Geneva Initiative

I can usually handle unpleasant news concerning international politics with a decent amount of detachment and dispassionate objectivity, but I was absolutely infuriated at this week’s presentation and widespread international acceptance of the “Geneva Initiative,” a recently drafted Middle East “peace” plan. The co-authors are Yossi Beilin, an Israeli leftist peacenik politician, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, the ex-Minister of Propaganda for the PLO. Although the document ostensibly calls for an end to terrorism and the relinquishing of the “right of return” by the Palestinians, it goes on to focus mainly on both legitimizing “Palestinian” terrorism and anti-Semitism and delegitimizing the moral argument for the creation and continued existence of Israel. More specifically, the document legitimizes anti-Semitism when it calls for the dismantling of Jewish settlements in “Palestinian” territories, thus implying that being Jewish on a certain piece of land is somehow a provocation, let alone the fact that one province of the West Bank, Judea, is the region from which Judaism derives its name. Arabs who live in Israel do not need a security fence to protect them because, unlike in the “Palestinian” territories, in

Israel extremist bigotry either—Jewish or Arab—is discouraged and punished severely by the government. The very fact that Israel is a Western-style secular democracy in the middle of a resentful Muslim world places the entire Jewish people in an extremely uncomfortable position. Both the Christian West and the Muslim East hate the Jews for creating and maintaining a political entity that defies traditional Christian and Muslim stereotypes of the Jew as weak and ineffectual. Further, it challenges an entire worldview wherein East and West are clearly distinguishable entities, free from the psychological and intellectual complications inherent in the existence of a Jewish state that is “Western” in structure and “Eastern” in spirit and tradition. Furthermore, militant Islam views Israel not as a legitimate, independent state like any other, but as the main imperialist outpost of a US-led West trying to dominate and humiliate the Muslim world. Any call whatsoever—like that of former President Jimmy Carter this week—for Israeli concessions to the “Palestinians” emboldens those who wish to view America as the façade of power which they evinced it to be in the rubble of its tallest towers on 9/11. This warning is crucial for the survival and interest of not only America, but also of the one billion-plus Muslims who need to formulate a collective identity based not upon rejection of “the other,” but imbued with the sense of spiritual and socio-economic self-dependence that will empower them to say “NO!” to the dictators and instigators who relentlessly call them to a jihad for “Palestine.” As a final note, I have placed the terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian(s)” in quotations in order to identify the fact that the Arabs/Muslims do not define their collective identity at the level of the nation-states that were imposed on them when the British Empire drew lines in the sand following World War I (the name “Palestine” and the “Palestinian” flag were decided upon by the British Imperial War Office).

—Alex Muller ‘06