Yalla Peace/Yalla Salam

Ikhras loves the Syrian Dictatorship: Just read their "Twits"

2011-12-09T06:41:00.001-06:00

Ikhras haters Thabit al-Arabi and Qassem Lufti, who have a life-long difficulty with the English language, moderation and accuracy, have laid out (or lied out) a long list of reasons why they think Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad shouldn't be attacked and that the pro-Democracy protesters should be blamed and criticized.

But they know that their support for the Syrian government, which has murdered more than 4,000 innocent civilians including hundreds of children, is not an easy one to argue. It makes them look like hypocrites as they assault and slander an array of people including. Their targets include star comedians Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid (who host the annual New York Arab Comedy Festival), and writers Hussein Ibish, Ray Hanania and Mona eltahawy. These are but a few of the scores of people that Ikhras brutalizes in their online verbal assaults as if they were the Syrian military police attacking civilians seeking freedom in Homs. (I can just see the Ikhras goofs cheering as new statistics surface about innocent Syrian civilians being killed by the Syrian Government that they consistently defend.)

All you have to do is read their Twitter posts, posts that Qassem and Thabet recently referred to as "Twits" in an email. Maybe that's because they are the "twits."

Hussein Ibish has penned a scathing expose of who these sad refugees from truth really are.

(Click here to read that priceless unveiling of the rotten core of Ikhras.)

Here's a direct link to Ibish's article: Click here.

But here are some of their most recent Tweets (Yes Thabet and Qassem, they're called Tweets, not Twits!) that demonstrate and prove their loyalty to the Syrian Dictatorship and why they pick and chose their words carefully to pretend as if they care about, say, the Palestinian refugees (they don't) or the people of Egypt (they don't) or ADC (which upsets them the most because ADC fights for the rights of victims of discrimination including those bullied by cowards like Qassem and Thabet and the Ikhras gaggle of online bullies).

Read how they carefully tiptoe and pretend they do not support the brutality of the Syrian regime, and then use that argument as a means of attacking others. The way they exploit the suffering of the Palestinians as a means of saying, hey, what's happening in Syria isn't that important because Bush is a liar and a murderer, too.

Their theme here is right out of the Little Red Book published by Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Baath Party dictators.

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

The show is sponsored by Royal Jordanian Airlines. Unlikely RJ would sponsor these clowns w/o involvement of Gov agencyascf.jo/index.html

2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Can anyone provide info on this show in Amman, Jordan?ascf.jo/index.html Interested in role of US Embassy in this event.@Deanofcomedy.

2 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Interesting to contrast Western officials descriptions of Eric Honeker/Gustav Husak/Nicolae Ceaușescu w/descriptions of Qadhafi/Saddam/Assad

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Why do some ignore mass murder of 1.5 Million people by Bush & Blair in Iraq & feign humanity over crimes by Arab rulers US Gov opposes?

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Arabs must oppose Arab tyranny w/o adopting racist double standards which dehumanize an entire culture and not just a regime or ruler.

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Arabs who oppose Arab dictators shouldnt accept the West's dehumanization of Arab rulers because it includes dehumanization of Arab culture

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Those who call #Syria n President a "liar" (and lets all assume he is): Would you dare call US officials liars? Dont accept double standards

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

For those who oppose the #Syria n regime: Its in your interest to not lie. Youre better off trying to preserve your credibility.

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

It appears some people paid more attention to State Dept's characterization of the Bashar Al-Assad interview than to the interview. #Syria

4 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

Arabs deserve better than to have to choose between dictatorship and imperialism.

18 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

If you must collaborate with a foreign force, at least collaborate with Sweden or Vietnam or someone without Arab blood on their hands. #snc

18 hours ago

ikhras Ikhras اخرس

just coined a new term. Housism (n): collaboration with the oppressors as a "strategy" to end their subjugation of the oppressed.

New Facebook support group for Arabs and Jews who are married or will be married

2011-06-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

I've set up a Facebook support group for Arabs and Jews (Israelis, Palestinians) who are married or are planning to be married. If you are in such a relationship, I hope you will join it.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_223690414327690

Ray Hanania

Abbas: The Long Overdue Palestinian State

2011-05-17T13:10:00.000-05:00

The Long Overdue Palestinian State

By MAHMOUD ABBAS

Ramallah, West Bank

SIXTY-THREE years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine.

This month, however, as we commemorate another year of our expulsion — which we call the nakba, or catastrophe — the Palestinian people have cause for hope: this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and that our state be admitted as a full member of the United Nations.

Many are questioning what value there is to such recognition while the Israeli occupation continues. Others have accused us of imperiling the peace process. We believe, however, that there is tremendous value for all Palestinians — those living in the homeland, in exile and under occupation.

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.

Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.

Our quest for recognition as a state should not be seen as a stunt; too many of our men and women have been lost for us to engage in such political theater. We go to the United Nations now to secure the right to live free in the remaining 22 percent of our historic homeland because we have been negotiating with the State of Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state of our own. We cannot wait indefinitely while Israel continues to send more settlers to the occupied West Bank and denies Palestinians access to most of our land and holy places, particularly in Jerusalem. Neither political pressure nor promises of rewards by the United States have stopped Israel’s settlement program.

Negotiations remain our first option, but due to their failure we are now compelled to turn to the international community to assist us in preserving the opportunity for a peaceful and just end to the conflict. Palestinian national unity is a key step in this regard. Contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asserts, and can be expected to repeat this week during his visit to Washington, the choice is not between Palestinian unity or peace with Israel; it is between a two-state solution or settlement-colonies.

Despite Israel’s attempt to deny us our long-awaited membership in the community of nations, we have met all prerequisites to statehood listed in the Montevideo Convention, the 1933 treaty that sets out the rights and duties of states. The permanent population of our land is the Palestinian people, whose right to self- determination has been repeatedly recognized by the United Nations, and by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Our territory is recognized as the lands framed by the 1967 border, though it is occupied by Israel.

We have the capacity to enter into relations with other states and have embassies and missions in more than 100 countries. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have indicated that our institutions are developed to the level where we are now prepared for statehood. Only the occupation of our land hinders us from reaching our full national potential; it does not impede United Nations recognition.

The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter. Once admitted to the United Nations, our state stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel. A key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.

Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another, however, and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us.

We call on all friendly, peace-loving nations to join us in realizing our national aspirations by recognizing the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and by supporting its admission to the United Nations. Only if the international community keeps the promise it made to us six decades ago, and ensures that a just resolution for Palestinian refugees is put into effect, can there be a future of hope and dignity for our people.

Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the Palestinian National Authority.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17abbas.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Ray Hanania interviewed on alHurra Arabic Satellite TV

2011-04-03T14:08:00.000-05:00

Ray Hanania interviewed on alHurra Arabic Satellite TV on the failure of American Arabs to tell their story fully and effectively.

Response to Efraim Cohen, former "US Diplomat"

2011-03-07T11:04:00.000-06:00

LETTER TO THE JERUSALEM POST
Utterly false charges March 6, 2011
Sir, – Ray Hanania alleges that “American politicians put their sights on [Iraq’s] oil and squeezed it for every penny possible through Halliburton, run by Dick Cheney before he became vice president” (“Freedom, democracy and ulterior motives,” Yalla Peace, March 2). Those charges are utterly false.

As an American diplomat, I was directly involved in designing and implementing the UN’s “Oil-for- Food” program during the mid- 1990s. Iraq was allowed to sell a limited amount of oil, with all proceeds held in an international bank and used to buy humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people.

The price was set by a group of independent experts relying on the prevailing world oil market.

The US had no access to Iraqi oil other than through private companies competing with foreign companies for purchase contracts.

America received not a penny from the sales. Had its primary goal been to increase its own oil supply, the best method would have been to close its eyes to the threat Iraq posed, work to have UN sanctions lifted, and allow Saddam to sell as much oil as he wished.

I also served in Iraq after the Second Gulf War. During my time in Baghdad I participated in several high-level meetings regarding efforts to rebuild and protect Iraq’s oil industry. Not once did I hear anyone say that our goal was to increase US oil supplies.

Our efforts were aimed entirely at helping the Iraqis utilize their resources to rebuild their country.

Hanania says most Arabs view the war as having been “a move to grab Iraq’s oil resources.”

These Arabs are simply wrong.

EFRAIM A. COHEN
Zichron Ya’acov
The writer served as an American diplomat for nearly 25 years.

RAY HANANIA RESPONDS

Like many propagandists, Efrain Cohen twists the facts. My column focused on the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, which was driven by oil profit greed, greed which directly benefited Halliburton. But Cohen choses not to address that and to pretend that the embargo of the 1990s is the invasion of 2003. It's interesting to see that he was a U.S. Diplomat and now lives in Israel.

The facts of America's brutal and unjustified invasion of Iraq are spelled out well not just by Arabs but by many in the West, although certainly Cohen's agenda probably was to destroy Saddam Hussein, a former ally funded and backed by the Untied States during the 1980s in the decade-long battle against Iran fought by Iraq on behalf of the United States.

As an AMERICAN, it is clear where the real issues and distortions lie.

The US grabbed and controls Iraq's oil resources since the 2003 invasion and we have used those moneys we did not grab to build projects that made many American contractors like Halliburton wealthy including the $1 billion spent to build the most outrageous lush palace in Iraq, the American Embassy.

-- Ray Hanania

Yalla Peace: Shut out the fanatics

2010-12-29T07:35:00.000-06:00

Yalla Peace: Shut out the fanaticsBy RAY HANANIA

12/28/2010 JERUSALEM POST

The Arabs’ failure to lead has allowed a small

cabal of Palestinian extremists to hijack the Palestinian cause.

As soon as the first-ever conference of Arab expatriates hosted in Cairo earlier this month by the League of Arab Nations closed, the fanatics dropped from their damp dark caves and started to scream that it was a sham.

The conference, backed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is calling on Palestinians and Arabs who are expatriates living in the West but more importantly in the United States, to organize.

The conference concluded with many goals including creating an “organizational framework for Arab expatriates” while fostering “a dialogue of civilizations, cultures and religions.”

Pro-Israeli media and pundits immediately criticized the conference, complaining that too much of it was focused on the Palestinian issue and that much of it was based on confronting Israeli extremism rather than pursuing dialogue.

The conference clearly endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative outlined in 2002, one that Israel continues to run from because it requires tough compromises.

But more importantly, the Palestinians and the Arab League want to rip control of the Palestinian cause from the hands of fanatics and extremists in the United States whose sole mission has been to block peace and to reinforce the power of Hamas, the terrorist religious organization.

Immediately, Arab and Palestinian fanatics started launching public attacks against the conference and it is a growing theme they are selling to the Palestinian diaspora which sympathizes with the fanatic anger but support the moderate strategies. It sounds contradictory but for most moderate Palestinians, Israel has given them nothing to cheer about at all and everything to jeer about.

Almost all of Israel’s actions since the Oslo Accords have been geared towards maintaining the status quo while granting some power to the Palestinians, except the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Israel wants to keep all of Jerusalem, all of the settlements, wants Palestinians to recognize it as a Jewish state.

IT IS about time that the Arab League nations finally did something. Their failure to lead has created a void which has allowed a small cabal of Palestinian extremists in the United States and Europe to hijack the Palestinian cause.

And they are no better than Israelis, speaking from both sides of their mouths, too. A good example is the movement to boycott products sold by Israelis that are manufactured or grown in the occupied West Bank. The movement is spearheaded by a group called Jewish Voice for Peace.

They say they target products made in the West Bank but many of their leaders are working hand-in-hand with Palestinian-American extremists who are also targeting products made in Israel.

These Palestinian extremists are anti-Semitic and driven by hatred. They say one thing but always mean something else.

Israelis don’t help much, as I have already pointed out. Instead of drawing a proper line on things like anti-Semitism, Israel’s supporters like the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America headquartered in New York, call everything critical of Israel anti-Semitic.

What Israelis don’t realize is that their broad stroke, knee-jerk attacks of anti-Semitism, against even the harshest critics of Israel, like the venerable Helen Thomas, only weaken the moderate Palestinian voices.

In a way, Israeli actions often strengthen the Palestinian extremists and maybe that is intentional. Many Israelis don’t want to give up anything. They don’t want peace. And the Palestinian extremists help them get away with this unacceptable status quo.

As long as the Palestinian extremists have the upper hand, this Israeli strategy will work.

But the Expatriate Conference in Cairo can change that, especially if they follow through with concrete actions to strengthen the voices of Palestinian and Arab moderates in the West and particularly in the United States.

More importantly, they need to reach out to Palestinian moderates, slam down the extremist voices and speak consistently about peace based on the 2002 plan. Israelis, believe it or not, are no different than Arabs.

And if they believe peace is genuine, they just might support it.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com.

Yalla Peace: WikiLeaks reminds us of reality

2010-12-07T17:15:00.002-06:00

Yalla Peace: WikiLeaks reminds us of reality

By RAY HANANIA

12/07/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Everything we have always suspected

about the Arab world is true.

The revelations by WikiLeaks regarding the behindthe- scenes views and contacts between Israelis and Arabs are really much of a shocker. In fact, almost everything I have read only underscores what I always believed. The Arab world is ruled by dictators who don’t really care about their people or Palestine.

These dictators are concerned about all the things that kings and tyrants spend their time on: power, money and fun.

Israeli leaders have been holding secret meetings with the Arab governments since the 1947-49 war, from meetings with King Abdullah of Jordan, who was assassinated in 1951, to the wealthy dictator of Qatar, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

None of this can give us comfort, though. In fact, WikiLeaks really confirms our worst fears. Everything we have always suspected about the Arab world is true.

Publicly, Arab leaders’ incendiary rhetoric against Israel preaches resistance and “steadfastness” to the Palestinians.

