Sunday, May 26, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
This weekend there is a conference in Detroit entitled "People's Conference for Palestine."
Omar explained how wonderful terrorism is, because, to his mind, the massacre of October 7 led to more political gains for Palestinians than anything else ever did (conveniently forgetting about Oslo, which brought them autonomy for the first time in their history.)
He said:
The fourth myth that I would like to also address is that resistance does not serve the Palestine image in the world and specifically armed resistance. One of the most pervasive attacks against all forms of resistance, especially armed resistance, is the claim that Palestinians use of armed resistance destroys the possibility of solidarity and tarnishes the images of our people. They say it diminishes our chances for support for our rightful cause. This narrative, echoed by even by some of our own intellectuals, must be addressed.Firstly, without the events of October 7th regardless of our feelings about those events, the political possibilities we now witness would not exist. The rise of the student movement in the United States and North America and Europe, the demands for divestment and boycott of academic institutions, the recognition of the Palestinian State, the moves by the ICC and ICJ and the significant shifts in global opinion - none of these would have come to pass for 16 long years despite the Palestinian authorities cooperation with Israel. No single moment has opened so many doors of political possibility like the events that transpired after October 7th.
[Applause]Secondly the discourse of Human Rights and victimhood can only evoke pity. Pity is a fragile and feeble foundation for building movements. Our strength does not lie in eliciting pity but in inspiring through various acts of resistance...Resistance, including armed resistance, inspires.... So resistance does not necessarily lead to a tarnished image for the Palestinians and the events in the past 6 months is is the biggest empirical testament to that.
The audience applauding his praise of October 7 is really all you need to know about how peace-loving the Palestinian solidarity movement is even in America.
The sad part is that he's not wrong. The violence, murders, rapes and abductions of Jews on of October 7 made Palestinians seemingly more popular than ever before.
That is more a testament to worldwide antisemitism than sudden popularity of Palestinians.
After all, if people were suddenly so interested in Palestinian human rights, they would be pressuring Egypt and Jordan to allow Palestinians in Gaza to flee if they choose to, and they would be protesting against Lebanese and Jordanian mistreatment of Palestinians. When Jews cannot be blamed, the interest in Palestinian rights and liberation dissolves.
But Omar is saying something beyond that. He's saying that the ends justify the means. The audience applause was for his justification of the horrific events of October 7.
This is as immoral a speech one can imagine. It is a call for more violence against Israeli Jews in the name of Palestinian liberation, and the more Jews killed and sexually assaulted, the better the results. The suicide bombings of the second intifada were not good enough - but the pogrom of October 7 was wonderful, and presumably an even more horrific act would be better still.
And the argument is not only immoral because of its naked incitement to attack more Jews. Gaza is devastated, thousands of Palestinian civilians are dead, yet to people like Omar and his audience, that is all worth it because it led to students at Columbia and judges in the Hague saying things that align with their anti-Israel politics.
We already know how little Hamas thinks about the people it was supposed to protect in Gaza. But the applause we hear shows that Hamas' treating Palestinians like human reactive armor and cannon fodder is supported by US Arabs and pro-Palestinian movement worldwide.
Think about what kind of a sick person and sick audience it takes to be willing to sacrifice so many of their own people for vague political gains.
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