In Defense of the Two-State Solution

As a freelance writer who has been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Catholic perspective for twenty years, it’s heartbreaking to watch what is now happening in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza, as the dangerous radical Zionist ideology unleashes its destructive power against hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and the historic Christian community in the Holy Land continues to dwindle toward extinction. No less disturbing is the hard-heartedness of well-intentioned American conservative politicians, TV and radio commentators, magazine editors, and citizens who, blinded by their wholehearted support for Israel, cannot see the naked evil of radical Zionism or the havoc it is wreaking in the Holy Land and the surrounding Middle East.

Radical Zionism is the fundamental root cause of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without the existence and activity of this century-old ideology and movement, no such conflict would have arisen and persisted so stubbornly. The radical Zionists’ trademark crime of seizing Palestinian property outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders, evicting or killing its owners and tenants, and handing it over to illegal European Jewish settlers has instigated and fueled the conflict while provoking occasional wars between Israel and surrounding Arab nations as well as radical “Islamic” terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians by a handful of Palestinians. In this vicious circle of injustice perpetuated by Israeli and Palestinian extremists, radical Zionists bear greater responsibility, as they initiated the cycle of violence and consistently kill and displace far more innocent people than the radical “Muslims” do.

The radical Zionist ideology and movement were founded by a handful of non-religious European Jewish intellectuals who settled illegally in British-occupied Palestine in the early 1900s, often forcing native Palestinians off their ancestral lands in the process. An offshoot of the mainstream (that is, peaceful and legitimate) Zionist movement, which led to the creation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948 and has generally dominated its politics since then, radical Zionism has much in common with the better-known twentieth-century ideologies of Nazism and Communism: it is fundamentally atheistic, secularist, utopian, racist, violent, and genocidal. Its ambitious goal is to expand Israel’s territory until it includes all of the land that was part of the ancient biblical Kingdom of Israel, which stretched from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, and to create therein an earthly paradise reserved exclusively for European Jews. The radical Zionist ideologues have used, are now using, and will continue to use any and all means necessary to achieve this goal of restoring the “Eretz Yisrael” (“Greater Israel”), including anti-Palestinian propaganda and economic warfare; the Israeli electoral process; mass forced displacement of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews; illegal immigration and settlement of Palestinian land; bribery; intimidation; terrorism; arbitrary arrest and detention; military invasion, occupation, and annexation; and mass murder.

In their blissful ignorance of radical Zionism, American conservative commentators cite radical “Islam” as the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. From the perspective of the radical Zionists, this common misconception conveniently deflects public attention from the elephant in the room. Radical Zionism is the more dangerous of the two ideologies because its followers are more widespread, more professional, better organized and trained, better funded, more secretive, more determined, and more violent. Its adherents in Israel, the U.S. and Europe range from headline-grabbing settler-terrorists to behind-the-scenes intelligence operatives to politicians in business suits. Their visibility, activities, and locations may differ, but they are united in a single purpose: to make the dream of the Greater Israel a reality. The radical Zionist movement of the twenty-first century wields an international terrorist organization of greater reach, destruction, and effectiveness than any radical “Muslim” terrorist network, and it is operating virtually unchecked.

The success and influence of the radical Zionist settler movement has waxed and waned through the years depending on various political, diplomatic, social, cultural, and economic factors. Concomitantly, the methods used to illegally acquire Palestinian land parcels and the number of illegal settlements have fluctuated significantly over time. For much of its existence, the movement was limited to small and scattered groups of European Jewish illegal immigrants living permanently in Palestinian territory with the knowledge, if not always the approval or permission, of the Zionist council or the Israeli government. Israeli leaders unsympathetic to radical Zionism have attempted to halt illegal settlement construction altogether, which allowed the peace process to move forward. On the other hand, during those occasional periods when the radical Zionists managed to gain control of the Israeli government and military, illegal settlement construction boomed, provoking further violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

