Category: Thought

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‘Disproportionate’ Response to New York Stabber Highlights Hypocrisy Over Israel

“Knife-wielding man shot dead in midtown Manhattan” was the headline making the rounds on the internet on Wednesday. The man with the knife had not shouted “Allahu Akbar,” nor was he attempting to commit a terror attack. He was simply an apparently inebriated individual, identified as Gary Conrad, who went into a Food Emporium, where he allegedly became “aggressive and belligerent.”

According to NYPD Chief of Department James O’Neill, “he was swearing at the people in the store, swearing at the workers in the store.” Swearing, imagine that. What a lethal menace!

A police officer called to the scene began struggling with Conrad, who pulled out a knife. Police officers ordered him to drop the knife, but he continued to approach them with the knife in his hand. At that point, O’Neill said, an officer and a sergeant opened fire on Conrad.

They did not shoot him once. They did not merely aim to neutralize him by shooting him in the legs or his arms. They shot him an incredible nine times. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Conrad had displayed “aggressive and belligerent” behavior at a food store by “swearing” and he had threatened police with a knife. For that he was shot nine times. Could this incident possibly be characterized as “disproportionate”?

Had this taken place in Israel, and had this man not been called Gary Conrad, but Mohammed, and had he not been merely an inebriated loon but a terrorist out to slash Jews, international outrage would have poured forth in torrents from the front page of every single news outlet and the mouth of every opinion maker worth his salt. The “disproportionate force” claim would have been thrown about and every self-respecting journalist would have asked why Israel had to kill the man — shooting him no fewer than nine times — instead of simply neutralizing him by shooting him in the legs or the arms and then taking him to hospital.

So far, not a single news report has questioned the judgment of the NYPD. No American liberal has come forth in self-righteous indignation, asking whether killing this man, who, after all, was not threatening to blow up the Food Emporium or stab anyone, may have been slightly on the disproportionate side. But those same liberals lie awake at night and pen heartfelt, emotional diatribes against Israeli “brutality” when Israeli soldiers kill certified terrorists and would-be suicide bombers as a last resort, to protect themselves and Israeli civilians.

Somehow, however, these liberals’ hearts do not bleed for a fellow New Yorker like Gary Conrad. Why might that be? My guess is that liberals, much like everybody else, do not like it when knife-wielding men roam their neighborhoods. It is one thing to sit safely behind your screen thousands of miles away from the Middle East, but it is something else entirely to have someone waving a knife at your neighborhood store, whether that person is a terrorist or just a criminal. Apparently, threatening Israelis with stabbings or blowing them up on the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem is acceptable, but acting “aggressively and belligerently” by swearing inside a Food Emporium warrants death.

I am pointing this out because a knife-wielding man poses the same threat whether he wields his knife in the name of Allah or because his beer was not served fast enough. A killing is a killing. If anything, the response should be far more mild to someone who is merely displaying drunken aggressiveness than the response to someone who is intent on deliberately stabbing as many people as possible. Predictably, however, the press has not made that connection.

CBS news has derived some of the most blatantly biased and incompetent reporting from the terror wave in Israel. Most famously, CBS graced us with the atrocious headline “Three Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on” after ‎three Arab terrorists armed with guns, knives and bombs attacked two border policewomen at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem in February. One of the police officers, 19-year-old Cpl. Hadar Cohen, ‎was killed in the attack.

So how did CBS news react to the killing of Gary Conrad? In the most matter of fact way possible. In fact, they even dramatized it by quoting the terrified witnesses, implicitly making it sound like a valiant rescue operation by the police, never questioning the legality of this “extra-judicial killing.”

According to some witnesses quoted in other news outlets, Conrad had blood pouring out of his head, which would strongly indicate that he had been shot there. Apparently, that is an appropriate response to someone being aggressive and belligerent and swearing in a Manhattan food store, disturbing busy New Yorkers. Real belligerence against Israelis? Now that is an entirely different matter.

