I’m just back from the boycott-divestment BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and will have a lot to post on it in days to come. I must begin with Ali Abunimah’s keynote speech Saturday, at which he emphasized the diversity and positive tone of the conference. He spoke to a hall jammed with over 300 people from countless different backgrounds. There was a great feeling of openness in the hall. Abunimah’s report is here.
The conference went off without a hitch and if there was one thing I took away it was Max Blumenthal’s comment that pro-Israel groups had scheduled events at the same time as the conference not so much to smash the conference or counter its message as much as to keep young people from wandering into the conference and getting hooked. The crowds were so big, the mood was so positive, the ideas so uplifting, the spirit of it so large– I sensed that this movement will only be gaining more adherents in months to come.
Apres nous the deluge. It is coming. And the message is inarguable. It is about human rights, human dignity.
Helena Cobban echoes the thought in an email she shared:
This conference was, I think, a turning point for the Palestinian-rights movement in this country and marks its coming together in a clear and focused way that it never has done before. I was so proud to be a part of it.
Helena Cobban
Cobban writes about the conference here:
The conference was an outstanding success! Everyone involved in organizing it– and most of us who spoke at it– have all been extremely busy; so I’m really sorry that we don’t have much more, and richer, reporting on the events out already. But expect more great reporting of the conference to come out over the coming days.
You can see the video of Ali Abunimah’s fabulous keynote address, Saturday night, here. That and Susan Abulhawa’s extremely moving and scrupulously well-documented introductory address were really the two high points of the conference.
I will get Susie Abulhawa’s speech up when I get a hold of it. Meantime, Naomi Zeveloff’s report on Abunimah’s speech in the Forward:
A prominent Palestinian rights activist said Saturday night that the recent fury around the first national conference advocating a boycott of Israel, being held at the University of Pennsylvania, signifies that the Mideast conflict is at an “end game.”
“This insane hysteria about the conference tells us something about the moment we are in,” said Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada news site, in his keynote speech at the conference. “In terms of the battle of ideas, we are in the end game.”
Phil, I hope you can also go to the J-Street conference. I’d like to see comparison. You tell us that (UPenn ?) Jewish folks were attracted-away from the BDS conference to other events. Well, but the BDS-consciousness is “out there” even among fair-minded Zionists (i.e., among Zios who believe and say that pre-1967 Israel “would have been enough” and is, in fact, enough, “so end the occupation” and that sort of thing).
As to J-Street, I’d like especially to see whether (and if so how) humane concerns for Palestine and outrage at Israel’s government’s (and its army’s and its settlers’ and some of its rabbis’ ) awful thoughts and horrific acts get softened, diluted, watered-down, erased at J-Street, and whether it happens at the direction of leadership or from grass-roots. OR, BETTER YET, J-Street joins BDS!
I tried posting this over on Ali’s blog, but the “spam filter” is making that impossible. Thus…
Sarah Smith’s conference coverage for The Daily Pennsylvanian this weekend left something to be desired and, unfortunately, made clear her proclivities and agenda. While her reporting tried to appear objective, her deliberate framing betrayed her subjectivity (or that of her editors).
For example, in her wrap-up of Ali’s keynote, Smith wrote:
Note how everything is framed as “according to”, “he claimed”, and “Abunimah said.”
These are not controversial suggestions – these are documented facts, yet Smith passes them off as mere “claims” made by Ali without any supporting evidence. But the evidence was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, not only in Ali’s speech itself, but during conference workshops and every single day in the Israeli press.
Writing that Ali “claimed” that there are discriminatory laws in Israel clearly attempts to dismiss the “claim” as unsupported by evidence and elicit eye-rolls from anti-Palestinian readers. But what Ali said is a fact. Sadly, Smith didn’t report that.
One wonders if Smith would ever consider writing a sentence like “Millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others were exterminated in the Holocaust, according to Alan Dershowitz, who claimed Nazism was racist.” Framing and equivocating like that would be beyond the pale. But not when Palestinian lives and rights are discussed. Then everything becomes opinion and competing, impenetrable, counter-narratives. This is not only a disingenuous way to report, but it hides the facts from the audience behind frames of personal belief and disputable .
At yesterday’s “Palestine in the Media” panel, Phil Weiss said, “The truth is serving this cause.”
Meanwhile, reporters like Smith are subverting it.
Ali Abunimah opens referencing a question put to Dershowitz, last Thursday. He said he had the quote not verbatim.
The question was the last one of the evening. At 1:21:25 in the video, the question was, literaly: “If an Arab student comes up to me and says: ‘you took my land’, and I respond back, ‘yeah, but we support gay rights’, how does that add up?”.
Indeed Dershowitz responded with the plain Nakba denial Abunimah noted.
In my opinion the message must be keep it simple and all claims reasonable, the majority of people we need to convince are not immersed in the minutia of the conflict,indeed our opponents want to make the arguments complicated simply to put off the average person. The Palestinians arguments are irrefutable and backed up by International Law and General World opinion, The opposition can only smear and obfuscate, plenty of that on show this weekend, when ordinary people are presented with the facts there can only be one winner.
Phil thanks for this and all of the links. So glad it went to well. So much work going on so many new people getting involved.
Mentioned on one of the threads here at Mondoweiss that Chris Matthews had Dr. Zbig and Richard Engel on last week to talk about the rising tensions between Israel and Iran. Chris Hayes had Amy Goodman on her round table on Sunday. A great deal said about this confrontation as well as the I/P conflict on Chris Hayes Sunday program.
Washington Journal has had two recent guest on the last couple of weeks Mr. Singh and Mr. Asan Jain who repeated one unsubstantiated claim after another about Iran. Wondering if those who had been allowing fact based guest on their program like former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit Micheal Scheuer and former Bush administration official Flynt Leverett on years ago are no longer at CSpans Washington Journal