Honkey's Help Hillary

THE ABSURD TIMES

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THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: A nice version of our last issue. Right on target!

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Well, Hillary won Pittsburgh, partly because of ABC and partly by double digit IQ white support. She won by 10 percent, which barely makes the "double digit" victory. That amounts to an over all gain of ten delegates (also double digits.). Now, to gain the popular and delegate contest, she only needs to win all the rest of the states by 85% of the vote. At least it would put her closer.

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Remember Norm Finklestein? Fired Professor?

Here is an interview involving him, recently:

ZNet </znet/>
Power, Politics & Scholarship

April 23, 2008 By *Norman Finkelstein*
and *Jake Hess*
and *Margaree Little*

Norman Finkelstein's ZSpace Page </zspace/normanfinkelstein>

Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein is one of the world's foremost authorities on
the Israel-Palestine conflict and the politics of anti-Semitism. He is
the author of five books, including /Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of
Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History/; /Image and Reality of the
Israel-Palestine Conflict/; and /The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on
the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering/. His work has been praised by
many of the leading scholars of the fields he works in, including the
late Raul Hilberg, Avi Shlaim, Sara Roy, and Noam Chomsky. His website
is www.normanfinkelstein.com <http://www.normanfinkelstein.com>.

The following interview took place on April 15 and 16, 2008, in
Providence, Rhode Island. The wide-ranging discussion touches on the
role of the Israel lobby in shaping US policy toward the Middle East,
Finkelstein's forthcoming book on American Zionism, the history and
politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Venezuelan politics,
Finkelstein's approach to teaching, the Palestine solidarity movement in
the US, and much more.

*
JH/ML: You have described the two-state solution as "The option which
is embraced by the whole of human kind, apart from Israel and the United
States... that is return to the June 1967 borders, mutual recognition
between an Israeli and Palestinian State and some sort of mutually
acceptable resolution of the refugee question." It's obvious why Israel
would reject the two-state solution, but what about the US?*

NF: Well, it's not really why obvious why Israel would reject the
two-state settlement. That itself is a matter of perplexity, because
what does it really have to lose with the two state settlement? First
of all, there are significant forces - for example, among the people who
backed what was Shimon Peres's ‘new Middle East' notion, that is, ‘Let's
profit from being the dominate economic power in the area, and the way
to profit from that is to simply withdraw, end the conflict. Anyhow,
this Palestinian state will be completely dominated from one side or the
other - by Israel or Jordan - so what do we even need these occupied
territories for?'

So, I mean, even the premise of the question of the question is not
entirely clear. Why are they persistent? There have been basically
three theories put forth -- two, and then I have my own view on the
topic. One is the ideological one, that these people are Zionists and
they're not going to concede any of Eretz Israel - to which they believe
they have title - so it's basically an ideological Zionist commitment.
And then there's the school of thought which says it's a rational
commitment to wanting to preserve the water resources, the land
resources, and so forth.

My own view is, I don't really think it's either. I think it's more of
a political issue. It has nothing to do with security and never has.
The mentality of the Israelis is that you don't concede anything to
Arabs, because when you give them an inch, they're going to take a
mile. So once you have something you don't give it up unless you're
forced to leave. And they control the occupied territories and they
will not budge until they're kicked out.

You take the case of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. OK, at
the beginning people said they wanted to keep it because they wanted the
waters of the Litani. But after a while that was no longer a credible
explanation. So why didn't they leave? I think they didn't leave
because the Arabs wanted them to leave, and you don't leave because they
want you to leave, because in their minds that shows weakness, and if
you show any weakness, they're going to exploit it. So they stayed in
Lebanon until May 2000, until when? Until they were kicked out. So I
don't really think the ideological or the rational explanation is the
right one. I think it's a political one, it's a whole mentality on the
part of the Israelis.

So, let's just now get to the question. I don't see any obvious reason
why Israel would want to keep the occupied territories. As for the
United States, there is, in my opinion, no rational motive. You ask
yourself a simple question. I happen to have been discussing it with
Professor Chomsky the other day, because he doesn't really agree with me
on this and he's pretty persistent in disagreeing. I said to him, ‘Ask
yourself a simple question. If tomorrow, the Israelis said ‘We're
packing up and we're leaving; we're going back to the June 4, 1967
border.' Is there anyone in the US ruling elite who would regret that?
Is there anyone who would shed a tear? Is there anyone who would tell
them ‘No, don't go'? I think the answer is obviously not. So if no one
in the US administration feels a real commitment to those occupied
territories, the pressure cannot be coming from here; that is to say,
from within the US government. It's coming from the lobby. On the
question of the narrower, or the local question of the Israel-Palestine
conflict, to my mind it's pretty clear it's lobby that keeps the US
supporting the settlements, the colonization, and so forth.

*JH: How does Professor Chomsky respond to that? *

* *

NF: You see, the thing is, with any political issue, you can always find
a quote/unquote ‘rational explanation' for anything. Benjamin Franklin
famously said, ‘What a wonderful thing reason is, because you can find a
reason for anything.' It's sort of like, in politics, you can always
find a ‘rational explanation.' But the rational explanation might not
be the right explanation, for a simple reason: Because you can have, in
any given situation, multiple rational explanations. [In the case of
Israel in the occupied territories], you can have a rational explanation
for staying, you can have a rational explanation for leaving, you can
have a rational explanation for anything. You can always find
quote/unquote rational explanations.

So Professor Chomsky will give rational explanations; he'll say the
water resources, he'll say land, he'll say it increases Israel's ability
to have a dynamic society, dynamic economy. That's all true. And he'll
say it keeps the tension up with the Arab world, which the United States
likes, because the US doesn't really want an Israel at peace with the
Arab world. That's all true. But then you can make a whole series of
‘rational explanations' saying if they withdraw, there will be a peace
with their Arab neighbors, then they can dominate the Middle East
economically, then they won't have to devote so much money to their
defense expenditures, they can devote their money to this and that. You
can find a rational explanation for withdrawal also. The rational
explanation kind of argument, in my opinion, doesn't always work for two
reasons: One, you can always find a ‘rational explanation,' and two, you
can find rational explanations for any number of options.

You can make rational explanation why Rumsfeld or Cheney should be
communists. I'm serious. You read Marx's /Grundrisse/, and he says the
most alienated person in society is not the worker; he says the most
alienated person in society is the capitalist, because they turn into
money-making machines. There's the famous line by Marx -- he was very
poor and was given an option for some sort of job -- and he said, ‘Come
hell or high water, I'm not going to let the bourgeoisie turn me into a
money-making machine.' So you can make an argument that ‘rationally,'
every capitalist should be a communist, because then they wouldn't be so
alienated. I'm serious; that's the kind of problem with these kinds of
arguments. You can make ‘rational arguments' to prove anything.

