Give
us back our democracy
Edward Said, The Observer, April 20, 2003
Americans have been cheated and lied to on matters of the gravest constitutional
importance -- In a speech in the Senate on 19 March, the first day of war against
Iraq, Robert Byrd, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia, asked: 'What is happening
to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends?
When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical
and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon
diplomacy when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?' No one bothered
to answer, but as the American military machine currently in Iraq stirs restlessly
in other directions, these questions give urgency to the failure, if not the corruption,
of democracy. Let us examine what the US's Middle East policy has wrought since
George W. Bush came to power. Even before the atrocities of 11 September, Bush's
team had given Ariel Sharon's government freedom to colonise the West Bank and
Gaza, kill and detain people at will, demolish their homes, expropriate their
land and imprison them by curfew and military blockades. After 9/11, Sharon simply
hitched his wagon to 'the war on terrorism' and intensified his unilateral depredations
against a defenceless civilian population under occupation, despite UN Security
Council Resolutions enjoining Israel to withdraw and desist from its war crimes
and human-rights abuses. In October 2001, Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan,
which opened with concentrated, high-altitude bombing (an 'anti-terrorist' military
tactic, which resembles ordinary terrorism in its effects and structure) and by
December had installed a client regime with no effective power beyond Kabul. There
has been no significant US effort at reconstruction, and it seems the country
has returned to its former abjection.
Ferment
in Muslim thinking
By A.G. Noorani, FrontlineOnNet, April 12 - 25, 2003
THE proceedings of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Kuala Lumpur provided
a glimpse of the hurt and dismay in the Muslim psyche at Western perception of
Muslims as terrorists. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed said on February
23 that the world was in a state of terror, allowing fear of Muslims to affect
international policy. He warned that "the attack against Iraq will simply anger
more Muslims who see this as being anti-Muslim rather than anti-terror". An Indian
correspondent reported that day that the draft "NAM statement on terrorism, largely
authored by India, was stalled... with most of the two score Muslim member-nations
viewing it as one that targets them and their religion." Mahathir Mohammed is
second to none in fighting terrorism. Terrorism is condemnable; but it is morally
and intellectually impermissible to view terrorism used to promote nationalist
causes as one inspired by religion because the nationalists falsely invoke religion.
The most extremist of Palestinian nationalists, George Habash, was a Christian.
Osama bin Laden was an U.S. ally who found the presence of U.S. troops on the
soil of his country, Saudi Arabia, revolting. Interestingly, while in the immediate
aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre (WTC) on 9/11 U.S. commentators
called for reflection on the deeper causes of terrorism, they soon adopted arrogantly
self-righteous postures and attributed terrorist attacks to hurt pride and envy
of U.S.' riches. However, as William Pfaff remarked: "Washington remorselessly
expands its military presence in the Islamic world in order to fight the anti-American
terrorism that its presence causes. No one in the government seems to see a contradiction
in this." Prof. John L. Esposito's pioneering work The Islamic Threat: Myth or
Reality? has run into three editions since it was published a decade ago. Unfortunately,
intellectual ferment among Muslims the world over gets drowned in the noise and
din generated by fundamentalists. Nowhere is this ferment more prominent and of
far-reaching consequence than in Iran, which U.S. President George W. Bush included
in his "axis of evil". This collection of books reflects both the trends - intellectual
creativity and despair which drives people to terrorism.
Blair
is in thrall to the myth of a monolithic modernity
By John Gray, The Guardian, April 19, 2003
From public services to Iraq, we are told the American way is the only way --
Tony Blair's unswerving support for the US attack on Iraq may not seem to have
anything much to do with his determination to remould Britain's public services,
but they are both applications of a single big idea. Like the neo-conservatives
in Washington, Mr Blair believes there is only one way of being modern and it
is American. The prime minister's incessant mantra of modernisation is sometimes
seen as an alibi for unprincipled pragmatism. In fact it is testimony to a deep
conviction. He believes that modernisation is a process that can have only one
result, the universal spread of American-style market states - and that anyone
who resists this happy outcome is struggling against the irresistible forces of
history. The belief that modernisation is a unilinear historical process is not
new. The neo-conservatives are only the latest in a long line of thinkers. Karl
Marx and John Stuart Mill had very different visions of what it means to be modern,
but they were at one in believing that it would be the same everywhere. They absorbed
this belief from the Positivists - an early 19th-century intellectual movement
founded in France by Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte that is almost forgotten
today, but which was enormously influential. The Positivists believed the motor
of historical change is the growth of scientific knowledge. As science advances
and new technologies are invented, the religions and moralities of the past are
cast off. Humanity is free to use science to achieve unprecedented levels of prosperity
in a new kind of civilisation based on reason and secular values.
