Last Sunday gathered at the Unitarian Church in Beverly to hear David Cohen from the Anti-Defamation League respond to talk held at the church last October by three Palestinian women from Jerusalem, who were invited to New England by a group called Partners for Peace.

The three women told their harrowing stories to some 400 residents of the North Shore who came to hear them on that rainy night. They told fervent tales of unbearable suffering in the Palestinian struggle for peace and justice in the occupied land of Palestine; they told heartbreaking stories of atrocious, racist cruelty exercised randomly by Israeli uniformed brutes, who follow the illegal and immoral orders of a warlike and territory-hungry regime of current and past terrorists. Israel, the occupying country, was not treated in very complimentary terms by the three visitors from Jerusalem.

 The few people in the audience who last October protested the harsh and inaccurate presentation of current events and present conditions in the unfortunate Israeli-Palestinian relationships were summarily dismissed as “one-sided,” “biased” and “misinformed” Americans who are “brainwashed” and “indoctrinated” by the “prejudiced media.” These few people came to the Unitarian Church again last Sunday, hoping this time to hear an explanation of why, in the hands of Palestinian propagandists, the distortion of truth so easily becomes truth, and how truth becomes the distortion of itself. They also wanted to hear about ways and means by which peace might yet be achieved.

 Cohen came ready for the event, armed with a beautifully sophisticated PowerPoint presentation (a device that didn’t work when the Partners for Peace tried to invoke it during their own presentation last time). Rabbi Steven Rubinstein, of Beverly’s Temple B’Nai Abraham, who  Cohen, introduced the evening by quoting Martin Luther King as a true lover and representative of peace. The evening was to proceed with a presentation by Cohen, followed by questions and answers.

Cohen, a historian by profession, did not wish to bore his listeners with lectures on history, though he made us all aware of the Palestinian capacity to distort and to manipulate history to their advantage. He did not talk much about Israel’s need to work on their own side of the truth by developing a narrative that is as legitimate and acceptable as is the Palestinian contortion of the same available facts.

He did talk much about how to respond to lies and half-truths, to inaccuracies and to viciously annoying accusations. Through the PowerPoint projector we learned that there are many code words in the Palestinian narratives that hide plain anti-Semitism. We learned that Israel is not a simple monolithic society but one that has many faces and numerous facets.

 Cohen talked very eloquently about great efforts, behind the scene, of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work on agreeable points despite the disruptions of fundamental minds and criminal behaviors from both sides, but primarily from the Palestinian camp. Unfortunately he did not emphasize the need to make these efforts the central point of the Israeli peace narrative. He mentioned ADL’s efforts in overcoming biases in and presenting justice and fairness to schools and colleges who invite Palestinian propaganda into their lecture halls.

 That was also the nature of the short Q&A session after Cohen’s talk. The focus was on how to respond to the Palestinian claims by learning to decode code words, and by presenting Israeli facts against Palestinian fiction. And that is precisely what makes the whole Israeli-Palestinian debate look and sound like an attempt of the mute to convince the deaf.

 The Palestinians and their “Partners for Peace” present a carefully selected side of a truth that can be, and is, extremely impressive when measured by the pain expressed, or experienced, or feigned, by the people who profess this side of the truth. The Israelis, and their American lobbyists, present rational and logical rebuttals in which they ridicule and point out how irrational and illogical and anti-Semitic and stubborn and hotheaded the Palestinians are. But no PowerPoint presentation or any shrewd decoding of anti-Semitism can lessen the power of personal suffering, real or imagined.

Thus, rather than talk to each other about making peace by renouncing and denouncing all killing and all suffering, the Israelis and the Palestinians compete over the American audience; the Palestinians are after the American heart, the Israelis are after the American mind. Good lawyers know that when talking to a judge it is advisable to use facts, and when talking to a jury it is advisable to use emotions. The three women from Palestine talked to a jury last October, and Cohen last Sunday talked to a judge. Many conversations were presented on both occasions, without a single dialogue.

 Winning the American heart or mind is irrelevant, since the Israelis and the Palestinians are both the clients and the beneficiaries of the United States. It is also futile, because numbers in modern democracy carry little meaning and even less influence or significance. There are many statistics showing that “the majority of Israelis and the majority of Palestinians want peace,” but peace is just as far away from us today as it was yesterday. In the same way, many polls have already shown that the “majority of Americans disapprove of sending more troops to Iraq,” and yet more troops are on their way. Consequently it makes little or no difference with whom the majority of Americans agree or disagree.

The sad truth, the truth that neither the three women from Palestine nor Cohen mentioned is that when the people  truly wish for peace to take over, peace shall become the realistic truth, regardless of history and territory, religion or bigotry.

If, in the meantime, while bombs are still flying around, there is a need also for a war of words, the Israelis should focus not on telling the world how bad the Palestinians are, but on telling the Palestinians how good peace will be for everyone.

Shimon Soferr lives in Beverly and works for the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department., running the Freedom From Violence Program. E-mail him at ssoferr@hotmail.com.