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Profile of Kamal Boullata
Love and respect of all forms of life is [...]
Kamal Boullata: Love and respect of all forms of life is rooted in the believe that the life of all human beings is equally secret everywhere. As long as there are people in our world who continue to be indifferent to human suffering outside the immediate environment and who consider the lives of other people less valuable than theirs, I would not blame any victim of such attitudes to consider the value of human beings on top of all other forms of life.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Article one of the universal declaration of [...]
Kamal Boullata: Article one of the universal declaration of human rights proclaimes and i quote: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and of [course], the basic dignities that each human being deserves are to live in freedom and to ensure one's human, political and social rights in equality with all other members of the human family regardless of faith, race, creed or colour. Does one's dignity may begin with selfrespect but its full realization is atteint through commpassion and respect for the lives of others. As for why so many people continue to go without the basic dignities they deserve it is mainly because elected officials who controle the reigns of political power in our world are cursed with greed as much as they are fired up by the need to extend their domination by waging war if need be. To them, all questions of [light] can only be solved and mesured by might. History teaches us however that people everywhere will continue to resist and risk their lives just to retain the basic dignities. Regardless of where we come from each one of us shares the resonsibility to win this battle for all.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Qu'est-ce qu'on peut dire? [De voir] une [...]
Kamal Boullata: Qu'est-ce qu'on peut dire? [De voir] une thèse comme ca, en trois minutes.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
If the political state in which we live, [...]
Kamal Boullata: If the political state in which we live, does not allow one to see or feel any responsibility for the pain inflected on others, how can we expect people that the life of others is as much worth as one's own? During the last israeli war in Libanon, within a month thousands of civilians were killed, hundreds were wounded maimed and paralysed in the name of saving two kidnapped israeli soldiers. You as ambassador to the UN announced that their is no more equivalence quote on quote ``between libanese civilian casualties of israeli bombing and Israelis killed by´´ what he called ``Malicious terrorist acts´´. Commanding on such attitudes in relation to the military [incergence]in Ghaza, Israelian historian Ilan Pappe writes that daily killing and the systematic and indiscriminate borbardement of men, women and children on a daily level in there is a ``genocide being carried out on a extended period of time´´. He informs us that ``the daily killing of up to ten civilians is going to leave a few thousands dead each year and of course in the israeli press all these killings is being reported´´ he also tells us in the entirely pages in the microscopic fund. Why the lifes of Israelis are worth more than that of their neighbours is not a mystery. It is the simple expression of the value system of superiority that was established by racist and colonialist attitudes since the birth of the settler state. With the blessing of the worlds most powerful country, Israel in our region is allowed litteraly to run away with murder.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
It is the people who dared to break unjust [...]
Kamal Boullata: It is the people who dared to break unjust laws who expedited humanity’s progress. If a law may only serve those in power, but not those who are oppressed and crushed by power, the injured, the weak, and the victimized that is no law to obey. It is our moral obligation to break that law. In our Judeo-Christian tradition, we have had perhaps the first laws that came down to us or come to us from the Book of Exodus. We learn that Moses taught, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” Yet from my experience as a Palestinian, I can tell you that in Israel today, laws that govern the country’s non-Jewish natives are not those that are applied to Israeli Jews. Palestinian Christians and Muslim are prisoners today never cease to tell the world that they do not recognize the decisions of Israeli courts. If one would think of that a little bit further, one can see why some of these people feel it necessary to break Israeli laws.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
I would like to answer this question by [...]
