The Lenses that Obscure our Conflict

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has been raging since 1920 is in many ways unremarkable. The conflict is far from the deadliest in the region even in the last decade, nor has it displaced or directly affected as many people as other regional conflicts in the last century.

Yet the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict dominates in global attention and investment, less because of the conflict itself and more because the conflict has come to be widely understood as a theater for what many people perceive to be the fundamental themes of power that define our contemporary world.

This is the hypothesis of Canadian political commentator J.J. McCullough on the disproportionality between the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the global attention it receives. The harsh but often nuanced realities Israelis and Palestinians experience on the ground are often overshadowed by global narratives – which can be grouped into four dueling pairs – through which individuals perceive the world, each necessitating understanding and each carrying significant ramifications for the State of Israel.

Americanism vs. Anti-Americanism

Americanism is the narrative that sees the United States as a global force of peace, freedom, and democracy. From this perspective, Washington’s historic rise to – and continued – hegemonic global dominance is a story of increased prosperity and liberty. 

Anti-Americanism, conversely, is the narrative that sees the US as an international exploiter, as an evil empire that props up dictators and puppet regimes for the extraction of resources and capital under the illusory guise of spreading enlightenment, democracy, or liberalism. From this perspective, Washington’s rise to global dominance is a continuation of the exploitative empires of Europe.

With Israel consistently receiving the most US funding of any country and publicly coordinating military and diplomatic policy with Washington, many people’s opinions on Israel are downstream from their opinions on global American power.

While it is true that on many occasions Israel has acted as an American vassal state, it’s also true that Israel has sometimes acted against US interests in the Semitic region. Israel was the primary weapons provider to Iran against the US-supported Sadaam Hussein regime in the Iran-Iraq War, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in part to counter the US-backed Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1976, Israel opposed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and Israel opposed US-backed regime changes during the Arab Spring.

Furthermore, Israel itself is very much the victim of US foreign policy and only receives the aid it does from Washington because it’s the empire’s way of maintaining control over Israel.

Even today, the US only supports Israel’s war in Gaza to set up a Palestinian Authority puppet dictatorship in the strip, a position opposed by Israel’s political leadership and most of the public. In that regard, it is harmful for Israel to lean into its supposed role as Washington’s regional junior partner, as doing so would subordinate Israeli national interests to US imperial designs, such as the creation of Palestinian puppet states within its borders.

Orientalism vs. Anti-Imperialism

Orientalism is the narrative that casts Western civilization as the bastion of political enlightenment and morality, creating a responsibility for it to civilize, democratize, and/or liberalize the rest of the world – the “white man’s burden.” 

Anti-imperialism, conversely, views the driving force behind international relations as the strong seizing dominions and exploiting the weak therein, incited by feelings of superiority over their conquered populations.

Orientalists view Israel, which can appear relatively Western in policy and character when compared to its neighbors, as a civilized island in an otherwise savage region – a “villa in the jungle” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak once phrased it. 

Anti-imperialists, by contrast, see Israel’s self-aggrandized, Western civility and proported liberalism as a front to claim and exploit Palestinian territory.

Fitting Israel into this dualistic paradigm is both inaccurate and harmful. The establishment of a Jewish state in our land was a revolt against European colonialism in the region, specifically the British exploitation of oil and valuable trading territories through the Kirkuk-Haifa Oil Pipeline, and a bulwark against regional British imperial puppets like the Hashemite and Muhammad Ali dynasties. 

This faulty paradigm also ignores the continuous presence and subalternation of Jews in Palestine by the various ruling empires since the Roman empire defeated Judea nearly 2,000 years ago.

Furthermore, casting Israel as the white man of the “white man’s burden” is a tremendous erasure of Jewish history and identity. It is an erasure of the reality that Jews are not a European people but a Semitic people with a unique Hebrew culture. Attempting to force Israel into the role of outpost of Western civilization in the Semitic region creates a blockage against Jewish uniqueness and identity separate from that of the West.

Anti-Semitism vs. Never-Againism

Anti-Semitism conspiratorial hatred, believing the international Jew to be behind all of a particular society’s or the entire world’s problems. Anti-Semitism can be casual, like Kanye West falling victim to systematic anti-semitism, or more deliberate, like that of David Duke and the alt-right – the most self-aware and militant subsections of Western civilization identifying Jews as a threat.

Never-Againism, conversely, is an impulse developed in the shadow of the Holocaust, hypersensitive to any threat of genocide or great harm against the Jews.

Systematic anti-Semitism has its roots in Feudalist Europe and positions vulnerable Jews as protected agents of the ruling class. This causes the oppressed in any given society to blame them for injustices and to direct their wrath against  the shutzjuden instead of against the actual power structure. More than simply opposing its outcomes, as Never-Againsts stand strongly against Jew-hatred, it is necessary to oppose the entire system of anti-Semitism, to disentangle Jewish participation in an unjust system, such that cooperation against common oppression among Jews and other oppressed groups can be achieved.

Islamophobia vs. Islamism

Islamophobia is a way of thinking about Islam that considers Islam to be fundamentally violent and incompatible with [a more enlightened] Western civilization, rendering its spread dangerous for global stability. Islam largely spread following the wave of al-Qaeda attacks in the early 2000s (9/11 included) and the ensuing “War on Terror,]” that saw the US Empire invade Afghanistan and Iraq, resurging alongside the rise of the Islamic State in the mid-2010s.

Islamism, broadly speaking, is the narrative that the global spread of Islam is good and inevitable, though this can take many different forms, including the theocracism of Khomeini or the populism of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both Islamists and Islamophobes perceive Israel as a country fighting Islam and, depending on how they feel about Islam, they feel either positively or negatively about Israel.

Like the other lenses listed, these dueling narratives are neither accurate nor helpful. Israel’s greatest regional ally, Azerbaijan – Israel’s largest oil supplier to whom Israel is the largest arms provider – is a Muslim nation in a 30-year-long war with a Christian country (Armenia). More than simply being inaccurate, casting Israel as Christendom’s bulwark against Islam is a terrific way to destroy any attempt for Israel to build bridges in the predominantly Muslim region.

Our Narrative

The running issue with these lenses is that they all deny Israel’s independence. Americanism denies Israel’s political independence from the US, Orientalism and Islamophobia deny Israel’s cultural independence from the West, and Never-Againism denies the Jewish people’s social independence from the systemic anti-Semitism of the Western world.

Israel must reject these four lenses not only because they are inaccurate, but because they are unhelpful. Israel deserves better than to be pigeonholed into lockstep obedience to the US, into a colonial enforcer or bulwark of the West, or as a reactionary pawn in a larger geopolitical game.

For the sake of Israel’s supporters, its detractors, and the future of the state itself, Israel must be understood in a manner that recognizes its political independence, its unique identity, and its place in the international struggle against imperialism.