NOVANEWS
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Cairo’s first dividend
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Arab democratization and the future of ‘the only democracy’
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But we don’t live in an ideal world
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‘Newsweek”s ‘new columnist’ slings caliphate tripe
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They hate us because of our freedom?
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Everyone in the Middle East deserves rights except Palestinians
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Neo-Cons: Egypt shows Bush as prophet and the demise of ‘Arab Exceptionalism’
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Naomi Klein: Did Goldstone single Israel out?
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Israel still laying down law for Palestinian police in West Bank
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‘Hatred is nothing more than cowardice’ (groovin on Egypt with Cornel West)
Cairo’s first dividend
Feb 14, 2011
Philip Weiss
Did you wonder why Jeffrey Goldberg was beating the Iran nukes bongos again this morning? Because the nightclub might be shutting its doors. Aluf Benn in Haaretz (thanks to Scott McConnell):
On the contrary: [Mubarak’s successor] will listen to Arab public opinion, which opposes a preemptive war against Iran. Israel will find it difficult to take action far to the east when it cannot rely on the tacit agreement to its actions on its western border. Without Mubarak there is no Israeli attack on Iran. His replacement will be concerned about the rage of the masses, if they see him as a collaborator in such operation.
Arab democratization and the future of ‘the only democracy’
Feb 14, 2011
Issa Khalaf
Such a pall of darkness had overtaken the Arab lands for so long that one thought Arabs existed in a permanent malaise, a condition of corruption and authoritarianism, their regimes maintaining a lock down on their subject populations and their mutual borders. It’s as if people slept, awoke, lived, and worked without hope, overtaken by the feeling that they could not even effect their own lives, much less something bigger. The Arab regimes’ lack of imagination in opening up to themselves and to other Arabs across the region, their inability to see that the future lies in economic, political, social cooperation and relations, is staggering, their parochialism, suspicion and fear for their power crippling their ability to respond meaningfully and effectively to the region’s multifaceted challenges.
The main issue was always the absence of citizen participation and representation in the affairs of state and society. In the past two decades, the monopoly of information in the public arena gradually stopped being in the exclusive hands of the state, leading to political culture’s democratization. This is why both the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings are inspiring. Hope rekindled was the driving energy and determination of the Egyptian protestors. They saw possibilities. And possibilities ignite the human imagination.
The West, particularly the US was content with the old state of affairs. The lamentation of missing Arab democracy, smugly attributed to Arab/Muslim culture, was a charade to obfuscate the fact that the US in fact required autocrats as lynchpins for its economic and political domination of the region. All the talk about freedom is vacuous, not comporting to actual behavior. The barely cloaked response is one of fear, resentment, and antagonism, for there was not and is not a natural comfort with peoples in weak states managing their own affairs. These, after all, may have their own preferences, interests and needs. But with Egypt, and an American president smart and nuanced enough to understand what he is witnessing, support for mass democratic revolution, for now in Egypt, is better than the alternative if America hopes to maintain influence. Perhaps Egypt may begin to acclimatize Washington to a more imaginative way of dealing with the region. One litmus test will be whether the US suddenly discovers, as they did of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that, after all, Hamas and Hizballah, too, are sociopolitical movements rooted in their societies and not al-Qaida like terrorists. I doubt this, including that US strategic policy centered on Israel will end anytime soon.
The Israelis for their part exist in a universe of their own, so steeped are Israel’s elites and leaders in anachronistic racist stereotypes of Arab culture, which they openly utter, along with fulminating fundamentalist men of the cloth and neo-fascist nut jobs, unaware of how they look, of the degradation of their own humanity. Many if not most Israelis and Jewish-Americans see the Arabs (and Muslims) as a collection of anti-Semitic tribes, ethnicities, sects, and classes bound together only by their hatred of Israel. This crude, stupid thinking is a product of a state-socialized society nurtured on Arab inferiority, violence, backwardness, etc., unable to see the consequences of its own actions or the humanity of the Other.
