“IT'S JUST ABOUT FREEDOM, OBVIOUSLY”
Someone who has disliked what I’ve been writing lately (someone in great company: a party comprised of my wife and effectively all my friends and everyone I know) sent me something to read that they felt was clarifying for them and ran contrary to what I was offering.
Interestingly, this is someone with whom I’ve celebrated Passover. Passover: that annual remembrance that the Israelites were forced out of their homeland in Canaan by famine and then taken as slaves by the Egyptian pharaoh (accompanied by the drowning of all their first-born sons); an enslavement said to have lasted four centuries and which they eventually escaped, hence the celebration; a celebration which always includes the reminder, with centuries of emphatic precedent, that, no matter who you are or where, being Jewish always entails being prepared, at a moment’s notice, to gather your loved ones and flee into the dark of night into an unforgiving desert, where you may wander lost for forty years…
Though I said I was thrilled to read anything anyone wants to share with me, and I am, I was not thrilled to receive the writings of Yousef Munayyer. There are few people better informed or situated to talk about the situation. For sure. Previously the Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Dr Munayyer presently sits as Senior Fellow and Head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington DC. He also serves on the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies and has been published all over the place, from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Boston Globe, to Foreign Policy, Middle East Policy, and others.
The trouble is that in my limited experience with him, mostly through podcasts, he is too often found playing a political game and so rarely trying to act as the scholar he is to help uncover what is true and paint a nuanced or, god forbid, clarifying picture for people. So when he feels like making accurate statements, he knowingly frames those in such a way as to ignore or conceal more than they encapsulate and reveal. And, from my perspective, a disingenuous footing of that sort is required to forward many of the claims he does. That may sound harsh (and you should go engage with his work yourself, certainly not take my word for it) but let’s see what he gets up to in this offering recommended to me.
THE CURRENT
The writing I was sent comes from Jewish Currents and is titled “What Does ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really Mean?” Back in 2021, Dr Munayyer was telling his readers that it is merely ‘from the river to the sea’ that Palestinians wish nothing more than to resist “the fragmentation of Palestinian land and people by Israeli occupation and discrimination” and to one day be free. And, of course, that’s as beautiful as it is simple. And he explained the controversy over this language thusly:
You may also have heard claims that this slogan is antisemitic or even genocidal. On May 19th [2021], for example, the New Yorker Union was widely attacked for tweeting, “Solidarity with Palestinians from the river to the sea who went on a 24-hour strike yesterday for dignity and liberation.” Whether in earnest ignorance or in bad faith, critics of the river-to-the-sea formulation argued that the union, and others who used the slogan last month, were implicitly calling for not only dismantling the State of Israel, but cleansing the entire region—from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, an area encompassing the West Bank, Gaza, and all of Israel within its internationally recognized pre-1967 borders—of its Jewish population.
Munayyer also eagerly highlights that, as historian Maha Nassar has noted, there has never been an “official Palestinian position calling for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine.” For the cherry on the top, the good doctor lets us know that “The claim that the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ carries a genocidal intent relies not on the historical record, but rather on racism and Islamophobia.” And, to be clear, Munayyer has said all of the same things, and others of this sort, in essays and on podcasts since the above publication and the events of October 7th. Some of those instances include:
AGAINST THE CURRENT
Surely, if you affirm all the same premises as Dr Munayyer you will, yes indeed, arrive at many or all of the same conclusions he does. The situation only gets complicated when you attempt to understand what all of this means and what lies within, beyond, and beneath his simple assertions (and threats.) And, from where I sit, for any of this to make sense, at all, you will either need to blindly accept every ahistorical and unethical pronouncement and assumption or, otherwise, come to some very different conclusions.
