Category Archives: Book Review

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What Really Happened In Gaza? – Book Review

Goldstone Report Cover

Goldstone Report Cover

Ira Glunts. 27 Feb 2011

(The Goldstone Report: The Legacy Of The Landmark Investigation Of The Gaza Conflict edited by Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, and Philip Weiss; foreword by Desmond Tutu, introduction by Naomi Klein, Nation Books, 2011.  449 pp., $18.95. paperback.)

The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 and the subsequent investigation and unequivocal condemnation by a United Nations team led by Judge Richard Goldstone of Israeli conduct before and during what the Jewish State calls “Operation Cast Lead,” have radically altered the way many view Israel’s brutal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.  Gaza and Goldstone have also caused many to question the 18 year-old US-sponsored Israeli/Palestinian “peace-process” which never produces any positive results.

Here in Central New York, some local activists in the Syracuse Peace Council started the group Central New York Working For A Just Peace In Palestine & Israel as a direct result of the invasion of Gaza. In February, the Judaic Studies Program at Syracuse University hosted journalist Peter Beinart, a self-identified liberal Zionist, who has recently signed a public letter urging President Obama to support a United Nations resolution condemning the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (The US vetoed the resolution.) Neither Beinart’s willingness to sign this letter, nor an invitation extended by the Judaic Studies Program to someone expressing these views, would have been conceivable before the Gaza invasion.

The Goldstone Report: The Legacy Of The Landmark Investigation Of The Gaza Conflict is invaluable in assessing what really happened in Gaza. It presents an abridged version (327 pp.) of the “Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission On the Gaza Conflict (September, 2009),” with 11 insightful essays which explore the Goldstone document from progressive legal, historical, and political, as well as personal perspectives. This version also intersperses witness testimonies which were published by the Mission, but not included in the original report. (Full disclosure: I am a contributor to Mondoweiss.net which is edited by Weiss and Horowitz.)

The stark fact is that the Israeli army killed over 1,400 people during the Gaza invasion. This is as opposed to 13 Israeli fatalities, some of which were Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers killed by “friendly fire.” Of the 1,400 fatalities, over 80% were civilians. Approximately 5,300 Gazans were injured, including 2,400 women and children; 2,114 houses were destroyed, with an additional 3,400 houses rendered uninhabitable. The three-week Israeli assault resulted in over 51,000 displaced persons. Among the IDF’s targets were mosques, hospitals, private residences, a chicken farm, a sewage treatment plant, and a United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) field office compound, which was sheltering 600 to 700 civilians. According to Goldstone, there was no military advantage gained by any of these attacks.

The Mission employed testimonies of Gazans, as well as on-site inspections in order to document its findings. Although the Israeli government refused to cooperate, and vehemently tried to prevent their citizens and soldiers from doing so, the Mission did interview Israelis outside of Israel and employed public testimony from the so-called “Soldiers’ Forum” at Israel’s Oranim military academy, as well as reports from the dissident soldiers’ group “Breaking the Silence.” The report contains statements made by Israeli officials, which were widely quoted in the Israeli and foreign press, that Israel’s declared aim was to punish the civilian population. The document also includes justifications made by Israeli officials, reported in the press for specific Israeli military actions.  Most of these were shown to be inaccurate, many purposefully so.

A Tzipi Livni quote illustrates the IDF intent to violate international norms of military conduct. Livni, who was the Israeli Foreign Minister during Operation Cast Lead, said, “Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.” The Israeli “wildness” violated the laws of war, including: use of human shields, capricious home invasions, illegal detention of civilians including elected officials, massive wanton destruction of personal property and of infrastructure, and killing of unarmed and non-threatening civilians.

The Goldstone Mission concluded that Operation Cast Lead “was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” Targeting a civilian population clearly violates international humanitarian law. The Mission also concluded, as did many who read the Israeli press before and during the three-week Israeli assault, that one purpose of the attack was to punish Gazans for voting for Hamas in the free democratic election of 2006.

The Goldstone Report not only addresses the Gaza invasion, but seeks to place it in the context of the ongoing struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In describing this history, the report harshly criticizes the Israelis for, among other things, the 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel from the occupied territories (a violation of international human rights law), the restriction of movement (between Gaza and the West Bank and within each territory), the suppression of legitimate dissent in the occupied territories, and the blockade of Gaza. It also condemns Israel for its settlements on conquered land, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Judaization of East Jerusalem, and construction and maintenance of the separation wall, which has been ruled illegal by the World Court. And all that is not even to mention the illegitimate and disproportionate use of force during the 2006 Lebanon War. This is hardly the portrayal of an enlightened Western democracy. And it is a characterization of Israel which is all the more shocking for many because it came from Richard Goldstone.

Judge Richard Goldstone is a nightmare for the Israeli and US pro-Israel spin doctors. He is an internationally-recognized jurist with extensive experience in redressing the injustices of apartheid in his native South Africa. He is not only Jewish, but is a self-identified Zionist, and was an honorary member of the Board of Governors of Hebrew University for ten years. His daughter immigrated to Israel where she now lives. This made it difficult to dismiss Goldstone as an anti-Semite from a United Nations whose moral and legal authority Israel has always ignored, with the aid of the United States veto. However, this did not stop the Israelis and their US supporters from smearing the judge.

Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School called Goldstone “an evil man” and “a traitor to the Jews.” The usual charges of “self-hating Jew” echoed loudly in the Israeli and US media. On November 3, 2009 the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 for House Resolution 867, which called the Goldstone Report, “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The Obama administration, not known for great courage in its foreign policy decisions, has danced to the tune of what some euphemistically call “certain political interests.” In so doing, the US has followed the advice of the House resolution and blocked any further consideration of the Goldstone Report at the United Nations.

Judge Goldstone has invited “fair minded people” to read the report and “point out where it failed to be objective or even-handed.” Neither the Congress nor the Obama Administration has done so. The US mainstream media has all but shut the door on criticism of Israeli conduct during the Gaza invasion. But despite the dismissive response to the Goldstone Report and to the critics of the Gaza invasion, both the report and the invasion have resulted in increased public opposition to US policy regarding Israel. The US pro-Israel camp, alarmed by this new reality, has inaccurately labeled it “a campaign of delegitimization of Israel.”

