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An important moment took place this morning on Chris Hayes’s MSNBC show when Hayes had on not one but two Palestinians to discuss the escalating conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Noura Erakat of Georgetown University and Yousef Munayyer of The Jerusalem Fund were joined by Noam Sheizaf of +972 and David Frum, the neoconservative former speechwriter for George Bush famous for allegedly coining the term, “axis of evil.”
It was a revealing discussion. Sheizaf started off saying, Obviously there’s been a steady escalation of hostilities around Gaza, but you can’t remove the political aspect. Elections are coming up in January ,and the Israeli Jewish public wants a more pro-active approach to dealing with the rocket fire from Gaza.
Munayyer then explained that there’s no military solution to this: You can’t bomb people into liking you.
But Noura Erakat was the real star of the show. She made the point: Who started all this? We’re losing focus of the idea, she said, that even if all the rockets stopped, from both sides, Palestinians would still be living under Israeli violence- unending blockade, occupation, and arbitrary detention. (As for the attacks on Gaza fishermen and young children on their side of the Israel-Gaza border, Munayyer pointed this out).
What struck me most strongly about the discussion was that Frum did not have anything of substance to add. In fact, his comments only hurt his position. In response to Munayyer’s thoughtful comments about Hamas’s opposition to Israel’s policy of extra-judicial assassinations as a whole, but especially in times of relative peace when rockets aren’t fired from Gaza, Frum could only respond that “it’s a little thick to hear it said that Hamas objects to assassinations when its stock in trade is mass murder.”
Later on, Frum continued with a third-grade knowledge of Hamas when he said, “Peace is not possible with Hamas.”
Erakat took him to task on this. She said that Hamas has long indicated that it was open to a two-state solution along the 1967 borders. It would not be a permanent solution, in Hamas’s view, but it would result in a long term truce; and that’s important.
Then she provided the money shot of the discussion. Frum had said that Oslo fell apart because Palestinian violence disillusioned a lot of Israelis and Diaspora Jews who at one point had been optimistic about a two-state deal.
Erakat asked Frum, What about the settlements? They doubled between 1993 and 2000.
Erakat: “Does that factor into the liberal Jewish community’s constellation of factors of what actually drove, torpedoed the peace process?”
Frum: “Settlements are just about money in the end. It’s just buildings.”
Erakat: “They’re on Palestinian land.”
Frum: “They’re the Palestinian apartment blocks of the future, potentially. That’s the way we would have thought about this in the 1990’s.”
Erakat: “But on destroyed land.”
Frum: “Apartments are useful things. The thinking was then that there would be a deal and probably these buildings would all be turned over…”
That’s not a meaningful response to the fact that they are on Palestinian land. Erakat is right. Villages have been bulldozed, farmland destroyed, the topography of the place has been transformed forever. Moreover the expectation that Palestinians would be expected to live inside former settlements, the fruits of their oppression, is obscene. Only someone with a colonial mindset like Frum would even suggest the idea in the first place. Sheizaf then dealt the knockout blow on this subject when he told Frum that it has become politically impossible to evacuate the settlements anyway.
Frum finished off by saying that the Palestinians had started a war that they ended up losing and therefore any agreement should be predicated on that outcome. He also argued that the true battlefield in this conflict was located inside social media, which led to a strong response by both Erakat and Sheizaf as they both reminded him that the conflict was having real effects on people on both sides.
Overall it was a very important conversation in our mainstream media. There was a discussion about Israel/Palestine, during a crisis, and two of the four on the panel were Palestinian. Chris Hayes should be commended for having the courage to bring them on.
But the discussion was important in another way. It showed the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Zionist right position. Between vapid talking points, sound bites and purely colonial thinking, Frum stood no chance when confronted with inconvenient facts that he is rarely, if ever, confronted with on television.
Chris Hayes is awesome. I wonder what it must be like to navigate the shark-infested waters of the MSM.
How did he get there? How does he stay there after a show like this?
I recall Chomsky talking to a group of Canadian journalists (Frum was one of them) in the 80s.
The ‘interview’/interrogation is online on YouTube. This was a group discussion on Chomsky and Herman’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’.
The discussion was featured as a short clip in the documentary version of the book. However, you can find the entire video @YT.
Anyways, Frum was as vapid and dishonest as ever in the discussion and said Chomsky cares more about “Palestinian corpse” and downplays that of etc. etc.
Chomsky’s answer was that we – generally speaking but in his case, Americans – should focus much more on our own crimes than on the crimes of others.
And that makes sense, but Frum took the typical Zionist line/Neocon line and said that Chomsky doesn’t criticize the Soviets or something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCwXZX5WzY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc8tPnkq3Eg&feature=relmfu
There are 4 videos total I believe. The second link is part 2 and I think Frum asks the first question.
Another funny question Frum asked was how Chomsky’s thesis/propaganda model can hold up when he is speaking to such a big audience often.
Chomsky’s answer was that as you move further from the centers of importance and ideological/institutional pressures – then it becomes easier to say what you want to say.
He was in Canada.
frum acts like there was a “war” between nations, and palestinians “lost” so they should lose some more rights/territory/whatever.
i can’t believe they did not JUMP on him. it was an uprising of a stateless, occupied, colonized, oppressed people. that was it…. not a war.
and further, even if it were a “war” between two nations, he suggests the “loser” should LOSE something (who starts wars anyways? the loser or the one who will win? and who really can define who starts most wars?). unless this is the case, he suggests, war will be a perpetual temptation.
bullshit… that would prompt overt and covert wars (and has in israel’s case). it is the opposite… we have the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by force”. if you do NOT allow nations to take land and resources from war, then you remove the impetus for most wars (israeli wars in particular). of course, the international community has to actually act on this central point of international law, and sanction and otherwise dissuade countries from taking land by force.
zionists drive me crazy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0H_LClxnsw
Bravo to Chris. Unfortunately, he is only on weekend mornings. Still it’s a start. We need to hear this on our more well-known Sunday morning shows as well. Also in prime-time to counter the false narratives that we are hearing from the Israel-firsters. Good of the guests to bring up the Occupation. The day-to-day suffering of the Palestinians is practically ignored in the US media. The checkpoints, the demolitions, the violence from the settlers are things we never hear about on the news. The settlers even attack olive groves. O, the irony.
Our media can’t get beyond the Israeli position that Palestinians are squatters on Palestinian land.
It’s an insult to talk to Zionist Jews; they think that the person they are speaking with is a complete moron.
Yesterday, member trainofsiberia posted a British Rabbi’s candid remarks.
This is the essence of what is wrong with the Jewish community that supports Israel. That community, wherever it may be, likes to put on a nice and kind face for the goyim among whom it lives. And that face, comes with all the hypocrisy, the spin, and the lies.
But within the Jewish community or at least in small circles, Jewish individuals allow themselves to be candid; just as Rosenfeld, the Israeli spokesperson allowed himself to be candid with Allison Deger when he told her that they will wipe Gaza off the map. He must have thought Allison was a member of the tribe, an American-Jewish spectator. But when someone like Phil Weiss, a man in his 50s, someone who is the stereotypical serious journalist asked him a question, Rosenfeld put on that fake facade and utilized nice language to explain Israel’s intentions.
So Frum’s garbage is not only pathetic, but it’s sad that intelligent adults have put up with such schtick for more than 40 years now, especially from the Zionist Jewish members of society.
At least non-Jewish hacks spout out the Hasbara without showing too much passion and conviction. They’re doing it for career or money. But Jewish Zionists are doing it with a passion that is motivated by an ideology, a strong belief in an idea. It’s sickening.