Remarks by Mark Bruzonsky – Mark@MiddleEast.Org
bio at
http://www.MiddleEast.Org/mab.htm
You
young people in this room are about to inherit a very dangerous, potentially
chaotic world.
Most
of you are Americans, citizens of the most advanced, the most privileged
country.
And
those privileges, coupled with your own interest in world affairs and the
United Nations, bring with them new and extraordinary responsibilities.
Thank
you sincerely for this invitation to speak with you this evening as you begin
what I am sure will be a tremendously educational experience at this very
special University of Chicago Model United Nations.
Thank
you especially as I am well aware my name is not Mary Robinson, or Ramsey
Clark, or Ralph Nader, and that few of you may have heard my name before this
evening.
Indeed,
in past years usually persons working for or with the U.N. in one way or
another have spoken to this forum. And
they have usually focused on the U.N. system itself, human rights issues, and very frankly matters not very controversial;
some might even say “safe”.
But
in many ways, including psychologically, the world of the roaring 90s -- which
is all most of you have directly
experienced in your own lives until lately – also crashed on 11 Sept. And I expect there are other crashes of
various kinds now ahead of us all – political and economic, as well as military.
There
are real and serious reasons our world is in such turmoil and danger
today.
There
are real and serious reasons there are “suicide bombers” in that great city
which represents the focal point of most of our religious faiths – Jerusalem, a
marvelous and unique city where I have spent much time.
There
are real and serious reasons young people your age in other places are choosing
to become what Americans call “terrorists” and what they themselves call
“martyrs” and “freedom fighters”.
And
there are real reasons, real grievances, real and profound struggles, which lie
behind 911. For we are not in a new war
at all. Rather we are in a new phase of
an ongoing war in which millions of people in far away countries have already
been killed, in many cases by policies and forces and allies of our own
country.
And
so, it is with these responsibilities and this new situation in mind that I
have chosen to diverge from the “safe” subjects and deal with issues that will
be crucial for your futures, and for our country’s future, and for our entire
world’s future.
This
evening I want to speak with you not about general human rights but about
specific political and economic rights; not about the successes of the United
Nations but about its failures and the great challenges it now faces.
And
most of all I want to speak with you about the subject I personally know best
and first-hand from over 150 visits to the Middle East region and 30 years of
conferences and relationships since I was a student like you – about the
“Middle East Peace Process” and why it has exploded in an orgy of even greater
violence and despair than when it began.
Most
of the human rights problems in our world really have deep political, economic
and territorial roots. Basic issues of
power and wealth are involved, both at the national and international
level. How we structure our society,
and who is really in control and why, are the truly crucial issues too often
not truly discussed.
The
most challenging and basic issue of all
is how our world’s resources are
owned and controlled and distributed, because this is what determines crucial
things like how people are fed and clothed and housed; how people receive, and
in most cases do not receive, health care; how people are able, or unable, to
provide for themselves and their families and their futures.
And
sadly, unlike for us who are so privileged, the majority of humans on planet
earth 21st century are in miserable and desperate circumstances.
In
the wake of World War II the victorious powers created the United Nations, just
as they had created the League of Nations after the previous “War To End All
Wars”, then renamed World War I. The
U.N. quickly became a world forum that in one way or another had to be. But it did not have to evolve as it
has.
For today’s U.N. has not lived up to either
the dream or the promise of its founders.
Most of all it has not fulfilled its primary responsibility to achieve
the kind of independence, credibility,
and assertiveness on behalf of all of the people on Planet Earth, rather than
on behalf of those most powerful and wealthy.
·
There
have been far too many major Security Council and General Assembly resolutions
that have gone unheeded, unenforced, in many cases unremembered.
·
The
major powers, especially the United States, have manipulated and cowered the
U.N. far more than should have been either allowed or tolerated.
·
There
is a terrible misdistribution of wealth on our planet leaving the majority of
human beings in poverty and despair – the U.N. should by now have far more
seriously addressed this major dilemma in far more assertive and potent ways.
