Blog For Palestine

The greatest success that the pro-Zionist elements in Western society have accomplished is dictating the language of the discourse for the world. Even worse many of us supporting Palestinian rights fall into the trap of using the blatantly false language imposed by the other side. By doing so we immediately put ourselves on the defensive and weaken our position. The word ‘terrorism’ and the phrase ‘peace process’ need to be completely eliminated from our vocabulary. When we sit there and try to squabble over whether Israeli terrorism is greater that Palestinian terrorism we’re already at a disadvantage because terrorism has been imprinted in the minds of people as a crime of the Palestinians. Saree Makdisi’s analysis of Language and Politics talks about how the corruption of the language surrounding the conflict has resulted in the absurd scenario of the victims of occupation and aggression being labeled as the aggressors. This piece is a must read.

It is absurd that we, the supporters of justice, the ones on the right side of the argument should ever have to be on the defensive. The other guys, the ones supporting oppression, occupation, racism, and murder, those are the ones that should be afraid to engage us in discussion. The language that has been fabricated and imposed on everybody has robbed them the ability to think for themselves. We need to speak a new language, one that describes the facts, not the fantasies woven by the ministers of Zionist propaganda.

We should all learn how to do a better job of framing the discussion. A couple of articles that I recently came across do a great job of doing that by insisting to provide the context of occupation and violence that Israel imposes on the discussion. The first is one by Ali Abunimah called ‘Two Failed States’, the other is by Saree Makdisi called ‘What’s Missing from the Discussion’, both articles manage to highlight the ruthelessness of the occupation and how that is the true catalyst for the violence. Read these articles, learn from skills of these linguistic and reasoning ninjas and try to become one yourself.

Not too long ago a paper came out published by a couple of hotshot University professors talking about how powerful the Israeli Lobby is. Everybody reacted as expected: many on the pro-Israeli side denounced it as anti-Semitic (suprise suprise) and many on the pro-Palestinian side have hailed it as validation of what they have been saying all along. This is all well and good. The part that is confusing me is why this story won’t go away even after all this time.

Molly Ivins, the professional Bush Basher, decided to chime in with an article whose only purpose, as our friend The Angry Arab pointed out, is to declare how pro-Israeli she is. Robert Fisk, in an article entitled The United States of Israel, is more interesting because he talks about the reactions to the paper by the pro-Israel side. But again there is nothing new here. Even the Israelis are paying attention to this, in an opinion piece in Haaretz, the author suggests that Olmert should ‘Walk on eggshells’ when engaging the Americans because there might be some additional scrutiny to Israeli relations with the US as a result of the paper.

The reason that I think this whole issue is lame is because simply talking about it doesn’t do anything for us. ‘Exposing’ the lobby will not diminish its power. As long as the politicians’ pockets are being lined with cash and political destinies are decided by voting the right way in congress, we will continue to have business as usual. The solution isn’t to expose the lobby, it is to oppose it.

Let me provide an analogy here. Let’s say I’m the greatest tennis player there is. I win all my matches and there is nothing that can stop me. It just happens that all my opponents are drunk seven year old children without rackets. Simply making the world aware of the fact that my opponents are at such a disadvantage will not stop me from being the best, it might be a little embarassing, but I’ll still be world champion. If you’re not getting the analogy, let me clarify, the pro-Palestinian lobby is the drunk seven year old without a racket. So instead of dancing around happy because somebody recognized that the other side is kicking our ass let’s recruit some adults, stop the drinking, hit the gym, get ourselves a nice racket and go out there and even up the odds.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the different options available for pro-Palestinian advocacy. There are many that seem to believe that we are weak in many traditional advocacy arenas - the media, politics, and education because we lack access. I really don’t agree with that assessment, I just think that we simply aren’t trying hard enough. Our weakness isn’t lack of access but rather lack of effort, and the evidence for that is how we’re doing in the field of electronic activism. The internet should be the great equalizer. I might not be able to get an opinion piece in a newspaper, but I sure as hell can start a blog telling the world what I think and try to get as many people as possible to read it. Despite having that opportunity, most individuals who support Palestinian rights, don’t seem to be using it. An informal survey that I did showed a 4 to 1 bias in the number of pro-Israel blogs vs the pro-Palestinian ones.

It’s crazy that today we aren’t kicking ass in the internet game. Why aren’t there thousands of pro-Palestinian blogs and hundreds of pro-Palestinian websites? The access is there; the knowledge is not hard to get; and this is a fight that we can win. So where does one start? It’s probably a good idea to start looking at what’s out there already and try to figure which efforts need to be supported, expanded, and replicated.

