Until Palestinians Reimagine Their National Identity, Peace Will Be Impossible

The use of the term “Palestinian” to describe the Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel originated only after 1948; previously, they were known simply as “Arabs.” Thereafter, a distinctive Palestinian national movement began to take shape; its key principle, argues Aaron Kliegman, was hatred of Israel:

Arab leaders, and even the Palestinian Arabs themselves, did not seriously seek to create a Palestinian state between 1949 to 1967, during which time Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. That was the best time to establish an independent Palestine, but no one tried, because Palestinian nationalism did not really exist. Egypt did create an “All-Palestine Government,” but it was short-lived and . . . a façade for Egyptian control. More importantly, no one thought of the government as an expression of Palestinian nationalism. Nonetheless, Palestinian Arabs still launched numerous terrorist attacks against Israel during this time and worked with Arab governments to destroy the Jewish state.

[O]nly in 1964, when the Palestine Liberation Organization was established, did the world begin to refer widely to these Arabs as “Palestinians.” . . . A Palestinian people exists today, but that people, that nation, emerged historically as an opposition movement against Israel, offering no vision other than destroying Israel.

Just look at Palestinian society today. Put aside Gaza, which endures . . . under the suffocating rule of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization. Focus instead on the supposedly moderate, more responsible Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, where streets, mosques, stadiums, and even summer camps are named after terrorists who murdered Israelis. Such butchers are glorified in every direction, revealing how Palestinians have chosen to build their identity. There is nothing distinctly Palestinian other than . . . “resistance” against Israel—steeped in hate.

The Palestinians need to have an identity crisis, to look inward and to question who they are and what Palestinian nationality really entails. They should feel insecure about creating a national identity whose only clear pillar is blindly opposing Israel.

Read more at Washington Free Beacon

More about: Anti-Semitism, Palestinians, PLO

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society