Essay: Israel, The Mistake That Can't Be Changed

The creation of Israel was a mistake that can't be changed. Zionists had been trying to create a state there for a long time (and stirring up a lot of trouble in the process), and with the Holocaust, suddenly events were forced when these displaced European Jews had to be put somewhere; sending them back to the people who had sent them to their deaths wasn't practical. The UN had just been created, and people had tremendous, desperate faith in the organization to prevent another world war; it had far greater stature than today, and created Israel on what was largely a blank map.

These European Jews are still Europeans, and as such, are quite bigoted towards the Arabs. They claim they need space for population growth even though the Palestinians have a rate of population growth and population density several times higher.

Pragmatically, however, we can't just send them back to Europe, or anywhere else; Israel is here to stay, and they must learn to coexist with their neighbors.

The status quo, from the Israeli end, is driven largely by three factors:
1. Fear of change
2. Bigotry and religious zealotry amongst Israelis and Americans alike
3. Greedy land developers who want to steal other people's land for profit

These arguments to the effect that the Israelis are entitled to the land because of what it says in the Old Testament are completely irrational. The region is a living area, not ancient ruins, and people live there. It's been continuously inhabited for about five thousand years, and the fact of the matter is, the people who live there now, call it home. Arguing the Israelis are more entitled to it because their ancestors (who only make up a tiny fraction of their bloodline due to interbreeding with Europeans) is as absurd as arguing that the Native Americans are more entitled to America or the Ainu to Japan or the Greeks to Istanbul or the Mexicans to California. Policy, on a going forward basis, needs to reflect reality, not trying to interpret the back-and-forth of history and who stole what from who first.

The Israelis are not useful to the United States. They have no military leverage outside their own territory aside from launching surprise attacks on small targets in other countries - and even this is only possible because of the American hammer hanging overhead. They have never donated troops for our use. We have no bases on their soil. They have no strategic resources. They are not a substantial trade partner. They have not helped us fight international crime or the drugs trade; in fact they've gotten in the way, for fear of compromising their intelligence network. They have not provided us with any useful intelligence; quite the contrary, they've kept quite a bit secret from us that we really would have liked to know - for example, they were aware of the plot to blow up the Marine barracks in Lebanon but chose not to tell the Americans.

They have done nothing to earn our loyalty and aid, and there is no reason we should continue to support them at enormous economic and diplomatic cost, especially when it has become increasingly clear their intention is to maintain an unreasonable and unsustainable policy based on what they believe to be certain and unrelenting American support.

We should cut Israel loose, and in doing so, force them to make a sustainable peace. This is not 1967; Israel is no longer under direct military threat from its neighbors, and the Palestinians are completely at their mercy. If we do not cut them loose, they will eventually be without our aid anyway, when American dominance further wanes and we can no longer afford to string them along.

Israel's policies are self-defeating and are leading to a dead end. Pragmatically, these two peoples will have to live together forever - not till the next election, or a few more years, forever, thousands of years, and they must work to build a future for both, so they may prosper together in peace. The alternative is to go down the path of Yugoslavia or Northern Ireland and remain torn by petty ethnic feuds and see their development fall further behind the civilized world. Israel does not see this and instead chooses to continue to aggravate the Palestinians with unreasonable and inhuman treatment. History has shown many times this sort of thing is self-defeating. Look at the Germans in Belgium or the English in Ireland or the Russians in Poland or Ukraine - the belief that a people can be terrorized into submission is profoundly wrong, and it always backfires in the end with an endless spiral of violence.