We are in such an unfortunate period now. Following the murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians by terrorists from the violent wing of Hamas in October 2023, radical Zionists cunningly played on Israeli citizens’ fears of additional attacks to seize full control of the Israeli government and armed forces. The recent pattern of official Israeli statements and actions clearly indicates the current government’s aggressive and unconditional support for the radical Zionist movement and betrays its genocidal intentions. The current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a lifelong radical Zionist who committed terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians in his youth. His regime is dramatically accelerating the process of establishing the Greater Israel through forced displacement and slaughter of the Palestinian people. The killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the expulsion of one million more from Gaza is just the tip of the iceberg. Building the Greater Israel will require the unilateral annexation of all Palestinian territory and, eventually, parts of nearby Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; the obliteration of priceless Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy sites; the massacre of several million innocent Palestinian and other Arab civilians; and the forced displacement of many millions more Arabs into nearby countries and areas. In other words, genocide, a regional war, cultural destruction, and a massive refugee crisis are in the offing, to say nothing of the environmental and economic devastation the war will inevitably cause. These regional hostilities will expand into a world war if the international community intervenes decisively to stop the radical Zionists from founding the Greater Israel, just as it did eighty-plus years ago to prevent the Nazis from establishing the Third Reich.

In the violent conflict of the last two years (not a “war,” properly speaking, as wars are fought by nation-states, such as Russia and Ukraine) between “Islamic” terrorists from the radical wing of Hamas and the radical Zionist-controlled Israeli military, approximately 3,000 innocent Israelis and 65,000 innocent Palestinians have been killed. It is clear from the outrageously disproportionate nature of the casualties—more than twenty Palestinians for every Israeli—which ideology is bloodier, yet American conservative commentators do not sound the alarm about the dangers of radical Zionism, dismissing factual reports of Palestinian genocide by Israel out of hand, blaming radical “Muslim” terrorists for the Palestinian refugee crisis, and denouncing criticism of Israeli policies as “anti-Semitic”. Whenever an Israeli civilian is killed, these commentators speak and write all about it; but when a Palestinian civilian is killed by violence or starvation, they remain silent or mention it in passing, seeming not to notice or care. Are Israelis and Palestinians not both children of God? Has the Creator not equally endowed them with inalienable rights?

During the twentieth century, Turkey slaughtered its Armenians, Germany killed its Jews, and Pakistan butchered its East Bengalis, to mention just a few modern examples of ethnic cleansing. Yet in most cases, the genocidal tyrants were defeated, often at the cost of a bloody war, and the victim peoples survived to realize their dream of self-determination. In the case of the East Bengalis, the independent nation of Bangladesh came to birth on India’s east-central border. The good of natural law ultimately triumphed over the evil of ideology. Taking a lesson from history, this author predicts that the Palestinian people will survive the current genocide and return to their homeland to establish the independent nation that is rightfully theirs.

In 1948, after careful and extensive research, the recently founded United Nations Organization, led by the United States, approved the establishment of the modern nation of Israel with specific borders and with the understanding that within ten to twenty years, a modern nation of Palestine would be established alongside it. Unfortunately, due to the persistent and outsized influence of the radical Zionist ideology, modern Israel has always illegitimately claimed and occupied various portions of territory beyond its internationally recognized borderlines, and the birth of the Palestinian nation has been delayed indefinitely. Meanwhile, demographic shifts during the past eight decades have only strengthened the Palestinian position. The number of Palestinians during this time has grown rapidly, leading to a high population density in the Palestinian Territories, while the number of Israelis has increased quite modestly by comparison. So if anything, the borderlines drawn by the UN in 1948 are considerably more generous to Israel than they were almost eighty years ago.

It has been the position of the Holy See for decades, which this author shares, that the long-proposed two-state solution, with two independent nations of Israel and Palestine existing side by side within internationally recognized borders and the historic Old City of Jerusalem in a special international zone, is the only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring real and lasting peace to the Middle East. There can be no peace without justice, and there will be no justice for the Palestinian people until the radical Zionist ideology and movement are defeated. Let us pray daily for the conversion of the radical Zionists and of those well-intentioned commentators whose ignorance and silence allow the evil of radical Zionism to grow more powerful with each passing day.