ATMOSPHERE AND ENVIRONMENT
So, to begin with, context is relevant. (That’s something you must continually remind those, like Munayyer and Butler and Massad and so many more authoritative scholars who insist they’re providing you all the appropriate context.) The resounding global chant of this slogan comes in light of recent events within Israel (occurring within its 1967 borders *said with eyebrows raised*) and from the same folks demanding a ceasefire (when Palestinians, not “Hamas,” so horrendously started a new war, livestreamed in 4k, on October 7th *eyebrows still raised but now with eyeballs popping out of my head*); paired with all the most horrendous rhetoric, (a)moral philosophy, and vulgar calculus (all too often coming from PhDs, religious scholars, community leaders, and human rights activists); accompanied by all the now-countless egregious actions of far too many participating in rallies, actual lynch mobs (!), or otherwise carrying out their own solitary (though publicly sanctioned) righteous acts of “justice” (not merely within Gaza or the Middle East or the Arab or even Muslim worlds but in almost every corner of the globe — a list that now includes the fire-bombing of temples and shootings at schools in Montreal). But not just that.
We are all too aware that the stated aims of many organizations and entire states (with countless members, active participants, advocates, supporters, cheerleader, fans, and sympathizers in seemingly every government, college, labour union, and coffee shop in the West, numbering, what, 10 million, 300 million, 2 billion?) is this very slogan — but with the addition of the bit Munayyer denies: the destruction of Israel and, if possible, the extermination of the Jews. Oh, and, lest we forget, this unabridged version of the slogan has not just been written and shouted but also used as a template for extermination by these very people and parties many times before.
That’s at least some of the context for this slogan. And then it's in this light that more context is revealed. Whoever you are and wherever you live, if you are listening, you also have your neighbours telling you this slogan arrives with the same furor and tenor and “just cause” as all the worst horror stories passed down to them from their elder-survivors (and gifted to all of us in seemingly endless trial records and books and films.) To so many of them, they tell you, all of this sounds and feels far too alike the precursors to every past bout of ethnic cleansing and genocide — about which few (no?) other communities understand so well, with recent examples from South America and Africa and Europe, Argentina to Russia and everywhere in-between, and stretching across an eon or three.
And, finally, it is from this place that the doctor and so many more (most people from where I sit) hears their neighbours’ sincere (and very obvious) concerns and replies with something little better, and often little more, than "No, fuck you!"
Additionally, for still more context, this slogan is often heard alongside "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud." This is the opening verse of an anti-Semitic chant referencing a battle fought in 628 CE in the Khaybar Oasis, in what is now Saudi Arabia, in which the army of the Prophet Muhammad massacred the Jewish population for the crime of escaping Roman persecution, introducing agriculture, and doing well, oh and conspiring (as ever) with other Jews. The full verse "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud, jaish Muhammad soufa ya'oud" translates to "Khaybar Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return." And what do you think this is intended to mean, particularly as it's chanted by disparate mobs throughout the West? Tea party in London? Cuddle session in Dearborn? No, it means, as explicitly as anything, "Whoever you are, wherever you live, if you are Jewish we are coming for you."
And, once again, it must be said, notice the folks offering these 'interpretations' (read: radical distortions) are the same people for whom a Confederate or Nazi flag or the chant “The Jews will not replace us!” was and remains instantly and clearly decoded, understood, and attacked. These are folks who appreciate that, while these symbols may certainly hold many possible connotations and connections, there is no semiotic universe in which their meaning and usage are widely understood to be restricted to a vague connection to one's cultural roots or another's passion for military history or as a call for full and universal employment. And no one would allow themselves or their friends or family to look or to pretend to be so stupid… And that is precisely what they just told us in countless academic papers, op eds, evening news segments, social media posts, and gatherings. And, more than that, keep in mind that these are also the people for whom every touch of a thumb to an index finger, or the wave of a hand slightly higher than normal, or the unseasonal purchase of khaki pants or garden torches, or any reference to frogs or lobsters, New Balance shoes or "the inner city" was deemed an encoded but unmistakable dog whistle between highly coordinated members of the secret multinational Fascist (but also Russia-loving? *zoinks*), white-supremacist army coming for all that is pure and good and holy. And yet here, where they themselves are enthusiastically employing what is the slogan of Nazi-sympathizing Islamo-fascists, they angrily reject outright that it, "from the river to the sea", has been or could ever be used as a call-to-arms and rallying cry for Hamas (or Islamic Jihad or al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades or the PRC or PFLP, DFLP, PLF, or Harakat al-Sabireen, or any of a thousand others) or any other anti-Zionists, anti-Jewish, or anti-Western bigots. And none of that, they demand, could have terrifying results. That, they tell us, is most definitely not what regular Palestinians were chanting (between elated shrieks of "God is GREAT!") as they kidnapped grandmothers in nightgowns and disembowelled pre-teens in their pyjamas... The straightforward and unambiguous reality of these dismissals, slapping us all in the face all day long, truly boggles the mind while the fact of who these denials come from does so much more, annihilating any hope for sense-making.
