I received a very typical Twitter response to my earlier article about the high life expectancy of Israeli Arabs: “Does that legitimise occupation?”
I’ve noted in the past that many people, when looking at Israel, wear “occupation glasses.” Nothing else matters. If the information they receive is bad, then it is the “occupation”‘s fault, if it is bad then it is being used to divert attention from the “occupation.”
The Israel-haters think that they have a slam dunk when mentioning “occupation” – it is their shorthand for repression, injustice, and colonialism.
For some reason Israel doesn’t do a good enough job when answering this. So here is a short response that works wonders:
If there was a Palestinian state, there would be no “occupation.”
And the ONLY reason there is no Palestinian state is because the Palestinian leadership has rejected every offer for one.
Every time.
Pointing this irrefutable fact out does a number of things. It shows that Israel doesn’t want to control another people, it shows that Israel wants peace, and it shows that Palestinians prefer “occupation” to statehood.
Moreover, it puts the Israel-hater on the defensive, forced to stutter that the peace offers weren’t good enough or whatever. To which the response is….then the “occupation” cannot really be so bad, can it?
When forced to answer this simple observation, the Israel-haters show that they don’t want a state either. They will say that a state without Jerusalem or without “return” of “refugees” – not to Palestine, but to Israel – is not worth it.
Showing that they don’t really care about “occupation” but about destroying Israel.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Zionists said they would accept a state the size of a handkerchief. They accepted a UN partition plan that wrested Jerusalem from them. They desperately needed a state for the Jews to live in without fear of being murdered.
Palestinians, however, don’t have any sense of urgency in their supposed quest for a state. They are willing to wait decades.
If that is true, then they are the ones who are prolonging ‘occupation,” not Israel.
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