Controlling
The Debate On
Palestine, Israel
By Ramzy Baroud
17 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
last time I spoke publicly in the United States before my current tour
was nearly four years ago. During this time I had travelled the world,
passing my message to people in nearly 20 countries. Wherever I went,
my calls for justice for the Palestinian people and for global alternatives
to racism and war were well-received. However, my latest talks in the
US have made me realize that the witch hunt on intellectuals that escalated
rapidly since September 11, 2001 is nowhere near over.
Doubtless, the US has long
served as a focal site for intellectual freedom, from which ground-breaking
ideas have developed and spread throughout the world. And despite incessant
attempts to circumvent this historic reality, most Americans still remain
committed to their country's founding principles. It is this commitment
that causes those interested in stifling undesirable viewpoints to resort
to the most disingenuous tactics, half-truths and downright fabrication.
Norfolk, Virginia was the
first leg of the tour for my last book, The Second Palestinian Intifada.
Co-existing with the town's fourteen military bases is an energetic
and hugely inspiring antiwar community. To now be able to stand among
and share my views on peace and justice with these activists was a truly
heartening experience for me.
At Virginia Wesleyan University,
I spoke about a myriad of topics, including Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela,
Nicaragua. I tend towards a cross-cultural perspective to help my audience
assess their relationship to issues beyond geopolitical limitations,
national arrogances and ethnocentricities.
On Palestine, I preached
co-existence without prescribing any easy recipes. Instead I outlined
basic prerequisites. To achieve co-existence, justice is a must, and
to achieve justice, Israel needs to acknowledge its historic injustices
against the Palestinian people and make a commitment to redressing them.
Palestine cannot be single handedly expected to extract peace from a
belligerent Israeli government that has done its utmost to undermine
it.
I discussed suicide bombings
in a context usually missing from mainstream discourse, trying to delineate
that such heinous acts are not a lifestyle choice. One must be courageous
enough to examine the roots of violence in order to eliminate it; for
Palestinian violence to end, the much more costly, systematic and state-initiated
Israeli violence and illegal occupation must also stop. Palestinian
suffering cannot be expected to magically vanish for the sake of Israel's
security. To base one nation's security on depravation of another is
nothing short of illegal, irrational, and inhumane.
In my talk, I praised Palestinians
for their courage in living up to the diktats of democracy, and chastised
those who ensured the demise of the once promising Palestinian democratic
experience, which could have served as a model for democracies in the
entire region. Palestinians should not be starved and a civil war should
not have been provoked to punish the Palestinian people for electing
a government that insists on the respect of their people's rights. I
contested that Hamas' Islamic ideas were hardly the reason behind the
US-Israeli violent response to their advent, and that 'extremism' and
'moderation' are not defined based on liberal ideals, but are used to
distinguish between those who are willing to serve as client regimes
and those who opt otherwise. I tried to imagine a future in which Palestinians
and Israelis can work together to escape the dark abyss brought about
by the Israeli and US governments, stressing that such a future cannot
be guaranteed with the hallow lip service to 'peace'; it requires real
justice and equality.
Apparently my words did not
move local Rabbi Israel Zoberman and his comrades. They attended the
talk after a local Jewish newspaper highlighted the upcoming event on
their front page: a 'Pro Palestinian' Journalist to speak at Virginia
Wesleyan. They came armed and ready to attack my integrity before even
hearing me speak. One after the other, they hijacked the questions;
one alleged that in 1880 there were more Jews than Christians and Muslims
in Palestine. How does one respond to such a falsehood? Another claimed
that Israel has never ethnically cleansed one Palestinian. Not one?
A third claimed that by trying to contextualize suicide bombings, no
matter how well my intentions may be, I am justifying the horrific terrorism
of 9/11. This accusation was by far the most devious. Zoberman himself
accused me of being a 'Hamas sympathizer', and since Hamas is on the
US State Department list of terrorist groups, well, you can do the math.
Infuriated by the fact that
I refused compromise at a following event, Zoberman began a campaign
of letter-writing and phoning the University and a local newspaper,
describing my message as 'poisonous.' He also chastised the university
for hosting my talk and demanded a change of course. The campaign of
defamation is yet to end.
Although this is not my first
experience of such unfair and dishonest smearing, the last few years
have witnessed an increase in the Zionist attempts to curb free debate
on the Middle East in this country, from such respected figures and
intellectuals as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, Norman Finkelstein,
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. In short, anyone who dares question
the US government's Middle East policy or even recognize the rights
of the Palestinian people is a candidate for senseless attacks and (often)
of accusations of anti-Semitism. Fortunately this time, I was spared
of the latter.
The truth is, the greater
the intimidation campaign, the more determined many US intellectuals
become in exposing the destructive role that Israel has played in shaping
US foreign policy. What Zionists in the US wish to overlook is the fact
that some of the most ardent supporters of Palestinian rights are themselves
Jewish, and that is simply because the question of justice and peace
is not hostage to ethnic or religious identities. That intimidation
may break the well of the weak, but the human spirit is too strong to
be shattered by smearing and arm-twisting. The truth will always manage
to find its way out to the people; in fact, in many respects, it already
has.
Ramzy Baroud is
a Palestinian-American author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com;
his latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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