so i don't wa to say that i think the affordable care act is a bad thing. it's a step, but only a step in the right direction. for those who have very low incomes, it is the affordable for the first time to see a doctor this is a good thing. but there are many people who have a moderate income and are far from wealthy they can't afford the premiums for this affordable care act. not only that, the affordable care act does nothing about the cost of medicine. and without some price discipline you can expect that medical costs will continue to increase. therefore, we will continue to put more and more burden on citizens and also on the government. therefore because of these reasons the green party continue to support and call for national health insurance and to take the insurance industry out of medicine and remove the profits

but we believe in the green party in basic medical care is a human right and that to deny it for any reason is basically a violation of human rights, and in some cases might be morally equivalent to murder. other nations have done this and then a good job him and they get better outcomes for about half the cost because they have national health insurance. we are addicted to an idea that capitalism like a religion must always be right and every case must always be the only solution for every problem. it is not. it does not work in case of a medical industry, and we need national health insurance plan for rebuttal, mr. pryor. pryor: again, gwen, thank you for the question of the mek three specifics on things i do support. contrary to what congressman cotton says, i don't support any change the undeleted democratic sponsor on repealing the independent payment advice report. i believe democratic sponsor on a bill that would fix the exchange is for pastors and

ministers, technical fix but nonetheless an important one and am also supportive of repealing the medical tax device. so there's three things right there. let me also ge give back to congressman cotton's answer on the affordable care act. he had no answer at all for people with preexisting conditions, none. end of the context what he talks about is reestablishing the high-risk pool. let me tell you something, congressman, i'm a cancer survivor. i've lived this. i've been in the high-risk pool. it is not a good place to be. women have high-risk pool in arkansas with over 20% of the people who did not have insurance, if we reestablish the high-risk pool we would be throwing sick people to the wolves and i don't supported. >> moderator: next question goes to mr. lafrance. >> mr. lafrance, president obama has two years left in his last term. is a lame duck. is blocked by majority in the

house. he has a senate that at best is going to be pretty evenly and bitterly divided. this is a six-year term for senate you're running for. would you please tell us which hope to accomplish in that six years, most of which will not be under the administration of barack obama? and please don't mention obama if you can give me an answer. lafrance: i appreciate that. i would hope to accomplish is pretty simple. if elected, i want to leave office six years from now, or be reelected for another term potentially, with the federal government smaller than it is today. with the budget deficit gone and a balanced budget amendment in place. i'd like to see the income tax system be completely overhauled. we have a 75,000 plus page income tax system that companies have to hire armies of lawyers, accountants, cpas just to deal

with and try to find the loopholes that benefit them. it's ridiculous to our laws that are made in washington are supposed to be loss for the american people for the american people should be able to read and understand these laws. and, in fact, most republicans and democrats in congress don't even bother reading them themselves, and most don't understand what's in them. with the income tax system, i would like to scrap it. put the whole thing in a shredder, 80,000 pages, probably a big mess. replace it with a simple national sales tax also called the fair tax, where americans pay a sales tax to the federal government on consumer goods. this can almost eliminate the irs, tremendous cost savings for americans, and i think will be a big boost to our economy. in addition like i said i want to string shrink the federal government.

we need to balance the budget. at the same time i'd like to cut your tax burden as well because of middle-class right now is just under tremendous strain from the income tax system they're facing, and it is hurting families all across arkansas. cotton: well, barack obama can do a lot of damage in just two years but he's already done a lot of damage in stitches and that's what arkansans are disappointing mark pryor for voting with them 93% of the time. i hope we can start in january even with president still in office to get our economy moving again. arkansans are hurting. we've had 80,000 people with food stamps, fewer than 30,000 jobs. wages are down 5%. we need to start with tax reform act we need to reform our tax code. we have summarized taxes in the industrialized world. that makes arkansas in a country less competitive for jobs here at home but we need reform our regular process, get out of the agencies like the epa act under

control so we can have constitutional self-government answer you can hold your elected representatives together for every rule overregulation it comes down to agencies as totaling the point the finger at nameless and faceless bureaucrats. we need and have the energy potential in this country. we seen what can do for jobs in places in northern arkansas because of the shield to look at what is in places like north dakota are out in midland. we could have gas prices are falling and diesel prices are falling and we need to adapt the potential clean coal, plans that all the potential for lowering and electricity prices for every arkansan, for every american. those were of two of the things up to get to work on but in these last years the prison can do a lot of damage in some of the damage can last for generations. he gets another supreme court justice domination or the continue to pac the lower courts, that will be and obama echo that will last for decades. mark pryor has robust to almost everyone of barack obama's judges and if they had your

wisdom you would have second amendment rights to keep and bear arms. our marriage laws would be overturned. we can protect unborn life. that's not good for our kids and another with which mark pryor is a vote for barack obama. >> moderator: to mr. swaney. swaney: good question but after i won't have enough time to cover all the ground. the first thing i would like to see as my first term would be to have government well on its way taking action to solve the problem of climate change. i know we don't hear very much about it but i read a lot about it and i care about the future and i care about the future of my children and my grandchildren, and if we don't we are not very good humans beings. we better get busy on another not one, i believe we need to institute a carbon tax. carbon tax refundable to lower and middle income persons that will eliminate the economic advantage that burning fossil fuels has right now over clean energy, thereby moving us away

in stages from a carbon-based economy. second thing i would like to do is tax wall street. i studied about this and i found some tremendous numbers. i will try to save them faster trillion dollars a day, trillion dollars a day just in america, just stocks and bonds. $383 trillion worth of financial transactions by wall street every year, not 1 penny of it is taxed. that needs to change. i want to see a minimum-wage increase to a living wage and put more money in the hands of working people because that will bring jobs by reviving the economy and the only way it can be revived and that is increasing consumer spending. i want to see a balanced budget and so-so security saved. both of those things can happen by restoring that tax cut come restoring the revenue taken away from the federal government by the tax cuts by those people who only care about the interest of the rich.

and last, i would come of age is your. they don't need and i would seek federal -- better relations with china and russia. pryor: i want to thank you for asking that question on president obama because as you all notice and ensure the audience and the folks at home have noticed is would ask a question that negative ads, congressman cotton talks about obama. we ask a question about isa, congressman cotton talks obama. ask a question of the photocopied talks about obama. do you see a pattern? yes. clearly congressman cotton is running against one man, but i am running for 3 million arkansans. that's what this race is all about and that's the difference in this race. i'm on your side. when i listen to you, when i come home and travel the state and hear what is on your mind, that's when i go to work. congressman cotton loves to throw out these phony statistics about how much i would agree with president obama. you all know me. and i don't agree with president obama on a whole variety of things.

just take the keystone pipeline. take his epa regulation on carbon to take his cuts is also security. i disagree them on that. i disagree with the blaster on gun control. so much so that when i voted no on this legislation, mayor bloomberg of new york city ran ads in arkansas criticizing you for standing up you for second amendment rights. so i disagree with obama to at , and yes, i've been disappointed in him. i'm not going to sugarcoat that but let me talk about my philosophy. my philosophy is this. if you look at the rankings of people who look at the senate and how we vote, not the tv ads, not all the rhetoric but look at how we vote, every year i've been in the senate, every year, they have ranked me as the most or one of the most in the end senators in washington. that's because i listen to you, and you know when president bush was in office there were times i agreed with them, times i took heat from my party for agreeing with president bush. arkansas comes first and that's what i mean. >> moderator: mr. lafrance

for rebuttal. lafrance: thank you. it's presumed what i would like to do for my first term. i would like to take the arkansas senate seat and give it back to you, the voters and the citizens of arkansas. right now 100 out of 100 people in the senate are controlled by interest groups of an array of areas and backgrounds appointing associates of the most big money, big donations, they campaigned, big influence in washington, d.c. you are going to influence my decisions in washington. what is best for you, what is best for americans and america? that would be what guides my decisions. one big issue i like to focus on is term limits. for all members of the united states congress. that would help end this perpetual cycle of fund-raising, doling out benefits to big

donors, fund-raising again but i think we have to make a structural changes in washington, and with your support i will work to make that happen. >> moderator: next question goes for mr. cotton. >> congressman cotton, for those of you have certain washington a u.n. senator pryor, which key piece of legislation have you help lead that you are most proud of? if you can name one, and you can also name one that you would perhaps like to take back. and for those of you who haven't served, maybe what is your key priority, if elected? cotton: i haven't been in washington very long, less than a year but i've been there long enough to know as calvin coolidge said that it's just a support to stop bad laws as it is to pass good laws. we been stymied a lot in trying to pass good laws, trying to reform obamacare. by prevented from having to pay a tax if you can't afford plan

