RUBENSTEIN: Campus falsehoods about Israel and the Palestinians

On Saturday, October 7, Gaza Strip terrorists conducted unspeakable horrors, blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israeli civilians. The cold-blooded murder of more than 1,400 Israelis, the rape, torture, and dismemberment of women and children and the savage hostage-taking of more than 200 elderly people, women and children amounted to the worst violence against Jews since the Holocaust.The foundational motive for this slaughter is crystal clear: a fanatical antisemitic desire, rooted in radical interpretations of Islam, buttressed by fake history, to exterminate the Jews of Israel, if not of the world.This is no histrionic conjecture. The 1988 Hamas Charter says:“The Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam … strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine [the State of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza] …. The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part or abandon it or any part of it. Palestine is an Islamic land…. The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them.”In practical terms, had there been no resistance to the October 7 invasion, all 7.1 million Jews living in Israel would have been systematically executed Holocaust-style.Though few of Israel’s supporters could ever envision such a horrific outcome, university students in Canada, America and Europe are loudly supporting a ceasefire or temporary pause in the exchange of fire that will only prevent the defeat of Hamas, thereby allowing more such heinous attacks on Jews, eventually leading to a 'final solution' to the Jewish question.Immediately following the first breaking news of the bloodthirsty invasion, Israel’s political opponents and public policy critics in colleges and universities in Canada, America and Europe have repeatedly described the October 7 attack on Israel on placards, in loud demonstrations, and in petitions as a legitimate response to Israeli “settler colonialism,” “occupation” of Palestine territories, and “apartheid.”Conversely and ironically, the Arab Street’s Middle Eastern leaders, persons far more knowledgeable about their region’s history and politics — especially those who have sought normalization with Israel via the Abraham Accords — have had to tread a fine line by refraining from blaming Israel for the October 7 attack.This still leaves the Palestine faction of the “Arab street” and their legions of campus supporters at the forefront of the vilification of Israel.Only the blindest observer could ever believe the countless organized public demonstrations around the world since October 7, are aimed at encouraging a just and lasting resolution to the current conflict that would be acceptable to its combatants.The words on the banners displayed and slogans uttered — “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Palestine lives matter,” “Israel = racism and apartheid” — prove this.“From the river to the sea” is particularly provocative because it rejects a two-state solution, for the Jews and one for the Palestinians — for a single Judenrein (free of Jews) Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; “Palestine lives matter” means Jewish ones don’t; and saying Israel is racist and based on apartheid denies its large Arab population enjoys freedom and prosperity denied to their brethren elsewhere in the region.This vilification of Israel has been reinforced by narrowly describing the current conflict as a battle solely between Israel and Hamas, a counterposing that says ordinary Palestinians and their supporters had no role to play in the massacre.According to Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, nor their legitimate aspirations. They do not speak for Muslim or Arab communities, and they do not represent the better futures that Palestinians or their children deserve,” a sentiment expressed by other leaders such as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden.A recent expression of this position came from White House National Security spokesman John Kirby, who claimed Israel and Egypt needed to allow the safe passage out of Gaza for civilians because “It’s the civilians who did nothing wrong, so we want to make sure they have a way out.”Really?Does “nothing wrong” also apply to the thousands of Palestinian and allied protestors who gleefully celebrated the October 7 attack throughout the Middle East and the Western world, including Canada, many shouting “death to the Jews” both on the street and in campus quadrangles, all supported by dozens of one-sided anti-Israel petitions.One of the most recent college petitions vilifying Israel comes from Canada’s Ryerson University, a thoroughly radicalized institution that is now calling itself Toronto Metropolitan University because Egerton Ryerson was a supporter of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, a noble attempt to bring the wonders and benefits of Western civilization to tens of thousands of pre-literate indigenous children.An anti-Israel letter issued on October 20 by a group of law students called for the support of “all forms of Palestinian resistance.”The open letter called on the law school’s leadership to denounce Israel. The open letter also demanded the law school’s leadership denounce Israel. It claimed Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, “is not a country” but rather “the brand of a settler colony.”“So-called Israel has been illegally occupying and ethnically cleansing Palestine since 1948, when the British unlawfully conceded Palestine’s territory,” claimed the students’ letter. “The apartheid state referred to as ‘Israel’ is a product of settler colonialism.”The students went on to say they “support all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts toward liberation” and the Hamas attack that killed at least 1,400 innocent people was a “direct result of Israel’s 75-year-long systemic campaign to eradicate Palestinians.”