The pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have broken out across our nation are full of signs containing slogans that are either blatantly untrue or completely misleading.
Consider the following:
1) “Set Palestine Free from the River to the Sea.” Based on the interviews of people chanting this slogan, it appears that many have no idea what it means. In the first place, Americans who have always been geographically challenged have expressed no knowledge of what river or sea they are talking about!
And when they are told that the chant refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, they still don’t get the point that it is talking about the annihilation of the state of Israel: it’s just a nice-sounding chant that rhymes.
For those who do understand the meaning of the slogan, it is an expression of appalling Anti-Semitism.
2) “End Apartheid in Israel!” This is a slogan that garners massive support, but the slogan expresses a total lie. There is no Apartheid in Israel. None! Zilch! Nada!
Two million Palestinians live in Israel. They are citizens of Israel, and as such, they have complete freedom to live where they please and to use any hospital or means of transportation. There is no enforced separation of Jews and Arabs of any type that exists in Israel.
Arab Israelis have the right to vote and to serve in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). They also have access to all the welfare services of the state. They have every freedom that the Jews have. In fact, they have been given a freedom Jews do not have! All Jews, except the small percentage of Ultra-Orthodox, are required to serve in the military — both men and women. Palestinian citizens are exempted from this requirement, although some voluntarily serve in non-combat positions.
The only Apartheid that exists in the Middle East is in the Arab countries where all their Jewish populations were forcibly evicted after the Suez War in 1956. The fact of the matter is that no Jews are allowed to live in Arab nations. That is true Apartheid!
3) “Free Palestine from Colonial Oppression.” This is sheer nonsense. The Jewish people are not colonialists. They are not outsiders who have taken over someone else’s land. The land they currently occupy (and much more they do not yet occupy) was given to them by God as an eternal possession (Genesis 12:1-3, 7, 14-15; 16:18-21; 26:3; 28:4, 13; 35:10-12; Exodus 6:7-8 and Psalm 105:8-11).
The Jews occupied this gift of God 3,500 years ago and lived there for 1,500 years until they were forcibly ejected from the land by the Assyrians and the Romans. After their final ejection in 70 AD, the land lay vacant and desolate for 2,000 years. The few Arabs who lived there considered themselves to be Syrians because most of the land was owned by absentee Syrian landlords.
During this long time span, the land was never an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. In short, there was never a Palestinian state with a Palestinian government. Nor was there a Palestinian language or culture.
When the Jews began to return to their homeland in the late 1890s, they bought the land at exorbitant prices. The land was so desolate that the Arabs could not figure out why the Jews wanted it so badly. For example, by 1900, nearly all the trees in Israel had been cut down. This was due to the fact that the Turkish empire taxed trees. In the 20th century, as the returning Jews began to reclaim the land, they started replacing the forests and ended up planting more than 250 million trees during the century!
4) “End 75 Years of Occupation.” Israel is not an occupying power. The land they are “occupying” was not only given to them by God, it was also legally granted to them by the United Nations.
At the end of World War I, the area which was known as Palestine was simply a province of the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. Since the Turks sided with Germany during World War I, the victorious allies decided to dismantle the Ottoman Empire by dividing its pieces between the British and the French. The area called Palestine was assigned to the British, and they later began to rule it as a League of Nations Mandate.
A year before the end of World War I, the British issued the Balfour Declaration in November of 1917. In it, they made it clear that their intention was to make Palestine into a homeland for the Jewish people. At that time, Palestine consisted of the territory that today includes Israel plus Jordan.
But in 1921, the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, decided to give two-thirds of Palestine to the Arabs to establish the Mandate of Transjordan. This area received its full freedom in 1946 when it was reconstituted as the state of Jordan.
When Churchill made his decision, the Jewish people felt betrayed by the British, but they expected to receive what was left of Palestine as their state. The remainder was a small sliver of land 270 miles long, with a width ranging from 9 to 85 miles.
In November of 1947, the United Nations voted to divide this sliver of land even further, dividing it between the Jews and Arabs in order to create a state for each one. Again, the Jews felt betrayed, but they accepted the offer. The Arabs refused.
Israel came back into existence as a state on May 14, 1948. On that same day, the Arabs could have taken advantage of the UN resolution and created a Palestinian state for themselves. But they wanted all the land, so they attacked the new Jewish state with the intention of driving the Jews into the sea.
Throughout the history of the area since it was cut away from the Ottoman Empire in 1918, there have been five times when the Arabs were given the opportunity to create a state of their own, and each time, they have refused:
a) In 1936, the British government appointed the Peel Commission to recommend a solution to Jewish and Arab conflict in the area. The commission offered the Arabs 80% of the land. The Arabs said, “No!”
b) In 1947, The United Nations approved a partition of the land into two states. The Jews received 56%. Again, the Arabs said, “No!”
c) In 1967, after the Six-Day War, the Jews offered to allow the Arabs to create a state that would include Gaza and the West Bank. The Arab League responded with “The Three Nos” — No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiation with Israel.
d) In 2000, the most liberal Prime Minister in Israel’s history, Ehud Barak, offered Yassir Arafat the opportunity to create a state that would include Gaza, 94% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The moderator of the conference, President Bill Clinton, said that all Arafat could say from the beginning to the end of the negotiations was, “No!”
e) In 2008, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, offered Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PLO, the opportunity to create a state that included even more of the West Bank. Abbas said, “No!”