But privately, they set aside the venom and share tea and crumpets with the Israelis. They speak from both sides of their sheesha pipes, on the one hand blasting Israel for the public, on the other privately showing that they don’t believe a word they are telling said public Fascinating.

A real shocker might have been to read that an Arab leader told the Israelis in private what he says so often in public. But that would take courage – not a characteristic of Arab leaders.

Bombast and phoniness have been the way Arab dictators, monarchs, kings, queens (not in a generic sense) and tyrants conduct themselves in public, turning into spineless creatures of selfish pleasure in private.

WikiLeaks further “disclosed” that the Arabs fear Iran as much or perhaps more than Israel. Wow. Isn’t that why Saddam Hussein, when he was an American-funded dictator, led the failed war against Iran for 10 years? There didn’t need to be a document reporting that very few Arab leaders spend time schmoozing with Iran’s little dictator.

To the Arabs, a nuclear-armed Iran is more frightening than a nuclear-armed Israel.

In some ways, Arab governments are much like American administrations. Both will tolerate dictatorship as long as the dictators are their friends. In these cases, Arabs have high tolerance for themselves and each other.

WIKILEAKS ALSO shows the Arabs are not beyond their paranoia. Many are convinced that WikiLeaks is a Zionist plot to strengthen the Israeli drive to destroy Iran’s ayatollah-run nuclear-wielding government. You can read it in many of the columns now being published in the Arab media, especially those not under government control.

Of course, the theory is far more comforting to accept than the truth that Iran is a dictatorship that brutalizes its people.

Clearly, the WikiLeaks documents show that Arab world leaders are all talk and little action.

I was also really hoping for something more exciting from WikiLeaks, like the confirmation of many of the rumors I have heard over the years.

For example, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who you would think would love to curl his fingers around a juicy clump of lamb and rice mensiff, instead spoons chunks of matza and soup with the finesse of a British teetotaler.

Or, maybe that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman isn’t really racist, but thinks that acting like he has a special bone to pick with Arabs makes him a tougherlooking government official.

Most disappointing is that in a massive leak of documents like this, there is usually some reference to a sexual or naughty nature.

You mean to tell me that none of the Arab dictators who met with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni offered to make her a part of their harems that they pretend no longer exist? I like her. I’d make her my fourth wife.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com.

Yalla Peace: Hanukka and Holidays at the Hanania household

2010-12-01T06:14:00.000-06:00

Yalla Peace: Hanukka and Holidays at the Hanania household
By RAY HANANIA
12/01/2010 JERUSALEM POST

In recent years, as Hanukka and Christmas overlapped,

the holiday season became a minefield of decoration-related decisions.

Over the past few years, Hanukka, Christmas and the Id al-Adha all seemed to coincide. That made Arabs, Jews and Israelis happy. They saw it as a sign of better things to come. People were singing “Kumbaya.”

They were mixing words and phrases from each religion to create new “words of peace,” like “holiday treats for peace.” And they were offering trades to kickstart the stalled peace process: felafel for matza.

Arabs and Jews even tried writing Middle East peace songs together, until each side discovered that wasn’t easy either. Promises made in some of the choruses had been changed. Important words had been replaced. Some of the lyrics required side notes to explain what the original intent of the song was.

Pretty soon, everyone was singing a different tune. Like Middle East peace, we all know what the melody is but we just can’t get the words right.

MAKING PEOPLE believe in miracles may have been good for everyone else, but it wasn’t good in the Israeli-occupied Hanania household, where marriage has achieved what negotiations and even proximity talks have failed to do in the Middle East. It may have coincided for everyone else. But for my family, the holidays collided.

That Hanukka and Christmas both overlapped was a big problem. My wife, Alison, and I found ourselves in a cast iron battle over whose settlements – I mean decorations – would get the best locations in and around our house.

We fought over the front room coffee table. Do we put a menora or a crèche (Nativity scene)? Who gets to hang something on the front door? A Star of David or a picture of Jesus wrapped in a Palestinian flag? Both?

I discovered that Hanukka lights are more Jewish than Christian lights. The lights on her string decorations had shapes of dreidels, menorot, Stars of David and images of Binyamin Netanyahu.

Mine were little bulbs called “Italian lights.” What have the Italians ever done for peace anyway? She got to do something new every day with our son Aaron. Lighting one extra candle every night for eight days. I got to turn on a switch.

The lawn was a battleground too. I wanted to put up a big Santa Claus. You know, that chubby guy with the long, white beard that needs to be dyed, wearing an effeminate looking red suit with white fur. What does he really have to do with Christmas, I wonder? Although Jesus had a beard too, but it wasn’t bushy white.

She had a huge display of Jerusalem with a big sign quoting Ariel Sharon “indivisible capital for all eternity” that she said she wanted to keep there all year long. She got it free – after a small donation of $1,500 – from the Jewish United Fund.

Believe me, by the time we got through arguing over what went where, who got what and who started the Gaza war, we were beat, so tired we could barely enjoy the meal, the one moment when Arabs have an advantage over Israelis.

After all, Arabs may know how to build settlements and walls, barriers and murals, but Israelis can’t cook. They end up making our food and while we Arabs complain that they stole our culinary style, our humous and our Syrian – yes, Syrian – bread, the fact is deep down we prefer to have them serve us something.

THANK GOODNESS all that “signs from heaven” stuff has stopped. This year, Hanukka comes first and Christmas comes after.

She puts her stuff up and then I get to take it down and put up my stuff.

I then get to celebrate secular New Year and, afterward Orthodox New Year. My stuff goes up last and never gets taken down.

No “Kumbaya.” No pretending there are going to be any miracles of peace. No arguing over whose food is best or who owns what land.

One Christmas, Alison even stopped painting a green line through the house to designate what part was hers and what part was mine. She always said she would be fair in our marriage and we each get “half.” She gets 78 percent and I get 22.

But then I realized that her not painting the green line in our house was just an Israeli trick to make me forget where the 1949 armistice marriage agreement really was.

And I demanded that she paint it, but she still refuses till this day.

So this year, no fights over bells ringing or who gets to “deck” the Halls – the Halls, our neighbors, always hated it when we decked them when they came by, although the Halls are Jewish so I didn’t mind. No sighs pretending like there is going to be peace.

Just a lot of mistletoe, zaide’s sandwiches of corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver, and real happiness knowing we each get our turn. And I go last.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Can we save Palestine? A call for moderates to conference and strategize

2010-11-23T07:58:00.000-06:00

Can we save Palestine? Or will we allow the extremists -- Arab and Israeli -- destroy that dream?

It's a simple question. I want to save Palestine. I want to eliminate fanaticism and the best way to do that is by creating two-states and removing the option of conflict from the table. But Israeli leaders continue to opt for violence and rejection of peace, baiting the Palestinians into emotion-driven reactions of anger, hatred and violence, too.

But the Israelis are better at it.

Can we save Palestine? I am hoping to organize a conference in Chicago in April to promote a New Strategy to Save Palestine, one that involves strategic rather than emotion-driven rhetoric and actions that fail.

Ali Abunimeh's call for a One-State solution is the allure of poison for our people. One state is what we NOW HAVE, a one-state where the Israeli masters oppress Palestinians and feed the hatred and suffering and provokes violence in response to Israeli violence.

We can stop it through strategic discussion and action intended to strengthen the voice of those who oppose extremism, Israeli and Palestinian.

If you want to support this effort, please go to the Facebook Page and join Yalla Peace.

If we can't at least we tried. And trying is better than feeling sorry for yourself.

Click here to go to Yalla Peace on Facebook and join the movement.

If we get enough people, we will launch the conference inA pril. If not, nothing has been lost, except our hope.

-- Ray Hanania
www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: Seven deadly sins that prevent peace

2010-11-16T18:25:00.002-06:00

Yalla Peace: Seven deadly sins that prevent peace
By RAY HANANIA
11/16/2010 JERUSALEM POST

What is it that motivates us to unite in prayer for rain but not to unite in prayer for real peace?

A major obstacle preventing Palestinian and Israeli peace is that our leaders do not genuinely speak of peace and have a mind-set that is based in anger.

They are so wrapped up in their negativity that they are incapable of coming together for peace and compromise, although they cover up their negativity by telling themselves that they do support peace, when they really do not.

I have always believed Israelis and Palestinians need a psychiatrist more than they need a nonpartisan negotiator like the US to bring them together. The truth of our conflict comes out in our actions more than in our words. We should all be laying back on couches as the psychiatrist brings out our deepest fears.

I follow Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon on Twitter. Most of the time his posts remind me of how hopeless Palestinian and Israeli leaders really are. He speaks about peace, but too often his words reflect the opposite.

Recently, on his Twitter page, he wrote: “Praying for rain unites Jews, Muslims and Christians.” He didn’t mean it as some major revelation about the historical relations between Palestinians and Israelis. It wasn’t a policy statement, nor a determination for peace. It was a subliminal gesture on his part that revealed what our problem really is.

DEEP DOWN we – Palestinians and Israelis – want everyone to come together. It makes us feel good. But we don’t want to pay the price for peace, which is compromise, and that leaves us with conflict. Rain is not conflict. But rain is one of those troublesome necessities of life. We need rain but we also fear rain, which can easily become thunderstorms, hurricanes and floods.

Rain can symbolize both a natural growth and a fierce natural destruction.

How come I never read Ayalon write on his Twitter page, “Respect and generosity unite Jews, Muslims and Christians.” Or “real peace where Israelis and Palestinians compromise and recognize each other unites Jews, Muslims and Christians.”

Ayalon’s Twitter post is so revealing because it represents exactly what is wrong with the relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

We look at the natural order of the world and spend all our time trying to change things that cannot be changed. We spend all our efforts rejecting the very answers and solutions that can bring change.

We can’t do anything about the weather, but we can do much to stop the violence. We can stop the killings. We can stop the hatred. We can stop the building of settlements. We can stop the firing of rockets. We can stop the assaults on civilians. We can stop the attacks on soldiers.

We can’t start or stop the rain.

So why do we pine for that which we can’t have, when what we can have sits right there under our noses? What is it that motivates us to unite in prayer for rain but not to unite in prayer for real peace? There are seven answers to that question, the psychiatrist might explain. Pining for rain is so much easier than pining for peace, at least according to the seven deadly sins that plague humanity – wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony.

Wrath: The eternal flame that brings Palestinians and Israelis so closely together. We often try to inflict more pain than what has been brought on ourselves.

Greed: The refusal by Israelis to surrender settlements and Palestinians to surrender a demand for the right of return.

Sloth: Peace requires real work and we have tired from failing over the years.

Pride: Wanting to look good to our people rather than doing the right thing and making them angry.

Lust: Israeli rejectionists see the West Bank as the wife of another man, and Palestinian rejectionists covet failed peace as their desired goal.

Envy: We hate what the other has.

Gluttony: We feed ourselves rhetoric that makes us fat with a false sense of having achieved something. We consume ourselves with a false belief that we are better than the other, and close our eyes to our own roles in the tragedy we all help to create.

I am sure that when Danny Ayalon wrote his Twitter post, he wasn’t thinking of all this. But I wish he did. The only thing we should allow to unite Jews, Muslims and Christians is praying for peace.

end

Ikhras and KabobFest, meet the Nana "Tea Party" of Israel

2010-11-14T05:45:00.000-06:00

Let's see, there is one moron in Michigan who continues to write hate email against ,e. It is so filled with four letter words (often misspelled) that I can't even reprint the letters from the Palestinian writer. Clearly, he is a very angry person and filled with so much hate it spills out in his internal cancerous rage. He hates me because I write for the Jerusalem Post and because I support compromise based on two states.

Oh, the Palestinian extremists hate the compromise so much, they can't argue against it, so they instead attack the people who advocate a secure and productive and peaceful life for the Palestinian refugees who have been stuck living in limbo and pain and suffering and hopeflessness, taught to embrace a dream that is genuine but that the fanatics are incapable of achieving.

Yes, that is the issue. The Palestinian Right of Return is a genuine, legal right. But the champions who urge the Palestinian refugees to wallow in the destitution of the refugee camps lie to the refugees saying that one day they will return and fight hard to blind and brainwash them in to believing that the realistic option of compromise where they will get respect, compensation and offer a future to their children is a Zionist trick.

That's the lie of Ikhras, the anti-Semitic anti-compromise Palestinian hate site on the Internet, and Kabobfest, the place where moronic mice dance to the tune of the haters.

And now it is the lie of the far Israeli right, the fanatic extremists who call themselves the Israeli Tea Party. Yikes!

Here are two of a few recent letters I received from the Israeli "Tea Party." Notice that they are more anti-Semitic in their rage than the anti-Semites, and that their philosophy is hatred:

Ray,

Spilling venom about Israel from Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Obama city is swell and safe.

Before you suggest for Jews to live in Islamic Palestine, I strongly suggest, you experiment living among this filth yourself. Then we shall talk.

Remember, Jews live in the Jewish State of Israel, so they will NEVER have to experience the living conditions the Arabs have in mind for them. Therefore, no matter how you have in mind to arrange the puzzle of the land, now considered land of dispute, not one Jew will live in a "Palestine" if a "Palestine" is ever created.

Just like the USA, soon, if anyone, Jewish or not, wants to have the privilege of living in Israel, they will have to swear allegiance to Eretz Israel as a JEWISH State. I hope you do not categorize it as racism because then the USA is racist too. And since both countries are founded on liberties and freedom, what is good for the USA is good for Israel. No discrimination please.

How dare you write such a seditious article so far removed from the truth?

Shalom to all

Nurit Greenger

Israel

Hey Ray, how's it going in Soetoro land?

I noticed indirectly by receiving your idiotic note from member of our field review people there that you propose to "live amongst the islamics" presumably yourself included. Because it will not be any other way guy.

