Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n their defense, the Israelis seem to have figured out the whole thing and opted out. But the hapless Palestinian leadership, along with their Arab League partners, joined by the French, EU and UN representatives, and even US Secretary of State, John Kerry, decided to play along.

However, the French peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is nothing but a charade, and they all know it, Palestinians included.  

So, why the colossal waste of time?  

If you have been following the Middle East ‘peace process’ business in the last quarter of a century, you are certainly aware that the ‘negotiations table’ is nothing but a metaphor for buying time and obtaining political capital. The Israelis want time to finalize their colonial projects in building up illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land; and the Palestinian leadership uses the ‘talks’ to acquire political validations from the so-called ‘peace-brokers’, namely the United States.  

The US, in turn, uses the futile ‘negotiations’ to further assert itself as the caretaker of the Middle East, overthrowing regimes while simultaneously brokering peace.  

Meanwhile, every other relevant political entity is included or excluded based on its own worth to, or relationship with the United States. Thus, the honor of invitation is bestowed upon ‘friendly regimes’. Others, namely, ‘enemies of peace’ are rejected for their failure to accommodate or adhere to US foreign policies in the region.  

While the ‘peace process’ has failed to deliver neither peace to the region nor justice to the Palestinians, the ‘peace process’ industry has been an unenviable success, at least until 2014 when Kerry and the US administration decided to tend to more urgent regional affairs, for example, the war on Syria.  

By then, Israel’s rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was too empowered by the anti-peace sentiment in his own society to even partake in the charade. There was little capital for him to be seen with aging Mahmoud Abbas, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries. His rightwing constituency, which dominates Israeli society, could not have cared less. They were – and are – still busy confiscating Palestinian land, issuing more racist laws in the Knesset and fighting dissent among their own ranks. 

Prior to that date, and since the very first peace conference in Madrid in 1991, the ‘peace process’ has splendidly paid dividends. The Israelis were finally accepted as a ‘peace partner’ and Israel slowly made its way from the margins of the Middle East to the center, without having to concede an inch.  

Even Saeb Erekat, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, has no qualms with this assertion. “In fact, the number of Israeli settlers transferred into Occupied Palestine has nearly quadrupled since the beginning of the ‘peace process,’” he recently wrote in the Israeli daily ‘Haaretz’; “yet Israel continues to enjoy impunity and is not held accountable.”  

Considering his ‘chief’ position in the travesty, why did Erekat agree to help maintain the misapprehension of peace considering the price that was paid in lost land, time and lives?  

Well, because the Palestinian leadership itself was at the forefront of raking in the benefits of the spurious peace. The ‘peace process’ meant money, and plenty of it; billions of dollars invested in the Palestinian Authority – feeding a dead-end political system that existed with no real authority, and almost always remained on the sidelines as Israel used extreme violence to sustain its colonial enterprise in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem.  

The PA even stayed aside as Israel battled the Resistance in Gaza, killing thousands of civilians and besieging an already highly-populated and economically-devastated region. Alas, in the last ten years, it seems that Palestinian leadership and factions invested more energy to nurse their own internal strife than to confront the Israeli Occupation.  

The French government has its own reasons for taking the lead on reviving the dormant peace talks and, no, those reasons have nothing to do with French desire to create a more equitable platform for talks, as Palestinian officials conveniently allege.  

Writing in Israel’s ‘Arutz Sheva’, Eran Lerman, explained the French endeavor in more practical terms.  “Broad regional security considerations” are driving the French diplomatic initiatives, he contented. 

In fact, the logic behind this is discernable. French President Francois Hollande’s approval ratings are at an all-time low. As of March, he broke his own record of low approval, sinking to 17 percent. (In October of last year it stood at 18 percent). His country is embattled by violence, massive strikes, terrible foreign policy decisions that resulted in French military involvement in Libya, Mali and Syria.  

