A Velvet Apocalypse

Proposing a visionary approach to the Israel / Palestinian crisis

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Continued from yesterday’s essay.

In what follows, I am, first, going to finish my overview of the situation. Then I am going to offer a possible solution set.

On the border of the West Bank, there is the Settlers’ Movement, made up of extremist Zionists, many of whom believe that Israel needs to expand far beyond its current borders. “They combine an exalted, messianic view of the Land of Israel, which the Lord gave to the Jews alone, with an astonishing indifference to the lives of the inhabitants whose land they are appropriating,” Sylvain Cypel writes in The State of Israel Versus the Jews.

The New Yorker published an interview with Daniella Weiss, one of the leaders of this movement, which includes more than 400,000 Jews. Their expansive ambitions extend far beyond Israel’s current borders. They want a much bigger state: “The borders of the homeland of the Jews are the Euphrates in the east and the Nile in the southwest,” she said in the interview. This would include what is now Jordan, as well as significant parts of Iraq and Egypt.

The settlers have the support of the Israeli government, which provides electricity, gas, water, and other services to illegal settlements. From childhood, orthodox Zionist settlers get indoctrinated in a radical theology: They are taught to see Palestinians as subhumans, squatters, and to believe “every square inch of the Land of Israel is sanctified [and] above the laws of the state… So it’s with a clear conscience that the settlers of this movement build their illegal outposts and commit crimes against Palestinian civilians,” Cypel writes. “Blessed are any means that advance the will of God.”

Orthodox Jews in Israel have a birthrate of 6.6, compared to 3.2 for the ordinary population there (and 4 for Palestinians in Gaza). This means Orthodox Jews are rapidly increasing their proportion of the total population, which will be 30% in 2050. This gives them increasing political leverage in any vote, pushing the country further toward ethno-nationalist and religious extremism.

Cypel argues, in his conclusion, that the state of Israel has become “bad for the Jews” because it drags us “into an ethnocentric and monolithic closing-in.” Israel has attached itself to “the emerging power of the new ethnic and authoritarian currents sweeping the planet,” and by doing so, has abandoned “that which made Judaism’s culture and glory in the modern age: the multifaceted engagement in progress, a belief in science over superstition, and a rejection of racism in all its forms.”

His proposed ideal answer is to dissolve the current Jewish ethno-nationalist model (made government policy in 2018, with the nation-state law, which gives Jews alone “the right of self-determination” within Israel and supports the settlements), and, in its place, establish a truly Democratic state where Palestinians and Jews have equal rights. He quotes a 2020 New York Times editorial from NYU Professor Peter Beinart: “The goal of equality is now more realistic than the goal of separation.” However, this view is not widely shared. 

I agree with Cypel on the horrible conditions of the Palestinians and the moral abyss this creates for Israeli (and all) Jews. However, I don’t imagine it is possible to dissolve Israel’s ethno-nationalist state, to create an alternative where power is equitably shared, due to Islamic ideology and the increasing power of Jewish extremism, as well as the harsh realities of demographics and geography. It is also extremely difficult to envision a two-state solution, at this point.

The contradictions confronting Israel were threatening to tear the country apart even before October 7. As Ari Shavit writes in My Promised Land: 

If the present status quo continues, and Israel keeps ruling over millions of Palestinians (who make up approximately half the population of the land), we face two equally dire choices: either we grant them political rights and Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, or we continue to deny them these rights and Israel ceases to be a democracy. A status quo vis-a-vis our immediate neighbors menaces us from within. An inner circle of ten million Palestinians threatens Israel’s very existence.

In an interview with Ezra Klein, Palestinian author Amjad Iraqi proposed a “no state” solution, which sounds intriguing, but also impossible to imagine, from where we are now. 

On the Israeli Right, many believe total expulsion of the Palestinians is the answer. Israel’s extremist Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, says that he “welcomes” the “voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world… that really want their best interests, with the support and generous financial assistance of the international community and within the state of Israel, is the only solution that will bring to an end the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike.” But this also seems ethically, practically, and politically impossible.

