To the Editor:
For many years Israel has intentionally been creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel denies this but the suffering has been documented by Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNRWA (UN Relief Works Agency), CARE, SAVE the CHILDREN (UK) and others. Many people living in Gaza have no electricity, medicine, food or water. Over the years the mass destruction, death and suffering inflicted by Israel upon the captive population of Gaza would not have been possible without US weaponry and US foreign aid (paid for by your tax dollars). In the West Bank of Palestine house demolitions, land theft, and attacks by Israeli Defense Forces occur regularly.
Israel and her supporters do not want this ugly truth (or others) to be exposed and carefully manipulate politicians at home and abroad, like successfully pressuring the Greek government to scuttle the humanitarian Freedom Flotilla before it set sail to Gaza. Unfortunately, Israelís callous and brutal behavior and apartheid policies towards the destitute and disenfranchised Palestinians are causing much of the world to question the legitimacy of the state of Israel. For long term peace and stability Israel must cease her inhumane and self-destructive policies and embrace a course which will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to "stay human."
Eli Kassirer
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What issues are we missing?
Dear editor:
The articles in the Woodstock Times are more and more feeling like a kind of PR for our local Chambers of Commerce-- (pumping up the Playhouse and Shandaken's eateries in the last issue for example.) Why can't we expect some authentic journalism in our weekly paper? We already know Woodstock's radio station is doing "international" rock muzak and couldn't give a hoot about anything of consequence in our area.
However up the road there exist some pretty impressive journalism models. There are two new radio stations (WIOX Roxbury and WGXC in Catskill/Hudson) which take their communities quite seriously. The Catskill Mountain News is doing world class research into local issues covering the local environment with responsible reporting in depth.
What issues are we missing? Well, fracking for one. Does anyone in Woodstock want to know the status of local leases and the position of the DEC and the NYS forestry service? Or what about our local legislators? What is their position on fracking? The New York Times took fracking quite seriously with extensive FOIA work and a comprehensive look at the economics of what some have called the "Enron of the environment". And how about Round Up? Recent reports indicate that the ubiquitous herbicide has caused birth defects and cancer in lab animals. Why is it being sprayed copiously next to the tourist rail tracks and our state highways-- often just a few inches away from reservoir feeder streams.
And there is real international news in which Woodstockers are a crucial element. This story has made headlines from China to Paris to Johannesburg. The US Boat to Gaza was organized by Woodstock citizens. Three of our neighbors have put their lives on the line to stand up for justice in the Middle East: Richard Levy, NIck Abramson and Gail Miller have been on the boat and have been active in the actions with include hunger strikes and attempts to run the blockade enforced by Greek officials doing the bidding of Israel and the U.S. Woodstock and Saugerties residents Jane Hirshman, Laurie Arbeiter and Helaine Meisler are key support persons in Greece for this action.
There is no community of this size in the United States that has sent so many people in the defense of Palestinian rights. And this is not newsworthy?
For shame,
DeeDee Halleck
The articles in the Woodstock Times are more and more feeling like a kind of PR for our local Chambers of Commerce-- (pumping up the Playhouse and Shandaken's eateries in the last issue for example.) Why can't we expect some authentic journalism in our weekly paper? We already know Woodstock's radio station is doing "international" rock muzak and couldn't give a hoot about anything of consequence in our area.
However up the road there exist some pretty impressive journalism models. There are two new radio stations (WIOX Roxbury and WGXC in Catskill/Hudson) which take their communities quite seriously. The Catskill Mountain News is doing world class research into local issues covering the local environment with responsible reporting in depth.
What issues are we missing? Well, fracking for one. Does anyone in Woodstock want to know the status of local leases and the position of the DEC and the NYS forestry service? Or what about our local legislators? What is their position on fracking? The New York Times took fracking quite seriously with extensive FOIA work and a comprehensive look at the economics of what some have called the "Enron of the environment". And how about Round Up? Recent reports indicate that the ubiquitous herbicide has caused birth defects and cancer in lab animals. Why is it being sprayed copiously next to the tourist rail tracks and our state highways-- often just a few inches away from reservoir feeder streams.
And there is real international news in which Woodstockers are a crucial element. This story has made headlines from China to Paris to Johannesburg. The US Boat to Gaza was organized by Woodstock citizens. Three of our neighbors have put their lives on the line to stand up for justice in the Middle East: Richard Levy, NIck Abramson and Gail Miller have been on the boat and have been active in the actions with include hunger strikes and attempts to run the blockade enforced by Greek officials doing the bidding of Israel and the U.S. Woodstock and Saugerties residents Jane Hirshman, Laurie Arbeiter and Helaine Meisler are key support persons in Greece for this action.
There is no community of this size in the United States that has sent so many people in the defense of Palestinian rights. And this is not newsworthy?
For shame,
DeeDee Halleck
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Imagine yourself driving to work
Imagine yourself driving to work, and instead of the quick 10, 20, 30, or even hour long commute, it took you several hours. Often you aren’t able to make it to work because you have to pass through checkpoints where security has the right to arbitrarily deny you passage. Imagine yourself as a college student unable to complete your education because you can’t get to school on a regular basis because of these same checkpoints. Imagine that you or a loved one has a medical emergency, and you or your loved one dies because you aren't allowed through the checkpoint. Imagine yet again, being a farmer who has a truck of produce to sell and you can’t because you have had to sit for hours at the checkpoint and your harvest has rotted in the heat of the day. Or imagine yourself as another farmer who always had easy access to your fields, but now you have to walk hours to get to an opening in a separation wall that has been built. Often, after you have walked for hours, you get to an opening and it has been arbitrarily closed for the day, and you have to go back home, unable to tend your land. How would these situations thwart and affect your physical and mental health, the ability to live a full life, and your society as a whole? These are some of the hardships faced on a daily basis by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The ability to lead a life - go to school or work, farm your land, even visit family in another town, are civil rights that have all been strictly curtailed and denied to Palestinians by the Israeli government. A government supported by our government and our tax dollars despite flagrant violations of human rights and international laws.
Alison Francis
Alison Francis
Sunday, May 1, 2011
To the Editor:
Most Americans want millionaires and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. We want universal health care, affordable education and housing, Social Security, and Medicare. Americans want clean renewable energy and safe, healthy food. We want freedom and liberty. We donít want endless wars, hydro-fracking, bailouts of big banks, or fat cat lobbyists dictating government policy. Reliable surveys support all of the above statements.
What do we get? Tax cuts for the rich and gaping tax loopholes for corporations. Skyrocketing health costs and 40 million without health insurance. Foreclosures galore and attacks on Social Security and Medicare. We get endless wars bankrupting us fiscally and morally. We get oil spills, nuclear leaks, GMO frankenstein foods, fracking, drilling and extreme weather from climate change. We are spied upon, lied to, frisked at airports, and subject to assassination by Presidential decree because of the so called ìwar on terror.î
We canít have what we want because the USA is an occupied territory. It is occupied by a military/industrial/corporate ìpower eliteî which is driven by radical greed and an insatiable appetite for profits and power. An occupied people never get what they want. Just ask the Palestinians.
The Palestinian people have been occupied militarily by Israel for decades. There are lots of things the Palestinians want; like enough food, water, electricity, and fuel to survive from day to day. They would like their stolen land and homes back, and to be free from attacks, abuse and daily humiliation by the Israeli Defense Forces and violent Jewish settlers. Palestinians want their freedom and many Israelis support this. Nearly the entire world wants this (look at the UN votes critical of Israel). So why canít they get what they want?
For the same reason we canít! The same powerful interests that stifle the true aspirations of the American people are working to maintain the status quo in Palestine/Israel. The $3 Billion dollars of US taxpayer money that goes to Israel each year is one way our military/ industrial complex exerts influence over the Middle East. The tentacles of occupation are crushing all of us in a death grip from which we must all struggle to break free.
Eli Kassirer New Paltz, NY
What do we get? Tax cuts for the rich and gaping tax loopholes for corporations. Skyrocketing health costs and 40 million without health insurance. Foreclosures galore and attacks on Social Security and Medicare. We get endless wars bankrupting us fiscally and morally. We get oil spills, nuclear leaks, GMO frankenstein foods, fracking, drilling and extreme weather from climate change. We are spied upon, lied to, frisked at airports, and subject to assassination by Presidential decree because of the so called ìwar on terror.î
We canít have what we want because the USA is an occupied territory. It is occupied by a military/industrial/corporate ìpower eliteî which is driven by radical greed and an insatiable appetite for profits and power. An occupied people never get what they want. Just ask the Palestinians.
The Palestinian people have been occupied militarily by Israel for decades. There are lots of things the Palestinians want; like enough food, water, electricity, and fuel to survive from day to day. They would like their stolen land and homes back, and to be free from attacks, abuse and daily humiliation by the Israeli Defense Forces and violent Jewish settlers. Palestinians want their freedom and many Israelis support this. Nearly the entire world wants this (look at the UN votes critical of Israel). So why canít they get what they want?
For the same reason we canít! The same powerful interests that stifle the true aspirations of the American people are working to maintain the status quo in Palestine/Israel. The $3 Billion dollars of US taxpayer money that goes to Israel each year is one way our military/ industrial complex exerts influence over the Middle East. The tentacles of occupation are crushing all of us in a death grip from which we must all struggle to break free.
