CNN broadcast Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the General Assembly today with a split screen of a huge, respectful, flagwaving crowd in Ramallah. Truly inspiring optics: Tahrir Square had come to New York.
Myself I found the Abbas speech hugely moving. It pulsated with history, with the Nakba and Partition and the ’67 war and the occupation, and it was incredibly dignified. As dignified as the people gathered in Ramallah, so many of them older. So many of them dressed for a global welcome. A beautiful people, I thought to myself, and they only want what we take for granted…
Abbas may not have any charisma, but his sense of the moment was flawless and Martin Luther Kinglike. Our dreams have been deferred forever– this is inarguable. His factual rendition of the unending occupation and of the thousands of prisoners of conscience and the refugees twice displaced was straightforward and unemotional. His invocation of the nonviolent protest movement against the racist, apartheid wall and the settlers touched on every freedom-loving heart in the room. He did not resort to figures of speech or any cheap histrionics.
It was a speech that called the U.N. back to its roots, in human rights. The calm description of 100s-year-old olive trees being uprooted was crushing, and surely comes as a revelation to many Americans.
I can’t think of a greater contrast than Netanyahu’s subsequent performance. It was casual and derisive and scowling. He seemed to be leaning on his elbow on the podium as he insulted the body. His sneers and one-liners reminded me of performances I’ve seen at the American Enterprise Institute; and when he said that he speaks for 100 generations of Jews who longed to return to Jerusalem, he seemed deluded. The Daily Beast is likening him to Caligula.
On CNN even Jamie Rubin of Bloomberg News trashed Netanyahu’s speech as unworthy of the body, a “debating society” speech. That is a sign of how the optics of the Palestinian movement have changed in just the past few days. Andrea Mitchell interviewing Diana Buttu– even the American elites seem dubious about the political cartel that is working to deprive the Palestinians of their Arab spring. In months to come, we can expect probing coverage of the occupation at last from the American press, reports on the children seized in the middle of the night, the demonstrators shot, the cisterns destroyed, the olive trees uprooted.
phil i admire your positive attitude and desire to see positive change in the mid east…
i don’t know if i can be as optimistic as you on this though -> “In months to come, we can expect probing coverage of the occupation at last from the American press, reports on the children seized in the middle of the night, the demonstrators shot, the cisterns destroyed, the olive trees uprooted. ”
i would like that, but after so many years of ignoring the struggles, aspirations and dreams of the palestinian people, it would be hard to imagine a quick 180 like you suggest here..
RE: “In months to come, we can expect probing coverage of the occupation at last from the American press” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Fat chance of that, but I admire your Weissglossian optimism.
“In months to come, we can expect probing coverage of the occupation at last from the American press, reports on the children seized in the middle of the night, the demonstrators shot, the cisterns destroyed, the olive trees uprooted.”
I sure hope you are right Phil.
I hope Netanyahu doesn’t decide to try to rehabilitate Israel’s image by attacking Iran. That would put American troops under attack and we would instantly enter the war on Israel’s side, thereby plunging us into a depression that would last an entire generation. And when it was over we would be a much poorer and less important nation.
So what are you saying Phil? that he came across as an arrogant bastage.
Great vision.
Written by Forward Editorial
Friday, 02 February 2007
“Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called „the poisoning of America,” Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.
Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.”