Alternative Views - Palestine Coverage (1982-89)

Ilan Ziv: Trends in Israeli psychology that was solidified over the last 20 years is that the whole world is against us. You have to understand, out of the Holocaust came a very, very, very sick psychological phenomenon.

Speaker 2: Siege mentality.

Ilan Ziv: It's very tragic. I mean, one of the most— the biggest tragedy of history is the type of human being that came out of this Holocaust and the political structure that this human being established to their own protection. And that's what people do not understand. I mean, the Israeli psychology is very different from any normal society psychology, because it operates by inner laws, which has nothing to do with the way countries lead politics or not. And for instance, the trauma of the world watching the destruction of European Jewry has basically ridden off Israel any interest in the rest of the world.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Ilan Ziv: Israel is interested in the rest of the world whether it can— for its own interest. Okay, but not— I mean, there isn't even the illusion of normal country living amidst the nation with a give and take, etc. The whole world is against us.

Speaker 4: We go inside Israel and take a look at the Israeli psychological and political phenomena tonight on Alternative Views. Good evening. Welcome to Alternative Views. This will be the second half of a twin program in which we're taking a close look inside Lebanon, concerning the Palestinians particularly, and now inside Israel. Ilan Zeev, who visited us and gave us a lot of good information, good insight into what is happening in Israel and what the effects of the Holocaust and this whole history of Israel in the past few decades and their relationships with the PLO What they've had on the people and the policies, and also on the PLO. We emphasized the Palestinians last time. This time we'll go more into the Israeli situation. Ilan Zeev is a peace activist in Israel and also a photojournalist. But first, here are some updated news stories. If you want to see a vicious world at work, don't go to the jungle, folks. Just read the business press. It's no wonder that our government and our international relationships are so vicious, because it's businessmen who are running them. If you've been following either the business press or watching Alternative Views over the past few years, you know we've been keeping you up to date on the merger movements and the takeovers of one corporation by another. And it seems it's just going at unprecedented rates, with big companies being eaten up by huge companies, and those in turn being gobbled up by gigantic companies. And now it's even some of the These brash Texans with a lot of money, they've been trying to go in there and steal away some of the biggies, like Mobil Oil or Phillips or Texaco. Well, this is just causing shockwaves throughout the business community. And so, a lot of these corporations are taking steps to try to protect themselves from these undesired corporate takeovers. And the big conglomerates are doing some interesting things. They're getting rid of a lot of their— of some of their various operations, so instead of being —such a mammoth conglomerate, they're getting back more to having just a core of related companies again. And oil companies, which took some of their obscene profits of a few years ago to buy corporations which were unrelated to the oil business, they're starting to get rid of those things, because it makes them more vulnerable. Also, when they sell off properties, they'll have more money. Then they can buy their own stock. And they— by doing that, they can protect themselves, help protect themselves from unfriendly takeovers.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 4: This information came from the magazine Mergers and Acquisitions, which is over at the University of Texas Library. Now, later, more recently, I've seen where Phillips Petroleum and Mobil Oil are taking additional steps to try to ward off some of these people. For instance, you remember T. Boone Pickens from Texas almost— or had a big thing on to try to gobble up an oil company or two, Phillips, Texaco, and he came out pretty rich as a result of it, but he didn't get the company. So these companies are really trying to protect themselves, and by buying up their own stock, by getting rid of other unrelated things, and staggering the terms of the board of directors, and doing other manipulations which would make it more difficult to— for an outsider to come in and take over. Now, there's another interesting thing that's happening, too. Periodically over the years, the Texas multimillionaires or billionaires have made Oh, little incursions into the private preserves of the biggies, the Rockefeller and Morgan people, the American economic establishment back in New York. And every time they do, they not only get their hands slapped, they get squashed on. Well, this has happened periodically to the Murkisons and to the Hunts, and now it seems that— I don't know if this is a preemptive strike like George Shultz wants to do around the world to terrorists, but it seems that in the—

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: An Austin paper, it seems that the Cullen brothers have filed for bankruptcy because their big lenders won't give them any more credit, or they're calling in their debts. The same thing is happening to the Hunt brothers, lack of cooperation with lenders. And even Clint Murchison, the big millionaire businessman, is filing for bankruptcy. So this means that since most corporations are usually in debt, and then just like cities and most countries, well, the bankers can call in the debt anytime they want to, or they can say pay up, and if you can't, well, you're in trouble. So they're doing this. This is what has happened to these 3 big, powerful multimillionaires and billionaires. And they're not the only ones. And it's very interesting to see if this is part of a power structure struggle or whether this is just, you know, just another bit of the law of the jungle. By the way, you may feel sorry for the Hunts. Their empire was $8 billion, over about $8 billion back in 1980, and the poor folks are down to $1 billion now.

Speaker 3: Down to their last bill.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know how they can live on that.

Speaker 3: Well, they can sleep on my couch if things get real rough. You got room for them?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Taking a different perspective on the current economic problems, there's an article in the Indy Times about these new unemployment councils, groups of the unemployed who have been acting to deal with problems like losing their jobs, losing their homes, having their mortgages foreclosed, etc., so that a group called the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, for instance, has been attempting to save people's homes by, first of all, getting their members to block Sheriffs and police attempting to kick people out of their homes to try to find if there's any way that they can save the house. They've also attempted to pass some legislation, and have in fact succeeded in Pennsylvania, to have the state legislature produce the nation's first and most comprehensive state-funded mortgage foreclosure assistance program—a $30 million government operation that is expected to save 6,000 to 8,000 homes in the economically distressed. Regions of Philadelphia. Moreover, their accomplishments have gone on a whole lot of issues. Since their inception in 1965, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project has initiated several campaigns on behalf of the unemployed and low-income Americans, extending healthcare benefits to the unemployed, extending unemployment benefits, trying to pass plant closure legislation to save jobs, as well as job creation and tax reform measures. And in the last Right. In the last several years, In These Times points out, unemployed councils have emerged throughout the United States.

Speaker 2: There's more than 30 councils of the unemployed currently functioning in states all over the United States, not only in the Northwest and the Midwest, that have been hardest hit economically, but in the South. And in the Sun Belt, they're starting to pop up.

Speaker 6: For instance, in Alabama, a state with perennial high unemployment, an especially active council of unemployed workers has come together. In Birmingham, a group has built an agenda —around short-term survival issues, such as utility shutoffs, mortgage foreclosures and unemployment compensation, as well as long-term issues of providing jobs and employment for workers. The article points out that in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, these unemployment organizations sprung up and had a tremendous effect on the federal government. Roosevelt borrowed a lot of the ideas from these unemployment councils.

Speaker 2: He took a lot of their leaders into the government and the New Deal.

Speaker 6: Right. actually put in practice a lot of the ideas and programs that they were projecting.

Speaker 2: Of course, it's not clear that the Reagan administration is going to do a similar task, but at least on the state level, they've been able to have some legislation passed to protect the unemployed and the workers.

Ilan Ziv: And you're not going to hold your breath waiting for Mr.

Speaker 3: Reagan.

Speaker 2: Not exactly.

Ilan Ziv: I have a couple stories from The Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 3: Over the last month or so, they've They've run a series on the risk to workers in factories. And this, the last story, which is in the second week of February, was about Shell Oil Company. There was a doctor who studied an abnormally high rate of cancer deaths among workers at one of their refineries in Illinois. And he says the cause most likely was exposure to benzene, which is produced at the facility. The company, quoting the doctor's own report, In the report, it said that the refinery workers— they actually told the refinery workers that no scientific link has been established between the benzene exposure and cancer. And this is a little bit like the way that the Reagan administration has been dealing with acid rain. Even though 20% of Germany's forests have been destroyed by it and thousands of their lakes, they're still not— they still haven't got the definitive scientific proof that this is what caused it.

Speaker 7: Right.

Speaker 3: But, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know, that old saying. Now, in particular, this raises questions about how companies inform their workers about industrial health hazards, which has been a hot topic since the Bhopal, India disaster. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which sets and enforces workplace safety standards, and which, I might add, has been relegated to wimpdom Along with several other agencies by the Reagan administration. They say that about 600,000 U.S. workers are exposed to benzene on the job. The controversy over this study's findings stemmed from research conducted by this Dr. Philip Cole into a particular form of leukemia at the Shell refinery in Wood— Wood River, Illinois. A 1983 company study reported that between '73 and 1981, 8 workers died who were employed at the refinery. Now, based on statistical averages, only 2 workers should have died from the illness during that period. So they hired Dr. Cole to check it out, and his conclusion was that it was highly statistically significant. Now, that's your basic scientist talk there. Government and industry studies indicate that occupational exposure to benzene is a likely cause of cancer. Again, we're talking about Probable causes. Yeah, it probably is it. And Dr. Kola said, at present, I remain of the persuasion that the most likely cause of leukemias is benzene.

Speaker 4: Let's go back to August 1982 now and take a penetrating look at Israel at that time. But first, we'll have an historical and cultural review of the Lebanese Phalangist Party.

Speaker 2: Frank, did you read in In These Times about some of the— some of the background of this phalange?

Speaker 4: What kind of a group Well, you remember back in, in 1936 was also the time when the Spanish Civil War started out, and Franco and the party which Franco was a part of, and which eventually took over all of the country after the Civil War, was the Falange Party. And this is a similar one to him. Actually, what happened was that Gemayel's father went to Germany and studied Italy during that period and said, "Hey, they've got good systems here. We want this for our country." So they admired the Nazi and fascist organization so much that they they decided to model their own party after this. Now, the Falange Party—they call them Christians in the regular media—but several people who were at our forum recently had quite a bit to say about the Falange. And I think it would be good to hear them repeat what they said then.

Speaker 8: Israel has expansionist plans in Lebanon.

Speaker 5: But moreover, Israel is after the creation of a fascist government that will join the Camp David process.

Speaker 9: Let me tell you one thing.

Ilan Ziv: It is a slander to Christianity to call a fascist party that has modeled itself—

Speaker 9: To call a fascist party that has modeled itself after the Nazi parties, a party that considers Mussolini its spiritual godfather, to call Christian, Christ would be appalled at that. It is those forces that Israel and the United States government are promoting in the area.

Speaker 10: And let me tell you that the current invasion was not made It was not meant really to uproot the PLO, was not meant really just to clear 40 kilometers or 25-mile free zone from quote-unquote terrorist attack. Its real aim was to redesign Lebanese internal situation and hopefully bring the Phalange Party into a major role that will shape Lebanon and then will later on sign peace treaty with Israel, as Begin said that this is his second dream after the signing of peace treaty between Egypt and Lebanon.

Speaker 4: Well, it seems like the Phalange has been very much meshed in with Israel, because not only has Israel been supplying the Phalange with military hardware and building up their militia, about 22,000-man militia, but also there's been a longstanding hope of Israel that they would be able to develop this phalange, the Christians as they call them, into a system where they would control Lebanon and then they would form an agreement with Israel and then they would be able to work with each other. Ben-Gurion, for instance, wrote about this many, many years ago. And it's— and recently we have seen that they're still saying the same thing in a— yeah, some of our recent programs on Israel they've said that, wanting to build up the Christians there. But it's really more than that. It seems like this Gemayel is really As much as anything else, just a mafia type of thug.

Speaker 2: This, this to me was the most shocking thing that I learned from this story and in these times. Actually, there was an earlier report in The Nation that reported that the Lebanese Phalange, of which the president of Lebanon now is the top representative, is really more or less a mafia organization that today controls the bulk— and I'm quoting directly—

Speaker 4: Right.

