“The Palestinian Right of Return as a Discourse in Oregon during Nakba Month 2008”

by Michelle Andujar

Communication Studies Department

University of Oregon.

         Eugene has a reputation for being an edgy, left-leaning, and even anarchist town in the U.S.. The University of Oregon in Eugene is a liberal arts school, and the local newspaper and weekly regularly publish alternative views regarding politics and the environment. Several organizations (NGOs) engage in peace activism, such as the Community Alliance for Lane County (CALC), which serves as an umbrella for many other local NGOs. One would think that in Eugene, Palestinian human rights would be addressed by the university, the media, and especially by peace organizations. In May 2008, many groups in the U.S. and around the world showed solidarity with the Palestinian cause while pro-Israel groups celebrated the country's sixtieth anniversary. Although the city of Eugene witnessed little activism as compared to Portland, it provided a microcosm for the way in which interest groups wage the war of ideas regarding the Palestinian refugee problem.

         The month of May 2008 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the "Nakba:" Arabic for "catastrophe," Nakba refers to the displacement, dispossession, and suffering of the Palestinian people. Zionists began planning the mass displacement of Palestinians in the late 1800s, as illustrated by Theodore Herzl's 1985 writings: "When we occupy the land … The process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly" (Masalha, 14). Later on, Ben Gurion, Israel's first president, warned: "We must expel Arabs and take their places … It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without… brutal compulsion" (Masalha, 18). Ben Gurion's vision materialized May 1948, when almost one million Palestinians were forcefully displaced from their homes to make room for Jewish immigrants settling the new state of Israel, the Jewish state. This was done through violence and threats of violence, as outlined by the official Israeli military Plan Dalet: in one of the most famous instances, the massacre of Dier Yassin, almost 200 unarmed civilians were killed, and the event used as a warning for other villagers to leave. This was not the only massacre: Israelis carried out ten major massacres of over fifty people and over one-hundred smaller ones (Masalha, 33-34).

         To maintain a Jewish demographic advantage, Israel has since 1948 prevented Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes, while absorbing an unlimited number of Jewish immigrants. As many as 5,000 refugees were killed while attempting to return between 1949 and 1952 (Masalha, 71). After the expulsions, the Israeli Transfer Committee was established, to destroy the evidence of Palestinian villages, prevent the return of refugees, and distribute Arab lands among Jewish immigrants (Masalha, 38). The years following Israel’s creation witnessed the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages. Palestinian houses either became the new homes of Jewish families from Russia, the U.S., Ethiopia, Japan, France, Iran, etc., or were demolished and covered by grass and trees for  newly created parks and forestsin an attempt to hide any evidence of the existence of ancient Palestinian villages. The Palestinian refugee population, with over five million refugees, is the largest and oldest in the world. For sixty years, Palestinians have been waiting to return to their homes. The United States provides Israel with over $3 billion dollars a year in aid, making it the biggest recipient of U.S. monetary and military aid, despite its oppression of the Palestinian people. Therefore, global support and activism, especially in the U.S., are crucial to the refugees' cause.

         Palestine was a British Mandate until 1947. As such, it was provisionally recognized as an independent nation, and Britain was required to assist its way to statehood. Britain lost control of the violence between Palestinians and Jewish settlers, and handed down the power to the United Nations to decide the future of Palestine. The General Assembly passed Resolution 181 of November 1947, which split Palestine into a Jewish state in a little more than half the land, and an Arab state in the remaining area. Thirty-three countries voted in favor of the resolution, while twenty-three voted in opposition or abstained. The votes by U.S. neocolonies were crucial, such as the Philippines and Haiti. European countries were pressured into voting favorably, and Latin American delegates were offered tens of thousands of dollars for their votes. The creation of this Jewish state in Palestine is considered illegitimate by several nations who don’t recognize Israel to this day, including U.S. allies Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The decision to partition Palestine was made unilaterally by Western powers, and neither the Palestinians nor any other Arab nation agreed to it. Furthermore, Israel’s continued violations of UN Resolutions has nullified its legitimacy. As reported by Egyptian paper Al-Ahram: “Israel's admission to the UN as a member state was conditional upon its compliance with two UN resolutions: accepting a full-fledged Palestinian sovereign state according to resolution 181 and accepting Right of Return [of Palestinian refugees as stated in UN Resolution 194].”

