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This was published at Just Journalism
Today’s interview with Gideon Levy by Johann Hari in The Independent is a perfect example of how criticism of Israel can be distorted abroad to fit the preconceptions of the foreign media. Levy’s narrow focus on the ills of his country matches perfectly with Hari’s blinkered perspective, and is therefore presented as the only valid viewpoint – the ‘truth’ about Israel.
‘Is Gideon Levy the most hated man in Israel or just the most heroic?’ asks the headline of the interview. Over the course of the five and a half thousand word article, Hari argues that he is the former, stands a good chance of being the latter and, of course, that Levy’s supposed pariah status is the result of his staunch bravery in the face of adversity.
Gideon Levy is an editor and columnist at Ha’aretz, a liberal Israeli daily newspaper. According to Hari, Levy has done ‘something very simple, and something that almost no other Israeli has done. Nearly every week for three decades, he has travelled to the Occupied Territories and described what he sees, plainly and without propaganda.’ Taken literally, this is probably true – after all, only a very small percentage of Israelis at any one time are columnists at a national newspaper, and the amount of them that have been reporting for thirty years on the trot would be smaller still.
This, however, is not what Hari means. He seeks to suggest that Levy’s concern for Palestinians, and his objections to the occupation of their land, marks him out from his fellow Israelis, who are characterised as violent and racist. According to Hari, Levy ‘patiently [documents] his country’s crimes, and [tries] to call his people back to a righteous path.’ While Levy offers Palestinians empathy, ‘so many others offer only bullets and bombs.’
But it’s not just that Israeli’s don’t care about these issues – they are, in the myopic portrayal of Israel that is conjured up in the interview, actively trying to prevent Levy from speaking out as well. Many people, according to Hari, want Levy ‘silenced’, and if the ‘attempt to deride, suppress or deny his words’ is successful, then ‘Israel itself is lost.’
In this week’s episode of the Tribal Update, the television-on-internet satire show produced weekly by Latma, (the Hebrew-language media satire website edited by Caroline Glick), against the backdrop of the renewed “land for peace” talks between Israel and the PLO, the truth is revealed about World War 2′s origins and reveal Winston Churchill’s “true colors.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, spoke at three Washington, D.C. synagogues on Yom Kippur. Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jews heard the same eloquent message, and Oren’s text is reproduced below. It’s well worth reading in full:
On Yom Kippur we read the Book of Jonah, one of the Bible’s most enigmatic texts. It is also one of the Bible’s shortest texts, weighing in at a page and a half, which is quite an accomplishment for this holiday. And it features one of our scripture’s least distinguished individuals. Jonah—a man whose name, in Hebrew, means dove—not dov, as in Hebrew for bear, but dove as, in English, pigeon.
Yet this same everyman, this Jonah, is tasked by God with a most daunting mission. He is charged with going to the great city of Nineveh and persuading its pernicious people to repent for their sins or else.
Not such an unusual task, you might think. 21st century life is rife with people who warn of the catastrophes awaiting us if we fail to modify our behavior one way or the other. Today we call them pundits, commentators who, if proven correct, claim all the credit but who, if proven wrong, bear none of the responsibility.
Jonah, though, cannot escape the responsibility. Nor can he dodge his divinely ordained dilemma. If he succeeds in convincing the Ninevehians to atone and no harm befalls them, many will soon question whether that penitence was ever really necessary. Jonah will be labeled an alarmist. But, what if the people of Nineveh ignore the warning and the city meets the same fiery fate as Sodom and Gomorrah? Then Jonah, as a prophet, has failed.
Such is the paradox of prophecy for Jonah, a lose-lose situation. No wonder he runs away. He flees to the sea, only to be swallowed by a gigantic fish, and then to the desert, cowering under a gourd. But, in the end, the fish coughs him up and the gourd withers. The moral is: there is no avoiding Jonah’s paradox. Once elected by God, whatever the risks, he must act.
As such, the Book of Jonah can be read as more than morality play, but also a cautionary tale about the hazards of decision-making. It is a type of political primer, if you will, what the medieval thinkers called a Mirror for Princes. The Talmud teaches us that, in the post-Biblical era, the gift of prophecy is reserved for children and fools. In modern times, we don’t have prophets—pundits, yes, but no prophets. Instead we have statesmen who, like Jonah, often have to make fateful decisions for which they will bear personal responsibility. If not a paradox of prophecy, these leaders face what we might call the quandary of statecraft.
