***** When I enrolled at Oklahoma University for the 1956-1957 terms, I found myself inside the gates of what the Oklahoma red-hunters called a "hotbed of communists." Right away, I found the few leftist dissidents on campus. The first was my dormitory housemother, who had come from a Wobbly family and was a lesbian. Then I met Jimmy, my future husband, an engineering student who had switched his major from architecture the year before when his idol and teacher, Bruce Goff -- the most brilliant student of Frank Lloyd Wright -- was fired for being gay. One of Jimmy's best friends was a Palestinian refugee. A number of engineering students at Oklahoma University were from Middle Eastern countries, including Said Abu-Lughod, whose family had fled to Jordan following the 1948 war that established the state of Israel in Palestine.
Said made me aware of U.S. foreign policy. It was the time of the Suez Canal Crisis when Egypt's President Nasser nationalized the canal in defiance of Britain and the United States. Meanwhile, in the United States the Dulles brothers, John Foster as secretary of state and Alan as CIA director, were fomenting military coups and bringing down elected governments in Guatemala and Iran.
As I learned about these events and many other things about world politics from my radical and foreign friends, I began to understand the meaning of the term _imperialism_. Said gave me a newly published book by a Jewish scholar, Alfred M. Lilienthal, _What Price Israel?_ and other books and pamphlets about the stateless Palestinian refugees. Supporting Israel was a popular cause in the United States across the political spectrum, from liberal Eleanor Roosevelt to conservative President Eisenhower. Even the fundamentalist Protestants interpreted the establishment of the state of Israel as the realization of prophecies from the Bible's _Book of Revelation_. *****
Up until very recently, there was no space for Palestinian points of view in mainstream American discourse. That has now changed. Hopefully, not too little, too late, though. Among the two dominant political parties in Israel, Palestinians have no partner for peace:
***** A disastrous dead end: the Geneva Accord Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 28 October 2003
. . . Israel would annex most of its West Bank settlements, including vast swathes of territory in and around Jerusalem and other major cities, a simple endorsement of most of the illegal territorial conquests Israel made since 1967. Crucially, the document completely cancels the basic rights of Palestinian refugees by giving Israel an absolute veto on the return of even a single person to his or her home. . . .
[J]ust look at how Amram Mitzna, the "dovish" former general who led the Labor Party to massive defeat at the last Israeli election, and one of the authors of the document, presents it to Israelis. In an October 16 Ha'aretz commentary, Mitzna claimed that: "For the first time in history, the Palestinians explicitly and officially recognized the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people forever. They gave up the right of return to the state of Israel and a solid, stable Jewish majority was guaranteed. The Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter (of Jerusalem) and David's Tower will all remain in our hands. The suffocating ring was lifted from over Jerusalem and the entire ring of settlements around it -- Givat Zeev, old and new Givon, Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Neve Yaacov, Pisgat Zeev, French Hill, Ramot, Gilo and Armon Hanatziv will be part of the expanded city, forever. None of the settlers in those areas will have to leave their homes."
Since these settlements account for the largest land expropriations in the most dense Palestinian areas, and for a majority of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Mitzna is simply following the Labor Party tradition of assuring Israelis that they can enjoy peace, international legitimacy and the spoils of conquest all at the same time. They cannot. . . .
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2110.shtml> ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>