(Originally published on Israel Hayom)

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Peace: A Deceptive, Dictatorial Word

After a long absence, “peace” is back in the headlines, due in large measure to this week’s visit to Israel by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who came to try to promote a new French initiative that somehow, by as yet unspecified means, would resuscitate the moribund “peace process.”

Perversely planned to take place without either Israel or the Palestinians, the principal protagonists, the conference has now fortuitously been delayed to accommodate the schedule of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, who apparently had better things to do than take part in yet another doomed charade to forge “peace” in the Middle East.

However, despite its ill-conceived rationale and dauntingly dim prospects, the planned summit can and should serve one constructive purpose: to focus attention not only on what the quest for the elusive condition of “peace” really entails, but on the even more fundamental question of what is actually meant, and what can realistically be expected, when we talk of “peace” as a desired goal, particularly in the context of the Middle East and particularly from an Israeli perspective.

Indeed, the need for such clarification becomes even more vital and pressing because of recent reports of possible Egyptian involvement in attempts to initiate “peace” negotiations with Arab regimes teetering on the brink of extinction and involving a perilous Israeli withdrawal to indefensible borders. All this in exchange for grudging recognition as a non-Jewish state by a partially no longer existent, partially disintegrating, Arab world.

A dictatorial word

It takes little reflection to discover that, in fact, “peace” is a word that is both dictatorial and deceptive.

It is dictatorial because it brooks no opposition. Just as no one can openly pronounce opposition to a dictator without risking severe repercussions, so too no one can be openly branded as opposing peace without suffering grave consequences to personal and professional stature.

Life can be harsh for anyone with the temerity to challenge the tyrannical dictates of the politically correct liberal perspectives. As British columnist Melanie Phillips remarked several years ago in an interview on Israel’s Channel 1: “Believe me, it [failing to abide by political correctness] has a very chilling effect on people, because you can lose your professional livelihood, your chances of promotion, you lose your friends.”

In a surprisingly candid admission, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote that “universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological. … We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.”

This peer-imposed doctrinaire uniformity has had a debilitating impact on the quality of intellectual discourse in general, and on the question of “peace” in the Middle East in particular.

A New York Times opinion piece by Arthur C. Brooks cautioned: “Excessive homogeneity can lead to stagnation and poor problem solving.” Citing studies that found a “shocking level of political groupthink in academia, he warned that “expecting trustworthy results on politically charged topics from an ideologically incestuous community [is] downright delusional.”

A deceptive word

The considerable potential for defective analysis in the intellectual discourse on such a politically charged topic as “peace” also accounts for another detrimental attribute of the word.

Not only is it rigidly dictatorial, but, perhaps even more significantly, “peace” is a grossly deceptive word. It can be, and indeed is, used to denote two disparate even antithetical political situations. On the one hand, “peace” can be used to describe a state of mutual harmony between parties, but on the other hand it can just as aptly be used to characterize an absence of violence maintained by deterrence.

In the first meaning, “peace” entails a situation in which the parties eschew violence because they share a mutual perception of a common interest in preserving a tranquil status quo. In the second meaning, “peace” entails a situation in which violence is avoided only by the threat of incurring exorbitant costs.

The significance of this goes far beyond semantics. On the contrary. If it is not clearly understood, it is likely to precipitate calamitous consequences.

The perilous pitfalls of ‘peace’

It is crucial for practical policy prescriptions not to blur the sharp substantive differences between these two political realities. Each requires different policies both to achieve and, even more importantly, to sustain them.

The misguided pursuit of one kind of peace may well render the achievement — and certainly the preservation — of the other kind of peace impossible.

Countries with the mutual harmony variety of “peace” typically have relationships characterized by openness and the free movement of people and goods across borders. As in the relationship between Canada and the U.S., there is little or no effort needed to prevent hostile actions by one state against the other. Differences that arise are not only settled without violence, but the very idea of using force against each other is virtually inconceivable.

By contrast, in the second, deterrence-based variety of peace, such as those between the U.S. and USSR during the Cold War or between Iran and Iraq up to the 1980s, the protagonists feel compelled to invest huge efforts in deterrence to maintain the absence of war.

