To the market and to the market-place
A shofar [ram's horn] calls out on the Temple Mount
In the Old City.”
How is it that Hamas’ credibility is treated as equal to that of the IDF and Israeli authorities? Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard journalists complain about the way in which Israel has dealt with their needs in relation to the weeks of violence at the Gaza border. I’ve also heard the argument from at least one journalist that both Hamas and Israel have equal and competing narratives that should be reported equally.Caroline Glick: Europe Seeks to Pin Down President Trump – and America
One major difference between the two sides is that one actively lies.
The death of Palestinian eight-month old Leila al-Ghandour on May 14, reportedly as a result of Israeli tear gas, made global headlines. Doubts were raised at the time over the cause of death and Hamas eventually took the baby off its list of casualties of the Gaza border violence. Still, headlines such as the Daily Express’ “Mother’s agony as baby dies in Gaza gas horror” and “Drones drop deadly cannisters” contributed to the libel of Israel as a brutal baby killer.
Despite this framing of the incident, the media cannot be blamed for covering the story. They can, however, be held responsible for taking Hamas claims at face value, not only in this case but more widely.
Reports now suggest that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar paid baby Leila’s parents NIS 8,000 ($2,200) to tell the media that the infant had died due to tear gas inhalation at the Gaza protests. This information comes from a relative of the family arrested and questioned over terror activities at the Gaza border who told Israeli authorities that the baby had died of a fatal blood condition that runs in the family.
Perhaps the media might be skeptical of any information of this nature given that it was apparently obtained from a Palestinian held in Israeli custody. Nonetheless, surely those same media outlets that reported the baby’s death in such a damning manner even while questions remained, have a duty to report this latest development? After all, how can the media not give equal coverage to what they would claim to be equal and competing narratives?
But, aside from a few reports, this new revelation simply didn’t register on most of the international media’s radars. A blood libel, like most of the blood libels leveled at Israel over the years, has essentially become part of the accepted narrative even if it is subsequently proven to be fake news.
Hamas knows it can get away with it.
In light of Europe’s institutional hostility towards Israel, and given the collective Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist, it is obvious that Johnson doesn’t want this meeting because he is keen to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
He is working to set up a meeting where the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan gang up on the U.S. and tell the President’s son-in-law that they will not accept any plan that doesn’t reflect their animus towards Israel.
Kushner, for his part, reportedly responded to Johnson’s attempt to railroad the White House into giving the EU veto power over U.S. Middle East policy by saying that while he is open to outside input in the U.S. peace plan, the President will decide its contents.
Kushner’s response hit the proper note. But it bears pointing out that Johnson’s speech at the UNHRC, like his attempt to build a coalition to ensnare the White House in a Middle East policy predicated on hostility towards Israel, show that Europe’s refusal to back the U.S.’s positions at the UNHRC was not a simple disagreement about the best way to achieve common ends.
Rather, Johnson’s efforts reveal a much more basic and unbridgeable conflict between the U.S. and Europe about the proper ends of foreign policy, and the sovereign right of the U.S. to advance its goals in the international arena.
Bernard Lewis issued a startling prediction in 2010: Iran—the land of scowling ayatollahs and flag burnings—would abandon Islamism by the end of the decade, while Turkey—Washington’s stalwart Cold War ally—would turn away from the West and burrow deeper into its Muslim identity. Lewis is no longer with us, and there are still a few years left in his wager, but events in both countries are proving him remarkably prescient.
On Turkey, Lewis has already been vindicated. Witness the ballot-box triumph of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, or AKP. In the presidential contest over the weekend, Erdogan thumped his opponent, Muharrem Ince of the Republican People’s Party, 53% to 31%. A smattering of pro-Kurdish and secular candidates divided the remaining ballots. Erdogan’s AKP and its allies also locked a majority of seats in Parliament.
The elections were not exactly fair. As the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observed, the state of emergency imposed following a 2016 coup attempt constricted “freedom of expression and assembly” for the opposition. Erdogan has used the emergency laws to dismiss more than 100,000 soldiers, teachers, police officers, and journalists. And some 50,000 people have been jailed and are awaiting trial, according to rights groups.
With numerous opposition reporters languishing in prison, it came as no surprise that the ruling party dominated the media landscape, which led European Union officials to conclude that “conditions for campaigning were not equal.”
