It’s too late to make peace

BASYA LAYE

“Two states for two peoples” is a “delusion,” argues Stephen Schecter in his recently published book, Grasshoppers in Zion: Israel and the Paradox of Modernity (Mantua Books, 2012). The author and retired sociology professor contends that Israel cannot possibly make peace with its neighbors and, instead, must take decisive military action to achieve a secure future for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Schecter suggests that the lack of a peace partner on the Palestinian side is rooted in the fact that Israel and its Arab Muslim neighbors have a fundamentally different way of seeing the world. Israel, as a modern and democratic society, is at loggerheads with the hierarchical and kinship-based society of the Arab Muslim world, in which some citizens are considered to be expendable, he asserts. These two competing structures cannot coexist, he states, but, eternally blind to this fact, Israel remains unwilling to make tough choices for its future. Instead, proposes Schecter, Israel must take action now to ensure its own security – no matter how unpopular or “politically incorrect” – instead of wasting more time negotiating an impossible peace and awaiting eventual destruction.

Citing biblical and contemporary examples of Jewish inaction in the face of hostilities, Schecter indicts the Jewish people repeatedly for what he calls their timidity and indecisiveness.

“So began the story which spawned so many others, and the stories gave birth to worlds, and now the world that started with that story is coming to an end,” he writes in the book’s opening lines. The West “no longer thinks of itself as a civilization and certainly not a Judeo-Christian one. And so, appropriately enough, what started with the Jews will end with the Jews. After Europe exterminated six million Jews and eradicated their culture from its midst, the rest of the world, with the connivance now of America, has gone on to ensure that the last remnant of Jewish life, the reborn state of Israel, will soon vanish as well. And the Jews, shockingly, unbelievably, have once again been willing participants in their own destruction.”

Later in the book, Schecter suggests that the solution to Israel’s quagmire is obvious. “Once you realize a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza makes no sense, once you realize that the Palestinians have forfeited whatever right they may have had to one, there is only one solution left. Israel must again seize those lands by military action and annex them. Then she must administer those territories in such a way as to encourage the Arabs to leave, as the Kuwaitis did to over 300,000 Palestinians when they realized they had an enemy in their midst. Israel does not need to be as brutal as the Palestinians were when they emptied Bethlehem of its Christians, but firm they must be. Do not worry about where the Palestinians will go. They will find a home, as people do in this global world of ours, as they did when they left Kuwait and no one said a word. In this case, the world will scream, but no one will go to war with Israel over a policy that will finally rid our television screens of this question. And six months after that has become a fait accompli, the world will forget a move on to its next problem.”

Schecter explained his position to the Independent. “There is comeuppance in this world for evil and sometimes even for stupidity. But then, Jews are grasshoppers as well as democrats, and reluctant to flex their political and military muscle, even in self-defence. So, unless there is a 180-degree change in the way we Jews look at things, the next decade will be more of the same.”

Schecter considers wasteful any efforts to avoid a conflict.

“It would have been nice for two peoples to exist side by side, but this is not in the cards,” he said. “After the Holocaust, it is unacceptable for any Jew to envisage the destruction of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. History, divine decree, international law and the laws of war, not to mention practical common sense and truth, make the two-state solution a non-starter now. Israel must draw its own borders, based on the recognition that it can do nothing to modify Palestinian or Arab or Muslim behavior in the direction it would like. So, Israel should annex Judea and Samaria. It should clean up Gaza. And, it will eventually have to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which I consider the greatest threat of all. Putting an end to Palestinian statehood would do much to produce peace and stability in the Middle East, contrary to what most people think. And, the West would come around quickly enough too. Some people think the Arabs in Judea and Samaria should be given municipal autonomy in the form of city states, because every city there is run by a different tribe anyway. I think they are too imbued with Jew hatred now to accept even that, so my preference would be to see them outside Israel’s borders.

“If life were made unpalatable enough for them, they would leave,” he continued. “Ask the Palestinians how they emptied Bethlehem of its Christians or the Kuwaitis how they emptied Kuwait of its Palestinians. In Bethlehem, the Palestinian Authority terrorized the Christians into leaving, but, in Kuwait, they took away their drivers’ permits, business licences, professional licences, and they left, and no one asked where they went. But Israel will do no such thing unless there is support in the population for that. And, for that, there has to be work done, work like my book, to bring Jews around to the idea that this is a plausible option. I am happy to say that some Jews in Israel are finally learning from the bitter experience of the last 45 years. Quite a number, in fact, and thanks to our enemies, the number is growing, every day.”

