In a May 10 interview on “60 Minutes,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained bitterly about social media: “We have seen the deterioration of the support for Israel in the United States almost—I would say, it correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media.”A key function of this trend is the way critics of Israel use—and often misuse—celebrities. Let’s look at one example.
Last month, memes began appearing all over social media with a quote from actor Richard Gere: “There’s no defense of this occupation. Settlements are such an absurd provocation ... .”
The problem is that this statement is both false and it’s nearly a decade old; Newsweek featured this exact quote in an article on March 13, 2017.
Gere has, by and large, managed to escape criticism for his opposition to Israel’s self-defense. Fellow actors Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem and Susan Sarandon have been harsh attackers of Israel during its fight against Iranian proxies and missile threats from Hezbollah following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist invasion. They have justifiably been rebuked by many in the pro-Israel community. Gere, until very recently, has not.
First known for his roles in the 1980s in brooding films that turned to more popular blockbusters, the 79-year-old has become an outspoken political activist. This reflects a broader pattern in which far too many actors use their fame to promote extreme views on complex issues, especially Israel-related ones, without the basic knowledge they should have before pushing their opinions on the public.
Here are the facts about the settlement communities. Article VII of the first Oslo Accord, signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993, authorized the P.A. to establish a 12,000-man “police force.” It proceeded to expand it into a 60,000-man “security force” that has become a de facto army, trained and armed by the CIA.
According to the World Atlas, the P.A. has the sixth-largest per-capita security force in the world. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has described P.A.-administered areas as “one of the most heavily policed territories in the world.” It’s the P.A. who is doing the “occupying.”
“Occupation” may have been an accurate term at one point, but even then, it was only for a short period. Israel’s “occupation” of the territories in question ended long ago. No Israeli families were living in “settlement” communities in the Gaza Strip after the summer of 2005 (and still zero on Oct. 7, 2023), a primary purpose of memes like the one with Gere is to attempt to obscure that fact.
The Israelis first stationed troops in those areas in self-defense during the Six-Day War in June 1967. Between 1993 and 1995, however, that occupation came to an end. It was replaced by an agreed-upon division of the region between Israel and the P.A. The Israelis withdrew from the parts where 98% of the Palestinian Arabs reside. There are no Israeli troops, no Israeli administration and no Israeli military governor there anymore.
So, who exactly is “occupying” it?
The Palestinian Authority, of course. The P.A. has its own armed troops (euphemistically called “security forces”), its own administration and its own governors. It runs the courts, the police, the schools, the news media and everything else that constitutes an administration. The only part of the area that Israel “occupies” is where Israelis reside.
Does Gere really object to the idea of Jewish families living in areas where ancient Jewish history is everywhere to be found?
The city of Hebron, in Judea, is the ancient resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah; this testifies to the Jewish heritage of the region. Would Gere have hundreds of thousands of young Jews forced out of their homes? Isn’t that the very definition of Gere’s “absurd provocation” of 2017?
Furthermore, the Israeli presence in these so-called “settlements” is stipulated by the Oslo Accords. This is not to say that Israel’s right to the area is based solely on agreements made in Oslo; it is based on 3,000-plus years of continuous Jewish inhabitation and many centuries of Jewish national sovereignty—not to mention international law and the Hebrew Bible.
Regardless, the fact remains that the P.A. agreed to the settlement communities.
If that’s the case, then it should be good enough for a handful of celebrities who should keep their eyes on the Hollywood hills, not the Hebron ones.
