[Gamblor]

Morality and Geopolitik
Maoz Azaryahu
May. 24, 2004

For some, Shavuot is mainly about cheesecakes. For others, still familiar with earlier Zionist traditions, it is the festival of the first fruits, as once enacted in kibbutzim and in elementary schools. For many it commemorates the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, at the center of which are the Ten Commandments.

The divine provenance of the Law renders it absolute, unlike the laws enacted by mortal humans. Yet beyond theology, the power of the commandments lay in the way they formulated fundamental notions about justice. Since law and its application is the quintessence of justice, and in order for them to be interpreted as such, they should correspond with an instinctive human understanding of justice and moral behavior.

Laws are the rules of the game. And applying the rules of the game is essential for producing a sense of justice. It is all too human that many who believe in the rules also assume that these rules mainly apply to others. It seems that even if everyone sincerely pledges to apply the Ten Commandments, or at least those which regulate human relationships, the world will very much look the same.

The problem is in the formulation: "Thou shall not kill" – thou, not I. The problem is that too often we encounter the premise that what applies to others does not necessarily oblige me.

Such a selective understanding undermines the moral foundations of justice. This becomes clearly evident in the case of the so-called right of return, a powerful moral argument and the precondition for and epitome of a "just peace" as demanded by Arabs and their enlightened allies.
Since the demand for a just peace is almost universally accepted, it seems appropriate to scrutinize it.

How just is the Arab-Palestinian insistence on the right to return to the villages and towns from which they fled or were forced to leave in Israel's War of Independence?

As repeatedly emphasized by Arabs and their allies, the right of return for Arab-Palestinian refugees of the 1948 War is about justice, and by necessity about what is moral - and what is not. Champions of the right of return claim to address not only the humanitarian plight of displaced persons who lost their homes in the wake of the war. They maintain that they intend to rectify wrongdoing, fight evil, and restore the moral order that allegedly was so bluntly disturbed by Israel's victory.

As the original sin of the Zionist state, Israel's refusal to accept the Arab-Palestinian right of return is considered not only a violation of basic human rights but also a fundamental moral flaw that undermines the foundation of the Jewish state.

Yet the issue of justice, properly addressed, is very different from the supposedly hyper-moral case presented by the Arabs and their allies.

TAKING INTO account the notion that every human transaction, be it between individuals or groups, amounts to a game with specific rules, the issue of justice is actually about the rules of the game and how these have been formulated and upheld by players.

The game metaphor does not insinuate that a war – even a just war – is just a game. War is a cruel matter: It leaves in its wake death and destruction, loss and bereavement. It is, however, a game in the sense that its conduct is subject to certain rules both players are well aware of.
So addressed, the fundamental rule of the 1948 war was a strikingly simple one: Winner takes all. The Arabs, who defied the right of the Jews for self-determination, declared the annihilation of Jewish existence to be their supreme objective. The Jews well understood what this meant in terms of survival.

Much has been written about the Arab villages and towns that were erased from the map in the wake of Israeli military victories. However, the destroyed Arab villages and towns were not free-floating in a moral vacuum. On the other side of the moral equation are the Jewish settlements that disappeared from the map during the war. Since this side of the equation is commonly absent from the discussion, some detailing seems appropriate.

The list of Jewish settlements includes Beit Ha'arava, on the shore of the Dead Sea and Atarot and Neve Ya'akov, north of Jerusalem; Kfar Darom, Yad Mordechai and Nitzanim, which were on the route of the invading Egyptian army; the four Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem (the residents of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion were massacred, the survivors of the other settlements were sent to captivity); the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem that surrendered to the besieging forces of the Trans-Jordanian Arab legion; Mishmar Hayarden, which was conquered by Syrian forces.
Some of these settlements were later restored, after Israeli forces reoccupied them.

The fate of these 11 Jewish settlements demonstrates two very simple things. One is what the rules of the game were, and how keen the Arabs were on applying them whenever they could. Wherever an Arab army conquered a Jewish settlement, this settlement ceased to exist.

Second is the magnitude of Jewish victory. The fact that many more Arab villages and neighborhoods were erased than Jewish ones is only proof that the Jews were winning the war, albeit, unlike their Arab counterparts, they did not always stick to the rules the Arabs applied whenever they could.

TO SUM UP: The rules of the 1948 war were clear to Arabs and Jews alike. The Arabs were stricter than the Jews in applying ethnic cleansing, yet had fewer opportunities to do so. However, it is the principle that matters, and here the facts are unequivocal: Not one Jewish settlement remained in Arab-controlled areas.

Furthermore: The persistent Arab demand for the right of return is morally wrong because it amounts to changing the rules of the game – the same rules Arabs determined at the onset of the war – after the game was over.

After 1948 the Arabs clearly demonstrated that their only concern was to rectify their defeat by declaring that the rules of the game they had applied were not valid. However, the rules of the game further applied to the Jews. Their right of return was never an issue in the moral equation formulated by the Arabs.

The right of return so vehemently demanded by Arabs is not a measure of justice. It is just the opposite. Because changing the rules of the game after defeat defies any notion of fairness. And without fairness, there is no justice.

Maoz Azaryahu