Last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made an important speech to the UN Security Council.Of course, if Ben Ami had been paying attention, Abbas was not showing the slightest willingness to make any hard decisions for peace - as he and his predecessor have adamantly refused to do so for over twenty years.
Abbas laid out explicit support for the two-state solution and put forward a serious proposal for how to get there.
But then Ben-Ami goes into complete fantasyland:
So it’s stunning when you realize that, today, of the three, the Palestinians are the only party willing to publicly endorse the goal of two states for two peoples.This is a breathtaking lie.
Never has Abbas recognized Israel as a Jewish state, and he never will. He certainly didn't do so in his speech. Without that, there are no "two states for two peoples."
This has been what Israel has insisted upon since Camp David. The very expression "two states for two peoples" is Israeli. Israel has never stopped endorsing it. The phrase is mentioned numerous times on Israel's Foreign Ministry website, today.
Sometimes, Palestinians and apologists for their double talk like Jeremy Ben Ami will claim that Palestinians do accept two states for two people - but when they say that they mean the "Israeli" people, not the Jewish. people. That is almost certainly what Ben Ami meant - and he is knowingly deceiving his readers who do not realize the depth of his hate for Israel as a Jewish state.
But actual people who care about actual peace know that he is throwing dust in their eyes with this lie.
After all, J-Street itself is against Israel being recognized as the Jewish state. They knowingly obscure their "two states" demand by saying things like this:
J-Street does not say that Jews have the right to self determination, but "Israelis." Which makes no sense, since there was no "Israeli" people before 1948 - so whose self-determination was realized with the rebirth of the state of Israel?
There is no daylight between the official Palestinian position stated to the world and J-Street. It is not pro-Israel in any sense.
And people who believe that all peoples have the right to self determination but not Jews, which seems to be J-Street's position, are antisemitic.