'From The River To The Sea' Does Not Mean Western-Style Democracy, Be Serious
Absolutely No One Seriously Buys A One State Solution Means Peace And Equality
In the winter of 2011, I covered the local angle to the “Arab Spring,” in a section of Astoria, Queens called “Little Egypt” home to thousands of Arab-Americans, mainly Egyptians. There were protests outside the mosque on Steinway Street after prayers each Friday that called for regime change in Egypt. I would go each week, mainly as an excuse to leave work early on Fridays.
That’s where I met Rahim. He was among the Egyptian-American protestors there every Friday. Born in New York, but raised mainly in Alexandria, Rahim came back to America when he was 18 in part because he was gay and his family was either not supportive or if they were, thought he’d be safer in America where he had citizenship. Rahim was at the protests calling for the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, which had been in power his entire life. He, along with many other young Egyptian-Americans I met at the time wanted to see a secular, free liberal democracy emerge in Egypt. As the Arab Spring swept dictators from power all over the Middle East, Rahim believed Egypt, the largest Arab country, could lead the way.
Mubarak was overthrown, and the Friday after his government fell, I met Rahim on Steinway Street where he cried tears of joy.
“It’s a seismic shift,” he said. “The Muslim world will look completely different now.”
That did not happen. Egypt held an election, and to Rahim’s shock, the Islamist candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won. Rahim had supported a socialist candidate who came in third and tried to get his family back in Egypt to vote for him. He was saddened to learn most of them, who had backed Muburak’s ousting, supported Morsi, in part because they wanted a more Islamist government that did not resemble the West. Due in part to widespread dissatisfaction with his election, Morsi was overthrown in a military coup after a year, and an authoritarian regime has ruled Egypt ever since.
I caught up to Rahim last week after he responded to one of my articles about Israel/Palestine. We met in Astoria, just a block from where we first met nearly 13 years ago.
I wanted to ask him about the phrase “From the river to the sea” the catchphrase for pro-Palestinian activism (which coincidentally appears in Hamas’ Constitution), and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Michigan)claim that it means wanting a free, liberal democracy for both Israelis and Palestinians under one government. When I brought it up, Rahim just laughed.
“I would love to believe Palestinians would back a liberal democratic government, but they won’t,” he said, adding that his faith in democratization in the Arab World died with the Arab Spring. “Any Arab who wants it is probably already living in the West.”
He believes strongly in Palestinian self-determination but thinks if people truly want a one-state solution, they should call for Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza and enfranchise the Palestinian population there, just as Arabs living in Israel can vote and serve in government. He added that he expected that would eventually lead to the oppression of Palestinians again anyway when they elect Islamists to the national parliament.
“Is Israel really going to be fine with Hamas representatives in their legislature?” he said. “Because let’s face it, that’s what will happen.”
The progressive movement lacks credibility to convince people the phrase “from the river to the sea” means something other than what groups like Hamas mean when they use it.
About 7 million Palestinian Arabs are living in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper, and about 7 million Jews in Israel. In a one-state situation, the population between the two will be about equal, and that’s assuming Palestinians who live in other countries do not get the “Right of Return,” where they are allowed to return to Israel, where they had been exiled from after the country’s creation in 1948. “Right of Return” was a major sticking point in peace negotiations in the 1990s. If they secured that in a peace deal, it would make the Palestinian population larger than the Jewish population; all but ensuring Palestinian dominance in national elections. There is “zero chance,” Rahim believes, that won’t lead to at '“least some oppression of the Jewish people” if no other reason than because of nearly a century of bad blood, He added that the desire for an Islamist-style government is still strong in the Muslim world. He believes that Israel will seek to return to policies that suppress Palestinians, the apartheid they are accused of, to preempt that possibility.
Even before Israel, Jews in Muslim lands were relegated to second-class citizens, forced to pay special taxes, and often forcibly relocated on the whims of the sultans and local pashas. They may not have been regularly subject to extermination as they were in Europe, but it certainly wasn’t a free equal society for them.
“The type of liberal secular democracy Westerners are thinking of just will not happen in Palestine,” Rahim said. “It just goes against their values. It’s an insult to Islamic culture. I wish it weren’t true but it is.”
Islamism is, as Rahim said, what differentiates the Muslim world from the West. It’s what makes them culturally independent, and it’s what protects their society and traditions from Western influence. Even Israel recognizes that. It is the only non-Muslim majority country to have sharia law courts, for the country’s small Muslim population.
I believe some of what is behind the argument Tlaib and others are making is simple gaslighting. They don’t genuinely care or believe a free Palestine would be an equal liberal society where Jews and Arabs live together in peace but just want us to think that’s what they want to make themselves sound reasonable. The only people who genuinely believe that a free Palestine where Israel no longer exists would be a secular, liberal multiethnic democracy are the same delusional leftists who thought America would rally behind Bernie Sanders, wear masks, and avoid crowds for the rest of their lives, abolish police, stop eating bananas, flying on planes and driving cars, and elect Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez president in 2028.
The phrase “from the river to the sea” has existed for decades. Its use stems from a speech by Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Assad (yes, *his* father) calling to “drive the Jews into the sea” and out of Israel. Hamas used the phrase in its Constitution calling for the destruction of Israel and for an independent Palestine, on all of Israel’s land, to be an Islamic state.
The progressive movement lacks credibility to convince people the phrase “from the river to the sea” means something other than what groups like Hamas mean when they use it. They simply come across as arrogant snobs who are lecturing people who have lived under the saying’s shadow for decades about a phrase they just discovered a month ago. Further, even if the left is trying to shift its meaning to something less sinister, no one trusts that progressives will put muscle behind it. Like every other policy that the left has pushed for that ended up causing a backlash (ending the war in Afghanistan, bail reform, COVID school closures, restricting housing development) if they are wrong, they will simply not own up to it and run away to avoid accountability. Israelis are not going to take their word for it that they will fight to ensure a one-state situation is safe and free for them if it comes to that, even if it means apartheid.
After all, they know their Arab neighbors better than a bunch of cosplay socialists in Brooklyn and Berkeley.
"After all, they know their Arab neighbors better than a bunch of cosplay socialists in Brooklyn and Berkeley."
Precisely.
Perhaps because I was born into a Greek-American family at a time when family friends who had to flee Turkey during the "exchange of populations" were still alive, I understand a bit more about that part of the world than most Americans. Trickiness and revenge and adherence to strict religious traditions are virtues. Justice is tribal, women are lesser beings, non-Muslims are infidels. Our State Department is naive if it thinks otherwise. Every-day Americans can have no idea.
Land is everything -- even for Greeks too. Turn your back, and your neighbors will steal your olive trees, then your whole stremma, then your house.
The Levant is not New York City or Boston or Seattle. I don't think the youngsters here who on Fridays march for transgender rights and on Saturdays march for Hamas understand the disconnect in their own heads.
Muslims scorn our Progressives as deviants but gladly use them.
If our young people hate militantly born-again Christians here in the United States, and they do, and perhaps rightly so, why are they so enamored of Muslims?