*JH/ML: We have a related follow-up question. During a recent talk at
the London School of Economics, you said: "In my view, there's no
evidence that Israel's colonization and annexation of the occupied
territories serves any American national interest. However you want to
configure the meaning of 'national interest' - it basically means
nothing - there's no way you can say American national interest is
served by Israeli policy in the occupied territories. And there's a lot
of evidence - I've gone through it myself - that US policy on the
Palestinians would be fundamentally different were it not for the
lobby. That I think is clearly true." Can you elaborate on that, and
maybe go through some of the evidence? And, building on your answer,
talk about when and in what areas the lobby influential in shaping US
policy, and when it is not.*

* *

NF: Well, it's basically what I said before: I think the lobby is
influential on the local issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict. So one
example is the whole issue of the [Israeli] withdrawal [from the
occupied territories]. If you look at the record right after the June
1967 war, of course the US was thrilled that Israel knocked off Nasser;
‘cut him down to size,' as they said, and he was no longer a pin prick
in the side of the Americans, with his anti-imperialist rhetoric and his
pan-Arab nationalism. So they were very happy.

But the Americans wanted a full withdrawal by the Israelis; they were
very clear about that. You can look at the internal record - and it's
now available - and you'll see the Americans are telling the Israelis,
‘You have to withdraw.' But every time it came to a point of a clash
with Israel - and they said in the internal record, ‘We have to go up
against Israel's friends in the United States' as they called [the
lobby] - they said ‘We don't want to do it. There's an election coming
up, it's not worth it to us'. But in terms of preference, the US was on
board for a full withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied.
Whether it was willing to use its political power to impose that
preference on Israel, the answer was no, for the simple reason it wasn't
that important to the US.

Where there are big issues are at stake, yes, the US comes in hard. But
you know, they preferred [an Israeli withdrawal], but there's a whole
question of priorities. You can prefer many things, but where are you
willing to bring to bear your political muscle? Here, they were not
willing to, for the simple reason it wasn't that important. You have to
remember [the Arab] countries had just suffered a huge defeat. They
didn't pose any threat to the region, to the US; quite the contrary.
All of the quote/unquote radical nationalist forces - in Syria, in Egypt
- had suffered a crushing defeat. So they didn't pose any real threat,
so the US didn't really care.

If [continued Israeli occupation] became a real, live political issue
endangering US interests, the US would impose a full withdrawal, but
they don't. I was just reading a book by one of the [US] negotiators at
Camp David, Aaron David Miller. It's a horrible book; he's a complete
imbecile. But he talks about how Rumsfeld referred to the "So-called
occupied territories." This is after 9/11, they have bigger fish to fry
- Iraq, Afghanistan, soon Iran - so the occupied territories mean
nothing. If it were a big power which threatened their interests, it
wouldn't be "so-called." We saw that after the October 1973 war, where
Egypt was determined, ‘We're getting our Sinai back.' [The US] didn't
say "so-called occupied Sinai." It was ‘Occupied Sinai, and the
Israeli's are going to have to withdraw.'

*JH: Can you give an example of an issue over which the US
administration and the lobby clashed, and the US overruled them?*

* *

NF: You saw, for example, 1991, with this whole issue with this guy
Shamir. They really couldn't stand Shamir; he was absolutely obnoxious,
Yitzhak Shamir. I think they called him ‘That little shit.' He was
this ideologue, very provincial, and he was very insistent about being
in your face, about expanding the settlements. Well, there's the famous
scene. The [Israeli's] ask for the ten-billion dollar loan, in 1991, in
order to subsidize the settlement of the Russian Jews. Bush said no,
and then he has the famous scene in Capitol Hill, he said, ‘It's just
one lonely guy - me -- against thousands of lobbyists.' And everyone
knew who he was talking about, he was talking about AIPAC and ‘The
Jews'. It's very interesting what happened; the lobby did nothing. No
Senators wanted to go on board - AIPAC was trying to push through a
bill, denouncing Bush, because he was ‘making an obvious allusion to
Jews undermining US national interests' - Senators didn't want to sign
it; no. They knew - Bush, Baker - now, they're serious. And [the
lobby] shut up. You know the next thing that happened? Shamir was
defeated, because the Israelis knew too. This guy [was] getting in [the
US administration's] face, they didn't like it, time to get rid of him.
The speech by Bush was in February; June was the election in Israel;
Shamir was out.

When the US feels like they have business to do, everyone falls into
line. The lobby falls into line, Congress falls into line, and even the
Israelis fall into line. When it's down to the crunch, everyone falls
into line. It's also interesting -- just as a side note -- because I'm
reading the Aaron David Miller book. You may know that the entire
negotiating team of the US, in its meetings with the Palestinians, they
were all Jewish - Malley, Miller, Ross - they were all Jewish. And
there's all this talk about how these people are more loyal to Israel
than they are to the United States. You know of these insinuations.
It's total nonsense. First of all, remember: people like Ross and
Miller, they all worked for Baker and Bush, and Baker and Bush were
supposedly ‘the anti-Semites', very hostile to Israel.

I was very struck - Miller's a complete imbecile, of that there can be
no question - what struck me is really interesting. There was a famous
line by Baker. He was told, ‘If you block the ten-billion dollar loan,
you're going to lose the Jews in the next election.' And the famous
line which everyone quotes is - and Baker replied, "Fuck the Jews." It
struck me. Miller -- and [his book] is a ‘tell all' - doesn't mention
it. All he does is praise Baker; ‘Baker is tough, Baker is not an
anti-Semite.' These people are completely loyal, faithful servants of
power. The notion they're working for Israel - the Mearsheimer/Walt
thing - is totally crazy. Ross, in 1988, he worked for Bush's
election. He only came to Clinton as a hangover from Bush and Baker.
There isn't one word of criticism of Bush and Baker [in Miller's book] -
and this was supposedly the ‘anti-Semitic' administration. And I was
waiting...is he going to quote the thing from Baker? Do you know the
line? Do you remember it?

*JH: Yes - the line was "Fuck the Jews."*

* *

NF: Yes. Miller doesn't mention it, because it would be very hard for
him to reconcile his complete toadying to Baker in the book with that
line. And that's why Mearsheimer and Walt - I like Mearsheimer, very
nice guy - but they totally misread these people. They have only one
loyalty: to power and privilege. That's their loyalty. And they don't
derive their power and privilege from this little village called Israel;
they derive it from here.

