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August 3, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
August 2, 2002
Ralph Nader
The Labor
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Chris Floyd
Moral Maze:
Bankruptcy Made Easy
Jeremy Scahill
Saddam,
Chemical Weapons and Donald Rumsfeld
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
July 30, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Branding September 11
PS Burton
Financial
Journalism:
A Very Small Cog
Tom Stephens
Hypocrites in the House:
Fast Track After Midnight
Dave Marsh
Censorship
Goes Global
July 29, 2002
Linda Belanger
Why Do They Do It?
Alfredo Castro
Colombia's
Disappeared
Anne Brodsky
Inside Pakistan and
Afghanistan with RAWA
Andrew George
The Fires
of Summer:
Don't Blame the Greens
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
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Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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August 3, 2002
The
End of Innocence
by Gilad Atzmon
In the light of the tragedy and the devastating
images from New York City, in the shadow of embarrassingly stupid
remarks made by the major western 'free world' leaders and in
the light of the call for a western jihad against a faceless
enemy, I feel obliged to expose the lie that stands in the center
of the current liberal democratic militant enthusiasm.
Being born in Israel in the early sixties,
I was raised to believe that I lived in the 'only democracy in
the middle-east'. While being a soldier in the army I realized
that I grew up among a people who deny the most basic human rights
to millions of Palestinians. As soon as I was able to interpret
my surrounding reality I had to acknowledge the terrible fact
that this oppressive Israeli policy is being supported by America
and the 'free world'. Having managed to stop regarding myself
as an innocent victim and detached myself from any Zionist beliefs,
I have became very suspicious of manipulative right wing brain-washing
and nationalist propaganda. Since September 11th, we have been
asked by every American official to join the struggle to maintain
our 'free world'. Ever keen to join righteous struggles for justice,
I had to ask myself few questions first: Where is this free world
that I am suppose to protect? Is it in the Gaza strip a land
heavily populated by Palestinian refugees that has been turned
into a concentration camp with the active support of the American
government? Is the 'free world' to be found in the streets of
Baghdad, where millions of civilians are deprived of medical
supplies and food because of something that looks more and more
like a personal debate between one person with a moustache and
another person who hasn't started shaving yet? Is there any room
in the 'free world' for hundreds of millions of Muslim Arabs
who watch the American administration supporting the continuous
humiliation of their brothers in the Holy Land? Does the 'free
world' which I am called to protect include all those dark corrupted
Arab regimes heavily supported by the American government only
because they happen to have huge oil resources? If there is such
a call to protect this kind of 'free world' I think that they
will have to fight without me. I am not going to be there among
the front line soldiers. As a matter of fact, in an attempt to
make this world a better place, I will try to expose this phony
and manipulative demand for a 'free world crusade'. I want to
believe that the common usage of the words 'free' and 'world'
together is just a clumsy slip of the tongue. At the end of the
day, the American leaders must know better than anyone else that
the world is not free mostly because of their own discriminatory
policy that opposes anything that fails to match western interests.
Since the horrifying collapse of the
twin towers we are urged by the American president to protect
our western democracy. So, there is an urgent need to scrutinize
this call, a call may well lead to a new world war. What is democracy
supposed to be? Originally, democracy was created to express
the people's will. Democracy claims to be the manifestation of
the true spirit of the people. If democracy manifests people's
will and spirit, then within a democratic society people must
share a certain kind of responsibility for their government.
Unlike in dictatorial regimes --in which the sovereign power
is taking a personal responsibility for the whole state policy
--in democracies responsibility is somehow shared between the
elected government and the electing civilians. The civilians
are sharing a direct responsibility with their elected government.
When the American people vote for an intellectually immature
politician to be their president, they must take a direct responsibility
for the danger of a world war provoked by his infantile character.
Similarly, the Israeli people can be blamed and should be blamed
for all the ongoing crimes committed by their government. The
Israelis have been voting every few years in favour of the continuous
oppression and humiliation of the Palestinian people. It is crystal
clear that the Israeli people have a direct responsibility for
the miserable condition of their Palestinian neighbors. They
are directly involved with the whole range of crimes against
humanity that go with occupation. In a dictatorial regime the
situation is very different. While the Israeli and American people
enjoy the possibility of changing their fate, the German people
under Hitler (for example) did not have any civil vehicle to
oppose the criminal gang that turned their state into an industrial
criminal organization. Unlike dictatorships in which citizens
are emptied from their legal right to oppose the ruling power,
in democracies civil opposition is a must. In a democratic society,
every citizen is obliged to protect the whole community from
committing crimes against humanity.
