Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

Today’s message contains 5 items.  I have reserved the longest for last.

Item 1 is the testimony of a 61-year old activist who relates his treatment by violent settlers and the Israeli police.  That’s the way things go in the West Bank—settlers’ rights protected, even if these rights are thuggery. I

Item 2 is from Moked, a human rights organization that, among other things, helps locate Palestinian detainees and prisoners and transmit the information to the families, who often have no clue as to where there loved one has disappeared, nor for how long.

 

Item 3 is a Solidarity update and request for help.

 

Item 4 is ‘Today in Palestine’  Today’s compilation includes reports on the Middle East as well as on Palestine, and also  two items that I have sent separately the past few days..  I recommend at the least reading the summaries for the West Bank and Gaza .  And if you have time, I recommend reading  also the following in their entirety: Strength of the Right,  Existence is Resistence,  Israel inaction encourages settler violence, the 4 reports on Gaza , and the article on the New Israel Fund.

 

Item 5 is a longish interview of Norman Finkelstein and Prof. John Mearsheimer , which I found interesting.  Perhaps you will too. The subject is ostensibly ‘The greater Israel or peace, ’ but covers a great deal more.

 

All the best,

Dorothy

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1.     Wednesday, October 26, 2011

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/10/testimony-of-an-israeli-activist-who-was-robbed-and-beaten-by-settlers-while-attempting-to-assist-the-olive-harvest.html

 

1,  Testimony of A’, 61 years old peace activist, who was robbed and beaten badly by settlers in a pogrom during an olive harvestby לוחמים לשלום on Tuesday, 25 October 2011 at 14:27

This is a testimony of A’, a 61 year old peace activist, who was beaten badly with clubs on his head and entire body by Jewish settlers during an olive harvest in the Palestinian village of Jalud; his ribs and several fingers were broken, and his camera and personal belongings were robbed:

 

I told him: “Aren’t you ashamed? Why do you act violently? I’m old enough to be your father!”. As soon as these words came out of my mouth, I felt a blow to my head, followed by the feeling of blood gushing out of the wound. I fell to the ground and they continued to beat me with clubs. I yelled at the top of my voice: “Help! Someone stop this!”, but no one heard me.

Last Friday we arrived at the Palestinian village of Jalud to participate in an olive harvest with a group of Palestinian farmers from the village. Joining us were a group of international peace activists and a group of members from a Palestinian agricultural cooperative from the Hebron area. We climbed a hill in order to begin with the harvest; it is about a kilometer from the village. We went to the terraces where the olive trees were – some ladders and a tractor which came before us to unload the equipment required for the harvest were already there.

No more than five minutes passed from the time of our arrival, when four or five masked Jewish settlers arrived on the scene, accompanied by an armed guard  in civilian clothes. Except for the guard, they all covered their faces with cloths – all white except one who covered his face with a black cloth. Seeing the direction that they came from, I assumed that they came from the illegal Jewish outpost of Esh Kodesh (“Holy fire”).

Upon their arrival, I immediately started filming them. They started arguing with the Palestinian farmers and shouted: “Get out of here! This is our land!”, “You haven’t been here for 10 years, haven’t farmed the lands, now they belong to us”. A shouting match developed, but at that point it did not become anything more than that.

After the shouting ceased a bit, the farmers returned to the olive harvest. I continued filming, when suddenly I saw the armed guard and one of the masked men approaching me. I heard a sudden, loud explosion and I realized that one of them threw a shock grenade to where the people were harvesting. Immediately after the explosion I heard a round of shooting. At this point people started to disperse and I too began walking in the opposite direction. Stones were being thrown by both sides and the masked men started to cruelly beat the people left in the area. I distanced myself to about 20 meters from the area and went to a lower terrace, to avoid being in the range of the rocks being thrown, after I felt a rock hit my backpack. At this point I was about 50- 60 meters away and quite far from the harvest area. In any case, everyone was already escaping in the direction of the village.

