Annual Nakba Commemoration Dinner Speech
My main point is this. While it is true that the incredible, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians is the rock on which all of us who campaign for justice stand, the struggle is not going to be won or lost IN Palestine that became Israel. It’s going to be won or lost HERE IN AMERICA.
In my analysis (and leaving aside the impotence of the regimes of the existing Arab Order) there are three political realities to be faced.
The first is that is that Zionism’s in-Israel leaders are not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.
The second is that only an American President has the leverage required to cause – or try to cause – enough Israelis to be serious about peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. (The leaders and governments of other major powers also have leverage, but they won’t think of using it unless America takes the lead).
The third is that no American President is going to use the leverage he has unless and until he is PUSHED to do so by informed public opinion, by expressions of real democracy in action. In other words, for peace to have a real and I believe last chance, a constituency of understanding has got to be created here in America to enable the President to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress. (As I put it in the Epilogue to the forthcoming Volume 3 of the American edition of this book, in order to use the leverage he has to require Israel to be serious about peace, the President needs enough members of Congress to be more frightened of offending their voters than they are of offending the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations).
As I dared to suggest in my Dear America Introduction to Volume One of this book, the problem in America is that most Americans are too uninformed and mis-informed TO DO THE PUSHING and make their democracy work. Simply stated, most Americans, like most Westerners, have been conditioned to accept a version of history, Zionism’s version, which is not true. It is, quite simply, a pack of propaganda lies.
The biggest of all the lies is the assertion that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation – the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. As I document in detail through the three volumes of this book, Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Not in 1948. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Despite some stupid rhetoric that suggested otherwise and assisted Zionism to get away with the Mother and Father of its propaganda lies, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most – in America and Western Europe – with presenting its aggression as self-defense and itself as the victim when actually it was and is the oppressor.
I bring the Prologue to Volume 1 of the American edition of this book to a conclusion by quoting an Israeli I admire – Major General Shlomo Gazit. He was the best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence. He was also one of the two who were advising Peres when I was shuttling between him and Arafat. Over coffee one morning I said to Shlomo: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a myth. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger.” Through a sad smile, he replied: “The trouble with us Israelis is that we’ve become the victims of our own propaganda.”
The biggest of the supporting Zionist propaganda lies was the assertion that Israel had no Arab partners for peace. As I’ve already said, and you know, Arafat had prepared the ground on his side for peace with Israel by the end of 1979. But there were a number of Arab overtures for peace long before that. I’ll mention just one. From almost the moment he came to power in Eygpt in 1951, Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel. So much so that he had secret exchanges with Israel’s then foreign minister, Moshe Sharret. In my view Sharret was the only completely sane Israeli leader of his time. It was because he wanted to be serious about advancing a peace process with Nasser that he was destroyed by Ben-Gurion… The documented record is quite clear. It was Israel’s leaders NOT the Arabs who spurned opportunity after opportunity for peace.
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