from one feel like they're trying to stop businesses because they don't provide obamacare compliant template. trying to stop obamacare from hurting our country into a part-time income. mark pryor and barack obama have led a most for those in the house of representatives pile up on the desk of the sender they won't even take an up or down vote. look what's happening to 4000 seniors just a cancellation notice of the medicare advantage plan here in arkansas just a few days ago. look what happened at wal-mart last week. they announced 30,000 part-time workers were going to lose their health insurance because of obama took him because of the costs it imposes on all workers at wal-mart following other companies like target or home depot. look what's happening in countries like ups. i've met many ups employees all around the state of arkansas who are losing coverage for their spouses because the ups had to get spousal coverage for certain employees because of the cost of

obamacare is imposing a this is frustrating to me, frustrating to arkansans because they know that washington is causing and this kind of paint with this kind of stress and dislocation. yet we can't before because the senate is in the hands of liberal democrats like mark pryor were always going to protect barack obama's legacies and enforces policy. that's why a vote for more -- a vote for mark pryor is a vote for barack obama. swaney: one other very important things that i would put of the top of my agenda, something we have heard from tonight, and that is a law dictating equal pay for equal work, for the working women of america but i also will support strongly passage of the equal rights amendment, long overdue. i studied and found that the and 35 pieces of legislation passed a state legislatures in recent years, mostly dominated by republicans, that provide

negative restrictions on women's rights to choose, make their own decisions about reproductive issues. this qualifies rightly as a war against women, and i think it needs to be stopped your women have never been treated equally in this country and its history so far to this day, and it's long past time that we remedy that, and then equal pay for equal work jobs bill would be on the top of my agenda. additionally, something i've already mentioned once i know mentioned again because it's very important, i think we need a tax on wall street. i think we need to restore revenue to the government. a government has been starved of revenue contribute to our national debt. you can't cut spending very much more than is already without hurting the nation and doing it. i want to see a tax on wall street and i want to see restoration of these revenues have been removed from the government over the past 10, 15, 20 years by republicans whose

agenda is only to make life easier for the wealthiest people in the country which by the way, 1% of our country now owns 90% of all the wealth. this is a service problem and i will work to reverse that to whatever extent possible. >> moderator: mr. pryor. pryor: thank you. i would say that my probably largest single, likes of accomplish it was the passage of the consumer product safety improvement act. that's the one that kept, -- cat let out of toys and made toys say. there's no doubt that act has saved the lives. it work. we worked with business. we work with business, consumer groups. we also worked through the process of the book exactly like you learned in eighth grade civics, where we at conferences, we had full on amendments on the floor and in the committees, and it works just perfectly. and it's a good example of how bipartisanship works and how we should do things. in addition to that i passed

about 70 pieces of legislation in almost all the bipartisan. that's what i were. 13 of those bills were for our men and women in uniform and our veterans. i'm proud of that. but also i'm proud of the non-legislative accomplishment i've had were picked up the phone and called the ceo and asked them to do a plant expansion of bring that this is to arkansas and agenda. i'm proud to do that. you know what? you just heard congressman cotton basically admit that he hasn't passed anything since he's been in the house. even though he was there for one month and he ran a poll on the senate race to didn't know where the bathrooms were but nonetheless now he thinks he's entitled to be innocent. his approach is this my way or the highway, it's dead in politics that leads to things like fiscal cliff and shutting down the government. let me say this. leadership in washington and false walking across the aisle. in congressman, you don't have the reputation, the inability or the desire to walk across the aisle to get things done in

washington. >> moderator: mr. lafrance. lafrance: thank you, sir. i can type it i feel no entitlement to this united states senate seat. but you're entitled to the senate seat. you the voter, you the people of arkansas the this is your seat and i want to help you take it back. mikey item, mikey project will be to get washington out of our lives as much as possible. when this country was founded they did not want a society where every decision you make him every turn you take, you have to think about what the federal government is restricting in this, what regulations are here, what regulations are there. this is not a free society where we can own our own lives under own future. freedom is hard. it's hard work to get take sacrifice. politician in washington today, they try to make everything better for everybody, taking money from one person, giving it

to the other, using wealth transfers to provide favors. it's got to stop. we as individuals, as families, communities, are the owners of our own destiny. if i go to washington for you, i'm going to make sure that you have the opportunity to own your future. a couple of other items real quick, as i mentioned, term limits. that goes along with my desire to get influence of money in washington as limited as possible but i think term limits will be a big help as the days of the career politicians are long gone and i think a significant reduction in federal spending will go a long way. right now when we're spending $3 trillion, you know there people are trying to get influence and get access to that money. people rob convenience stores for a couple hundred dollars. i'm going to remove this influence as much as possible and bring the senate seat back to you. thank you. >> moderator: rebuttal,

mr. cotton. cotton: senator pryor like to talk about leadership in washington. i learned leadership on the streets of baghdad in afghanistan but you can learn more there than you can from the halls of congress. leadership requires toughness, requires courage. senator pryor isn't tough enough to stand up to barack obama and put arkansas first. he cast the decisive vote for obama to it wasn't for his vote, it wouldn't have become law. he can claim he likes to make fixes never why didn't he demand them then? he had the power to protect arkansas from all the harms of that law. senator pryor like to talk about how he is led on epa regulations, yet we pass legislation to rein in vba. he can't get a vote on a. he likes to talk about keystone pipeline. we have passed legislation that would permit the keystone pipeline. he can't get a vote. why? he likes to talk one way in arkansas and then he votes like a liberal when he gets to washington, d.c. that's what a vote for mark pryor is a vote for barack obama. >> moderator: our next question from mr. thompson goes first to mr. swaney.

>> mr. swaney, as recent as the 2011, the president was willing to cut a deal, willing to raise the eligibility age on medicare. is willing to make changes to social security. to the frustration of much of his party's delegation in washington. but conservatives fault because it included tax increases. he insisted on the. in hindsight, was conservative influx of gold on this matter a mistake? swaney: yes. yes, it was. social security is one of the most successful programs of legislation that's ever been enacted in the united states of america. and it's not really in trouble. they want you to think that it is, but it's not. it needs a little bit of help.

probably all we need to do is to remove the cap, and payroll taxes, people that make more than $117,000 a year are not paying into the soul so security system. i think that ought to be removed. that may do the job by itself, but if not, what would be left would be very small% back increase in the payroll tax, which according to the government figures, it would solve the problem for that state government for 75 years. $5 trillion of the national debt is because the federal government borrowed the money from the social security trust fund and the medicare trust fund. if we enact small taxes now, that would be very easy to do, we could eliminate over that time period $5 trillion of the national debt and put the sauce is 30 system back on a good foot.

and put the social security system in solid position. and so i think we need tax increase to say the social security system, to replenish the social security trust fund and medicare trust fund so that that excellent benefit is available for all americans are now on. >> moderator: mr. pryor. pryor: thank you. yeah, i think your question was about sort of a global budget deal to try to get everything on the table, medicare, so sister, taxes, entitlements, everything on the table to talk about it. i do support trying to go to the process and get to a balanced budget. i do. it's hard. don't kid yourselves, folks. this is hard, but this is why we run for these offices. we don't want to get reelected. we run to get things done. this is something i've been pushing for for years and i have been successful yet, but i haven't stopped trying. the difference in congressman cotton and i when it comes to

these type of issues as i want to do it responsibly. so, for example, in the last three years i voted to cut $4 trillion out of spending. let me repeat that. in the last three years i voted to cut $4 trillion out of spending. in fact, we've had these trillion dollar deficits those are completely unsustainable. if there is good news this year, when it comes to budget, it would be we are now so were done in the range of 400 billion a year. still in the right direction, still too much but here's the key to getting our budget back on track. we need to work together in a bipartisan way to get this done, and everybody has to agree and hold hands and go together like back in the old days when ted -- excuse me. when tip o'neill and president reagan worked at salsa star. we need to have that same kind of leadership, but we need to get the economy rolling again. it we can get the economy rolling again a lot of the budget problem started to care themselves because the revenues

coming. that's what i support the american made strong package of jobs legislation. we need to focus on the middle-class but we need to focus on manufacturing jobs. one of the differences in tran and 12 -- kind of an eye, i want to build from the middle class out. >> mr. lafrance. lafrance: thank you. entitlement issues don't have to be hard. it's not the 1930s or the 1940s anymore. we have an opportunity to scale this back, to say these programs out, and return these tax dollars to the american people, have the money in the pocket and let them decide what to do with it. for social security my plan is pretty straightforward. for retirees, people near retirement, they're going to see the full benefit. for midcareer workers they will see partial benefit but they will also seek a phaseout of the sole so security tax. for younger workers, they will not have social security benefits. however, the social security tax will be eliminated for them over

the next several years. in addition to what we pay, as working arkansans, out of would also have to pay 7.5% social security tax. these taxes, these burdensome regulations on what a restraining our economy today. it's not that america doesn't have the potential to grow and grow stronger but it's about our businesses can't cope with the regulations. can't cope with the tax burden. i want to change the and i want our economy growing again. when it comes to programs like medicare and medicaid, as i mentioned, these are programs the government needs to stop taking money out of one person's pocket and give to another. we need charity or position set up for those are truly in need, get the services they need. same thing with a welfare program and the food stamp program. government is inefficient. government is messy. government is often corruptive. they don't need to have control