*JH/ML: You've said the following about the 2006 invasion of Lebanon: "I
agree with the analysis of the head of Hezbollah, Mr. Nasrallah. During
the war he repeatedly said, ‘This is not an Israeli war, this is an
American war. This is American financed, American planned, American
executed and Israel's just doing the bidding of the United States.' I
think that's a more accurate depiction. It is not the tail that's
wagging the dog, it's the dog that's very much wagging the tail."
Explain that.*

NF: That may have been slightly exaggerated because there is, in my
opinion, a complete confluence and overlapping of interests between the
US and Israel on the question of Iran. They both want to knock out
Iran, they both believed - and it was true -- a defeat of Hezbollah
would have dealt a psychological blow to Iran, and would have militarily
paved the way to an attack on Iran, because they were fearful of
Hezbollah having the military option of firing missiles at Israel in the
event of an attack on Iran.

There was a real fear among Arabs that if Hezbollah were defeated it was
going to mean a big problem for Iran. People forget now, but the first
thing that was said after the so-called ‘victory' in Iraq was ‘We're
going after Syria and Iran next.' And so this was, at minimum, supposed
to pave the way for terrifying Iran into submission - that is to say, a
psychological blow - and at maximum, paving the way for a military
attack by knocking out the Hezbollah missiles and therefore denying them
any deterrent power in the event of an attack on Iran.

There was a confluence of interests, but it was a confluence of
interests that was controlled by the United States. It was obvious.
Does anyone need any brilliance of insight? The United States blocked
the UN ceasefire resolution for three weeks, waiting and praying for
Israel to knock out Hezbollah. And Israel couldn't. The war would've
ended almost immediately were it not for the US.

*JH/ML: You've also said the following about the 2006 Israeli invasion
of Lebanon: "To tell you the truth, I think a war was inevitable. It was
inevitable not because there was no diplomatic solution possible. The
war was inevitable for a separate reason. Israel will not allow the Arab
world to modernize. That's the big problem." What did you mean by that?

*

NF: Whenever there's an independent, modernizing force in the Arab
world, the Israelis get terrified, because the fact of the matter is -
you don't need to be a mathematical genius to know this - numbers are
not on their side. Resources are not on their side, if you take the
whole Arab world amassed. And Israel is determined to control the Arab
world, to be the dominant power there. The only way it can remain the
dominant power is by keeping the Arab world backward, and that's always
been their attitude.

If you go back and read David Ben-Gurion, he used to say his biggest
fear was an ‘Arab Ataturk.' And they were terrified that someone was
going to come along and modernize the Arab world. Ben-Gurion's view
was, ‘They'll never accept us; we're a foreign implant, we came in here
by force, and so the only way to remain here is by keeping them
backward.' And so whenever there is a modernizing force that emerges in
the Arab world - an independent force - they become terrified, and they
want to knock it out. That's what they did with Naseer, and that's what
they're trying to do with Iran.

These are formidable powers, whatever you think of their ideologies.
It's so funny to read the [Miller] book; they love King Hussain. Sure;
you know, the British used to call him ‘Our plucky little King.' They
love King Hussein, they love Sadat, they love anyone who is slavishly
pro-American - whatever it means - pro-Western. But anyone who is
independent? It's funny; they hate them, but they respect them.
Believe me, they respect Hezbollah; they hate them, but they respect
them very much.

Hezbollah is one of those cases of wedding and adapting a traditional -
some may even say a throwback - ideology, but wedding it and adapting it
to the modern world. And they're pretty good at that. They're smart,
they're technologically sophisticated, they're serious, and that worries
the Israelis. Because ideology is very adaptable; you can pretty much
adapt any ideology, in my opinion. OK, there may be limits. Even the
question of women. In the south of Lebanon, they never really
imposed...women wore western styles, they never really imposed
ideology. There probably are some limits, but not so many. It's the
content, and the content is, ‘Hezbollah is modern.' You see how they
mastered all the technologies in the south, to the point which it kind
of scared the Israelis. Broke into all of their radio transmissions,
had everything figured out technically. They're pretty impressive.
They have to be. They have about fifteen hundred to three thousand
guerrillas who held off supposedly the fourth most powerful army in the
world; it's an impressive show, if you think those things are impressive.

* *

*JH/ML: Returning to the question of a two-state solution: what a
‘mutually acceptable' solution to the refugee question would mean in
practice is that Palestinians renounce their internationally-recognized
right to return, a basic human right. Isn't this antithetical to the
Palestinian right to self-determination? Why should the Palestinians be
expected to renounce that right? And, on a related note, you say the
refugee question is one of the few dimensions of the Israel-Palestine
conflict over which legitimate controversy exists. But there's no
question that the refugees have the right to return. So where does the
controversy arise?*

* *

Well, I think there's a misunderstanding there. First of all, it's a
fair question; I've had to think about it. There's no controversy in
terms of what the historical record shows, that the Palestinians were
ethnically cleansed in 1948. There's no controversy on the moral
question; ethnic cleansings are an abomination, you don't have to
belabor that point. And there's no question on the legal issue; under
international law, like all other refugees, they have the right to
return to their homes after battlefield hostilities have ended. But
then there's a separate issue, and that's the political one, namely,
politics is about what's possible. And as far as one can tell, there's
what one might call a strong international consensus on the full Israeli
withdrawal. You could say on the question of the Palestinian right of
return, I would have to say the consensus is there - no question - but
in terms of the political will, I would have to call it weak.

Now, where do I draw that inference from? The way I would draw the
inference is by looking at the negotiations. So what do you see in the
negotiations? If you look carefully at the record on Camp David - the
2000/2001 negotiations between Clinton, Barak, Arafat and their
negotiating teams - what you see is the Palestinians hung very tough on
the question of land. They wanted a near-total Israeli withdrawal,
let's say ninety-eight percent, even ninety-nine percent, they had to
withdraw. But, on the question of refugees, they were pretty much
willing to give everything. As Clinton put it at one point, ‘They've
conceded on the right of return.' And I think that's as good an
indication as any that the Palestinians recognized they were on strong
grounds politically - politically, we're not talking about the moral or
legal question - when it came to a full withdrawal, but the amount of
support they could muster for an implementation of the right of return
was pretty feeble. How do we know that? As I said, I'm looking at the
record.

But my guess is, if Israel announced ‘We're going to execute a full
withdrawal, but no right of return,' most of the world community would
then have put the burden of blame on the Palestinians. That's how I
guess it. That's politics. Politics is you weigh a thousand different
factors and you have to reach a judgment about what's possible and
what's not. My sense is the Palestinians weighed the thousand factors
and came to the conclusion which seems to me a reasonable one - they can
win on a full withdrawal, they can't win on the right of return.

