The Palestinian Leadership Should Stop Being a Schoolyard Bully.

Definition of a bully and the act of bullying: One who consistently seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable. To treat someone in a cruel, insulting, threatening, or aggressive fashion. To cause someone to do something by means of force or coercion.

I reached out to a long-time friend and NYC advertising colleague, David Eng-Chernack, Deputy Executive Director for Communications and Development at GLSEN, a non-profit focused on anti-bullying for LGBTQ youth, and an expert on ‘bullying.’ He pointed out that “A bully's goal is to intimidate and make you fear to the point where you are rendered powerless and not able to resist or fight back. A bully also wants the upper hand.”

When asked what happens if the bully’s threats of violence are not confronted by the victim or supporters of the victim? David Eng-Chernack replied, “It empowers and emboldens them to continue their behavior but more importantly, it tells them that their behavior is an appropriate course of action.”

And what happens if their tactics are actually supported by the powers that be (i.e.: the school principal, the courts, society, etc.)? For example: telling the victim to deal with it, stay out of the bully’s way, etc. He answered that “It perpetuates and enhances the wrong behavior and most importantly, continues to disenfranchise those who are bullied so that their voices are silenced.”

While Mr. Eng-Chernack’s comments are in the general context of bullying and not related to the topic at hand, it is easy to make the leap from the typical crass bully to situations described below.

Palestinian sources told the Al-Quds newspaper that the factions had sent "clear warnings" to Israel against holding the Flag March and against allowing Jews to enter the Temple Mount on Jerusalem Day. Note with irony that this threat of violence (bullying tactic) is focused on not allowing a certain group of people (Jews) into their own ancient and current capital of the sovereign State of Israel and the Temple Mount, both of which have been irrefutably and archeologically proven to have been established thousands of years prior to the birth of Muhammed.

Ignoring this important context, the Biden administration, supposed supporters of justice and democracy, has been pushing (bullying?) Israel to re-route their Jerusalem Day Flag March (being held as this article is being written, 29 May 2022) away from the Old City. Palestinian Arab leadership has long deemed the flag-waving event as a provocation despite their refusal of every peace offering from the 1947 UN partition plan to accepting their loss of every war they initiated with the objective of wiping Israel and Jews into the sea, while supporters of the rally view it as an integral part celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.

Asked for comment, a U.S. State Department spokesman recently said “the US has repeatedly expressed its concern regarding the recent violence in Jerusalem and across Israel and the West Bank. We continue to call on all sides to do their utmost to exercise restraint and avoid provocative actions and rhetoric.” This ignores the facts on the ground. Doesn’t the US (and everybody else) realize that the bullying tactics of incitement and instigation for violence is coming only from the Palestinian leadership and not the Israeli government? Serving as the powers that be, would they ask the same of any other country? Would any country ever demand America reroute the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

A similar dynamic unfolded last year ahead of the Jerusalem Day Flag March with the Biden officials pressing (again, bullying) the Israeli government to change their long-standing celebratory parade. The Israeli government resisted this foreign pressure until the day of the event, when Israel gave in and announced a reroute amid threats of escalation from Hamas (an internationally recognized terrorist organization) and then later actually cancelled the event (under a classic bully threat). Notwithstanding this capitulation to classic bullying threats, shortly thereafter, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem in what ended up kicking off an 11-day Gaza War in May 2021. So much for kowtowing to the bully. Hamas bullied, Israel gave in, and were attacked anyway. Lesson learned?

This bullying attitude and tactic (see definitions above: if you don’t do what we want, we will do violence) has been used by Arabs, and later by Palestinian Arabs, for more than a century. For example: Nebi Musa/Jerusalem riots (1920), Jaffa riots (1921), Buraq Uprising in Jerusalem and Massacre in Hebron (1929), to name of few of the more violent events, where hundreds of Jewish innocents were murdered, incited by the bully of the time, the British-appointed Grand Mufi of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, who repaid his appointers by becoming a virulent Nazi supporter.

The British continually bent to the will of these bullies by reneging on their own moral promises (the Balfour Declaration, 1917) and international commitments (San Remo, 1920) to the Jewish people. Specifically, maintaining the White Paper of 1939, so as not to upset the Arabs which, contrary to their Mandate of Palestine and prior commitments, severely limited Jewish immigration thus dooming millions of Jews to die at the hands of the Nazis. It continues to this day with the Arab League bloc using oil politics to control and bully the UN, its affiliated organizations, and Western countries, with its agenda of anti-Israel resolutions.

Status of the Status Quo: See well researched articles from many sources, including The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and my own blog on the topic. The Waqf and Jordan are guests on the Temple Mount, as spelled out in the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994 which ceded their illegal occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel. (Article 9 section 2: “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem.”) Note that the mosque is Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock is a shrine. Both take up only a portion of the Temple Mount.

However, Israel is solely responsible for security on the Temple Mount. In that role, Israel put metal detectors in place two days after the July 2017 murder of two Israeli policemen, shot and killed by Israeli-Arab attackers who had smuggled guns onto the Temple Mount. The detectors were put up at the entrances Muslims use to enter for daily prayers. Non-Muslims are allowed to visit the area only as non-praying tourists, and they enter through a separate gate where metal detectors have long been used.

The installation of the metal detectors prompted immediate backlash from Palestinian leaders, who used incendiary language to call the move as a violation of their imagined sovereignty rather than one aimed at security, the purpose of metal detectors. This incitement resulted in widespread protests throughout the city, some violent, with clashes between Muslim protesters and Israeli authorities resulting in hundreds of injuries and the deaths of at least three Palestinians.

But perhaps the reaction most likely to continue this bullying was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s inflammatory and libelous statements: “They don’t have the right to place the [metal detectors] at the gates to the Al Aqsa Mosque, because sovereignty over the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque is our right,” Abbas said, adding: “But [the Israelis] have to act and know that they are the ones who will inevitably lose, because we are doing a very important duty in protecting our security and theirs.” He added in another speech, “Sovereignty over the blessed mosque is for us. We are the ones who should be monitoring and standing at its gates.”

These puffed-up and factually incorrect statements of the Palestinians’ own self-importance on the Temple Mount make this delusionary point of view very dangerous, as proven repeatedly by deadly bully type violence threatened and committed. Yet, according to international law, the UN’s definition of indigenous rights, and the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, the sovereignty is Israel’s. Period.

Israel, just like all the other Western countries, supports freedom of religion for all. Until the very recent Abraham Accords, no Arab Muslim country could make that same claim. If Israeli sovereignty is accepted by the Palestinians, there would be access and freedom of worship similar to all the other mosques and churches throughout Israel.

No other country should dare ask another country to give in to any bullying entity. No country would stand to be bullied into doing anything that wasn’t in its national interest. No other country’s citizens should be monitoring the news, to determine if today was the day bombs and missiles would fall on their cities.

As Popeye the Sailor Man is often heard to say after passively taking a beating by Bluto, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” Popeye then eats his spinach and takes action which ensures Bluto will no longer bother him or his love, Olive Oyl.

It is time. Let’s all (are you listening USA and Great Britain?) grow up and have no more giving in to these bullying tactics, which importantly also silences the Arab and Palestinian moderates who do want peace and prosperity. The proven ramifications of letting bullies control the situation leads to more, not less, divisiveness, violence, unrest, and war. It is time to eat the spinach and put our collective feet down.

 

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