Op-Eds — palestine

  When I hear “free Palestine” (or some iteration thereof), I retort, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the “cause” is a fait accompli since midnight on May 14, 1948: the moment a Jewish-majority state in the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people — the pluralistic, liberal parliamentary democracy we know as Medinat Yisrael — was re-born following millennia of occupation by various colonial powers. As you may well imagine, bewilderment often ensues. Underlying my perhaps offbeat response is an intent to understand what precisely one means by the expression “free Palestine.” Interpreted in its most straightforward grammatical construction with some comprehension of the principle of self-determination, achieving...