Jewish Settlements Do Not Impede Peace

Many Western narratives on the Israel-Arab/Palestinian conflict, assert that Arab-Palestinian grievances are fundamentally based upon a supposed dispossession of territory, and so peace would be obtained by returning lands gained by Israel in the defensive Six Day War.

Today this argument relates principally to Judea and Samaria, more widely known as the ‘West Bank’, a recent moniker the Jordanians applied to the area, after the Arab State’s invasion of Israel in 1948.

The existence of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and formerly Gaza prior to the unilateral 2005 Israeli withdrawal, are central to the claim that the Jewish State has instituted a 'land grab' since 1967. Settlements are the focal point of boycott campaigns, and other efforts to deligitimise Israel.

However, commentators less hostile to Israel also assert Jewish settlements are a deeply problematic phenomenon. Whilst accepting Israel is surrounded, in a hostile Arab-Islamic neighbourhood, they nonetheless advance a somewhat similar stance to anti-Israel critics, by portraying the settlement issue as one of the great obstacles of the peace process. Indeed, some act as if it is the greatest challenge, as per John Kerry’s intensive criticism of Israeli settlement policy, suggesting it will undermine a two-state solution.

Inconvenient facts

Whilst Jewish settlements are seen across the world as the bottleneck that stops any peace process in its tracks, a cursory glance at some fundamental facts will suggest that that this claim is a propagandistic red-herring of monumental proportions.

Israel is regularly demonised, with the very worst of motives ascribed to its behaviour. For example, many in the Arab world suggest the Jewish State seeks to territorially dominate the Middle East. Thus, one might ask to what extent has Israel held onto the territory it gained during the Six-Day War, which constitutes the Nation’s greatest victory? Startlingly, 90% of these gains have been returned to Israel’s Arab neighbours: the Sinai, and part of the Golan Heights, with Gaza becoming a de facto independent state.

More particularly, what of Judea and Samaria itself? To what extent has Israel 'grabbed' or 'thieved' the 'West Bank'? A survey, commissioned by anti-Israel NGO B’Tselem, found that 0.99% of the territory features constructed settlements, with applicable roads taking further space. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) prime negotiator, similarly asserted that settlements constitute 1.1% of the region.

Processes have not been instigated, by Israel, to recognise new Jewish settlements, since the Oslo II process of the mid to late 1990s. Dutch anti-Israel activist and mapmaker, Jan de Jong, produced a sequence of distorted maps to suggest Israel was instituting a 'land grab'. De Jong rather absurdly claimed that 60% of Judea and Samaria is taken by settlements but his maps, as reproduced by the Wall Street Journal, Feb 4th 2010, note that Israel did not begin further processes of settlement recognition after 1995. Subsequent land activity, according to the map, relates to unrecognised 'Settler outposts', which the Israeli authorities dismantle with some regularity.

De Jong Map, suggesting a 'land grab', Wall Street Journal, Feb 4th 2010

Anti-Israel commentators claim that the proposed E1 development would drive a wedge from East Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley, and thus the site would divide any potential Arab-Palestinian state. This is a complete untruth. The narrowest point between the E1 and the Dead Sea is fifteen kilometres, as wide as the narrowest points within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the very borders those who condemn the Jewish State demand that it to return to.

Whilst settler violence is rightly an issue worthy of attention, it is wildly exaggerated in contrast to the far more prevalent, and deadly, Arab-Palestinian equivalent. According to B’Tselem’s own figures, some seventeen Arab-Palestinians were killed by settlers from 2000 to 2012, often in contexts of self-defence. By contrast, according to B’Tselem, over two hundred settlers were killed during the same period.

Negligible impact upon peace processes

One might think that Arab-Palestinians are desperate for an independent state, given the abhorrent conditions so many activists claim they are subjected to. Thus, it is curious that the Millennial ‘Camp David’ talks, which offered the PA 91% of their territorial demands, fell apart due to Yasser Arafat’s rejection of joint sovereignty over the Temple Mount, which Muslims call al Haram al Sharif. Land concessions were even more generous at Taba in 2001.

The 2007-08 Abbas-Olmert talks proposed territorial concessions of over 98%, with some land swaps. Abbas suddenly dropped out of the final stage of the talks in September 2008.

The brief 2010 talks with Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed because the PA demonstrated bad faith by only attending for the final few weeks of a ten month settlement freeze, having previously dismissed this substantive concession. Former US Peace envoy George Mitchell stated soon afterward that the PA made the freeze an absolute condition, after it having previously been 'less than worthless'. Mitchell described the freeze as less than the US requested but 'more than anyone else had done.'

Latterly, Netanyahu made several attempts to get Abbas to the negotiating table. Abbas finally succumbed when the demand to release all pre-Oslo prisoners was met, indicating that settlement freezes are not a pre-eminent requirement for negotiations. Rather, a tangible political victory is the incentivising element to bring an ever-reluctant Palestinian Authority to direct peace talks.

Likewise, anti-Israel commentators use the growth of settlements as a pre-text to claim that the two-state solution is dead, and thereby advocate for a one-state bi-national 'Rwandan solution'.

The intent of such one-staters is evident by their prejudicial actions. In reality, settlement growth is not a major issue because the substantive majority of Jewish Settlers live in five settlements near the 1949 Armistice Lines, and it was envisaged, in peace talks, that Israel would keep a majority of settlements, in exchange for some land swaps. The PA has long accepted the principle of land swaps. Thus, intense international condemnation, in which it is claimed that settlement expansion makes a just two-state solution impossible, is completely incorrect.

It could be argued that settlement activity is the sole stimulus toward achieving peace, given that the international community is unwilling to hold the PA to account for any wrongdoing. Former Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij said: 'The Palestinians now realize, that time is now on the side of Israel… and that the only way out of this dilemma is face-to-face negotiations'. It does seem Israel gives the green light to further construction when the PA seeks to bypass a negotiated peace process.

However, if such a strategy has been adopted, it has been enacted in a half-hearted fashion. Despite the popular portrayal of Benjamin Netanyahu as a ‘hawkish’ supporter of settlements, official figures by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics demonstrate that there has been less settlement construction during Netanyahu’s five years of governance. An average of 1,443 new housing units have been built in the contested territory during each year of his tenure, despite house prices being at a premium within the State itself.

In a similar manner, the most significant move on settlements occurred in April 2012, when an Israeli government committee was established to complete legal recognition of settlements Bruchin, Rechalim and Sansana, which already possessed de facto recognition. Previously, Negahot was the last settlement to have its recognition process legally finalised, in 1999, so this further de jure process was a diplomatic about-turn. The international media claimed Bruchin, Rechalim and Sansana were illegal settler outposts. However, State recognition had been initiated in the 1980’s and 90’s. The completion of the process was frustrated for years by Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, due to political considerations.

