By Ken Dorph
Americans, especially progressives, are deeply torn on how to react to the violence in the Middle East. Centuries of European anti-Jewish animosity, culminating in the Holocaust, makes us deeply sympathetic to Jewish fear and pain. At the same time, we are aware of the terrible injustices committed against the Palestinians in the name of Zionism. What outcome shall we hope for?
American policies in the Arab world have cost us dearly.
I spent my formative years in a Jewish shtetl in East New York, Brooklyn. Like most of us, I was a total Zionist. We had neighbors with tattoos from the camps. The Holocaust was palpably real.
I fully bought the narrative on Israel: “Land without a people,” “Turning the desert green,” “Arabs don’t love their children,” “Islam is a violent religion.” I played “Exodus” on the violin: “da Da, da Da, God gave this land to ME!”
At 19, my life veered radically. I went on a Junior Year Abroad, which included beautiful Morocco. My journey in the Arab world continued, with three years in Tunisia, a year in Damascus on a Fulbright (the first American to study in Syria), two years in Cairo with Citibank, and several years in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. I have spent more than 25 years as an independent consultant, in over a hundred countries, but with special focus on the Arab world.
My career included several years working with the Palestinians. I wrote the first draft of Palestine’s financial sector plan, and I consulted over several years with the Palestine Monetary Authority, what would become the central bank if Palestine ever became a state.
During my 50 years of contact with the Arab world, I’ve learned several things:
Americans, even educated ones, are phenomenally ignorant of Middle East history. It is far easier to have conversations on the topic with educated Europeans, Asians or Latin Americans.
Americans tend to see the Arab world through the lens of Israel.
Anti-Arab racism has infected our media and political discourse for generations.
We tend to humanize Israelis, who are “like us,” while demonizing Arabs. Israeli deaths are individualized, with stories and context, while Arab deaths are collectivized.
U.S. policies in the Middle East have been tied to the most conservative Israeli positions, mainly thanks to the phenomenal power of AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee. Democratic Congressman Tim Bishop told me that AIPAC was the “most persistent lobby,” bar none. I was one of the first contributors to J Street, the alternative “Jewish lobby” that is fighting bravely for a two-state solution.
Our anti-Arab racism has led us into stupid, wasteful wars: $4 trillion in Iraq alone. I have worked in Iraq, Libya and Yemen, trying to rebuild nations broken by our weaponry. When we cry to the world our indignity over the Russian occupation of Ukraine, they recall our Middle East misadventures and our boundless support of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
The Palestinians live in despair.
The deeply flawed 1993 Oslo Accords were at least a pathway to peace. The accords did not explicitly stipulate two states, but the Norwegians say this was implied. Messianic right-wing Israelis, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, despised the agreement, wanting all historic Palestine for Jewish settlement. Netanyahu branded Yitzhak Rabin a “traitor” and a “Nazi.” Soon after his incendiary words, a right-wing Israeli assassinated Rabin.
Since that time, successive Israeli governments have ignored international law by settling Jewish Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States has run interference, with over two-thirds of our United Nations vetoes protecting Israel from sanctions. There are now over 250 illegal Jewish settlements and outposts with 700,000 settlers. The upshot is that Palestinians are divided, intentionally, into multiple geographic areas with little or no contact among them.
Israel proper (the internationally recognized state) is about 20 percent Palestinian Israeli. Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens, but they do not live under apartheid. Palestinians in East Jerusalem have their own status and must apply for Israeli citizenship.
West Bank Palestinians live under apartheid, separated by Jewish-only roads and Jewish-only communities surrounding preexisting Palestinian villages. West Bank Palestinians are severely limited in where they may live and travel, with the West Bank divided into Areas A, under Palestinian control, Areas B, under joint control, and Areas C, under full Israeli control.
The territories under full Israeli control, where the Jewish settlements are, take up over 60 percent of the West Bank. Palestinian access to Areas B and C is limited, squeezing Palestinian livelihood into the 18 percent of the West Bank in Areas A. I’ve helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives on lands they must get permission to enter — their own properties — all while being harassed by Jewish settlers.
Travel among these Palestinian areas, which look like weird vacuoles on the map, is daunting, with over 500 checkpoints and barriers. See the Netflix film “The Gift” to get a flavor.
