Coexistence Is Necessary but Peace Remains Unlikely

Barry Strauss draws a line between criticism of Israeli policy and denial that Israel should exist. In his view, criticism is not merely permissible; it is a normal feature of Israeli political life. He describes Israelis as “boisterously democratic” and vociferously critical of their governments, and says the country is divided on many questions, including support for the current government.

That domestic contention is central to his answer to charges of antisemitism. Disapproval of the Netanyahu government, its military decisions, or its institutions does not by itself make someone antisemitic or anti-Israel. The relevant distinction is between criticism directed at policy and power, and an argument against Jewish national existence altogether.

Strauss treats that distinction as politically consequential because he sees anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism converging at ideological extremes in the United States. Parts of the extreme right, including parts of the MAGA movement, are anti-Israel and in some cases openly antisemitic, he says; he sees parts of the extreme left arriving at a similar position.

Israel’s internal disorder, in this account, is both proof that it is not reducible to its present government and a source of real vulnerability. Strauss thinks Israel would be better off with a constitution rather than a system in which Basic Laws can be changed by a legislative majority and the Supreme Court can reshape them through rulings. He describes the court as unusually powerful, in some ways more powerful than the U.S. Supreme Court.

The problem is not simply legal design. It reflects a society so divided that agreement on a durable constitutional settlement would be difficult. The controversy over judicial power is therefore a symptom of a deeper fracture as well as a threat to stability in its own right.

That fracture also limits the claim that the Netanyahu government speaks for Israel as a whole. Strauss calls it the most right-wing government in Israeli history, but says it does not represent many Israelis or their desire to build bridges with Palestinians. Asked about a reported tax on foreign NGOs that a questioner said would cripple community-building organizations, Strauss initially said he did not know the policy’s details and would look into it. His broader answer was that Israeli civil society—including people opposed to government actions—must be considered alongside the government.

He calls Israeli society “rambunctious”: people do not simply treat government positions as instructions for civic life. But the same political intensity that produces protest, opposition, and institutional contestation also makes compromise harder.

Barry Strauss argues that Jews’ historical connection to Israel/Palestine gives them a right to live there, but not a right to exclude everyone else. Zionism, as he presents it, rests on a return to a traditional homeland from which Jews had been conquered and dispersed, especially under Roman rule. He contrasts this with the settlement of the United States, where, he says, settlers lacked an equivalent ancestral connection and took land from native peoples.

Strauss maintains that the Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century complicates any argument that Arabs possess the superior historical title to the land. He dates that conquest to 638 and characterizes it as acquisition through conquest. He also notes that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem by 1850, during Ottoman rule and before Zionism had become a significant political movement.

But he rejects the premise, raised by one questioner, that Palestinians can simply be described as outsiders. He calls the Palestinian population historically mixed. Some Palestinians, he says, are indigenous to the land; some may descend from ancient Jews who converted to Islam, while others may trace ancestry to Philistines, Crusaders, Mamluks, and other populations shaped by centuries of conquest and migration.

He also says some Arabs moved to Mandatory Palestine as Zionist land purchases and development created economic opportunity. In Strauss’s description, Zionists bought and reclaimed land that had been marshy, malarial, and difficult to use, draining swamps and making it productive. That development, he says, drew Arabs seeking work.

For Strauss, then, Jewish historical ties establish a right to live in the land, but not a right to make Jews its only inhabitants or to drive other people out. That non-exclusive claim does not resolve the political conflict. It instead raises the question he considers decisive: whether Palestinians and their political representatives are prepared to make peace with Israel. He argues that Israel has repeatedly offered to divide the land with Palestinians, including before statehood in the 1930s, and that those offers were rejected.

Barry Strauss is not optimistic that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved during his lifetime. His historical expectation is that ethnic and national conflicts more often end through violence and victory than through an orderly transition to peaceful coexistence. He points to the wars between France and Germany, which ran at minimum from 1870 to 1945: reconciliation eventually came, but only after what he calls painful lessons.

