On Palestinian statehood and ‘Palestinianism’
I come from the Israeli left, from the political camp that believes that the only thing standing between us and peace is a Palestinian state. Only to realise that whenever they had the chance to have a state through direct negotiations, through Israeli withdrawals, they either would walk away from the negotiations and follow it up with violence – and no one within Palestinian society would question that choice – or they would turn whatever territory they controlled into a base to try to, in their words, liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.
And as I came to question what Palestinians really are after, given that they repeatedly don’t take the opportunity to establish a state (which is not normal behaviour for movements that claim to be movements of self-determination and liberation), only to realise that they’ve always told us what they wanted. Certainly in my political camp, we just didn’t listen to them, or when we did, it sounded so preposterous that we thought it was just bluster.
But I’ve come to realise that this is, tragically, the ideology and identity that unites the Arabs of Gaza, the West Bank, millions in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, under what I’ve come to call “Palestinianism”, which I say has four core tenets: from the river to the sea; there will be no Jewish state, and we are therefore perpetual refugees; until return.
And return, if anyone ever wondered, is what October 7 was all about. The new book I have in Israel about return shows how [Yahya] Sinwar and Hamas leaders, all the way leading up to the massacre, said “the day of return is near” and on that day, they said, “we are returning”. So I’ve come to realise that this is the obstacle to peace. Nothing else.
The Jews have always agreed to every two-state solution provided one of the two is the Jewish state, and the Arabs have always rejected every two-state solution if one of the two is the Jewish state. And if we’re ever to get to peace, that ideology, which is all about negation, has to be destroyed.
What has to happen for things to change
We really need to follow in the footsteps, like with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, where societies governed by terrible ideologies were only taken on a path of change once they were defeated and were made to understand that what brought them to defeat and ruin and destruction was their ideology. That they were not, as too many people allowed Palestinians to believe just pure victims of some outside evil, rather than conscious agents in history that have made an ideological choice to prioritise destroying what the Jews have built, rather than building for themselves.
So we need to ensure that this time around, the fighting does not end with some wishy-washy ceasefire that only allows Palestinians to try again, which is what they’ve been doing, believing that their victory is merely delayed. They need to understand that they’ve been defeated. They need to acknowledge it, and they need to appreciate that there’s a relationship of cause and effect between their ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish state, rather than building something for themselves, and the destruction and ruin that they are facing right now.
And only when you finally establish that cause and effect, something that they were allowed to evade and avoid for a century, can you begin to really take them on a different route, such as the ones that the countries of the Abraham Accords have begun taking, one that creates a proud Arab and Muslim identity that is not obsessively about destroying the Jewish state.
The issue with UNRWA
The reason that they’ve been able to persist for a century in trying again [to destroy Israel] is that they’ve been fuelled and supported by so many powers, many antisemitic powers in history, from the Nazis to the pan-Arabists to the Soviets to the Iranians to the Qataris.
But also, they’ve been supported, unfortunately, by organisations like UNRWA, which is fuelling station number one of Palestinianism. Through Western money, UN legitimacy, the Arabs have been able for decades to tell themselves “the world is with us as we are working on destroying Israel”. The West, which funds UNRWA, has to assume responsibility, not for what they think they’re doing when they’re giving money, but what Palestinians think when they receive the money. And what Palestinians think and say is that UNRWA is their guarantor of return.
I even have a visual, a big poster at the entrance to a neighbourhood near Bethlehem – which is called a refugee camp, but no one there is a refugee by any international standard, it’s not a camp, it’s a neighbourhood – but the entrance has a poster that says “UNRWA services are our right until return”.
So they’re saying: “You, the Australian government will fund us, not until there’s a two-state solution, you will keep giving money until we achieve our goal of no Jewish state.
Advice for the Australian government
There is feeling good and doing good. And a lot of the people who claim to want to do good just want to feel good. And [that is] virtue signalling, feeling that we’re doing the right things – “we’re promoting peace, a two-state solution”, but it does no good, because the conflict has only ever been about the complete rejection of a Jewish state in any border whatsoever.
So if they really want to promote a two-state solution, I’m willing to go with them. Fine. How about finally ensuring that the Palestinians understand that one of the two states is the Jewish state? You want to recognise Palestine, fine. Make it clear that no one living in Palestine is a Palestine refugee. Defund UNRWA. Issue a legal opinion that makes it very clear that there’s no such thing as a right of return into Israel. Do that package, which would convey a message that a two-state solution is one in which one is a Jewish state, not two Arab states. Then, I would take them at their word. But from what it appears, they’re not being serious. They just want to do this feel-good, virtue signalling stuff, rather than do the things that might not be pleasant, but would actually promote real peace.
