Q & A with Palestinian irks some local Jews

Russell Schoch thought he was being timely. But the Jewish Community Relations Council thought he was being something else: one-sided.

Schoch, who edits California Monthly, the magazine of the California Alumni Association of U.C. Berkeley, first heard Beshara Doumani on the radio. A U.C. Berkeley professor of Palestinian descent, Doumani was talking about what he saw as the lack of Palestinian representation in the American media, especially in light of the current conflict.

Schoch runs a question-and-answer column with a tenured Berkeley faculty member in almost every issue of the magazine, which focuses mostly on that professor's area of academic interest.

"As a journalist, I thought, here is an interesting person, a tenured faculty member," that would make an interesting profile, he said.

Schoch, who is not Jewish, said he closely monitors the Middle East conflict. "I knew it would be new to some people, and possibly controversial, and maybe even disagreed with by some people."

He was right about that.

Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said that shortly after the article appeared, he was inundated with copies of it.

"Our fax machine was roaring."

After reading it himself, Kahn felt that to present only the Palestinian perspective during this time of heightened tension was irresponsible.

Pointing out that California Monthly is not a political publication, Kahn said the article "presents what is widely perceived in our community as a one-sided and imbalanced perspective. In quieter times, it might have been perceived as less. People were concerned that a nonpolitical publication would have such an imbalanced kind of approach."

In a five-page piece in the February issue of the magazine, Doumani, who says his goal is to "write Palestinians into history," says "the U.S. media is curiously out of touch with the realities in the Middle East."

Among the more controversial of his statements: that the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 resulted in the expulsion of roughly 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland and was a form of ethnic cleansing, and that the expulsion was followed up by "a systematic program of dynamiting and bulldozing hundreds of Palestinian villages, razing them totally, to make history disappear."

Kahn responded that such statements "are representative of the grossly distorted view of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and contain inflammatory language that bears no resemblance to the historical record."

Doumani also tells of a Jewish student who took his course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. This student, who was on the right wing of the Zionist spectrum, used to challenge almost everything Doumani and the other students said.

After spending two years in the Israeli army, the student returned to pay a visit to his former professor, and told him, "Everything you said is right." The student had served in Gaza, and told his former professor of the brutality he saw the Palestinians experience at the hands of his fellow Israeli soldiers.

Doumani concludes by saying: "Americans are a fair-minded people. If I could only take them to Palestine, to let them see with their own eyes, I don't think it would take them long to notice that what is going on there is very different from what they're told in the media. I wouldn't have to say a word."

But Kahn had a few words to say. "One can't look at this out of the context of the current, highly charged conflict."

Doumani's point of view, Kahn continued, "underscores the importance of the magazine providing an opportunity for a perspective that looks at Israel's history in a different, and I would say, much more balanced light."

Schoch said it was clear that the piece was in question-and-answer format with one person, and not an article on the conflict itself.

"If I interview someone on East Asian politics, I don't have to get someone who disagrees with that person," he said. "If I do a scientist who thinks the mapping of the human genome is the most important thing in the 21st century, I don't feel I have to have someone else in same issue rebutting him."

Schoch said he had faith that California Monthly readers knew that this was one man's perspective. "I assume that our audience is mature and interested in various viewpoints. If I did a Palestinian in every issue, people would have the right to raise an eyebrow or a fist, but I don't do that."

Kahn first called Schoch, and then prevailed upon James Burk, executive director of the California Alumni Association, asking that the magazine interview Zalman Shoval, a Berkeley graduate who has served as Israeli ambassador to the United States.

"I thought it was important to suggest an equal-time provision," said Kahn. "Shoval is still a player, serving as a significant adviser to the new prime minister."

Burk said the magazine would get in touch with Shoval, and perhaps a story would come out of it.

"We feel it is worthy of exploring a discussion with the former ambassador," Burk said. "We'll get his thoughts, and maybe we will have an interesting story that comes out of it."

Meanwhile, Doumani, who is on leave this semester, had not heard of any such controversy resulting from his interview in California Monthly. But he was not surprised when told about it.

"It's a hypocritical argument," he said. "The hegemonic perspective is the Israeli perspective. This one doesn't get much airing." Since the Palestinian point of view is hardly heard in tandem with the Israeli one on television, he said, "it's really hypocritical as well as an exercise in power."

Meanwhile, the April issue of California Monthly will have four pages of letters, three of them in response to the article.

"We got 40 to 50 letters on this, on both sides" Schoch said, an unprecedented number in response to one article.