Aljazeera-News

What really happened in Lebanese elections?

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:11:00 -0700

Since the Lebanese parliamentary elections on June 7, the mainstream media have declared that the results of the elections clearly show that Hezbollah and its coalition partners have suffered a “crushing defeat.” Some, led by the New York Times and cable news outlets, went even further, suggesting that the Cairo address by President Barack Obama was what made the difference, tilting the elections in favor of the pro-Western governing coalition.

This is pure fantasy, and reveals a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Lebanese politics and an ignorance of the realities on the ground.

Let us first get some facts straight. In the previous parliament, Hezbollah and its coalition partners held 58 seats to the 70 seats of the governing coalition in the 128-seat parliament. The governing coalition led by Saad Hariri, the son of the slain former Sunni prime minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri, consists of mainly parties and groups which are considered friendly to the West and pro-Western Arab governments such as Saudi Arabia. This coalition also includes the traditional Christian Maronite parties supported by the Maronite church, such as the Phalanges and the Lebanese forces.

On the other hand, the opposition coalition is led by the mainly Shia parties, Hezbollah and Amal, in alliance with a main Maronite party, the Free Patriotic Movement led by former General Michel Aoun. In the regional rivalry between the U.S., Israel, and other “moderate” Arab governments on one hand, and Iran, Syria and pro-resistance movements on the other, this opposition coalition clearly supports the latter.

One of the main contentious issues in the previous parliament was the insistence of the pro-Western coalition in demanding the disarming of the resistance movement Hezbollah, ever since Israel failed to dismantle the group’s infrastructure in the 2006 summer war.

So the pro-Western groups have been trying to achieve politically what Israel failed to do militarily. The pressure applied by the U.S. during the Bush administration to achieve this very goal had been relentless, triggering a confrontation that lasted over a year and culminated in the recent elections.

Electoral politics in Lebanon is at odds with democratic principles because they are based on sectarian politics. Every major religious group is allotted a certain number of seats in Parliament, based not on population but on a previous agreement reached in 1989 to end 15 years of civil war.

For instance, in the current election, the Shias and the Sunnis had about 873,000 and 842,000 registered voters, respectively, but each group was given 27 seats. On the other hand the Maronite Christians and the Druze had 697,000 and 186,000 registered voters, yet were allotted 34 and 8 seats respectively, far greater than their numbers would entitle them.

In addition, more than 120,000 Lebanese expatriates were paid, mainly by the Hariri clan, to fly back to Lebanon and vote. It’s estimated that more than three-quarters of them voted for the governing coalition.

With this background, how did the Lebanese actually vote?

With 52 per cent of about 3 million registered voters actually voting, the opposition led by Hezbollah’s coalition received 55 per cent of the vote (840,000) but only 45 per cent of the seats (57). Hezbollah itself fielded only 11 candidates in deference to its coalition partners, the same number it had in the previous parliament. All of them won their seats overwhelmingly.

On the other hand, the governing coalition received 45 per cent of the vote (692,000) and 55per cent of the seats. In essence, the governing coalition won 68 seats, while independents won 3 seats, but later joined the governing coalition for a total of 71 seats.

In other words, the make-up of the current parliament changed only by one seat from the previous one, and that only happened after the independents were enticed to join the governing coalition. Moreover, the real surprise was that Gen. Aoun’s party, the coalition partner of Hezbollah, received, according to the results announced by the Lebanese interior ministry, 52 per cent of the Christian vote, though picking up fewer seats than his Christian rivals. Only in a fantasy world would such numbers be declared “a clear repudiation of Hezbollah’s coalition program,” as the clearly biased mainstream media, particularly the NYT’s Thomas Friedman ,would have you believe.

So the real story of the elections is that the will of the Lebanese people did not carry the day and the principle of majority rule was not respected. The Hezbollah-led coalition had indeed won more votes than the pro-Western coalition by a hefty 10 per cent. When President Obama received 53 per cent of the popular vote to John McCain’s 47 per cent last November, it was declared by the media and political pundits as a crushing defeat for the Republicans and a mandate for real change.

Lebanese politics is unpredictable. Today’s ally could be tomorrow’s nemesis. For instance, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was for many years Syria’s ally in Lebanon but turned against them a few years ago because of the political shift in the country. However, he recently started sending friendly overtures to the opposition. Though unlikely in the current political environment, but with the control of 8 seats, if he were to switch sides, then the make-up of parliament would become 65-63 in favor of the opposition.

The real question now is whether the new government, having a majority in parliament, will press for disarming Hezbollah in order to satisfy their patrons. If such a policy were to be carried out, it would immediately create a crisis and the majority of the Lebanese as shown on election day will be in the streets protesting and demanding that the real will they exhibited on election day be respected.

Privatizing war: Hire foreigners as mercenaries

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:06:00 -0700

The sudden reappearance of former Vice President Dick Cheney over the last few months - seeming to emerge from his famous undisclosed location more frequently now than he ever did when he was in office - does not mean six more weeks of winter.

But it does bring to mind that classic country and western song, "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?" Or, maybe, "If You Won't Leave Me, I'll Find Someone Who Will."

In his self-appointed role as voice of the opposition, Mr. Cheney has been playing Nostradamus, gloomily predicting doom if the Obama White House continues to set aside Bush administration policy, setting the stage for recrimination and finger-pointing should there be another terrorist attack on America.