At this point three or four of the masked men approached me quickly. I was convinced that when they would realize I was an older man and that if I would identify myself as Israeli, nothing would happen. When they approached me, they initially thought I was Arab and told me: “Jib al-hawiya” (“Give your I.D”). I tried to tell them: “Calm down, guys, I’m Israeli, no need for violence”. At this point the man with the black cloth pulled my camera and tried to take it. I argued with him: “Aren’t you ashamed? Why do you act violently? I’m old enough to be your father!”. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt a blow to my head, followed by the feeling of blood gushing out of the wound. I fell to the ground and they continued to beat me with clubs. I yelled at the top of my voice: “Help! Someone stop this!”, but no one heard me.

The masked men managed to grab the stills camera from my hand, and took my backpack which had the video camera, cassettes and my glasses in it. When I tried to fight back to take my camera, I was again beaten, this time on my wrist. At this point they ran away with my belongings, while I was left bleeding and beaten, but with full consciousness and completely aware of my situation and of what had just happened. The truth is that at this point the actual beatings didn’t hurt as badly, and I was more worried about the amount of bleeding. In addition, I was completely in shock, and was in disbelief that this had just happened to me.

I got up and started running up the hill. On the way I met A’ and M’, who was also covered in blood, and I realized that she had been beaten by the masked men at the beginning, right after the shock grenade exploded. After we met, we started walking down the hill , towards the village, while tear gas grenades were falling all around us, shot from a military jeep which was parked under the hill. I believe a second jeep was firing at us from the left side of the hill ; we saw this other jeep only later on.

When we arrived at the edge of the field, close to the road which leads to the village, the second military jeep approached. It was a border police jeep with the word “Police” on it, and it stopped about 20 meters from us. E’ or A’ yelled: “Come help us, there are wounded people here!”. A soldier emerged from the jeep, I was sure he was coming to help us. But instead, he walked to the back of the jeep, extracted a tear gas grenade and shot it at us.

Somehow, between the falling grenades, we managed to get of the hill and we stopped about 50 meters from the military jeep. A’, who was with us, kept yelling at the IDF soldiers to stop firing at us and that people were wounded – but they just kept firing. When we arrived at the edge of the field, close to the road which leads to the village, the second military jeep approached. It was a border police jeep with the word “Police” on it, and it stopped about 20 meters from us. E’ or A’ yelled: “Come help us, there are wounded people here!”. A soldier emerged from the jeep, I was sure he was coming to help us. But instead, he walked to the back of the jeep, extracted a tear gas grenade and shot it at us. The grenade fell about five meters from us, but the wind was blowing in the other direction and the Palestinians told us to stay where we were and let the gas blow in the other direction. At this point I was continuing to bleed from the wound in my head and one of the Palestinians tied his kaffiyah (head cloth) around my head in order to stop the bleeding. M’, who was standing next to us, was also bleeding profusely.

After the gas blew away, we continued walking towards the village and A’ hurried forward in order to bring his vehicle from the village. We entered his car and M’, H’ and I drove to look for the Palestinian ambulance which was in the village. The ambulance took us to the clinic in the Palestinian village of Qablan , where they disinfected our wounds, cleaned the blood and the Palestinian paramedic instructed me to call Madah (Israeli emergency medical services) and to call an ambulance for ourselves. We called, and Madah instructed us to reach the Tapuach junction and that the ambulance would be waiting for us there.

When we arrived at the Tapuach junction, we waited for some time before the military ambulance arrived. An Israeli police car arrived with it and the policeman started to ask questions about what happened. The military paramedic tried to speed up the questioning, so the policeman came on to the ambulance with us in order to continue with the questioning until we arrived to the Ariel junction. The policeman, accompanied by an officer, followed us in a car to the Ariel junction and informed us that an investigator had already been sent to the area of Esh Kodesh to investigate. One of the policemen said that after we receive medical treatment, they will contact us to continue collecting our testimonies. From there we were evacuated to Belinson hospital in the Madah ambulance.