Take, for example, the case of Winston Churchill. During the 1930s, he warned the world of the dangers of the rapidly rearming German Reich. The British people ignored Churchill– worse they scorned him, only to learn later that he was all along prescient and wise. But what if Churchill had become Britain’s Prime Minister five years earlier and had ordered a pre-emptive strike against Germany? Those same people might have concluded that the Nazis never posed a real threat and that their prime minister was merely a warmonger.
CiF writer Omar Rahman penned a quite predictable anti-Israel piece on Sept 22, criticizing Israel’s request to be acknowledged as a Jewish state (while seemingly not bothered by the 60 or so nations who insist on being called Islamic states.) His piece, not surprisingly, produced this boilerplate “Zionism = Racism” diatribe by a commenter called, yes, “Donkey Logic”.
This is cross-posted by Anglican Friends of Israel
In July 2010 the Church of England updated the list of resources which formed part of the appendices for its 2001 report DEMANDING PEACE: A CHURCH RESPONSE TO THE AL-AQSA INTIFADA. This list included books, organisations and travel companies was compiled for use by clergy and lay people wanting to understand the conflict both from a historical and contemporary context.
A brief glance at the list reveals an almost uncritical acceptance of the Palestinian narrative – Palestinian victimhood and Israeli aggression. Most organisations and books listed present Palestinians as having neither agency nor responsibility over their circumstances. Arab anti-semitism and Muslim aggression towards Arab Christians is ignored and Jewish Israelis presented as colonial interlopers whose presence is the cause of the conflict.
One might think that a Christian Church would sympathise with Israel, the one small island of freedom in a sea of despotic states, the one Middle Eastern with a free press and vibrant public discourse, the one nation in the Middle East that attempts to enshrine in law the rights of women, homosexual people and minority religions.
Sadly that would be a mistake. Archbishop Williams may claim that he supports the right of Israel to exist. But the majority of organisations and authors on this resource list don’t share his view.
Perhaps, too a Christian Church should take seriously the overarching Scriptural theme that God would one day bring His covenant people back to their Promised Land from the four corners of the earth.
But Archbishop Williams has dismissed that approach as aberrant . And his description is mild compared to how some of the authors on the booklist describe Christians who take their Scriptures seriously.
Below is a sampling of what an Anglican dipping into this cauldron of resources might find. It makes distasteful reading.
It is time for Anglican leaders to admit that Israel, besieged by regional enemies, exists under a state of war brought about by Arab aggression.
They should understand that criticising Israeli actions and policies whilst remaining silent about Arab aggression and anti-Semitism is hypocrisy – particularly in the context of far greater human rights abuses elsewhere in the region and in the world. The sheer disproportion of criticism against Israel is beyond reason.
Finally they should acknowledge that their criticisms of Israel are directed solely at her Jewish citizens, not Christian or Arab Israelis who are assumed to be victims of the Jewish state as well.
And they should beware, reflecting on centuries of institutional Christian anti-Semitism, and how long such institutional racism can take to be purged.
Per the Jerusalem Post
Dozens of Palestinians on Wednesday that barricaded themselves in the al-Aksa mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem dispersed and left the scene after Israeli security forces exited the area.
Police reported that a relative calm has been restored in the area after a day of violent clashes.
The violence started when riots erupted in Silwan early in the morning after a 35-year-old east Jerusalem resident was killed.
Throughout the day, violence spread from Silwan to the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives, as angry rioters threw thousands of stones at police forces.
Ten people were injured, including a 35-year-old Israeli in moderate condition who was stabbed in the back near the Mount of Olives. Police reported that attendees threw stones at officers, vehicles and buses causing injuries and damage, and that a police vehicle and several other vehicles were set alight near Jerusalem’s Old City.
Three Egged buses were destroyed by stoning near the Western Wall, injuring one of the bus drivers. The buses were missing all of their windows and one had blood splattered on the driver’s seat.