Being a citizen within a democratic environment
becomes a heavy moral burden. In other words, it becomes a moral
commitment. Unless the members of a democratic community take
an active role in opposing the wrong political decisions made
by their government, they lose their innocence. Every single
member in the democratic community becomes responsible for the
whole society. Unfortunately, in those democratic societies which
conduct military, imperial and capitalistic affairs overseas,
the civilians become instantly responsible for all those who
live on those foreign lands. Following that line of thinking,
the Israelis who regard themselves mistakenly as a democratic
people, should be made responsible for every possible aspect
of Palestinian life. For instance, the Israelis need a good excuse
to justify the denial of Palestinian civil and human rights,
or, at least, should explain the exclusion of the Palestinians
from the democratic game. The Americans should justify their
support of evil and corrupted regimes all around the world. Since
there is no sign of any apologetic behaviour either on the Israeli
or on the American front, we can conclude that Israeli and American
societies are far from being innocent. When an act of terror
takes place against Israeli and American people, the victims
cannot present themselves as innocent. At most they can hide
under the light shadow of naivety. We are moving towards a new
phase of political life in which 'free people', the citizens
of the free world, are emptied of their innocence. People are
drained of innocence unless they decide to fight for it, unless
they start to oppose their government's wrong policies. Living
in an era of growing terror activity and facing the unique phenomena
of suicidal attacks should raise many questions among the attacked.
I remember being myself under the terror of suicidal attack whilst
an Israeli soldier in the early days of the Lebanon war. I can
recall asking again and again what brings people to sacrifice
their life over an international conflict. In our western society,
soldiers have to fight from time to time but they always wish
themselves to come home alive. According to our western understanding,
young people go to fight in order to guarantee a better future
for their own community. In general it can be said that western
people go to fight because they try to improve their conditional
state of being in this actual world. Western people fight because
they want to live. They want more from life than life can give.
Yet, it is still hard to understand what motivates thousands
of American soldiers to jump into the blue cold water of Normandy
and to turn it into red. The will to live doesn't explain why
Americans rushed to die in Vietnam (or indeed in Afghanistan),
but we must believe that it has something to do with the acceptance
of the call to save the 'open society' from 'its enemies'. A
vague promise that guarantees better life but always turns out
to be fairly self-destructive.
In as much as we can try to empathize
with the poor soldier that swims or marches towards his death,
the suicide bomber is far more difficult for us to deal with.
On the surface, it is very hard to see how the collapse of the
twin towers and the evil murder of thousands of civilians can
improve the condition of any one anywhere. How can the death
of thousands of people make our world any better? Since we cannot
really provide any rational answer that is consistent with our
western methodological approach, we are left with some very fundamental
questions: How is it that someone is willing to give his life
just to kill me? What have I done so wrong that turns someone
into a mass murderer? How can I manage to turn some remote culture
into cold horrific inhumane criminals? Did we do something wrong?
Are we still doing something wrong? Are we stopping our governments
from supporting the continuous Israeli oppression of the Palestinian
people? Did we oppose our governments' sanctions against the
Iraqi civilian population? Did we ask our government to ban Israel
from developing nuclear and mass destructive weapons? Why do
we ban the Arab states from having weapons of mass destruction
while we keep plenty of them in our bunkers? Because the answer
to all these questions is probably going to expose a great deal
of ignorance toward people living in miserable conditions, I
allow myself to claim that we do not really care about anyone
but ourselves. Hence, we cannot see ourselves as 'innocent victims'
anymore. At most, when being hit, we are just victims. Since
we do not show any care for anyone except ourselves, we have
managed to lock ourselves within a western self-centred phony
sense of 'freedom'. 'Freedom' that very soon, is going to turn
itself against us. Because of the very basic character of suicidal
terror activity, the terrorist, as long as he succeeds, is always
the first to die. He is the first to be punished and he is delighted
about it. By punishing himself, the suicidal fighter manages
to demolish our common western sense of justice. He cannot be
brought to trial. He cannot be confronted with his own wrongdoing.
