A different perspective: a reply to David Warden on Israel and Palestine

By John Baxter

John Baxter is a retired head of Religious Education at Bristol Grammar School. He is a Buddhist and a humanist, and he lives in Somerset, UK. He was raised in apartheid South Africa. He has debated David Warden on the topic of Israel/Palestine at the Anvil discussion group in Wincanton, Somerset. This article was written before President Trump's peace plan came into effect. David has responded to some of John’s criticisms in a separate article.

Palestinianism

In his article on Israel and the Gaza War, Never again is now: calling out extreme anti-Zionism (published in the August 2025 issue of Humanistically Speaking), David Warden criticised certain humanists for statements which can only be described as crudely racist, anti-Jewish abuse. I appreciate him doing this. However, in his concluding paragraph he writes:

‘The future of the Palestinian people does not depend upon the defeat of Zionism. It depends upon the intellectual, moral and military defeat of the ideology of Palestinianism – which is the underlying cause of Palestinian suffering. What the world needs is a ‘New Enlightenment’ in the Middle East based on democracy, economic co-operation and peaceful co-existence.’

In proposing that the ‘ideology’ of Palestinianism is the underlying cause of Palestinian suffering, it appears he stands with Netanyahu and the extreme parties in his cabinet who use this language. He also makes clear what he seems to ignore. For them, and it seems for him, there are no Palestinians, just non-Jewish Arabs who happen to wrongly believe they are Palestinians with a claim to the land. This is because they accept in religious or secular terms the Zionist claim that four thousand years ago the Jews had a patriarch, Abraham, who told them that their god YHWH had given them the land of Zion. Since then, their descendants have lived in many lands where sadly they have been more or less discriminated against, particularly by the European Christian Church both Orthodox and Roman. Of course this did not destroy a desire to return to or at least visit Jerusalem (Zion) for religious reasons.

For Warden, it seems this brushes aside the fact that for the last two thousand years the population of Palestine has never since their calamitous expulsion by Rome had more than a small Jewish minority in the Jerusalem area. Since then, with the rise of Islam from 635 CE the land has been under Muslim rule (often more tolerant than Christian rule), apart from a period of Crusader control, until the Muslim Ottomans were replaced by the British Mandate, leaving behind in thousands of cases their written property records.

The establishment of a Jewish state

Warden is happy with the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine by the UN in 1948 as a response to the Holocaust and pogroms in Europe, despite ALL the surrounding Muslim states and  ALL non-Jewish Palestinians rejecting this as an unjust imposition on predominantly Arab land. Nor does he take issue with those Zionist Jews who have always worked since before 1947 not just for a limited share, but for the whole of what they have called Greater Israel ‘from the river to the sea'. Instead, it seems he accepts this aim and expects Palestinians to do the same. He also fails to recognise quite an important point. Virtually all modern Israelis are from immigrant families descended from European and Russian Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in those countries, or from the 800,000 Jews quite brutally expelled from Muslim countries after the setting up of Israel – this being a Muslim response to the Nakba Catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948 when 750,000 were expelled from their homes by Jewish fighters. The result is that very few Israeli Jews, unlike most Palestinians, can claim long-standing multi-generational roots in the country, even if it is hard to see where else the Russian and Islamic expelled Jews could go. This of course also applies to all post 1948 immigrants taking advantage of the ‘right of return’ law who have left the US and Europe for Israel.

Now we watch as Netanyahu and his cabinet extremists carry on to implement the Greater Israel aim as they order the IDF to pulverise what is left of Gaza. Of course, as he endlessly reminds us, this was triggered by the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 when 1,180 Israelis were killed and 247 captured by members and supporters of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and some others. Greater Israel was however always his undeclared aim, only to achieve it bit by bit through bureaucratic restrictions and supporting Jewish settlements on Palestinian West Bank land, properties and businesses as has been happening since 1967. Now October 7 gives him a good reason to deal with any who seek to set up a separate or Muslim state in Palestine and who hate and reject Israeli Jewish rule and so can be labelled as supporters of ‘Hamas’, a ‘terrorist organisation’. This has resulted so far in Israel killing around 65,000 Palestinians, including some 20,000 fighters, but with the great majority being women, children and the elderly.

Before October 7, there were several million Jews in Israel/Palestine and several million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It is pointless and difficult to argue over numbers, the important point being there is a more or less equal number of Jews and non-Jews in the country. This means if the Palestinians were to become part of the electorate of a democratic single state, the demographics show Jews might quickly find themselves in a minority. This for them would be an unacceptable result for a Jewish state. It would also be unacceptable to most of the 7 million Jews in the US, along with the even more numerous ‘Christian Zionists’ who think Jesus will return as Messiah for the Jews, and of course to the unpredictable Trump with Riviera dreams. Backing Israel with vast grants of money and arms has long been a defining, cross party US foreign policy.

Genocide

Now, without again going over what actually happened on October 7 and what provoked it, except to agree it was a terrible, brutal attack, which Netanyahu calls a genocide, we are witnessing Israel commit a grossly disproportionate (65,000 vs 1,500 – about 40 to 1) response which really does amount to GENOCIDE, Crimes against Humanity, Ethnic Cleansing and the use of Hunger, Starvation and Famine as weapons of war on a population of millions made deliberately homeless. All of these charges Netanyahu totally rejects as ‘Hamas propaganda’ (as it seems so does Warden) and has ordered a total call-up to prepare for a final crushing of Hamas and all opposition to Israeli rule.