When the Independent, noting that Jews have been “encouraged” to leave many countries throughout history, asked Schecter to clarify his proposed solution, he responded, “Kuwait adopted policies that induced the Palestinians to leave because the Palestinians in Kuwait supported Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. In effect, the Palestinians showed themselves to be traitorous and ungrateful to their hosts. That they could do so with so little consideration for the government of the country that welcomed them reflects the way kinship ties, rather than any sense of civic obligation, rules behavior in the Arab Muslim world. Saddam supported and financed Palestinian terrorists – that was good enough for them to betray their Kuwaiti hosts. Jews have not acted in that way to deserve the expulsions they received – not in the Rhineland, not in Europe and not in the Arab Muslim world, where they contributed loyally to those countries. So the comparison which worries you does not really apply.

“My point in referencing Kuwait was to show how the Kuwaitis knew how to repay betrayal, while the Jews do not seem to have learned that. We are under no obligation – no country is – to be compassionate to people who seek our liquidation and act upon it,” he continued. “Unless, of course, we are grasshoppers and see ourselves as that, hiding behind some lofty moral ideal to excuse our behavior. I simply advocate Israel’s calling a spade a spade. If you do not think the Palestinians and the Arab Muslim world that stand behind them is our enemy, then don’t expect the world to understand when you bemoan their murderous attacks upon us, from Iran to the P[alestinian]A[uthority]. Have we learned nothing from the 20th century?”

Schecter doesn’t have patience for those who would continue on the path of negotiation.

The people “who like to think of themselves as progressive cannot digest the facts I present before them,” he said. “They also cannot see that I make a distinction, as I stress in my book, between Muslims as individuals and Islam as a religion linked to a kinship-based society. They do not see that racism is an attitude that explains social phenomena in biological terms and holds people responsible for their actions by offering genetic explanations for societal behavior. But then they confuse society with individuals and misread the role of religion even in our own societies.

“So, instead of dealing with my argument, they label me a racist, which allows them to comfortably insulate themselves behind their well-coated self-image as left-wing, democratic, in favor of social change and the downtrodden – the J Street crowd, the N.Y. Times crowd, the NPR people – as if they have a monopoly on righteousness. But then, these people, Jew and non-Jew alike, are the people who amplify the structures of expectations that make modernity what it is. They are the ultra-moderns, unable to see that they and modernity are not one and the same – the people [at] the universities, especially in the social sciences and the humanities and arts, and [the] people [in] those disciplines and careers outside the universities – which means inadequate ideas gather force until to question them seems like heresy. And so, they label me a reactionary because if you are not left, you have to be right....

“I know these people intimately because I was once like them, shared their beliefs in the importance of being ‘critical.’ In sociology, I embraced critical theory for a long time, then gradually abandoned it when I came across [Niklas] Luhamnn’s sociology, which was every bit as powerful, much less moralistic, and much more adequate in helping me observe society.... The truth you come up with is usually unpalatable, even to you, but science is science. It is disheartening to be called a racist because you only quote the racism endemic in the Arab Muslim world in making your point, but my sociological training helps parry the blows, even if they do hurt. When I think of what the next generations are being taught, however, I am sick to my stomach. So, I guess you could say I have a paradoxical relationship to sociology as a discipline.”

Schecter reserves his most forceful judgment for the Jewish people.

“Maybe I am not a nihilist,” he writes. “Maybe I am simply aghast and even beyond aghast. After all, my beef is no longer with the Western world, not even America. My beef is with the Jews and with the Jewish state.... We were supposed to have a Zionist state so that Jews would no longer be easy pickings when hunting season on the Jews started. But it seems hunting season is now year-round and the Jewish state does nothing about it.... All I know is that once again Jews have become an abomination in the eyes of God.”

Stephen Schecter presents Israel, the Bible and You on Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m., at 350 East 2nd Ave. Tickets ($10) are available at 604-676-9697 or [email protected].

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