by RAYMOND GEUSS
Ancient Roman historians often told the story of how a small, rather undistinguished city-state in central Italy became a huge empire exclusively by fighting defensive wars. At school everyone used to read of how Caesar conquered all of Gallia (Gaul) by doing nothing more than responding with moderation to intolerable provocations by tribelets in what we now call France, Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries. But for his heroic intervention, Caesar claimed, those tribesmen would soon have been howling and screaming for blood around the sacred pomerium of the City of Rome, 1,500 kilometres away and on the other side of the Alps. Plutarch claims that Caesar killed a million Gauls and enslaved a further million. Even if this is an exaggeration, it is agreed that the scale of the destruction was enormous. How odd that the other side always initiated the war, that they usually suffered the most casualties, and that the conflict usually ended with Rome snipping off another piece of someone else’s territory.
Every pupil used also to read, in Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of a band of defeated wanderers from the ruined city of Troy, who were driven into exile ‘by fate’, but were also promised great things by the god Jupiter: that they would one day become a mighty nation if they returned to their ‘ancient mother’, the homeland from which their ancestors sprang, namely Italy. Virgil recounts the enormous difficulties the exiled Trojans had in establishing themselves in Italy, including the long and bloody war they had to fight against the tribes who were already there.
Is there a contemporary parallel to any of this? Does one come spontaneously to mind?
Since 1948, Israel has conducted wars and military operations against virtually all of its neighbours (Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Qatar; have I left any out?), while pursuing a relentless, murderous campaign against the Palestinians. In the midst of all this, those Zionists who also wish to be thought of as liberals are perennially fervent in their calls for a peaceful resolution. Peacefully resolving conflict, through negotiation and discussion, is indeed a laudable liberal virtue, provided, of course, that it is not a Tacitean peace: ‘they devastate the place and call that peace’ (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant), Tacitus writes, referring to the Romans’ conduct in Britain. Making peace can be very difficult, especially when one side insists on assassinating or imprisoning the adversary’s potential negotiators (see yesterday’s airstrike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar, to cite only the most recent instance).
In view of Israel’s track record – and daily conduct – its protestations of peaceful intent and promises to negotiate in good faith ring hollow. Netanyahu and his supporters claim that they want a peace which could be immediately realised if Hamas released its hostages, but also state that they fully intend to fight on even if the hostages are released. Netanyahu and the other hardline Zionists in his cabinet argue: ‘They attacked us first, so we have a right to do whatever we want. We propose to take as much land as we can by force, and just you try to stop us.’ On the softer end of the Zionist spectrum, liberal Zionists reiterate the usual claims that Israel is concerned only with peace and security in the region: ‘Why do they always threaten us? Why won’t they ever give us the peace and security which is all we really want?’ The ‘security’ which former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored last week, said he wants Israelis to enjoy means in the first instance unchallenged occupation of land, most of which was appropriated, mostly very violently, from Palestinians within human memory, and which he, naturally, proposes to keep. Bennett went on to appeal to Hamas to surrender and disarm voluntarily, and to place its trust in Israel to end the war. Imagine Lucius Gellius or Marcus Crassus making a similar offer to Spartacus. Can we imagine Spartacus accepting it?
As far as the prospects for the future are concerned, hardline Zionists want a Greater Israel (maximally from the Nile to the Euphrates), while many liberal Zionists still nominally support a two-state solution. Thus the Israeli historian Fania Oz-Salzberger, a commentator with impeccable liberal Zionist credentials, wrote in the Financial Times recently, ‘We need Israel and Palestine to share the land, either by partition or by a creative confederate structure enabling sovereignty and self-rule for both nations. Israel must be democratic, peaceful and secure; Palestine at the very least stable and unsupportive of terror.’
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