US and Iran: Exceptionalism, not Imperialism, in Extraordinary Times

Sixty years after the CIA-orchestrated coup d'état that replaced democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh with a military government that effectively allowed Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi to rule as the absolute monarch until the United States could not prevent his overthrow in 1979, a 15-minute phone call broke the 34-year freeze in relations between two very influential players on the global stage. On Friday, September 27, 2013, US President Barack Hussein Obama's call to newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani marks a momentous occasion that, in concert with the dramatic saga that brought about the UN resolution on the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons program, should assuage any doubts that Obama is, indeed, creating the change in US foreign policy that the world had expected from him.

Exceptionalism

In his address the UN General Assembly, Obama asserted US exceptionalism – and in a sense, he's right.

By virtue of its military superiority, its economic power, and its cultural influence, it can't be denied that the United States is exceptional. The world has looked to the United States for inspiration and leadership since its constitution became the benchmark for all codified constitutions established by every free republic to come. In 1886, the people of France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States to celebrate not only freedom as a republican value but also the promise of the expansion of freedom that Lincoln's victory in the Civil War represented. During the two world wars, the Allies in Europe called upon the United States to help them stand up against imperialist expansion. Today, the cultural reach is global, as billions of people throughout the world enjoy the music, entertainment, and technology generated by the United States.

Of course, the idea of exceptionalism is cringe-worthy when used with a sense of arrogance and entitlement; and of course, outside of US borders, the people of the world are fond of neither the insidious way that the US government has used them as pawns in its global power plays nor the annoying way that people from the United States tend treat them dismissively.

But exceptionalism doesn't necessarily have to take on that connotation when simply alluding to the realities that the United States, like every great world power that has had its moment in history, has exceptional qualities that are what brought it to prominence on the world stage and that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been the world's single superpower.

Because isolationism is not an option in today's globalized world, in its role as a world leader, the United States has certain obligations to the international community; and there is some merit to the argument that those obligations include taking on the responsibility of enforcing what Obama called at the UN "a prohibition whose origins are older than the United Nations itself." Of all the atrocities of war, the use of chemicals as weapons of war is the atrocity that has engendered the deepest abhorrence, and it has the longest legacy of societies coming together to prevent it. So, despite all other moral crimes ever committed by the United States, the president's decision to enforce the chemical weapons ban carries exactly the kind of moral authority that the president of the United States should be exhibiting. The wisdom of using bombs to do this is what is questionable, not the mandate for the leader of the international community to enforce its ban.

Thankfully, whether by shrewd plan or sheer serendipity, Obama has succeeded, without using military force, in ensuring that chemical weapons are now far less likely to be used by either the Syrian rebels or the Assad regime. The threat of force by the most powerful military in the universe, combined with dogged behind-the-scenes diplomacy, has brought the much-needed engagement of international actors, and this engagement could lead to real solutions for the people of Syria – a prospect that is all the more hopeful as the opening of relations with Iran brings that country into the process, as well.

Not imperialism

While embracing exceptionalism, Obama rejected the notion of US imperialism in his speech at the UN, at once acknowledging the past and stressing a change in direction when he mentioned "a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries." He referred to the idea of "American empire" as "useful propaganda," which, he pointed out, "isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion" – and again, to a large degree, he's right.

Public opinion in the United States has demanded a contraction of military intervention as well as far more accountability in everything from Obama's drone policy, to NSA spying, to the latest round of free trade agreement negotiations – all of which mark a decided turn away from support for the use of the nation's exceptional power to ensure its own interests whenever and wherever it can with impunity.

Still, the United States has a long ways to go to throw off the yoke of the imperialist bully, especially with the constant drip of NSA leaks inflaming passion against the US government both at home and abroad.

The Snowden Affair has made for good political theater in Latin America, although in reality, it changes little, as the trend away from US influence was already well established. Having failed to progress out of its paternalistic Cold War mentality toward the region, the United States has squandered the opportunity to build stronger economic relationships, leaving a void that other world powers – notably, China and Iran – have been quick to fill. And along with a sea change in attitudes toward drug policies sweeping the hemisphere, Mexico and Central America are beginning to rethink their militarized policing, which will bring a waning of the US' heavy hand in the name of security in the region. The age of US imperialism in Latin America has quietly slipped away.

