For perhaps a quarter of the world’s population, President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem on December 6 was humiliating. Just for that reason it makes Middle East peace more probable. More than President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Israeli-Egyptian peace deal of 1979, President Trump is likely to be remembered as the American president who contributed most to peace.
Wars end not when the loser is defeated, but rather when the loser is humiliated. Throughout history, as I argued in a 2016 survey of ancient and modern wars, losers have fought on until they lack the manpower to fill their depleted ranks. Typically that occurs after 30% of military-age men are dead, as in France during the Napoleonic Wars, the South in the American Civil War, or Germany in the Second World War. The losing side will not abandon hostilities until all those who want to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so — unless it is humiliated before the physical exhaustion of its resources has run its course.
That is why the use of atomic weapons against Japan well may have been an act of mercy. The American fire-bombing campaign had already wrecked most of Japan’s cities and killed far more civilians than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan might have sustained far more damage in a conventional resolution through bombing and an eventual invasion. Atomic weapons humiliated the Japanese by displaying the incomparable superiority of Western technology and the pointlessness of further resistance.
There are some defeats whose memory is too painful to bear. As an executive of Bank of America, I spent considerable time at its Charlotte headquarters. My Carolina colleagues needed only a Bourbon or two to lapse into obsessive rehearsals of Civil War battles which, by rights, they should have won. They sounded goofy, but that’s what happens when you sacrifice nearly a third of your young men.
For the Palestinian Arabs and many other Muslims, the many defeats that Israel has inflicted on Arab armies — in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, as well as in smaller engagements subsequently — are too painful to bear. How is it possible that a Jewish population of only 600,000 defeated five Arab armies in the 1948 War of Independence? Or that Israel crushed the combined might of the Arab countries in a few days in June 1967? Palestinian Arabs refuse to accept their past humiliations, believing rather that the Jewish presence in the region is a temporary aberration, and that the Jewish State will be eliminated before long. Daniel Polisar reviewed some 300 polls of Arab opinion in a 2015 survey, and noted that a full 80% of Palestinian Arabs believe that the Jews have no rights to the land whatever.
Even if the Jews have the Mediterranean coast, they do not have Jerusalem, their ancient capital and the holiest of Jewish sites, the Arabs console themselves. They do not have it because the nations of the world refuse to say that they have it. To state the obvious, namely that Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, is a humiliating dictum. If the so-called micro-aggressions now abhorred at American universities are pinpricks, the declaration that Jerusalem is Jewish is a stab in the heart.
Israel, to be sure, is more powerful than all its Arab neighbors put together, and in extreme circumstances has between 100 and 300 nuclear weapons, according to the defense agency Jane’s, roughly on a par with Great Britain. The Arab strategy to destroy Israel is indirect. Israel is ringed with missiles aimed at its critical infrastructure and population centers, including 150,000 in the hands of Hezbollah. Anti-missile systems such as the short-range Iron Dome neutralized primitive ballistic missiles from Gaza during the 2014 conflict, but Hezbollah has thousands of precision-guided missiles that are harder to intercept. The objective is to draw Israel into a conflict where the Jewish state causes massive collateral damage in order to suppress missile attacks, and the “international community” reacts with horror and forces a “settlement” on Israel, requiring a withdrawal from the West Bank. That would give Israel’s enemies firing positions closer to its national airport and largest cities. Eventually the debilitating effect of encirclement and rocket attacks would make the Jewish State unviable, or so the Arab side believes.
By fostering the hope that Israel might be defeated and eliminated, the world community encourages the Palestinian Arabs and their sponsors in Tehran and Ankara to pursue a long-term war strategy
This is a dodgy strategy at best, but most Palestinian Arabs simply cannot bear to resign themselves to a small and mediocre state on the border of a far more powerful Jewish neighbor. It should be remembered that the Jewish population accepted a far smaller state in 1948 than they have now in order to gain independence, and would have stayed within its borders had the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon not attacked the infant State of Israel. The Jews simply wanted a state, even a small one with a breadth of just 15 kilometers at its narrowest point. If the Palestinian Arabs had wanted a state, they could have had one from President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak in July 2000.
