Israel and Palestine are warring again. Civilians are dying again. Families are losing their homes, and chaos persists. Again. This would not be happening if Israel were located somewhere that makes more sense: in Germany.
No matter where you stand in the “Israelis vs. Palestinians” political arguments—in which both sides are hopelessly entrenched and unmoving—it seems fair to acknowledge that there are some fundamental problems with the location of the nation of Israel.
For one thing, it was carved out of land already occupied by someone else. Whether or not you think Israel was justified in carving itself a nation out of Palestine, you must admit that the act of doing so was bound to cause some resentment.
And, indeed, it did. It caused a lot of resentment, and anger. Emotions that still exist today. And which have fueled a more or less constant state of war against Israel since Israel was created.
So the establishment of Israel, regarded by many as a towering achievement of historic justice, will forever be tainted by the fact that it was established by taking land from people who had done nothing wrong. That act laid the groundwork for the nonstop conflict that continues to this day.
Some will say that Israel had to be located where it is now, because of the “Holy Land” and all that. Well, sorry—a mystical and empirically unjustified belief in the “holiness” of some particular place is not a reason to march in and take it from someone else, by force. Grow up. It may be a bit late to move Israel to Germany now.
But when you consider the prospect of another seven decades of war over that little sliver of land, the idea does not sound so bad. Germany would still acquiesce to it, if the demand was made before the last Nazis die out. It’s really the very least that they could do.