Dr. Kenneth Ring
Why did you write this book?
As soon as I became aware of the systematic pattern of injustice against Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, I became incensed and felt that I needed to become personally involved. So I did. The first person I heard speak on this subject was an American-born Israeli activist named Dorothy Naor who gave a brief talk for a local branch of an organization called Jewish Voice for Peace in March, 2008. The next morning, I woke up with the idea for this book and its title, Letters from Palestine. I wanted Americans to learn about the lives of Palestinian people – to actually begin to see them and hear their voices – in order to undermine the pervasive stereotypes that many Americans, and especially some American Jews, have about them.
What work did you do for this book?
In order to write this book, I needed to make contact with Palestinian people in order to learn about them myself and to collect their stories. Naturally, I also needed to go to the West Bank to see conditions there for myself and to meet Palestinian people. (I would also have liked to go to Gaza, but that was not permitted by the Israelis.) So, first, I began by writing to various people who could put me in touch with Palestinian people both in Palestine itself and here in America. I soon found myself meeting some Palestinians here where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and corresponding with others. Eventually, I was able to go the West Bank to meet personally with some of these people, including my co-author, Ghassan Abdullah, and to meet still others who eventually also consented to contribute their stories to my book.
Who do you think would be most helped by reading your book?
My intended audience are Americans who have found themselves interested in the longstanding conflict between Israel and Palestine, but who know little about the actual lives of Palestinian people themselves. I am particularly interested to reach American Jews because American foreign policy toward Israel, which historically has been overwhelmingly in support of the Israel perspective and disdainful and dismissive of the Palestinian narrative, has been made possible in large part by American Jewry. But this has begun to change, as influential commentators, such as Peter Beinart, have recently observed. I want to further this re-examination by making Americans more aware of the lives and aspirations of Palestinian people.
How is your book relevant to current events?
Isn’t this obvious? Look at what has happened just in the time since I began working actively on this book late in 2008. First, there was a brutal Israeli assault on Gaza in December of that year and continuing into January, 2009, in which over 1400 hundred trapped Gazans were killed, including over 300 children, and more than 5,000 injured. This attack outraged much of the world, and resulted in widespread condemnation of Israel. Many people then became aware of the situation in Gaza, and the crushing effects of the siege of Gaza that has been going on since 2007. For millions of people, this was a waking up to the injustice to which Palestinians were being subjected.
Then, you had the Obama administration taking a strong stand to force Israel and Palestinians to settle their issues and try to achieve some kind of Palestinian state. Israel reacted with truculence and intransigence, which brought about for a time one of the worst crises in Israeli-American relations. Palestinians, as usual, were caught in the crossfire, but, again, people were becoming more aware of the issues involved, and beginning to see things from the Palestinian perspective and not just that of Israel.
Finally, most recently, we have witnessed the heinous attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla in which Israeli commandoes landed on ships bound for Gaza on a humanitarian mission and killed eight Turks and one American citizen, and also injured or brutally treated many others. Again, the world was outraged, though the response of the United States government was, not surprisingly, more restrained. And Turkey, whose relations with Israel had already been strained almost to the breaking point, was vehement in its condemnation.
The only good thing to come out of this atrocity is that once again, people around the world, and certainly here in America, were made aware of the plight of the Palestinian living in Gaza, and the wanton cruelty of Israel which seems to be able to act with impunity.
All of these events have served to draw attention to the conditions under which Palestinian people live, and for that reason, I think more people than ever have become sympathetic to them and should want to learn more about them. That’s why I think my book is particularly relevant now.
What is your response to the Gaza flotilla incident?