I’m going to begin by looking at one site that caught my attention:

The Palestine Database: This website is basically a giant archive or articles, audio/video material, quotations, journals, maps, etc… all of it about Palestine. It’s probably the most comprehensive thing that I’ve seen of it’s kind. I can only describe it as a wealth of information and should be the first stop for anyone who is working on a presentation or a speech on the topic. The problem with something that has such a large amount of information is that you need a sophisticated system to sort through it and get to what you need; and this is what is missing. These guys can go a long way with an upgrade to some better software and a simple community racking scheme for their content. This effort is definitely a keeper. They have the full support of the Tineen.

You’re probably going to be seeing a lot of posts about sites that I like. If you come across something that’s good, drop me a line and let me know.

The level of hostility against the democratically elected Hamas government is being stepped up. This time around Mahmoud Abbas is leading the charge. ‘Abbas threatens to oust Hamas‘ The Aljazeera.net article quotes Abbas in a recent visit to Turkey proclaiming “The constitution gives me clear and definite authority to remove a government from power, but I don’t want to use this authority”. Well it’s nice to know that he won’t unleash an autocratic take over just yet. This really didn’t bother me since I would expect no less from a stooge such as Abbas. What is disgusting is that he lays the blame for the suffering of the Palestinians on Hamas’ doorstep saying that Hamas had to negotiate with Israel or the Palestinian people would be left to starve. Instead of facing up to the fact that his American patrons are spearheading this attempt to cripple the Palestinians he has simply adopted their stance of blaming the victims.

On a related note, the Jordanian governemnt, which never misses an opportunity to entertain me, have “uncovered” a plot by Hamas to target installations and people inside Jordan. This quote is awesome “‘Security interrogations with the detained suspects had proven they received instructions to execute operations from leaders of Hamas and specifically one of the military officials of Hamas currently based in Syria’ Nasser Joudeh, the government spokesman, told Reuters on Tuesday.” Do you think the Jordanian government gets a cookie from the American embassy for uncovering this plot. They even managed to get Syria in the mix, this deserves a really big cookie.

In the middle of all of this the Palestinian people are nearing a humanitarian catastrophe. Even worse all the parties involved seem to be more interested in using this fact as leverage for one thing or another instead of alleviating the suffering.

Two months ago I hadn’t even heard of Saree Makdisi. Then I started researching the Palestinian/Arab blogging landscape to figure out who’s out there advocating for Palestine in the blogosphere. It is during this time that I came across Saree Makdisi’s site. From that point on I’ve had a steadily increasing appreciation for him. I’ve finally been able to formulate a conclusion about him: Saree Makdisi Rocks

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English literature at UCLA, this explains the eloquance with which he writes. But what’s really impressive about this guy is a combination of moral clairty and accessible presentation of ideas. Simply put, when you read a piece by Makdisi, you understand what he is saying, but more importantly you agree with him. His articles flow well, are easy to read, make a lot of sense, and in the end you are always left with a moral ‘eureka’ moment.

So here is my advise to everyone out there. Start reading this guy’s articles. They are popping up all over the place, LA Times, Counterpunch, San Francisco Chronicle, and many others. IMEU.net always seems to have his latest article featured on their front page, and his site has an archive of all his previous material. I really believe we have pro-palestine rockstar in the making here. Anybody want to start the Saree Makdisi fan club?

Over the course of the past two days the Rachel Corrie Foundation (RCF) put together a wonderful conference in Olympia, WA. The RCF was setup by Rachel Corrie’s parents and friends to continue her legacy and work on behalf of justice for the Palestinian people. For those who are unfamiliar with who Rachel Corrie is visit the RCF website and learn more about this wonderful human being.

The Peace Works Conference is the first event of its kind organized by the Foundation and they have done an excellent job. Even though I didn’t get a chance to be at most of the conference I did catch a couple of the lectures. The caliber and quality of the event was truly impressive. The list of speakers was great and I think reflected the orientation of the organizers. Huwaida Arraf, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Diana Buttu, Amira Hass, and Dr. Sara Roy are some of the speakers that were there.

I did have one disappointment in the event - the attendance. It wasn’t bad, but it could have been a lot more. Even more problematic was the almost absence of Palestinian or Arab participation. It was really sad. What brought it home for me was Mustafa Barghouti’s lecture about the challenges facing the Palestinians. After talking at length about the distress that the Palestinian people are living through on a political, social and economic level it became apparent that this is truly a fateful moment in the history of the Palestinian people. It’s clear that Israel is intent on the total and absolute destruction of the Palestinian people. Then he gives his analysis as to how we can solve the problem and one of his points is that it is essential to re-engage the Palestinian Diaspora. This statement was made to an auditorium where there were only a handful of Palestinians. That really broke my heart.

There is a lot to talk about in terms of this conference. I didn’t attend the first day, but it looked like they were videotaping the lectures. I’m going to try and get a hold of the recordings and sumarize what was said. I heard that Huwaida Arraf did an excellent job and I look forward to seeing her speech. Mustafa Barghouti’s presentation was great, I’m going to try and get a hold of it and post it here. Stay tuned…