LOGIC?
Still without yet getting into what Munayyer wrote, and only tackling this idea on its face (the notion that the slogan means and can only possibly symbolize a universal, uplifting, and benign emancipation) we are called to to ask if anyone shouting this slogan is themself a Zionist? And the answer is obvious. No. But isn't that odd? These folks most certainly do not support a one-state future in which Israel drops it's walls, Germany-like, embracing millions more Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims as citizens (“more” because, as we all know, there are millions in living in or with Israeli citizenship already, among just seven million who identify as Jewish). Right. But effectively every one of those shouting and waving this slogan is, by contrast, in favour of either: A) a two-state solution, one of which will be a nearly ethnically and religiously homogeneous state (as it aims to be today, with zero Jews in Gaza) or B) otherwise a one-state “final” solution that rids the world of its only Jewish state and as nearly as possible the entire region of Jews, as we’ve seen recommended and enacted throughout the Arab world for generations. Right.
Whenever he hear things like the above suggestion of mine, that the options are both highly limited and the results predictable, Munayyer always explains that he is opposed to a two-state scenario and counters that there is, in fact, an obvious third option. (And, of course, that anyone thinking something different, despite all the abundant precedence, formally stated ambitions of many parties, and the overwhelming odds, is "racist" of all things.) So what does Munayyer offer? He tells us the Palestine of tomorrow will break from all tradition, deviating strongly from what the majority tells us they want, and the actions of all its neighbours and allies, to become a uniquely multicultural pluralism, an oasis of civil liberties, religious freedom, and human thriving that will be a model for the world.
Well, yes, that is something we all wish for. Indeed. But anyone offering this as both an obvious or likely outcome (and gladly charging us with the most egregious skin colour-based bigotry or blind hatred of Muslims, of all things, for having any questions or doubts) should also be happy not just to tell us their plan but also to discuss real probabilities while putting up a hefty wager backing their, doubtless, sophisticated evaluation. Munayyer, you will be shocked to learn, does none of that. It's just threats paired with unwarranted optimism.
To try and make sense of this frequent insistence of his, if I had Munayyer on a podcast I would ask if he feels that Trump voters hate and reject: Trump and the Republicans, Conservative policy and conservative values, the Second Amendment and abortion prohibitions, the idea of fiscal responsibility and limited taxes, any signs of nationalism, patriotism, or voluntary military service, support for police and strong border controls, Christian ethics and popular readings of scriptural commandments? Well, being an intellectual, he might just try arguing that; but people attempting to be honest, trying to map the real world, trying to clarify and understand, don’t so eagerly reject what people insist they believe and want and are willing to do to bring about a world resembling their ideal vision.
More than that, I would suggest, by his own words, Munayyer is required to demonstrate for us how all the sober and reflective polling (so much polling), whitepapers and policy statements, essays and blogs, school and religious teachings, television productions and films, on-camera chanting and online sharing and more, combines to reveal no record of any kind; how none of this self-disclosure exposes millions of peoples’ experience, passions, and intentions. He needs to explain how, uniquely among all humans, none of these folks are motivated by what they themselves tell us are their sincere beliefs and desires. He doesn't do that. Regular folks — not the 1% who are clinically off their rockers but just the average person — in their own words, sharing their personal experience, favourite books and readings and learnings, their point of view and best ideas, and what they truly, deep-down hope for themselves and the world, Yousef demands, know nothing at all and are all just full of shit.
