The Historian and the Twisted Politics of Expulsion Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris
http://www.counterpunch.org/carey07192008.html
By ROANE CAREY
Is it possible for someone who matter-of-factly supports crimes against humanity to be a good historian? A startling and provocative question, no doubt, but one that inevitably arises upon consideration of the remarkable career of Israeli scholar Benny Morris. A professor in the Middle East Studies department at Ben-Gurion University, Morris is well-known as one of the most important of the "New Historians," a group that upended traditional Zionist historiography of the Israeli-Arab conflict. In the first edition of his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988), Morris conclusively demonstrated, through the mining of newly released Israeli government archives, that the refugees from the 1948 war had, overwhelmingly, fled or been expelled by Israeli forces rather than left as a result of encouragement by Arab leaders, as a previous generation of Israeli propagandists had claimed.
After the release of that book and in subsequent years, with the publication of Israel's Border Wars (1997) followed by a general history of the conflict, Righteous Victims (1999), Morris was generally lauded by liberals as a historian willing to expose uncomfortable truths about the Israeli past. This Morris, the seemingly liberal Morris, rose to fame at the time of the first Palestinian intifada and the Oslo period that followed, when both support for Palestinian resistance to occupation and new hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict gained traction around the world.
But, like much of the liberal Israeli intelligentsia, Morris was deeply shaken when the second intifada began in the fall of 2000. He accepted the establishment Israeli (and American) claim that the breakdown of the Camp David summit the previous summer was entirely the fault of the Palestinians and that they launched the new intifada because they would never really accept the Jewish presence in Palestine. In an astounding January 2004 interview in the leading Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Morris went much further, arguing that the "ethnic cleansing" - his words - of the Palestinians was justified; that it was not only justified but that Israel's leader at the time, David Ben-Gurion, didn't go far enough and should have expelled all the Palestinians then living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; and that today's Palestinian citizens of Israel are "a time bomb.an emissary of the enemy that is among us." Morris topped off the tirade by applauding the "clash of civilizations" world view common in the West after September 11, condemning the entire Islamic world as one in which "human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West" and "the people we are fighting.have no moral inhibitions." In a mad crescendo of bigotry he condemned Palestinians as "barbarians" and Palestinian society as "in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society.. Something like a cage has to be built for them.. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."
Of course, not only liberals and leftists but anyone remotely respectful of human rights or common decency was horrified at this and similar jeremiads. But it wasn't so easy simply to dismiss Morris out of hand. For one thing, his fulminations occurred at the same time as publication of the revised edition of his book on the Palestinian refugee problem. In the new edition Morris gave more credence to critics of the first volume who had accused him of underplaying support for "transfer" (expulsion) among the Zionist leadership. He admitted that "by the early 1930s a full-throated near-consensus in support of the idea began to emerge among the movement's leaders"; indeed, "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism - because it sought to transform a land that was `Arab' into a `Jewish' state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population."
True, Morris still denied evidence of "a policy or master-plan of expulsion." But he came much closer to the idea that there didn't need to be a policy because expulsion was "in the air.accepted as inevitable and natural by the bulk of the Jewish population." Not only that, but in his new edition Morris documented more instances of Israeli massacres, rapes and expulsions during the war. His politics may have become, well, barbaric, but Morris the empiricist historian, Morris the painstaking comber of archives, continued to report what he found. And those findings, if not always his interpretations of them, were valuable.
Now, with 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, Morris has published his magnum opus on the war. So which Morris wins out? The ideologue and bigot, or the careful researcher and historian? Blessedly, the latter - for the most part. The book is, on the whole, a judicious and carefully argued narrative, and hews to the general themes of his earlier, nonpolemical writings on the war. Morris is at his best when explaining the broad strategic context and balance of forces between the contending sides - how it was, for example, that the Yishuv, as the Jewish pre-state community was known, though seemingly outnumbered and outarmed, was able to prevail. Morris contrasts the careful planning for statehood and military preparations of the Yishuv with the haphazard organisation, almost complete lack of planning and near-constant infighting among not only the various Palestinian factions but also among the Arab front-line states.
As Morris demonstrates, the two sides were actually fairly evenly matched at the start of the conflict, but by April-May of 1948, the Jewish forces, primarily because of crucial Czech arms shipments, had not only rough parity in number of soldiers but also in weapons and ammunition. While a UN arms embargo deeply damaged the Arab war effort, causing critical shortages, the Jewish side had become expert at evading it, even as they benefited from the technical expertise of international volunteers and financial donations from the Jewish Diaspora, especially in the United States. Between the UN's November 1947 partition resolution and the Arab invasion of May 1948, the Zionist leadership carried out a rapid build-up and professionalisation of its armed forces, transforming the Haganah militia into a genuine army; it nearly doubled in size between the May 15 Arab invasion and July, by which point it outnumbered the Arab forces.
Morris continues to deny that there was a master plan to expel the Palestinians, but, as in his previous books on the refugee problem, he presents so much evidence that expulsion was both understood and widely accepted by the Jewish leadership that the lack of a clear, unambiguous order from the top seems almost beside the point. He reports "the near-systematic destruction of villages after conquest and depopulation" that began in April and continued, with occasional lapses, for the rest of the war, on every front. By the late summer of 1948, "a consensus had formed that the refugees were not to be allowed back during the war, and a majority.believed that it was best that they not return after the war either.. If allowed back, returnees would constitute a demographic and political time bomb, with the potential to destabilise the Jewish state." Morris is also forthright in reporting atrocities. The massacre at Deir Yasin in April 1948, near Jerusalem (carried out primarily by extremist Jewish militias but in concert with the Haganah), is only the most infamous example; the worst concentrations of these were in the northern Galilee in late October. "In the yearlong war," he says, "Yishuv troops probably murdered some eight hundred civilians and prisoners of war all told." The Arab side committed atrocities too, of course, but Morris says "the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POWs in deliberate acts of brutality."
It's only in his final chapter, titled Some Conclusions, that Morris the ideologue really shows his colours. He downplays the nationalist element that dominates the discussion not only in his previous books but also the entirety of this one, switching into full Bernard Lewis, clash-of-civilizations mode, arguing that the conflict was "part of a more general, global struggle between the Islamic East and the West," with the Arab abhorrence of Zionism "anchored in centuries of Islamic Judeophobia." He argues, on the one hand, that "the Arab war aim, in both stages of the hostilities, was, at a minimum, to abort the emergence of a Jewish state or to destroy it at inception" - but then has to acknowledge that this wasn't true: the most powerful military player on the Arab side, Jordan, secretly colluded with Israel, was willing to accept a Jewish state and was primarily concerned with seizing the Arab-populated West Bank and thus preventing formation of a rival Palestinian state, as called for in the UN partition resolution. In perhaps his most outlandish claim, Morris asserts that expulsionist thinking on the part of the Yishuv "was in large part a response to the expulsionist ideology and violent praxis of [Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin] al Husseini and his followers" in the decades leading up to 1948. In other words, expulsion was forced on the Zionist movement - if the Palestinians had not been so ill-mannered as to resist the seizure of their native land, and had instead quietly left when the settlers first arrived, the Zionists would not have had to expel them.
So we return to our original conundrum: can a man seemingly without ethical scruple, who exuberantly supports ethnic cleansing and damns entire religions and ethnicities to perdition, who blames the victims of a historic tragedy for their misfortune, make valuable contributions to historiography? It doesn't seem possible. And yet Benny Morris, at least by the evidence presented in 1948, seems to have done just that. The political judgments may often be twisted, and the moral sensibility may be damaged beyond repair. But the well-trained historian lives on.
Roane Carey is managing editor of The Nation in New York and the editor of The Other Israel and The New Intifada.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
June 30, 2008 Issue Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
Looking Into the Lobby
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference is one of Washington’s most important—and least reported—events.
by Philip Weiss
For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the question of how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot of grousing about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and AIPAC officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. “We are not a debate society or a protest movement. … our goal is to have a friend in the White House,” executive director Howard Kohr said in a strict tone. It wasn’t hard to imagine things going poorly: Obama gets booed on national television. He feels insulted. Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to Obama. He becomes president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval Office.
But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example the conference provides of a powerful man truckling. Two years ago, it was Vice President Cheney’s red-meat speech attacking the Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee’s scary speech saying that giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a similar line. He suggested that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem “must remain undivided,” a statement so disastrous to the peace process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big deal. The actual meeting had gone swimmingly.
This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.
The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man’s land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars in their 50s—Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year’s book The Israel Lobby.
The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto transplanted to the biggest hall in Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing. The staging is faultless. Little documentaries called “Zionist Stories” play on the Jumbotron, complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then the subject of the documentary comes out on stage to thundering applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle East policy and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and Leon Wieseltier. The press was excluded from “Advanced Lobbying Techniques,” but still this is a feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is described by AIPAC as the largest seated dinner in Washington. The wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.
My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to the Democratic Party. After his Zionist story, Saban came out on stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver gray suit. He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab look—black-haired, wide forehead. He was surrounded by 200 college students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he sponsors at AIPAC.
On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his Republican counterparts, who are there in equal force. The main hall of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced banners featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside statements of their mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real estate developer whom the New York Times recently profiled on the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times said nothing in its piece about Diamond’s Israel work. But that was all the banner was about. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most important determinant of democracy in the world, and we must commit to securing it,” Diamond wrote. “It is so obvious to us that the Jewish community is a family and that we have to take care of each other.”
I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my credentials. The audience for this stuff isn’t the public, it’s people in the hall—other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in their wills.
At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the AIPAC’ers didn’t come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don’t know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz. “There is a tremendous amount of love in this place,” Meir Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. “If it was a beaker, it would explode.” Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.
Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest AIPAC line? This is the organization’s function. After consulting closely with the Israeli political leadership (leaning toward the right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy to its followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American politicians. AIPAC’ers do this with the conviction that Israel’s life is on the line. “It is we that are the guardians of that relationship,” AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the Lowes executive and leader in the Jewish community, warned the audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not for them.
AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America’s line by cultivating politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor described this process when he warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: “Do we know them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about?” Finding Israel activists in the suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. “But how about finding the one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs, Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships.” And people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.
AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards. Bill Kristol said that Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to shaping Dan Quayle’s view of Israel, having “spent a lot of time” with Quayle when he was still a congressman. (Quayle’s office later told me, “The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly accurate. Mr. Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and sources, not specifically from Mr. Hasten.”) Dan Senor, an analyst on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted that AIPAC won over Spencer Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt, and an AIPAC leader helped him pay that off. And of course, the famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel Sharon’s helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and saying of Israel’s ten-mile waist, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”
The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few people have had a chance to get to him. The relationship guy is Lee Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. “I can personally attest that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel,” he said. In 2006, Obama “fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community” and visited Israel. And the topper: Obama “has gotten to know” Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against ever dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained—as queasily forceful as a mob boss vouching for an unknown family’s bona fides.
The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the organization is belligerent: speakers emphasized the need to attack Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on Hamas. But peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government is working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank and with the Syrians for the return of the Golan Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the West Bank. But they received only a smattering of applause, and in one instance the moderator said the questioner was using inappropriate language.
The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly personable Israeli negotiator. “I see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids,” he said, promising that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement, their goal is “to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking.”
Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for more than 30 years promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast policy over Israeli intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed by 76 senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and told them to give up their idea of a Greater Israel including the West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed by 94 senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli government line and nullifying American policymaking.
No, AIPAC’s change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They’re not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of the ’30s and ’40s, who also abandoned their judgment to a far off authority even as they argued this and that subclause codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama’s views on Israel seemed “tailored” and “he’s never really stood up for Israel.” Indoctrination, pure and simple.
The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they don’t have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything “we” should do to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in our hearts. People who emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the “Star Spangled Banner,” but the “Hatikvah” has two cantors belting it out, with the audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing Israeli politician sharply criticizing Olmert’s policy in the West Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American politicians went abroad and criticized the president’s foreign policy. It’s no scandal here because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.
Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that American and Israeli interests are identical. I wonder how those politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel rhetoric is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too much—an impression that if there weren’t so much money at stake, they would run from Israel with winged heels.
AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the Jews. The Holocaust imagery never stops. And there is a related theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society. The very last of the “Zionist Stories” AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton spoke was of a scientist, IBM’s Nissensohn. The piece emphasized Israel’s contribution to high-tech industry from software to desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to flourish, it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban’s story made the same point. Look what Egypt lost when it forced the Saban family to flee.
The theme of the conference was “The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built to Last.” But that seems another case of protesting too much. AIPAC is beset on many sides.
It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring for commemorations of the Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession narrative. About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab societies following the formation of Israel. One of them was novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged Baghdad and was forced into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and berated AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.
Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews from Israel’s hardline policies, especially as those Jews do well here and assimilate. “I worry a lot more about the American Jewish community than I do about Israel—about which I have grave doubts,” Wieseltier said.
AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I sat at the same table with Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jews as a litmus issue. Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn’t hold my breath. Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a high-school girl who said, “But isn’t Israel an apartheid state?”
The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at visiting his son’s college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in the Middle East at which Israel was demonized. Some of the kids at that table were surely Jews.
Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on its left, AIPAC seems to be making gestures in a more peaceable direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli city bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or face political doom. (I think it’s Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable that someone from the region would take the stage, and it’s impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen Abrahams, a pretty, soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The audience was utterly quiet as she described the terrible price her community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the Palestinians have paid, I’d note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it was real schmaltz. At the end of her taped appearance, Abrahams said, “My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to them, I don’t believe in wiping them out.” I was stunned.
Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck me that it might be possible to take all the loving energy in this place now directed at helping other Jews and redirect it to great effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will only be safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also safe—without checkpoints, without a siege, with the dignity and freedom that Jews have had in the West—all these arrayed powers might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a miracle at last.
Philip Weiss is at work on a book about Jewish issues. He blogs at http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/.
Looking Into the Lobby
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference is one of Washington’s most important—and least reported—events.
by Philip Weiss
For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the question of how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot of grousing about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and AIPAC officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. “We are not a debate society or a protest movement. … our goal is to have a friend in the White House,” executive director Howard Kohr said in a strict tone. It wasn’t hard to imagine things going poorly: Obama gets booed on national television. He feels insulted. Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to Obama. He becomes president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval Office.
But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example the conference provides of a powerful man truckling. Two years ago, it was Vice President Cheney’s red-meat speech attacking the Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee’s scary speech saying that giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a similar line. He suggested that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem “must remain undivided,” a statement so disastrous to the peace process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big deal. The actual meeting had gone swimmingly.
This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.
The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man’s land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars in their 50s—Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year’s book The Israel Lobby.
The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto transplanted to the biggest hall in Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing. The staging is faultless. Little documentaries called “Zionist Stories” play on the Jumbotron, complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then the subject of the documentary comes out on stage to thundering applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle East policy and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and Leon Wieseltier. The press was excluded from “Advanced Lobbying Techniques,” but still this is a feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is described by AIPAC as the largest seated dinner in Washington. The wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.
My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to the Democratic Party. After his Zionist story, Saban came out on stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver gray suit. He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab look—black-haired, wide forehead. He was surrounded by 200 college students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he sponsors at AIPAC.
On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his Republican counterparts, who are there in equal force. The main hall of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced banners featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside statements of their mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real estate developer whom the New York Times recently profiled on the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times said nothing in its piece about Diamond’s Israel work. But that was all the banner was about. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most important determinant of democracy in the world, and we must commit to securing it,” Diamond wrote. “It is so obvious to us that the Jewish community is a family and that we have to take care of each other.”
I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my credentials. The audience for this stuff isn’t the public, it’s people in the hall—other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in their wills.
At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the AIPAC’ers didn’t come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don’t know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz. “There is a tremendous amount of love in this place,” Meir Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. “If it was a beaker, it would explode.” Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.
Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest AIPAC line? This is the organization’s function. After consulting closely with the Israeli political leadership (leaning toward the right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy to its followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American politicians. AIPAC’ers do this with the conviction that Israel’s life is on the line. “It is we that are the guardians of that relationship,” AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the Lowes executive and leader in the Jewish community, warned the audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not for them.
AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America’s line by cultivating politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor described this process when he warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: “Do we know them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about?” Finding Israel activists in the suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. “But how about finding the one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs, Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships.” And people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.
AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards. Bill Kristol said that Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to shaping Dan Quayle’s view of Israel, having “spent a lot of time” with Quayle when he was still a congressman. (Quayle’s office later told me, “The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly accurate. Mr. Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and sources, not specifically from Mr. Hasten.”) Dan Senor, an analyst on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted that AIPAC won over Spencer Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt, and an AIPAC leader helped him pay that off. And of course, the famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel Sharon’s helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and saying of Israel’s ten-mile waist, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”
The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few people have had a chance to get to him. The relationship guy is Lee Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. “I can personally attest that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel,” he said. In 2006, Obama “fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community” and visited Israel. And the topper: Obama “has gotten to know” Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against ever dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained—as queasily forceful as a mob boss vouching for an unknown family’s bona fides.
The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the organization is belligerent: speakers emphasized the need to attack Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on Hamas. But peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government is working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank and with the Syrians for the return of the Golan Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the West Bank. But they received only a smattering of applause, and in one instance the moderator said the questioner was using inappropriate language.
The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly personable Israeli negotiator. “I see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids,” he said, promising that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement, their goal is “to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking.”
Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for more than 30 years promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast policy over Israeli intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed by 76 senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and told them to give up their idea of a Greater Israel including the West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed by 94 senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli government line and nullifying American policymaking.
No, AIPAC’s change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They’re not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of the ’30s and ’40s, who also abandoned their judgment to a far off authority even as they argued this and that subclause codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama’s views on Israel seemed “tailored” and “he’s never really stood up for Israel.” Indoctrination, pure and simple.
The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they don’t have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything “we” should do to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in our hearts. People who emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the “Star Spangled Banner,” but the “Hatikvah” has two cantors belting it out, with the audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing Israeli politician sharply criticizing Olmert’s policy in the West Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American politicians went abroad and criticized the president’s foreign policy. It’s no scandal here because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.
Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that American and Israeli interests are identical. I wonder how those politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel rhetoric is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too much—an impression that if there weren’t so much money at stake, they would run from Israel with winged heels.
AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the Jews. The Holocaust imagery never stops. And there is a related theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society. The very last of the “Zionist Stories” AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton spoke was of a scientist, IBM’s Nissensohn. The piece emphasized Israel’s contribution to high-tech industry from software to desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to flourish, it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban’s story made the same point. Look what Egypt lost when it forced the Saban family to flee.
The theme of the conference was “The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built to Last.” But that seems another case of protesting too much. AIPAC is beset on many sides.
It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring for commemorations of the Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession narrative. About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab societies following the formation of Israel. One of them was novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged Baghdad and was forced into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and berated AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.
Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews from Israel’s hardline policies, especially as those Jews do well here and assimilate. “I worry a lot more about the American Jewish community than I do about Israel—about which I have grave doubts,” Wieseltier said.
AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I sat at the same table with Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jews as a litmus issue. Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn’t hold my breath. Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a high-school girl who said, “But isn’t Israel an apartheid state?”
The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at visiting his son’s college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in the Middle East at which Israel was demonized. Some of the kids at that table were surely Jews.
Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on its left, AIPAC seems to be making gestures in a more peaceable direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli city bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or face political doom. (I think it’s Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable that someone from the region would take the stage, and it’s impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen Abrahams, a pretty, soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The audience was utterly quiet as she described the terrible price her community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the Palestinians have paid, I’d note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it was real schmaltz. At the end of her taped appearance, Abrahams said, “My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to them, I don’t believe in wiping them out.” I was stunned.
Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck me that it might be possible to take all the loving energy in this place now directed at helping other Jews and redirect it to great effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will only be safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also safe—without checkpoints, without a siege, with the dignity and freedom that Jews have had in the West—all these arrayed powers might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a miracle at last.
Philip Weiss is at work on a book about Jewish issues. He blogs at http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Some country faces a catastrophe
Whenever President Bush and "The New York Times" agree on the need for humanitarian intervention in the world, you know that some country faces a catastrophe. Iraq is the present day example. "Saving" the Iraq people from Saddam has resulted in a million deaths, a destroyed infrastructure, and a land poisoned by depleted uranium.
How could America's good intentions result in such devastation of another country and its people? Because good intentions are almost always a lie when it comes to US foreign policy. We invaded Iraq for its oil deposits, possibly the richest in the world. "Saving" the Iraqi people was propaganda, something the Times does very well.
