Kharzai may not make it through the month...
Donahue’ for August 1
msnbc.com
Guests: Jesse Jackson, Joann Donnellan, Yitzhak Frankenthal, Steven Flatow, Lane Haygood, Katie Sierra
"DONAHUE: Up next, two Jewish fathers who lost children to the Middle East conflict, sharing different views on how they would respond to these personal tragedies.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: When the smoke finally settled from yesterday’s explosion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, seven were left dead, five of whom held American citizenships. Here’s how President Bush reacted today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I’m just as angry as Israel is right now. I’m furious that innocent lives were lost. However, through my fury, even though I am mad, I still believe peace is possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONAHUE: Any time a parent loses a child who’s barely out of their teens, beyond grief. But it’s even more tragic when the children are innocent victims of the crossfires of war.
Jewish American Stephen Flatow is here. He lost his 20-year-old daughter, Alisa, to a suicide bomber in 1995.
And we are joined by Yitzhak Frankenthal, an orthodox Jew from Israel. He’s on the satellite from Jerusalem. He lost his 19-year-old son when he was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1994.
Well, Mr. Frankenthal, your son was killed at age 19.
YITZHAK FRANKENTHAL, ISRAELI PEACE ACTIVIST: Yes.
DONAHUE: This is so tough to just try. I appreciate both of you being here. You are here to honor the memory of your children, your young adult children. May I share with our audience, Mr. Frankenthal, part of a speech you gave just last Saturday in front of the prime minister’s residence?
Here is part of what you said: “My beloved son, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son, who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son.”
“If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity. If the security forces were to kill innocent Palestinians as well, I would tell them they were no better than my son’s killers.”
“The Palestinians cannot drive us away,” you said. “They have long acknowledged our existence. They have been ready to make peace with us. It is we who are unwilling to make peace with them. It is we who insist on maintaining our control over them. It is we who escalate the situation in the region and feed the cycle of bloodshed. I regret to say, but the blame is entirely ours.”
“I do not mean to absolve the Palestinians and by no means justify attacks against Israeli civilians. No attack against civilians can be condoned.”
Well, Mr. Frankenthal, sir, how were you received with that speech?
FRANKENTHAL: It’s very difficult. I think that the situation in the Middle East, it’s worse day by day. And unfortunately, you cannot see that it’s going to stop. There is only one way to stop the hatred, by making reconciliation and peace. There’s no other way.
DONAHUE: But I would have to guess that you are-your views were not well-received by fellow Jews.
FRANKENTHAL: I will tell you that during the last two years, of course, most of the Israelis got completely the other view. Two years before, most of the Israelis, the majority, they have been ready to make compromises with the Palestinians, the same views that I got.
And unfortunately, since September 2000, the people have lost the view. And they’re thinking that we can get peace with the Palestinians. So I’m talking with a Palestinian and we are sitting with the Palestinian. We are over 200 Israeli parents working together, with 200 Palestinian bereaved parents. We are working together to try to establish reconciliation.
Let’s look at Mr. Flatow. Your daughter, the prime of her life, 20-year-old. You feel about her as he feels about his son. May we have your response?
STEPHEN FLATOW, DAUGHTER KILLED IN ’95 BUS BOMBING: I’m mad at the Palestinian parents that Yitzhak has been dealing with, who have taken to the street. Who have let their children become the buffer between militiamen and Israeli soldiers, who have turned their children into suicide bombers, and who now are planting bombs in college cafeterias.
If there’s going to be a change in the Palestinian-Israeli relations, it has to start with the Palestinians. They have to stop feeding their children a diet of hatred and unrealistic promises. If Yitzhak is correct in his assessment, then I think he just might as well put the key under the doormat, leave the door open and shut the lights out and go someplace else.
DONAHUE: Mr. Frankenthal?
FRANKENTHAL: Stephen is talking about the Palestinians like they need to do steps. But unfortunately, the situation is that we are the conqueror. We are those people got all those Palestinian cities and all those occupation. And if we would like to see that the Palestinians will stop what they are doing, we need to stop the occupation.
There’s no way to have on one side the occupation, and from the other side to tell the Palestinians, stop what you are doing. We need to stop the occupation, then the Palestinians will stop what they’re doing. There is no other way.
You know, Yitzhak Rabin was not stupid. He said, I will fight against the terror like I am not talking peace. And I will make peace like I am not fighting the terror. Why Ariel Sharon is not doing this?
FLATOW: I’m not going to speak for Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak. You know, you and I are both still grieving parents. But I will tell you that we cannot allow people to blow up children on buses or in pizza parlors. We cannot allow kidnapers to grab your son off a road and murder them.