Not only did Israelis expel the Arab residents from their UN-assigned territory, it expanded its borders to about 80% of Palestine in the months following the partition. These new borders remain illegal though, as international law, particularly the UN Charter, article 2 of 1945 forbids acquiring territory by means of war. If the Jewish state is to be recognized, its legal boundaries remain those assigned to it in the original 1947 partition: 56% of Palestine. Since 1948, Israel has not stopped deporting Palestinians. The next major displacement occurred in 1967, when Israel invaded the remaining Palestinian territories (the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem), displacing about 320,000 Palestinians. In addition, curfews, searches, arrests and border closures, have made Palestinian life so difficult that many "choose" to leave. Between 1967 and 1986, an average of about 33,000 Palestinians per year have been forced to migrate (Masalha, 178).

Palestinian refugees have a Right to Return, backed by international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 13, states that, "everyone has the right to leave any country and return to his country;" the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Article 12, states that, "No one should be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country." Israel has argued that Palestinians do not have "a country" and therefore do not have the right to return, or that they only have a right to return to a future Palestinian state. However, it is implied by these acts that the word country refers to a person's place of birth. Furthermore, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Article 5, guarantees, "the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of … the right to leave any country and to return to one’s own country." Israel’s Law of Return violates the Convention, granting any citizen of any country the right to Israeli citizenship on the basis of religion (Judaism), while denying the same right to other citizens of the same countries, and to people born in the land where Israel stands who have no citizenship from any country.

         The United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948 specifically addresses Palestinian refugees: “Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest applicable date.” The ambiguous language found in UN 194 has been an obstacle to refugee return: it uses “should” instead of “must,” limits returnees to those wishing “to live at peace with their neighbors,” and does not require immediate action (“at the earliest applicable date”). The recent focus of U.S. and Israeli policy has been on the Geneva Accords, which were (unofficially) negotiated without the participation of Palestinian refugees, but only by Israeli politicians and the middle-of the ground Palestinian Authority, which by no means represents the bulk of the Palestinian population. The Geneva Accords place refugee return at the discretion of Israel (Article 7/4/e/iii), which clearly violates UN Resolution 194.

 

         "Repatriation," "resettlement" and "compensation" are international law terms regarding the rights of refugees. “Repatriation” refers to the right of refugees to return to their land, whether inside or outside Israel’s UN-granted borders. “Resettlement” has been the Israeli position on Palestinian refugees, calling for them to acquire permanent residency in their current host countries. Although some Palestinian refugees have accepted resettlement options, the majority of them, as well as their host countries, opposes the idea. “Compensation” is the money sought by Palestinian plaintiffs for expropriated or destroyed properties, the use of these during the past decades, and for pain and suffering claims. Palestinians seek compensation by Israel, for which it would need to accept responsibility for the refugee problem. However, Israel denies having this responsibility despite all evidence against it, as it claims that its attacks were carried out in self-defense, and seeks an international fund to pay the refugees' compensation claims. Furthermore, Israel seeks the U.S. to increase its aid by more than $2 billion in order to compensate Jewish settlers living in the occupied territories, and relocate them in other areas of Palestine (palsolidarity.org).

         At the University of Oregon (U of O), students from the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and the Arab Student Union commemorated the Nakba on May 6 by setting up an information table, where students expressed support for the Palestinian right of return: "If someone paid me one million dollars, I would not trade my right to go back to Palestine. At some point in my life I am going to live there. It’s my land, the land of my family’s history. I have to live there. I have to raise my children there," said U of O student and third generation Palestinian refugee Yahya Dajani. Another Palestinian exile and U of O student in her twenties, Bana Kattan, expressed the same desire: “I just want to meet my family. That’s the thing about refugees. My family is all over the world: in South America, Europe, or in various Middle Eastern countries. Why can’t we all live in Palestine like we were meant to?” Bana’s sister is a doctor. Her dream is to build a hospital in Bethlehem, where the Kattans used to own a large piece of land. In 2000 Kattan visited Palestine as a tourist. She was able to enter the country because of her family's acceptance of resettlement in Jordan (accepting Jordanian citizenship, therefore giving up refugee status). With her family, she tried to go see her mother’s old house, but there was no trace that it was ever there. Her father’s family house, however, was exactly as they left it. Nobody was there at the time, but they poked through the windows and were surprised to see that even their furniture was still there, after almost sixty years. The house was clean and someone clearly lived there. “When I went there I could picture a different life that I was supposed to live. This may sound corny, but my destiny is in someone else’s hands: someone else changed my destiny and they had no right to take that from me,” she said.

