[WCUSP] Fwd: Talking to a Wall-Excellent-Palestine in the Mind of America

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Karen deslierres <karendes at umich.edu>
Date: Feb 17, 2008 5:29 PM
Subject: Talking to a Wall-Excellent-Palestine in the Mind of America
To: Karen deslierres <karendes at umich.edu>



February 14, 2008
Talking to a Wall
Palestine in the Mind of America

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison02142008.html

You would think that showing maps clearly delineating the truncated,
obviously non-viable area available for a possible Palestinian state
and showing pictures that define Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territories would have some kind of impact on an audience of astute
but, on this issue, generally uninformed Americans. We recently spoke
to a small foreign affairs discussion group and devoted much of our
presentation to these images of oppression -- images that never
appear in the U.S. media -- in the probably naïve hope of making some
kind of dent in the impassive American attitude toward Israel's 40-
year occupation of Palestinian territory.

But our expectations that these people would listen and perhaps learn
something were sadly misplaced. Few among the elite seminar-style
discussion group seemed concerned about, or even particularly
interested in, what is happening on the ground in Palestine-Israel,
and the event stands as starkly emblematic of American apathy about
the oppressive Israeli regime in the occupied territories that the
United States is enabling and in many instances actively encouraging.

The maps that we displayed of the West Bank, prepared by the UN and
by Israeli human rights groups, clearly depicted the segmented,
disconnected scatter of territorial pieces that would make up the
Palestinian state even in the most optimistic of scenarios --
Palestinian areas broken up by the separation wall cutting deep into
the West Bank; by large Israeli settlements scattered throughout and
taking up something like 10 percent of the territory; by the network
of roads connecting the settlements, all accessible only to Israeli
drivers; and by the Jordan Valley, currently barred to any
Palestinian not already living there, making up fully one-quarter of
the West Bank, and ultimately destined for annexation by Israel.

The maps make it clear that even the most generous Israeli plan would
leave a Palestinian state with only 50-60 percent of the West Bank
(constituting 11-12 percent of original Palestine), broken into
multiple separated segments and including no part of Jerusalem. The
photographs, taken during our several trips to Palestine in recent
years, depicted the separation wall, checkpoints and terminals in the
wall resembling cages, Palestinian homes demolished and official
buildings destroyed, vast Israeli settlements built on confiscated
Palestinian land, destroyed Palestinian olive groves, commerce in
Palestinian cities shut down because of marauding Israeli settlers or
soldiers.

We have shown maps and pictures like these myriad times before, but
have never been received with quite such disinterest. Here was a
group of mostly retired U.S. government officials, academics,
journalists, and business executives, as well as a few still-working
professionals -- all ranging in political orientation from center
right to center left, the cream of informed, educated America, the
exemplar of elite mainstream opinion in the United States. Their lack
of concern about what Israel and, because of its enabling role, the
U.S. are doing to destroy an entire people and their national
aspirations could not have been more evident.

The first person to comment when our presentation concluded,
identifying herself as Jewish, said she had "never heard a more one-
sided presentation" and labeled us "beyond anti-Semitic" -- which
presumably is somewhat worse than plain-and-simple anti-Semitic. This
is always a somewhat upsetting charge, although it is so common and
so expected as to be of little note anymore. What was more noteworthy
was the reaction, or lack of it, among the rest of the assembled, who
never disputed her charge but spent most of the discussion period
either disputing our presentation or trying to find ways to
accommodate "Jewish pain."

Our brief conversation with this woman progressed in an interesting
fashion. We tried to engage her in a discussion about what exactly
was one-sided in our depiction of the situation on the ground and
what she would have liked to see to make it "two-sided." She did not
answer but indicated that she thought whatever Israel did must be
justified by Palestinian actions. "Someone had to have started it,"
she said. We laid out a little history for her, noting that the first
action, the "who-started-it" part, could be traced back to Britain's
Balfour Declaration pledge in 1917 to promote the establishment of a
Jewish homeland in Palestine, at a time when Jews made up no more
than 10 percent of the population of Palestine. Then we came up to
the 1947 UN partition resolution, which allotted 55 percent of
Palestine for a Jewish state at a time when Jews owned only seven
percent of the land and made up slightly less than one-third of the
population.

