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Left Voice author Nathaniel Flakin tells us that intifada is a soft and cuddly teddy-bear term. He writes, in an article entitled No, Intifada Does Not Mean Genocide Against Jews,
The term “Intifada” has nothing to do with killing Jews. Rather, it is an Arabic word meaning roughly “shaking off.” The term was used for the first Palestinian uprising that began on December 9, 1987. This first Intifada was defined by mass resistance: demonstrations, strikes, and organizing across the occupied territories. This struggle forced Israel to make some concessions — at least on paper — that led to the Oslo Peace Accords.
Of course it has nothing to do with genocide, except for a few examples such as
This eventually led to a second Intifada, which began on September 28, 2000 after yet another provocation by a far-right Israeli government. This uprising again consisted of mass protests — but this second intifada is when Palestinian groups began the tactic of suicide bombings on a wide scale.
Then, of course, there is the absurd non sequitur,
“Intifada” has been used for different popular uprisings across the Arab world. The people of Western Sahara, fighting against occupation by the U.S-backed monarchy in Morocco, also refer to their struggle as an “Intifada.” Socialists have always supported the Sahrawis against imperialism and Moroccan colonialism. Would Stefanik claim this is also a call for genocide against Jews?
He never gets around to mentioning the events of October 7th, when 1200 Jews were murdered and over 200 kidnapped as hostages. All, presumably, in the name of intifada.
The problem with Mr. Flakin's transparent evasions is that he doesn't get to define the word intifada. Today the word is defined for us by Hamas. And they are quite explicit--in both word and deed--that intifada does mean killing Jews. All of them. From the river to the sea. The term has nothing to do with some past, irrelevant conflict in Morocco, nor with an ancient dictionary definition of the word before Hamas got hold of it.
Anyone who champions intifada today advocates the mass murder of Jews. Why? Because that's what Hamas says the word means, and they get to define it. Not Mr. Flakin.
Mr. Flakin tries to let himself off the hook by claiming Hamas doesn't understand its own language.
In a similar way, the slogan “from the river to the sea” means that all people living in historical Palestine — Jews, Palestinians, and others — must enjoy equal democratic rights. It is not a call to end Jewish life on the territory. Rather, it is a call to end Apartheid.
When Hamas uses the phrase "from the river to the sea," they're not talking about "equal democratic rights." They want a Judenrein" Palestine--cleansed of Jews, who ideally will all be killed, or at very least driven into exile. This is as clear as daylight--that Mr. Flakin tries to twist their language into teddy bears and sunshine is despicably dishonest on his part.
Note Mr. Flakin's gratuitous use of the word "apartheid." This is just a swear word--there is no serious reason why Israel is like South Africa of the 1970s. A more apt analogy is Rwanda in the 1990s.
Rwanda (along with Burundi, and neighboring parts of Congo and Uganda) is inhabited by two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The former are a Bantu people, agriculturalists, who have lived in Central Africa for millennia. The latter are of Hamitic ancestry (often considered racially distinct) who migrated to Rwanda beginning in the 14th Century. The Tutsis are pastoralists--famous for Ankole cattle. Like most pastoral people, the Tutsi are known for their military prowess, and despite being a minority soon came to dominate political life in Rwanda.
The Hutu--especially Hutu militants--regarded the Tutsi as "colonizers," which is the language that Mr. Flakin uses to describe Israeli Jews. And of course we know what happened to said "colonizers"--there was an attempt at a final solution, resulting in the deaths of up to 800,000 people.
The Hutu militants were eventually defeated and fled to neighboring Congo. There lived a Tutsi tribe known as the Banyamulenge--who had long been denied citizenship because of their immigration status, having arrived in the Congo only in the 17th Century. The Banyamulenge--afraid of being slaughtered--formed the corps of an army led by Laurent Kabila that eventually overthrew the Mobutu regime in 1997. That same conflict--a war of all against all, or kill our neighbors before they kill us, resulted in the Second Congolese war that did kill a lot of people--more than five million. (An excellent book about the Congo wars is here.)
This is the promise that Hamas holds for the Palestinians. And people who support Hamas are aptly dubbed génocidaires, named after the Hutu mobs responsible for the genocide.
Mr. Flakin, all of his comrades in Left Voice, and most of the progressive wing of the Democrat Party are génocidaires. The cowardly and clueless college presidents are at very least apologists for génocidaires, if not génocidaires themselves.
Of course génocidaires accuse Israel of committing genocide--what else would you expect them to say? There is an asymmetry between Hamas and Israel. Hamas explicitly in word and deed aspires to commit genocide, but they don't yet have the means to carry out the act. Israel is now fighting what it sees as an existential war for survival, to prevent Hamas from ever acquiring such means.
On the other hand, Israel has the means available to wipe out the entire population of Gaza. They have nuclear weapons for heavens' sake--they could kill all 2.3 million Palestinians in about 10 minutes. Or almost as bad, they could drive the entire population across the border into Egypt in about half a day--wouldn't take long. Yet here we are--two months into the war--and Israel has only killed 18,000 Palestinians, many of them not civilians but Hamas soldiers. That's less than 1% of the Palestinian population!
It's obvious that, despite having the means, Israel does not aspire to kill Palestinian civilians. Indeed, it is to their obvious political advantage to minimize civilian deaths as much as possible. Israel is not committing genocide. Civilian deaths in Gaza are war casualties. That's still bad, but it's not genocide.
The génocidaires think they are fighting for the Palestinian people. I don't get it. I don't understand how murdering ten million Jews is going to improve the lives of Palestinians.
The Militant reports that an Israeli, Ariana Pinsker-Lehrer, studying at Columbia University, spoke to a Palestinian Rights rally at that school.
Pinsker-Lehrer has been active inside Israel in support of Palestinian rights. “I want Israel to be a better country,” she noted, but “you guys think that you have some right to decide whether Israel has a right to exist or not.”
“There are 14 million people ‘between the river and the sea,’” she said, referring to the Jews, Muslims, Christians and others who live in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “and none of them are going anywhere. We need to find a solution that involves all of them and that is not what you are doing.”
She is not a génocidaire. Neither am I, but she has way more courage than I do.
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