no issues confronting american society more needs the kind of open discussion that i hope we will have this evening then the realities of the israel palestine conflict and how it has distorted the american reality there is a important price that is more than the monetary price tag there is a moral and a political price tag that has been associated with allow such an oppressive structure to be subsidized and to be complicit through such a long period of time in the subj of a people deprived of its lands and deprived of its rights i wanted to say at the outset that my approach to the israel palestine conflict does not proceed very much from a religious identity or on the basis of my national identity but it really is an expression of my human a dent a day and i think if we want to live on this planet successful way we have t more and more think as humans not as americans not as jews or christians or muslims we have to retain those the pride of those  dentity but they have to be part of a human experience and the more that we allow ourselves to be human the more likely we are to take suffering seriously and when we take suffering seriously we become in evidently committed to the struggle for justice and i really think that's what this whole set of issues in the end is about and reverend lang referred to the importance of courage and compassion and i think that also is really part of what is involved here knots i would say less courage although the hostility to truth seeking in this area sometimes requires at least stubbornness if not courage but what i really think it demands of all of us is responsibility being taking seriously our sense of freedom and opportunity as citizens to engage as we can in trying to solve a situation that has been so productive of violence and suffering and injustice and so i would say responsibility and compassion are what guides my understanding of these issues and the compassion is something very fundamental in our historical space i believe because living in a more and more crowded planet that is fragile and exquisitely complex  we need more and more to be able to think feel and act as if the other is not an object but a subject we have to find ways to have sympathy with the circumstances of the author and if we allow ourselves to do that suffering does become intolerable and in a way i think what seeking the truth leads us to do is to bring us into contact if we allow ourselves with the suffering and therefore to recognize that it is intolerable to live passively in the presence of israeli attack on the american espionage vasso the s s u s s liberty in which thirty four american service people and over one hundred thirty four were killed and over one hundred wounded and this happened a long time ago but it illustrates me the fundamental distortion of our sense of reality that has been fostered by this  very disturbing relationship between our government and the government of israel because this attack on the u s s liberty was a deliberate attack by the israeli government it's been well confirmed including by phone a cia operative's steven green among  the reason for the attack was that this ship was listening to the messages between tel of the and the israeli forces on the egyptian border and the  israeli leadership particularly the military command moshe dyan at the time didn't want the us to hear the israeli plan to attack syria and occupy the golan heights and the us at that time was very nervous about doing anything in syria because that could easily draw the soviet union into the conflict and escalate the situation in ways that were potentially extremely dangerous so there was a motive for attacking the us s liberty and what is i think really extraordinary about this is that israel the supposed close ally would conduct such an attack the ship was well marked and in international waters but what is more i think more revealing and more disturbing is that the american government would suppress the reality of what happened and engage in a cover up all these years that was originally ordered by lyndon johnson the president at the time and even then forty five years ago the u s government was much more willing to allow this criminal sacrifice of its own people then to tell the truth of what happened and why apparently because johnson was worried about a domestic jewish backlash that would result if israel was blamed for the attack but what i what i really think is important about this is the degree to which we need as citizens and as human beings to pursue the truth and we cannot rely on our government a un fortunately to transmit the truth even in such a situation where americans serving as naval officers and seamen were the deliberate objects of lethal attack i think we should all think about what that what that what does that tell us what does that incident tell us about this whole relationship the other  anniversary is the cut which overlaps with what happened to the liberty was the six day war the june hundred sixty seven which again was presented to all of us including myself i must admit as a war in which  israel had no choice but to defend itself against the prospect of aggression it's only now that we are beginning to get ripples of the reality there was an important article by the son of the one of the leading israeli generals at the time  pallid is who wrote and surprisingly was published in the los angeles times and many of you may have seen this article in which he recounts on the basis of very understood that there was no way that the arab neighbors could attack them with any effect but what they did see was an opportunity for expansionism and they saw an opportunity to destroy the military capabilities of their arab neighbors and so what was presented again with the complicity of our government because the intelligence was available to it was a complete faults conception a war of aggression was portrayed as a war of self necessary self defense that israel's survival was at stake and again what this  is very disturbing number of levels but in a certain sense at the most fundamental level because it illustrates that even in these most vital issues of war and peace one cannot trust our own popularly elected government to tell its own citizens the truth in situations where people are dying and being killed one would have hoped that that kind of coverup and dishonesty would be a form of treason that is regarded as a crime against the people but we tolerate only most weenie legitimize  lying by the state for whatever