Surprisingly, it is from the very heart of the Middle East, in the very midst of tumultuous times, in the very birthplace of CIA interventionism, that another sea change is occurring. On June 15, 2013, the Iranian people elected Hassan Rouhani as president with more than 72 percent of the vote. Having been the chief negotiator on Iran's nuclear program for 16 years before resigning under Ahmadinejad's hard-line presidency, he has wasted no time in setting a new course toward easing tensions in the region and opening up diplomacy with the West. At home and at events during his historic visit to New York, such as Rouhani's talk before the Council on Foreign Relations, he has continually stressed the danger of extremism, pledging to establish Iran as a stabilizing influence in the troubled region – particularly in regard to Syria and Afghanistan.

While pointing to the source of suspicion and mistrust that has haunted Iranians over the past 60 years – US imperialism at its worse – Rouhani, like Obama, has made it clear that he is determined to move forward. Like Obama, he faces great challenges from the opposition within his own country. But, with the will of the people solidly behind him, through his program of moderation and confidence building, these two world leaders now have the extraordinary chance to usher in a new age of international cooperation.

Javier Sicilia Speaks Poetry to Power

Mexican poet and founder of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity Javier Sicilia was in New York City on Friday, 7 September, where he made a short speech that's referencing of several other popular poets before getting to the inventors of peaceful revolution – King and Gandhi – or any mention of the movements that they inspired proves once again just how much the world needs our poets.

The speech is titled Let's give peace a chance, words that have been cached in cliché in a culture that refuses to take peace seriously, but which deserve much more than a knowing nod of nostalgic agreement. They are words that, when de-compartmentalized from that place in our brains where we store warm, fuzzy memories of grandma's cinnamon rolls and cozy family gatherings around the Christmas tree and our innocent first kisses the words to our favorite feel-good songs, hold the power of an idea unleashed from the confines of the ideal, a dove released from its bondage as a symbol of unattainable, perfect peace, freed to bring the reality of peace down to earth as a participant of an ecosystem where every creature innovates and creates its own niche.

In the individualist culture of the United States, the reality that many times, relationships are symbiotic in nature is washed over by the adrenalin rush of competition for resources. In the same way, the vision of an apocalyptic Mad Max future grabs the imagination, denying the chance for peace from being heard above the gripping din.

What this Mexican poet is seeking to do is what all poetry can do, if only we would let it. With the enduring strength of careful language, poetry serves as a connective force, connecting and reconnecting people, places, and ideas through past, present, and future, vanquishing the myth of separation with which those who hold so much power in our societies veil the truth of our ability to refuse to accept their version of the way things must be.

It was the words of Jim Morrison with which Javier Sicilia introduced the deeply Mexican notion that the dead can, by invitation, be with us in a meaningful way. After quoting that martyr of the culture wars, he began his speech in New York: 

For all the dead that this absurd war against drugs has left, but have come with us from far away; for the dead that this terrorist imbecility of the 11th of September left behind, and whom at the side of these victims of violence have been summoned here by the verses of Morrison to “anoint the earth”, “to announce the sadness” that overcomes us and to pray with John Lennon to “give peace a chance”, I ask for a minute of silence.

Every year, at the beginning of November, Mexicans summon their dead – to home altars and cemeteries – with such enticements as golden cempoalxochitl (Mexican marigolds), candles, pulque or tequila, sugar skulls, pan de muertos (sweet bread of the dead), and bowls of comforting atole.

Javiar Sicilia brought this stubborn Mexican refusal to deny the sadness of memory on a caravan of care that passed along the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, then headed up through the heart of Texas, over to New Orleans, on through Jackson, Miss., Montgomery, Ala., Atlanta and Fort Benning, Ga., and then up to Chicago and over to New York City, to end up in Washington, D.C.

