Bill Maher Discusses Islam, Israel and the Palestians with 4 Middle Eastern Students
Back to the Politically Correct Detractor's Page
Transcript for Wednesday, December 12 2001
JAWAD ISSA
JACOB ZAKARIAE
SHUSHANNA DJAVAHERI
AMER ZAHR
Bill: Welcome to "Politically Incorrect." I think we have a very special show for you tonight.
We have four college students who have very, very I would say opinionated points of view on the Middle East, and I don't think I have to encourage them too much to bring them to the floor.
Over here we have Shushanna Djavaheri.
Did I say that correctly?Shushanna: Djavaheri.
Bill: Okay, pretty close.
California State University at Northridge, majoring in political science, and founder of an on-campus pro-Israel group.
Welcome aboard.
Okay, Amer Zahr.
Amer: Yes.
Bill: Okay, graduate student at the center for Middle Eastern and North African studies, and a writer for the "Michigan Daily." Jacob Zakariae.
Jacob: You got it.
Bill: Pretty good? Okay.
Political science student at UCLA.
Active in the Hillall Center on campus.
UCLA is here in the House.
And Jawad Issa?Jawad: Mm-hmm.
Bill: Okay.
You are at Georgetown University, and you are a graduate of Seeds Of Peace which you may have seen on various news organizations.
They profiled this a few years ago.
It is a group that brings together children, high school kids, sometimes younger, in regions of conflict, tries to get them to understand each other so that the cycle of violence can be broken.
We hope we'll help break it tonight and not continue it.
Give a hand to this panel.
[ Applause ]
So given the recent state of escalated violence in Israel and the West Bank, let me ask you this question, 'cause a lot of people are saying now that the Palestinians really do not want to live in peace with Israel.
What they wanna do is annihilate them.
There are 280 million Arabs that surround the state of Israel.
There's 4.5 million Jewish-Israelis.
Now, we all know that the Israelis could annihilate the Palestinians if they wanted to, militarily.
They have the bomb.
Even if they didn't use the nuclear bomb, they could do it with conventional means.
They've never done that.
Flip the script.
What if for one hour, one crazy Sadie Hawkins hour, the Arabs had the ability to annihilate the Jewish state? Do you think things would be different? Do you think they would show the restraint that Israel has for over 50 years?Shushanna: They wouldn't think twice before killing them all.
Jawad: I really don't see, like, how the numbers make any difference.
At the very beginning in 1948, you see the numbers between Palestinians and the Israelis and the number of Arabs compared to Israelis, and the number of Arabs exceeded the number of Israelis by a lot, and they still do exist right now.
Bill: In Israel itself?
Jawad: No, I'm talking about in the region itself, in the Middle East.
Bill: Right, the Middle East.
Jawad: Even if it's flipped right now, and I don't know --
Bill: You don't think that they would annihilate the Jewish state? If they had the power?
Jawad: When you make the assumption that they would not want to live with each other, I don't see how this is correct.
The people in Palestine and Israel have been living through war for over 50 years.
Right now, they have seen so many people killed in front of them.
I've seen people getting killed in front of me, and I've seen their motives, and their motives are just so menial.
They're like, "Jihad.
We're sick of this.
We're tired of being sad all the time, and we don't want this anymore." We want to stop war.
Bill: Why don't they?
Amer: I think the question you ask rests upon a couple of faulty assumptions.
First you assume that Israel is showing restraint or that Israel would not like to get rid of the Palestines.
I think that the policies that Israel's been undertaking for the past 50 years have been policies that are meant to get rid of the Palestinians --
housing discrimination, demolition of houses throughout the West Bank, confiscations of land.
I mean, there are things that are like a slow ethnic cleansing process.
Bill: Let's ask the question again.
If, if, if the Arabs had the ability, which they do not, to annihilate, you say that they would not?Jacob: They've tried many times.
They've tried to accumulate the power to do so, and right now they can't, and that's why they're not.
And I believe if they were given the power to, they would.
