Towards a New Leadership in the Middle East

THE PREPPY PATHWAY TO PEACE FOR ARAB CHILDREN
By Peter Weinberg
The Times (UK)
September 16, 2007

It’s dawn at the Allenby Bridge, the river crossing that connects Jericho and the West Bank to Jordan. The temporary community of Bedouins, truck drivers and UN peacekeepers warily watches the heavily armed Israeli border guards. The guards tell us to stand back; they won’t be opening the border any time soon. Everyone avoids eye contact. The tension is palpable.
As an investment banker from New York, I’m a long way outside my comfort zone. I’m here to attend the opening of a new school in Jordan – an initiative that may plant some small shoot of hope in this troubled region.

King’s academy is in Madaba, which lies in a fertile valley at the base of Mount Nebo, the biblical perch from which Moses looked out over the promised land. The school is the inspiration of King Abdullah II, who wanted to create a top-quality boarding school for talented teenage boys and girls from across the Middle East. Last week, the first 106 teenagers arrived to join the first classes.

You don’t need to be wealthy to attend King’s academy. In fact, the school has raised over $60m (£30m) to pay for buildings and land, and for scholarships for those who can’t afford tuition.

Last weekend, one student showed up in a limousine with more suitcases and boxes than could possibly fit in a dormitory. Contrastingly, another arrived by bus and walked through the front gate alone with just a small satchel of belongings. The students share potential and opportunity, not privilege.

Freshly cut grass and young olive trees decorate the walled campus. The library is rapidly filling with books; art supplies and lab equipment are unpacked and ready for use. The buzz of student conversations, both in Arabic and English, bring the campus to life. In some ways, this campus resembles any number of others around the world. But it’s different here.

The students are the cream of the intellectual crop from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. There are even a few from America and Taiwan. Ultimately all Middle Eastern countries will be represented, including Israel. But even more striking, particularly in this region of “haves and have nots”, is the economic diversity of the students.

The model for King’s academy is Deerfield academy in Massachusetts, one of the top boarding schools in the US. King Abdullah attended Deerfield in the 1980s and often identifies his days there as among the best of his life. As a former Deerfield student myself, I can echo the quality of the experience and its long-lasting impact.

The two schools do not look alike: Deerfield is the archetypical leafy, New England campus familiar to millions from movies such as Dead Poets Society; King’s is in the Levant style of stucco, wood and tile.

But the schools share a common DNA, marked by intelligence, tradition, and an environment that encourages students to engage and provoke. To shape and embody this culture, King Abdullah has recruited the legendary Deerfield headmaster, Eric Widmer, and his charismatic wife Meera Viswanathan.

At the opening ceremony last weekend, five students stepped forward to deliver a nervous premiere of the school song. As the sun set behind the campus buildings, King Abdullah welcomed the students and faculty and reiterated his dream.

Nobody can predict where these courageous students will attend university. One can say that they will have the option to attend the finest establishments in the world: Oxford or Cambridge, Yale or Harvard. I am hopeful that they will choose that route and ultimately return to the region when their academic training is completed. What could be more important in the Middle East than educating open-minded future leaders?

Last week I was strolling through the campus and I heard the sound of Deep Purple’s 1973 hit Smoke on the Water coming from one of the boy’s dormitories. In the US or Europe, such a sound would be unremarkable. But at this school, in this place, at this time, this very normality is extraordinary.

It's Lobbying, but is it really "Pro-Israel"?

Washington DC, September 7, 2007
Issue # 337 By M. J. Rosenberg
(Courtesy of the PLO Mission in the US)

It's Lobbying, But Is It Really Pro-Israel?

Critics of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt cannot be surprised that the attacks on the book prior to publication have already helped propel it to #10 on Amazon's best-seller list.

Not only that, the names "Walt-Mearsheimer" have become almost People magazine famous, odd for two mild-mannered political scientists from the University of Chicago and Harvard. It just shows you what a little "buzz" will do and a lot of buzz surrounds this book.

