Traveling through Israel and Palestine
Sherif Hedayat and I were at the Malha Mall in West Jerusalem when news broke out about a White American Christian terrorist who opened fire on innocent shoppers (are there any other kind, I guess?) and killed nine and wounded more than five. We had to pass through an intense security check entering the Mall. With his beard/goatee-like look, Sherif looks like a terrorist 
… Me? Well, I haven’t gotten a hair cut (longing for the days when I could grow my hair long) and I look like a hippie. The Mall had all these same stores that you find in any other mall around the world and in the U.S., including a Versace knock-off where Sherif bought a shirt, was assured it was Versace and then saw a tag that said Versace Israel has nothing to do with Versace Italy. Ah, sounds like Israel Palestine has nothing to do with Palestine Palestine, if you know what I mean. Now I know why they said we couldn’t take any video while int he mall. Sherif went back in a controlled rage and got his money back. It might have been the beard. Or, who knows, maybe I am the poster child of what a terrorist looks like.
So I went back to the Ambassador Hotel and wrote a column on the issues I felt were raised by the Omaha Nebraska Mall shooting and how I immediately feared that the shooter was an Arab or Muslim and how it would impact us as a people. (www.ArabWritersGroup.com)
Prior to that, we went to visit MEY blogger Liz Cohen at her offices across the street and met her boss and my friend Bob Rosenschein, and another employee there, Moran Yachimoviz. What great people. Eli showed me some computer programming tricks — I thought I knew everything but she is the master, so you know I’ll have some neat Facebook apps soon.
Liz Cohen, myself, at her offices at Answers.com, with founder Bob Rosenschein and Moran Yachimoviz.
We spent much time in the Old City of Jerusalem, when we weren’t driving around the Western part of the city. I rented a car, stick, which is challenging on Jerusalem’s hilly streets. After a few days of driving around lost, it became very easy to find our way around.
Palestinian shopkeepers are always on the hunt for customers. The last time I was in East Jerusalem’s souq, I interviewed several shop owners and did one segment on a shop owner and his techniques to sell. I wrote the story up for ALO Hayati Magazine (which should be out sometime soon) and also did an online video on the techniques of a Souq sale with my friends, fellow comedian Aaron Freeman and his wife Sharon Rosenzweig.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited visiting comedian Jerry Seinfeld — my favorite Arab comedian (his mother is Syrian Jewish Arab) — for a formal meeting at the Prime Minister’s residence. I remember when I got to the Ambassador Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, I waited by the telephone for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to call. But then read a story in Haaretz a few days later where his son, Tariq, who owns one of the most powerful marketing firms in Palestine (hmmmm. I wonder how that happened since the Palestinians have the WORST PR AND MARKETING IN THE MIDDLE EAST!). Tarig said he won’t work with Israelis. Great. So much for real peace, I guess.
That got me thinking about the issue of “normalization” which is a Palestinian and extremist term for refusing to be nice to Israelis. Several Palestinian journalists would not attend the journalism conference I organized that featured Palestinian and Israeli journalists because they felt it was “normalization.” That motivated me to write another column about how my own people are sometimes the causes of their own failure and lack of success. Normalization is an excuse to explain away why they have failed to achieve anything in their “resistance” to Israel, other than a lot of lost lives (on both sides and caused by both sides), and are worse off today than they ever were. It keeps sliding down but the activists continue to reject peace, reject working with Israelis.
Duh! Has anyone opened their eyes in the Occupied West Bank yet? Palestinians are dealing with the Israelis everyday. And the idea that dealing with Israelis is taboo is pathetic, because NOT ALL ISRAELIS are settler fanatics or extremists or terrorists like Benjamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon. Many Israelis want peace and agree with Palestinians on many other issues. We can’t work together to build a foundation for peace?
Normalization = fanaticism in my book.
That also got me thinking about what would happen if we have peace? (I already wrote that column.) But it reinforced my belief that one stumbling block to peace are the activists who would become unemployed if peace ever happened. The whole activist industry would collapse. They are trained at rejection and survival but have no idea how to embrace and do normal things like shop for friendship in a grocery store of life.