·
There
is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe looming. Projections from U.N. bodies warn that in
the lifetime of most in this room our planet could experience unprecedented
environmental change including as much as a 10 degree temperature rise leading
to calamity on a tremendous scale.
·
The
international arms race is terribly out of control, propelled in fact by the
very powers in charge of the U.N. through the Security Council – an
international military-industrial complex is fueling future warfare and
potential Armageddon.
·
And
even if these terrible weapons of mass annihilation are controlled and never
actually used human kind is squandering the best of its talent and wealth
building ever new generations of ever more frightful weapons; rather than
schools and hospitals and food for all.
·
Nor
has the U.N. and its many agencies properly prepared to seriously fight
international disease and starvation – two plaques now ravaging the African
continent and threatening much of humanity.
By now you may have realized that I have not included any jokes or
one-liners to enliven my talk with you this evening. Frankly, the situation we are all now in is simply too dangerous
and too tragic for jokes or for pointing fingers at individual political
personalities.
What we need urgently to do is to focus our greatest attention on the
big political and economic issues and institutions – and to find ways to
restructure and manage them for the common good. That in fact was the original United Nations vision and
dream. That is what you are challenged
to be discussing, debating, and learning from each other about for the next
three very intense days.
We need to focus on resuscitating a United Nations which itself is in a
difficult predicament desperately needing to find a way to be independent and
potent. Though it is an organization of
member states it is urgently important it also become a far more democratic
forum, and thus a far more respected forum, representing the peoples of our
world, not just their often corrupt and self-serving, repressive and deceptive
governments.
Very frankly, the world’s only superpower has done far too much controlling,
manipulating, and badgering. And when
it doesn’t get its way far too much vetoing.
Just a few months ago, before 911, the U.S. was nearly totally isolated
at the important U.N. gathering in Durban South Africa – blustering and
bullying everyone nearly about everything relating to history, racism, and
basic economic and political rights.
And since 911 the U.S. has once again vetoed a Security Council
resolution rightly seeking to provide some protection for the Palestinian
people, whom it declared way back in 1947 should have a state of their own
immediately.
Indeed, let me turn directly now to that most controversial of issues,
the one the U.N. itself midwifed, and the one the U.N. has spent more time and
energy and anguish dealing with than any other.
Of course I am referring to the situation in what many still call “The
Holy Land”, the area that was Palestine until 1947, the area now called Israel
and the “occupied territories”.
It is this very region which also has given birth to modern-day
“terrorism”, to airplane hijackings, suicide bombings, truck bombs, and
political kidnapping. And today,
because of the past wrongs for which the United Nations and the United States
are considerably responsible, it is now more fractured and divided and
blood-soaked than it has been since Biblical days and then the period of
the Crusades.
But that was a world of swords and crucifixions. Ours is a world of nuclear and biological
bombs.
Your own schedule of sessions and debates at this Model United Nations
has this situation in the Middle East more prominent than any other. And rightly so.
Many of you may find what I will now outline troubling. Many of you, young Americans, will wonder
how can what he is saying be true in
view of what is usually said about these issues in the popular mass media in
our country.
Indeed, I still remember when I was in graduate school how upset and
disbelieving I was when Professor Richard Falk at Princeton first used such
concepts as “racism”, “war crimes”, and “apartheid” when discussing the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
Then I was a student like you are today. Then I had not yet had a chance to travel the world, meet so many
new people, hear so many new views, and ponder these great issues for myself.
Now, more than 25 years later, when I have personally been so lucky to
have had such opportunities, what I have to try to do is squeeze these 25 years
into less than 25 minutes – now half gone already!
All I can realistically do in the next few moments is share with you my
own conclusions; and then encourage you to start reaching your own. And in fact in just a few minutes when I
have finished, I encourage you to start with the most difficult and important
questions you can come up with to ask of me.
Today the situation in the Middle East is immensely worse than when I
represented the International Student Movement for the United Nations at U.N.
Headquarters for three years. It has
been made worse precisely by the “Middle East Peace Process”. And the basic reason is that all along
rather than a true peace process it has been, and it is, a domination and
subjugation and repression process…and we have all been taken for a
ride!
