Israel Can Be Cyrus

Israel has always been a sometime thing. Its place in history precarious. Early on, there were tribes and legends, the Book of Genesis. Yahweh destroyed the place several times. Actual history probably begins to assert itself with the two Kingdoms, Israel and Judah, the latter founded by the semi-mythical King David 1000 years before Christ—why two? Jews can’t agree on anything!—but they were wiped out too, suppressed by various marauders, Assyrians and Babylonians and then restored by—wait for it—the Iranians, according to the Old Testament, Book of Ezra:

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing…

Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them.

The Jews had a substantial presence in the region. They built a fabulous temple, destroyed by the Babylonians, and then another, and held onto the land for several hundred years after that, ruled by the Hasmoneans—the Maccabee family—until the Romans came and conquered, and sent the Jews scurrying to the four winds in 70 and again in 130 a.d.

I hadn’t considered the fact that some Jews remained there all along until I read Lawrence Wright’s crucial novel, The Human Scale.—I’ll have more to say about it below. But it seems apparent that in the course of the next two thousand years, many indigenes stopped calling themselves Jews; indeed, the religion itself changed. The old faith—led by a priestly classs; punctuated by the massive temple used for animal sacrifices—no longer existed. The new Judaism, which evolved in the diaspora, was more exclusive and intellectual. It was about rabbis—teachers—not priests. Its basic texts were rule books, the various Talmuds and the latter books of the Pentateuch. Many of the remaining Jews in the Holy Land lacked the education or inclination to remain members of a sect that was developing elsewhere, especially one that offered too many laws, too little love…and no organized meat distribution. But their DNA traces remain, almost identical to some of the people who now call themselves Palestinians. Truth is, we are one.

Which makes the current despair inevitable: Ever since Cain and Abel, the toughest squabbles have been between brothers, especially brothers who have different religions. (I give you Ireland; I give you Bosnia; I give you India and Pakistan.) This makes the fate of Israel, over the past 75 years, both predictably vicious and insanely complicated.

But what, exactly, is the Land? Where is it? The current iteration isn’t where it always was, though Jerusalem traditionally was its capital. In the beginning, Jewish tribes lived up in the Judean Hills, which is now, more or less, the area known as The West Bank. And in Biblical days, the West Bank was a Swiss cheese of tribes—the Samaritans, somehow, still exist, not quite Jews, but they give famous Passover Seders, but where are the Hittites of yesteryear? The various tribes traded with each other, intermarried, fought pitched battles, dissolved into each other, moved about (Hence Bedouins). Many disappeared, especially after the mass—and forced—assimilation of Islam, 700 years or so after the Roman rout.

The point is, land control changes over time, depending on who’s strongest. Nowadays, that’s Israel. This happens everywhere, just about. It certainly happened in North and South America. Control is based on power not fairness; it’s the way of the world. Once territory is conquered, it has—historically—remained so, until the new rulers collapse, or the next conquering neighbor comes along. Occasionally, there has been the delusion of a more enlightened neighbor—Persia back then, America in the 20th century—restoring territories, nations, colonies to their homeland…or to some inexact semblance of the land’s traditional ownership. The Poland imposed at the end of World War II was markedly different from the Poland that existed before the war.

So it is with Israel. There was no exact location for the Holy Land. Modern Israel and Palestine could have been divvied up in a dozen different ways by the Western powers; there was even the possibility of a straight north-south dividing line, across the belt from Jaffa to Jerusalem. But any Israel, any Jordan, any Palestine would have been problematic.

You want maps? We got plenty. The best, in my memory—and I love maps—were done by David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. After the Oslo accords, there was heavy traffic in map-making, with various experts—including Bibi Netanyahu—redistributing fractional parts of the West Bank and Israel to accommodate Jewish settlements and Palestinian lands. It was a hopeful time. It presumed that there could be two states. That seems a long shot now.

The massacre of October 7, 2023 made it near impossible. The Israeli war in Gaza made things worse—it was a war, not a genocide, by the way, but war is genocide’s next of kin, especially when it is fought by next of kin. The Israeli tactics in Gaza were brutal, but its Palestinian population still lives there. Gaza is their land; it always will be. They haven’t been swept away, which is what genocide implies.

But the Gaza aggression enabled Israel to go on a hubristic regional rampage. The world is a better place for the absence of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; I am thrilled that so many terrorist leaders were targeted, and wiped out, by the Israelis. But it isn’t as easy as all that; Hezbollah—like Hamas—maintains a (weakened) presence. And the saddest, most cruel Gaza aftershock, in my mind, has been the Netanyahu government’s unleashing gangs of settlers—fascist thugs; there is no other word for them—to commit atrocities on the West Bank, which would and should be the heart of a future Palestine. Here’s a recent mini-pogrom, described by Benny Morris in Quillette:

[It] happened two weeks ago in the remote Palestinian village of Tuba in the Hebron hills. A band of young masked Jews from a nearby settlement broke into homes during the night, torched a refrigerator, shattered rooftop solar panels, stoned and clubbed the residents, including two sisters, breaking their glasses. A woman in advanced pregnancy was hospitalised with two broken fingers and needed eight stitches to a head-wound. During the pogrom, one of the raiders danced and prayed in apparent “ecstasy.”

