Recognition without reality

By rushing to recognize a Palestinian state, Western leaders embolden Hamas and delay the only real path to peace: disarmament, reform and negotiation.

Western recognition of Palestinian statehood without reform or disarmament is symbolism, not peace—and risks emboldening terror.

This past week, several Western governments—the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia—announced their recognition of a Palestinian state. At the United Nations, their diplomats framed the move as a bold step toward reviving the two-state solution.

 In reality, it is neither bold nor helpful. It is a symbolic gesture that will not bring peace to either Israelis or Palestinians. Worse, it risks encouraging further violence from Hamas and other terror groups who already view murder as the most effective tool in their arsenal.

 

Steve Cadman, CC BY-SA 2.0
via Wikimedia Commons

I understand the appeal of recognition from a distance. But it’s symbolism without substance. It costs nothing politically at home for Western leaders to talk about peace. It allows them to signal moral concern without having to grapple with the brutal reality of what Palestinians have built—or, more accurately, failed to build—in Gaza and the West Bank.

 But symbolism is not statecraft. Recognition does not create security forces, disarm terror groups, establish functioning institutions or teach accountability to a population fed a steady diet of anti-Israel propaganda.

 As The Wall Street Journal editorial page noted this week, recognition is detached from Middle East reality. It changes the diplomatic conversation in New York, not the facts on the ground in Nablus or Rafah. The New York Times, for its part, has carried sympathetic voices arguing that recognition is an overdue correction to decades of imbalance. But what these “pro” arguments overlook is crucial: Unless the underlying problems are addressed, this shortcut guarantees more bloodshed, not less.

Consider the timing. Hamas still controls Gaza. Its leaders openly promise more horrific days like Oct. 7. Hostages remain in captivity. Palestinian politics are fractured, elections are nonexistent, and corruption is rampant. To declare “Palestine is a state” in such conditions sends exactly the wrong message: Violence works, governance doesn’t matter, and the world will hand you rewards even if you refuse to disarm.

 Terror groups understand incentives. If recognition comes without demilitarization, then they will trumpet it as vindication of their strategy. For Israelis, this means living under the renewed threat of rockets, kidnappings and cross-border attacks—all justified in the name of a “recognized” cause. For Palestinians, it means another generation consigned to leadership by warlords instead of reformers.

Real peace requires sequencing, not shortcuts. First must come an end to terror, and the disarming of groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Second, there must be credible Palestinian governance reforms—transparent institutions, accountable security forces and leaders chosen in free elections. Third, the parties themselves must negotiate borders, security arrangements and the status of Jerusalem. Only after those steps are credibly underway does recognition become meaningful. Anything else is play-acting.

Imagine if Britain or France had recognized the Confederate States of America in 1862. Such a move would have legitimized a rebellion before the United States had resolved the fundamental questions of slavery and secession. That is exactly what today’s premature recognition of “Palestine” does; it cements dysfunction instead of curing it.

Supporters of recognition like to claim it “levels the playing field” between Israelis and Palestinians. But leveling the playing field while one side is armed to the teeth with Iranian missiles and the other is a democracy fighting for survival is not balance. It is folly. Others argue that recognition restores hope. Yet hollow hope is dangerous; it creates expectations that cannot be met, setting the stage for more disillusionment and more violence.

Even voices sympathetic to the Palestinian cause concede the point. Barbara Slavin, writing for the Stimson Center, described such recognition as “a largely symbolic gesture” that lacks real pressure or follow-through. Vox columnist Abdallah Fayyad likewise acknowledged that recognition by Western nations is “largely symbolic,” motivated by domestic politics more than a workable peace strategy. Pro-Palestinian legal scholar Noura Erakat noted in a piece published by L’Orient Today that recognition, unaccompanied by enforcement or reparations, remains symbolic at best.

 When your own advocates acknowledge that recognition does not change the reality on the ground, it should be a red flag.

 There’s a better path. Western leaders who genuinely care about Israeli-Palestinian peace should stop chasing headlines and start demanding accountability. Recognition should be tied to hard benchmarks: the disarmament of Hamas, the release of hostages, the creation of functioning Palestinian institutions and the holding of real elections. Without those steps, statehood is not a bridge to peace but a recipe for war.

