‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free!’

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“From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!”

There it is. There’s the bumper sticker. It doesn’t start with Hey Hey Ho Ho, but it’s still easy to remember, easy to shout, but… not… very easy to defend. So naturally it’s perfect for young students to glom onto because they don’t flesh this one out at all. And they don’t do that because they don’t want to, and they don’t want to because they prefer to align themselves with a virtuous cause. They’re also influenced by radical students from the Middle East who seem to have arrived here with a plan. So we get lots of campus protests, lots of antisemitism, lots of gobbledegook. Hmmmm…Someone should take a closer look at the logic behind these chants.

I know…Let’s do a List!

1. From the River… I’ve seen the video blurbs where college students are asked what river? and what sea? And they fail gloriously. Taylor Swift a big thing. Geography not a big thing. Anyway, I’m not saying they’re all ignorant of the Mediterranean, the Jordan River, and their relative proximity to “Palestine,” but the implication is that the area between those two waterways (also known as the State of Israel) is in the way and has to go. But that patch of land is already free, and has a lot of opportunities for “Palestinians” who want to peacefully work there. And Arabs can also hold seats in the Knesset. But for the ones who support Hamas (which was voted in legitimately as the official government in 2006 and hasn’t held elections since), they’ve signed on to a mandate demanding Israelis die or move out so they can take over the land.

2.(Blank Blank)…You can’t hide! We accuse you of Genocide! Oh, shut up. No it isn’t. Genocide is when you try to wipe out an entire race of people in a given area. Like Hitler’s genocide. Or the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. Or the Turks against the Cypriots. Saying that Israel is committing genocide against “Palestinians” by accepting an invitation to war where your combatants hide among your civilians is like saying America committed genocide against the Japanese for bombing Hiroshima. Truman bombed Japan so we wouldn’t have a million casualties through invasion. He did not bomb Japan with the intent of killing every Japanese there was.

As for the Gazan civilians and their plight, It’s sad to see them suffer death and destruction in a war started by their political leaders, but if you play in the middle of the interstate (continue to support Hamas), you just might get squished by a Kenworth.

3. Our Land is Occupied Land! No…. no it isn’t and it hasn’t been for almost 20 years when Israel pulled out and left you to yourselves. Everything that “Palestine” became, it became all by itself. And what did it become? Well, it became a bastion of hatred. It became impoverished. It became dependent upon its neighbor (Israel) for fresh water because its political leadership decided to invest brainpower in bombs and hang gliders instead of desalination plants. It invested all of the financial aid it got from the rest of the world in tunnels and Jew-hating kiddie shows. Beirut was once known as the Paris of the Middle East with its coastline and hotels. Been degraded a bit since the ’70s by hosting terrorists, but it shares the same coast with “Palestine.” If Hamas had wanted to do right by its people, it could have been putting its resources into the same things. It could also have put resources into agriculture. If Jews can grow oranges as big as basketballs, so can you.

4. The Land Is Ours! Well, you can go back 110 years to the Balfour Declaration by the British, or you can go back a couple of thousand years to the Bible by God. There’s little doubt that the Jewish people have a more valid and historical claim to the land than the Muslims (who post-date the Jews by a couple thousand years). If you’re talking about how the Jews bought up all the land and then moved the Arabs off in the last century, it’s not that cut and dried. A dozen years before Israel became a state, the Peel Commission of 1937 found that Jews were mainly purchasing uninhabited tracts of sandy, swampy and arid land rather than what the Arabs were claiming: “The Jews are buying up all the good land.” The Commission found that the increased migration of more Arabs into the good land was causing less good land to be available. And the Jews were able to do more with their poor land than the Arabs were with their good land. See Above. Oranges. Big as Basketballs.

Regardless, whichever way you go, whether you believe Israel has a more valid claim than the Muslims or not, it’s all pretty irrelevant now. We’re not giving the land back to the Native Americans and the Israelis aren’t giving the land back to the Arabs.

5. Victory to the Palestinian Resistance! Okay…what does that look like? Do you think any of these campus brain trusts could articulate what that means? Could they drill down on a granular level and say, “This is what our idea of justice is?” without saying, “But we have to kill all the Jews first?” Probably not because all of that won’t fit on a protest placard or bumper sticker. Hamas proper says the Jews have to go, they have to be killed or evicted for their brand of justice to be realized. But I don’t think the college students here are going to say that quite so loudly. American students on campuses are more swayed by romantic ideals like Free Palestine! instead of Kill Jews! I think even they would be forced to admit that it sounds so Hitler…ish.

6. Palestinians This and Palestinians That. You may have noticed that I’ve been putting the word “Palestinians” in quotation marks and that’s because I think the word is somewhat specious. It comes from the word Philistine and the area was ruled by everyone from the Hebrews, the Macedonians, the Romans to the Ottomans, then more recently the Jews again, and now the Arabs (if we’re talking about Gaza). Arafat declared Palestine a state in 1988 and most countries in the UN recognize it. The U.S. still does not recognize it as a legitimate state because of its history with terrorism. This may be a minor point, but I try to be precise since the radicals use the word on all of their signage.

Summary. So every reason that the campus radicals proclaim in their tantrums is basically irrelevant now. The State of Israel has been there for decades, it is economically strong, and its military is the best in the business. It’s not going anywhere. Really…they’re not moving out of the neighborhood, and when campus children scream and shout, it isn’t going to change much. Republicans generally have no problem backing Israel. Democrats now find themselves in the unenviable position of being chewed on by the alligators they created. Radicals may get a Kamala Harris to reduce arms sales to Israel somewhat, but the IDF can just buy them elsewhere. There is no shortage of weapons on the international market for people with money.

So if you have the unstoppable force (Hamas) pitted against the immovable object (Israel), what is the solution? Well, the same solution that has come down for every decisive war in history. There is a winner and a loser. Two world wars, Korea (sort of), our Civil War, etc. etc etc. Somebody has to get beaten soundly, admit they’ve gotten beaten down soundly, and agree to peace. This is the only way this will ever end well. Hamas (and Hezbollah for that matter) has to quit making war on Israel and possibly even learn to get along with it. Or just ignore it and leave it be. But unless this happens, I don’t think conflict over there will ever end. And I’ve been watching this go on since 1972 so I’m not sure it ever will.

Hatred has a half-life just like plutonium…