"The United Nations is the accepted forum for the expression of international hatred."
"Yes, Prime Minister" British TV show
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region. [emphasis added]How much more?
With the Trump administration providing diplomatic cover, right-wing ministers in Israel pressing to exploit that while it lasts and international support for the Palestinians focused for the moment on Gaza, a new ruling by a settler-majority panel of Israel’s Supreme Court appears to have freed the government to proceed with the removal of entire Bedouin communities on the West Bank. Advocates of the Bedouins say this would be a war crime: the forced transfer of a population under the protection of the military occupation.In one paragraph, the NYT is claiming that Israel's Supreme Court probably allows war crimes, and that its bias is because its panel members are mostly settlers.
On June 10, 2002, Charles Krauthammer delivered the Distinguished Rennert Lecture upon receiving the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University's Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies. Below is an excerpt from the lecture titled "He Tarries: Jewish Messianism and the Oslo Peace."Charles Krauthammer’s Reflections on Israel, Zionism, Judaism, and God
In the 1990s, America slept and Israel dreamed.
The United States awoke on Sept. 11, 2001. Israel awoke in September 2000.
Like the left and like the reverie that we had in the United States, secular messianism was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from a history based on military and political conflict to one in which the ground rules were set by markets and technology. This was the infatuation with globalization as the great leveler and the abolisher of things like politics, war and international conflict. This kind of geo-economics was widely accepted in the early post-Cold War era.
It was Sept. 11th that abolished that illusion. It taught us in America there are enemies, they are ideological, they care nothing for economics and they will use whatever military power they have as a means to achieve their ideological ends. This is the old history, perhaps the oldest history of all, the war of one God against another. No new history, no break in history, no redemption from history.
The other source of this secular messianism in the Israeli context was the success of the European Union, which was seen as a model for peace in the Middle East. There was talk of Israel, Palestinian and Jordan becoming a new Benelux, with common markets, open borders, friendship and harmony.
Indeed, if you look at the Oslo Accords, of course there is page upon page of all of these ideas of cooperation on economics, on technology, on environment, all which in retrospect appear absurd. And indeed, this entire idea of the Benelux on the Jordan looks insane in retrospect, but I believe that it was insane from the very beginning, when it was first proposed 10 years ago.
Last week, Charles Krauthammer, one of America’s most incisive and influential political analysts and a profound thinker on issues pertaining to Judaism and the Jewish people, passed away at the age of sixty-eight. In 2016, Krauthammer engaged in an extended conversation with Roger Hertog based on his 1998 essay “At Last, Zion,” on the future of the Jewish people in American and Israel. At the conversation’s end, Krauthammer elaborates on a remark he once made that “I don’t believe in God, but I fear Him greatly.”Prince William lands in Israel for first-ever official visit by a UK royal
Long ago, when I was very young, I went from being a fervent believer to being not so much a non-believer as a skeptic. My theology can be summed up [thus]: the only theology I know is not true . . . is atheism. Everything else I’m unsure about. . . . The idea [espoused by] Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins that . . . there is nothing except what we see, and that’s it, is to me the most implausible, arrogant. It just can’t be, because things don’t create themselves. . . .
I have a deep belief in a transcendent “out there.” I don’t particularly believe in the mythologies that are told by any of the religions. I have an enormous attachment to the Jewish tradition and to the depth and the subtlety of its understanding of life, morality, and of metaphysics. I’ve always been interested in it, and to me . . . it is important for Jews to try to continue that tradition, to make sure it lives, and to make sure that culture is nourished. . . .
As to my own idea [that even if there is no God], “I fear Him greatly,” it’s because I believe in transcendence, some transcendence. [Since] I will never—we will never, as a species—be able to grasp what it is, there is a certain trepidation. In Judaism it’s called the fear of heaven. . . . I’m not really afraid, but in some ways you tremble when you look at the universe and you think, “I think I understand things.” . . . Human beings need to tremble when looking at the universe. If not, they don’t understand what’s going on. That’s sort of the key: to understand how little we can understand. . . .
Britain’s Prince William landed in Israel early on Monday evening, kicking off the first-ever official visit by a member of the royal family since the British Mandate ended and the State of Israel was founded in 1948.