 

2,  Hamoked September 20, 2011  [forwarded by Ofer ]

 

http://www.hamoked.org/Document.aspx?dID=Updates1130

 Withholding detainee information : the security forces continue to do what they will and violate the basic rights of OPT residents

 

The right to receive notification of a person’s detention and whereabouts is a fundamental right of both the detainee and his family. Registration in the holding place is crucial for upholding the detainee’s rights. Since its inception, HaMoked has been tracing the whereabouts of detainees and informing their families without delay. HaMoked submits its inquiries to the military Incarceration Control Center , whose role is to compile all detention data and whereabouts from the incarcerating authorities – the military, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Security Service and the Israel Police.

 

On the night of July 11, 2011, at a checkpoint, the military detained a young man from Ramallah.  His family sought HaMoked’s assistance in tracing him. The Incarceration Control Center , which HaMoked contacted, did not trace the detainee, whose whereabouts were not recorded in any military data system. On being contacted, the Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Center (HACC) of the civil administration informed HaMoked that “security reasons” prevent it from supplying information on the detainee’s whereabouts. Only when HaMoked appealed to the military legal advisor for the West Bank, was it disclosed that the detainee had been transferred to the Ofer Prison for an interrogation by the Israel Security Service, and that it would be possible to meet with him on the following day, at “the Russian Compound” detention facility in Jerusalem . 

 

A similar event occurred in that same month. A young man from Tulkarem was detained by the military and held without record, untraceable through the Incarceration Control Center, with all information about him withheld “for security reasons” by the HACC. Again, it was only after HaMoked sent another urgent appeal to the West Bank legal advisor, that his whereabouts were communicated, via HaMoked, to his family. 

 

HaMoked sent a complaint to the head of the civil administration an the West Bank legal advisor, recalling that the security forces’ obligation to notify of a person’s detention and whereabouts is well established in the military law of the OPT and in the rulings of the Supreme Court. 

 

In response, the civil administration stated the information had been withheld at the behest of officials (!), stating that “this procedure has been terminated” and information would be delivered in a regular manner as of that date. 

 

HaMokes seeks to recall that the military is strictly obligated to adhere to the military law of the OPT and the courts’ decisions. The construction of regulations outside these bounds is both forbidden and harmful to human rights in the OPT.

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3.   Solidarity updates and a request for video cameras

‘Price Tag’s Gangs – a Danger to democracy

Stopping settlers’ terrorism

Despite the fact that the ‘Shai’ District Police decided to reward the settlers by preventing us from returning to protest in Anatot, we are determined to carry on our efforts to uncover the state ’s collaboration with the settlers. We are determined to go back and demonstrate where injustice is being done, and we will take any measurement possible to do so.

This Thursday, 27.10.11, we are going to appeal to the Supreme Court demanding that the court will order the police to allow ‘Solidarity’ activists to demonstrate on the private Palestinian lands that are now captured within the fences of the settlement. If you wish to add your name to the court appeal please e-mail your name, I.D, address, mail and phone number to : info@ solidarity.org.il 

The Attorney General still stands by his refusal to put together a special independent investigation team that will look into the events in Anatot and to take the mandate for the investigation from Ma’ale Edomim police station that some of its policemen were among the attackers. We will keep our efforts to make sure that a true and independent investigation will be carried out and that the rioters will be brought to justice.

 

As a result of the hard work in the past two weeks of ‘Solidarity’s activists and supporters the events in Anatot received a wide international coverage. See the New York Times and the New York review coverage: here and here

Last Friday we received a reminder that the events in Anatot were not a onetime event, but rather a part of a very disturbing trend. A group of Palestinians and activists from ‘Combats for Peace’ that participated in a routine olive harvesting activity, were brutally attacked by a gang of masked armed settlers from the illegal settlement of Esh Kudesh. As in Anatot, the event ended with several Israeli and Palestinian activists being injured and with broken cameras. Similar to what we have witnessed in Anatot, the Armey joint forces with the attackers and the media have used the same strategy of defending the attackers in the name of ‘balanced’ coverage.

