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NDTV
25-05-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
How Assassination Of This Former PM Derailed Israel-Palestine Peace Process
New Delhi: Thirty years ago, hope stood on a stage in Tel Aviv and was silenced by two gunshots. Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Prime Minister and the man who dared to dream of peace with the Palestinians, was gunned down by one of his own. To the right-wing Israeli extremist who pulled the trigger, Rabin's vision was betrayal. The bullets ended a life, and also tore through a fragile peace process. Now, three decades later, the conflict Yitzhak Rabin tried to end still burns, unresolved. The Assassination That Shattered A Dream On the evening of November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin stood before a crowd of over 1 lakh Israelis at a peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square (later renamed Rabin Square). Despite warnings, Rabin refused to wear a bulletproof vest, believing no fellow citizen could pose such a mortal threat. Moments after delivering a hopeful speech urging Israelis to "make peace, not just sing about it," the Prime Minister was shot at close range by Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old Israeli law student and extremist. As reported by The Guardian, Rabin was shot twice and later died in the hospital. This was the first time in Israel's history that a sitting Prime Minister was murdered. And for many, it felt like peace had died with him. Yigal Amir: The Assassin Yigal Amir was a 25-year-old law student at Bar-Ilan University with strong religious and nationalist views. A devout, hardline Zionist, Amir viewed Rabin as a traitor for his willingness to 'concede' land to the Palestinians under the Oslo accords. He believed Rabin's plans endangered the Jewish state. Amir justified his actions by citing a religious concept known as "din rodef," which permits the killing of someone who poses a threat to Jewish lives. He acted alone, without the support or approval of any religious authority. He believed Rabin was a rodef, a pursuer who endangered Jewish lives, and thus, in his own eyes, a legitimate target. Before the assassination, Amir attended multiple public events where Rabin was present, waiting for the perfect moment. On the day of the shooting, he hid his Beretta 84F semi-automatic pistol and ammunition and mingled with the crowd. Then, as the Prime Minister stepped off the stage, the young extremist stepped out from the shadows and fired two shots at point-blank range. Within an hour and a half, Rabin was pronounced dead. Yigal Amir was arrested at the scene and later convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus an additional 14 years. His act, horrifying as it was, achieved exactly what he intended - the end of the peace process Rabin championed. Oslo Accords The Oslo peace process was a series of secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) that began years before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. This process was the result of decades of conflict and cautious talks. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, which led to ongoing tensions and conflict. The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising from 1987 to 1993, showed that military force alone could not solve the conflict. In 1993, secret talks held in Oslo, Norway, led to a historic agreement. On September 13, 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in front of US President Bill Clinton. They declared an end to "blood and tears," signalling a new hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The Oslo Accords were the first direct agreements between Israel and the PLO. They set the stage for a possible two-state solution and aimed to create a framework for peace after many years of fighting. The first agreement, known as Oslo I, included mutual recognition: the PLO recognised Israel's right to exist in peace and security, while Israel recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Oslo I also created the Palestinian Authority, which was given limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel agreed to withdraw its military forces from some areas, starting with Jericho and Gaza, and planned to hold democratic elections for the Palestinian Authority. Two years later, in 1995, the Oslo II Accord expanded this agreement. It divided the West Bank into three areas with different levels of Palestinian and Israeli control. Area A was under full Palestinian civil and security control; Area B had Palestinian civil control but joint Israeli-Palestinian security control; and Area C remained under full Israeli control. The Oslo II Accord also called for further Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian elections, and cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces to fight terrorism and maintain order. Despite these advances, the peace process faced many challenges. Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem continued to grow, making it harder to create a united Palestinian state. Violence from extremist groups on both sides, including attacks and bombings, undermined trust. Political divisions deepened. Among the Palestinians, Hamas rejected the Oslo peace process completely, calling it surrender and saying they would never accept any deal that involved giving up land to an Israeli state they believed should not exist. