WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: It’s Israel’s grim task to defang the perpetrators of what must be the Last Pogrom in our people’s homeland, but it’s we American Jews who must debunk the delegitimization of our people’s homeland that’s being waged here.
It’s We American Jews Who Must Debunk the Delegitimization of Israel That’s Being Waged Here
We grassroots American Jews were spared Hamas’ incineration inflicted October 7 on southern Israelis, but four of the huge aftershocks are striking home here as well. Hopefully, we’ll assess the damage that’s being done here realistically and set out on effective responses. This is our task, not Israel’s. So here are my assessments of the damage being done here by these four aftershocks and what we grassroots American Jews can and must do to counteract it.
#1 – The UN’s Non-Condemnation: All of us were rightly floored by UN Secretary General Guterres’ “not in a vacuum” remarks during the UN’s non-condemnation of Hamas’ pogrom, but as I argued last week (#1188) the damage he did was not defending Hamas’ vicious terror but delegitimizing our claim to the heart of our homeland. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said, and “their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Appreciate that the UN Secretary General here is not speaking of just Hamas or just Gazans, but of “the Palestinian people” being subjected to “occupation” – a “suffocating occupation,” at that. We must vigorously reject his misportrayal of Palestine. Individually and through our American Jewish organizations, we must make vividly clear to our fellow Americans who are of the Christian religion
[1] that through our thrice-sovereign continuous historical presence (see, e.g., Verlin, Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine) and international treaty, the Palestine Mandate, the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria included, is ours, the Jewish people’s homeland, and not “occupied Palestinian territory” of Palestinian Arabs who’ve never ruled Palestine in history; and
[2] that Palestinian Arabs are the majority population of Jordan, sitting on 78% of Palestine, and are the entire population of Gaza, likewise part of Palestine, and that under the Bibi-and-Ganz-agreed Trump peace plan would also be internally autonomous in a larger portion of Judea-Samaria (“the West Bank”) than where they mainly live now. So “suffocated”? – not exactly. And they’re not “THE Palestinians.” Palestine’s Jews are Palestinian too. See the Arab-rejected UN Palestine partition resolution, calling for “Arab and Jewish states,” not “Palestinian and Jewish states,” as the media sometimes puts it, and calling Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples.”
#2 – The Media’s Instant Condemnation of Israel: And we were equally justifiably floored by the media’s leaping upon Hamas’ claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital, killing hundreds, to bash Israel. Thankfully, proof existed to refute this canard, but two dangers remain. One is that in war, especially in urban areas, damage to civilian facilities is inevitable, and when this occurs in Gaza, which it inevitably will, the media will pounce upon Israel. The deeper danger is that the western media, for whatever reasons, has been and is contemptuously hostile to our Jewish homeland of Israel, and despite the great work of CAMERA and Honest Reporting, this disdain and contempt goes on unabated.
So what do we American Jews do about it? Two things. First, recognize that the western media’s bias against Israel is real. These weekly emails of mine began twenty-two years ago as “a media watch,” focusing principally though not exclusively on my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Lee Bender and I wrote a book, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, in which we exemplified a species of anti-Israel media bias for every letter of the alphabet. I invite you to look at a professionally recorded instance of our based-on-our-book “Ten Misleading Media Expressions” PowerPoint talk from a synagogue bimah on our website, www.factsonisrael.com, under “Videos.”
Secondly, accept the environmentalists’ aphorism “Think globally, act locally.” In a big American city like Philadelphia, there needs to be more than one on-the-street, in-the-driveway daily newspaper. A second publisher, backed by consumers, could demand that advertisers split their ad purchases. Push this with wealthy entrepreneurs who might do this. But beyond that, stop using the media’s loaded lexicon of Jewish homeland-delegitimizing poisoned pejoratives. See, e.g., the “Dirty Words” and “Toxic Terms” pages on our aforesaid website.
#3 – Poison Ivy League and Other Hamas-Hawking College Campuses: Most disturbing has been not just Muslim but Western youths’ howlings for Hamas on US college campuses. It’s reflective of surveys showing decreased enamor of Israel among America’s younger generation. And there is hostile-to-Israel sentiment being openly expressed by college professors. And all this is part of persistent American city “pro-Palestine” street demonstrations.
Yes, we must make our dissatisfaction known to our respective higher education alumni offices (I signed a petition to my Ivy League Law School). But we can’t let it go at that. Through our American Jewish “defense” organizations, we must reach out more effectively to American youth. (Quite scarily, Christian Zionist organizations are experiencing diminishing ardor for Israel among their young people.)
#4 – America Hyping “The Two-State Solution”: I listened this morning (Friday) to Secretary Blinken, speaking in Israel, supporting Israel in its war against Hamas, but ending with hyping as the ultimate result of all this “the two-state solution” – “two states along the 1967 [1949] lines with mutually agreed territorial swaps,” advocated by the United Nations in, alas, US-instigated UNSC 2334, vowing not to accept changes to the pre-1967 war ceasefire lines not agreed by the parties. See also AP, 10/29/23, Mission Impossible? Biden Says Mideast Leaders Must Consider a Two-State Solution After the War Ends.
You none-the-less-appreciated advocates of “two-states” among my subscribers are doubtless tiring of me pointing to Latrun and Radar Hill dominating the narrow Jerusalem corridor, the nine-miles-wide point further north, the ripping away from Israel of historic Jerusalem and defensible Judea-Samaria ridge, etc., and my moaning that “two-states” would render our people’s homeland militarily indefensible and Jewishly meaningless.
So let me regale you with others this week bemoaning “the two-state solution”:
Gatestone Institute, 11/2/23, Bassam Tawil, The ‘Two-State’ Solution to Murder Jews
Israel National News, 11/2/23, Mark Langfan, Why Any Palestinian Statehood Was a Bad Idea Even Before the Current War
World Israel News, 10/30/23, ‘The Two-State Solution’ is Terrorism
World Israel News, 10/27/23, ‘Tone-Deaf, Simple-Minded, Ignorant’ – Architect of Abraham Accords [Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle-East Jason Greenblatt] Blasts Biden’s Latest Call for Palestinian Statehood (see also Israel National News, 10/27/23, Jason Greenblatt: Ridiculous for Biden To Talk of 2-State Solution At This Time)
Bear in mind that Palestinian Arabs are the majority population of Jordan, 78% of Mandatory Palestine, are the entire population of Gaza, part of Palestine, and were offered by Israel in the Trump peace plan internal autonomy in a bigger area of Judea-Samaria than where they mainly live now. That’s what we must continuously tell people.