I did find from speaking to many Palestinians that they want peace, reject Hamas, will compromise and even believe Palestinian refugees will probably never be able to return to their original homes and lands, but will be recognized by Israel as victims (Olmert finally said what Israelis have refused to say for 60 years that they have suffered and Israel is partly to blame — stop blaming everything on the Palestinians, you extremists in Israel!), and they will be compensated.
That’s called compromise.
Still, everyone is out there trashing peace and no one is really working for it. All of the peace groups I met are like OneVoice, which is only concerned about itself and has a leader who I know, Daniel Lubetzky, who is a president-for-life type CCC personality. They didn’t listen to people, but they sure promote themselves and NEVER network with other peace groups. “Yer eeder wit us, er agin us” as President Bush, the moron, would say. (Everyone dislikes Bush in Israel and Palestine, it seems, and most people blame him for the destruction of the remnants of the old Oslo Peace Process started by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, both assassinated — Palestinians believe Arafat was poisoned. So all the peace groups are out there doing their own thing, all fighting for European based funding. The war on grants, I call it. They won’t work together. Pathetic.
Coming here makes me leave feeling even more pessimistic than I already was when I arrived. The peace groups are all pushing selfish agendas. Palestinians are encased in a triple layer of occupation, one imposed by the Israelis and two imposed by themselves. Even the Palestinian journalists live in a self-imposed occupation, pulling their punches and fearing censorship from the PNA, which replaced the Israelis.
Although I do video-blogging for al-Jazeera, I am leaving even more depressed about them. Their Arabic language programing is so biased and one sided, feeding the hatred and the concepts of “normalization” while their English language broadcasts are serving up very balanced reporting, which I know think is done out of guilt. A long time big fan of Al-Jazeera, I am now thinking they are not being courageous enough to be professional journalists, reporting ONLY what they think the audience wants.
Sigh!
On the other hand, the Israeli media is reaching out more and more trying to embrace Palestinian voices. Sure, they have their red lines — I can’t refer to the Israeli prison system as a Gulag, even though most of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are there on trumped up phony charges of terrorism and are really targeted because of their politics and rejection of Israel’s extremism.
But Jerusalem is my home and no one can take that away from me.
Ray Hanania
www.hanania.com
Join the Conversation
(maybe someone can help me adjust the photos
… I can’t get the large ones to be thumbnails …
Ray
Hello, Ray,
I had hoped you would find causes for optimism; I’m sorry that didn’t turn out to be the case.
Safe Travels,
My2
There is reason for optimism … maybe the post sounds a little pessimistic, but I am just focusing on the tough issues this time … they are real issues and have to be addressed, but the response from the majority of the audiences were every encouraging … I keep forgetting that words are taken in different ways, sometimes, from how they are written and how they are interpreted, especially when writing about the Middle East.
The good news is that we did get several new Palestinian and Israeli comedians to participate … and, Fadi Abu Sada of the Palestine News Network, is very motivated by the tour, even though he could not cross the checkpoints to enter East Jerusalem and participate in the Journalism conference. He’s working on setting up a NAAJA-Palestine jouranlism chapter to organize Palestinian journalists as professional journalists and separating them froma ctivist journalists
Ray Hanania
Great article Ray. Photos are fixed.
I hope you process in your efforts and feel happy and less optimistic, I pray for an everlasting peace, in the city of Shalom and Salaam, and the rest of the world. I definitely think people of the region have much to share and they can live together, transact and communicate on a productive, friendly manner, we are still good hosts, we are still good to our friends, we have to extend this friendship to the ones who were not included in the circle of our SALAM_ShALOM. It seems kind of sureal some times, but a fact is firt a mere idea, perhaps a very persistant idea that will stay untill it represents its entity in the world of reality.
Thanks Esra’a for fixing the photos
And I corrected names and added the name of another great person I met at Answers.com, Moran Yachimoviz.
I have a story I am writing about the first-ever comedy club in Jerusalem, Off the Wall Comedy, opened by comedian and friend David Kilimnick. I performed there three times, thanks to David, and loved every minute with the audiences.