Bush and the Times are again focusing on humanitarian intervention, this time in Darfur. Doctors Without Borders has termed their reports of genocide as "totally incorrect." And the fact that Sudan has a great deal of oil just never makes it into our national debate. But the pressure is on for another military invasion and occupation, all in the name of humanity.
If the US cared about humanity, it would tell Israel to end the apartheid treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. But the Israeli lobby has become as powerful a force in US foreign policy as Big Oil. With its allies in Congress and the US media, both lobbies are behind the Iraq occupation and the push into Darfur. Even more dangerous for the American people, both lobbies are working behind the scenes for an attack on Iran.
Fred Nagel
How could America's good intentions result in such devastation of another country and its people? Because good intentions are almost always a lie when it comes to US foreign policy. We invaded Iraq for its oil deposits, possibly the richest in the world. "Saving" the Iraqi people was propaganda, something the Times does very well.
Bush and the Times are again focusing on humanitarian intervention, this time in Darfur. Doctors Without Borders has termed their reports of genocide as "totally incorrect." And the fact that Sudan has a great deal of oil just never makes it into our national debate. But the pressure is on for another military invasion and occupation, all in the name of humanity.
If the US cared about humanity, it would tell Israel to end the apartheid treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. But the Israeli lobby has become as powerful a force in US foreign policy as Big Oil. With its allies in Congress and the US media, both lobbies are behind the Iraq occupation and the push into Darfur. Even more dangerous for the American people, both lobbies are working behind the scenes for an attack on Iran.
Fred Nagel
Friday, July 11, 2008
Jewish and against Zionism (thanks, Jack)
Jewish and against Zionism
Sam Bernstein reviews a book that takes on the common accusation leveled at Jews who criticize Israel.
July 10, 2008
AS ANY anti-Zionist knows, raising opposition to Israel and Zionism immediately draws accusations of anti-Semitism--and, if the dissenter is Jewish, accusations of self-hatred.
Review: Books
Mike Marqusee, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew. Verso, 256 pages, 2008, $26.95.
It is precisely these attempts by Zionism to squash all criticism of Israel, especially from Jews, that Mike Marqusee takes head on in his latest book, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.
Starting with the papers of his late grandfather and Marqusee's own personal experiences being raised as a Jew in post-Second World War America, the book beautifully weaves together a broad, yet intimately personal, history of anti-Zionism and radicalism in Judaism. Equal parts biography, autobiography, history and commentary, Marqusee powerfully strips Zionism of its claim to represent and speak for all of world Jewry.
Central to Marqusee's task is the re-appropriation of Jewish, anti-Zionist and leftist history--a history that is consciously buried by the Zionist establishment. In this process, he shows the strong connections between history, how we understand the present, and the frameworks we can utilize in determining the future.
Marqusee weighs in on an impressively diverse and rich array of subjects, including (but far from limited to) the Jewish workers' Bund, Jewish Enlightenment philosophy, political struggles within the New Deal coalition, parallels between Zionism and right-wing Hindu nationalism, the claims about "left-wing anti-Semitism," discussions with Muslims about Zionism, Jews in the Middle East, and the parallels between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
These discussions and explorations radiate out from Marqusee's narrative center: the life of his maternal grandfather, Edward V. Morand (aka EVM), a Jewish leftist active in New York politics in the 1930s and 1940s.
Despite being involved in virtually every left-wing cause of his time, EVM increasingly became an ardent Zionist, which led him to unconsciously sacrifice many of his radical principles. Marqusee is particularly horrified by EVM's political positions in 1948--the year of Israeli "independence," or al-Nakba (the catastrophe), as it's known to Palestinians. As Marqusee writes:
In the midst of [Israel's] one-way process of destruction, displacement and plunder, EVM's constant cry is "no retreat." He seems to have entirely lost his former distaste for war and militarism...In this war, there seems to be only one kind of victim, Jewish.
Marqusee attributes EVM's political twists and turns, in part, to a "failure to imagine the people on the receiving end of your dreams. It's a failure rooted in Western and white supremacy, a network of unexamined assumptions that has proved much more ineradicable and insidious than anti-Semitism. EVM's writings of 1948 resound with it, and offer inadvertent testimony to the racist character of the Nakba and Nakba denial."
These political contradictions and hypocrisies are exactly what led Marqusee himself out of the Zionist trap. In a very candid section, Marqusee relates an experience that is no doubt familiar to many Jewish anti-Zionists: the first time he was accused of self-hatred.
He describes hearing an Israeli soldier speak to his Sunday school class just after the 1967 Israeli war that began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The soldier was going on about how "the Arabs are better off now, under Israeli rule. You have to understand these are ignorant people. They go to the toilet in the street." Marqusee responds:
Now, something akin to this I had heard before. I had heard it from the white Southerners I'd been taught to look down upon. I had heard it from people my parents and my teachers described as prejudiced and bigoted. So I raised my hand and when called upon, I expressed my opinion, as I'd been taught to do. It seemed to me that what our visitor had said was, well, racist.
The young Marqusee was immediately denounced. Angrily, he went home to share this experience with his normally supportive parents. At the dinner table, he added to the story, putting forward his opinion, heavily influenced by the anti-Vietnam War movement, that "It was wrong for one country to take over another, or part of another, by military force...Suddenly, [my dad] barked, 'Enough already!'...Like my Sunday school teacher, he made me feel that I'd said something obscene...'I think you need to look at why you're saying what you're saying,' he said...'There's some Jewish self-hatred there.'"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN THE end, Marqusee answers the question set out by the title:
"If I am not for myself..." then others will claim to be "for me"...[I]n defining myself as an anti-Zionist Jew, I am for myself, and at the same time and without contradiction, for others...I find in anti-Zionism emancipation both as a Jew and as a human being...
Jews today can no more escape the question of Zionism than they could the question of anti-Semitism in earlier eras. The problem today isn't that Jews are in denial of their Jewishness or of the threat of anti-Semitism, but that Jews are in denial about Israel, Zionism, the Nakba, the occupation, the wall...
The people who call us self-haters want to steal our selves from us--appropriate our selves for their cause--and speaking as a self, I'm damned if I'm going to let them get away with it.
The task of anti-Zionists is to explain the role that Zionism serves in the U.S. imperial project, while also breaking the notion that Zionism has anything to do with Jewishness. As Marqusee puts it: "[T]he Zionist dominance of the diaspora, and especially the diaspora in America, is a mutable, historical phenomenon--not the inevitable expression of 'Jewish self-interest'--and the continuation of that dominance is by no means guaranteed."
Easier said than done, right? In addition to reclaiming history, we have to understand that Israeli war crimes and the logic of Zionism itself can shake even the most veteran of Zionists.
Just look at the development of Marqusee's father--the same dad who first called him a self-hater. As Marqusee writes:
[I]n the end, the Zionists tested his humanity beyond endurance. After the news broke about the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, he phoned me from New York. "Ok," he said, "you were right. They're bastards." He started to make contributions to Palestinian causes and to raise the issue among his friends.
The struggle against Zionism's dominance over Jews and Palestinians won't be easy, but Marqusee has made an important and captivating contribution to that fight. If you've ever had trouble arguing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, or if you just want to get a sense of the rich diversity of Jewish history and its relationship to radicalism, then you should pick up this book.
I just bought a copy for my dad--the first person to call me a self-hater. If Marqusee can convince his dad, then I guess I'll hold out hope for mine as well.
Sam Bernstein reviews a book that takes on the common accusation leveled at Jews who criticize Israel.
July 10, 2008
AS ANY anti-Zionist knows, raising opposition to Israel and Zionism immediately draws accusations of anti-Semitism--and, if the dissenter is Jewish, accusations of self-hatred.
Review: Books
Mike Marqusee, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew. Verso, 256 pages, 2008, $26.95.
It is precisely these attempts by Zionism to squash all criticism of Israel, especially from Jews, that Mike Marqusee takes head on in his latest book, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.
Starting with the papers of his late grandfather and Marqusee's own personal experiences being raised as a Jew in post-Second World War America, the book beautifully weaves together a broad, yet intimately personal, history of anti-Zionism and radicalism in Judaism. Equal parts biography, autobiography, history and commentary, Marqusee powerfully strips Zionism of its claim to represent and speak for all of world Jewry.
Central to Marqusee's task is the re-appropriation of Jewish, anti-Zionist and leftist history--a history that is consciously buried by the Zionist establishment. In this process, he shows the strong connections between history, how we understand the present, and the frameworks we can utilize in determining the future.
Marqusee weighs in on an impressively diverse and rich array of subjects, including (but far from limited to) the Jewish workers' Bund, Jewish Enlightenment philosophy, political struggles within the New Deal coalition, parallels between Zionism and right-wing Hindu nationalism, the claims about "left-wing anti-Semitism," discussions with Muslims about Zionism, Jews in the Middle East, and the parallels between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
These discussions and explorations radiate out from Marqusee's narrative center: the life of his maternal grandfather, Edward V. Morand (aka EVM), a Jewish leftist active in New York politics in the 1930s and 1940s.
Despite being involved in virtually every left-wing cause of his time, EVM increasingly became an ardent Zionist, which led him to unconsciously sacrifice many of his radical principles. Marqusee is particularly horrified by EVM's political positions in 1948--the year of Israeli "independence," or al-Nakba (the catastrophe), as it's known to Palestinians. As Marqusee writes:
In the midst of [Israel's] one-way process of destruction, displacement and plunder, EVM's constant cry is "no retreat." He seems to have entirely lost his former distaste for war and militarism...In this war, there seems to be only one kind of victim, Jewish.
Marqusee attributes EVM's political twists and turns, in part, to a "failure to imagine the people on the receiving end of your dreams. It's a failure rooted in Western and white supremacy, a network of unexamined assumptions that has proved much more ineradicable and insidious than anti-Semitism. EVM's writings of 1948 resound with it, and offer inadvertent testimony to the racist character of the Nakba and Nakba denial."
These political contradictions and hypocrisies are exactly what led Marqusee himself out of the Zionist trap. In a very candid section, Marqusee relates an experience that is no doubt familiar to many Jewish anti-Zionists: the first time he was accused of self-hatred.
He describes hearing an Israeli soldier speak to his Sunday school class just after the 1967 Israeli war that began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The soldier was going on about how "the Arabs are better off now, under Israeli rule. You have to understand these are ignorant people. They go to the toilet in the street." Marqusee responds:
Now, something akin to this I had heard before. I had heard it from the white Southerners I'd been taught to look down upon. I had heard it from people my parents and my teachers described as prejudiced and bigoted. So I raised my hand and when called upon, I expressed my opinion, as I'd been taught to do. It seemed to me that what our visitor had said was, well, racist.