Mahmoud Issa, a second generation Palestinian refugee from the destroyed village of Lubya now lives in Denmark, as do about 15,000 other Lubyans. Lubya is now an Israeli park called South African Forest, after the park's South African sponsors (it is a common Israeli tactic to cover the evidence of Palestinian villages with trees). After conducting a survey of over 700 Lubyan exiles, Issa wrote: “Although two generations have not been born in Lubya, in exile their main objective is still to return one day to their original land” (Issa, 2002). Although the village is now covered with trees, this does not mean its residents are unwilling to rebuild their lives there. Issa quotes an old man who was displaced when he was thirty years old: "I will never exchange the chance to pitch a tent on the ruins of my house here with all the palaces of the Queen of Denmark" (Issa, 2002). When Issa's own parents were expelled from Lubya, they refused to settle in proper houses, hoping to return soon. They settled in tents, where his mother and many other Palestinian refugees died under extreme winter conditions. Several Palestinian refugee camps are named after the original inhabitants’ villages, as are many Palestinians themselves, expressing their desire to return. Abnan Salma, a middle aged Palestinian living in Eugene, Oregon, whose family’s twenty-five acres of land were confiscated, stopped by the Nakba commemoration and said: “We, all Palestinians, believe that the Right of Return will happen. It’s a matter of time.”

         The Nakba activism at the U of O was carried out in response to a week-long public relations campaign to celebrate Israel’s sixtieth anniversary. For some students, especially for Palestinian refugees, seeing twenty-foot banners advertising the "celebrations" was extremely hurtful. As Kattan said: “I went into a depression from seeing that sign.” Norma Kehdi, President of the Arab Student Union, worried about the banner’s educational message: “For anyone who doesn’t know what the situation is, it doesn’t seem like a big deal because of the word ‘celebration.’” In fact, campuses all across the U.S. were advertising Israel's "birthday" (as it is sometimes humanized), sponsored by StandWithUs, a pro-Israeli organization with offices in Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.. StandWithUs is dedicated to tell “Israel’s side of the story … in communities, campuses, libraries, the media and churches” (standwithuscampus.com). For instance, in its “Israel@60: environment” pamphlet that was provided at the U of O, StandWithUs praises Israel’s reforestation efforts for being “one of the few countries that began the 21st Century with more trees than it had at the beginning of the 20th Century." As in the case of Lubya, this greening of the land came at a very high price. Part of the work of StandWithUs is monitoring and taking action agasint U.S. college professors. For instance, the organization lobbied to deny Nadia Abu El-Haj tenure from Barnard College because she wrote a book asserting that “archaeologists have created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation,” where none actually existed, and that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a “pure political fabrication.” StandWithUS lost that battle: Abu El-Haj did receive her tenure.

The StandWithUs 2007 handout promoting tourism and immigration to Israel does not show images of Palestinians, as if they did not belong there at all, and refers to them as “Arab-Israelis,” a known Israeli method of concealing the Palestinian's identity by denying their existence as "Palestinians." The only Arab portrayed in the handout was in fact not a Palestinian, but a dark Bedouin, smiling with an expression of meditative awe on his face, cheeks raised to the sky. No audience reading the booklet would suspect that the “Arab-Israelis,” including Palestinians and Bedouins, have any bad feelings towards Israel. The description of the free, “birthright” trips offered by StandWithUs to its Jewish members says: “You’ll learn about Bedouin culture while camel riding in the desert.” The only Arabs that the young Jewish-American tourists will get to speak to are reduced to the position of camel riders. Kattan explained that describing Palestinian Arabs as Bedouins is a trick to make audiences believe that they are nomads, a connotation carried by the term Bedouin. Therefore, people might conclude that Palestinians never permanently lived in Palestine: “They are trying not to recognize Palestine as a country, or Palestinians as a People… they are trying to wipe out Palestine and Palestinians!”

