Where openly anti-Israel rhetoric is aired by woke politicians, media elites all too often are close behind to follow up and justify their words.
Instead of criticizing the invocation of a notorious dog-whistle calling for the destruction of Israel, CNN pundit and New York Times contributing opinion writer Peter Beinart last week defended it.
The call “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has long been understood as a euphemism for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. So when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) retweeted a social media post, those words were met with strong opposition from many Jews and Israelis.
The Democratic Majority tweeted, “@RashidaTlaib is not just opposed to Israeli control of the West Bank — this slogan means she sees the entire State of Israel as illegitimate and wants it eliminated. That’s an immoral and reprehensible position.”
In response, Beinart used his public position to espouse the spurious perspective that this call for the destruction of Israel actually means something else entirely: the establishment of a state in which Jews and Palestinians would live equally.
“@RashidaTlaib supports 1 state where Jews + Palestinians live equally, under the same law. Why is that less moral that the current 1 state: Where millions of Palestinians lack citizenship, due process, free movement + the right to vote for the govt that controls their lives?” Beinart opined.
.@RashidaTlaib supports 1 state where Jews + Palestinians live equally, under the same law. Why is that less moral that the current 1 state: Where millions of Palestinians lack citizenship, due process, free movement + the right to vote for the govt that controls their lives? https://t.co/2HUNJaxYPa
— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) December 1, 2020
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He subsequently followed up by tweeting, “I get why many Jews find slogan ‘Palestine from River to Sea’ frightening. Some have used it to disregard Jewish rights (1st Hamas charter, for instance). But @RashidaTlaib has been clear that Jews + Palestinians deserve equality. Suggesting otherwise is a smear.”
Beinart’s disingenuous defense of Tlaib flies in the face of the facts. Whatever the congresswoman’s position may or may not be, the slogan she promoted is one which openly calls for the replacement of Israel. The call is not one about national liberation, but of national annihilation masquerading as “justice,” and decades ago was being used by terror groups which abducted, tortured and murdered Israeli civilians.
Let's get some clarity here. This phrase was used by the PLO leadership, specifically Abu Iyad, the head of the Black September terrorist group, which in the name of “freedom” and “resistance” in 1972 kidnapped, castrated, tortured, and then murdered 11 Israeli Olympians. pic.twitter.com/DsTQd7t96s
— Claire (@ClaireRedacted) December 1, 2020
Prior to the establishment of Israel, Jews in Middle East countries lived as second-class citizens under Arab rule. To the Jewish ear, any call to “free” the Holy Land means ending Jewish self-determination and subjecting Jews to yet again becoming a group of second-class citizens who are discriminated against by a system which favors the Arab majority, at best. It is precisely from this kind of system that hundreds of thousands of Jews fled since 1948. At worst, it means the utter destruction of the Jewish state and the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Jews living there.
As Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post noted, a troubling double-standard is at play here: Only for Israel are people regarded as a theoretical entity who can “be removed and forced into another country.” Nobody ever dares suggest such a thing being done to people elsewhere.
Are there other cases where millions of people who live in a country are told by a US member of Congress that their state will be removed and forced into another country…say like ordering India and Pakistan together, or Kosovo back to be part of Serbian-led Yugoslavia?
— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) December 1, 2020
While the likes of Beinart may claim that Tlaib’s real intention is for Jews and Arabs to live alongside one another as equals in a binational state, history has shown that this has never been the case before, and it is unlikely to materialize on the backdrop of one of the world’s most bitterly contested conflicts. Even under British administration, well before the establishment of Israel, Jews were being slaughtered in the Holy Land by their Arab neighbors.
Related Reading — Unprovoked Carnage: The Hebron Massacre of 1929
Beinart’s willful misinterpretation of Tlaib’s tweet is also demonstrably dishonest: When the Jordanians occupied the West Bank and Egypt took over Gaza between 1948 and 1967, there was no mass international movement to “free Palestine.” When the corruption-riddled Palestinian Authority subsequently came to power and inflicted great harm and often physical violence on the Palestinian population, those calling out for the end of Israel fell silent.
This isn’t the first time that a journalist connected to CNN has engaged in this kind of rhetoric. In 2018, after calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” at the United Nations, CNN terminated the employment of contributor Marc Lamont Hill.
Until today, I never heard of of @marclamonthill (don't watch a lot of cable TV). This is disgusting. Calling for the elimination of Israel is anti-Semitic and (being thankfully futile) does Palestinians no favors. https://t.co/na3ma7n8IV
— Dan Shapiro (@DanielBShapiro) November 29, 2018
Just as with Lamont Hill previously, Talib did not simply criticize Israel. Nor did she issue a simple call for a ‘free Palestine,’ something that plenty of Israelis and Jews would have no problem with as long as it did not mean the end of a free Israel alongside it. Her words were bad enough without having a leading media figure attempt to convince Twitter users that the phrase means something it does not.