The young Marqusee was immediately denounced. Angrily, he went home to share this experience with his normally supportive parents. At the dinner table, he added to the story, putting forward his opinion, heavily influenced by the anti-Vietnam War movement, that "It was wrong for one country to take over another, or part of another, by military force...Suddenly, [my dad] barked, 'Enough already!'...Like my Sunday school teacher, he made me feel that I'd said something obscene...'I think you need to look at why you're saying what you're saying,' he said...'There's some Jewish self-hatred there.'"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN THE end, Marqusee answers the question set out by the title:
"If I am not for myself..." then others will claim to be "for me"...[I]n defining myself as an anti-Zionist Jew, I am for myself, and at the same time and without contradiction, for others...I find in anti-Zionism emancipation both as a Jew and as a human being...
Jews today can no more escape the question of Zionism than they could the question of anti-Semitism in earlier eras. The problem today isn't that Jews are in denial of their Jewishness or of the threat of anti-Semitism, but that Jews are in denial about Israel, Zionism, the Nakba, the occupation, the wall...
The people who call us self-haters want to steal our selves from us--appropriate our selves for their cause--and speaking as a self, I'm damned if I'm going to let them get away with it.
The task of anti-Zionists is to explain the role that Zionism serves in the U.S. imperial project, while also breaking the notion that Zionism has anything to do with Jewishness. As Marqusee puts it: "[T]he Zionist dominance of the diaspora, and especially the diaspora in America, is a mutable, historical phenomenon--not the inevitable expression of 'Jewish self-interest'--and the continuation of that dominance is by no means guaranteed."
Easier said than done, right? In addition to reclaiming history, we have to understand that Israeli war crimes and the logic of Zionism itself can shake even the most veteran of Zionists.
Just look at the development of Marqusee's father--the same dad who first called him a self-hater. As Marqusee writes:
[I]n the end, the Zionists tested his humanity beyond endurance. After the news broke about the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, he phoned me from New York. "Ok," he said, "you were right. They're bastards." He started to make contributions to Palestinian causes and to raise the issue among his friends.
The struggle against Zionism's dominance over Jews and Palestinians won't be easy, but Marqusee has made an important and captivating contribution to that fight. If you've ever had trouble arguing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, or if you just want to get a sense of the rich diversity of Jewish history and its relationship to radicalism, then you should pick up this book.
I just bought a copy for my dad--the first person to call me a self-hater. If Marqusee can convince his dad, then I guess I'll hold out hope for mine as well.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Speak out to protect the children
By PAUL REHM
First published: Saturday, June 28, 2008
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=699786&category=&BCCode=&TextPage=2
They come in the middle of the night, some with blackened faces. They prefer the darkness, these men and women who take food and clothing meant for orphans and needy families.
Shortly after midnight on April 30, these Israeli soldiers drove through the streets of Hebron to raid the sewing workshop in a Palestinian girls orphanage. Taken by surprise when my Christian Peacemaker teammates found them there, they would not answer Art's challenge, "Is this the way you fight terror -- stealing clothing and sewing machines from a girls' orphanage?"
"Look at yourselves. Now tell me who the terrorists are." Could Art's words have been ringing in their ears as they discarded their loot at the municipal dump?
On Feb. 26, the Israeli army had ordered the Islamic Charitable Society to close the orphanages and schools it oversees in Hebron, along with the central warehouse and bakeries that serve those facilities. The army claimed there was a connection to Hamas. The ICS staff told us some employees are members of the political party Hamas and others belong to Fatah, but that neither party controls the charitable organization.
"If the army has evidence proving any ICS employees are involved in illegal activities," they added, "arrest those individuals and bring them to trial. Don't make the orphans and students suffer."
Those pleas fell on deaf ears. In March, the army raided the ICS central warehouse and took away school buses, clothing and food.
We walked through that ransacked warehouse -- shelves stripped, doors smashed, broken glass on the floor -- one more instance of the violence faced by people who ask our group to work with them as they attempt to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Christian Peacemaker Teams' commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking evolves from the life and teachings of Jesus. Besides Hebron, we also have teams in the nearby village of At-Tuwani and in Colombia and Iraq.
The army gave the Islamic Charitable Society until April 1 to vacate its buildings. In support of the children, and in keeping with Christian Peacemaker Teams' practice of getting in the way between oppressors and the oppressed, we slept on mats in the boys' and girls' orphanages for several nights at the end of March and start of April. The soldiers did not come.
A few weeks later, they did return in the night -- not to the orphanages but to one of the bakeries. They set fire to the commercial oven, smashed walls and ventilation pipes and drove away into the darkness.
While the army has been making its late night rounds, people in the West Bank and Jerusalem -- men and women, including Christians, Jews and Muslims -- concerned with human rights and the welfare of children have been raising their voices in the light of day. European Union Vice President Luisa Morgantini called the decision to close the ICS schools an "arbitrary and illegal action perpetrated by the Israeli military against the civil population."
Former President Jimmy Carter called for "people of good will to join me on behalf of the orphans and students ... so that 240 children will not lose the place they've come to know as home and 1,700 students will not be thrown out of school."
Rabbi Arik Ascherman of the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, forbidden by Israeli law from entering the area of Hebron where a news conference was held, phoned in his message of support. The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, was one of the first to speak out: "How pathetic is an occupation army that empties out warehouses of food and clothing earmarked for orphans."
In times like these, when Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire joins the struggle by sleeping in at the girls' orphanage, you and I can also speak out for the children of Hebron. We may not be presidents, vice presidents, rabbis, journalists or Nobel laureates, but our individual voices are critical. We can make ourselves heard. We can contact the Israeli embassy in Washington and ask that the closure orders be rescinded and the ICS compensated for its property. We can phone our representatives in Washington and ask them to bring America's influence to bear on behalf of the orphans and students in Hebron.
Or we can do nothing. The children will never know.
Paul Rehm, who lives in South Westerlo and retired as director of purchasing for Stiefel Laboratories, is a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams. He can be contacted by e-mail at kprehm@aol.com.
By PAUL REHM
First published: Saturday, June 28, 2008
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=699786&category=&BCCode=&TextPage=2
They come in the middle of the night, some with blackened faces. They prefer the darkness, these men and women who take food and clothing meant for orphans and needy families.
Shortly after midnight on April 30, these Israeli soldiers drove through the streets of Hebron to raid the sewing workshop in a Palestinian girls orphanage. Taken by surprise when my Christian Peacemaker teammates found them there, they would not answer Art's challenge, "Is this the way you fight terror -- stealing clothing and sewing machines from a girls' orphanage?"
"Look at yourselves. Now tell me who the terrorists are." Could Art's words have been ringing in their ears as they discarded their loot at the municipal dump?
On Feb. 26, the Israeli army had ordered the Islamic Charitable Society to close the orphanages and schools it oversees in Hebron, along with the central warehouse and bakeries that serve those facilities. The army claimed there was a connection to Hamas. The ICS staff told us some employees are members of the political party Hamas and others belong to Fatah, but that neither party controls the charitable organization.
"If the army has evidence proving any ICS employees are involved in illegal activities," they added, "arrest those individuals and bring them to trial. Don't make the orphans and students suffer."
Those pleas fell on deaf ears. In March, the army raided the ICS central warehouse and took away school buses, clothing and food.
We walked through that ransacked warehouse -- shelves stripped, doors smashed, broken glass on the floor -- one more instance of the violence faced by people who ask our group to work with them as they attempt to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Christian Peacemaker Teams' commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking evolves from the life and teachings of Jesus. Besides Hebron, we also have teams in the nearby village of At-Tuwani and in Colombia and Iraq.
The army gave the Islamic Charitable Society until April 1 to vacate its buildings. In support of the children, and in keeping with Christian Peacemaker Teams' practice of getting in the way between oppressors and the oppressed, we slept on mats in the boys' and girls' orphanages for several nights at the end of March and start of April. The soldiers did not come.
A few weeks later, they did return in the night -- not to the orphanages but to one of the bakeries. They set fire to the commercial oven, smashed walls and ventilation pipes and drove away into the darkness.
While the army has been making its late night rounds, people in the West Bank and Jerusalem -- men and women, including Christians, Jews and Muslims -- concerned with human rights and the welfare of children have been raising their voices in the light of day. European Union Vice President Luisa Morgantini called the decision to close the ICS schools an "arbitrary and illegal action perpetrated by the Israeli military against the civil population."
Former President Jimmy Carter called for "people of good will to join me on behalf of the orphans and students ... so that 240 children will not lose the place they've come to know as home and 1,700 students will not be thrown out of school."
Rabbi Arik Ascherman of the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, forbidden by Israeli law from entering the area of Hebron where a news conference was held, phoned in his message of support. The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, was one of the first to speak out: "How pathetic is an occupation army that empties out warehouses of food and clothing earmarked for orphans."
In times like these, when Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire joins the struggle by sleeping in at the girls' orphanage, you and I can also speak out for the children of Hebron. We may not be presidents, vice presidents, rabbis, journalists or Nobel laureates, but our individual voices are critical. We can make ourselves heard. We can contact the Israeli embassy in Washington and ask that the closure orders be rescinded and the ICS compensated for its property. We can phone our representatives in Washington and ask them to bring America's influence to bear on behalf of the orphans and students in Hebron.
Or we can do nothing. The children will never know.
Paul Rehm, who lives in South Westerlo and retired as director of purchasing for Stiefel Laboratories, is a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams. He can be contacted by e-mail at kprehm@aol.com.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Two Israels
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: June 22, 2008 HEBRON, West Bank (NY Times)
Inside the West Bank To travel through the West Bank and Gaza these days feels like traveling through Israeli colonies.
You whiz around the West Bank on new highways that in some cases are reserved for Israeli vehicles, catching glimpses of Palestinian vehicles lined up at checkpoints.
The security system that Israel is steadily establishing is nowhere more stifling than here in Hebron, the largest city in the southern part of the West Bank. In the heart of a city with 160,000 Palestinians, Israel maintains a Jewish settlement with 800 people. To protect them, the Israeli military has established a massive system of guard posts, checkpoints and road closures since 2001.
More than 1,800 Palestinian shops have closed, in some cases the doors welded shut, and several thousand people have been driven from their homes. The once flourishing gold market is now blocked with barbed wire and choked with weeds and garbage.
