By Ruslan Batiuk @Adobe Stock
Conquest, Tribalism, Democracy
Defining a Nation
Of this latest and growing war between Israel and Hamas, there are two opposing realities over who to blame.
- It’s accurate to condemn the atrocities permutated by Hamas on 7 October.
- Islamofascism is the greater evil and must not prevail.
In American Greatness, Edward Ring writes how the second axiom terrifies Israelis and countless others in the Middle East and beyond.
Can two distinct people, asks Mr. Ring, claim the right to live in the same place? Powerful sentiments wrestling with that question point to bigger questions affecting the whole world.
What’s at Play
- What defines a nation?
- What are the prerequisites for a functioning democracy?
- What is a legitimate justification for a population to live in a particular place?
According to Palestinians, at least those who want Jews expelled from Palestine, Jewish Zionists are colonial oppressors who over the past century have flooded into their land by the millions and stolen it from them.
According to the Israelis, especially the right-wing faction, this land is their land, and it has belonged to them for thousands of years.
The conflict between Israeli/Palestinian is an extreme version of similar conflicts occurring around the world, continues Mr. Ring. As an example, Mr. Ring refers to nations, settled by Europeans, facing a growing number of activists now claiming to they are living on “stolen land.”
There is an obvious problem with using the stolen land argument to delegitimize the presence of an entire people living somewhere, which is that with rare exceptions, no land of any value, anywhere on earth, is not currently occupied by people who did not themselves displace previous occupants, who in most cases had in-turn also displaced previous occupants. For example, native tribes in the Americas fought each other for land long before Europeans arrived.
Even though Israelis have lived in what is today Israel, they cannot escape the stolen land accusation.
From the first three verses of the Old Testament’s Deuteronomy Chapter 7 – a vivid description of that moment:
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.”
Don’t Erase Progress
Conquest, like slavery, continues Mr. Ring, is a “fact of human history, common to almost every culture and found in every century.”
Before Christian crusaders fought to conquer Jerusalem in 1099, it was conquered by Islamic armies in 635. What’s changed is that in modern times we have evolved to the point where the consolidating finale to conquest in earlier centuries – to destroy the vanquished totally and show them no mercy – is condemned as genocide. That’s progress. Let’s not go backwards. But is democracy up to the task of reconciling antagonistic tribes, both intact, living on the same land?
Drawing a Line Arguing over “Stolen Land”
Mr. Ring asks, “Does the establishment of a Jewish state in 1407 BC lend it more legitimacy than the preexisting ownership of land by Palestinians in 1948?” That’s a hard argument to make with a straight face when you are speaking with Palestinians.
The Bigger Question
Why aren’t Jews in Israel willing to accept a unitary state, a democracy where everyone living in the territory “from the river to the sea” gets one vote? And here we must ask, what defines a nation? It clearly isn’t just borders, because the borders of Israel, inclusive of Gaza and the West Bank, constitute a more viable geographic and economic unit than the fragmented jigsaw puzzle proposed as a “two state solution.” But nations aren’t merely defined by logical economic geography.
Israelis, regardless of whether or not you consider their territorial claims to be valid, are concerned that in a unitary state, their identity as a Jewish nation would be imperiled. Is it valid for Israelis to reject the prospect of living in a territory where a majority Muslim population, through the democratic process, determines their destiny? Is anyone surprised that Palestinians resent being disenfranchised in land that, at least in modern times, they used to call their own?
If the right to “self-determination” doesn’t apply to tribes of people unified by their language, culture, and heritage, does it still have any meaning? Most people would agree that at some point, it is not fair to suggest nations, and the people who live in them, don’t have the right to protect their culture from being overwhelmed by a new democratic majority that cannot or will not assimilate.
The battles between two people determined to live in one place probably can’t be resolved, admits Mr. Ring.
Wishful Thinking
Two peoples are determined to live in one land. This is not unique in history. What is unique is only our hope, in this post-modern, allegedly enlightened age, that somehow eventually they can live together in peace.
Democracy: Empowering and Destructive
In nations where competing tribes with distinct cultures vie for political control, democracy is the engine of empowerment for the majority, and the engine of destruction for the minority. As war rages again in the Middle East, it only requires a glance at the collateral turmoil on the streets from Chicago to Berlin to see what’s at stake. We are all settlers. We are all illegitimate. And just like the Israelis, we have nowhere else to go.
Two hard questions from Mr. Ring: Shall Israelis consent to live in a nation where they are a hated minority? Shall Americans or Europeans choose this fate?
While they still can, in the nations they still call their own, it would be wise for Americans and Europeans to avoid a similar intractable reality.
