Radical Philosophy Review

Media coverage of the recent explosion of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so thoroughly biased in favor of Israel, argues Edward Said, that Israel itself is made to appear as the victim, despite the fact that it is using missiles, tanks, and helicopter gunships against stone-throwing civilians rebelling, in their own towns, against their continued oppression. American Zionism is so successful, Said adds, that it has rendered impermissible any public discussion of Israeli policy, making this the last taboo in American discourse, which allows for the burning of the American flag, but not for criticism of Israel.

In this short but pointed “Open Letter,” Ashrawi lists a number of aggressions perpetrated by Israeli troops and armed settlers against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories, to redress the ”converse version of reality” promoted by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who claims that the U.S. seeks to be “an even-handed peace broker,” yet presents Israel as a victimized, besieged country, rather than an occupying force guilty of grievous UN-recognized crimes against humanity.

The Oslo “peace process” launched in 1993 can be seen as the latest in a long line of attempts to circumvent the national rights of the Palestinians. In this article, Souad Dajani argues that, contrary to popular opinion, the Al-Aqsa Intifada was not due to non-compliance with Oslo but sterns from flaws built into Oslo since its inception. Essentially, Oslo failed to incorporate the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination and return to their homeland. Dajani examines the main provisions of the Oslo agreements signed since 1993 to explain the context for the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada.

Written shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, this essay expresses the ambivalent emotions of a Palestinian American who, despite her longing for peace, reconciliation, and an end to bloodshed, realizes with profound sadness that “Oslo” merely legitimizes the Israeli aggression. A true reconciliation, writes Majaj, must safeguard its claim to the future by working through and resolving the past, but the Oslo Accord ignores both the historical origin of the conflict and its all-too-real outcome.

In this letter, the author denounces the hypocrisy of members of the Israeli Peace Now Movement, who seem surprised, even angry, at the eruption of a second Intifada in the Occupied Territories. “A conquering army is using tanks and helicopter gunships to disperse demonstrations. What is so hard to understand here? ... Seven years of deceptions and violations of agreements, and the Palestinians rise up. What is so hard to grasp?” he asks.

“Israel is to blame, and not Oslo,” writes Reuven Kaminer, a longtime member of the Israeli left. The almost instinctual tendency to delegitimize the Palestinian right to determine their future on an equal basis is the source of the current tension, he explains, arguing that the conflict continues today because Israel, backed by the United States - which has repeatedly proven not to be an “honest broker” - refuses to recognize the just national rights of the Palestinian people.

Muna Hamzeh is a Palestinian-American journalist living in Dheisheh refugee camp outside Bethlehem. The three diary entries below articulate her thoughts and feelings about death, freedom, and the importance of resist-ance and the Intifada. They reflect as well the growing determination among Palestinians to make this a “struggle till the end, till we win.”

Although he was born in Gaza, Palestine, Elias Rashmawi was issued a permanent deportation order by the Israeli High Court because of his involvement in Palestinian organizing while a student in the United States. In November 2000, as the Second Intifada raged on, Rashmawi’s father passed away, and he was granted a limited permit to his homeland to attend the funeral. “How many fathers must die before we are all allowed to return,” he asks in this essay that reifies the brevity and pain of his truncated visit.

In these excerpts from his diary, Adam Keller, spokesperson for Gush Shalom, relates some of the protest actions undertaken by the Israeli peace movement during the Second Intifada, as well as the sense of urgency and occasional confusion that permeates these activities.

With 5,000 convicts, most of them lifers, working soy, corn, and cotton crops, Angola’s “penal slavery” system today eerily recalls Louisiana’s past investment in the peculiar institution. Present-day form of discipline (chain gangs and striped uniforms) also indicate that dehumanization and popular vengeance are the selling points of a new punishment order. Using “America’s worst prison” as a case study, the author charts an archeology of the penal system in the U.S. South, arguing that prison revolts, and particularly the heelslinger revolution of 1951, have historically ushered in significant if short-lived improvements in the penal system, and that activists in the free world must heed them in their efforts to bring about prison reform.