I hear a lot in Dutch public debates that Palestine-supporters should talk to Israel-supporters. For instance, the editor of the daily newspaper NRC writes with concern about how speakers in the Palestine debate are being canceled. As examples, they mention the disruption of an interview with Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans (VVD) at the University of Amsterdam and the cancellation of a meeting with UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese by Dutch parliamentarians. NRC calls for dialogue between Israel supporters and Palestine supporters.
Talking only makes sense if it is meaningful. The reality is that Palestine-supporters do not need to talk to Israel-supporters, because Israel-supporters are not receptive to reason. Rational arguments are a peaceful alternative to violence. But as the International Court of Justice established in its 2024 advisory opinion, Israel’s illegal occupation violates the prohibition on the use of force and therefore constitutes violence rather than dialogue. It is unreasonable to demand that Palestine-supporters confine themselves to rational debate while Israel-supporters impose their will through violence.
More than a century of rational arguments
For more than a century, Palestinians and their supporters have put forward rational arguments. In “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine”, Rashid Khalidi cites letters from 1899 between Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi and Theodor Herzl. Yusuf Diya pointed out to Herzl that Palestine was already inhabited and could not be colonized. Herzl replied that European Jews would colonize Palestine and make the Arabs rich and happy.
From the outset, the will of the Arabs in Palestine was ignored. In “Imperial Perceptions of Palestine”, Lorenzo Kamel cites the thinker Hans Kohn, who resigned in protest from the Zionist movement in the British Mandate of Palestine:
“Lately I have become increasingly aware that the official policy of the Zionist Organization and the opinion of the vast majority of Zionists are quite incompatible with my own convictions. I, therefore, feel that I can no longer remain a leading official within the Zionist Organization […] We pretend to be innocent victims. Of course the Arabs attacked us in August [1929]. Since they have no armies, they could not obey the rules of war. They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt. But we are obliged to look into the deeper cause of this revolt. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [since the British mandate] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people. We have been relying exclusively upon Great Britain’s military might. We have set ourselves goals which by their very nature had to lead to conflict with Arabs […] for twelve years we pretended that the Arabs did not exist and were glad when we were not reminded of their existence.”
The same pattern emerged at the United Nations. In “The United Nations and the Question of Palestine”, Ardi Imseis describes how the UN debate over the partition of Palestine unfolded. Palestine-supporters argued that the local population should decide the future of Palestine, in accordance with the principle of self-determination. The colonial powers ignored this and supported partition, arguing that the Arab majority was too primitive and backward to govern over supposedly superior Jews.
“[W]hat characterized a nation was its culture and not the number of inhabitants. In twenty-five years, the Jewish people had left upon Palestine the indelible mark of an outstanding culture, which characterized the country even more than the Arab culture: Palestine was no more Arab than certain Spanish countries of Latin America were Indian. The Jews […] transformed the deserts, and their model farms compelled admiration not only for their productiveness but also for the democratic character of their social structure. […] [T]he Jews had made a pleasant and healthy country out of a land in which a sparse and rachitic population had merely vegetated. It was incomprehensible that the Arabs should adduce their numerical superiority as an argument when it was the Jews who had made the increase in the Arab population possible. […] Could anyone think of placing that flourishing community under the domination of another community, even a community of a comparable standard of development? What would happen if the demands of the Arabs were yielded to and an independent State of Palestine were created? The Arab population with its simple religiousness and rudimentary political sense [would harm the Jews]. […] An ignorant majority should not be allowed to impose its will. […] There was a certain order in the world which helped to maintain the necessary equilibrium. If the United Nations wished to save that order it must consolidate it.”
In “The Legality of a Jewish State”, John Quigley describes how Arab states in the 1940s unsuccessfully attempted to submit legal questions to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion, which they pledged to consider binding. These questions included: Was the mandate for Palestine legal? Was the UN competent to partition Palestine? Should the local population determine Palestine’s fate? To whom did Palestine belong? Were the Arabs or the Jews in Palestine the aggressors? European colonists blocked these initiatives through lobbying.
During the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinions in 2004 and 2024, Palestinians presented rational arguments, and on both occasions the Court ruled in their favor. In 2024, the Court determined that Palestinians have the right to an independent state in all occupied territories and that Israel must immediately halt the construction of settlements.
Palestinians (including Hamas) want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to rule on all the war crimes in this conflict, but Israel-supporters reject this and attack the Court with fallacies, sanctions, threats, blackmail and espionage.
Theodor Meron, a leading Israeli jurist and former judge at several international tribunals, advised the ICC prosecutor in the case against Netanyahu and Hamas leaders. Brekelmans, who has no expertise in criminal law and has not seen the evidence, attacked the prosecutor with fallacious arguments. He used the same fallacy as the former minister of foreign affairs Uri Rosenthal who stated in an op-ed that the ICC would violate the principle of moral equivalence by issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders and Hamas members on the same day. That reasoning fails on two levels.
