Maybe The Demonstrators Were Just Wrong
By
Leonard Zwelling
This piece from The New York Times on October 23 is laughable. It describes the regrets of many pro-Palestinian campus demonstrators that their efforts were not rewarded with a Palestinian state and that they have been penalized in the job market for their activism for this cause.
TS—tough situation!
Listen you Gen Z naifs, you displayed a complete lack of understanding of the history of the Middle East when you marched around in kaffiyahs and waved “from the river to the sea” signs on college quads. This country you call Palestine does not exist on any map except maybe in ancient Rome where it delineated the land of the Philistines. That would include Goliath for those of you who are Bible scholars.
So here’s a quick lesson:
There is no such country as Palestine and there is no such thing as a Palestinian. These people are Arabs who dwelled in the area of the British mandate of Palestine (not a country). In 1947, the United Nations established an Arab state in this part of the world by bisecting the area of the British mandate. One half was called Israel, a refuge for Jews. The other was called Jordan. That’s where these Palestinians were supposed to live. Did this Arab area include East Jerusalem where they had homes with their names in Arabic over the doors? Yes, it did. But, in 1967, rather than being destroyed by the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack that resulted in total victory in the Six Day War. The spoils of this war included a lot of territory that used to be Jordan, including the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, a retaining structure that is the last remnants of the Second Temple from 70 C.E. It also included East Jerusalem. In other words, the Israelis captured a lot of what the U.N. had designated Arab Jordan and which the current “Palestinians” want now.
As a guest speaker at our synagogue described this week (Einat Wilf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einat_Wilf), this presumptive right of return claimed by the “Palestinians” is a bit made up. What is not made up is that as long as these “Palestinians” continue to want to rid all Jews from all of these lands, there will be no peace.
Dr. Wilf pointed out that what is commonly said about radical Palestinian forces, even by me, is that you cannot kill an idea like Hamas. She disagrees. She argues that this is exactly what the Allied troops did to Nazism in WWII. Sure, there are still Nazis, but they don’t control any countries or populations.
When the Palestinians rid themselves of Hamas and all Hamas-like, Iran-backed, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist terrorists, then the Israelis can discuss peace. Until then, forget about it.
And as for the chuckleheads that backed the Palestinian cause on American university campuses and now have regrets and cannot find jobs, too bad. You signed up with the losers and a visit to the library beforehand (without wanting to take it over) would have taught you some history about those for whom you claim to be fighting.
How many times have these “Palestinians” had a chance to have a country and in the end walked away? Too many. And what’s their response after having departed any peace talks? War. If the American mainstream (law firms and other groups hiring recent college graduates) have blackballed the pro-Palestinian protestors, that’s unfortunate for them. Maybe they needed to think harder about the cause for which they were protesting.
The two-state solution to the Middle East dilemma has been presented to the “Palestinian” leadership many times. In return for leaving Gaza and uprooting Israelis from their homes more than twenty years ago, the Israeli government was given Hamas as a bargaining partner through one-time elections.
I appreciate Mr. Trump’s declaration that there is now and will be peace in the region. He’s kidding himself just as these American students, some of whom were Jewish (a Shonda), kidded themselves about who they supported. Hamas would have killed most of these demonstrators on sight.
These students backed the wrong horse. Again, too bad! I have no sympathy.
2 thoughts on “Maybe The Demonstrators Were Just Wrong”
A slight correction of this blog’s description of the UN partition plan from 1947:
Quote from this blog:
“In 1947, the United Nations established an Arab state in this part of the world by bisecting the area of the British mandate. One half was called Israel, a refuge for Jews. The other was called Jordan.”
Some inaccuracies in your description of the partition plan of 1947.
First, the British received in 1921-22 mandate over the area that included Transjordan ( east of the Jordan river, and today known as Jordan) and Palestine (today Israel plus the disputed Palestinian Territories). The British mandate over Transjordan ended on 1946, when Jordan became an independent state, not including any part of the British mandate over the area which was named Palestine in the west side of the Jordan river. The partition plan of 1947 then, was only for the region then named Palestine, dividing it between areas with dense Jewish population ( to become an independent state of Israel, and areas of dense Arab/ Palestinian population ( to become whatever remained of mandatory Palestine).
Some early maps from the 1920s show the entire British mandate ( east and west to the Jordan river) under the name Palestine, and after a revision by the league of nations in 1922 this area was subdivided to Transjordan emirate ( east) and Palestine (west).
That the area on the west was called Palestine under the British mandate is underscored by ID cards and birth certificates of those of us ( Israelis) which immigrated or were born before 1948. : born in פלשתינה.
To the best of my knowledge, there was never a situation in which Palestinians were actually Jordanians except between 1948 ( after the war of independence) and 1967. When the West Bank area was taken by the Jordanians in1948, they did offer the residents of that region Jordanian citizenship. Some accepted the offer and some did not. I believe that option was revoked after the six days war.
Sara Peleg
We don’t mind being wrong when we are educated in the correction process. Thanks Sara. Len