Over the past few months I’ve managed to alienate numerous friends on both left and right. I’m not sufficiently “woke” for my liberal friends, and I’m not sufficiently gung-ho for my right-wing friends. C’est la vie, I’ll continue to write and opine as best I can and hope there will be someone left to read what I say.
The latest wrinkle in argumentation I’ve noticed from friends on the right who are fully backing the Netanyahu strategy is that Israel must continue this forever war because there is no alternative but to utterly destroy the foe in Gaza. It’s now been more than 654 days (as I write this) since Gaza declared war on Israel, but despite the ferocity of its response, Gaza is still holding over 20 Israeli hostages believed to be still alive. I do not personally doubt that these 20, along with many who have died in captivity, could have been freed more than a year ago had the Netanyahu government been willing to enter into genuine peace negotiations.
In recent weeks, I’ve heard that excuse, that we must utterly defeat the Palestinians in Gaza, over and again, and most recently I’ve heard a refrain that it is possible just as the Allies were able to completely defeat the Fascists in World War 2. The problem for me is that this is a distortion and misrepresentation of history. Yes, it is true that the Allies utterly defeated the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan in the war. And Israel has all but defeated the government of Gaza in this war. But the Allies did not defeat Fascism. In fact, one of those Allies was unquestionably himself a Fascist—unless you think there is some qualitative difference between the totalitarianism of a Stalin and a Hitler.
Fascism is an ideology, and you cannot defeat an ideology by force of arms. Fascism today rears its ugly head all over the world, including very sadly here at home in my USA.
Just as the Allies failed to defeat Fascism, Israel has no possibility of defeating the nationalism of Palestinians along with the concomitant anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The Bogey-man of the day is “Hamas,” but Hamas is just a name, one that is easily replaced. Consider “Houthi” or “Hezbollah” or a dozen other militant organizations. Crush one—kill its leaders—and another will rise a day later. As long as war continues, as long as children are learning to live in starvation and destitution, as long as Israel is perceived as an enemy, nothing will prevent a return to terrorism and other forms of hostility.
The conflict which Israel should be looking at, in my opinion, is not that of WW2, but rather what became known as “The Troubles” in Ireland. For almost forty years, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland rioted, killed, and engaged in organized terrorism against each other. More than 3,600 people lost their lives in the conflict, and the terrorist acts spread all over the world. And then, in 1998, the leaders of various factions and parties finally agreed to genuine peace. It’s been 27 years now, so I think it’s fair to say that the idea we chanted in the ‘60s actually worked: “Give peace a chance.”
The problem right now, I believe, is that the surviving members of Hamas, and Netanyahu’s clique in Israel, both benefit from this never-ending war. But anyone who believes that Israel can really win against Gaza should reflect on this. Did the Allies really defeat Fascism in WW2? Is Fascism gone, or did it simply morph into other forms of ideological disease?
Much of this is fueled by emotion. Many Israelis are understandably deeply angry at the violence which has been perpetrated against them. And many in not only in Gaza, but other Palestinians and other Muslim groups in the Middle East feel just as strongly that there can be no peace with Israel.
To all, I will say what I said in my youth in the ‘60s, “Give peace a chance.”
7 Responses
Wow! Great info and far more detailed than anything I could say. Terri has the background to comment on the DNA, perhaps she’ll post a word or three. But ultimately, I think you are agreeing with me, which stands to reason as we are both “great minds.” LOL!
Ashkenazi Jews fall closest to Sicilians, Maltese, and Cypriots in Principal Component graphs of autosomal DNA. It’s true that descent from ancient Israelites is not demonstrated, but, in part, that reflects sample size. The ultraorthodox forbid DNA sampling of ancient skeletons known or suspected to be Jewish ancestors. We have Chalcolithic and Middle Bronze Age Canaanite samples, and Bronze and Iron Age Phoenicians from Lebanon, but very few Iron Age Judaeans. The major Ashkenazi male lineages (Y-chromosome) are branches of E and J, which are clearly Levantine-derived (E is found in proto-Neolithic Natufians in Israel, J (including the “modal Cohanim” lineage) is common in Arabs). The main female lineages (mtDNA), particularly of K and N haplogroups, are often stated to be of European origin, but immediately ancestral lineages are not present in living non-Jewish populations. I suspect the Jewish/Sicilian/Cypriot aggregate reflects the admixture of lots of Judean-like Syrians into the early Roman Empire. It was recently shown, surprisingly, that most of the people encased in volcanic ash in Pompeii had Levantine genomes.