The Caravan for Peace with Dignity and Justice has sought to expose the roots of drug violence in Mexico, raise awareness about the devastating effects of the War on Drugs particularly upon communities of color in the United States, and to inspire civil society to demand changes in the priorities of the most powerful democracy on earth.

To expose, raise awareness, and inspire – this is what poets and other thought-provokers do, and it is through words that the legacy of an individual's actions, which can only take place at one moment in time and in one location at a time, can be shared through space and time. The Caravan certainly made its enduring marks on the lives of many people who had the good fortune of being in each place and time that the pilgrims of peace stopped to expose, raise awareness, and inspire.

Now is when poetry can serve as a mnemonic device for our consciences to remember to move forward and take action rather than allowing ourselves to revert to our more comfortable, compartmentalized, disconnected, and forgetful cultural habits.

Ojalá podamos merecer que nos llamen locos, como han sido llamadas locas las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, por cometer la locura de negarnos a olvidar en los tiempos de la amnesia obligatoria.

If only we could merit being called crazy, as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been called crazy, for committing the insanity of neglecting to forget in times of obligatory amnesia.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, in his poem, los caminos del viento, The Ways of the Wind, reminds us that to forget our past is to allow others reshape our reality. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are the women who have been gathering in front of the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires every Thursday for decades, ever since their children were abducted and "disappeared" by their government during Argentina's disgraceful Dirty War.

Eduardo Galeano's ode to the courage of hope ends with the words, 

no tienen fronteras los mapas del alma ni del tiempo,

neither maps of the soul nor of time have frontiers.

With these words, he connects souls across space and time, just as Javier Sicilia's caravan journey maps connections between souls across space and time. Along the U.S.-Mexican border, the fates of the citizens of two nations are inextricably tied together. And their fates are strung together with those of Indigenous Americans in New Mexico and African Americans in the agricultural South and the soldiers from throughout Latin America who have come to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga., to learn how to wage war against the illegality of drugs and uphold the illusion of security in their countries and more African Americans and Mexican Americans and so many more people from less developed countries who have come without official sanction to the industrial North to try to forge a better life.

In New York City, Javier Sicilia spoke, as he did in each place where he spoke, in the language of the place. To introduce his Caravan to people in the United States, he began his essay for the Huffington Post by quoting Bob Dylan. In Atlanta, he summoned collective memories of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Maya Angelou. In Chicago, he invoked the image of Al Capone as a reminder of prohibition's failures. For New Yorkers, John Lennon's words struck the chord that blends together all of the irrational ironies of violence that the Movement for Peace is all about.

And just as Javier Sicilia speak through the voices of others, so did John Lennon voice idea of imagining peace expressed by Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, who understood that life is little more than how we choose to face our fears. His poem, En dag om året, Just Once a Year, begins: 

En dag om året borde alla låtsas,    

att döden vilar i ett vitt schatull.

Inga stora illusioner krossas

och inge skjuts för fyra dollar skull.

Why don't we make believe just once a year

that Death has drowned beneath the deep blue sea!

No one's life is undermined by fear,

and no one shoots his neighbor for a fee.

The Mirror of History

The story about medical experimentation in Guatemala is a harrowing reminder of our past, yet our reaction to this story is itself a snapshot of where our society is today, and I see a welcome image of hope for Progressives, in this time when disillusionment and disappointment seem to be almost overwhelming.

Amy Goodman's October 5 interview with Susan Reverby, the medical historian who recently brought to light the unpublished documentation of the project, puts the incident in perspective. As an authority on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, she is very familiar with the social attitudes of those decades when the lives of some were simply and plainly not considered to be as worthy of respect as the lives of others. In the case of Tuskegee, poor black sharecroppers in Georgia who were found to already have syphilis were studied, without being told that it was syphilis that they suffered from, they were lied to about the nature of their medical treatment, and they were never treated for their disease, even after penicillin was found to be an effective cure.

