Arab Spring

The Israel Lobby

2007-11-15T15:55:00.001-08:00

The Arab-Israeli conflict does seem like an intractable conflict. A country is established as a Jewish majority nation in the Middle of Palestine, an existing country with an Arab majority consisting of Christians and Muslims.

Today as it stands, 5.5 million Jews and 5.7 million Arabs live in historic Palestine, between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. There are only two possible solutions that are viable alternatives to the current situation of occupation and apartheid, as named by many observers, Jews and gentiles, including former President Jimmy Carter who, himself, gave Israel its most prized posession, peace with Egypt.

The first solution is a one state solution with Christian and Muslim Arabs living with Jews in one state that combines Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza into one large nation that is home to both Palestinians and Jews. The one state solution is supported by the majority of Arabs and Palestinians, but is a no deal to Israelis and World Jewry for the reason that the new state would be majority Arab.

The second solution is a two state solution where the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem form the Palestinian state. This would result in two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, one Jewish, one Palestinian with large minorities of Arabs and Jews respectively.

The reasons that induce one to conclude that the Pro-Israel lobby is too powerful in the United States are evident. For the last fourty years, the Arabs of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which now total 4.3 million people, have the been the only people on earth with no citizenship to any country. They have no rights, nor representation, nor self-determination or any freedom that is associated with a soverign people nor are they given these rights as full citizens of Israel.

The United States has supported this state of affairs despite its obvious moral shortcomings and illegal trappings, precisely because of a strong pro-Israel domestic lobby. Furthermore, American interests would no more explain the American policy in the Middle East than morality does.

US interest would lie at the very least in a peaceful Middle East, composed of a secured Israel and a free Palestine. However, even through the Oslo years, and definitely before and since, settlement building and settler colonization of the West Bank has been going strong. The number of settlers between 1967 and 1990 is 90 thousand settlers. During the Oslo years, between 1991 and 2000, the number of settlers increased to 250,000. Since the settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have reached up to 450,000. This number approaches ten percent of Israel's Jewish population. One can no longer claim that settlers are a fringe group. The United States has never weighed heavily against Israel for its settlement policy and the two presidents that tried, Jimmy Carter and George HP Bush did not get re-elected.

The answer is not to do away with lobbies or to outlaw the Pro-Israel lobby but to awaken average Americans to the real costs incurred in their financial and military support of the state of Israel against Palestinians and the entire Middle East.

Democracy or Terror

2007-11-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

Now that we have been riding this democracy wave for sometime the least we can do is to acknowledge it when it stares us right in the face. This democracy wave comes ashore, not in the form of our good friend Musharraf, but in the flow of journalists, judges, lawyers and human rights advocates getting clubbed by his stooges in the streets of Islamabad, Karachi and Rawalpindi.

It is the moment of truth and we must put our money where our collective mouth is, which has been decisively in democracy and for good reason. Beside the obviously expedient use of democracy to advance our interests like this administration’s justification of the Iraq war, we really do believe in the moderating effect of democracy and its unstoppable tide through history.

Unstoppable because empowered people everywhere will wish to control their own destiny rather than have it be decided by a general who, needless to say, has his own interests at heart. It is imperative that when a country finally reaches this state of self-determination, we are standing with it and not holding the millstones that were once tied tightly around its neck. It is for this reason that our support in the tune of billions of dollars to Despot Musharraf is at once morally bankrupt and strategically reckless.

However, even if our fast-paced nation cannot fathom such longterm politicking, we can rest assured that is also dangerous in the very near future. The Musharraf basket is a tattered one indeed and our whole alliance with such a strategic country should not rest on the fortune and fate of one widely unpopular man. Supporting the strong civil society in Pakistan, on the other hand, will ensure us a place at the table with the inevitably approaching new Pakistani government.

Today’s Pakistan provides important insight into many other Muslim countries, which is where democracy’s moderating effect comes into view. Musharraf’s Pakistan has been an incubator of extremism and radicalization, mostly from the northwest region of the country. Musharraf’s army cannot defeat half the country but a consensus government in Islamabad can surely coerce them into order and peace. Musharraf’s Achilles’ heel is his illegitimacy; he cannot ask for law and order and jail the lawyers and judges.

As in Turkey, democracy will act as a moderating force in Pakistan, which is good for us and for our NATO allies in Afghanistan. The Turkish Islamists succeeded in winning the elections but they quickly learned to talk less about religion and more about economics and so they won the elections again and Turkey is better for it. In their reign, Turkey has become less xenophobic, less nationalist, less militaristic and more tolerant. In Iran, on the other hand, the Islamists have alienated their constituents by talking too much religion and too little food on the table.

Pakistan now has a chance to be another Turkey in the Middle East. Its vibrant media and strong judiciary have shown themselves capable of confronting a dictator and they will be the standard bearers of Pakistan’s democracy and its protectors against corruption and militarism. Moderate Islamists and secularists are our best bets against extremists from Morocco and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Our choices are clear: either we support democracy and its moderates or stand with the dictators, helping them tend to their incubators of radicalization and terror.

Where Wilsonian Idealism and Realpolitik Meet

2007-11-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

The United States faces formidable challenges to its national interests in the Middle East today and in the decades to come. If the United States is to continue playing its powerful role in global politics, it must consolidate its influence in this strategic and central region. It is safe to say that the United States has alienated the Middle East’s citizens with its recent policies and that even the friendly regimes cannot work with us without compromising their already threadbare legitimacy. Monumental tasks such as fighting terrorism, containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and securing energy resources would be unachievable without reliable regional allies. While Israel is a strong ally, its use in driving US foreign policy in the region is limited as was evident in the two Iraq wars and now in the tense standoff with Iran.

Historically, the United States like its colonial predecessors has bought the needed support in the Middle East or coerced it out of the ruling elites. While this strategy of supporting pliant dictators and monarchs has worked for the United States and its interests in the region, it has also delivered astonishing setbacks, the epitome of which is the September 11 attacks on US soil. The realist calculus propelling our foreign policy in the Arab world has led to the aid of friendly regimes and the containment of hostile or even independent ones, unconditional support for Israel, and the intermittent strikes against regimes which were thought to harbor terrorists such as Libya, Sudan and Iraq. This Realpolitik was recklessly abandoned by the second Bush administration precisely because of the September 11 attacks, which made it abundantly clear that terrorism has become a global phenomenon with dire ramifications. To address the terror predicament, the root causes of terror must be addressed.

The root causes of terror are evident, Palestine and a dearth of democracy. Any opinion poll in the region before September 11, 2001 or since will show strong opposition to US policy vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine and its support of Arab dictators. And despite his initial rhetoric of the “they hate us because we’re free” variety, President Bush was clear about what he thought in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in 2003: the democratization strategy “is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East.” Changing the map of the Middle East through democracy was conjured up by many analysts and administration officials as a persuasive justification for the Iraq war, mostly after the invasion showed there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam and Al-Qaeda would have been unlikely bedfellows anyway. And thus the invasion of Iraq was justified, after the fact, by a strong push of democratization that was strongly resisted by the ruling elites in the Middle East.

The United States’ pressure on the regional dictators worked. Egypt held parliamentary elections, and Mubarak even amended the constitution to allow, incredibly, a multi-candidate presidential campaign in May 2005. Elections were held in the Palestinian territories, for the Egyptian parliament and throughout the region, even Saudi Arabia allowed local councils to be elected for the first time. This democratization effort ground to a halt, however, as the results of these elections came out. Hamas wins in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood quintuples its seats in the Egyptian Parliament. The Bush administration weakened by the Republican Party’s defeat at the Congressional elections, worried about an assertive Iran, disoriented by an Iraq mired in conflict, and chastised by the Realpolitik paleoconservatives retreated from its ideological machinations to the relief of the Arab dictators and the chagrin of Arab civil society.

As it were, the neoconservatives were right about one thing: democracy in the Middle East is an important American goal per se. More importantly, however, is that it is a realistic and effective approach in fighting terror and gaining credibility with the citizens of the region. The problem was the execution. Bringing democracy to Iraq by an American invasion was destined to fail. Even the most homogenous and pro-American country would have not democratized easily in those conditions, let alone a country with many religions and ethnicities and whose population is very distrustful of American intentions. Democratization of many other Arab countries would have been far easier and much less fraught with danger. Pressure on Egypt, Jordan and Morocco would have yielded much better dividends as these regimes are largely dependent on the United States for support. The wave of democratization efforts in the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq would have been much more effective were it not for the invasion of Iraq, which empowered Iran, destabilized Iraq and sapped American credibility throughout the Arab world. Ironically, the neoconservatives thwarted their own agenda. The invasion of Iraq made it much harder for the US to support democratization efforts in the region.

The United States must develop a strategy to maintain its influence in the Middle East without expending an exorbitant price in blood and treasure. Its goals of defeating terrorism, neutralizing Iran, and securing the energy resources of the region are achievable but need long-term engagement for an enduring solution not quick, cosmetic fixes. Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and promoting Arab democracy will go a long way to accomplishing these goals. Standing on the right side of history with democracy, the United States will earn valuable dividends from Arab civil society and future democratic governments indebted to the United States. Hamas’ and Hizbullah’s raison d’etre will vanish with the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict and so will Iran’s influence in Palestine and Lebanon. Here, at this moment in history, Realpolitik and Wilsonian idealism intersect. It is both in the United States’ interest and its moral obligation to support democracy in the Middle East and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a rising China and a resurgent Russia eye the Middle East for an opportunity to step in, the United States must actualize economical and expedient avenues to maintain its prominence in the region.