It is not, of course, that Israelis do not and should not have legitimate security concerns. It is that they must decide what they want: colonization and war or relinquishing occupation, peace and coexistence. Israel cannot ultimately impose its will on the region. Feeling encircled is more a psychological function than a reality. Israel’s ideological foundations require fundamental reconsideration.
Practical considerations for Israeli opposition to peaceful Arab mass resistance and democratization are the fear of a similar Palestinian revolt, which may very well come, of highlighting Israel’s fierce denial of Palestinian human rights and freedom, and of the bankruptcy of the claim that Israel is the Western frontline against violent Arab and Islamic tyranny. The “only democracy in the Middle East” may begin to look not so democratic or innocent after all, undermining the mantra of American-Israeli shared values. A state, a people, convinced of its normality, its historical and moral rightness, cannot possibly fear others’ democratization unless it fears the consequences of its oppression and violence against them. On the other hand, screeching self-righteousness rationalizes all thought, perception, and behavior. Or, perhaps, Israel is concerned that it cannot maintain the status quo, that is, occupation, expansion, and military primacy, its control and coerced cooperation, when dealing with democratic will rather than autocrats. The Mubaraks of the Middle East, having been neutered by treaties and bought off with US aid, sustain Israeli intransigence and belligerence, such as in Gaza and Lebanon. If extremism and instability are not in anyone’s interest, is it wise to bet one’s security interests on repressive despots who give rise to these conditions? Surely a state that genuinely desires peace on a legal and just basis has nothing to fear, especially from democratic nations, with whom peace is durable.
None of the old ways of perceiving and doing make sense anymore. They are fantasies. A democratic Middle East, unlike the pretend vision of the neoconservatives whose main concern is Israel, is a stable, legitimate region. Do we want transient regimes or permanent political institutions? Do we want friendship of dictators or independent cooperation based on shared interests and values predicated on people’s decisions? Is it really good for US national interest to advocate and support the needs and whims of Israel, which falsely thinks it requires friendly autocrats, keeping their cutthroat rabble under heel, to maintain its security? Arab democracy will be neither a tectonic nor volcanic occurrence for the US or Israel, but a more complex, fluid relationship. Arab liberal democratic sensibility is an antidote to extremism, a tamer of political Islamists who in any case are themselves fragmented, have evolved towards a more pluralistic power sharing orientation. It is the avenue to open borders, enhanced contact between peoples, Israelis and Arabs, the path to familiarity and humanization.
Democracy is the best permanent guarantor of Israel’s peace and security, but only if Zionism understands that ideologically driven expansion, oppression, and regional depredations must end, and an urgent end to occupation without condition take place. Israelis could have had a two state solution over two decades ago, Palestinians and Israelis peacefully coexisting, the Palestinians the gateway to Israeli-Jewish entry into the Middle East, in trade, social and cultural contact, political cooperation, joint efforts to solve ecological problems and security challenges, perhaps increasing integration, over a decade or two, towards a larger regional entity. Muslims can be most forgiving, and even assume the banner of fighting anti-Semitism. I say this with the certainty of a non-Muslim. Yes, this was, is, all possible, realistic for anyone who knows the Middle East and its historical, psychological, and cultural make-up well. Instead, Israel’s elites choose isolation and domination, deliberately creating enemies and staging provocations for war, emphatically rejecting a goal Israelis say they desire to realize, acceptance into the Middle East. The Israeli poet and novelist Yitzhak Laor argues that Israelis vehemently insist on their identity as Westerners and Europeans, juxtaposed to the Arab barbarians. Israel has long been on the path of suicide, its future in jeopardy, so myopic are Israeli elites, so paralyzed by a mixture of trauma, victimhood, and superiority and enabled by Diaspora Jews politically organized on Israel’s behalf.
