We are Israel, for better or worse

It’s no surprise that we view world events through the context of our own experiences. What other choice do we have? As I attempt to bolster my inadequate understanding of current events in Israel, I can’t help but draw comparisons with our American experience. The analogies are by no means perfect, but they are close enough to help me decipher the Middle East situation and, for a moment, reflect on our own.

Those of us who survived religious education know that the tribes of Israel inhabited the eastern Mediterranean area during the bronze and early iron ages, then were conquered by the Assyrians somewhere around 720 BC (yes, I still use BC). Over the next two and a half centuries, the Jewish people were expelled by Romans, Egyptians, and Visigoths, then displaced from nearly every part of Europe up through the Russian Pogroms of the late 19th Century.

Though the diaspora of Jewish populations has been traced over the centuries, migrations of that kind aren’t unheard of in our more recent American experience. The Scots-Irish people who populated our Appalachian region escaped Scotland by way of Ulster, Ireland, where they had lived from 1609 to about 1718. Our western plains, including Nebraska, were settled by Germans who migrated after establishing communities in Russia as early as 1764. Motivated by religion, economics, or politics, humans have looked for greener pastures since our first ancestors wandered out of eastern Africa six million years ago, and in that regard, the Jewish experience is not unique.

It can be debated whether or not the Jewish people have been picked on and persecuted more than other minorities. Human history is universally ugly in that regard. Still, many accounts of modern Israel begin in 1897 when Austro-Hungarian author Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet titled “Der Judenstaat,” where he concluded that assimilation of the Jewish people would never be possible. Herzl argued that Jewish populations could only be made safe from persecution by forming a Jewish state, and for that work, Herzl is regarded by many as the father of modern Zionism. As the idea began to take shape, several locations for the new Jewish state were considered, including Uganda and Venezuela. Eventually, consensus pointed to Palestine, home of the former Jewish tribes, and a migration from all parts of Europe began.

At this point in the story, it’s hard not to think of our Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, who were simply in search of religious freedom (they thought the Church of England wasn’t strict enough). I also think about the European settlers of Tennessee who pushed even further west to settle in the area of Northern Mexico that we now know as Texas. Had the Texans always intended to displace the local population and form a government? In most cases, no, but cultures differed enough that a new nationality was inevitable.

The Jewish population in Palestine gradually grew with relatively little friction, then came the Holocaust. Also known as the “Shoah, ” it’s a monstrous event that deserves more than the quick mention given here, but most of us who have achieved bipedal status know the story too well. As a part of Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, he embraced a mix of traditional antisemitism and eugenic theories circulating at the time. As a result, six million European Jews were methodically and efficiently exterminated before the end of World War II.

In our 21st century, we have had serious discussions, albeit late and misdirected, about reparations for the population devastated by the transatlantic slave trade. At the conclusion of WWII, the international community had a similar but more timely inclination to seek reparations for the surviving Jewish population. Herzl’s concept of Zionism became the answer.

In 1948, the State of Israel was formed as a Jewish homeland, much to the chagrin of the Palestinians who had called the region home since 720 BC. As soon as the United Nations recognized its status as a nation, Israel was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors. Israel managed to survive those attacks, but here’s the part of the story that is tough for me: I wish I could say that the Israelis have always occupied the moral high ground. They haven’t. As Jewish settlements grew, displaced Palestinians resisted with violence. The Israelis responded in kind, sometimes in a heavy-handed way, and humanity was the first casualty on both sides of the conflict.

In many ways, the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians mirrors our relationship with Native Americans. During our Western expansion, cultures clashed, and violence followed. We, the victors took the spoils but earned multigenerational resentment from the conquered and a modicum of guilt in the process. Those sentiments are now being played out on college campuses. They aren’t 100% wrong. They simply choose not to acknowledge the larger context.

Many have compared the October 7 Hamas attacks to our September 11. The comparison is understandable, but we might also compare it to Wounded Knee. It will likely be the last uprising of Hamas. The Israelis will do whatever it takes to prevent Hamas from repeating their unspeakable atrocities, but it may happen in a way that doesn’t make any of us feel proud–and sadly, it’s unlikely that it will definitively settle matters with the Arab world.

Ironically, the arc of history is now placing us on the receiving end of the same evolutionary cycle. Those native populations displaced by economic hardship and political persecution in Venezuela, Central America’s Northern Triangle, and Mexico are now migrating to the home that we, the sons and daughters of European immigrants, have occupied since the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. We hope our culture and national identity will withstand the influx, but history tells us that change is inevitable. We may, someday, find our population and culture in decline, or we may also choose to relocate to another place, another continent, or perhaps even another world.