over this kind of money. it shouldn't be their decision where it goes. the american people are compassionate. we care for each other and we are capable of helping each other out in times of need. >> moderator: mr. cotton. cotton: the last thing our economy needs is tax increases a mark pryor has voted for everyone of barack obama's tax increases. when i think about taxes, i think about campaigning down at cooper tires. i was shaking hands as the overnight shift is coming off. it was dark. several hundred workers were streaming by. i wa was trying to shoot i don't think anyone said that can argue democrat or republican? here we go. millard county has been democratic like most the state has been for a long time and i said i am a republican but she said good. because i can't work in of hours to pay all the taxes they are putting money. she's right. working families in arkansas are suffering from higher taxes day in and day out. we don't have a taxing problem

in this country. last year the federal government had the highest tax collection we've ever had in history of our country. we still deficits because we have a spending problem. mark pryor's solution is to keep increasing taxes. he's never voted against one of barack obama's tax increases. in fact, he's voted to raise taxes on wages, on savings, on health care plans, on medical device. even voted to raise taxes on indoor tanning salons. and then he says he wants to cut spending, he's voted for $4 trillion in spending cuts and these deficits are unsustainable. i agree, they are unsustainable but he has voted for every single penny of barack obama's trillion dollars a year in deficits on average every single year. time and time again. that's bad for our economy. it's bad for the next generation of americans as well. it's not something i will stand for one on your next united states senator. we have to keep taxes low, simple and fair. we have to control spending to get the budget back to balance. that's what i would do.

mark pryor won't because mark pryor will rubberstamp barack obama's policies travel mr. swaney, rebuttal cannot i believe the subject of this question began with social security, and i want to say that i'm a strong supporter of social security in its current form, that i believe a small increase in tax now is amply justified to put social security and medicare on a firm footing for 75 years. and that i think that sometimes i wonder whether or not people think it's a good thing to have old people living under bridges, which is probably what would happen if we eliminated social security. so i'm a very strong proponent of maintaining the program, and i think that we do need a slight tax increase. perhaps they wouldn't even need happen if we moved the cap on payroll earnings for the upper-class earners to that might do the job all by itself, but if that's what would be left would be small and easy to

accommodate. .. lafrance: we're messing it up right now in washington. our economy's stagnant, our taxes are too high, federal control over daily matters just continues to grow and grow. our taxes are too high at the state and local levels as well. whenever spending goes up too much, they just raise tax again.

enough's enough. i will not vote for a tax increase of any kind. in fact, i will fight for tax cuts for every american during my term in the u.s. senate. you know, all i can say as a closing is that this is your country. it's not mine, not tom cotton's, mark swaney's or mark pryor's. this senate seat is your senate seat. whoever you elect should be voting in your best interests, not in their own. career politicians, their days need to be numbered. i want term limits, and i want to end the day of career politicians. i want to reduce the amount of influence money has in washington in and its corruptive influence on everything that's done there in town. i want to bring control of your life, of your finances, of your children's education back to you. federal government doesn't need

to be involved. the federal government can protect the country with a strong defensive military and do some other functions, interstate commerce, interstate highways, things like that, that's fine. but they don't need to take your money and my money and give it to whoever they want, whatever groups they want. and i'm going to bring real, structural change to washington, and that's something that none of the other three gentlemen up here can say. thank you very much. >> moderator: thank you. mr. swaney, you're next. swaney: i want to talk now about to the audience both out there in the world today and in the auditorium here, thank you for attending and being interested. i want to talk about voting. you know, we have a peculiar idea in america sometimes. sometimes people think you can vote against a candidate. this is really not true. the ballot doesn't have a category which says which candidate do i hate the most. you can only vote for

candidates. and when you vote for a candidate, you need to take some responsibility for that vote after you cast it. sometimes people will have you believe that you are responsible for candidates you didn't vote for, make you feel guilty. oh, you didn't vote this way, and so this other guy got in the office. this is a false logic. if you don't vote for a candidate, you're not responsible more that candidate if that candidate gets elected, but if you do vote for a candidate, you think he's a bad one but you vote for him anyway because you think another guy is worse and that bad candidate gets elected, you have some personal responsibility for everything that bad candidate does. in this election you're lucky if you're progressive because you have a progressive choice in this race. if you don't want to throw your vote away doing the same things you've been doing for decades and seeing the country go more and more and more conservative, then i urge you to vote between. you won't be sorry about it, you won't have to feel guilty about it later.

we have an excellent candidate for the green party for governor, his name's josh drake. i urge all of you to vote for him. we need to get 3% for josh so that the green party can guarantee you'll have candidates to vote for in 2016. i urge you to vote green, vote for your life. thanks very much. >> moderator: mr. swaney, thank you. mr. pryor. pryor: >> thank you. and, steve, thank you for moderating this. i want to give a potential thanks to aetn, you guys do great things. i want to thank my three candidates, i'm up here tonight with these fine candidates, also want to thank university of central arkansas for hosting tonight and the journalists, but most of all, i want to thank the people of the state of arkansas. before i go on with my closing statement, i have to go back for just a minute because congressman cotton just told a whopper when he said that i have voted for every single one of barack obama's taxes, it's not even close. in fact, i voted against every

budget president obama has offered. my real record on taxes is i voted to cut taxes by $5.5 trillion since i've been in the senate, cut taxes by $5.5 trillion, and i'm a big believer in tax reform. we need to simplify the tax a code, lower the rates. but this is more of this fog of misinformation and this rhetoric that congressman cotton has gotten so good at doing over the course of this campaign. again, if you look at his own voting record is these investors, these people who are investing in him and want the big return on his investment, that's who he's listening to. that's who he's carrying the water for since he's been in the house, and that's exactly what he's going to do if he gets elected to the senate. listen, he is not listening to you, he's listening to those out-of-state billionaires who are writing those checks, paying for his campaign. in my office i have a plaque on my desk, and many of you all have been this, it says

"arkansas comes first." which is what i mean by that. i listen to the people of the tate of arkansas, i'll work hard -- the state of arkansas, i'll work hard year of year. i'm ranked as one of the most independent senators in washington. i would very much appreciate your vote. early voting starts on october 20th, and election day is november 4th. let's go out and win this one and keep this seat for the people of arkansas. >> moderator: mr. pryor, thank you. mr. cotton. cotton: i was very blessed to grow up in neil county, that ann ma and i are expecting our -- anna and i are expecting our first child, a baby boy. i want you and your families to have those same opportunities as well, to have a chance for a better life. barack obama's policies are making that harder though. president obama said his policies are on the ballot, every single one of them. in arkansas the name of those policies is mark pryor because mark pryor votes with barack obama 93% of the time. and that's why a vote for mark pryor is a vote for barack

obama's failed policies. he supports barack obama's failed economic policies which are costing jobs in arkansas and driving down wagings. mark pryor cost the decisive vote for obamacare which is hurting arkansas seniors with its cuts to medicare. mark pryor has voted for every single penny of new debt, a trillion on average every year under barack obama's six years even while we're cutting a trillion dollars from our military. mark pryor's a rubber stamp for barack obama's failed foreign policy of weakness, hesitation and indecision. and senator pryor won't even hold president obama accountable for not protecting our country and our families from ebola. there's a different way. there's the arkansas way. let's get our economy moving again. let's put people back to work so we can have people achieving their dreams. let's repeal obamacare and start over on health care reform. let's balance our budget, quit stealing from our kids, rebuild

our military and keep your families safe and secure whether the threat is terrorism or disease. this is the choice you face. barack obama said his policies are on the ballot, and they are. here in arkansas they go by the name of mark pryor. if you're happy with barack obama's policies, if you're happy with the status quo, then your vote for mark pryor will be a vote for barack obama. but if you want change, if you want a new direction for arkansas and our country, then i would appreciate your vote sphwhrm we want the thank our four candidates for their appearance tonight. thank you, gentlemen, for being here. only thanks to our -- able thanks to your -- an thanks to our panelists. most of all, thanks to you, the audience, the voters. see you next time. >> on our web site, c-span.org, you can see ads running in races across the country. here's a look at some of the ads in the arkansas senate race. >> i'm mark pryor, and i

approved this message. >> i'm the direct director of a 24-hour emergency domestic violence shelter. we've got to do something to break this cycle of violence, and tom cotton is not doing anything to help. he voted against protecting women and children from domestic violence. he was the only republican or democrat from the state of arkansas to vote this way. there's a big difference between mark pryor and tom cotton. one wants to protect women and children, the other doesn't. >> i'm mark pryor, and i approved this message. >> i'm courtney. i've never been political, but it's hard to ignore this senate race. the more i read, the more i'm concerned about tom cotton. did you know he voted against equal pay for women, and he thinks women should be charged more for health care than men in cotton was also the only arkansas congressman to vote twice against helping women who were victims of domestic violence. it makes you wonder, what's cotton got against women? >> i'm tom cotton, and i