Eli Kassirer New Paltz, NY
Friday, April 1, 2011
Packaging the Revolution: Muslims' Communications Lessons Post 9/11
Packaging the Revolution: Muslims' Communications Lessons Post 9/11
ZMag April 2011
By Jacqueline O'Rourke
Almost two months into what is being packaged as the "Arab" revolution, the international community is struggling to counteract the messages of an historical communication success for predominantly Muslim communities. Both the protests in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate a media savvy on the part of a new generation of Muslims, which clearly has learned lessons of the past decade when it comes to positioning any protest originating in Muslim majority communities. All attempts, by both Arab dictators and early attempts by American and European media, to label the revolution "Islamic" have failed, thanks to the youth who initiated the movement. This generation grew up in the rhetoric of the "war on terror" and are familiar with the tenuous categorization of "good" and "bad" Muslims - the" bad" ones being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the "good" ones being anxious to disassociate themselves from the "bad" ones. These young people are aware that the binary of traditional Orientalism - Islam versus the West - has been replaced by a new binary of "good" and "bad" Muslims and that the "good" Muslims, represent liberalism, moderation and compatibility of Islam with Western modernity. They are well aware that throughout periods of high alert, Islam and Muslims are routinely denigrated and stereotyped as enemies of freedom and civilization, victimized as potential holders of a threatening ideology, and even tortured to satiate the public need for perceived security. They also know that diverse players, from neo-cons to liberals to leftists, fragment Islam into convenient differentiations between various "types" of Muslims: the progressives, moderates, fundamentalists, neo-fundamentalists, and jihadists. They have lived in a world where simply being Muslim has become a highly contentious and visibly political stance. And even more important than all of these lessons, they know that the binary between "good" and "bad" Muslim is highly unstable and that the objectives of "good" Muslims are often quickly appropriated for both neo-liberal imperialist and leftist agendas. What they must be careful to remember, however, a lesson etched in recent Arab history, is that an ally today can become an enemy tomorrow.
This communication strategy of the youth movement began with a conscious decision to articulate a revolution by Muslim masses in secular language, contrary to various movements which pre-dated it which often expressed secular political ambitions in religious language. By positing the uprisings as revolutions rather than jihad, Muslims are demonstrating that to be Muslim does not necessarily mean to aspire to live in a theocratic state. They are also demonstrating, however, that being Muslim is actually an impetus to rise up against oppression which can be articulated in the indigenous vocabulary and lived experience of millions of Muslims across the region. This new communications plan is a direct attempt to create a counter-narrative to the predominant one which has dominated Western discourse for the past decade. That narrative runs roughly like this: The Muslims are jealous of the freedom and technological advantages of the West. Their society has been in decline after their scientific advances of medieval Europe. Instead, they try to use the West's technology against itself. Whether airplanes, viruses, or chemicals, Muslims have appropriated science for the purposes of terrorism. Consider for example Thomas Friedman's post 9/11 assertion that
"äterrorists can hijack Boeing planes, but in the spiritless monolithic societies they want to build, they could never produce them. The terrorists can exploit the U.S. - made Internet but in their suffocated world of one God, one truth, one way, one leader, they could never invent it" (Longitudes and Attitudes 46).
These days, however, even Friedman's tune has changed slightly as he writes admirably of the insatiable spirit of youth who have used social networking to inspire a revolution. At the same time, there is something ominous in this admiration which is exemplified in Friedman's recent New York Times op-ed in which he poses the major challenge to youth is to deconstruct the meta- narrative of the region, which he argues, of course, is false:
"That narrative says: 'The Arabs and Muslims are victims of an imperialist-Zionist conspiracy aided by reactionary regimes in the Arab world. It has as its goal keeping the Arabs and Muslims backward in order to exploit their oil riches and prevent them from becoming as strong as they used to be in the Middle Ages - because that is dangerous for Israel and Western interests.'
"Today that meta-narrative is embraced across the Arab-Muslim political spectrum, from the secular left to the Islamic right. Deconstructing that story, and rebuilding a post-1979 alternative story based on responsibility, modernization, Islamic reformation and cross-cultural dialogue, is this generation's challenge. I think it can happen, but it will require the success of the democratizing self-government movements in Iran and Iraq. That would spawn a whole new story".
The ominous echo in Friedman's analysis is his contention that this meta-narrative is paranoid and should be replaced by a mantra of neo-liberal ideology, which, conveniently, will not challenge American and Israeli interests.
Likewise,the left has been particularly euphoric with the youthful secular messaging of the "Arab" revolution and is hopeful that it can be appropriated to universally invigorate the left. For example,Hardt and Negri, in a recent article in The Guardian, place hope that the Arab revolutions will be this generation's Latin American struggle, as " a laboratory of political experimentation", a kind of "ideological house-cleaning, sweeping away the racist conceptions of a clash of civilizations that consign Arab politics to the past". They argue:
"This is a threshold through which neoliberalism cannot pass and capitalism is put to question. And Islamic rule is completely inadequate to meet these needs. Here insurrection touches on not only the equilibriums of North Africa and the Middle East but also the global system of economic governance".
Hardt and Negri are right to note that the revolutions rejuvenate some basic principles of the left which had been discarded as outdated: principles of justice and universalism and popular power, but they ignore that these principles which they praise are the very foundations of Islam itself, the cultural foundation from which these revolutions are being generated. This nostalgia to migrate the nature of the revolution into a communist agenda betrays a need, not to understand how Islamic societies harbor the same instincts toward social justice as the left, but to leave Islam out of any serious inquiry into both the reason behind the revolution and the future of its achievement.
Slavoj Zizek is, perhaps, a noted exception, though his ideas on Islam are often inconsistent. Zizek's Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle, which Zizek admits is not a book about Iraq, was reminiscent of Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. In fact, Zizek used Iraq to elaborate his Lacanian theories, while in his post 9/11 Welcome to the Desert of the Real, he saw an opportunity for radical Islam to be articulated into a socialist project:
"This means the choice for Muslims is not either Islamo fascist fundamentalism or the painful process of Islamic Protestantism which would make Islam compatible with modernization. There is a third option, which has already been tried - Islamic socialism. The proper politically attitude is to emphasize, with symptomatic insistence, how the terrorist attacks have nothing to do with real Islam, that great and sublime religion- would it not be more appropriate to recognize Islam's resistance to modernization? And, rather than bemoaning the fact that Islam, of all the great religions, is the most resistant to modernization, we should, rather, conceive of this resistance as an open chance, as "undecidable": this resistance does not necessarily lead to Islamo fascism, it could also be articulated into a socialist project. Precisely because Islam harbors the "worst" potentials of the Fascist answer to our present predicament, it could also turn out to be the site for the "best" (133-4).
This plea for a type of Islamic socialism remains consistent in Zizek's work on the Arab revolution, from his opinion editorial in The Guardian to his recent appearance on Riz Khan's show on Al Jazeera. Ironically the country where so called Islamic socialism has been tried, Libya under Gaddafi's Green Book program, is now very much under attack.
In fact, the discussion which took place on Riz Khan's Al Jazeera show, where both Tariq Ramadan and Slavoj Zizek offered their insights is representative of the lenses being used to interpret this revolution and steer it away from the reality that it is a revolution by Muslims, but not necessarily Islamists. Ramadan carefully argued that the revolution is not ideologically inspired and that the we must be cognizant of the reality that Western power wants changes in the region which at the same time enables the global situation to remain the same. Ramadan confronted head on the concerns about the involvement of Islamist politics, now that Arab dictators are disappearing, and argued that the fear of a monolithical, radical Islam is merely a guise upon which the West and Israel maintain hegemony over Muslim populations. Using the example of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which he argued is diverse in ideologies, he longingly looked to the example of Turkey, not Iran, where Islamism and political life has been successfully integrated, be it, under the eye of very watchful military. ?i?ek used the occasion to comment on universalism, and expressed his admiration of the Arabs who he argued truly understand democracy much better than does the West. Echoing his argument in Welcome to the Desert of the Real, and not responding to Ramadan's contention of the diversity contained under the umbrella of Islamist politics, he claimed that the choices open to the revolution are not just "Muslim fundamentalist Islam" or liberal democracy, but must include the left and argues for a synthesis of Islamic and leftist ideologies. Unfortunately, however, ?i?ek's well-intentioned conclusions betray similar biases to those that lurk in Friedman's neo-liberalism: that is that the Arab revolution must speak the language of the West - whether it be the left for ?i?ek or the ideology of liberalism for Friedman. The reality is, right now, the revolution is speaking many languages, as it contains diverse aspirations. It is speaking the language of universalism, which is neither left nor neo-liberal, but at the very foundation of pluralistic Muslim societies.
