“The tragedy of Israel-Palestine is that it is harder to imagine the humane futures coming true than the cruel ones,” writes Adam Kirsch ’97 (a contributing editor to this magazine). His On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice (W.W. Norton, $24.99) plunges into the current, agonizing terrorism and war, critiquing a contested term and form of analysis. The effect of the “ideology of settler colonialism,” he maintains, “is to cultivate hatred of those designated as settlers and to inspire hope for their disappearance,” thus helping “to ensure a worse future for everyone living ‘between the river and the sea.’” From chapter 7, “Justice and Despair”:
Despair of the future forces us to place our hope in remaking the past. But if what we want is hope for the future—for the possibility of ending conflicts, rather than renewing them; for reconciliation, rather than righteous hatred—then it may be necessary to despair of the past. This would mean recognizing that the wounds we inherit can’t be undone, but perhaps they can be healed, even if they’re guaranteed to leave a scar.
A model for this kind of despair can be found in the Talmud’s discussion of the legal status of lost and stolen items. If a person loses a possession or has it stolen, does he remain its legal owner? It might seem obvious that he should….But suppose a thief stole a cloak and sold it to a merchant, who sold it to a customer. If the garment still belongs to the original owner, then he would have the right to…take it back.…[But] this would create a new wrong, since the new owner acted in good faith and paid for his purchase.
Now imagine a case involving not just a cloak but homes, land, and political sovereignty, over a span of centuries.…A legal system that held out hope of reversing every loss would create more chaos and injustice than it remedied.
For this reason, Jewish law introduces the concept of “despair.” Under certain circumstances, the law presumes that a person who loses a possession despairs of getting it back and thus relinquishes ownership.…[that] person…is still entitled to monetary compensation and damages, but…can no longer demand the return of the original item, and its subsequent chain of title is valid.
Is despair justice? No. It is what the law offers instead of justice, knowing that perfect justice often cannot be achieved. And what is true of individuals and their possessions is infinitely more so of nations and their histories. To render perfect justice, the land of Israel would be restored to the Jews, who were exiled from it by the Romans, and also restored to the Palestinian Arabs who lived there before 1948. Not only is this impossible, but any attempt to secure the country for just one of these peoples would inflict suffering on millions whose only sin was being born in a contested land.…
The creation of the State of Israel should not be negated, but the Palestinians should have the security and dignity of their own homeland.
