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Dear editor:
I read Bruce Ticker’s column shortly after seeing a cartoon that gave the perfect response to the activists who rejected the Lederer brothers’ outreach to them. (Column: This Palestinian Comedian is Serious: “I Cannot Share the Stage with Zionazzis,” Boulder Jewish News, December 24, 2024) The activists said that Jews have no history in the land (of Israel), but the cartoon spoke of the birth of a very well-known Jew whose birth is recounted in the Christian Bible. https://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2024/12/christmas-eve.html
A brief review of the history of the founding of the modern State of Israel gives further insights into Palestinian rejectionism, the principal reason that a Palestinian state does not exist (despite the fact that such a “state” has been “recognized” by many of the nations that are members of the UN).
After the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the League of Nations assigned the war’s victors the task of dividing the empire’s land into modern states. Great Britain was assigned the mandate for Palestine and eventually set up the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan on 78% of the mandated land. Subsequently, the United Nations, as the successor to the League of Nations, proposed dividing the remaining 22% of the mandated land into a Jewish state and a second Arab state. The Zionist community in Palestine, which had been working, since the late 1800’s to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine (the site of ancient Israel), accepted this offer, but Arab leaders rejected it, threatening violence against the Zionists and the Mizrachi Jews living in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa even before the Partition Plan was approved by the UN General Assembly. The Arab-initiated violence of the late 1940’s failed to prevent the emergence of the modern State of Israel, but it did succeed in Egypt and Transjordan (now Jordan) gaining illegal control of Gaza and “the West Bank” (eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria), respectively. The areas under Jordanian rule were ethnically cleansed of their Jewish population, Jewish holy sites were destroyed and Jewish graves were desecrated. Both “the West Bank” and Gaza became staging sites for terrorist incursions into Israel. Neither Jordan nor Egypt gave any degree of autonomy to the Arabs of Palestine who were living under their rule. In fact, the 1964 founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization specified that the organization made no claims to areas then under Jordanian and Egyptian control. The aim of the PLO was “liberating” Palestine from the Jews. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-original-palestine-national-charter-1964
In June 1967, Jordanian forces fired on Israeli-held western Jerusalem as Jordan allied with Egypt and Syria in a war instigated with the open intention of destroying Israel and annihilating its people. The Six Day war ended with Israel having liberated Gaza and “the West Bank” as well as taking control of the Golan Heights (Syrian-held land from which snipers had, for years, been firing at Israeli farms located at the base of the Heights). Israel’s offer to withdraw from newly liberated land in exchange for recognition and peace was rejected by the Arab League in September 1967. There is no record of Palestinian leaders having urged acceptance of the deal so that a Palestinian state could be built on the land in question. https://www.sixdaywar.org/immediate-aftermath/the-3-nos-of-khartoum/
Palestinian leaders have subsequently rejected peace proposals from Israeli leaders spanning Israel’s political spectrum (left-winger Ehud Barak in 2001, centrist Ehud Olmert in 2008, right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu’s outlining of his vision for a demilitarized Palestinian state at Bar Ilan University in 2009). Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the first Trump Administration’s Peace to Prosperity plan before its details were fully revealed to the public. It has been pointed out that a major stumbling block for the Palestinians is Israel’s refusal to give people classified as “Palestine refugees” (UNRWA designation) a “Right of Return” to the homes the “refugees” claim their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, … lost when the State of Israel came into being in 1948. Such a “Right of Return” would essentially turn the nation-state of the Jews into a Muslim-majority state populated by millions of people (99.5% of them born into refugee status) who had grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for killing Jews.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/expose-the-palestinian-refugee-scam-1530833146
This may explain why the Lederer brothers didn’t receive the welcome they expected when they announced their support for a “Two State Solution.” Palestinian leaders view Two States as a Jew-free Palestine and a Muslim-majority Israel, while Jews (and Israel) want “Two States for Two Peoples” – a Palestinian state co-existing, peacefully, with the nation-state of the Jews, with members of minority groups having full civil rights in their country of residence (whether they’re living in Israel or in the Palestinian state) just as non-Jews have full civil rights in Israel.
Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA
