MICHEL MARTIN, host:
Continuing with our international briefing, we turn to the Middle East. The Persian Gulf state of Qatar: among Arab nations, it's known for its tolerance of open political discussion. It's home to television network Al-Jazeera. It's also the host of the Doha Debates, a forum for spirited discussion over Mideast policy issues. These debates are televised on the BBC World Service television eight times a year. The next installment airs this weekend, but this time they did something different.
That segment was taped recently here in Washington, D.C. The focus: whether the Obama administration should, quote, "get tough on Israel," unquote. Arguing the affirmative the debater said that the current U.S.-Israel relationship undermines national security.
Mr. MICHAEL SCHEUER: Can America defeat a pro-Israel fifth column of U.S. citizens that corrupt U.S. politics and foreign policymaking and amount to the most lethal threat to the state of Israel? For renewed post-war ties, Israel must take five actions to help destroy the fifth column that has made Israel the most arrogant, avaricious and treacherous U.S. ally.
MARTIN: Arguing the negative, the debater said it would be dangerous to break relations with America's greatest ally in the Middle East.
Dr. ALAN DERSHOWITZ (Professor of Law, Harvard): There could be no worse time to get tough with our strongest ally in the Middle East - to single out Israel as the one nation to get tough with. Getting tough on Israel is more likely to produce bloodshed than to produce peace.
MARTIN: Here to talk about the debate is Tim Sebastian, a former BBC correspondent. He founded the Doha Debates in 2004 and moderates the discussions. He's here with me now in our studio in Washington, D.C. Welcome, thanks for joining us.
Mr. TIM SEBASTIAN (Moderator, Doha Debates): I'm pleased to be here. Thank you very much.
MARTIN: A member of our team attended the taping of the debate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. - and spirited, clearly the word to use. I have a short clip of an exchange between Harvard University law Professor Alan Dershowitz and former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg. Here it is.
Mr. AVRAHAM BURG (Former Speaker of the Knesset, Israel): So it is not getting tougher, but it's an option Mr. Prime Minister...
Dr. DERSHOWITZ: What do you have? What would you prefer? Do you agree with that analysis...
Mr. BURG: This is getting tougher.
Dr. DERSHOWITZ: That's getting smart.
Mr. BURG: No, it's - smart and tougher, it's about vocabulary. It's not about content.
(Crosstalk)
Dr. DERSHOWITZ: ...It's psychology too.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Excuse me. Excuse me. You've made the point. I'm going to take a question from the gentleman over there on the left.
MARTIN: Excuse me.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Excuse me. Yeah, rough stuff. Rough stuff.
MARTIN: Excuse me. Yeah, well...
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Much rougher than in the Gulf, really.
MARTIN: And I was going to ask you about that. I can relate to the feeling of being more referee than moderator. Is this a typical exchange in one of these debates?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: This was pretty spirited by comparison. I mean, we do have people who feel passionately about the views they espouse, but this was pretty rough stuff. And I put it down to the fact that we were talking about a sensitive issue. There are strong feelings about it and I think we hit some raw nerves there. But that's fine. At the end of the day we had a civilized discussion. People agree to disagree. They walked away. They didn't fight. They didn't throw punches afterwards. I kind of expected they might, but they didn't.
MARTIN: Seriously? Or are you just being funny?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: No. No. I…
MARTIN: You really thought that it might get…
Mr. SEBASTIAN: I thought it could get rough. We had security there just in case.
MARTIN: I saw.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: But it wasn't necessary in the end.
MARTIN: How did you come up with the concept to begin with?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: I was in Qatar in 2004 and I was lucky enough to be invited to a lunch with the emir, the ruler. He explained what he was doing with the country and how he wanted to open things up a bit. He said, have you got any ideas? I said, no, but I'll go away and think about it. And I came up with the idea of town hall debates, thinking that if they really want to talk about controversial issues in a region where nobody talks about anything except under very strict censorship, then let's give it a try.
We gave it a try. We started in 2004, and the rest is history. We have aired some very, very controversial issues.
MARTIN: And just to clarify, there is no prior discussion with the government of the topics.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: There's no prior - there's no discussion of any kind with the government about topics, about what is said during the course of the debate or, interestingly enough, who is invited.
MARTIN: How do you choose your topics? And they are often ones that generate intense discussion. I'll give an example. This house believes that after Gaza, Arab unity is dead and buried. This house believes that political Islam is a threat to the West. This house believes that Gulf Arabs value profit over people. None of these are easy.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: These are not gentle subjects.
MARTIN: Gentle subjects, no. How do you choose the topics?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: No, but we want to be controversial. We want to be provocative. We want to talk about areas which don't get much of an airing in that particular region. And we bear in mind that we appear on an international news channel. So we want to make news, as well. We're looking for some headlines.
I think we raise some eyebrows, and we raise the temperature a little bit in the region where we work because we just talk about different things.
MARTIN: Well, I have to ask, though, because I realize that all, you know, countries and contexts are different, but in this country, there's a concern that a lot of our political discussion is more heat than light. It's just gratuitously provocative.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: I don't think we're gratuitously provocative. I know that kind of television. I know that kind of broadcasting. I think we get heat and light.
