January 29, 2005

Irshad Manji's Trip to Israel

Sequel to: Belanger: The Trouble with The Trouble with Islam

See also: Reader comments

By Linda Belanger

When listening to politicians or reading certain columnists, I often have to ask myself if they are stupid, ill-informed, or motivated by profit. 

The views expressed on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by Irshad Manji in her book The Trouble with Islam certainly leave me asking these questions. In the chapter dealing with her trip to Israel, it is hard to say which is most prominent:  the outright  misinformation, the double standards, the twisted logic or the regurgitation of the Zionist  propaganda. 

After 9-11, Ms. Manji captured the attention of Jewish organizations and her writings began to be included in their publications.  She was advised by a fellow Muslim that “when the views of a Muslim … are used by non-Muslims and Zionists, you must rethink”.   Rather than consider the advice and educate herself about Zionism, the ever combative Ms. Manji took this as another example of Muslim anti-Semitism. 

Infuriated, she accepted a free trip to Israel in the summer of 2002. 

She says: “I met the offer to go to Israel with two conditions:  I must be allowed to ask any questions I wanted, and I had to help shape the itinerary.  Of course, said my Zionist sponsor – I could, should and would be a partner in the journey.” _¹

How admirable! How free thinking!   Let’s see how this plays out.

Chapter 4 of the book describes her trip to Israel courtesy of  “the Zionists”.   The second paragraph of the chapter is worth reproducing here just to give the reader an idea of exactly how free thinking Ms. Manji is: 

“It was a heartbreakingly low point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The peace process had completely combusted and a new intifada raged.  Suicide bombings by Palestinians were accumulating and Israel was retaliating with what its most polite detractors deemed a reoccupation – illegal Jewish settlements, assault helicopters, checkpoints, curfews, and the demolition of Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah.”

Sounds good and balanced so far. But wait. Incredibly, the next sentence is: “Israel didn’t need the extra burden of safeguarding foreigners, but neither did it want to be perceived as preventing journalists from documenting the other side.” ²  

The West Bank and Gaza are being demolished and Irshad is worried about the burden of visitors on Israel, a country which uses tanks and assault helicopters to fight a virtually unarmed population, imprisoned in its towns and homes by checkpoints and 24 hour curfews! 

We are all biased to some extent; our opinions are affected by our past experiences, books we’ve read, people we’ve met, but this is outrageous!

It gets worse.

“Without any prompting from me, Paul [her Israeli guide] included visits with several Arab artists and intellectuals in the itinerary.  All of them, I would discover, had no qualms about criticizing Israeli policies.”³

So, although Ms. Manji is fully aware of “illegal settlements, assault helicopter, checkpoints, curfews and the demolition of Yasser Arafat’s compound” Ms. Manji seems surprised that Palestinians would criticize Israel.

In the remainder of the chapter it becomes evident that the self-proclaimed free thinking Ms. Manji has swallowed the Zionist propaganda hook, line and sinker. This is nowhere more evident than when she says that the Arab states attacked Israel only one day after it declared statehood in 19484 - a favourite Israeli propaganda line. She neglects to mention that during the previous five months Israelis had already driven out 350,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

The Arab attack on Israel was not so much an attack on its statehood as a reaction to the flood of refugees flowing across their borders.

Ms. Manji goes on at length about Israel being an open and democratic society where a variety of information is available and different opinions are discussed and published.  The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz is certainly an admirable newspaper and it is probably more critical of the occupation than any newspaper in the world.   However, Ms. Manji completely neglects to mention the numerous Israeli peace and human rights groups: B’Tselem, Gush Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.

It seems hard to believe that someone with such an affinity towards Israel would not know about these groups. Perhaps she is engaging in a bit of suppression of information of her own.

Discussion may be open in Israel but what is not so well known is the lengths that Israel goes to suppress information going out to the rest of the world.   In 2002, the same year that Irshad’s guide was so kind as to schedule trips into the occupied territories for her, Israel prevented a team of UN investigators from entering Jenin refugee camp to investigate allegations of war crimes.
 
Organizations such as the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the reputable Guardian newspaper of London, and Reporters Without Borders have accused Israel of numerous deliberate attacks on reporters working in the West Bank and Gaza. In regards to Palestinian journalists, Reporters without Borders states that  "most of them have not been able to renew their press cards, without which they cannot travel between Israel and the different territories. On 19 January 2002, the Israeli Army destroyed the building in Ramallah housing the Palestinian radio and television headquarters."

