Jerusalem Post Column, Yalla Peace: Palestinians need to look forward, not backward

Palestinians need to look forward, not backward
By RAY HANANIA
06/23/2010 JERUSALEM POST

The construction of what is called the first ‘Palestinian settlement’ in the West Bank – Rawabi – is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing more of to build Palestine.

Qatar is unlike many of the other Arab countries that support the Palestinians.

Instead of donating lip-service and writing checks to be used in conflict, it has invested heavily in a project with a Palestinian construction company to build a new city in the West Bank called Rawabi.

The Palestinians should be focused on doing more of this; building Palestine, and switching gears from the confrontation-style politics of Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and a lot of other losers who love to exploit Palestinian suffering.

Even Turkey might consider putting a cork in its rhetoric.

The confrontation politics of the past was a zero-sum game that achieved very little. In terms of Palestinian interests, it’s a step backward, not forward, to keep fighting with Israel. Instead of confronting Israel at every corner, Palestinians should spend at least some of their efforts building their country and strengthening not only its economy but national pride.

Building Palestinian cities in the West Bank is just one way to do this.

If Hamas had any real leaders instead of the modern-day bombastic Nassers it has now, they’d spend more time trying to lure Arab world development into the Gaza Strip to build rather than spending all their time with their confrontational go-nowhere rhetoric that helped empower Israel’s stranglehold on the Gaza Strip.

We really do need to start building more cities in Palestine, mainly for the day when the refugees will be able to walk out of their camps. We need to give them a quality of life alternative to the sad existence sustained by the charity of the outside world.

Not that the outside world doesn’t owe Palestinians a lot. It does.

Rawabi is a brilliant vision of what Palestinian life can be after confrontation with Israel. Palestine can be a better country. It can be the economic hub of the Middle East.

Palestine, in peace, can offer the region far more than as a constant antagonist.

Of course, that means the activists need to stop exploiting Palestinian suffering for their own needs, too.

But mainly, Palestinians need to stop listening to the no-future activists who promise only confrontation.

Rather than flotillas, Palestine needs more Rawabis, places where Palestinian pride can defeat Israeli occupation. Rawabi would be the first modern, planned Palestinian city – a step that officials say will help build an independent state – located about 30 kilometers north of Jerusalem. It’s modeled on the typical US suburb.

THE BIGGEST problem is Israel. Israel has been dragging its feet on giving approval for an access road. The Israelis keep saying how much they want peace and how much they want Palestinians to focus on rebuilding Palestine, but while Israel “talks the talk,” it doesn’t “walks the walk.”

The $700 million Rawabi project is funded by the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co. and the Ramallahbased Massar International.

Mortgage loans would be managed by the US Overseas Private Investment Corp., an investment arm of the US government.

The company began pouring foundations this year and anticipates that the first families will be able to move in by 2013.


But without an access road, residents would have to do the “Palestinian-Israeli shuffle” used to navigate Israel’s checkpoints and road access restrictions, traveling through narrow winding roads, including on two miles of West Bank land controlled by Israel. Rawabi is located in Area A, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The road access it needs is in Area C, controlled by the Israeli military, and on the ground, by settlers who continue to protest, angry that foreign dollars for settlement construction in the West Bank are going to Palestinians.

Palestinians will continue to have to put up with the warped views of Israeli writers like Yoaz Hendel, who recently wrote in the op-ed “Anti- Jewish apartheid” for Ynet, rather inaccurately, “We [Israelis] got used to the world referring to the war against Palestinian terrorism as apartheid, we got so used to being guilty, to the point of failing to notice that the construction apartheid is happening to be directed against us. The Arabs are allowed to buy homes anywhere, while the Jews are not. The Arabs are allowed to build, expand and engage in familyreunification.

The Jews are forbidden.”

No Yoaz, Palestinians are not permitted to live or build anywhere.

Take a trip to my land, for example, next to Gilo: 34 dunams that Israel has frozen so non-Jews cannot build there; land located in the West Bank annexed by Israel on the Israeli side of the wall. Yet Yoaz says it is hypocritical for Palestinians to criticize the settlers, who build Jewish-only settlements while the Palestinians build cities like Rawabi, which presumably is for Palestinians only.

