Real Life as a Palestinian-Has America gotten this one right or wrong? David Maloof will moderate the discussion.
- Background
I am pleased to lead an in-house conversation on “Real Life as a Palestinian: Has America Gotten This Right or Wrong?” on September 16th from 11am-12 noon.
To save on time, let me start by providing my personal vantage point.
As a successful international lawyer, some two decades ago I asked: how could I make the biggest difference in this life? I decided that the biggest challenge I could undertake was to try to solve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
I then undertook the following tasks, among others:
1. Visiting Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Lebanon to participate in real life; funding recreational facilities and a basketball court at a Palestinian refugee camp; serving on the national board of a Christian organization (“Churches for Middle East Peace”) dedicated to this cause, still a member; taking out a ½ page ad in the New York Times; paying for highway billboards; attending international Jewish organization’s peace conferences and lecturing on college campuses about my experiences; reviewing legal brief for US peace activist NGO.
2. Meeting with Middle East Christian Leaders; Palestinian leaders in Ramallah; Chief Palestinian negotiator (Saeb Erekat) and Palestinian and Arab leaders and ambassadors in Washington and London; Israeli Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv; members of Knesset in Tel Aviv; Israeli Settlement leaders; and Israeli media elite.
3. Meetings with US Senators, their staffs, and officials in the State Department; meeting with National Security Council Staff in the Obama White House; meeting with US Consul General in Jerusalem; providing informational documentaries to the same National Security Staff; meeting with George Mitchell, U.S. peace envoy.
4. Interacting with US media to place Palestinian peacemakers on US television and radio programs, such as CNN International and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (2009).
5. Arranged for the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to directly address the American people in English on a college campus (The Cooper Union) and call for peace (September 22, 2014).
Notes on the parameters of the September 16, 2021 discussion given the potential breadth of the topic and the limited time:
1. I would like to hew closely to the subject of: “Real Life for a Palestinian.”
2. I suggest that given time restraints we avoid discussion of historical events and try to stick to the current situation in 2020-2021.
3. I suggest that it would also probably be useful to focus on current living conditions in 2020 and 2021 in Palestine and in Israel.
4. suggest that we should focus more on current and possible future US policies than past ones.
Media
I suggest that you might go online and watch some of the two following media:
1. “John Oliver – Last Week Tonight” Israel v. Palestine (5/17/21)
2. “Budrus” (2009) (1 hour, 22 minutes)
https://www.amazon.com/Budrus-Ayed-Morrar/dp/B00B1Z20UQ
3. “Five Broken Cameras” (2011). (Nominated for an Academy Award in 2013 for “Best Documentary.”) (1 hour, 34 minutes)
https://www.amazon.com/5-Broken-Cameras-English-Subtitled/dp/B00B03Z858
4. “The Daily Show” (guest Mustafa Barghouti) (2009)
5. Anna Balzer, “Life in Occupied Palestine.” (2008)
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Occupied-Palestine-Eyewitness-Stories/dp/0930852478
6. Written Materials
I also suggest reading some of the following written materials:
Daily Life/Human Rights in Israel
- B’Tselem, “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” (2021)https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf
- B’Tselem, “This is Apartheid,” (2021) https://thisisapartheid.btselem.org/eng/#1
- Human Rights Watch, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” (2021) https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
- Amnesty International, “Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories 2020” (2020) https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
Treatment of Children in Palestine
- UNICEF, “The Situation of Palestinian Children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon,” (2010)https://www.unicef.org/oPt/PALESTINIAN_SITAN-final.pdf
- Human Rights Watch, “Second Class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools,” (2001)https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/ISRAEL0901.pdf
Life in Gaza in 2020-2021
1. Ghalayini, Basama, “A Gazan’s View on Hamas: It’s Not Complicated,” (2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire.html
2. Save the Children, “Denial of Healthcare outside Gaza Is a Death Sentence for Children,” (2020) https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/denial-healthcare-outside-gaza-death-sentence-children-save#:~:text=oPt-,’Denial%20of%20healthcare%20outside%20Gaza%20is%20a%20death,for%20children’%3A%20Save%20the%20Children&text=Children%20in%20Gaza%20are%20dying,Save%20the%20Children%20is%20warning
3. Al Jazeera, “‘Staggering’: WHO Says 200,000 Palestinians in Need of Health Aid,” (2021) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/2/who-says-nearly-200000-palestinians-in-need-health-of-health-aid
4. BBC, “Israel-Gaza Violence: The Conflict Explained,” (2021) https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396#:~:text=A%20ceasefire’s%20been%20agreed%20between,240%20people%20have%20been%20killed.&text=Israel%20and%20Hamas%20both%20claimed%20victory%20in%20the%20latest%20conflict
5. Conley, Julia, “This Is the Price of War,” (2021) https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/27/price-war-israeli-newspaper-publishes-photos-all-67-palestinian-children-killed-gaza
6. Balousha, Hazem and Berger, Miriam, “The U.N. Once Predicted Gaza Would be ‘Uninhabitable’ by 2020. Two Million People Still Live There,” (2020)https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/01/un-predicted-gaza-would-be-uninhabitable-by-heres-what-that-actually-means/
7. Hearst, David, “Gaza 2020: How Easy It Is for the World to Delete Palestinian Pain,” (2019) https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-2020-un-report-history-forgotten-israel-blockade
8. Kuttab, Jonathan, “Israel Has Effective Control over Gaza,” (2020) http://arabcenterdc.org/viewpoint/israel-has-effective-control-over-gaza/
9. Mahmoud, “Speech at The Cooper Union: Rethink Palestine,” (2014) https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/188331
Anthologies
a.The Electric Typewriter, “8 Great Articles about Israel/Palestine” (2019) https://tetw.org/IsraelPalestine
b. Foote, Jilliam, Jensen, Kristen, and Wintz Neighbor, Tese, “Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Resource Packet for Educators” (2009)https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/csrcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/478/2017/08/Israel-Palestine-Resource-Packet.pdf