Kamal Boullata: I would like to answer this question by quoting two quotations. The first is by German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He wrote in 1949 before his death, of course, and he expressed his fears after -- saying that after the war peace when it comes will not be peace. A real peace which is constructive, creative, but a stunted peace no more than non-belligerence, which at any moment when any new constellation of forces arises is liable to turn into war. Buber goes on and I quote, “And when this hollow peace is achieved, how then do you think you will be able to combat the spirit of militarism? When the leaders of the extreme nationalism will find it easy to convince the young that this kind of spirit is essential for the survival of the country, the battles will seize, but suspicions seize. Will there be any end to the thirst for vengeance? Won’t we be compelled and I mean really compelled to maintain a posture of vigilance forever without being able to breathe? Won’t this unceasing effort occupy the most talented members of our society?” The second quote is from the Israeli historian, Élan Pappe. He said, “When Israel was absolved from any responsibility or accountability for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, it turned this policy into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda.” As long as the Israelis are obsessed with military victories, we would not have peace in the region. As long as justice is not addressed, we will not have peace. Peace is not a moment between conflicts, but a continuous state one lives and strives for. Peace can only come along through peaceful means and reconciliation. A lasting peace can only be one that is built on justice. As long as Israel continues to serve U.S. interests in the region, I am afraid we won’t be having peace.
We can stop our governments from going to [...]
Kamal Boullata: We can stop our governments from going to war if we can plan for peace in the way we plan for war. We should never forget that there is an organic relation between war and the economics of the country that produces weapons. That has always been a link between the two. To be able to stop war, we have to mobilize for peace and resist the forces that make decisions to go to war in order that we’ll be able to stop the machinery of war. War is a product of the failure and the defeat in the phase of conflicting interests between parties. There has to be so many other alternatives than violence to war.
Kamal Boullata:
It depends who calls what is self-defense [...]
Kamal Boullata: It depends who calls what is self-defense and who calls terrorism. Those who dominate the world call the definitions. Throughout history we have learned that many people who were considered terrorists were now no more considered that. In mandate Palestine, when Palestine was under the British mandate before 1948, they were calling, the British were calling the Jewish groups terrorists that were the same speakers today are speaking of self-defense. The whole attack, for example, on Lebanon over the month of August was called self-defense. Why is it so in our world today is mainly because the U.S. allows this to happen.
Who said the increase in civilian death is [...]
Kamal Boullata: Who said the increase in civilian death is tolerated? Palestinians have a colloquial proverb in Arabic that says, “The person who is receiving the blows is not like the one who counts them.” Those who tolerate the dramatic increase in civilian deaths are not those who are its victims, their relatives and their countrymen, but those who remain on the outside. During the Spanish civil war for example, the total number of civilians killed over a number of raids in Guernica was situated between 250 and 300 civilians. At that time, the Western world could not tolerate that genocide. In contrast, the Israeli indiscriminate bombardment of densely populated areas in Gaza and in Lebanon during a single month this past year did not only kill thousands but destroyed the infrastructure of a whole country and made life intolerable without water or electricity for the Palestinian survivors. Yet that was perfectly tolerated by Bush and Blair, while the rest of the Western political leaders just counted the blows. In this context, it may be worth reminding ourselves that the tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica that hangs outside the UN Security Council had to be covered up with drapes before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared to promote the need for a U.S. war on Iraq. The U.S. war machine that killed Iraqi civilians, what considered part of what they call today collateral damage, do not count the killing and destruction that took place in Guernica in 1937 is only a fraction of the destruction and killing that was being committed in Iraq. It is the deep rooted racism embedded in today’s political decision makers in Western countries where most of these weapons are manufactured is why the dramatic rise of civilian death is being tolerated.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
In principle, all people should have the [...]
Kamal Boullata: In principle, all people should have the right to live in dignity and freedom in their own country of birth. If all people were granted that right, we would not be having the kind of enforced immigration and refugee problems that plague our world today. Take myself as an example. Being a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem and whose family roots go back to 100’s of years there, in June 1967 when the Israeli armies took over the Arab sector of the city, I lost the right to live there because I happened to be outside the country when Jerusalem fell. After obtaining a U.S. passport, I was only allowed to visit my home country as a foreigner. I was told at the Ministry of Interior, I can only come back as a foreigner on a limited tourist visa. More recently, the Israeli Ministry of Interior has revoked even that permit to Palestinians. Palestinians carrying foreign passports like myself have been turned back at Ben-Gurion Airport. Family members have been separated and new homes broken. This is not even reported in the press in general. The irony of it all is that as long as the choice to live in the city of birth is denied to me, simply because I wasn’t born in a Jewish family, verses from Psalm 137 continue to ring a very special bell to me. That says, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her coming; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I am preferred not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” Palestinians from Jerusalem do not need a religious setting to feel each time they part from each other to declare to each other next year in Jerusalem.