University campuses and anti-Zionism
I’ve come to describe something that I call the placard strategy, which you see on placards at anti-Israel demonstrations, which is the equation of Israel, Zionism and the Star of David with every word that is considered synonymous with evil – imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, racism, escalating into ethnic cleansing, Nazism, genocide, Holocaust. If you were in America in 2020 during Black Lives Matter, suddenly, Zionism equals white supremacy.
And what this does is create this repetition that gets laundered through institutions of prestige – like various UN institutions, academia, human rights institutions – that presents Israel, Zionism, the Star of David, as uniquely evil, thereby prepping the ground for the vision that the world would be a better place without Israel, without Zionism, without the collective Jew.
And that is one of the most ancient but also one of the most dangerous ideas, that the collective Jew stands between this world and utopia. And what I highlight for people is that they need to understand that they’re participating in something that is very dangerous.
Photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP
Everything the Nazis did was downstream from their belief that they’re keeping the world clean, that they are birthing utopia, that by physically getting rid of the collective Jew one by one, there will be a better world on the other side of it. This is what’s happening. So what I try is to let people know that this is not about Israel or Zionism, or this government or this minister. It’s really about creating this 360 degree environment that leads young people who want to do good in the world to believe that they are birthing utopia, but they are following a well-worn playbook that ultimately tends to spiral societies into destruction.
International law and double standards
The foreign minister says, “We are committed to international law.” But the amazing thing is that international law is actually incredibly reasonable and rational. It was drafted by people who knew that you had to win wars. But with Israel, it’s like made-up rules.
International law makes it very clear if you use schools and hospitals for military purposes, they become military targets. The doctrine of proportionality doesn’t say that you need to kill the same number of people. It says that you need to assess the threat and the collateral damage. There’s understanding that civilians will be killed in warfare. It says that you need to allow supplies to reach the population – children, women – but you can block it if you know that it’s helping your enemy, which we have evidence for.
There’s no international law that says that you need to supply your enemy while you’re still at war with them, while it goes to continue the war while they refuse to surrender and hold your hostages. Yet somehow people behave as if this is an obvious rule, and how dare Israel not continuously supply its enemy at a time of war? So there’s all these made-up rules for Israel. You can’t take any of Gaza’s territory. No war was ever fought this way. The civilian population has to stay there. In every other conflict, let them out, other countries take them in. Here, they must stay.
So international law is actually incredibly reasonable. Israel abides by it, by the way, above and beyond. But people somehow pretend and create unique rules for Israel.
Claims Israel fires on Gazans seeking aid
You only need to use three brain cells to understand that Israel wants the alternative aid means to succeed. Again, this is above and beyond Israel’s responsibility. But still, Israel wants it to succeed, knowing how UNRWA and other aid organisations have extended the war, extended the suffering by extending the war. But if you’ve been led to believe that Israel is uniquely evil, then you will believe that Israel lures starving people in order to kill them. You’ll believe anything.
On images of war’s impact in Gaza
People say, “Oh, we see those images”. I tell them, do a thought process, same images but imagine that the news report begins this way: “It’s been 600 days that Hamas, as the continued governing force of Gaza, refuses to surrender, refuses to allow people to leave the territory, is hiding in schools and hospitals and has built its entire strategy in creating all of Gaza as a united weaponised landscape. And as a result, people are dying.”
Imagine that this would be the framework. You could still have the same images, but the anger would be directed at the people actually responsible.
People say, “Oh, the Israeli public doesn’t see those images.” We see them, but we just have the correct context that we know how the government of Gaza operates. We know what the war is about, and we know that they still refuse to surrender while still holding our hostages.
On Qatar and Al Jazeera
I have a colleague who actually tested – you talk about Australian media using Qatari images – so he tested how often Western media relies on non-Western media for images. How much does it bring Chinese television, Russian television? almost nothing. Al Jazeera? It’s as if it’s part of the crew. And he made the argument, he said the success of Al Jazeera is not despite its antisemitism, it is thanks to its antisemitism. It is the way that the West can launder and kind of say, “you know, this is Al Jazeera. This is coming from there.”
Qatar, with Al Jazeera, with the way that it has infiltrated universities, think tanks, governments – has been one of the most nefarious forces, a very dangerous one. And I believe, again, a lot of my criticism within Israel is that, as with UNRWA and other things, we haven’t taken it seriously. We’ve allowed it to be legitimised, rather than for the enemy force that it is.
At the end of the day, Qatar, it’s an oil well with a family. If there’s no American base there, then all it takes is a little Saudi or Iranian invasion, and it’s over, right? And they’ve been very strategically using that oil and gas and all that to buy everyone.
Einat Wilf was a guest of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
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