People get offended when I make the analogy - I'm going to make it
tonight - I wish people would understand the point I'm making. I knew I
had a right to return to DePaul. I knew I had that right, and I knew if
I went to court for ten years, I would win. But then I have to make a
judgment: Do I want to draw this out for ten years, or am I going to go
for a settlement that's going to give me less than my right to return,
but it will give me something? And then I made my choice. I think it's
basically the same for the Palestinians. Do they have a legal right?
Yes. But is it worth fighting this out through eternity, or do you cut
your losses and move on? And that doesn't mean you don't have bottom
lines - as they're called in the fancy diplomatic language, the red
lines - I had my red lines. There was a red line about a statement
DePaul had to make recognizing my record at DePaul. And the
Palestinians, on the question of the refugees, they do have a red line;
it's the same as mine. The red line is the Israelis have to recognize
[their] historical and moral responsibility for what was done to the
refugees in 1948. And the second red line is the same as mine, there's
a material component: there has to be some sort of compensation. That's
what politics is; you weigh.

My lawyers said to me, ‘Do you want to be in court for six years,
because that's how long it will take.' But you know what that means?
That means for six years, instead of doing my research, instead of doing
my lecturing, instead of doing something, in my opinion, productive, I'm
going to have to sit down and write briefs, and briefs, and briefs for
court on this stupid case. Do I really want to do that? No. So, I'm
going to make a settlement which is short of it. Does that mean I'm
acknowledging I was wrong and DePaul was right? No, I'm not
acknowledging that; I'm making a settlement. And I think that's what
politics is about. I knew I couldn't win tomorrow, I knew I didn't have
sufficient political power, I knew DePaul would never take me back. I
could feel it last year. I knew they fought six years to get rid of
me. There was no way they'd take me back. That doesn't mean I don't
think I was right, and everyone else thought I was right. It's the same
thing for the Palestinians; of course they have a right to return. But
then, what are you willing to do for that? Wait ten years, and even in
ten years there is no certainty? I think that's what the Palestinians
understood; ‘on that one, we don't have sufficient will.'

The international community is tougher on the issue of borders, because
everyone recognizes the moment you say it's ok to take land by force, it
causes - U Thant said, if we reject [the principle of the
inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war], we're back to
the law of the jungle, because borders start changing because countries
make war. So every country is willing to hold fast on this principle of
no acquisition of territory by war, because it affects every country;
you know, the United States would take the rest of Mexico. On the
question of refugees, it doesn't affect that many countries of the
world, and there's not that kind of will.

*ML: One thing that strikes me in the analogy you're making is that you
made that decision on your own behalf. I'm wondering if the Palestinian
refugees will have a voice in this decision...*

* *

NF: I totally agree with that. I'm pretty tough on this issue; they
have the last word. My responsibility is to defend their rights. What
they choose to do with their rights is their business, not mine. I
don't like it when people tell me what I should do with my rights. When
I was at Brooklyn College in 1992, when they were getting rid of me and
they went over to one of the "radical" professors - with heavy quotation
marks, as with all "radical" professors - and they asked Steve London,
‘So, are you going to go to bat for Norm?' And London said, ‘I think
Finkelstein would be happier somewhere else.' When I heard that I
thought to myself, ‘Hey, I thought that was a decision I was supposed to
make.' Your responsibility is, if the university is in the wrong, to
defend my right. If I choose to relinquish that right, that's for me to
choose, not for you to decide for me. I'm not telling the Palestinians
anything. I told you what I infer from the record: that the
Palestinians seemed willing to give up that right. Not completely -
there's still the acknowledgement of wrongdoing, there's still the
material compensation - but they were not willing to budge on the issue
of borders. So as I said, I inferred from that that they recognized
their weakness on that particular question. I wouldn't tell the
Palestinians... absolutely not. Speaking again personally, I don't like
it when people tell me what to do with my rights; that's for me to
decide on my own. If someone's rights are violated, you're not supposed
to go publicly and say, ‘Hey, I think he should give up that right.'
No; your moral responsibility is to defend the right. Privately you can
give your opinion; of course. Frankly, if you aren't asked, you should
shut up. That's how I see it.

*JH/ML: In /Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict/, you
write: "The inevitable but very distant future is one in which
Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, enjoying reciprocal communal and
individual rights, coexist within a unitary entity." Why do you think
that?*

NF: Well, basically the Palestinian state will be such a piddling state,
and the Jordanian state is barely viable, and I think the point that
Meron Benvenisti makes; he's all along claimed this two-state idea is a
chimera. Because, he says, Palestinians and Israelis share everything,
that Palestine is an integral whole. They share the water, they're on
the same electricity grids, the geography is, to break it up, would be
artificial, and I recognize that. So at some point this artificially
fragmented whole - assuming people can get along - will peacefully
integrate.

And then there's the other fundamental issue - the demographic one -
which is not going away. Palestinian Arabs constitute now about twenty
percent of Israel's population. Assuming there's no new quote/unquote
miracle - which would mean, it is unlikely there's going to be a miracle
on the order of the Russian Jews, which was a million (although one
third weren't even Jewish) - which temporarily put in abeyance the
demographic problem Israel was facing in the ‘70s. Assuming that kind
of miracle doesn't happen, and assuming the other type of ‘miracle'
doesn't happen - an ethnic cleansing by Israel - then the demographics
are such that Israel's going to have to learn to accommodate itself to a
large non-Jewish minority, if not even parity.

Of course, one of the ideas that Israel has come up with is to do a land
swap with a Palestinian state, whereby it rids itself of its large Arab
minority. I don't think that's going to happen, because the Arab
minority of Israel does not want to de-nationalize itself. And I don't
think Israel can get away with it. I might be wrong about these things,
but I don't think Israel's going to get away with it. In which case,
the demographics are such that it's hard to imagine these
ethnically-pure states - especially there - being viable. So for
material reasons as well as demographic reasons, it seems to me that
Benvenisti is right, that the two-state quote/unquote settlement is very
makeshift, is jerrybuilt, and is fundamentally artificial.

*JH/ML: Israel conquered the Sinai peninsula in 1967 and withdrew in
1981. Why did it conquer the territory and why did it withdraw? What
was its policy there all about?*

* *

NF: Basically it was to knock out Nasser and to occupy a sufficient
amount of territory in the Sinai to humiliate Nasser and to basically
cause his downfall. At some point they decided - as they always do -
that ‘We need this for security.' And there was the famous line by
Moshe Dayan that the idea that they needed the area for security was a
complete fantasy, but that's beside the point. There's an area called
Sharm el-Sheikh - which is the Gulf of Aqaba - there's a famous line by
Moshe Dayan, ‘We prefer Sharm el-Sheikh without peace more than we
prefer peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.' And they discovered they had to
keep Sharm el-Sheikh, and since Sharm el-Sheikh is at the bottom of the
Sinai, they discovered they had to keep two thirds of the Sinai. And
they wouldn't budge.

But I think that's the point I made earlier; they had it, and they
weren't going to go. Most of the reason was that the Egyptians wanted
them to go. They had no security interest. But the Egyptians wanted
them to leave, and they decided ‘We're going to humiliate them; we're
not going to leave.' There was no need; that's true of all these
territories.

