Rebecca Shalam

I am pro-Palestinian. Some might be surprised by this due to my recent advocacy on @X for Israel, but you shouldn’t be. I am anti-terrorist, not anti-Palestinian. It is not inconsistent to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. And my pro-Palestinian viewpoint is not a new one. My pro-Palestinian perspective began more than 30 years ago when I was introduced to the Palestinian community and their plight in the early 1990s. I have invested millions in helping promote Palestinian economic development and peaceful coexistence. We would do a lot more if we could be confident that the funds would be used productively. The crisis in Gaza is largely due to a failure of leadership. The Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 after Israel withdrew and evicted 9,000 of its own citizens from their Gazan homes. Israel withdrew from Gaza for peace. It was a small scale test of a two-state solution. Rather than building the Singapore of the Middle East over the last 18 years, Hamas diverted funding to build tunnels, rockets and munitions to wage terror and war in an effort to eliminate Israel and kill Jews. Like the Israelis, the vast majority of Palestinians want peace. They want opportunities for employment so they can earn a living wage to support and educate their families so the next generation can build a better life. They want peace, beauty, happiness, health and prosperity as we all do. All of that would have been possible with Gazan leadership which focused on economic development rather than terrorism. Israel and (most of) the world wanted the Gazan experiment to succeed. Israel simply wanted peace. Israel built a fence and created checkpoints to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and other forms of terror. The Egyptians built a concrete wall at their border with Gaza for the same reasons. The need for a fence and checkpoints is made self-evident by the catastrophic impact on Israel when the fence was breached on Oct. 7th. Hamas is in the business of terrorism. Hamas makes money with grift, corruption, and funding from Israel’s enemies who support Hamas to achieve their own anti-Israel objectives. Hamas and those that support it don’t care about the Palestinians. The Palestinians are simply a tool to implement their anti-Israel and/or anti-Jew objectives. Like other businesses, Hamas has a corporate hierarchy where those at the top make thousands of times more than the ‘workers’ at the bottom. Hamas’ leaders have put aside hundreds of millions and even billions for themselves. Hamas uses their ‘culture’ of terrorism, cash, and other incentives to motivate young, brainwashed —often from youth—, radicalised militants to implement death, torture and destruction. Their ‘success’ at terrorism attracts more funding, amplifies Israel’s response, and the cycle continues. Hamas does not care about the Palestinian people. Hamas knew with certainty how Israel would respond to the torture, rape, beheading, and slaughter of Israeli women, children, seniors and infants on Oct. 7th. Hamas’ plan was to hide out in their tunnels and headquarters built under major hospitals, limit evacuations so that Palestinian citizens are exposed to the inevitable Israeli military response, and then rally the world against Israel in a globally coordinated response as innocent civilians die. Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas. It cannot allow its survival, as Hamas’ existence remains an existential threat. If ISIS invaded our southern border, we would do the same. We would warn civilians to evacuate and then we would go in and destroy the terrorists. We wouldn’t cease fire until they were obliterated. The whole situation is an incredible tragedy. While I have always hoped for a viable and peaceful two-state solution, the Gaza experiment has been an abject failure. Future efforts for statehood for the Palestinians must learn from this catastrophe. As always, I welcome your input, critiques and rebuttal. What did I get wrong?

Some advice for students: If an organization of which you are a member puts out a public statement you disagree with, you have a few choices. You can: Stay silent and have the entire world conclude that you stand by the statement. Convince the other members of the group to withdraw or otherwise modify the statement so that it can reflect the views of all members. Or you can resign in protest. Claiming that you had no involvement or knowledge of the statement, but remaining a member of the organization without it withdrawing the statement is perhaps the worst of the alternatives, as it appears to simply be an attempt to avoid accountability while continuing to be a member of the organization. If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims? I don’t think so. Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims? I don’t think so. Would you want them to be an associate at your law firm? Of course not. It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment. In fact, as CEO, it is your obligation to do so on behalf of all of the other employees in your company, the clients and customers it serves, and all of your other stakeholders. I have heard that the above inquiry has made some members of the groups which put out the statement feel ‘unsafe,’ a word that is sadly overused in universities today. Ask yourself how unsafe it would feel in Israel beginning Saturday early morning and how unsafe it feels now? Ask yourself how unsafe your Jewish classmates feel when 32 clubs published a statement assigning sole responsibility for the heinous, deathly acts of terrorists to Israel and the Jews? Experience is making mistakes and learning from them. If you have made a mistake, acknowledge it, and immediately correct your mistaken actions. Public statements made by organizations of which you are a member can have a material negative impact on your reputation. I have learned from experience that the best time to fix a mistake is now.