As I read Professor Nonini's (guest column) regarding divestment from Israel, I noticed he suffered from a common ailment among those advocating his position, a selective omission of facts that are "inconvenient" to a historically shaky argument tainted by pro-Palestinian propaganda.
While discussing Israel's unwillingness to recognize the "legitimate aspirations" of the Palestinian people, he fails to mention that under the original U.N. partitioning of Israel in 1948, Palestinians were allocated a state nearly geographically identical to the one they want today.
The infant Israeli government endorsed the plan.
However, rather than live peacefully with their Israeli neighbors or return to the negotiating table, surrounding Arab countries immediately invaded Israel with the goal of "driving them into the sea."
Today, Israeli Arabs who didn't choose a path of violence are among the wealthiest citizens in Israel, enjoying full and complete rights all the way up to representation in the Knesset.
A far cry from the apartheid.
Dr. Nonini also neglects to mention the specifics of the Camp David talks in 2000, where Ehud Barak took a stance even more moderate than the late Yitzak Rabin, father of the peace movement, in offering Palestinian leaders control of east Jerusalem.
That offer was of course refused and countered with an intifada of brutal attacks targeted at civilians, endorsed and funded by Yasser Arafat himself.
The majority of Israelis want a Palestinian state, but they would be foolish to allow the creation of a new Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan in their backyard.