Her answer was, "Well, but it wasn't Jews who did this." We disabused
her of this and briefly detailed the deliberate Zionist program of
ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population conducted during
1947-48 war, as described by several Israeli historians, including
particularly Ilan Pappe, whose The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is
based on Israeli military archives. Her eyes actually began to bulge,
but she held her tongue. Apparently deciding that she had no way of
refuting these facts, she finally decided that going back in history
was of no utility -- a common Zionist dodge -- and that Israel had
not been established in any case to be a democracy but was a haven
for persecuted Jews and as such has every right to organize itself in
any way it sees fit. The moderator finally called on others who
wanted to speak, and the discussion moved on.

But not very far. The talk now circled, for over an hour, around what
passed for profound discussion: around someone's curious remarks
about Zeitgeist, someone else's equally curious insistence that there
was "something out there that no one would talk about" that was
influencing the situation, a few remarks about Palestinians as
terrorists and how even if Israel made peace with the Palestinians
Hamas would still try to destroy it, a lot of talk about how to
accommodate Jewish pain and, taking off from this, a psychologist's
attempt to draw an analogy between Jews who live in fear of
persecution and the rape victims she counsels who live in constant
fear that they will be raped again or worse.

A few people did ask interested questions about the situation on the
ground and about various aspects of Israeli policy. After the
discussion had centered for quite a while on Jewish pain, one person
pointed out that Palestinians too feel pain and live in fear, but no
one else picked up on this. No one challenged the first speaker's
personal charge of anti-Semitism against us, and in the end there was
almost no mention of the destructive Israeli practices that had been
the subject of our presentation.

We had occasion to email several of the participants the next day. In
one message, we lodged a mild complaint with the three group
organizers about the fact that the charge of anti-Semitism was
allowed not only to stand but to set the tone for much of the
discussion, with no refutation of the substance of the charge by
anyone except us. In another message, sent to a man who had expressed
puzzlement over why the Jewish vote was thought to be important in
U.S. elections, we forwarded without comment an article from Mother
Jones about Barack Obama's difficulties with the Jewish community and
his concerted effort to demonstrate his bona fides by pledging fealty
to Israel and justifying Israel's siege of Gaza.

Finally, to the psychologist, we wrote a comment on her analogy
between Jews and rape victims, observing that as a psychologist she
undoubtedly did not encourage her rape victim clients to perpetuate
their fear or adopt an aggressive attitude toward other people, but
most likely gave them tools to help them regain trust and move beyond
fears for their personal safety. This kind of restorative therapy for
Jews has never been employed, we noted, but on the contrary Israeli
leaders and American Jewish leaders have encouraged Jewish fears,
along with an aggressive, militaristic Israeli policy toward its
neighbors.

These were all gratuitous overtures by us, but they were not
inappropriate or uncivil. Yet not one of these people saw fit to
answer our missives or even acknowledge their receipt -- indicating,
we can only assume, the general level of unconcern among Americans
about the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, including
the siege and starvation imposed on Gazans. Then, too, the lack of
response probably reflects feelings on the part of most attendees
that we are somehow responsible for having involved them in a
discussion that turned out to be fairly unpleasant for them.

Why is this interesting to anyone but us? Because this in-depth
discussion with a small but representative group of intelligent,
thinking Americans is indicative of a broad range of U.S. public
opinion on foreign policy issues, and their level of disinterest in
the consequences of U.S. policies is quite disturbing. The self-
absorption evident during this meeting, the general "don't-rock-the-
boat" posture, the overwhelming lack of concern for the victims of
Israeli and U.S. power amount to a license to kill for the U.S. and
its allies. The same unconcern allowed the United States to get away
with killing millions of Vietnamese decades ago; it gives license to
mass U.S. killing in Iraq and Afghanistan; it is the reason Democrats
still, after seven years of Bush administration torture and killing
around the world, cannot fully separate themselves from Republican
militarism. It gives Israel license to kill and ethnically cleanse
the entire nation of Palestine.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked
on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions
of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at
kathy.bill.christison at comcast.net.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a
National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's Office of
Regional and Political Analysis.

They can be reached at kathy.bill.christison at comcast.net.