Don't rule Hillary Clinton out so fast

I want change as much as anyone else, but despite Barack Obama's lead in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, he's still only in the stretch with a slightly better lead than Hillary Clinton.

Neither candidate has secured the locked delegates to win the nomination, and the popular vote has been frighteningly split almost equally in half. I think the enthusiasm to end this contest contradicts the primary season itself which has dragged on more than six months since Jan. 3 in Iowa.

The Democratic convention is not until August, more than two months away. That's where we will know or not know the real intent of the so-called "Super" delegates. The term "super" delegates is a phrase coined to described the gaggle of insiders who have been given "unpledged" delegate positions. They can change their minds and support any candidate they want, crossing back and forth from one candidate to another as often as they want.

What that means is that Obama does lead in pledged delegates and allegedly in unpledged delegates, but the reality of those unpledged delegates does not become final until the convention.

So why rush it? Why circumvent the very Democratic process we embrace and try to use numbers, and statistics that can be twisted in many ways to come up with many answers? Why not celebrate the power of the Democratic Party having two powerful and charismatic leaders, Obama and Clinton, and allow that leadership now to move towards the convention where the pledged delegates MUST cast their vote for the candidate they have been assigned to by the will of the American voters, and unpledged delegates can still weigh the real challenge: who is the best candidate to win the nomination and defeat Republican John McCain.

McCain is not a real choice for most Democrats who voted in the heated Obama-Clinton fracass. But, Hillary Clinton remains a real choice for nearly 50 percent of the Democrats who voted. Are we that sure that Obama can blow the doors off McCain in November that we can afford to tell those Americans who supported Clinton that their intentions are basically dimpled chads that can discarded, too?

I say slow down. I say take pause. I say build the Democratic Party and don't allow it to be torn down as we move towards the Democratic Convention. This race is still close and if Hillary Clinton does not drop out -- a right she has and has earned through a phenomenal performance that so closely matches Obama's own campaign showing -- we should work with both.

The Dream Ticket of Obama and Clinton is one that would be powerful. In fact, that is what Democratic voters have said very clearly as we turn the corner to the final stretch into the Democratic Convention. Let's not turn Denver into Chicago by ignoring the feelings of so many.

Ray Hananiawww.TheMediaOasis.com

Michelle Malkin reigns as the queen of hate-mongering

Michelle Malkin's vicious attacks against Dunkin Donut and Food TV talk show host Rachael Ray suggest how racism and bigotry are tolerated int his country when the targets are alleged to embrace anything Muslim or Arab, even when they are not.

Malkin accused Ray of sporting "jihadi chic" when she wore a scarf that looked like a kaffiyeh (keffiyeh). It was black and white checkered, and also had paisley flowers, too. Wow. A real terrorist symbol.

We denounce the symbols of terrorist hatred, I suppose in this country, but not the hate-mongers, which explains why America is so vulnerable to attack. When Michelle Malkin's hate-mongering defines who we view the terrorist threat, we know we are in trouble.

Read my column at the HuffingtonPost.com.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ray-hanania/#blogger_bio

CAIR on the racist Islamo-Facism Week of Hatred

‘ISLAMO-FASCISM’ WEEK SPEAKER MEETS WITH EUROPEAN 'NEO-NAZIS' - TOP
Robert Spencer is main speaker for upcoming Islamophobic campus tour

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 10/21/2007) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealed today that the main speaker for an upcoming series of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" lectures at university campuses nationwide recently offered a keynote address at a European gathering that included representatives of racist or "neo-Nazi" political parties.

Author Robert Spencer, who is scheduled to appear beginning next week at universities such as Brown, DePaul and Dartmouth, is regarded by American Muslims as one of the nation's worst Islamophobes. His virulently anti-Islam website promotes the idea that life for Muslims in the West should be made so difficult that they will leave.

Spencer recently spoke at a so-called "Counterjihad Brussels 2007" conference in Belgium attended by those with links to far-right parties such as Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang (Belgium) and Ted Ekeroth of Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden). Both parties have been accused of either having a racist platform, a neo-Nazi past or having links to neo-Nazis and other racists.

Vlaams Belang is the successor to the Vlaams Blok party, which was banned in 2004 for being an illegal racist political faction. (Vlaams Belang's founders were Nazi collaborators in World War II.)

Of Sverigedemokraterna, the International Herald Tribune wrote: “Sverigedemokraterna, or the Sweden Democrats, have been part of this country's political landscape for almost 20 years, but they were considered too close to the Nazi-inspired far-right to contend for large numbers of votes.” (7/7/06)

SEE: European Organizations Gather in Brussels to Organize Resistance to Islamization and Shariah


SEE: Court Rules Vlaams Blok is Racist


Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch Board Vice President "Hugh Fitzgerald" wrote on that hate site: "Only one group, only one belief-system, distinguishes itself by appearing incapable of fitting in. And that is Muslims, and Islam ... if one really knew what Islam contained ... then how could any decent person remain a Muslim?"

He also recommended that western nations be "Islam-proofed the way a house is child-proofed," compared Muslims to Nazis and urged that they be boycotted: "[I]t should not be hard to find ways to limit the spread or practice of Islam. And if in addition to whatever local, state and federal government officials do, private parties simply conduct their own boycott of goods and services offered by Muslims, in the same way that they would have refused to buy, in 1938, a German Voigtlander camera..."

Other speakers on the "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" tour include Ann Coulter, who refers to Muslims as "rag heads," and Daniel Pipes, a supporter of the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II and of the views of French racist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

“All those who value religious tolerance and diversity should be concerned about the growing links between European racists and American Islamophobes,” said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.

Publicity for the tour got off to a bad start when it was revealed that the poster promoting the campus events used a photograph that purportedly showed a Muslim woman being stoned to death, but which was in fact an image from a fictional movie.

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 33 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Rabiah Ahmed, 202-488-8787 or 202-439-1441, E-Mail: rahmed@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin, 202-488-8787 or 202-341-4171, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com

SEE ALSO:

WA: MUSLIMS UPSET BY CAMPUS EVENT - TOP
Janet I. Tu, Seattle Times, 10/20/07


A controversial week of events, billed as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, launches at the University of Washington and some 100 other colleges next week — drawing condemnations from Muslim groups here and across the country.

The UW College Republicans, organizer of the local events, say the week is intended to foster awareness of the terrorist threat posed by a small number of extremists within Islam.

But some local Muslims say the week fosters Islamophobia and racism and attempts to paint all Muslims as terrorists.

Beginning Monday, the group plans to hand out information sheets describing what the week's activities are all about.

And it's hosting two events open to the public: a showing of "Suicide Killers," a documentary about suicide bombers, at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Smith Hall, and a talk by conservative author and talk-show host Michael Medved at 7 p.m. Thursday in Kane Hall.

Amin Odeh, a board member with the local Arab American Community Coalition, said he agrees that "radical anything is dangerous — radical Muslims, radical Christians, radical Jews. Education is needed."

But Odeh says Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week makes too general a link between extremism and Islam, and that the term "Islamo-fascism" links fascism with an entire religion.

"Unfortunately, when people hear the term they don't think of only a small group of extremists, but of Islam in general," he said.

Hala Dillsi, a member of the UW Muslim Student Association, believes Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week promotes fear and intolerance. She is distributing green armbands and encouraging people to wear T-shirts that are green — traditionally the color associated with Islam — on Wednesday in solidarity with local Arabs and Muslims.

The student group also is organizing a forum Oct. 29 in which professors and local Muslims discuss and answer questions about Islam.

Members of the Muslim Student Association, along with other organizations, also plan to hold protests outside Wednesday and Thursday evening's Awareness Week events.

Assistant Chief Ray Wittmier with the UW Police Department said his department is meeting with student organizers on all sides "to make sure everybody stays safe."

Anti-Semitism from activists who hate Arabs and Muslims

Little Green Footballs is a racist anti-Arab and anti-Muslim site that attacks and slanders anyone who questions Israeli policies or the actions of government agencies that engage in racist and discriminatory behavior. The site is notorious for vicious hate and constantly publishes falsehoods about Arabs, slanders and libels individuals who embrace a moderate voice and who apply one principle to both sides. Little Green Footballs and its author are among the worst haters and vicious namecallers in America today, and an example of the hypocrisy of how Arab anti-Semities are constantly called out and rightly so, but that vicious racists like Little Green Footballs enjoys the support and apathetic endorsement of mainstream Americans and extremists who support Israel's government excesses.

Ray Hanania

Vicious hate letters continue in response to reasoned columns

Here's another letter from the Arlington Heights Dalei Herald in response to my reasoned column on Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Notice the viciousness in the slander against all Arabs and Muslims blaiming them for the Holocaust. It's fanatics like this who are behind the hatred that continues to fuel the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs and Jews, and why their strident voices continue to inflame and prevent peace:

LETTER:
I don't know which is more comical: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at the United Nation and Columbia University or Ray Hanania's column "Too busy ripping Ahmadinejad to hear his message" (Oct. 1) praising him.

