From the River to the Sea?

Hatred of the Jews is nothing new.

Hatred of the Jews by American political candidates for major positions is new.

For example, ABC4 News of Washington, D.C. reported last week: “Chants of ‘From the river to the sea’ were heard at recent Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America events featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, as new polling shows most registered voters view the Democratic Socialists of America unfavorably.”

Let’s be clear: “From the River to the Sea” means that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish nation. The River is the Jordan River and the Sea is the Mediterranean. What is between those two bodies of water? Israel.

Every politician of whatever party should be asked: Does Israel have the right to exist (as Israel)?

Why can’t there be lasting peace in the Middle East? Israel, a tiny nation-state, no bigger than New Jersey, is surrounded by hostile neighbors that don’t want it to continue to exist.

Israel is constantly having to deal with enemies from without and from within. The Judeo-Christian principle of “just war” applies to them—that is, that they have the right to defend themselves from those who would try to destroy them.

Furthermore, we see common cause between Jews and Christians in that both are often the victims of Jihadi attacks. Both Christians and Jews are called “people of the book” in the Qur’an, and sometimes the instructions are for Muslims to fight these.

The Qur’an says: “O believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians as guardians—they are guardians of each other. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people.” (Surah 5:51).

What is amazing about the Jew-hatred of today is how much of it seems to have come alive in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks against Israelis, killing some 1200 Jews, on their own soil.

In many American universities, including Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, George Washington University, we’ve seen pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli protests.

Sometimes Jewish politicians almost seem ambivalent about speaking up for the only Jewish state in the world, Israel. We should never forget that this land was re-created in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust when 6 million Jews (along with 6-11 million Gentiles) were systematically killed in Nazi Germany in order to speed up Darwinian evolution by creating “the Master Race.” Jews need not apply.

The United States was the first nation to recognize Israel as a new (old) state in 1948.

The Trumanlibrary.gov writes: “U.S. President Harry Truman was the first world leader to officially recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state on May 14, 1948, only eleven minutes after its creation. His decision came after much discussion and advice from the White House staff who had differing viewpoints. Some advisors felt that creating a Jewish state was the only proper response to the holocaust and would benefit American interests.”

And the website adds: “The new country was to be located across the various holy locations in which many events of the Old Testament occurred and, according to the Bible, was promised to the Jewish people by God.”

I just saw an amazing quote from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir: “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.”

Bill Maher, liberal comedian and commentator, surprises me sometimes. I was on his panel four times when it was on ABC-TV. I don’t always agree with him, but his recent comments on Israel make sense.

Maher noted, “Nowhere has this moral confusion become more obvious than a place called Gaza, a little strip of land that was not part of the original Israel, but which they won in a war launched against them, but then gave back—gave back—as a peace gesture. Do they tell you that part on TikTok, kids?”

He goes on to observe, “And the people who run Gaza, Hamas—who you celebrate as a liberation movement, but are really a terrorist, mafia gang, just like the one that terrorizes Haiti—only ever used it to stage attacks on Israel. I think Macklemore [a contemporary pro-Palestinian, American rapper] spoke for all clueless celebrities, when he said, ‘I know enough to know this is a genocide.’ Actually, you don’t know BOOP [applause]. It’s not a genocide. It’s a counter-attack in a war. A war that’s been waged on Israel since 1948, based on the ridiculous premise that Jews don’t belong in the one place on earth, they are indigenous and indisputably their ancestral homeland.”

In short, “From the River to the Sea” would spell the death of Israel. Thankfully, America’s founders, like George Washington, saw our nation as a haven for freedom—including for persecuted Jews—and felt that enlightened nations would follow suit.

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Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries. He has written/co-written 36 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.).