{"id":4058,"date":"2012-11-28T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T20:33:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-03-21T13:43:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T11:43:39","slug":"epalestine-national-interest-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/2012\/11\/epalestine-national-interest-why\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Interest: Why Americans Don’t Understand Palestine (by Scott McConnell)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published on The National Interest (http:\/\/nationalinterest.org)  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Why Americans Don’t Understand Palestine  <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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November 27, 2012  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Scott McConnell [2]  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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If a man from Mars descended to observe Israel\u2019s attack on the Gaza strip, he would have seen one group of humans trapped in a densely populated area, largely defenseless while a modern air force destroyed their buildings at will. He might have learned that the people in Gaza had been essentially enclosed for several years in a sort of ghetto, deprived by the Israeli navy of access to the fish in their sea, generally unable to travel or to trade with the outside world, barred by Israeli forces from much of their arable land, all the while surveyed continuously from the sky by a foe which could assassinate their leaders at will and often did.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This Martian also might learn that the residents of Gaza\u2014most of them descendants of refugees who had fled or been driven from Israel in 1948\u2014had been under Israeli occupation for 46 years, and intensified closure for six, a policy described by Israeli officials as \u201ceconomic warfare\u201d and privately by American diplomats as intended to keep Gaza \u201cfunctioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.\u201d He might note that Gaza\u2019s water supply is failing, as Israel blocks the entry of materials that could be used to repair and upgrade its sewage and water-treatment infrastructure. That ten percent of its children suffer from malnutrition and that cancer and birth defects are on the rise. That the fighting had started after a long standing truce had broken down after a series of tit-for-tat incidents, followed by the Israeli assassination of an Hamas leader, and the typical Hamas response of firing inaccurate rockets, which do Israel little damage.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But our man from Mars is certainly not an American. And while empathy for the underdog is said to be an American trait, this is not true if the underdog is Palestinian.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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READ ON AT: <\/span><\/span> http:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/print\/commentary\/the-official-line-palestine-7769<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Published on The National Interest (http:\/\/nationalinterest.org)  Why Americans Don’t Understand Palestine  November 27, 2012  Scott McConnell [2]  If a man from Mars descended to observe Israel\u2019s attack on the Gaza strip, he would have seen one group of humans trapped in a densely populated area, largely defenseless while a modern air force destroyed their buildings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1586,1401,980],"ppma_author":[936],"class_list":["post-4058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-america-and-americans","tag-hamas","tag-united-states-of-america-usa"],"authors":[{"term_id":936,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sambahour","display_name":"Sam Bahour","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bca109c333bf6d8ae807746dd512adde46265d37c923f6cd0fc4aab437f8e9aa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","first_name":"Sam","last_name":"Bahour","user_url":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour","job_title":"","description":"Sam Bahour (\u0633\u0627\u0645 \u0628\u062d\u0648\u0631) resides in Al-Bireh\/Ramallah, Palestine. He does business consulting as Applied Information Management<\/a> (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups.\r\n\r\nBahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers (APSC). He is Co-founder & Emeritus Member of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy<\/a> (A4VPE) and until recently served as an independent Director at the Arab Islamic Bank P.L.C. and a board member at Just Vision<\/a>.\r\n\r\nHe writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published in leading outlets. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians<\/a><\/em> (Olive Branch Press, 1993), tweets at @SamBahour<\/a>, and blogs at epalestine.ps.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7808,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions\/7808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}