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CounterPunch
September
16, 2002
A New Theology of Power
by M. Shahid Alam
"This book sounds an alarm: Israel,
through the deep and pervasive power of its lobby, threatens
deeply-cherished American values-especially free speech, academic
freedom and our commitment to human rights."
Paul Findlay, They Dare To Speak Out
(1985)
In 1982, Paul Findley, went down in his re-election
bid after serving in the Congress for twenty-two years, and the
principal pro-Israeli lobby in Washington took credit for his
defeat. What was the Congressman's crime? He had crossed a line
drawn by the Israeli lobby in United States; he had violated
the ban on meeting Arafat.
This past week I too had a small taste
of the same medicine. No, I am not a public figure, nor had I
met with Arafat or any other Palestinian degraded to "terrorist"
ranks by Israel's lexical offensive. I am only a professor,
an obscure peddler of dissent, who, once tenure was secured,
had been left reasonably well-alone by school administrators,
colleagues, and assorted self-appointed censors. How then did
I get into trouble?
Over the past year, however, I began
to cross that thin line which I should have known one crosses
only at some peril. I began to talk and write about Israel. None
of this would have been newsworthy if I had been reading from
the script; but I was not. Instead, I began calling a spade
a spade. In other words, I was stepping over the line.
Although invisible, this line is like
a charged electrical cable. I first stepped on this cable when
I spoke at a seminar on September 11 at Northeastern University
in October 2001. I had planned on providing a historical backdrop
to the attacks on the Twin Towers, drawing attention to the record
of French, British and American interventions in the region.
My principal concern was that such an attempt, so soon after
September 11, might be greeted with hostility. To my pleasant
surprise, I was proved wrong. At the end of the seminar, not
a few stepped forward to thank me for speaking out.
But the matter did not end there. I was
informed by the Chair of my department soon after the talk that
a colleague had emailed to complain that I had departed from
the announced theme of the seminar. Later, the same day, as I
was walking across the campus, I was stopped by a professor who
informed me that he was at my talk, and he proceeded to accuse
me of "hate speech." Apparently, he had been troubled
by a passing reference to the peculiar history of Israel.
The impact of September 11 on the lives
of Americans was best summed up by the feeling that it had changed
every thing. I shared in America's grief at the wanton loss of
human lives, the first in their recent history; though I had
known this grief before, many times before. September 11 was
changing me too. I was witnessing the curtailment of civil liberties
in United States, growing attacks on Islam, and the triumph of
lobbies who wanted United States to wage endless wars against
the rest of the world. I decided to step out of my academic shell.
It was time to speak to some real issues.
Among other things, when a campaign for
the academic boycott of Israel was initiated in early April,
I decided to join the campaign. When I invited a few colleagues
to join the boycott, one described the boycott as destructive,
prompting me to explain why I thought this campaign was morally
justified. I did so in an essay, "An Academic Boycott of
Israel," which was first published in Counterpunch.Org
on July 31, and it has since appeared on several websites, newspapers
and discussion groups. Of course, this prompted both angry and
supportive emails; only one threatened violence. On the whole
I was pleased at the response.
There was worse to come. On September
3, the Jerusalem Post carried a report on my essay, without
any mention its title or substance, under the heading, "US
Prof Justifies Palestinian Terror Attacks." This provoked
more angry emails to me, the Chair of Economics, and some others
at Northeastern University. Over the next two days, I was also
contacted by The Jewish Advocate, Boston Herald,
Bloomberg News, and The O'Reilly Factor. Although
flattered by the attention, I declined the invitation to meet
the honorable Mr. Bill O'Reilly.
On September 5, taking the cue from the
Post, the Herald published another malicious and
sensational report on my essay. It was headlined, "Prof
Shocks Northeastern with Defense of Suicide Bombers." It
claimed that my article "sent shock-waves through the Fenway
campus yesterday," but quoted only one of my colleagues.
This report too made no mention of the title or substance of
my essay, justifiably raising suspicions about the reporter's
motive. And although I had responded in a timely manner to their
email, the reporter claimed that he could not contact me by phone
or email.
It is curious how these reports had inverted
the objective of my essay. My essay made a case for an academic
boycott, a quintessentially non-violent act, as an alternative
to the recent Palestinian acts of desperation. By showing greater
solicitude for the Palestinians' desperate plight, I argued,
international civil society could give hope to this beleaguered
people, and persuade them to act with greater patience in the
face of Israel's brutal military Occupation. The Post
and Herald had twisted a moral case for non-violent action
into justification for terror.
