I created the Palestine Solidarity Telesummit (link to summit.katiemiranda.com) as a way to answer people who came to me during the recent Gaza war asking me how they can best support Palestine. My idea was to ask Palestinians this very question and to talk to activists around the world about the movement’s successes in order to inspire people to take action in support of Palestinian freedom.
Recently I received an email from a listener who I’ll call “Sarah”. Sarah wrote to me about a discouraging lecture by Jean-Jacques Surbeck about Israel/Palestine that she recently attended at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The lecture is part of a series and the schedule of speakers can be seen here. Note the “token” Palestinian speaker, Hatem Bazian.
Sarah described Surbeck as “a carbon copy of Alan Dershowitz”. She writes:
He goes around the world with his presentation that staunchly supports the Israeli narrative – it was very challenging for me to sit through his presentation. His main points were that those in support of Palestine have bought into the lies and false narrative, that Israel has NOT done anything illegal, and that the whole world is against Israel, including the media, because there is only one Jewish country in the UN and thus underrepresented. One infuriating thing he said was that the media is biased as anti-Israel and that the images we see of Palestinians are part of a conspiracy to portray them as the “victims”.
He said that all the claims of “apartheid” and human rights violations are fabricated. He said that every time Israel has offered to graciously “work things out” with the Palestinian gov’t they never got a chance because the Palestinian gov’t wouldn’t even listen, and that their demands were too ridiculous, and that they need to just accept Israel’s authority. The only mention he made of the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank was that Hamas kept weapons in UN shelters “so what did they expect would happen, Israel has a right to defend itself”. He kept bringing up how other countries in the world are in violation of international law and that nobody cares about THOSE countries and only wants to condemn Israel. He refuses to accept that the Geneva Conventions have been violated, (nor any international law) and on and on. He said that all of the Palestinian’s land was purchased, not stolen and the rest of it was uninhabited anyway. He never addressed the settlements and bulldozing of homes and villages. He never once addressed the hundreds of thousands refugees, the trade and infrastructure limitations Israel has set on Palestine, the basic human rights they are denied. He never mentioned the Israel lobby in the US and the millions per day we send over there. I asked him about that and he said that we send money to other countries too and he’s so tired of people saying that they are the “only” country we send money to. I said the problem is HOW MUCH we send there and he said it is 100% wisely spent because Israel shares its technology with us and that 75% of the money comes back to us to be spent on our defense industry.
He concluded his presentation with these strategies as far as “what the outside world can do:
1. stop making demands on Israel only
2. focus on the real tragedies of the world, measured by the number of real victims
3. demand of the Palestinians that they do their part and make concessions, tooUNBELIEVABLE.
It concerned me that people who know less than I do about the history and oppression of the Palestinians might actually believe what he was saying. I realize that those who put together this lecture series added him in order to give a “balanced” view, but what is so frightening is that he had ZERO references, did not recommend any books or documentation for his presentation. He said that after 30 years of reading and talking to people nobody has been able to prove him wrong. I wanted to say – what about Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finklestein… etc. If he had been in a debate with anyone that you have interviewed so far – now that would have been interesting.
I’m writing you because I am mildly traumatized by this experience. I can’t imagine the ignorance you have faced in the years that you have been doing this work.
I was unable to fall asleep last night, just going over and over this guy’s presentation, feeling dismayed by the lack of humanity on the part of these people who perpetuate this narrative. I know there are many people like yourself who are working to reverse this type of rhetoric. If you have any advice for me regarding how not to let this type of thing get me down please let me know. It seems like every time I think there is progress someone like this comes along and I start feeling the despair once again.
My response to Sarah:
What to do with one’s feelings of anger and frustration… I don’t know if I really have a good answer. I lived in Hebron for 9 months and left abruptly one morning for Ramallah. The last straw was getting punched in the face by an adult male settler in front of a soldier who did nothing. I packed my bags the next day and left Hebron. This incident was on top of months of verbal and physical abuse from settlers and soldiers in Hebron. I feel even worse when I think of the Palestinians who have spent their entire lives in Hebron dealing with this on a daily basis. I went to Ramallah because it was a little quieter but it literally took me years after I had left Palestine for my rage to subside. It still gets triggered when I have to share the room with people like you just mentioned.
I don’t know if you are religious or not so hopefully this won’t put you off.
