National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #33-01 Forbidden Views: Advocating Palestinian Rights
August 15, 2001

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2001/3301.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact...

Marcia Freedman: The blood of the Palestinians is on our hands, and many of us are misguided because the U.S. media has been so one-sided in not portraying the reality of the plight of Palestinians.

Reverend Mitri Raheb: The little town of Bethlehem was bombed by Israeli Apache helicopters and tanks. Over 170 houses in Bethlehem were destroyed. Children going to our school -- their homes were demolished.

Phillip Babich: Opinions run strong when it comes to conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Mass media reports about violent clashes and tenuous peace talks often obscure critical information about daily life in Palestinian territories. On this program we take a look reactions to Palestinian viewpoints. I'm Phillip Babich -- your host this week on Making Contact -- an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information.

On May 2nd, 2001, Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into the Gaza Strip to demolish Palestinian homes, a common occurrence in what are known as the Occupied Territories. It was the middle of the night and raining when this Palestinian man had to abandon his home, wearing only his pajamas. He told correspondent Raphael Krafft, as they surveyed the destruction, that Israeli troops smashed everything he and his family had and left it soaking in the downpour.

Raphael Krafft: Do you mind if we make a tour around your house, showing me what has been destroyed?

Palestinian man: My own PC, my computer, (footsteps through destroyed equipment), my cash machine, these are the toys, Christmas lights, some of my clothes, (sounds of children calling), this is my house right here. I have a small garden with my house. As you see, everything is destroyed. This is a destructive work. I don't know. What can I say? I myself, I'm looking for the peace. I don't ... I'm very agreeing to live together with them. But suppose ... put yourself in my situation, what you can see. (sounds of gunfire and missiles)

Phillip Babich: In February 2001, Israeli helicopters and tanks fired bombs on the fabled Bethlehem, a Palestinian town in the West Bank. When we spoke with Reverend Mitri Raheb that month, pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, he said that since the September 2000 renewal of the Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Israeli troops had destroyed more than 170 homes there. During that six months, Israelis constructed 18 Jewish settlements around Bethlehem and a series of bypass roads designed to isolate the town. Raheb said that he was not allowed to travel to Jerusalem, just five miles away.

Reverend Mitri Raheb: I can travel with my own car, only within a radius of one mile. Can you imagine that? Which means we have students coming to our center from villages in the Bethlehem area. They need to change three taxis, because there are two roadblocks. I mean, we are talking about just six miles from our center. There are two roadblocks, which the Israelis created so that people cannot travel with their cars freely. So basically the little town of Bethlehem, you know, about which so many Americans sing on Christmas Eve, is going through very tough times. And the people there are really prisoners in their own town.

Raphael Krafft: When you hear the term "Jewish settlements," -- you've seen Jewish settlements, what does it mean to you?

Reverend Mitri Raheb: I mean, settlements are actually like military fortresses. Their aim is to get more Palestinian land under control, and to divide the West Bank into -- or to make out of the Palestinian cities something like the Bantustans in South Africa, small homelands but all the territory around them are controlled by Israeli settlements, by so-called bypass routes. And they are, at the end, trying to make sure that there's no future Palestinian State is possible.

Raphael Krafft: Isn't there common ground in Israel among Jews and Palestinians, and what is that common ground like?

Reverend Mitri Raheb: There is, I would say, around 30 percent of the Jewish people in Israel I think are realizing more and more that Israeli occupation is the source for conflict in the region. And there also is a strong peace movement in Israel, which is saying: What we are doing there is wrong. We have to stop it.

Phillip Babich: According to Marcia Freedman, a former member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, who works with the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, that movement consists of about 5,000 to 10,000 activists. She told Making Contact's Lisa Rudman, that women are a primary force in the Israeli peace movement. Freedman also noted that it's important to understand the dynamics of gender inequality to fully understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Marcia Freedman: Israel is an incredibly militarized society, and the concept of masculinity is highly exaggerated. The concept of a militarized masculinity- men are very much locked into that, in great numbers. Any man can appreciate what it is to live up to the concept of masculinity in his culture, and what you have to do to do it. I don't think it's easy and I think it's really hard. Israel lists major neuroses around it. I don't think you can begin to understand the reliance on the army as the single solution to every problem without understanding that that is the headset that men are in, and men are leading the country. So I think that that's one big important part of it. The other part I think is to understand a gendered analysis of colonial oppression, and all kinds of oppression. The oppressed is made -- is feminized, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the oppressor.

