How Israel exists

[Hi. I'm a little self-conscious about this essay right now because it's part two of three. It is not ranting for ranting's sake, but a set-up for part three, which will follow. So please bear with me on this; it's going somewhere.]

The purpose of today's essay is to clarify a little something which is obfuscated by a migration issue: the common goal of the Middle Eastern Arab population is the dissolution of Israel.

Any statement that begins, `most people think...' is inherently untestable, but I believe that there is abundant evidence that the desire to destroy Israel, by force if necessary, is the consensus belief throughout the non-Jew Middle East (which is by no means a unanimous belief). None of this should be interpreted to imply that Israel's Jews are saints, nor will I say much of anything about why sentiment is the way it is, or whether there is moral validity to such hatred---I'm trying to stick to one topic at a time.

History/why there are refugees. The land was under Ottoman rule until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Brits took over; I once had a fact-free argument with a pal about whether this was British `administration' or `cruel, tyrannical rule'. Whatever. At the time, what is modern Israel, the PA, and Jordan was all one block named Transjordan.

This was the state through to 1948, when, feeling guilty about the treatment of Jews, but not wanting Jews to come to their countries, the UN all-but-unanimously conceded to the Jewish arguments that they needed a homeland of their own.

So why put Israel where it is? Two reasons. The first is that it was a focal point among post-holocaust Jews:
"The DPs [displaced persons] overwhelmingly wanted to go to Palestine. In fact, in survey after survey of the DPs, they indicated their first choice of migration was to Palestine and their second choice of destination was also Palestine. In one camp, victims where told to pick a different second location and not to write Palestine a second time. A significant proportion of them wrote `crematoria.' "
[This passage is a quote from Long Way Home, cut and pasted from here. (slight J-bias)]

In 1948, when the question came up, there was a large concentration of Jews in parts of the territory (I'll get to why next time), so it was not all-too-crazy to concede self-rule to the Jews in those areas. [Here's a map (J-bias) of the resulting jigsaw.] So on 14 May, 1948, rule of parts of Transjordan were shifted from British rule to Jew rule and other parts to Arab rule. Naturally, the Arab states around the new Jewish country declared war the next day. [When modern Israelis discuss the fact that Israel has been at peace for a grand total of one day, there's always a little pause after the fact is stated, understanding that it's vaguely humorous and you're allowed to chuckle if you want.]

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but there are two things we should note about the Arabs of 1948: they were not protesting the lack of self-rule, because those in majority Arab territories were being granted self-rule, and those who weren't were just going from rule by distant Brits to rule by local Jews. The second thing is that Israel was by definition within the borders the UN had set for it that day, and yet the Arabs of 1948 declared war against it anyway.

Why are there refugees from Israel? So the just-declared war against the just-founded country was supposed to be a clean, simple operation, wherein Arab forces would come in, take over, and the dust would settle by the end of the week. Just as American reporters were given a few days before the US invasion of Iraq to get out while the roads were clear, Arabs in Israel fled to safety when the invasion began. Some Arabs were forced out of their homes by Jews.

Here's The Economist, 2 October 1948:
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

Oddly enough, the war was not a brief affair, and the outnumbered Jews held their ground. Still more oddly, the Jews did not allow those Arabs who had sympathised with the invasion and fled to return to live in close quarters with Jews and the Arabs who had stayed (and were not particularly persecuted). Why? The Arab side was very well-spoken about the plan once the refugees return. Here's Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din:
"It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel."
--Al-Misri, October 11, 1949
[The above two clippings from here (J-bias).]

The modern day Much of the Muslim world lives their entire lives in an obsessive hatred of Israel and Jews. The hatred of the Jew-loving USA is sort of a side-hobby to this. The focus upon the dissolution of Israel is not obvious in politically-correct English texts, but check out the accounts of anybody who's ever spoken to a Middle Eastern Muslim. E.g., here's a travelogue (A-bias) through Palestinian camps in Jordan. Representative quote: "their
loathing of Israel was thinly disguised".

