Will Israel Miss a Second Golden Opportunity to Take the Moral High Road and Regain Worldwide Respect? It’s High Time to Confront the Real Issue: The Very Divisive Monotheistic Religions.
Many Israelis will not agree, but many will agree that the Netanyahu government made a terrible blunder by destroying most of Gaza as a reaction to the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, instead of directing surgical attacks on Hamas, sparing Gaza civilians. The Netanyahu wholesale destruction of Gaza is on a par with Russia’s annihilation of Mariupol, both veritable moral disgraces and egregious violations of international law. Who in the democratic West admires and respects Putin’s Russia today? Only the irresponsible, ignorant, immoral, and possibly corrupted MAGA Republican House of Representatives and extremist right-wingers. Sadly, the same can now be said of Netanyahu’s Israel, which has lost much of its international goodwill and its reputation for being a moral democratic nation, emerging from the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism and pogroms in central Europe.
The Netanyahu government missed a golden opportunity to significantly raise its international goodwill and reputation while reducing anti-Semitism by not behaving as a mature, strong, self-confident, highly moral and intelligent nation, not overreacting to the October 7 Hamas attack while minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza. Will it repeat the same mistake by overreacting to Iran’s missile and drone attack in response to Israel’s missile attack which destroyed Iran’s Syrian embassy? If it does, the consequences for Israel could well be severe, far beyond what Israelis can presently imagine. Israel’s arrogance (stemming from not having to pay for decades of bullying an economically, educationally, and militarily inferior adversary and for failing to make a serious effort to turn the adversary into a friend according to the principle of “noblesse oblige”) can lead to overconfidence and failure to carefully evaluate the possibility of extremely adverse outcomes considered heretofore highly unlikely.
Iran’s attack was telegraphed and clearly implemented so as to make it easy for Israel to knock out the missiles and drones and avoid any significant damage. There was no instantaneous massive barrage of missiles and drones, only a slow paced attack giving Israel ample time to intercept. Objectively, it appears to have been a symbolic “message attack”, not intended to cause real damage. While Iran could not remain passive after Israel’s destruction of its Syrian embassy, its political leadership showed a maturity and logic far superior to the Netanyahu government’s, as demonstrated by Israel’s reckless impulsivity, invading all of Gaza and flattening it with shocking disregard for Gaza civilians.
The Netanyahu government would do well to heed Biden’s advice to not counterattack Iran, not even minimally, thereby opening the door to sincere, serious, comprehensive negotiations with Iran and the Palestinians to finally end the interminable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is essentially based on religious discrimination and hatred commanded and incited by the Old Testament and the Koran. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, land is clearly not the real cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If the Israelis were Muslim, would there be a conflict? If the Palestinians were Jewish, would there be a conflict? If they were all atheists, would there be a conflict, would there ever have been a conflict? Of course not. They would be living side by side peacefully and sharing enormous social and economic prosperity.
How can anyone rationally ignore or underestimate the nefarious role divisive monotheistic religions have played historically? Causing extreme violence, wars, and injustices, including egregious violations of human rights. Catholics against Protestants, Christians against Jews, Muslims against Jews and Christians, Christians against Muslims, Christians and Muslims against atheists! All that religious strife based on the questionable Old Testament stories of Adam and Eve and of Abraham, without which the three monotheistic religions would never have existed. Where is there even a shred of evidence that the two stories are based on reality? Can rational minds believe those two stories? How believable is it that God has a favorite people or a favorite religion? That is what the three monotheistic religions proclaim, which clearly seems biased and self-serving. In fact, to many unbiased observers, the Old Testament was clearly written by Jews for Jews, the New Testament by Christians for Christians, and the Koran by Muslims for Muslims.
Evidently, one can logically conclude, monotheistic believers are so heavily invested in their religion psychologically and so strongly identify with it, that their religious belief overwhelms logic and adherence to hard evidence, totally disregarding their religions’ responsibility for millennia of extreme violence, wars, and egregious violations of human rights. Would Judaism have developed without the promise of God to help the Jews militarily against other tribes and without promising them exclusive ownership of territory? Would Christianity and Islam have ever developed without the promise of eternal life? (Some Jews now believe in eternal life, even though it was not even mentioned, much less promised to them, in the Old Testament. That explains the “Jews for Jesus” movement back in the late 1970’s in New York City.) Could the monotheistic religions simply be expressions of tribalism and wishful thinking?
It’s time humanity matured and gave its foremost allegiance to human rights, while specifically repudiating religious discrimination, hatred and violence. That’s what Israel should propose to Iran and the Palestinians. An agreement on that is the key to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the enmity between Iran and Israel. It’s up to them to choose what type of society and international relations they want. Hopefully, they will soon see the light and stop perpetuating primitive religious discriminations. If they do, they will finally enjoy peace and prosperity, as that mindset of rationality, good faith, and fairness will lead to necessary compromises. In such case, Israel will abandon the West Bank settlements, and agree to a sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, a friendly nation formally recognizing the state of Israel and joining the United Nations, undersigning, as all members must, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the commitment to implement and defend it as well as the UN Charter which prohibits attacking member nations. Then, Israel and Palestine will jointly enjoy economic and social prosperity and wonder why it took them so long to come to their senses.
The Netanyahu government and all Israelis should understand that retaliation against Iran would only serve to perpetuate the conflict, possibly leading to disastrous results for Israel. They should also realize that turning enemies into friends is the only strategy to achieve true reconciliation and full, sustainable peace.
Given the incompetence and immorality of the Netanyahu government, and the existential risk it poses for Israel with its delusional belief that the next Iranian counterattack would be easily fended off (the next one would be thousands, not hundreds, of missiles fired simultaneously, not intermittently, from Iran and Lebanon), the United States should save Israel from itself by insisting on an immediate ceasefire accompanied by an offer of serious peace talks to equitably resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. To push Netanyahu in that direction, Biden should inform Israel that if it irresponsibly provokes Iran with a counterstrike, the United States would not participate in its defense against an Iranian response.
The Netanyahu argument that Israel must counterstrike Iran to show strength is a complete fallacy. A counterstrike would only show stupidity and irresponsibility, and reveal a lack of self-confidence, apart from most probably leading to catastrophic losses for Israeli citizens. Furthermore, Israel cannot be allowed to drag others into its egregious follies, and expect to be defended from counterattack when it is the aggressor. Clearly, the United States’ commitment to defend Israel is premised on Israel not being the aggressor. Biden must make sure that Israel’s government and all its citizens fully understand that.
Furthermore, with U.S. weapon stocks already greatly reduced by the moral and historic need to help Ukraine repel Russia’s unprovoked, immoral, cruel, and criminal invasion threatening Ukraine’s very existence, the priority for the United States must be helping innocent Ukraine. Israel must not be so egocentric as to ignore what is happening to Ukraine, and to ignore that what it has done to Gaza mimics Russia’s immoral destruction of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. It must also acknowledge its own blunders, practically inviting Hamas’ atrocious October 7 attack on Israeli civilians by having a poorly defended border with Gaza, and following up with a shocking overreaction, leveling most of Gaza. Importantly, Israel must also acknowledge not making a serious and sincerely empathetic effort to reach an equitable peace with the Palestinians, as behooves Israel, having by far the most military might, the most advanced economy, and a much more educated citizenry. Israelis have long had the conviction of being highly moral and even superior. That conviction should have been accompanied by a commitment to “noblesse oblige”, which unfortunately for everyone, including the Israelis, has been severely lacking.
© Edward Sonnino 2024
April 16, 2024
