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How a Pro-Palestinian American Reporter Changed His Views on Israel

(Jerusalem Post) Hunter Stuart - In the summer of 2015 I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region. I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was, viewing Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom. It wasn't until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. When I traveled to the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story, a Palestinian kid pointed at me and shouted "Yehud!" which means "Jew" in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. I shouted at them in Arabic "I'm not Jewish," over and over. I told them in Arabic that I was an American journalist who "loved Palestine." They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I'll never forget. Even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100% of Israel - not just the occupation of east Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution and they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back "their" land. The ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward-looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it. I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who's to say they wouldn't elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel's destruction? That's exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Having Hamas in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem would be suicide for Israel. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction.
2017-02-17 00:00:00
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