Alan Dershowitz: Time to tell the truth about the Palestinian issue

Alan Dershowitz calls out a particularly biased, dishonest and wrong article by Michelle Alexander at the New York Times. Sure, Israel has its faults and there is plenty to blame Israel for. But the Palestinians have very largely brought their current set of problems onto themselves.

The "Blame it all on Israel" shtick that is the common line among anti-Semitic bigots in the UN, across the Middle East, among many Democrat leftists and also many elitist establishment types in Europe and others around the world, is "counterproductive," as Dershowitz explains, because "it encourages Palestinian recalcitrance".

Well said, Allan.

There is much more at the link and if you are someone who cares about this issue, I would encourage you to read all of it. It is an excellent article on this topic. Better than the article in the New York Times, that is for sure:

Alan Dershowitz: Time to tell the truth about the Palestinian issue

The suffering of Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of many other groups, has been largely inflicted by themselves. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peale Commission Report of 1938, the United Nations Partition of 1947, the Camp David Summit deal of 2000, or the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers, responding with violence and terrorism, because doing so would have required them to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, something they are unwilling to do even today.

I know because I asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that question directly and he said no. The Palestinian leadership indeed has always wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than it has wanted there to be a Palestinian state. The Palestinian issue is not “one of the great moral challenges of our time,” as Alexander insists in her column. It is a complex, nuanced, pragmatic problem, with fault on all sides. The issue could be solved if Palestinian leaders were prepared to accept the “painful compromises” that Israeli leaders have already agreed to accept.

Had the early Palestinian leadership, with the surrounding Arab states, not attacked Israel the moment it declared statehood, it would have a viable state with no refugees. Had Hamas used the resources it received when Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005 to build schools and hospitals instead of using these resources to construct rocket launchers and terror tunnels, it could have become a “Singapore on the Sea” instead of the poverty-stricken enclave the Palestinian leadership turned it into.

The leaders of Hamas as well as the Palestinian Authority bear at least as much responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians as do the Israelis. Israel is certainly not without some fault, but the “blame it all on Israel” approach taken by Alexander is counterproductive because it encourages Palestinian recalcitrance. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once observed, “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”​

Dershowitz explains how if the Palestinians had put the money and resources it received when the Israelis handed over Gaza to build roads, hospitals, schools, etc, rather than to build missiles and terror tunnels, Gaza would now be the Middle East "Singapore on the Sea"

He goes on to explain all of the different opportunities that the Palestinians had to wipe out the Jews, but failed to capitalize, because while the right of conquest apparently is not respected for the Jews, it would be respected for the Palestinians, if they were ever actually to succeed in conquering the Israelis.

Anyway, the Israelis have repeatedly accepted the proposal of a two state solution and the Palestinians never have. In order for their to be peace in this area, the Palestinians and the Muslim world are going to have to accept Israel. Period. As long as they will not, this conflict will not end.

Alan Dershowitz has on this issue gotten it almost exactly right.

 

Nope. Just because people who you support routinely act that way, it does not follow that others necessarily do, or that your adversaries also do.

 

Of course just because you support people who are anti-semites, that does not automatically make you an anti-semite. Although I have not researched your posting history, which is why I did not make that comment directly about you.

 

If there is a more high profile, devotedly anti-Semitic organization in the world than the United Nations, I could not even begin to guess what that alternative organization might be.

 

I should have clarified that it needs to be a group that is not generally regarded as a terrorist group. But leaving that qualification aside, your suggestion is a good one.

 

Again, I should have clarified that it needs to be a group that is not generally regarded as a terrorist group. But leaving that qualification aside, your suggestions are good ones. As in order to take the anti-Semitism of the United Nations up a notch, a group almost has to be a terrorist group. That is how bad the United Nations is on this score.