Art Basel and related art events in Miami last weekend showcased thought-provoking ideas, expressed through art. One was a time-travel exhibit: Upon stepping into the capsule, one enters a 1970s living room, which in turn helps the visitor enter a 1970s frame of mind.
That same weekend, Syrian rebels provided a real-life time-travel capsule – not only to the 1970s (the beginning of the Assad regime) but also to the 1920s. Anyone stepping into that time capsule would enter a Middle East where Arabs were pro-Zionist, lived in peace with Jews, advocated for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and understood that its prosperity served their interests.
Indeed, the year 1920 witnessed a utopian Middle East. At its core was an organic version of what we today define as a two-state solution: A Jewish state in the making in British Palestine (today’s Israel, the West Bank, and parts of Jordan), living peacefully side-by-side with an Arab kingdom in Syria.
Organic two-state solution
King Faisal, ruler of Hashemite Syria, was beloved by Arabs across the entire Middle East, not just in Syria. Faisal traveled to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and advocated for the establishment of a Jewish state – in front of US President Woodrow Wilson, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (who was an acquaintance and a fan of Herzl), and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
Reflecting on those days, Lloyd George wrote that the British wished to verify that Arabs were indeed supportive of the Zionist endeavor. They tasked T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, with checking, and he confirmed: The Arabs supported Zionism. As Faisal requested, the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to usher in a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
And so, the Middle East in 1920 was a fulfillment of Theodor Herzl’s vision of a peaceful Middle East..
There was just a slight problem: France wanted Syria for itself.
This was not based on historic claims but on an agreement made between a mid-level French Foreign Office official named Francois Picot and the British diplomat Mark Sykes.
Syria, according to the French, is Dar el-Français.
France did not wait for its claims to Syria to be settled through diplomatic channels. Instead, it did what Herzl identified as a European obsession: make war. It invaded the nascent Arab kingdom in 1920 and deposed the king. Some decades later, Syrians rebelled against the French, and in a series of coups that followed, the Assad family took over in the 1970s and kept power for over 50 years, until last weekend.
From Syrians to Palestinians
The degree to which, the Israeli-Arab conflict is “made in France” is often ignored.
To compensate the Hashemite Arab king of Syria, the British carved Palestine into two. Suddenly, the “two-state solution” was reduced from being about a Jewish state in Palestine next to an Arab kingdom in Syria to being about a Jewish state in half of Palestine (west of the Jordan River) living next to an Arab Hashemite kingdom in the other half of Palestine (east of the Jordan river).
But the more devastating effect was on the Arabs: The French robbed Arabs in Palestine and other parts of the Middle East of expressing their prototype nationalist sentiments through Syria.
Nascent Arab nationalism in Palestine in 1920 was unequivocally Syrian, but the British, in cahoots with the French, worked tirelessly to impose a new identity on those Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: Palestinian.
In the following decades, this identity was nurtured by the British, who reneged on their mandate and wished to keep Palestine for themselves, hence resorting to their “divide and rule” strategy; and later, the Germans, who “drafted” Arabs in Palestine for their war with the British, by cultivating Palestinian nationalism.
Some 70 years later, Western powers once again imposed a new identity of Arabs living “from the river to the Green line,” giving birth to the modern Western framework of the two-state solution.
And so the “two state solution” traveled in time, from being an organic, truth-based, abstract template for a stable peace, into a Western-imposed slogan-based, dogmatic template to perpetuate instability.
It also became a tool in the Western ideological assault on Judaism and was even drafted by the Biden Administration as an indirect reason to sanction Israeli Jews who dared undermine it.
Time for creative solutions
Indeed, the assault on Judaism is nuanced, abstract, and layered. While Art Basel and Miami Art Week may not be conventional stops for book tours, they served as the perfect backdrop for discussions about my new book, The Assault on Judaism. Countering the attack requires creative inspiring frameworks rather than conventional linear thinking.
Stepping out of the 1970s time capsule, a popular feature at Design Miami, the city was gearing up for its next festival, The Jerusalem Post conference, aimed at proactively crafting a better future. As suggested in its title, it is about “shaping tomorrow”.
Stepping out of the 1920s time capsule, on the other hand, brought us back to yet another French disruption of global peace and stability. As I discussed in my Wall Street Journal op-ed that weekend, the collaboration of France and other Western countries with the ICC embeds in it a dangerous challenge to the US-led world order.
Indeed, it is becoming more and more evident that the Western assault on Judaism is not just a proxy for an assault on America but also a growing threat to US national security and global stability.
In the 1920s, France disrupted peace and stability in the Middle East through its assault on Syria. In the 2020s, France is in the early stages of disrupting peace and stability in the West through the assault on Judaism.
This can be stopped: As suggested in my WSJ piece, Trump should link US support to France to a pledge never to collaborate with the ICC or any other lawfare efforts directed against the Jewish state or the United States.
This could benefit France itself. The Jewish state’s stunning military actions in Syria this week are eerily reminiscent of those performed there by its founding father, Abraham, some 4,000 years earlier. Both are viewed as miracles; both invoke the clear simple choice that the nations of the world need to make, to either bless Israel or curse it.
As evident in the Abraham Accords, many in the Middle East are choosing to bless Israel. Let’s hope that those in Europe and the West who choose otherwise will change course and be blessed themselves.
The writer is the author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West, and is currently on tour in the US. He is chairman of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com). His geopolitical articles are featured on EuropeAndJerusalem.com.