Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus, Nobel
Laureate Elie Wiesel, and human rights leader Robert L. Bernstein hosted a press
conference Tuesday launching Deception: Betraying the Peace Process.
Authors Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik document
numerous breaches in the Palestinian Authority�s commitments to recognize
Israel, to cease hate incitement and to reject violence and terror -
requirements established by the international community and accepted by the PA.
The authors and human rights leaders warned that the hate
speech and incitement against Israel by PA leaders is the fundamental impediment
to achieving peace.
Cataloguing Palestinian Duplicity
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta seems to have come up
with the solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian impasse:
�Just get to the damn table,� he said in response to a
question the other day on what Israel should do next, following his address
to the Brookings Institute in Washington.
How foolish of the rest of us not to have thought of that
sage advice all those years ago and saved so many lives, so much pain and
hardship.
Of course it should be noted that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has asserted on numerous occasions that he is ready to
sit down and negotiate directly with the Palestinians at any time. It�s the
Palestinian Authority that is holding out.
It�s disturbing, but not surprising, that administration
after administration in Washington since the Oslo agreement of 1993 has
ignored the essential stumbling block to real peace between the Israelis and
Palestinians. That�s the refusal of the Palestinian leadership, including
the �moderate� Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, to acknowledge Israel�s
right to exist.
Just this week an important new book arrived that details
in exhaustive fashion the duplicity of the PA, under President Mahmoud
Abbas, in speaking to the West of its recognition of Israel while at the
same time spreading hate speech and glorifying terrorists at home.
The book, �Deception: Betraying the Peace Process,� by
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik of the Palestinian Media Watch,
chronicles the statements and actions of the PA during the renewed peace
talks of 2010 and through this year.
Citing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton�s pledge to
Congress in 2009 that the U.S. would only work with the PA after it commits
to non-violence, recognition of Israel and ending incitement against Israel,
the authors catalogue how none of those criteria has been met. And further,
that violent acts against Israel are on hold only for tactical reasons. The
book offers extensive proof that the Palestinian leadership endorses and
promotes the belief that there is no room for a Jewish state in the region
and that Jews, not just Israelis, are evil and must be eliminated.
This disturbing reality largely goes unreported in the
mainstream press and is ignored by Western nations, including the U.S.
Why doesn�t Israel speak out more aggressively? �That�s a
political question,� Marcus told The Jewish Week at a book launch and press
conference here Tuesday. He said his organization, which has been monitoring
and reporting on the Palestinian media for 14 years, shares its information
with the government in Jerusalem, which in turn sends the material to
Washington. And there things seem to end.
We hope it�s not too na�ve to believe that if the facts
about the PA�s behavior were known more widely, Western funding, starting
with the U.S., would be leveraged far more effectively, with the threat of a
complete cutoff if the situation persists.
This is not about political ideology, right or left, but
about facts on the ground where on a daily basis children are indoctrinated
to hate Jews. As Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein said on
Tuesday, �Government-sponsored hate speech is incompatible with peace.�
That�s why an authentic agreement is less about getting
to �the damn table� than preparing Palestinian children to accept rather
than seek to destroy a Jewish state.
[The Jewish Week, Dec. 6, 2011]