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 was a major blow to the peace process. Then Came Benjamin Netanyahu Back in 1995, Benjamin Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition in Israel. He spoke at some of the most intense anti-Rabin rallies, where the former Prime Minister was harshly criticised and portrayed negatively, even being likened to a Nazi. At many protests, Rabin was compared to Yasser Arafat, with people putting a black-and-white Palestinian scarf (keffiyeh) around his head like Arafat wore. The aftermath of Rabin's death saw Israel's political landscape shift sharply to the right. In the 1996 elections, Netanyahu won a narrow victory over Shimon Peres. This was a move away from Rabin's peace efforts. Fast forward to today, Netanyahu, now Israel's Prime Minister, leads a government waging a harsh military campaign in Gaza following a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Almost two years since, the war has killed over 53,000 Palestinians, with many civilians, women and children, among the casualties. The Gaza Health Ministry has also reported more than 109,000 injured. What If Yitzhak Rabin Had Lived? Reports at the time suggested that had Rabin lived, he would most likely have defeated Netanyahu in the 1996 elections, implying that the future of Israeli-Palestinian peace could have been very different. After the famous handshake with Yasser Arafat in 1993, Rabin had said Zionism was no longer about expanding territory but about building a Jewish society based on traditional values combined with Western civilization. Today's dominant settler movement has moved far from Rabin's approach, pushing to settle Gaza again and expanding settlements rapidly in the West Bank, while Palestinian communities face violence and displacement. Rabin had always opposed the settlers' ideology, calling many settlements "political" and a financial burden with no real security benefit. He cut settlement funding in his time, focusing resources on social programmes. But today, under the Benjamin Netanyahu-government, settlers are empowered, and ideas once considered extreme, like expelling Palestinians, are openly discussed. Some settlers argue Rabin betrayed Zionism by making peace with the PLO. They believe the entire land of Israel, including Gaza and the West Bank, should belong to Jews and support settlement expansion even in Gaza. Others, including Rabin's former press officer Uri Dromi, say this extreme view has hijacked Zionism, which Rabin defined as a realistic effort to maintain a Jewish state through negotiation, not exclusion. A 2015 poll showed 76 per cent of Israelis regarded Rabin as "a respectable leader" and 55 per cent said he was missed, but only a third supported the Oslo Accords.
Middle East Eye
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Israel's culture of genocide is spreading globally. We must build an alternative
'The conquest of cultural power comes before political power,' philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote a century ago. Last month, three alarming incidents occurred within the span of just a week: a Palestinian girl and her three-year-old brother were tied to a tree in the occupied West Bank; a Palestinian bus driver was attacked by a mob in Jerusalem; and an American woman was assaulted by Zionists on the streets of New York. Compared with the scale of the disaster in Gaza, these events might seem minor - but it is important to view them as part of an ongoing process that is intensifying and transcending borders. The common thread linking these events is not only the right-wing Zionism of the perpetrators, but also the world's passive acceptance, as settler-colonial violence spills over from the occupied territories into Israel's 1948 borders and Jewish communities abroad. While many Zionists would portray these attackers as 'bad apples' or an 'extremist minority', the truth is that their behaviour reflects the success of a cultural revolution within Israeli society. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters They demonstrate how Israel's genocide in Gaza is enabled by the internalisation of popular slogans like 'flatten Gaza' and 'throw them into the sea' - slogans once confined to the fringes, but now manifested in real-world violence. This messianic worldview even extends to the world of diplomacy, where Israel recently sparked anger among the Catholic establishment for deleting a condolence tweet upon the death of Pope Francis and sending only a lower-ranking representative to his funeral. The Pope was seen an an opponent of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, and thus, endorsing him could harm Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reelection prospects. Political calculations Netanyahu's behaviour is not accidental. It is calculated and aligned with political interests, particularly among the base of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has become an icon for many young Israelis. Ben Gvir embodies the cultural shifts within Zionism and Israeli society. He was infamous in the 1990s for stealing the Cadillac hood ornament from former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car, holding it up on live television and declaring: 'If we got to the symbol, we can get to Rabin too.' Later that year, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a man linked to the same messianic right-wing circles. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war It would be a mistake to attribute the recent changes solely to the war in Gaza. While the war might have accelerated the process, the deeper cultural transformation began after the failure of the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada, when Israeli society refused to relinquish control over the occupied Palestinian territories. As he rose to power, Netanyahu launched an ambitious project to rebuild the country - not as a state striving for global integration, but as an unrestrained, unapologetic Jewish nation that views the world as a perpetual existential threat. Even as Israeli violence becomes more visible, politicians like Ben Gvir are welcomed as honoured guests in the US Netanyahu resolved the internal contradictions of Zionism, the last active settler-colonial movement of the 21st century. At a time when colonialism and occupation are global taboos, Netanyahu provided a new path for a society that still wants to dominate, but also craves western legitimacy. His solution was simple: discard the liberal facade. The global rise of populist right-wing forces, especially Donald Trump's presidency in the US, along with the weakening of international institutions, gave Israel the opportunity to shed the rhetoric of human rights and restraint. In its place, it openly pursued long-standing Zionist goals: transferring Palestinians, using unrestricted military force, and expanding into neighbouring Arab countries. What is even more critical, from a Palestinian perspective, is the world's growing willingness to accept this culture. Even as Israeli violence becomes more visible, politicians like Ben Gvir are welcomed as honoured guests in the US, while footage of a Zionist mob chasing a young woman through New York's streets receives little to no media coverage. Imagine what the international reaction would have been if the assailants had been Muslim men. Uncritical support This shows how - despite some shifts in global public opinion, particularly amid the Gaza genocide, where Israel is increasingly seen as the aggressor - power centres in the western political, media and business spheres continue to offer uncritical support for Israeli society. For Palestinians, this reality demands a serious political reckoning. Analyst Norman Finkelstein recently highlighted this challenge to Middle East Eye, pointing out that Palestinian movements often underestimate the centrality of power itself. Finkelstein illustrated this by referencing the recent departures of several university presidents in the US - two of whom were women of colour - over their failure to take harsher actions against pro-Palestinian campus protests. No one from the Democratic Party came to their rescue. Finkelstein further warned of how 'cancel culture' might have ultimately weakened the Palestinian movement, by paving the way for the suppression of legitimate political speech. His comments underscore the need to think of politics as a means of gaining power - not at any cost, but through informed and serious debate, carefully examining the available possibilities. At a time when a genocide is occurring and children are being murdered daily, this is especially critical. The lesson for Palestinians is thus clear: we must urgently begin constructing an alternative to Israel's genocidal culture. We must grapple with humanitarian and national questions without losing our own humanity. We must find ways to build power, organise across movements, and create broad coalitions - building a true democratic alternative to the nightmare now confronting the region. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Psychedelic Trips Defy Words—That's the Key to Unlocking Higher Consciousness, Scientists Say
Under the care of a traditional Peruvian healer, serial entrepreneur Mark Gogolewski took a powerful Amazonian psychedelic as part of his healing process from alcoholism. As the Ayahuasca ceremony deepened, Gogolewski felt himself pulled to the brink of death, but also felt an encouragement to just let go and jump, he says. But something caught him—and it was 'infinite love,' he says. 'Like, you can imagine anything you might want—the beautiful, loving light, the source, whatever word you use—we touch it. It's not just ineffable. It's everything.... And I will never forget it, because it was beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I can't give you exact words, but I remember the feeling of those words.' Gogolewski's struggle to put the experience into words touches on a larger mystery: why do so many people who undergo altered states of consciousness find themselves unable to explain what they felt? Studies are revealing that these states may be fundamentally outside the bounds of human language. Or perhaps language itself is a filter—a cage, even—that blocks us from grasping deeper truths. Dr. Dave Rabin, Ph.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies psychedelics and trauma, believes the disappearance of language in psychedelic states is not a glitch—it's the point. 'Psychedelic experiences—whether they're accessed through medicine augmentation, deep meditation, breathwork, or other non–drug-induced methods—can result in states of extraordinarily high levels of presentness,' Rabin says. In those moments, he explains, the mind shifts away from ego and the past and enters a mode of 'just listening to what's happening in the moment,' he says. 'Our language center requires higher cortical levels of processing [parts of the brain involved in planning, memory, and conscious thought] that draw from our past knowledge and experience,' Rabin says. 