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"Poor George, He Can't Help It . . ."

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Miller believes the demographics "look bad" for Israel because there are too many "others" being born there.

To live under the control of the Israeli narrative is to ignore all other perspectives when facing issues affecting Israel. Clinton concluded his speech honoring Peres, according to The Times of Israel,  by praising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

'Netanyahu in his first term as prime minister reached an agreement that, had the Second Intifada not erupted, would have given the Palestinians "more of the West Bank than they have today." And Netanyahu, in his second term as prime minister, Clinton recalled, froze settlement building for several months. The Palestinians 'made a mistake' at the time 'in not entering talks,' Clinton said."

Spoken, of course, like a true believer in the Israeli narrative, a believer who was twice elected U.S. president, and was in the White House when the Palestinians refused to accept that "gift" of "more of the West Bank than they have today." This is, of course, an Israeli narrative version of the "talks" to which Clinton refers.

The framing of the situation between Israel and Palestine today was repeated by President Barack Obama recently in a speech to the Israeli public. In the speech, Yousef Munayyer reports, Obama said:

"You can be the generation that permanently secures the Zionist dream, or you can face a growing challenge to its future. Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine."

Munayyer adds that while "Some believe that making this argument to the Israeli public advances the interests of peace. In reality, the opposite is true, it just makes things worse."

It is worse, because by encouraging the Israelis to see Palestinian freedom "not as the legitimate and urgent right of Palestinians but as a choice Israelis can or cannot make when and if they get around to it," Obama speaks entirely from the Israeli perspective of what is best for Israel.

Perspective is all. Look at Palestinian freedom from the Israeli perspective and what do you see? You see a challenge that must be met in Israel's best interests.

But look at Palestinian freedom from the Palestinian perspective and you see not a challenge for Israel, but a responsibility placed upon an Israeli government that continues to rely on the occupation as its way of "controlling" the neighborhood.

To describe Israel's "problem" as one of demographics, is to turn Israel's moral wrong into an accepted right. There is an historic reason why the demographics of a moral wrong has become an accepted right. It was planned that way from the beginning. In a recent posting entitled, "How many is too many?" Munayyer explains:

"Demographic engineering is central to Zionism and has been through every stage of Zionist history. I suppose when a political movement seeks to transplant millions of non-natives into a land of indigenous Arabs, to borrow "father of Zionism" Theodore Herzl's phraseology, demography must become a central obsession."

Munayyer adds:

"An ideology that seeks to build a society around a certain type of people defined by ethnicity or religion is inevitably going to feature racism, supremacy and oppression -- especially when the vast majority of native inhabitants where such an ideology is implemented are unwelcomed."

At the conclusion of Yousef Munayyer's posting on Clinton's speech, he offered a few words of advice to Israel, to former President Clinton and to current President Barack Obama:

"Palestinian freedom should not be framed as Israel's choice. Rather, as the occupier of Palestinian territory and millions of stateless Palestinians, this is Israel's obligation, an American obligation and an international obligation. It's about time we start talking about it this way."

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James Wall served as a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois, from 1999 through 2017. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. Many sources have influenced (more...)
 

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