Australia / Israel Review

I often ignore conspiracy theories and their peddlers, going by George Bernard Shaw’s advice “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

That’s why, when watching a short clip of the Oakland City Council debating a resolution on November 27 that called for a ceasefire in Gaza without condemning Hamas, none of the false statements made by the pro-Hamas demonstrators who dominated the meeting bothered me.

Some denied that Hamas, whose terrorists captured their atrocities on video and circulated them, had actually committed their crimes.

It was the Israeli military who killed its own, one speaker said.

But then, a comment from an Asian-American speaker hit a nerve: “I support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, including through Hamas, the armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance.”

I have been lucky to survive the Iraq-Iran War, the Lebanese Civil War and many rounds of war between Israel and different Palestinian and Lebanese armed factions.

Wars have repeatedly displaced my family. We lost one house after another and fled. We also lost real estate to confiscation and forgery.

Family savings repeatedly lost value due to hyperinflation or got wiped out in various economic collapses and consequent bank bankruptcies.

Each time, we picked up our pieces and silently rebuilt from scratch.

Ever since I became politically active in college, many decades ago, I have lost family in wars and friends to assassinations.

In 2019, I enjoyed a breakfast meal in Tunis with my two dear friends: Iraqi Hisham Hashimi and Lebanese Lokman Slim.

Pro-Iran militias in Iraq killed Hisham in July 2020. Hezbollah killed Lokman in February 2021.

After Lokman’s assassination, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in which he said, “We urge Lebanese officials, including the judiciary and political leaders, to hold accountable those who commit such barbaric acts without delay or exception.”

Washington relied on the Lebanese judiciary, under the thumb of the Hezbollah assassins themselves, to hold Hezbollah killers of Lokman accountable.

I silently wept.

Each and every one of the miseries my family, friends and I faced was blamed on Israel. 

Once we eliminate Israel and liberate Palestine, life will become rosy. This has been the justification for our bloody world since before my parents were born. This has been the excuse in the Arab world since I was born.

I refuse to pass this excuse on to my children. The Palestine nonsense, its victimhood and its liberation, have to end and have to end now.

I will not sit back and watch Americans who can barely point out the Middle East on a map tell me what Hamas is or is not or what should happen in Palestine.

I will be happy to help these Oakland “freedom fighters” trade places with hundreds of my family and friends in Lebanon and Iraq: Swap houses and bank accounts.

After all, it is much easier liberating Palestine for free, from the comfort of their sofas in Oakland, than struggling to find basic medication, potable water and electricity in Beirut or Baghdad.

Cool and trendy is one thing. Real life is another.

The “Oakland heroes” better educate themselves in ways other than watching 30-second clips.

A “unified Palestinian resistance” does not exist.

In fact, nothing “unified Palestinian” exists. Palestinians are as divided as ever. The Palestinian Authority and its leading party Fatah, which rules the West Bank, have barely talked to Hamas since 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup.

When Israel engaged Palestinian Islamic Jihad in war in 2022, Hamas sat back and happily watched Israel decimate the leadership of its rival.

These falsehoods are only the tip of the iceberg of the erroneous information circulating among Westerners who think they are brave and informed dissenters because they are pro-Palestinian and pro-“resistance”. They don’t know that their demand is an excuse for carnage and a distraction from the oppression of Arabs by other Arabs and by the troublemaking Iranian regime.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a Lebanese-born research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). © FDD (www.FDD.org), reprinted by permission, all rights reserved.