The study in Guatemala is even more egregious due to the fact that individuals who were institutionalized in a prison and in an insane asylum, as well as some army soldiers, were actually infected with syphilis, surely without their knowledge, although what they were told was a detail that had been left out of these newly discovered physician's notes. And even in the atmosphere that allowed for the Tuskegee experiment to go on for forty years, from 1932 to 1972, Susan Reverby points to a comment in a letter referring to a statement by the surgeon general himself, showing that he knew that it would not be ethically acceptable in the United States, as the most shocking aspect of her discovery.

On one hand, it is difficult to acknowledge the wrongs of our nation's past. Many would prefer not to think about them. When Glenn Beck spoke of “restoring honor” to the United States during his rally in Washington, for example, his statement rang of the personal experience of a man who seeks to put his own past behind him. He said,

“Let's be honest. If you look at history, America has been both terribly good and terribly bad. It has been both, but to concentrate on the bad instead of learning from the bad and repairing the bad and then looking to the good that is still out in front of us within our reach— We have a choice today. We can either let those scars crush us or redeem us.”

When Glenn Beck looks into the mirror of history, while acknowledging the bad, he cannot bear to dwell for long on those painful aspects. Assuming that what has worked for him in his own life will work for the nation, he turns toward the language of religious redemption, seeing those shameful instances as a part of a necessary spiritual path, as all-too-human lapses, their lessons being those of faith rather than of seeking deeper self-awareness. And whenever Progressives are characterized as the “blame America first” crowd, this abject refusal to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our collective actions, particularly in the “America” that stretches all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the colossal societal disconnect is strengthened.

On the other hand is the hope that surrounds this story. I perceive this moment to be a brief flash of the hope that Barack Obama campaigned upon, the hope that progress brings. That we find this story to be so horrifying, that the president's immediate apology to the nation of Guatemala is seen nearly universally as the appropriate response, shows that the rate of progress is, like the growth of a child, slow and nearly imperceptible to those who are witness to it day in and day out, yet society is moving forward.

Furthermore, by facing up to the attitudes that decided that it was acceptable to do in Guatemala what was not acceptable to do in the United States, the story links us to other past actions that our nation has taken in the Americas that merit attention, if we want to find realistic answers to problems such as illegal immigration or improve our relations within the rest of America. Rather than fearing that our scars will crush us, or refusing to accept blame beyond doing so in seeking redemption, we must study our image in that mirror in order to link our past actions to issues that continue to affect us today.

Walt Long's novel, The Travelers, achieves this goal. It is a story about the smuggling of illegal immigrants through a community in southern New Mexico that not only humanizes all of the factions involved, but also makes the link between the social realities that so many of the travelers are escaping in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the part that the United States has played in helping to create those situations. This novel evenhandedly depicts the complexities of a vexing issue, offering not answers, but respect for the fact that it is as complex as the human character is.

Similarly, the past year's unveiling of classified State Department documents from the Nixon era merit close examination, as they go a long way in explaining how the brutal dictatorships that gripped the Southern Cone region of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay were the results of a concentrated effort by the United States to weaken social movements that were becoming legitimized through democratic processes, thus threatening the veracity of the neo-liberal narrative.

“History does not refer merely […] to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it, the past, with us. And we’re ‘unconsciously controlled’ in so many ways, that history, the past, is present now in all we do.” - James Baldwin

On Zeitgeist

My answer to the question, "Have you seen Zeitgeist?"

Yes, I have now seen Zeitgeist, after having put it off for a long time because I had read the transcript. But it was important to see the effects of the whole sound and visual deal to find out why this movie seems to be so persuasive to so many people.

While I agree with many of the basic sentiments, like how we are all connected, and greed and war and war-profiteering are evil, and organized religion is little more than a power trip, I have to say that this movie is completely misguided. It really bothers me that most people are uninformed about Egyptian mythology, and so they will simply accept the assertions that Horus was born to a virgin mother, was the sun god, died and was resurrected three days later, and on and on. But all you have to do is look up Horus on any internet source you like (other than those connected with the movie - don't be a lazy sourcer!), and you will find that he was the god of the sky, that Isis was by no stretch of the imagination a virgin, and that nearly all of the other connections made in the opening segment are tenuous, at best.