Warden argues that such behaviour in a conflict where supportive civilians and active fighters, those in tunnels and those above ground, cannot be effectively separated, makes the actions of the IDF (warning, moving and then bombing the moved) justified on military grounds. Looking at the terrible images we see, this is hard to accept.

Because the war continues (at the time of writing), the international press are barred and local journalists (274) are killed by the IDF. We thus cannot know to what extent the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is actively supported by Gaza and West Bank Palestinians, elections long having been blocked, as opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). We do know that in both areas virtually all non-Jews, Muslim and Christian, do not accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state or its use of martial law and the IDF, and that hatred of the Jews in Israel runs very deep for what has to be seen as understandable reasons.

It is also appalling that what is happening is being done by the elected government and army of those whose great-grandparents suffered the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. On the one hand, while they vividly remember that, stirred up by 7 October they refuse to recognise the reality of what they are now doing to the Palestinians, who of course played no part in the Holocaust and were ignorant of it at the time.

Ironically, it was with the Jewish experience much in mind that international law, which outlaws taking over land by force and promotes fundamental human rights and the setting up of international criminal courts, has been developed: the aim being to attempt to stop such horrors as the Holocaust ever happening again.

However, what is happening in Palestine/Israel now is an appalling human catastrophe for both Palestinians and Jews. There is no going back to the self-confident and much admired Israeli prosperity and ‘peace’ of the pre-October 7 world. Gaza has suffered extensive destruction, and large parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are now controlled by Israeli settlements and authorities. Israel is now, and will remain, a pariah state, as it is ever more widely recognised internationally by people and by governments as guilty of genocide, mass killings, and crimes against humanity on an epic scale.

Whatever war crimes were committed on October 7 against Israel, humanists should and must stand up against what Israel has done and is doing in response as a gross abrogation of human rights, the rule of law, and basic humanity – and be strong in our support of those Jews who are speaking out about what is happening and saying ‘Never Again’. These points are all oddly ignored by David Warden in his final paragraph.

The future for Jews

Surely the future for the majority of Jews now has to be seen in the Diaspora, as that of a religious and cultural minority, like the Sikhs and the Kurds among others, making their home in many countries, not in setting up or living in a Jewish state on disputed land in an overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East area. Yes, that is a very big ask and most Israeli Jews will reject it, even if many of the brightest are already leaving. However, if diaspora Jews, still the global majority, continue unquestioningly to support what Israel is doing, they cannot be surprised if that provokes prejudice against Jews – ‘antisemitism’.

We, as non-Jews, should encourage their return to the United States and other Western liberal democracies – societies in whose development, laws and cultures they have long played a vital part. This is surely where all of us, humanists and members of all religions, races and cultural identities are safest and able to work actively to strengthen our human rights and live harmoniously together. We should also withdraw all arms and financial support for Israel.

As for the future of Israel/Palestine, it is hard to be hopeful as we have seen Israel evolve into the current apartheid, racist state. Can it now change radically and what might further American support bring? Is there still a place for the traditionally moral and liberal-minded Jews in Israel, as they find themselves living in what is becoming an increasingly militarised ultra-orthodox state engaged in an unending war? If they come here, they have much to contribute to our far-from-perfect societies.

Violent wars like this one can see the first casualty being truth, and clearly David Warden and I see things differently. It is inevitable that this can happen, for the facts are disputed and can be read in different ways.

Further questions to consider

1. Just what did happen on October 7?

2. Is Hamas broadly supported, or is its power in Gaza and the West Bank based on terrorising and torturing Palestinians?

3. Would Hamas accept a Jewish enclave in a single state?

4. Is not any talk of a two-state solution now hot air?

5. Is the IDF divided between those seeking revenge and those seeking to abide by the Geneva Conventions?

6. How reliable are the casualty figures on both sides?

7. Is Netanyahu consistently working for a Greater Israel, whatever he says?

8. Are Israeli denials of war crimes and, genocide and famine without foundation?

9. Are the media, BBC included, more influenced by ‘antisemitism’ or ‘the Jewish Lobby?’

Some of the sources I consider to be reliable:

• The Guardian

• The Economist

• Jeremy Bowen and Lyse Doucet – both of them excellent BBC journalists.

• Channel 4 News - which I regard as excellent.

• Ahron Bregman, Senior Teaching Fellow of War Studies at Kings College, London and author of  Israel’s Wars: A History Since 1947 (2000, 2016) and Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories (2014).

• Ilan Pappé, professor in the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) and other works.

The Genocide Convention: Definition of Genocide

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

A response by David Warden

I'm very grateful to John Baxter for this detailed reply to my article about anti-Zionism. My responses to his criticisms are set out in a separate article in this issue of Humanistically Speaking.

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Displacement of Gaza Strip Residents During the Gaza-Israel War 23-25. WIkipedia, free image by Jaber Jehad Badwan, Creative Commons.