Robert Wright
This is important, if you care about the mainstream media: Robert Wright at the Atlantic is writing unapologetically about the denial of human rights to Palestinians under 45 years of occupation. In a piece titled, The Arab spring is coming to Israel, he highlights the arrest of Fadi Quran, a Palestinian activist friend who was educated at Stanford, in the occupied territories Friday.
(Demonstrating again that it is very dangerous to meet a Palestinian. For then you will see that they are human beings.)
So Wright is joining Andrew Sullivan as a forceful voice for Palestinian freedom. Notice his hedge on the two-state solution. Wright does this because he has some sense of Palestinian opinion; and the news from Palestine is that Palestinians have ceased to believe in the two-state solution. The Israel lobby performed the coup de grace with its dismissal of the statehood initiative of last fall, extinguishing hope.
Wright:
more and more people outside of Israel are going to become aware that for 45 years Israel has been ruling a people who don’t have basic political rights–like the right to due process (Fadi could in theory spend months in jail with no charges filed) or the right to vote for or against the government that ultimately controls their fate, even though that government is part of a democratic state.
I don’t think it has been the intention of Israelis to sustain this horrible situation. In principle, most would like a two-state solution. But the traditional Israeli narrative–that the absence of a solution is the fault of the Palestinians, so they’ll have to live with it–is going to run into trouble if people like Fadi Quran have their way. Demonstrators seeking basic rights have an easier time gaining international sympathy than suicide bombers seeking vengeance.
I’ll close with another clip from my conversation with Fadi [on bloggingheads] in which he explains why his family so often lacks running water. This is a story Palestinians couldn’t easily convey to Americans before the digital revolution. Now they can.
“The Israel lobby performed the coup de grace with its dismissal of the statehood initiative of last fall, extinguishing hope.”
What happened there? It feels like everybody stopped talking about it… Did the Palestinians cave in? I remember the seats on the UNSC were changing on January 1st. Is the new composition worse for the Palestinian statehood initiative? Where did this thing go? The MSM completely stopped reporting on it but I don’t remember too many things on Mondoweiss either. How did this thing die? What does the autopsy report say?
Rob’t Wright says ” or the right to vote for or against the Government that ultimately controls their fate, even though that Goverment is part of a democratic state.” I could not agree more. The campaign for Labour representation in Northern Ireland [CLRNI] was set up by a group of Socialists and Trade Unionists who wanted the Labour Party [LP] and the Conservative and Lib Dem Parties to allow everyone resident in NI to be able to join and vote for or against the Parties that actually governed them at Westminster, the provincial government at Stormont was closed down in 1972 and NI was governed by direct rule, the local Unionist and Nationalist parties were notoriously sectarian and in any case only numbered 12 MP’s now increased to 18 and could not form a Government or even have much influence on the major parties, also the major parties were reluctant to be too associated with the sectarian nature of those parties. But since Catholic and Protestant citizens of the Province had no choice in the matter and in the absence of the major parties of Government they could only vote for what were conceived to be sectarian parties, this was a profoundly undemocratic state of affairs, one and a half million UK citizens effectively denied the vote. It is only recently that a Province wide ‘ Labour Forum’ has been set up with the agreement of the Labour Party National executive with a view to contesting all constituencies in NI. So, here we had in one of the oldest democracies on earth a situation in which it has taken over 40 years for NI residents to start to achieve those rights everyone in the rest of the UK had taken for granted. No comparison of course with the Palestinians, misgoverned under military rule for over 40 years but unless people tirelessly campaign for these fundamental rights they will not easily be conceded.
No matter the details, any MSM writing that describes the plight of Palestinians is to the good. The solution, if there is one, (e.g., 1SS, 2SS) cannot precede and must necessarily follow MSM daily, normal, “unapologetic”, simple, blatant description of the FACTS which make up the lives of Palestinians living under occupation (as well as those living in the other limbo, statelessness as refugees in Lebanon, Syria, etc.)
Just to add to my comment above, the Labour Party were very reluctant to offer membership to residents of Northern Ireland it was only a challenge by Mr Andy McGivern who mounted a challenge against the LP rules which he claimed was racist, claiming it discriminated against people from the province, which of course it did, the Party’s own legal advice was that they had a weak defence if the matter went to court. More than 86% of the delegates at the Party’s annual conference voted in favour of changing the Party’s rules. [ BBC News, Labour NI recruits on agenda] The message for the Palestinians is to use all the legal tools at their disposal including the ICC together with peaceful campaigning, it will take time as those campaigners in NI found out, but justice will win out in the end.
Rob’t Wright says ” or the right to vote for or against the Government that ultimately controls their fate, even though that Goverment is part of a democratic state.” I could not agree more. The campaign for Labour representation in Northern Ireland [CLRNI] was set up by a group of Socialists and Trade Unionists who wanted the Labour Party [LP] and the Conservative and Lib Dem Parties to allow everyone resident in NI to be able to join and vote for or against the Parties that actually governed them at Westminster, the provincial government at Stormont was closed down in 1972 and NI was governed by direct rule, the local Unionist and Nationalist parties were notoriously sectarian and in any case only numbered 12 MP’s now increased to 18 and could not form a Government or even have much influence on the major parties, also the major parties were reluctant to be too associated with the sectarian nature of those parties. But since Catholic and Protestant citizens of the Province had no choice in the matter and in the absence of the major parties of Government they could only vote for what were conceived to be sectarian parties, this was a profoundly undemocratic state of affairs, one and a half million UK citizens effectively denied the vote. It is only recently that a Province wide ‘ Labour Forum’ has been set up with the agreement of the Labour Party National executive with a view to contesting all constituencies in NI. So, here we had in one of the oldest democracies on earth a situation in which it has taken over 40 years for NI residents to start to achieve those rights everyone in the rest of the UK had taken for granted. No comparison of course with the Palestinians, misgoverned under military rule for over 40 years but unless people tirelessly campaign for these fundamental rights they will not easily be conceded.