On Democracy and Debates

There’s one story that won’t be reported in the U.S. about the annual Nazi holocaust remembrance day (were the gay, handicapped, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists who were killed remembered?). It’s the story about the ways in which survivors of the European genocide of Jews are treated poorly by the Jewish state. This is not a recent phenomenon, as Israeli journalist Tom Segev makes clear in his book The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. This happened from the moment they stepped off the boat, colonized Palestine, and participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Ha’aretz, reported on Tuesday:

“Hundreds of Holocaust survivors, students and members of youth movements gathered Monday in front of the Knesset to protest against Israel’s neglect of Holocaust survivors, many of whom are in a dire financial situation…..

A representative of the treasury told a special Knesset hearing concerning survivors’ financial situation on Sunday that some 180,000 Israeli Holocaust survivors do not receive any form of assistance from the state.”

This situation, which is not news to those familiar with the various oppressive state tactics Israel uses, even against its Jewish citizens, is something that Jews, especially in the U.S., do not want publicized. It limits their ability to use The Holocaust as an ideological weapon. And while American Jews attempt to take the moral high ground on rallying behind the cause of genocide in Darfur, Israelis have jailed Sudanese refugees fleeing the violence in Sudan. So much for taking the moral highground. But I wouldn’t expect the Jewish state to allow anyone fleeing genocide into its borders if they are not Jewish. Apparently, only Jews should have a state of their own as a result of mass murder.

Of course we already know that the Jewish state is responsible for all sorts of crimes which are unspeakable in the U.S. One of those crimes is Israel’s use of torture–something that Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz seems to think is an acceptable practice. Last week Nora Barrows-Friedman reported first-hand accounts of
Israelis torturing children. Of course, I suppose people claiming to have “democracies” are allowed to torture innocent civilians, including children.

But the harassment, torture, and occupation of Palestinians does not only occur in Israeli prisons or in the West Bank. It happens right inside 1948 Palestine as well, otherwise known as Israel. One of the many reasons I feel strongly about a one state solution, along the guidelines Ali Abunimah makes in his eloquent and brilliant bookOne Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse is not only to ensure Palestinians have the Right to Return as per UN Resolution 194, but also because Palestinians who live inside Israel’s borders need to be able to live without oppression. Real democracies have laws that protect all its citizens, not just those who believe or were born into a particular religion. Azmi Bishara, a member of the Israeli Knesset (something the Israelis and Zionists love to use as some sort of evidence that they have a democratic state.Ali Abunimah reported this week about the Jewish state’s targeting of Bishara:

What he was clear about was that he is the target of a campaign, coordinated at the highest levels of the Israeli state to destroy him and his movement politically. He is undoubtedly right about this and there is long precedent. In 2001, Israel’s attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein charged Bishara with “endangering the state” because of comments he made during a visit to Syria, and the Knesset voted for the first time in its history to lift the immunity of one of its members so Bishara could be prosecuted. In 2003, the Israeli Central Elections Committee attempted to disqualify Bishara and his party from standing in national elections, on the grounds that the party did not adhere to the dogma that Israel must remain a “Jewish state.” Under Israeli law all parties are required to espouse the dogma that Israel must always grant special and better rights to Jews, meaning truly democratic parties are always flirting with illegality. That decision was eventually overturned by the courts. (Though it should be noted that the ban was supported by former attorney general Rubinstein, who is now a Supreme Court judge!). Such persecution against Palestinians in Israel has been the norm since the state was founded. Until 1966, they lived under “military government,” a form of internal military occupation similar to that experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza today. Laws, practices and policies that continue to deny their fundamental human rights are well described in Jonathan Cook’s recent book Blood and Religion: Unmasking the Jewish and Democratic State. In recent years opinion polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews consistently support government efforts to force Palestinian citizens out of the country. (In recent weeks, former Israeli prime minister and current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it would be best if Bishara never returned).

There is currently a petition online that can be signed to oppose Israel’s campaign against Bishara. I urge people to sign this petition.

This issue of Palestinians and how they are treated inside and outside of Israel is crucial for those thinking about whatever so-called peace agreement is on the table. The Jewish state must be dismantled and turned into a state in which all people can live in whatever part of the country they choose to divide, a real democratic state with a constitution (which Israel does not have) and which grants all its citizens basic human rights. On the Doha Debates this month, which recently aired on the BBC, the subject was the Palestinian Right of Return.
The motion on the table to remove the Right of Return was presented by Knesset member Yossi Beilin and Bassem Eid, a human rights advocate who lives in a refugee camp in Eriha (Jericho). Against the motion were Haifa University historian Ilan Pappe (author of the important new book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and Ali Abunimah. The debate was amazing and substantive in many ways, though it was rather disturbing to see how Eid was sort of used as a spokesperson for all Palestinian refugees with respect to giving up the Right of Return. He minimized Ali Abunimah’s claims to want to return to Palestine merely because Abunimah has lived a privileged life in Europe and the U.S.; he did this so effectively that even some Palestinian audience member seemed to succumb to his position. But Abunimah was as brilliant as ever claiming that the only reason for their different situations is that their parents fled Palestine in different directions in 1948. He said, “I just wonder if Apartheid would have ended if Nelson Mandela took the position that Bassem Eid takes” with respect to giving into racism and colonialism. Beilin, who seems to believe he lives in a democratic state, suggested that “there are no racist policies” inside Israel (yes, you read that correctly) and is intent on arguing for a two-state solution based on the Geneva initiative that he helped craft. After the debate, Abunimah and Eid continued their discussion and published it on Electronic Intifada. The next Doha Debate will be on the Israeli lobby, which I expect will be as invigorating as this one was.

While all this was going on in the news, Beirut has been as lively as one can imagine. The Arab International Book Fair was held last week in Biel. There were thousands of amazing books and hundreds of publishers and bookshops, though I was sad to see that the American University of Cairo Press was not among them as their Arabic fiction in translation is fantastic and I would have loved to browse their new list. I went to every book booth asking for children’s books on or about Palestine–either historical or literary–and found only the usual suspects, I’m sad to say. One book shop in Amman, Azkadunya has many of the Ramallah-based Tamer Institute for Community Education publications and the stories of Rawda Hud Hud. There was a book booth sponsored by the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation, which was wonderful to see so much devoted to the incomparable Kanafani. The highlight of the event, however, was a Mahmoud Darwish poetry reading. Also going on in Beirut this week is the Al Jana Center Center for the Popular Arts annual children’s film festival. Last night I saw some really interesting films made by and about children. Films from Palestine, India, Denmark, and Holland were some of the most interesting films. There is a schedule and listing of the various films on their website where one can read about them in Arabic and in English.

One final note: for anyone in or around Washington DC or who has the resources to get themselves there, theU.S. Campaign to End the Occupation is gearing up for a major rally and lobbying program on June 10th. I wish that our semester were over by then so that I could go, but I cannot. The image posted at the top of this is one created by the campaign for DC area advertising. It is a very important event during which a new component of the campaign to organize African American support of Palestinians will be unveiled. It’s a project we’ve been discussing for a year and I’m so excited that this will finally come to fruition.