And why not? It's an important, heavily sourced and documented book (108 pages of footnotes) by two distinguished professors at two of our best universities. It deals with Middle East policymaking at a time when America's problems in that region surpass our problems anywhere else. And it is a serious book about a subject that is decidedly provocative, a much improved and expanded version of the original London Review of Books article. The book asks the question: how much power does the pro-Israel lobby have? The authors answer: too much, and that both America and Israel suffer as a result.

It's an arguable question and people are definitely arguing about it. It is also the kind of book you do not have to agree with on every count (I certainly don't) to benefit from reading.
The authors do not say that there is anything intrinsically wrong about the existence of a pro-Israel lobby. As political scientists, they understand that lobbies are as American as corn in Kansas. They know that lobbies play a major role in virtually all areas of American policy-making, domestic and foreign. Nor do they suggest that the pro-Israel community is out of bounds when it uses its influence on Israel's behalf.

Their question is whether or not that influence is used to promote policies that are in America's interest, or Israel's.

The authors answer is "no."

They believe that the interests of both countries would be better served by aggressive US involvement to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement along the lines of the so-called Clinton parameters. Israel would withdraw more or less to the '67 lines, a Palestinian state would be established, Israel's security would be guarded by ironclad guarantees, and the Palestinians would abandon any future claims on Israeli territory. They believe that it is the influence of the lobby that has prevented the US from vigorously pursuing this goal, despite the fact that both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have endorsed it.

I spent almost 20 years as a Congressional aide and can testify from repeated personal experience that Senators and House Members are under constant pressure to support status quo policies on Israel. It is no accident that Members of Congress compete over who can place more conditions on aid to the Palestinians, who will be first to denounce the Saudi peace plan, and who will win the right to be the primary sponsor of the next pointless Palestinian-bashing resolution. Nor is it an accident that there is never a serious Congressional debate about policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, every President knows that any serious effort to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on compromise by both sides will produce loud (sometimes hysterical) opposition from the Hill.

Walt and Mearsheimer mostly limit themselves to exploring whether all this is good for the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel). The question I ask today, and not for the first time, is whether this type of behavior is good for Israel. Forty years after the Six Day War, the occupation continues, the resistance to it intensifies, and Israelis in increasing numbers question whether they have a future in the Jewish state. Has "pro-Israel" advocacy consistently produced "pro-Israel" ends? At several critical moments, it most certainly has not.

Was it pro-Israel to lobby the Nixon administration in 1971 to support Israel's rejection of Anwar Sadat's offer of peace in exchange for a three mile pullback from the banks of the Suez Canal? Nixon capitulated to the pressure and backed off, leaving Israel free to reject Sadat's offer. Two years later, Sadat attacked and Israel lost 3000 soldiers in a war that would have been prevented had Israel accepted the Sadat initiative. Israel gained nothing in that war, and ended up giving Sadat all the territory he sought in 1971, and much more.

Was it pro-Israel to urge the Reagan administration to back Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982? That war, and its bloody aftermath, lasted for 18 years with the last Israeli soldier not leaving Lebanon until 2000 - after a thousand soldiers were killed. Just days after Israel's invasion, Lebanese Christian forces massacred almost a thousand Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. And 241 United States Marines, serving as post-war peace keepers, were killed (the most on any single day since Iwo Jima) when Hezbollah blew up their barracks. In the end, the war accomplished nothing and Israel withdrew unconditionally.

Was it pro-Israel to press Congress to attach so many onerous conditions to aid to President Abbas's Palestinian Authority that Abbas was unable to demonstrate to his people that a moderate President, who fully accepted Israel, would produce benefits that they would not achieve by choosing Hamas. The US (and Israeli) policies of all sticks and no carrots led predictably to Abbas's defeat by Hamas and a Hamas-controlled Gaza which has resumed its attacks on Israeli towns.

Was it pro-Israel to prevent the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administration's from insisting on a permanent freeze on settlements or, at the very least, the immediate removal of the illegal settlements? Wouldn't Israel be infinitely better off if the United States had used friendly persuasion to end the settlement enterprise right from the get-go? After all, the vast majority of Israelis consider the settlements to be impediments to peace and so has every President since the first settlement was erected. Similar question could be asked about the arguments favoring the Iraq war as good for both the United States and Israel (when critics correctly predicted that it would be disastrous for both) and should be asked about some future attack on Iran.

