There is a simple reason for opposing this propaganda offensive by Abbas at the UN.  It is not a way to achieve a two-state solution and bring a lasting peace to the region.  Rather, it is a way to avoid serious negotiations with the Israeli government and a means to mobilize anti-Israeli sentiment in the world.  True peace will arrive when a large majority of Palestinian Arabs accept the permanent existence of Israel, agree to defensible borders for Israel and give up the "right of return" to Israel for the great grandchildren of those Arabs who were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The PLA accepts the existence of Israel.  The goal has always been two states.  A second goal should be to isollate Hamas.  Israel should accept the existence of a Palestinian state as it exists now.  Thereby giving Abbas an advantage over Hamas and setting the stage for negotiations between two legitimate states.  Palestine and Israel.

Hamas (and Iran) are the problems

On one level, I applaud the Globe’s editorial today entitled “US should seek compromise with Abbas on  UN resolution” because it does not toe completely the Israeli lobby’s position with respect to the United Nation General Assembly vote today on the Palestinians’ bid to upgrade its status. On another and more important level, however, I am appalled at the misstatement of FACTS contained in the editorial.  In this regard, it is important to realize that while the Globe’s editorial staff has a right to its opinions, it does NOT have a right to its own set of “facts”. Journalistic ethics demand more of our media--even when it comes to editorial opinion.

Rather than address all of the many misstatements of fact and the multitude of serious omissions  in today’s editorial, I will confine myself for the time being to its first misstatement, as it sets the tone for the ones to follow, and a couple of  egregious omissions.  Wasting no time in getting to its false statements of fact, the editorial begins by stating:

Sixty-five years ago today, the United Nations voted on a partition plan that would have created two states: one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish people accepted. The Arab world did not, and attacked. That proved to be a terrible setback for Palestinians…. 

Today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is asking for a “do-over” of sorts. 

The entire world knows, except apparently the United States, that Israel has never wanted peace with the Palestinians unless that peace gave them every inch of the West Bank.  Although not reported in the main stream media in America and history books, this fact has been acknowledged repeatedly by Israel’s leaders:

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister:

            --“We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force to guarantee our own right to settle in those places--then we have force at our disposal” (1937)

--”I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral…The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making that happen, such as war” (1937)

--”I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine.”  

--”Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel.  That is natural: we have taken their country.  

--”Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.”

Menachem Begin, Israel’s 6th Prime Minister: “The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be realized…It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it and forever”

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister from 2001-2006: “It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is no Zionism, colonization {sic} or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands” “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours.”

Israel’s actions over that past sixty-five years clearly reflect its leaders’ statements. Israel’s current government, which is equally (if not more) extreme than many radical Islamist governments, is gobbling up Palestinian land at a record pace with no apparent intention whatsoever of giving it up.  Absent a 180 degree change of course on Israel‘s part, no amount of negotiations between it and the Palestinians is going to peace, must less a just peace.  In that regard, it is important to note that the charter of the Likud party, which Prime Minister Netanyahu leads, explicitly states that they will never allow for the creation of a Palestinian state.  Moreover, the slate of candidates elected just this week by the Likud to run in Israel’s national election this coming January is far more extreme on this point than ever before.  Gone from the slate are the few voices of moderation that had existed in the Likud up until this time.  Compared to the rest of the candidates, Netanyahu looks like a dove.  The radicalization of the Likud is furthered by its new alliance for the upcoming elections with Yisrael Beytenu, a party even further to the extreme lead by Israel’s infamous Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.

In addition to the misstatement of fact cited above, one needs to also consider some of serious omissions of fact from today’s editorial.  Missing from the editorial (as well as from virtually all of the Globe’s  news coverage over the last decade) are the two most basic facts about the I/P conflict which must be recognized in order to have any hope of a reality-based discussion of the situation: that Israel is engaged in an expansive and brutal blockade of Gaza and in an illegal occupation of the West Bank. Like Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren statement  a few days ago, the Globe apparently would have the world believe that the blockade’s sole purpose is to prevent weapons from being smuggled into Gaza which would be used by Hamas in an undying quest to destroy Israel and that all the Palestinians in Gaza need do to end the blockade is to recognize Israel’s right to exist. If that were the case, the blockade would be limited to weapons and not extend to many foodstuffs and the materials needed to rebuild the homes and economy which Israel has destroyed--both before and after the evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza.  Nor would Israel have found it necessary to calculate the absolute minimum numbers of calories and nutrients needed for the Gazans to sustain their bodies’ life functions and then tailor the blockade to insuring that that minimum not be exceeded.

Similarly, both the Globe’s news reporters and the author of today’s editorial, like the vast majority of the main stream media, cannot even bring themselves to use the factually accurate term “OCCUPATION” to describe the reality on the ground for Gazans’ fellow Palestinians in the West Bank.  Rather, they deny readers of an indisputably critical fact against which all else (that is actually reported and editorialized) must be read.   Despite its dismal world ranking in terms of free press (Israel is ranked only 93rd in the world in terms of freedom of the press), one only has to read the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz or most any other Israeli newspapers to discover Israel’s relentless drive to expel the Palestinians from their land, its brutal treatment of the Palestinians, its denial of equal rights to Israeli Arabs, and its inhumane blockade of Gaza. Reading Israel’s own newspapers one will see how Israelis themselves recognize the brutality of the Occupation (although most don’t seem to care) and the serious erosion of fundamental rights within Israel itself.  

