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April 3, 2002
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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April 3, 2002
Of War, Islam and Israel
By John Chuckman
War between Islam and the nations of the West?
There have been a good many careless words printed and broadcast
in America touching on this simplistic idea. And an American
president who lacks the most superficial knowledge of the world
or its history offers no reassurance, as he lurches from one
misstatement to another, that this idea is not being incorporated
into national policy.
The concept of Islam as an intrinsically
violent, anti-progressive opponent in the modern world is both
ignorant and dangerous. The new prominence of this idea in America
provides a good measure of the distorted information that exists
in our political environment. It's almost as though the bloody,
parochial views of Ariel Sharon on the nature of Palestinians
had been exalted to a world view, worthy of every statesman's
consideration.
How easily we forget that the history
of organized Christianity provides almost certainly the bloodiest
tale in all of human history.
The Crusades, that dark saga of Christianity
written in blood and terror, continued sporadically over hundreds
of years. They served little other purpose than gathering wealth
through spoils and sacking cities and easing the periodic domestic
political difficulties of the papacy and major princes of Europe.
We hear of the treatment of women under
Islam in certain places, not remembering that Christian women
were left locked in iron chastity belts for years while their
husbands raped their way across the Near East. And the character
of Saladin, hard warrior that he was, shines nobly in history
compared to the moral shabbiness of Richard Lionheart.
Europe wove a remarkable tapestry of
horrors in the name of Christianity from the beginning of the
modern era. There was the Holy Inquisition, the Expulsion of
the Jews from Spain, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation,
the Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, the St Bartholomew
Massacre, Cromwell's slaughter in Ireland, the enslavement and
widespread extermination of native peoples in the Americas, the
Eighty Years' War in Holland, the expulsion of the Huguenots
from France, the pogroms, the burning of witches, and numberless
other horrific events right down to The Holocaust itself, which
was largely the work of people who considered themselves, as
did the slave drivers of America's South, to be Christians.
Over and above the conflicts motivated
by religion, European and American history, a history dominated
by people calling themselves Christian, runs with rivers, lakes,
and whole seas of blood. Just a sampling includes the Hundred
Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years'
War, the slave trade, the French Revolution, the Vendee, the
Napoleonic Wars, the Trail of Tears, the Opium War, African slavery
in the American South, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian
War, the massacre in the Belgium Congo, the Crimean War, lynchings,
the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War
II.
How anyone with this heritage can describe
Islam as notably bloodthirsty plainly tells us that immense ignorance
is at work here.
What limited knowledge I have of Islam
is enough to know that there is no history, despite bloody characters
like Tamerlane, to overtop Europe's excesses, and, in some cases,
there has been generosity of spirit exceeding that shown by Christians.
The Moorish kings of Spain tended to
follow the same tolerant attitude towards religion that the classical
Romans had done. The Romans allowed any religion to flourish,
often officially adopting the gods of a conquered people, so
long as the religion represented no political threat to Rome's
authority.
People today point to a well-publicized
excess like the Taliban's destruction of ancient statues, apparently
completely oblivious to the fact that the religiously-insane
Puritans, direct ancestors of America's Christian fundamentalists,
ran through the beautiful, ancient cathedrals of England after
the Reformation, smashing stained glass, desecrating ancient
tombs, destroying priceless manuscripts, and smashing sculptures.
A remarkably tolerant society flourished
under the Moors in Spain for hundreds of years. Jews, Christians,
and Muslims were tolerated, and the talented served the state
in many high capacities regardless of religion. Learning advanced,
trade flourished.
During the centuries of the Jewish Diaspora,
the Arab people of the Holy Land looked after the holy places
and largely treated Jewish visitors with hospitality and respect.
There was none of the bitter hatred we see today. All this changed
at the birth of modern Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians
from places they had inhabited for centuries.
No reasonable, decent-minded person can
deny that the manner of Israel's rebirth did a great injustice
to the Palestinians. And the great powers, first Britain and
then the United States, had entirely selfish motives in seeing
this done.
Under the original UN proposal for Israel,
there were to be two roughly-equal states carved out of Palestine,
and the city of Jerusalem was to have an international status.
More than half a century later, what we have is an Israel that
covers three-quarters of Palestine and militarily occupies the
rest.
Yet somehow, the burden of appropriate
behavior, in a fuzzily-defined "peace process" leading
to some fuzzily-defined Palestinian state at some undefined date,
is always placed upon the Palestinians. They are supposed to
live patiently, exhibiting the peacefulness of model citizens
in Dorothy's Kansas, while under a humiliating occupation in
order just to earn the privilege of talking to Israel about the
situation.
I often wonder how Americans, with their
Second-Amendment rights and hundreds of millions of guns, would
behave under such circumstances. Would they patiently wait decade
after decade, watching "settlers" fresh from other
places build on what was their land? Watching bulldozers flatten
their orchards? Watching their people harassed and often demeaned
at checkpoints as they simply travel from one point to another
near their homes? Not being able to so much as build a road or
a sewer without the almost impossible-to-get permission of the
occupying authorities? Being told that only their patient behavior
can earn them the right to talk with those who control their
lives?