Your son did nothing wrong. My daughter did nothing wrong. The people at the Hebrew University yesterday did nothing wrong. And that’s what has to be stopped. And if it requires a military response by the Israeli government to do it, then that’s what must be done to eliminate these terrorists that are in your midst.
FRANKENTHAL: Stephen, I agree with you 100 percent that our children should have stayed alive. And there is no excuse for those suicide bombers, and there is no excuse for these terror attacks. I agree with you 100 percent. There is no question about it.
But the question is, why those people have got such motivation, to be suicide bombers? What pushed them? What makes 3.5 million people to be crazy? There is only one answer, no other. The occupation.
FLATOW: I don’t buy it, Yitzhak. Look, Israel did not occupy the West Bank until 1967. The PLO was formed before then. Terrorist attacks began before then. I’m just afraid that what we’re being lulled into, if we accept your position, is that we’re going to create a state on the other side that has nothing in their goal but to destroy the state of Israel.
DONAHUE: I regret, I cannot...
FRANKENTHAL: Stephen...
DONAHUE: You had one more thing to say.
FRANKENTHAL: You are going to the past. In the past, you are right 100 percent. It was the fighting against the Israelis and unfortunately, look what’s happened.
But the question is, what do you like to do? To go to the past and to lose the future? To lose our children’s lives? Now in the present, the Palestinians are ready to make peace with us. So let’s do peace.
Even the Egyptians. In the past, they didn’t want to make peace. And look what’s going today with the Egyptians. Why to live in the past? Why not to do today what we need to do?
DONAHUE: Stephen will have an opportunity to say, and then I must break. Sir.
FLATOW: Yitzhak, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians everything they wanted and more. And not only did they say no, they didn’t come back with a concrete proposal. And if you think that there’s peace between Israel and Egypt at this time, it is the coldest peace in the history of mankind.
DONAHUE: I thank you both, gentlemen, and hope we’ll have a chance to revisit with both of you. Your views are very respected.
And we’ll be back with Jesse Jackson in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: Stephen Flatow is with us. As you have been told, he lost his daughter in April of 1995. She was 20 and she was killed in a bombing of a public bus. Yitzhak Frankenthal is on the line, an orthodox Jew who lives in Jerusalem, whose 19-year-old son, Eric, was kill by Hamas gunmen in 1994.
Reverend Jackson, sir, you’re on the line from Chicago. You just got back from the Middle East. You’ve heard this very painful conversation between these two grieving fathers. Life will never be the same for them again. What do you think, as you listened in?
REV. JESSE JACKSON, URGES NON-VIOLENCE IN MIDEAST: You know, last night I went to the hospital in Jerusalem. I watched children lying there with faces burned up beyond recognition, and nails shot through their bodies. And so I’m sensitive to the pain that both of them share.
The question is, shall we engage in more retaliation, which begets retaliation? Or shall somebody stop retaliation, move toward reconciliation and reconstruction and negotiation? And I would hope that the going forward of a reconciliation, and the cease-fire would be our objective.
Because if Israel responds with one more round, it will be met with one more round. There will just be more children dead.
DONAHUE: There is, however, Mr. Flatow has got to be respected for his anguish at the failure of the-you know, do we believe Arafat really wants to stop these suicide bombers? Do we see the sincerity?
JACKSON: See, that might be the simplistic analysis. You know, we met with Arafat after having met with Mr. Peres and Ben-Eliezer twice in Jerusalem. And Arafat and his council met, make an appeal for a cease-fire, end terror, end suicide bombers, reaching out to Hamas. Apparently, had gotten them to agree on agree some kind of tentative cease-fire. Within four hours, the F-16 American-made plane and the bombs dropped.
Then Hamas said, we will retaliate. And of course, they did. What amazes me is that when they said, we will retaliate, we have not talked with them to ask them to not retaliate.
We have not said to them, there’s a way out. Let’s stop it now. Let’s choose negotiation and reconciliation over more confrontation. We’ve taken pride in not talking. If you don’t talk, you don’t act, you don’t change things, ever.
DONAHUE: Yes. Did you want to say briefly...
FLATOW: What I want to say is that Chairman Arafat has aggregated his responsibility to destroy the Hamas and Islamic Jihad infrastructure that exists under his jurisdiction.
Reverend Jackson, my daughter’s killers are walking free in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Why hasn’t he arrested them? Why hasn’t he brought them on trial?
And according to the Oslo Accords, the Israelis demanded their extradition to Israel. He has refused. The man is not committed to destroying the very groups that are looking to destroy...
DONAHUE: Reverend Jackson answers Mr. Flatow’s question, when we return in just a moment.