Indeed, whenever the deterrent capacity of one state is perceived to wane, the danger of war becomes very real, as was seen in the Iraqi offensive against an apparently weakened and disorderly Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In this type of “peace,” there is no harmonious interaction between the peoples of the states. Movements across borders are usually highly restricted and regulated, and often prohibited.

It is not surprising to find that peace of the “mutual harmony” variety prevails almost exclusively between democracies, since its characteristic openness runs counter to the nature of dictatorial regimes.

The perils of pursuing one type of peace (mutual harmony) when only the other type (deterrence) is feasible were summed up over two decades ago by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his acclaimed book “A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World.” In it, he calls for making a clear distinction between the “peace of democracies” and the “peace of deterrence.”

“As long as you are faced with a dictatorial adversary, you must maintain sufficient strength to deter him from going to war. By doing so, you can at least obtain the peace of deterrence. But if you let down your defenses … you invite war, not peace,” he wrote.

Much earlier, in 1936, Winston Churchill underscored the dangers: “The French Army is the strongest in Europe. But no one is afraid of France. Everyone knows that France wants to be let alone, and that with her it is only a case of self-preservation. … They are a liberal nation with free parliamentary institutions. Germany, on the other hand, under its Nazi regime … [in which] two or three men have the whole of that mighty country in their grip [and] there is no public opinion except what is manufactured by those new and terrible engines — broadcasting and a controlled press fills unmistakably that part [of] … the would-be dominator or potential aggressor.”

Compromise counterproductive

To grasp the potential for disaster when a policy designed to attain a harmonious outcome is pursued in a political context in which none is possible, it is first necessary to recognize that, in principle, there are two archetypal configurations. In one, a policy of compromise and concession may well be appropriate; in the other, such a policy will be devastatingly inappropriate.

In the first configuration, an adversary interprets concessions as conciliatory, and feels obliged to respond with a counter-concession. Thus, by a series of concessions and counter-concessions, the process converges toward some amicably harmonious resolution of conflict.

However, in the second configuration, the adversary sees any concession as a sign of vulnerability and weakness, made under duress. Accordingly, such initiatives do not elicit any reciprocal gesture, only demands for further concessions.

But further concessions still do not prompt reciprocal moves toward a peaceable resolution. This process ill necessarily culminate either in total capitulation or in large-scale violence, either because one side finally realizes that its adversary is acting in bad faith and can only be restrained by force, or because the other side realizes it has extracted all the concessions possible by non-coercive means, and will only win further gains by force.

In such a scenario, compromise is counterproductive and concessions will compound casualties.

Whetting, not satiating, Arab appetites

Of course, little effort is required to see that the conditions confronting Israel today resemble the latter situation far more than the former. No matter how many far-reaching compromises and gut-wrenching concessions Israel has made, they have never been enough to elicit any commensurate counter-concessions from the Arabs. Indeed, rather than satiate the Arab appetite, they have merely whetted it, with each Israeli gesture only leading to further demands for more “gestures.”

If in any “peace” negotiations such compromises undermine Israeli deterrence by increasing its perceived vulnerability, they will make war, not peace, more imminent.

Indeed, it was none other than Shimon Peres, in recent years one of the most avid advocates of the land-for-peace doctrine (or dogma), who, in his book “Tomorrow is Now,” warned vigorously of the perils of the policy he later embraced.

After detailing how surrendering the Sudetenland made Czechoslovakia vulnerable to attack, Peres writes of the concessions Israel is being pressured to make today to attain “peace” : “Without a border which affords security, a country is doomed to destruction in war. … It is of course doubtful whether territorial expanse can provide absolute deterrence. However, the lack of minimal territorial expanse places a country in a position of an absolute lack of deterrence. This in itself constitutes almost compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all directions.”

e also warns: “The major issue is not [attaining] an agreement, but ensuring the actual implementation of the agreement in practice. The number of agreements which the Arabs have violated is no less than number which they have kept.” Since then, of course, their record has hardly improved.

Will Netanyahu 2016 heed Netanyahu 1993?