 The Jewish people have always prayed for peace, and Israel has proven again and again its willingness to negotiate, compromise and sacrifice for the chance at a lasting settlement. But peace cannot be built on illusions. Recognizing a Palestinian state in today’s conditions does not hasten peace; it delays it. It does not empower moderates; it emboldens extremists.

 Those who care about a true two-state solution should be the loudest voices opposing this premature recognition. Otherwise, they will find themselves applauding a symbolic victory that becomes a practical tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians.

 Eight Senate Democrats Support Palestinian Statehood — Here’s Why It’s Dangerous

At first glance, the surge of support by Democratic elected officials for recognizing Palestinian statehood seems an act of moral clarity: After decades of suffering, political displacement and human tragedy, isn’t it overdue for Palestinians to receive the diplomatic recognition so many world powers already afford them?

Beneath the veneer of humanitarian concern and lofty rhetoric, however, lies a host of practical, ethical and strategic problems that Democratic politicians seem to gloss over—and that deserve a harder look from voters and policymakers alike.

Here are the problems with the resolution:

• Recognizing a state of ‘Palestine’ rewards weak governance and terrorist complicity.

One of the central promises made by advocates of statehood is that recognition will help moderate and stabilize Palestinian governance, especially the Palestinian Authority. But much of the Palestinian territories, especially the Gaza Strip, is controlled by Hamas, a group many nations, including the United States, classify as a terrorist organization. How can recognition that bolsters a formal state apparatus avoid strengthening this group or enabling its influence?

U.S. Capitol, CC0 Public Domain

Demands for Palestinian recognition often come with conditions—elections, reform, demilitarization—but there is little credible mechanism or pressure to ensure these conditions are met. Without enforceable guarantees, what many Democratic endorsements risk doing is to reward organizations that have repeatedly undermined peace, nurtured extremism and violated human rights themselves.

• Ignoring the security realities for Israel.

Israel shares a border—and often shares the consequences—of policies in neighboring territories. Every recognition of Palestinian statehood must contend with the decades-long history of cross-border attacks, rocket fire, tunnels and incitement from factions that reject Israel’s right to exist. Democratic politicians who favor recognition as a fait accompli often underplay the real threats to Israel’s security and sovereignty.

To press forward without ensuring robust security arrangements, counterterrorism cooperation, border control and demilitarization is not just naive. It is reckless. The United States has long had an ally in Israel with deep existential concerns; those concerns don’t vanish simply because a political statement is made.

• Undermining peacemaking by preempting negotiation.

The soundest path to peace would seem to be direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, including compromises from both sides. But unilateral recognition—without mutual agreement on borders, security guarantees, the status of Jerusalem, refugees and much else—is tantamount to picking winners before the peace process begins. Democratic support for statehood often reduces complex, bitter disputes into sloganeering. It signals to Israel that diplomatic recognition is the goalpost, not the long journey of compromise.

Meanwhile, Palestinians may be promised recognition without obtaining de facto sovereignty or stability in daily life. Symbolism, after all, does little for those without jobs, clean water or safety from rockets.

• Enter the Senate resolution.

This is no longer a fringe idea. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has introduced a non-binding resolution calling on the United States to recognize a demilitarized State of Palestine alongside Israel. He was joined by a list of co-sponsors: Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). These are not backbenchers; they include leading figures in foreign policy and national security committees.

Their proposal may be symbolic, but symbolism carries weight. A resolution like this signals to the world that swaths of the Democratic Party are willing to bypass negotiations, downplay terrorism and demand concessions from Israel without reciprocal demands of the Palestinians. It validates the long-standing Palestinian strategy of pursuing unilateral recognition in international bodies while avoiding the tough compromises needed for actual peace.

• Domestic accountability and hypocrisy.

Democratic politicians who push for Palestinian statehood tout their humanitarian values, the importance of international law and human rights. Yet many of these same leaders have been silent or weak when it comes to corruption, lack of democratic rule, suppression of dissent and the treatment of minorities within Palestinian governance. Worse, voters within the United States who raise concerns—about antisemitism, about Israel’s security, about inconsistent values—are too often dismissed as being “on the wrong side of history.”

The risk is a foreign policy based more on political identity and grandstanding than on careful, consistent principles. And in democratic systems, that kind of policy tends to produce backlash.

• Consequences: Not just diplomatic, but strategic.

