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Opening
& closing statements by the chair, As I was about to welcome people to this meeting, I realised that the double act – Nawal el Saadawi, a very distinguished Arab woman, and myself, a Jewish woman – that double act is a repeat performance. Unfortunately we had not rid the world of evil when we had a meeting attended by hundreds of people against the war on Iraq, so we have now to meet again against the holocaust in Palestine and the various other holocausts that clearly are being planned. You may have seen the leaflet in English and you may also have seen it in Arabic. The Global Women’s Strike which called this meeting is in the habit of translating wherever we can into all the languages that are appropriate. I will briefly outline some of the underlying principles of this meeting. Nawal will then speak for about a half hour. The first two women invited to speak at the open mike were recently in Palestine and will report on what they saw. Then the mike will be open to others. We have called this meeting first of all as an expression of the outrage of many of us at what the Israeli army is doing in the West Bank, to dissociate ourselves from it and to say there is no excuse for that slaughter of individuals and communities. We are opposed. Absolutely, utterly opposed. [Applause] The second thing we must say is to point to the struggle against the holocaust there, beginning with the work women do of caring and fighting to protect. The work of women is always hidden, and so are the views of women, especially in countries that are dominated by fundamentalists, whether Jewish (as in Israel), Hindu, Muslim, Christian (George Bush for example). Wherever there is fundamentalism, there is particularly crushing oppression of women, and our job not only as women but as a community of women and of men, is to make clear what women are doing, women the carers, women who keep communities together, women who see the community through all the vicissitude and horror and violence that we are faced with. And we want the women’s case in Palestine to begin to emerge, for us to begin to see what it is that women in particular are confronting and helping others to survive – not to hide what others are going through but to perceive just how deeply and fiercely the community is being attacked, and also to see what women are doing to protect these communities, as we women always do. Third, we want other truths to emerge tonight. These days it is very difficult to uncover the truth. You read a lot of articles, and I read many before this meeting, and you get some truth here and some truth there but you are bombarded with a tissue of lies that is, well, unbelievable. Not on this subject only. There is no subject about which they do not lie, and lie so profusely and so professionally and with such candour that it’s really very difficult to find your way through many subjects, most subjects. For example, I get the impression from the media in this country that they know how much the American state is spending on arms, and they’re so terrified by that killing machine that they’re determined to behave themselves – not to say anything that might offend those butchers in Washington. So those are the reasons we held this meeting. A few final words. When we spread the leaflet round, some people protested at our use of the word holocaust to describe what is happening in the West Bank. We used the word advisedly. There is, unfortunately, no monopoly on holocausts. We live in world where there have been many, and more are threatened. Those of us who are Jewish do not want the uniqueness of the holocaust against Jewish people to be used as an excuse for imposing a holocaust on other people. What we suffered should have taught us and has taught many Jewish people just how widespread is the murder and torture of others, and that we must stand against all of it. And in fact 460 refuseniks in Israel, Israeli soldiers, are now refusing to serve in the occupied territories, are refusing to perpetrate this particular holocaust, and it seems with the backing of and maybe the leadership of their mothers. [Applause] Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were German survivors of the camps, says that his mother always refused to make a special case and always connected her experience with others. You know, the slave trade was a most horrendous holocaust; Africa was emptied of 20 million people in the Middle Passage alone – in the capture and transporting of people into slavery in the Americas. He ends by saying, “In the face of the sufferings of African-Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother’s credo always was: We are all holocaust victims.” That is the starting point of this meeting. I must say additionally that Israel, which has tried to convince us that the Jewish experience is unique and unrelated to anyone else’s bitter reality, has never defended Jewish people from anti-semitism. Never. They have never stood up with Jewish people because they had their own agenda which had nothing to do with Jews. Our suffering was merely the excuse for perpetrating the power of the United States in the Middle East and keeping the oil supply in the power of the US. I want to say also that I disassociate myself as a Jewish woman from films like Schindler’s List which demeans what happened to us, which demeans Jewish people first of all by implying that we were only victims, never protagonists, against the Nazis. That is a great lie and we absolutely repudiate that. Finally, in the movement against North American and Israeli imperialism, we are often faced with an equating of Zionism to Judaism. There is no such connection. One represents the imperialist state, the other a people who have struggled against exploitation in most countries of the world. And we reject the anti-semitism in what passes for the Palestinian liberation movement. We as Palestinians, as Jews, as people facing holocausts, will never win on the basis of attacking other exploited people. We are going to be together or we will be decimated. That’s not the way to go and we won’t have it. [Applause] Now it’s my pleasure to introduce Nawal el Saadawi. She’s a very distinguished writer and is in the country at this time for the publication of the second volume of her autobiography, which I assure you is extremely interesting. Nawal is a very brave woman. I’ve seen her in all kinds of circumstances, at the UN, at demonstrations, in all kinds of places. And one thing that you can rely on Nawal for, she is absolutely fearless and she absolutely goes to the heart of the subject. I’m delighted to introduce my dear friend, Nawal. [Applause] Closing comments: I must say before we close, it was mentioned that I should not call myself a Jewish woman because that is a religion. Calling myself Jewish does not mean that I am a religious woman. I was born an atheist and stayed that way. But it does mean that I come from a whole tradition of struggle. And I have no other way to define myself except as a woman and as a revolutionary, one of which I am and the other of which I hope to be. So Jewish does not mean religious and to say Jewish and Arab women together in this context I think was useful. If there’s another way we can achieve that, I’d be glad to know. The second thing is about starting with ourselves as was said earlier. Yes, and no. If we start with ourselves, we often stay with ourselves. That’s one of the problems of living in the United States where you are encouraged to start with yourself and stay right there. OK. We liberate ourselves by starting with ourselves and starting with others. There is no other way except that we also struggle with others in the movement and that is the only way I know to start with yourself but not only end with yourself, and find out who you are in the faces of the people you struggle alongside of. That is the only way I know. Third, about forming states: I was involved in the anti-colonial movement in the Caribbean. I have a good idea of what so-called Third World struggle is, and I know the American state because that’s where I was born, and that was my first experience of a state including McCarthyism, Cold War, etc. We have not heard from Palestinian women yet, though we have tried. We demand Palestinian self-determination, and for the world to know what that people want, beginning with women. We do not begin with those who have been identified as Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian Authority was largely for the purpose of disciplining the Palestinians. That is clearly not the authority they want! [Applause] And when we hear from women, we will also for the first time begin to hear from grassroots men, and they will both tell us the kind of society they want to live in. And it may not be a Palestinian state. Up to now states have not been for us, you know. They have been against us. So we’re not about to call for more of the same. Many of us want a more global society beginning with the grassroots rather than with those in any authority. [Applause] Thank you very much for coming. This is a step in the building of a movement in this country, which is slow off the mark; it is a sign that we are doing things and getting where we want to go. Can I just repeat what was said by one of the 20 speakers: we have not heard a lot about women tonight, it is very hard to get information about women even from women and that is what we must pursue. I recommend this petition to you. Thank you very much. [Applause] |