This
occupation is a disaster. The US must leave - and fast
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, April 21, 2003
Any gratitude for the removal of Saddam is now virtually exhausted -- Abdul al-Malaki
lives opposite the gatehouse of the extravagant palace that Saddam Hussein built
in his home town of Tikrit. Flanked by megalomaniac twin statues of the former
Iraqi president riding a horse above four missiles, the palace arch was a daily
affront to locals. "The people of Tikrit are like the rest of Iraq. They hated
Saddam Hussein. I want to kill him," the 28-year-old cafe-owner spat out his words.
But as lorry-loads of US Marines trundled through the arch, he switched focus:
"This is an occupation. Nothing else. We will keep quiet for a year and if they
have not gone we will kill them." The gratitude for removing Saddam Hussein on
which Washington mistakenly expected to bank for years is almost exhausted. Those
who warned the Bush administration against this war have been proved right. Only
in the Kurdish areas of the north is there any satisfaction. The Tikrit cafe-owner's
views are replicated throughout the largely Arab parts of Iraq. In Nassiriya,
Shia protesters greeted the US proconsul General Jay Garner with shouts of "No
to Saddam, no to occupation" last week. In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Sunni
and Shia worshippers came out of Friday prayers and marched through the streets,
calling on the US to leave.
Graham
in Iraq Will Be Adding Insult to Injury
By Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News, April 21, 2003
JEDDAH, 21 April 2003 — Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and an avid
preacher of the new-style Christian fundamentalism, is coming to town. Franklin
Graham is to the right of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, if that is at all possible,
and he wants to come to Iraq. I have recently written an article calling for Christians
and Muslims to unite. That union, if anything, should be against Graham and his
hate-filled brand of Christianity. Graham is anti-Islam. He does not make any
excuses for it. He called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”
Graham, like his fellow American preachers, is stubbornly ignorant of history
and other religions. He shoots his mouth off in all directions and then claims
to bring his charity to aid the Iraqis. He also admits, in his own words, that
he believes “as we work, God will always give us opportunities to tell others
about his Son... we are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and
as a Christian, I do this in the name of Jesus Christ.” The hidden items
on this war’s agenda are becoming clearer by the day. Graham is a close
friend of Bush and his family. He was the one who delivered the invocation at
this president’s inauguration. For him to come proselytizing and evangelizing
in the heartland of Islam is an insult, and a dangerous one at that. He should
understand that he is not authorized to speak in the name of Jesus. Muslims know
Jesus. Granted, that they do not know him as the “Son”, but they know
he does not condone the hatemongering Graham is so accomplished at.
Jenin,
Jenin
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, April 21, 2003
A visit to the refugee camp one year after the IDF incursion. -- A small
arrow pierces a heart. Hassan and Manar. The names of the lovers are written in
Hebrew and they are misspelled. The handwriting is awkward. Hassan is embarrassed
when we discover the small drawing on the gate of his house. Maybe the Hebrew
was to prevent others from understanding. Manar married someone else. A year after
Israeli soldiers shot and killed his father - two bullets in the kidneys and one
in the head - and his body lay here in the yard for nine days and nights without
anyone being able to evacuate or bury him, Hassan Mukaskas wants to learn Hebrew.
He has enrolled at the Abu Jihad Institute in Jenin, where Abdullah teaches the
language of the occupier three times a week. Hassan Mukaskas is 25. His father,
Ali, he says, was a greengrocer of 52 who went out to the yard to wash his hands
and face before the noon prayers and to bring water to his children. There is
no tap in the house, only in the yard. The incident happened on April 6 last year,
when the Israel Defense Forces entered the refugee camp. Mukaskas fell bleeding
on the threshold of his house and died.
Abuse,
cover-up and forgiveness
Editorial, Haaretz, April 21, 2003
The arrest of four border policemen suspected in abusive acts that led to the
death of 17-year-old Amran Abu Hamadiya of Hebron follows a three-and-a-half-month
intensive investigation. The affair's horrifying details, first exposed by the
B'Tselem organization, outline how the suspected policemen - Bassam Wahabi, Shahar
Butbika, Yanai Lalzeh and Dennis al-Hazub - who served in Company 25 in Hebron,
took Palestinians into their jeep, abused them, brutally beat and injured them,
and threw them out of the moving vehicle. The police internal affairs unit believes
the act was a revenge killing for the November 15, 2002 Palestinian attack on
Hebron's Worshipers' Path. This is not the only severe case revealed, however.
B'Tselem reports, media reports, and Palestinian complaints to the police are
testimony that acts of abuse, revenge, thuggery and humiliation of Palestinian
civilians have spread like an infectious plague during the 30 months of the intifada.
