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Palestinian hatred of Israel revealed in reaction to Peres’ death

Instead of praising the life of this advocate for peace between his people and their neighbors, the chosen Palestinian Arab BBC commentator launched into a vicious attack on his character and denied he ever wanted to make peace with his enemies.

On September 28, we all awakened to the sad news of the death of former Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres. My radio was tuned to National Public Radio, and soon after, the BBC World program spent most of their hour reviewing the life of the Israeli leader.  Inevitably, they turned to a Palestinian Arab personality to comment on what his life meant to the Arab side of the Arab war against Israel.

Instead of praising the life of this advocate for peace between his people and their neighbors, the chosen Palestinian Arab BBC commentator launched into a vicious attack on his character and denied he ever wanted to make peace with his enemies.  According to Mustafa Barghouti, Peres entered into the entire peace arrangement in order to swindle the Palestinian Arab population. “Mr. Peres probably used his intelligence to deceive the Palestinians, but at the end of the day, through Oslo Agreement, he deceived the whole cause of peace.”

This reaction reveals how deep Palestinian Arab intransigence runs. President Peres was probably the Israeli leader most attuned to the narrative of the Palestinian side in all of the history of his country. There is no doubt that the Oslo accords he initiated and supported have not lived up to the promise that some on both sides of the deal were hoping for. Still, the demonization of Peres is startling.  “In my opinion he was intelligent for sure. He used his smartness, his connections, to squeeze the Palestinians in an agreement that was unjust.”  Objective listeners could not possibly see the relationship between this straw man and the actual statesman he was describing.

The inability of Palestinian Arab leaders to say a good word about their supposed partner in negotiations is actually a revelation about why peace has not come to the region. Barghouti falls back to a classic anti-Semitic stereotype- the clever Jew who cannot be trusted to resist manipulating a negotiation for devious ends. He claims that Peres was not sincere by pointing out that the Israeli leader would never agree to the Palestinian demands for full sovereignty and control of all of Jerusalem.  The Israeli concerns about security, about their own claims to the territories, about the influence of Islamic extremism and Iranian influence over a Palestinian Arab government are not only not addressed, they are completely absent from the analysis.

The fairness of BBC?

In fairness, not all Palestinian Arabs share Barghouti’s bizarre opinion on the motivation of Peres. The fact that the BBC, knowing his views about Israel chose him to give the Palestinian Arab reaction to the death of Peres opens up a whole different discussion about fairness at the BBC. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who eulogized Peres as a great patriot despite decades of political enmity, also was quoted on the same BBC program. Bibi almost certainly feels that Peres consistently erred in the direction of wishful thinking at each step of the Oslo process.

In his comments Barghouti manages to slander Netanyahu as an “extremist.” The truth is that the entire Israeli electorate wants peace, from Peres on one side to Netanyahu on the other.

A recent poll of Palestinian Arabs, however, reveals that nearly 2/3 of the respondents stated that if they achieved their own state, “resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated.” The difference with the Arab approach speaks volumes about the prognosis for peace. If Palestinian Arabs cannot credit the motivation of perhaps the most idealistic side of the Israeli political spectrum, peace might have to wait for quite awhile.

By: Dan Pollak, Co-Director of Government Relations, Zionist Organization of America