By Brian Carnell
Friday, September 20, 2002
M. Shahid Alam is a professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston who maintains in a CounterPunch article that he is the victim of a smear campaign designed to make it appear as if he supports Palestinian suicide bomb attacks. The problem is Alam does support Palestinian suicide attacks.
As Alam notes, this all began when he decided to write an essay in support of a noxious academic boycott against Israel. Started in Europe, the boycott called on Western academic institutions to refuse to have any contacts or dealings with Israeli academic institutions. In the most celebrated case of this, one European journal fired two Israeli professors simply because of their nationality.
Alam writes of the fallout over his essay in support of the academic boycott,
There was worse to come. On September 3, the Jerusalem Post carried a report on my essay, without any mention its title or substance, under the heading, "US Prof Justifies Palestinian Terror Attacks." This provoked more angry emails to me, the Chair of Economics, and some others at Northeastern University.. . .
On September 5, taking the cue from the Post, the Herald published another malicious and sensational report on my essay. It was headlined, "Prof Shocks Northeastern with Defense of Suicide Bombers." It claimed that my article "sent shock-waves through the Fenway campus yesterday," but quoted only one of my colleagues. This report too made no mention of the title or substance of my essay, justifiably raising suspicions about the reporter's motive.. . .
It is curious how these reports had inverted the objective of my essay. My essay made a case for an academic boycott, a quintessentially non-violent act, as an alternative to the recent Palestinian acts of desperation. By showing greater solicitude for the Palestinians' desperate plight, I argued, international civil society could give hope to this beleaguered people, and persuade them to act with greater patience in the face of Israel's brutal military Occupation. The Post and Herald had twisted a moral case for non-violent action into justification for terror.
In his essay for CounterPunch, Alam does not quote from his essay either, so here is what he wrote in his July 31, 2002 essay, The Academic Boycott of Israel,
Mr. Leonid Ryzhik, of the University of Chicago, argues that academic boycott "indirectly encourages the [Palestinian] terrorist murderers in their deadly deeds." Does he mean to say that this boycott "indirectly encourages" the Palestinian resistance; and anything that questions, delays or weakens the extension of the Zionist project to the West Bank and Gaza must be challenged, and neutralized. It must be affirmed in the face of such posturing that resistance is a right of the Palestinians, as it was of all colonized peoples who faced dispossession. Of necessity, dispossession is implemented by force-unless this project is aided by pathogens; and, it follows, that resistance to the colonizer must be violent.
The question is not, why do the Palestinians resist, or why do they resist by violent means? There is a different question before world conscience. Why have we for fifty years abandoned the Palestinians to fight their battles alone, beleaguered by a colonizer whom they cannot fight alone? Why have we allowed the Palestinians to be battered, exiled from their lands, herded into camps-in villages and towns that have been turned into concentration camps-exposed to the mercy of a colonizer who freely draws upon the finances, political support and military arsenal of the world's greatest power? In despair, marginalized, pauperized, facing extinction as a people, if the Palestinians now use the only defense they have-to weaponize their death-who is to blame?
And if now world conscience shows the first signs of acting on behalf of the Palestinians, we can hope that this will mitigate the Palestinian's deep despair. When the young Palestinians learn that academics the world over, that young people on campuses in Britain, France, Canada, and United States are stirring on their behalf, this will convince them that they are not alone; and once they are so convinced, they may be persuaded to renounce their acts of desperation. The academic boycott of Israel uses non-violent means, it leverages moral suasion, to reduce the violence of the colonizer as well as the colonized.
I fail to see why Alam wrote a defense of Palestinian "resistance" and then is upset that people interpret this as justifying Palestinian terrorism. Had Alam wanted to make it clear that violent resistance was permissible and understandable but the terroristic targeting of civilians was not, then he could easily have inserted this. But, in fact, he didn't. In his CounterPunch essay complainig that he has been portrayed as a supporter of terrorism, Alam never bothers to actually say that he isn't.
Not surprising given his views on suicide bombers from yet another article in CounterPunch criticizing an op-ed by the New York Time's Thomas Friedman (emphasis added),
But there is another way of posing the question that would shift the onus to the Israelis. A quick glance at the recent history of settler colonialism reveals that there have been many episodes, both long and short, of occupation and resistance to occupation, but it is not too often that the oppressed have employed 'suicide' bombing against their occupiers. Is it mere happenstance, then, that every time the Israelis occupy another people-whether it is Southern Lebanon, Gaza and West Bank-they have had to face 'suicide' bombers? Might the fault lie in the occupiers, and not the occupied?
The Palestinians must account for another sin of omission. They had the option of engaging in nonviolent resistance-à la Ghandhi-that would have won them an independent Palestine 30 years ago. But, instead, they chose the path of violent resistance. Oops! I mean, 'suicide' bombing. Mr. Friedman writes as if Israeli occupation had somehow earned the right to expect Gandhian nonviolence from its victims-as if this was part of the divine package which gave them exclusive rights to historic Palestine. . . .
I have been placing 'suicide' in 'suicide' bombings within quotes. This requires an explanation. The Oxford English dictionary defines a suicide as "one who dies by his own hand." This definition is clearly inadequate. In the absence of a motive, we cannot distinguish between (i) a person who takes his life because he wants to die and (ii) a person who takes his life because this will save her soul-or her honor, her family, her friends, her community, or her country. The first suggests suicide; the latter is ordinarily regarded as a martyr. Judge for yourself then whether the Palestinians are suicides or martyrs.. . .
Use your imagination again. Consider a different history of Germany and Europe-one without the Second World War, without the Final Solution, with-out Auschwitz-all because a lone Jewish 'suicide' bomber in 1938 had penetrated the inner chambers of Nazi leadership and blown them to smithereens while also killing herself. Would this 'suicide' bomber-and her likes-also be regarded as a threat to all civilization? What would Mr. Friedman say about her?
And yet Alam is complaining that newspapers characterized him as a supporter of Palestinian terrorism? I think he might want to look in the mirror a bit more.
Sources:
Lies of Desperation: Answering Thomas Friedman by M. Shahid Alam, Counter Punch, April 3, 2002.
The Academic Boycott of Israel. M. Shahid Alam, Counter Punch, July 31, 2002.
A New Theology of Power. M. Shahid Alam, Counter Punch, September 16, 2002.
