Articulating the Unprintable:  Ramzy Baroud Discusses Media Response to His Book

By June Rugh

Ramzy Baroud, veteran Palestinian-American journalist and Editor-in-Chief of
the Palestine Chronicle, recently completed a speaking tour of the United
States’ East Coast to promote his second book, The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006). The Second
Palestinian Intifada is a far-reaching account of key events of the past
five years that transformed the political landscape not only of Palestine
and Israel, but of the entire Middle East. With a critical eye, Baroud takes
the most controversial issues head-on: the alarming escalation in suicide
bombings, the construction of the Separation Wall, the devastating hunger
and unemployment in the Occupied Territories, the brutality of the Israeli
army, the political surprise of the Palestinian elections. On November 12,
2007, Baroud was interviewed by June Rugh, a freelance writer, in Seattle,
Washington.

June Rugh:  Good afternoon, Mr. Baroud. Your book, The Second Palestinian
Intifada, has been widely praised by eminent scholars and intellectuals such
as Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Norman Finkelstein. Coupled with the
national media awareness of the momentum building towards the US-based
Palestinian-Israeli peace conference, did your book tour receive
considerable attention from the press?

Ramzy Baroud:  On the contrary, the silence has been deafening. Let me
clarify: The Second Palestinian Intifada has received wide coverage in the
progressive, alternative, Asian, African, and Arab media, and has been
reviewed many academic journals, in print and online. But not one corporate
newspaper—that I know of—has touched it so far.

JR:  Not one? Are you surprised?

RB: Actually, I’m not surprised at all. In Western corporate media, it is
the most predictable and consistent practice: if the narrative doesn’t fit
the dominant “liberal” ideology, it is simply omitted. And it’s not just the
media boycott of the book. Sometimes the local newspapers refused to cover
the events of my tour. Rather than straight reportage, certain newspapers
opted to publish defamatory articles and letters to the editor that
chastised the academic institutions for inviting me to speak and
deliberately misinterpreted my comments.

JR: In other words, they literally replaced your words with other content—a
kind of journalistic ventriloquism. Can you give an example?

RB:  The most disturbing case occurred around my talk at Virginia Wesleyan
College, in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk has a powerfully committed antiwar
community—in addition to fourteen military bases, interestingly—and I was
very much looking forward to speaking to this audience. My core message was
a call for justice for the Palestinian people based on coexistence, coupled
with global alternatives to war and racism. In my talks, I always address
other regions of concern in addition to Palestine; notably, Iraq, Venezuela,
and Nicaragua. I feel it’s crucial to give a cross-cultural perspective to
encourage the audience think beyond the usual geopolitical limitations and
ethnocentricities. Yet a local Jewish newspaper announced the event on the
front page as a “pro-Palestinian journalist”—suddenly, I’m a speaker with a
narrow agenda.

JR:  What happened when you spoke at the college?

RB: A local rabbi and his supporters came and heckled me with questions and
outrageous claims. One said that in 1880 there were more Jews than
Christians and Muslims in Palestine; another claimed that my effort to
explain the sociopolitical context of suicide bombings was the same as
endorsing the horrific attacks of 9/11. Zoberman himself accused me of being
a “Hamas sympathizer”; and since Hamas is on the US State Department’s list
of terrorist groups, his implication is clear.

JR:  This brings to mind an observation by Steven Salaita: that the
discourse of mainstream America is shaped in such a way that if an Arab
expresses any feature of political identity, he or she immediately evokes
the “undefined but identifiable terrorist.”

RB: Yes, I’d say that applies here. The Rabbi’s supporters followed me to a
second event at a local theatre, and when I refused to modify my statements,
he began a campaign of letter-writing and calling the college and local
papers, describing my message as “poisonous.”

JR:  So as far as mainstream media goes, you—and your book—are either
ignored or vilified. What is it that strikes a nerve?  Is it the topic of
Palestine, or your particular perspective?

RB: The subject of Palestine always strikes a nerve in American media. Even
more, though, the fact that I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza
to a dispossessed family forced to leave its ancestral village in
1948—leaving behind burned homes and bullet-riddled bodies—does not make me
a desirable voice for the “liberal” media. I was raised in a place where I
had to negotiate my daily survival among Israeli tanks and soldiers. As a
Palestinian, I advocate for a just peace and dignity for my people, who
remain hostage to the inhumanity of the Israeli occupation; as an American,
I protest my country’s contributions to violence in the Middle East. This is
not the kind of writer that the New York Times wants to profile. It’s too
far out of their readers’ comfort zone.

JR: So, as a Palestinian, you find yourself doubly effaced: first, by the
Israeli government, and then again, by the Western press.

RB: Yes, you could say that.