We are committed to keep our struggle against this dangerous phenomenon of mobs of settlers that receive state’s backup whether it will be by protesting where injustice is being done, by using legal channels or in the media.

 

An urgent request for donation

In order to keep document our activity we need more video cameras to replace those that were smashed our stolen by the settlers in Anatot. Who ever has a video camera that they can spare can contact info@ solidarity.org.il.

An appeal to the Supreme Court against ELAD,

the Jerusalem Municipality and the National Parks Authority

 

ELAD meddling in Silwan uncovers another side of state authorities’ collaboration with extreme right-wing bodies. Ir Amim in collaboration with other public figures has appealed to the Supreme Court against the mandate ELAD received to manage the ‘City of David ’ national park. On Wednesday, 26.10.11, the hearing will take place in front of the Judges Hauit, Meltzer and Amit. We encourage all our supporters to attend the hearing and by so doing to say that the public will not remain indifferent to the privatization of its assets to extreme right-wing associations. For more details:

 

http://www.ir-amim.org.il/?CategoryID=475&ArticleID=1186&Page=1

 

http://www.ir-amim.org.il/?CategoryID=446&ArticleID=1063

 

http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1529640

 

To make a secure, tax deductible (in the US ) online donation please click here

Bank transfers can be made to: Democracy Defense Fund Ltd. (cc), Bank Hapoalim (#12), Branch 574, 38 Hapalmach st., Jerusalem, Israel, Israeli account number: 12-574-254781, IBAN: IL56-0125-7400-0000-02540-781, SWIFT: POALILIT

 

4.  Today in Palestine for October 25, 2011

 

http://www.theheadlines.org/11/25-10-11.shtml

 

5.  Wednesday, October 19 

Forwarded by Mark Marshall

 

Norman G. Finkelstein

 

Pathbreaking scholars Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer speak out about the precarious future of the Jewish state.by sana • 10.19.2011 • News

 

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/pathbreaking-scholars-norman-finkelstein-and-john-mearsheimer-speak-out-about-the-precarious-future-of-the-jewish-state/

 

Greater Israel -or Peace?

 

Shortly before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state, TAC’ s Scott McConnell sat down with Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer to discuss the deeper currents shaping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since then, President Obama has given a speech shocking in its deference to Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing coalition, and there is no immediate prospect for renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations—the “peace process” begun with discussions in Oslo, Norway in 1991. Israel has announced fresh plans to move settlers into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem it conquered in 1967.

 

As daunting as the prospects for peace may be, Israel no longer enjoys immunity from criticism within the American media and academy—thanks in large part to the work of scholars like Mearsheimer and Finkelstein, who have forced a debate among foreign-policy thinkers and the American left over the price Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians all pay for Tel Aviv ’s policies.

 

One of America ’s most important dissident scholars, Norman Finkelstein has written six books touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2007, after he had been recommended by DePaul University ’s political science department and described by the university as an “outstanding teacher,” he was denied tenure thanks to an unprecedented lobbying campaign waged by Alan Dershowitz, who had long sparred with Finkelstein over Israel . Finkelstein is the child of European Jews who survived Auschwitz and Majdanek, which gave added force to his book The Holocaust Industry, critical of ways Israel has exploited the Holocaust for financial and political gain. His most recent work, This Time We Went Too Far, is an analysis of Israel ’s 2008-09 war against the Palestinians in Gaza .

 

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is one of America ’s foremost international relations scholars. He created a storm in 2006 when he and co-author Stephen Walt of Harvard University published the essay “ The Israel Lobby ,” which was later expanded into a best-selling book.

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Scott McConnell: Have we come to the end of the Oslo process? Is a two‑state solution still a viable possibility?

