The ‘Palestinian Cause’: signs of genocide?

According to the narrative of the ‘Palestinian Cause’, Israel occupies ancient ‘Palestinian’ land. The ‘Palestinian’ people seek justice. They want their homeland back. They want their ‘rights’. They want Israeli occupiers out.

The say they war against Israel only because they war against oppression and occupation. They say they fight for a just, ethical cause.

But there’s trouble in this ‘Palestinian’ ethical paradise. Its narrative may not pass the smell test. For example, it turns out that most of the ‘Palestinian’ narrative has no basis in truth. There was never an ancient Arab-only’ Palestine’ that now needs to be ‘free’. There never existed an ancient ‘Palestinian’ people.

The story of an ancient ‘Palestine’ has no archaeological record. There’s no history of ancient ‘Palestinian’ kings, queens, generals or other potentates. Indeed, while so much of anti-Israel rhetoric gets expressed in terms of Islamic belief, it turns out that the words, ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian people’ never appear in the Islamic Koran.

But the words, ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’, are in the Koran.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement supports the ‘Palestinian’ drive for rights and justice. But it suffers the same flaw. It advertises itself as a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) that will work against Israel until Israel complies with international law and Palestinian rights (BDS Homepage). The movement claims to be “a truly global movement against Israeli Apartheid” (ibid). But, as former (and once proud) supporter Norman Finkelstein discovered, the BDS movement isn’t about ‘Palestinian’ rights (“Finkelstein: BDS Movement is a 'Cult', Arutz Sheva, February 15, 2015).

Yes, Finkelstein said, BDS calls itself a “rights based organization” and claims it is “fighting for rights” and “enforcing the law” (ibid).  But in reality it does no such thing. Instead, its goal is to eliminate Israel (ibid). As Finkelstein puts it, “they [BDS adherents] think they are very clever, but they know that the end result [of their efforts] is that there is no Israel” (ibid).

In other others, this former supporter has concluded that the sole BDS goal is to destroy Israel (ibid).

The justice ‘Palestinians’ demand is not linked to the right to create an independent state. The justice they seek is linked to liberation from an Israeli occupation of ‘Palestine’.

Many do-gooders who join the fight for ‘Palestinian’ justice don’t understand the difference between ‘independent state’ and ‘liberation from Israeli occupation’.  They believe that ‘independence’ and ‘liberation’ are synonyms. They aren’t.

 ‘Independence’ means a desire to be autonomous. ‘Liberation’ is different. As one strongly anti-Israel ‘Palestinian’ website explains, “There is a huge difference between ‘liberation’ and an ‘independent state’. Freedom for Palestinians means much more than establishing a bantustan [state] in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (“The sham solidarity of Israel’s Zionist left”, The Electronic Intifada, July 28, 2011).

For the ‘Palestinian Cause’, ‘liberation’ means the complete removal of Jews from modern-day Israel (the land Arabs call ‘Palestine’). Israeli ‘occupation’ occurs when Jews control land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (which includes all of modern Israel). This is why Hamas recently objected to Mahmoud Abbas’s UN demand for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea-Samaria: such a withdrawal, Hamas declared, doesn’t represent a consensus of the ‘Palestinian’ people (“Hamas Opposes PA's UN Resolution”, Arutz Sheva, December 25, 2014).

You see, the ‘consensus’ of the ‘Palestinian’ people doesn’t seem to be a desire for an independent state. That ‘consensus’ appears almost every day to be the desire to liberate all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is just another way of saying its aim is to remove Jews from modern Israel and turn the ‘liberated’ area into an Islamic state called ‘Palestine’ (see the Hamas Charter).

The ‘Palestinian Cause’ has a problem when its supporters ignore self-rule and speak instead of Israel as an Apartheid state that must be dismantled (“Former Canadian Minister of Justice Cotler: ‘Calling Israel an Apartheid State is Not Antisemitic’”, Antony Lerman, June 11, 20-11).  This ‘dismantling’ is not a euphemism for an ‘indenpedent Palestine’. It’s a euphemism for Israel’s destruction (ibid).

The ‘Palestinian Cause’ has a problem when you go to a local march to support the ‘Palestinian struggle’ and see signs that say, ’death to Jews’ (“Anti-Israel protesters clash with police outside Paris synagogue”, Haaretz, July 13, 2014) and ‘Hitler was right’ (“Israel Protesters: ‘Hitler Was Right’”, charisma news, August 13, 2014).

These aren’t signs of the ethical struggle for self-rule. They aren’t signs of a drive for ‘rights’.

They’re signs of genocide.