Yalla Peace: Out with the old (system)

Jerusalem Post: Yalla Peace: Out with the old (system)
By RAY HANANIA
06/15/2010 JERUSALEM POST

To survive, Palestinians needs an election system that will result in true representation, rather than the failed one that has sputtered on and off.

Parliamentary systems do not really work in the Arab world. It definitely doesn’t work in Palestine, where coalitions are hard to establish and people vote not on the basis of issues but on ethnicity, religion, tribes and clans.

To survive, Palestinians need a real election system that will result in true representation by the people and for the people, rather than the failed system that has sputtered on and off since 2003.

There is nothing successful about any of the elections in Palestine, from the 2005 municipal and presidential elections to the 2006 legislative elections. International observers like former president Jimmy Carter can claim they were fair, but they are talking about the casting of the votes, not about the process of the election itself.

In fact, the history of Palestinian elections is one mess followed by another, with a minority of voters controlling the government. The 2005 municipal elections were supposed to be completed over several election dates. Voters were to select from two ballots, one a list of parties, the other a list of individual candidates. The election cycle was never completed.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president in that same process on January 9, 2005, with 62 percent of the vote. But despite the majority, the system was unfair. State run media coverage was denied to his challengers.

After Abbas’s election, Hamas continued to act as a shadow government, engaging in foreign policy and suicide missions against Israel to further destroy the ailing peace process.

Built on the failed municipal elections, the legislative elections went ahead anyway on January 25, 2006.

A real election results when the majority of the voters chooses its leadership. That’s not what happened. Hamas won the election but never won a majority of the votes.

Hamas won 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats with Fatah winning only 43 seats, later increasing to 45. The remaining seats were won by smaller splinter groups which were less coalitions and more parties set up by individuals who had no real grassroots support.

The voting system was confusing. People voted on two ballots, again to select a “party” and then to select individuals. It was intentionally confusing, I think, because the powers that be wanted to undermine Hamas and strengthen Fatah. That backfired.

Hamas won a majority of parliament’s seats, but again, it only won 44 percent of the votes cast on the party lists. More than 50,000 of the 1.1 million votes cast were thrown out. Hamas candidates also only won 41% of the votes on the individual lists, while Fatah candidates won 37%.

Instead of embracing the peace process that brought the elections, jubilant Hamas leaders immediately declared their intention to undermine the peace process. That should not have been surprising as Hamas, and the left-wing rejectionist groups like the Jabha and extremist activists in the West, spent most of the prior 13 years using suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks to block peace.


PRIOR TO the election and the expansion of the parliament from 88 to 132 seats, Fatah held a solid majority, 68 of the original 88 seats. What went wrong? Well, Fatah had the votes. But while Hamas offered no choices, Fatah offered too many choices. That divided its base. Long time Fatah leaders were engaged in an internal battle with young rebels who sought to change the leadership of the party. That should have been decided outside of the election, not during the election.

Rather than challenge the corrupt election system, the ruling Palestinian leadership, including Ahmed Qurei, who was appointed prime minister in 2003, too quickly accepted its fate.

What Palestine needs is a Western-style democratic system where elections are held in two distinct rounds of voting. The first vote represents the process by which party supporters decide who will be their candidates. In the West, that is called a “primary” election.

The winners of the primaries then become the candidates who run for office in the final round, called the general election. Only when a candidate wins more than 50% of the votes cast in a general election is that candidate declared the winner.

Because this election process was flawed and there was no clear majority, Palestine was destined for turmoil. Abbas was supposed to run for reelection in 2009 but that never happened because of the Hamas “victory.” In response, the PLO suspended elections and extended Abbas’s term in office. Israel responded by imprisoning many in the Hamas government. Rather than weaken Hamas, Israel’s policies empowered it even more.

Recently, elections have been again delayed, but without offering a real alternative. That only makes matters worse. Instead of simply delaying the elections, Abbas should reconstitute the election system. Throw out the parliamentary system. Replace it with a primary-general election process. Require that every office holder be elected by a majority of votes cast. Replace the office of prime minister with a vice president and keep the power in the hands of the president.

In the event that there are more than two parties in an election and more than two candidates, then if no one gets more than 50% of the vote, then the two highest vote-getters would run-off with the winner taking the majority.

Without a new election system, there can be no democracy in Palestine. The turmoil of the failed elections in 2005 and 2006 will continue to undermine Palestinian democracy and prevent the nation from emerging as a whole.

The collapse of secular government in Palestine is not only Israel’s biggest concern, it will also be a nightmare for the Palestinians.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com and rghanania@gmail.com

Wanted: Israeli strategic long-term thinking

Wanted: Israeli strategic long-term thinking
By RAY HANANIA
06/08/2010 JERUSALEM POST

At the rate it’s going, Israel will eventually help Hamas
become one of the most formidable political forces in the region.

Israel’s botched handling of the seizure of the Mavi Marmara seeking to break the Gaza blockade isn’t the first time a government in Israel has messed up. The Israelis actually have a long and consistent record of missing opportunities to avoid conflict.

Just look at the record of bad decisions.

In the 1970s, to avoid peace talks with the PLO and Yasser Arafat, Israel’s leaders developed a scheme to create an Islamic alternative. They provided support to the Islamic Association, headed by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, whom the Israelis killed in a targeted assassination in 2004.

That scheme allowed Yassin and his Gaza-based organization to launch Hamas in 1989 at the start of the first intifada. Although Israel did not “create” Hamas as some claim, Israel’s mess ups helped midwife Hamas.

Big mistake.

When Yasser Arafat’s peace partner, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered by an extremist Jew, instead of using the tragedy to undermine Israeli extremism, the government spiraled toward a policy of blaming the Palestinians for all peace failures. Voters responded by electing leaders who opposed Rabin’s peace vision, wrongly believing that a “tough” leader – I call it the Menachem Begin factor – would bring peace.

Instead of reinforcing peace, tough policies once again reinforced extremism and further weakened peace.

WHEN THE Israelis finally decided to consider returning lands seized in 1967, instead of making the right choice for peace, Israel’s “tough” leaders made the politically expedient choice, withdrawing their troops – and citizens – from Gaza in 2005 unilaterally.

Again, Israel’s policies strengthened Hamas and made it look like a hero to a people besieged by military occupation and frustrated by the start-and-stop failures of peace.

This was a mistake that crowned Hamas as the movement to defeat Israel’s 1967 occupation policies.

And just as these failed policies reinforced a slow and steady movement of Palestinians toward religious extremism and Hamas, it also created a growing intransigence among Israeli voters who, instead of voting for new, fresh or creative leadership, always voted instead to chose the “tough” leader. The one they hoped would beat down Palestinian nationalism and allow them to believe they could make peace with no substantive concessions on land.

When President Barack Obama spoke about the need to recognize the needs of “both sides” in a speech one year ago designed to reinforce moderation in the Arab and Muslim world, Israelis, seemingly unfamiliar with balanced arbiters, took the comments personally and did everything they could to undermine his policies using their political allies who control both houses of the US Congress.

And when Obama sought to kick-start the peace process by bringing Palestinians and Israelis from the battlefield to the negotiating table, Israel’s government (some of the same who were involved in the 1970s decision to support Yassin’s Islamic Association) couldn’t even stand up to the public pressure to freeze settlement expansion without damaging the “special relationship” with the US.

