Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
It comes up every time someone wistful about peace discusses
the two-state solution. “I have to believe” or “I must believe” they say in
regard to two states for two peoples. When I hear another robotic pronouncement
insisting they must or have to believe in the two-state solution, or peace
itself, I always think, “Why must you believe? Why do you have to believe
something so obviously false?”
There won’t be a two-state solution, because none of the
actual players want this. The Arabs don’t want a two-state solution and neither
do the Jews. By the end of October
2023, in fact, support for the two-state solution had dipped to 28.6% of
Israeli Jews, while 24% of the Arabs Palestinians supported a two-state
solution, down from 59% in 2012. By now, that support—on both sides—will surely
have dropped even further.
That’s because two states for two peoples doesn’t solve
anything. It is only a nonstarter idea imposed by people who live outside the
arena where this longstanding war against the Jews is taking place. The Arabs
don’t want two states. They want one state, Judenrein. The Jews don’t
want two states, because why should they be required to give up sovereign
Jewish territory at all, let alone to those who plague them? That would not be
a “solution” but a form of capitulation and subsequent suicide.
Despite the polls and the nonsensical nature of the
two-state solution concept itself, liberals continue to proclaim that they
“have to” or “must” believe that peace is possible, and that only two states for
two people can get us there.
No matter what you believe, we have to stand united against clear use of sexual violence, and then people were still not believing it so I helped organize a conference at the UN where we brought these witnesses who stood there and cried and said “Here's what I saw, what I saw with my own eyes,” and then I took those same witnesses to parliaments in Europe where I certainly think they need to do this, and then we still were having some denial and a whole bunch of silence and some people speaking out, “It's never so black and white.”
Sandberg had worked hard for women’s causes over the years,
but now that Jews were the victims, all the women she’d supported and believed
were turning their backs, and worse. Some of them were blaming the victims. The
general consensus? Believe all women, except when they are Jews. It was a
painful revelation for Sandberg. And it woke up something in her Jewish—and
liberal—consciousness.
But that consciousness, thus far, only goes so far. Bless Sheryl Sandberg, truly, for documenting sexual violence on and in the wake of October 7. You can see that something changed for Sandberg in the days and months after the massacre, that drove her to do the film. And still, and perhaps all the more so, she “has to believe” in a two-state solution—stubbornly persists in believing what will never be (emphasis added):
What I would say is I think it's made me realize how much harder it's going to be to get to the solution that I still have to believe in. I don't think there's another solution other than two states, but it has to be two states run by people who want their neighbors to live in peace and prosperity.
It flies in the face of all Sandberg has faced and learned since October 7, and yet she persists in forcing herself to maintain hope in a lie, a false dynamic. Why? How does it serve her?
But Sandberg is not unique in insisting on believing
something that in reality is a nonsense idea. Ehud Olmert, who served as
Israel’s prime minister from 2006-2009, and who served 16 months of a 27-month
prison sentence on corruption charges besides, also feels compelled to believe
a fictional fairytale is true, or so he says. Rolf Dobelli, founder of WORLD.MINDS interviewed Olmert in 2023 for
Politico,
and brought up the subject of the two-state solution (emphasis added):
Dobelli: You’ve been a proponent of the two-state solution for a long time. Do you think the time has arrived to finally implement it?
Olmert: First of all, I think that it is the only real political solution for this lifelong conflict between Israel and Palestinian states. There is no other. Therefore, I have to believe that this is possible.
Olmert did more than pay lip service to the insane idea of a
two-state solution. In 2008, he promised to give the Arabs up to 94 percent of
the land they wanted for a state of their own. Naturally, the Arabs spurned
Olmert’s attempts to woo them with land. For the Arabs it’s all or nothing. One
state for one people, and they don’t mean Jews.
It doesn’t seem to matter how smart you are, or highly
placed. People have this need to believe in what will never, and can never be,
two states for two people living side by side in peace.
Take Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State at the time of
Olmert’s temerarious 2008 offer. In 2011, looking back at that time, she wrote:
“The conditions were almost ripe for a deal on our watch, but not quite. Still,
I have to believe that sooner or later, there will be a two-state
solution. There is no peaceful alternative.”
