Pro-Mideast in America: Getting past 'Pro-Israel' and 'Pro-Palestine'

[IndianaGreen]

At root, the struggle for peace in the Middle East is the fight of the Israelis and Palestinians against the extremists in their own midst.

We know this much, if nothing else. If we allow the extremists their victory, everyone will have lost.

Pro-Mideast in America: Getting past 'Pro-Israel' and 'Pro-Palestine'

By Bradley Burston

Last update - 16:01 17/02/2010

Let's face it. Viewed from North America, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dismal read.

Seen in full context, the confrontation is suffocatingly complex. As literature, it is paralytic, sullenly wordy. The plot, for all its spasms and blood, goes nowhere. As drama, the Israel-Palestine morass is the geopolitical equivalent of James Cameron's 1997 film "Titanic": interminable, exorbitant, unwieldy, dumb without just cause. Titanic-like, it tempts the observer to bail out in mid-course, seething under the breath "Sink, already! Just #*%&-ing sink!"

This may explain why it often seems that the only participants left standing - that is to say, still interested - in the debate over the future of Israel and Palestine, are extremists. These are the evangelists of the zero-sum. They are the activists for the One State Solution, that is, One State for My Side Alone. They are the misers of spirit who believe that this land cannot be big enough for the both of us.

They are the Jews for whom compromise is spelled Auschwitz, for whom pro-Israel is the same as anti-Palestinian, for whom pro-Israel also means there is no Palestine, there never was, nor will there be. For this brand of pro-Israeli, there are no Palestinians, and these Palestinians - who do not, in fact, exist, and who all came from somewhere else - lack all claims to morality, compassion, and historical legitimacy.

They are, as well, the Palestinians for whom accommodation is spelled collaboration, for whom pro-Palestinian also means There is no Israel, there never was, nor will there be. For this brand of pro-Palestinian , the Jews of today are not real Jews, descended from people who were once here, and these Jews - who are not, in fact, Jews, and who in any case all came from somewhere else - lack all claims to morality, compassion, and historical legitimacy.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150311.html