Perhaps what Friedman and ?i?ek fail to mention, and Ramadan merely hints at, is that the silence of Islamists of various stripes has helped the revolution immensely. That doesn't mean, however, that the Muslim social structure of the societies under upheaval is not related to the revolution itself. The struggle against injustice is the root of Muslim civil life and the young revolutionaries have been raised in this tradition where five pillars organize both social and spiritual life. The first pillar is to worship no God, but God and to recognize Muhammad as his messenger. This pillar, when applied to a contemporary reality, puts spiritual life and equality of all people as a first priority over the striving for global capital and Western liberalism. To place more attention on the material at the expense of the good of the whole community is against the major principle of tawheed in Islam, which always places God as the priority. Further, this very first pillar, by recognizing the role of revelation in the acquisition of knowledge, challenges one of the major contentions of the Western metaphysical tradition - that knowledge is secular, learned in the world, only, not transcendental. The recognition of the validity of both secular and transcendental knowledge poses a major philosophical challenge to this paradigm. The second and third pillars of daily prayers and fasting, also focus social life on the spiritualand identification with the poor and the dispossessed. The fourth pillar of zakat, institutes a system for the distribution of community wealth. The fifth pillar, the hajj, is a spiritual and politically symbolic ritual of the equality of all human beings, regardless of race or gender.
This rather rudimentary description of how basic pillars of Islam are related to an agenda for economic, social, and political equality, as well as the right of self governance, demonstrates how these pillars are present in the spirit of the contemporary revolution. The point is that the revolutionaries have been socialized in this Islamic context and thus they are articulating this context. The revolution does not need to turn to theprinciples of secular liberalism or the left to express its vision. The roots of the revolution are in Muslim societies and as such contain the roots of Islam which are now being articulated to Western audiences through action, in a manner which has been impossible over the past decade under the oppression of the "war on terror". If traditional Islamic political ideology belongs to the last generation, then the living Islam belongs to the present. The youth's success has been their remarkable ability to package this living tradition in a secular language. The revolution is ending the monopoly that the conservative Islamists have had over dissent, and this fresh articulation is from within a living Muslim tradition, which is secular, leftist and Muslim, all at once. There is hope that this new political space will be fertile ground for moving beyond simplistic divisions of 'religious' versus 'secular', another misnomer in understanding the politics of the region.
One critical reality is that this revolution is not only a revolution against Arab dictators, but a revolution against the humiliation Muslims have been facing in the post 9/11 global landscape. In other words, the Arab/Muslim people are not just enraged with political, social and economic oppression, they are also angry with their rulers' complicity with imperialism, particularly American and Israeli. In short, the revolution has erupted from Muslim societies as a result of internal oppression and as a response to political, economic and cultural imperialism, with which the post 9/11 youth are intricately familiar. In this regard, the international community must get the message that this revolution is as much against its hypocritical and condescending manner of dealing with Muslim societies as it is against Mubarak, Ben Ali or Gaddafi.
When the international community issued its response on February 28th to the violence in Libya, from the vantage point of the politically savvy Arab masses, its hypocrisy, once again, became obvious. While American warships prepare to enforce a no fly zone, as of yet announced but seemingly inevitable, freeze Gaddafi's assets and impose an arms embargo on Libya, a few days earlier this same American government vetoed a United Nations Security Council Resolution, voted on by 14 out of 15 members, to make Israeli settlements illegal. After the horrendous and condemned Operation Cast Lead on Gaza in 2009 and the attack on the fictional "humanitarian terrorists" of the Mavi Mamara in 2010, the memory of "international" inaction to violent suppression of human rights and dignity in the region is still very much alive. This is not to mention, of course, the ongoing violations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the now transparent subservience of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States and Israel as evidenced in the Palestine papers. The Arab and Muslim masses are accustomed to such hypocrisy: one rule for Israel and another for all others, but this time the situation is even more precarious.
In a unipolar world where America manipulates the umbrellas of NATO and the UN to fabricate an "international" consensus, the Arab revolution is in danger of being co-opted and appropriated for the goals of global capital and American "security". Talks of the necessity of humanitarian aid and access of humanitarian workers to Libya, the installment of their presence in Tunisia and Egypt, are warning signs for a region well accustomed to the connection between humanitarianism and following military intervention. The memory of the simultaneous dropping of food baskets and bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh in the minds of the activists on the streets, who are asserting, unequivocally from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, that while they welcome diplomatic support, they do not wish military intervention in their struggles. The United States is well aware of this, of course, and although a slow learner, has no doubt learned some lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence, it is catapulting the European Union and the United Nations to the forefront as the key messengers of international humanitarian concern. What the Americans have learned from Iraq particularly, is not to go it alone, but to use the umbrella of "international" outrage at human rights to secure its intervention in a revolution which could threaten its control over oil resources and its military supremacy in the region. The argument it has used for the past 50 years that Israel is the only outpost of democracy in a dark, medieval Muslim heartland is now being radically deconstructed as the Arab masses demonstrate not only their desire for democracy, but also their willingness to break from neo-colonial rule. It is the latter, of course, which is problematic for the Americans, the European Union and the Israelis.
The recent diplomatic flurry, and the impending imposition of a no fly zone on Libya is an attempt to ensure that Western interests are not subverted by too much anti imperialist sentiment. And this will be the turning point of the revolution. Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis, Libyans, and certainly yet others to come forward, are simply fed up with having their resources raped for the benefit of the North and selected locals who trade their nations' resources for the embellishment of their own personal power. They are fed up with being treated as perpetual Muslim infants who cannot grasp the adult complexities of concepts such as liberalism, leftism, or democracy. Meanwhile the United Nations, the EU and the Americans are all singing in the same choir, claiming to welcome and even champion these popular democratic movements, expecting that the Arabs will be amnesiac to the reality that they have supported these dictators for over 40 years, and that wretched memory of Muslim persecution, particularly over the past decade, will magically disappear.
The Arab masses, which now include not only the youth but opposition figures, rebels, peasants, the cosmopolitan middle class and others, are well aware of the international politics at play as well as the impending world economic crisis of historic proportions. They are not only ousting their leaders, but demanding accountability for the corruption, and simultaneously challenging the success of global capital - a world economy that has been organized to benefit the few at the expense of the many. And they are also spearheading a social and cultural revolution, organizing across class and ideology from within their own indigenous Muslim social fabric which provides the universality of such an enabling mobilization.
This is why Libya has become the frontline of this dual battle against internal dictators and imperialism. Gaddafi provides the international community the opportunity, under the guise of a hypocritical concern for humanitarianism, to intervene in a challenge to American hegemony throughout the Arab region. And it is evident that the Muslim majorities of Libya, and across the Middle East and North Africa, have learned a painful lesson over the past decade- a lesson in communication, a valuable lesson in employing the West's own language of secularism to frame its aspirations. The revolution may have been started by media savvy youth who led the way in framing the argument in a secular, liberal or leftist, narrative understandable to the accepted discourse of the West. It will be carried forward, however, by Muslim societies which have truly come of age in giving birth to a new political space that the entire world is watching being born.
Jacqueline O'Rourke is a consultant in research and communications who lives in Doha, Qatar. She has written academic materials for language acquisition, recently published a book of poetry and is currently awaiting the publication of her PhD thesis titled Representing Violence: Jihad, Theory, Fiction. She can be reached at jacmaryor@...
ZMag April 2011
By Jacqueline O'Rourke
Almost two months into what is being packaged as the "Arab" revolution, the international community is struggling to counteract the messages of an historical communication success for predominantly Muslim communities. Both the protests in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate a media savvy on the part of a new generation of Muslims, which clearly has learned lessons of the past decade when it comes to positioning any protest originating in Muslim majority communities. All attempts, by both Arab dictators and early attempts by American and European media, to label the revolution "Islamic" have failed, thanks to the youth who initiated the movement. This generation grew up in the rhetoric of the "war on terror" and are familiar with the tenuous categorization of "good" and "bad" Muslims - the" bad" ones being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the "good" ones being anxious to disassociate themselves from the "bad" ones. These young people are aware that the binary of traditional Orientalism - Islam versus the West - has been replaced by a new binary of "good" and "bad" Muslims and that the "good" Muslims, represent liberalism, moderation and compatibility of Islam with Western modernity. They are well aware that throughout periods of high alert, Islam and Muslims are routinely denigrated and stereotyped as enemies of freedom and civilization, victimized as potential holders of a threatening ideology, and even tortured to satiate the public need for perceived security. They also know that diverse players, from neo-cons to liberals to leftists, fragment Islam into convenient differentiations between various "types" of Muslims: the progressives, moderates, fundamentalists, neo-fundamentalists, and jihadists. They have lived in a world where simply being Muslim has become a highly contentious and visibly political stance. And even more important than all of these lessons, they know that the binary between "good" and "bad" Muslim is highly unstable and that the objectives of "good" Muslims are often quickly appropriated for both neo-liberal imperialist and leftist agendas. What they must be careful to remember, however, a lesson etched in recent Arab history, is that an ally today can become an enemy tomorrow.This communication strategy of the youth movement began with a conscious decision to articulate a revolution by Muslim masses in secular language, contrary to various movements which pre-dated it which often expressed secular political ambitions in religious language. By positing the uprisings as revolutions rather than jihad, Muslims are demonstrating that to be Muslim does not necessarily mean to aspire to live in a theocratic state. They are also demonstrating, however, that being Muslim is actually an impetus to rise up against oppression which can be articulated in the indigenous vocabulary and lived experience of millions of Muslims across the region. This new communications plan is a direct attempt to create a counter-narrative to the predominant one which has dominated Western discourse for the past decade. That narrative runs roughly like this: The Muslims are jealous of the freedom and technological advantages of the West. Their society has been in decline after their scientific advances of medieval Europe. Instead, they try to use the West's technology against itself. Whether airplanes, viruses, or chemicals, Muslims have appropriated science for the purposes of terrorism. Consider for example Thomas Friedman's post 9/11 assertion that
"äterrorists can hijack Boeing planes, but in the spiritless monolithic societies they want to build, they could never produce them. The terrorists can exploit the U.S. - made Internet but in their suffocated world of one God, one truth, one way, one leader, they could never invent it" (Longitudes and Attitudes 46).
