They’ve done this before. The vehicles vary, the subject doesn’t.
Jack Ross and Ahmed Bedier — each speaking truth and reality as they know it. About Jews and Muslims. About Israelis and Palestinians. About blame.
In the end, they don’t agree on enough, but they do personify hope. That’s because Ross, a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Bedier, the Muslim president of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council and radio talk-show co-host, are as collegial as they are articulate.
They both agree that the violence and resultant human suffering – in both Gaza and southern Israel – are deplorable. They both agree that peace is a goal.
End of agreement.
But this, of course, wasn’t the frustrating, tragic crucible that is Gaza. This was the eminently civil political forum that is the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa luncheon at Maestro’s, comfortably ensconced within the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
Bedier went first and decried the “collective punishment” meted out by Israel over the actions of a few “criminals” and “terrorists” in Gaza. He labeled such disproportionate response as “Nazi-like tactics.”
Israel, underscored Bedier, has “habitually and consistently used violence to get its way….They’re the most powerful nation in the Middle East…The actions of its military and hardliners have furthered the radicalization of the Palestinians.”
What they’ve done in Gaza, stressed Bedier, “doesn’t send a message of peace. When you treat Palestinians like animals, you’re going to get animal behavior. Palestinians don’t hate Jews. They hate the treatment. They hate what they see. ‘Never again’ should apply to all people all the time.”
And while he found “condemnable” the acts of civilian-targeting “terrorists” and “un-Islamic” suicide bombers, Bedier found more moral culpability on the Israeli side. “Yes, these (Gaza residents) are terrorists, and I personally condemn what they do,” he insisted. “But that’s (Israelis) a government. We expect more.”
What the Palestinians have done, countered Ross, is to continually miss opportunities – going back to the Oslo Accords of 1992 and through the Camp David compromise that Yasser Arafat walked away from in 2000 – for a realistic, two-state solution. They instead, said Ross, chose an Intifada strategy and elected Hamas, which sponsors terror and has refused to recognize Israel. The predictable result: A deal-breaking “land for insecurity” reality that Israel cannot countenance and has been forced to combat with its land-air-sea barrage.
Ross cited “truce violations by Hamas” and the “10,000 missiles fired from Gaza to southern Israel over the last three years.
“There’s a pattern,” emphasized Ross. “They re-arm during cease fires. They provoke a military response. Until they take responsibility, this won’t end.”
And, yes, the amorphous subject of a “solution” inevitably came up.
According to Bedier, any meaningful sense of a solution would have two prerequisites. First, a halt in “killing Palestinians and treating them like animals.” Second, a “return to pre-1967 borders.”
Ross: “But who do you talk to who can deliver?”
Bedier Outtakes
Afterward, Bedier elaborated on a couple of points.
*He had indicated earlier that a Muslim version of a “Reformation” – along the lines of those experienced by Judaism and Christianity – could, indeed, occur. But if so, he averred, it would likely be propelled by Muslims living in Western democracies.
“The Muslims there (West) are a bit more detached from the ongoing political situation,” explained Bedier. “They enjoy the freedoms of democracy. They can express themselves more effectively. Remember that Muslims in America responded to the Danish cartoons differently than in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Here, there were no protests. They wrote letters to the editor.
“The people in the Middle East are too close to the action,” added Bedier, a native of Cairo, Egypt. “Politics is closely mixed with religion.”
*Bedier then addressed the issue of outrage. The word is all too applicable when referencing the Middle East. He has been consistently outspoken in his condemnation of terrorist tactics.
But where was the global Muslim outrage – as expressed by massive crowds, burning effigies, government-controlled newspaper editorials and key, influential leaders – over the INTENTIONAL targeting of innocents from 9/11 to Mumbai to southern Israel? Where was the in-the-streets outrage over sadistic beheadings and the cherry picking of the Koran to justify the world’s division into believers and “infidels?” Why, candidly, did Dutch cartoons elicit more of a response in Muslim countries than mass murders?
“The area is evolving,” said Bedier. “Absent any Gandhi-like leaders in that part of the world, there are still signs that people are speaking out. Especially in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt. There have been protests against suicide bombers in the West Bank. There have been peace demonstrations. Especially in Iraq.”
The problem, maintained Bedier, is context. Israel and the U.S. are seen as occupiers who have ceded the moral high ground.
“It’s hard for peace demonstrators to be empowered when, for example, Israel has a policy of political assassination, and they will bomb a whole block to get one terrorist,” noted Bedier. “This is what undermines moderates.”
But where there is dialogue, there is hope.
And where the word “martyr” doesn’t get sacrilegiously invoked, there is hope.
And wherever George Mitchell takes his “special envoy” portfolio, there is hope.
That will have to do for now.