Idealism Not Delusion

2007-11-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Supporting democracy in the Middle East should be a priority for the United States as it is, not only a moral obligation, but strategically astute. The conservative backlash against the Bush administration’s short-lived freedom agenda is now in full force. The paleoconservatives joined with the now powerful moderates, liberals and libertarians to give the neoconservatives a thrashing. As a knowledgeable scholar on the Middle East put it to me, “The United States’ interest in the region lies in stopping terrorism and protecting the energy sources from the unstable Persian Gulf, exporting democracy is not our business.” The Iraq war was an experiment of dishing out democracy to a country by fiat and democracy was the point, at least according to its proponents. Given the sundry reasons touted before the war justifying its imminence, it is easy to be skeptical about the real motive of the catastrophic engagement. What is easy to see is that the Iraq war was not primarily about democracy in the Middle East and if it were, a case of an apology more damning than the crime, it demonstrates the level of ignorance of the perpetrators about all things Middle Eastern.

Why attack Iraq, a country over which we have very little leverage, when we pay the Egyptian dictatorship more than 3 billion dollars a year, the majority of which goes to fortifying the police state? Why not pressure Jordan, as it is the third highest recipient of military aid after Israel and Egypt? Why not pressure Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the highest terrorist exporting countries to liberalize politically and economically as to provide room for dissent and debate so their citizens don’t have to settle for the proverbial “Arab basement”? Why attack Iraq, a country who is a shadow of its previous self, already fragile and fragmented by no-fly zones, with a traumatized population, which has lived through two wars followed by 12 years of UN sanctions, unless, the invasion had nothing to do with democracy at all. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson writes in defense of neoconservative idealism and questions the attractiveness of traditional conservatism when “it begins to question the importance or existence of moral ideals in politics and foreign policy,” but he does not address why Iraq was the prime target of this “democracy agenda”. For neoconservatives and neoconservatism to be taken seriously, they must address this important question: was it ignorance and incompetence or duplicity that led us to Baghdad? But we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Exporting democracy may not be our business, but impeding its progress is immoral, dangerous and costly.

It is no accident that within the brief period following the Iraq war and ending abruptly at the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006 that Arab human rights groups, media, professional associations and political organizations mobilized citizens, taking advantage of the relative freedom provided by American pressure on the dictators and monarchs of the region. Within that two-year period a veritable spring of ideas and self-expression took place, especially in countries dependent on the United States for legitimacy, namely, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. Egypt, where a third of the Arab World’s 300 million citizens live is a case in point. Its dictatorship is largely subsidized by the United States and it is highly sensitive to American pressure. In 2004, the secular movement, Kifaya, sprung up and mobilized Egyptians in mass demonstrations and joined forces with another secular party, AlGhad, both calling for free elections and an end to the emergency laws. In 2005, the Egyptian constitution was changed to allow contested elections rather than the usual referendum on Mubarak and in the same year, parliamentary elections were held, though deeply flawed and marred by government violence, the Muslim Brotherhood quintupled its seats in parliament. In all the aforementioned countries reliant on US support, whether financial or intelligence-based, similar democratic initiatives took place.

Ironically, the American “democracy agenda” for the Middle East came to an abrupt halt because of a disintegrating Iraq. As any seasoned analyst would have predicted, with Iraq in shambles and therefore a strengthened Iran extending its influence into the Levant, the United States needed to recollect its terribly de-legitimized regimes and prop them up more firmly. But it needs not end this way. The United States can gain credibility by upholding a moral stance of standing with forces of democracy instead of ignoring Egypt’s imprisonment of Ayman Nour, a secularist, pro-democracy, human rights activist and a former presidential candidate against Husni Mubarak. The Neoconservatives were right about calling for democracy in the Middle East, although they were wrong about exporting it, a discrepancy due to their ulterior motives. Standing firmly on the side of democracy, the United States will be walking on the side of history. It will also shore the dismal opinion of the United States in Muslim countries, which, contrary to the “clash-o-civilization” arguments, is a direct reaction to American foreign policy in the region. And although Hamas and Hizbullah may not feel differently about Israel until a peace deal, democratization in the Arab world will undoubtedly reduce the global current of terrorism and extremism. As Arabs have more legitimate forms of government, better avenues of expression and assured participation in the political process, terrorism will gain less credence.

Finally, democratization of the Middle East may be important for the United States in confronting Iran. Iran has a considerable following in the Arab World because it is viewed as a counterbalance to the United States in the region. The United States is viewed as cynical and hypocritical, championing democracy while financing despotism. A United States practicing what it preaches may be less opposed in the region. Of course, the Middle East will not know stability fully until the Israeli-Arab conflict is resolved but democracy and peace in Palestine need not be coupled. Resolution of that conflict will also deprive Iran of its emotive power. Ultimately, the neoconservatives were all buzz and no bite or as the late Ann Richards said of President Bush, “All hat and no cattle”. The next push for democracy in the Middle East has to be a concerted and stubborn effort, rooted in American idealism and future interests.

The United States, Israel and Democracy

2007-09-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

In an opinion piece to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2007/09/20/AR2007092001959.html), Michael Gerson reflexively charged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt with anti-Semitism for authoring the newly published “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. In his piece, he quotes them as writing ‘the "Israeli government and pro-Israel groups" have shaped President Bush's "grand scheme for reordering the Middle East." He then goes on to show that the pro-Israel Lobby as well as Israel are both opposed to Bush’s democratization efforts in the Middle East and thus Mearsheimer and Walt must be wrong. But the authors’ assertion is, in fact, diametrical to Gerson’s presentation of their views. Mearsheimer and Walt make it clear that the Israel Lobby and the neoconservatives, which overlap considerably, both pushed for an invasion of Iraq to protect Israel’s supremacy in the region.
Gerson's commentary is disingenuous and purposefully misleading, confusing different trends during the Iraq war and immediately thereafter to create a fog in the collective memory as to what has occurred. The pro-Isreal lobby consisting of AIPAC and the many neoconservatives that have worked in this administration was at the forefront of the war on Iraq. This is Mearsheimer and Walt's main assertion. The attack on Iraq was viewed by the neocons as the emasculation of another Arab country, perhaps, the most threatening to Israel. Famous words "the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad". Talk of democracy by the Bush administration didn't start but half a year into the war when it was apparent that the sundry reasons given for the invasion of Iraq were nonexistent. No weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear program, no threat to American interests, the Bush administration began to tout its pro-democracy credentials. But even that has quickly stopped, at the behest of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby, when Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood made gains in their respective elections.
Precisely because of the Israel Lobby, the United States stands against democracy in every Arab country and props up important Arab regimes such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco with financial support as well as intelligence vital to their survival. Democratic Arab movements, both secular and Islamist, have been crushed by Arab autocrats with the help of the United States, this too arguably for Israel’s benefit. The pro-Israel lobby knows that a democratically elected Arab government can never sit idly by as Israel occupies 5 million Palestinians and subject them to mass imprisonment and starvation.
The United States support for Israel is not about a moral obligation or even a realpolitik calculation. The Palestinians have been occupied for the last 40 years by a powerful army and in full view of the international community. The synergistic mix of the conflict in the Middle East and US support of Arab Autocrats has had a detrimental effect to American interests in the Middle East and beyond.
Mr. Gerson is right about Israel and the lobby being against democracy in the Middle East but he is wrong about the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq and the timing of the pretext of democracy. The United States has always been theoretically for democracy but this administration’s actions speak louder and its special relationships with the Mubaraks, Abdullahs, and Musharrafs of the world belie a much more cynical agenda.

In Defense of Jimmy Carter

2007-02-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

Former President Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” instigated a flurry of vicious criticism from Israeli sympathizers from across the American political spectrum upon its publication in November 2006. Although his critics encompassed a broad range from the political classes as well as activists and academicians, they were the usual faith-based Israel apologists that seek to cement the “irreproachable Israel” mantra that impelled Jimmy Carter to write his book. Much of the criticism consisted of ad hominem attacks on Jimmy Carter’s character and his new found hate of Israel. As Carter, himself, stated in a speech at Brandeis University, he has been labeled a liar, a plagiarist, an anti-Semite, a bigot and a coward. All this for stating the obvious and that which has been stated many times: the system of Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, road-blocks in Palestinian cities and a wall that snakes its way through the West Bank, at times surrounding entire cities, amounts to apartheid. Such use of the word apartheid to describe Israel’s actions in the West Bank, while may be controversial here, is not elsewhere including in Israel but as Carter points out in “Palestine” and in subsequent opinion pieces, the debate over Israel’s thwarting of international law through its occupation of Palestinian lands is carried out everywhere, including in Israel, but rarely in American media or the American halls of power. Carter’s book carefully recounts the history and context of the conflict but his main focus remains in the issue of settlements, demonstrating his belief that it is the most formidable obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Jimmy Carter is not a new comer to the Middle East, and especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. His contribution to Israel’s security is the greatest gift any American President has produced before him or since. In 1978, through his determination and despite the two parties to the conflict, he brought Egypt and Israel together in the historic Camp David peace agreement that guaranteed Israel’s security in the western front and effectively disengaged Egypt, the most populous Arab country and where a third of all Arabs live, from the Arab-Israeli conflict. In “Palestine”, Jimmy Carter states that the terms of the Camp David Accords clearly prohibited the building of any settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. As if this were not enough to drive his point home, he also notes that “In 1980, UN Resolution 465 (Appendix 5), calling on Israel to dismantle existing settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, was passed unanimously.” Despite his criticism of Israel’s actions in the occupied territories, he was quick to pour lavish praise on Israel’s democracy within its 1948 borders and the “degree of freedom” in the society from the Kenesset to the media. He paints starkly disparate tableaus of Israel in its 1948 borders and Israel in the occupied territories. Essentially, Israel has become a state within a state, the inner one democratic, secular, and free, the outer one dictatorial, fanatic and oppressive.

