The following article is a “Letter to the Editor” in response to a previous article published by The Argus. The Argus is committed to giving a voice to all members of the IWU community but does not reflect all the views stated below.
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Equaldex is an organization that assesses LGBTQ rights in countries and provinces around the world. Equaldex also assesses US States, including Florida, which has appeared everywhere in the news over the last few years for limiting what LGBTQ content can be made publicly available to children. They gave Florida a score of 69/100. Palestine, on the other hand, received a score of 7/100. Opinion polls show that 95% of Palestinians say that homosexuality is not an acceptable practice and 93% believe that society should not accept homosexuality. Let’s just say that many of these Arab nations are willing to do much worse things to LGBTQ people than refuse to use preferred pronouns. The Jewish Post writes, “According to Palestinian law, being gay is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Gaza, it’s punishable by death. In 2016, Hamas executed a senior commander by firing squad in Gaza for homosexual activity. LGBTQ+ Palestinians have no legal protections against discrimination, are forbidden from adopting and gay marriage is not recognized in any capacity.”
You wouldn’t know it by looking around the IWU campus, but a recent poll conducted by Fox News found that 68% of Americans side with Israel in the current conflict in the Middle East. IWU isn’t alone as a college campus with a very vocal minority of Palestine supporters though, as all over the country, young people have started advocating for the “Free Palestine” movement.
Unfortunately, much of the information put out by these Free Palestine movements has been incomplete at best, which can lead to dangerously incorrect assumptions about the people and conflicts in our world. Of all the “Queers for Palestine” groups I’ve seen, not one has adressed the blatant LGBTQ discriminations currently present in Palestine. However, that’s not all of the vital information that the Pro-Palestine movement misses. Below I’ve listed a few myths that have arisen in our society in light of the recent surge of the Free Palestine movement.
Claim: Israel is rooted in white supremacy, relying on the ethnic cleansing of Arabs to exist
Assessment: True, but not the whole story
There’s no denying that Israel was founded on bloody grounds. Jews have been the most persecuted racial group in the history of the world, often used as a convenient scapegoat by civilizations due to their worldwide presence and minority status. However, the need for an independent Jewish state became clear in the 20th century as Pogroms (massacres of Jewish people) and the Holocaust showed new levels of anti-semitism.
The Jewish State needed land somewhere, and it turns out that people already live just about everywhere that is habitable. The West chose to have the Jewish State founded in the Middle East. It is true that the influx of Jews to the Middle East in the early 20th century and the creation of Israel led to a huge number of Palestinians being displaced. However, what Pro-Palestine supporters won’t tell you is that Jews have a claim to this land that is 1500 years older than the Arab nations (1000 B.C.E. vs 636 C.E.). They, too, were displaced from their land by Assyria, Babylon, and the Romans, and have been scattered throughout the world ever since.
However, let’s also not pretend like the past people of Palestine were completely innocent. Another thing that Free Palestine fails to mention is that the Arab Nations sided with Hitler and the Nazis during World War II in hopes that Hitler would create a “final solution” for the Holy Land and solve the “Jew problem.” Let’s also not forget that Hamas, the “terrorist” group (depending on who you ask) that is currently attacking Israel, has a charter that flagrantly calls for the extermination of Jews worldwide. “The Day of Judgment will not come about until [Muslims] fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O [Muslim], there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7).
Question: Is this the same Israel that we see today?
Assessment: No
When looking at modern Israel, 21% of the Israeli population is Arab. Israel has also appointed Arabs to their Supreme Court, including Judge Khaled Kabub, who is a muslim. Not only that, but a majority of Arabs living in Israel trust their Supreme Court. If Israel’s current goal in fighting is still to “cleanse” the Middle East of Arabs or Muslims, then why are there so many Arabs who now support Israel?
Claim: The Palestinian People would be free if it weren’t for Israel
Assessment: Myth
The last presidential election Palestine had was in 2005, where they elected Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is in the 18th year of his four year term. Ever since the legislative election the following year, there have not been any national Palestinian elections. Abbas did schedule an election on May 22, 2021, but canceled it when he realized that his party would lose to Hamas. This is the “free” governance of Palestine that we could expect if Israel wasn’t “stealing” the people’s rights to rule.
It’s also worth mentioning that President Abbas is an avid holocaust denier, claiming that the Jews overstated the number of deaths in the Holocaust tenfold in order to garner support for an independent state of Israel. This isn’t a government that would magically change if Israel got wiped off the map.
Claim: The Palestinian government is just defending itself. The Israeli government is the one engaging in unnecessary war crimes
Assessment: Double-Standards
Pro-Palestine supporters operate under the assumption that retaliatory acts of violence or terror by Palestine is justified as “a woman punching her rapist,” but retaliatory acts of violence or terror by Israel are never okay. This assumes that the retaliatory acts of Palestine are both necessary and justifiable given the circumstances. However, we’ve known for years that Hamas stores weapons in mosques, schools, and hospitals. They quite literally bury explosives under Kindergarten playgrounds so that Israel needs to commit war crimes if they don’t want their people bombed. Not only that, but when Hamas forces Israel to bomb areas with civilians, Israel always sends out evacuation warnings. Hamas then urges the Palestinians to ignore these warnings and to instead choose to die in order to get pictures of “Israeli war crimes.”
Beyond that, many of Hamas’ attacks are blatantly aimed at civilians. They shot rockets and killed about 260 civilians at a Jewish music festival. They’ve taken Israeli women, children, and babies hostage into Gaza and violently killed others. However, to a Palstine supporter, these acts of terror against Jewish civilians are just “punching their rapist,” and to many, not at all excessive given the circumstances.
Claim: Israel doesn’t care about Palestinian civilians
Assessment: Myth, but Israel will always prioritize their own civilians over Palestine’s
Since 2017, the Israeli government has been providing Gaza with liquid fuel, food, medical care, and electricity for free after the Palestinian Authority stopped paying for these services. The Palestinian government, caring so little for its people, stopped paying the bills needed to meet these basic necessities for their citizens. But that’s not a human rights violation that Free Palestine will chalk on the sidewalk. Regardless of how the Palestinian Authority feels about the innocent civilians, Israel still decided to cover the check.
When Hamas took Israelites hostage across the border into Gaza, Israel finally shut down water, food, and electricity that they were providing entirely for free. Palestine supporters instantly labeled this a “human rights violation,” the fact that Israel stopped giving free stuff to the nation that started to shoot rockets at Jewish civilians.
However, there is a more legitimate human rights violation present. Israel is preventing humanitarian organizations from providing these services to Gaza. While this is a tragic part of the conflict, Israel needs to make a choice between the safety of the Israeli hostages and the rights of the Palestinians. By sitting around and waiting patiently for Palestine to start playing nice, Israel is all but assuring the death of these hostages. It’s at least reasonable to understand why Israel would make such a decision. It’s not Israel’s fault that Hamas is committing the war crime of taking hostages in the first place. Yet all we’ve been seeing on this campus is Israel’s “white supremacy” or “colonialism.” It’s been a one-sided story of the Western bully needlessly oppressing “innocent” people in the modern day.