YOUNGSTOWN — Two surefire ways to ensure peace, democracy and stability will one day be realized for many Palestinians are to shift a popular and prevailing narrative and remove the major barrier to achieving such a goal, a writer, anti-Zionist and human rights activist contends.

Specifically, the racist and discriminatory system that denies basic rights for many Palestinians must be dismantled, and the overall conversation regarding their plight needs to shift from the periphery toward the center, Milo Peled of Washington, D.C., told several dozen Youngstown State University students and others who attended a dialogue gathering he led Sunday afternoon in YSU’s DeBartolo Stadium Club room.

Hosting the three-hour event, much of which also was a question-and-answer session, were the Arab American Cultural & Educational Center and YSU’s Students for Justice in Palestine organization.

“Palestinians are like kids looking through a window at the adults who are making the decisions. We need to get in the room and at the table,” said Peled, who is director of a Washington-based nonprofit organization called the Palestine House of Freedom.

The PHF is dedicated to disassembling what it views as Israeli Apartheid and establishing a single state in all of Palestine. A primary objective is to counter what it sees as “the skewed political education that many Americans receive through an aggressive Zionist educational campaign targeting everyone from lawmakers, staffers and the media, to the general public,” according to the Washington Report.

The ultimate goal is to create a free and democratic Palestine “with equal rights on all of historical Palestine,” said Peled, who also penned a book titled “Injustice,” along with his memoir “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.”

“The General’s Son” explores how Peled, who was born in Jerusalem, grew up with a father and grandfather who were part of early Israel’s military and political elite, yet decided to follow a path that led him to believe in the importance of peace between Israelis and Palestinians living in the Holy Land and elsewhere.

During his discussion Sunday, Peled called Jerusalem “a completely segregated city,” where he and others were repeatedly fed the narrative that many Palestinians are dangerous. Instead of learning about the Palestinians’ history, he grew up largely surrounded by certain myths and distorted views about them, Peled recalled.

Racism also extended to many “brown” Jews who came to Israel from predominantly Arab countries and who were relegated lower on a caste system than European Jews, he noted. When he was in sixth or seventh grade, Peled first heard the term “integration,” but in his school, Arab and European Jewish students were in separate classrooms, he remembered.

Peled compared such racism and discrimination to the Jim Crow era in the 1950s and 1960s in the Deep South in which many blacks were treated as inferior, stripped of their rights and dignity, blocked from exercising their right to vote and forbidden from using many of the same public accommodations as whites.

Despite the atrocities from the Hamas-led attack on Israel that began Oct. 7, 2023, many people have not been adequately awakened to the effects the continuing war has had on many Palestinians’ lives, Peled said.

Following the attack, Israel launched a series of military operations in May that killed an estimated 21,600 Palestinians in Gaza, 33% of whom were children, and destroyed about 60% of the homes there. In addition, Israel intensified its 16-year blockade on Gaza, cutting off food, medicine and other supplies, and strengthened the Apartheid system to further oppress Palestinians in Gaza and Occupied Palestinian Territories, according to Amnesty International.

“We can’t afford to allow it for one more day,” Peled said. “Another generation? This should have stopped 75 or 76 years ago; it should never have been allowed to happen.”

The first step is to shift the narrative regarding how to establish a free Palestine “across the board” and away from blindly supporting the genocide, though “we’re far from that,” he said, adding that it will take far more than a single politician, leader or piece of legislation. Part of the reason is that the Zionist point of view has been pervasive and entrenched in American culture for about 100 years, Peled said.

“The cause is the issue; it’s not the person,” he added.

As much as the Palestinian population continues to struggle and bear the brunt of atrocities, torture and racism, truth and international law are largely on their side, Peled said, noting that bipartisan support also is essential for paving the way for Palestinians to have greater freedom and stability.

In essence, a newly revamped and more aligned system of values is needed to reach that point, where one side must stop efforts to “eliminate” Palestinians, many of whom already are committed to peace, democracy and justice, Peled said.