JNS.org..
27 April '20..
What scholars like to call counterfactual history is science fiction for those who prefer to ponder the implications of things turning out differently in the past rather than speculating on the future. Such “what if” scenarios are behind television shows like “The Man in the High Castle,” which imagined life after the Germans and Japanese won the Second World, or “The Plot Against America”—the dramatization of the Phillip Roth novel that imagined isolationists led by Charles Lindbergh keeping America out of the war and then instituting state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the United States.
But as Israel celebrates its 72nd birthday this week, it’s relevant to point out that a lot of people have spent the entire period of its history wishing that the outcome of the 1948-49 War of Independence had turned out differently. At the heart of the nakba or “disaster” narrative and core principle of Palestinian nationalism is a belief that the creation of Israel was a crime that should have been stopped and without which the world would have been much better off. The debate about the future of the West Bank often causes observers to lose sight of the fact that the basic demand of Israel-haters is not a Palestinian state alongside a smaller Israel, but no Israel at all.
What would a world without Israel look like?
(Continue to Full Column)
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