Comprehending the Incomprehensible

            As Americans, we have a natural affinity for the underdog, the ‘little guy.’ We often go out of our way to excuse the behavior of people who are downtrodden, and we are likely to give aid and comfort to victims and the oppressed, even if we find their cause or their views unsupportable. We are always interested in helping provide the proverbial ‘level playing field.’ Our collective conscience rebels at any attempt to sit idly by while the powerful brutalize the helpless.

Our history has defined our makeup. We are now empathetic people. We naturally try to understand the plight of the underdog and to imagine what life must be like for such people. But is it possible for us as Americans to intellectually put ourselves in the shoes of the Palestinians? Clearly, we have not been able to empathize with  Palestinians in the manner we’ve often been able to do with others. Is that wrong?

            Is it because at first Israel was clearly the ‘little guy?’

            And now, as Israel is no longer a fledgling state but instead is a powerful country whose armed forces are currently driving deep into Palestinian territory and occupying its towns and cities, should we heed the voices that declare the Jews are the aggressors? Or are such assertions misguided or purposefully convoluted, designed to make us rethink our support for Israel?

            A return to history may well provide the answer.

            Israel was created out of a largely desolate territory long dominated by England and technically controlled by Jordan and Egypt at the close of WWII. The newly formed Jewish nation was from its beginning surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs who, together with their established governments, were almost universally hostile. They were hostile to the concept of an outside force – the newly established United Nations and the victorious allied nations emerging from the calamitous second world war – creating a new Jewish state at the edge of their part of the globe, and they were extremely hostile to the idea of Judaism returning to gain a formal foothold in the historic Holy Land, so long dominated by Islam.

It is also important to remember the original time frame, and the fact that during WWII much of the Arab world was aligned with Hitler and the Axis powers.

            In a then famous and now largely forgotten resolution of November 29, 1947, the United Nations called for the creation of two new states; i.e., one state for the Jews and one state for the indigenous Arab population of the Palestine territory.

            The Arabs rejected this plan, and the world soon saw what they intended.

            Israel was a brand new state in 1948 when neighboring Arab countries joined forces to destroy it. In fact, Arab radio stations in neighboring countries broadcast their intentions to the Palestinian Arabs living in Israel, suggesting that the indigenous Arab population leave Israel and return, in a week or less, after the Jews had been defeated. It was intimated, and sometimes bluntly stated, that after the Jews were defeated, the spoils of war would be shared. This of course meant land and homes and personal possessions would be distributed among the victors and the returning Arab residents.

            But surprise of surprises, the fledgling state revealed an iron core. The core was constituted of dedicated and committed Jews who had originally sought to put down roots in the area, many if not most of whom were Zionist by affiliation; that is, members of the various organizations and the political movements that began to coalesce in the 1800’s and took more formal shape in the 20^th Century under a cumulative Zionist banner, the guiding principle being the reestablishment of a Jewish state. The name derived in part from Mt. Zion, a hill in Jerusalem that history indicated held the historic temple of the Jews and was the site of the royal residence of King David and his line of successors.

            Instead of a quick victory, the Arabs of 1948 sustained an almost immediate defeat at the hands of hard-fighting Zionists, joined together with desperate survivors and refugees from former Axis countries, and Jewish immigrants from virtually every part of the globe.

            And so the ‘little guy’ showed guts and perseverance. We liked that, especially since our collective awareness of what could develop from casual anti-Semitism was driven home by the graphic nature of what we discovered at the end of the war, in 1945, as we liberated the Nazi death camps.

            But after that first conflict, the Jews made it clear they were not going to welcome back the Arabs who had left. This decision of course can be debated, but it is certainly understandable; that is, people who left your neighborhood because of an impending attack upon you, and who harbored a hope of profit from your death or displacement, are probably not going to be people you will want to share your neighborhood with after the dust settles. Interestingly, the Arab countries that had encouraged their Palestinian cousins to leave Israel, turned their backs on them after the defeat, refusing to allow them to resettle within their borders. Instead, they created Palestinian Arab refugee camps.

            And in so doing they established a formula for poverty, resentment and pent-up rage that exceeded the worst housing projects and slums anywhere else in the world.