You don't even have to look on the internet - just watch for the three stars of Orion's belt in the night sky (you will have to be up before dawn in the southern hemisphere to see it at this time of year (the end of May), while up north, you people with your long summer days will have to wait for a few months to see it at all). Or better yet, do yourself the favor of purchasing a star chart, so you can connect with the big wide wonderful universe. You will not find a constellation named "The Tree Kings," but you will see that Orion's belt ALWAYS points to Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky. (This star is useful, if it is visible, for figuring out if another bright star is really a planet. If the "star" in question is brighter than Sirius, which is easy to find - those three stars are ALWAYS pointing at it - then, by golly, that ain't no star! This would all be so much easier if the little buggers would stop moving around all the time.) Then, once you have become a junior astronomer, you might reconsider the meaning of statements like this:

"The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the 3 brightest stars in Orion's Belt. These 3 bright stars are called today what they were called in ancient times: The Three Kings. The Three Kings and the brightest star, Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on December 25th. This is why the Three Kings "follow" the star in the east, in order to locate the sunrise -- the birth of the sun."

Really - when it is Canis Major, the Big Dog that follows Orion, the Hunter in their continual march from east to west across the night sky - are they Sirius?!


I am in complete agreement that Christianity is a myth-based belief system that borrows many ideas from other belief systems. Joseph Campbell wrote about this decades ago, without diminishing the power of these myths to enhance people's lives in positive ways. Unfortunately, the movie develops its own set of myths, presented as facts, to establish another belief system: that because Christianity has been used as an instrument of control, is based on myths that some claim to be "truths," and often demands blind submission to its authority, so, too, is the government doing the same thing in regard to 9/11 and to the banking system and the education system and the secret North American Union, and so on.

As to the 9/11 stuff - the Bush administration had a lot of shit to cover up, but pulling off the 9/11 attacks was not one of them. What they covered up was their total incompetence and/or having allowed the attacks to happen to fit their agenda. But that's all the credit that I am willing to give those douche bags. All of the supposed proof that the official story is false can be explained by regular old physics, from the way that the Twin Towers, building 7, and the Pentagon were constructed and affected, to the crash site in Pennsylvania, to the capacity of the amateur pilots to pull off the maneuvers, to the fact that airplane aluminum melts...

The 9/11 conspiracies are not just a matter of not understanding physics, but also of ignoring all of the eye-witness accounts that disagree with their assertions, especially all of the people who saw the airplane strike the Pentagon, and all of the people who immediately went to the crash sites in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon to try to help in whatever rescue operation there might have been, who saw mangled airplane parts and the devastating horrors of these unusually high-speed impacts.

The eye-witness accounts that they do focus on, which are used for emotional emphasis in the movie, are the accounts of explosions being heard by people in and near the World Trade Center. But the trauma, anxiety, and stress, in addition to what is referred to as "reconstructive memory," which is the brain's mechanism for trying to put things into context, can greatly affect memories of an event witnessed at close-range. Add to these factors the power of suggestion and the probability that there were some huge explosions involved in the chaotic catastrophic failure of these humongous towers, and the jump to the conclusion that there must have been explosives planted in the basement must be further questioned.

Then, the third section goes back to just making stuff up out of thin air - misquoting, taking things out of context, failing to point out that Nazis and other antisemitic types believed that the Jews ran a secret international banking cartel, which was their basis for fear and loathing of "international bankers," and flat out getting it wrong that the gold standard was abolished in 1933, when this didn't happen until 1971, for just a few examples.

