Palestinian Heritage Foundation Holds 17th Annual Banquet

By Jane Adas


Rashid Khalidi signing his latest book, Resurrecting Empire, at the Palestinian Heritage Foundation banquet (staff photo J. Adas).

THE 17TH ANNIVERSARY banquet of the Palestinian Heritage Foundation, held Sept. 12, was devoted to a memorial for Prof. Edward W. Said. Last year’s honored guest, Dr. Clovis Maksoud, sent a letter from Jordan in which he remembered that Said, very near death at that point, had sent a message regretting his inability to attend the tribute for Maksoud: “Imagine that Edward even thought of the event at that moment!” Maksoud further wrote that Said was disdainful of compromise under the pretext of realism, but was passionate about the need for reconciliation, not only to heal wounds, but also to animate the integrity of common humanity.

Said’s widow, Mariam, told the guests that her husband’s political involvement began during the Vietnam War. Because his education had been Western, he re-educated himself by reading non-Western writers and learned to link the Palestinian issue to other struggles. Separation between peoples is not a solution, Mrs. Said concluded, arguing that our only hope lies within interaction and cooperation, as in the East-West Divan founded by her husband and the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. The family is striving to keep that project alive, she said. In that spirit, the Palestinian Heritage Foundation donated proceeds of the banquet to the National Conservatory of Music in Ramallah.

Keynote speaker Dr. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, said it is natural for a community that has been subjected to racist hostility to be proud of its intellectuals. Arab Americans should cherish the memory of Edward Said, Khalidi said, but warned against creating a cult of devotion. What the community desperately needs now, he emphasized, are not shining leaders, but institutions that are not based on a personality. He pointed out that in its greatest time of crisis, the Jewish community failed to influence the U.S. racist immigration policy in the 1930s because its institutions were insufficiently mature. Since then, as we all know, they have built powerful institutions.

Khalidi exhorted the Arab-American community to quit focusing on the role of individuals, to quit waiting for a savior, but instead to build institutions that are so strong that those in power cannot afford to ignore them. He acknowledged that this requires hard work, time, money, and self-effacing teamwork. It requires skills in fund-raising, management, public relations and accounting, and is far less glamorous than relying on charismatic leaders. But it is what is most necessary to change the situation, Khalidi insisted.

Much of Said’s work was directed to American audiences, Khalidi explained, because he understood that the challenge of furthering the cause of justice and redressing the image of Arabs lies here in the U.S. The same reasoning inspired Farah and Hanan Munayyer to establish the Palestinian Heritage Foundation. The Munayyers frequently travel with their collection of Palestinian and Syrian costumes and embroidery to educate Americans about an aspect of Arab culture of which they otherwise would never have heard. This past year the couple presented lectures and exhibits at the Museum of Natural History in New York, the White Plains Public Library, the Ibn Rushd Arab cultural organization in Richmond, Virginia, and the Heritage Museum and Center in Pennsylvania. The Munayyer collection was recently augmented by two generous donations: the late Hala Maksoud’s collection of Arab costumes, donated by her sister Hania and brother Ousama Salam; and a unique set of antique dolls dressed in Arab costumes made in the late 1940s by Palestinian refugees at UNRWA camps in Lebanon, donated by Ambassador William Stoltzfus.

Adam Keller in Princeton


	Women In Black members Yael Korin (l) and Elana Golden protest at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles days after returning from Palestine (staff photo S. Twair).

Adam Keller, a spokesman for Gush Shalom and editor of The Other Israel, discussed “The Gaza Disengagement Plan: Dilemmas for the Peace Camp” at Princeton University on Sept. 27. The talk was sponsored by Churches for Middle East Peace-New Jersey, the Princeton Middle East Society, the International Center, and the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

A peace activist his entire life, Keller served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but has been imprisoned three times: in 1984 for refusing to serve in Lebanon; in 1988, during the first intifada, for writing on tanks, “Solders of the IDF: Refuse to be oppressors”; and in 1990 when, after Israeli soldiers beat a Palestinian father to death in front of his children, Keller decided he could not bear to serve in any capacity with such an army. The military declared him “unfit for service.” Keller’s son has become a complete pacifist who refuses to serve in any army on any terms. He is among the high school seniors, now numbering more than 150, who refused to report to the induction center, opting instead for six months in prison.These young men, Keller said, are the real heroes.


	TOP: Adam Keller; ABOVE: New Yorker Festival panelists (l-r) Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Tarazi, Ari Shavit, Benny Morris, and Rashid Khalidi (photo Suhail MuGhal).

The failure of Camp David and the second intifada marginalized the peace movement, said Keller. A new literary genre has emerged, he quipped: Confessions of Former Leftists. Israelis elected as their prime minister Ariel Sharon, who vowed to end the intifada by force. Yet with military means used to the fullest—targeted and untargeted killings, more Palestinians in prison than at any previous time, thousands of homes demolished, more than 10,000 acres razed, re-ococupation, curfews, and the wall/fence/barrier—Israel has been unable to break the Palestinians, Keller said.