In 1996, shortly after Netanyahu was elected prime minister for the first time, Ari Shavit of Haaretz interviewed him on positions he had articulated in “A Place Among the Nations.”Shavit: “In your book, you make a distinction between … a harmonious kind of peace that can exist only between democratic countries, and peace through deterrence, which could also be maintained in the Middle East as it currently is. Do you think we need to lower our expectations and adopt a much more modest concept of peace?”

Netanyahu: “One of our problems is that we tend to nurse unrealistic expectations. … When people detach themselves from reality, floating around in the clouds and losing contact with the ground, they will eventually crash on the rocky realities of the true Middle East.”

Let us all hope that Netanyahu of today will heed the advice of Netanyahu of then. It is the only way Israel will be able to avoid the ruinous ravages of the deceptive and dictatorial word “peace.”

(Originally published on Israel Hayom)

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Israel Is to Be An Example of Justice and Perfection to Mankind

[This week’s Torah portion is the Parsha of Behar]

While the Torah instructs Israel to aspire towards a “kingdom of priests and holy nation” (SHEMOT 19:6) in the Land of Israel, a just social order and healthy economy are two crucial ingredients to fulfilling this charge. Since modern Zionism’s early years, there has existed a conflict between self-proclaimed adherents of socialism and their opponents who favor a free market economy. For decades following the reestablishment of Jewish independence, this battle has raged and formed deep divides. Although security threats, increased westernization and foreign pressure to shrink the country’s borders in recent decades have often caused class issues to fade into the political backdrop, Israel still lacks the socio-economic ideal necessary to serve as a paragon of justice and morality to other nations.

Israel is tasked with becoming a light unto nations. As the national expression of HaShem’s Ideal for this world, the Jewish people are meant to demonstrate to mankind how to live all facets of life in such a way that actualizes and fully expresses our inner kedusha (holiness). The State of Israel must set an example of excellence to the rest of the world in every sphere of nationhood, from commerce and agriculture to governance and social services. Israel must aspire to build a perfect society that functions according to G-D’s Truth in every detail of life. The formula is not man-made but rather a sacred reality that transcends the limited perception of human beings. Only through existing as such a holy nation in the whole of Eretz Yisrael can the Jewish people hope to bring humanity towards a future of genuine harmony and universal fulfillment.

In order for Israel to achieve this goal, it is necessary that we establish a just society reflecting the values of our Torah. The Children of Israel must determine and implement social policies that benefit the collective society as well as the individuals within. Because Israel is meant to serve as a national light to mankind, the Jewish state must become a model civilization in which people live lives of dignity and fulfillment while wholeheartedly sharing in the collective national burden.

“If your brother becomes impoverished and his means falter in your proximity, you shall strengthen him – proselyte or resident – so that he can live with you.” (VAYIKRA 25:35)

Various modes of production and social structures may possess positive features from which man can benefit. But in order to arrive at a complete and perfect system, Israel cannot be limited to working within the framework of the choices offered by the outside world. Rather than adhere to rigid foreign concepts, Israel must set our agenda in accordance with Hebrew values and promote a new outlook in compliance with Torah culture – an all-encompassing approach that will succeed in expressing the highest values in seemingly clashing ideologies. A central goal of Israel’s redemption process is freeing mankind from the limitations of dualistic thinking. Israel must bring man beyond the artificial contradictions of ostensibly conflicting ideals towards a higher awareness of opposites actually enjoying a deep inner unity.

A clear example of this concept is found in the Hebrew understanding ofkedusha. While Western thinking has traditionally viewed holiness as the triumph of the spiritual over the physical, Israel’s more holistic approach recognizes kedusha as being the healthy unification of spirituality and physicality.