I am really concerned about all of this because I keep meeting people who believe every word of this movie. It is so strange because I wrote a book, long before I ever heard of Zeitgeist, that I have been trying to get published, which begins with the idea that fear-mongering can be so persuasive, and ends up grappling with how our understandings, or rather, misunderstandings, of cause and effect are at the base of our belief systems - and here is this movie that takes the same ideas and uses them to create fear of the government as an agent of a secret cabal (so secret that it can't be proven to exist) and a whole cause-and-effect scenario of its own. What really bothers me is that anyone who disagrees with any of it is considered to be under the influence of the evil powers that be - it's exactly like how Christians will argue that ideas that oppose their belief system are the work of the devil, who is just trying to confuse us and turn us away from God.

HERE is a good debunking website, if you want to get another opinion. And HERE is an awesome article about real corporate greed by Matt Taibbi, who is also the author of The Great Derangement, and he has debated Griffith, who is in the movie. Additionally, I wrote a long essay titled, Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: Lessons from History, that, in part, looks into how fascism came to be in Germany, with frightening similarities to what is happening in the United States right now. Racism (which is at the base of this North American Union myth, and is very similar to how the Jewish banking cabal conspiracy was at the base of the Holocaust), fear-mongering, and a crisis of confidence in the government were all major factors, all of which this movie plays right into.

I also write a lot about how different societies deal with complexity, and how Latin American culture deals with this so much better than US culture, due to complex histories and other sensibilities. They know what real tyranny is, and have often had very personal experience with US-sponsored greed and hypocrisy. We just found out the other day that our landlord was imprisoned and tortured with electric probes during the dictatorship - and it is well documented that the US supported all of the dictatorships in Latin America, due to fear of socialism, plain and simple. He is very skeptical of his government as well as of the US government, yet he is still a patriotic Argentine. He said simply that every experience in life has its lessons to teach. He is not a bitter man. He is the opposite - very kind and gentle and thoughtful. Life goes on, and he is still a socialist, in the spirit of the self-sufficient individualist that so defines Patagonian heritage. And this is my whole point: that he can be an individualist AND a socialist. He can be an atheist AND a spiritual person. He can see things in terms that are more complicated than "You're either with us or against us." This is what I mean when I speak of dealing with complexity, and I'm afraid that this Zeitgeist movie encourages people to fall right into George Bush's simplistic thinking pattern in a world that is far from black and white.

So do not think that just because I do not agree with what the movie promotes I therefore believe all of the lies of the US government or that it is somehow inherently good. It isn't that simple. Nothing is ever simple. I don't believe what the movie says, AND I don't believe everything the US government says. I even believe that the Bush administration might like for people to think that they were involved in 9/11 in order to distract from their real crimes and muddy the waters of what issues citizens should really be concerned about. And if the "logic" of this movie is followed through, it points to the existence of a One World Order, to which the response is so often to run away and hide, giving up on the democratic process on the premise that individuals can have no effect, whatsoever, against the secret uber-rulers. It's called "silent consent," and the powers that actually do exist are diggin' it.

One of the things that I love most about Latin America is that people do not take their democracy for granted - they get out on the street and make their voices heard and struggle for what they believe in, instead of accepting that they have no power against huge financial and military interests, which is what this movie basically comes down to. Just live your life, and don't pay any attention to the men behind the curtain. It is supposedly a wake-up call, but to what effect? And if their concerns are so legitimate, why do they lie and make shit up - including that they don't make any money selling their DVD - to make their point? Inquiring minds want to know!

letter from Gaza Friends

End of an Odyssey

By Jeff Halper

Now, a few days after my release from jail in the wake of my trip to Gaza, I'm posting a few notes to sum things up.

First, the mission of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege proved a success beyond all expectations. Our reaching Gaza and leaving has created a free and regular channel between Gaza and the outside world. It has done so because it has forced the Israeli government to make a clear policy declaration: that it is not occupying Gaza and therefore will not prevent the free movement of Palestinians in and out (at least by sea). (Israel's security concerns can easily be accommodated by instituting a technical system of checks similar to those of other ports.) Any attempt on the part of Israel to backtrack on this - by preventing ships in the future from entering or leaving Gaza with goods and passengers, including Palestinians - may be immediately interpreted as an assertion of control, and therefore of Occupation, opening Israel to accountability for war crimes before international law, something Israel tries to avoid at all costs. Gone is the obfuscation that has allowed Israel to maintain its control of the Occupied Territories without assuming any responsibility: from now on, Israel is either an Occupying Power accountable for its actions and policies, or Palestinians have every right to enjoy their human right of traveling freely in and out of their country. Israel can no longer have it both ways. Not only did our two little boats force the Israel military and government to give way, then, they also changed fundamentally the status of Israel's control of Gaza.

