WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Palestinian Arabs this week banned the term “Abraham Accords.” And in explaining that action they threw in a bunch of Jewish homeland-denigrating dirty words. What’s most disconcerting and counter-productive is we use these dirty words too. Even if you’re a “Two=States” believer, Stop.
This Week: What Palestinian Arabs Understand Better Than Us – Word Choices Matter
Two news articles this week on Palestinian Arabs’ latest shot at the Abraham Accords show that they understand and appreciate word choices better than us, by which I mean not just us American Jews but likewise Israel and some Israeli media. These two articles are World Israel News, “Palestinian Islamic Fatwa Council Bans Term ‘Abraham Accords’” (1/27/21) and the Jerusalem Post, “Palestinian Fatwa Bans Muslims From Following ‘Modern Abrahamic Faith’” (1/27/21).
First, what the Palestinian Arabs’ latest action is about: As WIN put it, “the leading Palestinian Islamic religious body” has issued a Fatwa “condemning the use of the term ‘Abraham Accords’ to refer to the historic agreement signed at the White House last year.” The Palestinian Arabs’ objection, as the Jerusalem Post quoted them, is that the reference to Abraham, “the common patriarch of the three major Abrahamic religions,” gives people today who “claim to be the true sons of Abraham ‘the opportunity to integrate into the region and claim their purported historical rights.’”
But the Palestinian Arabs’ statements didn’t stop with denying Israeli connection to the Hebrew patriarchs and all that that delegitimization entails. JPost quoted the Fatwa issuing council as calling the use of that name a “political use” that “benefits the occupier” and seeks to “redraw the map of the Middle East in line with the Greater Israel map.” (emphasis added)
It doesn’t matter whether you agree with me that Palestine was in fact divided between Arabs and Jews in 1922 (78% to 22% favoring Arabs) or believe that that 22% west of the natural boundary Jordan River should be divided again between Arabs and Jews. “Occupier” and “Greater Israel” are fighting words, and it is a shanda on our father Abraham and all his descendants for us to avert our eyes from what is intended by the use of these terms.
And the Jewish people’s Peace Partner didn’t stop with those slurs. Per the JPost, they added: “The reality of the struggle in our land is to confront the Zionist occupation and the settlement enterprise.” (emphasis added)
“Settlers” and “settlements,” like “occupier” and “occupation” are dirty words, for all that Israelis and we American Jews ourselves use them. Want evidence? The media lovingly contrasts “Israeli settlements” in “the West Bank and East Jerusalem.” frequently in the same sentence, with nearby “Palestinian neighborhoods, villages, towns.”
Calling Israel “the Zionist entity” isn’t just an evasion of saying “Israel.” It dates Jewish presence in Palestine to that late nineteenth century-begun movement, denying Jewish connection all the way back to Abraham.
And “Greater Israel” is perhaps the most mocking misnomer of all. The Palestine Mandate with its “Jewish national home” and “close settlement of Jews on the land” originally included Palestine east of the Jordan River, and Britain, exercising an escape clause in the Mandate Britished us out of that. And now the world calls the Jewish claim to every inch beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines between Israel and the invaders of 1948 “a redrawing of the Middle East map in line with a “Greater Israel map”? A twice-sliced Lesser Israel is these folks’ intention, but have you ever heard even us stand up and accuse them of that?
So, those of you among us American Jews who agree with the UN and EU and other folks who don’t like us very much on a western Palestine “two-state solution,” along with Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan and the People’s Democratic Republic of Gaza, don’t just give away Judea-Samaria and much or even all of historic Jerusalem by yourselves mouthing “occupation” and “settlements” and “annexation” and “Greater Israel.” Sell these parts of our homeland for something, if relinquish them in a “peace process” you must.
But must you? In 1947 British Foreign Secretary Bevin, who makes ex-US Secretary of State Kerry seem like a Zionist, told Parliament that for the Jews the essential point of principle was to establish a Jewish State in Palestine, and that for the Arabs the essential point of principle was to prevent that from happening. What’s changed since then? Nothing. Here’s Israel’s Arlene Kushner this week, “From Israel: Because We Must” (1/27/21), on the demise of “The Deal of The Century” and resurrection of American pushing of the “Two-State Solution”:
“So, here we are again, back to promotion of a ‘plan’ that is totally unacceptable with regard to both Israel’s rights and Israel’s security. It never goes away, no matter how overwhelming the evidence that the Palestinian Arabs want to destroy Israel, not establish a peaceful state at Israel’s side.”
So what then? Arlene Kushner quoted an Israeli politician this week, which I think says it all. He was addressing his fellow Israelis, but I believe there is guidance in there also for us:
“Jews are not occupiers in our land. We are linked to it by ties of love, the Bible, heritage, nature, landscape, religion, history and holiness. When dealing with the new administration in Washington, we need to invoke the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution, the U.N. Declaration, the League of Nations British Mandate and every other document relevant to our historic rights in Judea and Samaria [jv: and goes without saying, Jerusalem].