The price that comes with recognition is its terrorist activities constitute war crimes warranting being brought before the International Court of Justice!

By Jonathan Feldstein

If you’re keeping score, to date 138 states have recognized the ‘State of Palestine’, most recently Ireland, Norway, and Spain. This begs the question, what are they recognizing?

They have recognized a state that never existed, with a name never used before 1964, but whose national identity is that Israel “occupied” them in 1948. The first time the term Palestine was used was in the 2nd century, over 100 years after Jesus was crucified, to subjugate and embarrass its indigenous people, the Jewish people, after a Jewish revolt to expel Rome from Judea. It is documented in the term Judea capta which the Romans branded on their coins and architecture to document their conquering of the Land and its people.

Today’s Palestinian Arabs are a self-identifying mix of indigenous Arabs, and descendants of Arab immigrants from the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, and Syria.

Today’s ‘Palestine’ is governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terrorist group which, along with Hamas, are dedicated to eradicating Israel, not coexistence. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is their genocidal anthem, calling for the destruction of Israel.

One must ask, if “Palestine” was ever independent and therefore occupied by Israel: who was its first king, president, emir, or prime minister? What is its currency? When is its Independence Day?

How is it possible that the PLO governs a territory that is not under its control, not because of Israel but because of Hamas expelling the PLO in 2007?

What are the “Palestinians” national past times? Celebrating terror, inciting hatred and violence, funding terrorists and their families with an obscene financial incentive known as “pay to slay.”

Why when its terrorists attack Israelis and Jews around the world, the “State of Palestine” is not brought to the International Court of Justice?

Why the double standard?

If we are going to recognize “Palestine,” we must recognize it for what it is: a divisive tool to pressure Israel, a “state” whose only response to multiple offers for actual independence has been violence and terror and death.

Before the PLO was established May 28, 1964, one would be hard pressed to find any mention of the “Palestinians”, referring to Arabs in the Land. Before 1948, “Palestinian” currency issued by the British, had Arabic, English, and Hebrew. Would a Palestinian Arab state, or any Arab or Islamic state, ever have Hebrew on its official currency?

Before 1948, the Palestine Philharmonic was a Jewish orchestra. As were “Palestinian” athletic teams that competed internationally. All Jewish. The daily “Palestine Post” was a Jewish publication. And when the British referred to Palestinians, they were referring to the Jewish population as there was no Palestinian Arab ethnicity recognized by anyone until then. My father was an actual Palestinian.

After creating the PLO and a people for it to represent, Palestinian Arab nationalism existed with the sole purpose of eliminating Israel and the Jewish people. The also PLO tried to unseat the artificial Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1970, the entity that sits on 70% of British Mandate “Palestine” – the made-up state to reward their Hashemite allies who hailed from Arabia. Even the PLO knew that this was a fake state. After being squashed and butchered by the Hashemite army, with more casualties in a month than Hamas claims today in Gaza after eight months, they retreated, were expelled, and set their sights only on Israel.

In the Oslo Accords, PLO leader Yasser Arafat publicly recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced “terrorism and other acts of violence” against Israel. Yet practically, the PLO continued to engage in terrorism, and initiated the infamous “Pay for Slay” program, providing hefty pensions for Palestinian Arab terrorists and their families. This represents millions of dollars in the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget, and is subsidized by foreign contributions to the PA. In October 2018, the PLO suspended its recognition of Israel, and doubled down on the funding of terrorism.

This is the “Palestine” the world should recognize. Yes, there are several million people who identify as “Palestinians” today, a reality that will not change.  There needs to be a resolution where they will hopefully, one day, choose to live in peace with Israel, truly renounce and stop inciting terror even among their children as young as pre-school, and live prosperously. But the solution is not to recognize a “State of Palestine” blind to this reality, as a slap to Israel, or thinking in any way that doing so without the Palestinian Arabs having to negotiate and aspire to peace rather than an endless genocidal war, will bring peace closer. It won’t. It only emboldens the terrorists.

