\u201cThis is a moment when, if we do not do the right things, we will remain stuck in a loop,\u201d she said at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The cycle of conflict has dragged on because of a scenario in which, she said, \u201cthe Jews are never allowed to win, the Arabs are never allowed to lose \u2013 or at least are never allowed to acknowledge defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilf calls this the \u201ctragedy of ceasefires.\u201d<\/p>\n The Arab world tried to prevent the creation of a Jewish state and then, since 1948, has attempted to undo the existence of that state. This is the core of the conflict, she argued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen it becomes clear that they are about to fail, what people call for is a ceasefire,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what would actually help us is not a ceasefire. What would help us is to bring back the great ideas of victory and defeat, because those are actually necessary for us to get to peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, the world demands that the parties go back to the negotiating table, as if nothing had happened, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople talk about the conflict constantly going on, as if it\u2019s by some bizarre coincidence,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not. It\u2019s because the Arab side for decades has been constantly told, try again, try again. If you haven\u2019t succeeded this time, try again.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the ruptures in the dialogue, Wilf said, is the idea that the only thing standing between\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Israelis and peace is the establishment of a Palestinian state. This has been the driving force in decades of peace efforts, \u201conly to realize that this is not what the Palestinians had ever wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem, she said, is that many Jews and others refuse to take the plainly stated Palestinian and Arab message at face value. Many Jews on her social media feed disagree with her, she said. Many Arabs, by contrast, are up-front.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Arabs on my feed would write this: \u2018You are settler-colonialist, white Europeans. Get out.\u2019 I love that,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re saying there shouldn\u2019t be a Jewish state.\u201d And yet, the Jews who comment, she said, keep coming back to settlements, the occupation and other issues that ignore that the root of the problem is a Palestinian and larger Arab refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any part of the region, said Wilf.<\/p>\n Two Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barack in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008, tried to negotiate a resolution, only to find that two different Palestinian leaders, Yasser Arafat in 2000 and Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, walked away and reverted to violence, she said. Between those two administrations, a different prime minister, Ariel Sharon, decided that, if the Palestinians would not sign an agreement, he would just give them land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe gets out of the Gaza Strip to the last square inch, and we know what they did with that control of the territory,\u201d said Wilf.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The devastation experienced by Gaza and its people in the current war is a tragic moment, but also a possible turning point.<\/p>\n \u201cMoments of ruin and destruction, both in personal as in collective lives, can be moments of growth and transformation,\u201d she said. \u201cBut only if you acknowledge the possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilf admits that people say she speaks harshly.<\/p>\n \u201cI do,\u201d she agreed. \u201cBecause we have not benefited from people who soften the message. We try to cut corners, we don\u2019t go to touch the molten lava that is at the core of our conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, long before Oct. 7, European capitals have been sending money to Palestinian regimes to feel good about themselves, she said. \u201cBut it does no good. It just extends the conflict.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She tells European audiences to change their approach. \u201cYou want to do good?\u201d she asks. \u201cYou need to tell the Palestinians, given that your goal in the last century was to prevent and then to undo the existence of a Jewish state: you lost, and it\u2019s over. You can find a dignified life next to a Jewish state but not instead of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Hard truths are difficult to dislodge, said Wilf, and they can be perpetuated at the highest levels. When Joe Biden, then the US president, visited Israel after Oct. 7, Wilf said, he went out of his way to argue that Hamas does not represent ordinary Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a lie that we often tell to comfort ourselves,\u201d argued Wilf. \u201cHamas is merely the most brutal and successful executor of the ideology that we\u2019ve come to call Palestinianism.\u201d<\/p>\n The ideology, she said, does not hide its goal of eradicating the existence of Israel \u201cfrom the river to the sea.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Terms like \u201cright of return\u201d hold equally brutal meanings.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look at Palestinian Arab texts from the \u201950s, the \u201960s, they are very clear about the term,\u201d she said. \u201cThey talk about \u2018We will tear their hearts out of their bodies, their fingernails from their limbs.\u2019 That\u2019s why you have euphoria on Oct. 7 \u2013 euphoria across the people of Gaza, euphoria across the people of the West Bank, Palestinians and their collaborators around the world. The euphoria was not [because Palestinians were] breaking out of some open-air prison…. The euphoria was that they finally saw the moment that they had been groomed for, for decades.\u2026 Hamas executed Oct. 7 on behalf of Palestinianism, on behalf of the Palestinian people \u2013 for them and of them.\u201d<\/p>\n That is the only way to understand what happened, she argued, or to understand how billions of dollars in international aid have resulted not in social progress but in a militarized terror regime with hundreds of kilometres of tunnels under schools, mosques, homes and kindergartens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can only do something like that among a supportive population, when you are intent on carrying out the vision of that population,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, the enemy is not just Hamas. That\u2019s too easy. The enemy is Palestinianism. And that ideology has to die so that Jews and Arabs can finally live.\u201d<\/p>\n An ideology can indeed be killed, she argued. \u201cIn fact, it happens all the time. We all live in a world where ideologies are constantly killed and dying and replaced by others.\u201d<\/p>\n A first step, Wilf contended, is rejecting what she calls \u201ctrauma determinism\u201d \u2013 the idea that people who are collectively traumatized can only respond with violence and stubborn resistance. This manifests in the idea that Israel\u2019s actions will only further radicalize Palestinians. \u201cI don\u2019t know that there is much further to radicalize,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n Trauma determinism is not real, she said \u2013 or, at least, it need not be. \u201cExhibit A: the Jewish people,\u201d she said. But she also raised the examples of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. \u201cThey suffered violence. The issue is not the violence,\u201d she said. \u201cThe issue is what is the story that gets told. That\u2019s why this moment is so important. Because, just like nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure. People begin to run away from failure.\u201d<\/p>\n To move on and embrace peace, she said, Palestinians, like Germans and Japanese before them, have to acknowledge defeat.<\/p>\n \u201cEmbracing defeat is not necessarily a bad thing,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that process needs to happen. I\u2019m not denying that there is ruin and devastation in Gaza. The question is, how is that ruin and devastation understood? Because, if the story is big, bad evil Israel did that to you and you are just innocent Gazan victims of Israel\u2019s evil nature, then nothing will change. What needs to happen is something that has never happened in the last century of the conflict, which is a connection between cause and effect, action and consequences.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Palestinians, the broader Arab polity and the world need to understand that the ruin and devastation inflicted upon Gaza is the outcome of their ideology. Some other peoples in the region have awakened to this idea and begun to give up their fruitless hostility to Israel, Wilf said.<\/p>\n
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