Brackets [ ] is my commentary.

Quotes “” means I’m (as best I can) quoting verbatim.

Bold denotes a question/comment from an audience member.

Consul General Mr. Fascist (F)Moderator Professor Banafsheh Keynoush (M)Professor As’ad AbuKhalil (AK)

F: Wants to live in peace with Palestinians and does not interfere with Palestinian politics.

AK: While Israeli diplomats speak of peace their soldiers kill Palestinians. “I believe in forms of all boycott in” Israel and my participation does not contradict the view of boycott.

It is easy to say one is sick of conflict when one has bee instigating conflict [through settlements, invasions, terrorism, etc.] since the 1930s. Israel got 50% plus of land by UN mandate now controls 90% with official territory of over 70%.

Ben-Gurrion was racist towards Arabs and said “they were like children.” The idea of transfer did not begin with Avigdor Libermen but is earlier to Ben-Gurion and other original Zionists. There were peace offers by Arab leaders [which AK opposed] and were turned down by successive Israeli coalition governments.

From 1948 to 1960s thousands of Palestinian civilians were shot like pigeons by Israeli soldiers because they were checking on their farms (Benny Morris in the book Righteous Victims).

Camp David Peace Accord, Invasions and occupation in between of peace offers. In my years Israel has bombed a number of Middle Eastern countries.

Ariel Sharon: was fed propaganda by F who could not get away with that in Israel as he would be laughed at out loud.

[Begins his statement]

The IDF released estimates on the latest incursion onto Gaza and stated on 295 Palestinian civilians were killed AK says it is 926. Israeli military counts Palestinian males from as young as 5 to up to a late age as militants. “He wants you to forgive and forget and wants you to accept his words of peace” as true and sincere.

The stage in the U.S. on which we debate these issues is that last place on the Earth were there is sympathy of Israelis over Palestinians. In Europe students storm buildings and are openly hostile to Israeli diplomats and other arms of the state, etc.

“The complaint I have with we should boycott as we did with South Africa” with Israel. We should never forgive Al Qaeda and Israel and “we should insist on a categorical boycott of the state, an arrogant and proud state that is a relic of the old” colonial states of the 19th century “on every single issue you can judge Israel…racism” Zionism is founded on racism Read the book 1949 on how Israel treated newcomers [such as Arab Jews and local Palestinian Jews compared to European white Jews].

The Hebrew press is “casual on how they refer to the Arabs as animals.”

“The Zionists introduced terrorism into this land…the first bombs in cafes were used by Zionists in Palestine…in Jaffa…bombs were first put on buses by Zionists in Palestine…the first bombing of hotels were done by Zionists…oh you know about that one because that was done against the white man, the British.”

“If you want footnotes on anything I said throughout the evening you can e-mail me.”

The early Zionists knew there were people already in Palestine “He who desires the ends desires the means” a French proverb.

“I am opposed to Israel…because it is a religious state…We should reject any religious state of any kind…The state of Israel was found on religious supremacy and…on the denigration of others.”

Israel is a moral, economic, and political burden to the U.S.

[F checks his watch, impatient with AK’s opening statement]

Wraps up his opening statement. “It is a state that is also based on lies and deception.”

Abu Mazen his a holocaust denier but Israel supports him as “he is a puppet.” Israel does not reject anti-Semitism from their mist.

Sadat was a Nazi sympathizer but Israel didn’t care.

[F taps M on the shoulder to wrap up speech M writes something down on a piece of paper to AK]

“I don’t believe in a peace process and in a true peace were Palestinians have the full right to return…but not in this discriminatory and undemocratic Israeli state.”

[loud applause around the room]

M: I have personally been enlivened by these two sides and my father told me there “are always two sides to a story.”

[Oh my fucking God! What the fuck did she just say?! Yeah, there ARE two sides to each story and in this case it is between the racist apartheid oppressor and the oppressed and disposed Palestinians! Would she have said that about a South African consul general in the 1960s and the ANC!?]

F: “Respectfully, I did not call the other speaker a liar and I am not going to go to that level I want to speak directly to the audience…You are making a terrible mistake…The rhetoric you heard is of Islamic terrorists. Sadat is a Nazi? Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize…Try not to be taken in by one’s own internal rhetoric…We are trying to be the first country in the world to have an electric car grid.”

Israel is no more a Jewish state than Turkey, a secular state, is an Islamic State.

“My wife is from Yemen! Half of our population is Oriental.”

[Oriental??? That’s like using the term Negro.]

On the contradictions with racism within Israel he says “Are there problems, of course there are, we are trying to overcome them.”

“On the other side you did not hear of one word of self-criticism.”

The Hamas charter is an anti-Semitic and anti-Christian document.

“Professor AbuKhalil does not believe for the state of Israel to exists.”

The debate “is not reality connected…If we want a better future we have to find a way to put the Peace Charter back on track…I’m not going to fall into the trap to call someone an anti-Semite...It’s absurd” to have the Jewish people give up their nation state and the Jews have no state is deeply racist [anti-Semitic].

AK: Saying my wife is Arab is like racist in America saying I have a “Black friend.”

To speak to an American audience he threw in Islamic fundamentalism and somehow put me, a secular hard core atheists anarchist, with the Islamists. “Did you notice how they are trained to deal with the speakers” and here he cannot so call me an anti-Semite or an Islamic fundamentalists but he still does it anyway.

The people in Ramallah are collaborationists hand picked and armed by the Israelis.

The Nobel Peace Prize was won by war criminals and Anwar Sadat had a Nazi past but he glorifies him.

I don’t want a Christian state in Lebanon or an Islamic state in Saudi Arabia or a Jewish State in Israel.