Speaker 2: —of Lebanon's protection rackets and vice squads, and parcels out a percentage of this money to the Christian militia. Moreover, their income comes from $1 to $3 billion a year from the hashish trade. And they have, in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, knocked off almost all the food crops and grow hashish there, the plant that produces hashish. And for the first time, they've also begun doing heroin production there in Lebanon, from which the Phalange also directs or gets a lot of their money. The other shocking feature was that this Lebanese Phalange has been training fascist neo-Nazi forces from all sorts of European countries— Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. You hear a lot about how the PLO has been training different left-wing terrorist organizations. Well, the Lebanese Phalange has been training right-wing neo-Nazi terrorist units in Lebanon. And here it's particularly ironic, because Israel has been initially financing the Phalange, and they are thus aiding European neo-Nazis through these training camps, which is pretty bizarre. Finally, This story in In These Times indicates that the Phalange periodically engages in outright gangsterism, mobster-style hits of all their political opponents, where they literally have death squads that just simply go and kill anyone who doesn't agree with them or stands in their way or dares to criticize them. So it looks like Lebanon is going to have a tragic future ahead of it with this Phalange government in charge, and with the tension between the Islamic population and the Christian population heavier than ever. A lot of people thought that Israel was doing a favor to the Lebanese by driving out the PLO, which was alleged to be a source of dissension and trouble in that country, whereas their own divisions are really a more serious problem that was the source of civil wars and battles for the last Yes. —5 or 6 years in Lebanon. So it looks like a tragic history is going to ensue for the Lebanese people. I also might note, Frank, something I mentioned to you on the phone a couple days ago. While I was in Mexico the last couple weeks, there was a lot of headline stories that didn't get much attention here about how Jimmy Carter said that he talked to irrefutable and unimpeachable sources That indicated the American government knew in advance that the Israeli army was going to invade Lebanon and approved it. And secondly, Jack Anderson confirmed the same thing. He was in Israel and interviewed Begin and many other Israeli leaders, as well as Palestinians. And he said over and over he got the same story, that this had been approved by Haig and Reagan, this whole Israeli operation.

Speaker 6: Although—

Speaker 2: So Reagan was shocked by the extent of it, the amount of civilian bombing, the numbers of military forces that invaded, the amount of suffering and bombing that took place, and all the prisoners of war that were seized by the Israeli troops. But nonetheless, the basic idea was approved by the American government.

Speaker 4: Well, Doug, let's take a deeper, more intimate look at the Look at Israel and the Israelis and show our interview which we did with Ilan Zeev, who is a photojournalist and peace activist in Israel, a member of Peace Now, and he's also visited the war zone in Lebanon.

Ilan Ziv: See, once you start pursuing a logic, it's endless. I mean, which means once you start pursuing that all the PLO is terror— I mean, what the PLO is terrorism, which means everybody who supports the PLO, whether it's his mother or his sister, is a also by implication terrorists as well, then you basically start to dehumanize an entire population, and you're calling every expression of that society terrorism. And that allows the soldier to treat an entire group of human beings, you know, as basically somebody outside of any recognized Geneva Convention legality, etc., because he's—

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what the United States did in Vietnam over and over again, like My Lai, for instance.

Speaker 2: Civilians, anyone is the target because they're the enemy.

Ilan Ziv: The experience of America in Vietnam is relatively accurate because it's the same problem, which means how do you fight the Viet Cong? You have to destroy villages. I mean, there's no other way. I mean, when you're talking to uproot and destroy, you have to destroy the population.

Barbara Harlow: Right.

Ilan Ziv: So therefore, it's not by mistake or by some cruelty of the PLO to place its combatants inside the civilian population, that entire camps have been devastated. Because, I mean, they were fighting— soldiers told me they were fighting kids of 12 years old with RPG bazookas. So when you deal on that level of a war, I mean, it's inherent. How did the Israeli soldiers feel about that?

Speaker 4: I've heard reports that some of them were against fighting in the war, and of course you've got the sadists in uniform occasionally too. What did you see?

Ilan Ziv: The majority of the soldiers that you meet in the front is possibly the majority— is the reflection of the majority of the Israeli society, because the army in one sense or another is the truest reflection of the Israeli society. Therefore, these are the—

Speaker 2: Like the PLO is an expression of Palestinian society?

Ilan Ziv: The Israeli army, because it is basically a civilian army, the majority of it is reserve. I mean, it's really the reflection of the society. So it isn't any professional army that you can say it's in any kind of conflict with, you know, the society itself. The majority of the soldiers— you see, the problem with this whole conflict is the indifference, and that was sort of the inherent racism of the problem, because people really don't hate the PLO, and people don't really hate Palestinians. They just don't care.

Edna Hunt: Right.

Ilan Ziv: And the not caring is dangerous in itself, which means it's not that really any Israeli soldier is dying to defend his home and destroy a Palestinian camp in the process. He's not— I mean, there was a succession of over years to dehumanize this population to the point that you really don't care. I mean, they are gooks. I mean, they're out there and, you know, they seem like masses of faces. And you really don't care. Faces without any personal history, faces without any, you know, recognized human dignity. and emotion is out there, outside of our periphery. So there's very little hate. I mean, there's indifference, so to speak. So I would say that the majority of the soldiers are indifferent on that level, which means they were given the order and they executed it. And—

Speaker 2: Some must have had doubts.

Ilan Ziv: Right. So I'll get to that.

Speaker 4: You know, that sounds terrifying, because it sounds so much like the Germans' attitude toward the Jews during World War II.

Ilan Ziv: I mean, it's not only— I mean, I think it's in any society, specifically in this era. I mean, I could go to Vietnam and probably find the same problem. I mean, it's like a soldier, specifically in a society that sort of appreciates and has social values about military service and success in military service, a soldier is a professional when the dust settles, and he has to do the job as good as possible as he can. And he might have conflict, as a matter of fact, some kibbutzim member will tell you in Israel, in the war zone, that they don't necessarily agree, but they will make a fantastically psychological distinction between the orders that they are being given and, you know, their personal grievance. As a matter of fact, he might go put back his uniform and go to join a demonstration of Peace Now, you know, 2 days later, and he wouldn't see a contradiction there. You might see a contradiction. He wouldn't see a contradiction.

Speaker 4: Was there much of that?

Ilan Ziv: Yeah, a lot. So, I mean, if Peace Now succeeded in the middle of the war, which is the first time Israeli history to have a demonstration of 100,000 people. I mean, that's a very significant number. I mean, that's equivalent to a million people in New York really demonstrating, I mean, population size-wise. Right. So the thing is that, I mean, this ability to distinguish between what he does in the front and what he does— it's still, in my opinion, a big problem. I don't think it's— it necessarily cannot overcome. It can overcome, and it might be overcome. But it's— that's what I find is the main thing. Soldiers will not really articulate for you hesitation so much. Although there were a lot of— for the first time in Israeli war, there were a lot of group sessions with the commander about people letting out their feelings, because people had some feelings. So again, for the first time.

Speaker 2: Let's talk about the Peace Now movement in Israel. This is, as you pointed out, one, the first time there's been opposition to any Israeli military action, and two, it's the biggest peace movement that you've ever seen.

Ilan Ziv: No, and 3, if I may add to that. The third part, that Peace Now for the first time in its history recognized the Palestinian conflict as central to the resolution of the Middle East conflict, which in Peace Now when it started, you know, pre-Camp David, it was very, very, very large, loose coalition of forces, liberal forces. They were talking about peace, end of wars, we don't want to get down— we don't want to get killed, etc., etc. It was very loose and very, very broad. Very humanitarian, almost on the abstract level. For the first time, Peace Now is coming for a statement about self-determination, etc., which is a huge—

Speaker 2: For the Palestinians.

Ilan Ziv: Right, which is a huge step, I mean, politically speaking. I mean, there were many other facets. I mean, for the first time in the history of Israel, 22 combat pilots wrote a letter to Begin protesting the way they've been used as combat pilots. Now, a combat pilot in Israel is like the most stereotype of the Loyal, patriotic element, the cream of the cream of the society, is the combat pilot.

Speaker 4: The best pilots in the world.

Ilan Ziv: Right. So if— so 22 combat pilots, I mean, it's a huge number, again, given the context that they're springing from. There have been 90 combat soldiers protesting and writing letters. Today I read in the Washington Post that there was the commander, colonel, resigning upon— his conscience would not let— wouldn't let him participate in the Battle of Beirut if it will come. So he stepped down before he will be ordered, and then he will disobey order. But, I mean, all these things surfacing and mushrooming, which, again, it's very early to tell how they're going to lead. It looks to me that if Israel will really get bogged in a Vietnam-style war in Lebanon— War in Lebanon. Inability to resolve it politically, inability to win it militarily, I mean, in a smashing military victory that will finish it, in my opinion, these a huge chance of this mushrooming movement growing into a sizable political force.

Speaker 4: What is the basis of the Peace Now? Are there a lot of different groups that have come together forming a coalition, or is it kind of a wellspring against the militarization of the country and the war?

Speaker 2: And what is their critique of the Israeli war policies? Why are they dissenting from this particular military action?

Speaker 4: A few questions there thrown at you all at once.

Ilan Ziv: Let me start with the last one. It looks to me— you see, what this war did in terms of the popular mind, in a very— in the cruelest way, it symbolized the intensity of the Palestinian problem, because Israel ran all the way up to Beirut and still remained with the problem. As a matter of fact, not only remained with the problem, unveiled the problem, because, again, if we talk about the contradiction before, assumingly you destroy the PLO, you still remain with the Palestinians. And what are you going to do with them?

Speaker 2: There's also Palestinians within Israel. There's how many? 600,000?

Ilan Ziv: No, no, no. There's about 400,000 in the Galilee, and there's about a million in the occupied territories.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Ilan Ziv: So, I mean, but in the cruelest form, the Israeli society suddenly saw almost a Jewish implication of that war, which means you're ending up with this mass of human beings that nobody seems to want. They don't know where else to go, and it does start ringing, you know, recognized bells if you're coming from a Jewish background. So that's the first thing. The second thing that the peace now springing now on the basis of a continued deterioration of the situation occupied territories with Israel overt and subvert annexation policies and the necessity to crush by force attempts of resistance by the local population. So there's a growing accumulation of disgust over the fact that at the end this policy doesn't lead to anywhere. And I think that basically is the motivation, that not that everybody is so much for the PLO, or nobody is for anything, it's just people realize, and any sane human being does, that there's never an example in history of either successfully annihilating an entire people, which the Jewish people is the first example, how unsuccessful their attempt was.

Speaker 5: Right.

Ilan Ziv: And the second thing, if you cannot annihilate them and you don't provide them political solution, so you're ending up with these open wounds that will keep—

Speaker 2: Which will fester terrorism, violence, and more war.

Ilan Ziv: And I think people do realize that, no matter what your political— and in that sense, the spectrum is much wider, because you don't have really to be a radical to understand that. You can be—

Speaker 2: It's political realism, really, that leads a lot of these people to—

Ilan Ziv: So that is why— I think the invasion, this war is sort of— is not the culmination of the process, because I don't think we have seen the end of the process. But I think it came after a long period in which there was sort of a brewing, growing disobedience among soldiers about the West Bank. I mean, there was disgust about the necessity to kill twice a week 16-year-old children who throw stones on fully armed Israeli soldiers. So there's an accumulation of disgust over the fact that this doesn't lead anywhere.

Speaker 5: Right.

Ilan Ziv: And the Lebanese situation, that's what I'm saying, if it will Vietnamize itself, which I think it will, will show us, hopefully for the last time, that, you know, it's unresolved militarily.

Speaker 2: Is there a growing tendency in the Israeli population to recognize the PLO, to move to establishing a Palestinian homeland as the only solution to the problem?

Ilan Ziv: You see, the problem with the PLO is that there's a popular disgust in Israel of the PLO.

Speaker 2: With the PLO.

Ilan Ziv: And this is something that we'll have to overcome. The disgust is, A, because PLO early policies, which were geared at civilians. The disgust is also of years of brainwashing and propaganda. I think specifically among peace activists, the realization that whether we like it or not, the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people. They are the— And unless the Palestinian people are going to democratically or by popular demonstration vote for another representative body, You don't choose your enemy, you know. I mean, the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people, whether you like it or not. And I'm— right now you'll find more and more people talking in that language, which means, look, I really don't fancy Yasser Arafat, but unfortunately I was not given the choice to choose who am I fighting. It would have been much nicer to fight the Dutch and establish peace with the Dutch, but we are here and we are fighting with— and the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people. So you'll find people talking in that language. I mean, you're talking about the PLO, but you're not talking about the PLO. So sort of the, you know, sinking realization that— I mean, after years of repression, Israel succeeded really to establish quisling on the West Bank. They cannot succeed to establish any single human being that could get the support more than his local clan armed with Israeli submachine gun. So after so many years of repression, if Israel did not succeed to—

Speaker 2: It's an impossible situation.

Speaker 6: It's an impossible situation.

Speaker 2: Palestinians within your own country, and the only logical solution is establishing a state.

Ilan Ziv: So I think a lot of people now, I think for the first time, I mean, there is a growing realization of a Palestinian state. Also, I think the severe blow that the PLO militarily got really took a lot of wind out of the Israeli sail about saying that the PLO wants a Palestinian state because the first phase, because the second phase, they want Tel Aviv. People realize that they might want Tel Aviv, But they are too weak militarily to ever come to Tel Aviv.

Speaker 13: Right.

