by Lital Shemesh
I participated in the Dialogue for Peace Project for young Israelis and Palestinians who are politically involved in various frameworks. The project’s objective was to identify tomorrow’s leaders and bring them closer today, with the aim of bringing peace at some future time.
The project involved meetings every few weeks and a concluding seminar in Turkey.
On the third day of the seminar after we had become acquainted, had removed barriers, and split helpings of rachat Lukum [a halva-like almond Arab delicacy] as though there was never a partition wall between us, we began to touch upon many subjects which were painful for both sides. The Palestinians spoke of roadblocks and the IDF soldiers in the territories, while the Israeli side spoke of constant fear, murderous terrorist attacks, and rockets from Gaza.
The Israeli side, which included representatives from right and left, tried to understand the Palestinians’ vision of the end of the strife– “Let’s talk business.” The Israelis delved to understand how we can end the age-old, painful conflict. What red lines are they willing to be flexible on? What resolution will satisfy their aspirations? Where do they envision the future borders of the Palestinian State which they so crave?
We were shocked to discover that not a single one of them spoke of a Palestinian State, or to be more precise, of a two-state solution.
They spoke of one state – their state. They spoke of ruling Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Akko, Haifa, and the pain of the Nakba [lit. the tragedy – the establishment of the State of Israel]. There was no future for them. Only the past. “There is no legitimacy for Jews to live next to us” – this was their main message. “First, let them pay for what they perpetrated.”
In the course of a dialogue which escalated to shouts, the Palestinians asked us not to refer to suicide bombers as “terrorists” because they don’t consider them so. “So how do you call someone who dons a vest and blows himself up in a Tel Aviv shopping mall with the stated purpose of killing innocent civilians,” I asked one of the participants.
“I have a 4-year-old at home,” answered Samach from Abu Dis (near Jerusalem). “If G-d forbid something should happen to him, I will go and burn an entire Israeli city, if I can.” All the other Palestinian participants nodded their heads in agreement to his harsh words.
“Three weeks ago, we gave birth to a son,” answered Amichai, a religious, Jewish student from Jerusalem. “If G-d forbid something should happen to him, I would find no comfort whatsoever in deaths of more people.”
Israelis from the full gamut of political parties participated in the seminar: Likud, Labor, Kadima, Meretz, and Hadash (combined Jewish/Arab socialist party). All of them reached the understanding that the beautiful scenarios of Israeli-Palestinian peace that they had formulated for themselves simply don’t correspond with reality. It’s just that most Israelis don’t have the opportunity to sit and really converse with Palestinians, to hear what they really think.
Our feed of information comes from Abu Mazen’s declarations to the international press, which he consistently contradicts when he is interviewed by Al Jazeera, where he paints a completely different picture.
I arrived at the seminar with high hopes, and I return home with difficult feelings and despair. Something about the narrative of the two sides is different from the core. How can we return to the negotiating table when the Israeli side speaks of two states and the Palestinian side speaks of liberating Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea? How can peace ever take root in a platform which grants legitimacy to terrorism?
The author is a rising star in the Israeli media who openly expresses her political aspirations to reach the Knesset. She worked as Editor-in-Chief for the Yedioth Youth Magazines, reported for the Israel Broadcasting Authority and the Hot CableTV News channel, and is CEO and Founder of a web-based girls magazine “Pinkish – Everything that Girls Love.”
The West is antisemitic and stupid. That is a given. There is no other way around. They know very well, in the West, that there cannot be 2 states for 2 peoples since one (Palestinians) will do whatever it can to eliminate the other. It is like giving freedom to a mass murderer who tells the whole world in advance that once freed he will commit another mass murder. Therefore the logical conclusion is that the West wants the elimination of Israel.