These days, however, even Friedman's tune has changed slightly as he writes admirably of the insatiable spirit of youth who have used social networking to inspire a revolution. At the same time, there is something ominous in this admiration which is exemplified in Friedman's recent New York Times op-ed in which he poses the major challenge to youth is to deconstruct the meta- narrative of the region, which he argues, of course, is false:
"That narrative says: 'The Arabs and Muslims are victims of an imperialist-Zionist conspiracy aided by reactionary regimes in the Arab world. It has as its goal keeping the Arabs and Muslims backward in order to exploit their oil riches and prevent them from becoming as strong as they used to be in the Middle Ages - because that is dangerous for Israel and Western interests.'
"Today that meta-narrative is embraced across the Arab-Muslim political spectrum, from the secular left to the Islamic right. Deconstructing that story, and rebuilding a post-1979 alternative story based on responsibility, modernization, Islamic reformation and cross-cultural dialogue, is this generation's challenge. I think it can happen, but it will require the success of the democratizing self-government movements in Iran and Iraq. That would spawn a whole new story".
The ominous echo in Friedman's analysis is his contention that this meta-narrative is paranoid and should be replaced by a mantra of neo-liberal ideology, which, conveniently, will not challenge American and Israeli interests.
Likewise,the left has been particularly euphoric with the youthful secular messaging of the "Arab" revolution and is hopeful that it can be appropriated to universally invigorate the left. For example,Hardt and Negri, in a recent article in The Guardian, place hope that the Arab revolutions will be this generation's Latin American struggle, as " a laboratory of political experimentation", a kind of "ideological house-cleaning, sweeping away the racist conceptions of a clash of civilizations that consign Arab politics to the past". They argue:
"This is a threshold through which neoliberalism cannot pass and capitalism is put to question. And Islamic rule is completely inadequate to meet these needs. Here insurrection touches on not only the equilibriums of North Africa and the Middle East but also the global system of economic governance".
Hardt and Negri are right to note that the revolutions rejuvenate some basic principles of the left which had been discarded as outdated: principles of justice and universalism and popular power, but they ignore that these principles which they praise are the very foundations of Islam itself, the cultural foundation from which these revolutions are being generated. This nostalgia to migrate the nature of the revolution into a communist agenda betrays a need, not to understand how Islamic societies harbor the same instincts toward social justice as the left, but to leave Islam out of any serious inquiry into both the reason behind the revolution and the future of its achievement.
Slavoj Zizek is, perhaps, a noted exception, though his ideas on Islam are often inconsistent. Zizek's Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle, which Zizek admits is not a book about Iraq, was reminiscent of Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. In fact, Zizek used Iraq to elaborate his Lacanian theories, while in his post 9/11 Welcome to the Desert of the Real, he saw an opportunity for radical Islam to be articulated into a socialist project:
"This means the choice for Muslims is not either Islamo fascist fundamentalism or the painful process of Islamic Protestantism which would make Islam compatible with modernization. There is a third option, which has already been tried - Islamic socialism. The proper politically attitude is to emphasize, with symptomatic insistence, how the terrorist attacks have nothing to do with real Islam, that great and sublime religion- would it not be more appropriate to recognize Islam's resistance to modernization? And, rather than bemoaning the fact that Islam, of all the great religions, is the most resistant to modernization, we should, rather, conceive of this resistance as an open chance, as "undecidable": this resistance does not necessarily lead to Islamo fascism, it could also be articulated into a socialist project. Precisely because Islam harbors the "worst" potentials of the Fascist answer to our present predicament, it could also turn out to be the site for the "best" (133-4).
This plea for a type of Islamic socialism remains consistent in Zizek's work on the Arab revolution, from his opinion editorial in The Guardian to his recent appearance on Riz Khan's show on Al Jazeera. Ironically the country where so called Islamic socialism has been tried, Libya under Gaddafi's Green Book program, is now very much under attack.
In fact, the discussion which took place on Riz Khan's Al Jazeera show, where both Tariq Ramadan and Slavoj Zizek offered their insights is representative of the lenses being used to interpret this revolution and steer it away from the reality that it is a revolution by Muslims, but not necessarily Islamists. Ramadan carefully argued that the revolution is not ideologically inspired and that the we must be cognizant of the reality that Western power wants changes in the region which at the same time enables the global situation to remain the same. Ramadan confronted head on the concerns about the involvement of Islamist politics, now that Arab dictators are disappearing, and argued that the fear of a monolithical, radical Islam is merely a guise upon which the West and Israel maintain hegemony over Muslim populations. Using the example of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which he argued is diverse in ideologies, he longingly looked to the example of Turkey, not Iran, where Islamism and political life has been successfully integrated, be it, under the eye of very watchful military. ?i?ek used the occasion to comment on universalism, and expressed his admiration of the Arabs who he argued truly understand democracy much better than does the West. Echoing his argument in Welcome to the Desert of the Real, and not responding to Ramadan's contention of the diversity contained under the umbrella of Islamist politics, he claimed that the choices open to the revolution are not just "Muslim fundamentalist Islam" or liberal democracy, but must include the left and argues for a synthesis of Islamic and leftist ideologies. Unfortunately, however, ?i?ek's well-intentioned conclusions betray similar biases to those that lurk in Friedman's neo-liberalism: that is that the Arab revolution must speak the language of the West - whether it be the left for ?i?ek or the ideology of liberalism for Friedman. The reality is, right now, the revolution is speaking many languages, as it contains diverse aspirations. It is speaking the language of universalism, which is neither left nor neo-liberal, but at the very foundation of pluralistic Muslim societies.
Perhaps what Friedman and ?i?ek fail to mention, and Ramadan merely hints at, is that the silence of Islamists of various stripes has helped the revolution immensely. That doesn't mean, however, that the Muslim social structure of the societies under upheaval is not related to the revolution itself. The struggle against injustice is the root of Muslim civil life and the young revolutionaries have been raised in this tradition where five pillars organize both social and spiritual life. The first pillar is to worship no God, but God and to recognize Muhammad as his messenger. This pillar, when applied to a contemporary reality, puts spiritual life and equality of all people as a first priority over the striving for global capital and Western liberalism. To place more attention on the material at the expense of the good of the whole community is against the major principle of tawheed in Islam, which always places God as the priority. Further, this very first pillar, by recognizing the role of revelation in the acquisition of knowledge, challenges one of the major contentions of the Western metaphysical tradition - that knowledge is secular, learned in the world, only, not transcendental. The recognition of the validity of both secular and transcendental knowledge poses a major philosophical challenge to this paradigm. The second and third pillars of daily prayers and fasting, also focus social life on the spiritualand identification with the poor and the dispossessed. The fourth pillar of zakat, institutes a system for the distribution of community wealth. The fifth pillar, the hajj, is a spiritual and politically symbolic ritual of the equality of all human beings, regardless of race or gender.
This rather rudimentary description of how basic pillars of Islam are related to an agenda for economic, social, and political equality, as well as the right of self governance, demonstrates how these pillars are present in the spirit of the contemporary revolution. The point is that the revolutionaries have been socialized in this Islamic context and thus they are articulating this context. The revolution does not need to turn to theprinciples of secular liberalism or the left to express its vision. The roots of the revolution are in Muslim societies and as such contain the roots of Islam which are now being articulated to Western audiences through action, in a manner which has been impossible over the past decade under the oppression of the "war on terror". If traditional Islamic political ideology belongs to the last generation, then the living Islam belongs to the present. The youth's success has been their remarkable ability to package this living tradition in a secular language. The revolution is ending the monopoly that the conservative Islamists have had over dissent, and this fresh articulation is from within a living Muslim tradition, which is secular, leftist and Muslim, all at once. There is hope that this new political space will be fertile ground for moving beyond simplistic divisions of 'religious' versus 'secular', another misnomer in understanding the politics of the region.
One critical reality is that this revolution is not only a revolution against Arab dictators, but a revolution against the humiliation Muslims have been facing in the post 9/11 global landscape. In other words, the Arab/Muslim people are not just enraged with political, social and economic oppression, they are also angry with their rulers' complicity with imperialism, particularly American and Israeli. In short, the revolution has erupted from Muslim societies as a result of internal oppression and as a response to political, economic and cultural imperialism, with which the post 9/11 youth are intricately familiar. In this regard, the international community must get the message that this revolution is as much against its hypocritical and condescending manner of dealing with Muslim societies as it is against Mubarak, Ben Ali or Gaddafi.
