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Controlling The Debate On Palestine, Israel
by Ramzy Baroud 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).
Writings 
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. 
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