I
criticized Sontag for accepting the Jerusalem Prize, whose
supposed function is to reward creative dedication to
the notion of freedom. I recalled Sontag’s constant trips
to Sarajevo and asked readers to imagine her gibes at
an author traveling to Serbia to get an award from Radovan
Karadzic in the name of intellectual freedom.
Sontag
went to Israel and picked up her Jerusalem Prize on May
9. Ori Nir reported in Ha’aretz the following day
that after accepting the prize from Jerusalem’s mayor,
Ehud Olmert, Sontag told those present at the convention
center: "I believe the doctrine of collective responsibility
as a rationale for collective punishment is never justified,
militarily or ethically. And I mean of course the disproportionate
use of firepower against civilians, the demolition of
their homes, the destruction of their orchards and groves,
the deprivation of their livelihood and access to employment,
to schooling, to medical services, or as a punishment
for hostile military activities in the vicinity of those
civilians."
In
her opinion, Sontag said, there will never be peace in
the Middle East until Israel first suspends its settlements,
and then demolishes them. Some cheered, others left the
hall. Sontag told the Jerusalem Post that there’d been
a lot of pressure on her not to attend the Jerusalem Book
Fair and accept the prize. Publicly-at least in this country-I
think my columns, initiated on this site, constituted
the only such pressure. They apparently helped firm up
Sontag to make the remarks noted above.
Sontag
has mostly been quiet on Israel’s conduct down the years,
though one document she co-signed as a PEN board member
a decade ago signals why it still might have been better
for her to decline to accept any prize from Mayor Olmert.
Back on February 18, 1991, amid the war with Iraq, the
New York Times published a letter signed by Sontag along
with E.L. Doctorow, Allen Ginsberg, Larry McMurtry, Arthur
Miller and Edward Said, all executive board members of
PEN American Center.
It
began as follows: "We are acutely dismayed by the
continuing detention of the Palestinian intellectual and
activist Sari Nusseibeh in Jerusalem, for what the Israeli
Government first called ‘subversive activities of collecting
security information for Iraqi intelligence.’" The
letter went on to describe how Nusseibeh, professor of
philosophy at Bir Zeit University, had been imprisoned,
though Israeli authorities were unable to produce any
evidence against him.
"We
are concerned that the Israeli Government is exploiting
these difficult days of war against Iraq to crack down
on precisely those figures whose moderation and opposition
to violence will be essential to the conclusion of a just
and secure peace between Israelis and Palestinians in
the aftermath of this war."
This
May 10, in the same edition that noted Sontag’s public
remarks on receiving the Jerusalem Prize, Ha’aretz
ran a commentary titled, "What Freedom, What Society?":
It ran partly as follows:
"Yesterday
evening Jerusalem’s Mayor conferred the ‘Jerusalem Prize
for the freedom of man and society’ to the writer Susan
Sontag. At the same hour, a proposal submitted by the
Public Security Minister to ‘shut down for the near future
the administration and presidency of Al-Quds University
headed by Sari Nusseibeh’ was sitting on the desk of the
mayor, who serves on the Jerusalem Affairs Committee,
which is appointed by the Prime Minister. It can be assumed
that only a few of the hundreds of participants in the
festive Jerusalem event (all of them committed cultural
figures who fight for human liberty) were conscious of
the irony.
"In
a different world, Sari Nusseibeh would be a leading candidate
for such a prize, rather than the Jewish-American writer
who was involved naively in a celebration of self-righteousness
and self-congratulation. A Palestinian prince and cordial,
dignified philosopher, Sari Nusseibeh has built a splendid
academic research framework. Not the type to surrender
to threats, or to physical blows or the temptations of
power, he had created bridges of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue,
and furnishes original ideas and plans to resolve the
dispute.
"This
is the man depicted by Israel’s establishment as "a
security threat," rather than a culture hero. In
a different world, people of culture and supporters of
freedom would have suspended such an awards celebration,
waiting for circumstances to arise under which universal
meaning to the concept ‘freedom and society’ might crystallize.
One should marvel at the prize givers’ ability to compartmentalize
and the ability to reconcile the contradiction between
‘freedom of man and society,’ and a ‘plan’ designed not
only to ruin human freedom, but also a society located
just a few hundred meters from where the prizes were conferred.
"One
of the last, still operating, joint Al-Quds University-Hebrew
University projects is a botanical catalogue, an attempt
to identify and describe the flora of the shared homeland.
When will these botanists be recognized as the ones whose
works should be lauded, rather than those of righteous
hypocrites?"
So
Sontag accepts a prize from a group that’s trying to boot
Nusseibeh out of East Jerusalem – the very same man
whose detention she petitioned to end ten years ago, during
the first intifada! She deserves credit for condemning
the occupation policies, but she could have gone a lot
further. For example, she praised the man giving her the
prize, Mayor Olmert, as "an extremely persuasive
and reasonable person." This is like describing Karadzic
as a moderate in search of multiconfessional tolerance.
Olmert is a fanatical ethnic cleanser, one of the roughest
of the Likud ultras. During his period in office, he has
consistently pushed for the expropriation of Arab property
and the revocation of Arab residence permits. Olmert was
a principal advocate of the disastrous 1996 tunnel excavation
underneath the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. During the
ensuing demonstrations, Israeli security forces shot dead
about fifty Palestinian civilians. The mayor was also
instrumental in the seizure of Palestinian land at the
southeastern edge of Jerusalem in order to build the settlement
of Har Homa, another link in the encirclement of Arab
East Jerusalem. This too led to prolonged rioting.
Such
people have no right to award a prize on freedom to anyone.
[Editor's
note: Tune in next Friday when Cockburn will have a real
scoop: the billion dollar drug bust in the Pacific, and
the new turn in the drug war. Don's miss it!]
Copyright
© 2001 Alexander Cockburn
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