'So, when we find ourselves in states of extraordinary presentness—whether psychedelic drugs are involved or not—these states can leave us with an absence of words, or what we call ineffability.' This beyond-words feeling doesn't hit us because language is broken, Rabin suggests, but because it's temporarily irrelevant. Describing an experience, especially in the peak psychedelic moment, actually removes us from the experience, because 'we're putting it through a filter in our minds to describe it, to attempt to define it.' Yet, it's through language that we've built laws, literature, religion, and reason itself. Human civilization depends on our ability to preserve and transmit knowledge through structured, symbolic communication. As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote, 'The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.' Which, in a way, goes both ways. Language expands our reality—or quietly narrows it, too. A 2024 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that language doesn't just express ideas; it encodes and spreads our attitudes across cultures and centuries, even the ones we don't realize we have. Another 2024 paper, published on the preprint server arXiv and titled The Age of Spiritual Machines, offers striking evidence that reducing attention to language may itself induce altered states of consciousness, even in artificial intelligence (AI) models. When researchers dampened the language-processing functions of AI systems, the models began to resemble disembodied, ego-less, and unitive states—in short: the AIs tripped. Michael Valdez, MD, a neurologist, addiction specialist, and medical director of Detox California, agrees that altered states reshape how language functions, but from a different angle. 'Whether it is achieved through meditation, psychedelics, sleep deprivation, or trauma … language becomes less literal and more symbolic or metaphoric, as words become links to emotions that are felt rather than thought of.' He notes that during an altered state of consciousness, the experience of time, space, and reality can shift dramatically. So can the way people speak, leading to 'fragmented and disjointed thoughts.' But in Valdez's view, this is not linguistic failure—it's a poetic reorientation. In these moments, language stops being strictly logical and begins to resemble emotion in verbal form—metaphoric, symbolic, and affective, Valdez says. And while the words may sound jumbled on the surface, at their core they may open a path toward insight: 'A new way of seeing, and perhaps, a new way of being,' Valdez says. For Gogolewski, who wrote the book How to Be OK (When You're Supposed to Be OK But You're Not), the challenge of expression didn't end with the February 2024 ayahuasca ceremony. For the last eight years, he has been studying Kabbalah and Buddhism, and he has found that words often fail in the face of symbols and metaphors rooted in ancient traditions. 'The Buddhists would use these phrases that were impossible to understand purely with the mind. You'd have to wrestle with them before you could get an answer. Like, one I love right now is: 'How you do one thing is how you do everything.'' It could be Buddhism, Sufism in Islam, or Christian mysticism—'it doesn't really matter,' Gogolewski says. What matters is the 'spiritually rigorous vocabulary' that helps people in groups talk about things that might otherwise remain beyond 'commoner' everyday language. He has spent years trying to find better ways to describe what he experienced in that psychedelic ceremony—and still can't. 'I'm just going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out better words,' Gogolewski says. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Arab News
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
1993 - The Oslo Accords and the broken promises of peace
CHICAGO: As a Palestinian, I grew up in the shadow of the pain and suffering of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israeli violence during the 1947 and 1948 war forced my father's family to flee their homes in West Jerusalem and live for more than two years in the squalor of a refugee camp in Jordan, until my father could bring them to the US in 1951. My mother and her family in Bethlehem were forced to suffer through constant Israeli military assaults after the war, even though they lived under Jordanian control. They were uncertain whether they could survive, so eventually they fled to the welcoming arms and sanctuary of the diaspora, settling in Colombia and Venezuela. But they lost so much. To this day, more than 10 acres of my family land, on my mother's side, adjacent to the Israel settlement of Gilo, remains under Israeli control and outside our reach, simply because we are Christian Palestinians and not Jews. This cumulative weight of suffering was lifted from me as I sat and watched my hero, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, shake the hand of our oppressor, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, during the signing of the Oslo Accords peace agreement at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. Rabin was a monster to Palestinians. In January 1988, as a general, he ordered his soldiers to 'break the bones' of Palestinian civilians identified as 'inciters' during protests against Israeli policies. Rabin was never charged over this but his lower-ranking officers faced a public outcry that was covered up by the Israeli government and the pro-Israel news media. Yet we were willing to set all of that aside for an Israeli who was willing, for the first time, to recognize Palestinians as a people; a people that had been denied recognition by all of his predecessors, including Golda Meir, a Milwaukee schoolteacher who became an immigrant prime minister and once cruelly declared that the Palestinians 'did not exist.' On Sept. 13, 1993, we set aside the pain of the past and hoped to move forward thanks to a new beginning on 'a great occasion of history and hope,' as President Bill Clinton declared at the beginning of the momentous event. I remember grabbing a chunk of grass from the White House lawn in front of the stage as a souvenir and placing it between the pages of the program that was distributed to Palestinian and Israeli guests at the signing. We