Column 004｜オリーブの木は証言する——聖地、帝国、同盟、そしてハーグ

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The Olive Tree Bears Witness: Holy Land, Empire, Alliance and The Hague

The olive tree is not collateral damage. It is livelihood, inheritance, memory—and evidence.

Beginning with the violence carried out by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank in October 2026, this essay follows one line of responsibility through the Crusades, Persian and Islamic traditions of statecraft, the British Mandate, American Middle East policy, international criminal justice and the racial selectivity of Western empathy.

TokyoBrainie’s indictment

I do not indict an ethnicity or a skin colour. I indict those who commit violence; those who turn dispossession into policy; institutions that fail to investigate and prosecute; allies that supply weapons and diplomatic protection while calling for “restraint”; and a media and political culture that opens its eyes only when the victim holds the right passport.

What happened

On 16 October 2026, Reuters reporters witnessed approximately 80 masked Israeli settlers, some dressed in black and carrying gas canisters, descend on an olive harvest near the West Bank village of Abu Falah. They burned olive trees, used slings to fire stones and, in at least one recorded instance, an armed settler fired a gun.

American photojournalist Heidi Levine was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked. She suffered a broken rib and a hand injury that required surgery.

Israeli military vehicles arrived, but the assault continued. Soldiers fired tear gas towards Palestinians. The military later described violence against civilians as grave and unacceptable. That statement matters, but it does not erase the practical question raised by the scene: who was protected, and who was subjected to force?

The following day, near the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh, settlers attacked Palestinian civilians, diplomats from Belgium, France and Poland, a French mayor and Catholic representatives. A Belgian diplomatic vehicle was damaged. Citing the Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din, Reuters reported at least 170 settler attacks since the olive harvest season began on 27 September.

On 19 October, Israeli police arrested ten suspects in connection with attacks on the American journalist and European diplomats. This is a material development and must be recorded fairly. But arrest is not prosecution, conviction or structural prevention. Reuters also noted that prosecutions of settlers accused of violent crimes against Palestinians remain rare.

The factual judgment is therefore more precise than either slogan:

• It is inaccurate to say that the Israeli authorities did nothing; an investigation and arrests followed.
• It is equally inadequate to close the case as the work of a few isolated rioters. Repeated attacks, settlement expansion, financial and political support, and a record of limited prosecution together create an enabling environment.
• The war involving Iran may divert international attention from the West Bank. But the sources reviewed for this essay do not establish that the attackers or the Israeli government deliberately timed these incidents to exploit that diversion.
• The proper target is not a hidden motive we cannot prove. It is the public structure and its documented results.

An olive tree is not merely a crop

Burning an olive tree does more than destroy one season’s harvest. An olive tree may take years to mature. It embodies family income, inheritance, continuity and a physical bond to the land.

The same is true of homes, fields, roads, water and places of worship. When access becomes dangerous, residents may later appear to have left “voluntarily.” Yet movement produced by violence, impunity, access restrictions and economic suffocation is not free migration.

In 2026, the British government formally stated that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was occurring in parts of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists. It also announced measures including restrictions on goods from illegal settlements and sanctions against individuals and entities that support, incite or carry out settler violence.

These measures do not erase Britain’s historical responsibility. They do, however, show that the current British government is no longer describing every incident solely through the fog of “clashes between two sides.”

If we summon the Crusades, we must summon them accurately

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for an expedition to the Holy Land at Clermont. The First Crusade, led by nobles including Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond IV of Toulouse and Bohemond of Taranto, captured Jerusalem in 1099 and massacred Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. Before reaching the Levant, crusading movements also attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland.

This history does not justify calling modern Israel or the Jewish people “new Crusaders.” The historical actors, religions and institutions are different. More importantly, Jews themselves were victims of crusading violence.

What can be compared is not bloodline but political technique:

1. Sacred geography is converted into an absolute title to land.
2. The other population is treated not as a complete political subject, but as an obstacle or an object of management.
3. Faith, civilisation or security is used to cover the pursuit of territory, power and spoils.
4. Violence against civilians is described as an isolated deviation while territorial control advances.
5. Distant patrons supply moral fervour without paying the local human cost.

This structure is not unique to the Crusades, Israel or any one religion. It has reappeared in empires, colonies, sectarian wars and the global “war on terror.” History should therefore be used not as an indictment of ancestry, but as a method for recognising how power justifies itself.

Before turning Saladin into a hero, remember who he was

Salah al-Din—Saladin—was not Persian. He was a Kurdish founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. In 1187, after defeating the Crusader army at Hattin, he recovered Jerusalem. Compared with the massacre of 1099, his acceptance of surrender and ransom created a later image of a comparatively restrained conqueror.