These questions are especially urgent with a Presidential election coming up.

Once again, Presidential candidates are being told that in order to earn the "pro-Israel" label, they must heartily endorse the status quo. That means that when asked what they would do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they must state unequivocal support for Israeli policies. They must put the onus for the failed diplomacy of recent years on the Palestinians. They must indicate that although they support peace, they will not adopt the kind of pro-active peacemaking engaged in by President Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. They must never use the words "even-handed or "honest broker." There is a script and the candidates must not deviate from it.

For the vast majority of us who care deeply about Israel, the politically correct (and safe) approach to Israel is insulting. Sure, it keeps candidates out of trouble with that small minority of the pro-Israel community which believes that Israel can survive as a Jewish state while holding on to the territories. But that isn't most American Jews, not by a long shot.

Candidates who avoid saying what they believe out of fear of offending lobbyists and activists who have been proven wrong over and over again are not doing Israel any favors. And they should not be rewarded for it by being granted the label of "pro-Israel."

There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that promise only that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons' 18th birthdays for another generation. For that we are supposed to be grateful?

The Jewish People's New Task, by Avraham Burg

The Jewish people's new task
Muslims as Jews of the 21st Century
By Avraham Burg
Ha'aretz -- Monday - September 10, 2007

Rosh Hashanah is very different from other Jewish holidays. A thread of universalism runs through it, and its prayers differ from those of the rest of the year. Nationalism and the nation's collective memories are marginal at this time; its main essence is directed outward: "a prayer ... for all the nations."

This is the only day when we pray for the world's well-being. We sing "today the world was conceived," and we know that "everyone in the world will pass before Him," without distinction and without discrimination, because everyone is equal before the world's creator. Like Adam and Eve, who were born free of religion and zealotry.

Over the years, due to the Jewish people's historical troubles, the holiday's universal identity became blurred. It was difficult for us, the persecuted, to rise to the occasion and act on behalf of the world that rejected us so violently. Behaving as "a nation that dwells alone" came naturally to us, and we abandoned the universal responsibility of the Jewish people, which was once "a nation of the world" and has now become too much of "a nation of the land."

The results of this closing of the national soul are very sad. For the first time in millennia, we are not at the forefront of influence on the world. In the past, there was hardly an era in which we did not have an influence. Take Jesus, for example. His teachings and values sprang from the Jewish core of the Second Temple period.

Those who sowed the European renaissance included descendants of Jewish Marranos, who brought the wisdom and achievements of ancient Greece, which had been preserved by the moderate and tolerant Muslim philosophers, back home.

It is impossible to decipher the codes of modern times without Spinoza or Moses Mendelsohn. And what would the previous century have been like without Marx and his communism, on one hand, or Freud and the individual soul, on the other? That period also produced Trotsky, Zamenhof and others, and their dreams. All that is finished. Sixty years ago, Europe failed the test of "the other." When it was given the chance, it spat out and destroyed its Jews, who became the ultimate lepers.

Today, Europe faces the test of a new "other" - the Muslims. Tens of millions of Muslims live in Europe and the West today, and when Turkey joins the European Union, it will have some 100 million Muslims. The question, "what do we do with them?" can be heard in the corridors of power in Paris; it influenced the elections in Britain; it changed the laws on religion and state in Sweden; it is reflected in the stereotypes of Hollywood heroes in Washington. The West's racists also ask, "what do we do with them?" And as the crowds cheer, they reply: What we always did - war, exile, restricting their rights.

But Israelis and Jews do not even ask this question. While the West is fighting one of its most important battles, over its health and sanity, we are absent, because of an understandable complex. They are struggling without us over the ecology of heaven and earth - against fundamentalism and extremism, for human rights, against international terror, for women's status, against the veil. A time when our international acceptance is greater than ever before, at a time when the world needs our unique input, we are absent as never before.

This is the Jewish paradox of our times. Our contact, friction, traumas, recovery and interface with the modern West opened some doors of contemporary Judaism to new winds and exciting ideas: religious pluralism, the equality of the Jewish woman. Yet on the other hand, we hide ourselves and cut ourselves off, with understandable fear, behind our closed national shutters.