And now there is the disastrous naval response to the bunch of “activists” who might have sailed into distant memory but are now being hailed around the world as leaders of Middle East civil rights, deflecting attention from Hamas, highlighting the nature of Israel’s blockade against 1.5 million civilians and shattering the already precarious relations with its only real ally in the Middle East, Turkey.

If these policy decisions were intentionally designed to undermine peace and Israel’s standing in the world, I would call the tactics brilliant. But the truth is each and every failure is the result of government policy gone wrong, reinforced by an Israeli public that lives in denial.

At this rate, Israel will eventually help Hamas become one of the most dominant and formidable political forces in the region, the other being Hizbullah.

Of course, Israeli voters might wake up from their hallucinations about their future based on an iron-fist policy and withdraw completely from the West Bank to, for the first time, do something to support the only alternative to Hamas, the secular and anemic Palestinian Authority.

But then, that would require some strategic long-term thinking and that’s not something Israel has a good record of.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian-American columnist. www.YallaPeace.com

The lynching of American Arab journalist Helen Thomas

The lynching of American Arab journalist Helen Thomas

By Ray Hanania

Helen Thomas has survived attacks from every president of the United States, from Eisenhower to Obama, but alas, the champion of Middle East truth could not stand up to this country’s fanatically pro-Israeli media and movement.

It was an amazing display of what Israel and its power players consider important in this world.

They didn’t hesitate to destroy Thomas’ outstanding career in journalism over a few exaggerated comments she made – Abe Foxman the bigoted head of the Anti-Defamation League celebrated in total rapture when he heard the news that Thomas had resigned.

I mean, she’ll turn 90 years old in August.

Yet the same legion of verbal stone-throwers who pilloried Thomas remained defiant in the face of criticism of Israel’s military murder of nine civilians aboard several boats in international waters that were trying to bring food and medicine to the 1.5 million besieged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s defenders like Elliott Abrams have tossed in the word “Lynch mob” to define criticism of Israel over the Gaza flotilla massacre. But the truth is the phrase is more appropriate for what has happened to Helen Thomas. It is supporters of Israel who are doing the lynching, this time stringing up an 89 year old little old lady on a tree of hypocrisy under which Israel can do no wrong and on the basis of words of criticism of Israel that have been wildly distorted and taken out of context.

And Helen Thomas’ comments were clearly taken out of context and distorted into an ugly mass of anti-Semitism.

What perfect timing, 11 days after the fact in the eye of a storm of criticism over Israel’s killing of nine civilians including one American whose death drew hardly a whimper of shock from other Americans or the mainstream news media. Not even as much as a whimper of indignation from the American Congress or media that screams when someone criticizes Israel as they line up to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from AIPAC related PACs,

Truth is on the side of Helen Thomas, and here is what she said. The “interview” took place on May 27 at a Jewish Heritage Celebration at the White House – I wonder how many Palestinian Heritage Celebrations the White House has hosted over the years?

Thomas was approached by an active anti-Palestinian Rabbi and blogger who asked, “Any comment on Israel? We’re asking everyone today.”

The blogger didn’t ask, “What do you think of Jews?” as most news media falsely reported. The question was specifically about “Israel,” a sovereign nation that apparently can do no wrong.

Thomas responded forcefully but with a laugh: “Get the hell out of Palestine.”

Was that the comment of someone saying the “Jews” should go back to where they came from as was reported falsely and repeatedly by the mainstream and pro-Israel media? No. She never used that word.

Helen Thomas said what many believe, that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine, and that means the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Yes, the West Bank that Israel occupies and the Gaza Strip that Israel imprisons.

The comment from Thomas elicits a laugh from the Rabbi, although the media ignored his laughter and instead perniciously characterizes Thomas’ response as “cackling.” The Rabbi then jokingly or sarcastically follows up with a leading comment and question:

“Oooh! Any better comments on Israel?” The blogger laughs and so does another woman whose voice is heard in the background.

Helen Thomas then says, “Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. Not Germany. Not Poland.”

“So where should they go,” the Rabbi, who knows exactly where he is leading the witness asks.

“Go home,” Thomas replies.

“Where’s home?” The Rabbi asks.

“Poland. Germany.”

Knowing he has a good story at this point, the Rabbi changes the context from “Israel” to “Jews.” He says, “So you’re saying the Jews should go home to Poland and Germany?”

Quite a change from what she said. But Thomas, who is walking out of a White House reception past a gaggle of reporters and bloggers, casually brushes off the insertion of a word she did not use, and repeats what she said to the original question.

“Go home to Poland. Germany and America and everywhere else.”

Who is Helen Thomas talking about?  Strip away the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred that exists in the mainstream American media, and the bullying policies that critics of Israel must face, and any fair person would say she was speaking about the settlers who live in the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, like the Gaza Strip, which was the context in which the discussion began.

But that’s not what Israel and their pro-Israel activists enjoy.

Americans are not allowed to have an open debate about Israel in this country. If you do, watch out. The lynch mob is waiting.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

US Attorney vows to protect American Arabs as indecision continues on critical anti-Arab hate crime

US Attorney vows to protect American Arabs as indecision continues on critical anti-Arab hate crime

By Ray Hanania

U.S. Attorney Eric Holder told the opening meeting of the 30^th Annual American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington D.C. Friday that “the prosecution of hate crimes is a top priority” of the Obama administration.

Yet for nearly one year, the Justice Department has not acted to intervene in one of the most heinous hate crimes against a Palestinian American tourist, Husien Shehada, shot and killed last year on South Beach by a Miami police officer with a history of problems.

Police had responded on June 14, 2009 to a 911 call from a caller who said he saw a suspect carrying an AK 47 under his shirt. But when Miami officer Adam Tavss confronted Shehada, no weapon was produced and he had his hands raised in the air and was being compliant. Tavss shot Shehada three times in chest, after, according to his attorney, Shehada had pleaded with the officer several times.

Tavss was suspended but was returned to duty days later after he was “cleared” by an internal probe. Hours after returning to duty, Tavss was involved in another shooting in which a suspected was reported to have hijacked a taxi cab at gunpoint.  Tavss is suspected as the possible shooter but police have never identified which officer fired the bullet that killed the African American cab driver.

Tavss has had a history of brutality complaints that were dismissed by police but he was eventually fired when police discovered he was running a marijuana grow in a home.

The Shehada’s filed a civil suit against the Miami Police and Officer Tavss. The police have refused to release their records on the case, and the attorney for the Shehada family, John Contini, a criminal lawyer based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, said he was hopeful that Holder’s office would intervene.

That request was repeated by Contini on Friday after Holder delivered his remarks and then departed the ADC luncheon at the Marriott Wardman Hotel at the start of the weekend convention. But Contini, who was honored by ADC at the luncheon, handed over his materials to one of Holder’s deputies who was seated next to him.

Holder made no mention of the case but Contini offered details of what he called a “frightening event.”

Contini accused Miami officials of a cover-up and called on the U.S. Attorney to intervene.

“When this case was first brought to me I have to admit that I reacted with the same kind of racism and bigotry than many Americans react with when they hear an Arab or Muslim name like Husien,” Contini confessed. “I am ashamed of that but after looking at the case I am more ashamed of what was done to Husien Shehada, who was on vacation in South Beach with his brother, and what the City of Miami is doing today.”

