NOVANEWS
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Americans believe red herring– Iran is Enemy #1. Why?
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Do we really need another ‘Gandhi’?
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A mixture of feelings as prisoners near freedom
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Burg, former Knesset speaker, endorses idea of one state from river to sea
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The Nakba Review of Books, at last
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What do Jewish settlements look like?
Americans believe red herring– Iran is Enemy #1. Why?
Oct 13, 2011
Philip Weiss
I’m not going to answer the question in the headline. But here are three sane voices on the red-herring car-salesman Iranian terror plot. First, MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters says we’ve seen this neoconservative movie before:
But for the lies and manufactured evidence that led us into Iraq, we might actually accept the idea that the Iran plot is thoroughly genuine and in no way linked to the determination of so many inside our government and out of it who are hell-bent on war with Iran and who would do anything they can to achieve it.
Fortunately, however, and this may be the only fortunate thing about the Iraq war, the Iraq experience taught us to be skeptical, especially of anything and everything championed by the hawks.
…The neocons’ “drop bombs now and ask questions later” approach has been thoroughly discredited. How stupid would we have to be, then, to allow the same gang to lead us into yet another reckless war, one that would be infinitely more deadly?
And here is a very insightful piece about the railroading of American public opinion on Iran, called “Dear America, Iran is not your country’s greatest threat,” by Madison Schramm at the CSM (posted at Business Insider— h/t Mark Wauck):
Well before Attorney General Holder announced the thwarted assassination plot, in two recent Gallup polls, Americans rankedIran as enemy No. 1 – in front of the two countries the US is at war in; before China, which owns over $1 trillion in US treasuries; in front of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was found; ahead ofYemen and Somalia where some of the most recent terrorist attackers hail from; and even before unpredictable, weaponizedNorth Korea….
George Bush included Iran in the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in 2002. Rick Santorum said in the Ames Republican presidential debate a little over a month ago, “anyone that suggests that Iran is not a threat to this country or is not a threat to stability in the Middle East is obviously not seeing the world very clearly.” But clarity is not prevailing in the calculations of Mr. Santorum and others. The Eurasia Group’s 2011 Top Risks Report included Iran in the “Red Herring” category.
And this latest furor over Iran may fall into that category as well.
…such a plot would seemingly go against Tehran’s most basic political interests. The last thing the Iranians would want is to empower the US-Saudi relationship. Several pundits have pointed out how the alleged plot also runs counter to Iran’s past behavior. Former Middle East CIA case officer Robert Baer even said, “this is totally uncharacteristic of them.”
…Iran’s military capability never bounced back after the Iran-IraqWar, and Iran only ranks 61st internationally in military expenditures. As for being an economic threat, Iran is ranked 104th internationally in terms of GDP per capita and most certainly will not be giving the US (ranked 11th) a run for its money anytime soon….
Iran’s nuclear program is a strategic, not a direct, threat. Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s annual performance at the UN General Assembly, the leadership in Tehran is rational and would be highly unlikely to actually deploy nuclear weapons. Doing so would ensure the obliteration of Iran, and the leadership in Tehran is eccentric, not suicidal. In September, Ahmadinejad offered to stop uranium enrichment at 20 percent enrichment (90 percent is considered weapons grade) if Iran were guaranteed fuel for a medical research reactor.
Yes, Iran has almost hit the nuclear capable mark, at which point it would possess the technical expertise and materials to move quickly to create a weapon. But if Iran manages to cross that threshold, it will be in the company of the estimated 40 states already in the nuclear capable club. Were the Iranians to gain capability and then to arm, Washington would need to prepare for some muscle flexing – not Armageddon…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Iran will instigate an arms race, but the arms race in the Middle East began in the 1960s when Israel armed. Since then, over half a dozen countries in the Middle East have sought nuclear capability, but Israel is the only country that has succeeded. A nuclear Iran could very well accelerate an arms race, but it could be contained. By leveraging US patronage to the region and continuing to supply Gulf states with conventional weapons, the US could dissuade other countries from joining the race.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
Perpetual war-cheerleader Ken Pollack of Brookings says that, if true, this plot “shows that Tehran is meaner and nastier than ever before” and “would represent a major escalation of Iranian terrorist operations against the United States.” Also, he announces, this “should remind us that Iran also is not a normal country by any stretch of the imagination.” That — self-anointed arbiter of who is and is not a “normal country” — from a person as responsible as any pundit or think-tank expert for the attack on Iraq that killed at least 100,000 human beings, denouncing as Terrorists and abnormal a country that has invaded nobody…
On NPR this morning, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations — and Ken Pollack’s co-author on Iran — said this when asked if he has any doubts about the accuracy of U.S. government statements: “The only unusual aspect of this is actually having a terrorist operation on American territory. I don’t know what the evidence about this is, but I’m not in a position to doubt it.” That perfectly summarizes the political, media and “expert” class’ attitude toward U.S. Government claims: they’re keeping everything secret about their accusations, so there’s no reason to doubt what they’re claiming. The National Security Priesthood that uncritically amplified every U.S. Government claim and fanned the flames of war against Iraq is alive, well, and more mindless and dutiful than ever.
