I recently read yet another op-ed by a far-left American Jew writing as though Oct. 7 never happened, as though the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was an inconvenient footnote rather than a moral rupture. In this worldview, peace is always one concession away, and the messianic era will arrive the moment a Palestinian state is declared.
It reminds me of one of those movie scenes about fraternities where the person seeking admission bends over and says, “Thank you, sir, can I have another?” as a brother paddles his behind.
These activists refuse to listen to Israelis on the left who once dedicated their lives to coexistence—who drove Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals, who hired them for work on kibbutzim, who believed that engagement could soften hatred. Oct. 7 utterly shattered that illusion. It confirmed what Hamas has always said openly: The goal is not a state alongside Israel, but Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews.
And yet, America’s Jewish far left tunes it all out.
They ignore the testimony of hostages who described sexual abuse, captivity in civilian homes and the complicity of “innocent” Gazans who returned escapees to Hamas. They dismiss the evidence of weapons caches and tunnel entrances embedded in children’s bedrooms. They insist that Hamas has no support, even as repeated surveys show it would win elections and that its atrocities are widely celebrated as “heroic resistance.”
They continue to chant about a two-state solution that Palestinians themselves overwhelmingly reject. And they avert their eyes from the textbooks, maps, media and official rhetoric that make the objective unmistakable: not partition, but replacement. Palestine instead of Israel. A final solution, not a compromise.
What is especially grotesque is the moral inversion. These American Jews profess greater concern for Palestinian rights than Palestinian leaders do.
Has there been a single major rally demanding that the Palestinian Authority protect freedom of speech, religion, assembly, women’s rights or gay rights under its own rule? Where are all the U.N. resolutions condemning the P.A.’s kleptocracy and repression? Civil rights in Palestinian society are denied by Palestinian governance, not Israel, yet the activists’ outrage is reserved exclusively for the Jewish state.
They continue to portray 90-year-old P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier now in his 20th year of a four-year term, as a “moderate partner.” They ignore that he rejected statehood offers in 2008 and 2020. They ignore that Palestinian nationalism has been defined less by building a society than by resisting Jewish sovereignty.
History itself is inconvenient to them. No Palestinian state ever existed. Palestinians were once identified as part of southern Syria. For 19 years, under Jordanian rule in the West Bank and Egyptian control of Gaza, there was no call for an end to their occupation or a two-state solution. Why is it that control of the areas by Jews suddenly prompted a surge of Palestinian nationalism?
Some Palestinians are willing to admit the truth, but far-left Jews and others who claim concern for their welfare ignore them as well.
‘We have to give up this struggle’
Ahmed Albaba, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in the West Bank who studied Palestinian collective memory, recently gave an interview that should be required reading in Israel studies courses, as well as for Jews everywhere. He refers to the territory not as the “West Bank,” which he calls a bureaucratic designation, but as Judea and Samaria—a name rooted in Jewish history. He argues that Palestinian identity cannot develop without acknowledging the Jewish component of the land’s past and adopting it into Palestinian cultural self-understanding.
Albaba explains that “the major obstacle to the democratization, secularization and modernization of Palestinian society” is what he calls the “resistance project” that is based on the “Palestinian cause.”
He speaks plainly about the project’s goal: “To liberate Palestinians from the Jews. It’s based on an ideology of hate, and the aim is to fight—against the West, but, above all, against Israel, against Jews and against Zionism.”
Notice he is clear that the cause is not just directed at Zionists but Jews, a message to those who think that if they shed that label and become anti-Zionist, the kumbaya moment will arrive. It is also a reminder to those who want to blame this or previous governments for the absence of peace that there is nothing Israel can do to satisfy the Palestinians short of suicide.
Albaba places responsibility where the Western left refuses to: on Palestinian society. “We have to give up this struggle, this resistance project, which is also a terror project.”
But he acknowledges the problem: Such statements offend many Palestinians because the culture sanctifies resistance. It operates on three levels: physical elimination of Jews, narrative erasure of Jews and moral demonization of Jews.
“There is this fantasy,” he says, “that if you eliminate Jews, then you liberate yourself.” Hence, academics, artists and historians “try to establish a narrative in which Jews do not appear.”
Peace activists in the West place their faith in the “next generation,” but Albaba demolishes that fantasy. Palestinian youth are not being educated toward coexistence, careers or prosperity. They are being radicalized toward struggle.
Again, Albaba speaks truth to the non-believers: “The young generation is not striving for progress, not for economic goals, not for careers, not for things that are normal in the Western world. Instead, it fights against Zionism, Israel and the Jews.”
This obsession prevents Palestinians from addressing the real problems in their society. “We have economic problems. We also have patriarchal structures. There are still honor killings. We need a solution,” Albaba says. “And the academics and the artists and so on, they don’t care about these problems. If there’s an art project, it’s about occupation and how to develop a narrative against the Zionist narrative.”
He also sees Israel very differently from his peers and the far left. For many Palestinians who have jobs in Israel, he observes, “Israel is the solution because it enables them to improve and establish their economic situation.”
Albaba understands something that American “pro-Palestinian” Jews refuse to confront: Antisemitism is not incidental. It is foundational in Palestinian society and fuels violence.
“As long as hatred against Israel is entrenched,” he warns, “you can activate it quickly for terrorist attacks.”
When have you heard anyone from the pro-Palestinian camp in America talk about antisemitism in Palestinian society, its corrosive effects and its impetus for terror? The reflexive answer is always the same: “End the occupation.”
As though antisemitism is a zoning dispute.
As though Jews will suddenly be loved once Israel shrinks.
‘We grew up with it’
Albaba rejects that delusion. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism, he argues, are ideologies that destroy societies from within. He acknowledges that the consequence of the latter was that “almost all Jews in the Arab world were expelled” and that had “a negative impact on Arab societies as well.”
Here, finally, is a genuine partner for peace.
And therein lies the tragedy: Albaba is marginalized. Voices like his are silenced, sometimes violently. In Palestinian society, advocating coexistence can get you arrested, tortured or even killed.
“My voice is quieter than ideally it should be,” he acknowledges.
Why? “Because of this ‘Palestinian cause,’ many people, especially young people, believe that if they fight on these three levels—physical, narrative, and moral—then they are on the right side of history, and this belief gives them the justification, the legitimization for terrorist attacks, for denial and also for insults. The Palestinians know this because we grew up with it.”
This is reality, not the fantasy world in which Israel’s next concession will dissolve a century of hatred.
Peace will not come from Jews performing self-abnegation or from American activists laundering Palestinian extremism into the language of “rights.” Peace will come only when Palestinian society abandons the resistance project and accepts that Jews are not a temporary intrusion, but an indigenous people with an unbreakable connection to their land.
Until then, those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” while ignoring Palestinian antisemitism are not helping Palestinians—and they are not helping or working toward peace.
They are enabling terror.