Politically, this position risks alienating crucial allies and donors, both Jewish Americans and others who see Israel’s survival as non-negotiable. Strategically, it could weaken U.S. leverage: If recognition is given without a strong negotiating posture, the United States loses bargaining chips for insisting on peace, reforms or guarantees. It also risks emboldening regional actors who are less interested in peace than in confrontation.

• A call for humility and tough love.

Senators such as Merkley, Van Hollen, Kaine, Sanders, Peter Welch, Tina Smith, Baldwin and Hirono may believe that they are advancing peace by championing Palestinian statehood, but in reality, they are advancing instability. By pushing recognition without demanding disarmament, reform and accountability, they risk creating not a peaceful neighbor for Israel, but another failed state dominated by terror.

Voters should remember exactly who is willing to gamble with Israel’s security—and America’s credibility—in the name of symbolism.

* * *

This column and others by me can be read at JNS.ORG here. 

Stephen M. Flatow

 

American Jews, this is your war, too

Hamas doesn’t care whether you support Netanyahu or not. When Jews are murdered for being Jews, unity must come before politics.

Let’s be honest: Benjamin Netanyahu is not everyone’s favorite politician. That’s fair. Debate over policy, leadership and politics is healthy in any democracy, including Israel’s. But there comes a point in times of war when internal disagreements must be set aside.

Because this war is not about Bibi. It is about Israel’s survival. And the Jewish people, especially American Jews, must not let personality distract from principle.

Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has faced a military, moral and psychological assault of unprecedented complexity. Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 250, including children, the elderly and entire families, was not just a “battle.” It was a pogrom, fueled by genocidal ideology and celebrated openly by its perpetrators. Yet today, Israel is the one on trial in the court of public opinion, not the murderers who triggered the war.

Hamas doesn’t care whether you support Netanyahu or not. When Jews are murdered for being Jews, unity must come before politics.

 

What Israel faces in Gaza is not a conventional war or even a typical counterterrorism campaign. It is asymmetric warfare against a terrorist organization that intentionally uses its own civilians as tools of war. Hamas stores weapons in schools, digs tunnels under hospitals and launches rockets from densely populated neighborhoods. It steals food aid from the population. This is not incidental; it is strategy.

 

Hamas leaders have made this explicit. In 2008, Fathi Hammad, then Hamas’s interior minister, declared:  “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry. … This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen.”

 

What sane person would say that?

 

That’s not rhetoric; it’s policy. Hamas relies on images of dead civilians, especially children, to inflame world opinion and pressure Israel into submission. Tragically, too many in the West, including some Jewish voices, fall for this manipulative theater. They call for ceasefires, condemn Israeli “disproportionality” and wring their hands at the humanitarian crisis, while ignoring how Hamas engineers that crisis.

 

But put this in perspective. During the U.S.-led assault on ISIS in Mosul from 2016 to 2017, between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were estimated to have died, according to The New York Times. That battle, fought by Western militaries with advanced precision weaponry, still resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. No one accused the United States of genocide. No one proposed sanctions.

 

Yet Israel, which goes to unprecedented lengths to warn civilians, including dropping leaflets, making phone calls and pausing operations to allow evacuations, is treated like a rogue state.

 

The moral asymmetry here is staggering. Hamas celebrates death. Israel mourns it, even when forced to cause it to protect its own people.

 

And yet, Western diplomats—many from countries that have never faced a single rocket attack—dare to lecture Israel on restraint. The European Union, Canada and even the United States have called for a “ceasefire,” as if peace can be restored by papering over mass murder.

 

Some American Jews have joined that chorus, distancing themselves from Israel out of discomfort with its current government. That’s not just misguided. It’s dangerous.

 

Hamas doesn’t hate Israel because of the policies of Netanyahu and his government. It hates Israel because it exists. Article 13 of the Hamas Charter states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”

 

Diplomacy, negotiation, peace-building? “All are a waste of time,” the document says.

 

This is the enemy Israel is fighting. An enemy backed by Iran and Qatar, supplied by global jihad networks and committed—openly, unapologetically—to the eradication of the Jewish state.

 

To our fellow Jews in the Diaspora, especially in America: This war is about you, too. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran don’t care whether you vote Likud or Labor, whether you’re Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or unsure. On Oct. 7, Hamas murdered Thai farm workers and Israeli Bedouin alongside Jews. Their hatred is not nuanced. It is total.