Final recognition was likely intended to place pressure on the Palestinian Authority. Negotiators for the two sides held talks in Amman during January 2012, but the PA decided to withdraw after only five meetings, thus failing to get Abbas to agree to meet Netanyahu. Talks recommenced, but PA negotiators again walked away in April, after Israeli proposals were submitted. Ron Prosor, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, noted that the PA quit the talks without response. Netanyahu would initiate the move toward full recognition soon after.

A conclusion - racism

This article addressed the pragmatic and realpolitic issues surrounding Jewish Settlements. The subject also has a substantive moral and legal dimension, for which the continued existence of settlements can be forcefully argued. For example, Article Six of the League of Nations/British Mandate charter explicitly allows for Jewish settlements.

Likewise, Jewish history and culture has not only been embedded in Judea and Samaria since ancient times, but to arguably an even greater extent than the rest of Israel, with of course the notable exception of East Jerusalem.

Yet we see an overt denial of any rights of residence for Jewish people in Judea and Samaria.

The frequent pronouncements, by a variety of Palestinian Authority officials, that Jewish people will not be allowed live in a future Arab-Palestinian state, are met with disinterest. More broadly speaking, there is no substantive expectation that Jewish people will or should be allowed stay in the region, with a decades-long acquiescence to the Palestinian Authority’s racist land-law, making it a capital offence for Arab-Palestinians to sell land to people of a Jewish identity. Rather, there is unrelenting hostility to their presence. This popular anti-Israel Western position subscribes to overtly racial argumentation, for not only does it echo the NAZI concept of Judenrein living spaces, it goes further by extending the claim to a region where Jewish people possess an indigenous tie to the land.

Ultimately, a narrative focusing on settlement issues confuses a disturbing reality, in which hostility toward settlers is merely symptomatic of a broader malaise. This conflict is motivated by Israel’s very existence, as a principally Jewish State in Dar al-Islam, be it existing behind or beyond its Armistice Lines.

First published at the New English Review.

Harry Browne, and the Hypocrisy of the Irish ‘Academics for Palestine’ Boycott

Harry Browne (left) with a journalism graduate, 2013, screen-grab
from the Dublin Institute of Technology website, Feb 27th 2014.

Journal.ie recently published a piece by Harry Browne, entitled ‘I’m supporting a boycott of Israeli academic institutions – here’s why’.

Journal.ie innocently describes Browne as ‘a lecturer in journalism in DIT’. However, this statement doesn’t begin to qualify as the journalistic disclosure of an interested party, a failure perhaps fitting for Journal.ie, given the highly-prejudicial slant of its coverage on the Arab-Israel conflict.

Harry Browne, an American of Irish descent, today largely writes for left-wing publications. Browne is perhaps best known for his book The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power). It is a typical example of Browne’s hard-left worldview. He attacked the famous Irish singer, for attempting to assist the Third World in a fashion he found politically unfitting. Browne’s thesis: Bono’s supposed egomania allowed him to become a patsy ‘for a system of imperial exploitation’. Browne also took issue with Bono’s low-level association with Israel.

Browne on Boycotting

Browne opens his pro-boycott apologia by citing a rift between Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson, to suggest an:

"…extraordinary index of the growth in consciousness about Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements on Palestinian land…"

Browne justifies this statement by claiming Oxfam is ‘not especially associated with the Middle East.’

Whilst not as oriented toward the region as some, Oxfam’s stance has nonetheless long been characterised as anti-Israel. In 2003, Oxfam notoriously produced anti-Israel propaganda, featuring blood-libel imagery. Last year, it was discovered that Oxfam was funding an Arab-Palestinian NGO that published anti-Semitic material. Oxfam is also associated with groups closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Browne claims the Johansson row ‘shows the success of the wider campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.’

Whilst the BDS movement has had some very modest successes in academia, ultimately the project has been a notable failure. For example, Israel’s export market remains extremely healthy, despite the focus on economic boycotting.

Browne states:

"That campaign, far from being a creature of western do-gooders, originated nine years ago with a call from a broad coalition of Palestinian civil-society groups."

The oft-parroted propagandistic line, that BDS constitutes a ‘call from Palestinian civil-society’, is a deeply deceptive whitewash. In actual fact, the BDS movement developed due to the fostering of an anti-Israel alliance at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban I conference, and boycott campaigns emerged soon afterward.

Thus, BDS is an evolution of the old anti-Semitic pan-Arab boycotts, with a modified humanitarian façade, due to the notable success in the international boycott of Apartheid-era South Africa. Certainly, the endgame is the same, a demand for the cessation of the Jewish State’s existence. BDS is very much part of the pan-Arab/USSR move at the UN to isolate Israel diplomatically, after the Yom Kippur War defeat. Browne states:

"But even people who avoid Israeli avocados may feel uncomfortable about academic and cultural boycotts, of the sort recently endorsed by the 5,000-member American Studies Association in the US. What about dialogue and the free exchange of ideas? Well, try explaining those concepts to Palestinian artists, students, lecturers and researchers under Israeli occupation."

The ‘Palestinian artists, students, lecturers and researchers’ are not so much under ‘Israeli occupation’ as what might be termed ‘Palestinian Authority suppression’, since the majority of Arab-Palestinian society is controlled by the PA under the Oslo Interim Accords, and Hamas, under a defacto statelet.

Indeed, it may be worth noting that academic freedom in Arab-Palestinian society is suppressed by the same forces that have long suppressed journalistic freedom, and political opposition. Perhaps the failure to even hold elections, in what have become near-totalitarian environments, should be reflected upon, or is only one side in this conflict to be deemed blameworthy, à la the notable disinterest these campaigners have of Syria?

Browne cites the “American Studies Association” boycott. The boycott advocates conducted a campaign with little debate prior to the ballot. Indeed, the move has even been deemed akin to the 1930’s Nazi boycott by a surprising source.

‘Academics for Palestine’

Judging by its themes, Harry Browne’s article, is probably part of a co-ordinated effort to push through a March 6th National University of Ireland-Galway Students Union referendum, advocating an Israeli boycott.

Indeed, Browne finds time to hail the launch of a supposedly new group, ‘Academics for Palestine’:

"This week saw the launch of a new group, Academics for Palestine, which has gathered about 140 signatures from people who teach in universities and ITs throughout Ireland, north and south."

According to an article, ‘UCD Academics Sign Pledge to Boycott Israeli Collaboration’, in the College Tribune, ‘Academics for Palestine’ (AFP) was officially launched on February 20th, and the head of the organisation is Jim Roche, a long-time anti-Israel activist.

Various sources also note that David Landy is the founding member of this group. Rather than being new, “Academics for Palestine” appears to have existed for a year, or perhaps more. The group is mentioned as playing a role in last year’s Teachers’ Union of Ireland boycott, notable for being the first European trade union involved with academia to adopt a resolution calling on its members to ‘cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel’. Interestingly, both Jim Roche and David Landy played a leading role in achieving the boycott.