Then, in mid-2003, things began to change. He could feel the change at every level, Keller said, from grass roots to the media: 670 air force pilots refused to bomb Palestinian cities; dozens of veterans of Israeli elite command units refused to serve in the territories; the reserve system was beginning to break down. The peace movement adopted a new slogan—“Sharon has no solution”—and the Geneva initiative was gaining popular support.

All of this pushed Sharon to the defensive, Keller said. But Sharon is clever, he cautioned, and realized that to survive he must appear to take up some agenda of the left—hence the plan to withdraw from Gaza and four tiny West Bank settlements. This, Keller admitted, has placed the peace movement in a dilemma. They can’t be against dismantling settlements, but are aware that Sharon intends to keep nearly all of the West Bank. How can you make a sound bite with “Yes, but…”? Keller asked.

Within a year, Keller predicted, Sharon will either quit, find a way to wriggle out of the withdrawal, or actually remove the settlers from Gaza—then declare the problem solved. In the meantime, according to Keller, settlers and the extreme right are chanting incantations for Sharon’s death and threatening civil war. In answer to a question about the difficulty of removing the settlers, Keller responded that the construction industry in Israel is powerful, especially within the Likud Party. The industry contracted to build the settlements, he noted, but would welcome a second contract to dismantle them, and a third to rebuild them within Israel.

The peace movement is waiting to see how the situation unfolds, Keller said. He added that he finds hope in the many Israelis, Palestinians and internationals working together to oppose the wall, and in the knowledge that although Israel has been living by the sword and a powerful U.S. gives it unlimited support, none of this is permanent. Keller concluded by saying that Israel is lucky that Palestinians and other Arabs are ready to accept Israel within the 1967 borders. Therefore, he explained, it is in Israel’s vital self-interest to end the occupation.

New Yorker Festival

The New Yorker sponsored a panel discussion on “The Middle East Conflict: Can there ever be peace?” at the New York Public Library on Oct. 3. The moderator was Jeffrey Goldberg, a New Yorker staff writer who has written for the magazine about Hezbollah and Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. His first question, “In 25 years does the state of Israel as we know it still exist?” elicited responses from the panelists that revealed attitudes that each maintained throughout the discussion.

First to reply was Prof. Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University, one of the original “new historians” whose books, particularly The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988), challenged the traditional Israeli narrative about the events of 1948. Israel’s survival depends on the receptivity of the Arab Middle East to accept a Jewish state in their midst, Morris argued—a prospect for which he seemed to have little hope. Although Zionists originally wanted the whole of the Palestine Mandate, he acknowledged, by the 1930s they understood that other people were there. The problem, according to Morris, is that the Palestinians never have reached the same accommodation, and that even if they were to get Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, they would continue to want areas within the 1967 borders. Morris accused the Arab states of supporting “extreme Palestinian positions, such as the Right of Return,” which, he said, would be the destruction of Israel. Although he said at one point that Arafat was the only Palestinian with the stature to deliver an historic compromise, Morris later complained that Israel has no partner as long as Arafat is in power.

In the opinion of Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Jerusalem daily Haaretz, Israel will continue to exist only if a Palestinian state is allowed to exist. Because of what he characterized as the existential demographic threat, Shavit said Israel is doomed if it does not retreat from most of the occupied territories. He views settlements as Israel’s worst mistake since 1967. For Shavit, the state of Israel represents Jewish civilization in which Arabs can live as a minority. “Benny Morris’ books had more influence on me than on him,” Shavit said, explaining that they taught him that his duty as a Jewish Israeli is to understand the Palestinian tragedy, while Palestinians’ duty is to understand Israelis’ real fears.

Columbia University Prof. Rashid Khalidi, whose most recent book is Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East, foresees a continuation of the present: Israel in charge of what is effectively one state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan with terrible inequality. Palestinians have a serious leadership crisis, Khalidi acknowledged, and people with guns are seizing the initiative. He sees Palestinian elections as the only way out, and agreed with Shavit that Arabs need to better understand European anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. This must not, however, be used to justify the Palestinian catastrophe, he argued.

In response to Goldberg’s first question, Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser in the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization, hoped Israel “as we know it”—where three and a half million Christians and Muslims are unequal—will not continue to exist as an apartheid state. Because of the settlers, their infrastructure, and now the wall with the land on the Israeli side and Palestinians on the other side, Tarazi said, a Palestinian state no longer is viable. He said he would like to see one state, with equal rights, not based on religion or ethnicity, for all. Tarazi described the various peace processes, from Camp David to the Geneva initiative, as reflecting the Israeli position of wanting to keep the land without the people in order to get rid of the demographic problem. With creative thinking, he said, a negotiated two-state solution is possible—but it won’t work if it is imposed, because such a solution would be based on power and injustice rather than international law. When Shavit asked Tarazi to give up on the demand for total justice, Tarazi responded, “What is Israel going to give up?”

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