Human Failure, Israeli Progress
Israel's social progress reveals the path to peace in Gaza
Idea: The 7th of October massacre is grim evidence of the failure of Palestinian society to progress. It’s evidence of the failure of Palestinians to control men within their society who have extreme personalities and are only concerned with their selfish desires. If the West doesn’t recognise this failure and understand that support for Israel is necessary for peace, this will be evidence of the regression of Western society.
When I was thinking about the Israel-Hamas conflict there seemed two options for an initial post. The first was to explore what was the most realistic solution to minimise harm, even if this wasn’t especially realistic. And then assuming there wouldn’t be such a planned response, what was the likely outcome for the conflict given it would just be a process of action and reaction from the various players. This post explores the latter.
I’ll begin with a question. After 76 years since the founding of Israel, is the 7th of October massacre the best Palestinian society could manage in response? The deliberate killing of civilians, whole families, children, the rape and torture? Allowing hospitals, schools, homes to be used as military bases? Allowing themselves to be used as human shields and disposable political fodder?
What standard, though, is there to compare against? The irony is that Israel itself can act as the standard. We’re meant to believe the creation of Israel was so traumatic for Palestinians they’ve never recovered, when Israel is born from the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. We’re meant to believe Israel only exists because of America, when there are dozens of Arab countries and nearly 2 billion Muslims. We’re meant to believe that Israelis and Palestinians could never have found peace over the 76 years since Israel’s founding, when the country that started WWII, Germany, now has open borders with its neighbours.
No. The 7th of October massacre is an example of social and human failure; it’s an example of a failure to progress. This failure has been there since the beginning. It’s the reason Arab countries and the Palestinians were too weak to prevent the formation of Israel. It’s the reason Jewish refugees couldn’t find sanctuary in what is now Israel following the Holocaust. It’s the reason nearly a million Jews left or were forced to leave Arab countries following the creation of Israel.
Why have Israelis progressed versus their opponents? One of the major themes for this blog is to highlight the role of intelligence in determining human outcomes. I’ve also suggested our understanding of human behaviour will eventually become focused at the level of the individual rather than social or political theories. I’ll integrate these two perspectives.
Israel is a high tech, pro-science society whose military power depends on these features. There isn’t space in this blog post to discuss the way values and culture shape shared knowledge in a community and therefore how intelligently it deals with problems, but this can be intuitively measured by intellectual output. A simple way to do this would be to take note of the vast difference in Nobel prizes, for example, won by people of Jewish heritage vs Arab/Muslim. Israel has inherited this intellectual culture from its Jewish founders, and it is an essential source of its strength.
So, Israel has inherited the Jewish culture for education and knowledge, but there are also social factors it has in common with other Westernised countries. There are many examples I could discuss but I'll focus on one that’s directly relevant to this conflict. Israeli society is better than its opponents at controlling extreme elements within it.
I’ll illustrate this idea by asking a question whose answer highlights for me how low quality our discussions are about social problems. Who was directly responsible for the October the 7th massacre? It was almost exclusively men. The same as nearly every conflict. Yet, this obvious fact isn’t even noticed.
By pointing this out I’m not invoking politicised pop psychology terms such as toxic masculinity. I’m calling upon a central theme of this blog, which is that I believe we know enough about the brain and mind that we should integrate it into our discussions. That is, we know enough to know what the content should be, even if the details are still to be fully determined. I’ll illustrate.
It is highly likely there are sex-based differences in innate behaviour. In this case, the propensity to resolve social conflict using physical violence, with men being more likely to use violence. However, as can be illustrated by the level of violence in advanced societies, this is only a latent potential. Whatever the exposure to social conflict, there will be individual-level and innate factors, for example to do with mental health and personality. And then at the social and again individual-level this will be overlayed by cultural factors, for example gender socialisation.
To put these various factors together more concretely, it’s possible a male child could be born with innate mental health problems or a propensity for personality traits such as psychopathy. As they grow, they could be socialised into a gender role that reinforces their personality traits or amplifies their mental health problems. Mixed with an innate potential to resolve social conflict with violence – and with unstable and extreme emotional states – you’re guaranteed to produce someone who feels only hate and a desire for violence.
Advanced societies at the very least control these people, while modern societies are less likely to provoke their latent potential for extreme behaviour. It should be obvious to any intelligent person the behaviour of Hamas members on October the 7th was completely irrational if the claim is it was intended to benefit Palestinians. The whole of Palestinian society, both men and women, failed to control these extreme elements in their society and are now suffering the consequences.
The intelligence to create a high-tech, materially successful economy mixed with an ability to exclude irrational, selfish, and emotionally unstable people from important social roles converges in the military strength of the Israel Defense Forces. Its brutal response to the 7th of October massacre is the starkest evidence of the difference between Israel and its enemies.
At the top of this post, I said I wanted to discuss what the likely outcome of the Gaza-Israel conflict would be, and the argument I’ve made above is the 7th of October massacre is evidence of nothing more than human failure. So, this is what I see as the outcome for the conflict. Whether it’s one year, ten years, or one hundred, everyone will agree that the massacre was an example of social failure. And the social progress required for this consensus will lead to peaceful relations between whoever holds this view.
People in 100 years will also think many others failed, particularly in the West. As I argued in Know Your Israeli, many countries have good reason to share some responsibility for the conflict in Gaza, so they should have worked to create peace. Another reason why people in the future might consider the West failed is if doesn’t adequately support Israel. The reason is because support for Israel is much more likely to lead to peace than not supporting it. I’ll explain by posing a final question.
Imagine that on the 6th of October gay couples in Gaza were living openly together, as they can in Israel. Now what do you consider as more likely: on the 7th of October 1000s of men would cross the border from Gaza into Israel to rape, torture and murder; or, a diversity of people would be crossing an open border for work and leisure?
It’s clear to me the people who would choose the latter option understand how peace could be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians. Such people understand what human progress is and how values and knowledge make it possible. Israelis have socially progressed more than Palestinians, and so are closer to finding peace with Palestinians and Israel’s neighbours than those groups are with Israel. This is why the West should support Israel. But there is another reason.
There is political instability in the West. The West is failing to control extreme elements in its own society, whether it’s from home-grown extremes across the political spectrum or religious fundamentalism in immigrant populations. Although not unconditional, support for Israel reflects how developed the West is socially, and therefore how likely it is to control its own extremism. If doesn’t, like the Palestinians, it’ll live with the consequences.
I have so much more I’d like to say but this post is long enough. I’d therefore welcome comments so these thoughts and ideas can be linked to this post in the replies but without making it too long!