Mazin gave me this interview before he did a book signing in Saugerties, NY. It is not the first time that Mazin has been a guest on Activist Radio. A friend of Joel Kovel, Mazin has visited the Hudson Valley before.
I don't always know how to interview Palestinians. There is my guilt for being a citizen of the country most responsible for the suffering of his people. And the news is always bad, Palestinians being beaten, shot or imprisoned. It is never my family in the crosshairs of some sniper's rifle. It is never my house that is being destroyed.
My questions always seem to focus on Palestinian suffering. In fact, my interviews are designed to do just that. It is only when millions of Americans have learned to acknowledge and reject the apartheid state of Israel that it will change. We are the supplier of bullets, the protector at the UN, and the funder of its state racism.
Mazin talks freely about the injustices inflicted on his people. He is sorrowful, and yet looks at the longer picture. Unless Israel commits the genocide of five million people, the Palestinians are there to stay. Like many indigenous peoples, they are masters of resistance, even in the face of overwhelming military superiority. One day, two peoples will inhabit the Holy Land, and as God's children they will be loved and cherished equally.
Like Martin Luther King, Mazin believes in the arc of the moral universe.
