What Being Pro-Palestinian Really Means – By Richard L. Cravatts (Front Page Mag) / December 21, 2021
Campus activism for Palestinian self-determination has never been about statehood.
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.
Writing in 2009 about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the insightful Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh observed that, “What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation,’” he wrote, “as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”
And that is what those who observe the campus activism against Israel have never fully understood: that being pro-Palestinian, by definition, means being anti-Israel.
It does not involve urging the Palestinian leadership to come to terms with Israel about long unsettled negotiation points about borders, Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and other key issues. It has never involved advising Palestinians to abandon terror, or so-called “resistance,” as a tactic for advancing political ambitions.