            As Americans, remembering Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, we have seen what can happen, even with the best of intentions, when isolated housing projects are created for the poor and the displaced. Yet we need to extrapolate from the mistakes of the 1960’s and 1970’s and think about what happens when there are no good intentions; when the goal of establishing refugee camps seems clearly aimed at the cynical development of an international political pawn – a stateless and helpless population -  while simultaneously creating generational poverty and resentment that can be channeled into the recruitment of ‘nothing to lose’ brigades of misguided religious warriors and terrorist zealots.

            The displaced Palestinians, an ever-growing population in the years since 1948, have become a rallying point for a wide variety of Arab goals, and the Palestinians themselves have clearly come to believe the Jews cheated them out of what should have been their land. A convenient twist of history for the Arab power brokers.

            Of course, in the intervening years Arab coalitions went to war against Israel again, and again. And each time they were soundly, roundly defeated, even though they had modern weapons – as often sold to them by us as by the Russians and the French and others – and trained troops.

            So we came to understand Israel as an outpost of Western-style capitalistic democracy, and a feisty ‘little guy’ as well; a nation well deserving of our support as it stood up to the bullies around it. And, as the victor over aggressor nations, Israel accumulated land adjacent to its borders, some of which had been used as staging areas for armed assault. In all cases, of course, the land was forfeited to the victor by the defeated country, as has been the case in all of recorded history.

            But during this same time period a new type of war began, one aimed at achieving political goals through isolated acts of barbarism. It might be well to remember the killing of Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Eleven Israeli’s who had gone to the games to participate in the competition were killed, along with one German policeman and ultimately five of the eight Palestinian gunmen. 

        In the same vein, it is worth recalling the Achille Lauro incident in October, 1985, during which Palestinians with ties to Yasser Arafat took over a cruise liner and, among other outrages, callously killed a Jewish American, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, who was confined to a wheelchair. After being murdered, Mr. Klinghoffer and his wheelchair were summarily consigned to the ocean. In both incidents the stated goal of the terrorists was the freeing of other terrorists imprisoned in Israel, but the real goal was propaganda.  These and other vicious attacks were coupled with a remarkably sophisticated propaganda campaign that asserted such barbarism was the only alternative left for a displaced people who had no chance to conduct open war against their ‘oppressors.’

            Somehow the sophistry of this argument was overlooked by some thoughtful people, particularly in academia and the western media, and it began to be suggested that Israel was no longer the feisty ‘little guy,’ but had instead transmuted itself into the oppressive bully of the region.

            Similarly, as might be expected, the dictators, monarchs and political bosses of the Arab world understood that while a declared war clearly would not succeed, escalating violence committed by the so-called dispossessed could have a powerful demoralizing effect on Israel and her supporters while at the same time providing a rich and fertile opportunity for propaganda, both internally and externally, and a means of maintaining control by deflecting dissident anger and frustration toward a non-Arab enemy. Israel became a convenient foil for totalitarian regimes that above all desired to retain absolute control over their own people.

            So the kings and dictators turned a blind eye when Yasser Arafat and lesser-known terrorist leaders began to develop suicide killers. The development of a mindset whereby Arab youths were willing to destroy themselves in order to kill and maim non-Muslim people was of course vastly aided by schools throughout the Middle East whose textbooks and teachers taught hatred of the Jews and of the west. Often these schools were affiliated with or dominated by so-called Islamic religious leaders who preach that the path to eternal glory opens wide for those who die while killing infidels; that is, in particular, Jews and Christians. How many times have Islamic religious leaders called for a Jihad, a holy war, against the Jews and Americans? How many times have the political bosses and terrorist thugs called for recruits under such a banner?

            And all the while the propaganda machine rolled out the big lie, asserting that all of these atrocities would end if only Israel wasn’t such a bully to the impoverished Palestinian Arabs, and if it would give up the territories it retained after beating back its foes perhaps everything could be worked out. But the latter demand revealed its empty core when Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians were essentially granted everything they wanted via the land in agreements that Ehud Barak, then leading Israel, was willing to grant in meetings that were conducted in Oslo and in Washington. These meetings were moderated by  President William Clinton, and of course he has been roundly blamed for their failure, as if somehow the moderator could dictate successful terms.

        The Palestinians ultimately snubbed the offers made by Mr. Barak, and promptly initiated another Intifada. They immediately began trying to demoralize Israel with suicide bombers while propagandizing the plight of the Arabs.  

            Such efforts were not without effect.

