July 8, 2019
By Dr. Eric Lankin, Vice-President of Development at StandWithUs
This week it was reported that the Israeli Police arrested a man from Ein Aloeza in East Jerusalem who had worked in a medical clinic and provided medical services but was falsely claiming he was a doctor. He was reported to have provided aesthetic services and prescribed medications to the Palestinian Arab patients in his community.
Considering how difficult it is to be a medical doctor, I am surprised that it took the community so long to spot and report a fake doctor. Perhaps he had regularly consulted with the same Dr. Google that real doctors always complain about.
I sure hope that no one suffered because of his fakery.
However, I can say without question, that thousands of Palestinian Arabs are suffering because of fake leaders in Ramallah. These leaders claim to be concerned about their people but when they are offered potential opportunities for peace and prosperity, these offers are dismissed out of hand without even considering them or providing a counter-offer.
Starting with the Partition Plan of 1947, dividing the balance of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, their leaders, including the Mufti of Jerusalem, rejected the offer and launched a war against the Jews. Other serious offers at Camp David by Israeli Prime Minister Barak in July 2000; Prime Minister Olmert in 2008; and now, recently announced in Bahrain, President Trump’s offer in June 2019 of 50 Billion dollars of investment in Palestinian society were rejected immediately.
Real leaders, not these fake ones, would at least allow the offers to be the beginning of serious negotiations.
Perhaps Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in his fourteenth year of an elected four-year term, thinks he is a shrewd negotiator. Perhaps the Palestinian lack of a response is a tactic of negotiations.
Or perhaps the Palestinian leadership have no intention of negotiating about any plan that would force them to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish State in their midst. Perhaps they reject the existence of Israel and believe as Dr. Harold Rhode, Middle East expert and formerly of the Pentagon, recently wrote, “According to Islam, once a territory has been captured by Muslims, it must remain in Muslim hands forever. It cannot revert to non-Muslim control.”
Real leaders, not fake ones, need to respond. Real leaders, concerned about their people and who are not kleptocrats or murderers, would be willing to enter into serious talks. A peaceful future in this area depends on it.
(Featured image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images )
StandWithUs is an international, non-partisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism. StandWithUs empowers and energizes students and communities with leadership training and educational programs on hundreds of college campuses, high schools, and middle schools. StandWithUs informs through social media, print and digital materials, films, weekly newsletters, and missions to Israel. StandWithUs takes legal action through the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Los Angeles, the organization has chapters and offices throughout the U.S., Israel, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia. More at www.standwithus.com.