But Saladin was still a medieval ruler, not a modern human-rights advocate. If history is reduced to heroic legend, “our” violence becomes justice and “their” violence becomes barbarism. That is only the mirror image of the ideology being criticised.

From the Persian world, the more useful figure to summon is not only a warrior but Nizam al-Mulk: the Persian vizier who served the Seljuk sultans Alp Arslan and Malik Shah. In the Siyasatnama, or Book of Government, he examined administration, justice, bureaucracy and the ruler’s responsibility.

The Islamic world on the eve of the Crusades was not a single bloc. Seljuks, Fatimids, local dynasties and sectarian communities competed with one another. Saladin’s later success rested not only on religious mobilisation, but on the political, military and administrative work of bringing Egypt and Syria under one strategic order.

The question for a modern leader is therefore not simply whether territory was gained.

Did the ruler subject power to justice? Did he subject his own side to law?

The Hague is not a metaphor

On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They have not been convicted. An arrest warrant is not the end of a trial; it is an instrument intended to bring a suspect before the Court. Presumption of innocence must be maintained.

The International Court of Justice is a separate institution. In its advisory opinion of July 2024, the ICJ concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and identified obligations including the immediate cessation of new settlement activity, the evacuation of settlers and reparation for damage. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 had already reaffirmed that settlements in territory occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of international law.

There are precedents for heads of state facing justice in The Hague:

• Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
• Former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević was tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but died in detention in 2006 before judgment.

These cases do not prove Netanyahu’s guilt in advance. They establish a narrower and essential principle:

A head-of-government title is not a permanent licence of immunity from international criminal responsibility.

American Middle East policy: “incompetence” is too simple

Calling every American president incompetent obscures the evidence. Some used pressure on Israel; some brokered agreements; some opposed settlements rhetorically but refused to attach effective conditions; others rewarded unilateral changes to the status quo.

• Harry Truman recognised Israel on the day it declared independence in 1948. The decision supported Jewish statehood and safety after catastrophic persecution, but did not resolve the political fate of Palestinians.
• Dwight Eisenhower opposed the British, French and Israeli invasion during the 1956 Suez Crisis and applied pressure for withdrawal. His record demonstrates that an American president can impose meaningful constraints on an ally.
• Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords and helped produce peace between Egypt and Israel. The central questions of Palestinian self-determination and occupation remained unresolved.
• George H. W. Bush used loan guarantees as leverage in a dispute over settlement expansion.
• Bill Clinton sponsored the Oslo process, but failed to build an enforcement structure capable of converting interim arrangements into permanent peace. Occupation and settlement facts continued to accumulate.
• George W. Bush endorsed a two-state solution, while the language of the global war on terror increasingly absorbed the asymmetry of occupation into a broad vocabulary of security.
• Barack Obama opposed settlement expansion while preserving an enormous military-support structure. His administration allowed Resolution 2334 to pass through abstention only near the end of his presidency—an institutional objection delivered too late to alter the underlying system.
• Donald Trump’s first administration moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and changed the American government’s position on the legal status of settlements. These actions rewarded changes to the status quo.
• Joe Biden supported Israel’s security after Hamas murdered civilians and took hostages on 7 October 2023. His administration also criticised civilian harm and sanctioned violent settlers, but left a deep contradiction between arms support, diplomatic protection and accountability for outcomes.
• The present Trump administration contains the same contradiction in a sharper form: Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Israel to crack down on the current settler violence, while President Trump endorsed Netanyahu before Israel’s October 2026 election.

This is not simply a history of failure. It is a history of possessing the power to impose conditions, yet repeatedly choosing not to bind that power consistently to law and civilian protection.

When spoken by a government that supplies weapons, funding, veto protection and diplomatic cover, the words “concern,” “restraint” and “investigation” are not neutral substitutes for policy. Support without enforceable conditions does not create innocence regarding foreseeable consequences.

Britain: an empire promised the future of land it did not own

In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government supported the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people.” It also promised that nothing would prejudice the civil and religious rights of the “existing non-Jewish communities.”

The asymmetry is embedded in the vocabulary. A national project was articulated for Jews. The Arab majority already living there was rendered as a residual category—“non-Jewish communities”—and was promised civil and religious rights, not equivalent political rights.

Britain did not create the entire conflict. Zionism, European antisemitism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalism, the League of Nations, the Second World War, the Holocaust and the choices of regional governments all shaped the outcome.

But Britain governed as an empire, managed incompatible promises, ranked political claims and ended the Mandate after violence had deepened. That responsibility cannot be erased.

