A few points I left out of my report on Mustafa Barghouti of last night in my haste to report: He was hosted by the Arab Students Association of Columbia University‘s school of international affairs. The space was a 15th floor faculty lounge in the foreign affairs building with commanding views of midtown, Columbia’s quad, and the Jersey bank of the Hudson.
Barghouti was introduced by Saif Ammous, who said the dichotomy you have been fed in this country, between Fatah politicians who are too corrupt to lead a state, and Hamas leaders who are too driven by blind hatred of Jews and westerners to do the same, is a false one, witness our guest. “He is the living talking walking breathing refutation of this dichotomy.”
Throughout his appearance, Barghouti was urbane and worldly. He was dressed as a university administrator or thinktank president is dressed. He sat chatting with numerous people beforehand, always with a small smile on his sensitive narrow face. Afterward he stayed for a half hour, even as Michael Brown of the Institute for Middle East Understanding waited to whisk him off to his next event on the East Side.
Barghouti is a star for one reason: because of media; because of the stunning “60 Minutes” report by Bob Simon a month ago. Never has celebrity been so-well deserved. Barghouti is ready. He is familiar with New York and the Palestinian diaspora. He has been here many times, to visit the late Edward Said, whose widow was in the audience. The students in the audience never interrupted his lecture with applause, their only spontaneous response was cries at the photographs he insisted on showing us of white phosphorus victims. The students seemed hungry to get his marching orders: that they must revive the idea of a global Palestine Liberation Organization, which is buried now inside the Palestinian Authority in the bureaucracy of Oslo, which he says Palestinians should not have accepted.
Barghouti’s rise parallels Avigdor Lieberman’s in the eyes of the world; and that is the entire story. Before the presentation began, watching him as he chatted and listened, seeing his thoughtful head turning and nodding to this person and that one, I felt rage and despair at the conversion of so much of my community, Jewish intellectuals, to a form of religious nationalism that does not allow this fine man to travel the few miles from his home to the place of his birth, Jerusalem, this year, next year or any time at all.
(Phil Weiss)