With American Arabs angered by the recent Israeli assault on a flotilla of ships carrying food and aid to the 1.5 million besieged residents of the Gaza Strip, and with President Obama consumed by the international uproar and call for an investigation in to Israel’s assault which resulted in the killing of 9 activists including one America, Holder focused instead on the fight against profiling and hate crimes.

“The Justice Department’s commitment to civil rights has not been stronger,” Holder insisted.  “Racial profiling is wrong. It can leave a lasting scar on communities and individuals. And it is quite simply, bad policing whatever city, whatever state.”

Holder revealed that he had been the victim of racial profiling when he was in college, calling it a humiliating experience.

Holder said that heart wrenching stories of misguided racial profiling continue. “The Justice Department will not stand idly by as the discrimination by the few unfairly tarnishes the outstanding work being done by so many. Nor will we stand idly by as isolated law enforcement departments engage in discriminatory practices of any kind. Our nation is better than that.”

Contini said he was moved by Holder’s speech but he said that like American Arabs, he is also waiting to see the administration put their muscle behind their promises.

“We haven’t seen anything yet but I am hopeful,” Contini said.

“The era of us versus them that some have experienced must end. Together we can make sure that era does end. … Regardless of our faith and regardless of our background, we are all Americans,” Holder said.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

By RAY HANANIA

06/01/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all the flotilla brought was death, violence, and int'l condemnation of Israel.

The activists leading the flotilla carrying medicine, food and building supplies to the suffering civilians in the Gaza Strip got exactly what they wanted. The IDF, stained by the indictment of the Goldstone Report, obliged them without hesitation.

Both sides are at fault in this confrontation. The activists are against peace, and want Israel to turn the clock back to 1948, while Israel wants to pretend the Palestinians don’t exist.

The flotilla was a bad idea from the start – not that supplies shouldn’t be brought in, but because the organizers knew full well that the purpose was to embarrass Israel politically. They knew that Israel might attack the convoy, and that’s why they chose to attempt to break the blockade rather than even try to negotiate.

But that’s always been the problem. People like that don’t want negotiations. When Palestinians and Israelis were negotiating, they were opposing the Oslo Accords, doing everything they could to stop them. And they stood by while Hamas, a terrorist organization which is also partly to blame for the suffering of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, used suicide bombings and brainwashed teenagers to kill themselves and to take innocent Israeli civilians with them.

As it stands, nine civilians aboard the flotilla were killed, although that number is not definite.

Israel’s military stormed the ship and for Israelis to claim they didn’t expect violence under those circumstances is ridiculous.

What could and should have been done?

First, the civilians should have negotiated with Israel rather than staging this dramatic PR drive. But Hamas refuses to do so, and the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip are as much a prisoner of Hamas’s distorted religious oppression as they are of Israel’s blockade.

Negotiation, not confrontation, is the answer. Discussions with Israel would have worked because Israel will never bend to the failed pressures of the Palestinian extremists. The activists who openly denounce Israeli military excesses are silent when it comes to Hamas excesses.

IT IS this hypocrisy that creates such tragedies. The activists have always been willing to have civilians die to make their case against Israel because the Arab world has been a huge failure from the start. The Arab League is a bad joke. It couldn’t argue its way out of a paper bag, but it sure knows how to act after the fact.

Meanwhile, innocent people die, including many of those who joined the flotilla believing, wrongly, that confronting Israel at sea would be the right strategy to break the blockade. But we know history, and confrontations with Israel always end up badly for the Arabs, and even worse for the Palestinians.

The extremists point to the fact that Turkey, Israel’s largest Muslim ally, is breaking off relations with Israel, but the truth is that this shift began long ago.

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the flotilla brought more death and violence. It achieved the international condemnation of Israel it sought, remaining silent when Hamas terrorists attack and murder Israelis.

The Israelis, too, should be ashamed of their policies, which have abandoned moral principles and instead exploit Palestinian extremism. This Israeli practice of using Palestinian extremism to justify excessive brutality is shameful.

Israel claims it wants peace, but the government seems to prefer confrontations, and the oppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Let’s face it folks, the people of Europe can scream all they want about Israel’s actions, but until the United States steps up to become a true arbiter of peace, this conflict will continue to rage.

And the activists who knowingly play into the hands of Israel’s military responses are doing nothing to achieve peace.

These activists do not want peace based on compromise, and it is clear this Israeli government does not want peace based on compromise either. Both find it far easier to continue the carnage and spin their stories.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at

www.YallaPeace.com.

Yalla Peace: Bikinis versus burkas

Yalla Peace: Bikinis versus burkas
By RAY HANANIA
05/26/2010 JERUSALEM POST

This debate in the Muslim world, prompted by Lebanese-American Rima Fakih’s win of the Miss USA title, is hotter than the two-state vs. one-state debka.





Rima Fakih, the new Miss USA, symbolizes everything that’s wrong with the Middle East. But not in the way you might think. The problems her victory raises are not about herself, but rather about the region’s moral hypocrites.

I had never heard of Fakih until she won the Miss USA title last week when she beat out a gaggle of blonde, blue-eyed descendants of Vikings. Remember, it was the Vikings who first discovered America and established forever the image of blonde hair and blue eyes as the de facto essence of American beauty. And in America, where perception is reality, beauty and image determines one’s success. Not truth. Not justice.

Rima Fakih may have changed all that. A Lebanese-American girl from a Shi’ite family, Rima has dark eyes and jet black hair. She is the first American-Arab to slip through the nation’s color standard (and break through anti-Arab racism) to re-set the definition of American beauty.

And that new definition of American beauty could help change America’s definition of peace and justice, too, where perception is often more important than truth, fairness or the law.

While some scoff at the idea of beauty pageants, physical appearance is the first level of human recognition and is the focus at the beginning of relationships. How you are perceived sets the tone for future relations with others. It may be superficial, but it is reality.

THE SELECTION of Fakih as the symbol of American beauty prompted various responses. For some, Rima’s win simply said “not all Arabs are bad.”

In fact, I’d add, some are pretty hot.

To others, including right-wing Israelis and Arab religious extremists, she symbolizes a moral corruption that threatens all they hold sacred. Some Israelis denounced her as a Hizbullah Mata Hari. The Arab religious fanatics denounced her as excessively immodest and a threat to all they hold sacred. The fact that she doesn’t wear a burka has them all running to their holy books.

The Israeli criticism is political, and not unexpected.

The more interesting debate, however, is the one taking place among Arabs. It surrounds the biblical question: “What’s better, if thou wearest a bikini, or if thou submits to a full burka?”

The bikini versus the burka debate is hotter than the two-state versus one-state debka the Arabs are dancing.

Fakih wears bikinis and believes in things that are banned in many Arab countries, things like civil rights and free speech. Worse, though, to them is the fact that she is a woman asserting her rights and speaking her mind (and body).

They hate beauty unless they can “own it.” So they are not too happy that she has been gyrating her derriere against a pole. No, not against a person of Polish descent, but against a metal pole used at strip clubs by dancers who sometimes entertain rich sheikhs and wealthy Israeli land developers at the bars and casinos of Las Vegas and Monaco.

Gyration of any part of the human body is considered haram, or a sin in Arab culture. It’s taken Arab sheikhs hours on hours of watching those sinful practices to come to that conclusion.

BUT I think if a woman wants to wear a burka and erase her identity just to make her husband and every male member of her family, village and country happy, that’s her choice. It may be a poor choice, but it’s hers nonetheless. My guess is that in most cases, it isn’t a choice at all but an imposition by the legions of closed-minded hypocrites among the Middle East’s moral majority.

