Posted on 05/31/2012 by RamallahOnline

Bernard-Henry Levy; the Ugly Jew.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

There are hundreds if not thousands of “Jews” who enriched our lives and that of humanity with their talented contributions to the arts, to the literature, to music, to cinema, to science, to medicine, to physics, to sociology and psychology, to freedoms, to civil rights and liberties and law, Bernard-Henry Levy is not one of them. he is full of it.

At the recent Cannes Film Festival, Bernard –Henry Levy who thinks of himself as modern day Voltaire and was able to get the French media to proclaim him as the “philosopher” of France, was on one his many ego trips, presented his own documentary about the Libyan revolution “ Le Serment de Tobrouk” or “ The Oath of Tobruk” narrated, directed by himself and of course were he was the central figure of the documentary, dashing in the desert with his crisp summer suit, a modern day Lawrence. Continue reading →

Posted on 10/22/2011 by RamallahOnline

Gaddafi, the inevitable bloody end.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

With the exception of Tony Blair, the modern day Lord Balfour who had “special” business and political relations with Gaddafi, every one in Libya and the Arab world is quite happy with the news of the end of Mouamar Gaddafi and his regime. It is only fitting for a bloody dictator and a regime to meet a bloody end. No one should shed tears. Contrary to his claim to die fighting, Gaddafi was pulled from a sewer pipe like a rat.

Like so many bloody kelpto-criminal dictatorships, Gaddafi was and for a time the darling of the West specially after abandoning his weapons of mass destruction program. The US George Bush dispatching Condi Rice to engage him and Hilary Clinton as recent as this January treated his son Moutasim as royalties warmly shaking hands with the towering Moutasim.

While the US did not sponsor Mouamar Gaddafi in certain periods of his regime, it did engage him and according to certain reports facilitated his coming to power and with the exception of Fiedel Castro the US engaged if not sponsored every dictator and dictatorships in Latin and Central America, in the Middle East, in East Europe, certainly in the Far East.

The US more than any other country in the world should take the blame for the millions who died and suffered under military dictatorship that not only killed and tortured its citizens but looted the country as well.

We all need to remember the likes of the late Shah of Iran who was brought back to power by coupe organized by the CIA with a planned budget of $1,000,000 with $100,000 distributed in cash to the streets and the remaining $900,000 was handed over by Kermit Roosevelt to Ardashire Zahedi as part of Operation Ajax.

The Shah who ruled his country with an iron fist relying on the CIA, Mossad and his torturous SAVAK also looted the country and allowed his close circle of generals and advisors to loot tens billions of dollars allowing them to live the good life in Switzerland, in West Europe, certainly in the US and around Washington DC.

While the people lived in dire poverty in the country side, the Shah was able to spend $100 millions on his coronation ceremony in 1967 in the city of Persepolis as King of Kings with heads of states, diplomats, movie starts counted among the guests with caviar, chefs and Baccarat crystals flown from France dinning on Limoges porcelain china.

We all should remember the end of the man, politicians and socialists adorned him as “emperor of emperors”, dejected pegging for a country to give him asylum and a place to die.

Nicolae Ceausescu was anther dictator much beloved and admired by American presidents who received him in White House, simply because who took an independent line from Moscow when it came to the Middle East and his relationship with Israel not withstanding his bloody and ruthless dictatorship and his looting of the country making every Romanian poor with the exception of his immediate family and his close circle of friends. I will never forget that night in a Geneva hotel when I saw his execution on December 25th, 1989.

General Suharto of Indonesia and General Ferdinand Marcos were among the many dictators the US not only supported but sponsored delivering weapons and riot fighting equipments allowing these two to loot their country blind and run authoritarian bloody regimes with wide spread corruptions, all in the name of supporting anti-Communist regimes.

In Latin and Central the US and over the last century have supported and given aid and comfort to a dozen of civilian and military dictatorship key among them the likes of Anatasio Somoza Garcia and his family, Fulencio Batista of Cuba, General Noriega of Panama, and of course General Augusto Pinochet who ruled Chile with an iron fist for 17 years, murdering in cold blood mover 3,000 and torturing hundreds of thousands.

In Central America, the US the could not find one military dictator it did not like. The US sponsored, trained and funded the many military rulers and dictators that ruled Central America where some 500,000 people died or killed as a direct result of these military dictatorship and the wars they waged against their people and the resulting civil wars.

In Africa the story was no different, American presidents disgraced the White House with receptions offered to killers and murderers the likes of Samuel Doe of Liberia, who upon taking control in a bloody coupe tied more than 17 members of Liberian cabinet to palm trees and shot them.

Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire was another favored dictator favored in Washington, Paris, London and Brussels. Mubuto Sese Seko took over Zaire in a CIA sponsored coupe on 14 September 1960 and ran Zaire to the ground while looting its wealth. Western governments were only too happy to support such criminal dictators as long as they claim to fight Communism.

In the Middle East the story was no different. It is well known fact that the CIA not only provided safe house for Saddam when he was injured and fled the attempted assassination attempt on General Abdul-Kareem Qassem and later in 1968 sponsored his return to Iraq to become the VP of Iraq.

During the 8 years war with Iran, the US under the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein over $40 Billions in aid in his fight against Iran and forced the neighboring Arab Gulf countries to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to Saddam, money and resources that could have done wonder in the development of the Arab world from Morocco to Yemen to Syria to Bahrain.

Until the evening of his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam was America and Europe favorite Arab dictators knowing well he ran a bloody criminal authoritarian regime were more than one million persons were killed or murdered and were for the first time chemical weapons were used against civilians targets, Iraqi Kurds killing 5,000 instantly and injuring 10,000. Donald Rumselfed was to deliver Ronald Reagan congratulations to the Iraqi dictator.

The United States played a key and critical role in perpetuating Saddam Hussein dictatorship providing it with money, economic and military aids and of course providing legal and international cover and immunity for its crimes. Thanks to a freedom loving American administration millions of people died during and after Saddam in Iraq, and in Iran and over $1.5 Trillions of Arab wealth simply disappeared and evaporated if not looted by the merchants of death.

Hosni Mubarak and Bin Ali were the darling of the United States the model of modern Arab rulers and police states where dictators rule with iron fists making sure the country and the West id free of “Islamists” and rewarding these two regimes for their openness and special relationship with Israel.

No doubt the US which contracted countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other North Africa countries as “torture contractor” was only too happy to seek these rulers and dictators and their families not only loot the country clean but imprisoned, killed and tortures tens of thousands of citizens.

Kelpto-dictarotship touted by the World Bank and the IMF as model emerging economies were millions lived below poverty lines and with millions unemployed. International donors, financial instructions never looked beyond the “cooked” financial and economic books presented by the leadership of these countries and never bothered to leave their 5 stars hotels and see the utter misery the majority of people lived in.

With Mouamar Gaddafi meeting the bloody end he deserve the Arab Spring must continue and succeed in countries and against dictatorship
In Syria, in Yemen perhaps with these dictators meeting the same bloody end. Those who rule by the sword will die by the sword. Grieved, oppressed, tortures and dramatized people should not have mercy on those who rules them.

In closing I want to address this question to President Obama and the leaders of the West, why is it OK for the Libyans, the Syrians and the Yemenis, the Egyptians and the Tunisians to rise up against oppression and dictatorship and in the case of Libya to use force with support from NATO while denying the Palestinians the right to have a seat at the UN to seek freedom and independence from the Jewish Occupation, not by use of arms but by getting a UNSC resolution to demand the immediate end of the Jewish Occupation that lasted more than Gaddafi 42 years of bloody rule? An explanation is needed.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.

Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah

Born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh ( presently under Israeli Military Occupation, Armed Jewish thugs and settlers). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army ( 66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers where in US military service about the same time. Graduated from Indiana University with BA-72, Master of Public Affairs-74 and Juris Doctor-77, and in senior year at IU,was elected Chairman of the Indiana Student Association.

Posted on 09/12/2011 by RamallahOnline

One Eyed Men in the World of the Blind

One-Eyed Men In The World Of The Blind – An Analysis (11 September 2011)

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

There is an interesting phenomenon which we can call “the political retiree’s confession.” I don’t mean all those hyped memoirs, ghost written for all manner of high ranking ex-officials. Here I refer to statements by important political leaders and bureaucrats, either out of office or about to vacate their positions, publically describing what really needs to be done. For instance, what really needs to be done to obtain peace, or accurately pointing fingers at those obstructing peace. These statements can be shocking in their honesty, but curiously enough, are never made, much less acted upon, while the truth sayer is in a position of power. They come to us only with retirement or pending retirement.

For example, take former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert was Prime Minister from 2006 (replacing Ariel Sharon who had suffered a debilitating stroke) till early 2009. A few months before leaving office Olmert told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that, in the end, Israel would have to return “almost all” of the West Bank to the Palestinians, including East Jerusalem. There was no other way to achieve peace with the Arab world. Olmert went on, “the decision we are going to have to make is the decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed….The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table.” Of course “the time” oddly coincided with a period when the Prime Minister could not move this insight from theory into practice.