Well, Yoaz, the fact is that the settlers are not building homes in Israel. They are building them in the West Bank. The true comparison would be if Rawabi were being built next to Haifa, for Palestinians only.

Of course, that’s a small detail that right-wing Israelis love to ignore.

But if Palestinians are going to move forward, we’ll need to ignore the ranting and self-righteous lamentations from both the Israeli and Arab sides.

Build more Rawabis. And in the process of building Palestine, we must find time to negotiate a genuine peace agreement.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.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.)

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.

When journalists routinely brush off criticism of popular governments

When journalists routinely brush off criticism of popular governments …

Last summer, New York Times Columnist Stephen J. Dubner wrote a column in which he trashed claims that the Israeli military was harvesting organs from palestinians without the permission of their relatives.

Dubner, with no facts but probably an instant bias against all claims critical of Israel or, more likely, that drive sympathy for the oppressed Palestinians, write that the claim was “probably false.”

Wow. A whole column on why something so significant would be false. you wouldn’t expect the New York Times or its flashy columnist, Thomas Friedman to explore the veracity of such an outrageous claim against Israel, athough Dubner made sure to include the knee-jerk response that Israel always makes when it is criticized, quoting:

“The Israeli government has struck back, claiming that Boström’s article is false, outrageous, and, in the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, a “blood libel,” the sort of malicious rumor that has led to the persecution of Jews for centuries.”

Click here for the link to the column.

Then, Dubner went on to explain why harvesting human organs would be unlikely. It requires so much technical know-how.

That was in August 2009. A few weeks back, Jan. 19, 2010, Dubner offered a mild correction in typical pro-Israel bias seen often at the New York Times and in larger mainstream news media that just don’t want to be bothered by the facts when defending Israel or bashing Arabs. Dubner wrote:

“And in a more distant post, I discussed why an accusal of “the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers” was “probably false.” In a separate but related story, it has since been reported that “Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.” ”

Click here for a link to the story.

Tragically, this kind of shoot-from-the-hip defense of a foreign government is not unusual. Had this story involved any other nation, it would have dominated the news headlines for weeks. It is scandalous.

The response of the Israeli  government — and I want to stress here that this is NOT about criticizing Israel or Israelis, but criticizing a government — is outrageous. They finally admit a decade later that they did indeed harvest organs from Palestinians. They lied about it when it happened, denied it and, as you read, slandered those who made the claims.

What does that say about today? That because the mainstream news media does not do its job, we must wait 10 more years to discover the truth?

What about the accusations in the report by renown war crimes Jurist Richard Goldstone, a report that detailed numerous atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers, including in one case rounding up civilians in a school building and then shooting them dead.

Read the Goldstone Report, if you have any foundation of professional journalism. The facts are outrageous and offensive. Those who are using the Goldstone Report to slander Israel and Israelis are clearly overstepping their bounds. But the news media refusal to hold the Israeli government accountable amounts to a violation of their professional responsibilities. Allowing people like lawyer Alan Dershowitz slander those calling for an investigation by publishing his columns in their newspapers is a violation of professional journalism, a violation especially when his accusations are published without adequate defense of the Goldstone Report.

The Goldstone Report reminds me of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam by Lt. William Calley. Then, the news media held the US Military and the government accountable. yes, it was an outrage. But by airing the crimes and demanding justice, journalists reflected the highest levels of ethics and morality.

Today, that moral high ground is AWOL in mainstream American journalism.

I would like to see it return not just for the of the victims but for the sake of Israel. By investigating and prosecuting the crimes, the United States did this country a great service strengthening our Democratic principles by investigating and standing up for justice. Israel can and should do the same thing.

– Ray Hanania

(Ray Hanania is a  columnist for Israel’s  Jerusalem Post Newspaper, writing every Wednesday, and also a columnist for PalestineNote.com, the leading news and opinion site for Palestinians.)

