To be clear, by the way, I'm not insisting Saeb Erekat was a perfect man by any means, nor even a great man, but he was one of the few genuine would-be peacemakers in the region, and much like PM Rabin, has a complicated legacy worth merit and scrutiny.

Rabin was by no means a Saint, and contributed to some genuine atrocities against Palestine, but he moved toward peace and heralded Oslo. It was foolish of AOC to scorn him without taking this complexity into account. We should treat Erekat with the same nuance.

If peace is to ever be established in the Homeland of the Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and if two, independent and sovereign states are to be established and recognized with totality, we must be gracious, understanding, and take these complexities of character into account.

Of course, I understand how raw and emotional these people's legacies are for some of us. My father vehemently hated Rabin and called him a devil for his history during the Nakba and '67. He doesn't believe Oslo was worth anything, but that's not as gracious as I'd like him to be

and I still try to urge him to understand what Israel means to so many, and the intensity of emotion it evokes for families who lost people in the Holocaust and many pogroms. Statehood is security, and Palestinian Arabs like myself want it, the Jews want it. We can both have it.