Now we have another example of this strange phenomenon. This time from the United States. According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “in a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held shortly before his retirement this summer [2011]” gave his expert opinion that the Israeli government was ungrateful for United States assistance. That despite all the Obama administration had done for Jerusalem, “access to top-quality weapons, assistance developing missile defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing….the U.S. has received nothing in return.” On top of that, in Gates’s estimation Prime Minister Netanyahu is “endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation…” No one at the high level meeting disagreed with this analysis.

Gates’s publically revealed anger is nice to hear about but, like Olmert’s epiphany, it means little in practice. Netanyahu has been rude, duplicitous and downright nasty to President Obama in what was actually a replay of the behavior of Menachem Begin toward Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. Carter’s National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski learned to distrust the Israeli leadership and would later, after he was no longer in office, advocate an increasing hard line toward Jerusalem. Indeed, he once suggested military confrontation with Israel if that country’s leaders risked a regional war by attacking Iranian nuclear development sites (he suggested the U.S. Air Force shoot down the Israeli planes). This was a reasonable suggestion given the stakes but, of course, it was made when Brzezinski had no position of influence.

Getting back to the article on Gates’s negative opinion of Netanyahu and his government, Jeffrey Goldberg writes, that the former Defense Secretary actually “articulated bluntly what so many people in the administration seem to believe.” OK. So what are they doing about this? Absolutely nothing. They will all wait until they no longer have positions of influence to come out and vent. The situation is disgusting. And it is disgusting because in both the U.S. and Israel (and no doubt in many other countries as well) there are leaders and advisers who know what needs to be done in Israel-Palestine to make the world more secure and stable, and yet they stand by and twiddle their thumbs.

Why do these leaders do nothing about matters of such importance? Here are two interconnected reasons:

1. In his book Victims of Groupthink (1972) Irving L. Janis shows how governing political elites create self-reinforcing decision making circles that insulate themselves from serious challenge. It is rare that anyone within these circles “thinks outside the box.” However, it turns out that the “box” must always be able to accommodate the demands and interests of other groups whose money and power support the “circle’s” political viability. This is a system that must produce frustration and sense of powerlessness among (the rare) officials who can see even a little more clearly than their peers. By the way it is not a problem unique to political elites. It surely exists in most organizational structures. It is just that when it comes to government the stakes are so much higher for all of us.

2. Enmeshed as they are in a system of national interest group politics that dictate the fate of their various political parties and their own careers, those who might suspect a world outside the box will stay silent. The narrow fate of party and career is, apparently, worth more than world peace. It is worth more than the lives of millions of doomed civilians and soldiers. It is worth more than justice for nations and peoples. Only when free of this debilitating system do some of these people find their tongues. But by then all they have are impotent words. This is what we are seeing in the belated surfacing of rational criticism and analysis from unexpected sources such as Olmert and Gates.

Conclusion

How often do we read about individuals and groups who, witnessing an accident or a crime just stand by and do nothing? These people do not want to “get involved.” Afterwards, such folks are usually very quiet and meek. They don’t want their neighbors to know that they stood by and did nothing. But the position of these confessing political retirees is quite different. They were already involved. And now, after the fact, these one-eyed men in the world of the blind want us all to know they have seen the light. Great. Now you tell us!

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

The author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com.More articles can be found on RamallahOnline.com, Logos Journal, and Dr. Davidson also maintains an online blog, you can find it at http://www.tothepointanalyses.com

Posted on 08/24/2011 by RamallahOnline

Syrian Revolt Speeds Up Gaddafi’s Defeat

Rebels advance into Tripoli, capturing Green Square (Martyrs' Square), Bab al-Azizia and most of the city

Yahya R. Haidar

Libya is important. And referring to a column by Foreign Policy yesterday entitled “Was Libya Worth It?”, the answer is that it almost certainly was (especially to awakening colonial powers such as France and Italy) knowing the sea of black gold that Libya floats on. Libya is important, but not as much as Syria. There is financial gain in the former, and while the list of reasons for military intervention in Libya runs long, no strategic analyst can seriously advance a claim that Gaddafi was becoming the Stalin of North Africa. Indeed, there may be some geopolitical strategy involved in the NATO’s bombardment of Libya, but geopolitics is the very essence of the Syrian situation. With Syria the parameters of the conflict run long: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Golan Heights, instability in Iraq, Iran’s influence on Iraqi politics, Turkey’s expanding economy and stiffening political will, the Kurdish issue, and so on.

Syria is getting out of control – and to policy makers in the mighty Western nations, it means Assad is losing his tight grip on power. Assad is a favorite to the Israelis, and the tanks rolling into the Syrian cities were once upon a time supposed to liberate the occupied Golan Heights, and the rest of Palestine, as the regime’s propaganda invariably asserted.

But, Syria will be a more costly endeavor, and will undoubtedly be a long-lasting Iraq-like scenario, given the multiple foreign and local factors at play there. Syria, has like Iraq and Afghanistan, a complicated geography. The Sykes-Picot Accord, which drew the lines of the current Middle East post World War I were controversial ever since, and they were meant to be. To lump together vastly differing ethnic, religious and linguistic groups over night meant a type of what the late Edward Said called ‘imaginative geography’ must be in place. And like every image we imagine, or hope to construct in the hope of creating a dream-like reality, it will surely fade and wear-out as muddy, earthy reality kicks in. No better time than now has that geographic concept-dream faded in the Arab World, giving way to a vacuum of un-ideological protests, but one which can easily be the beginning of new ethnic and religious groupings. In this milieu, Iraq comes quickly to mind, and, given the readiness with which NATO interfered in Libya, Syria is naturally next foreign-knocked domino.

Military analysts on Libya, even little informed generalists, knew well in advance that there was something odd about the prolonged conflict – reaching a stalemate and no advance seemed in sight for a few months. But, now, before we knew it, it is all over! Coincidentally, Syria seems more in a ‘stalemate’ than ever. The difference is that such ‘apparent’ balance which a stalemate brings about is this time under the control of the Assads of Damascus, and not the big chaps in NATO headquarters. The mighty honorable Ban Ki-Moon has just spoken tough (for the first time) that ‘time is up’ for the Syrian president.

Gaddafi is ‘defeated’ and Mr. Moon quickly joins the troupe in beating the drumbeats of war.

Yahya R. Haidar is a freelance journalist and researcher in religious studies.

Posted on 08/14/2011 by RamallahOnline

The global uprising begins to take shape

Watching the tragic unfolding events around the world from starvation in
Somalia to rioting in London, we are not feeling vindicated but merely sad
and angry. For a long time many of us said that the increasing chasm
between the rich and the poor (the haves and the have nots) has grown to
obscene levels. The Soviet Union had in many ways replaced the chasm
between workers and owners of capital to a chasm between elites of the
commmunist system and millions of impoverished people. But the cold war had
kept the rains externally on unrestrained privatization and capitalism in
the third world. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, a vacuum was created and
the greedy capitalists moved in. In the privatization mania in the 1990s,
wealth of nations was replaced with debts of nations. With the help of the
IMF and the world bank (some with key connections to Israel), third world
countries were saddled with debts that were in some cases many times the
size of the GDP of those countries. But the capitalist mania effected
countries large and small. In Russia, the phenomenon stripped Russia of its
natural wealth to put billions in the hands of oligarchs, most of them ended
up in Israel as Russia tried to reclaim some of its plundered wealth. In
Greece, the debt and government expenditures could not be sustained by the
tourism industry (itself shrinking world-wide as the middle class shrinks).
Spain, Portugal, and Italy also have problems.

In the Arab world, the Arab spring turned into a bloody summer. Dictators
thought that if they were more brutal they could survive longer than the
dictators of Egypt and Tunisia. But people also have no clear alternatives
and some of these revolutions need to take time to hold meetings and plan
for the day after (the post regime collapse). Prime Minister of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu (family is from the US) had pushed for privatization in
his first term in office in 1996 and 1997 and continued now with his extreme
right-wing coalition. The more moderate and reasonable Israelis saw the
damage this was inflicting and now, a small uprising ensued (300,000 out on
the streets). Protesters just gave their demands which include social and
economic equality. The Israeli stock market plunged in line with the
plunging stock markets around the world. There is a price to be paid for
spending billions on apartheid walls while 25% of your population lives
below the poverty line. There ia a price to be paid when the US wages a
$3 trillion war on Iraq (to control oil and to help Zionism) and other
costly wars on Afghanistan, costly help to Israel, and more. The US racks
in debt andlives beyond its means (as China rightly points out). The value
of the US dollar plunges and gold which is now $1754/ounce will keep going
up. Around the world, prices of commodities and basics (food, housing etc)
goes up while incomes do not even grow as fast as inflation. Worse is yet
to come as countries grabble with the widening social and economic gaps
brought about by misplaced priorities that allocate trillions to the
military and leaves crums for food, education, and healthcare.

As the world spirals seemingly out of control, millions of Palestinians are
remarkably quiet and philosophical about these things. We Palestinians used
to lead social transformation and provide models for transformation and
challenging oppressive regimes. The PLO leadership used to help mediate
conflicts around the world but under the new unelected leadership, they
cannot even solve the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas (a prerequisite for
moving forward). It seems that after decades of challenging the system, the
older generation of Palestinians got tired and weary. But a new generation
inevitably arises. This happened repeatedly with each uprising; so far 15 or
more uprisings, waves that are 7-15 years apart. But still, many people
rightly see peace here as critical to peace around the world. This is not
only because it is so obscenely wrong to keep denying 11 million people
their basic human rights. It is also because billions around the world
believe in Christianity and Islam and they will not continue to allow few
Zionists in power centers to foment conflict and war to avoid facing
reality.