Pro-Hamas media bias and Gaza activists block peace

Pro-Hamas media bias and Gaza activists block peace
By Ray Hanania

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas complained recently in Qatar that the media there was pro-Hamas, and that tis bias was threatening the ability to achieve peace, he struck a chord that many Palestinians know is true.

It isn't just the mainstream Arab media that is pro-Hamas, branded a "terrorist organization" by many nations, but it's also the groups that support Hamas that slowly dominate the Middle East landscape unchallenged that are threatening peace.

A good example of this is the issue of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians complain they are under an oppressive military and economic Israeli siege and where Israelis counter that radical elements there continue to target their civilians with Katyushas and Kassam missiles.

Gaza is a very complicated issue, but not that hard to really understand.

The area has been controlled by Hamas and radical Muslims since the 1970s. Although Hamas's parent organization, the Islamic Association, did provide health and social care to its citizens, that care was only given to those who embraced its hard-line religious ideology.

Hamas opposes genuine peace with Israel, and used the most pernicious form of violence - suicide bombings - throughout the 1990s to destroy the peace process and prevent compromise. Its mission is not to achieve peace based on compromise, but to pursue the impossible dream - more a nightmare for everyday Palestinians - of destroying Israel and returning Palestine to what it was in 1917, before it came under British colonialism.

THAT HAMAS desire is not only shared by the religious extremists who continue to grow, but by those who are secular fanatics yet also oppose peace based on compromise. Most of those activists are based in Western countries, where it is easy to chant for the destruction of not only Israel but of Abbas's secular Palestinian government which does support compromise based on two-states.

These are strange bedfellows in the Palestinian extremist camps, religious fanatics shoulder-to-shoulder with secular extremists like the Popular Front and the rejectionists led by the activists and fawned on by the Arab media that mistakenly believe "freedom" means embracing the most extremist activists.

The Arab media, which glorify religious extremism and even violent attacks, don't realize, of course, that under a Hamas-run government, it wouldn't just be Jews, Christians and secular Muslims who would be oppressed. The media in a Hamastan would be among the primary targets, stripped of the "freedoms" they enjoy today - of criticizing Abbas, two states and peace based on compromise.

THE ISSUE for the Free Gaza protesters is not about bringing freedom to the 1.3 million Palestinians there or lifting Israel's "oppressive military and economic siege." It's about their long-term goals. By "freeing" Gaza, they mean declaring Hamas the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." But that's not their goal.

The purpose of many of the protesters is to strengthen Hamas. They know that Israel is forced to deal first with the threats rather than the compelling cases for peace. And Hamas is a threat not only to Israel but also to the Palestinians, secular Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, to Christian and Jewish religious independence and, more importantly, to the goal of achieving a peace based on nonviolent compromise.

The activists continue to cling to the false and irrelevant claims that Hamas won one election in 2006 and ignore the fact that Hamas was ousted from political leadership in the same way it was installed. It was a corrupt election that was poorly constructed, allowing the divisions of the majority of Palestinians to be merged with Hamas's faith-based reticence. In Western nations with elections, they separate the two processes, allowing individual parties to select their candidates from internal battles before putting them up against candidates from the other parties.

Hamas and the activists have allowed the Gaza Strip to fester in economic squalor because it suits their purpose. They can't rally support based on their ideals because they have no realistic ideals. They call for the destruction of Israel and the destruction of a secular two-state Palestine, and also for the destruction of Egypt and pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with their extremist agendas.

Rather than help the besieged people of the Gaza Strip achieve freedom and build the first steps of a secular Palestinian state that would lead to the creation of full Palestinian statehood in the West Bank, the protesters have helped to encase the Palestinians there in continued suffering.

THE PROTESTERS seeking to enter Gaza have closed their eyes to the oppression and brutality that is the true Hamas. They have limited their criticism to Egypt.

More importantly, this bizarre alliance between the religious fanatics and the secular extremists which today is focused on the Gaza Strip is silent on the campaign of terror that Hamas continues to wage against secular Palestinians.

Hamas has made it easy for some to oppose Palestinian statehood, and is the main obstacle standing in the way of peace.

The Arab media are going through an internal struggle no different than the one now dominating Arab and Palestinian politics. It's one between extremists who see the media as an instrument of activism and those of us who believe the media must remain objective witnesses to the truth.

