The anti-Zionist tautology

A rejoinder to Nicholas Kristof of ‘The New York Times’

Either it will be sunny later, or not. Either it will be rainy, or not. Both statements are tautologies: propositions that define all possible or thinkable states of the world. As such, they are always and necessarily true. But they are metaphysical, so paradoxically, they say nothing about the world. They cannot be falsified. Or, put differently, any observation would prove them true.

With the case of anti-Zionists, the same argument applies. If Israel is being attacked, it is actually the aggressor. If it offers peace, it really wants war. If it respects the rights of women and LGBT communities, it is only to preclude criticism. If 20% of its population is Arab with as full rights as other Israeli citizens, it is only for propaganda purposes. If it leaves Gaza, it is still occupying it by taking measures to avoid letting weapons from entering. If it defends its citizens from thousands of rocket attacks, it is in fact perpetuating aggression. If it develops an Iron Dome air defense system that protects its citizens from being slaughtered by bombs, it is in fact waging a disproportionate attack.

In other words, either Israel is evil, or is it no good. Such is the anti-Zionist tautology.

Nicholas Kristof follows this line of thought in his New York Times column of June 2. Yes, it is true that no civilized Western country would let its population be bombed by neighboring areas, the author recognizes, but responding with force ends up strengthening the attacker. So, the argument amounts to: You are being attacked, but don’t think of doing much of anything to stop it, otherwise you will end up strengthening your enemy. The problem is that not defending yourself does not exactly make your enemy weaker either.

Kristof mentions cases where other, apparently more civilized countries, “dealt with attacks far more judiciously.” He fails to recognize that violence with the IRA or the Basque separatists, for example, didn’t stop because of “judicious” measures, but because these groups decided to stop their violence. Israel has already taken judicious measures, even extremely judicious, such as giving the entire Gaza Strip to the Palestinians for them to begin building a state of their own (and at the expense of its own citizens who were living there before they were forced to leave). Instead of doing that, Hamas turned it into a rocket launching area.

Peace is not achieved when you decide to make peace, but when your enemy agrees to make peace with you. It takes two to Tango.

But Kristof does not stop there. He further says (following an Israeli human rights lawyer) that Israel is to blame for the situation. But the situation in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood (nowadays presented only as “Sheikh Jarrah”) is a judicial dispute concerning Palestinian Arabs occupying Jewish properties that were expropriated from them once the Jordanians ethnically cleansed the Jews from the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948. It is a matter of property rights, not a “provocation.”

Nor is it the case that there is an “official policy” to “Judaize” east Jerusalem. There is no such thing, simply because Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel, the core of the Jewish people and its history, and has always been. There cannot be a Christian, let alone a Muslim Jerusalem without there first being a Jewish Jerusalem.

KRISTOF WOULD object, saying Israel is to be blamed, because it “deliberately nurtured Hamas in the first place.” But Hamas was created by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that dates to 1928, not by Theodor Herzl. True enough, Israel did not immediately try to end Hamas from the start, but that was because its main focus then was the PLO. But, to state that Israel created Hamas is quite a bit too much. However, not according to the Anti-Zionist tautology.

Kristof declares that according to “most experts” and the United Nations, Israel occupies Gaza. “Israel controls it, even though it withdrew in 2005,” the law of non-contradiction notwithstanding.

He then implies that Israel occupies the area by citing the rhetorical question of the research director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (“A better question would be: ‘What would the US do if it conquered and occupied British Columbia, and then Canadian armed groups, resisting the occupation, shelled Seattle?’”). He then sarcastically says, “Hmm. A bit more complicated.” It is not at all that complicated. Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip. Period. It only attempts, feebly, to prevent even more weapons from arriving there.

But the author’s subversion of cause and effect is clearly seen when he writes, “Every time Hamas shells Israel, it makes a solution less likely. And every time Israel grabs more land or kills more children, it likewise makes peace less achievable.”

But it is not the case that Israel “grabs more land” or “kills more children.” It is rather Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip and has established a totalitarian state, as well as deliberately targets Israeli civilians (including children) with rockets. And it is Israel that deliberately tries to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas intends to maximize them.

Kristof recognizes that Hamas committed war crimes, but “most scholars believe” that Israel did so too because of “its attacks on Gaza that were far more lethal to civilians than attacks by Hamas.” However, Israel does not attack Gaza as such, but only Hamas military targets. More fundamentally, what would “most scholars” or Kristof like Israel to do? Shut down the Iron Dome?

In a war, a proportional response is such that it can be enough to end the threat by the aggressor. It has nothing to do with equal casualties. This is not a soccer match. Civilian casualties, painful as they are, are the responsibility of the aggressor. And the latter is Hamas, not Israel, which does all it can to prevent them.

The author ends with the following line, “A basic principle of peace-building is to stop committing war crimes. That’s the only path to making insoluble problems solvable.” We cannot agree more. Hamas needs to stop committing war crimes. If no attacks are launched from Gaza to Israel, no Israeli response will follow.

More importantly, the only path to make insoluble problems solvable is to understand the facts of the case, not to use facts just to accommodate the unfalsifiable view that Israel is wrong no matter what. The anti-Zionist tautology, and not Israel’s actions, is the root of Hamas’s attacks.

Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans; Alan Futerman is adjunct professor of institutional economics at the University of the Latin American Educational Center (Rosario, Argentina); Rafi Farber is the publisher of The End Game Investor, a daily market commentary, Golan Heights. The three are authors of