He was right: It didn't happen in a vacuum.
He was right: It didn't happen in a vacuum.
The United Nations Secretary-General jumped off the deep-end this week.
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A few days ago, United Nations’ Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed that it is important to recognize the massacre by Palestinian terrorists in Israel and taking of 200-plus hostages on October 7th, 2023 — and I quote — “did not happen in a vacuum.”
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he added. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Is it just me, or can you also smell the grotesque antisemitism seeping through Guterres’ words?
Once again, people are using some of the oldest tricks in antisemitism’s book: trying to rewrite Jewish history, and positioning the Jews’ as scapegoats, in this case for the Palestinians’ decades-long dismal leadership and inauthentic self-determination.
If your attempt at leadership is to be governed by terrorist organizations (Fattah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad) which refuse to take care of its people’s basic needs, and which are funded by state sponsors of terrorism (Iran and Qatar), then you’re not interested in your own state. You’re just interested in relentless revenge against Jews who you thought you could wipe out, yet disastrously failed to do so time and again.
If your attempt at self-determination is to rid the Middle East of Jews, then you’re not interested in self-determination. You’re interested in scapegoating the Jews for your long list of insufficiencies, unfortunate miscalculations, and pathetic infighting.
I can only help but wonder how jealous the Palestinians must be of the Jewish People’s ability to politically, socially, and financially organize and create what is today one of the great countries in our world. Especially after 6 million of our people were systematically massacred, and millions more displaced both from European and Arab countries, leading up to, during, and following World War II.
This is why, when Guterres claims that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he couldn’t be more accurate. Nothing about the current situation is void of historical events and influences.
In the simplest terms, the Jews have attempted to live peacefully side-by-side with the Palestinians on multiple occasions, while the Palestinians (and their so-called partners) have attempted to destroy the Jewish state and wreak havoc against its citizens on multiple occasions.
Each time they attempted to do so, Israel has taken precautionary measures to improve its security and protect its citizens. This is why, today, we have more walls, check points, and security presence around Israel and in the so-called occupied territories.
I use the term “so-called” because the vast majority of Israelis do not want to occupy any Palestinian territories. But the Palestinians (not all of them, but many) have effectively forced us to choose between Palestinian terrorism that is aimed at indiscriminately killing as many of our defenseless citizens as possible, or occupying territories to minimize such terrorism. And you can be damn sure that we’re opting for occupying territories if these are our two choices.
We keep wanting the Palestinians to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, but they keep demonstrating that they’d rather use us Jews as the scapegoat for their perplexing history, which doesn’t reflect so positively on them.
Plus, it’s much easier to blame others than it is to take responsibility for yourself, especially for things like, as Guterres asserted:
Their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence
Their economy stifled
Their people displaced and their homes demolished
Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing
Let’s unpack each of these assertions.
Their land steadily devoured by settlements: Yes, there are settlements. I am personally not for many of them, since they can be provocative and counterproductive to achieving a two-state solution.
At the same time, it’s critical for people to understand that Judea and Samaria — what others call “The West Bank” or “the Israeli settlements” — have never truly been a defining issue in the saga that is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Israel dismantled all the settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, and the following year, Hamas was supposedly voted into power in democratic elections, with a public charter that includes:
Article 7 — describes Hamas as “one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders and references a hadith (a statement or endorsement of Muhammad) which states that the Day of Judgment would not come until the Muslims fight and kill the Jews
Article 8 — “Allah is Hamas’ goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur’an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
Article 13 — There is no negotiated settlement possible. Jihad is the only answer.
Article 17 — Declares the role of women in Islamic society to be the “maker of men”
Article 22 — Makes sweeping claims about Jewish influence and power, specifically claiming that the Jews were responsible for instigating multiple revolutions and wars, including the French Revolution, World War I, and the Russian Revolution, and that Jews control the United Nations
Article 28 — Claims that “Zionist organizations” aim to destroy society through moral corruption and eliminating Islam, and are responsible for drug trafficking and alcoholism
Five years earlier, the Israelis again were willing to sacrifice land as part of the Camp David offer (brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton), and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat responded by initiating the Second Intifada (a violent Palestinian uprising during which Israeli fatalities exceeded 1,000. For reference, only two of the Israel’s wars — the War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War — have claimed more Israeli lives than this intifada.)
Their land plagued by violence: It’s impossible to measure violence and the unfortunate deaths that result on both sides — especially when one side has been using their own people as human shields for who knows how long.
