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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Kalpana
Sharma
Flower
Power:
A Blow for Peace
Tony Mauro
The Quirin
Ruling:
FDR's Horrible Precedent for Bush's Terror Courts
C.G. Estabrook
American
Crusades
November 17, 2001
Zoltan Grossman
It Ain't
Over Til It's Over
November 16, 2001
Rick Giombetti
Rep.
McDermott and
the Decay of Liberalism
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
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Pakistan
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Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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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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November
18, 2001
Suicidal Ignorance
By now, at least,
it should be clear: the US just doesn't get it. Time for a change
of policy.
By Edward Said
The extraordinary turbulence of the present moment
during the US military campaign against Afghanistan, now in the
middle of its second month, has crystallised a number of themes
and counter themes that deserve some clarification here. I shall
list them without too much discussion and qualification, as a
way of broaching the current stage of development in the long,
and terribly unsatisfactory history of relationships between
the US and Palestine.
We should start perhaps by re-stating
the obvious, that every American I know (including myself, I
must admit) firmly believes that the terrible events of 11 September
inaugurate a rather new stage in world history. Even though numerous
Americans know rationally that other atrocities and disasters
have occurred in history, there is still something unique and
unprecedented in the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings.
A new reality, therefore, seems to proceed from that day, most
of it focused on the United States itself, its sorrow, its anger,
its psychic stresses, its ideas about itself. I would go so far
as saying that today almost the least likely argument to be listened
to in the United States in the public domain is one that suggests
that there are historical reasons why America, as a major world
actor, has drawn such animosity to itself by virtue of what it
has done; this is considered simply to be an attempt to justify
the existence and actions of Bin Laden, who has become a vast,
over-determined symbol of everything America hates and fears:
in any case, such talk is and will not be tolerated in mainstream
discourse for the time being, especially not on the mainstream
media or in what the government says. The assumption seems to
be that American virtue or honour in some profoundly inviolate
way has been wounded by an absolutely evil terrorism, and that
any minimising or explanation of that is an intolerable idea
even to contemplate, much less to investigate rationally. That
such a state of affairs is exactly what the pathologically crazed
world-vision of Bin Laden himself seems to have desired all along
-- a division of the universe into his forces and those of the
Christians and Jews -- seems not to matter.
As a result of that, therefore, the political
image that the government and the media -- which has mostly acted
without independence from the government, although certain questions
are being asked and criticism articulated about the conduct of
the war itself, not its wisdom or efficacy -- wish to project
is American "unity." There really is a feeling being
manufactured by the media and the government that a collective
"we" exists and that "we" all act and feel
together, as witnessed by such perhaps unimportant surface phenomena
as flag- flying and the use of the collective "we"
by journalists in describing events all over the world in which
the US is involved. We bombed, we said, we decided, we acted,
we feel, we believe, etc., etc. Of course this has only marginally
to do with the reality, which is far more complicated and far
less reassuring. There is plenty of unrecorded or unregistered
scepticism, even outspoken dissent, but it seems hidden by overt
patriotism. So, American unity is being projected with such force
as to allow very little questioning of US policy, which in many
ways is heading towards a series of unexpected events in Afghanistan
and elsewhere, the meaning of which many people will not realise
until too late. In the meantime, American unity needs to state
to the world that what America does and has done cannot brook
serious disagreement or discussion. Just like Bin Laden, Bush
tells the world, you are either with us, or you are with terrorism,
and hence against us. So, on the one hand America is not at war
with Islam but only with terrorism, and on the other hand (in
complete contradiction with that, since only America decides
who or what Islam and terrorism are), "we" are against
Muslim terrorism and Islamic rage as "we" define them.
That there has been so far an effective Lebanese and Palestinian
demurral at the American condemnation of Hizbullah and Hamas
as terrorist organisations is no assurance that the campaign
to brand Israel's enemies as "our" enemies will stop.