Back in the 1960s and 70s Palestinians were Marxist Leninist and Socialist and used anti-communism to attack them, “We are not against Palestinians we are against” communists or now Islamic fundamentalists.

Legal discrimination against Arabs is embedded within the state [clearing of homes in East Jerusalem].

M: “I would like to open the floor.”

F How does Israel plan to deal with Iran.

Iran has been quite pragmatic and Iran would probably not use nuclear weapons. “Short of war how does Israel plan to deal with Iran.”

AK “how do you envision peace.” For the sake of pragmatism how would you envision peace.

F: Iran is the main problem and threat for Israel today.

Deterrents will not work here with Iran.

If talks do not work and if Iran continues to enrich the world should use strong economic sanctions.

AK: “I find the answer you pose to Iran as quite offensive…What business is it of Israel…The state the sits on a massive” stockpile of nuclear and chemical weapons. How could the moderator ask this unless there is a tinge of racism within the question because it allows for Israel to only have WMDs. Iran is an aggressive state but Israel is more aggressive. “This is a state in the position to ask about diplomacy?”

Arabs, and more than Arabs, will not accept the terrorism of Israel.

“All Arab regimes with the exception of Sudan and Syria are supported and armed by the United States.”

[Open forum]

“Do you agree with the theory of the Iron Wall.”

F: “I agree with the majority of the international community that” two states should live side and side.

[Didn’t answer the question of Iron Wall theory]

“How can you justify a war that Israeli soldiers refused to partake in?”

F: “Stop being so selective stop blinding yourself. The airs strike was against Hamas militants, they were armed…it was not against civilians.” Hamas launches rockets on Sedrot. And states need to defend themselves.

M: We need to keep this forum as quite and as centered on questions as possible.

[Wow, fuck this puppet moderator.]

The two-state solution is a joke considering the Palestinians. “What does Israel have to fear about a one-state solution.”

F: “We are a minority people on the face of the earth we are an ancient people with an ancient culture…we predate Islam…we desire to exists as a culture” within a state “to develop itself. This is what Zionism is…It is no more by Jewish nationalism…by secularists.”

What is acceptable for every other people why can’t it be for the Jews?

“In all the early Islamic texts the term Palestine exists.”

F: I did not say that.

Respectfully your version of archaeology is revisionist.

AK: there is a very long record of Israel denying and denigrating the existence of Palestinians in the Holy Land [calling them Syrians or Egyptians, etc.]

It is clear that Palestinian nationalism predates 1948 and does indeed come out of the state of Israel coming into existence.

F: “I don’t understand your method…” Sadat was a Nazi in 1930s but was does that make him a Nazi in the 1970s.

We are not a monolithic society.

M: I think in the end it is peace of perpetual conflict that we should be addressing.

AK: “Nationalism is a modern movement born in the 19th century” as is Zionism and it was embedded with the European racist-imperialist nationalist thought.

Sadat never recanted his Nazi position and said anti-Semitic statements until the day he died.

Why did Israel reject the Saudi plan and of a nuclear free Middle East?

F: The Saudi plan is an important document. “The Saudi plan is both an opportunity and also a huge challenge.” The Arab League will recognize the right of Israel to exists if it allows the refugees to return to Israel and gives up territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

We cannot accept the right of Palestinians to return to Israel.

The challenge for us is the following, we are doubtful the Arab League will not be able to bring the Arab world to support if after Israel makes major concessions.

“I think we have made major concessions…We have returned the Sinai Peninsula.”

[Not answering the question on nuclear weapons.]

M: My fear is this conversation will drag.

F: I am a diplomat and Israel has never confirmed or denied we have nuclear weapons. “We have never threatened to destroy another country.”

AK: Israel complains of threats from the other side but Israel destroys the other side. There was an already existing nation that Israel destroyed to come into existence.

F: It was an imperfect decision by the international community to have a two-state in 1948. “To deny the Jews a nation” is anti-Semitic. “That is a very deep form of racism which you don’t recognize himself.”

AK: He is losing his calm and his nerve.

[Talk of Israeli hypocrisy, foreign policy, being against a religious state and being against anti-Semitism]

M: As a teacher it is important to take questions we only have ten minutes.

How come Jews from around the world can come to Israel but not Palestinian refugees.

F: AK use of scholarship is systematic. “If one would go to the documents…we need to be talking about how to get solar energy in the Middle East…You guys are totally retro!”

[Audience hisses, boos and is getting pissed]

To understand what history is, is not to read Noam Chomsky but to read a diverse cross-section of history.

The Right to Return is about whether you accept the nationality of Israel, if you are a Jew you are a Jew and Jews should have a right to a nation state.

[People getting upset their questions will not be asked.]

Why did the IDF uproot farming land.

F: “We are trying, we left Gaza, we uprooted our settlements, we are offering to leave large parts of the West Bank.”

Why do all the successive governments allow settlements in the West Bank?

F: “We are a messy society and there is a significant minority” that want a Greater Israel. “We are in a different place now and we have not done it within the last six or seven years.”

[Yet they continue to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem]

“The word lie is so wrong, it is so wrong.”

AK: [Laughing with arms up in the air] “Why!?”

F: “We left the entire Gaza Strip…We can do it again.”

AK: “Unfortunately for the other speaker” this audience is well informed. [Moderator tries to butt in] “I do not determine what people want me to say.”

“The religious block in Israel is not a fringe block like in Europe it is a major block” coalitions can’t be formed without the religious block. “There are secular arguments in Israel” for settlements.

Israel left Gaza due to resistance and the same in South Lebanon.