Browne parrots the oft-spoken line that the ‘boycott is aimed at institutions and does not mean Irish academics can’t work with Israeli individuals.’ Such a sentiment is highly misleading. Boycotts inevitably impact upon dealings with individuals. What exactly do these apologists think academic institutions are made of? Individuals, perchance? And when engaging in activities of an academic nature, these Israeli individuals will almost inevitably have some degree of association with Israeli universities for funding etc. Thus, this attempt to forward a boycott is almost as much an attack on individuals, as it is on broader Israeli society, regardless of which side of the 1949 Armistice Line!

Last year, Landy, also claimed that ‘the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel is an institutional boycott, not a boycott of individuals.’ However, ‘Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine’, which attempts to bring these divergent communities together, asserted that the TUI boycott resolution was highly indiscriminate since it includes students and academics who support self-determination for the Palestinians. Thus, this defence should be seen as duplicitous.

An IPSC front?

Some have suggested that ‘Academics for Palestine’ is little more than an ‘Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ (IPSC) front. The IPSC is the largest anti-Israel group in Ireland. Jim Roche, a member of the IPSC leads ‘Academics for Palestine’. The group’s founder, David Landy, is also a senior IPSC figure.

The IPSC has run very similar academic petitioning campaigns for at least a decade. They largely featured the same old names, and didn’t achieve any particular success. Thus, ‘Academics for Palestine’ is a useful way to lend new boycott crusades some credibility, by avoiding the controversial baggage surrounding the IPSC’s activities over the years.

Disclosure of ‘Academics for Palestine’s’ character would be philosophically fitting, given its mantra, but, interestingly the group does not mention any prior IPSC connections in its ‘About Us’ website page. Similarly, the IPSC’s gushing piece, heralding the organisation’s achievement, failed to mention its links to ‘Academics for Palestine’.

It is unclear whether Browne is himself a member of the IPSC. He has written heading articles for IPSC journals, and defended the rather shocking tactics the IPSC adopted against Irish folk group Dervish, to prevent them performing in Israel.

Browne forcefully characterised reportage of this shameful behaviour as a ‘miscarriage of journalism’. In the article, he claimed:

"I am not a member of the IPSC but have supported and advised it on media matters, including the case discussed in this article."

It may be inferred, from Browne’s claim, that an apologia is acceptable, from a journalistic perspective, if one has collaborated extensively with a group, just as long as one is not a card-carrying member.

Browne appears to have been involved with the attempted boycott of Israeli produce, in an ambitious ‘two-week petition drive’ to ‘enlist Dunnes customers in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Limerick,…’ etc. The authors of the text are identified as belonging to the IPSC: ‘Freda H and Harry Browne – IPSC’, ‘Freda H’ abbreviating ‘Freda Hughes’, a leading member.

Browne also appears to be a full member of “Academics for Palestine”, since his mobile phone number is being disclosed freely in promotional press material for the purposes of contacting the group. If he is indeed a member, it would represent a further possible journalistic non-disclosure in the well-publicised Journal.ie article.

A moderate, with a change of heart?

Subsequently, Harry Browne portrays himself as the wholesome ingenue:

"For years I felt I couldn’t support the boycott, though I did oppose the privileges Israel enjoys in EU research funding. I thought academics and their institutions should be talking to each other, exchanging ideas. Freely, you know? Then, last year, I visited Gaza. The conditions endured by 1.8 million people there under Israeli siege were sickening to behold, but so was their determination to live normal lives"

What of the fact that Israel vacated Gaza, whilst Egypt also employs an embargo on the defacto statelet? Is Browne calling for similar treatment against Egypt? No, it would seem not. Do the people who elected Hamas in 2006, on a mandate of continued “armed resistance” against Israel, have any culpability for causing this crisis?

Hamas is widely understood to be creating conditions that have led to a desperate fuel shortage, whilst taxing Gazan’s to the hilt. Yet, once again, Browne lets everyone off the hook except Israel, a nation that continues to electrify and water the belligerent area. Recently, Israel took steps to lessen Gaza’s fuel crisis by increasing power transfers.

In another article, Browne stated:

"I recently returned from Gaza, where comparative death-tolls are frequently wielded to highlight the brutality of the 2008-09 war (roughly 1,400 dead Palestinians versus 13 Israelis) and the one last November (160 versus six)."

Notably, Browne still speaks of an old debunked death toll advanced by Hamas, which was uncritically accepted by anti-Israel NGOs, such as B’Tselem. Similarly, it is estimated that half, or perhaps more, of those killed in 2012’s Pillar of Defense were militants. However, Browne, like so many others, conveniently conflate militant combatants, with civilians. Evidence of vast massacres would be more easily found next-door in Syria.

Most puzzling of all, Browne claims to have only objected to some supposed preferential treatment of Israeli academia in the past. Is this the same Harry Browne who for years has been one of the harsher critics of Israel, in a nation where criticism of the Jewish State can almost be described as a past-time?

An article by David Landy, entitled ‘Irish academics call on EU to stop funding Israeli academic institutions’ (Electronic Intifada, 16th September 2006), might at first suggest Browne’s claim is correct, as he is a signatory to the letter described therein. However, the letter, as published in the Irish Times, does in fact call for a relatively broad anti-Israel boycott. Landy noted that whilst:

"this letter does not call for a comprehensive boycott, it does demand that European academic institutions cease funding collaborative projects with Israeli institutions. It also calls for academics to refrain, where possible, from institutional collaboration with Israel. Such actions are to continue until Israel abides by international law, part of which is ending the occupation."

Therefore, it would seem Browne has lent his support to considerably more than just a lessening of EU funding. Browne put his name to another letter in January 2009, which attacked Israel for defending itself during a November 2008 Hamas border incursion. To quote a description of the text by an anti-Israel website:

"The letter was organised in response to the Israeli attack on Gaza and the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott. The letter demands that the EU cease funding collaborative projects with Israeli institutions."

Browne’s presentation, as a moderate recently turned by suffering, should be received with scepticism.

A veritable roll-call of one-state ‘Rwanda solution’ advocates

An article that makes extensive use of the opinions of other individuals, in order to justify its claims, may be measured by the broader stances of such individuals, even outside the topical domain of a given article. Thus, if an author uniformly cites the opinions of extremists, we may assume an extremist stance, as an underlying theme, is being put forward in the article. And so with Browne’s advocacy:

"I met, for example, Ayah Bashir, a great young scholar determined to become Gaza’s first woman PhD in English. But the things any student or academic should take for granted — the books you need, the capacity to travel to your college — were so rarely available."

Ayah Bashir is in fact a university lecturer and activist, who seeks an absolute boycott. She is also part of a group, ‘Real Democracy’, seeking to subvert the legitimate vote of the Israeli electorate.

"And in Gaza I met Miko Peled. Son of a famed Israeli general, he told an audience of Palestinian students that BDS was the only message his society would understand. He firmly and finally convinced me."

Miko Peled seeks a one-state solution, namely the destruction of Israel as a principally Jewish state, whilst spreading rather ugly untruths about the conflict. He cheapened the memory of the Holocaust, describing Gaza as an ‘enormous concentration camp’. Peled also peddles other obvious historic falsehoods, e.g. claiming Israel is to blame for the Six Day War.