JR:  One of the objectives of your tour was to promote The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. What is your
primary goal in getting people to read this book?

RB: To present an alternative reading of Palestinian history. To help people
realize, among other things, that Palestinians should be praised for their
courage in taking on the risks of democracy; that they should not be forced
to suffer, and a civil war provoked, because their elections resulted in a
government that is not a regime compliant to the US government. That the
terms “extremism” and “moderation,” as used in the corporate press, are not
objective concepts, but rather tied to whether a government or political
agency serves the interests of the Bush administration. These are concepts
you’ll never see in the mainstream media.

JR: So, in a sense, you are raising awareness that an alternative narrative
of Palestinian history even exists.

RB: Exactly. And this issue goes beyond me and my particular book. As you
know, well-known figures such as Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt—even the usually untouchable Desmond Tutu—have recently been victims of
smear campaigns, accused of anti-Semitism and so on, simply because they
were presenting the Palestinian perspective and, implicitly or explicitly,
criticizing US and Israeli government policy.

JR:  And that’s in the public forum. It’s striking that even in
academia—traditionally, the last bastion of open debate—there is now also a
systematic silencing of alternative readings of Palestinian history. Norman
Finkelstein was essentially forced to resign position at DePaul University;
Ilan Pappé recently left the University of Haifa for similar reasons.

RB:  Even the area of publishing is no longer safe. Pluto Press, the
publisher of my latest book, is currently fighting for the right to
distribute Joel Kovel’s book, Overcoming Zionism, in the United States.
Kovel’s book was published by Pluto Press and is distributed in America by
the University of Michigan Press, under contract with Pluto. But when the
Michigan chapter of the pro-Israel group StandWithUs denounced the
Overcoming Zionism as anti-Israel propaganda and discredited facts, the
university press stopped its distribution. In early September, the press’s
executive board decided to continue distribution temporarily; but the
incident has caused the university press to review its relationship with
Pluto Press, with a decision due in late November. A statement from the
University of Michigan says explicitly that Pluto Press’s decision to
publish Kovel’s book brings into question the viability of the university’s
distribution agreement with the publisher. So sometimes, quite literally,
the phrase “Stop the press!” is treated as a reasonable request.

JR:  In other words, what we’re seeing is not just a chilling effect, but a
deep freeze that appears to be settling over all alternative sources of
information. Do you have suggestions for people who want to counteract this,
who want to keep these lines of communication open?

RB: Yes. It’s important to actively support progressive publishing companies
such Pluto Press, and to be aware of the attempts to shut down distribution
of their books. I’d urge everyone to go to their website and see the books
they offer. It is vital to keep information sources flowing to counteract
the deceptively complete discourse presented in the corporate media. And be
aware of other news sources: progressive websites such as Counterpunch, and
other resources such as the Palestine Chronicle, Zmag.org, etc.

JR:  It strikes me that by referring to your book and the progressive press
as “alternative narratives,” we are implicitly affirming the primacy of
mainstream media. Yet the fact is that your book, which deals with
on-the-ground realities of the second intifada, is not “alternative,” but
central, and vital to any real understanding of the Palestinian struggle.

RB:  Quite right. In fact, if you want a true alternative reality, I’d
suggest a front-row ticket to the upcoming peace conference in Annapolis,
Maryland. That will be a parallel universe constructed to serve the needs of
the Bush administration, with very little to do with the actual needs of
either the Palestinian or the Israeli people. It will be a media spectacle,
starring Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas as the already-disempowered players,
and with little result—except for preserving the US and Israeli governments’
status quo, and keeping the region ruled by military occupation, state
violence, and, inevitably, terrorism.

JR: One challenging issue you address in The Second Palestinian Intifada is
the increasing violence used by Palestinians against the Israeli military
and Israeli civilians. You write that it is important to “contextualize this
phenomenon, not to justify it, but to present the Palestinian response as a
tragic yet predictable human reaction to decades of subjugation.” Do you
think it’s possible for the American audience to get beyond the image of a
suicide bomber and see the larger phenomenon behind it?

RB: Yes, I do. I assume intelligent readers, and thoughtful readers will
ultimately be able to put themselves in the position of the Palestinians
described in the book. To eliminate violence, one must be brave enough to
examine the root causes. That requires a mixture of humility and
imagination—a mental exercise rarely required by the corporate media.

JR: Finally, in practical terms, how can one buy a copy of The Second
Palestinian Intifada?

RB: You can order the book directly by sending a check of $23 USD, which
includes shipping charges, to Ramzy Baroud, PO Box 196, Mountlake Terrace,
WA 98043, USA. If you have a PayPal account, you can send $23 USD, including
your shipping address: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

-For more information on Ramzy Baroud, please visit his website at
http://www.ramzybaroud.net.