The Long Shadow of Nakba – Part 2

This essay continues my account of Nakba’s long shadow. But first let me address a core question of context. Why write about it here? Shouldn’t science distance itself from politics? 

Yes, it should. But Nakba-inspired politics have already infringed on science. They disrupt education at some of the world’s leading research universities. They encourage Orwellian double-speak and self-censorship, which undermine the rational debate that is vital to scientific progress. They intimidate or ostracize many excellent Jewish scientists. They make a travesty of stated DEI aims. 

It’s time to push back. Not by suppressing debate but by encouraging it. Not by insisting on faith but by respecting doubt. Not through virtue-signaling at victims’ expense but through genuine compassion for them. 

That especially matters here, because the Palestinians rank among the greatest victims ever of virtue-signaling by others. The poseurs include:

• Arab states who wouldn’t absorb their displaced ancestors and still deny them full rights. 

• great powers who continually kicked the can of despair down the road, causing even more despair

• UNRWA, the UN relief agency that delighted in nurturing generations on handouts, bitterness, and hunger for reconquest. 

• radical Islamists who fulminated against  peaceful coexistence and killed Muslim critics.

• terrorists who used women and children as human shields, hoping less to save themselves than to maximize the misery on public show.

It is incumbent on the victims to try to escape their victimhood. Decades in the shadow of Nakba, in stateless limbo between Israel and its hostile neighbors, forged a distinct Palestinian national identity. It is understandable that Palestinians would hate and resent Israel’s rise, for it catalyzed their fall. But Israel is not the main obstacle to Palestinians gaining a state. The main obstacle is Palestinian insistence that Israelis lose their state, with Jews subjugated, killed or expelled.

To be clear, I don’t call this an obstacle on moral grounds. Most conquests are identified as highly moral by the conquerors and evoke little remorse after, even if third parties think they should. I call it an obstacle because their continued efforts to create Greater Palestine, which they don’t command nearly the military strength to achieve, keep shrinking the prospects for an independent Lesser Palestine. The latter requires clear acceptance of clear borders, with each side forswearing attacks on the other.

The two million Arabs living in Israel do mostly accept this. The 150 thousand Druze in Israel tend to be highly loyal and have a significant presence in the IDF. And many Palestinians in the diaspora would doubtless welcome an independent Palestine at peace with Israel. 

However, every moderate turn by diaspora leaders tends to hurt their internal standing. In 1951, when Jordan controlled the West Bank, Palestinian nationalists assassinated King Abdullah due to his openness toward peace with Israel. In the late 1950s, Palestinian disillusionment with Egyptian President Nasser’s pan-Arabism prompted the formation of Fatah, dedicated to armed struggle to “liberate Palestine”. In 1970, the Fatah-led PLO tried to assassinate Jordan’s King Hussein due to his reluctance to fight Israel. After the Oslo Accords in 1993, where the PLO sought a negotiated two-state solution, support shifted to Hamas which explicitly aimed for Israel’s destruction. In 2000, PLO leader Arafat torpedoed a proffered two-state solution in fear of Palestinian rebuke for allowing Israel to remain a majority Jewish-state. In 2006-7, Hamas won Palestinian elections; took over Gaza by force and expelled the PLO. 

In short, what Palestinians call resistance has remained mostly a quest for reconquest. Most of them view Great Palestine as a nobly righteous cause. They take pride in their steadfastness, find joy in occasional vengeance, and win admiration from outside supporters. Yet their practical gains are scant. They haven’t won an inch of territory from Israel proper. Their deadly attacks trigger far deadlier reprisals. Their perceived blood thirst scares both Israelis and would-be Arab hosts. Their leaders siphon billions of dollars in development aid toward attack weapons, tunnel construction, and personal wealth stashes abroad. Public criticism risks execution.

