Schumer Falsely Claims Palestinians Have Their ‘Own Culture, Identity, Cuisine, and Literature’

Global support for Israel will continue to get worse if the Israeli government continues moving toward a single state entirely under its control, Schumer said.

Israel does not wish to rule over the Palestinians in Gaza, nor over the Palestinians in Area A of the West Bank. Netanyahu has said that those Palestinians will have total autonomy over their own lives, but not the ability to harm Israel. As Netanyahu’s lapidary formula puts it, “I’m certainly willing to have them have all the powers that they need to govern themselves, but none of the powers that can threaten us.”

“As the highest ranking Jewish elected official in our government and as a staunch defender of Israel, I rise today to say unequivocally, this is a grave mistake for Israel, for Palestinians, for the region, and for the world,” Schumer said. “The only real and sustainable solution to this decades-old conflict is a negotiated two-state solution, a demilitarized Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security, prosperity, dignity, and mutual recognition.”

"Both Jews and Palestinians have long, historical claims to this land," Schumer said, contrary to the “unfounded, absurd and offensive claims by some that Jewish people are colonizers in their ancestral homes.” But Palestinians have lived on the land for generations, Schumer said, and in past centuries have formed their own culture, identity, cuisine and literature.

Palestinians have “lived on the land for generations”? There were no “Palestinians” before they were invented, for obvious propagandistic purposes, and at the suggestion of the KGB, in the mid-1960s. Schumer wants us to believe that “both the Jews and Palestinians have long, historical claims to this land.” He dares to compare the Jews’ 3500 years of history in the Land of Israel, that began two millennia before a single Muslim Arab appeared in the area, with the “Palestinian” Arabs’ much shorter and more tenuous presence in the land. Does he not know of the reports from 19th century travelers to “Palestine,” such as Mark Twain, who visited the area in 1867 and described in The Innocents Abroad the desolation and waste of the land, where one could ride for miles without seeing a single living being? “Palestine,” Twain wrote, “sits in sackcloth and ashes.” And Jerusalem, the “stateliest name in history,” was in reality a village, so small he could circle it – all “rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt” – in a hour. When he visited, there were fewer than 150,000 thousand Arabs, and rural Bedouins living in what was then called “Palestine.”  Those Arbs did not think of themselves as “Palestinians.” They considered themselves to be “Arabs of southern Syria.”

Schumer claims that those he insists on calling “Palestinians” have formed their “own culture, identity, cuisine, and literature.” No, they have not. They are no different in their language, religion, folktales, mores, or cuisine from Arabs in Jordan or Syria. They have tried to convince the world that they really are a “separate people.” As Zuheir Mohsen, the Palestinian leader of the terror group As Saiqa, said in a 1970 interview in the Dutch newspaper Die Trouw, “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

"The only solution to this predicament is one in which each person can flourish in their own state, side by side," Schumer said. "Though for a two-state solution to work in the long term, it has to include real and meaningful compromises by both sides," Schumer said.

Schumer continues to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, if given a state of their own, would settle down to peace with Israel. Ariel Sharon decided in 2005 to pull all the Israelis out of Gaza, leaving for the Gazan Arabs infrastructure, including greenhouses worth $14 million (paid for by American millionaire Mortimer Zuckerman) so that they could take over the business — raising flowers and fruit for export to Europe. Sharon believed that the Gazans would seize the opportunity to live in peace and prosperity with Israel.

He was quickly disabused of this. Instead of accepting the greenhouses and putting them to use, the Gazans vandalized and destroyed them. And instead of Gaza becoming a peaceful neighbor to Israel, the Gazans voted in Hamas, which ever since then has been making intermittent war on the Jewish state from its base in Gaza. It is the same in the West Bank, where Palestinians continue to launch terror attacks on the Jews among whom they live. Yet Schumer thinks giving them a state of their own will finally bring “peace to the two peoples.” After October 7, even Israelis of the left-wing “peace parties” have had to rethink their own naïve faith in “two states for two peoples” and decided that they agree with Netanyahu: they too now oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. I don’t think Chuck Schumer realizes just how profound the change in Israeli opinion is on this matter.