ArcaMax

The word that Palestinians use for the 1948 displacement of many of their forebears is "Nakba," Arabic for "catastrophe." That displacement, of course, was a self-inflicted catastrophe, but also one that Arab leaders inflicted on the rest of the world, which has paid a heavy price for it. It was the proximate result of the decision by Arab nations to reject a United Nations partition of disputed land into a Jewish state and another Arab one, a decision to invade the nascent state of Israel in order to wipe it out.

Improbably, this invasion failed, and in the process several hundred thousand Arabs whose descendants would otherwise today be Israeli citizens aren't. This was the Original Self-Inflicted Wound -- because had there been no rejection of the United Nations compromise and no invasion, there would have been no displacement -- but it wouldn't be the last time the annihilationists placed the desire to annihilate over the lives of those they profess to care about.

The narrative of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of Israel may be risible, but it is addictive to many. On the left and in academia, this narrative has been to intellectual honesty what Kool Aid was to cult followers at Jonestown.

Since 1948, there've been other Nakbas, and each time those responsible for them have devoted themselves to deflecting responsibility. In 1967, when Israel had no presence in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza, the decision by Arab states to take another run at eliminating Israel boomeranged badly. But for that particular attempt at annihilation, there'd be precisely zero Jewish settlements in occupied territory to invoke as the basis for Palestinian grievance, no "apartheid state" claptrap to fraudulently-but-effectively claim was the "root" of The Problem. Had Palestinians actually wanted one, there would have been an independent Palestinian state on the territory they lost trying to end the state of Israel.

Each Nakba along the way has had in common the quality of self-infliction. Palestinians would have had their own state in 2000 or in 2008 had they only said "yes" instead of "no." Their bombing campaign that murdered 1,100 Israelis and maimed 5,000 others between 2000 and 2004 caused Israel to construct a separation barrier in self-defense; that barrier, naturally, quickly generated a battle cry that what was self-protection was actually apartheid.

Hamas' bloody takeover of Gaza in 2007 positioned it to launch repeated barrages of rockets from within Palestinian civilian centers at Israeli civilians, thousands of rockets at a time, totaling tens of thousands even before Oct. 7, 2023. When Israel responded in order to stop the bombardments, both Hamas and civilians were hit, precisely as Hamas intended. There were ceasefires, whereupon the international community, led by American taxpayers, poured money into Gaza under the rubric of "reconstruction." But the money was used instead for rearming. Hamas would then break the ceasefires. Rinse and repeat. And then came Oct. 7.

With the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel last week and indications that Hamas may have had enough for now, it's time to survey the death and destruction caused by the latest Nakba inflicted on Gaza and Lebanon by Hamas and Hezbollah respectively. It takes no genius to grasp that had Hamas -- so long coddled and indulged by the self-professed progressives at Columbia, Harvard and elsewhere -- not decided to send 6,000 gunmen into Israel to attempt a genocide, the tens of thousands of Gazans who are now dead would be alive. Hundreds of thousands now homeless would have homes. And had Hezbollah not chosen to join Hamas' attempted genocide by firing thousands of rockets at Israel in "solidarity" with Hamas, the destruction in southern Lebanon would likewise never have transpired.

Now, once again, Americans will be asked to fork over their hard-earned dollars for another reconstruction that will almost certainly become another rearming. There will be another pause that eventually will be punctuated by another attempt at genocide by the annihilationists. It's certain to be another Nakba, a catastrophe for Palestinians, grievous for Israelis and a disaster for a world that is guilty of averting its eyes from reality and directing blame in what decidedly is the wrong direction.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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