The Palestinian Boy Phenomenon

By Walter E. Block

There are many reasons articulated by the enemies of Israel arguing that this country should not use violence to defend itself against scurrilous attacks launched at it, such as the abomination of October 7, 2023.

One of them concerns these archetypical 14 year-old Palestinian boy. He will grow up with a seething hatred for Jews in general and Israelis in particular. He sees his family members die at the hands of the Israel Defense Force. He witnesses the pulverization of the buildings in which he spent his early years. He notes the wrecked schools which taught him, the hospitals that succored him. He may not be able to do much right away, except throw a few stones, but for the rest of his life the Israeli military will have made a bitter enemy.

This counsel of despair will not of course stop the IDF from reacting to the Jewish nakba. This boy was celebrating that event on the day following, on October 8, 2023, and for several days thereafter. But does this argument against the Israeli military pursuing Hamas and other such enemies have even the slightest degree of validity?

No.

One reason for this rejection is that this young man was already burning with an unquenchable loathing for all things Jewish and Israeli, on the day before, October 6, 2023. Some might say that this was due to previous Israeli attacks in the period before that time. But this, in turn, was a result of previous responses of the IDF to earlier Arab atrocities perpetrated upon innocent Israeli women, children and other non-combatants. Pogroms have a long history, dating long before 1948, during the time this young future warrior was not even born. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Here the precedence is clear; the Jews were occupying these contested lands some four millennia ago; the Arabs, perhaps for as many as four centuries. Further, the Jews completely abandoned Gaza in 2005; soon afterward, the suicide bombs, the rockets, travelled eastward toward the Jewish state; in the other direction, only in retaliation.

A far more accurate explanation for the ferocious hostility is the teachings to which he was continually subjected in school, and the views he imbibed from the adults in his family and community. He was not born with hatred for Israelis and Jews. That had to be inculcated into him by his environment.

If the IDF should foreswear its defensive wars against its attackers, what about the equally young teenaged boys in Germany, Italy and Japan at the end of World War II? Why have they not continued to take pot shots at, and engage in suicide bombings against the US and its Allies? The Irish and the English have made peace with one another. Ditto for the native peoples and the US army. All around the world nations have buried the hatchet with each other, and not in each other’s skulls; they live peacefully with each other.

But suppose, arguendo, this hypothesis is actually true. The malevolence of the Palestinian boy will never abate; instead, it will be transferred to his own sons, and live for ever after. What then should Israel do?

Under such assumptions the options of the Israelis are slim and dim. What is now being done by the IDF will not solve this egregiously problematic threat. There are only two alternatives.

One, pack and go home. Leave the Middle East en masse. If this present war will carry on indefinitely, one option is to retreat.

There are problems here. Many Israelis are adamant that they will never depart from the Holy Land. They are, if anything, even more stubborn about this than even the proverbial Palestinian boy we have been considering. They and their forebears have lived in these now contested lands for eons and will never give them up, assuming no Messiah arrives on the scene. If the fighting men depart out of fear of the grownup Palestinian boy, these folk will all die. Truly stated Bibi Netanyahu: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ?violence. If the Jews put ?down their weapons ?today, there would be no ?more Israel.” This is not a happy conclusion for those who support justice.

Here is an entirely separate difficulty: where is this “home” to which the Israelis can flee? There is no such place. When Canadian authorities in the late 1930s and early 1940s were asked how many Jews fleeing Hitler they would accept as immigrants, the infamous answer was, wait for it, “None is too many!” Matters might be better nowadays in that and other countries, but not by much. There is no evidence of any national jurisdiction calling for stepped up immigration of Jews, let alone any at all. There is plenty of migration from the Middle East to Europe, but this consists mainly of Muslims. Jews would be even less welcome there as a result.

The other option, of course, is for the IDF to increase its level of military action against its enemies. If the backs of this people are against the wall and they have no place to retreat, then the present level of defensive violence is simply insufficient. It is simply breeding malice and ill will.

Shock and awe must become the order of the day. The IDF must use more of its might to the degree that our Palestinian boy draws a very different conclusion than revenge. He must be made to realize that he has met his match and more, far more. He must be made to respect and, yes, fear, the overwhelming power of the Israeli army. The IDF is the fourth strongest army in the world, exceeded in power only by the US, China and Russia. Its enemies are a rag tag bunch of criminals led by Iran, a far weaker nation. The problem with Israel is that it has been fighting not with one arm behind its back, but with one and three quarters of its hand perched there. It has paid far too much attention to its press clippings; to world opinion; to the votes of the United Nations. It is time, it is past time, to do what is necessary for itself and its people. It must end these wars once and for all with an overwhelming use of its military ability.

Then that boy will sit up and take notice – if he survives.