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The annotated Palestinian narrative; 20 year cycles of self-induced Palestinian “Nakba” (catastrophe)

During the past century, the Palestinian Arabs have specialized in killing Jews and have committed their individual and collective existence towards one goal, the murdering of Jews and the destruction of the State of Israel. Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and for the past 75 years, Israel has had no respite from acts of Palestinian Arab terror while their multi-generational leadership has proudly proclaimed threats of Israel’s eminent destruction. The establishment of their own state, namely the State of Palestine, has never been their primary goal, that goal was and will always be subservient to their goal of eradicating the State of Israel.

The UN partition plan of mandatory Palestine in 1947 that divided the land in a manner that would have allowed each state to have a majority population of its chosen identity,, and that both Israel and Palestine would be established one alongside the other was rejected outright by the Arabs. Since then, the Rogers Plan, the Road Map for peace, the Oslo Agreement, and the Camp David agreement have all been ultimately rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and their leadership. Any one of these plans would have led to the establishment of a Palestinian state, yet the Palestinian Arabs have consistently rejected again and again for the past century any opportunity to end their century old conflict with the Jews. The principal grievance of the Palestinian Arabs has always been counter intuitively not the absence of a Palestinian state, but that the State of Palestine cannot come into existence without the disappearance or destruction of the State of Israel. This principle grievance of the Palestinian Arabs spanning generations, has brought upon them one “Nakba” after another.

The October 7th invasion of Israel’s communities in the Gaza Envelope and the barbaric murder of 1200 Israeli civilians wasn’t a military operation; it was a Jew–killing spree. The invasion and the mass murder by Hamas will also enter the history books as the Palestinian Arabs' greatest tactical and political blunder over the past 100 years culminating in the fourth cycle of “Nakba” and an end to the presence of any Arab control over the area known as the Gaza Strip. Their goal of establishing an independent Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria (i.e., "West Bank") has taken a severe setback and has unified the Israeli public from both sides of the political spectrum against their state adjacent to the state of Israel. Hamas has not only dug its own grave, but buried once and for all the possibility that a Palestinian Arab state will come in to being..

What differentiates the Palestinian Arabs from other nations who have built throughout the last century on the ruins of their historic homelands? What has made the Palestinian Arabs so successful in ensuring that no Palestinian state has come into existence over the last century and most likely will never become more than a mantra for supporters demonstrating on the streets of New York, London, or Paris?

The first cycle most associated with the saga began during the mid-1920s culminating in the War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Arab leader Haj Amin Al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, an avowed anti-Semite was extensively involved in Arab unrest and terror during this cycle. Haj Amin Al-Husseini met covertly with representatives of the Nazi SS, and not coincidently with Otto Adolf Eichmann, who was a German-Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major implementers of the Holocaust’s systematic annihilation and extermination of European Jewry. Haj Amin Al-Husseini played a leading role in inciting the local Arabs to attack and murder Jews. The Hebron Massacre of 1929 in which 69 Jewish residents of the ancient city of Hebron were viciously murdered by their Arab neighbors, the massacre and mutilation of the 35 young soldiers of the “Lamed Hey convoy”, and the Arab Revolt during the 1930s against the Jews who lived in mandatory Palestine are only a few examples of how the Arabs brought upon themselves their “Nakba”. Their revolt was unsuccessful, and its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 War of Independence and caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist forces like the Haganah.

The second cycle of the “Nakba” from 1948 until 1967 was characterized by the self-expulsion by the Arabs. David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: “The Arabs’ exit from Palestine….began immediately after the UN resolution, from the areas earmarked for the Jewish state. And we have explicit documents testifying that they left Palestine following instructions by the Arab leaders, with the Mufti at their head, under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive.” In retrospect, a war was embarked on enthusiastically, with much unanimity, and with much anticipation by the Arab countries of driving the Jews into the sea, and when they lost, their leadership, cynically transformed the narrative into a story of victimhood.

The third cycle of the “Nakba” between the years 1967 and 1987 culminated in the “first intifada”. Masses of Palestinian Arabs attacked Israeli troops with stones, axes, Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and firearms supplied by their leadership, killing and wounding soldiers and civilians. Throughout the intifada, the PLO leadership played a leading role in orchestrating the insurrection frequently by issuing leaflets dictating which days violence was to be escalated, and who was to be its target. Jews were not the only victims of the violence. In fact, as the intifada waned around the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the number of Arabs killed for political and other reasons by Palestinian Arab death squads in what amount to an “intrafada” exceeded the number killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Victims were stabbed, hacked with axes, shot, clubbed and burned with acid.

