A partially balanced evaluation of the conflict at Vox, but still 150° wrong (Part 1)

Sar Shalom

Recently, Vox, a left-of-center news and analysis site, updated its explanation by Max Fisher of the Israeli-Arab conflict. While the collection of 11 cards correctly identifies several facts that would engender sympathy for Israel, overall, it feeds a narrative that circumscribes Jewish rights and sets Israel as the party to blame for not accepting that circumscription.

{Editor's note - Fisher's reference to "cards" is a pedagogical device he uses to denote each of his points of argument.}

I'll start with Card 7, the one card from the collection that I can endorse. It starts off

There is a common trope, especially on the left, that the Israel-Palestine conflict would end overnight if only the US were not so unflinching in its support of Israel, and instead used its influence to bring the conflict to an end.

The main points of this card are: the premises of that trope are the mistaken (the narrative of the card demonstrates that Fisher considers it mistaken) notion that Israel is fully responsible for the conflict, that American support is not (neither presently nor historically) as absolute as popular imagination would have it, and that pressure on Israel merely creates a sense of isolation which induces Israel to do the opposite. The author cites several facts supporting this position such as the lack of a close relation prior to 1973 and conflicts between Israel and the George H. W. Bush and Obama administrations. This card also did not include any reason to justify those administrations stoking conflict with Israel. Altogether, nothing objectionable.

The remaining cards all have issues in which they highlight issues that misdirect people or ignore others that would create needed context with the overall effect of facilitating unfavorable narratives regarding Israel. Some of the cards are problematic by their very premise, others are neutral or even Israel-supporting by their premise, but turn their premise in a direction that supports an Israel-detracting narrative. I'll address those cards in order over a series of posts.

Card 1 posits that the conflict is not as complex as it is made out to be. This is a premise which is on its surface neutral. Further, the three major supporting points are also neutral. Those points are that any point about the conflict requires knowledge of the relevant history in order to be properly understood, the two sides tend to shout their conflicting narratives, and that the two sides try to present the conflict as complex unless they are saying that their own side is right and the other wrong.

However, Fisher's main point in this card, "[a]t its most basic level, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is over who gets what land and how that land is controlled," is at the root of why people think that all that's needed to solve the conflict is for Israel to give the Palestinians what is "rightfully" theirs. Proper evaluation of that assertion demonstrates Fisher's first supporting point, but contra Fisher in Card 3, the relevant history did not begin in 1947.

While Fisher might be accurate that Jewish objectives revolve around maximizing the amount of land under Jewish control, the Palestinian national movement is after the nihilistic goal of ending Jewish self-determination in any portion of the Middle East with who winds up in control being besides the point and promulgates that it is treason for any Palestinian to oppose that goal. Saying that one side has only nihilistic goals is anathema to most people who try to evaluate others fairly. However, just because a concept is anathema does not mean that it is false, although it does create reason to require justification before stating it that otherwise might not be required.

Needless to say, the Palestinian national movement would be at considerable advantage if westerners believe their objectives are positive, that is more land for the subjects' benefit, relative to westerners believing their objectives are negative. Thus we can not just go by what they tell western audiences. One alternative way to assess the Palestinian national movement's aims is to look at the history leading to its establishment. In the late Ottoman period, there were three categories of people: believers, equal infidels, and inferior infidels. The believers are those who like the Ottoman rulers accepted the faith of Islam. The equal infidels were those who while not accepting Islam, shared a faith with the rulers of others powers with whom the Ottoman rulers dealt on equal terms, that is to say the Christians. The inferior infidels were everyone else. Naturally, the Christians liked the distinction between equal infidels and inferior infidels because this gave them an opportunity to be accepted as equals. One result of this is that it was a Christian who founded the Baath Party and Christians were as much in the forefront of opposition to the UN Partition plan as were Muslims. As to why there would be such a distinction, this is speculative, but if every power on earth treats a particular group like clay in a potter's hand it is easier to claim that your ability to treat that group like clay in a potter's hand as due to divine will than for a group which is like the potter under other powers.

While such thinking could animate a political party, it would not naturally become a motivating factor for a larger public. However, this way of thinking did not have to take root naturally to become the dominant mode of thought for the masses. In 1921, the British appointed Haj Amin el Husseini as Mufti of Jerusalem and inflated his title to Grand Mufti. Husseini was a believer in the notion that Jews are to be like clay in a potter's hand and used his office of Grand Mufti to promulgate the notion that grant any higher status to Jews constitutes treason. To those of a European guilt-culture background, suggesting that a mode of belief is treason, particularly a mode of belief that liberal multiculturalism holds to be central to maintaining a peaceful world, would be simply meaningless bluster. But, in the honor-shame culture of Islam (analagous to Christendom in this instance, not Christianity), being told that an authority figure considers something treason means that you have to stop doing what the authority figure considers treason. Hence, the Mufti used the Islamic shame-culture to bring the rest of the Arab public to believe as he did that Jew are to be a subjugated people and should not be allowed to bring any relief for themselves from their subjugation.

The Arabs' negative goal would explain why they rejected every partition plan that has been proposed in the past. They did not want Jewish self-determination on less land, they wanted there to be no Jewish self-determination. It also explains their steadfast adherence to the right of return. Simply put, achieving the right of return is enough on its own to achieve an end to Jewish self-determination since the demographic effects of it would result in an Arab government in the next election which would be in position to dismantle Jewish sovereignty from within.

It is one thing to present evidence that the Palestinians' goal is positive rather than negative. The issue with mainstream thought is that it dismisses the possibility that their goal is in fact negative and refuses to entertain any evidence that it is so. If their goal is positive, then the peace process would be a viable way to reach an end of claims agreement. However, if their goal is in actuality negative, then a peaceful settlement leaving both sides standing would require either breaking the Palestinians of their negative goal or imposing a regime on them that does not hold by it since Israel surviving and holding so much as a postage stamp sized piece of land would constitute failure to achieve the negative goal. Wishing that the Palestinians' goal is positive, and thus amenable to some sort of peace process, does not make it so.

Future posts will respond to Cards 2 through 6 and 8 through 11.