The Key Difference Between 'Pro-Palestine' and 'Pro-Israel'

"Pro-Israel" is exclusively about Jewish sovereignty on the Jews' historical homeland. "Pro-Palestine" isn't really about "Palestine." It's about the resistance, rejection, and destruction of Israel.

Both “pro-Palestine” words and their actions are based in “resistance” of Jewish sovereignty, clearly indicating that their entire national ethos exists only in antithesis of the Jews. (photo: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay written by Z.E. Silver, who writes the newsletter, “Gam V’Gam.”

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

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Since October 7, 2023, the vernacular of “pro-Israel,” “anti-Israel,” “pro-Palestine” and more have flooded the discourse as a way to categorize everyone into distinct buckets.

While it’s not abnormal for people to find themselves forced to identify as some overarching label that suffocates important subtleties, there is a unique aspect to this topic. Easy examples such as “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” and “pro-gun control” versus “pro-Second Amendment” have become adopted as a way to highlight where people stand on an issue.

One of the many issues with allowing these labels to dominate the discourse is the implication of pinning these labels against each other. Being “pro-choice” is akin to being in favor of strangling children with their own umbilical cord, and being “pro-Second Amendment” is the same as believing everyone should own bazookas. Neither is true, but these falsehoods are a natural consequence of reinforcing labels that smothers nuance.

Within the topic of Israel, the most complex geopolitical issue possibly ever in human history, the juxtaposition of these labels is even more dangerous. Set aside the absurd notion of being “pro-Israel” (no one is ever described as “pro-Argentina” or “pro-Cameroon”) and contemplate the implications of the dichotomy of “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine.”

The former can be easily described as holding the position that Israel should exist as a country and the belief that the U.S. should support it as a strategic ally in the region. Ask almost anyone who describes themselves as “pro-Israel” and their answer will most certainly be some version of this.

There are plenty of people on the fringes who believe that the existence of Israel must come at the cost of a Palestinian state, but that is not the mainstream view amongst those who would say they generally find themselves aligned with the Jewish state.

Across the table from the “pro-Israel” position is, of course, the “pro-Palestine” position.

Or … is it?

To be “pro-Israel” is to be in favor of the existence of a state that is majority Jewish on the Jewish People’s ancestral lands — nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing “anti-Palestine” about being “pro-Israel” and the proof lies within the history of the Jewish People. Countless examples exist within Jewish holy texts of the importance of our people dwelling in the land of Israel and returning to it after the Romans exiled us for what seemed to be permanently.

Rabbinic Judaism was created hundreds of years before Palestinians were ever a distinct national or ethnic identity, all for the sake of ensuring the eventual return to the land. Even after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the genesis of a national identity, the 20th-century Zionists showed they did not believe they were in a zero-sum game.

Everyone knows about the moment in 1947 when the Jews accepted the United Nations Partition Plan, but not everyone is aware there was a plan presented a decade prior by the Peel Commission, which the Jews also accepted.

After 1948, the Israelis consistently proved their priority was on advancing their own interests, not vanquishing the interests of another. Simply look at how they have related to every other Arab population. When the opportunity arose to make peace with Egypt, they took it; when the opportunity arose to make peace with Jordan, they took it; when the opportunity arose to make peace with Saudi Arabia, they took it.

Israel’s focus has always been inward — protecting itself, growing its economy, and engaging in the global community.

Unfortunately, the “pro-Palestine” position cannot say the same. Unlike the “pro-Israel” mainstream position, those who consider themselves “pro-Palestine” rarely, if ever, advocate for the additional existence of Israel. They do actually see this conflict as a zero-sum game.

Historically, the Arabs of “Palestine” rejected both the Peel Commission map, as well as the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Many justify rejecting the latter because the Jews were given a majority of the land despite being a minority — completely ignoring the majority of the land the Jews were given was largely uninhabitable desert.

Similarly, the justification for rejecting the former, despite the Arabs receiving the majority of the inhabitable land, is predicated on the idea that Arabs shouldn’t have been forced to give any land whatsoever to “invading Europeans who were part of a settler colonial enterprise” — once again ignoring that the first major wave of Jewish immigration was from Yemen thirty years prior to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the existing Jewish population that had been there for centuries.

Prior to 1948, the Arabs of “Palestine” simply could not accept the existence of a state for themselves if it also meant the Jews received one as well. That doesn’t sound like an ideology based on a dream of building a state for Palestinian Arabs, but on a nightmare that it would exist alongside a Jewish one.

Coincidentally, there is a state for the Palestinians, and it is called Jordan — where a majority of the population is “Palestinian,” which makes sense given the British’s initial “two-state solution” was a Jewish Palestine and an Arab Transjordan. Sadly, Palestinian leaders found far more wealth and power in skewing the Nakba narrative toward one of ethnic cleansing, instead of facing the truth, which was that the seven Arab armies suffered a humiliating defeat after attacking the nascent State of Israel in 1948.

When Constantine Zurayk, who coined the term “Nakba,” wrote “The Meaning of Disaster,” his first line was:

“The defeat of the Arabs in Palestine is no simple setback or light, passing evil. It is a disaster in every sense of the word and one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been afflicted through-out their long history — a history marked by numerous trials and tribulations.”¹

Consequently, the Arabs of “Palestine” have tethered themselves to a lie that still permeates amongst their descendants and has kept both them and the entire Arab Muslim world from progressing forward.

Given the technological advancements Israel has made, imagine the world we would be living in had they not only been free from the threat of annihilation, but also imagine if they had access to the wealth of Arab Muslim countries.

For almost a century, Palestinian leaders have been convincing the Arab people that rectifying the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the Jews must be the top priority — sacrificing the possibility of the region becoming the most dominant in the world.

Tragically, even the Palestinian “people” aren’t above the cause of settling the score against the “weak Jews.” Palestinian leaders deny their own people basic democratic rights, steal from them, keep them perpetually impoverished, incentivize them to sacrifice their own lives, and even execute them. If their leaders’ priorities were the people, why do they treat them as though they don’t matter? Just look at history.

During the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs of “Palestine” were against the presence of Jews in our ancient homeland. During the British Mandate Palestine, the Arabs of “Palestine” were against the existence of a Jewish state that was a fraction of the size of an Arab one. Then they were against the existence of a Jewish state that owned mostly barren land.

Over the last 76 years, they have been against the existence of a Jewish state unless they can take over from within, through the so-called “right of return.” Both their words and their actions are based in “resistance” and “rejection” of Jewish sovereignty, clearly indicating that their entire national ethos exists only in antithesis of the Jews.

To me, that doesn’t sound “pro” anything.

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1. Constantin K. Zurayk. The Meaning of the Disaster” Beirut: Khayat’s, 1956.