An Atheist’s Take on Israel and Palestine

The intractability of irrationality

The horrific events of September 11, 2001, left the world forever changed — mostly for the worse.

Between the attack itself and the subsequent American response, including multiple, multi-trillion dollar “forever wars,” hundreds of thousands of deaths, untold destruction and trauma and shattered lives across the globe, along with vastly curtailed liberties and an ever-present police state here at home, the results of that dark day have been nothing short of catastrophic.

What a way to kick off a new millennium.

But hidden among that long litany of horrors, one positive development — one step of seeming progress in humankind’s moral, social, and cognitive advancement that emerged from the wreckage of that terrible day — was the vast number of atheists it produced.

For this lifelong rationalist infidel, it was a rare moment of hope.

At last! For the first time since the Enlightenment, an Age of Reason could once again usher forth! No more ancient superstition guiding society’s most important decision-making. No more senseless quarrels over rival books and rival interpretations of primitive, violent mythology.

At long last, John Lennon’s famous, hope-filled lyrics could possibly come to pass:

Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace

I was far from alone in these thoughts. For millions of people across the Western world and beyond, the abject horror of witnessing live on television what unconscionable evil religious zealotry is capable of when paired with modern technology was enough to make them declare, “Enough!”

It was enough to make them set aside whatever notions they held of whatever transient good religion may occasionally achieve, and instead focus on the endless barbarisms that are an inseparable, infallible essence of all faith-based religions and the ancient writings they’re based upon. As Voltaire famously said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

And religion is nothing if not absurd.

As with that long-ago September day in America, the events of October 7, 2023, will forever be etched in the psyche of all Israelis, and will once again leave the world forever changed — almost certainly for the worse.

Analysts, pundits, historians, and an enraged and grief-stricken public will be dissecting, for decades to come, the causes of this latest flareup in the perennial stew of ethnic and sectarian violence that is the Middle East. There will be talk of the Holocaust and Zionism, of antisemitism and Islamophobia, talk of the Nakba and refugees’ right of return, talk of apartheid and “the world’s largest open-air prison,” and of course, empty talk of a “two-state solution.”

But the one glaring driver of Middle Eastern violence that few accounts care to acknowledge is the most obvious one of all — religion. And the reason for this is simple — because admitting religion’s primal role in the matter makes the problem utterly, hopelessly intractable.

After all, was not all the land of Israel given to the Jews by the almighty creator of the universe himself?

Indeed it was. At least, according to their own holy (and in no way biased and self-serving) account of it. As recounted in the Old Testament, or Tanakh:

The Lord said to Joshua: “Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them — to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates — all the Hittite country — to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. … Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.”

— Book of Joshua 1–6

“None will be able to stand against you.” Do you hear that, Hamas? Do you hear that, Hezbollah? Do you hear that, Iran?

This tiny scrap of mostly desert wasteland is the Jewish people’s divine birthright. And when the magic man himself handed you the deed to your home, no one else gets to impose a lien upon it or try to repossess it — no matter how many mortgage payments you’ve failed to make. Furthermore, any attempt to do so will be met with merciless force.

Except now, of course, this force consists not of slings, swords, and arrows, as used against the Canaanites, but of guided missiles, drones, and smart bombs. It’s third millennium B.C. goat herders meets twenty-first century A.D. high-tech, startup nation — the primitive mindset of the former controlling the incomparably more destructive weaponry of the latter.

The results, as horrific as you’d imagine them, are splashed on news screens around the world for all to see. And despite all pleas to respect the “laws of war” and “international human rights,” there’s simply no stopping an onslaught sanctioned by God himself for his very own, favorite, “chosen” people.

But what of the other side? What do the Palestinians (whose name is derived from the ancient name of “Philistines” — those people violently dispossessed of their land on a rival god’s orders), what do they think of all this? Surely, they too feel like they have a valid religious claim on the land. And what does their current God have to say on the matter?

Glad you asked.

As described in the Qur’an (Surah 17:1):

Glory be to the One Who took His servant ˹Muḥammad˺ by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose surroundings We have blessed, so that We may show him some of Our signs. Indeed, He alone is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing.

Clear as mud, right?

