Middle East peace requires real courage from both sides

Middle East peace requires real courage from both sides

By Ray Hanania

On the eve of a long-hoped-for meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, members of the Hamas terrorist organization killed four members of the Israeli terrorist settler movement.

The murders of the four settlers took place at Kiryat Arba in the West Bank where settlers have celebrated the memory of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American Jewish mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they were praying at the Hebron Mosque. Amazingly, he wore an Israeli military uniform and the mosque was under the control of the Israeli army.

Talk about an inside job.

This act of terror is more than just a reminder that violence takes place on both sides – yes, Israel settlers kill Palestinians, too. It should remind us of the objective of extremist Palestinians and extremists Israelis, which is to block the peace process.

The extremists have been encouraged by Netnayhau who has been hesitant to give up his drive to take all of the land of the Palestinians in the West Bank and convert them in to illegal Israeli settlements. He has refused to really freeze settlement expansion and despite a minor hold on some insignificant “outposts,” the settlements continue to expand with new construction and more settlers.

Abbas has been trying his best to embrace peace, demanding only that Israel stop expelling Palestinian homeowners from East Jerusalem, which is located in the Israeli occupied West Bank and is a Palestinian majority. Israel has been building homes for settlers in East Jerusalem while demolishing the homes of Palestinian families there for the past decade.

The problem facing both Netanyahu and Abbas is a political problem. And the question is, do they have the courage to do the right thing? Do they have the courage to stand up to the fanatics in their own community and confront the growing anger from the moderates who are pulled apart by violence, failure, and the actions of the other side?

We know what the peace agreement is. Two states. Israel closes some settlements and gives the Palestinian lands in Israel in exchange for the illegal settlements that it keeps.

East Jerusalem is divided not by a wall but by sovereignty with people able to travel throughout the Holy City. The Jewish section though falls under Israeli control and the Palestinian sections, three quarters of the city, come under Palestinian control.

The Palestinian refugees are addressed with real options, not false promises of returning to lands they will never see. Relocation to the Palestinian State. A fund to support their development. An apology and acknowledgement from Israel for that country’s role in intentionally taking their homes, lands and destroying their villages in 1948, an event that took place more than 62 years ago.

Most importantly, an internationally recognized border is drawn between Palestine and Israel that for the first time in history gives Palestine the power of international law if Israel breaks its agreement. Sovereignty gives Palestinians a power they have never had. They have always been the outcast in every international debate about their situation. Their non-sovereignty status has allowed Israel to do all the talking and direct all the action. Israel’s violence has been defined as “defense” while Palestinian violence has always been defined as “terrorism.”

A peace accord would change the power balance to fairness.

Palestine could continue to prosecute crimes as could Israel. Palestine could continue to push for more humanitarian treatment of Palestinians seeking to be compensated for lost lands and homes taken by Israel and so could Jews seeking to be compensated for lost lands and homes in the Arab World.

But if Netanyahu has the courage to stand up to the fanatics in Israel who are beating the drums of hatred and rejection, he could go down as one of the most influential Jewish leaders in modern human history.

If Abbas can push ahead and let go of Palestinian injured ego and pride, he could become the most important Palestinian leader, eclipsing the Hamas terrorist organization which claims power only on the basis of their ability to murder Israeli settlers and civilians and to threaten violence.

In peace, Hamas would slowly disappear. Their power would vanish. It is only in conflict that Hamas has power. And, it is only in rejection that the Israeli settler fanatics -- who murder innocent Palestinians all the time without even a mention in the mainstream American news media – find power. The settlers would disappear as a violent extremist force, too. And that is good for Israeli politics.

Take away power from the fanatics and the extremists on both sides by doing the right thing. And the right thing is for Abbas and Palestine and Netanyahu and Israel to return from their meetings in Washington D.C. with President Barack Obama by holding up an agreement for the world to see.

Make the peace now. Address the details we’ve been haggling over later. We know there will be fights over the line “dividing” Jerusalem. We know there will be fights over which lands Israel must surrender in exchange for the keeping the illegal settlements like Ariel and Gilo.

But we also know that failure means a future of far more violence than what we have witnessed over the past six months. From the attack on the civilians on the Gaza flotilla to the attack on the settlers at Kiryat Arba.

It’s a simple choice. Peace. Or, violence.

(Ray Hanania is distributed by Creators Syndicate. He writes a column every Wednesday for the Jerusalem Post and regularly for PalestineNote.com. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Jerusalem Post: Good news is hard to come by

Good news is hard to come by

By RAY HANANIA

07/27/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Postive stories from the region are few and far between but they do exist and they do inspire some hope.

Palestinians and Israelis spend a lot of time blaming each other. Sometimes, we can’t even remember what started the argument because the bad things that consume our attention happen so fast. So, it might be nice, once in a while, to look at things that are good. And each side does have some good in them.

Although Israelis refuse to recognize the Goldstone Report, Israel’s government has quietly begun prosecuting a few soldiers who violated the rights of Palestinian civilians. That’s good news, though maybe not the way many Palestinians would want.

One soldier is expected to be prosecuted for killing two civilian women during the 22-day long Operation Cast Lead. News reports say the IDF “disciplined” another officer who ordered an air strike near a Beit Lahiya mosque that resulted in 15 dead and 40 others wounded.

Okay, it’s far from what the Goldstone Report determined were war crimes, but it does represent some form of justice.

Under pressure from US President Barack Obama, Israel will now permit many food and personal items to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip, banning only anything related to weaponry and building materials that could be used for the tunnels or manufacture of rocket launchers.

That it banned any kind of food, soap and even many medicines was not a good thing. But that it lifted the ridiculous bans is a positive move forward.

On the Palestinian side, no one built a monument for Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man accused and convicted of planning the PAN 103 bombing over Lockerbie Scotland. Megrahi was released last year on “compassionate grounds” that he was suffering from prostate cancer and was not expected to live long.

