Wrong! (and utterly unfair)

If what Aluf Benn writes at Haaretz is true, it could explain the insanity we are seeing in Condoleezza Rice. If what he writes is true, we had better complain to her boss, and quickly, before all is lost.

When Condoleezza Rice talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, she sees in her mind's eye the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, which culminated in the period of her Alabama childhood.

Rice is very aware of political sensitivity, and avoids making such comparisons in public speeches and interviews, where she keeps to the official list of talking points. But in private, she talks about the segregated buses of her childhood.

One can guess that the settlements, the checkpoints and the separation fences created by Israel on the West Bank bring back unpleasant memories of Jim Crow racial separation in the South. Her empathy for the suffering of the Palestinians under occupation goes beyond the strict interests of the administration in promoting the status of the United States in the Middle East and has the touch of her personal experience.

Rice was one year old when Rosa Parks, a heroine of the struggle for equal rights in the U.S., refused to yield her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. This was in Montgomery, Alabama, a 90-minute ride from Titusville, the Birmingham suburb where the future secretary of state was raised....

Now, Rice is comparing Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayad, to Martin Luther King. Abbas is committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence, and like Abbas he is opposed to terror and violence. Just as Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy and former British prime minister, compares the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, so does Rice recall the struggle for civil rights in the United States when she speaks about the Palestinian boy who needs new hope instead of aspiring to commit a suicide attack....

The writer doesn't quote specifics, so we'll have to do some checking. If it's even vaguely true, though, Rice has it all twisted up. A more accurate analogy would be that Israel is like the Black family that moved into an all-white neighborhood and had crosses burned on their lawn (or bricks thrown through their windows) in order to frighten them away. Who would not have defended their right to stay?

Yet Rice demands concessions from the only Jewish household in the Arab neighborhood: If you want to stay here, you have to give your white Islamic supremacist neighbors your back yard and your swimming pool, and the sidewalk that runs from your front door to your garage. And they might want more later on, like your living room and kitchen. But you get to keep whatever they don't want. And you pay the mortgage. And the neighbors' utility bills. Oh, and feed their children.

In this day and age, African Americans can live anywhere in the world they want. Jews cannot. Jews are not allowed to travel to or live in the Gaza strip. We cannot own property or become citizens in Jordan. We are not allowed to travel to Syria or Saudi Arabia.

According to Rice's own State Department, Israeli Jews are subject to official discrimination in Iraq. If you thought that "Documents Relating to Jews" was a thing of the past, think again.

1. The head of the Jewish community in Baghdad does not maintain records of births. Birth certificates issued by him are based either on Iraq Government Census Books or on evidence given by reliable persons. Jews who were born in Baghdad but are now living in foreign countries may obtain birth certificates by submitting evidence of date and place of birth duly certified by the head of the Jewish community in the place of the applicant's present residence.

2. Records of marriages and divorces are maintained by the head of the Jewish community in Baghdad, and marriage and divorce certificates issued by him are based on these records.

3. No certificates are issued by the head of the Jewish community in Baghdad to Jews who are residents of Israel.

There's more, of course, but should I have to explain these things to the Secretary of State? I don't think so.

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UPDATE: I wrote to Aluf Benn and asked for any substantiation of his comments on Secretary Rice. He very kindly responded immediately:

I cannot name my sources, and as I have written, Rice did not speak in public about these matters. But I rely on firm ground.

Comments

[RR]

Condoleezza Rice in her “Keynote Address at the American Task Force on Palestine Inaugural Gala” on October 11, 2006: “I know that sometimes a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel must seem like a very distant dream. But I know too, as a student of international history, that there are so many things that once seemed impossible that, after they happened, simply seemed inevitable. I've read over the last summer the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. By all rights, America, the United States of America, should never have come into being. We should never have survived our civil war. I should never have grown up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama to become the Secretary of State of the United States of America.”

[J. Lichty]

The comparison of Abu Mazen to MLK is profane and ironic. MLK (despite the urban legend of the letter to anti-zionist friend) was reputedly a staunch supporter of zionism and was very philo-semitic. Thank God Rice will be gone to her next career in the Saudi Foreign Ministry next year. What a disaster. Makes me wish Powell were still on the job.

[Irene]

She speaks for her boss.