The following transcript was from an MSNBC/CNBC appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews on 5 December 2001, at 8:00pm ET.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Just late this afternoon, the Palestinian authority announced that they had placed—they have placed a spiritual leader of Hamas under house arrest. We’re joined now by Ali Abunimah. He’s the vice-president of the Arab American Action Network.
Mr. Abunimah, let me ask you about suicide bombers. What do you make of them? Mr. ALI ABUNIMAH (Arab American Action Network): Well, I think it’s a reprehensible and debased tactic. I think it’s wholly unacceptable and unjustifiable. I think it should…
MATTHEWS: Where does it fit—where does it fit, theologically? The people—do you believe the people go to heaven and meet 72 virgins there if they do this kind of thing?
Mr. ABUNIMAH: Well, if you just listen to what I said before, Chris, I don’t think you could reach that conclusion. I said it’s reprehensible and unacceptable and I condemn the killing of all civilians, the targeting and killing of all civilians whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian.
MATTHEWS: But where in the religion do you find this deliverance that seems to come to these people? They believe that they will be delivered to this paradise. Is it accurate in the religious textbooks, that this is actually something that would happen if you committed suicide in this fashion?
Mr. ABUNIMAH: I’m not a rel—I’m not a religious person, Chris, but my under—my understanding is no. But people twist religion all the time. You have Israelis twisting their religion in order to justify the brutalization of Palestinians, the occupation and colonization of their land and the killing of Palestinian children. People distort religion all the time. I don’t believe that because Israeli settlers in Hebron venerate Baruch Goldstein that that is a—an indictment of Judaism.
MATTHEWS: I understand what you mean. Let me ask you this. Tell me about the decision by a young Palestinian, a man in his early 20’s, for example, to commit suicide in one of these missions. How do you explain, just politically and socially, why a man would reach that point in his life that he would be willing to give it up to blow up three or four people in some pizzeria somewhere?
Mr. ABUNIMAH: Well, I think it’s an appalling thing. I think that the Israeli occupation, which has been going on for 34 years, has lead to a situation where more than half the people living un—under Israeli occupation have not known a single day of freedom in their lives. Not known a single day when they’ve been allowed to move around in their own country without Israeli soldiers brutalizing them, humiliating them and killing them. Over the past year, more than 200 Palestinian children, like the boy in the package, have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers…
MATTHEWS: But if that is your concern…
Mr. ABUNIMAH: Yesterday a Pale—yesterday a Palestinian school boy was killed by an Israeli F-16…
MATTHEWS: Who cannot sympathize with…
Mr. ABUNIMAH: We’re supposed to believe that F-16s used against school children…
MATTHEWS: OK. You’re making—you’re making a speech here. Sir, you’re making a speech, but the fact of the matter is that everybody agrees with everything you say, but you could have peace with Israel tomorrow if you would cut a deal with them to partition Palestine between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Why does your side, Arafat, continue to reject that offer which would eliminate this occupation, eliminate the humiliation?
Mr. ABUNIMAH: Well, the—well, the Palestinians went into the peace process with that, wanting to partition Palestine on the basis of the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Unfortunately, Israel is totally unwilling to end this occupation and still talks about keeping 80 percent of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, keeping control of—of the borders of the so-called Palestinian state and maintaining that sit—the situation of total domination of the Palestinians…
MATTHEWS: OK.
Mr. ABUNIMAH: …by Israel. Calling domination a state doesn’t make it a state. A state has to have…
MATTHEWS: OK.
Mr. ABUNIMAH: …sovereignty. It has to have control of its territories and its borders, and that has never been an offer.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much, Mr. Ali Abunimah.