One of the reasons I’m visiting my parents in Cape Cod is that there was a lecture last night by an Arab, Rami Khouri, in a series about the middle east at the Church of the Messiah, an Episcopal church. I was as curious about what Khouri would say as I was about the local reception. Woods Hole is a scientific community, it’s about half-gentile, half-Jewish. When I was growing up it was the old world, and we were on the lookout for antisemitism. That was a long time ago.
The hall was filled, about 100 people. I sensed the crowd was almost all gentile, with a few exceptions. Khouri stood before a smoke-stained brick fireplace with a large cross on it. He was better than I could ever have imagined. A Lebanese Arab with roots in Nazareth, he had stayed at the home of a former ambassador in the community, and he has a courtly aspect. He is a leading Arab columnist, he is at the Wilson Center in Washington. He took care not to offend.
For a while he only spoke about the American presence in the Middle East. That we had botched it badly. We had acted as a “local” actor in countless struggles, taking sides, say against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, when we could be an offshore balancer. So he is an Arab realist. He dismissed the likelihood of Iranian nukes, said they had a right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Reach out to them and the society will change in an instant, it wants to change. But of course in all cases the U.S. is on the side of the Arab autocrats. And in the last 30 years Arab society has changed. It is mostly urban and educated, the people are fed, and because of polling and other instruments of modern society we know what they want: they are beginning to demand the higher things, human rights, civil rights, and so forth. The era of “docility” is over. The U.S. must be on the right side of this great movement forward. Bush wasn’t.
So far so good. Everyone in the room hates Bush. I wondered how long it would take him to get to the Arab-Israeli issue. It was about 30 minutes. From then on it was all that anyone could talk about. He did not disappoint. The U.S. was disliked across the region because it has taken one side in the battle between Israelis and Arabs. Why it does so is a mystery. Well actually it is not a mystery, he corrected himself. But this political dynamic–he obviously meant the Israel lobby–will not change soon. The change will come from the region. Israel is now more realistic than the Americans. It understands that it can defeat state actors forever but nonstate actors, like Hezbollah, will fight it to a draw. Hamas too. Israel understands that it cannot win. So do the Arabs. That is why there are now five peacemaking initiatives in Israel/Palestine all by regional actors, from the Turks to the Saudis to the Egyptians. The Arab world wants to move on, they accept Israel’s presence. Only one issue is still up in the air: the right of return. It must be dealt with and most of all the great Palestinian “wound” of 1948 must be dealt with. They were forced off that land. He concluded his remarks by saying that the U.S. should “be itself–be more relaxed and engage people as ordinary Americans engage people.” Fairly, good-naturedly. Then everything would change. It felt optimistic.
At times there were hints in his remarks of a sharp critique, like the one I offer on this blog. But he held back. His Nakba comments were reserved, though it seems his own family suffered, in Nazareth. The wound was very real. He spoke of the Palestinians as a “traumatized” people–as the Israelis are also traumatized. He said there must be an “acknowledgment” of their suffering. He did not say the words Israel lobby and when a speaker asked him about the Jewish lobby he corrected her, said it was way more than Jewish.
He had the crowd on his side. I noticed the people nodding at his words. I thought they were gentile partly because of their clothing. It was what my family would say was bland. Mostly white shirts, pale blue shirts. The Jews up here have a little bit more sophistication and cultural improvisation in the way they present themselves. And these gentiles wanted to talk about Israel. During the Q-and-A all the questions were about Israel and Palestine. Khouri now took it a step further. He spoke feelingly of the competition of nationalisms, Arab and Jewish, for the same land, he said that the Israelis had won again and again. They were a threat to their neighbors. That was holding the region back. they had militarized their neighbors, who saw them as an expansionist, colonial state. They would be rigid and authoritarian until the issue was resolved. The war on terrorism was a bogey man. The feverish neocons had elevated a few hundred players, Al Qaeda, into a major power thorgh their actions. As for Jimmy Carter, he had created a problem with the apartheid word. His editor should have been more sensitive. Though he was trying to call attention to great suffering in the occupied territories.
I kept waiting for the Jewish questions. They came near the end. The room was too stuffy and it had been over an hour. The first was a woman standing in the door. You had the feeling that she had just stuck her head in, she wasn’t going to dignify this performance with her actual audience. And she was going to have her say. Her words were very emotional. The Jews had been persecuted for thousands of years, of course they must have a homeland, who can deny them that after what they have experienced? And how can anyone dismiss the words of Ahmadinejad or wish them away. We tried that with Hitler too, didn’t we, and what happened?
I thought Khouri was very deft. He spoke for a while and acknowledged Jewish suffering but pointed out patiently that Palestinians had been made to suffer terribly. It is a dispute over land, and the Arab nations have accepted the presence of a Jewish state. He didn’t get upset. As to Ahmadinejad, he said that he did not have the power, Khameinei does. Iran has been a force in the region for thousands of years. You cannot wish that away. You must work with them and respect them.
The last question was from an Israeli. He was angry. He sounded like a neocon, the way that almost any fearful Jew can sound like a neocon. I thought you were going to attack the Arab governments. You started out that way, he said. Then what does it come down to, the Arab-Israeli issue. Well i have friends in the Arab community. They agree that the Arab Israeli thing is just a “nuisance.” But it gets elevated, because the real issues are not dealt with.
At last the man i had come to hear expressed himself. Khouri was emphatic and dismissive. “I disagree with your basic analysis.” This is the longest military occupation of the 20th century, and the colonization continues. Look what the Israeli cabinet authorized two days ago, more settlements. It has created incredible suffering and has “everything to do” with the problems in the region. Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t exist until 1982. They are Sharon’s children. Israel’s colonization “is the most radicalizing influence on the whole region.” If you could address one issue that would have the maximum effect to calm the region, it is this one. The absence of a just solution perpetuates the autocracies that surround Israel. Of course the other issues will need to be dealt with. This comes first. “Most people around the world will tell you that. Solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and the radicalizing influence will dampen.” They say this in Brazil, they say it in China. Only not in the U.S. and Israel.
It was raining, i walked out with my father. There were a group of women gathered on the steps holding umbrellas and speaking in whispers about the Nakba. I heard one say, “It was just like what we did with the Indians, what they did to them.” My father and i walked to the car through an old church yard that he told me is partly ecumenical, Jewish and gentile scientists are buried there.
I felt no ecumenical cohesion in my childhood community. The gentiles had been nodding and quiet and a little ashamed to agree with the Arab, but it didn’t stop them agreeing. The Jews had been defensive, even in this highly educated privileged community. When will that change? And who can wait for that? I gather there are Arab intellectuals making this type of speech in communities around the country and god bless them. For my part I can report, there are huge quiet cultural divisions within the ruling class over this issue. Some will call it antisemitism. i say it is the refusal of my people to see themselves–the Israel in which they are so invested–as others see it, from China to Brazil.