[ Applause ]
Shushanna: Why don't we look at the states in Iran.
Syria, Saudi Arabia.
If they practice in public, they could risk getting executed or kidnapped or spying for Israel.
You get accused for spying.
I mean, this is a smaller version of, you know, quieting them down, and maybe if they were in a position, they would kill them all, too.
There is no doubt about it.
Why would they oppress them?Amer: Look, I don't doubt that a few Arab dictators --
well, all the Arab leaders are dictators.
I wouldn't doubt that a few of them would try to put together armies like they have in the past and try to get rid of Israel.
They can't.
I also don't doubt that there is anything that is a moral factor that's stopping Israel from doing the same thing to the Palestinians.
They simply couldn't get away with it.
No nation states probably today in the year 2001 could get away with annihilating a couple million people.
Bill: Why?
Amer: It would probably be the end of the Jewish faith,
Jacob: Because the whole world is watching right now.
Bill: The whole world is watching, but who would care? Who would come?
Jawad: If we did not care, if America did not care, they would not spend so many money on sending envoys there, and back to the point about Arabs wanting --
Bill: Okay, look --
Jawad: No, listen --
[ Laughter ]
The Arabs want to annihilate the Israelis, the Arabs have come to the conclusion many, many countries, for awhile now, that Israel is part of the Middle East.
Why do Arab countries have --
Bill: Really?
Jawad: Qatar.
Let's take Qatar for an example.
Other Arab countries are on the way.
Palestine.
Palestine and the P.L.O. recognizes --
Shushanna: Can we shift the attention a little bit? Well, how does Palestinian authority on all the Palestinian schools from elementary school to the high school get away with teaching anti-semitism to the children?
[ Talking over each other ]
Jawad: Now when I'm talking about the education system in Palestinian --
Bill: Where did you go exactly? Where were you?
Jawad: I went for four years.
Two of them were in a public school in Palestine.
Bill: In what city?
Jawad: In Gaza city.
Bill: Gaza, okay.
Jawad: And the curriculum is all the similar in public and private schools.
Shushanna: What year?
Jawad: Starting from 7th grade up to 11th grade, and my siblings were all in different --
Bill: So in your school system, there was nothing that you could even interpret as anti-semitism?
Jawad: Not at all.
Bill: Really?
Jawad: Let me tell you a story.
Let me tell you a story.
Bill: Make it a short one.
[ Laughter ]
Jawad: Yes, I'll make it a short one.
One of my teachers, one time, we were talking about the politics, and then all of sudden, this kid comes up, he's saying, "No, they're attacking us.
They're killing us.
They're having all those checkpoints, and we should fight the Israelis." He literally said, "Stop this discussion.
If you wanna talk to me about this, come to my home.
I am not allowed to talk about this stuff in school."Bill: Wow.
Jawad: That's my teacher.
He was Palestinian in a Palestinian school.
Bill: Where do all the suicide bombers come from? Where do they recruit them? How come there are so many people who seem to be willing to strap on dynamite and walk in a pizza parlor?
Amer: Because they're living under an Army --
look, let's first make clear, right, that sometimes we talk about this, about the whole Israel-Palestine thing, and if somebody didn't know any better, they might think that there's an Israeli state, and there's a Palestinian state, and they're fighting with each other.
This is not what's going on.
We're talking about an Israeli government that has a state and is occupying a whole Palestinian population.
Bill: Not true.
Amer: It is true.
Bill: Not by any legal means of the word "occupy." "Occupy" refers to a state that was already there.
When the Nazis took over Poland, they occupied it because there had been a Poland.
There had never been a Palestinian state.
There had been an area of land called Palestine where Arabs and Jews both lived.
[ Applause ]
So if you wanna talk facts --
and in 1947, when the U.N. mandated that they would split that land, the Arab reaction was, "Nyet.
We would rather annihilate you." The Arabs doubled down.
They said, "You know what? We'd rather take our chances and try to get the whole thing," and they did nothing but lose half.