Ilan Ziv: Even Israel is some kind of a regional superpower, so the whole illusion that the PLO, with some bazookas and RPGs and some Katyushas, which really were never a military match to Israel, will out of the Palestinian spirit spring as an overwhelming force to sweep down the Jewish state, is really mere propaganda. And people realize that. And I think in that sense, again, it took a lot of, a lot of of steam out of the Israeli propaganda that this is some kind of an old-time PLO conspiracy.

Speaker 4: Is there a fear in Israel that if they don't make peace now, that this will just consolidate the hatred of the Arab states and perhaps towards Israel, and then this could escalate into— if Israel were back into a corner, it'd be a nuclear war? Is this part of the peace movement too?

Ilan Ziv: And the ease— I mean, For the first time, I think it's a very realistic fear, which means that by not compromising on the Palestinian issue, Israel is going to get into basically an immortal war with the Arab world, which, as we know in history, countries can go for hundreds of years, but eventually they come down. I mean, there's no example of a country in history that lived on a bayonet, you know, for centuries, really.

Speaker 2: Particularly if nuclear weapons become more and more widespread, you're just asking for holocaust.

Ilan Ziv: And I think there's a realization of that. There's a realization.

Speaker 2: What then is the motivation of Begin and Sharon, the defense minister, for pursuing this movement into Lebanon? It seems like it goes against political realism.

Ilan Ziv: Right. You see, your political realism and their political realism is not the same thing, which means, you see, there is the hubris, the famous Greek hubris of the victorious powerful. I mean, this hubris was even shown in the This war, which is not— it was not enough, you know, to destroy half of Lebanon. I mean, Israel could have stopped 10 miles south of Beirut and say, okay, we won the PLO, okay, we want the PLO out. And then millions of things could happen in terms of the Lebanese society, the friction between the Lebanese and the PLO. The Lebanese society would start pushing the PLO to start leaving because we are destroying, you're destroying. There are so many things that could have happened. But the hubris of Mr. Sharon was to encircle Beirut in gingerbread houses. And This then what? type of operation and dictate his condition to the vanquished. And of course, that just helped to solidify the ranks in Beirut and the whole image of an Arab capital besieged and destroyed slowly, day by day, by an Israeli army. I mean, just to show, within 2 weeks, I mean, so many mistakes, even within their own thinking.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Ilan Ziv: So I think the problem is that Israel still, or at least the leading circle, and some— I mean, the majority of the Israeli society Still think that the Palestinians' problem can be resolved militarily.

Speaker 3: Uh-huh.

Ilan Ziv: And until historically they're not going to see that that's not going to happen, unfortunately, I'm afraid that we're going to watch massacre after massacre. See, because Israel is living under the illusion— I mean, Israel is living within this contradiction that there is no compromise with Palestinian nationalism. Because once— see, the problem is not once you give them the finger, they will eat the whole hand. The notion is that once you give them the finger, You legitimize their rights. Once you legitimize their rights, in some way or another, in their mind, illegitimize your rights. Because we came and we took the land, and everybody will tell you that. We came and we settled this land. This land was not empty. People realized it back in the '20s. There were Palestinian people. So by recognizing the Palestinian rights to any piece of land, okay, in their mind, is recognizing that they had rights to begin with.

Barbara Harlow: Hmm.

Ilan Ziv: Which then the fear is that 100 years from now, There will be some circles talking about Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Tiberias.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

Ilan Ziv: And there's going to be a dissolution of that state from the inside, not necessarily militarily. So Israel is caught within this enormous conflict, the way they see it, which means on one hand, you're being pushed constantly into this military road, which is dead and suicidal, and everybody knows it. On the other hand, you see that if you open up, you'll get dissolution from inside, because who can control the social processes that will happen after there's going to be a Palestinian state? Who will control the movement of population? Who will control the assimilation that will happen to the Israeli society within the larger Middle East continent? And I think their fear, okay, is the losing of their identity either. So they're getting cornered and cornered in this military solution, which is this desperate— I mean, they will go up to Ankara to smash PLO. They will go up to— I mean, it's this act of despair because they feel that by opening up, you know, they will sort of undermine Unleash something that they don't have any control, and nobody will have any control. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the Palestinian people will militarily conquer Israel. It's the fear that there's going to be an immensity of social processes happening in that region, peaceful social processes, that eventually will dissolve that state from the inside. That's— I think that's the crux of that thinking.

Speaker 6: That's their logic.

Ilan Ziv: The crux of that thinking, which, in my opinion, is the underwriting Mm-hmm. Logic that we don't compromise. I mean, there are so many pathetic examples of— I mean, a Palestinian who lost their land inside Israel, in the occupied territories, will never get it back, no matter— even if it's 1 acre, even if it's half an acre, even if it's a fence or a piece of stone. I mean, the thing goes to utmost examples of surrealism. I mean, there are 2 miserable villages that were evacuated in '48, Ikram and Bir Eid, 2 Christian villages, that even Begin in opposition promised them to go back to the villages. Nobody, no government was successful politically to say, okay, we are going back. Because once you recognize one village go back to the land, the way they think, we'll have to recognize everybody goes back to the land. And then these, all these frightening hordes of refugees living around us that we don't know what to do with. So it's a very traumatized and sick psychology of a society which is almost in an inner siege, much more than a real siege.

Speaker 2: But if you've And if you follow that thinking to the logical conclusion, you get to the point we were talking about earlier, that the logical implication of this policy of Begin and Sharon is the extermination of the Palestinian people.

Ilan Ziv: And this is the danger. This is the danger which people in the United States do not understand. Israel sells a lot of media to the United States and a lot of talks about security, legitimate needs for security, terrorism, etc., etc. There is a war of annihilation going on.

Speaker 2: But it's an impossible war because there's so many Palestinians both within Israel and without that it's not a viable military strategy.

Ilan Ziv: No, it's not. But I think I would not be surprised, and I don't think we should discount the possibility of that happening, whether it's going to be depopulating the West Bank, whether it's going to be depopulating South Lebanon. I mean, there is an attempt to finish with the problem by finishing with the people. Outside of gas chamber and concentration camp, almost everything else is going to be attempted, in my opinion.

Speaker 4: Has there— has it been publicized in Israel, the negative reaction of many influential American Jews to the Israeli operation?

Speaker 2: And European Jews who are in support.

Ilan Ziv: Yeah, there is, there is. But again, in the entrenched Israeli psychology that was solidified over the last 20 years is that the whole world is against us, and we have, because the whole world didn't care. I mean, you have to understand, out of the Holocaust came a very, very, very sick psychological phenomenon.

Speaker 2: Siege mentality.

Ilan Ziv: It's very tragic. I mean, one of the most— the biggest tragedy of history is the type of human being that came out of this Holocaust and the political structure that this human being established to their own protection. And that's what people do not understand. I mean, the Israeli psychology is very different from any normal society psychology, because it operates by inner laws, which has nothing to do with the way countries lead politics or not. And for instance, the trauma of the world watching the destruction of European Jewry has basically ridden off Israel any interest in the rest of the world. Israel is interested in the rest of the world whether it can— for its own interest, okay? But not— I mean, there isn't even the illusion of normal country We are not a country living amidst a nation with a give and take, etc., etc. The whole world is against us.

Speaker 2: Can Israel survive militarily without military support from the United States?

Ilan Ziv: At this point, yes.

Speaker 2: This has been obviously a linchpin of the Israeli infrastructure.

Ilan Ziv: At this point, yes. You see, I think we have a little bit of an illusion to think that, let's say, in the next 2 years, America will cut some of the support of the United States, Israel will collapse. Israel will not collapse. Well, I mean, there's this genie went out of the bottle, and it's going to be very hard to get it back. I mean, unless the United States is going to cut arms to Israel and all financial support, which I think will never happen because of the complexity of the decision-making process inside the United States.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

Ilan Ziv: Short of massive cuts, not a dime, not a bullet, nothing, short of that kind of an action, I think Israel can survive, because Israel has a very developed arms industry. Israel is competing with the United States about selling weapons to the Third World. Israel is competing with the United States in electronic hardware. I mean, Israel developed a very genuine, strong military industry. And in this world, you can all the time get raw material, whether it's from South Africa, from other countries, from countries in Africa. The myth that Israel is dependent solely on the United States, and once you take this little piece of straw, this whole country is like a helpless child running for help. Mm-hmm. Is a myth, and short of a massive, massive blockade or massive embargo of the United States, I think Israel can survive. Israel can survive even the loss of the United States support to a certain degree. And I don't think the United States will ever withdraw total support from Israel because of the structure of this country, because of the political complexities in this country. So short of really the United States voting with the rest of the world UN resolution after UN resolution against Israel, short of really I mean a mass. Unless there is a massive change in U.S. public opinion, I think Israel can survive for many, many years.

Speaker 4: Do you think the Israeli peace movement is having some effect, or—

Speaker 3: Definitely.

Speaker 4: That's one thing, and the second thing, has it been repressed by the government?

Ilan Ziv: No, it's not really been repressed. The government tried to mobilize their own anti-peace demonstration. As a matter of fact, Begin succeeded to launch a big demonstration of support to the government, which, admitting so, was much larger than the Peace Now demonstration. So the game is who can bring more people to the street, and Begin is a master of bringing people to the street. I mean, from his days in the underground and his days as a public orator. So there is this kind of a war going on. There isn't really any suppression. I mean, look, I can sit and talk to you whatever I want, and I can go back to Israel, nobody's going to do anything. I mean, it's still— to the Jewish citizens, it's an open society, and these are very clearly distinction, because if you are Palestinian, it's a whole different ballgame. But if you are Jewish, it's still very much a free society. Therefore, when we're saying it's the only democracy functioning in the Middle East, we have to limit it— the only democracy for Jews functioning in the Middle East, because outside of the Jewish race or the Jewish ethnic group or Jewish collectivity, there's a whole different, you know, repressive machinery. But if you are Jewish, look, I can say whatever I want, really.

Speaker 4: What about the Arab Jews? I read so much about how they're second-class citizens and they're treated very shabbily. Are they supporting the government in this drive?

Speaker 14: Totally, totally, totally.

Ilan Ziv: Again, I mean, I don't know—

Speaker 2: Are they in support of Likud? Isn't it more of the— what's the word— Sephardic?

Ilan Ziv: I would like to call them Arab Jews. I mean, people call them Oriental Jews.

Speaker 3: Again, I don't know if we have time.

Ilan Ziv: I could go into another 5 minutes sort of explanation because— Alternative medium. No, the thing is that, I mean, again, people tend to simplify the problem with the Arab Jews. It's like saying that the movement in the United States of blacks for civil rights was a secessionist movement. And I think it wasn't a secessionist movement. I think a lot of blacks that protested for civil rights in the United States were feeling, and part of the problem was that they felt American and they wanted to become, to be Americans, true Americans. American, equal American. So it was probably very simplistic at that time to come from the outside and to see America is breaking apart, the blacks are leaving, the blacks are trying to secede from that state. It was not true. And the same thing with the Arab Jews. The Arab Jews feel dramatically Israeli and very strong and powerful Israeli. So there is a struggle for civil rights, there is a struggle for improvement of economic situation, there is a struggle for improving opportunity, but it's definitely within a very solid iron cast of our identity as Israelis, and one has to remember that.

Speaker 2: So there's a distinction also to be drawn between the Arab Jews in Israel and the Arab Palestinians who are settling there.

Ilan Ziv: The Palestinians— look, the Palestinians used to be— I mean, it used to be that— I mean, what '67 did is solidify the sort of the social strata in a way There was sort of, you know, the European Jewry at the top, these— the Oriental Arab Jews in the middle, and the Palestinians at the bottom of the social ladder. And this is also what helped to solidify the chauvinism of that group, because suddenly I'm not the lowest, there's somebody lower than me.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

Ilan Ziv: Okay? And if you are lower, and you already have been brought up with insecurity about your identity, and you've been brought up in slums, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, You try to dump it on the lowest, and suddenly we found these fantastic lowest that those societies considered as lowest. So what I'm saying is, again, I wouldn't be too quick to say that the Arab Jews are the only hope, because some people tend to talk like that.

Speaker 2: There's some fundamental misunderstandings that Americans have, do you think, of the Mideast and of what's going on there?

