[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Palestine Chronicle - Controlling the Debate
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:00:25 -0500
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PALESTINECHRONICLE.COM FEATURE ARTICLE
Ramzy Baroud: Controlling the Debate on Palestine, Israel
By Ramzy Baroud
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
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 (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and
journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A
Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London)
ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
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