William, the second in line to the British throne, was welcomed at Ben Gurion Airport by Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and MK Amir Ohana, both members of the ruling Likud party.
The Duke of Cambridge’s three-day stay, ending the royal family’s seven-decade unofficial boycott of Israel, is likely to be full of historical symbolism, though it was initially billed as a celebration of the unprecedentedly good bilateral ties between London and Jerusalem.
However, the trip is taking place under a minor cloud of controversy, as Kensington Palace’s official itinerary states that the prince’s visit to Jerusalem’s Old City — where he is likely to stop at the Western Wall and Muslim and Christian holy sites — will take place in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
“We will receive today the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, for the historic first visit in Israel of a representative of the British royal family,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Monday at the start of the Likud faction meeting.
“I must say this is not exactly true because there is a representative, his great-grandmother Princess Alice, one of the Righteous of the Nations who saved Jews in Greece during the Second World War and requested to be buried in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu added.
Addressing Likud lawmakers, he joked that he would have invited all of the party’s MKs to meet the prince, but “it is a little cramped at the Prime Minister’s Residence, so we will welcome him on your behalf and on behalf of all the citizens of Israel — welcome!”
MOSCOW, June 25. /TASS/. Issues of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement were in focus of a meeting Russian president’s special envoy for the Middle East and African countries and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov had with a delegation of Hamas leaders led by Hamas Political Bureau member Mousa Abu Marzook, the Russian foreign ministry said on Monday.From official PA news agency Wafa:
"Key attention was focused on the problems of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement on the basis of the generally recognized international legal documents, including UN resolutions, and on efforts towards restoration of Palestinian national unity on the basis of the agreement signed between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo in October 2017," the ministry said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will attend the final of the 2018 World Cup in Russia with a number of world leaders and heads of state, FIFA's foot Gianni Infantino.Something is brewing. Maybe Russia wants to break the Hamas/Fatah deadlock.
Al-Rajoub said in a statement to WAFA that his Excellency will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin while in Russia, and will discuss bilateral relations and the latest developments.
Keeping up with the spirit of the #FifaWorldCup2018— BDS South Africa (@BDSsouthafrica) June 25, 2018
Here is a soccer match of Palestine and Australia back in 1939. Hopefully sometime soon the Palestinian soccer team will participate in the tournament and Israel expelled from @FIFAcom just like Apartheid South Africa pic.twitter.com/CYyP49NaNo
Forces loyal to the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad took control of an abandoned UN post in the no-man’s land between the Israeli and Syrian areas of the Golan Heights, Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported on Sunday.
The post, abandoned by United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) troops on the Golan, is meant to be free of both Israeli and Syrian troops, according to the cessation of hostilities agreement between the two countries that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
According to the report, UNDOF has identified ongoing infrastructure work at the site.
The IDF said in a statement that it was “aware of what is taking place, and views [the takeover of the site and] the infrastructure work at the post as a serious and flagrant violation of the separation-of-forces agreement.”
The IDF statement suggested Israel might act to remove the forces from the post by force. Officials told Kan that Israel “sees UNDOF as responsible for tracking and acting against military forces in the separation zone, and is determined to prevent military entrenchment in that area.”
It would almost be funny if it wasn't so absurd. The Palestinian Authority, whose leaders pay salaries to imprisoned terrorist murderers and to families of killed terrorists - including suicide bombers - participated in a conference in Paris called "No Money for Terrorism"!Terror victims protest Pay-to-Slay bill's delay
"The State of Palestine participated... in a ministerial conference against terror funding, which was held in the French capital Paris under the headline No Money for Terrorism. Palestine was represented at the conference by [PA] Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki and Head of the [Palestinian] Central Bank Azzam Al-Shawa, accompanied by a Palestinian delegation." [WAFA, official PA news agency, April 26, 2018]
The PA was invited and included in the conference while the PA actively and openly uses its money and also donor countries' money to pay terrorists, while PA leaders ignore the condemnation by the international community.
The PA pays monthly salaries to around 6,500 imprisoned terrorists, as well monthly allowances to the families of tens of thousands of killed terrorists - who the PA calls "Martyrs" - to which the PA allocated over $350 million in its published 2018 budget. Despite international criticism, PA leaders vow to continue to pay these salaries rewarding terror.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA spends money on establishing monuments to terrorist murderers and the PA Ministry of Education has named 31 schools after terrorists, just to name a few of the many ways the PA spends money on terrorists and on immortalizing them.
