The case for abolishing Palestine
Tags: Israel, Palestine

In the years when the Roman Empire was entering a phase of terminal decline, all practising Jews were imposed the Fiscus Iudaicus, in response to the aftermath of the Jewish-Roman war. Yet, Jewish Christians could be exempted from it by asserting their Christian faith and therefore the differences between Christianity and Judaism. Indeed, these Jewish Christians who were exempted from the Fiscus Judaicus, yet remained in Eretz Y'Israel, would later become known as the Palestinians: Many of them converted to Islam and virtually all of them adopted Arab cultural practices. Yet, when the Nazis embarked on their systematic persecution of Jews in Europe, the Palestinians were compelled not to extend their solidarity to their fellow Jews.

Yet, this does not render Palestinians to be Non-Jews. Palestinian insistence to not be regarded as Jewish has perhaps shielded Palestinians from antisemitism and even gained them the sympathy of antisemites such as Neo-Nazis, as well as Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists. Yet, if we are really honest, the notion of "Palestine" is to antisemitism what skin-bleaching is to white supremacy: An instance where a targeted group simply turns the racism that targets them inward, in order to avoid persecution themselves. And to be frank, the Palestinian cause is the most successful instance of ethnic self-loathing: Even Jews themselves are now convinced the Palestinians are not Jews. Yet, this is not without problems.

The first and most important premise of the notion of Palestine is that Palestinians are not Jews. Yet, if there are no Jews, there are also no Palestinians. Despite this, Zionist authors frequently (if inaccurately) claim that the Palestinian cause emerged from a desire to contra-distinguish from Zionism, the repatriation of people of Jewish descent to the Jewish homeland. Yet, Palestinian self-conception is much older than that: Popular teachings of the early church taught its followers the doctrines of supersessionism (with Jesus Christ supposedly having supplanted the Mosaic law) and "outside the church no salvation" (roughly meaning that those who aren't "God's people" are doomed in the afterlife). Adding the Fiscus Iudaicus into the maelstrom, certain ethnic Jews began to identify as Christians, first and foremost. Thus, certain instances of conversion to the Christian faith became perhaps the first documented instance of "bleaching".

What did not exactly help was that the Church claimed to be the "new Israel". In the popular mind, the notion of "God's chosen people" became detached from the land of Israel, which the Roman Empire had now named "Syria Palestina". Yet, for the descendants of Jewish exiles from the land of Israel, the Jewish faith ceased being the sole identifier of Jewishness. Meanwhile, in the Land of Israel itself, this piece of land changed owners multiple times: Islam and the Arab language began to appear, removing memories of their own Jewish heritage among its local inhabitants even further, further cementing a Palestinian identity. However, even Ben-Gurion at one point believed that Fellahin (Palestinian peasants) were in fact no less Jewish than the progenitors of the Zionist project. Zionism is perhaps not so much the desire to establish a Jewish state as to guarantee the right of self-identified Jews to be simply present in the Land of Israel, an aim fully compatible with free migration. So, why haven't the Palestinians identified with Jewish re-arrivals or conversely, cited the law of return to move back?

Part of it is political, yet has surprisingly little with to do with Pan-Arabism or Anti-Zionism: The Olim (returning Jews) brought ideas antithetical to the feudal underpinnings of Palestinian society at the turn of the 20th century, such as Liberalism and Socialism. Thus, Arab-speaking lords of Feudal fiefdoms, with the support from Islamic and Christian clergy, impelled their subjects to not associate with the budding Zionist movements. In fact, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism could be regarded as thoroughly secularist in its outlook, with many Orthodox Jewish rabbis opposed to it as well. Furthermore, linguistic barriers would aid in sowing the looming division: Most of the Olim spoke Yiddish or German and later on Hebrew, which continues to this day, whereas the Palestinians speak Arabic. Misunderstandings would therefore easily emerge and never be resolved.

Yet, ultimately, the idea of "Palestine" is an invention of Christian fanaticism, since co-opted by Revisionist Zionists (the dominant ideology behind Likud), Leninists, Neo-Nazis and religious fanatics among Christians, Muslims and even Jews alike. This makes AIPAC's efforts to forge and maintain an alliance between Israel and Christian Evangelicals in the US even more ironic. Far from being a power-projection tool upon the United States acting at Israel's behest, it forces Israeli Jews to be friends with Evangelicals whose opinions are fundamentally hostile to Jews, in spite of their political support to Israel (or perhaps more precisely, Likud-domination).

Of course, a major problem with "Palestine" is that such notion forces the two-state non-solution, which marginalises the Left, as Likud and Hamas alike will inevitably become the dominant political players in the Land of Israel in such an arrangement. Yet, while a separate Palestinian state is no more desirable than, say, an Ashkenazi state, this is not to say Palestinians should abandon their identity completely: Instead, a shift should occur away from viewing the Palestinians as a subset of the Arab people toward Palestinians as a subset of the Jewish people instead, akin to the Mizrahim and the Ashkenazim as opposed to being akin to Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians. Because if there is such a thing as Israeli apartheid, Palestine is inseparably a part of it.