"Extra Left" Depends From Where You Start

Excerpt from "Extra Left," an article based on an interview with Dr. Nurit Peled Elhanan, Israeli peace activist, lecturer at Hebrew University, and mother of 13-year-old daughter Smadari Elhanan who was killed 11 years ago by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

"...We have appropriated all the beautiful things about that (the Palestinian) culture. Why is it impossible to live together? If there are two cultures it is impossible to live together? If there is equality of civil rights, there will be no conflict.”

"...No one is doing a thing to save the children and to give the people a good life, so they can live as neighbours, in happiness. So there can be life with mutual respect and mutual learning and mutual acceptance and good education, and there’s no people like the Palestinians for investing in the education of their children. There’s no people like them. You know, that in Gaza the literacy rate is among the highest in the world, 92 percent, with all that we are doing to them? They are wonderful people, charming people. It’s all racism, it is all in a context of racism.”

The interview and article, by Yuval Hyman, were prompted by a letter written by Dr. Peled Elhanan to the European Parliament on the occasion of the the 20th anniversary of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which she shared with fellow peace activist and Palestinian writer Izzat Ghazzawi in 2001.

The article was originally published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, on January 2, 2009. The English translation by George Malent was supplied to AWR by Dr. Peled Elhanan. See the full English text of the Maariv article.