Truth means that not all of today's tragic events can be blamed on Israel, Egypt, Abbas or on the failure, so far, to achieve peace.

The writer is a Palestinian American columnist, satirist and founder of Yalla Peace.

This column appeared in the Jerusalem Post Jan. 12, 2010

When life becomes frivolous -- challenges facing Palestinians in the occupation

When life becomes frivolous

By Ray Hanania

Jerusalem Post Monday Dec. 28, 2009

I read recently that a group of Palestinians decided they were going to host the first-ever Miss Palestine contest. But it was quickly scuttled when religious and secular extremists decided it wasn't good for the country.

The argument, repeated often in interviews, held that it was somehow wrong for Palestinians to engage in such "frivolity" when there were more serious issues like the tragedy of the occupation and the suffering of the economic collapse associated with the occupation.

A similar pageant is held in Haifa, but when the idea was brought to Ramallah, the supposedly bustling cosmopolitan heart of Palestinian society, the "governor" decided to cancel it because the event "coincided with the first anniversary of the Israeli attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip."

Other Palestinian leaders said it was canceled because it was simply inappropriate to celebrate when so many are suffering.

That kind of thinking is exactly why Palestinians have been losing over the years. They embrace the psychology of the victim rather than exercising the will of the victor.

It's simple. When you surrender to tragedy you live the life of a victim. You become the victim. You become the hostage of suffering, and your life begins to reflect a life without will.

And that explains why there is so little hope in Palestine.

I entered stand-up comedy after September 11, 2001 specifically because I know that the most powerful response to tragedy and suffering is to spit in its face, to tell tragedy, terrorism, violence and suffering that you will not simply lie down and surrender without a fight.

And the best way to fight is to be human and to exercise the power of humanity through a resistance to tragedy.

Humor, not anger, is the answer to hatred. Humor and being human is the answer to suffering and tragedy, and even to the loss of life.

The reality is that the human spirit of the Palestinians cannot surrender to the suffering of the Israeli occupation or to the continued conflict that seems never-ending. To surrender and to allow the suffering to consume our lives means that we have given up the hope of being human beings and living full lives.

IN FACT, the answer to the occupation is to not stop being human, and to do the very things that tragedy and oppression throw at you.

The Palestine beauty pageant would have been a powerful statement to the world that Palestinians will not surrender to the occupation nor allow the suffering to dictate how they live their lives.

It also would have been a powerful statement to themselves to energize their inner spirit and allow them to find strength just when strength is needed most.

At the most tragic moment, when a family member dies, sadness is the appropriate response to respect the dead. But the most appropriate response for those who survive and are left holding the tragedy of the person's death is to give the spirit a boost, to allow them to overcome the hardships of suffering.

Humor is often found in the aftermath of burials and wakes because humor helps the survivors to survive.

Underlying this conflict in human survival for Palestinians is the steady rise of the religious fanatics who bring the lowest common denominator of life, subservience to zealotry, as their answer to tragedy and suffering. In reality, they want you to continue suffering because it helps them disguise their inability to be true leaders.

In fact, when a society "suffers" and embraces victimization, false prophets with little talent or leadership ability can rise more quickly to control the population.

Instead of focusing on the failings of the leaders, embracing the tragedy makes it easier for the failed leaders to avoid accountability.

The pageant would have been a declaration that Palestinians are a people who can rise above the challenges that oppress people, not just in Palestine but throughout theMiddle East, where living as an oppressed victim seems to be a way of life.

And that's no joke.

The writer is a Palestinian American satirist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com.

Is the Goldstone Report being used merely as a weapon of continued conflict by extremists on both sides?

Many are arguing that Palestinians who fail to denounce Israel for its conduct in Gaza, as cited by the Goldstone Report, is an indication of failed leadership and they are using the Goldstone Report not as a review of Israeli war crimes (and Hamas war crimes, too) but rather as a political weapon to attack Israel and moderate Palestinian leaders who support two-states. It is the typical manner in which extremists exploit Palestinian suffering, not to end the suffering but to continue the conflict to an end they seek but that is impossible to reach.

