By GORDON GLANTZ

Do you find it odd the worldwide protests
against Israel, the target of the Oct. 7
atrocities, were almost simultaneous with
the terrorist attack?
It was almost as if it was coordinated.
And these protests have quickly devolved
from the nonsensical comments about
being “anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic” to
calls for Israel (and Jews) to be completely
obliterated from the map for the crime of
ever existing in the first place.
That is another discussion for another time,
however.
The ire directly just at Israel – and Jews in
general — is particularly curious when one
considers the cold shoulder the vast

majority of the Arab world has given to its
alleged brethren.
It is not new.
There is a long and bitter history there, and
seemingly remains swept under the rug.
Let us not lose sight of what was about to
occur before since Oct. 7, as a peace treaty
between Israel and Saudi Arabia seemed
imminent.
Saudi Arabia still has not slammed the door
on the mutually convenient concept.
Meanwhile, other countries — UAE,
Morocco and Bahrain — didn’t even
withdraw their ambassadors from Israel
(Jordan only did because it has a sizeable
Palestinian population).

Back in 1982, at the time of the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon, there was a massacre
at a Palestine refugee camp (Shatila).
Carried about by Israelis? Nope.
Lebanese forces killed as many as 3,500
civilians.
And just three years after the Shatila
massacre, in 1985, something started called
the “War of the Camps” took place. That
was Lebanese Shia, backed by Syria and
Iran, laying siege to the Shatila and Bourj el-
Barajneh camps for close to three years
with untold numbers of dead and wounded
among the Palestinians.
Back in 1975, in the early days of the
Lebanese Civil War, a Palestinian refugee
camp in East Beirut was leveled.

Why don’t we hear about this sordid
history?
Because it doesn’t fit the anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic narrative, that’s why.
While supporters of Israel tend to paint Iran
as an ardent backer of Hamas, it is a more
complicated marriage of convenience.
Experts actually don’t think the Iranians
planned the Oct. 7 attack, with Hamas
doing the dirty work, but they do agree they
weren’t too bothered by it, either.
Iran had to know, though, that Israel would
strike back, and strike hard, and really
hasn’t gotten too directly involved.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Lip service aside, the Arab world has left
Gaza hanging out to dry.

This disturbing history of the Palestinians
being the black sheep of their own family
can be traced back even further.
The 1967 war — and emergence of the PLO
as the representative of the Palestinian
people — was a key turning point, as the
Palestinians had effectively been a function
of other Arab states and Arab militaries
The 1967 war forced hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians into exile, following their
brethren from the 1948 war with Israel.
Many wound up in Lebanon and Jordan,
and were given enough autonomy to run
the camps.
Still, the Arab states, particularly those
around Palestine and Israel, never wanted
to see an independent Palestinian
movement, let alone a state.

Why? The Arab states didn’t really want a
war with Israel after getting taken out to
the woodshed by the neophyte Jewish state
in the 1947-48.
The 1967 war – a.k.a. the Six Day War — put
an end to dreams of the conquest of Israel,
and it gave rise to the PLO as a somewhat
independent force.
That is what led to Black September, a
militant wing of the PLO, and its 1970 aim
to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy.
It should be noted that the Syrians withheld
the air support for the Palestinians they had
promised. The air force was under
command of a general named Hafez al-
Assad (later ruler of Syria), who reportedly
loathed the Palestinians.

While street rhetoric in the Arab world was
pro-Palestinian, the Arab governments
basically turned their backs.
In Syria – and also Jordan and Egypt – there
were open campaigns against the PLO.
There is no Palestinian population – at all –
in Egypt, which bristled at Secretary of State
Anthony Blinken’s suggestion that the
Egyptians absorb refugees from Gaza (even
temporarily).

They have a wall, in fact, that would put Donald’s Trump’s wet dreams to shame (see above).

And, yet, you see no Egyptian flags being
burned at protests. There are no chants and
signs about recalling aid, of which it
receives plenty, from the U.S.
Then again, Egypt, saw the threat in 1970
when the Jordanian prime minister, Wasfi
Tal, was assassinated in Cairo by Palestinian
activists who were literally so literally bloodthirsty that one reportedly knelt down
and drank the blood of the victim (you can’t
make this up).
Yasser Arafat, who later reneged on peace
accords with Israel that would have led to a
two-state solution well before all of this
current loss of life, claimed responsibility.
Arafat, who died in 2004, reportedly
diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds to
himself, under the guise of his “political
survival,” but reports are that much more
was left unaccounted for to this day.
Consider all that – and the bad blood (pun
intended) between Arabs and Palestinians —
while watching the starvation on TV.