Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: "An exclusionary and radical set of players has hijacked the Palestinian narrative"
There are people who believe the Levant is exclusively and divinely ordained for Palestinians, and there are people who believe it is so for Jews.
Both of those groups are detached from reality, detached from history, and detached from anything resembling a humanistic value of justice. Both of them are in power.
The task laid out for all of us in the Jewish diaspora is to diminish the power of the extremists in our communities.
And here Alkhatib suggests that you can also diminish the power of extremists in the Palestinian community by lifting up other voices, multitudinous voices, voices like his.
You’re not wrong to fear extremists. But it is wrong to let your fear of extremists silence reasonable people, to silence an entire community desperately demanding basic decency and repair from Israel and beyond.
Alkhatib is not to blame for racists who lump him in with violent theocrats. Yet he’s right to call out the violent theocrats who damage the movement for justice.
I take his words to heart as those of one person.
Tags: israel-palestine