And what list of arch anti-Israel defamers would be complete without mentioning Ilan Pappé?

'In fact the famed Israeli historian Ilan Pappé sent a message to the boycott organisers here: “The recent pledge by Irish academics to boycott Israeli academic institutions is yet another landmark in the growing international refusal to allow Israel to continue its oppressive policies against the Palestinians.”'

Browne’s reference to Ilan Pappé might seem a little disingenuous to those familiar with this ‘historian’. Pappé, now in situ at the English University of Exeter, was instrumental in peddling overt untruths, which have defamed Israel over the years. He is one of the most sustained and prolific pro-boycott advocates in the world, where his speaking events helped generate toxic environments on university campuses.

Pappé is a ‘famed historian’ but perhaps partly for the wrong reasons, unless the repeated fabrication of Ben Gurion quotes is a worthy move for historians. He advocates a one-state solution so is hardly representative of Israeli academia.

Moreover, despite Browne painting Pappé’s intervention as a major development, he has repeatedly supported the IPSC’s boycott calls for years, and to little avail. He has also visited Ireland on several occasions to promote this agenda so Pappé’s ‘message’ is hardly a major development.

In a section entitled ‘I believe in justice’ Browne makes much of cultural links with Judaism – he comes across as almost wishing to claim he is Jewish, so keen is his professed love of Jewish Culture:

"I have to admit it – I have philosemitic tendencies. Growing up as I did in the US, with Rabbi Gottlieb next door, with Jewish girlfriends, with that sweet old couple nearby with the terrifying Nazi-assigned numbers tattooed on their arms, I came to believe, and sneakily still keep somewhere in my consciousness, the idea that as a people Jews have more often than not represented the most genuinely civilised traditions of an otherwise dissolute ‘western civilisation’."

…and promptly utilises another well-worn sophistic tool: look the Jews don’t want a militarised Israel!

"Politically, it should be enough that a representative swathe of the oppressed Palestinian people have asked for BDS… But this time, me personally, I must confess that I take my lead from Israelis and other Jewish people (Pappé, Peled, Haim Bresheeth, Hilary and Steven Rose, Judith Butler, Naomi Klein) who insist that militarised Zionism does not represent them, and who have called for an international campaign to rid Israeli society of the shameful injustice."

Most of these people have called, in one fashion or another, for a one-state solution, and have displayed a deep unerring hostility to Israel. Thus, it is hardly a matter of wonder that these people do not want a Jewish state that can defend itself. To take Judith Butler as an example: she described the viciously anti-Semitic ‘Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, [which] is extremely important.’ Haim Bresheeth advocated a witch-hunt against Israeli academics whilst taking considerable sums for projects from the Jewish state. He, of course, advocates for the elimination of Israel.

Hilary and Steven Rose also seek the abolition of Israel, whilst Naomi Klein, a one-time member of ‘The Free Gaza Movement’, has inverted the truth of the Durban I anti-Semitic hate-fest. Klein, like many others, seems to have a real issue with Jewish people possessing conservative opinions. She even finds Jewish people blameworthy for economic conditions that may, in time, give rise to Fascism!

Like Browne, these people also share a distinctive left-wing-inspired hatred for the West, whilst largely ignoring the wrongdoing, or even supporting, the wrongdoing of opposing entities. Yet, after citing the opinions of so many other extremists, Browne still wants to insist he doesn’t want to cut all Israeli ties:

"…the real object of BDS. Not to cut off discussion with Israelis — that would be impossible even if it were desirable, which it is not."

As with the insistence that BDS won’t harm individuals, this mellifluously apologetic line presents mere sophistry, to reassure an audience disturbed by the singling-out of the sole Jewish state in existence.

Miscellaneous expressions of extremism

Some of Harry Browne’s views on the Israel-Arab conflict are nothing short of extraordinary. He spoke of Ireland’s media having a biased pro-Israel stance:

"Harry Browne, journalist and lecturer in DIT, spoke of the mainstream media bias in favour of Israel and its official sources which he said were often accepted at face value without the application of critical analysis on behalf of reporters. He stressed that some of the best and most honest reporting from Gaza came from Gazans themselves, like Sameh Habeeb, because very few Western media outlets had a presence there when the war was launched. He referred to this as ‘real reporting’."

This is a staggeringly counter-factual belief to possess, particularly for one involved with the Irish media itself. It is typical for Irish coverage of Arab-Israeli controversies to give little space to the Israeli perspective, whilst dwelling on Arab-Palestinian complaints. Elements of the Irish media are linked with anti-Israel posturing amongst Irish political elites, as Rory Miller noted.

Reading between the lines however, Browne is clearly suggesting that any response from Arab-Palestinian sources should be treated with absolute credulity. This is a disturbing deviation from the basic premise of journalistic impartiality, one that a mentor should be wise enough not to advocate.

Furthermore, Browne praises Sameh Habeeb, who runs a website called the Palestine Telegraph, which has published content by neo-Nazi’s, under the pretext of freedom of expression.

Indeed, Browne asked his readers

"Given the ubiquitousness of political violence, the relevant question about Gaza is not “how dare they fire those rockets?”. We should ask, instead, what decent or fearful or otherwise-restraining impulse causes Palestinians to use violence as little as they do?"

Such a sentiment should of course be seen as a moral legitimisation of Arab-Palestinian terrorism.

Browne on the abandonment of ‘critical faculties’

On January 30th 2010, Harry Brown appeared on a TV chat-show challenging the conspiratorial views of Jim Corr. Brown rightly questioned Corr’s stance, and referred to components of conspiracy theory having links to anti-Semitism. Of course, many objected to even the mere mention of the word ‘anti-Semitism’, and the conspiratorially minded even suggested that Browne was a shill for the programme-makes, working for the government etc. Such conspiracists commonly support the Arab-Palestinian cause, and deem Israel to have colluded in 9/11, as well being as a central part of Zionist-World-Government.

Was Browne’s conscience pricked when he left a detailed comment (November 9th, 2006) on the extreme-left site Indymedia? His views provide an insight into the moral wiggle-room those possessing nigh-on indefensible political stances seek to create. When the Irish Anti-War Movement invited Ibrahim Mousawi, a known anti-Semite, to Ireland, Browne stated:

"The arguments against hearing a Hezbollah speaker don't convince me -- of course it makes sense to take (though not endorse) our anti-imperialists as we find them, however we might wish them to be; the IPSC runs a tour of ex-CIA analysts..."

Thus, Browne thought there was no moral problem with a Hizbullah speaker being invited to speak on at a political conference in Ireland, since the act of doing so does not necessarily endorse a given individual’s perspective. This stance is self-evidently untrue, when a speaker’s views are in close conformity with that of the organisers, and he likely knew this was far from an act to provide another viewpoint for balance. The IAWM did indeed act as if they supported Mousawi’s stance, and had previously expressed strong support for Hizbullah itself.