Ilan Ziv: I think people do not understand that, and I think it's crucial to understand that the invasion of Lebanon is part of a process and is by no means a freak, that once we take care or once we get totally alarmed— I mean, there is a calculated program going on, and people will have to understand the scope and determine— I mean, we don't have time to go into leading Israeli thinking, okay, about how Israel is going to shape the entire Middle East and the military might that Israel has give it the illusion of power that it can sort of graphic redesign the Middle East map. And I think King Hussein is definitely next in line. The West Bank is already in the process. I mean, there's a lot of— and I don't think people understand that there is a real process going on, and the invasion in that sense is really part of that process. It's by no means just a freak invasion. It all depends on how the invasion is gone, because if this invasion is going to succeed politically to a certain degree or whatever, it will just give the Eric Sharon and the Begin the green light to go to Jordan, and from Jordan, I don't know where, but the whole world is open. I mean, Eric Sharon said that Zambia is also within the sphere of interest of Israel. I mean, once you start redefining the universe as that, I mean, you know, there is no limit.

Speaker 4: You're watching Alternative Views, and our program emphasizing We're talking inside Israel tonight with Ilan Zeev, a peace activist and photojournalist from Israel. Well, Doug, you have another story in connection with this.

Speaker 2: Frank, to go back inside Israel, I have a good story from The Nation. It's written by an Israeli citizen and journalist and political commentator called Boaz Evron in an article titled A Military Boomerang on Israel and the So-Called War He points out that one of the negative effects of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is the bad effect that it's having on the morale of the Israeli army. He points out that the Israeli army, rather than being a war machine, as it's popularly presented, as being a very highly efficient and motivated professional military force, is really literally a people's army that consists of people who are —are not professional soldiers, but are well motivated because they're fighting for the defense of their country and they're fighting for what they think is right. Moreover, he points out that the elite corps of the Israeli army mostly come from the kibbutz and are mostly labor supporters who are not supporters of Begin. And the problem is that many of these ordinary Israeli citizens who make up the army Are horrified by the current invasion into Lebanon and all of the civilian casualties and the suffering that this invasion has caused, and that their morale is at an all-time low, and more and more soldiers are starting to question this and even to resign. For instance, on July 26th, this article cites Colonel Ali Jeeva, who is supposedly one of the most brilliant young officers of the army in charge of a tank infantry resigned rather than to move into West Beirut. That went against his conscience and he thought was a military mistake. So more and more there's contradictions and tensions growing within Israelis— Israel's army, so that whereas it appears they've had a military triumph in the long term, This may have a boomerang effect, and it may be a defeat in terms of the negative consequences on the morale and the long-range efficiency of the Israeli army.

Speaker 10: But I think the conflict currently now is a bit, to say the least, misrepresented by the American media. We're not really dealing just with the invasion of Lebanon and the historical ramifications for the entire region. We're dealing with another step in a logical conclusion thought out by certain elements in the Israeli society. They think that the only solution to the Palestinian question is the extinction and the dispersion of the Palestinian people, and by that the resolution of the historical conflict. This is a line of thought that has been basically a minority at the beginning of the state. And since the election of Begin's government into power, has become definitely the dominant political line in Israel. This line of thought do not see any possible reconciliation and compromise with the Palestinian aspiration. Therefore, there's a whole set of logical conclusions that has to be thought out. The military invasion of Lebanon was really just a sideshow to alleviate the political pressure on Israel to resolve the political status of the West Bank. The idea behind it was that if the PLO will be destroyed in Lebanon, moderate, so-called moderate Palestinians, Arabs on the West Bank will join the so-called peace camp, the Camp David peace treaty. The war in Lebanon was mainly really the first of a grand design to restructure the Middle East and hopefully to resolve what Israel sees as a growing contradiction between itself and the Palestinian people. I brought with me a piece in the Village Voice that I don't know if you read about. I had the doubtful luxury of listening to that lecture. It's by a guy called Oded Yinon who gave a political analysis of the Middle East and what Israel's strategic and national interests should be pursued in the light of that analysis. To summarize it very, very briefly, the idea behind the article was that the Arab world is divided between religious and political groups, and therefore the political structure that was established after the leaving of colonialism, which means the division of the Arab world into countries, is an artificial structure. The conclusion from that analysis, which is partially accurate, is that Israel should exploit the internal division in any existing Arab government that will create eventually the dissolution, the dissolution of, and the dismemberment of the entire Arab world. This is not my words, this is quotation. For instance, and I'm reading, Egypt in its existing domestic political image is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Muslim/Christian Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographic regions is the political aim of Israel in the '80s on its western front. On the northern front, he writes, Lebanon's total dissolution into 5 provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into its ethnic and religious minorities, such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the eastern front in the long run. This is just a short quotation to show you that there is definitely a— I wouldn't say dominant, but definitely an underlying thought that thinks that with its military might, Israel basically modeled itself on some kind of a Roman Empire. And dictate its political will on the entire region. That stems from a certain perception that the Israeli existence can never be compromised with the Palestinian aspiration. Therefore, Israel will never be accepted by the Arab world. Therefore, Israel will never be accepted by the Palestinian people. Therefore, Israel is locked into a war-and-to-death struggle with the entire Arab world. This line of thought is producing this kind of an analysis, which is translated into practice by the attempt to redesign Lebanon with the current invasion. The Palestinian people are facing a war of annihilation now. It will reverberate in the entire region and will culminate in years in the destruction of the Israeli state as well.

Speaker 9: Upper Nazareth was built on our own confession.

Speaker 6: No!

Speaker 9: Now, there is a racist policy also practiced in Upper Nazareth against Arab families who want to live there. We have a very sharp housing problem in Nazareth because of the confiscation of our lands and because of the policy of the government, which is not investing anything I want to say, as a Jew, that this was exactly the situation of the Jews in Europe and in other places 200 years ago.

Speaker 15: On March 30th, 1976, the Palestinians in Israel held a general strike. The Day of the Land Strike, as it was called, paralyzed the Israeli economy. It was the largest demonstration against the state since 1948. The government's response was swift and brutal.

Speaker 16: There are by now 2 companies in Israel which export not weapons, but export experts, as it is called, experts in combating terrorism, to Latin America, to Africa and to countries like Thailand. Because you have such an excess of security experts, of Shin Bet, Mossad, whatever you call, who all have to retire at the age of about 45, at the age of 45 we export them to Chile, for example, or to El Salvador or to any places. And because of this, you don't have practically any unemployment among Jews, or very Very little. But you have to remember that the inflation and the unemployment and the other economic ills of this sort are being transferred to Palestinians.

Speaker 14: The Palestinians living in Israel, their history, the confiscation of their lands, the discrimination, their resistance, the U.S. support for Israel— all this tonight on Alternative Views. Tonight on Alternative Views, we present a documentary, Nazareth in August. We now return to our interview with the guests, which was provided for us by Norman Cowie, Ahmed Damian, and Dan Walworth from New York City.

Speaker 5: My name is Fatma Mahmoud Mutran.

Speaker 14: Of course, I'm from Nazareth. I work in a clothing store for half a day, and then I spend the afternoon with my children. That's all. Because of the housing crisis in Nazareth, I came here to Upper Nazareth.

Speaker 5: I found a house through an ad in the newspaper.

Speaker 14: I contacted the owner, and we agreed on everything, and I took it. Now, afterwards, the block association started giving me trouble. The first day was Friday. We started to move in our belongings. No, they didn't welcome me. They gave me a lot of trouble. They put up signs around the block which say, "No Arabs permitted to live here." I don't know why. No, when I brought And in the first piece of furniture, the building committee came, and they blocked the steps. One of them kicked the dresser and then came and hit me with a drawer. And now, after the police came, we moved everything in, and, well, let's say we're settled. But when I came home one day, I found the bathroom window screen torn off. And they'd thrown in some 50 red cockroaches. The next day, it was worse. They took the water meter. The mayor of the city was made aware of the situation. He said, "We don't want Arabs living here." Even the mayor doesn't want.

Speaker 17: When the State of Israel was established in Palestine, 45% of all Arab towns and villages were destroyed by the Israeli army, forcing 800,000 Palestinians into exile. Those who stayed on their land were granted Israeli citizenship and placed under military rule. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank They were given the right to vote and denied the freedom to organize themselves politically. Today, there are over 600,000 Palestinians living in Israel, making up 18% of the population. 55,000 of them live in Nazareth, the largest Arab city in the state.

Speaker 13: لك حبي وأفواتي بلادي بلادي بلادي لك حبي وأفواتي نحن نورنا السبيل في لحيل المستحيل نحن نورنا السبيل في لهيب المستحيل بيننا وبين واجلين أمنا الحر ينادي On the hills surrounding Nazareth, one can see the other Nazareth, a Jewish settlement founded in the mid-1950s.

Speaker 9: It is not Nazareth, the city of Nazareth. We are the city of Nazareth. It's called— even the official— it's called Upper Nazareth, Nazareth elite, which even the name carries some racism in it, upper. And it's wholly Jewish. Upper Nazareth was built on our own confiscated lands, the lands of Nazareth and the nearby villages. And what about the Jewish people?

Speaker 7: Nazareth Illit was settled from the reason that, like I said before, it is our country, and we have to sit everywhere. And if you want, in the Bible, in the Book of Yeshua, you can find this place. That we were here about 3,000 years ago.

Speaker 9: So, that was— the first confiscations took place in 1954. And then the government began planning to build the new Jewish city. And this was the first plan for what was— what is called the plans for Jewishizing the Golan. That's to decrease the number of Arabs in Galilee, to confiscate the lands of Arabs, and to build Jewish settlements and towns in the framework of this plan of Jewishizing Galilee.

Speaker 7: Well, first of all, Judaization of Galilee, I don't know exactly what you mean. We are speaking about the development of Galilee. And we do all of it.

Speaker 9: The government invested milliards upon milliards of dollars in building Upper Nazareth and in building more than 50 big industrial enterprises—for instance, the Dodge Assembly Factory, the. Food industry, textile industry. The factories, these factories in Nazareth, are the biggest in their field of production in the whole country. Now, there is a racist policy also practiced in Upper Nazareth against Arab families who want to live there. We have a very sharp housing problem. We are suffering in Nazareth because of the confiscation of our lands and because of the policy of the government, which is not investing anything for solving this housing problem.

Speaker 7: And what you asking about the relationship, the Nazareth— the Arab big Nazareth and our Nazareth? It's very good relationship. You can see every day, even now, the commercial relationship. You know, in Azaret Eli today are living about 400 families, non-Jews. Nobody mention about that.

Speaker 9: It's not correct that 400 families— no, I want to tell you, it is correct as a result. But there's a trick in it. They, when they confiscated parts of our town, simply they annexed parts of the town with completely Arab families to Upper Nazareth. It's an Arab neighborhood.

Speaker 5: It's a good neighborhood.

Speaker 14: Each time we come and go, they tell me that my children are forbidden to come out, even if there is blood between us. Yes, they told me that there will be blood between us if my kids are seen downstairs. They cry to go down and play, but I can't let them. I'm afraid that something will happen to them. My kids say that down there, in the one-room house, at least we were free. Here we are chained.

Speaker 16: I want to add to this something which I think very important. I want to say, as a Jew, that this was exactly the situation of the Jews in Europe and in other places 200 years ago. The situation of Palestinian citizens Citizens of the state of Israel, not West Bank, not Gaza, not Lebanon, citizens of the state of Israel, is, in my opinion, completely or on most points similar to the situation of Jews in European ghettos 200 years ago.

Speaker 14: The 4 great powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs and future hopes of far profounder ...than the desire and prejudice of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

Speaker 15: Zionism's colonial project received its legitimation as a part of imperialism's conquest of the Third World. Although the ideology of both Zionism and imperialism expressed a common disregard for the Palestinians, Zionism's vision of the redemption of the land was based on the exclusion of those people. And while the Zionist movement was able to use Western antisemitism to its advantage, the Palestinians fell victim to that same racism under both British and Zionist rule.

Speaker 14: It should be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country. If the Arabs leave, it is a large and open country. If they stay, it is small and poor. Up to this point, Zionists have been convinced They are content to buy land, but this is no way to establish a country for the Jews. A nation is created in one move, and in that case, there is no alternative to moving the Arabs to the neighboring countries, moving them all, except perhaps those living in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Old City of Jerusalem. Not one village, not one tribe must remain.

Speaker 15: Great Britain's colonial administration in Palestine enabled the European Jewish settlers to consolidate Jewish immigration doubled the yishiv population, and by 1937, over 140 million Deutschmarks had been transferred through the Anglo-Palestine Bank to settlement projects, thus setting in motion the transformation of feudal Palestine.

