The cynicism displayed by Mahmoud Abbas’ recent visit to Washington, DC can only be appreciated when considering the incredible acts of self sacrifice taken by Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails who at the time of writing this, have been on a hunger strike for more than two weeks. Abbas and Trump were disengaged, Spicer all the experts and pundits spewed their usual nonsense about peace and how Palestinians need to end terrorism (what terrorism?) which only goes to show the reckless disregard with which people treat Palestine and its people.
It was reported that during his meeting with Trump, “Mr. Abbas… repeated the conditions the Palestinians have insisted on for years — the creation of an independent Palestinian state based on borders that existed before the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital; the right of return for refugees; and freedom for prisoners in Israeli cells. That formulation has been a nonstarter for Israel which itself has shown no sign of backing off its own fixed positions.” This is according to the New York Times which also reported that “Echoing Israel’s position, Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Abbas to discourage Palestinian instigation against Israelis. “There cannot be lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice against incitement to violence and hate,” Mr. Trump said. This is a strange demand indeed since the cause for Palestinians hating Israel is Israel’s brutality. No amount of incitement will result in the kind of hate Israel creates each time a child is beaten, or shot by soldiers, each time Gaza is bombed, each time a family has to stand in line for hours at a checkpoint and is tormented by soldiers. Indeed it is not the Palestinians who are to blame for hatred of Israel, it is Israel itself.
According the NYT, Trump did not publicly mention Palestinian financial payments to the families of convicted terrorists, but his spokesman, Sean Spicer, said Mr. Trump raised the issue privately.” In a piece about this visit in Israel’s daily, Haaretz it was emphasized that “Spicer added that Trump raised with Abbas the issue of payments to families of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails, and asked the Palestinian leader to resolve it.” The insistence by Israel that the families of Palestinian prisoners suffer economic strangulation was discussed here and it should come as no surprise that Israel has got the US demanding this of Abbas. Once again, we see reckless, indeed criminal disregard for the lives of Palestinian political prisoners and their families.
No dead horse has ever been beaten with more vigor than the so-called Israeli Palestinian Peace Talks. As Ghassan Kanafani so brilliantly stated in this interview from 1970. When asked why his organization, the PFLP won’t engage in peace talks with Israelis he paused for a while then looked up at the reporter and said, “You don’t mean exactly peace talks, you mean capitulation.” Then he added, that for Palestinians, negotiating with Israel is like “negotiations between the sword and the neck.” And indeed when twenty three years later the PLO did engage in talks with the Israeli government in what yielded the Oslo Accords, the result was capitulation. The Palestinians had given up the struggle and got nothing in return.
The man leading the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike currently going on is Marwan Barghouti who was as enthusiastic as anyone about negotiating with Israel for a free independent Palestinian state. In fact, Barghouti himself was deeply involved in the negotiations. However, having gone through the humiliating process of negotiations with Israel, he realized, as Ghassan Kanafani had predicted, that the more Palestinians were negotiating, the deeper the Israeli sword was cutting into the Palestinian neck. Barghouti, considered by many to be the Palestinian equivalent of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison because he had realized that only resistance can bring Palestinians the freedom they deserve.
Because of the total disregard for the lives of Palestinians, Israel is getting financial and military support from the world while the Palestinians heroically fight and get very little support. But this is because there is a paradigm in which Palestinians always need to be grateful for whatever little crumbs they get and Israel always 0calls all the shots. Sadly, Mahmoud Abbas made very little demands during his visit to Washington. He did not call on Washington to support the call for BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, against Israel. He did not demand that Israel immediately and unconditionally lift the siege on Gaza and though he did demand that the prisoners be freed, there was no clear sense that he was demanding, it was more like he was politely begging.
Juxtaposing Abbas’ meeting in Washington with the prisoners’ hunger strike provides a clear picture of who is truly fighting for Palestinian rights. As these brave men continue with their self-sacrifice one is reminded of the hunger strike of Bobby Sands and the ten IRA volunteers who the British government let die. Their short lives and painful struggle is documented in the book “Ten Men Dead,” by David Beresford. Anyone wishing to understand what hunger strike entails will do well to read it.
The illegitimate regime that has been occupying Palestine for sixty-nine years, Israel, must be dismantled and a democracy with equal rights must be established in its place. Otherwise the criminal disregard for Palestinian lives will go on uninterrupted.
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Miko Peled 
Dear Brother Miko,
Thank you for speaking up the truth and taking the high road that is less travelled, but only brave and honest people like you make the journey.
Reblogged this on Contramedia.
Sorry, but this essay proves why you are only taken seriously by the Alison Weir crowd.
Miko — the gatekeeper says you are not taken seriously by his crowd but he doesn’t explain the flaws in your presentation. What could they be? Did you say something false?
