The two-state solution long backed by successive U.S. administrations and the international community to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a “canard” that Palestinians view as a “stepping stone to the destruction of Israel,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday.
“It’s important for us in the United States to be very clear-eyed about what it means to be a strong ally of the State of Israel, and that means we should not embrace the canard of a two-state solution,” the Republican told the Israeli American Council summit in Washington. “That is not seeking to have peace. They are seeking that as a stepping stone to the destruction of the Jewish state, and that is not acceptable!”
In his address, the staunchly pro-Israel governor, who has cracked down on violent university demonstrations against Israel in the Sunshine State and fought against the boycott of Israel, said that chants of “From the River to the Sea” common at the protests were calls for genocide.
“What you’re seeing on these college campuses, no question, is a lot of virulent antisemitism, a lot of hate. When you say, ‘From the River to the Sea’, you are chanting in favor of a second Holocaust. That’s what that means.
“I do think some of these students are just ignorant. I don’t think they even understand what they’re talking about. You hear some of them talking about ‘End the occupation of Palestine’. And I just think they need a little history lesson: There has never been a Palestinian Arab state!” DeSantis continued.
He then offered a crash course in Israel 101.
“Prior to the First World War, you had hundreds of years of occupation under the Ottoman Empire. It was not a Palestinian Arab state. Then you had the British Mandate for Palestine. Then you had a Partition Plan from the U.N.—Jewish state and Arab state,” DeSantis said.
“The Jews accepted the state and founded Israel. The Arabs rejected the state and they went to war to try to eradicate Israel, and they lost. And they went to war again and they lost in 1967 and 1973 and throughout the intifadas, and so on! That land historically has no stronger connection to any group of people except the Jewish people. It goes about thousands of years. Read your Bible!”
Earlier this year, DeSantis signed into laws bill on antisemitism and on Jewish school security, including one which codifies the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, and another allocating state security funding for full-time Jewish day schools and preschools.
He has also spoken out against the often violent campus demonstrations against Jewish students this past year, saying that he would not allow that to happen in Florida, which has become a go-to state for Jews fleeing New York.
