is the US media coverage...???? Where are the faces of the Palestinians in Exodos as we write. Where are the faces of those made recently homeless.
Because time is running out and history does seem to stand on the side of the RW and Sharon would not hesitate to move in for a kill.
Perhaps it is just I but even within the rhetoric of some of the peace orgs, I am not hearing something I seem to think I need to hear... there seems an absense in the linguistic... It comes up the loudest in this mantra about how useless it is to assign blame...
Some of the peace groups too just seem to want to clean the slate miraculously and start as if today is the first day. Sorry that philosophy is encourages RW Likud to maintain its denials.
I have said it before I will say it again. It is not enought just to be anti-occupation while discouraging blame or responsibility. One contradicts the other.
Peace now was an ardent advocate of Oslo... Oslo was a lie... this groups also must unearth the lie and understand why Oslo..
Here is a paragraph from a Said essay on how he was treated by some peace activists from Peace Now because he outwardly and IMHO rightfully criticized the Oslo peace process. Peace Now activists vilified him opennly... And now we can see clearly the sham of Oslo.
All it did was buckle the occupation down.
snip
A short while ago I was invited to present my views on the current "peace process" to an invited group of guests at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Aside from a small number of individuals from the university itself, and one Arab UN ambassador, the audience of about fifty people comprised reporters, news directors, and columnists from television, newspapers, and radio. What I had to say was described by title of my remarks–"Misleading Images and Brutal Realities"–which argued that that the picture given in the U.S. media as well as by the U.S. government of a wonderful progress toward peace in the Middle East is belied and contradicted by the worsening situation in the area, especially so far as Palestinians are concerned. I gave a documented and discouraging picture of how the Oslo agreement and its aftermath have increased Palestinian poverty an unemployment; how the worst aspects of the Israeli occupation–now the longest military occupation of the twentieth century–have continued; how land expropriation and the expansion of settlements have gone on; and finally, how for Palestinians living under the "limited autonomy" supposedly controlled by the Palestinian Authority life has gotten worse, freedom less, and prospects diminished. I laid the blame for this on the United States, which sponsors the injustices and inequities of the process; on Israel, which exploits Palestinian weakness to prolong its military occupation and settlement practices by other means; and on the Palestinian Authority, which has legalized the illegal, not to say preposterous, aspects of the "peace process" and presses on with it weakly and incompetently, in spite of incontravertible evidence that Israel and the United States remain unchanged in their hostilities to Palestinian aspirations.
A period of discussion and questions followed, most of it dominated by two or three supporters of Israel, one of them an Israeli employee of Reuters. The irony here was that all of them attacked me personally, speaking about my lack of integrity, anti-Semitism, and so on, without ever saying a single thing that contradicted the picture I had just presented. Both the organizer of the seminar and myself tried to push past the storm of insults and slurs, asking that people dispute with me on the basis of contesting facts and figures. None was forthcoming. My crime seemed to be that I opposed the peace process, even though it was also the case that what I said about it in fact was true.
My opponents were in every case people who described themselves as supporters of Peace Now (i.e., liberal Jews) and hence of peace with Palestinians. I kept raising the question of military occupation, settlement policy, the annexation of Jerusalem, but I received no response–only more accusations that I had missed certain nuances and important distinctions.
I concluded from this that in some very profound way I had violated the accepted norms for Palestinian behavior after Oslo. For one, I persisted in bringing up embarrassing questions and troubling issues. We are now supposed to feel that peace is moving forward and to question anything about the "peace process" is tantamount to being an ungrateful, treasonous wretch. For another, I spoke in terms of facts and figures, and I was unsparing in my criticism of all the parties to peace But I found that I was expected to express gratitude and a general attitude of cheerfulness, which I had violated by complaining abuot concrete abuses. Lastly, I had had the nerve to speak about the sitution neither as a supplicant nor as a subservient "native." This was particularly annoying to one of the individuals, who had become accustomed to Palestinians regarding her as a superior "expect" and foreign adviser. In other words Palestinians are obligated to see such people as somehow entitled to tell us what is good for us, for our own good. The precedent seems to derive from the PLO chairman, who has surrounded himself with foreign advisers and financial experts, al of whom aid him in his private investments and commercial undertakings.