All this talk about the Golan Heights is complete nonsense. First of
all, even if the Golan Heights were returned, it would be
demilitarized. Everyone understands that, just as part of the Sinai was
demilitarized after the return. It's all complete fakery anyway, all
the talk about the Golan Heights and raining bombs on the kibbutzim.
It's all nonsense, but that's a separate story.

They wanted the Sinai, they wanted the Golan, for the same reasons: to
humiliate, to show the Arabs who's in charge, that's their standard. In
the case of the West Bank, it's different somewhat, but it's not security.

*JH: What is it about the West Bank?*

* *

NF: In the West Bank, there were, at the beginning, ideological
elements; that's clear. At the beginning. And there was, at the
beginning, the rational argument about water and land. I think they've
diminished in significance. First of all, Israel is never going to give
up the water. Whatever happens, there's not going to be some sort of
agreement on that, I think that's pretty clear. I don't think it really
is anymore; unless you kick them out, they won't go. Originally there
was also Lebanon, they thought about the water - and also on the Golan,
by the way, they wanted the land and the water. It's very funny. Do
you know what separates an agreement with Syria? Do you know what it
is? Four hundred meters. It's hard to believe; in total, twenty square
kilometers. That's it. My friend Alan Nairn lives in this tiny hovel
in New York. The little apartment is the size of a broom closet. I
said, ‘Al, you won't believe it. This whole conflict with Syria is over
the size of a broom closet.' People won't believe it, but read any book.

Why? Because the June 4, 1967 border was four hundred kilometers off of
the Sea of Galilee. Israel is demanding that the border be within the
Sea of Galilee so the Syrians cannot touch the water. Now, you may
think it's about water; it's not. Egypt got one hundred percent; it got
full Israeli withdrawal. And the Syrians want the same. And the
Israelis are determined to humiliate the Syrians four hundred meters
less. It has nothing to do with ‘rational argument.' I think that's
where I disagree with Professor Chomsky. There's no rational reason for
that. The Israelis say ‘We need the four hundred meters so we can drive
our cars around the shore.' That's ridiculous. And you know what Hafez
al-Assad said? ‘I need the shoreline so I can dip my feet in the water
the way I used to as a kid, when I used to swim in the Galilee.'

Now, do you think it's about that? Do you think it's about so they can
drive their car and dip their feet? No. It's Israel's
determination...Syria didn't win a war like Egypt; Egypt did well in
1973. So Syria doesn't get the whole thing back. You read any account,
there's no mystery. Assad wants the June 4, 1967 border. If it were an
issue where Assad said, ‘If we give them ‘til the waterline edge, then
they'll steal the water in the Galilee...' He doesn't say that; he says
he wants to dip his feet like he did as a kid. It's all about dignity.

Personally, I agree with Assad. You have got to stop these Israelis.
They always want to humiliate and degrade the Arabs.

*JH/ML: In an interview with Chicago public radio, you said: "I don't
say this with any kind of satisfaction, but I don't think Israel has a
future there any more. It's turned into a crazy state." What did you
mean exactly?*

NF: You saw an example of it just a few months ago. The Bush
administration was poising itself to attack Iran, and even within the US
government, there were serious reservations about pursuing such a
policy. And so the National Intelligence Estimate report [came out]
saying that Iran hasn't been pursuing a nuclear weapons program since
2003. Whether they were even pursuing one in 2003 is very doubtful, but
that's a separate issue. And the entire world, of course, breathed a
sigh of relief, because (A) every rational person doesn't want war in
the first place, and (B) least of all wants a war in the Middle East,
because it would have terminal consequences.

Well, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief, except one country:
Israel. Israel immediately began to denounce the NIE findings and was
gung-ho for a war. Now, if you look at the polls, Israel was the only
country in the world - not just the government, but the population -
that relished the prospect of war. It wasn't even true in the United
States. Israel, in its bellicosity, is so out of sync now with the rest
of humanity.

When you take the case of the end of the 2006 war in Lebanon. There are
seventy-two hours left in the war, the United Nations has already
brokered a ceasefire agreement, and now the only issue is to implement
it; the war is over. At that point Israel proceeds to drop about four
point six million cluster bomblets on south Lebanon. And you can make
an argument there is a rational - if lunatic - explanation for part of
it: Israel likes to leave a ‘calling card.' It always does; it's been
Israel's standard policy. So when they had to withdraw in 1974 - from
Syrian land - they destroyed the city of Quneitra. That's their style;
they're Vandals. Destroy everything in their path. To send a calling
card to remind their neighbors, ‘Don't mess with us.'

But even if you accept that rationale, four point six million is still
insane. You could have accomplished your aim with far fewer than that.
This was the densest use of cluster bomblets in history. The only thing
that came close was Iraq in 1991, when the US dropped twenty million
cluster bomblets, but it was over an area more than twenty times the
size of south Lebanon. There's nothing to compare with it. And that,
to me, is lunatic.

This war hunger, this incapacity to even think in terms of diplomacy and
trying to reach some sort of détente with your neighbors. No, you can't
reach a détente with your neighbors; there is only one thing you can do
with your neighbors, and that's break their kneecaps. That's the
Israeli style. It's fine if you're mafia, but there, the stakes are
getting much higher. They have a very serious adversary now in Iran and
in Hezbollah. And when you play those games with them, the stakes start
getting very high. This is not Jordan, this is not Nasser; these are
not blowhards, they're serious.

*JH/ML: In /Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict/, you
write: "There can be little doubt that, consigned to a footnote, Oslo
will one day be dismissed as a sordid detour on the path to a just and
lasting peace." Talk about the Oslo ‘peace process.' Why did it begin,
and why did it ultimately collapse? How did the various parties view
the process and its prospects?*

* *

NF: I think the main misapprehension about Oslo is that, in one crucial
sense, it worked. Oslo was not a failure if you understand what its
purpose was. Its purpose was, as Benvenisti put it in his book
/Intimate Enemies/, to maintain the occupation by remote control. And I
think he used the expression it was a ‘bantustanization' of the occupied
territories. So the main purpose of the Oslo accord was direct Israeli
rule was no longer viable. Therefore, they were looking for an internal
Palestinian element to rule the occupied territories, acting at Israel's
behest as collaborators. The Israelis recognized that it would take
time to cultivate this internal collaborationist leadership. And that's
why a five-year interim period was built into Oslo. The five-year
interim period was to create a class of credible collaborators who,
after five years, will have enjoyed all the perquisites of power, who
were called back then - if you look at the Oslo II accord of September
1995 - they were called throughout the accord ‘VIPs.' By the end of the
five-year period, they will naturally - like most human beings - want to
cling to those privileges and power which they derived from the accord.