Leading world leaders in another peace gambit that is helping distract from the US failure on that front is a clever political calculation from the French perspective. It might even help Hollande appear stately and in charge.  

The Israelis rejected the initiative right away, without even bothering with a public diplomacy campaign to defend their position, as they often do. Dora Gold, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry repeated on the eve of the conference what Netanyahu and others have parroted for weeks. The conference will “completely fail”, she said, calling on Abbas to engage in direct talks with no prior conditions instead.  

The nonchalant Israeli position can be partly explained in Tel Aviv’s trust in the French government, the very government that is taking the lead in the fight against the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).   

“On more than one occasion, French positions and actions on this subject have been more reassuring from an Israeli point of view than those of our American ally,” wrote Lerman. “For example, France served as the hardline anchor of the P5+1 [in the Iran nuclear talks]. It was France that raised questions about reliability and implementation (even as it was French business interests that were among the first to bang on Tehran’s doors).”  

The conceited Israeli response to the French conference was paralleled with euphoria among the embattled Palestinian leadership. That, too, is understandable. The PA subsists on this sort of international attention, and since the last major meeting between Abbas and the former, now jailed Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in 2008, Abbas is left on his own, disowned by the Americans and neglected by Arab governments.  

“The French Initiative is the flicker of hope Palestine has been waiting for,” wrote Erekat. “We are confident that it will provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of negotiations.” 

Even if – and when – the long-awaited ‘resumption of negotiations’ arrive, nothing good is likely to come out from it, except for political dividends for those who have participated in the 25-year gambit: buying time and acquiring more funds. There is nothing to celebrate about this.  

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Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]erely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and other media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting experience. For many years, Palestinian media has been on the defensive, unable to articulate a coherent message, torn between factions and desperately trying to fend off the Israeli media campaign, along with its falsifications and unending propaganda or ‘hasbara’.  

It is still too early to claim any kind of paradigm shift, but the second Tawasol Conference in Istanbul, which took place May 18 to 19, served as an opportunity to consider the vastly changing media landscape, and to highlight the challenges and the opportunities facing Palestinians in their uphill battle.  

Not only are Palestinians expected to demolish many years of Israeli disinformation, predicated on a make-believe historical discourse that has been sold to the world as fact, but also to construct their own lucid narrative that is free from the whims of factions and personal gains.  

It will not be easy, of course.  

My message in the “Palestine in the Media” Conference, organized by the Palestine International Forum for Media and Communication is that, if the Palestinian leadership is failing to achieve political unity, at least Palestinian intellectuals must insist on the unity of their narrative. Even the most compromising of Palestinians can acknowledge the centrality of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the destruction of their towns and villages in 1947-48.  

They can – and should –  also agree about the hideousness and violence of the Occupation; the dehumanization at the military checkpoints; the increasingly shrinking spaces in the West Bank as a result of the illegal settlements and the colonization of whatever remains of Palestine; the suffocating hold on Occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds); the injustice of the siege on Gaza, and the one-sided wars on the Strip that have killed over 4,000 people, mostly civilians, in the course of seven years, and much more.  

Professor Nashaat Al-Aqtash from Birzeit University, perhaps more realistically, downgraded the expectations even further. “If we could only agree on how we present the narrative regarding Al-Quds and the illegal settlements, at least that would be a start,” he said. 

The obvious fact is that Palestinians have more in common than they would like to admit. They are all victimized by the same circumstances, fighting the same Occupation, suffering the same violations of human rights, and facing the same future outcome resulting from the same conflict.  

However, many are strangely incapable of disconnecting from their tribal-like, factional affiliations. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having ideological leanings and supporting one political party over another. It becomes a moral crisis, though, when the party affiliation becomes stronger than one’s affiliation to the collective, national struggle for freedom. Sadly, many are still trapped in this thinking.  

