What about Anti-Palestinianism?

In response to Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that broadens the definition of “antisemitism” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars U.S. citizens from discriminating against Jews and also prohibits “targeting the State of Israel.” What! You can’t even criticize Israel anymore? Many analysts claim it would severely encroach upon free speech laws. This legislation now goes to the Senate. I doubt it will pass as is.

As a Christian, a Bible believer, and an author of nine books about biblical studies, I’m all for Jews. In fact, I even have Jewish relatives. And I believe in the right of the existence of the State of Israel. But I sure don’t believe in prohibiting criticism of Israel. And, of course, I denounce Hamas for advocating the extinction of the nation of Israel.

But why do we focus so much on antisemitism and never on anti-Palestinianism? The latter is what the U.S. has been doing for many decades. How so? Ever since the 1960s Israel has been the main benefactor of U.S. foreign aid, receiving from us about $3 billion or more annually. And Jews have had their own nation for over 75 years; yet Palestinians are still wanting. In fact, the U.S. government all that time never had as a policy that there should be a Palestinian state until President George W. Bush said so. Yet the U.S. has not done that much in making it happen. We’ve usually just subjected ourselves to the likes of Israel’s leaders on this subject. That is largely due to lobbying efforts of AIPAC and Christian Zionists in this country, which the latter are severely misguided about understanding of relevant biblical prophecies. I have a chapter on that in my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia.

I believe the U.S. has contributed to anti-Palestinianism all those years by failing to connect its $3+ billion Israel aid to the peace process. That is, if Israel was going to continue to be against the peace process, thus working toward creating a Palestinian state, then the U.S. should have withdrawn some of that financial support. For, throughout all the many years that Benjamin Netanyahu has been the prime minister of Israel, he has opposed the peace process and even worked behind the scenes to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

I think America needs to wake up to these college kid demonstrations against Israel’s disenfranchisement of Palestinians and quit being so anti-Palestinian. Get a balanced viewpoint. If Jews are deserving of their own state, so have Palestinians been all these years. People push back on me about this, saying Israel can’t allow that because of so much Palestinian hatred toward Jews. Guess what causes much of that! As I often say in such blog post, Israeli Jews have not been heeding Torah about this–“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18).