Palestine Should Put the Victim Card Back in the Deck and Accept Responsibility, But Likely Won't (Pt. 2)

The war in Gaza has been raging on for eight months. There are a lot of things that frustrate me to no avail about the Middle Eastern conflict. Here you have Hamas take October 7, 2023 to commit the largest pogrom against the Jews since the Holocaust by raping, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating civilians in a barbaric manner. By carrying out this pogrom, Hamas broke a ceasefire and instigated a war with Israel that Israel did not want in the first place. These past eight months have been a reminder that Palestine has done a convincing job playing victim not solely during this latest war, but for years. I wrote a piece about a couple weeks ago in which I began to analyze the Palestinian mentality and how victimhood has shaped its identity. 

Part I of this blog series included looking at Hamas as an organization and how the Jew-hatred is common among everyday Palestinians. I also pointed out how Israel has been fighting Jew-hatred for decades and how that animus even predates the creation of the modern-day state of Israel. I finished by asking about the alleged atrocities of Israel, the so-called "aggressor." Let us non-rhetorically examine the main accusations the pro-Palestine side likes to launch at the pro-Israel side similar to how Hamas likes to indiscriminately launch rockets at Israel:

• Genocide. As I brought up last December, Israel is not committing genocide. Israel's intent is not genocidal. If Israel wanted to, it could have carpet-bombed Gaza by now, which would have been a whole lot cheaper and would have kept Israeli soldiers out of harm's way. The civilian-combatant ratio in the Israel-Hamas War is one of the lowest in modern urban warfare. Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties, as Chair of Urban Warfare at West Point John Spencer illustrates. This accusation conveniently ignores Hamas' genocidal intent, the very intent that drove the October 7 attacks.
• Occupier. Going back to my 2015 analysis, the West Bank and Gaza are disputed territories, not occupied territories. It is especially difficult to accuse Israel of being an occupier in Gaza when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 under the false hope of "land for peace." Hamas has been running the show since 2007. 
• Colonizer. Israel has sovereignty over one country the size of New Jersey, which also is less than 1 percent of the Middle East. Those are basic geographical facts. The Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Also, if you want to talk about colonizing, look at the British, French, Spanish, and yes, the Arabs. Read more analysis here on the accusation of colonization.
• Ethnic cleansing. A little difficult for Israel to be ethnically cleansing with nearly 2 million Arabs within its borders. In contrast, what do you think the chant "from the river to the sea" means? Answer: it's ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians do not want a single Jew in their midst. 
• Apartheid state. I brought this up last October. Much like any other developed nation, the living conditions for minorities is not perfect. Nevertheless, Israeli Arabs are able to participate in civil society, politics, and the economy. Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jews or anyone else in Israel. In spite of its imperfections, Arab Israelis have more political and economic freedoms in Israel than they would in other Arab countries. It is a far cry from the extreme form of racial segregation that once existed in South Africa. 

Aside from this Holocaust inversion being morally reprehensible, these accusations lobbed against Israel do not withstand scrutiny when examined. It is even more frustrating because the Palestinian elements are projecting their true, genocidal intent onto Israel. However, for argument's sake, let us incorrectly assume for one iota for a second, that Israel is committing genocide, ethnically cleansing, colonizing, occupying Palestine, and/or being an apartheid state. It would not matter. Why? 

History has its vicious moments. Countries and borders change, and that change has been predominantly driven by war. Innocent civilians sadly die in warfare, as was certainly the case in World War II. People getting displaced during and after warfare is sadly all too common. 12 million ethnic Germans were forced out of various European nations as a result of World War II. A million Greeks were shoved out of Turkey in 1923. What about the one million French out of Algeria in 1962? Then there's the Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in modern-day times. During the 1940s, nearly a million Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in response to modern-day Israel becoming a nation-state. 

People learned to make the best of the new reality. They learned to cope with the harshness and unfairness that life has dealt. When Mexico lost in the Mexican-American War, they did not clamor for having Arizona or California back. No, they realized that the United States was as likely to give up Los Angeles as Israel will be to give up Tel Aviv. Mexico moved on and created one of the world's largest economies. The Irish came to an accommodation with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 after fighting for about 30 years. The Kosovo War ended with negotiations. I could list more examples, but the point is that everyone comes to an accommodation...except the Palestinians. More on that in the final part of this series.