Eight people were arrested for disturbing the peace, five at the Temple Mount and three on Derech HaOfer, the road that leads from the Mount of Olives cemetery towards the Old City and back to Silwan.
The death of the east Jerusalem resident happened early Wednesday morning, when a security guard was driving a security vehicle on his way to a Jewish home when residents blocked the street with trash cans and began hurling rocks at him.
UPDATE, Sept 24:
Jerusalem District Police Commander Aharon Franco on Wednesday backed an Israeli security guard who shot an east Jerusalem resident to death in Silwan. “According to an initial investigation, the guard encountered a preplanned ambush which put his life in danger, prompting him to open fire.” The killing sparked Arab riots in the capital, with rioters throwing firebombs and rocks at Israeli security forces and civilians. Four buses were badly damaged, as were private vehicles. Palestinians also hurled stones from the Temple Mount at Jewish worshippers below.
A guest post by AKUS
Every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, like many others in synagogue I have read the paragraph in the service that describes how the members of mankind will be inscribed either in the Book of Life or, via a lengthy list of rather horrific fates, in the Book of Death – the judgment to be sealed on Yom Kippur.
One of the fates listed, which had never seemed relevant till this year, is “who shall die by stoning”. I had assumed that we left that particular punishment behind in the Middle Ages, or even long before.
Apparently that is not the case in Iran, where Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was accused of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning by a majority of 3-2 in an Iranian court (see that linked article for a link to Amnesty’s translation of the sentence). Possibly her sentence has been commuted as a result of a global outcry – but it is not clear if to death by other means or to another punishment. In the meantime, reports state that Iran has sentenced her to 99 lashes in prison for “spreading corruption and indecency” after allowing an unveiled picture of herself to be published in a British newspaper – even though the picture was not of her, but of Susan Hejrat, an Iranian political activist living in Sweden!
Reuters has reported that “Adultery is the only crime which carries the penalty of death by stoning under the sharia law which Iran adopted after the 1979 Islamic revolution.” Needless to say, there have been no reports of any punishment at all being ordered for the two men she was accused of having a relationship with. Meanwhile, Mohammadi Ashtiani has stated that she admitted to the “crime” under duress so it is no longer at all clear what she is charged with.
In an interview aired on Sept. 19, 2010 with ABC’s This Week host Christiane Amanpour, despite published copies of the Iranian court’s 3-2 ruling, President Ahmadinejad denied that there ever was such a death sentence handed down in the Mohammadi Ashtiani case, and claimed that “This was news that was produced and incorrect, and regrettably, U.S. media affected — was infected by U.S. politicians to make a piece of news out of it.” Later, Ahmadinejad also showed his enlightened side for Western consumption when he said: “Now this is ancient method, an ancient method that needs to change”
We now have the gruesome spectacle of this representative of the mullahs who are unlikely to change their “ancient method” parading round New York delivering his latest diatribe at the UN and conducting interviews in the US media. In a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance, after claiming that the reports of a sentence of death by stoning are Western propaganda, he also claimed that the death sentence about to be carried out on a Virginia woman for the murder of her husband and step-son is as bad as the proposed stoning of Mohammadi Ashtiani for adultery.
How naive I was during all the years I had thought that removing “death by stoning” from that ancient prayer would be an appropriate acknowledgement that we are now in a more enlightened age …
To our friends celebrating Sukkot, have a joyous festival. (Chag Sameach!)
(Cartoon courtesy of Dry Bones Blog)
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. A founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, she is the author of Their Jihad . . . Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.
(See video of Raza confronting Tariq Ramadan, here.)
FP: Raheel Raza, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about the courageous battle you have been fighting, as a Muslim, on the frontlines of our battle against radical Islam. Your pronouncements against the Ground Zero Mosque and your collision with Tariq Ramadan are the recent examples of your noble stand for justice and freedom.
Let’s start with your battle against the Ground Zero mosque and also the threat you received from Ground Zero mosque developer Sharif El Gamal after your meeting with the organizers of the mosque in New York.
Raza: Thanks Jamie.