So now consider how many of your favourite TV shows lasted just one or two seasons. Or how the discovery of a journalist or educator or comedian (!) offering a wayward syllable a decade ago can, if the crowd demands, result in the derailing of a career or business or entire global brand. And now contrast that with how the worst news broadcasts and call-in shows and cartoons ever produced aired for many seasons, have been reinvented, and live on in many forms due to their popularity in Palestine and the broader Arab and Muslims worlds, even being broadcast out via satellite to Arabic-speakers in the rest of the world. Go to the market in Iraq or Tanzania or Pakistan or Indonesia or to the darker corners of the internet and find and watch shows like Tomorrow’s Pioneers, for just one example, or really anything from Al-Aqsa or Al-Manar television or by Al Ribat Communications and Artistic Productions or so many others found across 50 nations. And then tell me how there is no way 50 million people have or would ever subscribe to any of these ideas — the very worst ever formulated — and that those worst-ever ideas do not manifest from popular cultural or religious sources, however distorted or selective you insist those to be. I mean, how many hours of the most aggressive anti-Semitism do you require, and from how many diverse sources, before you will admit that those wildest conspiracies and direct calls to murder may have some influence on beliefs and behaviour, even to just a very confused 5% of any population? And recall that everyone you know demanded that effectively no exposure to virtually no propaganda was maximally potent and effective at swinging millions of voters and an entire US election.
And when the leadership of major organizations and entire states (with countless millions of supporters and billions of dollars in international aid) refuse to show any ethical or semantic inhibitions around their narrowly focussed and jubilant anti-Sematism, that too is nothing. Apparently. When they establish on record for everyone under their influence that their collective aim is, and should always be, to rid the world of Jews and/or merely extirpate them (with extreme prejudice) from entire swathes of the planet, and most eagerly their homeland, and the one and only Jewish state, that is also nothing? Dr Munayyer requires that what everyone is really up to is sharing a nightmare of a sort, one full of their own prayers and hopes and ambitions, perhaps, but not anything they would ever have any part in bringing about. (Aside, of course, from elucidating and disseminating the obliteration of Israel and the Jewish people, with a dozen Quranic warrants and justifications and especially directed at school-aged children, through any and all media and regardless of frontiers...)
Yousef demonstrates in this way how he is allergic to any and all context. To take "from the river to the sea" from anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic to freedom-loving, he requires that dozens of states across the Arab and Muslim worlds did not already fully ethnically cleanse their populations of Jews, some of whom had been there for many many centuries, pushing them into Israel, and with no hope for any "compensation" or “right of return.” And, essential here, this "no right of return" is something Munayyer considers among the worst of the brutal and ongoing crimes committed against Palestinians. This, he tells us, is something that justifies, or at least explains, unending bouts of murder. He tell us, endlessly, that "no right of return" forms the conditions under which violence occurs and persists. (Or, rather, is made to occur by the Jews against the Jews! Palestinians, you see, are innocent. With hands forced by such oppression, they could do nothing else. Which Munayyer insists is not victim blaming, or anything like it, but mere facts.) There is no other way than by deliberate exclusion of context like this (and also his own apparent burning hatred of the Palestinians) that what he says makes any sense at all. So, of course, he demands that the fact of Jewish minorities being expelled is neither historically accurate, by his accounting, nor would those form anything like a precedent for a future Palestinian state.
And with that also notice how Munayyer insists these older expulsions along with the present-day inability for Israelis (or even anyone who has ever travelled to Israel) to freely enter or work in many of these same places (including all its neighbours but also Malaysia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Tajikistan, Yemen and Sudan, Algeria and Libya and many more) is nothing at all like the “apartheid” he and so many others imagine exists in Israel. The "apartheid" [sic] he continually demands is a human right violation so far beyond the pale with regard to Israel, that paints Israel as indistinguishable from 1860s America or 1960s South Africa — and which also creates the conditions that justifies and explains so much murder (a crime not perpetrated against Israelis so much as one they have inflicted upon themselves through their very existence) — is, magically, not even worth noticing when as much or worse is enacted by dozens of Arab and Muslim nations. Amazing. So how critical is the avoidance of any context (so much of reality, really) to Munayyer's analysis? Well, it could not be more clear that avoiding effectively any context is his preferred mode of analysis.
