Zionists have not internalized the venom with which most Arabs view Jewish presence in the holy land.
Nazi Germany invaded France in May 1940 and the reaction was mixed. A minority saddled up to the Nazis and facilitated the enactment of antisemitic laws and rounding up Jews for deportation. Many French formed “resistance” groups to fight the invaders, and enlisted the help of foreign countries to rid the homeland of those interlopers. They used all means at their disposal to return France to its 1939 reality.
Most Palestinian Arabs view Jews in the holy land the same way.
Arabs reject the history of Jews in Israel, especially in Jerusalem. They claim that the entire Zionist enterprise is a fiction of European creation. Palestinian leadership demands an apology from the United Kingdom for advancing the Balfour Declaration, and Hamas, the dominant political party in the Palestinian parliament considers killing Jews a “natural” response to the colonialist effort. They “resist” the Jews by any and all means possible, and polls show the majority of Palestinian Arabs support killing Jews inside of Israel. They are convinced that eventually these foreign Jews will leave and that the Jewish State won’t live to see its 100th birthday.
Anti-Zionist groups understand this. The Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime held a rally calling to use “any means necessary” (meaning violence) to liberate their land “from the river to the sea.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) told attendees at a conference that American Jews are “enemies” because they support Israel. Students for Justice in Palestine say Zionism is based on “racism, expansionism, [and] settler colonialism,” and the Palestinian Authority Minister of Culture called Jews “invaders.“
Palestinians aren’t frustrated by the lack of a Palestinian State on a fraction of historic Palestine; they are infuriated that the world would consider chopping up their homeland. They rejected the notion of a Jewish State in 1917, again at the United Nations in 1947, and to this very moment. They don’t think of a “Nakba” as an event in the past, but discuss an “ongoing Nakba” in Israel’s existence now.
Yet people talk about the “two state solution” as though it is something that needs to be imposed on Israel, when Israel is the party that has consistently tried to advance an enduring peace. It is the Arabs who reject the “invaders”, “colonialists” and “enemies” who have robbed them of their homeland.
One cannot advance actions for a “peace process” without interalizing that Palestinian Arabs continue to reject the basic presence of Jews. From the 1940s through 1970s, the Palestinians turned to fellow Muslim Arab countries to destroy the Jewish State. Now they turn to the global community to combat the “Zionist entity” and Zionists in the global community.
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