“We have no coherent identity and no continuous past. In a sense, we have no civic culture. Our grace is the semibarbaric grace of the wild ones. It is the youthful grace of the unbound and the uncouth. We respect no past and no future and no authority. We are irreverent. We are deeply anarchic. And yet, because we are all alone in this world, we stick together. Because we are orphans, we are brothers in arms and in fate.” - Ari Shavit, My Promised Land

Based on the writing I have been sharing here, I was invited to meet with a few influential members of the Jewish community, who asked what I propose can be done to deal with this situation. The question surprised me: I wasn’t trying to define an answer in such practical terms. I had to improvise. After a bit of reflection, this is what I came up with (please let me know what you think in the comments):

1. Israel agrees to financially underwrite the building of a state-of-the-art, ecologically advanced, city-of-the-future for the Palestinian refugees that is located in one of the neighboring Arab countries. Perhaps it is even in Gaza itself, which could be made part of Egypt, or given its own nationhood. Recognizing the severity of accelerating climate change, this city would be designed as a concerted effort to explore best practices and apply cutting-edge regenerative and permaculture techniques, plus renewable energy systems, to construct a model of survival for humanity’s future. Accelerating warming threatens to make the Middle East, and similar desert regions, uninhabitable. Palestinians would be trained in permaculture and other practices.

2. While maintaining itself as an ethno-nationalist state with an assured Jewish majority, Israel would agree to give Palestinians the right to return to their ancestral lands for one month or perhaps several months a year, setting up centers for this. Perhaps there is a sense that the stolen lands are understood to be permanently co-owned, cooperatively owned, or leased from their original owners in some long-term way (one hundred years? One thousand years?). In return, Palestinians agree that a Jewish state has the right to exist — just as Palestinian populations were displaced, an equal or greater number of Middle Eastern and European Jews were also displaced and need a home.

3. Israel undertakes a large-scale initiative to use psychedelic and MDMA therapy to help both orthodox Jews and fanatic Muslims escape the hypnosis of their entrenched ideologies. Psychedelic or MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is mandated as a treatment for anyone, on either side, who commits acts of violence or sabotage. Perhaps it is made available universally, to help process the historical trauma felt by all sides. These treatments continue until a series of psychology tests reveal a shift to a pluralistic, rather than parochial, worldview.

4. Intensive cultivation and targeted funding of moderating influences among fundamentalist Christian, Islamic, and orthodox Jewish factions: This includes think tanks (like Zauddin Sardar’s Critical Muslim Magazine and Institute, which I discussed in a recent essay), platforms for ongoing open dialogue, and media outlets.

5. As one element in this transition, we can satisfy a crucial element of Biblical prophecy in a harmless and peaceful way, through a holographic projection of the Third Temple of Solomon above the present Dome of the Rock. This is an alternative to physically removing the Al-Aksa Mosque, which would plunge that region, and the world, into catastrophe. The Bible specifies that the Third Temple should descend from Heaven onto that spot, and mentions the dimensions of the Temple, but it doesn’t state that this Temple needs to be constructed out of stone or brick. Therefore, the Third Temple could be constructed out of light, as a hologram, an imaginal and technological projection of humanity’s collective prayer.

   The effect could also be accomplished, today, with thousands of flying drones. This idea was explored in a 2004 Wired article, “Apocalypse Now,” presented by the late Yitzhaq Hayutman, a tech entrepreneur:

   Hayutman wants to set up an array of high-powered, water-cooled lasers and fire them into a transparent cube suspended beneath a blimp. The ephemeral, flickering image, he says, would fulfill an ancient, widely revered Jewish prophecy that the temple will descend from the heavens as a manifestation of light…

   "God has given me a mission," Hayutman says, speaking in a thoughtful, accented English as rain pounds the windshield. "I am here to show that the temple can be rebuilt peacefully and in such a way that it will bring the beginning of a new age."

