How Dare You Sing For Co-Existence?

Last week I was like, "awww, that's heart warming." I'm a sucker for feel-good stories, especially when it seems there's only chaos and bullshit happening in the world. So when I read this article, I thought that maybe, on some small scale, it's possible to change things, affect some people, spark a little compassion and mutual understanding amidst the unsolvable riddle that is the "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" or the "Jewish-Arab Conflict," or whatever you want to call it. One major issue I have with the current state of affairs is the obvious indoctrination of children who grow up in the West Bank and in Gaza (and throughout the Arab/Muslim world). We've all heard the stories about the crazy textbooks that teach children to count based on killing Jews and which constantly promote continued "resistance" and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state that encompasses all of modern-day Israel. And fine, we look at everything with a skeptical eye, and despite the hateful things anti-West, anti-Semitic things they show on TV in that part of the world (you can watch a few clips from memritv.org to get an idea of what it looks like), we still wonder about how much hate incitement and brainwashing and indoctrination actually happens.

Well this adds a little peg to the "I told you so" pile. A bunch of these kids went from Jenin to play for a group of holocaust survivors and here I am thinking it's really nice and sweet and an amazing show of humanity, and what happens less than a week later? You get this - the total condemning of the concert and the "banning" of the Israeli Arab woman who planned it from entering Jenin. Of course I can understand this response of a people who call the Holocaust a "political issue" and who said that the participation of the children was a "dangerous matter" because it was directed against the cultural and national identity of the Palestinians and because it might "impact the national culture of the young generation and cast doubt about the heroism and resistance of the residents of the camp during the Israeli invasion in April 2002." Yeah, we wouldn't want to create any doubt in the minds of children about these "heroes" now would we.

The thing that scares the leaders in Jenin and in the Palestinian Authority about something like this is precisely the idea that doing things like this might, just might, help contribute to a "normalization" of relations with Israel, something no leader on the Palestinian side really wants because that might mean a true two-state solution where Palestine and Israel live side-by-side in peace rather than the continuing plan of having Israel disappear altogether. Think about it - you undermine the refugee camp system, you undermine the root hatred that Palestinians have for Israelis, and you undermine the grand objective of removing the "Zionist epidemic," of destroying Israel, of creating a Palestine that stretches from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. The elements of moderation and of peace who would see a true two-state solution and a normalization of relations between Israel and a future Palestine, elements that include women like Wafa Younis, the conductor of the orchestra, are shunned and silenced in favor of those who would prefer to continue the 60+ year status quo of "resistance" and hatred. Maybe people like living for generations in a refugee camp system, in a bubble, I don't know. Maybe it creates a sense of worth and purpose that might not otherwise be found in the "boredom" of peaceful co-existence. This is not to lay full blame on Palestinians or on Arab leaders for all that has not come about in the last 60+ years, but only to highlight a simple little event that, at least for me, underlines the entire problem - you can't have peace if you don't have a partner who's interested in peace.

That's also why on some level, I can agree with at least some of Netanyahu's direction even while I totally shun any racist policy that might have, in the past, been suggested by some of the members of the coalition that is emerging to run the government. The parts that I like recognize that there is no current partner for peace with the Palestinians, that Hamas is useless and that the PA is corrupt and weak and unrepresentative of the Palestinians and just as hateful towards Jews and Israel as the most extreme elements, and that as a result we must focus first on the building of Palestinian civic society, an infrastructure, an economy that can support its own people and bring them some prosperity and investment in the world outside of the refugee camps, and of an educational system that does not direct Palestine's children towards a culture of death and martyrdom. Maybe then a partner for peace may emerge, maybe then people can get serious about compromising on true borders that involve a little less of some and a little more of something else than they might have originally liked or wanted.