Cheney's grouchy legacy is the gift that keeps on giving. Just this week, The Washington Post reported for the first time that while vice president, Cheney oversaw "at least" four of those briefings given to senior members of Congress about enhanced interrogation techniques; "part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees...

"An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared to be calculated to give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program."

And remember Halliburton, the international energy services company of which Cheney used to be the CEO? After the fall of Baghdad, Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR were the happy recipients of billions of dollars in outside contracts to take care of the military and rebuild Iraq's petroleum industry.

Waste, shoddy workmanship (like faulty wiring that caused fatal electric shocks) and corruption ran wild, Pentagon investigators allege, even as Vice President Cheney was still receiving deferred compensation and stock options.

Reporting for TomDispatch.com, Pratap Chatterjee, author of the book, Halliburton's Army, writes, "In early May, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, DCAA [Defense Contract Audit Agency] director April G. Stephenson told the independent, bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that, since 2004, her staff had sent 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other possible violations of the law to the Pentagon inspector general.

“The 'vast majority' of these cases, she testified, were linked to KBR, which accounts for a staggering 43 percent of the dollars the Pentagon has spent in Iraq."

In one instance, KBR was charging an average $38,000 apiece for "prefabricated living units" on bases in Iraq; another contractor offered to provide them for $18,000. But of a questionable $553 million in payments to KBR that the DCCA blocked or suspended, the Pentagon has gone ahead and agreed to pay $439 million, accepting KBR's explanations.

KBR, Halliburton and the private security firm Blackwater have come to symbolize the excesses of outsourcing warfare. So you'd think that with a new sheriff like Barack Obama in town, such practices would be on the "Things Not to Do" list. Not so.

According to new Pentagon statistics, in the second quarter of this year, there has been a 23 percent increase in the number of private security contractors working for the Pentagon in Iraq and a 29 percent hike in Afghanistan. In fact, outside contractors now make up approximately half of our forces fighting in the two countries.

"This means," according to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, "there are a whopping 242,647 contractors working on these two U.S. wars."

Scahill, who runs an excellent new website called "Rebel Reports," spoke with my colleague Bill Moyers on the current edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

"What we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war," he said.

By hiring foreign nationals as mercenaries, "You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars.

"In the process of doing that you undermine U.S. democratic policies. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, because you're making their citizens combatants in a war to which their country is not a party.

"I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation-state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it's happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale."

Jeremy Scahill's comments come just as Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, the man slated to be the new commander of our troops in Afghanistan says the cost of our strategy there is going to cost America and its NATO allies billions of additional dollars for years to come.

In fact, according to budget documents released by the Pentagon last month, as of next year, the cost of the war in Afghanistan - more and more known as "Obama's War" - will exceed the cost of the war in Iraq.

The President asserted in his Cairo speech on Thursday that he has no desire to keep troops or establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

But according to Jeremy Scahill, "I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world," he told Moyers, "but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era."

Maybe that's one more reason Dick Cheney, private contractor emeritus, won't go away.

Waltz with Bibi

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:02:00 -0700

An old Israeli Joke:

Rightwing Settler: Next summer we are going to expel all the Palis who are still on our land. Leftwing Israeli: This is fine with us, but just make sure that you use air-conditioned busses.

Netanyahu’s speech this weekend taught us once again that Jewish national political polarity is a myth. In reality, there is no such thing. Once the Zionist political soup is ready to be served there is no real difference between Benyamin Netanyahu and the so-called 'Israeli left’. They all say YES to a Palestinian state and NO to the Right of Return, for what they really want is the 'Jews only state'. A few months ago we wondered where the Israeli 'left' is, as if there has ever been such a thing. Now we happen to wonder where the 'right' is. In fact, in Israel, all you have is rabid racist rightists. People who sincerely believe in the bizarre Jewish right to celebrate their national aspirations at the expense of others. They all believe in Jewish isolation and segregation. All they really want is a sealed Jewish ghetto located on historical Palestine. They want to be surrounded by high separation walls. They actually don't mind if there is a Palestinian state behind these walls as long as they don't see it, they don’t smell it and they don't hear it. They do not mind a Palestinian state as long as it doesn't own its sky and they succeed in grabbing all its water. Interestingly enough, they all manage to forget that in this saga they are not alone, there are Palestinians as well. They somehow forget that it is actually down to the Palestinians to agree upon the existence of a Jewish state over their land, cities, villages, fields and orchards, around their rivers and near to their shore. Honestly, I do not think that this is ever going to happen. More than a while ago the Jewish state crossed into the no return zone, its disintegration is immanent. Even Barack Obama won’t be able to save it.

Prussia on the Mediterranean

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0700

It is an assumption almost universally acknowledged among the liberal American intelligentsia that while the Israeli occupation is repressive and abhorrent, Israel itself is an open, fully democratic state with a lively, argumentative and very free press.

Perish the thought. After spending three months in Israel on a fellowship, I can say that nearly every member of the liberal Israeli intelligentsia I've talked to says something quite different: that their country's media are seriously diseased, failing to provide the minimal level of fair reporting and serious critical inquiry that are crucial pillars of an open society.

Americans who don't read Hebrew or watch Israeli television news may get a skewed view of the spectrum, assuming that Ha'aretz, the smaller-circulation daily read mostly by intellectuals and the political classes -- and foreigners, who devour its English-language edition online -- is representative, and that critical columnists and reporters like Gideon Levy, Akiva Eldar and Amira Hass are sprinkled throughout the Israeli media. It isn't, and they aren't. The larger-circulation dailies Yediot and Ma'ariv, as well as the Jerusalem Post and television news, are tilted much more to the right -- just like the mainstream U.S. media, which certainly have nothing to teach Israel in this regard.

