Societies of people, including nationalities, often have histories that help form a country’s culture. The members of a group may not realize their contemporary behaviors are a product of or are, at least, influenced by these shared histories. They also may fail to recognize similar Volksgeists in other societies.
American college students today may be puzzled by the reaction of their federal government to the wars between Israel and its neighbors. While Israel may have been created mainly by Great Britain and the United States in 1948, many Israelis and even certain fundamentalist religious Americans have been taught it was created by a Hebrew god just for Jews over two thousand years ago.
A great number of Americans of European ancestry believed their cultural god, Manifest Destiny, was offended by what was seen as a sinful sloth and fallowness by Native Americans. Therefore, it was morally justified to take and use the land the indigenous peoples had inhabited for thousands of years but failed to develop. Contemporary Jewish “settlers” use the same justification to squat on property owned by Palestinians.
For both Israel and the United States, the mantra was, “A land without people, for a people without land”. It is difficult for many Americans to fault Israel for taking Arab lands when we have generations of subliminal cultural evidence that we would not have the sweet lives we enjoy had our European ancestors not done the same thing. One might dream that the expiation of our national guilt could be somewhat assuaged by refusing to aid Israel to behave similarly. However, hope is a poor plan when it comes to seeing ourselves as others might. In today’s America we may not realize our conclusions and prejudices concerning conquest and settlement of Palestinian lands by Israelis are subconsciously determined by our own cultural history of genocidal actions towards Native Americans.
Another interesting phenomenon occurs when one culture not only does not learn from the ills cast upon it by another morally corrupt society but instead emulates and repeats it. Such is the juxtaposition of Zionist Israel and Nazi Germany. Reason calls for a culture that never forgets the Holocaust to be ever mindful of unfettered power coupled with unaware depravity. Thinking Israelis know the war in Gaza was not started by Hamas on October 07, 2023, but by Israel that began to eliminate Palestinians in 1948. This is much like thinking Germans in the 1930’s and 40’s knew Jewish people in post-WWI Germany were not responsible for the hardships suffered by their country regardless of what the Nazis preached as justification for a Jewish genocide.
To many Zionists in Israel, Hamas and even Palestinian civilians are an evil that should be destroyed even if countless innocents are slaughtered in the process. But to many Palestinians, Israel has been an occupying, oppressive evil throughout the past seventy-seven years. To the oppressed peoples of Gaza, October 07 was a desperate act of resistance. We should recognize the similarity between Palestinian resistance and that of Native Americans at the Little Big Horn and other acts of desperation that brought down the wrath of the United States against many other innocent Native Americans.
Israel may not see itself as a pariah among nations in its genocide against Palestinians any more than our European ancestors saw their desire to take Indian lands as genocide. After all, both Israel and America had their god on their side. However, America does have an opportunity to somewhat atone for our past sins and to help Israel put an end to their present ones. If gods truly are involved, we better do both for Israel’s salvation and our own.