I focus on Jewish identity and the Jewish community because I believe that’s where the power lies to change U.S. policy in the Middle East. Well, here is great news inside the Jewish community. The Forward newspaper allowed the estimable Samuel G. Freedman to be a guest editor of its opinion page and Freedman promptly turned the page over to four pieces by five Arab-American and Muslim writers. The voice of the “other,” as Freedman puts it (I hope that some psycho-spiritual day that word is put to rest; when it is discovered that we are all other).
Reza Aslan has a piece on how Muslims should make like Jews. And Alia Malek has a fervent call for the inclusion of more Palestinian voices in the American discourse.
I wish that Malek were not alone, that there were other Arab-Americans here. It seems that four of the five authors are of Muslim background, not specifically Arab background. Alas an evasion. I wish the Forward would deal more directly with the Jewish responsibility for Palestinian oppression. This is the core issue for me, Jewish complicity in the nighttime arrests and the killings of children and the destruction of Palestinian dignity, and Jewish indifference. But Freedman has struck a blow for greater openness and a continuing discussion. I look Forward to the Forward playing its part. Here is Malek’s bold lead:
As the two-state solution in Palestine/Israel continues to dissolve, there is much consternation in the national media about what Jewish Americans think of current developments. Will their support of President Obama wane if he presses Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu too strongly on settlements? What will they demand regarding Iran? What do they make of J Street and its sources of funding?
Yet there is no similar interest in what Arab Americans think about any of these issues, even though they number at least 3.5 million — a good portion of them Palestinian in origin — and are directly and indirectly impacted by what happens in the Middle East. And they are just as capable as Jewish Americans of exerting a positive influence on events in the region.
The stunning disinterest in Arab-American opinion, or its productive role in genuine peacemaking, is the result of decades of demonizing the Palestinian narrative and reducing it to an intellectually dishonest caricature of a violently anti-Semitic people squatting on the land, always rejecting peace.
Note that Malek’s wonderful book of reporting, A Country Called Amreeka, is out this week in paperback. It includes you-were-there descriptions of the power of the Israel lobby in stifling Palestinian efforts to express themselves in the U.S. historically.
Update: This post originally identified Malek as a Palestinian-American. She is a Syrian-American. Apologies.