To that I may add that I have good news for you.

A. You will soon not be allowed to come here w/o a Pledge of Allegiance to Eretz Israel as a JEWISH State. I presume that you claim to be Jewish... Say yes please. ATTABOY!

B. You will not need to relocate to Eretz Israel, chas v'chalilah.

Just stay in Chicago a few more years and you will have exactly the communal living under Shariah Law and imams joy there, in Chicage. Rham is arranging that fer you.

Shmuel

TRUTH NOW!, The NANA PEA PARTY of ISRAEL

Radio Free Israel

No wonder the Middle East is so screwed up.

I suggest that the Nana Pea Party/Tea Party of Israel have a conference with the morons at Ikhras and KabobFest and waste their energies bashing each other

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Letters and comments from my Jerusalem Post Readers

2010-11-10T07:48:00.000-06:00

As you can imagine, I do get a lot of hate email although I am not sure if more comes from Palestinian maniacs or Israeli maniacs. But here are some letters emailed to me directly I thought are worth sharing:

Mr Hanania;

I have just read your column in today's Jerusalem Post.

I applaud your efforts to overcome the fear mongering and rhetoric.

I just want to ask you: if a Palestinian state is established, will you emigrate from comfortable Chicago?

Voices of peace and moderations will be needed in the new state. (they are needed right now!)

I feel that I can ask you that question because I did leave Toronto, Canada to live in Israel, because of my beliefs.

My standard of living has dropped considerably, as you can imagine. But there are other compensations.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours truly,

I’d love to immigrate to Palestine, but right now Israel will not permit me to immigrate there. They control the immigration and they refused me the ability to apply for Palestinian Citizenship, telling me that if I applied, they would not allow me to enter Israel to get to Palestine. So, unlike you, who had the choice, I don’t but will when it happens one day …

I think that despite any differences we might have over minor issues, the bigger picture of recognition, fairness, security and justice are critical and can be achieved

Thank you for writing … I appreciate it very much

RAY HANANIA

==== =============

This is a perfect example of how out of touch you just might be. But thanks for

writing.

Rena Cohen

Israel

**************************************************

“Racism”

By Steven Plaut

Allow us to introduce you to young Kochav Segal Halevi. The life of

the Israeli 26 year old is in danger and he is receiving death

threats. In fact he had to go into hiding. His offence? He

purchased an apartment in the Arab town of ‘Iblin not far from Haifa.

The Arabs of the town do not like the idea of their town being

polluted by the presence of a Jew. I mean, one Jew and there goes the

neighborhood. The left-leaning Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot (Nov. 7,

2010) described the threats he has been receiving and how he fears for ...

[RAY HANANIA COMMENTS: This column is typical of how Israelis sometimes pretend to address issues but ignore the facts, like the fact that the residents of Ibilin would embrace Jews if Israelis would stop stealing their lands and expewlling non-Jews from them. So the writer thinks that the provocations and actions that provoke anger are not important, on the consequences of what Israel does counts, consequences of Palestinians reacting angrily to Israeli extremists who are growing in size in Israel.]

I guess being out of touch is still far better than being a hater, don’t you think? Maybe wanting peace instead of conflict, fairness, justice, you know, all the things that Jewish people are supposed to be?

RAY HANANIA

=========== ==============

Mr Hanania

I have been reading your syndicated articles for many years in the US and in the JPOST. Your article about Palestinians accepting Jews is very interesting and many Jews have said the same thing for decades. Clearly many Jews would be interested.

One major flaw in your thinking is that successive declarations by Arafat and Abbas contradict your thesis, as they have said there won't be a single Jew in Palestine. These quotes are available. Consequently, while I admire your thought, I think the article is directed to the choir.

Best,

DJ, MD

I think that while you can find statements that pander to Palestinians from Arafat and everyone, you can also find the same kin of pandering comments from Israeli leaders who say they do not want a Palestinian state at all.

We know both sides play politics, but for some reason when an Arab says something, it is written in stone but when an Israeli says something, it’s just a part of the peace process.

When peace arrives, we won’t have to deal with these issues of contention, which is why fanatics on both sides are doing their best to stop peace.

We shouldn’t surrender to them.

Thank you for your kind words, though. It’s rare for me to hear anything nice from Israelis or American Jews.

RAY HANANIA

=============== ==========

Hi Ray,

Credit when credit is due. I don't always find everything you write what we Brits call fair play, but your article in the Post today was a fair play. More power to your elbow.

Best wishes,

Thanks David … I don’t think many of the talkback writers on the Jpost.com agree : ) … and I can’t figure out who hates me more, the extremist Palestinians or the extremist Israelis. But being in the middle between them makes me feel comfortable and optimistic and I can look myself in a mirror … thank you for your encouragement. Even the moderate voice needs that occasionally.

RAY HANANIA

======================= =============

Dear Ray:

The American English and the civility born of living in Chicago does wonder for softening your views; but, logic is still logic—so how does the case of Haneen Zoabi expose the flaws in Israeli democracy? Haneen Zoabi is an MK in the Knesset, which I contend demonstrates just how democratic Israel is. And, while I would not stoop to compare Israeli democracy with the government of any Muslim country, just how does preventing a citizen from breaking the law impinge on the democratic nature of a democracy? And, even more so when breaking the law is seditious?

Of course, Ms. Zoabi knew exactly what she was doing, and she sought the response she got…a response she would have gotten in any real democracy--so long as its citizens had not become so open-minded that their collective brains had not fallen out.

Regards,

CAA

Boarding a ship to bring food and clothing and medicine to people imprisoned by a boycott is not illegal … it is the right thing to do … Israel should let go of Gaza … protect itself from the terrorists … and clean up their own house too … Arab Israeli citizens are discriminated against in Israel and are denied equal rights … their cities and villages do not get the same services as Jewish cities and villages and they are excluded from some areas of Israel, banned by local ordinances … that discrimination contradicts your claims of democracy …

I visit Israel and Palestine frequently and my relatives live on both sides of the green line … as citizens of Israel (with an ID card that had a number and letter that distinguishes them from Jews – another form of discrimination

Thanks for writing but I think you need to open your eyes and re-embrace the principles that are the conscience of the Jewish people, not close them to avoid seeing the violations of human rights

RAY HANANIA

=============== ==============

Sir,

While I rarely agree with your stand vis a vis the Middle East and Israel I have none the less enjoyed your articles and felt that they may be reflective of a change in the air, at least among some. Your defense of Zouabi has convinced me otherwise. I will not read your articles again and will advocate for their removal from the Jerusalem Post due to your complete lack of credibility as a spokesperson for change, and obvious lack of analytic clarity and plain old fashioned honesty.

Are you really that obtuse that you fail to see that the liberties that Zouabi enjoys is proof of our democracy and not the opposite? I for one would love to see the same freedom of dissent in any Arab country, perhaps in Egypt? Jordan? Syria? Morocco? The PA? Surely you see through her thinly veiled agenda.

Frankly…you blew it, and with that there is less hope. I had expected more. You have now joined the ranks of good old fashioned propagandists.

ABY, Israel

Thanks for writing ABY. I guess there are some Israelis who are no different than the Arab fanatics they hate

Thanks for writing

RAY HANANIA

================= ===============

I have always wanted to write to you. I cant say that I usually agree with you but I do find your articles humorous and I mean that in a good way. I enjoy hearing about your wife and kids and

how each of you call him by a different name. Although I don’t agree with you on most of the issues, I do find you to be a very reasonable person in which I have an opposing view. On the issue of the Juan William, I really cant see how it is racism.

We all have irrational fears for one reason or another . Juan Williams becomes nervous when he sees someone wearing Moslem garb. The issue isnt what he thinks, but rather how he reacts to it. Is he rude to them, does he complain to the airlines that there is a Moslem on board. What does he exactly do when he see someone and gets nervous. From what I can see he does nothing because he knows its irrational. I don’t recall if you a Moslem or a Christian, but I can understand why it would be offense to you. Most people including myself take these things personally. That being said, I don’t think its being prejudice. I went to Israel flying El Al about 14 years ago and sat next to a guy who I noticed was writing in Arabic so I figured he was an Arab. I have to tell you I got really nervous. Again, I wasn’t rude to him nor did I make a scene and complain about him to the pilot or Stewardess. We had wonderful flight or as wonderful as an El Al flight can be and arrived in Israel with no issues. Turns out he was a Persian Jew and had been writing in Persian. How do I know this, because I spoke to him. Yes he made me nervous but he was a fellow traveler and it was the nice thing to do. That and the fact the my wife slept the whole way and I had no one else to talk to. Do I regret my fear of him, no because it was an irrational fear just as I have an irrational fear of spiders (an no I am not comparing the two) Despite my irrationally, I dealt with both in a sane and rational way

It really doesn’t matter what people think because in the end its what they do. I guess you can call that being two faced, but if you have an irrational thought or idea and actually do the opposite, I think that makes you a better person

AS for the terrorist who slammed the planes into the twin towers, you are right no one elected them representatives of the Moslem faith, the issue is that they didn’t attack it in the name of Saudia Arabia or Egypt or Kuwait or Yemen, they did it in the name of Islam. Their actions therefore connect themselves to the religion and it’s the other members of the religion to who have to dispel this. Its not fair but that’s how humans work. Romans killed Jesus with help of some jews (maybe) and two thousand years later we are still to blame

In any case, keep writing and I will keep reading your articles. I get excited when I see them on the Jerusalem Post

Daniel

Thanks Daniel so much for writing

I wish everyone was a reasonable as you are … we don’t have to agree to be friends and live in peace and even help each other, one day. But we do have to be able to discuss issues. You make some great points.

I appreciate the Jerusalem Post for running my columns. I try to write some that are humorous and satirical, and some that are serious. I try to balance the topics because I don’t want the column to become a bash-Israel column. I try to apply one principle when I write to make the point that more important than our political views is what we stand for and what we stand for ourselves we can also stand for for others.

I thought Juan Williams’ comments were disturbing because I grew up in a country when hatred of Blacks was expressed in the same way – Whites would always say we can’t have Blacks on our buses or in our schools or at our grocery stores because they make us nervous and they might kill or harm us.

Most disappointing is that Juan is African American and his people were victimized by this same attitude. I might have expressed the issue differently. I do not fear Israelis when I go through Ben Gurion Airport, but many Palestinians I know say they fear Jews and Israelis because they will harm them. I know some or many Israelis say the same thing about Palestinians and Arabs. If I were Juan Williams, I would have asked the question, rather than make it a statement of fact. Why would you fear a stranger because of the way they look? We should fear actions not stereotypes. We should push all criminals together and not separate them by their race or religion. We should separate the middle east not between Arabs and Israelis or Jews and Muslims but between extremists and moderates, the latter being willing to find a way to respect the needs of the other, to compromise and bring out the morality and high principles and virtues that make us good people. Good people need to act like good people.

I wish I had more readers who would write the way you do because it gives me faith that we can do something. Instead, I do get a lot of angry hate, accusations, blame, distortions and very little compassion or understanding and that makes me feel sad. But it makes me recognize what the real problem is. It isn’t the facts of our conflict that keeps us apart. It is the emotions and fears that we have and then use the facts and events to justify or explain away.

I don’t hate anyone. And I don’t want to have a reason to explain that hate if I did hate someone. I’d rather find a way to confront my own fears to make myself a better person, not try to change the other person. I would hope the other person would also try to deal with their own hate and prejudices to make themselves a better person, too.

Maybe this would be a good column actually. Would it be okay if I use some of your comments (don’t have to use your last name) and turn it in to a column because your attitude is exactly the kind of attitude Palestinians and Israelis need more of

Thanks so much for writing. It is a breath of fresh air and a real tragic drama that seems neverending.

RAY HANANIA

========= =================

What you and those many adherents of the "blame Israel" crowd just don't seem to get, is that peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors has never been a question of territory. Blaming settlement expansion is merely the latest fig leaf to the non-acceptance of a Jewish national presence among the sea of Muslim Arab states. This has been proven time and time again since 1947. The blind spots are glaring.

That’s your defense? That “everyone” always blames Israel. Sad.

Land is exactly the issue and always has been. You want it to be something else so that you can argue that you don’t want to return any land. The hate you see out there is a reflection of the anger of poor Israeli (and Arab) policies. Both sides are at fault, but of course, I don’t see you admitting any responsibility at all. It’s always someone else’s fault, right?

That’s the kind of logic that will guarantee that Israel will never have peace, security and a real future. The Islamicists only have to win one war and they will one day, unless there is peace and through peace we undermine the religious nut jobs and extremist fanatics on BOTH sides.

That’s if you really believe in the principles of the Torah and believe in principle and laws.

Thank you for sharing your views

RAY HANANIA

NAAJA and Radio Baladi announce 2011 Journalism Conference in Dearborn

2010-11-09T05:49:00.000-06:00

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Ray Hanania

Nov. 10, 2010 rayhanania@comcast.net

Laila alhusinni

313-570-2206

NAAJA and Radio Baladi announce 2011 Journalism Conference in Dearborn

(Dearborn/Chicago) The National Arab American Journalists Association is partnering with Radio Baladi radio to host a journalism conference to explore the state of American Arab and Muslim news media and journalism 10 years after Sept. 11, 2001.

Titled “The Future of American Arab and Muslim Journalism 10 Years After September 11,” the conference will feature more than 14 panels and workshops exploring all aspects of American Arab/Muslim life and the state of journalism in the community.

Guest speakers will represent the ethnic Arab and Muslim media as well as Arabs and Muslims working in the mainstream American news media, and also mainstream American journalists whose beats cover Arab and Muslim issues. We will also showcase journalists working for Arab and Islamic World publications and media outlets at the three-day conference that will be held March 4 through 6, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency, Dearborn, Michigan.

