Have the anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian campus protests been good for the Palestinians?
3 May 2024
When reading the news, I look for articles about whether people are moving towards or away from solving important problems.
Regarding Israel and the Palestinians, the only long range vision that makes sense is to have a non-corrupt, non-terrorist State of Palestine working with the State of Israel as part of a fully integrated Middle East, as envisioned by ROPES and the Biden administration. Moving towards this vision is likely to bring peace and prosperity to all players in the region, except those countries (Iran, Syria, Lebanon) and organizations committed to hatred and violence.
Challenges to achieving this vision are:
Terrorism is embedded in Gaza and will be extremely difficult to dislodge even if all major players agree on this goal. The current terrorist government in Gaza is unlikely to give up its power and its supporters are unlikely to end their terrorist activities.
Even without terrorist leadership and activities, it will be difficult to establish a viable and non-corrupt government in Gaza and the West Bank because its residents have tolerated corruption, incompetence and terrorism for 75 years with little desire for change.
Regrettably, most Palestinian leaders do not even appear to be genuinely interested in creating better lives for Palestinians and have made little effort to do so. They are not even willing to repudiate terrorism. Instead, they seem focused on staying in power and promoting the destruction of Israel.
In addition, the current Prime Minister of Israel has no interest in this vision either. He also seems primarily focused on staying in power, either because he is addicted to power or to hold off pending criminal indictments. He must be replaced by an Israeli committed to the solution outlined above.
My analysis of the anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian campus protests is:
These protests are merely the continuation of the weaponization of Palestinians as a means to destroy Israel and promote the hatred of Jews. Hamas and Iran have been very successful at using Palestinians and their supporters as their puppets or “useful idiots”. Palestinians who genuinely want to end suffering in Gaza should urge the Palestinian government of Gaza to end the war that it started and to immediately release the Israeli hostages they have been holding for over 6 months. Unfortunately, these anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian protesters have not used their intelligence and talent to pressure the government that Palestinians elected, to repudiate Palestinian terrorism, to work towards developing a non-terrorist Palestinian state or to improve the lives of Palestinians in any significant way.
Although the anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian campus supporters have not killed themselves or anyone else, these protests are still self-destructive. They create tremendous resentment from the college students affected, their families, the surrounding communities and much of the general public. As a result, anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian supporters that can be identified may have much more difficulty in securing employment and obtaining future success, with little actual improvement in the lives of Palestinians in Gaza to show for their protests.
These protests are also bad for Palestinians and Muslims in general. It took many years after 9-11 for the general public to stop associating Islam with terrorism. However, the anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian protesters have reestablished this association because many of them have praised Hamas and other terrorist groups and have demonstrated severe hatred for Israel and Jews through these protests.
If you support the long-term vision of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East outlined above, please share this essay with others, post it on your social media and get more involved in organizations working towards this goal.
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Does Israel have a right to exist, in your opinion?
You outline the problem wrong, which isn’t surprising given what you concluded. There can be no peace with an apartheid state, why are you pretending that’s a legitimate possibility? Not very brave of you to refuse to see the situation for what it is. Could it be you’re afraid of professional consequences for speaking the actual truth? Calling protestors “useful idiots” is condescending and insulting. You know that people can form informed opinions that differ for yours and, shockingly, they could be right. You give away how little you understand the situation with your bullet point list masquerading as an informative essay. Please sit down and read a book on the topic instead of posting this garbage that does nothing but lend credence to the idea that college protests are enabling terrorism.