The “ecstasy” may be real. In Lawrence Wright’s novel, which is inspired by years of living and reporting in the region, a lot of drugs are circulating on the West Bank; both Jewish settlers and Hamas terrorists are complicit in running heroin. They use the proceeds to buy arms to kill each other. They are immoral equivalents.

The behavior of the Jewish Settlers on the West Bank is criminal; their pogroms happen on an almost daily basis. Wright’s novel takes place in Hebron, which has roots as deep as Jerusalem. The cave where Abraham allegedly buried his wife Sara is there, a spectacular open sandstone mouth with a network of deep chambers;. various other Jewish patriarchs may have been entombed there (most of them, like Abraham, also worshipped by Muslims.)

The hatred in Hebron is nothing new. There was an anti-Jewish massacre in 1929; there was an anti-Arab massacre conducted by Baruch Goldstein in 1994. According to Wright, the Goldstein massacre—he killed 29 and injured another 125—came at a most delicate moment, just after the 1993 Oslo Accords, when Jews and Palestinians were trying to figure out how two states might be possible. Goldstein sent a message to Palestinians: forget co-existence. Go away. Which launched the current era of impossibility. The Human Scale is notable for its complications, all of which seem to lead toward despair. This—despair—is how I feel now.

I’ve been to Hebron several times. I once went to a Hamas meeting there; mostly older folks, shop owners paying protection to the terrorists; it reminded me of a Rotary Club meeting. I’ve also been to the two Jewish settlements in the area, Kiryat Arbat, home to Baruch Goldstein, and also the semi-official enclave in the Old City.

In the Old City, the settlers showed me Jewish coins 3000 years old or so they said. Most American visitors get similar schmeikeling. It is a profound statement of Jewish heritage, but meaningless—if such an Oxymoron is possible: in the Old City, maybe 700 settlers are protected by 1500 iDF soldiers, who are surrounded by 150,000 Palestinians.

I was struck by how many of the Jewish Settlers in Hebron came from Boston and Brooklyn and Philly, eager young bucks trying to prove their machismo. The beginning of any peace deal must start with them. They must leave.

Some settlements, like Ariel, near Tel Aviv, are deeply embedded and should remain, but at a cost in Israeli territory—thus, all those lovely maps. Israel has committed an historic error here, attempting to colonize these Palestinian lands. It is the sort of Biblical error that vexes Yahweh and causes Him to turn people into pillars of salt. But the maps offer a path to a negotiation.

My solution for the settlements may seem extreme. It most certainly is, but we are not talking about historic injustices, we are talking about right now injustices. My guess is that any State of Israel that tried to annex the West Bank would be so spiritually corrupted that it could only continue to exist as an outlaw state.

There is a plethora of Jewish opinion-slingers in America. Most of us play within the 40 yard lines: we tend to be two-state guys. Even Bret Stephens of the Times, a veteran Likudnik, recently drew a line:

Anyone who cares about Israel’s well-being shouldn’t be silent about anti-Palestinian settler terrorism in the West Bank and the nothing-much-to-see-here policy of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. That’s not only because the terrorism is a menace to Palestinian lives and property, or an affront to Jewish ethics, or a stain on Israel’s reputation — though it’s all those things. It’s also a direct threat to Israel’s security and statehood, and thus to Zionism itself.

Anyone who cares about Israel’s well-being? I would start with AIPAC, the monomaniacal Israel lobby that has spent the past 30 years doing Bibi’s bidding. It is in the midst of a terrible election year in America. I have supported some of the candidates it has backed, but the backing has come with a heavy hand. AIPAC has become the face of Jewish intolerance. It has imperiled Israel by doing so. It is time for amends. It is time for a statement: We support the State of Israel. We abhor the terrorist violence of Hamas. We also support a severe contraction of West Bank Settlements. We offer free passage home for American Jews who live in them. We can’t dictate what the people of Israel choose, but we believe it’s time for Bibi Netanyahu to step aside. We anxiously await a more humane future.

That won’t happen, of course. But supporters of Israel are about to have a rough go in American politics. We need to make a stand—a stand more reasonable than the sophomoric Jew-haters and self-hating Jews who think Israel could, or should, be abolished. We need to say: No more offensive weapons for Israel until it moves toward a permanent deal with the Palestinians; in the meantime, we offer Patriot missiles and Iron Dome reluctantly. We need to say: Mr. Netanyahu, you have the power to stop the settler atrocities right now. By everything that is of value in the Jewish tradition, you must do so.

And one other thing: We American Jews have been proud of Israeli strength and relentless defense of the homeland. But it is time, now, for Israel to be equally known for its humility. It can be Cyrus in Palestine. Such things have happened before. It’s in The Bible.

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