An Open Letter to the ‘People of Palestine’

"If they did not have Israel as the common enemy, they would kill each other. This is the reality of what is so-called Palestine."

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Everyone seems to be writing “open letters” these days, in light of the Israel-Hamas war.

On October 19th, 2023, barely a dozen days after one of the most savage pogroms in recorded memory, the influential journal “Artforum” published an open letter co-signed by 8,000 artists, curators, and art world associates.

In their letter, the IDF’s initial military response was foreshadowed to plague the Palestinians as a “war crime,” and they demanded an immediate ceasefire even before an Israeli soldier stepped foot in Gaza.

California Governor Gavin Newsom also published an open letter recently, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — and citing rising “Islamophobia” as one of the motivations behind his calculus.

Then, last week, more than 2,400 North American professors signed an open letter, accusing Israel of “scholasticide” — a term that was coined by Palestinian professor Karma Nabulsi, who defines it as “a reference to a pattern of Israeli colonial attacks on Palestinian scholars, students, and educational institutions.”¹

There was also the “Philosophy for Palestine” open letter written by philosophers in North America, Latin America, and Europe, whose basis for condemning the Jewish state was the “occupation of the West Bank and Gaza” which “has lasted 56 years” — even though Gaza has not been “occupied” by Israel since 2005.²

As you can tell by now, most of these “open letters” have predominantly targeted Israel; you know, the country that experienced the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Few “open letters” thus have dealt with the Palestinians and their role in this mess. After all, Palestinians are adults who have agency, too.

So I would like to address them, as someone who has been their neighbor since 2013. Here we go.

Dear “People of Palestine” ~

An experiment was conducted to test the viability of a Palestinian state. After 19 years, the results are in.

The experiment, known as Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, has failed miserably. Palestinians, even with massive amounts of foreign aid, have not been able to build civic institutions, form a unified government, peruse peace, tame corruption, or establish a self-sustaining economy. As time has gone on, conditions have deteriorated — making you a threat to neighbors and yourselves.

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, of course, far more than 19 years old. For nearly a century now, you and your “supporters” have faced a fundamental choice: to strategically accept living alongside an independent Jewish state on the Jews’ indigenous land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or to keep rejecting it.

The day you accept it — strategically, not tactically as Yasser Arafat tried to do with the 1990s Oslo Accords — there will be peace. Actual peace, lasting peace, believable peace, exciting peace, collaborative peace. Not a temporary, disingenuous, spiteful peace. We Israelis have had more than enough of that.

And conditions for Palestinians will improve greatly, including the achievement of many positive national aspirations.

But if you perniciously continue to reject it, there are two possibilities:

1. The ongoing status quo of Palestinian suffering and societal malaise, while you pathologically pine for the “imminent” destruction of Israel

2. The actual destruction of Israel, mostly likely by the international community prohibiting Israel from adequately defending itself (including imposing much-needed deterrence)

Since 1948, you have sought the latter possibility — the actual destruction of Israel — only to get the former again and again. Continued demonization of Israel feeds the persistent fantasy that the latter is achievable. As does the ever-kindled rage borne of humiliation and defeat.

Except that the destruction of Israel is not possible, and the sample size of repeated attempts is great — notwithstanding geopolitical trends, as well as Western foreign policy incompetence, impotence, and anti-Israel (really, anti-Jewish) double standards. And even in the face of an ascendant Iran and Qatar.

I will not even address here whether it is “right” or “wrong.” It is not possible. Israel is not a spider web, but a web of iron. And it will remain so, especially after October 7th.

Palestinian-British activist John Aziz (who is very pro-two state solution) had this take on it, writing:

“The biggest mistake Palestinians made is basing very large parts of our national identity around waiting for Israel to collapse, and trying to push it to collapse. This, objectively, did not work. Hate me all you want, but what you really hate is the truth.”³

From Israel’s vantage point, it seems that you hate the Jewish state and us Jews more than you love yourselves, or as Hamas puts it: “We love death as much as Israelis love life.”

Let’s see how that worked out for Indonesia, another Muslim-majority population. Last year, Indonesia was scheduled to host the FIFA Under-20 World Cup and refused to allow the participation of the Israeli national team that had earned its qualification. FIFA therefore stripped Indonesia of the hosting privilege and moved the cup elsewhere.

Now Indonesia wants to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), whose membership requires consensus approval. Israel is a member of OECD and has made its “yes” vote incumbent on Indonesia normalizing ties with the Jewish state. As such, Israeli press is now reporting that the two sides have started the normalization process (in the middle of the Israel-Hamas war, no less).