When the international community issued its response on February 28th to the violence in Libya, from the vantage point of the politically savvy Arab masses, its hypocrisy, once again, became obvious. While American warships prepare to enforce a no fly zone, as of yet announced but seemingly inevitable, freeze Gaddafi's assets and impose an arms embargo on Libya, a few days earlier this same American government vetoed a United Nations Security Council Resolution, voted on by 14 out of 15 members, to make Israeli settlements illegal. After the horrendous and condemned Operation Cast Lead on Gaza in 2009 and the attack on the fictional "humanitarian terrorists" of the Mavi Mamara in 2010, the memory of "international" inaction to violent suppression of human rights and dignity in the region is still very much alive. This is not to mention, of course, the ongoing violations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the now transparent subservience of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States and Israel as evidenced in the Palestine papers. The Arab and Muslim masses are accustomed to such hypocrisy: one rule for Israel and another for all others, but this time the situation is even more precarious.
In a unipolar world where America manipulates the umbrellas of NATO and the UN to fabricate an "international" consensus, the Arab revolution is in danger of being co-opted and appropriated for the goals of global capital and American "security". Talks of the necessity of humanitarian aid and access of humanitarian workers to Libya, the installment of their presence in Tunisia and Egypt, are warning signs for a region well accustomed to the connection between humanitarianism and following military intervention. The memory of the simultaneous dropping of food baskets and bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh in the minds of the activists on the streets, who are asserting, unequivocally from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, that while they welcome diplomatic support, they do not wish military intervention in their struggles. The United States is well aware of this, of course, and although a slow learner, has no doubt learned some lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence, it is catapulting the European Union and the United Nations to the forefront as the key messengers of international humanitarian concern. What the Americans have learned from Iraq particularly, is not to go it alone, but to use the umbrella of "international" outrage at human rights to secure its intervention in a revolution which could threaten its control over oil resources and its military supremacy in the region. The argument it has used for the past 50 years that Israel is the only outpost of democracy in a dark, medieval Muslim heartland is now being radically deconstructed as the Arab masses demonstrate not only their desire for democracy, but also their willingness to break from neo-colonial rule. It is the latter, of course, which is problematic for the Americans, the European Union and the Israelis.
The recent diplomatic flurry, and the impending imposition of a no fly zone on Libya is an attempt to ensure that Western interests are not subverted by too much anti imperialist sentiment. And this will be the turning point of the revolution. Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis, Libyans, and certainly yet others to come forward, are simply fed up with having their resources raped for the benefit of the North and selected locals who trade their nations' resources for the embellishment of their own personal power. They are fed up with being treated as perpetual Muslim infants who cannot grasp the adult complexities of concepts such as liberalism, leftism, or democracy. Meanwhile the United Nations, the EU and the Americans are all singing in the same choir, claiming to welcome and even champion these popular democratic movements, expecting that the Arabs will be amnesiac to the reality that they have supported these dictators for over 40 years, and that wretched memory of Muslim persecution, particularly over the past decade, will magically disappear.
The Arab masses, which now include not only the youth but opposition figures, rebels, peasants, the cosmopolitan middle class and others, are well aware of the international politics at play as well as the impending world economic crisis of historic proportions. They are not only ousting their leaders, but demanding accountability for the corruption, and simultaneously challenging the success of global capital - a world economy that has been organized to benefit the few at the expense of the many. And they are also spearheading a social and cultural revolution, organizing across class and ideology from within their own indigenous Muslim social fabric which provides the universality of such an enabling mobilization.
This is why Libya has become the frontline of this dual battle against internal dictators and imperialism. Gaddafi provides the international community the opportunity, under the guise of a hypocritical concern for humanitarianism, to intervene in a challenge to American hegemony throughout the Arab region. And it is evident that the Muslim majorities of Libya, and across the Middle East and North Africa, have learned a painful lesson over the past decade- a lesson in communication, a valuable lesson in employing the West's own language of secularism to frame its aspirations. The revolution may have been started by media savvy youth who led the way in framing the argument in a secular, liberal or leftist, narrative understandable to the accepted discourse of the West. It will be carried forward, however, by Muslim societies which have truly come of age in giving birth to a new political space that the entire world is watching being born.
Jacqueline O'Rourke is a consultant in research and communications who lives in Doha, Qatar. She has written academic materials for language acquisition, recently published a book of poetry and is currently awaiting the publication of her PhD thesis titled Representing Violence: Jihad, Theory, Fiction. She can be reached at jacmaryor@...
Friday, December 24, 2010
Letters to the Editor - December 23, 2010
BRIBE MONEY NOT WELL SPENT
Another bad deal for Americans. A three billion dollar offer to Israel for a three month respite from the latterís illegal colonization of the West Bank. Thatís $500 million a week to bribe Israel not to commit war crimes. And the money wasnít even enough to get Israel to stop the settlements.
How many American teachers, social workers, and state employees would this have been? We face massive layoffs in our society because we are broke. Our corrupt politicians canít wait to break into the Social Security trust fund to bleed it dry for future workers. We are in crisis, but payments to Israel always come first.
Is our government, in fact, unduly influenced by Israel? Has the Israeli lobby in the U.S. learned to buy politicians as effectively as our major corporations? Have our disastrous wars in the Middle East been planned by Israel?
Obama, the consummate appeaser, is much more intent on pleasing the Israeli lobby than the American people. Congress grovels just as pathetically to Zionist influences and money. What politician would dare suggest that the Israeli invasion of Gaza was a killing spree, a blood bath? What politician beside former president Jimmy Carter would even whisper the word ìapartheid.î
Our countryís leaders have abandoned their obligation to the American people in their consistent support and funding of right wing Israelís war and occupation agenda. In another era, that would be seen as simply treason, the betrayal of our countryís citizens in exchange for bribes from a foreign government. May our leaders one day face a jury of their peers: we the people.
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck
WE WILL RESIST
There is a major disconnect in this country in relation to veterans. We are honored by everyone, all the time, until we speak out against the status quo of ongoing wars. Doing that is not acceptable to the Establishment. We had assembled peacefully and while were speaking out, 131 of us were arrested and taken to jail for standing next to the fence around the White House, the former ëpeoplesí house. This happened this past Thursday, the 16th of December. Veteransí For Peace from all over the country led a civil resistance there. We were joined by hundreds of other citizens demanding the end ≠ not tomorrow or next year but now ≠ of the never-to-end wars our country is maintaining, at the cost of innocent lives, at the cost of the degradation of our infrastructure, at the cost of making new enemies for us around the world, at the cost of this countryís soul. We were endorsed by every Peace oriented organization that heard of our plan, we were joined in being arrested by many luminaries like the war correspondent and author Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon papers renown, retired CIA agent Ray McGovern and many more courageous and moral citizens.
The weather was freezing cold, it snowed, and after a brief rally in Lafayette park where every one of us made a non-violent pledge, we proceeded solemnly around the park to the barricades in front of that wrought iron fence, accompanied by the sound of a single drum and ëTaps,í played beautifully on a harmonica. After mounting the concrete base of the fence, we stood in the snow for several hours, singing Peace songs, and delivered thousands of cards through the fence addressed to the President, with a Peace message on one side. On the other was a color photograph of a terrified child, covered in blood, standing next to the soldiers who had just killed her parents, with the statement ìthis what your wars do in our name.î
After being arrested, we were taken to the National Park Police station on the Anacostia Flats, across the river from DC. What goes around comes around, History repeats itself. This location is where the 43,000 Bonus Marchers of 1932 camped when they came to Washington to demand early payment of their promised War Service bonus. It would not have been paid until 1945, but the Depression then was murderous and the bonus money was desperately needed. People today have no real idea of its depth. President Hoover ordered Gen. MacArthur to remove them from government property when they came to the steps of Congress to wait for the Congress to vote on their demands; ìRemove them but donít pursue them.î MacArthur convinced himself those WW1 vets were Communists, and along with Majors Eisenhower and Patton, did pursue them across the river with tanks, fixed bayonets, Adamsite gas, and burned their camp to the ground. Four vets and one baby died in that 1932 action. Today, in this economic and moral recession brought on by the greed of the fat cats, we veterans are demanding our Bonus ≠ peace now!
As a combat Infantry veteran, as a person with a conscience, being there with my brothers and sisters was gratifying and inspiring. We are keeping the spirit of Resistance alive. I am ashamed of what my country has been doing to itself and to others with lies and terror. We will resist until the ëleadersí of this nation and the ëleadersí of the corporations that thrive on the suffering of human beings stop their hideous activities. We will continue to resist evil, our numbers will grow, our influence will expand as other people with a conscience realize that keeping silent ties them to the ìgood Germansî of WW2. We will win, maybe not tomorrow, but we are committed and we will win. Truth will overcome looking the other way.
Jay Wenk
Woodstock
THINK GLOBAL, GIVE LOCAL
As war and climate disasters cause more pain and death around the world, we try at this time of year to look for ways to give a little something to alleviate the suffering that our taxes and carbon consumption have caused. I have grown cynical about the big ìNGOî charities that suck money into their own bloated bureaucracies. The Woodstock community is lucky to have several activists who work tirelessly all through the year to make the earth a better place, whose organizations are exemplary of that adage ìsmall is beautiful.î If you are writing year-end checks, think local:
ïThe Haitian Peopleís Support Project goes directly to amazing work that Terry and Pierre Leroy do in that tormented country: HPSP, PO. Box 476, Woodstock NY 12498
ï Woodstock International, a small collective that puts out one of the very best newspapers in the country with international information from a local perspective. Woodstock International, PO Box 1362 Woodstock, 12498
ï Mary Frankís tireless dedication to solar cooking has introduced many of us to the wonderful work of Solar Cookers International, c/o Mary Frank, PO Box 695 Bearsville, NY 12409.
