Israel: A Blind Spot for Steady Staters?
by John Mirisch
Israel and the Palestinian Territories: rife with conflict and unsustainability. (GOV.UK)
For some reason, recognizing planetary boundaries, including support for a steady state economy, is seen by some as a “progressive” cause. And granted, some steady staters and degrowthers seem to have a checklist of “progressive” causes they identify with. Perhaps adhering to these checklists helps them avoid unwanted labels.
This is a big mistake. Support for a steady state economy is no more “woke” than the laws of thermodynamics. Rather, it is a rational, non-partisan position to take. If anything, it is a more “conservative” position, not in the political sense in which the term is often misused nowadays, but conservative in the core sense of wanting to conserve the planet’s resources.
And yet, self-identified “progressives” often want to adhere to their progressive checklist, linking extraneous—or even conflicting—themes in what they perceive is the service of steady statism. But of all the far-fetched attempts to conflate progressive hobby horses with steady statism, perhaps nothing misses the mark more than attempting a link-up with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Israel is a blind spot for most “progressives” at large. Sadly, it is a blind spot for steady staters who would use the context of steady statesmanship to demonize the Jewish state.
Demonizing the Jewish State
Demonizing the Jewish state is one of Natan Sharansky’s classic “3Ds” of antisemitism, the other two being “delegitimization” and “double standards.” In my opinion, at least two of the three are evident in Alix Underwood’s Steady State Herald article, “Economic Incentives for Genocide: The People Profiting from U.S. Military Aid to Israel.”
Natan Sharansky: Israeli politician, champion of Jewish rights, and scholar of antisemitism. (Ram Mendel, Wikipedia)
Perhaps the most authoritative definition of antisemitism is that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which links “hatred toward Jews” with “targeting the state of Israel” under circumstances congruent with Sharansky’s 3Ds. When I was mayor of Beverly Hills in 2020, we were the first city in the United States to adopt and implement the IHRA definition. Dozens of cities, states, governmental agencies, and NGOs have followed suit.
Underwood’s piece links the war in Gaza with the U.S. military industrial complex and specifically those who profiteer from wars and armed conflicts throughout the world. Discussion of the military industrial complex is nothing new. Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term almost 75 years ago. Perhaps by now we can all agree that profiteering off armed conflict is a bad thing and that the environmental impacts of wars are bad.
The problem with Underwood’s article (and/or executive editing at the Steady State Herald) is the blood libel “genocide” in her headline and article. Blood libels have been used to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment for millennia. Most infamous was the blood libel that the Jews killed Jesus; most ridiculous the blood libel that Jews engaged in the ritual killing of Christian children to make matzah. “Genocide” in Gaza is just the newest blood libel.
Underwood cites the biased and compromised UN in applying the “genocide” label. Yet the UN has covered up its own staff’s complicity in Hamas’s crimes. Urban warfare expert John Spencer completely debunked the notion that the Gaza war is a “genocide.”
The Double Trouble of Double Standards
From a steady-state perspective, the demonization of Israel is not even the worst of it. Underwood ignored the real-world fuel for ecocidal growthism in the Middle East. This is a double standard; another of the 3Ds.
The Middle East, a land of existential threat for Israel. (Wiki Voyage)
Underwood links to a Herald article from two years ago that tries to frame the crisis in the Middle East as a “crisis of growth.” My comment on that piece remains valid today and is relevant to a critique of the Underwood piece, which shares the biased “progressive” perspective, along with a common progressive blind spot:
First off, the narrative of Israel as a “settler-colonial” enterprise is just wrong. If one believes at all in Indigenous Rights one must acknowledge that Jews are the Indigenous People in Israel, which is their ancestral homeland. Let’s not forget that Israel gave up the Sinai, with some three times the land mass of the entire state of Israel, for peace. Let’s not forget the numerous overtures of “land for peace” that have been continually rejected by the Palestinian leadership over the decades.
