No, the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict isn't 'Complicated'...Here's Why
Arab Palestinians now represent the oppressed David to Israel's Goliath
Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield… - 1 Samuel 17, 45
The late, great political commentator, writer, and talk show host Michael Brooks covered Israel’s brutality against Palestinians well over the course of his far too short life and career. The below clip of him addressing a question at an event does a nice job of neatly, accurately and quite fully summarizing why the subject of Palestinians’ fight for survival against the new Israeli ethno-state that subjugates them is not, in fact, complicated.
Watch the clip below. It is as edifying as it is succinct.
Brooks begins addressing an audience question with this correction:
“So, it’s not a complex issue. That’s the big thing. It’s super simple. There’s one group that has enormous power, the most powerful country in the Middle East, it’s backed by the United States. It acts on another population of people with total impunity and is never held accountable for anything. So, there’s no symmetry in the relationship, period….my Jewish values teach me to oppose apartheid.”
One of the main propaganda tools used to keep otherwise well-intentioned people out of the struggle of supporting Palestinian freedom is the proliferation of the idea that the “situation” in Israel is “complicated,” or “complex.” This allows some to look down at the entire Middle East and scoff with the quite historically incorrect dismissal that “they’ve been fighting there for thousands of years” with the implication that nothing much can be done, while providing no analysis on power dynamics in Palestine and the region.
Others use this to either intentionally (perhaps laziness) or unintentionally (possibly intimidated by the supposedly mountain of a task to educate oneself on Palestine) just wish for generic “peace” in Palestine without actually providing an analysis or judgment on the nature of the violence and who is to blame for it, on-scale. Wishes for generic “peace” without identifying the structural violence that is in place against Palestinians is magical thinking, of course.
Without offering an analysis on the violence’s systemic causes and the power dynamics at play in Palestine, wishing for generic “peace” while acting as though both Israel’s government and the indigenous Arabic people of Palestine are equally to blame will never, in fact, bring peace.
We can’t end violence without understanding what and who causes it. This isn’t a matter of the “hearts” or “character” or “souls” of people from different groups in Palestine, whether they be the region’s indigenous Arabs or Israel’s largely European-descent Jewish population, whether they’re devout Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or completely secular as many Jewish and Arabic people are.
So, this isn’t about casting judgment on the individual souls of millions of particular people and deciding which side has more “good” people. No, this is about power dynamics.
It is easy to support Palestinians’ struggle for freedom without even understanding the relatively new history of the Zionist colonial project that picked up steam at the end of the 19th century and culminated in the mid-20th century with European Jewish people taking over control of Palestine by force with the support of global powers Britain and the United States, exiling millions of indigenous Arabic people after taking their property and land, and subjecting those who remained to undemocratic and squalor-filled living conditions. We don’t have to go back to the late 1940’s, or even the late 1960’s to be able to come to a quick and appropriate judgment on the Israeli government, though historical context is always worthwhile.
We can start with where we are right here in this new century at present. As Brooks said, it is not a complex issue.
One group – Arab Palestinians – who are the indigenous people of Palestine live under occupation and have no army, no navy, no air force. In fact, the entire occupied population is stateless.
Their water and energy supplies are controlled by the Israeli government.
The other group – mostly European descendants – have not just the Israeli government on their side with the most lethally effective military in the Middle East, on the strength of over 500,000 troops, sophisticated ground, air, and naval armaments and technologies covered by an annual national military budget of over $20 billion, but also the global hegemon – the United States – on its side with full military support and annual financial assistance from us of nearly $4 billion.
Palestinians have rocks, the Israeli government has nuclear weapons.
Even mainstream and relatively conservative human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch have designated Israel as an apartheid state against Arab Palestinians. Israel’s own top human rights organization, B’Tselem, categorizes their state as an apartheid regime.
Under international law Israel occupies its Palestinian territory illegally. The so-called settlements into more Palestinian territory that the Israeli government supports are also violations of international law.
One doesn’t need a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to understand and comment on Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This isn’t a complex issue.
This is an illegal colonization by Israel. This is literal ethnic cleansing of indigenous people by European descendants.
The so-called settlers have the full force of the United States behind them, as well as Israel’s own nuclear arsenal. The indigenous people of Palestine – Arabs - have already been splintered across the region and world, fractured, displaced, disenfranchised by Israel, dispossessed of wealth and millions banned from ever returning to the homes and fields they were ripped from by the Israeli government.
That process of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government rolls on to today, as new generations of so-called settlers break into the homes of Palestinian Arabs, take them for their own, rove the streets in mobs chanting “Death to Arabs,” destroying Arab-owned businesses while Israeli military and police storm mosques and beat kneeling parishioners, including women and children, before tearing up the places of worship.
In the end, it’s simple – one group has no relative power, wealth, armament and in fact struggle to even possess potable water, while the other group is the state itself and has an effectively endless military budget. Group pairings like that cannot “fight” or “clash” with one another.
In situations with these power dynamics all that is possible is domination of one group by another. Domination should never be supported or appeased.
Israel – filled with millions of both wonderful and horrible people, and everything in between – dominates the indigenous Arabic people of Palestine – who themselves are everything from wonderful to horrible, with everything in between. With those qualifications out of the way, let’s return to what should be the big boy and girl focus:
Israel dominates Palestine, economically and militarily, with what the international community and international law categorizes as an illegal occupation and apartheid state. If you don’t support apartheid, this is a simple issue.
If you don’t support illegal colonialization and ethnic cleansing over and of indigenous people, this is a simple issue. Palestinians are not free.
Like all people, they should be. Analyses that insist that this is a “complicated” scenario are either inexcusably ignorant or made in bad faith.
By all means learn as much of the history as you can about this and all regions. One doesn’t have to become an “expert,” however, to see and accept the simplicity and clarity that the chasmic power disparity between Israel and Arab Palestinians offers us.
If you came onto a scene where a child is raising a stone to throw at an armed, adult soldier pointing a rifle at them you wouldn’t need to know much of the backstory to know whose side you stood on. That’s the moral of the story of David vs. Goliath as I read it.
The above scene is not merely some dystopian hypothetical – it actually plays out in real-time all across Palestine every day and we have the torrent of photos, videos, and first-hand accounts to prove it. When David, the young and poorly armed child, comes up against a grown, heavily armed giant of an adult soldier, we root for David.
The Biblical David wasn’t worth lauding because of his family name or lineage. His story is celebrated because he unflinchingly took on a well-armed giant with nothing but a stone, a slingshot, and a desire to end his people’s oppression.
Young David’s story isn’t powerful because he was Jewish, and an Israelite of the tribe of Judah. At least not to me.
I’ve no interest in siding with people because of their religion, family lineage, or tribe. I side with whoever is staring down hegemonic oppression, always.
I side with David against Goliath. I stand with Palestinians against their own modern day Goliath.
It isn’t a difficult stance to take.