From Dubai to Twitter - what's real? Hanania Jerusalem Post column March 3, 2010

From Dubai to Twitter - what's real?
Could Salam Fayyad's new Twitter feed be another Mossad strategy to throw Palestinians into turmoil?
From The Jerusalem Post Published March 4, 2010
By RAY HANANIA

Whenever my wife Alison and I go out to eat, she always asks the waitress about her menu choices: “Does this one taste good?” I’m sitting there thinking, hmmm! I wonder if the waitress is going to lean over and say, “No. That really tastes terrible. You should go to another restaurant.”

Alison gets very angry with me when I point out the obvious: “Do you really expect the waitress to tell you the food doesn’t taste good?” The waitress responds with public relations, ignoring me and saying, “It’s good, but this one is better.”

Well, it’s one thing to confront a waitress and be naïve in a restaurant. It’s another in the Middle East, where it’s easier to blow nargila smoke in someone’s face. Arabs and Israelis are always willing to believe whatever they are told about the other, especially if it’s something bad.

Who murdered Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 19? Dubai police point the finger at the Mossad, Israel’s secret spy agency, which has a record of assassinations, as depicted by filmmaker Steven Spielberg in Munich. Israel reacted predictably, asserting that Mabhouh was involved in smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip, and insisting he was responsible for the killing 20 years ago of two Israeli soldiers.

The Israelis refuse to take “credit” for the killing: Mabhouh was reportedly injected with a muscle relaxant that made him immobile, and was then suffocated with his hotel pillow.

Like the waitress put in a spot, Israel understands the power of public relations. Israelis spend millions on PR. They were the first in the Middle East to create a presence on the Internet, back in the early 1990s. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have no concept of PR or professional communications. They do little with strategy and most of it is by accident.

When Israel does something bad, Israeli officials never take credit. When Hamas commits a killing, they can’t wait to blame themselves.

YOU CAN see the differences between Israelis and Palestinians on the Internet’s leading new social networking tool, Twitter, which (for those who don’t know allows you to post messages of under 140 characters, including spaces). Other people can “follow” you and read your posts. Some people have as many as 1 million followers. Imagine being able to send a fast message to one million people at a time? That’s power PR.

A quick check shows there are many Palestinians and Israelis using Twitter.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has an account. Despite his bungling style, Ayalon has 1,745 followers and is following 805, nearly every one of them an Israeli person or a news site.

Ayalon is on top of the news, and is quick to send notices to his followers condemning the Palestinians for this or that and defending Israel’s actions. After the Chilean earthquake last week, he offered his condolences to the people of Chile and the families who lost loved ones – something he never seems to do when Palestinians are the victims of some confrontation with Israel.

I also found Twitter accounts for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and one of my friends, Labor Party Knesset member Einat Wilf.

On the Palestinian side, there are accounts for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, former security chief Muhammad Dahlan, and for the popular Palestinian moderate Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

I connected with Fayyad after he started to “follow” me. But how do I know any of the Palestinians are who they claim to be?

“Twitter Fayyad” writes fascinating posts like this one: “I think Rafik al-Husseini should take a page from Tiger Woods and do a press conference admitting his actions and taking responsibility.”

Or this exchange with “Twitter Dahlan” over who was responsible for the Mabhouh murder: “Ya man. Beards are only OK if you are mujahideen on holiday or Mossad tennis stars?”

And another from “Twitter Fayyad” to “Twitter Dahlan.” “Bas ya zelameh. I heard you were in Dubai pulling in old favors to get your ex-mukhabarat construction workers’ release, no?”

There is a real sense of humor in that last one.

The posts seem to suggest “Twitter Fayyad” is a regular guy with a good sense of humor, which is why he is so favored by many in the West, and scolded by Hamas and Jabha fanatics.

Or is it fake? Is this the waitress telling my wife what she wants to hear, or real honesty from a politician willing to jeopardize his job by telling the truth?

I like to think people who have a sense of humor are also likely to embrace peace. No sense of humor means no chance of ever making peace.

Of course, “Twitter Fayyad” may not be the real Salam Fayyad at all. That’s what my friend Hussein Ibish at the American Task Force on Palestine insists, and I believe him.

“Twitter Fayyad” has only 160 followers, and is following 305 others. That’s a clue.

Among people he is following are Shakira, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

In a region of the world where anger, hate and violence dominate the headlines, we could use more humor and a lot more of Shakira, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and especially Lady Gaga.

Of course, “Twitter Fayyad” could just be another Mossad strategy to throw Palestinians into internal turmoil. It’s not hard to believe, and certainly more effective than killing some obscure Hamas operative in Dubai.

end

Jerusalem Post: Middle East Drama starring Israel's Danny Ayalon

Middle East Drama starring Israel's Danny Ayalon
By Ray Hanania
(Published in the Jerusalem Post Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010)

When Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon intentionally disrespected Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol last month in the "sofa affair," many believed he was just an immature politician.

