Last night CNN’s Kaitlan Collins made a fool of former attorney general William Barr after he said he will vote for Donald Trump by pointing out that Barr, the former chief legal officer of the United States was backing an insurrectionist and a man with 88 criminal counts against him, among other things. Barr looked about as uncomfortable as one can look before muttering that he will support the Republican ticket.

I assumed that would be the highlight of the show, but no, it wasn’t. Her next guest was Michael Moore, who (in spite of sounding a bit incoherent) gave a plea to President Biden to cut off funding to Israel until the Gaza War is ended. It was an “l support Israel and I hate antisemitism but this war is outlandish” kind of plea, calling – among other things – on the moral authority of the Pope and Biden’s Catholic faith.

But then he said something that took me aback. He quoted what he called the Likud Party charter from 1977. The Likud Party of course is the party of Benjamin Netanyahu and in 1977 was the party of Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s first Likud Prime Minister.

From what I can see, Moore was not quoting the party’s charter, but their 1977 platform. The platform said that Israeli sovereignty would control the land from – you may have already guessed it – the river to the sea.

Wikipedia has an entire entry called “From the River to the Sea” that you may find interesting. I did. But it got me thinking. What if “they” are right? What if Israel is engaged in what should be viewed as a form of genocide?

Let’s look at it in two different ways. First, let’s look at those religious (is that really the right word?) Zionists who believe God did give the land of Israel to the Jews and that the land of Israel goes from the river to the sea. Presumably they would do anything to fulfill God’s wishes, using the conquest of much of this area by Joshua, as related in the biblical texts, as a model. We could call them Aggressive Zionists.

And then there are those who are tired of now-and-then wars and constant pressure and tension from Arabs who want to destroy Israel and who believe that the only solution to totally eliminate the threat. Let’s call them Defensive Zionists.

And we can assume that most Jewish Israelis have a little, or a lot, of both in them. (I say Jewish Israelis of course because 20% of Israel proper is Muslim…but that’s another story.) And let’s assume from the perspective of a Jew living in Israel, neither position is irrational.

The current Israeli government is made up of Aggressive Zionists and Defensive Zionists. Extreme examples of both. They were voted into the Knesset by the Israeli population. And, by my definition, they believe in Israeli sovereignty from the river to the sea. And their strength has grown, it would appear, substantially since 1977.

So now let me extrapolate. The horrific attack by Hamas occurs. As bad and perhaps unnecessary as it was, it gave Likud the excuse it needed, or the rationale if not the excuse, to – in effect – go nuclear.

By this, I mean to work to eliminate the possibility of non-Israeli sovereignty anywhere from the river to the sea. To simply flatten Gaza. To set the stage for the mass emigration of Gaza residents because it will be impossible for them to stay. And all those other Arab countries with room to spare will no longer be able to bury their heads in their omnipresent sand, and will have to take them in.

Certainly there will be casualties, and these are to be regretted, at least for the most part. But the casualties will be forgotten or fade from importance as time passes. At least, this is the theory.

And while this is going on, there will be similar pressure for dispersal from the West Bank and, after Gaza is resolved, West Bank pressure may be increased even more.

After all, they may think, the vast majority of Jews in Israel were either kicked out of Europe or out of the Muslim middle east or North Africa. Horrendous situations then, maybe even worse than what is happening now. And people move all the time. All around the world. Voluntarily. By necessity. For all sorts of reasons. Why should these moves be any harder or special in any way.

This is obviously not a pretty picture, and we may want to oppose it. But what is the way to do that? Or, you may think that we shouldn’t oppose it. You may be an Aggressive or a Defensive Zionist who thinks it’s time to take a stand. You wouldn’t be alone.

One last thing – this presents one facet of this story. A similar piece written about Palestinian leadership would probably look even worse.

From the River to the sea

It’s the stuff of historee.