It would appear that I had crossed the
line in advocating an academic boycott of Israel, and I had to
be punished. To quote from Taha Abdul-Basser (Herald,
September 9), what the Post and Herald "actually
find distasteful is the thought that intelligent, well-spoken
people of conscience should call for a moral stand against the
oppressive and unjust behavior of Israel." At least in United
States, it is the Israeli narrative that has dominated public
discourse on policies towards the Middle East. This narrative
speaks only of Jewish claims to Palestine, and presents Israel
as a victim of Arab hatred of all things Western, a beleaguered
outpost of Western civilization in an ocean of Arab barbarians.
My essay was unacceptable because it questions this narrative.
The attacks against me perhaps are not
over yet. As I was finishing this essay on the night of September
8, I learned that I had been 'spoofed'-a new word in my lexicon.
Someone had stolen my identity and sent out a malicious e-mail
to administrators and colleagues at Northeastern. The spoof was
quite crude, making it hard for anyone to believe it could have
originated from me. Or perhaps, I am being naïve.
In the days following the September 11
attacks, President Bush had ad-vanced a vision of the world framed
in Manichean terms. You are either with us, or you are against
us. We are innately good, but all those who oppose us are evil-doers;
their violence against us is metaphysical, it springs from their
devilish nature, and has no political or sociological causes.
Instantly, this new-fangled political doctrine was also transformed
into a theology. It applied not only to countries but also to
individuals, aliens and citizens alike. Any dissent with the
Bush doctrine could be regarded as blasphemous, as support for
terrorism. This is the new theology of power, whose foundations
and ramifications are being worked out feverishly every day by
hawks of every stripe.
In the same manner that Israel, Russia,
China, India, and many smaller powers besides, have appropriated
this new theology to suppress the legitimate resistance of various
oppressed peoples as terrorist activities, a variety of hawkish
lobbies have been using the media to stifle discourse by painting
their opponents with the brush of terrorism. In attacking me,
the Post and Herald reports have employed the same
strategy.
I am afraid that if these efforts are
allowed to succeed, we may soon witness the narrowing or, worse,
the closing, of all discourse on history, foreign policy, rights,
justice, resistance, violence, power, oppression, sanctions,
imperialism, and--lest I be accused of offering a partial listterrorism.
We will be free only to mouth slogans.
Down with terrorism! Down with our enemies!
Down with Islam!
M. Shahid Alam
is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston.
He can be reached at: m.alam@neu.edu
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam
Today's Features
September 14 / 15, 2002
Ben Tripp
Notes for
Future Historians:
The Bush Administration Explained
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy & US Policy on Cuba
David Vest
Neither-Handed
Behzad Yaghmaian
A Letter
from Istanbul
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fire Next Time:
Nuclear Plants & Terrorism
Anis Shivani
The Warped
World of
Bernard Lewis
Uri Avnery
A Witness from the Past
Robert Fisk
Bush Across
the Rubicon
Josh Frank
Lacking Tenacity
Christini, Alam, & Krieger
Poems
New
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to Subscribers:
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Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
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McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
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Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
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Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
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Shrike
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September
14 / 15, 2002
Ben Tripp
Notes for
Future Historians:
The Bush Administration Explained
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy & US Policy on Cuba
David Vest
Neither-Handed
Behzad Yaghmaian
A Letter
from Istanbul
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fire Next Time:
Nuclear Plants & Terrorism
Anis Shivani
The Warped
World of
Bernard Lewis
Uri Avnery
A Witness from the Past
Robert Fisk
Bush Across
the Rubicon
Josh Frank
Lacking Tenacity
Christini, Alam, & Krieger
Poems
September
12, 2002
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary
of Occupation
James C.
Faris
Riefenstahl
at 100:
The Fascist Aesthetic
Gary Leupp
Presidential
Honesty on Iraq
Tarif Abboushi
A Conversation
with My Arab-American Self
Ron Jacobs
Shelter
from the Storm
Rick Giombetti
Paxil
and Addiction
Krystal Kyer
From NAFTA
to CAFTA
Another Rotten Trade Deal
John Jonik
Overcome
in Philly
September
11, 2002
Anis Shivani
How to
Survive in Ashcroft's America
Pierre Tristam
Abusing
the Sorrows of 9/11
David Krieger
Resisting
Bush's
"Relentless War"
Jerre Skog
9/11 One
Year Later:
Remember the Others, Too
Dave Marsh
Illegal
Music?
A Sampler's Delight
Norm Dixon
How the
Warmongers Have Exploited 9/11
September
7 / 8, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim
and Jason Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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