Palestine and manifest destiny

The newspapers are full of articles attempting to explain why a certain number, a very small number actually, of young Muslim men are angry enough at the West to resort to violence, even against their fellow citizens. The explanations run from teenage angst to ethnic alienation to "they hate us for our values," and so on. Convoluted psychological analyses are not, however, required. One word will suffice: Palestine.

Muslims have been forced to watch year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, as their coreligionists in Palestine are ethnically cleansed, conquered, occupied, humiliated and have more of their land stolen every day. Anyone who doesn't understand why Muslims might be angry has lost touch with human emotion. The Americans are assaulted once and they invade two countries.

Of course it's not only Palestine. It's Iraq. It's support for brutal dictators like the Sauds. It's the overthrow of democracy in Iran. It's the whole colonial legacy.

Nothing on this long list justifies the slaughter of innocents. Nothing ever does. But we are talking about understanding, not justification. If we are to preclude attacks on innocents, we must try to understand why they occur, why young men commit them. After all, they do have reasons. Unfortunately, those who strive for understanding are often accused of justification. It's almost as if their accusers are afraid a kernel of justification may be found and this seems to irritate them.

And Palestine certainly contains kernels we might prefer to leave unexamined. Prior to the Second World War, Winston Churchill supported a Jewish state "by the banks of the Jordan." Asked if this might inflict an injustice on the Palestinian Arabs, he replied, "I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I don't admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher race, or a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." This belief in Manifest Destiny persists today, advantaging Israel over the Palestinians in the eyes of the West while infuriating Arabs and their fellow believers. Justification for violence? Perhaps not, but certainly for anger.