Let me try to explain in the following way:
If you had invited any of the following much more
distinguished speakers, most of whom I am fortunate to have as personal
friends, here is what they would have told you about the realities of the
“Middle East ‘Peace Process’:
If you had invited Professor NOAM CHOMSKY:
“The agreements incorporate the extremist version of
U.S.-Israeli rejectionism…and are closest to the Sharon Plan of the early
1980s….. [They] should be compared to
the institution of that monstrous system of Apartheid in the former South
Africa…(upon the Palestinian people).”
If you had invited Professor EDWARD SAID:
“There is a wanton murder of language evident in the
phrase ‘peace process’… At a time when
people are suffering and shabby leaders are reaping Nobel Prizes that only
enable more exploitation, it is crucial to bear witness to the truth… Far from bringing peace [the agreement] will
bring greater suffering for Palestinians and an assured threat to the Israeli
people…. Every leader involved with
the Oslo peace process – Palestinian, Israeli, American or European – has acted
without principles and without anything remotely resembling vision and
truthfulness. Worse, large droves of
intellectuals, scholars and experts have betrayed their vocations, to say nothing
of their expertise and knowledge, and this betrayal has contributed to the
amazingly compliant attitude of the American media in particular, who have
celebrated, extolled, saluted and rejoiced, where there has been neither
occasion nor cause to justify such excessive handclapping and jubilation.”
If you had invited DR. EYAD SARRAJ - Dr. Sarraj, a distinguished
Palestinian, who has his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard by the way, made
these remarks at a Georgetown University forum:
" We are not against the rule of law, in fact
we want the rule of law. We want
fairness and equality before the law.
We want to feel that the people have rights, and they are dignified;
after so many years of brutality and repression and humiliation at the hands of
the Israelis. This is what the people
here are longing for - dignity, and pride…
Dr. Sarraj wrote an important essay
titled “Why We Have All Become Suicide Bombers” five years ago now. It was widely published throughout the
world, except in the US. In it Dr.
Sarraj wrote: “the struggle of
Palestinians today is how not to become a bomb and the amazing
thing is not the occurrence of the suicide bombing, rather the rarity of them.”
If you had invited ROBERT FISK – the Western
correspondent longest in the Middle East region, writing for The Independent in
London for the past quarter century: He
made these remarks in an interview with me also five years ago now, long before
recent events proved him right:
"I put ‘peace process’ in quotation
marks when I write about it in my newspaper, it is an American expression, it
is definitely not a Middle Eastern expression…
All one can say about the ‘Peace Process’ now is that it is dead, it is
finished, it is over, and the most remarkable thing I find in coming now to the
States is the degree to which people do not realize that. I have to live
the reality of the Middle East and I have not met anyone in the past two to
three months including those who originally, wrongly in my view, believed it
would work who does not now believe that it is dead, and finished completely."
If you had invited HAIDAR ABDUL-SHAFI – a
most distinguished secular Palestinian who was Chairman of the Palestinian
Delegation at the Madrid Conference and all subsequent international
negotiations until Oslo – and by the way, he refused to attend the White House
ceremony in 1993 predicting what was to come:
"How do we view the acts of resistance by Hamas
and the Islamists? Palestinians are
entitled to resort to all sorts of measures including legitimate armed struggle
to try to rid themselves of occupation.
The Israeli position, which is based on Israeli military power and with
heedlessness toward legality, and legitimacy, and United Nations resolutions,
is actually a cause for violence...
Israel in the recent time killed so many Palestinians in cold blood,
Palestinians that it apprehended and could have arrested, but it preferred to
kill them… The world is going to
realize that this peace process is not really a peace process, it is hopeless…."
If you had invited PROFESSOR CHARLES BLACK* –
one of
America’s most respected scholars of Constitution and International law who
taught his entire career at the Yale University Law School. And yes, here too, no one would publish
these views in the USA, the first time in his life Professor Black could not
find a publisher for his essay about the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians:
“They
are imprisoned under obscene conditions, after kangaroo trials, or no trials at
all. They are regularly shot at; enough
of them are killed to make death ever-present…
Many are maimed; many are disfigured for life. Yet they come out in the streets again and again, these young
people…
What name
shall we give to the trait of character that produces conduct like that?
