This Is Not About The Land And Resistance is Futile

The concept that “resistance” means “any means necessary” or, as I prefer to put it, “anything goes, especially your life if I disagree with you or am unhappy with you” is becoming acceptable.

For example:   how else are we going to resist the “oppression” of health insurance companies if not by murdering their executives?  The insurance companies have what we want so let’s kill their executives.  The reality is that what we want is unlimited resources (not our own) for healthcare, which is unreasonable. But we also want to be treated with compassion, which is eminently reasonable and possible.

Resistance to oppression, by any means necessary.  That’s the same logic used by the “pro-Palestinian” but really pro-Hamas activities in Europe and the US.  The current Palestinian leadership wants to get rid of the State of Israel, kill all the Jews, and take over all the land from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.  I submit this is not only unreasonable but impossible.   The Palestinian people, I hope, want peace, which would be possible as soon as their leaders and fanatics among them abandon the goal of driving killing all the Jews and destroying the State of Israel.

Let me posit that “by any means necessary” as used by supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Qatar, and others is simply trying to whitewash the objective of killing Jews.   

This twisted logic and the associated rampant antisemitism – and yes, I believe “anti-Zionism” is antisemitism – is starting to have an impact.  The idea that Jews everywhere are fair game because someone thinks the Palestinians are being “oppressed” is not dissimilar to the logic that leads to celebrating the murder of a CEO.  Thus, resistance “by any means necessary” has fueled celebrating, embracing and normalizing the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of not only Jews in Israel, but attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide.  

This behavior is resulting in some new thinking in parts of the Jewish community. First, such widespread pogroms and individual violence against Jews is reminding us that there really is no place safe from antisemitism.  Israel survives and will continue to survive because Israel will defend itself and righteously retaliate.  Truth is, they have no other choice.  The Israelis will defend the Jewish people, something other countries (e.g., the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Canada)  have, despite their rhetoric, neglected to do.  Remember that Jewish law upholds the right to kill someone who is trying to kill you.  Murder is prohibited, but self-defense is not.

Second, Jews who have never before thought about arming themselves are starting not only to think about it, but to do it.  I have talked to a number of American Jews who, like me, have decided to be armed.  Some are getting concealed carry licenses.  While fraught with legal nuances, self-defense is still a solid legal defense.  The Second Amendment does not take sides.

Third, we understand what underlies the reality that violence against Israel is also a blank check for violence against Jews world-wide.  Iran and its proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis along with other majority Muslim nations run by monarchies and dictators, are not anti-Israel due to its politics. They seek the destruction of Israel because it is a Jewish State with a majority Jewish population.  The goal of Iran et. al. is not peace or a two-party solution but real genocide.  From the river to the sea means exactly that – no Jews.  And by extension, that means no Jews anywhere, not just in Israel. (For more on this, see a recent history of terrorist attacks on Jews not in Israel in the note below.)  The fact that many in the progressive left have bought into “by any means necessary” is tragic.  For them and for Jews.

I find it interesting that many people have bought into the canard that the Israelis have “occupied” Palestinian land and thus need to be removed.  First, there has never been a Palestinian State and the one that was proposed in 1947 was rejected by the Arabs both inside Israel and in the proposed Palestinian State.  Opposed meaning that the Arab residents of the British Mandate of Palestine followed the advice of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (a Nazi collaborator) and, along with the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq went to war against the new State of Israel….and lost.  During that war Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria (a portion of the internationally recognized State of Israel) and rebranded it the “West Bank.” This real occupation stood from 1948 until Israel recaptured their land  in the 1967 Six-Day war.  Prior to the proposed partition in 1948, some 40,000 Jews lived in the West Bank.  Who stole whose land?

Palestinian leadership has controlled Judea and Samaria according to the Oslo Accords of 1993 – 1995 and requires the area to  be “Jew-free.” But at the same time Israel grants its non-Jewish Arab population full Israeli citizenship.  That’s right, the Palestinians who stayed in what is now Israel are full Israeli citizens.  Now tell me who is operating under apartheid.

Israel holds regular elections.  The last elections in either Gaza or the “West Bank” were last held around 2005/6.  Who is oppressing whom?

I guess I can understand it.  So pissed off that they wasted their chance for a state of their own for the first time in history because of their antisemitism, the Arab nations surrounding Israel have never ceased their attacks, now including the terrorist groups funded mainly by the Iraqis, the Qataris, the Saudis, and the notoriously anti-Israel and antisemitic United Nations.

Sorry, you do not get to reject statehood, time and time again, as the Palestinian leadership has done in 1948, 1993 and 1995, 2000, 2009, and 2010 and lose 5 major wars that you started in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 2023 and then plead “they took our land” when, in fact, it was never “your land” but rather the Ottoman Empire’s from 1571 to 1917, then the British as  Mandatory Palestine from 1917 to 1948.

And besides, you lost.  In wars you initiated.  Just ask the Native Americans (who typically did not start the wars) or the English, or the Germans (and a whole hell of a lot more examples) what happens to disputed territory after you lose a war that you started.  Here’s a hint.  You no longer have a claim….and particularly if you are a 5-time loser.  You do not hear about people firebombing or going to war to encourage the US to give back all the Native American lands, or the Australians to give back all their land to the First Nations, or Texans to give their land back to Mexico, let alone the world demand that China give back Tibet or  any of the numerous other countries who gained territory as the result of war. And in these examples the winners were not even indigenous to the land that was acquired.  The Israelis, the Jews, are indeed indigenous to the land of Israel, to Judea and Samaria.  And for 3,000 years they have paid for it with blood.