In the meantime, both George Bush and
Tony Blair have realised that indeed something needs to be done
about Palestine, even though I believe there is no serious intention
of changing US foreign policy to accommodate what is going to
be done. In order for that to happen, the US must look at its
own history, just as its media flacks like the egregious Thomas
Friedman and Fouad Ajami keep preaching at Arab and Muslim societies
that that is what they must do, but of course never consider
that that is something that everyone, including Americans , also
needs to do. No, we are told over and over, American history
is about freedom and democracy, and only those: no mistakes can
be admitted, or radical reconsiderations announced. Everyone
else must change their ways; America remains as it is. Then Bush
declares that the US favours a Palestinian state with recognised
boundaries next to Israel and adds that this has to be done according
to UN resolutions, without specifying which ones, and while refusing
to meet Yasser Arafat personally.
This may seem like a contradictory step
also, but in fact it isn't. For the past six weeks there has
been an astonishingly unrelenting and minutely organised media
campaign in the US more or less pressing the Israeli vision of
the world on the American reading and watching public, with practically
nothing to counter it. Its main themes are that Islam and the
Arabs are the true causes of terrorism, Israel has been facing
such terrorism all its life, Arafat and Bin Laden are basically
the same thing, most of the US's Arab allies (especially Egypt
and Saudi Arabia) have played a clear negative role in sponsoring
anti-Americanism, supporting terrorism, and maintaining corrupt,
undemocratic societies. Underlying the campaign has been the
(at best) dubious thesis that anti-Semitism is on the rise. All
of this adds up to a near-promise that anything to do with Palestinian
(or Lebanese) resistance to Israeli practices -- never more brutal,
never more dehumanising and illegal than today -- has to be destroyed
after (or perhaps while) the Taliban and Bin Laden have been
destroyed. That this also happens to mean, as the Pentagon hawks
and their right-wing media machine keep reminding Americans relentlessly,
that Iraq must be attacked next, and indeed that all the enemies
of Israel in the region along with Iraq must totally be brought
low, is lost on no one. So brazenly has the Zionist propaganda
apparatus performed in the weeks since 11 September that very
little opposition to these views is encountered. Lost in this
extraordinary farrago of lies, bloodthirsty hatred, and arrogant
triumphalism is the simple reality that America is not Israel,
and Bin Laden not the Arabs or Islam.
This concentrated pro-Israeli campaign,
over which Bush and his people have little real political control,
has kept the US administration from anything like a real re-
assessment of US policies towards Israel and the Palestinians.
Even during the opening rounds of the American counter-propaganda
campaign directed to the Muslim and Arab world, there has been
a remarkable unwillingness to treat the Arabs as seriously as
all other peoples have been treated. Take as an example an Al-
Jazeera discussion programme a week ago, in which Bin Laden's
latest video was played in its entirety. A hodge-podge of accusations
and declarations, it accused the US of using Israel to bludgeon
the Palestinians without respite; Bin Laden of course crazily
ascribed this to a Christian and Jewish Crusade against Islam,
but most people in the Arab world are convinced -- because it
is patently true -- that America has simply allowed Israel to
kill Palestinians at will with US weapons and unconditional political
support in the UN and elsewhere. The Doha-based moderator of
the programme then called on a US official, Christopher Ross,
who was in Washington to respond, and then Ross, a decent but
by no means remarkable or even fluent Arabic speaker, read a
long statement whose message was that the US, far from being
against Islam and the Arabs, was really their champion (e.g.
in Bosnia and Kosovo), plus the US supplied more food to Afghanistan
than anyone else, upheld freedom and democracy, etc.
All in all, it was standard US-government
issue. Then the moderator asked Ross to explain why, given everything
that he said about US support for justice and democracy, the
US backed Israeli brutality in its military occupation of Palestine.
Instead of taking an honest position that respected his listeners
and affirmed that Israel is a US ally and "we" choose
to support it for internal political reasons, Ross chose instead
to insult their basic intelligence and defended the US as the
only power that has brought the two sides to the negotiating
table. When the moderator persisted in his questioning about
US hostility to Arab aspirations, Ross persisted in his line
too, more or less claiming that only the US had the Arabs' interests
at heart. As an exercise in propaganda, Ross's performance was
poor of course; but as an indication of the possibility of any
serious change in US policy, Ross (inadvertently) at least did
Arabs the service of indicating that they would have to be fools
to believe in any such change.