The Goldstone Report is an unprecedented action in Arab-Israeli history, meticulously detailing the war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza during the War Israel started in November 2008. But it also details war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is no different than the settler terrorist organization which is slowly choking moderates out of Israel's government.

But the Goldstone Report is not the real priority for Palestinians and the blame game, which Palestinians and Israelis play well through years of experience, is an exercise in futility when it comes to achieving justice.

The only answer to the tragedies, war crimes and violence is peace, peace based on two-states and peace based on non-violence by both sides.

As Palestinians and Arabs, we can continue to scream at Israeli atrocities to no avail, or, we can work towards a genuine peace based on compromise. Any other goal besides compromise is not possible and only prolongs the conflict and prolongs the suffering mainly for Palestinians.

Supporters of the One-State agenda, a nightmare plan for the continued mental occupation of the Palestinian people embracing an impossible goal, argue that only Israel should be criticized because they killed more Palestinians than Hamas killed Israelis.

How can we Palestinians have fallen so low morally to make that argument when every life is worth fighting for in a moral and principled world. Crime and criminals should be punished through the court of law not through vigilante justice nor through emotional screaming that feeds irrational rejectionism.

If we achieve peace then the tragedies and sufferings will end. The Goldstone Report and the terrorism of the Israeli military and the Hamas fanatics are a symptom of the failure to achieve peace, a result that has been played over and over during the past 61 years. The history of Palestinian and Israeli relations are pock marked by repeated tragedies of similar circumstances and those tragedies will continue.

Rejectionists and one-staters insist that the PLO and the Palestine National Authority have failed to prosecute the case for the Goldstone Report, saying they are not leaders.

But the truth is that those fanatics are using the Goldstone Report not to achieve justice for the victims but as a weapon in their continued efforts to block peace and provoke more conflict. The rejectionists and fanatics want more violence and they want more atrocities so they can point a finger at the enemy -- Israelis and Palestinians -- and blame someone to score political points. It makes them popular among the emotion-distraught Palestinian population and public. Screaming hate is always the easy road to leadership. But real leadership is to recognize the reality of the Goldstone Report, argue for its adjudication through a process of the Rule of Law, but not use it to prevent peace. Real leadership comes from those Palestinians who stand up to the fanatics in our community and who demand that we have a two-state solution and an end to the conflict.

The real failures are among the fanatics and extremists and Hamas terrorists who use violence and suffering to keep the cauldron of tragedy stirring so they can artificially lift themselves up to self-proclaimed positions of leadership while allowing our people to sink into a lifetime of tragic hell.

Their dream of continued conflict is a nightmare for the Palestinians that we continue to live, exploited and fueled by Israeli extremists and settler terrorists, but one that we help to make happen through rejection.

Two-states and peace are the only real answer to the atrocities committed in the Gaza Strip by Israel's military and by the settler fanatics.

Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com

My response to the vicious slander by Laila el-Haddad, the "Gaza Mom"

Here's my response (to Laila el-Haddad's personal attack -- the extremists NEVER address the issues, they only attack the person) and under the guise of being the "Gaza Mom", she attacked me personally in part because I am a Christian Palestinian (married to a Jewish wife) and because I espoused support for peace based on two-states, something she clearly rejected. (Click to read her blog). 

When you support the one-state "solution" you are condemning Palestinians to generations of despair and suffering, but that suffering and despair enables you to self-focused activism. Anyone who supports "one-state" is either consumed with suffering and tragedy or simply an extremist who rejects compromise, and NOT a moderate. So why waste my time talking to you?  

Gaza IS NOT the only issue. The issue is peace, something the Hamas terrorists (and the settler terrorists) do not want. When we have peace, we will have a safe Gaza and West Bank and Palestine State. But I don't think you want peace at all. You want victory over the "Jews" and the Israelis, and you won't stop fighting until you turn back the clock to 1922. It ain't going to happen. And don't wrap yourself up with the suffering of my people. It's people like you who have enabled the Israeli extremists to achieve what they have.

