The C̶e̶n̶t̶r̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ Growing Irrelevance of Palestine

A large swath of people are engulfed by the illusion that "Palestine" is a lot more important than it actually is.

Many “pro-Palestinians” are just a loud, annoying, bored minority overly focused on a conflict far, far away that has little-to-no bearing on their day-to-day lives. (photo: Hugo Breyer/Unsplash)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

Sam Husseini recently wrote an article titled, “The Centrality of Palestine.”

He bills himself as an “independent journalist” as well as the communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that “promotes alternative sources for mainstream media reporters.”

Knowing Husseini, “alternative sources” probably means what today’s cool kids call “alternative facts” — falsehoods, untruths, and delusions.

Yet Husseini himself does not bother me. He is apparently of Palestinian descent and probably has familial trauma passed down to him as part of the wars that his Arab ancestors started and then lost against the Jews and the nascent State of Israel.

Indeed, many people act out their own familial and/or direct traumas that they have not done “the work” to mitigate, nullify, and overcome. I just listened to an interview yesterday with billionaire Scooter Braun, who is credited with making a 13-year-old Justin Bieber the worldwide superstar we know today.

Braun’s grandparents survived the Holocaust and, as such, his parents educated him that, “Tomorrow they could come take everything from you” — a mindset he attributes to his entrepreneurial success. But Braun also acknowledged that this mindset stunted him in many ways; by doing emotional and psychological work on himself, Braun said, he was able to recognize it and develop a healthier outlook, worldview, and so forth.

What bothers me about Husseini is that he is a microcosm for a growing group of people, mainly in the West, who have not done their own “self work” and thus project their traumas, insecurities, missteps, failures, and other negative elements onto others, such as Israel and the Jews.

Instead of focusing on themselves and their agency to create the improvements they desire in their own lives — to the extent that they can — these people try to bring others down to the level of their internal turmoil, coaxing us into suffering with them. They attempt to make other people feel horrible for having “privilege” and “luck” and what they perceive as unjustified success.

I am not downplaying people’s traumas, circumstances, and life experiences. And I know that many people are afflicted by real institutional barriers such as racism, sexism, ageism, and other types of discrimination and prejudices.

But there is a stark difference between acknowledging and working to correct these personal and societal issues, and playing a blame game that is largely based on “alternative facts” — falsehoods, untruths, and delusions.

For example, Husseini wrote that, “Israel is not supported by the U.S. and European establishments in spite of the fact that it is a settler colonial state. It is supported so fervently exactly because it is a settler colonial state.”

In addition to the facts that this is an absurd oversimplification and that Israel is not a settler colonial state by any stretch of the imagination, Husseini and the millions of others who believe this warped “pro-Palestinian” quasi-reality are more enthralled with “alternative facts” than actual facts.

The way their arithmetic works is as follows: I am going to come to a conclusion and then work backwards to find “facts” and “evidence” which support my conclusion, while simultaneously rejecting all facts and evidence that contradict or delegitimize my conclusion.

This is the opposite of critical thinking and scientific reasoning, both of which originally made the Western world so promising. Excusing, overlooking, and/or enabling the antithesis of critical thinking and scientific reasoning is a fascist way of going about life, which should worry us all.

Indeed, I have recently heard a few stories of critical thinking and scientific reasoning being scrapped from primary education in Canadian and American schools. One parent called it “communist education” where “students are not allowed to question anything anymore” — and this parent is a bonafide liberal, not some Right-winger who paints anything she does not like with the word “communist.”

Whether they make us feel good or bad, facts (still) exist. There are certainly things that are true — that the world is not flat, for instance — whose truth is supported by various kinds of evidence. These might be called “scientific propositions” because their truth is verified through certain, standardized methods of collecting and interpreting data, and through the reproduction of experimental tests.

“Sociopolitical propositions” — which are directly relevant to the governance of people — tend to appeal to emotions and beliefs, and thus cannot be held to the same scrutiny as scientific propositions.

Beliefs operate in a similar way to facts, insofar as a belief generally requires some evidence at an individual level. And a belief, like a fact, must still be justified by this evidence.

However, contrary to the way hypotheses are tested and reproduced, beliefs are formed with very little recourse. And they undeniably exist and affect the way people make decisions. Belief can override evidence obtained by other means precisely because it is more personal and, in a sense, more humanistic than the impartial scientific method.

To be clear, I am not dismissing belief by claiming it is based on limited information. Rather, I am pointing out that this a property of any belief held by any individual — and the belief may relate to anything, including good and/or beneficial things.