But things are also changing; they always do. After over two decades of the failure of the so-called ‘peace process’, and the rapid increase in the colonization of the Occupied Territories in addition to the extreme violence used to achieve these ends, many Palestinians are waking up to the painful facts. There can be no freedom for the Palestinian people without unity and without resistance.  

Resistance does not always have to mean a gun and a knife, but rather the utilization of the energies of a nation at home and in ‘shatat’ (Diaspora), along with the galvanization of the pro-justice and peace communities all over the world. There must soon be a movement in which Palestinians declare a global struggle against apartheid, involving all Palestinians, their leadership, factions, civil society and communities everywhere. They must speak in one voice, declare one objective, and state the same demands, over and over again.  

It is bewildering to realize that a nation that has been so wronged for so long being so greatly misunderstood, while those who have done the harm are largely absolved and seen as if the victim.  

Sometime in the late 1950’s, Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, became aware of the need to unify the Israeli Zionist narrative regarding the conquering and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. According to a revelation by Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Ben-Gurion worried that the Palestinian refugee crisis was not going to go away without a consistent Israeli message that the Palestinians left their land of their own devices, following instructions to do so by various Arab governments.  

Of course, that, too, was a fabrication, but many supposed truths often start with a sheer lie. He delegated several academics to present the most falsified, yet coherent, story on the exodus of the Palestinians. The outcome was Doc GL-18/17028 of 1961. That document has, ever since, served as the cornerstone of the Israeli ‘hasbara’ concerning the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Palestinians ran away and were not driven out, was the crux of the message. Israel has been repeating this falsehood for over 55 years and, of course, many have believed it.  

Not until recently, thanks to the effort of a burgeoning group of Palestinian historians – and courageous Israelis – who counter the propaganda, a Palestinian narrative is taking shape, although much is yet to be done to offset the damage that has already taken place.  

In fact, a real victory for the truth would only happen when the Palestinian narrative is no longer seen as a ‘counter narrative’ but as a sovereign story of its own, free from the confines of defensiveness and the burden of a history laden with lies and half-truths.  

The only way I see that happening is when Palestinian intellectuals invest more time and effort in studying and narrating a ‘people’s history’ of Palestine, which could finally humanize the Palestinian people, and challenge the polarized perception of them as terrorists or perpetual victims. When the ordinary individual becomes the center of history, the outcomes are more relatable, more effective and poignant.  

The same logic can be applied to journalism, as well. Aside from finding their common story, Palestinian journalists need to reach out to the wider world, not only to their traditional circle of dedicated friends and supporters, but to mainstream society. If people truly appreciate the truth, especially from a humanist perspective, they cannot possibly support genocide and ethnic cleansing.  

And by ‘wider world’ I am hardly referring to London, Paris and New York, but to Africa, South America, Asia and the entire South. Nations from this hemisphere can fully understand the pain and injustice of military occupation, colonization, imperialism and apartheid. I fear that the emphasis on the need to counter Israeli ‘hasbara’ in the West has meant the allocation of a disproportionate amount of resources and energy in a few places, while ignoring the rest of the world, whose support has for long been the backbone of international solidarity. They must not be taken for granted.  

The good news, however, is that Palestinians have been making great strides in the right direction, although with no thanks to the Palestinian leadership. The key, now, is to be able to unify, streamline and build on those existing efforts so that such growing solidarity translates into greater success in raising global awareness and holding Israel accountable for its Occupation and violations of human rights.  

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Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n May 15^th of every year, over the past 68 years, Palestinians have commemorated their collective exile from Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make room for a ‘Jewish homeland’ came at a price of unrelenting violence and perpetual suffering. Palestinians refer to that enduring experience as ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’.  

However, the ‘Nakba’ is not merely a Palestinian experience; it is also an Arab wound that never ceases from bleeding.  

The Arab ‘Nakba’ was namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided much of the Arab world between competing Western powers. A year later, Palestine was removed from the Arab equation altogether and ‘promised’ to the Zionist movement in Europe, creating one of the most protracted conflicts in modern human history.  

