Middle East Institute (MEI) Senior Fellow Khaled Elgindy, a previously discussed go-to establishment policy wonk for all issues Palestinian, has tweeted that Jerusalem’s Old City is Israeli “occupied territory.” His absurd claim that Jews could ever “occupy” their historic capital of Jerusalem is just one piece of nonsense that he has broadcast online, further proof of many pro-Palestinian falsehoods.
While Jerusalem is “occupied” for Elgindy, a Hamas-ruled Gaza with its terroristic “protesters,” who seek to infiltrate Israel, is for him a victim of Israeli aggression. He wrote of this jihadist rocket-launching base on November 19, 2019, that:
When prominent political figures condemn rockets & affirm Israeli self-defense without mentioning political and humanitarian context—blockade, assassination, killing protestors—they’re not just being intellectually & morally dishonest but actually helping to perpetuate conflict.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the hope that the inhabitants would establish responsible self-rule as a step towards peace with Israel, only to see Hamas terrorists take over in 2006. Yet Elgindy appeared to include Gaza residents among “5 million human beings” suffering under Israeli “apartheid” in an October 25, 2020, tweet. Palestinians in the disputed territories of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria likewise live largely under an unfortunately corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) self-rule, subject to necessary Israeli security measures.
Like many others, Elgindy simplistically promotes modern claims of a “Palestinian” nation inhabiting the territory of the former, post-World War I British League of Nations Palestine Mandate (i.e. Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank). “When people say there’s ‘no such thing’ as Palestinian[s], what they really mean is Palestinians should have no rights,” he tweeted on July 6, 2019. Yet the historical definition of Arabs in places such as Gaza has important policy ramifications for the present. If, for example, Gaza’s inhabitants are merely a local Arab population and not part of any longstanding Palestinian nation, then they do not require a “Palestinian” capital in Jerusalem, where no Arab capital has ever existed. Rather, they can simply create an Arab city-state in Gaza, similar to the Gulf States.
As with hackneyed “Palestinian” historical clichés, Elgindy advocates repeatedly failed strategies of Israel making concessions in the name of Arab-Israeli peace. “There is no solution,” he tweeted on July 8, “that does not involve a loss of power & privilege for Israeli Jews, as the dominant group.” Yet precisely unremitting Palestinian hostility to the Jewish state’s existence has exemplified the famed 1973 words of Israeli diplomat Abba Eban that “Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” After over 25 years of bloody failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords peace process, for instance, Israeli will never forfeit strategic dominance over the Jordan River valley.
This Arab hostility included a war of annihilation against Israel’s birth in 1948, but Elgindy always blames Israeli leaders such as the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Before signing the Oslo Accords at the White House on September 13, 1993, with the murderous Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, Rabin had been an Israeli general in Israel’s 1948 independence war. Among the few instances where Israeli forces expelled Arab populations, he oversaw in June 1948 an ad hoc tactical expulsion of Arab villagers along the strategically vital Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, given the security threats they presented.
Yet Elgindy offered no context to the biography of Rabin, assassinated by a rightwing radical Israeli Jew in 1994 opposed to Rabin’s peace initiatives. Often thus praised as a martyr for peace, Rabin only got criticism from Elgindy in a September 25 tweet. Rabin “certainly never accepted responsibility, much less expressed remorse, for his role in the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians in 1948. In fact, no Israeli leader ever has,” Elgindy stated.
Even Elgindy in this Twitter thread acknowledged that Rabin “never accepted the goal of a Palestinian state” dominating the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, an unacceptable threat to Israel. Yet somehow, after years of PA terrorism sponsorship, similar Israeli sentiments in 2020 manifest extremism, as Elgindy tweeted on October 15. The “growing extremism of (and in) Israeli politics is one of the most underreported and under-analyzed foreign policy issues in all of Washington thinktank-dom,” he argued.
Increasing Palestinian political power is alarming for Israel, given the Palestinians’ widely-criticized “culture of death” that publicly celebrates violence and hatred against Israel. Elgindy in a July 11 tweet gave a brief, disturbing indication of this culture when he noted Palestinians celebrating a teenager’s passage of university entrance exams (Tawjihi) by the dangerous firing of M-16 assault rifles into the air. “Some traditions are worth abandoning. Forever,” he correctly wrote.
Israelis worry about incorporating such Palestinians into Israeli society as fellow citizens with voting rights, as Yishai Fleisher, a representative of the Jewish settler movement in Judea and Samaria tweeted to Elgindy on October 21. Rather, Fleischer and others have variously proposed that these Arabs have residency in Israel and citizenship elsewhere, such as Jordan or a new state in Gaza, or become Israeli citizens after careful vetting. Elgindy dismissed Fleischer’s concerns as “good old fashioned racism.”
The key motive behind Israel-hatred among Palestinians and beyond is various sharia supremacist doctrines, including Islamic antisemitism, yet Elgindy would deride these concerns as “Islamophobic” bigotry. While he tweeted on August 19 support for “confronting antisemitism where ever it exists, including in Arab & Muslim communities,” he also condemned the “many ways mainstream Jewish institutions normalize islamophobia.” His “veritable who’s who of Islamophobes” in a July 19, 2019, tweet featured both Jews and non-Jews such as Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes, Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein, and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer.
Elgindy has strange ways of showing concern for antisemitism. He implied the old anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty with respect to America’s Jewish ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, in an August 19, 2019, tweet. Friedman “seems to have forgotten which government he [is] supposed to represent,” Elgindy claimed.
The company Elgindy keeps with Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, and the anti-Semitic Muslim-American political activist Linda Sarsour, also gives cause for alarm. Duss came under fire in 2012 for comments demonizing Israel as an analyst with the leftist Center for American Progress (CAP) while the vile Louis Farrakhan-fan Sarsour has consistently damned Zionist Jewish self-determination. Yet Elgindy re-tweeted an August 20 tweet from Duss that “my friend” Sarsour “believes that every human being, regardless of race or religion, is entitled to equality, dignity, and security.”
By contrast, Elgindy has dismissed this author as part of the “radical religious right, which sadly is no longer fringe,” in a July 6, 2019, tweet. This followed his criticism of PA diplomat Husam Zomlot engaging in yet another Palestinian cultural appropriation of the Jew Jesus as a Palestinian. Elgindy did not comment upon this egregious historical deception.
Just as in Elgindy’s writings and presentations, online he has reiterated stale Palestinian talking points that can never be the basis for a successful peace with Israel. No wonder that the Arab states Bahrain, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates are abandoning solidarity with Palestinian authorities including the PA in favor of direct ties with Israel. Elgindy and his allies can sound off in an online echo chamber all they want, but their views have no positive relationship to reality.















mortimer says
If Jews are ‘occupying’ Jerusalem, then the English are also ‘occupying’ London, Germans are ‘occupying’ Berlin, the French are ‘occupying’ Paris, the Italians are ‘occupying’ Rome and the Russians are ‘occupying’ Moscow.
The names ‘JERUSALEM’ and ‘ISRAEL’ appear in the Bible 850 times The words Israel, Israelite or Israel’s or other descriptions of the country are mentioned in the Bible over 2,000 times.
There is no other ethnicity (besides Jews) who have such an intimate and lengthy association with the land of Israel.
gravenimage says
Khaled Elgindy’s Virtual Palestinian Reality
……………….
Grimly, most Muslims live in this “reality”–and want to force us to do the same. Good article from Andrew Harrod.