The view from the Israeli Right

Five decades of retreat and weakness

Palestinians certainly have legitimate grievances, and goals that most people would see as legitimate too. However, these are almost invariably mixed up with petty bigotries, ethnic and religious chauvinism (neither of which are justified by their achievements), mad irredentist fantasies, total nonsense, bloodlust, self pity, and gross distortions of the historical record. There is a thriving online industry devoted to sanewashing Palestinian aspirations into something that 3rd party observers will find reasonable.¹ My general view is that these people should reorient their efforts from pretending that Palestinians are more sane than they are to persuading them to actually be more sane than they are, which would be a win-win for everyone. Nevertheless, I thought that it might be good to do the same for the Israeli irredentists. First of all, it’s only fair, and since those who are currently doing the job in English are sociopathic freaks or obvious lying grifters who persuade no-one except illiterates and charity cases, then the job falls to me. Secondly, I think it’s an important exercise for me personally. It’s one thing to struggle to inhabit the mind of your opponents, it’s another to struggle to inhabit the mind of yourself. These were my views for the better part of my life, and if I can’t reconstruct and defend them, what am I even doing?

What follows is not precisely what you are likely to hear from any individual Jewish revanchist. It’s a collage that takes the most cogent points and weaves them together into something persuasive while leaving out the things that make Israelis appear like nutters. I’ll even add in a few notes of my own where appropriate. It should not be assumed that I agree with everything I write here, nor that I disagree with everything, since neither is true. Here goes.

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For five decades, Israel has been in retreat. The retreat started in 1978 when Israel withdrew from the Sinai, with its oil, its mines, its ports and its strategically valuable positions, in addition to a landmass almost three times the size of Israel itself. In return, Israel received a promise that it would not be attacked from a country it had decisively defeated three times in the space of twenty-five years. To Israelis, this was sold as a peace treaty, but Egyptians themselves have never considered it anything more than an extended ceasefire with US guarantees. Egyptian educational curricula, state media, and popular culture continued to portray Israel as an illegitimate and wicked state which would one day be destroyed. Egypt has cooperated with Israel to precisely the extent it was in its interests to do so, and not one iota further, all the time glorifying Palestinian armed resistance and relentlessly attacking Israel at the UN and other international institutions.

That was bad enough, but Israel’s political elite was not satisfied merely with exchanging land for empty promises; it moved on to exchanging land for nothing at all. In 2000, it withdrew from southern Lebanon, and in 2005 from the Gaza Strip, in the latter case forcing over 8,000 loyal Jewish citizens from their homes, barbarically dragging them by the feet if they refused. Both territories were then taken, just as predicted by the reviled opponents of withdrawal, by Islamist paramilitaries explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel. The retreat was not received even for a second as a prompt for mutual concessions or a sign of goodwill, but rather - what in truth it was - as a sign of weakness, a confirmation that terrorism works, and an encouragement to engage in further terrorism to liberate more land.

Even these acts of self harm, however, pale into comparison to the greatest betrayal of all, the Oslo Accords. After decades of war against the PLO, architect of some of the most vile acts of terrorism in world history, Israel allowed it to create a transparent front organization and control territory barely half an hour’s walk from almost every population center in Israel. Again, Israel asked for nothing in return except the mere hope that Palestinians would take this in the spirit it was intended and agree, in their magnanimity, to make peace and share the small fraction of land left to the Jews from the original Balfour declaration and be content with a second Palestinian state in addition to the one on the other side of the Jordan. Of course, precisely the opposite happened. Palestinians are driven first and last by religious and racialist fanaticism taught both by Muhammad and the prophets of Arab nationalism. They sincerely believe that Jewish sovereignty in any part of Israel, indeed anywhere at all, is an abomination that defies the fundamentals of their faith, and they are happy not just to kill, but to be martyred to whatever extent it takes to rectify it. They saw the Oslo Accords as proof of concept: Jews are weak, they love life, and if you threaten them, they will give you land. If you threaten them more, they will give you more land, and eventually they will have no more land left, and they will leave. Thus followed the Second Intifada, the worst period in Israeli history, of course until October 7th.

