A new vision for the Middle East

As academic Ghassan Hage points out, Israel treats Palestinians as non-humans, and denies them all political and socio-economic opportunities (Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society, 2003, Pluto Press). Young people, in particular men, who have almost no chance of living a meaningful life under such circumstances, become suicide bombers as a stand against Israeli oppression and for the independence of Palestine.

The Israeli state deceives the Israeli public into believing that all Palestinians are primitive, bloodthirsty terrorists, and terrorism is a genetic problem - although a study shows that Jews and Palestinians share a similar gene pool, not the sociological and political product of the horrors of the occupation (Amira Hass, in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim).

Many Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, are happy to cast Palestinians as terrorists since this legitimises the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. They are almost hardwired to believe that Jews are entitled, as the victims of Holocaust, to behave in this way, Consequently, they are now mostly hardened and callous when it comes to the sufferings of Palestinians.

But what of this Jewish obsession with depicting themselves as first-class victims? What about other peoples’ sufferings? Are non-Jewish Holocaust victims less important? Does the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Turks have less significance? What about the millions of Indians who died as a result of the man-made famine in the 19th century when the British Empire imposed free-market economy on the colonial world? (Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts.)

What about millions of others who became the victims of mass murders and genocides but were never recorded in history books? Why do we need to compare people’s sufferings at all and rank them in terms of importance? Isn’t each life valuable? And shouldn’t every sufferer count?

Israel is the product of British colonialism of the previous century, and has become the base of American imperialism in the Middle East. Anthropologist and political scientist Mahmood Mamdani argues that the main reason for the overwhelming US public support for the Jews in Israel is, rather than the Jewish lobby and donors, the American belief that Jews are not colonisers, but settler-natives who have returned to their homelands. This belief is in parallel to the fact that Americans do not view their ancestors as colonisers who destroyed the native Indian population, but as mere settlers.

However, the US interests in the Middle East seems to be at the heart of American support for Israel and its lawless actions. This gives Israel its illusion of absolute power. But can Israel forever behave like an imaginary state of the US albeit located in the Middle East? What would happen if the US and Western interests shift, and the Middle East loses its strategic importance? Can Israel always rely on its nuclear weapons, and military forces for its security? Doesn’t the real sense of security come from making peace and co-operating with the others in the region?

As many Jewish dissenters have asserted, Israel has become a suicidal state since rejecting negotiation and compromise. Therefore it might totally alienate itself, becoming a pariah state like South Africa and its apartheid regime.

To avoid these consequences, Israel needs to negotiate with Hamas for a just solution, whether a one- or two-state solution, based on withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian lands and recognition of Palestinians as equals. Israel also needs to reform itself, replacing the discriminatory state based on ideological Judaism with a new one based on equal citizenship.

At the same time, it is also undeniable that unfortunately many Muslims have anti-Semitic views. They often confuse anti-Semitism with the criticism of Israel. But if all racisms including Islamophobia are wrong, shouldn’t Muslims also be concerned for anti-Semitism?

Although many Muslims give unconditional support to Palestinians, they do not care as much about the human rights violations and oppression of different minorities in their own countries. Their concern for Palestinians is mostly based on Muslim religious solidarity against a non-Muslim Jewish other. They seek “justice as retaliation” for their own kind. But a genuine concern for justice requires seeking justice for the sake of justice for everyone.

In fact, Arab and Muslim countries in the region, mostly hypocritical accomplice states and US-Israeli allies, have also used Palestinians as political pawns to negotiate their own political, economic and military interests with the US and Israel.