The future of the world to a large extent depends on the West's ability to be fertilized and impregnated with the new Islam; to include Muslims, instead of rejecting them as they did us; and then together to give birth to a new world discourse. Not the "macho" discourse of George Bush and other fundamentalist Christians, not that of Israeli settlers and local conservatives, and not that of the Islamic zealots, who forbid all contact with the West as if it were an impure woman.

What is needed is a moderate and painstaking dialogue, semi-feminine, inclusive and accepting. A dialogue of pregnancy, "world-conceiving," such as that which enabled contemporary Western Jewry to break the pathological historic cycle of Jews and Gentiles and present a new model of life in opposition to Hitler, his successors and the thousand years of bloodshed that preceded them.

As the world opens up to us as never before, and as we change to meet it, we can relax from our fears, renew the holiday's originality and return to responsibility for the world and its well-being. What can we do to promote a world of this kind - a better, more perfect world that would be much less dangerous for its residents and for us? To my mind, we must contribute from our experience as victims, as "others," and then as those who were accepted, so as to prevent the unnecessary sacrifice of our generation's "new others."

Modern Jewry, with its victims and its lessons, must propose itself as a bridge on which Western Muslims and Christians can step as they go to meet each other, create a Christian-Muslim dialogue and institutionalize Western Islam. The West can and should embrace its Muslim citizens and cause them to see themselves, their religion and their traditions in a new light - a light of openness, tolerance and religious pluralism.

Many Muslims in the West oppose extremist terrorism. Not everyone there is Osama bin Laden, just as not everyone here is Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein or George Bush. Muslim moderates are in line to be the "Jews," the foreigners of the 21st century, without having done anything wrong.

The partners to the 20th century's failure, the victims as well as those who sacrificed them, must get together on their behalf, so that they can pass the test this time. Because if the Europe and the United States fail the test of "citizens of the Muslim faith," the wave of failure will unavoidably drown the West. In contrast, success could give the struggling West a new birth on the path to world peace, whose partners would include most believers in "the one God" to whom we all pray.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/902516.html

Scholar Denied Tenure at De Paul U, Chicago

U.S. prof. who says Jews abuse Holocaust to curb critics resigns
By The Associated Press
Ha'aretz -- Thursday - September 6, 2007

A Chicago university professor who has drawn criticism for accusing some Jews of abusing the legacy of the Holocaust agreed Wednesday to resign immediately "for everybody's sake."

DePaul University officials and political science professor Norman Finkelstein issued a joint statement announcing the resignation, which came as about a hundred protesters gathered outside the dean's office to support him.

Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty. His remaining class was cut by DePaul last month.His most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is largely an attack on Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel. In his book, Finkelstein argues that Israel uses perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.

Dershowitz, who threatened to sue Finkelstein's publisher for libel, urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.Finkelstein said in the statement that he believes the tenure decision was tainted by external pressures, but praised the university's "honorable role of providing a scholarly haven for me the past six years."The school denied that outside parties influenced the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure. The school's portion of the statement called Finkelstein a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher.

Finkelstein called that acknowledgment the most important part of the statement."I felt finally I had gotten what was my due and that maybe it was time, for everybody's sake, that I move on," he said at a news conference that followed a morning rally staged by students and faculty who carried signs and chanted "stop the witch hunt."Finkelstein added: "DePaul students rose to dazzling spiritual heights in my defense that should be the envy of and an example for every university in the United States."

The professor would not discuss financial terms of the resignation agreement, which he said was confidential, but noted that it does not bar him from speaking out about issues that concern him, including the unfairness of the tenure process.

He also said he does not know what he will do next, but came to realize before Wednesday that "the atmosphere had become so poisoned that it was virtually impossible for me to carry on at DePaul. The least I could hope for is to leave DePaul with my head up high and my reputation intact."

Dershowitz was critical of the school. "DePaul looks like they caved into pressure," he said in a telephone interview. "The idea of describing him as a scholar trades truth for convenience. He's a man who is a propagandist and is not a scholar."

