Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 48-50
New York City and Tri-State News
Norman Finkelstein Discusses “Prospect for Peace” at Rutgers
By Jane Adas
PROFESSOR NORMAN Finkelstein was the keynote speaker at “Prospect for Peace? The Palestinian Israeli Conflict,” an event organized by BAKA—Students United for Middle Eastern Justice, on Oct. 30 at Rutgers University.
Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian poet who grew up in Lebanon, opened the evening by reciting several of his poems. Some expressed wry humor, others were angry—all were moving. Here is a brief example from “Dead Again”:
But we’re not Bin Laden
We didn’t fly planes into buildings
We’re civilians
Trying to survive in a world that doesn’t hear our cries
And so we die
In the same fashion
That our children’s lives were taken
Desperate, defenseless, subdued
I may be a killer now
But you were the best teacher
I ever had
More of Kanazi’s poetry can be found at <www.poeticinjustice.net>.
Norman Finkelstein then proceeded to explain his thesis that, in order to divert attention from the clarity of the documentary record, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is deliberately presented in the media and public discourse as so complex and controversial that the solution is elusive.
As an example of how strikingly uncomplicated the issues are, Finkelstein cited the International Court of Justice’s landmark decision in July 2004 that Israel’s separation wall is illegal, that Israel must dismantle it and pay compensation to Palestinians who have suffered losses where it was built. The decision is surprisingly brief, Finkelstein pointed out: only 64 pages compared to other opinions that are over 1,000 pages. The votes on all counts were 14 to 1, the latter being the American judge, and even he issued a declaration rather than a formal dissenting opinion.
In order to reach a final opinion, Finkelstein noted, the Court had to render judgments on borders, settlements and Jerusalem—all considered so sensitive during the Oslo process that they had to be deferred to the final stages. Regarding borders, the Court declared that Israel has no title to any territory it occupied in 1967. It also found that all settlements are illegal under Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention and that Jerusalem is part of occupied Palestinian territory.
On a fourth “final status” issue, refugees, there is no argument that from 1947 to 1949 Palestinians were uprooted, Finklelstein said. Instead the argument has narrowed to whether this occurred through war rather than by design (Ã la Benny Morris) or because Zionists committed premeditated ethnic cleansing (as Shlomo Ben Ami maintains). While there is agreement on the facts and the legal standing—Palestinians’ Right of Return is guaranteed in international law and U.N. resolutions—there are disagreements on moral conclusions, Finkelstein said. He quoted Benny Morris as saying that without displacing Palestinians there could not have been a Jewish state, and Alan Dershowitz as describing ethnic cleansing as “a fifth-rate moral issue.”
For 20 years, Finkelstein noted, there has been international agreement on a solution to the problem: full Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967, a Palestinian state established on those territories, and recognition of Israel’s right to live in security within recognized boundaries. When Hamas was elected last January, Israel, the U.S. and the EU demanded that it “recognize Israel.” Setting aside that the PLO has recognized Israel since 1988, Finkelstein conceded that Hamas’ position is ambiguous, but pointed out that there is no ambiguity on the Israeli side: no Israeli government, party or official has ever recognized the Palestinian right to a state within the pre-1967 borders. To make such a demand of only one side, he stated, is hypocritical.
Finkelstein included among “fraudulent controversies and concocted taboos” the mystification of the conflict as a cosmic clash of religions and civilizations where normal moral intuition is not valid. Therefore, he argued, we are discouraged from asking why Israel is the only country in the world that has legalized torture, hostage taking, and home demolitions as a form of punishment. The reason behind the myth that the situation is too complex to compare, Finkelstein said, is that using the obvious analogies, such as apartheid, Israel comes out on the wrong side—as evidenced by the hysteria that met the mere title of President Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid. A third is the uniqueness of the Holocaust, meaning that because of their suffering Jews can’t be held to the same moral standards. All genocides are unique, Finkelstein concluded, but to rank them is a moral abomination.
SADDAM HUSSAIN WAS AN EMBARRASSMENT, NOT A THREAT, SAYS SCOTT RITTER
According to Scott Ritter, Saddam Hussain’s regime was never a security threat to the U.S., only a political embarrassment for three presidents. At a Nov. 14 public lecture at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq discussed issues of intelligence, Iraq, and ulterior motives.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and the U.N. imposed sanctions on Iraq, President George H.W. Bush tried to make a case for the necessity of going to war. But it was a hard sell, Ritter pointed out, because only months earlier Washington had described Saddam Hussain as a “true friend.” Bush Sr. went too far, Ritter said, by demonizing Saddam Hussain as being like Hitler and deserving Nuremberg-like retribution—thereby implying regime change. The troops came home to a huge celebration, but Saddam was still in place. With its economy in ruins and its infrastructure devastated, Iraq was no threat to the U.S., Ritter said, but Bush Sr. had a political problem because he had failed to deliver on his harsh analogies.
Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates, then with the National Security Council, reported that if Iraq could be contained for six months, Saddam would fall. So in April 1991, the U.S. pushed through the Security Council a resolution calling for the disarmament of Iraq. But the real purpose, Ritter asserted, was to create conditions where Saddam Hussain’s regime would fall, as revealed by then-Secretary of State James Baker’s remark that “economic sanctions would never be lifted until Saddam Hussain is gone.” Iraq therefore had no incentive to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors, which led to a seven-year standoff.
Nevertheless, as early as fall 1992, Ritter was able to report with certainty that Iraq had destroyed all its ballistic missiles. When he came back to report the good news, however, he got an icy response. Ritter was later surprised when Clinton-appointed CIA Director James Woolsey reported to Congress that Iraq had 200 missiles. Ritter’s team then spent millions more for ground-penetrating radar, examining every underground and mountainous site, in sometimes dangerous conditions, and found nothing. Woolsey’s response, according to Ritter, was, “OK, not 200 missiles. There are 12 to 20 missiles, and that number will never change no matter what you do.”
That fall, Ritter recalled, Bush Sr. issued a “lethal finding” to the CIA to get rid of Saddam Hussain using all means necessary—a policy inherited by President Bill Clinton. In Ritter’s view, the failure of Clinton’s 1996 pre-election attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussain led to the empowerment of neoconservatives, the Project for a New American Century, and the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.
After 9/11, Ritter continued, President George W. Bush asserted that “there can be no doubt” about Saddam Hussain’s involvement in the attack and his possession of weapons of mass destruction. Bush never shared the basis of his certainty, Ritter added, nor did Congress, the media or the American people express much skepticism. According to Ritter, we have lost the war in Iraq because we went to war on the basis of lies disguised as national security, and now the only thing to do is to get out.
Ritter concluded by cautioning that the whole process is about to be replayed in Iran.
YORAM PERI AT NEW ISRAEL FUND
Professor Yoram Peri of Tel Aviv University spoke at the New Israel Fund’s New York office on Nov. 16. He was invited to discuss his new book, Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy, but spoke instead about what he described as the worst institutional and ideological crisis since the establishment of Israel. Israelis no longer speak of peace, he said, but rather of tranquility.
Since 1967, Peri explained, the Israeli public and government were evenly split between those advocating “land for peace” and those wanting “peace for peace.” By 2003, the third year of the intifada, Peri perceived a dramatic change in public opinion. Israelis realized they could not stop the intifada, he said, and that the occupation was becoming a liability rather than an asset. Led by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israelis for the first time were willing to give back territory, but because Sharon claimed Israel had no Palestinian partner for peace, it would have to be done unilaterally. This led to the creation of a new party, Kadima, which drew from both the left and the right.
After what Peri called the Hezbollah attack in July, opinion has moved so far to the right that people “don’t want to give back territory until the Messiah arrives” and Kadima has lost its raison d’etre. Peri described the mood of Israelis as “We live in a jungle, therefore we must behave like animals or be destroyed. All the beautiful words, like human rights and international law, are suitable for Switzerland, but not for a jungle.”
As an example, he pointed out that when the Israeli Supreme Court found the IDF’s “neighbor policy” of using Palestinians as human shields to be illegal, the public response was that “European anti-Semitism has crept into the Supreme Court.” Peri described what is happening now as a dramatic battle for the soul of Israel.
“PERPETUAL WAR FOR PEACE” TOUR VISITS RUTGERS
Just Foreign Policy describes itself as “an independent, non-partisan membership organization dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy to serve the interests and reflect the values of the broad majority of Americans, rather than those of special interests both inside and outside government.” To further that aim, the organization sponsored a 12-day speaking tour focusing on Iran and Iraq which included award-winning photographs from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon—such as one by Andrew Stern of two Red Cross ambulances that had been fired on by Israeli aircraft in Qana on July 23. Each ambulance has a large hole in the center of the red cross on its roof—bull’s eyes.
Speaking at Rutgers University on Nov. 9 were Rostam Pourzal, president of the U.S. branch of the Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, and Raed Jarrar, director of Global Exchange’s Iraq Project.
