http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=273124
“Sadly for Israel, US Jews’ experience with their Muslim friends has little practical relevance in terms of policy input or political doctrine. After all, the realities that Israel must contend with to ensure the security of the state and the safety of its citizens is not generated by populations of affable, educated Muslims who have chosen to live in an open, democratic society. The realities it has to deal with are populations that produce societies like those in Sudan and Syria, in Algeria and Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq; that beget organizations such as the Taliban, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade and Islamic Jihad.”
How could we give permission [for there] to be a state of Islam and a state of Jews? It [the two-state notion] is a kind of apartheid….For the Palestinians and the Israelis, I am sure that the one democratic state will be the only solution
– Badran, Khaled Jaber’s grandfather, April 2012
We need all [of] Palestine… Israel as a Jewish state is a big lie. It’s a big lie. [Israel is] a European colonial imprint…. It’s a matter of time…. They will go away the same way that France went from Algeria and Italy from Libya.
– Falastin, Khaled Jaber’s mother, April 2012.
Readers will, of course, recall that Khaled Jaber was the five-year-old Palestinian boy filmed sobbing at his father’s arrest by Israeli police, and who, according to Peter Beinart, provided much of the impetus for him to write his recent book, The Crisis of Zionism.
Sauce for the gander
It is, of course, true that the Jaber family’s rejectionist political perspectives are neither moral exoneration for any alleged injustices/iniquities in Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, nor definitive proof of universal or wide-spread sentiments of similar enmity among the wider Palestinian population.
However, neither is the Jaber incident – even if one accepts Beinart’s unquestioning and questionable interpretation of what happened – a fair representation of overall Israeli conduct vis-à-vis the Palestinians, any more than the brutal beating of Rodney King by the LAPD is a representative reflection of official US policy vis-à-vis ethnic minorities.
But since Beinart did extrapolate from the Khaled Jaber incident, implying that it is illustrative of the unfair and oppressive burden imposed on the un-enfranchised Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, he should neither be surprised, nor in a position to protest, when others extrapolate from other localized events/expressions to illustrate the imprudence and implausibility of his views.
Inimical icons
Beinart is on record stating that even if he had known the Jaber family’s political beliefs, it would not have changed his decision to feature Khaled’s story in the book’s introduction, saying: “The point I was trying to convey in that story was simply about a small example of the reality of what it means to live as a population that doesn’t have citizenship or the equal rights given by full citizenship and the consequences of that. And that seems to me a reality that is important, irrespective of the political views of the people who are suffering.”
As mentioned earlier, this is not a position that can be dismissed apriori. However, few will deny that it seems more than a little incongruous that the very family through which Beinart chose to convey the pressing need for a two-state arrangement vehemently rejects the admissibility of such an arrangement –irrespective of Israeli policy.
Actually, it’s worse. For it turns out that the Jabers are not a typical Palestinian fellah (peasant) family eking out a meager living from arid lands denied irrigation by iniquitous Israel.
As The Jerusalem Post reported, Badran is a professor at one of Hebron’s two universities – both established in the 1970s under the Israeli administration of the town – prior to which it had no institutions of higher learning.
He is also designated a “senior member” of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which has been involved in some of the more gruesome terror attacks over the past half century.