I went on to describe how framing the Israel-Palestine conflict through the prism of the steady state economy doesn’t make much sense in and of itself. Considering Israel-Palestine without looking at the larger region makes even less sense. Instead of blaming Israel for poverty in Gaza, how about considering the extreme wealth in neighboring Arab countries and the billions of dollars Qatar and other nations funnel to Hamas. Those billions could be used for the welfare of the residents of Gaza rather than for weapons, tunnels, and pensions for the families of Jew-killers.
Ultimately, for Israel, the crisis in the Middle East is existential. All the wars in Israel’s 75 years have been existential. The crisis is about Israel’s survival as a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People. In a world of extreme anti-Jewish racism, which surfaces time and again like a pathological virus, Israel is what separates Jews from millennia of pogroms, persecution, and genocide. At least for many Jews, it is not at all about growth.
The real growthism, however, overlooked by Underwood (and Daniel Wortel-London) lies at the core of the Gaza war and all anyone needs to do to understand it is to listen to Hamas itself.
Hamas Billionaires and Demographic Jihad
Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical jihadist Islamist group whose goal is the reestablishment of a caliphate ruled by Islamic religious law, or sharia. Hamas has made its goal clear not only of expelling the Jews from Israel and killing Jews around the world, but it has also made clear that it intends to introduce sharia law in Israel. It would accomplish sharia along with its partner Muslim Brotherhood groups throughout the region, either within the framework of one large caliphate or a confederation of caliphates.
Unchecked population growth is both a goal and a strategy for some of the Islamists. According to the Hamas charter: “The role of women in Islamic society is to be the ‘maker of men.’” During the recent conflict, Twitter (or X) was full of pro-Hamas women who brag that they want to have more children who will then grow up to become suicide-bombing, murderous martyrs. Sadly, this is nothing new.
If we look at the result of the imposition of sharia in other Islamofascist regimes like Afghanistan, we can only guess what the gender apartheid would look like if the entire region became subject to the misogynistic oppression of women. Women become baby-making machines and slaves of religious fanatics, whose holy texts, so they think, give them the right to mistreat women and to justify child marriages.
Female empowerment and family planning are the best way to stabilize a planetary population that now exceeds eight billion, with Earth Overshoot Day falling on August 1 last year. And yet Islamofascist Iran, which previously had allowed family planning, has in the past few years blocked family planning and reinforced the concept of “women’s primary role as mothers in charge of child-rearing,” as even the antisemitic NGO Human Rights Watch was forced to admit.
Instead of dealing with the prospect of sharia-based theocratic fascism and demographic jihad, Underwood focuses on Israel and on the carbon-intensive lifestyles of American military suppliers.
Yes, rich people throughout the world are disproportionately responsible for ecological overshoot. So then what about the lifestyles of the petrodollar billionaires who are funding Hamas, such as the Al Thani family, the rulers of Qatar?
Unsustainability runs the spectrum from rapacious consumption to activist population growth. (Wikimedia left, Pexels right)
How about digging into the lifestyle of Bashar Masri, the billionaire who is alleged to have funded much of the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the tunnel system? Does his consumption, including the fumes from his private jet not contribute to planetary overshoot?
How about Hamas billionaires like Khaled Mashal, who owe their billions to looting international aid? Are they models of sustainability?
Perhaps Qatar and the jihadis get a pass because the International Union of Muslim Scholars, based in Qatar and funded by the Qatari government, has called for armed jihad against Israel and the killing of Israeli tourists in Arab countries? Maybe the population increase stemming from radical Islamism would be offset by the deaths of the terrorized Jews. Mathematically, killing off 15 million Jews would seem to be a drop in the overshoot bucket, but when it comes to killing Jews, people aren’t always rational.
There is nothing particularly virtuous about anti-Israel bias, even in the context of “steady statesmanship.” The situation in the Middle East most certainly should give steady staters pause, but the main concern should not be the self-defense of the world’s only Jewish state. The main concern of steady staters should be the underlying growthism inherent in Islamist ideologies and in the actions of jihadi groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, funded by fossil fuel dictatorships like Qatar.
