From The River To The Sea Palestine Shall Be …Auschwitz????

Rabbi Paul Plotkin
6 min readDec 13, 2023

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BEFORE
AFTER

If you are following the world wide debate about Israel and Gaza and especially the anti-Israel protests with the unholy alliance of some Muslims, all antisemites, and some progressives and I am ashamed to say, some Jews, you have heard the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Anyone with an elementary school education can look at a map and see that from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea there is only one country, and it is called Israel. To replace it with a free Palestine is a clear and obvious message. There will be no Israel, and the only way there will be no Israel is to wipe it off the face of the earth, because Israelis have not volunteered to give up their country. This is the obvious truth and reality not withstanding U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Talib’s absurd explanation that “it is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate….” This is a pile of B.S.

It is like a group of protesters back in the Jim Crow era marching and chanting,” Lynch all the ni,,,,”and when confronted about it saying,” it was just an aspirational statement about how better to decorate the trees”.

I live at 7…1 XStreet in Margate. If my neighbor hung up a sign that said from 7899 X Street until 7903 X Street no Plotkins will be there, I don’t think I would take it as an aspirational call for all of us to live together in a big cumbia moment. I would hear the message loud and clear.

“Leave before we attack and make sure you and your family are forever gone. You don’t deserve to be here, we intended to buy all the lots for our kinsmen and somehow you inserted yourself into our neighborhood so get out or we will make you.”

It wouldn’t matter to them that I was the first person to not only move into my home but the first person to live in my neighborhood. Facts are irrelevant when slogans are so catchy, and some people across the street will think it’s cool to chant and pick on me.

A recent study asked protesters what river and what sea are they chanting about? Almost 60% had no idea. They heard the chant somewhere, probably on social media or even better on Tik Tok and thought it was cool. Maybe they weren’t the cool kids, but the ones they saw chanting were, so they hoped to improve their social standing by chanting it.

When informed that it meant the destruction of Israel many said that was not what they believed or wanted. They didn’t realize that genocide of the Jews was what they were calling for.

The dumbing down of America and the leaders that will emerge from this age group and educational cohort, is one of America’s greatest threats to our future.

We must ask ourselves what is it that these protesters want and why are they so angry at the Israelis? Do they want a ceasefire now so that down the road Hamas can retool and start all over again and the population of Gaza can be human shields again and the next Israeli attack will be even deadlier?

Are you hearing them calling for a ceasefire dependent on a Hamas surrender and maybe a one-way ticket out of Gaza and the return of all the hostages? That is after all a possible outcome that might end the suffering in Gaza.

If it is I haven’t heard anyone calling for that. Just ceasefire and all will be good.

Really?

Did you know that prior to the October 7th pogrom the state between Gaza and Hamas was a ceasefire, and who broke it by attacking and killing over 1000 Israeli civilians? That is who Israel should again grant a ceasefire to?

So what do the protesters calling for a ceasefire really want?

They want an end to Israel because they have been taught that Israel is a white colonial power that has stolen the land of brown and black people.

Just like the British, the French, the Spanish and the Italians sent their troops into far away “primitive” societies to save the “savages of color” by setting up colonies, and then stole their assets and made slaves or serfs of the population and converted them from their native culture and religion into “civilized” and second class citizens , so too the Jews are guilty of colonial behavior.

When the great ships sailed from Israel to capture the dark natives of….. Oops. Jews haven’t had an independent country in almost 2000 years so they were not the colonists but were themselves treated as if they were the colonies if you will, living in ghettos as second class citizens, denied trades or land owning but offered exile, conversion or murder.

But Jews are white and therefore privileged, so they must be evil by definition and therefore persecuted and judged by standards that no one else is called upon.

You have seen the continual world protests against the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and the obvious targeting of hospitals and schools where no soldiers are hiding?

OF COURSE NOT!

There are few protests because these are 2 white populations fighting each other so why should we care how many innocent civilians are killed? And if that hypocrisy was not enough to get your attention, the majority of the Israelis are not white Ashkenazi but Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews who have the same melanin as Hamas. Moreover, Israel saved the Ethiopian Jews who are not brown but black. But does this matter to the “from the river to the sea” crowd?

Not a bit.

Chanting is what matters, not facts, history, or the obvious reality.

Israel is also accused of being an apartheid state.

“Look at how the white power class built a fence on the West Bank to separate themselves from the poor brown Palestinian population.”

Did that wall get built when Israel captured the West Bank in a defensive war against the Arab states that threatened their destruction?

NO.

It was built only after Palestinian terrorists kept entering Israel from the West Bank and planted bombs and sent suicide bombers to blow up civilians in restaurants and at bus stops and in schools.

When Israel totally left the Gaza strip in 2005, they did not build a fence around Gaza. They left behind a population that could have built a peaceful and prosperous country. Instead in a short period of time they started lofting missiles at their neighbors.

If my neighbors were to constantly walk across my back yard and drop their garbage on my property and after a few attempts at talking to them to no avail, I would build a fence around my property.

That is what Israel did and now they are an apartheid state?

How many black doctors were there in Johannesburg during apartheid? How many black judges were there in the court system? How many black members of parliament were there?

Israel had an Israeli Arab, Khaled Kabub on the Supreme Court. Many of the doctors at its hospitals are Arab Israelis. The previous Israeli government had the head of the largest Arab Party as a minister in the cabinet. How apartheid does that sound to you?

From the River to the sea is antisemitism, it is a call for genocide, and when a Jew says it, I don’t have words to express my disgust. All I can say to them is that after they come for me, they won’t remember what you chanted they will be too busy taking you away as well.

Please share this with your friends and family and if anyone would like to join the blog please email me at ravpp1@gmail.com and send me your full name and email address.

If I don’t post again for 2 weeks let me take this opportunity to wish my Christian readers a Merry Christmas.

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Rabbi Paul Plotkin

I am a retired Conservative Rabbi. I was a pulpit Rabbi for 40 years. I supervise a chain of kosher Delis called Ben's .