Disclaimer: nothing in this post is an endorsement of any Israeli policy.
There is no future in Israel and Palestine without both Israelis and Palestinians. An intifada will never drive Jews away from Israel, but it will perpetuate the cycle of bloodshed and will likely prompt the Israeli government to pass policies that deteriorate the quality of life of Palestinians even further.
Likewise, calling for a global intifada will do nothing but incite violence against Jews worldwide, as we are already seeing, and drive Jews to move to Israel, which is ironically what these pro-Palestine protestors don’t want.
"Listen, the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, 'You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?' I tell them that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them." - Võ Nguyên Giáp
A 2000-YEAR YEARNING
You will never understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if you refuse to understand the Jewish relationship to the Land of Israel. Whether you like it or not, Israel is central to Judaism. Our identity as a people developed in Israel, and our (forced!) displacement(s) was so painful to us that we even had to come up with a new word -- “galut” -- to describe it.
For 2000 years, Jews in Israel continued praying for the “ingathering of the exiles,” an important concept in Jewish eschatology. As the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine, Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, said, “We all desire that the in gathering of the exiles should take place from all areas where they have been scattered...”
For over 2500 years, Jews made unsuccessful successive attempts to reclaim sovereignty in the Land of Israel: in 539 BCE, 167-160 BCE, 66-73 CE, 132-135 CE, 351-352 CE, 614-617, in the ninth and tenth centuries, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the Spanish Inquisition, in 1700, 1740-1750, 1742, 1810, 1839, 1860, 1873, and, of course, during the Zionist Aliyot. It just so happens that modern political Zionism was the movement that finally worked.
The yearning to return to the Land of Israel is a central theme in thousands of years’ worth of Jewish literature, both liturgical and secular.
After the Holocaust, a poll of 19,000 Jewish Displaced Persons [Holocaust survivor refugees] found that 97 percent wanted to go to the Land of Israel. When asked for a second choice, many wrote “crematorium.”
No matter how much you want to paint us as foreign usurpers to the land, the fact of the matter is that we are in Israel to stay. No intifada will change this.
THE NAPOLEON LEGEND
The story is told that Napoleon was walking through the streets of Paris one Tisha B'Av. As his entourage passed a synagogue he heard wailing and crying coming from within; he sent an aide to inquire as to what had happened. The aide returned and told Napoleon that the Jews were in mourning over the loss of their Temple.
Napoleon was indignant! "How come I wasn't informed? When did this happen? Which Temple?"
The aide responded, "They lost their Temple in Jerusalem on this date 1,700 years ago."
Napoleon stood in silence and then said, "Certainly a people which has mourned the loss of their Temple for so long will survive to see it rebuilt!"
- via Aish
REJECTIONISM
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a conflict over two opposing narratives. The Zionist narrative — and the predominant Jewish narrative — is that the establishment of the State of Israel is the reclamation of a long-persecuted nation’s ancestral homeland, the culmination of a 2000-year-old dream to re-establish Jewish sovereignty in our ancestral land.
The predominant Arab and Palestinian narrative is that a people foreign to the land established a colonial outpost in the Middle East, thereby largely displacing who they deem to be the region’s native population. For this reason, Palestinians have largely historically rejected the State of Israel’s very existence, deeming any form of compromise between the two parties unacceptable.
The Palestinian leadership rejected proposals for “one state solutions” (i.e. a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea”) in both 1939 and 1947. They also rejected “two state solutions” in 1937, 1947, 1978, 2000, 2008, and 2010. The facts are clear: if what the Palestinian movement wanted was an independent Palestinian state, there would’ve been a Palestinian state long ago. But time and time again, Palestinian leaders have shown their true priorities: instead of fighting to establish a Palestinian state, they’ve fought to destroy the Jewish one.
British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin — himself no real friend to the Jews — noted in February of 1947, “His Majesty’s Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles…For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”
In 1994, almost immediately after signing the first Oslo Accord, which was meant to establish a pathway to an independent Palestinian state, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), delivered a speech at a Johannesburg mosque, assuring his audience that this peace agreement was only a tactical pause, and that he had no intention of pursuing a permanent peace with Israel.