            Suddenly it seemed that Israel was the rich and powerful force that was less and less benevolent to the impoverished Arabs around them. Pictures of well armed, organized and uniformed Israeli soldiers combating rag-tag teenagers and sometimes little kids became commonplace, and the abject poverty visible in the battleground seemed to indicate a people being held down and subjugated.

            But who has held the Palestinian Arabs down? Who has subjugated them?

            The Palestinian Arab population that remained in Israel has grown in numbers and prosperity along with the nation itself. Israeli Arabs are involved in the government of Israel, all the way up to seats in the Knesset, and many others hold professional positions or are businesspeople, while others are employed in skilled trades.          

            Yet just across the border, and even within the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza, abject poverty is visible and a hardscrabble existence is commonplace.

            So who is the ‘little guy’ in this seemingly everlasting conflict? Are we now supporting the neighborhood bully?

There is no doubt that the Israeli’s have become hardened. And they have taken vengeance. In many ways they are implacable, and they certainly have their share of religious zealotry and absolutism, but there is no evidence that these factors have turned them into a nation of oppressors bent on enslaving the Palestinians.

Conversely, it seems clear that the principal enemy of the Palestinian Arabs exits within their own body politic, fostered and kept active by Arab societies in virtually every other part of the Middle East; i.e., Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, in the forefront, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in tacit support..

How deep must cynicism run to allow the leaders of any ethnic group or culture to use its own greatest treasure, its young men and women, as suicide killers? Can we, looking back over our own often-bloody history, ever imagine ourselves putting forth our sons and daughters as human bombs?

In the worst days of our own social unrest, when our impoverished ghettos exploded in flames, there were no suicide bombers. Our downtrodden had no illusions about where their true wealth existed! It existed in their love and hope for their young people, and if there was a catalyst for their anger it was a desire to advance the possibilities for those young men and women.

Reasonably, it has to be assumed that many – perhaps a majority – of Palestinians are of like mind; that is, they don’t want their young slaughtered for any reason.

But it is equally important to remember that the Palestinian Arabs, and virtually all-Arab citizens in every country everywhere in the Middle East, save those who live in Israel, live under totalitarian regimes. There is no safe means of dissent. There is no media that is free from government control and can therefore report how dissidents disappear. There is no way to combat an entrenched and self-serving Islamic religious autocracy that sets itself up as a shadow government in every part of the Muslim world.

So cynical Arab governments join forces with religious zealots to rob their downtrodden of their last treasure and their best hope, their sons and daughters.

            How pathetically ironic and soul searing sad is it to hear a parent declare how proud he is over the suicide death of a son or daughter who died while murdering innocent human beings? How twisted must be the concept of God and man to allow an Islamic cleric to praise such murderous slaughter, and then to encourage more of it?

How depraved can it be for the leadership of an ethnic group to actively recruit its young people for murderous suicide missions? How evil can it be for the leader of an Arab nation, such as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to offer to pay a small fortune, by Arab Middle East standards - $25,000 or more - to the family of each suicide bomber?

That this is all evil cannot be denied. It cannot be rationalized into anything other than what it is: evil is evil. The big lie fails!

Israel is still the underdog, albeit it is now more than just a feisty experiment in nation building. It is a powerful established country that is beset with contradictions, but we know of them because it is a democratic nation where opinions can be openly aired. And it is a shining example of what can be accomplished by a free people in what was once a geographic wasteland, a scrubby desert.

But it is still under siege by Arabs of many backgrounds and nationalities, who have changed the form of battle from open confrontation, where they lost each time, to subterfuge and terrorism. And until these Arab peoples, Palestinians and all others, understand that this new form of war also will not succeed, they will continue to embroil all of us in a conflict of cultures and of specific concepts of good and evil.

Our empathy and sympathy is not misplaced. We are correctly backing Israel, the underdog, the powerful ‘little guy.’ To do otherwise would be to contravene our very understanding of morality, and to invite the corruption of our values, which would lead to disaster on every level: emotionally, intellectually, culturally and politically. And it would deny history.

The bully remains the same; an Arab coalition comprised of Palestinians first, as a convenient foil, and all of the so-called Islamic fundamentalists second, plus all the game playing Arab governments third. Collectively they are an immensely powerful force.

But in the end, one truth is evident: Evil cannot be appeased, it can only be opposed.

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