My letter to the Guardian regarding Israeli cargo ship heads toward LA after Oakland protest blocks unloading & Pro-Palestine protesters again thwart Israeli cargo ship in Oakland

The Knotted Gun, United Nations, NY | Creative Sculptures and Statues from around the world

RE Israeli cargo ship heads toward LA after Oakland protest blocks unloading & Pro-Palestine protesters again thwart Israeli cargo ship in Oakland

Dear Editor,

We seriously cripple Palestine and Palestinians when we use the word "pro-Palestine" interchangeably with "anti-Israel". Look at the big picture: Pro-Israel is more than sixty sovereign years of Israeli diplomacy and hasbara and state building efforts aimed at providing jobs and security to Israeli citizens.

Many of the most articulate anti-Israel activists are Jewish individuals fixated on and enraged by Israel. Anti-Israel activists tend to promote a one state agenda alongside Boycott Israel efforts, convincing their friends and associates to scorn negotiations and Palestinian state building efforts. They should be free to do that, but in doing that they most certainly should not be called pro-Palestine. 

Pro-Palestine is about Palestine, not Israel. Effective and helpful and fully honest pro-Palestine advocacy empowers Palestinians as fully accountable state building citizens, engaged in a modern global world and a crucially important conversation concerning negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict with a just and lasting peace based on international law and full respect for universal human rights. 

The words we choose to use to understand and define the conflict have the power to either exasperate or end the conflict.  For instance, Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine wisely points out in a recent op-ed Non-violent resistance is Palestine’s most powerful weapon that "Palestinians must redefine martyrdom".  Ibish mentions the fact that "The [Israeli] occupation is a system of discipline and control over a subjugated people by a powerful foreign army. Worse, one of the main tasks of those occupying troops is to facilitate and protect the settlement project, which basically means taking land from its [Palestinian] owners and illegally giving it to [Israeli] colonists." Ibish knows the facts, understands the very real plight of the Palestinians, but Ibish does not get distracted and he does not go galloping off into an anti-Israel rant. He keeps calm and he keeps our focus on empowering Palestinians with realistic options and good advice.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
One state is a trap, and there will be no escape: One state is Israel, not Palestine, surviving the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

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