Best regards
Ray Hanania
And what exactly is Israel “compromising” here? Absolutely nothing! You’re not speaking for the Palestinian refugees when you say they know they probably won’t return. You never supported the refugees, so why should you do so now. No, everyone out there is NOT trashing peace. They are trashing justice!
Ray, if you’re coming through NY on the way back to the Midwest, come to the play MASKED and I’d love to put you on a panel to talk about the Comedy Club and your trip.
Great article, Ray. You must be an exceedingly busy person.
Saw this article on Google. I’ve googled a number of things. Your article was on “Arab Street.” I get notices every day. This is the second one of yours that appeared there.
I”m still writing letters to politicians and newspapers. Didnt know that you had another group. I’ll check it out again!
Carol
Ray, when I read your material, I do feel a sense of optimism in the air. For example, the fact that you’re involved with comedy and with the Middle East, at the same time, is cause for optimism. The fact that we can laugh at some of the ridiculous positions we put ourselves in is a cause for optimism.
With respect to Palestinians and Israelis, I am coming to believe that we have to start creating facts on the ground which speak louder than words. We have to start ignoring some of the words of hate, even as we build economic realitities, which will eventually create their own language of hope.
For example, if I were negotiating with Hamas, I wouldn’t start negotiating the big final disposition issues, like Jerusalem, or the right of return, or final borders. I would negotiate to build 10 luxury hotels on the Gaza Coast, to attract business leaders, who could begin to invest to create a better life for the people.
If Hamas would agree to protect these hotels, and if Israel would cooperate, then soon enough an economic reality on the ground could begin to condition people for the possibility of peace. What do you think?
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To “We Shall Return” … what have you done to help the Palestinian refugees except tell them to live in continued depression without real hope? What have you done except talk? What have you done to help the Palestinian refugees except fight to keep them in their squallor? What have you done to work for peace and justice, as you say.
I know the Right of Return Movement. They’re good people. Misguided who live in the past and have no plans to achieve any of their goals. All they do is reject and say no.
When people complain of a bad situation and reject all offered solutions, they are being irresponsible. The real leader offers a solution. What’s your solution? Keep saying “No” for another five generations of squalid suffering for the refugees?
My family lost lands and homes too in Romema in 1949. My dad’s brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews lived in a Refugee camp in Jordan until several years later when my dad was able to bring them to Chicago to live.
What did you do for the refugees? Go and have seminars on how to say “No?” Live a great life of relative luxury in the West while the Palestinian refugees live and die in a dire pathetic lifestyle?
My family won’t get their homes and lands. But maybe my people will get a future that instead of being filled with suffering and tragedy will be the foundation for anew hope and vision for their children.
People like you who say we can’t compromise are being selfish. Why not? They live int he camps blinded by the rhetoric of hatred, festering in anger, and given handouts as hope. It’s pathetic and disgusting the way we Palestinians treat our own people to make a political point. We don’t want them to leave their camps because it undermines OUR goals for what WE believe is justice.
The truth is sad, but the truth is the truth. None of those refugees are returning to their lands or homes, including my cousins and relatives. And the longer we say no, the more there will be refugees and people who will lose their lands and homes.
Let them return to a Palestinian State where instead of focusing on hate and anger, they can turn their efforts toward rebuilding their lives. The only way to do that is through compromise and peace negotiations. Because so far the “resistance” to Israel has been one big FAILURE led by losers and selfish elitist landowner families who raped Palestine when they were charge long before Israel was established.
For Nissim: There can be no negotiations with Hamas. I just wrote a column arguing that Palestinians must reject Hamas and destroy the organization if they have any hope for an independent Palestinian state.
The acronym FATAH is based on the Arabic words “Harakat al-Tahrir (Al-Watani) al-Filasteen,” a movement dedicated to the (national) liberation of Palestine. Hamas is based on the Arabic words “Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia” which is a movement dedicated to zealous Islam, not the liberation of Palestine. To Hamas, Palestine is just one step towards a larger Islamicist goal, but to secular Palestinians like myself, a Palestinian state is the goal.
http://www.ArabWritersGroup.com
Thanks
Ray Hanania
Ray, you are very eloquent in your denounciation of some people’s warped sense of justice. For some, justice means destroying the State of Israel. To my mind, that will not bring justice. I agree that there has been injustice in the past, and that the injustice is being perpetuated as we speak, by both sides to the conflict. But in the final analysis, justice will not come from destroying an exsisting nation, but rather from building a new one.
