Israeli peace activist Miko Peled is in Seattle this week to give a presentation called “Beyond the Zionist Paradigm: New Hope for Israel/Palestine.”
I saw him at the University Temple United Methodist Church last night, and he’ll speak again at the University of Washington’s Smith Hall on Thursday at 6:30pm in room 205.
Peled was born and raised in Jerusalem, served in the Israeli army, and now lives in San Diego, California. He comes from a privileged family, his father was an Israeli army general who took an active role in orchestrating the attack on Arab armies in the Six Day War of 1967.
Peled’s presentation, outlined by his newly published book The General’s Son: a Journey of an Israeli in Palestine with a forward by Alice Walker, provides a historical narrative of the creation and objectives of the Zionist state, intertwined with narratives of personal histories.
The presentation is almost like The Question of Palestine 101. He begins with some background on Zionism’s movement into Palestine, then the partition of Palestine in 1948 and its occupation by what we now know as Israel.
But his narrative goes beyond politics to a personal story of self discovery.
His mother, born and raised in occupied Palestine, refused to live in homes stolen from Palestinians who fled for their lives in 1948, because she could not understand why she would steal their property. His father, in 1973 began informal peace negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. His niece was killed in a bombing in Jerusalem. His sister, in a press conference after her daughter’s death, said that she blamed the Israeli government because, “as long as Palestinians are denied peace, hope, homes, water, and land, we will always have things happen.”
For Peled, the truth lies in the personal story, not the national narrative. At age 39, he says he became aware of his privileges as an Israeli Jew from an affluent family in Israel, and came to the conclusion that everything he was taught in school and served in the military for were lies.
Peled draws on this awareness to narrate a story of a national dogma that is in its essence racist. And like racism, he says, Zionism has to go.
Miko Peled’s presentation at UNC Chapel Hill, NC 11-12-12 was a collection of misrepresentations and, as usual with his NC sponsor the Coalition for Peace with Justice, full of “the sins of omission.” He includes a projected photo of his niece killed in a terrorist attack in Israel, but refused to answer a question from a woman in the audience asking if he thought the attack was justified (he repeats “Zionism is racism” and faults Israel for “ethnic cleansing” repeatedly), but he said the woman’s question about his presentation was “offensive.” He topped it all off when I asked Peled why he omits saying that there is a high percent of Arab Jews in Israel “because they were ejected from Arab countries after Israel was established.” Peled’s reply, “That’s a lie, that’s a lie.” See al Arabiya re Yasser Arafat;s wife Suha: http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2007/08/22/38159.html
Stop lying Lynne, you and all the people working with you there to change wikipedia and change the truth. Israel is kill, destroy, invade…
yes, once again the lies and distortions of the anti-semites, the palestinian muslim arabs were cutting the heads off jewish children and stabbing their mothers to death. that was hebron 1929 (see police chief ray cafferatas report to the court 1929) no, nothings changed, israel is in a battle for survivlal against 100’s of millions of arabs and islamists. now, with the help of degenerates like this israel is surrounded by enemies seeking nuclear weapons to finish hitlers plot of killing all the jews. this miko peled should be tried for crimes against humanity. fame and fortune, he has sold his soul to the devil
This man’s goal is everything that will bring peace. He and every Israeli and Jews around the world that are finally taking a stand are helping to awaken the CONSCIENCE of the Israeli people and the world. His personal connection to the very moment in time that changed the face of the Middle East. The military accounts, actions, and predictions of his own father about the fate of Israel. What his mother accounts as she witnessed the Palestinians being driven out of their homes. All the voices of past Israelis speaking out in this book grab and demand the readers attention.
All his findings and work have historical backing by Israeli historians, sources, and information that have come straight out of Israel itself – including its own military archive. They can be easily found and are provided.
The rise of the Israeli war mongering regime, the destruction of Palestine, what was in Palestine before the systematic decimation of the Palestinian people, the myths, the propaganda, and the distortions all exposed. Making this book a MUST READ for anyone new to the conflict of those familiar with it and seeking out the truth behind all the distortions.
All written and researched by an Israeli, whose only goal is for conscience to rise, barriers be broken, justice being served, wrongs being put right, and peace to finally reign.
I videotaped Miko Peled at the same event; now more than 165,000 people have watched his talk. Which is more than all my other videos together, the past 6 years. In HD video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOaxAckFCuQ
see http://www.eradication-of-malaria.com and then make your mind up about the rights and wrongs of Palestine. You may find it interesting, you will find it surprising.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Zionist and said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Exchange the word Islam for Zionism and people would be screaming “Islamophobia” a term coined by Muslim Brotherhood. The uninformed masses need to understand that there were traItors of Jewish faith that betrayed their brothers and sisters during the Holocaust. Peled seems to be going down the same path. Shameful.
Craig, that’s an asinine corollary. If I changed the words “fresh squeezed orange juice” to “the blood of children” everyone would also be against that. It would also be similarly a ridiculous comparison, educating no one about anything.
