Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2003, pages 63-65

Southern California Chronicle

Ilan Pappé Urges Divestment, Boycott, Anti-Apartheid Campaigns

By Pat and Samir Twair

On a whirlwind visit to California, Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé was honored along with Hebrew University Prof. Jeff Halper at a brunch in the Los Angeles home of Prof. Mahmood and Nancy Ibrahim.

Just hours before a massive Feb. 15 anti-war march was scheduled in Hollywood, the Israeli visitors discussed challenges facing the Palestinians.

“The Arab American lobby is incompetent,” Pappé stated bluntly. “It has more potential than it’s using. It should be coordinating non-governmental agencies into a concentrated focus on divestment, boycotts and campaigns to condemn the Israeli apartheid system.”

Asked by the Washington Report what specific steps he would recommend, the Haifa University professor replied, “It shouldn’t be concentrating so much on defamation. It should be running ads, buying its own TV network, letting Americans know what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

“The peace camp has given up too easily in the U.S.,” he said, “and decided the pro-Israel lobby has succeeded.”

It is because of such outspoken views that Pappé, one of Israel’s most respected academics, is in danger of losing his job at Haifa University.

“Talk about divestment alarms the Israelis,” he continued. “If a divestment campaign is to succeed, it must have as wide a coalition as possible and it must make clear that it isn’t designed to de-Zionize Israel, but that it rather is a means of putting an end to the occupation.

“Israel must realize,” he explained, that “the price it will pay for occupying [Palestinian] land is to be a pariah state.”

The prolific author said it is difficult to compare Israel’s apartheid system with the one that existed in South Africa.

“Conditions Palestinians live under are much worse than South Africa’s,” he declared.

“Israel is losing its inhibitions as it becomes more extreme and ruthless in its clamp-down on the Palestinians,” Pappé observed. “This should convince the world that the problem is on the Israeli side.“

However, he reasoned, this state of peril for the Palestinians should not be prolonged. “The more brutal the victimizer becomes, the faster his behavior should be recognized. Scandinavian nations are aware of the situation, but Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and other former U.S.S.R. satellites aren’t going to pressure the European Union to object to Israel.”

The best remedy for Israeli intransigence, he stressed, is to organize a global body of non-governmental agencies which will demand an end to occupation. “Politicians won’t come to the forefront, nor journalists,” he said. “The pressure must come from NGOs.”

Regarding the immense fortified wall Ariel Sharon is building to separate West Bank Palestinian population centers from Israel, Pappe’ said: “The wall can be stopped if there is sufficient outside pressure. Sharon is in no hurry to complete the wall, he is eagerly awaiting a mega [Palestinian] attack so he can wreak a mega retaliation.”

As to whether there is any chance for the destroyed Palestinian economy and infrastructure to recover, Pappé believes “it is possible, but it will take years to rebuild the fabric of Palestinian society. The more we wait, the more difficult it will be.”

Pappe’ operates on three agendas, he said. The urgent agenda is to prevent the next nakba, the immediate to end the occupation, and the long term is to settle the refugee problem.

“We don’t know what the Palestinians want: one state or two states?” he said. “We know Israel wants one state—without the Arabs.”

Interjected Halper: “The occupation is so massive, the settlements so extensive that it is impossible to detach the West Bank [from Israel]. The $3 billion highway system—paid for by the U.S.—takes up 17 percent of the West Bank. There now are more Israelis living in East Jerusalem than Palestinians. The Palestinians have even been hinting that they might say ‘Okay, Sharon, the settlements stay, you’ve won. All we want is our civil rights.’”

Noting that Palestinians are living under the risk of death or expulsion, Pappe’ warned that if war breaks out in Iraq, Sharon could declare military closures in Gaza and the West Bank and do anything he cares to while the world’s attention is riveted on Iraq.

“Sharon definitely is capable of the transfer option,” Pappé warned, “but he prefers to impose a military presence enforcing such unbearable conditions the Palestinians will leave.”

He reiterated his belief that occupation will not end because of a Palestinian struggle against it. Instead, he argued, “It is outside pressure through divestment, anti-apartheid campaigns, and boycotts of Israeli products that will end occupation.”

No Cars for Palestinians

A new Israeli strategy to push the Palestinians into 18th century ghettoes was brought to light by Susy Mordechay of the Ta’ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership during a Feb. 1 talk at the Workmen’s Circle. The occasion was the first visit to Los Angeles in 10 years for Mordechay, who was a graduate student in linguistics at UCLA in the mid-1980s.

At the onset of the current intifada, Mordechay said, Israeli troops closed villages by blocking major roads with mounds of dirt. When Ta’ayush volunteers dismantled two mounds, the army replaced them with cement blocks which left a space wide enough for a donkey cart, but not a vehicle, to pass through.