Speaker 8: There is proof that the British were not the only ones who Create a national question here, not only Palestinian but the Jewish. Did not resolve it, create it. Zionism is a typical colonization movement, a colonial movement by its own words. Speak about it yeshuvot, it nakhilot, which means settlements, colonization for the Jews in Palestine.

Speaker 15: After the Second World War, the effects of the fascist atrocities in Europe and the alignment of U.S. imperialism with Zionism in its efforts to replace the British in the region culminated in the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. All of the major powers supported the resolution. which granted 56% of the land to the Jewish minority, who owned less than 7% of Mandate Palestine. The War of 1948 nullified the UN plan, as the new State of Israel gained de facto control over 78% of the land. Hundreds of Arab villages were destroyed, forcing 800,000 600,000 Palestinians into exile. After the Israeli victory in the war of 1948, an equivocal armistice established a permanent state of tension in the region, at the expense of both the Arab and the Jewish people. The U.S. became the arbiters of the tension, protectors of Israel, but also the Arab leaders, threatened with popular uprisings in their own countries, were able to use this tension to redirect class conflict along national lines, while the Israeli rulers saw it as a way to strengthen the Zionist character of the state.

Speaker 7: We are the children of the refugees.

Speaker 15: The peace agreed on in 1949 assured the militarization of the region, enabling the U.S. to expand its postwar economic penetration and consolidate its control over shipping and oil interests. From then on, the role of Israel in the Middle East is characterized by the defense of an imperialist equilibrium in the area, and therefore Well, we have to remember here, especially, I think, you Americans, that the role of the alliance between Israel and America is a global one.

Speaker 16: It is as important in Honduras or on the outer borders of Nicaragua now as it was in the '60s and '70s. As is important in Lebanon.

Ilan Ziv: 1967, June 5th. War breaks out again between Israel and the Arab states.

Speaker 15: In the expansionist post-'67 period, Israel's internal contradictions were contained by massive infusions of U.S. aid and the rise of religious chauvinist tendencies. The state became increasingly militarized. The phrase armed ghetto, coined by an Israeli politician, became more and more the official line. In December 1975, the Israeli Communist Party The Communist Party formed an alliance with other progressive groups and won the municipal elections in Nazareth. Their candidate, Tawfiq Ziad, became the mayor of Nazareth. Meanwhile, Israel Kinnig, Commissioner of the Interior for the Northern District, began writing a memorandum concerning the Palestinians within the state. In his book, The Jewish Problem: Israel's Dividing, the Demographic Problem, and the Manifestations of Arab Nationalism, Kinnig warns against the growing size of the Arab population and their increasing militancy.

Speaker 14: The Jewish democratic and open society, which swallowed the Arab population remaining in the country after the establishment of the state, failed to absorb it. The Jews appointed to take care of this population, and whose aim had been to make them loyal to the Jewish society in this state, failed to do so. Their policy does not take into consideration the superficial and the bantamistic Arab character whose imagination tends to exceed rationality.

Speaker 9: So to speak about equality and freedom in a system based on racism and on national oppression, this is a modern Israeli joke. This is a modern Israeli joke. And these are the facts which all the international public opinion knows.

Speaker 15: On March 30th, 1976, the Palestinians in Israel held a general strike. The Day of the Land Strike, as it was called, paralyzed the Israeli economy. It was the largest demonstration against the state since 1948. The government's response was swift and brutal.

Speaker 9: In 1976, on the Land Day, they shot dead 6 people, the army and the police forces, wounded by firearms hundreds of people, expelled thousands of workers from their work and arrested hundreds of people. Only we wanted to strike, protesting the confiscation of our lands.

Speaker 13: Allahu Akbar!

Speaker 15: The increased repression that followed in the wake of the Land Day strike forced the progressive forces in Israel to adopt new tactics in their political struggle. In August of that same year, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality organized The first volunteers' work camp in the city of Nazareth. Since 1976, the work camp has become an annual focus of resistance, mobilizing tens of thousands of people in a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinians in Israel.

Speaker 13: الليلة وساتوازت بيننا في الأيام والليالي القادمة ألوف أبناء الشعبنا من المناطق المختلفة يا أخوان لا يمكن تصور مخيم العمل التطوعي بالنصر بدون أبناء تفضل البيوت داخل سيد المرة. الله يعلمش أبنائه كيف بتشتغلوا. وإذا كان إذا كان هيك بتشتغلوا في النصر، فاحنا فاهمين كيف بتشتغلوا بنعبد الله. الغس والخليل. واحنا مثل ما انتو مش بس مثل ما انتو معنا حتى لما حتى اوكو شوية يا عمي احنا معكو انتو لحن من لحننا ودم من دمنا وجزوا من قضيتنا كلها. من خليل طيب هذا واسمه بالتعامل من شان تعرفوا ويعرف العالم كله أنه لا يمكن التعايش مع الاحتلال لا يمكن التعايش مع الاحتلال مش بس مع الجندي وإنما حتى مع المحتل لو كان لا بالسبيل وحالت دكره حاطت كمان ترونية لا يمكن التعايش معه أنا أنا بتكون ترونية هاي ترونية.

Speaker 17: يا ريفا بترفع جينا من الشمال جينا للطارة معاكو بالميزان أمالي لصول العالم لا بيطال لا جفاك ترطي عرسك لا بينا The collective labor of the volunteers produces substantial and badly needed improvements In 1982, the value of the work accomplished during the 4 days of the camp was equal to 3.5 times the total annual development budget allocated to Nazareth by the state. Since 1976, the idea of the work camp has been adopted by This is the second time I'm participating in this camp in Nazareth.

Speaker 18: I'm a refugee from Syria. I think that we prove here that the Zionist idea that the Palestinian people and the Jewish people cannot live together peacefully, it is a lie, because each one of us participate in this camp, whether he's a Palestinian or whether he's a Jew, find it It's extremely useful, in terms of political terms, to be together, to work together. In many ways, we feel that we disprove the lies of this government or the previous government that are telling us that living together as equals, it's impossible.

Speaker 13: Assata Shakur! Assata Shakur!

Speaker 4: I want to ask you, our role as democratic women beyond the work at the camp.

Speaker 5: لا يتوقف فقط على العمل بخصوص المخيمات. Or lend support to those impacted by terrorism. It extends to women's day, to the day of the children.

Speaker 8: We go into the house to build women's consciousness.

Speaker 4: Maybe because of her husband or due to lack of education, she does.

Speaker 14: A woman must not always know her role in society, but she should be an active member.

Speaker 5: So our work is very broad, not only in the political field, but also in the social field.

Speaker 14: And we ask all of the interested democratic forces in America, Europe or anywhere, Who support us in our work to liberate the Arab woman from oppression, government oppression, social oppression, or any other kind. As long as government policy remains the same, we're not optimists. It's not inconceivable that Sabra and Shatila could happen here. Just yesterday, they fired on the students at Ahl Khalil. We can't be optimistic if this policy doesn't change.

Speaker 16: This is the only state in the world in which the government budget is bigger than GNP, than the gross national product, because, of course, of the enormous aid from United States. Because of this, you have an inherently unstable situation. The more aid you give to a country, the more unstable it becomes. The more aid you give to a country, the more unstable it becomes. The more aid that the United States gives to Israel, the more we have inflation, the more the economy is being changed to less productive uses. For example, Israeli agriculture, which used to be the most flourishing section of the economy, is now one of the worst. And especially, the more and more the economy is becoming militarized, not only by— through the army, but through factories which are producing weapons for export. There are by now 2 companies in Israel which export not weapons, but export experts, as it is called, experts in combating terrorism, to Latin America, to Africa and to countries like Thailand. Because you have such an excess of security experts, of Shin Bet, Mossad, whatever you call, who all have to retire at the age of about 45, at the age of 45 we export them to Chile, for example, or to El Salvador or to any places. And because of this, you don't have We don't have practically any unemployment among Jews, or very little. But you have to remember that the inflation and the unemployment and the other economic ills of this sort are being transferred to Palestinians.

Speaker 8: Class consciousness and national consciousness are antagonistic. As long as practically The Israeli ruling class is able to convince the Israeli working class that they are in the same boat, that they all are profiting from the situation and they will all lose the same if this situation will change, the development of a real class consciousness will be almost impossible. I'm sorry, I didn't understand.

Speaker 14: How are the conditions here? Are you satisfied?

Speaker 4: No, I'm not satisfied. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 14: I see many people here. No one is happy here. They're all speaking out. What salary did you make? Up to 220,000 lira per month.

Speaker 4: I take home 220, including today's increase. What increase?

Speaker 14: 30%, so we jump up to 220,000. And from this, we pay electricity, rent, taxes, everything. We're hardly left with 100,000 in our hands. Do you have a workers' committee? Yeah, but it's sold out to the management.

Ilan Ziv: Do you vote for the committee?

Speaker 4: Well, we elect them, but the management does as it pleases.

Speaker 14: Why don't you recall them?

Speaker 4: We're still trying.

Speaker 14: Are you in touch with the Histordude? The Histordude is hand in hand with the management.

Speaker 4: We eat the shit and keep quiet.

Speaker 14: It's as simple as that.

Speaker 8: In contradiction to what many people believe abroad, the Histadrut is not, never have been, and never claimed to be a union. It used to be, before the creation of the State of Israel, the state institution before the state. The Histadrut has various departments. One is the kibbutzim. One is cooperatives, one is cultural department, the biggest sport organizations, the biggest health insurance. Among other things, Israël has a department of union affairs, which is one department out of many others, not the most important. And it's dealing to, as it's written in the constitution of this department, to keep good relations of work, work relations. And this is a job he has done quite successfully during the last 30 years, trying to organize the working class in the framework of the state and in accordance to the basic priorities and interests of the state of Israel.

Speaker 14: They forced the committee to sign without our consent.

Speaker 4: That's against the law in Israel.

Speaker 14: Is everyone here like you?

Speaker 4: Yes, everybody.

Speaker 14: Why don't you do something? Nothing helps. I'm not complaining.

Speaker 4: No, because you're— you're the management.

Speaker 9: If the working class can see the relation, the integral relation, between the general policy of wars, aggressions, invasions and the deterioration of the economy, Of their economic situation, they will come to a situation in which they will understand that to solve the Palestinian problem on just basis and to liquidate occupation is in the interest of the Israeli people itself, and not only in the interest of the Palestinian people.

Speaker 13: ما شيبس فيش مواد. لزين وديك تبين. لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا لا يا ليفي استني عذور ومع السبب حور يا ليفي استني أهلي علمتني رؤيا We work very hard.

Speaker 18: Nevertheless, it's very joyful, because we feel it's very productive. In terms of the results, the actual results, the projects, and in terms of the social relationship that we build here, the conversation, the political discussions, the dancing, the singing. You know, it is an event that— it's really pleasant. And I have a lot of pleasure being here. I'm very happy to be here.

Speaker 13: يا ريفا للتربة جينا من شمال جينا للطارة مع عدو بالنظام يا ريفا للتربة جينا من شمال جينا للطارة مع عدو بالنظام مهما ليل الطور Fatih Ghadim, a Palestinian artist, was arraigned before a military court in 1984.

Speaker 14: The evidence presented to the court was a painting showing a Trojan horse and standing next to it a Palestinian man and woman. The court found that the 4 colors in the upper corner of the painting represented the Palestinian The artist was accused of incitement against the State of Israel. He was fined and sentenced to 6 months in jail. And just to mention something that happened last night. At 2:00 a.m., a group of armed men entered the camp. Strangers.

Edna Hunt: Just to scare us. مين في غير الحكومة وزعراء؟ Who else but the government and their thugs?

Ilan Ziv: In Hebrew, kibbutz means. Many Israelis feel that if it were not for the kibbutz ideals of a better society, and their devotion to these ideals, there would be nothing unique left in Israel.

Speaker 16: All the America, I think, has heard again and again about the kibbutzim. Kibbutzim are as apartheid as apartheid itself. South Africa. No Palestinian citizen of the State of Israel can become a member of kibbutz, with one single exception. One Druze was accepted a year and a half ago to a kibbutz, Deir Boqer, in the Negev, on the following 3 conditions. First of all, that he will not keep the commandments of the Druze religion. In the kibbutz, but he will keep the Jewish religion, outward commandments of Jewish religion. Let's say he will fast on the Day of Atonement. B, that he will attempt to marry, he will first convert to Jewish religion. 3, that he will not speak about his being Druze when young persons and visitors from outside Israel are around. And he is the only exception. All the other kibbutzim, I repeat it, are as apartheid as Johannesburg. Those more than 90% of the land of State of Israel, and also the lands confiscated in West Bank and Gaza Strip, belong or are administered by the Jewish National Fund for openly and officially racist purposes. meaning only for Jewish benefit. This is quotation from their own regulations. And this is the main arm of the apartheid policy of both State of Israel and the World Zionist Organization.