When we finally arrived in Gaza after a day and a half sail, the welcome we received from 40,000 joyous Gazans was overwhelming and moving. People sought me out in particular, eager it seemed to speak Hebrew with an Israeli after years of closure. The message I received by people of all factions during my three days there was the same: How do we ("we" in the sense of all of us living in their country, not just Palestinians or Israelis) get out of this mess? Where are WE going? The discourse was not even political: what is the solution; one-state, two-state, etc etc. It was just common sense and straightforward, based on the assumption that we will all continue living in the same country and this stupid conflict, with its walls and siege and violence, is bad for everybody. Don't Israelis see that? people would ask me.

(The answer, unfortunately, is "no." To be honest, we Israeli Jews are the problem. The Palestinians years ago accepted our existence in the country as a people and are willing to accept ANY solution -- two states, one state, no state, whatever. It is us who want exclusivity over the "Land of Israel" who cannot conceive of a single country, who cannot accept the national presence of Palestinians (we talk about "Arabs" in our country), and who have eliminated by our settlements even the possibility of the two-state solution in which we take 80% of the land. So it's sad, truly sad, that our "enemies" want peace and co-existence (and tell me that in HEBREW) and we don't. Yeah, we Israeli Jews want "peace," but in the meantime what we have -- almost no attacks, a feeling of security, a"disappeared" Palestinian people, a booming economy, tourism and ever-improving international status -- seems just fine. If "peace" means giving up settlements, land and control, why do it? What's wrong with the status quo? If it's not broken, don't fix it.)

When in Gaza I also managed to see old friends, especially Eyad al-Sarrajof the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whom I visited in his office. I also received honorary Palestinian citizenship, including a passport,which was very meaningful to me as an Israeli Jew.

When I was in Gaza everyone in Israel -- including the media who interviewed me -- warned me to be careful, to watch out for my life. Aren't you scared? they asked. Well, the only time I felt genuine and palpable fear during the entire journey was when I got back to Israel. I went from Gaza through the Erez checkpoint because I wanted to make the point that the siege is not only by sea. On the Israeli side I was immediately arrested, charged with violating a military order prohibiting Israelis from being in Gaza and jailed at the Shikma prison in Ashkelon.

In my cell that night, someone recognized from the news. All night I was physically threatened by right-wing Israelis -- and I was sure I wouldn't make it till the morning. Ironically, there were three Palestinians in my cell who kind of protected me, so the danger was from Israelis, not Palestinians, in Gaza as well as in Israel. (One Palestinian from Hebron was in jail for being illegally in Israel; I was in jail for being illegally in Palestine.) As it stands, I'm out on bail. The state will probably press charges in the next few weeks, and I could be jailed for two or so months. I now am a Palestinian in every sense of the word: On Monday I received my Palestinian citizenship, on Tuesday I was already in an Israeli jail.

Though the operation was a complete success, the siege will only be genuinely broken if we keep up the movement in and out of Gaza. The boats are scheduled to return in 2-4 weeks and I am now working on getting a boat-load of Israelis.

My only frustration with what was undoubtedly a successful operation was with the fact that Israelis just don't get it - and don't want to get it. The implications of our being the strong party and the fact that the Palestinians are the ones truly seeking peace are too threatening to their hegemony and self-perceived innocence. What I encountered in perhaps a dozen interviews - and what I read about myself and our trip written by "journalists" who never even attempted to speak to me or the others - was a collective image of Gaza , the Palestinians and our interminable conflict which could only be described as fantasy. Rather than inquire about my experiences, motives or views, my interviewers, especially on the mainstream radio, spent their time forcing upon me their slogans and uniformed prejudices, as if giving me a space to explain myself deal[t] a death blow to their tightly-held conceptions.

