What Palestinian ‘Resistance’ Actually Means

"I grew up learning to hate Jews. Most Muslims grow up and learn to hate Jews. No group hates another group as much as Muslims hate Jews."

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“I am an ex-Muslim,” wrote Ridvan Aydemir. “I grew up learning to hate Jews. Most Muslims grow up and learn to hate Jews. No group hates another group as much as Muslims hate Jews. This did not start on October 7th, not in 1948, and not in 1920. This started 1,400 years ago.”¹

By 1,400 years ago, Aydemir is referring to the creation of Islam. There are many stories of Muslim hostilities against Jews at that time, and one famous instance is the Battle of Khaybar in 628 CE, when Muhammad’s army marched on the Jewish community of Khaybar in present-day Saudi Arabia.

Khaybar was home to a sizable community of Jewish tribes; the Jews had arrived in Arabia after fleeing from Judea in the wake of the Jewish-Roman wars throughout the ancient Land of Israel.

Amidst the rise of Islam in the Hejaz (the most populated region in Saudi Arabia), the Muslim community feared that the Jews — who had recently been attacked and expelled from Medina (also in Saudi Arabia) after Muhammad, on the basis of a divine revelation, alleged that they had been plotting to assassinate him — were forging alliances with a number of non-Muslim Arabian tribes.

The Battle of Khaybar ended with the Jews surrendering. As part of the agreement, they were to evacuate the area and surrender their wealth. The Muslims would cease warfare and not hurt any of the Jews. After the agreement, some Jews approached Muhammad with a request to continue to cultivate their orchards and remain in the oasis. In return, they would give one-half of their produce to the Muslims.

According to one version of the pact at Khaybar, it was concluded on the condition that the Muslims “may expel” the Jews of Khaybar “if and when we wish to expel you.” Indeed, the Jews were expelled in 642 (you know, 14 years later).

Since at least the late 20th century, Muhammad’s conquest of Khaybar’s Jewish community has become notable as the subject of an Arabic-language rallying slogan, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud!” in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The slogan means, “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return.”²

Another notable Muslim-Jewish “encounter” comes from the year 1834, when brutal riots known as the “Peasants’ Revolt” broke out in Ottoman-era Palestine. In theory, the revolt had nothing to do with Jews at all. It started because local Arabs (i.e. Palestinians) resented conscription duty to the Egyptian army. But when the governmental order was disrupted, the Jews immediately became its victims.

During the revolt, the rebels from the surrounding villages rioted against the Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed (the Four Holy Cities of Judaism). The evil acts that occurred in the Israeli towns around Gaza on October 7th took place there and then as well. Jews were murdered, beaten, and abused, and their property was looted and plundered — all preceded by incitement in mosques, just like in our times. The result was terrible destruction.

Many Jews’ homes were destroyed or set on fire. Jews who tried to find refuge in synagogues were beaten to death. The rioters took hundreds of Torah scrolls from the holy arks and disgracefully desecrated them in the streets. They also blocked the roads leading out, so that the Jews could not inform government officials, military forces, and foreign consuls about the pogroms.

At the time, there was no issue of “occupation” or “oppression” or even Zionism, nor any other vain excuses that felons try to use to explain their lust for murder to the naive. It was pure, unadulterated hatred of Jews.

Ultimately, this is what Palestinian “resistance” boils down to: intimidating, attacking, and murdering Jews. In recent decades, the Palestinians have attempted to juggle and politicize interpretations of the events in a cowardly effort to change the fact that Muslim and Arab actors have repeatedly attempted to rid the Middle East of Jews and destroy the Jewish state, each Arab and Muslim regime or faction with their own asynchronous operating logic.

Meanwhile, Islam has become one of the most aggressive, proselytizing, colonizing, settling religions on the planet, consisting of 49 countries and nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Jews make up 0.2 percent of this population, we do not proselytize, and we have one tiny country.

Who exactly is the threat here?

Accusing the other of that which you are guilty is a rule straight out of Goebbels’ playbook.

It’s “resistance by any means necessary” for Palestinians — but “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “colonialism” when Jews defend themselves. (photo: Shai Davidai/X)

When it comes to modern-day Palestinians, they are both the perpetrator and the victim. In some respects, the Palestinians are a microcosm for a larger, more protracted and “innate” Muslim hatred of Jews. In other instances, they have been used as a pawn in Middle Eastern and North African actors’ geopolitical games and, accordingly, brainwashed to despise the Jewish state and blame it for all of the Palestinians’ miseries.