The intermediate to long-term future does not bode well. Zionism is ideologically and institutionally incapable of a liberal, pluralistic state. Israel has failed to create a tolerant, moral society. It has not brought peace to its people, despite essentially Arab pleading. It has become increasingly isolated. America, relatively or otherwise, is declining—exhausted by the folly of its elites and, partly, by Israeli scheming to have the US fight wars on its behalf—and it will globally retrench. Some scholars argue in 10 years at most. Signs of a collapsing US-imposed order are everywhere in the region. Middle Easterners will always be there, as witness the history of all previous imperial powers. The Palestinians in historic Palestine are growing, perhaps substantially exceeding Israeli Jews in the next 25 years. If the current trajectory persists, the victims, because of potential widespread destruction in the Middle East, will be both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, for this will not end well nor come to a peaceful conclusion. In this historical moment, it’s in the hands of the US and Western powers, but not for much longer.
Picture the following alternative reality yet again: an Israel coexisting with Palestine, working energetically with Arab democratic states and movements to construct the various facets of confederal arrangements, from Egypt to the eastern Mediterranean to Iraq. Supranational institutions to enhance economic cooperation and integration and accommodate the region’s diversity. A popular US, unequivocally in support of Arab democracy, dignity, human rights. The disappearance of global al-Qaida terrorism virtually overnight. This is not only possible, but also eminently realistic. It must first be imagined.
(12 February 2011)
But we don’t live in an ideal world
Feb 14, 2011
Jerome Slater
I’d like to continue a recent discussion at this site on the Jewish state and a possible settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and do so by addressing the very interesting and subtle comment by Shmuel. (And why don’t you, the excellent Shmuel, identify yourself?)
Shmuel begins by quoting my response to another critic: “I am suggesting that in a Jewish state it would be possible to privilege certain matters of particular concern to Jews, but yet not mean that the Arabs would be treated as second class in all other ways of far greater consequence. You appear to be simply denying such a possibility, but you have provided no analysis of why such a system is impossible.”
Shmuel then writes:
“This was actually the premise of Israel’s declaration of independence, the platform of various political parties and governments throughout Israeli history, and it is an idea still espoused by many Israelis. Yet, it has never worked, de jure or de facto. Furthermore, there is an “us or them” attitude – reflected most grotesquely in the Israeli obsession with the “democratic problem” – that is unlikely to change as long as any sort of preference or privilege is afforded to one group over the other. With a Palestinian state next door, this may even get worse. You are basically talking about nuances of identity and administration that require an incredible amount of good will – far more, in my opinion, than the un-nuanced “one man one vote” approach. As Jerry Haber (Magnes Zionist) points out, the part of whatever democratic polity may emerge that will be Jewish will not cease to be so simply because it does not have greater privilege or control than the non-Jewish parts of society. What comes naturally will come naturally, but I believe it is asking for trouble to begin the entire experiment with any kind of declared inequality – even nominal inequality. With regard to Israel continuing to serve as a safe haven for persecuted Jews, I’m convinced (and have heard as much from Palestinians) that a solution is possible, without the need to define Israel as a specifically Jewish state.”
I would like to see Shmuel develop his argument, and I have several queries for him:
First, you do not appear to reject my argument that in principle there is no inherently irreconcilable conflict between a formal recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and the treatment of its Palestinian citizens as full equals. Rather, you say that this was the way it was supposed to be, but it hasn’t worked. Does that imply that it can never work?
Second, if so, what is the alternative? If I understand your argument correctly, the implication of “the un-nuanced one man one vote approach” that you favor would require a single binational state. If so, why would you consider that a more realistic alternative than relatively small privileging of Jews in a Jewish state? That a binational state would be morally preferable in an ideal world is not the issue–we don’t live in that world. If the Israelis won’t grant full equality to a minority currently constituting 20% of a de facto Jewish state, what possibility is there that they would do so if they became a minority in a binational state?
Third, I agree that the need–or alleged need, if you prefer–for a specifically-defined Jewish state would be greatly and maybe completely alleviated if the Jewish “right of return “ to Israel could be maintained. Can you develop this? Has it become part of the negotiating process, even informally? Would that work even in a binational state? And if immigration were unlimited for Jews but not for others, why wouldn’t that be an inequality? And if you concede that it would be, then wouldn’t that undercut the argument that other inequalities–which you agree might be nominal–cannot be allowed?
