I have reality issues, as readers of this site know. I read out-of-print books and get up in the morning and write down my dreams. I seem to gravitate toward marginalized communities. It's good for me, therefore, to run into people who are more grounded-- and get the news from them.
Last night I saw a friend who reads history all the time and studies international politics from afar. He's a businessman, very well off, non-Jewish. He follows our issue the same way he follows health care reform. He said the following:
He's now frankly anti-Zionist, based on the fact that it hasn't worked out well. He is in the Tony Judt camp: he does not believe that ethnic/religious states ought to exist, of any sort. When the Kurds say they want a state, screw them. This is not the way the world is heading. The era of the nation-state has lasted 200 years and is coming to an end. Can't happen too soon. This goes for the Palestinians too. He doesn't think they should have a state. The likelihood is that it would be an Islamist state anyway. I/P should be one state. The Israelis have lost their claim to a Jewish state through their actions, and the force of history.
Alas, the whole region is immature politically. The neocons are right about the Arab states. The United States came to political maturity through a horrifying civil war, and Israel and Palestine will have to have their own variant of this process. In that struggle, secular Palestinians and Israelis will combine to take their country back from the religious crazies. The obstacle to this combination is that the Palestinian standard of living is low, and you need more educated Palestinians. Ironically, Netanyahu's "economic freedom" ideas for the West Bank may advance this process.
"Just because I'm an anti-Zionist doesn't mean I'm pro-Palestinian. Just because they've been trampled doesn't mean I approve of their actions. I don't. Suicide bombing? The United States achieved what it did in the Civil Rights struggle because the great mass of black Americans were willing to forgive the country the tremendous suffering they'd experienced in exchange for recognition and greater freedom. It could have been violent. It wasn't. That reflected the leadership of Martin Luther King and others."
My friend then proceeded to ask the old question, Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Palestinians will command the world's sympathy when they walk up to that wall and are willing to be shot to protest it, he said.
I responded that Palestinians do do that, in Bi'lin. They are shot and you don't know about it. Because the world has turned a deaf ear. Nonviolence doesn't work if no one is watching. Moreover, Palestinian conditions are worse than they were in the Jim Crow south, and 10,000 Palestinians are in jail, their leadership has been decapitated by Israel.
I told him I'd send him a link about Bi'lin, but I could see that my arguments had not convinced him. My friend's comments resonated precisely with those of a Palestinian friend I met last week in NY who said, We screwed ourselves with suicide bombing, our image is awful in the world, everyone thinks we're terrorists, no one knows about Bi'lin.
I left my friend's home thinking this is the great challenge to those who care about Palestinian freedom: to help change the paradigm. To get out the word about Bi'lin. To try and get coverage for the new coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis in protesting the occupation. And to make Palestinians feel less lonely in the west, so that they will drop violent tactics and grow the nonviolent movement in ever-more-sophisticated ways.
The Palestinian Gandhi was probably assassinated by Israel. There have been so many killed. Abu Jihad could now be the head of Fatah. He was murdered in 1988.
The Palestinian “image problem” is related to how journalists report the story. Most journalists report from West Jerusalem in a building shared with the Israeli censor. Careers come before effort.
Anybody who has ever visited the West Bank or Gaza doesn’t seem to have the image problem thing .
Beilin (at least the films that you’ve posted here) do NOT present a different image of Palestinian integrity.
They show young kids doing mischief, throwing rocks.
To change an image, you’d have to post films like Harvey Stein’s of
“The Heart of the Other – A documentary about Khaled Mahameed, a Palestinian-Israeli man who recently opened the first Holocaust museum in the Arab world. ”
The converted called the two intifadas non-violent. It wasn’t true.
Hate to be the cynic, but if ‘nonviolence doesn’t work if no one is watching,’ how will a change in PR tactics work if no one is watching, reading, listening? Sure, there’s the great Interthreat, Charlie Brown, but that’s just a scattered trickle relative to the floodgates of the brand name news sources.
So the better question still seems to ne: why aren’t the usual news sources helping the Palestinian cause find viewers, readers, listeners the way they recently did for the Iranian election?
Put simply; our mainstream media is controlled by our moneyed elite, and hence serve their interests. Had attempts to promote revolution in Iran been successful, it could have opened the nation up for exploitation; creating a cash cow of oil and gas contracts along various other related industries and services. On the other hand, If the Israel/Palestine peace movement is ever successful; that would cut off the gravy train of arms sales, the settlement industry, and a host of other profiteering which is facilitated though Israel’s conquest of Palestine.
Also note this is not simply a matter the injustices we support within Palestine either. More broadly, our ongoing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is largely dependent on the threat of terrorism which is primarily motivated by our continuing support for the oppression of Palestinians. Take that point of contention away, and maintaining the troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan which protects our robber barons interests would be far harder to justify to the public which funds it.
Mearsheimer & Walt’s startling finding is that US ME policy has been more pro-Israel than even Zionist-conditioned public opinion favored. Recent polls seem to confirm that. So I’m not sure the Palestinian image problem is the binding constraint on change. The highest priority is to neutralize The Lobby, and then let’s see what unfolds. We don’t really need to be pro-Palestinian, just pro-American.
