Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict
[ Israeli policy toward Israeli Arabs ] [ Arab-Israeli war prospects ]
Israeli society is deeply split. On one hand, many Israelis believe that preserving Eretz Israel within the boundaries of the Promised Land is the Jews' utmost obligation. That opinion of Israelis is valid, since it is based on Torah, and some degree of adherence to the Torah is that which makes Jews Jews. Other Israelis, mostly secular-minded but some deeply religious Israelis as well, believe that no Israeli territory is worth the life of a single Jew, since the commandments were given the Jews for life, not for death.
Both kinds of Israelis have many other valid arguments. While Israeli adherents of the Eretz Israel argue that only acquiring all the Promised Land fulfills the Jewish nation’s destiny, their Israeli opponents just as reasonably point to the practical impossibility for Israel of attaining the goal of Eretz Israel in the foreseeable future after Israel transferred Sinai to the Egyptians. Israel conquering Jordan and Iraq to the Euphrates is a long way off. If Israelis cannot fulfill the covenant promise now, why kill a lot of Israeli and Arab people and spend a lot of Israeli money for the Arab territories, which have no value in themselves and, except Sinai, lack significant defense value for Israel? Jewish opponents of the Eretz Israel-now goal believe that economic growth of Israel unhindered by Arab-Israeli war would be a better source of Israeli national pride, prevent emigration from Israel, and attract Diaspora Jews to Israel.
The Israeli government vacillates between those views on the future of Israel. One Israeli government builds a tremendously expensive Bar-Lev line to protect Israeli Sinai forever;[1] another Israeli government gives up the land, biblically and strategically important for the Jews, for paper guarantees of Egyptian-Israeli peace. One Israeli government encourages and finances Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories; the next Israeli government dismantles the Jewish settlements. Such wild swings of Israeli policy indicate the relative balance between two Jewish visions of Israeli goals and the impossibility for Israel of bringing the two types of Jews together.
That is only natural, since anybody’s worldview is just a set of axioms. Some Israelis believe that the size of the Land of Israel the Jews control is more important, while other Israelis believe that preserving Jewish life and its quality take precedence. It is almost futile to argue about Jewish axioms, which are matters of conviction.
Israel, however, cannot have two mutually exclusive policies. Under pro-expansion Israeli governments, even the Israelis who do not want more territory for the Jewish state have to fight and die for it, as well as suffer economically from Israeli taxes that finance Arab-Israeli war. Under Israeli conciliatory governments, Israeli biblical partisans watch helplessly as Israeli government gives the Jewish land away. In the long run, no Israelis are happy with Israeli government. Everyone, both Israeli groups, want coherent Jewish leadership that shares their vision of Jewish destiny. That can be achieved.
In ancient times, two Jewish entities, Israel and later Galilee, formed an economically viable, cosmopolitan Jewish state. Judea, centered in the barren hills, was content with a subsistence economy, jealously guarded Jewish religious purity, and Jewish national consciousness. In our time, Jewish history repeats itself. Israeli zealots flock to kibbutzim[2] and other Jewish settlements, where the priority is not economic development but preserving certain ideological goals and values—which many Israelis do not share. Jews' military and fiscal obligations to Israel are also different.[3] Everything is in place for a split of Israel into two Jewish states.
Judea would encompass the contested Palestinian territories, with the aim of eventual expansion into Sinai and all of Eretz Israel. Although Judea would not be economically self-sustaining in industry as Israel, Judea would get the lion’s share of material support that pours into Israel from Jews around the world. Judea could defend herself against Arabs without great expense and depend on Israel and the West for last-resort protection against major Arab aggression.
Being a profoundly religious Jewish state offers advantages in confrontation with Arabs which secular Israeli nation does not possess. Judea would be free to clear out Arab indigenous inhabitants. Following Hebrew biblical guidelines, Judea could use military measures otherwise unacceptable in the modern world—though the nations that decry them were themselves established in fire and blood--and unavailable to Israel.