Edna Hunt: The World Zionist Organization formed the Jewish National Fund in 1901 to purchase and develop land This company's first land purchase was made in 1905, and its first kibbutz was founded in 1909. By 1947, the Jewish National Fund had succeeded in buying only 6.6% of the land of Palestine.

Speaker 9: Since 1948, all the lands of the Arabs were divided Arab refugees, including tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, which left the country for 1 or 2 days or 2 weeks and returned back, all their lands were seized. 80% of our lands were confiscated.

Speaker 8: The land do not belong to the state of Israel. It belong to the Jewish people. And most of the land questions are dealt not with official structure of the state, but by the Jewish National Fund, which is a Jewish institution not linked to the state. And the Jewish National Fund, as a Jewish institution, not as an Israeli institution, has its own regulations and law, which are completely discriminating. But it's not an official discrimination of the state of Israel.

Speaker 7: How shall we develop this area till year 2000? The first of all is how to create a common culture for all the people of the Jewish nation. What we are hoping— and the master plan is the basis of that— How to develop a quality, a high quality of life? Because this is only the one way that we can hold our population here and to bring here new population. Generally, I want to say that the North Area can tell us the whole situation of Israel around it.

Speaker 16: What is happening to Galilee— in Galilee is similar, although milder, to what is happening in West Bank, in Golan. The pattern of colonization, really rather similar to the Wild West, is to form a chain of either settlements or fortified positions, like lookouts, which will divide the Palestinian population into small areas, which Sharon used to call squares, each one surrounded by settlements on lookouts and each one watched by this system of settlements. If you look on the map of South Africa and on the Bantustans, you will see a very similar pattern.

Speaker 9: Since the occupation in 1967, the Israeli government turned the economy of the occupied territories into a colonial economy, completely dependable on the Israeli economy. And you have more than 100,000 Palestinians 100,000 who are unemployed. The economy is dependent on the Israeli economy. workers, cheap labor, coming from the occupied territories to work inside Israel. And they turned the occupied territories into a market for the Israeli goods or the Israeli production. But in spite of this, we see the sharp economical crisis in Israel, which means, which proves That new occupations and new invasions, new military plans, can only complicate more and more the situation of the Israeli economy.

Speaker 8: We used to laugh, for years, when we heard about the programs of the Israeli government to settle 100,000, 200,000 Jews in the West Bank, and we said, Except some fanatics, who is a Jew want to live in a small settlement surrounded by Arabs in the Jordan Valley? And then came Sharon with a new policy, changing the type of settlements— urban settlements and not agricultural ones, and close to the former border. One-hour drive from the Valley of Jordan, And today you can have an apartment twice bigger than the apartment you can receive here, with excellent conditions, with loans for 50 years without interest and things like that. I know people even from the left, a friend of mine from Peace Now, who is Peace Now and wants to get rid of the territories, who tell me 3 months ago, You are— you will be angry with me. But, you know, I was— the temptation was too big. I was offered an apartment, the dream of my life, a small villa. And by selling my apartment in a popular neighborhood in Jerusalem, I was able not only to have this new villa, big and with a big garden and so on and so on, But even to buy a car, with all the subsidies I receive, all the subventions and so on. So it's not only ideological, it's practical. Let's take the money from the United States. It's not only that in the past, in order to create the state, the help of international imperialist powers was needed. It is the very existence of the If the United States would stop for 6 months to supply not only arms, not mainly arms, to supply the money to make the economy run?

Speaker 16: In very short, the situation of Israeli economy, to combine it all together, is that we are becoming economically like the Cossacks or the Gurkhas in India or like a people or like a state which is being kept by another state, United States, to do unproductive jobs. Because of this, Israel needs more money. But because the American Congress and President Reagan are being what they are, it will receive more money. To quote something from the beginning of United States. We have taxation without representation in another way, but it is you who are being taxed.

Speaker 8: It's based on a contract, on a very simple contract, not on love. And because there is a Jewish or Zionist lobby in the States, it may help. But this is— it's a A meeting of interest. Israel needs American help in order to exist and to achieve its goal. First to exist, then to achieve other goals. And the United States needs Israel in order to keep order here and to defend its interests. This is the basis of the alliance between them. Both they are interested in stopping any progressive movement. Movement in the area. And today it means, first of all, to crush the Palestinian nationalist movement.

Speaker 4: Today, a New York-style salute to Israel, marking the anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. The day began with a breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, and lox for U.S. and Israeli dignitaries Most of the talk was about the tradition of friendship that has existed between the 2 countries.

Ilan Ziv: With some ups and downs along the way, they're getting better all the time.

Speaker 4: From an economic standpoint, from a governmental standpoint, the fact that they've built up a nation and defended that nation successfully, I think we have a bond of friendship and recognize that we have similar values and, in many ways, a similar view of the world.

Speaker 13: نحمل أرض المحبوبة، نحمل أرض المحبوبة، نشراب كاسكيا فيتنام، نشراب كاسكيا فيتنام، على حنا ما من نام، على حنا ما من نام، يا وزر الماء، يا ماما وزر الماء، في طفتنا الغربية، في طفتنا الغربية. كل واحد منهم عملة ابن الحق الشعبي ابن الحق الشعبي يا ما ما وسر الماء يا ما ما وسر الماء تحكي الأرض نحن تحكي الأرض نحن يا ما and no matter what the Israelis do, you know, and they've they've they said already what their program is genocide.

Speaker 5: Transfer or starvation. That's Mordechai, the commander of the West Bank.

Edna Hunt: There are some detachments in the Israeli army, I don't know whether it's a platoon or whatever the size is, that have called themselves the Mengele Detachment.

Speaker 4: Oh my God.

Edna Hunt: And the Auschwitz Detachment.

Speaker 5: And what they have done is in order to show that they're particularly tough, You look at the popular education, which, by the way, any student or any teacher who is caught engaged in the popular education could be sentenced to 5 years or 10 years in jail. Why? Because the Israelis have closed the schools since the beginning of the Intifada. We don't want our people to be ignorant. We want our children to learn.

Speaker 13: I think that's a very important point.

Speaker 5: So people started engaging in a popular education manner. In homes, they would sit together, teach the children, you know, and the children would be going with books, knapsacks on their back, you know, and so on. And the Israelis started stopping the children, and they arrested a few teachers.

Speaker 4: 2 women who were born in Palestine, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, give us some information and some interpretations as to what has been happening in Israel and the occupied territories. Occupied territories, right now on Alternative Views. The matter of the situation in Palestine with the Intifada and the Palestinians and the Israelis has been pushed off the main pages of the national newspapers and off of the television Network News in the past several months. We want to get an update and talk about a lot of things that are happening in this area. But before we have our interview, here are some news stories from the alternative press.

Speaker 6: Well, an explosive new article has been published in, in these times that of course has not been mentioned in any of the establishment media. We reported some weeks ago that in Costa Rica, the government Accused John Hall, an American rancher who was the local CIA representative there, Oliver North, Richard Secord, and other big names in the Iran-Contra investigation, of dealing drugs in Costa Rica, that the secret supply operation to arm the Contras that were stationed in Costa Rica were financed by Colombian drugs, in which the same The same planes that were used to drop arms to the Contras were used to fly drugs back to the U.S. And the Costa Rica government actually put out drug charges against John Hall, Oliver North, Richard Secord, so none of them can go into Costa Rica anymore because they're wanted criminals in this country. Well, last week Costa Rica also handed out murder indictments against John Hall, Robert Owen—

Speaker 2: Robert Owen.

Speaker 6: —who was Oliver North's personal courier, and other local CIA agents that had been stationed in Costa Rica. This was a long Costa Rican report into the bombing in La Penca, Nicaragua, on May 30th, 1984, that was intended to kill Edén Pastora, who was a Contra leader who refused to cooperate with the CIA and the other Contra leadership.

Speaker 4: Right.

Speaker 6: So members of the other Contra group, Oliver North, and the U.S. government decided to assassinate Pastora. This has long been reported in the left-wing press. The Christic Institute filed a lawsuit claiming that these people were engaged in drug running and murder, etc., which was thrown out of an American court. But after a long, detailed Costa Rican investigation, murder indictments were issued.

Speaker 7: Right.

Speaker 6: Indeed, passed down against Hall, Oliver— Robert Owen and others that were involved in the assassination attempt at Eden Pastora that killed several journalists who were there at the press conference. According to the Costa Rican report, the other Contra fellows wanted to get rid of Pastora because he refused to cooperate with the CIA-led Contras, who were former Somalis. Right.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 6: —that were members of Somoza's National Guard, who were also engaged in torture and killing of Nicaraguan civilians and were involved in drug running. Pastora didn't like the fact that the Contras were financing their operation with these drug sales, so he was criticizing them, so they decided to kill him. Well, the Costa Rican government indicated that indeed it was John And his friends that planted the bomb at this press conference to try to kill Pastora. Moreover, in another explosive story, they indicated that even after this attempt failed, there were other attempts on Pastora that were decided upon by Hall, by Robert Owen, by Adolfo Colero and others. One of the people that testified in Costa Rica One of them is Jack Terrell, a former mercenary, who said that he was at a meeting after the failed bombing to kill Pastore in December of 1984 in the Sheraton— the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston, Texas. According to Terrell, Hall, Robert Owen, Calero and others indicated that they had to get rid of Pastore. Yeah. To be a thorn in their side, and another assassination attempt was necessary. The Indy Times points out that Hall has a knack for staying a step ahead of the law. In the spring of 1986, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese derailed an inquiry into Hall's illegal drug run— gunrunning activities, and later a Senate subcommittee The Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Drugs, headed by John Kerry, was not able to get hold of Hall because he was in Costa Rica and he refused to come to the U.S. to testify. There's also an interesting footnote of Dan Quayle's involvement in all of this. Robert Owen, who was Oliver North's courier, who worked with John Hall, was introduced to Hall by Dan Quayle. Quayle, Owen, and Hall are all Indiana residents. They're all close friends. And Owen was actually in Quayle's office when he was first introduced to Hall and got involved in this illegal arms and drug-running operation with the Contras that was also involved in political assassination. So if this ever came out, Quayle also could would be smeared with the effects of an investigation. Of course, despite the Costa Rican official inquiry, there hasn't been a mention of this in the press in the U.S.

Speaker 4: The Nicaraguan elections are a fascinating thing from a lot of aspects, but you're not hearing much at all about it in the United States. All you hear about is the opposition group, the UNO. Well, As usual, the American media are completely ignoring what's really happening there. As a matter of fact, the electorate faces a choice of 21 parties. There are 4 liberal, 4 social Christian, 4 conservatives, and various— of various sizes. 11 opposition parties are grouped into this United National Opposition, which the American press is And the government is saying, well, it is the opposition, as if nothing else existed. Well, there was a really— in Nicaraguan Perspectives for the winter-spring of 1990, has a real good rundown and history of all these various parties and how they got to be the way they are. It seems like before the Sandinistas took over, historically, there were just 2 parties in Nicaragua, the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Speaker 7: Right.

Speaker 4: And like in the United States, where the 2 major parties are supported by different groups of elite, powerful, wealthy people, the same there. The Conservative Party represented old capital, the cotton farmers and the cattle ranchers, when the Liberal Party, they represented the urban business interests and the coffee growers. Well, when Somoza took over, he was from one party, but And the other party snuggled up to him, and it was pretty much one party, although a couple of people did break off and form their own parties. Later, after Somoza was overthrown, there have been a lot of other parties that have split, and those splits from them and splits from that, so there are many, many parties. But also been some other activities, like the Nicaraguan Conservative Party. It had accommodation with Somoza, but it left to form its own group and holds 14 assembly seats from the previous election. Just running down a few of these others, there's a Popular Alliance Conservative Party, which was funded by the U.S. National Republican Institute for International Affairs, funded by the U.S. Republican Party. There's a Social Christian The Christian Party, which was founded by the Christian Democratic International. You know, there are these Christian Democratic parties all over the world. They started, I think, in Italy with CIA and the Vatican support. After World War II. After World War II, yeah.

Speaker 6: It was a major project of the U.S. Cold War foreign policy.