First, it is a non sequitur. The fact that two decisions are made on the same day says nothing about moral comparison. When a public prosecutor in Jerusalem indicts a petty thief and Adolf Eichmann on the same day, no one concludes that the prosecutor claims that both criminals are equally evil. Secondly, it is an ad hominem argument. The prosecutor is implicitly accused of antisemitism without any evidence.
Professor Adil Haque explains this clearly. The ICC does not compare states or groups. It assesses individuals based on their legal obligations. It doesn’t weigh who is worse. A war crime is a war crime. Former ICC President Chile Eboe Osuji also pointed out that the date of arrest warrants is legally irrelevant. Even if they had been issued on different days, the facts would remain the same. The underlying suggestion is that Israeli leaders should never be prosecuted. This implies that some victims are worth less than others. That is discrimination.
Netanyahu was the first to speak of ‘twisted and false moral equivalence’. Israel supporters parroted after him. Joe Biden repeated it, followed by AIPAC and German government leaders, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Mark Rutte and Ruben Brekelmans. Donald Trump even imposed sanctions against the ICC citing this alleged moral equivalence. Great Britain threatened to stop funding the ICC and even to leave it.
All this masks an inconvenient truth. Former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated as early as 2015 that there was sufficient ground to prosecute Israeli settlements as a war crime. Thus, by trying to prevent the ICC from prosecuting all the war crimes in Palestine, Israel supporters are trying to help Israel grab as much territory as possible.
Courts are the most appropriate forum for disputes in which two parties with opposing interests present arguments and a (neutral) judge decides who is right. Yet Israel-supporters avoid legal proceedings as much as possible. Why? Because they can impose their will with military force or political power.
Why Israel-supporters cannot be persuaded by rational arguments
Western politicians, who are also Israel-supporters, prefer to be influenced by the Israel lobby rather than by rational arguments. In the United States, lobby groups such as AIPAC and Christians United for Israel spend hundreds of millions of dollars on election campaigns. In this clip you see John Hagee, American evangelical pastor and televangelist, founder of Christians United for Israel, known for his influential role in Christian Zionism and close ties to conservative U.S. politics.
Donald Trump alone received hundreds of million dollars from pro-Israel donors.
In his book “A Promised Land”, Barack Obama writes the following:
“By the time I took office, though, most congressional Republicans had abandoned any pretense of caring about what happened to the Palestinians. Indeed, a strong majority of white evangelicals—the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc—believed that the creation and gradual expansion of Israel fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham and heralded Christ’s eventual return. On the Democratic side, even stalwart progressives were loath to look less pro-Israel than Republicans, especially since many of them were Jewish themselves or represented sizable Jewish constituencies.
Also, members of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful bipartisan lobbying organization dedicated to ensuring unwavering U.S. support for Israel. AIPAC’s clout could be brought to bear on virtually every congressional district in the country, and just about every politician in Washington—including me—counted AIPAC members among their key supporters and donors. In the past, the organization had accommodated a spectrum of views on Middle East peace, insisting mainly that those seeking its endorsement support a continuation of U.S. aid to Israel and oppose efforts to isolate or condemn Israel via the U.N. and other international bodies. But as Israeli politics had moved to the right, so had AIPAC’s policy positions. Its staff and leaders increasingly argued that there should be “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to U.S. policy. Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as “anti-Israel” (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.
I’d been on the receiving end of some of this during my presidential campaign, as Jewish supporters reported having to beat back assertions in their synagogues and on email chains that I was insufficiently supportive of—or even hostile toward—Israel. They attributed these whisper campaigns not to any particular position I’d taken (my backing of a two-state solution and opposition to Israeli settlements were identical to the positions of the other candidates) but rather to my expressions of concern for ordinary Palestinians; my friendships with certain critics of Israeli policy, including an activist and Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi.”
In the Netherlands, the VVD was influenced for years by CIDI (the Dutch equivalent of AIPAC). In 2010, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minster, spoke at a CIDI symposium about his “very good friend” John Manheim, who had long been active in both the VVD and the leadership of CIDI. Rutte described how a trip organized by Manheim had shaped his view of Israel. In “Een open zenuw” (“An Open Nerve”), Peter Malcontent writes that within the VVD nothing about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was released without Manheim’s approval.
Since 1899, Palestine-supporters have tried to persuade Israel-supporters with rational arguments, without success. Israel-supporters prefer to use violence and Western political power to impose their will. In parliament they rely on lies and fallacies. Even in 2024, the largest party, the PVV, claimed that the Palestinian people do not exist, which is nonsense under international law.
Conclusion
Arguing with Israel-supporters is like dancing for rain: futile. What is the point of engaging with them if it leads nowhere? Anyone who claims that Palestine-supporters must talk to Israel-supporters should first demonstrate that Israel and its supporters are receptive to rational arguments.
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