Pondering

One can imagine the length this article could be if chose to exhaustively explain the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. While context is important and will be provided as needed, my intent here is to focus on the current pro-Palestinian protests we see on college campuses and elsewhere.

To sidestep Hamas’ ghastly actions on October 7, 2023, in defense of Palestinians, requires an extremely narrow-minded and bigoted worldview. But that worldview comes from somewhere. The history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict may go back thousands of years, but today’s upheaval is largely the result of what the Arabs call Al Naksa (or Al Nakba) — “The Catastrophe.”  

A brief historical context is important.

Control of Judea, the home of the Israelites, by Greek and Roman Empires resulted in a number of Jewish revolts—including the Maccabean Revolt (166-164 B.C.), the Great Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66) which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Kitos War (A.D. 115-117), and finally the Bar Kokhba Revolt (A.D. 132-136). Following this last revolt, Jewish losses were profound, and the remaining Jews were either forced into slave labor or displaced throughout the known world.

The territorial home of the Jews was lost.

Over the subsequent centuries Jews were marginalized, persecuted, forced out of several nations, and nearly wiped out at the hands of the Nazis. From a series of anti-Jewish incidents in the late 19th century, a movement began in Europe known as Zionism—a call to regain Israel’s homeland. In 1897 Theodor Herzl, generally considered the father of Zionism, established the Zionist Organization, dedicated to reestablishing the State of Israel in its territorial homeland (known as Eretz Yisrael – “Land of Israel)”, which at the time was under Ottoman Empire control.

World War I resulted in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration (named after British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour), which called for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. By 1920 Great Britain had gained territorial control of Palestine under a League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) mandate, and with that Jews began to immigrate in large numbers back to Palestine.

On May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel officially established the new State of Israel.

A resulting war between Arabs and Jews living in the region caused the displacement of as many as 700,000 Arabs, the Al Naksa to which I referred previously, commemorated each May 15—the day after Israel declared itself a sovereign nation.

This is the worldview through which pro-Palestinians see conditions in the Middle East. It matters not that the region was once Israel’s homeland. In their minds what matters is that the Jews forced Arabs out of their homes, off their farms, and turned them into second class citizens. Most of the Arab world, with Palestinians beneath that umbrella, see the Jews as one would see the Nazis—an unredeemable, hateful, violent people group for whom there should be no sympathy.

That’s how pro-Palestinians justify their antisemitic support of Hamas’ actions in 2023. Raping and murdering innocent Jewish men, women, and children is no different from putting down a rabid dog. There is an odd parallel in this worldview. Pro-Palestinians accuse Jews of being Nazis then turn around in Nazi fashion to destroy them, seeing them as as vermin, non-human rats requiring justifiable extermination.

Reminds one of Antifa using fascist tactics to reject Fascism.  

This is why having a rational conversation with pro-Palestinian protestors is generally futile. They viscerally hate Jews whom they see as invaders. The protestors are also largely ignorant—not a particularly novel things these days with respect to any social controversy. Recent interviews asking protestors to define “From the River to the Sea” was embarrassing. It revealed Marxist class warfare, identity politics gone mad, rather than being genuinely concerned and informed. As I’ve noted in other venues, the LGBTQ+ community standing with Hamas couldn’t be more ridiculous given how they are treated in most Muslim countries—again, an example of Marxist class warfare trumping logic.

The Jewish people have been hated for a long time, and the reasons for such hatred are legion. The constants in Jewish history are two things: They are God’s Chosen People, and they endure. No caring human likes what’s going on in Gaza or justifying the killing of any innocent person. Yet the pro-Palestinian antisemitic protests we see today are no less disturbing.