Destroy and revive?

A Muslim temple in downtown Washington hosted a seminar years ago on anti-Semitism and Israel, which was not the knee-jerk trashing of the zionist bad-guys some of expected. Middle Eastern scholars and diplomats were invited (excluding Israelis) to reflect on the long history of the conflict and its nutrients.

Surprisingly, speakers identified anti-Semitism itself as one of the culprits for the decades of war and slaughter because, the Gulf Muslims and Christian Palestinians said, that long history and any modern flowering of anti-Jewish racism fed Israel’s determination to remain an apartheid state. Every act of anti-Semitic violence reminded the world of centuries of oppression and reinforced the raison d’etre of the zionist project.

One questioner asked what, given this logic, were the Palestinian movements and Arab governments in the region doing to combat anti-Semitism, and the replies were most unsatisfactory. Three decades later the public face of Israel’s adversaries remain the most backward of the bunch from Bashir al-Assad to the Hizbollah gunners, whose anti-Semitic chants only fuel the fires of Israeli victimhood and provide excellent cover for the continued land grab that exacerbates the endless conflict.

It is therefore curiously consistent although counterintuitive to hear that the current offensive in Gaza, as some commentators argue, will strengthen Hamas, whose support has been slipping badly in the last two years. After diplomatic errors and an erosion of internal democracy, the Hamas-led Gaza government was taking a lot of blame. Now, with the chance to appear as heroic resisters and martyrs, the religious fundamentalist movement may be physically decimated but at the same time politically revived.

A cynic might conclude that this outcome will not particularly disturb the Israeli leadership. As long as permanent warfare against homicidal enemies continues, Israel can continue to consolidate its control over newly seized lands and crush any Palestinian infrastructure or institutions, thus further delaying any formation of a rival state. Hamas—which the Israelis once encouraged as a religious thorn in the side of Arafat’s hated, secular PLO—remains a perfect foil for the zionist project, the face of a thousand-year blood feud that most of the Israeli public apparently believes is eternal, built into the DNA of deluded goyim.

All of which makes me recall that Barack Obama is coming into office with a pledge to bring Republicans and Democrats back together. That’ll be a snap compared to finding sane interlocutors on either side of this tragedy.