“For years, Israel has severely oppressed Palestinians living in the center of the city,” notes B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, in a recent report. The authorities, it adds, “have expropriated the city center from its Palestinian residents and destroyed it economically.”
Rima Abu Aisha, a housewife in Hebron, has the misfortune of living in an area near the settlers. When she went into labor, an ambulance could not get the appropriate permissions in time and the baby died, she said.
Even if the Hebron settlement were not illegal in the eyes of much of the world, it is utterly impractical. The financial cost is mind-boggling, and the diplomatic cost is greater.
Perhaps greatest of all is the cost for any hope of a peaceful settlement: the barriers and checkpoints have undermined Palestinian moderates like President Mahmoud Abbas and have empowered Hamas. Polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians now approve of terror attacks against civilians in Israel, up from 40 percent in 2005.
The Palestinians are committing national suicide as well. By turning toward the zealots of Hamas, and toward the short-term thrill of sending rockets into Israel, they are building a tombstone for their state before it is even born.
Americans who haven’t toured the West Bank or Gaza recently may not appreciate how the new security regime of the last few years is suffocating, impoverishing and antagonizing Palestinians.
In the village of Ein Bani Salim, a farmer named Khalifa Danna pointed to his field, separated from his house by a barbed-wire fence that Israel built in 2004. Since then, he has been unable to get to the fields. Mr. Danna shows photos he has taken of Israeli settlers on his land — even using it to throw stones at him.
B’Tselem is giving video cameras to Palestinians to document the attacks and abuses they suffer. Just this month, a Palestinian woman near Hebron used a camera to record a group of four settlers clubbing her family in a field; two settlers were later arrested.
The settlers see the issue very differently, emphasizing the continuing Palestinian attacks on them and noting that the security steps were put in place only in reaction to Palestinian terrorism during the second intifada a half-dozen years ago.
“If people are trying to actively wipe you out and kill your people, then you have to take security measures,” says David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers in Hebron. “If that antagonizes them, they should stop trying to kill us.”
So the chasm grows wider and peace more distant.
It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)
Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.
All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel’s historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.
In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace.
Inside the West Bank To travel through the West Bank and Gaza these days feels like traveling through Israeli colonies.
You whiz around the West Bank on new highways that in some cases are reserved for Israeli vehicles, catching glimpses of Palestinian vehicles lined up at checkpoints.
The security system that Israel is steadily establishing is nowhere more stifling than here in Hebron, the largest city in the southern part of the West Bank. In the heart of a city with 160,000 Palestinians, Israel maintains a Jewish settlement with 800 people. To protect them, the Israeli military has established a massive system of guard posts, checkpoints and road closures since 2001.
More than 1,800 Palestinian shops have closed, in some cases the doors welded shut, and several thousand people have been driven from their homes. The once flourishing gold market is now blocked with barbed wire and choked with weeds and garbage.
“For years, Israel has severely oppressed Palestinians living in the center of the city,” notes B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, in a recent report. The authorities, it adds, “have expropriated the city center from its Palestinian residents and destroyed it economically.”
Rima Abu Aisha, a housewife in Hebron, has the misfortune of living in an area near the settlers. When she went into labor, an ambulance could not get the appropriate permissions in time and the baby died, she said.
Even if the Hebron settlement were not illegal in the eyes of much of the world, it is utterly impractical. The financial cost is mind-boggling, and the diplomatic cost is greater.
Perhaps greatest of all is the cost for any hope of a peaceful settlement: the barriers and checkpoints have undermined Palestinian moderates like President Mahmoud Abbas and have empowered Hamas. Polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians now approve of terror attacks against civilians in Israel, up from 40 percent in 2005.
The Palestinians are committing national suicide as well. By turning toward the zealots of Hamas, and toward the short-term thrill of sending rockets into Israel, they are building a tombstone for their state before it is even born.
Americans who haven’t toured the West Bank or Gaza recently may not appreciate how the new security regime of the last few years is suffocating, impoverishing and antagonizing Palestinians.
In the village of Ein Bani Salim, a farmer named Khalifa Danna pointed to his field, separated from his house by a barbed-wire fence that Israel built in 2004. Since then, he has been unable to get to the fields. Mr. Danna shows photos he has taken of Israeli settlers on his land — even using it to throw stones at him.
B’Tselem is giving video cameras to Palestinians to document the attacks and abuses they suffer. Just this month, a Palestinian woman near Hebron used a camera to record a group of four settlers clubbing her family in a field; two settlers were later arrested.
The settlers see the issue very differently, emphasizing the continuing Palestinian attacks on them and noting that the security steps were put in place only in reaction to Palestinian terrorism during the second intifada a half-dozen years ago.
“If people are trying to actively wipe you out and kill your people, then you have to take security measures,” says David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers in Hebron. “If that antagonizes them, they should stop trying to kill us.”
So the chasm grows wider and peace more distant.
It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)
Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.
All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel’s historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.
In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Israeli Army has used almost every weapon
Friends of Freedom and Justice (FFJ) June 20 2008-The Israeli Army has used almost every weapon in their arsenal to impose their Apartheid on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. In many cases these weapons, which are often lethal, are used on the whole of the Palestinian population regardless of whether they are simply trying to lead a private family life or if they are resisting the occupation.
The Village of Bilin in particular has been struggling against the Apartheid Wall and the occupation for three consecutive years using peaceful resistance. Bilin has been holding weekly demonstrations with the participation of local villagers, internationals, and Israeli supporters. In return, the Israeli Army has used all manner of violent methods and weapons to silence the Bilin Resistance, even though Bilin's approach has been non-violent.
This use of disproportionate and sometimes lethal force against peaceful resistance has been perpetuated by the Israeli High Courts decision to "legally" allow the use of live ammunition on peaceful Palestinian protestors, only barring the use of live ammunition when foreign nationals and Israeli Activists are present at these protests. The Israeli Army has now used live ammunition against Palestinian protestors in Bilin with the presence of Internationals and Israeli activists there, even in violating its own racist laws. This has led to many serious injuries to the Bilin Villagers, such as Ibrahim Burnat, who was shot with three bullets in his thigh at last weeks protest.
The action of the Israeli Army against the whole of Palestinian Society betrays their rhetoric about security as the purpose of their occupation and instead shines light on what seems to be their true aim; the slow removal of the Palestinian people from their land by any means possible. This includes terrorizing the population through forced transfers, economic starvation, house demolitions, unwarranted arrests, and unchecked killing of the civilian population. This ethnic cleansing is cemented as a reality through the Israeli policies of land confiscation, settlement expansion, and the control of water resources which are the true aims of the Apartheid wall and system of occupation.
This week as part of Bilin's ongoing weekly resistance, the villagers and their international supporters organized a protest against the Apartheid Wall. The protestors carried signs and banners denouncing the use of live ammunition against peaceful protestors. They also raised pictures of some of the villagers who had been wounded by Israeli Forces while participating in the protests. Below the pictures of the victims was written "Despite the hatred of your bullets, we will uproot your wall". Israeli Troops responded by showering the protest with tear gas and flash bombs and dozens were treated for tear gas inhalation.
Today, the people of Bilin sent the message that they will not be bullied by Israel's use of deadly force and their peaceful struggle will continue its effort to bring about the end of the settlements, the destruction of the Apartheid Wall, and the end of the occupation as a whole.
To read more or veiw photos from the protest please visit our new website at
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/
Thank you for your continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
The Village of Bilin in particular has been struggling against the Apartheid Wall and the occupation for three consecutive years using peaceful resistance. Bilin has been holding weekly demonstrations with the participation of local villagers, internationals, and Israeli supporters. In return, the Israeli Army has used all manner of violent methods and weapons to silence the Bilin Resistance, even though Bilin's approach has been non-violent.
This use of disproportionate and sometimes lethal force against peaceful resistance has been perpetuated by the Israeli High Courts decision to "legally" allow the use of live ammunition on peaceful Palestinian protestors, only barring the use of live ammunition when foreign nationals and Israeli Activists are present at these protests. The Israeli Army has now used live ammunition against Palestinian protestors in Bilin with the presence of Internationals and Israeli activists there, even in violating its own racist laws. This has led to many serious injuries to the Bilin Villagers, such as Ibrahim Burnat, who was shot with three bullets in his thigh at last weeks protest.
The action of the Israeli Army against the whole of Palestinian Society betrays their rhetoric about security as the purpose of their occupation and instead shines light on what seems to be their true aim; the slow removal of the Palestinian people from their land by any means possible. This includes terrorizing the population through forced transfers, economic starvation, house demolitions, unwarranted arrests, and unchecked killing of the civilian population. This ethnic cleansing is cemented as a reality through the Israeli policies of land confiscation, settlement expansion, and the control of water resources which are the true aims of the Apartheid wall and system of occupation.
This week as part of Bilin's ongoing weekly resistance, the villagers and their international supporters organized a protest against the Apartheid Wall. The protestors carried signs and banners denouncing the use of live ammunition against peaceful protestors. They also raised pictures of some of the villagers who had been wounded by Israeli Forces while participating in the protests. Below the pictures of the victims was written "Despite the hatred of your bullets, we will uproot your wall". Israeli Troops responded by showering the protest with tear gas and flash bombs and dozens were treated for tear gas inhalation.
Today, the people of Bilin sent the message that they will not be bullied by Israel's use of deadly force and their peaceful struggle will continue its effort to bring about the end of the settlements, the destruction of the Apartheid Wall, and the end of the occupation as a whole.
To read more or veiw photos from the protest please visit our new website at
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/
Thank you for your continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
FYI: An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky (Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/barat06062008.html
June 6, 2008
On the Future of Israel and Palestine
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
By FRANK BARAT
Barat: Thanks for accepting this interview. Firstly I would like to ask if you are working on something at the moment that you would like to let us know about?
Ilan Pappé: I am completing several books. The first is a concise history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the other is on the Palestinian minority in Israel and one on the Arab Jews. I am completing an edited volume comparing the South Africa situation to that of Palestine
Noam Chomsky: The usual range of articles, talks, etc. No time for major projects right now.
Barat: A British M.P recently said that he had felt a change in the last 5 years regarding Israel. British M.Ps nowadays sign E.D.M (Early Day Motions) condemning Israel in bigger number than ever before and he told us that it was now easier to express criticism towards Israel even when talking on U.S campuses.
