If you want to feel really demoralized about justice in the Middle East, watch this video of a “National Conversation” about the US-Israel relationship hosted by an NPR reporter, Guy Raz, at the Wilson Center in Washington late in January. You will feel that you have no voice in the mainstream, that no one cares about historical injustices, that Islamophobia is alive and well in the establishment, and that holocaust denial—or the denial of ethnic cleansing– is a virtue in Washington.
Six people speak in this national conversation. I believe that five of them are Zionists (as I wrote ahead of time), that five of them are Jewish, and one or two are Israeli, and the most liberal is, hold on to your hat, Jane Harman, head of the Wilson Center, co-owner of the Daily Beast, and tireless supporter of Israel when she was in Congress– Jane Harman who says in introducing the evening, “P.S. From me, we desperately need a two state solution.”
No one here addresses the one state that exists in Israel and Palestine right now. No one speaks of the horrors of occupation and says that the U.S. should stand up for human rights. David Horovitz, the Israeli journalist, repeatedly says that Israelis can’t possibly think about a Palestinian state when there are Arabs who believe they will get eternal salvation by blowing up themselves and killing non-believing Muslims and Christians and Jews: “They actually believe that that is their path to paradise.”
And Obama naively doesn’t understand this: “The sense in Israel has never dissipated that this president doesn’t get it.” Because unlike John McCain who was tortured, Barack Obama doesn’t understand that some people are evil. No, the innocent went to Cairo first and showed that his heart was not with civilization but the barbarians.
All that he says without contradiction or demurral. Till Theodore Kattouf, a former diplomat, stands up in the Q-and-A and says that Netanyahu humiliated Obama.
Natan Sachs, who is at the Saban Center and seems to be Israeli, echoes Horovitz. He says that the status quo in the West Bank is not so bad, and the U.S. is guilty of naive solutionism when the situation does not lend itself to a solution. And the man who advised several presidents, Aaron David Miller, while holding out hope for hope about the two-state solution but nothing more, says Israel has a “dark past” and “is living in a dangerous neighborhood on a knife’s edge.” Like a bejeweled scimitar held to its throat.
Sam Lewis chuckles off-mike that if Dan Kurtzer were here – a liberal Zionist—he would be very dismayed by the dialogue.
What is the awareness here of the Palestinian experience of humiliation and the rest of the world’s perception of the injustice? Zero. The matter is considered only from the Israeli perspective. Horovitz describes Mahmoud Abbas’s statement to the U.N. that Israel was born with ethnic cleansing as hostile and absurd, and describes the right to return as “ridiculous” because it would “destroy” the Jewish democracy. Miller allows that this democracy is a “preferential” one because Palestinians are discriminated against. Yes and if that were going on here, American Jews would rise up in arms and denounce the euphemism “preferential” as galling and odious.
Is this right? If you believe that Palestinians have human rights, do you feel represented in this National Conversation? Those who believe that the special relationship is not in the interests of the U.S., do you feel represented? Should an NPR host be a party to this imbalanced marginalization? Should he maybe correct Horovitz when he dismisses ethnic cleansing and the right of return as fantasy? Should he ask how Jews would feel about preferential democracy? Raz goes with the flow.
When I watched this, I understood why people turn to violence, why violence changes a discourse. And I understood why the radicalism of a non-violent movement like BDS is also necessary. Because elites left to their own devices are going to tell lies to comfort themselves about the goodness of the status quo.
PS. The Forward has a piece this week on Israel’s harsh measures in the West Bank:
“Is ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ a Prelude to Annexation of Arab Land?” Even the Forward can talk about an Israeli policy of getting as much land as it can with as few Palestinians as possible on it; but Guy Raz does not dare to contradict an Israeli rightwinger in a National Conversation.
Update: This post originally stated that all the participants in the panel are Jewish. I am told I was wrong, that Sam Lewis is not. Apologies.