 

Norman Finkelstein : The problem is the definition of terms. The Oslo process, contrary to what’s widely understood, was largely a success. It’s true now that it may be at an impasse, but as it was originally conceived, it was largely a success. The Israeli leadership was very clear about what it intended from the Oslo process.

 

Mainly, Rabin said—the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin—that if we can get the Palestinians to do the dirty work in the Occupied Territories , there’s going to be less pressure from human rights organizations. They wouldn’t cause as many problems if the Palestinians were doing the policing. And there was a military reason: namely, a large number of Israeli troops was bogged down in the Occupied Territories . That meant time taken away from military training.

 

The quid pro quo was, well, in 1990‑91 the PLO made what seemed to have been a tactical or strategic error by supporting Saddam Hussein, and they lost all of their funding from the Gulf States . And basically the United States and Israel threw them a life preserver, saying, “If you switch sides, you do what we want you to do, we’ll keep you alive.” That was the choice that the Palestinians made, or the Palestinian leadership made. But then a new problem arose, and that’s Hamas began to rise in power.

 

John Mearsheimer: The Israelis—and this was especially true of Rabin when the Oslo peace process got started—had no interest in giving the Palestinians a viable state. What they wanted was to restrict the Palestinians to a handful of Bantustans that were located inside of Greater Israel, and it could be called a Palestinian state. In a very important way, Oslo has been successful in that it has allowed the Israelis, working with the Palestinian Authority, to create a situation where the Palestinians have some autonomy in these Bantustans .

 

McConnell: You say this about Rabin too? He’s considered the most peace-oriented Israeli.

 

Finkelstein: He was the most rigid. Even Rabin’s wife, afterwards, during the Camp David negotiations, said that her husband would never have agreed to the concessions that [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak made. Now remember, Barak barely made any concessions. But she said her husband would have never agreed to that. I think she’s probably right. In Rabin’s last speech to the Knesset before he was assassinated, he said, “I don’t support a Palestinian state.” He said, “Something less than it.”

 

Mearsheimer: It’s also important to understand the American position since the Oslo process began has reflected very clearly the Israeli position. It was considered politically unacceptable in the United States to use the words “Palestinian state” until Bill Clinton ’s last month in office.

 

The first time Bill Clinton uttered the words “Palestinian state” was in January of 2001. If you remember, in 1998 Hillary Clinton , who was then the first lady, said that she thought it would be very good for peace in the region if Palestinians had a state of their own. All hell broke loose. The president had to dissociate himself from his wife because it was so controversial. This was 1998, five years after the Oslo peace accords had been signed.

 

As unusual as this may sound, or as paradoxical as this may sound, it was actually George W. Bush who was the first president who really put the issue of a Palestinian state on the table. But even he realized that with Ariel Sharon as his counterpart in Israel there was no way he could push in any meaningful manner for the Palestinians to get a viable state of their own. And again, that’s the key to having a deal.

 

McConnell: Do you think there is a framework for a possible deal in the kind of negotiations that went on late in Barak’s term before Sharon ’s election, at the 2001 Taba summit and things like that?

Finkelstein: What you can say with a fair amount of generality is that if you look at the Taba map, and you look at the map that [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert presented in 2006, they look the same. They all call for keeping about 9 percent of the West Bank, and they all call for keeping the large settlement blocs, what’s called Ariel in the north and Maale Adumim in the center. It is impossible to construct a Palestinian state with those maps.

 

Mearsheimer : Ariel reaches far out into the West Bank and actually sits on top of the largest aquifer in the West Bank, and it was put there for a purpose. Maale Adumim is designed to give Israel control well out into the heart of the West Bank. And the people who built those settlements understood full well that it would be almost impossible for any Israeli political leader to abandon them and turn them over to the Palestinians.

