Without a doubt, the “Palestinian Cause” has “jumped the shark.”
Jumping the shark is a term that comes from the old television show Happy Days. It is defined in the Urban Dictionary as “The beginning of the end. Something is said to have "jumped the shark" when it has reached its peak and begun a downhill slide to mediocrity or oblivion.”
Not that the Palestinian Cause ever really had a peak. It was mostly imaginary thinking to begin with. But ever since the October 7th massacre by the Hamas terror group, led by the elected government of the Palestinian quasi-state in Gaza, where Israeli, American, and other men, women, children, the elderly, including Holocaust survivors, were killed, raped, or kidnapped, there really is no logical reason for people in the U.S., or, indeed, the rest of the Western, civilized world, to support the creation of an official and violent terror state for a people that are marinated in hate against Jews and Israelis. There is absolutely no U.S. national interest in doing so, and the Palestinian Arabs are so brainwashed in animosity towards the non-Muslim world that simple morality argues against it as well.
We can tell that the Palestinian Cause has jumped the shark because of how its proponents have behaved following the October 7th massacre. Starting the very day after the attack, before the Israelis had even cleared their territory of all the Hamas killers, and continuing to today, U.S. cities have been engulfed with riots by deranged leftist “useful idiots” who have expressed their support for Hamas’ barbarity, often chanted anti-Semitic slogans, and condemned the Israelis simply for acting to defend themselves. They have attacked Israeli or Jewish owned restaurants. They have charged into synagogues, to harass worshipers. They have harassed Jews on college campuses. They have killed and injured Jews and other supporters of Israel. Their leaders have spouted the most obvious and ridiculous nonsense and lies about the situation, babbling about supposed Israeli “genocide”, “apartheid”, “targeting children”, and “occupation”. Their followers in the media have pushed talking points from Hamas about supposed Palestinian civilian casualties, despite the fact that a terror group like Hamas should have absolutely no credibility, as it has frequently lied about such things before. Most recently, a U.S. airman, and leftist antifa extremist useful idiot, burned himself to death in front of the Israeli embassy, a suicidal action so absurd that in the past it was ridiculed by the comedy group, Monty Python, in their comedy The Life of Brian.
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Currently, those promoting the Palestinian Cause are calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza. Supposedly, they are motivated only for the sake of the children. (This time, they are echoing a Simpson’s comedy reference.) No doubt, it is merely a coincidence that Hamas is facing destruction in Gaza, and desperately needs its useful idiots to stop its annihilation by imposing a ceasefire. Another reason that the useful idiots state that this ceasefire must occur is to honor the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. This argument is quite hypocritical, considering Hamas broke the last ceasefire on October 7th, during the Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday (and also on the Jewish Sabbath day). (I sense a pattern here – see the Yom Kippur War.)
Among those continuing to flog the dead horse of the Palestinian Cause is President Joe Biden, who thereby continues to keep intact his record of being “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”. As was noted by former U.S. Secretary of Defense, under Presidents Bush and Obama, Robert Gates. (Of course, American politics has more than a little bit to do with this.) President Biden, it is reported, is so determined to create an official Palestinian state that he is prepared to act unilaterally, in opposition to the wants of not only Israel but also the entire Arab world, which hates Palestinian Arabs for their history of terrorism and chaos.
Don’t expect any of this to end anytime soon. The useful idiots have their worldviews, and as everyone knows, challenging their world views with facts can lead them to believe that we are attacking their personal identity, which usually results in the hardening of their positions.
So, they will remain forever oblivious to the fact that the Palestinian Cause has jumped the shark.
Adam Turner is a foreign policy expert and national security professional, with two decades of experience on Capitol Hill and in Washington DC.
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