That he has lived longer may be a testament to great strides in medicine, but not much consolation to satisfy the anguish of the relatives of the 270 bombing victims.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has given interviews not only to Palestinian columnists like Fadi el-Salameen, the publisher of the moderatevoiced PalestineNote.com Web site, but he has also spoken at length about peace to Israeli journalists and American Jewish writers including Alon Ben-Meir, whose column “The Fayyad difference” (July 16) was published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the article, Ben-Meir said of Fayyad: “First, he stressed that militant resistance and violence have run their course. Committing acts of violence against the Israelis simply plays into their hands, offering justification for continued occupation and enabling Israel to link national security with occupation.”

Salameen reported at the moderate- voiced Maan News Agency based in Bethlehem that Fayyad ordered the creation of a committee with broad representation to investigate all government agency appointments to ensure extremists who embrace violence are not among those nominated to the positions.

I ADMIT it is not easy to find positive news stories in the region. It is so much easier to find stories of Israelis and Palestinians killing each other, calling each other terrible names and vowing to reject a fair and just peace based on two-states.

But we have to keep trying. Positive stories do not generate the same passion as fear-mongering and name-calling or the political blame game. Those stories need our help.

That’s why I am asking if you hear of a positive story, share it with me. I want to know. I can’t promise to write a whole column about it, but it would be nice to include a collection of positive stories in one column just to prove that good news is still out there and that hope is not completely dead.

There is a silver lining in every dark cloud, something good that we can salvage from the overabundance of bad. I’ve even found that silver lining in the darkness that surrounds me.

A group of extremist Palestinians in the United States have set up a hate Web site targeting me.

Why? Well, I am a Christian Palestinian.

My wife and son are Jewish.

I support compromise and oppose violence.

They really, really hate that I write for both PalestineNote.com and The Jerusalem Post – which is another reason why I love writing for both.

As you can imagine, I get ugly emails from Arabs and Jews every day complaining about something I’ve written. I can’t even repeat the things they call me. Fortunately, though, the hate site has also energized a lot of good people to contact me and express support.

Good words go a long way to encourage even the most challenged hope for peace.

But thanks to the haters, their attention has helped me sell a lot of copies of my humor book I’m Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing up Arab in America. In the end, “hate” can make “good” look that much better.

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

Yalla Peace: Fire them all

Yalla Peace: Fire them all
By RAY HANANIA
07/13/2010 JERUSALEM POST

That the differing cases of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr yielded the same result exemplifies a failure to make the necessary distinctions amid the nuance of American Arab thought.

When Pope Innocent III ordered a crackdown on Christian heretics called the Cathars in 1210 CE, he applied a reasoning that was not so reasonable: “Nulla salus extra ecclesium” or “Outside the Church there is no salvation.”

The Cathars were living among the Christian faithful in a French city called Beziers. During the assault, when the pope’s general was asked how the soldiers would determine who was a believer and who wasn’t, he responded, “Kill them all, let God sort them out.” More than 100,000 people were slaughtered, mostly Christians not part of the Cathars.

We’ve seen this form of political strategy repeated many times in history since. Most recently, it was former president George W. Bush who launched his war of vengeance against Iraq in 2003, declaring: “You are either with us, or against us.”

In the Hollywood version of the real life story of the rise of the Mafia in Las Vegas, the accused mobsters were sitting in a federal court conference room worrying about who the witnesses against them might be. They went through a list and came across the name of one of their most loyal. But the decision to murder him came down to one final thought, “He’s a stand-up guy, but, why take a chance?” Israel and its allies have viewed the Arab world in much the same light. It’s not how you criticize Israel, but the fact that you criticize Israel at all that is important. Even if you don’t criticize Israel, but are like those who do, well, “Why take a chance.”

LET’S TAKE the differing cases of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr.

Thomas was a veteran White House correspondent who covered eight presidents. When she became the dean of the press corps, opening and closing presidential press conferences, she often led with question about the unfairness of American foreign policy toward the Arab world and Palestinians.

Last month, a rabbi activist interviewed the 79-year-old journalist outside the White House with a video camera and asked her: “Any comments on Israel?” Thomas’ response was a crude critique: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

Then she added: “Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. It’s not German, it’s not Poland.”

Where should they go, asked the rabbi? “They – go home.”

“Where’s their home?” Thomas: “Poland.”

“So the Jews can...”

Thomas: “Germany.”

“You’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?” Thomas: “And, and America and everywhere else.”

Thomas was immediately fired by the Hearst Newspapers.

In fairness to Thomas, and while her choice of words left a lot to be desired, I think she meant to criticize Israel’s occupation and not to express anti-Semitic feelings.

But contrast her case with that of Nasr, the senior Middle East correspondent for CNN, and a 25-year journalism veteran, who was forced to walk the modern-day Beziers plank of anti-Israel Cathars. Also Lebanese American, Nasr was considered pro-Israeli and not so sympathetic to Palestinian causes, according to CNN colleagues who knew her well.

But when she learned of the death of Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a founder of Hizbullah denounced as terrorists by Israel and the US, she wrote on Twitter (the Internet social networking site that limits comments to a total of 140 letter characters or about 30 words): “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hizbullah’s giants I respect a lot.”

CNN didn’t have to have a meeting with the pope. After a firestorm of protests from many, including Israel’s strongest Jewish American supporters like the Simon Weisenthal Center, Nasr was fired.

Later, and too late, Nasr explained she was referring to Fadlallah’s views toward women’s rights and his opposition to honor killings, a practice in which women accused of infidelity and bringing shame to their families are murdered, often by other family members who are celebrated for the killings and protected by laws.

Neither his progressive views on women’s rights nor his break with Hizbullah over the group’s growing embrace of the fanaticism of Iran’s extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was taken into account.

