Mohammad Jaradat and Eitan Bronstein Discuss 1948, Right of Return

By Jane Adas


	Eitan Bronstein (l) and Mohammed Jaradat (Staff photo J. Adas.)

MOHAMMED JARADAT, co-founder of Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and Eitan Bronstein, director of the Israeli organization Zochrot, spoke on “Acknowledging the Past; Imagining the Future: Palestinians and Israelis on 1948 and the Right of Return,” at an April 5 event at Alwan for the Arts sponsored by Adalah-NY and the American Friends Service Committee.

Zochrot was established in 2002 with the purpose of increasing Nakba awareness among Israeli Jews, Bronstein explained. He lives in Tel Aviv, 100 meters from the Palestinian village of Summayl, where some 100 Palestinian houses remain. Israelis don’t know who the owners were, why they left, or where they are today. To get their attention, Zochrot puts up signs naming Palestinian villages and streets and provides schools with maps of Israel that include the locations of destroyed Palestinian villages.

One of Zochrot’s projects is to place life-sized posters of Palestinians now living in a refugee camp in Saida, Lebanon on the site of their village of Ras al-Ahmar, near Safad. The villagers fled in fear, Bronstein said, because there had been a massacre. Within months of their leaving, Israelis “repopulated” their abandoned homes, and the site is now a moshav. Zochrot placed a poster next to the remains of the schoolhouse and another in the village’s destroyed cemetery of a man who died soon after the photo was taken. The people in the moshav were interested, and asked if the refugees wished to return.

In June Zochrot is holding a conference in Tel Aviv on how to implement the return of Palestinian refugees. Israelis feel threatened by the right of return as an abstract principle, Bronstein said, but he feels there is a greater chance Israel will be able to accept the actual return of refugees when they consider the practical concrete aspects. It is not enough to acknowledge the loss to Palestinians, Bronstein concluded, to merely say “sorry.” Israelis also must take responsibility, because the history of the Nakba is also Israeli history. Then, he suggested, Israelis will find it less difficult to feel proud.

Zionists not only evicted people and destroyed their villages, Jaradat noted, but fragmented Palestinians into people seeking humanitarian aid. They did this, he added, because if Palestinians exist as a people, Israelis will one day find themselves before a tribunal. Regarding the issue of what should be done for the refugees, Jaradat pointed out that there is a cubic meter of paperwork at the U.N. addressing the problem—but none of it enacted. It is generally suggested that refugees be given three options: return home, remain in their host country, or seek a third country. But only the first is a right, Jaradat explained; the other two are privileges that the other country may not extend, as in Lebanon, or may decide to limit the number of refugees it is willing to take in.

Israel’s claim that it doesn’t have enough space to accommodate the return of refugees is belied by statistics from its own Absorbtion Agency: 86 percent of Israeli Jews live in 14 percent of Israel proper. Refugees from the 86 percent of Israel that is under-populated comprise 75 percent of Gaza’s population. In addition, Israel’s population density is 180 to 200 people per square kilometer, as compared to Gaza’s 6,000. Even if 5 million Palestinians returned to their homes, Israel’s population density would not exceed 300 per square kilometer. In Jaradat’s opinion, the Israeli response—“OK, there is no problem about space, but we are Jews and we need to be alone”—suggests a preference for the institution of the state over the Jewish life of the people. However, he concluded, if Israelis insist on a Jewish state, since ancient Jewish history is in the West Bank, Jaradat suggests giving them the West Bank and Palestinians will take Israel.

“The Visitor” Screens in New York


(l-r): “The Visitor” author and director Tom McCarthy, actress Hiam Abbass and producer Mary Jane Skalski (Staff photos J. Adas.)

Somebody in the U.S. State Department selected Tom McCarthy’s first film, “The Station Agent,” along with the documentary “Fog of War,” for screening in the Middle East. That is how McCarthy, on his first trip to the region, came to make connections with filmmakers in Beirut. That, in turn, led to three years of research into Arab culture and immigration issues in post-9/11 America, resulting in the second film McCarthy has written and directed, “The Visitor.” He does not expect the State Department to select this one for overseas screening, however. McCarthy, actress Hiam Abbass and producer Mary Jane Skalski spoke after a private showing of the film in New York on April 9.