Despite all attempts at separating the current conflict in Palestine from its larger Arab environs, the two realities can never be delinked since they both go back to the same historical roots.  

How Did This Come about?  

When British diplomat, Mark Sykes, succumbed to the Spanish flu pandemic at the age of 39, in 1919, another diplomat, Harold Nicolson, described his influence on the Middle East region as follows:  

“It was due to his endless push and perseverance, to his enthusiasm and faith, that Arab nationalism and Zionism became two of the most successful of our war causes.” 

Retrospectively, we know that Nicolson spoke too soon. The breed of ‘Arab nationalism’ he was referencing in 1919 was fundamentally different from the nationalist movements that gripped several Arab countries in the 1950s and 60s. The rallying cry for Arab nationalism in those later years was liberation and sovereignty from Western colonialism and their local allies.  

Sykes’ contribution to the rise of Zionism did not promote much stability, either. The Zionist project transformed into the State of Israel, itself established on the ruins of Palestine in 1948. Since then, Zionism and Arab nationalism have been in constant conflict, resulting in deplorable wars and seemingly perpetual blood-letting.  

However, Sykes’ lasting contribution to the Arab region was his major role in the signing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, also known as the Asia Minor Agreement, one hundred years ago. That infamous treaty between Britain and France, which was negotiated with the consent of Russia, has shaped the Middle East’s geopolitics for an entire century.  

Throughout the years, challenges to the status quo imposed by Sykes-Picot failed to fundamentally alter its arbitrarily-sketched borders, which divided the Arabs into ‘spheres of influence’ to be administered and controlled by Western powers.

Yet, with the recent rise of ‘Daesh’ and the establishment of its own version of equally arbitrary borders encompassing large swathes of Syria and Iraq as of 2014, combined with the current discussion of dividing Syria into a federation, Sykes-Picot’s persisting legacy could possibly be dithering under the pressures of new, violent circumstances.  

Why Sykes-Picot? 

Sykes-Picot was signed as a result of violent circumstances that gripped much of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East at the time. 

It all started when World War I broke out in July 1914. At the time, major European powers fell into two camps: the Allies – consisting mainly of Britain, France and Russia – vs. the Central Powers – Germany and Austria-Hungary.  

The Ottoman Empire soon joined the war, siding with Germany, partly because it was aware that the Allies’ ambitions sought to control all Ottoman territories, which included the Arab regions of Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt and North Africa.  

In March 1915 – Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, which would allow the latter to annex the Ottoman capital and seize control of other strategic regions and waterways.  

A few months later, in November 1915 – Britain and France began negotiations in earnest, aimed at dividing the territorial inheritance of the Ottoman Empire should the war conclude in their favor.

Russia was made aware of the agreement, and assented to its provisions.  

Thus, a map that was marked with straight lines with the use of a Chinagraph pencil largely determined the fate of the Arabs, dividing them in accordance with various haphazard assumptions of tribal and sectarian lines.  

Dividing the Loot 

Negotiating on behalf of Britain was Mark Sykes, and representing France was François Georges-Picot. The diplomats resolved that, once the Ottomans were soundly defeated, France would receive areas marked (a), which include the region of south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq – including Mosel, most of Syria and Lebanon.  

Area (b) was marked as British-controlled territories, which included Jordan, southern Iraq, Haifa and Acre in Palestine and the coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan.  

Russia, on the other hand, would be granted Istanbul, Armenia and the strategic Turkish Straits.  

The improvised map consisted not only of lines but also colors, along with language that attested to the fact that the two countries viewed the Arab region on purely materialistic terms, without paying the slightest attention to the possible repercussions of slicing up entire civilizations with a multifarious history of co-operation and conflict.  

The Sykes-Picot negotiations concluded in March 1916 and was official, although it was secretly signed on May 19, 1916.