“Israel is therefore responsible for all loss of life in Palestine. To say otherwise is to accept and endorse colonialism in all its forms: there would be no death if not for Israel’s apartheid regime.”According to the law students, the current situation is “neither a war, nor a conflict.”Instead, it is a situation where Palestinians “are the subjects of Israel’s colonization and genocide.” Hence, they “condemn any statement that denies or shifts away from the narrative of colonialism, or which equates the struggle of the oppressed with the acts of their oppressor.”Where did these law students learn this fallacious and hateful rhetoric if not in their classrooms where all human relations are simplistically viewed through the binary lens of oppressor vs. oppressed?The TMU law students’ statement is just the latest case of radical anti-Zionist and anti-Israel activism in Canadian universities. As earlier reported, student unions at York University in Toronto issued a joint statement stating the events that took place in “so-called Israel” serve as “a reminder that resistance against colonial violence is justified and necessary.”The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union also issued an anti-Israel statement, in which it said it stood “in solidarity with all Palestinians and innocent civilians affected by the ongoing conflict in Gaza and around its borders.”At McGill University in Montreal, an official campus club praised Hamas’ action as “heroic” and “monumental” in a Facebook post. The group also cheered on the launching of rockets and the taking of hostages. Several Canadian professors also expressed support online for Palestinians “taking their land back,” decrying Israeli “colonialism.”Similar views have been shouted by professors and students in universities and colleges across America.How to interpret all this anti-Israel hate speech? One way is to compare it to the overarching mission of any reputable modern university to create, preserve, communicate and apply truthful knowledge.Is there any verifiable historical or contemporary truth to these assertions about Israel and the Palestinians?To begin with, those unfamiliar with the roots and history of attempts to delegitimize and destabilize the State of Israel need to examine the “ethnic cleansing” demands of Palestinians for a 'Judenrein' Islamic state of their own in all of the former British mandate of Palestine.Concerning the settler-colonial and occupation claim, there was no “occupation” during the numerous pogroms inflicted against Jews living in their Promised Land (a territory whose ancient physical boundaries are even detailed in the Old Testament) before statehood in 1948.All such violence was rooted in any Jewish presence in the region.Nor is Gaza an “occupied territory”: The Gaza Strip hasn’t been occupied since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005. Yes, Israel and Egypt control Gaza’s borders for basic security reasons, but that is not the same as physical occupation.Settler colonialism is also a specious claim because “Israel is not a colony of any country, nor was it established as one…. Moreover, they [Jews] have ancestral ties to the land. It is the place from which they came, and from which they were exiled.… [I]t is not colonization when those who are driven out of their land return to it.”Conversely, it needs to be asked whether the Moslem Arabs called the “Palestinian people” deserve special recognition and treatment based on legitimate historical and cultural realities, given that the Palestinians never had a country of their own in the past that was lost or stolen from them: what archeology, written history, and contemporary lifeways reveal is the “so-called” label rightly belongs to the Palestinians, a people with no racial, ethnic, national or cultural distinctiveness.It has often been claimed that, like all other peoples, the Palestinians deserve their own state.But there are thousands of unique ethnic groups today — peoples with distinct languages, cultures, religions, and histories stretching back millennia — few of which have their own country. The Palestinians have a far weaker claim to statehood than most of these age-old ethnicities, including the mostly Muslim Kurds whose 35 to 50 million people were denied a promised state of their own in 1920 but continue to live in exploited minority status in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria with hardly a word of outrage from the outside world. The Palestinians, in turn, already have a state of their own — the Kingdom of Jordan — a dictatorship headed by an imported monarchy where they culturally form most of the population and where it is illegal for Jews to live.Is any of this history ever taught in Western lecture halls or discussed and debated in graduate student seminars?Most important of all is the question of whether Palestinian statehood would see an end to violence against Israel following a ceasefire that would maintain Hamas control of Gaza.The Palestinians and their Arab allies have fought ten wars of extermination against the Jewish state and have conducted hundreds of heinous terrorist attacks against innocent men, women and children both in Israel and abroad. By legitimizing the claims of a comparatively new ethnic group headed by terrorists, Palestinian statehood would only strengthen the call for Jewish liquidation by protecting it with political sovereignty.As Moslem Arabs, the Palestinians are part of a larger ethnic collectivity now controlling 22 countries with 98% of the landmass and population of the entire region. If most Israelis were Moslem Arabs, not Westernized Jews, there would be no Middle East conflict. If there were no state of Israel, there would be no demand for a separate Palestinian state or cries about apartheid.Most of these anti-Israeli demonstrators and slogan shouters know all of this.As for the distinction made between the Palestinians and Hamas by most commentators, polls show most Palestinians, including many fanatical students and professors at leading Western colleges and universities, support Hamas and its Nazi-era genocidal goals.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.