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March 28, 2003
Campbell blames Israel
"Peace" speaker surprises listeners with slant of talk.
KYLE BERGER REPORTER
It was a presentation that was supposed to take a deeper look at
peaceful solutions to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Instead,
the majority of author Deborah Campbell's talk, Israel: Popular
Media and Counter Culture, laid blame on the Israeli military for
the violence in the region.
Campbell's presentation, which took place at the Jewish Community
Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) March 20, started out with a condensed
history of the Middle East and briefly discussed some of the challenges
that media have covering the conflict in the region. But the direction
of her talk soon led into and focused on stories of Palestinians
suffering at the hands of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Starting with the 1948 War of Independence, Campbell claimed that
the establishment of the state of Israel resulted in the current
Palestinian refugee problem on an area of land of which only seven
per cent had previously been owned by Jews.
"[After the war] about three quarters of a million Palestinians
left, fled or were driven from their homes there," she said.
"In the 1967 war, Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt, Syria
and Jordan and another 300,000 Palestinians were displaced, many
for the second time."
Campbell did not discuss the purchase of land by Jews from Arabs
during the years leading up to the establishment of the state, the
reasons behind the pre-emptive strike of the Six Day War or that
the surrounding Arab countries refused to take in the refugees who
had fled.
Leaving history aside, Campbell then made references to her new
book, This Heated Place, for which she had done research in the
Middle East in 2001. The book was described as "an exploration
of the human side of the conflict" by the presentation organizers.
Campbell claimed that the media often just leaves the plight of
the Palestinian people out of the news because their stories aren't
always bloody enough or are too hard to tell.
"It's difficult to tell, for example, the story of how Palestinian
residents of the West Bank city of Nablus have been under curfew
for three out of [every] four days since last June ... during which
they cannot leave their homes without being shot," she said.
"This is just the story of thousands of people locked in their
homes for months on end. There aren't any visuals, so there isn't
any story worthy of TV coverage."
Campbell continued criticizing the credibility of the media for
using what she called "he said, she said journalism,"
which involves getting comments from each political side by phone
rather than reporting firsthand from the scene. She then offered
some of her own speculation on the death of American peace activist
Rachel Corrie, who was recently run over by an Israeli bulldozer.
"I do remember reading a report about Jenin when there was
a lot of bulldozer-driving going on and one of the drivers was talking
about how he had been drunk the whole time," she said. "So
one wonders if maybe that could have been part of it."
Campbell grew up in the Lower Mainland, but studied as a foreign
student at Tel-Aviv University during 1990/'91. She said she became
fascinated by the small country that sat amid several hostile nations.
"I was enchanted by stories of early pioneers who were making
the desert bloom," she said.
Back in Vancouver, Campbell spent time working for the Canadian
Jewish Congress and the Jewish Family Service Agency.
However, Campbell told the audience, when she returned to Israel
and the occupied territories in 2001, she gained a new perspective
on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.
"I don't recall [while I lived in Canada] hearing mention of
the indigenous Arab residents of the land where Israel was established
or of the 3.5 million living under Israeli military occupation in
the West Bank and Gaza," she said of what changed her mind
about the conflict. "I had been given to understand that Israel
was a land without a people for a people without a land. A fiction
that, repeated often enough, was mistaken for the truth."
Campbell's talk was part of the Sharing Peace Workshops series sponsored
by the Peace Walker Society. According to a letter to the editor
written by Alan Woodland, one of the organizer's of the series,
the finger-pointing in Campbell's speech was not what the organization
been expecting.
"What we had hoped for – and perhaps this was too much
to expect in these dark times – was a message of peace,"
he wrote. "What we got was a narrative that focused largely
on the sufferings of the Palestinian people and the role of Israeli
military in creating and prolonging this suffering.
"And while many of the facts she presented are undeniably true,"
Woodland continued, "I felt that her approach to the material
was decidedly judgmental and critical of Israel. Little light was
shed on the prospects of peace."
Woodland insisted that his organization is not a political group
and that their future events would focus more on visions of peace.
Last July, the Israeli group Ta'ayush had its booking at the JCC
cancelled because of its political focus. At the time, JCC executive
director Gerry Zipursky said the centre was "not interested
in hosting political programs that are against Israel." As
of this week's press time, the Bulletin was unable to reach
Zipursky for comment about Campbell's presentation, despite numerous
attempts.
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