Dr. Mustafa Barghouti Narrows “Big Gap” Between Gaza Reality, Americans’ Knowledge

By Jane Adas


	Dr. Mustafa Barghouti (Staff photo J. Adas).

AFTER ISRAEL ended its 22-day “Operation Cast Lead,” Dr. Mustafa Barghouti spent a week in the Gaza Strip. Israel refused him entry through the Erez checkpoint, so he had to make a two-day journey to Gaza via Jordan and Egypt.

Even though he had followed events closely on al-Jazeera television, Barghouti said, he was so shocked by what he saw in Gaza that he couldn’t speak about it for four days. Now he feels it is his duty to tell the world, and especially the U.S., because of the “big gap between what’s happening in Palestine and your [Americans’] knowledge of it.” That knowledge was exemplified by the first question he was asked when he appeared on Fox News: “When will Palestinians stop barbaric assaults on Israel?”

Barghouti, a medical doctor, is head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Committee, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. During his U.S. visit, he spoke at Columbia University Feb. 12 on “The War on Gaza and the Israeli Elections: What Next?”

Gaza, he explained, is a mere 220 square miles with a population of 1.5 million people who have been under siege for almost two years. In the assault’s first day alone, Israelis killed 150 Gazans. By the end of the operation, the Israeli offensive had killed more than 1,400 people and injured 5,300, the majority of them civilians—although Barghouti observed that Western media counts only children and women as civilians, “as if Palestinian men cannot be civilians.” By contrast, he noted, Israel’s fatalities totaled 4 civilians and 10 soldiers, half of the latter killed by friendly fire.

While in Gaza, Barghouti spoke with older residents who had lived through 1948 and 1967; all agreed that Operation Cast Lead was the most brutal. Beyond the complete destruction of 17,000 homes, with another 20,000 left uninhabitable, Barghouti said what shocked him most was the destruction of what remained of Gaza’s private sector—351 factories, including its largest cement factory, and many farms—which the Israeli army dynamited in the last two days as it was leaving Gaza. Barghouti wryly remarked that he was under the impression that the U.S. supports the private sector.

When Egypt closed one tiny port in 1967, he reminded the audience, Israel deemed it an act of war. Gaza has been under siege for two years, with all land, air, and sea passages closed. This, too, Barghouti reasoned, is an act of war.

Why, he went on to ask, did Israel launch Operation Cast Lead? If it was for “regime change,” it hasn’t worked, he pointed out: the assault has empowered Hamas and reduced the approval rating of President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA to only 13 percent. Nor did it boost Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s electoral chances. In trying to present himself as the most brutal candidate for prime minister, Barak said of Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman that he was “a lamb in hawkish clothing—when did he ever kill anybody himself?”

“This is the voice of a moderate?” Barghouti wondered.

Possibly, he continued, the assault on Gaza served as a testing ground for new weapons that Israel can now market.

Barghouti said he viewed the results of the Israeli elections as not merely a move to the right, but a declaration that Israel, so corrupted by occupation, now accepts to be an apartheid state. Asked whether he prefers a one-state or two-state solution, Barghouti responded that one state would be easier with regard to equal rights and duties. His heart wants two states, he admitted, but his brain has seen the maps and knows the window is closing on the two-state solution.

If there were to be a Palestinian state, Barghouti stressed, it must be a real state with the right to choose its leaders. However, Palestinians do not now have the power to choose one or two states, he noted: that choice is Israel’s. However, he concluded, “We Palestinians do have the power to refuse to accept to be slaves of either occupation or apartheid.”

Juan Cole on Occupations, Obama

Professor Juan Cole, whose latest book is Engaging the Muslim World, discussed “Gaza to Iraq: Can Obama End the Other Occupation?” at Alwan for the Arts in New York on Feb. 13. He began by stating that the strength of the U.S. derives from soft power—namely our principles, even when we are in breach of them—and our aspirations. It is therefore of concern that between 2000 and now, the favorable impression of America in Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, has plummeted from 75 percent to 18 percent, and in Turkey, a NATO ally, from 56 percent to 9 percent. Cole interpreted the findings as meaning that because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Washington’s lack of even-handedness in Israel/Palestine, much of the Muslim world now views this country as a bully.

In the case of Iraq, Cole noted, the fact that the Bush administration offered changing justifications for the invasion—weapons of mass destruction, links to al-Qaeda, democracy—suggests that it never gave the real reason. Cole pointed out that the U.S. did not invade Burma, which has no oil. The administration plan, according to Cole, was to replace Saddam Hussain with the CIA-funded Ahmad Chalabi, establish a permanent base in the region, and get out in six months. However, when, after unanticipated violence, the Iraqis maneuvered the U.S. into allowing free and fair elections, Chalabi couldn’t get elected to parliament.

Paul Bremer, whom Cole dubbed “Iraq’s MacArthur,” formed a committee to write a constitution for Iraq and planned to have caucus-based elections with appointed provisional councils as the electors. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani then issued two fatwas, which Cole described as models of liberal democratic principles: that a legitimate government derives from the will of the people—meaning, Cole explained, that the American regime may not impose a constitution on Iraq; and that elections should be fair and open, with one man, one vote.