I agree with your point. And their are so many people gullible to accept a peace at the cost of selling out their birthright. Miko Peled denies his heritage and his God in his presentation. The Palestinians as they are called could live in relative peace in Israel, if their leaders in wiping Israel of the map would lay down their arms. Why does Peled not speak with them instead of gullible trendy Americans. I too believe in peace, and wars are a shame, a blight in the heart of man. But in this day people talk of peace…but the plan is for WAR.
Anyone wonder why not a single legitimate synagogue in the United States has invited this traitor to speak? Why does he only speak to anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish establishments? It is because most American Jews are well informed. We know about the 500,000+ Arabs that came into present day Israel from bordering areas between 1900 and 1945. We know that Arabs from Jordan stole JewIsh homes In Jerusalem. We know this because of the Peel CommIssIon Report In 1937 & Robert F. Kennedy wrote about it in 1948 while reporting in Israel:
http://robertkennedyandisrael.blogspot.com/?m=1
I agree with your comment. I will say that Miko Peled is like Esau in denying his people and his birthright. He denies God as well. Gullible Americans and people all over that clamor for peace at any cost give him an ear. The Palestinians could live in Israel in relative peace if their leaders would not conspire with the muslim world, and lay down their arms. Peled is a foolish man to think he is working for a peace that “man” cannot bring about. While they talk of peace, they plan for war.
All the anti Peled comments reveal the “march to war” in the hearts their writers. These people have the right to their own point of view but not their own facts. Peled throughout his spoken words and views speaks of his desire for peace for Arabs and Jews. Sadly not so these Zionist supporters.
It’s one thing to criticize Israel for an admittedly right-wing turn since Begin’s election and to show extremists as exist in every movement…see the nonviolent Buddhists fighting Muslims in Malaysia.
It’s another thing entirely to claim that Zionism in its inception was only to create a Jewish Supremacist state. Read Herzl, Ben Gurion or the Declaration of Eretz Yisrael, which pleads for indigenous Arabs to stay and live together in peace. Peled’s claims are based on his ideology, not theirs.
In addition, even if you take everything he says as true, why does this “peace activist” never mention the 24,000 Israelis killed since 1920, the 160,000+ Syrians killed by Assad’s regime, 3000 Americans killed on 9/11, thousands of minorities murdered during ISIS’ march across Iraq or any war crimes other than those supposedly committed by Israelis? It’s as if the Palestinians have found their own Al Sharpton who spends 100% of his time focusing on alleged crimes against them while ignoring every other atrocity committed by Hamas and their Islamic militant brethren. I guess having an autocratic Muslim state with Sharia law where women are subjugated and gays and apostates murdered is acceptable but.a Jewish state where everyone has equal rights is not.
Sounds legit.
People like Miko Peled so called Ashkenazi jews have no concept of what took place in the Arab world as far as the Jews were concerned. We the Jews of the Arab and Islamic world outnumbered the Arab refugees of the former British mandate of Palestine by many hundreds of thousands. there was never 1.5 million Arabs in The British Mandate of Palestine. The real estate that we left behind in our Arab homelands was four times the size of the whole of Israel today. Today we the Jews of the Arab and Islamic world outnumber all Ashkenazim in Israel.
During the 1920s 30s and 40s Arabs from all over the Arab world including North-Africa entered Palestine illegally seeking work and a better life which was only possible through the sweat & hard work the Jewish immigrantsin Palestine put in to make Eretz-Yisrael a country worth living in, by clearing much land infested by malaria swamps. building a better lifestyle by introducing modern medical care and much more, no wonder Palestine at that time was so inviting to so many Arabs from all over the Arab world.
Why do people like Miko Peled try so hard to de-legitimize Israel in so many ways in order to please his Gentile Jew-hating colleagues who simply jump at the opportunity to argue against the creation of the Jewish State, trying to prove in every way the illegality of Israel especially when a Jew offers such help to them. I would like to know where these Gentile Israel-hating people were when millions of Jews were being slaughtered on a daily industrial scale by Nazi Germany in world war two. I would like to know when these same Israel-hating people were when we the Jews of the Arab world were being thrown out of our Arab homeland, our property stolen our wealth stolen, many of us were humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered by our Arab countrymen.
No country truthfully really wanted to accept Jewish refugees from running from Nazi persecution, only a fraction of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution were offered safe havens in countries such as the UK, Canada, the USA, Australia, South Africa, South America for example, because if they would have accepted with open arms the Jews seeking refuge from Nazi tyranny the holocaust wouldn't have taken place, however they didn't therefore all countries were as guilty as Hitler was for the slaughter of some 6,000,000 Jews and others, as in reality, Hitler was doing the dirty work for all those countries who forever detested Jews and still do to this day. Palestine didn't belong to the Arabs, it certainly didn't belong to the Arabs of Palestine, Palestine was never a Kingdom or a State.