Knowing the facts, it is fair to ask why so many climate-centered organizations are focused on Israel? In truth, it is not just those wanting to save the climate that has adopted the Free Palestine mantra. 'Codepink,' which gained fame during the #MeToo movement and co-sponsored the infamous Women's March on Washington D.C. the day after President Trump was inaugurated, is also an organization that slides Palestine into almost everything they do.
It is ironic. An organization that bills itself as a 'Women-led grassroots organization working to support peace & human rights & end U.S. wars & militarism,' calls Israel an apartheid state and employs the 'from the river to the sea' mantra at many of its rallies. That chant has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or its complexities; it literally means Israel has no right to exist at all.
WATCH: HOW WAS JURY SELECTION HANDLED IN TRUMP'S TRIAL?
When Israel was defending itself against Gaza rocket fire, Codepink stood up for those firing those rockets, calling the missiles directed at civilian populations 'resistance'. They stood up for a group that subjugates women and punishes homosexuality and gender 'wokeness' over a country leading the region in women & gay rights for decades.
WATCH: "WE WILL OPEN YOU UP LIKE A SOFT PEANUT"
The hypocrisy is glaring, and yet few call them out. In fact, in many ways, organizations like them have been responsible for bringing the Free Palestine movement into almost every protest for any cause. Somehow, it seems, Israel is responsible for all the World's problems.
A LOOK INSIDE DEMOCRATS' PLAN TO WIN BACK THE HOUSE WITH RECORD INVESTMENT
There is a meme floating around the various Social Media platforms that mocks the irony of this. It has an image on top of three separate airplanes and the bottom of three distinct social causes with Palestinian banners and flags present at each. The caption reads, 'Palestinians realized that hijacking airplanes did not help their cause, so they decided to hijack other people's causes. As inappropriate as one might think it is, this seems to have been precisely what happened.
The concerning thing is how so many protesters who come out for one cause can be so easily manipulated to incorporate the cause of a people and a situation they know nothing about. The idea that so many can be swayed with little knowledge of the facts, history, and current reality is scary. It means Jim Jones was right; anyone will 'drink the Kool-Aid' if the leader is magnanimous enough.
DEMS' LAST-MINUTE BID TO SAVE SEATS AMID SOUTHERN BORDER TURMOIL!
It is easy to blame this all on anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League has used that word so often it has become meaningless to many. It is easy to blame Israel, a small country that takes its defense seriously and, as a result, is seen as the aggressor. The truth is that the blame for this can be placed on the Arab nations that have allowed Palestinian refugees to remain for seven decades when the United Nations says that the average time spent as a refugee is five years.
FOX NEWS COLUMNIST TEARS APART MTG'S "RECKLESS AGENDA"
The U.N. has an agency called the High Commission on Refugees, which manages the World's refugees, helps displaced people, and ensures their resettlement and integration into other countries.
According to the UNHCR, 'A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.' However, the Palestinians are different. For over seventy years, the descendants of those who fled Israel and Palestine have lived in permanent refugee camps across the Arab World.
For seventy years, not one Arab country has given citizenship to them. For seventy years, not one Arab country has tried to do anything for this population other than use them to further the cause of eliminating Israel. In fact, the UNHCR is not in charge of the Palestinian refugees; the organization was forced under Arab pressure to create a separate agency solely for the Palestinians; the United Nations Relief Works Agency is that agency.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS SLAM OMAR'S CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM REMARKS AFTER DAUGHTER'S ARREST
Has anyone ever asked why? Why are people born in other countries still considered refugees from Palestine and contrary to the UNHCR's standards? Why were special dispensation and a lot of money used to create and maintain an organization whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the refugee status of one specific group? Why has the only Jewish majority country in the World been targeted by a group of people who can claim close to fifty majority countries?
To answer this, we need to look back on how this all began. And to do so, we need to look at some hard truths. Truths that are unpopular and considered off-limits to even discuss.
The first truth is that Palestine was never a country. There was never an Arab who defined themselves as Palestinian before the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There is no glorified history, standard cultural practices, and no unifying event in history that the Palestinians have and celebrate until the Nakba – the day Israel was created.
In fact, I contend that had Israel never been created, there never would have been an Arab-led movement to free Palestine. To illustrate this, from the late 1800s through the creation of the only Jewish State in the World, the term Palestinian was used by and referred explicitly to Jews. Posters of these campaigns exist and can be used to support my contention (Below).
Jewish-led charities like the Zionist Organization of America and B'nai B'rith held fundraising drives to support the original Free Palestine movement. For all intents and purposes, it was freed in 1948 with the creation of the State of Israel. Many organizations that exist today and identify with the Arab Palestinian movement are simply using it as a cover for what can arguably be called an anti-Israel agenda.
When Lord Balfour sent a letter to Walter Rothschild in November of 1917, it set off a flurry of work designed to bring this vision to fruition. In 1922, a draft was issued that would define creating a Jewish National Home in Palestine, and here is the second hard truth that no one wants to discuss. When mapped out, it showed the layout of what is now Israel combined with Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) that was meant to be the Jewish nation, and the rest of Trans-Jordan, what is now today's Kingdom of Jordan that was to be the 'Arab Palestine.'
What happened from that time through the establishment of Israel in 1948 was nothing short of a concerted effort of pressure by prominent Arab states to ensure that the Jews were not given the initial piece of land discussed. In fact, Jordan was created as a separate country in 1946, and somehow the Jewish homeland had to now be divided up amongst Jews and the newly defined 'Arabs of Palestine.'
The last hard truth is this: Palestine's capital city was never meant to be East Jerusalem or even Ramallah; it was Amman, Jordan. Today, the World thinks the Jordanians are different from the Palestinian Arabs, when in fact, they are one and the same. Suppose a Palestinian refugee in Syria, Lebanon, or any other Arab country can still be considered a Palestinian refugee. In that case, we can call the Palestinians part of the Jordanian nation – as for all intents and purposes, they were thought of as that during the British Mandate.
As President Trump's efforts to bridge the divide between Israel and the Arab World bore fruit with the Abraham accords, the onus is now on the same Arab World to correct the record. Israel's Arab partners work towards dismantling the infrastructure they helped build that has fueled so much anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred throughout the years. Patriating the 'refugees' and their offspring into the countries they lived in would be a good start, but it cannot end there.
It is a big ask and likely never to happen as it would threaten the fragile peace between some of the Arab World and the only entity that can say it is a Jewish state. However, it should be the goal for the sake of truth and the sake of the Palestinians who have been made to be perpetual victims and used to further an unrighteous and sinister cause.
Discover alternative ideas that will make you think
Engage in mind bending debate
Earn points, rise in rank, have fun