Also, in the last few weeks, John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the U.N Human Right Council said that "Palestinian terror 'inevitable' result of occupation", the European parliament adopted a resolution saying that "policy of isolation of the Gaza strip has failed at both the political and humanitarian level" and the U.N and the E.U have condemned Israel use of excessive and disproportionate force in the Gaza strip.
Could we interpret that as a general shift in attitude towards Israel?
Ilan Pappé: The two examples indicate a significant shift in public opinion and in the civil society. However, the problem remained what it had been in the last sixty years: these impulses and energies are not translated, and are not likely to be translated in the near future, into actual policies on the ground. And thus the only way of enhancing this transition from support from below to actual policies is by developing the idea of sanctions and boycott. This can give a clear orientation and direction to the many individuals and ngos that have shown for years solidarity with the Palestine cause.
Noam Chomsky: There has been a very clear shift in recent years. On US campuses and with general audiences as well. It was not long ago that police protection was a standard feature of talks at all critical of Israeli policies, meetings were broken up, audiences very hostile and abusive. By now it is sharply different, with scattered exceptions. Apologists for Israeli violence now tend often to be defensive and desperate, rather than arrogant and overbearing. But the critique of Israeli actions is thin, because the basic facts are systematically suppressed. That is particularly true of the decisive US role in barring diplomatic options, undermining democracy, and supporting Israel's systematic program of undermining the possibility for an eventual political settlement. But portrayal of the US as an "honest broker," somehow unable to pursue its benign objectives, is characteristic, not only in this domain.
Barat: The word apartheid is more and more often used by NGO's and charities to describe Israel's actions towards the Palestinians (in Gaza, the OPT but also in Israel itself). Is the situation in Palestine and Israel comparable to Apartheid South Africa?
Ilan Pappé: There are similarities and dissimilarities. The colonialist history has many chapters in common and some of the features of the Apartheid system can be found in the Israeli policies towards its own Palestinian minority and towards those in the occupied territories. Some aspects of the occupation, however, are worse then the apartheid reality of South Africa and some aspects in the lives of Palestinian citizens in Israel, are not as bad as they were in the hey days of Apartheid. The main point of comparison to my mind is political inspiration. The anti-Apartheid movement, the ANC, the solidarity networks developed throughout the years in the West, should inspire a more focused and effect pro-Palestinian campaign. This is why there is a need to learn the history of the struggle against Apartheid, much more than dwell too long on comparing the Zionist and Apartheid systems.
Noam Chomsky: There can be no definite answer to such questions. There are similarities and differences. Within Israel itself, there is serious discrimination, but it's very far from South African Apartheid. Within the occupied territories, it's a different story. In 1997, I gave the keynote address at Ben-Gurion University in a conference on the anniversary of the 1967 war. I read a paragraph from a standard history of South Africa. No comment was necessary.
Looking more closely, the situation in the OT differs in many ways from Apartheid. In some respects, South African Apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true. To mention one example, White South Africa depended on Black labor. The large majority of the population could not be expelled. At one time Israel relied on cheap and easily exploited Palestinian labor, but they have long ago been replaced by the miserable of the earth from Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear. And it is no secret that the policies that have taken shape accord well with the recommendations of Moshe Dayan right after the 1967 war : Palestinians will "continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave." More extreme recommendations have been made by highly regarded left humanists in the United States, for example Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and editor of the democratic socialist journal Dissent, who advised 35 years ago that since Palestinians are "marginal to the nation," they should be "helped" to leave. He was referring to Palestinian citizens of Israel itself, a position made familiar more recently by the ultra-right Avigdor Lieberman, and now being picked up in the Israeli mainstream. I put aside the real fanatics, like Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who declares that Israel never kills civilians, only terrorists, so that the definition of "terrorist" is "killed by Israel"; and Israel should aim for a kill ratio of 1000 to zero, which means "exterminate the brutes" completely. It is of no small significance that advocates of these views are regarded with respect in enlightened circles in the US, indeed the West. One can imagine the reaction if such comments were made about Jews.
On the query, to repeat, there can be no clear answer as to whether the analogy is appropriate.
Barat: Israel has recently said that it will boycott the U.N conference on Human Rights in Durban because "it will be impossible to prevent the conference from turning into a festival of anti-Israeli attacks" and has also cancelled a meeting with Costa Rican officials over the Central American nation's decision to formally recognize a Palestinian state. Is Israel refusal to accept any sort of criticism towards its policies likely to eventually backfire?
Ilan Pappé: One hopes it will backfire one day. However, this depends on the global and regional balances of power, not only on the Israelis 'over reacting'. The two, namely the balance of power and Israel intransigence, may be interconnected in the future. If there is a change in America's policy, or in its hegemonic role in the politics of the region, than a continued Israeli inflexibility can encourage the international community to adopt a more critical position against Israel and exert pressure on the Jewish state to end the occupation and dispossession of Palestine
Noam Chomsky: One can agree or disagree with these decisions, but they do not imply "refusal to accept any sort of criticism towards its policies." I doubt that these particular decisions will backfire, or will even receive much notice.
Barat: How can Israel reach a settlement with an organization which declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state? If Hamas really wants a settlement, why won't it recognize Israel?
Ilan Pappé: Peace is made between enemies not lovers. The end result of the peace process can be a political Islamic recognition in the place of the Jews in Palestine and in the Middle East as a whole, whether in a separated state or a joint state. The PLO entered negotiations with Israel without changing its charter, which is not that different as far as the attitude to Israel, is concerned. So the search should be for a text, solution and political structure that is inclusive - enabling all the national, ethnic, religious and ideological groups to coexist
Noam Chomsky: Hamas cannot recognize Israel any more than Kadima can recognize Palestine, or than the Democratic Party in the US can recognize England. One could ask whether a government led by Hamas should recognize Israel, or whether a government led by Kadima or the Democratic Party should recognize Palestine. So far they have all refused to do so, though Hamas has at least called for a two-state settlement in accord with the long-standing international consensus, while Kadima and the Democratic Party refuse to go that far, keeping to the rejectionist stance that the US and Israel have maintained for over 30 years in international isolation. As for words, when Prime Minister Olmert declares to a joint session of the US Congress that he believes "in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land," to rousing applause, he is presumably referring not only to Palestine from the Jordan to the sea, but also to the other side of the Jordan river, the historic claim of the Likud Party that was his political home, a claim never formally abandoned, to my knowledge. On Hamas, I think it should abandon those provisions of its charter, and should move from acceptance of a two-state settlement to mutual recognition, though we must bear in mind that its positions are more forthcoming than those of the US and Israel.
Barat: During the last few months, Israel has accentuated its attacks on Gaza and is talking of an imminent ground invasion, there is also a strong possibility that it is involved in the killing of the Hezbollah leader Mughniyeh and it is pushing for stronger sanctions (including military) on Iran. Do you believe that Israel's appetite for war could eventually lead to its self destruction?
Ilan Pappé: Yes, I think that the aggressiveness is increasing and Israel antagonizes not only the Palestinian world, but also the Arab and Islamic ones. The military balance of power, at present, is in Israel's presence, but this can change at any given moment, especially once the US withdrew its support.
Noam Chomsky: I wrote decades ago that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. I have also believed for many years that Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security, ever since it turned down Sadat‚s offer of a full peace treaty in 1971, may well lead to that consequence.
Barat: What would it take for the U.S to withdraw its unconditional support to Israel?
Ilan Pappé: Externally: a collapse of its Middle East policy, mainly through the downfall of one of its allies. Alternatively, but less likely, the emergence of a counter European policy. Internally: a major economic crisis and the success of the present coalition of forces working within the civil society to impact such a change.
Noam Chomsky: To answer that, we have to consider the sources of the support. The corporate sector in the US, which dominates policy formation, appears to be quite satisfied with the current situation. One indication is the increasing flow of investment to Israel by Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and other leading elements of the high-tech economy. Military and intelligence relations remain very strong. Since 1967, US intellectuals have had a virtual love affair with Israel, for reasons that relate more to the US than to Israel, in my opinion. That strongly affects portrayal of events and history in media and journals. Palestinians are weak, dispersed, friendless, and offer nothing to concentrations of power in the US. A large majority of Americans support the international consensus on a two-state settlement, and even call for equalizing aid to Israel and the Palestinians. In this as in many other respects, both political parties are well to the right of the population. 95% of the US population think that the government should pay attention to the views of the population, a position rejected across the elite spectrum (sometimes quite explicitly, at other times tacitly). Hence one step towards a more even-handed stance would be "democracy promotion" within the US. Apart from that eventuality, what it would take is events that lead to a recalculation of interests among elite sectors.
Barat: CounterPunch featured an interesting debate on the 1 state vs 2 states solution last month. It started with a Michael Neumann article saying that "the one state solution was an illusion" and was followed by articles from Assaf Kfoury entitled "One-State or Two-State?" - A Sterile Debate on False Alternatives" and Jonathan Cook entitled "One state or two, neither, the issue is Zionism". What's your opinion on this and do you think that in view of the "facts on the ground" (settlements, bypass roads...) created by Israel a 2 state solution is still possible?
Ilan Pappé: The facts on the ground had rendered a two states solution impossible a long time ago. The facts indicated that there was never and will never be an Israeli consent to a Palestinian state apart from a stateless state within two Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza totally under Israeli control. There is already one state and the struggle is to change its nature and regime. Whether the new regime and constitutional basis would be bi-national or democratic, or maybe even both, is less significant at this point. Any political outfit that would replace the present racist state of affairs is welcome. Any such outfit should also enable the refugees to return and even the most recent immigrants to remain.
Noam Chomsky: We have to make a distinction between proposal and advocacy. We can propose that everyone should live in peace. It becomes advocacy when we sketch out a realistic path from here to there. A one-state solution makes little sense, in my opinion, but a bi-national state does. It was possible to advocate such a settlement from 1967 to the mid-1970s, and in fact I did, in many writings and talks, including a book. The reaction was mostly fury. After Palestinian national rights entered the international agenda in the mid-1970s, it has remained possible to advocate bi-nationalism (and I continue to do so), but only as a process passing through intermediate stages, the first being a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. That outcome, probably the best that can be envisioned in the short term, was almost reached in negotiations in Taba in January 2001, and according to participants, could have been reached had the negotiations not been prematurely terminated by Israeli Prime Minister Barak. That was the one moment in the past 30 years when the two leading rejectionist states did briefly consider joining the international consensus, and the one time when a diplomatic settlement seemed within sight. Much has changed since 2001, but I do not see any reason to believe that what was apparently within reach then is impossible today.