It wasn’t the first time Rice had said this. Here’s an excerpt
from the transcript of a meeting she had with President Mahmoud Abbas in 2005 (emphasis added):
Remarks With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas After Their Meeting
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The Muqata
Ramallah
February 7, 2005
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would just note that in the Palestinian national elections, President Abbas got numbers that would have made any American president extremely happy. It was a very strong vote for his program of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, of peace with the neighbor Israel, of democratic reform and of reconstruction and development to improve the lives of the Palestinian people. I have to believe that what the Palestinian people were responding to is the opportunity to have their children grow up in an environment of peace and opportunity and that is what the president won his election on. We are going to be supportive partners for him and for his leadership as they try and realize that vision for the Palestinian people.
Tom Phillips, British ambassador to Israel from 2006-2010, also
pled to believe in a falsehood, in an undated article appearing in The
JC:
“If you look at the Palestinian story and the depth of their sense of victimhood — ‘we lost our homes, we have a right of return’ — they must compromise as well. Each side must compromise on an issue that touches its identity. That is going to require great leadership on both sides. I have to believe there is the leadership to do that,” said the ambassador.
But why? Why does anyone “have to believe” there is Arab leadership
with the will to make peace, when no such leadership exists?
On October 24, 2023, Jake Tapper of CNN, interviewed Roy Yellin, director of public outreach of the fifth column anti-Israel organization B’Tselem. Yellin too, is delusional, forcing himself to believe what can never be. It’s almost like he’s trying to persuade himself (emphasis added):
I have to believe that in order to stay here. And I do believe that, the only option is to find a way to live with Palestinians, as equal. That I do believe that only we provide people on the other side with full, complete human rights, future, equality, democratic norms. Only like that we can live together.
Academics, too—people you’d expect to be at least slightly
intelligent—spout the mantra, resolved to believe a whopper. Here is Janet
Freedman of the Brandeis University Women’s Research Center, writing on Feminism
and Zionism in 2017 (emphasis added):
I have found that when I offer my definition of Zionism – the right of Israel to exist as a state – those with whom I am speaking usually agree with me. Yet in recent times, there are those who do not, and as eager as I am to embrace coalition politics on a wide range of issues, if a person or group does not support this basic assumption, I will seek others with whom to work toward a resolution of the serious, but, I must believe, still resolvable Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
In seemingly every sphere of society, you can find people pledged to believe something that is not true. Jared Stein, for example, a senior account executive with Customer.io, a "customer engagement platform for tech-savvy marketers" wrote a kumbaya-style essay for LinkedIn about how he chooses to perceive the post-October 7 anti-Israel protesters (emphasis added):
I have to believe that the people marching across the world want the same thing that I do for Israelis and Palestinians - self-determination. Security. Peace. We're all on the same team and should be marching together.
Just try it Bub, and see what happens. Presumably with a name like “Jared Stein,” you won’t last very long—and probably not long enough to realize the extent to which you are self-deluded.
Tova Leigh is a mommy blogger. Or at least she was until she
turned 40. That’s when she released her first book, ‘F*cked at 40: Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks’ in which “Tova takes the reader on her journey of
rediscovering who she is after motherhood and beyond the norms society forces
upon women, whilst encouraging them to break free and just be themselves.”
Leigh, too, has fallen sway to the demented self-assertion
that she really
should believe something stupid and untrue (emphasis added):
There is distrust between these two people that runs so deep that sometimes I wonder if it will ever be bridged.
But I want to believe that the people who are ripping down posters of kidnapped babies or chanting "gas the Jews" do not represent the majority of Palastinians, just like I'd like to believe that the people chanting "make Gaza a cemetery" do not represent the majority of Israelis.
Why? Because I would rather believe that more people are good than bad, otherwise I can't function in this world.
Tova? Methinks thou dost profess too much.
But at least Tova Leigh is honest. She simply can’t handle the truth—her brain can’t take it in. Leigh needs to believe a lie in order to function.
There seems to be a lot of that going around. Even or
especially now, when the two-state solution has never been less desired by the
relevant parties, and has never been so far away. People need to and must believe what
they don’t really believe, or they wouldn’t be working so hard to persuade themselves. But it takes more than a will to believe to generate any real hope for the
future, or the promise of a better, more peaceful life for Arabs and Jews.
Belief, manufactured or otherwise, won’t cure the Arabs of
the enmity they have for the Jews. Two states, ten states, one hundred states won’t
slake the Arab lust for Jewish blood. In the end, peace can only come when we acknowledge
evil, look it squarely in the face, and banish it from the world.
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