Investigators probing some of these complaints have encountered a lack of cooperation,
procedural obstructions, and factual cover-ups. In the recent case, internal affairs
investigator Aryeh Zuk said during debates regarding the extension of the four
suspects' remand, that "this is a protected Border Police company, which in the
past has been involved in cover-up acts and obstruction of the investigation."
So
where are they, Mr Blair?
Editorial, The Independent, April 20, 2003
Not one illegal warhead. Not one drum of chemicals. Not one incriminating document.
Not one shred of evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in more than
a month of war and occupation -- So where are they? In case we forget, distracted
by the thought of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, looted museums and gathering
political chaos, the proclaimed purpose of this war, vainly pursued by Britain
and the US through the United Nations, was to disarm Saddam Hussein and to destroy
weapons of mass destruction deemed a menace to the entire world. But, Mr Blair,
where are they? A month has passed since American and British troops entered Iraq,
more than a week since the fall of Baghdad. But thus far not even a sniff. Not
a drum of VX or mustard gas, not a phial of botulin or anthrax, not a shred of
evidence that Iraq was assembling a nuclear weapons programme. But that wasn't
what they told us. Remember Colin Powell at the Security Council two months ago
(though today it seems another age on another planet): the charts, the grainy
intelligence satellite pictures, the crackly tapes of the intercepted phone conversations
among Iraqi officials? How plausible it all sounded, especially when propounded
by the most plausible figure in the Bush ad- ministration. And what about those
other claims, wheeled out on various occasions by Messrs Bush, Blair, Cheney and
Rumsfeld? The Iraqi drones that were supposed to be able to attack the US east
coast, the imports of aluminium tubes allegedly intended for centrifuges to enrich
uranium, the unaccounted-for lethal nerve and germ agents, in quantities specified
down to the last gallon or pound, as if exact numbers alone constituted proof.
All, it seems, egregious products of the imagination of the intelligence services
– one commodity whose existence need never be doubted.
The
unthinkable is becoming normal. Do not forget the horror
By John Pilger, The Independent, April 20, 2003
The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war --
Last Sunday, seated in the audience at the Bafta television awards ceremony, I
was struck by the silence. Here were many of the most influential members of the
liberal elite, the writers, producers, dramatists, journalists and managers of
our main source of information, television; and not one broke the silence. It
was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant,
rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its
foreign master. Iraq is the "test case", says the Bush regime, which every day
sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist
state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As
the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing
"incredible'' levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest,
Syria or Iran, is "debated'' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue. The
unthinkable is being normalised. The American essayist Edward Herman wrote: "There
is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with
the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working
on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive
napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is
the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable
for the general public.''
A
Midnight Knock On The Door
By Uri Avnery, OutlookIndia.com, April 21, 2003
Some people believe that if the depression deepens, the "weak strata" will one
day rise against the Sharon government, the masses will pour onto the streets
and topple it. That may be too optimistic... It was an almost unbelievable
news story: in order to trim the national budget, the Ministry of Education had
decided to dismiss hundreds of teachers. A private company got the job of delivering
the bitter news to the dismissed teachers. Two days before Passover - one of the
highpoints of the Jewish calendar, both for religious and secular Jews, when families
sit together around the table for the joyous Seder ceremony - the messengers of
the company spread out to do their job. They knocked on the doors at midnight
and delivered the notices. Even the Israeli public, which does not get excited
any more about anything, was shocked for a moment. How could such a thing happen?
Couldn't they have waited until after the feast? What brutality! For me, it was
much more than a mistake of some government office. This is a symbolic act, which
reflects all that is wrong in today's Israel. First of all, the cruelty. It wasn't
deliberate, of course. The Minister of Education did not tell the private contractor:
hand them the notice in as painful a way as possible. The contractors, too, did
not sit down and decide: let's do it just before Passover and knock on their doors
in the middle of the night, like Stalin's secret police or our undercover soldiers
in Nablus. No, nobody decided. Nobody thought about it. And that is really the
most shocking part: the total insensitivity. Even three or four years ago, this
would not have been possible. Somebody would have intervened in time and shouted:
"What are you doing? Are you crazy?" The Jews always defined themselves as "the
compassionate sons of the compassionate". They believed that compassion is a Jewish
invention and quoted the old texts (such as the Sabbath injunction in the Ten
Commandments, ordering Jews to relieve their slaves and draft animals every seventh
day.) Nietzsche, who abhorred pity, accused Judaism of creating a morality of
pity. The new Hebrew society that was created in this country was always proud
of its "mutual responsibility", the fact that nobody went hungry in our society,
that the incapacitated, sick, old and unemployed were protected by the whole of
society. Once, when I was asked what being a Jew meant to me in my childhood,
I mentioned compassion, together with seeking justice, hating violence, striving
for peace and loving education. Not any more. After two years of the al-Aksa intifada,
the senses of Israeli society have become almost completely blunted.
