"If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem"
About this Quote
God’s “death” isn’t a theological claim here; it’s a journalistic indictment dressed as gallows humor. Stone hijacks Nietzsche’s most misquoted provocation and repurposes it for mid-century realpolitik: if even an omnipotent deity can’t broker “an equitable solution,” the conflict has become the ultimate machine for exhausting moral language. The punchline lands because it’s cruelly plausible. Not that God literally failed, but that every proposed fairness - partition lines, refugee return, security guarantees, sovereignty - gets shredded by competing traumas and incompatible narratives of legitimacy.
Stone’s intent is less to sneer at faith than to puncture the comforting idea that the Arab-Jewish conflict can be solved by good intentions, lofty rhetoric, or a single “balanced” formula. “As some now say” signals a modern, secular audience; he’s speaking to readers who already suspect that history, not providence, runs the show. The subtext is harsher: if God is dead, the living are the ones killing Him - by turning moral absolutes into weapons and treating suffering as political capital.
Context matters. Stone wrote as a fiercely independent American journalist, famously allergic to official stories and national mythmaking. He’s also writing in the long shadow of the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, displacement of Palestinians, and the Cold War’s habit of laundering interests as virtue. The line works because it compresses that entire moral crisis into one mordant thought: the conflict doesn’t just resist compromise; it erodes the very belief that “equity” is an achievable category.
Stone’s intent is less to sneer at faith than to puncture the comforting idea that the Arab-Jewish conflict can be solved by good intentions, lofty rhetoric, or a single “balanced” formula. “As some now say” signals a modern, secular audience; he’s speaking to readers who already suspect that history, not providence, runs the show. The subtext is harsher: if God is dead, the living are the ones killing Him - by turning moral absolutes into weapons and treating suffering as political capital.
Context matters. Stone wrote as a fiercely independent American journalist, famously allergic to official stories and national mythmaking. He’s also writing in the long shadow of the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, displacement of Palestinians, and the Cold War’s habit of laundering interests as virtue. The line works because it compresses that entire moral crisis into one mordant thought: the conflict doesn’t just resist compromise; it erodes the very belief that “equity” is an achievable category.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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