Israel, What Might Have Been, and What Actually Happened
It takes memory, and that’s problematic, because there are not many of us still alive who remember the Holocaust. And history is not much use, first, because too few read it and, secondly, it’s written by the winners. The winning side is always suspect, particularly in times of war and colonialism.
How differently the hangman’s noose might have swung at Nuremburg, had the winner been Germany.
But I was alive, paying attention as only a young man can, and I’ll try to explain what might have been with ‘the Jewish question.’
Unique among the peoples of the world, the Jews always raise a ‘question.’ While there are seldom Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist ‘questions,’ Jews are everywhere and nowhere, generally on the bottom of some nation’s heap of humanity.
No one has been able to explain that to me sufficiently, but the creation of a state named Israel was an attempt to solve the question.
But there were hills to climb, and not all that many skilled climbers.
Answering the question of why Jews didn’t leave Europe as Nazi power grew, refugees were welcomed nowhere and could be assimilated nowhere. Once they had left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they remained stateless; once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth.
Essentially, no one wanted the Jews, just as no one wants immigrants today, in Europe or America.
So Great Britain had a plan.
Mandatory Palestine, officially known as Palestine, was a British administrative territory between 1920 and 1948. Since 1922, when England still had a colonial empire and under the terms of the all-too-brief League of Nations it held the Mandate (governance) of Palestine. Administered by the British, who deemed it unfit for self-governance, that mandate was near its end, with a mere ten days to run.
Why not just give it to the Jews?
Unlike the rest of the post-war mandates, the main goal of the British Mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish ‘national home’ where Jews constituted less than 10 percent of the population at the time.
But who really cared, Palestinians being unfit for self-governance anyway. Brits, as their colonial empire slid out from under them, were skilled at giving other people’s countries away and redrawing national boundaries.
It turns out Palestinians cared, along with most Middle Eastern nations in an area that didn’t take all that kindly to Jews either.
Palestine had a population of just 630,000 at the time – about the same as the total population of Nashville or Oklahoma City today – and Jews comprised a third of the whole. There were about two Muslims for every Jew, alongside a small population of Christians.
All hell broke loose with the acceptance of the State of Israel.
Immediately following the declaration of the new state, both superpower leaders, US President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, recognized Israel. Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine.
Storm clouds were gathering.
These Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, lighting off the first Arab–Israeli War. The Arab states had heavy military equipment at their disposal and were initially on the offensive (the Jewish forces were not a state before 15 May and could not buy heavy arms). Long story short, on 11 June a month-long UN truce came into effect.
Israel signed armistices with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Israel’s new borders, later known as the Green Line, were established. Although these borders were not recognized by the Arab states as international boundaries, Israel was in control of the Galilee, Jezreel Valley, West Jerusalem, the coastal plain and the Negev.
The Syrians remained in control of a strip of territory along the Sea of Galilee (originally allocated to the Jewish state), the Lebanese occupied a tiny area at Rosh Hanikra, and the Egyptians retained the Gaza strip and still had some forces inside Israeli territory. Jordanian forces remained in the West Bank, where the British had stationed them during the mandate. Jordan annexed the areas it occupied, while Egypt kept Gaza as an occupied zone.
The Six Day War.
Jumping twenty years (and profoundly wishing Israel was elsewhere), on 5 June 1967 the Israeli airforce pre-emptively destroyed the Egyptian air force, then demolished the air forces of Jordan and Syria later the same day. Israel then went on to defeate Egypt, Jordan and Syria. By 11 June, the Arab forces were routed, and all parties had accepted a cease-fire called for by UN Security Council Resolutions 235 and 236.
Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the formerly Jordanian-controlled West Bank of the Jordan River. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel. Residents were given permanent residency status and the option of applying for Israeli citizenship. The annexation was not recognized internationally (the Jordanian annexation of 1950 was also unrecognized, except for the UK, Iraq, and Pakistan). Other areas occupied remained under military rule (Israeli civil law did not apply to them) pending a final settlement. The Golan was also annexed in 1981.
What we might have done, but didn’t.
Mormon settlers began a westward exodus, to escape persecution in the 1830s. When they arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, outside the boundaries of the United States in 1847, they finally found a safe home in what is now Utah.
The 630,000 Jews making up Israel might also have migrated to Utah, a hundred years after those Mormons, in 1947 (also to escape persecution). Instead, they were given another man’s country, deep within a hotbed of antisemitism.
But we didn’t allow that (not that it was ever proposed). Mormons, by the way, are among the most highly respected American citizens today.
Coulda been, mighta been, shoulda been, but weren’t.
Instead of a Mormon-style Jewish migration to Utah, we have an American backed genocide going on in Gaza, a flood of illegal cities being built by Israel in the West Bank and what remains of Gaza, and a brand new major Israeli-American attack on Iran.
The Middle East is in turmoil, with who knows what endgame, and the biggest current problem in Utah is saving the Great Salt Lake.
Getting back to the subject of modern day Israel, its circumstances have turned it from a Holocaust survivor to a Holocaust provider (without the gas chambers).
I understand their ‘Never Again’ motto, but I had hoped it included all of humanity. And yet, they seem to have turned their backs (as well as their military) on those whose land was stolen for their modern-day occupancy.
Genocide is a strong word, and I don’t use it casually.
The world’s leading genocide scholars have declared that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide. Following the landmark publication of two reports by leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, both concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
This is the first time that admission has come from inside Israel. The UN and 68 of its member states agree.
Early days in modern Israel were not easy.
In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight from the land that the State of Israel came to control. That led to waves of Jewish immigration from other parts of the Middle East, which had always had a minor, but significant, Jewish population.
This was followed by a series of further conflicts between Israel and its neighboring Arab nations. In 1967, the Six-Day War erupted. In 1973, the Yom Kippur War began, with a retaliatory attack by Egypt on the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula.
In 1979, an Egypt–Israeli peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed.
Despite efforts to finalize peace agreements, these conflicts continue to play major roles in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life.
So, What Might Have Been was easy, but not at the time.
And What Actually Happened, is a study in wrong decisions, and the consequences of having made them.
Unlike cats and hot stoves, we remain slow to study consequences before we leap.