Give the gift of solidarity with the global community this year!
DeeDee Halleck
Willow
O LITTLE TOWN
I was in Bethlehem two years ago at Christmas when the gates to the city were opened for the arrival of the Jerusalem Patriarch. Families lined the streets to the Nativity Church, chanting carols and singing Jingle Bells, as they viewed joyous parades of bands and scouts. After the two-week holiday (when West Bank Palestinians fortunate enough to receive permits from the Israeli authority could cross into Jerusalem), the gates were closed and the 25-foot high Separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem assumed once more its massive and crushing reality.
Last spring, on returning to Bethlehem, I saw an animated film Warda (Flower), that Palestinian children had created based on Little Red Riding Hood. Every day Warda brings her grandmother a basket of home-made goodies. One day, Warda finds a huge Wall obstructing her path. She sits by its side and cries. An artist arrives and gives Warda a pencil and she draws a bird on the Wall. The bird comes alive and Warda hops on its back and flies over the Wall. Every day from then on, Warda reaches her grandmother by flying on the birdís back. A caption reads: ìBuilding of the dividing wall began June 2002. It encloses much Palestinian land and separates many people from their villages and families.î
The children of Bethlehem and their families are experiencing terrible segregation built into Israelís Wall: confiscation of land and water; settlement building (There are now 27 settlements surrounding Bethlehem); devastation of forests and orchards; demolition of homes by US Caterpillar tractors swathing paths for the Wall, the settlements, by-pass roads that cross their land.
Uprooted in 1948, many Christians from Ein Karem (where the Holocaust Museum was later built), fled to become refugees in Bethlehem. Since 1967, along with Muslim families, they have struggled under Israeli military occupation. More than six million Palestinian Christians and Muslims have emigrated and only two percent of the Christian community remains.
Uri Avnery, famed Israeli peace activist, spoke two years ago at a conference in Bethlehem: ìI apologize for the terrible things done in the name of Israel to the Palestinian people. Iím ashamed for the killing. Iím ashamed for the settlements that are being enlarged while our government speaks about peace...î
The carols we sing today ìOh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie...î belie a sacred space that exists no more. Bethlehem ≠ like the other villages and cities in the West Bank and Gaza ≠ has been made into a ghetto that confines its Palestinian Christians and Muslims and excludes them, burying their reality from the Zionist state.
Let us confront this Wall, the damages wrought by the politics of exclusion ≠ within and outside ourselves ≠ and work towards the creation of one state/one world where all people can experience equality and justice. Let us bring Bethlehem alive again with the promise that birth holds.
Jane Toby
Catskill
Another bad deal for Americans. A three billion dollar offer to Israel for a three month respite from the latterís illegal colonization of the West Bank. Thatís $500 million a week to bribe Israel not to commit war crimes. And the money wasnít even enough to get Israel to stop the settlements.
How many American teachers, social workers, and state employees would this have been? We face massive layoffs in our society because we are broke. Our corrupt politicians canít wait to break into the Social Security trust fund to bleed it dry for future workers. We are in crisis, but payments to Israel always come first.
Is our government, in fact, unduly influenced by Israel? Has the Israeli lobby in the U.S. learned to buy politicians as effectively as our major corporations? Have our disastrous wars in the Middle East been planned by Israel?
Obama, the consummate appeaser, is much more intent on pleasing the Israeli lobby than the American people. Congress grovels just as pathetically to Zionist influences and money. What politician would dare suggest that the Israeli invasion of Gaza was a killing spree, a blood bath? What politician beside former president Jimmy Carter would even whisper the word ìapartheid.î
Our countryís leaders have abandoned their obligation to the American people in their consistent support and funding of right wing Israelís war and occupation agenda. In another era, that would be seen as simply treason, the betrayal of our countryís citizens in exchange for bribes from a foreign government. May our leaders one day face a jury of their peers: we the people.
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck
WE WILL RESIST
There is a major disconnect in this country in relation to veterans. We are honored by everyone, all the time, until we speak out against the status quo of ongoing wars. Doing that is not acceptable to the Establishment. We had assembled peacefully and while were speaking out, 131 of us were arrested and taken to jail for standing next to the fence around the White House, the former ëpeoplesí house. This happened this past Thursday, the 16th of December. Veteransí For Peace from all over the country led a civil resistance there. We were joined by hundreds of other citizens demanding the end ≠ not tomorrow or next year but now ≠ of the never-to-end wars our country is maintaining, at the cost of innocent lives, at the cost of the degradation of our infrastructure, at the cost of making new enemies for us around the world, at the cost of this countryís soul. We were endorsed by every Peace oriented organization that heard of our plan, we were joined in being arrested by many luminaries like the war correspondent and author Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon papers renown, retired CIA agent Ray McGovern and many more courageous and moral citizens.
The weather was freezing cold, it snowed, and after a brief rally in Lafayette park where every one of us made a non-violent pledge, we proceeded solemnly around the park to the barricades in front of that wrought iron fence, accompanied by the sound of a single drum and ëTaps,í played beautifully on a harmonica. After mounting the concrete base of the fence, we stood in the snow for several hours, singing Peace songs, and delivered thousands of cards through the fence addressed to the President, with a Peace message on one side. On the other was a color photograph of a terrified child, covered in blood, standing next to the soldiers who had just killed her parents, with the statement ìthis what your wars do in our name.î
After being arrested, we were taken to the National Park Police station on the Anacostia Flats, across the river from DC. What goes around comes around, History repeats itself. This location is where the 43,000 Bonus Marchers of 1932 camped when they came to Washington to demand early payment of their promised War Service bonus. It would not have been paid until 1945, but the Depression then was murderous and the bonus money was desperately needed. People today have no real idea of its depth. President Hoover ordered Gen. MacArthur to remove them from government property when they came to the steps of Congress to wait for the Congress to vote on their demands; ìRemove them but donít pursue them.î MacArthur convinced himself those WW1 vets were Communists, and along with Majors Eisenhower and Patton, did pursue them across the river with tanks, fixed bayonets, Adamsite gas, and burned their camp to the ground. Four vets and one baby died in that 1932 action. Today, in this economic and moral recession brought on by the greed of the fat cats, we veterans are demanding our Bonus ≠ peace now!
As a combat Infantry veteran, as a person with a conscience, being there with my brothers and sisters was gratifying and inspiring. We are keeping the spirit of Resistance alive. I am ashamed of what my country has been doing to itself and to others with lies and terror. We will resist until the ëleadersí of this nation and the ëleadersí of the corporations that thrive on the suffering of human beings stop their hideous activities. We will continue to resist evil, our numbers will grow, our influence will expand as other people with a conscience realize that keeping silent ties them to the ìgood Germansî of WW2. We will win, maybe not tomorrow, but we are committed and we will win. Truth will overcome looking the other way.
Jay Wenk
Woodstock
THINK GLOBAL, GIVE LOCAL
As war and climate disasters cause more pain and death around the world, we try at this time of year to look for ways to give a little something to alleviate the suffering that our taxes and carbon consumption have caused. I have grown cynical about the big ìNGOî charities that suck money into their own bloated bureaucracies. The Woodstock community is lucky to have several activists who work tirelessly all through the year to make the earth a better place, whose organizations are exemplary of that adage ìsmall is beautiful.î If you are writing year-end checks, think local:
ïThe Haitian Peopleís Support Project goes directly to amazing work that Terry and Pierre Leroy do in that tormented country: HPSP, PO. Box 476, Woodstock NY 12498
ï Woodstock International, a small collective that puts out one of the very best newspapers in the country with international information from a local perspective. Woodstock International, PO Box 1362 Woodstock, 12498
ï Mary Frankís tireless dedication to solar cooking has introduced many of us to the wonderful work of Solar Cookers International, c/o Mary Frank, PO Box 695 Bearsville, NY 12409.
Give the gift of solidarity with the global community this year!
DeeDee Halleck
Willow
O LITTLE TOWN
I was in Bethlehem two years ago at Christmas when the gates to the city were opened for the arrival of the Jerusalem Patriarch. Families lined the streets to the Nativity Church, chanting carols and singing Jingle Bells, as they viewed joyous parades of bands and scouts. After the two-week holiday (when West Bank Palestinians fortunate enough to receive permits from the Israeli authority could cross into Jerusalem), the gates were closed and the 25-foot high Separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem assumed once more its massive and crushing reality.
Last spring, on returning to Bethlehem, I saw an animated film Warda (Flower), that Palestinian children had created based on Little Red Riding Hood. Every day Warda brings her grandmother a basket of home-made goodies. One day, Warda finds a huge Wall obstructing her path. She sits by its side and cries. An artist arrives and gives Warda a pencil and she draws a bird on the Wall. The bird comes alive and Warda hops on its back and flies over the Wall. Every day from then on, Warda reaches her grandmother by flying on the birdís back. A caption reads: ìBuilding of the dividing wall began June 2002. It encloses much Palestinian land and separates many people from their villages and families.î
The children of Bethlehem and their families are experiencing terrible segregation built into Israelís Wall: confiscation of land and water; settlement building (There are now 27 settlements surrounding Bethlehem); devastation of forests and orchards; demolition of homes by US Caterpillar tractors swathing paths for the Wall, the settlements, by-pass roads that cross their land.
