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Anatomy of a Falsehood: Roger Cohen recycles pro-Israel attack against Omar Barghouti

Roger Cohen has an International Herald Tribune column today titled “Zero Dark Zero” that outlines the dire state of the two-state solution. In the process of making his case Cohen recycles an out-of-context quote from Omar Barghouti that has become popular among Israel supporters looking to smear the BDS movement. Although the Times has issued a semi-correction on the quote, it serves as a useful example of how pro-Israel advocacy enters the mainstream discourse.

In his article Cohen explains why the two-state solution is important to him as a liberal Zionist and the outlines forces standing in the way:

For any liberal Zionist — and I am one — convinced of the need for the two-state outcome envisaged in the United Nations resolution of 1947 establishing the modern state of Israel, both the religious-nationalist Israeli push to keep all the land and the Palestinian refusal to abandon the untenable, unacceptable “right of return” (there is no such right in history, just ask the Jews) are causes for deep despondency.

To prove his point regarding Palestinian obstinance he provides a quote from Omar Barghouti:

As Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, put it recently to Yale students: “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you’d have a Palestine next to a Palestine.”

The quote immediately struck me as something Barghouti wouldn’t say. Luckily Barghouti’s talk at Yale is online:

No where is this video does Barghouti utter the line Cohen attributes to him, and it ends up he didn’t say it. Cohen’s article was posted online yesterday morning, and the following correction appeared in the early evening:

An earlier version of this column gave the wrong venue for a quote by Omar Barghouti. Mr Barghouti used these words at an appearance at the University of Ottawa. He says he was quoting a well-known position of Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.

Interestingly enough, although the Times cut the claim that Barghouti said this at Yale there were pieces that reported it. Sara Greenberg quotes Barghtoui saying almost the same thing as Cohen in the Times of Israel, and she relies on this article from the Jewish Ledger which strangely doesn’t report the same exact quote:

Lauri Lowell, director of Community Relations at Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven (JCRC), was one of several Jewish community representatives who attended the event. . . .

“While he stated that the BDS movement does not take a position on a onestate vs. two-state option, he made it clear that if the three goals were met, Israel would become an Arab-majority state and, as he put it, you would have ‘Palestine next to Palestine,’” Lowell says. “It was obvious what would come next in that scenario.”

If Barghouti didn’t say this at Yale when did he say it (if he said it at all)? And how have all these writers ended up with a line that seems so difficult to pin down?

Following the correction, the Times have changed the Barghouti quote in Cohen’s article to (emphasis added):

As Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, once put it: “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you’d have a Palestine next to a Palestine.”

Although the correction does add Barghouti’s claim “He says he was quoting a well-known position of Sari Nusseibeh,”the Times is clearly standing behind the quote.

I contacted Barghouti to ask for an explanation and he responded the quote was from a presentation at the University of Ottawa in 2009. He also offered more context for the correction that ran in the Times:

I was quoting Sari Nusseibeh who wrote that return of the refugees would make the two state solution a Palestine next to a Palestine. His solution was scrap the right of return. My solution, in rebuttal, was scrap two states!

Here is example of Nusseibeh using this same formulation in a 2001 New York Times article:

“The Palestinians have to realize that if we are to reach an agreement on two states, then those two states will have to be one for the Israelis and one for the Palestinians, not one for the Palestinians and the other also for the Palestinians,” he said.

And here’s video of the 2009 event showing the full context of the quote (at the 1:00 mark):

In the end Barghouti was simply quoting Nussibeh to explain an argument counter to his own position.

I googled the quote Cohen referenced to see if it has been reported elsewhere and found only one exact match — an August 2010 article titled “Palestinians Using Academics and Liberal Ideals to Promote an Extremist Agenda” by Juda Engelmayer. Engelmayer is an executive with the New York public relations agency 5W Public Relations which is known for right-wing pro-Israel advocacy including representing Hebron settlers.

Engelmayer writes:

Under the guidelines of a two-state solution, which has widespread support, both peoples can live together. Yet, Barghouti clearly states that “if the occupation ends” BDS will not end, because the right of return is its real cause. “I clearly do no buy into the two state solution,” Barghouti said. “This is something we cannot compromise on,” he said.

In his own words, Barghouti understands that “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two state solution, you’d have a Palestine next to a Palestine.”

Engelmayer references “a video expose available on YouTube” as a source for the quote — here it is:

The video was produced by the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs and the Barghouti quote (at the 5:00 mark) is clearly used without context.

