Off the face of the earth

I've found it easy to resist the surge of commentary about Mel Gibson's drunken remarks about Jews, mainly because I'm not particularly a fan of Gibson's. I thought The Passion was definitely one of the more interesting attempts at serious religious art in the film medium, but aside from that I've thought every movie that he's directed was just terrible.

But I was amused by this opening paragraph in an editorial in this morning's WSJ:

So Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu, Calif., for drunk driving, tells a police officer that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Pity the actor for not substituting the word "Israelis" for "Jews." The latter apparently confirms his long-suspected anti-Semitism. The former would have made him a darling of right-thinking progressives the world over, especially at this moment of Middle East stress.

That had kind of been my own thought as well, to be honest.

Of course, Israel represents a rather interesting question in regards to the whole idea of Just War. I tend to support Israel for something of the same reason that John Derbyshire once gave: Because in a generally oppressive and uncivilized area of the world they are one of the few fairly just and egalitarian democracies. (Ironically, the runner up in that category is arguably Lebanon.)

However, there is another half of conservatism that is much less sanguine about Israel. Some say this is because of anti-Semitism (and there is some of that in certain paleo-conservative circles from what I can see) but I think it is also because Israel represents something of a puzzle in that it is so new. Fifty years ago there was no state of Israel, and 100 years ago there was not a Jewish majority population in that area. Israel is an example of a phenomenon which has become very rare in the modern world, though it happened often in the 'Dark Ages', of a people moving into a previously populated area and securing political control over it essentially by force.

The Normans did this to England in 1066, and before them the Danes did much the same to parts of central England in the 700s to 900s. Before that, the Saxons did the same thing to the Celts and Roman Britains when they invaded. By comparison, the Israelis took a fairly peaceful route: moving into the area while it was under Turkish and then under British control, and building up to where they represented a sizeable percentage of the population before demanding political control. And yet, there is a sense in which the local Arab population can rightly see Israel as an invading population.

Much of just war doctrine centers around whether or not a war is defensive in nature. If your country is invaded, it's generally considered just to defend it. Going off and invading someone else's country requires much more work to justify -- some maintain that it can't be justified at all.

And yet, pretty much all the territory on this earth is conquered territory many times over. Which raises the question: at what point is one required to admit that no matter what you think about how the current owners acquired their territory, their right to it should now be respected? People have long memories. In Northern Ireland the IRA and the Orange Men are still fighting it out over the wrongs committed by Cromwell and William III, as well as the much more recent oppression of the Irish Catholic population. In the Balkans grudges stretch back 1000 years or more.

Israel is new by comparison -- unless you count the country established in 1948 as possessing true historical continuity with the Israelite kingdom that was dispersed in 70AD. And yet, looking at the map of the world, a goodly portion of them did not reach their current form until after 1948. I don't think there's any period of time one can lay out which makes a new country "established" rather than "invading".

Israel has stood the test of time for more than a generation, and it offers its Muslim citizens as much freedom and more opportunity, in many ways, than most of the surrounding Muslim countries do. It seems to me that at this point in history, all reasonable observers must acknowledge it as a country that is here to stay (not an invading population) and that with that status comes a need to proportionately defend itself from attack. Not that anyone has ever accused Hamas and Hezbollah of being reasonable...