[ Talking over each other ]
Shushanna: In 1937, with a commission, they got offered statehood back then, as well, and back then, there was no Jewish majority.
There was no Israeli majority, and they declined a statehood back then.
Bill: So why is it occupied?
Amer: Well, because every international legal organization has said that it's occupied.
The U.N. calls it occupied.
If you need more than the U.N. to call it occupied, then we can use your definition, if you want.
Bill: Oh, I do.
The U.N. just was at the conference for racism.
The U.N. associated Zionism with racism, and that was [ bleep ], too.
[ Applause ]
Amer: Zionism is racism.
Bill: Really?
Amer: A Zionist inherently has to be racist.
Bill: Why?
Amer: Let me finish.
Like most nationalist ideologists, though I'm not supporting Zionism in a unique way, like Zionism as Israeli nationalism or Turkish nationalism.
Any other kind of nationalism that say, "You need to be of a certain ethnic or religious background to get certain rights in our state." That is how Israel works.
In Israel, 1 million residents or citizens of Israel, we're talking about Israel, not the West Bank and Gaza, are Arab.
Their rights --
they can do things like vote and whatever, but their rights, as far as living as an equal member of society, are much less because they simply are not Jewish.
Bill: They're greater than they were when they lived under Arab rule, aren't they? I gotta take a break.
We'll come back to that in a second.
[ Applause ]
Bill: All right, we're back here with our four students, and since we have students, I brought in a visual aid.
Professor Maher has a map here.
Can you push in closer on that map? Let's talk about --
let's show what we're talking about.
Now, here is Israel, this little bit of land.
Okay, here's --
[ Scattered applause ]
Thank you.
Here's Syria.
Here's Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Sudan, Libya.
Look at all this.
Now, the Arabs purport to be brothers.
That's what we always hear.
It's one Arab nation divided into falsely drawn countries by the colonial powers.
If this whole bit of land are all brothers, how come at the time of the partition when they refused to share the land with Israel, and there was only 600,000 Palestinian refugees, how come they couldn't find any home in this whole area? Look at the little area --
[ Applause ]
Amer: Can I answer that?
Bill: Yes, please.
Amer: Now, while Arabs --
and I believe we as Arabs do have common threads that keep us together from Morocco to Iraq, but --
just like we as Americans have common threads that keep us together from California to New York.
You live in California.
If some foreign military power came into your house and kicked you out, would it really be justifiable for them to say, "Well, you're an American.
Just go live in Arizona or just go live in Oregon.
They're Americans." You wanna live in your house.
[ Talking over each other ]
Shushanna: I told you, you can come move and live with us, and we'll go kill the foreign power for you.
Jawad: I am a refugee.
I am a refugee.
I belong to a family who, in 1948, were all moved out and have to live in refugee camps.
My dad moved out of a refugee camp when he was 18.
Why should he just, you know, give in when some people come to his house, and they say, "Okay, you leave or you die."Bill: Because your people were offered half the land, and you said no and chose to try to annihilate them, instead.
[ Talking over each other ]
Jawad: Would you leave your home if somebody asked you to just leave it there? Just, get out of your home.
Would you leave your home? Would you not say, "But this is my home"? Can I not live there? I still want to go back.
I want to live there.
You know, I personally don't care who my neighbor is, and my grandfather's best friend was a Jewish person, and they live together.
This shows that it is possible to live together.
[ Applause ]
Bill: I don't live in a disputed area.
Jawad: This is why it's so easy for you to say, "You know what?"
[ Talking over each other ]
Jacob: You're one amongst many.
There are many Palestinians who cannot live amongst Jews, and not only can they not live amongst them, they can't even live next to them, and that's what we see every day.
Jawad: Because they've been subjected to hatred for so long.
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: Again, who --
when the partition was there, who negated it? Who said, "No, we do not wanna share the land.
We would rather take our chances trying to get it all." Just answer that question.