DONAHUE: Talking with two Jewish fathers who paid the ultimate price, lost children to the Middle East conflict. Stephen Flatow is here. His daughter was killed with the bus she was riding was hit by a suicide bomber. From Israel, Yitzhak Frankenthal, whose 19-year-old son Ara (ph) was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1994. We’re also joined by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who just returned from a peace mission to Israel.
When we last were with you, Mr. Flatow had asked Reverend Jackson why are his daughter’s killers still out there? In other words, he is entitled to some evidence that there is a response by the Palestinians to this kind of heinous behavior.
JACKSON: Well, there must be a response, but the question really is twofold here, a retaliation which will begat a retaliation, or some move back toward the bargaining table, rather than battlefield. Now there is tank movement to Nablus tonight, I understand for example.
DONAHUE: That is correct. Dozens of Israeli tanks have moved into Nablus to, it is reported, remove relatives of those who have been aggressing or creating acts of terrorism against Israelis.
JACKSON: Well, when I was there, Nablus had already been under curfew. People have been denied their work permits. People, eight and ten living in two rooms without electricity, some dying because they can not get the dialysis machines to work. Some children could not take their exams to go to college.
And so, you have despair on the Palestinian side and in some sense of fear on the Israeli side, but as you recycle despair and you recycle fear, we need hope and hope is above fear and despair and that’s why we need an honest broker.
I think Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a death grip and neither can turn the other loose because of recycling. That’s why the U.S. should be involved to be the honest broker. If in fact a U.S. plane dropped that bomb in the Gaza and killed innocent people: a) we should have said that we’re sorry if that’s not our policy. If Hamas said we’re going to retaliate, we should try to convince them to not retaliate.
DONAHUE: Yes.
JACKSON: Again, we choose not to talk.
DONAHUE: Mr. Frankenthal, you’re listening.
FRANKENTHAL: I must say a few things. Number one, if the Palestinians will watch on their people as terrorists and not as soldiers, that will happen only after it will be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and then the matter of the daughter of Stephen Flatow, there will be rest. But in the time being, they can not see those people who have reacted against the Israelis, against the people here in Israel as terrorists. They are looking at them, watching them as soldiers as a conqueror, number one.
Number two, Mr. Flatow has said that Ehud Barak gave almost everything to Arafat, but it’s not correct. It’s (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It’s something that we need to understand that we the Israelis we got the red line but the Palestinians got also a red line. So we didn’t come to the red lines of the Palestinians, but we came to the red line of the Israelis and the Palestinians were ready to accept the red lines of the Israelis, but we haven’t been ready to accept the red lines of the Palestinians.
And number three, you know we are, as Israeli patriots, we are doing what we are doing only because we believe that there is only one way to stop what’s going in the Middle East. It’s to make reconciliation and to make compromises, and there is only one way to achieve peace and security. There is no other way, only this way to sit together and look Sharon, he didn’t sit even one time with Arafat, so what do you expect from Arafat?
DONAHUE: Let’s give Stephen a chance here.
FRANKENTHAL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Arafat.
DONAHUE: Yes, go ahead.
FLATOW: Yitzhak, when I hear Palestinian parents talking as eloquently as you have just spoken about reconciliation, then I will believe there’s a chance. You’re very fortunate. You live...
FRANKENTHAL: No problem. You can hear them. You can hear them all day.
FLATOW: Let them say it in Nablus. Let them say it in Ramallah. Let them say it in Gaza. We just don’t see that (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
FRANKENTHAL: We’ve got it taped. The Israelis we’ve got it taped in the video. We can send it to you.
(CROSSTALK)
FLATOW: I want to see it on Al-Jazeera. I want to see it...
FRANKENTHAL: Last March it has been in the United States and they talk to the Americans like I’m talking.
FLATOW: That’s correct, and that’s not Al-Jazeera and it’s not the West Bank and it’s not Jordan.
FRANKENTHAL: This is the situation.
FLATOW: I understand what you’re saying, Yitzhak, and I still, like I said before, I grieve with you over your loss, but we can’t leave the door open and walk away from the country.
FRANKENTHAL: Phil, no one would like to go out of the country. It’s my country. I would like to stay here. I would like my children to stay here. I would like you to come here to visit here whenever you go.
FLATOW: My son will be there in August.
FRANKENTHAL: It’s our country.
FLATOW: My son will be there in August to study.
FRANKENTHAL: Welcome. Welcome.
DONAHUE: Yes. We certainly can not challenge Mr. Flatow’s devotion and allegiance to the State of Israel; five children, all five studying in Israel including a son that’s going upcoming.
FLATOW: In August.
DONAHUE: Well, dad...
JACKSON: Phil. Phil.
DONAHUE: Yes.