These attacks seem to have had the intended effect.  Not many news outlets have reporters in the West Bank and Gaza.  The situation has become so dangerous for reporters that few of them actually venture among the people to report the humanitarian crises and human rights abuses.

Much of the “news” we receive is from Israeli army and government officials. The views of Palestinians and the daily horrors of the Israeli occupation are for the most part hidden from the Public especially in North America.

Fortunately the news is getting out through various websites and e-mail lists, such as Canpalnet News, that deliver information coming from aid organizations, Ha'aretz, European newspapers and Jewish and Israeli peace and human rights groups to e-mail boxes each day.

While the Israelis are praised for being open, Palestinians, it seems, can’t win.  Ms. Manji dismisses Sharon’s ill-advised visit to the Temple Mount which triggered the intifada as merely “A cynical political pantomime…. To boost his as-yet informal campaign to become prime minister.”   She continues, “Speaking of cynical politics, Arafat’s chief of security in the West Bank pre-approved Sharon’s visit.  A Palestinian Authority cabinet minister later revealed that Arafat had been planning the intifada for months.  He needed a provocation.” ⁴

Can you imagine the uproar if the Palestinians had refused an Israeli leader the right to visit the Temple Mount.  Ms. Manji provides neither a source nor the name of the cabinet minister who “later revealed that Arafat had been planning the intifada for months.”

As for Israel being a democracy, it is a democratic tyranny of the majority over the minority Arab population.  Israel has no Constitution and no Charter of Rights.  While Israel encourages immigration of all Jews from any country in the world it refuses to recognize the right of Palestinians to return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948 - as stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention - and it has never made any offers of compensation. 

The democratic state of Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Gaza in defiance of UN Resolution 242, passed after the Six Day War in 1967.  Israel's citizenship laws discriminate against its own Arab citizens.  While Jews from all over the world are accorded Israeli citizenship upon request, Israeli Arabs who marry Arabs from outside Israel’s borders cannot claim citizenship for their spouses or children. 

Within the last year, Israel has sprayed the crops of its own Arab citizens with deadly chemicals in an effort to force them from their land. 

Israel’s founding ideology is Zionism, which has been the ideology of all Israeli governments since its inception in 1948.   Zionists would have us believe that Zionism is simply the desire for a safe homeland for a persecuted people.  Few people would object to that.  What the Zionists do not tell us is that Israel was created on the territory of another people and that their vision of Israel is of a racially pure state for Jews only.

Ms. Manji, who abhors the racism expressed by Muslims, seems to have no problem when it comes from Zionists.

Zionist rhetoric and ideology is discussed in detail in this article by former CIA analysts and Middle East specialists Kathleen and Bill Christison. Not only does Israel want a racially pure state within its internationally recognized borders but it is becoming painfully obvious that it wishes to expand that state into a large part of the West Bank.

Ninety percent of the “Security Wall” is built on Palestinian land. In many areas it dips deeply into the West Bank (up to 10 kilimetres) and surrounds entire Palestinian towns.

On Friday, January 20th, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Sharon government has implemented the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem.   The law means that thousands of Palestinians who live in the West Bank will lose ownership of property that they own in East Jerusalem - without compensation. 

Is Irshad Manji stupid, ill-informed, or motivated by profit?  Perhaps Ms. Manji is truly misinformed about the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, but in the age of the Internet, research does not involve spending hours in libraries. The truth is available from many very reliable internet sources in the comfort of one’s home. The Internet is a wonderful thing, providing us with opportunities, never before possible, to interact with individuals.

I have had e-mail exchanges with two well-known journalists who have frequently spoken for justice for Palestinians.  One told me that if a journalist wishes to speak for Palestine, he must be prepared “to keep his horse saddled”.  The other echoed this sentiment.  “It can be very dangerous to speak the truth about Israel-Palestine and very lucrative to be aligned with the other side”.

1. Manji, Irshad, The Trouble with Islam, Random House. (p.77)
2. Manji, Irshad, The Trouble with Islam, Random House. (p.78)
3. Manji, Irshad, The Trouble with Islam, Random House. (p.78)
4. Manji, Irshad, The Trouble with Islam, Random House. (p.105)