Who?Amer: I'll answer that question, okay?
Bill: Who?
Amer: The answer to that question is, unfortunately, that there probably is no real answer because there has been --
let me finish.
Jawad: You're just evading the question.
Amer: Because there has been historians, Palestinian and Israelis, who have argued both points.
And there is actually a big class of historians coming out of Israel now that call themselves the new historians who have said that Israel was the state that decided that they didn't like the plan.
So that doesn't mean --
it's true.
Bill: That's so not true.
Amer: It is true.
Jacob: How about, in 1993, they were once again offered to have their own statehood.
Palestinians were offered their own statehood.
[ Talking over each other ]
Shushanna: Last year, they were offered statehood.
They've been offered statehood repeatedly since the creation of Israel, and repeatedly Israel has made concessions, and repeatedly, Palestinians have denied and declined the offer.
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: Let me ask you a question.
From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank, the occupied land, was not under Israeli control, as you know, it was under Jordanian control.
And yet, in those 19 years, the Arab state of Jordan, which is a Palestinian state, most of the population there is Palestinian, so they could have gone there.
But okay.
For those 19 years, the West Bank was under King Hussein.
Why didn't they create a Palestinian state then in 19 years?
[ Applause ]
I'd like to hear the historical --
Jawad: They could not declare a state.
What they wanted then, they wanted to get back to their land.
A lot of those people have been displaced from their areas that now --
Bill: Your hometown was under Jordanian rule.
Shushanna: It's part of Egypt.
Jawad: It's been part of the state is Israel, that is right now --
[ Talking over each other ]
Jawad: I'm talking about Rendi.
I'm not talking about Remandav.
Rendi is different from Remandav.
Bill, I should get your book for, like, Palestinian towns and cities.
It's been occupied by Israel since 1948.
It was not part of the West Bank.
Bill: Okay, all right.
Jawad: Now back to your question.
Why you could not declare it a state? Because most of those people, a lot of those people were looking forward to go back to their own hometowns.
They're looking forward to going back to the place that they've been displaced from.
And let's just sit around here talking about whether it is possible --
Bill: Wait a second.
They live, most of them, in the West Bank that Jordan controlled for those 19 years.
Why didn't Jordan, an Arab country, declare a Palestinian state?
[ Talking over each other ]
Amer: He was a dictator.
He wasn't interested in giving up land.
Bill: Thank you.
Amer: You're not gonna get --
Bill: A little wisp of truth.
Amer: But where's the brotherhood in that?
[ Applause ]
Nobody can defend, I don't think anybody can defend the actions of Arab rulers, okay? I think, though, we should disassociate that with the sentiments of Arab people, what they would like to see happen.
People live in countries in the Middle East where they simply have no power on the ground, right?Shushanna: Including Palestinian areas.
Jacob: Sure, fine, yes.
The Palestinian leadership is just as corrupt as any other leadership.
That's all fine and dandy.
We can talk about how people hate each other.
We can talk about how some persons are Jew killers or Arab killers.
We can talk about that probably forever and fill up 1,000 "Politically Incorrects." But in the end, when you take it all away, you wipe away all this rhetoric, you have a land, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, that are occupied illegally, according to international law.
And when we talk about concessions, I think that we should talk about concessions not as Israel conceding something.
We should talk about what Israel is required to do under international law which is to leave the West Bank, leave the Gaza Strip, and allow Palestinians to return to their home.
Jacob: How did the land become occupied territories? How did they become occupied?
Bill: We've already went over how they became occupied.
They lost them in a war.
You lost it in the war.
You've had four wars.
You've tried to do it four times.
Every time you lost, and now it's like, "Okay, we're the victims."Jacob: You think Israel wants to be there right now? Do you think Israel wants to be there and fulfill the duties of the P.A.? That's what they're doing right now.
Amer: If Israel doesn't want to be in the West Bank, why are they escalating settlement activities day by day?
Jacob: When Arab nations formed an alliance in '67 and waged war upon Israel?
