This past weekend I went up to NYC, and apart from the things that typically make a weekend there wonderful, I was witness to similarly disconcerting events.
The first of which was an event held by Independent Viewpoints that sought to discuss Sunni and Shiite relations in Iraq with a keynote speech by Noam Chomsky. The undercard to this event were four panelists moderated by Ann Goodman.
On the left were two women and on the right, two men separated in the middle by Ms. Goodman. Ms. Yaqoob, a British woman who recently was elected to city council in Birmingham, spoke with poise and much thought, traits that were shared to a lesser extent by Mr. Shallal, a founder of the Peace Cafe in Washington DC. The two other speakers, an American cleric named Shaykh Ibrahim Kazerooni who was fairly invisible during the panel, and the other a Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah, who is the individual that troubled me the most.
Apart that most of the discussion diverged from Sunni/Shiite relations, Dr. Fattah used her platform to direct conversation towards her preoccupation with Israel. She attacked Israel for all aggression against Palestine, and accused the Israeli security service of funding Kurds to further divide and sabotage an Iraqi state. Her inflammatory rhetoric was staunchly anti-Zionist and in my perspective, thinly veiled anti-Semitism. This theme seemingly continued into the question and answer with Noam Chomsky, where an audience member pined for his reaction to the recent Israel Lobby paper, seemingly to gratify a ‘I knew they were behind everything the whole time’ feeling (unfortunately, Noam Chomsky dismissed the paper on several levels).
In a bizarre but parallel coincidence, I encountered the Israeli Day Parade the following day. The parade is an event to celebrate Israel in a very specific manner: complete and undisputed support for Israel as a Jewish state. The scene is a twisted public examination of indoctrination from parent to child, with youths being led by their elders with Israeli flags and signs in Hebrew in tow. Such memories I recollect are a man holding a sign reading ‘Expel the Arab Nazis’ with flag-waving children marching by, and a parent yelling at a group of very young children to hold a large sign up correctly as they paraded.
My reaction to both of these was initially simplistic (I kind of wanted to yell “THIS ISN’T HELPING!” while witnessing both), that turned into defensive and disenchanted. It’s unfortunate that people, especially Arab-Americans or Jewish-Americans, can be completely shielded from the consequence of their words and actions as they live a world away from the Middle East conflict. Would half of these people be involved in such causes if they themselves were in the midst of it? Could they bare the brunt of the storm instead of weathering it from the view in America?
The results of ongoing nationalism and extremism in Palestine and Israel are underreported by the main stream media, and ignored by those who subscribe to such philosophies in America. While I prefer to think many are ignorant of the atrocities and bloodshed that such mindframes have facilitated, I am still incredibly disheartened by the very fact that forums are given to these viewpoints and readily endorsed by many. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ is not an applicable phrase for the continuing violence that plagues the Middle East. While many of us want and work hard for peace, I find it increasingly harder not to be crushed by the realities of human nature and pervasive ideology that continually debilitates and sabotages a serious peaceful resolution.
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Amen! Well written and moving piece.