Open Letter to President Obama – Yes, You Could.
“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
More than two decades on, I think it could and should be said (and I would seek to persuade you, Mr. President, to say it), that Israel’s “misconduct” has become the prime factor in the rise of anti-Semitism.
In engagements with Israel’s Jews you would have to address their three main fears. They are not rational fears, but they are nonetheless real fears in minds that have been closed to reason by Zionist propaganda.
One fear is in the belief that a Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would pose an unacceptable and perhaps unmanageable threat to Israel’s security and even its existence. The reason why this is complete and utter nonsense was given to me by Yasser Arafat. He said, “Alan, we Palestinians are really not that stupid!” What he meant and went on to say was that if a Palestinian mini-state was in existence, and if from it Palestinian rejectors of compromise attacked Israel, there would come a point (if the Palestinian government did not stop the attacks) when the Israeli army would roll over the mini state’s borders and crush it out of existence, and would do so with the understanding if not the full approval of the whole world. Arafat then asked me this question. “Do you really believe that after struggling for so many years against impossible odds to achieve an acceptable minimum of justice, we Palestinians would then give Israel the pretext to take away for all of time what we had gained?” I replied: “No, I don’t believe that, and nor should any person of sound mind.
Another fear that could be explained away if the minds of Israel’s Jews were open to reason concerns the return of the Palestinian refugees – those and the descendents of those who were dispossessed of their land, their homes and their rights by, mainly, Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in the months immediately before and after Israel’s unilateral declaration of the independence. Zionism has always insisted that the return of the refugees to all of what was once Palestine is an insurmountable obstacle to peace because it would swamp the Israel of a two-state solution and end its existence as a Jewish state by numbers (by peaceful means). The fact is that the return of Palestinian refugees ceased to be an insurmountable obstacle to peace many years ago. As far back as the early 1980′s, the pragmatism of Arafat and his mainstream PLO leadership colleagues went as far as understanding and accepting that, in territorial terms, the return would have to be limited to the land of the Palestinian mini-state. They even worked out approximately how many refugees would be able to return. The number was not greatly in excess of 100,000. The rest, several millions, would have to settle for financial compensation and, for their heritage and dignity, a Palestinian passport. The problem at the time Arafat and his leadership colleagues decided that they’d got to make this unthinkable concession to the reality of Israel’s existence was that they could not say so publicly – because they knew they could not sell it to their people without some real proof that Israel was going to negotiate a genuine and viable two-state solution in good faith. That never happened. Israel has never negotiated in good faith.
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