Sigman — what’s wrong with the “Alison Weir crowd”? Do they promote lies? Where is the failing? I know Jewish Voice for Peace disengaged from Alison because she appeared on a five year old White supremacist radio show. But, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? Isn’t that Jewish Voice for Peace saying that White Man’s Voice for Peace is racist? And this…when Jewish Voice for Peace claims that “the white man” is responsible for all the world’s ills. If this were said about Jews it would be cause for stopping the world, a conference, a major lawsuit, and a TV show. C’mon — what’s wrong with Alison Weir big shot?
It does take a great deal of gall for Israel to ask, through Trump, that Palestinians back off of “instigation” when Israeli troops demolish homes, imprison 7,000 Palestinians, steal land, torture and murder Palestinians, all which is actually instigation, don’t you think. The colonizer imprisons and kills the native people. It is an old story but one that always…always…works out for the native people and not the colonizer. Israel has now created a circumstance, a single state encompassing millions of Palestinians, that they cannot win. The whole world understands this apartheid and will eventually boycott Israel into the stone age.
Another eye opening article by Miko. As an American who’s been a front row witness to the gross, obvious Israel bias in U.S. media, its refreshing to see people like Miko stand up for the speechless, and I’m glad to help spread the word.
The Israel of today is not exactly what Theodor Herzl envisioned is it?
Actually I think it is
Keep up the good work, Miko. You speak for me.
The American Palestinian Solidarity movement removed Alison Weir and her crowd from their graces, not because she appeared on the show of a white supremacist, but it was proven that Weir was pandering to the white supremacist audience. Weir’s secondary sin was in posting antisemitic material on her web site.
Frank — I see — White supremacists do not need to be informed about Palestine. Is this right? But they too are Americans and they vote. The American Jewish community also votes. What’s the difference between white people attending to their interests and Jews attending to theirs? Here is a Zionist Jewish organization castigating a racist white man’s organization. Any problem here? Indeed, Jewish supremacism appears to guide the search for anti-semitism. The main business of JVP is which is to destroy activists who use the word “Jew”, a patented privileged word that can only be used by licensed approved activists and their organizations. Yet, as Miko says elsewhere, it is Jews who oppress Palestinians. (Why wasn’t Miko disengaged from these organizations? Because he is Jewish! )
What about the evident racism of the American Jewish community? This community supports the Zionist state which butchers non-Jews. Zionism, supported by the American Jewish community, is the program which incites Jews to degrade, terrorize, jail, torture, and kill gentiles in order to possess their property and liquidate their rights! This behavior is extreme racism matching some of history’s worst racist debacles because this racism has been destroying gentile life in Palestine for three generations.
Yet, JVP doesn’t confront the American Jewish community very much, preferring to complain about US policies. This “strategy” in itself reflects Jewish interests because it is designed to shield the American Jewish community from culpability for the crimes they support, pay for, even acknowledge and celebrate.
JVP talk about racism is necessarily contradictory. “pandering” is not a crime if you want to get your message across to a group. And the white supremacist audience is American who need to know about I/P. Lastly, what anti-semitic materials? Could it be materials that do not reflect well on some Jews? Are the materials untrue? The point of such materials is to challenge the propagandist narrative in which Jews are innocent victims everywhere and that Jews are the most moral people — IDF the “most moral army in the world”. Articles and books summing up Jewish bad behavior aim to disparage the race-based narrative promulgated by Zionism and American Jews. These works are not anti-semitic per se; Zionism has set up this paper thin idea that Jews have no moral choice regarding I/P. How can one dispute this without chronicling Jewish bad behavior.
This is the point of Alison’s book. In brief, they asked for it.
Here is the bottom line: JVP and other Jewish activist organizations wish to help liberate Palestinians. However, they do not want to incriminate Jews. So, in order for even a Palestinian activist movement to escape the charge of anti-semitism, it must pander to the Jewish sensitivities and endorse the Jewish strategy for liberation. Therewith, Jews are not the perpetrators. Other identities are guilty of the crimes against Palestinians. These other targets include first the US government policies, Beyond this, there is the “white man”, globalism, capitalism and imperialism. Jews are simply the agent/victims of large global historical forces and hence are not morally liable. The Jewish people were, by chance, left without a chair when the music stopped. Somehow Jews will not incur loss by virtue of what has been done. Yet, Jews have sought reparations in abundance from a number of European states. But Nazis too were just the agent/victims of such forces.
It is double talk. What is lost in this deformed narrative is the truth itself. Some Palestinian groups have traded the truth about their abuse for a seat at the Jewish table. Do you think that Jews will liberate Palestinians? Not likely.
Have a nice day!
There is a difference between appearing on a white supremacist show to educate them, and appearing to agree with them so that they will agree with you. Weir is the second case. That is why the American Palestinian Solidarity movement removed Alison Weir and her crowd from their graces. Again, not because she appeared on the show of a white supremacist in order to spread the truth, but it was proven that Weir was pandering to the white supremacist audience by agreeing with their racism. Weir’s secondary sin was in posting antisemitic material on her web site.
That is the bottom line.