This is not to blame all impasse on Palestinian irredentism. Israel’s long-standing occupation of the West Bank can’t help but stoke resentment. The occupation has allowed and protected substantial Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Greater Palestine sentiment resonates with Greater Israel sentiment, making each more intense. Yet Israel’s post-1967 decisions cannot bear primary blame. When Israel dismantled settlements in the Gaza Strip and withdrew its forces, hoping to lay seeds for a peacefully independent Palestinian state, Gaza became a hotbed of Greater Palestine sentiment and preparations for future war. 

I do not know which of the Greater Palestine, Greater Israel, or two-state solutions will eventually prevail. I do not expect scientists or any other group to agree on what should prevail. I simply note that Israel’s military strength and determination to avoid a second Holocaust are far stronger than West Bank’s and Gaza’s strength and determination to avoid a second Nakba. From that perspective, the Greater Palestine quest augurs the most suffering for Palestinians while peaceful acceptance of Israel’s existence augurs the least.

Few Palestinian leaders or major backers disagree. They just see the cause as so noble or invigorating that it’s worth the sacrifice. Their main bargaining chips are never their weapons and always the lives of civilian shields. Even now, when Israel has wiped out most of Hamas’s military capability, decimated its forces, and killed most of its leaders, they would rather retain a hundred Israeli hostages than let two million Gazans start to rebuild.

Again, readers are welcome to take different perspectives or to challenge my assessment of relative strengths. The quest for truth needs flowing debate like trout need a flowing stream. Let me close by clearing a few logjams that block the flow. Here are some phrases that are widely repeated with intense conviction yet mean the opposite of what they nominally suggest :

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free: The chant suggests that Greater Palestine will offer more rights and liberties to the current inhabitants than current arrangements do. In fact, the original Arabic version calls for Palestine to be “Arab” or “Muslim” with no reference to civil rights. The only fair translation is “Palestine will be Jew-free”, analogous to the Nazi aim of “Judenrein” that inspired it. That’s long been evident in Gaza. 

Stop Israeli genocide: Judging from the quadrupling of Gazan population under Israeli occupation, Israel is the least successful genocidal power in history. And if genocide were Israel’s aim in the current war, it had the power to achieve this in a few days. Instead, it has painstakingly achieved the lowest civilian-to-combatant toll in history, with civilian deaths outnumbered by births. The real aim of this slogan is to divert attention from Hamas’s explicitly genocidal aims, as evident in how it operated in October 7 and eagerly sought to extend.

Protect women and children: A milder variant of the preceding slogan, it portrays Israel as vindictively killing peaceful women and children out of spite for male combatants. In fact, Hamas built the finest network of combat shelters in the world, at unparalleled expense, but refused to let women and children (other than a few leaders’ kin) take refuge there. Hamas leaders were quite frank that they needed big women-and-children casualties to sway world opinion.

Protect indigenous people: The Arab descendants of conquerors, immigrants and refugees are inherently no more indigenous than the Jewish descendants of conquerors, immigrants and refugees. If the focus is suffering ethno-religious communities in the modern Middle East, why no attention to the 30 million Kurds lacking a national state or the million displaced Christian Assyrians? If the focus is equity, diversity and inclusion, then why not applaud Israel for offering its minorities far more tolerance and opportunities than any other country in the region? 

Zionism is modern-day Nazism: The only parties that regard Nazi Germany wistfully, recycle Nazi-era tropes, preach extermination of minorities, or publicly crow about the capture, rape and slaughter of civilians are on the Palestinian side (which is not to claim that all Palestinians agree or that Israel never behaves badly). “Zionism” is invoked vaguely enough to cover any defense for Israel’s existence or sympathy for it. The main point is to twist the Holocaust into an excuse for a sequel while blaming Jews for bringing it on.

Hamas is a liberation movement: According to its own founding covenant in 1988 and confirmed repeatedly in practice, Hamas is explicitly Muslim-supremacist, Arab-supremacist, male-supremacist, and heterosexual-supremacist. Occasionally a few Hamas leaders or their allies hint at softening and suggest to gullible journalists that harsher statements are just for show. The October 7 massacres stripped away every reasonable doubt.