Palestinian are the creators, not 'missers', of opportunity

[bemildred]

During these days of the Hebrew month of Elul, on the eve of the declaration of a Palestinian state, and with optimism enveloped by threats hovering in the air, I recalled an old newspaper clipping in my yellowing archive. On July 13, 2000, Haaretz published a letter from reader Naftali Raz in which the sound of silent pain echoes louder than a thousand screams.

In the letter, Raz recalls his own family history, which is interwoven with the history of the conflict here. With deafening silence, he tells the story of relatives and loved ones who have been killed since 1948, and of the milestones in the lives of several leaders. At the end of his sober report, he turns - in the name of the fallen - to then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was on his way to Camp David, and he calls on him to take action to achieve peace.

On November 19, 1974, Yasser Arafat first ascended the speakers' dais at the UN General Assembly. The headline on the front page of the newspaper Al-Ittihad read, "Palestine returns to life." In Nazareth, they distributed knafeh, and I, a 10th-grader then, invited my friends to my house to celebrate. Palestine was, and still is, a bleeding wound in the body of the Arab nation. "Our shame is in Palestine," Arab intellectuals declared, unable to offer help to the majority of the nation expelled from its homeland. Iraqi poet Mudhaffar al-Nawab warned, "We have turned into the Jews of history."

Palestinian suffering became a symbol. "Between the fainting and the awakening appeared the face of Palestine, the proud bereaved one, which appears wherever a stranger is tortured," sighed al-Nawab, who was cruelly tortured during the period of Baath rule in Iraq. Many intellectuals supported the saying, "The road to Jerusalem passes through the Arab capitals."

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/palestinian-are-the-creators-not-missers-of-opportunity-1.385692

[Jefferson23]

1. +1

* The Palestinian fellahin used to say, "The longer (the harvest ), the more crops are gathered." But in our case, the wider the circle, the more victims are gathered. Not only in the names of the fallen, but also in the names of the living, we must therefore close this circle.

[aquart]

2. Co-opting. Great tactic. Republicans use it all the time.

"We have turned into the Jews of history," my ass.