(Of course I did not "praise" Ahmadinejad, but fanatics rarely report anything accurately)

Ahmadinejad does not accept the Holocaust as fact. That is why he called for it to be scientifically investigated in his speech and why he sponsored a Holocaust Denial conference in Tehran last year. The Holocaust is probably the most documented event in human history and doesn't need further investigation to prove what happened.

(The writer ignores the FACT that in his speeches Ahmadinejad openly acknowledged the Holocaust and the murder of "5 Millions" Jews ... it sounds like Ahmadinejad questions the totla number but that is ridiculous, too, but still contradicts the lies from this writer.)

The Palestinians were active participants in the Holocaust. The leader of the Palestinians, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, organized Muslim death squads in Europe to murder Jews. He had to flee to Berlin and spend the duration of the war as Hitler's personal guest. And Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial.

(This is an outright lie and slander and represents pure hatred, the kind of hatred that is behind the murderous terrorism ripping apart Israelis and Palestinians.)

Is Hanania admitting that Ahmadinejad did state that Israel must be "destroyed"? That would make him more than the "foe of Israel" Hanania describes him as. In Ahmadinejad's own words, he stated this past June "God willing, in the near future we will see the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime," and in 2005 he made the widely publicized statement "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world."

(Amazingly, this writer accepts what has been written about Ahmadinejad that is critical but rejects Ahmadinejad's own words.)

Iran is a signatory to the U.N. Genocide Convention. It prohibits calling for the annihilation of another member state. Instead of having been given a public forum, Ahmadinejad should have been arrested and indicted for incitement to commit genocide as soon as he landed in New York.

(Of course, the writers may not know much about freedom of speech which he so abuses and yets sets to deny to anyone else who responds to his outrageous falsehoods.)

Hanania's claim that Israel was established on land that was majority Arab is false. The November 1947 U.N. partition plan called for creating a Jewish state in the areas that were majority Jewish populated and an Arab state where the Arabs were the majority.

(The FACTS show that the proposed Jewish State under the Partition was majority non-Jewish and every major Israeli leader acknowledges this. But why have to argue the truth when you can lie so viciously.)

The Jews accepted this even though it would have only given them 10 percent of the land designated for them as a homeland under the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

(This is another outrageous falsehood by a vicious Arab-hater and little more. He is saying that Palestine also included Jordan and other Arab countries which is a pathetic rejection of truth. Under the Partition, the Jews were given half of Mandated Palestine, and the Christian and Muslims were given the other half. Before Israel was delcared on May 14 and the Arab armies attacked, Jewish fighters already occupied 10 major cities in the proposed Arab State and kept them. On the end, Israel included not only the half given to them but the half given to the Arabs and had occupied much of that land prior to the May 14 fighting.)

The Arabs, along with all the other Arab countries, unanimously rejected this and launched a war to wipe out the Jews. Israel survived and Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt took over Gaza. The fact that an Arab Palestinian state was not created in 1948 is 100 percent the fault of the Arabs.

Steven Peck
Riverwoods

(Sadly, it is people like Peck who continue to stamp their angry feet and wave their arms in anti-Arab hatred and yell in their vitriolic way who are fueling the conflict. Palestinians and Israelis must both set aside their rejection of peace and accept the reality in order to achieve peace, and they should ignore fanatics like Mr. Peck and instead focus on the hope of the majority that peace can be achieved withut violence.)

-- Ray Hanania

Disturbed by persecution of Azmi Bishara

Azmi Bishara, like all "Arab citizens" of Israel, is the victim of persecution and discrimination. He has the right to criticize, challenge and try to change the government in which he has worked. But the pressure and persecution that has forced him to resign from the Knesset proves that the Israeli Democracy is a failure and that Arab citizens are not citizens at all.

Here's the YnetNews story:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3390826,00.html

It's tragic because there are extremists in Israel and Bishara's experience proves they exist and are a real threat to peace, just as there are extremists among Palestinians. Regardless of his political views, Bishara has every right to express hiw views without having to fear persecution in Israel.

It's a blow to peace and empowers the fanatics in Israel -- and among the Palestinians -- to push harder to destroy each other.

It makes it harder for those like me who support two-states, believe in the hope that is the foundation of the Palestinians and Israelis, to believe that two-states or any solution besides continued conflict is an option.

Ray Hanania
www.hanania.com

The truth about the "Don Imus" Affair: It's not about race but about the unfair of "free speech"

The truth about the "Don Imus Affair"
By Ray Hanania

The Don Imus controversy is not really about the limits of free speech as some are contending, but rather about the discrepancies in how "freedoms" such as free speech are tolerated for some in America but not for others.

These discrepancies are based not on merit but solely on the basis of race, stereotypes and a mainstream society of plagued by the ugliness of America’s unbalanced racial realities.

I enjoyed seeing the Don Imus empire collapse in such utter humiliation. Why? Well, I am Arab American who is most often mistaken for a Muslim.

I disliked Don Imus passionately and am celebrating in his demise. I’d like to see a handful of other American media bigots tumble down along the same ugly path including anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigots like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others like them.

But is the issue curtailing free speech? No. Because free speech is more free for some than it is for others in America.

Those who have enjoyed free speech as unrestrained and as viciously as Imus has, deserve to be judged by a tougher standard of morality.

Those who come from communities who are excluded from the mainstream media, denied equal rights of expression not just in principle but more because of the practice of media exclusion have more flexibility in how they may express themselves.

The freer you have been to disparage people who do not have the same ability to respond to the attacks, the less your right of free speech, in my opinion.

The more you have been a victim of hate speech, the more you have the right of flexibility in what you can say.

Imus and others like him have made sport of Arabs and Muslims, blaming an entire race and religion for the actions of a few fanatics. The horrors of today’s terrorism has been used to rip away the Constitutional protections from a race of people, I believe because they were never popular in this country to begin with.

Most Americans hated Arabs and Muslims long before 19 Saudi Arabian hijackers commandeered four airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Should Imus have been fired for the three words he uttered. As an Arab American who watched and listened helplessly as Imus ranted, slandered, insulted and defamed Arabs and Muslims relentlessly, never giving us the opportunity to respond.

Am I glad he is fired? Absolutely. Was it fair? No.

But fairness has nothing to do with this not because I say so, but because Imus rose to fame on the basis of an unfair system anyway.

In other words Imus rose in popularity to host one of the nation’s premier syndicated radio shows that was also broadcast on an important and high profile Cable Network because 2.5 million people cheered on his rants against Arabs and a select few others in America, mostly Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, Muslims and even some Jews.

He rose not because of talent, but because his message of hatred, disguised as "satire," defended wrongly as humor, was popular among a growing class of Americans who look down on other ethnic groups. Imus was not popular because minorities loved him. Imus was popular because Whites in mainstream America loved him.

Therefore, his fall from the pinnacle of that mountain of discrimination is justified to be brought down not on the merits of whether what he said was right or wrong, but because just as 2.5 million people can elevate him to popular radio and TV host status, 10 million mostly minorities, Blacks, Asians and Hispanics, and Arabs, have the right to bring him down.

Defenders of Don Imus offer the ridiculous contention that he is the victim of free speech hypocrisy.

Imus merely said in one moment what some African American hip-hop artists, comedians and other entertainers say all the time, endlessly.

But the difference is that Imus directed his comments against individuals of another race. The African American members of a basketball team.

The Black rappers and hip-hop artists are saying things are that considered distasteful to many Americans, but they are almost always speaking about their own experiences of the environments in which they have lived.

There are whores in this world and the fact is they come in all colors and races and religions. If rap artists of one race, African American or even White, want to write lyrics that address that reality of their lives and experience, they have every right to do so even if someone, a majority of Americans, find their comments distasteful.

They can use the term "hos" because it is about what they see around them. Don Imus was not talking about himself, his experience or even trying to make a social statement about the relevance of "whores" in American society when he described 8 African American basketball players as "nappy haired hos."

He made the comments because that is how White Don Imus viewed eight Black women playing basketball who had tattoos and looked "tough."

There is a difference when you laugh at some one, as racist do, or laugh with someone, as true comedians and satirists do all the time. Black comedians joke about their stereotypes and they have every right to do so.

Don Imus, a White man, has no right to lampoon the stereotypes of Black people.

White people are not under the foot of a new more sophisticated form of racism. Blacks and other minorities are.

At the very bottom of the hatred that is the foundation of some in American, sit Arabs and Muslims. As heavy as the burden is upon our heads, we can find the room to celebrate in the demise of Don Imus, and we will do so with gusto!

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

Found a new home at MidEastYouth.com Blog site

Blogging at one of the Middle East's top sites Current mood: Couldn't be happier!

I am excited because I have been invited to blog with some of the brightest and best writers in the Middle East at MidEastYouth.com blog and eZine. This site is one of the highest ranked Middle East blogs on the Internet, according to Technorati. Although I am far from young (in my 50s, folks), I have the mind of a five year old. And they make 5 year olds pretty darn smart these days.

Anyway, my generation's 50 is my dad's generation's 20. Let's face it, I doubt that anyone my age when I was a kid had the same kind of sense of humor and positive perpsective on Middle East life. I loved my dad, but I just couldn't remember him having a powerful sense of humor.

