Sedition Between Enforcing the Law and Violating It: A Response to Palestine TV

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I listened closely to what Palestine Television reported in its commentary on an interview I gave to Al-Quds TV, and listened closely to its two guests, Sheikh Da’is and Dr. Suweilim. I offer the following responses:

1. I never called for anyone’s death, while the program claimed I had called for the killing of the president of the Palestinian Authority and the heads of the security services. This is, of course, a baseless lie — I call for no one’s death, and it is not I who decides such a matter, but the competent courts.

2. The channel aired excerpts from the interview but never read out, to viewers, the texts of the PLO’s revolutionary law, nor the texts of the Palestinian Authority’s Basic Law, leaving matters instead to its guests’ own speculation and anxieties.

3. What I said on screen rests on legal texts that are not applied by those who bear responsibility for applying them. The PLO’s revolutionary law was issued by the Executive Committee of the Liberation Organization, a Palestinian law that the Liberation Organization’s own leaderships took part in drafting. I did not write this law, and I am not responsible for enforcing it, but as a citizen I have the right to ask why some matters are enforced while others are ignored. Likewise, the Palestinian Authority’s Basic Law was written by the Palestinian Authority itself, yet it is often applied according to mood.

4. Who is truly the source of sedition — the one who violates the law, or the one who calls for its application? I believe commitment to the law spares us many problems and burdens, while stepping outside the law, or failing to apply it, plunges us into states of chaos and enmity. Whoever seeks sedition is the one who ignores the law, and whoever seeks people’s security and harmony is the one who demands the law be implemented and upheld.

5. Is the academic supposed to remain silent, never showing people the true facts of the matter? I want nothing from anyone, seek no one’s flattery, and have, thank God, enough money to last me many years — whoever wishes to play the hypocrite should not do so at my expense.

6. I have been attacked, and my property attacked, again and again, and Palestine Television incites against me.

7. It would have been more fitting for the channel and its guests to show viewers exactly where I overstepped or erred. I said nothing without grounding it in, and backing it with, texts written by Palestinians who themselves claimed to be leaders.

8. The Palestinian scene did not reach this level of misery for free — there has been deliberate work, over the years, toward sedition, monopolization, and stirring hatred and animosity within the people’s ranks.

9. Palestine Television and its two guests issued a death sentence, their unspoken message being that what Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem said about Palestinian revolutionary law leads to the killing of many of Oslo’s people. I never spoke of killing anyone — it was the television that spoke of it. They issued a verdict without a trial, and this is impermissible.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الفتنة بين تطبيق القانون وانتهاكه: رد على تلفاز فلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.