An Open Letter to Those Worried About the 'Poor Palestinians'
Both Arab and Muslim states want nothing to do with Palestinian immigrants or refugees. In the West, we should pay attention to why that is.
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This is a guest essay written by Ned Blinick of “The ‘Can You Believe This…’ Newsletter.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Every Muslim country sheds tears for Palestinians, but none of them care enough to help them achieve a better life.
Does anyone care why Palestinians continue to live in refugee camps, as semi-autonomous states, in Jordan or Lebanon? Does anyone care why Palestinians are living in perpetual refugee status in Turkey or Egypt?
Does anyone care that Arab-Muslim countries that profess to stand with Palestinians have abandoned them to 76 years of corrupt governments, tyrannical authoritarianism, and perpetual dependency on foreign aid from the United Nations; liberal Western democracies; some Arab-Muslim countries; and the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Does anyone care that the Palestinians have kept more than two million of their population in refugee status for 76 years and deprived them of real citizenship and opportunities?1
Looking objectively at the results of the past 76 years, since the Arabs launched and lost their disastrous war against the newly created State of Israel in 1948, the answer is, “No!” — no one except progressive Western liberals cares about the betterment of Palestinians (and I am not entirely sure that they are committed to the average Palestinian’s well-being).
A reason, if not the reason, that the Palestinian refugees and the UN agency exclusively for Palestinians are perpetuated is to continue a war for the eradication of the only Jewish state, Israel, at the world’s expense.
The Palestinian cause was never about improving the lives of Palestinians. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas were created to advance the betterment of the Palestinians generally and Palestinian refugees specifically. Today, Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza are held adrift by their politicians.
The UN consistently and continuously professes its support for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. The public face of UN support is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the UN agency created exclusively to maintain and foster Palestinian refugees.
As part of their mandate, UNRWA advances the impractical and unrealistic aspiration of the so-called “Palestinian right of return.” For three or four generations of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has taught Palestinian children that hate and armed “political jihad” of Israel and Israelis are not only acceptable, but rather, they are seen as supreme acts of martyrdom in which killing Israelis and Jews is honored.
For 75 years, UNRWA has done little to help the Palestinians escape their self-inflicted victimization. For 75 years, Palestinians have been pawns of an ideological war waged, for the most part, by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to advance these factions’ political agendas that have squandered billions of charitable dollars and Arab goodwill on a futile war against a country and people who are rooted (both historically and temporally) in the land they now occupy.
This reality has slowly been accepted by many Arab and Muslim countries, resulting in tepid but growing support for Israel and a nascent abandonment of the Palestinian project.
To be sure, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas exist on handouts — mainly from Western Liberal democracies (directly or through UN agencies) and rich oil states like Qatar. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ leaders, both historically and to this day, have amassed billions of dollars of wealth and live a life of absolute luxury. The depressing reality is that even the Palestinian leadership does not care about the Palestinian people and only wants “the Palestinians” for the legitimacy they provide these kleptocrats.
The main product of the Palestinian political project is the perpetuation of a consistent state of hate, turmoil, and conflict between the Palestinian people and Israel. Palestinian leaders’ principal investment has been in promoting and supporting terror and terror-adjacent activities.
In Gaza, the investment in terror is most evident in the massive diversion of humanitarian aid into an underground tunnel system built for the sole purpose of murder and slaughter of Israeli citizens and soldiers. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority enables terror factions to exist and promotes hate against Israelis (through education, media, and other avenues) at the expense of creating sustainable industries and jobs.
The Palestinians have suffered for 76 years under their leadership, abetted by the UN and specifically UNRWA. The despair and futility of their hateful ideology have resulted in a standard of living far below what the Israelis have achieved during roughly the same amount of time.
Unlike the Jews who were expelled from surrounding Arab states and absorbed as citizens into Israel, the Palestinians have chosen to keep a vast segment of their population as perpetual refugees with no citizen status or a country.
Hate and Chaos: The Primary Export of the Palestinians
If the Palestinian political project was just a war between the Palestinians and the Israelis, it would be a tragedy for the Palestinians and Israelis. But, the Palestinians, recognizing the hopelessness of their local conflict, have made their futility and hate their main export to the world community.