He had a powerful sense of justice, fairness, ethics and morality, but humor and comedy was not one of his strong suits.

So, I'm off on a new adventure with some great young writers and I urge you to visit and read their writings. They are fresh, young and not jaded like many Arabs and Israelis and people from the Middle East my age. Their approach to the Middle East is reasoned, moderate and passioned. Whether you agree with them or not is besides the point. Reading their writings -- and hopefully mine also, will only help broaden your own understanding of the tough issues the people of the Middle East face, including our youth.

Here's the link: www.MidEastYouth.com

# # #

FIRE that fat pig of a radio talk show host Don Imus

Imus controversy shows power, not morality, defines racial limits in America
By Ray Hanania

It isn’t enough that Don Imus is the ugliest man to host a TV show.

Imus, the syndicated radio talk show host whose program is broadcast on MSNBC, the NBC Network affiliate, also happens to be one of the nation’s most outrageous racists and bigots.

Imus is always slandering someone, and some how because his show generates profits, and he is popular among mainstream White audiences, he can get away with it.

But Imus may have met his match when he went too far slandering Black people this week.

In referring to the Rutgers woman’s basketball team, Imus called the eight Black women members "nappy-haired hos" who have tattoos.

Immediately, the giants of the African American community, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, demanded that Imus be fired, that his syndicated radio show be dropped and that NBC cancel his MSNBC TV simulcast.

Of course, none of the demands were met because Imus is White. He speaks with a Southern drawl, is so ugly he could be a legitimate target of criticism himself, and he has a track record of slandering everyone.

Not White people, of course, unless they happen to be Democrats.

Why do we tolerate bigots like Imus?

Today’s America is not the same America that it was in the 1960s when it was fashionable to openly slander Black people and minorities. Whole neighborhoods changed from White to Black all because a Black family moved into the community.

The suburbs were born not just out of post-World War II efforts to help returning veterans buy cheap homes, but to also create a haven that was too expensive for Black people and other people of color to move.

America hasn’t become less racist today. America has just become more sophisticated about its racist tendencies.

You can hate Blacks and other people of color in America, as long as oyu don’t say it publicly.

You can fire people of color from their jobs, as long as you are smart about it and find other reasons to dismiss Black and Hispanic and Arab employees. You can discriminate against women, as long as you are not open about it.

In fact, racism is alive and well in America, just as long as the racists don’t get crazy and express their hatred openly, as Don Imus did on his widely broadcast radio and TV show that is listened to by millions of Americans, almost all of them White.

Maybe Imus and other racists are just too comfortable inn today’s world of sophisticated racist hatred.

Maybe Imus knows that the only color that counts in this country besides White is Green. The holy dollar. Profits decide the line of morality in America, not principle.

MSNBC is making a fortune broadcasting the Don Imus show and it is going to take a lot more than Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson to call for his firing. Why? Because most Black people don’t listen to Imus.

So at the end of the day, MSNBC won’t see a drop in their revenues.

Advertisers will keep buying their ads on the Don Imus show because their market isn’t Black people. It’s White people, the audience that Imus commands every morning.

Don Imus should have been fired years ago. But he hasn’t been fired.

And that fact alone proves that as long as you are White and you make a fortune for oyur sponsors, you can rant and rave against any minority group, any minority religion, any minority ethnic group.

As long as your audiences loves it and doesn’t complain.

And listen to the complaints against Don Imus.

In case you haven’t figured it out, it’s not his audience calling for Imus to be fired. White leaders are not calling press conferences to demand that Imus be fired.

It’s Black leaders. Leaders of color. Columnists like me whose skin color isn’t quite White enough in this country – my skin color is Olive, one of the colors not even favored among the coalition of the minorities in this country.

So Imus will apologize, as he has done, in one of the most arrogant ways I have ever heard someone contritely thumb his nose at the public.

Imus said on his show Monday morning, days after his racist, bigoted and hateful remarks were broadcast to millions of people in America:

"Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it," Imus said.

Is that what you learned, Don Imus? That you can make fun of some, but not everybody because "some people" don’t deserve it and apparently "some people" do.

Don Imus should be fired immediately.

Anything less would be an insult to Americans who do believe that this is a great country of principle, justice and fairness for all.

END

Radicals Taking over Arab World, By Ray Hanania

Radicals taking over
Religious extremism slowly, steadily consuming Palestinian society
By Ray Hanania

03.20.07, YnetNews.com

A few weeks ago, stories that were once only whispered as rumors were being confirmed in isolated media reports.

Islamic extremists who have been battling Israel and secular Palestinian forces have also begun targeting secular Palestinian establishments that engage in what the Arabs refer to as "haram," or "sinful activities."

Most of the oppression has occurred in the Gaza Strip where the Islamic movement Hamas has the Israeli-oppressed population in a tightly controlled religious headlock, although there have been some incidents in the more secular West Bank.

Although the "religiousization" of the Palestinian people began more than a decade ago, it only found its strength in the last few years and reared its ugly head publicly after Hamas took control of the Palestinian government.

No secular establishment is safe. An Internet cafe in the Gaza Strip was firebombed. A cultural center was forced to cancel a program deemed unacceptable to the principles of Islam, and other cultural organizations have been carefully screening programs so as not to "offend" the religious police.

Three Palestinian women, believed to be prostitutes, were murdered, each killed with a bullet to the head and chest, and dumped in a public location.

Clandestine Islamic groups with names like the Swords of Islamic Righteousness, suspected to be associated with Hamas or the Hamas security services, have claimed responsibility.

All or nothing
While I don't condone prostitution, the murder of any person is immoral. Not addressed by the religious zealots in the prostitution killings is the fact that the women are solicited by men who go unpunished. But that's not uncommon in a society where increasingly Palestinian women are being forced to wear a Hijab, or head scarves, as a political statement and to prove their faith.
It's no longer enough to believe in Islam.

The threat of the religious fanatics has been on the secular horizon for years. Increasingly during Ramadan, secular and Christian-owned restaurants in "Christian" towns like Bethlehem and Beit Jala have been forced to close their outdoor patios so as not to "offend" Muslims who are forbidden to eat during the daylong fasting.

What is happening is that the Palestine conflict with Israel, which began as a secular battle over land and national identity, is steadily transforming into a religious conflict driven by religious extremists who see secular Palestinians as enemies equal to the "Zionist entity."

That is troubling. While Israelis complained much about the failings of the secular Palestinian leadership, the reality is those secular Palestinians always viewed the conflict as one of achieving "justice" through violent resistance and also through negotiated compromise.

For the religious zealots, however, the issue is "faith." And for them, there is no compromise on faith. Only their version of "jihad."

It's either all or nothing, and they are willing to die for that nothing. For the past 60 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the 40 years since Palestinians took control of their own destiny, the Palestinians have achieved only fragile political gains, but very little substantive gains.

Although it is easy to blame the Palestinians, the truth is Israel has also contributed to the failure of peace by always only offering minimal concessions far short of what is acceptable to Palestinians and fairness.

Harder to deal with religious enemies
Israel's governments have consistently undermined peace through compromise. They have refused to acknowledge Israel's role in creating the Palestinian refugee problem. Their uncompromising and extremist policies have often intentionally provoked Palestinian violence. While claiming to negotiate peace in good faith, they have continued to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements. And, they have unilaterally imposed an unjust pre-condition insisting that Jerusalem will never be shared.

In fact, as the Palestinians fail to achieve peace, so to do the Israelis.Israelis are discovering that it is far more difficult for them to respond to the challenge from enemies driven by religious fervor. Just look at the powerful battle waged against Israel by Hizbullah in Lebanon.

When secular Palestinians become extinct - and that future is on the horizon, Israel's ability to negotiate peace will be extinguished too. While secular Palestinians may battle with a violent fervor, their political drive allows for the possibility of compromise.

There is no possibility of compromise with an individual or a movement that bases its drive on religious ideology.

Faith does not permit compromise, and promises a far more frightening future for Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel should negotiate with secular PA
If the Palestinians are incapable of overcoming the Hamas challenge, then Israel has the responsibility to step up to the plate and separate the religious fanatics from the secular leaders. Israel must continue to negotiate with responsible secular Palestinians.

Palestinian public attitudes are driven by the emotions and suffering of the times. When things are good, they are optimistic. When things are bad, they are inclined to anger and rejectionist sentiments reflected in recent polls.

If the Israelis impose a unilateral compromise on the Palestinians that is genuinely fair, most Palestinians will turn away from the religious fanatics and embrace the compromise as an inevitability of their tragedy.

But to refuse to push for genuine compromise or to negotiate with the Palestinians because of Hamas only plays into the hands of the extremists, in the same way that violence also undermines peace and strengthens the cards of the very perpetrators of that violence.

One day, Israelis will wake up and discover there are no more "Arabs" left in the world to negotiate with.

The Arabs will all have been replaced by a more formidable and impossible enemy to defeat, political Islamicists, who are as unwavering in their cause as they are unwavering in their faith.

