X-factor: malcom in the middle east

Jesse Marinoff Reyes ( Jesse Marinoff Reyes Design, Maplewood, N.J.)

Malik Shabazz, aka Malcolm X (1925-1965)

Malcolm X

This issue of the Saturday Evening Post excerpts The Autobiography of Malcolm X (“I’m Talking To You, White Man”) and in photographs chronicles X’s then-current travels in Muslim Africa and the Middle East, his haj to Mecca—his journey of Muslim discovery that would cement his break from The Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad. In five months he would be dead, assassinated on the dais of the Audubon Ballroom. His killers have all since been paroled.

The Saturday Evening Post, September 12, 1964 issue
Photograph: John Launois
Photo Editor: Hank Walker
Art Director: Asger Jerrild
—————————————-

Malcolm X, even today, the resident of Mosque No.7 in Harlem, is an enigmatic mass of contradictions. The boilerplate public rhetoric peppered with cheap populism the dangling red meat tactics not foreign to GOP contenders. His antipathy for integrationist movements despite their inevitability was a sort of reverse racism to protect the black gene pool. Not every mob lynch candidate gets to discuss mutual values of segregation with the KKK. His public denunciation of Israel- he was apparently receiving money from Egypt’s Nassar- conflicted with a private side revealing a more complex understanding of people, context and culture that de-constructed the facade and problems that arise when race and class are mixed. Given his support for Goldwater in the 1964 election because he opposed the Civil Rights Act would he have supported a two state solution between Islamic and Jewish culture in Palestine? It appears time and circumstances would have forced Malcolm X to reconsider and posit his neo-socialist template within something approaching the solution when all else has been exhausted.


Malcolm X :…The number one weapon of 20th century imperialism is zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel. The ever-scheming European imperialists wisely placed Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders and also divide the Africans against the Asians. Zionist Israel’s occupation of Arab Palestine has forced the Arab world to waste billions of precious dollars on armaments, making it impossible for these newly independent Arab nations to concentrate on strengthening the economies of their countries and elevate the living standard of their people….Read More:http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12385

From an interesting interview just published. It makes sense, but when I read it, I can’t stop thinking of Rabbit Redux-John Updike- reacting to blacks moving into his neighborhood in Pennsylvania.

SPIEGEL: Do you want to give up the 1967 borders which have been the basis of all the peace plans?

Nusseibeh: It is extremely hard for the most imaginative of us to see how to work out a redrawing of the map in order to give us, t


alestinians, East Jerusalem as capital. But secondly, there are the Israeli settlers. Can you take away half a million people? No, you cannot. Nothing is impossible, mathematically speaking. But we are talking about politics, and in politics not everything is always possible.

SPIEGEL: So we should admit to ourselves that the two-state solution is dead?

Nusseibeh: Mathematically speaking, a two-state solution is an excellent solution. It causes minimum pain and it is accepted by a majority on both sides. Because of this, we should have brought it into existence a long time ago. But we did not manage to do so.

SPIEGEL: Who is to blame for that?

Nusseibeh: First of all, it took Israel a long time to accept that there is a Palestinian people. It took us, the Palestinians, a long time to accept that we should recognize Israel as a state. The problem is that history runs faster than ideas. By the time the world woke up to the fact that the two-state solution is the best solution, we had hundreds of thousands Israelis living beyond the Green Line . There is a growing fanaticism on both sides. Today, the pursuit of a two-state solution looks like the pursuit of something inside a fantasy bubble.

---RON ENGLISH: It was similar to painting this squatted school in the East Village in the 1980's. The police had the building surrounded and they threatened to shoot me when I climbed out onto a second story ledge to paint a mural. It was also a bit like painting the Berlin Wall.--- Read More:http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2007/12/jamoeblog/santa-s-ghetto-bethlehem-2007.html

SPIEGEL: What are the alternatives?

Nusseibeh: The final political form doesn’t matter that much. The important thing is that both sides can agree on it and that the basic principles of equality and freedom are upheld. They can be upheld in the context of one state, of two states, of three states, or in the context of a federation or a confederation of states.

SPIEGEL: In your book you propose that, in a joint single state, Palestinians should be given civil rights, but no political rights. “The Jews could run the country while the Arabs could at last enjoy living in it,” you write. Could that work?

Nusseibeh: Yes, as a transition. Ever since the occupation began, we have been denied basic civic rights, on the promise that a solution or a state is around the corner. For 20 years, we have been promised that. But they should not keep the Palestinians living in the basement until a solution is found. I suggested we be allowed to have basic rights. Allow us freedom of movement, allow us to live and work wherever we want. Allow us to breathe.

SPIEGEL: Where do you want to draw the borders? Along ethnic lines?

Nusseibeh: Yes, I am proposing a federation between Israel and a Palestinian state based upon the demographic placement of populations in the country.

SPIEGEL: And you think Israelis would accept that?

Nusseibeh: Oh yes, they would love that. Israelis who wish for a predominantly Jewish state may well find this a reasonable solution, because even if they somehow manage to get rid of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, which they regard as a demographic burden, they will still feel in the long term that they have a problem with the Arabs in Israel. What I am suggesting is not totally crazy. This idea has always been there. If you go back in Jewish history, you will find Israelis suggesting it right from the beginning, like (the prominent intellectual and cultural Zionist) Martin Buber.

SPIEGEL: What would be the benefit for Palestinians in such a federation with Israel?

Nusseibeh: They would have freedom of movement — they could settle and work wherever they want. That’s a huge benefit. And more than that: According to the classical two-state solution, there is no return of (Palestinian) refugees to Israel, only to the West Bank or Gaza. But in a future map which is solely drawn the way I am proposing it, chunks of what is now Israel could become part of a Palestinian state. And therefore, many refugees might actually be able to go back exactly to their hometowns….

…SPIEGEL: Khaled Mashaal recently said that Hamas should focus on non-violent resistance. Do you believe him?

Nusseibeh: I remember a situation with him, maybe 10 years ago. It was at the height of the second intifada, and it was the first time I was invited for a comment on Al-Jazeera. I tried to explain why suicide attacks were not good, that they would not achieve anything. I did not initially realize that Mashaal was on the other side. He replied that I was talking rubbish and that suicide attacks are great and shooting and killing is great. That is why I got so fed up when I heard him now saying he wants civil resistance. Why is he coming up with this now, after 10 years of having ruined us? The entire wall (ed’s note: the West Bank barrier) would not have been built. Things would be so different today.Read More:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,816491,00.html

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