Yet when beliefs turn into attacking others and twisting narratives to demonize, vilify, manipulate, gaslight, and incite against Israel — and, by extension, the Jewish People — we cannot afford to give beliefs the benefit of the doubt.

For example, Husseini wrote:

“Most notably, after centuries of Christianity and White Man’s Burden being the main pretexts for colonialization, a new excuse was made, that of Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis.”

“I’ve sensed for years that main reason that Israel is so important to the U.S. and European establishment is that it is the last remaining expanding European settler state. The notion of European settler colonialism must be kept alive to repressive elements in the U.S. and Europe. It being kept alive in Israel ensures the concept is not extinguished and makes a mass revival of colonialism possible.”

These beliefs are grossly beyond the pale, not only because they are an implicit attack on Jews and an explicit smearing of Jewish history — again, to fit conclusions that were made far ahead of collecting facts — but also because they stupidly conflate two very different concepts.

The U.S. and Europe support Israel for dissimilar reasons. And even then, you cannot group all European countries that support Israel into a singular entity. But for the sake of simplification, which we know fascists like Husseini and many other so-called “progressives” enjoy, Europeans support Israel, the Jewish state, in part because they allowed the Holocaust to happen right under their nose. (Never mind that Israel offers them disproportionate technological, defense, security, and economic value.)

And the Holocaust was not merely “Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis.” It was Jewish annihilation at the hands of Nazis and their many sympathizers — and not just in Europe. At the time, many Arabs like Husseini thought Hitler was doing God’s work. But sure, Sam, keep telling us how “White” folks are deplorable and “people of color” are perfect.

As it relates to U.S. support for Israel, the European variation has nothing to do with it. America supports Israel because it has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and the vast majority of these Jews are Zionists who like to vote for pro-Israel candidates.

What’s more, Israel is America’s most reliable ally in the Middle East, a crucial region that is notoriously volatile and unpredictable, and whose oil and gas have the potential to exact immediate worldwide effects on economies large and small.

Americans also support Israel because both are democracies, and democracies tend to get along with each other according to the major international liberalism theory. Specifically, more democratic states in the international system makes the international system more peaceful.

Not only are there zero other democracies in the Middle East, but if “Palestine” ever became a state, it would not be a democracy — far from it. “Palestine” would violate virtually every democratic value, including two that Husseini and many others have made fortunes on: freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Yet people like Husseini support Palestinian “resistance” and “uprisings” which make the international system less peaceful. There is a word for wailing and screaming about a ceasefire while supporting notoriously non-peaceful people: hypocrisy. Indeed, Palestinians going back to the 1800s, far before Zionism was even a thing, have been increasingly violent towards Jews in the region.

Thus, Palestinian “resistance” and “uprisings” have little to do with self-determination and “liberation” and much more to do with antisemitism. Only in the 1980s did Palestinians start talking about statehood, not because they really want it, but because it was language that resonated with gullible, uneducated Western audiences, ultimately generating more “humanitarian aid” (that has largely been stolen by Palestinian kleptocrats for decades, still to this day).

At the same time, the Palestinian “cause” has become exponentially irrelevant as the world has shifted its priorities to globalization, climate change, renewable energies, the Russia-Ukraine war, artificial intelligence, and a host of other topics.

This reality was cemented with the Abraham Accords in which Arab countries began realizing that getting in bed with Israel is more promising than championing a Palestinian “cause” which has done far more harm than good to the region.

Saudi Arabia was next on the list of these Arab countries, until October 7th. But anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that the Israelis and Saudis have been covertly working together for quite some time now because, again, getting in bed with Israel is more promising than championing a Palestinian “cause” which does far more harm than good to the region.

To keep the Palestinian “cause” barely relevant and interesting, nefarious Arabs and their Western-world sympathizers over-inflate the concept of “Palestine” and “the Palestinians” by conflating it with other issues that are plainly unrelated. As such, Husseini wrote: “Palestine is central now because it is fighting the tip of the spear of the settler colonial project.”

No, Sam, “Palestine” is not “central.” I have been to six countries on three continents in the last 10 months, and I have spoken to many people about the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war during these travels. Nine times out of 10, folks are indifferent to both Israel and “Palestine” — which makes perfect sense. Most people are generally concerned with their lives, their surroundings, and not much else.

The reality is, folks like Husseini and many other so-called “pro-Palestinians” are just a loud, annoying, bored minority overly focused on a conflict far, far away that has little-to-no bearing on their day-to-day lives — increasingly desperate to halt the growing irrelevance of a perverted fairy tale they call “Palestine.”

---