Do we really need another ‘Gandhi’?
Oct 13, 2011
Pam Bailey
Calls abound for another Gandhi — particularly when the subject is the Palestinian struggle for human rights and self-determination. Nicholas Kristof is just the latest. The main reason why my business partner and I called our latest venture the Palestinian Gandhi Projectis that this is the language used by everyone else. “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” they ask when I speak to almost any audience. Or, “if the Palestinians would just follow the lead of Gandhi….” (there would be peace, or Israel would have to give them freedom, is the unfinished end to that sentence).
That’s the reason I recently started the Palestinian Gandhi Project with a “business” partner – to respond with pictures and videos rather than with just words. But, as one friend recently pointed out, none of the individuals we showcase on our website — or even those who are leading the increasingly well-publicized marches in the West Bank — have the stature of Mohandas Gandhi (“Mahatma” means “Great Soul” and is not his real name, contrary to what appears to be popular opinion). That is true; Gandhi commanded a mass following and loyalty – and achieved an impact — that no Palestinian living today is close to emulating. (However, as I pointed out in my last post, some clearly have the potential and Israel is doing its level best to snuff them out.)
However, that is not where I believe the focus should be. Waiting for the next “savior” is an easy excuse that lets too many people off the hook, delaying the pain that all revolutions require from each of us. History has demonstrated repeatedly that personality “cults” are dangerous. The Barak Obama campaign is a very recent, clear case in point. So much adulation was directed his way by progressives and moderates alike — desperate for deliverance from the Bush years — that anyone sounding a note of caution or reservation was virtually shunned. I had just that experience during a book discussion group centered on Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope.” I sensed throughout the pages a lack of backbone, an unwillingness to take a stand and stick to it. But when I tried to express that concern, I was almost railroaded out of the house. That desperate hope for a “prince in shining armor” swept him into office. Many in the progressive movement disengaged, sitting back with a sigh of relief now that a new messiah had been found.
Now look where we are today. Obama has disappointed many, and the progressive movement is only now beginning to regain its former strength, through the “Occupy” movement. Rather, in my opinion, we all must look for, support and celebrate the Gandhian potential within us, and within others. As Clay Sharkey observed in his book, “Here Comes Everybody,” “many jobs that we regard as the province of a single mind actually require a crowd.” That is what the Palestinian Gandhi Project is all about – lifting up the budding leaders and contributors who just need a bit of a megaphone.
But that raises the question of just what we mean by “Gandhian.” Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories,” wrote in his blog recently, “the espousal of nonviolent politics is a necessary but far from sufficient reason for christening a momentous political occasion as a Gandhian moment.” In addition, he writes, in order to be Gandhian, an individual or movement must demonstrate an “unconditional commitment to non-violence of the sort that Gandhi made the signature of his life and theory.” Using these criteria, he says, Nelson Mandela does not qualify, since he never recanted his support for armed resistance to the apartheid regime in South Africa on the part of the African National Congress. And, likewise, I know of few Palestinians – even those who are active practitioners of non-violent protest — who will take violent resistance completely off the table in terms of future options, no matter how much they desire not to use it. Does that make Mandela, or Palestinian leaders such as Mohammed Khatib, any less deserving of the Gandhian mantle? I don’t think so.
Falk goes on to say that another defining characteristic of Gandhi’s legacy is his dedication to “the politics of impossibility” – that is, “dedication to goals that are beyond the limits of the feasible as they are conventionally understood.” This is indeed what defines the individuals we are seeking to highlight in the Palestinian Gandhi Project – Palestinians living under occupation or displacement but who work peacefully to make the impossible achievable, nonetheless.