"the warmth of the IAWM embrace… seems indeed to be worth discussing in some detail. This speaker, after all, does not represent the courageous military resistance to Israeli aggression, nor the laudable social commitments of Hezbollah 'on the ground'."

The desire to have ones cake and simultaneously consume it continued, by expressing disapproval for the IAWM’s great welcome to Mousawi, since he is part of Hizbullah’s propaganda wing, rather than being at the vanguard of the struggle against the Jewish State! Thus, Browne appears to have no issue with these terrorists, only one wing disseminating hatred.

Would Hizbullah’s terrorist wing not endorse the same opinions? Are they not part of the same entity, Mousawi and his colleagues merely inculcating hatred, the ‘militants’ acting it out, with the ultimate objective to annihilate the Jewish State, despite its complete withdrawal from Lebanon? Al Manar, the propagandistic Hizbullah channel that Mousawi ran, glories in the violent deeds of Hizbullah’s jihadists, those jihadists that Browne vocally supports. Al Manar is not an independent agent – it is a mere tool assisting in generating the hate that reinforces Hizbullah’s belligerency, in which Jewish civilians are seen as a legitimate target.

Besides Browne’s admiration of those with deeply problematic views, he has himself written for the leftist anti-Israel site‘CounterPunch’. It is noted for possessing a very disturbing attitude toward the Jewish race and its history. Browne asks those of his ‘anti-imperialist’ persuasion to keep their ‘critical faculties intact’. If his concern about anti-Semitism is sincere, then he should consider taking some of his own advice.

This article was first published in the New English Review in March 2014. Harry Browne posted a detailed response in the comment section. I decided not to post a reply because he should have the space afforded for a right-of-reply. Readers are of course welcome to raise any of the issues in his response in the comment section on this blog.

Raja Shehadeh: A Moderate or a Moderate Façade?

“Raja Shehadeh is Palestine’s leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.” - Mountains to the Sea Book Festival, 2013.

Screen-grab from website of September 2013's
Mountains to Sea book festival (Dublin).

Since the millennium, Raja Shehadeh has become a common fixture at literary and cultural events throughout the West, and makes a frequent appearance in literary reviews etc. His books have earned him a substantial amount of praise and a number of awards, including the 2008 Orwell Prize, for which he again made the shortlist in 2013.

Raja Shehadeh works as a lawyer in Ramallah. He was educated in London, and his often semi-autobiographal works, all written in English, a mere two (as of 2011) translated into Arabic, are principally orientated toward Western audiences, although that is a view Shehadeh denies.

Shehadeh is quite a prolific writer, his books dealing essentially with a common theme: a highly personalised account of displacement in Palestine, often told in the form of a journey. They include themes of tragedy, misfortune, despondency, revelation, and some modest spiritual triumph against a brutish Israeli presence. Family features heavily, the drama of flawed relationships woven within an at times burdensome sense of history but one mitigated by a deep abiding love of the land and its history.

The books use substantive imagery as a central point of narrative. For example, the image of a bird’s song ending, or the tragic motif of Shehadeh’s father, Aziz, looking toward the city lights of Jaffa, which he left behind after moving to Ramallah in 1948, as featured in Strangers in the House (2001).

Raja Shehadeh stated in 2012:

“I saw writing as a way of serving the cause of justice and human rights. Human rights reports reach a limited sector of the population and so have limited impact, but if you write something that touches more people and is mass-distributed, the impact is that much stronger... If you’re affected by what you read, it becomes part of your experience and you take it in or feel it in a much stronger way.”

In the struggle for hearts and minds, feelings trump facts. Imagery and accusations, automatically triggering humane compassion, are incomparably more compelling than dry defensive argumentation.

It has often been observed that judgement is influenced more by emotion than by reason, and, therefore, those who suffer tend to obtain empathy and support. This fact has long been understood by the entertainment industry. For example, a victim wronged, is, from an audience’s perspective, the one who is best placed to seek justice. The individual, or group, destroyed ought to be in some way deserving, if the subject is especially cruel, malign, etc. If there could be a shadowy side to the humanitarian spirit, this characteristic would surely qualify.

Considering the highly politicised themes, a question may be asked of Shehadeh’s work: do the books constitute an authentic effort to tell personal stories which possess substantive political overtones, as is sometimes necessarily the case in certain contexts, or do they constitute a knowing propaganda, or perhaps possess elements of both? The impact of these books would seem to be quite significant politically, judging by his success. The stories relate to a serious conflict, which has been the cause of a substantive degree of suffering through the twentieth century, and will continue to cause much for the foreseeable future.

To question the more personal details of Shehadeh’s account of his life and family, which has been touched by tragedy, without good cause to do so, may constitute the needless crossing of a boundary. Yet it is nonetheless worth analysing the more general political claims of the author, due to the way in which they inevitably inform the broader narrative of his books.

This move should be especially pressing, given Shehadeh’s past political activism in al Haq, and the broad Arab-Palestinian move to utilise literature for propaganda’s sake, for example, the pro-boycott “Palfest” literary festival, of which he is a regular fixture.

Shehadeh’s work with al-Haq

Raja Shehadeh is a member of the English Bar, and the Palestinian Bar Association. The Palestinian Bar Association is apparently an affiliated member of the rather hateful Arab Lawyers Union of which it works closely – a telling feature of the conditions in which Arab-Palestinian lawyers work.

Outside of his literary career, Shehadeh is best known for his association with Al-Haq, which he co-founded in 1979, with another lawyer, one Jonathan Kuttab, who has been at the forefront of Israel’s delegitimisation, particularly in Christian circles.

First known as ‘Law in the Service of Man’, al Haq became a principle group upon which other NGOs and a significant segment of the Western media relied for information. Al-Haq, is described as an organisation affiliated to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, although it is also described as the “Palestinian branch of International Commission of Jurists”. The NGO would soon become a leader in lawfare based international campaigns, motivated by a desire to delegitimise Israel’s right to exist.

Since its inception, Al-Haq has presented distorted data to promote anti-Israel propaganda, often on the basis of pursuing heavily publicised lawsuits, which have little chance of success. Its mandate, to supposedly encourage the rule of law in a non-partisan fashion, suggests it would take an interest in any source of wrongdoing. However, al Haq’s conduct, with regard to addressing the many abuses Arab-Palestinian groups have visited upon their own people, have been extremely limited and only at times made public as a last resort. Self-censorship, with a failure to even catalogue abuses, is normative NGO behaviour for the region.

In 1990, Al Haq claimed that killings, within Arab-Palestinian society, by paramilitary factions, were in fact not human rights violations because these groups were responsible for keeping order. Apparently, the “network of informers” and “agents of the [Israeli] state” were killed spontaneously by an enraged Arab-Palestinian citizenry, which presumably mitigates blame. The hypocritical callousness of this position is reinforced by the fact that it was stated during the First Intifada, when close to a thousand Arab-Palestinians were murdered by their brethren.