Still, Dershowitz said, "I'm happy he's out of academia. Let him do his ranting on street corners."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Normal+Finkelstein&itemNo=901583

Jewish/Muslim Dialogue. Yes

RABBI PRESSES JEWS, MUSLIMS TO EASE STRIFE
By Manya A. Brachear
Chicago Tribune
September 1, 2007

In an unusual goodwill gesture, the top rabbi of the nation's largest Jewish movement pleaded with American Muslims on Friday to transcend the differences that have divided their people for decades and join Jews to confront the extremist factions and prejudice that plague both religious traditions.

"It is ... our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths," Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told members of the Islamic Society of North America at their annual meeting in Rosemont. "We know nothing of Islam -- nothing. The time has come to listen to our Muslim neighbors speak in their own words about the spiritual power of Islam and their love for their religion."

Frequently interrupted by ovations, Yoffie introduced a joint initiative to launch conversations between Muslims and Jews across the country. In a separate interview, Yoffie envisions mosques and synagogues initially forging partnerships in 10 cities.

"There is nothing simple or easy about the project that we are about to undertake," he said. "But interconnected since the time of Abraham, thrust into each other's lives by history and fate and living in a global world, what choice do we really have?"

Sayyid Syeed, who directs the Islamic Society's national interfaith outreach, welcomed Yoffie to the stage, saying the appearance was long overdue.

"Today we are making history," Syeed said. "What you can ask him today is 'What took you so long?'"

For many in the audience, the answer was simple. For decades, most American Jews and Muslims have been unable to forgive or forget the deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Many attempts to engage in dialogue have reached an impasse.
Others who were not in the audience said the Muslim organization's invitation to Yoffie marks a significant and symbolic shift in approach. In years past, interfaith receptions have been scheduled on Friday nights, when Jews observe the Sabbath, making some Jews feel unwelcome.

"I think it's a healthy step forward," said Rabbi Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. "The important thing is to be able to talk to people."

Yoffie said Jews and Muslims should indeed start talking and stop arguing. They should present a unified front when urging the American government to work toward a peaceful resolution overseas and to stop racial profiling and discrimination on American soil. Yoffie joined Muslim leaders in private meetings with government officials Friday.

Along with other major American Muslim groups, ISNA's tax records and prison ministries have been investigated by the federal government in search of terrorist connections. No wrongdoing has been found. U.S. military and government officials have job booths at the convention to recruit chaplains and others who speak Arabic.

Yoffie acknowledges the trepidation some Jews might feel about the partnership, especially if they equate the Islamic Society with other Muslim organizations that have been targets of government investigations.

"Our view is that it's important to talk to people that you don't agree with and not simply those that you do agree with," he said in an interview. "It would be impossible to enter into this kind of program with a group that is somehow not unequivocally clear in its condemnation of terror. ISNA is not in that category."

To the Muslim audience, Yoffie insisted that Jews and Muslims must overcome the fears and suspicions that stem from clashes overseas.

"Will we, Jews and Muslims, import the conflicts of the Middle East into America, or will we join together and send a message of peace to that troubled land?" Yoffie asked. "If Israel is portrayed as 'a dagger pushed into the heart of Islam,' rather than a nation-state disputing matters of land and water with the Palestinians, we are lost. As religious Jews and religious Muslims, let us do everything in our power to prevent a political battle from being transformed into a holy war."

This is not the first time the Reform movement and national Muslim leaders have attempted to launch a dialogue in Chicago. Rabbi Herbert Bronstein, senior scholar of North Shore Congregation Israel, spearheaded negotiations in the early 1990s that broke down when neither Muslims nor Jews could avoid taking sides in the Middle East conflict. He called efforts to revive the conversations "nothing short of momentous."

He said liberal Jews can help Muslims who are seeking to become more moderate while retaining the authenticity of their beliefs.

"That's the North American experience," Bronstein said. "There's a kind of mutual illumination taking place that we should be proud of as Americans."

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, said that while agreeing to disagree may sound easy to some, "it takes time to build trust and confidence just like any relationship."