The fourth cycle of the “Nakba” between the years 2000 and 2023 began with the 2nd intifada and culminated in the Oct 7th massacre. The 2nd intifada was a long, sustained, and intensive series of terror attacks with Palestinian Arab suicide bombers blowing up buses sometimes twice a day. Over 1000 Israeli’s were killed and over 8000 wounded. This 2nd intifada fundamentally altered Israeli society because it impacted everyone. No one, regardless of their political opinions, level of religious observance or ethnicity, was left unaffected. For the latter part of the fourth cycle, the Palestinian Arabs led by Hamas continued their war of attrition by firing thousands of missiles on southern and central Israel. Hamas instigated violent riots on the border with Israeli communities, kites and helium balloons with incendiary material attached were launched from the Gaza Strip to the Israeli side. Hamas spread its ideology to Judea and Samaria (i.e.- West Bank) resulting in the deaths of hundreds of local Jewish residents.

Each and every cycle of the Palestinian Arabs' self-induced “Nakba” has progressively diminished the eventuality of a separate state. Former President Clinton was quoted in the past - “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state,” “I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza, 96 to 97 percent of the \West Bank\, compensating land in Israel, you name it.”

The massacre of Oct 7, 2023, signaling the end of the fourth cycle of the Palestinian “Nakba” will most likely be the final cycle. No Israeli government, nor the Israeli public from both sides of the political spectrum will support the establishment of the State of Palestine. That is the Nakba, the self-inflicted tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs.

Hamas and the Islamic Domino Effect

As Israel entered the second month of the war on Hamas, the radical Islamic terror organization; former President Barack Obama appropriated the anti-Israel movement that has violently demonstrated not only against Israel but against American Jews and Jewish supporters of the State of Israel. His timely appearance justified the rage and violence seen at pro Hamas demonstrations by Muslim Americans and supporters of Hamas who have incited and called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Obama, still commanding respect among a large spectrum of young Americans, encouraged Muslim-Americans and supporters of Hamas the terror organization to continue and engage in the openly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American demonstrations by refraining from condemning these violent demonstrations against American Jews. It seems that the limits of the first amendment and the legal constraints of incitement have no relevancy when Israel is the issue.

Former President Obama, never a true friend of Israel who always harbored a deep hatred of Israel is now unrestricted by an upcoming election, and can speak freely. Obama has willingly contributed to the false portrayal of the Hamas terror organization as a kind of unfinished project of national liberation rather than a terror organization that butchered, raped, burnt alive, and kidnapped hundreds of men, women, children, and infants after breeching the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Hamas, a radical Islamic organization no different than ISIS or El-Qaeda wants to impose the law of the Sharia everywhere and does not recognize other religions such as Judaism or Christianity. Hamas will use any means, as barbaric as they are, to impose what they consider Islamic justice.

It was over a decade ago when Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was asked whether he would support a Muslim for President. His answer reflected what many in Western societies do not understand. Gingrich responding by saying that the answer to that question really depends on whether the candidate was “a modern person who happens to worship Allah” or “a person who belonged to any kind of belief in Sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us.” He concluded by stating that the former would not pose a threat to America or the Western world, while the latter would be a “mortal threat.”

Gingrich is absolutely right in making such a distinction. The danger facing America from the Islamic Hamas organization’s supporters sweeping the streets of American arises not from the fact that people practicing the Islamic religion are Muslim, but rather from the degree to which they adhere to the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of Sharia. What was perceived in the not so distant past as threat on Israel should now be understood as a problem for America and much of the Western nations where Hamas supporters have taken to the streets in mass. This is nothing less than a current manifestation of the Islamic Domino Effect. By not shying away from this issue, Gingrich raised a serious concern that should worry all Americans today in light of the vast support for Hamas.