Ben Dror Yemini of the popular Ma'ariv newspaper called us a "satanic cult." Another suggested that a prominent contributor to the Free Gaza Movement was a Palestinian-American who had been questioned by the FBI, as if that had to do with anything (the innuendo being we were supported, perhaps even manipulated or worse, by "terrorists"). Others were more explicit: Wasn't it true that we were giving Hamas a PR victory? Why was I siding with Palestinian fishermen-gun smugglers against my own country which sought only to protect its citizens? Some simply yelled at me, like an interviewer on Arutz 99. And when all else failed, my interlocutors could always fall back on good old cynicism: Peace is impossible. Jews and Arabs are different species. You can't trust "them." Or bald assertions: They just want to destroy us. Then there's the paternalism: Well, I guess it's good to have a few idealists like you around...

Nowhere in the many interviews was there a genuine curiosity about what I was doing or what life was like in Gaza. No one [was] interested in a different perspective, especially if it challenged their cherished slogans. No one going beyond the old, tired slogans. Plenty of reference, though, to terrorism, Qassam missiles and Palestinian[s] snubbing our valiant efforts to make peace; none whatsoever to occupation, house demolitions, siege, land expropriation or settlement expansion, not to mention the killing, imprisoning and impoverishment of their civilian population. As if we had nothing to do with the conflict, as if we were just living our normal, innocent lives and bad people decided to throw Qassam rockets. Above all, no sense of our responsibility, or any willingness to accept responsibility for the ongoing violence and conflict. Instead just a thoughtless, automatic appeal to an image of Gaza and "Arabs" (we don't generally use the term "Palestinians") that is diametrically opposed to what I've seen and experienced, a slavish repeating of mindless (and wrong) slogans which serve only to eliminate any possibility of truly grasping the situation. In short, a fantasy Gaza as perceived from within a bubble carefully constructed so as to deflect any uncomfortable reality.

The greatest insight this trip has given me is understanding why Israelis don't "get it:" a media comprised by people who should know better but who possess little critical ability and feel more comfortable inside a box created by self-serving politicians than in trying to do something far more creative: understanding what in the hell is going on here. Still, I formulated clearly my messages to my fellow Israelis, and that constitutes the main content of my interviews and talks:

(1) Despite what our political leaders say, there is a political solution to the conflict and there are partners for peace. If anything, we of the peace movement must not allow the powers-that-be to mystify the conflict, to present it as a "clash of civilizations." The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political and as such it has a political solution;

(2) The Palestinians are not our enemies. In fact, I urge my fellow Israeli Jews to disassociate from the dead-end politics of our failed political leaders by declaring, in concert with Israeli and Palestinian peace-makers: We refuse to be enemies. And

(3) As the infinitely stronger party in the conflict and the only Occupying Power, we Israelis must accept responsibility for our failed and oppressive policies. Only we can end the conflict.

Let me end by expressing my appreciation to the organizers of this initiative - Paul Larudee and Greta Berlin from the US, Hilary Smith and Bella from the UK, Vaggelis Pissias, a Greek member of the team who provided crucial material and political input, and Jamal al-Khoudri, an independent member of the PLC from Gaza and head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege and others - plus the wonderful group of participants on the boats and the great communication team that stayed ashore. Special appreciation goes to ICAHD's own Angela Godfrey-Goldstein who played a crucial role in Cyprus and Jerusalem in getting the word out. Not to forget our hosts in Gaza (whose names are on the Free Gaza website) and the tens of thousands of Gazans who welcomed us and shared their lives with us. May our peoples finally find the peace and justice they deserve in our common land.

Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He sailed to Gaza on August 23rd aboard the SS FreeGaza. For more information on the ICAHD, please visit:http://www.icahd.org/.

For more information on the Free Gaza Movement, please visit: http://www.freegaza.org/.

Jeff can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.