approved this message. >> my husband and i started this business on a leap of faith. we have everything from a body shop guy to mechanics to a cleaning crew to the dispatch, the drivers. our dreams now is survival. obamacare has already raised the premiums, it's already costing us a fortune. it's not only hurt our business, it's hurt our employees. it was supposed to make health care a lot more affordable. it has done everything but make health care affordable. next year we might not even be able to afford coverage at all. our hands are tied. it is frustrating to realize that your own senator cast the deciding vote on obamacare. we told him potentially how -- potentially how this would effect our business and our employees. i wish senator pryor had listened to us, and i wish he would have voted against it, but he didn't. ♪ ♪ >> c-span's campaign 2014 is

bringing you more than 100 debates for the control of congress. follow us on twitter at c-span and like us at facebook.com/c-span. >> tonight we'll bring you the debate between the candidates for louisiana senate. incumbent democrat mary landrieu faces republican challengers congressman bill cassidy and rob maness. live coverage starts at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> c-span's 2015 student cam competition is underway. this nationwide competition for middle and high school students will award 150 prizes totaling $100,000. create a 5-7 minute documentary on topic, "the three branches and you." videos need to include c-span programming, show varying points of view and must be submitted by january 20, 2015. go to studentcam.org for more

information. grab a camera and get started today. >> now, a discussion on the living conditions of palestinians in gaza and the effect of the israeli/palestinian conflict on civilians. from the palestine center in washington, d.c., this is an hour, 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everyone. good afternoon. if everyone can find a seat and if there are not enough spaces available here, we do have an overflow room. and if anyone is standing in the back and would like to have any more of a comfortable space to sit down there, we'd invite you to do that. thank you, all, for joining us today on indigenous peoples day.

my name is yusef, i'm director here at the jerusalem fund, and on behalf of our board of directors, i'm very happy to welcome you back for this palestine center event today. just a couple of brief announcements before we get started. the event today is live streaming, and for those who are following online, you can participate in the question and answer session and in commentary about this event via twitter. we are using the hashtag, hashtag esml14, so you can send your questions in by tagging that hashtag or, of course, sending them to @palestinecenter which is our handle. for those of you in the room, if you could just take this moment to silence your phone or anything else that would disturb

our presentation, we'd appreciate it. after today's event we have a number of events coming up fall, and i will just take a moment to highlight a couple. on thursday, the 23rd of october, which is ten days from today, we have a talk, a book talk by richard falk on the legitimacy of hope which is the title of his new book. so we'd encourage you to check that out. we also have the opening of attar exhibit featuring -- a art exhibit featuring 20th century water colors from jerusalem on the 24th of october. information on those events and many more are available on the information table outside and, of course, on the web site. moving to today's program, we are very happy to host on an annual basis a memorial lecture commemorating the contributions

and life of professor edward saeed who we lost far too early as a guiding light and an intellectual not just in the palestinian cause, but also in studies on postcolonialism and critical theory and comparative literature and the like. this lecture is one of our key events annually, and we're very happy to have dr. judith butler as our edward saeed memorial lecturer this year. dr. butler is the maxine elliott professor in the department of rhetoric and comparative hitture and the co-director of the program on critical theory at the university of california, berkeley. she's the author of numerous books, and her most recent is "parting ways: jewishness and the critique of zionism." she also is active in gender and sexual politics and human rights, anti-war politics and jewish voices for peace.

today she will discuss the differential value accorded to palestinian and israeli lives in light of the most recent israeli military campaign on the gaza strip in which massacres and violations of international law have occurred. so please join me in welcoming dr. judith butler. [applause] >> thank you very much. i'm very honored to be here. i want to thank yusef and also his staff for making this possible for me. the constitute l of my talk today -- title of my talk today is "what is the value of palestinian lives?" i know that the saeed lecture is a way to honor and remember the extraordinary work of the scholar edward saeed including his prodigious literary

accomplishments and his incisive public and political commentary. and so the question of how best to honor him has to be thought through since my task today after the gaza massacres, after the most recent and most devastating gaza massacres is to try to think about him but also with him. his words, the words he left us even though he was writing many a different political time -- in a different political time. so i do not want so much to return to his work, but to bring that work forward in order to think with and through his words about how it is that a certain question can emerge during this time, what is the value of palestinian lives. to ask the question is already rather terrible. why does such a question have to be asked at all? and when we ask it, are we also

asking for whom palestinian lives have value? could it be that the answer to the question is, no, they do not have value? the question should not surprise us if we consider the political situation in which palestinian lives are considered expendable when we recognize that the international outcry against the latest bombardment of gaza, for instance, was muffled if not censored, and when we recognize that what i should call these crimes are very far from being recognized or adjudicated in existing international courts. so on the one hand, we should not be surprised that the value of palestinian lives has once more come into question. on the other hand, we should always be surprised, for without that sense of shock, even bewilderment, without a sense of being scandalized, we lose the fully appropriate rage and grief that is a crucial part of

political resistance. so one cans the question what is the value of palestinian lives to show that there is no consensus on the matter and to expose this as a moral and political scandal. to can ask the question is to show the horror of the question. indeed, one asks the question simply, unbelievably, to show that the question can bed and that this should not be the case. of course, it's possible to respond quickly and set the matter aside. of course palestinian lives, like all lives, have value and ought to have value and ought not be terrorized or destroyed. such an answer seeks recourse to what i would call a quick universalism, one that works simply by asserting the abstract equal the city of all lives lard -- equality of all lives regardless of where they are from, regardless of religion, region allocation, race, gender and all the other possible

social considerations of one's life. indeed, it's possible to accept that and yet to live and act in a world that does not reflect that equality in concrete terms. this produces a certain schism in the mind, one defends, the equal value of all lives as human lives, abstracting them, yes, from their social and political location. at the same time, precisely because one clings to the abstraction in the place of social reality, one accepts the differential way that lives are valued in the social, economic and political sphere. in that way the abstract equality that is asserted among all lives functions as an alibi for not recognizing and opposing concrete and urgent inequalities. although i've just suggested that a quick version of universal equality can serve as an alibi for actual inequality, i'd actually love to move towards a more complex

understanding of what edward saeed called universalizing and to query what he meant by such a term. this argument might already seem abstract as if i will be suggest ising one theoretical model over another, but it will only work if it can become increasingly concrete. it could be that we answer the question, the question that i pose at the outset of this talk, by simply claiming that palestinian lives have value because they are palestinian and that they are specific values associated with palestinian lives that have to be recognized in their specificity. to answer the question this way means bringing forth the spes be firstty of culture, daily life, cultural production, his and i and -- history and economics. and yet all that work is quite necessary given the cultural effacement that palestinians have suffered in the popular media, given the slander and the stereotypes. but can such an approach by

itself answer the question of why certain lives can be publicly grieved and others are deemed ungrieve bl? can it answer the question of why it is so difficult for there to be a powerful global consensus on the grievability of palestinian lives? what do i mean by grievability, and what effect, if any, does conceiving of palestinian lives as worthy of grief have on concrete social policy, much less on an effective resistance movement backed by international consensus. first of all, when we speak about a life as potentially grieve bl, we are talking about someone who is alive. indeed, all of us here with potentially grieveable or at least i hope we are. when a life is from the start regarded as grieveable, then every precaution will be taken to preserve that life and to safeguard that life against harm and destruction. be we think that all lives ought to be treated in that way -- if

we think that all lives ought to be treated that way, then in my view we embrace a principle of the radical equality of the grieveable. concretely, we can say that very often the statistics that show the overwhelming devastation of the populationing in gaza are compared with those in israel not enough to effect certain kinds of powerful rhetorics that foreground the right of israel to self-defense. whenever we talk about self-defense, we have to ask which self, indeed, we have to ask who has a self that can be defended. who is in the political position to have a self that can and ought to be defended? is it possible within international political discourse to talk about palestinian self-defense? can those who live under settler rule defend themselves? let us review once again the that the the u.s.ices we have -- statistics we have about the losses that resulted from

operation protective edge. i do this not only to show the inequality of those losses, but rather to show how that inequality is covered over when certain losses count as real and others are waived away through certain -- waved away through certain gestures that wield political power within a situation of structural inequality. whether one takes the u.n. numbers or those offered by the pal sin january center for human rights -- palestinian center for human rights in july and august of year, somewhere between 2131 and 2168 palestinians were killed, and 77 israelis were killed. when we make a distinction between combatants and civilians, we are already on tricky political territory. for how is that distinction made, and who makes it? the u.n. claims that 1,473 of palestinian dead were civilians, but pchr puts the number at