The journalism conference is the 6^th hosted and organized by NAAJA, which has more than 300 networked members across the United States. Radio Baladi is a partner and broadcasts a simulcast live radio show in Chicago (WJJG AM 1530) and Detroit (WNZK AM 690) every Friday morning at 7 am (Chicago) 8 am (Detroit).

“How have the post-Sept. 11 events impacted the practices and effectiveness of the American Arab and Muslim American news media and what are the successes and the challenges they face is the purpose of the conference,” explained Ray Hanania, a veteran Chicago-based Palestinian American journalist and radio talk show host and national coordinator for NAAJA.

“This is NAAJA’s 6^th Conference and each event grows bigger and more effective. We anticipate that this will be our most successful and largest conference of all.”

Laila alhusinni, who hosts the Detroit-based radio show “Good Morning Michigan on WNZK radio, and co-hosts the weekly Radio Baladi program, said that Dearborn was chosen as the location for the conference for very specific reasons.

“Dearborn is recognized as the capitol of the American Arab community and also the Arab Muslim community in America,” alHusinni said.

“We wanted the conference to also be centrally located in the country so that we can facilitate participation from Arab, Muslim and non-Arab and non-Muslim journalists from across the country. The conference will also integrate the participation of major community organizations and businesses. They will have a major presence.”

Hanania and alhusinni said the conference has several goals they hope will be achieved when completed.

Strengthen communications among Arab and Muslim journalists in the ethnic, mainstream American and Middle East communities. “We have to communication with each other and establish professional networking in order to strengthen our mission to be professional journalists operating in the United States,” Hanania said.

Establish a scholarship fund to encourage young American Arabs and Muslims to pursue journalism as a professional career choice.

Assist the community to more effectively engage the media through workshops that will showcase strategies to be heard in the Arab and Muslim ethnic media, the Arab World media and also in the mainstream American media.

“This will include sessions addressing how to write an effective press release and then distribute it effectively,” Hanania said.

Hanania, alhusinni and 34 American Arab and Muslim organizations based on Dearborn agreed during a planning conference that the Arab and Muslims in American are denied equal access to journalism jobs and opportunities not only by the major mainstream media but also by the major professional mainstream American journalism organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, UNITY and others.

“We expect the hypocrisy from the uneducated public but we don’t expect it from organizations that claim to represent professional journalism.

More details on the conference can be obtained at www.NAAJA-US.com or on the web site of Radio Baladi at www.RadioBaladi.com.

end

Yalla peace: No deals with the devil

2010-09-28T21:18:00.002-05:00

Yalla peace: No deals with the devil
By RAY HANANIA
09/28/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Like the proverbial pact with the Germans during the British Mandate and Saddam Hussein inthe 1990s, cheering Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not help the Palestinian cause.

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is described both as a Chinese and an Arabic proverb that is used to explain how someone can make a pact with the devil if it helps their cause. Sometimes called “the devil’s pact,” it’s not a good policy, even if it does have historical weight in the Middle East.

One of the first such pacts was made by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Jerusalem mufti during the Palestine Mandate who reached out to the Germans during World War II. The Germans were railing against international Zionism, although no one yet knew the extent of the Nazi horrors.

It was a pact of convenience, not hatred, often used to wrongly demonize all Palestinians.

Like the US, Palestinians also made a pact with Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s tyrant who was finally toppled and replaced by a new tyrant, Halliburton.

Saddam began as a client of the US in his decades-long war with Iran.

Of course, the US had a stronger pact with Iran’s pre-ayatollah tyrant, the shah of Iran, whose government murdered hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

Palestinians turned to Saddam when the Iraqi dictator, seeking to exploit their suffering for his own political benefit, gave the families of suicide bombers money; Israel’s policy of collective punishment violated international laws and punished innocent people for the crimes of others.

Although the gesture was good, the source and motive were corrupt.

NOW, MANY Palestinians are turning to the strident fanaticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the “president” of Iran. Like Saddam, Ahmadinejad uses the suffering of the Palestinian people to tug at the heartstrings of the pro-Palestinian movement. It is a pact with the devil that Palestinians should avoid. But in a world where support from major powers is weak, Ahmadinejad’s abrasive assaults against Israel have attracted many admirers.

But Ahmadinejad is a demagogue.

After making his outrageous claims at the UN that the US was somehow involved in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, a group of activists – mostly extremists but including some Palestinians – met with Ahmadinejad. They praised the Iranian tyrant and he praised them. I am sure they left the meeting agreeing that his voice can help pull the veil from Israel’s brutal occupation – a veil that is wrapped tightly around the eyes of most Americans.

But like the proverbial pact with the Germans and Saddam, cheering Ahmadinejad does not help the Palestinian cause. In fact, it harms it.

The Palestinians do not need to cuddle up to tyrants to find friends; they have a just cause as they challenge Israel’s policies. The issue of settlements is not one of family growth, as Israel contends, but rather one of land theft – theft that is a counterweight to the fight against terrorism.

When Israel doesn’t follow through on its often-empty peace promises, some activists see the devil’s pact as an attractive option.

Palestinians should purge the Arabic proverbs that have helped bring down Palestinian aspirations for statehood. They should slam the door on Ahmadinejad’s hypocrisies, and challenge his own oppressive tyranny. Having principles means that when you criticize one enemy, you never embrace the devil. Principle means that when you stand up for justice in the cause of Palestine, you stand up for justice in the cause of those persecuted by Iran, such as the hikers who have been jailed for more than a year, or the hundreds of political activists who speak out against its vicious policies.

Having principles means that when a Palestinian kills an Israeli, you speak out as forcefully as you would when an Israeli kills a Palestinian.

Sure, Israelis could use these words of advice too. After all, they have stolen Palestine’s felafels and the Arabic proverbs too, making their own pacts with the devil.

But you don’t do your justice any justice if you defend your wrongs by saying the other side does it too, or by accepting the canard that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Ahmadinejad is not our friend.

The writer is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

J Street Ads in NYT, WSJ Push for Bold Peace Moves

2010-09-22T08:37:00.002-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22, 2010

CONTACT: Amy Spitalnick
202.248.5868 (o) / 516.521.0128 (c)
amy@jstreet.org

J Street Ads in NYT, WSJ Push for Bold Peace Moves

Why is it that when Israel goes to war, its friends in America rally to its side - but when it makes moves for peace, support is much harder to come by? With the settlement deadline approaching, J Street is making clear that broad support exists for bold moves toward peace.

A full-page ad in today's New York Times, as well as ads in the Wall Street Journal and in Jewish newspapers around the country, urge Israeli, Palestinian and American leaders to seize the moment and "Make History Now" by freezing settlement growth and giving talks a chance to succeed.

Responding to Ambassador Oren's call for greater American Jewish support when Israel takes hard steps for peace, J Street's campaign also highlights broad support for bold Israeli moves. Petitions to Oren, as well as to Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Abbas, and President Obama, urge the leaders to make the necessary and difficult choices to keep talks alive.

The campaign also features a telephone town hall on Monday, September 27th (details to follow) and an op-ed by J Street President and founder Jeremy Ben-Ami in JTA.

Here's the full text of the ad:

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he seeks to reach an historic compromise that enables Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace, security and dignity.

President Obama has set the bar appropriately high: A two-state solution within the coming year leading to comprehensive regional peace.

Israel's long-term security and its survival as the democratic, national home of the Jewish people depend on the success of these talks. Success will require leadership, hard decisions and sacrifice - from all the parties.

Extremists will seek to derail the new effort; cynics and pessimists will seek to dismiss it.

We are standing up to say: It is time to end this conflict now.

Join J Street's 160,000 supporters in telling the leaders in the region and here at home to seize this moment.

Freeze settlement growth.

Give these new talks a chance to succeed.

Yalla Peace: Palestinians have already recognized Israel

2010-09-14T20:22:00.002-05:00

Yalla Peace: Palestinians have already recognized Israel

By Ray Hanania
09/14/2010 Jerusalem Post

The acceptance of this country is not only inherent in the Palestinians’ repeated declarations but also in the fact that their leaders are sitting down and negotiating two states.

In the reality of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the field where peace is played is the United States. That “stadium,” if you look at this like a sport, is the home field for the Israelis.

They have many advantages, including the support of the mainstream American media and an American public that still views the Leon Uris book Exodus as the bible of Middle East history.

I don’t want to burn that bible, but I think it is important to weigh both sides and what they are really saying, to look past the rhetoric and analyze what is really being sought.

Both sides want peace. Even the fanatics want peace. They just want it at the end of a war with their opponents vanquished.

Real peace means balance, and balance has never been a major component of the ongoing negotiations that began in 1993 in – to use a sports analogy again – the White House Stadium.

LET’S LOOK at some key issues.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is making his case that Israel needs to end settlement expansion and address the core issues. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is responding with the assertion that settlement expansion is not the key issue here.

Rather it’s Palestinian violence (Israel’s security) and the acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state – a new precondition that has risen from the stalemate of years of failed negotiations.

According to Netanyahu, equilibrium does not exist between Palestinian demands on settlements and Israeli demands on security and defined recognition.

But that equilibrium does exist and Netanyahu can’t simply brush it aside.

To the Palestinians, the issue has never been rejecting Israel’s right to exist but rather Israel’s imposed right to grab any land it wants.

To Israel, the issue is security and being recognized as a “Jewish state.”

The fact is Palestinians have recognized Israel’s right to exist. That is not only inherent in their repeated declarations but also in the fact that Palestinians are sitting down and negotiating two states.

Despite that, though, Netanyahu has asserted that the Palestinians have not compromised and they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, with the new caveat of being a “Jewish state,” and he has insisted that Israel, and he personally, have recognized the rights of Palestinians.

What rights are those Mr. Netanyahu? If Israelis can’t recognize that Palestinians have land rights, then what rights are they offering in exchange for a cessation of violence to reinforce security for Israel? What is Israel going to give the Palestinians in exchange for bringing this conflict to a final resolution? Ironically, the extremist movements of both the Israelis and Palestinians are being fed by Israel’s rightwing rhetoric. Many Israelis do not recognize the West Bank as the West Bank at all and in fact refer to the area as “Judea and Samaria.” It is an offensive term that is the equivalent to “Zionist state” used by many Palestinians who refer to the 1948 lands that were occupied by Israel.

Additionally, the right-wing Israeli sentiment is clear. They argue that the Palestinians, and Arabs, lost repeated wars and therefore also lost their right to claim ownership of the lands taken in those wars.

That is exactly the fuel that feeds the growing extremist movement. Because what Israelis are really saying to Palestinians is: “You only will get what we want to give you, and if you don’t like it tough luck.”

If Israelis really want peace, they need to drop the car dealership hustle and start speaking openly, candidly and compassionately about peace. Israel has the upper hand in this relationship. For now.

IF PEACE talks collapse, the Palestinian secular movement will eventually disappear and Israel will not only face the Hamas religious movement but the unbendable and uncompromising Islamic world, which increasingly is building its power and strength and would shift the balance in favor of a one-state solution.

The writer is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: Ignore the fanatics

2010-09-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

Yalla Peace: Ignore the fanatics
By RAY HANANIA
09/06/2010 JERUSALEM POST

If we want real peace,

we must move steadily ahead.

I don’t understand why so many people are pessimistic about the chances for ending the conflict. Let’s face it, we’ve only been trying to achieve real peace since 1993. That really isn’t a long time. The conflict has been raging for more than 100 years.

Yet everyone tells me they have high hopes but low expectations.

Well, anyone who is successful will tell you that you must first have high hopes and high expectations, and then fight to make those hopes a reality.

There are many reasons for doubting that peace will come, including that abhorrent terrorist attack last week that killed four people near Kiryat Arba – a settlement whose inhabitants have with a history of vicious assaults against Palestinians. People have been killing each other there since the settlement was created in the heart of Hebron.

The people who live there are not Jews hoping to build relations with the Palestinians; many of them are part of a group determined to impose its will through Israel’s military protection.

It never was intended to be peaceful, so why are we surprised when it explodes in violence? But of course, nothing justifies the heinous murder of the four victims. We need to learn to separate our political differences and show our human compassion and tolerance for all.

THE FANATICS on both sides have already vowed to do everything they can to block peace. Armed gunmen from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian groups have vowed a campaign of violence to prevent peace – isn’t that how it’s always been? And Israelis from the far Right have also declared they will do everything to bring down the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

But we can’t be intimidated by hatred and threats. We need to stand fast for peace. We need to become vocal about peace. We need to show Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that we support peace, and that it’s the only answer.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that Israel would agree to share east Jerusalem, taking control of the Jewish sectors and giving Palestinians control of the Arab sectors. That offer was alleged to have been made to Yasser Arafat but never formally offered at Camp David, where the failed “proximity talks” all began.

This time, Netanyahu and Abbas are meeting face-to-face, an important change from Camp David. This time, Jerusalem is on the table.

If Netanyahu has the courage to ignore the public opinion polls driven downward by years of conflict and hate, he can make real peace with Abbas.

The PA president has no choice but to stand up to the fanatics in Hamas,the PFLP and other hate groups who have taken the just cause of the Palestinian people and turned it into a formula for their own political aristocracy.

The issues of settlements and refugees can be resolved. Palestinians are ready to accept a rock-solid plan to compensate the refugees and help them rebuild their lives. To offset the right to return to their original homes and lands lost in 1948, they need strong words of support from both Netanyahu and Abbas.

Netanyahu needs to show understanding for what the Palestinians lost in 1948. It is the height of humanity to extend a hand to people who have suffered.

Israelis need to turn within and confront their own demons, and tell their own fanatics – who would just as easily resort to violence to block peace – to stand down.

Can they do that? Saving all our children depends on it.

