DAY OF INFAMY: SEPTEMBER 28, 2000

IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED 24 YEARS AGO TODAY, YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY PALESTINIANS ARE DYING NOW.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Great Man (TM) Yasser Arafat, PBUH.

Twenty-four years ago today, we entered the current era of the Middle East conflict. As I have said repeatedly in articles leading up to this date, if you do not understand what happened on September 28, 2000, you do not understand what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians or in the wider region today.

On this date, 24 years ago, Ariel Sharon — the now late but then once and future prime minister of Israel — took a walk on the Temple Mount. This was seen as a provocation.

I have a problem with the very term “provocation.” It is too often used to blame the victim. Decent people now accept that “provocative” clothing does not justify rape. We do, however, generally accept that a Jewish person setting foot on or near a Muslim holy site is justification for thousands of deaths. This is the justification we invoke every time we accept the term “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” which is what most Palestinians and their supporters call the Second Intifada.

Mahmoud Abbas (the moderate Palestinian leader, mind you) has said “Al-Aqsa [the mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount] is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet.”

That’s a mouthful.

Filthy Jewish feet. Nice.

But also … the Al-Aqsa mosque was built on top of the remnants of the Second Temple and the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site in Judaism. 

Talk about desecration.

And, wait a minute.

Even if we give them their mosque (since no one seems to care about Jewish holy sites being desecrated and usurped), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre? The holiest pilgrimage site in Christianity and historical the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and (Easter long weekend) entombment? This is Palestinian territory now?

Talk about cultural appropriation!

But anyways.

On this day on 2000, Ariel Sharon hauled himself up the ramp to saunter around the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif compound.

I’m not going to pretend that Sharon was not being deliberately provocative in his stroll that day. Of course he was. But, let’s put this in context. After about 2,000 years of Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, Muslims came along and, as conquering vanquishers, triumphally built a new Muslim holy site on top of the remnants of the earlier Jewish holy site. Then, a few years later (well, about 965 years later) when a Jew decides to walk on that holy site, it is considered a provocative act deserving of 24 years and counting of terror, violence and catastrophe. Sensitive much?

Anyway, the succeeding violence that began in earnest the next day, September 29, was presented to the world as a spontaneous uprising of Palestinians who just couldn’t take it anymore. Of course, it was a deliberately organized and planned campaign of terror by the Palestinian Authority, under Yasser Arafat, and the assorted terror organizations with which he was in cahoots.

But why?

This is the crux of this entire conflict. If we do not understand this, we understand nothing.

Never had the Palestinian people been closer to national self-determination than on September 27, 2000.

The problem was, the creation of a Palestinian state was not, is not now, and never was the primary objective of the Palestinian movement. That movement is not about creating a Palestinian state. It is about erasing the Jewish state. Palestinians and their allies used to keep this fact a secret. Now they chant “From the river to the sea …” so that gig is sort of up.

Therefore, while the world saw the Palestinian uprising as completely irrational, it was entirely rational in the irrational mindset of the Palestinian population, who had been indoctrinated for generations to anticipate nothing short of complete and total annihilation of the Zionist entity.

As a result, the closer Palestinians and Israelis came to peace, coexistence and an independent Palestine alongside an independent Israel, counterintuitively, the further Palestinians came from their actual goal.

The Palestinian reaction — the Second Intifada — made perfect sense if you understood this actual Palestinian objective. But since Palestinian statehood seemed so close, to international observers what happened was absolutely irrational. So, as humans have done for centuries, we blamed the Jews.

Instead of getting to the truth, the world almost unanimously accepted the Palestinian narrative that was fabricated in the immediate aftermath.

Eg., Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount was the last straw in a long list of “humiliations,” disappointments, bait-and-switches — basically negotiations were too slow (and were never going to result in the eradication of Israel). The Oslo Process (which, until recently, had been plugging along nicely and which almost everyone believed would lead to peace and coexistence) must have been a big charade to screw the Palestinians. The subtext quickly devolved into the overtly antisemitic assumption that no one, after all, can best those people in a negotiation. Therefore violence is completely legit — even when jilted (Jewish) negotiators were still sitting, gobsmacked, at the negotiating table Arafat had overturned two months prior. 

