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Time to Tell the Truth about the Palestinian Issue
(The Hill) Alan Dershowitz - The New York Times Sunday Review featured a column by Michelle Alexander entitled, "Time to Break the Silence on Palestine" - as if the Palestinian issue has not been the most overhyped cause on campuses, at the UN, and in the media. There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the double standard of those who elevate Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, Syrians, Iranians, Chechens, Tibetans, Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the international community. The UN devotes more of its time, money, and votes to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all of these other oppressed groups combined. The suffering of Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of many other groups, has been largely inflicted by themselves. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peale Commission Report of 1938, the UN Partition of 1947, the Camp David Summit deal of 2000, or the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers, responding with violence and terrorism, because doing so would have required them to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, something they are unwilling to do even today. The writer is Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School.