I just received an email from a one-time acquaintance, a hardcore non-Jewish leftist married to an equally hardcore Jewish leftist. She assured me that Israel is engaged in an ongoing genocide against Palestinians and faked a massacre to gain sympathy for the latest iteration of this genocidal plan. This person is not a crazy person on a street corner. She is a biologist with a job—and millions across America share this person’s beliefs. How in the world did this happen? Gary Wexler writes that it was part of a deliberate plan sparked by money flowing from the promised peace of the Oslo Accords.

Before I get into Wexler’s essay, let me just say that it’s a very peculiar genocide (a) that sees the population of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank increase from 1.1 million in 1967 to 14 million in 2023 and (b) leaves slightly more than seven million Jews surrounded by approximately 250 million Muslims and/or Arabs. Having said that, how in the world did we get to the point at which seemingly rational people claim that there was no attack against Israel and, instead, that what we’ve heard about October 7 is all part of a nefarious scheme to kill all the Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza.

The alleged goal is to colonize land to which Israel has no entitlement whatsoever (never mind the Jews’ 4,000 years of continuous residency versus the fewer than 200 years the Arabs have been there). Even to state the proposition is to reveal its insanity. And yet…

According to Wexler, once the Oslo Accords came into being, big money flowed into the region. He was one of the people the Ford Foundation hired to start handing out money “to help build a vibrant liberal civil society.”

Image: Pro-Hamas at Harvard. YouTube screen grab.

Wexler describes how the Israelis had wonderful visions of peace and cooperation. Not so the Arabs to whom he spoke. They didn’t mention the word “peace,” denied co-existence, and spoke in coded terms of a continued occupation. In other words, they saw the Oslo Accords as a pause, not an end, to their continued war against Israel.

Wexler tried to explain to Israelis that the Arabs didn’t share their goals, and he asked the Arab organizations with which he spoke questions about “terrorism, cooperation and even budget.” When he brought up those issues, “the interviewee would slam on the brakes.” And every time, Wexler would be told the same thing:

“When you are in Haifa meeting with Itijaa, you can ask that question to Ameer Makhoul.” Itijaa was an Arab civil rights organization. Ameer Makhoul was its executive director. It became clear to me that Ameer Makhoul had some type of control over all the Arab NGOs I was speaking to.

When Wexler and his Israeli colleague, Debra London, finally did meet with Makhoul, they discovered that he had detailed information about every meeting Wexler had previously had with the Arab organizations. Additionally, Makhoul had an equally detailed dossier about all facets of Wexler’s life, a clear intimidation tactic. Then, having put Wexler in his place, Makhoul explained the plan the Palestinians would put into effect under cover of the Oslo Accords and with the money soon to be flowing in:

“And now, Gary Wexler,” he sat down, “let me give you more direct answers.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Just like you were a Zionist campus activist, we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.”  

He stood again this time, right over me. “You wonder how we will make this happen, how we will pay for this? Not with the money from your liberal Jewish organizations who are now funding us. But from the European Union, Arab and Moslem governments, wealthy Arab people and their organizations. Eventually, we will not take another dollar from the Jews.”

The meeting ended, Makhoul called the Ford Foundation to accuse Wexler of threatening him, and Makhoul was eventually arrested as a Syrian spy. But none of that’s important.

What’s important is that Makhoul and those allied with him did exactly as promised: They flooded the world—the media and academia—with anti-Israel propaganda, starting with the Muhammed al-Dura hoax. Writes Wexler:

As the years went on, I began to see what Ameer Makhoul had laid out to me taking shape. The PR coverage was first: The Muhammad al-Durrah incident in Gaza, when a 12-year-old boy was shot to death on the second day of the Second Intifada, capturing global headlines. The Mavi Marmara, the Turkish Flotilla to Gaza that the Israelis stormed, killing several Palestinian activists, grabbing global headlines. I knew the Mavi Marmara was manufactured for the exposure it would gain.

Then the campuses: The creation of Apartheid Week worldwide. The growth of BDS. The student volunteers who began by the thousands to work in the Palestinian territories and its refugee camps. The shocking creation of anti-Zionist Jewish student groups.

What we’re seeing today is not an accident. It’s part of a deliberate, well-funded plan to say that terrorists who bake babies ovens, rape women to death, and torture young children before murdering them have the moral high ground when held up against a liberal democracy that, when fighting a hot war, tries to evacuate the enemy’s civilians. And the plan is succeeding, probably far beyond Makhoul’s wildest dreams.