Legacy of Betrayal  

WWI concluded on November 11, 1918, after which the division of the Ottoman Empire began in earnest.  

British and French mandates were extended over divided Arab entities, while Palestine was granted to the Zionist movement over which a Jewish state was established, three decades later.  

The agreement, which was thoroughly designed to meet Western colonial interests, left behind a legacy of division, turmoil and war.  

While the status quo it has created guaranteed the hegemony of Western countries over the fate of the Middle East, it failed to guarantee any degree of political stability or engender economic equality.  

The Sykes-Picot Agreement took place in secret for a specific reason: it stood at complete odds with promises made to the Arabs during the Great War. The Arab leadership, under the command of Sharif Hussein, was promised complete independence following the war, in exchange for supporting the Allies against the Ottomans.  

It took many years and successive rebellions for Arab countries to gain their independence. Conflict between the Arabs and colonial powers resulted in the rise of Arab nationalism, which was born in the midst of extremely violent and hostile environments, or more accurately, as an outcome of them.  

Arab nationalism may have succeeded in maintaining a semblance of an Arab identity but failed to develop a sustainable and unified retort to Western colonialism.  

When Palestine – which was promised by Britain as a national home for the Jews as early as November 1917 – became Israel, hosting mostly Europeans settlers, the fate of the Arab region east of the Mediterranean was sealed as the ground for perpetual conflict and antagonism.  

It is here, in particular, that the terrible legacy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement is mostly felt, in all of its violence, shortsightedness and political unscrupulousness.  

100 years after two British and French diplomats divided the Arabs into spheres of influence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement remains a pugnacious but dominant reality of the Middle East.  

Five years after Syria descended into a violent civil war, the mark of Sykes-Picot are once more being felt as France, Britain, Russia – and now the United States – are considering what US Secretary of State, John Kerry, recently termed ‘Plan B’ – dividing Syria based on sectarian lines, likely in accordance with a new Western interpretation of ‘spheres of influence.’  

The Sykes-Picot map might have been a crude vision drawn hastily during a global war but, since then, it has become the main frame of reference that the West uses to redraw the Arab world, and to “control (it) as they desire and as they may see fit.”  

The Palestinian ‘Nakba’, therefore, must be understood as part and parcel of the larger western designs in the Middle East dating back a century, when the Arabs were (and remain) divided and Palestine was (and remains) conquered.

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Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

There is a witch-hunt in the British Labor Party. Britain’s Opposition party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is being hounded for not rooting out alleged anti-Semitism in his party. Those leading the charge are pro-Israel Zionists and their supporters within the party, members who are mostly allied with the former Prime Minister, the largely discredited pro-war Tony Blair. The Blairites are quite unhappy that Corbyn, who won the party’s leadership election last September with a landslide victory is a non-elitist politician, with a deep-rooted grassroots activist past, and, yes, a strong stance for Palestinian rights. 

Corbyn has been subjected to all sorts of attacks and ridicule from his own party, many members of which have been busy plotting to push him out, but remained hesitant because of his popular appeal. The Labor party had, in fact, lost much of its credibility since the days of Blair’s ‘New Labor’ and following the US lead in waging an immoral and illegal war on Iraq. Blair’s supporters changed the priorities of the party, which was ‘labor’ by name only. Corbyn’s advent galvanized young people around fresh ideals, and renewed the shaky faith of the party’s traditional supporters.  

But since he became a leader, the man’s agenda of anti-corruption and greater equality in Britain has been slowed down, or even entirely halted, by some most bizarre controversies. He was attacked over such things as his supposed poor sense of fashion, his alleged lack of patriotism, and more. The attacks have been so ridiculous, yet omnipresent, that they became the subject of popular memes and much satire.  

And when it all failed, he was hit with another manufactured controversy, that of alleged anti-Semitism within his own party. The recent attacks have been the most organized, yet. They involve Israel supporters, British politicians, the media and other sources.  

