In his speech at the UN General Assembly meeting earlier this month, President Obama acknowledged that the Palestinian Authority had made great headway on security issues, which is their main responsibility under the Roadmap, but added that they should do more to combat incitement. This is a reasonable request, especially when incitement comes from PA-funded or subsidized institutions, as it sometimes does. However, the persistent concerns about incitement in the Palestinian media, which are entirely reasonable and valid, in this case and as usual, come in the absence of any recognition of the serious problem of incitement in the Israeli media.

In the past week, both of Israel’s most important newspapers, Yediot Ahronot, the largest circulation daily paper in the country, and Ha’aretz, the most respected and sophisticated Israeli paper, featured commentaries by Jewish Israeli extremists that denied the existence of the Palestinian people, implied the need to remove them from their country, and sought refuge in the absurd fantasy of "Jordan is Palestine." Incitement to violence comes in many forms, including this one. The wholesale denial of the existence, national identity and history of the Palestinians is not morally or intellectually superior to Holocaust denial. Support for the occupation and the denial of the most fundamental not only national but even civil and human rights of the Palestinians and labeling them "the occupiers" is plainly supportive of a political agenda that is nothing if not violent and that can only lead to countless instances, and an entire brutal and hideous system, of quite extreme violence.

Because this kind of incitement, which is not extraordinary enough in Israel to be rejected as legitimate commentary by either of the country’s major national dailies or to provoke any evident outcry, is distressingly familiar to all of those who follow the discourse of the Israeli right wing. That it receives less attention in the United States and from the international media generally than even fairly marginal instances of Palestinian incitement as meticulously catalogued, and occasionally fabricated, by propaganda organizations such as MEMRI, does not make this Jewish Israeli incitement any less dangerous or worthy of attention and condemnation.

In today’s edition of Ha’aretz, a familiar figure on the Israeli racist ultra-right, Ron Breiman, who was chairman of the extremist group "Professors for a Strong Israel" from 2001 to 2005, provides a perfect example of what I mean. On his bizarro side of the looking glass, the Palestinians in the occupied territories are an "army of occupation" and "the occupier," and under Oslo "liberated territories became occupied territories" by allowing the Palestinians a small measure of self-rule in extremely limited areas. All of this, of course, is because only the Israeli national project is legitimate and the Arab presence in Palestine is a temporary and recent usurpation and fraud.

This man clings to the delusion that the Palestinians are merely interlopers who entered the country following Zionist colonization in the early part of the 20th century (a particularly preposterous and completely discredited absurdity). At best, Arabs in Palestine were place-holders for distant imperial rulers, so how could they possibly have any legitimate or natural national sentiments? And the Arab presence in Palestine certainly has no history predating the emergence of Islam:
Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel immigrated here after our waves of aliyah. In other words, Zionism and the prosperity it engendered spawned "the Palestinian people." Since the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel in the seventh century, and throughout the centuries of Muslim occupation, not one of the occupiers viewed this land as anything more than a distant imperial outpost.

But, this is a generous and kind-hearted extremist. Not for him the slightly excessive siren song of ethnic cleansing:
In contrast with the critics who espouse a racist transfer of Jews from Judea and Samaria, I reject any forcible transfer of any population group.

But this massive concession leads him to a certain despair, that without further ethnic cleansing and mass expulsions, perhaps there is no way to resolve the conflict (since Palestinian nationalism is, after all, a hoax and ending the occupation simply unthinkable):
Perhaps there is no solution to the problem. There is certainly no solution at this point. But this is no reason to commit suicide or sacrifice the Zionist vision on the altar of "peace."

You will be relived to learn that the "professor" has a brilliant solution, albeit temporary. He imagines that the Israeli occupation can continue to function and become permanent without allowing the Palestinians any political rights whatsoever, by somehow securing for them Jordanian and Egyptian citizenship:
If there is a solution, it cannot be found within the confines of just the western Land of Israel. In the long term, the solution will be a regional one that combines democracy, demography and geography. The Arabs of the Land of Israel will continue to live in their present homes and will hold Jordanian and Egyptian (for Gazans) citizenship, voting for their respective parliaments.

Of course he does not consider why or how Egypt and Jordan could possibly be compelled or convinced to impose their citizenship on millions of Palestinians living in territories to which neither has any claim of sovereignty and which would be regarded as an existential crisis by both states and undoubtedly rejected by the Palestinians themselves. And, what would be the point of voting for parliaments that have zero political influence and authority in the territory in which one lives? It would be entirely too generous to call this nonsense.

The ultimate solution, of course, is the same old idea: Jordan is Palestine. The Palestinians will and should take over Jordan and, it is impossible not to conclude from his text, leave "western Israel" and go to the new Palestinian state there:
In the long term, citizens of Jordan who comprise an overwhelming majority in eastern Transjordan will gain power in Amman. It is there that a solution will be found for their brothers who live west of the Jordan River.