 

And as antisemitism, let’s call it what it is—Jew-hatred—surges on campuses, in public squares, and online, it’s clear that Hamas’s war against Israel is fueling a broader war against Jews everywhere. This is not just a political crisis but a civilizational one.

 

So, what is the role of American Jews?

 

It is to stand with Israel—not conditionally, not reluctantly and not just when it’s easy. It is to reject the moral fog that equates a democratic state defending its citizens with a terrorist group that hides behind children. It is to recognize that you can critique Israeli policy at another time, but right now, we must remain united.

 

To those who are hesitant, ask yourself this: Would you demand moral perfection from any other country under siege? Would you have told Britain in 1940 to cease fire until Winston Churchill stepped down?

 

Israel’s democracy will sort out its leadership in due time. However, today, it needs our solidarity. Our advocacy. Our unapologetic defense in the face of global slander.

 

As the Psalmist wrote: “He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” But Israel still needs us to stay awake—and to stand up.

Stephen M. Flatow

This column originally appeared on JNS.ORG.  You can read it and others by me here.

Bono’s compassion is real—but his Gaza remarks risk moral confusion between democracy and terror. Stephen Flatow responds

Bono’s compassion is real—but his Gaza remarks risk moral confusion

 

Bono, Wikimedia Commons

Bono’s compassion is genuine. But his recent Gaza comments dangerously blur the line between a democracy defending its citizens and a terror group targeting them.

As a bereaved father and terror victims’ advocate, I know that empathy is essential—but not when it comes at the expense of truth.

Read my response in Israel National News to Bono's comments here.

 Stephen M. Flatow

#Israel #Hamas #Bono #MoralClarity #IsraelUnderAttack #HumanRights #StopTerror #MiddleEastTruth #JusticeForVictims 

Macron’s Palestinian state push: A dangerous lecture from a country in disarray

France is burning, and Macron thinks Israel needs a lecture?

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has joined the chorus of Western leaders pushing unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state—another reckless move wrapped in the language of “peace.” But coming from a country gripped by riots, antisemitic violence, and rising insecurity, Macron’s lecture to Israel rings hollow.

© Rémi Jouan, CC-BY-SA, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons

In my new JNS column, I argue that Macron’s push isn’t about resolving the conflict—it’s about deflecting from his own political failures at home. Demanding concessions from Israel while ignoring Hamas’s terror is not statesmanship. It’s appeasement dressed as diplomacy.
👉 Read the full op-ed here

Stephen M. Flatow

#EmmanuelMacron #France #Israel #Hamas #PalestinianState #Appeasement #ForeignPolicy #Antisemitism #Zionism #MiddleEast #VictimsVoice #JNS #SecurityVsTerror #DoubleStandards

Fix your own country, Prime Minister Starmer

While Britain faces spiraling crime, growing antisemitism, and social unrest, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is more focused on pressuring Israel than fixing his own country. In his first major foreign policy moment, Starmer has threatened to recognize a Palestinian state if Israel doesn’t meet vague “peace” conditions—essentially handing Hamas a political victory.

Keir Starmer outside 10 Downing St.  Wikimedia Commons

In my latest op-ed for JNS, I challenge Starmer's warped priorities. How can a leader demand concessions from Israel while ignoring the terrorist entity on the other side? It’s not diplomacy—it’s dangerous moral failure.
👉 Read the full column here

Stephen M. Flatow

#KeirStarmer #Israel #UKPolitics #Hamas #Appeasement #Antisemitism #MiddleEast #PalestinianState #Terrorism #FixYourOwnCountry #ForeignPolicy #VictimsVoice #JNS #Zionism

Canada’s Dangerous Embrace of Appeasement

Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, has chosen to make his diplomatic debut not by supporting democratic allies or condemning terrorism, but by rewarding it. In announcing Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state—absent peace, negotiation, or even Palestinian renunciation of Hamas—Carney has joined a growing bloc of Western leaders more interested in appeasement than in justice. His decision doesn’t advance peace; it emboldens terror.

 European Communities Audiovisual Services via Wikimedia Commons.

In my latest column at JNS, I explain how this move undermines not only Israel but the broader Western effort to deter radical Islamist violence. Recognition without conditions means handing a victory to those who use murder as a political strategy. Canada once stood firmly against that. What changed? Read the full op-ed here:
👉 Canada’s Dangerous Embrace of Appeasement

Stephen M. Flatow

#Israel #Canada #MarkCarney #PalestinianState #Appeasement #Terrorism #MiddleEastPolicy #JNS #VictimsVoice #Hamas #ForeignPolicy #PeaceNotTerror #JewishVoices #AlisaFlatow #Zionism

 Unity is Israel’s most powerful weapon

Its military victories have always depended on something deeper than airpower or intelligence: The unity of its people.