The essays contained in the Goldstone Report do little to legitimize an Israeli perspective. Jerome Slater criticizes Goldstone’s position that Israel’s war in Gaza could be justified by the claim of self-defense. He writes that “when illegitimate and violent repression engenders resistance” then the claim of self-defense is invalid. Brian Baird, an ex-Congressman, details the degree to which his House colleagues passionately spoke in defense of Israel while demonstrating their almost complete lack of knowledge of the facts.  All his attempts to educate them met with indifference — caused by the giant shadow of the pro-Israel lobby.

The final word is given to Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian journalist and blogger. She spent Operation Cast Lead in North Carolina connected via Skype and email to her father, who was under siege in his home in Gaza City. She details his messages of fright, courage, and despair, followed by relief and muted hope. These thoughts given from father to daughter provide the reader with a visceral understanding of the terror and horror visited on Gazans during the invasion, a horror which is impossible to transmit through a United Nations document. Sadly and soberingly, El-Haddad tells us that for now, for the people of Gaza, the Goldstone Report is just “ink on paper,” since it has not led to any improvement in their lives.

The presentation of the Goldstone Report and the accompanying materials contained in the volume are valuable because they make this extraordinary document accessible to those who might normally be reluctant to read it in its entirety on the United Nations web site. The book is especially recommended to those liberals who still check their progressivism at the gate before entering the portal of Palestine. What they read here just may shake some of their deeply-held beliefs.

(An earlier version of this book review appeared in the Syracuse Peace Council’s Peace Newsletter; March, 2011, PNL #802.)

- Ira Glunts is a Jewish-American who as an English teacher living in southern Israel boarded an Israeli intercity bus and traveled to Gaza City in 1972. He spent the summer of 1992 as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces. Currently, Mr. Glunts is a critic of Israeli policy and the Jewish-American establishment which supports it, and a member of Central New York Working For A Just Peace in Palestine & Israel.

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THE HOUR OF SUNLIGHT

Hour Of Sunlight

Synopsis of The Hour of Sunlight:

As a teenager, Sami Al Jundi had one ambition: overthrowing Israeli occupation. With two friends he formed a militant cell and began building a bomb to use against the Israeli police. But their plans were derailed when the bomb exploded prematurely, killing one of his friends. Sami was sentenced to ten years in prison.

The Hour of Sunlight (Nation Books) describes Sami’s extraordinary metamorphosis from a militant to a passionate advocate of nonviolence and peaceful reconciliation. Born to a family of Palestinian refugees in the Old City of Jerusalem, Sami was only five years old when Israeli soldiers took over his home after the 1967 war. His family began life again as refugees in another part of the Old City. In moving detail Sami describes how these and other realities (and indignities) of his early years caused his radicalization.

Following his arrest, Sami was bound and tortured for weeks by the Israeli General Security Service before beginning his ten-year prison sentence. Ironically, it was in an Israeli jail that his personal transformation began: Sami was welcomed into a highly organized, democratic community of political prisoners who required that members of their cell read, engage in political discourse on topics ranging from global revolutions to Russian literature.

In the prison library, Sami found a book on Mahatma Gandhi. He was struck by one story in particular—a Hindu man who had murdered a Muslim baby came to Gandhi seeking repentance. Gandhi told him that there was one way that he could find peace again; he must raise a Muslim orphan for twenty years. It took two decades to build a life, Sami reflected, but only seconds to destroy one.

Sami left prison still determined to fight for his people’s rights—but with a very different notion of how to undertake that struggle. He discovered the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, and later became supervisor of an Israeli-Palestinian coexistence center in Jerusalem. He kept his faith in reconciliation alive through the most difficult times, remaining determined to inspire a new generation to follow the path of peace and nonviolence.

The Hour of Sunlight offers a perspective that is sorely missing from the mainstream media’s portrayal of Palestinians. Marked by honesty, humor, pain, and, ultimately, compassion for all Palestinians and Israelis, The Hour of Sunlight charts an inspiring journey of perseverance and personal transformation. In so doing it illuminates the Palestinian experience through the story of one man’s impassioned struggle for peace with justice.

Click HERE to read advanced reviews and endorsements of The Hour of Sunlight!

Jen Marlowe “You can purchase the book here, or at your favorite local indie bookstore. Amazon.com is an option, of course–but I hope you will choose to support an indie! If you are in Palestine/Israel, you can purchase the book at the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem. Contact them here to place your order.”

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Insisting on Their Humanity: ‘The Plight of the Palestinians’

This book is not another chronicle of the history of a defenseless nation.
This book is not another chronicle of the history of a defenseless nation.

This book is not another chronicle of the history of a defenseless nation.

Ramzy Baroud, 17 Dec 2010

When a copy of William A. Cook’s latest book, The Plight of the Palestinians arrived in my mailbox, I initially felt a little worried. The volume, featuring the work of over 30 accomplished writers, is the most articulate treatise on the collective victimization of Palestinians to date. From Cook’s own introduction, ‘The Untold Story of the Zionist Intent to Turn Palestine into a Jewish State’ to Francis Boyle’s summation of ‘Israel’s Crimes against the Palestinians’, it takes the reader through an exhaustive journey, charting the course of Palestinian history prior to and since al-Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1947-48.

Still, I feared that something might be missing in this noble and monumental undertaking: Palestinian people’s own responses to the cruelties they’ve suffered. Would Palestinians be presented yet again as merely poster-child victims, eager for handouts?

The photograph on the cover was telling: a kindly old man with a white beard, who could have been any Palestinian or Middle-Eastern grandpa, is lovingly touching the hair of a toddler. The two are crouching before a small, stained tent. Al-Nakba was still recent, and the two Palestinians, separated by two generations appear tired and haggard as they are caught in this hopeless scene. Yet, somehow the grandfather insists on preserving his right to love his grandson. This insistence on one’s humanity has been the key strength which has allowed the Palestinian people to preserve their struggle and resistance before the wicked arm of occupation and oppression for nearly 63 years.

Do most academics know this? Do they truly comprehend what it is that makes an old man from a West Bank village face the brutality of Jewish settlers, year after year, as he returns to harvest his few remaining olive trees? Or a Palestinian woman from Gaza who keeps coming back to hold a vigil before the Red Cross office with a framed photo of her once-young son, now ailing in some Israeli jail?

What keeps them going is something that cannot be dissected scientifically or analyzed intellectually. It can only be felt, experienced, and partially understood. This understanding is essential, for without it much more time and effort would be wasted, discounting the most important component in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Palestinian people.

Some intellectuals, although well-intentioned, often conflate the understandable weakness of the current Palestinian leadership and the steadfastness of the Palestinian people. They write about both entities as if they are one and the same. One of the best authors on Palestine rightly pointed at the huge discrepancies of power between Palestinians and Israel, noting that such an imbalance could not possibly lead to an equitable platform for negotiation. To demonstrate the point, the author refers to Palestinians as “almost totally powerless people”, negotiating with a “powerful occupier.”