Like many people in the world, I was shocked and outraged by the unprovoked and deadly Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara — the main ship of the convoy — but I wasn’t really surprised. The Israelis had previously forcibly prevented other boats carrying humanitarian supplies from reaching Gaza, even ramming one and then arresting its passengers, and had warned that they would use force, if necessary, to intercept the ships of the flotilla. Still, the idea that they would end up using deadly force, and killing nine of the passengers, when such measures are clearly both immoral and illegal, to say nothing of self-defeating, beggars comprehension. To attack a collection of people whose only goal was to bring medical and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza whose residents have been barely surviving under an unrelenting and cruel Israeli blockade for over three years not only has no warrant, but is on its face extremely counterproductive.
What could Israel hope to achieve by such actions? Whenever it uses overwhelming force against weak or captive populations, as it did in the Lebanon war of 2006 or the assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, and now on these unarmed humanitarian activists, it only succeeds in enraging much of the world’s population and furthers the notion that Israel has become a pariah state. Furthermore, it vitiates if it doesn’t destroy important alliances, such as with Turkey, and it severely strains its vital relationship with the United States. And of course it only increases the enmity of the Muslim and Arab world against Israel. In defeating its perceived foes and “terrorists,” it only defeats itself.
I knew two of the Americans on the flotilla and have read their first-hand accounts of their treatment. They were not shot, but they were beaten, in one case severely, and dealt with very brutally by the Israeli authorities. Their possessions were taken from them and, so far, have not been returned. What happened to the other activists who were actually wounded or killed was of course incomparably worse. But I haven’t read any account by any of those involved who survived the attack that suggested anything other than an increased resolve to continue to try to break the inhuman siege against Gaza. So what did Israel gain by these actions? And what price will they eventually have to pay for their crimes against innocent civilians?
What is your response to the Israeli plan to demolish 22 Palestinian homes to make room for a park and apartment complexes?
Demotions are a fact of everyday life for Palestinians. Indeed, since 1967, more than 24,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished, sometimes with their residents still in them. Furthermore, permits for homes are routinely denied for Palestinians, and only rarely granted. This state of affairs is well known and has drawn condemnation throughout the world. Even the United States, which has always favored Israeli interests over those of Palestinian rights, has spoken out vigorously against these practices. And, recently, when Vice-President Joe Biden was in Israel, he was flagrantly insulted when Israel announced that they would be building more such housing in East Jerusalem. Even Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist and long time friend of Israel, was compelled to speak out sharply in condemning these actions. To no avail, however. Prime Minister Netanyahu remained intransigent and said this practice would continue, even if some of the housing units might be delayed for a time.
East Jerusalem, in fact, has now become a focal point of contention and an explosive arena concerning the continuing practice of house demolitions. For Palestinians living in this traditional sector of the Holy City, which they have long sought to become their capital, the problem is of existential significance. The reason is that East Jerusalem is gradually becoming — to use the common phrase these days — judaized. The intent of the Israelis here is to forcibly dispossess Palestinians of their homes in East Jerusalem and then to make them available to Jews so that, over time, the whole of Jerusalem will be dominated by Jewish residents, thus making it impossible for Palestinians ever to claim East Jerusalem as their capital. Of course, Jerusalem as a whole is sacred to Palestinians, and those living in the West Bank are not even allowed to enter it to pray at Al-Asqa Mosque, one of the most holy sites in the Muslim world.
For that reason, there are on-going protests at the site of these demotions, particularly of late in an area called Sheikh Jarrah, where hundreds of demonstrators — Israeli activists, Palestinians, and Internationals — have been engaging in non-violent, but definitely strenuously vocal, actions to bring attention to these forcible evictions — some families refuse to leave the area, even after their houses have been razed, and are living on the street — and to try to bring to a halt these arbitrary but decidedly systematic demolitions. Here, then, is just another sad and agonizing chapter in the gradual expulsion of Palestinian people from the land of their birth.
What are your hopes for this book?
My hope is that it will help Americans to become more sympathetic to the struggle for Palestinian justice and to become involved in that struggle. And also, of course, to come to see Palestinians as people, not abstractions, and to have a greater appreciation, not just for what they have suffered for so long, but for the many admirable qualities of their character as a people and for the creativity and resilience of their culture.