The character of Walter Vale, a jaded economics professor and widower, had been in McCarthy’s head for a while, but the idea for “The Visitor” began with the character of Tarek. Through a fluke, Walter (Richard Jenkins of “Six Feet Under”) meets Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira), illegal immigrants from Syria and Senegal. Walter is with Tarek when, though another fluke, Tarek is picked up by the police and taken to a detention center in Queens. A fourth member of this unlikely and impromptu family, Tarek’s mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass of “The Syrian Bride” and “Paradise Now”) arrives because she is worried about Tarek, not having spoken by phone with him for several days. Skip to the final scene: Walter pounding furiously on Tarek’s drum in a subway station.

By the end of the cast’s first reading of the screenplay, the whole crew was crying. During readings and re-readings in New York, Abbass said, the four actors really connected with each other. If something didn’t feel right, McCarthy rewrote it. The detention center, he explained, “the emotional hook for the movie,” was a complete build-out, because getting access to the real thing would have compromised the script. To make it realistic, McCarthy visited many detention centers through a Sojourners program and took with him a designer who made detailed sketches.

Asked why the story is told through Walter’s viewpoint, McCarthy replied that Walter’s arc of understanding was his own. Therefore, we don’t see behind the door of the detention center, because Walter could not. Most of the questions after the screening expressed concern for the fates of the four main characters. McCarthy jokingly replied that might have to wait until “Visitor II.” Meanwhile, don’t miss “The Visitor” (I).

Dahr Jamail and Jeremy Scahill Speak At Rutgers


	Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Dahr Jamail. (Staff photo J. Adas.)

For its April 16th discussion of “Investigative Journalism in a Time of War,” Rutgers University invited two outstanding independent reporters: Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (available from the AET Book Club), and Jeremy Scahill, whose Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army received a 2008 Polk award.

Jamail identified two main waves of media propaganda about the U.S. “surge” in Iraq. “New life in Baghdad” stories dominated coverage of Iraq in the first few months of the surge, suggesting that the situation was so improved that people were returning to their homes. In reality, he said, fewer than 20,000 of Baghdad’s 1.5 million displaced residents had returned by the early months of 2008, according to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees; of these, 50 percent had fled Iraq but were now out of money, and 25 percent were unable to leave Iraq due to visa problems. Jamail described the rest as victims of bad propaganda.

More recent headlines boast of improved security. Jamail agreed that there is less violence against occupation forces, with the average number of U.S. soldiers killed down from four to one a day, but he argued that this is due less to the surge than to Muqtada al-Sadr putting his military on stand down. Jamail provided context for the recent attack by the Iraqi army on al-Sadr’s forces in Basra. Hoping to hinder al-Sadr’s chances in the U.S.-backed elections in Basra scheduled for October, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki first tried to pass legislation preventing provincial elections, then withdrew that idea and decided to attack. Couched in the phony rhetoric of the war on terror, Maliki deemed “the greatest threat” to be al-Sadr, whom Jamail described as a nationalist who believes in a unified Iraq and has millions of supporters.

The U.S. occupation has completely eviscerated Iraq, Jamail asserted, noting that the infrastructure is worse on every level than when Iraq was under sanctions. Inflation is at 70 percent and unemployment between 40 and 70 percent. (By comparison, Jamail pointed out that in the U.S. during the depression it was 25 to 27 percent.) Forty percent of the Iraqi population are dead, displaced, or in need of emergency aid. Yet the mainstream media goes unchallenged when it parrots the government line that the surge is working.

Scahill described the incident last Sept. 16 that even the U.S. media could not ignore. An Iraqi medical student and his mother, a doctor, were driving through a U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood, where Iraqi police were trying to redirect traffic to accommodate armored vehicles going the wrong direction on a one-way street. When the student failed to stop fast enough, a Blackwater mercenary shot him in the head. Before the Iraqi police could drag the mother out of the car, a Blackwater sniper fired at the vehicle, blowing it up with mother and son in it. This led to a 15-minute Blackwater killing spree that left 17 Iraqis dead and 20 wounded. The U.S. military arrived within minutes. Scahill quoted Lt.-Col. Mike Tarsa’s report that all 17 Iraqis were killed due to unprovoked gun power. Prime Minister Maliki, assuming Iraqi sovereignty, ordered Blackwater to leave and the shooters to be prosecuted, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded him of Paul Bremer’s Order 17, which provides immunity for bodyguards.