Pourzal saw the root of today’s problem with Iran going back before the 1979 hostage crisis to 1953, when the CIA with British assistance overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Muhammad Mossaddeq. The Iranian was accused of being soft on Communism, but his real sin in Western eyes was to nationalize Iran’s oil, Pourzal said. The coup ushered in a 25-year reign of oppression and absolute terror, according to Pourzal, whose father was a colonel in the shah’s intelligence.
Today, Pourzal continued, we have another cold war, with “Islamic fascists” replacing Communists—but the underlying issue is still oil. According to Pourzal, Bush administration neocons see China as the real threat to U.S. hegemony, and to contain China the U.S. must have a chokehold on energy sources. Because the enemy must be demonized, as in Bush’s 2003 “axis of evil,” Iran is seen as a danger to the U.S. and guilty of mistreating its people in an exceptional way. Admitting that Iran does mistreat its own people, Pourzal argued that it is not exceptional, because the U.S. counts worse abusers among its allies.
Pourzal warned that the administration is pushing fear of a nuclear-armed Iran in order to build public support to attack or destabilize Iran—or give Israel the green light to do so. In fact, he said, Iran’s nuclear program began openly more than 30 years ago, under pressure from the U.S. Iran has signed, and never violated, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and, after hundreds of hours of searching, IAEA inspectors have found no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program in place. As with Iraq, Pourzal said, the issue is not weapons of mass destruction, but regime change.
Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-Palestinian who was born in Baghdad and moved to the U.S. in 2005, observed that it is instructive to compare U.S. foreign policy (about them) with its domestic policies (about us). When dealing with domestic law, he explained, we obey the law or try to change it, but with international law we instead try to kill it, as with the Geneva Conventions.
While Iraq has many problems, Jarrar argued that foreign military and political intervention makes the tasks of Iraqis working for change more difficult. For example, he said, during the sanctions regime anyone who criticized Saddam Hussain’s administration or advocated elections was accused of being pro-American. Citing polls showing that 70 to 90 percent of Iraqis want a short timetable for U.S. withdrawal, Jarrar maintained that the U.S. could help Iraqis most by leaving them alone.
Jarrar’s mother is an Iraqi Shi’i and his father a Sunni Palestinian. Both studied for free and became engineers, as did two of his brothers. All are products of Iraq’s excellent educational and health systems that were in place before Saddam came to power and continued to function well during his rule—but which were all destroyed during the U.S-led invasion. Now, Jarrar said, after the U.S. elections and with Rumsfeld gone, there is the possibility of finding a better course, but only if Iraqis are consulted. Any unilateral plan, including the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group, will not work, he warned.
“PALESTINE BLUES” SCREENED IN NEW YORK
“Palestine Blues,” a beautifully filmed documentary about Israel’s “security barriers” and Palestinian resistance to them, was shown at Alwan for the Arts in New York on Nov. 15. As described by Palestinian-American filmmaker Nida Sinnokrot (see p. 51), it depicts “an interminable road trip across hard and liquid borders, across a terrain that is being erased as it is being traversed.”
The journey begins in Rafah, at the site where an Israeli D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer crushed Rachel Corrie to death. The entire area is now razed, and bulldozers and tanks make noisy, threatening moves amid much smoke. A woman with two children who had witnessed Rachel’s death is afraid to talk to the film crew because of the bulldozers. “Don’t worry, you are with foreigners,” one crewmember tells her. The woman responds, “She was a foreigner.”
In Jayyous we meet Abu Azzam repairing a very old tractor. Asked to show his farm and greenhouses, he says “Climb aboard my F-16” and they rumble off to delight in his citrus groves. Back in his home he finds a notice in Hebrew: “These lands are for military purposes. The Israeli army will confiscate this land tomorrow for building a wall.”
“How to continue life without a farm?” he asks.
An olive harvest is interrupted by Israeli soldiers and huge machines. In the ensuing chaos, it is Palestinian women who resist fiercely while the men try to restrain them. “Each of these soldiers is from a different country,” one of the women says. “Now they are masters of those whose grandparents were born here.” There is shooting, the men pray. Afterwards Abu Azzam recites poetry “to change sad feelings to pleasant ones.” Later, after more attempts to resist end in teargas and clashes between boys in T-shirts with slingshots and Israeli soldiers in full-body armor, Abu Azzam again turns to poetry, but is unable to continue. He wonders if his future life is to wait for bags of flour from the U.S. to have something to eat.
Sinnokrot dedicated “Palestine Blues” to the memory of those who died protesting the wall. Please, try to see this film.
Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.