And it worked like a charm; they created a class - it was called Fatah -
and then the day of reckoning came in Camp David, in 2000, where this
class of collaborators was essentially expected to sign off the parts of
the occupied territories Israel wanted to keep, and the remainders, they
would be the so-called leaders of. And two problems arose. Number one
was the problem that for probably mixed motives - you never know what
goes in Mr. Arafat's head - but I would say probably a residue of
Palestinian nationalism, and partly because he thought he wouldn't
physically survive signing the Camp David accord, Arafat rejected it.
And he was now the one obstacle - in Israel's mind - to this successful
experiment called Oslo.

Well, Mr. Arafat, like all of us, was mortal, and he passed from the
scene. And now you have a bunch of leaders who don't give a wit about
Palestinians, Palestinian nationalism; they just want their Swiss bank
accounts, good meals, photo-ops, and the rest. And so it seemed as if
everything was now going swimmingly, like we were back on course. And
we were going to sign the agreement, and Israel would get what it wanted
and the Palestinians would rot in a bantustan.

But a new problem came: the problem of Hamas. They didn't really have
much of a choice, but they waited too long, and by this time an
opposition movement had dug roots among the Palestinians, and the rest,
as they say, is history. American collaborators now are trying to
dislodge Hamas and get on with the business of being collaborators.

*JH/ML: Describe the on-the-ground legacy of Oslo in the occupied
territories. In Hebron, for example, it has meant the forced division
of the city and the slow ethnic cleansing of the /casbah/ by settlers.*

* *

NF: What's happened has been exhaustively documented. The main features
of the Oslo accord which have wreaked havoc on the Palestinians have
been, number one, the growth of the settlements and settlers, which have
doubled - now more than doubled, the last number was four-hundred sixty
thousand settlers in the occupied territories. In 1993, the figure was
about two-hundred thousand. So the number of settlers has doubled.

And then there's been the policy of closures - both internal and
external - meaning the large number of Palestinians - it was over
one-hundred thousand, plus the families they support - who were
dependent on work in Israel have been completely cut off. Israel found
replacement workers from Asia and Eastern Europe. And so that has been
devastating. And then there are the internal closures, which basically
mean it is impossible to carry on the economy when there are roadblocks
everywhere. Deliveries can't be made on time, goods can't be
transported abroad. The economy is, in the face of these internal
external and internal closures, unviable. And basically Palestine has
survived the last ten years by being on the international dole; it has
no economy anymore.

*JH/ML: If most of the major historical questions about the conflict
have been answered, as you say, are there any important issues which
still need more scholarly attention, in your opinion? Were you to lay
out a research agenda on the Israel-Palestine/Arab-Israeli conflict,
what would it look like?*

* *

NF: First of all, I have to be a little bit cautious here. The issues
for which there are no longer any real political consequences, there is
no longer any real controversy. So, for example, the 1948 war - apart
from the lingering refugee question, which Palestinians have basically
conceded they've lost - there are no open political questions left.
What do I mean by that? Everyone accepts the borders after the war as
being Israel's borders; it's no longer an open question. And because
it's no longer an open political question, the scholarship is basically
honest on it, because there's nothing to lose. Israelis can tell the
truth about 1948 because it's a closed political question.

When you come to the 1967 war it's different, because it's still an open
political question, namely the issue of occupation and withdrawal. And
so on '67, I would say the scholarship still presents areas of
controversy, in particular, two. Number one, did Israel face a to live
or to perish threat in '67? And number two, did they intend to seize
the territories, or was it another accident of war? And if you read the
Israeli scholarship, there's still a certain amount of pretense about
'67 being a to live or perish war, what they like to call a ‘war of no
choice', and there's still a pretense they just happened to end up in a
territory three or four times their size; it was an accident. So
there's more controversy there. In my opinion, the record is clear, but
I couldn't honestly say that the scholarship is completely clear.

Apart from '67, it's not really controversial anymore. 1973 is no
longer controversial; why? Because '73 was about the occupation of the
Sinai. Israel withdrew; it's over. It's a dead political issue, so you
can write the truth about it. 1982, Lebanon, you can write the truth
about, because Israel is out of Lebanon, at least it's on its own
border. So, there's only real controversy in scholarship where
politically it's still an open question; once, politically, it's a
closed question, it's no longer politically-charged controversy.
Obviously there's still controversy over what caused the US Civil War,
or what caused World War I or World War II. But these are what you
could call academic or scholarly controversies, which have no real
political repercussions. And in that respect, the '48 scholarship is a
dead issue, and everything is pretty much a dead issue except '67,
because the occupation endures. And that's why you find, when you read
the scholarship, that the area where Israelis are pretty tough - they
still want to pretend that they didn't really want to occupy the West
Bank, Gaza, and Sinai. Which is crap; of course they did. And that it
was a war of self-defense, which of course it wasn't.

*JH/ML: You're writing a book titled /A Farewell to Israel: The Coming
Breakup of American Zionism./ What's your argument going to be?*

NF: Basically the argument can be summed up pretty simply. American
Jews are basically liberal - you see it in polls, you see it in party
affiliations - for a simple reason. American Jews flourished and
thrived in the United States on the basis of basically liberal
principles: separation of church and state, rule of law, all that. Jews
were tremendous beneficiaries of that, which is why Jews are by far and
way the most prosperous ethnic group in the United States. And for the
longest time, there seemed to be no conflict between the liberal values
which American Jews espoused - you can sort call them the ‘Clintonite
values', liberal on social issues, liberal on political issues, not so
liberal on economic issues, at least not liberal in the modern sense -
and for the longest time, you were able to reconcile your liberal values
with Israeli policy.

But the argument I make in the book is, our knowledge of the
Israel-Palestine conflict has substantially changed in the last twenty
years, and there's much more informed criticism of Israel right in the
heart of the mainstream of the political spectrum. You saw that in a
pretty vivid way with President Carter's book. Carter may not be the
heart of the Democratic Party establishment, but he's within the
mainstream of American values. And he was hitting Israel not
particularly hard from the point of view of the world community, but
quite hard from the point of view of the United States. It was kind of
striking; this morning I was looking at my e-mail, and today there was
an editorial in /Haaretz/. The title is "Our debt to Jimmy Carter."
And then it refers to his criticisms [quoting the editorial]: "Israelis
have not liked Carter since he wrote the book /Palestine//: Peace Not
Apartheid./ Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the
situation begs it." And they go on to say it is apartheid.

What's my point? My point is mainstream people are saying it's
apartheid. /Haaretz/ is saying it's apartheid. If you're American, if
you're Jewish, you're liberal; how can you reconcile your liberal values
with supporting what mainstream American and Israeli institutions and
officials are calling apartheid? And so as a consequence, you see -
especially among the younger generation, which I'm more familiar with
because I lecture a lot around the country - on college campuses, Israel
now has zero support, apart from that core around Hillel. Apart from
that core, there's nothing. Even among college Jews, it's about one
third and less hard core around Hillel; one third which are indifferent;
and one third which are on my side when I speak. And that's among
Jews. It's falling apart.