 

The reason that the Oslo peace process is dead and that you’re not going to get a two‑state solution is that the political center of gravity in Israel has moved far enough to the right over time that it’s, in my opinion, unthinkable that the Israelis would number one, give up the Jordan River valley; number two, abandon Ariel and Maale Adumim; and number three, allow for a capital in East Jerusalem.

 

So given all those factors, I think that we’re rapidly reaching the point—in fact, I think we’ve reached that point—where we’re going to have a Greater Israel which runs from the Jordan River valley to the Mediterranean.

 

Finkelstein : I don ’t agree with that. There are many reasons to be pessimistic. But there are also some grounds for a reasonable amount of optimism. Things are changing in the region, and things are changing in the world. Like you say, the Israeli political establishment has moved to the right. The Israeli population has moved to the right, it has a siege mentality. But those are political factors.

 

And then the question is trying to change the calculus of power. Here things are changing. There are changes in American public opinion, which are quite significant when you look at the polls. There are changes in Jewish public opinion. There are major regional changes—what’s happening now between Israel and Turkey that’s part of an Arab Spring.

 

Mearsheimer: I think there’s no question that the international environment that Israel operates in is changing in profound ways, and developments in Turkey and Egypt are probably the best two examples of that. As a result of all this, Israel has a growing sense that it’s isolated, that it really only has one friend in the world , which is the United States .

 

Now the $64,000 question is whether that’s likely to lead Israel to be more flexible in the short to medium term, or is it likely to cause them to hunker down and be much less flexible and even more bellicose than they have been. And I would bet that the latter would be the case.

 

McConnell: What difference does it make that Turkey and Egypt are no longer de facto allies of Israel ?

 

Finkelstein: I think a lot of it is psychological, and not psychological in the sense of Oprah psychological. It’ s a whole way of relating to the region. Israel has the sense that this is its region. And it’s very disorienting for them to feel as if they’re losing control in that part of the world , that the natives are getting restless.

 

Mearsheimer: I put Norman’s point in slightly different terms, that is to say, I think what is at stake for the Israelis here is legitimacy, and I think that for them, and for most countries, legitimacy matters greatly. If you read the Israeli press, you’ll see there are all sorts of concerns about de-legitimization. And if you listen to people in the American Jewish community talk about what’s happening to Israel , they’re deeply concerned about de‑legitimization. What’s happening here with Turkey and with Egypt is that as those countries become more democratized and more critical of Israel , they’re adding fuel to that de‑legitimization fire.

 

There’s no question that most European governments will support Israel at the UN, and there’s certainly no question that the United States will. But the support in Europe, and even the support in the United States , is not terribly deep. It’s wide, right, but not deep.

 

Finkelstein: Actually support for Israel is no longer that wide. It used to be fair to say wide but not deep, wide and thin. But now if you look at the polls, it’s actually quite surprising. In Pew polls of the last few years, the negative opinion of Israel is kind of astonishing.

 

Mearsheimer: It’s right down there with Iran , North Korea …

 

Finkelstein: Well, it’s always ranked with Iran , North Korea , and Pakistan . They’re the four countries least liked in the world. But even if you take countries which have the strongest Israel lobbies—apart from the U.S. , it’s Canada , the U.K. , France , Germany , and Australia —look at the polls. Even in places like Canada , the polls show about 15 to 20 percent having a positive view of Israel , 60 or 70 percent having a negative view. Public opinion has really swung. Even in the U.S. , by the way.

 

McConnell: Let’s try to tease this out, I mean, the number of Americans who consider themselves pro‑Israeli as opposed to pro-Palestinian has been kind of constant, like a 60 to 10 ratio, and hasn’t changed very much over a generation.

 

Finkelstein: Except—if you put it “pro‑Israel versus pro‑Palestinian,” that’s correct—if you look at it in terms of, “Do you have a positive or negative opinion of Israel ?” for the first time in the last two or three years it’s come down to 50/50. It has changed.