In choosing the settlements as the focus of his book, Jimmy Carter pinpoints the core issue in the conflict: land. He quotes Ariel Sharon as saying as late as 1996 that “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” This statement was made by Ariel Sharon, who was to become prime minister of Israel in 2001, six years into Israel’s peace process with the Palestinians that started with the Madrid talks in 1991. A central issue here is whether Israel will allow the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as UN Resolution 242 and 338 as well as the Madrid talks and the Oslo Accords stipulate. But as to sow no doubt about Israel’s settlement policy, Carter states that in the years Clinton was in office, from 1993 to 2000, “there was a 90 percent growth in the number of settlers in the occupied territories, with the greatest increase during the administration of Prime Minister Ehud Barak,” Barak being the Labor Prime Minister. Another way to look at it is at the end of 2000, there were 225,000 settlers in the occupied territories up from 78,000 in 1991: a whopping 288% increase during the peace process years. As Carter points out, only 20% of the settlers were to be evacuated in the best offer received by the Palestinians in the year 2000, leaving more than 180,000 settlers in more than 209 fortified settlements in the stillborn state of Palestine. Needless to say the peace process foundered and in the American press the Palestinians, and specifically PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, were blamed for their intransigence.

Jimmy Carter seemed especially affected by the failure of the Oslo peace accords and of its immediate aftermath. He meticulously documents the events of March 2001 after Ariel Sharon is elected prime minister of Israel. On March 27, a suicide bomber kills 30 Israelis during a Passover holiday in Netanya, Israel. The next day, on March 28, the twenty-two member nations of the Arab League, after a long debate, unanimously endorsed a Saudi resolution calling for normal relations between Israel and all Arab nations if Israel complies with UN resolutions 194 and 242. Jimmy Carter specifies, “Asked how ‘normal relations’ were defined, the Saudis responded, ‘We envision a relationship between the Arab countries and Israel that is exactly like the relationship between the Arab countries and any other state.’” The following day, on March 29, Yasir Arafat’s office compound in Ramallah was destroyed by Israel, leaving only a few rooms where Arafat was imprisoned until his death in November of 2004. According to Jimmy Carter, Arafat was not the only Palestinian prisoner of Israel; about 630,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned since 1967 which is more than 20% of the Palestinian population of the occupied territories.

Almost none of these facts were disputed or even discussed in the barrage of criticism that came from American political and academic circles. Instead platitudes such as Carter’s alleged disregard for Israel’s security needs were lobbed at the former President, although Carter was criticizing Israel’s settlement building and not calling for its imminent withdrawal from the territories. No one expects Israel to leave the territories without making peace with the neighborhood but no one expects Israel to leave the territories when it has 300,000 settlers in permanent settlements therein. Many critics raised the specter of the Holocaust and its effect on Jewish political identity, but Carter never questioned the existence of the Jewish state nor belittled its importance to the Jews. Almost all reviewers completely sidestepped the issue of settlements and parried the main questions, about Jewish settlements, Palestinian imprisonment and peace, raised by the book.

Finally many reviewers took issue with the title of the book which evokes images of the South African Apartheid state. As stated earlier this analogy is not new nor does it take much imagination to see that Jews and Arabs living in a state of “apartness” in the occupied territories with Jews having better homes, better roads and more of the water constitutes apartheid. In fact in September 2006, the editorial board of Haaretz, Israel’s leading newspaper, stated, “the apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation.” While it may not be agreed upon in Israel that the occupation at this point constitutes apartheid, it can be safely stated in Israel by its leading daily without an ensuing furor. Nelson Mandela, the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa, himself, stated in an address to the Palestinian Assembly in 1999 that “The histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots.” Furthermore in 2002, in a speech in the United States the South African Bishop Desmond Tutu said he observed “the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.” Even Yossi Beilin, an Israeli Kenesset member, couldn’t resist the word choice though he was stung by it: “Somewhere down the line — and symbolically speaking, that line may be crossed the day that a minority of Jews will rule a majority of Palestinians west of the Jordan River — the destructive nature of occupation will turn Israel into a pariah state, not unlike South Africa under apartheid.”

That line is perhaps already crossed. According to Israeli and Palestinian census figures there are 5.3 million Jews in Israel and 1.4, 2.4 and 1.6 million Arabs in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, which amounts to 5.3 Jews and 5.4 Arabs west of the Jordan river. Perhaps in reminding us about the dangers of apartheid, Jimmy Carter is trying to preserve the Jewish nature of Israel which it cannot maintain without leaving the occupied territories and allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. The only other options are a binational state with an Arab majority or apartheid.

Resisting the Urge to Purge

2007-01-18T23:50:00.000-08:00

Once again Democrats are protesting moves by the Bush administration to change events in Iraq without coming up with a viable alternative. This time Democrats are steadily uniting against an increase of troops in Iraq, while Democratic congressmen and women are promising stiff resistance to Bush’s policy shift. For the past six years, the Democrats seem to be dancing awkwardly to the wrong tune. During the summer of 2002 and leading to the invasion of Iraq, when the Democrats should have protested, even out right obstructed, the administration’s plans, they voted for and abetted the misguided war of choice waged by the Neocons. Since then the Democrats have been in a state of utter confusion and have not united around any policy proposal pertaining to Iraq. The reason for this confusion is that the Democrat’s pivotal moment in Iraq has come and left as they failed to mount an opposition against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now that the United States is in Iraq, proposals such as John Martha’s troop withdrawal and even a phased troop withdrawal are no longer an option.

Beside the obvious moral obligations for staying in Iraq and preventing an all out civil war for which it is partially responsible, the United States has even more compelling economic and political reasons to stay in Iraq. First, Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites are ready to descend into a bloodbath whose repercussions may easily spread to other Sunni-Shiite fault lines in the region in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Bahrain. The spreading of sectarian schism in the Persian Gulf would have dire economic consequences, which would definitely affect the global economy as well as global security. Add to this unfortunate tableau a rising Shiite Iran that is extending its influence all the way to Hizbullah, Hamas and even Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as well as an increasingly defensive Israel and a besieged Palestinian population. Withdrawing American troops from Iraq is not a solution given that the United States would most definitely have to go back into a more dangerous situation to impede the ensuing chaos as it boils over.

Proposing a troop increase is not as ridiculous as some detractors insist, nor is Iraq as hopeless as it seems. Securing Iraq’s citizens, as well as its museums, libraries and infrastructure is what should have been done at the onset of this regrettable war. Instead, the Neocons decided to embark on a Rumsfeldian war on the slim, which as it turns out is an unqualified failure. Without sufficient troops to secure the infrastructure of Iraq, its cultural heritage or even its citizens, the country quickly disintegrated. Having dissolved the Iraqi Army and police, the US administration in Iraq naively relied on local militias which, sectarian in nature and hard to control, are largely responsible for the frightening calamity that is Iraq. A troop increase can also be reconciled with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group which did not propose an immediate troop withdrawal for the reasons outlined above. It did insist on a diplomatic track to go along with the military strategy to help Iraqi Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political groups to forge a political agreement on key issues such as federalism and the distribution of oil wealth.

In a dual diplomatic strategy, the ISG also outlined a regional effort at Israeli-Arab peace to accompany internal Iraqi reconciliation. This dual strategy may prove to be the most important part of the ISG proposal. In 2002, the Neocons haughtily predicted that the “road to Jerusalem goes though Baghdad” implying a sort of subjugation of any residual Arab resistance in stubborn Baghdad, enabling the United States and Israel to impose a peace deal on the Palestinians. Unfortunately for the Neocons and for Israel, the defeat of Saddam has spawned a more threatening and more credible menace in the form of Iran. Now the ISG seems to suggest that the road to Baghdad goes through Jerusalem, and that maybe so, because the United States now is as radioactive as a Russian Spy Agency and it may take such a bold peace accord in the Middle East to enable Arab countries to work closely with the United States in pacifying Iraq. Furthermore, peace in the Holy Land will deprive Iran of its two important patrons, Hizbullah and Hamas, whose raison-d’etre is Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, as well as bring back Syria to the Arab fold away from the tutelage of Iran. This dual strategy of diplomacy within and without Iraq can deal Tehran a triple blow, depriving it of Iraq, Syria, and militant groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas.

As Democrats offer the President snide remarks about “resisting the urge to surge”, they, themselves, may be advised to resist the urge to purge. Iraq’s invasion was a mistake and the execution of the occupation was a sham. Nonetheless, leaving Iraq now is a false choice and a false economy. Whatever tax dollars are saved and however many American lives are spared will have to be reinvested many times over to contain a widening conflict. The United States will have to contain the mess it has created. Better do it now in Iraq than deal with it in a year all across the Persian Gulf.

The Trouble with Oriana (Edited Version Published in "LA Weekly")

2006-04-01T02:28:00.000-08:00

The first line of Brendan Bernhard’s article “The Fallaci Code” states “Is Muslim immigration to Europe a conspiracy?” This is the question that Mr. Bernhard seriously asks and sets out to answer by using Oriana Fallaci’s book, The Force of Reason. Oriana Fallaci, a woman to whom age has not been kind, comes across as belligerent and uninformed. In reading her book, I found it, unlike its name, utterly unreasonable. It is an endless, inchoate, illogical rant attempting to answer a question she never explicitly asks but that Brendan Bernhard states for her in his review, namely, “How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?”