But let’s just linger on this idea, his favourite (that Palestine aspires toward nothing more than freedom and achieving their inevitable calling as a beacon of human flourishing), to see how silly his suggestion is. I don’t think I've done it justice. To make sense of the demand of activists like Munayyer actually consider what the world, or merely Gaza, would look like if Hamas (Judith Butler’s “progressive Leftist social movement”) or so many of the other numerous political and militant ("freedom") entities in the area had their way. Would Palestine become something closer to Japan or Finland or New Zealand or more like Nicaragua, Turkmenistan, or Libya? Well, we need not speculate as they enthusiastically tell us.
Hamas, neither a radical fringe at home nor within the region (who gained legitimacy for their moderate views and with the support of a "huge majority"), are dedicated not to a two-state solution but, as we all know, to "obliteration." They have an original Covenant that spells this out (and a "revised" one that is no better, despite what folks like Munayyer insist.) Too, Palestinians and so many of their neighbours and allies have also continuously convened to recommit, decade after decade, to the Khartoum Resolution of 1967: “No peace with Israel, No negotiation with Israel, No recognition of Israel.” It doesn't get any clearer than that. And, really, Palestinian authorities and their supporters across time have shown the same commitments to Palestinians as they have to Israel and Israelis. They continually refuse to hold elections, for example, while backing president Abbas, the voracious Holocaust denier and his seemingly endless rule by decree. And when they have held elections historically the population, again a "huge majority", elected folks to the Palestinian parliament with campaign promises like "I will continue to develop [Hamas’] armed wings by recruiting more members and making more rockets and bombs." And the leadership, with many millions of supporters, has shown no liking for anything like a rule of law or basic human rights. They have never demonstrated a commitment to freedom of expression, association, or assembly but instead only the restriction of these; something they enforce with combinations of violence, disappearances, warrantless or arbitrary arrests, and unlawful killings. Is there any doubt that Palestinian authorities, favoured by a strong majority, could enact whatever laws they like — and that they do? They set out an interim constitution that enshrines the principles of Shari’a, with religious police cracking down on (or just fire-bombing) hair salons that commit the heinous crime of catering to both sexes. They also like fire-bombing pools and dance halls and do so with Quranic (that is to say, not Hamas or Abbas) rationale. Of course, these folks are not agnostic about attacks against the LGBTQ community, either, as they themselves gladly imprison and torture (and toss from rooftops) anyone who is out or would encourage such. And they promise the same to political opponents. Oh, and they also promise to gift all Jews with death (in policy statements and childrens' cartoons and call-in shows alike: “from the river to the sea.”)
Given this and so much more, how shocked would anyone be to find a “free” Gaza or state of Palestine, even a century out from now, looking far less like Singapore, Switzerland, or Dubai and far more like Syria or Iraq? Munayyer insists that even entertaining this isn’t only irrational but a sign of one’s racism (again, of all things, as if the word has no meaning.) He demands that all of this is engendered by the conditions imposed by Israel. He requires that Palestine, out from under the boot of the evil Israelis, having torn down the walls and rolled up the razor wire, would quickly become that which it has always desired to be: a shining light in a world of darkness.
TIMELINES
Now notice that if you read or listen to Dr Yousef, he strongly prefers to talk about the history of the region, of Palestine, and of all relations with Israel and Jews beginning in 1948, of all places. He does so exclusively and ad nauseum. He never starts with the ancient history we all know and that no one denies (unless of course you are less interested in facts than you are in trying to maintain a favourable status with Palestinians and their friends.) He avoids going back, as one might when trying to get to the root of things, to, say, 1200 BCE. And he rarely if ever mentions the Israelite tribes or kingdoms or their Kings David or Solomon. And because he’s never there, he never mentions the pentapolis of Philistia, so named by the Greeks for being home to the Philistines (those settler-invader seafarers from the Aegean who occupied what is now Gaza.) And, as such, Munayyer never talks about the extinction of the Philistine culture by way of Assyrian and Babylonian domination and eventual assimilation. Curious, that. No?