We can definitively say, though, that both Palestinians and Israelis have inflicted violence on each other, including well before the UN Partition Plan in 1947 to divide the land into two states, and well before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Not to mention, all the times Arab countries attacked Israel “in support of” the Palestinians.
To act as though the Palestinians have been the only or even main victims of violence in this region is completely unbefitting of someone with the title “United Nations Secretary-General.”
Their economy stifled: The Palestinians have never had a real economy, so I don’t know how it could have been stifled if it never really existed. What I do know is that the Palestinians have received billions of dollars in aid and support over the decades, and they chose to invest much of it in terrorism and terrorism-related activities, not in said economy.
Their people displaced and their homes demolished: Ah, yes, Mr. Secretary-General, please tell us more about the time that the Palestinians and Arab countries declined your organization’s Partition Plan in 1947 to divide the land into two states, and then something like seven Arab countries attacked the Jewish state. These Arab countries instructed the Palestinians to flee their homes, adding that they would be able to return after Israel’s defeat.
Naturally, though, you blame the Jews for defending themselves against the Arab League, and then expect the Jews to allow those who provoked this existential war to return to their homes? How out of your mind can you possibly be?
Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing: All you have to do is look at the Arab countries who have made peace with Israel, starting with Egypt, then Jordan, then the Abraham Accords, to start realizing that even Arab countries — the so-called “Arab brothers and sisters” of the Palestinians — are growing tired of the nonstop Palestinian game to play victim and deflect any level of responsibility for themselves.
You see, it’s these largely baseless assertions that the Palestinians and their mouthpieces, including but certainly not limited to Antonio Guterres, have been making for decades. They throw around buzzwords and terminology that sound good to the antisemitic ear — an ear that has never been interested in fact and truth, just in blatant and subliminal propaganda.
Hence why, when the daughter of Palestinian “refugees” was asked several direct questions on a respectable news program, she refused to answer any of them, because she and so many other Palestinians don’t have any legitimate answers. They just have brainwashed and factually depleted narratives: Israel committing genocide, Israeli colonization, Israeli white supremacy, et cetera. I’m not sure if these talking heads are unconscionably ignorant, or if they (possibly including Guterres) are being bribed by anti-Jewish factions.
But what I found most interesting about Guterres’ incendiary remarks is the timeframe he used as his launch point — 56 years — which takes us back to 1967. I always find it amusing when people try to pinpoint a certain year or time period to engineer their points of view, as if nothing happened prior.
In my extensive research of Palestinian history, it seems that Palestinian nationalism emerged in response to Jewish immigration and settlement, according to historian James L. Gelvin. In other words, Palestinians had no real national identity or plans for self-determination before Jews arrived on the scene.
In 1919, the idea of a unique Palestinian state distinct from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by Palestinian representatives. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations that year, which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution:
“We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.”
Around this time, the first Palestinian nationalist organizations emerged, along with two political factions. al-Muntada al-Adabi, dominated by the Nashashibi family, militated for the promotion of the Arabic language and culture, for the defense of Islamic values, and for an independent Syria and Palestine. In Damascus, al-Nadi al-Arabi, dominated by the Husayni family, defended the same values.
After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the Balfour Declaration — a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War, announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine — some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem in 1920.
A month later, during the Nebi Musa riots, the protests against British rule and Jewish immigration became violent, and Bols banned all demonstrations. In 1921, however, further anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa and dozens of Arabs and Jews were killed in the confrontations.
In 1935, the dead body of a Palestine Police constable, Moshe Rosenfeld, was discovered near Ein Harod. British police believed sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and his followers were responsible, and search parties set out to capture them. Eventually, the British police engaged in a firefight with al-Qassam and some of his followers, and killed them.
The next year, al-Qassam’s followers initiated the Arab revolt in Palestine, which began with a general strike in Jaffa, as well as attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus. The Arab Higher Committee called for a nationwide general strike, non-payment of taxes, and the closure of municipal governments, and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and a ban of the sale of land to Jews. By the end of 1936, the movement had become a national revolt, and resistance grew during the next three years.
So, yes, Antonio Guterres — you history-perverting imbecile — you are absolutely right, none of this happened in a vacuum.
And, as you also said, the “clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza” — they didn’t happen in a vacuum as well. For decades, Palestinian terrorists have been using their own people as human shields, redirecting money and aid designed for humanitarian causes, and aiming to indiscriminately kill as many Israeli citizens as possible.
So why, all of the sudden, are you and millions of others so concerned about international humanitarian law in Gaza? Are you truly concerned for the people of Gaza and for the Palestinians? And what about all the other terrible tragedies happening across the world, all the time?
Or are you just an antisemite?