Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
Few foundation myths are as diametrically opposed as those of Jews and Palestinians. In the original Jewish narrative, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 meant redemption, an escape from the genocidal persecution of the Nazis and a return to the land promised by God (for the religious) or historical precedent (for the secular). For the Palestinians, it was the nakba, the Disaster: banishment from their ancestral homes as the innocent victims of aggressive Jewish nationalism.
Time has mollified both these tales. Most Palestinians, even if they still do not think Israel’s birth at their expense was justified, accept that the place now has to be allowed to exist. Most Israelis, too, have come to accept the Palestinians’ own right to self-determination, and Israeli “revisionist historians” have rewritten the academic accounts of the country’s birth to reflect its mistreatment of the native population. What the two sides teach their children, though, are still quite different things. Access the full article>>