This export of hate first played out in Jordan in 1970 and 1971 when the Palestinians, who were refugees from the 1948 First Arab-Israeli War, destabilized the Jordanian government and threatened its kingdom. The civil war that ensued between the Jordanians and Palestinians (known as “Black September”) resulted in the expulsion of the main political Palestinian leadership (the Palestine Liberation Organization) under Yasser Arafat, first to Lebanon and then to Tunisia in 1982.
Within four years of settling in Lebanon, the Palestinians created havoc and chaos. They destabilized the Lebanese political and social establishments, leading to a 16-year Lebanese Civil War, the deaths of more than 100,000 people, and a fundamental breakdown of civil society.
A direct consequence of the Jordanian Civil War was the formation of the Black September movement, which went on to incite terror through murderous hijackings of civilian aircraft and cruise ships, assassination attempts and murders of Jordanian leadership, and the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Palestinian refugees and immigrants also moved to Kuwait between 1936 and 1975. Before the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, Palestinians made up about 18 percent of Kuwait’s population. But during this war, the Palestine Liberation Organization endorsed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion Kuwait — leading the Kuwaitis to expel most of its Palestinian residents.
Since the Jordanian and Lebanese civil wars and the Palestinian exodus from Kuwait, no Arab or Muslim countries have allowed significant immigration of Palestinians in masse. The Arab and Muslim countries that advocate for and support the formation of a Palestinian state want nothing to do with the Palestinians as refugees or immigrants.
The Political Palestinian Contagion: A Western Disease
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a parasite, in relation to this essay, as someone or something that resembles a biological parasite in living off of, being dependent on, or exploiting another while giving little or nothing in return.
A consistent feature of Palestinian immigration is the sole commitment to their cause of achieving a Palestinian state at the expense of their host countries. This parasitic practice began immediately after the disastrous 1948-1949 decision by hundreds of thousands of local Arab-Muslim inhabitants living in the British Mandate Palestine to abandon their homes during the war that five Arab states launched mere hours after the Jews’ declared the State of Israel’s independence (in line with the UN Partition Plan for Palestine).
Their parasitic relationship with their hosts initially showed up in the tragedy and terror against their Jordanian, Lebanese, and Kuwaiti hosts between 1950 and 1992. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, Palestinians have emigrated to Western democratic countries. Among these Palestinians are a significant number of political activists and religious fundamentalists who disdain Western institutions, political norms, and cultural values.
For many Palestinian immigrants, their objective is to impose sharia law on the host population and influence foreign policy, with the intent of establishing a Palestinian state and eliminating Israel and its Jewish and non-Muslim populations.
However, unlike most other immigrants who escaped their birthplace and left sectarian conflicts behind (for the most part), many Palestinians have brought their resentments and hate with them and inculcated them into the host country’s institutions and political discourse.
These politically active Palestinians have exploited Western attitudes and sensitivities with the intent of imposing their political objectives, religious and moral values, and social norms on Westerners such as us Canadians here in The Great White North. They have taken advantage of the openness of the political and education systems of their new host countries and embedded themselves in university student associations, teacher and government unions, and traditional and social news media with the purpose of promoting their pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish agenda.
This is not new.
For the past several decades, many Palestinians emigrated or escaped from the West Bank and Gaza to European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and several South American countries, ostensibly seeking a better life for themselves in their newly adopted host countries. And yet, when many Palestinian refugees and immigrants arrive, they quickly establish or join mosques where radical imams continue to preach fundamental Islamic beliefs that perpetuate their anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israel, and antisemitic hatreds.
The more radicalized and committed Palestinian youth join liberal and progressive institutions and become politically active to gain access to the levers of influence. Although fundamentally steeped in Palestinian and Islamic conservative beliefs, they initially align with Western liberal and progressive values.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Western democracies. Immediately since the Hamas-led massacres and kidnappings on October 7th, 2023, the fullness of the Palestinian rage, hate, and anti-Jewish vitriol is evident daily on liberal university and college campuses and the streets of Western cities. “Pro-Palestinian” protestors aggressively, hatefully, and disdainfully advocate for the destruction of Western legal institutions, values, and norms in their fundamental religious sermons; in primary, secondary, and post-secondary school teachers’ unions; in NGOs and public sector unions; and on social media.
As they have done in virtually every Arab country that took them in as refugees, the Palestinian refugee political establishment aggressively attempts to impose their political agenda on the local political leadership.