Speaker 4: Now, many of these we're talking about are in the UNO, the United Opposition. But this is an incredible thing. Guess where the— there are 2 socialist parties. One was a— they call themselves National— the Nicaraguan Socialist Party. They were an orthodox communist party until recently, when they dropped the Marxism-Leninism, and now they're just socialist. But there's also a Communist Party of Nicaragua, and they are in power.

Barbara Harlow: And they're in power.

Speaker 6: They're part of the United Opposition.

Speaker 4: Yeah, you never hear about that when the Americans are saying, oh, the United Opposition. You don't say, well, the communists are part of that.

Speaker 6: I mean, you always hear about the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, but as a point of fact, the Sandinistas are a nationalist movement based on Sandino, who had some leftist ideas, but he was mainly a democratic populist nationalist. And all through the years of the revolution, revolution in the years of the Nicaraguan regime, there's also been socialist and communist parties in Nicaragua that are independent of the Sandinistas. And this is not well known in the U.S. It just assimilates the Sandinistas to a Marxist-Leninist label, which is far from the truth.

Speaker 4: Right. As a matter of fact, they're in great opposition to the, uh, to the Sandinistas. There are some other organizations, Revolutionary Workers Party and others to the So the last election that was held there, the Sandinistas were actually the centrist party. There were parties to the left and parties to the right. But you don't get any of this idea of how much political pluralism there actually is in Nicaragua from the American press. Only from the alternative press do you hear it.

Speaker 6: Also, you don't get a sense of the extent to which the U.S. is funding the opposition to the Sandinistas. This is a current policy throughout Latin America of the United States government, is to give tens of millions of dollars to opposition parties, to conservative parties that are against more progressive populist or socialist parties. In the election in Panama in 1989, $20 million was channeled into the opposition to Noriega by the CIA. In the current Nicaraguan election, I don't know how much money, but probably 50 hundreds of millions of dollars are being given to opposition parties.

Speaker 4: In this Nicaraguan perspective, there's a good article by Edward Herman, who is one of our most important critics of the mass media. He says that the approach to the foreign elections, the media covering these elections, the U.S. media use three Myths. The first one is that the U.S. supports democracy in the Third World. The U.S. is always very happy to have support for any dictatorship, but here's a good example: the United States' attitude toward democracy in Guatemala changed perceptively in 1947 when they passed a law giving workers the right to strike. Suddenly, the United States started intervening, and then. Later resulted in the coup which overthrew the only freely elected government in Guatemalan history. The next, the second myth which the establishment media use and swallow at least, is that the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala were legitimated by free and fair elections, whereas the elections that were held in 1984 Or in Nicaragua were not. Talk about sham elections. People were forced to vote, and then they could only vote for those 2 parties which the U.S. and the Salvadoran elites really wanted, after the death squads and the army had murdered and repressed through state terror the real opposition. And the flip side of that, of course, is that the Nicaraguan elections are considered by international observers to be the most free and fair that there possibly could have been. The third myth that the media swallow and they spew out to you and I is that the Soviet Union has been the source of or behind a lot of these radical regimes. Of course, we should know that's a bunch of baloney by now. Well, that's all the time we have for news right now. We'll have more news stories from the alternative press later in the program. But now let's have our interview about what's happening in Israel and the occupied territories. We have with us Barbara Harlow, who's with the Department of English at the University of Texas. Barbara and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee have just finished a whole week Palestine Week, in which they've had a lot of speakers and documentaries which they've shown, and they've had a lot of discussion groups. There are 2 people who have participated in this who are going to be with us now on Alternative Views. Edna Hunt is from Boston, but she was born in Israel, and she of course has an interest in, in the situation in Palestine. And Rabab Hadi is also living in New York, but she is Palestinian.

Barbara Harlow: I'd like to hear a little bit more about how you both got involved in politics. You're both real activists now, and perhaps you could give us a little bit of a biography about how your life became engaged in the political activities that you're so committed to.

Edna Hunt: I was a very faithful Israeli citizen. I was pro-Israeli until, I would say— and I had swallowed hook, line and sinker the Zionist government lines— until, I would say, the Yom Kippur War. And that began to open my eyes to the realities of what the aims of the Israeli government and people was.

Speaker 4: And this was when? What year?

Edna Hunt: And that was 1973. I didn't become really super active until the— really, the Lebanon War broke out in 1982. And it was then that I shifted into high gear, because it seemed to me that what happened on the Lebanon border and the invasion of Lebanon and all the rather nasty events that ensued from that invasion had to be counteracted because it was a formidable pack of lies. And it was to me also because I came to know some of the people who were in Israel opposed to that invasion. But it became clear to me that I had to give much more time to counteract the official lines Both inside Israel and also the Israeli connection with the United States and a very, very strong pro-Israeli line in the United States.

Speaker 4: What was life like back when you were growing up? You've grown up during very turbulent times in Palestine.

Edna Hunt: No, I did not grow up through turbulent times.

Barbara Harlow: You didn't?

Edna Hunt: No. The times when I grew up were very nice and quiet. I grew up in Palestine, remember? I grew up under the British mandate.

Speaker 4: Right.

Edna Hunt: And the only turbulence were periodic turbulences. It was not as continuous a turbulence as now. But the British mandate lasted from 1920, essentially, until 1948, when the British left. And during that time, I grew up, and I grew up in a multiethnic society. In other words, I interacted with Arabs, with Armenians, with Greeks, with Turks. These were my playmates in Jerusalem, where I grew up the first years of my life.

Speaker 4: Now, you— have you lived in Palestine all of your life?

Speaker 5: Well, I was born in Nablus, the West Bank. Which was at the time under Jordanian rule, which means I've never experienced any Palestinian identity on paper, on passport or anything of the sort. When I was 12 years old, the Israeli occupation started in 1967, and I've seen, you know, friends, neighbors, family members being Some were arrested, taken away, some expelled. A cousin of mine spent 7 years in Israeli jails. He was tortured. And then, the last day before he was released, he requested that he would be released— he agreed to stay in prison longer in order to be released in Ramallah, which is also on the West Bank. The day before he was released, the Israelis shipped him across the Jordan River. And he was deported? across the bridge to Jordan. They expelled him, basically.

Speaker 4: And when was this?

Speaker 5: That was in 19— what? '74 or something like that. And I stayed— I lived in Nablus until I graduated from high school. I saw many people, you know, getting killed and detained and so on. And if you're a Palestinian, you're born politicized. You cannot— I mean, it's part of your life. It's like the air you breathe. I went to college, and, you know, I've been active all my life. I don't think we have any other choice, for that matter.

Speaker 4: When did you come to the United States?

Speaker 5: I came to the United States in 1978 to go to college in Madison, Wisconsin. And then I moved to New York.

Speaker 4: Do you go back periodically to the West Bank?

Speaker 5: No. No, as a matter of fact, the last time I went there to visit was in 1980. I was on a summer vacation. And afterwards, I, you You know, we have what is called the laissez-passer, which is a passport that's good for one year to allow us to exit from the occupied territories. Not an Israeli passport; it's just for the Palestinians who hold ID cards. And I send it to the Israeli embassy in Chicago. Actually, it was a consulate to get it renewed, and they kept giving me different stories, and I never got it back. So I'm not allowed to go back home. My family. My family is still there, but I can't go back.

Speaker 13: So—

Speaker 4: What is the latest information you have about the Intifada that's going on?

Speaker 5: Well, I think what's going on right now with the Intifada entering its 23rd month, it's— the oppression is getting worse and worse. There is an escalation of Israeli violence against the Palestinians. The problem is it's not getting reported. As it used to be. I think— I don't know, maybe we can, you know, discuss this later on. But one of the starkest examples that I could remember is the question of the town of Beit Sahour, which is a small town near Bethlehem, where the inhabitants, the citizens, refused to pay taxes to the Israeli occupation authority. Right. They said this is an occupation. We're not going to subsidize it. We're refusing to pay taxes. And the Israelis have been trying different methods here and there in order to bring the inhabitants into submission. Eventually, they raided the town like a couple of weeks ago or three weeks ago, and they confiscated the appliances, TVs, radios, irons, whatever the houses that you know. Refrigerators, washing machines, everything they had. They confiscated the beds. They confiscated the furniture. A pregnant woman, you know, asked them if they could leave the bed so she could sleep on because she's pregnant. They said, well, you let us know when you're about to give the baby. We'll get you the bed back, and then we'll take it from you. So they don't have anything, you know, in the house. A man's— TV was confiscated. It turns out it's not color. The Israelis bring it back, and then they take his brother's TV, you know, and like over like between $1 and $2 million worth of appliances. They're going to be auctioned, I think, this weekend in Tel Aviv to be sold. And this is, you know, something that the Israelis have been trying to do, whether by, you know, beating people up, which we've heard about a lot, and we saw saw on TV a lot, or killing, shooting with live ammunition, plastic, rubber bullets, shooting tear gas, poisonous tear gas. That's manufactured right here in the United States, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, federal labs.

Speaker 4: Which has resulted in the deaths of a lot of people because that's used here.

Speaker 5: Not only in the death, but also in the miscarriages of hundreds of women, because it is poisonous. It's not supposed to be thrown into closed areas. It has led It has led to many people choking. It has led to many women, you know, having miscarriages, which reminds me of something very interesting, that the Bush administration claims that it is against abortion, against women's right to choose, because they want to, you know, save the fetus. In the meantime, they are supplying Israel with tear gas that kills Palestinian fetuses. You know, so it's— you know, it kind of poses the question, what is the Where does the rights start and where do they end? Is this really about rights of fetus or rights of, you know, protecting life? Or is it about some hypocrisy? Wherever your interests, you know, fall, you'll go along with them.

Barbara Harlow: Both of you have been active here in the United States, active around an issue that seems to be remote. It seems to be in another part of the world. In your political work here, doing solidarity work, doing mobilizing work with other groups, what kind of experiences have you had in terms of making the Palestinian question or the Israeli question make sense to the people here in the United States?

Speaker 5: I think sometimes people wonder why should I Why should Americans living thousands of miles away from the Middle East be concerned with a question like this? Don't they have enough problems of their own? And I agree. I think there are a lot of problems in this country. I think problems stemming from the fact that there is no funding for, you know, poor people to go to hospitals and get medical care. There isn't enough money going around for student loans to get an education to enable them to have a better life. I think that's a very good point. There isn't enough money to provide jobs or provide housing. I come from New York. Every day when I go home and I come back, I see hundreds of homeless people, and it breaks your heart to see this situation in supposedly one of the richest countries in the world.

Speaker 15: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: Meanwhile, the United States spends vast amounts of money on the military budget. The highest recipient of all foreign aid is Israel, with $3.6 billion. billion a year, OK, mostly in grants. And this money is going to a state that is not only militarizing itself, becoming a garrison state, is not only, you know, busting the sanctions in South Africa that supposedly the United States is trying to put economic boycott around apartheid to go, to end, is not only training the drug cartels in Medellín in Colombia—

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 5: Or the death squads in El Salvador, or Pinochet regime in Chile, and so on. So that's one thing. But it's also violating U.S. standards of human rights in the occupied territories, killing Palestinians. And the U.S. State Department report itself said that Israel violates human rights, Palestinian human rights. So Israel is violating all these U.S. laws, the end-user certificate, whereby every country that gets military aid has to certify Where does it get spent? So it's not supposed to go to South Africa or to Colombia, anywhere else in the world. And the human rights. And we say that it is extremely important for both the Palestinian people and for the American people to stop this amount of, you know, funding that is going to subsidize the Israeli occupation, which is illegal by U.S. government standards. We're not even talking about Palestinian standards. And even if you talk about the homeless problem, we have 3 million Palestinian homeless refugees, 3 million refugees. If you stop this aid, you will resolve both the Palestinian political homelessness—

Speaker 13: Right.

Speaker 5: —and the American homelessness problem. So we're very much in the same, you know, corner. And there is a need to bring the intifada home to the American people and have the American people working alongside the Palestinians in In order to stop this flow, that is not helping anybody, but it's bringing disaster all over.

Barbara Harlow: And indeed, the same kinds of connections that you were drawing with regard to abortion— while we are denying the right to choice to women in the United States by disallowing their access to abortion facilities, we are contributing to the miscarriages, to the fetal deaths of Palestinian children over there. And by the same token, the money that does not go to building houses in the United States goes to bulldozing houses in the occupied territories. So, to be able to make these connections is important.

