“The Palestinians can not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, said the Israeli leader Abba Eban half a century ago. With all his outstanding qualities, Eban did not understand one fundamental issue: You can not understand the world if you look at it only from your own point of view.

Again and again my friends ask me, why, even after they have gotten all of Gaza, the Palestinians continue suicide bombings, rocket attacks and all other methods they can use to kill Israelis? (The attacks are continuing; the media just stopped informing us about them). Why do the majority of the Palestinians and Arabs in general, support these hateful attacks? Don’t they understand that they are injuring themselves in the process, that their ability to have a peaceful life and live to enjoy the fruit of their labor is diminishing? Now even the Europeans are suspicious of the Palestinians and would prefer to drop their long term support.
What is it within the Palestinians that seem to work against their own best interest?

The real issue is not that the Palestinians are making mistakes and increasing their agonies, it is that we are looking at their actions purely from our own deeply ingrained Western point of view-- life is sacred, peace is superior, love your neighbor, are our standards.

We want peace, democracy, cooperation between people and nations, unfortunately most Palestinians and Arabs all across the Middle East consider personal honor, national, and religious pride, and destroying the enemy, as much more important than personal freedom or standard of living. Here is what was in the newspaper last week:

“Karbala, Iraq—More than one million Iraqis marched and beat themselves Thursday in blood-soaked processions through this holy city and other Shiite centers around the country to mourn the 7th-century death of their revered martyr, Imam Hussein.”
By Khalid Mohammed, Associated Press

Read it again and again to grasp what is to us an unthinkable behavior: One million people, mutilating themselves, are proud to bloody themselves in public, in honor of a religious leader who died thirteen hundred years ago! It is not one hundred, not thousand, but a million! And we expect these people to embrace Democracy, peace, and the rule of law? And that fanaticism is not only in Iraq.

There are several ways of looking at these questions, but as long as we think we are right and they are wrong we will miss the essence of the issues involved. Our ways may be right for us, but their ways are singularly important to them! Often their beliefs are more important than their comfort, standard of living, even their lives, and even, to some, the lives of their children!
Marian Farahat was a mother of six, and with her encouragement three of her sons died as suicide bombers killing Israeli civilians. She is famous in Gaza for a recruitment video showing her 17 years old how to be a suicide bomber like his brothers, telling him not to come back. Along with other Hamas terrorist she just was elected to the Palestinian Legislative council.
M. Zukerman, Editor in Chief. US. NEWS

We are unable to grasp it, it is beyond our experience. And, therefore, we often dismiss facing it.

The Palestinians will continue to believe we are selfish, self centered, leisurely oriented people, afraid to die, and therefore, we are inherently weak. In the end, many Palestinians believe, they will eventually win.

It is not a matter of right and wrong, it is a matter of deep cultural beliefs, of profound cultural differences. You may say the hate and the killing are not advocated in the Koran, but what is important, I believe, is what people do, not what is in their books.

I would like to reemphasis, since it is so essential to grasp:
We believe our ways are superior and that many of them are either uncivilized murderers with no regard to human life, either their enemies’ lives, their religious brothers’ lives, or their own lives. We think, Palestinians will soon learn their mistakes and be able to live with us in peace.
However, they don’t think they are mistaken. They believe that their personal needs and preferences are secondary to the long term religious and cultural need of spreading their religion globally.
Again, it is not a matter of right and wrong, it is a matter of a substantially different world view.

It is also not a matter of poverty and low standard of living. Millions of people around the world have a considerably lower standard of living; in fact millions are on the verge of starvation all their lives. They do not resort usually to indiscriminant murders of their own religious brothers like in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other Muslim countries.

Back to Israel, Gaza and the potential for peace:
This basic lack of ability to grasp the nature of your enemy, the underlining core of the enemy soul, drove Rabin, Peres and Clinton too, to lead the Israeli people into one of the worst nightmare of their existence to date. It is easy to understand the naivety of the American President, we, the American people, on the whole, so much believe that if you give peace a chance it will win. Many of us do not grasp that there is more than one way to look at the world. And the more idealistic you are the more likely is that you would miss the real issues. That is why often tough men like President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin, can achieve reasonable peace for their nations. They are less likely to be swayed by idealistic views and more by down to earth concerns for their own countries, and more important, he/she are more likely to understand the enemy’s core views.

The Oslo peace agreement was done on the Israeli side by good, peace loving people, such as Peres and Rabin. But on the Palestinian side by a smart, politically savvy, pursuer of a long term vision completely different from peace, by Arafat. Arafat nationalistic, no compromise belief, set the Palestinians on a course that it would be very difficult to undo for decades!!

Arafat and his associates, including Abbas, took two and a half million, highly emotional and easily impressionable people, more than half below 20 years of age, and systematically, continuously, relentlessly, taught them to hate, to murder as the only method of national liberation. These ingrained feelings do not suddenly disappear. It takes decades to reduce, to change, and to diminish.

“In school in Gaza, I learned hate, vengeance, and retaliation. Peace was never an option. At school we sang songs with verses calling Jews "dogs." Hundreds of millions of other Muslims also have been raised with the same hatred of the West and Israel as a way to distract from the failings of their leaders.” Nonie Darwish (Telegraph-UK)

It does not matter what peace agreements Israel may eventually reach with the Palestinians. Even if ever a Palestinian leadership would emerged that would seriously and comprehensively pursue peace and work systematically to destroy terrorism, it would still be nearly impossible to stop this ingrained hate from surfacing again and again in murdering of Israelis.

That is the sad reality of the Middle East.

Matania
2/06