AMHERST -- Calling for an end to the nation of Israel is how anti-Zionist author and historian Thomas Suarez began a new book tour this week at UMass Amherst.
"The only way there's ever going to be peace in the Middle East and in the larger world is that the state of Israel ceases to exist and is replaced by a secular state of all the people," Suarez said.
He spoke in an interview with The Republican before his talk in front of 75 people at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Wednesday.
From London, Suarez is visiting American towns and cities to promote his latest book, "Palestine Mapped: From the River to the Sea in Early Geographic Thought with Thomas Suarez."
Interlink Publishing, a Palestinian-owned, independent book publisher in Northampton, is producing and distributing the work. Its co-founder, Michel Moushabeck, told the audience he was honored to have brought Suarez in for the lecture.
The hotly debated slogan, "From the river to the sea," refers to the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Palestinians and their supporters say they see the phrase as a call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence in a single, secular democratic state. Many Israelis and Jewish people see it another way -- as an antisemitic call for the destruction of Israel.
The U.S. House of Representatives condemned the phrase as antisemitic in 2024.
The state of Israel was established in 1948, following the end of World War II and the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews.
According to the United States Holocaust Museum, Jews believed there was no future for them in Europe, and they desired a safe haven somewhere else. On Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181, a plan to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.
Israel was created in 1948, sparking nearly 80 years of war and dispute over who was there first and who owns the land.
"Israel only exists by keeping people in internment camps. If all people were equal, Israel would cease to exist," said Suarez.
In the interview with The Republican from London before he came to the U.S., Suarez called for the elimination of Israel.
"The problem is the very existence of the Israeli state period, the existence of any state based on a genocidal ideology, and Zionism is an irredeemably genocidal ideology," he claimed.
Suarez goes scorched earth when he outlines what he calls the crimes of Israel, accusing the nation and its leaders of "ethnic cleansing."
"The land between the river and the sea, historic Palestine, was inhabited by various peoples who lived together. There were Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, you name it. It was only Zionism that segregated them. When Zionism took over, only those Indigenous people who were Jewish remained, and the rest were ethnically cleansed," he said.
Suarez accuses global powers, the U.S. foremost among them, of enabling what he calls Israel's segregationist, apartheid policies. He insists dismantling Israel is possible and rejects a fait accompli that allows the nation to exist.
"The Zionist project must be forcibly stopped. It's not going to stop on its own volition, just like we stopped the Nazis, and just like we exerted pressure to stop apartheid in South Africa," he said.
World leaders are now considering President Trump's bullet-point peace plan, which so far has accomplished only a hostage exchange and shaky cease fire. Part of that framework is a two-state solution, which includes Israel and Palestine.
Suarez said he has no patience for this approach.
"The very idea of the need to chop up historic Palestine is to legitimize the Zionist libel that the various peoples who lived in the region for millennia suddenly can't live together," he said. "The purpose for two states is to divide what had always been a single territorial unit in order to segregate the land between Jews and non-Jews. The very idea should horrify us."