My column in the Jewish Journal this week-- an encounter with a Palestinian who has a pro-Palestinian, not an anti-Israel, point of view.
The man was Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, and he spoke at the home of Steve and Rita Emerson in Westwood.
Toameh has been reporting on Arab affairs for close to 30 years, for both Jewish and Arabic media. There’s a quiet nonchalance about him, an old-school Middle Eastern dignity. Even when he says something familiar, it sounds different coming from him.
Toameh is in the middle of a U.S. tour sponsored by StandWithUs and was in Los Angeles for their annual “Israel in Focus” weekend conference, which gathers student activists from around the world. Of course, he wouldn’t have been chosen if his views toward the Jewish state weren’t sympathetic.
But when Toameh spoke, what stood out was not that he is pro-Israel, but that he is pro-Palestine.
For example, he spoke about the virulent anti-Israel atmosphere he is seeing on U.S. college campuses, about which, he observed, “there is sometimes more sympathy for Hamas than I see in Ramallah.”
When he asked these students, “What makes you pro-Palestinian?” the answers were usually the same: “Israel is an apartheid state, Israel is a violent occupier, etc.”
“But that’s anti-Israel,” he challenged them. “That’s not pro-Palestine. I’m pro-Palestine. What makes you pro-Palestine?
“If you’re really pro-Palestine, come help us instead of just spewing poison about Israel. Come teach my people democracy. Instead of Israel Apartheid Week, why don’t you have Palestine Democracy Week?”
There was something authentic and disarming about him. His words didn’t smell like propaganda or activism. He spoke for moderate Palestinians like himself, and he spoke from his heart, not from talking points.
1 comment:
This is really great. Many problems or misunderstandings stem from our tendency to think of things in the context of binaries. As such, we typically conceive of a person who is "pro-Palestinian" as being "anti-Israel." The problem, of course, is that it is a much more nuanced situation. It requires a more complex response. It's easy to think in terms of binaries. It's not so easy to think in terms of gray.
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