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The hypocrisy coursing through the following tale is so potent that one does not know whether to laugh with incredulity or weep with frustration:
Complaints by Israeli settlers angry at Facebook for listing them as residents of “Palestine” prompted the popular social networking Web site to allow users to switch their location back to Israel.
Facebook users living in Maaleh Adumim, Ariel and other large West Bank settlements protested when the site automatically listed their hometowns as being in “Palestine,” and a group of settlers had accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.
“I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called ‘Palestine,’” wrote Ari Zimmerman on Facebook. [Source]
I feel your pain, Ari, I really do.
As, I am sure, do the thousands upon thousands of Palestinians stripped of their country, and the children who now must learn from revamped history books in which their land is as real as Alice’s Wonderland.
Excuse me then, if the tears I wipe are less in disappointment and more in tragic mirth as your surprise and disappointment is registered and remedied against international law, and that of the West Bankers is discarded.
I keep reading that Israelis “do not oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state if safety can be guaranteed,” but my question is – who’s safety are they worried about? Their own or that of the Palestinians? I feel like both sides are for the most part concerned with their own establishments, their own safety, their own country. Yes, they both want peace, but only so that they are secure. I want to believe that this “hope for a deal” is something that will go through, but I often find that it is just a show.
An old woman, who I learned about in a short documentary, is one of the last Palestinian hold-outs in the Israeli-occupied territories. She seems to be pretty cynical, and I don’t blame her. She of all people would know that despite people continually “talking peace” things don’t seem to really change.
Here is a link to the 8 minute film about this woman living in the west bank/occupied territories: http://explore.org/explore/middleeast/films/147