It is more than time for people around the world to understand that the many of the Arab countries and definitely Iran do not want peace and probably do not really care about the land (other than for the value the Israelis created).  It is apparent that they do not  care about the Palestinians, as evidenced by the Lebanese and Jordanian civil wars to get rid of the PLO and the fact that virtually no other Arab country has ever offered the Palestinians of the West Bank or Gaza a home.  No, they care about keeping the heat on Israel in the impossible hope they will be able to push all the Jews into the sea.

It is not going to happen.   And trying to make it happen will only result in more deaths among the Israeli, Arab and Palestinian populations.  Moreover, such continued violence will make no progress on the goal of removing all the Jews and all that effort will be at the expense of the lives of Palestinian citizens to fulfill the absurd goal of its corrupt and fanatical leadership. And yes, I hate to deliver the bad news to all the college protesters in the US, the football hooligans in Amsterdam, the prestigious literary associations, and “the Squad” and their attendant squadlings in Congress, but Israel is not going to go quietly into the night. All together, these folks are real fanatics – they can’t change their mind(s) and will not change the subject.

The sad fact is that the Palestinian people have been oppressed and put into harm’s way by their terrorist leadership and by their Arab neighbors ruled by dictators and monarchs.  Israel is the excuse, driven by antisemitic fanatics who adhere to the radical Islamic notion that any “loss” of land ever ruled by Islam is a threat, and a double threat when it is lost to the Jews.  Nothing will change unless those leaders give up their antisemitic goals.  Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will find peace anytime soon unless the rules of the game are changed.

If I follow the “any means necessary” logic of the pro-Hamas types, that means that all those things declared illegal by the Geneva Convention are legitimate to use and to celebrate their use. Just what the world needs, more poison gas, more targeting of civilians, more rape, and more torture.  That is not progress.

Moreover, if the world ever needs a  lesson in “whatever means necessary” really looks like, think about what happens when, G’d forbid, Israel does get its back up against the proverbial wall (or sea).  That is the ultimate irony.  While affirmatively embracing the overthrow of Palestinian “oppression” by any means necessary protesters are condoning the murder of civilians, and the rape, torture, and burning alive of Israelis..  Those same protesters profess that they are displaying their humanity and projecting their horror when any violence is done by the Israelis in defending themselves against further atrocities.  In other words, once again, murdering Jews is OK, but Jews defending themselves is “genocide.” 

Don’t be fooled.  This Middle East miasma is not about the land.” or about “oppression.  It is about the Jews.  It reflects the long-standing and single-minded commitment of Palestinian/Arab leaders, along with the terrorist organizations aided, funded, and supported by Iran and Qatar, to kill all the Jews.  This conflict has never been about anything else.

Note:  As evidence that this 75 year-old conflict between Israel, its Arab/Muslim neighbors and their terror proxies is about anything other than antisemitism, let’s look to the past and recent activities in the name of “Palestinian freedom” where no Israelis were involved:

• 1977 Khaalis and 12 associated gunmen (Hanafi movement took 149 hostages at the B’nai B’rith headquarters and two other buildings in Washington, D.C.
• 1981 Two Palestinian nationals entered the 155 year-old Israelite Temple in Vienna posing as Jews. They opened fire and threw grenades at  attendees of a Bar Mitzvah, killing two and wounding 18 Jews.
• 1982 On Rosh Hashanah, the Great Synagogue of Brussels was attacked by a man from the Abu Nidal Organization (Palestinian nationalism) with a submachine gun, seriously wounding four people.
• 1982 Palestinian militants of the Abu Nidal Organization (Palestinian nationalism threw at least three hand grenades into the Great Synagogue of Rome and afterwards sprayed the crowd with sub-machine gun fire.  A 2-year-old toddler was killed and 37 civilians were injured.
• 1986 In Istanbul, Turkey Abu Nidal gunmen killed 22 worshippers and wounded 6 during Shabbat services.
• 1994 the Buenos Aries Jewish Community Center, home of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) where 85 people were murdered.  The attack was ordered by Iran and executed by Hezbollah.
• 2000 Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale The Bronx, New York City;  Mazin Assi and Mohammed Alfaqih; Synagogue firebombing: On the morning of the eve of Yom Kippur, two Molotov cocktails were thrown, but did not ignite, at the door of the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale The Bronx, New York City.  Two Palestinian men were arrested and found guilty for the attack.
• July 2002 Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, approached the El Al ticket counter inside the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport, pulled out two Glock pistols, and started shooting at the 90 passengers standing in the line.  Customer Service Agent Victoria Hen and 46-year-old bystander Yaakov Aminov were murdered before the attacker being killed.
•  2016 ; Mohamed Barry (Islamic extremism) attacked patrons (with a machete) of a Middle Eastern restaurant in Columbus, Ohio displaying an Israeli flag.
• 2024 Oroville, California a 56 year-old man opened fire at a private Seventh Day Adventist school motivated by America’s involvement in the oppression of Palestinians.  Two Feather River School students, kindergartners aged 5 and 6 were critically wounded and will require surgery.  The perpetrator then killed himself.
• 2024 Melbourne, Australia two masked people firebombed a Synagogue which sustained substantial damage.  Due to luck alone, no one died. 
• 2024 In Montreal, Quebec, Synagogues have been shot at, firebombing planned but caught ahead of time, and received numerous bomb threats.  Again, presumed to be in response to “anger” at Israel.

Recent instances of violence and violent intent against Jews not in Israel are being carried out worldwide.  Incidents in the US,  Amsterdam, and Paris being most recent.  So, don’t buy in to the argument that this is about “the land.”  It is not about “the land.”  Nothing is further from the truth.