Here's a random article from the last time I ranted about Israel [``Mideast Truce Talk Effort Renewed; Tanks Enter Tubas'' AP article printed in the NY Times, 5 April 2002]:
``In the Gaza Strip, some 10,000 supporters of Hamas rallied in the Jebaliya refugee camp. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder, said the group would not stop attacks on Israelis, and he accused the United States of trying to weaken the Palestinians' resolve by renewing truce efforts.''

I could quote extensively from the well-spoken site Al-Awda.org (A-bias), but the flashing gif summarizes their position: "no return = no peace". [It's since been removed; check out al-awda.org/old]

I assert that all the above sources, although by different people and fifty years apart, purport beliefs shared by the great majority of today's Middle Eastern Muslims, and it is correct to put them into one syllogism:
[Return=the liquidation of Israel];
[no return=no peace];
therefore,
[no liquidation of Israel=no peace].
Further, it is not a tiny minority which supports this position. Crowd estimates are always crappy, but 10,000 showed up to that rally in support of continued non-truce, above, when the Jebaliya camp has a population of 70,000. Can you recall a rally in the USA or elsewhere which had gathered a seventh of the area's population?

Or read this report (J-bias) which actually surveyed Muslim opinion on the matter, and found majority support for `armed struggle' even if Israel were to leave the West Bank and Gaza. After all, it's a fallacy to conclude from
[if no return then no peace]
that
[if return then peace].

A rant about the word `demonstration' I'd love to be proven wrong, but I really don't think that this is my J-bias at work here. Muslim children are raised from birth to hate Jews and Israel, and even the most moderate among them still have this hatred in their upbringing.

Demonstrations in which children throw rocks at Jews happen daily. Although it could just be kids being kids (`I'm bored. Let's go throw rocks at some Jews.') many of these demonstrations come off as rather well-organized. Meanwhile, back in the states, people read about Jewish soldiers defending themselves against Muslim children with rocks and then lament how evil those soldiers must be to shoot demonstrating children. But imagine for a moment what it'd be like to get hit in the head with an average-sized rock that somebody pitched at you: it'll cause somewhere between a hospital-level injury and death. Although the preferred term for this activity is `demonstration', those vaguely innocent-looking children are making a sincere, impassioned effort to kill soldiers and any random people who may be standing around looking Jewish. As much of a liberal vegan pacifist as I am, if somebody were to make such an unambiguous effort to kill me, I'd hit back.

Arab parents know all of this: they know exactly how soldiers would respond to an attack with a deadly weapon; they know that their children could be killed; and they know that the Times will choose the headline `Soldier kills child' over the too-verbose `Child attempts to kill soldiers and bystanders, then soldier fires rubber bullet which, although intended only as a deterrent, kills child'. Knowing all of this, they send their kids out to throw rocks at people.

Hopefully, I've talked you out of any errors of projection bias you may have harbored. The average American parent wouldn't take too well to their kids going out and throwing rocks at people, especially if there's a good chance the kid will get shot in the process. So to put yourself in the head of a Middle Eastern Muslim, you'll have to start by imagining yourself being around parents who not only think such things are OK, but encourage them. Here's a now-cliche from Golda Meir: ``There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews.''

It feels bad to impute bad intentions on people. We feel better when we think that others are well-meaning but just in a hard situation. But as much as we'd like to believe that the pervading desire of Arab society is to be left alone to live in peace with its Jewish neighbors, it is a society with violent hatred toward Jews at it core. It has had this attitude since before 1948, and will continue to have it as the rock-throwing kids of today grow up over the next few decades. The hatred is incredibly common, as evidenced by public opinion polls, well-attended rallies, the depressing commonness of children trying to kill Jews, adults blowing themselves up so they can take a few Jews with them, and the still more depressing lack of dissent among Arabs regarding these activities. I'll talk more about migration issues (aka `right of return') next time, but we musn't confuse that debate with the true goal of the Arab population: the dissolution of Israel.

So there's one more fact about Israel for you. The intent here is not to get you to dislike Arabs because their consensus position is a mean one, but because it's essential to be clear on this before asking the question of what Israel (which has some asshole consensus positions of its own) should be doing, which I'll cover in the next blog.