And as for being an open, fully democratic state, most people I talk to speak of a chilling of dissent in recent years, running in parallel with the election of increasingly right-wing governments. The nadir came during the recent Gaza "war." I've seen a microcosm of this myself here in Beer-Sheva, at Ben-Gurion University. A few days ago, Noah Slor, who is in the graduate program in BGU's department of Middle Eastern studies, was arrested by police at the request of campus security and detained for several hours for quietly handing out leaflets opposing a bill now before the Knesset that would make it a criminal offense to commemorate Nakba Day (the day in May when Palestinians mourn the catastrophe of their dispossession and expulsion, which for Jews is a celebration of independence). She was doing this in a spot right outside the main campus gate, where students traditionally hand out everything from party announcements to information about political rallies, with never a bother from security.

Student activists and professors attest to a pattern of politically motivated harassment by campus security. Indeed, Slor, an activist with Darom le Shalom (the South for Peace), a recently formed group of Arabs and Jews in the Beer-Sheva area who "struggle against racism and for equality and coexistence between Arabs and Jews," told me that at the time of her arrest, a security officer told her, "Listen, don't pretend you're so naïve -- I've seen you in past demonstrations. Everything is recorded and written, everything is documented." She can't prove it, but she's convinced security went after her because she were protesting the Nakba Day legislation; "that was the subtext," she told me.

The students were not going to take this sitting down. That same night, about sixty or so held a demonstration protesting the arrest, gathering at a university ceremony attended by the board of governors and other dignitaries. The students put masking tape over their mouths and held up signs saying "The Security Department Runs the University" and "Security Department = Secret Police." (In a response to questions about the incident, university spokesperson Amir Rozenblit said students are not allowed to distribute fliers on campus -- why in the world not? -- and that Noah was handing them out "in an area considered part of the campus" -- even though it was outside the main gate. He also claimed one security guard was detained as well as Noah.)

The stifling of dissent was pervasive during the Gaza campaign. Nitza Berkovitch, a BGU sociologist, said, "I think the media was completely and truly mobilized. There was complete support of the war." A few days after the start of the war, in late December, a group of Arab and Jewish students held a peaceful demo against it. The police soon arrived and demanded that they disperse. They agreed, but as they were folding their signs, several were tackled by police, dragged to cars and held for hours, accused of "rioting." There was another demonstration in mid-January, this one even more moderate, with people holding signs calling for peace and an end to violence on both sides. Again, the same thing happened: dozens of police arrived and roughed up the crowd, arresting several. One BGU student, Ran Tzoref, was put under house arrest for a month.

Harsh repression of Palestinian citizens is a deeply engrained practice in Israel. Recent incidents indicate there may be a loosening of constraint on repression of Jewish dissent as well. Hundreds of Israelis were arrested for protesting the Gaza campaign, probably most of them Palestinian but many Jewish as well. Tzoref told me, "I was in protests in the occupied territories, and they acted the same here. For me it was shocking that riot police came to the university and attacked us. This was never done before, not on this scale." Berkovitch said, "It was like I was in a South American dictatorship. It was as if an arbitrary order had been given nationwide that a certain number of people needed to be arrested -- it was a simple matter of intimidation."

Certainly the Gaza campaign brought out the worst in the apparatus of repression, which was fueled by a public mood of vengeance and hatred of Palestinians, which was itself heightened by the Hamas rocket barrages. (Berkovitch told me that many passers-by at the January demonstration shouted abuses at the protesters, calling them traitors and saying things like "Jews should kill more Arabs." "So much hatred I've never encountered in my life," she said.) The trends are worrying, but it should be emphasized that in general, Israeli Jews, unlike Palestinians, still enjoy a remarkable degree of freedom to speak out on almost any issue.

With a far-right government that is not only determined to avoid serious negotiations with the Palestinians but is actively promoting settlement growth; that shows all the signs of preparing for war against Iran and is actively stoking public paranoia on that front; that increasingly sees Palestinian citizens as a menace, as the enemy within, the contradictions of a nation that claims to be both Jewish and democratic are fraying. How can a state that imprisons 4 million Palestinians behind ghetto walls, bypass roads and a blockade, and treats another 1.5 million as second-class citizens, be democratic? BGU geography professor Oren Yiftachel calls Israel an ethnocracy (the title of a recent book of his); the late Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called it a "Herrenvolk democracy." Whatever you call it, if Israel continues along its current path, the repression will necessarily intensify, and the avenues for free expression will become ever more constricted. The old joke about Prussia was that it was an army masquerading as a state. Is Israel destined to become Prussia on the Mediterranean?

Israel should remember Nakba day

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:57:00 -0700

Life for Palestinian citizens of Israel, always a testing experience, seems to be getting more precarious of late. This is a section of society that, since Israel’s creation, spent 20-odd years under direct military rule and thereafter continued to be treated as second rate and a potential fifth column.

Recently, Arab-Israelis, the identity-blurring label for this 20 percent sector of the population, have had to contend with threats that they must swear loyalty to a Jewish and Zionist state as a precondition of citizenship. Now, Israel’s ministerial committee has approved a draft law that would ban the commemoration of Nakba day in Israel. The day marks the dispossession of some 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced out of their homes in 1948. Arab-Israelis remember Nakba day with demonstrations in Israel — but if the proposed law goes through Parliament, such action would result in a three-year prison sentence.