Yet, if wearing a burka is a choice, then why isn’t wearing a bikini also a choice?

It just might be the kind of Middle East debate that could bring new life to the paralyzed Arab League, which has been sidelined by its failure to do anything about Palestinian rights in Israel or Arab rights in the rest of the world.

Debate over Rima Fakih might launch a new revolution prompting Arab women to throw off their burkas, kick off their sandals, and do the hootchie cootchie – which was made famous at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. That was the last time the West fell in love with the image of an Arab sheikh riding across the desert sands on a white stallion.

It was there that Arabs discovered that people from the West would pay anything for the things they want. Exorbitant prices for “Holy Land” olive-wood junk. Don’t blame the Arabs for having learned from the West that they shouldn’t give their oil away.


Rima Fakih is beautiful. Rima Fakih is hot. She could be my fourth wife any day. If the Arabs were smart, they would replace their failed leadership with Rima Fakih and let her negotiate Middle East peace. She would do far better than we have so far.

Imagine how different negotiations with Ehud Barak might have ended in 2000 had Rima Fakih been at the negotiating table instead of Yasser Arafat. She’d have blinked her long eyelashes and Barak would have surrendered, offering to share Jerusalem and even work out a fair deal over the Palestinian refugees.

Who knows? The conversation might also have turned toward Barak’s collection of dresses.

We know what happened when Arafat blinked.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian-American columnist. www.YallaPeace.com
rghanania@gmail.com

Chicago Reader profiles Ray Hanania's media network

Check out the Chicago Reader's profile of Ray Hanania's media network ...

Click HERE to read the feature by columnist Michael Miner

We can’t make peace but we can sure make up terms

We can’t make peace but we can sure make up terms
By RAY HANANIA
20/05/2010 JERUSALEM POST

An Israeli-Palestinian phrasebook could be made for all the terms coined over the years: Proximity talks, The road map for peace; Martyrdom operation.

Palestinians and Israelis haven’t been able to come up with a workable peace plan, but they can sure make up original terms. In fact, a complete new dictionary can be filled with such phrases and words created by both sides up over the years: The road map for peace; Targeted killing; Righteous resistance; Martyrdom operation.

More recently, someone invented the term “proximity talks.”

It’s a term I had never heard before, maybe because I was never in proximity to the person who might have said it. But then, isn’t that the point of having peace discussions based on “proximity”? What exactly do proximity talks mean?

Well, for starters, it means not talking to each other, which probably makes both sides happy. It does allow them to talk to everyone else.

Pure genius, if the intent is to pretend peace talks are taking place, make President Barack “The Muslim” Obama look good and, well, do nothing.

I thought they jumped too quickly to the term proximity talks. Palestinians and Israelis could have initiated proximity talks in stages.

They could have had the “procrastination talks,” where each side promises to discuss peace, but never actually makes it to the negotiating table. Then, they could have moved from procrastination talks to the next stage, “approximation talks.” Maybe the two sides could have sat in the same room, but instead of talking, they do that thing people in the Middle East are known for – wiggling their outstretched hands at each other and making faces.

Then, from approximation talks they could have easily moved right into the proximity talks where they talk “at” each other, not “to” each other. It only works if you don’t listen to what the other side is saying, which is what Palestinians and Israelis are basically good at doing.

They could do this over the course of say, five more years, and from proximity talks they could then move to something more substantive, like “virtual reality” peace talks where Twitter and Facebook would play a leading role, and where words like “de-friend” and “un-follow” would be common.

They can do the whole computer e-mail dialogue and then spam each other with “flame wars.”

Maybe Obama can ask Dennis Ross to draw a map using invisible ink and offer it to the Palestinians, pretending it is an Israeli offer. And the Palestinians can then insist that they first have a cup of tea before engaging in anything of substance. The Palestinians might demand that the Israelis meet them at the negotiating table at sundown on a Friday night, for example. We can call those talks the “Shabbat shuffle discussions.”


AND WHEN it all collapses, they can start all over again at step one, with recycled procrastination talks. If that doesn’t work, Palestinians can promise to “recognize” Israel – in a police lineup, of course. Israelis can announce they are “freezing” settlement construction, not by suspending the construction of new housing units in the West Bank, but by installing high-powered air conditioners in the homes of settlers and forcing them to bundle up to stay warm.

Of course, the Israeli plan would require the purchase of huge amounts of air conditioners, paid for by American taxpayers, leaving Palestinians to wonder how come they can’t come up with ideas that require large donations from the Americans, too.

“Proximity” doesn’t mean that you have to hit your mark, of course. It only means that you get close. Close to peace, not actually getting there. That way, no one is disappointed and everyone could say “I told you so.” Everyone knows, though, that “close” only counts in horseshoes, a game most Israelis and Palestinians don’t play anyway. It doesn’t count in peace, as we have seen over the past 17 years of dead end talks.


Dead end. That’s another one of those road map terms. We could call them cul-de-sacs instead of dead ends if we wanted to put a positive spin on failure. No one likes to live on a dead end street, but people do like to live in cul-de-sacs.

I’m sure by now you are scratching your yarmulke or your keffiyeh wondering where this is all leading, or even better, what the heck am I talking about? Don’t worry.

That’s the brilliance of proximity talks, which is what this column has been all about anyway. It doesn’t take you anywhere at all, but you think have been there when you are done.

The author was recently awarded the Sigma Delta Chi national award for column writing by the Society of Professional Journalists. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com

American Arab will bring Arab culture to Miss Universe Contest

American Arab will bring Arab culture to Miss Universe Contest

By Ray Hanania

For years, Arabs have wondered why more Arab countries have not participated in the Miss Universe competition showcasing the beauty of the Arab Woman.

There are 22 Arab countries yet only two had the courage (or pride in their women) to field entrants in last year’s Miss Universe Contest, which was held in the Bahamas, where string bikinis replace car bombs and women are truly free.

The only two Arab countries that entered contestants were Egypt and Lebanon. But next year, assuming things don’t improve and the religious extremists shout down the secular moderates again, we will have at least three. For the first time in American history, an American Arab of Lebanese heritage will represent the United States in the 2010 Miss Universe Competition.

Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Michigan, was crowned the 2010 Miss USA in one of the country’s top beauty pageants. Miss. Fakih was selected at the annual competition hosted by Donald Trump at the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Born in 1986 and only 24 years old, Miss Fakih began her rise to international stardom when she won the 2009 Miss Michigan competition last September.

For me as an American Arab, I am so proud to see that for the first time in American history, a contestant of Arab heritage has won.

Although there are many in the Arab World who object to the competition as violating religiously imposed excesses of modesty on women, Miss Fakih has helped to break the glass ceiling showing the world that Arab beauty is something we should be proud of.

Why is it that a woman in the Arab World has the “right” to make the “choice” to wear a Berqa and face veil (niqab) thereby erasing her physical identity in public, but that same Arab woman does not have the right to wear a bikini in public? I think the Bikini is the symbol of true freedom and the berqa is the sign of the modern day oppression of the Arab woman.

Rima Fakih’s victory Sunday night will help break through that barrier.

It’s one of the hypocrisies that plagues the Arab World, brought on by the religious fanatics, the lowest common denominator in the Middle East. And instead of standing up to it, secular Muslims and Christian Arabs – let’s just call them “Arabs” – are doing nothing to stop this growing oppression.

