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Richard Cohen's columns have appeared on the op-ed page of The Washington Post since 1984. He joined The Post in 1968 after attending the Columbia ...
Read more about Richard Cohen.
Richard Cohen's columns have appeared on the op-ed page of The Washington Post since 1984. He joined The Post in 1968 after attending the Columbia ...
Read more about Richard Cohen.
No Way to a Two-State Solution
Richard Cohen
What can you say about a 19-year-old woman, pretty in the pictures,
who participates in a terrorist attack in which 38 people, 13 of them
children, are killed in cold blood? The answer, if the woman is
Palestinian and the dead are Israelis, is heroine or martyr -- and if
she is Dalal Mughrabi, you name a school and a camp after her, and
last week, a square in the West Bank town of El Bireh. It will be the
fitting venue for those who furiously single out Israel for allegedly
killing civilians in violation of all the rules of warfare. Hypocrisy
Square would be its appropriate name.
To be sure, the dedication of Dalal Mughrabi Square was a low-key affair. This is because the Palestinians, unlike the Israelis, had the wit not to be so crude while Vice President Joe Biden was more or less in town. Consequently, the official ceremony was postponed and only one senior Fatah leader made an appearance. In contrast, the Israelis honored Biden by announcing that even more building projects would be constructed in East Jerusalem. This was apparently done for two reasons: to reassert Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem, and to impede a revival of peace talks.
Still, even in the Middle East, reality is more important than perception. If the term "confidence-building measure" is employed, what confidence can Israelis have in a people and their leaders who honor the 1978 murder of innocents, particularly children? I am aware that terrorism is the warfare of the weak and I am aware also that Jews used terrorism against the British before Israel became a nation in 1948. But even those rare instances of terrorism were directed against the military and when they were not -- the massacre of Arabs at the village of Deir Yassin -- they were condemned by the Zionist leadership. To my knowledge, there is no square in Israel named for the mass murderers of civilians. Palestinian society, in contrast, honors all sorts of terrorists.
This is not a minor point. The veneration of terrorists says something unsettling about Palestinian society. An Israeli can recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration and appreciate the depth of the calamity that befell them in 1948. The Palestinian intellectual Constantine Zurayk coined the term "al-Nakba" (the disaster) for their 1948 debacle -- and there is no doubt it was. But for Palestinians, that disaster has only been compounded by an Arab intransigence and belligerence that played into Israel's territorial ambitions, particularly the annexation of East Jerusalem. The reliance on terrorism has had it cinematic charms and given the Palestinians a certain cache among the West's kafiya set, but it has caused Israelis to dig in their heels. The adulation of Dalal Mughrabi and other terrorists is bound to give your average Israeli parent a certain pause: Is this the state we want next to us? Didn't pulling out of Gaza produce steady drizzle of rockets and, in due course, another war?
Editorialists around the world were quite right to bash the government of Binyamin Netanyahu for its in-your-face rebuke to Biden -- even though, as the analyst Stephen P. Cohen explains, the decision by right-wing ministers was meant also as a rebuke to Netanyahu himself. These housing plans are more than just an irritant. They are a core issue. They proclaim the insistence of right-wing Israelis that all of Jerusalem will remain in Israeli hands on pragmatic grounds and because God wants it this way. For both reasons a second opinion is in order but not, as it happens, sought.
Still, it would have been nice for those same editorialists to have paused in their anti-Israel jihad to wonder a bit about the virtually simultaneous Palestinian veneration of terrorists. In fact, the determination in the West, particularly Europe, not to hold Palestinians morally accountable for terrorism -- as well as their commonplace anti-Semitism -- is a repugnant form of neocolonial mentality in which, once again, the Palestinians are being patronized. I dare say the Brits would have reacted differently if a square in Belfast had been named for some IRA terrorist.
Washington's response to the Israeli government's announcement of additional housing was both harsh and appropriate -- an "affront" and "insult," David Axelrod, President Obama's senior adviser, called it. He might have added "unnecessary" and "counterproductive." The incessant march of West Bank settlements and housing has to stop if there is any chance of reaching the vaunted two-state solution. At the same time, though, one of those states has to stop exalting terrorists.
Stop the settlements. Rename Dalal Mughrabi Square. Now let's talk.
========
Richard Cohen's e-mail address is cohenr@washpost.com
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 03/16/2010
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Posted Comments:
03-19-2010 17:55
JCE wrote:
Catharyne
It isn't just acknowledging the truth, it is challenging American citizens and posters to do the homework as well, and post as well. Goldenwren is the only other person I know who seems to want to do such an accurate and complete job of research. And you are the only conservative on here who is consistently right in their facts. Rather appalling that the Americans don't have the same interest in the truth.
03-18-2010 12:19
Catharyne Stauffer wrote:
To HHJ and JCE thank you :) I try hard to bring added information to these many topics of interest just like so many posters on this sit do , yourselves included :)
03-17-2010 22:23
JCE wrote:
As usual, Catharyne delivers the goods. The lies about the Jews have been horrendous all along. Mostly caused by governments who wanted to use them as banks and not pay them back. So they stirred up hatred against them, thru their tool the church, to either run them off, or kill them. But even now, historians and archaeologists are telling a different story about the history of the Jews, and it is a far different one than the Bible. One that paints them not as slaves, but allies, mercenaries, and highly skilled free people. But even the Bible corroborates all of the new stuff when you look at it. A few things are certain. The Jews have their back against the wall, with nowhere to go. And why should they? They will fight, and why not? Even we as a nation talk out the side of our mouths, and stab them in the back. And so many people are afraid of the temple being rebuilt. People don't know the truth about the Jews, and don't want to know it. As far as the banker Jews, considering how they were treated, I would take revenge. The Japanese did it. I wonder how much of the oil money we pay to the Arabs goes to fight Israel, our supposed ally. But then, when you look at how our elite rulers and government treats its own middle and lower class, how can you be surprised at how we deal with the Jews?
03-17-2010 15:37
HHJ wrote:
Thank you Catharyne, for the good information!!!
03-17-2010 12:42
Catharyne Stauffer wrote:
With Iran purchasing land in the so called Palestinian area I would NOT be surprised to learn that they bought that land with plans to set up a Military base or at the very least militia camps .
Last summer when Israel finally had enough of the Palestinians sending missiles into their residential areas they were heavily criticized by the UN and Palestinian sympathizers that they reacted with excessive force .
Israel attacks were based on intel where certain tunnels were that held munitions , missiles and other explosive material .
This caused Iran's leader Ahmadinejah to really get beside himself with rage and again reiterate that he was going to wipe Israel off the map .
I bet some of the now Iranian owned land was damaged and perhaps stalled certain plans :)
Last summer when Israel finally had enough of the Palestinians sending missiles into their residential areas they were heavily criticized by the UN and Palestinian sympathizers that they reacted with excessive force .
Israel attacks were based on intel where certain tunnels were that held munitions , missiles and other explosive material .
This caused Iran's leader Ahmadinejah to really get beside himself with rage and again reiterate that he was going to wipe Israel off the map .
I bet some of the now Iranian owned land was damaged and perhaps stalled certain plans :)
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