Several hundred Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and a few Jewish students attended the opening day “Live Free” for Palestine Awareness Week 2007. Although a few pro-Israel extremists (both sides have them) protested the event, falsely accusing the Palestinian organizers of “demonizing Israel,” what I saw was the exact opposite.
In fact, to put a fine point on how false the charge is, I will quote a comment from the spokesman for Bruins for Israel, which has a lot of good and moderate members, who wrongly charged in the Daily Bruin this morning that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim organizers displayed anti-Israel hate material.
(From the Daily Bruin): But Leeron Morad, president of Bruins for Israel, took pictures of the poster to document what he said he believed were inaccurate and anti-Semitic sentiments that were included. “It’s worrying. … They aren’t acknowledging Israel at all. This is not a message of peace,” Morad said, referring to some of the political cartoons and a map of the region colored with the red, white, green and black of the Palestinian flag.
That is an OUTRIGHT LIE and Mr. Morad should apologize to the students who did and are doing an excellent program. Will there be SOME views expressed that might be considered extremist? Possibly. Maybe probably. But isn’t that the case with Israeli events, too?
But more specifically to Morad’s lie, the large poster that depicted Palestine IN FACT had the name “ISRAEL” in the pre-1967 border area. Wow. So Murad is a liar? And, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip were defined in a green line labeled only on the side as Palestine.
It’s amazing how extremists on both sides want to distort the reality of what happened. Morad, who I believe owes the organizers a public apology, has done a disservice to the movement for moderation. If he disagrees with the views of some of the individual organizers or even one of the many co-sponsoring organizations, he should be specific and he should be ACCURATE. Because the only hate-talk or demonization that I saw taking place Monday was from Mr. Morad.
I performed comedy Monday night at Ackerman Union Hall’s main banquet room and was introduced by my friend Maysoon Zayid whose comedy lampooning her experiences as a Palestinian woman are hilarious. She also lampoons the fact that she has cerebral palsey, yet despite that she manages to organize a program to raise funds to help Palestinian children and orphans in the refugee Camps. Is that something that is bad? No. In fact, I was proud to donate to her effort.
I was also most impressed by Maysoon’s comment that she is not against the Israeli people, but critical of the Israeli government and Israeli government policy. And you know what. THAT IS NOT EXTREMISM MR. MORARD. That is proper conduct. We have the right to challenge policies on both sides, to criticize governments, to criticize their actions. Stop blaming the Palestinians for everything and start accepting some of your own blame, too.
My friend Mark Gonzales, the spoken word, hip-hop artists who uses powerful lyrics to protest Israeli government policy, also performed. I met Mark at the DIWAN cultural conference hosted recently by the Arab Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
We need to start focusing on the moderate debate and push aside the extremist and strident voices on both sides. Whether they be Palestinian or Israeli. On Monday, all I saw and heard were the sincere voices of individuals who believe in peace. They may not agree with every issue that I support, but they have a right to express their views and they did so respectfully.
Here’s the poster that was displayed ALL DAY MONDAY:
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