In the age of true believers, blind adherents and weirdo fanatics
The Israeli-Palestinian divide has more than its fair share of zealots: those who think Israelis are Nazis and Palestinians their victims - or vice versa.
An anti-Israel protest held after the Friday noon prayer at Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, May
I am often jealous of true believers and
ideological fanatics. I don't necessarily condone their actions, but I
sometimes envy the lives that they lead, in black or in white. I admire
their assurance, covet their certainty, yearn for their direct line to
God.
In
a world of conflicting claims and contradicting counterarguments, the
thoughts of devoted disciples are untroubled, their words unequivocal,
their convictions untarnished by doubt or misgiving.
I
am far from being their only fan, of course, because their ranks seem
to be swelling all the time, not only in deeply ideological or intensely
religious countries, but over here, in America, and over there, in
Israel, as well. As the middle ground gets increasingly muddled, people
are being pushed to the edge and pulled to extremes, enticed by the
self-righteousness of absolute beliefs and excited by the bloody battle
against dissenting perspectives.
The
Israeli-Palestinian divide has more than its fair share of such
zealots: bigots and diehards, dogmatists and chauvinists, people for
whom there is only one side of every story, and it is always theirs.
They detest ambiguity, abhor criticism, despise self-doubt, view their
opponents as fools or traitors or worse. Their credo is my way or the
highway, or, in an ideal world, the gallows themselves.
On
the one hand we have those who sincerely believe that Zionists are evil
colonialists but Palestinians are indigenous saints; that the Nakba was
horrendous but the Holocaust is way overblown; that IDF soldiers are
latter day Nazis and Palestinians their latter-day Jude; that Jewish
settlements in the West Bank are a crime against humanity but
slaughtering innocent Jewish children is heroic resistance; that Israel
is guilty a-priori and Arabs innocent by default; that Israel has no
redeeming features and Palestinians no noticeable faults; that Israeli
democracy is a sham but Palestinian internal violence and vigilante
justice are just understandable reactions of a people under siege.
Israelis,
in their eyes, are eternal perpetrators who can do no right and
Palestinians, in their minds, are perpetual victims who can never do
wrong.
But
then there are those who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil of
Israel or its occupation ׀and who don't, in fact, recognize it as such;
people who believe that Palestinians invented themselves, who turn a
blind eye to the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages that still
dot the Israeli landscape, who view the Arabs as an irredeemable species
and Palestinians as lesser beings who should be grateful for anything
they get; who whitewash the settlements and tsk tsk their price-taggers
and pretend that roadblocks and closures are fun; who pretend that a
"startup nation" can cleanse all their sins; who latch on to any
Palestinian word that can be portrayed as incitement but downplay the
rising tide of supremacist and xenophobic Israel and the parallel
drowning of the liberal and democratic state that preceded it, warts and
all.
These
are the Jews who think that loving Israel means never having to say
you're sorry about anything and they are the mirror images of
Palestinians for whom self-criticism is a betrayal of the cause. These
are the so-called lovers of Zion who know nothing but crude propaganda
and they are the alter egos of those for whom even the most outlandish
and ghoulish Palestinian claims are taken as gospel truth. These are the
people who, disguise it as they may try, truly regard the Palestinians
as inferior beings and they are a warped but nonetheless true reflection
of those who think Jews are just evil and devious by nature.
And
both are identical in the curious fact that their disgust and disdain
and animosity reach fever pitch when they are directed not at their
external enemies but against those in their own group who happen to
believe otherwise.
Some
are fanatic by religion or nature, others adapt to their surroundings,
many are taken in by preachers and professors and politicians and
pundits proclaiming to know it all from above. These are the people who
exploit the extreme and feed off its fruit to curry favor with their
peers and increase popularity with their consumers, to spike up their
speakers' fees, drum up their book sales, increase their support in the
party's Central Committee, get more donations from the appropriate lobby
or from a dedicated billionaire, those who callously inflame their
people just enough so that they come out to vote on their judgment day.
Much has been written
about the contribution of modern technology, social media and the
increasing one-sided partisanship of the mass media to this explosion of
insular and doctrinaire and small-minded intolerance. Whatever its
origins, it is gaining on us all, and the prognosis, unfortunately, is
far from positive, as French philosopher Denis Diderot famously noted:
From fanaticism to barbarism there is only one step.
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