I write in my latest column on JNS.ORG:

The State of Israel has always lived by the principle that its survival depends not only on military might but on the unity of its people. A review of Israel’s modern military history—from the existential wars of 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 to more recent conflicts in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the 2025 strike on Iran—reveals a clear pattern: when Israeli society stands united, its military achieves clarity and strength; when it is divided, outcomes are murky, costly and inconclusive.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the traumatic aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israeli communities near the border with Gaza. In that darkest of moments, the deep divisions that had wracked Israeli society for months over judicial reforms and political polarization were, at least temporarily, set aside. The country responded with a surge of unity not seen in decades.

The answer to the question of Israeli successes on the battlefield comes down to "unity."

If Israelis can re-embrace that unity, then perhaps this war—born of unimaginable loss—can also mark the beginning of national restoration. 

The full column can be read here.

Stephen M. Flatow

 

Teaching terror to children, it's child abuse according to Hillary Clinton

 

Why Hillary Clinton called it ‘Palestinian child abuse’

At summer camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian Arab youths are being taught that all of Israel—Tel Aviv, Haifa, everything—is “occupied Palestine” and must be annihilated

By Stephen M. Flatow

It’s summertime!

“Summer-camp activities” for youth that present terrorists as role models at the
Palestinian Authority Security Forces’ Al-Istiqlal University. Credit: PMW.

For most children, that means campfires, nature hikes and outdoor games like “Capture the Flag.”

For kids in the regions governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, it means weapons training, skits in which the children pretend to kidnap and murder Jews, and lectures on the importance of destroying Israel.

Hillary Clinton once called it “Palestinian child abuse.” One glance at the campers’ daily schedule explains why.

The Central Hebron branch of Fatah—the major faction of the P.A.—has posted on its website dozens of photos and descriptions of their local “Buds of Construction and Liberation” summer camp. Instead of photos of smiling children holding popsicles or swimming in the camp lake, we see photos of smiling Palestinian Arab children holding AK-47 rifles. They’re standing in front of a giant banner showing P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

Palestinian Media Watch, which translated the captions, points out that the banner also shows the official Fatah logo, including rifles, a hand grenade and the official P.A. map of the region, which labels all of Israel as “Palestine.”

Read the full column at jns.org

Whatever happened to the generation of peace - college students back Hamas

Palestinians vote for genocide -
What happened to the generation of peace?

Hamas won overwhelmingly in elections for the student council at a leading Palestinian Arab university last week. In other words, the young leadership of the Palestinian Arab community just voted for genocide.

 When I use the term genocide, I am not indulging in hyperbole. I am referring to the actual, legal definition of genocide, which is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

“Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide

 That’s exactly what Hamas has been doing for decades, with thousands of rockets, flaming balloons, stabbings, bombings, sniper fire, suicide attacks and kidnap-murders.

And that’s exactly what Hamas has always advocated in its official charter, which Simon Wiesenthal Center has described as “a Fatwa (Muslim religious decree) for genocide.”

(photo credit: FLASH90)

So, when the students at Birzeit University elected Hamas representatives to 28 of the 51 student council seats, they were making a clear and unequivocal statement: they want to “destroy, in whole or in part,” the seven million Jews in Israel.

 This was supposed to be the generation of peace. The 1993 Oslo agreement was based on a Palestinian leadership commitment to raise their young people to embrace non-violence and peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. They promised to change their old hate-filled textbooks so that Palestinian classrooms would become incubators of peace instead of training facilities for war.

 The fact that young Palestinian Arabs voted for a genocidal group shows that the Palestinian educational system has never changed. No new curriculum has been instituted. No textbooks have been changed. Palestinian Arab boys and girls have been raised since 1993 in the same way they were raised before 1993: to hate and kill Jews.

 LET ME say that again: to hate and kill Jews - not to hate and kill Israelis, and not to hate and kill settlers.

 The distinction is crucially important because it goes to the motives of Hamas and its voters. If their motive was simply to secure some territory and live in peace next to Israel, then many people would see some justification in Hamas violence against settlers.

