If you’re going to argue for ethnic cleansing, at least do it with a little more tact.
On Monday, The Jerusalem Post published an opinion piece arguing, by any plausible interpretation, for the forced expulsion of two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into the Sinai Peninsula. The opinion that Israel should drive Palestinians out of their homes at gunpoint is not new: Meir Kahane, the extremist rabbi from Brooklyn who made aliyah in the 1970s and left a mark on Israeli politics – and society at large – that is felt to this day, advocated this view openly. His party, Kach, was outlawed in both of its later iterations and is considered a terrorist organization.
His ultra-nationalist philosophy inched its way further into the mainstream – we have a national security minister who came to prominence as an ardent Kahanist. Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees police, for years kept in his living room a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish terrorist who killed 29 Muslims and injured 125 as they prostrated themselves to God at the gravesite of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Goldstein is buried in Kiryat Arba, in ‘Meir Kahane park.’
But even Kahane had the decency to acknowledge that Palestinians would not agree to this proposition: ‘If I were they,’ Kahane used to say, ‘I’d fight too.’ Compare this to the declaration on these opinion pages on Monday that “the northern Sinai Peninsula is an ideal location to develop a spacious resettlement for the people of Gaza. Its open areas, along with the existing infrastructure, can easily host large-scale development projects that, if led by the Chinese and supported by local labor, for example, can easily mature in just one to two years.”
You’d think you were reading a real estate ad, rather than an argument for war crimes. “If Egypt bravely…consents to such an endeavor,” the author wrote, “It will be hailed by the international community as the savior of the dire plight of Gazans; it will strengthen its status as a leader of the Arab world.” And should the Palestinians object to their mass displacement? Well, “history has taught us that Gazans, despite their complaints about their humanitarian situation, may object towards genuine rehabilitation programs.” The author calls this “stubbornness.”
Don't mince words: we're talking about a war crime
Let’s clarify what this opinion piece is arguing for: Egypt, an Arab country which has repeatedly and adamantly refused to host Palestinian refugees, even temporarily, is to collaborate with Israel to force millions of them out of Gaza at gunpoint and resettle them in the Sinai Peninsula, sealing the border with their former country lest they try to return.
The Arab world, which has fought Israel endlessly since the very first Palestinians to be displaced from the conflict were driven out in 1948, will applaud this initiative, as will the international community, which already accuses Israel of war crimes even when we aren’t committing them. If the Palestinians have a problem with this, that’s just self-destructive “stubbornness,” that the Egyptians, presumably, will be responsible for handling.
The term “Overton window” refers to that range of political opinion, from radical on one end to radical on the other that falls within the bounds of acceptable discussion in the public square, without crossing into the unthinkable. Overton windows shift over time, and they sometimes jolt suddenly in response to significant events.
October 7 was one such event: peaceniks in the South who lived the value of coexistence gave up hope on a two-state solution, disillusioned that there could ever be peace with a population that widely endorses Hamas’ atrocities. Those who were already on the Right were pushed further; it is no longer out of the ordinary to hear calls for the “flattening” of Gaza, or the expulsion of all its residents.
But those who would advocate rewinding the tape on humanity’s moral evolution must at least acknowledge the gravity of their proposal. “Expelling the Palestinians will win plaudits from the rest of the world” is delusional. “And the Palestinians should be grateful for it, too” is obscene.
If you can't say it straight, don't say it at all
Of course, it is impossible to articulate a vision of forced displacement without falling into such obscenities and delusions. Just as it is impossible to endorse Palestinian terrorism without sacrificing your empathy, it is impossible to endorse the ethnic cleansing of Gaza without slaughtering your critical faculties. “Throw them out” is no more a solution today than it was when Meir Kahane was alive. Nor, more importantly, is it any less unjust.
The “day after” conversation is a hard one, not least due to radicalization in Palestinian society. But the way to de-radicalize Gaza is not to radicalize ourselves. And while a free society is obliged to hear out even extremist points of view, it is under no obligation to take those views seriously– especially when they are presented in such a fatuous, flippant, and feckless manner as the one proposed here.