But the Palestinian people are currently negotiating with no one. Their representatives merely represent themselves and their own interests. It is important that we preserve that distinction – between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Palestinian people, who have held on to their rights for so many years, and unleashed two of the greatest expressions of people’s power and resolve: the First Uprising of 1987 and al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000. A whole population taking on the self-celebrated “greatest army in the Middle East” is hardly “powerless”. The Palestinian people have printed themselves on the practical discourse of this conflict, and they have proved themselves to be powerful players in determining their own fate.

Jeff Halper, the Director of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, understands this fact well. The peace and justice activist has spent decades working for a just settlement to the conflict, a journey that’s allowed him to work with numerous Palestinians. He has thus grasped something many politicians have intentionally or inadvertently missed. “Until they – the Palestinian people as a whole, not the PA – say the conflict is over, it’s not over.” He further states, in a recent article entitled ‘Palestine 2011’, that “Israel and its erstwhile allies have the ability to make life almost unbearable for the Palestinians, but they cannot impose apartheid or warehousing.”

Halper is correct, and history has repeatedly validated his assertion. There are limits to the power of the “powerful occupier”. It can kill, confiscate, destroy and burn, but it can never force the other into submission. Thus to speak of Palestinian victimization without discussing their collective resistance presents an incomplete version of the story.

The Plight of the Palestinians turned out to be an essential read, and a full and authoritative discourse. It offers a grim and detailed story of suffering and the ‘slow motion genocide’, which is important in order to appreciate the harshness of the Palestinian experience. Without this, one can never understand the anger, resentment and pain that are shared by several generations of Palestinians, in Palestine and in the Diaspora.

‘The Human Tragedy’ is laid bare in Part I. Every paragraph confronts the reader with gory details. But if such violence is the reality of the history of this conflict, why do many people understand it differently? The answer lies in Part 2: ‘Propaganda, Perception and Reality’. It starts with a quote, the Israeli Mossad’s own pre-2007 slogan: “By way of deception, thou shalt do war.” It seems that such a slogan has defined Israeli official conduct. However, civil society cannot be misled forever, and the powerful initiatives carried out by ordinary people around the world are what give Part 3 its value. ‘Rule by Law or Defiance’ is an uplifting introduction to activist efforts, with topics ranging from ‘The Russell Tribunal on Palestine’ to the ‘Necessity of the Culture Boycott’.

The Plight of the Palestinians is not just another chronicle of the history of a defenseless nation. While it is an unhesitant acknowledgment of that reality, it is far from being a celebration of victimhood. Rather, it documents the logical evolution from suffering to resistance.

In the essay, ‘Does It Matter What You Call It?’ two of my personal favorite authors, Kathleen and (late) Bill Christison write: “Palestinian resistance does figure in this dismal story. In the same small village where one is uprooting his family, others are building…”

It is the very balance between destruction and rebuilding, despair and hope, occupation and perseverance that makes the Palestinian people powerful. Their power cannot be demonstrated in numbers, but it can be felt, experienced, and understood. The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction spreads the seeds of understanding, which is so essential to any meaningful and lasting change.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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Behind the Israeli Wall: A Lesson in Reality

Behind The Wall

Ramzy Baroud, 2 Sept 2010

Writers often romanticize their subjects. At times they even manipulate their readers. A book – or any piece of writing for that matter – is meant to provide a sense of completion. Sociological explanations are offered to offset the confusion caused by apparent inconsistency in human behavior. At times a reader is asked to take a stance, or choose sides.

This is especially true in writings which deal with compelling human experiences. In Behind the Wall: Life, Love and Struggle in Palestine (Potomac Books, 2010), Rich Wiles undoubtedly directs his readers, although implicitly, towards taking a stance. But he is unabashed about his moral priorities and makes no attempt to disguise his objectives.

As I began reading Wiles’ book, various aspects struck me as utterly refreshing in contrast to the way Palestine is generally written about. We tend to complicate what was meant to be straightforward and become too selective as we construct our narrative. And we tend to consider the possible political implications of our writings, and thus compose the conclusions with only this political awareness in mind.

Much of this is understandable. The situation in Palestine is appalling, and also worsening. If our writing is not meant to influence positive change, then why bother? But a hyped awareness of the consequences and over-politicization of narratives and texts can prove limiting and intellectually confining. Worse, at times it provides a particular contextualization of the conflict – with all of its internal offshoots and external outcomes – that does much injustice to other important contexts. It neglects facts and paints an unrealistic picture of a subject already confused in the minds of many readers.

Thus when the conflict is deciphered by a writer, all players take positions. Israel is pitted against ‘the Arabs’. Palestinians are often sliced off into two competing parties, while Israel is largely shown as maintaining a sense of political and institutional integrity. Palestinians are radicals or moderates, Islamists or secularists. The ‘conflict’ is right in the center, and within it are the sub-topics: the peace process, the occupation, the settlements and numerous others. Without such lucid configuration there is no structure. Publishers get frustrated. The writer is urged to revisit and restructure his work.

But real life is not a well-organized academic argument. It can be, and often is chaotic, strange and puzzling, but it is real. Only by understanding reality the way it is – not the way we feel that it ought to be for any reason – can we meaningfully position ourselves to appreciate the subject at hand.

Can we understand the conflict in Palestine and Israel without subscribing to the same language, confronting the same political and historical milestones? Can Palestinians be understood outside the confines of political and ideological affiliations?

That is what Rich Wiles attempted to do in Behind the Wall, and in my opinion, very much succeeded.

Wiles relocated the conflict historically, geographically and sociologically to the side most affected by it: the Palestinians. The book is located in the West Bank, mostly Aida refugee camp, where Wiles spent years dedicating his time and efforts as an artist and a writer to help children share their stories and talents with the rest of the world. The writing is a non-elitist, part and parcel, which is a prerequisite to a factual understanding of the struggle in Palestine. Equally important, Wiles provides a depiction of the Palestinian not as the victim, despite the protracted process of victimization that Palestinians have endured for generations. Wiles’ subjects might have been imprisoned or deeply scarred by war, but they are confident and complex human beings.