 If, however, Hamas’s motive is simply to kill Jews, then their actions are genocidal. Nothing can justify it. And no surrender of territory will ever put an end to it.

 Obviously, not everyone who has been harmed in Hamas attacks has been Jewish. But, we know who they are trying to kill. And we know it for the simple reason that Hamas terrorists never try to murder Israeli Arabs.

 Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens. So, if Hamas is against Israelis and not Jews, why don’t they ever attack Israeli Arabs?

 If Hamas’s grievance is against the policies of Israel and not against Jews, then they should be attacking Israeli Arabs, just as they attack Israeli Jews, but, they don’t.

 If they were merely against “Israelis,” Hamas newspapers, and radio and television programs would be inciting Palestinians to hate Israeli Arabs with the same vehemence that they hate Israeli Jews. They would be accusing Israeli Arabs of being evil and Nazi-like. Their political cartoons against the occupation would be showing Israeli Arabs as monstrous occupiers. Instead, their cartoons show occupiers with huge, hooked noses, side curls, beards and yarmulkes.

Hamas doesn’t plant bombs in supermarkets in Israeli Arab neighborhoods. They don’t machine-gun bus passengers in Israeli Arab towns. They don’t kidnap Israeli Arab teenagers from hitchhiking posts and murder them. The reason is simple, and there is no other plausible explanation, their goal is to murder Jews and that makes it genocide.

 It’s time to acknowledge the true nature of what Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists have been doing to Jews for more than a century. It’s not about politics. It’s not about policies. It’s not about territories or settlers. It’s genocide.

 That’s what the young leaders of the Palestinian Arabs voted for last week. That’s the sad and ugly reality that Israel and its supporters will have to confront in the years ahead.

 The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism.

This post originally appeared on JPost.Com

 Emma Watson is right

 Hopefully, her declaration about the Palestinians will stimulate a serious conversation about the cruel occupation that the international community has been ignoring. 

“Free Palestine!” says actress Emma Watson.

 She’s right.

 The territories where the Palestinian Arabs live are indeed enslaved. They deserve to be freed from the tyrannical rule of their oppressors—Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Emma Watson Wikimedia Commons

 The actress, best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” films, set off a firestorm in the world of social media with her Instagram post showing “Free Palestine!” banners and expressing “solidarity” with them. Hopefully, her declaration will stimulate a serious conversation about the cruel occupation that the international community has been ignoring.

The details concerning Hamas and the P.A., which I cite here, are all quoted from the latest reports by two strongly pro-Palestinian groups: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These are not “Israeli allegations.” They are what the Palestinian Arabs’ most vocal supporters are saying about the two Arab regimes that rule over 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs.

 During the past year, “the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Hamas de facto administration in the Gaza Strip continued to crack down on dissent, including by stifling freedoms of expression and assembly, attacking journalists and detaining opponents,” reports Amnesty.

 Human Rights Watch notes that the P.A. recently jailed journalist Sami al-Sai for the crime of “administering a Facebook page that had posted information about PA corruption.” Twenty protesters in Ramallah who dared to cry out against P.A. corruption were likewise jailed. Hamas recently arrested seven citizens for “participating in a video chat where they answered questions from Israeli civilians about life in Gaza.” And other Gazans were jailed for “weakening the revolutionary spirit.

Hamas also frequently executes citizens after “trials” that are “marred with due process violations,” reports Human Rights Watch.

 How do the P.A. and Hamas regimes treat those whom it arrests? “Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and Gaza routinely used torture and other ill-treatment with impunity. … Security forces in both areas used unnecessary and/or excessive force during law enforcement activities.”

 What about women’s rights in Occupied Palestine? Amnesty: “Women and girls faced discrimination in law and practice and were inadequately protected against sexual and other gender-based violence, including so-called honour killings.” Last year alone, “nineteen women died in the West Bank and 18 in Gaza as a result of gender-based violence.”

 Human Rights Watch points out that the P.A. “has no comprehensive domestic violence law.” Keep in mind that the P.A. has been ruling for 27 years. Nearly three decades in power and still no comprehensive domestic violence law.

 With regard to gay rights, Amnesty reports: “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people continued to face discrimination and lacked protection” at the hands of Hamas and the P.A. In Gaza, section 152 of the penal code “criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity and makes it punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.”