Here’s my own bottom line. Given the history of the Jews, it was necessary to establish a Jewish state, somewhere, and in light of that same history, it cannot be said that the need for a Jewish state—de facto or formal—has definitively ended, for all time. That the creation of that state in Israel in a land already inhabited by another people created an injustice is undeniable, but the dilemma of Zionism—there was an imperative need for a Jewish state, but no place to put it—could and of course should have been mitigated in many ways by the Israelis, none of which they did.
It’s not too late to mitigate the inevitable injustice to the Palestinians, but given Israeli attitudes, not to mention the inevitable consequences of more than 80 years of binational conflict, the most that can be expected is an end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state, along the lines accepted by practically everyone, including, it now appears, the West Bank leadership.
We all know that Netanyahu raised the issue of a formal acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish state as a pretext to avoid any settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but unfortunately the demand apparently has taken on a life of its own among most Israelis. That being the case, the Palestinians should agree to the demand, but only as part of an overall settlement that created a viable Palestinian state, accompanied by guarantees that the Israelis would now grant fully equal economic and civil rights to the Israeli Arabs.
This latter argument cannot be refuted by observing that the Israelis have already made that commitment to its Arab citizens and violated it, so what would stop them from doing so in the future? Not much, probably. But that’s not the point: what is the alternative? Isn’t it more likely that the Israelis would live up to their principles in conditions of peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole, than under the current circumstances?
To conclude: we live in an imperfect world, full of injustices, tragic dilemmas, and circumstances we can’t control. There is no perfectly just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even in principle, let alone in practice. If those who rightly abhor Israeli policies give up on a two-state settlement in favor of a binational state that under all present and foreseeable circumstances is pure fantasy, they will get nowhere at all.
‘Newsweek”s ‘new columnist’ slings caliphate tripe
Feb 14, 2011
Anonymous
This is hilariously stupid, from Niall Ferguson, Newsweek’s “new columnist.” I hear he’s going out with Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
Last week, while other commentators ran around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hyperventilating about what they saw as an Arab 1989, I flew to Tel Aviv for the annual Herzliya security conference. The consensus among the assembled experts on the Middle East? A colossal failure of American foreign policy….
These were [Obama’s] words back in June 2009:
America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Those lines will come back to haunt Obama if, as cannot be ruled out, the ultimate beneficiary of his bungling in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country—and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia.
They hate us because of our freedom?
Feb 14, 2011
Philip Weiss
King County, WA, is being sued by the Seattle Mid East Awareness Campaignbecause it would not let Israeli War Crimes ads go on the sides of buses. From the Post-Intelligencer account, it sure sounds like the county was manipulated, or that it allowed itself to be manipulated. The P-I:
King County worried about civil disobedience, violence and even “terrorist activity” if ads critical of Israel ran on the side of Metro buses, a federal judge was told Monday.
But an attorney for a group that wanted to run ads that said “Israeli War Crimes Your Tax Dollars At Work” said the county’s fears were overblown and that it had allowed controversial messages to run on buses before…
The County couldn’t fully quantify the number of complaints and threats, something [Seattle MidEast Awareness Campaign attorney Jeffrey] Grant seized on. He said he only identified 37 threatening e-mails. He also said only about 20 members of the county’s bus drivers’ union complained – out of about 4,000 active members.
[County attorney Endel] Kolde said the furor over the ads had been referenced on a website run by Hamas, the Palestinian group that has been classified a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
Everyone in the Middle East deserves rights except Palestinians
Feb 14, 2011
Philip Weiss
Hillary Clinton is cheerleading the protesters in Iran, as she failed to do in Egypt. This is the same secretary of state who can say nothing about jailed protesters in Palestine, and unending settlements, and uprooting of Palestinian villages. Clinton:
“We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunities that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize.”
