When the Guardian launched its “Palestine Papers” on Sunday, the sensational leak was accompanied by an editorial, which was sensationally titled “Pleading for a fig leaf” and just as sensationally subtitled “The secret notes suggest one requires Panglossian optimism to believe that these negotiations can one day be resurrected.”
The editorial went on to accuse the Palestinian leadership of being a bunch of collaborators — it described them as “weak” and “craven” — a mixture of poodles and quislings. It decried their humiliating readiness “to flog the family silver” in order to get “a puppet state.” It then proclaimed: “The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street.”
So, on January 23, the peace process is dead, unless you are a “Panglossian optimist.”
This was not just an isolated 0pinion piece — this was an opening salvo from the editor. Somehow, it looks like someone may have regretted going so far, because just two days later, a new editorial with a contrary headline appeared — “Despair. But we still need a deal” — with a subtitle that was also the opposite of that of the January 23 editorial: “A two-state solution remains the only show in town.”
The Guardian now says it wants the two-state solution back — two days after it inaugurated the latest effort to sabotage it and a day before the head of Hamas’s international-relations department was given a prominent platform in the paper.
Nice try, but this does not in any way match the impact of the avalanche of op-eds, news coverage, and profiles the Guardian provided and continues to provide in order to support the perception that the Palestinian leadership betrayed their people.
In other words, the Guardian believes in the two-state solution, just not the one that could be realistically negotiated, because that constitutes a betrayal of the Palestinian cause; and not one under U.S. auspices, because the Americans are not honest brokers; and not one where Israel gets its way on settlements, Jerusalem, or refugees, because that is “craven.”
In short, the Guardian is for a two-state solution where Israel, not the Palestinians, surrenders.
The Guardian has always taken the Palestinian narrative as the truth. The leaks, accompanied by an accusing finger pointed at the Palestinian negotiators, is a cry of “betrayal” of the Palestinian cause. They are more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves.
Just consider the Guardian’s wise counsel on how successfully negotiate:
[T]alks succeed only when each side can put itself in the shoes of the other. To imagine that Abu Mazen could put to a referendum a deal in which Israel got its way on all the core issues – settlements, Jerusalem, the return of refugees – and to imagine that such a deal would be durable, is the ultimate failure of a negotiator’s imagination.
There. The Guardian can only put itself in the shoes of the Palestinians — but no word of Israeli and Jewish pain, when Israel’s leaders would have to relinquish Hebron, the second holiest place for Judaism; or Bethlehem, where one of four matriarchs of Israel, Rachel, is buried; or Nablus, where Jacob’s son Joseph is buried; or the entire biblical heartland, which, more than Tel Aviv and the entire coastline of Israel, is filled with longing and memories of Jewish identity.
No pain is registered, because the Guardian, in its cravenness, sees Israel as the Palestinians see it — a colonialist, European implant, based on a racist and imperialist ideology that crafted an imagined past fed by religious superstition and devoid of the authenticity of the indigenous culture.
Their leaks may be a treasure trove for the impatient historian who won’t need to wait 30 years to access classified material. It may be a golden opportunity to undermine the Palestinian Authority and poke Israel in the eye in the process. And it is no doubt great for Internet traffic. But it has no value whatsoever in terms of advancing the cause the Guardian pretends to support.
That plea for a two-state solution is just their fig leaf — a convenient cover before they charge ahead.
yes, the key element is “perversion of language” Hamas is leading a media war to pervert language and charge Israel with every crime that Hamas commits. Human shields, starving its citizens, desiring genocide of a sovereign state. Hamas works night and day to find new creative ways to inverse language, sell it to the media, and work to destroy Israel’s standing in the International Community. Along with Iran, this poisoning of Israel’s image around the world and in the minds of its own citizens can be effective.
It will take more than a military campaign to defeat Hamas. I support the military campaign fully, but Israel needs to analyze language and media and come up with a solid response to Hamas’ language war.
Hahahaha. Call their bluff. I need a new keyboard, damn you.
Israel has been paralyzed for far too long to do anything of the sort. While I would love to see that happen, calling Hamas’ bluff has about as much chance of happening as the Cubs winning the Series.
Sorry, J.G., ain’t gonna happen.
You wrote about Hamas that “[i]t is an avowed terrorist organization …”
Obviously you haven’t been reading the papers where they insist that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States (and sometimes the EU.) Apparently it is a subjective judgment that firing rockets at schoolchildren constitutes terrorism.
Debasement of language in one sector enables its debasement in others. The Soviets mastered this art when they talked about American imperialism and aggression. “When you’re a Red and some land you oppress, always say your defending it from the US”. — East Side Story, (c) Mad Magazine)
Calling Hamas’ actions a “truce” makes it easier to redefine marriage to mean “any legally recognized union of two adults.” And when advocates for same sex “marriage” protest that civil unions are unfair, and that anyone who objects to redefining marriage is ipso facto an irredeemable bigot, it makes it easier for the likes of Hamas to call their strategic rearming a truce.
Letting either one of them get redefine language enables both of them.
Last line should have read
Letting either one of them redefine language enables both of them.
At least you’ve got it, J.G.–as far as the western media and diplomats are concerned, “truce” means “Hamas isn’t trying to kill as many Israelis as before.”
Does anyone doubt that when and if Israel hits back in force the narrative will be either that Israel has broken the truce or that its action is “yet another round in the cycle of violence that besets this war-torn region?”
Yet again it brings to mind Eric Hoffer’s remark that alone of all the peoples of the world, only the Jews are expected to act like Christians.
If…alas, I say “if”…Israel hits back, I’d like to think that they’ll do it with great force, figuring they’re going to be condemned for it no matter what they do, and they may as well be shot for a wolf as a lamb.