Miss Fakih was not just about her natural beauty, however. She was smart, intelligent and quick in answering tough questions from the judges. She had planned to enter law school following the Michigan competition, but now her victory in Las Vegas means she stands to compete and possibly win the international competition.

In the secular world, these competitions can help change how the world’s people view people of other races. And for far too long, Arabs have been pushed aside by oppressive restrictions and pejorative attacks.

But Rima Fakih of Michigan will help, as an American Arab, to change how the world views our people and our culture.

She is going to become an amazing ambassador of goodwill championing many causes that touch women of all races, ethnicity and religions. She has vowed to take on issues including raising public awareness of breast and ovarian cancer, sicknesses that have taken the lives of far too many women in this world.

She also helps to put the spotlight on the positive side of the American Arab community, which oftentimes only comes to the front pages of America’s mainstream media during firestorms of negative events and news such as in conflict, terrorism and political confrontation.

America is a nation driven by images, communications that range from movies to the mainstream news media, and having advocates stand at the forefront of American public discourse.

It’s only one of many doors that has been opened. But one day, when all of the door sin America and the West are pushed open, the West and especially the American people might come to better know the real spirit of Arab culture through individuals like Rima Fakih.

I am proud of Rima Fakih but I know that in her achievement, she will face the usual criticism from the extremist corners of the Arab World who are blinded by anger discourse.

We need to support her and encourage her and cheer her on because winning the Miss Universe Contests can only serve to shatter the glass ceiling and add to the movement of empowerment for women of Arab culture in the Arab World and in the West.

Mabruk Rima! We are so proud of your achievement.

end

“Jerusalem Day” is celebration for Israel and tragedy for everyone else

“Jerusalem Day” is celebration for Israel and tragedy for everyone else

By Ray Hanania

Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day today, declaring that when East Jerusalem was captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, it suddenly became an open city.

Of course, that is more Israeli fiction. They’re so good at it.

In the course of capturing Jerusalem and making it open for Jews and Israelis, the Israeli military closed Jerusalem to more than 95 percent of the Arab World.

East Jerusalem was “closed” by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 to pro-Israel activists and any Jewish visitor who carried a stamp in their passport from Israel, but it was open for everyone else.

Of course, the Israelis, wanting to make their point, insisted that the city was closed to “Jews” because of anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish hatred, anti-Israeli hatred and anti-Israel politics.

Well, there was a conflict taking place. And Jordan had every right to prevent Jews from Israel and pro-Israel activists from entering East Jerusalem. They were merely replicating the very policy that Israel implemented in 1948 to ban non-Jews from entering West Jerusalem.

Oh yes, people forget. Israel also captured West Jerusalem in 1947, a year before the state was established. Jerusalem was supposed to be an International City, but Israel refused to accept the partition plan the way it was laid out. Their propaganda was good, though, and they argued they supported the partition, all the while fighting to take as much of the land as possible.

In addition tot aking West Jerusalem in 1948, Israel also took 10 major cities that were supposedly to be located in the phony United Nation’s Partition Plan, a plan that served only to be the front for Israel’s army’s goal of capturing as much of Palestine as possible.

But Israelis are master propagandists and they never spoke about how West Jerusalem was cleansed of Palestinian homeowners. In fact, go through West Jerusalem today and Israelis who live there openly speak about how they live in an “old Arab home.”

Oh yea, more fiction. The Arabs simply left West Jerusalem believing they would be marching back in with the victorious Arab armies, which by the way, never tried to enter the conflict until Israel was declared a state unilaterally on May 14, 1948, a year later.

So West Jerusalem has been a closed city ever since by Israel to 95 percent of visitors from the Arab World, and to Christians and Muslims or Arab and especially Palestinian heritage.

Israel allows some Palestinians to enter West Jerusalem, as long as they have either an accepted foreign passport from outside of the Arab World and second are not pro-Arab activists. Anyone who had a passport with a stamp from Egypt, Jordan and Syria were also specifically banned from entering not only West Jerusalem but Israel.

Imagine. That’s exactly what Jordan did. Jordan implemented the exact same policy and prevented anyone with an Israeli passport or a stamp on their passport from Israel or who was identified as being a pro-Israel activist from entering East Jerusalem.

And then in June 1967, Israel captured East Jerusalem and the name was changed to “east Jerusalem” with a lower case “E” so as not to designate that part of the city to be anything different from the “west Jerusalem” which was captured by military force in 1947, 21 years before.

Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, are routinely banned from entering Jerusalem under Israeli control. They ban travelers who have certain stamps from certain countries in their passports. They ban activists identified as pro-Palestinian or pro-Arab. They ban almost every Arab from entering Jerusalem.

When I performed comedy with the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour in 2007, Palestinian journalists were not permitted by the Israeli government to enter Jerusalem to see my show. In fact, I was allowed to enter because I had an American passport and because I was not considered an anti-Israel Palestinian activist. I was still humiliated a few times at the border. But Israelis, you know how funny they are? They just shrug their shoulders and blame it on “those tough border guards who have to be tough to protect us from those Arab terrorists.”

So while Israel celebrates Jerusalem Day this week, don’t for one minute believe that Jerusalem is an open city just because Israelis who have placed blinders on their faces so they don’t see the ugly truth insist it is so.

One of the key components of a lasting peace is that both sides recognize what they have and are doing to the other. And until Israelis learn to share the blame, there won’t be much peace at all. Just more conflict.

Jerusalem is a closed city. Christians and Muslims who are Arab and especially Palestinian are banned from entering Jerusalem. The only ones you will see there are those who lived there and haven’t been evicted yet by Israel’s extremist government.

But then, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is working on that little loop hole, isn’t he?

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and writer. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com.)

Yalla Peace: Who supports ‘Palestinian development’?

Yalla Peace: Who supports ‘Palestinian development’?

By RAY HANANIA

04/05/2010 JERUSALEM POST

For five years I have tried my best to gain control of my family’s land near what is now Gilo. All I’ve been getting is the runaround.

Silvan Shalom is the vice prime minister of Israel and minister for regional development. He wrote a column last week that appeared in a local paper in Chicago titled “Israel, striving to be a good neighbor.” It was an upbeat column, intended, I think, more for American consumption than to reinforce confidence among the Palestinians. But I did read it. And I was inspired by his words and his promised goal to “support Palestinian development.”

Maybe I am a sucker for politicians who have a habit of saying inspiring and great things, but doing something different. I’ve been a journalist for 35 years, so that makes me very cynical. Then again, maybe I always just want to believe that there is something far better behind the ugly headlines of conflict and continued turmoil that plagues Palestinian-Israeli relations.

There are things about Shalom that make me, at least as an Arab, believe he is genuine. He is a Jewish Arab born in Tunisia who immigrated to Israel as a one year old in 1959. About that time, my dad was able to get his brothers and sisters out of a refugee camp in Jordan and resettled in Chicago near by. I was seven at the time.

But Shalom is also a journalist, and despite what I know is a deep-seated bias in the mainstream media against Arabs, I think sometimes Israeli journalists are more open to see the “other side.”

So, maybe Shalom does “care” about us Palestinians.

AND IT is in that spirit that I am asking Minister Shalom to step in to my life and into the issue of my family’s land. It is located right in the middle of that spirit of cooperation that Shalom spoke about in his column, about how he and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were working hard to improve relations with the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab countries by “increasing the level of economic cooperation.”

