I want to modify a thought experiment that David Mamet suggested in his fine book The Secret Knowledge, and do so as my own response to the risible proposal coming before the U.N. this week. Excuse me, I see that “risible proposal” doesn’t narrow things down enough. I am referring to the idea that the U.N. recognize a Palestinian state without any of the troublesome conditions that Israel has placed on the creation of a neighbor (to wit, that it be a neighbor willing for Israel to remain a neighbor). Mr. Abbas is getting them all to vote on it, and if they do, Mr. Obama will have the kind of headache that starts at the ankles and gets progressively worse as it goes up. Either the United States vetoes it at the Security Council or we don’t, but either way his fat is in somebody’s fire.
So here’s the thought experiment. Say you are somewhere in the Middle East ten years from now, and a Palestinian state has in fact been formed. Ten years gives sufficient time for enough international aid to flow into that place to transform it into a paradise. This is not to say that it would be a paradise, just that enough money to do that went there. The money would actually be in Switzerland, but let us not get distracted from our main point.
A crisis hits, and you have flee whereever it is you are. You get to the airport, and you have a choice. You can get on one of two planes. One would take you to Israel, and the other to the Palestinian state. No, not Jordan, the other Palestinian state. Whichever choice you make, you will have to stay where you land for an extended period of time, years perhaps. Which plane would you get on?
If you get on the plane to Israel (as virtually all of us most certainly would), and yet are supportive of these current Palestinian shenanighans, then the only word to describe this is hypocrisy. What it would mean it this. You would be willing to support a series of actions that will make the miserable lives of the people there manifestly more miserable. That you know it would have this effect is revealed by what plane you would get on. At the same time, you are still supportive of very expensive liturgical gestures, empty ritual libations. You are sacrificing to gods you do not believe in anymore. Your lack of faith is seen in the refusal to put your own life on the line. Your continued faith is seen in your willingness to sacrifice other people, just so long as the external rituals of liberal compassion are still observed. You are willing to pour out a drink offering to Molech, and this is because Molech only devours the people who have to live near him.