Willfully Ignorant:  Jews Who Blame Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Lawrence Martin
drlarry437@gmail.com

Essay based on information in:

http://www.lakesidepress.com/JewsWhoBlameIsrael.pdf

I was raised in a conservative Jewish household, married a Jewish woman, raised three Jewish girls, and now have five Jewish grandchildren. During a four-decade career in medicine, our family was active in the large Jewish community of Cleveland, which was (and remains) very pro-Israel. Yet during this period, if you had given me a quiz on the history of Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (IPC), I would have flunked. I was busy seeing patients, writing books on medical topics, teaching. It was only after retirement and three trips to Israel that I became knowledgeable about this history, and began to take note of the range of Jewish opinions about the long-standing IPC.

That’s when I realized that many of my “pro-Israel” Jewish friends, acquaintances and, yes, relatives, placed a significant part of the blame for the IPC on Israel. They did so for a variety of reasons, e.g., Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”); its settlements in Judea and Samaria; its refusal to accept Palestinian peace proposals and set up a two-state solution.

All of these criticisms of Israel “sounded” legitimate, but when I raised questions about the underlying history, I found an amazing level of ignorance. I did no scientific survey, did not offer any formal quiz. I simply came to realize that many of their criticisms fell apart – rang hollow is a better term – when examined against the actual history, of which they seemed unaware. I began to keep a list of things these Jewish critics should know about if they were to have informed opinions, but did not. Some examples:

• Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937, colluded with Hitler during WWII to exterminate the Jews in the Middle East if Germany won the war. Hussseini’s leadership – political and religious authority mixed with organized violence and the intimidation of rivals – set the attitude for all future Palestinian leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat.
• Since 1937 the Arab leaders have turned down or refused to negotiate five formal offers of a two-state solution.
• The 1988 Hamas Covenant called for the destruction of Israel. The “revision” in 2017, with slightly different language, did not renounce the 1988 covenant
• Israel pulled all its citizens out of Gaza in 2005, hoping this would lead to peace. Hamas won a parliamentary election over the Palestinian Authority, then went to war with the PA and kicked them out of Gaza in 2007; there has been no election since.
• The “pay to slay” program of the Palestinian Authority spends about $300 million yearly, the money going to Arabs who commit terrorist acts against Israelis; if the terrorists are killed, the money goes to their families.
• Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria from 1948 until the Six-Day War in June 1967, a period during which the country made no attempt to establish a Palestinian state on the land.
• There are two N. agencies for the world’s refugees: United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA, established 1949) for the Palestinians, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, established 1950) for the rest of the world. Under UNRWA, all descendants of every original Palestinian refugee are, in perpetuity, also considered a refugee – a distinction unique to Palestinians and not to any other group. As result, upwards of 6 million Palestinians are called refugees, so if they are granted the often sought “right of return” brought up in peace negotiations, that would signify the end of Israel.

None of this information is hidden, or obscure, but I saw that it was almost never mentioned in left-wing print and other media that routinely slanted their editorials to criticize Israel for the ongoing IPC. So, for example, an essay would often mention that Israel has no interest in establishing a two-state solution, and never mention the history of Arab refusals. This bias helped explain the willful ignorance of so many progressive Jews, who relied only on this media for information about Israel. (I found the worst bias, due its almost daily output of anti-Israel writing, was, and remains, The New York Times; see www.lakesidepress.com/NYTBiasAgainstIsrael.pdf.)

I found the bias also manifest in reporting on anti-Semitism in the U.S. The left-wing media ignored or seriously underreported the issue whenever Democrats were the source. As a result, the willful ignorance among Jews I encountered often showed up in the following ways.

• Recognized the anti-Semitic threat from the far right, but tended to minimize anti-Semitism coming from the far-left.
• Found no alarm regarding the BDS movement, unaware of its singular goal, to destroy Israel, as made clear by its founder Omar Bougati (whom they never heard of).
• Supported, or at least were not critical of, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), despite her support of anti-Semitic claims (“Isreal is apartheid”), causes (BDS), and politicians (other members of the “Squad”)
• Acknowledged that other congressional “Squad” members, including llhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, were anti-Semitic, but downplayed their importance as “a tiny minority” in Congress.
• Brushed off the well-documented anti-Semitism of the Black Lives Matter movement, opining that it only comes from a few of the BLM chapters, not all of them.

