Things We Would Like to See Palestine Free From

By Aviva Klompas and Rachel Fish.

"From American college campuses to the streets of London, protesters can be heard chanting, "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." The phrase suggests the destruction of Israel and its people between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. As Jews and Zionists, those words are horrifying. But this does not mean we wish to see the Palestinian people denied the fruits of freedom.

We, too, want "Palestine to be free" and we support Palestinian aspirations for a peaceful state of their own. But the world cannot afford another failed state—another Lebanon or Afghanistan, both of which have been hijacked by terrorists. Avoiding that fate in a "free Palestine" means freeing them from many different things first.

Most obviously, we want to see Palestinians free from Hamas.

Since taking over the Gaza Strip in 2006, Hamas has constructed a fundamentalist authoritarian state and decimated the Gazan economy. Their leaders, fat and happy in Qatar and Turkey, use their own people as human shields as they pursue the politics of a suicide cult. The destruction of Hamas is prerequisite to any peace or freedom that the future can hold for Palestinians.

We also want Palestinians to be free from the corruption of Fatah, their feckless leaders in the West Bank. It would seem Palestinians agree. Fatah continues to delay elections, knowing they will be voted out. Often considered "moderate" in comparison to Hamas, they are led by ailing 87-year-old Palestinian Authority president and PLO chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier. There is no future for Fatah, and no future for Palestinians while Fatah retains their tenuous grip on power.

We want to see Palestinians free from Iran, which uses them as pawns and cannon fodder in a geopolitical game that has no end—and no winners. Quick to praise the atrocities of Oct. 7, Iran provides up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other terrorist organizations, furnishing them with rockets, drones, and a politics of nihilism beyond redemption. If Iran cared about Palestinians, they would pursue regional peace not proxy war.

We want to see Palestinians free from their other Arab "allies" as well. Allies like Egypt who have barely opened their border with Gaza for aid, let alone commerce. Allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan have no interest in taking in Palestinian refugees and close their borders to them. Allies like Turkey and Qatar who empower Hamas' reign of terror in Gaza by harboring their leaders. With allies like these, who needs enemies?

We want to see Palestinians free from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the most dysfunctional relief organization in the world. A slouching, bloated bureaucracy, UNRWA's senior leadership has been mired in scandal for years, including charges of nepotism, corruption, and sexual misconduct. They have a billion-dollar budget and yet Palestinians remain trapped in an endless cycle of destitution. UNRWA does not work, and it does not serve the Palestinian people.

Finally, we'd like to see Palestinians free from Western academic orthodoxy, the adherents of which naively chant, "from the river to the sea," but who have no meaningful understanding of the history, politics or culture of the middle east. Their virtue signaling is an act of violence because it legitimates those who wield authoritarian violence over Gaza. Their patronizing ideology requires Palestinians to remain forever impoverished, forever victims without agency — rather than a people with a future.

We are unapologetically Zionist, believing that the state of Israel embodies the promise of a homeland free from persecution for the Jewish people. We also want to see Palestinians prosper as a people. This requires Palestinian leadership that is willing to compromise and recognize a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Arab intransigence is not a starting point. Neither is Palestinian terrorism.

And that means ensuring that a future state of Palestine is free of Hamas, free from the corruption of Fatah, from the dysfunction of UNRWA, from the cynical exploitation of so-called allies, and from the idiocy of academia.

From there, we can do more than hope and pray for peace: we can realize it. From the river to the sea.

Rachel Fish is special adviser to the president at Brandeis University. Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations. They are co-founders of Boundless Israel, a non-profit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat Jew hatred."