It’s been almost a month since my article was published in the Ottawa Citizenregarding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero, which was followed by my trip to New York to attend a meeting of the organizers of the mosque and then the follow up — which has been good, bad and ugly.
feel no need to give a defense of my actions as everyone has the right to pursue the truth. It’s been a turbulent two months with many ups and downs. However, I have written a report about my visit to New York, since I met the organizers, asked questions and was able to make an informed opinion. Events that followed have only confirmed my stance. Hence, I owe it to myself and to those following these events to give an accurate account of my visit. Let me share it with you Jamie and with Frontpage’s readers:
At 5:57 p.m. on Monday August 16, 2010, my cell phone rang. The man asked me: “Is this Raheel Raza?” I automatically said yes. He said “I am Sharif El Gamal – do you remember you dared jump into a meeting called by Daisy Khan for 9/11 victims in New York?” I was a bit shocked at the tone but I retorted “I was invited to that meeting.” He said curtly, “No, you were not.” I tried to explain that I went as a guest of a 9/11 widow. “You were not invited,” he said again, and then added: “I am an American and a Muslim and may Allah protect you.” These words sent chills down my back. It took only one minute for the veneer of ‘tolerance’ to be peeled away, and the reality of the agenda became crystal clear.
I had decided to go to New York on Tuesday, August 10, to attend a meeting hosted by the ASMA Society as a guest of Maureen Basnicki, who is the widow of a 9/11 victim. I wanted to see and hear firsthand what the Ground Zero mosque was all about, to ask some important questions and to deliver a message that this is not a good idea.
When I arrived at the meeting, there were about 30 people in the room, most of them 9/11 survivors and their families. Some were carrying placards saying LOCATION which they respectfully kept under their chairs. The meeting was chaired by Gerry Bogacz, who is part of the 9/11 Community for Common Ground. There were no formal introductions of people around the table.
However, as soon as the organizers started speaking, I knew that this was not about sincere intentions but a con-job, a cover-up for a subversive agenda and all about the money. Ms. Daisy Khan spent 20 minutes telling us about her life and work. Eventually, she came to the mosque project and said that this monument (Ground Zero Mosque/Cordoba Institute/ Park 51) is to help shape Islam in America. She also said that the idea has garnered support not only in the U.S. but “would be replicated all over the world.”
This essay, by A. Millar, published by Hudson New York, represents an alternative view of the English Defence League from the ones previously presented at CiF Watch. As always, your comments are welcomed.
A group of extremist Islamists attacked the returning soldiers as “butchers of Basra,” “baby killers,” and “terrorists” during a homecoming parade not long ago in the city of Luton. With years of anti-British “political correctness,” and a political class that has failed to tackle Islamism with seriousness, this proved to be too much: the crowd that had turned out to cheer on the soldiers was soon making their disgust known to the Islamists; the two groups had to be held apart by police. Within a few days, a video was floating around the internet, showing the aftermath: calling themselves the “United People of Luton,” thousands of (mostly) young men had taken to the streets in a rowdy, and chaotic show of anger and frustration, chanting “no surrender to the Taliban,” “we are Luton,” and, directed at the Islamists, “scum.”
A short time later, the English Defense League [EDL] emerged from the United People of Luton, and, in a little over the year since its founding, has become the largest street protest movement in Britain.
The EDL has also inspired the recent establishment of independent leagues in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, and other EU states; the movement is attracting international attention – including from the Israeli-based Haaretz and the US-based Dissent.
Strident opposition to integration — from politicians, the media, and Islamist extremists — has led to serious social problems, not only for long-settled British citizens, but also for immigrants and the children of immigrants. These range from the high rates of unemployment among Muslims, the forced marriage of school girls (and to a lesser extent school boys), to honor violence against women and girls, and violence against homosexual Muslims. Opponents of integration know of these problems, but ignore them. It would appear that their intention was not to make life easy for immigrants, but to make life easy for themselves.
Mass immigration into Europe, is, in some sense the “Americanization” of Europe, according to Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, who has said that over the last few decades – especially over the last ten years – Europe has become increasingly multi-ethnic, and multi-religious, and multi-everything. In this sense, it resembles the US, especially its cities, such as New York; however, because the EU was intended as a “counterbalance” to the US – and an exemplar of a more socialistic, statist, and allegedly moral and ethical way of doing things – Europe has enacted immigration and integration in an almost opposite way. Consequently, as immigration has increased, instead of becoming more like the US, Europe has become less like it.
