The Palestinians Will Never Accept Israel’s Existence

Week after week, we’ve watched Hamas “negotiating” with Israel for a ceasefire. Recently, participants and observers were celebrating that headway was being made, but as usual, Hamas broke off activities once again. The terrorists remain focused on their major goal: driving Israelis into the sea. Any agreement short of that will be a failure to them.

So why do these negotiations continue? What does either side hope to accomplish? Exploring the issues on both sides has been a passion of mine; I admit that I am a Jew and have visited Israel several times, but not lately. Still, like most Westerners, I want to live to see peace in the Middle East. A book I just read was probably intended to suggest there was a way to peace. After I finished reading it, however, the possibility of reaching a practical and workable agreement seems extremely unlikely.

The book I read, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, spends a small amount of the narrative on recent occurrences, such as October 7. I found its focus educational and insightful regarding the long-term relationship between the Jews and the Arabs. I learned the limitations that both sides bring to the conflict, as well as their history.

The story begins by introducing us to a Jewish man, David Shainberg from Memphis, Tennessee, who went to Israel to study at Yeshiva; he chose the Yeshiva in Hebron, Israel (which was called Palestine at the time). After his death, a family member discovered letters that he had sent home from Hebron, and she shared the letters with the author of this book. The letters ignited the curiosity of Yardena Schwartz, and set her on a journey to learn the story of David Shainberg, the events that led to the Hebron pogrom, and to see if she could discern the differences and similarities to what had occurred in Hebron on August 24, 1929, and October 7, 2023.

David Shainberg fell in love with Palestine, the Jewish people, and his study at the Yeshiva. After arriving in Palestine in September 1928, he immersed himself in the experience with deep devotion and learning. He discovered the existence of relative peace between the Arabs and Jews.

The relative harmony between Jews and Arabs in Hebron was rare in a country largely divided along religious lines. In Hebron, Jews and Arabs celebrated weddings and holidays together. They did business together. Jews traveled between Jerusalem and Hebron in Arab buses, taxis, and horse-drawn carts.

But for David Shainberg, this idyllic existence was short-lived.

For weeks, rumors had been circulating, inspired by the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini:

Rumors quickly spread in Muslim circles and the Arabic press: the Jewish youth who marched to the Western Wall on August 15 had attacked Muslim residents, cursed the Prophet Muhammad, and raped Muslim women. None of this was true.

[snip]

Outside the mosque, sheikhs delivered speeches to growing crowds. ‘The Jews have killed a thousand Arabs in Jerusalem,’ declared one of the mosque’s preachers, Mahmud Sultan. ‘The Jews have taken the Wailing Wall and Al-Aqsa, and if you wait longer the Jews will also take the Patriarchs’ Tomb.’ In truth, the Jews had conquered nothing, and no one was being killed by the thousands.

The actual riot/pogrom began on August 24, 1929:

On the morning of August 24, 1929, 3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes, and daggers marched through the Jewish Quarter of Hebron. They went from house to house, raping, stabbing, torturing, and in some cases castrating and burning alive their unarmed Jewish victims. Sixty-seven Jewish men, women, and children were murdered, and dozens more wounded.

The riots spread all over the country, and lasted several days, with little effort from the British to protect the Jews.

David Shainberg was killed.

When it was over, the Shaw Commission conducted an investigation. They insisted that the Grand Mufti played no role in instigating the riots. One person, however, felt that the truth needed to be told about the situation:

[Sir Henry] Snell, a socialist politician of the Labour Party who would go on to be party leader, disagreed chiefly with the recommendation to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases. What is required in Palestine, he concluded, is not a change in policy so much as ‘a change of mind on the part of the Arab population, who have been encouraged to believe that they have suffered a great wrong and that the immigrant Jew constitutes a permanent menace to their livelihood.’ These fears are not only exaggerated, he wrote, but wrong. ‘The Arab people stand to gain rather than to lose from Jewish enterprise.’

Unfortunately, the Grand Mufti and other Arab leaders did not agree. The solution, from their standpoint, was to simply remove all the Jews.

After the October 7 massacre, polls were taken to assess the reactions of the Palestinians to the attacks:

Palestinian polls showed widespread support for Al-Aqsa Flood [a name for the Hamas attack], and a rise in support for Hamas itself. One poll conducted in late November by a Ramallah-based research group found that three-quarters of Palestinians approved of the attack. The same poll found that support for Hamas in the West Bank had tripled since October 7.

* * *

The reason for exploring and comparing these two major events in Palestine/Israel, which occurred many years apart, is to suggest the following: nothing significant has changed. The barbarity and hatred of both incidents were similar. Permission for the Arab population to tell lies and spread rumors about the Jews was pervasive in Hebron, as well as in Gaza. To this day, many people are in denial about the events in Gaza:

For many, recent events are difficult to swallow, contain, or comprehend. How does one react to horrific accounts of mass rape, mutilation, and savage sexual violence? Some would rather not know about it in order to protect themselves, and some prefer to treat it with disbelief.

Still, it happened. It all happened massively on October 7. Those who invest their energy in attempts to blur the incidents should not be referred to as serious journalists.

The implications of these findings are dire. How is it possible to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis when there is no way to know who truly wants peace? Ms. Schwartz says moderate Israelis and Palestinians must be found, but how will either side know the true hearts of the others? Even if Hamas is removed from governance, how will they be kept out of Gazan rule? The Palestinians elected Hamas to govern Gaza, even when they knew they were terrorists. Is there any reason to think that the Palestinians have sincerely reformed?

Yes, there were Arabs in 1929 who saved the lives of Jews in Hebron. Yes, there are probably many Palestinians who want nothing to do with Hamas today. If other entities are brought in to govern Gaza (if anyone wants to take on this impossible task), how will they govern fairly and effectively?

A long-term peace is simply not possible.

[originally published in the American Thinker, January 6, 2025]