As Johann Tilly put it, “States create wars, wars create states.” Even ostensibly humane states fight all the time: the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falklands Islands, Spain and Morocco over an island, the United States and Cuba in Grenada, the Coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq. Third-world countries fight to establish boundaries. Only six decades have passed since the bloodbath of two world wars, not enough to change the mentality of nations. And it did not change: the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and only fear of reprisal prevented them from doing the same in Korea. The French and their allies slaughtered millions in Algeria and Indochina. Russia has killed thousands in the dispute with breakaway Chechnya. The same nations that suffered the first World War’s devastation marched straight into World War II. Current military restraint springs from the fear of escalation, not humane scruple.
Judea can forget the notion of civil rights and obey Jewish religious law. Unlike Israel, Judea can afford to stop non-Jewish immigration, directly or through inter-marriage of Jews with gentiles, and limit non-Jewish Orthodox conversions and other Jewish Reformist practices, which, though compatible with modern secular values, significantly water down the Jewish religious identity.
Judea could become a classic Jewish theocracy, organized along the lines of pre-kingdom Israel ruled by the judges, giving rabbis in Judea the judicial functions of the late Second Temple period onward. Judea could use Talmudic law, updated to accommodate present reality of Jewish life, instead of contemporary Israeli legislation. An influx of fresh Jewish ideas into the body of the Talmud would benefit the Jewish tradition and spark renewed interest of Israelis in it. Judea’s official language would be the beautifully powerful biblical Hebrew, not the modern garbled Hebrew substitute spoken by Israeli Jews.
Israel could withdraw from the contested Palestinian territories, enjoy peace with Israel's Arab neighbors, and concentrate on rapid economic development of the Jewish state. That would win Israel some international respect. Israel could become the dominant Middle Eastern economy, replacing Switzerland, the United States, and Russia as the source of financial, technological, and military commodities and services to Muslims. Western powers will not compete with Israel for hegemony in a Middle East plunged in incessant wars between Arabs after Muslims lose the common Israeli enemy.
Relieving Israel of her war expenditures will let Israel work to recapture Jewish prominence in banking and trade, fundamental research and technology, and the arts.
Dividing Israel into two states, Israel and Judea, would not cause enmity among Jews, rather would eliminate the enmity currently brewing in Israel where whatever policy Israeli government chooses displeases to about half the Israeli population. The division of Israel would let both Israel and Judea “specialize” and limit their liability. Israel would not be responsible for Judea’s expansionism, while Judea, financed by Israelis, might disregard the economic consequences of its decisions.
Throughout history, anti-Semites have used the actions of a few Jews, from Zealots to tavern-keepers, to incriminate all Jews. Today all Jews are accused of maltreating Palestinians. Creating Judea would let Israelis shift the blame from the Jewish nation to a Jewish state which pays no attention to gentile opinion. Israel, which would have almost no problems with Palestinians, would become a good neighbor of Muslims.
With Judea siphoning off Jewish religious radicals, Israel could move away from Jewish theocracy. Jews who do not observe the whole of the Talmudic law may feel themselves not proper Jews, though keeping it precisely is virtually impossible under normal circumstances. Ignoring the Jewish rabbinical law identified with Jewishness pushes the Jews toward atheism and away from Israel. Israel could adopt Sadducean Judaism, which expects obedience only to the Torah’s explicit commandments[9] to let Jews feel themselves fully Jewish.
[1] A strategically ludicrous line of Israel Defense Forces' fortifications on the Israeli bank of the Suez Canal, praised before 1973 as the ultimate Israeli defense against the Egyptians
[2] Communal agrarian Jewish settlements, very important in the early days of Jewish immigration but ineffective, costing Israel dearly in subsidies.
[3] Religious Jews generally do not do military duty in Israel Defense Forces, a policy with flimsy theological substantiation, especially shameful because the religious Jews demand confrontation with the Arabs. The Jewish clergy get Israeli government funds and numerous tax breaks.
[9] In addition to the Decalogue, Jewish law developed 603 further commandments of Torah interpreting the Ten, the Mishnah to interpret Jewish scripture legally, and the Gemara to explain the Mishnah. Only the radically orthodox Jews see all commandments as divine, but the commandments have great benefit of doubt when questioned.