In the US, newcomers may be encouraged to feel proud of America’s achievements in the world, its democracy, its opportunities. Immigrants might retain significant aspects of their culture, their religion, or values from their former homes, but, largely, they are also proud to be American, and proud to have democracy, liberty, free speech, and the other opportunities for which they came. In Britain, however, immigrants have been encouraged to remain separate from the rest of society, to refrain from learning the language of the host culture, and from integrating. The Archbishop of Canterbury appeared to encourage the adoption of some sharia into Britain in 2008; a few months later, Stephen Hockman, QC, former chairman of the Bar Council, called for aspects of sharia to be formally incorporated into British law.
The routine devaluing of British culture is a gift to Islamists who want to separate Muslims from non-Muslims in the UK – or, worse, who intend to impose sharia on everyone, like it or not. The organization hosting Hockman, as he delivered his appeal for a sharia-lite Britain, was none other than the now-banned Islam4UK, an Islamist group descended from al-Muhajiroun, which has been linked to one in seven convicted terrorists in the UK [pdf]
This is cross posted at Richard Millett’s Blog
Matthew Gould: Britain's new Ambassador to Israel
Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is one of those nasty anti-Israel think-tanks which aims to win the ear of the political establishment.
It describes itself as “an independent media research institution founded in the United Kingdom to foster a fair and accurate coverage in the Western media of Middle Eastern issues and in particular the Palestine Question.”
Fair and accurate? Pull the other one.
They won’t even let you into one of their meetings if they disagree with your views.
Now MEMO asks: Is Britain’s new ambassador to Israel really going to be objective?
The question under discussion is:
“Can a Jewish ambassador to Israel ever be truly objective when advising his home government on relations with the Jewish state? That is going to be the big question for Britain’s new ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, who has just taken up residence in Tel Aviv.“
This is not the first time the someone’s Jewish background has been held against them recently in the media. When respected historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman were appointed to the panel of the Chilcot Enquiry to investigate the Iraq War Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, wrote in The Independent:
“Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but The Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind. All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”
Should being Jewish really disqualify them from all aspects of political life involving Middle Eastern matters?
And yet I wish I had a pound for the amount of times that someone’s Jewish background has been utilised to make a political point when it is to Israel’s detriment.
This was published by Barry Rubin, at Pajamas Media. (Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal)
It’s always fascinating to find historical parallels to contemporary events. When one discovers an obscure gem of this type, cutting the stone to let it reflect the light of truth is irresistible.
For well over a century, the Jewish people have been beset by an eleventh plague inside their own house: extreme left-wing intellectuals who urge they throw away their own interests, concerns, and even lives for the supposed higher ones of humanity or the chimera of being morally perfect.
According to this view, their supposed true interests lie in bringing about utopia for everyone, paved by abandoning their own aspirations, dissolving their identity while other groups are encouraged to do the opposite.
While I admire Bertram Wolfe for things he did in later life, he spent thirty earlier years campaigning for Communism. During that period he produced one of the greatest examples in this genre of left-wing calls for Jewish suicide. On April 6, 1939, Wolfe made a speech to the Keep America Out of War Congress, opposing U.S. involvement in the looming war in Europe against the Nazis, the worst persecutor of the Jewish people (so far) in modern times.
Wolfe was then an exemplar of what has become known recently by the name “As-a-Jew.” That is, those who never identify as a member of the Jewish people or religion except when bashing some aspect of it, usually in our era, Israel. So they start their rant by saying, “As a Jew…” I oppose this or that thing. (With the implied meaning: Aren’t I a great and noble person!)
In this tradition, Wolfe’s speech ordered Jews to sacrifice themselves for a left-wing cause based on a distorted left-wing view of reality:
The element that makes the war party [who want to fight Nazi Germany] so much larger in New York than elsewhere in this country, [are] those whose anguish blinds their visions as each day their spirits are bruised and shocked afresh by the daily budget of news of Jewish persecutions throughout the world. Profiting by their anguish which amounts to hysteria, there are those who would sell them the coming war as a war against antisemitism. And this is the more dangerous delusion because the growth of militarism and reaction in this country is bringing with it the growth of antisemitism.