Twenty family members of victims of terrorism from the Almagor organization demonstrated outside the Likud faction meeting at the Knesset on Monday after they were not permitted to address Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Likud MKs about the need to pass a bill meant to discourage the Palestinian Authority from continuing to pay terrorists.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee authorized legislation two weeks ago that requires the government to deduct the amount the PA pays terrorists from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects for the authority.
A final vote which would have passed it into law on Monday was postponed at the request of coalition chairman David Amsalem, who acts as the parliamentary arm of the prime minister. The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will meet either this Wednesday or next week to consider revisions of the bill that would water it down.
“I am worried the bill will be buried,” Almagor head Meir Indor said. “I try to respect the prime minister, but we have our limits. A similar bill already passed in both houses of Congress in the US, and we have been legislating it for a year. We would rather have the bill not pass at all than pass with half its power taken away.”
Netanyahu himself requested a delay in the voting from the heads of the parties in his coalition. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon have created obstacles that have made it harder to pass the bill due to battles over credit, but the bill’s sponsor, Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern, said on Monday that he blames only one man for the legislation not yet being law.
REPORTER: What have you learned from Arab leaders on your recent trip through the Middle East?
KUSHNER: That the prospects for peace are very much alive. The leaders we met with all care a lot about the Palestinian people, and know that the lives of the Palestinian people can only be made better when there is a peace deal that is agreed to by both sides. They know that it is a tough deal to make, which is why it has eluded both sides for decades, but they all acknowledge the good that will come to the region if an understanding of peace is achieved.
Notice that he doesn't say that Al Aqsa would be under Palestinian control.
REPORTER: What are the points that are most important to the Arab leaders to see in a peace plan?
KUSHNER: They conveyed they want to see a Palestinian State with a capital in East Jerusalem. They want a deal where the Palestinian people can live in peace and be afforded the same economic opportunities as the citizens of their own countries. They want to see a deal that respects the dignity of the Palestinians and brings about a realistic solution to the issues that have been debated for decades. They all insist that Al Aqsa Mosque remain open to all Muslims who wish to worship.
The deal apparently is heavy on economic incentives, which is much more appealing to the Palestinian Arabs themselves than the symbolic "red lines" that their leaders have fruitlessly demanded for decades.
REPORTER: Does the deal you are working on accommodate these points?
KUSHNER: I don’t want to speak about specifics of the deal we are working on, but like I said in my speech in Jerusalem — I believe that for a deal to be made, both parties will gain more than they give and feel confident that the lives of their people will be better off in decades from now because of the compromises they make. It will be up to the leadership and the people of both sides to determine what is an acceptable compromise in exchange for significant gains.
Meaning, jobs. Israel can help, the Saudis and other Gulf states can help.
REPORTER: You mention “up to the people.” Are you saying that you could see a world in which you put out a plan and let the people vote on it?
KUSHNER: I didn’t say that, but that’s something that the leadership of both sides should consider doing. Perhaps that’s a way for them to take less political risk on endorsing a solution, but that is still a few steps ahead of where we are now.
REPORTER: This conflict has been going on for so long and so many people have tried to bring a resolution on what seems like intractable problems — how is your approach different?
KUSHNER: We have done a lot of listening and have spent our time focusing on the people and trying to determine what they actually want. At the end of the day, I believe that Palestinian people are less invested in the politicians’ talking points than they are in seeing how a deal will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs and prospects for a better life.
Each of the political issues are very controversial and there are people on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides who will object to any compromise. We think that the deal should be looked at by both sides as a package and both sides should ask themselves — are we better-off with what we are getting in exchange for what we are giving?
Not everyone will agree that it’s the right package, but reaching for peace takes courage and the need to take the right calculated risks. Without the people pushing the politicians to focus on their needs and giving them the courage to take a chance, this will never be solved.
REPORTER: What do you make of the recent statements by Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for President Abbas, that your trip is a “waste of time and is bound to fail”?
KUSHNER: I think the Palestinian leadership is saying those things because they are scared we will release our peace plan and the Palestinian people will actually like it because it will lead to new opportunities for them to have a much better life.
