Thank you for your comment. Would that all US Jews supported the right of Palestinian self-determination alongside Israel, and I do appreciate that a sizeable minority do. Unfortunately, the militant Israeli establishment — with a small number of honourable exceptions such as Uri Avnery when he was an MK — has never seriously wanted peace, and in fact has done everthing in its power to prevent a viable Palestinian state. I do very much agree with your sentiments that

“Rather than polarizing people and perpetuating the problem by representing one people’s pain and suffering as worse or one people’s rights as more important than the other’s, responsible leaders must rise to the challenge to appreciate with compassion the history and struggles of all the peoples involved.”

Palestinian writers such as Azmi Bishara have themselves argued compellingly that understanding collective Jewish trauma would help in this conflict; this does not however give the current Israeli state free rein to continue its despicable treatment of the Palestinian people. You would be aware then that this is a starkly asymmetric conflict; there is really no fair comparison between the death toll, persecution, humiliation, economic strangulation, starvation and military occupation suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israeli governments, evidenced in death toll numbers; in rejection after rejection of peace offers such as the Saudi Peace Plan; in the Israeli state’s refusal to define borders; in its refusal to recognise Hamas, the democratically elected choice of the Palestinians; in improperly withholding tax credits to the Palestinians, their own money — yet at the end of the day, it is the Israeli state absurdly claiming a monopoly on victimhood, whipping up fear amongst the Israeli population to justify repugnant militarism and silence legitimate criticism with false charges of anti-semitism. This pertains to states as well with the war drums now being beaten for a strike against Iran, just as Israel pushed for an invasion of Iraq, with the canard that Iran’s figurehead President Ahmadinejad said “wipe off the map” — he did not.

Tell me, Shari, do you think these reasonable preconditions for peace are too onerous? Hamas has already recognised Israel’s existence (Reuters, January 2007) — when will Israel recognize the Palestinians and their right to exist? Your sentiments are laudable but evince no apparent awareness or recognition of what Israel is doing to violate this and prevent meaningful peace and a just settlement. Hamas has repeatedly offered — and stuck by hudnas or ceasefires, unlike Israel’s belligerent provocations. Among them, the continued illegal settlements and the apartheid wall that eats up a furrther 10% of Palestinian land.

Many seasoned observers, Israelis such as Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, the late Tanya Reinhart and Uri Avnery, have observed that the ball is and has been in Israel’s court to enact peace but it has spurned every opportunity, instead propagating the myth that all Hamas had to do would be to recognise its occupier and all would be dandy — one of many spurious stalling tactics.

I think Roger Lieberman is right on the money here, and the sooner we see through the fiction of Israeli government benevolence or its claims of being a democracy, the sooner we come closer to enacting a genuine peace. But not before we hear the sound of illusions being shattered. Palestinian violence (in service to resistance) is episodic and in reaction to the Israeli attempt to exterminate them (one simply uses it as rhetoric, the other party actually is doing it), so it really should be the Palestinians who have any rightful claim to feeling existential crisis, not a state that is armed to the teeth and funded by ridiculously lavish amounts of US tax dollars—it is the Israeli state which is addicted to violence yet simultaneously claiming a monopoly both on victimhood and on virtue. Last time I checked, Palestine hadn’t invaded a country. Nor had Lebanon. Israel, as you know, has. And for what?

May I offer pointers to two excellent sites, one American, the other Israeli, that may further clarify what I’ve described here in brief: http://www.ifamericansknew.org and http://www.gush-shalom.org.

Thanks for coming by.