[289] in peace2
Fadia Rafeedie's Speech and Article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (F. AuYeung)
Sun Jun 11 17:02:21 2000
Message-Id: <200006112102.RAA10459@e51-075-3.mit.edu>
To: peace-list@MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 17:02:05 -0400
From: "F. AuYeung" <auyeung@MIT.EDU>
regarding Albright's appearance at the UC Berkeley commencement:
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 00:52:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Simon Mui <simsays@MIT.EDU>
To: "F. AuYeung" <auyeung@mit.edu>
Subject: commencement speech
Berkeley Convocation Address
By Fadia Rafeedie
Chancellor Berdahl: Please join me in congratulating our 2000
University Medalist, Fadia Rafeedie:
Fadia: Thank you, that was way too generous, Chancellor Berdahl. It
makes me sound, you know, a lot better
than I am. I had a speech and it's right here. It took me so long to
draft it and I kept re-drafting it, and this
morning I changed it again, but I'm just going to put it to the side
and I'm going to talk from my heart because
what I witnessed here today, I have mixed feelings about.
I don't know why I'm up here articulating the viewpoints of a lot of
my comrades out there who were arrested,
and not them. It's not because I got, you know, straight A's or maybe
it is. Maybe that's the way the power
structure works, but I'm very fortunate to be able to give them a
voice. I think that's what I'm going to do, so if
you give me your attention, I'd really appreciate it.
I was hoping to speak before Secretary Albright, but that was also a
reflection of the power structure, I think, to
sort of change things around and make it difficult for people who are
ready to articulate their voice in ways they
don't usually get a chance to.
So I'm going to improvise, and I'm going to mention some things that
she didn't mention at all in her speech but
which most of the protesters were actually talking about. You know, I
think it's really easy for us to feel sorry for
her, and I was looking at my grandmothers who are actually in the
audience - my grandmother and her sister -
who weren't really happy with all the protesters, and I think they
thought that wasn't really respectful of them, and
a lot of you didn't, I don't think, because you came to hear her
speak. But I think what the protesters did was not
embarrass our university. I think they dignified it.
Because secretary Albright didn't even mention Iraq, and that's what
they were here to listen to. And I think
sometimes NOT saying things not mentioning things - is actually lying
about them.
And what I was going to tell her while she was sitting on the stage
with me, I was going to remind her that four
years ago from this Friday when we were freshmen, I heard her on 60
Minutes talking to a reporter who had just
returned from Iraq.
The reporter was describing that a million children were dying [died]
due to the sanctions that this country was
imposing on the people of Iraq. And she told her, listen, "that's
more.. children than have died in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Do you think the price is worth it?" [Albright] looked into
the camera and she said, "the price is worth it.
"Since that time, 3 times that number of people have died in
Iraq. And I was going to tell her, "do you really think
the price is worth it? " We are about 5000 here today, next month, by
the time we graduate, that's as many
people who are going to die in Iraq because of the sanctions. This is
what House Minority Whip David Boniors
calls 'infanticide masquerading as policy.'
Now, I don't want to make the mood somber here because this is our
commencement, but commencement means
beginning, and I think it's important for us to begin where
civilization itself began, and where it's now being
destroyed. [applause]
Let me talk to you a little bit a little bit more about the
sanctions, because I think it's very important. Now, I'm a
Palestinian, I would really love to talk about the struggle for the
liberation of my country, and to talk about a whole
bunch of other things and I see some people maybe rolling their eyes,
and other people nodding these are
controversial issues, but I need to speak about Iraq because I think
what's happening there is a genocide. It's
another holocaust.
And I'm a history major, and sometimes I look back at history and I
see things like the slave trade, the Holocaust
you know, I see I see people dropping atomic bombs and not thinking
what the ramifications are, and I don't want
us to think about Iraq that way. It's already a little too late
because 2.5 million people have died and yet these
sanctions continue.
For the last 10 years, you wouldn't imagine the kinds of things that
aren't being let into this country: heart
machines, lung machines, needles, um infrastructural parts to build
the economy. Even cancer patients sometimes
some of the medicine will be let in, but not ALL of the medicine.
It's very strategic what's let in at what time, because what it does
is it prolongs life, but it doesn't save it.
In Iraq, the hospitals they clean the floors with gasoline because
detergent isn't even allowed in because of the
sanctions.
These are all United States policies.
And Secretary Albright - I have no conflict with HER, as an
individual. I don't happen to RESPECT her, but she
belongs to a larger power structure. She's a symbol.