The aggressive, at times vengeful and hateful behaviour of the Palestinian demonstrations taking place on the streets of Toronto, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and many other Western cities bear witness to this. These Palestinian mobs and their “progressive, anti-colonialist” supporters ignore local laws and law enforcement; they vilify politicians who do not fully back their demands; and they violently threaten and, at times, attack identifiable Jews.
Within their communities, they threaten those who do not adhere to their Islamic and political ideologies. From their radical mosques, their imams spew venomous hate against the non-believers and advocate for the establishment of sharia law. As immigrants and refugees, these politically motivated Palestinians attack the liberal Western norms, values, and institutions that are the foundations of our societies.
Wherever the Palestinians have emigrated to, civil unrest follows. This pattern of civil and political agitation in the name of Palestinian victimization under the “oppression” of “Israeli occupation” is more than an observation; it is a documented reality.
The influx of Palestinian immigrants and refugees to Western democracies, particularly Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain, France — and now the United States, Australia, and Canada — has brought a concomitant increase in aggressive demonstrations in favour of the mostly singular Palestinian cause: a Palestinian state and the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
As the Palestinian population and influence increase within their Western host countries, the attacks on the liberal civic, legal, religious, social and educational institutions of those countries come under increasing attack.
As the Palestinian activists embed themselves in the Western institutions, university student unions and newspapers, the mainstream media, labour unions, and political parties, they work assiduously to have their focused agenda marginalize other progressive issues like women’s rights, minority rights, indigenous rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so forth.
Like all parasites, the Palestinian activists feed off of the host institutions while giving them little support in return. The irony is that the Palestinian ethos is directly opposed to the social values and norms of the progressive institutions that are now a significant source of their support.
This destructive behaviour pattern has played out in those Arab countries that initially welcomed the Palestinians. The same behaviours are now evidenced in all major Western cities with a relatively large Palestinian population, a reprise of the experiences which transpired in Arab states of Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait.
Arab and Muslim states know the toxicity of the Palestinian obsession.
Since 1947, the Palestinian refugee and statehood problem has been front and centre in the Arab and Muslim political agenda.
At the United Nations, its Human Rights Council, and other international bodies, the Arab and Muslim states have voted as a block in support of the Palestinian agenda. For the past 76 years, these states have contributed billions of dollars to support the Palestinian political elites.
In the early years, the Arab countries Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya offered the Palestinian refugees refuge, only to find them undermining their social institutions and threatening their political survival. In every one of these Arab States, the Palestinian political leadership was expelled.
Will Western democracies learn from the destabilizing experience of the Palestinian contagion on Arab and Muslim countries? The answer lies in the moral clarity of our democratically elected leaders. Failure to learn from the experience of history often leads to similar mistakes being repeated.
The Gazans are experiencing unbearable human suffering because of the Israeli response to October 7th and the failure of the Palestinian leadership to accept responsibility for their actions. But, if the Arab and Muslim countries do not want to aid the Palestinian refugees because of their direct and painful experiences, why are Western countries like Canada placing Palestinian refugees ahead of other refugees whose situations are equally dire?
Canada and the greater West should do everything they can to support a just and fair peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Canada should also learn from the experience of the Arab and Muslim states with regard to why Palestinians are dysfunctional refugees and immigrants.
Canada and many other Western countries need immigrants, and there should be robust refugee programs that open borders to those who are legitimately in need. At the same time, there is no shortage of immigrants or refugees. Canada, like other Western societies, must reach out to those who want to accept Canadian foundational values of tolerance, respect for the dignity of the individual, freedom of expression, and respect for the rule of law and our institutions.
Anything less will weaken the West as we aspire it to be.
“Palestinian refugees.” Wikipedia.
This magnificent open letter carries with it the force of a 2000 pound bunker (tunnel?) busting bomb.
May we all have the resolve to deploy these facts as needed!
I'd also like to add that dignity is a human right, but first you must be human to acknowledge this right.
The barbarians holding our hostages and those who still support it deserve no such acknowledgement, and dignity will continue to elude them so long as our hostages are held.
The author appears to be a Canadian. Quite an indictment of Palestinian culture. It is hard to believe there was a time when they were considered to be among the more ambitious and educated of the Arab populations. Who knew that hatred was so contagious? It feels like Covid, only deadlier.