Barnes and Noble cancels Palestinian author’s book reading
Posted on May 23 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under Daniel Pipes , Free speech.Susan Abulhawa has just written a well reviewed novel “The Scar of David”
‘Abulhawa goes to great lengths to highlight the universal desire of all people for a homeland. Furthermore, Abulhawa’s compassion for American victims of 9/11 and for those who suffered in the Holocaust illuminates what it means to be humane and spiritually generous. The Pennsylvania-based Abulhawa, herself Palestinian, has crafted an intensely beautiful fictionalized history that should be read by both politicians and those interested in contemporary politics. Highly recommended.’
Editor, Library Journal
As is typical for an author, Abulhawa is on a book tour which usually entails a reading and a book signing. It’s the “bread and butter” of the book biz and is usually pretty non-controversial. Unfortunately, in this case, because of the content of the book and apparently the author’s Palestinian ancestry, one of her scheduled readings at a Bayside, NY Barnes and Noble has been “reduced” to a book signing.
Barnes and Noble, by way of explanation, talked candidly of author safety and a seeming need of “sensitivity” to the Jewish community.
These reasons are problematic and somewhat self-canceling. Where would the threats to author safety (and free speech) most likely come from? Some element of a Jewish community that Barnes and Noble needs to be sensitive too?? And which part of the Jewish community, in a part of the world where Jews are hardly voiceless, must be treated with so much “sensitivity” that they require a author’s reading to actually be canceled? Indeed, in addition to obvious American free speech protection, it is not difficult to claim that such a silencing goes against culturally and religiously foundational Jewish notions of discussion and inquiry.
Indeed, although a seemingly small matter, (Abulhawa has other readings lined-up), this is a highly unusual action that goes to the heart of free speech in the US.
We don’t know what was said to Barnes and Noble, nor does it matter. Barnes and Noble needs to be taken to task for making such a terrible decision. (contact info).
It’s almost impossible to imagine Barnes and Noble taking the same action with someone like Daniel Pipes, who regularly makes explicitly racist remarks about Moslems and attempts to limit free speech on US campuses.
Get Muzzlewatch delivered fresh daily
Print This Post
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
I notice you neglect to mention what exactly she says in her book.
Hmm, I wonder why?
May 24th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Oh wait, I know why!
IT’s because this liar compares Zionism to Nazism and the Naqba to the Holocaust, among other things which I don’t care to go into right now. For once, Electronic Intifada did something good, telling th truth about what this book says. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6838.shtml
May 24th, 2007 at 5:46 am
Quite right, Alvin. Let’s have a book burning bonfire shall we?
May 24th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Hey, take a look at this one sided crap. It’s funny that she had Wiesel on not too long ago after Israel was taking some heat. Like a country who that is already experiencing the death of its own soldiers in the face of terrorism needs this crap pushed on them as if they don’t understand. How dare they!!! That is kill Arabs and then cry anti-Semitism. I would like to see who will visit Palestine. Oh I forgot, they aren’t humans but just terrorist scumbags. Right? No visit must be deemed necessary.:
Oprah coming to Israel for solidarity visit
American talk show queen accepts Elie Wiesel proposal to come to Israel, says she sympathizes with Israelis’ suffering
05.22.2007 | By Itamar Eichner
Oprah Winfrey will be arriving in Israel for a solidarity visit in the near future, the queen of American talk shows announced Monday during an event at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
In the event, Winfrey was honored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity for her contribution to promoting humanitarian issues.
Wiesel called on Winfrey to visit Israel, where “the major war against terror is currently taking place.” in her speech, Winfrey said she sympathized with the suffering of the people of Israel, and that she intended to accept Wiesel’s invitation and come with him to Israel. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Gillerman, who attended the event, said that a visit of a figure with such influence on the international media could help bring an end to the indifference towards the terror threat faced by Israelis.
May 24th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
“It’s almost impossible to imagine Barnes and Noble taking the same action with someone like Daniel Pipes, who regularly makes explicitly racist remarks about Moslems and attempts to limit free speech on US campuses. ”
Not that I personally agree with everything Pipes says, but what I’ve read of his writings speaks about radical Islam as the problem and the need to support moderate Islam (the kind that actually opposes suicide bombings, jihad, and terrorism) as the solution. And as an example of “muzzling”, Pipes had his talk at Berkeley in 2004 repeatedly interrupted by shouting students (Muslim and otherwise) who also provided an element of intimidation before and after the talk for those who came to hear Pipes speak. (Need I even mention how Bibi Netanyahu cancelled his speech in Berkeley, an event for which Penny Rosenwasser took great pride? http://www.oznik.com/news/001129.html) The audiences for Carter, Finkelstein, Pappe et al are not marked by this type of disruption.