And therefore the concept, and one hears it in Palestinian discourse all the time, one's individual honor as a man, and one's national honor are totally dependent upon one another. And the national honor has been debased and therefore one's individual honor has been debased and how do you get your honor back? Well you strike back. And so I think we have a conflict that is testosterone led on both sides. Unfortunately I'm sorry to see the Palestinians not embracing more strongly, I know there are those who do, but more strongly looking for nonviolent resistance. I think it would also be more effective and certainly less deadly for them. But I don't think that you can begin to dialogue, to bridge gaps, to understand how to come to some resolution of this without a strong feminist base. And I think that we really must have the women's voices in there. It's not going to happen without them, and I think ultimately, along with everything else, we'll probably find out that that's genuinely true in this situation.

Lisa Rudman: And so if you can give us some examples of how are women's voices getting out there?

Marcia Freedman: The first Intifada broke out in 1988. In 1989, I think it was, first contacts were made between Palestinian women from Ramallah and other areas in the West Bank, and Israeli women leaders. And the women leaders on the Palestinian side were the leaders of women's organizations that were active in the Intifada, and the women on the Israeli side were women who were active in the Women's Peace Movement. They met in Brussels and put together an historic document -- I think there were nine or ten basic priciples -- which was recognition of the 1967 borders. It was everything that we now know that became the basis of the Oslo Accords, and even the first meetings in Madrid, and so forth. And it's everything that we now know of as the overall look of the solution to this problem. One of the consequences, for instance, of the organizing of the women's movement, the Women in Black, in 1988 in Jerusalem was the word "occupation" used prominently. The women's signs all said, "End the Occupation." This word was Hebrew kibush, occupation, was verboten. You could not use it without being labeled a self-hating Jew, or an anti-Zionist, or all those other things. So standing there, powerfully, silently, in black, holding these signs, which is a Middle Eastern hand, which is a sign, hamseh, which is a kind of a talisman, was very, very powerful and in fact, normalized a word that had been absolutely unspoken before. And now it's becoming again unspoken. We're talking about not the occupied territories anymore, Dehuna, but the disputed territories.

Phillip Babich: Marcia Freedman, speaking with Lisa Rudman, director of the National Radio Project's Women's Desk.

Women in Black staged a demonstration in July 2001 at a major sporting event in Jerusalem. As former general Ariel Sharon, now Israel's Prime Minister, addressed the crowd, eight Jewish women denounced Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Penny Rosenwasser, with the U.S.-based Middle East Children's Alliance, was one of those women.

Penny Rosenwasser: In July I was part of a group with seven Israeli women at the Maccabea Games, which I hadn't know about, but they're like the Jewish Olympics, they're held every four years. A very very big deal. This was in mid-July in Jerusalem. It was a stadium of 13,000 of us. We went through two security checks, because I guess people felt it was a likely place for someone to do a bombing, and they say that they caught a couple of people beforehand on the outskirts on their way to do a bombing. I never know how much to believe that is true or not. And so we were in that audience, and it a very -- it was my most intense experience of mainstream Israeli culture. I mean, there were fireworks, and they had children marching on the field like we have at football games, and some of them were dressed in Army uniforms, and had flags. They were marching to Hinai Matov, which I see as this very kind of sacred song that we sing at, you know, different Jewish services. And here's this kind of marching beat of Hinai Matov and the kids marching. It really kind of blew me away. And then they played the national anthem and showed all these scenes from Israel. So it was patriotic and moving.

And then when Ariel Sharon got up to speak, The eight of us, who were all dressed in black, Israeli women and I as the only American, stood up and shouted: "War Criminal" in Hebrew at Sharon, and held up a huge banner that we had brought in with us, that said, No to Ethnic Cleansing. And we were holding up this banner and yelling "War Criminal" while Sharon was speaking. It was wonderful, that whole thing of speaking truth to power. And immediately Israelis around us started pulling the banner down and trying to push us out of the way and pull -- they were very strong, they were vicious, waving Israeli flags in our faces. My Israeli friends had said that would happen, they knew that would happen. I was shocked. I haven't experienced anything like that in the States.

Phillip Babich: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, check out our website at radioproject.org. That's radioproject.org

Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. foreign aid annually. In many instances, those who have spoken out against Israeli repression in the Occupied Territories or have advocated for Palestinian rights have found themselves the target of sharp criticism, or worse...death threats. In one such case, a right-wing Jewish website listed an American rabbi Michael Lerner as one of five enemies of the Jewish state and provided driving instructions to his house. Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, a bimonthly Jewish publication on politics, culture, and society, says he started receiving death threats and hate mail in Spring 2001.

