If you really want to understand why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued for more than a century, if you really want to know why there is no peace in the Middle East, all you have to do is read Mohammed Abed’s “Blaming the victims: apologizing for the crimes of Zionism,“ published in The Badger Herald March 3, 2003. That article contains everything that the extremists want for the Middle East. It sadly epitomizes all of the mistakes the Palestinian leadership has made since at least 1947.
Let’s be clear on one thing: Mr. Abed is an extremist. He opposes the very existence of any non-Arab society in the Middle East; his perception of history is a malicious fallacy bent on perpetuating the bloodshed. Although marketed with a civil-rights coating, Mr. Abed’s views are rooted in hatred. His views of Israel are extremist, his “solutions” for the conflict are extremist, his understanding of the Israeli history is extremist.
In his angry and hate-filled article, Mr. Abed distorts the truth about several issues, about which I shall only remark briefly, before turning to his more dangerous assumptions:
Mr. Abed intentionally lies about the nature and scope of the problem of the Palestinian refugees. For only one example, according to the same sources he uses (Benny Morris), some 400,000 Palestinian fled their homes until mid-1948, waiting for the invading Arab armies to defeat the Jews.
The ugly vision of Zionism Mr. Abed espouses is, needless to say, malevolent and ill-informed. The fact that he chooses to focus on Mr. Yosef Weitz (what is his historical importance in the Zionist venture?) to portray an image of the Zionist movement, instead of speaking about Theodor Herzl or Ahad Aham, clearly shows his tendentiousness and his intent to mislead.
In order to support his view on the “good intentions of Arafat” on the Camp David talks of 2000, Mr. Abed bases his argument on an article written by Robert Malley. To respond to that plethora of propaganda, I offer what former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross (who was also present at the talks) said about the talks: “We (the Americans) put ideas on the table that would have affected the borders and would have affected Jerusalem. Arafat could not accept any of that. In fact, during the 15 days there, he never himself raised a single idea … The only new idea he raised at Camp David was that the temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem; it existed in Nablus (sic)” (Interview with Dennis Ross, FOX News Sunday, April 21, 2002.)
Mr. Abed quotes segments of some U.N. resolutions and totally disregards others. For example, he “forgets” to mention the historic U.N. resolution 181 of Nov. 27, 1947, which determined the right of both Jews and Palestinians to a state of their own. While the Jewish side unconditionally accepted the plan, the Arab states and the Palestinians rejected it with violence.
With regard to Mr. Abed’s accusations on the Jenin supposed “war crimes” (Abed’s words), I can draw the reader’s attention to a journalistic report written May 1, 2002. “The director of … Fatah movement for the northern West Bank … no longer used the ubiquitous Palestinian charge of ‘massacre’ and instead portrayed the battle as a ‘victory’ for Palestinians in resisting Israeli forces.”
As to the quotation Mr. Abed uses about “total devastation, no whole standing house, as though someone has bulldozed a whole community,” the Washington Times reporter in Jenin described: “[The destruction of Jenin] constitutes only about 10 percent of the housing in the camp … Families living in houses directly opposite the destroyed area have told … that Israeli soldiers, who temporarily occupied their houses just before the final battle began, treated them without violence. … Families whose homes had been destroyed were ordered to sit and lie inside tents pitched near the destruction, to be available for interviews and filming with foreign reporters and photographers.” (Paul Martin, “Jenin ‘massacre’ reduced to death toll of 56,” The Washington Times, May 1, 2002)
In his article, Mr. Abed conveniently fails to mention a further cardinal issue in the conflict, of which we received a reminder this past Wednesday in Haifa: the continued Palestinian terror campaign for the last two and a half years. I can surely understand the frustration of so many Palestinians in the face of the incapacity of their leadership to achieve peace for more than 50 years. However, I cannot accept, under any circumstances, the deliberate decision of so many Palestinians to blow up and murder hundreds of men, women and children on buses, in cafés or in shopping malls as a legitimate means for achieving an independent Palestinian state.
As an Israeli and Zionist who believes in a better future for our region, I feel frustrated by Mr. Abed’s article. What is the horizon that such an extremist, such an odious position can offer to the Middle East? Is he helping us to bring about a better future? Is there a path to peace in his hostile and slanderous accusations? The answer is very clear indeed: No.
As an Israeli, I may disagree with many of our fellow countrymen, a possibility that I, unlike so many Palestinians, do enjoy. The fact that Mr. Abed is able to quote Israeli scholars that share different historical and political views not only undermines his contention on a society based on “racism, apartheid and discrimination,” but rather strengthens the notion of Israel as a pluralist society. Unlike millions of Arab citizens throughout the Middle East, I have the right to disagree with some of the decisions of Israel’s governments regarding the future of the region, and I will certainly struggle with all the democratic instruments I have in order to bring Israel and the Palestinians onto the track of an historic peace agreement. The problem is, again, that Mr. Abed just will not.
Quite the contrary: his view is anything but democratic, anything but critical. His violent article is a clear manifestation of a new Palestinian generation that goes in the same, old, warlike path of its ancestors. Mr. Abed insists on going further in the trail of hostility and hate. He prefers, as the Palestinian leadership has done repeatedly, to celebrate his victimhood. Instead of retrospection, Mr. Abed proposes blaming Zionism. Instead of peace, he chooses the continuation of war. He doesn’t share our dream: two countries for two nations. He only dreams about one: his own.
Readers of the Herald have to understand the importance of this last point. Mr. Abed’s incapacity to acknowledge that the Jews as a nation also have right to a state in the Middle East is the same failure that the Arab leadership showed in 1947-48. After 50 years, Mr. Abed and his comrades still believe that Israel, as a Jewish state, should be wiped off the map. His rhetorical manipulations notwithstanding, there is no place for any non-Arab political existence in Mr. Abed’s view of the future. In our days, such political views have led to ethnic cleansing.
There is only one way out of this conflict: compromise. The Palestinians won’t disappear, but neither will we. Both our nations have the right to a sovereign existence, and no one, not even a philosophy graduate student of UW-Madison, can make that basic right disappear. The way to a peaceful solution passes through us: the young generations. But if young men and women like Mr. Abed keep on following the disastrous trail of their forerunners, convincing the Palestinian society of the need of war and of the evilness of the “Zionists,” peace will never arrive. Until people like Mr. Abed see that there is no way other than peace and compromise, the whole Middle East will keep bleeding every single day.
Ron F. Lerer is a graduate student in the history department.
