The Problem with Palestine

On November 22, 1967, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242. I would cut and paste the entire text here, but no one is particularly interested in facts anymore.

So, I’ll just offer a quick highlight reel:

Paragraph One, Item (ii) asserts that there should be (unspecified) territorial withdrawal only where it respects Israel’s “…right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries…”

In other words: Land for Peace. (Spoiler alert! There has been no peace.)

Keep in mind that in when the UN offered the Arabs a state, side-by-side with Israel, in 1948, the offer was rejected the outright. The Judean and Samarian territories that were subsequently acquired by Israel in the Six Day War are—legally and historically—“disputed” at worst, and actually owned by Israel at best. (Can you name another nation that has been told to return recaptured land?)

Over the years, the narrative has shifted from legally disputed to “occupied.” And the more they say it, the more it becomes true. Until one day, the world just accepts it. Judea and Samaria—the breadbasket of Jewish history—represent occupied land.

Say something enough times and people will start to believe it. And repeat it. And morph it into fact.

This has always been the strategy of the anti-Israel machine and has only been shamelessly amplified by the infinitely impressionable world populous with the advent of social media.

Look at the narrative of “apartheid.” Anyone who knows what apartheid actually is (an official policy of segregation and discrimination on the basis of race) and knows the first thing about Israel couldn’t possibly justify the association of Israel with apartheid. This egregious correlation would be akin to associating Los Angeles with winter blizzards…or summer blizzards, for that matter.

But when millions of people play the term on repeat, it gets burned into the brains of the ignorant and/or uninformed faux-woke masses (hello, AOC!). And then…it becomes “truth.”

Because these days, facts have little to do with truth. Just ask Vice President Harris, “your truth cannot be suppressed.” Doesn’t matter if your truth is actually true. That is a matter of semantics.

Which brings me to the problem with Palestine.

And if that sentence does not set off alarm bells in your mind, you’re already a victim of the propaganda.

Hold on to your hats and glasses…THERE IS NO PALESTINE.

This isn’t a matter of opinion or pro-Israel sentiment. This is a matter of fact.

The UN doesn’t recognize Palestine, and among the G20, nor do Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the United Kingdom or the United States.

FACT: No internationally recognized Palestinian state exists. If it did, why would everyone be talking about a Two-State Solution….?

If there were a Palestine, there would already be two states. Problem solved.

But true to the course, anti-Israel activists have used the term Palestine so consistently that it has entrenched itself into the common vernacular. By normalizing the term, the “Palestinian State” has slipped under the radar and become so deeply engrained in the world psyche that even politicians and scholars who should know better…don’t know better.

(Just curious…how can you have a state with two separate governments that hate each other—the Palestinian Authority and Hamas—one of which is a designated terrorist organization?)

So, what’s in a word anyway?

These days, everything.

A few strategic keystrokes can reverberate around the globe and create a new reality. The frightening turn of public opinion against Israel in recent years is but a warning of even worse things to come.

We have seen how tweets and posts can mobilize hatred and violence. We have seen the excruciating resurgence of antisemitism bleed across the entire world stage. And it is all fueled by lies and propaganda that even good people of good conscience can’t discern from the truth.

Today, it’s “Palestine” instead of the Palestinian Territories. Tomorrow, it will be “Palestine” instead of all of Israel. You can already see those wheels turning.

It is not an accident. It is a strategy.

If we don’t watch our words, they will be replaced.