strategic or domestic priorities it may have at a particular time but it tells us that we have to  depend on our own capacities to find the truth and pursue the truth without accepting public manipulation of a sensitive and controversial political reality now against that  in part the rationale for this extraordinary relationship between the united states and israel that  is almost unique in the history of international relations particularly the degree to which the much smaller and weaker partner country is able to manipulate the superpower the superpower has relinquished its own capability to offer criticism however justified it may be from the point of view of american national interests do you realize how radical a posture that is that government is whichever party is in power is intimidated or inhibited from expressing its own understanding of the national interests involved because it doesn't want to offend the pro israeli media congress certain public opinion sectors of public opinion and nothing illustrates this intimidation more vividly i think than the way in which the iran war is being that this build up toward a confrontation with iran the threats that have vigorously have taken have preceded despite the widespread understanding that to carry out these threats would be disastrous economically politically in the region and likely have very adverse military repercussions and my point is not to make that substantive argument so much as to say our elected leaders can't even put that before the people as a  issue they had in fact as some who followed this question may have learned all sixteen american intelligence agencies are agree that the overwhelming evidence points to iran's abandonment of a program to acquire nuclear weapons back in two thousand and three now if you listen to our leaders or read the media you would never know this you would never know that there was any ambiguity about what iran is doing and what it's doing is exactly the opposite of what all these intelligence capability is that we pay billions of dollars to have our informing us about one would have expected it least that president obama would say in talking about the issues involving iran that there was some doubt about whether they were pursuing nuclear weapons but we first see did not only to threaten them but to impose sanctions and we've done all this without even mentioning israel's nuclear weapons arsenal now why is that serious it's serious because it conveys this hip hop what i would call geopolitical hypocrisy that there one set of rules for our friends and another for our adversaries are enemies and this undermines the rule of law because you can't have a system of law in which equals are treated unequally it's not law then it's power and hard power because it's military and what's what is i think deeply troubling beyond what i've already said is that this is a perfectly attractive alternative to this kind of war diplomacy and that is to establish a nuclear free zone in the middle east that would include israel nothing could be better actually for the security of israel among other things then to get rid of these weapons and the threat and all of the governments in the region would x would be grateful for initiatives of this sort that would denuclear encounter that is already generating acute tensions in the region and destabilizing what is already very unstable but my point that is part of my wives or effort to convey my understanding of the israel palestine conflict is that because israel is intent on this threat diplomacy directed at iran the us leadership cannot even mention the fact that there exists an alternative to a military approach even as a coercive sanctions approach is basically trying to force a solution where there's a much better way that's quite obvious to handle issues of this kind so there are two problems here that are both in my view fundament one problem is the inability of the or the let me say this the political unwillingness of our elected leadership to criticize israeli approaches to problems even when we know they're wrong and you realize how radical that is what i'm saying even when we know they're wrong we can at least in public our leaders are unwilling to voice criticism and the other point that i think is equally  us is that israel and the united states more than any other important governments in the world have reduce their understanding of security to a reliance on military options they see security through an optic that biasing policy toward military approaches that have been proven to be among other things unsuccessful over and over again c one of the unlearnt lessons of the post colonial world is that the stronger military side usually over time loses the conflict that was the main lesson of the vietnam war or should have been the us had complete military superiority in the air on sea and land lyndon johnson referred to vietnam as a rate asian power that couldn't stand if they won the war ends and we haven't we haven't been willing to learn that lesson so we keep reinventing technology and doctrines to say next time we can win and the most recent next times have been iraq and afghanistan and only the befuddled observer would call those fichter is in other words weak our leadership and our media have great thinking outside the military box and therefore they don't see these police full alternatives their political imagination is blinkered in such a way as to  incline the response to situations of conflict to select military instruments no matter how dysfunctional they may be and that that's a very disturbing conclusion if it is a correct commentary on how our leadership approaches these issues infrastructure of this unconditionally pro israeli approach that is taken in the by our government  the first is that the jewish people who having endured the holocaust have long been persecuted and that only when jews act from strength can they find security in a world that remains essentially anti semitic and besides that in addition to that sense of permanent victimization is the coupled belief that the only political language that the arab world understands is the language of force so it is that that complementary set of ideas that you that when jews were weak and acted weakly they were persecuted when they are strong and use their power aggressively they are respected and they are david shulman who's an israeli peace activist was reviewing a recent book the crisis of zionism and he put this issue this way i'm from the jaws of death i