On Saturday, I will share my own experience. I will also discuss the expropriation of Palestinian lands. See the Amazon Prime film “Five Broken Cameras” to bear witness.
Gaza is a strip of land, the remnant of 1948 Palestine that bordered Egypt, separated in an imprisoned island. Although my work required me to go to Gaza, the Israeli government refused me entry. Our talks with our Gazan colleagues had to be on Skype, even though it was, from Hebron, less than the distance from Sag Harbor to Westhampton.
The likely reason was that the Israelis did not want foreigners to bear witness. Watch the film “Born in Gaza” on Netflix to sense the despair.
Hamas was born in the radicalized fields of Gaza. Netanyahu and the Israeli right supported Hamas from its earliest days to divide the Palestinians and squelch the secular Palestine Liberation Organization and thereby prevent two states.
Netanyahu and his fanatic government envision one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, with permanent Jewish supremacy. In 2019, Netanyahu declared that Israel was “the national state not of all its citizens but only of the Jewish people.”
I was at Ben Gurion Airport when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz declared, “We are the minority.” The population of the land between the Jordan and the sea, call it “Greater Israel,” is now more than half Palestinian. How could Netanyahu’s Israel exist? It would mean permanent suzerainty of one population over another of similar size, with continuing apartheid.
Why did Hamas attack now?
Hamas represents the tip of Palestinian anger. Most Palestinians want a peaceful solution. Most would be happy with an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza or living alongside Israelis in one state if they had equal rights. I know this both from personal conversations and from opinion polls.
But they see no progress on either. The PLO in Ramallah has no power to slow the Israeli takeover of the West Bank or the provocations in Jerusalem. They were supposed to be the midwife of a Palestinian state but instead are viewed as an arm of the occupation.
Hamas had several objectives in its murderous attack:
• Revenge for the drumbeat of killings of Palestinians that has become background noise, hundreds every year. Revenge is perhaps the most understandable and most useless of human emotions. Violence hardens hatreds.
• Derailment of the Israeli-Saudi rapprochement. Saudi Arabia is the biggest of the shiny prizes to legitimize the status quo, given Saudi wealth and Mecca. Israeli writer David Grossman dubbed the pending agreement “the peace of the wealthy.”
• Placing the plight of the Palestinians back on the front burner. In this, they succeeded, with large pro-Palestinian demonstrations worldwide. But at what horrific cost, in terms of Israeli and Palestinian lives?
We must end the status quo.
At this moment, Israelis and Jews generally are feeling raw and fearful in the wake of the horrific Hamas massacre. At the same time, the disproportionate killing of civilians in Gaza will anger Palestinians and those who identify with them, including the world’s Arabs and Muslims.
This is a tough time to speak of change. But we must not forget that our nation holds the keys to end the Palestinian-Israeli stalemate.
I am extremely sympathetic to the desire for a Jewish state and in my heart of hearts wish it so. I also am painfully aware that the Palestinians have suffered from dreadful leadership, missing opportunities at every opportunity. Still, their mistakes do not justify permanent subjugation.
A blank check has done Israel no good. Most Americans, including most Jewish Americans, believe that our aid to Israel should be conditional, specifically tied to the settlements. This horrific violence has reminded the world of the Palestinians’ plight.
It is time to say “no” to the extremists, whether Israeli or Palestinian. Instead of funding racist Jewish settlers on the West Bank, I’d rather my tax dollars sustain groups like Standing Together, kibbutzim like Neve Shalom, and organizations like B’Tselem, who share my vision of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation.
If we are serious about a two-state solution, let’s recognize Palestine as a state, as 138 of the 193 United Nations members have done. If we envision one state with equal rights, perhaps a confederation, let’s visualize how that would come to pass and what it would look like. Many thinkers far smarter than me have put forth ideas that could work: Let’s listen.
Let’s take the opportunity, with love and respect, to plan for a future where these two wonderful peoples can live, between the river and the sea, in peace.
Ken Dorph is a Middle East expert who speaks widely on the Arab world, seeking to build bridges of understanding. He will be leading a discussion called “Palestine/Israel: What Gives?” at the Unitarian Universalist Meetinghouse in Bridgehampton at 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 28. Registration is available at uucsf.org.
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