“Naive solutionism.” Great phrase! I had an uncle who infuriated me (and my Palestinian wife) when he said to us, relative to I/P, “If there is no solution, then there is no problem”. After I left the phone booth (well, actually, the Faculty Club) I wished I’d said, “And since there was no solution to the Holocaust, there was no problem? — And, BTW, Israel is not that solution.”
“Not even naively.”
Feh!
Speaking of non-solutions, ask anyone who’ll stand still long enough, why the USA and EU and UNSC should not insist — backed up by sanctions — that Israel comply with international law to the extent of removing all the settlers, the wall, the settlements buildings, and end the siege. A solution? What was the problem?
To peace? No. To the illegal occupation? A partial solution, yes.
And what’s so wrong with solving part of the problem? Do our police enforce the laws against joint-smoking and petit-robbery as well as those against murder?
“Natan Sachs….says that the status quo in the West Bank is not so bad…”
The status quo is the BEST deal Israel can hope for. Right now they can take all the water, land and resources they want and they can shoot in the head, with impunity, anyone who gets in their way. They will never sit down and negotiate away any of that, unless forced to.
Also don’t forget that in the settlers we are dealing with a very dangerous group of people. Mr. Sara knows that if he tries to settle with the Palestinians he will end up just like Rabin. Not that he wants to anyway.
Guy Raz is a committed Zionist. Somehow he’s able to juggle being a professional journalist with NPR while at the same time openly advocating that media coverage be skewed to be more pro-Israel.
Raz gave a talk at Yale in 2006:
“National Public Radio correspondent Guy Raz argued that the media’s preoccupation with the Palestine-Israel conflict contributes to anti-Semitism in a talk on Thursday.
Raz, who has worked as a reporter for CNN in Jerusalem and as a correspondent in several other countries, spoke on “Covering Anti-Semitism: From Nazi Germany to the Modern Middle East, A Reporter’s Notebook” at the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies. The central topics Raz discussed were how and why the media has discounted anti-Semitism in its coverage, and how this problem can be ameliorated…
Raz connected his argument to the modern world by explaining that things such as “time constraints and editorial disinterest” often make it hard, even for Jewish journalists like himself, to portray the depth of anti-Semitism that they have found, especially in the Middle East.
He also said that very few journalists who covered the Palestine-Israel conflict are well-informed, which contributes to the spread of misleading information. Many editors or reporters have also been biased because of previous professional experience, he said.
Raz said there are close to 600 or 700 correspondents in Israel, more than anywhere else in the world. The best thing that could be done to abate anti-Semitism in the media is to bring more coverage to other areas around the world like Darfur, which also has a vast number of casualties and is close to ignored by the media, he said.”
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2006/12/08/raz-condemns-anti-semitism/
Got that? The media shouldn’t cover Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, illegal settlements, and apartheid too much. Otherwise the ignorant masses will become anti-Semitic. Go ahead and report on atrocities in, I don’t know, in Africa or something.
Guy Raz is a exquisite specimen of what passes for American journalism. He shows that NPR and the mainstream media in general is a scam.
At Yale Raz can tell the elites what goals drive his and his colleagues reporting but to the average listener who flips on the radio or television, how are they supposed to know that they’re being indoctrinated and on whose behalf? Especially when the propaganda is emanating from both supposed sides of the political spectrum?
that’s just too funny. what a distinguished, diverse panel! and guy raz, npr berlin bureau chief at 25, stationed there after an exhaustive international search for qualified candidates i’m sure. but, alas, nobody was better qualified than guy at the time. i’m sure he learned quite a bit on the job though, just like ms. rudoren.
Israelis can’t possibly think about a Palestinian state when there are Arabs who believe they will get eternal salvation by killing themselves and Christians and Jews: “They actually believe that that is their path to paradise.”
If you look at the text passage often cited, it does not mention Christians. As for Jews, it reads like the apocalyptic expectation in oxymoronic “Christian Zionism”. But as with AIPAC’s oxymoronic CZ allies, Muslims are not instructed to do this.