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Anyone promoting a two-state solution that omits the transformative changes which must take place in Palestinian society should be ashamed.
By ALIZA PILICHOWSKI JANUARY 12, 2025 01:48
UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola attend a news conference in Pretoria.
(photo credit: Alet Pretorius/Reuters)
A recent global social media campaign among physicians calling for the release of a Palestinian doctor, with the hashtag “FreeDrHussamAbuSafiyeh” has recently gained wide popularity, with most of the posts following a similar script: Doctors identify themselves, their specialty, and where they practice, and then write, “I’m calling for the immediate release of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. He was abducted by Israeli forces. I am calling for the protection of hospitals and medical workers in Gaza.” These doctors imagine themselves allies of the Palestinian people and think they are effectively advancing the cause of the Palestinians.
They couldn’t be more mistaken about the role they are playing or their effectiveness. Every one of their posts emboldens the Palestinians and further entrenches them in their self-destructive behavior and policies that have impeded their success for over a century. These doctors aren’t allies and they’re not advancing the Palestinian cause.
ON OCTOBER 8, 2023, less than 24 hours after the devastating massacre that the Palestinians perpetrated along the Gaza border, hundreds of Palestinians and their advocates gathered in New York’s Times Square to demonstrate and chant violent slogans against Israel.
The demonstrators chanted “Resistance is justified,” “Globalize the Intifada,” “Smash the settler Zionist state,” and the ultimate call for the annihilation of Israel, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The full-scale Israeli ground invasion wouldn’t start for another two weeks, yet Palestinian advocates were already making calls to attempt to ensure that Israel wouldn’t be able to defend itself or retaliate for the attacks it suffered. These preemptive calls against Israel undermined the credibility of all later demonstrations against Israel, based on Israel’s activities during the war. Palestinian characterization of Israeli behavior was false from the very start of the war and has been all along.
In the immediate aftermath of October 7, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the UN Security Council. As he began to speak, he appeared to take a rational stance on the massacre saying: “I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented October 7 acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians - or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.”
Yet Guterres quickly shifted to rationalizing the attacks, saying, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
HUMAN RIGHTS organizations have been lying about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians for years. In a report titled “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity,” Amnesty International claimed, “Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians.” Other so-called human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch followed suit. Since the start of the war, these organizations have continued their slander of Israel, claiming that its conduct during the war has amounted to genocide.
These false charges have been used by Palestinians, their activists, and even foreign politicians to justify Hamas and other Palestinian terrorism.
Kenyan Billow Kerow wrote these horrific words, “All actions by Hamas or any other Palestinian armed resistance groups are lawful and do not constitute terrorism. Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist organization by the UN. It is deceptive to treat the oppressor and the oppressed as if they are equal. Clearly, the US maintains a false equivalency between Palestinian rockets and Israeli bombs.”
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Palestinians and their advocates should be embarrassed by their conduct, not rationalizing it to the world. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is one of the most corrupt governing bodies in the world. It is ripe with graft and nepotism. Unlike the freedom-loving countries that support it, the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, haven’t held an election in 20 years.
The PA hasn’t abandoned its terrorist past. Its “pay-to-slay” program costs $400 million a year and incentivizes its people to commit terrorist acts. The program is so dastardly, the United State Congress passed the Taylor Force Act that made it illegal for the US to provide any aid to the PA as long as it kept up its pay to slay program.
Israel’s Defense and Security Forum wrote, “Fatah’s own terror group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has also claimed that its fighters participated in October 7. Its spokesperson has released videos of terrorists abducting and taunting victims from Israel, wearing clearly recognizable yellow scarves associated with Fatah (as opposed to the green color associated with Hamas). The video says: First we “liberate the Gaza Strip,” then the rest of “Palestine” and “tomorrow [we will be] at the gates of Jerusalem.”
Instead of disavowing the attacks and demanding that Palestinians holding Israeli hostages release them, Hamas members and other Palestinian non-combatants have used Israeli hostages as pawns and bargaining chips to shame Israel and try to gain the release of other Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
Kidnapping is one of the most despicable acts, together with rape and murder. All three acts have been utilized, justified, and praised by Palestinians as policy since October 7. What kind of a people justify raping young women and holding a baby hostage?
Palestinian society has a problem today. Unlike Arab Israelis, their people are corrupt, anti-freedom, and antisemitic. They never call for peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel. They call for an independent Palestinian state to replace it. They maintain that they are justified in all acts of resistance against Israel’s Jews, including, and especially, violence and terrorism.
Palestinian leadership today falls into one of two camps, Hamas, a terror organization conducting regular terrorism, or the PA, a corrupt repressive institution that promotes terrorism. Anyone siding with Palestinians today, instead of calling for Palestinian reform, joins a culture of corruption, antisemitism, and violence and should be ashamed of themselves.
Anyone promoting a two-state solution that omits the transformative changes which must take place in Palestinian society should be ashamed.
It is time for the world to stop emboldening the Palestinians and further entrenching them in their self-destructive behavior and policies that have impeded their success for over a century.
The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho, where she lives with her husband and six children.
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