Free The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine by Miko Peled

the southern Israeli city of Eilat, in front of an audience of high school students. It was during this speech that she claimed that, before 1967, she had never heard of the Palestinian people and that they were somehow invented and had no real national identity—and therefore could have no national claims to the land of Palestine. In his column, my father immediately wrote a scathing reply to Golda’s speech where he asked:
     
“How do people in the world refer to the population that resides in the West Bank? What were the refugees of 1948 called prior to their exile? Has she really not heard of the Palestinian people prior to 1967? In discussions she must have had over the years in her capacity as ambassador and then as foreign minister, how did she refer to these people? Yet she says she had not heard of the Palestinian people prior to 1967? Truly amazing!” 5
     
    Still, it came as a shock when in the mid-1970s my father called on the Israeli government to negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO. He agreed that the PLO was the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and as such must be Israel’s partner to the negotiating table. He claimed that Israel needed to talk with whoever represented the Palestinian people, the people with whom we shared this land. He constantly wanted to remind everyone that only peace with the Palestinians could ensure our continued existence as a state that was both Jewish and democratic.
    In those years, I occasionally traveled with my father when he gave lectures around the country. He was often invited as an expert to speak about the major political and military issues of the day. It was a great way to see places I had never seen and to spend time with him. I recall once we visited the Kibbutz Bar’am in the northern region of Galilee. Bar’am sits on the lands of the former Palestinian village Bir’am. The lecture was at the Kibbutz in the evening, and the next day we went to see the ruins of the village. At the time, I was not fully aware of the state’s role in the displacement of Palestinians.
    Sometimes my mother would come on these trips as well. The lectures were typically on Friday night, so we would drive Friday afternoon, and then eat dinner and spend the night at the Kibbutz. Then on Saturday we’d see whatever the area had to offer.
    The lectures were quite often very tough and people were not at all polite when they heard my father’s opinions. I will never forget the anger and venom directedat him when he spoke of Ashaf , the actual Hebrew acronym for the PLO. “How can you talk to terrorists who want our destruction?” some would ask. “They want Yaffa and Haifa and Ramle, and they want to slaughter all of us.”
    “Terrorism,” he would reply, “is a terrible thing. But the fact remains that when a small nation is ruled by a larger power, terror is the only means at their disposal. This has always been true, and I fear this will always be the case. If we want to end terrorism, we must end the occupation and make peace.” He insisted that the Palestinians could become our natural allies, our bridge to the entire Middle East, where we Israelis had decided to build our home.
    A military general was suggesting that we negotiate instead of fight; this was hard for Israelis to swallow. I think it angered people that he did not go along with the established thinking, which always placed Israel on the right side and the Arabs on the wrong side. Moreover, he was suggesting we turn away from what had become basic Zionist principles: to never give up land and to never accept the claims of the Arabs regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
    He was suggesting that we talk with the people we had been taught to hate and fear the most. Unlike Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, or Lebanese, who had their own states, “these so-called Palestinians,” people would say to him, and to me when I opened my big mouth, “wanted our homes and our