on a law code based entirely on the primacy of one favored religion. Furthermore, the statement that Islam “provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety” is disingenuous. Islam only grants that “umbrella of safety and security” for religious Jews and religious Christians. Furthermore, it’s implicitly understood by Jewish and Christian populations living under Islamic law that their safety and security requires their assent to the primacy of sharia law, and that the definitions of tolerance or stringency are matters reserved exclusively to the Muslim leaders of particular Islamic regimes.

Much of the rest of the Hamas Charter consists of similar Islamist claims of temporal power and authority over the territory outlined as “Palestine”, including the city of Jerusalem. By contrast, the Charter dismisses any claim to any part of the land on the basis of Jewish teachings and tradition, often in the most heated and disdainful fashion:

Article 10: “…Not one stone of Jerusalem can be surrendered or relinquished. The measures undertaken by the occupiers in Jerusalem, such as Judaisation, settlement building, and establishing facts on the ground are fundamentally null and void.”

Article 11: “…The occupation’s plots, measures and attempts to judaize al-Aqsa and divide it are null, void and illegitimate.”

It needs to be noted here that no government of Israel has ever made any move to “judaize” the al-Aqsa Mosque, or to “divide” it. Despite recent outbreaks of sectarian violence of unprecedented intensity on the site and the involvement of Israeli troops to suppress it, the sole authority over the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock remains with the Muslim mullahs of the Jerusalem Waqf.

(As for my own suggestion above- that the mullahs voluntarily relinquish the summit of Mount Moriah to Jewish sovereignty, out of magnaminity- it’s entirely my own recommendation. As far as I know, no one has ever broached the idea. I’ve never had any discussion with someone else about it. I’m entirely aware how risible my suggestion appears, at first glance. At least to practically everyone with any knowledge of the situation, that is; few of my fellow Americans know what the al-Aqsa Mosque is, much less where it’s located.)

Article 14: “The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression.”

This is the point in the Hamas Charter where the plot thickens, so to speak. The implict premise- restated several times- is that no Jew has the slightest claim to any of the territory of Palestine. Unless, that is, they can trace their paternal lineage to recent- i.e. 19th century- ancestry on the land, as a Middle Eastern Jew. Instead, the Zionist Jews immigrating from Europe and other Middle Eastern regions are interloper, invaders, colonists. They’re a settler population, like the Spanish, Portuguese, English and other European ethnic populations who conquered the Western hemisphere by force and killed off or drove out the indigenous peoples in order to supplant them. As a result, Zionist Israel is nothing more than North American style imperialist colonialism, instituted on the territory of Palestine in the 20th century.

There are some terrible parallels that can be drawn in that regard. But in my opinion, there are valid grounds for considering the two cases as very different. One factor is historical; none the Europeans who eventually settled throughout the territory of North, Central, and South America ever claimed to have an ancestral bond with the land to which they immigrated. The Jewish people have that bond. It’s an incontestable fact. It’s recorded in written history- both their own, and the history recorded by outsiders, some of whom were their conquerors. There’s no analogy to be found in the history of any European ethnic group that traces a heritage to American indigenous peoples. By contrast, the history of the Jews is not only traceable to an ancient history in the territory between the eastern Mediterranean and the Jordan River; there’s also historical documentation of their being “ethnically cleansed” from that territory and expelled. Not just once; repeatedly. Historians, Bible scholar, religious believers, skeptics, coffeehouse intellectuals, barflies, and the peanut gallery in the cheap seats can argue all they want over the factuality of the earliest history of the eras of Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and the rest of the early scriptural compilations of the lore of the Hebrews; but when it comes to the more recent Old Testament writings, the driving of the Jewish population from Judea and Samaria into captivity in Babylon is an established fact (as if their repatriation by the Persian emperor, Cyrus.) The story of the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem by the Romans (AD 137) is also not in dispute. Neither is the forcible ethnic cleansing and expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem by the victorious “Christian” Crusaders in 1099. That narrative doesn’t bear any resemblance to the European conquest and colonization of the “New World.”

Then there’s geography. To speak of North America alone, English and French settlers took over the entire continent of North America (9,540,000 square miles.)

Compare that with Israeli “colonialism”: laiming a right of return to the land of their ancestors, the Jews who settled and founded Israel as a nation in 1948 eventually expanded to take over a territory at most around 15% larger than the state of Vermont (which is 9,614 square miles.) If, that is, the entire territory of the West Bank were to be included. The disputed territory of the West Bank is around 12% larger than the size of Delaware, the second smallest state in the Union (which is1954 square miles.)

Those are the two differences of circumstance that make the conquest and colonization of North America different from the Jewish (re)settlement in the land known variously as “Israel” or “Palestine.”

I’m also aware of the similarities of Israeli settlement to the European conquest of the Western hemisphere. Along with the recent turn of events toward increasing hostilities at a level heretofore unknown. My commentary here may appear to be absurdly unrealistic at times. But the crackpot realist script being followed by both extremes offers no hope at all. My alternative isn’t nearly as crazy.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been waged for three-quarters of a century. It’s been elevated to global significance, possibly even cataclysmic global significance. Over a piece of land the size of Vermont. Or, people can tell themselves that it’s about a piece of land the size of Delaware, I suppose. Even though the Hamas Charter makes it clear beyond all doubt that they’re in their cage match of the death for the Big Prize, i.e., a chunk of land the size of Vermont. Only with a semiarid Mediterranean climate, and an increasing shortage of water.

The horrible basis for this contest over a paltry amount of territory is only partly about the old homestead, of course.

I have to digress here to note some details of my personal history that arguably have some relevance to how I view long-simmering local territorial conflicts over territories the size of Vermont: I’m a certified product of the American Century, a government issue Army Brat. I (was) moved from Kansas to Georgia to Pennsylvania to Germany to Georgia to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania by the time I was 10 years old. And that was just the beginning. I don’t understand Rootedeness. If I was kicked out of Vermont, but New York, New Hampshire, and Quebec were available, I’d reckon I’d just move. That’s me, okay? Maybe I’m deranged by Modernity. I don’t pretend to understand age-old ties to a homestead. I do know that it’s possible to live humanely and enjoyably with the perspective that first and foremost, the planet is my home.

And yes, I realize that in some ways it isn’t that simple. (Which is why my earlier suggestion for territorial relocation proposed exchanging Jerusalem and the West Bank for Northern Palestine, including the coastline along the Mediterranean Sea from Haifa to Lebanon, along with a healthy portion of the Golan Heights. It’s pretentious, yes. But at least I’m not proposing it for, say, a conquered Russia.)

But in some ways, it could be exactly that simple. Especially if all of the currently hostile parties between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River were to recognize how much of an improvement 25 of 50 years of living side by side in peace would offer. It isn’t even out of the question that the national borders might get porous, and some resettlement of old homesteads might result. War only produces an illusion of dynamism and change; all it really offers is the stasis of misery, and a balance of terror. But peace and cooperation, that’s when things get flexible. Right now, the people of Palestine are poisoned with decades of the embrace of violent martyrdom, resentment, and the false doctrines of religious extremism; and the Jews of Israel are poisoned with hypervigilance, paranoia, and the false doctrine of the preemptive strike. Both sides are enslaved by the doctrine of punitive retaliation, the basis for every needlessly protracted blood feud in history. The rest of us are sick of witnessing it. Not that we’re so pure, it isn’t about that. Some of us know how good both Arabs and Jews can be, at your best. We need the help of both of you. The world is facing big problems. The entire world.