 Citing local Palestinian Arab human-rights activists, Amnesty says that in the past year, there were numerous “violations of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press,” as well as “158 cases in the West Bank and 118 in Gaza of the arbitrary arrests of opponents and critics.”

 Amnesty says that last year, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms “recorded 97 incidents of attacks against journalists, including arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment during interrogation, confiscation of equipment, physical assaults and bans on reporting: 36 in the West Bank and 61 in Gaza.”

 As for elections, the P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 17th year of his four year-term and has repeatedly postponed parliamentary elections. In Gaza, too, democracy is a dirty word.

I realize that Emma Watson is an actress, not an expert on Middle East affairs. And in posting about “Palestine,” she might have just been going along with what she thinks all the cool young celebrities are doing.

 But perhaps the international uproar that she has provoked will inspire her to take a closer look at the implications of what she posted on Instagram. Because in raising the issue of freeing the Palestinian Arabs from their real occupiers, she’s actually on to something.

 Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism.”

 

 

Once Again, Qatar Saves Hamas

by Stephen M. Flatow / JNS.org

The government of Qatar has again rescued Hamas.

Every time the Hamas terror regime in Gaza is on the brink of collapse, the Gulf state of Qatar comes riding in on a white horse like a knight in shining armor to ensure that Hamas will live to see another day. What happened to the “moderate” Qatar that American Jewish leaders were praising just a few years ago?

Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

This time, Hamas allegedly is running out of money to pay the salaries of its employees. If you don’t pay your employees, they don’t work. And if your workers don’t work, your gangster regime collapses. The collapse of Hamas would obviously be a good thing for Israel, the United States and modern civilization in general.

But once again, Qatar has jumped in on the side of the bad guys.

The new deal, according to media reports, will involve Qatar sending fuel to Gaza through Egypt. Hamas is then going to sell the fuel in order to meet its payroll.

That will keep Hamas in power so that it can continue firing thousands of missiles at Israeli kindergartens and kibbutzim near the Gaza border. And it can keep its cells in Judea and Samaria operating, so they can murder Jews there, too.

Qatar is already underwriting Gaza’s power plant and sending financial aid to 100,000 Gazans every month through a UN voucher system, which saves Hamas the expense of having to provide that aid. And it offered Hamas $500 million to rebuild after the 11-day conflict with Israeli in May—a conflict started by the terrorist organization and one that ended with the launching of more than 4,000 rockets at civilian populations in Israel. In short, Qatar is pretty much propping up the entire Hamas mini-terror state. 

Hamas is not the only terror gang supported by Qatar. Its close relationships with the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood have been well-documented. And a lawsuit now making its way through British courts charges that Qatar has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Al-Nusra Front, a Syrian-based affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

 And for those who are concerned about the rise of antisemitism around the world, it’s worth recalling that a report by the Anti-Defamation League found the official Qatari government media continues to publish editorial cartoons “which blatantly demonize Jews” and “draw on the worst kind of antisemitic themes.”

In addition, a review by MEMRI of textbooks prepared by Qatar’s Ministry of Education and used in its schools found that they “feature antisemitic motifs, presenting Jews as treacherous, dishonest and crafty, and at the same time as weak, wretched and cowardly.”

Moreover, the last international book fair in Qatar’s capital, Doha, featured antisemitic books such as “The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers” and “Lies Spread by the Jews,” and an Arabic translation of “Awakening to Jewish Influence in the United States of America” by white-supremacist leader (and former Ku Klux Klansman) David Duke.

This is all quite different from what we were told by the handful of leaders of American Zionist organizations who took all-expenses-paid trips to meet with the Emir of Qatar in his oil-rich Gulf kingdom in 2017-18. One Jewish official later admitted publicly that he was a paid, registered foreign agent of the Qatari government.

When the secret trips were exposed by journalists, the Jewish leaders defended their actions on the grounds that Qatar was becoming more moderate.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar hosting and sponsoring the world’s largest antisemitic media network, Al Jazeera.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar financing terrorist groups around the world.

And I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar rescuing and sponsoring a deadly terrorist regime along Israel’s southern border.

It’s time to take off the blinders and see Qatar for what it really is—a terror-funding outlet for antisemitic vitriol.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism.”

 

Poverty doesn’t cause Arab terrorism

 The main cause of terrorism is ideology. That’s hard for Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience.