Israel could help to bring justice by helping to revitalize the economy of a Palestinian State. That will create the kind of justice that Palestinians deserve.
You say that we can’t negotiate with Hamas. Well, here’s another idea. What if we invest heavily in the economic viability of the West Bank. Not in payoffs, but in jobs. Soon enough, the people in Gaza may see what’s happening in the West Bank, and say to Hamas, “Hey, where’s our share?” They are in a better position to sqeeze Hamas than anyone else. When Israel fights Hamas, they augment their power through martyrdom. But when the local population comes to the conclusion that Hamas is holding them back from a better life, then they will become marginalized in the eyes of their own people, and their power will diminish accordingly. The extremists will not be able to capture the public’s imagination, once people begin to imagine a better life for themselves. The West is well advised to put that alternative on the table.
Hey Nissim … I agree with you up to the point that hatred does not allow people to think for themselves … hatred is a disease, usually the result of failed attempts at justice and continued frustration and suffering. Palestinians didn’t begin by Hating Jews or Israel, but the hatred grew from suffering, failure to achieve their goals, continued occupation, oppression, injustice, etc., but most importantly, the inability to find a solution. Groups like Hamas do not want Palestinians to find a solution because once they lose the hate, they lose the will to fight … Hamas feeds on the hatred to build up their rejection of all efforts at compromise … it is doing more to undermine Palestinian freedom and statehood than it is to destroy Israel, it’s stated goal.
Secular palestinians will compromise. Islamicists will not compromise on dictatorial religious faith. One problem is the industry of activism. When the conflict ends, there will be a lot of people out of jobs, including those who, fromt he comforts of their Western homes, yell that Palestinians should remain in refugee camps.
There is no compromise with Hamas. It is a minority group that dominates the majority through the exploitation of the majority’s suffering and failed achievement of their goals. Economic prosperity is not the answer by itself. A person must have a sense of genuine freedom to truly appreciate the benefits of economic success.
just my two dirhams
(Dubai money)
Ray Hanania
I agree with you, Ray, that the problem in the region is intractable because there is a powerful minority that sees it as in their interest to perpetuate the crisis. Their power is fueled by the hatred that they help to sustain.
Therefore, reasonable people like yourself, and like the majority of Palestinians, have to come up with a way to marginalize the extremists. My take on it involves 5 pieces, in an effort to Sell a Vision of Hope:
1. Create a new ideological framework based on common sense.
2. Invest in one another to create jobs.
3. Use Ideology and Investment to sell people on a Vision of Hope- a Vision of Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom.
4. Sustain the hope with some heavy duty Public Diplomacy, including Empowering Women.
5. And when you have to, fight, and fight hard, but position the fight within a Vision of Hope. Raise the fight on the ground to a higher moral plain by giving the fight a moral clarity of purpose.
I can’t be sure that it will work. But I think it just might. When a poor Palestinian looks at the table and sees only an ideology of hate and some charitable handouts, then that’s what he’s going to buy into, because that’s all there is. But when he looks at the table and sees an ideology that makes more sense, and a job waiting for him, then now there’s a choice, and I’d like to believe that 90% will choose a life, and will fight the extremists who would take that life away.
I am beginning to meet some people who actually have the wealth and power to pull something like this off. Whether they can be convinced is something else. But I think it’s worth a shot to at least try.
