From the River to the Sea and the Horrific Doctrine

 

I was in a public library when I found a home-printed-looking pro-Palestinian magazine titled Where is Home. 

It is a collection of mostly poems, artwork, and a few short essays. As a regular listener of Haviv Rettig Gur, the primary thing that stuck out to me was that this was not a serious exploration of a complicated geopolitical issue involving real people on both sides. Instead, it was a cartoon morality play. For the creators of this magazine, Palestine seems to have little to do with a physical place. It is treated as a kind of psychomachy, a war of the soul, that manifests the world's decision whether to embrace love or hate.

I was particularly interested in the introductory essay, which begins:

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

Do you see the words "murder" or "death sentence" being remotely implied in this phrase above? We don't either, yet some people will gasp, call you antisemitic, and believe it is an outcry to kill Jewish people.

   

For the zine's intended audience, chanting "from the River to the Sea" as part of a like-minded crowd is something that makes them good people standing up against injustice. It has nothing to do with trying to solve problems in the Middle East by reaching out to the opposition through negotiation and compromise to avoid getting millions of people killed.

From the perspective of anyone not absolutely committed to the Palestinian cause, the sort of people you actually negotiate with in the non-cartoon universe, the claim that the River to the Sea chant could never have anything to do with murder is laughable. Are the authors, Madi Parsley and Ivan Salinas, unaware of the concept of euphemistic language? Advocates of mass murder rarely call for it openly. Real mass murderers talk in code. This code signals marching orders to those actually carrying out the crime, such as operating a gas chamber. In addition, the code serves to protect the wider population of enablers, allowing them to collaborate in the crime while pretending they have no idea what is really happening. For example, the ordinary German who supported sending Jews "to the East" for "resettlement" must have known at some level that this meant murder, but the phrasing allowed them to pretend otherwise.

Imagine a pro-Israel person saying, "From the River to the Sea, Eretz Yisroel Shall Be Free." I assume the authors would agree that there would be valid reasons to suspect this was a dog whistle to commit mass murder, even though the statement says just as much about murder as the Palestinian slogan. We can assume that, in this "redeemed" Eretz Yisroel, there would be no place for Palestinians. Who else are we making the land free from? Furthermore, if lots of Palestinians happen to die in a way that is deemed "completely their fault" during the "sacred" task of bringing about the cosmic good of Eretz Yisroel, a cause that transcends the flawed politics and borders of a limited State of Israel, who should complain? A few million dead people are a small price to pay for the redemption of the world, particularly if they were the evil ones who were standing in the way of salvation in the first place.

In truth, as I have argued previously, it must be taken for granted that every doctrine is a kill order. If you claim that your beliefs do not make you complicit in mass murder, you are either lying or you have not seriously thought your beliefs through. To use a math analogy, we understand the nature of a quadratic equation, in part, by finding the roots, those points on the x-axis where y = 0. So too, we only truly understand an ideology when we can find those points where it advocates murder. To be clear, there are going to be quadratic equations where the discriminant involves the square root of a negative number, leaving us no real roots where y = 0. Similarly, in politics, there are Tolstoyian pacifists who will refuse violence even at the cost of allowing the entire world to fall to evil. For example, Tolstoy advocated refusing to convict murderers, allowing them back on the streets to kill again because the legal system itself is a form of violence. While such pacifism allows the believer to personally avoid committing violence, the real-world implications of this position are so monstrous as to defy the imagination.

Imagine if we were to hand Parsley and Salinas a button that they could press to free Palestine from the River to the Sea. It would also "magically" "resettle" all Israelis in the "East." These Israelis would never be heard from again, but their fate would not be the fault of the Palestinians, who we all know are wonderful people only caring about fighting for freedom and justice. Alternatively, they can refuse to press the button. This will crush all Palestinian resistance, leaving the River to the Sea in Israeli hands forever. Perhaps I am wrong, but I have a hard time imagining our authors not pressing the button. For them, Palestine is not about actual Palestinians and their claim to a piece of land along the Mediterranean coast. Instead, Palestine is nothing less than the redemption of the world from cosmic evil. Who would be willing to accept global damnation for the sake of a few million Zionists?

What I have said about Parsley and Salinas applies equally to me. I am not a pacifist. If I had to choose between letting Israel fall victim to an October 7th-style Holocaust and killing every Palestinian, I know what I would choose. Because I know that I would sacrifice their people to save mine, I can empathize with Palestinians who make the same decision, letting my people die to save their own. That being said, if I were given a button that would make Palestine free from the River to the Sea, but in which the lives and property of Israelis would be protected, I would press that button rather than see the bloodshed of Israelis and Palestinians continue. I do not see Israel as the redemption of the world, nor do I see the Palestinians, even Hamas, as cosmic evil. As such, while I may be willing to kill millions of Palestinians to save Jewish lives, I am not about to sacrifice Palestinians, let alone Jews, merely for the cause of Eretz Yisroel. Could supporters of Palestine make the inverse choice, letting Israel win in a way that does not seriously materially harm Palestinians? How could they allow the "evil" of Zionism to persist even at the expense of the Palestinians?