And when the protesters are protesting, it's not because they want to
pick a fight with the woman who you guys
all happen -well, many of you - happen to love. She was introduced as
the 'greatest woman of our times.' Now
see, to me that's an insult. [applause] This woman is doing HORRIBLE
things. She's allowing innocent people to
suffer and to die.
Iraq used to be the country in the Arab World that had the best
medical services and social services for its
people, and NOW look at it. It's being OBLITERATED.
And a lot of times you might hear it's because of Saddam Hussein and
I'd like to talk a little bit about that. He's a
brutal dictator - I agree with her, and I agree with many of you. But
again, I'm a history major, and history means
origins. It means beginnings. We need to see who's responsible for
how strong Saddam Hussein has gotten.
When he when he was gassing the Kurds, he was gassing them using
chemical weapons that were manufactured in Rochester, New York.
And when he was fighting a long and protracted war with Iran, where 1
million people died, it was the CIA that
was funding him. It was U.S. policy that built this dictator. When
they didn't NEED him, they started imposing
sanctions on his people. Sanctions - or any kind of policy - should
be directed at people's governments, not at the
people.
The cancer rate in Iraq has risen by over 70 percent since the Gulf
War. The children who are dying from these
malicious and diseases, weren't born when the Gulf War happened. The
reason that the cancer rate is so high is
because every other day our country is bombing Iraq STILL. We're
still at war with them. They have no nuclear
capabilities. In fact, just last week, the United Nations inspectors
found [again] that Iraq has no nuclear
capabilities and yet WE are BOMBING them every other day with
depleted uranium. And what this does is it
releases a gas that the people breathe. It's making them ill, and
they're dying and they don't have medicine.
I saw some of my friends, even, being arrested here today. One of
them was Lillian. Her aunt did a documentary
about this depleted uranium, and it showed that it's being MINED by
Native American populations in the United
States. THEY'RE getting sick. Their children are getting sick. And
that depleted uranium is going from HERE, to
our MILITARY, to Iraq, and it's decimating populations. This is a big
deal.
And I'm embarrassed that I don't even get to talk about Columbia,
because I saw a few signs about that, too.
And my colleague here, Darren Noy, who's also a Finalist, is very
interested in these issues. We don't stand alone.
I'm on stage with allies, I'm looking out at allies, we need allies,
my allies have been taken away [today].
But in general, I mean, I'm speaking to a crowd that gave a standing
ovation to the woman who typifies everything
against which I stand, and I'm still telling you this because I think
it's important to understand.
And I think, that if I achieve nothing else, if this makes you think
a little bit about Iraq, think a little bit about U.S.
foreign policy, I've succeeded.
I don't want to take too much of your time, but I want to end my
speech with a slogan that hangs over my bed in
Arabic. It says, "La tastaw7ishu tareeq el-7aq, min qilit es-sa'ireen
fihi" and that translates into, "Fear not the path
of truth for the lack of people walking on it." I think our future is
going to be the future of truth, and we're going to
walk on that path, and we're going to fill it with travelers.
Thank you very much.
[Standing ovation from the stage, with the faculty members, the
senior class council, and the student
award-winners. And, of course, standing ovation from a cheering
section in the crowd.]
------- End of Forwarded Message
--------
------- Forwarded Message
Subject: ADC: Article by Fadia Rafeedie on her UC Berkeley graduation speech
(fwd)
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 12:45:10 -0400
From: Ozgur Alkan <boalkan@MIT.EDU>
ADC Update:
Article by Fadia Rafeedie on her UC Berkeley graduation speech
The following article in today=92s issue of the San Francisco Chronicle,
by UC Berkeley gold medal winner and ADC Bay Area Board Member Fadia
Rafeedie, discusses her speech at this year=92s UC graduation ceremony,
which was also addressed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Ms.
Rafeedie=92s speech focused on the inhumanity of US policy towards Iraq.
It can be read online at
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2000=
/06/08/ED105443.DTL>.
What I Wanted to Convey To My Fellow Cal Graduates
by Fadia Rafeedie
BEFORE I LEARNED that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would be
sharing the stage with me as UC Berkeley's keynote speaker for
convocation exercises on May 10, I had submitted to the Committee on
Prizes a packet of application materials in competition for the school's
highest honor, the University Medal. The last question that the
eight-person panel of professors posed to me was: ``If you had a chance
to address your graduating class, what would you talk about?''
