The most significant fact arising from the Holocaust is that the unspeakable barbarity and depravity wrought upon the Jews was perpetrated, not by a society of uncivilised savages, but by the Germans, one of Europe’s most advanced and civilised nations.
The significance of this was not lost on the surviving Jews. If the Germans were capable of such a thing, then anybody was and it could therefore happen again at any time in the future. And to attempt to explain it away by believing that Germans as a people were uniquely inclined to such heartlessness and cruelty was naïve as well as racialistic.
The appalling evidence arising from the Holocaust was that it is possible even in these modern times for any political group in a position of power over Jews to choose, in particular circumstances and for its own purposes, to massacre them as the Germans had done. How likely it was to occur was irrelevant; it could happen again as it had in the 1940s and in earlier pogroms, and that was all that mattered.
Furthermore, the Allies’ shockingly indifferent response to Germany’s systematic slaughter of Europe’s Jews while it was happening was apocalyptic for world Jewry, and deeply ominous in respect of their future. Clearly, the gradual emancipation of Jews and the improvement in attitude towards them among Western gentiles that had taken place over the previous three centuries meant nothing: Jews were in reality no safer today from pathological anti-Semitism in the supposedly humanistic West than they had been in mediaeval times.
This realisation together with its disturbing implications was not lost on the leaders of the newly established state of Israel. History had made it quite clear that the only reliable protection for Jews against the power of those who would harm them was the equivalent or greater power of a dedicated Jewish state. No outside government, international body, church, ethical system, rule of law, or guarantee could ever be relied upon again, as the Holocaust had proven beyond all doubt. The Allies, by failing to respond appropriately and timeously to the facts of the Holocaust, let the Jews know that they did not share in the comity of civilised peoples or enjoy its protection. They remained beyond the Pale.
To assuage Allied guilt, Israel was allocated to the Jews by the United Nations in 1948, so providing them with a territorial area over which they could exercise full political control and in which they would therefore be safe from the homicidal inclinations of other political groups.
Even though it was understood that many more Jews would live outside Israel than in it, those outside it would at least have a refuge to which they could flee should there be any future outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism in their countries of origin.
At the same time that the Jews were allocated their homeland in this part of the old Turkish Empire, a separate but contiguous territory was allocated by the United Nations for the Arab occupants of the area. For a variety of reasons, however, this territory was never established as a separate Arab nation but today it by and large forms the physical basis for a putative Palestinian homeland that is at the centre of the long ongoing Palestinian/Israeli negotiations.
To resolve the problem created by the United Nations’ granting of sovereignty to the Jews over an area already inhabited by numerous Arabs as well as Jews, two basic physical options have been mooted: one, that a single, binational democratic state be formed, comprising Israel together with the West Bank and Gaza, and admitting as citizens all the occupants of these areas together with all displaced Palestinian refugees (the “binational state solution”). Two, that a separate sovereign Palestinian state be formed comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with the occupants of these two areas and the Palestinian refugees as citizens (the “two-state solution”). Currently the two-state proposal appears to be the most favoured by both Palestinians and Israelis but the negotiations drag on interminably.
While they participate in negotiations on the problem, the advent of the Holocaust makes it highly unlikely that the Israelis have any real intention of ever accepting a negotiated settlement involving either the single or the two-state proposals. It would be quite irrational to expect them to do so, in fact. The whole point of Israel’s existence is that it is a sovereign Jewish state, totally under the control of Jews who can be expected to protect Jews against the world’s omnipresent and insane anti-Semitism and to give priority to Jewish interests at all times.
In the proposed and enlarged democratic single state incorporating Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, however, demographics would ensure that within a relatively short period of time the number of Arab voters would outnumber the Jewish voters and the state would thereafter cease to be a uniquely Jewish one, and one which could provide the protection for Jews for which it was specifically created. The single-state proposal is therefore not even a remote possibility for the Israelis.
Furthermore, the two-state proposal wherewith Israel would remain a Jewish state, and so ostensibly in a position to fulfil its basic protective function for Jews, is hardly more feasible from the Jewish viewpoint. If the new and adjacent Palestinian state entailed in this proposal were fully sovereign and so in control of its borders, foreign policy, and military, the threat to Israel’s survival would almost certainly be significantly greater than it appears to be now.
So long as it is avoidable by prevarication or any other means no such increase in the threat to Israel’s survival could possibly be acceptable to its leadership. It has managed over the years to control the threats inherent in its hostile neighbourhood and one of the means of doing this has been through deliberately drawing out the negotiations regarding the establishment of a Palestinian homeland. There is no potential resolution of the Palestinian problem yet on the table which would not in all probability create greater threats to Israel’s actual existence than already exist today, and Israel is responding accordingly by merely going through the motions of negotiating a Palestinian state in order to gratify its allies.
Realpolitik is the only form of politics that Israel as a geographic state can afford to practise if it is to survive, as its leadership, answerable to world Jewry, is fully aware. This fact has resulted in the state of Israel undertaking acts and implementing policies which inescapably come into direct conflict with the ethical system embodied in Jewish culture, creating acute moral conflict for many Jews. It has also given rise to the anomalous situation of Jews through the power of the state coercing non-Jews under their power in the way that they themselves were coerced in the past. Realpolitik provokes at the same time as it seeks to protect, so increasing the sum total of hostility directed at Jews and compounding the fundamental problem of anti-Semitism. This is all unfortunate but there is no evident rational and pragmatic alternative for the Israeli leadership if it is to fulfil its primary duty of defending the state of Israel and protect Jews wherever and whenever it can against those who would harm them.
When it eventually becomes obvious to all, Israel’s refusal to approve either a one-state or two-state proposal is clearly going to be problematic for its Western allies, as well as for the world as a whole, given the intransigence of all the parties directly involved and the likely availability to them of nuclear devices or weapons. A solution as yet unimagined will have to be found.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the root cause of the problem lies neither with the Israelis nor the Palestinians but with the failure of the wartime Allies to respond at the time of the German extermination of the Jews in a forceful, proactive, and humane manner that would have indicated to them that they were regarded as moral equals who could then, and in the future, count on the support and protection of all civilised nations. Had this happened it would not today be imperative for the Jews that Israel remain a purely Jewish state and so either the one or the two-state proposals would have been viable as a potential solution to the Middle Eastern problem.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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