Why do
you hesitate? You know what the word
is. Do you hesitate because that word
just never happens to be spoken in American in application to these young
Palestinians people? Or is it because
you fear that a revolution in your thought and feeling will have to follow your
pronouncing the word?
Well,
you’re very likely right about that last.
That makes you nervous? So let
me help you. I’ll start things off by
saying the word for you the first time.
The word
is ‘courage’”
And finally, though I could go on and on in this vein,
had you invited ARUNDHATI ROY – Winner of India’s most prestigious literary
prize – and again published throughout the world, except in the US. Here she is writing about the World Trade
Tower/Pentagon attacks:
"Could it be that the anger that led to the
attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US
government's record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things --
to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship,
religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)?"
"Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow
each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as 'the head of the snake'.
Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as
their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes.
Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely
powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless… The important
thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the
other."
With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the
world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the U.S. government. All
the beauty of human civilisation - our art, our music, our literature - lies
beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance
that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is
that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about
good v. evil or Islam v. Christianity as much as it is about space. About how
to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every
kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.”
Please let me conclude with a startling
poem, one which contains the seeds of possible salvation rather than
future cataclysm.
For if you had invited Israel’s very well-known and
respected Israeli playwright and television host DAN ALMAGOR he might
have recited this poem to you. He wrote
it during the first Intifada after visiting the Palestinian city of Nablus for
the first time. Before writing it he
went back a second time to make sure, this time accompanied by his close
friend, then the Defense Minister of Israel, none other than General Yitzhak
Rabin, with whom he then parted ways.
And this poem is not just about Israelis and
Palestinians, it’s about all of us, especially now.
Most of these people truly desire
To harvest their olive trees
As they have for hundreds of years.
Most of these people truly desire
To raise their kids
Not to throw stones
Or Molotov cocktails;
But to study in peace
And raise a flag.
A flag.
Their own flag.
And facing that flag, to cry,
As we did, that night, then, excited as we were.
And we have no, have no, have no
Right in the world
To rob them of this desire,
This flag, These tears,
These tears which always, always
Come after all the others.
Let us start preparing our defence.
We will need it soon enough;
Those who actually did it.
And those who still do.
And those who hushed it up
And those who still do.
And those who said nothing
And those who clucked their tongue, saying
“Something must be done really;
(But not tonight, I have a concert.
A gala event.
A birthday!)
Indeed, we’ll all get our summons one day
For the Colonel’s Trials.
The Colonels’ trials are coming.
Their time will come, it must be so.
The trials of the generals, the colonels,
And the division, the battalion,
And the platoon commanders.
There is no escaping it.
This is how history works.
What shall we say then?
What will the colonels, the captains, the corporals
say?
What will they say –
Of those terrible beatings, The Brutality.
Of houses blown up.
And most of all, the humiliation, That humiliation.
Of patients forced to wipe off the
writing on the walls.
Of old men forced to take down a flag
From an electric pole
Who got electroducted, or fell
And broke their legs.
Of the old water carrier
Whom soldiers ordered off his donkey
And role on his back, just for fun.
We turned a deaf ear.
We turned a deaf heart.
Mean, arrogant, and dumb.
Who do we think we are
To be so deaf, so dump?
Ignoring the obvious: They are as human
As we are, as we are.
At least as we used to be.
Only forty one years ago.
No less diligent, no less smart
As sensitive, as full of hope.
They love their wives and children
As we do, no less.
And our children now shoot theirs
With lead, plastic bullets, and gas.
The Palestinians State will come to pass, it will.
Not a poet wrote this. History will.
And seasons will come and seasons will go
And life goes on as we very well know.
Weddings and birth and death all the same.
But just the shame of it. The shame.
Thank you again so very much for inviting me and for
so politely listening to me.
Now it is your turn.