Twenty million, a grossly exaggerated estimate, sounds like a heap of people but in fact that is only 4% of Europe’s 459 million citizens, according to the CIA fact book. To put it in perspective, the United States 2003 census estimates that Hispanics constitute 14% of the population while African Americans comprise 13%, which makes the United States a quarter non-White, not to mention Asians, Arabs, Africans, and Indians. Yet, poor Oriana Fallaci is having a temper tantrum over the fact that Europe is now 96% Christian (i.e. White). What is even more interesting is her assertion that a Muslim presence of 4% in the European continent threatens the Christian character of Europe. She cites the fact that Europeans churches are empty while more mosques are being built, which is hardly a reflection of Islam’s “ferocious colonization of Europe,” but rather Europeans’ desire for less religion.

Beginning from the first chapter, Fallaci’s fear mongering does not end until an epilogue that even Mr. Bernhard thought is shameless. Her descriptions of Muslim conquests of the Middle East and Europe are filled with such gore that it makes Candide’s treacherous trek through the same region seem like a pleasure cruise. Literally on the second page of the book she writes, “the armies of the Crescent Moon invaded Christian Syria and Christian Palestine… they invaded Christian Egypt and overran Christian Maghreb. That is, the present Tunisia and Algeria and Morocco. They landed in the most Catholic Iberian Peninsula, took possession of Portugal and Spain where despite the Pelayos and the Cid Capeadors and the other warriors engaged in the Reconquest they remained for no less than eight centuries.” What? Alas she doesn’t even bother to tell us how Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Spain became Christian.

Wasn’t it her ancestors, the Romans, who conquered North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and made them Christian? She doesn’t even explain to us, despite “Islam’s brutality”, how Spain remained under Muslim rule for 800 years while the vast majority of its population maintained their Christian beliefs, never made to convert to Islam. She also fails to mention that Cordoba in Muslim Spain was the largest and most prosperous city in Europe, although, she does quote, with contempt, the Spanish longing for their Golden Age which culminated in their discovery of the New World, mere decades after the retreat of the Muslim armies from the Iberian peninsula. Catholic Spain arrived to the New World and named this beautiful state, the province of the Caliph: California.

After frightening the reader out of his wits by the 4% Islamic “re-colonization” of Europe, she then proceeds to argue against all historical facts about Islamic contributions to the world, which Mr. Bernhard finds “amusing”. She argues obsessively about who invented the sherbet! What? Yes it is an Arabic word which means drink but who cares, Arabs invented Algebra and learned how to distill Alcohol, both Arabic words. Islamic and Arab contributions to medicine, mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, literature, and philosophy are well documented but then again Oriana Fallaci is not well read.

Her immediate and most important aim, however, is not to discredit Islamic civilization or even to reveal its “brutality” but to save her dear Europe. And so she gets back to her tired tirade about the Islamic invasion, occupation and colonization of Europe by the faithful four percent. Here is where the Flaubertian surrealism begins.

“There is the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created. The most squalid plot that through ideological fraud, cultural indecency, moral prostitution, deception, our time has produced… By the collaborationists and better yet the traitors who invented the lie of Pacifism. By the hypocrites who invented the fraud of Humanitarianism.” Oriana Fallaci, the martyr, fighting against Europe, all of it, with its humanitarianists, pacifists, politicians, intellectuals, Christians, Muslims and Jews. She alone knows what transpires. “The biggest conspiracy” in modern history is so convoluted, so incoherent, so incomprehensible that I am not sure I can do it justice, but I attempt. It goes something like this…

First the Arabs and Muslims want to take over the world, naturally. They start out by taking Europe. The Arab heads of state make a deal with their European counterparts, providing them with Arab laborers as well as free oil. What? Yeah but it gets better. European intellectuals, academia, as well as media are “complicit” and spread lies such as the great contributions of Islamic civilization. The politicians are also complicit as they sell the European continent to the highest bidder, Arabs. The European political Left and the Right are just as guilty for they “play for the same team. They are the same team.” Islamic extremists are also somehow involved, as well as secular Palestinians dedicated to the establishment of Palestine. Muslims get shipped in droves from Muslim countries to colonize Europe and they have kids and they ask for election rights. The Europeans tow the Muslim line on everything because the 4% says so.

Never mind that Europeans pay about $6 a gallon for gas, which is hardly free. Never mind that most immigrants came to Europe in the sixties and seventies from former European colonies in North Africa, like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal, Sudan, Egypt and the Congo to do jobs that Europeans did not want to do. Never mind that none of these Muslim countries have any oil. Never mind that most of today’s European “immigrant” Muslims are not immigrant at all but first and second generation citizens as European as Oriana is. Never mind that the whole premise for the paranoia and conspiracy theories is a 4% Muslim population. Apparently Brendan Bernhard didn’t mind.

Could it just be that Muslims are just like other human beings on this planet? Could it be that Senegalese, Nigerian, Egyptian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Turkish and Indian Muslim immigrants are not all in cahoots? Could it be that they are just looking for jobs in a continent that has a vibrant economy not unlike Europeans who have descended on the Persian Gulf in droves? Could it be that Muslim immigrants in Europe are searching for a better life, not unlike Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Italian, French, German, British, American Christian immigrants working in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, and India?

No Oriana Fallaci did not ask these questions and, in fairness, nor did Mr. Bernhard, the impartial reviewer of her work. Ironically, she, herself, is an immigrant, who lives in New York, a city that has welcomed thousands of her compatriots over the last two centuries.

Nonetheless, there is a lesson to be learned from this book. In spite of its teeth-gnashing, unimaginative prose; in spite of its intolerable misuse of English grammar; in spite of the work’s disdain for facts; in spite of the detail that she has not a single reference to which she attributes her spewed “facts” such as her assertion that the marble “Ten Commandments: the genesis of our moral principles” were removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court because of Muslim protests!; in spite of its hallucinating, paranoid zeal the book reveals much about the author and the nature of extremists. Oriana Fallaci is no different than the Islamists and jihadists that she purportedly stands to fight. Like the jihadists who want to take the Middle East back to its earlier glory where things were simpler and before globalization made the Middle East a virtual melting pot of religions, ethnicities and nationalities, so too does Oriana Fallaci want to take Europe to its medieval homogenous days, to a purer Christian Europe, not stained by its 4% Muslims, its immigrants and its Jews.

Like the Jihadists who exploit Abu Ghraib to paint the West as savage and perverted, she uses terrorism to paint the entire Islamic world with broad strokes. Like the jihadists whose hate spills over from Westerners, to Muslims who oppose them, to everything that is modern, so too does Oriana’s hate spread from Muslims, to Jews, to politicians, to academicians, and to all Europeans who disagree. And so beneath the anti-terrorism veneer, Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism, readily bubble up to the surface in gushes so violent and incredible that they say more than her conspiracy theories can ever explain.

On discussing the law suits brought against her in Italy, France and Switzerland by European human rights groups, Oriana Fallaci states, “the trial was triggered by the Movement Against Racism (MRAP), but also by the complaint filed by the Jews of the LICRA (International League Against Racism and Antisemitism).” As if LICRA Jews should not be able to sue this full-blooded Italian. In describing a highly critical review of her book, fittingly named “Anatomy of an Abject Book”, published by Le Point, a major French magazine, she, again, employs racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. She admonishes Le Point for publishing “the prosecutorial comments of journalists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, or politologists, not seldom, with Arab names. Rather often with Jewish names.” Apparently, Oriana takes commentators seriously only if they were White European Christians who agree with her…..

Contrary to Brendan Bernhard’s view of the epilogue (“she could have done without”), it is the most amusing chapter of the book. She pulls off such a dramatic and no less impressive coup de theatre, where she is burned on the cross by the Europeans that she is trying to save and the sneering 4% who scream Arabic words. She dies in her very own “auto-da-fe”, an ancient Christian ceremony where heretics are purged. Ironically, auto-da-fes were how hundreds of Spanish Jews perished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries after the retreat of the Arabs from the Iberian peninsula. Yes, she too, like the jihadists, is a martyr, against whom the world conspires. And yes, Brendan Bernhard’s last line in his review is, “The Force of Reason, at the very least, is a welcome and necessary antidote to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere”. Oh, really? Makes you wonder what kind of atmosphere Mr. Bernhard wishes to replace it with.

Danish Cartoons Revisited

2006-02-13T18:06:00.001-08:00

While it is true that Europe has been more forthcoming and honest about the Palestinian question and core European countries (France and Germany) refused to partake in the war on Iraq, Spain, Britain, Poland, Italy and Denmark gladly joined the United States on a rampage the likes of which Iraq has not seen since the days of Ginghis Kahn.

I agree with you that European societies are free and I wish that European governments were so keen on seeing those same freedoms implemented in the Arab world. Instead, Europe and the United States curry favors with such unsavory regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Morocco.