Prophet Muhammed peace be upon him said in a Hadith narrated by Abu Hurayrah:
“A man said to the Prophet, ‘Give me advice.’ The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, ‘Do not get angry.’ The man asked repeatedly and the Prophet answered each time, ‘Do not get angry.’”
When Prophet Muhammed said “do not get angry” my understanding of it is not that the emotion of anger is frowned upon, but that one should not act destructively as a result of anger.
Anger is an energy that can be channeled and re-directed towards positive outcomes. The best way to deal with the anger we feel at injustices anywhere in the world is to harness that energy and put it to use by taking positive actions. That could be connecting with a group like Youth Against the Settlements (YAS) who are struggling against the Israeli occupation of Hebron. Issa Amro of YAS has asked for help in translating articles, editing video, and adding subtitles. It could be starting up a BDS campaign in your city and urging your local stores not to carry Israeli products. It could be carving out a space in the Jewish community where Jews can simultaneously remain connected to their faith and work for justice for Palestinians. It could be finishing that documentary you started but haven’t worked on in months.
Redirecting our anger is definitely not an easy practice to do. All of the great religions have methods for dealing with strong negative emotions whether it’s breathing, praying, fasting or physical exercise like yoga. In Islam we have the “greater jihad” which is the struggle against oneself. Anger gets in the way of our progress so redirecting our anger towards constructive activities is an example of a greater jihad.
The alternative is to allow our anger to consume and paralyze us. When this happens the result could be taking it out on friends, family or co-workers who don’t deserve it.
For more ideas on positive actions to take, I invite you to join the Palestine Solidarity Telesummit: summit.katiemiranda.com and listen to my interviews. Every speaker has progress generating ideas that will help inspire you to take constructive action to end apartheid in Palestine.
Shukran. So very well expressed, Katie– especially about ‘anger’.
I was thinking about you and your Telesummit last nite. I haven’t seen some of the latest episodes yet, but the ones that I have been privileged to watch are an incredible source of information and inspiration on how to better stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their cause for freedom and justice. All of your guests have shared important history and context to the ongoing struggle. So do you.
I would heartily encourage everyone to sign up and be witness to this great project. If you don’t, you’re missing something both special and important. A real gift from the heart. A way to further inform yourself so that we can actually combat the hasbarists, educate others, and delegitimize people like JJ Surbeck.
Thanks, Katie.
This person is a very serious and influential person in Switzerland. Reading what he says just goes to tell you that the Israel-Palestine conflict has been around long enough as to allow people to make their minds about it – in particular, catch-slogans (as the favorite “apartheid” charge) make no influence on them. Apparently the top guys in the world are moving Israel`s way – the dice have been cast.
“Apparently the top guys in the world are moving Israel`s way ”
top guys? really? A Zionist doesn’t move.
“the dice have been cast.”
liar’s dice.
“Liar’s dice is a class of dice games for two or more players requiring the ability to deceive and detect an opponent’s deception. The genre has its roots in South America, with games there being known as Dudo, Cachito, Perudo “or Dadinho; other names include “pirate’s dice,” “deception dice” and “diception.”
(wiki)
Katie , Thank you for a great project. I follow every night ‘s offering with so much interest and appreciation.
I clicked on the Jean-Jacques Surbeck link provided by Katie in the article. Lo and behold, JJ Surbeck was an attorney and also a North American spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Color me skeptic, but Surbeck certainly doesn’t strike me as a humanitarian nor specialist on the Geneva Conventions…..more likely, a specialist in how to subvert the protocols of the Geneva Convention. Really ugly stuff.
J.J. Surbeck is a Swiss-educated attorney who worked for 16 years for the famously discrete International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Swiss private organization which many have dubbed the “Guardian of the Geneva Conventions” (even though its name suggests that it is international in nature, in fact this refers only to its activities). He was the ICRC’s P.R. point person for North America from 1984 to 1989, and subsequently served for several years as well with the American Red Cross.
J.J. is currently one of the few former ICRC officials available on the speaker circuit to give lectures and seminars on the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, also called International Humanitarian Law.
Recently, J.J. helped create – and is the Executive Director of – a non-profit organization called T.E.A.M. (Training and Education About the Middle East) with a focus on presenting a more balanced image of the Middle East conflict than the one projected by the media and many academics. The T.E.A.M. web site can be found at sandiegoteam.org.