Alternatively, if the world actually recognizes the “State of Palestine” against which it claims Israel is committing acts of war and genocide, and which 138 states that have recognized “Palestine” as an actual legitimate entity, it’s high time that “Palestine” be held to the same accountability as Israel, or any other state. As such, acts of terror that are inspired by, celebrated in, and funded from the “State of Palestine”, constitute actual war crimes and genocide.  “Palestine’s” leaders should have arrest warrants against them. They should be brought to trial, individually and nationally.

It’s doubtful that anyone in Ireland, Norway, or Spain were intelligent enough to note the irony of their recognition of “Palestine” the week of the anniversary of the creation of the PLO. Since a terrorist revolutionary movement can’t have a cause without a people, the Palestinians were invented along with it.

If only the Marx brothers had the sense to create a people, the Fredonians, along with their fictitious country called Fredonia, they could have been recognized as the indigenous people, from the river to the sea, of their imaginary state, receiving billions from gullible governments and terrorist sympathizers around the world. If only Dorothy and the Wizard had a sense to create a revolutionary movement to liberate the Munchkins, the Munchkinland Liberation Organization, the Wicked Witch of the West and Good Witch of the South would have been jailed on charges of genocide of the little people and rotted away in prison.

The world’s double standards are profound. In calling for a “two state solution” nobody is demanding that “Palestine” be democratic. “Palestine” is an anti-democratic kleptocracy that has not seen even a fake election in nearly two decades, and the last time they had an election, Hamas became the parliamentary majority.  The vast majority of “Palestinians” support the genocidal Islamist Hamas, according to their own polls, the same Hamas that slaughtered PLO leaders in Gaza, and then held all Gazans hostage.

This is the “Palestine” to recognize.

About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

A failure to recognize that Israel’s war must be to defeat not appease Hamas and other Iranian proxies.

By Jonathan Feldstein

It’s almost unimaginable to see recent Biden Administration moves going from bad to worse, so much so that these defer any prospect for any real peace, an end to the war against Hamas (and Iran and its proxies) or the return of our hostages.

Words have meaning but when they are mindlessly repeated followed by inaction, they end up hollow and simply embolden the terrorist. Defiantly repeating “DON’T” to Iran before launching an unprecedented massive arial attack on Israel without consequences, and then telling Israel to “take the win” and not respond forcefully has fundamentally undermined both the US and Israel’s deterrence value. Constantly reassuring his support for Israel as “ironclad” but then showing the world in general, its allies, and specifically the terrorists that it is anything but “ironclad”, only stiffens the resolve of the terrorists and makes them less likely to release hostages or to negotiate in any good faith.

Last week, President Biden went public with his threat to cut off weapons delivery to Israel, suggesting that Israel was using them illegally or irresponsibly, despite his own administration verifying that wasn’t the case.

The first problem with this is that he went public. Not even his mentor Obama did that when he cut off delivery of the precision Hellfire missile.  Cutting off weapons is bad enough. Announcing to the terrorists that he’s doing so across international media simply empowers them.

Specifically, by doing so, Biden gave Hamas abundant reason to refuse any deal to release the hostages, including Americans, that it is holding in Gaza for over seven months. After this happened and with Hamas being jubilant, I created a meme:

Now, with no hostage deal even possible because of Biden emboldening Hamas after his own Secretery of State said that the deal before Hamas “was very generous,” Israel must complete its invasion of Rafah to find and release the hostages and crush the remains of Hamas’ 4 to 5 battalions.

By cutting off precision munitions, Biden is ensuring that more civilians will die, which was the premise that he used to cut off the weapons. Yes, read that again. Dead Gazans blood will be on Biden’s hands.

Biden’s action also emboldens Hezbollah in Lebanon, making an all-out war there more likely, not less so.

Jordan, Egypt and other “moderate” Arab allies are watching Biden’s blunder unfold with multiple negative consequences.  Primarily, it signals that the US is an undependable ally that if it could turn its back on Israel with whom it perennially proclaims enjoys “shared values and strong friendship”, it can do so on them. This is likely to accelerate more extremism. Biden’s blundering also pushes off any possible Saudi normalization with Israel for the same reason. The Saudis don’t need to extend themselves if they don’t believe the US is going to be a reliable partner!