Bernard & Yamit, there is one big item missing from that picture: our survival instict. There are billions of people all over the world who know almost nothing about history, not even their own, but who would fight to the last person to defend their territory. I repeat: it is an instinct. When you put this in context of our knowledge of 2000 years of persecution and recent genocide, you add another motivation to fight back. And when you add the element of high literacy and moral awareness among Jews, you add yet another one. How can anyone explain Jewish anti-Semitism, pro-Arabism and anti-Zionism? I can’t. Whatever the reason, I don’t attribute it to misinformation. Where is their instinct for survival? The Diaspora know that changing their names and going to church did not work last time.
Further to my last post: the Israeli govt frames everything as negotiations in a vacuum. I hear security but I never hear the claim of” the land belongs to us”! whether negotiating or not everything should be started with that principle.
@ Canadian Otter:
@ yamit82:
yamit82 Said:
I disagree. we have an MSM on which most americans and most american jews rely and trust as sources. we have regularly quoted sources in the wire services,MSM and even Yahoo news which regularly quotes Israelis sources, experts and journalists who are almost always representative of the minority, leftist Israel point of view. the typical american jew has no idea that there are other Israeli points of view. The US Jew has no idea that there is even a special set of legal rights in international law that justifies in law the jewish occupation other than through conquest. The american jew has never seen any such issues raised by israeli jews or the israeli govt in any international forum. They hear ad infinitum that Israel is illegally occupying the land beyond what it legally owned pre 67, illegally settling the land, violating the Geneva conventions and there is not one stinking shred of rebuttal for decades to these arguments from the Israeli govts. I completely blame the Israeli govt for not standing for the right of jews even verbally, for catering to the arabs over the jews. for not educating an ignorant Israeli population honestly wrt their own history. The Israeli jew appears to be no less lazy or ignorant than the US Jew and it is his own history and legal rights which he does not know. How can anyone expect the US jew to be more aware, and more knowledgeable, more involved about these things than the Israeli Jews. the us jew learns us history whereas the israeli jew is learning isreali history: what the hell do they teach in israeli history in the school? as far as the US Jew is concerned the Israelis want to give the land up for peace and have 2 states but it is just a bunch of right-wing religious fanatics who are ruining everything. the problem starts in Israel and if the problem is solved there and the narrative changes then so will the US jewish perspective change with it. It is the Israeli leftist Jews who have organized and gained ears in america and it doesn’t help to see these polish ghetto jews in black hats and peyas shouting in support of the pals on TV. The radical liberal US Jews has taken his cues from the radical liberal Israeli Jew and that is where the rot lies. Ten years ago I had absolutely no knowledge about the complexity and difference of opinion in Israel. I could not possibly have conceived of a more alice in wonderland scenario than what I now see exists. It is incomprehensible to a diaspora Jew that there could be such a divergence of opinion on serious existential issue. I would have thought that a people living with the arabs and experiencing all this terror would have been unanimous in kicking their backsides out at the earliest possibility. If an Israeli who is not brain-dead were to tell me what these leftists say I would have believed him. If he tells me the arab is a victim rather than a terrorist I would have to defer because he lives here. I would not assume he is insane as I assume now. Now that I have spent ten years reading Israeli sources it appears more hopeless every day because Israelis can’t even decide whether or not they actually have any enemies or just annoying neighbors. Israel is the address where the rot must be fixed, it is not obama, it is not the US Jews it is the Israeli Jews who must decide because they have to live with the decisions. the problem is they can’t even determine the facts upon which to base any sensible decision.
Further to my previous talkback, I just found this: “Boston suspect becomes teen hearthrob: Thousands of girls express their love for bomber in worrying online forums. A startling number of teen girls have admitted to having a crush on bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, proclaiming their love for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect on social media.” – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323342/Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-The-teen-girls-crush-Boston-bomber.html
YAMIT & BERNARD – I’m not disputing all those arguments behind lack of Diaspora support for a Zionist Israel. But there are a good number of Israeli leftist Jews who express sympathy for the Arabs (even for the terrorists) in spite of having seen so much Jewish blood flow… Something similar happens in the EU and USA. It’s not just the Jews who are sacrificing their culture and safety and embracing their enemies. Something very bizarre is going on. Other interesting cases are the willing converts to Islam, and Slavic and Greek Nazis. Slavs and Greeks would have been slaves in the Third Reich, so how can they justify their sympathies! To say nothing of the kapos in the concentration camps. Maybe all those cases have something in common. They are like different strains of a kind of mental flu. And it’s catching, too!
