What, if anything, can understanding the Certainty Trap tell us about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
As most people know, last Saturday brought an unprecedented series of attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants. The violence has made above-the-fold headlines in major newspapers around the world every day since.
Depending on where you sit politically, the attacks are either the inevitable outcome of Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians or they’re yet more evidence that the only solution acceptable to Hamas—the party that controls the Gaza strip—is one where all Jews are exterminated.
To be clear, I’m simply observing that these are two possible perspectives. And that observation need not come with any claim that the two are equivalent in a moral sense.
It's worth taking a moment to elaborate on that distinction. Avoiding the problem of certainty isn’t an argument for bothsidesism. It doesn’t mean equivocating when it comes to violence against civilians. In fact, identifying and naming the principle being violated—a task whose importance I’ve outlined here—when concertgoers are slaughtered is fairly straightforward. After all, rules about the treatment of civilians in times of conflict have been enshrined in various places, see here for the International Committee of the Red Cross’s version. In other words, pointing to the problem of certainty isn’t a milquetoast plea for everyone to simply get along.
It's also worth saying explicitly that the importance of understanding the problem I’m describing isn’t always shared equally. Telling a mother in Gaza or a father in Ofakim who just lost her or his child to be a little less quick to demonize the enemy sounds cold and callous in the face of their devastating loss. At the same time, pressing government leaders—as well as those in charge of how the topic is discussed in the media and in educational settings—to bear in mind the problem of certainty seems not only warranted, but crucial.
Before we dig into the question of how understanding the problem of certainty can help us think about this particular topic, a personal note. I come from a place of confusion on this. I am Jewish, but not especially observant. I care about understanding the complexity of contentious topics, but I am horrified by what appears to be a callous indifference to lives lost. In other words, I’m still trying to sort it out.
Certainty lets us justify almost anything, as long as it’s in service of a righteous outcome
In comparatively milder forms, certainty gives us permission to demonize, judge, and dismiss people who hold opinions we find objectionable. In its extreme version, it gives us permission to kill them. It’s the very conviction that paves the way for us to see our opponents as subhuman.
For those inclined to question the link I’m making, I’ll point out that various programs committed to getting us to see the humanity in our enemies are rooted in this basic idea. Once we meet and talk with people we instinctively hate for their beliefs, we tend to see them as multi-layered and three dimensional. And when we do, we often find ourselves with the space to wonder whether the person we initially saw as deplorable might be human, just like us, after all.
This is why certainty sits at the core of every genocide in human history. After all, with the belief that you alone are righteous in your position, you can justify practically anything.
Certainty keeps us from finding a shared goal
For as long as we’re sure we’re of our moral certitude, we will remain unmotivated, and therefore unable, to identify, let alone pursue, a shared goal. After all, in the case of Israel, why would I engage with an entity I’ve decided is nothing more than a “settler colony”?
To understand the relevance of having a shared goal, imagine for a moment that both sides in this conflict committed to ending the war and stopping the violence. I don’t mean that in an airy, let’s hug it out, sense, but in a literal and practical one. I’m talking about stating that, come what may, this is our priority.
Such a commitment wouldn’t magically erase the battles over holy land, or over who did what in the recent or distant past. But, in its most potent version, it could bring every discussion into sharper focus. Every question and every decision could be reframed in the context of whether it serves to advance the stated goal.
Of course, in this case, clearing a path to get to that point probably first requires the resolution of a different, and more existential, question. That is: can (as in does it have the right to) or should Israel exist as a Jewish state? If one side says yes and the other say no—here again, this observation comes with no declaration of moral equivalence—the goals are so different that it’s difficult to see a path forward that leads to anything other than the cycle of violence we’ve already seen. Attack, defend, repeat.
Certainty distorts the broader conversation about the conflict
Shortly after the attacks, the left-leaning magazine Jacobin ran the following headline: In the West Bank, Israel’s Apartheid Rule Results in Everyday Violence. The language presents an argument that amounts to saying, yes, the attacks were violent, but what can you expect when you’re basically running nothing more than an oppressive regime?