Al Haq’s more recent links with terrorism, and its moral legitimisation of terrorism as “resistance”, are stark. Commentary Magazine notes the head of Al Haq, Shawan Jabarin, is prohibited from travelling abroad by Jordan and Israel due to his substantive involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Shehadeh helped establish al Haq’s morally problematic template, and he remained a director of the organisation for a lengthy period of time. Shehadeh left al Haq in the 1990’s but his tenure at the organisation is something for which he is still likely proud, with mention of it in seemingly all of his numerous guest profiles in a variety of publications.

Shehadeh’s curious understanding of the conflict

Raja Shehadeh’s views of the Israel-Arab conflict have had a notable impact on certain left-wing Israelis. Gideon Levy, perhaps the most notorious anti-Israel propagandist living in Israel today, stated of his first interview with Shehadeh:

“That meeting was a deep impression on me; I was moved by him, his intellect”

The meeting, when Levy was a young journalist in the early 1980s, marked the development of his interest in the conflict. However, others like Meron Benvenisti, himself well known for intensely criticising the Jewish State’s actions over the years, saw Shehadeh differently. He described Shehedeh's attacks on Israel as marking a “...hatred that does not know any bounds, and that blinds the eyes...”

Indeed, Shehadeh has long made many remarkable assertions, such as claiming Israel is ethnically cleansing the Arab-Palestinian populace. This view contravenes basic facts.

Claims of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem are fictitious. Jerusalem’s Muslim-Arab/Palestinian population has grown faster than its Jewish equivalent since 1967. The city had 68,000 Arab residents in 1967, which grew more than four-fold to 275,900 in 2009. During the same period, the Jewish populace rose at a much slower rate of 2.5 times.

Likewise, census figures demonstrate that the combined Arab-Palestinian populace of the West Bank and Gaza, was just under 955 thousand (including East Jerusalem) in 1967. The Palestinian Authority took over census collection responsibilities, under the Oslo Accords. The figures collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics have been deemed to be highly problematic but even allowing for dramatic over-estimation, for the purposes of political gain, the populace can still be understood as growing at a normatively satisfactory rate, one hardly compatible with ethnic cleansing.

Shehadeh has often charged that Israel conducted a “belligerent war” in 1967, from which it obtained the territories Arab-Palestinians now seek for a state of their own.

One would think that Egypt’s removal of United Nations peacekeeping troops from the Sinai, the blockading of the Straits of Tiran (an international waterway) to Israeli shipping, bellicose threatening language directed at Jewish State, the sending of large forces into the Sinai in breach of UN Resolution 997, and continued Syrian sponsorship of terrorism reaching across Israel’s borders (condemned by UN Secretary General U Thant), was significant enough for Israel to mount a pre-emptive strike?

Of the Security Barrier, which marks a division between the West Bank and Israel, Shehadeh stated:

“Undoubtedly it has an element of a spectacle and has given some Israelis a sense of security, even though it was not the wall that stopped the dreaded suicide bombings. That happened largely because of a change in tactics on the part of Hamas, which launched them.”

It is remarkable to claim that the security barrier merely gives a sense of security, when it played a substantive role in bringing suicide attacks down to almost zero during the Second Intifada, a point which Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah acknowledged.

Shehadeh claims Hamas’ tactics changed, which prompted an end to terrorist assaults. Whilst Arafat did indeed request that Hamas carry out suicide attacks, the majority of attacks against Israel appear to have been carried out by the well-armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority. To attribute a change in policy by Hamas is odd, when they vowed continued violence in Gaza soon after.

A 1984 meeting of international NGOs, run by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), and the Division for Palestinian Rights, at the United Nations base in Geneva, entitled “on the Question of Palestine”, featured a by then typically one-sided diplomatic assault on Israel, with groups like the ‘Arab Lawyers Union’ in attendance. The ALU has produced anti-Semitic material for some of these events. At the meeting, Shehadeh proposed that the international community adopt the strategy proposed by the Soviet Union, and its socialist client states:

“While advancing its new proposals on the Middle East, the Soviet Union pursues the prime aim of peace in the region and, hence, resolution of the Palestinian problem. […] For my part, I would like to assure those present that the Soviet Union has no aggressive intentions whatsoever, either in the Middle East or all over the world. A graphic illustration of this are all the recent Soviet peace initiatives.”

The assurance of the Soviet Union’s good intentions would have come as news to anyone familiar with the USSR’s conduct in Afghanistan, which was causing immense suffering, along with the greatest refugee crisis at the time. After installing a puppet socialist regime, which the Afghan people rebelled against, the Soviets invaded in 1979. Figures are difficult to establish but it is thought one to two million Afghani people died.

Shehadeh would approve of a Soviet peace brokerage, since the USSR towed the Arab line almost completely since 1953/4, and were a principle party leading the 1975 Zionism as racism United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, and the attempt to get Israel removed from the UN itself.

In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh makes one of his most remarkably a-historical assertions:

“In the twenty-first century, the case of Palestine remains one of the last surviving examples of a country usurped by a colonial project exploiting religion to deprive Palestinians of their land.”

Religion is of course only one element of the Zionist project, which originated in a secular fashion. Zionism relates principally to a people, rather than a mere religion. Moreover, there has never been an independent nation in this region since the end of the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt, in 135 AD Judea.

There are still occupations today that have an overt or underlying religious component, for example, the Pakistani occupation of the Gilgit–Baltistan and Azad Kashmir regions, territories where older religious cultures are oppressed seemingly with some degree of state collusion. More broadly, many territorial disputes do indeed have a strong religious dimension.

Pro-peace or pro-conflict?

Ostensibly, Raja Shehadeh, who himself was a peace negotiator during the Oslo talks, supports a two state solution:

“I have been consistent in my view that the solution lies in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. […] There are two possible outcomes to this hundred-year-old struggle: one is that the land would be partitioned into two states: Israel and Palestine. The other is that the present situation would continue and the conflict would continue to fester.”

The above is a fair assessment. Yet Mr. Shehadeh has long been a powerful proponent of boycotting Israel academically and culturally, whilst laying little substantive moral responsibility at the collective feet of the Arab-Palestinian community. Neither will assist the influence of moderation.

In the opening chapter of A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle (2003), Shehadeh notes his feelings of disappointment in 1996, with the Oslo Accords:

“Those first years of the transitional rule of the Palestinian Authority were strange times. It was the rude awakening at the end of a fascinating and hopeful period for me, during which I had devoted all my energies to bringing about change and a conclusion to the Israeli occupation… Prompted perhaps by disappointment over the false peace heralded by the signing of the Oslo Accords, and despite all the fanfare on the White House lawn, my thoughts had been turning to the past.”

It had only been a year since Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin initiated the Oslo II process. The initial 1993 phase of the process, Oslo I, was a preparatory stage offering a degree of self-rule. However, Shehadeh also opposed this initial phase since it did not constitute an explicit path to independence:

“I’m not saying that people should not be involved in politics and not try, but everyone should know their limits.”

However, Shehadeh would also oppose subsequent processes that did offer explicit provision for an independent state. Tellingly, Shehadeh reveals that:

“The outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987 gave me hope that things would finally change and I dismissed all thoughts of leaving Palestine.”