My column on jns.org.

Is poverty the root cause of Palestinian Arab terrorism?

That’s what U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to think. At a press conference during his recent visit to the Middle East, Blinken argued that the forthcoming U.S. aid package to Gaza will defeat the terrorists.

“Reconstruction and relief for the people of Gaza” will “undermine Hamas,” he claimed. “I say that because Hamas thrives, unfortunately, on despair, misery, desperation, on a lack of opportunity.” If the United States provides “genuine prospect for opportunity, progress and material improvement in people’s lives,” then “Hamas’s foothold in Gaza will slip. We know that, and I think Hamas knows that.”

We know that? How, exactly? Usually, the way we know things is from past experience. We know something happened in the past, so we conclude that if we duplicate those conditions, that thing will happen again. If the billions of dollars in aid that the United States sent to the Palestinian Arabs in the past had led to a decrease in terrorism and the undermining of Hamas then, yes, it would be reasonable to conclude that we should do more of that. But in reality, the exact opposite happened.

With the signing of the Oslo Accords, America began sending $500 million annually to the Palestinian Arabs, including to Gaza, then ruled by the Palestinian Authority. That’s a total of $10 billion-plus from 1994 to 2006.

If anything would have “undermined” Hamas, that largesse should have done it. Yet somehow, all the “opportunity, progress and material improvement” that money brought didn’t convince the people of Gaza to reject terrorism. On the contrary, in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006, the voters democratically gave Hamas a majority of the seats.

In June 2007, Hamas became the ruling regime in Gaza. Every few years since then, Hamas has attacked Israel, the Israelis have bombed Gaza, and the United States and the international community have rushed in with hundreds of millions of dollars in “humanitarian aid.” Yet that aid has never undermined Hamas. Fourteen years later, Hamas is still in power.

Certainly, it’s true that in the United States, poverty contributes to crime. The mistake that Blinken is making is to assume that the Mideast is similar to the American Midwest and that terrorism is just another form of crime. Neither of those assumptions is valid.

Viennese terrorist Kujtim Fejzulai

The main cause of terrorism is ideology, not poverty. That’s hard for some Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience. Most Americans are not ideological. American culture doesn’t accept political violence. The American government does not promote the use of violence. The religions that most Americans embrace do not espouse violence.

Contrast that with the Middle East, where Muslim fundamentalism actively encourages violence, and governing regimes such as the Palestinian Authority actively promote terrorism and glorify terrorists as heroes and martyrs. The Palestinian Arab public is inculcated daily through the regime-controlled media, with pro-violence messages. Children in P.A. schools absorb those messages daily in their classrooms. Summer camps in Gaza teach children to crawl under barbed wire with weapons, albeit fake ones, in their hands.

The stereotype that Palestinian terrorists are all single, unemployed young men who are lashing out because of their poverty is nonsense. Studies of suicide bombers, for example, have found that many were well-educated, employed, and family men and even women.

Remember the 415 Hamas terrorists whom then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin deported to Lebanon in 1992, in response to a wave of terrorist attacks against Israelis. The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that “many” of the deported terrorists were “businessmen, academics, lawyers [and] doctors.”

Likewise, the co-founder and longtime leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was a practicing pediatrician. By day, he treated Palestinian children; by night, he organized the murder of Israeli children. Rantisi, of course, is just one example of a successful, educated Palestinian Arab professional who chose to become a mass murderer.

There are countless others.

This applies to other Mideast terrorist groups as well. In 2016, the World Bank undertook a study of 4,000 foreigners who joined ISIS. Here were the report’s key findings:

• “These individuals are far from being uneducated or illiterate … 69 percent of recruits report at least a secondary education … a large fraction have gone on to study at university. Only 15 percent left school before high school and less than 2 percent are illiterate.”

• “Foreign recruits from the Middle East, North Africa and South and East Asia are significantly more educated than what is typical in their region.”

• “The vast majority … of [ISIS] recruits from Africa, South and East Asia and the Middle East … declared having an occupation before joining the organization.”

The authors of the study wrote that, as a result, their conclusion “is consistent with a number of other studies that come to a similar conclusion: poverty is not a driver of radicalization into violent extremism.”

Blinken is wrong. The Biden administration’s plan to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza will not undermine Hamas. It won’t promote moderation. It won’t increase the chances for peace. It will just be throwing good money after bad.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism.”