Life and sacrifice in Gaza: I suffer, therefore I am

Opinion: It is difficult to understand the triumphant cheers in Gaza; What victory? After all, they are surrounded mostly by rubble, but the main component of Palestinian identity is sacrifice and suffering

Ben-Dror Yemini|
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While the Israeli public cried tears of joy with the release of the female soldiers from captivity in Gaza, Gazans mainly cheered with feelings of victory. What victory? After all, there was mostly rubble all around. The world refuses to believe. We also have a hard time understanding. But the main component of Palestinian identity is sacrifice. This is also the source of the sympathy they receive in the world. It is no longer 'I think, therefore I am', but 'we suffer, therefore we are'.
The sacrifice began as early as 1948, the so-called Nakba. There was nothing unique there. After all, over the last century, between 60 million and 70 million people were displaced and expelled from their homes. Always due to the establishment of nation-states. A few years passed, and not a single refugee remained throughout the world. It was over. Only the Arabs of Palestine managed to turn this displacement into their national identity. It's not that the Zionist enterprise decided to expel them. They refused to accept a state of their own.
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What victory are they celebrating?
(Photo: Mariam Dagga)
They refused the Partition Plan. They declared a war of extermination to prevent the partition. I have already presented quite a few threats of extermination in the past. Here is another one. A month before the vote at the UN, the King of Saudi Arabia sent a letter to U.S. President Harry Truman, in which he threatened that the Arab world will isolate such a country from the world and impose a siege on it until it dies of hunger. The original letter is in the archives of the U.S. State Department. The extermination plot failed. The war caused the displacement of both Jews, who following disturbances in Arab countries became refugees in Israel, and Arabs from Palestine. A Jewish Nakba. An Arab Nakba.
The Arab refugees did not become strangers in an unknown land. Quite the opposite. Most of them arrived in exactly the same areas that the UN had allocated to them for the purpose of establishing a state. In any case, they spoke the same language, celebrated the same culture, believed the same religion and in many cases were members of the same family. But, unlike all the tens of millions of others, they made every effort to perpetuate their plight. They took care of their own refugee agency, UNRWA, which instead of taking care of rehabilitation, took care of perpetuating the refugee status. All attempts at rehabilitation were deliberately thwarted.
Even if many Palestinians aspire to prosperity and not destruction, they are silenced by violence. The sword wins
That plight, that victimhood, is one of the main justifications for Palestinian terrorism in general, and for the brutal massacre of October 7 in particular. Haneen Zoabi, a former Israeli Arab member of Knesset, recently said at a conference in Vienna: "We choose to resist. It is not Hamas that resisted. It is the Palestinian people. It is impossible to separate Hamas from the Palestinian people. Those who entered on October 7th entered their own country."
They have mobilized to justify the terror, the massacre, the rape, the narrative of victimhood, even though they have long known that this terror is not national or even nationalist, but jihadist and Islamist.
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חנין זועבי
חנין זועבי
Former Knesset member Haneen Zoabi
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
So what and why are the Gazans rejoicing? Because when the campuses in the United States erupted, it is their victory. When countries in Europe, and also the U.S., imposed restrictions on defense exports to Israel, it is their victory. When the level of antisemitism rose, it is their victory. And when the real images of destruction and the false claims of genocide were broadcast, that was also their victory.

It was not a show

I fear that Ehud Yaari, the excellent commentator, was wrong when he assessed that the Hamas gunmen we saw on Saturday were a show. It is not a show. The same Hamas terrorists, who caused the greatest Palestinian destruction, will likely continue to be the rulers of the Strip. In Palestinian and progressive thinking, they are faithful representatives of the victim narrative, which includes the dream of destroying Israel. Until that happens, and it won't, they are indulging in self-destruction. There are brave and critical voices, including figures in the Palestinian Authority, that at least officially opposes terrorism, which contradicts the founding narrative. Therefore, even if many Palestinians aspire to prosperity and not destruction, they are silenced by violence. The sword wins.
It is possible that, without international support, in the media, in academia, on campuses and in the streets, the brave voices among the Palestinians would have grown stronger. But the opposite is happening. The green-red coalition of radical progressives and jihadists has taken over the discourse. It is rampaging through the streets of New York, Amsterdam and Toronto. It does not help the Palestinians. On the contrary. It perpetuates their plight.

Four times the Marshall Plan

It is not only the radical progressives who are enabling the victory of the destructive narrative. A week ago, a report was submitted to the U.S. Congress on the budgets that the U.S. has transferred to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA since 1950, immediately after it was founded in December 1949. Well, in today's terms this is $7.3 billion. It is estimated that this is about 30% of the funds transferred to the organization over 75 years of activity. Wasted years, years of huge investments, which not only did not solve any problem, but perpetuated it and inflated it to frightening proportions.
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דונלד טראמפ
דונלד טראמפ
Trump cut funds for Palestinians
(Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis)
Of course, these are not the only budgets that the Palestinians receive. According to a study published by the OECD, between 1994 and 2020 the Palestinians received $40 billion. To put the proportions into perspective, the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy found that the aid that the Palestinians received, per capita, in the 1990s of the Oslo process alone, was four times the aid of the mighty Marshall Plan after World War II. International aid to the Palestinians is not the solution. It is the problem. It serves the narrative of victimhood.
Hamas will no longer control the Gaza Strip, promised Mike Waltz, Trump's national security adviser. Hamas will not control the Gaza Strip, both outgoing President Biden and incoming President Trump said. Hamas will not control the Gaza Strip, the next steps of the cease-fire agreement and the release of the hostages determine. Now it is the word of the leaders of the world's most powerful power and the parties to the agreement, and of course Israel, in the face of the Palestinian narrative.
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The problem is that the massive funding of Western countries and the support of academia and the media provide assistance to a jihadist ideology that is both sacrificial and destructive. In the Gaza Strip, they will continue to fight. And the free world, for its part, will continue to support and finance.
The failure is also Israel's. A failure that has been going on for years. Not a failure of advocacy but a failure of policy. The restraint in the face of the hooligans who are rampaging in the village of Funduq, in Huwara and other places, is not only immoral, non-Jewish and non-Zionist. It is also a huge contribution to the haters of Israel. We have Hamas and Haneen Zoabi and their supporters. There are also hooligans among us, with supportive ministers who insist on helping them.
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