Your extremism is undermining the Palestinian cause. And although you use your celebrity to achieve personal gain, the Palestinians are suffering because of your extremist views and your hatred of moderates, Jews and Christian Arabs who like me dare to express their views.

You asked, I answered.  

Ray Hanania 

www.RadioChicagoland.com
www.TheArabDailyNews.com

Israel's government distorts truth in response to War Crimes report

Israel's government distorts truth in response to War Crimes report
By Ray Hanania --Renown South African Jurist Richard Goldstone has completed a comprehensive report on the war crimes committed during the Israeli war started against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 4, 2008 and the Israeli response has been to call Goldstone, a Jew who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia an "anti-Semite" with no basis in international law. While the war crimes in Gaza are a real crime, the outrageous slander that marks Israel's government response to any form of criticism is an even bigger crime. They argue Israel did not start the war, Hamas did. But the facts prove Israel wrong. But does truth matter in today's world? Not when it comes to Israel's government.

I completed an exhaustive study of how the Gaza War started based on Israeli government and university sources that monitored the peace agreement that was in place between Israel and Hamas in 2008 that involved the firing of rockets and Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip.

The facts show Israel intentionally started the Gaza war mainly fearing that the election of Barack Obama as president -- because he was raised in a Muslim background, has an Arab middle name, Hussein, was friend with many Palestinian activists in Chicago, and has an inherent sympathy for downtrodden people abused by demagogues and government dictatorship.

Here's the link to the report:

www.TheMediaOasis.com/Hamasrockets.htm

What you might also notice if you research anything that has to do with Israeli atrocities and reports of this kind is that the Government of Israel has engaged in a strategic public relations campaign to counter the unveiling of the truth and to protect their lies.

For example, at the bottom of nearly every Google Web site reference to Israel's war crimes in Gaza are ads purchased by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel's Government, which leads individuals who red these few online reports to see an alternative propaganda spin.

This debate over Goldstone's war crimes report is being handled differently by Arabs and Israelis.

The Arabs are relying on their worthless, emotional leadership and activist spokespeople to scream and yell and make the Arabs feel good. But the Arab response to the report has been insignificant in terms of educating the world to the veracity of the report.

In contrast, Israel's government has unleashed a sophisticated public relations campaign to counter the truth and make a pre-eminent Jewish legal scholar, Richard Goldstone, into an anti-Semite.

It's the same kind of immoral conduct that Israel and its legion of blind supporters engaged in responding to former President Jimmy Carter who accurately warned that Israel's actions in the West bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip against the occupied civilians there amounted to a form of Apartheid.

Since then, Carter has been vilified and the vilification of Carter continues. Carter's biggest problem is that he continues to associate with the loser leaders and activists in the Palestinian community, especially in the United States, who could argue their way out of a paperbag they are so incompetent.

The fact is Israel is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in public relations and communications dollars to spin the truth into acceptable lies that favor them. But they really don't need to because the Arab response has been pathetic, filled with emotion rather than facts and logic and actually play in to the Israeli defense strategy.

It is a tragic day in this world when the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity can't even get a chance to defend themselves and face their accusers in an open court. Palestinian victims are much like the women assaulted by male rapists. The rapists main defense is that the women victims "caused" their own rape by inviting it. They use fear and further shame to force the victims of rape to remain silent.

Goldstone's report was meticulous and fair. It not only cites instances of war crimes in the murder of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Defense Forces, it also condemns Hamas with also committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But it's the fact that the report is balanced and holds not only Hamas but Israel's government to account that most offends Israel's supporters who would rather lie to defend Israel than to acknowledge the truth in order to achieve a lasting peace.

END

Future of Middle East peace hangs in Israeli election balance

Violence drives politics in the Middle East, not just in the decisions by the dictators who control the Arab countries, but also in the election booth in Israel's quasi-Democratic parliamentary system.

Tuesday, Israelis go to the polls, and once again they share in this election what has been shared before. The elections follow a major wave of violence and conflict. And, most of the Arab Palestinian citizens in Israel will, once again, cut off the noses of their pride to spite their best interests. They will boycott the elections argiong that there is no difference between the Kadima and Labor Parties on the left, headed by Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, and with the utltra-extremist parties led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the past, elections that have followed long periods of conflict and violence in Israel, have ended up causing israel's electorate to spin out of control to embrace the far right.