To document all that I had learned, in the summer of 2021 I created a website titled: “Willfully Ignorant: Jews Who Blame Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” (Link shown in the heading.) Back then I wrote:

“Progressive American Jews will acknowledge the terrorist activities by Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but they nonetheless feel that Israel bears significant blame for the ongoing Conflict. The most important aspect of this belief system is that if Israel would just change somehow, there could be a peaceful solution. Israel is the impediment.”

To present all the relevant information in a digestible format, I divided the website into discrete sections, each with multiple references. Some of the section titles:

• The Arabs Want All the Land, from the River to the Sea
• The Arab Position: Israel has no right to exist
• Willful Ignorance and Democratic Politicians
• The False Distinction between Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism
• What if Israel Disappeared?

All of the “willfully-ignorant Jews” I encountered were college graduates, with the resources and ability to learn the relevant history, but they chose not to. I found that their “progressivism” made them pretty much tune out any conservative media, such as The Wall Street Journal. When I tried to quote Alan Dershowitz, whose books document the lies published by many far-left Jewish academics, I was rebuked with “Don’t quote me Alan Dershowitz!” Dershowitz was (and remains) a pariah, mainly because he had argued against impeachment of President Trump in 2019. Hence, a great source of information, simply canceled by this group.

They also knew nothing of pro-Israel websites that could  inform them about the reality of media bias, like Camera.org, Israpundit.org, Algemeiner.com, JNS.org, and Memri.org.  Based on all this information, I concluded that the beliefs of Jews who blamed Israel for the IPC were “ill-founded and not based on reality.”

Over the next two years I periodically updated the website, adding references and strengthening my argument about willful ignorance. Then came the Hamas Massacre of October 7, 2023. What now?

The Hamas massacre and ensuing Gaza war created a whole new landscape for willfully-ignorant Jews. They turned their wrath onto Netanyahu and his rightwing cabinet for continuing the war in Gaza and not securing peace. They saw the divide within Israel among its own citizens, and took comfort that many Israelis also wanted a change in their country’s government.

Are these American Jews still willfully ignorant? Sadly, in most cases, yes. What I’ve found is that Jews who were willfully ignorant before Oct 7, 2023, are still too quick to accept media propaganda aimed against Israel, especially accusations of Israel purposely blowing up hospitals, of starving Gazans, and of committing “genocide.” Even when Camera.org pointed out the lies, and some media were forced to issue retractions or corrections to their reporting, the false claims stayed within the minds of these people.

Why? Why? Why? One answer is hatred of Trump, and his support of Netanyahu. For calumny purposes, Trump and Netanyahu are often paired together. Anything they do or say is fodder for blaming Israel for not ending the war, for all the destruction in Gaza, for settler fighting in Judea and Samaria.

Here it is important to point out that I am politically an Independent, and avoid as much as possible any discussion of American politics when discussing the IPC. By contrast, willfully ignorant Jews are mostly (if not exclusively) Democrats, and seem to want to make the discussion “political,” Now, two years after the Hamas massacre, it’s come to something like “get rid of Trump and Netanyahu” and peace will follow, or at least be possible.

Nonsense. The I-P conflict in the Middle East, and barriers to peace between Israel and its hostile Arab neighbors, have nothing to do with who is in power in Israel or the U.S. The conflict long preceded the current leaders, and will continue long after they are gone. Jews who want to lay the blame on politics, and the solution on political change in either country, are simply “willfully ignorant.”

From the beginning my goal in creating this website has been two-fold. One, to help teach myself the history of the IPC conflict. I find writing for publication (print or online) is the best way to learn about a subject; it forces you to get your facts right, to document presented information. My second goal has been to communicate with those intelligent Jews who wish to escape their willful ignorance, and by so doing create informed opinions that can be discussed, debated, challenged. To a large extent I have succeeded in the first goal. As to the second, goal, I still have a long way to go.

***

Lawrence Martin is a retired physician. He has written 30 books, including fiction and nonfiction, which are listed on his website

www.lakesidepress.com/LawrenceMartinBooks.pdf.

His latest book is: Boycott: A Novel – Love and Conflict on an Elite College Campus

It deals with the rise of anti-Semitism on a fictional campus outside Chicago, in the year before October 2023.

Kindle e-book

https://www.amazon.com/Boycott-Novel-Conflict-College-Campus-ebook/dp/B0FNH2PB6D/

Print

https://www.amazon.com/Boycott-Novel-Conflict-College-Campus/dp/B0FNJZKZ7B/