We are in the middle of a transition in global power, a global intifada that
I spoke of in my messages and articles last year. The old centers of global
power (in Russia, Europe, Norh America and by extension Eurocentric
Ashkenazi Israel) will lose power and new emerging powers will take place.
It is a shift from the Northern to the southern hemisphere. All global
transitions in power in the past 4000 years involved tremendous dislocation
and pain and upheaval. Population trends (ageing among Euro-Caucasian
populations arund the world, growing in other countries) and the global
environmentalimpending Nakba wil accelerate the trend. As activists who
care about fellow human beings and about earth must help move things in the
right direction by minimizing the pain of transition while not standing in
its way.

For those who are religious, they can take scriptures that deal with that
and disregard the fanatical scriptures of their religions. From the Torah,
they can take “What does god require of us: to do justice, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with God” and discard the tribalistic notions where God
gives licence to murder the other. From the New Testament take the sermon on
the mount and things like “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be
called Children of God” and ignore the notions of unique salvation only
through certain beliefs. From the Quran, take the statements about no
compultion in religion and disregard the notions of religious superiority.
For those who are not religious, a reading of history and social
transformations can show indeed the natural transformation of societies and
give equally valuable lessons. We can emphasize how we achieved good things
such as ending slavery and ending many wars and gaining civil and women
rights.

The choices we make must be rooted in morality, justice, and caring for one
another especially the most vulnerable sectors of our society. We do have an
untappedreservoire of ingenuity, resources, and beauty to more than make-up
for the ugliness around. Humanity that creates great science, great art,
great music, and great social movements surely can cope. We just have to
believe in each other and more importantly act on our beliefs.

Action item: 81 US congressmen are visiting “Israel” to pander to the
lobby. Ask your congressman to come visit us in the ghettos and the refugee
camps.

THE ONLY HOPE: A Palestinian Revolution By: Gulamhusein A. Abba
http://defyingsilence.blogspot.com/2011/08/only-hope-palestinian-revolution.html
Palestinian Nonviolence: Muslims, Not Christians, Are the Leaders by Sami
Awad, Executive Director Holy Land Trust
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sami-awad/palestinian-nonviolence-c_b_905095.html

and do come visit us in Palestine

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour He is author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and the forthcoming book Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment.

A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org
http://www.pcr.ps

Articles by Dr. Qumsiyeh on RamallahOnline.com.

Posted on 03/21/2011 by RamallahOnline

Worldwide sanctions can erode Israel’s fanaticism: Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Born in 1945 in Philadelphia PA, Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
At Georgetown University he studied modern European intellectual history under the Palestinian ex-patriot Professor Hisham Sharabi. Sharabi and Davidson subsequently became close friends and one can date his interest in Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Zionist, issues from this time.
Dr. Davidson writes regularly on the Middle East affairs, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. foreign policy.
He has written several books of which “America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood” by the University Press of Florida is a prominent example.
Dr. Davidson joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, the collective uprising of the Arab world, Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions of 2011, the humanitarian crisis in Libya, the prospect of anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia and the fate of Israeli regime in the wake of growing international isolation.
What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Lawrence Davidson.

Kourosh Ziabari: Everything started when a simple, unostentatious street vendor committed an act of self-immolation before a municipal office in the suburbs of Tunis in protest to the humiliation and persecution which was inflicted on him. How this apparently trivial incident led to the unprecedented wave of protests which encompassed the whole Arab world in a matter of days? Do you consider the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi the cause of this turmoil or did the Arab world revolutions have their roots in other factors which we might be unaware of?

Lawrence Davidson: The conditions which made the uprisings in the Middle East possible have been with us for a very long time. Economic deprivation, repression and corruption were constants throughout the reigns of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. They also exist in Yemen. Different variations on these themes can be found in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and many other countries of the region as well. So revolt was and is always a possibility. The much harder question to answer is, why now? For instance, why did the steps taken by Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia act as a successful trigger?

We know that the default position of most people living under repressive regimes is fear and passivity. At some point an exceptional occurrence (it can be negative or positive) will bring a small and brave element of the population into the streets. If they are not suppressed quickly by the regime, their actions might encourage others to join them and then you have a snowballing effect. At that point the regime either negotiates or brings in the tanks. Negotiating often risks the complete unraveling of an authoritarian regime. That is why you most often get the tanks.

In the case of Tunisia, the military seems to have backed off shooting its own people. In Egypt I think the Obama administration played a role by telling the Egyptian military that they were not to use American weapons to shoot Egyptian protesters. That seemed to have had a real impact. Washington ought to tell the Israelis the same thing.

KZ: It’s undeniable that the United States and its European allies are dithering over how to deal with Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, refusing to take a practical, decisive step to tackle the deplorable situation in the war-hit country. It’s estimated that the Libyan butcher has so called massacred more than 6,500 people and the UN, UNSC, the US and its allies haven’t made any decision to stop him. What’s the reason behind the West’s indecisiveness over the situation in Libya?

LD: Well, it would appear that the Western powers have overcome their indecisiveness as far as Libya is concerned. I wrote a recent blog piece which points out that the American rationale for this intervention, the protection of civilians, is just sheer hypocrisy. It is simply impossible to believe that Washington has any real concern for civilians in Libya given the U.S. history of slaughter of civilians in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan, as well as its protection of Israel as that country ethnically cleanses Palestine. No, the issue of civilians is just an excuse for the Americans.

The U.S. government, after some hesitancy over the Islamic makeup of a number of Libya’s rebelling elements, has decided to go for regime change in that country. The on-going civil war is a good opportunity for Washington to do this. Most of the NATO allies were quickly brought into agreement and the Gulf oil sheiks, who never liked Gadhafi, soon joined the chorus. The next step was a bit more difficult. Intervening in someone else’s civil war is easy for Washington. The Americans do this all the time, particularly in South America. However, it is the sort of thing that does undermine the principle of national sovereignty, and countries such as China and Russia have always been very wary of creating precedents along this line. That is why I was surprised when these countries abstained in the Security Council vote on Libya rather than casting a veto. One wonders what they got in return from Washington.

The passage of the Security Council resolution means that Muammar Gadhafi is probably finished. Whatever one might think of his regime, I do not believe that it is going to be easy to put Libya back together again once you have helped take the country apart. But then, maybe the Western powers don’t care if this basically tribal society falls apart. A dismembered Libya is an inherently weaker Libya. All they care about is that the oil keeps flowing.

KZ: What’s your estimation of the military presence of Saudi Arabia and UAE in Bahrain? It seems that the United States has showed the green light to Saudi Arabia and UAE to invade Bahrain and suppress the anti-government protestors. What are the impacts of this invasion on the Persian Gulf security and the implications thereof for the regional countries?

LD: When one compares American policy in Libya with the policy in Bahrain it becomes pretty clear that neither the protection of civilians, nor the cause of democracy and freedom espoused by the protesters, is a motivator of U.S. policy. In Libya the issue is oil and getting rid of a leader who is obviously beyond Western control. In Bahrain the issue is, as it was in Egypt, finding a way to bring about a modicum of reform that maintains stability. Washington has a major naval base in Bahrain as well as oil interests. Optimally, Obama would have liked to see the ruling Sunni elements in that country come to some compromise with the majority Shiite citizenry. The Obama administration sees (with more clarity than most U.S. administrations) that outright suppression of the Bahraini Shiites only postpones the day of reckoning. And so they have counseled both the Bahrainis and the Saudis to move in the direction of compromise reforms. After all, the next time you get protests in Bahrain, and there will be a next time, things might be much more violent and you run the risk of getting a pro Iranian takeover in that country.

Unfortunately, neither the Bahraini government nor the Saudis feel confident enough to compromise with their Shiite populations. So, they decided to settle the matter through repression. The distractions provided by the Libyan situation provided the moment to do so and the Americans made the decision to stand aside in these cases. Solving the problems that brought on protests in Bahrain, and also in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, is therefore postponed to an unspecified later time.

KZ: It’s been a longstanding American tradition to help foster, back and encourage dictators and dismantle them consequently. We know of Saddam Hussein’s fate who was unconditionally backed and supported by the United States during the 8-year war with Iran. 20 years later, the same United States captures and kills Saddam Hussein. The same goes about Osama Bin Laden, whom we know that was promoted by the United States. Ben Ali and Mubarak are also the same. At first, President Obama urged them to remain in power and implement the changes which the angry people demanded, but when he saw that the implementation of changes without a regime change would be impossible, he softened his tone and called on them to step down. You may remember that the same happened with the Shah of Iran. What’s your opinion about this?

LD: When it comes to American foreign policy you have the war hawks such as the neo-conservatives, and then you have the more flexible and diplomatic elements like Jimmy Carter and now Barak Obama. The two groups have the same ends, the maintenance of U.S. domination and the satisfying of various powerful domestic interest groups, but their tactics can be quite different. From the point of view of the latter group, the Shah of Iran self-destructed. In other words, he brought himself down by not knowing how and when to adjust to changing conditions. Thus, when Mubarak got into trouble he was told by Washington to adjust to the new conditions and meet the protesters half way. If it had been George W. Bush in office he might have gotten quite different advice.

