{"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":"","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<\/strong> is a Palestinian-American business consultant, writer, and commentator based in Al-Bireh\/Ramallah, Palestine. He is the principal of Applied Information Management (AIM)<\/a>, a consultancy specializing in business development and startup advisory services.<\/p>\r\n

Bahour played a foundational role in establishing two of Palestine\u2019s publicly traded companies: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers (APSC). He co-founded Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy (A4VPE), of which he is now an emeritus member, and served as an independent director on the board of Arab Islamic Bank P.L.C. from 2004 to 2025. He currently serves on the board of Just Vision<\/a> and The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS)<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

He frequently gives talks to delegations visiting Palestine on the subjects of Palestine\u2019s political economy, Palestinian Politics 101, and a general orientation to the state of affairs under Israeli military occupation.<\/p>\r\n

A prolific writer on Palestinian affairs, Bahour has been published in major international outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, Haaretz, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera America, Le Monde diplomatique, Al-Monitor, +972 Magazine, The Hill, and Arab News. He has appeared as a commentator on NPR, CNN, BBC, and other broadcast media.<\/p>\r\n

Bahour is the co-editor of Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians<\/a><\/em> (Olive Branch Press, 1993) and was profiled in the bestselling anthology Kingdom of Olives and Ash<\/a><\/em>, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, in a chapter authored by Chabon titled \u201cThe Tallest Man in Ramallah<\/a>.\u201d He holds an Associate\u2019s and Bachelor\u2019s degree in Computer Technology from Youngstown State University, and a Kellogg-Recanati International Executive MBA \u2014 a joint program of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University.<\/p>\r\n

He tweets at @SamBahour<\/a>, blogs at www.epalestine.ps<\/a>, and may be reached at sbahour[AT]gmail[DOT]com.<\/p>"}],"_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}]}}