DOn’t be offended Nissim if I add to everything you wrote — which I agree with — that Israelis, too, have a serious problem with hatred and denial. They refuse to see what they are doing and they insist that when they respond it is not hatred, when in fact much of what I see coming from Israel is very much hatred against Palestinians. I think Israelis have to recognize that they are where others were once at above them … that Jews, at one time, were victims and persecuted and mistreated … but that being an oppressor is not consistent with being Jewish. Israelis need to acknowledge their own misdeeds and stop blaming everything on the Palestinians … acknowledge the suffering of Palestinian refugees instead of worrying about whether that acknowledgment will be used as a political leverage … we’re all so worried about how morality is abused that we back off it as if it is a problem. Morality, principle and justice are all exploited but they are still the right things to pursue
thanks
Ray Hanania
Ray, most times when I refer to extremists, I don’t single out one side or the other, because I readily admit that there are extremists on both sides of the fence.
On the Palestinian side, as we said, there are extremists who believe that it is to their advantage to perpetuate the conflict, as a means of consolidating power. There are also those whose sense of justice calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, and who place their need for that type of justice above the welfare of their people.
But to be fair, there are extremists in Israel as well. There are religious zealots who interpret the Bible to create a Jewish entitlement to all the land west of the Jordan River. And there are also Jews who view the political realities of the moment through the prism of an historical legacy of persecution. For these people, in light of 2000 years of Jewish suffering, culminating in the Holocaust, the conflict with the Palestinians, and with Arabs in general, poses an existential threat to Israel, and by implication , to the Jewish people.
And once you feel cornered, as these people do, you tend to over-react. So in your effort to defend against what you perceive as an existential threat, you over-react, and you transform yourself from a victim into an oppressor: by becoming an occupier, by maintaining checkpoints, by building a “fence,” by targeting assissinations, by detaining suspects, by demolishing houses, and by doing whatever you have to do in the name of security, the security you never had as a wandering Jew, and the security you will only have by defending your homeland.
So what’s the answer, Ray? Well, part of the answer is this website, where people like you and I can talk to one another. And part of the answer is to use ideology and investment to empower the vast numbers of Israelis and Palestinians who want to embrace the possiblity of peace.
It is time to place people ahead of beliefs. It is time to believe in what makes sense, instead of believing in what we want to believe. And it is time to believe that God put us on this good earth to live, not to kill, and not to die, before our time.
The truth is not an extrmist position. As Aristotle, Muhammad, and Maimonides discovered; the truth is ususally somewhere in the middle between two extremes. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to create a reality that embodies the truth, and that gives expression to the beauty that surrounds us, the beauty that can one day define who we are as a people.
It isn’t easy to marginalize the extremists when they’re the ones in power, especially if they have some popularity. Have you heard about Hamas’s anniversary rally? Tens of thousands of people cheering Ismail Haniya, “Resistance and jihad is the best path to the liberation of Palestine, not negotiations and meetings, sitting at round tables and exchanging smiles and chuckles with the Jews.”
Are you still over there, Ray?
Rallies are one thing. And it’s easy to be coerced into going, or to be taken in by the excitment of the moment. But then, after the rally is over, you go back to the squalor of your home. And you realize that this is not a life. And if somebody out there, someone with good intentions, can offer you the possibility of a life, a life of dignity, then maybe you’ll think twice about what you actually believe. I don’t get impressed much by rallies, or even by what people have to say in the heat of the moment. I take more seriously what people are really thinking in the stillness of the night, when there is no one around to meddle with their thoughts.
And what are the Gazians thinking in the middle of the night after watching huge crowds cheer when their leader promises the liberation of Palestine if they resist, not negotiate?
It’s hard to say, Two Cents. But my guess is that Palestinians may buy into the illusory dream of destroying Israel, when there is nothing else on the table. Deep down, they know it’s not likely. And they also know that their leaders are holding them back from a better life. And sometimes, they may actually believe that it’s all Israel’s fault.
But after a while, it becomes hard to fool oneself. As much as we want to believe in greater glories, sooner or later we have to come to terms with reality, and reality bites. The Palestians know that Israel will cut a decent enough deal, but it will require some sacrifices on both sides, including letting go of some deeply held beliefs. Only then will common sense prevail, and only then will true justice triumph. I believe that most Palestinians and Israelis realize this, but will have to suffer the agony of convincing those who hold the validity of their beliefs above the welfare of their people.
Palestine is interesting country for me. I like to go there.