Failing the Test of History

The Fellowship  |  June 6, 2018

As Palestinian terrorists violently attack Israel on the ground, and their leadership attacks the Jewish state via the international community and media, one has to wonder why these failed tactics continue to be used. Is it because they are effective? No, says JNS’ Martin Sherman, who argues that after decades of such strategies all the Palestinians have to show for it are corruption (Fatah) and terrorist tyranny (Hamas), but no success:

Clearly, the Palestinian failure has been undeniably staggering.

In fact, a strong claim can be made that, in the history of post WW-II national independence movements, none have enjoyed conditions more conducive to success, and yet achieved such miserably meager results, than that of the Palestinians. Accordingly, the proponents of Palestinian statehood must be compelled to respond to a simple but trenchant question: Why hasn’t it happened up to now? Despite highly favorable conditions for success…

All they have been able to establish has proven both tenuous and dysfunctional, from a corrupt kleptocracy under Fatah to a tyrannical theocracy under Hamas. Indeed, the Palestinian state has perhaps the unique, if dubious, distinction of attaining “failed state” status before it was in fact established.

So today, decades after other movements for national liberation across Africa and Asia, with far less financial and political support, managed to throw off mighty empires, the Palestinians, with all the weight of the Muslim world and its vast petro-riches behind them, have been unable to wrest independence from the tiny micro-state, Israel – not only when it opposed such independence, but even when it did not!

Clearly then, the time has come for the international community to recognize that rather than a coherent, cohesive national entity, the Palestinians comprise an amorphous amalgam of clans, gangs and bands whose overriding aspiration is not to establish a state for their own people but to dismantle a state of another people – the Jews…