Anti-Israel protesters take part in a demonstration hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America, IfNotNow Movement, and Jewish Voice for Peace that turned violent in Washington, DC, Nov. 15, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

JNS.org – The marchers in the streets chanting “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are not pro-Palestinian. They are anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-Western civilization. Palestinians are pawns in their political agenda, and they deserve better. These marchers, whether they are leftists, Palestinian nationalists or extreme right-wing Neturei Karta members, will fight Israel until the last Palestinian is dead, and then they will move on to the next weapon in their arsenal.

The Arabs living in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip have gotten a raw deal for the past 75 years. The surrounding Arab nations promised them that the “Zionist entity” and the Jews would be eradicated quickly. They believed those promises, even after Israel survived its 1948 War of Independence. After 1948, Palestinian Arabs were told to sit tight and wait by the Arab nations and the world. The U.N. even created an organization, UNRWA, whose sole purpose is to keep Palestinians angry and in permanent refugee status, so they can be used as a weapon against Israel.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created in 1964 while Judea and Samaria were annexed parts of Jordan and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military governance. It was created by the Arab League, which put Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat at its head. Its purpose was to be a centralized mouthpiece for the Arab world, using the Palestinian people’s pain and suffering caused by that world itself.

The people who are currently referred to as “Palestinians” were always seen as human weapons against the Jews by the Arab world, nothing more. During the 1937 Peel Commission hearings, Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadii said, “There is no such country [as Palestine]! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country is part of Syria.” This was echoed 10 years later by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, representative of the Arab Higher Committee and ally of Adolf Hitler. “Palestine was part of the province of Syria,” he said. “Politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.”

This mentality continued into the PLO. PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein was quoted in a Dutch newspaper in March of 1977 saying, “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity.” Muhsein continued, “Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

This attitude towards the civilians of the areas under Palestinian Authority and Hamas control is ingrained. These entities do not care about their people. That is why Gaza is now in ruins instead of being a beacon of Palestinian ingenuity and resilience. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, it took all of the Palestinians’ excuses with it.

The world gave Gaza hundreds of billions of dollars, and the people the Gazans voted for and supported in large numbers took that money and used it to fight a war they lost generations ago. To this day, aid is being brought into Gaza and stolen. Eylon Levy of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said, “The IDF inspects the aid where it then enters Gaza, and international agencies are responsible for its distribution.” That international agency is UNRWA, which has more loyalty to Hamas than to Palestinian civilians.

It’s no wonder that Hamas steals aid from Palestinian civilians. They view it as a necessary contribution to the war effort, because they, their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents were promised that the Jews are just one battle away from being gone forever. This was and is a lie. Israel is not going anywhere.

This diseased mentality has spread throughout the West. A recent Harvard-Harris poll indicated how broken our educational system is. Of the 18–24-year-olds polled, 60% claim that the Oct. 7 attack, which they admit was genocidal, “Can be justified by the grievance of Palestinians.” 50% support Hamas over Israel. 53% believe that students should be told by universities that they are “free to call for genocide” of Jews. 67% believe that “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors.” 67% also favor an “unconditional ceasefire that would leave everyone in place” as opposed to a ceasefire that “should happen only after the release of all hostages and Hamas being removed from power.”

The scariest response from 18-24-year-olds was from the 51% who said they want “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.” This is the influence of the “from the river to the sea” chants and decades of academic corruption. America’s Gen Z wants to see what the Arab world tried to do in 1948—a second Holocaust. Just as the Arab world has failed to do right by its youth, it is our failure that so many American youths are indoctrinated in lies and propaganda.

There can never be Palestinian prosperity as long as this mentality continues. Jewish people know better than anyone else when it is time to accept the reality of a situation. Just as millions of Jewish grandchildren of Holocaust victims have no right to Poland or Hungary, Palestinian grandchildren of the genocidists of the 1948 war have no right to Tel Aviv. To tell those grandchildren otherwise is to teach despair and hatred. Palestinians deserve better than that. Any true pro-Palestinian activist would be marching for the denazification of the Palestinian Authority. That is the only way the people they claim to be supporting can prosper.