Shlomo Avineri-10/05/2007

Shlomo Avineri, (Haaretz)

"A much used expression in Jewish tradition says "because of our sins we were exiled from our land." This expression is religious, but it indicates that the Jews viewed their exile in a self-critical manner. It would have been easy, of course, to blame the Romans and the other nations for their fate. But the Jewish narrative did not do so and viewed both the destruction and exile as deriving, among other things, from the Jews' own actions and shortcomings.

Every nation, especially a defeated one, sees itself as a victim. But most of the nations that were defeated - Germany after World War II is the classic example - also looked at themselves, at their society, values and actions.

Far be it from me to maintain that in 1948 the Jews were "right" and the Arabs were "wrong." What troubles me and other Zionist Israelis wishing to be attentive to the Palestinians' pain and willing to help rectify injustices and accept a historic compromise, is the Palestinians' complete unwillingness to acknowledge that in 1948 they and their leaders made a terrible historic mistake - of both political and moral proportions - by rejecting the international compromise they were offered.

It is for this reason that the Palestinians' customary comparison between the Nakba and the Holocaust is so outrageous. Did the Jews of Germany and Europe declare war on Germany? Were the world's Jews offered a compromise that they rejected? Europe's Jews were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews. What does that have to do with the Palestinians' decision to refuse the UN's compromise proposal and go to war?

It would not be exaggerated to say that there will be no true compromise between Israel and the Palestinians without a readiness on their part - however minute and partial, for the "truth" is always complex - to admit that they, too, are partly responsible for what happened to them in 1948."

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