Mordechay showed slide after slide of demolished cars, run over by tanks or bulldozers, which remain on streets or in unsightly piles of burnt-out chassis.

“Palestinian cars are systematically being destroyed,” she said. “Donkey carts are a new business, the sole means of moving people between one mound to another.

“If modern transportation is gone, if ambulances can’t pass and it takes two hours to get to school by donkey cart,” she pointed out, “everything slows down, while Israeli citizens whiz by on their bypass roads.”

Ethnic cleansing already is underway, Mordechay said, citing the forced evacuation of the village of Beit Hanoun, of families from caves in south Hebron, and the destruction of one-quarter of the homes in Qalqilya.

In the southern West Bank, she stated, full-scale efforts are underway to clear out Palestinians from the southern border to Hebron.

Diana Butto Tells It Like It Is

Canadian-born attorney Diana Butto, who serves as a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, was keynote speaker at a March 8 program of the Palestinian American Women’s Association of Southern California.

Stepping down from the podium, the articulate barrister said she wanted to be on the same level as her audience and address her listeners eye-to-eye.

As Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) sat within earshot, Butto outlined Ariel Sharon’s relentless assault on a captive Palestinian population.

“In the last two-and-a-half years,” Butto emphasized, “1 percent of the Palestinian population has been killed or injured! In the U.S., a comparable figure would be 3 million Americans—imagine how outraged you would be.”

Stating that 300 Palestinian children under age 18 have been killed, the Stanford University-educated lawyer stressed that 9,000 homes have been destroyed. In March alone, she said, 800 families were made homeless by Israel’s house demolition policy.

“Palestinian women are on the front lines, resisting in ways you don’t know about,” she continued. “More than 45 percent of women are anemic, 30 percent of the children are malnourished—and this is solely because of Israeli policy.

“In the U.S., you hear public service announcements on how to stop smoking or to test your fire alarms,” she observed. “In Palestine, public service announcements tell women how to give birth in a car when they are held up at Israeli military checkpoints.”

Turning to the apartheid wall under construction, Butto said 7 percent of Palestinian land is being confiscated for the electrified wall, which is twice as high as the Berlin Wall and three times as long.

“At Qalqilya, there is a military tower every 300 meters along the wall,” she said. “Eight homes have so far been destroyed, 31 water wells will be confiscated, the farmers will be separated from their fields.”

While the World Health Organization specifies 100 liters of water as the standard minimum per person, Palestinians are allotted only 70 liters of water daily, while settlers enjoy swimming pools and decorative lawns.

Butto concluded by asking audience members to go to their legislative representatives and ask them to enforce the Arms Export Control Act, which forbids recipient nations from using U.S. weapons on civilian populations.

In an exclusive interview with the Washington Report, Butto said the Palestinians may be facing starvation in the event of a U.S. war on Iraq. “The World Food Agency only has a one-week supply of foodstuffs,” she explained. “If Israel closes the borders, the Palestinians are going to go hungry.”

Butto is headquartered in Ramallah, where, she says, there is a lot of talk within the PLO of a one-state solution.

“It’s a new thing for the PLO to be discussing this,” she observed, “but one can’t unscramble an egg.”

In addition to her legal services with the PLO, Butto is preparing a Ph.D. dissertation on refugees and compensation.

“I never thought I would go to Palestine,” said Butto, whose parents emigrated from Nazareth to Canada before her birth, “but at the end of the Camp David negotiations, an Israeli asked me what is wrong with the Palestinians when Barak offered them everything and they rejected it. I dropped everything and went to Ramallah.”

Asked about Yasser Arafat’s appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister, Butto said she believes Israel’s insistence on reform of the Palestinian leadership is Sharon’s ruse to deflect attention from the occupation.

“The Palestinians called for financial reform in 1998,” she pointed out, “and Israel and the U.S. thwarted it, stating there couldn’t be reform until statehood. Now, when Israel insists on Palestinian reform, it becomes an issue. Palestine is asked to be a democracy and act like it has a state.

“They are asking the Palestinians to fly,” she concluded, “but they won’t let them out of the cage.”

Protesting Raytheon

Union organizer Bob McCloskey wore a sign around his neck identifying himself as George W. Bush while he stood beside a pile of “Iraqi corpses” in front of the Raytheon campus in El Segundo, CA.

“This will be my legacy,” McCloskey stated, pointing to the lifeless bodies. “These are your U.S. tax dollars at work.”

The occasion was the second street theater protest of the then-pending war on Iraq by the Middle East Peace Education Program of the American Friends Service Committee. More than 50 demonstrators assembled March 11 at the entrance to Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.