I don't think these riots were about the cartoons in and of themselves. I for one would not have cared at all if Denmark had published those cartoons but then stopped there. There is something extremely insulting about the fact that the prime minister would not even meet with Arab and Muslim ambassadors to Denmark but what's more is that the government is being ruled by a rightist party not unlike France's Le Penn and Belgium's Flams Block, which campaign on anti-immigrant platforms and forced integration (i.e. Europeanization and secularization) without addressing issues that make integration difficult if not impossible (such as jobs, discrimination, and economic opportunity). At a time of extreme tension between the Muslim world and the West (because of Iraq, Palestine, dictators), the Danish government handled the situation very badly and the European newspapers that followed suit in publishing the cartoons did so knowing it would be a provocation. Remember that the first newspaper that republished the cartoons was an evangelical Christian Norwegian daily.

All that being said, world Arabs and Muslims are hardly blameless. I agree that in normal circumstances, one should depict Mohammed in what ever light one wants to and I do not expect non-Muslims to abide by Islamic rules of not drawing the prophet. But we are not living in normal times, we are living in times of an Israeli wall on Palestinian land, four years of Guantanomo, secret CIA prisons in Europe, renditions of suspects to torturing regimes, ruthless Arab and Muslim dictators that will not share power, and American and European governments that have only narrow interests with no vision in the longterm repercussions.

Violence by Muslims (although, I must say, was very small compared to the hundreds of thousands who protested peacefully) is abhorrent and did nothing but emphasize the racist and xenophobic stereotypes drawn by the Danish artists in the controversial cartoons.

As to the Arab and Muslim governments (those which are not democratic) have my greatest contempt. Because, it is true, they used this whole debacle cynically to foment anger against a disengaging West, no longer interested in buoying up their sagging, sinking ships. Arab and Muslim governments tried to paint Western democracy as irreverent and even evil, because it is their greatest threat. The angry Muslim reactions we saw on the streets are an indictment of those regimes and their utter failure. There cannot be bridging between the Muslim world and the West, until those regimes are dismantled, because Muslim mouths are closed shut and their hands are tied behind their backs with no representative nor accountable governments.

Danish Cartoons: An American-Muslim’s Perspective

2006-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks, we have seen an incredible escalation between Europe and the Muslim world over cartoons originally published by a Danish newspaper that depict the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, in an unflattering light. The Danish newspaper and government insisted that the cartoons are a matter of free speech and recently a few European newspapers reprinted the cartoons in agreement and solidarity in principle. The Muslim world already angered by the original publication was further inflamed by the Europeans’ inability to see matters from their perspective. While free speech is important and a fundamental of free society and democracy, even European countries place constraints on its extreme forms such as incitement and bigotry. Should the American KKK and the German Neonazis be handed forums in respectable newspapers to spew their hatred?

Here lies what most Muslims view as a double standard. Although depictions of the prophet Mohammed are impermissible in Islam, Muslims cannot expect Europeans to adhere to Islamic mores. However, what angered the world Muslims is the nature of the depictions published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, and subsequently in French, German and Norwegian newspapers. The prophet Mohammed was shown as a terrorist with a bomb disguised as a turban on his head and, in another cartoon, he was shown as a crazed man telling a queue of suicide bombers to stop for heaven has run out of virgins. Europeans maintain that the drawings are in bad taste but that “free society has a right to blasphemy” as the Le Monde puts it.

However, the Europeans are missing two important points. First, by publishing a caricature of the prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomber, they not only condemn him of being a terrorist but also condemn all his followers of being complicit in the violence. The former is blasphemy but the latter is defamation. This point is perhaps the most angering to world Muslims. While terrorism by all accounts is carried by a small minority, all Muslims are collectively incriminated by the West. As most Muslims condemn violence, explain that their religion is against the killing of civilians, that even plants should not be harmed during war, an all encompassing condemnation of 1.5 billion people by Europe is frustrating and insulting.

The second point has more to do with today’s Europe. It is an increasingly hostile place for Muslims whether they are immigrants, first or second generation. The fact that a Danish politician can say that Muslims are a spreading cancer coupled with a colleague’s assertion that new converts to Islam should be placed under surveillance demonstrates the kind of atmosphere in which these drawings first appeared. This Islamophobia was already evident during Turkey’s talks for accession to the European Union and during the French riots earlier this year. Perhaps even more disturbing is the silence emanating from the Vatican during the cartoon debacle, even as the Grand Rabbi of France condemns the Danish cartoons. Aside from the hypocrisy of Arab governments, who are using the crisis to polish their Islamic credentials, there is genuine anger and concern in the Muslim world about the rift between Islam and the West.

Averting a Civil War in Iraq

2006-01-25T16:18:00.000-08:00

Iraq has been sliding down a slippery slope leading to civil war for sometime now. Since the Shiite umbrella group announced that it, too, like the Kurds, wants an autonomous Shiite region in the nine southern provinces, an impending conflict has been brewing. The Kurdish leadership has made it clear that autonomy of Kurdish regions is nonnegotiable and that since it has been the case for sometime now, under Saddam Hussein, it is also irreversible. Sunni leaders are less averse to Kurdish autonomy in the northern three provinces of Sulaymania, Irbil and Dahuk but a Shiite autonomous region in the south would effectively leave central Iraq with no resources because most of the nation’s oil lies in the far north and the southern province of Basra. The constitution was ratified on October 15, by the Iraqi public and with considerable Sunni participation, only after Shiite and Kurdish groups agreed to amend it when the permanent government is elected on Dec 15, 2005. Now, in power and with a near majority of the seats in parliament, the Shiite leadership balked at making any substantive changes in the constitution, especially when it came to a strong Shiite autonomous south.

This impasse threatens to get worse, especially, because the Shiites and Kurds can garner enough seats to establish a two-thirds majority and sideline the Sunnis entirely. An already restive Sunni population is sure to protest violently. An Iraq civil war would be nothing short of catastrophic: tearing the nation apart, inflaming the region, and, not to mention, further discrediting to the United States. An Iraq civil war will be sectarian and ethnic in nature and will easily spill to the Gulf where oppressed Shiites languish under Sunni rule, to Iran, the protector of Shiites, to a Kurdish-induced volatile Turkey, and can wreak havoc on the world oil supply. Hence, it is in the best interest to avert an Iraq civil war that will make the Lebanese civil war look, well, civil. Current American efforts to avert a crisis seem to be nothing more than face-saving, time-buying fatalism at the ultimate impending outcome. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, is forcefully pressuring the Iraqi, essentially ethnic and religious, political parties to form a national unity government. A national unity government will remain united only as long as the parties agree but when it comes to the most contentious issue of autonomy, the battle lines have already been drawn and no one will budge.

A new strategy is needed, namely to convert the current debate from a sectarian/ethnic one to a regional debate. Regional democracies are much more successful than sectarian democracies but more importantly, central Iraq which is about to be stripped of its resource rich south has about half of Iraq’s total population, 13.5 million out of a total estimated population of 27 million Iraqis. The only reason that the Shiite umbrella group, the United Iraqi Alliance, won so many seats is because about 6.33 million Shiites in central Iraq also voted for it, surprisingly, to their own detriment. The nine southern provinces that are to form a Shiite autonomous region contain only 9.5 million Shiites which by themselves cannot account for the near fifty percent showing in Parliament by the United Iraqi Alliance. The strategy of Zalmay Khalilzad should be to unite the Sunnis and Shiites of central Iraq to work together (rather than all Iraqis) because they really do have the same interest which is not to be perpetually poor, under the mercy of southern and northern charity. Another important point for the central Iraqis is that they will bear the brunt of an Iraqi civil war. The homogenous Kurdish north and the Shiite south will watch from afar, as the flames of intercommunal strife rage in central Iraq. There are already a few candidates that are ripe for this argument such as the secular Shiite Iyad Allawi and the fiery but underappreciated Moqtada Al-Sadr. Both would love to deliver their fellow central Iraqi Shiites from the grips of Najaf and Karbala, or even Iran.

Perspective

2005-12-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

To put it in perspective, the Egyptian government killed eleven Arabs in the last three weeks and the Israeli government killed four Arabs. The Egyptian government’s police also wounded scores of fellow Egyptians and two Palestinians were wounded by an Israeli air strike.

To put it in perspective, the Egyptian government sent out paid thugs, gangsters and police officers to beat harass and shoot at Egyptian voters in areas where they are thought to be voting for opposition parties while Israel does not want to lift obstacles and road blocks around the West Bank and East Jerusalem to allow Palestinians to vote.

To put it in perspective, the Egyptian government has decimated the Egyptian economy in the last 23 years, where the standard of living has steadily declined and Egypt’s influence around the world has become nothing. Simultaneously, the Palestinian economy is nonexistent, where the majority of Palestinians are not employed and most of their infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli bombs.

To put it in perspective, the Egyptian government receives more than 2 billion dollars in US money annually, which is second in American foreign aid only to Israel, receiving more than 3 billion dollars in grants and many more billions in loan guarantees that would never get paid off. And Americans wonder why Arabs hate us.

To put in perspective, the Egyptian government occupies 70million Arabs, while Israel only occupies a total 5.5 million Arabs (counting those within Israel).

Who needs enemies when you have Hosni Mubarak?

French Arabs: France’s Saving Grace?

