PLO Ambassador to Washington, Maen Rashid Areikat at a Friendly Harvard Venue

When an Israeli Foreign Ministry official speaks, this is what you will invariably hear:

"Confidence Building Measures"
"Co-existence"
"Reconciliation"
"Tolerance"
"Partner for Peace"
"Disengagement"
"Concessions"
"An end to the Occupation"

When a PLO representative speaks this is what you hear:

"Nakba"
"An End to the Occupation"
"Right of Return"
"Deir Yassein"
"Sabra and Shatilla"
"Land Grab"
"Apartheid State"
"Discrimination"
"No Peace, No Justice"

The actors are well-rehearsed and the audience knows what to expect. If it's a university setting, it's a guarantee that the Israeli will be heckled and the Arab will be applauded. If anyone dares to ask a question along the lines of "What about Israel's security in the face of suicide bombers?", she is confronted by the speaker's fury at being required to "guarantee" Israeli security when they are the occupied, aggrieved party.

From "moderates" like Khalil Shikaki (of Brandeis, naturally) to the current PLO Ambassador to Washington, the audience smiles approvingly when Arabs declare their refusal to comply with the security provisions of the umpteen treaties they signed that require them to disarm militant groups. Of course, the only obligation (which never appears in any of these instruments) that anyone acknowledges is the mythical one of freezing settlements. The actual treaty obligations for the Arabs - namely, that they disarm militant groups - is never mentioned, even though it has appeared on virtually every piece of paper they signed since 1993. They agreed to end incitement against Israelis and Jews, to disband terror organizations and to surrender thousands of weapons, requirements that to this day have never been fulfilled. Those provisions require the PLO - in a real sense -to become Israel's "policeman" just as Israel is required (and in contradistinction has actually performed) to rein in its militants. Try to find the equivalent of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Israel. None of that matters, of course, so long as the role you are playing and the one the audience readily accepts is that of the perennial victim.

Maen Rashid Areikat is the current PLO Ambassador to the United States (odd that a country that doesn't exist boasts an Ambassador). He comes from a wealthy, well-connected family that is associated with the preeminent Palestinian Arab Husseini dynasty (the wonderful folks who gave us Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti, Hitler's bosom buddy and Yasir Arafat). Areikat was an aide to Faisal Husseini, another touted "moderate" and nephew of the Mufti. He declared in 1996,

In similarly "moderate" phrases, the Ambassador was caught off-guard calling Israel "weak" in an obvious move to signal the inevitable collapse of the Jewish State. His wishful thinking had to be corrected by Nicholas Burns, former State Department Under Secretary and now Harvard Professor of Diplomacy:

Professor Burns: Some Israelis might say to you "...We withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza and what happened was that Hezbollah began to launch attacks across the border. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005 - what happened were the constant rocket attacks into Israeli towns. Israel is a small country..."

Ambassador Areikat: "and weak country..."

Burns: "and strong country.."

Let's alter the familiar epigram, "In Vino Veritas" to "In Harvard Veritas" It's their motto after all. (excuse the poor audio):