The First Intifada was a time of extreme violence, despite the superficial gloss smeared over such a tragic event today. Shehadeh must surely be aware that the original Intifada, to a significant extent, constituted a campaign of terror that Arafat, and various factions, waged against the Arab-Palestinian populace, in which almost a thousand of his own people were killed by paramilitaries for supposedly being traitors, although many were in fact killed due to their political stances as dissenters, moderates as well as in familial blood feuds. To a significant extent, the Intifada was a purge of Arab-Palestinian society. As such, it is quite remarkable to characterise it as somehow being a time of hope, a stance seemingly indicative of extremism.

Shehadeh stated:

“It is likely that my father's murderer was an Israeli collaborator. Israel nurtured and protected the collaborators however depraved they were.”

Whilst Shehadeh presents himself as a moderate who became disillusioned by the two-state peace process, he in fact appears to have been hostile to almost all solutions to the conflict since at least 1984.

At the aforementioned CEIRPP International NGO Meeting in Geneva, Shehadeh asserted:

“[T]he debate on Western Europe's stance on the Palestinian problem and Middle East settlement has been going on for many years. I want also to point to its somewhat moderate character.”

During the 1970’s the European Economic Community developed a distinctive hostility toward Israel. This was made manifest in the Bahrain and Venice Declarations, both of 1980. These declarations legitimised the PLO by recognising them as the representatives the Arab-Palestinian people, at a time when they were still vocally expressing their dedication to Israel’s absolute destruction. There was no criticism with regard to the violence of the PLO, and a focus on Israel returning all the Territories contested. If Shehadeh supported a two-state solution, how could the EEC stance be unduly moderate?

“...the process of forcing on the Arabs the Camp David policy which is capitulatory in its essence and which does not serve to achieve settlement of the Middle East crisis.”

It is peculiar to present the Sadat-Begin Camp David accords as capitulation. To abandon its aggressive policies, Egypt obtained the Sinai and substantial aid, in return for recognising Israel’s right to exist.

With such hostility toward the most important Middle-Eastern peace process in decades, Shehadeh’s intense advocacy of initiatives, to dramatically increase pressure on Israel, had clearly inferred goals:

“…it is imperative for Western Europe to take sides. On whose side is it? Is it on the side of Israel which is trying to impose Camp David on the Arabs with fire and sword? […] It is necessary… to launch a new intensive campaign to ensure that the Western European countries take sides.”

Shehadeh’s early statements cast doubt on the view that he lost faith in two-state solutions during Oslo.

More recently, Shehadeh characterised Israel and its neighbouring Arab dictators, such as Mubarak, as having been involved in a “deadly embrace”, which allowed Israel’s existence to continue unabated for the last three decades.

Shehadeh says he departed from the views of his father, who sought a two-state solution, due to the issue of Jewish settlement:

“…Israel began building settlements in the occupied territories. I grew up feeling we were in a race with time. Every year the chances of peace were being diminished and our land was being usurped before our eyes. Unless something was done the remaining part of Palestine beyond the 1967 borders of Israel would also be lost.”

Claims that Jewish settlements are swallowing up the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) can be disputed. In 2011, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s prime negotiator, asserted that settlements constitute 1.1% of the West Bank. Around the same time, a survey, commissioned by anti-Israel NGO B’Tselem, found that 0.99% of the West Bank features constructed settlements, with applicable roads taking further space.

Nonetheless, if it were true that settlements were taking over the West Bank, would it not behove Shehadeh to have advocated the solutions proposed at Camp David, Taba etc., which offered almost all of the West Bank and Gaza? Seemingly not. In the London Review of Books, Shehadeh characterised Yasser Arafat as “admirable” for not having “betrayed his people” in accepting the offer made at Camp David. Arafat was offered most territorial demands. His response was to initiate the bloody Second Intifada, which one may assume is deemed less of a betrayal than peace.

Shehadeh’s stance on the Oslo talks, in which he was involved, is somewhat contradictory. Broadly speaking, he has expressed strong disapproval against them. For example, in 2011, he charged that they were hopelessly fixed from the outset:

“[T]he Oslo Accords have only consolidated this system of occupation rather than broken away from it… I could see that the problem began from the terms of reference of the negotiations themselves, which were very restrictive.”

Yet it would seem the Accords were left intentionally vague, to allow a starting point for negotiations. Much of the challenging substance of a solution, for example the status of Jewish settlements, would be located in the final stage of negotiations.

Two years later, Shehadeh would seem to have a change of heart over Oslo, but only with respect to pushing the issue of the “right of return”, a legally dubious charge based on UN Resolution 194, which would intentionally bring about the demographic nullification of Israel as a principally Jewish State.

As Arafat himself stated, during a closed meeting in Oslo with Arab diplomats in 1996:

“We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews.”

Unfortunately, a tolerant pluralistic approach from Arab-Palestinian Muslims is less likely than ever. For example, a recent Pew poll demonstrates that 89% desire having Sharia law as “the official law of the land.”

Shehadeh wants to go even further according to an interview conducted by one left-wing website:

‘He seemed disinterested in debating the contours of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement or the feasibility of the so-called two-state solution […] “We should always be aware of what are dreams and what is reality. So my dream is not only one state, but one huge confederation in the entire eastern Mediterranean,” said Shehadeh, who envisions this to include both Israeli Jews and Arabs across the region.’

Thus, Shehadeh seems to be advocating a form of old fashioned pan-Arabism or even the re-emergence of the Islamic Caliphate! This is a remarkable assertion, considering the appalling way in which Jewish people have been treated throughout the Arab-Islamic world. In contrast to Martin Luther King’s noble vision of racial reconciliation, Shehadeh’s dream would perhaps be best left remaining just as it is.

Shehadeh’s stance on anti-Semitism

Several years ago Jewish Chronicle theatre critic John Nathan described as ‘anti-semitic’ the use of Holocaust imagery in a play about Gaza. The play in question, “Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea”, indicated that Israel is visiting a holocaust upon Gazan people, very much akin to the Jewish Holocaust or Shoah.

Raja Shehadeh disagreed with the claim, and although uninvolved with the Play’s production, he took the step of communicating with Nathan on the matter.

Nathan objected particularly to the set design, which strongly evoked Holocaust imagery. Shehadeh stated: “when I saw the brilliant set of the play, I found it compelling and moving, and inspiring many layers of associations.” He added:

“Many have made the analogy between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto… I was of the contrary opinion. Gaza is not a ghetto, I argued. It is a large prison. I found the insistence on resorting to terms usually associated with the Jewish experience of suffering disturbing. It sounded to me as though only by appropriating nomenclature related to the Jewish experience could we validate Palestinian suffering. As though our suffering cannot stand on its own.”

Shehadeh stated that he disliked analogies between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza etc., but, notably, not so much because it is offensive to Jews but rather because the Jewish experience should not be used to “validate Palestinian suffering”. The use of stronger language to describe Gaza is perhaps unintentional but, despite his objections to the application of descriptions relating to the Holocaust, he nonetheless appears to be drawing an equivalence of scale, dimension, or significance, between the two events.

