Toda

If I have accomplished nothing with my hundreds of Townhall articles, at least I taught some people a few words in Hebrew.

“Toda” in Hebrew means thank you. Jews are named after Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob and matriarch Leah. In naming him, Leah specifically says that she gives thanks to God for having four boys. Thus, the very name of the people “Jews” is based on the Hebrew word for thanks. The Jews are “Yehudim,” taken from the name “Yehuda,” one of the 12 sons/tribes of Israel. We have a grandson who is a bit over a year old. Whenever we give him something, he says, “Da.” Since he isn’t Russian and hasn’t watched any James Bond movies, I assume that he is giving his version of “Toda,” which completely amazes me. We have 90-year-old ingrates, yet a child can say thank you when given something by another.

I wish to use this article to express my sincere thanks to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. For the second year running, they have denied Abu Mazen and his gang of thugs entry into the U.S. for the annual U.N. world leader confab. Last year, they instituted the policy, and I figured all things Washington, it would run its course and the brutes would be let in this year. But no. The U.S. politely told the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to get some popcorn and watch the event from Ramallah. The U.N. immediately acted to allow for terrorist participation via Zoom. I wished that Israel had hacked the feed and put on some Israeli cooking show instead.

The Palestinian Authority has been around for 33 years. It was supposed to be a temporary outfit birthing the state of Palestine. But the PA proves the simple rule that if you don’t do things yourself, they’ll never get done right. The reason why Shimon Peres ran to Oslo to make a lousy deal with Yasser Arafat was that Israelis were tired of taking out Palestinian trash. And running their schools. And managing their internal affairs. After 1967, Israel and the IDF set up an administration (COGAT) to run areas beyond the 1949 armistice “green line.” And while things went relatively well for many years, with the first intifada in the late 1980s, the friction between Israelis and Arabs increased dramatically. Running these areas gave Israel security control but came at a price: soldiers were killed from Hebron to Gaza, as were Jews who lived in “settlements” or traveled on the roads there. Let’s give it to the Palestinians! Why should we run their affairs? The fact that Arafat was bent on destroying Israel seemed lost on Peres, Rabin, and their friends. Israel wanted quiet. Instead it got an intifada, pogrom, rockets, and thousands of dead and injured.

The Palestinian Authority is not dedicated to making the lives of local Arabs better. It has no mandate from its people to make peace with Israel. It is not simply a celestial coincidence that Mahmud Abbas is in the 21st year of his four-year term. If there were kosher elections for the PA presidency, a Hamas guy or a dedicated terrorist like Marwan Barghouti would win. If you think that there is some Palestinian peacenik in the wings, you are wrong and confused. The PA reflects Yasser Arafat’s goal of establishing a beachhead and using the same to destroy all of Israel. Would he kill all of the Jews or let them board ships to go someplace else? That’s an open question. But the PA is not interested in any peace that would leave Israel existing and strong. It has proposed borders and return of people from Jordan, etc., that would make Israel untenable. Offers of land and land swaps from Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak did not lead to peace. Of course, the PA leadership blames Israel. And the sun rises in the east.

So the U.S. not allowing in the PA leadership is a true lesson in strength and statesmanship. The PA still pays the salaries of their terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. Some of those on the payroll killed and maimed American citizens. The last bunch of terrorists from our attack got out in one of the deals made to release some number of hostages in Gaza. The U.S. is making a clear statement which will fall on deaf ears in Ramallah: we don’t need window-dressing and pretend reforms. We need a functioning government that is prepared to make peace with Israel and manage a state for the citizens living under its jurisdiction. Gaza was a great opportunity to repudiate Hamas and show that the PA wants a better future for its people. But its leaders also liked the mass murder of Jews, and turning on Hamas would have been politically unpopular. You’re going to come out against the people handing out candies in Hebron over the mass slaughter of Jews? Next, you’ll say that there is no tooth fairy. So the PA somewhat condemned the pogrom while, of course, reflexively blaming Israel for everything bad in the world.

There is no solution to the Palestinian issue because there never was a Palestine, and the Arabs living between “the river to the sea” are mostly descendants of Egyptians and Saudis who came to find work in the Jewish fields and factories before and after the formation of the state of Israel. The Palestinians have been transformed into the ultimate weapon against Jews and Israel. Some Jew is washing his car in Maryland, and a guy comes up screaming that he is a baby killer and genocider. And while the Left and fellow Muslims could not care less about actual Palestinians and their well-being (Greta’s last boat stunt had no “humanitarian aid” and was only meant to cause a confrontation with Israel’s navy), they are a great tool for attacking Israel and working toward its destruction.

Before Palestinians were banned from Israel, tens of thousands of them made good money working for Jews. Virtually every worker in agriculture, construction, and factory production was Palestinian. Not anymore. How many Chinese did I see on Yom Kippur, enjoying the empty streets? The Palestinians put politics over parnassah (a living) and are now living in deeper poverty. There could have been a Palestinian reservation with full Israeli security control, but obviously the PA is not interested in such an arrangement. The only solution for Gaza is for the locals to go someplace else. The strip will not be rebuilt by investors as long as Hamas is around, and Israel does not have the fortitude or mandate to ruthlessly rip Hamas out of Gaza. Nobody wants the Palestinians in their countries for the obvious reason of their being total ingrates. So Israel is finding itself once again having to run some Palestinian enclaves, something that the peace push was supposed to end forever.

Deep-seated Jew distaste has found its mate with the Muslim Brotherhood’s lies about Gaza to unleash a Jew hatred not seen for generations in the U.S. In the day, immigrant groups could fight it out, and there were those who didn’t like the Jews. America has come a long way toward acceptance of everybody, but currently it is regressing with respect to Jews. Hatred is considered acceptable and is openly expressed against American Jews. Keeping Abbas and his cronies out of the country was a good move, even if it means lost sales from their wives blowing the PA budget at American stores. The PA is worthless, but the Palestinians have become the tool of choice to attack Jews and Israel. Abbas has never wanted a state, only the end of the Jewish one. The post-October 7 events have shown the PA to be Hamas Junior.