A mixture of feelings as prisoners near freedom
Oct 13, 2011
Shahd Abusalama
A very confusing feeling passes through me after hearing about the exchange of 1,027 Palestinian detainees for the only Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is held captive by the Palestinian resistance. I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad. Gazing at the faces of the prisoners’ families in the solidarity tent, I see a look that I have never seen before: Eyes glitter with hope. These people have attended every event in solidarity with our detainees, have never given up hope that their freedom is inevitable someday, and have stayed strong during their loved ones’ absence inside Israeli cells. Thinking about those women whose relatives are most likely to be released and seeing their big smiles makes me happy. But at the same time, thinking about the other 5,000 detainees who will steadfastly go on with their resistance in the prisons makes my heart break for them.
When I arrived at the tent today, the wife of the prisoner Nafez Herz, who was sentenced to life-long imprisonment and has been jailed for 26 years, shook hands with me and said very excitedly that she had heard that her husband would be freed. Then she said, “But you can’t imagine how much my heart aches for those families whose prisoner will not be released in this exchange deal. All prisoners’ families have become like one big family. We meet weekly, if not daily in the Red Cross, we share our torments, and we understand each other’s suffering.” I grabbed her hands and pressed them while saying, “We will never forget them, and God willing, they will gain their freedom soon.”
While I was writing this article among the crowd of people inside the Red Cross, I suddenly heard people chanting and clapping and could see a woman jumping with joy. While on the phone, she said loudly, “My husband is going to be free!” Her husband is Abu Thaer Ghneem, who received a life sentence and spent 22 years in prison. As I watched people celebrating and singing for the freedom of the Palestinian detainees, I met his only son, Thaer. He was hugging his mother tight while giving prayers to God showing their thankfulness. I touch his shoulder, attempting to get his attention. “Congratulations! How do you feel?” I asked him. “I was only one day old when my father was arrested, and now I am 22 years old. I’ve always known that I had a father in prison, but never had him around. Now my father is finally going to be set free and fill his place, which has been empty over the course of 22 years of my life.” His answer was very touching and left me shocked and admiring. While he was talking to me, I sensed how he couldn’t find words to describe his happiness at his father’s freedom.
The celebration continued for an hour. Then I return to my former confusion, feeling drowned in a stream of thoughts. 1,027 detainees’ families will celebrate the freedom of their relatives, but what about the fate of the rest of the prisoners?
I heard lots of information since last night concerning the names of the soon-to-be-released prisoners, but it was hard to find two sources sharing the same news, especially about Ahmad Sa’adat and Marwan Al-Barghouti and whether they are involved in the exchange deal. I’ve always felt spiritually connected to them, especially Sa’adat, as he is my father’s friend. I can’t handle thinking that he may not be involved in this exchange deal. He has had enough merciless torment inside Israeli solitary confinement for over two and a half years.
Let’s not forget those who are still inside the Israeli occupation’s prisons and who are still hunger striking, as this hunger strike wasn’t held for an exchange deal, but for the Israeli Prison Service to meet the prisoners’ demands. The number of Palestinian people who are joining the hunger strike in Gaza City is increasing, including the prisoners’ families. We have to speak up out loudly and tell the world that this hunger strike will end in only one case: once Israel addresses our living martyrs’ demands. We will never stop singing for the freedom of Palestinian detainees until the Israeli prisons are hopefully someday emptied.
Shahd Abusalama lives in Gaza and blogs at Palestine From My Eyes.
Burg, former Knesset speaker, endorses idea of one state from river to sea
Oct 13, 2011
Matthew Taylor
Enormous. Former Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg has come out of the colonialism closet and endorsed one democratic state from the river to the sea if Israel fails to take real steps toward two states, which of course, it will not.
This is barely a week after Nicholas Kristof said similar things in the New York Times. If only Thomas Friedman or the NYT’s editorial page had the courage/honesty to write this. From Haaretz:
If the idea of realizing this aspiration [of democracy] in the framework of a democratic Palestinian state does not bear fruit, the Palestinians must embark on a worldwide initiative demanding that they be allowed to vote for the Knesset. Yes, Israel’s parliament.
This initiative must be accompanied by a non-violent civil rebellion. It will attract a great deal of attention and will cast the spotlight on the paradox of Israeli hypocrisy which claims that we are the only democracy in the Middle East but forgets to point out that we are a democracy for Jews alone. Because we are also the only colonialist conqueror that is left in the Western world….
Anyone who is not prepared to do anything to promote two states today – and who is not prepared to pay the price by evacuating the settlements – will, in the end, have to concede all of the state of Israel. That is to say, the Jewish and not so democratic state will be renounced in favor of a legitimate democratic process in which everyone between the Jordan River and the sea has one basic right – the human and civic equality to elect and to be elected. They will have at least the very same rights that are enjoyed by Obama and his new friend who knows just how to manipulate him, Netanyahu.
