A lot of people have sent me a piece by novelist Susan Abulhawa at The Palestine Chronicle about refusing to participate in a forum on the Nakba on Al Jazeera’s social media show, the Stream, because it would feature three or four Israelis. Titled “Are Israelis Now Appropriating the Nakba?” the piece begins by quoting the email traffic between herself and the producer. After Abulhawa said she wasn’t interested, the unnamed producer persisted, saying he needed her “to balance things out.”
He continued, “As you noted, it would be 3-4 Israelis and just the one Palestinian – but as I said, the Israeli’s will include those very critical of Israeli society on this issue. We certainly wont have anyone in the discussion who flat out denies the Nakba.”
Here is an excerpt of Abulhawa’s piece, in which she describes why she finds the forum “appalling”:
After thoughtful consideration and rumination on my initial impulse to refuse, I responded as follows:
“I have considered your invitation and it frankly pains me that you would conceive of such a forum. However, I suspect that others may consider going the same route in the future and I am willing to come on merely to repudiate and discourage such a conversation from taking place again. As such, I would appear only under the following circumstances:
1. I do not agree to any form of “conversation” with Israelis about the Nakba, and that must be made clear.
2. Per the above, the show must be split somehow whereby I would follow whatever discussion you had with them. I do not agree to any exchange with them; but i will agree to a discussion with the interviewer afterward about whatever is said.”…Since we must perpetually put our pain in the form of analogies in order to facilitate empathy, let me do that to start off.
Imagine Germany never acknowledged the Jewish holocaust. Imagine, we are living in an era where Jews are still fighting for basic recognition of their pain. Then imagine that on the day in which Jews engage in solemn remembrance of their greatest collective wound, television shows choose to feature German sons and daughters of Nazis in a discussion expressing differing views on whether or not and/or how Germany should deal with the memory of the genocide their country committed. And imagine, of course, there is a token Jew “to balance out” such an ill-timed and inappropriate public conversation.
Here is the Al Jazeera show as it ran. Titled “Israel’s fractured memory: Are Israelis ready to include the Palestinian Nakba tragedy in their independence narrative?,” it featured four Israelis and one Palestinian: journalist Lia Tarachansky, filmmaker Amos Geva, Ran Bario Bar-Yoshafat of the Jewish Agency, Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot, and Palestinian activist Adrieh Abou Shehadeh.
As many readers will be aware by now, EI has reported that Al J English has pulled Joseph Massad’s article on Zionism. None of us who have followed Al J since its inception will be surprised by this, or by their having a programme on the Nakba which is told almost entirely from the Israeli point of view. It’s been clear for some time that Al J is no longer the channel which brought us such brave, on-the-spot coverage of the Egyptian uprising and the assault on Gaza. That channel has disappeared, and in its place a bland CNN-style outlet, ever on the look-out for not touching Zionist ‘sensitivities’ is here. And what, I ask you, is the point of that?
Al Jazeera is plumbing new depths all around this week.
“In an unprecedented act of political censorship Al Jazeera English has deleted an article by noted Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad after coming under intense criticism from Zionists in recent days.”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/al-jazeera-management-orders-joseph-massad-article-pulled-act-pro-israel
Al Jazeera has changed a lot over the years. I remember reading awhile back that Haim Saban was investing in Al Jazeera.
That might be why.
Susan was right to decline the invitation to ‘balance’. And she is absolutely right about how the Nakba is ‘framed’ by press. It’s always ‘should Israelis feel a bit perturbed by that pesky Palestinian tragedy’?
Always an afterthought and with a group of Israelis discussing things. And in America naturally, it’s similar to other ME issues and we only have Jews talking about it or other ‘White’ Americans.
I was so surprised that HuffPo had a video discussion with some Palestinians (I think that’s what it was at least).
Years ago Al Jazeera hosted a debate between Palestinian and Israeli teens. It was a good debate. One of the Israelis was an Israeli Arab (but Jewish I think? I dunno) and he was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause (or it felt that way).
He would describe his experiences in Israel and one Israeli Jewish girl interjected and tried to speak for him. He was upset that she kept interrupting to speak for him.
I think that’s a perfect example of how this discussion is hijacked constantly and reframed through the POV of the oppressor.
On the other end of the spectrum, Zionists always refer to Palestinians in Israel proper, being treated so graciously and kindly (LOL). Even Zionists attempt to speak for Palestinians.
Not to mention these same Zionists divert attention away from Zionist crimes to dead Arabs elsewhere, ie Syria, Libya, Iraq, blah blah.
The one commonality is clearly the cynicism and depravity of these Zionists and their sociopathy towards Palestinian life. Whether it’s mocking Palestinian suffering or denying it’s existence by changing the subject nonsensically to Darfur or Sudan or BLAH BLAH BLAH.
We think of Holocaust Deniers as a unique species of haters. But the same intellectual framework is seen EVERYWHERE in many different issues and conflicts and Zionists who mock/deny/divert the Nakba are no different than Holocaust deniers.
6 million people do not need to die for someone to then come around and start denying that those people died or justifying their deaths or minimizing/trivializing or diverting attention away.
And so often Zionists use the Holocaust to (reverse minimizing) to trivialize suffering elsewhere (these same type of Zionists also promote Israel as being an oasis for refugees because of the ‘lessons’ of the Holocaust).
Susan has placed truth and justice first and foremost………….thank you.
Seems to me, the ultimate quest is to get down to historical facts, whether one is looking at the Shoah or the Nabka, or anything controversial. Whether there were actual ovens the Nazis burned Jews alive in, or whether some Palestinians were convinced to run out of their homes due to Arab broadcasts, it’s hard to put under either cover that the Nazis acted in view of their vision Jews were expendable, and so did the Jews with regard to the native Palestinians. You don’t need evidence of a group using another group’s skin as lampshades to know grave injustice was committed and needs to be rectified. Similarly, even if most native Americans died from simple lack of immunity to disease Europeans unknowingly brought to America, you have ample evidence the US government back in those days mounted a policy to take native American land, no matter what the cost to the natives. Since those days, we’ve had two world wars, Nuremberg, Geneva, etc. And, for starters, the whole world except Israel is on record as against Israeli settlements. So, what now?