IN THE United States and among American Jews at least, too often there are inadequate discernable levels of distinction when it comes to supporting or opposing Israel.

Moderates, extremists, Arabs and Muslims are often all lumped together.

That failure to understand the nuance of American Arab thought – as exemplified in the cases of Thomas and Nasr, different cases that yielded the same result – works well with the fear-mongering that defines how American Arabs are understood in the new era of post- September 11, 2001 terrorism. You are either with us or against us.

Whether you support peace or not does not matter. If you criticize Israel in any fashion, that’s more than enough. Say something nice about Israel’s bitterest enemies, watch out.

Outside of the pro-Israel debate, there is no salvation. In the firings of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr, and criticism of other leading American Arab journalists, there is only one fate: “Fire them all, let God sort it out.”

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

Yalla Peace: Celebrating ‘Passter’ in our troubled times, Jerusalem Post Column

Yalla Peace: Celebrating ‘Passter’ in our troubled times
By RAY HANANIA
30/03/2010 23:06 Jerusalem Post Column

A taste of this combination of Passover and Easter at the Hanania household.

What another terribly marred Passover and Easter week. Now I know why so many Israelis and some Palestinians turn their eyes away from the constant tragedy and pretend it isn’t there.

My Facebook page is raging with anger between Palestinians and Israelis. “Friends” insist on posting notes about how the “other side” is responsible for everything.

“Terrorists.” “Racist Zionists.” Hateful blather. Yes, I know that people are killing each other and frankly I blame both sides. Of course, depending on whose side you are on determines who is to blame for the latest skirmish in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF entered Gaza and Hamas responded. So many were killed. And then the hate speech ramps up from both sides.

In peace, incidents like this won’t happen. In peace, IDF soldiers will cross into the Gaza Strip with permission from the Palestinians and, instead of firing on them, Palestinians might ask what they are doing.

SO MY wife (who is Jewish) and I are here in the United States planning for our annual “Passter” dinner, watching helplessly as the situation in Israel and Palestine deteriorates further.

Oh, sorry, “Passter” is a term you all in Israel and Palestine might not be too familiar with in these days of continued conflict, name-calling and blame. It’s something that can only come from peace. A combination of Passover and Easter.

My wife and I argue about the typical things Israelis and Palestinians seem preoccupied with these days, like the continued bloodshed, violence, fight over land ownership, targeted killings, terrorist attacks and the growing political division between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.

But we don’t yell and scream. We don’t call each other names or spend our time planning revenge. No, we look at the people in Israel and the Palestinian territories and we shake our heads. A bunch of unruly kids. Okay. With weapons. They should all be sent to their rooms. Disarmed.

We have other important things to think about. Sunday was Palm Sunday, a very important holiday for me as a Christian. Monday night was Passover, a very important holiday for my wife and son as Jews.

We celebrate our religious holidays together. On Palm Sunday, we decorate eggs and then have a big dinner. Palestinians like to use one color – purple – to reflect the “Passion of Christ.” Americans like to decorate eggs with different colors reflecting the excessive commercialization of a holiday. (Ah those Americans. It’s all about money!)

Relatives drop off palm fronds symbolizing... well, I don’t need to explain it again, do I?

On Passover, we celebrate with a Seder. I like the way Arabs and Jews focus on food at holidays, as well as religious prayers and custom, of course.

IN MY comedy routine, I like to riff on the fact that Jews really don’t have much in the way of a food menu. That’s why the Israelis “stole” our land. To get the food. Humous. Falafel. Stuffed grape leaves.

They do have a dish called cholent, I’ll give them that. You know, it’s something Jews start cooking the night before and eat the next day. Arabs have a similar dish. It’s called “leftovers.” Of course, the Passover meal has many more sacred food items than my Arab menu; matza, wrapped in a napkin; maror (bitter herbs), which is usually horseradish that opens my sinuses; haroset (apples, nuts and cinnamon. We Arabs and Jews have a lot of nuts among us); the boiled egg (is it cheating to use an Easter egg?); and the one thing we all enjoy as Arabs and Jews – roasted lamb.

We bring the two holidays together because they often overlap and they are really so very close. Just look at the Arabic, Hebrew and English words. They may have the same origins, but surely sound similar. Passover. Pessah. Passion. Purple.

We call it “Passter.”

The mixing of Israeli and Palestinian words is a tradition in my Jewish-Palestinian home. It was started by my son, Aaron (that’s what my wife calls him. I call him Abdullah, of course). He was trying to learn the words “Shalom” and “Salam,” more example of similar-sounding Arab and Jewish words and he came up with “Shalam.”

Why not? It’s better than some of the words I have been reading on my Facebook page.

We do have that one moment at the Hanania “Passter” dinner table when Passover and Easter collide in a mini Arab-Israeli skirmish.

That’s when my wife always looks at me and tells my son, “Aaron, ask daddy to pass the Israeli salad.”

And I always respond with, “Abdullah, please tell mommy that we don’t have Israeli salad. We only serve Arab east Jerusalem salad.”

Can you blame the kid for scratching his yarmulke? And then grabbing the bowl of tabbouleh and dividing it equally, 78 percent for my wife and 22 percent for me?

Well, Happy Easter, Hag sameah, and a happy “Passter” from the Hanania household; what the future of Palestinian-Israeli relations might someday look like not just in our home but in Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Insha-Allah (God willing). And yes, yehi ratzon (same in Hebrew). I like to cover both bases.

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

Abbas should call Israel's bluff and push for peace talks, Jerusalem Post column

Abbas should call Israel's bluff and push for peace talks
By Ray Hanania

It’s too easy for members of Israel’s government to call for peace talks to resume. From one side of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s mouth, he says he wants peace. From the other, he says he won’t freeze settlements.