think that like many other israelis he is in love with such a world and would reinvented even if there was no serious threat from outside and i think that sense of kind of political paranoia coupled with this stereotyping of the arab a dversary that is violent unless faced with greater violence explains a lot about the  mentality that has emerged in israel and what's wrong with it is that it undervalues the relevance of peaceful  diplomacy of the sort i just mentioned in relation to iran it unduly it becomes unduly distrustful of genuine and understanding so i think there are many things wrong wrong with that and it leads to this willingness of the united states over the years  to subsidize such a world view that is excessively militarist and has made made the relationship with israel unnecessarily costly over the years in a number of different ways american jew or story built around this basic truth we are not history's permanent victims it's a choice to be a victim in this world situation that now confronts israel it's not in any sense a destiny or a necessity a second widely endorsed explanation of this special american relationship is that israel is the only democracy in the region which you hear you don't often hear this welcome laughter but you often hear this in tone with great solemnity by our gust leaders but are at least several things wrong with such a generalization at least since the arab spring of two thousand and eleven there are it's no longer accurate to not recognize the tunisia and egypt at least have become a fled fledgling democracies that are operating within a constitutional framework they have problems but they are definitely moving toward establishing democrac after engaging in largely peaceful revolutionary movements and then even before the arab spring turkey had very much  stablished a successful democratic governing system that was also economically extremely robust and pursuing a foreign policy that has made the turkish leader by far the most respected political leader in the world and turkey is the most  and it no longer if it ever fit the facts it certainly no longer fits the reality that israel is the only democratic country in the region and if that israel in many respects doesn't deserve to be called a democratic country not only is it not the only one it may be not one and there are at least twenty six separate laws in israel that discriminate against the palestinian minority living there which is one point five million people or twenty percent of the total population so that it's a very serious thing to claim to again paper over the reality the palestinians are at best second class citizens and in many ways live with increasing vulnerability and under a in an atmosphere where they're not really wanted in that a state that is proclaiming itself to be dedicated to the purification ethnic purification of the population to make it as jewish as possible then it so that you have this discrimination but you also have the consistent defiance of international law and one of the characteristics of a democratic society in the twenty first century is respect for international law and international institutions israel rejected without any reason giving any reasons a nearly unanimous decision of the international court of justice in two thousand and four declaring that the separation wall built on palestinian occupied territory was unlawful should be dismantled and palestinians compensated it's very rare that you get a fourteen to one decision in the international court of justice because that the judges come from all over the world so this was a clear legal case this was not a case that was ambiguous and the you can guess who the one judge was what country the one judge came from i don't need to tell you that but what was interesting again from that picture of how this bias has crept into all corners of our public life the u government rejected the international court of justice is opinion even before israel did it it was so eager to show that it was more pro israel it did the same thing essentially with the g what practices israel engaged in that were inconsistent with international law and from my perspective was quite pro israel overlooking some very important palestinian issues such as the fact that the population of gaza was locked into the combat zone during the war which is very unusual they couldn't palestinians couldn't become refugees they weren't allowed to leave the combat zone and as i say that's both very cruel and naval commandos attacked a humanitarian ship that was trying to bring medical supplies to gaza that were very very much needed and was trying to challenge a blockade that was a form of collective punishment that is itself a crime against humanity prohibited by article thirty three of the fourth geneva convention so and so in a way this defiance of international law and the support that the u s has consistently given to that defiance is one further expression of the degree to which our own foreign policy cannot cannot fulfill its own ideals because of our willingness to exempt israel from criticism despite the fact that we give israel so much military and economic assistance the third of these myth that i wanted to bring to our attention is the kind of hard power myth that israel is the most reliable and important strategic ally possessed by the united states in the in the middle east which is so crucial because of the energy reserves  in my view this is a complete misunderstanding of how positive relations with the region could be established if we pursued a balanced approach to the conflict and exerted pressure on israel to solve the conflict in conformity with respect for the rights of the palestinians under international law and the conditions for a sustainable peace in other words the this idea that israel is so important as a strategic ally is another mis interpretation it seems to me of security in the twenty first century because it's it's  five security with military superiority there's no question that israel is the strongest military power in the region and that is a addition to american military power but the  misunderstanding is the thought that security can be achieved by reliance on military superiority that was true more or less in the nineteenth century and it was true before the colonial anti colonial movement succeeded but it isn't true in the world as it's constituted today and that's why military superiority has generally not produced favorable political outcomes in the major conflicts