It should have never made sense. A country created by importing foreigners to steal the lands of the locals and ethnically cleanse them, and in the heart of the Muslim world? On one of Muslims’ main holy places?

Just thinking about the idea feels exhaustingly anti laws of nature. Whoever thought it would work for long cannot have been thinking clearly. If I had to guess, I’d say it was power drunkenness. What we’ve been seeing since 10/7 (and for most of the year in the West Bank) is not some glitch in the code. It’s not an anomalous breakaway event that needs to be corrected so we can go back to the same old program. Rather, what we’re witnessing is the only possible natural consequence for this unnatural project called Israel.

Israel is the way we chose to treat Muslims in the East Mediterranean. The question I keep asking myself is: why did we in America choose to treat Muslims based on a European narrative? Why did we have to transfer Europe’s Crusader baggage into our mindset? After all, it was Muslims in Morocco who were the first to recognize the US after its independence. In fact, Muslim sentiments were in favor of the US since Americans revolted against, and gained independence from, an enemy of Muslims called Britain. Muslims loved the American ideal of freedom from oppression and, after our independence, welcomed our convoys and embassies with open arms.

So why, then, did we decide that we need to stick this thing called Israel as our colonial outpost in the heart of the Muslim world to keep Muslims under our boots? Which brilliant think tank came up with that one?

It could have been much different. We could have chosen to have the whole Muslim world be our friends. Things could have been much more peaceful even without us losing our power or influence in the world. But instead we chose to create an entity that would upend world peace for decades, spend billions to preserve it, and have the planet witness so many wars and conflicts because of it.

Why?

To what end? That is the question that needs to be on the minds of American foreign policy makers. How did the idea that Israel is good for us come to be and how is it actually good for us? It’s ok to rethink basic questions like that every now and then, and for us, it’s about time we do so.