1,662 civilians, and this includes between 501 children and 257 women or 519 children and 297 women depending on your source. the palestinian ministry of health reports 11,100 palestinians were wounded and that at least 100 of those will suffer long-term disability or illness. especially hard hit, as you know, are the populations living within refugee camps. at least 80,000 refugee homes were damaged or destroyed during the bombardment of gaza, and as many as 20,000 of those structures are no longer habitable. it is worth noting as well that the majority of gaza's 110,000 homeless people are children. there are many more statistics that are important including those who are traumatized, including those who suffered those losses and who survive to

live in a world in which those losses arer reversible. -- irreversible. and then those who require social and psychological support, how do those numbers get established? can we ever know them? i give you these numbers knowing that new losses are added to the list every week. i do this not because i think that numbers talk in ways that other arguments do not. in fact, i hi that many people -- i think that many people can glance at the numbers or hear the numbers and not be affected by what they see or hear, not be moved to conclude that what has happened is terrible or, indeed, unjustified, and they remain able to claim either the palestinians brought this on themselves or to regard the loss of life within israel as a much great or concern. indeed, the numbers do not speak for themselves. they require interpretation even though we may think that the horror of it, that are the horror of it is and ought to be absolutely clear.

we still have to make it clear. that means bringing forth the numbers, offering numbers and names, numbers, names and images all that together with analysis and media presence. and the risk is, of course, that one will be entering into a certain media industry in which it is also the same picture of palestinian devastation. and it continues and recurring as if it were -- recurs as if it were some kind of inevitable reality, compounding the sense of political paralysis rather than moving its viewers to judge and to act. of course, it is the human shield argument that functions to de-realize palestinian losses. it was made popular in operation cast lead and was renewed in july and august of this year with ferocious zeal. as yusef and others have pointed out, the human shield argument is racist and reprehensible. it is important this be said

time and again since it has not yet been heard where it should be, and saying it turns out not quite to be enough since it is not only a pernicious argument, but a belief that is much more widely held than i would have thought. indeed, when i first came across the argument that pal sin januaries put their children in the way of israeli bombs, i thought it was soily ridiculous that no one could possibly accept it. of course, i was wrong, and i now see i was much more wrong than i could have imagined. what gives such an argument its appeal and credibility in the argument takes different forms, but the one that seems to circulate most often is that hamas in particular places its rocket launchers in civilian areas and so draws israeli fires to those same areas, putting at risk the civilians living there. such a claim should be easily brokered by determining where the rocket launchers actually are, but israel does not, as far as i know, public any of the --

publish any of the maps or documentation it claims to have to support this view. moreover, the so-called handbook said to be discovered by israelis in east jerusalem that lays out the hamas strategy to use and imperil its population as human shields turned out to be a forgery. some of those who defend israel's bombing of civilian populations understand those civilians to be members of hamas or to have voted for hamas and conclude that by voting as they have, they have put themselves in the way of israeli bombs. they may not be combatants, but they also, according to this argument if it's an argument, put themselves in harm's way by voting as they are said to have voted. the children who do not vote, nevertheless, belong to families who have ostensibly voted and that means they, too, will pay for their voting privileges with their lives. indeed, i'm not sure whether from the point of view aerial

bombardment anyone can know whether those targeted really voted for hamas, did not vote or remain loyal to fatah, but the argument make clear that the status of civilian does not quite matter, for civilians are the ones who vote, and if they voted for hamas, they are to pay with their lives. ..

political is very often taken to be sympathy for hamas. if not potential membership. so now, that i have situated, i would be the first lesbian jewish post-structural -- okay, sorry. [laughter]. so now that i have situationed myself i want to make two remarks. one is that hamas, the political party is often made to function as a synonym for palestinians in gaza. and from the israeli state's perspective the destruction for majority support of that party justifies assault on civilians. precisely civilians largely supported hamas that civilians are targeted. does not seem to matter that there a part of hamas dedicated to armed resistance and part of hamas takes care of social

services, irrigation and social services. secondly, hamas because it is a islamic party it is kara tured as culture of martyrdom. that palestinians in general that do not value life or life of their children in the way that israelis do or in the way that people in the so-called, west are set to do. so to the extent that the human shield argument relies on this gross stereotype that palestinians figured as uncivillized and premodern do not value life as those of us in the west do, we see that a fundamentally orientalist conceit makes this claim possible. the claim that palestinians as a group sacrifice their children for the sake of their cause relies on a conception of palestinians as barbaric and this broader view of the palestinians supports the more specific view that amass is responsible for hits own civilian losses especially the

children. there is a great deal to be said how women and children function in these kind of arguments. obviously there is a special kind of shock and horror reserved for the destruction of the lives of women and children who are understood to be emblems of innocence. on the one hand the accusation that hamas has sacrificed them makes them barbaric, but this same assumption implies that if the idf deliberately targeted them for destruction, it is the idf that is barbaric. so we see how the same premise operates in the accusation. does it mean that at some level the idf knows it is engaged in a form of killing that is utterly unacceptable? i'm reticent to redeploy the language of barbarism because it seems mainly to be opposed to civilization and that term distinguishes among cultures more or less civilized, reproducing the scene of

orientalism. indeed it is one reason i continue to have interest and faith in international protocols that simply call the destruction of civilian populations criminal but i suspect if the israeli discourse that charges palestinians with the barbaric sacrifice of its children believes that the deliberate destruction of population of children is barbaric, that at some level it knows and beliefs its own actions are barbaric. the point of the accusation against hamas is to then cover over and externalize what it considers to be its own barbarism. what is of course a very shocking about this set of arguments is that they clearly serve the purpose of deflecting from and rationalizing the fact that the israeli defense forces have targeted civilians, massacred populations and destroyed the infrastructure conditions of life in large parts of gaza. the argument is meant to twist the terms of truth so that it is

palestinians who sacrificed their children and women, their civilians, not israel that killed those vast numbers of people. indeed the evidence that israeli deliberately targeted civilians, that is unarmed people, has been released by dissidents within the idf, confirmed by u.n. workers in the area and by palestinian testimony. at some point we have to ask whether there is a destructiveness at work that does not really care finally about the rationale for the destructiveness. the rationale seems to come later. it can suddenly shift and it doesn't matter that the rationale remains consistent. after all, at first it seemed that the killing of israelis in hebron, itself quite hideous and horrible, was a reason for attack on gaza, the crackdown and increased tensions throughout the west bank. but it did not hebron killers were not precisely hamas.

those killings became the occasion to attack gaza and into a full-scale war of bombardment. if as netanyahu claimed the population of gaza will see what happens to it if it continues its support for hamas, we might conclude that the point of the bombardment was to destroy that political party and its apparent hold on majority of gas sans. but then it turned out more sympathy was generated among palestinians in the west bank ever recorded before as a result of the bombardment. so it seemed that netanyahu's aim was foiled but what if the aim, was to claim that all of palestine is potentially is hamas establish the rocket of this-throwing, rocket-firing civilian as the norm? that seemed to be failing. if the point was to establish the palestinian authority in

gaza as the dominant partner in any unity government, that also seems to be failing. if the point was to confirm hamas as a terrorist organization, then that was surely called into question by the fact that israeli representatives entererred into negotiations with them in cairo and perhaps begun to treat them perhaps inadvertently as diplomatic players. the fact is there is no one rationale for the bombardment and the rationale was constantly shifting. are we perhaps asked by this circumstance to think after destructiveness relatively indifferent to the question of whether destructiveness is justified? that takes unjustifications after the fact and switches them quickly without any care for consistency or accountability? of course the most ex-most it language of justification that the state of israel has given, mobilizes the language of self-defense. that is the rationale that

president obama and others have used. israel is entitled to self-defense. given that palestine is not yet formed and recognized as a state, although that seems to be happening in some interesting ways, and that gaza remains under colonial rule in the sense that siege is an instrument of occupation, and gaza in that sense remained occupied, precisely because it has no sovereign authority over its borders, then the appropriate framework for this conflict continues to be colonial rule and resistance to israel is the resistance to colonial rule. again, as i said earlier i would like to see the charter of hamas relinquished and repudiated as long as language destruction of israel remains couched as anti-semitic rhetoric, israel will be able to invoke self-defense for whatever destruction it causes. that said the way israel invokes self-defense gives it permission for unbridled and unlimited

assaults. not only in relation to rockets sent into israeli territory that israel invokes self-defense, for some israeli self-defense transfers of palestinian israelis outside of 48 and more self-defense imply, humiliation, harrassment, detention, imprisonment of massive numbers of palestinians is justified. self-defense works to justify the massacre of sillian populations, forms of destruction that some recently called genocidal. indeed, if and when the very existens of another people on their land seems to be understood as potential or actual threat to one's existence, then self-defense authorizes total war. in what i have laid out so far today i think you can see that there are at least two forms of twisted logic. the first was the massacre of children is made to appear as the deliberate choice and plan of the victim. the second is that the principle of self-defense, depending how

it is construed can thorize limitless aggression. i began today with a discussion of griefable lives and asked whether we might be able to ask the question, what is the value of palestinian lives? and i've suggested that the systemic devaluation of palestinian lives proceeds to twisted arguments of the kind that i sought to expose. they are themselves are the one who supposedly devalue of their own lives or lives of children or they, the palestinians only seek to threaten israeli lives so ought to be understood as living threats which means that taking their lives is the same as eliminating a threat to life, a threat to the life that matters, israeli life. life in that last claim is always israeli life, the life that is considered to be more worthy of grief. how interesting the rabbi in new york, sharon klein who sought to honor israeli and palestinian losses speaking