Now there have been different explanations put forth; I mean the polls
show support for Israel is eroding. Some say it's because of the high
rate of intermarriage among Jews, and things like that. I don't think
that's it. I think it's the issue I just pointed to. When you have
Israel's most influential paper saying it's apartheid, what do American
Jews say to that? ‘Oh yeah, we support apartheid'? You can say that if
you're Pat Robertson or Dick Cheney. But it's very hard if you're an
American Jew who claims to be a liberal to be making arguments like
that. And I think you see the erosion in particular among college
students because they study and they're better informed, and they see
that all of this stuff Israel is doing has now become morally
indefensible. And so there's some who are just embarrassed, and they
have become, as it were, indifferent; and then there are those who have
become completely hostile, in an active way.

And I'm pretty confident about that conclusion because I lecture at
forty schools a year; I know the campuses, and I see what happens.
[Pro-Israel groups] have lost a huge amount of ground. There was a time
when I came [to speak at colleges] and it was like a Daniel in the
Lion's Den. But it's not like that any more; it really isn't. They're
losing ground, it's obvious. I see it everywhere I go. They come to
where I speak, there's one row, all primed to attack me, but they don't
say anything at the end. Because all I do is say ‘This is what
international law says, this is what Amnesty says, this is what Human
Rights Watch says.' So do they really want to have to stand up and say
‘Amnesty, they're anti-Semites; Human Rights Watch, they're
anti-Semites; the International Court of Justice, they're anti-Semites;
all these Israeli authors, they're anti-Semites; /Haaretz, /they're
anti-Semites.' Do they really want to go there? No, so they shut up.

*JH/ML: When will the book be published?*

* *

NF: I don't know.

*JH/ML: You've described yourself as "forensic scholar." Explain your
approach to research and how you developed it. Do many other scholars
do similar things?*

* *

NF: It's very easy to describe my approach to scholarship. It's
everything you were taught in graduate school...not. Graduate school is
designed to teach you how to be a fake: namely, how to say you read this
book and that book, when all you did is read the first and last chapter
of the book, or the last paragraph of each chapter, or you read a review
of the book, and you pretend like you read the book. That's what
graduate school is about; it's the art of complete chicanery and
fakery. I don't say these words with relish. I was absolutely shocked
when I went to graduate school. I remember my first few months; I would
sit in the library in a state of utter panic. I would have eight hefty
volumes to the right of me in my cubby, unable to concentrate on what I
was reading because I couldn't imagine how I could read eight freaking
books a week, and then prepare my seminar report, which meant an extra
three books, and then prepare my seminar paper, which is what your
entire grade is based on anyway. How do you do that?

And I was a very slow learner. It was maybe only at the end of maybe my
first year in graduate school - when I was already a disaster - that I
got the idea. Nobody does the reading. First of all, they concentrate
on that seminar report, because that's the only thing that counts -
publishing, preparation to learn how to publish. And secondly, what
they do read is the first and last chapter of the book. I was
dumbstruck. My attitude always was, there are many books out there in
the world, and if you select one book to read, there has to be a good
reason for choosing that book over another book. And if you chose it
because you think it is significant enough to read, then you should read
it, and you should read it seriously, which is what I do. You should
read every word, and check every footnote, and take the book seriously.
That's exactly what graduate school doesn't teach you.

You ask if anyone else does what I do. No, because nobody cares. They
don't treat books as significant items. Unless they're asked to review
it, and then they need to show who is smarter, so they proceed to shred
their opponent's book. But apart from trying to again boost their ego,
they don't care about books. They care about their own books; ‘very
important' works, read by six people. That's what they care about.
They have no regard for scholarship, no regard for argument; it's
pitiful. Again, I speak of a very limited range - the social studies.
The natural sciences, I assume they're serious, but I don't know.
That's what I'm told. But what I do? Oh my gosh.

*JH/ML: You were in Venezuela recently. What are your impressions of
what's going on there?*

* *

NF: I was only there for four days. I was fortunate that the people who
were taking me around were politically sophisticated, knew the lay of
the land, and weren't - to use the language of Nicaragua during the
Sandinista period - they weren't /militantes/. They were sympathetic
with the revolution for sure, but nonetheless qualified in their
support. So I got a pretty good sense, I thought, of what was going on,
and it's exactly what you would expect. There are obviously positive
elements; the poor and the disenfranchised are reaping benefits from
Chavez's rule. And there are the negative elements. The revolution -
you can use the term, though I'm not sure it's an accurate term - is
entirely dependent on Chavez as a personality. He directs all the
traffic. He micro-manages. That can't be a healthy process if your
fundamental view of revolution is to empower the masses, ‘ordinary
people'; that's not how you empower them. **

There was a vivid example of that in the process of amending the
constitution. The package of constitutional reforms in and of itself
wasn't the worst document, for sure. But the process by which it was
cobbled together was totally unacceptable. It wasn't as if people met,
debated, discussed, and there was a process of popular input. Of
course, in any kind of political process, you need leadership; I'm not
going to bring up this kind of naïve anarchism and say ‘you don't need
any leaders.' No; you need leaders, I recognize that. But this had no
popular input. Chavez appointed a committee, and this appointed
committee returned to him a document that he wanted. That's unacceptable.

Beyond that, the new constitution had social, economic, and political
provisions. The economic provisions were very generous, but the
political provisions were, basically, allowing Chavez to be president
for life. There were proposals put forth - for example, by the
Venezuelan Communist Party, which isn't part of Chavez's coalition -
they said, ‘Let's vote on the constitution in parts - let the people
vote on the economic part, the social part, and the political part.'
And that was a big object of contention, and Chavez was categorical that
it was all or nothing. Then it became a bribe; it was effectively
saying ‘We give you a four-hour work day and you give us president for
life.' That's a bribe. In that regard I think it was a good thing it
was voted down, even though most people I spoke to - on balance - were
willing to go with it. But I'm glad it was voted down.

Unlike other people, I don't see it as a setback for the revolution; I
see it as a healthy corrective. You have to get back on course. And on
course means doing exactly what Chavez has been doing all along. That
is - whatever you want to say about him - it's a fact that, every step
along the way, he has looked for a popular mandate. And if you lose the
popular mandate - if you use his own criterion - you're off course.
Because he himself believes in the notion of a popular mandate, which I
believe is a good idea. So I feel it was a healthy corrective for the
revolution. Had it been used as a wedge for the Americans and their
supporters to overthrow Chavez, that would have been one thing; that
didn't happen. Chavez gracefully accepted the results, and that's
fine. We don't need an all-knowing vanguard party which knows what's
better for the people than the people. So I don't have any regrets that
it was rejected.

