Bill Maher made a strong case for the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. While every word he said was historically and technically correct, none of it matters in the eyes of the Palestinian people.
In his very poignant monologue, he discussed the history of peoples being displaced and/or hating one another and eventually moving on to live new lives and/or make peace. Twelve million German-speaking people were sent back from the east to Germany after World War II—and the UN did not have an office for decades dedicated to German refugees wanting to go back to their former homes. Northern Ireland was the site of decades of bloodshed between Catholics and British troops and local Protestants, and finally a form of peace agreement was signed. The monologue was accurate at every point, and in Bill Maher fashion, also quite funny. If the Palestinians’ ‘from the river to the sea’ mantra does not mean killing all of the Jews, then what, move? How? “A fleet of trucks, Jew Haul”?
Maher’s words reminded me of all of those international busybodies from the UN, the Quartet, Foggy Bottom, and the British Foreign Ministry. “We must have two states for two people,” they demand. Even now, while a hot war is going on in Gaza and battles are taking place in the north of Israel and in the West Bank, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken cannot stop talking about a “two-state solution.” But what if one side does not play by your rules? What if one side simply has zero value for “logic”, “truth”, “history”, or “facts”? We all remember the famous sword scene from the first Raiders of the Lost Ark. According to those who worked on it, that brief fight was supposed to be the sword scene to end all movie sword scenes. Then, everybody on the set got diarrhea and they could only work for two minutes at a time. So the swordsman whirls his sword around in impressive fashion, and Harrison Ford pulls out his pistol and kills him in one shot. The Palestinians are not interested in playing chess on the same board and by the same rules as Israel and the rest of the international community. They want it all. In the two months of massive marches since the 10/7 pogrom, have you seen one sign with “two states for two people” or the like? Me neither.
The extreme position of the Palestinians is not just in their leadership. One of their billionaire leaders sunning himself in Qatar mumbled something the other day about joining the PLO which on paper recognizes Israel. He was castigated from every side and forced to correct himself before his next massage in Doha. The vast majority of Palestinians, 72 percent, support the barbaric murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Jews on 10/7 by Hamas and their Gazan pals. Those 72 percent are not interested in Bill Maher’s concept of “coping”, “moving on”, or “getting real”. Again, I think that Maher’s monologue was outstanding, but if his target audience was the Palestinians and their useful idiot supporters in the West, then his logic, truth, and historical examples collapse like the sword-bearer in Indiana Jones. The Palestinians do not care about truth or a better future. They only care about killing Jews and destroying Israel. And that thinking is not simply with Hamas; it is the baseline view of Palestinians throughout the region. Bahrain and the UAE could make peace with Israel and shake hands on the White House lawn. The Palestinians may have shaken hands under Arafat but he made it clear that he was using the Oslo Accords as a wedge to get into the land so as to take all of it. He said as much frequently to his own people. “A million martyrs going up to Jerusalem” was not a call for peaceful coexistence.
The fact that world leaders think like Bill Maher, while Palestinians and their leaders think like barbaric conquerors, means that Israel is stuck in a no-win situation. Westerners bleat on about ceasefires and not killing Palestinian civilians, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire rockets at major Israeli population centers to simply kill Jews. Killing Jews for them is a military goal; avoiding Palestinian casualties is for Israel a military goal. Go watch videos of pilots who scrubbed missions because of the presence of a few civilians near a terror target. How many of the over 130 Israeli soldiers killed during the ground operation died because an extra emphasis was put on not endangering Palestinian noncombatants? 10? 100? I don’t know, but I do know that all-out wars finish more quickly with fewer casualties than the ones where armies are forced to conduct themselves like brain surgeons.
Bill Maher, in his not infrequent criticism and critiques of those on the left and/or in the Democratic Party, is a liberal of the old school. He looks for truth as he understands it and argues in support for it with all of his heart. And really, his monologue was correct in every way. My parents were forced to leave Germany after at least 500 continuous years of documented life there, and for my father, he had many stops in life:
Australia where an uncle took responsibility for his and his parents’ immigration
Chicago for a Ph.D. in Chemistry
Back to Sydney to look for a job but there was none
Off to Florida to work; fired
Back to Chicago for a job for 42 years
Retirement in Las Vegas
We tried to convince my folks to move to Israel, but Dad said that he had done enough moving in his life. While my parents held a grudge against Germany until we visited in 1988, they never demanded to get their houses back or threaten violence against Germans who took over Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses. They fit the Maher Model of coping, moving on and building a new life. The problem for Israel is that the Palestinians do not buy into this model. They are demanding a country of their own where one never existed. And the few who try to suggest making peace, accepting less than 100 percent of the “river to the sea” real estate, or getting along with the Jews are either silenced, killed, or forced to run for their lives. Palestinians after 80 years are still in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and elsewhere because it's all of the land or bust. They are not interested in a better life if it does not involve getting it all. Coping and moving on is for losers by their thinking.
The Palestinians will never make peace. Israel lives with that reality every day. There are debates in the government whether or not to let Palestinian workers back into Israel from the West Bank. On the one hand, the economy needs more hands; on the other hand, can one be sure that some worker is not going to try to run over, shoot or stab Jews when in Israel? The world at large should also start getting used to total Palestinian intransigence and stop nudging Israel to make peace. They should also stop threatening not to send arms, or voting in the UN against Israel or giving the Palestinians aid which eventually goes to terror. If the world would simply accept the fact that the Palestinians want it all and thus should be given nothing, maybe the Palestinians would finally be forced to think about a different future. But as long as the UN, US, and Europe keep pushing and badgering Israel to take the first steps toward national suicide, the Palestinians will keep their dream alive of having all of the land and not a single Jew in sight.
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