Worse, this process of endless retreat did not even end at the Green Line so beloved of the peace mongers and the ‘international community’. Lod and Ramle were within living memory entirely Jewish cities. In their naivety, and like the good liberals they were taught to be, the municipal authorities allowed Arabs to buy and rent property and they became mixed cities. The Jews of these 'mixed cities’ know exactly what this means: break-ins, bars over your windows, being afraid to walk the street at night. That is everyday life, but, in 2021, the Arab community, not in the least bit pacified by the best living standards and most civil rights anywhere in the Middle East, erupted in riots: looting, burning, beating. The Jews of these cities cowered helplessly while the police were nowhere to be found. Only after the arrival of the ‘radical settlers’ from the hills, who took their lives in their hands in service of the state that persecutes and defames them, did they know safety. Of course, it goes without saying that every mixed city in Israel is a formerly Jewish one. There are no shortage of Israelis who would take advantage of the lower prices in Nazareth, Kfar Kassim or Ar’ara if they could, but they can’t, because they will be driven out by the same tactics that are strictly forbidden to Jews in their cities, and the police will do nothing. Those Jews who have the gall the live in areas that have been declared by fiat to be for Arabs, be it Hebron or the Mount of Olives, do so behind fences and 24/7 armed guard and, for this, they are blamed for disturbing the peace. Beset by enemies on all sides, and from within, the Jewish people has everywhere retreated, though not to safety, but to more concentrated danger.

In case we are tempted to quibble with such a clear-cut case of cause and effect, we even have a scientific control. In the delirious days of the 1990s Israel tried to give away the Golan Heights too, and was stymied only by Hafez Assad’s perverse refusal to accept even the 1949 armistice line as a border between the two countries. Had the government got its way, it would have traded yet more land for a piece of paper with a promise from Syria not to attack (but only to scheme against) Israel. Assuming this agreement had even held, it would have been rendered moot a mere two decades later by the Syrian Civil war, at which point the strategic positions overlooking hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Galilee would have been seized either by Shia or Sunni Islamist paramilitaries, or perhaps a patchwork of both. The sole success story of the Oslo years was forced upon Israel’s suicidal regime by the shortsighted greed of its enemies.

The surrender and humiliation process was imposed upon the population of Israel by an out of touch elite, drunk on their own faux humanism and self-righteousness, desperate to suppress religious and traditional Jews, sold out to foreign powers or all of the above. The Two State Solution was the brainchild of Maki, Israel’s anti-Zionist Communist party. When it was adopted by Meretz and Mapam, Israel’s electorate responded by consigning what were once Israel’s two dominant parties to electoral oblivion. They elected Sharon, hero of the Sinai, but he too betrayed them, and they chose Likud. Then, in 2009, Likud betrayed them as well, and Netanyahu announced in his Bar Ilan speech that the Likud charter was null and void, that the policy of Maki was now the policy of the whole Israeli political spectrum. Israelis who wanted nothing more than the policy of Ben Gurion, for a government that put their need to live above the elites’ need to feel good and popular among the chattering classes of the world had nowhere to turn except the ‘fascists’ of the so-called ‘far Right’. However, though ordinary Israelis were not responsible for the policy of pre-emptive surrender, they were responsible for paying the costs: blown up on buses, stabbed on the streets, run over by trucks. Their blood flowing like water. Only on October 7th, when the kibbutznikim, too, tasted what the Jews of Yehuda and Shomron had known day in day out, did the penny drop for the ‘beautiful souls’ of North Tel Aviv, but too late.

It would be one thing if this woeful history of capitulation after capitulation had resulted in the world giving Israel its sympathy, but, to add insult to injury, the country that was the darling of the civilized world, became its villain. Not praised for withdrawing from Gaza or Lebanon, Israel was only blamed for responding to attacks. Most absurdly of all, it is still identified in both international law and polite opinion as the occupying power in Gaza!

This seems paradoxical, but it is really very easy to understand. The Israel of 1948-1967 that fought, that expelled, that launched pre-emptive strikes, that put Arabs under curfew was very clear: this is our land by right, and people took it at its word. Each concession Israel has made since has been an admission, tacit perhaps, but unmistakable nonetheless, that this is not our land, that we are strangers, conquerors. Every time we give up land, we only convince the world further than we are interlopers on that which still remains in our hands.

What to do now? As an Irishman once said, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’. It is to be hoped that an unambiguous affirmation that this is our home, and that we will not give an inch of it away will turn the tide, but it may be too late. However, even if not, it doesn’t matter. Whether we kill ten or ten thousand Palestinians, we will be accused of genocide. We may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. The safety of our children hinges on whether we have the resolve to drown out the noise, take the economic hit, and do what needs to be done.

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I think that came out pretty good. Beyond questions of which parts of this are wrong and right, it’s important to understand why these views became popular. Of course, the various activists and propagandists of the Right bear responsibility - or, as they would see it, credit - as do the Left for their manifold incompetences, blunders and crimes. But those most responsible are actors from among the Palestinians and their supporters, who have done everything possible, at every opportunity, to make Israelis feel this way. A 50 year strategy with no consistent rationale other than making those with the power to kill you hate you has consequences. Someone who likes Palestinians should tell them that.

1. Some names include Wajahat Ali, Dave Smith, Mehdi Hassan, Omar Bassan, Mouin Rabbani, Robert Wright or Youssef Munayyer. I think Norman Finkelstein imagines himself to be doing this too, but is too much of a psychotic weirdo to pull it off.