The Fly in the Ointment

. . . in 1981 Dar al-Hurriyya, the government publishing house, widely circulated a pamphlet whose title in translation is Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies. The author is Khairallah Tulfah, former governor of Baghdad and foster-father, uncle, and father-in-law of Saddam Husain. Persians, Tulfah says, are "animals God created in the shape of humans." Jews are a "mixture of the dirt and leftovers of diverse peoples," and flies are a trifling creation "whom we do not understand God's purpose in creating."
- Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear

The above is racism and unduly harsh to Jews and flies. Zionism is not racism; it is arguably chauvinistic and illiberal (as are many of its enemies and all of its neighbours), but it is not racist for the simple reason that it discriminates based on religion and not race. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which discriminates against the Bahá'ís based on religion and not race, should be cognizant of the difference.

More to the point, states that are not at some level chauvinistic and illiberal do not exist; they get taken over by states that are chauvinistic and illiberal. Exceptions like Canada and Switzerland are anomalies of good geopolitical fortune. Everyone knows a Palestinian state would be just as chauvinistic and illiberal as Israel if not (and almost certainly) more so. But it is now an international norm that every petty nationality has the right to its own illiberal and chauvinistic enclave, so the creation of the Islamic Republic of Palestine is inevitable.

The reason Israel gets its existence questioned is not because its founding was any more brutal than any other state's founding, but because it took place after human rights were invented. Nobody tells the Magyars to leave Europe and go back to central Asia for the simple reason that they made Hungary their home before people thought tribes dispossessing each other was unnatural. After all, that is how the Arabs got the land of Israel in the first place; they conquered, squatted, likely intermarried with the local Hebrews and became "natives."

The late status of Israel's tribal reconquista cannot be helped, but if Israel does want to be established in its neighbourhood like Hungary is established in Europe it needs to A) settle its borders (that means creating the Palestinian state everyone knows will be a third-rate Syria) and B) declare the Zionist project closed. That means the Jews who are there now can remain and solidify their regional, Semitic identity over the generations, while the rest of the Jews can look on Israel like the Muslims do Mecca: a nice place to visit but not an ideal place to live. The other long-term solution is the apocalypse, which is equally conducive to my personal state of exile but less ideal from a human rights perspective.

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