Although all the other members of the audience soon tired of my opponents, and expressed agreement with my views, I realized that the nature of the encounter I had just had with proponents of the "peace process" was the main thing that was wrong with that process: its total obliviousness to the interests of the Palestinian people, as well as its enhancement of Israel's position...(FIRST CHAPTER: THE END OF THE PEACE PROCESS: OSLO AND AFTER, E.Said)
_____________________
My point is this: I detect even in the voice of peace activists a reticients to let go of some of the propaganda as well. While theY may not be purporting it, it is not necessarily debunked, nor are flood gates opening to let out those aspects of the Palestinian plight and cause that must come front and center on this. For all the blossoming groups, which i most wholehearted encourage WHERE is the mainstream coverage, where is the needed commentary on the adverse consequence of the occupations mechanism of control.
Instead, what I detect somewhat is still an attempt to guide from view that blame and expose that is crucial to the Palestinians. Take the gag of the mouth of the Palestinians. Let them tell their story of their "catastrophe" always parleed in quotes as if it remains some semi fiction in the mind of a lesser and more evil people. There were intricate nuances of Israeli control evident throughout the Oslo process wherein the GAG was never removed and after it become WORSE for the Palestinians, and now stands on the threshold of utter travesty which it seems all walk toward with all eyes open...
Sure there is enough blame to go around, but behind all that Israel has not been called to task for, and has remained unaccountable for just being anti-occupation will not do.
WHERE IS THE US MAINSTREAM PALESTINIAN DIALOGUES, THE PALESTINIAN CRITICISM OF THIS PROCESS. Where are their thoughts on abc and nbc and cbs as to this devastation called the Al Aqsa Intifada.
Please take my thoughts in stride I am aware of all of the work of gush shalom and I am not sure that I am directing these thoughts to all of the movements or anyone in particular. All I know is from what I have followed in regard to what is really going on vs. what US mainstream covers which is nothing but the General's it is clear to me the Palestinians still are non-existent in this story. It is just more food for thought.
You say there is no standing in the middle of the street on this one. I ditto that. I say it is not enough to be anti-occupation at the continued maintainance of the Israeli denials. That will not do!
Here is a recent speech by Edward Said. Is definitely worth a listen or a viewing if you haven't already done so. He speaks as a Palestine in exile as he calls himself of the DIGNITY OF HIS PEOPLE...
Edward Said on Israel, Palestine and the Most Recent Middle East Peace Planfrom transcript
snip
if we miss that truth about the power of Palestinian resistance, despite all its failings and all its mistakes, and God knows there have been many, we miss everything. Palestinians have always been a problem for the Zionist project, and many solutions have perennially been proposed that minimize rather than solve the problem. The official Israeli policy, no matter what--whether Ariel Sharon uses the word occupation or not, or whether or not he dismantles a rusty, unused tower or two, has always been not to accept the reality of the Palestinian people as equals, nor even to admit that their rights were scandalously violated all along by Israel.
Whereas a few courageous Israelis over the years have tried to deal with its other concealed history, most Israelis and what seems like the majority of Americans, of American Jews, have made every effort to deny, avoid, or negate the Palestinian reality. That is why there is no peace. another excerpt...
"Now, I have some papers here. I'm not good at selling things but, here's a recording made by a group from the conservatory of Arabic music, a C.D. Here is an account of it, and here's some leaflets which will be available at the back of the hall for you to look at, and I recommend it. It's a very worthwhile, humane project to support. It's precisely this will kind of thing that never gets mentioned. They just talk about suicide bombers, right?
But the Palestinian kids are very gifted, that there is a marvelously accomplished young Palestinian pianist who's now playing at the best halls all over the world. That there's another one who's only 13 or 14 years old who's considered to be a child prodigy, all of them having connections with this conservatory. That's never mentioned. It's all suicide bombers and fundamentalists. So surely those things need to be assessed. -------------------------------------------------
AGAIN I SAY WHERE IS THE US MAINSTREAM MEDIA????
My apologies for going on. Here now is the speech:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/26/152245HERE IS THE FULL TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.democracynow.org/transcripts/edwardsaid.shtml
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