Ray Hanania was named Best Ethnic American Columnist for 2006/2007 by the New America Media. He can be reached at www.hanania.com

SYNDICATION: The Dispossessed often become ambiance, a lesson for Palestinians

Dispossession and the Palestinian-Israeli future

By Ray Hanania

(Syndication Columns can be purchased for republication. Contact Ray Hanania at rayhanania@comcast.net for details.)

The dispossessed eventually become little more than ambience.

It’s a harsh reality, but it’s true. Once a conflict is resolved, anyway.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is sometimes compared to the conflict between the American pioneers and the Indians, now more respectfully called "Native Americans."

American hasn’t forgotten it’s Native American history, but that history has become more of a national "decoration" than a reality.

But they were originally Indian tribes long before they became politically correct owners and operators of America’s most profitable casinos, living on an American guilty conscience dole, and still, more than a century and a half later, as outsiders.

As a child, I remember always feeling sorry for the American Indians. My only contact was on popular television Westerns which always pitted the American soldiers against the barbaric, uncivilized and brutal "Indians."

It wasn’t because I was Palestinian. That Palestinian consciousness never materialized for me until years later because my dad tried to shelter me from the tragedy he knew would wreck lives in a country driven by stereotypes, racism and lack of education.

Yes, America is the most educated country in the world, populated by the most uneducated people in the world when it comes to "the world."

I think my feelings for American Indians was the result of how they were portrayed so negatively on television. And even if you favored the "cowboys" above the "Indians," every American child was enthralled with the history of the American Indian.

We all knew the fearsome Apache Geronimo and the battle of the Little Big Horn where the arrogant, golden-haired American Colonel George Armstrong Custer lost his life along with the lives of his entire regiment in one of the last great "massacres" of the American-Indian conflict.

In 1875, two of the largest Indian tribes, the Sioux and Cheyenne, left their reservations and Custer led the U.S. Cavalry to bring them back. Instead, he walked into a brilliant trap.

It’s worth noting that the American military and settlers committed heinous atrocities against the American Indians, too. They massacred men, women and children along with the American Indian Braves.

But there is an old saying in journalism, which is the cornerstone of communications. He who controls the pen controls the history. And for many years, and especially on television programs and Hollywood movies, the American Indians were always the bad guys.

This week I thought about all this as I was attending the Will Roger’s Writers Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a "plains state," the 46th of 50 American states. The name "Oklahoma" comes from the Choctaws, American Indians who once roamed there.

Ironically, many American cities carry Indian names, like Chicago, which comes from an Indian word for "wild onion" or "skunk." People have long forgotten from which tribe the name originates.

I was brought to Oklahoma City not as an expert on Palestinian native history, but as a journalist and as a Palestinian American comedian. My act has gotten huge publicity because I won’t follow the hateful path of some of my other Arab comedian colleagues by refusing to perform with "Israelis."

I’ll be back in Israel and the West Bank to perform, hopeful, in a few months.

But as we convened to discuss and debate hefty journalism issues as all journalists always do, I was struck by where I was at and the parallels (that are really misleading) between the history of Native Americans and the still incomplete history of the Palestinians.

About six blocks away from the conference hotel is the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. To most Americans, it is better known as the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995.

At just after 9 AM that day, a terrorist pulled his truck up to the Federal Government building, walked away and then detonated the explosives inside tearing away half of the buildings front like a volcanic eruption and killing 168 people including many children in the nursery below.

Everyone thought the terrorists were "Arab." But by accident involving a traffic stop, the real terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, a Scottish American Christian Catholic, and a member of one of the many hidden and armed racist militias that exist in America, was caught. He was later executed.
The nation built a huge memorial on the site to remember the attack.

Meanwhile, throughout Oklahoma, massacres that took even more lives of Native Americans remain forgotten.

Nearby, in the city’s trendy "Bricktown Mall" and it’s popular river walk, down the street from the Bricktown Baseball stadium off Mickey Mantle Street. There, restaurants are filled with patrons celebrating sports and other personal events.

Yet, it is hard to forget that this area was once a center of American Indian culture. And today, you can barely see anything of real significance, other than Indian names on streets, some tourist stores that sell "Native American" jewelry and other souvenirs.

A ways from the city is the casino that is run by the region’s major Indian Tribes. No one says Native Americans are not American. They are fighting the way all dispossessed fight assimilation, but they are treated with respect equally under American law. They lost much.

The Native Americans exist here, but their existence if less reality and more ambience. Their history is little more than decoration. Landscaping. Paintings. Trinkets. And interesting memories that continue to fade of their facts.

It makes me think of the Palestinians, many of whom live in refugee camps that are much like reservations, too, I guess. Even those Palestinians like me who have assimilated into American culture, are in a sense, refugees of a sort too. We can’t move back to the homes and land that our father’s once owned.

We can argue about land ownership but I will just point to a recent study by the Israeli organization Peace Now that proves that at least 32.4 percent of settlement lands were stolen from Palestinian owners. Not bought. Not abandoned. Stolen.

Still, I am sitting here in a bizarre world in Oklahoma where dispossession has been completed under the shadow of terrorism. And I am wondering out loud. Does it really benefit the Palestinians to fight against compromise and two states or to insist that everything be returned to the way it was at the beginning of the 20th Century before most of Israel’s Jews immigrated to Palestine, mainly from Europe?

I don’t think the Palestinians are like the Native Americans at all. But I do think that if the Palestinians don’t seriously contemplate their situation soon, they will become a fading memory.

It will take the Israelis a lot longer than 100 years the American settlers took to erase the presence of the Native Americans and force them to surrender, but it will happen one day unless both sides reach a peace accord.

I don’t know how many Geronimos the Palestinians will have in the meantime. There might be more statues erected like the one that greets visitors to Jenin in the Northern West Bank, of Yahya Aiyash, the fearless Palestinian guerrilla who battled the Israelis as seriously as they battled him.

But is that really what we all want?

I don’t think so.

(Ray Hanania was named 2006/2007 Best Ethnic Columnist in America by the New America Media. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

NEW HANANIA BLOG LOCATION -- http://blog.myspace.com/rayhanania

WHile I may still post columns here occasionally, a lot of my effort is now on my MySpace.Com Blog.

Here is the lnk: Ray's MySpace Blog ...

http://blog.myspace.com/rayhanania

Enjoy the blogging on my current Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour to Israel Jan. 23-Feb 2 with comedians Aaron freeman (Chicago African American Jewish); Charley Warady, former Chicagoan and Israeli citizen for the past decade; and Orthodox Israeli Yisrael Campbell (who I refer to as "The Zionist Entity" Campbell).

Anyway, please circulate if you can.

Also, the web site for the comedy tour is www.IPComedyTour.com

Shalom and Salam to all.
Ray Hanania
Jan. 28, 2007

Calculating the 300 million th American, but not Iraqi deaths

Pinpointing 300 millionth American but not casualties in IraqBy Ray Hanania

The number was staggering and hard to believe, but that was besides the point, I guess. All acts of mass murder and killing are difficult to fathom regardless of which side of the political debate you are on.

But the ease at which many Americans in public, politics and the media have dismissed without a thought the recent report by the prestigious John Hopkins University that nearly 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the United States illegally invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003 is staggering.

My first questions was, did the number actually include the dozens of innocent people who were murdered when American made missiles struck a house where President Bush had hoped to kill Saddam Hussein and his two sons?

Bush brushed off the number saying the “methodology” used to calculate the number of Iraqi’s killed has been “discredited,” but he never says by who.

Instead, he insists that the far lower and more acceptable butcher’s bill of only 30,000 Iraqis killed is accurate, that he declared without a description of his own methodology last December. Imagine, 30,000 human beings killed and we can accept that from “Professor” George W. Bush, but not the 655,000 from John Hopkins University?

The whole debate would be nothing except that a week later, the American media was declaring that the U.S. Government can pinpoint to the minute when the 300 millionth American will be born.

In fact, they precisely said the 300 millionth American was born on Tuesday, October 17 at 10:46 AM Pacific Time (1:46 PM East Coast Time).

Wow. That is pretty darn precise.

Apparently, there is a baby born every 11 seconds. No mention of how often an American dies of old age or more likely violence, crime and the result of gunfire according to new statistics showing the American crime rate skyrocketing.

It just reminds me of the old American saying, “You can put a man on the moon, but you can’t …?” You can complete the thought. You can’t figure out how many Iraqis have paid the price for Bush’s military arrogance?

How many Iraqi lives equals the worth of a gallon of oil? Isn’t that what the Iraq war is all about? We certainly haven’t invaded North Korea which has done far worse things than Saddam Hussein, and North Korea not only claims to have a nuclear bomb but they tested one and vow to test another.

Well, we all know from our last war there that North Korea doesn’t have a lot of oil. But they have a lot of tough soldiers that were difficult to defeat. In fact, we never defeated North Korea in our last war. We just ended it in an armistice that allowed the dictatorship to build up its nuclear arsenal and remain a world menace.

I didn’t hear Bush talking about pinpoint bombing Pyongyang to kill North Korea’s President Kim Jong Il or his children the way Bush vowed to take out Saddam Hussein and his sons and grandchildren.