They are not compatible statements, but Netanyahu knows that each message has a
different intended audience. Not freezing settlements is intended to provoke Palestinians into their typical rejectionism. The Palestinians have a button that Israelis can easily push to get the reaction they want, the same reaction every time.

Netanyahu also knows that constantly calling for peace is exactly what American leaders want to hear, easing the pressure off President Barack Obama. The US, which has a multibillion-dollar annual investment in Israel and politicians who pander to pro-Israel votes during biannual elections, doesn’t really care about the problems of the Middle East conflict, so freezing or not freezing settlements is a non-issue to most Americans.

Do Netanyahu and most Israelis want peace? The only way to find out is to push them into a corner from which they can’t escape. But you can’t do that when you are in your own corner, drawing lines around yourself and babbling meaningless rhetoric as the world continues to collapse around you.

Instead of issuing unenforceable preconditions on Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should go to the peace table and play the cards he has. Talk. But this time, do what his predecessor the late president Yasser Arafat failed to do. Partner peace talks with public relations. When they collapse, as they might, make sure you get your story out first before Israel, not three years later as Arafat did in futility during the siege of the Mukata and the confrontation years with Netanyahu’s party predecessor Ariel Sharon.

WHAT’S THE worst that can happen? Peace talks collapse and the region nose-dives into militant-driven violence, terrorism and excessive, heavy-handed military responses from the IDF. Or, just maybe, peace talks progress and Netanyahu, given something to take back to Israel’s increasingly intransigent population, shows them peace might work and restoring hope.

Peace is the only answer that can move Israelis and Palestinians away from the precipice where they have debka’d during the past 62 years. Not only are Israelis and Palestinians bad dancers, they are terrible at reading road maps. But only Israel has the clout.

Israelis will not willingly budge from their rejection of compromise with the Palestinians. It’s been too easy for them over the years. The Palestinians demand “all or nothing” and constantly end up with nothing, while the Israelis take whatever they can get.

A peace agreement is the only way to freeze Israel’s settlement expansions around Jerusalem.

The Israeli settlements didn’t just appear because some ingenuous Israeli developed a bullet-proof strategy to build them, but because Palestinians always said “no,” demanding everything and always ending up with nothing. Israel had carte blanche to take what it wanted. And it did. Who wouldn’t?

IN RETURNING to the peace table despite Israel’s hard-line stance, Abbas can also give some strength back to the weakened President Obama, whose powerful shouts of peace sound more like distant whispers these days. If Obama can show some progress in the Middle East, he just might be able to leverage that to pressure Israel’s government to do more, which it should, and add tenor to his declarations.

But with Abbas saying “no,” and with Netanyahu’s clever double-talk to preserve his right-wing coalition, Obama can’t do much except tell Americans he will focus his attention elsewhere.

The Palestinians will never have a stronger American ally than Obama. Every other Democratic alternative, including Hillary Clinton, would move the table back into Israel’s corner. Politically, there is no advantage to confronting Israel in the United States.

Every Republican challenger, like Mike Huckabee, will be fawning all over Israel during repeated visits, telling the Israelis everything they want to hear, from bashing the Goldstone Report as the bible of anti-Semitism to promising that America will always stand by Israel’s side – well, as long as there are Jews in America who can vote. There is neither virginity in American politics nor innocence.

My guess is Abbas will make the wrong choice, again, and waste his time trying to smooth things over with the uncompromising Hamas, presumably to strengthen his own weak government. Only Hamas can play the game of double-talk better than Netanyahu. And there is nothing anyone could do to change Hamas, which is uncompromising by faith.

The only Palestinian leader giving Abbas good advice is his prime minister, Salam Fayyad. But Fayyad’s role has been relegated to that of an entertainer as he travels the country and the world telling audiences what they need to hear while failing with his own people.

The truth is Israel holds all the cards. If Israel wanted to end the conflict it could. But with Israelis becoming increasingly satisfied with the status quo – controlling everything with only “minor” losses of life – there is little incentive to push them to do the right thing.

If Abbas could stop being predictable and surprise Israelis and the US, maybe he could regain the momentum and reignite a peace process that Israel cannot reject.

What do Abbas and the Palestinians have left to lose that they haven’t already lost?

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

Columnists: We come and we go (Jerusalem Post)

Columnists, we come and we go
By Ray Hanania
(Originally published in the Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 2010)

Years ago I was a lead writer for a flashy column in Chicago’s daily newspaper The Sun Times. Called Page Ten, it showcased an assortment of news tidbits – some called gossip, others called insider tips – and my beat was politics, mainly Chicago’s City Hall.

After two years, the editor called me one day and said the column run was over. All the celebrity recognition I received from the column quickly ended and the column was replaced with someone else’s. They moved me back to my regular beat covering Chicago’s City Hall, which is where I wanted to be from the beginning.

In journalism, this happens all the time. Sometimes the move is a shift. Other times it involves scandal. Sometimes, it even involves a newspaper reacting to public outcry.

In Israel, this week, The Jerusalem Post decided to drop the regular column ‘Critical Currents’ by Naomi Chazan, the head of the New Israel Fund. The change came in the middle of a storm of controversy in which Chazan and the NIF were being attacked by a right-wing Israeli organization which was angry because, it asserted, the NIF had made it possible for the United Nations to produce “The Goldstone Report.”

The Goldstone Report, as you have read, is the report completed by a fact-finding mission led by renowned international jurist and civil rights lawyer Richard Goldstone. The report concluded that Israel and Hamas both committed war crimes.

But in demonizing NIF and Chazan, the critics complained not that the report was inaccurate, but that some of the facts obtained by the report came from organizations that received funds from NIF. It is a typical lynch mob mentality. Demagoguery at its worst.

NEVERTHELESS, CHAZAN’S column was dropped. It should also be noted that Chazan was also writing for Yedioth Aharonot and Maariv and online web sites and some of her columns were dropped there, too.