Looking at the situation in that hypothetical
light may offer a better appreciation for what the Palestinians
have endured with considerable patience.
The simple fact is that it has been the
clear policy of Israeli governments over the last half century
to avoid, at all costs, the creation of a Palestinian state.
Every effort at delay, every quibble over definitions, every
tactical shift that could possibly be made has been made, many
times over, in an effort to buy time, hoping that time alone
will somehow make the problem of the Palestinians go away.
This policy may have changed, ever-so-slightly,
under Mr. Barak from one of preventing the creation of a Palestinian
state to one of preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian
state, but that is not the same thing as "the great opportunity
missed" that has been dramatized, over and over again, in
America's press. And even this slight change in policy remains
unacceptable to many conservatives in Israel.
And when the Palestinians, morally exhausted
by endless waiting that yields no change, resist the occupation
they are under with the limited, desperate means they possess,
they are regarded as unstable lunatics who don't love their children.
A number of apologists for Israel's worst excesses have repeated
this theme, an extension of a remark attributed to the late Golda
Meir about peace coming "when the Palestinians learn to
love their children more than they hate us." The actual
quote from Ms. Meir that is most applicable here is one she made
to the Sunday Times of June 15, 1969, "They [the Palestinians]
did not exist."
We are repeatedly told that Israel is
the only democracy in the Middle East and it is defending itself
against malevolent forces. This vaguely-defined image of enlightenment
versus darkness appeals to Americans. But democracy has never
been a guarantee of fairness or decency. It is only a means of
selecting a government.
Under any democracy, a bare majority
of people with an ugly prejudice can tyrannize over others almost
in perpetuity. Indeed, this very experience is a large part of
the history of the United States, even with its much-vaunted
Bill of Rights. But Israel has no Bill of Rights, and what's
more important for actual day-to-day fairness and decency, the
very will to act in a fair manner appears to be absent. What
else can one say where assassination, torture, and improper arrest
have been management tools of government for decades?
Israel's politics are highly polarized,
undoubtedly far worse than those of the United States, and the
balance of power needed to form any parliamentary coalition is
always in the hands of far-out religious parties. The interests
of these people are anything but informed by enlightenment values
and democracy, holding to views and ideas, as they do, that predate
the existence of democracy or human rights.
It is not an exaggeration to say that
killing the Philistines or tearing down the walls of Jericho
are regarded as current events by a good many of these fundamentalist
party members. A number of their leaders have, time and again,
described Palestinians as "vermin."
The extreme conservatives receive many
special privileges in Israel that distort the entire political
mechanism. For example, their rabbis decide the rules governing
who is accepted as a Jew or what are acceptable religious, and
religiously-approved social, practices. The students in the fundamentalist
religious schools traditionally have been exempt from the army.
In effect, they are exempt from the violent results of the very
policies they advocate.
These parties generally believe in a
greater Israel, that is, an Israel that includes what little
is left of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, minus its current
undesirable inhabitants. It has been the view of Israeli government
after Israeli government over the last half century to consider
Jordan as the Palestinian's proper home. Thus, when Israeli governments
talked of peace, it meant something entirely different than what
Palestinians meant.
And when, finally, an offer for a Palestinian
state was made by Mr. Barak at Camp David - an offer that, by
all reports, was made quite angrily and contemptuously to Mr.
Arafat - under any honest, rational analysis, it reduced to one
for a giant holding facility for people not wanted in Israel.
How surprising that Mr. Arafat left in anger when after days
of being subjected to good-cop/bad-cop treatment by Mr. Clinton
and Mr. Barak, this was the end result. Surely, this was an immensely-frustrating
disappointment to the Palestinians after years of effort and
compromise to achieve and implement the Oslo Accords.
Mr. Bush's War on Terror, a mindless
crusade against disagreeable Islamic governments, has had the
terrible effect of casting the bloody-minded Mr. Sharon in the
role of partner against the forces of terror and darkness. He
has received a new mantle of legitimacy for continued destruction
and delay, for continued injustice against those too powerless
to effectively oppose him.
As Israel's leaders well know, the Palestinian
population is growing rapidly. Rapid population growth is the
general case for poor people throughout the world. Israel's highly
organized and costly efforts to support Jewish immigration reflect
awareness of this fact. But a combination of large birth rates
on one side and heavy immigration on the other is a certain formula
for disaster in the long term. The region's basic resources,
especially water, will sustain only a limited population.
A large population, outsizing its resources,
almost certainly is the major underlying reason for the immense
slaughters and numberless coups and civil wars of Western Africa
in recent years, a region whose population growth has been high
but whose usable resources are limited. And the history of civilization
tells us that vast changes and movements of population have been
far more decisive in human affairs than atomic weapons.
So it appears that not only in the short
term, but over some much longer time horizon, Israel and the
Palestinians are on a deadly collision course.