How many Iraqis have died as a result of our war there?

Even if we pretend it’s not about oil and that is is about bringing “Democracy” to the oil rich Arab state, what is the price of one vote compare to the number of people who have had to die for it? Most against their will.

We don’t know. But somewhere in the American heartland this week probably, the United States will identify a baby and declare it the 300 millionth American born.

And they will have all kinds of celebrations and parties and the baby will be drowned in gifts, accolades and media celebrity.

The last time it happened, the young baby boy who was identified as the 200 millionth American was so honored that throughout his life he found himself on a public fast-track and became a very successful engineer. He was the son of Chinese immigrants. Imagine that. He wasn’t even “American,” according to some of the conservative Republicans who are battling to keep “foreigners” and “illegal immigrants” from entering this country by building a wall along the border with Mexico.

We’re not building a wall along the Canadian Border because, well, most Canadians are Europeans while the threat along the border with Mexico is to keep those “Mexicans” out.

The issue of immigration is as much about race as the war in Iraq is about oil, and the failure to act against North Korea is about politics.

I pity the 300 millionth American who will be born. That child will become the symbol of an era in American history when morals, ethics and the rule of law was tossed out the window so that a privileged class of European ethnics could reinforce their dominance over new and old minorities and religions.

He’ll always stand as a reminder that when it comes to selfish indulgence, we can be very precise and concerned. The 300 millionth baby.

But when it comes to death, destruction, conflict, violence and tragedy, it only matters when it benefits this country politically.

We do know how many Iraqis Saddam Hussein killed. In this trial, they claim its 180,000. No one dispute that “methodology” of that number because Americans want to believe the worst about Saddam Hussein and they don’t want to be reminded that maybe the invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law.

Americans don’t want to know how many Iraqis have been killed in Iraq because if it really is 655,000 as most of the rest of the world believes, then our soldiers will have been guilty of war crimes.

And war crimes is only something we cast against people we don’t like, not against ourselves as Americans.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist, author and satirist. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

Gibson is no Ahmadinejad: But then, Ahmadinejad doesn't drink

Gibson is no Ahmadinejad: But then, Ahmadinejad doesn't drink
By Ray Hanania


Suffice it to say that if you want to criticize "the Jews," it’s a lot easier to do it in Iran than it is in say, Hollywood.


Just ask Mel Gibson. He’s not even Arab and he can’t shake the impression that he is some how anti-Semitic.


And worse, when Gibson unleashed what some have called an "anti-Semitic tirade," he was drunk on a stretch of California coastline that is notorious for nailing drunk Hollywood celebrities.


But Gibson is no ordinary drunk Hollywood celebrity. His name has become more synonymous with attacks on Jews than Hezbollah these days.


Gibson was driving in Malibu, a place known for sedate laid-back discretion, when a cop, who happens to be Jewish, noticed not Nazi flags flying from Gibson’s vehicle, but the clear impression that the car’s driver was drunk. Erratic wobbling.


The sheriff’s deputy who stopped Gibson, Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputy James Mee, said he feels saddened that he may have destroyed Gibson’s career.


But "destroyed" may be mild.


Gibson is being returned to the Quarter Rack that he once sat on during the gruesome scene in Braveheart. (I wonder what an anti-Semitic spiel sounds like in a Scottish brogue?)


Gibson was arrested on a Friday and the popular entertainment web site TMZ.com broke the story. But hours later, the same web site disclosed that Gibson had gone "berserk" after being arrested.


At first, Gibson started screaming that his life would be ruined. Imagine, a Hollywood actor caught drunk.


When Mee would not let him off, and handcuffed him, Gibson launched into a tirade about his clout, his friends, his power.


For some strange reason, it wasn’t until all of that failed that, according to reports on his comments, that Gibson launched into the anti-Semitism. TMZ.com claims that Mee was forced to rewrite his detailed original 8-page detective novel that he turned in after bringing Gibson to the jail. Sources there said Mee was forced to eliminate all the Jew-hating comments.


My question is, how did he know Mee was Jewish? Or, if he didn’t say what he reportedly said because Mee was Jewish, how did he jump from "a ruined life" to "the Jews start all the wars in the world"?


Of course, Gibson was drunk.


Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a hardcore Muslim, (Shi’ite), and doesn’t believe in the consumption of alcohol. So, when he goes off on "the Jews," you know it’s not the alcohol talking.


Although when Ahmadinejad rails on "the Jews," I wonder if he’s not sipping a few martinis with a couple of those Harem broads!


But drunk or not, the hammers came down hard on Gibson.


Barbara Walters, whose accent sounds more like a drunken brogue than classic New York strut, immediately tossed her two lisps into the controversy saying, "I’m neber gwoing to twee anudder Meaw Gwibson mobie again!"


Of course, Walters has been criticized for racism against Black people and the rude manner in which she tossed African American TV star, Star Jones, off of the popular TV Show, "The View."
Hey. "Jew bashing" trumps anti-Black racism in America.


Hollywood executives, many Jewish, denounced Gibson and vowed never to rep him or his films, even though Gibson’s last big film, "The Passion of the Christ," was denounced as anti-Semitic when it was released in 2004 but earned nearly $400 million at the box office.


There’s a lot a "Jew-bashing" going on in the American heartland, apparently.


Gibson initially apologized for the drunken behavior, and conspicuously didn’t mentioned his "anti-Semitic tirade." But once the tirade got out and the TMZ.com web site reported that the LA County Police were trying to downplay the anti-Semitism, the first statement didn’t seem to do much good.


Having sobered up quickly, and recognizing that Jew-bashing in a Jewish city like Hollywood isn’t the same as Jew-bashing in Tehran and can quickly undermine a career in acting, Gibson issued a second statement. This time he begged for forgiveness, asking Jewish leaders help him "find a path to forgiveness."


Actually, the original term probably was "beat a path" to forgiveness.


Gibson’s publicist released a statement that began, "Hatred of any kind goes against my faith … I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing."


Ah, which faith is that? I thought anti-Semitism began in the Christian faith, didn’t it?


Of course, we don’t know when group of "Jewish leaders" Gibson was hoping to sit down with, the ones who lead the community or the ones that he sees heading up the ABC TV network.


Days after Gibson’s remarks were made public, ABC TV announced it was canning the Holocaust TV mini-series Gibson had signed a deal to produce about a Catholic family that protects a Jew during the Nazi Holocaust. Right, another let’s make excuses for the Catholics who some claim have institutionalized anti-Semitism in their religious teachings. They will go ahead and release his other movie, "Apocalypto," about the ancient Mayan empire.


Of course, Tehran declared Gibson "shadeed," or martyr in Arabic, and announced they would supply him with katyusha rockets to fight the "Zionist infidels." Ahmadinejad said that with fronts in Gaza, Lebanon and Hollywood, "the Jews" would really be under siege.


Most Iranians probably don’t know who Mel Gibson is, considering that Hollywood movies are banned as "haram" (a sin) in Iranian society.


And while Gibson has entered a drug treatment center in California, I doubt there are any drug treatment centers in Tehran.


Although, maybe there should be.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

Israeli assault exposes impotency of the Arab World

Israeli assault exposes impotency of Arab World
By Ray Hanania


We could all sit back and just blame Israel for all the killings but the Arab World has to share in the blame, especially its leaders.


The fact is that no Arab country has the power or the courage to stand up to Israel, at least not the courage that Hezbollah and Hamas have shown despite being labeled as "terrorist organizations" by the United States.


Yet, after seeing the massacre of Lebanese children and their mothers in Qana in Southern Lebanon this past week, it would be hard not to describe Israel’s government as a terrorist organization, too.


In fact, when you look at how the conflict began, Israel’s government looks more and more like a terrorist organization that deserves to be confronted for its own good.


The problem is, no one has the courage or strength to stand up to Israel.


Hezbollah and Israel have been in battle ever since Israel invaded Lebanon and the Arab World did nothing to stop it. Israel took a military beating not from any Arab government army but from Hezbollah, a ragtag group of Muslims who banded together to expel Israel from occupying another Arab country.


In fact, while Israel was in Lebanon, it was also occupying Syrian land, and Palestinian land, in violation of international laws and United Nations resolutions.


Israel argues that Hezbollah initiated the conflict and gave it the right to fight back with unrestrained power when Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel and attacked a fully armed Israeli military patrol. In the fire fighter, both Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters were killed. And, Hezbollah, which more and more is proving to be the only real Arab World force that can back up its promises to defend Arab land, captured two Israeli soldiers.


Israel calls them "hostages," mainly to claim the mantel of the moral high ground in this conflict and Hezbollah merely refers to the captured soldiers as prisoners. Hezbollah has offered to return the two Israeli soldiers if Israel will return hundreds of Lebanese fighters and political prisoners who have been held in its jails along with nearly10,000 Palestinian resistance fighters and civilian political prisoners.


Israel has always held the Western media, mainly in the United States, in a vise-like headlock. It’s so criminal, though, it might better be referred to as "vice-like."


