Gurgen Jews have lived there continuously for about 3,000 years, it's not all religious texts or ancient history. Obviously numbers fluctuated heavily. But I guess more relevant is that they themselves see it as their homeland and nothing you, I or anyone says or does is going to change that. Apart from their extermination of course, which is the goal of Hamas. The "Israelis are all colonisers" narrative is quite similar to the "there is no such thing as a Palestinian, they already have Jordan" narrative you hear from Israeli extremists. Neither is going anywhere than continuous violence.
Right, there's black and white thinking and then there's what will happen.
Which to be frank is the trouble with all public political speech versus private political sentiments—whether it's absolutes such as "they don't integrate" or "they don't share our values", or "decolonisation is not a metaphor".
"Jews have lived there continuously for about 3,000 years" absolute-ises Jewish identity as one undifferentiated mass—which is far from the experience of Jews in Israel.
Some Mizrahi Jews who if one argues the toss (which I don't recommend) are closer to indigenous to the region regard themselves as having faced their own oppressive experiences during Israel's formation. In practice there are lots of Israeli Jews whose descent prior to 1948 had no connection to the region beyond Scripture for centuries on end—and in effect, little more connection than my own ancestors to Australia.
Once such an undifferentiated identity claim has done its work excluding Palestinians from homes they actually lived in … the discourse can turn to the previously hidden nuances of intra-Jewish contention for land, resources, life and security.
The thing is, I know you have got to be well aware of this.
This is why I don't say the most salient thing is identity-based claims to territory, or some kind of transhistorical utilitarian calculus of good and bad claims in general. As you say yourself the "good versus evil" framing is dysfunctional and non-negotiable.
"Good versus evil" is what we say in public to get the various shades of grey that make up real life in private. "Good versus evil" is the way we arrive at this public logic of the Holocaust as an inexhaustible and manipulative trump card of these arguments. The Holocaust is no longer the Holocaust, it's the contradictory ideal form of an atrocity that must never be repeated when it comes to the Jews, but can never be repeated when it comes to Palestinians.
This is how a genocide has not only happened but retains its powerful political constituency in Israel—the constituency of Netanyahu's absolute "You must remember what Amalek has done to you". Do we dare to talk about "conflation" with respect to antisemitism when living Palestinians are being lined up with a group named in Exodus in order to justify a massacre?
No, we have to be pragmatic. The question is not whether to be pragmatic—nothing that happens is ever not pragmatic. Genocide is pragmatic if it is accomplished. The question is how to be pragmatic—and it means being empirical about what has actually been happening, not dealing in absolutes, some kind of capacity for truth-telling.
So my question about this conflict: how do we get to live in a better world where tens of thousands of civilians aren't massacred by absolute bigotry? The answer can't be "we just get over it" or "we celebrate an era of peace".
Pragmatism has got to start with an ability to discriminate between ongoing war crimes and fantasies of Armageddon or violent episodes from the Bible.
Gurgen Apart from their extermination of course, which is the goal of Hamas.
Extermination: the ideal goal of Hamas, the practical program of the Israeli Defence Force. How many real people have to really die before we stop permitting a suspended image of the possibility of death weigh so heavily in these debates?
