Thursday was Thanksgiving Day in America, a day as rich in myth as it is in calories.
In the four hundred years that have passed since the original Pilgrim-Native American feast, artists have sketched that scene on countless canvases and, in the process, etched it onto the American psyche.
History is itself more of a tableau than a book. It lives not on pages but in imaginations. Books can be edited in a single year; minds take far longer. So for generations, "the savages" were the natives, the European explorers and settlers the righteous ones.
Palestinians have suffered an even crueler fate. Their existence as a distinct people is still denied today, a myth of a "land without people for a people without land" that continues to color the perspective of some Israelis and their allies.
Even worse, now that the vast majority of the world - and Israelis - recognize their right to a homeland, they engage in brutal tactics that taint a newly reconstructed image with the blood of innocents. Those who support and direct misguided young people to "martyr" themselves should be charged with murder and sedition. Full stop.
There is no religion that celebrates these acts. None. Don't even try to come up with a caveat, a "but if". There are none. This is not jihad, this is haraam. It's time this mayhem was made a secular crime and treated as such anywhere it occurs.
Perhaps some Palestinians and their Arab supporters are proud to be associated with Osama Bin Laden. If so, they are guilty of perpetrating a gross injustice to a very just cause.
Hamas touts Israel's unilateral Gaza withdrawal as a solid victory for its terror campaign. Not so fast. Until last week, Palestinians were in effect jailed inside Gaza with no jobs, scant housing, little potable water and open sewers. Their jailor, Ariel Sharon, could argue quite convincingly that Israeli security trumped Palestinian poverty. Paradise? I think not.
The West Bank will not be won - not as a contiguous territory and certainly not with East Jerusalem to anchor it - through violence.
Palestine is not Lebanon. One page out of that playbook worth noting: Hezbollah shifted tactics to win more popular support. One lesson to be learned from their current dilemma: Don't let victory go to your head.
"Justice", not territorial settlement, is the common refrain in the region. As Dr. Azmi Bishara said recently, "I want to remind you that the goal of the Palestinians originally was not statehood but liberation and justice. . . What is suggested by Bush and Sharon is a state instead of justice - a state instead of a solution, as a dis-solution of the Palestinian issue."
What is that "issue" when those whose hearts and minds Palestinians must win abroad are coloring their vision of the conflict with the blood of Israeli children not Palestinian? When confusion over who committed the last wrong obscures the cause?
Justice is blind, not dumb. The scales will never balance when both sides choose to victimize innocents. Shouldn't the strategy center on a clear image of Palestinians as victims, not victimizers?
I never tire of asking after the long, lost legacy of the first intifada. Truly heroic stone-throwing kids aiming at tanks, heavily armored vehicles, shielded soldiers - the entire world saw quite starkly the contrast between occupier and occupied. A strategy that showcased the Palestinian cause and came at a time when Israelis were themselves beginning to question the myths of their Zionist history.
Is there really something in the Palestinian psyche that demands an eye-for-an-eye? I don't think so.
Two weeks ago, an Israeli soldier shot a 12-year-old boy from Jenin's refugee camp who was waving a toy gun. He was hospitalized in Israel, but died days later. His parents, while grieving for him felt enough compassion for the suffering of Israeli children in the same ward that they donated his organs to help save them.
According to the front-page article in the Washington Post, Zakaria Zbeida, Fatah's chief within the Jenin refugee camp, said, "Five members of the Israeli community are now carrying part of a Palestinian. I don't think someone with a Palestinian organ will now kill a Palestinian. Not to mention, these families now have a family in Jenin."
Imagine how that one event shaped readers' views of Palestinians that day. Imagine how in millions of minds the Palestinians finally existed as they are, a kind and honorable people unjustly treated who retain their humanity despite generations of abuse and sorrow. Imagine Sharon and his allies' chagrin when they were reduced to a sideshow, their "terrorist" rant silenced for a day or two.
History is made and remade a little bit every day. It is a living tapestry because its craftsmen are all of us. Israelis spend tens of millions on public relations not only to corner the market on "here and now" but to mold and color longer-term impressions that are themselves constantly evolving.
Palestinians can do so for a fraction of the cost but only with careful (and so far lacking) political coordination, discipline in the face of Israeli provocations, and articulate messengers with highly refined media skills - and a Western accent.
Palestinians have no military power yet the moral high ground is theirs alone if they choose to abandon terror (let's not quibble on the terminology) and employ tactics of resistance. It really is that simple. And yes, Palestinians should obey international laws and decorum that Israel openly flouts. That's the price of being the victim and the public relations advantage too.
Then, just watch Israel's wall come down, foreign investment in Palestine explode, and how quickly statehood follows.
Palestinians can easily trounce Osama Bin Laden's record in Afghanistan without even firing a bullet. After all, he only took out a few already weak divisions of the Soviet Army; he didn't bring down the Berlin Wall and with it the Iron Curtain. Palestinians can.
- Maggie Mitchel Salem is a public affairs and media consultant in Washington D.C.
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