Anna Baltzer and Mustafa Barghouti on the Daily Show
October 30, 2009
There's an interesting post about Jon Stewart and the Middle East at Talking Points Memo: Jon Stewart Creates Sea Change on Middle East Coverage. (More reasons to love Jon Stewart! Not that I really needed any help in that department.)
On Wednesday night, October 28, as I was on my way home from the JStreet conference, the Daily Show aired an abbreviated interview featuring Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer, a Palestinian and a Jew who are working together as part of a broad-based movement toward Israeli/Palestinian peace. The full version of the interview can be seen online, and I'm embedding it here beneath the extended-entry link. It's in two parts; they add up to about 15 minutes of conversation.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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(If you can't see the embedded video, you can watch it here.)
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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(And if you can't see the second embedded video, you can watch it here.)
The audience member who yells "liar" at Barghouti a few minutes in to the conversation is a useful reminder of the challenges of talking rationally about this issue. "People...can't even agree to begin the conversation," Jon says; "how can you remain hopeful?" Barghouti finds hope in the strength of the movement of which he and Beltzer are a part -- "a movement of non-violence," he says, and the room applauds.
Beltzer talks about how she grew up with an image of Israel as the peaceful party in this conflict, and how her understanding didn't change until she actually spent time traveling around and meeting people. I wish more American Jews were open to meeting Palestinians and encountering the "facts on the ground" -- this is exactly what I admire about the work that Encounter does.
"Neither group is homogenous, Palestinian or Israeli," Jon points out -- another reality which is too-rarely discussed in our polarized and polarizing discourse about Israel and Palestine. "What has entrenched both of these cultures in the self-destructive spiral that they appear to be on?" It's a hell of a question.
Thanks, Jon, for being a host to the kind of conversation that I wish our actual mainstream media were capable of. I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore that America's best "fake news" show offers more nunced coverage of these issues than most of the "real news" I see.