YOUR UNHINGED HYSTERIA ISN’T HELPING PALESTINIANS

SELF-RIGHTEOUS ACTIVISTS IMAGINE THEMSELVES THE GREAT SAVIORS OF THE DOWNTRODDEN. IN REALITY, THEY ARE THE REASON PALESTINIANS ARE DYING.

Well I’m convinced.

I’ve been involved in political stuff for a long time. I was doing gay rights activism when it wasn’t so chic. I have supported political candidates in times and places where our positions made us pariahs. I’ve taken some unpopular positions.

But in all the things I’ve ever been involved in, never has there been a topic that sets people into irrational mania like Israel and Palestine.

Most Sundays, I hang out with a small clot of Jews and their allies at a vigil for the Israeli hostages. Occasionally, we get passersby who have something to say. Lately, it seems, we’re getting more supportive noises than otherwise, but it’s the emotion of the opponents that is really striking. They are overwhelmingly, wildly, out-of-their-minds possessed. I have seen individuals in cars, in wheelchairs and holding infants devolve into drooling, shrieking Tasmanian devils. They scream obscenities at us as we quietly mourn dead Jews, hold vigil for the return of the remaining hostages and urge peace for everyone in the region. That’s not normal. That’s not political commentary. It’s verging on mental illness.

No other issue on the planet garners this level of unhinged, hysterical fanaticism. I’m not even going to waste words explaining the obvious roots.

Of course, as I wrote yesterday, there are well-intentioned, well-informed people who are capable of rational intervention. (They are tragically rare.) But these people are a problem too.

Because these “reasonable” people say, Well, yes, there are some crazies on our side. But Israel does deserve condemnation.

Perhaps. But by no standard or measure does Israel deserve more condemnation than scores of other countries, societies, non-state actors and crises that gather not a fraction of the world’s attention. Israel eats up more United Nations General Assembly condemnatory resolutions than every other country on the planet combined. Conflicts elsewhere result in exponentially more deaths and destruction that the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, but no one gives a damn about those. The activists hollering about a pretend “genocide” in Gaza are literally ignoring actual genocides taking place today in the world. Worse — they ensure those actual genocides are eclipsed and continue because the din of fake genocide claims against Israel monopolize the short attention spans of the activist set.

The mindless haters are not going to be convinced, obviously. So, weirdly, it’s the “reasonable” people who are really at fault here. Let me explain.

Haters gonna hate. We’ve accepted this. Kooks who roll down their windows, scream vulgarities and soil their diapers when they pass a bunch of Jews on a Vancouver street are not really our target audience here. So let’s have a chat with the ones who engage like relative adults. They need to quit with the hate-Israel stuff, too, even if theirs is a cut above the screechy hate harangues.

Am I asking for uncritical support of Israel? Oh stop being such precious little pedants. I wrote about this last week and it’s so tiresome. Grow up. You have more freedom to express your stupid opinions than anyone in history. No one is silencing you, you fake victim. I’m not saying you can’t criticize Israel. I’m saying that, if you actually care whether Palestinians live or die, you might reconsider your approach.

I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, will cover their ears and hum, but if there is one silver bullet (there isn’t but) to resolve this conflict, it is to stop doing what doesn’t work.

The brutal fact of the matter is that all this savaging of Israel does not bring peace or Palestinian self-determination closer. It pushes it further away.

Your activism isolates Israel (and Jews and their allies), demonstrating to us yet again that the world is an unwelcoming place for Jews and so the existence of an invulnerable Jewish state is as necessary as ever.

Your activism empowers precisely the forces of entrenchment in Israel that anti-Israel activists claim to most abhor. But maybe that’s your goal — the more fiercely you push Israelis into a corner, the more you can depict their self-defence as savagery. Again: Not helping Palestinians but maybe it makes you feel virtuous.

Your activism convinces Palestinians — as if they needed more convincing after three generations of official demonization of Israel (and Jews) — that anything short of righteous “resistance” is submission. So you urge them to continue fighting to the death.

Above all, your activism intensifies the very thing that stands in the way of the very thing you (unconvincingly) claim to advance: peace and Palestinian self-determination.

Violence will never free Palestine. As charming as the David-versus-Goliath motif is — and as righteous as it apparently makes you activists feel to count the bodies of dead Palestinians and declare yourselves outraged — your every act ensures more dead Palestinians and no Palestinian state.

Pillorying Israel makes it more difficult, if not impossible, for any future Palestinian leader, were they so inclined to negotiate an independent Palestine. (That leader is not on the radar yet, but I’m being hypothetical here.) Because by demonizing Israel and Israelis, we make a negotiated settlement — the only thing that will ever “free Palestine” — a deal with the devil.

Above all, this maniacal denouncing of Israel is the epitome of barking up the wrong tree.

Here is the ultimate truth, so cover your ears and start humming now.

All your howling about Israel will not free Palestine. As I said, it polarizes the parties, rather than bringing them together, and the only way this ends peacefully is when the sides agree to live in peace, not triumph over the other side’s dead.

But the silver bullet, if there were one, would be this: It would require you to recognize that you have placed the blame on precisely the wrong side.

If you want peace and Palestinian self-determination, you need to put pressure where it will actually work.

The problem is … Israel is not the problem.

Yes, you can keep plugging your ears and humming, but you are only prolonging the violence and death.

There is only one side that can make peace because there is only one side making war. The Palestinians and larger Arab and Muslim worlds adopted a position in 1947 (at the latest) to reject coexistence and any recognition of a Jewish right to self-determination. With few exceptions, they have clung to this intransigent position through hell and high water, despite the self-defeating, hopeless, nihilistic reality it engenders.

And you, overseas activists, reward and encourage it.

You are part of the reason there is no “free Palestine.”

You are the reason this bloody battle continues and peaceful negotiations have never been further away.

You are the reason Palestinians are dying.

But, sure, keep howling against Israel if it makes you feel better. Because that’s really what this about in the end, isn’t it?