The media has tried to paint him as an embattled leader who is not able to control the uncontainable Jewish hate oozing from his party members.  

British Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, known for his strong support of Israel joined the fray, charging that the lid has been lifted on bigotry within Labor and that investigation into anti-Semitism must be more than a ‘sticker plaster.’  

The investigation and the preceding outcry of anti-Semitism, however, targeted those who were critical of Israel, not Jews, in general, or Judaism. Former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labor for suggesting links between the Nazi party and early Zionists, was not making any reference to Jews per se, and certainly not to Judaism. Arguably, if he was wrong, then it is a mere question of history, not race.

In its coverage of the controversy, even the BBC, delinks both concepts:  

“Anti-Semitism is ‘hostility and prejudice directed against Jewish people’, while “Zionism refers to the movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East.”

Indeed, the first is a racist ideology, while the latter is an entirely political and historical question, especially since early Zionists were largely atheists. Israel’s Zionist-Jewish contradiction was phrased skillfully by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, when he wrote:  

“The secular Jews who founded the Zionist movement wanted paradoxically both to secularize Jewish life and to use the Bible as a justification for colonizing Palestine; in other words, they did not believe in God but He, nonetheless, promised them Palestine.” 

But the Rabbi, and many of those who unscrupulously joined the charge against Labor pretend that Zionism, a late 19^th century political movement is the same as Judaism, a religion that dates back millennia.  

However, there is nothing new here, and the manufactured ‘controversy’ is hardly limited to Britain or the Labor Party.  

The message that Israeli hasbara (propaganda) has been steadily sending to its critics since the establishment of Israel over the ruins of the Palestinian homeland in May 1948: if you are critical of Israel, however slightly, you are a certified anti-Semite. If it happens that you are Jewish, then you are a self-hating Jew, and if you are an Arab, you must abandon the idea that you are, yourself, Semitic and Arab, by merely opposing Israel’s ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians who are all anti-Semites, anyway.  

I doubt there is a self-respecting Palestinian intellectual who has not fended against accusations of being anti-Semitic for merely advocating Palestinian rights, and demanding accountability of Israeli violations of human rights and war crimes.  

Many independent Jewish voices, too, have found themselves on the defensive, although within a different category. The classification of a ‘self-hating Jew’ has been ever so popular these days, especially as many Jewish activists have righteously joined the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS). The once-marginalized voices are now a large and growing crowd.  

Unable to defend Israeli action based on logical arguments, international law or common sense, Israel’s supporters use other means, threats, smears and vilifications, and also by fabricating non-existing controversies. And no one is immune.   

Daniel Greenfield engaged in a bizarre diatribe in the Jewish Press on March 8, in an article entitled: “Bernie Sanders is NOT a Jew“.  In the same familiar tone of distortion and self-pity, Greenfield theorized: “While Bernie Sanders invoked his last few drops of Jewishness and the Holocaust in support of a Muslim anti-Semite’s cry bullying, he didn’t feel the need to do so for the Jewish State when it actually stood on the verge of destruction. Instead, he had called for denying arms to Israel before the Yom Kippur War.”  

How about the United Nations, which has failed to enforce a single resolution of the dozens of resolutions passed to demand justice for the Palestinians and accountability from Israel?  

It is an “anti-Semitic circus” according to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The novel designation followed the recent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC’s) decision to compile a list of international and Israeli companies that do business in illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. 

Despite the fact that the UN is yet to reverse the worsening plight of the Palestinians or advance their cause beyond symbolic gestures, one rarely hears the accusation that the UN is anti-Palestinian, or anti-Arab.  

On the other hand, for merely censuring Israeli action by words only, the UN, according to Jennifer Rubin writing in the Washington Post on February 16, “tolerates and, by its silence, condones, anti-Semitism.”  

The US government has blindly and unconditionally given credence to that notion, marching to the drumbeat of the Israeli government on every occasion and boycotting international institutions whenever Israel raises the frequently false flag of anti-Semitism.  