I know the NIF very well. It has, in the past, supported the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour. I have attended many of the events it has organized in Chicago and in Jerusalem. It is progressive and it supports peace based on justice. It backs the two-state solution and its programs often involve frank discussions and analysis that not only challenge the extremism in the Palestinian community but the growing extremism in Israel, too.

I worked for Yedioth Aharonot’s online web page, YnetNews.com, also. And I have been writing irregularly for The Jerusalem Post since leaving YnetNews about two years ago. (I won a Society of Professional Journalism Lisagor Award for my columns at YnetNews.com and I enjoyed the freedom they gave me.)  

But YnetNews.com is an online news site. And being the old-fashioned journalist that I am, I still prefer the print newspaper. I like to see my columns in print, not just online.

Recently, The Jerusalem Post offered to give me a regular column. The column will run every Wednesday, except for this week. The column will reflect my fiercely moderate views and unashamedly anti-extremist views. I passionately dislike extremists – a political lifestyle I define for someone who rejects compromise and enables violence through selective silence; someone who denounces others for violence but is silent when their side engages in the same violence.

A moderate is everything an extremist is not. And, I will go further to say that the new Middle East is not a conflict between Israeli and Palestinians, but rather between extremists and moderates. I am proud to help lead that fight.

The fact that I am Palestinian does not make me feel uncomfortable writing for The Jerusalem Post, which is usually right of center (although it does carry left-wing columnists and op-eds) and all the way to the limits of the right. I don’t mind. To me, journalism is about divergent views.

In fact, to the contrary, I feel at home writing for the newspaper. I believe in the secular future of Palestine and Israel. I also recognize and respect the heritage of my family which has had roots in Jerusalem for a millennium and probably even more. Jerusalem is my home whether it is controlled by the Ottomans, the British or Israel.

Many Palestinians are angry with me for writing for The Jerusalem Post, but I don’t care. There are even more Israelis angered by my columns who sometimes are more articulate in expressing their hate.

But there are far more Palestinians and Israelis who support my views and who reject the extremists who try to control through censorship, intolerance and bullying.

I support the NIF. And I am proud to also write for The Jerusalem Post. I am sure Chazan will do well and find a new forum for her views, views that are badly needed.

In the meantime, I’ll keep writing and define “the moderate Arab voice” speaking to an audience or primarily Jews and Israelis who I believe need to better understand what has otherwise been a poorly articulated Palestinian narrative and viewpoint.

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. This column originally appeared at the PalestineNote.com news blog.

Arab journalists suffer oppression because Arab Journalism groups fail to work together

Arab journalists suffer oppression because Arab Journalism groups fail to work together

By Ray Hanania

Jared Malsin, an English editor at the Maan News Agency in Bethlehem, was arrested and jailed by Israeli border police this week for the high crime of "criticizing Israel." The journalist is sitting in a jail cell awaiting a kangaroo court hearing before an Israeli judge. And there is nothing Arab Journalists can do about it, mainly because they spend more time fighting among themselves than they do networking and creating one, single, strong voice.

Maan, which is constantly under siege from israeli authorities and operating under Israel's brutal repression of palestinian voices in the occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, is fighting to spread the word and get support.

But the challenge they face is not of their own doing. The problem has to do with the fact that most journalism associations, especially those organized by Arabs, do not work together. Maybe it's rivalry. Maybe it's politics. Maybe it's about jealousy. Maybe it's just that the presidents-for-life at the various groups just don't like each other.

And who suffers? Journalists like Jared Malsin.

In the United States, Arabs have 10 journalism associations. None of them will work together. Almost all of them insist on being "the" organization, when in fact none of them are really anything of significance.

Working together or networking doesn't mean an organization has to lose its identity nor lose it's influence. It CAN mean just linking together the way we link pages on the Internet. But that means showcasing another organization and American Arab organizations -- not just the Arab journalism groups -- don't like to do that.

Maybe it is a cultural thing?

Because the same thing happens in the Middle East.

Arab World Journalists are arrogant and look down on American Arab journalists, even though journalism in the United States, despite the political bias towards Israel, is more professional and more powerful than anything written in the Middle East. In fact, much of the arrogance has to do with a cultural flaw in the world of Arab journalists. If you don't speak and write in Arabic, you are NOT an Arab! That's the corrupted attitude of how Arab World journalism operates.

The truth is that the Arab World media that writes only in Arabic is doing the Arab people, and especially the Palestinian people, a huge disservice. In fact, it might be a moral crime. The Western audience doesn't read, hear or understand anything published in the Arab World media in Arabic and therefore the Arab World media in Arabic is not influential and marginalized.

But they are legends in their own minds, of course.

How do we change that?

1 - All Arab journalism organizations in the Middle East and in the West such as the United States, should network together. Put aside their differences -- Journalism is NOT about politics or activism, but about professional journalism principles of objectivity.

2 - The Arab World media should expand their operations to include mirror English web sites and even sections in their all-Arabic pages with English translations.

3 - Arab American and Western Arab groups should insure they also provide both English and Arabic sections.

Setting aside politics is going to be tough because Arab World journalism did not arise out of the need for free speech, but rather out of the long term activism to fight political oppression in places like Israel and also in other Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

In the meantime, everyday an Arab journalist like Jared Malsin is detained, harassed and intimidated by Israel or another government agency including in the Arab World.

And until Arab Journalists decide to set aside their political rivalries and focus first and foremost on professional journalism reporting in both Arabic and English, Jared Malsin won't be the last.

Click to Read the National Arab American Journalism Association release on Maslin.

Click to read the recent update by Maan (Ma'an) News Agency's update on Maslin.