That would be tricky, because the people will then be inundated with propaganda about how terrible the deal is in their own media. The PA would orchestrate massive anti-deal rallies. The Internet is not yet the great equalizer it should be in Palestinian areas; despite the growing discontent with Abbas he still has a great deal of dictatorial control.
REPORTER: Have you reached out to President Abbas to see if he would meet you on this trip?
KUSHNER: Not directly. President Abbas knows we are in the region and we have many mutual contacts who convey messages — he knows that we are open to meeting him and continuing the discussion when he is ready. He has said publicly he will not meet us and we have opted not to chase him.
We have continued our work on the plan and on building consensus on what is realistically achievable today and what will endure for the future. If President Abbas is willing to come back to the table, we are ready to engage; if he is not, we will likely air the plan publicly.
Entirely accurate.
REPORTER: When will you be ready?
KUSHNER: Soon. We are almost done.
REPORTER: Will the breakdown in the relationship with President Abbas impact your ultimate ability to get a deal done?
KUSHNER: President Abbas says that he is committed to peace and I have no reason not to believe him. More importantly, President Trump committed to him early on that he would work to make a fair deal for the Palestinian people. However, I do question how much President Abbas has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal. He has his talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years. There has been no peace deal achieved in that time. To make a deal both sides will have to take a leap and meet somewhere between their stated positions. I am not sure President Abbas has the ability to do that.
Again, entirely accurate, and Kushner is referring to the Egyptians and Gulf states when he says "global community" here.
REPORTER: What makes you think he doesn’t have that ability?
KUSHNER: I didn’t say that he doesn’t have the ability, I said I am not sure. I greatly respect that there are many things he has done well for establishing the foundations of peace, but I don’t think the Palestinian people feel like their lives are getting better and there is only so long you can blame that on everyone other than Palestinian leadership. The global community is getting frustrated with Palestinian leadership and not seeing many actions that are constructive towards achieving peace.
The critics of the plan are correct when they say that this sounds like what Israel has wanted for years. They are worried because it might actually work, and the Arab world can benefit as a whole from working with rather than against Israel. Palestinians would indeed benefit greatly as well.
There are a lot of sharp statements and condemnations, but no ideas or efforts with prospects of success. Those who are more skeptical say President Abbas is only focused on his political survival and cementing a legacy of not having compromised than on bettering the lives of the Palestinian people.
REPORTER: Do you think that is the case?
KUSHNER: I hope not. My job is to work with the parties in charge, so I am ready to work with President Abbas if he is willing. There is a good deal to be done here from what I assess.
REPORTER: What does “economic prosperity” look like for the Palestinian people in your view?
KUSHNER: Think about the prospects for the Palestinian people over a 5-20 year horizon if they get massive investments in modern infrastructure, job training and economic stimulus. The world is going through a technological industrial revolution and the Palestinian people can be beneficiaries by leapfrogging to be leaders in the next industrial age. The Palestinian people are industrious, well educated and adjacent to the Silicon Valley of the Middle East — Israel. Israel’s prosperity would spill over very quickly to the Palestinians if there is peace.
Many countries from around the world are ready to invest if there is a peace agreement. I feel strongly that while in order to make a peace deal you need to define and have secure borders, economically you want to eliminate boundaries and allow the economies to become more integrated to increase the opportunity and prosperity for all of the people — including the Jordanians and Egyptians and beyond.
Kushner is correctly blaming Hamas and Fatah - and the Arab countries have known this for years.
REPORTER: So what you are working on is more regional in nature?
KUSHNER: The actual deal points are between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the economic plan we are working on can show what comes as part of a deal when it is achieved with some massive investments that will extend to the Jordanian and Egyptian people as well. This conflict has held the whole region back and there is so much untapped potential that can be released if peace is achieved.
REPORTER: Can you give some details about the economic plan you are working on?
KUSHNER: Yes. We believe we can attract very significant investments in infrastructure from the public and private sectors to make the whole region more connected and to stimulate the economies of the future. This will lead to increases in GDP and we also hope that a blanket of peaceful coexistence can allow the governments to divert some of their funds from heavy investments in military and defense into better education, services and infrastructure for their people.