Barghouti’s quotation was twisted by an Israel advocacy group to supposedly prove the malevolent intent of the BDS movement and has taken on a life of its own among Israel supporters.  Although it should be clear that this quote does not represent Barghouti and the BDS movement’s true motives, Roger Cohen and the New York Times are standing by it. In the process, they are not impugning the BDS movement and advocates for Palestinian rights, they are only further discrediting the paper of record when it comes to honestly discerning fact from simple propaganda.

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I don’t understand this hoo-haw (other than as VERY bad reporting). It appears that both Nuseibeh and Barghouti believe (or do not challenge) that “PRoR” into Israel would, in time, result in a Palestinian-majority Israel.

If they do not, let them say so.

I don’t agree, but for a reason that will not make Zionists happy.

You can have two states, one called “Israel”, the other called “Palestine”, the Jews of today’s Israel (and the settlers, too, of course) living in the “Israel”. The PRoR would be limited as follows: no Palesetinian coukld return to the new Israel who (or whose 1948 predecessor(s)) had not lived in the territory of the new “Israel”. (Nothing new here, I trust!)

The kicker is that if Israelis agree to make the territory of the new “Israel” small enough, and located in a place which had fewest Palestinian Arabs in 1947-50 who became refugee/exiles, then the PRoR to THAT territory would be minimal, and the population would be overwhelmingly Jewish in the new “Israel”. Consider that 10 million people live in New York City, a place far smaller than present day Israel (i.e., pre-1967).

A smaller Israel would be Jewish and could, if it chose, be democratic. But it would not be expansive and would not exist at the cost of a homeland and most water resources to most Palestinians. It could continue to have wonderful armed forces! (Such treasures!) and wonderful Mossad and Shin Bet (such treasures). And universities and arms industries and make-the-desert-bloom scientific enterprises. Sure! Why not? And it would be a good safe place for anxiety-ridden Jews — if any, if and when — to “return” to.

But it would be decoupled from the relifious ladn-grabs and from most of the rest of the land-grabs. This would be an Israel that exists for the stated reason of offering a safe haven to Jews, but which avoids the unstated reason of expelling and/or lording over its neighbors, the Palestine Arabs.

I recommend it. And let it not be said that 2SS is dead because it is “impossible”. If Israel will not give up the West Bank, 2SS will not happen. If Israel can and will give up the West Bank, where 10% of Israeli Jews now live, it can also give up some or even a great deal of pre-1967 Israel, a territory it has held for only a few years longer.

This tactic is as old as time, just keep repeating the same lies or talking points over and over and over again. After enough time uninformed or uninterested people will simply accept it.

While Cohen misquoted Barghouti, he got the underlying issue right. There are other reasons to criticize Cohen’s piece (I’ll get to that), but Barghouti doesn’t believe in a 2SS because he doesn’t think it is workable or fair. He refuted the notion of a Palestine next to a Palestine by saying he favored one state. That’s Cohen’s objection–Cohen doesn’t want an unlimited right of return because he thinks that it would lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish majority state. Barghouti wants one democratic state for all.

I think it’s more important to examine the Cohen remark you also cited–

“For any liberal Zionist — and I am one — convinced of the need for the two-state outcome envisaged in the United Nations resolution of 1947 establishing the modern state of Israel, both the religious-nationalist Israeli push to keep all the land and the Palestinian refusal to abandon the untenable, unacceptable “right of return” (there is no such right in history, just ask the Jews) are causes for deep despondency.”

That’s self-contradictory. There’s no Jewish “right of return”, but apparently there was a Jewish right to move to Palestine and establish a majority Jewish state no matter what the inhabitants thought and if they objected, to expel them. It would be nice if people could think clearly about stuff before typing it out, but I guess that would cut into my own output too, so nevermind.

This stuff belongs out in the open.
Israel’s PR handlers have such flimsy arguments once you strip them down to their essence.
When it all falls apart we’ll wonder how they managed to dupe everyone for so long.

Something very interesting from a Ha’aretz article about Bethlehem

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/graves-of-the-next-intifada-s-victims-are-waiting-in-dheisheh.premium-1.506538

“Every clash with soldiers is filmed from local rooftops and uploaded onto YouTube.”

The eyes of the world. And a story worth following as well as the understanding that it isn’t the world that is out of sync- it is Zionism that is nuts.
A system of ethnic persecution such as Zionism can only work in a defined space. Jews have no power over Palestinian civilians in London, for example. Or in my house. Because in essence Zionism is ludicrous.

And when the internet is there and the Beit Lahmis can broadcast to the world, the spell the bots have over them is diluted.

Another sign of the decline in American power- NATO ally Turkey compares Zionism to crimes against humanity such as fascism and antisemitism

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/turkey/130301/erdogan-zionism-israel-us-john-kerry