I told them that I wanted my speech to have a global perspective and
that I intended to impart a serious, but not somber, message to my
colleagues that while we are living in an age of exploding dot-coms,
``stock options'' and outrageously high salaries out of college, the
truth was the United States' tremendous wealth as the strongest
superpower in world history comes at the expense of a great deal of
human suffering elsewhere. By way of examples that I would draw based on
my own interests as an Arab and as a history major, I would remind my
fellow graduates that our world extends beyond Berkeley, and certainly
beyond the borders of the country to which my parents immigrated from
Palestine almost three decades ago.
That Madeleine Albright would also address my class added an
interesting, though not terribly influential, dimension to my plans. I
could not imagine speaking at my convocation, in the spring of the new
millennium, without mentioning what I consider to be the greatest human
tragedy of our time: the obliteration of the modern state of Iraq and
the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people from preventable
illnesses, starvation and bombing since the imposition of U.S.-backed
economic sanctions after the Persian-Gulf War. Indeed, I would have used
Iraq to illustrate a larger point about the arrogance of power.
I also could not imagine that I would not take the opportunity to
confront Madeleine Albright with the damning quote that has haunted her
for four years ever since she appeared on ``60 Minutes'' and told Lesley
Stahl -- who had just returned from Iraq -- that the ``price was worth
it'' to advance U.S. policy in the region, even if it meant the death of
half a million Iraqi children.
Albright had suffered a humiliating political setback in February 1998
at the hands of Ohio State University students at a CNN International
Town Meeting. Like me, the students were outraged that a genocide of
this magnitude could continue unchallenged for nearly 10 years. And less
than a week after she left Berkeley, she faced a crowd opposing U.S.
sanctions at the more conservative George Washington University's
commencement.
Albright did not hear my own condemnation, because she fled from
Berkeley unexpectedly after the university administration switched the
order of speakers at the last moment when we were all already sitting on
stage. It's unfortunate, but in many ways telling, that she could not
bear to sit through my speech and give me an opportunity to say what all
the hundreds of voices who met her -- black and white, Arab and
non-Arab, Muslim and atheist -- were saying, as they ``spoke truth to
power.''
I watched as the protesters were expelled one by one for speaking out
about injustices in Iraq. By then, the speech that I had prepared --
which was not entirely political and had included a substantial portion
about what I learned from my class on Sproul Plaza -- not only
encouraged me to give the impromptu speech that I did, which was solely
about Iraq, but dictated that I do so.
I talked about how the sanctions were ``infanticide masquerading as
policy,'' in the words of House Minority Whip David Bonior; that basic
food supplies and medicines are blocked from entering Iraq in sufficient
quantities and the U.S. government bombs Iraq still, nearly every day,
with depleted uranium, which causes tremendously high cancer rates. Even
though Saddam Hussein is a dictator, I told them he has historically
been sustained by U.S. dollars and weapons and that innocent Iraqi
civilians should not have to pay with their lives for that sordid
relationship.
Had I said nothing, the protesters would have remained a spectacle --
misunderstood, loud, irritating and disruptive -- instead of a brave and
inspiring voice of justice.
Some outspoken critics fault me for using the podium to advance my
political opinions, and for ruining what in their mind is a celebratory
occasion. Madeleine Albright's presence itself was a political
statement, and her not mentioning the atrocities in Iraq was a more
resounding statement still. It is crucial, too, to see a convocation as
an event that challenges graduating seniors with issues that they will
likely face as this country's future leaders. Celebrations and
congratulations aside, I was talking about another holocaust. Though my
focus might have been on an Arab country to which I am connected by
culture, nationality, and, of course, humanitarian concern, by no means
was the larger point I tried to communicate confined to any one region
or any one people.
My fellow students have causes of their own about which they are
passionate, and there is no monopoly on the recognition of human
suffering. Neither is there an inappropriate time to expose injustices
wherever we might find them.
Though Albright may not have heard my message, hundreds of supporters
throughout the world did. The letters of solidarity that I received mean
more to me than the University Medal itself, whether they came from
classmates and professors, academicians at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and
Stanford, or written in broken English from Germany, South Africa,
France, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Iraq and Palestine.
As one letter read, ``Sometimes the smallest victories vindicate the
larger injustices.''
Fadia Rafeedie, who will begin pursuing her studies at Yale Law School
this fall, served as a board member for the Bay Area chapter of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The group is coordinating a
campaign to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sanctions on Iraq
this August. For more information, go to www.amaal.org.
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...
btw, thanks aimee for your suggestions to my response editorial letter
for the daily cal. i sent it to Fadia a while back, and she wrote back
a note, saying how she especially liked the part about choosing Albright
as a political statement in itself. i don't think it is a coincidence
of thought that your idea appeared in her editorial in the chronicle...
;)