Over the past 100 years, powerful and belligerent conglomerations of state and non-state Islamic forces adopted the use of terror to mount a strategic threat on the continuing survival of the State of Israel. During those years, Islamic terror was considered a threat only on Israel and was felt to be a consequence of the ongoing conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors. In recent years, Hamas’ Islamic terror was not understood or interpreted as a strategic threat to America. Hamas’ Islamic terrorists enjoyed the status of celebrities and were welcome in the corridors of power and intelligentsia throughout Europe and the United States. Within the corridors of Congress, Democratic congressional representatives such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Jamal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have given their full support to the incitement and violence sweeping the streets of American against American Jews and supporters of Israel. They have refrained from condemning the calls to eradicate the state of Israel, and have not condemned the acts of violence against American Jews during the demonstrations. The rage and hatred expressed during these demonstrations will not stop with the Jews and will slowly take the form against all non-Muslims, meaning everyone else.

Hamas represents the latest manifestation of the Islamic Domino effect within free societies such as America after a decade of mass Muslim immigration to the European Union. More and more of Muslim-Americans and supporters of Hamas are willingly dissociating themselves from the prevailing values, constitutional restrictions and legal regulations of mainstream America and the values of Main St. These supporters of Hamas are using the freedom of Democratic societies to strengthen the message that Islam is not and will never be subservient to any other religion or political system. This is the true meaning of what Hamas stands for and this is what American Muslims are demonstrating for.

Up until Oct 7^thIsrael stood alone in the war against Hamas and for the past decade and a half, the communities of southern Israel have lived under the shadow of indiscriminate missile attacks and Hamas terror against civilians living in the communities adjacent to the border. What seemed then as a localized conflict between Hamas and Israel has metamorphosed into a direct threat on the rule of law, on the physical safety of American Jews and Jewish Institutions. Support for Hamas will plant the seeds of the Islamic threat to American society from within while creating a Domino effect that will disrupt American society as we now it. The Islamic Domino Effect as personified by the Hamas terror organization, will develop into an Islamic tsunami of political and religious intolerance for religions and ideologies in open societies that are not subservient to Islam and Sharia Law.

The Day the music died for Progressive Jewry

The Oct. 7 Hamas massacre will be remembered as the day the music died for progressive Jewry. What was will no longer be.

Hamas showed for all to see, in many cases live on social media, a level of barbarism and cruelty unseen since the days of Nazism. But Hamas also shattered the dearest delusions of progressive Jews, because its savagery was quickly justified and celebrated throughout the West by progressives. This has forced an overnight exodus of Jews from the progressive movement. Hamas not only shattered the lives of numerous innocent Jews, but also decades during which Jews were part of the vanguard of the progressive world. Within 24 hours, progressive Jews woke up and realized that what they so wholeheartedly believed was based on the illusion that if we just say the right things and advocate for the politics and policies of progressivism, we will not only be doing tikkun olam but also become senior partners in the “woke” revolution. Progressive Jews sympathetic to “woke” discourse now see that they signed on to a worldview that has nothing to say about murder, mass rape, killing children in front of their parents, killing parents in front of their children, beheadings and burning babies alive.

The response to the attacks from pro-Hamas Muslim and progressive protestors, along with university presidents and student organizations, celebrities and mainstream media personalities crushed progressive Jews’ sense of solidarity and security. For many years, progressive Jews dismissed the poisonous anti-Semitic environment on campus. They rationalized the actions of campuses anti-Semites by claiming that students shutting down events that don’t embrace the “woke” narrative is irritating, but it’s what students do. Now these Jews see the results: Campus antisemitism has spread overnight into our communities and cities and on to our streets. Many if not most Jews have lost their sense of personal safety outside their own homes.

Progressive Jews saw Muslims and their progressive supporters march like storm troopers through the streets, brandishing swastikas and chanting “gas the Jews” at the top of their lungs. Progressive organizations like Black Lives Matter glorified Hamas terrorists who beheaded and murdered babies. Jewish schools were forced to close down because of safety concerns prompted by these violent “demonstrations.” Jews watched on their TVs and smart phones as, throughout the U.S. and Europe, the mainstream media gleefully broadcast Hamas lies, propaganda and blood libels as if they were disseminating hard news.

The events of the past three weeks have shown these Jews that progressivism now has nothing to do with aiding the oppressed or differentiating between good and evil. It is about killing people, especially Jews.

