Campaign seasons rarely provide opportunities to discuss issues, but the last week of the 2024 election has yielded a surprisingly enlightened discussion — on the left — about who is to blame for the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The first comments came from Van Jones, the veteran left-wing community organizer who is a strident partisan on cable news panels but also one of the few people who will speak honestly about the Democrats’ weaknesses as well.
Jones appeared on Jonah Platt’s new podcast, Being Jewish, to discuss the relationships between blacks and Jews. At one point, he made the rare but crucial observation that the pro-Palestinian movement has, thus far, been misguided:
The Palestinians deserve all the support in the world. Their cause is just, they want human rights, they want dignity, they want sovereignty — that’s beautiful. And it’s been hijacked by a Nazi organization called Hamas, who are terrible. They are not freedom fighters, they’re freedom takers. They are not interested in democracy, they’re not interested in human rights, they’re not interested in women’s rights, they’re not interested in gay rights — they’re not interested in anything that we care about over here. And they are trying to destroy Israel way more than they’re trying to help the Palestinians. It’s a Nazi organization … if you’re a Nazi, I’m against you first, and then we work out everything else. So when you have a good cause that’s been hijacked by bad people, that’s tough — and so you’ve got to be able to to talk about this stuff honestly. … I’ve had people pull money out of things I’m a part of, but who cares — it’s nothing compared to what those kids went through at at the Nova festival, nothing compared to what those people went through with the kibbutz. You’ve got to remember — I’m a progressive, so Hamas attacked my people. Those are my people on the kibbutz, those are liberals, those are my people. Those are my people. I’m a progressive. And so Hamas pushes through with bulldozers and butchers my people — progressive, liberal, peace-loving — you know, social justice people, were murdered and butchered. And then you have these idiots over here talking about, “Oh, these were Nazi, you know, Zionist colonizers, blah blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “Guys, you don’t know a thing about about anything , you sound like idiots, and the only reason that you can get away with it is because there’s just not that many Jewish people to fight back.”
In a similar vein, former President Bill Clinton addressed Democrats in Michigan as part of a get-out-the-vote effort. And he also told several hard truths that the left rarely hears:
Let me talk about the hardest issue — here in Michigan — is the Middle East. And I have to be careful what I say because there’s only one president at a time, and none of us can get ahead of where we’re going. But I think we’re going to have to essentially start again on the peace process. And I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died since — I get that. But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine, most pro-two-state solution of any of the Israeli communities, were the ones right next to Gaza. And Hamas butchered them. And so then the people who criticize it are essentially saying, “Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in retaliating, so how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?” That all sounds nice until you realize: what would you do if it was your family and you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village? You would say, “Well, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not keeping score that way. It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill, because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. they’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.” And, look — I worked on this hard, and the only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem, they would have the — I can hardly talk about this — and they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights. All this was offered — including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and two of the four quadrants of the Old City of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his cabinet. And [the Palestinians] said no. And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. Well, I got news for them: they were there first, before there was their [Islamic] faith existed, they were there in the time of King David, and the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria. But the whole fight that you have seen played out was present in the beginning for Israel — two parts parties Likud and Labor. Likud says, “We want the whole West Bank because we had it in the time of David and to heck with whoever came and other things.” Labor said. “We will take what the United Nations has offered us and we will make a garden in the desert and we will have friends and we will work through it.” And they did — David Ben-Gurion. They’re still fighting this fight today. And so here’s what I want to tell you: I’m going to do everything I can to convince people that they cannot murder their way out of this — neither side. You can’t kill their your way out of
this. And they have to make a new beginning. But when I read that people in Michigan are thinking about not voting because they’re mad at the Biden Administration for honoring his historic obligation to try to keep Israel from being destroyed, I think that’s a mistake.
Clinton’s point was that Arab and Muslim voters should not believe that a Trump presidency would be better for the Palestinian cause. Many Arab and Muslim leaders have begun to conclude otherwise. However, the essence of his point remains true: it was Palestinians, not Israel, who chose war, and to punish any administration for defending Israel is to ensure the continuation of the conflict, not its solution.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