Uprooted in 1948, many Christians from Ein Karem (where the Holocaust Museum was later built), fled to become refugees in Bethlehem. Since 1967, along with Muslim families, they have struggled under Israeli military occupation. More than six million Palestinian Christians and Muslims have emigrated and only two percent of the Christian community remains.
Uri Avnery, famed Israeli peace activist, spoke two years ago at a conference in Bethlehem: ìI apologize for the terrible things done in the name of Israel to the Palestinian people. Iím ashamed for the killing. Iím ashamed for the settlements that are being enlarged while our government speaks about peace...î
The carols we sing today ìOh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie...î belie a sacred space that exists no more. Bethlehem ≠ like the other villages and cities in the West Bank and Gaza ≠ has been made into a ghetto that confines its Palestinian Christians and Muslims and excludes them, burying their reality from the Zionist state.
Let us confront this Wall, the damages wrought by the politics of exclusion ≠ within and outside ourselves ≠ and work towards the creation of one state/one world where all people can experience equality and justice. Let us bring Bethlehem alive again with the promise that birth holds.
Jane Toby
Catskill
Thursday, November 11, 2010
My meeting with Henry Waxman (thanks, Eldad)
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/my-meeting-with-henry-waxman.html
Disclaimer: I wrote the following a couple of hours after my encounter with Congressman Henry Waxman today. This is not verbatim, it is not a transcript, but it is my recollection of the conversation. I've kept in everything from our discussion as I remembered it - including the things I said that could have been much better.
*****
It's not every day you see a Representative of the House outside of the coffee shop you're about to enter. Well, at least not one as recognizable as the liberal titan Henry Waxman. But there he was: talking on his phone on the street corner, only ten feet away from me.
Dear lord, I thought to myself. Should I say something to him? Should I say something about ending military aid to Israel, ending the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan? Oh god, I should, but I hate confrontations.
The congressman continued to walk around on his phone, talking to someone who was probably Very Important about a Seriously Important Subject. Should I say something?
Waxman went into a next door restaurant and sat down to eat with another man, someone I didn't recognize. Oh damn, there went my opportunity, I thought. I don't want to interrupt his lunch – that would be rude.
And I almost walked away. But then I thought: Our two wars and occupations are rude - they don't give a damn if they interrupt anyone's lunch. I'm never going to get this opportunity again. So I quickly contacted some friends and asked – what should I say to Henry Waxman? Several people told me: just tell him you're young, you're Jewish, and you're disappointed in the way congress has dealt with Israel and Palestine. Let the conversation go from there.
I waited around for a few minutes outside, deliberating with myself if I should spark what was sure to be a tense conversation in a crowded place. And just as I was about to chicken out – this was a Congressman, after all – I saw Mr. Waxman and his companion exit the restaurant, walking directly towards the car I was standing next to.
Excuse me, I said as Waxman approached, before I really realized what I was doing, are you Henry Waxman?
Yes I am, he replied, strolling up to me, ready to talk with this random citizen on the street. This was actually a pleasant surprise – I was expecting him to shake my hand and then quickly rush off to whatever Important Meeting he had next.
It wasn't to remain pleasant for very long.
My name's Brian Van Slyke, and I'm a young Jewish American, I said.
Okay, nice to meet you, he said as he stuck out his hand for me to shake.
I took his hand and shook , and the words just spilled out: I just want to say that I'm really disappointed in the way your Democrat-led congress has dealt with the Palestine/Israel issue.
Well, there was no going back now.
He nodded his head slowly, as if he already knew where this were going.
I can't believe that Congress continues to provide Israel with 3 billion dollars in military aid every year, I continued. To me, this is in direct opposition to the promotion of freedom, democracy, and human rights you liberal Democrats claim to promote.
He stood up a little straighter and his eyes widened – this certainly wasn't what we was expecting to hear.
That money is supporting an apartheid wall, it is being employed to expand Israel's illegal colonies, it is maintaining a deadly and unjust occupation, it -
Wait a minute, he said, waving his hand. Let me stop you right there before you take your rhetoric too far.
Okay, I had had my say – I was ready to hear his response.
There are nations in the Middle East that want nothing more than to wipe Israel off the map, and that money we give is to protect them from that threat. The Separation Wall was installed to stop terrorist attacks. It was put up and it has stopped Palestinians from blowing themselves up and killing innocent Israelis.
I could almost see him mentally going down the AIPAC checklist of responses.
You can't - I began to interject.
Wait a minute, he insisted, waving his hand again. Let me say what I have to say. You said your part, let me say mine. That was fair, I thought. I don't like when people interrupt me, so I was willing to respect that for him as well – even though he had certainly cut me off only moments ago.
He went on: And the settlements, he seemingly emphasized his watered-down choice of the words - settlements – to contrast my far more accurate term (colonies), well they are another story. If you are talking about the settlements in Jerusalem, that's one thing. If you're talking about the settlements in the West Bank, that's another. The settlements in East Jerusalem are a difficult matter, as they are in the capital of that state [Israel]; but if you're going to have a Palestinian state, they are going to want East Jerusalem for their capital. The settlements in the West Bank, well I certainly agree that those have to stop in order to bring about a two-state solution. But the Separation Wall, that has saved innocent people's lives.
This was just too much – I had so many rebuttals boiling inside of me that I nearly blurted them all out at once. But I took a deep breath and decided to take him point-by-point: I think you're completely wrong there. That Wall, which is enforcing apartheid rule, is not maintaining peace but fostering misery. It makes life unbearable for many Palestinians – it has stolen countless Palestinian land; it has cut families and towns off from each other; trips to work or school that were once normal now take hours or are just impossible to make at all. Its destroying lives, towns, and economies while stealing land. You can't say that's saving innocent lives because -
He cut me off: Look, before terrorists were killing Israelis in buses and now they're not.
I'm sorry, I said, slightly indignant, I let you finish, so will you let me finish what I was saying?
No, you said your thing, then I said my thing, and now I have to go. We don't have time to talk about this whole issue in this small discussion. By the way, I think you're understating some of your case and overstating other parts. He, along with the man he had been dining with, started to make towards the car next to me. But I wasn't ready to let him get off that easily.
The military aid to Israel which you and the rest of congress provide is the thing that is killing innocent people. That money goes to build weapons that kill Palestinians, bulldoze homes, and maintain Gaza as the world's largest open air prison camp! It -
There are Arab nations in the Middle East that want to destroy Israel! He stammered, still heading towards the car. Some of those include Palestinians!
Now, that just made no sense. He was obviously frustrated.
First of all, I began (okay, I was losing my cool too – my voice was on the rise), that just has no basis in reality! Palestinians don't have a nation. You can't just make things-
They were supposed to! Israel withdrew from Gaza and said have this country, we will help you build an economy - but their will was to elect Hamas! He was reaching for the car door, opening it, but still facing me and arguing.
There were so many absurd statements in that single sentence that I was simply flabbergasted. Honestly, my next reply should have been more thoughtful, but I was just at a loss for words. I had no idea how to reply to a man that was so detached from reality.
You honestly don't understand the situation, do you? You don't seem to know the issue at all, it's as though-
I know what apartheid is! He insisted as he climbed into the passenger seat and his companion entered the driver's side. I know what apartheid looks like. That is not apartheid.
He closed the door without another word.
I bent down and looked into the window, but he refused to make eye contact with me and stared straight ahead as his companion put the keys into the ignition.
No, I raised my voice loud enough so that the car window wouldn't be a barrier. You know who knows what apartheid looks like? That would be Desmond Tutu! I'm pretty sure Desmond Tutu is more familiar with apartheid than yourself. And he says that there is apartheid in Israel and Palestine!
The congressman just shook his head and did not respond. The engine had started and his companion, who hadn't said one word the whole time, shifted the car into drive.
By the way, that's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I continued, perhaps louder than I should have, Nobel peace prize winner, who lived under and struggled against apartheid in South Africa. Are you really going to disagree with Desmond Tutu on what apartheid looks like?
The car drove off without another response.
I looked around and saw that there were people looking at me oddly – but I didn't feel ashamed, I just became aware that my heart was pounding from nervousness and adrenaline. I was glad that I had overcome my initial trepidation.
I finally went and got that coffee I was initially after.
***
I don't think our little argument will change Congressman Waxman's mind in anyway, nor do I suspect that he will he wake up tomorrow suddenly aware of the errors of his way. Yet, I do think our encounter shook him up. I'm fairly positive that the last person he would've expected to challenge him on military aid to Israel would be a young Jewish kid on the street. But alongside my Jewish peers that openly challenged Prime Minister Netanyahu just yesterday, I think we're beginning to show the old guard that we do not share the loyal-to-Israel-no-matter-what mentality. Instead, that identity is rapidly fading for many Jews who are instead reclaiming their long legacy of standing for social justice.