2005-12-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

It has been common knowledge for sometime now that the French socialist model has failed its citizens. This is not only the case in France but a problem in much of continental Europe where socialist policies to protect workers against opportunistic capitalist corporations and provide basic services such as education and healthcare to the public have stifled competition and resulted in a rigid, inflexible bureaucracy. This rigidity, in turn, makes it very hard for European countries to compete on a global scale, although, one can argue the humanitarian aspect of such a system when compared to its American “do or die” counterpart, where many do but still die anyway. However, whatever changes Europeans need to make, it is obvious they will have to commence this painful exercise of economic liberalization very soon. As stated earlier, everyone knew that the French model was sinking, but what no one expected was how volatile it made the situation in France, until the 2005 French riots. Young French men, first and second generation African and Arab, have rioted for more than two weeks now, protesting France’s economic stagnation, lack of jobs and discrimination. Discrimination maybe the biggest challenge to the French who have not redefined themselves since the Gauls roamed France before the invasion of the Romans: “…nos ancetres, les gaulois….” French Arabs and Africans think they are French but the public and the private sector don’t seem to think so. A study found that resumes sent out with French names, rather than Arab names, were 50 times more likely to be offered a job. But the discrimination is not the whole story. There is a real debate throughout Europe about the direction of the European Union and whether it should adopt the French and German socialist models or steer towards a British and American free market economy. This debate, perhaps, was one of the main reasons that the French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution in the spring of 2005. Another problem with the socialist model is the excessive protectionism on everything from agriculture to manufacturers, although no country, including the United States, is innocent of that. The penchant for protectionism combined with a rigid bureaucracy, high corporate and income tax, highly organized and protectionist labor unions leads to an inefficient economy that is not readily capable of changing course as needed which in turn results in the high unemployment and the economic stagnation that we see in much of Europe today. The French, as do the rest of Europeans, have a simple choice to make now: Push on with the painful changes from the top or wait for a much more painful socio-economic eruption from below.

Arab Silent Majority

2005-11-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

The term “silent majority” has been increasingly used to describe the Arab public vis-à-vis its stance to Islamic terrorism. It is true that public outrage against suicide bombings, like the protests seen in Jordan last week after the November 9, 2005 bombings, have been limited and criticism of terrorists is seemingly only voiced by the direct victims. It is interesting to note, however, that the Arab public is asked to speak up about terrorism while its silence is requested on everything else. It is a matter of perspective. While the United States sees terrorism as the root of instability and conflict in the Middle East, Arabs are more inclined to see it as a consequence, a consequence of deeply muzzled societies, including those nations that are America’s closest allies like Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia; of a pervasive culture of mukhabarat (secret police) that ensures silence on issues important to the public like free speech and human rights; of dysfunctional and corrupt governments that hold rigged elections; of American and European support, financial and intelligence, lent to these same governments; of American foreign policy that is heavily biased towards Israel because of domestic concerns; of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the subsequent unraveling of the nation. In every major catastrophe in the Arab world for the last half century, the Israeli-Arab conflicts, the Lebanese civil war, the Iraq-Iran war, and the two Gulf wars, the United States and its regional proxies have directly been involved, usually to their narrow interests, and to the detriment of the region at large. The fact that the “silent Arab majority” is silent is no surprise at all because we cannot add fuel to the fire and then ask why it is not being condemned. The United States and Europe must change their policies regarding the despots and theocrats in the region no matter how much they acquiesce to our need and no matter how frightened we are of what comes next. The United States and Europe should finally start isolating dictators in the Middle East like they did with Eastern European dictators in the 1970s and 80s. If we are to make the world freer for democracy we should not support dictators when it suits our interest because as we see today only too vividly, our interests will be served best by a democratic and vibrant Middle East.

Did Arabs Create the State of Israel?

2005-11-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

For decades the Arab intellectuals and public viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as European compensation for centuries of anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust. This view is strengthened by the avid support of Europe to the establishment of Israel, as a home of the Jewish people, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust. To many Arabs, the “Jewish question” was simply exported to the Arab world where it became the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Israeli-Arab one. This line of thinking, however, ignores the fact that almost half of Israel’s citizens in 1948 were Sephardic Jews from Arab countries. The large number of Jews who chose to leave other Arab countries and move to Israel raises an important question: Were Jews mistreated in Arab countries before the creation of Israel? Would Jews have moved, in such large numbers, to Israel if they were not ill treated? Would Jews have immigrated to

Israel

from Arab countries had Arab leaders made it clear that their fight was against Zionism and not Judaism? These questions are impossible to answer but they maybe helpful to explore. To be sure, no ill treatment of Jews in the Arab world resembled the German Holocaust, the pogroms of the Soviet Union, the Spanish Inquisition, or even the Dreyfus Affair in France. Nonetheless, minority rights in the Arab world were surely not protected adequately, especially because most Arab countries were colonized by the same anti-Semitic European powers. There are, surely, other factors, namely, that Zionism is a religious-nationalist movement and that most Jews would have moved out of conviction no matter where they lived. The large number of American Jews that moved to Israel weakens the argument that Jews moved to Israel as a result of ill-treatment. Another important factor is that countries like Morocco and Yemen could not compete with a Western funded and protected enterprise in Palestine.

The question, however, remains important because it sheds light on the state of the independent Arab countries today. Given the state of Copts in Egypt and Sudan, the Orthodox and Catholic Christians in Syria and Palestine, and the Chaldeans in Iraq, would anyone be surprised if they decided to establish their own Christian Arab state in the Middle East? The question sounds absurd but it raises more important questions about the rule of law and the state of minority rights in Arab countries. Arabs should not be surprised that the Iraqi Kurds are so noncommittal about a strong unified Iraq. The last time Iraq was unified and strong under a string of dictators, the Kurds were exterminated by chemical weapons. Where was the Arab outrage against such an abominable act? The very threat to Iraq’s unity, in fact, came from the silent Arab majority that chose not to see the onslaught. Who will it be tomorrow? Syria’s Kurds, many of whom are denied citizenship, have no basic rights such as naming their children with Kurdish names or teaching Kurdish in schools. Or will it be the Shiites of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain who are treated as apostates by the Sunni establishment? Or maybe, the next state will be established by the non-Arabs of Sudan or the Western Saharans of Morocco? In order for the Arab world to prosper, it must provide for all its citizens, ensure legal protection and equal rights to all minorities. This is not just the case for Arab world, as we see today in the French riots. It is also a lesson for Israel itself, as it treats its Israeli Arab minority and occupied Palestinians with fear and contempt.

Ode to the Land of Sand

2005-11-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

I dread the day I dare, realize how much I care about this sand, this feeling I won’t bear. This land I will forsake I swear, if only I could escape its grip on my collapsing chest, I sigh heavily, breathing is for the living. Hardly can I exhale, fresh air is not for sale, in this land, poison I inhale. Long dead, it has been, in slumber, from blunder to a yet more grave blunder, taking us under, floating no longer, drowning waving arms, hoping our skin may grow gills and that we shall forever leave this world and live down under. But leave this, our world, is not a choice, torn asunder, we have been and yet condemned to live and rejoice. Parts and pieces float about, some sink in, some scream out, yet we have not a voice, we sing, we speak, we shout in dissonance, our chorus scattered, our dream is shattered, our land is battered. War after war, nothing left of us anymore, closing for us door after door. Not a day, not a minute should we wait, how long can we act as bait. Why don’t we rise and tempt fate, maybe this time, it will open its gate. Its vision for our future, what a validation of our culture, but be wary of division for narrow is the gate, lest we gather and assemble, only then may we resemble, a people with a blank slate, a modern nation state.

Yet we toil for naught, and inwardly broil, how can we stop this onslaught, we have lost connection with our soil. Make no mistake about it, this is a disconnect. Nothing binds this weary quilt, threads torn at every turn between each generation, religion, and sect. Parallel worlds do not intersect. How to sew the quilt and not dissect, how to build relation on intellect. Is it but an illusion to relive and respect a civilization once finely built, how to overcome the byproduct of failure, this feeling of guilt, how to believe that the course of the river in our favor will tilt. Introspect, and so we closely self-inspect, ours is a stormy past in retrospect, but truly what did the world, God and the elements expect. We were torn asunder. How we are today is no wonder. They nibbled on our bellies, the vultures, decried and dismissed our cultures. We were stuck in the National Museum of Art, a world in which we had no part. We walked from wing to the next in confusion, all the galleries were trompe l’oeil, all an illusion. We thought the art was beautiful, we welcomed the incoming civilization, yearning for emancipation, to their needs we were dutiful, yet when we reached to grab the basket of fruit, the canvas was torn asunder. Not for us, we learned later, although it was plentiful, this basket of fruit, the apple was our first blunder. Even the fly on the basket handle was just art, this game, this trick ripped the heart. How could the basket of liberty thusly allude, why did the art choose to exclude, why did we flinch and self-seclude, this ugly ending no one had dared conclude. Surrounded by the museum we shirked everything new, turned ourselves inwardly in a way we never knew. Reached violently for the insides and destroyed what we grew. From shame and guilt, the fruits of fine failure, we tear, rip and devour our heart. But how beautiful was the art. Like the horses of McBeth, we ate our own flesh, part after part, we forgot who were at the start, there was no exit from this hell nowhere to depart. Like the underworld of Hades, beauty was meant to tantalize, tempt us into hope and dazzle our eyes. Our freedom seemingly so close was but lies, that the painting was two dimensional took us long to realize. Like Jean d’Arc we burned, for a hundred times, for a hundred years we burned, the world stood around, their eyes turned, no one made a sound, our hearts yearned, charred bones are what we earned. Again and again and again, we burned, how many times must one be spurned until a lesson is learned. Like the Arabian Hind who in the heat of battle ate her cousin’s heart, we cooked ourselves into fried, grilled and flambé, shish kabob, panseared and soufflé, invited all the animals, of course, present were the cannibals. An orgy of consumption, for which there will be no redemption. Everyone was out for his own, no longer a family or a people was the assumption, all turned cannibals with no exemption.

