For years now my colleagues and I at the American Task Force on Palestine have been harping on a very standard, well-established and consensus Arab and Arab American theme — ending the occupation in Palestine — but promoting this goal in the United States through new strategies, conceptual frameworks and rhetorical tactics. Confused by the newness of the method, many people have failed to comprehend the continuity of the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state along the borders of 1967 with its capital in East Jerusalem, etc. Perhaps we should not be too surprised. An audience entirely acculturated to grand opera of the heroic style might be expected to react badly to a dense, careful Baroque aria reflecting the logical precision of the Enlightenment rather than the passionate idealism of the Romantic era.
I’ve often thought that people who listen to ATFP expecting to hear Wagner’s Götterdämmerung lurching from crescendo to crescendo, as Arab American rhetoric on Palestine usually does, are greatly taken aback when confronted with something that bears a lot more similarity to the methodical, exact, sometimes clinical but always purposive Bach. With that in mind, I’ve taken to referring to my recent interview with the Atlantic monthly website as "the Goldberg variation." This bit of silliness refers not only to the fact that ATFP’s entire mission is simply a variation on an established Arab and Arab-American goal and that, except for Islamists and one-state absolutists, the vast majority of Arabs and Arab-Americans almost certainly and strongly agree with this aim, but also to the fact that other than some rather unremarkable comments about the J Street conference at which I spoke, there was nothing new in what I had to say to Jeffrey Goldberg.
I find it hard to avoid the sense that it wasn’t so much what I said (even if that is, perhaps, somewhat objectionable to some people) but rather the forum in which and the interlocutor to whom I was expressing these rather well-known opinions that really got some people’s goat. The outcry in some cases was positively hysterical, even though almost all of these people are well familiar with my thinking already. At any rate, the general quality of the response can be viewed by viewing this posting on the Mondoweiss blog. I think it speaks for itself, rather resoundingly, and the sad truth is that it’s fairly typical of attitudes informing the negative reaction.
As it happens, I know Philip Weiss a little, and I have always thought him to be an intelligent and fundamentally decent man. I e-mailed him a couple of days ago, when this was first posted, to ask him if he could possibly defend the publication of such a response on his own blog, Mondoweiss, and therefore indeed under his own name. I have not heard back from him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t. That would mean choosing between endorsing such empty, vapid rage or acknowledging that there is a more complex reality that needs to be defended from this kind of puerile outburst. Until now I would have been sure that he would’ve chosen the second, and it’s certainly by no means too late, but I’m beginning to lose hope.
On October 18, I sent him an e-mail asking about his opinion about J Street, about which he had just blogged, and also challenging him, since his postings revealed that he had obviously read my book (you know they all have, of course), to go beyond referring to it in passing as he had done on more than one occasion, and actually provide some kind of evaluation. He immediately replied, in part:
You’re absolutely right that I’ve been unfair to you; I mean to amend that. I like your book. I don’t know that I agree with it entirely, but it’s smart and often very sharp.
He ended:
I think the book is well written and often on target. I’ve mentioned it twice now. Count on me to amend by doing a posting dedicated to the book and taking on the positive ideas in a positive way, and thanking you for your assistance to me in the past.
That’s what I call an honorable response from an honorable man who in the past has shown himself to be plainly interested in ideas and more than capable of serious, sustained engagement. Since then, nothing. I had been assuming that he was simply taking his time, which is only fair. I suppose he may well be continuing to do so. If he ever does provide any kind of sustained response — positive, negative or both — it will be a breath of fresh air in a suffocating smog cloud of silence from the one state advocates whose ideas my book challenges. But with this latest posting on his site and no response to my simple, obvious and very fair question — "can you stand by this posting on your site?" — I’m starting to lose hope in him too. I would be deeply relieved if he proves me wrong, but by now I’m not holding my breath.
Worst of all, I have found myself getting sucked into the most pointless and endless exchanges on social media sites like Facebook that have greatly clarified my thinking about how to engage with people in that kind of forum. I’m desperate to have a more wide-ranging, serious debate in the Arab American community, but my recent experiences have convinced me, once and for all, that Facebook just doesn’t help much. I have already criticized e-mail lists and social media for creating smaller and louder echo chambers, and now I can see the extent to which it simply doesn’t function as a useful medium for the exchange of serious ideas — though I should’ve known better all along I suppose. I’m grateful to my friend, the young activist Omar Baddar, who pointed out to me how much time I was wasting on answering truly silly and absurd allegations and accusations ("Ibish supports the siege on Gaza," etc.).
I can do no better than quote him directly:
Hussein, for sanity’s sake, don’t get consumed in these sorts of debates. Anyone willing to jump from what you actually say (some of which I disagree with) to accusing you of supporting AIPAC, Dahlan, & detractors of Goldstone is simply someone who is incapable of having a serious conversation about any of this! To be sure, I do think that you should, on occasion, explain yourself and clarify where you’re coming from. But this type of childish back & forth with amateurish accusations is really not worth your time!
He later added, I think with perfect clarity:
The cycle is seductive, but ultimately useless: They make an assertion, you refute it, then they get more belligerent, then you refutations become more devastating, then they get absurd, then you wonder why you engaged in the first place… & then it starts all over again!
The voice of experience speaking to someone new to social media. Therefore, and as a completely unexpected and very interesting side effect of the Goldberg variation, I’m going to take Omar’s advice and be vigilant about only answering serious, reasonable comments and questions precisely so as not to be consumed by absurdities and foolishness.
A serious blog posting from Philip Weiss, for example, or any thoughtful, serious Arab-American who disagrees with me and is capable of forming a coherent argument, would definitely constitute the kind of debate I have been complaining we are lacking, but that recent posting on his site and some (though by no means all) of what emerged in social media in response to the Goldberg variation are anything but that. Belligerence, anger and outrage are not only not a strategy; they are also not an argument.