Obviously, it’s not muzzling if it’s someone JVP disagrees with, even if you have to use physical force to prevent others from hearing a speaker, right?
May 24th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
#2, Alvin, I read that review on Electronic Intifada, and it seemed to me that the author was talking about the causal relationship between the Holocaust and the founding of Israel and Nakba and how the Holocaust affected what happened next. From my reading of the review, she wasn’t trying to equate the two.
Here’s a quote from the review:
“The novel illustrates how Palestinians have paid with blood and land for the horrific crimes commited in Europe against Jews.”
Alvin, I’m sure you’ll disagree with this statement, as you are free to do so, but do you really believe that someone who makes such a comment should be censored?
And if any who compares the Holocaust to anything else deserves to be be muzzled, what about all those who have compared Saddam Hussein, Arafat and Hamas to Hitler? Should they not be able to hold book readings either?
May 27th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
““The novel illustrates how Palestinians have paid with blood and land for the horrific crimes commited in Europe against Jews.. do you really believe that someone who makes such a comment should be censored?.””
no one is censored, the book is published, anyone can buy or read it. why a private company should be forced to have someone read anything in their bookstore is beyond me. i have lots of favorite authors that are never invited to barnes and noble.
and as far as the substance, it is foolish to make the claim above. first of all, arabs control most of palestine, including gaza and jordan, and it is only their unwillingness to negotiate with israel that is preventing their complete independence.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I have not read “The Scar of David” but will indeed do so. But I have just read “The Lemon Tree” by Sandy Tolan where in his historical novel, which is remarkedly researched, he follows the path of a Jewish family who fled from Europe during the “holocaust”, and an Arab family who has to flee their home in 1948 to go to Ramullah. Guess who gets their home?
Using the historical data Tolan provides what sounds like the same picture as Abulhawa. The Naqba happened as did the Holocaust. Trying to pretend that neither took place as they did finds one wearing a B&N hat!
June 1st, 2007 at 4:32 am
Last fall (2006) Elie Wiesel had a book review in the Guardian Weekly of a study down of anti-Semitism in Poland in the years IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the end of WW2. While it was well written and dynamic, I was shocked to see Wiesel write, “The rare escapees who thought themselves fortunate to return home found their property occupied by strangers who chased them away with scornful cries.” Hey Palestinian refugees living the the camps and the diaspora, or in the Gaza prison yard!!! Does this complaint of Wiesel’s SOUND AT ALL FAMILIAR?
This guy, Wiesel, is HYPOCRITE #1 and no doubt will someday join Jerry Falwell, wherever he is, in the afterlife. And the fact that a cultural icon such as Oprah Winfrey swallows this stuff hook, line and sinker about Israel being on the front line of GEORGE BUSH’S (Mr. Credibility HIMSELF)”war on terror” is an indication that AMERICA’S INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY has cancer, sadly, of the terminal kind.
As far as Alvin’s comment about the Naqba goes, which the best of Israelis such as Pappe, and many others, have DOCUMENTED, it all boils down to the WE ARE THE PINNACLE of VICTIMHOOD syndrome (due to the Holocaust which was in fact the largest crime of ethnic cleansing ever committed). Alvin’s problem is that anything on the SAME MEASURING SCALE, i.e., ETHNIC CLEANSING, but of lesser degree in terms of deaths, doesn’t count. IF it’s caused by Zionism and the Israeli state and protected by the United States, that is.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Lets make this really simple. If the Palestinian Nakba means that some, but not all, Palestinian people lost their homes, and Shoah means that two out of every three Jews in Europe was slaughterd,and you choose to compare the two as equivalents, then you are valuing the loss of Arab real estate on a par with the loss of Jewish lives. It is an amoral equation.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Ah yes, Carl, Ilan “facts are unimportant” Pappe is a very objective and reliable source, at least if you’re not looking at actual history.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:51 pm
good post in 10, R.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I agree; let’s make it simple. Comparing the number of deaths on each side to determine the depth of the tragedy is meaningless. The reality is that Jews were persecuted and killed in Europe by Europeans. The Palestinians were not responsible and they occupied all the land of the original Palestine before Israel was created. They were displaced from their homes and land and livelihood by Jews from foreign countries because of a piece of paper written in England without any input from the native population.