The willingness of Washington to support an ally and then abandon him is an indicator that (outside of traditional alliances like that with Great Britain) individual loyalty has nothing to do with anything. The Saudi royal house may have been shocked and unsettled when Washington let Mubarak go, but what is really surprising is that they had not yet learned that international relations as played by the Western powers is not at all about personal relationships and loyalties, its about the satisfaction of special interests embedded in the domestic politics of the Western nations. If Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Osma bin Laden, or anyone else behaves in ways deemed really incompatible with those interests they will be pushed aside, or worse.

KZ: What’s your prediction for the outcome of anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia and Yemen which have not borne fruits so far? It seems quite unlikely that Saudi Arabia which enjoys the all-out backing of the United States will bow down to the demands of its people regarding the expansion of social and political freedoms. The sames goes with Yemen where the uncompromising Ali Abdullah Saleh has shown no signal of willingness to reconcile with the revolutionaries. What do you think about this?

LD: The answer to this question has been given, pretty definitively, by events in Bahrain over the last couple of days. The Obama administration, though they would have like to see reform, have acquiesced in the suppression tactics of the Bahrainis and Saudis. Such tactics are not deemed long term solutions, but they do maintain stability for the immediate future. Yemen is not a very strategic place for Washington. And so the Americans will go along with whoever comes out on top as long as that party keeps Al Qaida out and does not interfere in Saudi Arabia.

KZ: Some thinkers believe that the recent developments in the Middle East will jeopardize the interests of Israel on one hand and empower the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other hand. They believe that a democratic government in Egypt which is led by a moderate Islamist such as Mohamed ElBradei will be quite intolerable and bitter for Israel while being a good news to the Iranians. The same would be applicable to the other U.S.-backed tyrannical regimes of the region such as Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Jordan. What’s you viewpoint in this regard?

LD: Washington had much more leverage in Egypt than in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The U.S. supplies Egypt’s weapons, spare parts, and practically pays the salaries of the officer corp. It sends tons of free surplus wheat to Egypt to help moderate food prices. The Obama administration made a strategic decision that having Egyptians, protesting for democratic reform, shot down with American weapons would be disastrous and so it decided that Mubarak would compromise or he would be pushed out.

The Obama administration relationship with Israel is barely cordial. While Obama will retreat before Zionist pressure, particularly as exercised through Congress, he seems to have drawn the line when it came to Egypt and Mubarak. His arguments must have won the day with the Congress because the Zionist lobbies went largely mute on this issue even as the Israeli government was screaming and throwing temper tantrums. If nothing else all this goes to prove that the Zionists in the U.S. are not invincible.

This being said, the Israeli influence in the U.S. is still very great and, as we have seen with the recent U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution on illegal West Bank settlements, Obama will still play along with the Zionists on most issues. However, the Israelis will just have to learn to live with the new Egypt. They will have no choice as long as Obama is president. After that, who knows? The amount of influence Iran will have in the new Egypt will almost certainly be very small. After all, the U.S. still has its leverage.

KZ: It’s widely believed that the Israeli lobby controls the majority of mainstream media in the United States and Europe and hence impedes the publication of any report, commentary, feature story, article or news in which Tel Aviv is criticized or its illegal, unjustifiable policies and actions are exposed. How has the Israeli lobby acquired such an immense power and how does it control the mass media in the United States? What is the source of Israeli lobby’s influence and power?

LD: The answer to this question has to do with the nature of American domestic politics, which is driven by special interests and lobbies. Here is how it works in terms of Israel. The Zionist lobby is one of the best organized and funded special interests in the country. It is allied to the Christian fundamentalist lobby which represents one of the country’s largest voting constituencies. The two allies go to each of the American Senators and Congressmen and offer them support. The support comes in the form of mobilizing Jewish and Chr. fundamentalists voters in their areas to vote for them, and also in terms of financial contributions to their campaigns. What they want in return is a consistent pro-Israel voting record which, of course, includes voting for generous foreign aid to Israel. Since the vast majority of Senators and Congressmen come from areas where their general constituency is either indifferent or favorable to Israel, it is easy to see how they would go along with the Zionist and Christian fundamentalist lobbies. On those rare occasions when an American legislator refuses to play along, the Zionists financially back his or her opponent both in the primaries and the general election. Eventually they are able to help defeat him. The opponent whom they backed is now beholden to the Zionists who helped get him elected. It is a rather simple strategy.

In addition both political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, receive money from the Zionist lobby and so both parties try to keep the Zionists happy. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the American Congress, both House and Senate, have become agents of a foreign power when it comes to the question of Israel/Palestine.

When it comes to the media it has to be kept in mind that these are mostly for profit companies. They are not in business to supply the “truth” or even accurate reporting. They are in business to sell newspaper and television advertising. That is where they make their money. Under the circumstances, the Zionists, or “the Jews,” do not have to own or control these businesses, and in most cases they do not. All they have do is be able to organize subscription and advertising boycotts, and this they can do. So most media outlets are simply going to stay away from any sort of consistent reporting that will result in loss of revenue.

KZ: Many political academicians have openly suggested that the life of Israel is approaching an end and it will have the destiny of the former Soviet Union. A report which is attributed to CIA says that Israel will decline in 20 years. What’s your prediction for the future of Israel? Do you cast the same doubts regarding the survival of Israel? Is it capable of standing on its own feet should the United States lift its support for Tel Aviv?

LD: I think it is premature to start predicting the demise of Zionist Israel. What we have here is a fully industrialized, high technology economy that is now fairly well integrated into equivalent high tech and military production in the United States and Europe. In other words, to a certain extent these economies are now tied together. Therefore, Western support for Israel is not going to evaporate by magic in the foreseeable future. In Israel we also have a population that is fully indoctrinated into a racist ideology. They already feel abandoned by most of the world and so most Israelis (who do not simply pick up and leave the country) are fanatically holding own to their Zionist ideology and state.

My feeling is that the only thing that can eventually erode this Israeli fanaticism is a worldwide campaign of boycott, sanctions and divestment similar to the one that finally brought down the regime in South Africa. And, of course, that campaign is underway and growing steadily. Still, in will be a long struggle, perhaps another fifty to seventy five years. It is a shame, but I will probably not live to see it.

Kourosh Ziabari

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist, and regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. More articles by Kourosh Ziabari can be found here.

Posted on 03/17/2011 by RamallahOnline

Where might the “wrong track” lead?

Alan Hart, 17 March 2011

In the early days of the demonstrations of people power on Arab streets it could have been said (some did say) that they were a huge setback for all the various forces of violent Islamic extremism. This because the demonstrations, in Egypt especially, seemed to be sending a clear signal – that change could be brought about by peaceful means on a non-sectarian basis. But…
With Qaddafi at (more or less) one edge of the Arab world slaughtering his own people and the Saudi regime at the other edge closing down all possible room for dissent internally and then moving forces into Bahrain to assist the brutal suppression of those demonstrating for change there, the signal is not so clear.

Incidentally, I don’t believe Qaddafi is “mad”. I think he is quite clever and very cunning in a Zionist-like way, and was always prepared to stop at nothing to keep himself and his family in power. The single word I’d use to describe him is evil. I imagine he knew better than anybody else that his statement about his people loving him and being prepared to die for him was complete and utter rubbish. (“B.S” as President Carter once said in another context). But I also imagine Qaddafi calculated that such a statement would cause many correspondents not only to laugh but to write him off as nuts and therefore a leader who could be removed without too much more mayhem. And that, he probably also calculated, would give him more time to organize those of his army units he could rely on and his mercenaries for a counter offensive to crush the rebels for freedom.

I thought Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, was spot on with his first comments after Saudi Arabia’s reinforcement of Bahrain’s military. Drawing off four years experience of living in Bahrain, he said: “The Bahraini royal family has squandered chances for dialogue over many years. Now it’s too late.”

IF the Obama administration is to be believed, it didn’t have advance notice of the Saudi move. That suggests there might now be some serious tension in the U.S.’s special relationship with Riyadh. What could be the real cause of it?

Through officials if not directly, Saudi Arabia’s rulers made no secret of their displeasure with Obama for what they regarded as his failure to use America’s influence with Egypt’s generals to keep Mubarak in power. (I wonder if it bothered Saudi royals that keeping Mubarak in power would have required Egypt’s generals to do a Qaddafi and slaughter their own people?)

My guess is that the present masters of the House of Saud have said to themselves something very like the following: “We can’t rely on Obama. He cut Mubarak loose and he’ll do the same to us if he continues his embrace with what he calls ‘universal values’. Our survival is now dependent on what we do, not what Obama wants.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right when she said in an interview with CBS that the Gulf States were on the “wrong track” in sending troops to Bahrain. She added: “We find what’s happening in Bahrain alarming. We think there is no security answer to the aspirations and demands of the demonstrators,” (It’s also true that there’s no security answer to the aspirations and demands of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians).

Question: Where does the wrong track that Qaddafi, the Saudis, the Bahraini’s and other autocratic Arab leaders and regimes are on lead to?