While it might not be obvious from this reading alone, this verse lies at the heart of Jewish/Muslim tensions in Jerusalem. Admittedly, the holy book itself is rather light on details as to why this should be so, but the accompanying Hadiths (traditions) give a much fuller account:

One night the Angel Jibril took Prophet (peace be upon him) on al-Buraq [a magical, flying horse] from Masjid-i-Haram [the holiest mosque in Mecca] to Masjid-i-Aqsa [the Temple Mount in Jerusalem]. There the Prophet (peace be upon him) offered his prayers along with the other Prophets. Then he took him towards the higher spheres, where he met some of the great Prophets in different spheres. At last he reached the Highest Place in the Heavens, and was received in audience by Allah. It was there that, besides other important instructions, five daily Prayers were prescribed. Then he returned to the Temple and from there came back to Masjid-i-Haram.

So, basically, the magic man’s number one human hopped on a magical flying horse one night and rode it from the roof of some other folks’ number one magic man temple, thus instantly rendering it the magic horse rider folks’ number three holiest magic man temple. And therefore, people have to hate and kill each other over it forever.

And hate and kill they do.

Did you happen to notice the Arabic name for this highly contested edifice — “al-Aqsa”? Look familiar?

It should, being as it’s the namesake of the terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, “a militant wing of the West Bank’s Fatah political faction that seeks to drive Israeli military forces and settlers from Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip and establish a Palestinian state.”

And uncoincidentally, it’s also part of the codename the terrorists Hamas gave to their recent murderous rampage, the “Al-Aqsa Storm.” In fact, the storming of the Al-Aqsa mosque by hundreds of extremist Israeli settlers just days before the attack was one of the reasons cited by Hamas for carrying out their baby killing terror spree. An eye for an eye, and a thousand lives for a slight against a building, apparently.

It all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

The conflict in the Middle East has been raging on, unabated, since the dawn of recorded history. And unlike most other conflicts in the world, this one is utterly unresolvable by normal means, as it’s fundamentally irrational. It’s not about resources or real estate or anything tangible or negotiable. It’s about whose magic man is mightiest. And imaginary beings make notoriously bad referees in such disputes.

Yet second worst to imaginary referees are biased human referees beholden to the imaginary. In the U.S., the Republicans give unfettered and wholly uncritical support to Israel (in the form of billions of dollars in annual aid) regardless of how badly they treat the Palestinians.

And the driving factor behind this is not geopolitical strategy or support for democracy; it’s not guilt over initial American inaction during the Holocaust (although both of those are prominent factors).

Ultimately, what drives this blind and unwavering support is the firm evangelical belief that the Jews must rebuild their temple in order to usher in Armageddon and the subsequent Rapture, when all good Christians will be whisked off to heaven. In other words, the magic man violence must continue indefinitely because, well, the magic man.

And when the magic man’s involved, both sides feel they can do no wrong. As recounted in a recent Politico article by a journalist interviewing locals on the streets of East Jerusalem:

When a colleague of mine showed Mussa photos released by the Israeli government of the corpses of Israeli children killed by Hamas, he derided them as “fake pictures of the Jews.” Hamas only kills soldiers, not children, he said, because the group follows the Quran.

And the Qur'an of course, is forever blameless. It’s not as though the immediate verses after the story of the magic horse ride say:

And We warned the Children of Israel in the Scripture, “You will certainly cause corruption in the land twice, and you will become extremely arrogant.

When the first of the two warnings would come to pass, We would send against you some of Our servants of great might, who would ravage your homes. This would be a warning fulfilled.

Ravaged homes? A warning fulfilled? That sounds hauntingly familiar.

But two can play at this game, right? For as the Bible proudly describes the exploits of Joshua after being promised the land of Israel (as depicted in the opening image of this piece):

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it — men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house.

Savagery begets savagery, violence begets violence, and the brutal cycle continues. And why must this be so?

As I wrote in an essay over a decade ago, during a similar time of heightened religious violence:

The problem with religion is that it doesn’t content itself with being just a moral philosophy; it tries instead to be a total theory of reality, and as such, it promotes an inflexible worldview increasingly at odds with science and with the norms of civilized society.

Whether in opposition to stem cell research that has the power to cure countless diseases and improve millions of lives, or opposition to gay marriage and the chance for people to find happiness expressing their true, natural-born identities, religion is the number one impediment to continuing human progress.

Until more people learn to recognize this, we will continue to hate and to kill and to oppress one another solely on the dictates of a few musty old books thought up by illiterate goat herders before the invention of sliced bread. We can do better than that. Evolution has provided us with incredible minds; let’s use them.

Let’s use our minds indeed for a change. Because the alternative is all too horrifically familiar and depressingly tiresome.

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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