All this sends multiple dangerous messages to Iran and its terrorist proxies, basically that they can get away with their murderous terrorist objectives without consequence. They will feel they have a free pass to operate against Israel and soft Jewish targets globally without restraint.

And with the Administration pressurizing Israel not to pursue the ground operation in Rafah will only result in even more Israeli casualties as it will leave Hamas homicidally intact. If will require more conflicts and a wounded nation questioning why so many of its soldiers have died in vain.

Furthermore, look for Russia and China to swoop in to extend their negative influence in the region, and anywhere else they see US policies exposed as weak.  

A few weeks ago, the US passed a bill providing an additional $17 billion for Israel to have the weapons needed to pursue prosecuting a war it neither began nor wanted. Now the US is trying to tie Israel’s hands from doing so. I was asked about this in an interview, and said that I was thankful as an Israeli as well as proud as an American, for the US making the right decision.  But then on reflection, I commented that had Biden not controversially released $6 billion to Iran in the summer, and then another $10 billion to Iran in the winter ($16 billion), and had President Obama not earlier paid off the Iranians with billions more, perhaps there would have been no or far fewer deaths; no emboldening the Iranians, no funding for their proxies, and there would have been no need for an extra $17 billion in defense aid to Israel, and some $9 billion providing humanitarian relief to the people in Gaza.

Just think, what if the US had engaged in a full-scale embargo on Iran, cutting the Islamic regime off from any possible funds, bringing the already weak Iranian economy to its knees, and empowering Iranians to take back their country from the Ayatollahs. There could have been regime change in Iran without a US weapon being fired, a safer world, and no war now on multiple fronts.

Instead, the US through a blundering foreign policy has been complicit in funding Iranian-backed terrorism in the Middle East.

BLOOD ON U.S. HANDS

It gets worse.  After Biden declaring that he is withholding weapons – ostensibly to avoid civilian deaths in Rafah – there have been reports of the Biden Administration offering Israel a deal:

Providing intelligence on the location of Hamas terror leaders in exchange for Israel not conducting an all-out assault.

It is unthinkable that if the US had such intelligence, it would not provide it not as a carrot on the end of a stick, but to help Israel defeat Hamas which the US has acknowledged is an important goal. Had the US ‘as an important friend and ally’ provided this vital intel days or weeks ago, Israel could have cut off the head of the Hamas snake already, saving lives on both sides. If these reports are true, there’s all the more blood in Gaza on the hands of the US administration.

And as the US tries to link Saudi recognition of Israel with a US-Saudi defense treaty, the Saudis surely are looking at all this and questioning the value of any such agreement with the Biden Administration beyond the paper it’s written on, and wondering where it more prudent to wait until after the US election on November 5.

The war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies must be to defeat and not to appease them and certainly not to leave them standing where they can threaten Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere.  Biden would be well served to understand this, recognizing that the only way to defeat the Hamas wing of his Democratic Party to which he is shamefully pandering to is to truly defeat Hamas. 

For Biden and the Democratic Party, ‘the issue’ is no less existential.  While despite his damaging blundering, Biden still genuinely refers to himself as a Zionist and supporter of Israel but if he allows the Ilhan Omars, Rashida Tlaibs and other Hamas supporters in his own party to win, he may be the last Democratic president who publicly claims support for Israel.

Biden may have already lost Michigan and other battleground states.  Short of declaring war on Israel, it could be a done deal.  Many pundits believe that his appeasement of the Hamas wing of his own party will not only not work come November 5, but is immoral.

What Biden is doing now is extending the war, preventing the completion of the necessary objectives, and creating more casualties. Is there a conspiracy behind it or just plain stupidity?

What happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza. If only Biden understood that the negative consequences of his policies are horrifyingly far-reaching.

About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).