John Mirisch was elected to the Beverly Hills City Council in 2009, has served three terms as mayor, and currently serves as vice mayor. He is a CASSE signatory and occasional contributor to the Steady State Herald.
John, I respect your opinions and am grateful that you took the time write this response, which I’m sure reflects some other Herald readers’ thoughts. I’d of course like to address some of your points and defend some of the positions in my original article.
– You invoke the term “woke.” Isn’t one of the biggest critiques of woke culture that it is too quick to use labels like racist and sexist to “cancel” people? I find it ironic that you do a similar thing here, implying that anyone who critiques the Israeli government is antisemitic. It seems dangerous to use this horrible label (which I reject) so liberally to discourage dissent.
– Reading the linked “Genocide Libel” article did make me think twice about using the term. I’m confident, though, that killing over 50,000 people in 1.5 years—16,000 of them children (Gaza’s child population being “massive,” as one of your sources says, doesn’t make this acceptable)—and illegally blocking humanitarian aid deserves a special term. Mass murder? Cruel and unusual mass punishment? Targeted at a national/ethnical/religious group? It’s starting to sound a lot like the UN’s genocide definition, which is admittedly vague.
– Pointing out the disproportionality of Israel’s actions isn’t the same as condoning Hamas’s. If the shoe were on the other foot, I wouldn’t put it past Hamas to behave the same way. But the shoe’s on Israel’s foot, and it’s a big, U.S.-subsidized shoe. My article was meant to critique the U.S. government, though that of course goes hand-in-hand with an Israel critique in this scenario.
– Thanks for drawing attention to the fact that wealthy people sit on both sides of the chess board. I don’t think Hamas’s funders are “models of sustainability,” and not acknowledging them was indeed a blind spot (I learned from your piece).
– I respectfully pose a closing question: Where is your red line? How far could the Israeli government go before you’d criticize it?
Alix, thank you for your response. I understand you are passionate about the Palestinian cause; however, I feel your response here doesn’t really address my main point that it is off base to try to discuss the Israel/Palestinian conflict within the framework of the steady state. It feels a bit like it’s shoehorning something that isn’t all that relevant, though tenuous connections can be made.
To your points: I have seen similar positions to those made in your article from degrowthers (not necessarily steady staters), and it does feel like there are a list of issues that people must subscribe to if they want to be true “progressives.” From my perspective, being pro-Hamas and/or pro-Palestine is not at all “progressive,” so my goal is to break down labels, not to perpetuate or reinforce them. As I mention, supporting the steady state economy is simply a matter of being able to take a cold, hard look at where we are as a planet and the only real label I might attach is “realist.” Opposing Ponzi schemes should be all-partisan.
I certainly don’t believe that anyone who criticizes the Israeli government is antisemitic. Quite the opposite and IHRA makes it clear that criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitic. However, Israel’s falsely being accused of blood libels is another story.
Hamas’s own unreliable casualty figures aside, it is likely that there have been war crimes on Israel’s side, but those are investigated and there are consequences. As the links show, Israel has taken care and risked the lives of its own soldiers to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, made more difficult by Hamas’s open “strategy” of martyring its own Palestinian civilians. Hiroshima was certainly a tragedy, but hardly a “genocide.”
As said, I have criticized Israel. The buck stops with Netanyahu, and Oct. 7 happened in part because he ignored signs and was not prepared. There does need to be a reckoning.
Happy to have a longer conversation if you’d like. Brian has my number.
Thanks, John. I appreciate the clarification that you don’t equate criticism of the Israeli government to antisemitism. To your point that it’s off base to connect the conflict to the steady state economy, I understand that to many, ecological economics is about the cold, hard fact that we’ve passed planetary boundaries. But for others, myself included, the goal is to move beyond that fact and, amongst other things, call out the institutions and people driving unfettered economic growth. You seem to agree that the U.S. military-industrial complex is a good example of that, so I suppose the disagreement lies in whether the complex’s behavior in this case (providing billions in aid to Israel) is justified. Something tells me that’s going to remain a disagreement for now.
