Israel must start saying 'no' to most invidious issues that seek to delegitimize identity - opinion

Back on September 1, 1967, in the wake of Israel’s June victory, an Arab League summit, convened in Khartoum, Sudan, adopted a resolution. Contained in the third paragraph of that summary resolution were what became known as the “Three Noes.”

In order “to consolidate all efforts to eliminate the effects of [Israel’s] aggression,” to achieve “the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country” and to regain “these lands” that Israel now possessed, they agreed their efforts would be based on three principles: three “noes.” The three were 

• “no peace” with Israel, 
• “no recognition” of Israel, and 
• “no negotiations” with Israel – while insisting “on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.”

Ever since then – in fact, since two and a half months prior to that on June 19 – Israel has based its diplomatic efforts on what have been its own “Three Yeses”: 

• Israel seeks peace with an ethnic community that does not want peace with it, 
• Israel grants that community recognition while the goal of that community has always been eliminating Israel and Zionism altogether, and 
• Israel seeks to negotiate a territorial compromise while the other side either rejects all plans and proposals or violates what has been agreed to.

FOR MORE than 57 years, this non-equation has been the bane of Israel’s ability to assure not only security for its citizens – as well as advancing its economic, social and cultural needs – but also its international standing in forums and institutions from the United Nations to courts of justice, universities, and human rights groups.

Of course, those three noes were not always upheld in practice. Since then, peace treaties have been negotiated and signed with Egypt and Jordan. With the PLO, however, it was different.

Yet a “no” does not necessarily carry a negative connotation. It can be saying something protective as when an unwanted advance is rebuffed. It can be morally affirming when one, at times, is offered an illegal substance. It can be positive when denying a falsehood.

Playing by the rules

Israel’s official bodies have for too long tried to play by the rules but those rules were continuously altered – to our detriment. The diplomatic discourse became corrosive and debates turned into battles using woke terminology describing nonsensical contradictions.

At public forums, debating halls and studios of media circuses, the language started out at the level of Orwellian 1984 and shifted to a jargon that is intended to confuse and mislead. When one begins to make a good point, the other side convulses from perceived micro aggressions and complains about being the subject of too critical an argument.

The time has come, I suggest, to declare – in as straightforward a manner as possible – Israel’s fundamental positions that are at the core of the conflict that Arabs have with Zionism. The time has come to start saying “no” to the most invidious issues that seek to delegitimize the national identity and rights of the Jewish people.

In my estimation, the three most elemental noes to promote start with:

• No Colonialism

Today’s anti-Zionism is predicated on the fiction that European Jews, suffering antisemitism, enlisted the help of Europeans powers to colonize a land called Palestine. The Jews were not indigenous, continues the fabrication, and even if Jews did live in the area, it was 2,000 years previously and therefore does not count.

Our “No Colonialism” means that we have always, throughout our history, maintained our national identity and our links, on multiple levels, to our national homeland. Even antisemites knew that when they yelled at us to “go back to Palestine.” In fact, the very name “Palestine” was awarded to the land of Judea by a white European imperial colonialist: Emperor Hadrian of Rome.

THE SECOND “no” follows from the first one: that there is:

• No Occupation

The territory supposedly “occupied” is the same territory originally to have been part of the Jewish national home, decided by international law in 1920-1922. In fact, all the area east of the Jordan River was separated then from the Jewish national home and was intended as the Arab state in historic Palestine.

Israel is administering the area as the result of a defensive war forced upon her in 1967 when Arab states and the PLO engaged in an act of aggression. Throughout history, aggressors who lose cannot demand the total return of lost territory. Without a peace treaty, Israel legally is the “belligerent occupier” by law of Judea and Samaria. Israel has more rights to the area than any other ethnic community, especially the group termed “Palestinians,” as Arabs themselves conquered and occupied Judea in 638 CE.

THE LAST is more of a current status: that there is:

• No Genocide.

Despite being fairly recent in the vernacular of anti-Zionism, at its root is the assertion that we Jews are immoral in realizing our national goals. We stole, uprooted, killed and massacred, it is claimed, from the very beginning of our Return to Zion and throughout the Mandate years and early years of our statehood.

The charge that we are engaged in a “genocide” of Gaza’s population is but another variation on the theme of Deir Yassin. Despite the refutation and the casting of serious doubts on the figures of casualties being promoted, and despite Israel’s policy of warnings, evacuations and entry of humanitarian aid – which Germany’s population never merited, for example – the cries of “genocide” continue. Gaza has blinded the haters of Zion. The charge of genocide is but a regurgitated revival of Jews “poisoning wells” and performing “ritual murders” from the medieval ages.

These three noes, among others, should form – especially on the backdrop of the incoming American administration – the hard core messaging on the diplomatic and public policy fronts that Israel faces.

They are noes that assert a positive and truthful message: that Israel is here to stay.

The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.