And now that we are wary, and our days which run into one another are dreary, and our prospects for a better world, for a prosperous future, for a happier life are scary, we have turned contrary. Deaf, blind and dumb, insensitive and unrealistic we have become, all silence for most and barely a word for some, sound waves do not reach our ears and to visible photons we do not succumb, a sculpture, a dead horse, we are numb. Simply riding the wave, que sera sera to the grave, words of the wise and the brave, nonexistent we huddled in our cave. Then, the world shook, the tours fell, each clutched his book, a church rang her bell, we were forced to look, a mosque warned of fiery hell. Welcome to the Age of Madness, we joined hands in sadness, worse has begun, the unimaginable has become, and we began to crave, not much to lose before, but now there is much to save. Yes we protest, this New World Order we contest, we will put our courage to the test, our days of slumber are laid to rest. O’ Rise thee who will sway thy fate lest, your internal disease forever quench thy quest, pray change our way on our behest, unabashedly join the world reformation with zeal and zest. While the vultures externally hungrily devoured, as it were, we were plagued by an internal virus as we cowered. And now to heal the inside, we must brush off the vultures aside, and recruit all the seekers of peace by our side, all the mongers amongst us we must deride, our true face we must not hide, frank and free only by true justice we will abide. In that true day of madness our fear has died, how long will the world be blind, how many mothers in devastation and humiliation have cried, how long will the world insist on keeping the International Grind: Fresh human for very little per pound, how does that sound, a good deal I tell you and the package is well bound, nothing will stain you or dirty the ground! How long will the world send a whole people to the grind row after row, in one hundred years, first the Armenians, then the Jews, the Rwandans, the Gays to Kosovo. Now our turn in Palestine, we need a power nothing less than divine. Each reach within and we will find, a way to stop this ever rolling grind. O Palestine, heart of the Arab lands, be kind, our whole world is in a bind. Intifada is the answer, defeats the colonizing forces and the endogenous cancer. Intifada and in protest so we purge, kings and dictators move aside as we surge, nothing can stand against this urge, to clean, vomit, cleanse, throw up the contents of the stomachs, we purge, clean them out of their dens, show mercy and let them keep their newly polished benz, and so we’ll be free. The Arab world will be ours from sea to shining sea, ours, the inhabitants of the land, the sole keepers of this grainy sand, as far as the eye can see, everyone will be free to be, a him, a her or a he-she.

How long must I lament hungrily the beautiful specter, this enticing scent, how long will it last this perpetual lent, what has God by this protracted fast meant, how long, how long can body, mind and spirit last until all are spent. How did it come about that in our own home we pay rent, how long, how long will we to distant lands be sent, how long how long how long had we watched as the ages came by and went. What does another day matter if it’s a hundred years we’ve slept, we will sleep once more and group it to all the other years we have kept, but fake sleep it is, no rest but a gathering of all the nights we have wept, like Patrick Henry, liberty or death, we must accept. Slumber is neither death nor at liberation has it made us more adept. Rise, rise, rise or forever cry alone at night, die all or many but still dream of light, darkness may consume for now but some day we will regain our sight, hold up the colorful flags and throw away the white.

Between Fundamentalists and the West: Arabs Look on with Horror

2005-08-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

In a day when Ayman Al-Zwahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second in command, and the US commander-in-chief, George Bush, exchange barbs, Arabs look on at an enduring, engulfing and confounding wilderness. While most Arabs admire American values of democracy, rule of law, human rights laws, independent media, freedom of expression and minority protection as shown by polls conducted by Zogby International over the last few years, there is a disconnect between American values and American policies in Arabia. The United States invasion of Iraq is only the latest example of this disconnect because the rule of law was ignored by the US as it invaded Iraq short of UN consent or even a reasonable plan of stabilizing the country. The effect of this war is a large festering wound at the heart of the Middle East, infected with foreign terrorists and militant Salafist ideology, throw in a mix of ethnic and sectarian killings and settling of old scores and Iraq is a destabilizing force for the entire region. The blind support the US lends to Israel, ignoring its announcement of building new settlements in the West Bank the same day that Zwahiri’s tape comes out, as Israel’s troops leave Gaza, is not only infuriating but deeply insulting to all Arabs. Where is American rule of law, human rights and adherence to international treaties?

As Arabs look on, the sad truth is that they don’t know who to support. They cannot stomach the massacres in the City of Peace, Sharm Al-Sheikh, or in London. Arabs do not want a Talibanized Middle East, against freedom, cultural exchange, diversity, tolerance and education. Aiding the terrorists morally or otherwise is a dead end. At the same time, the cavalier attitude with which the Anglo-American alliance destroyed a whole country must have some consequences, consequences that Arabs hope might prevent another invasion. In the absence of potent representative government the only possible Arab response is, unfortunately, the terrorists. Although, this, by no means, makes all Arabs complicit in the terrorist attacks taking place from Baghdad to London, it does give the fundamentalists an argument of fielding off oppression of Anglo-Americans and allies. The United States also offers financial and intelligence support to the most entrenched and ruthless dictators in the region. And though Bush’s talk of freedom and democracy is uplifting and welcomed, the Bush administration is not consistent and the Arabs are wearily suspicious. Unlike Dr. Rice’s strong speech at the American University in Cairo, Laura Bush touted the Egyptian government line of “gradual” change, even going as far as calling the opposition movement “naïve” for wanting decisive change. The situation is complicated by the deep distrust of the US in Arabia. Arabs have heard lectures about democracy from the US before but as always the US changes course as befits its national interest, often to the detriment of Arab democracy. This time it is only too obvious that the US brought up democracy in the Middle East in the context of Iraq as a justification for the invasion after the arguments of WMD, 9/11- Saddam Hussein link, and Iraqi government-terrorism links have all fell through.

In short, the United States and allies must hold themselves to the same standards that they hold to the rest of the world. The West cannot pillage and plunder and then react with shock when there is a response, even if it is terrorism. Many important issues must be addressed and the grievances of Arabs must not be overlooked. Such longstanding questions such as the “the Jewish Question” in Europe that was exported to the Middle East, support of undemocratic regimes by the West in quest of “stability” as well as Middle East oil and its importance for the world economy. When these issues are addressed, the anger in the region will subside and so will terrorism, inevitably, diminish. In the meantime, with every provocative Western move terrorism will flourish. My father once told me that you can condone terrorism or not but the barometer measuring the level of anger correlates directly with the amount of terrorism around the world.

Terrorism of Different Forms

2005-07-29T01:23:00.000-07:00

As an Arab and a Muslim I would like to address the issue of terrorism. I think Muslim and Arab Americans have a role of communicating the frustrations of Arabs and Muslims around the world. Lest no one should accuse American Arabs and Muslims of complicity or silence, we must make our voices heard. Terrorism does not exist in a vacuum. Terrorism exists in a context, not unlike crime in the urban American centers. Both directly correlate with sociopolitical injustice. Both are reprehensible and will not resolve anything but both have causes and are effects. I condemn all terrorist attacks, just as I condemn any heinous criminal act, be it murder or grand larceny. However, all the condemnations in the world will not stop terrorism nor will a great clampdown annihilate terrorism for, by its very nature, it seeps through the cracks of our most strenuous security efforts. The world is a large place that is not conducive to American military rule to ensure no country is a haven for terrorism while the distance between places is significantly shortened by modern technology. Just as Arabs and Muslims everywhere have to fight intolerance and bigotry, have to resist fanaticism and vocally oppose radicalism, the West has to take a long look at its policies and actions around the World. Why is there no Palestinian State fifty years after the establishment of the state of Israel? Why are there Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza 38 years after the UN Security Council demanded that Israel leave the occupied territories? Why is the Israeli government building settlements in the West Bank this summer, while it is negotiating with the Palestinians to leave Gaza in two weeks as part of a road map agreement to establish a Palestine state? Why has the United States provided Israel with 3 billion dollars in grants and much more in loan guarantees every year for the last fifty years while Israel has not responded to United Nations resolutions or US demands? Why did the United States invade Iraq in 2003? To find the nonexistant weapons of mass destruction that all American intelligence said did not exist, to appease Israel, was it for democracy or oil. No one knows. Why did the United States try to democratize Iraq when all its best friends in the Middle East are just as autocratic and repressive as Saddam Hussein? Why not exert pressure on President Mubark of Egypt, Abdullah of Jordan, our beloved Saudi Royal family, the Sharon government itself or our many other oppressive allies? Why does Mubark of Egypt get 2 billion dollars a year, more American aid than any other regime after Israel? Why did Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland sign up for this illegal enterprise despite worldwide protest and large majorities at home opposed to the war? Until we, Americans and Europeans, answer these questions and address them earnestly, we are not fighting terrorism, we are merely lighting candlelight vigils and asking why Muslims are so awful. It is true that there will always be terrorism, just as there will always be fanaticism, bigotry, racism but if we get at the causes we can reduce it much more effectively. It is true that some fundamentalists are against our way of life. Some want to regress to the early days of Islam and to its "purest" form but they are an extremely small minoritywhose view are widely shunned. The only reason they can recruit so many people from such a wide pool of citizens from Bali to London to New York is precisely because of the above questions. Let me make it clear here, this is not a war of civilizations; Arabo-Islamic civilization is not incompatible with Western civilization. There is however great anger and disappointment at Western actions in the Middle East from Baghdad to Marrakesh and the fanatics shrewdly use this despair to carry out their own agenda. The United States and by extension many other Western nations have zero credibility with Arabs and not just because the West ignored the plight of the Palestinians for the last fifty years, not just because the Palestinians were sacrificed to atone for Western murderous indulgence in Western Europe, but also because the United States unabashedly financed the Israeli army and its harsh tactics, supported dictators and ignored calls for democracy. Fighting terrorism is a two way street: Arabs andMuslims have their share of the work, but Americans and Europeans cannot, simply, look on with horror. We all have our work cut out for us, indeed. As Voltaire stated, we all should tend to our own garden.