A chapter entitled “A Child and a Balcony” starts with this line: “‘On Friday, December 8, 2006, I was shot.’ Miras is unemotional as he tells his story.” Miras should be emotional, but he is not, and Wiles doesn’t attempt to rectify the seemingly inconsistent behavior. It turns out that Miras, a child (now a promising young photographer, thanks to Wiles’ help) almost died when a bullet carved its way through his body and penetrated his abdominal from one end and emerged from the other. He was playing with his siblings and cousins at a balcony in the refugee camp, when an Israeli sniper hit him from the watchtower. The story is short, but rich in emotionally powerful detail: the father’s panic and near hallucination, the mother confusion, the sense of solidarity that unifies the refugees and strengthens their resolve even when their situation seems so helpless.

Wiles is not an anthropologist or a detached ethnographer, and he doesn’t pose as one. He is part of the story, at times an important character. In “Memories”, he accompanies a young Palestinian boy on the journey of his life, from the confines of the small refugee camp to Jerusalem. The boy is visiting his very ill grandfather at a hospital in the Arab side of the city. (No other member of the family was granted an Israeli permission to make the short journey, thus the need for Wiles’ intervention). Wiles provides an extremely honest and vivid account, bringing to life the bravery of the boy and the sense of freedom he experiences as he crosses the checkpoints into Jerusalem.

At the same time, Wiles does not attempt to assemble the perfect, heroic and infallible character of the Palestinian. He includes the story of a son of drug user who was mysteriously killed (perhaps by a Palestinian group that suspected him as a collaborator with Israel). The son became involved in the resistance to redeem the family’s honor. His impulsive resistance (an attempt to burn a hole in the Israeli wall that surrounded his refugee camp) earned him time in an Israeli prison. Yasser Jedar (known as Yasser ‘Wall’ owing to his obsession with trying to bring down the Israeli wall) was certainly not a poster child revolutionary. But he is refreshingly real, which is what should matter the most to an inquisitive reader.

Wiles’ work is an important contribution to what I insist on referring to as a ‘People’s History of Palestine’. In order for this genre to endure and flourish, it must remain honest, and duty-bound to the truth – to reality as it is, not how we wish it to be.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide – Book Review

1282098033hamas_book_hroub_review

Dr. Ludwig Watzal – Bonn

Khaled Hroub, Hamas. A Beginner’s Guide, Pluto, 2 nd Edition, London-Ann Arbor 2010 (2006), 196 p.

Israel, the United States and the European Union call Hamas a “terrorist organisation”. Yet Hamas swept to victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections and stunned the world. It is now a democratically elected political party. All the election observers agreed that the elections were free, fair, and democratic. The Palestinian people showed their ability to establish a democratic state next to Israel. But Israel, the United States and the EU did not like this idea of a democratic Palestinian state besides Israel and the outcome of a democratic election. According to their opinion, the Palestinian people voted democratically, but for the wrong party. What is wrong with the Hamas movement? And why is it demonised by Israel, the US and the European Union? The reviewed book asks all relevant questions concerning Hamas and gives very balanced answers.

Khaled Hroub is one of the best experts on this Islamic Movement. He works as a director of the Arab Media Project at Cambridge University. In 2000 he already published a book on the political thought and practice of Hamas. Hroub, a secular Palestinian, tells the story of the “real Hamas” and the “misperceived and distorted one”. By “real Hamas” he means the reality of Hamas as it has been on the ground in all its aspects – debunking any reductionist approach. The book is structured chronologically and thematically. It follows a question and answer structure, which makes it a good read, with steps that can easily be comprehended. The book has thirteen chapters, starting with Hamas´ history, the movement´s ideology, strategy and objectives, Israel and Judaism, the resistance and military strategy, ´international Islamism`, leadership and structure, the stance towards the West, Hamas in power, the future of Hamas and Hamas and the Gaza war et cetera..

Western experts in international relations, who follow the realist school and show some understanding of Hamas policy, are typically branded “terrorist sympathizers”. Aware of this predicament, Hroub makes his position clear: “My own perception of Hamas goes beyond the mere question of being with or against the movement. As a secular person myself, my aspiration is for Palestine, and all other Arab countries for that matter, to be governed by human-made laws. However, I see Hamas as a natural outcome of un-natural, brutal occupational conditions. The radicalism of Hamas should be seen as a completely predictable result of the ongoing Israeli colonial project in Palestine. Palestinians support whichever movement holds the banner of resistance against that occupation and promises to defend the Palestinian rights of freedom and self-determination. At this juncture of history, they see in Hamas the defender of those rights.”

The extreme brutality of the Israeli occupation really started with the outbreak of the first Intifada in December 1987. Before that, Israel pretended to exercise a “benign occupation” (Moshe Dayan). Nowadays, perceiving the degree of Israeli oppression, the incompetence of the ruling Fatah elite, the corruption, and the bad governance, everybody can understand why Hamas exists and became the strongest party in Palestine. From the beginning, they refused the charade, which Israel, the US and PLO-chairman Yassir Arafat called “peace process”.  Hroub writes that after Hamas´ foundation they challenged the role of the PLO as “the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. The biggest blow to the after-Arafat PLO was the defeat in the elections in 2006 and the loss of power. They could only gain their power back by ousting a democratically elected government with the “support” of Israel and the US.

There has never been any sign that Hamas has been involved in “globalized Jihad”, writes Hroub. “Hamas limits its fight to within the borders of Palestine, and its enemy is Israel.” Hamas has remained “nation-state based, limiting its struggle to one for and within Palestine, and fighting not a local regime but a foreign occupier. This differentiation is important as it exposes the shallowness of the widespread (mostly Western) trivializing conflation of all Islamist movements into one single ´terrorist` category.” That is why “Hamas is indeed very anxious to keep itself well distanced from al-Qaeda, and certainly does not engage in any co-operation with it.”

According to Israeli and Western perceptions, Hamas is branded a “terrorist organization” which wants to destroy Israel. To support such an accusation, the Hamas Charter is quoted as a case in point. What Hroub writes about the importance of the Charter contradicts the Western image of the organization. The author admits that the Charter, which was written by one person from the Muslim brotherhood, who belonged to the ´old guard` and was “completely cut off from the outside world”, was never officially adopted by Hamas. The document contains many generalisations, all kinds of confusions, and conflations between Zionism and Judaism that led to charges of anti-Semitism and of a naive worldview, writes the author. Hroub also mentions that no Hamas official ever revered to the Charter as a leading policy paper. The statements of the Charter “are irrelevant to the present Hamas party, the Charter itself has become largely obsolete”. The charges “that the Charter explicitly calls for the ´destruction of Israel` or the ´termination of the Jews` are not accurate; no such literal phrases occur in the Charter”. If the Charter has harmed Hamas, as the author writes, why does Hamas not get rid of it? Hroub gives the following explanation: Hamas leaders fear this would be construed by many as giving up on the basic principles of the movement. Phrases like the “destruction of Israel” or the “termination of the Jews” which are often used by Western media or pro-Israeli supporters, when referring to Hamas’ “ultimate goal” are in fact never used by Hamas, writes Hroub. Neither the Israel public nor the Israel government and its Western friends will buy such an assertion.