 

Mearsheimer: I think that’s very important, but I think there’s an even more important indicator of how weak the support is. And that is that if you ask Americans if the United States should support Israel or the Palestinians in their conflict, roughly 70 percent, sometimes up to 75 percent, say we should favor neither side.

 

It’s really quite remarkable. We have this special relationship where we favor Israel axiomatically over Palestinians at every critical juncture. But here you have a situation where the American people, three-fourths of them, are saying that the United States should favor neither side. In fact, what the American people want to see is the United States act as a—what’s the word?

 

McConnell: Neutral arbiter.

 

Mearsheimer: Yeah, a neutral arbiter rather than as Israel ’s lawyer.

 

When you think about how Americans deal with Israel , there are three dimensions to it. One is how people think about Israel and America ’s relationship with Israel . Number two is how they talk about it, and number three is actual U.S. policy. There’s great variation among those three dimensions.

 

I think that over the past ten years how Americans think about Israel has changed in significant ways. More and more people are aware of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. They understand that this is bad for the United States from a strategic point of view, and it’s morally bankrupt behavior.

 

There has been a significant change in the discourse as well over the past ten years. And that’s largely a result of the Internet. It’s very difficult for pro‑Israel forces to shape the discourse on the Internet the way they exercise great influence with the New York Times or CBS or even NP R.

 

So the discourse has really changed, especially when you get away from the mainstream media, which is increasingly less important. But what’s depressing is that U.S. policy has hardly changed at all. And the question you have to ask yourself is what does this mean for the long term. In a world where people are thinking very differently from the policy-makers and talking very differently from the policy-makers, how does this play itself out?

 

McConnell : Norman , you’ve been on this subject a long time, a whole career. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the beginning of your involvement and whether you’ve sensed a change in response to what you say compared to the way it was 20 or 30 years ago, or 10 or 15 years ago?

 

Finkelstein: I’m sort of second generation. I think the Edward Said, Noam Chomsky generation was first—that was the generation of the ’70s, where it was really virtually impossible to say anything on the topic without being ostracized. I came in right after the Lebanon War of June 1982. And the Lebanon War was Israel ’s first public relations disaster in the United States , at least after the ’67 War. They took a big blow back then. It’s forgotten, but it was a PR disaster. Immediately afterwards they tried to recoup from it.

 

Actually, one of the initiatives they took to recoup was how I got started. I think the Joan Peters book From Time Immemorial was simply a propaganda exercise to try to recoup from the ’82 war.

 

The next big change occurs with the 1987 Palestinian Intifada, which I think had a very substantial impact, though it was temporary, on public opinion in the United States . I was already teaching by ’88. And I remember in my class—I was at Brooklyn College at the time—a student who was not particularly political, he was what you’d call a typical white ethnic, he was either Irish or Italian, from Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst, he said in class, “Stone vs. Uzi, that doesn’t sound fair.” And that was the image that was being projected then.

 

The next big turning point probably came with the Second Intifada, which had a very negative impact because of the suicide bombings. But it also had a positive impact because the Israeli repression was so terrible; again, it alienated significant numbers of people.

 

As for myself, I don’t know if you were familiar with the lingo from back in the ’30s and ’40s, but there were all of these young Americans, many of whom incidentally were Jewish, in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who went to go fight fascism in Spain . And at that point, to fight fascism made you pro‑Communist, because—you know the whole thing. And then they went to fight in World War II again.

 

So they come back, and a lot of them are called before [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy, the very same people who fought in World War II. And why were they called before McCarthy? Well, they called themselves premature anti‑fascists. They were anti‑fascists before it was politically correct to be anti‑fascists because they were anti‑fascist at the time of Franco, and at that time the Americans supported Franco.

 

So even though personally my political positions aren’t really radical at all, and even though I don’t particularly like the nomenclature, I say I was a premature anti‑Zionist.

 

Mearsheimer: Can I ask Norman a quick question…

 

McConnell: Yeah, sure.

Mearsheimer: …which I think is important to readers and for me and Scott. You say that you’re an anti‑Zionist.