Kamal Boullata:
There is no other system that I can think of [...]
Kamal Boullata: There is no other system that I can think of that is better than democracy, if the elected officials actually do represent the will and aspirations of all citizens from all the classes of that society. But democracy cannot be dictated from above as the U.S. has done in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Democracy has to be created from below, which calls for exercising responsibility of everyone living under that system. I was living in America during the Vietnam War. From that time I remember a saying by Abraham Heschel that I think can apply to all time when it comes to democracy. He said, “In a democracy a few are guilty; all are responsible.” There are also different kinds of democracies. For example, in South Africa during the apartheid period, there was a democracy for a certain class or ethnic group, namely the whites, who enjoyed democracy. It wasn’t the blacks that enjoyed it in their own country. In our region, for example, Israel is the only country that is considered to be a democratic country. The truth is democracy in Israel is only for its Jewish citizens and not to all its citizens, which include Palestinian, Christians and Muslims. As we have seen in the last war on Lebanon, the bombs at Hezbollah were shooting at Galeli. The majority of those who were killed in that war, the majority of Israeli citizens who were killed were actually Palestinians from Israel; and the main reason was that these people did not have the right to have the security and the hiding places – I forgot what it is called in English -- to protect their lives. They lost their lives because Israeli law did not apply to them.
Kamal Boullata:
It is the big corporations linked with the [...]
Kamal Boullata: It is the big corporations linked with the war industry, I believe, in the big countries that profits most from terrorism. Individuals are the victims of terrorism, be they the terrorists themselves or the people who fall in these terrorist activities. Terrorism has been replaced by communism in the West as the rational for the militarization of the country and for military adventures abroad. Creating an atmosphere of hysteria is important in order to be able to carry on a war.
Physical bravery used to be considered a [...]
Kamal Boullata: Physical bravery used to be considered a decisive factor in battles in the past. That kind of bravery has lost its meaning in our time when hundreds of people can be instantly killed at the press of a button. Moral courage which has been decisive in promoting human progress throughout history continues to be the key factor in changing our world today.
Indeed, why should any nuclear bomb anywhere [...]
Kamal Boullata: Indeed, why should any nuclear bomb anywhere in the world be more dangerous than any other? To whom an Iranian nuclear bomb is more dangerous and who says an Iranian bomb is more dangerous? That is the question. [Hanna Aran] once wrote the hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against himself. It is really hypocritical to think that an Iranian nuclear bomb supposed to be more dangerous than an American, Israeli or French bomb. The USA that actually was the first to use a nuclear bomb is the same that refuses today to sign treaties to stop nuclear testing. In our region, as long as Israel is considered part of the Western world defending its ideals, the nuclear bombs it owns is never brought up as an issue when talking about Iran. This is what allows Germany today, even while Israel was waging a war on Lebanon, to pledge two submarine ships with nuclear heads to Israel.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
To find a definition for the modern version [...]
Kamal Boullata: To find a definition for the modern version of colonialism, perhaps the main characteristics of colonialism needs to be defined first. In colonialism, we always had a military conquest; often we had ethnic cleansing, racial discriminations and settlements. These are a few of the things that have marked the history of colonialism. In the Middle East region today, the political behavior of the State of Israel, supported mainly by the USA and its allies, represents a modern version of colonialism.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Non-violent resistance in history, be it in [...]
