Why Jews Should Drop the Palestinian Cause in 2021 - Justin B. Hayet
In 2021, and in the years and decades beyond, the organized Jewish community should abandon its paralyzing, archaic, immoral and dangerous objective of establishing a Palestinian state.
Our world has changed. The Middle East has changed. Israel has changed. The American Jewish community, and its objectives, must too. Suppress your anger, lay down your talking points and hear me out.
The tectonic plates of the Middle East shifted with the signing of The Abraham Accords – and they have not stopped shifting. The accords will continue to shape, if not completely guide, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East for the foreseeable future and throughout future Democratic and Republican administrations.
This diplomatic breakthrough and peace agreement, at first between a few Arab powerhouses, led by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco is simply unprecedented. Add the countries that continue to follow along with whispers that Saudi Arabia will eventually join, and the map of the Middle East isn’t only re-edited: It is completely rewritten.
Our communal objectives must be reflected in this. This redrawn map will outlive the Trump Presidency and the Jewish community’s distaste for it. The writing is on the wall: the Abraham Accords will continue to shift, guide and influence Middle Eastern geopolitics of the twenty-first century.
Shouldn’t we jump on board? If Sunni Arab Muslim countries, their leadership and increasingly their populations don’t care about the Palestinian cause, why should we?
Why must American Jews cling to a cause that acts against the interest of the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors? Do we want to live in a world where the Israeli government is more aligned with the Sunni-Arab states than with the United States and its Jewish powerhouse of a Diaspora?
What moral imperative calls upon us as a Jewish People to tie our identities, and the love of our nation state, to a neighboring people who name streets after people who kill us, who pay terrorists to kill us and who refuse to accept that we, the Jews, have a right to a state?
This shouldn’t be so complicated. The Arab World is beginning to turn the page and recognize the Palestinian cause for what it is: a problem, a problem that would only grow exponentially if granted statehood. It is time the American Jewish community does the same.
Clutching onto the Palestinian cause as the Arab World continues to publicly, and rightfully, reject it is simply shooting ourselves strategically in the foot, right as the marathon is about to begin. And don’t we want to win the marathon?
It is time the organizations bent on establishing a Palestinian state in the name of their Judaism update their policy objectives, smell the Aroma coffee...
The region – along with the overwhelming majority of Israelis – has moved on from the malpractice of Palestinian rejectionism: It’s time we as a community do so, too.
The times have changed and so must we. We must craft and enact communal objectives based on the reality of the moment and not the nostalgia of Olso’s archaic past. Jewish organizations whose sole mission is the establishment of a Palestinian state are stuck in the 1990s and cannot wish 2021 away.
The Palestinian cause hates Jews. The Palestinian cause hates Zionists. The Palestinian cause hates America and Americans. Shouldn’t we dedicate our time, communal objectives, organizations and its funds to causes that actually authentically embrace us?
In other words: Let's build the Jewish state. Let's invest in projects and partners who put our values into action – not those who name streets after terrorists who killed Israelis.
Let's build a new Jewish world in 2021 with a renewed and honest vision, with our new partners in the Arab world who have rejected Palestinian rejectionism. Let’s embrace our new and growing list of Arab partners – and leave our old ones in the past.
Justin Hayet is the COO of Bnai Zion and is the youngest executive of a major Jewish organization in the United States.
[Jerusalem Post]
HAT TIP: JB
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