There is no need to claim that “the British are racist” as a national essence. The proper target is an imperial bureaucracy that classified the political maturity and rights of other peoples while placing itself above them as arbiter.

If Britain today sanctions perpetrators and restricts trade connected to illegal settlements, that is not absolution for the past. It is a minimum, belated correction that should be judged by enforcement.

Anti-Black racism and the Western gaze towards non-white lives

The United States spoke the language of liberty and universal rights while maintaining slavery, Jim Crow segregation, disenfranchisement and legally enforced racial hierarchy. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 used race and origin to regulate entry and citizenship. The British Empire likewise embedded assumptions of hierarchy and political immaturity into colonial law and administration.

This history does not mean that every present-day American, Briton or white person holds the same beliefs. It means that the institutional habit of deciding whose death counts as a strategic loss and whose death becomes background noise did not appear yesterday.

The political response intensified after an American journalist and European diplomats were attacked. Their protection is necessary. But a question remains:

Why was the same urgency absent when Palestinian farmers endured the same violence?

Indicting “all white people” would weaken this question. It would place the assaulted journalist, the diplomats, citizens documenting abuses, American and British opponents of government policy, and Israeli human-rights monitors in the same racial dock.

White supremacy is a historical and institutional subject of analysis. White skin is not evidence of criminal responsibility.

The answer to selective Western morality is not reverse racial guilt. It is universal responsibility without national or racial exemptions.

Israelis and Jews must not be used as shields for a government

Hamas’s killing of civilians and hostage-taking on 7 October 2023 were crimes and cannot be justified. The history and continuing reality of antisemitism are also real.

Neither fact grants immunity for violence against West Bank farmers, journalists or diplomats, nor for illegal settlement and forced displacement. A politics that treats Jewish safety and Palestinian rights as opposing principles condemns both peoples to permanent war.

Israeli society includes people who document settler violence, oppose occupation, demand the release of hostages and an end to war, and criticise their government as lawyers, journalists, former soldiers and citizens.

Erasing them by declaring all Israelis guilty is factually false. It also hands Netanyahu’s government its strongest defence: the claim that foreign criticism is merely antisemitism.

A government is not an entire people. Precisely because state responsibility must be pursued, that distinction must be defended.

Put each link in the chain of responsibility on trial

Moral anger becomes effective only when demands are directed at institutions rather than races.

1. Direct perpetrators Conduct prompt investigations and public trials based on video, weapons, vehicles, location data and medical evidence. Publish judicial outcomes, not merely arrest numbers.
2. Inciters, financiers and organisations Freeze assets, impose travel bans and expose the financial structures supporting violent groups, illegal outposts and organised incitement.
3. Security forces and command structures Independently investigate whether forces failed to protect civilians, tolerated or assisted violence, or used disproportionate force against Palestinians.
4. The Israeli government Halt new settlement activity, dismantle illegal outposts, protect harvests, guarantee fair access to land, water and roads, and publish a time-bound programme consistent with international humanitarian law and the ICJ advisory opinion.
5. The United States, Britain and European allies Attach enforceable human-rights and accountability conditions to weapons, finance, trade and diplomatic support. Do not use “deep concern” as a substitute for policy.
6. ICC member states and the international community Do not apply arrest warrants according to political preference. Protect the rights of suspects and the presumption of innocence, but do not permit leaders to evade the courtroom itself.
7. The media Continue reporting Palestinian victims, investigations, prosecution rates, convictions and land transfer—not only incidents that become internationally visible when a foreign citizen is attacked.

TokyoBrainie’s verdict

While the world watches Iran, olive trees are being burned on West Bank hills. People are kicked to the ground. A family’s connection to its land is severed one tree at a time.

But I will not call all Israelis criminals. I will not make every Jew an accomplice to state policy. I will not reduce Britons, Americans or white people to one collective defendant.

I make a more difficult accusation—one with fewer escape routes:

Prosecute those who committed the violence.

Prosecute those who financed it.

Hold accountable those who turned dispossession into policy.

Investigate those who obstructed justice.

Judge those who supplied weapons and diplomatic immunity while denying responsibility for the results.

Apply the same evidence and the same law, regardless of the flag.

Crusading nobles consecrated the sword in the name of God. Imperial officials classified other peoples’ futures in the name of civilisation. Modern allies administer exceptions in the name of security.

The names change. The technology of exemption remains familiar.

The Hague is not a metaphor. The olive tree is not scenery. Silence is not neutrality.

If justice is truly universal, its scales must be capable of weighing allies as well as enemies.

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