What is Hamas’s view of Israel? “According to Hamas, Israel is a colonial state established by force and resulting from western colonialism and imperialism against Arabs and Muslims before and after the turn of the twentieth century.” Hroub writes that at the beginning of Hamas its view of Israel was loaded with “religious significance, holding that Israel was the culmination of a Jewish onslaught against Muslims and their holy places in Jerusalem”. The Western encroachment was seen as a “renewal of the medieval Crusaders”. For Hroub, Hamas does not aim at the “destruction of Israel” as its “ultimate goal” because Hamas has never used this phrase, not even in its most radical statements. The organization`s ultimate goal is “the liberation of Palestine”. Any realist knows that neither any Arab state or all together nor Hamas or Hezbollah are capable of destroying Israel. “Depicting Hamas (and the Palestinians) as any such threat to Israel is a matter of political propaganda and emotional sensationalism.” According to Hroub, Hamas has never used the old rhetoric after they were elected into power in 2006. The discourse is dominated by resistance against the occupation and the illegal seizure of Palestinian lands. “Any suggestion that Hamas plans or aims to destroy Israel is obviously naïve”.

The author points at the pragmatism and realistic approach of Hamas which does not exclude the recognition of Israel by the organization. As long Israel does not recognize the right of the Palestinian people of self-determination, Hamas will not recognize Israel. (According to international law, the Palestinian Authority has recognized Israel already several times. But the Israeli political class wants more than the just a recognition under international law. They demand from the Palestinian leadership recognition of their “right to exist”. Such a “right” is un-known in international law. It’s a political weapon which would, if accepted, leave the Palestinians without any rights in their own country, and all the injustices which were inflicted upon the indigenous people would have been justified. (L. W.) Hroub mentions that Hamas would accept a deal with Israel of the final settlement when a referendum about the status would be held in Israel and Palestine.

The latter Bush administration claimed it wanted to create a “New Middle East”. At the end of his second term the “Bush-warriors” have indeed created a “New Middle East”, but it was a Middle East they would not have dreamt of when they stated their adventure. All interventions strengthened the determination of resistance to occupation as is the case of Hamas after the Gaza war, writes Hroub. “The Gaza war is, in certain ways, a result of Bush´s short-sighted Middle Eastern policy.” The result: “The moderates have been knocked out, the resistance forces have become stronger, anti-Americanism is deeper, and Palestine as the core issue in the region is as persistent as ever.” Should there be no Palestinian state under the Obama presidency, there will be a “new resisting Middle East” a new wave of radicalisation with Hamas as a part of it, writes the author. Building hope on Obama, as the author insinuates, is like building on sand. The US Middle Eastern policy is as one-sided and depended on the wishes of Israel and its cronies in the US as ever. For the region, the worse is yet to come, when an Israel-US-American alliance will attack Iran.

The highly differentiated picture of Hamas painted by Hroub will not be appreciated by Western policy makers, because it does not fit into their “terror mythology”. The book would, however, a veritable asset to politicians´ who want to contribute to a genuine and just peace in the Middle East. Hroub´s book will be an eye-opener to those with an open mind. It provides a sober analysis of Hamas and can only adequately judged in the light of the Israeli occupation. The book should be read by policy makers and political analysts who want to understand Hamas as a major Middle Eastern player.

- Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a publicist, editor and journalist in Bonn, Germany.

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Book of the Day: Midnight on the Mavi Marmara

Moustafa Bayoumi
Midnight on the Mavi Marmara, Moustafa Bayoumi

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara, Moustafa Bayoumi

Book of the Day: Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Moustafa Bayoumi, Editor.

‘ “We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates … The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.”—Henning Mankell, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Eastern Mediterranean, Monday, May 31st, 2010, 4.30am: Israeli commandos, boarding from sea and air, attack the six boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as it sails through international waters bringing humanitarian relief to the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Within minutes, nine peace activists are dead, shot by the Israelis. Scores of others are injured. The 700 people on board the ships are arrested before being transported to detention centers in Israel and then deported.

Within hours, outrage at Israel’s action echoes around the world. Spontaneous demonstrations in Europe, the United States, Turkey, and Gaza itself denounce the attack. Turkey’s prime minister describes it as a “bloody massacre” and “state terrorism.” Lebanon’s prime minister calls it “a dangerous and crazy step that will exacerbate tensions in the region.”

In these pages, a range of activists, journalists, and analysts piece together the events that occurred that May night, unpicking their meanings for Israel’s illegal, three-year-long blockade of Gaza and the decades-long Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Mixing together first-hand testimony, documentary record, and illustration, with hard-headed analysis and historical overview, Midnight on the Mavi Marmara reveals why the attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla may just turn out to be Israel’s Selma, Alabama: the beginning of the end for an apartheid Palestine.

CONTRIBUTORS: Ali Abunimah, Eyad Al Sarraj, Lamis Andoni, Omar Barghouti, George Bisharat, Max Blumenthal, Noam Chomsky, Marsha B. Cohen, Juan Cole, Murat Dagli, Jamal Elshayyal, Sümeyye Ertekin, Norman Finkelstein, Neve Gordon, Glenn Greenwald, Arun Gupta, Amira Hass, Nadia Hijab, Adam Horowitz, Rashid Khalidi, Stephen Kinzer, Iara Lee, Henning Mankell, Paul Larudee, Gideon Levy, Alia Malek, Lubna Masarwa, Mike Marqusee, Yousef Munayyer, Ken O’Keefe, Daniel Luban, Kevin Ovenden, Ilan Pappé, Doron Rosenblum, Sara Roy, Ben Saul, Adam Shapiro, Raja Shehadeh, Henry Siegman, Ahdaf Soueif, Raji Sourani, Richard Tillinghast, Alice Walker, Stephen M. Walt, Philip Weiss, and Haneen Zoabi.