It seems to me there are two possible answers.

One, as Zionism has demonstrated in its own context, is that if corrupt and repressive Arab regimes are prepared to be brutal enough, and even to commit war crimes against their own people (as I believe Qaddafi and the Bahrainis with Saudi complicity are doing), they may buy themselves some more survival time. But brutal repression will ultimately be counter-productive and feed the fire of Arab rage. In this scenario the regimes of a corrupt and repressive Arab Order are committing suicide, and change with a democratic face will come. The Arab peoples will be liberated from their own tyrants. Arab Spring becomes Arab Summer.

In the other possible scenario, Arab Spring becomes Arab Winter. This because autocratic and repressive Arab leaders and regimes succeed (with America’s secret and unspeakable blessing?) in reconstructing the walls of fear which until the start of this year imprisoned their own peoples. In this scenario the main beneficiaries are most likely to be Al Qaeda and Co. (my shorthand for violent Islamic extremism in all of its forms).

I am not suggesting that Arab peoples who have been demonstrating peacefully for change will give their active allegiance and support in great numbers to Islamic groups and organizations which preach the need for and practise violence. I mean only that the re- suppressed rage, despair and loss of Arab hope for something much better will create environments in which violent Islamic extremism can take roots and grow. To understand why, it is necessary to have some idea of the essence of how terrorism can be defeated.

In Volume Three of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, sub-titled Conflict Without End?, I offer this explanation in 146 words:

Terrorists cannot operate, not for long, without the cover and the practical, emotional and moral support of the community of which they are a part. When that community perceives itself to be the victim of a massive injustice, and if that injustice is not addressed by political means, the community will cover, condone and even applaud the activities of those of its own who resort to terror as the only means of drawing attention to the injustice, to cause it to be addressed. It follows that the way to defeat terrorism – the only successful and actually proven way – is by addressing the genuine and legitimate grievances of the host community. The community will then withdraw its cover and support for its terrorists; and if they continue to try to operate, the community will oppose them by exposing them – reporting them to the authorities if reasoning fails.

As I go on to say, there are many case studies to support that analysis. In Northern Ireland, for example, the British Army did not defeat Provisional IRA terrorism. The terrorists called off their campaign when they had no choice – because the Catholic host community would not cover and support them any longer. And that happened only because the British government summoned up the will, about half a century later than it should have done, to risk the wrath of militant Protestantism by insisting that the legitimate grievances of the Catholics of Northern Ireland be addressed.

Modify and apply that to the Arab world if autocratic and repressive leaders and regimes manage to cling on to power by ever more brutal repression and you can understand why Secretary of State Clinton and her boss are alarmed (they damn well should be!) by what is happening.

Footnote:

My last post was headlined Could pariah status spell the end for Zionism? A possible alternative headline for this post is Could pariah status spell the end for autocratic, corrupt and repressive Arab leaders and regimes? (I probably won’t be writing much if anything for the next three weeks because I’ll be on a lecture and debating tour of South Africa with my very dear anti-Zionist, Jewish friend, Dr. Hajo Meyer).

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Posted on 03/05/2011 by RamallahOnline

Lessons from the Egyptian revolution

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, 5 March 2011

The rush and tumult of events makes it hard, sometimes, to draw the most important general conclusions from their significance. This said, the revolutionary tidal wave, which began in Tunisia and Algeria, reached its crest in Egypt and is currently sweeping other countries such as Libya and Bahrain, offers a unique opportunity to watch how people can reshape history as they reconstruct their fates and futures. It also offers a rare scientific window to observe the birth of the new from the old and to study a moment of qualitative transformation that culminated from a long process of quantitative accumulation and that manifests the dialectical laws of social dynamics with utmost clarity.

What happened in Tunisia and then in Egypt, and what will certainly follow in other places, cannot be produced or fabricated by a political party, movement or force, domestic or otherwise. The uprisings are the product of a long cumulative evolution, lasting years, decades or perhaps even centuries in some areas, that eventually erupted into millions-strong grassroots protest movements of a magnitude unprecedented in the modern history of the Arab world, and perhaps in its entire history. Perhaps the only moment of similar size, scope and breadth is the first popular Palestinian Intifada, in its first year (1987-88). Sadly, the Oslo Accords undermined the magnificent initial results of this uprising and destroyed a historic opportunity to end the Israeli occupation. We should add that this Palestinian revolutionary moment was never sufficiently documented, first due to the differences in size and strategic importance compared to the Egyptian case, and second due to the lack of media coverage and unprecedented sophistication in communications technology that was available to Egypt today.

The events in Egypt today — as was the case in Tunisia and in all great revolutions, such as the French and Russian revolutions — epitomise what sociologists call a “revolutionary moment”. Such a moment occurs when the governed refuse to be ruled as they had been and when the rulers can no longer govern in the same manner. It is a momentous event. It is one that political parties, movements and forces, and intellectuals and spontaneous popular action can prepare for. But it is far bigger than anyone could have expected, planned for or attempted to produce. Great revolutions cannot be made. They erupt, like volcanoes, atop of the mounting force of huge and long-suppressed social and political contradictions.

It is precisely because these contradictions have been pent- up for so long, prevented from expressing themselves and unable to vent their anger, that the moment of explosion is too powerful to cap or control. Therefore, political parties and forces should be careful not overrate their own size, role and or abilities with respect to this condition. They might be akin to a midwife who is there to help with a safe delivery, but they did not produce the embryo or induce the birth, and they are not the mother (the people), or even the surrogate mother.

Rather than blaming themselves for their actions in the past, political forces should focus on their role at present, which is to ensure the safety of the birth and the health of the infant, and to safeguard it against any attempts on the part of the old order to abort, kill or stunt it. The revolution, or the eruption, may produce a newborn, but it cannot guarantee its survival and well being. This is one of the tasks of an organised and aware intellectual vanguard.

The phenomenon that is unfolding before our eyes today is not restricted to Egypt; it has its roots in the state of the Arab world as a whole. That Tunisia was the first country to react is due to the fact that it was the weakest link in the chain of an interconnected order, whose profound internal contradictions, some of which are old and others of which are relatively new, have long needed to be resolved.

THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE:

The system of governance and the relationship between the ruler and the ruled in the Arab world remains so at odds with the democratic transformations that have taken place elsewhere in the world as to appear not only far behind but outside the course of human history. People around the world can no longer tolerate systems of authoritarian despotism that are essentially totalitarian in substance, that rely on unrestrained security apparatuses as their chief instruments of control, that survive by means of repression, suppression and the denigration of human dignity, and whose form of government centres around the exclusive group or single state party.

Many bigger and more powerful regimes than the ones we have in our region ultimately proved unable to withstand the winds of change. The most salient example is the Soviet Union, whose successes in protecting itself and the world against the spread of Nazism and in defeating Nazi Germany, and whose economic feat of transforming Russia from a feudal to a modern economy, could not prevent it from rapid and resounding collapse when the soviet peoples decided that they could no longer tolerate totalitarian rule. After decades in which the soviet ruling elite controlled everything — national wealth and resources, the military and security agencies, the economy and all aspects of political life, and all organisations and associations connected with health care, education and culture — and sustained a suffocating stranglehold on public space and civil society, there came a point when the people said “Enough!”

Another prominent example is to be found in the Latin American dictatorships, which the US had long fostered, backed and financed while fighting the popular revolutions, such as that in Nicaragua, in order to maintain its strategic dominance. But then came the critical moment when the Cold War ended and the primary propaganda stay of that entire constellation collapsed. Suddenly, one dictatorship after the other toppled as Latin American countries finally entered the expanses of pluralism and democracy and began to forge their way to real development and to win major victories over poverty and unemployment. Brazil is a prime example of a nation whose successive elected leaders represented socio-political movements that advocated a blend of political and social democracy, and whose policies enabled their country to progress by leaps and bounds, socially and economically.

In this regard, it should be born in mind that political democracy is not an ideal form of government. It still has plenty of room for improvement, to which testify some major inconsistencies in leading democratic nations. In the US, for example, the difficulties in challenging the alliance between money and the media pose an enormous challenge, which will probably entail breaking the near total monopoly of the two mammoth parties over the political realm.

Democracy has evolved at the hands of different peoples and cultures across history since its first beginnings in ancient Greece. The evolutionary process is still ongoing, the most salient indication of which is the general acceptance of the notion that democracy is deficient if it is restricted to purely political domain and fails to include a socioeconomic dimension. The evolution of democracy has not been solely the province of the Western world, as some might claim or imagine. In fact, some of the healthiest signs of progress were manifested in developing nations. Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) was the first country to elect a woman head of state, preceding long-established democracies such as Britain by decades in this regard.

Yet, with all its imperfections, democracy is immeasurably superior to the horrors of totalitarianism. Its components are universally applicable and appropriate, and consist of free and fair periodic elections, the separation between the executive, legislative and judicial authorities with an equitable system of checks and balances between them, and the subordination of the army to elected executive and legislative authorities. It also rests on a broad range of essential principles and civic liberties, notably freedom of opinion and the press, political plurality and the right to associate and form political parties, an open civic space, and the rule of law and equality before the law.

