This week, America is continuing to celebrate the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. While the most important attributes of a president are character, integrity and the love and fear of God, Obama’s additional attribute -’- his ethnic heritage ‘- does not represent the majority population and is indeed a remarkable achievement for America.

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This celebration stands in marked contrast with the recent slaughter of more than 1,000 civilians in Gaza. No amount of punditry can dispel what our eyes plainly see. The call of compassion must not be limited to our preferred ethnic, religious or ideological associations, because true compassion extends without regard to nation, party or any other distinction.

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Experts tell us to blame Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group, for the butchery, but they fail to properly explain the history of the land known as Palestine. The precise definition of this land has changed with the differing occupying regimes, but today Palestine would generally be thought to include Israel itself ‘- along with the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

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The mainstream media in America doesn’t teach us properly about the history of Palestine, resulting in a major disconnect between Americans and the rest of the world. Americans often view Palestinian Arabs as being intransigent by not allowing Israel the right to exist and accepting a two-state solution.

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This does not correctly reflect history.

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Arabs have traditionally viewed Palestine as one area within a much larger region, but Zionism has a different conception of the land. It is the ideology that underlies the modern state of Israel.

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Zionism is a national movement founded a little more than 100 years ago. At the time, Zionism reflected the trend among European ethnic groups toward asserting a national identity.

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Zionism is not based upon religion. It is unique among European ethnic nationalisms in that it combines a subset of people from many ethnic groups. The vast majority of early Zionists were Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, who immigrated to Palestine to escape anti-Semitism and in the hope of establishing idealistic socialist communities.

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Zionism remains largely disconnected from the practice of Judaism as a religion, as the vast majority of Israelis are secular. Most haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews remain opposed to Zionism as a matter of religious law.

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While deficient in religious sensibilities, Zionists use unsupported biblical claims to assert a right to an ethnically-exclusive homeland in Palestine.

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This is where the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians occurs.

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It would be as if a group of non-Americans were to immigrate into Wyoming, refuse to follow American law and then declare a brand new nation-state that excluded or rendered as second-class the Americans who lived in Wyoming.

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Even if we add to the consideration that most of Wyoming is presently uninhabited, it is hard to envision many Americans accepting a two-state partition of Wyoming st1:state>.

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Likewise, it seems absurd and morally disingenuous for America to pressure Palestinian Arabs to accept a two-state solution. Even if Palestinians make this concession, Israeli settlements have divided the occupied territories so that it would be extremely difficult to establish a contiguous landmass to suitable for a Palestinian state.

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Within Israel, Arab citizens encounter discrimination ‘- both in the attitudes of Israelis as well as in unequal treatment in the rights of land ownership, marriage and immigration. While there are many countries that are far worse offenders than Israel, the difference is that Israel is a Western-style democracy and should be expected to live up to this moniker.

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Increasingly, both practically and morally, as well as using our own experiences in America as a guide, what seems to be the fairest solution is to establish a single state encompassing all of Palestine.

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In such a state, all citizens would be equal before the law. The safety and rights of Jews, Arabs and others would be inviolate. This should not spell the destruction of anyone’s ethnic, religious or ideological identity. As in America, there would still be considerable leeway to establish local traditions and customs within individual towns and villages.

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Discussing the situation in the Holy Land is always difficult, especially considering that advocacy for Israel has replaced religious observance as a marker of identity among the vast majority of American Jews.

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However, if anything, the safety and security of Jews ‘- by extension Americans ‘- is threatened throughout the world by the use of terror among some extremists. These extremists justify their actions in their own minds by the pervasive sentiment in Arab and Muslim communities over the injustice of the situation in Palestine.

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As America celebrates its successes in overcoming past wrongs and yearns to live true to its ideal of extending liberty and justice to all people, all Americans of good will earnestly pray that Obama receive the blessings of Providence in all that he does to effect these ends.

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While we pursue our national objectives, we must never forget to bind up the brokenhearted and to declare freedom for the captives, wherever they may be throughout the world.

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Eric Magazu is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at emagazu@student.umass.edu.