The idea is that we produce, in this region, which hasn't had any of it, some free speech, and that means accountability.
MARTIN: How do you choose your guests? Because obviously, you want people who know quite a lot about the subject. You want people with strong opinions, but you also want people who will maintain a standard of civility, and you want newsmakers. How do you go about choosing?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Well, we cast around as far as we can.
MARTIN: Has anyone ever turned you down?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Oh, they turn us down all the time.
MARTIN: Because?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Well, because they don't like the particular subject that we're talking about, or they can't make it on the day. But I mean, there are plenty of reasons. Free speech isn't going to be popular with everybody.
Look, it's a fight, wherever it is. It's a fight in the United States. It's a fight in the United Kingdom. It's certainly a fight in the Gulf, and it's getting worse around the world.
Look, we operate in a very, very complex environment. The Middle East is a rough neighborhood. I don't need to tell you that. Free speech is at a premium because there isn't any of it. We are a little island in a sea of censorship, which is restrictive, which stunts the growth, the normal, natural growth of free societies.
MARTIN: There are those, and I am not being facetious, I'm not being disrespectful, but there are those who would say, you know, talk is cheap, that there is no way that these debates can really have any larger meaning. People are still killing each other every day over these issues and that by definition, if persons are willing to participate in this kind of forum, that they only represent a very - a slice of the relevant parties, that the people who don't believe in debate, the people who don't believe in this kind of dialogue are by definition absent. So therefore, it's, in a way, a kind of an unreal world. Do you understand what I'm saying? What do you think of that?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Not much, I have to say.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: Well, I mean, we do words for a living. That's what we do. Obviously, we believe in words. But do you know what I mean?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Look, it's a luxury for us to say talk is cheap because we live in a society where we can have it. It's not a luxury at all in the Middle East or in much of the Islamic world, where talk is strictly censored, regulated by the state.
So for us to say talk is cheap, in those areas, I'm sorry, it's condescending. It's very condescending indeed. We represent an island of free speech in an area that simply doesn't have it. And we have embraced a number of people, hundreds of people, and we have introduced them to this concept that people can hold thought leaders and their politicians to account by asking them questions. I don't think that's cheap. I think that's rather worthwhile.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We're speaking with Tim Sebastian. He's the founder and the moderator of the Doha Debates, which grapple with some of the toughest question in Middle East policy.
Why did you choose the resolution, this house believes it's time for the U.S. administration to get tough on Israel?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Oh, because I think Israel's relationship with the U.S. is a very controversial area. You don't see many debates on that subject in the United States. Everybody talks about how powerful the Israel lobby is and that it stifles debate. I didn't believe that that was necessarily the case. I thought, why don't we come in and let's have a tough debate on the subject?
MARTIN: We noted that the goal of the debate is a spirited debate, but a civil debate. There were times when the conversation did get extremely intense. I want to play a short clip from a comment by Alan Dershowitz.
Dr. DERSHOWITZ: More Jews than any other ethnic group in America oppose the war in Iraq.
Unidentified Panelist: They led us into war.
Dr. DERSHOWITZ: What you're saying is bigotry. It's bigotry.
(Soundbite of applause)
MARTIN: What do you think about that? Because there are often times in a number of issues that people discuss where - you know, where is the line between ad hominem attack and a legitimate statement? Where's the line, and when do you have to decide when to step in?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Taste and decency. Taste and decency, and when the public can no longer hear what's going on because everybody's talking at the same time. That's when you step in.
I mean, again, it comes back to your question about heat and light. I want some light out of this. If everybody's shouting at each other, you don't get any light at all.
I think there was some shouting, but I also think we aired some very important issues. We talked about discrimination against Arabs in Israel. We talked about the settlements policy. We talked about how Israel is reacting to the new Obama administration. These are important issues.
MARTIN: Did you feel that you succeeded with this one?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: Success in my terms was airing a very controversial issue, and we certainly did that. Everybody walked away, all the participants walked away saying it was a fair debate. Those who won and those who lost said it was a fair debate.
MARTIN: What's next?
Mr. SEBASTIAN: What's next? We'll be talking about Darfur, and we're likely to suggest in a motion that the Arab world should hand over the Sudanese president to the International Criminal Court, where he's been indicted. So we'll be talking about another sensitive issue.
MARTIN: I'll watch that.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: I hope so.
MARTIN: Tim Sebastian. He's the founder and the moderator of the Doha Debates. He is also the author of eight novels and two works of nonfiction. You can see the Georgetown debate on the BBC's World News Television on April 4th and 5th. Tim Sebastian, he was here with me in our Washington, D.C., studio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Mr. SEBASTIAN: It was a great pleasure. Thank you.
MARTIN: Remember at TELL ME MORE, the conversation never ends, and we want to hear from you. I'd like to ask you to weigh in on a question that I asked Tim Sebastian. Do you think debate forums like this are, in fact, constructive? Do they ever move opposing sides toward solutions, or do they just reinforce the polarization that already exists?
To tell us what you think and to hear what other listeners are saying, you can call our comment line at 202-842-3522. That number again is 202-842-3522. Or you can visit our Web site at the TELL ME MORE page at npr.org and blog it out. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
