Public Response to Berkeley's David Nusbaum

They say that mimicry is the highest form of flattery. It can also be the most witless form of retort.

David Nusbaum's artless rendition of my essay published on May 7th proves both ("Maintaining Education in the Midst of Conflict" 5/10/02).

I am flattered that he would consider my arguments efficacious enough to appropriate them for his own. As a Palestinian though, I am sick of Israelis taking ownership over every element of our existence - our land, our homes, our food (falafel is Arabic food), and our history of suffering.

How many Palestinian missiles hit Hebrew University? None. Did Palestinians raid Israeli schools, destroy their computers and student records, urinate in the Ministry of Culture's office, and arrest students and teachers, as the Israelis have done to the Palestinians? No! His attempt at equivocation falls short due to the clear lack of comparability between Israel’s full-blown military occupation and the random and desperate acts of Palestinians.

There are no Israeli Jenins.

Senior, Noura Erakat also was a visiting student at Hebrew University. She told me about how Hebrew U's students joked and talked cheerfully about backpacking trips, while her Palestinian neighbor in Abu Dis was brought home with a bullet in his brain on his daughter's birthday.

That is the fundamental difference between random suicide bombings and Israel's massive military occupation. I reject Nusbaum's strategy of making them appear as mirror images.

Nusbaum does not know what most Israelis do – that Israel’s military occupation is the source of the problem. I have never understood why pro-Israeli Americans are far more pro-Israeli than most Israelis are. It is parallel to the fanatic support American Communists showed for the USSR. It was far greater than Communists in the Soviet Union, who had much more informed and educated critiques.

We need to work towards ending both Israeli and Palestinian-sponsored violence in the context of greater a peace with justice. It is makes more sense to ask a government to end its siege of a whole population, than it is to ask members of the population not to resist while their back is against the wall. After all, if Israel ends its occupation, it will be a closer move towards peace, than if the Palestinians simply stop resisting. Israel’s brutal military control of Palestinian lives would simply resume, and there would be the same basic problems all over again. The Palestinians will still be oppressed.

The Students for Justice in Palestine is the only organization on campus that offers a framework for peace. We argue it starts with granting the Palestinians equality by dismantling Israel's Apartheid structure. The end goal is coexistence based on a mutual respect and recognition for each other under the law. So long as there is not equality and freedom for both, there will not be peace.

I will gladly take up Nusbaum’s challenge and elaborate in an "academic debate" against him or any other Israeli-flag-wearing super-nationalist. I invite the Daily Cal to sponsor it, and the public to attend and witness why opponents of the Palestinian cause for liberation need to steal our arguments. I e-mailed him Friday, but he is yet to respond.