Ruling the Golan Heights: Territory and War

I’ve just been waiting for someone to comment on last week’s newsletter in which I went into detail on the situation in Syria and dropped a fairly controversial line: “...the leadership of the faction now controlling Syria—just across from the Golan Heights…”. Unfortunately, that edition did not get as much attention as some of my others. C’est la vie. If you don’t get why that statement is controversial, just wait.

Today I’m going to address territory, war, and “occupation”. What antisemites really hate about Israel is not that they are “occupying” territory but that they have the audacity to win and win again as the perpetual underdogs of the Middle East. Their enemies would prefer they just lay down and die, and so Israelis existing anywhere in the world constitutes “occupation” to certain “charming” individuals. For the uninformed masses, however, they hear words like “occupation” and it seems intense, like Israel is doing something wrong. It is intentionally biased language that we need to clarify.

Firstly, what makes an ‘occupation’ an occupation?

In Wisconsin we joke that the UP is “occupied” by that state. But of course that’s not really how it works. Just because someone thinks that territory should belong to a certain state or nation does not make it temporarily “occupied” by another.

Generally speaking, we consider territory “occupied” when it hasn’t been formally annexed into a state that yet exercises temporary rights of sovereignty over it. Germany and Japan were officially occupied by the Allied powers for some period of years after the war. Gradually, they were given sovereignty back after intensive deradicalization efforts; and now today they are some of the healthiest democracies in the world. We never intended to take their territory; only safeguard it for a better future for the inhabitants.

It should be apparent then that “occupation” is not inherently morally bad. It can be something like the classic example of holding on to a weapon your friend gave to you for safekeeping and not giving it back if the friend comes demanding it while not in a sound state of mind (see Plato’s Republic). Is it denying someone’s sovereignty? Yes. Is it for the “greater good”? Also yes.

Judea and Samaria (or the ‘West Bank’ of the Jordan river) can be considered an “occupied” territory in some respects. It didn’t need to be this way today if Yasser Arafat had taken one of the many deals the world BEGGED him to take…but I digress. Residents of the Palestinian Authority are not Israelis. The land they live on has not been formally annexed into Israel. And if some day the mythical “two state solution” materializes, that land will probably go to the world’s first nation of ‘Palestine’.

This is not the case for either the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip. Despite the laughably absurd claim Israel forces Gazans to live in an “open air prison”, Israel has not occupied the Strip since their complete withdrawal in 2006 that saw thousands of Jews (living and dead) forcibly evicted from their homes in Gaza. Every action taken since then in Gaza has been under the direction of Hamas. If Gaza was "occupied" in that period of time, it was only by the terrorists that would go on to commit October 7th.

But what about the Golan Heights, the place everyone is talking about now? Doesn’t it belong to Syria in the first place?

And now it’s time for controversy. Because the Golan Heights are Israeli, and will likely remain so for a very long time to come. Not a majority but a significant number of Druze from the Golan Heights have Israeli citizenship. The Druze are a fascinatingly hard people to understand, and it’s intentional. You may have recently seen that six Druze towns on the Syrian side of the border formally requested annexation into Israel. Now why would they do that, I wonder? Could it be because they know in Israel they’ll have freedom to practice their religion, whereas under the jihadis of HTS they won’t? They’re not requesting sovereignty (for a number of reasons). They’re requesting protection.

The Druze understand the best situation they can make for themselves and the best lives they can live are in Israel. Why can’t the world understand this?

Here’s the thing: you can shake your fist at the sky and scream “occupation” until you’re blue in the face over the results of the ‘Six Day War’. Do you know what the ultimate rule has been in the “laws of warfare” specifically determining to where go the spoils?

Vae victis. That’s it. And especially if you’re the one that started it. Who started the ‘Six Day War’ again, in which Jordan lost Judea and Samaria, Egypt lost the Gaza Strip (and the Sinai peninsula, which would later be given back for the promise of peace after the Yom Kippur war), and Syria lost the Golan Heights?

Of course the enemies of Israel will say Israel started it with their preemptive strike that took out the air power of the combined armies assembled against them. Thing about preemptive strikes though: they generally preempt. Israel had more than enough casus belli to act with the extreme brinkmanship of Nasser on the southern border after he ordered UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai (and they listened(!)). And then, he blockaded the straits of Tiran. Nasser committed the first act of war in the ‘Six Day War’, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

No one forced the Hashemites in Jordan to team up with Egypt and try destroying Israel again. No one forced Syria into it. They were caught in bloodlust for Jewish lives. And the price Syria paid specifically was the Golan Heights.

Few realize just how strategic of a location the Golan Heights are. To give up that territory to a hostile neighbor—or even a potentially hostile neighbor—is running directly counter to the survival of their country. As Elie Wiesel said in his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.” May we one day see such a vision realized, where ownership of the Golan Heights is not central to the survival of the Jewish state.

עם ישראל חי