And Munayyer never starts closer to the present, in 1916, say, either. Why is that? It was in June of that year when a rebellion against the Ottomans was hatched at Mecca. The plan would see Arabs revolt against the ruling Turks, backed by France and the UK, breaking the Ottoman hold on the region (a region these foreign invaders controlled for centuries) and establishing one unified independent Arab state. Munayyer doesn’t talk about how within two years the rebels, aided by Britain's Egyptian Expeditionary Force, expelled Turks from large swathes of the Ottoman-occupied lands east of the Mediterranean. Nor does he speak of how at the end of WWI, the French and British, supported by Italy and Russia, walked away from any idea of a single unified Arab state and instead, with legitimacy granted by the League of Nations, partitioned the Ottoman Empire into smaller independent Arab states (what are today Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.)
When he can, Yousef also avoids discussion of the Balfour Declaration, that public statement by the British government, and published in the press in November of 1917, announcing its acknowledgement of the value of and its backing for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" — in what was still at the time the Ottoman Empire. And, relatedly, Munayyer rarely wishes to talk about 1921: when the Middle East Department of the British Colonial Office spelled out the distinction between the regions of Palestine and Trans-Jordan under the Mandate for Palestine. As such he never discusses how these administrators, backed by the international community, acknowledged their responsibility to “establish in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people” while pledging to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in certain areas of what had been the Ottoman Empire.
He also rejects talk about the year 1947, despite knowing this was the year in which, having spent all their blood and treasure in two world wars and with growing nationalist and anti-colonialist movements across the globe, Britain happily handed over the “problem of Palestine” to the newly formed UN. And he also knows that was the year a new commission to investigate the issue was formed in the “Special Committee on Palestine”; and that they proposed a similar partition plan to that of the Peele Commission, a decade earlier. And he doesn’t like to talk about how this plan was rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews or the outcome of that.
STRATEGIC TIMELINES
All of this avoidance and dismissal is not accidental. Doing so is exactly how Dr Munayyer is able to fundamentally reject the reality that Jews have an ancient connection to this land — and thus cannot be, as he demands, engaged in a settler-colonial project carried out by very recent alien invaders from Europe.
Doing as he so often does, Munayyer also doesn’t entertain the fact that one option after WWI was for any number of European empires to have folded all or part of Ottoman territory into their holdings; and that instead they quickly released them from anything approximating their historical cycles of foreign domination.
While doing so, Yousef also rejects that in 1921 the British Middle East Department only spoke of “Arabs”, to whom they owed and did so bequeath effectively all of what had been Ottoman-ruled territory. He is deliberate in ignoring the fact that, while writing about a region called Palestine, no one made any mention of any sort there to any peoples called “Palestinians” or, as a result, to anyone anywhere owing such people anything. Convenient, that.
He also omits his knowledge that the League of Nations knew, as the UN after them knew, as the Arabs in Palestine knew, just as everyone everywhere always knew, that the homeland of the Arabs was, indeed, the vast Arab homeland (!), a homeland greatly enlarged after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire by European powers. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just Google the “Arab nation” or “Arab homeland”.) And one Arab homeland, not partitioned Egyptian or Syrian or Iraqi or Palestinian states, was exactly what Mecca, insisting they were the voice of the people, had been calling for. Also good to ignore.
Of course, any map of the Arab homeland reveals a territory that reduces Israel, the Jewish homeland and a place folks have roots to going back eons, to a tiny speck — so much of which is still today uninhabited and undeveloped rocks and sand. Thusly, Munayyer rejects that this Arab homeland is composed of almost two dozen Arab majority and Arab controlled nations across all of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa, covering an area of more than 13 million square kilometres (which is three million square kilometres larger than Europe) and containing roughly 457 million people using Arabic as their lingua franca. None of this tremendous area and population size, you see, supports the relentless framing of Arabs (“Palestinians”) as a wee and enfeebled David fighting, abandoned and alone, the terrible and merciless Goliath that is Israel. Even today Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar and the many factions therein and friends beyond are unified in their mobilization. But still, as glaring as this is, the reversals and denials persist.