Publication September 1 2010 256 pages’

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Apartheid – Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine

Woman in Gaza, 2009 (Sameh Habeeb)

NEW BOOK RELEASE

Anthony Löwstedt, 7 July 2010, Apartheid – Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, Vienna: Gesellschaft für Phänomenologie und kritische Anthropologie, 2010, 6th edition, (1st edition 2006)

The author, Dr. Anthony Löwstedt, worked and carried out research over twelve years on three continents for this book, which is now appearing in a new, updated and considerably extended edition on the web. In his Foreword to this edition, the Israeli historian and editor of the forthcoming volume, Peoples Apart: Israel, South Africa and the Apartheid Question (I.B. Tauris, 2010), Ilan Pappe, writes:

„Although the association of apartheid South Africa and the Palestine issue has been in the air for quite a while, very few scholarly books tackled the comparison in a profound and professional way. This book is one of the first serious attempts. . . It does not confine the comparison to South Africa alone. After all, apartheid and segregation accompanied other…regimes and these case studies are equally important for such a comparative study. The novelty here, however, is not confined to extending the comparison geographically or chronologically. What the author calls the ‘wide sense’ of apartheid exposes layers quite often hidden from the public, and quite often the professional eye. These include the impact of segregation polices in both societies on individual violence, family cohesion and gender issues. . . The awareness that the story in one case, South Africa, has come to an end and the terrible sense of worse to come in the other, in Israel and Palestine, gives this book particular urgency and vitality.”

Apartheid is a crime against humanity under international law, which uses the term ‘apartheid’ in a generic sense, i.e. not restricted to South Africa, yet academic and theoretical efforts to extend the applicability of the term, ‘apartheid’, have been slow. This book attempts to meet what the author sees as a need to discuss the definition of apartheid much more extensively, especially since the UN Human Rights Envoy, John Dugard, has recommended charging Israel with the crime of apartheid in international courts. The book also addresses such questions as: How does apartheid relate to colonialism, genocide, and other crimes against humanity? To what extent does the concept of apartheid enable us to explain what has happened and what is happening in Israel/Palestine? Are predictions possible based on the South African experience? In what areas and for how long are apartheid legacies likely to linger in South Africa (and in a possible post-conflict Israel/Palestine)?

Anthony Löwstedt was born in Sweden and grew up there and in Hong Kong, he studied in Vienna, and worked here for a press freedom organization, the International Press Institute, for ten years. He has also been active as an academic and UN consultant in South Africa (University of the Witwatersrand, University of Pretoria, UNESCO) and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Bir Zeit University, UNDP, UNESCO). Since 1997 he teaches Media Communications, History, and Philosophy at Webster University Vienna.

You can view the web edition here, or below on RamallahOnline.com

Apartheid – Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt,…

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Book review: ‘Letters from Palestine’: a must-read

4-8_2Ring FC1

Stuart Littlewood, 27 June 2010

I seldom read books from cover to cover. But when Kenneth Ring sent me his Letters from Palestine with a note saying “Here’s my baby,” I couldn’t put it down. (Available at Amazon)

Ken presents a collection of personal stories from Palestinians, inside and outside the occupied territories, that provide penetrating insights – sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, always fascinating – into their daily lives and thoughts. It would not surprise me if, in time, these accounts became inscribed in Palestinian folklore.

They reveal the Palestinians’ strength of character so well. For these are among the world’s most civilised and sophisticated people. They have withstood 90 years of betrayal and humiliation, and still they bubble with humour and friendship, thanks to their resilience and a gritty determination to overcome the collective and individual tragedies inflicted on them.

Letters from Palestine

Letters from Palestine

 

The thirty whose voices are heard in the letters they write to their American friend, are a wonderfully varied group.

One young lady says that, for her, the adeyat phalastin (question of Palestine) is the ultimate fight for humanity and justice. “And being Palestinian reminds me every day that justice and human rights can never be taken for granted. Because, in theory, every person is entitled to equality and his or her rights. In reality they are a privilege a select few enjoy.”

A young Palestinian-American woman visiting family members in Birzeit comments: “Despite the occupation, Palestinians still remain some of the most educated people in the Arab world. They sit at the checkpoint if they can’t make it to school and read their books, or have class right there if their teacher happens to be around…”

She tells how “the majority of the students I worked with at the camp had a parent or a sibling in jail. One boy’s father was shot by Israeli soldiers right in front of his eyes. Many of the children wore pictures of dead loved ones or of martyrs around their necks or on their shirts. It was a constant part of their lives.”

Fareed, a peace activist, challenges Israel’s claims that the clamp-down on Palestinian movement is in response to the new Hamas-led government. “The reality is that Israel first established its system of permits and closures in 1991, and we have been living under these difficult conditions ever since.”

The first-hand accounts of terrified families trying to survive the horror and devastation unleashed by Israel on the Gaza Strip in December 2008 are very powerful indeed. As Ken himself reminds us, “by the time it was over nearly seven thousand Gazans had either been killed or wounded, and Gaza itself had been largely reduced to smoke, burning phosphorous, and rubble”.

The book’s hard message is softened by the many threads of humour. “In spite of the terrible hardship, you still won’t find people sleeping on pavements like in New York or London,” says Ghassan. “So we guess we still have a long way to go before we become an advanced society.”

He observes that Israel is losing the demographic war with the Palestinians. “What do you expect people locked up in their homes to do, especially when the power is cut off by the Israeli Army and no TV?”

I laughed out loud at Ghassan’s pithy jokes and found myself cheering Manar’s exploits, which she reported to her university chums back home in the US. But then I was brought down to earth with a jolt by Ramzy Baraud’s heartbreaking account of how his freedom-fighter father, ill and prevented by the Israelis from leaving Gaza for treatment, died there alone, cut off from his family.

Discovering that two of Ken’s contributors were friends of mine was a wonderful surprise. Jiries Canavati (I call him George) was a survivor of the infamous 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. It is a gripping story of great courage. In the end they had to surrender, but the eyes of the world were on the Church by then.

George was lucky. Many who came out of the Church alive were deported. The Israelis put him on a blacklist. “So I can’t leave Bethlehem now. I can’t move anywhere. Bethlehem is like a big jail, and that’s it… I am a Christian, but there were both Muslims and Christians together in the siege. The relationship became very friendly. We respect ourselves, we respect each other, and we love each other. And they said, now the Church of the Nativity is the most important place and very special for us because this place protected all of us.”

George has very recently set up an organisation called Bethlehem Fair Trade Artisans, which promotes small craft workshops. Ken won’t mind, I’m sure, if I give this brave man’s new venture a plug by mentioning the link, www.bethlehem-artisans.com.

