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June 28, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
The Gaza Flotilla Tragedy
Next month, OR books will publish Midnight on the Mavi Marmara, a collection of essays about Israel's recent raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. The book will be edited by Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College, and published on July 28th. Bayoumi is the author of How Does it Feel to be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin Press, 2008).
I caught up with Bayoumi, who is currently in Seoul, and he answered my questions by e-mail.
Q. How did the idea for this book come together? Did OR Books approach you?
A. Colin Robinson, the publisher of OR Books, sent me an e-mail a few days after the attack on the Mavi Marmara asking me if I would edit the book, and I agreed. We both felt that this event had shocked the conscience of much of the world and that it needed to be understood with testimony, context, and analysis, things a book can provide perhaps better than any other medium.
From the beginning, Colin had a very quick turnaround in mind, particularly since that model of publishing had worked out well for OR Books in the past. Their first publication was Going Rouge, a debunking look at Sarah Palin from the left that reached The New York Times Bestseller list. Since OR Books publishes through their website (www.orbooks.com), publication can be very quick, and Colin really wants to take advantage of this feature to have his list speak immediately to current events.
Q. What will be included in the book? Will it be all original material? Who will be some of the contributors?
A. We decided early on that the book would be a mix of the best of the published material about the event and new material that I would solicit. We wanted the first part of the book to be testimonials and the latter part to be analysis, history, and context. I reached out to several volunteers who were on the boats–such as Lubna Masarwa and Haneen Zuabi—to ask them for contributions and they gladly agreed to participate. Some volunteers, like the activist Ken O’Keefe and Swedish writer Henning Mankell, had already put out powerful pieces, so we’re in the process of getting the rights to those. Other contributors to the book include Glenn Greenwald, Rashid Khalidi, Stephen Kinzer, Raja Shehadeh, Amira Hass, Ahdaf Soueif, Gideon Levy, Max Blumenthal, Ali Abunimah, Juan Cole, Sara Roy, Noam Chomsky, and others. I think it’s a very vibrant list of writers. Alice Walker has written a very moving essay which I’m also very glad to have in the book.
Q. The working title, Murder on the Mavi Marmara, suggests that the book will present a clear argument. What is that argument?
A. We changed the title to Midnight on the Mavi Marmara almost immediately after announcing the book. Colin wanted something that would catch people’s attention and wanted to put out a press release about the book quickly. But we decided just after issuing the press release that Midnight on the Mavi Marmara was better. That title would appeal more to mainstream readers, which is one of my hopes for the book. After all, many of the people we have in the book are establishment figures—we have decorated academics, celebrated novelists, world-renowned journalists, and a poet who is a Guggenheim Fellow lined up for the book. Unfortunately, the Israel/Palestine conflict generates such emotion and vitriol that one must prepare oneself for the ad hominem attacks.
The book is less about a single argument and more about offering a view of the events that night and of the conflict in general that is less common in the mainstream (although it is certainly more common now than it used to be). The events of that night—where, we shouldn’t forget, nine people lost their lives—are significant in a number of ways. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla showed how more and more ordinary people from around the world are joining the call for an end to the occupation and a just resolution to the conflict. It illustrates how the Israeli political class, in thrall to military power, is increasing its own isolation in the world by launching a series of wildly disproportionate and punishingly cruel actions over the last years. The response to the attack illustrates, in many ways, what Peter Beinart calls the crisis in the American liberal Jewish establishment, as many no longer support Israel’s actions reflexively and are often actively critical of the state. And the book will also discuss the growing grassroots, mostly non-violent, resistance strategies employed by the Palestinians and their allies today. In many ways, the book is trying to show the trends and trajectory of the struggle as it now stands.
Q. What are your hopes for this book?
A. Is an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict based on the principles of justice and true equality for everyone too much to ask? Barring that, what I’d like to come out of the book is a challenge to the Israeli narrative of the events of that night, which frankly speaking much of the world (outside of the United States and Israel) doesn’t believe. The testimonies in the book offer a place to read what happened that night by those who survived it. (The New York Times, for their part, has published at least two op-eds supporting Israel’s position, including one from its ambassador, but not a single one from the more than 600 participants in the flotilla.) It would also be wonderful to see the book generate more interest in how the Palestinian struggle continues to adopt more non-violent strategies of resistance.
Q. What are you working on next?
A. I’ve started a project on globalization and immigration, but events in the world keep pulling me away from it. I hope I will soon find the time I need to devote to it.—Evan R. Goldstein
PageView is The Chronicle's blog about scholarly publishing.
