‘They only understand force’: The deadly racism behind Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians
Palestinians inspecting the damage after an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza on 18 October 2024
Dahlia Scheindlin writes in Haaretz on 22 October 2024:
After a string of spectacular Israeli assassinations was topped by the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, an analysis in The New York Times probed deeper into Israel’s reliance on violence to execute revenge, sabotage or strategic deterrence.
Prominent thinkers such as Micah Goodman and Yossi Klein Halevi fit Sinwar’s demise into the historic arc of Zionism, with Goodman characterizing a view articulated by Zeev Jabotinsky in 1923: That “there will only be peace when our enemies lose hope that the Jewish state won’t exist.”
This explanation can’t be excluded from the Israeli mind-set. But it also seems like a far-reaching justification for related, but cruder, sentiment that is far more prominent in Israel today than early Zionism and Jabotinsky: That Arabs, or the Middle East, or simply “they,” only understand force.
In 2017, Mideast analyst Nathan Thrall put this paradigm at the center of his book “The Only Language They Understand,” which he correctly noted applies to both Israelis and Palestinians. His analysis included both diplomatic pressure with military force, though these are decidedly different in daily life.
The United States’ four-page letter last week warning that Israel might violate the technical human rights-related restrictions on U.S. military exports, implying limitations on arms sales in the future, is different from Hezbollah lobbing a drone at your house – like the one that hit Benjamin Netanyahu’s villa in Caesarea. In the Middle East this year, military force is the currency.
But regarding the Israeli side of this equation, there’s an additional pressing factor. The conviction that the other side only understands force isn’t just because the Middle East is a tough neighborhood, which it is. It’s also partly due to straight-up, old-world racism.
Israelis famously eschew political correctness. I’ve heard any number of participants in focus groups in Israel begin a sentence “I’m not a racist, but…” or “Peace would be nice, but we don’t live in Switzerland – when the Middle East is like Switzerland, there will be peace.” A man in Lod told me recently: “We Jews don’t have the instinct to kill and murder. But I see it in them, even things like how they drive.” Another common trope is: “Take it from me, I know them – Arabs only understand force.”
Everyday conversations are regularly echoed and reinforced by voices in Israeli academia and the media.
In early September, Middle East researcher Edy Cohen told Channel 14 (the pet channel of Likud and its far-right governing coalition partners): “In this world, the equation is simple: When Israel uses force and employs force – the Arab world and terrorist groups are afraid. When Israel hesitates and takes policy actions like containment or non-escalation, it’s perceived as weak, and invites further blows from terror organizations.”
A ball of fire rising from an explosion on al-Zafer apartment tower, following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City during the 2014 wa
The ultra-Orthodox editor of one of the most important Haredi newspapers, Mishpacha, posted on X in late September: “In the Middle East they understand only the language of force. Whatever doesn’t work through force will succeed through more force. All the rest is irrelevant.” His tweet did arouse a wave of derision from the virtual public, but only due to the irony that his own community of Haredim refuse to join the military. It was hard to find a shadow of doubt about his assertion, which is axiomatic in Israeli discourse.
The fallacies of force
Acknowledging the scourge of racism that buoys the “only through force” view isn’t a gratuitous statement that Israelis are inherently evil. No group is inherently evil, but most groups do harbor racism or chauvinism of some sort. The problem needs to be named in order to explain reality better, and to try to fix it.
Racism, of course, is immoral and wrong – a primitive sentiment in its own right. But it turns out to be irrational, and deadly too. For a start, the racist underpinnings to “they only understand force” contributed to the October 7 attack. The idea that the Middle East is more primitive and responds to brute force led Israel to bask in the “success” of Operation Protective Edge. That 2014 war with Gaza generated huge Palestinian casualties (over 2,000 was considered a heavy toll then), and significantly weakened Hamas. The big blow, in this view, proved itself through years of relative quiet before the next major escalation in May 2021. To the extent that the public thought about Netanyahu’s Qatar-cash scheme, it was force that people credited more.
The belief that Palestinians only understand muscle complements a corresponding view that the Jewish state is intellectually, technologically and culturally superior. Netanyahu had a stump speech basking in the disproportionate number of Israeli Nobel Prize winners, or cybersecurity innovators and IPOs. All true, but Netanyahu – and too often Israelis take his cue – treats success as hasbara, evidence that Israel is doing things right in the places where it’s going wrong.
