Khaled Abu Toameh: A Voice for Palestine Solidarity?

Khaled Abu Toameh spoke yesterday on Wayne State's campus at the behest of community and campus Zionists. (Zionists apparently don't mind community members on campus when they support Israeli colonialism and apartheid.) Although Toameh's presentation played nicely into Zionist hands, blaming Palestinians for all that violence they use to oppose Israeli colonialism, ARA wondered at several points whether this was actually a pro-Palestinian event.

Toameh, for example, readily admitted that Palestinians in Israel have second-class citizenship status, something Zionists on campus have consistently denied. He went on to list the inability of these Palestinians to get jobs working for the state and the marked differences between Palestinian and Israeli neighborhoods. He also stated quite plainly that it was these inequalities that were responsible for radicalizing Palestinians inside Israel. However, rather than praising this radicalization as a step toward Israel's ultimate dismantling as a Jewish state, he lamented Israeli behavior, and formulated policy advice for Israel so that it might avoid the wrath of the social forces it is responsible for creating. Naturally, doing so destroyed any credibility he might otherwise have had as a Palestine solidarity activist.

In addition, Toameh paid ARA the remarkable compliment of calling us optimists when we called for a single, democratic polity in all of historic Palestine where Jews, Muslims, Christians and all others can live side by side as equals. We have been called a lot of things during our struggle for the liberation of Palestine, but "optimists" has never come up. Unfortunately, Toameh tried to dismiss our optimism by saying it was impractical because Jews and Palestinians don't want to live next to each other. At that point, we reminded him that Judea Pearl, another Zionist speaker, had only Monday afternoon specifically said the opposite, that the VAST MAJORITY of Palestinians DO want to live as equals, "one person, one vote" with Jews in the region. That being the case, the conclusion was clear to everyone in the audience: it is actually the Jewish folks in Israel that refuse, and enforce with all the power of their state, to live with Palestinians as equals. In light of such cold, hard logic, all talk of Palestinian barbarism faded away like so many Zionist dreams past, present, and future.

As much as ARA agreed with Toameh on the second-class citizenship of Palestinians, and as much as we appreciated being called optimists when the alternative is racist pessimism clinging for dear life to military might, we disagreed on the way forward. Toameh still labors under the illusion that Palestinians within Israel can gain equal rights without challenging the Jewish character of Israel. The case of Azmi Bishara proves otherwise. While Toameh tried to dismiss Bishara's case by accusing him of corruption, the truth is that Bishara has pioneered the movement among Palestinians in Israel for full citizenship. Unlike Toameh, however, Bishara realizes that full citizenship will only be achieved when Israel as a Jewish state is dismantled. Toameh refuses to make that stand, and as a result operates freely in Israel, unharassed, writing for one of the most rightwing papers in the country.

Similarly, Toameh naively clings to the hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. ARA, on the other hand, clarified to him that the solution in the region has ALREADY been decided in favor of a single state. Israel controls the whole region. As Toameh pointed out on numerous occasions, all claims of Palestinian autonomy and self-government are a sham! Palestinians can elect their own prison wardens, but they remain in prison, under Israel's lock and key. Further, if they elect prison wardens Israel doesn't like, Israel will cut off their rations. That is not a two-state solution, that is a single state solution, it is apartheid, and it is what we have today.

The question before people of conscience everywhere is simple. Will that single state be an apartheid regime, as is currently the case, or will the Jewish character of Israel be done away with and a single democracy for all people be established?

This is the question we as activists must ask ourselves. But we must not end with questions, because the answer depends on us. Resolving the struggle for Palestine is our generation's mission. Will we fulfill it, or betray it?

In ARA, we derive hope from the words of one of the twentieth century's greatest political minds, CLR James, who once said, "Political power never rests entirely on naked force. By the time it has reached that stage, it is already doomed."