Fortunately, many voices within Israel have slammed the proposed bill as absurd and dangerous. Campaigners, rights groups, left-wing politicians and organizations such as the New Israeli Fund have swiftly issued condemnation, counterargument and petitions. Some Israelis have used the words “Nuremburg laws” and “thought crime” to describe the Nakba bill. And commentators in the Israeli press have pointed out the unconstitutional hazards of such a law.

All of which is encouraging. But it is countered by an absolutist current within Israel, predicated on an “us or them” rationale and finding its spiritual home with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party Israel Beiteinu — proponents of the Nakba bill. By definition, this style of thought does not tolerate the idea that history might be of totally different import to two different peoples. Haaretz writers are not necessarily proponents of such logic, but there is a taste of it in the paper’s headline for an article on the subject: “Israel moves closer to banning mourning of its independence.”

This seems like an unnecessarily loaded way in which to define commemoration of Nakba day. Palestinians aren’t mourning Israeli independence, but rather Palestinian dispossession and displacement. The tears aren’t triggered by the idea of a Jewish state or by Jewish self-determination, but rather by the suffering and turmoil caused when historical events forced Palestinians out of their homes, off their lands and into refugee-status limbo. That might sound to some like a gratuitous distinction, but it’s one that ensures both people’s narratives get the space to speak, neither one threatened by the other.

“Give an inch and they’ll take a mile,” is a common Israeli take on the Palestinian issue — applied to negotiation, de-occupation and the necessity of overpowering the perceived enemy with military force. It’s virtually an embedded thought process: Question certain historical points and the response is all too often knee-jerk: If we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have a state. It’s a rapid acceleration, from discussion to absolute decree; a conversation culture that seems practically totalitarian in the lack of space it leaves for divergent voices. Israel thinks that admitting to any part of the story of Nakba would cause the Jewish state to suddenly collapse.

But it won’t. It can’t. Accommodating another people’s history — not resolutely rejecting it — is the real show of strength and security. Israelis don’t have to subscribe to every syllable of the Palestinian side of the story, but they do need to respect the Palestinian right to have a history and a narrative. That’s the cornerstone of reconciliation: Acknowledge the other person’s experience, apologize and find a mutually acceptable form of recompense. Doing the opposite — blocking your ears, shouting “Liar! Liar!” and using the law to impose silence — only causes anger, hatred, violence and, inevitably, more suppression and more solutions premised on force and the dissolution of democratic rights. Or, to put it another way: As long as Israel keeps trying to erase Palestinian history, it is Israelis, not Palestinians, who are jeopardizing the Jewish state.

A boy and an artificial leg: A Gaza story

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:54:00 -0700

His room is ready; the walls have fresh paint and my kids prepared a basket of chocolates and other treats to place beside his bed. They hung a poster on his door that has been decorated with colored pens and glitter that says “Welcome Sobhi!” I have taught them that “Sobhi” actually means the “morning light”, and that during his visit, he will not be treated as a visitor, but as a brother. They have compiled a list of fun places to visit, parks, the beach and maybe a ferry ride.

Two weeks ago, my family, after months of anticipation, were scheduled to be the host family for a very special and unusual exchange program for kids from Gaza to visit the U.S. Our host child, Sobhi was schedule to arrive on May 30th.

My family was excited and a little nervous, I noticed my wife taking every opportunity to share the news of the arrival of our special visitor. We call Sobhi’s family from time to time, realizing that sending a child off to a foreign land to live with a strange family can be unsettling for a parent. But I think our occasional conversations are putting everyone at ease.

As time has progressed, we have learned more news of Sobhi’s life and family in Gaza , and through the weeks, news has changed and altered. We first thought he was 11 years old, and then learned that he is actually fifteen. We originally thought his family lived in the town of Khan Yunis, but then learned that he is from the northern town of Beit Lahia. We thought that he was maimed when his house was demolished in the Israeli attack of January 2009, but then later learned that his leg was actually blown off by an Israeli tank shell when the army opened fire on his family while they were farming their land. So, day by day, we are learning more about this fine young boy’s tragic lot.

Like Sobhi, disgracefully growing numbers of children forever maimed, dismembered and killed by Israel are not only somehow disregarded by the world media and therefore the world’s conscience - but to add insult to injury - they are even denied access to healthcare.

Sobhi is one of many Gazan children that have been taken under the wing of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, a non-profit, U.S. based organization that organizes medical exchange programs, sending injured children abroad for treatment when it is inaccessible in Palestine, as well as sending medical teams to Palestine for short-term medical missions.

While I cannot express my admiration and gratefulness for the tireless work of the staff of PCRF, in anticipation of Sobhi’s arrival, the irony fails to escape me, that of this innocent and unassuming son of a Gazan farmer, whose life is forever altered by a tank shell propelled by Israel and subsidized by the U.S., to venture alone across the world to be the recipient of another U.S. manufactured implement; a plastic leg.

And now, as if things could get any worse, even the possibility of getting Sobhi here seems grim.

Coming from Gaza, Sobhi must cross the Rafah border to begin his journey from Cairo. But Egypt is refusing to grant Sobhi entry. It is the predicament that so many Gazans face following the January massacres: hospitals lay in ruins, medicine scarce, embargos on everything from medical equipment to medical teams that have flocked to Rafah’s border in droves from all over the world.

