ACCORDING TO ONE ISRAELI SOURCE1, Arab human rights activist Bassem Eid believes peace between Israel and the Arabs can exist only on the basis of economic cooperation.
"I live in the territories, Eid said, and know what people think. Most of the Palestinians are looking for respect and not identity - I see how many people are trying to get a job, to live, and raise their children with dignity."
THE PROBLEM FOR “PALESTINIANS” in Israel (vs. Israeli Arabs) are two-fold.
1. European leaders, Eid continued, have embraced a false vision of the conflict, as well as the needs of Palestinian Authority residents: "We need to explain to European Parliament members the true picture, and we must make it clear to them that it's forbidden to use Palestinians for political purposes. Unfortunately, Europe is still impervious to our message, but we're trying to appear in its institutions and stimulate their thoughts.
2. Arab Members of Knesset. "They don't represent the interests of the Palestinians, they were chosen by the Israeli Arabs and not by the residents of the West Bank or East Jerusalem. The Arab Knesset members don't represent me; I live in the Palestinian population and have nothing to do with the Joint List in the Israeli Knesset."
Don’t forget BDS
Although Eid did not mention it by name, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement plays a large role in keeping “Palestinians” from the jobs that would provide them with the economic opportunities “to live and raise their children with dignity.”
Case in point: SodaStream.
The Israeli company was located in the so-called West Bank. It employed both Arabs from the PA and Jews from Israel. Equal pay for equal work. The staffing was roughly 50% Arab and 50% Jewish. Workers, by all accounts, respected each other and peacefully coexisted on the job.
Enter BDS.
By instigating the leftists of Europe and the U.S. – and those in Israel as well – the BDS forced SodaStream out of the West Bank. When it left, it left 500 workers from the PA stranded sans employment. Unhappily for the BDS movement, it did NOT force SodaStream out of business.
Since belong forced out by BDS, SodaStream relocated to the south and now employs Israeli Arabs and Jews. The PA’s loss is the south’s gain. Meanwhile, SodaStream has been sold to beverage giant PepsiCo for US$3.2 billion.
Education to the rescue
There are a number of private and Israeli government programs to help being both Israeli Arabs and PA Arabs into technology fields,
Israeli hospitals continue to educate Arabs in the medical arts. “Continue” because there is a long history of Arab doctors training in Israeli hospitals. (I once had an ophthalmologist who studied at Hadassah in Jerusalem.)
Fortunately for the PA Arabs, the BDS bigots cannot prevent the residents of the PA from taking advantage of Israeli-offered opportunities.
Even “blue collar” workers from the PA earn better wages in Israel than their brothers who work in the PA, ergo the number of PA Arabs who travel to and from Israel on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, the reality on the ground and the pipe dreams of the leftists are different. The real victims of the leftists’ are the people they claim to be helping.
Given their choice – assuming Eid is correct – PA residents could have economic dignity and peace with Israel. Sadly, the choice is not theirs to make; it belongs to the PA’s politicians and the world’s leftists, most of whom have been no closer to the PA than New York, London, Moscow, or Berlin.
Sources
1. http://tinyurl.com/ydz7k8re
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