“This is how nations seek their interests, not emotions, and this is how things should be,” wrote Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But if you listen to many Arabs … they will tell you that they see the finish line: Israelis are closest than ever to their breaking point, they will soon pack and leave Israel. They also think that the world has finally turned a corner and abandoned the Jewish state, in Palestinian favor.”⁴

As John Aziz so accurately pointed out:

“Israel won’t be abolished, but if Israel was abolished, day one after Israel is abolished would be day one of the Palestinian civil war between Hamas and everyone else, and most of the liberal(-ish) Palestinian spectrum would just end up claiming asylum in the United Kingdom, USA, Norway, and Sweden.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas’ founders, put it similarly:

“Since October 7th, I personally don’t differentiate between Hamas and what are so-called ‘Palestinians.’ There is no ‘Palestinians.’ There are tribes — the tribe of Hamas, the tribe of Islamic Jihad, the tribe of Khalil, the tribe of Nablus — and each one has different interests. And all of them are conflicted. If they did not have Israel as the common enemy, they would kill each other. This is the reality of what is so-called ‘Palestine.’”⁵

Yousef also added that “pro-Palestinian” supporters are “proving to the world that Palestine depends on the destruction of the State of Israel.”

But Israel is not going anywhere, so you do not have to worry about that. Instead, you should worry about the effects of October 7th — which is worse than the Yom Kippur War, and Israelis are still talking about that war half a century later. In fact, just a few months before October 7th, we just commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and there was nationwide engagement with it — movies, documentaries, exhibits, lectures, you name it.

October 7th is the Yom Kippur War on steroids, and its effects are already profound. Before these massacres, for instance, some Israelis were saying that we should end the (justifiable) “occupation” and even some were calling to reduce the IDF’s expenditures. Now, the vast majority of Israelis understand that the Palestinians (still) cannot police themselves, so Israel must do what it needs to do accordingly.

And many more Israelis will be recruited to the IDF, including many of the ultra-Orthodox who were previously opposed to joining the military. That is how bad October 7th was — you somehow found a way to motivate ultra-Orthodox Israelis to enlist.

What’s more, tons of Israelis have awakened to their Judaism, their Jewishness, and their Zionism because of October 7th. So too have tens of thousands of Jews across the world. And many Arab Israelis are prouder than ever to call the Jewish state their home.

Ultimately, the vast majority of Israelis, Jewish and not, are good people who remain open to a true, lasting, well-intentioned, peaceful resolution to this conflict. In this regard, you are not “just like us.” We do not encourage our children to become “martyrs” and express joy when they are killed while murdering and brutalizing Jews.

A cultural difference that explains a lot: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his wife (left) show a big smile and flash V sign in celebration of the killing of three of their sons, and Israeli Minister Gadi Eisenkot and his family (right) during the funeral of their son Gal, a soldier killed in the Israel-Hamas war

Whereas Palestinian textbooks portray Jews and Israelis to be monsters who must be defeated, Israeli children are not systemically raised on hate and incitement. And unlike many Muslims, Jews do not see “non-believers” as “infidels.” We are comfortable being “a nation that dwells alone.” Heck, our history tells us that we simply have no choice.

But you have a choice. You can continue to pursue hate and animosity — how’s that been working out for you? — and keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Or, you can finally come around to peace.

As long as the goal of you, Iran, Qatar, and your allies is to continue vying for the elimination of Israel, the onus is 1,000 percent on you to prove the contrary of everything we know to be true today: The majority of Palestinians both in the territories and around the world overwhelmingly approve of the October 7th atrocities and would vote for Hamas in a democratic election.

And that’s fine. You wanted war, you got a war. I hope one day you will wake up and realize that picking fights you cannot win — only to cowardly cry about it every time you lose — is nothing short of laughable, not least profusely ineffective.

“Hopefully in the future, Palestinians and their allies will begin to view Israelis and Jews as ‘like us’ enough to end generations of hate and terror,” wrote Gerald Steinberg, emeritus professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel. “But until that happens, we cannot afford to entrust our survival to illusions and myths.”⁶

Like this one: Israel is not occupying Palestine. The Palestinians are occupying Israel.

Anyone who says otherwise is — as we say in Hebrew — “living in a movie.”

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1. “OPEN LETTER FROM NORTH AMERICAN ACADEMICS CONDEMNING SCHOLASTICIDE IN GAZA”

2. “Philosophy for Palestine”

3. John Aziz on X

4. Hussain Abdul-Hussain on X

5. “Dr. Phil Primetime.” Merit Street Media.

6. “No, Most People in Gaza Are Not ‘Just Like Us’.” Jewish Journal.