This shattering of the progressive worldview, however, is ultimately a good thing. Delusional beliefs may well be replaced by a life-affirming embrace of the views of the overwhelming majority of world Jewry. The question now is whether this wake-up moment will persist. Will progressive Jews revert back to an illusory utopianism? Or will they be able to resist the urge to indulge in magical thinking and soothing myths over harsh realities?

They’d better, and not only to save themselves. What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. With its embrace of terrorism, barbarism and mass murder, today’s progressivism has made it clear that it is a threat to civilization itself. Progressive Jews can use their awakening to teach this lesson to all of society. The West has made the value of human life a basic tenet of its civilization. If it embraces the new genocidal progressivism, this value will die, and with it the West. Understanding this is an existential necessity. The alternative is the savagery we witnessed on Oct. 7.

Nazism 2.0

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his visit to Tel Aviv this past week, cataloged some of what he called Hamas’s “countless acts of terror in a litany of brutality and inhumanity,” specifying, “Babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped, parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.” Secretary Blinken was shown photographs of this unspeakable savagery from the southern communities of Israel in 2023, and not from the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation in 1940. A majority of the 1300 victims were veteran residents of Kibbutzim, Moshavim, and a string of small towns and villages adjacent to the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

As more details of the barbaric and murderous attacks by the Palestinian terror organization Hamas are documented and shown to the world, the leaders of Hamas, the heads of the Iranian Regime, and their paymasters in the Qatar Regime and the Palestinian Authority lead by Mohammed Abas are equally responsible and accessories to these unspeakable crimes. The murder, torture, mutilation of bodies, and sexual crimes against innocent Jewish children, women, men, and elderly are nothing less than a pogrom reminiscent of the Holocaust and the Nazi’s genocidal war against the Jewish people.

Since its inception, the Palestinian terror organization Hamas has openly and consistently declared its determination of annihilating Israel and murdering Jews. The ideology of Hamas quotes a disputed hadith in its founding charter stating explicitly “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘O Muslim, o servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” Hamas’ ideology echoes and is reminiscent of classical European antisemitism and Nazi ideology, which incited to commit genocide of the Jewish people. The Hamas Palestinian terrorists are modern day torchbearers of the Nazi ideology that committed genocide against the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

The common thread unifying the desire for the total destruction of Jews is shared by both the radical Islamism of Hamas and Nazi ideology. This common bond of “purifying” humanity of any Jewish presence promoted and upheld by radical Islamism and Nazi ideology began during the early decades of the previous century. One cannot deny the nearly identical ideological and doctrinal models used by the Nazis and todays Hamas who promote the total annihilation of Jews and the state of Israel. Nazi ideology spoke of “redemptive anti-Semitism”, namely a form of anti-Semitism that explains all in the world by offering a form of “redemption” by exterminating and purifying humanity of the Jews. Hamas provides the same rational for murdering Jews and Israelis in particular. Hamas religious and political leaders broadcast daily sermons of incitement to murder Jews promising heaven and redemption for those that carry out this call to rid the world of Jews.

The shift of redemptive antisemitism from Nazi Germany to parts of the Arab world after World War II, is not merely a supplementary feature of modern radical Islamism, but lies instead at its ideological core. This modern manifestation of redemptive anti-Semitism has been willingly adopted and inculcated within the Palestinian Hamas terror organization as we have witnessed this past week.

The connection between the Palestinians and the Nazi regime in Germany however runs much deeper. A key player was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini who met covertly with representatives of the Nazi SS intelligence arm during the late 1930s, and not coincidently with Otto Adolf Eichmann, who was a German-Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major implementers of the Holocaust’s systematic annihilation and extermination of European Jewry. An interesting footnote to Al-Husseini’s family lineage; Yasser Arafat, deceased leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an organization that was dedicated to the murdering of Jews and the destruction of the State of Israel, was a first nephew of Al-Husseini.

What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and today at every airport at every country in the world, we now line up for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of dismissing the axis of Jew hatred as personified by the Palestinian Hamas terror organization, the heads of the Iranian Regime, their paymasters in the Qatar Regime and the Palestinian Authority lead by Mohammed Abas lies in there inherent danger for the whole world as today’s modern torch bearers of Nazism. Jews throughout the world must not be confused. What transpired this past week is not only a conflict, not only a war but part of our historical struggle against those that want to annihilate the Jewish people.