There is hope. Modern societies have
all experienced a phenomenon called demographic transition. This
term simply means that, faced with a reduced death rate, people's
normal response is a reduced birth rate, yielding a net result
of slow, or even negative, population growth. Couples prefer
to have only two or three children who are almost certain to
survive instead of six or more, at least half of whom die before
growing up. This is the reason why modern countries depend entirely
on migration for growth, or to avoid actual decline, in population.
Israel, populated largely by people from
Europe and North America and being a fairly prosperous society,
follows the pattern of advanced nations. The West Bank and Gaza,
with some of the world's highest birth rates, do not. Now, the
only way to trigger demographic transition is through healthful
measures like adequate diet, good public sanitation, and basic
health care, especially measures for infant care. These things
done, nature takes a predictable path and people stop having
large families.
But these are not measures that can be
accomplished quickly, and the need to get on with them should
add some sense of urgency to ending the occupation and helping
the Palestinians achieve a state with some degree of prosperity.
By now, it should be clear that life
in Israel for the foreseeable future cannot be quite the same
as life in Dorothy's Kansas no matter who leads the government.
No one has been more ruthless or bloody-minded than Mr. Sharon,
and he has only succeeded in making every problem worse.
Yet life in Israel similar to Dorothy's
Kansas - that is, a life as though you were not surrounded by
people seething over injustice and occupation and steeped in
poverty - is a condition that Mr. Sharon insists on as a precondition
even for talking about peace. Somehow, Mr. Arafat, with a wave
of his hand, is to make all the violence disappear. This is not
only unrealistic, it is almost certainly dishonest.
Israel herself, in any of the places
she has occupied, and despite having one of the best equipped
armies in the world, has never been able to do that very thing.
All those years in Lebanon, and the violence continued at some
level for the entire time. Indeed, a new enemy, Hizballah, rose
in response to Israel's activities. It is simply a fact that
there has always been some level of violence in any place occupied
by Israel. How is Mr. Arafat, with his limited resources and
in the face of many desperate factions, supposed to be able to
accomplish what the Israeli army and secret services cannot?
And were he to try running the kind of
quasi-police state one assumes Israel favors, with regular mass
arrests of suspects, how long would he remain in power?
Moreover, Mr. Sharon treats Mr. Arafat
with utter contempt, dismissing him as insignificant, and has
destroyed many of the means and symbols of his authority. How
can a leader, treated as contemptible, exercise authority? For
all his faults, and he has a number of them, Mr. Arafat has demonstrated
through many compromises related to the Oslo Accords that he
is a man who sincerely desires peace and a constructive relationship
with Israel.
Mr. Sharon's entire adult life has been
dedicated to killing. I do believe there is more blood on his
hands than any terrorist you care to name. Mr. Sharon first made
a name for himself with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when a force
under his command blew up forty-five houses and killed sixty-nine
people, most of them women and children.
Nearly thirty years later, in 1982, he
was still at it when Lebanese militia forces under his control
murdered and dumped into mass graves, using Israeli-supplied
bulldozers, between two and three-thousand civilians in the refugee
camps called Sabra and Shatila.
Mr. Sharon was responsible for the disastrous
invasion of Lebanon which saw hundreds of civilians killed by
Israel's shelling of Beirut and precipitated a bloody civil war
in which thousands more died.
Mr. Sharon's policies of assassination
and bombing have succeeded only in multiplying the suicide bombings
beyond anything in recent memory. It is almost impossible to
imagine this man as capable of making a meaningful gesture towards
peace. Yes, of course he wants peace, peace on his terms, a cheap
peace without giving anything, but by definition that is not
peace for the Palestinians.
We always hear about what is required
of the Palestinians for peace, but a genuine peace requires some
extraordinary things on Israel's part.
First, she must at some point accept
a Palestinian state. This condition is a necessary one, but it
is far from sufficient, for she must be prepared to generously
assist this state towards achieving some prosperity, reducing
the causes of both run-away population growth and the dreary
hopelessness that causes people to strap bombs to their bodies.
Most difficult of all, it is hard to
see how Israel can avoid some level of violence during a period
of Palestinian nation-building. This is something no ordinary
state would consciously embrace, but then Israel is no ordinary
state. The norms of Dorothy's Kansas simply do not apply. The
hatreds generated by a half century of aggressive policies are
not going to just melt away, but if there is enough genuine,
demonstrated goodwill, it does seem likely that such violence
would be minimal. It is an unappetizing risk that almost certainly
needs to be taken, for no one is going to run a police state
on Israel's behalf in the West Bank.
Considering the immense difficulty of
these things and political barriers that exist against them in
Israel, it does not seem likely that peace is coming any time
soon. The prospect seems rather for low-grade, perpetual war,
paralleling that Mr. Bush so relishes speaking of. For someone
of Mr. Sharon's turn of mind, this may be a wholly acceptable
alternative.
John Chuckman,
a columnist for YellowTimes,
lives in Ontario, Canada. He encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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