Stephen Walt is being oh-so-cute by pretending that if religious Jews replaced religious (fanatic) Palestinians like Hamas, the results would be the same. Here’s his risible “thought experiment”:
Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of Israel. Imagine that the victorious Arab states had eventually decided to permit the Palestinians to establish a state of their own on the territory of the former Jewish state. (That’s unlikely, of course, but this is a thought experiment). Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip. Then imagine that a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement.
It goes on. Soccer Dad pointed out that it’s obvious that Walt knows nothing about Judaism. He doesn’t even know much about religious Jews, as they are the ones who generally do not fight—studying Torah is considered their highest calling.
Walt further defends himself with this quote:
But then he went on to explode that analogy, and get at the core issue: Lack of Political Sovereignty. Canada and Mexico are states. Palestinians have no state.
Let’s try another thought experiment. Let’s say that six million Jews, religious, secular, atheist, men, women, and children, were forced from their homes. Let’s say they were first put into narrow enclaves in cities throughout Europe—let’s call them “ghettos.” Then let’s say they were takent out of those enclaves, put onto trains, crowded into cattle cars, and sent to prison camps, where they worked and starved and died and were murdered in great numbers.
How many of those six millions Jews grew up to become suicide bombers? How many of the religious Jews advocated murdering the civilians of the people who rounded them up and forced them into those camps? And what happened to those that survived?
Yes, I know. Their descendants had the nerve to grow up and bother Stephen Walt, in whose mind this world would be ever so much better if only us pesky Jews would go quietly into our ghettos again.
Or quietly die.