Around the corner from the Nakba table were five tables from various Jewish coalitions, sponsored by Hasbara Fellowships (based on the occupied East Jerusalem) among other organizations preoccupied with improving Israel’s image. One of the pro-Israel “activists,” Amitai Zuckerman, said about the Nakba display: “They say Israel is an occupation and Palestinians are the victims. We as Jews have a different view: Israel has been given to us by God.” But Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies professor, Hatem Bazian, Ph. D. said recently in a speech concerning the creation of the Jewish state sixty years ago: “God is not a real estate agent!” One of the Israeli-nationalistic events on campus taught students about “Israeli food,” such as falafel, shawarma, and shakshuka. Although this does not seem confrontational or political, Arab students were outraged, as those dishes are traditional Arab and Palestinian dishes. “It’s bad enough they take our land, now they try to take our food!” said Lebanese student Beshara Kehdi. Kattan started to cry and said, “If we only did a quarter of what they do, we would have so much success. We could have Palestine back. They have many resources and public relations to promote a false Israeli culture… After a while [Lebanese poet] Khalil Gibran is going to be an Israeli!”

Away from campus, other interest groups in Eugene were engaged in Palestine-related activism. CALC, one of Eugene’s most respected peace groups, looks for an “anti-racist way on social issues” and has the mission of “upholding human rights” (calclane.org). This would include the human right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. But this is not in the CALC’s agenda: “We don’t support it or oppose it,” said Carol Van Houten, a volunteer and a board member CALC, concerning the Palestinian right of return. CALC is currently thinking about taking sides on one aspect of the Palestine issue: the board will have a session to discuss whether or not CALC will consider the occupation of Palestinian territories -the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, occupied -and/or annexed- by Israel since 1967- “illegal.” CALC is considering to take a stance on this issue, “out of pressure,” according to Van Houten. This pressure came from two independent, Eugene-based, Palestinian human rights partner-activists, Mariah Leung and Jack Dresser. CALC has traditionally avoided taking sides in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

In May 16-18, the “Sixth Annual Convention to Mark 60 Years of Palestinian Exile and Occupation” was held in Anaheim, California. The event was one of the biggest Nakba events in the world. Leung forwarded CALC details of this event so that they would pass the information on their substantial membership: “Someone may have been interested in going. It was not that far and it was a very important event,” she said. CALC, however, refused to forward the message, arguing that they only focus on local events. "With a mailing list of over twelve-hundred people, and an email list of around six-hundred, taking a stance could make a difference in the way people in Eugene understand Palestinian human rights, especially concerning the right of return," said Leung. This could also potentially lead to a reduction of members, and/or a loss of revenues, as CALC receives part of its funding from synagogues. Leung worries that CALC's inaction hurts the Palestinian human rights cause, as it promotes a never-ending dialogue without pressuring the Israeli side to stop its violence and injustice towards Palestinians, through boycotts and solidarity with the right of return. “These [‘peace’] groups ‘hijack the issue.’ It’s called ‘progressive Zionism.’ CALC is not interested in Palestinian human rights,” she said, and added that one can tell whether activist groups are or aren't working for peace by the way in which they address the right of return. Leung attends CALC's meetings and actively puts pressure on the group to increase its engagement regarding Palestine: "I'm not gonna give up on CALC, the point is that they change," she stated. “It’s been a long struggle with CALC,” said Leung. “If people can’t stand up for justice, they need to step down and let others put the Palestinian platform on the table,” she advised.

Mariah Leung originally became inspired to become an activist when she attended both a Portland and a Eugene protest against the 2006 Israeli attacks in Lebanon. In Portland, people displayed pictures of massacred children and angry banners against Israel, while in Eugene, the CALC-sponsored protest limited itself to signs that said, "Stop Killing, Start Talking." She was asked to step away from the main stage by a member of CALC because she was carrying a sign displaying pictures of violent deaths. This lack of diversity in the voices of Eugene frustrated her and she decided to take it upon herself to inform the public in Eugene, "as no one else was doing it." She collected and purchased films, posters, and reading materials, and this is her third year standing once a week at the Courthouse Plaza in Eugene, distributing information about the Nakba and the Palestinian right of return. Leung is also a mother and this motivates her to continue mobilizing for the rights of families in the Middle East: “I can’t help but feel empathy with all the mothers and families who suffer and die in the Middle East,” she explained. Leung's activist partner, Jack Dresser, Ph.D., was always interested in peace and justice issues. One of the founders of the Eugene-based group Veterans for Peace, he actively worked to rally the public against the Iraq War. When he felt that most people opposed that war, he moved on to the Palestinian cause. He now drives a "Nakba Mobile," a van covered in pictures of Palestinian refugees and casualties. “It drives me crazy that American citizens are apathetic to this suffering, a suffering that we create ourselves,” he said. Dresser explained that the “Israeli lobby,” a term used to describe pro-Israel organizations –and individuals- operating in the U.S., concerned with influencing policy making as well as public opinion, is afraid of losing this vital U.S. aid. “The key reason [for lobbying] is money: if the public turns against Israel, it will cut off its aid,” he said, and explained that Palestinian human rights activism poses an existential threat to Israel, as it exposes the origins of the state’s creation in terms of the Palestinian displacement  and ongoing suffering.