From this perspective, the chief task that lies before the Egyptian people at this juncture is to remove all obstacles to the establishment of a true democratic order and to proper democratic practices. The emergency law must be lifted, the fraudulent parliament dissolved and all the constitutional and legal impediments to the people’s right to freely elect their officials, from the president down to the members of the smallest municipal council, must be eliminated. All officials must also be subject to a clear system of responsibility and accountability while there should be no restrictions to the right to contest incumbents through free and fair elections held at their appointed times. In short, the Egyptian people need to put in place the institutional and legal edifice to guarantee the peaceful rotation of authority in accordance with the will of the people.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TRADITIONALISM AND MODERNISM:

The mounting conflict between traditional forms of totalitarian rule and the influences of modernism was another factor that fed the Egyptian revolution. It is impossible, here, to discuss the question of globalisation and its positive and negative impacts, or the attempts of capitalism to monopolise it as a means to secure global dominance. Suffice it to say that globalisation, like the industrial revolution and the invention of the steam engine, is a fact of life and stage in technological development. Its consequences are contingent upon how it is used, for it can be used for good or for bad.

What matters in this context, however, is that globalisation brought three concurrent revolutions: the unstoppable and irrepressible revolution in information technology, as exemplified by electronic communications and social networking media such as the Internet, Face book, blogging sites and Twitter; the communications revolution as powered by mobile phones and similar devices, of which billions are bought every year; and the media revolution in which satellite television channels are spearheading forward bound mass media, just as radio broadcasting had in the mid-20th century and the press had in the late 19th century.

Conventional means of authoritarian control could not, nor cannot, halt the impact of these revolutions. They have given people access to information that their governments tried to conceal from them. They have furnished unprecedented means to establish contact, to remain in communication, and to organise and mobilise. They have broken the monopoly of dictatorial governments on communications and the media, creating what we might term a media democracy in advance of the emergence of political democracy, serving as a means for opposition forces to spread calls to rally and demand change.

The impact of this quantum leap forward in media, communications and information technology not only shook the foundations of the conventional structures of totalitarian societies. It had a similar impact on the countries of the modern industrialised West, where government monopolies over confidential information and diplomatic cables have been severely dented. What better illustrations have we than the famous Wiki Leaks revelations, which probably mark only the beginning of what is yet to come? It is no longer possible in our age to conceal information from the public for any length of time, as had once been the case with such dealings as the Sykes-Picot agreement.

At the same time, the growing pressure of the IT and communications revolutions are forcefully propelling us towards modernisation and modernism. This dynamic is affecting many traditional systems and structures in our region. Even such heated divides as that which plagues the Palestinian arena are being exposed as conflicts between two facets of the same traditional structure, which resists modernisation and modernity, and espouses exclusionist dominance and one party rule, as opposed to political plurality and equal opportunity.

Arab youth was naturally poised to assume the vanguard of the drive to change. They are the most adept at using and taking advantage of the modern technologies, and they have the least to lose from an overthrow of the old traditional order and are simultaneously the most open to modernist development. Contrary to what some might think, this does not imply that our young are willing to sacrifice their heritage and history. Indeed, they are probably keener on protecting this heritage and reinforcing this history in contemporary terms, much in the manner of the Muslims and Arabs of the Middle Ages, who pioneered the fields of science and knowledge, and built the finest universities and research centres while Europe was still shrouded in medieval darkness.

Arab youth and the Palestinian youth among them have long been the victims of marginalisation, neglect, lack of opportunity, unemployment and the ills of nepotism, discrimination and petty corruption. Yet, people under 30 constitute the overwhelming majority of the Arab population. The UNDP Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) diagnosed these problems and cautioned against their repercussions. Sadly, the series was stopped and its lessons and recommendations remained unheeded. Incidentally, the AHDR series shed considerable light on the structural deficiencies derived from the marginalisation of the role and status of women.

Given all the foregoing factors, young Arab men and women house an enormous revolutionary energy aimed at development and modernisation. They should not only assume participatory roles, but also effective leadership roles in all domains.

ECONOMIC MONOPOLISATION, CORRUPTION AND POVERTY:

The Arab national liberation movements achieved national liberation and founded revolutionary systems of a predominantly militaristic character, the army being the best organised controlling power. Initially, at least, these regimes scored major inroads towards development. The Nasserist regime, for example, put an end to feudalism and set Egypt on the road to industrialisation and agricultural modernisation. Some of these regimes espoused a socialist outlook. However, by the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, three major factors asserted themselves.

One was the oil boom and the enormous influx of money that poured into the hands of traditional conservative regimes, which started to expand their influence in the region. The second was Israel’s repeated attacks against neighbouring countries, such as Syria and Egypt, with the aim of curbing their influence and their role as beacons of national liberation, which had been a source of considerable anxiety to governments in Africa and the developing world in general. The third factor was the lack of political democracy, which deprived the leaderships of these regimes of one of their mainstays of support: the people in whose name they were ruling.

In tandem with these factors there was significant economic development. The overthrow of the capitalist and feudal order in these societies left a vacuum. Rushing to fill this were portions of the new middle class that monopolised the hold on the state bureaucracy and used its power to create what we might term a parasitic bourgeoisie that eventually fused with the comprador bourgeoisie. Therefore, it would not take long for a country such as Egypt to take a 180-degree turn. The process was led by president Anwar El-Sadat who reoriented his country towards the control of these parasitic groups, the Camp David Accords, and the establishment of a repressive system of control against the people for whom the 1952 Revolution had originally been waged.

Although there are certainly shades of difference between one country and next, the rise of the parasitic bourgeoisie and their hold over the state bureaucracy enabled them to control all the resources of the economy in both the public and private sector. Through a combination of repression, bribery, kickbacks, expropriation and outright theft they accumulated unimaginable fortunes without creating a base of production that would permit for a simultaneous growth in society at large. The result was a rapidly broadening gap between the rich and poor and an increasing concentration of wealth. When the sources of wealth began to dry up, privatisation and the sale of state- owned property, businesses and factories became the next avenue for corrupt enrichment at the expense of the poor. In the face of that conspicuous ill-gotten wealth, the oppressed and impoverished peoples could no longer tolerate their daily privation and they rebelled.

The story of Mohamed Bouazizi encapsulated that blend of poverty, hardship and degradation at the hands of the Tunisian security forces that drove the Tunisian people to rebel. Other examples are to be found in the stories of the torture and persecution of thousands of equally deprived young men and women in Egypt, and in the stories of other tens of thousands of people who have reached the autumn of their lives without being able to afford the costs of marriage.

The triad of corrupt and parasitic economic monopolisation, widespread and mounting poverty, and brutal repression was the great engine of the unprecedented revolutionary upheaval in the Arab world. When one contemplates this fact one is struck not by the surprise that these revolutions happened but by the surprise that it took them so long in coming.

THE REVOLUTION OF DIGNITY AGAINST PERSONAL AND NATIONAL DEGRADATION:

It was no coincidence that the events in Tunisia and in Egypt were often described as the “Dignity revolution”. Arab people have suffered degradation on a daily basis. They were routinely humiliated by their own repressive regimes or by those in the neighbouring countries they visited. Perhaps it was the offence to dignity caused by the deprivation of citizenship rights that sparked the wrath of the middle class. Its members may not have suffered poverty, but they would have suffered from the lack of equal opportunity, from the degradation inflicted by theft, by means of forged elections, of their right to chose, and from the larger affront of being marginalised in their own country by a totalitarian order and its coterie of opportunists who closed the doors of opportunity and advancement to others.

In Egypt, the deprivation of the right to dignified citizenship reached a new peak with the blatant forgery of the last People’s Assembly elections in November. That farce was one of the major triggers of the anger of the middle class and its younger members in particular who, because of modern telecommunications and media, were fully aware of what they were being deprived of.

THE REVOLUTION AND PALESTINE:

There remains another factor that we should not overlook and that has a direct bearing on Palestine in particular. The defeat of the Arabs in the Palestine war of 1948 and the defective weapons scandal that exposed the corruption of the Egyptian monarchy played a major part in fuelling the 1952 Revolution, which was also a revolution against the humiliation inflicted upon the Egyptian army. In the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the national dignity of every Arab nation suffered a stream of offences primarily at Israel’s hands.

Arab people and especially the people of Egypt which, from Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi to Gamal Abdel-Nasser, had become accustomed to being at the forefront of the Arab national defence, watched in fury at the atrocities it perpetrated against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, from the invasion of Lebanon and siege against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1982, through the suppression of the Palestinian Intifada and further attacks against Lebanon, to the brutal incursion into Palestinian territories and siege against the Palestinian leadership in 2002 and the massacres in Lebanon in 2006.

The latest chapter in Israeli belligerency and brutality was its invasion of Gaza, which was weak, defenceless and under economic blockade. The Egyptian people watched this crime unfold in its full horror right next to their country’s borders amidst accusations against their government for complicity in the blockade. Such outrages must offend the national dignity of every Arab citizen, all the more so when, as is the case with Egypt, that citizen’s country is bound by an inequitable treaty with Israel that restricts its ability to act in solidarity with the oppressed.