Edna Hunt: If I can turn a minute, just answer your question very briefly, and I really would like to. It's really a mixed bag, the reactions to some of the work that I've been doing with groups. I would say that the reactions are in 2 extremes. There's either a lot of hostility to what we are doing, and I recently had a rather good dose of experience on that score, both from Jews and from non-Jews, to bringing, let's say, the message of Israeli brutality and And then I have also the reactions of intense sympathy and support, and both in financial terms and in activity terms. One of the things that I'm very anxious to do, since I'm now an American citizen, is to use political clout. And one of the things that I try to do is to to persuade Americans that it's in their own interest, as citizens, to use their political clout, which I find they really don't use sufficiently. And in a sense, I find that the Americans don't realize that they have disenfranchised themselves by not voting for representatives on the Palestine-Israel issue. They're also disenfranchising themselves in terms of their own community needs, because they're not electing to Congress the people who are going to help on both those fronts.

Speaker 4: Can I ask you a question? I'm sure you, you've talked to a lot of people, particularly a lot of American Jews who are sympathetic to Israel, and I find when I talk to them, some of them are— have terrible guilt feelings because they The State of Israel is very important to them, has so much emotional tie to them, and yet they also feel terribly guilty about what the Israeli government is doing and has done to the Palestinians. What do the— what do you find when you talk to Jewish people?

Edna Hunt: I would say just what you reported yourself, namely that some are so hostile to any idea that Israel can do any harm, because you see, Israel is— the emotional appeal has reached the proportions of cult worship.

Barbara Harlow: Um-hum.

Edna Hunt: The American Jews have been, I think, worshipping 2 cults. One is the cult of Israel, and Israel worship is a very important element of Jewish community life. If you were to take Israel away from the life of Jewish communities, what would they have? If you were to look at bulletin boards of synagogues and other institutional places where Jews get together, the focus is on things related to Israel, either in the American government or in the American context or in relation to Israel. And the other one is that there is a Yes. Holocaust is being worshipped as a political instrument, because if you truly, if you truly feel terrible about the Holocaust, then you could not countenance the Holocaust that is being perpetrated on the Palestinian people.

Speaker 4: It's incredible. You see the quotes that they use the same terminology Right. And phrases that the Nazis used, like the final— they're going to have the final solution in Lebanon. That is frightening.

Edna Hunt: Right. And the thing that— I mean, since you mentioned that, I can tell you, I was showing it to Barbara yesterday. There are some detachments in the Israeli army, I don't know whether it's a platoon or whatever the size is, that have called themselves the Mengele Detachment.

Speaker 14: Oh my God.

Edna Hunt: And the Auschwitz Detachment. And what they have done is in order to show that they're particularly tough in relation to putting down this Palestinian insurrection. Now, this is not published in the American press, and whenever I say it to an American, their reaction is what yours is: I can't believe it.

Speaker 4: Well, I can believe it. I think so. The Palestinian press, or at least the Jerusalem— and some of the left-wing newspapers. It still is a shock, even when I read it.

Edna Hunt: That's right.

Speaker 4: But this is a curious aspect of control of the American press, and that is that there is a lot of criticism by Israeli citizens in the Israeli press that never gets into the American press.

Edna Hunt: Well, that's one of the curious things, is in fact that the Israeli press is much freer than the American press. And I think it's really a very simple explanation, if I may just spend 30 seconds to tell you about it. The Israeli public is not shocked by the revelations of the press. The American public would be shocked by that. Very simple. I think that's a very good point.

Ilan Ziv: Hmm.

Barbara Harlow: Speaking of that kind of coverage and the information that we do get on the Intifada here in the United States, Frank mentioned this problem for us here when he opened. What we do see is largely a foreground of children and stones. Indeed, children and stones have become the kind of logo. Of the Intifada. What's going on behind this logo? What's going on behind the children throwing the stones in the streets? What's going on in the houses, in the schools, even when they're closed? To talk about some of that infrastructural development that has occurred.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's what's so significant about the Intifada. That sometimes has something to do with the media coverage, because some of the media that is not very thorough doesn't go after the news. They need like a sensational, you know, image, take it, you know, and broadcast it, and that's done with. But what's going on with the intifada is not about just stones or Molotov cocktails, if you wish, or, you know, a few confrontations with the Israeli soldiers. It's really building the infrastructure for the Palestinian state. So, for the state that has been declared, but it's yet to be realized, okay, that dream. It's— what's going on is you see thousands of popular committees in every sphere of Palestinian life. You look at the agricultural aspect, for instance, and you find out people in their own They are cultivating cucumbers and tomatoes, you know, and so on. And you find out cooperatives also. Some of them, as we were talking last night in our program, led by women, initiated by women, worked by women, run by women, and profits are for women, some of them. Okay? All of this because the Intifada leadership, the Unified National Command of the Intifada, has said we have to boycott Israeli goods. We have to make the Israeli occupation suffer economically. In order to do so, you have to have a Palestinian alternative. Otherwise, people will starve. So people have been cultivating their own produce, their own crops, and they have been feeding themselves and marketing in the market. You take the question of the health services. There are countless health committees— Mm-hmm. Popular committees for health services, for instance, who go to each village, refugee camp, far away place, and provide health services. Mostly volunteers, doctors and nurses, treat the injured because many people cannot go to the hospital because the Israelis come and arrest the wounded people and take them to interrogate them. They cannot do that. They can't risk that. So you need to provide these services to the people. You look at the popular education, which by the way. Any student or any teacher who is caught engaged in the popular education could be sentenced to five years or ten years in jail. Why? Because the Israelis have closed the schools since the beginning of the Intifada. We don't want our people to be ignorant. We want our children to learn. So people started engaging in a popular education manner in homes. They would sit together, teach the children, you know, and the children will be going with books, knapsacks. Bags on their back, you know, and so on. And the Israelis started stopping the children. And they arrested a few teachers. You know, all this stuff is taking place in order— I mean, even if you talk about the court system, OK? Since hundreds of people who work for the Israeli occupation authorities have resigned in response to the Intifada instructions, and they've repented from collaborating with the Israeli occupation authorities, Yes. There is nobody like police in the streets, you know, the court system and so on. There are popular committees to resolve disputes in land, feudal disputes, disputes in marriages, weddings, all kinds of things. People say that the streets have never been safe as much as they have been since all this system has been put together. So you already have a judicial system. Mm-hmm. Ministry, so to speak. You have Health Ministry. You have economy. I'm not saying that we have the way we would like it to be. It's modest, but it fulfills the stage until we can develop something better. We have all of that set up. There is a whole people have disengaged from the occupation. They've rendered themselves free. They don't want to be part of this occupation, and no matter what. That's what the Israelis do, you know. And they've said already what their program is: genocide, transfer, or starvation. That's Mordechai, the commander of the West Bank. You know, genocide, starvation, or transfer. Transfer is a double word for expulsion of all Palestinians. They keep trying to come up with solutions, but eventually the Palestinian state is going to be born.

Speaker 8: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Hopefully it won't be born with so much blood and sacrifice, but eventually it will.

Barbara Harlow: Edna, maybe I wonder if you could talk a little bit in either contrast or in comparison to that about the ways in which Israeli society might be reorganizing itself, whether around oppositional movements, contestations of the— to the occupation, and so on.

Edna Hunt: I would say that Israeli society is not reorganizing itself in any positive sense of the word. I'm unfortunately very pessimistic about that. I would say that in general Israeli society has moved to increasingly to the right, towards a form of fascism. The small groups of people who have been active in extending assistance to people in the West Bank have been very severely harassed, in one way or the other. I would say that probably the most severe harassment has been extended to the people of military age, the men of military age, who have refused service in the occupied territories. I'm sure you're familiar with them. There are hundreds of them. They're called the gray refusers.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Edna Hunt: Simply because they're not made public, and many of them are not thrown in jail. What happens is that through personal arrangements between the individual and his commanding officer, they're not being sent to the territories. They've made an example of about a dozen people who are repeatedly put in jail for periods of 25 days. And then released. to 30 days. And then, when they come out, they get an order to go to the territories. The order is turned down, and they sit another 35 or 25 days. So there are some now that have been in jail for several months, with maybe a couple of days of respite in between.

Barbara Harlow: So they're effectively sentenced to life imprisonment.

Edna Hunt: Well, for all practical purposes. On the other hand, there have been And groups of people— they're small groups of people— who have been active in a number of ways. During a period when there were very serious threats of starvation to some sectors, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, because the Israelis would not allow food to be brought into the area— and there certainly isn't enough. You can't live on tomatoes and cucumbers.

Speaker 5: They—

Edna Hunt: The Israelis organized convoys of food and really bulldozed their way through into some of the camps. And then there have been solidarity visits by a number of groups. There's the 21st Year, which is one that is particularly prominent. And then there is my very favorite group, and that is the Women's Organization for Political Prisoners. And what they do is they are particularly concerned with the 60 to 70 women who are in various Israeli detention centers. And they've afforded them lawyers. They meet with the families and try and intercede for the release of these women. for visits between the prisoners and their families, not always very successfully. And they organize publicity abroad so that people from outside write to the various authorities who are in charge of these prisons in order to avoid some of the most extreme conditions that have prevailed over the last couple of years.

Barbara Harlow: In fact, it might be worthwhile mentioning here a recent success Can you tell us the cooperation between groups like the Palestine Solidarity Committee and women— and the Women's Organization for Political Prisoners had with the release of one Palestinian prisoner?

Speaker 5: Yes. This was a woman named Maha Nassar. She's 34 years old. She has 2 children. During the first months of the Intifada, She was tear-gassed. She had a miscarriage as a result of that. Then she was arrested, you know, by the Israeli authorities. At the same time, her husband was serving a 6-month administrative detention period in Ansar Free detention camp in the Negev Desert. Her 2 children were left—

Speaker 4: Ansar Free is a horrible place.

Speaker 5: It's a very, very horrible— it's a concentration camp, you know, to say the least. And her children were left with nobody to take care of them. Mahdan was released, and on October 4th, which is not a long time ago, she was arrested again. And people think it's because of her efforts on behalf of the Beit Sahour people, who are resisting the tax war. And she was put in the Maskobiya detention center, which is known to be an interrogation and torture center. That's where they first Where first they put the prisoners. And due to the efforts of a large group of people, both in the United States, in Europe and throughout the world, due to the fact that in Boston, where Adnan is, a group called Mahanassar Support Committee was set up from different movement groups, and hundreds of mailgrams were sent to Rabin, the Israeli defense minister— I should say the war minister.

Speaker 13: Right.

Speaker 5: Shakur was released. Not only she was released, but even 2 days before she was— you know, you have 14 days in prison before you see the Red Cross, 18 days before you see your lawyer. On her 11th or 12th day, she saw her lawyer, because of this, you know, campaign. And she was already aware of the fact that we are waging a campaign on her behalf. Now Maha is, you know, free. She had lost a lot of weight, because she went on a hunger She was on hunger strike all the period that she was in jail. She needed a checkup and so on. We still have the case of Dr. Riyad Malki, a very close friend of mine. He graduated from New York, from the Polytechnic Institute in New York, with a PhD in civil engineering. And he is a lecturer at Birzeit University. He was also arrested the day before Maha was arrested, because on his way to meet with foreign consulates in Jerusalem and to participate in a And Dr. Malki is still incarcerated. He hasn't been released. His lawyer has been able to see him, but he's still at Maskobiya prison camp. He is on a talking strike. He doesn't talk to the Israelis. And until now, they haven't released him, even though we had many, many people intervene on his behalf. Amnesty International is seriously considering adopting him as a political prisoner of war. And you're still in touch with of him? conscience. There are many efforts on his behalf. But the situation, you know, I mean, but we had the success with Mahan Assar. We believe that we can have success with Dr. Malki, if more and more people intervene by, you know, mail grabbing to the defense minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin.

Edna Hunt: You need to— we must also remember that these are people that are known internationally and that have a support group internationally. I'm thinking of the hundreds and thousands of men whom nobody knows except their families, and the dozens of women whom nobody knows except their families, who haven't seen their children except through a barbed wire at a great distance, because the Israelis on visiting day do not allow mothers and children to touch each other. Talking about Nazification.

Speaker 4: That's terrible. Well, I certainly hope that— I mean, your efforts are small, but if a lot of people keep organizing and working, and like the organization that you're in, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, and if the people who are viewing this program put pressure on their politicians to try to change the situation, like in so many problems around the world, the problem actually starts right here in the United States, right up in New York City and Washington, D.C. Hopefully we can take some steps to— And Austin, Texas. And Austin, Texas. Yay. Hopefully we can do something to end this horrible situation in Palestine.