When organizing Palestine-related events, CALC coordinates with two local groups: the pro-Israeli synagogue of Temple Beth Israel, and the middle-of the ground Eugene Middle East Peace Group. So far, the Middle East Peace group has not taken the stance of supporting the refugees’ right of return. The group was founded by Ibrahim Hamide, a Palestinian and local businessman whose brother was one of the "LA8:" a group of eight Palestinians imprisoned in Los Angeles in the 1980s for distributing flyers supportive of the Palestinian struggle. “I didn’t know the right of return was covered by basic human rights,” said Hamide, whose organization claims to be strictly guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Leung hopes for the Middle East Peace Group to take a stance on the Palestinian right of return, a step that she said, “would not make Hamide popular in the community.” “Already,” said Hamide, “many people in town would not set a foot in my restaurant just because I’m Palestinian, even though I’m not against Israel.”

Last year, CALC invited professor Steven Zunes to speak in Eugene about Palestinian issues. Zunes is most famous for publishing articles denying the power of the Israel lobby in the Unites States. Zunes calls for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories, but he clarifies, “except perhaps for some along the border,” and he calls for “a just resolution of the refugee problem.” The argument calling for a “just solution to the refugee problem” is the official Israeli and U.S. foreign policy. Palestinian scholar Nur Masalha explains in her book about Palestinian refugees, The Politics of Denial (2003) that the concept of a "fair and reasonable solution to the refugee problem [is] one of the basic points of the Israeli propaganda for rejecting refugee return" (Masalha, 2). This position has been backed by several world leaders, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said that it would “unreasonable” for Palestinians to return to what is now Israel and that they should only be resettled in a future Palestinian state. President George W. Bush shares Sarkozy’s views based on the new “facts on the ground:” the expansion of Israeli settlements. Peace agreements that don’t include full Palestinian right of return violate international law, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Resolution 194. So do the views of Bush and Sarkozy. Other world leaders, such as the Vatican’s head of the Program on Migrants, Cardinal Renato Martino, have expressed their support for the Palestinian Right of Return to their former homes, including what is now Israel.

In May, CALC sponsored a film series named, “Two Narratives: the Founding of Israel and Al Nakba.” By using this title  CALC is giving equal value and legitimacy to both sides. This could be problematic, as Palestinian scholar Nadim Rouhana writes, noting that white South Africans and Serbs in Bosnia had, like Israelis, narratives that victimized their own groups: “Granting equal legitimacy to both narratives and symmetricizing an asymmetric conflict is ethically questionable. The fact that each side has its own narrative is not sufficient [to maintain] that both narratives are equally valid or equally legitimate.” Despite the series’ title promoting "both sides," all of the movies premiered in the event were Israeli-made, and “biased towards the Israeli narrative,” according to Chris Barghout, a Palestine peace activist based in Portland, who came to represent the Palestinian view in Eugene. He considered the event to be offensive to the Palestinian cause, as it was presented as being neutral but wasn’t: “They should have shown at least half of the movies from the Palestinian perspective,” he said.

One of the films in CALC's series sparked a heated debate. “Al Nakba: the Palestinian catastrophe 1948,” featured Benny Morris, a famous Israeli historian, author of Righteous Victims (2001), a book that looks into declassified Israeli government information and details its planned displacement of Palestinians and the destruction of their villages. However, as published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in the article Survival of the fittest, an interview with Morris, he does not condemn the expulsions: “I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs ... It was necessary ... to cleanse the villages.” He goes on to excuse the massacres of 1948, which he counts to be around 800 people, by saying they are “peanuts” compared to other world massacres. Morris also claims that the actions carried out to create the Jewish state should have been taken one step further: “If [Ben-Gurion] was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. This place would be quieter … if [he] had … cleansed the whole country- the Whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake.” Finally, he agrees with Israel ethnically cleansing Arabs in the future, saying that if Arabs attack Israel, “expulsions will be entirely reasonable [including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs].” Leung and Dresser had brought Morris’ record to CALC’s attention long before the showing date, and had asked the group to consider other options, as this film would be premiered precisely on Nakba Day: May 15. Eugene rabbi Maurice Harris attended the showing, and defended the showing of the film by claiming that it had been approved by a Palestinian: Hamide. It is unlikely that Hamide was aware of Morris’ record when he previewed the film, and he also was in Palestine visiting his family at the time of the showing (thanks to his U.S. citizenship). When he learned of Morris' record, he was shocked: “Showing a film featuring an author with such racist views goes against CALC’s mission: it's racist.” However, "Hamide does not represent all Palestinians," said Barghout.

