Bernard Avishai,
who "was Visiting Professor at the Fuqua School of Business and Senior Fellow at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, where he taught courses of the new economy and public policy...[and is] a consultant associated with Monitor Group, and has taught entrepreneurial business planning in Libya [??]", provides cover for the evil and the non-genuineness of the "Arab Palestinian" national historical narrative
in writing
Israelis, and people in the West more generally, should take a close look at this impressive document from the Palestine Strategy Group, the closest thing there is in Palestine to an independent voice reflecting what the educated center is thinking.
Look, especially, at pp. 6 and 7 of the executive summary for the various strategic options open to the Palestinian leadership....To my mind, the key to the document can be found in the following passage from the document:
Strategic option (D): Smart resistance
Smart resistance means an intelligent, focused and flexible use of the various sub-components of the broad strategic option of national resistance in general. These include legal action against Israel in the world’s courts and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. But the main emphasis in the PSG is on non-violent popular resistance, as demonstrated so powerfully in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions so far, and elsewhere in the Arab world. Palestinians have been pioneers in this area as in the first intifada in 1987
He is echoing, uncritically, and fawningly,
this type of tripe:
The truth is that there is a long, rich history of nonviolent Palestinian resistance dating back well before 1948, when the state of Israel was established atop a depopulated Palestine. It has just never captured the world's attention the way violent acts have....Resistance to Zionism during this period [in the early 1920s] was characterized by various efforts led by elite members of Arab society who raised awareness about the dangers Zionism posed....Diplomatic efforts to lobby the mandatory government ensued while concurrently peasants occasionally clashed [!!!] with the European newcomers, but violence was largely localized and communal and took place amid larger, more peaceful, and political efforts to resist Zionist aims.
In the early 1930s, numerous protests and demonstrations against the Zionist agenda were held, and the British mandatory government was swift to crack down...It wasn't until nonviolent protests were met with severe repression that Palestinian guerrilla movements began. After the 81-year-old Husseini died a few months after being beaten, a young imam living in Haifa named Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (the namesake of Hamas's military wing) organized the first militant operation against the British mandatory government...
This is BS.
The Arabs of the Palestine Mandate territory not only engaged in numerous violence from the very start of the British regime in the country from 1919 on, and consistently and persistently pursued the deaths, rapes, injuries and thefts of and from Jews, but did so much earlier on.
And as for Sheikh Qassam,
check this timeline:
The Black Hand (Arabic: الكف الاسود (transliteration) al-Kaff al-Aswad) was an armed organization in the British Mandate of Palestine. It was founded in 1930 and led by Syrian-born Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam...After the failure of the 1921 Syrian revolt that he led, al-Qassam escaped to Haifa and engaged in recruitment and training of Arab peasants. The clandestine cells had no more than five people...In various acts of violence they targeted Jewish targets in northern Palestine between 1930 and 1935 and killed at least eight Jews.[2] In one instance three members of kibbutz Yagur were killed, and in another a father and son were killed in Nahalal.
More:
...let us turn to Zionism: False Messiah, by historian Nathan Weinstock, who agrees with Shapira on the most important facts but not on the interpretation:
“...the Palestinian anti-colonialist movement was deformed by racism. The distorted national struggle expressed itself in anti-Jewish slogans (‘Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dogs’), followed up by attacks upon Jewish passers-by and store-owners, and eventually in mob violence akin to the all-too familiar pogrom [ = unprovoked racist attack against unarmed Jews, with the semi-unofficial assistance of the (in this case British) authorities[1a]]. These attacks cannot, however, in any way be assimilated to straightforward anti-Semitic outrages which had their source in classical European coordinates of the Jewish problem, but should be seen as a deformed expression of national consciousness, all the more understandable as the Zionist leaders clearly allied with the British while the latter encouraged this distraction from the anti-imperialist struggle.”[2 - Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. (pp.166-167)]
Notice first that the anti-Zionist historian -- Weinstock -- agrees that Arab mobs attacked civilian Jews in British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and that these mobs were racist.
And
still more:
"From late 1919, Arab attacks on Jewish settlements became more frequent and relentless, particularly in the Jordan Valley and the Galilee."2
"As early as 1920, Palestine Arab opposition to Zionism and desire for self-government led to a threat to public security. ... three days of rioting in Jerusalem, in which Arab mobs fell upon Jews with sticks, stones and knives...As a result of these disturbances, five Jews and four Arabs were killed and 211 Jews and 21 Arabs were wounded."3
On May 1st, 1921 “Arabs of Jaffa murderously attacked Jewish inhabitants of the town and Arab raids were made on five Jewish rural settlements; the disorders were suppressed by the police and military forces. Forty-seven Jews were killed and 146 wounded, mostly by Arabs…”5
...On the 3rd May Hebrew colonies at Kafr Saba and Ain Hal were looted. On the 5th May the village of Petah Tiqvah was attacked by several thousand armed Arabs in semi-military formation, and was saved from destruction only by the arrival of several squadrons of cavalry. On the 6th May Arabs besieged Haderah and attempted an attack on Rehovoth..."6
In 1929 general anti-Jewish riots spread throughout Palestine. From August 23rd to the 29th, “murderous attacks were made on the Jews in various parts of the country. The most violent attacks were those against the old established Jewish communities at Hebron and Safed; there were also attacks in Jerusalem and Jaffa and against several Jewish rural settlements. There was little retaliation by Jews, of whom 133 were killed and 339 wounded.”7
..."The period between 1929 and 1936 was marked by periodic violence. In August 1930, there was a minor Arab outbreak at Nablus. The years 1930 and 1931 saw a series of terrorist murders of Jews. Agrarian crime was endemic and the Arabs attempted to take into their own hands the prevention of illegal Jewish immigration. In October 1931, Arab demonstrations and riots directed against the Government, as well as against the Jews, took place in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and Babes.
Avishai's figleaf posturing in favor of the Arabs will assist them to kill more Jews. And provide justification of those killings.
Sick thinking in pursuit of that fantasy "state of Palestine".
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