So, I hope Mr. Waxman tells his colleagues – Democrats and Republicans alike – of this unfortunate, annoying, and surely frustrating occurrence. And this is the message I hope he carries: whether you are the Prime Minister of Israel speaking to a massive gathering of Jews, or you are a Congressperson outside of a coffee shop who happens to meet a young Jew, it is no longer safe to assume that we all abide by the blind allegiance to a state that falsely claims to speak for everyone of us. Rather, our allegiance is to our fellow human beings, and especially to those that are oppressed - and that means challenging the apartheid and colonialist policies of Israel wherever we find them.
I hope they are beginning to understand that we are everywhere.
Brian Van Slyke is an activist as well as an educator. He has facilitated workshops and classes on everything from organizing protests to the history of colonialism and slavery. He was raised by a Jewish mother who taught him solid non/anti-Zionist principles.
Disclaimer: I wrote the following a couple of hours after my encounter with Congressman Henry Waxman today. This is not verbatim, it is not a transcript, but it is my recollection of the conversation. I've kept in everything from our discussion as I remembered it - including the things I said that could have been much better.
*****
It's not every day you see a Representative of the House outside of the coffee shop you're about to enter. Well, at least not one as recognizable as the liberal titan Henry Waxman. But there he was: talking on his phone on the street corner, only ten feet away from me.
Dear lord, I thought to myself. Should I say something to him? Should I say something about ending military aid to Israel, ending the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan? Oh god, I should, but I hate confrontations.
The congressman continued to walk around on his phone, talking to someone who was probably Very Important about a Seriously Important Subject. Should I say something?
Waxman went into a next door restaurant and sat down to eat with another man, someone I didn't recognize. Oh damn, there went my opportunity, I thought. I don't want to interrupt his lunch – that would be rude.
And I almost walked away. But then I thought: Our two wars and occupations are rude - they don't give a damn if they interrupt anyone's lunch. I'm never going to get this opportunity again. So I quickly contacted some friends and asked – what should I say to Henry Waxman? Several people told me: just tell him you're young, you're Jewish, and you're disappointed in the way congress has dealt with Israel and Palestine. Let the conversation go from there.
I waited around for a few minutes outside, deliberating with myself if I should spark what was sure to be a tense conversation in a crowded place. And just as I was about to chicken out – this was a Congressman, after all – I saw Mr. Waxman and his companion exit the restaurant, walking directly towards the car I was standing next to.
Excuse me, I said as Waxman approached, before I really realized what I was doing, are you Henry Waxman?
Yes I am, he replied, strolling up to me, ready to talk with this random citizen on the street. This was actually a pleasant surprise – I was expecting him to shake my hand and then quickly rush off to whatever Important Meeting he had next.
It wasn't to remain pleasant for very long.
My name's Brian Van Slyke, and I'm a young Jewish American, I said.
Okay, nice to meet you, he said as he stuck out his hand for me to shake.
I took his hand and shook , and the words just spilled out: I just want to say that I'm really disappointed in the way your Democrat-led congress has dealt with the Palestine/Israel issue.
Well, there was no going back now.
He nodded his head slowly, as if he already knew where this were going.
I can't believe that Congress continues to provide Israel with 3 billion dollars in military aid every year, I continued. To me, this is in direct opposition to the promotion of freedom, democracy, and human rights you liberal Democrats claim to promote.
He stood up a little straighter and his eyes widened – this certainly wasn't what we was expecting to hear.
That money is supporting an apartheid wall, it is being employed to expand Israel's illegal colonies, it is maintaining a deadly and unjust occupation, it -
Wait a minute, he said, waving his hand. Let me stop you right there before you take your rhetoric too far.
Okay, I had had my say – I was ready to hear his response.
There are nations in the Middle East that want nothing more than to wipe Israel off the map, and that money we give is to protect them from that threat. The Separation Wall was installed to stop terrorist attacks. It was put up and it has stopped Palestinians from blowing themselves up and killing innocent Israelis.
I could almost see him mentally going down the AIPAC checklist of responses.
You can't - I began to interject.
Wait a minute, he insisted, waving his hand again. Let me say what I have to say. You said your part, let me say mine. That was fair, I thought. I don't like when people interrupt me, so I was willing to respect that for him as well – even though he had certainly cut me off only moments ago.
He went on: And the settlements, he seemingly emphasized his watered-down choice of the words - settlements – to contrast my far more accurate term (colonies), well they are another story. If you are talking about the settlements in Jerusalem, that's one thing. If you're talking about the settlements in the West Bank, that's another. The settlements in East Jerusalem are a difficult matter, as they are in the capital of that state [Israel]; but if you're going to have a Palestinian state, they are going to want East Jerusalem for their capital. The settlements in the West Bank, well I certainly agree that those have to stop in order to bring about a two-state solution. But the Separation Wall, that has saved innocent people's lives.
This was just too much – I had so many rebuttals boiling inside of me that I nearly blurted them all out at once. But I took a deep breath and decided to take him point-by-point: I think you're completely wrong there. That Wall, which is enforcing apartheid rule, is not maintaining peace but fostering misery. It makes life unbearable for many Palestinians – it has stolen countless Palestinian land; it has cut families and towns off from each other; trips to work or school that were once normal now take hours or are just impossible to make at all. Its destroying lives, towns, and economies while stealing land. You can't say that's saving innocent lives because -
He cut me off: Look, before terrorists were killing Israelis in buses and now they're not.
I'm sorry, I said, slightly indignant, I let you finish, so will you let me finish what I was saying?
No, you said your thing, then I said my thing, and now I have to go. We don't have time to talk about this whole issue in this small discussion. By the way, I think you're understating some of your case and overstating other parts. He, along with the man he had been dining with, started to make towards the car next to me. But I wasn't ready to let him get off that easily.
The military aid to Israel which you and the rest of congress provide is the thing that is killing innocent people. That money goes to build weapons that kill Palestinians, bulldoze homes, and maintain Gaza as the world's largest open air prison camp! It -
There are Arab nations in the Middle East that want to destroy Israel! He stammered, still heading towards the car. Some of those include Palestinians!
Now, that just made no sense. He was obviously frustrated.
First of all, I began (okay, I was losing my cool too – my voice was on the rise), that just has no basis in reality! Palestinians don't have a nation. You can't just make things-
They were supposed to! Israel withdrew from Gaza and said have this country, we will help you build an economy - but their will was to elect Hamas! He was reaching for the car door, opening it, but still facing me and arguing.
There were so many absurd statements in that single sentence that I was simply flabbergasted. Honestly, my next reply should have been more thoughtful, but I was just at a loss for words. I had no idea how to reply to a man that was so detached from reality.
You honestly don't understand the situation, do you? You don't seem to know the issue at all, it's as though-
I know what apartheid is! He insisted as he climbed into the passenger seat and his companion entered the driver's side. I know what apartheid looks like. That is not apartheid.
He closed the door without another word.
I bent down and looked into the window, but he refused to make eye contact with me and stared straight ahead as his companion put the keys into the ignition.
No, I raised my voice loud enough so that the car window wouldn't be a barrier. You know who knows what apartheid looks like? That would be Desmond Tutu! I'm pretty sure Desmond Tutu is more familiar with apartheid than yourself. And he says that there is apartheid in Israel and Palestine!
The congressman just shook his head and did not respond. The engine had started and his companion, who hadn't said one word the whole time, shifted the car into drive.
By the way, that's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I continued, perhaps louder than I should have, Nobel peace prize winner, who lived under and struggled against apartheid in South Africa. Are you really going to disagree with Desmond Tutu on what apartheid looks like?
The car drove off without another response.
I looked around and saw that there were people looking at me oddly – but I didn't feel ashamed, I just became aware that my heart was pounding from nervousness and adrenaline. I was glad that I had overcome my initial trepidation.
I finally went and got that coffee I was initially after.
***
I don't think our little argument will change Congressman Waxman's mind in anyway, nor do I suspect that he will he wake up tomorrow suddenly aware of the errors of his way. Yet, I do think our encounter shook him up. I'm fairly positive that the last person he would've expected to challenge him on military aid to Israel would be a young Jewish kid on the street. But alongside my Jewish peers that openly challenged Prime Minister Netanyahu just yesterday, I think we're beginning to show the old guard that we do not share the loyal-to-Israel-no-matter-what mentality. Instead, that identity is rapidly fading for many Jews who are instead reclaiming their long legacy of standing for social justice.
So, I hope Mr. Waxman tells his colleagues – Democrats and Republicans alike – of this unfortunate, annoying, and surely frustrating occurrence. And this is the message I hope he carries: whether you are the Prime Minister of Israel speaking to a massive gathering of Jews, or you are a Congressperson outside of a coffee shop who happens to meet a young Jew, it is no longer safe to assume that we all abide by the blind allegiance to a state that falsely claims to speak for everyone of us. Rather, our allegiance is to our fellow human beings, and especially to those that are oppressed - and that means challenging the apartheid and colonialist policies of Israel wherever we find them.
I hope they are beginning to understand that we are everywhere.
Brian Van Slyke is an activist as well as an educator. He has facilitated workshops and classes on everything from organizing protests to the history of colonialism and slavery. He was raised by a Jewish mother who taught him solid non/anti-Zionist principles.
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