Pro-Palestinian Forces Blame Everyone But Themselves

By Bruce S. Ticker

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania –It is all about them. Again.

Muslims and Arabs in Maine, Michigan and Los Angeles over the weekend seemed to blame Israel, America and others for everything, but they don’t accept responsibility in the never-ending Israel-Hamas war.

“We are fed up with all sides,” Dearborn Heights City Council chairman Mo Baydoun tells a New York Times reporter in a wide-ranging article that describes relations between Arab-Americans in Michigan and political operators in both major parties.

They are fed up with every side but their own. In so doing, Muslim- and Arab-Americans dodge responsibility, distort grim conditions, neglect to mention relevant facts and lie outright. It is a recipe for demolishing their credibility, and that could dilute any sympathy for their brethren in Gaza who continue to struggle with military attacks, hunger and displacement.

In an op-ed for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald this weekend, Kristen Haddad presents this glaring falsehood: “For decades, the U.S. has masqueraded as a peace broker while pressuring Palestinians to accept deals that overwhelmingly benefit Israel. Palestinian resistance is then framed as refusal to negotiate.”

She must be referring to this deal: Nearly a quarter-century ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a proposal for an independent state comprising all of Gaza, 93 percent of the West Bank and at least part of eastern Jerusalem. Arafat responded by resuming hostilities. Maybe Haddad can explain how that “overwhelmingly benefit(s) Israel.”

Haddad denies that American military aid to Israel minimizes Israel’s losses since Oct. 7, 2023, as she cites “a Lancet study” estimate that “over 186,000 Palestinians have likely died due to direct attacks and destruction of infrastructure. Meanwhile, Israel reports 1,200 casualties, a third of whom were soldiers.” Hamas’ official list of Palestinian deaths is 48,000.

Haddad downplays Israeli casualties. 1,200 Israelis were murdered when Hamas and other terrorists launched the war. She neglects to mention that. She also does not tell us that Hamas installs its military operations in schools, hospitals, residential buildings and other sites where “over 186,000 Palestinians have likely died.”

It is hard to defend Israel’s military response because the situation has been so complicated. No sensitive person can be unmoved by the deaths of the Palestinians, but Hamas set up its own people as human shields and refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages. Haddad knows this, unless her only news sources are that of terrorists.

I took note that she lists the estimated amount of Gazan child deaths, but she omits the number of Israeli children killed.

Haddad, a member of the Maine Coalition for Palestine, also quoted Israeli notables who planned to create an Israeli state that rejects Arab inclusion. Arab leaders had the same idea, to control the land without Jewish involvement – another fact that she neglects to mention.

In 1947, Jews and Arabs were given the chance to share the land under the United Nations decree, but the Jews were willing to compromise as Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948.

Arab-Americans in suburban Detroit are among those rattled by Israeli bombings that, according to Hamas, killed 400 Gazans last week. They excluded themselves from the list of people to blame that includes Democrats, Republicans, Trump supporters, human rights organizations, the media and critics of the Arab community, the Times reports.

“It’s like nobody is really listening to us as our people are being killed,” said Mo Baydoun of the Dearborn Heights City Council, according to the Times.

Lucky he and others have not been heard. They talk in circles so much that it seems hard to pry the truth out of the web of fiction. They are now vulnerable to blame for Trump’s election because many of them pledged to vote for candidates other than Democrat Kamala Harris, the vice president, to punish her party because they claim President Biden failed to do enough to restrain Israel.

Trump received slightly less of the popular vote last November and barely won the majority of electoral votes in the swing states, particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Two months since Trump was inaugurated, Israel has been accused of resuming the war and his administration arrested a student leader with the intent of deporting him for his protest activities.

So, Dearborn is mad at Trump. Or simply mad.

At least pro-Palestinian activists allies in Los Angeles have a sense of humor. They believe they were entitled to protection from pro-Israel assailants while they occupied university property.

According to the Times, activists filed a lawsuit against the University of California, Los Angeles, on grounds that the school and various police forces failed to protect them in an encampment that they installed.  They said school officials shut down the camp without reason. During the course of several hours on the night of last April 30, the encampment was attacked by pro-Israel activists.

Jewish students claimed UCLA permitted the camp to remain open for days, although it created a hostile atmosphere and prevented them from entering some parts of campus, the Times reports.

The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Los Angeles, seeks monetary damages for physical and psychological injuries suffered by the demonstrators. The suit says that counter protesters sprayed chemical irritants into people’s eyes and pulled down metal and wooden barricades, using them as weapons. They said that police ignored their pleas for help, the Times article adds.

This lawsuit. maybe, is a script to revive Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series. Or perhaps a pilot for an even funnier show. All it needs are some of Susie Essman’s verbal bombs – directed at the plaintiffs.

*
Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.