FREE PALESTINE: what does it mean?

Children of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, tribe.

I want to open today’s topic with an image. When the rabidly anti-Semitic Roger Waters of Pink Floyd puts on a concert, he likes to float a helium pig bearing symbols of “evil”, including a Jewish star, in the airspace directly above his audience.

You’ll notice that in this context, he doesn’t even bother with the moral smokescreen of the Israeli flag, as so many others do (a trend captured in the dark comic just below).

No, Roger Waters often doesn’t even bother with that cover. His helium pig is simply imprinted with the Star of David, the symbol of Jewish people everywhere.

I mention this only because whenever I’m confronted by the phrase “Free Palestine”, which is countless times a day, I picture such a helium pig. That balloon is my image of the sentiment itself: blind, mindless, full of hot air, empty yet bloated and floating around all over the place.

What does it mean? I suggest asking those who are calling for it. What does it mean to free Palestine from the river to the sea? What does the person typing it — or chanting it or shouting it or holding a sign emblazoned with it — mean by it?

As with a helium balloon, if you scratch beneath the surface, asking to go a single millimeter deeper than the skin, the whole thing will burst and plummet into the dirt.

If their explanation of what it means comes cloaked in yet another empty slogan, such as “End The Occupation,” then our next question should be: how?

People believe Hamas’ atrocities are the result of “the occupation”, when really, the precise inverse is true: the occupation is the result of Hamas’ atrocities.

Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally and totally in 2005, leaving the strip to be self-governing. They left a lot of infrastructure as a goodwill gesture.

I hope you know what happened next, but in case you don’t: Gaza elected Hamas (a terror group with their genocidal aspirations written explicitly into their charter) as its government. Within two hours of Israel’s total withdrawal, they were firing rockets into Israel. They destroyed all the greenhouses and other infrastructure Israel left them as a gift, including the water pipes, which they ripped out and converted into rockets. And over the better part of the next two decades, they built a $2.6 billion subcity beneath every inch of the Gaza Strip: a 400-mile-network of terror tunnels more extensive than the MTA.

And they have conducted a steady campaign of terror attacks the entire time. That’s why there are checkpoints and blockades and why Israel is forced to maintain control over its side of the border. Egypt does exactly the same — the fortifications they’ve put up on their own side of the border makes the security barrier around Fort Knox look like the slat fence in front of the OK Corral. But — and I know this will shock you — no one cares when Egypt does it.

Here are other brilliant responses I’ve heard to what “Free Palestine” means:

1. All the Jews should leave the region.
   

   Great. All 7 million Jews should be ethnically cleansed from our ancestral homeland. Ethnic cleansing is apparently just fine when it’s Jews! When we lived in Europe, they told us: Go back to Palestine. And then when we did, the world screams at us to go back to Europe. I wish they’d cut to the chase and just admit that they can’t stand the idea of Jews taking up space and breathing air anywhere.
   

2. Jews and Palestinians should form a bi-national secular democracy with equal power in the government and equal rights for all.
   
   In other words, Jews should let themselves be hopelessly outnumbered in no time at all and then be back to sqaure one: at the mercy of a host country.
   
   Bonus question: which Arab nation or Muslim country has offered a model of this peaceful, diverse, secular democracy, in which Jews are considered anything but “the other”? What has created your confidence that this imagined country, comprised in huge part of Hamas members and their widely indoctrinated followers, would be the first to bring this fabled bi-national secular democracy into being?
   

3. Finally, we have the very honest folks who admit they want Hamas — the noble freedom fighters, the resistance warriors, pursuing liberty for their people by any means necessary — to prevail.
   

   Let’s just go a millimeter deeper into that fantasy too. So Hamas wins, the Jews are annihilated or expelled, Palestine is “free”, and true to Hamas’ vision, in place of the Israeli government is an Islamic Caliphate, doing what the Islamic Caliphate does: throwing gay people from rooftops and hanging them from cranes, forcing women to cover themselves from crown to toe, imposing the most repressive version of Islam on everyone in the vicinity. Is that the free Palestine you want? Is that better than Israel?
   
   And then let’s go a millimeter deeper still. Israel is now gone and Iran, Russia, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a slew of other sociopathic Islamic extremist proxy armies are now the dominant force on the geopolitical chessboard. Russia keeps Ukraine and goes for Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and any other neighbor Putin decides to own. China seizes Taiwan. The struggle between moderate Muslims and Islamic extremists throughout the Middle East is weighted in favor of the extremists. Is this a good outcome? Is this what any western liberal or progressive should be fighting for?
   

   So fam, I know we can’t interrogate every instance of “Free Palestine” we encounter in the wild. But we have more of an opportunity when it’s a friend or acquaintance. As always, I recommend employing the Socratic method (which is a fancy way of saying: lead with questions).
   

   Questions are gold. Questions are the opposite of an attack. Questions are emblematic of curiosity and respectful inquiry. Questions invite the other to share their vision. What do they mean by Free Palestine? What does that look like to them? What is the outcome they seek to achieve?
   

   Give them lots of rope. Either they’ll refuse it and stick insistently to parroting empty phrases, which will reveal their inability to be real or say anything of substance — and this will be readily apparent to anyone watching and listening. Or they will pick up that rope and hang themselves in very short order, because if there were a reasonable way forward, Israel would have found it and done it by now.
   
   Okay, this is long, and I think I’ve covered my main points. I hope your week is off to a great start.

   
   I have a tiny ask of each of you reading right now. As of today, I’ve been at this substack for a few days short of one month. Your support so far has been appreciated beyond anything I can describe, and all I want is to keep doing this and my many other forms of Jewish advocacy full-time and then some. So my ask is just this: today, right now if possible, could you invite one other person to subscribe to Never Alone? Emphasize that it’s free and without any obligation. If each of you would take the literal single minute required to do that, I would be inexpressibly grateful.
   
   All right, I will be back in your inbox tomorrow! I will definitely be composing an “Ask Me Anything” response post, so if you have any questions about this conflict or our history or how to handle tension on any front within this context, please don’t hesitate to DM me or leave your inquiries in the comment section.
   
   Heartfelt love to you all. Chazak v’ematz! Am Yisrael Chai.