In this view, Israelis are seen as villains, people committed to displacing the land’s rightful owners. Although, of course, this stands in stark contrast to seeing them as a similarly displaced population who has been persecuted throughout history.
We arrive at such a conclusion through the reinforcement and conviction associated with extreme oversimplification. It amounts to saying: This side is good, and this side is evil. And oversimplification thrives any time it isn’t vigorously questioned or challenged. In other words, it thrives with certainty.
The good news is we’re not helpless to fight it.
A few questions to consider
I said at the outset that I have struggled to think through this topic. I’ll add that I’m not an expert on the geopolitics of the region or on its history.
I avoided writing about this conflict until I could no longer justify claiming to be focused on contentious issues all the while ignoring, what to some people is, the mother of all of them.
I first dipped a toe in here, for Sapir journal. In that piece, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wasn’t the sole focus, I offered some thoughts on questions we might think about when we’re trying to consider the nuance of the broader issue. Those include:
Can people on both sides be aggressors and victims?
Whose claim to victim status matters more?
What is the difference between self-defense and unprovoked aggression?
What is the right way to compensate people who have been wronged?
Who deserves compensation, in what form, and when?
And, of course, who should decide all these things?
Of course, many people would understandably find it difficult to see how this is relevant in the immediate aftermath of what amounts to a massacre. And yet it’s precisely because the stakes are so high that leaning into complexity matters the most.
Whether you’re a leader directing the military, whether you’re a government official thinking through foreign policy, whether you’re a peacemaker trying to bring together moderates on both sides, or whether you’re a journalist or an educator trying to navigate these issues, remembering to avoid the trap of certainty—to question our assumptions and be clear about our principles—may have never mattered more.
I think this is a thoughtful response to a terrible situation, and therefore likely to be dismissed by people on both sides. There is a place for certainty, and identifying evil, and the terrorist attacks by Hamas are definitely evil. The danger of certainty is taking that moment of evil and viewing the entire Israel-Palestine conflict through that lens. There's a danger of bringing certainty to any response to certain evil, and then "level the place" as Lindsay Graham advocated about Gaza. I do also worry about what I would call "the Anti-Certainty Trap"--dismissing views because they express certainty. You attack the Jacobin article as an example of the evils of certainty, but I thought it was a useful, and biased but thoughtful article. The only way we can escape the Certainty Trap is by listening to many different views, including those people who we think are wrong because of their certainty.
"That is: can (as in does it have the right to) or should Israel exist as a Jewish state? If one side says yes and the other say no...."
Good question. To be clear, I think Israel has the right to exist as a secular republic which protects the rights of its citizens and with a large Jewish majority. And those caveats: "republic with rights to citizens" are key. Otherwise, it's just another tyranny. (Does it always measure up? Sadly, NO. Is there a freer country in the Middle East? I don't think so.)
I can't comment on "Palestinians" in general (who largely probably want to live in peace), but I can observe the actions of the people in charge in those regions, the people who claim to represent the "Palestinians". It appears to me that side does not believe in the right of Israel to exist. Going back to the original 1947 UN partition plan -- a 2 state solution -- it appears that the govt. of Israel has been willing to accept a 2 state solution, but -- first the "Arabs", later the "Palestinian leadership" -- appears to have consistently rejected proposed 2 state solutions. And it seems like Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, as are chants of "From the Jordan to the sea, Palestine should be free". None of that sounds like acknowledgement of the right of Israel to exist.
I'd welcome evidence to the contrary, or perhaps evidence of what the borders of an Israel acceptable to Palestinian leadership would look like. If I'm correct, it is an irreconcilable difference -- at least with the current crop of "Palestinian leaders".
I'm not sure if I'm closing on an optimistic or pessimistic note, but it doesn't have to be "Attack, defend, repeat. " WW-II was horribly bloody, as was the US Civil War. But neither were attack, defend, repeat.