My friend Mohammad in Vancouver, who is from Iran, told me he was wearing his Star of David when he went to Norman Finkelstein's talk last night and asked Finkelstein some hard questions. I asked Mo why he wears the Star, and what he asked Norman. –Phil Weiss.
I bought my star of David
necklace last May on Essex Street just north of Canal in New York's
lower east side at an old Jewish jewelry shop that had a sidewalk sale
on a sunny Sunday. [Mo, I used to live a few blocks away, with my grandmother.] The salesperson was not friendly at first. She
thought of me as some sort of a nosy non shopper, but my admiration for
the antique star that was tucked nicely in an antique box, and my
skills in competitive bargaining made her like me at the end. She sold
the already reduced item with the sale tag of 10.00 for one dollar to
me. I asked her to put it on me, and I have not taken it off since then.
The
idea behind wearing the star was to examine how New Yorkers will react
to me wearing the star. Most people in the Upper West Side's Zabar's,
where I like to start my days in Manhattan
assumed I am a Sephardic or a Mizrahi, or a Farsi Jew. Sometime I would
play along and make up some stories about being one. Sometime I told
them the truth: that I have Sephardic heritage.
Opposite to my
old anti-Islamic days, when I also wore a Star of David, wearing the star this time has an entirely
different function for me. It allows me to speak with a more confident
and focused voice about Israel,
Zionism and Jewish issues. My Canadian art friends just love it around
my neck. My guess is that it functions as an anti anti-semitism
insurance on my otherwise critical ideas. This of course doesn't work
all the time, because I also have been accused by Zionists that I am
wearing the star to hide my deeply held anti-Semitism.
However,
last night at the Finkelstein lecture at the University of British Columbia, I experienced a new phenomenon,
mostly from Arab and Palestinian young women in the line up and the
room. It was a dual expression of resentment and attraction. One
beautiful woman dressed in Islamic Hijab kept staring at me and even
though I was wearing an I HEART GAZA button, she was much more
interested in staring at the star. At first she was suspicious. I
assumed she was mixing me up with one of those progressive Zionists who
oppose occupation, but always condemn "Palestinian terrorism" in the
same sentence. But when the lecture got going and she saw my hard
clapping and my tears for Norman's emotional description of Israel's
crimes, she got more interested. Half way through the talk she was
smiling and flirting with me.
But it was my questions and
objections to Norman Finkelstein that finally made her to walk to me
and say hi and thank me for my points. Her opening line was "so after
all, I guess you're not just covering every angle, in case…".
It's
not easy to be the first person who raises a question at a talk where
close to 1000 people have packed two full lecture halls. But I managed
to be the first who grabbed the microphone and spoke after Finkelstein.
First I contradicted him by disagreeing with his main point that
Israel won the war, since the objective of the war was restoring
Israel's deterrence among Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians. I said that
Israel's performance can only be judged against IDF's stated objectives
before or during the war which were:
1- destroying Hamas
2- Stopping the rockets
3- Destroying all the tunnels that Hamas uses to bring food medicine fuel and arms into the territory.
And
since Israel failed to accomplish any of these three objectives,
despite the immense human suffering and destruction of civil life in Gaza, we can safely assume that Israel lost this war. I said that if
destroying ordinary lives could restore Israel's deterrence, the Lebanon invasion had already achieved that and there would be no need for another was in that style.
I
also criticized the North American academia for failing to come
together, like the British Academia, and petitioning Israel. I
complained that "you can't ask us to organize when the leading
intellectuals and academia in North America like Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sinclair, Alexander Cockburn, Ralph Nader, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein and Judith Butler
failed to organize and agree on a single collective statement that then
can be helpful to the pro peace and justice groups in organizing the
ordinary good people of the west."
I also wanted to add that in
every occasion, these people are willing to come together quickly to
condemn the Iranian Government for the abuses of human rights in Iran,
but they never collectively speak against Israel. Yet since my focus
right now is Palestine, I refrained from bringing this last point up.
Finkelstein
was dismissive of my point. I felt that his come back was somewhat weak. He said
most social sciences academics and intellectuals were not very smart
and were stupid. He added that he respected the real scientific
community much more. I left the microphone without arguing further.
I would give him an A- for the fact that he really made things clear for ordinary people.
The tape of this speech could be the most amazing course material for
those new to the conflict. Also his insistence that Israel now is a
Satanic state put people in in shock. It made me and a lot of people
realize about how radicalized he has become in articulating his points
since the last round of killings.