names of those who were kid in the latest bombbombardment was censored by her own community. how dare she stand for the principle that lives are and ought to be equally griefable. grievable. the criminal attack on civilian populations are properly considered and adjudicated by the international criminal court. the eggerments made for this by the national lawyers guild, center for constitutional rights, numerous other legal associations can not be heard unless or until the palestinian authority agrees to become a signatory to the icc. there are those of you here today who know better than i do why that petition was initiated and then withdrawn. my own lay view on the matter, that as long as the icc can not adjudicate these matters, derealization of palestinian losses continues. at stake in this matter is not only the documenting of deliberate targeting of civilian populations, their schools, mosques and shelters, in effect the infrastructural conditions

of life but also the military and financial assisting of this operation by the u.s. government. the icc through the rome statute offers the opportunity to establish a war crime a crime against humanity or genocide. the most cynical interpretation of the withdrawal of that petition by abbas is that he seeks to keep favor with israel and the united states by doing so, or that he seeks to gain permanent power over hamas and whatever unity government survives. i do not know if that interpretation is correct but i do think that for a global consensus on the value of palestinian lives to emerge, the icc is an important venue on that ought not to be refused, especially for short-term strategic reasons. as you may know i am a professor of the humanities and not a politician. not even a policy wonk. i read what i can and i offer analyses that make use of whatever conceptual resources i

have. i would like them in the last section of this paper to return to edward saeed, although it is strange to talk about returning to saeed although he has gone, his thought remains with us as both inspiration and guide i wonder if any of us have really caught up with him. i began today by asking whether we might be able to extend our ideas about political equality to the equality of the grievable, that is the idea that all lives are equally grievable and equally valuable. i cautioned against a quick solution to this problem, one that would abstract people from their concrete realities, including concrete inequalities which they live. although i do think that international criminal courts rely importantly on the notion of humanity when they articulate crimes against humanity, think as well, that forms of equality emerge when people are able to make historical connections between conditions of suffering and demand for redress,

conditions of subjugation and struggles for political self-determination. saeed gives us some ways to think about making connections among different sorts of suffering, suggesting that we have to be capable of juxtaposing one historical form of suffering with another, not to assert their concrete identity with one another, but see how different forms of subjugation and an out ought to speak to one another. demand of palestinian suffering and aspiration is important to make it legible to allow to become grievable the rout rage and redress the demand from emancipation from colonial rule and political self-determination. how do we understand this demand to represent collective suffering? saeed's view is that palestinian suffering had to be detailed in its specificity but it also had to be framed in terms of its connection with other subjugated

peoples. his concern was with those in exile, those hundreds of thousands who had been displaced from their lands in '48 or' 67 or '83. so he wrote about those possibilities of connection among exiled peoples and in that context he cited ashari, who wrote some years ago the palestinian people are those whose national experience, here i quote, belongs with that the armenians, jews, irish, cypriots, blacks, polls, american indians at the terrifying frontiers where existence and disappearance of peoples fade into each other. resistance is necessity but where there is also sometimes a growing realization of the need for an unusual and to some degree an unprecedented knowledge. as best he says, i at best i feel about these various palestinian existences that they form a counter point of

multiple, almost desperate dramas, which each of us is owe wear of occurring simultaneously with his or her own. so then saeed drawing inspiration from this remark writes the following, and i quote, to this terribly important task of representing collective suffering of your own people, testifying to its travails, reasserting its enduring presence, reinforcing its memory, there must be added something else which only an intellectual i believe has the obligation to fulfill. for the intellectual the task i believe is explicitly to universalize the crisis. to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation suffered. to associate that experience with the suffering of others. as much as the idea belonging to a common humanity seems crucial to the perspective of the international criminal court, there is another form of belonging that is also universal

or rather universalizing in saeed's view. when and how does this universalization happen? for saeed it happens precisely, and i quote again, in the practice of associating, not identifying one's own experience of suffering to that of others. end quote. he continues. is in adequate only to affirm a people dispossessed, oppressed or slaughtered, denied its rights and its political existence without at the same time doing what fanon did during the algerian war, a fill eighting those horrors with the similar afflictions of other people. this does not mean a loss in historical specificity, he writes, but rather it guards against the possibility that a lesson learned about oppression in one place will be forgotten or violated in other place or time. it follows then, that to

represent the sufferings of one's own people does not relief the person of the duty, and i quote again, that revealing your own people now may be visiting related crimes on their victims, end quote. indeed this was the view of the writer levy, the survivor of auschwitz who objected to the bombings of lebanon in '82 and objected to israeli complicity in the slaughters in sabra. and he insisted one form of suffering can not be used as pretext for causing another form of i will legitimate suffering. that if one were to learn from one's own suffering it would mean generalizing the unacceptable character of that suffering so that indeed no one should suffer in that way or in equally illegitimate way. not to say all sufferings are the same. they are not. but that they can become the basis for widening circles of solidarity, especially when we are willing to undertake a comparative analysis, make the links, and engage in a practice

of cultural and political translation. saeed knew exceedingly well these are distinctly different histories of displacement, the displacement of palestinians and the displacement of jews in the 20th century and there is no absolute structural analogy to be drawn between them. after all it is most often the case the displacement of the jews which led to the establishment of israel was the cause of the dispossession of the palestinians, a situation quite brilliantly relayed in in the return to haifa. the one group dispossessed can not justify dispossessing another group. after you will the establishment of israel as sanctuary for european jewish refugees, produce ad new refugee problem for the palestinians. a refugee problem continues to be reproduced in the 20th century up to the present. a comparative approach to the refugee problem, remember saeed

was a professor of compare testify literature, a field that fosters the recognition of uneasy or unexpected parallels between difficult texts a or contexts which regularly undergoes shifts in frame. so a comparative approach to the refugee problem becomes possible only when the vision is widened to include several instances of the refugee problem and in drawing the analogy between jews and palestinians which is distinct i think from annalgy between israelis and palestinians, saeed is seeking to widen the lens on the refugee problem, mobilizing the potential for a diaspora understanding between those in the diaspora or whose diasporaic past forms the ethical and political sensibility. diaspora or sometimes exile is not foregrounded as the aim or goal of politics nor can it possibly describe a fixed location. it is rather proposed as a

critical perspective on forms of political nationalism that have required repeated expulsion of those perceived as non-national. in the case of zionism, those who favor expulsion are understood as self-segregating, continuing a form of settler colonialism bound up with the historical and ongoing dispossession of palestinians from their homes and building dwelling structures an appropriated land, settlements and destruction of homes, expanding and debilitating practice of indefinite detention. as i said it was no accident that saeed was a literary school lore. he since in a scholar of comparative literature in particular, he really thought the work of bringing disparate cultural conditions into contact with one another could produce more expansive solidarity as long appears translation of one cultural situation from one cult tour another was not a simulation or domination. his perspective of someone who

lost his home. he used the term exile. we also now have to understand what it is to be an exile in one's own home or on the land where one's home used to be or on the land across the wall from where one's home used to be or on the grounds of a devastated structure that used to be called one's home but where no one can live. saeed wrote that exile, the exile is one who sees things as they were and as they are and as they were there, as they are here and so sees double and can not do otherwise. yet there are possibilities of seeing that emerge from the exile condition that are to be valued and i quote, an ideal or experience is always counter posed with another making them both appear in unpredictable light. he suggests this practice of juxtaposition and idea of reading brings back to ideas of universalizing what he calls

human rights and matters of justice. he writes, from that idea of juxtaposition, one get as better, perhaps even more universal idea of how to think, say, about a human rights issue in one situation by comparison with another, end quote. of course we do need abstract principles to make the point that all lives are valuable, that they ought to be treated as potentially grievable in the same way and that losses have to be marked, acknowledged and mourned. we need that universalizing moment when we say all lives. but to make the point politically we have to be able to communicate that palestinian lives are lives and ought to be treated as such. it is astonishing and appalling that this case has to be made at all. we've seen how effectively certain losses can be derealized or how quickly populations are defined as targets, shields,

attackers, renamed, reimagined within a scenario of war. when a child is figured as a shield, he or she is turned into metal, into an instrument to shield rockets or instruments of war. that means, that that child, even the one playing on the street or hanging out in the playground, the one who moves too close to the sea on a hot summer day, that child is somehow, somewhere hiding or shielding a bomb, a rocket, a rocket launcher. so if you see a photo of a child bit sea, what you should see, there is a bomb right behind that child and that, that child is a function of the bomb. okay. at this point the human body is transfigured by those who are targeting that body into an instrument of war, and the destruction of that child is understood as the destruction of a war instrument. how do we stop a reverse in this most nefarious of transfigure