Still, even with the cheerleading from the American media, Israel continues to attack Lebanon unprovoked.


Israel argues it is attacking Lebanon to end the Hezbollah rocket attacks, but it was Israel that launched the full scale attacks with missiles and rockets and initiated a blockade by land, sea and air. And Hezbollah’s first rocket attacks were in response to Israel’s rocket attacks against Lebanese civilian targets, Such as Beirut’s civilian Rfik Hariri International Airport.


Israel and the United States blame Iran and Syria for arming Hezbollah, a claim that has never been proven but is published in American newspapers as if it were the Gospel Truth.


Yet, the fact is that the bombs that killed the little children and mothers of Qana, Lebanon were in fact supplied by the United States. The United States continues to provide the bombs and weapons of mass destruction to Israel that makes Israel a continued threat to longterm peace.


Rather than step in and criticize Israel’s excessive response to what many see as an ongoing cross-border raid, the Arab World leaders have basically been silent.


The truth is the Arab World is crumbling. They have been bought off in Egypt and Jordan. Elsewhere, the Arab World believes it is protecting its oil interests and even protecting itself from possible Israeli attack.


After all, Iran is only accused of trying to build a nuclear weapon, but it is Israel that has more than 200 and that refuses to abide by international nuclear treaties.


In reality, when the Lebanon war ends, and it will certainly end, probably with the wholesale destruction of a country and the mass murder of thousands of civilians, the Arab World itself might also formally cease to exist, too.


Despite their numbers, the Arab World has no real voice in the United Nations. Despite their oil reserves and industry, the Arab World has no ability to exercise economic power.


And worse, despite the justice that is in their cause to liberate Palestine, by forcing Israel to accept a peace based on two states defined on the basis of realistic boundaries, the Arab World doesn’t know how to use that justice.


It never has.


(Ray Hanania is the former National President of the Palestinian American Congress, a columnist and author. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

Follow-up to my column of July 4: Wall Street Journal article on divisions in Arab Community

The Wall Street Journal published this feature by a reporter who is pro-Israel (read about his background in Israel and at a yeshiva). Yochi writes that the division is based on the claim that too much emphasis is placed on the Palestinian issue, but no research by the reporter was done into: 1) whether the groups invited were in fact singled out by the Bush administration which is extremely biased against most Arabs and Arab causes, or 2) that the split is really the result of many Lebanese feeling that "mainstream" Arab American organizations have been co-opted by the larger and faster growing Islamic organizations which have a religious agenda rather than a "Palestinian" agenda.

I wouldn't expect the article to address these issues since it is written by someone with a pro-Israel slant because the purpose of the article is to slam Palestinians and cause further divisions in the Arab American Community.

ADC National is a great organization, but there are SOME members who are fanatics who use their influence to exclude people. Chances are the Lebanese groups often are the victims of exclusion by the very groups not invited to this reported meeting. AAI is a secular group that is conflicted by the growing Islamicism and won't address it, so Zogby's comment is typical and intended to brush the issue aside rather than address it.

The fact remains Arab American organizations refuse to address their problems publicly and attack anyone in their community (like me) who addresses those differences. The attacks take the form of ostrcizing, calling eople names (like Mossad agent, mukhabarat, Jew-lover, Jew, etc). It's disgusting and it needs a far better analysis than this very shallow andf self-serving political slant offcered by the WSJ reporter.

The Dreazen feature should have been labeled a pro-Israel Op-Ed, and the feature should have been tackled by a far more objective reporter. (The WSJ is a great newspaper, by the way, but anti-Arab bias exists everywhere.)

Ray Hanania
====
Split Among Arab-Americans Curbs Political Clout
By YOCHI J. DREAZENJuly 28, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- When a coalition of Lebanese-American groups gathers on Capitol Hill today to condemn the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and push for an immediate cease-fire, the event will be as notable for who wasn't invited as for who was asked to attend.

The "Lebanese-American Leadership Conference" is expected to include representatives of a dozen small Lebanese political-action groups and at least one member of Congress. But the organizers pointedly chose not to invite representatives of high-profile advocacy groups like the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab American Institute. The decision to shun the groups -- which have large professional staffs, significant financial resources and savvy media operations -- highlights the growing tensions roiling the Arab-American community as the conflict in the Mideast grinds on.

Although often seen as homogeneous, the Arab-American community of 1.2 million is deeply divided by nationality -- and by fierce arguments over how it should flex its political muscle. Arab-American groups lack the resources of pro-Israel organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and have traditionally contributed far less to political campaigns and parties. The Arab-American groups are working hard to narrow the gap financially and build lobbying arms modeled on AIPAC, capable of exerting greater influence with the administration and on Capitol Hill.

However, many Lebanese exiles and their families complain that Arab-American advocacy groups focus disproportionately on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the exclusion of all other causes. The leaders of the mainstream Arab-American groups counter that the Lebanese are placing parochial concerns above the interests of the broader community, which sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the root cause of the region's chronic instability.

"The major Arab-American organizations focus on Palestine first and foremost, and they really have very little interest in Lebanon," says Joseph Gebeily, the Lebanese-American activist organizing today's event. "That shifts the public and political attention, to be honest. We feel like we're out there pushing one thing, and they're out there pushing something completely different."

The upshot is that the dispute is preventing the advocacy groups from presenting a united front at a moment when Arab-Americans are trying to find a strategy to respond to explosions of violence in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

The larger Arab-American groups acknowledge the tensions but deny that they focus too heavily on the Palestinian cause. Officials at the groups note that the organizations have held an array of public events in recent weeks designed to raise funds for humanitarian relief work in Lebanon or to call attention to the civilian suffering there.

"We can walk and chew gum at the same time," says James Zogby, a Lebanese-American who heads the Arab American Institute, a large political-advocacy organization that is leading its own Capitol Hill event today focusing on Lebanon's humanitarian crisis. "For anyone to say that we're not concerned with Lebanon is just nonsense."

The strains between Lebanese-Americans like Mr. Gebeily and the leaders of the higher-profile Arab-American organizations have been building for a long time, in part because of the demographic differences between the Arab-American community here and the Arab communities in the Middle East. Arabs as a whole are overwhelmingly Muslim, and nations like Iraq and Egypt account for a much larger share of the region's population than smaller countries like Lebanon. The Arab-American community, by contrast, is predominantly Christian, with people of Lebanese descent comprising the largest single block -- 37% of the 1.2 million Arab-American population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That has led many Lebanese-Americans to expect that they could make Lebanon's fate a key priority for the Arab-American community as a whole and sparked fierce feelings of anger and disappointment when the broader community refused to go along.

The Lebanese community here has long focused on a series of discrete goals: ending Syria's occupation of Lebanon, disarming groups like Hezbollah that have taken refuge there and pressuring Israel to respect Lebanon's borders. The broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a far lower priority, largely because Lebanon has bad memories of the years it spent under de facto Palestinian military control in the late 1970s and because Lebanon largely sat out the Arab-Israeli wars of the past few decades.

The tensions between the groups first peaked in 2003, when Lebanese-American groups flooded Capitol Hill in support of the Syria Accountability Act, which imposed travel and economic sanctions on Syria because of its long occupation of Lebanon and its support for anti-Israel groups like Hezbollah. The legislation had been a top priority for many Lebanese-American groups.

The larger Arab-American groups, by contrast, strongly opposed the bill, which they saw as overly punitive of Syria and as an improper congressional attempt to dictate foreign policy. The Arab-American groups lobbied against the bill and denounced it in op-ed columns and public speeches, though they made clear that they also opposed the Syrian occupation.
"We didn't think it would work, and we didn't think it was the right approach," says Laila al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the oldest and largest Arab-American organizations in the country.


The legislation passed and was signed into law, but the bad feelings continued to build. Many Lebanese-Americans were infuriated when an Arab-American delegation led by a senior official in Ms. Qatami's organization visited Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus in late February 2004, just as the United Nations had begun considering measures demanding that Mr. Assad end Syria's occupation of Lebanon.

"The Syrians killed more Lebanese in one month in 1978 than Israeli has done in 30 years of war, but these big groups appear to believe that it's OK for one Arab country to invade another Arab country and abuse people there," says Joseph Hage, a wine merchant in Miami whose American Lebanese Coordination Council is an organizer of today's event. "They see Lebanon only through the context of the Palestinian cause, and it's really totally different. For us, Lebanon is what matters most, not Palestine."

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com1

An Israeli Arab held "hostage" in the Israeli Gulag?

A political prisoner in Israel’s Gulag
By Ray Hanania

I remember when I last traveled to Israel. It was on British Airways and as the plane approached Ben Gurion Airport, the pilot announced that “Israel prohibits passengers from taking pictures from the airplane.”

I thought that was very odd and wondered how the offender would be handled. Would nearby passengers turn in the criminal? And, what would happen to the offender?

Certainly, I can understand why Israel would not want anyone to take pictures, I guess. They are building a Berlin-like Wall that is grabbing Palestinian land in the West Bank that can be easily annexed into Israel.