Dualistic thinking is only one of the many negative features of Western civilization – a civilization principally based upon the values of Esav, whose Edomite descendants ultimately became the Roman Empire, morphed into the Christian Church and dominated Europe. Essentially utilized as a means of social control, the poisoned doctrine of Christianity spread far and wide while spiritually oppressing a significant share of humankind. As Europeans began to conquer and pillage the new world, the culture of Edom took on a secular form still rooted in the barbarism of its forerunners as Europe’s feudalist social structure gave way to the rise of capitalism. Capitalism as a mode of production is essentially based on the competition between rival capitalists to attain profits. To beat out their contenders and constantly feed this ever-expanding system, leading capitalists enlist the aid of their governments in finding markets in other countries, gaining access to natural resources and exploiting cheap labor, essentially spawning the same imperialism that characterized ancient Rome. Within the capitalist mode of production itself exists a drive compelling nations to dominate and oppress weaker peoples.

Capitalism gave rise to a powerful culture that indoctrinates the masses to constantly consume, subliminally promoting the goal of life as the acquisition of wealth. The motivational forces driving Western man to be productive became the pursuits to accumulate the most money, bed the most attractive women, drive the fastest cars and live in the largest homes. While the Torah certainly requires men to be physically attracted to their wives and successful in providing for their families, these do not serve as the actual foundations of a Hebrew society. Unlike Western civilization, which places the materiel success of the individual at the center, Hebrew civilization is primarily concerned with the moral and spiritual wellbeing of the collective.

The future to which Israel is bringing the world is one in which the motivational force driving man becomes an idealistic desire to perfect the entire world. To become partners in Creation that experience HaShem flowing through us as we actively bring history to its ultimate goal. For Israel to lead the world to this stage first requires a conscious rejection of Edomite values in favor of a society based on giving and caring for the other, in which production is determined by actual human need. We must realize that the capitalist system only seems natural to us when we perceive ourselves as separate from – and at odds with – one another. The more we recognize mankind’s true inner unity, the more we appreciate our intrinsic subconscious drive to succeed collectively as one.

The Torah forbids us from allowing the impoverishment of other people as we are commanded to provide assistance to our brothers in need. Helping the poor is not merely a recommendation but actually a directive from HaShem and Divine expression of justice, no different than safeguarding the Sabbath or liberating Eretz Yisrael from foreign rule. Israel’s historic mission necessitates bringing all of humanity to the conscious awareness that Creation, with all of its multiplicity and variety, is actually one single entity – an organic whole of which we are all unique and crucial parts.

The ultimate goal towards which history is advancing necessitates the establishment of a social order founded on the morality and justice of our Torah where no person goes hungry and all live in friendship and mutual respect, setting an example of justice and perfection to mankind.

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Did France Get The Memo?

Imagine this news story:

“Last week, Israel convened representatives of 20 countries from across the world for an international conference to discuss what to do about the escalating security situation in France.

“‘Israel has no vested interest but is deeply convinced that if we don’t want to let the ideas of the Islamic State group prosper in this region, we must do something,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said when asked why he was pushing for the conference despite France’s vehement protests. Netanyahu put special emphasis on the fact that ‘the international community feels there is an urgent need to find a solution to the spread of Islamic State in Europe, especially in France, which has the largest Jewish population on the continent.’

“‘We are not giving up, and neither are our partners,’ said the Israeli prime minister.

“Discussions at the meeting will be based on a new groundbreaking peace proposal under which France will give up large swathes of the south of France as well as the entire Ile-de-France in return for a permanent peace agreement with Islamic State in order to create ‘a just solution’ to the conflict. An Islamic State spokesman told reporters that unlike the French, they welcome the Israeli initiative.

“‘We wish Israel and its efforts success because the Israeli efforts are the only ones on the ground now, and could eventually result in giving the political process a good push forward at this stage,’ the Islamic State spokesman said.

“‘The aim of the conference is to prepare an international summit in the second half of 2016, which would include French leaders and leaders of Islamic State. The second conference would take place ‘sometime in the fall,’ said a spokesman for Netanyahu.”

Of course, the above scenario is fake. I have produced it here merely to make a point. Israel is not convening any conferences on the future of France, nor is it meddling in its affairs. There is a principle of international law called sovereignty, but in France and the rest of the European Union, that principle has been gradually usurped by a new principle, that of supra-nationalism.