[ Talking over each other ]
Jacob: Why would you go to somebody's land, the only land they have, and you just take it away? And you just say it's no longer --
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: I gotta take a break.
I gotta take a break, but you know, you do realize that you're all kinetic people.
We'll be back.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Okay.
We only have three minutes to solve this, so you kids better get on this case.
[ Light laughter ]
I just asked you, in the seeds of peace, you take the Israeli side, and you sometimes in the seeds of peace have to take the other side?Jawad: Yes.
Bill: Let's hear it.
Take his side.
Shushanna: Take his side?
Bill: Yeah.
Argue the Arab case.
Shushanna: I don't think that there is --
[ Laughter and applause ]
I don't believe that --
if there is a state that was offering me a state --
Bill: That's your side.
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: Can you argue their side?
Jawad: I can, but let me tell you something, as soon as the people --
[ Laughter ]
As soon as the people learn how to take the other side and think like the other side thinks, that's when there's going to be an understanding.
When there's going to be an understanding, then the Palestinian state and the Israeli states can work together.
Shushanna: They won't be understanding.
[ Talking over each other ]
Jawad: When you talk like you are the victim, "I am the victim.
They're doing that to me," and then the Palestinian comes, "I am the victim.
The Israelis are to blame."
[ Talking over each other ]
Shushanna: They have to shoot, have to blow themselves up and to sing songs.
[ Talking over each other ]
Jawad: Do they teach you how to shot them?
Bill: Whoa, whoa.
Do they teach you how to shoot guns? You said you wanted to say something about the suicide bombers.
Amer: Yeah.
I think we have to make an important distinction when we talk about the suicide bombers.
Now, first you have to decide what is legitimate resistance, what is illegitimate resistance? You have Palestinians living under occupation.
They are, in my view and the view of many other scholars, that they are allowed to resist the occupation.
Now --
Bill: So by killing civilians.
Jawad: Just let me finish.
Bill: I'm asking.
Jawad: I'm saying no.
Blow --
putting a bomb onto yourself and walking into a bus station or a club to me is a completely illegitimate form of resistance.
Bill: Certainly a club.
Amer: I'm saying anywhere where there's civilians.
Anywhere where there's civilians is an illegitimate form of resistance.
But that doesn't mean that you cannot sympathize with the sentiments that would push somebody to that level.
In other words, I could say, "A Palestinian living under occupation, I see his or her life, and I see what kind of things --
"
[ Talking over each other ]
Jacob: It's the great life that they're promised afterwards.
[ Applause ]
Amer: This is kind of a thing, something that a lot of people say that shows, I think, a complete ignorance of Islam.
Jacob: If there's something wrong with my life here, I'm gonna stick around and work my best and try to make the best of it.
I don't kill myself.
Bill: There is a big difference in the religions, come on, between this life and the other life.
Jacob: There you go.
Bill: Muslims are a little more like the Catholics, "It's gonna happen after you die." The Jews are more like, "Let's make the deal now."
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: I have to take a commercial.
We'll be right back.
[ Applause ]
Bill: I wish you could have seen them in the break.
They were hugging and kissing.
These two fell in love, it's like "Romeo and Juliet" here.
[ Laughter and applause ]
I wish I was serious.
[ Applause ]
Credits
Executive Producers
Bill Maher
Nancy Geller
Marilyn Wilson
Kevin Hamburger
Supervising Producer
Sheila Griffiths
Created By
Bill Maher
Directed By
Hal Grant
Writers
Jose Arroyo
Kevin Bleyer
Bill Maher
Ned Rice
Kevin Rooney
Danny Vermont
Coordinating Producer
Claudia Cagan
Producer
Carole Chouinard
Billy Martin
Associate Director
Bob Staley
Stage Manager
Patrick Whitney
Produced by
Dean E. Johnsen
Executive in Charge of Production
John Fisher
Executive Producers
Brad Grey
Bernie Brillstein
Marc Gurvitz
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