Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Hijab Misses the Point, Natch

Nadia Hijab, (*) senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, has an op-ed in the Int'l Herald Tribune that I spotted.



Entitled, The odds against Tzipi Livni , she takes a pessimistic view, alright, a Pal. view, of what is disguised as a peace process. She doesn't think that Tzipi Livni can deliver a peace with the Palestinians.

And one main reason involves me. Well, me and some 300,000 other Jews in Judea and Samaria, not including almost a quarter of a million Jews in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods.

Here, Nadia explains:-

...Israeli political and military leaders can no longer control the settlement movement they launched and supported soon after Israel occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967 [and]...They have colonized the territories in a way that swallows up the best land and water and maintains sovereignty over East Jerusalem...The right-wing leaders of the Israeli settlement movement are too strong to budge. To prove it, the settlers have been escalating their attacks on Palestinians - and even on Israeli soldiers - unchallenged by Israel's politicians, military or courts...


That reads quite complimentary actually but, as usual, this Pal. researcher just doesn't understand the 'enemy' and seeks to project. "Attacks" are not many and the few that are are usually reactions to Pal. terror attacks. Arabs who attack are seeking to liberate, Hijab would have it, always. Jews, though, are evil.

Secondly, I am willing to accept all compliments but she exagerates the political power of the revnent movement. I don't think we are that coalesced and coordinated, we are split among too many breakaway groups but nevertheless, the idea of Jews returning to their ancestral homeland combined with the refusal of ASrabs to recognize that and seek a compromise, historically and at the present, is what is our real strength.

The best land is occupied...by Arabs, by the way. Where 99% of we Jews live in Judea and Samaria empty of any Arab habitation and development over the past 500 years or more, unless, of course, Nadia is referring (surprise! surprise!) to all of what she thinks is Palestine, i.e., all of Israel. Don't forget, in the 19 years that Judea and Samaria (WB) was in Jordanian hands, that is, Arab hands, it was underdeveloped, purposefully so. Arab growth over 1300 years in the area was insignificant if compared to what we have done in less than 40 years.

And so, what sounds like a commentary is actually propaganda. Again.




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(*)

Born in Syria to Palestinian Arab parents, Hijab grew up in Lebanon, earning her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the American University of Beirut...she left for Qatar and then England in 1975, as the Lebanese civil war intensified.
In England, she became the Editor-in-Chief of Middle East Magazine and was a frequent commentator on the BBC and several other TV, radio, and print outlets.
In 1989, Hijab moved to New York to begin what was to be a 10 year period with the United Nations Development Programme. During that time she served in several departments within UNDP and helped organize the organization's contribution to the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. After the UN, Hijab has worked as a consultant for organizations such as the World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, and Columbia University on issues such as human rights, human development, gender, and the media. She joined the Institute for Palestine Studies as a Senior Fellow in 2006. She was also a founder and has served as co-chair of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and a member and past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates.

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