That does not lead him to treat a military outcome as sufficient. In the long run, he says, a resolution would require a combination of military decisions, education, and deliberate efforts on both sides to build human relations. He points to existing examples of good relations between Jews and Palestinians, and between Jews and Arabs, as signs worth fostering even though war makes that work harder.

The conflict cannot, in his view, be understood as a bilateral dispute alone. It also involves small states, empires, and great powers. Strauss argues that Iran’s backing was necessary to the current war: Iran did not make every decision or pull every string, he says, but without the Iranian regime there would not have been an October 7 attack on Israel. American support plays a corresponding role on Israel’s side; without the United States, he says, Israel would not be in its current position of strength.

A settlement therefore depends in part on what outside powers want and whether they are willing to spend “blood and treasure” pursuing an outcome. The United States has many other priorities beyond this conflict, Strauss notes, which limits any assumption that it will indefinitely concentrate its resources on Israeli-Palestinian peace.

His account of refugees follows the same logic of original displacement compounded by subsequent political choices. Palestinian refugees put in camps, including people who still live in them, have a valid complaint, he says. Some camps consist of apartment buildings rather than tents, but that does not erase their condition. Strauss argues, however, that Arab states bear substantial responsibility for not accepting many Palestinians as citizens.

He contrasts their situation with the 12 million to 15 million Germans who fled or were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and were accepted as citizens in West Germany, East Germany, or other countries. Some Palestinians, he notes, were also accepted as citizens in Western countries. The persistence of Palestinian refugee status, in his view, reflects not only the displacement itself but later decisions by states that did not grant citizenship to many refugees.

Barry Strauss calls Israel an important American ally while stressing that the relationship has had ups and downs. Harry Truman recognized Israel quickly in 1948, he notes, but the United States also imposed an arms embargo that prevented American weapons from reaching Israel while Arab armies had support from their own states and, in some cases, Britain. A closer relationship took time to develop.

Different administrations have approached Israel and Iran differently, he says, contrasting Obama and Biden with Trump. Israel matters to U.S. interests, in his view, because it provides intelligence and military technology and because it is, despite its shortcomings, a democracy. He describes it as a reliable ally while acknowledging that smaller allies predictably try to influence more powerful patrons. The United States, he argues, is capable of recognizing Israel’s interests while judging its own.

The relationship also requires political maintenance. Strauss agrees that the Netanyahu government has been ineffective at public relations, though he insists that deeds should matter more than messaging. Still, he says Israel could do more to make its case abroad, including appointing an ambassador in Washington and improving its public-facing diplomacy. Israeli bluntness may be culturally familiar, but it is not always strategically useful.

Strauss considers possible U.S. isolation over Israel a reasonable concern as European politics becomes more anti-Israel. Powerful countries need allies, he says. But he doubts that the United States will ultimately stand alone, questioning how much of Europe’s posture reflects durable strategic commitments and how much responds to domestic audiences. He expects Washington to find support elsewhere, and points to Israel’s technology and military capabilities as resources that give other states reasons to engage with it.

Barry Strauss says antisemitism on American campuses did not appear suddenly. It grew gradually through intellectual and political currents in academia, in his view.

He cites Eva Illouz, the Moroccan French Jewish Israeli sociologist, and her book October 8th, which Strauss says traces the development of what she calls “virtuous antisemitism.” He connects that phrase to the philosopher Jean Améry’s argument that antisemitism can move beyond ordinary prejudice into a portrayal of Jews as demonic or as a threat to humanity. In that frame, opposition to Jews becomes morally righteous; at its most extreme, Strauss says, even extermination can be represented as virtuous.

He attributes the growth of this outlook to renewed socialist thought, post-colonial theory, deconstruction, and what he calls post-truth movements in academia. Strauss also mentioned a Wall Street Journal headline about a survey of college courses on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that reportedly found an overwhelmingly anti-Israel orientation, though he said he had not read the underlying opinion piece.

The public turning point, he argues, was congressional testimony by the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. Their responses to questions about campus antisemitism were unconvincing, in his view. Events at Columbia and UCLA likewise brought the issue into wider public consciousness.