JACKSON: Phil, it seems to me that if we can step up a step above the pain just for a moment, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) an end game, coexisting states for Palestinians and Israelis, end the occupation, end the settlements, end the Intifada, and bring relief to the Palestinian despair and some hope for the Israeli fear. That’s the end game.
But the U.S. is not there at the tunnel to get to the end of the game. We take the position now; we would not talk and negotiate for the end unless Arafat is no longer their leader. Well, democratically he was elected by them or recognized by the Arab states, by the European Union, by the United Nations. We can not not negotiate based upon an undemocratic recommendation.
FLATOW: Reverend Jackson.
JACKSON: The Israelis - yes.
FRANKENTHAL: You’re 100 percent right.
FLATOW: Do you believe that...
FRANKENTHAL: You’re 100 percent right.
FLATOW: ...the Israelis are wrong in asking for a cessation of terror attacks before they go back to the table with the Palestinians?
JACKSON: They are right to ask for cessation of terror attacks but you have kind of two simultaneous things. One, on the one hand the reason we appeal so fervently to Arafat and the council, come public in Arabic and English to be against terror attacks, against suicide bombings and ceasefire.
FLATOW: But sir, yesterday Arafat blamed Ariel Sharon for the attack. He said “I condemn it but it’s Sharon’s fault.”
JACKSON: But he condemned it but his point was that the extreme repressive measures are creating a basic ration-and we must not make the Palestinian Council and Hamas the same. When we were fighting in the South African thing, there was Mandela and ANC. There was PAC. There were distinctions between various groups.
Hamas is a very different group. They are philosophically opposed to Israel’s right to exist. That’s a very different group. They’ve said that when their leader was killed in that bombing, we’re going to get you back. What amazed me, we did not talk with the people who said they were going to retaliate and they did. We got to talk even with our enemies if we’re going to seek some reconciliation. We must talk even with our enemies if we see reconciliation.
DONAHUE: Right, but you were going to meet with Hamas, were you not?
JACKSON: I was and I was going to meet with them because they said we will retaliate. We wanted to convince them to choose negotiation over retaliation, to join a ceasefire and give peace a chance, because war had failed.
DONAHUE: Yes.
JACKSON: But when the bomb blew up we chose to go the hospital to visit the injured children and the dead instead.
DONAHUE: Yes. Mr. Flatow, the suggestion is that your understandable response will just lead a spiral down, down, down, more deaths, more young people, and I guess what Yitzhak and what Reverend Jackson are trying to do is stop that cycle and see if we can’t in the memory of your daughter and all those who died reach some kind of cooling off period where peace will have a chance.
FLATOW: The United States is waging a war of terror at the present time. The State of Israel should not be held to a double standard when it comes to their fight to survive.
DONAHUE: Let me get you one more time, Mr. Frankenthal, give you an opportunity to make your point. You’ve been listening in. What would you want to say before we break here?
FRANKENTHAL: I would like to say that there is only one way to stop the hatred and to stop the bloodshed and to stop the terror and both side terror. It’s not only the Palestinian terror. It’s also from the Israeli side unfortunately, I must say it, because if you are conquered, you can not accept those people to live under the occupation and to be ready to lose 2,000 people of them since September, over 2,000 people of them since September, 2000, and to ask them to be a good people and to be ready to pay more and more price because we are conqueror. Now there is only one way to stop it, sit together and make reconciliation, make compromise and make peace. This is the only way.
DONAHUE: Reverend Jackson, I’ll throw you a short pass here before we break. Iraq’s foreign minister has sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan asking that Chief Inspector Hans Blix (ph) a U.N. weapons expert come to Baghdad at the earliest agreed upon time. Did you know about that?
JACKSON: I did not but it’s a step in the right direction. To attack Iraq is to further destabilize the region. I hope that in that case containment and negotiation prevails over some isolationist preemptive strike. That’s hopefully a breath of fresh air.
DONAHUE: OK, let’s understand these latest developments now, Israeli tanks rolling into Nablus reportedly to seek out the relatives of those who have been killing Israelis, and also we have Iraq apparently saying U.N. inspectors, come in, we’ll talk. Well, these are hardly small issues but we have to wait to see.
JACKSON: Phil.
DONAHUE: Yes.
JACKSON: Phil, one of my concerns now is that the U.S. has become the new theater for this war. It’s not just the Israeli-Palestinian war. We’re so invested in the area financially and militarily, now we’re becoming the object of the vilification, so we have a national interest at reconciliation and reconstruction and negotiation. America’s absence in this debate between these two pained fathers is what’s troubling to me. Our absence in this, in the center of this debate, is a void that must be filled in a meaningful way and early on. |