The Balfour Declaration stated the Jews were to have a homeland (not a State) that would not compromise the rights of the inhabitants of the lands. The Zionists ignored that and confiscated the land by fear, intimidation, violence and unjust laws. Whatever name you call it, the blood of the Palestinians paid for Europe’s crime. It is time to stop the endless accusations, often based on misinformation, and time to figure out how we can get both sides to live together in peace in today’s reality, because we cannot go back. Palestinians must accept this reality and the Israelis must accept that the Palestinians are fighting for their freedom and their human rights; otherwise, we can never go forward and are doomed to the status quo.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:30 pm
the problem as the Israelis (and supporters outside of Israel) see it is that the Palestinians are NOT fighting for their freedom but rather to eliminate the state of Israel. So says Hamas. So said Arafat when talking in Arabic. So said the PLO before the sort-of-well-maybe-we’ll-not-quite-be-explicit rununciation of those clauses in its charter. So said Nasser. So said the Arab states in 1948.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 am
Actually, aside from #10’s valuable comment, there is the other simple equation which is that the Nazis weren’t attacked by either Jews or several other countries. They did the attacking and they did the genocide all on their own. On the other hand, after Israel/Yishuv accepted partition for a second time, they were attacked by several countries as well as many Palestinians across the land. The results, even in those cases where Palestinians fled because of the Israeli military, as opposed to their own leadership promoting their departure, have everything to do with the hostilities initiated by the Arabs and nothing to do with either the Holocaust or a genocidal desire on the part of Israel. On the contrary, you simply have to go back to 1947 to have absolute proof that the Yishuv was willing to compromise and to live side by side with the Arabs peacefully.
It is entirely inaccurate to compare the Naqba with the Holocaust. It is also disingenuous, even if you wish to make a strident point about Palestinian suffering.
Instead, the valid comparison would be the naqba that befell many Jews who lived in Arab lands and found themselves having to flee or leave, usually without any of their assets, without any resources and into a world where their previous experience and success held little value. You hardly ever hear about them because they’ve integrated into numerous societies across the world. That doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer and perhaps still do, or perhaps their children do. However, bringing them up poses a problem for the pro-Palestinians and Palestinians because it destroys the myth that Israel is populated by non-indigenous East Europeans and the false parallel of a genocide to a war with refugees and no genocide. Have some integrity, folks, and next time you want to make a parallel between Nazis and Jews, instead try to recall your Jewish brethern who had to leave Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Tunisia and compare their situation to that of the Palestinians instead.
You know what will happen? All of a sudden you’ll be criticing countries such as Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. that refuse to patriate their Palestinians even though most of the original refugees are dead and their children were born in these Arab states. In Israel, the children of the Palestinians of ‘48, as well as the Palestinians of ‘48, are citizens.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:43 am
“criticizing” is the word in the last paragraph.
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:17 am
Funny that such a big deal is made about the whether or not a handful of Palestinians is still interested in the destruction of Israel (i.e., “Hamas”, and there is even great controversy about whether or not this is true inside Hamas which is not a political organization within which there is only a monolithic view), while
Ariel Sharon’s lifelong goal had been to obliterate all trace of Palestinian nationalistic political identity, as in 1982 and 2002. Geoffrey Aronson has documented the step by step confiscation of Palestinian land through official Israeli government moves since 1967. Israeli “new historians” such as Shlaim, Pappe, Morris, Ben-Ami, Flaphan have documented the ethnic cleansing carried out from 1948. Whether Mike wants to accept what they ALL agree on to be the commonly accepted facts of 1948 and beyond or not. Any yet, all we hear about from the other side is that “PALESTINIANS” (a gross distortion and oversimplification and a myth which has been kept by Israel’s supporters for so long in the public eye that the settlements have been completed and have precluded any possible viable 2 state solution and of course that is the fault of PALESTINIANS who have only sought to destroy Israel, contrary to what scholars like Clayton Swisher have demonstrated for all of the Oslo years) as a monolithic group of people (despite ALL evidence of polls showing the desire, and have desired, a fair peace settlement with Israel.
As I also said, the number of deaths between the Holocaust and Naqba is not the question nor are they equal. But as Sara Roy, an Israeli at Harvard recently titled an appeal, “How Can the Children of the Holocaust do such Things”. Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed by Israel, both by the 1948 Naqba and by the deliberate settlement confiscation. And research shows that this was always Zionist intention from the early days (Neville Madel’s work shows) of the 20th century, to CLEAR THE LAND OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING THERE, even though the official party line has always been that there were no people living there. What, EXACTLY, gives Israelis and their global supporters the right to ethically cleanse Palestinians from their own land? The Holocaust? How can anyone talk about immorality given this reality.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:34 am
Sorry for any lack of clarity in this sentence from my posting immediately above. Here’s a more readable arrangement.
