Deciphering October 7

By David McCalmont

The Israeli Flag in Jerusalem. Photo by Neal E. Johnson on Unsplash.

Deciphering October 7

The late intellectual mouthpiece for Palestinian Arab anti-Orientalism, Edward Said, defended Yasser Arafat – who was then still a notorious terrorist, not yet a corrupt kleptocrat – by saying that his sensational violence at least kept the Palestinian Arab cause from disappearing entirely from the world's consciousness, and kept the Arab diaspora unified, even at the moral price of backing terror.

Said wrote that 50 years ago. But it is almost exactly the same argument used by Hamas leaders who spoke to The New York Times recently, telling the First World public that without their attack on Israel – with all its horrific atrocities – the Palestinian Arab cause would have been forgotten, left behind in the progress of the Abraham Accords begun under President Trump and in the continuing excitement of a "normalization" deal between influential Saudi Arabia and powerful Israel.

The Palestinian “Cause”

It is worth asking whether the Palestinian Arabs could have done something else in those 50 years to advance their cause, beyond killing Israeli civilians. Or whether violence against Israelis is the Palestinian Arab cause. If so, how did it come to be like this?

After all, you never see pro-Palestinian activists doing much to help "Palestine" (a non-existent entity) between wars. This time, they began marching right after the terror attack and before the Israeli response. It is easier – and more fun for 20-year-olds – to destroy than to create.

Let’s Rewind the Years

Israel is the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people and has been for at least 3,500 years. Jews have lived in the Levant continuously for all that time. Even during periods of exile and dispersion, they faced Jerusalem during prayer. They still do today, from all over the world.

The idea of creating (recreating?) a Jewish state emerged in the late 19^th century as a response to persecution in Europe, and diaspora Jews began Aliyah.

A generation or so later, in the early 20^th century, Arabs living in the region began to feel their own national stirrings (as the Ottoman Empire was coming undone). Palestinian Arabs were no different, though initially they wanted to be a part of a broader Arab empire, not a separate state.

When the British took over from the collapsing Ottoman Empire after WWI, with a Mandate from the League of Nations, they struggled to reconcile promises made to both sides.

As you may imagine, the conundrum was difficult to unravel. Dividing the land, however, seemed the least bad solution. This was acceptable to the Jewish side, which simply wanted sovereignty of any kind, particularly with the looming horror for Jews lurking in the evil bureaucratic minds of the Nazi German regime.

But the Arabs – who were only known as "Palestinians" much later (consult 1960 classic film "Exodus") – clung to the notion that there should be no Jewish state at all. No Jewish immigration, not even refugees from Nazi crematoriums.

Enter the Grand Mufti

The man most responsible for this intransigence was named Hajj Amin al-Husseini. The British sought to appease him by appointing him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He abused that position to foment riots against Jews, most notoriously in the Hebron massacre of 1929. The British tried to keep the Arabs onside in WWII by agreeing to radically reduce Jewish immigration, but al-Husseini sided with Hitler and the Nazis anyway.

There has never been a reckoning with this history. The Palestinian Arab leadership collaborated with Hitler. By doing so, through pressure on the British, the Jews had nowhere to escape. This is crucial. (Democrats in FDR's New Deal administration have also never come to terms with Franklin Roosevelt's gross indifference to the plight of a people being murdered in Europe and socially excluded in his own Blue Blood society.)

After the War, Germany was "de-Nazified" through public denunciation of Hitler's crimes. But that has never taken place in the Arab world, which continued to incubate Nazi anti-Semitism alongside radical Islamic sentiments.

The Two-State Solution

In 1947, the newly formed United Nations tried to tackle the same problem that had vexed the British, and came up with the same answer: Partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

But the Arab's answer was to destroy the Jewish state rather than build their own and declared war. The Arabs lost, and the same pattern has repeated itself for 75 years. Palestinian Arabs have always rejected statehood in favor of violence.

Up to 2000, it was possible to believe that some Palestinian Arab grievance justified the rejection. But when President Bill Clinton offered Arafat nearly all of Judea and Samaria and shared sovereignty over Jerusalem's holy sites, and possible compensation for Palestinian Arab refugees, Arafat walked away. Yasser Arafat didn't want to be reduced to governing a state and picking up the garbage. He then launched a cynical and destructive campaign of terror that Hamas, the Islamist rival of Arafat's "nationalists", has continued this century.

That shattered the Israeli Left, which had long supported compromises with the Palestinian Arabs, believing that peace was possible. For the last 23 years, Israelis have been looking for a workable alternative to solving the world's greatest conundrum – from building a barrier along the West Bank, to unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, to making peace with the other Arab states in the hope that Palestinian Arabs could be persuaded to set war aside.

From the River to the Sea

Yet, the Palestinian Arab leadership dug in its heels and held tight to the fantasy that the Levant – from the River to the Sea – was tenable, boosted by Iran, which continued to fund and arm terrorist groups.

In 2001, at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa, global anti-Israeli activists seized on the idea of casting Israel as the new "apartheid" state which, like South Africa, had to be dismantled. It was a loony tunes idea without merit, but the inaccurate and inappropriate symbolism appealed to the uncritical minds of Western leftists. Ironically, several spasms of violence, hatred and racism pockmarked this virtuous gathering of "good people" seemingly opposed to hatred and bigotry in all its forms, except of course hatred and bigotry against Israel and Jews.

The same impulse of intolerance persists in the efforts of anti-Israel activists to tear down posters of Israeli hostages: There can be acknowledgement of Jewish victimhood, which is the sole reason for Israel's very existence.

But ask these activists what they have actually done to help "Palestine", and you will find no answers. They have not invested in economic development; they have not donated to Palestinian Arab schools. A few have donated to Palestinian Arab relief efforts, but none has given thought to building Palestinian institutions.

Efforts to “Free” Palestine

The one question that unravels pro-Palestinian protesters every time is "What kind of Palestinian state do you want"? None of them know. Few of them care. They just want Israel "gone".” They just want to "free Palestine.” The slimly qualified President of Harvard University recently admitted that "From the River to the Sea" is thinly disguised polemic for annihilating the State of Israel and is thus anti-Semitic. Moreover, it implies genocide of the eight million Jews who domicile between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh urged followers to imagine a post-Israel "Palestine." He wants an Islamic state. The likely outcome: Gaza, a complete wreck, and a constant threat to its neighbors.

The only portion of the Palestinian Arab population that has moved beyond this conundrum are the Israeli Arab citizens, who are deciding in the face of Hamas terror, they would rather be Israeli than Palestinian (many of the dead from 10/7 were Israeli Arabs).

Their "free Palestine" is Israel.

Pro-Palestinian activists don't know what they want. But "no more Israel" cannot/will not be an acceptable option.