Comments
1. ulysses - June 28, 2010 at 04:24 pm
The book is a purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of its audiences for ideological and political gain through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels...i.e. propaganda.
According to an in-person interviews with people who were actually on board, (CNN) and other published accounts, the ship and its organizers had one goal...to cause an international scene and make Israel look bad - hidden behind a very thin veil of delivering humanitarian aide. Running a blockade is an internationally recognized act of war, Israel reacted in a way that the U.S., the USSR, and any other nation would have reacted.
the polemics hiding as facts in this book abound. take for example: "...It illustrates how the Israeli political class, in thrall to military power, is increasing its own isolation in the world by launching a series of wildly disproportionate and punishingly cruel actions over the last years."
This is pure media spin to support arab palestianian hype. On the one hand the author speaks of an "Israeli political class" - all unified in its glee over having military power, and is protrayed here as a monolithic, unified, body making key decisions - the power behind the power - anyone familiar with Israeli politics knows there is no unified agreement about what should have been done and what was done, before, during and after...and then there is the problem that if such a class really did exist...the author would not be priveledged to such information from such a clandestine all powerful "Israeli political class". So how would he know?
words and ideas: like "wildly disproportionate" and seeding the idea that American Jews are starting to abandon Israel in large numbers, because they happen to disagree with any given policy or action of any particular Israeli government is pure propaganda. Makes it seem as if its a growing trend...Jews abandoning Israel...these statements are wildly disproportionate.
Let no loss of life be celebrated, but if one needs to assign blame it is squarely on the organizers who hoped for and are delighted by this out come.
2. morsej001 - June 28, 2010 at 04:30 pm
At http://jonathan-morse.blogspot.com/2010/06/terms-of-art-key-jewish-persons.html I've posted a note about some of the terms spoken on the Mavi Marmara -- notably "the Zionists" and "uh, Jewish, uh, persons."
3. jupiter125 - June 28, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Re "The Gaza Freedom Flotilla showed how more and more ordinary people from around the world are joining the call for an end to the occupation and a just resolution to the conflict."
Israel does not occupy Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza, and Hamas, dedicated to Israel's destruction, took it over by force. Then (note the chronology, please) Hamas was elected to continue in power by the Gazans who had in the meantime pointlessly destroyed the Israeli-built greenhouses and other means of food-production and sustenance. Israel understandably seeks to prevent more weapons from reaching Gaza, the continuing source of bombs raining on Israel. The flotilla stunt was a deliberate provocation aimed not at getting food to Gaza--else why not go through Ashdod as Israel had allowed--but to manufacture precisely this kind of faux-naif attention from "ordinary people." This mendacious insta-book promises neither insight nor scholarly response, merely easy and bogus outrage; that Chronicle gives it this much space is dispiriting.
4. allens - June 29, 2010 at 06:35 am
This book definitely appears rather biased; there is more than one viewpoint on the events, as proven by the comments above, and the book in question does not deserve a non-hostile review if it fails to give that viewpoint.
5. ralphmelnick - June 29, 2010 at 09:27 am
If the publisher and editor were really concerned about the people of Gaza, they might want to bring out a book about the ongoing physical, emotional, political, religious,and economic abuse of the Palestinians by Hamas and others in that benighted land, including the heavy taxation on comsumer goods smuggled in, the pocketting of aid money that largely never reaches the masses, the subjugation of women that often turns physical and results in murder, the destruction of UN built children's playgrounds, the unending rounds of bombings of Israeli civilians that engender appropriate defensive responses from Israel, the ongoing and cowardly use of civilians as shields, the torture and murder of political opponents, and the like. If those internationally concerned individuals who seek to express their outrage at every turn truly cared enough to be fully informed about what is actually going on instead of reflexively responding time after time after time to the same old tired propaganda that does little more than aid the thuggish power elite controlling Gaza, while furthering the agendas of those like Iran and Syria who seek only to widen their undemocratic hegemony throughout the region by backing such regimes, then perhaps peace might actually come to the Palestinians one day. How sad.
6. kisarita - July 09, 2010 at 03:09 pm
The author does not claim to offer an evenhanded account. He takes a position and the goal of the book is to promote that position. There is nothing wrong with that, however it is wrong of the interviewer to collaborate in portraying the book as the sum total, the best, and the finest writings out there on the issue. One should suspect that the author's categorization of the finest, is suspect.
The title "... and how that change the course of the Israeli Palestinian conflict..." is also a bit premature. It may or may not do so, but isn't it a bit presumptous to make that claim only a month later?
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