Another way in which CALC members have been involved in the community in regard to the conflict is by denouncing anything critical of Israel as "anti-Semitic." Dresser, an expert in the subject, explained that, "Arabs are the new Semites in ‘anti-Semitism,’” and he pointed out that the definition of “Semitic” is a speaker of a Semitic language, which includes Arabic and Hebrew, and that actually, the great majority of the world’s Jews are not native Hebrew speakers. Actually, there were no native Hebrew speakers until the fabrication of “Israeli” national identity in Palestine, which included a carefully planned revival of Hebrew. Sixty years ago, Hebrew was a dead language. Over ninety percent of Jews spoke Yiddish, the Jewish European language, a mixture of German and other languages, since the majority of the world’s Jews are of European descent. Eliezer Perlman, a Russian Jew, moved to Palestine in the 1880s after learning Hebrew and deciding it should become the language of Jews in Palestine. He changed his name to a Hebrew one, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and spoke to his wife only in Hebrew even though she didn’t understand: “Ben-Yehuda didn’t care: he had higher things on his mind that marital bliss,” says linguist Mark Abley. Their child, Ittamar Ben-Avi was sheltered from other children who might speak to him in other languages, and his own mother was not allowed to say a word to him. Eliezer and his children spread the Hebrew language to other Jewish immigrants in Palestine, making up new words. In this way, the newly created Jewish society in Palestine began.

        

The Pacifica Forum is another local group that has hosted events related to Palestinian human rights, such as showing the Palestinian-made films, “Jenin Jenin” (which describes Israeli attacks on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002) and “People and the Land” (1997 PBS documentary). Founded by retired UO professor Orval Etter the forum is a discussion group that supports peace, justice, and freedom of speech. The Forum has sponsored speakers who adamantly condemn Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians and its supporters’ lobbying in the United States. Michael Williams, one of the main organizers of CALC’s movie series in downtown Eugene and a board member of CALC, has been actively involved in accusing the Pacifica Forum as being anti-Semitic, presumably after they began to focus on the topic of Palestinian human rights in 2003. Williams helped create the “Anti-hate task Force,” an offshoot of CALC. He has been monitoring the Forum’s meetings weekly since 2003 in name of the “anti-hate” group and has written several letters to the Register Guard denouncing the Forum. The Forum in turn has suffered from a stained reputation, to the point where it has lost members and sponsors. “All of this was happening in an atmosphere where we felt we were under considerable attack because we were talking about Zionism and its links,” said Etter.

CALC’s “anti-hate task force” openly admits that it’s anti-Semitic accusations of Pacifica are based on Pacifica's criticism of Israel. CALC’S letter collecting signatures and money for an ad in the Register Guard accusing the forum as a whole of hatred and anti-Semitism, read: “Pacifica Forum’s consistent theme over the past several years has been anti-Jewish. This includes singling out the state of Israel for criticism.” Hamide himself has had discussions with CALC members over this issue. “CALC is ultra-sensitive when it comes to labeling criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism,” he said, adding that he has told Williams "so many times that the use of anti-Semitism as a sledge hammer [to stop open criticism of Israel] is not fair, it’s abusive." The letter to the Register Guard co-written by Williams (“Pacifica is about hatred, not freedom”), says that his “Task Force” is, “alarmed by the anti-Semitic message consistently promoted by Pacifica Forum in its lectures during the past four years … Many of the Pacifica Forum lectures, in our view, have conveyed messages of hatred.” Another co-author of the letter, Daniel Bryant, is a Minister of the First Christian Church in Eugene. He recently came back from a trip to Israel, which was financed in its entirely by the American Jewish Committee (which Bryant claims did not affect his views towards Israelis or Palestinians). KLCC’s “Sunday at Noon” program recently quoted him alleging that "most sides" agree to the return of a small number of refugees to Israel, while others "return" to a Palestinian state (not to their original home), and yet others receive compensation “through some international effort.” This is basically the Israeli position.

