Beinart knows this, but he won’t dare say it.
One need only look at this post from yesterday to see that this is true. Not only is there virtually no voice for true peace among Palestinian Arabs, but even the slightest attempts at coexistence are demonized and practitioners blacklisted.
How often does Open Zion report on this? For that matter, how much does the NYT, BBC and other mainstream media (the recent Forbes piece being a rare exception) report on this?
Where are the Palestinian Arab “Open Zions?” Where are the people who really want co-existence who can speak out without being tarred that worst of all insults – “collaborators”? You will not find any Arab Beinarts writing for Palestinian Arabic media.
Beinart’s own self-created cocoon where he pretends that most Palestinian Arabs want peace is even more bizarre. In his entire lengthy essay, he does not mention Islamic fundamentalism once. The reason is once again willful blindness – Beinart knows that there is no way that fundamentalist Muslims, represented by Hamas – winner in the last PA elections – would ever accept Israel’s existence in any manner.
So Beinart chooses to ignore that problem and pretend that Salam Fayyad, an unelected former prime minister who barely scraped together 2.4% of the vote for his own party, is mainstream and Hamas is all but nonexistent.
Even though he says admits that “Virtually every Palestinian I’ve ever met considers Zionism to be colonialist, imperialist, and racist. ” Sure, let’s invite them over to the Hadassah meeting so we can hear all about it!
That is willful blindness of a far worse kind than anything he can say about the American Jewish establishment.
The real cocoon is the one that looks at the Middle East and pretends that it is Jewish American leadership that is somehow more in denial than liberals like Beinart. The real cocoon is the place where the extent of Palestinian Arab intransigence and hate is downplayed and glossed over as simply a few TV programs and textbooks, with no mention of, say, Gaza being controlled by a separate party that considers all of Israel to be “occupied.” The real cocoon is the place where, even in light of the Arab Spring, Muslim fundamentalism simply isn’t worth mentioning as a problem.
Israel doesn’t want to oppress anybody, but it has an obligation to protect its citizens – the supreme obligation of any nation. The line it needs to walk in order to do that it a thin and jagged one, and one that for the most part has been successful. Today there is less terror than ever before even as restrictions on Palestinian Arabs are being slowly lifted. This is what should be emphasized, highlighted and encouraged.
Beinart, though, is blind to the real facts – because he is the one who lives in a cocoon.
Visit Elder of Ziyon.