How a Pro-Palestinian American Reporter Changed His Views on Israel and the Conflict

[Ken Burch]

34. If I shake my fists at rank-and-file Palestinians, all of whom are powerless

to do anything about Hamas, that would make me complicit in defending the status quo that oppresses them and it would make no positive difference. Yes, Hamas is a horrible group, but ordinary rank-and-file Palestinians don't deserve to suffer because Hamas exists.

What the hell are ordinary Palestinians supposed to do? Get themselves killed in an internecine conflict just to please Likud?

And why defend the iron fist policy towards the West Bank when it's been in place for sixteen uninterrupted years now and, in practical terms, there is nothing to show for it? When it's already clear that there is no way collectively immiserating ordinary Palestinians is ever going to cause a change for the better in the Palestinian leadership? Isn't it time to finally try something else?

You still don't seem to realize that Hamas exists, in significant measure, because the right-wing governments Israel has had for most of the past forty years put their obsession with getting rid of the PLO above any and all other concerns. If they had negotiated with Arafat in the Eighties(he was willing to do that, the only sticking point was Shamir's pointless insistence that the PLO recognize Israel BEFORE the talks started rather than at the moment the talks started as he insisted on), they would have been able to negotiate with a Palestinian leadership at the peak of its influence and credibility, a leadership, with its flaws, that would have had the ability to make a peace deal actually stick. Instead, Shamir(like Begin before him and Netanyahu after him-with Labor not being that much better)cared more about delegitimizing the PLO than it did about ending the war. At some point, that should raise some questions with you.

I don't know what you do other places...but why do you never say anything critical about the Occupation, or at least the West Bank settlements(a project you know perfectly well is indefensible and that has done nothing but make the situation worse)on THIS forum?
Why don't you at least call for a settlement freeze here, since there can't possibly be any excuse for any further settlement expansion?
And why do you perpetuate the claim that virtually all public criticism of Israeli security policy is tantamount to anti-Semitism? In all but a handful of cases, it's not, and in the cases where it is, I join all decent people in condemning it.