The second courageous friend is that young Gazan photo-journalist Mohammed Omer. Sheer professionalism, and a determination to tell the unvarnished truth about Gaza to the western world, earned him the coveted Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2008 while he was still only 23. He received the award in London and went on a speaking tour of European capitals. On the way home to his family in Gaza he was detained and brutally beaten up by Israeli border and security thugs at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan, and hospitalized with severe injuries. In the book Mo tells the shocking story in his own words.

Perhaps Mo’s darkest hour – and he must have had many in his young life – was in January 2009 at the height of Israel’s vicious blitzkrieg on Gaza’s civilians. He wrote to me: “I have been in Holland the past few weeks in hospital, with high fever and following up Gaza’s appalling situations. My family have been under very awful situations, but today I managed to get hold of them finally and they are all alive. Some damages around, but that doesn’t matter as long as they are alive. I have been so worried and also sad to lose some of my friends who are journalists and others were injured… shame on the international community to allow this to happen.”

Yes indeed, shame on the international community which, 18 months later, has still done nothing to resolve the situation and actually rewards the lawless Israeli regime while it continues air strikes and threatens to repeat the atrocities.

Ken writes from a humanistic standpoint, as befits a professor of psychology. He treats those he meets with sensitivity and respect. His great affection for them shines through at all times.

And I like the way he came to the task almost by accident, as I did, after reading a book by a remarkable peace activist. It changed his life completely, he says.

Palestinians have been stripped of nearly everything – their lands, water resources, possessions, dignity, quality of life – and are left with only their education (which the Israelis do their damnedest to disrupt) and their culture. Women value education, pursue it energetically and hold down responsible jobs. I think their influence would surprise westerners.

This is not to say that the menfolk neglect their education. On the contrary. Palestine’s strangulated economy is full of well-qualified men. But it is right that many of Ken’s contributors are female. Despite decades of deprivation and hardship the rich Palestinian-Arab culture survives. The women, with their resourcefulness and strong sense of family, have seen to it and injected it with an indomitable spirit.

Letters from Palestine

Letters from Palestine

Letters from Palestine will put you through the emotional wringer – you’ll share the laughter, pride, helplessness, despair, anger and even the camaraderie. It is written with a pleasant light touch while providing an accurate portrayal of the plight of the Palestinians.

The picture painted by Kenneth Ring and his friends is, of course, seriously at odds with the one invented and broadcast by the propagandists in Tel Aviv and their hirelings in the US and British governments. Anyone who has been to the occupied Holy Land knows that Letters from Palestine speaks the truth.

And Ken’s being Jewish makes the book all the more remarkable. I see it as one of the few beacons of decency in a swamp of deceit, and I would like one day to shake him by the hand.

I understand that proceeds from the book are to be split between the Atfaluna School for the Deaf in Gaza, where Ken sponsors a child, and civil society NGOs in the West Bank with which co-author Ghassan Abdullah is associated.

God and Allah bless you, Kenneth Ring, for your gift to better understanding.

Stuart Littlewood
27 June 2010

  • Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk

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Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion

"This Time We Went Too Far"

By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN | CounterPunch

Editors’ Note: This article is excerpted from Norman Finkelstein’s important new book about the Gaza conflict, “This Time We Went Too Far” published this month by OR Books. To purchase a copy of the complete book please visit OR Books. This book is not available from bookstores or other online retailers.

Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel. As polling data of Americans and Europeans, both Gentiles and Jews, suggest, the public has become increasingly critical of Israeli policy over the past decade. The horrific images of death and destruction broadcast around the world during and after the invasion accelerated this development. “The increased and brutal frequency of war in this volatile region has shifted international opinion,” the British Financial Times editorialized one year later, “reminding Israel it is not above the law. Israel can no longer dictate the terms of debate.”


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Book Review: Zionism’s Invented State

Sam Bahour 

Israeli Exceptionalism : The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism
by M. Shahid Alam
Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pp., £55.00
Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism arrived in the mail shortly after I completed sending a thank you note to two other authors and friends, Kathleen and Bill Christison.  The Christison’s had just released their newest title, Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Pluto Press) and I felt that they deserved a huge thank you for encapsulating their eyewitness report of Israeli military dispossession and occupation in the warped ideological framework of Zionism.  I felt such a framing depicted a high sense of rarely found political maturity on behalf of American analysts.  Israeli Exceptionalism was a natural next read for it peeled the onion of Zionism to reveal how deeply flawed this ideology was and is and how it has become a destabilizing factor which puts people of the region—and arguably beyond—in serious jeopardy. 

Israeli Exceptionalism is not only a must read, it is a must think about book.  To add intellectual spice, every chapter starts with a few quotes of prominent individuals related to the topic at hand.  Reading these quotes alone speak volumes of the human tragedy, in thought and lives, that Zionism evoked. 

Author M. Shahid Alam, a non-Arab, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston does a fascinating job of creating a repository of references on Zionism by way of narrative and footnotes.  Although I think of myself as well-read on the topic, I attest that I learned much from Israeli Exceptionalism, not only in terms of identifying new references, but also in terms of analysis and context. 

It was not the first time I have read the word “exceptionalism” in relation to Israel.  New York Times columnist Roger Cohen recently wrote that Israel “lives in a perpetual state of exceptionalism.” (New York Times, Oct. 16, 2009).  However, Professor Alam explored this Israeli phenomenon on a deeper level of its underlying ideology to shed light on why this abnormal state seems to be unable to come to terms with modern day realities.  The book addresses three principal forms of Israeli exceptionalism: 1) the “divine right” of Jews, 2) “Israeli achievements,” which at first glance seem impressive, and 3) the Jews’ “uniquely tragic history.”  Alam explains that, “In order to secure itself against these “unique” threats to its existence, Israel claims exemption from the demands of international laws.”  Sadly, so long as Israel resists permitting international law to be its reference point, despite the fact that Israel’s own birth is owed to the same body of law, the only alternative Israel allows for is the age-old Law of the Jungle—the law of might is right. 

Throughout the book the author uses a new term, “Islamicate,” which this writer, a secular Palestinian, found a sober source of food for thought, especially given the state of global and regional affairs today.  As a foil for his historical review of the development of Zionism, its trials and tribulations, and the existence of Israel, the author gives us the Islmicate—the Muslim world, or the “Islamic heartland”—which forces the reader to see the larger context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Given the events of 9/11 and all that proceeded it, including the shift from a Cold War paradigm to a War on Terror one, this backdrop is a key framing for the analysis.  However, the author speaks at some length of the Arab nationalist movement which unsuccessfully attempted to face off with Israel, but skips the depth of the secular Palestinian national movement that broke away from official Arab nationalism leadership and kept the Palestinian struggle for freedom and impendence alive all these years, albeit under threat today from an Islamist trend in the region.  That noted, Alam is correct when he ended the book by saying, “The Islamicate world today is not what it was during World War I. It is noticeably less inclined to let foreigners draw their maps for them.” 

