by June Rugh
Ramzy Baroud, veteran Palestinian-American journalist and Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle, recently completed a speaking tour of the United States’ East Coast to promote his second book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006). The Second Palestinian Intifada is a far-reaching account of key events of the past five years that transformed the political landscape not only of Palestine and Israel, but of the entire Middle East. With a critical eye, Baroud takes the most controversial issues head-on: the alarming escalation in suicide bombings, the construction of the Separation Wall, the devastating hunger and unemployment in the Occupied Territories, the brutality of the Israeli army, the political surprise of the Palestinian elections. On November 12, 2007, Baroud was interviewed by June Rugh, a freelance writer, in Seattle, Washington.
June Rugh: Good afternoon, Mr. Baroud. Your book, The Second Palestinian Intifada, has been widely praised by eminent scholars and intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Norman Finkelstein. Coupled with the national media awareness of the momentum building towards the US-based Palestinian-Israeli peace conference, did your book tour receive considerable attention from the press?
Ramzy Baroud: On the contrary, the silence has been deafening. Let me clarify: The Second Palestinian Intifada has received wide coverage in the progressive, alternative, Asian, African, and Arab media, and has been reviewed many academic journals, in print and online. But not one corporate newspaper — that I know of — has touched it so far.
JR: Not one? Are you surprised?
RB: Actually, I’m not surprised at all. In Western corporate media, it is the most predictable and consistent practice: if the narrative doesn’t fit the dominant “liberal” ideology, it is simply omitted. And it’s not just the media boycott of the book. Sometimes the local newspapers refused to cover the events of my tour. Rather than straight reportage, certain newspapers opted to publish defamatory articles and letters to the editor that chastised the academic institutions for inviting me to speak and deliberately misinterpreted my comments.
JR: In other words, they literally replaced your words with other content — a kind of journalistic ventriloquism. Can you give an example?
RB: The most disturbing case occurred around my talk at Virginia
Wesleyan College, in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk has a powerfully
committed antiwar community — in addition to fourteen military bases,
interestingly — and I was very much looking forward to speaking to this
audience. My core message was a call for justice for the Palestinian
people based on coexistence, coupled with global alternatives to war
and racism. In my talks, I always address other regions of concern in
addition to Palestine; notably, Iraq, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. I feel
it’s crucial to give a cross-cultural perspective to encourage the
audience think beyond the usual geopolitical limitations and
ethnocentricities. Yet a local Jewish newspaper announced the event on
the front page as a “pro-Palestinian journalist” — suddenly, I’m a
speaker with a narrow agenda.
JR: What happened when you spoke at the college?
RB: A local rabbi and his supporters came and heckled me with questions and
outrageous claims. One said that in 1880 there were more Jews than
Christians and Muslims in Palestine; another claimed that my effort to
explain the sociopolitical context of suicide bombings was the same as
endorsing the horrific attacks of 9/11. Zoberman himself accused me of
being a “Hamas sympathizer”; and since Hamas is on the US State
Department’s list of terrorist groups, his implication is clear.
JR: This brings to mind an observation by Steven Salaita: that the
discourse of mainstream America is shaped in such a way that if an Arab
expresses any feature of political identity, he or she immediately
evokes the “undefined but identifiable terrorist.”
RB: Yes, I’d
say that applies here. The Rabbi’s supporters followed me to a second
event at a local theatre, and when I refused to modify my statements,
he began a campaign of letter-writing and calling the college and local
papers, describing my message as “poisonous.”
JR: So as far as
mainstream media goes, you — and your book — are either ignored or
vilified. What is it that strikes a nerve? Is it the topic of
Palestine, or your particular perspective?
RB: The subject of
Palestine always strikes a nerve in American media. Even more, though,
the fact that I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza to a
dispossessed family forced to leave its ancestral village in 1948 —
leaving behind burned homes and bullet-riddled bodies — does not make
me a desirable voice for the “liberal” media. I was raised in a place
where I had to negotiate my daily survival among Israeli tanks and
soldiers. As a Palestinian, I advocate for a just peace and dignity for
my people, who remain hostage to the inhumanity of the Israeli
occupation; as an American, I protest my country’s contributions to
violence in the Middle East. This is not the kind of writer that the
New York Times wants to profile. It’s too far out of their readers’
comfort zone.
JR: So, as a Palestinian, you find yourself doubly
effaced: first, by the Israeli government, and then again, by the
Western press.
RB: Yes, you could say that.
JR: One of
the objectives of your tour was to promote The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. What is your primary goal
in getting people to read this book?
RB: To present an
alternative reading of Palestinian history. To help people realize,
among other things, that Palestinians should be praised for their
courage in taking on the risks of democracy; that they should not be
forced to suffer, and a civil war provoked, because their elections
resulted in a government that is not a regime compliant to the US
government. That the terms “extremism” and “moderation,” as used in the
corporate press, are not objective concepts, but rather tied to whether
a government or political agency serves the interests of the Bush
administration. These are concepts you’ll never see in the mainstream
media.
JR: So, in a sense, you are raising awareness that an alternative narrative of Palestinian history even exists.