When Obama spoke in Cairo on January 4, the closest major city was Gaza, where children flooded the border, imploring the U.S. leader to exert some pressure on Israel to open the border and end the blockade that has imprisoned the entire population for nearly two years. Children held banners with slogans like, “a light of hope for Gaza children”, and “ Gaza children appeal for help”.

Sahar Abu Foul, a nine-year-old girl who attended the rally, said that the children in Gaza want Obama's help "to secure a life like all other children." But considering his rigorous schedule, Obama couldn’t pencil in a visit to the border to address this young crowd. However, just before his arrival, Congress invested further money into fortifying the border area, allocating an addition 50 million dollars to secure the Rafah border, making Sobhi’s crossing all the more unlikely.

So the days pass. I telephone Sobhi, who speaks with such maturity and courtesy on the phone, inquiring about my health, the health of my family, and asking that God will grant us lives of good health and other mercies. His medical charts say that he is overcoming his depression and simply wants to join his father in the fields again. He has uncomplicated aspirations and a seemingly simple request; an artificial leg. His father, soft-spoken and a bit shy seems to be resigned to the unfortunate possibility of his son not coming to the U.S. after all. I continue to encourage him, but I myself also feel that this special and unusual exchange may have been too good to be true. Sobhi says that he hopes that he will be able to help with the olive harvest this year. But sometimes having hope in a place like Gaza becomes more of a liability than a lifeline.

Forget 'negotiations', Obama

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Sun, 7 Jun 2009 17:04:00 -0700

The situation cries out for law and justice

Whenever western leaders lecture us about a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem, they rely on those comfortable, woolly words "negotiation" and “peace process”… it’s a convenient crutch.

Kick away the crutch and they’d finally have to grasp the nettle of justice, something they have always avoided.

Justice is underpinned by law, but the operation of law in the Holy Land is conspicuously absent. The Arabs, I believe, want plain, simple justice. Why is this such a problem to a western alliance that claims to itself sweeping moral authority?

President Obama, speaking the other day in a BBC interview, said he believed the U.S. was "going to be able to get serious negotiations back on track" between Israel and the Palestinians. Asked about Israel's defiance of his call for a halt to illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Obama urged patience, saying it was early in the conversation. "Diplomacy is always a matter of a long hard slog. It's never a matter of quick results."

Diplomacy hasn’t produced a result in 61 years, and he made no mention of implementing international law and enforcing UN resolutions. Like others, he much prefers the soft and fluffy option of negotiations that go nowhere and a “process” that is doomed to fail, enabling Israel to pursue its evil designs indefinitely. In their minds, and for some unexplained reason, Israel is exempt from laws, conventions, codes of conduct and respect for human rights that other nations of the civilised world are expected to observe. It is allowed to act the brutal aggressor with impunity

“Negotiations” without law are immoral

There are, of course, several objections to the idea of “negotiations” in the Israel-Palestine context. In particular, it is immoral to put a weak party and a strong party together and expect a fair outcome when the strong party is in permanent occupation and has its military boot on the other’s throat.

It is immoral to expect a weak party to negotiate with a strong party that’s daily in breach of international law, commits war crimes and acts of piracy and continues to steal land and dispossess the weak party's citizens in order to unlawfully expand its borders.

It is immoral for the sponsors of the negotiations to be partisan and vilify the democratically elected representatives of the weak party, and to refuse to acknowledge the weak party's right to political self-determination and territorial integrity.

It is immoral to force negotiations without first establishing a level playing field in terms of compliance with international law and UN resolutions. The international community has shirked this responsibility for decades - not because the peoples of the member nations are reluctant but because their leaders are corrupt.

Mr Obama says there needs to be “a good deal of truth-telling” if the rift between America and the Muslim world is to be healed. Which of the many painful truths will he tell? As David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, remarked: "If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country."

Truth-telling: what is Obama’s version of the truth?

The whole rotten 90 years of lies and betrayal needs to be ventilated and understood in the West… the chicanery leading up to the 1947 United Nations partition of Palestine that gave the Jews 57 percent when they accounted for only 30 percent of the population, and how the plan designated Jerusalem, with its major religious sites, an internationally administered city.

How the Jews apparently accepted the plan, declared statehood in May 1948 but wanted more. How the new Israel immediately proceeded to uproot 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes and lands, obliterated nearly 400 Arab villages and towns, and allegedly committed some 34 massacres in pursuit of its territorial ambitions.

How Israel demolished 125,000 Palestinian homes, and after 1967 destroyed 18,000 more. How house demolition is still used today as a deliberate strategic tool to break the Palestinians’ will, achieve ethnic transfer and help make Israel's control of Occupied Palestine permanent.

And how, in the process, Israel has flagrantly breached of every rule, convention and declaration governing civilised conduct.

UN Resolution 194, re-passed many times since 1948, requires Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and compensate those choosing not to. Israel has refused to comply. Meanwhile any Jew from anywhere in the world, who has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors have never lived in Israel, can go and live in Israel while Palestinians who can prove title to their former homes may not.

In 1967, under the pretext of the Six Day War, Israel seized what remained of Palestine - the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Resolution 242 ordered Israel to withdraw its armed forces, but again it defied the international community and international law. As a result Palestinians today comprise the largest refugee population in the world and have endured the longest, most brutal occupation in modern times.

Obama should remind himself of the countless other UN resolutions that Israel has defied.

Israel says it "withdrew completely" from Gaza in 2005. It didn’t. It still occupies Gaza's airspace, airwaves and coastal waters, and the military invade with tanks, bulldozers and aircraft to shoot the place up whenever they please. Israel still controls all the border crossings except the one with Egypt, which it is allowed to 'monitor'.