Iraq’s recent regional elections were won by the Islamic Dawa Party, which Cole described as the Shi’i version of Hamas, and in no way hostile to Iran. Last year Iraq further maneuvered Washington into accepting a Status of Forces Agreement that called for all U.S. troops to be out by the end of 2011, leaving no permanent bases. President Obama, Cole noted, caught a break from the Iraqis themselves.

Cole was not optimistic about Obama being able to end the other occupation—Israel’s. He characterized the Oslo accords as deeply flawed, with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expecting the PA to police Palestinians on Israel’s behalf, and Arafat making the mistake of thinking Israel would actually withdraw from the occupied territories. When the U.S. pushed for Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Cole reminded his listeners, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked that Hamas not be allowed to run, but the Bush administration replied that that would not look good. Ever since Hamas’ Change and Reform Party won the free and fair vote, the U.S. and Israel have tried to undo Hamas.

Cole sees three remaining possibilities: Avigdor Lieberman’s plan to push Palestinians into Jordan and Egypt could come about, which Cole said would lead to war; apartheid could deepen, which would lead to more boycotts and would not be sustainable; or Israel could be forced to offer citizenship to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, which, he concluded, “would be the end of Zionism as we know it.”

Gorenberg Discusses Israel’s Future, Amercan Jews

The New Israel Fund sponsored a Feb. 8 discussion in New York by Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977, about Israel’s future and American Jewry. In considering why there is a debate about Israel’s policies in Israel’s Haaretz but not in the U.S. media, Gorenberg recalled his graduate student days in Jerusalem in 1982 when Lebanon had become Israel’s quagmire. His American roommate felt unlucky because he was going home to Oregon and would have to defend Israel. By remaining in Israel, Gorenberg did not have to act as Israel’s district attorney, and in fact had an obligation to debate the issue.

Gorenberg maintains that Israel avoided making a choice about what to do with the land it gained in 1967, which he argues came about without premeditation in a defensive war. Yet holding on to the territories indefinitely has been the most strategic threat to Israel as a democratic Jewish state, he said, noting that Israel faces no military threat. “The Cossacks are not galloping towards the shtetl,” he pointed out, “Iran is not Hitler’s Germany,” and Israel, after all, has second strike capability.

He likened diaspora Jews’ “inability to take yes for an answer” to a story about a Soviet Jew who was part of a delegation ranting against Western imperialism during the Cold War. When told afterwards, “You’re Jewish. You must have your own opinion,” the Soviet Jew replied, “Yes I do, but I don’t agree with it.” Gorenberg pleaded with American Jews that if they believe the future of Israel is peace, “for God’s sake, say it!”

“Lynne Stewart: An American Story”


Attorney Lynne Stewart (Staff photo J. Adas).

In April 2002 Lynne Stewart, attorney for Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was indicted for conspiring to aid terrorists and lying to the government. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced her arrest on late night’s “David Letterman Show.” Soon after that, with Stewart’s permission, Canadian filmmakers Francis van den Heuvel (director and editor) and Claude Jacqueline Herdhuin (writer) began following her case with the idea of making a documentary about it. Six years later, “Lynne Stewart: An American Story” was screened in New York on Feb. 24 with Stewart and Herdhuin in attendance. The 78-minute documentary is still in rough cut because, as Herdhuin explained, the producer has not yet agreed to release it. The Canadians chose to focus on Stewart’s case as an example of how, “in the name of a ‘War on Terror,’ there has been a war on justice.”

The film contains many illuminating moments. For example, the blind sheikh was not convicted of complicity in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, as the media would have us believe. Rather, it was because when FBI informant Imad Salem said to him, “Let’s blow up the U.N.,” Abdel Rahman declined, saying it would look like Muslims were against peace. “Think of something else.” The FBI then defined the sheikh’s role as approving or disapproving targets and sentenced him to life in solitary confinement.

After Abdel Rahman’s conviction, when Stewart became his lawyer to seek an appeal, the government required that she sign a “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMS) agreement designed to shut off communication between prisoners and the outside world and giving up the right to the confidentiality of their meetings. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark views SAMS as unconstitutional because they deprive the client of counsel. In 2000 Stewart very publicly passed a message from the sheikh to Reuters withdrawing his support for a cease-fire in Egypt. No action was taken against her, however, until April 2002. The typical response to such an action is denial of the lawyer’s right to see her client.

Attorney Ron Kuby tells the camera that working on Islamist cases is hard work for little money. “Everyone publicly hates you,” he says. “If you do a good job, you get indicted.”

Stewart was convicted in February 2003. Her case was dismissed four months later because of “vagueness,” but she was then recharged and again convicted. The government asked for 30 years; she was given 28 months. She is now free and awaiting appeal, but there are scars. Even her 7-year-old grandson had to ask, “Did Grandma help the terrorists?”

In the post-screening discussion, Stewart said her fondest hope is “some vindication. I don’t want them to get away with it.”

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