A mural of the White House was the backdrop for a corporate executive who symbolically destroyed education (an over-size ruler), healthcare (crutches), food and hunger programs (an apple), and affordable housing (a “For Rent” sign). An air-inflated “missile” inscribed with RAYTHEON (light of the gods) fell on “Iraqi civilians” sprawled on the sidewalk.

Actress Mimi Kennedy, who plays Dharma’s hippie mother on the hit TV series “Dharma and Greg,” brandished a handmade sign stating: “Preserve Life, Plan for Peace and Pay for Peace.”

“This is the only way we can protest,” she told the Washington Report. “I voted last week, but war wasn’t on the ballot. Conflict may be inevitable, but violence is not.”

Stated protest coordinator Shady Hakim: “Raytheon’s $14.5 billion defense business provides 85 percent of its total revenue. It has the highest profit margins in the industry. In fact, its shares rose 30 percent after the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan.”

A check on stock market reports shows that Raytheon shares soared to $45.70 at the onset of the May 2002 U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. On March 12, they were hovering around a yearlong low at $24.96. Two days after the U.S. launched its war on Iraq, the stock closed at $27.79.

Tomahawk Cruise Missiles are just one of the popular products made by Raython, the nation’s fourth largest defense contractor. It also manufactures AMRAAM missiles, at $386,000 apiece, HARM missiles, at $284,000 each, and Maverick missiles, which go for $180,000 each.

Commented protester Shiva Rose: “Our [government’s] priorities are ridiculous. One Tomahawk missile costs $600,000, an amount that could provide 379 children health care for one year.”

Rose, who is the wife of TV’s “The Practice” star Dylon McDermott, was arrested Jan. 16 at AFSC’s first civil disobedience act at the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building.

“We’re trying to bribe Turkey with $26 billion to give us military bases,” she said, “when we need that money here for social services.”

Protesters linked hands and stepped into an intersection, blocking vehicular traffic in the busy airport/industrial area.

When asked why demonstrators didn’t block the entrance to Raytheon, Hakim explained that if they stepped foot on property of Raytheon, a government contractor, federal charges might have been pegged onto them.

Traffic lines grew and horns honked while the 12 protesters sang “We Shall Overcome.”

After several warnings to desist, the police arrested the dissenters one-by-one.

As he waited to be handcuffed, Rhodes Thompson, 75, a retired minister from Claremont, declared: “This is just a way to put my life on the line and say I cannot do anything else.”

Marches, Protests Continue

Actor Danny Glover marched and actor Ed Asner spoke at the International Women’s Day march and demonstration March 8 in Westwood. Highly visible in the throng of 10,000 was Code Pink for Peace, an organization geared to informing women of social inequities in the U.S. As marchers arrived at Occidental Petroleum corporate headquarters, Code Pink demonstrators lay down in the street and shouted slogans against the corporation’s damaging social and environmental tactics in the Third World.

At the head of the parade was a huge flatbed truck on which women of all ages and racial groups held signs. Among the slogans: “Value Women’s Work,” “Let Iraqi Children Live,” “Stop Penalizing Us For Being Women,” “Reclaim Military Spending” and “Every Mom Is a Working Mother.”

In a last ditch effort to challenge the Bush administration’s push to war, a crowd of 10,000 to 50,000 demonstrators braved the heaviest storm since 1952 in downtown Los Angeles on March 15.

Wearing a yellow raincoat, the Rev. Jesse Jackson vowed that President George W. Bush will face war crime charges if he starts a war on Iraq.

“Give us a sense of sanity in high places,” Jackson shouted. “We need a coherent foreign policy that is committed to one set of rules. We must not look at the family of nations with contempt.”

Stating that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld knows what weapons Iraq has because he has the receipts for them, Jackson noted that the people in Bush’s administration didn’t fight for democracy in Selma, South Africa or Angola. Why then, he asked, are they so eager to install democracy in Iraq?

“When the bombs fall, the U.S. will lose its moral authority,” he warned. “Don’t let a burning Bush stop you.”

Activist/writer Ariana Huffington termed Bush’s motives repugnant for hiring Halliburton Corporation, of which Vice President Dick Cheney was president, to rebuild Iraq’s refineries after Saddam.

“Mr. President, you know how many will die in Iraq, give us those numbers now,” she demanded.

Actress Alfre Woodard stated: “God is watching us. History is recording us.”

Referring to the pending war as a “fireworks display to deflect focus from Bush’s domestic failures,” Woodard said, “You can’t shoot somebody just because he has a bad attitude.”

As the clock ticked down to the deadline, and on each night thereafter, peace proponents planned to burn candles in their windows or balconies as an expression of sympathy for American troops and Iraqi citizens.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.