Gaza's 3,000 licensed fishermen are unable to put to sea and earn their living for fear of being fired on by Israel patrol boats.

We in the West are asked to believe the siege of Gaza is about rockets “raining down” on Sderot, an Israeli township built on stolen Palestinian land. Stop the Gaza rockets and things will be OK, says Israel. But Palestinians in the West Bank don't fire rockets and the Israelis are still in occupation after 41 years. They have seized Palestinian agricultural land and water resources for their own use. While Israelis fill their swimming pools and wash their cars, Palestinians have to survive on as little as 10 to 15 litres a day. More than 38% of their territory is now off-limits to them. In the Gaza Strip the UN reports that a border “exclusion zone” imposed by Israel bites as much as a mile into the narrow enclave and renders 30 percent of Gaza’s farmland unusable.

Gaza overflows with unpalatable truths. Hamas have invited Obama to visit and see the evidence for himself. He could demonstrate his good intentions by accepting.

The ‘roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council puts Israel under an obligation to immediately dismantle outposts erected since 2001, freeze all squatter activity and do nothing to undermine trust, including confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property. Israel rides roughshod over these obligations.

“Because Israel does not recognize Ottoman or British-era deeds, 72% of the West Bank is considered Israeli ‘state lands’. More than 200 settlements have been constructed in the Occupied Territories, and 450,000 Israelis have migrated across the 1967 boundaries,” says the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. The main aim of the squatter project, together with the exclusive Jewish claim to the entire country, is to prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. "The settlements, the infrastructure serving them and the security system necessary to protect them have carved the Occupied Territories into dozens of isolated, impoverished enclaves. Palestinians are forbidden to travel between these enclaves without military permission, thus turning their own towns and villages into prisons.”

Nevertheless Israel’s allies continue preaching a two-state solution to safeguard the ‘purity’ of the racist regime, knowing that it involves the remnants of Occupied Palestine becoming a permanently ghettoized sub-state, subservient to Israel and never capable of prospering.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that the route of the Separation Wall, where it intrudes deeply into Palestinian territory, is illegal and should be dismantled. Far from complying, Israel is still building it.

In the wake of Israel’s 22-day devastation of Gaza and wholesale murder of its civilians at the New Year, the Zionist regime is not only blocking humanitarian and reconstruction aid but also denying access to teams investigating allegations of war crimes.

And let’s not forget that 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children abducted from their homes, are rotting in Israeli jails, many without charge or trial. 30+ democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians are also imprisoned.

Here’s something else for us all – not just Muslims - to worry about. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission says that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal possibly larger than the British stockpile. Israel is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. It has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Nevertheless the US government pours aid into Israel at a rate of around $3 billion annually. The money helps pay for Israel’s illegal occupation, its helicopter gun-ships, tanks and high-tech weaponry, Caterpillar bulldozers, and all the other paraphernalia of military oppression. Israel usually gets another $2 to 3 billion in indirect aid - military support, loan write-offs and special grants. So the US taxpayer is generously funding Israel’s destruction of Palestinian infrastructure (often paid for by British, EU and US taxpayers) and livelihoods, and its ethnic cleansing programme.

And what does the President think about the racist overtones in the manifesto of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party? It says: "The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state… Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel... The government firmly rejects attempts of various sources in the world, some anti-Semitic in origin, to question Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital."

Rivals Kadima aim for a solid Jewish majority and claim the Jewish people have a national and historic right to the Land of Israel “in its entirety”. They seem determined to grab all of it.

The last official word on the question of Jerusalem, I believe, was the UN’s declaration at the time of the 1947 Partition that it should be a 'corpus separatum' – an international city. So a good starting point for Mr Obama and the international community would be to knock these nonsensical Zionist claims of exclusive ownership on the head and properly implement at least this part of the UN plan, in order to take some of the heat out of the situation.

There are many more truths that ought to be aired. But enough are mentioned here to send a simple and obvious message to Mr Obama. End the occupation. Apply the law. Deliver justice. Stop helping to sustain Israeli oppression. It would not be tolerated anywhere else.

One nation under God

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Sun, 7 Jun 2009 17:01:00 -0700

George W Bush and his overzealous friends might have signed off but their shenanigans during their eight years in power continue to emerge, fascinating the world. Last week, Robert Draper revealed in Gentleman’s Quarterly how Donald Rumsfeld sent top-secret, intelligence briefings to Bush covered with photographs of Americans at war abroad and ‘relevant’ Biblical verses.

In one such briefing, above a huddle of U.S. soldiers, appears the question famously put by God, “Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?” The answer is right here. This line from Isaiah appears over the photograph of a group of U.S. soldiers apparently headed to Iraq: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

And look at this promise from Proverbs to those promoting Bush’s mission of ‘freedom and human dignity’ around the world: “Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” Another briefing cover, according to Draper, shows Isaiah-inspired U.S. tanks with the command: “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”

One Nation Under God! The Righteous Nation on a divine mission from God! This wasn’t part of a Doomsday cult’s literature or something that appeared in a Dan Brown thriller.

They had been part of the U.S. government’s briefings and were exchanged at the highest level of chain of command of the world’s most powerful army. This is why all this is so disturbing. Many in the U.S. media have tried to underplay these revelations as barmy manifestations of Rumsfeld’s overactive imagination. I am not so sure though.

