We Could Use a Few More Like Him
Last month, I attended an event held in Chicago with guest speaker being Afif Safieh who in October 2005 was appointed Palestinian Ambassador to Washington. Though the U.S authorities do not consider the Palestinian mission as having diplomatic status (which explains his title on his card reading Head of the PLO Mission To the United States of America), Safieh has been involved in negotiations that led to the official and first direct American-Palestinian dialogs.
According to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper: Afif Safieh is considered the most articulate Palestinian diplomat in Europe, and possibly the world. The most experienced speakers the foreign ministry can muster have been sent to face off against him in international conferences and on BBC talk shows, and they have run into difficulty opposite the Jerusalem-born Palestinian with the rich vocabulary and smooth delivery.
In his speech last month, he talked about the importance of establishing strong institutions which will help strengthen our identities. I took some notes of his speech and referred to some published material he had given to me. He goes on to say, “The Arab world has no ideological dispute with the USA. Our belief is that there are two Americas, two political cultures, two historical memories. There is the America of the early settlers who, on discovering the new world, clashed with the indigenous population and almost totally exterminated them. The America that established slavery and had an elastic conception of its frontiers expanding shamelessly at the expense of Mexico. This is the America that Ariel Sharon always seeks an alliance with. When the shared values are invoked, it is in this national experience that the common traditions are deeply rooted.”
He went on to say, “But there is another America. The America of the War of Independence against the colonial power. The America which took the painful decision to undergo a civil war to abolish slavery. The America of Woodrow Wilson which came to the Versailles conference upholding the principle of self determination. The America of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King’s dream. It is this America that we Palestinians appeal to and seek an alliance with. These two Americas do not coincide with Democratic America and Republican America. The two historical memories cross this political divide.”
Another point Safieh touched on is the monopoly of human suffering. He goes on to say “If I were a Jew, the holocaust would be the most horrible event in history. If I were a Black African it would be slavery and apartheid. If I were a Native American , it would be the discovery of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted in near total extermination. If I were an Armenian it would be the Ottoman-Turkish massacres. And if I were a Palestinian, it would be the Nakba-Catastrophe. No one people has a monopoly on human suffering. ” He warned the audience of the importance of how it is not advisable to try to establish a hierarchy of suffering. He continued “humanity should consider all the mentioned as morally repugnant and politically unacceptable. And humanity is increasingly beginning to express its adhesion to the principle that there is only one mankind and not different kinds of men and women.”
