The Warped Mirror: The birthday bashers

There is something sad and pathetic about the efforts of pro-Palestinian activists to hijack events celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary. These activists insist that, instead of focusing on what was achieved by those who accepted the UN partition sixty years ago and ever since invested all their energies into building a successful state, the world should be transfixed by the misery of those who rejected the partition plan and for decades invested all their energies into turning back the clock.

The false premise underlying the appeals that the plight of the Palestinians should be in the center of everyone's attention is the notion that Palestinians never had a choice: Israel's establishment had to become their "naqba" and thus the focal point of a Palestinian identity that centers on victimhood and a sense of resentment and grievance. And often enough, the very same people who are most vociferous when it comes to accusing Israel of focusing too much on the Holocaust will insist that the "naqba" is the most natural point of reference for anything and everything to do with the Palestinians. 

It is symptomatic for the sorry state of pro-Palestinian advocacy that the vilification of Israel takes center stage. From the rich choice of poor offerings, consider the innocuously named "israels60thbirthday" website which prominently sports as its motto: "1948-2008: SIXTY YEARS OF PALESINIAN SUFFERING". At the time of this writing, the top post denounced German chancellor Angela Merkel for "traveling to Israel to celebrate 60 years since the beginning of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." Unsurprisingly, the recommended reading on the site includes whatever the Norman Finkelsteins and Ilan Pappes of this world might produce; in addition, there are such pearls as a piece by the British writer Jonathan Cook, who claims that he is based in "Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian minority in Israel" where he muses that "if we stopped distracting ourselves with the Holy Grail of the two-state solution, we might channel our energies into something more useful: discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology of Zionism that upholds it."

If this is something "useful", it is useful only for Jonathan Cook, who seems to make a living with this kind of writing.

What most pro-Palestinian activists are apparently both unwilling and unable to see is that among those who celebrate Israel's anniversary, there are few who would not wish that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been resolved long ago by implementing the sixty-year old vision of a Jewish and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and prosperity. It is nowadays often forgotten, and even more often grossly misrepresented, that it was genuine idealism that inspired many who endorsed the partition plan in 1947. A publication issued last year by the American Jewish Committee to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the UN decision highlights and documents that some "of the strongest rhetorical support for the Jewish cause came from small nations that had struggled against domination by colonial powers. For them, the establishment of Israel, through a democratic procedure, represented precisely the opposite of imperialism and colonialism." 

Indeed, at the time, there was good reason to regard it as "an extraordinary advance in the moral progress of the world" that the fate of a disputed territory would not be settled by yet another war, but by a compromise that reflected the recommendations of the international community. Sixty years on, some of the "old guard" of the Palestinian leaders seem prepared to acknowledge that it was a mistake to reject any compromise and waste six decades in futile fighting: in a recent interview, the leader of the "Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine" concluded ruefully that after "60 years, we are struggling for what we could have had in 1947 [...] We have missed many historic opportunities."

But others who were interviewed insisted that they had no regrets: Mohammed Oudeh, the architect of the 1972 Olympics attack that left 11 Israeli athletes dead, declared that he would "do it all over" again - though he added that "maybe, just maybe, we should have shown some flexibility. Back in our days, it was 'the whole of Palestine or nothing,' but we should have accepted a Palestinian state next to Israel."

So what about a Palestinian state next to Israel now? Unfortunately, it seems that all the talk about "missed opportunities" does not translate into support for the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The focus remains on complaining about the occupation - and perversely, not so few actually hope that the occupation will last long enough to make a "one-state solution" inevitable. Considering how passionately pro-Palestinian activists accuse Israel of every conceivable crime, it sure is remarkable that so few seem willing to look for salvation in a separate Palestinian state.