Since he is the first to die, among his victims, he is probably
the first to meet God. Within his own philosophical and cultural
presuppositions, the 'shaid' guarantees himself a luxurious state
in heaven. While on earth the 'free world' granted him misery
and humiliation, confronting God, he is listed among the greatest
martyrs. The terrorist, from his point of view, is not concerned
with our human sense of morality and justice. He prefers the
heavenly supreme court of justice. As we all know, God allows
himself to demolish the whole world in order to purify it from
its sins. Following that line of heavenly supreme justice, the
suicidal terrorists are conducting a Biblical war against us.
They are fighting a religious war in the name of Allah. They
attack the core of our new religion, the religion of money and
wealth. If we accept that money and life-style have become the
spiritual mediator of new man, by hitting the world trade center,
the terrorist has managed to destroy the 'free world' temple,
the 'Mecca of wealth'.
Although nobody has yet managed to win
the war against terrorism, it looks as if the Americans are trying
to pull us all into a pointless crusade against the most extreme
form of terrorism, the suicidal one. Except for the fact that
conflict with suicidal terrorism can lead to an enormous catastrophe,
we are made blind to the fact that categorically, suicidal terror
is unbeatable. Western man can never win against this enemy.
In our culture 'life' is regarded as the highest human value.
In our culture, the death penalty is regarded as the worst possible
punishment. It is a trivial and obvious truth that a culture
that regards life as the most sacred value can never win in a
conflict with a culture that regards death as a supreme spiritual
souvenir. When it comes to a conflict with all those millions
of Muslim people that are living in extreme poverty, there is
very little that we can take from them except their life. Since
it seems as if they are completely blazé about giving
their life away, the West is conditionally deprived of victory.
We can never win in the battle against the real Other. The Other
that is conditionally different from us. When you cannot win
a battle you had better call off the war and start to listen
to your enemy. If we really insist on considering ourselves as
free agents in a 'free world', we must learn in detail the fury
of all those remote Islamic cultures. We must confront our wrongdoings,
we must look in the mirror.
We must understand that the victory in
the battle against terrorism leads us to a logical conflict.
By winning the battle we are losing our freedom altogether. The
suicidal terrorist takes his conviction and determination to
die from a mighty spiritual force. While it is clear that the
spiritual call to hand over your soul to God can bring some people
to conduct some terrifying crimes, that very spiritual lesson
is completely legitimate within our western cultural boundaries.
The call for a physical sacrifice is reflected in all religions
to a certain extent. In that case, in order to protect ourselves
from the suicidal terror, our only way to fight back is to clear
our streets of certain spiritual leaders. Unfortunately by doing
so we cease to be a 'free world'. By the restriction of the freedom
of speech we empty ourselves of the most fundamental essence
of liberty. Thus, a victory in the war to maintain our 'free
world' will be the end of our freedom. We will turn into an oppressive
culture. In that case I would prefer, again, to call off the
war all together.
Our only way to become free in this world
is to start to listen while knowing that we might not understand.
To accept the differences, to welcome the existence of different
ideas and remote world-views. We must learn to regard the act
of terror as an act of despair, as a call for help. If we are
as strong as we think we are, we can move on and help this world
to be a bit better. We must open ourselves to the Arab world
and to understand Muslim fundamentalism. We must learn to accept
lack of a dialogue as a legitimate form of co-existence. We must
move towards better sharing procedures of the world's wealth.
We have to remember that this war is not ours unless we really
insist on making it ours. This war belongs solely to the Americans
and their Zionist counterparts.We must remember that Europe can
have a different role. The European can get involved in providing
the American people with the terrible truth of their wrong international
policy regarding the Middle East and the Islamic world.
If this message gets through we might
save this planet from a unique form of political incompetence
represented by the new American administration. If this message
does not get through, we are going to face a very different world
in a very short time. If we don't listen, if we just decide to
use our mighty forces against hungry civilians, we are probably
going to turn central London into a pile of rubble.
In honouring the memories of the victims
buried under what is left of the world trade center, we must
try to consider a peaceful approach, lead our world into the
next phase of multi-culturalism, to the land of compassion and
forgiveness.
Gilad Atzmon
is an acclaimed jazz musician (saxophonist/clarinettist), the
top selling jazz musician in the UK. His group is the Orient
House Ensemble. He is also the author of a novel, Guide to the
Perplexed, just published in Israel to great acclaim.
Today's
Features
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
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