It would go a long way, Minister Shalom, if you would insure that no one messes with my family’s land, which has been handed down to me as the official representative of the “Hanania Palestinian people.”

My mother’s cousins on my grandmother’s side purchased about 34 dunams of land that sits in one of the valleys in Gilo that face Malha and the stadium. The land belongs to my cousins, the Tarud family. It is right around the mountain bend from a little Muslim village called Sharafat. It’s not too far away from the land owned by the Darweesh family.

For years, one of the family members at Sharafat watched over our land, harvesting the olives and other vegetables and fruits as a trade-off for his service. Three generations have passed. The caretaker lived in a small home that was on the side of the land, but that was torn down by Israeli soldiers sometime in the 1970s. They sealed the water well that was nearby, too. (It wasn’t a great gesture of wanting to work together, by the way. But, I guess, stuff happens.) The land has more than 100 olive trees and Zarzour berries. I’ve been to it several times in the past few years, as my cousins have passed away, leaving the land’s ownership in the hands of one last cousin, who placed the power of attorney in my hands.

For five years I have tried my best to gain control of my family’s land. I have all of the original papers and even the sales document stamped by the Ottoman government, and registered in Bethlehem, where my mother’s family is from.

And for five years, all I have been given is the runaround. “We don’t ‘steal’ anyone’s land,” I have been told by countless Israeli officials who defend the expansion of settlements like Gilo, which was once a security settlement and is a prestigious and “old” neighborhood these days.

PALESTINIANS HAVE not been that helpful, either. They keep threatening me that I “must not sell the land to the Jews.” And everyone wants a piece of it to help me protect it.

I brought it to an Israeli realtor to put it on the market to see what I can get from Palestinians or Israelis. They found one potential buyer, “Yossi,” who offered a paltry $600,000 through a prominent law firm on King George Avenue.

But Yossi never followed through. The deal was never consummated. I don’t trust too many people anymore. I ignore the threats from Palestinians and the hypocritical advice I get from other Arabs who tell me, “Don’t do anything. We’ll get it all back one day.”

The biggest problem, though, is the Israelis, Every trip to an Israeli office has ended in a bad experience. Why should they help me when maybe, if they wait long enough, they can just take it from me. Who am I to complain?

But that would contradict the spirit of what Minister Silvan Shalom wrote about in his glowing column on how much Israel’s government wants to help Palestinians through cooperative development.

Okay, Minister Shalom. Here’s my deal: You develop the land for me. I want to create a peace oasis where Palestinians and Israelis can come together to learn about cooperation. Maybe they can build a business there run by both sides. Maybe we can build a theater there where Israelis and Palestinians can creatively work out their conflicting narratives through writing, comedy, stage plays and sometimes just sharing a cup of coffee.

Yea, that’s it. Maybe we build a big coffee shop that caters to both sides so that Palestinians and Israelis can come together. Or, maybe it’s all just a bunch of baloney – kosher or halal, who cares.

And it’s all just talk. I’d like to believe there are some good Israelis out there who really do care about “Palestinian development,” and maybe even do the right thing.

Imagine, Palestinians and Israelis sharing a table in a disputed region not too far from Jerusalem to the north. Sharing a finjan kahwah and even having their futures read from the grinds at the bottom of the porcelain cup.

My mother, bless her heart, read my fortune once when I was young. And she said to me, “One day, you’ll be at the forefront of peace.” I’m here. Just sometimes, it feels a little lonely.

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian-American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com.

SYNDICATED: Yalla Peace: Stop saying tolerance/neither Palestinians nor Israelis seem to show much tolerance for each other

SYNDICATED: Yalla Peace: Stop saying tolerance
By RAY HANANIA
27/04/2010 THE JERUSALEM POST

Until everyone starts accepting the other’s views and even their historical narratives, I am not sure either side should be building museums of tolerance.

I met Simon Wiesenthal as a cub reporter in the early 1980s. I was one of the only Palestinian Americans working as a full-time reporter at a daily paper in the country. My editor, who was Jewish, must have thought it funny to assign a Palestinian reporter to cover Jewish American and Holocaust events.

I didn’t mind, though. Wiesenthal received an honor from the Decalogue Society, the association for Jewish lawyers in Chicago. I interviewed him and we had a great conversation. He was fixated on me being Palestinian, but in a positive way.

At the end of the evening, he gave me his autograph, which I put alongside autographs from other Middle East luminaries including Abba Eban (whom I debated on national television when I was 25), Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat.

Wiesenthal told me he believed the Palestinians deserved a state, and hoped violence would be overcome by peace. He said Palestinians needed a visionary leader who could see peace and work toward it, and not be distracted by the ongoing violence.

Wiesenthal, to me, was a very tolerant person who seemed to consider the feelings of others in his quest to hunt down Nazi war criminals. That’s why I am concerned, as are all Arabs and Muslims, with the Wiesenthal Center’s plans to build a “Museum of Tolerance” on land adjacent to what was once a prominent Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

The Wiesenthal Center defends the decision, arguing the land was used as a municipal parking lot by the government for many years and no Muslims complained.

Well, they did complain, but who listens when a Palestinian complains about anything in Israel? (No one listened when Israel bulldozed dozens of Arab homes and expelled the residents around the Western Wall in order to expand it.) It’s not a good defense to argue, “well, Muslims didn’t complain when concrete was laid on top of the cemetery and cars were parked there.”

The other argument is that Muslims planned to build something on it years ago under the British Mandate, but are opposed now because it’s the “Jews” who want to build on it.

MY ATTITUDE is simple, and I am a very tolerant person. If Muslims want to do something with a Muslim cemetery, that is their business and their right. Jews don’t have a right to do anything with a Muslim cemetery. And Muslims don’t have a right to do anything with a Jewish cemetery, either. Sadly, that has happened, too. Arabs have desecrated Jewish cemeteries.

These acts of desecration have been the result of our unending conflict.

It’s not unusual to have an Israeli institution built on top of something the Arabs and Muslims hold sacred. Israel rarely worries about what Arabs think, whether they are citizens or neighbors.

Yad Vashem, for example, is built in close proximity of the land of Deir Yassin where the pre-state organizations, the Stern Gang and the Irgun, killed about 100 Palestinian civilians.

I understand the building of a memorial to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. But to do so on a spot sacred to others, and where others were killed? Some might not see that as being very tolerant at all.

Certainly, there is no equivalency between a mass campaign to murder 6 million Jews and the killing of “only” 100 civilians.

The sad truth is, intolerance is rampant on both sides. Palestinians’ continued support of extremism and violence against Israeli civilians gives Israel its best defense: Hey, the Arabs do it! Palestinians and Arabs have massacred Jews.

That is not a good defense. It is an intolerable defense. You can’t defend a crime, a killing, an unethical or immoral act or policy by saying, “Well, the other side did the same thing.”

I’m not just picking on the Israelis. As I have said, Palestinians do it too.

Here’s a great idea. Maybe we should all stop. Maybe Palestinians and Israelis should spend a little less time on intolerance and a little more time showing compassion and concern. Yes, tolerance for each other.

What Palestinians and Israelis clearly seem to lack is tolerance. Until everyone starts tolerating each other better and tolerating their views, grievances, claims for justice and even their conflicting historical narratives, I am not sure either side should be building museums of tolerance. Or claiming to be more tolerant than the other.