This remains a core premise of the Palestinian narrative: Violence is the only thing they have, so it is fair to eviscerate, behead, immolate, rape and mass murder. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Or, in this case, when your only tool is a sharp dagger, every problem looks like a Jewish neck.

And this is the narrative advanced by people with COEXIST bumper stickers on their Priuses. But anyways. The accepted wisdom among the bien pensants across the West was that Palestinians were sooooo frustrated they just couldn’t help blowing themselves up on crowded Israeli buses.

The violence that began that day, and which continues today in the war with Hamas and in the South and with Hezbollah in the north, including the elimination, announced hours ago, of the death of Hassan Nasrallah, is a direct consequence of the Palestinians’ choice of violence over coexistence on September 28, 2000.

(Fun side note: The New York Times today, reporting Nasrallah’s death, notes this is “a major escalation in Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign …” Imagine the NYT headline if Britain had killed Hitler: “RAF airstrike kills Nazi leader in major escalation of conflict.”)

This is where we are now. But anyways.

Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount was the excuse Palestinians were looking for to launch an all-out uprising. Arafat had already abandoned negotiations, knowing that he had backed himself into a corner, talking peace in English translation while promising in Arabic total victory over the evil Zionists. (The West still chose to completely ignore this duplicity because it was 2000 and, you know, Arabic-English translation wasn’t yet available).

As Bill Clinton has made absolutely clear, Arafat destroyed the peace process single-handedly. (I’m not excusing Clinton here. He is as guilty as almost every other Western leader and observer for being hoodwinked by Arafat and others to believe that Palestinians could actually be convinced to live in peace beside Israel, instead of on top of its remnants.)

Nevertheless, we have now had 24 years to wise up. We haven’t.

Marching millions, the United Nations, campus campers, United Churchers, lefties of all stripes and Raging Grannies lament the deaths of innocent Palestinians — even as every statement and action they make ensures that Palestinians keep dying.

If we refuse to acknowledge the root of the problem, we will continue to exacerbate it, not ameliorate it.

I just want to be clear here: I’m sure that there are Palestinian activists, maybe even a leader here or there, who actually believe in peace and coexistence with Israel. If you know their names, send them to me in a private message. Because sharing them publicly would probably be an invitation to get their heads scythed off.

Those of us who do not live under the bootheel of Palestinian leaders have a choice. We can either learn the lesson of September 28, 2000 — when the “legitimate voice” of the Palestinian people made crystal clear their view of peace, coexistence and Palestinian statehood — or we can continue driving off the cliff we veered toward 24 years ago today.

The world has been rewarding Palestinian terror for 24 years. And since Palestinian terror — not Israelis self-defence — is the reason Palestinians are dying, do the math.

Everything those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” do encourages continued intransigence, intolerance and violence. Unless you are demanding the surrender of Hamas and the relinquishing of the demand for the eradication of Israel, you are promoting war and dead Palestinians.

Stop chanting “From the river to the sea …” Stop justifying “any means necessary.” Stop, even, hollering “Free Palestine” unless you can demonstrate that you genuinely want a Palestine where Palestinians are actually free to do more than stomp on the graves of vanquished Jews.

For 24 years now, overseas activists have been egging on Palestinian violence. On that date, Palestinians chose violence over negotiation, perpetual war over coexistence. And activists worldwide chose to reward that strategy.

Now, with tens of thousands of Palestinians dead in a war of their leaders’ own making, the world continues to insist on blaming Israel.

They should look in a mirror.

By rewarding the strategy that began 24 years ago today, “pro-Palestinian” activists worldwide bear responsibility for this carnage.

To them I say: Get off your self-righteous high horse.

You are the reason Palestinians are dying.