[Peace] Summary of Saturday Symposium

[Green, David]

Submitted by David Green:

On Friday evening and Saturday, the Urbana-Champaign Community Forum
sponsored a symposium on "The War as Lived at Home" at the Urbana Middle
School. Friday evening, History Channel producer Wayne Weiss commented on
clips from various war movies along with Doug Rokke, a local veteran who has
been highly involved with the medical issues of Persian Gulf War veterans.
On Saturday, a panel of five academics was convened to respond to a
statement by prominent intellectuals in support of the War on Terrorism.
Insightful, critical, and international perspectives were articulated by
Michael Wesissman, Professor of Physics; Ania Loomba, Professor of English
who is from India; Aisha Sobh, a graduate student in History who is Muslim
and has lived in Saudi Arabia; Carol Spindel, a local author who has spent
much time in Africa and has written a book analyzing the Chief controversy;
and Robert McKim, a Professor of Religious Studies who is from Ireland and
has spent much time in Malaysia. The next panel featured contrasting views
on Israel and Palestine from Yevgeny Shulman, a student and member of
Illinipac who supports the policies of the State of Israel, and claims that
it uses violence in order to prevent violence in the Occupied Territories;
and Aaron Love, a member of Unity and Struggle and a leader of the campaign
to divest the University of Illinois from U.S. companies that invest in
Israel, which the group argues has systematically violated the rights of the
Palestinian people since 1948. A contentious but informative debate on the
issue of "Israeli Security versus Palestinian Rights" was witnessed by over
50 people, with many questions and comments from both the audience and panel
members. The mid-afternoon panel was a debate between Carl Estabrook, a
local commentator and candidate for Congress on the Green Party ticket; and
Dan Corkery, Managing Editor of the News-Gazette. While Estabrook argued
that coverage of the War on Terrorism is severely distorted and limited by
corporate interests and the demands of the military-industrial complex,
including coverage by the News-Gazette, Corkery argued that the paper does
the best it can given the difficulties of covering a foreign war and the
limitations of space. The paper, Corkery asserted, never caves in to the
demands of advertisers in regard to news coverage. Estabrook supported
claims by those who have evidence that more innocent civilians have been
killed in Afghanistan by American bombs than the number of Americans killed
on September 11th, while Corkery denied that there is adequate evidence for
this to be considered a fact suitable for publication. Finally, Professor of
History Mark Leff spoke on the perils of dissent during wartime in the
United States, from World War 1 and the Palmer raids; to World War II, the
Japanese interment and the McCarthy Era; and to our current war, which is
accompanied by the Patriot Act and the repressive measures of the Justice
Department under John Ashcroft. The organizers of this fourm feel that it
was succesful in presenting diverse views regarding the War on Terrorism,
and hope that videos taken of the panels will air on Urbana Cable Access in
the future during the Thursday night 8 to 10 slot that has been allotted to
AWARE, the local Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort, whose members were both the
brains and the beauty behind this operation.