The writer is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Avoid the misunderstandings to get to Palestinian-Israeli peace

2010-09-04T08:38:00.001-05:00

Avoid the misunderstandings to get to Palestinian-Israeli peace

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House with President Obama, they were careful not to make fun of Obama, whose popularity is lower than his bow to the king of Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu didn't ask Obama if he celebrates Ramadan, and Abbas didn't call Obama a "Zionist hack." Those were good things that came out of the first face-to-face talks in two years. But they need to make sure to avoid creating misunderstandings as were created at Camp David, when Ehud Barak thought he offered a real peace deal to Yasser Arafat, and Arafat thought that peace was based on meeting face-to-face.

Misunderstandings, in fact, have been the major cause of most of the conflicts in the Middle East. Just look at the history

The history of Arab-Israeli relations is filled with misunderstandings, even before the misunderstanding that took place last July when Israeli and Lebanese forces exchanged fire over the trimming of a Cypress tree.

In 1948, it was all just a misunderstanding when Jewish immigrants from Europe arrived in Israel and declared their own state. They thought they were in New York where the Jewish population was vibrant and the Arabs of New York, who were all called "Syrians," welcomed the Jews with open arms.

In 1956, Israel launched an assault on the Suez Canal and captured the Sinai when someone yelled in a Tel Aviv coffee shop "The Egyptians are claiming that since the Hebrews left Egypt, they have no right of return."

In 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser yelled about "driving the Jews in to the sea." But the Egyptian dialect is filled with heavy with guttural-based sounds easily misunderstood. What Nasser really said was he wanted to drive the Jews "to" the sea.

In 1973, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat attacked Israel because he thought it was the "Day of Kipper," which is his favorite fish; and you can't get a great Kipper dish anywhere else in the Middle East except in Israel, although there is Nasrallah's café off Shadeed Street in South Beirut. But Egyptians are less desired there than the Israelis.

When Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak were at Camp David, Arafat felt uncomfortable being at a hotel named after the Hebrew King David. Arafat was concerned because he recalled that Jewish resistance fighters had blown up the King David Hotel 53 years earlier. Maybe Clinton could have hosted the peace talks on more neutral ground, like in Beirut where both Arafat and Barak would both fear for their lives together.

Arafat did feel slightly snubbed when Barak refused to meet with him face-to-face at Camp David. No one explained to Arafat that Barak spent most of his days at Camp David at the local boutiques checking out the new dresses. Israelis know that prime ministers don't last long and can be quickly out of a job and he might have to return to hunting down Israel's most wanted.

When Ariel Sharon walked upon the Haram al ash-Sharif in 2000, he made a declaration that so many Arabs simply misunderstood. Sharon said Jerusalem will always be the "capitol" of Israel, he was using the word "capital" which referenced the city's monetary value.

The 2nd Intifada began with a misunderstanding, too, when a Palestinian heard that the Israelis had decided that instead of returning the West Bank they were going to keep all of it. Wanting to make sure they had everything, a Palestinian picked up a stone and tossed it towards the Israelis in a gesture of cooperation, yelling "Don't forget this piece of the West Bank."

Even the Gaza War in 2008 began with a misunderstanding. Hamas was abiding, for the most part, to the truce or "Lull" with Israel that summer. So in honor of having dramatically cut back the number of Qassam Rockets fired at Israeli civilians, Hamas decided to celebrate with their own fireworks display, shooting off Chinese-made bottle rockets. Of course, Hamas never mailed the celebratory invites to the Israelis, who saw the Chinese bottle rockets as being more of a deadlier threat than the Qassams.

Oy Vey. That's all one can say in the Middle East. Although that is a misunderstanding, too. The guy who said the phrase wasn't declaring anguish but merely trying to get his donkey, named Oy, turn to the right, or go "that way."

Misunderstandings. They happen all the time. Like when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised the Palestinians that he would "freeze" all the settlements. He meant he was going to buy air conditioners for all the settlers, a promise he said would be completed by Sept. 26.

And when Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas refused to negotiate with the Israelis until those settlements are frozen, he was merely waiting for the temperature in the settlements to chill, because the settlers because they are such an emotional people. Step one foot on "their" land and they go berserk, twisting their beards into braided knots.

Of course, the worst moment was when an Israeli negotiator told an Arab negotiator at the very first peace talks back in 1993, "If you compromise, we can both live in peace."

The Arab responded angrily, rejecting compromise and declaring, "No Jew is going to tell me what to do!"

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Middle East peace requires real courage from both sides

2010-09-01T07:58:00.000-05:00

Middle East peace requires real courage from both sides

By Ray Hanania

On the eve of a long-hoped-for meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, members of the Hamas terrorist organization killed four members of the Israeli terrorist settler movement.

The murders of the four settlers took place at Kiryat Arba in the West Bank where settlers have celebrated the memory of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American Jewish mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they were praying at the Hebron Mosque. Amazingly, he wore an Israeli military uniform and the mosque was under the control of the Israeli army.

Talk about an inside job.

This act of terror is more than just a reminder that violence takes place on both sides – yes, Israel settlers kill Palestinians, too. It should remind us of the objective of extremist Palestinians and extremists Israelis, which is to block the peace process.

The extremists have been encouraged by Netnayhau who has been hesitant to give up his drive to take all of the land of the Palestinians in the West Bank and convert them in to illegal Israeli settlements. He has refused to really freeze settlement expansion and despite a minor hold on some insignificant “outposts,” the settlements continue to expand with new construction and more settlers.

Abbas has been trying his best to embrace peace, demanding only that Israel stop expelling Palestinian homeowners from East Jerusalem, which is located in the Israeli occupied West Bank and is a Palestinian majority. Israel has been building homes for settlers in East Jerusalem while demolishing the homes of Palestinian families there for the past decade.

The problem facing both Netanyahu and Abbas is a political problem. And the question is, do they have the courage to do the right thing? Do they have the courage to stand up to the fanatics in their own community and confront the growing anger from the moderates who are pulled apart by violence, failure, and the actions of the other side?

We know what the peace agreement is. Two states. Israel closes some settlements and gives the Palestinian lands in Israel in exchange for the illegal settlements that it keeps.

East Jerusalem is divided not by a wall but by sovereignty with people able to travel throughout the Holy City. The Jewish section though falls under Israeli control and the Palestinian sections, three quarters of the city, come under Palestinian control.

The Palestinian refugees are addressed with real options, not false promises of returning to lands they will never see. Relocation to the Palestinian State. A fund to support their development. An apology and acknowledgement from Israel for that country’s role in intentionally taking their homes, lands and destroying their villages in 1948, an event that took place more than 62 years ago.

Most importantly, an internationally recognized border is drawn between Palestine and Israel that for the first time in history gives Palestine the power of international law if Israel breaks its agreement. Sovereignty gives Palestinians a power they have never had. They have always been the outcast in every international debate about their situation. Their non-sovereignty status has allowed Israel to do all the talking and direct all the action. Israel’s violence has been defined as “defense” while Palestinian violence has always been defined as “terrorism.”

A peace accord would change the power balance to fairness.

Palestine could continue to prosecute crimes as could Israel. Palestine could continue to push for more humanitarian treatment of Palestinians seeking to be compensated for lost lands and homes taken by Israel and so could Jews seeking to be compensated for lost lands and homes in the Arab World.

But if Netanyahu has the courage to stand up to the fanatics in Israel who are beating the drums of hatred and rejection, he could go down as one of the most influential Jewish leaders in modern human history.

If Abbas can push ahead and let go of Palestinian injured ego and pride, he could become the most important Palestinian leader, eclipsing the Hamas terrorist organization which claims power only on the basis of their ability to murder Israeli settlers and civilians and to threaten violence.

In peace, Hamas would slowly disappear. Their power would vanish. It is only in conflict that Hamas has power. And, it is only in rejection that the Israeli settler fanatics -- who murder innocent Palestinians all the time without even a mention in the mainstream American news media – find power. The settlers would disappear as a violent extremist force, too. And that is good for Israeli politics.

Take away power from the fanatics and the extremists on both sides by doing the right thing. And the right thing is for Abbas and Palestine and Netanyahu and Israel to return from their meetings in Washington D.C. with President Barack Obama by holding up an agreement for the world to see.

Make the peace now. Address the details we’ve been haggling over later. We know there will be fights over the line “dividing” Jerusalem. We know there will be fights over which lands Israel must surrender in exchange for the keeping the illegal settlements like Ariel and Gilo.

But we also know that failure means a future of far more violence than what we have witnessed over the past six months. From the attack on the civilians on the Gaza flotilla to the attack on the settlers at Kiryat Arba.

It’s a simple choice. Peace. Or, violence.

(Ray Hanania is distributed by Creators Syndicate. He writes a column every Wednesday for the Jerusalem Post and regularly for PalestineNote.com. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Ray Hanania released the following statement regarding Ikhras, the racist hate site:

2010-08-28T07:47:00.002-05:00

Ray Hanania released the following statement regarding Ikhras, the racist hate site:

Ikhras has been attacking me by publishing false quotes, taking sentences out of context and accusing me of being "anti-Muslim" even though I have spent my life defending Muslims because most Americans believe I am Muslim. They have made up false claims, few are creative or imaginative but driven by racist hatred and, I believe, because I am a Christian Palestinian who supports compromise and peace based on non-violence and the exchange of land. They would never write the same trash about a Muslim activist, which is an example of their vicious anti-Christian attitude that many Christian leaders and activists have shared with me.

They have launched this hate campaign because they can't handle the issues I address, so instead of addressing the issues, they attack me. It is typical of racist hate sites that can't deal with issues so they have to attack the individual.

Most people who have emailed me say that Ikhras is a ridiculous, typically extremist site that waste a lot of energy attacking other Palestinians, like KabobFest, because they have nothing positive to contribute to the fate of the Palestinian People or the cause of the Arab World. They are ignorant and uneducated, and most of all, like KabobFest, poor writers.

They distort facts because they can and because their small following of extremists celebrate racism and hatred. They use the suffering of the Palestinian People as a political football in order to achieve their agendas, and they don't care about helping the Palestinian Refugees at all.

I want the refugees to have better lives, Ikhras wants them to wallow in the hardship of the camps endlessly because it suits the political agenda of Ikhras.

I want to thank all of the people who have emailed me. Ikhras has served one purpose and that is to showcase the ignorance that exists in the Arab community, an ignorance that has been used before to stifle public debate, that is intolerant of thought engagement, and that has helped to both oppress the future of the Palestinian people while also enabling extremism and fanaticism that provides cover for Israel's oppression of our people.

I understand, though, because Ikhras represents the tragedy of a segment of the Palestinian people. Depressed, defeated, uneducated and incompetent, Ikhras focuses its energies on the only thing it can do, bash other Palestinians, the typical ailment of the victimization mentality of some small segments of the Palestinian people.

You can't understand or recognize hope until you see the ugly face of racism, hatred and defeatism which is what Ikhras represents. They are anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and even anti-Muslim. Pathetic.

-- The Maklooba Man

KabobFest comes under assault for smearing Christians and playing the race card

2010-08-22T17:54:00.001-05:00

More and more Christian Arabs are calling on KabobFest to end its discrimination against Christian Arabs who challenge their radical and extremist views on the Middle East and Palestine.

KabobFest has launched a smear campaign targeting Ray Hanania and falsely claiming that he is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, ludicrous charges justified only by their anti-Christian hysteria and the racist writing founders.

Several Christian leaders have contacted Hanania in the past few weeks saying they are urging their Arab Christian congregations to protest KabobFest and another hate site called Ikhras, which are joined at the hip of racist extremism like Siamese twins.

Hanania issued the following statement to about 30 Christian leaders in Michigan, Illinois, California and Washington DC who offered their support to stand up to the anti-Christian racism that is finding its way into the rhetoric of some extremist Palestinian and Arab activists.

"The haters like KabobFest continue to say that my religion has nothing to do with their vicious assaults but you will NEVER see them assault a Muslim in the same manner as they are now slandering me. The only reasons they are attacking me is because I am Christian, I am a moderate who openly and consistently opposes violence, and my wife and son are Jewish," Hanania said.

"I am saddened that many Muslims have not spoken out against the hatemongers at KabobFest. I know that if the tables were reserved, KabobFest would be exposed as the Arab version the anti-Mosque hatemongers in New York who incredulously argue that a mosque should not be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Yet rather than focusing on the tougher fight for Muslim and Arab rights, KabobFest and its hate writers find it easier to target Christians like me because they feel comfort that they will not be challenged.

"But the more vicious they become the more right I know I am. Instead of building opposition to my moderate views defending Muslim rights and Palestinian rights based on the compromise plan embraced by the late Palestinian hero Yasser Arafat, they are strengthening my support base. I want to thank all of those who have written and emailed me telling me that they are ashamed not only of KabobFest but also the silence of many in the Arab community who tolerate hate against Arabs but scream about hate from Israel and Jews.

"If we can't tell our fanatics to shut up, how can we confront the real extremists on the Israeli right who are slowly erasing Palestine. KabobFest and Ikhras enable Israel's extremists by dividing the Palestinian and the Arab community. I'm proud to defend and support Muslims. I am proud to be often mistaken for a Muslim by many Americans. And I am even more proud to be targeted by hate mongers like KabobFest and Ikhras."

end

Vacation consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict

2010-08-17T17:43:00.002-05:00

Vacation consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict
By RAY HANANIA
08/17/2010 JERUSALEM POST

As a Palestinian, I have lawn mower fights

and the dividing line is more vague than the Green Line.

As a Palestinian, I have this need to control and protect land. It includes battles with my neighbors over where my grass ends and their grass begins. We have lawn mower fights and the dividing line is more vague than the Green Line. I’ve been like this all my life and it has consequences.

