I Don’t Give a Fuck About Israel

I really really don’t

To be perfectly honest, I don’t give many fucks about most foreign policy affairs. Ukraine, for example. I’m neither Russian nor Ukrainian, and while I’m entirely amenable to the idea that this whole war is America’s fault, I’m not committed to the outcome. It will end when it ends, and someone will gain something thereby, and a lot of others will have lost a great deal. The rest is cheerleading.

When it comes to the ongoing slapfight between Jews and Arabs over the Levant, however, my scholarly distance becomes active distaste for the whole wretched business. When I say I don’t give a fuck about Israel, I really mean it.

Some people say that because they’re tired of the rhetorical display of “Our GreatestAlly”. I am sympathetic. The United States gets nothing from its association with Israel but an ongoing diplomatic migraine. My entire life has been spent watching Presidents of both parties try to square the circle, and come up empty-handed. Best to be rid of the whole bother. A highly-educated, tech-savvy people like the Israelis should not require our handholding. Let them settle their own affairs in whatever way seems best to them.

I mean that. Whatever seems best to them. If they need to make peace, they should do it. If they need to make war, they should do that. It’s none of my affair.

A necessary corollary to not giving a fuck about Israel is not giving a fuck about Palestine. If you care about Palestine, you care about Israel. I have no way of knowing which among these tribes of Semites has more blood upon their hands. Both of their claims to the Levant are based on ancient conquests granted divine sanction. Neither of them can be trusted to tell the truth about their past crimes, any more than any other nation of the earth can. Neither of them are above exaggerating and amplifying the crimes of the other. Picking and choosing which to accept and which to downplay is necessarily a political act, born of a preference for one side or the other. Doing so makes you a rhetorical stooge in the hands of a foreign people.

Accepting and applying this makes one wonderfully liberal and tolerant. I am unbothered by Israel being a Jewish state. In the first place, I am not offended by religiously-centered societies (what else should you base a polity on? Commerce?). In the second place, I don’t live there. They are an ocean away from me. The underpinning of their society neither harms nor aids me in any meaningful way. By the same token, I am unbothered by Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., being Muslim States. If the Persians are content to live under a Shi’ite theocracy, if the Arabians are satisfied to be ruled by a long-lasting dynasty of Custodians of the Holy Places, so be it. If they are not satisfied with these arrangements, they should change them. What have I to do with it?

Obviously, the actions any of these states take on the world stage is a different matter. If they seek to cause harm to my country, then my country should respond. But if they are fighting each other, then I do not care. Regional conflicts become world wars through entangling alliances.

War is a thing that humans do. It is a thing humans have always done. It is a reflection of our darkest ambitions and our profoundest loyalties. It will not be entreatied away. The best we can hope for is for wars to be limited, decisive, and followed by a just peace. The whole world cheerleading and feeding the conflict with weapons prevents such discretion.

Therefore, I have removed myself from the contention. It was very easy to do, requiring only a mental switch, a category shift. The reality always was that I had very little to do with what went on in the Middle East. The existence or destruction of Israel or of Palestine was to me an abstract thing I felt obligated to have an opinion on. I have decided that the obligation was false. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people for whom these questions are not matters of life and death. It just means that I am not one of them, and I have no wish to pretend otherwise. As an ancient Jew put it, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.