"They have to look at us as partners, not a threat," he said.

Niger Rehman of Long Island, N.Y., said she was pleasantly surprised by Yoffie's ability to give a balanced perspective.

"I do hope we can find common ground," she said. "One step at a time. Though the world is moving fast, we don't have too much time."

ISNA, based in Plainfield, Ind., is the largest umbrella group of Muslims in North America, claiming more than 100,000 members and 300 constituent organizations, including mosques, campus groups and professional organizations.

About 30,000 members from the U.S. and Canada are expected to attend the annual meeting, which runs through Monday. Yoffie leads 1.5 million progressive Jews in the U.S.

Israelis/ Palestinian Youth Summer Camp

CPTnet
28 August 2007
AT-TUWANI: Israeli children, parents, and teachers participate in Tuwani
summer camp

On 11 and 12 August, fifteen young Israelis and many of their parents joined
Palestinian children from the Tuwani area in summer camp activities. Tuwani
community members collaborated with the Israeli peace organization Ta'ayush
and a non-profit organization called Prelude to make the summer camp
possible

The Israeli visitors were mainly students and teachers from a bilingual
school in Jerusalem. Upon entering the Tuwani schoolyard, an arc of
cheering, chanting Palestinian children, clad in summer camp T-shirts and
caps, welcomed them. After shaking hands and listening to brief welcome
recitations from their hosts, the guests filed into classrooms for morning
activities that included musical games and art projects. Later, Tuwani
children hosted a tour of the village aiming to teach their Jerusalem
friends about life in the rural Palestinian setting. The Israeli youngsters
observed and participated in pulling water from the well, milking goats and
sheep, and riding a donkey before enjoying a meal prepared by local women.
A separate outing to the nearby village of Mufakara took place the following
day. A Palestinian cave-dwelling family received the Palestinians and
Israelis as guests for tea and conversation. The hosts responded to
questions from Israeli visitors about the challenges of living near two
Israeli settler outposts.

In a closing finale of the two-day exchange, all children joined forces in a
painting project that resulted in a vibrant mural hemming the exterior wall
of Tuwani's school.

Parents and teachers of the Israeli summer campers were equally involved in
the tours and activities. Some voiced concerns that the topics of settler
violence and other realities of the Israeli occupation could overburden the
young visitors. But all agreed that the visit reinforced the importance of
learning about Palestinian culture and building relationships with their
counterparts on the other side of the Green Line.

One Tuwani summer camp organizer commented on the significance of the visit:
"This is really something never done before in this whole area. We're
hoping that the people who came will tell their friends, and next year we
can have fifty children from Israel visiting us." He also expressed
interest in offering overnight home stays for next year's guests. "By doing
this we're saying we have faith in the future, because the children -- from
both sides -- are our future."

Click on the following link for a slideshow from the Tuwani summer camp
activities:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshhough/sets/72157601697599442/show/
______________
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
Christian denominations.

To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send
messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.

Is A Boycott of Israel Schools Really Possible?

A Boycott Of Israel: Something Has Changed
By John Pilger
24 August, 2007
The New Statesman

From a limestone hill rising above Qalandia refugee camp you can see Jerusalem.

I watched a lone figure standing there in the rain, his son holding the tail of his long tattered coat. He extended his hand and did not let go. "I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks.

When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now."

"How do you feel about all that?" I asked him.

"Do you expect me to feel hatred? What is that to a Palestinian? I never hated the Jews and their Israel . . . yes, I suppose I hate them now, or maybe I pity them for their stupidity. They can't win. Because we Palestinians are the Jews now and, like the Jews, we will never allow them or the Arabs or you to forget. The youth will guarantee us that, and the youth after them . . .".

That was 40 years ago. On my last trip back to the West Bank, I recognised little of Qalandia, now announced by a vast Israeli checkpoint, a zigzag of sandbags, oil drums and breeze blocks, with conga lines of people, waiting, swatting flies with precious papers. Inside the camp, the tents had been replaced by sturdy hovels, although the queues at single taps were as long, I was assured, and the dust still ran to caramel in the rain.

