When you look at a map of the Middle East during the Ottoman Empire, 1878 to 1914, you can see that it’s not unlike the map of North and South America during the 1500s and 1600s, where Indians lived in villages or wandered as nomads. Land was not delineated. Egypt, Tunisia, Persia, Russia, and Arabia were delineated roughly, but not Palestine.
From 1914 to 1918, the Ottoman Empire supported Germany during World War I. For no reason. Just as, for no reason, Germany invaded France. As in the Napoleonic wars the century before, every man aged 25 to 45 died. Go to any town in France—there is a memorial with the names of all those men. In every church in every city, town, and village, there is a wall inside with a list of those names.
The British, too, because they lost those men in World War I, were so incensed that after the war, they carved up the Ottoman Empire into separate countries. So mad, the British just drew lines anywhere, sometimes right in the middle of homogenous populations. They didn’t care.
In the 1880s, Jews started wandering back to Palestine (Zionism). They discovered sand dunes, malaria-infested swamps, a nomadic population, and a few ancient villages. Painstakingly, Zionists turned that desert into an oasis. Landlords of what legal land holdings there were did not object—they lived in Damascus and Alexandria. Plus, those Zionists paid for their land. They didn’t just take it.
In other words, the Palestinian claim to Palestine is no stronger than the claim by Christians or Jews.
Two thousand years ago, Rome destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews. Most left, but not all. There have always been Jews in Palestine, and there have always been Philistines (the older word for Palestinians).
Similar to the Romans, in Deuteronomy 20:16–17, before entering Canaan (Israel), Moses’s soldiers cleared out the Philistines. David and Goliath. That doesn’t mean they all left. There have always been Palestinians in Palestine—just as there have always been Christians.
A little history. After Rome crushed Israel in A.D. 132 and dispersed the Jews, half remained in the Mediterranean. The Sephardim. Half, the Ashkenazim, went north to eastern Europe. Those who stayed in the Middle East were absolutely an essential ingredient in the creation of the Middle East, to the high point of Arab culture, the Islamic Golden Age, the 10th to 14th centuries.
By 1947, there were 630,000 Jews, 143,00 Christians and 1,181,000 Muslims. (Source: Wikipedia.) Why, then, at the moment of the U.N.’s formal re-creation of Israel in 1948, did the Arab nations, population 45 million (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq), try to crush the 630,000 Jews? The Arab nations attacked; 750,000 Israeli Arabs fled. Why?
Because they assumed the Israelis would do to them precisely what they planned to do to the Israelis: kill them. They assumed a people persecuted for 2,000 years—holocaust survivors, grateful to finally have a homeland—would do such a thing. Please.
One hundred sixty thousand Palestinians did not flee. (Sir Vernon Bogdanor, King’s College, London, Financial Times, Nov. 4, 2023.) They knew a good thing. Their descendants, members of Parliament and the Supreme Court, with children attending schools alongside Israeli children, today number 1,700,000 Palestinians. (Bogdanor.) Like the Zionists, they, too, wandered back.
Yet, in retaliation for the Israeli victory in 1948, 650,000 Jews were forced to flee the Arab countries they had called home for centuries—the very people who helped build those countries. The difference: They were welcomed and assimilated into Israel, whereas the Palestinians were forced to live in refugee camps, where many still remain.
Arab nations attacked again in 1967 and 1973. Why? To divert attention away from their inability to run their own countries. Neither Arabs nor the American left who support the Palestinians are aware of the profound change that has taken place, namely, that Palestinians and Israelis, for some time, have been working very well together, and that most Palestinians do not want Israel to leave, regret even that Israel was attacked: It destroyed the one-state solution already in place.
On Oct. 8, 2018, a 23-year-old man walked into a West Bank industrial park known for its peaceful coexistence and, at point-blank range, shot and killed two Israelis (and wounded a third). Hamas praised the attack, calling it a “heroic operation, a natural response to the crimes of the Israeli occupation against the rights of our people, in all the Palestinian lands.”
President Reuven Rivlin of Israel announced, “It was also an attack on the possibility of Israelis and Palestinians coexisting peacefully.” That industrial park is an important source of employment for Palestinians. (Isabel Kershner, “Palestinian Kills 2 Israelis in West Bank Attack,” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2018.)
The group’s leaders praised the operation, with some hoping it would set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza, and the countries around them. (Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib, “Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a Permanent State of War,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 2023.)
As in 2011, young Arabs tried to make a change in the Middle East: Arab Spring. Change didn’t happen. Leaders of every Arab nation crushed that movement.
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are asking for equal treatment and understanding. Are they asking, in the spirit of the Arab Spring or the European Age of Enlightenment, for tolerance and acceptance, pluralism, respect for all peoples? Are they applying one of Christ’s greatest teachings—lead by example?
Not quite. After Oct. 7, a Hamas spokesman sneered: “Israelis love life, we love martyrdom.” (National Review, Nov. 23, 2023, p.13.) Well, that spokesman may have provided a win-win solution.
The real truth as to why no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible is that the underlying pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli position popular on college campuses and among progressives worldwide is being overlooked for what it really is: antisemitism—that Zionism is not the cause of antisemitism but the consequence.
Charles M. Blow wrote in “The Question of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism” in The New York Times on Nov. 16: “I interviewed several pro-Palestinians and scholars in America. Almost all of them described themselves as anti-Zionist … all of them also condemned antisemitism. Then, I turned to Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League [who] sees anti-Zionism, by definition, as antisemitism. He told me, ‘Zionism is fundamental to Judaism.’ He believes that claiming to be anti-Zionist but not antisemitic is like someone saying in 1963 that ‘I’m against the civil rights movement, but I’m also against racism.’
“[Greenblatt] believes that you can be a harsh critic of the Israeli government without being anti-Zionist; he also said that he, like many others, supports Palestinian identity and Palestinian nationalism while also being Zionist.
“When I talked to the pro-Palestinian activists and scholars, I posed a simple question that is often asked: Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist? To my surprise, none answered with a direct ‘yes.’”