Unfortunately, and despite the fact that Israel is not a member of the European Union, France and company appear to be unrelenting believers in the extension of this principle all the way across the Mediterranean to the Middle East.

What is not fake, however, is that this exact scenario is indeed taking place, but instead of Israel hosting a conference about France’s out-of-control problems with Islamist terrorism, which are indeed affecting French Jews in the most appalling ways, France is hosting a conference about the future of Israel’s territorial borders.

Thus, despite Israel’s protests, France has convened an international conference for May 30, consisting of ministers from 20 different countries who will presume to lord it over Israel’s future. Clearly, France and company did not get the memo about decolonization, or rather France and company seem just fine with exhibiting colonial behavior toward only one nation in the entire world, namely obstinate Israel, which still refuses to dance to the tune of the Europeans.

While the aim of the French initiative is to “encourage” bilateral negotiations, let no one be fooled: This is really about pushing an agenda down Israel’s throat, namely that of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative, which asks nothing less than Israel’s withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines and a “just” solution to the refugee issue without specifying what that means.

In other words, the initiative makes very serious demands on Israel concerning its existential issues, while being extremely shady on what Israel is supposed to receive in return. Also why drag this long-dead rabbit out of the old hat now, when the Palestinians have shown no sign whatsoever of letting up in the terror war against Israeli civilians and soldiers through ramming, stabbing and shooting attacks? All this conference does is reward terrorism.

What is, of course, conspicuous, is the timing. It is scheduled at a time when Europe is coming apart at the seams with the terror threat from Islamic State and the infighting in the European Union between the European Commission and the central and Eastern European members of the EU, whom the EU’s executive branch is threatening with huge fines for each migrant that these countries refuse to receive.

One cannot help but think that Israel, once more, is proving to be a very useful diversion (and scapegoat) for all the unrelated problems of the Western world.

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5 Mendacious Palestinian Myths Make One False Narrative

Given the lies and distortions of Palestinian claims, what seems more credible: An offer to buy the Brooklyn Bridge or the Palestinian narrative?

Of all the Palestinian lies there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank… Not since the time of Dr. Goebbels has there been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has born such great fruits… – Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, formerly education minister, member of the far-left Meretz faction and dean of Tel Aviv University’s law faculty, “Palestinian Lies,”Haaretz, July 30, 1976

Telling the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would affirm American support for international law, democracy, the peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the principle of equal rights for all peoples… [as well as] American opposition to aggression and terrorism. – Prof. Michael Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, “The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace – and it always has been, because its premises are false,” Commentary, April 14, 2016

I don’t think there is a Palestinian nation at all. I think there is an Arab nation. I always thought so… I think it’s a colonialist invention – a Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians?... – Balad party founder Azmi Bishara, Channel 2, 1996

In last week’s column, I demonstrated how attributing legitimacy to the Palestinian narrative (and hence to the aspirations arising from it such as statehood) necessarily culminate in stripping the Zionist narrative of its legitimacy, by delegitimizing the measures required to sustain the Jewish nation-state.

Consequently, the inescapable conclusion is that the only way to attain legitimacy for measures required to sustain the Jewish state is to delegitimize the Palestinian narrative, according to which Palestinian-Arabs comprise an authentic, identifiably distinct national entity, entitled to all the rights accorded other such entities.

I undertook to trace the outlines of how to address the daunting challenge of discrediting, disproving and ultimately delegitimizing a narrative that due to “decades of distortion, deception and delusion [has] become entrenched in the collective international consciousness” as the received wisdom regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Massive sleight of political hand

As I pointed out in a previous column (UN-nation; un-nation; non-nation; anti-nation, September 16, 2011), while no consensus exists among political scientists as to an exact definition of “nation” and “nationalism,” there is broad agreement over what cannot be excluded from such definition. Thus, whatever other details different scholars might wish to include in their preferred definition, there is little disagreement that:

  • A “nation” is an identifiably differentiated segment of humanity exhibiting collective desire to exercise political sovereignty in a defined geographical territory; and
  • “Nationalism” is the pursuit, by those identifiably differentiated segments of humanity, of the exercise of political sovereignty in a defined territory.

