Free Free Palestine

Among the illiterati, especially among leftist college students, the slogan du jour is: Free Palestine.

It has a certain ring to it. It appeals to people who know nothing. We have heard it on the many encampments that have grown up-- like tumors-- on American college campuses.

And, of course, no one, except for Bret Stephens at the New York Times, really questions what it all means.

Free like what… you might ask.

After all, Jordan is a Palestinian state. The great majority of its inhabitants are Palestinians. Is it a liberal democracy? Is it a thriving capitalistic society? Raising the issues is absurd, on their face.

If perchance you might recommend that the West Bank Palestinians become part of the Jordanian kingdom you will hear Jordanians issue a resounding No. 

We are not opposed to monarchy in principle, but we would point out that the per capita GDP of Jordan is around $4,000. The same number describes the per capita GDP of Egypt. As for Israel, the number is around $54,000. 

The numbers date from 2022. Look at them closely and you will see why Palestinians among others hate Israel.

Israel’s neighbors are neither free nor prosperous. Similarly with Egypt, which held an election that elected a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, one Mohamed Morsi, in 2012. This led eventually to a military coup that granted the presidency to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2014.

As you may know, Hamas was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And, obviously, however much the Arab world rails against Israel, it is also true that Egypt wants to have nothing to do with the Palestinian people and their putative cause.

As for the people of Gaza they have enjoyed freedom for nearly two decades now. They have been granted massive amounts of foreign aid. The rulers of the territory, that would be Hamas, have squandered these resources and used them to build terror tunnels and rockets. They have no concern for the people of Gaza. They are hellbent on destroying the prosperous and free state of Israel, because they think that will make them feel better.

Of course, you would expect the Palestinians to have shown their propensity for freedom and democracy in the territories that they govern. Such is not the case.

Bret Stephens explains:

But there’s an equally important dimension to Palestinian politics that is purely domestic. When Abbas was elected in 2005, it was for a four-year term. He is now in the 20th year of his four-year term. When Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, it didn’t just defeat its political rivals in Fatah. It overthrew the Palestinian Authority completely in Gaza after a brief civil war and followed it up with a killing, torture and terror spree that eliminated all political opposition.

Such would be the political fate of a free Palestine. But then, how could free Palestinians continue to blame Israelis for their own failings?

And, of course, Israel has needed to defend itself from terrorist attacks, attacks that sometimes originated in the West Bank and that sometimes originated in Gaza.

The blame-Israel-first crowd only sees facts that can be used to condemn Israel. It’s anti-Semitism in the raw:

At the same time, Israeli leaders have repeatedly offered the creation of a Palestinian state — offers Arafat and Abbas rejected. Charges of an Israeli economic blockade tend to ignore a few facts: Gaza also has a border with Egypt; many goods, including fuel and electricity, flowed from Israel to Gaza up until Oct. 7; much of the international aid given to Gaza to build civilian infrastructure was diverted for Hamas’s tunnels, and Hamas used the territory to start five wars with Israel in 15 years.

Dare we mention that Hamas leadership has been anything but a manifestation of liberal democracy.

Stephens again:

The regime established by Hamas isn’t merely autocratic. It’s more like the old East Germany, complete with its own version of the Stasi, which spied on, blackmailed and abused its own citizens.

“Hamas leaders, despite claiming to represent the people of Gaza, would not tolerate even a whiff of dissent,” The Times’s Adam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman reported on Monday. “Security officials trailed journalists and people they suspected of immoral behavior. Agents got criticism removed from social media and discussed ways to defame political adversaries. Political protests were viewed as threats to be undermined.”

It is well known that radical Islamist regime tend to see homosexuality as a capital crime, punishable by death. Naturally, this has led gay leftist American students to support Hamas and the Palestinian authority.

Stephens explains what they are embracing:

In 2019, the Palestinian Authority banned an L.G.B.T.Q.-rights group’s activities in the West Bank, claiming they are “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society.” In 2016, Hamas tortured and killed one of its own commanders, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, on suspicions of “moral turpitude” — code for homosexuality. “Relatives said Mr. Ishtiwi had told them he had been suspended from a ceiling for hours on end, for days in a row,” The Times’s Diaa Hadid and Majd Al Waheidi wrote.

Keep in mind, this is not Hamas. This is the same Palestinian Authority that Times columnist Tommy Friedman considers a potential partner for peace.

Of course, the Hamas charter has no place for Jews:

In other words, what the campus protesters happily envisage as a utopian, post-Zionist “state for all of its citizens” would under Hamas be one in which Jews were killed, exiled, prosecuted, integrated into an Islamist state or pressed into the servitude of a Levantine version of Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle. Those same protesters might rejoin that they don’t want a future to be led by Hamas — but that only raises the question of why they do absolutely nothing to oppose it.

When it comes to Free Palestine, the old saying applies: be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

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