If you ask white Americans whether Black slavery was wrong, I would think that almost all would agree with that. The same would be true if you asked about the treatment of native Americans during the colonial period and early years of the Republic.

But white Americans today by and large give little thought to those questions, and, as we see, many Americans, including many who rank high in our government, not only don’t think about them, they don’t want to think about them. They do not want to interrupt their appreciation of the life so many of us lead by thinking about how we got here. And even among those who might think about those things now and then, the questions “If I had been alive then, what would I have thought and how would I have acted?” rarely comes to mind.

Now, let us switch to the Middle East.

Let’s look at Israel 100 years from now. There are at least five  possibilities. I am going to list them, but am not going to give odds as to which are more or less likely.

1. Israel no longer exists as a sovereign state, and the area from the river to the sea is free of Jews.
2. Israel no longer exists and the area comprises a different country with a mixed Jewish-Arab population.
3. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states at peace with Israel.
4. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states always in a hot or cold war with Israel.
5. Israel has expanded to include Gaza and the West Bank.

The right wing of the Netanyahu coalition, and by now, maybe Netanyahu himself, are banking on scenario number 5. They discount the possibility of scenario 3 and the others are unacceptable. 

Getting to scenario 5 might be brutal, just like getting to today’s United States was brutal, but once you get there, the brutality will be limited to history books. Or, as we see today’s tendencies in this country, the brutality may not even make it big in those books.

Of course, scenario 5 may never be achieved, but the other four possibilities (plus others that you could add to my list) should be, they think, much less appealing to those who want to minimize conflict in the 22nd century. They see the necessity of increased conflict in the 21st to achieve future stability in the 22nd. They feel themselves the bringers of peace to Israel. And they are betting on the potential of achieving scenario 5, and that the conflicts that lead there will largely be forgotten, tacitly approved, or at least understood.

You and I don’t live in the 22nd century. We think about a much shorter term future. We disapprove of how the Palestinians are being treated, just as we strongly disagree with how most Palestinians seem to be thinking about their own future.

After all, a Palestinian could have written the post. His or her scenario 5 would be very different.  Palestine from the river to the sea. Jews exiled or turned into barely second class citizens. And it is that opposite vision that makes scenario 4, a scenario that no one wants, a possibility.

The right wing Israelis and the right wing Palestinians are each willing to sacrifice the 21st century to bring about their version of the 22nd, a version characterized as peaceful, forgetfulness forgiving.

Who are we, looking into the future our own 21st century preferences is likely to bring about, to say they are wrong?

I think of two quotes. First, Senator Joni Ernst, who said, “We’re all going to die”, so (I add) whether it’s by disease or violence, does it matter in the long-run? And Pres. John Adams who talked about the necessity of fighting wars, so that yhe next generation can bring about prosperity, and so the generation after that can enjoy literature and music.

Not a sermon. Just a thought.