The matter is not only pertinent to Israel and Palestine. Anyone who dares go against Israel’s interest in the region and around the world is a candidate for the manipulation of Israeli terminology.  

Following the Iran nuclear deal between Iran and western powers, conservative commentator, Debbie Schlussel, coined new terminology: ‘Jews in the Name Only’ or JINOs. Those alleged JINOs are the 98 prominent ‘Hollywood Jews’, who backed the Iran deal in an open letter.  

By completely shutting the door on any form of criticism of Israel, Zionism, and the censure of its military behavior in the region coupled with the daily violence meted out against occupied Palestinians, Israel has expanded the definition of anti-Semitism to include whole countries, governments, international institutions and millions of independently thinking individuals the world over.  

However, not even such deliberate distortion should prevent us from making the differentiation loud and clear: anti-Jewish racism should be condemned as loudly and decisively as Islamophobia and any other form of racial discrimination and bigotry.  

However, criticizing violent political movements and the behavior of any state that violates international law and human rights is a moral duty. Israel will not be the exception.

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Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Truth’s Advocate

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t the age of 21, I crossed Gaza into Egypt to pursue a degree in political science. The timing could have not been worse. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had resulted in a US-led international coalition and a major war, which eventually paved the road for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I became aware that Palestinians were suddenly ‘hated’ in Egypt because of Yasser Arafat’s stance in support of Iraq at the time. I just did not know the extent of that alleged ‘hate.’  

It was in a cheap hotel in Cairo, where I slowly ran out of the few Egyptian pounds at my disposal, that I met Hajah Zainab, a kindly, old custodian who treated me like a son. She looked unwell, wobbled as she walked, and leaned against walls to catch her breath before carrying on with her endless chores. The once carefully-designed tattoos on her face, became a jumble of wrinkled ink that defaced her skin. Still, the gentleness in her eyes prevailed, and whenever she saw me she hugged me and cried.  

Hajah Zainab wept for two reasons: taking pity on me as I was fighting a deportation order in Cairo – for no other reason than the fact that I was a Palestinian at a time that Arafat endorsed Saddam Hussein while Hosni Mubarak chose to ally with the US. I grew desperate and dreaded the possibility of facing the Israeli intelligence, Shin Bet, who were likely to summon me to their offices once I crossed the border back to Gaza. The other reason is that Hajah Zainab’s only son, Ahmad, had died fighting the Israelis in Sinai.  

Zainab’s generation perceived Egypt’s wars with Israel, that of 1948, 1956 and 1967 as wars in which Palestine was a central cause. No amount of self-serving politics and media conditioning could have changed that. But the war of 1967 was that of unmitigated defeat. With direct, massive support from the US and other western powers, Arab armies were soundly beaten, routed at three different fronts. Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were lost, along with the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and Sinai, as well.  

It was then that some Arab countries’ relations with Palestine began changing. Israel’s victory and the US-West’s unremitting support convinced some Arab governments to downgrade their expectations, and expected the Palestinians to do so, as well. Egypt, once the torch-bearer of Arab nationalism, succumbed to a collective sense of humiliation and, later, redefined its priorities to free its own land from Israeli Occupation. Without the pivotal Egyptian leadership, Arab countries were divided into camps, each government with its own agenda. As Palestine, all of it, was then under Israeli control, Arabs slowly walked away from a cause they once perceived to be the central cause of the Arab nation.  

The 1967 war also brought an end to the dilemma of independent Palestinian action, which was almost entirely hijacked by various Arab countries. Moreover, the war shifted the fcus to the West Bank and Gaza, and allowed the Palestinian faction, Fatah, to fortify its position in light of Arab defeat and subsequent division.  