Munayyer also doesn’t talk about how the Arabs rejected the UN plan of ‘47, just as they had the recommendations of the Peele Commission in ‘37 (despite existing Arab sovereignty over a continent-sized swathe of land, and the plan receiving the consent of the community of nations, and their being given much of the best land in the partition plan) while the Jews once again accepted (despite the majority of their allotted land being the virtually inhospitable Negev desert and what was always malaria-infested swamps.)
Yes indeed, he truly hates 1947. Apparently, you cannot even force Yousef to discuss how, to show their disapproval, Palestinian Arabs formed militias and went to war with the nascent Israel — who were then left to defend themselves against an act of belligerence intended to end the Zionist project and rid the region of Jews. He insists this was not so much an Arab attack on Jews as the inevitable consequence of Zionist ambitions and the stealing of land that was divinely and inalienably given to Arabs. (Which is, unsurprisingly, the same victim-blaming and moral genius he, and so many others, offer as an explanation and excuse for the most recent Palestinian and Lebanese violence. "But- But- The Jews!")
However, weirdly, you can get Munayyer to talk about 1948. Though he doesn’t like to discuss how Israel turned down the Arabs of Palestine and their militias’ kind offer of extermination and responded with a formal declaration of independence (backed by Russia and the US). And he doesn’t like to talk about how, as a result of their declaration of independence, all of the neighbouring states, as well as Iraq, formed a pan-Arab invasion force and declared war on Israel, invading from all sides and declaring their intention for total extermination (and so in the immediate aftermath of WWII.) He also doesn’t talk about how, as a result of the conflict, Jordan annexed what is today known as the West Bank and Egypt, Gaza — a pair of "foreign occupations" like any other if we are to take the claims of Palestinian nationhood seriously, but, mysteriously, no one ever refers to as such nor even bothers highlighting. Curious.
No, Dr Munayyer prefers to discuss “the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians” in 1948. That's the biggest deal to him. He doesn’t talk about how, not wishing to be caught in the crossfire, Arabs fled their homes in the face of battle. He doesn’t suggest that, just like Ukrainians today, some were forcibly expelled, some were encouraged to leave by their own leadership or friends and family elsewhere, or that others, exhibiting some basic common sense, left on their own volition entirely — most with a hope (and others an expectation born of a promise) that they would return to their homes after seven Arab armies were done with the extermination the Palestinians and the Third Reich immediately before them had failed at. Instead, Munayyer would offer the simple assertion that all Arabs were forced off their land at gunpoint by the evil Jews. Oh and he doesn't like to talk about Arab nations simultaneously expelling their entire Jewish populations, similar hundreds of thousands.
And when discussing this exodus and expulsion, he likes to suggest that it was the inherent unethical nature of the Israelis and their love of committing human rights abuses that explains the rejection of a right of return. He never does the simple reasoning and math, that he himself or any of us would make. He never notes that there was no compelling justification for anyone to believe the very people supporting or participating twice in armed conflict explicitly aimed at ending Zionist ambitions (an ambition already twice approved by the a majority of the international community, over land that had been controlled by actual foreign invaders, Turks, Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks and more, for all of time), Arabs who also significantly outnumbered the Jews of Israel, would be the best possible collaborators in any future state of Israel. Does it even need arguing that permitting the blanket return of all Arabs, to a democratic state, would have effectively meant the immediate conquest of Israel, by a significant Arab majority, and thus the birth of just one more, of nearly two dozen, Arab nations?
Ignoring all of this, and so much more that is even better known, is what’s required to be able to declare that the “from the river to the sea” has no precedence in, connotation with, and cannot possibly be a prescription for the end of Israel or the genocide of a religious minority despised and rejected and purged like no other, even from what is undeniably their homeland.
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
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