Even a cursory analysis of historical events in this region will reveal that, in the case of Palestinians-Arabs, neither of these constituent elements exists: Not an identifiably differentiated people, desiring exercise of political sovereignty; nor a defined territory in which that sovereignty is to be exercised.

One need only examine the declarations and documents of Palestinians themselves to verify this, and discover that they have never really conceived of themselves as a discernibly discrete people with a defined homeland.

Accordingly, little effort is required to demonstrate that the Palestinian “narrative” – the ideo-intellectual fuel driving the demands for statehood – is nothing more than a motley mixture of multiple myths, easily identifiable and readily refutable. The inescapable conclusion is – or should be – that the entire edifice of Palestinian national aspirations is a giant political hoax, a massive sleight of political hand to serve a more sinister – and thinly disguised – ulterior motive.

What are the five constituent myths that comprise the noxious concoction of the Palestinian narrative?

The myth of Palestinian homeland

The first – and arguably, the most startling – myth is that of a Palestinian “homeland,” now designated as “the West Bank” (Judea-Samaria) and Gaza. For not only did the “Palestinians” never claim this as their historical homeland, they explicitly eschewed any claims to sovereignty over it until well after it fell under Israeli control in 1967.

Thus Article 16 of the original version of the Palestinian National Covenant sets out the alleged desire of the people of Palestine “who look forward to… restoring the legitimate situation to Palestine, establishing peace and security in its territory, and enabling its people to exercise national sovereignty…”

However, since the covenant was adopted in 1964, well before Israel “occupied” a square inch of the “West Bank” or Gaza, the question is what is meant by “its territory” in which the Palestinians were “looking forward… to exercise national sovereignty”? Significantly, in Article 24, they state specifically what this territory did not include, and where they were not seeking to exercise “national sovereignty,” explicitly proclaiming that they do not desire to “exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan… [or] the Gaza Strip…”

From this we learn two stunning facts: Not only did the “Palestinians” not claim the “West Bank” and Gaza as part of their homeland, but they expressly excluded them from it. Moreover they unequivocally acknowledged that the “West Bank” belonged to another sovereign entity, the Hashemite Kingdom.

Myth of homeland (cont.)

There is, therefore, not the slightest resemblance – indeed not one square inch of overlap – between the territory claimed by the Palestinians as their “homeland” when they first allegedly formulated their national aspirations, and the “homeland” claimed today.

Indeed, the two visions of “homeland” territories are not only inconsistent with each other, but mutually exclusive.

Accordingly it would seem that it is Jewish rule, rather than any “collective historical memory,” that is the determining factor in defining the location of the Palestinian “homeland.” This is starkly underlined by the proclamation of Ahmad Shukeiri, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor, on the eve of the 1967 Six Day War: “D Day is approaching.

The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation… This is a fight for the homeland…”

Shukeiri’s use of the words “liberation” and “homeland” are revealing. They clearly cannot refer to Judea-Samaria or Gaza, now claimed as the “Palestinian homeland,” since these were then under exclusive Arab control.

Indeed, nothing could better vindicate the contention that the concept of a “Palestinian homeland” is a fabricated construct, conjured up to further the Arab quest to eradicate any trace of a sovereign Jewish homeland.

The myth of Palestinian peoplehood

Senior Palestinian leaders have openly admitted – consistently and continually – that Palestinians are not a discrete people, identifiably different from others in the Arab world. For example on March 14, 1977, Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO’s Political Department, told Newsweek: “… Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.”

This statement parallels almost exactly the oft cited, and ne’er denied, position expressed two weeks later by the former head of the PLO’s Military Department and Executive Council member, Zuheir Muhsin, who declared: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese… It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity…(Dutch daily Trouw, March 31, 1977).

It was Jordan’s King Hussein who underscored that the emergence of a collective Palestinian identity was merely a ploy to counter Jewish claims to territory considered “Arab.” At the Arab League meeting in Amman in November 1987, he stated: “The appearance of the Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.”