It took two weeks for FBI investigators to arrive, during which time there was no protection of the crime scene—and, Scahill noted, it was Blackwater contractors who guarded the FBI agents. The FBI determined that the shooting of 14 of the 17 dead Iraqis was unprovoked. Blackwater claimed they were under attack and shot in self-defense. The State Department conducted its own investigation, giving Blackwater employees a Limited Use Immunity Agreement, meaning nothing they said in the investigation could be used in any court. Its report, written by Blackwater contractor Darren Hanner, backed Blackwater’s version of the event. Scahill reported that the State Department recently renewed its contract with Blackwater.

Joel Kovel and Ghada Karmi on the One-State Solution


Drs. Joel Kovel (l) and Ghada Karmi (Staff photo J. Adas.)

Joel Kovel and Ghada Karmi agree: Zionism is the problem and the solution is one secular state. Kovel, who was born in an American Zionist community, grew up believing Israelis were plucky Jewish settlers escaping age-old persecution, but who were ganged up on by Arabs. Karmi’s family fled Palestine in 1948 and wound up in England. Both are medical doctors turned academics—Kovel at Bard College in New York and Karmi at the University of Exeter. They discussed “What Israel’s 60th Anniversary Means for Palestinians” at the Brecht Forum in New York City on April 22.

In speaking to college students, Kovel said he has been struck both by the “tremendous disconnect” of their lack of information about the Palestine/Israel conflict, and their curiosity and hunger for justice. These are two of several hopeful signs he sees of a change in the political climate in this country—which is important, he added, because the whole Zionist project is dependent on U.S. support.

The founder of the Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism (www.codz.org) sees the beginning of a change in the balance of forces at three levels. First, he pointed out, the edifice of the Zionist mythology that he grew up with is beginning to crumble. We now know, through the work of Israeli historians such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé, that Israel was founded on a coldly calculated project of ethnic cleansing. Reaching further back in history, Kovel cited University of Tel Aviv history professor Shlomo Zand’s recent Hebrew-language book, When and How was the Jewish People Invented, which questions the relationship of European Jews to ancient Israel.

Secondly, he continued, it no longer is possible to ignore the barbarity of the Israeli occupation. As one of the most extreme examples, Kovel mentioned Hebron, where the Israeli army protects settlers who daily and often violently harass Palestinian residents. The two-state solution lies in ruins, he asserted, because of Israeli colonization.

Third, Kovel stated, imperialist overreach, inherent in settler colonialism, “hatches its own demonology” and must always have an enemy. All Israel has left, he said, is its military power and its special relationship with the U.S. Israel uses the U.S. to further its own paranoia, but Kovel suggested that the “titanic failure” in Iraq, and potentially in Iran, may lead the U.S. to rethink that relationship. Kovel said he sees divisions within the U.S. Jewish community, particularly regarding Barack Obama’s campaign (see www.JewsforObama.com) and the founding of the pro-Israel lobby J Street as a less hawkish alternative to AIPAC.

Ghada Karmi assured the audience that her latest book, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine (available from the AET Book Club) is not about marital infidelity, and that the cover design of two 19th-century rabbis looking at Jerusalem is not meant to suggest the rabbis are gay. Rather the title sums up the tragedy of siting a Jewish state in a land already taken, with no way to stay in the region except by force and crushing any attempt at resistance. Karmi said her aim in writing the book was to acquaint a Western audience with how it feels for the people forced to “host” the Zionist project, including Arab states who have paid a heavy price in wars, militarization, fragmentation and the rise of radical movements.

Karmi sees the basic problem for Arabs not as being on what percentage of land Israel is willing to allow a Palestinian state, but rather the racist, exclusive, belligerent nature of the Israeli state, whatever its borders. She emphasized that this is not because Arabs don’t want Jews in the area, nor is it about destroying Israeli Jews. Instead, Karmi explained, it is about bringing an end to a loathsome state structure that has caused tremendous damage. Arabs, with no tradition of European-style anti-Semitism, were unable to understand why European Jews, who arrived carrying a load of neuroses, behaved toward them as though they were European Christians. Karmi said Arabs resent that Europe unloaded its Jewish population on them, and now castigate Palestinians for not “accepting” Europe’s own unwanted population.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.