races? the simple photograph will help but will not suffice. publishing of statistics will help but it doesn't do the job all in its own. i do not know a practical way, but i think nothing will happen without building a global consensus. so, why is it so difficult for there to be a powerful global consensus on the grievable of palestinian lives? i think it can be built through forms of solidarity with other struggles against colonialism, not only to show that the situation in palestine continues to be that of colonial domination, and to show as well as orientalist and racist figures of the palestinian continue to function as popular justification for the elimination of their lives. we can and must say that palestinian lives are also lives but to do that we have to fight a colonial and racist legacy with you will at resources from other anticolonial struggles. we have to do this as well by

pursuing those juxtapositions between forms of suffering not always set against one another or lined up next to each other. i think saeed tried to do this by claiming that jews and palestinians both suffered forms of dispossession and this might become the basis for a common commitment not only to the rights of all refugees but for the right not to become a refugee in one's own land. perhaps that moment of hopefulness seems very unlikely at this moment. i can understand that. but there is some hope. there is jewish voice for peace. there is non-violent palestinian resistance movement in bdf and legal associations and institute such as this one. there are grounds for prisoner rights, stopping the wall, saving trees and land. despite failure of many international institutions to condemn israeli aggression a growing sense that a terrible massacre has happened and that many ruses have gotten in the

way of grieving those losses and demanding redress. we could say all the lives killed suffered loom rights violations but the framework of human rights can not grasp systemic character of destruction and destruction that has been going on periodically, repeatedly for some time and which has to be understood as the violent character of militarization and colonial rule. i do think there are shifts happening in the broader global understanding what has happened but they remain muted in some ways that has to be countered. one reason i'm in favor of pursuing justice through the icc is that i think there is a chance to make the analogies between what is happening in palestine and what is happened in other places where populations have suffered expulsion, destruction, and statelessness. following saeed's view, it is only consistent for a people affirm their own rights to be relieved the statelessness, their rights to sanctuary under

conditions of persecution and to make that case, by establishing the general and transposable character of those rights. even if the historical conditions of displacement differ, one people or its emerging or continuing state apparatus is responsible for displacement of one another, reparation begins precisely through the recognition and transposable character of the rights of the stateless to the political conditions of belonging and to the rights of political self-determination. making that claim in the global arena allows for that process to begin the transposability of rights, accorded one population to the another in the name of equality. with the hope that translations then, juxtaposition such as these, lead to an institutional recognition of the equal value of lives now extended to palestinian lives. the task is to forge a world in which no one asks ever again what is the value of palestinian

lives. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, professor butler. thank you very much. we are going to move to a q&a i want to remind those watching online you can send your questions in by tagging hashtag, esml 14. we'll begin with questions in the room. please do wait for a microphone to get to you that that we can hear you up here and the audience can hear you as well. start in the front row here. just one moment. >> thank you for the lecture. my question to you, you're saying that this reduction of the value of palestinian life as far as israel is concerned is not distinctly israeli but

inherent in the aspect of colonialism. that it is really, we can look at this being indigenous, look at examples of history. the british shot 5,000 round inflicting almost 5,000 casualties. so, having said this, do you see a point at where the israelis can accept the equality of grief for palestinians so long as they continue to exist basically through a colonial project, thank you? >> the quick answer is number i think the colonial project has to be overcome all together for the grievability of palestinian lives to be established because the slander russ, the slapped -- slander rouse stereotype is mobilized in other to maintain

the occupation. extend indefinite detention, indefinitely and, to take, and to take civilian lives when it proves strategic to do so. so i do think, but there is a question what comes first, right? what comes first? and my sense is that it would be it would be interesting to see what would happen, i know many people are involved in this struggle trying to ally the palestinian struggle with the struggles of the indigenous, ally the palestinian struggle with the struggles with the irish republican army and historical struggles of al fear yaw, not necessarily ending up with the same outcomes of any of those struggles but to suggest that, that kind of alliance, gives it kind of a broader framework and it

reconceptualizes the political terrain so that we're not just concerned with this incident or that incident or that violation of human rights or that one. we have a framework. it is specific to palestine but has really important comparative dimensions to other anticolonial struggles. i believe as people throw colonized power off and this is a fanon point, that greater humanist comes into focus. greater humanist gets asserted and known. the very struggle in throwing it off, struggle of overcoming it with international solidarity, that is kind after coming into recognizability as a life worth valuing and a life worth honoring. >> the lady in the third row here. ma'am. go ahead. behind you. >> considering how important you

thought icc is, i am wondering if ownly mahmoud abbas could apply to it. if there is any other group that could possibly apply for this? >> i don't know the specifics on that. if somebody else does, it would be great to hear but my understanding that he is the designated authority who has the power to apply. he has been asked to apply and then he decided not to apply. even when, people speculated that perhaps hamas put pressure on him not to apply because they don't want to be targeted, my understanding is that they did say, they did say, no do it, do it, we'll take that. we'll take the scrutiny. they can inquire into what we do as well and we will stand by their judgment. so it is an enigmatic why he, why he took that back but my understanding is that is the only one who has the kind of

legal designation to do it at this point. i don't know. >> go right over here. try to get around the room. then we'll come back. >> thank you for your lecture. you mentioned at some point that the presentation of the palestinians struggle by virtue which they bring on to themselves continues to be seen as inevitable reality, that fosters political paralysis and, when, when i have noticed people creating juxtapositions between the palestinian struggle and other indigenous people, or, other displaced peoples historically, it seems to have a rift of creating a greater sense of inevitability of the struggle because they are, you know, under colonial rule as some other people, they're going to suffer in the same way. how can we overcome that?

>> i think as much as we need to give representation with collective suffering and comparative frame as saeed suggests we do, we also need to have comparative analysis of resistance movements and solidarity movements and movements for liberation or movements for political self-determination which have worked. there has been massive decolonization and we can look at those histories as well. and use them for semiutopian purposes. >> gentleman right here has been waiting patiently. >> yes. >> yes. thanks very much. i'm norman. >> to meet you. >> yes, same here. at the 1944 trial of the prussian plotters against hitler, one of them was asked

why he had revolted or why he had participated in the plot and he said because of the many murders. and at that point the presiding judge, the brutal nazi judge lost his countenance, his cool, and began to yell. what do you mean by using the term, murderers, for the policies of third reich? i'm thinking of this, one wonders about the normalization so to speak of israel behavior in the sense that the behavior of the israel state, of its executives, armies, so on and of its supporters, in the diaspora and other supporters by no means jewish, represents a certain triumph of zionism, namely israel has become a normal, modern brutal state, using all

the means at its disposal to protect itself against threats, real, imagined, constructed or invented? there are plenty of other instances of this, not least in our own brief national history but seems to me that the your admirable request or demand or discussion based on edwards work can we admit the suffering peoples to a kind of a equality such that they can grieve, if it was the fact to some degree that modern normally at least for much of the 20th century or our century is precisely of the kinds of brutalities israel army exercised in gaza, which were perfectly normal, recognized as such, indeed had a good deal of support in american opinion?

>> well, i appreciate your comment although it is a very despondent comment. i understand. it makes me have to counter with more cheerfulness than i actually have. [laughter]. but i'm going to try to do my bit here. and i guess what i want to say is that, of course you're right, that, massacres such as those we recently witnessed have become normalized over time and a sign of military strength. and even a sign of membership in certain militarized, in the community of militarized nation states that do this periodically or indeed sometimes systematically. at the same time, it seems to me that there is a counter normalization movement going on, that seeks to expose the

normalization, say, of civilian targeting and to try to resist that. that is something i think we were talking about earlier today. that it used to be that there was greater moral outrage when we recognized how much civilian, how many civilian losses there were in military exercises such as these. or, when we realized that, that there were actually orders given, yeah, go ahead. you had a hard day. take your shot at a civilian population, it's fine. we will look the other way. you bomb where you need. it is those reports that we're starting to see more of. so in a way i am asking the same question you are, where is the outrage? how can the outrage be marshalled? how can it be, how can it produce counter normalization effort? and i'm, and i'm, i mean i know

that the international criminal courts have limited power. they don't have their own army and they're not binding and there are all kinds of problems but they do have the power to name. this is criminal, right? let's remember, this is criminal. right? and i, and i think, you know as much is that ethos of unbridled militarism, that seeks to pump up its own status and standing in the world through unbid i willed destructiveness there is some fear being that far away from international consensus. we see a rift in europe itself and see a rift in the united states between those that understand, those that have to do and those that really don't understand and not willing to allow this to become normalized. that is what we used to call a hegemonic struggle. maybe we need to keep alive the idea we're still in a hegemonic

struggle and we have to be part of counter normalization in the way that you have described. >> [inaudible] then we come across. >> thank you for wonderful or stimulating thought. >> take my questions from the morning headlines, international ngos, donor groups, refused to engage in resisting of rebuilding of gaza, basis it has been destroyed three times. why should we do it again because it will only happen again. so in light of what you have been speaking about, enlightened by your own remarks and those of our beloved edward saeed, you know, what can you add to this, level of argument, the victimization that is normalized. there is nothing we can do about it, we accept that gaza can not be rebuilt, this morning's

headline? >> sometimes the washington papers don't say the same thing as "the new york times" so it is very interesting to me. >> nfr. >> i see. i read "the new york times" article. seems this is brokering situation where ngos come from more money or temporary promises and what i think we need to think about is the way in which rebuilding becomes an opportunity to renegotiate power relations. if, state of israel and the u.s. and others are able to bring in. gos in, there is the chance we see ngoization of gaza, which allows for a parallel structure there, with the west bank. and as much as those ngos are terribly important for repairing infrastructure, they can not

stop the the process of destruction, right? some don't want to be complicit to be part of that. process of rebuild, your prerogative is always to destroy. i think we ought to be paying attention to how that issue gets resolved because people will be brokering for power positions in the process of rebuilding. and that, it's a new way to establish dominance. and perhaps, through the ngoization of the area, to undermine popular struggles for political self-determination. >> in the corner over here. then we'll come back. >> thank you very much for being here. i wanted to explore a little bit

your discussion of working in solidarity with palestinians, and other oppressed peoples. where you stand, as, half-jewish women with a palestinian-american daughter who lives in palestine for several years, but now living here in the united states, how does one do that with integrity? because you know, as someone who is an activist, as a writer, i'm also aware of this concept and have in fact been told, well, you must work in your community? what does that mean to you? how do you, as a woman of integrity work in solidarity with people that, who you're not one of? in other words, you're not a palestinian but yet you want to work in solidarity with them?