This necessarily implies that the “Palestinian personality” is devoid of any independent existence, a fictional derivative, fabricated only to counteract Jewish territorial claims.

The myth of Palestinian nationhood

But not only do the Palestinians admit that they are not a discrete sociological entity, i.e. a people, they also concede that as a political unit, i.e. a nation, their demands/ aspirations are neither genuine nor permanent.

Indeed, Zuheir Muhsin candidly confesses: We are all part of one [Arab ]nation… The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”

Doesn’t get much more explicit than that – unless you read Azmi Bishara in the introductory excerpt.

Indeed, the Palestinian-Arabs not only affirm that their national demands are bogus, but are merely a temporary instrumental ruse. In their National Covenant they declare: “The Palestinian people are a part of the Arab Nation… [H]owever, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity and develop their consciousness of that identity…”

So how are we to avoid concluding that at some later stage there will be no need to preserve their “national identity or develop consciousness thereof? How are we to avoid concluding that Palestinian identity is nothing but a short-term ruse to achieve a political goal: annulling the “illegal 1947 partition of Palestine” (a.k.a. Israel).

After all, what other nation declares that its national identity is merely a temporary ploy to be “safeguarded” and “developed” for the “present stage” alone? Does any other nation view its national identity as so ephemeral and instrumental? The Italians? The Turks? The Japanese? Of course not.

So as King Hussein said: “The appearance of the Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.” Nothing more.

The myth of Palestinian statelessness

A major theme exploited to evoke great sympathy for the Palestinians’ cause – and commensurate wrath at Israel – is that they are a “stateless” people. But this condition of “statelessness” is not a result of Israeli malfeasance, but of Arab malevolence.

For the Palestinians are stateless because the Arabs have either stripped them of citizenship they already had, nor precluded them from acquiring citizenship they desired.

In the “West Bank” for example, until 1988, all Palestinians – including the “refugees” – held Jordanian citizenship. This was then annulled by King Hussein, after relinquishing his claim to this territory. This abrupt measure was described by Anis Kassim, a prominent Palestinian legal expert, as follows:”… more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.”

But Palestinians have also been prohibited from acquiring citizenship of their countries of residence in the Arab world, where many have lived for over a half-century.

The Arab League has instructed members to deny citizenship to resident Palestinian-Arabs “to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland.” Thus, Arab League spokesman Hisham Youssef, in an 2004 Los Angeles Times interview, reiterated that this official policy was meant “to preserve their Palestinian identity” – which was apparently incapable of independent existence without external coercion.

He went on to assert that “if every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.” Precisely.

The myth of Palestinian refugees

Much has been written elsewhere on the anomaly of the Palestinian refugees. I will, therefore, confine the discussion to two short but edifying references.

While all other refugees on the face of the globe are under the auspices of the UN High Commission for Refugees, the Palestinian refugees have their own unique organization, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The two organizations have two different definitions of who is a refugee and different mandates as to how they should be treated. These differences have far-reaching consequences, arguably the gravest being that they spectacularly inflate the numbers of Palestinian refugees, from fewer than 50,000 to around 5,000,000.

Thus, in a letter to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan (May 18, 2002), the late Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat on the US House International Relations Committee, expressed bewildered disapproval at the prevailing situation: “I am frankly baffled as to why, more than 50 years after the founding of the State of Israel, there continues to exist a UN agency focused solely on Palestinian refugees… No other refugee problem in the world has been treated in this privileged and prolonged manner.”

Over a decade later (August 31, 2014), former Labor Knesset member and ardent two-stater Einat Wilf wrote: “If UNRWA operated the same way as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for all other refugee groups in the world, today there would be only tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, rather than millions…”

Brooklyn Bridge or Palestinian narrative?

So there you have it – or at least part of it. Thus, in light of this overly condensed and admittedly incomplete exposé of lies, distortions and exaggerations of the Palestinian claims, what seems more credible? An offer to buy the Brooklyn Bridge or the Palestinian narrative?

(Originally published in The Jerusalem Post)