*JH/ML: You're known to be a remarkable educator. What's your approach
to teaching?*

* *

NF: My approach to teaching is basically, number one, you have to want
to teach. You have to feel like you have something important to say,
and if people learn it, that they will come to appreciate it as much as
you appreciate it. There's a line in Plato's /Republic/ I've always
liked; ‘The object of education is to teach us to love what is
beautiful.' I don't particularly agree with that entirely, because it
assumes there is one Beautiful, and with sufficient enlightenment, we'll
all see it. That all goes back to Plato's notion of the forms, that
there's an intrinsic form of beauty. I suspect there's probably
something to that; and I'm not, obviously, sufficiently attuned to those
topics, but I suspect there is something to it; there is a kind of
eternal beauty. From now, until the end of time, when you hear...[hums
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 ]... it will resonate with all of humanity.
There's something intrinsic to it that makes it beautiful.

But I prefer to say the object of education is to teach us to love to
think, to derive a certain pleasure from your mental powers at work.
That, I think, is what I try to convey in teaching - that these ideas,
number one, it's not inaccessible to the lay person; it's not particle
physics. That these ideas are A, accessible, and B, once you've
accessed them, you will actually enjoy thinking about them. You will
feel a certain element of thrill due to the knowledge that you are
capable of thinking of them. Whenever students start with me Mill's /On
Liberty/ they find it completely impenetrable, but by the end, number
one, they do understand it, and number two, they are intrigued by it.
There's an intrigue element - ‘these are interesting ideas' - and
there's a sense of accomplishment; ‘you know what? I was able to scale
that mountain. It was a very steep mountain, and when I began looking
up, there didn't seem to be any possibility of me being able to
penetrate Mill's prose.' It's tough, but people can get it, and I think
that's what teaching should be about; to discover the thrill of your
mental powers at work, just as any athlete discovers the thrill of his
or her or physical powers at work. And that's what I try to convey
through teaching.

And I always do it along with them. I always learn something new. Some
student will come up with a clever objection, a clever illustration, a
clever argument. Never rest on your intellectual laurels; keep
learning, along with the students.

*JH/ML: You've taught at many universities and you constantly lecture on
college campuses. What can you say about the state of student Palestine
solidarity activism?
*

NF: I think the most noticeable difference is the Palestinian and Arab
students are a very impressive bunch now. They're second and third
generation here, they're at the best schools, very excellent students,
very focused, and courageously and bravely committed to the cause. Not
much trembling and fear, I think mostly because they're second and third
generation, and I think they've realized that civil liberties here -
whatever you want to say - are pretty solidly entrenched. Unless you're
on a green card or something. But if you're American-born, they're
pretty solidly entrenched.

I was at Penn State that students were picked up and questioned by the
police, but it didn't scare them, it didn't deter them. They have a
feel for their rights, and they know that unless they go seriously awry
that their civil liberties are quite firmly entrenched, and so they're
pretty courageous. So I think that's the most encouraging sign. And
when you go to universities now, Palestinians are not at all afraid to
be at the forefront, to sponsor their events, to bring in who they want,
to face down the Hillel, and they are as smart and as articulate and
much more courageous than the other side. So I'm very optimistic about
where things are headed. You know, it's a race against time because
there may not be anything left soon, but assuming we can beat the clock,
I think it's a good sign.

And the other good side of course is many wonderful Jews working in
concrete, collaborative ways with Palestinians and Arabs. Frankly, I
don't even think the distinction means much anymore once they work
together; that barrier is so quickly and easily transcended if you can
agree on basic principles of solidarity. If you want to compare, for
example, trying to transcend the barrier between blacks and whites in
the United States is much, much tougher than Jews and Arabs. Blacks and
whites, when they work together, there's always an element of
artificialness. White people trying to be ‘cool' - they ‘love jazz' and
all that crap - and black people always being suspicious, doubtful. I
don't find that at all among Arabs and Jews. When they work together,
there's no problem and no suspicion.

Yesterday at Brown was just terrific. An Israeli refusenik, as he's
called, raised his hand and devoted the larger part of his remarks
turning to the Hillel members in the audience and making direct eye
contact with them, denouncing ‘rude American Jews who tell Israelis to
go and commit murder.' And he said two things. Number one, ‘If you
want to tell us what to do, why don't you go to Iraq and ‘bring
democracy'? Stop sitting so comfortably in Providence. You need me to
defend Israel against the Palestinians? Well we need you to defend Iraq
for democracy. So go fight.' And then he really decided to go for the
jugular. He said, ‘And then there are these Jews who wear the black
yarmulkes.' He was looking at a student wearing a black yarmulke. And
he says, ‘You tell me to fight, but how come in Israel the orthodox Jews
don't fight?' And at that point one of the Hillel students said ‘That's
not true!' But of course it's true. They do fight if they choose to,
but they aren't drafted; they get an exemption.

And I thought to myself, ‘if we had a national organization, to have
people like that hammering away at the Israeli lobby...' I was told
last night was the first time he had spoken. He had been in jail for a
year and a half. People knew it, but he was always silent. And I
think, ‘Oh my God, we have this guy! Knock them all out!' That's what
we need; we need an organization. We have real possibilities.

*JH/ML: What about the state of public discourse more broadly? You've
been lecturing on Palestine for a long time. Is it now easier (or more
difficult) to criticize Israel, for example?*

* *

NF: Actually, to tell you the truth, I have a debater's impulse in me.
I like people to make devil's advocate arguments against me to see how
my own arguments fare against them. I mention this because, frankly,
it's become too easy. No one challenges you anymore. There are no
arguments on the other side anymore. Over and over again I discover
it. I do the same routine, as it were, everywhere I go. I give a
fairly lengthy talk and I ask for dissenters to go first [during the
question and answer session.] And I even give them the option of making
a statement; you don't even have to ask a question. And dissenters
simply don't appear. There's no dissent, and there aren't even
statements. It's become too easy; it's become embarrassingly easy,
because Israel has no case anymore.

*JH/ML: Did you vote in the New York primary?*

NF: No; I rarely vote. I'm embarrassed to say the last time I voted was
I think Nader for president or something; I don't remember. I once
voted for the Communist Party, when it was still around.

*JH/ML: Now that you've been basically forced out of academia, what are
you going to do?*

* *

NF: Nothing. I have no idea. Slip, slide to eternity. That's what I'm
going to do.

/Jake Hess is a graduate student at Brown University and a contributor
to ZNet. He welcomes feedback at JakeRHess(a)Gmail.com. Margaree
Little is a Palestine solidarity organizer based at Brown. She can be
reached at Margaree.Little(a)Gmail.com /

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