At the United Nations office I asked about Ahmed Hamzeh, the street entertainer. Records were consulted, heads shaken. Someone thought he had been "taken away . . . very ill". No one knew about his son, whose trachoma was surely blindness now. Outside, another generation kicked a punctured football in the dust.

And yet, what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral issue of the age" refuses to be buried in the dust. For every BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more powerful now than ever.

Documentation of the violent expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is voluminous. Re-examination of the historical record has put paid to the fable of heroic David in the Six Day War, when Ahmed Hamzeh and his family were driven from their home. The alleged threat of Arab leaders to "throw the Jews into the sea", used to justify the 1967 Israeli onslaught and since repeated relentlessly, is highly questionable.

In 2005, the spectacle of wailing Old Testament zealots leaving Gaza was a fraud. The building of their "settlements" has accelerated on the West Bank, along with the illegal Berlin-style wall dividing farmers from their crops, children from their schools, families from each other. We now know that Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon last year was pre-planned. As the former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison has written, the recent "civil war" in Gaza was actually a coup against the elected Hamas-led government, engineered by Elliott Abrams, the Zionist who runs US policy on Israel and a convicted felon from the Iran-Contra era.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history.

But something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our lives, has finally brought the attention of the international community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to one of its principal sources, Israel.

I got a sense of this recently in the United States. A full-page advertisement in the New York Times had the distinct odour of panic. There have been many "friends of Israel" advertisements in the Times, demanding the usual favours, rationalising the usual outrages. This one was different. "Boycott a cure for cancer?" was its main headline, followed by "Stop drip irrigation in Africa? Prevent scientific co-operation between nations?" Who would want to do such things? "Some British academics want to boycott Israelis," was the self-serving answer. It referred to the University and College Union's (UCU) inaugural conference motion in May, calling for discussion within its branches for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. As John Chalcraft of the London School of Economics pointed out, "the Israeli academy has long provided intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and human support for an occupation in direct violation of international law [against which] no Israeli academic institution has ever taken a public stand".

The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so has South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish members of the liberation struggle. In Britain, an often Jewish-led academic campaign against Israel's "methodical destruction of [the Palestinian] education system" can be translated by those of us who have reported from the occupied territories into the arbitrary closure of Palestinian universities, the harassment and humiliation of students at checkpoints and the shooting and killing of Palestinian children on their way to school.

These initiatives have been backed by a British group, Independent Jewish Voices, whose 528 signatories include Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Eric Hobsbawm. The country's biggest union, Unison, has called for an "economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott" and the right of return for Palestinian families expelled in 1948. Remarkably, the Commons' international development committee has made a similar stand. In April, the membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted for a boycott only to see it hastily overturned by the national executive council. In the Republic of Ireland, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has called for divestment from Israeli companies: a campaign aimed at the European Union, which accounts for two-thirds of Israel's exports under an EU-Israel Association Agreement. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended.

This is unusual, for these were once distant voices. And that such grave discussion of a boycott has "gone global" was unforeseen in official Israel, long comforted by its seemingly untouchable myths and great power sponsorship, and confident that the mere threat of anti-Semitism would ensure silence. When the British lecturers' decision was announced, the US Congress passed an absurd resolution describing the UCU as "anti-Semitic". (Eighty congressmen have gone on junkets to Israel this summer.)

This intimidation has worked in the past. The smearing of American academics has denied them promotion, even tenure. The late Edward Said kept an emergency button in his New York apartment connected to the local police station; his offices at Columbia University were once burned down. Following my 2002 film, Palestine is Still the Issue, I received death threats and slanderous abuse, most of it coming from the US where the film was never shown.

When the BBC's Independent Panel recently examined the corporation's coverage of the Middle East, it was inundated with emails, "many from abroad, mostly from North America", said its report. Some individuals "sent multiple missives, some were duplicates and there was clear evidence of pressure group mobilisation". The panel's conclusion was that BBC reporting of the Palestinian struggle was not "full and fair" and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture". This was neutralised in BBC press releases.

The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott?

Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose." And so would the rest of us.

This article was first published at the New Statesman

http://www.countercurrents.org/pilger240807.htm