Israel: Ripples of Violence

The creation, development and expansion of Israel caused ripples of violence in the Middle East and in the rest of the world. Israel and its Western allies hold it against Palestinians and Arabs that they immediately tried to fight and destroy Israel. Ask anybody in the US: would you fight for the independence of your country if it was invaded? The honest answer is obvious. Yet Palestinians are punished for doing exactly this: they just fought against the invasion of a colonizer in their country.¹

Arabs were legitimate in their fight, they were resisting another wave of colonization. But they lost all their wars and for that they were humiliated by Israel, which took even more of their land as punishment. A double injustice: Palestinians were not allowed to benefit from the just outcome of decolonization and have their free country, like everyone else in the world; and they were made even more miserable by seeing most of the little land they had left stolen. They were treated as if they were savages for doing what every other country has done: fighting for their land. They were punished like naughty kids by the supposed “adults in the room”: have you been a good boy? No, so no freedom for you.² They were humiliated over and over again by Israel: it didn’t only take the land, it made sure to make Palestinians utterly powerless, dependent for everything including their basic needs (water, electricity), economically crippled, not even able to collect their taxes, and of course not able to protect their citizens against the Israeli settlers who behave exactly like protected criminal gangs.

Let’s imagine a parallel universe where Israel is created but Palestine is too; or, more reasonably, a universe where after a couple wars Israel acts like the bigger man. Because Israel could have played it understanding and peaceful, it could have tried to de-escalate the situation, to make the first step towards peace… At least it could have not taken additional territory from Palestinians, again and again! Let’s be honest, the obscene and continuous land grab would have enraged anybody. But it was the intention of the founders of Israel since the beginning to expand and colonize more of Palestine. The project of Zionism was always rooted in violence and supposed to crush indigenous opposition: Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a leader of Revisionist Zionism, said crudely that “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot.”

As Jabotinsky proudly admits, the violence was expected and even intended all along: of course, a colonization project makes the people it takes land from angry. Indigenous fight all they can, and their allies in neighboring Arab countries support them, if only because they feel threatened too, especially since they have been similarly colonized and dominated for centuries. And Israel became the black hole of human progress in the Middle East: the persistent injustice has been feeding despair, humiliation and resentment for decades in the whole area. Antisemitism has skyrocketed in Arab countries due to Israel and its insistence to conflate Judaism with Zionism. What is the role of Israel in the expansion of various extreme brands of Islam in the Muslim world? It makes sense that the attacks on the Muslim world, in particular the conquest of Jerusalem, would cause a reaction. All the extremist organizations which flourished in the past few decades have used Israel as an argument to convince people that their fight is morally justified.

It is impossible to know how things would have turned, but the deep injustice that Israel caused on the Muslim world certainly contributed to make some Muslims more angry and more inclined to use violence. Israel was one of the main arguments used by organizations such as Al Qaeda or Islamic State for instance. To my knowledge this causal link has never been made, but it’s worth asking: if history had been different, would these organizations have existed? Would they have been so popular? Would they have been able to carry out major terrorist attacks, like the 9/11? We don’t know the extent to which the violence of the history of Israel had an impact on the violence which happened elsewhere. We don’t know if the Arab and Muslim world would have relied on authoritarian leaders either, since this is a sign of fear and violence too. One could even imagine a country like Iran not turning into intolerance and violence, or its population revolting for a more progressive and open-minded country. Would the tragic massacres in Syria, in Iraq or in Afghanistan have occured? A lot could have been different if the Muslim world had been left in peace and able to focus on their progress, rather than managing violence and competing into a global arms race… to the great benefit of greedy Western industrials, as usual.

The creation of Israel and its subsequent expansion have been a slow torture on the Arab and Muslim world. Israel and its Western allies have shown willful blindness to the Palestinians’ misery mostly by racist indifference, but this is quite rightfully perceived as a moral assault and a deep humiliation. It makes talks of justice and human rights by Western countries sound hollow and fake. All of this certainly has already more consequences than people think, because it simply shows violence as the only way to be respected. The message was well received by various terrorist actors. This is likely going to leave a lasting and painful scar, especially since the West is still supporting the law of the strongest in Israel. The Western world should reflect on this: in the 21st century, are we still choosing violence and feeding the old cycle of hatred?

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