Saturday, November 24, 2012

Yousef Munayyer, "America’s Failed Palestinian Policy": Only by Attacking Israeli Civilians Do Palestinians Achieve Their Goals

Indeed, if you are seeking rabid enmity and unsubstantiated loathing toward Israel cloaked in the presumed integrity of a once great national newspaper headed for Chapter 11, Andrew Rosenthal's op-ed page of The New York Times provides a spring of malice that never goes dry.

Have a gander at the latest Israel bashing guest op-ed in The New York Times entitled "America’s Failed Palestinian Policy" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/americas-failed-palestinian-policy.html?_r=0), written by Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Jerusalem Fund. Munayyer, who calls for a "significant re-evaluation of the American policies" toward Israelis and Palestinians, writes:

"Hamas has used armed struggle to achieve certain objectives, albeit at significant cost."

Indeed, Hamas has used "armed struggle," i.e. suicide bombings and missiles directed at Israeli civilians, to seek to achieve "certain objectives." And what might those "objectives" be? You don't have to look very far. They are all explicitly spelled out in the Hamas Covenant (see: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp), which provides, inter alia:

• "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with."
• "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
• "In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children. Their policy of striking fear in the heart is meant for all. They attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money and threatening their honour. They deal with people as if they were the worst war criminals."
• "The Islamic Resistance Movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road."

Or stated very simply, Hamas is a racist organization, which rejects recognition of Israel and calls for the murder of all Jews, not just Israelis.

Munayyer would excuse the terror tactics of Hamas directed against Israeli civilians by observing:

"American policy initially signaled to Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, a Palestinian party committed to the idea of negotiations, that talks would yield a Palestinian state on 22 percent of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time the United States, which has monopolized the role of mediator for itself, failed to do anything to change Israel’s policies of settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Palestinians’ patience grew thin as the number of Israeli settlers tripled between the beginning of the 'peace process' in 1991 and today. Palestinians learned that the message they initially got about a peace process’ [sic] leading to statehood was either made in bad faith or an outright lie."

Of course, there is no mention by Munayyer that Israeli prime ministers Barak and Olmert offered the leaders of Fatah, Arafat and Abbas, an independent state along the 1967 lines with agreed upon land swaps, and Olmert even offered Palestinian control of east Jerusalem. Arafat and Abbas refused.

There is also no mention by Munayyer that Israelis settlements occupy less than two percent of the West Bank.

In addition, Munayyer "forgets" to mention that in November 2009, Netanyahu acceded to Obama's request for a 10-month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank; however, Abbas ignored the gesture.

Munayyer goes on to observe:

"The real danger is if the underlying causes of discontent in Gaza — the denial of human rights and dignity for Palestinians — continue to go ignored once rockets stop targeting Israel."

So only Israel is responsible for "the denial of human rights and dignity for Palestinians." Yeah, right. Needless to say, Munayyer makes no mention of discrimination against women (e.g., "honor killings"), gays and Christians in the West Bank and Gaza.

And even Human Rights Watch has acknowledged the brutal repression of freedom of speech by Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza (see: http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/04/06/west-bankgaza-stop-harassing-journalists).

Democracy in the West Bank and Gaza? Presidential elections were last held by the Palestinians in January 2005. Parliamentary elections were last held by Fatah and Hamas in January 2006. Israel is not to blame.

Bottom line: Munayyer would have us believe that Palestinians have no choice other than to make use of terror attacks against Israeli civilians in order to achieve their goals:

"What message is sent to Palestinians when the only time we pay attention to their plight, and the only time they make gains, is through the use of arms?"

In fact, absolutely nothing has been gained by the Palestinians in this latest round of fighting during which Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired more than 1,500 missiles and rockets at Israeli towns and cities. Hamas's infrastructure has been shattered with nothing of substance to show for the renewed bloodshed, and Hamas has again demonstrated that it is no more than a terrorist entity dedicated to killing Jews.

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