Neo-Cons: Egypt shows Bush as prophet and the demise of ‘Arab Exceptionalism’
Feb 14, 2011
David Samel
The people of Egypt have toppled their dictator, which surely ranks among the most remarkable and wonderful human achievements in memory. However, every significant event is an occasion for idiotic and offensive commentary, and this has been no exception. Prominent members of the neo-con community have declared that the Egyptian people should acknowledge a debt of gratitude owed to … George W. Bush.
Yes, it seems that Egyptians were only fulfilling the wise prophecy made by that visionary more than seven years earlier. Of course, these same neo-cons previously operated as though poverty, corruption and tyranny for 80 million people was a small price to pay for their tormentor’s loyalty to Western “values.” Now they claim it is their progressive philosophy that deserves credit. Take Elliott Abrams, whose avoidance of a well-deserved lengthy prison sentence would have been far more tolerable had he not remained a high-profile commentator and Bush Administration official. Here’s what Abrams had to say during the demonstrations:
In November 2003, President George W. Bush laid out this question: “Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?” The massive and violent demonstrations underway in Egypt, the smaller ones in Jordan and Yemen, and the recent revolt in Tunisia that inspired those events, have affirmed that the answer is no and are exploding, once and for all, the myth of Arab exceptionalism. Arab nations, too, yearn to throw off the secret police, to read a newspaper that the Ministry of Information has not censored and to vote in free elections.
Here’s what Abrams doesn’t say. Bush delivered this speech in November, 2003, about eight months after the US-led invasion of Iraq by the coalition of the bullied and bought. It already was quite clear that the WMD’s we had been promised were not going to surface. Having lost their casus belli, Bush & co. were scrambling for a replacement, and the cause of Arab democracy was tried on for size: “Sure, we thought Saddam had WMD’s, but even if we were honestly mistaken, we toppled an evil dictator who was oppressing 25 million people.” Those who opposed the war were excoriated for their love of Saddam and insensitivity to freedom for the peoples of the Middle East. The anti-war crowd was portrayed as quasi-racists who thought Arabs were not equipped to function under democracy, when their real position was that the U.S. could not successfully impose “democracy” by bombing, invasion and occupation. Bush faced a small dilemma in extolling the virtues of Arab democracy. He did not want to offend the tyrannical Arab regimes that were recipients of lavish financial and/or diplomatic support from the U.S., including Egypt and the Bush family favorite, Saudi Arabia. Problem solved! With a wink and a nod to his Arab allies, Bush signaled that he was not really serious about spreading the dangerous notion of democracy throughout the region. According to the Washington Post:
[Bush]praised the governments of Egypt, which said “should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East,” and Saudi Arabia, which he said is “taking first steps toward reform, including a plan for gradual introduction of elections.”
Yes, that is the same article discussing the same speech that was linked by Abrams as support for his thesis of Bush as visionary prophet. Abrams actually exalted his former employer as a guiding light of Egyptian democracy based upon a speech in which Bush praised Egypt’s dictatorship as a role model.
Bush gets credit for mouthing insufferably paternalistic platitudes that were a transparent pretext for waging aggressive war that would take at least hundreds of thousands of lives and displace millions more. His administration continued to bribe the Mubarak regime with over a billion dollars a year to toe the US line, with full awareness that the tyrant was lining his pockets while keeping Egyptians in misery. Anyone familiar with Abrams could not be surprised at his dishonesty, but it helps to be reminded of the depths of depravity to which such “respected” commentators sink on a regular basis.
Another entry in the rogues’ gallery of odious neocon punditry is this gem from Charles Krauthammer. The celebrated Mr. K sees Bush and Blair as members of the vanguard that refused to accept the “leftist” notion of Arab preference for dictatorship over liberty:
Today, everyone and his cousin supports the ‘freedom agenda.’ Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism — the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another sordid example of U.S. imperialism. Now it seems everyone, even the left, is enthusiastic for Arab democracy.
