Israel is a country that worries its neighbors, and they are right to worry. It is the only nuclear power in the region, it does not abide by international law, and, in its wars with genocidal dimensions, Israel makes no noticeable effort to distinguish between combatants and civilians. With criminally disdainful arrogance, it bombs the headquarters of multinational peacekeeping forces without hesitation when they stand in its way.
Moreover, this latest/current war has demonstrated its immense technological superiority over the countries of its region. Technology can, when its use is dictated by a certain logic, kill twice: once through mass murder and another because those who possess it present it as the carrier of an ideology that creates an alternative to ideology and, by extension, an alternative to politics.
Once we add the stark developments unfolding on a daily basis under the current Israeli government, from its unequivocal rejection of a Palestinian state to its encouragement of settlement in the West Bank, and its promotion of a fundamentalist nationalist-religious consciousness, we find an abundance of reasons to build immunity against it and to think ways to contain the threats it poses through political means.
But where can we get this immunity from?
The root of the problem lies in the difference between our own conditions and our words and deeds. Traditionally, the stance on Israel, in all of its episodes, has been presented as something that transcends its neighbors’ borders. However, the countries neighboring Israel all lack immunity, any immunity. Indeed, their statehoods are weak, they are deeply fragmented and atomized, and they are being devoured by sectarian, ethnic, and communal sentiments and loyalties that fall beneath statehood and nationhood.
That lays the foundations for this horrendous contradiction between heeding an extremely costly transnational call, and the structural domestic conflicts between their social components - conflicts that drag all these components beneath the state and nation. Indeed, the more we inflate our rhetoric (by saying things like "Palestine is the Arabs' great cause" or "Palestine is our compass"), the more it rings hollow.
The Arab Levent, which is neither nationalist nor patriotic despite its claims to both, has found itself embroiled, for decades, in a battle characterized as nationalist and patriotic. Not only that, the way the Israel problem has been presented, or used, aggravates the domestic fragmentation of the countries involved, making their immunity weaker and weaker.
Even in Palestine itself, the "great cause" is coupled with major domestic schisms that have played a significant role in hindering the emergence of an independent Palestinian nationalism with independent political tools.
Instead of playing a unifying role, experiences show that the most prominent outcome of taking this course is the increased fragmentation of already fragmented societies, whereby the various fragments are left on the brink of civil war. This state of affairs totally contradicts the deluded literature and rhetoric that claim our struggle with Israel is the sole foundation on which we can build our states, burdening this struggle more than it can bear, and even undermining it at times.
In this sense, the failure to seriously address the Palestinian-Israeli issue has significantly contributed to the Levant’s lack of immunity. Addressing this issue seriously entails, above all, not turning it into an excuse for not building more harmonious societies and more respectable states that militias do not toy with.
Palestine/Israel would stop being made into a pretext, albeit rhetorically sanctified, for one community to clash with others, or for a ruler to oppress his people. Such behavior not only destroys our immunity against Israel but also contributes to making the supremacist Israeli model seem appealing to the fearful or oppressed communities.
Repugnant phenomena have arisen as a result of the "cause's" role in civil wars and communal disputes and given its appropriation by security regimes (Syria) and then theocratic regimes (Iran). The most recent reflection of these phenomena was the emergence of what has been called "schadenfreude," or "penetration" by spies who are not necessarily driven by money and are, in some instances, driven by their opposition to an imposed status quo that has had intolerable communal or political repercussions.
There is another experience with immunity and losing immunity in relation to colonialism and independence that we would perhaps do well to recall. Before nation-states were established, there was genuine immunity against colonialism that was embodied by broad popular forces, parties, individuals, and movements. However, after the establishment of these states and anticolonialism’s transformation into a rhetorical shell, whose function is concealing the states’ vulnerability and repression, we found ourselves faced with bogus and artificial immunity that reflected a lack of real immunity. Thus, anticolonialism’s amplified functional noise existed alongside growing nostalgia for the colonial era - nostalgia whose articulation has taken many forms.
With regard to the Israel problem, the articulations of this weak immunity are not limited to terms like "schadenfreude" and "penetration," nor even to the boisterous slogans about the "Arab’s great cause,our compass," and others. We also have heard, on the part of those directly involved in the conflict, lies about fake victories being told to citizens, as well as an unflinching willingness to sacrifice civilians. We also saw the world brim with preposterous and tedious cliches about resistance, as well as other things of that nature that this current war has copiously offered. Thus, demands for achieving the impossible are being raised as our empathic failures to achieve the possible becomes increasingly evident.
If we may borrow, after adapting and altering it somewhat, Heidegger’s duality about poetry and technology, we could say that we are undergoing a fierce struggle between lethal technology and lousy poetry. How and where from, then, will immunity come?
