How Jews and Palestinians Somewhat Coexisted (Until the US and Russia came)

People have been calling Jews colonizers and all Palestinians terrorists, but only an ignorance of history would cause people to make such claims. The Jews have a claim to the land as much as the natives who had their land stolen from them in the United States and the Palestinians are not all monsters and many want to peacefully coexist. In fact, both groups used to coexist better than what we currently see in the modern world until two global superpowers got involved with their international dick-measuring contest we now know as the Cold War.

For those who do not know, the original version of the Levant was shared between Bedouin Muslims, Christians, and Sephardic Jews who mostly lived in the region. While they did not perfectly co-exist, they were able to somewhat live together without the major conflicts that we see today. A lot of the problems, unfortunately, started during the rise of nationalism which started to be increasingly fuelled by global superpowers.

After World War II, the United States of America and Britain wanted to have a way to dominate parts of the Middle East to help fight Soviet influence and wanted to create a state in the Middle East, but use it as a kind of buffer state for influence, leading to many Jews being dumped in the Middle East under British policies. Many Jews who wanted self-determination and Jewish resistance groups actually hated these policies and formed coordinated attacks with some help from Arab alliances against the British military. Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion even went as far as to describe Britain like so: “A more evil, foolish and short-sighted policy could not be imagined… Satan himself could not have created a more distressing and horrible nightmare.” More extreme resistance moved on to more terroristic tactics like the bombing at the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 which led to the death of many civilians, which was what the British government needed to help support the dismantling of many of these resistance groups - even ones not involved. The British supported more nationalistic and imperialistic individuals willing to fall in line with their policies for a future state while some British people like Constable Sydney Burr referred to Jews and Arabs alike who opposed the policies as “ugly specimens” and complained they got “not a word of thanks” for controlling the region while boosting nationalistic tension.

Support for Israeli nationalism and expanding power in the Middle East became an important issue for the United States as World War Two ended and the United States looked, at least partially, to take over where the British had left off. According to the book American Presidents and the Middle East, President Truman decided there were three important sectors for America to win the Cold War: "the Soviet threat, the birth of Israel, and petroleum.". A lot of the focus in continuations of Truman's policy was less on coexistence or even the plight of the Jewish people and more on preventing Soviet influence in Turkey and Iran. This also came with the rise of nationalism in America and the idea that 'true Americans' must crush anyone who might support the communist menace that led to more imperialistic policies for US power.

But the Soviet Union and Russia are not free from criticism either. People also seem to forget there is a reason Hamas is disliked by those - even those supporting Palestinian independence: Hamas is a Sunni Islamist organization. Similar to Jewish nationalism with Zionism, Hamas has a very 'my way or the high way' look when it comes to the idea of coexistence. They oppose the social democratic movement Fatah that is ok with the two-state solution in the region and other more moderate Palestinian organizations that also want independence. They have also targeted civilians, even those within Palestine who are Muslim but do not support them since they believe loyal Muslims have an obligation to destroy Israel and go with their version of Sunni Islam. What does this have to do with the Cold War - you might be asking? Because while the Soviet Union officially opposed Hamas, the KGB started courting Hamas and giving weapons to these militants to oppose the United States during the Cold War which is somewhat described in the book Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to Gorbachev and other text. Even after the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia continues to have relations with Hamas and even provides them with weapons.

What was the point of this? The idea that comes from talking heads talking about evil Jewish colonizers and glamorizing Hamas or those claiming we should kill all the Muslims and that they are the real colonizers is too simple. The real colonizers, ironically, are the same people or the parents of the same people blaming the Jews and Muslims. Some of the blame falls on the United States/Britain and Russians who disturbed a part of the Middle East that - while not perfectly peaceful - was far less violent than what we see now due to their Cold War antics. The real imperialists are the people in the US & Britain now blaming the Jews when they were the ones who helped to disturb whatever coexistence was already there and helped to promote nationalism for their own ambitions while only somewhat caring about the plight of the Jews beyond what could benefit them. Meanwhile, the Soviets and Russia came from a similarly selfish position, giving aid to very militant groups like Hamas as a form of imperialism while ignoring more moderate groups since their focus is also more on amassing power than caring about the deeper politics in this part of the Middle East. Obviously, these superpowers are not solely to blame and there is more to this conflict, but I would argue their influence is how the conflict grew to this point and it feels more as if the real imperialists are the same people trying to blame the Jews or the Muslims when they should honestly be looking in the mirror - or at least at their parents or their politicians/businessmen who profit off of trying to 'control the Middle East' and keeping a proxy conflict going.