Being fully aware of the various factual misstatements and omissions from today’s editorial, I find it difficult to accept the editorial’s conclusion that the US should seek a compromise with Abbas on today’s UN resolution. Rather, the US should fully endorse or at least abstain from voting on the resolution altogether.  Any other action will leave the US in short company. As of this morning, it appears that the only countries (aside from Israel) which agree with the US’ position are Canada, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Aside from these few countries, it appears that not a single European country or other democracy in the world will join the US in opposing the UN resolution. In such short company, the US is going to be awfully lonely--and rightly so!

I feel that it is important to provide a backdrop to the obvious distress about today’s Globe editorial which is contained in my earlier comments.  Earlier this week I had a discussion with the editor of the Globe’s editorial page. In that discussion,  I challenged a statement in an earlier editorial in which he squarely placed the blame on  Hamas for Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent invasion and attack on Gaza. The actual chain of events is succinctly set forth in, among other places, a November 20 article which can be found at Mondoweiss.com,  mondoweiss.net/2012/11/4-myths-about-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza.html :

· Nov. 4: Israel killed a mentally ill Palestinian walking near the Israeli-imposed “no-go zone” inside the Gaza Strip -- an event that triggered a rocket from Gaza into southern Israel, which did not cause any deaths or injuries.

· Nov. 8: Four Israeli military tanks and a bulldozer entered Gaza, fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy who had been playing soccer by his family’s house.

· Nov. 10: In retaliation, two rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel, and an anti-tank missile injured four soldiers, when it hit an Israeli army jeep that had crossed over into the territory. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported the killing of five more Palestinians, four of whom were civilians – including two soccer players age 16 and 17 and two young men (18 and 19) who ran to the scene. Forty-nine others were wounded, including 10 children.

· Nov. 11: Amid talks of a truce, six more Palestinians (all but one were civilians) were wounded and another was killed by both air strikes and troops on the ground.

· Nov. 12: With Israeli air strikes continuing, two rockets from Gaza hit Israel.

· Nov. 13: After two mid-afternoon air strikes, news services announced a truce had been agreed-upon.

· Nov. 14: Israel ignored the nascent truce and assassinated Hamas military chief Ahmad al-Jabari. (It is questionable whether Israeli officials ever really wanted a truce. As Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies wrote in The Nation: “Earlier this year, on the third anniversary of the Gaza assault of 2008/9, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told Army Radio that Israel will need to attack Gaza again soon, to restore what he called its power of ‘deterrence.’ He said the assault must be ‘swift and painful,’ concluding, ‘we will act when the conditions are right.’ Perhaps this was his chosen moment.”)

The author  goes on to  point our “[a] fact not known by most Americans, who see Jabari as merely a leader of “terrorists,” is that Israeli activist Gershon Baskin confirmed that Jabari was engaged in peace settlement negotiations with Israel. In fact, he was due to send Hamas’ version of a draft agreement to Baskin on the Wednesday evening before he was killed. It’s worth asking: Did Israel intend to torpedo those efforts? The rest of the story is tragic history. Jabari’s killing triggered Operation Pillar of Defense….”  

The Globe editor ADMITTED his awareness of this timeline. Despite his awareness/knowledge of those FACTS, his editorial nevertheless  describes a “reality” which is clearly contradicted by the facts, as well as the reality on the ground.  

In his defense, the editor states that rather than referring to the most recent escalation in violence he meant to refer more generally to the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel over time.  I personally suspect that the editor does not actually believe either the truth of the clear and unambiguous  statement in his editorial or the broader perspective that he allegedly meant to convey.  Nevertheless, Moreover, even the broader perspective that was allegedly intended contradicts the facts:

In an analysis largely ignored by the main stream media in the US, www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html, Nancy Kanwisher (the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) examined the entire timeline of killings between Palestinians and Israelis from September 2000 to October 2008 to determine if there was a historical pattern. She found that 

“It is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict. Seventy-nine percent of all conflict pauses (during the study period) were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer (ceasefires). Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than nine days.”

One of the lessons to be learned from this date, Kanwisher states is that: “If Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.” www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html

As a result of that conversation I am admittedly struggling to reconcile the high regard I have always held for the editor of the Globe’s editorial page with the inevitable conclusion that I can away with from our recent conversation: that for whatever reason there are times when the Globe’s editorial page (like that of the vast majority of the American main stream media) conveys not just opinions, but also knowing misstatements of fact.  That struggle was only intensified by today’s Globe editorial and my earlier comments about today’s editorial should be read against that backdrop.

I agree with the comments that point to Israel's responsibility for the lion's share of ongoing hostilities and  its clearintention, from 1948 or earlier (not 1967) to take as much land and remove as many Palestinias as possible in its effort to create a greater "Jewish State" (a non-democratic principle, since 20% of the population in Israel proper are not Jews and since Israel apparently wishes to stand uniquely as a nation with a religious identity).

With regard to today's activities in the UN:  Is the US again to stand virtually alone on the world stage in opposition to any Palestinian effort to be recognized as a people?  Abbas' "government" is already on life supports; many objective analyses (see Wed. New York Times, e.g.) point to a declining influence of Fatah, a growing respect for and alliance with Hammas.  The US is playing a dangerous game and stands, again, to be seen as the enemy in the Arab world.  Is Susan Rice to be the messenger this time, too?  This is what her real test of diplomacy should be about, and she should balk at delivering the same old US line if she stands any chance of being an effective Sec. of State in the future. 

Why are we giving money - lots of money - to the Palestinian Authority? Shouldn't the Arab states be providing the support? They're the ones who are constantly complaining about the "Palestinian Problem." Where's Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Kuwait? The Emirates? How much money do they give to the Palestinians?