of the last seventy five years it's can destroy unlimited amounts of physical structures and kill people but it can't control the political out that's not how history is moving in the twenty first century and as long as we try to fight that movement by continuing to  emphasize the military foundations of security we will find ourselves more and more vulnerable the united states has never been stronger in its history relative to the rest of the world from a military perspective yet we've never been more insecure and it's this disjunction that we haven't grasped politically and therefore we haven't acted in a rational fashion in a sense and again the approach to iran is emblematic of that failure to understand both the limits of military superiority and the alternatives to it see both things are important in my view and neither are understood what  m trying above all to express is that the the relationship with israel has reinforced a separate mil turn in our own country that derives from having a permanent war economy that it came after world war two and was persisted during the long cold war and that built up at this bureaucracy this military bureaucracy what eisenhower fifty years ago warned about the military industrial complex but but that notion of a government that has become bureaucratized and in a way that is biased toward  military approaches really is inconsistent with democratic government because it creates this constant sense  of that but what i'm trying to convey is that there is a mentality that has emerged out of this long process of militarisation that has crypt been crippling to our political and moral imaginations it disables us from pursuing a rational and moral course that is compatible with the particular challenges of this new century and the relationship with israel is in a sense the extreme expression of this distortion but it is also a microcosm of a much broader problem that makes it so difficult for the country at this stage to find appropriate solutions for problems at home and abroad i want to just say with before bringing my remarks to an end that there are several important developments in the in relation to the palestinian conflict that should be noticed by people such as yourselves who care about these issues but also remind us that our understanding of this conflict is filtered through an extremely biased media and extremely  one sided government so that all week we don't get the opportunity to think for ourselves about what's happening in this of this the first of these is the almost total disillusionment with international negotiations between  israel and the palestinian authority as a constructive approach to conflict resolution and that disillusionment for different reasons is on both sides both the palestinian side and the israeli side and what is i think important to notice is that time is not neutral the israelis portions of the west bank and to change the demographic balance in east jerusalem in other words the palestinians have lost and the israelis have gained by the absence of progress in these negotiations and therefore it seems like a fool's errand to continue to participate in such a game from the palestinian side and their most respected political leader marwan barghouti recently made a call from his prison cell  get what he said give up the farce of the peace process and and negotiations resort to massive nonviolent resistance and the second development that both follows from and is was really anticipated prior to what barghouti had to say is this been a dramatic turn on the part of palestinian activists including the more radical elements such as h s and islamic jihad toward nonviolence and again what i would emphasize is you'd have to be a reader of online marginal publications to have any awareness of this trend it's not only that for years now the palestinians have essentially given up armed resistance they have retaliated at times when israel has attacked ork assassinated some of their leaders they've  sort of symbolically attacked but their basic political strategy as evidenced in the how they've tried to resist for instance the construction of this unlawful separation wall for years is through peaceful demonstrations that have been carried on courageously over every week for seven years and enduring quite a bit of israeli violence that has produced death and injury they've tried to break the blockade of g blockade that governments and the un have not been able to do anything about and they've initiated the boycott divestment and sanctions campaign which is perhaps impressively of all they've challenge the abuse of imprisonment and administrative detention by prolonged hunger strikes that are completely unreported in the american media we hear endlessly about chinese human rights activists or about those that challenge the situation in tibet and we should hear about them i'm not suggesting that we shouldn't but these hunger strikes that currently there's one palestinian who's a soccer star that's been on a hunger strike for eighty two days which is sixteen days longer than bobby senses famous ira hunger strike back in one thousand nine hundred one and there's a complete blackout in the media  the ira hunger strike back in one thousand nine hundred one was covered on a daily basis see in this part of what the media bias involves is a double a double movement it's a politics of invisibility so far as palestinian initiatives are concerned and palestinian grievances are concerned and  magnification as soon as the palestinians do anything wrong so it creates a unreal appreciation of what th circumstance is the existing circumstances are albert einstein said many bright things but one of them that he said was unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth and i think that we need to avoid that deference to authority to overcome the weight of conventional thinking on these issues to get around the distortions of government policy and to do something to correct for the biased media filter that gives such a selective presentation of the facts that are occurring and if you ask what is truth in this situation i think it is getting to understand the experience and the facts as accurately as possible with as little interference from biased sources as can be achieved and so i think we're all challenge but i feel that the palestinian people have great courage and they do need courage and have expressed that courage and we need to strengthen our compassionate attachment to their struggle thank you very much