The result leads to the same place: unrelenting antisemitism that, in some ways, pales in comparison to that of the Nazis. If the Palestinians had the same military resources that the Nazis had, I would not be writing this essay right now.

This does not mean that Israel should has the license to do whatever the heck it wants in this Israel-Hamas war. And the Jewish state knows it doesn’t. Gazan civilians need aid and should receive it, regardless of the overly fabricated reports about “mass starvation” and “man-made famine” — iterations of which we have been hearing from the first days of this war, unsurprisingly none of which have been true.

For example, 164 food trucks entered Gaza on Wednesday. According to UN figures, that is 124 percent more than the daily average for September 2023, before Hamas declared war. Some 245,000 tons of food have entered Gaza since October 7th.³

So let’s not lose sight of the real issue: According to a variety of polls and extensive anecdotal evidence, a healthy majority of Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank passionately support what Hamas perpetrated on October 7th.

Meir Ben-Shabbat, a former Israeli national security adviser, emboldened this analysis, saying: “In any fair election, Hamas would win by a landslide.”⁴

By the most basic of logic, this makes the majority of Palestinians a direct threat to Israel’s legal and legitimate residence, which in turn makes the Palestinians Israel’s self-inflicted enemy.

“I treat the Palestinians in Gaza in the same way I would treat any other group that produced a horror like that. They are responsible for their actions,” said Douglas Murray, who has written two books about Islam’s war on the West. “They voted in Hamas, knowing what Hamas are. They allowed Hamas to carry out the coup, killing Fatah and other Palestinians. They didn’t overthrow the government. They allowed Hamas to indoctrinate an entire generation of sociopaths in Gaza. They then start a war ... and it’s Israel’s fault.”⁵

Not only does this twisted-yet-obvious reality make Israel’s fight against Hamas and its many Palestinian supporters morally right, just, and noble. It also means that Israel understandably might need to maintain a security presence in Gaza after the heavy fighting of this war winds down, just like Israel has in the West Bank.

And knowing what we know today, this should be perfectly acceptable. If the Palestinians cannot police themselves, Israel has no choice but to do this dirty work. Or die a slow and painful death. I vote for the first option.

Regardless, there is another path this war could take: Israel might be blocked by other actors, such as the Americans or Europeans, from justifiably defeating Hamas’ military and governing apparatus in Gaza. Should this happen, it will be the most ridiculous, undeserving of rewards for Palestinians and their sympathizers, including radical Islamic terrorists in Madrid, New York, Paris, London, and Sydney.

When Western politicians tell you that Hamas “doesn’t represent” the Palestinians, they are lying to you — for these politicians’ corrupted political gain.

“It’s not what Hamas is,” wrote Michael Oren, a former Israel ambassador to the United States, “but rather what it does. Palestinians may well be disillusioned with Hamas governance, but they remain overwhelmingly approving of terror.”

What’s shocking is how this terrorism is being justified by the so-called Israeli “occupation” and “blockade.” Lacking a bonafide army, apologists claim, the Palestinians have no other means to “resist” Israel and achieve independence.

“There will continue to be resistance to oppression as long as apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide continue to exist,” said Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder of the organization Within Our Lifetime Palestine. “As long as oppression against the Palestinian people exists, we will continue to resist.”⁶

That might be true if Hamas was a national liberation movement, but it is not. As opposed to the mainly secular ideology of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), Hamas is built on a jihadist theology along the lines of ISIS, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda.

Common to all these terrorist organizations is the millennial Muslim vision of recreating the medieval caliphate in the Middle East — and then across the world. Hamas differs only in calling for Israel’s destruction as the necessary first step to kickstarting this process, a call that the majority of Palestinians seem to agree with.

You see, so many of us want the Palestinians to be these tender, loving folks who share our values of human dignity, “live and let live,” teaching our children not to harm and kill (let alone rape) others, and a long list of liberties and rights that most of us have never lived without.

But the majority of Palestinians are not who we want them to be, and there is a drastic disconnect between what so many people think the Palestinian cause is, and what Palestinians think the Palestinian cause is.

It is about time the world wakes up and comes to terms with this unfortunate reality.

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1. Ridvan Aydemir on X

2. “Chant: Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the Army of Mohammed will Return.” Anti-Defamation League.

3. Eylon Levy on X

4. Oren, Michael. “Why the Body Cams?” Clarity with Michael Oren.

5. “Politics of Intimidation | Douglas Murray on the Not-So-Subtle Threats Driving Policy and Media [P2].” Israel: State of a Nation with Eylon Levy.

6. “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” YouTube.