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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 55-56 Waging Peace Organizing Against Occupation with Finkelstein
SCHOLAR NORMAN Finkelstein opened the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’s seventh annual national conference with a discussion entitled “Organizing Against Occupation: Norman Finkelstein’s Story of Combating Israeli Apartheid.” The July 25 event, held at American University in Washington, DC, was co-sponsored with the Washington Peace Center. Finkelstein began his talk by citing recent polls concerning how the American public—and, more specifically, American Jews—perceive the Israeli occupation of Palestine. According to these polls, the average American has a higher opinion of Israelis than of Palestinians. Americans overwhelmingly support an even-handed policy toward resolving the conflict. What was surprising, Finkelstein noted, was that 50 to 55 percent of Americans feel Israel is not doing enough to resolve the conflict, and that 60 percent of the public support a two-state solution. He quoted M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum, who stated that America’s support for Israel is broad, but not very deep. Finkelstein then turned to Jewish Americans’ opinion of Israel, noting that they appear to be distancing themselves from the Jewish state. The new pro-Israel lobbying group JStreet found in its research that 60 percent of American Jews speak about Israel with any frequency; the rest rarely discuss it. He wondered what the 60 percent were saying, Finkelstein said. “I speak about it frequently,” he pointed out, “but it’s not an encouraging sign for those who want me to talk about Israel.” The JStreet poll also found that 30 percent of American Jews describe themselves as distanced from Israel, and 60 percent oppose an attack on Iran—“at the same time Israel is calling this [the conflict with Iran] the second Holocaust,” Finkelstein observed. Finkelstein went on to speculate on the cause of the shift in American Jewish opinion of Israel. One reason could be due to American Jews intermarrying with non-Jews, which, he said, is now at 60 percent. He was more inclined, however, to attribute the change to the fact that people are more informed about the true history of the conflict since 1967. “The kind of sheen that Israel had after the 1967 war has been tarnished,” he explained. A striking fact, Finkelstein noted, is that if one reviews any standard Israeli or Palestinian textbook on the origins of the conflict, they tell the same story. “The scholarly literature is very critical of Israel’s history,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago, there was not a [printed] article that didn’t begin with Israel’s purity of arms, Israel’s moral army, the only army in the world that includes moral factors into its fighting.” Finkelstein emphasized the importance of legal records of the struggle. It is clear, he said, that the majority of the world’s countries support a two-state solution; compensation for land; right of return; East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine; and the illegality of Israeli settlements under international law. This past year, he noted, 161 nations (with the exception of Israel, the U.S. Palau, Tuvalu, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands) voted in favor of a U.N. resolution supporting all five of these conditions. Finkelstein singled out the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July 2004 advisory opinion concerning Israel’s separation wall as a breakthrough document and one of the greatest victories for those striving for lasting peace. The court went through every so-called final status issue, he noted, and in each case they found Israel to be in the wrong. The vote was 14 to one—a rare verdict for this court. The one dissenting vote came from the court’s American judge, who stated that he agreed with much of the majority opinion, especially the court’s decision that the settlements are illegal. “If Israel can’t have settlements, they don’t want the West Bank,” Finkelstein reminded his audience. Finkelstein’s answer to the question, “how do we proceed?” is to focus on documentary records, which he described as “Israel’s Achilles’ heel.” Documentary records carry moral weight, he noted, and reminded the audience that Zionists invested great care to ensure that the world knew the Balfour Declaration as well as the U.N. Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban called 181 Israel’s birth certificate because it gave the Jewish state legitimacy. “It said Israel is not a bastard child,” Finkelstein said. “It is a legitimate legal offspring of the international community.” Finkelstein believes supporters of Palestinian rights now have their own Balfour Declaration with the International Court of Justice’s decision and their own partition resolution with the many U.N. General Assembly resolutions passed over the years. Describing them as “very powerful weapons,” Finkelstein emphasized that “first we have to learn them, and then we have to make sure everyone else knows them.” Finkelstein reminded activists that even though the Zionists got the Balfour Declaration passed, they still continued to face great opposition and resistance in Britain—in fact, many in the British government attempted to rescind the decision. The 1939 White Paper was one such effort to block the Zionists. He advised his listeners to stick to the facts of the conflict and avoid debates on such issues as “Have you now or have you ever been a Zionist?” Israel and its supporters, he said, prefer to debate abstract questions such as “Do Jews have a right to a state?” or “Is Zionism a form of a Jewish liberation movement?” These kinds of debates, he said, are distractions from the real issues: “It’s cutting edge fluff, marshmallow topped with ready whip.” Questions and debates must be free of ideological baggage, he maintained, and should be framed in a different manner, such as: “Did ethnic cleansing occur?”; “Are demolishing homes and torture morally right?” or “Is building a wall on another people’s country just?” Finkelstein’s final point was that in order for those seeking justice for the Palestinian people to move forward they need to build on the foundation that has already been laid—and that foundation is the two-state solution. In 1988, he recalled, PLO leader Yasser Arafat based his whole argument for a peace settlement with Israel on the two-state solution, U.N. Resolution 181. For the movement to switch to another strategy such as the one-state solution is difficult and not very constructive, he argued. The course that has been set over the last century is correct, Finkelstein said, citing the ICJ decision as an example. The ICJ is a very conservative body which was not happy to go against Israel, but it had to deliver the decision it did because there was no other course of action. Finkelstein reminded his audience of Chairman Mao’s famous quote about uniting the many to defeat the few. “You don’t unite the few in your moral purity (such as the one-state solution) to defeat the many, because you won’t win,” he said. The road to victory, he said, is to work to isolate Israel and its supporters by employing the language of human rights and international law. “We are lucky,” he said. “Within these languages Israel doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” Although many may say that the two-state solution proposal has been tried and has failed, Finkelstein strongly disagrees. In his opinion the pro-Palestinian forces have never sufficiently organized to make it a reality. “If we make a commitment, if we are willing to take the risk and make the sacrifices,” Finkelstein concluded, “I believe a just and lasting peace built on the firm foundation of truth and justice can yet be won.” —Jamal Najjab |
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