The Nakba Review of Books, at last
Oct 13, 2011
Philip Weiss
Kudos to the New York Review of Books. In a continuing effort to rethink the conflict, spry editor Robert Silvers has published an important review of David Grossman’s novel, To the End of the Land, by Patricia Storace.
The publication is brave because the New York Review is at last granting an American liberal writer (who I believe is not Jewish) greater moral authority than the Israeli icon whom she is reviewing, negatively. For Storace exposes the blinders worn by even the most respected Israeli artist when trying–honorably– to grapple with the occupation and racism that surround him. And Storace uses the book to interrogate Israeli foundational myths.
Below are three devastating excerpts of the review. 1, What is the Jerusalem neighborhood of the novel and why can’t Grossman describe it?
Trying to get some sense of Ora’s and Ilan’s Ein Karem neighborhood made me understand why Grossman either keeps the family indoors or whisks them out of the neighborhood…. But Ein Karem was once Ain Karim, a Palestinian village whose inhabitants were driven out in 1948. The neighborhood contains “one of the largest concentrations of Palestinian village construction in Israel and the West Bank,” according to a newspaper report, structures that are known to the Israelis as “architecture without architects.” The British Mandate government aimed to preserve Ain Karim, along with the villages of Lifta, al- Malkha, and Deir Yassin; the other three villages were completely destroyed. [Noam Dvir, “Ein Karem Under Threat,” Haaretz , August 25, 2010.] It was apparently a popular, affordable neighborhood for young couples in the 1970s…. The city government covered over Mamluke and Byzantine remains while the spring, supposedly the site where the Virgin Mary uttered the Magnificat, is now polluted, thanks to the public toilets built next to it
Ora’s stone house with arched windows and decorative floor tiles must surely be one of the Palestinian villas. There her son Ofer develops a childhood obsession with Arabs, sleeping with a monkey wrench ready to attack them, making his foster father draw up precise population counts of each Muslim country, misspelling Arab “Arob” in his notebooks, “‘cause they’re always robbing us.” In Grossman’s novel, the neighborhood is little more than a name and decor. Without its historical or social setting, we cannot fully grasp what living there might mean. We sense oppressively that we are being told one story to distract us from others….
2. Storace’s treatment of Grossman’s handling of the Palestinian driver character in the novel, Sami.
These passages are oddly reminiscent of American Civil War literature in Ora’s need to be justified and simultaneously enjoy her privileges: as Scarlett O’Hara says, “Uncle Peter is one of our family; drive on, Peter.” Like the black coachman’s, the Palestinian chauffeur’s driving is an emblem of the limits of his freedom; he can move, but only where ordered. As Uncle Peter must transport his owners, so Sami is summoned to transport Ora’s soldier son, Ofer, to join his unit in an “operation” against his own people.
Ora’s privilege within the novel extends to her freedom to repeat ranting soliloquies about Arabs:
“Them and their lousy honor, and their never-ending insults, and their revenge, and their settling scores over every little word anyone has ever said to them since Creation, and all the world always owes them something, and everyone’s always guilty in their eyes!”
It is unimaginable that Grossman would dare to allow the Palestinian character the same freedom in his thoughts about Jews, but in this and other passages, with steely candor, he reveals the pervasive intensity of the societal hostility to Arabs. Ora remembers sitting in Sami’s taxi while airport policemen hustled him off for a session of abuse, calling him a “shitty Arab.” On Ora’s hike, she stops in a guesthouse run by a group of fanatics who rapturously curse Arabs as an eternal enemy ordained by God before they offer a hot lunch.
Ora’s sons have absorbed this almost dogmatic enmity; Ofer screams and stomps, “Make them go away! Back to their own homes! Why did they even come here?”…
3. Here Storace faults Grossman for touching on the ways that Holocaust education is inculcated in Israeli youth but failing to explain this to the reader. She has done her own research:
The novel gives no description of this rite of passage, but an essay by the chairman of the Early Childhood Department of Efrata Teacher’s College offers an admiring account of a model approach in the classroom. The kindergarten teacher explains that when Hitler
“saw the Jews did not have a country of their own, he decided to kill them all. She emphasizes that the only place Jews can be safe is in the state of Israel, and asks the children ‘to think about those murdered…old people, babies, and children like you.’ She dismissed the likelihood that this information might induce fear, insisting that the children are ‘not frightened very much’ by what she chose to tell them”