So intimidated is the world community by Muslim anguish over the State of Israel that it humors the delusion that Israel can be destroyed, specifically by refusing to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. By fostering the hope that Israel might be defeated and eliminated, the world community encourages the Palestinian Arabs and their sponsors in Tehran and Ankara to pursue a long-term war strategy.
President Trump has changed all that, by acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s de jure as well as its de facto capital. The humiliation this will occasion in the Arab world cannot be underestimated. But it is the sine qua non of peace. Before they are ready to make peace, the Palestinian Arabs will have to drink the bitter draught of defeat to the dregs, and admit to themselves that their problems are not due to the depredations of imperialists, but are of their own making. The Jews have been doing this for 2,600 years, since the fall of the First Temple in 587 B.C.E. Taking responsibility for their own failings, in fact, is one of the secrets of Jewish success. In the short run, Trump’s declaration may provoke the occasional act of violence. In the longer view, he has indicated the only possible path to peace.
Though stupidity is flourishing in the minds of Israelies and their God fathers but the last decision of the GOD is their complete destruction and no so called power of the world can change this decision.
David Goldman
Here we go again. Megalomanic thought processes are dangerous. Who are you to think that you know the solution for Iraq? And that the anguish of breaking the country apart is somehow good? Such vile thinking has caused every human tragedy. Revolutions, conquests, human misery. No revolution is worth one child’s tear. And you so cavalierly dismiss the humiliation of Abu Graib, while you clearly believe that humliation is the prerequsite to forcing people to accept the utter defeat. Are you suggesting that US did not really get the idea of how to humilate Iraqis properly? Needed some Israeli adivsors?
Sun Tzu had a different view, a view of getting your enemies an exit, a face saving model that allows for the long term solution, not the cycle of violence, humiliatrion, revenge, and more violence. But this line of thinking is alien to human beings who think themselves to be Gods, who believe that being the elite that manipulates the system to generate their wealth — are superior to unwashed masses. That is to bite the hand that feeds you, the humble, patient, and in your view "stupid". But your level of Hubris does not recognize Nemesis, you are stuck up too high to recognize it.
Stop advocating lies, cruelty, and humliation as solutions to human problems around the globe. You may have reshaped Asian Times from a decent spot that it was, into pushing the imperial globalist narrative. Congratulations. But as an influential member of the Asia Times Team, you have advocated genocide of Lebanese Shia population, in the most casual manner. Your article that spells recommendations on how to annihilate Iran by nuclear weapons, poisoning its waters, etc. That should have disqualified you from any position of public trust.
No respectable information outlet should employ you, you are toxic. By not being centured for advocating genocide — you and those that support you are shoving in our faces the simple truth, that you and your supporters are above any known laws.
But then, why not just come right out to say — I have the power, nobody can challenge me? Be truthfull to youself, and do not blame Arab wars, or Palestinians.
The kind of "history" and "reality" you promote are mostly ignored by anybody with real knowledge. Having learned the simple truth, that people like yourself have zero self-examination. Zero. Blame somebody else, and move on. Unfortunatelly, much damage will be visited upon all of us, before tyour kind of arrogance is faced to look in the mirror.
As decreed by Almighty God whose Son is JESUS CHRIST.
The HOLY SPIRIT has SPOKEN.
????????????
Totally agree. He did it crudely, but it is what needed to be done.
The logic of this piece is warped at best:by humiliating the oppressed and empowering the oppresor war will end
the new chapter of jews and arabs is about to unfold. the promise land is always for the jews.
Maybe it is time for US to encounter the bitterness of nuclear bombs
"Before they are ready to make peace, the Palestinian Arabs will have to drink the bitter draught of defeat to the dregs, and admit to themselves that their problems are not due to the depredations of imperialists, but are of their own making."