As an American of German heritage, I was appalled as a child by pictures of Nazi death camps. I wondered–is there something in my cultural heritage that led to these horrors? For Israelis, where many of the original settlers were Holocaust survivors, “Never Again” means that as long as Jews have weapons, they will not be victims of genocide again. Collective punishment for attacks–killing 100 Palestinians for every Israeli murdered–implements this determination not to be victims and to rely on force for protection in a hostile world. But to the world, it looks like morally unacceptable collective punishment of the innocent. The “lesson” taught to Palestinians is not the one Israel intended. For me, as a German-American supporter of Israel whose family opposed the Nazis and with relatives who fought and died fighting the Nazis, “Never Again” also means “Don’t do it.” Israel and its supporters would do well to remember the “don’t do it” moral imperative. “Jewish values” are supposed to include deep respect for each human life and an obligation to make the world better. I respectfully submit that the biggest threat to Israel at present is the betrayal of Jewish values and coming near to committing the same crimes others embraced in persecution of Jews. Ultra-Orthodox settlers may be the most serious threat to Israel’s future. Bombing and starving children damages Israel’s moral legitimacy and could threaten survival in the longer run. Collective punishment sets the stage for endless rounds of revenge and suffering. Corrupt Netanyahu does not represent the ideals on which Israel was founded. Jews and others who support Israel should be more thoughtful rather than offering kneejerk unqualified support to policies that betray Jewish values without making Israel safer. Peace is the answer, but Israel seems to be looking for a “final solution.” That approach left Germany in ruins.
There are many good points here, but on balance the Middle East seems like a place where there are no “good guys” now, at last insofar as a steady state economy is concerned. Both Hamas and the Israeli state seem to embrace natalist policies, presumably because babies today = more infantry tomorrow. Meh.
I looked at things with fresh eyes just now, endeavoring to be open minded – since anything in the Middle East tends to have pretty hardened opinions and passions now. Overall I ended up where I was before: from the standpoint of steady state thinking, both Israel and much of the Arab world around Israel leave an awful lot to be desired. Some Google searching seemed to confirm that both sides are pushing pretty hard for increasing their populations. Hamas/etc. as a matter of fundamentalist and frankly bloodthirsty religious zeal, and Israel via technocratic policy approaches (eg, unlimited state funding for fertility treatments, unique in the world).
Setting aside everything else to think only about sustainability and a steady state, man, this is not good. I am left (again) with a sad sense of there aren’t any good guys in this story. If I could pose a question to both sides I would ask, gentlemen, how is this going to work, long term? Climate change is not going to make this part of the world any easier to live in. Seriously guys, whatever side one is on, let’s get real: what are you going to do if your population just keeps increasing as heat rises relentlessly and water gets more scarce?
I have a hunch that alas, in both case there would be a lot of willful ignorance. Hamas types would mutter “Inshallah”, God will find a way, and Israeli technocrats would (probably) suppress their rational mind and say “human ingenuity will find a way.” Sadly, again, I feel safe in predicting a lot of hand waving in both cases, as if depth of emotion can overcome physical laws.
How does this end? I don’t know. But probably badly. Humans are disappointing, alas.
Ultimately, this is pretty much a question of scale. Israel has around 10 million people with a little more than 7 million Jews. We definitely see some pro-natalism among the Jews, especially among some of the Orthodox groups, but the Jewish position towards family planning is not at all comparable to, say, the Catholic position. I’m guessing there would also be some ecomodernism among the tech crowd in Israel, as there seems to be everywhere (“human ingenuity and technology will find a way”).
But the 7 million Jews in Israel are dwarfed not only by the worldwide Muslim population (and less radical versions of Islam seem to be more open to family planning and/or female empowerment than the misogynistic, Islamist versions).