No one who knows anything about Islam and the cruelty and violence Muslims perpetrate against non-Muslims in every Western country they are now colonizing, should be surprised. CONQUEST of EVERY non-Muslim country is the Muslim goal.
Hate for, atrocities, and mass murder and enslavement of non-Muslims is taught in the Quran, mosques, schools, universities and Muslim media. You CANNOT make peace with a ‘people’ who want to murder and enslave you. Because this is the goal of EVERY devout Muslim who follows Islamic teaching, it is a crime against humanity to allow Muslims in any non-Muslim country.
It is a crime that Muslims were given Gush Katif in Gaza and that Muslims were given the high-tech greenhouses, etc. It is an enormous crime that Muslims were given control over a huge amount of land in Judea and Samaria and that PLO-PA were/are provided weapons and mega money and are given constant advanced military training by the U.S. All of the military training is used against Israel’s Jews.
EVERY non-Muslim is BETRAYED by our leaders.
@ Bernard Ross:
I chalk it up to disinterest and intellectual laziness and assimilation. Just like they cling to the Liberal political agenda in American politics they follow the liberal lead when it comes to Israel. Acceptance by liberal christian Americans trumps any Jewish or Israeli interests for them and every poll I’ve seen in the last 10 years supports what I am saying.
According to the American Jewish Identity Survey 2001, out of approximately 5.5 million American adults who are either Jewish by religion or of Jewish parentage and/or upbringing, nearly 1.4 million say they are members of a non-Jewish religion.
We are not talking here about secularism, not about Jews who opt out of going to synagogue in favor of a baseball game or the movies, but rather in favor of church. Since the vast majority of American Jews are of Ashkenazic descent, this means that 25% of the descendants of European Jews who resisted the blandishments and threats of Christianity for some sixty generations, often at the cost of their lives, are now voluntary apostates.
American Jews have been occupied for four decades in a desperate attempt to stay the tide of assimilation and intermarriage (not to even speak of their more hideous confrere: conversion).
“History shows that substitutes for halachic Judaism have a shelf life of four generations or less. Reform Judaism’s founder Moses Mendelssohn had nine grandchildren; eight of them were baptized as Christians. Zionist founder Theodore Herzl’s children were not only not Zionists, they were not Jews. How many of the grandchildren of the great Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz married under a chupah? How many of his great-grandchildren know what a chupah is?
To perpetuate Jewish culture, outside of museums and university courses, at the very least you need Jews. But Jews, as all the population surveys prove, are rapidly disappearing. The first step in the multi-million-dollar enterprise of passing Jewish culture on to the next generation is to ensure that there will be a next generation.” http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48899257.html
@ Bernard Ross:
I’m so disgusted by everything that’s going on that I need to cite the fact that ignorance of the law is no defense. And we can certainly say that ignorance or willful blindness about the war against the Jews and Israel is no excuse either. Because the campaign against Israel is nothing less than criminal. ~~~ Ignoring those criminal acts, or rationalizing them, becomes part of the crime. The crime in essence is to soften up the victim for the final blow, when Jews will be so hated and dehumanized that nobody will care about whatever it’s done to them.~~~ I don’t buy the excuse of ignorance. Sensitive Jewish souls that cringe in sympathy when an Arab gets a hangnail, don’t register the same feelings for Jews victims of demonization and terror.
Canadian Otter Said:
Ha’aretz Editor Is Trying to Get Olmert Raped
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=061cgLtuYeQ
@ Canadian Otter: I have been saying for the longest while that diaspora jews believe that the views of the left are the views of Israelis because the MSM presents them as such rather than presenting them as fringe journalists. The most quoted Israeli experts and journalists are Haaretz and leftists. I never see a Jpost reporter quoted.