all sat near each other, in different groups and sections, Jews and Arabs, and greeted the start of the ceremony with relief. The peace documents were actually signed by Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas, with Rabin, Arafat and Clinton looking on. Then, with Rabin to his right and Arafat to his left, Clinton nudged the two leaders together and they shook hands. The Oslo Peace Accords included recognition of certain rights on both sides. The Palestinians openly recognized Israel's 'right to exist,' considered a major concession at the time, while Israel recognized only that Palestinians would be granted a process leading to limited self-rule. Israel did not agree to recognize Palestinian statehood under the accords, instead committing only to a vaguely defined system of Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories, and to withdrawing its armed forces from much, but not all, of the West Bank. It was to be the foundation for a promise of a process that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state within five years. But this was never written down or documented. It was only interpreted. At the Madrid Peace Conference, US Secretary of State James Baker invites Israeli officials to meet representatives of several Arab countries to pursue peace and establish self-rule for Palestinians. Israel objects to direct talks with the PLO. Palestinians from the occupied West Bank partner with Jordanian delegation to explore peace prospects. Yitzhak Rabin is elected prime minister, vowing to make progress in peace negotiations and the establishment of Palestinian self-rule. He enters into secret, direct talks with the PLO in Norway. US President Bill Clinton hosts the signing ceremony of the Oslo Accords. Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign the Declaration of Principles, marking a historic step towards peace in the Middle East. The agreement recognizes the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, with the PLO renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel's right to exist. US-born Benjamin 'Baruch' Goldstein, wearing an Israeli military uniform and carrying an automatic weapon, enters Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and massacres 29 Muslims as they pray, wounding 125. On Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day, a Hamas suicide bomber kills eight Israelis and injures 55 others. The Nobel Committee awards Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat, Rabin and Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords. Progress with Palestinians opens door to a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, signed during a ceremony in the Arava Valley, north of Eilat in Israel and close to the Jordanian border. Rabin shot by an Israeli extremist and dies the following morning. Rabin's family claim killer supported right-wing extremist politics of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. And yet, even as limited as it was, the agreement was an overwhelming relief to many, including my family. My wife is Jewish, and we subsequently traveled through Israel and Palestine, in 1994 and 1995. Although the agreement did not spell out the granting of true freedom, it did create an atmosphere of hope. Palestinians and Israelis, for the first time, got the chance to know each other as potential friends, not enemies. But the hopes for peace promised by the Oslo Accords were quickly cut short, in a large part because of the violence committed by Israeli fanatics, which provoked Palestinian outrage and sparked counterviolence. After shaking Arafat's hand, Rabin declared: 'We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough!' He should have directed his words toward his own people, too. On Feb. 25, 1994, just five months after the signing of the Oslo Accords, an American-Israeli doctor, wearing an Israeli military uniform and carrying an automatic weapon, entered the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He massacred 29 Muslims as they prayed, and wounded 125. This massacre, carried out by Benjamin 'Baruch' Goldstein, a far-right ultra-Zionist who was overpowered and killed by survivors, prompted a retaliatory wave of suicide bombings by Hamas militants opposed to the peace process. They began with an attack at a bus stop in Afula on April 6, 1994, Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day, in which eight Israelis were killed and 55 injured. It was considered the first suicide attack, although there had been three others, one during the Intifada, on July 6, 1989, the others in April and October 1993. On Nov. 4, 1995, a 27-year-old disciple of Benjamin Netanyahu, Yigal Amir, a far-right Israeli religious extremist, assassinated Rabin, shooting him in the arm and back following a peace rally. Amir confessed that he killed the Israeli leader because Rabin wanted 'to give our country to the Arabs.' Rabin's widow blamed Netanyahu and Israeli extremists for influencing Amir's actions. And so the peace quickly unraveled. Israeli and Palestinian extremists, both of whom opposed any form of compromise, escalated their violence. Eventually, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu took control in Israel and quickly peeled back the Oslo promises. But I will never forget one memory from the time before the hopes were dashed. I was driving with my wife through the Jordan Valley in the summer of 1995 when we arrived at an Israeli checkpoint. The soldiers there handed us a flower and were curious about the idea that a Palestinian and a Jew would marry. 'You're the future,' one soldier said to us with a smile. It was one of the last smiles I would see on the face of an Israeli soldier.
