By Jim Denison
It has been my privilege to lead several study tours of Israel. Each time, I am struck again by the tiny size of the Holy Land. Comparable to New Jersey, it is only six miles wide at its narrowest point. And yet this postage-stamp-sized territory has been pivotal to human history for four millennia.
Today the global relevance of Israel centers on its relationship with Palestine. It is current conventional wisdom that our ongoing conflict with radical Islam is largely the result of the Palestinians’ plight. If Israel and Palestine would settle on a two-state solution that granted sovereignty to the Palestinian people, much of the radical Muslim world’s antagonism toward Israel and the West would be minimized.
Or so the theory goes. James Kirchick, writing in the latest World Affairs journal, is skeptical. I find his analysis of the Middle East quandary both illuminating and troubling.
At issue is “linkage,” the term used for tying Middle East and Muslim conflicts to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Kirchick reports that when Barack Obama was running for president, he told the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg that this “constant sore does infect all of our foreign policy.” He also cites Vice President Biden’s reported complaint to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
Kirchick isn’t so sure. If the Arab world is so troubled by the plight of their fellow Muslims, he asks, why doesn’t it do more to help them financially? Why isn’t the mass killing of Muslims in Sudan a greater issue for them?
If radical Muslims are outraged at the West for our support for Israel, Kirchick continues, surely they are likewise angered at the decriminalization of homosexuality by the Supreme Court and the recognition of gay marriage by some jurisdictions. But no one seems to link these issues to our dealings with the Muslim world.
Kirchick believes that a two-state solution would not accomplish much in the way of global peace with radical Muslims. They would likely complain that Palestine did not receive its fair share of land so long as Israel exists at all. And they would likely undermine the treaty from within Palestine. He sees this issue as an “amazingly useful propaganda tool” for radical Muslims as they perpetrate a much larger assault on Western civilization.
I find his analysis of the issue to be compelling but incomplete. There should be no doubt that radical Muslims want nothing less than a global Taliban-like Ummah (Muslim civilization). They are working fervently to topple Western-leaning Muslim governments in nations such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and want to mobilize jihadists around the world to take up the cause of violence in the name of Islam. Kirchick is right: They will use any instrument, whether the plight of the Palestinians or the hedonism of Western culture, as a means to their end.
At the same time, there is a compelling moral issue that finds no place in Kirchick’s analysis. Our Declaration of Independence claims that “all men are created equal,” whatever their racial, religious or regional status. Our solidarity with Israel is based in no small part on our shared affirmation of universal human rights.
On my many trips to Israel, I have yet to meet an Israeli who does not believe that the Palestinians, like the Jews, deserve a homeland. Israeli and American leaders are on record affirming this commitment. The fact that radical Muslims will not cease their aggression if Palestine is granted statehood is no reason to refuse Palestine statehood.
On one of my trips to Israel, our group was preparing to see Bethlehem. To make the ten-minute drive to the Church of the Nativity, we had to leave our Israeli-credentialed bus to board a Palestinian vehicle with its Arab driver and guide. As we were leaving one bus for the other, our Jewish tour guide saw his Palestinian counterpart. He ran to him, hugged him, and asked about his wife and children.
As the two friends clasped each other’s arms, I watched with hope renewed. And prayed for the day when the rest of us join them.