Rabbi Michael Lerner: Yeah, they say, "Die (bleep) die" and they say, "You dirty little kike deserve to be extinguished." Language that you'd actually think would come from some anti-Semitic right wing nut, but instead is coming from Jewish people who are saying that it's because of my stand on Israel that they're so angry at me.

Phillip Babich: And what is your stand on Israel? I'm sure it's complex, but in referring to your stand on Israel? What is that?

Rabbi Michael Lerner: Well, Tikkum magazine is the only nationally-distributed Jewish magazine that has articulated a strong stand in favor of both a strong Israel and defense of Israel on the one hand, and an end to the occupation, dismantling of the settlements, sharing Jerusalem, and taking partial responsiblity for the refugees, which would mean allowing some refugees at a level that we project vaguely at about 25,000 a year for the next 30 years to come back into Israel. And coupling that with adequate reparations for those who don't come back so that they could be resettled in a Palestinian State.

Phillip Babich: And so this, according to your harsh critics -- the ones who were giving you the death threats, makes you what they term a self-hating Jew. What does that mean?

Rabbi Michael Lerner: Well, a self-hating Jew by them means somebody who, though born Jewish by accident, really hates their Jewishness and is ashamed of being Jewish. And so takes stands critical of Israel in order to deal with their guilt at being Jewish or hatred of their Jewishness. In my case, I'm a Rabbi, I love being Jewish, I'm very proud of Judaism, I spent a great deal of my time with Tikkum magazine showing people the deep spiritual depth of Judaism. And there's no hatred here. There's only love and embracing of Judaism. And precisely because of that I embrace the spiritual and ethical message of Judaism, which starts in the first book of Torah and the very first chapter, which tells us that God created human beings in God's image.

And consequently, not Jews, all human beings. So, and the tradition is very clear on this. It says very strongly that the story of Genesis is based on telling about equality of all human beings. That's why it says that God took from the dirt of the earth to show that human being were formed, not out of some pre-existing model that was white or black or whatever color or whatever race, but that it was from the basic materials of the earth. And how we all came from the same one family, Adam and Eve, and so we're all created in this image of God. So that leads me and many other religious Jews to say: in that case we have an absolute obligation to treat other people with love and caring. However, then there's all the distortions of history. The distortions of history have subsequently led people to live in a class-dominated society, where some people have more power than others, oppression, and through that oppression came cruelty and pain towards some people by others.

Now, that has been passed on from generation to generation. The message of Judaism is that that chain of pain can be broken. Yud, Hay, Vuv, Hay (YHVH), that was wrongly translated in English as Jehovah, actually is a word that means the transformation from that which is, to that which ought to be. And that's who the God of Israel is, the force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from that which is, to that which ought to be. Now, once you get that, that the world can be healed and transformed, then there's a great deal of hope in this world for overcoming all kinds of pain and cruelty. But there's still the tendency within us to act in a cruel and hurtful way. So when we face the current situation and see so many people bringing the pain that was inflicted upon us, and now are inflicting it upon the Palestinian people, it breaks my heart. Because it's the opposite of the Jewish message. And so people like me, who love Judaism, who are very proud to be Jewish, are insisting that the Occupation end, that the settlements be dismantled, and that we take responsibility for the hurts that we've unintentionally caused the Palestinian people when we created our State in 1948.

Phillip Babich: Are you hopeful for a peaceful resolution in Israel and Palestine?

Rabbi Michael Lerner: Well, there's not going to be any other possible solution. The only question is when? And right now I'm very discouraged about the short term chances for peace, because I think that both sides have locked themselves into a destructive dynamic. I've talked about the destructiveness on the Jewish side, but I should also say that from my standpoint the Palestinians are making a terrible error by resorting to acts of violence and terror rather than adopting the strategy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi. Those are strategies that worked. They appeal to the highest instincts of their oppressors. Now, of course, oppressed people can always say back, "Who are you to lecture to us about how to conduct our liberation struggle?" But looking at history I can tell you that it's those struggles that have been most effective that have relied on non-violence. And those that have been internally destructive have not ended up producing a decent society have been those that primarily relied on violence.

Phillip Babich: Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine.

Another target of sharp criticism for his views on Israel is Edward Said. A Palestinian born in Jerusalem, Said is a widely acclaimed author and scholar and is a Professor at Columbia University. He spoke with David Barsamian, host and executive producer of Alternative Radio, about his reactions to denunciations in the establishment press. Said says attacks in publications such as the New Republic or the Wall Street Journal do not distract him.

Edward Said: What it does do, in fact, is to interest more people in my work and my writing. And that's the way I respond to them, by producing more. I think what they want is my silence. And unless I die, it's not going to happen.