REPORTER: I know you recently hosted a conference on Gaza in the White House. Has anything come from that? What are you doing to make that situation better while we are all watching it deteriorate before our eyes?
KUSHNER: Well, what’s happening in Gaza is very sad. The humanitarian situation started long before President Trump came into office, but nonetheless we must try and make improvements. The level of desperation and despair shows the worst-case scenario of what happens when these problems are left unresolved and allowed to linger. The people of Gaza are hostages to bad leadership. Their economy has spiraled downward because of the inability to have connectivity with the world.
As long as there are rockets being fired and tunnels being dug, there will be a chokehold on resources allowed to enter. It’s a vicious cycle. I think the only path for the people of Gaza is to encourage the leadership to aim for a true cease-fire that gives Israel and Egypt the confidence to start allowing more commerce and goods to flow to Gaza. This is the only way to solve the problem from what I have seen. Many countries would be willing to invest in Gaza if there was a true prospect for a different path. It will take some leadership in Gaza though to get on that path.
This is short on details, and this is the crux of the issue.
REPORTER: Saeb Erekat recently criticized your efforts to help Gaza saying it’s a political situation that you are trying to make a humanitarian issue in order to divide the Palestinians. Is this your intent?
KUSHNER: The last I checked they are divided, they are not connected by government or land and it’s needlessly become a dire humanitarian situation because the Palestinian leadership has made it a political situation. While it’s been on a downward spiral for a decade, long before this administration got involved, with multiple wars and a terrorist government, the political dysfunction, greatly exacerbated by the PA’s salary cuts, has made Gaza ungovernable.
It’s time for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to stop using the people of Gaza as pawns. The narrative of victimhood may feel good for the moment and help you grab headlines but it doesn’t do anything to improve lives. President Trump cares a lot about the Palestinian people and so yes we are looking very closely at Gaza and have spent a lot of time with our partners and hope to put forth ideas to relieve some of the pressure and try to change the trajectory of the situation for the people. Finally we have said from the beginning that there is no path to peace without finding a solution for Gaza.
REPORTER: Do you see a world where the Israelis and Palestinians can coexist peacefully?
KUSHNER: I really hope so. A lot of people tell me that this can never happen because there is a lot of distrust and hatred that comes from years of conflict and people using politics to blame the hardships of life on others. There have been wars, conflicts, demonstrations, acts of terrorism and more. This is not exactly a solid foundation on which you can build coexistence and peace.
However, I am an optimist and I have met so many people and also have seen so many examples of Israelis and Palestinians reaching out to each other and trying to forge bonds to try and circumvent a failed political process. These people know their lives will only be improved by working out the issues and moving on. So yes, there is a lot of hatred and a lot of scar tissue, but I do not underestimate humankind’s ability to love. To be successful, we must be willing to forgive in the present, not forget the past, but work hard towards a brighter future.
REPORTER: You clearly are very focused on improving the economic circumstances of the Palestinian people — what about the traditional core issues?
KUSHNER: The traditional core issues are essential and we focus on them extensively with a strong appreciation of the historic differences between the two sides. We are committed to finding a package of solutions that both sides can live with. Simply resolving core issues without creating a pathway to a better life will not lead to a durable solution.
The backlash for this interview has already begun. It is difficult to know whether it means anything to the average Palestinian Arab. But there is a lot to like in this, and if the Arab nations - crucially, Jordan - are on board with this, the pressure on the Palestinian leadership could be immense.
REPORTER: Finally, if you could deliver a message directly to the Palestinian people, what would it be?
KUSHNER: You deserve to have a bright future. Now is a time where both the Israelis and Palestinians must bolster and refocus their leadership, to encourage them to be open towards a solution and to not be afraid of trying. There have been countless mistakes and missed opportunities over the years, and you, the Palestinian people, have paid the price.
Show your leadership that you support efforts to achieve peace. Let them know your priorities and give them the courage to keep an open mind towards achieving them. Don’t let your leadership reject a plan they haven’t even seen. A lot has happened in the world since this conflict began decades ago. The world has moved forward while you have been left behind.
Don’t allow your grandfather’s conflict to determine your children’s future. My dream is for the Israeli and Palestinian people to be the closest of allies in combating terror, economic achievement, advancements in science and technology, and in sharing a lifestyle of brotherhood, peace and prosperity.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!