The last thing Israel’s government wants are photographs of the ugly behemoth floating around that might be published without their mandatory two-shekels of PR spin explaining it all away as just another innocent looking little fence.

But I figured taking pictures at a tourist site might not be so much of a crime in Israel.

Apparently, I’m wrong.

Several weeks ago, Ghazi Falah, a Palestinian with US residency who also is a citizen of both Canada and Israel, was in Israel visiting his sick mother, who is undergoing brain surgery. As a distraction, and being an “Arab Israeli citizen,” he went to Nahariya Beach, a popular Israeli tourist site near the Lebanese border.

Israeli police saw Falah “taking pictures” at the Beach. They approached and then “arrested” him, putting him in jail in Haifa.

To his family and friends, Falah just disappeared off the face of the Earth. For weeks, there was no word on his status.

Falah’s abduction occurred on July 8, days before Hezbollah crossed the border July 12 and attacked an armed Israeli military convoy and took two Israeli soldiers prisoner.

But Falah’s stories only surfaced a few days later as the conflict between Israel and Lebanon exploded, thanks to the reporting of a local Ohio newspaper, the Beacon Journal.

What happened to Falah?

There is a big debate over whether or not the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah are “hostages” or “prisoners of war.” Technically, Israel and Lebanon have been at war for years, despite armistice agreements. Israel and Hezbollah are at war, too. In fact, Israel is pretty much at war with a lot of groups these days.

So Hezbollah refers to the soldiers as POWs. As POWs, they should be accorded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. But Israel doesn’t recognize the Geneva Conventions in the occupied Palestinian territories. Then again, neither did President Bush in detaining prisoners in the Iraq and Afghan wars, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his actions are in fact a violation of the Geneva Accords.

Israel considers the two soldiers to be hostages, of course. And since Israeli lobbyists and supporters have the American mainstream media in a headlock grip that only gets tighter when the issues become more controversial, few American media have referred to them as anything but hostages.

I wonder what the Israelis consider Falah, one of their citizens?

His family told me no one in Israel would tell them anything. And that has to be frightening. We now know he sits in an Israeli jail. An official of the Israeli embassy in Philadelphia, not too far from where Falah’s family lives, said the issue involves “national security.”

In her reporting, Beacon Journal reporter Carol Biliczky may have offered some clues as to why Falah was abducted by Israeli security. “He reportedly was bitter toward the Israeli academic establishment for preventing him from getting an academic post equal in standing to his Jewish colleagues …”

Falah also wrote some academic papers criticizing Israeli policy, which is usually the real reason why Israel grabs people at airports, detains them and throws them in to what Palestinians refer to as the “Israeli Gulag.”

Ah, that Gulag Word really upsets many Israelis. They don’t like it, insisting “every Palestinian prisoner,” nearly 10,000 of them, are all “terrorists, murderers and criminals.” Including many youngsters who are also detained.

Falah went before a magistrate in Haifa, but his lawyer was not only barred from entering the courtroom, he was also warned against saying anything about Falah’s condition to anyone. The gag order was only recently lifted when an Israeli newspaper complained that Falah’s story was being carried by newspapers in the United States and the gag order was unfair to them.

Falah’s still in jail, and his family members told me they still have not spoken to him and have no idea how he is being treated.

Sounds like “hostage” is the right term, to me.

Now, Israelis are going to dispute all of this, of course. They dispute everything, except when it is in their best interests.

The occupied territories are not occupied. They are now “disputed territories.”

And Ghazi Falah is probably not a hostage or a detaining or a prisoner, since he technically isn’t being held with the same respect that Israeli police give to mobsters, drug dealers, and other criminals who happen not to be Arab.

In fact, so little is known about Ghazi Falah’s situation that we might actually refer to him as a “disputed person.”

Palestinians complain of these kinds of Israeli security disappearing acts all the time, but not all of them are reported. It is just another example of Israel’s double standards.

They kidnap, take hostages, bomb, attack and even kill civilians when it is in their defense. But Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have no right to do the same.

Even as an Israeli citizen, apparently, Falah doesn’t seem to have any rights in Israel, a country that asserts to be the region’s “only real Democracy.”

I think we all know what the real problem is.

Falah isn’t really a “national security threat” at all. He just happens to be a Palestinian who disagrees with Israeli policies and he used his right to free speech to express his beliefs.

In Israel, apparently, that is all it takes to justify Falah’s detention in the Israeli Gulag.

What is Falah’s real crime? Apparently, it is “guilty of being Arab.”

(Ray Hanania is a Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

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Chicagoland's Arab Community needs leadership, not religious fanaticism

Chicagoland’s Arab American community needs leaders
By Ray Hanania

When you review the roster of government services, representation and community institutions, the Arab American community sits at the bottom of the list behind everyone.

Part of the reason is that our community lacks true leaders who are willing to set aside their personal gain in favor of helping our community, but more importantly, we lack leaders who understand the importance of the word “Arab.”

It’s not a religion and it’s not a political movement. It is a very proud culture that is slowly disappearing as the leadership void grows.

Instead of an Arab community, we see fragments of our community drifting towards religious fundamentalism, political extremism and people who support government institutions in order that they can get grants, awards and jobs for themselves and their own children and relatives.

You can’t blame these opportunists for trying to take care of themselves first, if the majority of Chicagoland’s Arab Americans remain apathetic, silent and inactive.

We have the “Arab disease,” which is basically the urge to only do something when you are angry and driven by emotion, rather than out of strategic planning and calming and more successful long term planning.

Emotion forces us to act now, sometimes in great numbers, but most often in few numbers.Strategic planning forces us to view the challenges long term and plan out strategies to overcome and then improve them.

The downside of the emotional response is that it doesn’t last long and it transforms from energy into hatred. We end up feeding our despair with hatred. One day, we see a hundred or even one thousand people chanting for justice in Palestine, and then they go away for months with no sustained strategic action.

Worse, because these “flare-ups” of activism which are not substantive activism at all only last a few days or during the height of crisis, we turn away from the challenges and the groups and organizations that cause our suffering and instead focus on ourselves as a community.

We prey on each other, individually, instead of standing together as a community. We start talking about others in derogatory terms. Instead of viewing the efforts of others as small steps forward, we tear each other down.

In reality, the only way a poor leader can look good is to bring someone else down. Attack others and push them down to make ourselves look good. So we find leaders in mosques and churches railing against people and individuals because they have dared to ask questions or wonder why our leaders act the way they do.

Leadership is not only about leading. It is about doing what is right, doing it fairly and doing it strategically.

It is also about recognizing differences of opinion and being “tolerant,” which is probably the one characteristic of leadership missing from those who claim to lead us today.

When I was younger, I recall a true leader in Professor Imbrahim Abu-Lughod. Professor Abu-Lughod was a Muslim, who happened to be married to a woman who was Jewish. He was probably the most effective spokesman for the Palestinian and Arab cause.

Why? Not because he was the most eloquent. But because he recognized that the real answer to our challenges in this society rested on strengthening the secular spirit of the community in order to bring Christian and Muslims together, Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis and others. There are 22 Arab countries and these days we act as if only one of the 22 count. Ourselves.

We hide behind religion as an excuse for our failed leadership, putting our faith in God as if God did not want us to be responsible ourselves. Instead, we should cherish our individual faiths and respect our traditions and apply that morality not only to our enemies but to ourselves.

The God of the Muslims and the Christians is the same God. Both communities refer to him as Allah. And according to Allah, it is wrong to slander and gossip about others in our community, to support suicide, to support violence, to use the pain of others as the reason to launch movements.

Professor Abu-Lughod understood this and preached this. And under his leadership, our Chicagoland community was stronger, even though there were fewer Arab families then than there are today.

Over the past 10 years, we have seen newcomers who have no history in our community using their religion to force everyone to follow their dictates. They lash out those who are different, of different religions and different political views and of different Arab nationalities, because they view the challenges not in the broader perspective that Professor Abu-Lughod recognized, but from a narrow perspective that suits their personal goals.

We need to get past these losers and we need to do it quickly. We need to strengthen the bond that brought most Arab Americans to America. We are American and we are proud of being American. We are not visitors here. We fled the persecution and the insanity of the monarchs, mullahs, dictators and tyrants to experience the true meaning of freedom.

When the silent majority of Arab Americans find the courage to stand up and push the cowards aside who exploit our anxieties and suffering for their own selfish gain, then once again will our community be able to speak to Americans about the justice of the Palestinian cause, the righteousness of Lebanon’s needs to defend itself against Israeli government terrorism, and remind Americans that the Arab World is a just and moral World that deserves their friendship and support, not animosity.

That was Professor Abu-Lughod’s dream. And it was his dream that drew deep into the activism of the Arab American community in 1975, long before some of today’s so-called leaders ever even heard of Chicago.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning journalist, author of the book Arabs of Chicagoland and the host of the Internet TV program “CounterPoint.” You can reach him at www.hanania.com.)

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Miss Universe Pageant, no distraction from Middle East politics

Miss Universe is no distraction from politics and conflict
By Ray Hanania

I thought I would distract myself from the ongoing Israeli terrorism against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanese in and around Beirut by switching from CNN to the 55th Annual Miss Universe Pageant.