What an absolutely disgusting statement. Mr. Goldman, your morals are in the gutter, only slightly above those of Agent Orange, who you apparently support.
In addition, the utterly false statements in your article state volumes about your intellectual integrity. I’d be happy to point them out, but I don’t want to waste your time and mine, and I suspect it would be a waste of time, especially when dealing with someone who not only subscribes to Bronze Age Myths but likely uses them as the basis for modern day political action. Shabbat Shalom.
David Goldman Populatoin excahgnes a/k/a ethnic cleansing, a Zionist specialty. Boy, you are a piece of work.
Marc Gunn ok, thanks for clarifying, my apologies.
David Goldman
Looks like you are deceitful in trying to rewrite history. I went to to the University library and read up on the creation of the modern state of Israel and the Zionist movement. Even a Jew must be honest before God! Or else the Jews might face karmic retribution again! Before my reasearch I was neutral. Now, I wonder about a global Jewish conspiracy for domination!
"The story of Palestine is one of betrayal and tragedy. This tragedy is not purely an Arab issue – nor can it be a purely Islamic issue any longer. It is a tragedy for the world, to quote the famous English historian, A J Toynbee. Toynbee, in his foreword to The Palestine Diary (1970), wrote, “The reason why the State of Israel exists today and why today 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs are refugees is that, for thirty years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own. The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.”
David Goldman Another New York Zionist who thinks he is more entitled to a state on the land than a Palestinian Muslim or Christian born on the land. Stick to finance.
David Goldman I read the article. I stand by my comment. Are you the author?
David Goldman You can keep that ad hominem to yourself; do tear down that wall, though. Then you no longer have to differentiate between them as “Arabs” and “Palestinians” or any other Israeli euphemism from one side of the Mediterranean all the way to the dead sea. I have visited and been on both sides of the monstrous wall, saw the good, the bad and the ugly first hand, and yes, the discrimination, mistreatment, and profiling is real, along with trigger happy personnel. I do believe a peace agreement will be hashed out during our lifetime, but perhaps it can be done more equitably, so ‘humiliation’ isn’t part of the op-ed title, while claiming equal rights for all.
David Goldman – Like Brazil?… You wish!… Jews are quite free of persecution or prejudice, in Brazil…
Amin Patel , Israeli Arabs are the ONLY Arabs in the Middle East who have free and fair elections based on one man, one vote, just courts, and equal protection under the law. They work with Jews ,vote with Jews and if they want, marry Jews. "Apartheid" is just name-calling. Shame on you.
A utopian dream. God forbid — it might turn out like Brazil!
Nobody’s stopping you! But gold has fallen from $1800 USD in 2011 to about $1250 today. You were better off in dollars.
time to trade oil with gold
David Goldman Having attended messianic evangelical church Sunday sermons, perhaps ‘how many’ might not be the right question. The ones I know, believe that a certain number of Jews have to be converted to accept Jesus, and once rapture commences, the remaining Jews well…it gets really gruesome. These folks are really into converting Jews in Russia and far flung places, Israel, included.
Evangelicals + Zionism is a marriage of convenience. No matter how you look at it, it doesn’t end well for Hamonian Kingdom 2.0 — if the current course continues. The ‘Prince of Rosh’ in your apocalyptic narrative, just can’t wait to get his hands dirty, he continues to controls the Kremlin, unhampered. If the evangelicals and the Israelis keep ticking off the Orthodox Church and her local adherents with that monstrous separation wall, this might be sooner than later, along with her Persian allies.
Tear down that wall, Mr. Goldman.
You need the neighbouring Muslims on your side (the population, not just their petro-monarchs), Palestinians included. Humiliation is not the way to go. King David was all about being just. His ‘successor’ is not going to be running an apartheid police state. That would be a breach of the covenant. Shalom.