All good observations, Stuart, and I was especially fond of your blast at the “Khazar” theory which I agree has been completely refuted. But aren’t all of these ethnic distinctions artificial? What is to be gained by trying to argue with folks who imagine that they belong to one group or another? A couple of decades ago, there were people using various DNA strategies to try and classify various Jewish sub-groups. And it is true that there are genetic markers that seem to conclusively identify the European Ashkenazi community–at last that’s what Ancestry tells me about my own DNA. But attempts to link that to any ancient Israelite groups have largely failed. In a way, it’s appropriate that they fail, in my opinion. After all, Ex 12:38 tells us:
And a vast, mixed population accompanied them, with many sheep and cattle.
(My first attempt quoted the Hebrew, but WordPress doesn’t seem to care for Hebrew, or I haven’t figured out how to do it.)
The “Palestinians” have been desperate since their invention in the 1960s to display ethnic signifiers to show that they are not just southern Syrian Arabs. So, they dance the dabke, they point to minor local dialect peculiarities, and the women wear village-specific dresses. Then of course there is the Arafat net-patterned keffiyeh, borrowed without acknowledgement from the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. They also like to claim now that they are the original indigenous Jewish peasants who stayed in situ and merely converted to Christianity and then Islam. The diaspora Ashkenazim, they like to claim, are just Khazar converts (totally disproven by genetic studies!). I’m also bitterly amused by current assertions that the Jews are trying to push the Gazans out of their “homeland”–It’s the temporary refugee settlement they were put in after the “Nakba,” when Egypt wanted to maintain the strip as a salient for guerrilla attacks on Israel. I have come to despise the Palestinians for their stupidity, lies, and the logical inconsistency of their ubiquitous, well-funded propaganda.
Thanks for the comment, Stuart! I hope I was clear in acknowledging that the Allies did in fact crush the governments of the Axis. But however you want to define Fascism, it survives. When you say that Stalin was a “Communist”–how are you defining that term? Exactly how does Stalin’s ideology differ from Hitler’s? You are also technically correct that Houthis and Hezbollah are not “Palestinian,” but once again we face a definitional problem. What exactly is the ethnic differentiation of people that allows one group to be called “Palestinian” and another something else? For that matter, more than half the population of Gaza is not Palestinian by the strictest standards of any such definition, so should exclude them as well? My sense is that the terminology is too malleable to permit such differentiation.
The Allies defeated Fascist governments in Germany, Japan, and Italy, which surrendered unconditionally. Japan and Germany became de facto pacifist in the aftermath. There are no more Fascist parties in those nations. That you label Stalin a “fascist” shows how unmoored the term has become from its original specific political meaning. Stalin was a vicious homicidal totalitarian dictator, but he was a Communist, not a Fascist. Remember, those idealistic American leftists who went to Spain to fight against Franco’s Fascists were taking orders from Stalin’s apparatchiks. Another minor point: neither the Houthis nor Hezbullah are Palestinian–they are radical Islamists motivated by Jew-hatred, for which Palestinianism is a convenient symbol.
I’m all for giving the Palestinians a West Bank statelet, provided that they will agree to 1) allow Jewish visits (or even residence if people so desire) to the “holy” sites in Judea/Samaria and 2) agree to a pacifist constitution akin to those of postwar Germany and Japan. In previous negotiations, they have rejected such arrangements. They want to retain a military in order to accomplish their final revanchist “river to the sea” objective.
I like the rational middle ground. I also understand why those who support Israel unconditionally and those who support the Palestinians unconditionally will see this as capitulation. As was the case in WW2, neither side will quit until the “other” is so devastated that one cannot imagine that they could rise again. That said, I doubt that total destruction of Gaza and the West Bank are possible … and even if they are, will Israel mount a Marshall Plan to help rebuild the devastated land? Will a homeland for Palestinians finally be possible?