Kamal Boullata: Non-violent resistance in history, be it in the War of Independence in India, or in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA did not only liberate those who fought against injustice, but it also liberated those who were counted as their enemy. That is why non-violent resistance should be a first choice in the struggle against injustice. It's visionaries like the Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King in America have led the way and have showed us how wars can be won through non-violent resistance. Sometimes, they do fail. If we look for example in the history of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, it has been throughout one of non-violence. The six months of strike in 1936 perhaps was the example that set the tone for that kind of resistance. Through the outbreak of the popular uprising in Intifada in 1987 that also was a movement of non-violent -- that expressed itself non-violence. During the '70s and the '80s, a close friend of mine, by the name of Mubarak Awad from Jerusalem, has started a movement in under occupation in which he was able to organize peasants whose trees were being uprooted to ask the peasants to go back and replant the trees. Homes were being destroyed; people would go out and build their own homes against the Israeli laws that brought them down. But, Mubarak Awad was not tolerated in this kind of struggle. He was soon jailed and then he was deported. There was a decision by Israeli court that he is -- he does not belong there. Since he carried an American passport, he better goes back to America. And, he was actually carried by people throughout -- from the prison -- from his prison to the airport in Ben Gurion on the plane by force and he was not allowed to come back and live in his own country of birth. That’s why all means of resistance should be applied in our world today.
Our world is full of women and men heroes [...]
Kamal Boullata: Our world is full of women and men heroes who stand up to lead the fight for the people’s national and human rights and who are willing to sacrifice their lives for what they stand for. Many are found in jails of those countries which happen to be the closest allies to the USA. Many others organize on the streets of the industrial world. They protest against oppression, injustice and globalization. All together they form different pockets of resistance against the world’s new order as defined by the USA and its satellite states. My heroes are all these anonymous people who are calling for a new world in which many different worlds may live together.
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I would like to see a future in which the [...]
Kamal Boullata: I would like to see a future in which the world’s wealth would be distributed to benefit all peoples of the world and in which the gulf between the rich and the poor is minimized and in which natural foods can be guaranteed to all, a world in which injustice anywhere would become the concern of all. The United Nations that is restructured to represent the world’s nations in a more egalitarian manner, in which the UN would be more independent from being used by the most powerful nation on our planet. I wish to see a future in which international treaties would be respected, so that we will put an end to the destruction of our natural environment, to stop manufacturing, maiming, personal mines and all weapons of mass destruction, to outlaw torture, to create international commissions of inquiry into all complaints by national groups to bring war criminals to international justice.
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Kamal Boullata:
Every person aware of being, no matter how [...]
Kamal Boullata: Every person aware of being, no matter how simple a life one is living, can experience during certain inspired moments in the course of a day how one is part of nature. To perceive our planet in that way, however, is a different story. People endowed with an inner sense of contemplation may perceive our planet in this light. Such an experience may be communicated and amplified through educational channels. At our disposal today, we have all the technological means to communicate to people everywhere the fact that each living being is part and parcel of nature and that we are all responsible for this planet we live on.
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The price of establishing the state of [...]
Kamal Boullata: The price of establishing the state of Israel in 1948 and how a whole society was destroyed in the process has continued to be the most important unreported story in the Western media. One can also think of how much prejudice there is every time the Palestinian survival comes on the news. There has to be something to be done about this.
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In our time which are getting faster and [...]
Kamal Boullata: In our time which are getting faster and faster everyday the new technology that has been developed have often been applied to disguise and distort truth into half truth and turn fact into fiction. This practice may only work for a certain period of time. The unethical manufacturing of truth and fact, however, cannot last for long because sooner or later the truth would emerge. For us to determine the truth and the facts we must begin by patiently listening to all sides and in time the truth should emerge.
The first value I think to teach a child is [...]
Kamal Boullata: The first value I think to teach a child is respect for life within and for the dignity and individuality of others. Secondly, a freedom of thought that allows equal freedom to others. Thirdly, the courage to stand up for one’s own rights and resist injustice by all means available.
Being a painter myself, I will only focus in [...]