For this has been more like a general pattern, rather than an exception. Rummy may be a fruitcake. But he knew what he was doing when he sent those memos and briefings dripping with evangelical fervor to the commander-in-chief. He knew they would make his Bible-thumping boss happy. After all, Bush took his mission as ‘savior of the world’ rather seriously. He actually once told Palestinian foreign minister he was on a ‘mission from God’ to save the world.

Recently, former French president Jacques Chirac revealed how in the run up to the Iraq invasion Bush called him up to warn that the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog (Yajuj and Majuj in the Quran, I think!) were at work in the Holy Land and why they must be defeated by the Coalition of the Willing.

According to Genesis and Ezekiel, Gog and Magog, the forces of Apocalypse, will come out of the north to attack the Children of Israel. Insisting end times were nigh, Bush reportedly told the French president: “This war is ordained by God, who wants to wipe out His people’s enemies.”

The story of this Bush-Chirac conversation was first revealed by Thomas Romer, a theology professor at the University of Lausanne, in an article in Allez savoir, in 2007.

Romer had been consulted by a baffled Elysee Palace after Bush’s call. Chirac confirmed it recently in a new book by French author Jean Claude Maurice recalling how he was stupefied by Bush’s divine justification for the war on Iraq.

Bush sincerely believed the Iraq war was the fulfillment of Biblical prophesies and that he was the Chosen One for the divine mission. And I hardly need elaborate who, in his view, God’s people and their enemies were. Is it any wonder then the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen in the Muslim world as new crusades?

More than a million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. soldiers have paid with their lives for Bush’s mission to protect Israel. So, it turns out, the Iraq war was after all driven by religious zealotry and the U.S. Right’s preoccupation with Israel, as long suspected by many in the Middle East. More alarmingly, while Bush and his cronies have retired to their ranches, the crusader’s mindset is still at work.

In fact, as James Carroll wrote in Boston Globe this week, this influence of extreme Christian evangelicalism on the U.S. army has acquired alarming proportions under successive Pentagon bosses like Rumsfeld.

I do not have anything against anyone’s beliefs. What worries me though is this chip on the shoulder, this perception of U.S. soldiers about themselves as God’s Army which seems to shape and define their approach towards the people they have come to ‘reform’. Remember those iconic images from Abu Ghraib?

Recently, a report showed U.S. soldiers distributing copies of Bible in Afghanistan and conducting group prayer services. The army was forced to destroy thousands of Bible copies after the report sparked outrage in Kabul.

It is this mindset in the U.S. establishment that opposes all attempts to put America back on the track. These are the forces that are opposed to the closure of Guantanamo Bay and offering justice to its long suffering inmates.

While Obama tries hard to restore the rule of law and battered image of his country, the Republicans and many in Obama’s own party are bending over backwards to defend the indefensible.

The US Senate has overwhelmingly rejected Obama’s plan to shut the gulag at Gitmo – 90 against 2 – despite it being repeatedly condemned by rights groups and the international community as an outrage against the Geneva Conventions and America’s own laws and lofty ideals.

After what the Bushies visited on the world, you would expect them to lie low out of shame and for fear of reprisals. If I were in Cheney’s shoes, I would disappear with my copy of Mein Kempf before I am bundled and dragged before the world court at The Hague.

But the irrepressible former vice president has been going around defending the shame of Gitmo and arguing why the US must continue the policy of abduction and torture of innocent people from around the world to protect itself.

Following the Senate vote against Gitmo closure, an angry Obama went before the Americans, passionately pleading for upholding justice and rule of law for the sake of building a better America.

In response, Cheney made at least nine television appearances crying how Obama’s plan to shut the Gitmo and his ban on ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ (read torture) and other equally persuasive practices put ‘our way of life’ at risk! “To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come,” snarled Cheney in his speech after the Senate vote.

It is now up to the American people what, or rather who, represents and defines them: Men like Bush, Cheney and Company, who turned the world upside down, making America one of the most despised countries on the planet; or Obama who epitomizes everything that is good and noble about America and who is trying hard to reinvent the original land of the free that all of us once loved?

I think the Americans have already made their choice by throwing out the party of Bushes and Cheneys to elect Obama.

N-challenge: A new red line for Iran

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Sun, 7 Jun 2009 14:21:00 -0700

The Iranian nuclear challenge was transformed on President George W. Bush’s watch. Events in Iran have advanced faster than the policy community’s thinking about the problem. The brute fact is that Iran has crossed a threshold that is painful to acknowledge but impossible to ignore: It has lost its nuclear virginity.

Over the past eight years, the United States has insisted that Iran would never be allowed to develop the capability to enrich uranium, as that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. Three unanimous UN Security Council resolutions demanded that Iran “suspend all enrichment-related activities.” That was a worthy aim. Technically, mastery of enrichment is the brightest red line short of nuclear weapons. Israelis have called it the “point of no return.”

Bush chose the right operational objective when he declared, “We cannot allow the Iranians to have the capacity to enrich.” Sadly, the strategy he pursued to prevent Iran from crossing that red line failed. One can debate whether a different strategy would have produced a different outcome. At this point, however, we must recognize the irreversible bottom line: Iran has demonstrably mastered the capability to manufacture and operate centrifuges to enrich uranium. The February report of the International Atomic Energy Agency documents the details: Iran is operating 4,000 centrifuges and has already produced more than a ton of low-enriched uranium — an amount sufficient, after further enrichment, to make its first nuclear bomb.