While waiting for the realization of this racist wet dream, however, "we must end the occupation. The Arab occupation in the Land of Israel." This apparently means absolutely cancelling any Palestinian authority, national organizations or infrastructure. Anyone who fails to see the depth of not only the hatred and racism, but also the clear incitement to violence, in these words does not know how to read.

In last Wednesday’s Yediot Ahronot, someone called Moshe Dann, who is identified as a former assistant professor of history, wrote another outstanding screed denying that the Palestinian people even exist and insisting that they have no legitimate or historically-rooted national rights in their own country. Again, the Palestinian identity is cast as a myth and an anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic plot to destroy the Jewish state.

There is no such thing as the Palestinian people because in the wake of the 1948 war, he claims, "This heterogeneous population was called ‘Arab refugees,’ not ‘Palestinians,’ because at the time there was no such group, or people." Of course there was indeed a rhetoric by that time that identified the Arabs of Palestine as Palestinians, but more to the point, before 1948, what and who were the "Israelis?" This is not a term that would have been recognized by anyone, and had no meaning until then. Before the 1948 war, the Israeli identity was unknown and the Palestinian identity was nascent, and referred in many instances to both Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and also to elements of the British mandatory structure.

I never cease to marvel at the number of Israelis and Zionists who seem to feel that their own national identity, which at least in terms of the "Israeli" identity does not predate 1948 (up to the eve of the Israeli declaration of independent statehood there was an ongoing debate over what, precisely, to call the new Jewish state, with Judea a major contender until almost the last minute), is somehow an ontological category of being, eternal, transcendent and beyond historical contingency or interrogation. Both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict readily recognize how recent and contingent the national identity of the other side really is, but completely fail to see that much the same applies to their own (I think a more thorough consideration of this mutual misrecognition is required on the Ibishblog at some future date).

Having established that Palestinian identity does not exist, Dann writes that, "It took a crafty Egyptian, Yasser Arafat, to create the PLO with his friends to promote the destruction of Israel and the return of Arab refugees." Obviously, we are here in the presence of the most moldy and putrid Israeli propaganda, which, no matter how many times it is staked by the facts rises again from the grave to walk among us, thirsting for credulous and fanatical victims.

For Dann, every aspect of Palestinian identity and national aspirations are a "fraud":
As the proportion of anti-Israel countries in the UN grew, "Palestinians" were given more and more recognition, support and legitimacy, unlike any other group. And the fraud worked! It worked so well because the world’s media accepted the Palestinians’ self-definition and their cause. Even the Israeli media, politicians and jurists adopted this myth. Academics promoted "Palestinian archeology," "Palestinian society and culture." Every time someone writes or speaks of "Palestinians" it reinforces this myth.

To debunk Palestinian national identity, Dann proposes the following masterpiece of insight: "This amalgam of national identity is possible because ‘Palestinian’ is not a separate, unique linguistic, cultural, ethnic, religious or racial group." Whereas, of course, the Israeli identity… oh, sorry, that’s right. Never mind. As noted above, the simplest self-awareness, let alone any effort at metacognition, are not qualities typically found on either side of this conflict.

Like almost all of the rhetoric of the extreme Israeli right, Dann’s ridiculous assertions are all marshaled to deny the legitimacy or the prospects of Palestinian national rights, and like Breiman, he insists that Palestinians have no national rights and no future in any part of their country and must ultimately somehow become Jordanians. He even suggests that Palestinians are not entitled to civil and human rights in Israel or the occupied territories:
Arabs of Palestine are entitled to civil and human rights in the countries in which they have resided for generations. That there needs to be a second Arab Palestinian state, in addition to Jordan, which was carved out of Palestine and whose population is two-thirds "Palestinian," and whether such a state will resolve all the attendant problems is extremely doubtful. That the State of Israel should commit suicide to accomplish this goal is unthinkable.

This is the essential stance of the Israeli extremists: the occupation is Israel, and any talk of ending it is national suicide and "unthinkable." In order to rationalize this fanatical position, which is not any less extreme than that of Hamas, Palestinian identity, history, and basic human, civil and national rights must be absolutely and absurdly denied. Of course it is perfectly true that one can readily find an analogous discourse among some Palestinians, and that has become a matter of international concern and diplomacy, even reflected in Obama’s UN speech. But the persistent and malignant incitement in the Israeli media (not to mention by some of the Israeli military rabbis, as witnessed during the Gaza war, radical politicians and many others) must become more widely recognized as a major part of the problem if both societies are to overcome their wrath and move towards a reasonable peace agreement. Within the context of a respect for freedom of speech, counteracting incitement is a responsibility not only for Palestinians, but for Israelis as well.