Shehadeh went on to effectively imply that criticism of Israel is never anti-Semitic, when it is done in relation to addressing Arab-Palestinian issues. He wrote:

“Describing anyone challenging Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, whether through literature or plays, as antisemitic is intellectually dishonest and censorious of legitimate criticism. But it is worse. It is self-defeating. It is often carried out by those who believe they are expressing loyalty to Israel.” [emphasis added]

Such stances clearly whitewash the fact that criticism of Israel is often anti-Semitic in tone. Moreover, it is absurd to suggest that those referring to “anti-Semitism” do so in an effort to be loyal to Israel, presumably to silence legitimate criticism. Anti-Semitism is a manifest reality in criticism of Israel. No nation should be above criticism, including Israel. However, a substantial amount of criticism, directed at Israel, does indeed possess distinctly anti-Semitic overtones.

An insensitivity toward this issue may be a significant factor. Shehadeh strongly advocated for the USSR’s involvement in resolving the Israel-Arab/Palestinian conflict, at a time when the USSR had become an anti-Semitic state, which advocated world Jewish conspiracies and discriminated against Jews in an intense fashion, a fact that garnered headlines internationally during the 1980’s.

A tale of two peoples

Raja Shehadeh suggested in a recent interview that reconciliation is the truest way of finding peace:

“I have come to realize now that the political arrangement of two states is only part of the resolution of the conflict. Unless there is true reconciliation and acceptance by the one of the other the tension will continue to simmer and true peace will be thwarted.”

This is a worthy sentiment, the kind to which the international community should pay some heed. It is a shame however that Mr. Shehadeh does not appear to take his own advice seriously. Shehadeh noted:

“For years Israeli propaganda denied that such a people as the Palestinians existed. This battle has been won.”

It is true some commentators disputed the notion that the ‘Palestinians’ constituted a people in their own right. The Arabs of Palestine were known under Ottoman rule as “South Syrians”, who originally sought unification with a Greater Syria, during the British Mandate era. A desire, amongst Arab-Palestinians, for territorial independence, re-emerged after Israel’s territorial gains in the Six Day War. Israel accepted this demand in the 1970’s.

Shehadah wrote, in his book Strangers in the House:

“Rather than counting on peace as the best guarantee for its security, Israel continues to count exclusively on its military might refusing to recognize its Palestinian foe as a national group entitled, like all national groups, to self determination.”

Menachem Begin recognised the aspirations of Arab-Palestinian people in 1978 when he signed the Begin-Sadat Camp David Accords. The “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” include the granting of autonomy and self-governance. This declaration occurred despite a lack of any Arab-Palestinian group or faction offering the promise of recognition for Israel.

However, even if there had been no recognition forthcoming from the Israeli State, it would still constitute a deeply one-sided view of the matter. Recently, Abbas has restated his absolute refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently commented:

“[There] hasn’t been, since the dawn of Zionism, a leadership that is prepared to recognize our right to exist as a nationstate for the Jewish nation and to recognize an agreement as the end of the conflict and the end to demands.”

Shehadeh is clearly a man who loves to roam. A lot of his work is pre-occupied with this act. Of course, amongst the idyllic scenery is the dreaded Zionist, the ugly mark of “the occupation”, of which the Jewish Settler is the most malign presence clashing with nature itself, an entity seemingly filled with “greed, bitterness and spite”.

To take one account as an example, amongst all of Shehadeh’s walks, where he comes upon Byzantine tombs, Ottoman olive presses, Roman fortifications and the like, there is nothing of note from Jewish history, other than to complain about an exhibit of Herod’s possessions in Jerusalem. The exhibit took artefacts from a site of Herod’s in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). He fails however to mention that these artefacts are of course culturally Jewish, rather than Arab or “Palestinian”. Where does the Jew fit amongst Shehadeh’s landscape?

Unfortunately little is said of the desire of Arab-Palestinian society to re-write history. In 2011 Hamdan Taha, director of the PA’s Department of Antiquities, said their digs would assist in “rewriting the history of Palestine.” An inability to recognise the rights of an opponent is a root cause of conflict. This component is a sticking point in Arab-Palestinian society, which Shehadeh seems reluctant to address.

For Shehadeh to state, with regard to Israel’s understandable reluctance to accept a ‘right of return’, that:

“...it lies in a profound unwillingness to accept the very existence of the Palestinians as a people… there was once a nation living in the territory where Israel was established.”

Such statements demonstrate sufficiently that Shehadeh is only interested in one perspective on the conflict. Even if we are to accept that the Arab-Palestinian populace is a distinctive people, rather than part of a broader culturally Syrian grouping, what of the much older race, which in regional terms is more culturally distinctive, and more closely tied to the history of the region? Apparently, it is now popular amongst anti-Israel campaigners to deny that Jewish people even have any genetic linkage to the region.

A Conclusion

Raja Shehadeh presents a moderate dovish image. For example, reciting Martin Luther King's “I Have A Dream” on the BBC, to mark the 50^th anniversary of the famous speech, and his recent “Is there a language of peace?” lectures, delivered in international venues, such as the British Museum, for some apparent reason.

Dr. Joseph Lowin, author and Hebrew language specialist, suggested a disturbing side to Shehadeh’s narrative. Upon readingThe Third Way (1982):

“I was astonished to find there not a portrait of an idyllic past clashing with an unpleasant present reality but a blatant rehearsal of anti-Jewish canards that go so far as to find even the Hebrew language an oppressor of his people. When it comes to Shehadeh, people of good will can become fools.”

There is a notable trend, as with many other Arab-Palestinian activists, of failing to pay heed to the possibility that Mr. Shehadeh possesses politically extremist positions, and, as such, whether his work may have a corrosive influence on international narratives of the conflict. Mr. Shehadeh is of course entitled to forward any position he so desires, however extreme. Nonetheless, the moral legitimacy of political narratives should be analysed in a balanced discussion of all contentious topics. Unfortunately, when it comes to Arab-Palestinian matters, this almost never occurs in the present political climate.

At the aforementioned CEIRPP International NGO Meeting, at the United Nations in Geneva, Shehadeh stated:

“It is necessary… to launch a new intensive campaign to ensure that the Western European countries take sides.”

For Shehadeh, the Western European community wasn’t nearly pro-Palestinian enough. He advocated a leading role for the anti-Israel USSR. Thus, for Shehadeh, the international brokerage of a peace deal should be hostile to Israel. Moderation, the adoption of a balanced approach, would seem to be wrong.

With regard to Shehadeh’s slanted views on the issue, perhaps his efforts at legalistic campaigning in international forums, and later forays in literature, can be understood as having a similar intent. Rather than an attempt to advance understanding if the Arab-Israeli conflict, his work, despite his protestations to the contrary, can be understood as part of a broader effort for the people of the world to “take sides”.

Published at the New English Review.