 

Finkelstein: No, I don’t. I say I don’t like the nomenclature.

 

Mearsheimer: You said you were an anti‑Zionist before your time.

 

Finkelstein: I said that just to make the parallel with anti‑fascist.

 

Mearsheimer: But here’s the question. Do you, Norman Finkelstein, think it’ s a good thing there’ s a Jewish state?

 

Finkelstein: No. But I don’t think it’ s a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states. There is a difference between saying… remember let’s be clear about what the UN said. The UN said, “We want to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine .”

 

Mearsheimer: Right.

 

Finkelstein: But then the UN went on to say, and it was very explicit in the recommendation, “There cannot be any discrimination whatsoever in the Jewish state against an Arab minority.” Now, you may ask the reasonable question, “Well, if there can’t be any discrimination whatsoever, what do they mean by a Jewish state?” They never answer that.

 

But it doesn’t necessarily follow from the idea that you say there should be two states that you believe it should be a Jewish state or that you’re a Zionist. There’s no connection between the two.

 

Mearsheimer: I was just interested in what your preferences were.

 

Finkelstein: I think one of the problems when we discuss the Israel‑ Palestine conflict is people talk too much in terms of “What’s your preference?”, like politics is a Chinese menu—I’ll take one from column A and two from column B. That’s not what politics is about.

 

Politics is about what is realistically possible in terms of your long‑term values, your philosophical perspective. What is really possible now in my opinion are two states, basically what people call the international consensus. It doesn’t mean it’s my philosophical preference. If you asked me, I’d say I would like to see a world without states.

 

McConnell: When does a two-state solution become not realistically possible?

 

Mearsheimer : The reason that people continue to talk about a two‑state solution even though I think it’s no longer realizable is that many Palestinians don’t see a viable alternative; they don’t think that a one‑state solution will work.

 

And in the case of many Israelis and their American supporters, they’re basically sticking their heads in the sand because they don’t want to talk about a one‑state solution, because they understand that a one‑state solution is basically an apartheid state.

 

Finkelstein: You know, I can see John’s point, but we have to be clear about what John’s point is. He was talking about political facts and political will. He said that the political spectrum has shifted in Israel and that it’s going to be very hard to get these people to budge.

 

Yes, that’s true. It’s going to be hard to get them to budge, but the problem is, to put it simply, it’s never been tried. The only time it really was tried to get them to budge was the First Intifada, and you know, the First Intifada was very sobering for Israel .

 

I lived there during the First Intifada. I used to go every summer. You’d be very surprised what it looked like. They had to have 500,000 troops there. When you went in the Occupied Territories then, you saw 65‑year‑old men—they had to bring up all their reserves, and they were putting in six months.

 

Once there is a real mass action and summoning of will, you may see things shift in Israel . It’s just not been tried. All that’s been tried is this thing called a “peace process.” Nothing happens because there was no pressure on them; the Israelis treat the whole thing like a joke.

 

Mearsheimer : A lot has changed since 1987 when the First Intifada broke out. First of all, there are many more settlers. And if you leave 60-plus percent of those settlers, you still have to remove…

 

Finkelstein: 200,000.

 

Mearsheimer: Right. You still have to remove a…

 

Finkelstein: If you look at the polls, the polls vary. But as high as 60 percent say they’re willing to be bought out. The Israeli expression is “quality of life settlers.” They just moved there because Israel gave them tons of mortgage subsidies and everything. They say, “Give us money, we’ll leave.”

 

Mearsheimer: But the fact is that if 40 percent of the settlers were to resist removal, it would be incredibly bloody.

 

Finkelstein: Yeah, but then you look at the polls, and the polls say about 10,000 or 15,000 would resist violently. The rest say they would oppose it, but if the army gives an order, “You have to leave,” only about 10,000 or 15,000 say that they would resist violently. In my opinion that’s mostly bravado. The actual number