OMG! I can’t believe this – B’nai B’rith World Center names David Landau, former editor-in-chief of Haaretz, winner of its highest honor for “contribution to extended Diaspora reportage” http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=9249
May I remind you that this is the same David Landau who told US secretary of state Condi Rice that Israel needed to be “raped”. This elicited such outrage that Landau eventually had to resign his post at Haaretz. – To add to the shock of this news is that right wing Israel Hayom website does not even mention this sordid detail in Landau’s background on their report.
yamit82 Said:
My wager would be that the dems considered it a red line and threatened to let some repub skeletons out of the closet. When both parties are corrupt there is little hope for any real transparency. Its a “gentlemen’s agreement” that’s a hallmark of the 2 party system. I watched this phenomenon for years in the third world.
Canadian Otter Said:
I was very amused, but suddenly became frightened that those involved might not be joking.
@ Canadian Otter:
Unbelievable – the US government refuses to profile terrorists but they will profile conservatives and punish them via the IRS all day long.
🙂 Maybe the Diaspora will save Israel –
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/the-latest-us-jewish-rage-bark-mitzvahs-video/2013/05/12/
I’m a extremely fanatical animal lover, but dogs with a tallit and yarmulke?
@ yamit82:
Yamit, I’ll tell you what really scares me: the fact that this and future administrations will be able to get away with anything. And I mean anything. ~~~ Some people care, those who care too much end up badly, and the rest don’t have the time to bother or are afraid to press too hard. ~~~ Even if we don’t look too far back, there were important questions regarding the president’s background that went unanswered, his and Bush’s morphing the US into a police state, the banksters’ still unpunished derivatives and mortage fraud, the NDAA … and on and on. Nothing will bring down this president. There is already a climate of fear seeping into the population, particularly with the official list of activities and thoughts that make people suspect of being terrorists. Being critical of the government being one of them.
@ Canadian Otter:
Potentially bigger than the Benghazi coverup. IRS VS.Conservatives UPDATE: IRS Has a Disastrous Presser (PLUS It’s Bush’s Fault)
Why Did the RNC Pull This Pre-Election Benghazi Ad?
The above is really a piece of good news
Young Israelis tend to be liberal lefties who think they can correct the mistakes of their elders
They have just learnt the truth – which many of us have been shouting off the roof tops for years
We even have older politicians who are blind & deaf and must be off their rocker if they do not understand the following:
There is no partner for peace
They do not want an Israel
They want to push us into the Med
They have a death cult
Arabs only understand one thing- strength – and they have to submit to us
We shall soon be in another war – one in which it is possible that they will be driven /flee over the to Jordan
They will then press for a return and we shall concede the border as being the Dead Sea to which we shall
happily agree
We shall the Temple Mt back under OUR control with free accessible worship for those who are sincere and a proper State of Israel PG
someone needs to send this article to John Kerry – not that he cares.
Interesting article about the IRS targeting right wing groups and Z-Street, the pro-Israel group. Their application for non-profit status with the IRS was subject to additional scrutiny, and when Z-Street questioned this, they were told they were suspect of funding terrorism! http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/05/11/IRS-Also-Targeted-Pro-Israel-Groups
TIME TO SMILE 🙂 The non-stop songs-and-chatter parakeet. He’ll make you laugh. ~~~ Disco the parakeet is a superstar with his own YouTube channel. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2322609/Nobody-puts-baby-bird-corner-Bilingual-budgie-amazes-owner-non-stop-songs-chatter.html
Why is it that people thousands of miles away and with no knowledge of Hebrew know about the Arabs’ real nature and intentions, about their violent statements, and about the consequences of appeasement, but so many Israelis seem not to want to know? They’ve witnessed the terror attacks, the daily violence. So where do they get those ideas about “peace”? Where’s their evidence when Egyptians keep calling for the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, and when there is conflict and bloodshed in just about every country with Muslims in it? Not even the so-called Palestinians can make peace with each other! How could they live in peace with the Jews?