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Special Cases, Special Rights

Sunday, Jan. 14, 2007:

Here's a simple thought experiment that may give you some fresh insight into your attitudes about the unending conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

James Fenimore Cooper once wrote a novel called "The Last of the Mohicans." From this, we might easily conclude that there are no more Mohicans. In fact, there's a small tribe of Mohicans living on a reservation in Wisconsin, but I'm more interested in making up some fictional Mohicans of my own. For the purposes of our thought experiment, we're going to assume that a small band of Mohicans -- perhaps a thousand of them -- escaped the fate that was visited upon them by the marauding European invaders (and later by the Congress of the United States). These surviving Mohicans, we will suppose, retired to the remote northwest, perhaps to what is today called Saskatchewan. There they established a new community.

In the course of time oil was discovered on the land inhabited by these exile Mohicans. And then deposits of uranium. Today, the surviving descendants of my fictional band of Mohicans don't need to run casinos: They're very, very rich.

They decide that they would like to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Of course, there are already people living there, and the current inhabitants don't much care for the idea of giving up their homes and land to Mohicans. But the Mohicans are rich, so they purchase helicopter gunships and retake their ancestral homeland by force. They herd the current inhabitants into camps, where poverty and misery run rampant. When those in the camps take up arms and attempt to rebel, the Mohicans react by bombing the camps and assassinating those who lead the revolt.

The question I'd like to ask is, would you support the Mohicans? But before you answer, I need to give you one more piece of information:

The ancestral homeland of the Mohicans is Manhattan.

It seems to me that this question is a useful litmus test. If you support the Israelis but would not support the Mohicans, you may want to ask yourself what differences you see between the two cases.

If anything, our fictional Mohicans would have a stronger claim to Manhattan than the Jews have to the land of Palestine. Legally, land ownership in Manhattan can be traced back to the original invasion that drove the Mohicans off of the island. Genetically, today's Mohicans would be nearer descendants of the original tribe than today's Jews are of the Jews who were made homeless in 70 A.D. by the Romans, and so would have a stronger claim to any real estate of which their ancestors had been unjustly dispossessed.

But to millions of people who support the Israeli occupation of Palestine, none of that will matter. All that really matters, in situations of this sort, is an emotional identification of one group as "we" and another group as "they." "We" are the noble good guys, entitled to do whatever we need to do to insure our well-being, up to and including preemptive military strikes against those who are planning to do us harm. "They" are bloodthirsty savages who, for no good or comprehensible reason, are trying to murder us.

In a confrontation between Mohicans and Manhattanites, most Americans would identify with the Manhattanites as "we." The markers of a "we" group include a common language, skin color, customs, and shared interests. Who among us would want to see stockbrokers and Broadway producers herded into internment camps?

Similarly, in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, most Americans identify with the Jews as "we." Their day-to-day customs are more like ours than those of the Palestinians, but there's more to it than that. Most non-Jewish Americans share with Jews a common religious heritage. This automatically makes Jews "we" and Muslims "they." (The Muslims share that heritage as well, but never mind that -- they speak a weird language and have weird customs, so they're "they.")

Trying to discuss Americans' attitudes toward the Israeli/Palestinian conflict without mentioning religion is like pretending there's no elephant in the living room, so we may as well dive right in.

The belief that the Jewish invaders have some inherent right to occupy Palestinian land and herd the Palestinians into camps rests, it seems to me, on a concatenation of premises. These premises are fervently believed by millions of people. Unfortunately, they're all laughable.

• Premise 1: There exists an invisible entity called "God."
• Premise 2: "God" takes a direct interest in human affairs, and sometimes favors one group of humans over another.
• Premise 3: The written records of the Jewish people dating from about 2,500 years ago, which are today contained in the portion of the Bible called the Old Testament, provide an accurate indication of the wishes of "God."
• Premise 4: People should do what "God" wants. They should actively attempt to bring into existence on this planet conditions that are in accord with the desires of "God." People who do what "God" wants are good. People who don't do what "God" wants are evil. Sooner or later, and in some manner or other, "God" will reward good people and punish evil people.

Premise 4 has a corollary: Good people are "we," while evil people are "they." And vice-versa -- if you're part of "we," you're assumed to be good until proven otherwise, while if you're part of "they," owing perhaps to skin color or ethnicity, you're assumed by default to be evil.

If you believe all four of these premises, you'll very likely support Israel's barbaric suppression of the Palestinians -- though of course you won't call it that. The fact that I would even make such a comparison will probably enrage you. (Rage might be a clue that you're being led around by your emotions, not by your brain.) If your belief system fails to include any of the four premises, you'll probably have serious misgivings about what the Israelis are doing.

But even if you have serious misgivings, you may still identify with the Israelis as "we" based on our common heritage and shared culture. You may be hoping for a compromise that will somehow magically satisfy both sides. But that's never going to happen. The Mohicans are never going to share their homeland with the Manhattanites, and the Manhattanites won't be satisfied until they have driven out the very last Mohican.

As a postscript, I should add that I abhor the Palestinians' barbaric tactics. Nor do I admire their religion and customs. All religions promote idiocy, Islam no less than Judaism and Christianity. And the Palestinians' ineptitude in pursuing their legitimate claims in the worst possible way is spectacular. It's breathtaking. They could have been inspired by Gandhi -- but noooo. That would have required that they change their cherished customs, which seem, if we're to judge by the evidence, to include a taste for revenge. Better decades of bloodshed than adjust your value system to reflect a new reality.

But then, that's human nature, isn't it?