Leung complained that Portland activist groups hosted many more Palestine-related events than their Eugene counterparts. For instance, the Portland-based group, Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights (AUPHR) hosted University of California Law Professor George Bisharat in Portland State University May 31st. He spoke about the Nakba and the Palestinian right of return in international law. “Why would someone like me need to go to Portland to learn about Palestinian human rights and the right of return?” Leung questioned. Also in Portland, a small, independent theater (Shoebox theater), staged the play, “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” based on the diaries and emails of the Evergreen College student who joined the International Solidarity Movement in 2003. She was killed by an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer when she attempted to prevent it from demolishing the home of a Palestinian doctor and his family for lack of appropriate permits. Portland activists faced harsh opposition when deciding to show the play. The Catholic Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, another outlet for the show, experienced angry phone calls and even bomb threats by the local Jewish community after a local radio show, the Lars Larson’s show, spoke against it, according to Kate Mytron, a Portland activist. However, the threats did not stop the Portland-based sponsors of the play, AUPHR: “We decided we were going to do it anyway,” said Mytron. In the play, Corrie describes the conditions in Occupied Palestine as “truly evil,” and remembering the responsibility that Americans have to become Palestinian human rights activists because of the U.S.’ support of Israel, she says: “I believe people should drop everything to make it stop!” The venue was censored by several American theaters, as critics called it “controversial” or “anti-Semitic,” on the grounds that “it does not present both views.” This was brought up in the discussion section that followed the first showing of the play in the Shoebox. One person from the audience pointed out that those criticisms made no sense, as the play is known to be a biography, and as such, “it obviously reflects the view of that person.”

Media outlets in Eugene provided little coverage of the activism surrounding the Nakba commemorations. The Eugene Weekly (EW), an alternative magazine featuring investigative journalism, has a, "bias in favor of free speech, democracy, social justice and transparency in government,” according to Ted Taylor, editor of the EW. However, he said that the last time the Weekly published a cover story denouncing the difficulties experienced by Palestinians, “there was anger and outrage from the Jewish community in Eugene.” The complaints and “emotionally charged letters” inspired a strange reaction on the part of the Weekly: self-censorship. “After that reaction, we rather focus on the local and environmental stuff. We let the Register Guard cover the international stuff.” Hamide, conscious of the local organizational power of the pro-Israel lobby, said, “Newspapers and magazines have to survive. They couldn’t survive if advertisers pull the plug” (the Weekly is financed through ads). But the Weekly still talks about the issue, through one group’s eyes: “We run many stories about Ibrahim Hamide and his Middle East peace group,” said Taylor. 

The Weekly's cover story that caused outrage was, “One side of the Fence: scenes from farm life in the West Bank,” by Kate Rogers Gessert. The author’s son and his wife had joined the International Solidarity Movement, a grassroots organization created by Palestinians to bring internationals to the territories as witnesses of the occupation and conditions they are forced to deal with, and as human shields, as they can offer protection to Palestinian civilians by simply being there. The article simply tells what the author witnessed in the West Bank when she went to visit her son: the lack of water for irrigation that Palestinians experience due to Israeli control of Palestinian aquifers since 1967, demolitions of homes belonging to people she met, and the effects of checkpoints and the separation wall. The published letter of complaint to the Eugene Weekly regarding Gessert’s article is titled “anti-Semitism.” It complained that the Eugene Weekly itself is “one-sided,” and engages in “Jew-bashing” by publishing articles that portray Israel in a negative way, “when so much that is good is also going on in Israel.” The authors clearly engage in what Hamide said was using the “sledge-hammer” of anti-Semitism to shut down criticism of Israel. The authors of the letter are Irwin Noparstak and Joan Bayliss.  They are both members of the Eugene Middle East Peace Group.