In those days, “New York” was a code word, often used by anti-Semites, for Jews. True, he expresses sympathy to gain credibility but only uses it to warn that the worst thing Jews could do was to advocate a war against Hitler.
Why? The left always portrays the true threat to Jews in America as being from the right-wing. Of course, historically there was real truth in it — Charles Lindbergh made a similar antis-Semitic speech at the time — and of course it was quite true in Europe at the time. Still, everyone remembers that conservative British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain practiced appeasement; nobody remembers that the Labor Party voted against Chamberlain’s last-minute reversal of that policy to rearm Britain’s army.
The threat to the east came from fascism, but the danger in the west came from not fighting fascism. You are free to make a modern-day parallel to that sentence.
Those conservatives in America — as well as the more numerous liberals doing so — advocating the United States ally with Britain and France to fight Nazi Germany weren’t anti-Semitic. On the contrary, the isolationists were anti-Semites. And those anti-Semites on the extreme isolationist right held precisely the same view as Wolfe and the Communists or pacifists on the left. Both extremes were enemies of the Jews, not just one. And you are also free to make a modern-day parallel to that paragraph.
This piece on the English Defence League (EDL) was posted recently at Modernity Blog, and is part of CiF Watch’s ongoing conversation and debate about the EDL.
The true character of the EDL was revealed over the weekend.
They sought conflict in Oldham and when the police tried to restrain them the police were attacked with glasses and bottles.
As Nick Lowles reported:
“A hundred EDL supporters turned up unannounced in Oldham town centre yesterday in a worryingly new development. While they ostensibly claimed to be marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and indeed they did lay a wreath, the nature of their mobilisation could be a sign of things to come.
The EDL met up in the Greaves Arms and marched through Oldham town centre to the local cenotaph where they laid a wreath and held a two minutes silence. Among those there were a number of current and former BNP members, including Griffin’s former bodyguard and convicted drug dealer Jock Shearer. The police moved in to break up the gang and they were met with a volley of glasses and bottles. A number of people were served with dispersal orders (Section 27 of the Public Order Act) which banned them from the town for 24 hours.
It was clear that many EDL supporters are becoming increasing frustrated at how the police have contained them in recent protests, not least in Bradford, where they were penned in by police and an eight foot wall. A growing number seem keen to just go it alone with spontaneous actions.
I’m nervous about where this is all going and I fear a growing cycle of both targeted and indiscriminate violence by EDL supporters. Some are actively hunting down their opponents, including myself, while actions like we saw yesterday in Oldham could spark off real violence within communities. And of course violence is what these people are after.”
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Guardian promotes anti-peace camp
September 26, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Guardian, Hamas, Omar Rahman | by Israelinurse | 2 comments
By publishing the article entitled ‘Israel’s unreasonable demand’ written by Omar Rahman, Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre , on September 22nd, the Guardian has placed itself well and truly in the opposite camp to all those hoping to find a fair, peaceful and durable solution to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. (Its not insignificant that the the Guardian piece was posted, and promoted, on anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sites such as Mondoweiss and Friends of Al-Aqsa. For info on Mondoweiss, see here; For more on Friends of Al-Aqsa, see here.)
Rahman employs much transparent waffle in the first part of his article, but the essential paragraph is this later one:
There are numerous voices of opposition to the ongoing peace talks currently making themselves heard. From the rhetoric coming out of Tehran and the Arab League (including Mahmoud Abbas), through the violent actions of Hamas and other assorted terror groups, and down to various supposedly ‘humanitarian’ NGOs (often backed with European funding); the style may differ, but the bottom line is essentially the same – the refusal to accept the concept of two states for two peoples.
An end to the Arab/Israeli conflict depends upon an end to Arab demands – an acceptance of the reality of Israel as a Jewish State as being permanent. Any other formula simply sets the stage for the next round of conflict because it indicates that its promoters have not given up on the dream of yet another Arab State on the land which is today Israel. Omar Rahman can try to dress his refusal to bring about an end to the conflict in all sorts of guises designed to push the buttons of his Western liberal readers – and he does – but the bottom line is that this is all about the ‘right of return’ of Palestinian refugees to Israel and the subsequent inevitable annihilation of the Jewish right to self-determination.
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