With this history in mind, you can understand what Israel’s most famous diplomat, Abba Eban, once said: “The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
5) “Free Gaza!” This is another nonsensical slogan. Israel granted complete sovereignty to Gaza in 2005 and did so at great social and financial cost. The Israeli army forcibly evicted 9,000 Jews from their homes in 25 settlements and turned the entire area over to the Palestinians.
Jews had to blow up their synagogues to keep them from being desecrated by the Arabs. They also had to dig up their cemeteries and move the bodies of their loved ones to keep the graves from being desecrated. The removal cost the Israeli government $900 million. Further losses included $120 million in annual flower production and 15% of Israel’s agricultural exports, including 60% of its tomato and herb exports. Also lost was 70% of Israel’s organic produce.
After Israel’s withdrawal, hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid flowed into Gaza from many nations, including the United States. This money was for humanitarian assistance and the rebuilding of the area’s infrastructure, particularly hospitals and schools. But when Hamas took over in 2007, these donations were diverted to the purchase of military weapons and the construction of over 300 miles of concrete tunnels for launching attacks into Israel.
The Palestinian people were left to scrape out a living as best they could, while Hamas built up its military with the intention of attacking Israel. Also, the Hamas leaders confiscated much of the financial aid for themselves personally, using it to live extravagant lives of leisure in the Arab Emirate of Qatar. It is estimated that the top leaders of Hamas have a combined worth of a staggering $11 billion.
“Free Gaza” is an appropriate and true slogan only if it refers to freeing Gaza from Hamas!
6) “Stop the Israeli Genocide!” This would be an appropriate slogan if it were addressed to Hamas because the goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel and kill all its Jewish population. But the slogan is greatly misdirected when aimed at Israel.
Israel’s desire is to live at peace with the Arabs. The only war Israel has ever started is the Six-Day War in 1967, and it did so because the surrounding Arab nations declared that they were going to attack and annihilate the Jewish state. Israel decided its only hope for survival was a pre-emptive attack.
The Israeli military has a long-established reputation for being the most humane in the world. When Israel goes to war, it always does everything possible to protect civilians. Israel drops leaflets, makes phone calls, and sends emails to announce targets so that civilians will have time to evacuate. Also, Israel focuses its attacks on military targets and not civilians. Yes, mistakes sometimes occur, but mistakes are not war crimes.
In stark contrast, Hamas uses its civilians as human shields. Thus, it launches rockets from the roofs of hospitals and schools, and when Israel announces targets, Hamas forces civilians to the target areas so that they can use their dead bodies for propaganda purposes. As one expert has put it, “Israel uses its military to protect its citizens, whereas Hamas uses its citizens to protect its military.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long summed up the situation in the Middle East with these words: “If the Arabs were to disarm, there would be peace. If Israel were to disarm, we would cease to exist.”
7) “Gas the Jews!” This slogan has actually been used by the Pro-Palestinian protesters. It is nothing but a horrendous expression of naked Anti-Semitism. It is just one indication that the true aim of the Palestinians is not to create another Palestinian state. No! The real aim is the annihilation of Israel.
And when I refer to “another Palestinian state,” I mean that a Palestinian state already exists. It is the state of Jordan. The state itself was carved out of the Palestinian province of the Ottoman Empire, and one-half of its population is Palestinian.
Conclusion
The outbreak of massive, irrational Anti-Semitism worldwide is a supernatural event orchestrated by Satan. He hates the Jewish people with a passion because they are God’s Chosen People through whom God gave the Scriptures and the Messiah, Jesus. Satan also hates God’s promise to bring a great remnant of the Jews to salvation through faith in Jesus (Isaiah 10:21-22, Zechariah 12:10, and Romans 9:27).
Satan’s determination to annihilate the Jews is what the Holocaust was all about. It is the reason he will motivate the Antichrist to focus the second half of the Tribulation on picking up where Hitler left off in ridding the world of the Jewish people.
But Satan will not succeed:
“He who touches Israel, touches the apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8).
“He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121:4).
“In that day I will make the clans of Judah like a fiery laver among pieces of wood and a fiery torch among sheaves, so they will consume on the right hand and on the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem will again be inhabited in its own place — in Jerusalem” (Zechariah 12:6).
“And it will be in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem” (Zechariah 12:9).
God has regathered the Jewish people to their homeland for a reason. He is going to bring the whole world against them (Zechariah 12:3), not because He hates them but because He loves them. They have been a stubborn and stiff-necked people throughout their relationship with Him. When in trouble in Old Testament times, they always turned to Egypt for help. In modern times, they have relied on the United States. God has always wanted them to rely on Him.
In these end times, as the whole world turns against them, they will be forced to come to the end of themselves, and in their desperation, they will turn to God for their help, and they will finally accept His Son as their Messiah (Zechariah 12:10).
What a day that will be! Jesus mentioned it when he rode into Jerusalem at the climax of His life. He said He would not return to this earth until the Jewish people were willing to say, “Baruch Haba B’shem Adonai,” meaning “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39).
Maranatha! (1 Corinthians 16:22).
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[Dr. Reagan earned a doctorate degree in International Law and Politics from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, a school of international relations that is owned and operated by Tufts and Harvard Universities. After a 20-year career teaching international politics at various universities, he resigned his academic career in 1980 and established Lamb & Lion Ministries — a Bible prophecy ministry that focuses on end-time prophecies concerning the return of Jesus. In 2021, he retired from the ministry after 41 years of service and has since focused on writing books about Bible prophecy.]