-- Ray Hanania

http://www.naaja-us.com/

http://naaja-us.ning.com/

Interview with Bradley Burston of Israel's Haaretz Newspaper

JAN. 2010 -- Interview with Haaretz Columnist Bradley Burston

Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston on Radio Chicagoland 12-20-09 @ Yahoo! Video

Tragedy in Wonderland, the fatalism of the rejectionist ideology

It's one thing to be optimistic. But when you replace optimism with fatalistic hope, it is irresponsible and even selfish.

How else do you describe the bizarre, although articulately expressed, assertions by Ali Abunimeh, the presumed successor to the late great philosopher Edward Said, that Israel is "failing?" Published on Abunimeh's web site "The Electronic Intifada," where Abunimeh pines for the days when Palestinians were willing to sacrifice everything by using inadequate violence to respond to Israel's military violence, the column makes the seemingly bold claim that Israel is a "failed" state.

That kind of rebellious declaration, or rhetoric, does make the Palestinian sheep that follow him blindly cheer for optimism. But it isn't optimistic at all. In fact, attempts to rally the Palestinians with empty claims are undermining Palestinian ability to overcome the occupation.

The fact is if Israel is a "failed" state, then what is Palestine? What is the Palestinian achievement? What is the Palestinian strategy/ What is the means by which Palestinians might exploit this national failure by Israel?

The sad truth is that Palestinian extremists have been feeding false hope and useless rhetoric that instead of moving Palestinians to overcome the occupation have deluded them into believing that the continuation of the occupation is good because it will miraculously vanish because "Israel is a failed state."

Never mind that the movement Abunimeh cheers like a scene from the film "Lord of the Flies" amidst the bonfire of his vanities is an empty movement with only one goal: keep the conflict going because there might be some miracle. Because that is what Palestinian extremists need, a miracle. And they don't mind waiting through three more generations of Palestinian refugee destitution in the hopes it will arrive. Someday. Not now, of course. But someday, in the distant future.

People who are desperate and denied leadership will consume anything for hope. Alixirs. Promises of dreams that in reality are nightmares. False hope is always what false leaders offer to the hopeless. Because feeding hopelessness preserves the leaders of the "leaders."

They can't tell the people the sad and pathetic truth that after 62 years of fighting with false hope and lies and alixirs, the Palestinian people are no closer to statehood than they were in 1948. The rejectionists used to blame that failure on the late Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Never mind that Arafat was the only Palestinian to achieve any significant objective, raising through revolution the Palestinian people out of the abyss of darkness and forcing the world to recognize that we in fact do exist. But that revolution in the hands of extremists and other false Palestinian prophets is non-existent. They wish for it, which is why Abunimeh's Electronic Intifada is an online altar to a power long lost.

There have been two Intifadas. The first was powerful and pushed Israel to the negotiating table that it falsely claimed it hoped to sit at with Palestinian peace partners. The sacrifices of the first Intifada, led by Palestinians at the grassroots level of the occupation, had a goal: to resist the oppressive Israeli military occupation and to push Israel to a solution to end the occupation and allow creation of a Palestinian State.

The second Intifada was started not by Palestinians but by Ariel Sharon, an Israeli terrorist in a three-piece suit who rose from the infamy of the Qibya massacre of Palestinian civilians in 1953 (and later was also involved in the Qafr Qassem massacre as a military supervisor in 1956) to become Israel's most vicious prime minister. It was hijacked from the hapless Palestinian people by the terrorism of Hamas, a religiously fanatic militant organization that Sharon and Israel helped midwife into being in the 1970s.

Abunimeh, who comes from the same corrupted Palestinian elite who destroyed Palestinian hopes and dreams in the pre-1948 years, pines for another Intifada, a violent and unnecessary option that would heap huge suffering upon a Palestinian people already max-ed out in suffering. The last thing the Palestinians need is another violent struggle against Israel. After two failed struggles and limited success from a revolution, Palestinians need leaders who can bring the conflict to an abrupt end and achieve at least some form of genuine statehood sovereignty. The only way to do that is to negotiate a real peace that establishes Palestine as a state in the last remaining land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There is still hope for that two-state settlement, but that hope is exactly what pushes the rejectionists to mislead Palestinians into believing that somehow Israel, which has its military boot on the necks of Palestinian Nationalism, is in fact a "failure."

The only answer is peace. But that is why the rejectionists and their disciples continue to push for conflict. Their goal is the same goal that was sought by Hamas when Arafat and the late Yitzhak Rabin sought to negotiate a final peace agreement. Hamas and Abunimeh want the option of peace to be erased forever. If they can just get rid of the slim hope for peace through negotiations and compromise, then, maybe, Palestinians will stop trying to compromise and instead go all out in a new Intifada, one in which the leaders, sheltered in their luxurious homes in the decadence of the West that they so despise, can cheer on each and every Palestinian to martyrdom. Every Palestinian Martyr becomes another opportunity to push palestinians away from hope and in to the hands of all out conflict.

That reality is that while many in the world are outraged at Israel's military and violent excesses in the West Bank and the alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip, Israel is far from failure. It is the Palestinian people who are moving closer and closer to failure, thanks to the rejectionists and their lack of leadership and their inspirationally misleading words to fight on. "Until every last Palestinian has sacrificed his or her life for the rejectionist cause."

But Abunimeh is just one person. A good person when he is not leading the Palestinian people, but one who is leading Palestinians to another decade of slaughter. The real problem is the extremism that his zealotry represents. The idea that destroying peace and igniting a new Intifada because "Israel is a failed state" is so appealing to the traumatized, hapless Palestinian masses (who have been embraced by conflict for so long they know no other means of life) they are willing to go that route and lose everything rather than salvage what they can.

Many often point to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and observe that Palestinians mimic the Israelis in their actions. Yet Palestinians have not mimicked israel at all. Instead, they chose the fatalistic and the failed option almost every time. Israelis have always taken what they could, when they could, and how they could. In contrast, Palestinians, led by rejectionist leaders, have insisted that they must take "all or nothing."

