I share Obama’s stated committment to the survival of Israel as a Jewish state, and have consistently done so ever since the Zionism-is-racism controversy at the UN. I can document that if anybody cares.
That said, Obama’s remark that he might have a better appreciation of the Muslim sense of grievance and humiliation bears consideration.
I doubt that there is a single individual reading this comment, Jew or Gentile, who, if he were born a Palestinian, would not be angry about the current situation.
The problem — and perhaps this is something Obama might grasp — is that the Palestinain anger is badly misdirected. Israel and Jews are not responsible for his situation; on the contrary, given the impossible situation in which they find themselves, I doubt that any other people in the world would have acted nearly so well.
Neither is it the failure of the Palestinians to sieze the opportunities for peace that have been presented to them which is ultimately to blame, in my opinion.
Rather, the failure — shared by Israeli’s, Palestinians, and American’s alike — is to put the finger on Europe where it rationally belongs.
It was European anti-Semitism after all — a widespread phenomenon culminating in, but by no means limited to, the Holocaust — that drove the Jews out of Europe in the first place; and it was European statesmen — acting in concert, I might add — who decided to solve their Jewish problem by giving someone else’s land away (for all the juicy details see Friedman’s “The Question of Palestine, 1914-1918″). Everything else follows from there.
Where am I heading? Well, I am heading towards the principle of compensation, which is deeply established in Arab culture and civilization. In fact it is the only religiously sanctioned way to end a blood feud unless I am mistaken.
Let me suggest therefore that if the European community were willing to acknowledge its guilt and moral responsibility in this case, and were to commit itself to a program of real restitution over the course of the next two generations, that just might do the trick.
Ask the Palestinians themselves if you don’t believe me.
How much would it take? Something in the neighborhood of what the U.S. has spent in Iraq to date I would guess: not in the form of a lump sum payment, to be sure, but as an ongoing program of investment in social and economic development, whose aim would be to establish a Western standard of living (on a par with Israel’s) among the Palestinians who choose to live in the West Bank, or in Jordan, or whereever so long as it is outside Israel — the continuance of such a program to be conditional upon Palestinain adherence to the terms of any final agreement they make with Israel.
“Israel shall be redeemed by judgment.” — I believe this was the motto on the front page of Weizman’s memoirs.
Isn’t it about time we three peoples started to put pressure on the people of Europe to carry their share of the burden of peace in the Middle East, upon which the welfare of the entire planet now depends?
I think so. And I know that if I were a Palestinian I would settle for nothing less. Neither would you if you are honest with yourself.
