UNMIA

Why can’t we all just get along? Why not peace instead of war? For Israel these two songs give the main reason. Here is a popular Israeli song, with a common theme. Other songs are about life and love, like most other people’s songs. You won’t find Israeli songs about murder and suicide and the joy of killing Arabs. Listen to the Palestinian song. It’s very typical, you can find many samples like this among popular Arab songs, and many are more violent than this one.

Do you want peace? First, define peace. There are many kinds of peace…the peace of the grave, the peace of complete victory, the peace of having nothing left to lose, the peace of living together in unity. Unless both sides in a conflict want the same kind of peace, peace will only come with victory. For that to change, the Palestinians will have to change their goal. Listen and consider.

UNM Daily Lobo

Jerusalem Post reporter to address conflict in Mideast
Xochitl Campos
Issue date: 4/7/08 Section: News

Jerusalem Post correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh will speak to UNM students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today.

Toameh is an Arab-Israeli journalist who reports from the West Bank and Gaza. He was invited to speak on the conflict by Stand With Us, a nonprofit.

He will speak at 6 p.m. in Woodward Hall.

Toameh said Americans need to take interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It is much more complicated than what people think, and it’s not enough to watch CNN or to read an article in the New York Times,” he said. “That is why I’m invited to come here and speak to everyone about the conflict and to share my views.”

Toameh said Israelis and Palestinians must learn to live together in the Middle East. One group is not going to eradicate the other, and the only solution is for both to learn how to coexist, he said.

“We live over there together. We are destined to live over there forever,” he said. “There is no other choice.”

Toameh said he is obligated as a journalist to report fairly on the conflict from both sides. But as an Arab-Israeli, he finds …

By Ami Isserhoff Zionism-Israel.com

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was to have been accompanied by creation of an independent Arab Palestinian state. Instead, a war broke out, and at the end of the war, between 600,000 and 711,000 Arab Palestinians had left their homes and were refugees. The defeat of the Arab Palestinians and the creation of the refugee problem is called the “disaster” (Nakba) by pro-Palestinians, and it is blamed on a supposed Zionist conspiracy to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine, and supposed forced expulsion of the Arabs from their homes.

Nakba: Arab Palestinian Refugees

It cannot be disputed that a large number of Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the Israel war of Independence. Their suffering is real. It cannot be disputed that the Jews (and later the IDF) carried out violent acts, often targeting civilians. The Irgun rolled barrels of explosives out of the backs of trucks in the Old City of Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the Haganah and Irgun attacked villages in various reprisal raids. They did it because the Arabs were terrorizing the Jews, attacking Jewish transportation and murdering people in ambushes. …

by Ido Zelkovitz
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008, pp. 19-26
http://www.meforum.org/article/1874

Many U.S. and European diplomats contrast Fatah’s Palestinian nationalism with Hamas’s Islamism. At a November 28, 2007 press conference, U.S. national security advisor Stephen Hadley praised Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and cited President George W. Bush’s argument that “Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda [are] different faces of the same evil: a radical ideology seeking to impose its world-view throughout the Middle East and beyond.”[1] But, while Fatah, the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), may have its roots in the revolutionary, secular-oriented ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s,[2] Islamist discourse is also integral to the movement.[3] Indeed, even as Western diplomats seek to bolster Fatah’s Abbas as an alternative to Hamas, they underestimate the degree to which Palestinian nationalism now intertwines itself with Islam.[4] Since the 2000 Palestinian uprising, Fatah has fused national and religious symbols in order to use Islam as an instrument of mobilization.[5]
Fatah Imagery in the Twentieth Century

In the 1970s, Fatah graphic art promoted the culture of armed struggle which was at the heart of Fatah’s ideology. (See Figure 1.) This enabled Fatah to mobilize the masses in the absence of a solid ideology among the divided and …