   What's fascinating about his vision of the apocalypse is that it's not the bloodbath that fundamentalist Christians imagine. It is the end of the current world – with all its inequity and injustice – and the beginning of a new, perfect Earth ruled by the Messiah. The trigger will be a peaceful, technology-fueled spiritual revolution. A velvet apocalypse.

   As old approaches fail us and our legacy institutions become obsolete, perhaps the world will be ready for visionary approaches.

6. Support the dissemination of the philosophical paradigm of analytic idealism¹ as a scientifically and philosophically coherent worldview that can “break the spell” of reductive materialism (I have been working on an initiative in this area: https://www.theelevator.earth). Once generally understood and accepted, analytic idealism can help people from different religions overcome sectarian views to embrace a cooperative framework. I believe we need this paradigm shift to build a bridge between the religious, mystical/esoteric, and contemporary scientific/secular worldview.

   In actual fact, the reductive materialist worldview is obsolete, as philosopher Bernardo Kastrup explores in Why Materialism is Baloney and other books. Analytic idealism, with its understanding that consciousness, not matter, is foundational, provides a substantive basis for recognizing the meaning and intrinsic value of the major religions. Each religion offers a particular mode of realizing and connecting with the ultimate nature of reality, rooted in historically and culturally specific circumstances. They do not have to be in opposition with each other.

Beyond this, as my friend David Sauvage reminded me, any “solution” may also require something radical, unprecedented: A mutation or transmutation of human consciousness to go beyond obsolete ideologies, beliefs, and logical contradictions, into a realization of universal love and compassion. To overcome all local, tribal, and national identities and affiliations: Isn’t this what the messianic tradition of all the monotheistic religions point toward? In that case, what are we waiting for?

This is what I envisioned in Quetzalcoatl Returns (2006, originally published as 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl). It seemed to me that there could be a “tipping point,” where, based on the theories of Rupert Sheldrake, a new morphogenetic field will constellate based on direct experience of transcendent insight. The collective consciousness of humanity will make a sudden leap, attaining a new cooperative, empathic, ego-free state.

Unfortunately, in the years since Quetzalcoatl Returns was published, I haven’t seen society — or humanity’s collective consciousness — moving in this direction. If anything, we seem to be regressing and degrading, in many respects. These days, for example, the impact of social media makes sustained concentration increasingly difficult for many people, particularly younger people. The multitude is more easily swayed by viral memes — by anything that can momentarily hold their scattered attention. Fundamentalist religions and fanatic sects continue to indoctrinate and control the minds of many millions. If anything, these seem to be growing in popularity.

However, it could also be the case that the planetary, species-wide crisis must still deepen and intensify before such a “mutational break” can occur, initiating a new collective state of being, which Jose Arguelles called “Noospheric” consciousness, or what the philosopher Jean Gebser called the “integral-aperspectival” state. We could see coherence and clarity spontaneously emerge from the current murk: This option cannot be completely ruled out. In a universe constructed out of consciousness, anything is possible.

A holographic image of the Third Temple could be projected above the Done of the Rock as a peaceful fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

In future essays, I want to consider how the Israel war reflects the broader crisis of Liberalism: The increasing global conflict we are seeing between (flawed, corrupt) liberal Democracies and (horrific, unfree) dictatorships and despotisms. Are we reaching the end of Liberalism as an ideology, and, if so, what comes after?

I want to reconsider the Left perspective that sees America and the West to blame for wars across the Middle East and elsewhere. I also want to explore something I find bizarre: the power of ancient texts — the Bible and Quran, particularly — to continue to shape the ideology and behavior of billions of humans. I’m also open to other ideas in the comments. I am grateful to have such a thoughtful community of readers; I learn a great deal from what people share here.

1. Perhaps, also, as an alternative, panpsychism.