Whatever else it says, Bush's America
remains a unilateralist power, in the world, in Afghanistan,
in the Middle East, everywhere. It shows no sign of having understood
what Palestinian resistance is all about, or why Arabs resent
its horrendously unjust policies in turning a blind eye to Israel's
maleficent sadism against the Palestinian people as a whole.
It still refuses to sign the Kyoto convention, or the War Crimes
court agreement, or the anti-land-mine conventions, or to pay
its UN dues. Bush can still stand up and lecture the world as
if he were a schoolmaster telling a bunch of unruly little vagrants
why they must behave according to American ideas.
In short, there is absolutely no reason
at all why Yasser Arafat and his ever-present coterie should
grovel at American feet. Our only hope as a people is for Palestinians
to show the world that we have our principles, we occupy the
moral high ground, and we must continue an intelligent and well-organised
resistance to a criminal Israeli occupation, which no one seems
to mention any more. My suggestion is that Arafat should stop
his world tours and come back to his people (who keep reminding
him that they no longer really support him: only 17 per cent
say they back what he is doing) and respond to their needs as
a real leader must. Israel has been destroying the Palestinian
infrastructure, destroying towns and schools, killing innocents,
invading at will, without Arafat paying enough serious attention.
He must lead the non-violent protest marches on a daily, if not
hourly basis, and not let a group of foreign volunteers do our
work for us.
It is the absence of a self-sacrificing
spirit of human and moral solidarity with his people that Arafat's
leadership so fatally lacks. I am afraid that this terrible absence
has now marginalised him and his ill-fated and ineffective PA
almost completely. Certainly Sharon's brutality has played a
major role in destroying it too, but we must remember that before
the Intifada began, most Palestinians had already lost their
faith, and for good reason. What Arafat never seems to have understood
is that we are and have always been a movement standing for,
symbolising, and getting support as the embodiment of principles
of justice and liberation. This alone will enable us to free
ourselves from Israeli occupation -- not the covert manoeuvring
in the halls of Western power, where until today Arafat and his
people are treated with contempt. Whenever, as in Jordan, Lebanon
and during the Oslo process, he has behaved as if he and his
movement were just like another Arab state, he has always been
defeated; only when he finally understands that the Palestinian
people demand liberation and justice, not a police force and
a corrupt bureaucracy, will he begin to lead his people. Otherwise
he will flounder disgracefully and will bring disaster and misfortune
on us.
On the other hand, and I shall conclude
with this now, leaving the subject for my next article to develop
in detail, we must not as Palestinians or Arabs fall into an
easy rhetorical anti-Americanism. It is not acceptable to sit
in Beirut or Cairo meeting halls and denounce American imperialism
(or Zionist colonialism for that matter) without a whit of understanding
that these are complex societies not always truly represented
by their governments' stupid or cruel policies. We have never
addressed the currents in Israel and America which it is possible,
and indeed vital, for us to address, and in the end to come to
an agreement with. In this respect, we need to make our resistance
respected and understood, not hated and feared as it is now by
virtue of suicidal ignorance and indiscriminate belligerence.
One more thing. It is also far too easy
for a small group of unexceptional expatriate Arab academics
in America to keep appearing on the media here in order to denounce
Islam and the Arabs, without having the courage or the decency
to say these things in Arabic to the Arab societies and peoples
they so easily rail against in Washington and New York. Nor is
it acceptable for Arab and Muslim governments to pretend to be
defending their people's interests at the UN and in the West
generally, while doing very little for their people at home.
Most Arab countries now wallow in corruption, the terror of undemocratic
rule, and a fatally flawed educational system that still has
not faced up to the realities of a secular world.
But I shall leave that all until my next
article.
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