how does one do that in your view? >> well, i think, a lot of it depend on how you understand your community, and, sound like your community is already a double community and overlapping community but if we think more broadly, i'm a u.s. citizen and i'm at least partially responsible for the speaking out about my own government's investments and its support of that area. so any u.s. person could and should have a view on this matter. and, i'm an american jew. i don't have relatives in israel, although i come from very strong zionist background and it to -- i had to struggle with that and my community of origin. but i have found some jewish groups to keep that more local sense of belonging but also to be part of solidarity networks, but if i ask the question, who

am i, when i'm in a solidarity network, it is not just that i'm an american or i'm a jew or it this or that, i could name other things that i am that would not be very interesting, but i also belong to a global community. i mean, i mean, and, -- so, you know, i think the real question i have, where do people draw the line when they decide which community they belong to? why the so-called, strictly community tearian position makes no sense to me. palestinian refugees, living all over the place and multilingual and are truly many cultures, are truly from many places, are truly exilic in saeed's sense and also belonging but having to decide what other terms of belonging. do i only care about those or do

i care primarily those closest to me and defined in the same demographic way as me? what would that mean? isn't that part of what is wrong with the world. that we imagine we can only identify with and represent those who are like us. i find that worrisome. i find that to be a refusal of difference, a refusal of the political and cultural and demographic complexity of the world we're living in. and because obviously we are also interconnected through economy and through little at thattization and through -- militarization. seems something called, global responsibility is crucial. we may start from a specific place and may have have a particular path into that and our way of doing it may be inflecked by all of that but that doesn't mean we don't belong to the wider circles or

shouldn't. >> go to the back here. >> thank you. can we make a comparison to the palestinian situation and the situation of the kurds, struggle going on for a long time? of course, we hear a lot less about that, when they get hit by turkey or? >> well they're kind of being hit by isis right now i think but, i think there are many issues to be said about that and i'm not sure that i can elaborate but, you know, ashari was speaking some time ago, but perhaps the armenians would be one side of association or affiliation and i think the kurds, given their expulsion from so many national borders and their inability to establish their own, national borders or, to be accepted as full and equal

citizens, say, in turkey has been, has made them into, a really important refugee issue. sometimes, when refugee issues have been going on for decades and decade they also become to a certain degree naturalized, right? we forget to see this as inequality, this is expulsion, this is the effect of non-inclusion in those ways. i think there is much more to be said about that, more also to be said about vast numbers of refugees produced every day in syria? and outside of syria? it is, it is really stunning. we're going to have to be thinking about all that. and in relationship to, to the politics of israel, palestine as well. >> we'll have one final question here.

let me bring the microphone. over on time but. >> thank you very much for a lecture that i think has gone beyond the issue by issue, event by event approach to often dealing with the complexity of the palestine-israel situation. i come from south africa. which i think has given a great prefix to what the palestinians suffered, the apostate war, the apostate zion its, et cetera, et cetera, and i often fear that it masks more than it reveals because it may lead to a sense, if only there were mandela, the problem would be solved. if only, and israel says, but we are not racist because we have not put these things on the law books. i think there is a intellectual laziness sometimes although there is a shortened that is useful from time to time. i thought that out of what you

said there seems to be a very vicious triangle that may indeed be unraveling be interested to hear what you say. on one hand how do we increase the equality of palestinian lives and not of those that who support palestinians be inefectualized in the process, we get divided left and right between palestine and hamas, et cetera. we contribute to the apex of that triangle we may contribute because if it is not, if it is hamas, then i'm less worried about it? i think the second point of triangle that may lead to unraveling is, how does one deal, despite the fact that they insist on fusing the two personas between jew and zionist, how do we continue insist on delinking it in order to salvage the human from the

general, self-dehumanization that is going on? and so what we appeal to in order to grow those kind of grassroots movements that you speak about? so i think that it is to increase the leverage of the human over the dehumanized within, within palestine. the third one is how do we from particularly the west resist this automatic victimhood that is transferred in time from world war ii and before to today, that continues to be a figure leaf for allowing -- fig leaf, that allowing barbarity? and assure that the battle beyond victim-hood is defined? i think out of your lecture seems to be a very vicious triangle that needs to be diffused and i wonder if you have any ideas on that. >> i am going to be brief

because i know we've gone over. let me just say this. i think the effort to establish solidarity with, with the south african example, if i may, has more to do with the definition of apartheid and i think that there are two very interesting and, and complex views on that, at least. one of them is oh, whatever is happening in palestine is not quite the same as what happened historically in south africa. so the analogy doesn't quite work. or, to look at how genocide actually has been, not genocide, i'm sorry, how apartheid has been defined legally, and see that the legal definition of apartheid applies to very different historical formations

of apartheid. which we could say there is a that is right tied in palestine and apartheid in south africa, without saying a that is right tied in south africa and palestine are not the same. saeed wanted resonance and possibility for a comparison to take place without everybody ending up being in the exact same situation. i really that that is what he called for. than would also be true for ideals of political self-determination. we may agree what happened in south africa with the end of a that is right tied was a partial liberation, right? there are pretty rotten deals made, right? we didn't see economic equality achieved. we didn't see the end of racism. as a social and economic reality so, so there is that. i do think that, that there are two issues on the question of being, of the jew and israel

and, and one of them of course is that the state of the israel wants to claim it represents the jewish people and anybody who seeks to criticize the state of israel is, is, is at risk of being told that they are involved in an anti-semitic enterprise and that's a real trap if you're colonized and trying to object to colonial rule and you're called anti-semitic when you're trying to object to colonial rule. that claim needs to be stronger. we're not objecting to jews. we're not objecting to the even future possibility of some kind of israel. what we're objecting to is the continuatino of colonial rule and what we're objecting to is militarization. and be very specific bit. i do think hamas should get rid of its charter language. i don't buy the argument, oh,

well, it doesn't really matter. just on the books. they don't use it. i don't care, i think hamas should get rid of its anti-semitic rhetoric and would be huge symbolic importance. it would allow people to adjust and possibly hear what is going on in a different way. i think it's wrong and i think it should be taken away. i also think that, there are major efforts on the part of various jewish communities throughout the world to establish independent jewish organizations that are critical of israel and that allow for a solidarity. they can be, they can be left zionist, they can be anti-zionist and pro-boycott or antiboycott but they are to the left significantly of how israel is defining that. there. is room to think about jewish values and how jewish values have to be reclaimed from the israeli state. i think there are many ethical resources we can find in the

jewish tradition for the critique ever militarism, for argument of equality, for the value of cohabitation. the preciousness of life we're taught. that our mourning practices even the most -- life is worth of grief. let me say about victimization. it is true that saeed wants us to find ways of representing collective suffering. he wanted us to do it in comparison with a number of different groups so that we could see what alliances are but also we could see what possibilities of moving out of it are but unless grief is acknowledged, unless loss is acknowledged, it seems to me it is very hard to move forward because, if we take the victimization to be permanent or if we take the losses, if we're numb to the losses, oh, more losses, right? we don't have that affect basis

to say, this is an outrage. this ought not to happen and i will struggle to make sure it does not happen. we don't have it collectively. seems mourning doesn't stop with mourning. mourning is part of outrage and articulation of ideals that we want to see embodied in the world. it has to take that, it has to convert, it has to convert into action and it can but for those who are derealized, whose losses are no losses, who don't exist or are not recognized or whose agency is constantly being disfigured or transfigured in pernicious ways, it is very hard to break out of that slander, to break out of that stereotype, to show what legitimate resistance is and why it is legitimate. that is perhaps where allying with historically and in contemporary way with other anticolonial struggles may well be great support. thank you for your -- [applause] >> thank you very much.

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