US Sutra | American campus protests: Radical Islamists and Leftists have destroyed the Palestinian cause

On campuses across the United States and for the larger thinking public, have Leftists and Islamists ruined the Palestinian cause? Yes, I would argue. By hijacking and distorting the plight of the Palestinians for their own political and ideological ends, they have ended up doing a lot of harm to the very cause they ostensibly support.

For long, Palestinians enjoyed world-wide sympathy and support. They were seen as the displaced, dispossessed, and persecuted. But no more. Now the unfortunate plight of the Palestinians draws much less consideration let alone commiseration. Just as the horrific Hamas raids on Israel have damaged the Palestinian cause in the holy land, the ugly and violent visage of pro-Palestine supporters on US campuses has damaged it across the free world.

Those who wish to read between the lines or try to understand what is going on behind the scenes will wonder at the dual deadly game behind the hijacking and eclipsing of the Palestinian cause. Who benefits from such unrest and violence in their name? Palestinians have been sacrificed by their own corrupt and compromised leadership as by the friendly Arab states who claim to support them.

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As to the big powers, the US, Russia, and now increasingly, China, who habitually play political, ideological, and strategic football with the cause of Palestine, the less said about their cynical power games, the better. There are newer players too, like Qatar, who, it is alleged, willingly serve as agents of superpowers by pumping in money to fund mercenaries and protestors on whichever side they are directed to and see it fit to interfere.

Let us dive back into recent history to understand how the Palestinians have been manipulated and discarded by the bigger powers and players of the world. When Zionism gathered steam just over a hundred years ago, let us remember that Palestinians, by and large, did not resist the settlement and land purchase by European Jews in Palestine. Nor was it their fault or actions that caused a Jewish nation to be established right in the middle of their homeland.

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Palestinians, though, by and large, reputed to be better educated and smarter than most other Arabs, they were also the weakest of them. After the Arab uprising of 1916 during the Great War, other tribes and families were permitted to carve out their own states and kingdoms. The Palestinians were left only with the so-called “Mandatory Palestine”, a fragile territorial arrangement with limited sovereignty under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

That is because, while the British and the French agreed to redistribute the Arab territories under Ottoman control, they had other plans for Palestine. On November 2, 1917, British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, promised in a letter to Lord Rothschild that his Majesty’s government was in favour of creating a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. At that time, the Jewish population in the region was very small, numbering in a few hundreds.

Mandatory Palestine, thus, had a brief and precarious existence, from 1920-1948. It became extinct with the creation of Israel. The Palestinians were left without a state or kingdom to call their own. Besides English, many were fluent in other European languages such as French or even German. And, yes, much more liberal, far from the Islamist Wahaabis and other radicals in their neighborhood. In fact, what many today have totally forgotten is that many Palestinian Arabs were not even Muslim. They were Christian. Such as perhaps the most famous of them, Edward Said. All of them, moreover, loved Palestine as much as the Jews did Israel.

In 1947, after World War II ended, the United Nations proposed a partition plan to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arabs. After the British announced their intention to withdraw from Palestine, Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, leading to a war with neighbouring Arab states. The rest, as they say, is history. The steady territorial expansion of Israel through wars and settlements and the equally unrelenting squeezing of Palestinians into smaller and smaller spaces heavily guarded and controlled by Israel.

Instead of making peace and finding a formula to live amicably with or within Israel, Palestinian leaders and their backers, constantly mounted violent protests and aborted revolutions against their superior foe, Israel. Islamists radicalized the Palestinian youth, turning them into stone-throwers and rocket launchers. From the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to Fatah to Hamas no one, we might argue, really served the cause of the people of Palestine. What is the proof of this? Simple. The plight of the Palestinian people has only worsened, without any concrete prospects of statehood or peace.

Who is responsible for this mess?

Now to US campuses, where the Palestinian cause has once again been hijacked and come unloose. Leftists and Islamists have taken over, attacking Israel and America itself. When a crackdown against anti-Americanism and anti-intellectualism ensues, which it must, Palestine will, once again, be forgotten. No one will care about what happens to the beleaguered and traumatized Palestinians.

Can there be any doubt that anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic protestors have harmed the very cause they claim to espouse? But there is one silver lining. Such disruptive, often violent campus activism has served as a wakeup call to the American establishment. In the cleanup that ensues, the organised Left, which has infiltrated and captured many American universities and departments, will be wiped out.

The author is Director of Education, Access Health Care Physicians LLC, Spring Hill, Florida. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.