Palestinian resistance to Zionism has historically worked off the premise that since they believe Israel is a colonial outpost, like all colonizers, Israelis will eventually leave. The Palestinian movement often uses the “decolonization” of Algeria as a reference and framework, noting how Algerian Arabs managed to kick out the French through violent means.*
At the end of the day, however, Israel isn’t French Algeria. For Jews, Israel is our ancestral, historic homeland, a fact that is easily backed by both Jewish and non-Jewish historical record, a plethora of archeological finds, genealogical studies, and so much more. We don’t have a “mother country” or a “metropole” to go back to, because Israel is not a colony of a sovereign state. Rather, Israel is a sovereign state. The tactics that worked on the French colonizers will never work on us. So long as the mainstream Palestinian movement doesn’t come to terms with this, we will only be seeing a continuation in the cycle of violence.
Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going anywhere. Violent tactics won’t convince Israelis to “go back home,” because Israel is home.
*Of course, what they neglect to mention is that Algeria is still colonized. The Indigenous Amazigh culture is heavily repressed. Imazighen in Kabylia are still fighting for sovereignty to this day.
OUTCOME OF THE INTIFADAS
For 100 years now, Palestinian terrorism has not improved the quality of life of Palestinians in any capacity. In fact, terrorism has made their quality of life demonstrably worse.
The first checkpoints, which diminish the quality of life of Palestinians, were erected in response to the terrorism of the First Intifada. The West Bank separation barrier, which pro-Palestine activists often decry, was built during the Second Intifada to prevent suicide bombings -- a tactic that seems to have worked.
When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, there was no blockade. Yet, merely two hours after the last Israeli left the Strip, Hamas began firing rockets at Israeli civilians. The blockade was placed after Hamas’s takeover of the Strip, not a moment before.
1603 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the First Intifada. Another 359 Palestinians were killed by fellow Palestinians. In the Second Intifada, around 3000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops, and another 406 Palestinians were killed by fellow Palestinians. What did the intifadas accomplish? Absolutely nothing but loss of life on both sides and the deterioration of quality of life for Palestinians.
Albert Einstein once famously said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” There is no logical reason to call for an intifada if your sincere goal is to improve the quality of life of Palestinians.
VIOLENCE IN THE DIASPORA IN THE NAME OF PALESTINE JUST DRIVES JEWS TO ISRAEL
Violence in Algeria drove the French out of France. But as I explained previously, Palestine is not Algeria, and Israelis are not the French.
It’s also worth noting that since October 7, antisemitic violence worldwide has skyrocketed. This May, for example, the World Zionist Organization noted that antisemitism worldwide is at the highest levels since the 1930s. This is corroborated by figures from law enforcement: in the United States, antisemitism rose by 360%, in Canada by 733%, in Australia by 433%, in Spain by 680%, in the Netherlands by 450%, in the United Kingdom by 442%, in France by 433%, in Germany by 207%, and on and on. These antisemitic incidents include murder, kidnapping, rape, and more...all “in the name of Palestine.”
While Jewish immigration to Israel momentarily dipped in the very immediate aftermath of October 7, the numbers are rapidly growing again. As of August 27, 29,000 Jews have migrated to Israel since October 7.
The main motive? Escaping antisemitism abroad...an antisemitism that disproportionately comes from the “pro-Palestine” crowd. It’s ironic that the same people that are trying to get Israelis to leave Israel are actually directly causing more and more Jews to move to Israel.
DISPELLING SOME ABSURD MYTHS
No, most Israelis don't have foreign passports
Calling for Jews to “get out of Palestine” is an open call for ethnic cleansing. For some reason, however, there is a strange myth floating around the pro-Palestine crowd that this isn’t so because most (or all) Israelis have dual citizenship. So let’s debunk this once and for all: no, most Israelis don’t have dual citizenship. Only 10% of Israelis do. The remaining 90% of Israel’s citizens have Israeli citizenship only.
No, October 7 did not succeed in making Israelis flee the country
Various pro-Palestine social media accounts have made posts showing photos of busy airports as “proof” that Israelis are fleeing because of the actions of the Palestinian “resistance.” This is just a photo of a busy Ben Gurion Airport in April 2022. Sometimes airports are busy...
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