In C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children are evacuated from London to a home in the English countryside to escape the Blitz. There, they discover a wardrobe that contains a portal into the magical and fictitious world of Narnia, a land where animals talk and there is no ambiguity between good and evil. In the end, the Christ-like figure of Aslan the Lion and his army, with the help of the children, defeat the evil White Witch who has brought perpetual winter to Narnia.
Last week, evil passed through a portal from the equally magical and fictitious world of Palestine. An evil and delusional representative of the nonexistent “country of Palestine” shot and killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., for the “crime” of being “Zionists.” The murder was not just an attack against these two beautiful young people and Israel, it was also a direct frontal assault on Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethos that is at its ethical core.
While Western civilization prevailed in Narnia and good triumphed over evil, it remains an open question as to who will win the battle between good and evil that is now unfolding before our eyes.
Remarkably, the savages who have transported themselves through the Palestine portal to wage war against the American-led world order, Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian ethic, Israel and the Jews are embraced and given sucker by cultural, virtue-signaling “elites” who have mainstreamed the fantasies, delusions and lies of the anti-Zionists to justify their antisemitism.
While acts of violence and hate speech directed against Jews are viewed by an overwhelming majority of Americans as un-American, to these pillars of society, it is as American as apple pie.
That is social justice on steroids. The greater the role that social justice and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies play in any given community, the more it accepts antisemitism. Look no further than our college campuses and in America’s cities. University presidents who equivocate as to whether it is permissible to advocate for the extermination of the Jewish people, district attorneys who will not charge those arrested for assaulting Jews and members of Congress who attempt to deny Israel the right to defend itself and decry efforts to confront antisemitism, are just the tip of the iceberg.
The best way to confront these purveyors of Jew-hatred is with facts. For example, neither Narnia nor Palestine has ever existed in the real world.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, a sovereign Palestinian state. One cannot free something that has never existed.
Before the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948, the territory was governed by the British, who captured it from the Ottomans in 1917. Before that, the Ottomans ruled it for 500 years. Before the Ottomans, the land was governed by a series of Muslim caliphates. Before them, the Roman Empire exercised sovereignty. Before the Romans, it was the Greeks. But first came the Jews in a land called Judea and Samaria.
The Jews have lived there continuously for more than 3,000 years. Unless the killer of Milgrim and Lischinsky was advocating on behalf of the Greeks, the Romans, some Muslim caliphate, the Ottomans, the British or the Jews, his calls to “Free, free Palestine” were delusional.
“Free, free Palestine” came into vogue only after “the Final Solution” and “From the river to the sea” fell out of favor. All three slogans are code for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people.
There could have been a sovereign Palestine, but the Palestinians have continually refused to say “yes.”
In 1948, the U.N. Partition Plan called for the creation of two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The Jews said “yes,” and the Arabs said “no.”
Instead, five Arab countries attacked Israel in an effort to destroy it. Interestingly, Gaza was occupied by Egypt from the end of that war until 1967. Similarly, Jordan, which joined in the effort to destroy Israel, captured and occupied Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) from 1948 to 1967. Together, Gaza and the West Bank were supposed to make up the bulk of the Arab state. Does anyone remember hearing chants of “Free, free Palestine” then?
In 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton attempted to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. The then-Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, said “yes,” and PLO leader Yasser Arafat said, “no.” Arafat then launched the Second Intifada.
In 2005, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew all Jews, military and civilian, from Gaza. There was not a single Jew in Gaza—except when, for example, Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier like Gilad Shalit—from 2005 until Oct. 7, 2023. So much for an Israeli occupation. Rather than establishing a Palestinian state and improving the lives of their fellow Palestinians, Hamas turned Gaza into a terrorist hellhole.
Former President George Bush, in 2008, attempted to negotiate an even better deal for the Palestinians than the one Clinton negotiated. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yes, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said no. Instead, there were more attacks against Israel.
There will never be a Palestinian state until a Palestinian leader is willing to recognize the right of the Jewish State of Israel to live safely and securely within internationally recognized borders. No such leader currently exists in the magical and mystical world of Palestine.
While it is not possible to free, free Palestine, it is possible to free, free the Palestinian people. That requires the complete and utter defeat of Hamas. There is no future for the Palestinian people without a total Israeli victory over Hamas, only perpetual winter.
The next time someone from the other side of the magical portal chants “Free, free Palestine,” show them you stand for the triumph of the good over evil and respond: “Free, free Narnia!”