We can’t claim to be tolerant of challenges facing the world when we can’t even be tolerant of the challenges that face us in our own little space in Israel and Palestine.

Maybe the Wiesenthal Center might consider building a Museum of Palestinian-Israeli Tolerance and Peace.

I’d support that. I bet the late Simon Wiesenthal would have supported it, too.

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian- American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post/Yalla Peace: Palestinians need an A Street, too

Yalla Peace: Palestinians need an A Street
By RAY HANANIA
20/04/2010 Jerusalem Post Newspaper

At a recent event hosted by J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami, I was inspired by the man’s dedication to principle and morality.

AIPAC is both praised and criticized as the powerful Israel lobby. It hasn’t done a good job of promoting peace, however. There is a new kid on the block doing just that, promoting peace. It’s called J Street and it’s headed by Jeremy Ben-Ami. I recently had a chance to hear Ben-Ami speak to a tough audience of American Jews at Am Yisrael synagogue in Glencoe, Illinois.

His words inspired me because of the clarity of his dedication to principle and morality. It made me even wish there was a Palestinian version, maybe called A Street. All we Arabs have are the extremist activists who dominate public discourse and the ineffective Arab League, which spends a fortune doing nothing. The closest equivalent of Ben-Ami in my community is probably the articulate intellectual Hussein Ibish.

But if we wait for the Palestinians to get their act together, we’ll probably wait forever. Is that a reason not to pursue peace?

J Street, founded in April 2008, is fast becoming the impetus for a revival of the peace process and reinforcement among many that peace is possible, including among many Arabs and Palestinians I know.

BEN-AMI is no Jewish quisling, nor a self-hating Jew, and not anti-Semitic. He’s not anti-Zionist and not some leftist activist looking to achieve the impossible, to turn the clock back to 1947 and achieve “one state.” He’s hard core Jewish, Zionist and very pro-Israel.

But Ben-Ami makes points I make all the time: Jews don’t have to abandon their diehard support for Israel (nor Palestinians for Palestine) to support a peace plan that brings peace and safety to both.

Ben-Ami’s grandparents were among the founders of Petah Tikva in 1882. His father served in the Irgun.

He candidly laid out Israel’s three choices: hang on to all of the land, hang on to Israel’s Jewish character and hang on to Israel’s democratic tradition. Israelis can only pick two of the three.

Ben-Ami argues convincingly that the majority of Jews, including in America, support two states and compromise. He said, “This conversation we are beginning is not about American foreign policy... but about who we are as a people... How Jews act and behave when we are not the minority. When we are not powerless, but the powerful.”

I could not have been more inspired as a Palestinian. He quickly won the support of the more than 250 Jews and others in the synagogue, with the exception of a small handful of sometimes disruptive foes of peace.

He answered the tough questions and dispelled false rumors, like the one put forth, he said, by Alan Dershowitz, that Norman Finkelstein, the extremist anti-Zionist Jew from Chicago, was a speaker at a recent J Street event. (My support of two states, attacks against extremists and condemnation of Hamas as a terrorist organization have drawn Finkelstein’s ire.)

Ben-Ami warned the audience the clock is ticking on the two-state solution, something the fanatics recognize too. They’ll stop at nothing to block peace. “Time is not on the side of peace. Time is no longer on our side,” he said.

He reflected many of the views I embrace: The wall is needed, but not in Palestinian territory. It should have been built on “recognizable borders.” Israelis and Palestinians need a time separation, especially once peace is established, to help overcome natural animosity from a century- long conflict.

Jerusalem is already a divided city, but that division can continue in a peace accord with Israel controlling the Jewish areas and Palestine the Christian and Muslim areas.

Ben-Ami said Hamas is both a terrorist organization and a political voice that represents a sizable segment of the Palestinian population. But, he added, Israelis and Jews “must recognize that every movement will use violence, and I speak from my own family experience.” Two-states can be achieved through a swap of land on a one-to-one basis. As many as 75 percent of settlers could remain in the West Bank.

He was especially outraged at the hateful campaign against the renowned jurist and international legal scholar Judge Richard Goldstone who headed the UN inquiry into allegations of war crimes committed not just by Israel, but by Hamas as well during Operation Cast Lead. Ben-Ami stressed that many Israeli leaders believe the allegations should be investigated, but said “the vilification of Judge Goldstone is ludicrous and out of bounds.”

FINALLY, BEN-AMI was asked why he isn’t as critical of the Palestinians as he is of Israel (which isn’t true).

“We do a disservice if we refuse to look at the reality of the West Bank... to call the West Bank a terrorist breeding ground does a disservice to the reality and to people like Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who are working for support peace,” Ben-Ami said. “There will be violence from both sides” as we get closer and closer to peace.

He stressed that he is Israeli and a Jew. His responsibility is not to tell the Palestinians how to forge their own society, but to help improve, strengthen and define Israel and the Jewish people.

It’s a similar message I make when addressing Arab and Palestinian groups. As a Palestinian, it is not my place to tell Israelis what to do with their country. Is it Jewish or not Jewish is up to them.

“My focus is on what my people and my country are doing,” Ben-Ami said.

In other words, Jews and Palestinians can help the process not by blaming the other side or telling the other side how to act. As a Palestinian, my responsibility is to do more to end the campaigns of violence against Israel and to speak out more forcefully against the voices of extremism in the Palestinian community.

Palestinians can’t keep pointing to what Israel does as an excuse to ignore what Palestinians are doing to Israelis. That goes the same for Israelis.

The battle is not between Palestinians and Israelis. It is, as Jeremy Ben-Ami so eloquently argued, “between those who support compromise and those who do not.”

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian-American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post/Yalla Peace: A peace plan Obama might embrace

Yalla Peace: A peace plan Obama might embrace
By RAY HANANIA
13/04/2010 The Jerusalem Post

What can the US president offer? Attitude. A tough, strong and undeterred approach to peace.

President Barack Obama will reportedly offer his own peace plan to Palestinians and Israelis. Although the two sides have been working on peace for nearly two decades, nothing has succeeded.

There are too many people who oppose peace – Hamas and religious fanatics on the Palestinian side, and some settlers and religious fanatics on the Israeli side.

They don’t want peace because they each believe they can get it all if they can just keep the conflict going.

So what can Obama offer that hasn’t been offered? Well, he can offer attitude. A tough, strong and undeterred approach to peace. Obama can tell both sides to shake hands the way former president Bill Clinton did in 1993 on the White House lawn with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin – an event I witnessed firsthand.

I’VE OUTLINED my own peace plan. It’s a part of my PR stunt to run for Palestinian president, but my real goal is to run for the Palestine Legislative Council from east Jerusalem. It’s simple, and detailed on my YallaPeace.com Web site.

Basically, draw the boundary roughly on the 1967 borders. Israel keeps most of the settlements, and gives Palestine land mass equal to land annexed from the West Bank.

The Palestinian refugee issue is resolved using the rule of reason not the rule of law. Refugees would surrender the “right of return” in exchange for financial compensation from an international fund and resettlement in the Palestinian state or assimilation into the Arab countries where they now reside.

Both sides would apologize to each other for the past and embrace this vision of moving forward.

Also on the table for discussion is my plan (which the Financial Times “borrowed,” to put it nicely) requiring Israel to take back some refugees, based on how many settlers remain in West Bank settlements. “Refugees for settlers” is a concept that needs to be explored.