One State, 10 Million Individuals

2005-07-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Along time ago, a history professor made a remark that has remained with me since. She stated matter-of-factly that the crusades were a much bigger deal in Western history than in Arab history. It is true that the Arab rulers of lands that stretched from Spain to Northern India thought that it was a small battle in Arab and Muslim history; however, they also understood what it foreshadowed for the Middle East. It is here why the crusades remained etched in the Arab and Muslim psyche, the Middle East has been claimed by many through history, almost every major empire engulfing a large chunk of it, and doubtless to be claimed again by many. Israelis often lament if only “Arabs were Finns, there would be peace.” The problem is that the Middle East is geographically and literally in the middle of the old world, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe. The Middle East is not a remote corner of the world and the crusades made that very clear. The crusades have gained an especially important role in Arab history, after the establishment of the state of Israel. The parallels are uncanny and frightening to Arabs, particularly Palestinians, who see history repeating itself. To begin with, both the crusades and Zionism came from Europe. They both were religious movements that sought to lay a historical and exclusive claim to the land of Palestine. Though they were conjured up about a thousand years apart, their ideologies were surprisingly similar and characteristically European. For homogenous Europe it was logical that each group of people has its own tract of land in the world, while it was an understood concept in 1055 AD, the time of the crusades, this idea of a people tied to a land was solidified with the Nationalist movements of the 18^th century, including Zionism. There the French lived in France and Germans were “organically tied to the land of their forefathers”. So when the Jews looked to find a home, they naturally looked to the land of their forefathers. There is no equivalent to one people in one land in the Middle East. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Persians, Arabs, Assyrians, Druze, Turks, for example, all lived in Palestine from the end of the crusades until the establishment of Israel. Palestine was not an exception, from North Africa to the Levant to Mesopotamia, hundreds of different ethnicities and religious ideologies lived in relative peace. The heterogeneity was facilitated by trade routes from China to Italy and France, by trade between the Sahel (Africa’s east coast) and the Arabian Peninsula, and the fact that the Middle East is the ideological cradle of many of the World’s religions. Both the crusades and the Zionist establishment of Israel were violent militaristic enterprises that resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians. It is of note that when the crusaders, as when the zionists, came to Palestine, it had large populations of Christians and Jews, nor was it a policy at either point in history for Jews and Christians not to be permitted to immigrate. The two movements did not only seek to allow their followers to move to Palestine but to supplant the existing population, in essence, to take a homogenous population of Europe and move it to a new homogenous Palestine. This is precisely why, most Arabs and Palestinians don’t think that a two-state solution will work, it is still not a local solution: what about Arab Israelis who already comprise a fourth of the Israeli population, what about the three hundred thousand West Bank Jewish settlers, who are probably nontransferable if the shaky Gaza withdrawal of 8000 settlers is any indication. The problem is that both the crusades and Zionism tried to recreate the Middle East in the image of Europe. Needless to say both enterprises failed miserably, after all Finland is Finland and the Middle East is just that.

Fear Not Democracy

2005-03-03T00:48:00.000-08:00

Now that the desire for democracy is spreading like fire in the Arab World, some Westerners are having second thoughts. It is the same questions that have been asked for the last fifty years but unfortunately, people don't learn from their past mistakes and inevitably keep repeating them. Again American and European intellectuals are wondering aloud whether the new democracies will be fanatical and anti-West. Again these same intellectuals are asking if we are going to replace dictators by Iranian backed mullahs in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and worse yet Hamas in Palestine. But if there is anything the world should have learned in the last fifty years from the Middle East, it is that democracy and political participation are moderating forces. Beside the obvious fact that Arabs should have the right to chose their leaders, it is also good for the world that they do. The more the autocratic regimes in the region block political dialogue, repress human rights, oppose free expression, and ignore sectarianism and racism, the more monopoly the preachers, imams and mullahs have in being the opposition to these failed regimes. Islamist political parties have the edge in the autocratic Middle East because they have a pulpit from which to propagate their message.

The Muslim Brotherhood is so popular in Egypt because they are the only party of opposition. Same goes for all the strong parties in Iraq like the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. However, already an Egyptian secular alternative is offered in Ghad Party, which means Tomorrow in Arabic, and it has mobilized the opposition so much that its leader, Ayman Nour, is now imprisoned by the Mubarak government. In Iraq countless secular Kurdish and Arab parties have sprung in the last two years since the American invasion. During the last fifty years Islamist political groups have flourished in the Middle East under the guise of being religious groups while any secular alternative was not allowed to flourish.

We should help Arabs reclaim their region through democracy. There will be oscillations between religious and secular movements and governments but they will have to answer to their populations which will make them reconsider fanaticism and extremism. We have examples in Iran and Turkey, while Iran now is loosening its fundamentalism in response to public pressure, Turkey's Islamists are ruling with great care not to awaken a secular backlash.

Ar(a)b[or]

2005-03-03T00:27:00.000-08:00

A barren tree, once full of life
Stands leafless, brown ice in gloom
A barren tree, once full of strife
Stands not a spark, not a flower in bloom
A barren tree, once full of promise
Stands in sorrow, a promise but for tomorrow
As for today, not a leaf dares there stay

Arabs Hunger for Rights Denied to Gays

2005-03-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

Arabs and Muslims around the world complain of the injustices that they have endured in the past century and seemingly infinite road of oppression paved ahead. In spite of many ideological movements from Nationalist to Pan Arabism, from Communist to Islamist, from leftist liberalism to fanatic extremism, all have been defeated by the global will to control the strategic petroleum reserves in the Middle East as well as its central geography and by the will of dictatorial, autocratic regimes that work in concert and coordinate their efforts with the Military-Economic World Powers. All the troubles of the Middle East result in one important consequence, namely, that Arabs are not sovereigns. They have no right to the land on which they have lived for thousands of years, they can be expelled from it at whim and if they remain in the land they have no say in its affairs, its natural resources, its riches, and how it interacts with the rest of the world. Although, Palestine is an extreme case of this Arab Nonexistentialism, not a single Arab nation today is ruled by its citizens. In fact, the Arab Diaspora, citizens of many nations around the world, enjoy more freedoms than their original compatriots. The blame for these great injustices lies, above all, with the Arabs at home and abroad for the inability to organize, speak openly, and push for democracy, in the loosest sense of the word, to self rule. It is true that obstacles against Arab self-rule are large but they are not insurmountable and the more difficult the task, the sweeter the achievement.

Arabs must push their governments in the Middle East and abroad to support nascent democratic organizations, to protect human rights, to have access to free press, to free political prisoners, to guarantee the rights and equality of all citizens no matter what their race, sex, creed, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. We must be consistent in our call for equality; we cannot impose our belief systems on others who do not share it. Israel’s greatest failure was not brought upon it by Arabs but by its inconsistent logic and Israel must face these discrepancies in ideology if it is to survive. Is Israel God’s gift to the Chosen People, if so then how is that reconciled with the Palestinians, who are not Jews and so, do not share that belief? Is Israel a Jewish State, if so then are the Arab Israelis, who constitute more than 20% of Israel’s population, full citizens or second class citizens and, if not so, then what’s the problem of allowing all of historic Palestine to be one state for Jews and Arabs? After centuries of European oppression, Israelis have turned into oppressors and are now grappling with these issues. Unfortunately, however, Arabs are not dealing with their own illogic. To my horror and amazement, Arab and Muslim American groups were at the forefront of the Anti-Gay movement in the United States in recent months. These Arab groups are a clear manifestation of Arab frustration and impotence being devoted to stripping the rights of women, gays and other minorities away.

My shock was two fold, first because it is morally wrong; second because it is politically devastating. How are we, Arabs, to speak for our rights while denying other human beings similar rights to the ones we enjoy? Why do Arabs seem intent on exporting all that is wrong with the Arab World instead of importing to it the freedoms of the world? From a moral stand point, a difference of belief does not entitle us to deny gays and lesbians basic human rights just as a difference of belief does not entitle Israelis to expel Arabs from what they perceive as God’s gift. From a political stand point, we are being ideologically discordant, how can we exclude others from having those same rights that we fight for in the Arab world, namely the right to speak freely, to marry whom we want, to raise families in peace, to believe in what we want without fear of retribution. The Black Caucus, despite being deeply religious, recognized the inconsistencies of fighting for the freedom to marry between races and the currently proposed ban on gay marriage, why can’t we see the hypocrisy? Furthermore, the gay community has been one of the few unwaveringly pro-Palestinian groups in the United States, a group that has suffered discrimination throughout the ages and is thus very sensitive to discriminatory policy towards Arabs after September 11, 2001. Finally why? Do we not have enough enemies? Do we not have enough propaganda in articles, in television shows, in news programs and from the government? Why are we making it more difficult to build an American constituency that is interested in true peace and democracy in the Middle East? Why do we parade with the Christian Right who support extremist, Zionist AIPAC and who await the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple and the return of the Messiah? Interestingly, the Christian Right, Israel’s “best friend” in US politics, await the Messiah who will kill all disbelievers, including Jews; another contradiction Israel must deal with.