My letter to Financial Times RE Israel must unpick its ethnic myth By Tony Judt (12-7-2009)

Motherhood by Ismail Shammout

RE: Israel must unpick its ethnic myth By Tony Judt
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f8fafee-e366-11de-8d36-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Dear Sir,

Yes indeed, Israel must unpick its ethnic myth... Israel’s uniquely “Jewish” quality might be an imagined or elective affinity, but the subsequent violence and rampant institutionalized bigotry inspired by that imagined elective affinity has been very real and it continues to have very real negative ramifications for countless increasingly vulnerable Palestinian men, women and children.

Hussein Ibish, a realist and a well respected Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) as well as the Executive Director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership , wisely points out in a recent interview what will most likely happen if the Israel/Palestine conflict continues on the one state path: "You'll end up with two sets of bearded fanatics on both sides fighting over holy places and God. It will be a complete disaster. And I think the Israelis will end up ultimately dealing with forces not only beyond its borders, but beyond its comprehension in the long run. This has the possibility of turning into not an ethno-national war but a religious war between the Muslims and the Jews over the holy places with the whole concept of Palestine gone and the Jewish population of Israel in a very unenviable situation, protected in the end only by its nuclear weapons. It's a nightmare." Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of One-Staters, interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.americantaskforce.org/interviews_and_speeches/interviews/2009/11/03/1257224400

We live in an age of paper trails and passports- and a global job market. Economics matter on both a personal and a political level: Palestinians need to have a passport of their own, and the power to shape their own future identity and destiny.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

In Jerusalem by Ismail Shammout