That division was highlighted most starkly in the August 1967 Khartoum summit, where Arab leaders clashed over priorities and definitions. Should Israel’s territorial gains redefine the status quo? Should Arabs focus on returning to a pre-1967 situation or that of pre-1948, when historic Palestine was first occupied and Palestinians ethnically cleansed? 

The United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 242, on November 22, 1967, reflecting the US Johnson Administration’s wish to capitalize on the new status quo: Israeli withdrawal “from occupied territories” in exchange for normalization with Israel.  The new language of the immediate post-1967 period alarmed Palestinians who realized that any future political settlement was likely to ignore the situation that existed prior to the war.  

Eventually, Egypt fought and celebrated its victory of the 1973 war, which allowed it to consolidate its control over most of its lost territories. A few years later, the Camp David accords in 1979 divided the ranks of the Arabs even more and ended Egypt’s official solidarity with the Palestinians, while granting the most populous Arab state a conditioned control over its own land in Sinai. The negative repercussions of that agreement cannot be overstated. However, the Egyptian people, despite the passing of time, have never truly normalized with Israel.  

In Egypt, a chasm still exists between the government, whose behavior is based on political urgency and self-preservation, and a people who, despite a decided anti-Palestinian campaign in various media, are as ever determined to reject normalization with Israel until Palestine is free. Unlike the well-financed media circus that has demonized Gaza in recent years, the likes of Hajah Zainab have very few platforms where they can openly express their solidarity with the Palestinians. In my case, I was lucky enough to run into the aging custodian who cried for Palestine and her only son all those years ago. 

Nevertheless, that very character, Zainab, was reincarnated in my path of travel, time and again. I met her in Iraq in 1999. She was an old vegetable vendor living in Sadr City. I met her in Jordan in 2003. She was a cabby, with a Palestinian flag hanging from his cracked rearview mirror. She was also a retired Saudi journalist I met in Jeddah in 2010, and a Moroccan student I met at a speaking tour in Paris in 2013. She was in her early twenties. After my talk, she sobbed as she told me that Palestine for her people is like a festering wound. “I pray for a free Palestine every day,” she told me, “as my late parents did with every prayer.”  

Hajah Zainab is also Algeria, all of Algeria. When the Palestinian national football team met their Algerian counterparts last February, a strange, unprecedented phenomenon transpired that left many puzzled. The Algerian fans, some of the most ardent lovers of football anywhere, cheered for the Palestinians, non-stop. And when the Palestinian team scored a goal, it was if the bleachers were lit on fire. The crowded stadium exploded with a trancing chant for Palestine and Palestine alone.  

So, did the Arabs betray Palestine? The question is heard often, and it is often followed with the affirmative, ‘yes, they did.’ The Egyptian media scapegoating of Palestinians in Gaza, the targeting and starving of Palestinians in Yarmouk, Syria, the past civil war in Lebanon, the mistreatment of Palestinians in Kuwait in 1991 and, later, in Iraq in 2003 are often cited as examples. Now some insist that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was the last nail in the coffin of Arab solidarity with Palestine.  

I beg to differ. The outcome of the ill-fated ‘Arab Spring’ was a massive letdown, if not betrayal, not just of Palestinians but of most Arabs. The Arab world has turned into a massive ground for dirty politics between old and new rivals. While Palestinians were victimized, Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis and others are being victimized, as well.  

There has to be a clear political demarcation of the word ‘Arabs.’ Arabs can be unelected governments as much as they can be a kindly old woman earning two dollars a day in some dirty Cairo hotel. Arabs are emboldened elites who care only about their own privilege and wealth while neither Palestine nor their own nations matter, but also multitudes of peoples, diverse, unique, empowered, oppressed, who happen at this point in history to be consumed with their own survival and fight for freedom.  

The latter ‘Arabs’ never betrayed Palestine; they willingly fought and died for it when they had the chance.  

Most likely, Hajah Zainab is long dead now. But millions more like her still exist and they, too, long for a free Palestine, as they continue to seek their own freedom and salvation.

 

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