The US-led invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq aggravated the Arabs’ sense of fury and compounded their thirst to avenge their national humiliation. This factor cannot be excluded in any attempt to understand the force and scope of the eruption that took place in Egypt. Many wonder how the current revolutionary wave will affect the Palestinian struggle. I do not believe it is premature or wishful thinking to claim that there has already been a positive effect.

First, the Arab world will no longer remain a passive agent as regional and international forces fight it out on Arab territory. Henceforth, the Arabs will be proactive agents in these conflicts, which in itself is a positive development.

Second, the victory of the Egyptian revolution will strengthen the status and the role of Egypt, if it establishes a solid democratic government. This can only help to readjust the balance of power in favour of the Palestinian cause, for a democratic Egypt can only be a supporter of the Palestinian people, rather than a mere mediator.

Third, the victory of democracy in Egypt, Tunisia and hopefully elsewhere will fling open the doors to popular solidarity with the Palestinian people. People who have been longing to demonstrate their support for Palestine will now be able to do so in powerful and effective ways. The Arabs will once again be able to take the lead in the campaign to boycott and impose sanctions on Israeli occupation, which is a major feature of the Palestinian national strategy for altering the balance of power.

Fourth, we can already see the effect of the Egyptian and Tunisian victories on the Palestinian morale. Thousands of Palestinian youth are re-emerging from the doldrums of frustration, despair and marginalisation, and displaying a renewed desire to take part and act. The immediate effect of this can be seen in the Palestinian demonstrations in support of the people of Egypt, as well as in support of the campaign to end the internal rift among Palestinians and demand democracy and civil rights. In the mid to long range, we can expect the resurgence of a broad-based youth and people’s none violent resistance movement against the occupation, the Separation Wall and apartheid. If the first Palestinian Intifada was the prelude to the Arab popular uprisings of today, the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia serve to remind the Palestinian people of their latent force and of the power of large-scale peaceful none violent grassroots resistance.

Fifth, certainly the Palestinians harbour the hope that one of the first actions of the new Egypt will be to lift the boycott against Gaza and thereby neutralise the criminal Israeli stranglehold on a million and a half people living in what can only be called the largest prison in modern history.

Whatever happens next, Israel remains a major source of concern. Its arrogance, racism and aggressiveness have remained unchecked by neighbouring regimes, whose weakness it had long exploited in order to give full sail to its dreams of political, military and economic hegemony over the region. Finally, however, the voice of the Egyptian people reminded Israel ” There are limits to power and they are defined by the forces of history, civilisation and human grit. The rule of tyranny in the age of despair must recede before the revival of human will.

A NEW AGE:

We have entered a new era in every sense of the word. Some of us may have had the fortune to have experienced the global youth revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and then to witness this new youth revolution. What a relief we feel after that long interval of stagnation and decay, when humanitarian values collapsed, despair and frustration prevailed, and many of the old revolutionaries and pioneers were turned into worthless statues, while intellectuals became sycophants in royal courts and consciences were reduced to commodities to be bought and sold. Today, a new and promising age has arisen in the Arab world. For the moment, it is taking its first tentative steps and it might totter like an infant. However, it will grow and it will become stronger.

Therefore, our most crucial task today is to tend to this infant, to take its hand and help guide it to a full and robust democratic system that derives its authority from the will of the people. Nothing is more important than protecting this newborn from Israeli or other attempts to stunt it solely in order to perpetuate Israeli hegemony and the interests vested in this hegemony. Nothing is more important than to keep the doors open to the winds of change so that they can gather speed and spread, and break down more barriers.

Perhaps what we see today in the Arab world marks the beginning of a universal transformation whose time must inevitably come, because the current system of global hegemony and the globalisation of dominance is rife with contradictions that can only be resolved by revolutionary transformations on a global scale. In this turbulent world, we — the Palestinians — stand on the right side of history: the side that is fighting for freedom and human dignity. Our allies are the Arab and international forces of progress and change. As for those who are waging their bets on the adversary, they will reap nothing but disappointment.

Dr. Barghouthi was born in Jerusalem in l954 to a Palestinian family from Deir Ghassaneh village in the Ramallah District. As well as a Medical Graduate of Friendship University, Faculty of Medicine and got his degree in Business, Administration and Management from Stanford university , he is a member of the Palestinian Parliament; former Minister of Information under the 2007 National Unity Government; 2005 presidential candidate; General secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative; social, political, human rights and peace activist,one of the most active grassroots leaders in Palestine, campaigner for the development of Palestinian civil society and grassroots democracy, outspoken advocate for internal reform, international spokesperson for the Palestinian cause, leading figure in the non-violent, peaceful struggle against the occupation, and organizer of international solidarity present in Palestine.

For more information on Dr. Barghouthi: + 972 599 201 528 or + 972 599 254 218 Mob + 972 5999 400 73 office”

www.almubadara.org www.palestinemonitor.org

Posted on 02/24/2011 by RamallahOnline

What is Winning? The Next Phase for the Revolutionary Uprisings

Hosni Mubarak facing the Tunisia domino effect (Carlos Latuff)

Richard Falk, 24 Feb 2011

Early in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings it seemed that winning was understood by the massed demonstrators to mean getting rid of the hated leader, of Ben Ali in the Tunisian case, and Mubarak in the Egyptian. But as the process deepened it make clear that more was being demanded and expected, and that this had to do with restoring the material and spiritual dignity of life in all its aspects.

Without any assurance as to what ‘winning’ means in the setting of the extraordinary revolutionary uprisings that are continuing to rock the established order throughout the Arab world, it is likely to mean different things in the various countries currently in turmoil. But at the very least winning has so far meant challenging by determined and incredibly brave nonviolence the oppressive established order. This victory over long reigns of fear-induced pacification is itself a great transformative moment in 21st century history no matter what happens in the months ahead.

As Chandra Muzaffar, the widely respected Malaysian scholar who religion and justice, compelling argues, the replacement of the old order by electoral democracy, while impressive as an accomplishment given the dictatorial rule of the past in these countries, will not be nearly enough to vindicate the sacrifices of the protestors. It is significantly better than those worst case scenarios that insist that the future will bring dismal varieties of ‘Mubarakism without Mubarak,’ which would change the faces and names of the rulers but leave the oppressive and exploitative regimes essentially in tact. This would definitely be a pyrrhic victory, given the hopes and demands that motivated the courageous political challenges embodied in withstanding without weapons the clubs, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and overall brutality, as well as the uncertainty as to what the soldiers in the streets would do when the order to open fire at the demonstrators came from the beleaguered old guard.

What is needed beyond constitutional democracy is the substantive realization of good and equitable governance: this includes, above all, people-oriented economic policies, an end to corruption, and the protection of human rights, including especially economic and social rights. Such an indispensable agenda recognizes that the primary motivation of many of the demonstrators was related to their totally alienating entrapment in a jobless future combined with the daily struggle to obtain the bare necessities of a tolerable life.

There is present here both questions of domestic political will and governmental capability to redirect the productive resources and distributive policies of the society. How much political space is available to alter the impositions of neoliberal globalization that was responsible for reinforcing, if not inducing, the grossly inequitable and corrupting impact of the world economy on the structuring of domestic privilege and deprivation? Not far in the background is an extended global recession that may be deepened in coming months due to alarming increases in commodity prices, especially food. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization the world Food Price Index reached a record high in December 2010, a level exceeded by another 3% rise in January of this year. Lester Brown, a leading expert on world food and environment, wrote a few days ago that “[t]he world is now one poor harvest away from chaos in world grain markets.” [International Herald Tribune, Feb 23, 2011]

With political turmoil threatening world energy supplies, oil prices are also surging, allegedly further endangering the uneven and fragile economic recovery in the United States and Europe. Global warming adds a further troubling feature to this deteriorating situation, with droughts, floods, fires, and storms making it difficult to maintain crop yields, much increase food production to meet increasing demands of the world’s growing population.

These impinging realities will greatly complicate the already formidable difficulties facing new leaders throughout the Arab world seeking with a sense of urgency to create job opportunities and affordable supplies of food for their citizenries. This challenge is intensified by the widely shared high expectations of improved living circumstances. If the autocratic prior regime was held responsible for mass impoverishment of the many and the scandalously excessive enrichment of the few, is it not reasonable to suppose that the more democratic successor governments should establish without much delay greatly improved living conditions? And further, how could it be claimed that the heroic uprising was worthwhile if the quality of life of ordinary citizens, previously struggling to avert the torments of impoverishment, does not start improving dramatically almost immediately? An understandably impatient public may not give their new leaders the time that need, given these conditions, to make adjustments that will begin to satisfy these long denied hopes and needs. Perhaps, the public will be patient if there are clear signs that the leaders are trying their hardest and even if actual progress is slow, there is some evidence that the material conditions of the populace are, at least, on an ascending slope.

Even if the public is patient beyond reason, and understands better than can be prudently expected, the difficulties of achieving economic justice during a period of transition to a new framework of governance, there may be still little or no capacity to fulfill public expectations due to the impact of these worsening global conditions. It is quite possible that if the worst food/energy scenarios unfold, famines and food riots could occur, casting dark shadows of despair across memories of these historic victories that made the initial phases of each national uprising such a glowing testament to the human spirit, which seemed miraculously undaunted by decades of oppression and abuse.