The thesis of the book is that “The Zionist movement in Palestine has generated endemic violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians.  Since 1948, this violence has repeatedly pitted Israel against the Palestinians and its neighbors. It has dragged Western societies, especially the United States, into ever widening and deepening conflicts with the Islamicate.” Professor Alam argues that “the history of these ever-expanding circles of conflict and instability was contained in the Zionist idea itself.” 

This approach to understanding Zionism and Israel —the notion that an all-encompassing plan has and is guiding Israel—is a constant source of debate between myself and many Israeli friends.  I argue that a macro plan, one that has a guiding thrust to force the realization of the original Zionist myth that Palestine was a “land with no people for a people with no land” is in place and motivating many on the Israeli side.  Many Israelis argue that this notion gives too much credit to their society and leadership and contend that minimal planning, chance, luck, and near total haphazardness have brought them to their precarious state of affairs.  After a careful reading of Israeli Exceptionalism I tend to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle.  Like the founders of Zionism, Israel’s current leadership is too politically savvy to try and micromanage the future.  Instead it provides an overall framework and lets its constantly adapting organizations—the World Zionist Organization, then Israel—deal with the required, real-time maneuvering based on the ever-changing realities and interests of the moment. 

Professor Alam carefully follows the intertwining interrelationships among many seemingly disparate movements that have, collectively, driven the State of Israel—the exclusionist ideology of Zionism, interests of shifting global powers, anti-Semitism, Christian Zionism, Jewish Diaspora, the Israeli lobby, and the clout ascertained by serving the short term political interests of individual western leaders.  Although the text is heavily footnoted, the author’s many insights prompt the reader to want to learn more and corroborate some of the information provided: particularly in the chapter devoted to “Jewish Factors in Zionist Success,” for example, where the author’s historical portrayal of Jewish influence in the service of Zionism/Israel around the world suggests much more of a monolithic dynamic among these communities than I tend to find plausible.  For example, and Alam also makes mention of this aspect of Jewish Diaspora: “Jews of 19th century Germany founded the Reform movement, rejecting the idea of a Jewish nation …The Reform movement of those days was a compromise between total apostasy (assimilation) and orthodoxy.” (Ami Isseroff, Opposition of Reform Judaism to Zionism – A History, August 12, 2005).  Given such strong trends within world Jewry that opposed Zionism for considerable periods in the movement’s history, Alam’s monolithic view seems tendentious. I would claim that superior organization and dynamic leadership among committed Zionists is what led to the “success” of Zionism, more so than any natural Jewish leaning toward a desire for an exclusionist state, with all that that means for others. A significant minority of Jews alive today in fact continue to oppose Zionism on the grounds that it is very “un-Jewish.” 

Meantime, the book chronicles the emergence of an influential trend of Jewish-only exceptionalism long before the horrific misery of Jews after WWII, and as a matter of fact, even before the recognized founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote The Jewish State (a book I re-read annually.)  However, Alam correctly notes that “Israel’s creation and survival are anomalies” and that, after nearly 100 years of Zionist/Israeli exclusionism evinced in a policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, “It would appear that Israel’s demographic constraints are binding: and these constraints may well determine the ultimate destiny of this exclusionary colonialism.”  “The tragedy of Zionism,” proclaims Alam, “is written into its design; its end is contained in its beginning.”  That may be true for many –isms of this world, some which have already collapsed of their own weight. 

A Zionist friend and writer, Bernard Avishai, recently wrote in his latest book, “Israel is a society where institutional discrimination against individuals for an accident of birth or a profession of faith has been so routine it is hardly noticed—not, at least, by Jews.” (The Hebrew Republic, Harcourt, pg. 25).  Another Zionist, albeit of a completely different school of thought, Israel’s current Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, was quoted earlier this month as saying "If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic … If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state."  These words coming from across the Zionist spectrum should not be taken lightly.  Remember: apartheid is a crime against humanity! 

Professor Alam states that “at first, Zionists did not seek to conceal the colonial character of their movement…concealment was not necessary in the age of high imperialism and triumphant racism.”  The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), "determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was revoked by Resolution 46/86 on December 16, 1991. In the history of the UN, this is the only resolution that has ever been revoked.  As a Palestinian experiencing the real-time impact of the racialist policies of a Zionist-motivated Israeli state, I believe that revoking this resolution was a mistake because it only postponed the inevitable day of reckoning when Israel would have to look at itself in the mirror and accept what it found there as real.  Reading Israeli Exceptionalism can help us to understand how such historical oddities evolve. 

Another Israeli friend, Deb Reich, a non-Zionist but someone who has lived—sometimes painfully—the Zionist reality, expressed it rather succinctly when I asked her about Zionism. She said, “I have come to believe that lecturing people about their badness is the last thing on earth that can solve our problems and will rarely change their behavior one iota; in fact, it can make them more stubborn. I know that we have no choice but to try to hold people accountable for their actions in terms of both the intended and unintended consequences for others, because without accountability there is chaos; but at the same time, if we want positive change, then we MUST open a window for people on how they can redeem themselves, and redeem the situation.  That endeavor is what leadership is supposed to be about.” 

Understanding history is one thing, but being able to come to terms with it and survive it is something materially different:, just ask Palestinians living today.  Is turning back the clock of history doable or even desirable today?  Left to the tools of our day—international law, compensation, and hopefully reconciliation—will history correct itself in the future with the emergence of smarter generations of Israelis and Palestinians?  Can we Palestinians survive as a people to see that day?  These are questions we ponder daily while under the influence of Israeli occupation and dispossession. 

Professor Alam believes that the tide of Zionism will begin to turn when the banana republics of the Middle East begin to fall and are “replaced by Islamist governments” at which time “it may become difficult for the United States to maintain its presence in the region.”  I beg for the international community to uphold their obligations under international law and resolve this conflict before that day. 

The writer is a Palestinian-American living in the Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994) and may be reached at sbahour@palnet.com. 

Note: An edited version of this review was published in Arab News on March 17, 2010 and may be found at: http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/books/article31014.ece