At a benefit in New York in March of last year, political science professor Norman Finkelstein from the University of Chicago told an audience that modern historians (as opposed to popular versions) agree on the main strands of the conflict's developments. Similarly, he said, human rights organisations reporting on the conflict situation concur on the injustices and human rights violations committed on the Palestinians.

"If you look at the reports, they are remarkably similar in their analyses and their conclusions, so even in the current situation there isn't that much dispute The problem is that the conflict has been shrouded in this kind of ideological mist and that's what makes it complicated. If we can sort of dispel the clouds, the ideological clouds that are enveloping the Israel/Palestine conflict, I think we can probably reach most people on the justice of the struggle of the Palestinian people for their human rights."

Norman Finkelstein, whose own parents survived hell at the hands of German Nazis in one of Hitler's concentration camps for Jews during World War II, often speaks not to crowds of 'blindfolded' Muslims indoctrinated with an irrational and inherited hatred of all things Jew.

He speaks to large, educated, American audiences of intellectuals and activists of all colors, languages, religions, and nationalities, Jewish and goyim.

Nor is Finklestein's voice in the wilderness. There are hundreds of civil societies and millions of individuals, including staunch Jewish individuals and organisations, that are in solidarity with the Palestinians simply because the violations against the latter have become so outrageous and clear.

In fact, and parallel to the developments described above, there has always been the increasing number of Jewish historians within Israeli universities as well as abroad who have combined rigorous and methodical research methods with mainstream Israeli sources to reveal the racist and colonialist principles and methods behind Israel's Zionism and its leaders.

Such people (and these are just the historians) include Simha Flapan ( The Birth of Israel ,1987), Benny Morris ( The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem , 1987), Ilan Pappe ( The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict , 194751, 1992), Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis , 1986), Avi Shlaim ( Collusion Across the Jordan , 1988; (The Iron Wall, 2000).

Moral balance

Such documentation, not by 'fringe Muslim sources' expressing deep roots of prejudice but by mainstream Israeli sources, and revelation to the world of Israel's crimes, as well as the protests against them, should indicate the moral balance on which things stand and the way things should be seen.

It was Israeli official figures that placed the estimate of the Sabra and Shatila slaughter at 700, while the Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk asserts that the victims actually numbered 3,500.

Following that tragedy, 400,000 Israelis took to the streets in protest. More recently, after the Rafah outrage last month, 10,000 Israelis were in the streets protesting against Ariel Sharon (photo right).

The 1986 revelations about Israel's nuclear stockpile were made not by discredited sources, but by the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot ; the whistleblower with the inside information was Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician who had worked in one of Israel's atomic reactors (Vanunu was subsequently abducted by Israeli secret agents, arrested and detained for 13 years, only to be released a month ago).

Statistics about the demolition of Palestinian houses as 'collective punishment' derived from Israel's own Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem).

B'Tselem was also the first organisation to document for the world Israel's use, since the 1970s, of torture and ill treatment as standard procedure in its prisons against Palestinian detainees.

Numbers on the destruction of homes in May this year and the resultant increase of homeless Palestinians were provided in a May 28 statement by (non-Jewish, but still not 'fringe element') UN's Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari.

'Ideological clouds'

This brings me to my point about AB Suleiman's The Blindfolded' Palestinian Conflict

.

Suleiman's article is refreshing to read as indication of that rare attempt by writers to transcend the 'determinisms of his past' (As Roger Garaudy puts it) in search of higher truths and meaning.

In his article, Suleiman rightfully notes the fears of 'alarmists' who believe that Israel-Palestine, 'the Holy Land', will be a powder keg for a near-future 'Armageddon'.

Suleiman should also be commended for his call to the Cronesian Media, to go beyond the convenience of labels and one-dimensional descriptions to see the multi-faceted nature of the issue and thus contribute to its resolution. Such 'sticky labels' are often attached to some larger 'agenda', though Suleiman left the question of identifying that agenda unanswered.

The main thrust of Suleiman's article was, admittedly, the Cronesian media's parochial treatment of the issue.

Where this writer begs to differ, however, is with Suleiman's other contentions on the issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict: misleading on the one hand, dangerous on the other.

"Taking a hard stand on one angle of truth in the Palestinian issue is perhaps the easier part, but to be objective is more difficult. There are too many emotional elements in the stew clamoring for recognition and legitimacy to one version of truth," says Suileiman.

At the outset, it may seem that my own citation of Finkelstein merely supports Suleiman's assertion ("The problem is that the conflict has been shrouded in this kind of ideological mist and that's what makes it complicated.").

But again, Finkelstein continues to say that "if we can sort of dispel the clouds, the ideological clouds that are enveloping the Israel/Palestine conflict, I think that we can probably reach most people on the justice of the struggle of the Palestinian people for their human rights."

The remarkable aspect of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the clarity of the present issue. Granted, strands of history weave in and out of discussions on Israel-Palestine, to the extent that serious and sincere grasps for 'the truth' get hampered occasionally by the mist of religious and communal narratives.

The present situation, however, is clear. Whether the report on the situation derives from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), or the Islamic Human Rights Commission, the statistics and conclusions are overwhelmingly the same.

Next: Part 3 tomorrow

Fauwaz Abdul Aziz is a former malaysiakini journalist