It needs also to be kept in mind that often the slogans of the demonstrators highlighted a thirst for freedom and rights. Even though there is little experience of democratic practice throughout the region, there will likely be a serious attempt by new governing institutions to distinguish their practices from those of their hated forebears, and allow for the exercise of all forms of oppositional activity, including freedom of expression, assembly, and party formation. Unlike the problems associated with creating jobs and providing for material needs, the establishment of the atmosphere of a free society is within the physical capacities of a new leadership if the political will exists to assume the unfamiliar risks associated with democratic practices. We must wait and see how each new leadership handles these normative challenges of transition. It remains to be seen as to whether the difficulties of transition are intensified by counterrevolutionary efforts to maintain or restore the old deforming structures and privileges. These efforts are likely to be aided and abetted by a range of covert collaborative undertakings joining external actors with those internal forces threatened by impending political change.

And if this overview was not discouraging enough, there is one further consideration. As soon as the unifying force of getting rid of the old leadership is eroded, if not altogether lost, fissures within the oppositions are certain to emerge. There will be fundamental differences as between radical and liberal approaches to transition, and especially whether to respect the property rights and social hierarchies associated with the old regime, or to seek directly to correct the injustices and irregularities of the past. Some critics of the Mandela approach to reconciliation and transition in South Africa believe that his acceptance of the social and economic dimensions of the repudiated apartheid structure have resulted in a widely felt sense of revolutionary disappointment, if not betrayal, in South Africa.

There will also be tactical and strategic differences about how to deal with the world economy, especially with respect to creating stability and attractive conditions for foreign investment. It is here that tensions emerge as between safeguarding labor rights and making investors feel that their operations will remain profitable in the new political environment.

This recitation of difficulties is not meant to detract attention from or to in any way diminish the glorious achievements of the revolutionary uprisings, but to point to the unfinished business that must be addressed if revolutionary aspirations are going to be able to avoid disillusionment. So often revolutionary gains are blunted or even lost shortly after the old oppressors have been dragged from the stage of history. If ever there exists the need for vigilance it at these times when the old order is dying and the new order is struggling to be born. As Gramsci warned long ago this period of inbetweeness is vulnerable to a wide range of predatory tendencies. It is a time when unscrupulous elements can repress anew even while waving a revolutionary banner and shouting slogans about defending the revolution against its enemies. And a difficulty here is that the enemies may well be real as well as darkly imagined. How many revolutions in the past have been lost due to the machinations of their supposed guardians?

Let us fervently hope that the mysteries of the digital age will somehow summon the creative energy to manage the transition to sustainable and substantive democracy as brilliantly as it earlier staged the revolutionary uprisings.

Richard Falk

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Visit his blog at https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/ for more articles. This article was posted with permission from the author.

Posted on 02/19/2011 by RamallahOnline

The Genie is out of the Bottle

Uri Avnery, 19 Feb 2011

THIS IS a story right out of “1001 Nights”. The genie escaped from the bottle, and no power on earth can put it back.

When it happened in Tunisia, it could have been said: OK, an Arab country, but a minor one. It was always a bit more progressive than the others. Just an isolated incident.

And then it happened in Egypt. A pivotal country. The heart of the Arab world. The spiritual center of Sunni Islam. But it could have been said: Egypt is a special case. The land of the Pharaohs. Thousands of years of history before the Arabs even got there.

But now it has spread all over the Arab world. To Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen. Jordan, Libya, even Morocco. And to non-Arab, non-Sunni Iran, too.

The genie of revolution, of renewal, of rejuvenation, is now haunting all the regimes in the Region. The inhabitants of the “Villa in the Jungle” are liable to wake up one morning and discover that the jungle is gone, that we are surrounded by a new landscape.

WHEN OUR Zionist fathers decided to set up a safe haven in Palestine, they had the choice between two options:

They could appear in West Asia as European conquerors, who see themselves as a bridgehead of the “white” man and as masters of the “natives”, like the Spanish conquistadores and the Anglo-Saxon colonialists in America. That is what the crusaders did in their time.

The second way was to see themselves as an Asian people returning to their homeland, the heirs to the political and cultural traditions of the Semitic world, ready to take part, with the other peoples of the region, in the war of liberation from European exploitation.

I wrote these words 64 years ago, in a brochure that appeared just two months before the outbreak of the 1948 war.

I stand by these words today.

These days I have a growing feeling that we are once again standing at a historic crossroads. The direction we choose in the coming days will determine the destiny of the State of Israel for years to come, perhaps irreversibly. If we choose the wrong road, we will have “weeping for generations”, as the Hebrew saying goes.

And perhaps the greatest danger is that we make no choice at all, that we are not even aware of the need to make a decision, that we just continue on the road that has brought us to where we are today. That we are occupied with trivialities – the battle between the Minister of Defense and the departing Chief of Staff, the struggle between Netanyahu and Lieberman about the appointment of an ambassador, the non-events of “Big Brother” and similar TV inanities – that we do not even notice that history is passing us by, leaving us behind.

WHEN OUR politicians and pundits found enough time – amid all the daily distractions – to deal with the events around us, it was in the old and (sadly) familiar way.

Even in the few halfway intelligent talk shows, there was much hilarity about the idea that “Arabs” could establish democracies. Learned professors and media commentators “proved” that such a thing just could not happen – Islam was “by nature” anti-democratic and backward, Arab societies lacked the Protestant Christian ethic necessary for democracy, or the capitalist foundations for a sound middle class, etc. At best, one kind of despotism would be replaced by another.

The most common conclusion was that democratic elections would inevitably lead to the victory of “Islamist” fanatics, who would set up brutal Taliban-style theocracies, or worse.

Part of this, of course, is deliberate propaganda, designed to convince the naïve Americans and Europeans that they must shore up the Mubaraks of the region or alternative military strongmen. But most of it was quite sincere: most Israelis really believe that the Arabs, left to their own devices, will set up murderous “Islamist” regimes, whose main aim would be to wipe Israel off the map.

Ordinary Israelis know next to nothing about Islam and the Arab world. As a (left-wing) Israeli general answered 65 years ago, when asked how he viewed the Arab world: “though the sights of my rifle.” Everything is reduced to “security”, and insecurity prevents, of course, any serious reflection.

THIS ATTITUDE goes back to the beginnings of the Zionist movement.

Its founder – Theodor Herzl – famously wrote in his historic treatise that the future Jewish State would constitute “a part of the wall of civilization” against Asiatic (meaning Arab) barbarism. Herzl admired Cecil Rhodes, the standard-bearer of British imperialism, He and his followers shared the cultural attitude then common in Europe, which Eduard Said latter labeled “Orientalism”.

Viewed in retrospect, that was perhaps natural, considering that the Zionist movement was born in Europe towards the end of the imperialist era, and that it was planning to create a Jewish homeland in a country in which another people – an Arab people – was living.

The tragedy is that this attitude has not changed in 120 years, and that it is stronger today than ever. Those of us who propose a different course – and there have always been some – remain voices in the wilderness.

This is evident these days in the Israeli attitude to the events shaking the Arab world and beyond. Among ordinary Israelis, there was quite a lot of spontaneous sympathy for the Egyptians confronting their tormentors in Tahrir Square – but everything was viewed from the outside, from afar, as if it were happening on the moon.

The only practical question raised was: will the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty hold? Or do we need to raise new army divisions for a possible war with Egypt? When almost all “security experts” assured us that the treaty was safe, people lost interest in the whole matter.

BUT THE treaty – actually an armistice between regimes and armies – should only be of secondary concern for us. The most important question is: how will the new Arab world look? Will the transition to democracy be relatively smooth and peaceful, or not? Will it happen at all, and will it mean that a more radical Islamic region emerges – which is a distinct possibility? Can we have any influence on the course of events?

Of course, none of today’s Arab movements is eager for an Israeli embrace. It would be a bear hug. Israel is viewed today by practically all Arabs as a colonialist, anti-Arab state that oppresses the Palestinians and is out to dispossess as many Arabs as possible – though there is, I believe, also a lot of silent admiration for Israel’s technological and other achievements.

But when entire peoples rise up and revolution upsets all entrenched attitudes, there is the possibility of changing old ideas. If Israeli political and intellectual leaders were to stand up today and openly declare their solidarity with the Arab masses in their struggle for freedom, justice and dignity, they could plant a seed that would bear fruit in coming years.

Of course, such statements must really come from the heart. As a superficial political ploy, they would be rightly despised. They must be accompanied by a profound change in our attitude towards the Palestinian people. That’s why peace with the Palestinians now, at once, is a vital necessity for Israel.

Our future is not with Europe or America. Our future is in this region, to which our state belongs, for better or for worse. It’s not just our policies that must change, but our basic outlook, our geographical orientation. We must understand that we are not a bridgehead from somewhere distant, but a part of a region that is now – at long last – joining the human march towards freedom.

The Arab Awakening is not a matter of months or a few years. It may well be a prolonged struggle, with many failures and defeats, but the genie will not return to the bottle. The images of the 18 days in Tahrir Square will be kept alive in the hearts of an entire new generation from Marakksh to Mosul, and any new dictatorship that emerges here or there will not be able to erase them.

In my fondest dreams I could not imagine a wiser and more attractive course for us Israelis, than to join this march in body and spirit.

Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979-81.

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