The perfidy and naivete of progressive Jews know no constraints. Writing in the leftist “ThinkProgress,” Max Berger, co-founder of the anti-Zionist IfNotNow, actively calls on Jews to support Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her attack on AIPAC.
Berger is less troubled by Omar’s use of hackneyed anti-Semitic tropes than by the Israeli government, which he sees as the main obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For Jews like Berger, the conflict boils down to the simple-minded notion that the presence of Jews in the disputed territories explains everything and is the key to solving the problem. Remove the Jews from Judea and Samaria, and the conflict will be resolved.
Berger traffics in analyses that are almost indistinguishable from the Palestinian version.
But ask any Palestinian leader where the boundaries of a Jewish state would be if a Palestinian state were to be created, and you will have asked a question that cannot be answered.
As is common in international disputes, the same words frequently have far and away different meanings. To Israelis, the two-state solution means a Jewish state and an Arab state living side by side in some type of peaceful co-existence.
To the Palestinians, it means an Arab state living side by side with another Arab-majority state created by the “right of return” of three or four generations of “refugees” who will replace the Jewish state.
Since the British Peel Commission in the late 1930s conceived of a second partition of the British mandate (the first having unilaterally created the Kingdom of Transjordan), every attempt to create a Jewish state alongside an Arab state has been rejected by the Arabs.
In 1967, before a single Jew returned to the land from which Jews had been massacred and ethnically cleansed by the British-trained Jordanian army in 1948, the Arabs met at Khartoum and announced that there would be no negotiations, no recognition and no peace.
Israel’s attempts to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, whether at Camp David or subsequently at Taba, have been met with single-minded rejection.
AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations exist, in part, to ensure that Israel maintains a competitive military and technological edge so that the Arabs don’t overrun it and commit the second Holocaust they repeatedly promise with the same alacrity with which they and their progressive allies chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The meaning of the chant is obvious.
If Israel were to withdraw entirely from the so-called West Bank tomorrow, it would not move the situation any closer towards peace. It would, however, exacerbate Israel’s already significant lack of strategic depth and make it even more vulnerable to attack.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in the aspiration that it could grant land for peace. Instead, it traded land for an endless round of rockets and missiles and organized attacks on its southern border designed to inflict civilian casualties and manipulate the sensibilities of progressives.
To date, the Arabs have not been able to defeat Israel. Their program has been to delegitimize Israel and to make it more difficult for Israel to receive American arms and technology to maintain its competitive military edge.
This is Ilhan Omar’s playbook, like that of IfNotNow and other anti-Israel groups such as J Street, and the so-called “Jewish Voice for Peace,” which is neither Jewish in any meaningful sense, nor a voice for anything but Israel’s destruction.
The naivete of Jews like Max Berger gives legitimacy to the Palestinian cause while advancing an agenda designed for Israel’s annihilation.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on Twitter: @salomoncenter.