But it’s not just maintaining a well-manicured, Malibu- lighted, dark greentrimmed carpet-of-a-lawn that my “Palestinian-ism” has impacted. It goes far beyond, including even when I go on vacation.

Yes, I don’t go on vacation to relax. I go there to sharpen my Palestinian skills.

Every morning at dawn, while on vacation in places like Punta Cana or at a resort along the Cayman Island’s famous Seven Mile beach, I find myself compelled into a “possession jihad.”

I don’t get up and walk to the beach at six in the morning simply to enjoy the sunrise or the pristine coral sand.

My first concern is staking out beach-front lounge chairs or a palm cabana with an idyllic view of the ocean.

Sounds like a strange way to start off relaxation, but it’s an ugly world out there. You have to stake your claim early, or be occupied and oppressed for the entire trip. Eventually, a mass of like-cultured people stampede to the vacation resort shores to lay claim to their own lounge chairs.

As a Palestinian, I just have to be there first.

THERE IS a methodology to the whole process that I have fine-tuned during 30 vacations over the last decade. It’s called “ownership documentation.”

I position the lounge chairs perfectly, spacing them out for comfort.

I push other lounge chairs away that look to be “too close.” I neatly wrap three beach towels on the three lounge chairs. Then I go back for a second round of claims, and on each, I lay down something of “apparent value” but that is really valueless.

On one chair, I place a copy of Chelsea Handler’s many books – I wish they had more pictures and less writing of her sexual exploits. That will scare anyone away.

On another, I pile plastic sand toys, shovels and buckets, shamelessly exploiting my nine year old in my obsessive behavior.

Who can steal a lounge chair location from a child? But for those who consider theft, I provide an offering to the icon of unethical vacation- goer criminality – a copy of Sarah Palin‘s hardcover book. If there are beach thieves, chances are they are tightly wound Republicans who would grab the book thinking it a prize and run. I even faked her autograph on the inside cover: “To Ray, with passionate love. If I were not exploiting racial fears to become president someday, I might become your fourth wife, my olive-skinned Rudy Giuliani. All my GOP Love, Sarah Palin.”

Of course, it’s not enough to just prepare the beach lounge chairs like the crescent of a Mayan sacrificial pyramid.

I sit there and smoke a cigar with my look of conquest, a macho scrunch of thick brows and confidence.

Like the young Michael Corleone shouldering-up to protect his father – who was the target of assassins at a New York Hospital – in the movie “The Godfather.”

And I watch as the others do the same as me, grabbing their perfect spots, except many minutes later.

By 8:30, we’re all sitting in our conquests, staring each other down – until a beautiful topless woman jogs by and steals our attention.

By that time, the cigar is but a smoldering stogy. The imagined tension with the other men at the beach who also claimed their spots finally dissipates. And right about then, my wife and son meander along as if there were no worries in the world.

But before the sun goes down, I am already scheming to repeat the whole process again the next morning.

Until, that is, I leave this resort and return to Chicago.

The writer is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post: American Jews often come to the defense of Muslims

2010-08-10T21:57:00.002-05:00

American Jews often come to the defense of Muslims

By RAY HANANIA

08/11/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Recent example involves the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ where

the leading Jewish defenders were passionate in their defense.

When was the last time leading Arabs or Muslims came to the defense of Jews? I say that because a phenomenal thing happened in America last week. American Jews were divided, but still led the national debate on whether or not a mosque should be allowed within blocks of “Ground Zero,” the spot where the Twin Towers collapsed under a terrorist assault on September 11, 2001.

Although the Anti-Defamation League flip-flopped on the issue, supporting it on principle and then later opposing it on emotional grounds, it did so with attempted gracefulness.

The ADL noted the intense emotions aroused and said that Muslims seeking to build the mosque should recognize the feelings of those who lost family, relatives and friends in the al-Qaida terrorist attack.

Yet the ADL was just one of the American Jewish voices addressing the controversy; the leading Jewish defenders were not only passionate in their defense but stubborn about the principle involved.

Among those voices was one of the country’s leading Jewish politicians, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose eyes welled up with emotion while he declared that Muslims have every right to build a mosque, just as Christians and Jews could build a church or synagogue nearby.

Bloomberg was consistent in May when he declared: “I think it’s fair to say if somebody was going to try to build a church or synagogue on that piece of property, nobody would be yelling and screaming.

The fact of the matter is that Muslims have a right to do it, too.”

Bloomberg remained principled on August 3, when he insisted: “Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors mourned with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave in to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.”

ONE OF America’s leading Jewish American writers, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, expressed shock at the ADL flip-flop, and unhesitantly defended the right of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Steinberg concluded a column addressing the issue, saying: “I expect more from the ADL.

Given the history of Jews being tarred as an evil foreign presence, I thought we’d be not quite so fast to condemn others based on the same non-reasoning. There are lots of Islamic terrorists, sure, but there are also lots of Jewish bankers. Both are still offensive stereotypes, still slurs, and I can’t see how what one group of 19 Muslims did in 2001 should prevent another, completely separate group of Muslims from building a religious center in 2010. How is claiming that any different from saying I can’t join your country club because the Jews killed Christ? The ADL thinks the Islamic center spoils the healing process? Well boo hoo – the Jewish kids spoil the Christmas pageant too, but they aren’t forced to stay home. That’s how America works. We adapt. I thought the Anti-Defamation League understood that, but I guess I was wrong.”

Steinberg also asked the question many may have asked quietly. If two blocks is too close to Ground Zero, how far away would be acceptable? Six blocks? One mile? Ten miles? These were but a few of the principled and courageous voices raised in defense of the Muslim American community as the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy raged. These voices stood in stark contrast to the hysteria of mainstream Americans who packed the media with assertions that Islam is “evil” and that all Muslims support terrorism.

I hope to one day hear Arab and Muslim voices speak in defense of the Jewish people as powerfully as the Jewish community has spoken in defense of Muslims.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a tragedy that keeps both sides on “politically correct” guard. But it doesn’t mean that Arabs and Muslims can’t be principled, moral or ethical in defending what is right when it comes to anti-Semitism.

Arabs and Muslims should not allow themselves to be consumed by what we think is wrong. Sometimes we need to step outside of the conflict and remind others and ourselves that we also believe in what is right.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Everything points to the Middle East conflict

2010-08-04T05:45:00.002-05:00

Everything points to the Middle East conflict

By RAY HANANIA

08/04/2010 JERUSALEM POST

How a simple conversation turned into a

complicated discussion on the Israeli and Palestinian narratives.

It all started when I turned on the television set and started watching an old rerun of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a sitcom about an American-Italian family’s everyday humorous challenges.

(I’ve always wanted to produce my own TV show called “Everybody Loves Abdullah,” about an American-Arab family and their everyday humorous challenges, too.)

The topic of that particular episode was about Raymond who was asked by his wife to explain the whole issue of sex to their young daughter.

That’s when my wife turned to me and said, “Maybe you should have that talk with Aaron.”

“Are you asking me that because my name is Raymond?” I began facetiously.

“I’m being serious,” she said.

“You want me to have the ‘talk’ with Aaron?”

“Yes. I want you to talk to him about sex. He’s old enough to know.”

“Sex? Me? Why me?”

Alison gave me that look. You know, the way a border guard looks at an Arab entering Ben-Gurion airport.

“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll do it.” I know better than to challenge my wife, or any woman, on any issue.

Not that Aaron – who I call Abdullah when my wife isn’t around – had asked about sex.

SO I sat Abdullah down and I asked him if he’s ever heard of sex. I winced as I anticipated the possible response, “Sure, dad, what do you want to know?” He just looked at me like was I annoying him and said: “Sex is that thing I’m not supposed to talk about.”

“Well, that’s right.”

“So why are we talking about it? Are you trying to get me in trouble?” he asked.

I just started yapping. Going into detail: “There are boys and there are girls, Abdullah. Boys and girls are different. In order to make babies, they have to come together and have, you know, sex. They get together. Then badda bing, badda boom. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Yaani [like, in Arabic] this and yaani that. Kol ma sheh ze lokeah [whatever it takes, in Hebrew]. Whatever. Everyone’s happy. And they have a baby. It’s simple. Any questions?”

“Why are boys and girls different,” he asked?

“That’s just the way it is.”

“You mean the birds and the bees?”

“Yes.”

“What do birds and bees have to do with sex?”

I knew this wasn’t going too well. “Well, ah, I don’t know. Maybe birds are boys and bees are girls. It doesn’t matter. It could be anything.”

THAT STARTED a whole series of difficult questions. “Do insects have sex?”

“Not all of them.”

“Do girls have stingers?”

“No, but they can cause you a lot of pain if you are married to them and you don’t listen to them; which is what’s going to happen to me if this conversation about sex doesn’t produce results.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because G-d made people that way.” Whenever I can’t explain something, I always blame it on G-d. “G-d made us all different.”

“Why? Is that why you are Arab and mommy and I are Jews? Why did G-d make us different? Why are they killing each other?”

“Arabs and Jews are basically the same. We’re both human beings. People. We just believe in different things.” I told him mommy and I have an armistice agreement, which was harder to explain than sex. “Mommy is the boss in our family, but I make all the decisions.”

“So, Arabs and Jews are fighting because they believe in different things?” he asked. “How about sharing? Mommy tells me to do that all the time. If you and mommy get along, why can’t Arabs and Jews get along?”

How did a simple conversation about sex turn into a complicated discussion about the Middle East conflict? That made me realize the problem we have in the Middle East. This is exactly what happens to Arabs and Jews. No matter what the topic, it always turns to the Middle East conflict. We can’t escape it.

Talk about sports turns in to a debate about why the Arabs opposed two states in 1947 when the UN proposed it and used violence to get it all back. Talk about technology turns in to how Israelis are slowly controlling and censoring social networking sites like Facebook and BlogTV. Farming? A debate on who owns what land.

Before I know it, I’m giving Abdullah the Palestinian narrative and then my version of the Israeli narrative, which are different, of course.

“There was this country, Palestine. The Jews lived there. Then the Arabs lived there. Then Jews came back. Then they started to fight over who owns the land. Both sides did bad things to each other and everyone just got madder. Sometimes, one side is tougher and stronger than the other, but the other won’t give up.

Then badda bing, badda boom. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Yaani this and yaani that. Kol ma sheh ze lokeah. Whatever. It’s simple. Any questions?”

Right about that time, mommy decided to poke her head into the room and ask, “How’s it going?”

“Great,” I said.

“Yeah mommy,” my son said. “Daddy says you’re the boss but he makes all the decisions.”

Ouch!

The writer is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post: Good news is hard to come by

2010-07-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

Good news is hard to come by
By RAY HANANIA
07/27/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Postive stories from the region are few and far between but they do exist and they do inspire some hope.

Palestinians and Israelis spend a lot of time blaming each other. Sometimes, we can’t even remember what started the argument because the bad things that consume our attention happen so fast. So, it might be nice, once in a while, to look at things that are good. And each side does have some good in them.

Although Israelis refuse to recognize the Goldstone Report, Israel’s government has quietly begun prosecuting a few soldiers who violated the rights of Palestinian civilians. That’s good news, though maybe not the way many Palestinians would want.

One soldier is expected to be prosecuted for killing two civilian women during the 22-day long Operation Cast Lead. News reports say the IDF “disciplined” another officer who ordered an air strike near a Beit Lahiya mosque that resulted in 15 dead and 40 others wounded.

Okay, it’s far from what the Goldstone Report determined were war crimes, but it does represent some form of justice.

Under pressure from US President Barack Obama, Israel will now permit many food and personal items to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip, banning only anything related to weaponry and building materials that could be used for the tunnels or manufacture of rocket launchers.

That it banned any kind of food, soap and even many medicines was not a good thing. But that it lifted the ridiculous bans is a positive move forward.

On the Palestinian side, no one built a monument for Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man accused and convicted of planning the PAN 103 bombing over Lockerbie Scotland. Megrahi was released last year on “compassionate grounds” that he was suffering from prostate cancer and was not expected to live long.

That he has lived longer may be a testament to great strides in medicine, but not much consolation to satisfy the anguish of the relatives of the 270 bombing victims.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has given interviews not only to Palestinian columnists like Fadi el-Salameen, the publisher of the moderatevoiced PalestineNote.com Web site, but he has also spoken at length about peace to Israeli journalists and American Jewish writers including Alon Ben-Meir, whose column “The Fayyad difference” (July 16) was published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the article, Ben-Meir said of Fayyad: “First, he stressed that militant resistance and violence have run their course. Committing acts of violence against the Israelis simply plays into their hands, offering justification for continued occupation and enabling Israel to link national security with occupation.”

Salameen reported at the moderate- voiced Maan News Agency based in Bethlehem that Fayyad ordered the creation of a committee with broad representation to investigate all government agency appointments to ensure extremists who embrace violence are not among those nominated to the positions.

I ADMIT it is not easy to find positive news stories in the region. It is so much easier to find stories of Israelis and Palestinians killing each other, calling each other terrible names and vowing to reject a fair and just peace based on two-states.

But we have to keep trying. Positive stories do not generate the same passion as fear-mongering and name-calling or the political blame game. Those stories need our help.

That’s why I am asking if you hear of a positive story, share it with me. I want to know. I can’t promise to write a whole column about it, but it would be nice to include a collection of positive stories in one column just to prove that good news is still out there and that hope is not completely dead.

There is a silver lining in every dark cloud, something good that we can salvage from the overabundance of bad. I’ve even found that silver lining in the darkness that surrounds me.

A group of extremist Palestinians in the United States have set up a hate Web site targeting me.

Why? Well, I am a Christian Palestinian.

My wife and son are Jewish.

I support compromise and oppose violence.

