The Palestinian Substitute Child

I have a dislike for people explaining the behavior of women without children as somehow tied to that. I grant that instincts are powerful in all of us and there may be something to it, but it's too pat, too one-size-fits-all for my taste. Thus I was not initially sympathetic to Daniel Klein's explanation of the British left's intellectually impossible attachment to the Palestinian cause and almost stopped reading after a few paragraphs. Britain and the Palestinian Word-Symbol. But I stuck with it and some pieces did seem to fit. 

Persistently tracked to their origins, all the frothy debates surrounding Palestine devolve on this point. Why the woundedness? Why the empathetic overdrive in a single direction? The Palestine word-symbol represents collective humanity - humanity as Christ-like victim of the Jews’ unbearably disturbing presence: the mental presence of Jewish ideas that draw humanity away from innocence and instinct and animal-nature, and into the burdensome world of responsibility, moral choice and honesty before our Creator.

St. Greta makes an appearance.  When he gets to the men who are as deeply enamored with that cause he locates a separate instinct there, also plausible.  He may have overshot and told a just-so story in both cases, but I think it is worth a look.