The local newspaper, the Register Guard, published three opinion articles in May that touched on the subject of Palestinian refugees and their right to return. The first one, by rabbi Maurice Harris, called, "A place to call home,” provides a "progressive zionist" voice: it supports Israel as a state with a Jewish majority and calls for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories, because otherwise -if Israel was to annex the territories- Arabs would win the demographic race in the combined territory. Therefore, Harris calls for an end to the occupation for selfish reasons and not for the benefit of Palestinians living under occupation. Regarding the right to return, he argues for a, "resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue through a compromise: a limited right of return to Israel for a number of Palestinians that is demographically calculated so that Israel remains a Jewish homeland." Here, the only people "compromising" would be the Palestinians, who would have to give up their universal right to return. Harris says that having two states, "both groups [Jews and Palestinians will] have a place for right to return." In this way, he equates the situation of Palestinian refugees to Jewish settlers as having a "right to return," and he actually calls Jewish settlers to Palestine "refugees," even though they immigrated voluntarily, and demands that Arab countries grant them a compensation because, he claims, the "Jewish refugees" left these countries fleeing anti-Semitism "after 1948." Harris omits the facts that anti-Jewish feelings and fears that Jews would turn on them as well surged in Arab countries as a direct result of the creation of the state of Israel and subsequent Arab Palestinian refugee problem. In addition, most Jewish immigration to Israel was not due to Arab expulsion but rather to encouragement including incentives by the new state. In Harris' article, Israel was the solution, not the cause. He mentions the Nakba (though not by that name), stating that Jews did expel the Palestinians from their homes in 1948, yet he gives full credit for this "recent" information to "Israeli historians [who] shattered ... the myth ... that we, Jews didn't expel the Palestinians from their homes." Giving credit to new Israeli historians for admitting to the Nakba is ethnocentric, as it takes away all power and credibility from Palestinians who have documented Nakba stories since 1948.

         In response to Harris' commentary, a Palestinians and an Israeli cooperated to write the article, "Middle East peace will come through recognizing injustice," published May 25. Although the commentary begins by warning the reader that it will offer a different perspective than that of the rabbi's, it actually shares some similarities with it. For instance, the authors cite "Israeli historians" just as Harris did, and refer to Zionist immigrants as "refugees." The piece appeals to the readers' emotions with regards to "Jewish refugees" in a much stronger way than it does regarding Palestinian refugees: it makes a point that Jews "fled their homes in fear," while it does not use the same language for Palestinians who did flee their homes in fear of real death threats that materialized in several massacres at the hands of, precisely, these Zionist immigrants! The commentary does call for the right to return of Palestinian refugees, but they add that Palestinian refugees have a "right to return to their homes, receive compensation... 'and/or' receive support for voluntarily settling elsewhere." This is not part of the legal Palestinian right of return. In fact, it absolutely contradicts the right of return. Finally, like the rabbi, the authors make the plight of Jews and Palestinians seem equal, saying that, "We know that our two peoples are destined to live together." Was it God's plan for the Palestinians to be forced off their land to make room for the Jewish state, and in some future, return to fulfill their "destiny" of living together?

         Less than one week later, CALC's Michael Williams published a letter which went along with the previous trends regarding the right of return. In his June 1, "Most want justice in the Middle East" piece, Williams calls for the Palestinian right of return to be "realistically addressed," meaning not-universally implemented. He mentions three things that are needed to solve the conflict: ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, establishing a Palestinian state, and ending military actions by both Israelis and Palestinians. There are a few problems in Williams' ideas: firstly, he only calls for an end to the occupation of the West Bank, but not the siege of the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem; secondly, he does not explain the borders of a Palestinian state; and thirdly, he speaks of Israeli and Palestinian military actions as if they had an equal effect on both populations... Palestinians don't have a military while Israel has one of the strongest in the world; Palestinians are not even allowed [by Israel] to carry individual guns while settlers are usually well armed. In May 2008, at least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israelis (http://www.pchrgaza.org ). Finally, Williams dismisses any possible impact that activism by groups in the United States may have. This is interesting, coming from a Eugene activism leader, although he does not mention CALC in the letter: he says that, "[steps for peace] can only be accomplished by people there, on the ground, involved in day-to-day work of peacemaking:" he takes any responsibility away from U.S. peace groups to work for Palestinian human rights, and instead recommends that American citizens find and support Israeli and Palestinian organizations that "are working together for peace." Colonizer and colonized, working together. It is impossible for Israelis and Palestinians together to come up with a just solution, as Palestinians have no bargaining power. Why does Williams deny support for Palestinian-only human rights organizations, or U.S./European groups that work for justice in Palestine? Williams, as CALC does, signals that U.S. imperialism is to blame for the problems in Palestine. Leung disagrees: "It's zionism! Christian and jewish zionists are the ones fighting with us [her and Dresser] at the free speech plaza. Not oil men!"

 

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