They really, really hate that I write for both PalestineNote.com and The Jerusalem Post – which is another reason why I love writing for both.

As you can imagine, I get ugly emails from Arabs and Jews every day complaining about something I’ve written. I can’t even repeat the things they call me. Fortunately, though, the hate site has also energized a lot of good people to contact me and express support.

Good words go a long way to encourage even the most challenged hope for peace.

But thanks to the haters, their attention has helped me sell a lot of copies of my humor book I’m Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing up Arab in America. In the end, “hate” can make “good” look that much better.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: The Israel question

2010-07-22T16:07:00.000-05:00

Yalla Peace: The Israel question

By RAY HANANIA

07/20/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Extremists in America force many

to examine its policies more closely.

A seismic shift in American politics has occurred over the past decade that has created a gap so wide and so bitter that America is a nation of growing polarization where issues once embraced by both sides are now being challenged.

In the shift, the far right has embraced Israel as a means of separating itself from Democrats, causing many Americans to question what, until then, has been unquestioned loyalty.

Although Israelis have always enjoyed support from both mainstream political parties, the extremists in America who are using support of Israel as a litmus test are forcing many to examine its policies more closely.

Israel has become a flagship platform issue for far-right groups like the Tea Party, which has come under attack from groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which has accused it of being plagued by bigots and racists.

For the first time, many Americans are saying they support Israel, but question the occupation of the West Bank, its exclusive claim to Jerusalem and the conduct of its military.

CAN AMERICANS support Israel’s security and still criticize its policies? It’s a question now being raised in the heated race for the US Senate in Pennsylvania, where the public’s rock-solid support for Israel is coming apart at the seams.

Joe Sestak is the Democratic candidate who defeated longtime Israel champion Arlen Specter in last May’s primary. Specter had switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic.

Sestak is no left-wing extremist and represents the American mainstream. He supports Israel, but he is critical of some of its policies, including its use of “collective punishment” – a policy that challenges international laws and human rights.

While Pat Toomey, his Republican opponent, has made Sestak’s questioning of Israel a priority attack issue, Sestak has stood firm, insisting he supports Israel but making it clear not all of Israel’s policies are acceptable. He has responded to Toomey by tying the Republican to the hated bankers on Wall Street and the nation’s economic decline.

Toomey’s allies, like the Emergency Committee for Israel, have accused Sestak of donating to a Hamas “front group,” pointing an accusatory finger at his speech to a dinner hosted by the Council on American Islamic Relations.

The accusation is outrageous. Sestak was accompanied to the dinner by Pennsylvania Governor and Democrat Ed Rendell, who is Jewish, showing there is no place for Islamaphobia in American politics.

Yet Islamaphobia is the cornerstone of right-wing ideology. The more groups like the Tea Party wrap themselves in Israel’s flag, the more Americans start to question Israeli actions, including the killing of a dual American-Turkish citizen aboard the Gaza flotilla in late May.

For many voters, Israel is becoming a point of division. The election will be decided on other, more important issues, such as the deteriorating economy and the need for jobs.

The Sestak-Toomey fight over Israel will force voters to take sides. Sestak may have issues with Israel, but is popular on many other mainstream American issues that are more important.

IN THE past, most American voters have not distinguished between Israel’s interests and the interests of the US. They have supported Israel even when its policies have crossed the line.

That has come from the imbalance in how Arabs and Israelis manage public relations. The Arabs fumble through public relations on emotion and chance.

Israel manages public relations through a sophisticated strategy that is well funded.

American perspectives are built on decades-long exposure to sophisticated pro-Israel marketing strategies in the news media and entertainment. The book Exodus set the tone in the American mindset in the 1960s and has been reinforced by years of solid PR.

But that glass ceiling is breaking across many fronts as issues that hit close to home trump even the best PR efforts.

Earlier this year, Gen. David Petraeus said that American policies regarding Israel have put the lives of American soldiers in jeopardy.

In prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he stated, “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in Centcom’s area of operations and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.”

The more American extremists embrace Israel, the more they undermine its standing, regardless of who wins the Pennsylvania election.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: Fire them all

2010-07-13T16:01:00.002-05:00

Yalla Peace: Fire them all

By RAY HANANIA

07/13/2010 JERUSALEM POST

That the differing cases of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr yielded the same result exemplifies a failure to make the necessary distinctions amid the nuance of American Arab thought.

When Pope Innocent III ordered a crackdown on Christian heretics called the Cathars in 1210 CE, he applied a reasoning that was not so reasonable: “Nulla salus extra ecclesium” or “Outside the Church there is no salvation.”

The Cathars were living among the Christian faithful in a French city called Beziers. During the assault, when the pope’s general was asked how the soldiers would determine who was a believer and who wasn’t, he responded, “Kill them all, let God sort them out.” More than 100,000 people were slaughtered, mostly Christians not part of the Cathars.

We’ve seen this form of political strategy repeated many times in history since. Most recently, it was former president George W. Bush who launched his war of vengeance against Iraq in 2003, declaring: “You are either with us, or against us.”

In the Hollywood version of the real life story of the rise of the Mafia in Las Vegas, the accused mobsters were sitting in a federal court conference room worrying about who the witnesses against them might be. They went through a list and came across the name of one of their most loyal. But the decision to murder him came down to one final thought, “He’s a stand-up guy, but, why take a chance?” Israel and its allies have viewed the Arab world in much the same light. It’s not how you criticize Israel, but the fact that you criticize Israel at all that is important. Even if you don’t criticize Israel, but are like those who do, well, “Why take a chance.”

LET’S TAKE the differing cases of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr.

Thomas was a veteran White House correspondent who covered eight presidents. When she became the dean of the press corps, opening and closing presidential press conferences, she often led with question about the unfairness of American foreign policy toward the Arab world and Palestinians.

Last month, a rabbi activist interviewed the 79-year-old journalist outside the White House with a video camera and asked her: “Any comments on Israel?” Thomas’ response was a crude critique: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

Then she added: “Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. It’s not German, it’s not Poland.”

Where should they go, asked the rabbi? “They – go home.”

“Where’s their home?” Thomas: “Poland.”

“So the Jews can...”

Thomas: “Germany.”

“You’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?” Thomas: “And, and America and everywhere else.”

Thomas was immediately fired by the Hearst Newspapers.

In fairness to Thomas, and while her choice of words left a lot to be desired, I think she meant to criticize Israel’s occupation and not to express anti-Semitic feelings.

But contrast her case with that of Nasr, the senior Middle East correspondent for CNN, and a 25-year journalism veteran, who was forced to walk the modern-day Beziers plank of anti-Israel Cathars. Also Lebanese American, Nasr was considered pro-Israeli and not so sympathetic to Palestinian causes, according to CNN colleagues who knew her well.

But when she learned of the death of Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a founder of Hizbullah denounced as terrorists by Israel and the US, she wrote on Twitter (the Internet social networking site that limits comments to a total of 140 letter characters or about 30 words): “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hizbullah’s giants I respect a lot.”

CNN didn’t have to have a meeting with the pope. After a firestorm of protests from many, including Israel’s strongest Jewish American supporters like the Simon Weisenthal Center, Nasr was fired.

Later, and too late, Nasr explained she was referring to Fadlallah’s views toward women’s rights and his opposition to honor killings, a practice in which women accused of infidelity and bringing shame to their families are murdered, often by other family members who are celebrated for the killings and protected by laws.

Neither his progressive views on women’s rights nor his break with Hizbullah over the group’s growing embrace of the fanaticism of Iran’s extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was taken into account.

IN THE United States and among American Jews at least, too often there are inadequate discernable levels of distinction when it comes to supporting or opposing Israel.

Moderates, extremists, Arabs and Muslims are often all lumped together.

That failure to understand the nuance of American Arab thought – as exemplified in the cases of Thomas and Nasr, different cases that yielded the same result – works well with the fear-mongering that defines how American Arabs are understood in the new era of post- September 11, 2001 terrorism. You are either with us or against us.

Whether you support peace or not does not matter. If you criticize Israel in any fashion, that’s more than enough. Say something nice about Israel’s bitterest enemies, watch out.

Outside of the pro-Israel debate, there is no salvation. In the firings of Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr, and criticism of other leading American Arab journalists, there is only one fate: “Fire them all, let God sort it out.”

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: What Abbas must do for peace

2010-07-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

Yalla Peace: What Abbas must do for peace
By RAY HANANIA
07/06/2010 JERUSALEM POST

The PA president should recognize that the battle is in the mind-set of the American public, where the future of Palestine will be decided.

As long as Israel has the US on its side, its government knows it can do no wrong. It plays games with Middle East peace by provoking extremism in the Arab world with excessive policies that fuel anti- Israel sentiment more than they protect Israeli citizens.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may not be the poster-child of moderation, but he is smart enough to recognize that if Israel loses the ball in the US court of public opinion, he will lose the game completely. So he swallowed his pride and again reached out to President Barack Obama, after the Obama administration slammed him harder than any Israeli government.

But Israel made it easy for Obama. Netanyahu’s irrational refusal to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as a means of returning to peace talks with the Palestinians has put Israel in a strange place in American public opinion, which increasingly recognizes the settlements as obstacles to peace.

Then, there was Israel’s playing right into the hands of the extremists by taking the bait and taking over the flotilla of boats seeking to break its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Although Israel has refused to release a complete list of what the blockade prevented from entering the Gaza Strip – insisting the banned items are intended to prevent terrorism – it’s since been impossible to keep the truth from coming out.

The fact is the Israelis not only have prevented weapons from entering the Gaza Strip, they also have prevented many food items, toys for children, most medicine – allowing some to trickle in at an unreasonable pace – and a long list of items that include other things that have less to do with preventing terrorism and more to do with efforts to “punish” the Palestinians.

I opposed the flotilla strategy to break the blockade because I believe it empowers Hamas and its supporters.

Palestinian national policy should not be defined by activists, including some who openly oppose peace based on two-states; it should be left to the legitimate Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah.

But the legitimate PA government has been ineffective and indecisive, driven more by what the emotion-driven Palestinian public feels rather than by policies and strategies reflecting leadership.

IF YOU do not lead the public, you leave the public to be led by fanatics and extremists who tug at emotions.

Irrational conduct always looks good through the blinded rage of an emotional person. Courageous leadership means doing the right thing and knowing that such leadership will bring the majority of the Palestinian public back from the irrational precipice to one of reason.

They just need a courageous leader. And so far, one has not stepped up to the plate.

That dynamic makes it easy for Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinian activists to avoid peace, although Israel has the advantage as it is the only one that recognizes that the ball game is not in the UN but in the US.

It doesn’t matter what Belgium or Turkey believe. It only matters what the Americans think. They not only hold the key to the future in the Middle East, but they also control the money and their military is actively engaged in several Arab world countries.

What Americans believe will decide whether Israel can continue to sidestep peace and expand settlements in the West Bank while rejecting demands for peace based on the return to the 1949 armistice line, called the Green Line. So what’s a moderate to do? First, the Abbas government should get its act together.

It needs to recognize that it is trailing the Israelis when it comes to defining effective public policy.

Abbas needs to engage the American public directly. He needs to define his core message, which is simple: the Palestinian Authority supports the creation of two states, a land-for-land swap, the sharing of east Jerusalem and wants Israel to step up to the plate and recognize its role in the Palestinian refugee tragedy.

Abbas should hire a high powered public relations firm and stop pandering to the fanatics in the Arab world through the Arabic language media – a pandering that often undermines Palestinian rights because of contradictory pronouncements that confuse rather than enlighten public opinion, including in Israel.

And, more importantly, Abbas should recognize that the battle is not in the Gaza Strip but in the mind-set of the American public, where the future of Palestine, twostates and Middle East peace will be decided.

The problem with Abbas is most of what he does is conveyed to the world through the Arabic-language media, which has little or no impact on the American public. They’re not reading the Arabic media for positive news and only scour through the Arab world media to find evidence of terrorism and anti-American hatred.

And there is a lot of that to be found.

While Netanyahu is bringing his message directly to Obama, Abbas needs to bring his message directly to the American people. He should do a 10-city tour of the US and argue directly what many do not want the American public to hear.

As far as most Americans are concerned, Hamas and its extremist activists represent the face of the Palestinian people and Abbas is negligible.

That can easily change. For the first time in Palestinian history, the Palestinians have a friend in the White House. He may only be there a few years. Now is the time for Abbas to change his strategy and stop playing second fiddle to Hamas and to Israel.

Abbas needs to make the American public his priority.

If he can win over their hearts and minds, Palestine can become a sovereign state.

The writer is an award- winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Still no Sadat has stepped up from Israel's leadership for peace

2010-07-01T05:45:00.000-05:00

MyJerusalem Post column talked about the issue of whether or not there is an "Anwar Sadat" in Israel's political world but all of the responses have dealt with a lot of hatred from many Israeli writers who reflect the fanaticism I see among the same small group-sized fanatics on the Palestinian side like fromt he extremist hate-site KabobFest.

Is there an Anwar Sadat in Israel? Apparently not. Avigdor Lieberman and his defenders continue to say he is a visionary who wants to resolve the Palestine Conflict by returning to the 1947 Partition Plan thought-process which got us in this mess in the first place. He wants to redraw the lines around Arab neighborhoods to put them outside of "Israel" and embrace land not settled in the West Bank (that Israelis refuse to recognize as being Palestinian and constantly refer to as Judea and Samaria -- the mirror image of the Israeli contention that Palestinians do not show "Israel" on their "maps."

I wouldn't mind a plan where Arab populations are drawn out of Israel as long as it just wasn't a tight squeeze and that land to grow is also included in the mix. And, will there be a dunum-for-dunum swap of lawn/ Will the new two-states be contiguous and able to exist as real states? Has anyone even started drafting such a plan. Would it not just create more buntastans of Arab populations encircled by Israel? You know Lieberman will encircle Arab areas or seek to expel Arabs from the encircled isolated land areas in Israel, but create special roads and "land bridges" between Israel and the settlements.

