A blinding hypocrisy

The Bush team needs to identify the real 'racists' in this conflict

By David Parsons

22 Jan 2008

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure”
Lord Byron

Despite the best of intentions, the recent Annapolis conference and visit of US President George W. Bush to Jerusalem exposed an untidy truth: The decades-long pursuit of peace with the Palestinians is still stuck on ‘square one.’

Annapolis was held on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the UN Partition Plan of November 29, 1947, which divided the land into a Jewish and an Arab state. With this historic moment in mind, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted ahead of the international gathering that the Palestinians must finally recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Some say this was accomplished under Oslo, but Olmert knew better, and the Palestinians confirmed as much.

“Israel can define itself however it sees fit… but the Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity,” responded chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

“We did not request to be a member of the international Zionism movement,” quipped senior PLO member Yasser Abed Rabbo.

 “From a historical perspective, there are two states: Israel and Palestine. In Israel, there are Jews and others living there. This we are willing to recognize, nothing else,” affirmed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in a post-Annapolis tour of Arab capitals.

It was against this backdrop that Bush arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport in mid-January and immediately declared: “The United States and Israel are strong allies… the alliance between our two nations helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state.”

Two days later, his concluding statement to the parties read: “[A final] agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people…”

WHY DOES all this matter? Because it means the Palestinians, including the ‘moderate’ Abbas, have never given up on their dream of destroying Israel. Fatah and Hamas still share the same strategic goal of eliminating the “Zionist entity”; Fatah is just willing to use diplomatic tactics alongside the “armed struggle” to achieve that end. Ultimately, by persisting in their claim to a ‘right of return,’ the PLO hopes to flood Israel with enough Arab refugees to turn a two-state solution into one Arab state.

This rejection of Israel’s Jewish character extends to the wider Arab world, which opposed the 1947 UN partition plan to the point of initiating war, and have yet to truly come to terms with Jewish sovereignty in their midst. Even the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan contain no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. This despite scores of UN resolutions and documents expressly endorsing Israel as such.

NOW SOME may say it is irrelevant whether the Palestinians ever see Israel as it sees itself. Others view Israel’s demand in this regard as ‘racist.’ But what troubles me most is the way the Palestinians also get away with the immoral demand that their own future state be purely Arab. Their long hatred of Jews has blinded them to their own hypocrisy, and yet no one in the international community is calling them on it.

Witness the traditional pre-Christmas message of Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, an Israeli Arab cleric but self-identified Palestinian nationalist. "If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against," he averred. “[Israel should] discard its identity as a Jewish State [for] a political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews. This land cannot be exclusive for anyone."

But what of the Palestinian position that their state must be free of Jews? Isn’t that equally discriminatory? – Nay, even more so, since Sabbah knows well that a thriving Arab minority indeed live in Israel and are free to exercise their democratic rights. Let’s hear him say his beloved Palestine must also be a "political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews.”

I appreciate Bush’s backing of Israel as a Jewish state. I just wish the Bush Administration, along with other world leaders, would confront the Palestinians on their demand that Judea and Samaria be Judenrein. But instead, we get Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s bizarre comparison of the Palestinian situation to the Jim Crow South. Isn’t it time to identify the real racists here?

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