The Arab countries, too, would work with Israel to compensate Jews who lost lands and homes as a result of the conflict. (How Palestinians and Jews “lost” land and property is irrelevant in this discussion. It doesn’t matter if they left voluntarily or were forced to flee.)

The status of citizenship would remain the same. But Jews who wish to live in Palestine could do so and retain Israeli citizenship for voting purposes, although they must abide by Palestinian laws. Jews should be permitted to live in any area of Palestine, including Hebron.

The same for Palestinians. Refugees who “return” to Israel under the “settler-refugee exchange program” would be given Palestinian citizenship. And, Palestinian citizens of Israel could receive dual citizenship too, living by Israel’s laws. Settlers in settlements not annexed by Israel and surrendered to Palestine would be given the same option to keep Israeli citizenship.

It’s worth exploring at a higher, more detailed level.

The Old City of Jerusalem would be shared, with Israel taking the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall and Palestine taking the Armenian, Muslim and Christian Quarters. There, Palestine can establish its capital alongside Israel’s, which would be recognized by all.

The West Bank and Gaza Strip could be linked by an underground subway, or by an air corridor of shuttle flights.

The Arab world would normalize relations with Israel, and each would open embassies in each country. Palestine would be a non-military nation for the first 20 years, and would eventually partner with Israel to form a Palestinian-Israeli military, even creating merged Palestinian-Israel police.

Maps that exist today would be replaced with maps that show both country names and boundaries.

NOW, WE all know that violence will not disappear. The fact is regardless of whether it is peace or not, violence will continue, though it will be diminished considerably.

Extremist Jews and extremist Arabs will continue to sabotage the peace plan just as they undermined the Oslo Accords, but once there is peace, the major flash points will end.

Laws would be adopted to ban hate speech, and while Israelis and Palestinians can continue their own different narratives of history, a Palestinian–Israeli commission would be formed to forge a common consensus of a “peace history.” Eventually, both Israeli and Palestinian children would learn the two different narratives and the consensus peace narrative to help improve relations.

Israel would work with Palestine to create a major port in the Gaza Strip to develop an economic engine for commerce and international trade. A fund would be created that would provide grants to encourage Palestinian and Israeli cooperation to create businesses together.

Both countries will join a commission of conciliation in which grievances and failed promises are discussed. The US and several Arab countries would send representatives.

Finally, on the Palestinian side, we would also have to reengineer the existing election system. Right now it does not work. The process should be changed to permit political parties to hold primaries to elect their candidates, who would then run in a general election.

The winner of the election would not be the candidate with the most votes, but the candidate who receives 50 percent plus one vote of all votes cast.

Admittedly, this is my “anti-Hamas election rule” to prevent a radical minority from holding the entire country hostage with not a majority vote but a plurality vote. Only political parties that embrace nonviolence and the peace process could participate. Those that refuse can be shown the door.

I believe, and many other Palestinians and Israelis I have met believe, that this plan is doable. It requires both sides to make concessions, each difficult in different ways.

It’s a simple plan with simple rules. Palestinians and Israelis need peace badly, and they need it now.

It’s just an idea, but one that best encompasses most of what both sides would accept.
Obama can’t make everyone happy. But with a good peace plan, he can help make both sides safe.

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian-American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post/Yalla Peace: How about some compassion from the Jewish people for Palestinians

How about some compassion
By RAY HANANIA
06/04/2010 Jerusalem Post Column

Israel should start acting like the Jewish state it claims to be.

When I was young, I read all the horror stories of how the Jews were persecuted over the centuries – mainly by non-Arabs. I read about the tragedy of World War II and the Nazis, and what we now know as the Holocaust. My dad, who was born in Jerusalem, knew even better. As Palestinians, he and his brother fought during World War II to liberate Europe and end the Nazi persecution of Jews, and many others.

So I am not trying to make Israel stop being a Jewish state. In fact, I am trying to make it be a real Jewish state – a Jewish state with a conscience embracing the Jews’ history of suffering.

Why is it that suffering often does not bring compassion, but rather meanness? Yes, meanness. That’s the only way I can describe the way many Israelis and American Jews are acting.

How else do you describe what is taking place in the Gaza Strip, pushing people beyond frustration and despondency? And when they explode in violence, Israel strikes so powerfully, as if it believes that beating someone teaches them to obey. It doesn’t. It feeds more rebellion. But I fear many in the Israeli government know that; the violent reaction of Palestinians in Gaza is exactly what they want.

The best defense Israelis offer is that they do their “best” to minimize civilian casualties. Oh well, if many civilians die, it happens. That does not portray Israel’s “best” at all.

Collective punishment. Targeted killings. Land confiscations. Are these the principles of the Jewish people? I don’t think so.

THEN THERE is the peace process that the Israeli government insists Palestinians are stalling. Really? Since 1988, the Palestinians have formally accepted Israel’s “right to exist.”

But have Israelis recognized that Palestinians exist? Most do not, insisting there never was a Palestine or a Palestinian people.

With each step of the failed peace process, the Palestinians compromised and are now willing to accept what’s left: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and most of – not all of – east Jerusalem.

What’s Israel’s response? After the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, his successors fought hard to stop the compromises and reverse the peace process. They openly vowed they would not dismantle settlements. They would not share Jerusalem. They would not compensate Palestinian refugees.

If I were Jewish, I would be ashamed of myself. I would be ashamed of the conduct of my country established to give Jews a place where they could stand up as a people based on the rule of law, morality and principles of justice and compassion.

Israel keeps saying it acts to protect its citizens from “Arab terrorism,” but everything it does goes one step further. Israel builds settlements in the West Bank after it is captured in 1967, claiming they are merely security enclaves to prevent Palestinians from trying to attack the new state. And then these security sites become fast-growing settlements on land owned by Palestinians. And they expand, grabbing all the nearby resources. Wide areas are cleared so these settlers can not only have new homes but also enjoy a buffer zone and special roads... all on land that is not theirs.

Then it decides to build a wall with lookout towers and checkpoints. It is a concrete wall when it is near Palestinian populations, and a fence when it is near less-populated Palestinian farmlands.

Worse, instead of being built on the Green Line, it is built deep in the West Bank, and it snakes around the most precious commodity besides land – the water wells. Every one of them is now on the Israeli side.

AND WHILE Palestinians are struggling to keep the frustrations of a brutal occupation from making matters worse, Israel shrugs its shoulders. Sure we want peace, says Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But why should we stop expanding existing settlements?

Why? Maybe it might help make peace a reality? If that is really what Netanyahu wants. He long declared that he would not support two states. Now he does. Kind of.

In east Jerusalem, instead of trying to find ways to help both sides, Israel’s government is confiscating land and property and turning them over to Jews. When someone complains that this is “Judaization” of Jerusalem – something some Israelis openly claim – he or she is denounced as an anti-Semite.

Do I want to destroy Israel? No. I want Israel to start acting like the Jewish state it claims to be. Because right now, Israelis are not doing a good job of being Jews, Jews with compassion, Jews who believe in real peace. Jews who suffered so tragically that they know what it is like to have their land, homes and possessions taken.

I remember Jews leading the civil rights movement in America to fight for the rights of blacks, and who stand by silent as Arab citizens of Israel claim they are being discriminated against. No civil rights movement for them. I remember Jews leading the world with great discoveries. And I ask myself, where has it all gone?

Yes, I recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The real question, though, is when will Israelis start to recognize Israel as a Jewish state too?

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian-American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com