Your friend may have it exactly backwards when he claims that he believes that “ethnic/religious states ought [are] not the way the world is heading.” He is looking at a short-term trend, the relentless promotion of “diversity” & multiculturalism in the west and is presuming that these trends will extend far into the future until we have a globalist multicultural utopia of the type Tom Friedman touts, wherein every state and city becomes a cosmopolitan microcosm of the globe.
If anything the main trend in the past century has been the advance of ethno-nationalism and the fracturing of multi-ethnic, multicultural states into ethnonationally homogenous ones.
To quote Pat Buchanan:
The Return of Ethnic Nationalism
According to a compelling lead article in the new Foreign Affairs, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,” we may be witnessing in the Third World a re-enactment of the ethnic wars that tore Europe to pieces in the 20th century.
“Ethnonationalism,” writes history professor Jerry Z. Muller of Catholic University, “has played a more profound role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to recur elsewhere.”
[links cut by webmaster; excerpts too long.]
I meant to say:
“Even in the posh neighborhoods of America one sees the beginnings of separation writ small. “
“So the better question still seems to ne: why aren’t the usual news sources helping the Palestinian cause find viewers, readers, listeners the way they recently did for the Iranian election?”
It couldn’t be because there are gatekeepers to the MSM who want to control the thinking of the American people, could it?!?! Are you insinuating that there is some kind of Jewish Zionist control of the dialog in the mainstream? How could you or I even think such a thing? It must be that old genetic defect, anti-semitism, rearing it’s ugly head, complete with ticking eye and drooling maw. Abe Foxman calls it a “canard”, and Abe chooses the word carefully, for his entire existence is based on the principle of “vendre un canard a moitie” or that of “half-selling a duck”, which means to swindle. But seriously though, read something like Manufacturing Consent and take a look at Herman and Chomsky’s analysis of the Propaganda Model; the MSM is a joke, how could you expect them to “help the Palestinian cause”? Does that put any bread on their butter?
Here are some of my lyrics for you. Contact me and I’ll send you a rough mp3
Mainstream Media (To sow confusion)
Mainstream Media’s agenda is clear
To sow confusion, spread lies, and fear
The Slimes in New York, Posted in Washington
They sow confusion, but now they’re on the run
Weblogs growing, subscriptions down
shareprice falling down to the ground
Public trust lost, can’t pay the rent
Smash the filters, manufacturing consent…
FPM
Why are my comments moderated?
I don’t believe Palestinians have screwed themselves with suicide bombing. Going back to my last comment on this site, the IRA perpetrated some vicious bombing attacks in the UK but look where we are today.
It does, as others here have mentioned, all boil down to how interested the Western media is in bringing non-violent Palestinian protest to the attention of all of us. But, it’s not all doom and gloom as we see with this Fox News report of the weekly Bil’in protest. The link will take you to CAMERA’s site (unfortunately) where you can have a good laugh at their take on the report – there are three videos on the page and they all play simultaneously so you’ll have to pause two of them. The video was originally posted on YouTube and Adam Horowitz wrote about it here, but YouTube have since taken the video down (I’ve tried lots of different search terms but can’t find it).
Apparently everybody’s are.
I thought that it was just a time delay, to allow Phil and Adam to review for grossly offensive material.
But, at least five posts of mine have not appeared in the last few days, and I question as to whether the posts are being “censored”. (I don’t write what I consider offensive posts, critical yes.) Maybe its a technical glitch.
In cases where others comment on my posts, it makes it very awkward to respond in a dialog.
I had originally referenced almost all of my comments to the original article (for years), but that seemed to attract attacks, which I wanted to address, rather than leave an accusation “Witty is a racist “zionist” – and you know what means”, unanswered.
The image thing is a function of the success of hasbara. It’s why people still think there was a desert that bloomed and a land without a people. The Palestinians have been airbrushed off the page. They don’t appear on CNN or Fox ergo they don’t exist.
They lost. End of story. Except for every Jew in the Land of Israel there is now one Palestinian in Erez Israel and another in a refugee camp in the region. It’s why the hasbara has been intensified rather than retired. And they haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth. They reside deep in the consciousness of every Jew in Israel.
Mahmoud Darwish hit the spot
Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the nineth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks..
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew
My father.. descends from the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather..was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house is like a watchman’s hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title!
Record!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks..
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!
Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!
The rule of law is the fulcrum around which to organize for Palestinians that would make both a nationalist assertion themselves (a basis of credibility), and a stark contrast to Israel’s system and results.
Its a high bar, but it is THE bar.
Israel’s legal opportunism in East Jerusalem and the string of evictions, contrast negatively with attempts to determine law constitutionally, most importantly consistently applied with precedent as a key firm characteristic of the legal system.
But, Palestine would have to actually ACHIEVE that. Talk about which system “would” be better is not enough.
Israel is spinning out these days, in its attitudes. It is allowing extreme and isolating logic to become its norms, rather than just a voice among many.