The self-image of Jewish genius was marshaled to conjure military superiority. Technological ingenuity could keep Gaza under wraps, in combination with a population kept submissive through regular rounds of “mowing the grass.” What left Israelis’ heads spinning was not just the crushing failure of their military and intelligence systems on that day; it was the realization that over years of planning, Palestinians had outsmarted them in all possible ways.
Hamas outsmarted Israel militarily, finding simple solutions to destroy the highest-tech surveillance – thereby overpowering Israel’s military strength for far too long, on its sovereign territory. Most painful of all, Hamas outsmarted Israel psychologically. Sinwar knew that Israel thought its heavy force in 2014 had deterred Hamas. He was able to lull Israel into believing they were right. Sinwar not only spoke Hebrew; he spoke Israeli. He too firmly believed Israel, and maybe the world at large, only understand force – since nothing else puts Palestine back on the map.
Before and beyond October 7, in the longer term, overreliance on force and military strategies has destroyed diplomacy. The former Israeli diplomat and Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas recently argued that Netanyahu has gutted the Foreign Ministry, which has been “reduced to a glorified travel agency,” while elevating hasbara to the fool’s gold version of diplomacy.
Some might counter that Netanyahu was conservative militarily and avoided big wars, before October 7. But he still relied on force – military occupation in the West Bank, and effective control over Gaza, with regular mini-wars there. After October 7, many believe Israel needs to use more force. Diplomacy – not tweaks on the number of work permits, but a horizon for change, hope for a future, material and national-symbolic prospects for a better Palestinian life – has hardly been seriously entertained.
If anyone isn’t sure about the buffoonery of Israeli diplomacy – here’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz with a load of gobbledygook: “It’s undemocratic and unacceptable” that France won’t allow Israeli weapons companies to participate in its naval arms exhibition, he fumed on X. To be fair, Israel’s military exports are a huge source of revenue, and reached a record high of $13 billion in 2023. Since air defense systems make up the largest portion and this is a year full of real-life testing, Israel surely hopes to sell more – it would be a convenient way to offset the tremendous cost of the war. But it’s not very skilled diplomacy to post on X about “taking legal action and diplomatic steps” against French President Emmanuel Macron.
Pinkas’ true critique was that Israel has “not produced even one diplomatic initiative … one innovative idea. … Israel’s challenges change, opportunities arise. Israeli diplomacy has been subdued and paralyzed.”
A caveat is in order. Israel has in fact embraced diplomacy recently, in a creative and innovative way, via the Abraham Accords. But the cliché that one makes peace with enemies, not friends, is true. It was worth hoping that the new partnership – or at least the gleaming streets of Abu Dhabi and the glittering boulevards of Dubai – would chip away at Israel’s stereotypes of primitive Arabs who only understand force. If the idea was to use diplomacy with friends, to avoid diplomacy with enemies – something’s wrong.
The case for diplomacy – evidence-based
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi shaking hands with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud in Riyadh, October 2024
The racism-tainted tropes about force being the only currency is foolish because so much evidence weighs in favor of diplomacy. Recently, I read some Israeli X users arguing against the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. One observed that there had been attacks against Israeli civilians in both cases. I was incredulous: the horrific attack in Jordan was in 1997 and killed seven schoolgirls; in 2023, an Egyptian policeman killed two Israeli tourists. Compared to the October 7 toll, such a low death toll since 1979 and 1994 is, well, incomparable. Lower body counts is a low bar, but these are low times – no wars between these erstwhile bitter enemies for decades on end matters.
The Middle East is pulling ahead of Israel on regional diplomacy. After Iran and its proxies attacked the United Arab Emirates and Saudi oil facilities in 2019 – these sides are reverting to diplomacy to avoid a resurgence. Iran’s foreign minister has recently embarked on a diplomatic grand tour of the region, cultivating Arab states – including numerous Israeli allies or potential partners such the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
It is becoming inexplicable that Israel rejects a perfectly good option of normalization with Saudi Arabia as the basis for a regional agreement and Palestinian self-determination. A better deal from Israel’s perspective won’t come around. This agreement would both secure regional partnerships in light of Iran’s nefarious role, but could also bridge gaps in a changing Middle East whose lines of division are not so clear.
A path to Palestinian statehood and a cease-fire could facilitate renewed diplomacy between the United States, the great powers, the Gulf and Iran. Iran in turn might curb its nuclear program through diplomacy – the evidence is that it did so once – instead of threatening to build nuclear weapons in light of the war. That’s good for Israel.
What’s also good for Israel is acknowledging that racism is not just wrong, it’s dangerous and blew up in its face. Not all Israelis are racist, of course; but all Israelis can do better.
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