David Barsamian: In your 1978 book, Orientalism, you wrote: "The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in America, is disheartening." Does that situation still pertain today?

Edward Said: Well, what's disheartening is the fact that many of the same prejudices I was attacking were misrepresentations. The racist assumptions about Arabs and Muslims are still there. You know, obviously I wasn't vain enough to think that my book would turn the tide, but it's enforced every day by the media, which whether constituively or out of ignorance or laziness perpetuates these images. But on the other hand, there is a rising tide, which is quite evident wherever you go, that this is now being combated. There is an alternative media, which you represent, which is quite widespread. There is an enormous amount of information available on the Net and alternative press, from other countries, from England, from France, from Israel even. So, at least from that point of view, my books can be seen in a wider context, which is more encouraging. But just the sense of being an Arab, I thing there is decided pressure, which I've had directed against me, to discourage me from talking, and to discourage others from listening to me. And they use very punitive means. They threaten, they get people to cancel lectures. It hasn't happened very often. But that's what they try to do. They don't engage you directly. It's a very cowardly way.

David Barsamian: You had been invited by the Freud Society of Vienna to give a talk on May 6. Your invitation was withdrawn.

Edward Said: Well that was a clear case of pressure. I was invited by the Freud Society in the summer of 2000, and I accepted on September 1. I gave them the title of the lecture, and it wasn't until the middle of February that I got this unannounced letter saying that the lecture was being canceled. Why? Because, the gentleman said, of the political situation in the Middle East and its consequences. End of quote. I then immediately sent him back a letter saying I would like to know what the connection is between a lecture on Freud in Vienna, and the political situation in the Middle East and its consequences. And to this day, I haven't received an answer. But the lecture was canceled. I subsequently found out that what had happened was that they had received funding for an exhibition of Freud's papers in Tel Aviv, and were told that if they wanted to exhibit these papers, and wanted the funding for it (this was from funders in Israel and America) they would have to cancel my lecture, and dutifully, they did.

So that's what happened. But there was a lot of protest, and a group of twenty of the most distinguished psychoanalysts in the world signed a letter in protest to the Freud Museum, which was published in the London Review. And numerous other people wrote in. The press in Austria was uniformly hostile. And this poor fall guy for them, who's a sociologist, who's head of the board of the museum of the Freud Society in Vienna, was forced to say stupid things, like, "We have to take into account the sensibilities of the Austrian Jewish community, the emergence of Jorg Heider, memories of the Holocaust," without ever showing any connection between all that and me and my lecture. And I think I had the last word when I said, "Freud was hounded out of Vienna in the late 30s by Nazis, and as a Palestinian, I wasn't allowed to speak in Vienna." By the same people, basically, just a generation or two later.

David Barsamian: Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the Independent, and he comments in a December 2000 article on the degree of abuse that sort of reflects on something you said earlier, and outright threats are directed at anyone, academics, analysts, reporters, who dare to criticize Israel itsfast-reaching, McCarthyist proportions. And that ignorance of the Middle East is now so firmly adhered to in the U.S. that only a few tiny newspapers report anything other than Israel's point of view. Is Fisk on the right track there?

Edward Said: Absolutely. The fact is that I did a kind of a homemade survey of the major papers in the metropolitan centers, whether Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and elsewhere. They are uniformly reporting from Israel. That is to say, reporters who are stationed in Jerusalem, which is Israel (because it's been annexed), or Tel Aviv. And first of all they have very few reporters in the Arab world who are reporting the Palestinian point of view. Second, they report things that are sent back to their editorial offices in their home bases, and the stories are changed to reflect the same bias, same line. The mantra is Palestinian violence and Israeli insecurity. You know, that is the theme of all reporting, which, as I said, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, and literally thousands have been maimed and wounded...ignoring the reports of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, UN Committees - the UN High Commissioner for Refugees report, Mary Robinson's report. I mean, I could give you a dozen citations. They're easily available for verifications of what is taking place. None of it gets reflected in the major newspapers, and certainly not on the TV screen certainly. Even the so-called virtuous ones like the McNeil Lehrer report, or whatever it's called now (News Hour), NPR, etc...hew to the same line.

Phillip Babich: Edward Said, speaking with David Barsamian.

That's it for this edition of Making Contact: a look at reactions to Palestinian viewpoints. Thanks for listening. And special thanks to Raphael Krafft for recorded portions. We had production assistance from Samantha Haimovitch. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producers, Stephanie Welch and Shereen Meraji. Women's desk director, Lisa Rudman. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Administrative coordinator, Rosalyn Fay. And, I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. 'Bye for now.