In happened in 1996, a year after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli fanatic who opposed his support of peace with the Palestinians and a growing spat of suicide bombings by the Hamas terrorist organization. Benjamin Netanyahu ousted Shimon Peres as prime minister and drove the nation towards a harsher confrontation with the Palestinians and moved the region further away from peace.

In 2000, the peace process collapsed driven by a lot of factors. Those factors included the inept manipulation of the process by President Bill Clinton and his biased Middle East liaison Dennis Ross; the refusal of Barak, then Israel's prime minister to meet face-to-face with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat; and Arafat's inability to accept the elimination of the Palestinian Right of Return without a major quid pro quo from Israel. The collapse launched the 2nd Intifada, or Palestinian "rebellion" against the Israeli occupation, and another long wave of violence and suicide attacks by Hamas. That violence helped Ariel Sharon, one of Israel's most extreme leaders, to win the election.

Now, as the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has raised the level of condemnation of Israel's harsh military assault that included hundreds of civilian fatalities by nation's throughout the world, Netanyahu is perched to once again win. Many believe Netanyahu's rivals, Livni and Barak and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister who has been accused of wide spread corruption and was forced to step down as a candidate for re-election and th ehead of his party, launched the Gaza War thinking they could undercut Netanyahu's extremism by showing the voters they could flex their muscles.

But the Gaza war failed to achieve any of Israel's goals. Hamas remains not only as a potent force but with growing popularity among frustrated Palestinians convinced Israel will never concede any land or remove core settlements in the West Bank. Israel withdrew after weeks of onslaught, but without destroying Hamas.

The real tragedy is that the Middle East has been leaderless for years. Everyone talks peace, but few leaders, Arab or Israeli, have the courage to fight for peace. it is easier to fight in wars.

Even more tragic is the fact that Arabs and Israelis both know what the final compromise will be: Land for peace. Israeli security. Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A sharing of Arab East Jerusalem with Israel given control over the city's ancient Jewish areas. Compensation for the refugees, Palestinian and Jewish. And Israel keeps some settlements in the West Bank in exchange for an equal amount of land (inch-for-inch) from the pre-1967 Israel borders.

The peace agreement is out there. It's just waiting for people willing to make it work.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Palestinians and Israelis come together on Chicago Radio Show this morning Jan 14 8 am

I have invited two guests on my show this morning, Fadi Zanayed, president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and David Steiner, president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Friends of Peace Now. Zanayed is Palestinian and Steiner is Israeli.

Over the past few weeks, it has been disheartening to watch and listen as some leaders in the Arab community and also in the mainstream Jewish American community, spew hatred and vicious rhetoric blaming others for the unspeakable crimes against women, children and innocent people in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli towns near Gaza. Instead of leadership, some of these organizations have been denouncing fiercely the crimes committed against their people, but have either remained silent or have justified the carnage and immoral conduct committed against the others.

Both sides are committing crimes, and the worst crime is when the people on either side pretend their side is not committing a crime but scream and cry about the crimes committed only against their people.

That is complicity in the carnage and that needs to stop.

Today on my Radio Chicagoland program (WJJG 1530 AM Radio) I am asking callers, especially Arab and Jewish listeners, to call in and say something nice about the "other side." To show not that the other side is right but that their side has a remaining sense of morality in a conflict filled with a vicious war of words of "moral equivalency."

Innocent people are dying in a conflict that has raged on for more than 100 years. No one incident started anything. The facts so the claims on both sides are untrue. And when people lie or they close their eyes to the truth, they are also participating in the inhumanity that is taking place today.

Our government leaders are failing and are also playing politics on the spilled blood of innocent people. It's up to us, the people, to take the lead and say and do something to force them to do the right thing.

If you are not in the Chicagoland area to hear the show live on the radio this morning between 8 and 9:30 am, you can go to the web site and listen online, including on the live video streaming option,

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/