It doesn't make sense that in terms of the unprecedented number of Palestinian women and children killed that it's always Muslims that are the "deeply religious ideologues." Especially Israel's concern before the Hamas attack was demographics. If Israel were. democracy, it's unlikely Hamas and the attack would have happened. The followin…
It doesn't make sense that in terms of the unprecedented number of Palestinian women and children killed that it's always Muslims that are the "deeply religious ideologues." Especially Israel's concern before the Hamas attack was demographics. If Israel were. democracy, it's unlikely Hamas and the attack would have happened. The following is from Mearsheimer and Walt's book. "The fact that the creation of Israel entailed a grave injustice against the Palestinian people was well understood by Israel’s leaders. As Ben Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the Word Jewish Congress, in 1956, 'If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?'" All that's incorrect is Ben Gurion's convenient statement that Muslims don't worship the same God--they do, and the Koran has many references to Jews as "the children of the book" in it--negative but also positive.
I read the Mearsheimer Walt article that either preceded or followed the book (I can’t remember which), and was struck by the same Ben-Gurion quote, which I passed on to some friends. The article is long. It made me aware that things I was noticing on my own, e.g., the weaponization of “antisemitism” to include anything critical of Israel, as well as the justification that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” were longstanding memes developed as a propaganda decades ago. Yet they’re still being used, not only by Israel, but by our mainstream press in the U.S., our universities and the Democratic Party. Biden used that identical language in response to an email I sent the White House in support of a ceasefire in early 2024, despite my having said in my email that killing children was not “defense.” They of course knew this, just as they knew the stories of beheaded babies had been debunked. They used them anyway. Thus they were dishonest and cynical and not just naive.
I think you made some valid points, and taken in isolation, they stand solidly. But let me invite you into my thought process—because demographic anxiety, nation-building, and forced population movements are not unique to Israel or Palestine.
Take Czechoslovakia, for example. Ever heard of the "Czechoslovak" nationality? It never existed until the 20th century. It was invented as a demographic strategy: there were more Germans than Slovaks in the newly formed state. To prevent Germans from having more political influence, we just made up a shared “Czechoslovak” identity. Not moral, not immoral—just cold demographic engineering.
That same region later saw some of the largest ethnic cleansings in modern history. After WWII, 12–14 million ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from Eastern and Central Europe. Between 500,000 and 2 million died. Czechoslovakia alone expelled around 3 million, and yes, we murdered a significant number of them.
This happened at the exact same historical moment as the Palestinian Nakba—same era, same geopolitical chaos. But the international response was entirely different. The Germans got no refugee status, no "right of return" movement, and minimal long-term support. Their homeland was in ruins, and yet... no permanent refugee camps, no ongoing insurgency. They integrated—painfully and imperfectly—but they moved on.
No one fears that a Sudeten German will shout "mein Wienerschnitzel" and blow up a bus.
So why the radically different outcomes? In my view, part of it comes down to:
- The narrative built around the displacement (UN support, identity politics, religious framing)
- The international community treating Palestinians as a permanent exception
- And yes, a religious and cultural attachment to the land that fuels cycles of grievance
This doesn’t absolve Israel. They’ve committed and continue to commit actions that meet definitions of ethnic cleansing—even genocide by some legal standards. But when we step back and compare it to similar post-war events, the Palestinian case is not uniquely horrific—it’s uniquely politicized.
Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to invite you into how I think about this—why I tend to frame it more as a religious issue than a purely national one.
Yes, my analogy is flawed. There are too many variables to "simulate" entire historical events. But when I cut through the ideological noise and compare it to something with similar—if not worse—causes and consequences that I actually have personal proximity to, the emotional and political narrative just doesn’t add up.
It doesn't make sense that in terms of the unprecedented number of Palestinian women and children killed that it's always Muslims that are the "deeply religious ideologues." Especially Israel's concern before the Hamas attack was demographics. If Israel were. democracy, it's unlikely Hamas and the attack would have happened. The following is from Mearsheimer and Walt's book. "The fact that the creation of Israel entailed a grave injustice against the Palestinian people was well understood by Israel’s leaders. As Ben Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the Word Jewish Congress, in 1956, 'If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?'" All that's incorrect is Ben Gurion's convenient statement that Muslims don't worship the same God--they do, and the Koran has many references to Jews as "the children of the book" in it--negative but also positive.
I read the Mearsheimer Walt article that either preceded or followed the book (I can’t remember which), and was struck by the same Ben-Gurion quote, which I passed on to some friends. The article is long. It made me aware that things I was noticing on my own, e.g., the weaponization of “antisemitism” to include anything critical of Israel, as well as the justification that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” were longstanding memes developed as a propaganda decades ago. Yet they’re still being used, not only by Israel, but by our mainstream press in the U.S., our universities and the Democratic Party. Biden used that identical language in response to an email I sent the White House in support of a ceasefire in early 2024, despite my having said in my email that killing children was not “defense.” They of course knew this, just as they knew the stories of beheaded babies had been debunked. They used them anyway. Thus they were dishonest and cynical and not just naive.
I think you made some valid points, and taken in isolation, they stand solidly. But let me invite you into my thought process—because demographic anxiety, nation-building, and forced population movements are not unique to Israel or Palestine.
Take Czechoslovakia, for example. Ever heard of the "Czechoslovak" nationality? It never existed until the 20th century. It was invented as a demographic strategy: there were more Germans than Slovaks in the newly formed state. To prevent Germans from having more political influence, we just made up a shared “Czechoslovak” identity. Not moral, not immoral—just cold demographic engineering.
That same region later saw some of the largest ethnic cleansings in modern history. After WWII, 12–14 million ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from Eastern and Central Europe. Between 500,000 and 2 million died. Czechoslovakia alone expelled around 3 million, and yes, we murdered a significant number of them.
This happened at the exact same historical moment as the Palestinian Nakba—same era, same geopolitical chaos. But the international response was entirely different. The Germans got no refugee status, no "right of return" movement, and minimal long-term support. Their homeland was in ruins, and yet... no permanent refugee camps, no ongoing insurgency. They integrated—painfully and imperfectly—but they moved on.
No one fears that a Sudeten German will shout "mein Wienerschnitzel" and blow up a bus.
So why the radically different outcomes? In my view, part of it comes down to:
- The narrative built around the displacement (UN support, identity politics, religious framing)
- The international community treating Palestinians as a permanent exception
- And yes, a religious and cultural attachment to the land that fuels cycles of grievance
This doesn’t absolve Israel. They’ve committed and continue to commit actions that meet definitions of ethnic cleansing—even genocide by some legal standards. But when we step back and compare it to similar post-war events, the Palestinian case is not uniquely horrific—it’s uniquely politicized.
Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to invite you into how I think about this—why I tend to frame it more as a religious issue than a purely national one.
Yes, my analogy is flawed. There are too many variables to "simulate" entire historical events. But when I cut through the ideological noise and compare it to something with similar—if not worse—causes and consequences that I actually have personal proximity to, the emotional and political narrative just doesn’t add up.