RB: Exactly. And this issue goes beyond me and my particular book. As you
know, well-known figures such as Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt — even the usually untouchable Desmond Tutu — have
recently been victims of smear campaigns, accused of anti-Semitism and
so on, simply because they were presenting the Palestinian perspective
and, implicitly or explicitly, criticizing US and Israeli government
policy.
JR: And that’s in the public forum. It’s striking that
even in academia — traditionally, the last bastion of open debate —
there is now also a systematic silencing of alternative readings of
Palestinian history. Norman Finkelstein was essentially forced to
resign position at DePaul University; Ilan Pappé recently left the
University of Haifa for similar reasons.
RB: Even the area of
publishing is no longer safe. Pluto Press, the publisher of my latest
book, is currently fighting for the right to distribute Joel Kovel’s
book, Overcoming Zionism, in the United States. Kovel’s book was
published by Pluto Press and is distributed in America by the
University of Michigan Press, under contract with Pluto. But when the
Michigan chapter of the pro-Israel group StandWithUs denounced the
Overcoming Zionism as anti-Israel propaganda and discredited facts, the
university press stopped its distribution. In early September, the
press’s executive board decided to continue distribution temporarily;
but the incident has caused the university press to review its
relationship with Pluto Press, with a decision due in late November. A
statement from the University of Michigan says explicitly that Pluto
Press’s decision to publish Kovel’s book brings into question the
viability of the university’s distribution agreement with the
publisher. So sometimes, quite literally, the phrase “Stop the press!”
is treated as a reasonable request.
JR: In other words, what
we’re seeing is not just a chilling effect, but a deep freeze that
appears to be settling over all alternative sources of information. Do
you have suggestions for people who want to counteract this, who want
to keep these lines of communication open?
RB: Yes. It’s
important to actively support progressive publishing companies such
Pluto Press, and to be aware of the attempts to shut down distribution
of their books. I’d urge everyone to go to their website and see the
books they offer. It is vital to keep information sources flowing to
counteract the deceptively complete discourse presented in the
corporate media. And be aware of other news sources: progressive
websites such as Counterpunch, and other resources such as the
Palestine Chronicle, Zmag.org, etc.
JR: It strikes me that by
referring to your book and the progressive press as “alternative
narratives,” we are implicitly affirming the primacy of mainstream
media. Yet the fact is that your book, which deals with on-the-ground
realities of the second intifada, is not “alternative,” but central,
and vital to any real understanding of the Palestinian struggle.
RB: Quite right. In fact, if you want a true alternative reality, I’d
suggest a front-row ticket to the upcoming peace conference in
Annapolis, Maryland. That will be a parallel universe constructed to
serve the needs of the Bush administration, with very little to do with
the actual needs of either the Palestinian or the Israeli people. It
will be a media spectacle, starring Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas as
the already-disempowered players, and with little result — except for
preserving the US and Israeli governments’ status quo, and keeping the
region ruled by military occupation, state violence, and, inevitably,
terrorism.
JR: One challenging issue you address in The Second
Palestinian Intifada is the increasing violence used by Palestinians
against the Israeli military and Israeli civilians. You write that it
is important to “contextualize this phenomenon, not to justify it, but
to present the Palestinian response as a tragic yet predictable human
reaction to decades of subjugation.” Do you think it’s possible for the
American audience to get beyond the image of a suicide bomber and see
the larger phenomenon behind it?
RB: Yes, I do. I assume
intelligent readers, and thoughtful readers will ultimately be able to
put themselves in the position of the Palestinians described in the
book. To eliminate violence, one must be brave enough to examine the
root causes. That requires a mixture of humility and imagination — a
mental exercise rarely required by the corporate media.
JR: Finally, in practical terms, how can one buy a copy of The Second Palestinian Intifada?
RB: You can order the book directly by sending a check of $23 USD, which
includes shipping charges, to Ramzy Baroud, PO Box 196, Mountlake
Terrace, WA 98043, USA. If you have a PayPal account, you can send $23
USD, including your shipping address: editor@palestinechronicle.com.
Mr. Baroud's experience with a local rabbi and his followers in Norfolk underscores a very important point, and one that I have had experience with as well. There has been much talk about the power of the "Israeli lobby" but more pervasively, it is local groups who stridently and publicly oppose any discourse critical of Israel or Zionism that extend that power down to the average citizen. I have personally given talks on Carter's book and been shouted down so that no discussion could take place. I have attended other events where that has happened as well. Others who come to such public events to learn find it difficult to ask any questions and are intimidated. This not only keeps people from becoming informed, it makes a decision to explore all the angles of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a socially militant and aggressive step. This happens over and over again in places far and wide.
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November 18, 2007
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Ramzy Baroud, veteran Palestinian-American journalist and Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle, recently completed a speaking tour of the United States’ East Coast to promote his second book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006). The Second Palestinian Intifada is a far-reaching account of key events of the past five years that transformed the political landscape not only of Palestine and Israel, but of the entire Middle East. With a critical eye, Baroud takes the most controversial issues head-on: the alarming escalation in suicide bombings, the construction of the Separation Wall, the devastating hunger and unemployment in the Occupied Territories, the brutality of the Israeli army, the political surprise of the Palestinian elections. On November 12, 2007, Baroud was interviewed by June Rugh, a freelance writer, in Seattle, Washington.
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