In reality, though, Ayalon's snub of the ambassador represents more than just one man's failings. His actions symbolize the fundamental shortcomings common to rejectionists and shared by the Arabs, too.

Ayalon didn't accidentally disrespect the Turkish ambassador. He did it with flair and intended mischief. Ayalon had Celikkol sit on a couch in his office that was "lower" than his own chair. Not that anyone would care except that Ayalon intentionally pointed out the slight to the Israeli media to drive home the embarrassment.

Celikkol was "summoned" to Ayalon's office to be "reprimanded" because Turkish state TV was airing a program that made the IDF look bad. Well, if they were mad about that, you can imagine why they were enraged with the war crimes allegations against the IDF in the UN's Goldstone Report.

And in an apparent response to the Ayalon "slight" of Celikkol, a billboard went up near Istanbul on Sunday depicting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan standing upright before Israeli President Shimon Peres, an advocate of peace, who was portrayed "bowing" to the Turks. Is that the best the Turks can come up with?

THE CONTROVERSY hadn't even cooled when Ayalon did it again last week. This time, Ayalon reportedly refused to meet with an influential delegation visiting Israel organized by J Street and refused to let them meet with senior Israeli officials, a charge the Foreign Ministry denied earlier this week. J Street is the celebrity Jewish American lobbying group that seeks to replace the rigidly right-wing policies of AIPAC with more moderate views to convince American Jews to support peace based on two states. The delegation included five members of the US Congress, normally a place where childish behavior is rewarded.

But for Ayalon, it wasn't enough to not shake their hands or make them sit on a "time-out couch." According to J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, Ayalon ordered a "boycott" of the delegation.

When the congressional delegation protested in anger, Ayalon reportedly apologized (although this was also denied by the Foreign Ministry) - through a surrogate - to them too.

AYALON'S CONDUCT is not peculiar to Israelis, though. There is more than enough childish behavior among the Arab and Palestinian rejectionists. Arabs don't need a TV show to set them off. There are more "serious" things like when an Arab journalist tried to interview an Israeli official and was reprimanded by the Arab Journalists Syndicate, which acts more like a mafia than a professional fraternity of the Fourth Estate.

But the worst offense for the rejectionists is to embrace the two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

Arab rejectionists insist that the solution is a failure. Their answer: one state, a goal they share with Ayalon whose right-wing party endorses one state but without Palestine, while the Arab rejectionists endorse the same without Israel.

So why not have a debate about it? Because that is normalization, too. Haram[forbidden] of the highest fatwa order.

This attitude to "normalization" (contact with the enemy) and "public debates" isn't just a problem with Arabs in the Middle East. It is a bigger problem with the Arabs who live in the West and in the US.

Recently, a group sought to bring together two Palestinians to debate the issue of "One State or Two?" at the University of Chicago.

The proponent of the two-state solution is Hussein Ibish, a fellow at the moderate American Task Force on Palestine in Washington as well as one of the most articulate English language spokespeople for Palestinian rights.

The sponsoring organization at the university reached out to nearly every leading Palestinian activist to present the case for "one state," and all refused, including, according to Ibish and event sponsors, the canonized saint of the "one state" plan, author Ali Abunimah.

Based at the University of Chicago, Abunimah is one of four founders of the online "Electronic Intifada," where Palestinian moderation is regularly browbeaten and defamed. Abunimah is also the author of the convoluted manifesto and the rejectionist's bible titled One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Basically, the "one-state" theory goes like this: If Palestinians will just refuse to compromise and to create two states, Israelis and Jews will simply give up so Palestinians can replace the Jewish homeland with an Islamic homeland.

Just like that.

Wow. If we only knew that, how many suicide bombers could we have spared in the past? A stupid notion, it has gained huge support among Arabs, maybe because it is just that, a stupid notion.

But "one state" advocates have an ulterior agenda. They know their idea is impossible to achieve and it allows them to exploit Palestinian anger and frustration, turning suffering into hatred and hatred into violence.

Rejectionists have no desire to compromise. They want to keep the conflict going until they can win, they think.

In the end, although Israeli rejectionists are similar to Palestinian rejectionists, there is one glaring difference. Palestinians never apologize for anything or admit they are wrong.

Apologizing means compromise. Apologizing recognizes a mistake. Palestinian rejectionists live in a pretend world where their mistakes don't exist and their failures are not debatable. War crimes committed on their behalf are never addressed, only the war crimes of others.

Danny Ayalon may be a poor diplomat but at least he knows when to apologize and recognize when he is wrong.

When Israelis and Arabs can apologize and recognize when they are wrong together, and stop denying everything as they often do, maybe, just maybe, we might see the day when genuine peace is achieved.

That's something I would bow to myself.

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