And yet, all we hear about from the other side is that “PALESTINIANS” as a block of people have always been the ones blocking peace and threatening to destroy Israel. This is a gross distortion and oversimplification, a myth which has been kept by Israel’s supporters for so long in the public eye that the settlements have been completed and have precluded any possible viable 2 state solution. Of course that is the fault of PALESTINIANS who have only sought to destroy Israel, contrary to what scholar and Camp David participant Clayton Swisher have demonstrated for the entire stretch of the Oslo years for both the Syrian and Palestinian peace talk tracks. ALL evidence of polls among Palestinians shows the majority want a peace settlement. However, the failure of the 2 state track at Camp David and the rise of the second intifada after Sharon’s show of force on the Temple Mount, couples with longtime Fatah corruption, drove the Palestinian people to put Hamas in power, which was originally built up by Israel to weaken the influence of the PLO. Now the US and Israel are turning once again to arm and train Fatah to take on Hamas since King George didn’t like the result of the democratic election he demanded in Palestine.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Why is my comment awaiting moderation in this discussion as well? I thought this place was about free speech.
June 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 am
Still awaiting moderation. Incredible.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Carl should take a moment to read the PLO charter and then to read the Hamas charter. He should consider carefully how it’s possible that a people who seek a state so badly refused to accept both the Camp David offer as well as the Taba offer by Israel. In both cases there would have been a Palestinian state. In fact, the reaction of the Palestinians - as in 1937 and in 1947 - was to engage in a war with the Jews. Every time the idea of partition is on the table, the Palestinians are either engaged in or follow up with a war and I challenge Carl to prove otherwise.
The fact is that there could be a Palestinian state today. If there isn’t one, it’s not because of Sharon, it’s because of the Palestinians.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:05 am
Dear TM,
Let’s take November 1947. You are a Palestinian. Jewish people make up 33% of the population, Muslim and Christian Arabs 67%. Jews own land officially at 6.59%, the standard figure which everyone (Edward Said, Uri Avnery, Rabbi Michael Lerner, all the Israeli “new historians”, etc.) agrees on now, a combination of JNF and private ownership. Now. 30 years earlier France and Britain go against Wilson’s democratic survey of the region and ignore the political will of the vast majority of people. At the time the Jewish population was 8% in Palestine, but as soon as Britain and France had their imperialist mandates (see what happened to Iraqi oil under this system of Mandated “protectorates”, and to European Jewish immigration into Palestine) enshrined into law as the League of Nation Mandates in 1922, Britain opens up, enforced by the British army out of necessity, immigration of European Jewry into Palestine. Again, completely against the will of the vast majority of the population-documented in King-Crane (full text online). So after thirty years, in 1947, the Jewish population “jumps” to 33%. But they still have managed to only secure 6.59%. Now along comes the UN, coerced by President Truman. Preceding this the biased UNSCOP suggests a partition plan. You can research the reasons why I claim its study of the region was biased for yourself, it’s all there. But Truman doesn’t have the votes so he bribes and armtwists to get his way to FORCE (see Karl Sabbagh,”Palestine: A Personal History”, chapters 18 and 19) the partition plan through, much like what George Bush Senior did with every member of the Arab League and UN Security Council in 1991. This was not a democratic vote on the merits of the issue. This was a first world power play with the usual aim, screwing weaker nations (just as the Dems and Repubs are doing right now with the Iraqi oil PSA benchmark provision in the $120B they just presented to Bush as a gift).
So what does the UN do under duress? Even though the UNSCOP subcommittee categorically rejected (see Virginia Tilley on this) the partition arrangement suggested in the final UNSCOP proposal to the UN? They vote to give Zionists 56% of the land, and Palestinian Arabs 44%. QUESTION: If you were Palestinian, what would you have done. Or better, if this situation had happened to Jewish Zionists at the time, what would they have done? The answer to the latter is that they predictably would have continued the same campaign which drove the British out, led by the Irgun and Stern gang with Begin and Shamir leading the charge, and no doubt supported by Ben-Gurion (who later admitted his acceptance of 56% was just a ploy and that they would take the rest later) and the Haganah.