It is of some interest, and I think instructive, that proposals for a "one-state solution" are tolerated within the mainstream today, unlike the period when advocacy was indeed feasible and they were anathema. Today they are published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. One can only conclude that they are considered acceptable today because they are completely unfeasible -- they remain proposal, not advocacy. In practice, the proposals lend support to US-Israeli rejectionism, and undermine the only feasible advocacy of a bi-national solution, in stages.
Today there are two options for Palestinians. One is US-Israeli abandonment of their rejectionist stance, and a settlement roughly along the lines of what was being approached at Taba, The other option is continuation of current policies, which lead, inexorably, to incorporation into Israel of what it wants: at least, Greater Jerusalem, the areas within the Separation Wall (now an Annexation Wall), the Jordan Valley, and the salients through Ma'aleh Adumim and Ariel and beyond that effectively trisect what remains, which will be broken up into unviable cantons by huge infrastructure projects, hundreds of check points, and other devices to ensure that Palestinians live like dogs.
There are those who believe that Palestinians should simply let Israel take over the West Bank completely and then carry out a civil rights/anti-Apartheid style struggle. That is an illusion, however. There is no reason why the US-Israel would accept the premises of this proposal. They will simply proceed along the lines now being implemented, and will not accept any responsibility for Palestinians who are scattered outside the regions they intend to incorporate into Israel.
Barat: During my recent trip to Israel/Palestine it became obvious (talking to people, reading newspapers, watching the news) that something scared Israel a lot: a Boycott. Are you in favor of this type of actions and do you think that they could bare fruit?
Ilan Pappé: Yes I am and I do think it has a chance of triggering processes of change on the ground.
Noam Chomsky: Boycotts sometimes make sense. For example, such actions against South Africa were effective, even though the Reagan administration evaded congressional sanctions while declaring Mandela's ANC to be one of the "more notorious terrorist groups" in the world (in 1988). The actions were effective because the groundwork had been laid in many years of education and activism. By the time they were implemented, they received substantial support in the US within the political system, the media, and even the corporate sector. Nothing remotely like that has been achieved in this case. As a result, calls for boycott almost invariably backfire, reinforcing the harshest and most brutal policies towards Palestinians.
Selective boycotts, carefully formulated, might have some effect. For example, boycotts of military producers who provide arms to Israel, or to Caterpillar Corporation, which provides the equipment for destroying Palestine. All of their actions are strictly illegal, and boycotts could be made understandable to the general public, so that they could be effective.
Selective boycotts could also be effective against states with a far worse record of violence and terror than Israel, such as the US. And, of course, without its decisive support and participation, Israel could not carry out illegal expansion and other crimes. There are no calls for boycotting the US, not for reasons of principle, but because it is simply too powerful
-- facts that raise some obvious questions about
the moral legitimacy of actions targeting its clients
Barat: Coming back from Israel/Palestine a few weeks ago, the director of ICAHD U.K said that, in spite of Annapolis, "not one thing on the ground has improved{...} witnessing Israel judaisation of the country left me feeling cold and angry". Seeing this, could Palestinian resistance (which has mainly been non violent so far) go back to an armed struggle and start the most brutal 3rd intifada?
Ilan Pappé: It is difficult to understand the 'could' - theoretically they can and they may, the question is whether it is going to produce different results from the previous two uprisings, the feeling is that it is not likely.
Noam Chomsky: My opinion all along has been that the Palestinian leadership is offering Israel and its US backers a great gift by resorting to violence and posturing about revolution -- quite apart from the fact that, tactical considerations aside, resort to violence carries a very heavy burden of justification. Today, for example, nothing is more welcome to Israeli and US hawks than Qassam rockets, which enable them to shriek joyously about how the ratio of deaths should be increased to infinity (all victims being defined as "terrorists"). I have also agreed all along with personal friends who had contacts with the Palestinian leadership (in particular, Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad) that a non-violent struggle would have had considerable prospects for success. And I think it still does, in fact the only prospects for success.
Barat: What NGO's and charities working for justice in Palestine should focus on in the next few months?
Ilan Pappé: They know best and I hesitate to advise them. I think they gave us guidance with their call for boycott and if they continue with initiatives like this it can be very helpful. But most importantly it would be great if they could continue to work for reconciliation and unity in the Palestinian camp.
Noam Chomsky: The daily and urgent task is to focus on the terrible ongoing violations of the most elementary human rights and the illegal US-backed settlement and development projects that are designed to undermine a diplomatic settlement. A more general task is to try to lay the basis for a successful struggle for a settlement that takes into account the just demands of contesting parties -- the kind of hard, dedicated, persistent educational and organizational work that has provided the underpinnings for other advances towards peace and justice. I have already indicated what I think that entails -- not least, effective democracy promotion in the reigning superpower.
© Frank Barat ˆ June 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/barat06062008.html
June 6, 2008
On the Future of Israel and Palestine
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
By FRANK BARAT
Barat: Thanks for accepting this interview. Firstly I would like to ask if you are working on something at the moment that you would like to let us know about?
Ilan Pappé: I am completing several books. The first is a concise history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the other is on the Palestinian minority in Israel and one on the Arab Jews. I am completing an edited volume comparing the South Africa situation to that of Palestine
Noam Chomsky: The usual range of articles, talks, etc. No time for major projects right now.
Barat: A British M.P recently said that he had felt a change in the last 5 years regarding Israel. British M.Ps nowadays sign E.D.M (Early Day Motions) condemning Israel in bigger number than ever before and he told us that it was now easier to express criticism towards Israel even when talking on U.S campuses.
Also, in the last few weeks, John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the U.N Human Right Council said that "Palestinian terror 'inevitable' result of occupation", the European parliament adopted a resolution saying that "policy of isolation of the Gaza strip has failed at both the political and humanitarian level" and the U.N and the E.U have condemned Israel use of excessive and disproportionate force in the Gaza strip.
Could we interpret that as a general shift in attitude towards Israel?
Ilan Pappé: The two examples indicate a significant shift in public opinion and in the civil society. However, the problem remained what it had been in the last sixty years: these impulses and energies are not translated, and are not likely to be translated in the near future, into actual policies on the ground. And thus the only way of enhancing this transition from support from below to actual policies is by developing the idea of sanctions and boycott. This can give a clear orientation and direction to the many individuals and ngos that have shown for years solidarity with the Palestine cause.
Noam Chomsky: There has been a very clear shift in recent years. On US campuses and with general audiences as well. It was not long ago that police protection was a standard feature of talks at all critical of Israeli policies, meetings were broken up, audiences very hostile and abusive. By now it is sharply different, with scattered exceptions. Apologists for Israeli violence now tend often to be defensive and desperate, rather than arrogant and overbearing. But the critique of Israeli actions is thin, because the basic facts are systematically suppressed. That is particularly true of the decisive US role in barring diplomatic options, undermining democracy, and supporting Israel's systematic program of undermining the possibility for an eventual political settlement. But portrayal of the US as an "honest broker," somehow unable to pursue its benign objectives, is characteristic, not only in this domain.
Barat: The word apartheid is more and more often used by NGO's and charities to describe Israel's actions towards the Palestinians (in Gaza, the OPT but also in Israel itself). Is the situation in Palestine and Israel comparable to Apartheid South Africa?
Ilan Pappé: There are similarities and dissimilarities. The colonialist history has many chapters in common and some of the features of the Apartheid system can be found in the Israeli policies towards its own Palestinian minority and towards those in the occupied territories. Some aspects of the occupation, however, are worse then the apartheid reality of South Africa and some aspects in the lives of Palestinian citizens in Israel, are not as bad as they were in the hey days of Apartheid. The main point of comparison to my mind is political inspiration. The anti-Apartheid movement, the ANC, the solidarity networks developed throughout the years in the West, should inspire a more focused and effect pro-Palestinian campaign. This is why there is a need to learn the history of the struggle against Apartheid, much more than dwell too long on comparing the Zionist and Apartheid systems.
Noam Chomsky: There can be no definite answer to such questions. There are similarities and differences. Within Israel itself, there is serious discrimination, but it's very far from South African Apartheid. Within the occupied territories, it's a different story. In 1997, I gave the keynote address at Ben-Gurion University in a conference on the anniversary of the 1967 war. I read a paragraph from a standard history of South Africa. No comment was necessary.
Looking more closely, the situation in the OT differs in many ways from Apartheid. In some respects, South African Apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true. To mention one example, White South Africa depended on Black labor. The large majority of the population could not be expelled. At one time Israel relied on cheap and easily exploited Palestinian labor, but they have long ago been replaced by the miserable of the earth from Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear. And it is no secret that the policies that have taken shape accord well with the recommendations of Moshe Dayan right after the 1967 war : Palestinians will "continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave." More extreme recommendations have been made by highly regarded left humanists in the United States, for example Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and editor of the democratic socialist journal Dissent, who advised 35 years ago that since Palestinians are "marginal to the nation," they should be "helped" to leave. He was referring to Palestinian citizens of Israel itself, a position made familiar more recently by the ultra-right Avigdor Lieberman, and now being picked up in the Israeli mainstream. I put aside the real fanatics, like Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who declares that Israel never kills civilians, only terrorists, so that the definition of "terrorist" is "killed by Israel"; and Israel should aim for a kill ratio of 1000 to zero, which means "exterminate the brutes" completely. It is of no small significance that advocates of these views are regarded with respect in enlightened circles in the US, indeed the West. One can imagine the reaction if such comments were made about Jews.
On the query, to repeat, there can be no clear answer as to whether the analogy is appropriate.
Barat: Israel has recently said that it will boycott the U.N conference on Human Rights in Durban because "it will be impossible to prevent the conference from turning into a festival of anti-Israeli attacks" and has also cancelled a meeting with Costa Rican officials over the Central American nation's decision to formally recognize a Palestinian state. Is Israel refusal to accept any sort of criticism towards its policies likely to eventually backfire?
Ilan Pappé: One hopes it will backfire one day. However, this depends on the global and regional balances of power, not only on the Israelis 'over reacting'. The two, namely the balance of power and Israel intransigence, may be interconnected in the future. If there is a change in America's policy, or in its hegemonic role in the politics of the region, than a continued Israeli inflexibility can encourage the international community to adopt a more critical position against Israel and exert pressure on the Jewish state to end the occupation and dispossession of Palestine
Noam Chomsky: One can agree or disagree with these decisions, but they do not imply "refusal to accept any sort of criticism towards its policies." I doubt that these particular decisions will backfire, or will even receive much notice.