Israel wants to live in peace, I am convinced. They don’t want to have to fear a repeated series of October 7-style attacks with the stated goal of annihilating the country. I don’t think they have delusions of grandeur, beyond being a prosperous Jewish state living and cooperating peacefully in the region. Maybe an expansion of the Abraham Accords can help this become a reality. We could then focus not just on survival, but on the steady statism that the world so desperately needs.
The worldwide Jewish population today is less than pre-Holocaust levels. Its struggle for survival and the survival of the world’s only Jewish state isn’t, in my opinion, the main problem we as steady staters are facing.
There is no defense of starving children in support of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, or bombing ships bringing humanitarian aid – and carrying humanitarian workers, leading to their deaths – in support of starving those children. Redefining legitimate criticism of a state actor as “antisemitism” gives cover to the terrorist state of Israel and does a disservice to Jews who suffer as a result of real antisemitism. Millions of antizionist Jews like Norm Finkelstein and members of Jewish Voice for Peace prove my point.
There are not millions of Jews that support anti Zionism or Mr Finkelstein. The millions of jews you refer to is the sum total of all jews on this planet. You have fallen victim to the sham of Islam allowing yourself to believe the false narratives propogated by the Iran/Qatar propaganda machine. Anyone who follows all of the koran, the sections written during Mohammed’s Mecca and Medina phases which are polar opposites, can not support a steady state economy and must work to convert Christians, Jews, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and all other non-muslims or kill and enslave them. These are the choices. This war goes beyond land issues, in fact it has nothing to do with land (smoke screen), it has one purpose, the execution and eradication of the Jewish people and the country of Israel. …, no they are not separate issues but two sides on the same coin. Thank you.
“First off, the narrative of Israel as a “settler-colonial” enterprise is just wrong. If one believes at all in Indigenous Rights one must acknowledge that Jews are the Indigenous People in Israel, which is their ancestral homeland. Let’s not forget that Israel gave up the Sinai, with some three times the land mass of the entire state of Israel, for peace. Let’s not forget the numerous overtures of “land for peace” that have been continually rejected by the Palestinian leadership over the decades.”
Yes, but the area was NOT exclusively occupied by Jews only for millennia. It was occupied by Jews, Christians and Muslims. To change that balance and carve out land is akin to partitioning. It never works for the region. It disempowers and divides the people in the region. It is debilitating. It cripples the economy, making the region dependent on some vested power to survive. Look at India and Pakistan.
Who does it work for? It works for a third party who has vested interests in that area. Always some ‘western power’.
Solution? Only the concerned parties must come to their senses, negotiate among themselves and find resolution. Until then, western countries will benefit from the conflict in the Middle East.
If this article is also aimed at some of the people who commented on Alix’s article – which would include me – where did Alix or I mention anything that condoned the October 2023 actions of Hamas and/or did not warrant an appropriate response? And where did Alix or I mention ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’? Israel is a nation state and any nation that embarks on the action Israel has taken in Gaza since October 2023 (and prior, which is what drives extremists, like Hamas, to do what it did in October 2023, though never justifies extremist actions) deserves condemnation.
Also, stop referring to governments and ‘leadership’ as if they represent the views of the masses. Even where ‘democracy’ supposedly exists, it is an illusion. Since the advent of agriculture, when the hands of some people were freed from productive activities, the world has been run by psychopaths. They first used tyranny as a means of human management for their own benefit; then, because tyranny is inherently unstable, devised modern money and taxation to manage humans (the most under-recognised change in human history, and still horribly misunderstood); and, following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the bourgeoise, established political institutions to maintain their power and privilege (Upper House) and provide legislation-enacting powers to the bourgeoise (Lower House). Gradually the masses were given the right to elect who sits in parliament (a concession to appease the masses), but they only get to vote for the candidates chosen for them by the psychopaths.
Israel does not represent the views of many Jews and Hamas does not represent the views of many Palestinians because psychopaths run the show, are the cause of the conflict, and the worst of them need to be sounded out. The same could be said of the psychopaths running the show in Iran and Qatar (and Russia, and … I could go on and on). Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic any more than criticism of Russia is anti-Russian Orthodox.