Arab News
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Palestinians need a political reset
There is absolutely no doubt that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has exploited the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorism to advance his long-term agenda to destroy any chances of peace with the Palestinians. His war on the Gaza Strip has resulted in the worst massacre of Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. Netanyahu and his extremist predecessors, such as the late Ariel Sharon, have continued the terrorism that was started in Palestine in the 1920s by Jewish extremists under the banner of Zionism. But instead of being smart by pursuing a strategic response to defeat these Zionist extremists and their racist violence, Palestinians have too often allowed their emotions to control their actions. This has exposed the just Palestinian cause to Western animosity, driven by media bias. One journalist who contributed to this narrative was the American Freda Kirchwey, the editor of The Nation magazine from 1933 to 1955. During her editorship, The Nation falsely portrayed Arabs and Muslims as the drivers of violence in Palestine, while closing its eyes to the Jewish attacks of the 1940s. The Arab world had very little influence over the Western media, which dominated public information. The racist portrayal of the Arab world to disguise the violence of the new state of Israel was broadened into all aspects of communications, including the publishing world. This was a strategic, unemotional plan that was embraced by Israelis, Jews and Christian Americans, who viewed the Palestine conflict as a modern-day revival of the Christian-led Crusades against the Muslim 'hordes.' Such Islamophobia in the West continues to this day, although now it is veiled by more diplomatic expressions and less confrontational rhetoric. Instead of understanding this historical dynamic, the Arab and Islamic worlds and pro-Palestinian activists tend to embrace a policy of anger and outrage. This has resulted in several wars that have only weakened the image of the just cause of the Palestinians. The Arab and Islamic worlds and pro-Palestinian activists tend to embrace a policy of anger and outrage Ray Hanania Anger also led to the rise of an evil hatred embodied by the violence of Hamas, which in 1994 launched a campaign of suicide bombings against Israeli targets, both military and civilian. This wave of suicide bombings undermined confidence in the Oslo I Accord signed the year before by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. As hopes of peace deteriorated, a disciple of Likud's rising star at the time, Netanyahu, assassinated Rabin and threw the entire process into cardiac arrest. I attended the White House ceremony at which Rabin and Arafat signed the Oslo I Accord. But it was just too much for the extremists in Israel and the pro-Israel movement to accept. Hamas walked right into the hands of the Sharon and Netanyahu fanatics, giving them exactly what they needed to tear the Oslo Accords to pieces and advance the absorption of the lands occupied in the 1967 war. However, despite the damage caused by the pro-Israel manipulation of the truth, Palestinians can reverse this decimation of their image. Palestinians need to accept that Israel is and will always be more powerful militarily. It can also better disguise its violence by using distortions of international law and media bias. The proper response is to reject all forms of violence, contain one's anger and pursue legal challenges to Israel's violations of international law. Mahatma Gandhi, the anti-colonialist peace activist, did that when confronting widespread British oppression in India. He turned the other cheek in the face of British violence and resisted any desire for revenge attacks. Palestinians need to make a clean break from Hamas and define a new leadership, even in the face of Israel's brutal violence Ray Hanania Palestinians need to make a clean break from Hamas and define a new leadership, even in the face of Israel's brutal violence. They cannot wait until Israel's carnage is concluded, because it will not be concluded any time soon. They need to commit to an entirely nonviolent response to Israel and the growing anti-Palestine movement in America. The horrible Gaza genocide naturally fuels pain, suffering and anger, but these emotions need to be contained in order to effectively neutralize Israel's fanaticism and its increasing violence. An eye-for-an-eye response will not work amid today's trauma. Palestinians need to show the strength of their compassion for all human beings — Christians, Muslims and Jews alike — in every expression and in every action. To do otherwise only gives Israel a platform to ratchet up its violent oppression. Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at X: @RayHanania