That's why I question Lieberman's motives. It's an idea worth pursuing but Lieberman lacks the compassion for peace that is needed to reassure both Israelis and Palestinians that his intentions are noble and not typically politically selfish and sinister.

That kind of leadership we have too much of among Palestinians and Israelis. We don't have enough leaders who have the courage of Anwar Sadat, nor the courage of Yitzhak Rabin, Yasir Arafat or even Shimon Peres who seems to have retired from the peace business these days.

Where is the inspiration? Just a lot of hate talk, back talk and talk backs.

-- Ray Hanania
www.YallaPeace.com

Yalla Peace: Is this what Israel has to offer?

2010-06-29T20:19:00.001-05:00

Yalla Peace: Is this what Israel has to offer?
By RAY HANANIA
06/29/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Lieberman’s ideas fall right into the hands of Palestinian extremists.

It seems the controversies and pain in Palestinian- Israeli relations never end. It’s enough to make people even more despondent about the possibility of peace and turn toward extremism, not as a solution but rather as a means of either defending one’s sense of being right or to justify the unjustifiable.

Israel is in that position today in part because it allows the conflict to worsen. There’s no real progress.

Little by little, though, Israel is becoming isolated in the world. And worse, more and more Americans are starting to recognize that it is as much a part of the problem as the Palestinians.

So what can Israelis do? Well, they can turn to people like Avigdor Lieberman, a politician often shrugged off as representing far right-wing extremism. But he’s not just any politician. He is the foreign minister, though far from the stature of a man like Abba Eban, the former South African-born statesman who became Israel’s most eloquent spokesperson. And Lieberman is also deputy prime minister under Binyamin Netanyahu. As wild as they are, his ideas cannot just be brushed aside.

Last week, Lieberman, unveiled his blueprint for peace in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post. He chose this Englishlanguage publication as a clear sign he is trying to speak to the American public – and a clearer sign that he realizes that attitudes toward Israel are changing fast, with which I agree.

The failure of the peace process is falling on Israel’s shoulders. Netanyahu won’t fully freeze settlement expansion, continues to insist that Jerusalem cannot be shared, and uses disturbing policies meant to restrict non-Jewish life there.

In the face of these policies, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been left with little choice but to reject negotiations, including the ridiculous process of negotiations at a distance called proximity talks. Lieberman, with the backing of some of the Israeli public, represents a frightening future for those who believe two states and compromise are possible.

In the Lieberman blueprint, instead of swapping land for peace, Israel would draw new borders, kind of trying to redo the 1947 UN partition plan which divided Mandatory Palestine into two criss-crossing states whose borders were based mainly on where most of the Jewish population was located. Lieberman’s idea is basically a repeat of the idea that some suggest caused the problem in the first place.

Lieberman also says he wants most if not all of Israel’s Arab citizens to be drawn out of Israel so that the “Jewish state” can really be all Jewish. Israelis fear that the non-Jewish population might one day exceed the Jewish population and while the fear is exaggerated, Lieberman’s idea falls right into the hands of the Palestinian extremists who are calling for the creation of one state in which Jews, Christians and Muslims – well, basically Israelis and Palestinians, since there are so few Christian Palestinians left – would simply come together and live in peace.

THINGS MUST really be bad for Lieberman to take his ideas into the English forum. Yet this will only serve to push more and more Americans to recognize that the conflict is not being resolved and Israelis and the Palestinians are headed toward an even more cataclysmic future, one that Americans will probably have to pay for.

There is a choice, though. Israelis could push their government to do the right thing. Instead of Lieberman’s blueprint, Israelis could rethink the proposals Ehud Barak supposedly offered during the failed non-face-toface peace talks with Yasser Arafat. The “best offer” was far from great and all it lacked was just a little more creative compassion to work. Share Jerusalem. More importantly, Israelis could overcome the obstacle that made Barak’s offer impossible for Arafat to accept by recognizing and addressing fairly the rights of the Palestinian refugees.

But that option is missing one ingredient. A leader with courage. Someone like, well, the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. In 1977, Sadat did something so dramatic that he singlehandedly changed the dynamics of the Middle East conflict.

Is there a Sadat in Israel today? Or are leaders like Netanyahu and Lieberman all Israel has to offer? A courageous leader must surface, someone who can do the unthinkable to preserve Israel and make peace a reality.

A new era of cooperation could eliminate all of the conflict and one day we all may look back at today and wonder how this insanity all came to be.

The writer is an award- winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post: Palestinians need to look forward, not backward

2010-06-23T05:27:00.002-05:00

Palestinians need to look forward, not backward

By RAY HANANIA

06/23/2010 JERUSALEM POST

The construction of what is called the first ‘Palestinian settlement’ in the West Bank – Rawabi – is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing more of to build Palestine.

Qatar is unlike many of the other Arab countries that support the Palestinians.

Instead of donating lip-service and writing checks to be used in conflict, it has invested heavily in a project with a Palestinian construction company to build a new city in the West Bank called Rawabi.

The Palestinians should be focused on doing more of this; building Palestine, and switching gears from the confrontation-style politics of Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and a lot of other losers who love to exploit Palestinian suffering.

Even Turkey might consider putting a cork in its rhetoric.

The confrontation politics of the past was a zero-sum game that achieved very little. In terms of Palestinian interests, it’s a step backward, not forward, to keep fighting with Israel. Instead of confronting Israel at every corner, Palestinians should spend at least some of their efforts building their country and strengthening not only its economy but national pride.

Building Palestinian cities in the West Bank is just one way to do this.

If Hamas had any real leaders instead of the modern-day bombastic Nassers it has now, they’d spend more time trying to lure Arab world development into the Gaza Strip to build rather than spending all their time with their confrontational go-nowhere rhetoric that helped empower Israel’s stranglehold on the Gaza Strip.

We really do need to start building more cities in Palestine, mainly for the day when the refugees will be able to walk out of their camps. We need to give them a quality of life alternative to the sad existence sustained by the charity of the outside world.

Not that the outside world doesn’t owe Palestinians a lot. It does.

Rawabi is a brilliant vision of what Palestinian life can be after confrontation with Israel. Palestine can be a better country. It can be the economic hub of the Middle East.

Palestine, in peace, can offer the region far more than as a constant antagonist.

Of course, that means the activists need to stop exploiting Palestinian suffering for their own needs, too.

But mainly, Palestinians need to stop listening to the no-future activists who promise only confrontation.

Rather than flotillas, Palestine needs more Rawabis, places where Palestinian pride can defeat Israeli occupation. Rawabi would be the first modern, planned Palestinian city – a step that officials say will help build an independent state – located about 30 kilometers north of Jerusalem. It’s modeled on the typical US suburb.

THE BIGGEST problem is Israel. Israel has been dragging its feet on giving approval for an access road. The Israelis keep saying how much they want peace and how much they want Palestinians to focus on rebuilding Palestine, but while Israel “talks the talk,” it doesn’t “walks the walk.”

The $700 million Rawabi project is funded by the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co. and the Ramallahbased Massar International.

Mortgage loans would be managed by the US Overseas Private Investment Corp., an investment arm of the US government.

The company began pouring foundations this year and anticipates that the first families will be able to move in by 2013.

But without an access road, residents would have to do the “Palestinian-Israeli shuffle” used to navigate Israel’s checkpoints and road access restrictions, traveling through narrow winding roads, including on two miles of West Bank land controlled by Israel. Rawabi is located in Area A, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The road access it needs is in Area C, controlled by the Israeli military, and on the ground, by settlers who continue to protest, angry that foreign dollars for settlement construction in the West Bank are going to Palestinians.

Palestinians will continue to have to put up with the warped views of Israeli writers like Yoaz Hendel, who recently wrote in the op-ed “Anti- Jewish apartheid” for Ynet, rather inaccurately, “We [Israelis] got used to the world referring to the war against Palestinian terrorism as apartheid, we got so used to being guilty, to the point of failing to notice that the construction apartheid is happening to be directed against us. The Arabs are allowed to buy homes anywhere, while the Jews are not. The Arabs are allowed to build, expand and engage in familyreunification.

The Jews are forbidden.”

No Yoaz, Palestinians are not permitted to live or build anywhere.

Take a trip to my land, for example, next to Gilo: 34 dunams that Israel has frozen so non-Jews cannot build there; land located in the West Bank annexed by Israel on the Israeli side of the wall. Yet Yoaz says it is hypocritical for Palestinians to criticize the settlers, who build Jewish-only settlements while the Palestinians build cities like Rawabi, which presumably is for Palestinians only.

Well, Yoaz, the fact is that the settlers are not building homes in Israel. They are building them in the West Bank. The true comparison would be if Rawabi were being built next to Haifa, for Palestinians only.

Of course, that’s a small detail that right-wing Israelis love to ignore.

But if Palestinians are going to move forward, we’ll need to ignore the ranting and self-righteous lamentations from both the Israeli and Arab sides.

Build more Rawabis. And in the process of building Palestine, we must find time to negotiate a genuine peace agreement.

The writer is an award-winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.YallaPeace.com

Jerusalem Post: Yalla Peace: Out with the old (system)

2010-06-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

Jerusalem Post: Yalla Peace: Out with the old (system)

By RAY HANANIA

06/15/2010 JERUSALEM POST

To survive, Palestinians needs an election system that will result in true representation, rather than the failed one that has sputtered on and off.

Parliamentary systems do not really work in the Arab world. It definitely doesn’t work in Palestine, where coalitions are hard to establish and people vote not on the basis of issues but on ethnicity, religion, tribes and clans.

To survive, Palestinians need a real election system that will result in true representation by the people and for the people, rather than the failed system that has sputtered on and off since 2003.

There is nothing successful about any of the elections in Palestine, from the 2005 municipal and presidential elections to the 2006 legislative elections. International observers like former president Jimmy Carter can claim they were fair, but they are talking about the casting of the votes, not about the process of the election itself.

In fact, the history of Palestinian elections is one mess followed by another, with a minority of voters controlling the government. The 2005 municipal elections were supposed to be completed over several election dates. Voters were to select from two ballots, one a list of parties, the other a list of individual candidates. The election cycle was never completed.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president in that same process on January 9, 2005, with 62 percent of the vote. But despite the majority, the system was unfair. State run media coverage was denied to his challengers.

After Abbas’s election, Hamas continued to act as a shadow government, engaging in foreign policy and suicide missions against Israel to further destroy the ailing peace process.

Built on the failed municipal elections, the legislative elections went ahead anyway on January 25, 2006.

A real election results when the majority of the voters chooses its leadership. That’s not what happened. Hamas won the election but never won a majority of the votes.

Hamas won 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats with Fatah winning only 43 seats, later increasing to 45. The remaining seats were won by smaller splinter groups which were less coalitions and more parties set up by individuals who had no real grassroots support.

The voting system was confusing. People voted on two ballots, again to select a “party” and then to select individuals. It was intentionally confusing, I think, because the powers that be wanted to undermine Hamas and strengthen Fatah. That backfired.

Hamas won a majority of parliament’s seats, but again, it only won 44 percent of the votes cast on the party lists. More than 50,000 of the 1.1 million votes cast were thrown out. Hamas candidates also only won 41% of the votes on the individual lists, while Fatah candidates won 37%.

Instead of embracing the peace process that brought the elections, jubilant Hamas leaders immediately declared their intention to undermine the peace process. That should not have been surprising as Hamas, and the left-wing rejectionist groups like the Jabha and extremist activists in the West, spent most of the prior 13 years using suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks to block peace.

PRIOR TO the election and the expansion of the parliament from 88 to 132 seats, Fatah held a solid majority, 68 of the original 88 seats. What went wrong? Well, Fatah had the votes. But while Hamas offered no choices, Fatah offered too many choices. That divided its base. Long time Fatah leaders were engaged in an internal battle with young rebels who sought to change the leadership of the party. That should have been decided outside of the election, not during the election.

Rather than challenge the corrupt election system, the ruling Palestinian leadership, including Ahmed Qurei, who was appointed prime minister in 2003, too quickly accepted its fate.

What Palestine needs is a Western-style democratic system where elections are held in two distinct rounds of voting. The first vote represents the process by which party supporters decide who will be their candidates. In the West, that is called a “primary” election.

The winners of the primaries then become the candidates who run for office in the final round, called the general election. Only when a candidate wins more than 50% of the votes cast in a general election is that candidate declared the winner.

Because this election process was flawed and there was no clear majority, Palestine was destined for turmoil. Abbas was supposed to run for reelection in 2009 but that never happened because of the Hamas “victory.” In response, the PLO suspended elections and extended Abbas’s term in office. Israel responded by imprisoning many in the Hamas government. Rather than weaken Hamas, Israel’s policies empowered it even more.

Recently, elections have been again delayed, but without offering a real alternative. That only makes matters worse. Instead of simply delaying the elections, Abbas should reconstitute the election system. Throw out the parliamentary system. Replace it with a primary-general election process. Require that every office holder be elected by a majority of votes cast. Replace the office of prime minister with a vice president and keep the power in the hands of the president.

In the event that there are more than two parties in an election and more than two candidates, then if no one gets more than 50% of the vote, then the two highest vote-getters would run-off with the winner taking the majority.

Without a new election system, there can be no democracy in Palestine. The turmoil of the failed elections in 2005 and 2006 will continue to undermine Palestinian democracy and prevent the nation from emerging as a whole.

The collapse of secular government in Palestine is not only Israel’s biggest concern, it will also be a nightmare for the Palestinians.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com and rghanania@gmail.com