Annual Nakba Commemoration Dinner Speech
Now to what I believe is the real significance of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. It is THE KEY to creating the constituency of understanding needed here in America to create the space to enable a president to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress.. Put another way, it is only when enough Americans are informed about the truth of history that there will be – perhaps I should say could be – sufficient pressure on Congress for an end to US support for Israel right or wrong.
Question: Why is it that still today most Americans are ignorant of the truth of history?
A large part of the answer is that the mainstream media still prefers to peddle Zionist propaganda. But in my view the ignorance is also evidence of the FAILURE TO DATE OF ACTIVIST GROUPS OF ALL FAITHS AND NONE. Yes, it’s important to draw attention to what’s happening in Israel/Palestine today and to protest against Israel’s violations of human rights and international law. Yes, it’s important to assist the occupied and oppressed Palestinians to remain steadfast and go on surviving. And yes, it’s important to campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions. But none of this campaigning is going to result in a fundamental change of U.S. policy so long as most Americans remain ignorant of the truth of history and how much they have been conned by Zionist propaganda.
The conclusion invited, or so I believe, is that IT’S TIME FOR ACTIVIST GROUPS TO GIVE PRIORITY TO DEVISING AND IMPLEMENTING A STRATEGY FOR INFORMING AND EDUCATING AMERICANS ABOUT THE TRUTH OF HISTORY, and therefore who must do what and why if this conflict is not to end in catastrophe for all; and by all I don’t just mean the Arabs and Jews of the region, I mean all of us everywhere. The essence of the campaign message would be something like – “Fellow Americans, almost everything you’ve been conditioned to believe about the making and sustaining of this conflict is not true.”
I devoted more than five years of my life to researching and writing the original version of this epic book. My purpose was to provide a powerful weapon to make winning the war for truth possible. The book is about much more than is suggested by its title, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. (A longer version of the title could be – It isn’t the Arabs who are the real enemy of the Jews, it’s Zionism’s brutal and increasingly Nazi-like colonial enterprise).
Updated to President Obama’s surrender to the Zionist lobby, it’s the first ever book tell the complete story of the making and sustaining of the conflict replacing Zionist mythology with the documented facts and truth of history. And the story as I tell it is not confined to events in the region. I’ve given those events global context, meaning that I take my readers behind closed doors in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow. With this book you can start out knowing nothing worth knowing about the conflict, which sadly is the position of most Americans, and end up seeing how all the pieces of the most complicated jig-saw puzzle fit together. Simply stated, this book enables all readers – almost all of them for the first time ever – to make sense of what is happening and why.
If I had written a pro-Zionist book, I would have had wealthy Jews throwing money at me for promotion of all kinds. My experience to date is that wealthy Arabs, including wealthy Palestinians, are frightened of offending Zionism to assist my efforts to make informed and honest debate possible.
I also think that like most activist groups they have no understanding of how you change lobby-driven government policies in the so-called democratic nations. There is only one way to do it – by informing and educating the citizens, the voters, empowering them to make democracy work and call and hold their leaders to account. When enough citizens want something done, governments have to do it.
So I’m asking you tonight to make good use of my book and become actively engaged in the process of educating your fellow Americans to make democracy work. I am, of course, aware that there is a reason why some and perhaps many Arab and other Muslim Americans think that’s too dangerous and that they should keep their heads down and their mouths shut, in order, as they see it, to protect themselves, their families, their careers and their businesses. The reason is that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl in America (as it is in Europe) and licking its lips.
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