Gaza War and cognitive dissonance

Click above for video. I expected to be rather pro Israel, 
being German TV, but not so much

What do you do when you believe strongly in “A", and then see powerful evidence for “B” which is the opposite of “A”? 

Do you immediately give up A, and believe in B? Perhaps. But most often that will lead to cognitive dissonance and the way most humans deal with that is to rationalise. 

And so, when I see the video of the Marxist professor Ilan Pappè, “The Israeli New History and its Relevance”, and the causes of Palestinian anger, I get cognitive dissonance. 

It’s not that I don’t know about the “new history” of Palestine, of which he is a major mover; I do. I’ve read about it years ago, have books on it. Benni Morris is something of a “new historian”, and I’ve got his books. No, the reason for the onrush of cognitive dissonance is just that it’s been a while since I’ve seen the “new history” of the Middle East, of Palestine, put so forcefully. And so it’s cognitive dissonance redux (not anew). 

So, how do I deal with it? Am I going to move from A to B? Am I going to support the Hamas-loving kids around the western world, calling for the death of Israel? Am I going to join in their blood lust for the death of Jews, and for a “Free Palestine”?

No I am not. Which is what most people do. Which is why it’s so hard to change people’s minds on fundamental beliefs. We will always default to finding a way to reconcile our dissonance. 

In my case, it’s simple. I just zoom out. I look at history from a more abstracted plane. Thus:

• Should the Jews have been given a land, a place to stay, a place to call their home, a nation, in the aftermath of the holocaust? Answer, for me: Yes. 
• Where should it be? Of the options, Uganda, the USS, Japan, Madagascar and Palestine, clearly the old historical land of the Jews, in what we now call Palestine, was the obvious one. 
• Should the non-Jews living there have been expelled? No. Were they? Yes. To some extent. By whom? The “new historians” tell us it’s entirely by the Jews. But it was not. There is clear evidence that the surrounding Arab states planned to attack Israel when it was named, by the United Nations, as a new state, and that they told the Arabs living in the new state, that they should leave, to get out of there way, while they busied themselves with annihilating the Jews. 
• 56 countries are members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, many of them Arab states surrounding Israel, the one Jewish state in the world. That seems rather little to ask, even if some Arab families had to suffer, for that ask to become true. 
• Muslim states surrounding Israel (the “Middle East”) own 99.6% of the land; Israel only 0.4%. Is that really too much to ask?
• Other countries were created like Israel: Pakistan and Bangladesh, for example. We don’t obsess over their creation stories, even though even more people were displaced and killed, that were in Israel. 
• There were some 60 million refugees in the wake of the second world war. There were about half a million Arabs displaced in the creation of Israel. Only the refugees displaced in Israel in 1948, only they, remain refugees. All the rest are now resident in other countries. Why is it that the surrounding Arab states have refused to take in any Palestinian Arabs? 

That’s my cognitive dissonance rationalisation for the fact that Jews Behaved Badly, at the birth of their nation. But they needed and still need a nation. And in the grand scheme of life, their crimes were both understandable and (relatively) minor. It’s time we called out the Palestinian Arab victimhood and said, enough, get on with it. And called out the surrounding Arab states for not taking them in. 

ADDED: Pappè is a Marxist. Marxists have a particular way of analysing. That all history is down to a battle between oppressed and oppressor. I don’t trust them. I know of none whose views I find useful. Sometimes I’m asked about China. How is it that China, a self-avowed Marxist-Leninist state, has done so well in the last forty years? And the answer is simple: they have done well exactly and precisely to the extent that they have given up, not followed, Marxism-Leninism. As soon as they veer back to M/L, they lose their zip. As is happening now. There’s nothing good about Marxism-Leninism. Not time. No where. And I’m seeking here as a guy that lived in China when it was way more hewing to the M/L playbook, back in the 1970s. It was that that made me hate socialism.