Barat: How can Israel reach a settlement with an organization which declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state? If Hamas really wants a settlement, why won't it recognize Israel?
Ilan Pappé: Peace is made between enemies not lovers. The end result of the peace process can be a political Islamic recognition in the place of the Jews in Palestine and in the Middle East as a whole, whether in a separated state or a joint state. The PLO entered negotiations with Israel without changing its charter, which is not that different as far as the attitude to Israel, is concerned. So the search should be for a text, solution and political structure that is inclusive - enabling all the national, ethnic, religious and ideological groups to coexist
Noam Chomsky: Hamas cannot recognize Israel any more than Kadima can recognize Palestine, or than the Democratic Party in the US can recognize England. One could ask whether a government led by Hamas should recognize Israel, or whether a government led by Kadima or the Democratic Party should recognize Palestine. So far they have all refused to do so, though Hamas has at least called for a two-state settlement in accord with the long-standing international consensus, while Kadima and the Democratic Party refuse to go that far, keeping to the rejectionist stance that the US and Israel have maintained for over 30 years in international isolation. As for words, when Prime Minister Olmert declares to a joint session of the US Congress that he believes "in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land," to rousing applause, he is presumably referring not only to Palestine from the Jordan to the sea, but also to the other side of the Jordan river, the historic claim of the Likud Party that was his political home, a claim never formally abandoned, to my knowledge. On Hamas, I think it should abandon those provisions of its charter, and should move from acceptance of a two-state settlement to mutual recognition, though we must bear in mind that its positions are more forthcoming than those of the US and Israel.
Barat: During the last few months, Israel has accentuated its attacks on Gaza and is talking of an imminent ground invasion, there is also a strong possibility that it is involved in the killing of the Hezbollah leader Mughniyeh and it is pushing for stronger sanctions (including military) on Iran. Do you believe that Israel's appetite for war could eventually lead to its self destruction?
Ilan Pappé: Yes, I think that the aggressiveness is increasing and Israel antagonizes not only the Palestinian world, but also the Arab and Islamic ones. The military balance of power, at present, is in Israel's presence, but this can change at any given moment, especially once the US withdrew its support.
Noam Chomsky: I wrote decades ago that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. I have also believed for many years that Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security, ever since it turned down Sadat‚s offer of a full peace treaty in 1971, may well lead to that consequence.
Barat: What would it take for the U.S to withdraw its unconditional support to Israel?
Ilan Pappé: Externally: a collapse of its Middle East policy, mainly through the downfall of one of its allies. Alternatively, but less likely, the emergence of a counter European policy. Internally: a major economic crisis and the success of the present coalition of forces working within the civil society to impact such a change.
Noam Chomsky: To answer that, we have to consider the sources of the support. The corporate sector in the US, which dominates policy formation, appears to be quite satisfied with the current situation. One indication is the increasing flow of investment to Israel by Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and other leading elements of the high-tech economy. Military and intelligence relations remain very strong. Since 1967, US intellectuals have had a virtual love affair with Israel, for reasons that relate more to the US than to Israel, in my opinion. That strongly affects portrayal of events and history in media and journals. Palestinians are weak, dispersed, friendless, and offer nothing to concentrations of power in the US. A large majority of Americans support the international consensus on a two-state settlement, and even call for equalizing aid to Israel and the Palestinians. In this as in many other respects, both political parties are well to the right of the population. 95% of the US population think that the government should pay attention to the views of the population, a position rejected across the elite spectrum (sometimes quite explicitly, at other times tacitly). Hence one step towards a more even-handed stance would be "democracy promotion" within the US. Apart from that eventuality, what it would take is events that lead to a recalculation of interests among elite sectors.
Barat: CounterPunch featured an interesting debate on the 1 state vs 2 states solution last month. It started with a Michael Neumann article saying that "the one state solution was an illusion" and was followed by articles from Assaf Kfoury entitled "One-State or Two-State?" - A Sterile Debate on False Alternatives" and Jonathan Cook entitled "One state or two, neither, the issue is Zionism". What's your opinion on this and do you think that in view of the "facts on the ground" (settlements, bypass roads...) created by Israel a 2 state solution is still possible?
Ilan Pappé: The facts on the ground had rendered a two states solution impossible a long time ago. The facts indicated that there was never and will never be an Israeli consent to a Palestinian state apart from a stateless state within two Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza totally under Israeli control. There is already one state and the struggle is to change its nature and regime. Whether the new regime and constitutional basis would be bi-national or democratic, or maybe even both, is less significant at this point. Any political outfit that would replace the present racist state of affairs is welcome. Any such outfit should also enable the refugees to return and even the most recent immigrants to remain.
Noam Chomsky: We have to make a distinction between proposal and advocacy. We can propose that everyone should live in peace. It becomes advocacy when we sketch out a realistic path from here to there. A one-state solution makes little sense, in my opinion, but a bi-national state does. It was possible to advocate such a settlement from 1967 to the mid-1970s, and in fact I did, in many writings and talks, including a book. The reaction was mostly fury. After Palestinian national rights entered the international agenda in the mid-1970s, it has remained possible to advocate bi-nationalism (and I continue to do so), but only as a process passing through intermediate stages, the first being a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. That outcome, probably the best that can be envisioned in the short term, was almost reached in negotiations in Taba in January 2001, and according to participants, could have been reached had the negotiations not been prematurely terminated by Israeli Prime Minister Barak. That was the one moment in the past 30 years when the two leading rejectionist states did briefly consider joining the international consensus, and the one time when a diplomatic settlement seemed within sight. Much has changed since 2001, but I do not see any reason to believe that what was apparently within reach then is impossible today.
It is of some interest, and I think instructive, that proposals for a "one-state solution" are tolerated within the mainstream today, unlike the period when advocacy was indeed feasible and they were anathema. Today they are published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. One can only conclude that they are considered acceptable today because they are completely unfeasible -- they remain proposal, not advocacy. In practice, the proposals lend support to US-Israeli rejectionism, and undermine the only feasible advocacy of a bi-national solution, in stages.
Today there are two options for Palestinians. One is US-Israeli abandonment of their rejectionist stance, and a settlement roughly along the lines of what was being approached at Taba, The other option is continuation of current policies, which lead, inexorably, to incorporation into Israel of what it wants: at least, Greater Jerusalem, the areas within the Separation Wall (now an Annexation Wall), the Jordan Valley, and the salients through Ma'aleh Adumim and Ariel and beyond that effectively trisect what remains, which will be broken up into unviable cantons by huge infrastructure projects, hundreds of check points, and other devices to ensure that Palestinians live like dogs.
There are those who believe that Palestinians should simply let Israel take over the West Bank completely and then carry out a civil rights/anti-Apartheid style struggle. That is an illusion, however. There is no reason why the US-Israel would accept the premises of this proposal. They will simply proceed along the lines now being implemented, and will not accept any responsibility for Palestinians who are scattered outside the regions they intend to incorporate into Israel.
Barat: During my recent trip to Israel/Palestine it became obvious (talking to people, reading newspapers, watching the news) that something scared Israel a lot: a Boycott. Are you in favor of this type of actions and do you think that they could bare fruit?
Ilan Pappé: Yes I am and I do think it has a chance of triggering processes of change on the ground.
Noam Chomsky: Boycotts sometimes make sense. For example, such actions against South Africa were effective, even though the Reagan administration evaded congressional sanctions while declaring Mandela's ANC to be one of the "more notorious terrorist groups" in the world (in 1988). The actions were effective because the groundwork had been laid in many years of education and activism. By the time they were implemented, they received substantial support in the US within the political system, the media, and even the corporate sector. Nothing remotely like that has been achieved in this case. As a result, calls for boycott almost invariably backfire, reinforcing the harshest and most brutal policies towards Palestinians.
Selective boycotts, carefully formulated, might have some effect. For example, boycotts of military producers who provide arms to Israel, or to Caterpillar Corporation, which provides the equipment for destroying Palestine. All of their actions are strictly illegal, and boycotts could be made understandable to the general public, so that they could be effective.
Selective boycotts could also be effective against states with a far worse record of violence and terror than Israel, such as the US. And, of course, without its decisive support and participation, Israel could not carry out illegal expansion and other crimes. There are no calls for boycotting the US, not for reasons of principle, but because it is simply too powerful
-- facts that raise some obvious questions about
the moral legitimacy of actions targeting its clients
Barat: Coming back from Israel/Palestine a few weeks ago, the director of ICAHD U.K said that, in spite of Annapolis, "not one thing on the ground has improved{...} witnessing Israel judaisation of the country left me feeling cold and angry". Seeing this, could Palestinian resistance (which has mainly been non violent so far) go back to an armed struggle and start the most brutal 3rd intifada?
Ilan Pappé: It is difficult to understand the 'could' - theoretically they can and they may, the question is whether it is going to produce different results from the previous two uprisings, the feeling is that it is not likely.
Noam Chomsky: My opinion all along has been that the Palestinian leadership is offering Israel and its US backers a great gift by resorting to violence and posturing about revolution -- quite apart from the fact that, tactical considerations aside, resort to violence carries a very heavy burden of justification. Today, for example, nothing is more welcome to Israeli and US hawks than Qassam rockets, which enable them to shriek joyously about how the ratio of deaths should be increased to infinity (all victims being defined as "terrorists"). I have also agreed all along with personal friends who had contacts with the Palestinian leadership (in particular, Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad) that a non-violent struggle would have had considerable prospects for success. And I think it still does, in fact the only prospects for success.
Barat: What NGO's and charities working for justice in Palestine should focus on in the next few months?
Ilan Pappé: They know best and I hesitate to advise them. I think they gave us guidance with their call for boycott and if they continue with initiatives like this it can be very helpful. But most importantly it would be great if they could continue to work for reconciliation and unity in the Palestinian camp.
Noam Chomsky: The daily and urgent task is to focus on the terrible ongoing violations of the most elementary human rights and the illegal US-backed settlement and development projects that are designed to undermine a diplomatic settlement. A more general task is to try to lay the basis for a successful struggle for a settlement that takes into account the just demands of contesting parties -- the kind of hard, dedicated, persistent educational and organizational work that has provided the underpinnings for other advances towards peace and justice. I have already indicated what I think that entails -- not least, effective democracy promotion in the reigning superpower.
© Frank Barat ˆ June 2008
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