The Frustrating Trials of "Star-Manning" Zionism

In 2021, Angel Eduardo, senior writer & editor at FIRE and all-around mensch, invented a new way to argue.

He called it star-manning. 

Star-manning isn’t just the opposite of “straw-manning” where people rephrase an opposing argument to make it easier to defeat, it’s not merely “steel-manning,” where people restate their opponent’s position in a way that’s equally or ideally more persuasive.

No, star-manning is the wildly unreasonable step of engaging with the strongest, most charitable version of the opposing argument and the strongest, most charitable version of your opponent. Star-manning demands that you strive to understand how people you disagree with might believe that they’re not just factually correct but morally good.

And sure, if this reckless faith in human nature were more common, previously intractable disagreements would be immediately resolved, thanksgiving dinners would go by without a hitch, and the world would be a utopia of peace and love and free pizza.

But come on, is any of that really worth treating the opposition like human beings?

Over the past year, I’ve been doing my best, if not to star-man Zionism, to at least understand it. 

I’ve spent hours jogging to a soundtrack of pro-Zionist podcasts and interviews, I’ve listened to several former Zionists explain what changed their minds, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with people from across the Zionism spectrum, and if we ignore the kind of people who want to “erase every single living being in Gaza,” there seem to be three main arguments in defence of the idea that Zionism is not only correct but morally good. 

1. Palestine belongs to the Jewish people, not the Palestinians.

I'm getting this one out of the way first because it's the hardest to treat with the generosity that star-manning demands.

It doesn't matter if you think that all Jews own the Levant region forever because some Jews have lived on it for thousands of years or if you imagine it's sensible (or feasible) to define 2024 A.D. borders according to 1000 B.C. books, it's hard to find a charitable interpretation of people who declare that they own a piece of land and take it, “regardless of the will of the native population.”

But while I hate to be stumbling at the first star-manning hurdle, I'll take comfort in the knowledge that David Ben-Gurion, one of Israel’s founding fathers, understood my dilemma:

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? 

They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

And if we assume, as star-manning requires us to do, that Zionism's apologists are smart enough to understand a reality that Ben-Gurion understood ~90 years ago, we have to conclude that they've found a way to justify the theft. Which brings us to...

2. The European persecution of Jews justifies the Jewish persecution of Palestinians.

In April 1945, as the Allies made their final push toward Berlin, the newly liberated survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp held up handmade signs with the words “Never forget” and “Never again” written in various languages. 

And while most people assumed this stand against murder and ethnic cleansing applied to everyone, it turns out “Never again” didn't include the Palestinians.

After the Nazis exterminated six million Jews, and the assembled Western nations sat on their hands rather than taking in what would have amounted to just 17,000 Jewish refugees each, it's easy to understand why some of those survivors felt that the Europeans had abandoned them.

But it's harder to understand how that justified persecuting a different group of people who weren't at fault.

And if we assume, as star-manning requires us to do, that the Zionists understood that all humans would fight against that persecution, maybe the issue is that they saw Palestinians as something less than human. 

3. Israel's moral, cultural and/or technological superiority to Palestine justifies colonisation.

Of all the things you're not supposed to admit in 2024, the belief that you're better than somebody else is near the top of the list. But in the 1890s, people like Theodor Herzl had no trouble admitting they saw Western civilisation as superior to “this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient.”

And, to be honest, I also think some societies are better than others.