Kamal Boullata: Being a painter myself, I will only focus in -- on pictorial expression in the visual arts. Unlike in past centuries, our life today is increasingly being bombarded with images that travel with lightening speed across the world. As a result, image-making which since Paleolithic period until most recently served as an extension of humanity's faith, dreams and aesthetics celebration of life has been drastically altered. The sense of growth, accumulated experience and continuity throughout the ages seems to have been severed in our time. Now, only chaos and the spectacle that competes with the never-ending rush of images seems to be the ultimate aspiration of many celebrated artists and the driving force behind their phenomenal appetite for new forms in visual expression. In the process, technological tools used by such artists have been standardized throughout the globe. As a result, the criteria of the creative outcome regardless of its place of orgin have been set and reset in accordance with demands of the marketplace in the dominant West. All these issues need to be raised among the general public, as well as in all art circles. They need to be talked about in the open, discussed and brought all out. Why? Because, the art adhered to this description while it may claim the so-called freedom of choice and a break with the tradition of possessing art, the perpetual drive of the new art seems to me to mimic the very erratic drive for more consumption. Such art contributes to the chaos of our age leaving [audio ends]
All human creativity moves me whether it was [...]
Kamal Boullata: All human creativity moves me whether it was the visual arts, the music or literature especially when the moment of encounter takes place with the work of art. I am moved by the human contact that is demonstrated within the work, as well as in the encounter. It’s all because I guess art in itself is the most expressive language that brings people together.
I do not understand why do we have to create [...]
Kamal Boullata: I do not understand why do we have to create myths to change the world for the better. The world has been made a better place for all every time the truth triumphed and it had been made worse every time a myth was perpetuated.
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
Kamal Boullata:
It is man who created religion, it isn’t God [...]
Kamal Boullata: It is man who created religion, it isn’t God who did. God has no religion. God is love, and that means all religions end up in God.
Kamal Boullata:
It certainly is more important to define [...]
Kamal Boullata: It certainly is more important to define people in relation to where they come from and not in accordance with the race, creed or religion. But, if people were defined in relation to where they come from, our world today would be much more at peace with itself and free of much racism, which is at the heart of many refugee problems that plague it. For example, in my case, as a Palestinian, I was born and raised in Jerusalem. The State of Israel does not recognize me as it's citizen of my country of birth, not even of my city of birth. By claiming to be a state created for the Jewish people, an American Jew born in Miami, Florida has the full right to live in Jerusalem as a first class citizen whereas I who happen to be born to a Christian Arab family whose roots in Palestine go back to the times when Jerusalem was a Byzantine city, I have no right to return and live there in peace. In fact, after East Jerusalem was conquered by Israeli armed forces in 1967, Palestinians like myself be they Christian or Muslim who continued to live at home were only considered as residents and not as citizens of their city of birth. They were given resident permits by the Israeli authorities that could be revoked from them at any time by the whim of a simple Israeli official. Since 1967, hundreds of Jerusalem natives have lost their residence permit that way. Why Palestinian refugees are denied their right to return to their ancestral country is not for demographic or logistical considerations as it is often claimed, but because Israel as a state exclusively -- is exclusively reserved for its Jewish citizens and it is not a state of all of its citizens.
To reach a stage of being a possible [...]
Kamal Boullata: To reach a stage of being a possible world-changer one begins by accepting with total humility the arduous journey of learning. Before specializing in a field of knowledge without which little could be done to change tomorrow’s world, a young adult should ideally perhaps read in one’s own language the major classics, learn the history of one’s own people and develop a taste for the arts along with using one’s own hands to sharpen one’s aesthetic sensibilities and to create beauty that can be shared with others. Then, make sure to learn a foreign language and familiarize oneself with the art and literature of its culture, the history of its people as it is written by its most reliable sources. Finally, to make a habit of traveling outside one’s country to areas of particular interest and gain practical experience of living with peoples that are of different class and background than those in which the young adult was brought up.
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Kamal Boullata:
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