If We Had Just Put Israel in Texas . . .
The current tragedy wouldn’t be happening
Who’s to blame for the horror unfolding in Israel and Gaza?
Hamas, a militant, nihilist Islamic gang dedicated not just to establishing a Palestinian state but to obliterating Israel, obviously started the current war with its rocket barrages and barbaric assault on kibbutzes bordering Gaza.
There’s also no denying that some Israeli government policies, in particular enabling its citizens who “settle” on Palestinians’ scarce acreage, have been a long-standing provocation.
Can anyone honestly, morally argue that blowing Gaza City apartment buildings to smithereens is any less grotesque than attacking Israeli civilians with assault rifles and swords? The death toll in Gaza is already far larger than in Israel, and the ground invasion hasn’t even begun.
What’s going on is a two-state atrocity.
I side with Israel, grudgingly, because it is the most democratic country in the region and because, whatever its faults and missteps, it isn’t dedicated to eradicating any people of a different ethnicity or faith.
I hope that when it’s done crushing Hamas (assuming it doesn’t trigger World War III), its government sees the folly of its expansionism and makes changes.
All that said, I can’t help but think, with 20–20 hindsight, that we could have averted this endless tension and recurring terror if, after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, we had given the surviving Jews who wanted a homeland a piece of Texas.
And by “we,” I mean the WW2 Allies, led by us, the United States of America.
Instead of shoehorning a Jewish state into a hostile sliver of the Middle East in which Jews had not lived en masse for centuries, President Truman and Congress could have offered 8,522 square miles (the area of Israel at present) up around Lubbock, Texas, as the new Holy Land. Or, alternately, designated a comparable chunk of land that encompasses the spot in north Texas where it borders Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Texas by itself is almost 269,000 square miles, 30 times the size of present day Israel. Nine or 10 thousand square miles of sparsely populated land would barely have been missed.
We could even have given “Israel” statehood.
Imagine what that state would be like today given how the Israeli emigres and their children have transformed that challenging landscape. Imagine how prosperous. How peaceful.
True, this would have meant not being in close, everyday proximity to Jerusalem’s Old City, the Mount of Olives, Masada and other historical sites precious to Jews and Christians. But did I mention “peace”? It’s highly unlikely residents of Amarillo would be raining rockets on their Jewish neighbor.
This American possibility is not as heretical as it might at first sound. Long before the Holocaust there were multiple campaigns for a Jewish homeland.
At various times locations as diverse as British Guiana, Canada, Australia, and Alaska were proposed.
Obviously there is no do-over. The hand that we dealt is the hand that we dealt.
We can continue playing it, tragically, with similar results.
Or we can start thinking about relocation.