But all I could think of was how deeply the political fighting and fanaticism has burrowed into our lives.

Of the 86 contestants this year, only two were from an Arab country. Egypt and Lebanon, despite the destruction being inflicted on it by Israel, sent a contestant, maybe in a defiant gesture that Israel could destroy their country but they will not be able to destroy their humanity.

A third contestant from a country that some no longer consider “Arab,” withdrew when Islamic extremists threatened to have her killed.

On April 9, Tamar Goregian, 23, a Christian from Iraq, which is occupied by American forces, withdrew after Islamic extremists, calling her “the queen of infidels,” threatened to kill her if she attended the Miss Universe Pageant.

The pageant, held this year at the Shrine Temple in Los Angeles, actually moves from host country to host country each year, although the US has won more of the contests, 7, than any other country.

The two runners-up in the Miss Iraq Beauty Pageant are Muslim and they declined to take Miss Goregian’s place in the face of the death threats. The fourth place runner-up, Silva Shahakian, 23, also a Christian, was left to take the title, but apparently she, too, declined as she was not among the 86 pageant beauties who were introduced Sunday night during the show’s broadcast.

Don’t blame the lack of Iraqi contestants on the United States. The last time an Iraqi woman competed was back in 1972.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I became angry.

There are 22 Arab countries and only two could come up with pageant entrants this year.

I credit Egypt and Lebanon for standing up to the principle of tolerance. Must everyone live by the lowest common denominators in the Muslim World, extremists who seek to impose their will on everyone else?

While the main attraction of the contest is physical beauty, the winner becomes a world activist for good causes. Last year’s winner, Natalie Glebova, became the champion of the sick. She helped raise awareness of HIV/AIDS education. Other winners have championed the needs of the poor, the homeless and helped strengthen the image of their home countries in the eyes of most of the rest of the world, if not in the 19 Arab countries that have failed to proffer entries.

The contest seems rigged, but that’s besides the point. A panel of judges narrows the field down to 20 finalists for the TV broadcast. Both Egypt and Lebanon were not selected as finalists. That was fine because Israel wasn’t selected either.

In 2002, Israel’s contestant caused a minor uproar when she wore a gown that featured a map of Israel on her dress that merged the occupied Gaza Strip, West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem as parts of that country.

So much for the Israelis who constantly bark that Arabs are biased because they have maps of Palestine that don’t identify Israel. (The Israelis are the world’s greatest hypocrites, as we all know.)

In that contest, Miss Lebanon decided to withdraw rather than appear on stage with Miss Israel, citing the Israeli incursions into Lebanon even after Israel withdrew from its near 20 year long occupation of Southern Lebanon only two years earlier in 2000.

In contrast to Israel, Miss Egypt was very professional. Her gown featured the word “peace” written in Arabic.

So even before the first of the 20 finalists from Sunday’s show were even eliminated, I had switched channels in disgust thinking about all this controversy.

None of the finalists were Arab, so why watch?

Well, the real issue is why does the Arab World permit the fanatics to define who we are?

Who are they to insist that we cannot sing, dance, imbibe modestly and even perform standup comedy?

Who are they to hold back the rest of us by issuing death threats against 23 year old women who are not even of their religious faith, forcing them to withdraw from the contest.
It may be about beauty, but the show is one of the most watched programs in the world. More than 170 countries view the show, maybe because the majority of people in this world prefer to see the basic beauty of womanly innocence on a TV screen rather than the frightening look of some religious fanatic with a full beard issuing death threats and launching entire regions into conflicts they have no right to start.

When it comes to the Miss Universe Pageant, the Arabs and Israelis are tied. Lebanon’s won once in 1971 and Israel won once in 1976.

If the religious fanatics have their way in the Arab World, we won’t even have two contestants in next year’s pageant.

I think that is a shame. And if we want to defeat the extremists, we should stop letting the extremists control our lives.

Next year, every Arab country in the Middle East should have a contestant in the 2007 Miss Universe Pageant.

But that assumes that the extremists won’t have achieved their goals and there will still be a “Middle East” and an “Arab World” left standing.


(Ray Hanania is the former national President of the Palestinian American Congress, a writer and author. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

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Not giving up on Palestinian-Israeli peace

Palestinians, Israelis must find courage for peace
By Ray Hanania

(Arab News, YnetNews.com, Utah Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Newsday, the Future News, and more)

Responsible Palestinians reject Hamas's rejection of Israel. But Israel's got the upper hand to make peace
Most Palestinians and Israelis recognize that there is no military option to end their conflict.

As Palestinian society continues to deteriorate, the threats against Israel -- as demonstrated by the recent suicide bombing targeting innocent Israeli citizens -- only increase.

Israelis cannot make the Palestinians go away, and Palestinians cannot defeat Israel. Both sides can either make things worse, or they can continue to fight for a lasting peace.

Because Israel has the upper hand, it faces the hard choice either to contribute to the erosion of Palestinian society and reject the Hamas-led government, or to accept the fact that violence will never go away until a real lasting peace can be achieved.

As a Palestinian, I oppose Hamas because it has violated two principles that Palestinians who support peace believe are sacred.

Not only has Hamas driven a decadelong campaign of suicide bombings and violence, but worse, it has used that violence to undermine the only real peace process Palestinians and Israelis have seen that was initiated more than a decade ago by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

As an extremist Islamist group, Hamas has been driven by faith. But as a result of its election, Hamas faces the higher responsibility of representing the greater needs of the Palestinian people, setting aside its religious zealotry and embracing the secular responsibility that comes with Democracy and governing.

I am not sure Hamas, a terrorist organization, can do that. But we have seen many terrorists transform into statesmen, and not just in the Middle East.

From terrorist to statesman

Arafat was a great revolutionary who forced the world to recognize Palestinian rights. He was not, however, a very good government bureaucrat, and his government was plagued by corruption. Yet Arafat was the first Arab leader to openly recognize Israel's right to exist and to accept the inevitability of a mini-state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Had Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a genuine concessions, such as really offering to return or share East Jerusalem in 2000, Arafat might have been able to embrace that peace and then enforce on his own people a compromise on the delicate issue of the Palestinian Right of Return.

But all that is behind us.

Confronting Israel is the dilemma of treating Hamas as a terrorist government or accepting its own logic, which has argued that only a hard-line rejectionist Israeli leader, like Menachem Begin, a former terrorist, could be capable of negotiating peace with the Arabs.

Dealing with Hamas

Maybe Hamas is the only Palestinian entity that can enforce a peace accord that will be accepted by Palestinians, if Hamas would be willing to compromise.

Although Hamas has refused to renounce, or even condemn, the violence of other splinter groups, the Islamic militant group has abided by a unilaterally imposed hudna, or suspension of violence, for more than a year. Even as religiously zealous as Hamas leaders are, they didn't hesitate to distance themselves from the recent tape in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden expressed solidarity with their election. Hamas leaders said their views are "vastly different'' from bin Laden's views.

Collective terror

In contrast with Hamas' actions, what has Israel done? Israel continues to punish all Palestinians for the crimes of a few, a policy that is the equivalent of terrorism and called "collective punishment.''

So far, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not used the collective-punishment policy against the leaders of Hamas for the suicide bombing of another splinter group, Islamic Jihad. He did not respond to the suicide bombing by striking out at all Palestinian leaders, Hamas, Fatah or others. Instead, he has focused on moving foreward with his vision of a unilaterally imposed settlement that will separate Israelis from Palestinians and possibly give Palestinians the choice to build on their own independence, or, worse, use the developments as just another opportunity to incite anti-Israeli violence.

Either way, a critical moment is upon us all. And, maybe, there is a strategy for peace in this awkward turn of events.

Creating peace

I am not defending Hamas. It suffers the same failure that plagues all "rejectionist'' Palestinian groups. They can prevent peace, but they have no strategy to ever win. And violence for the sake of vengeance is not a strategy.

There is only one real strategy to achieve peace, and that is to not give up on peace even as the violence continues. And we have seen that, even at the heights of the peace process, violence has always been present.

This is not about giving Hamas a chance. It is about giving the Palestinians a chance. It is outrageous that Hamas would not denounce the recent suicide bombings. Yet, its failure to act responsibly should not preclude the pursuit of strategies that might drive Palestinians and Israelis back toward peace and to the negotiating table as is being continually urged by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli responsibility

Responsible Palestinians have condemned the violence and recent suicide bombings. And they have also even rejected Hamas' rejection of peace. At the earliest opportunity, Palestinians should throw Hamas and all the rejectionist hypocrites out of office.

Until then, though, Israel can prevent the situation from worsening. Israel should punish only those Palestinians who directly engage in violence. It is a responsibility Israel cannot avoid.

Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, not the other way around. Israel has the means to push toward peace or toward more conflict.

We don't need more violence. We need more leaders like Rabin and Arafat who had the courage to shake each other's hand.

To achieve peace, Palestinians and Israelis must shoulder their own burdens to make it work. We have no other choice.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian-American journalist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)

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