Daniel Brown’s two recent columns addressing the status of Israelis and Palestinians exhibit a troubling blind spot long-shared by many Americans and their leaders. In his June 22 piece, Brown wonders “how white members of the Franklin County peace community would react if descendants of the Pocomtuc Indians knocked on their doors and, condemned them as ‘European colonizers’ and demanded they hand over the keys to the house?”
For a moment, let’s think through this analogy between the European treatment of North American Natives and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. First, we might ask: are current Americans proud of the displacement of Native peoples? Would they do it again? Was Native resistance, even violent resistance, unjustified? As the “frontier” moved farther and farther west, the conquest of Native groups was justified by their supposed “savagery.” But this obscured the larger picture: the Natives were losing the entire continent. Israel justifies its expansion with similar arguments: Palestinians are terrorists; there is no choice but to take more and more Palestinian land to contain their essential fanaticism.
The war for North America was asymmetrical: one side had stone tools and arrows, the other, rifles, cannon, and cavalry. Israel is the only state in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. It also has been generously supported with the best US weapons, aircraft, and a three-layer “Iron Dome” that intercepts 90% of Hamas’s primitive missiles. There is no Palestinian air force. Palestinians are almost defenseless before Israeli bombs. Hamas is understandably blamed for hiding its weapons amidst its own people, but what of the fact that Israel goes right ahead and bombs these densely populated sites anyway? Gaza’s Two million people live in a strip 25 miles long and 4 to 7 miles wide). In the last “war,” 20 Palestinians died for every Israeli. Can we call this a conflict? Like so many others, Brown equates Palestinians and Israelis as “two dysfunctional Middle East tribes,” as if this tragedy were just an ancient irrational rivalry. This is a lazy attempt to avoid looking deeper and considering the entire picture.
If it is outrageous for Natives to request their homes back 200 to 400 years after being driven out, how should we expect Palestinians to react when Israeli settlers show up 2,000 years after the Romans scattered the Jewish people?
As European colonialism waned in places like Australia, Canada, the U.S., and South Africa, white settlers continued to expand their domination over natives. From the native point of view there was little difference between imperial armies and armed white settlers. In the South African case, the settlers were eventually contained and the Apartheid system demolished, partly by a global boycott movement– similar to the nonviolent tactic supporters of Palestinian rights today call Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS).
Brown suggests that progressives have an anti-Semitic double standard, ignoring atrocities in countries like Saudi Arabia. He is not paying attention. Progressives are continually pointing out that, with the support of US petroleum companies, the brutal Saudi Kingdom became the second most important US ally in the region. And the most important, Israel, just made a peace deal with that kingdom. The US has been far from neutral on this issue; it supplies both Saudi Arabia and Israel with weapons and blocks any UN resolution that Israeli leaders don’t like, such as the one in May calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Prime Minister Netanhahu, who was then in political trouble, said Israeli raids would continue “full-force” to “levy a heavy price.” President Biden accommodated him.
Perhaps the most fundamental problem is that Israel, as Brown admits, does not have a constitution that promises freedom of religion. It was envisioned and created as a place for only one ethnic group, even though that place was already occupied.
Here is a thought experiment: What If Palestinians simply gave up and said: “Okay, you have completely defeated us militarily; let’s just have one country — call it Israel if you like — but treat all people under its control equally.” To even consider such a proposal, Israelis would have to acknowledge the profound dissonance of positioning their country as a liberal democracy while clinging to a two-tiered social and political system. Perhaps American blindness to these dynamics stems from the unsettling parallels between both countries’ treatment of those already living on lands they claimed–a kind of original sin that remains unrecognized and left to fester. Unless brought to light it will continue to haunt both countries.
Patrick McGreevy, who lives in Greenfield, can be reached at pm07@aub.edu.lb.