The Mideast, Explained

The situation in the Middle East: Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Hamas, Hezbollah ... explained in less than 1500 words.

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

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Way back in the simpler times of 2014, I was initially hopeful when a news outlet (Vox) launched that promised to provide neutral context and deeper explanation of news events. I was soon disappointed. The context wasn’t really neutral - that may have been an unrealistic hope - but, more disappointing, the explanations were not very deep or, in some cases, very good. Deeper, nuanced, lengthy explanations might have been another unrealistic hope. First, because there aren’t a lot of people who are able to provide these deeper explanations. And second, because not enough people want them. The second reason is much bigger than the first. We like to simplify complex things - we like to cut to the chase, get to the bottom line, make the long story short. This is literally what TL:DR means if you have ever seen it in a social media post - Too Long: Didn’t Read. In a fast-moving world, that is understandable. Just tell me what it means. But I think another dynamic is at work, perhaps more powerful than our impatience with detail and complexity and nuance.

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I have written before about our decades-long (perhaps centuries-long) drift from a common moral framework. Western Civilization had a basic moral framework (and a basic understanding of identity and truth) provided by Judaism and Christianity that was largely accepted. We can read Shakespeare and recognize the moral universe in which he operated and the outlines of reality he assumed to be true (along with most people living in that time and place). Incidentally, this framework at the most foundational level would be shared by most understandings of Islam as well. There is a God external to us to whom we are accountable and who determines what is good and evil and who (at least at the very macro scale) guides history (history comes from His Story). As that has been discarded, a number of things have moved into the vacuum. We seem to have increasingly come to understand ourselves as free agents, able to completely (or almost completely - reality is stubborn) determine our identity, our path, our truth, our morality, and our destiny. Because we are moral creatures, we need to replace the old moral framework with something else. What we have replaced it with is something that I may spend more time on in a later dispatch. But our new moral framework seems to revolve around preserving our chosen identity and interpreting our collective actions in the world. Which is to say that politics has become one of the main, if not the main expressions of morality.

Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

By now you are beginning to suspect that this piece will not contain an explanation of the Middle East in 1500 words or less. Let me confirm your suspicions. OK, so it turns out it isn’t possible to explain the situation of the Middle East in 1500 words or less. Of course. There is a lot of history and culture and religion and politics that form the basis of any such explanation. But the truth is we are not always open to such an explanation, even if one existed. Not because we don’t understand it or even because we disagree with it on a factual basis. Because politics (and therefore much of history) is the most prominent venue of morality, we seem only open to explanations that align with that morality or that align with my in-groups collective moral understanding. If my moral identity is partly determined by taking the right moral stance toward every political issue, then any number of explanations that would challenge my understanding (and therefore my moral stance) are just off the table. If that explanation is true, I might be bad - or, worse, they might be good. So that explanation can’t be true. In addition, a group of people that have a different understanding than I do or that my in-group does also becomes “bad”. Not because they are wrong about this issue or that, but if their politics are “wrong”, they are immoral - because the political is the moral (in that understanding). Whatever else, I can’t be the bad person here. And, just as potent, I can’t agree (ever) with the bad people. It truly becomes the case that facts don’t matter.

We want to live in a world where the moral division is clean and simple - and where our political positions and historical understanding all line up perfectly with this clean moral division. The good people support Israel and their right to exist and reasonably defend themselves. Or they support the Palestinians and their right to self-determination in the land currently claimed by Israel. I have my thoughts on this issue, but my point here is simply to note that this is a difficult question with many factors. History. Religion. Geography. Politics. There is a moral dimension to this question, of course, as there is to most things. But if my political position/moral stance rules one of these out from the beginning, I am not really going to listen to any number of historical, religious, geographical, or political factors. They lend some support to those who hold the “bad” view. So they are “false”. If not factually false, then morally false. But morality and adherence to facts can go together - in fact, they must if there will be a moral impact in the actual world.