As far as Oslo goes, you must read Clayton Swisher’s “The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process”, if you really want to wrestle with exactly WHY Arafat didn’t accept Camp David. The big Clinton-Barak myth about CD was that they made the most generous offer and Arafat was given everything he could want. But then at Taba after the Clinton “Parameters” in December, Israel finally started to talk turkey, improving in the “discussions” on their disastrous CD offer and PROVING that in fact at CD they had NOT made the most generous offer in the first place. But you are wrong about Taba. Israel never made an offer to the Palestinians. In fact, Barak withdrew from those talks because of the propinquity of the Israeli elections. There was no offer at Taba, and no written offer at CD either, just endless attempts by Clinton and Barak to get the Palestinians to compromise, which they did, on their internationally recognized rights in regard to territory, Jerusalem, refugees. If you REALLY want to see proof, sit down at a bookstore for a few minutes and look over Swisher’s book. Of course, MUCH MORE has been written on Camp David. Here are two quick links which you might already be familiar with.
Shlomo Ben-Ami’s debate with Norman Finkelstein (on the Democracy Now website)
http://democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml
and, “Distorting Camp David”, N.Finkelstein
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12683&sec...
As far as the PLO and Hamas charters go, the PLO charter is now moot and has been for quite awhile (Oslo), even as evidenced by how Olmert and Bush are scramblng to arm and train Fatah to oust the democratically elected government in the P.A. As far as Hamas goes, it is not a monolithic terrorist org and many are screaming, including Avnery, that you don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies, so TALK TO THEM. On the opposite side of the coin, Israel has demonstrated with the immovable settlement infrastructure that it has only talked about recognizing Palestinians and in fact has been glacially but steadily, faster during the Oslo years itself, amassing a settlement infrastructure that is IMPOSSIBLE to withdraw from, all the while imprisoning West Bank Palestinians and quietly forcing them to consider emigrating, i.e., ethnically cleansing them (see Tilley, Abunimah, Pappe and many others to come since this is the new reality).
You said you challenged me to prove otherwise. Let’s see if you are willing to go through these sources.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Dear TM,
And don’t forget Israeli new historian Avi Shlaim’s “The Iron Cage”, his account of how it has been the Zionists and Israelis at each of the turns you mentioned who have avoided making peace. Not the Palestinians.
For a wonderful expose of how Ariel Sharon opened his heart and went to great lengths to embrace the Palestinian people as a nation at the same time Israel and the world had been demanding this from Palestinians (wait! they still are), see Chomsky’s detailed, and documented, account of the 1982 disaster in Lebanon, “Fateful Triangle”.
Hopefully these Jewish writers, who strive to put Jewish humanism BEFORE Jewish statehood, will carry some credibility with you, or at least a bit of intellectual curiosity, and won’t be rejected out of hand, since they are coming with a difficult message, as self-hating Jews.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Have you considered that Avi Shlaim is not god? He’s an historian, one with an ax to grind because he strongly believes that his father was mistreated when he arrived in Israel as a new immigrant. Historians such as Ephraim Karsh reject many of Shlaim’s claims as does Anita Shapira. When Benny Morris began to backtrack on some of his conclusions regarding the conflict, Shlaim began to attack him as if somehow one had to come to one particular conclusion using the data or else one was [insert negative description here].
With all due respect to Chomsky, he’s got about as much authority on the Middle East as do I. He’s a linguist, which gives him zip credibility on politics, and he approaches any writing of his with an ideological agenda of the Left. When I read Dershowitz, I know I’m reading a lawyer who has an opinion and may have researched it to some degree but is ultimately a layperson expressing his ideas. I see Chomsky in the same vein.
As to the term “self-hating Jew,” I reserve that for the real loonies like Finkelstein. Although I have to admit that the existence of this site and its mandate are making me wonder what the hell is going on here.
Anyway, I fail to see your point. I pointed out three instances in the past 70 years where either the Yishuv or Israel have agreed to or have offered compromise with the Arabs. In all three instances, the Arabs have said “no.” This has nothing to do with Sharon, Chomsky or Pee Wee Herman. Compromise was offered by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs. It’s not complicated to understand. As for peace overtures made over the years, there apparently have been some but they haven’t come from the Palestinians but from Egypt or Saudi Arabia. And with all due respect to “missed opportunities,” the purported Egyptian offers of the early ’70s had nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with Egypt and Sinai. The Saudis do address the Palestinian issue but demand east Jerusalem in total as well as refugee return to Israel, both of which are, correctly, non-starters. I do think the Saudi plan offers hope, but they will have to allow negotiations instead of demanding a priori acceptance of the unacceptable.
If the Palestinians want peace and a state, let them modify their hateful, antisemitic charters, commit to ending terrorism, and accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Why won’t you demand that, instead of demanding from Israel more compromise so that it can endanger its citizens (again and some more) by giving those who explicitly state a desire to harm them the ability to do so (again and some more)?