It was the three famous "No's" in the 1960s. And those "No's" have turned into the foundation of Palestinian rejectionist policies. No normalization. No compromise. No peace. "All or nothing."

I will admit though that Abunimeh has a better chance of achieving the goal that is the destiny of his leadership: Palestinians, having demanded "all," will find themselves with "nothing."

You never know, though. There could be a miracle. Someday. Maybe. Possibly. Just say no to peace. Turn anger into hatred and hatred into violence.

Or, Palestinians can break the bonds of the extremist hallucinogens, open their eyes, see that their people are in such a state of despair that compromise is their only hope to begin to rebuild their devastated nation.

But few Palestinians have the courage to admit that they made a mistake, they were wrong and that the policies of violence and empty rhetoric are as much to blame for their plight as are the brutal policies of the Israeli occupier.

Israelis could not have wished for a better opponent, one that allows emotion to trump reason and good decisions to be erased by empty words of extremist and rejectionist rhetoric.

Tragedy in Wonderland.

-- Ray Hanania

www.YallaPeace.com

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.

Principles that should guide Palestinian and Israeli Peace

These are some principles I have fashioned that I hope will become the basis for establishment of Yalla Peace Parties throughout the world to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

1-We can disagree about the past with passion and emotion and still come together for a great future together. We do not have to deny each other's narratives about the past, or challenge them, on order to agree on a mutual future of peace and compromise. This is the first step. Stop using the past as a bludgeon to attack the other side, while closing a blind eye to similar conduct among our own peoples.

2-We apply one principle of fairness, justice, morality to achieve compromise looking within ourselves to find and correct the fault. Israelis must be able to denounce the killing of Palestinians before they can denounce the killing of Israelis. Palestinians must be able to denounce the killing of Israelis before they can denounce the killings of Palestinians.

3-We resist the temptation to blame people for the actions of individuals, and resist the temptation to respond in anger and in kind. This is not about people but rather about politics and government policies that have gone wrong and feed on the suffering, tragedy and confusion of our peoples.

4-We set aside the old paradym of Israelis versus Palestinians and instead define our movement as moderates versus extremists. We use the M Word proudly and reject those who seek to deny it as a means of distracting eyes from their own extremist ways and views.

5-We embrace two-states, Israel and Palestine, and deal with the issues after we achieve a real peace and two states. We create two states on the basis of the bigger principle and later negotiate the final borders, the sharing of Jerusalem, compensation and resettlement of the Palestinian refugees, the dismantling of which specific settlements, the swap of land, etc. Create two states so that Israel and Palestine become equal partners at the negotiating table rather that seeking to achieve the unachievable through an imbalance with Israel as the subjugator and Palestine as the subjugated.

6-We strive to see the bigger picture and not get drawn in to the battle over the "pebble." We see that peace based on compromise is the answer to past violence and terrorism. We don't allow one disagreement to discourage us from seeking the bigger agreement of peace.

7-We resist the rhetoric of hatred. We stop stereotyping Israelis and Palestinians. We reject hate speech, denial of the suffering of others. Palestinians must stop enabling or advocating Holocaust revisionism or questioning the Holocaust. israelis must stop questioning the existence of Palestinians or the facts that they lost many homes and lands as civilians in the 1947-48 war.

8-We view criminal acts (violence, terrorism, all acts of physical injury) not as the consequences of a people but rather as the result of individual conduct. Terrorism and violence must be treated as criminal acts not an excuse to persecute or demonize any other people.

9-We do not allow violence and terrorism to derail compromise and recognize that the more successful we become in reaching peace based on compromise and two-states, the extremists will push harder until it is too late with more violence, and violence of the most despicable kind including suicide bombings and military massacres.

10-We view violence of the past in its context not as a means of defining the future. The massacres in the Gaza Strip are horrendous but the answer is not to respond with violence, but rather to build peace to prevent future events from re-occurring. The same with violence against Israelis. We treat them as horrific incidents, not blanket condemnation of an entire people.

11-We stop blaming others and begin to address the challenges among ourselves. Palestinians stop blaming Israelis and Israelis stop blaming Palestinians. Instead, Palestinians look into themselves and identify their errors, mistakes, misconduct and change them. Israelis look into themselves and identify their errors, mistakes, misconduct and change them.

12-We accept that Peace is the answer and that both sides have injured each other.

-- Ray Hanania

www.YallaPeace.com

My letter to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on J-Street

Letter to the editor from: rayhanania@comcast.net Sent at: Oct 21 2009 at 06:39 am EDT (re: Click here to read Jewish Telegraphic Agency Story on J-Street):  


To the Editor:  

As a Palestinian American Activist who speaks out forcefully on peace and against the use of violence, and who supports a two-state solution, I am concerned at the attacks being made by Jewish American and Israeli groups against J-Street, a Jewish American organization that 1) recognizes Israel and 2) supports a non-violent peaceful solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict.  

We cannot achieve genuine, long lasting peace if we silence the legitimate discussion and debate between our peoples and if we both move to our far rights, denouncing anyone who has ever criticized Israel, or Palestine, and seeking to exclude rather than to build a new and more effective moderate consensus that embraces the fundamental goals of peace based on compromise and a rejection of all violence.  

As one of the bloggers and writers participating in an independent blogging panel hosted by Tikun Olam, I am surprised that the responses to J-Street and the panel have been so harsh from some American Jewish organizations and news outlets. It is discouraging that there are so many people who are fighting to preserve the status quo of conflict and who resist seeking ways to bring two antagonists closer together.  

There is not one Israeli, not one Jew, not one Palestinian and not one Arab who has not said something critical of the other side. To pretend that 61 years of tragic conflict has not produced a difficult relationship marred by violence on both sides and highlighted by emotion-filled rhetoric is a tragic mistake that does not create an environment which supports Israel's right to exist or the right of Palestine to exist, too.  

We can continue to attack each other, or we can insist on findings a path towards peace. I support Israel's right to exist along side an independent Palestinian State. As a Palestinian and former national president of the Palestinian American Congress, and a writer who often criticizes bad Israeli government policies and bad Palestinian government policies, I believe Palestinians and Israelis must be ready to compromise and that violence by both the Hamas terrorists and the armed settler fanatics must be brought to an end.  

The solution is simple if we are willing to embrace it. Compromise. Tough compromise. Fair compromise. Rejection of violence and a fundamental belief that neither side is safe nor can sustain a safe future without achieving a two-state solution. Anyone who rejects that is merely helping to foment more conflict and insure that the future for Israelis and Palestinians remains one fraught with violence and uncertainty.  

Thanks Ray Hanania
www.TheMediaOasis.com

in response to their report (Click here to read their story on J-Street and rising criticism from mainstream Jewish American Organizations)

Movement to moderate Jewish voices at J Street could reignite moderate Palestinian voices

For years, APIAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, has had Jewish American political thought in an extremist headlock, a new voice of Jewish American moderation is rising in strength called J Street. The organization, which is being pilloried by extremist pro-Israel conservatives, holds a major conference on Israel and Middle East next week in Washington D.C. I'll be participating in a special blogging panel of Israelis and Palestinians who support compromise and peace based on two-states organized by Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam.

There is no doubt that Jewish American thought on peace between Palestinians and Israelis has been driven to the far, extremist right by AIPAC and its network of pro-Israel funding mechanisms. In fact, in part because of AIPACs powerful lobbying, many Jewish Americans who normally would support peace based on compromised have been pushed into a corner embracing a one-sided peace in which Israel retains all that it has taken over the years without making any sacrifices for peace while demanding that Palestinians do everything from surrendering some West Bank Lands, compromising on Jerusalem, accepting some of the illegal all-Jewish settlements and accepting a state that lacks the true power of sovereignty over its lands.

At the same time, many Palestinians are being pushed into the corner of extremism by the failure of the Palestinian leadership to achieve any real concessions from Israel. There is a growing movement of Palestinians who are now calling for a "one-state" solution which is not a solution at all but the end of the Palestinian Revolution and claim to nationhood. The one-state agenda basically abandons the occupation as the primary evil in the current relationship between Israel and Palestine, and instead naively proposes that the Arab population will grow at such a rate that eventually Israel and Palestine will become one Arab State, the original goal of the Arab World in the 1930s and 1940s that laid the groundwork for six decades of Palestinian failures.

Palestinians live in occupation and in the diaspora for the fundamental reason that they have allowed their emotions to lead them into believing the notion that nothing less than total Jewish surrender can compensate for their suffering and their failures and military losses. In other words, Palestinians have been taught that the shame of their failures can be compensated through rejection and emotion, and in many cases, unrestrained violence of vengeance that often targeted innocent civilians.

Every time that the Palestinian leadership sought to compromise with Israel and achieve a step forward towards the two-state solution, Hamas terrorists using a bastardized distortion of Islam as their standard intentionally targeted Israeli civilians in suicide bombings. This ongoing violence gave many Palestinians the only form of fulfillment, a macabre sense of justice.

This failing among the Palestinians to develop a reasoned strategy to support a compromise that would maximize their returns pushed many Israelis and American Jews into extremism themselves. They use Palestinian failure as a justification to reject true compromise and this formula has become the foundation of AIPAC's political assaults. It has held American public opinion hostage through ignorance of facts, leading them to believe that it is the Palestinians who refuse to compromise when in fact it is the dominant Israeli government that, even during the peace process, continues to expand settlements, confiscate Palestinian lands and provoke hostilities through policies of confrontation and even violence.

Next week in Washington, Jewish Americans who still believe in two-states, and peace based on compromise will meet to discuss how to strategically move the two-state solution out of the margins. Their success can also motivate Palestinian moderates to reinvigorate their own support of two-states and peace based on compromise.

What is that compromise? Most Palestinians know what it is. Palestinians know that they cannot defeat Israel, but they can continue to make the lives of Israelis miserable and painful, at a cost of making their own lives miserable and painful too. That's the Hamas option.

They also know that if Israel were to become serious in peace, and if moderate Jews and Israelis can reclaim control of their public opinion, they would reciprocate and support peace based on compromise. And that compromise entails very clearly defined concessions for both sides. Israel surrenders the majority of Palestinian lands it occupied in 1967 and end its provocative military attacks not just against Hamas but other Palestinians in the West Bank. It means that Israel stop expanding its settlements and instead begin dismantling the settlements. It also means Israel accepts that there must be a Palestinian presence in Jerusalem that would represent the capitol of a Palestinian State.

It also means that Palestinians accept the reality that the right of return may be a legal legitimate right, but that it is an unrealistic right that can never be achieved. Palestinians must accept the fact that refusing to compromise on the Right of Return is in fact a form of punishment on the Palestinian people living in the diaspora with no hope other than the empty promises made to them year after year by Palestinian fanatics who refuse to compromise. Those fanatics will fight to the very last refugee to prove their point.

But before Palestinian moderation can re-establish itself, the moderate Israeli and Jewish movement must re-assert itself. They Pace Now is dead and that the leftists in Israel no longer have a voice in Israeli policy. If Jewish and Israeli moderation is dead than the future is bleak for everyone. But if it can resurrect itself, it is very possible that might reignite the moderate Palestinian movement.

And that moderate Palestinian movement is the only hope Palestinians have for the future. We can remain interlocked in an unending conflict in which Palestinians sustain far more punishment than the Israelis, with no real hope of statehood, or we Palestinians can recognize the reality and replace emotion and hate with passion and reason. If we can, we might see a sovereign Palestinian State in our lifetime.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com