The policy consequences of Iran having gotten this far down the road to a nuclear bomb are profound. These new facts require a fundamental reassessment not only of how we engage Iran but also of what we can realistically hope to achieve.

First, the long-held American objective to prevent Iran from acquiring the technical know-how to enrich uranium has been overtaken by events. While it was an appropriate goal at the time, Iran has acquired this capability. Its knowledge of how to enrich uranium cannot be erased. There is no realistic future in which Iran will not be “nuclear enrichment capable,” that is, have the know-how to replicate its current enrichment facility at Natanz — either overtly or covertly.

Second, the predominant focus of U.S. and international policy on Iran’s observable nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz is largely misplaced. Preoccupation with the “known” to the neglect of the “known unknown” is common in policy-making. But at this point, it has become a caricature of the story of the drunk looking for his car keys under the lamppost, even though he knows he dropped them a hundred yards away, because that is where the light is. If Iran detonates a nuclear bomb in the next four years, the likelihood that the highly enriched uranium for that bomb will have been produced at Natanz is less than 10 percent. Thus, erasing Natanz today, either by Israel’s threatened military attack or through negotiations, addresses the smaller part of the threat.

Further, and third, the source of the highly enriched uranium for Iran’s bomb — if Iran makes and tests a bomb during Obama’s first term — will be a covert enrichment plant that we have not discovered. By definition, we don’t know the location or status of secret, undiscovered facilities. But as an American intelligence officer quipped, if Iran’s nuclear project manager has put all his eggs in the one basket that is under the spotlight of international inspection, he should be fired. The bottom line for American policy is that the menu of feasible options has shrunk. Every option available at this point requires living with an Iran that knows how to enrich uranium. Continued denial of this truth is self-delusion.

The central policy question becomes: What combination of arrangements, inside and outside Iran, has the best chance of persuading it to stop short of a nuclear bomb? More important than how many centrifuges Iran continues operating at Natanz is how transparent it will be about all of its nuclear activities, including the manufacture of centrifuges. Maximizing the likelihood that covert enrichment will be discovered is the best way to minimize the likelihood that it will be pursued. The best hope for defining a meaningful red line is to enshrine the Iranian supreme leader’s affirmations that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons in a solemn international agreement that commits Russia and China to join the United States in specific, devastating penalties for violation of that pledge.

The Obama administration cannot restore Iran’s nuclear innocence. Its challenge is to prevent the birth of the next nuclear-weapons state.

Islamic banking in ASEAN: Don't fly too high

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Sun, 7 Jun 2009 14:18:00 -0700

Indonesia just hosted the third ASEAN annual meeting of sharia economic experts in Jakarta, raising the question as to where sharia banking is going and how to avoid the heady heights of high finance that brought down the Western banks. Or will shariah banking fly too high and make the same mistakes?

Understandably Syafi Antonio, CEO of the Tazkia Group, wants sharia banking to go global. “To develop the sharia financial system, we have to go global. And for that we need to secure our transactions under sharia law”. So the meeting discussed the idea of sharia-compliant currency exchange swaps, and the possibility of an Islamic single currency to back trade.

But this involves precisely the areas of derivatives, hedging and collateralization which caused problems for conventional banks during and after the October 2008 crash and complex concepts like simultaneous term and reverse back-to-back murabaha to try to avoid riba (interest) , gharar (uncertainty of value of underlying assets) or maisir (speculation).

The full complexities of secondary (reverse) murabaha and full cross currency swap structures have been described by Richard Tredgett of Allen and Overy and published in the financial press, for example in Derivatives Week, along with advanced hedging mechanisms and profit rate swaps, total return swaps and fund/index linked derivatives.

But given the reservations felt by many ASEAN conventional and Islamic bankers about such financial instruments since the October 2008 crash in the USA and Europe, is this the sort of thing we should prioritize when promoting the capacity of ASEAN Islamic banks and financial institutions?

Syafi acknowledged in the same meeting that the Indonesian government would need to treat sharia banking in Indonesia as an infant industry for at least ten years.

The third ASEAN annual meeting attracted participants from six countries, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. All of these countries are developing Islamic banking and finance. There is also interest in sharia banking in Cambodia and Myanmar with Muslim minorities. Muslim firms and traders are also active in the Lao PDR and Vietnam.

So everybody in ASEAN can benefit from Islamic banking and finance, which should be regarded as an ambassador of Muslim modernization and a vehicle for economic and social development, in line with the aspirations of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF).

The disparities between Malaysian Islamic banking and finance and the comparative state of development of Indonesia and most ASEAN countries highlights that as yet there is no realistic strategy where sharia banking can reach adequate financial volume and significant market penetration in most ASEAN countries.

Muliaman Muliaman D Hadad, Deputy Director of the central bank recently underlined to an Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN) seminar in Jakarta that the Indonesian sharia banking industry has no almost no chance of expanding capital deployment from 3 percent of national banking capital to the target of 5 percent without more capital, more people and a new strategy including lending to corporates and not just SMEs.

This could be built on four strong pillars, (i) a broad individual customer base including on-lending to small lenders (ii) expansion of corporate lending in high growth and labor-intensive sectors (iii) private sector bonds for company expansion and small infrastructure (iv) large volume Islamic bonds to finance state budget deficits and large infrastructure. All this requires big increases in capital and capacity to handle clients, corporates, public-private partnerships and projects.

Only Malaysia, a decade in front of the pack, has anything like this delivery capacity, while Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, can take a different path, focusing on building regional financing partnership hubs, with their high capital resources and low populations.

ASEAN should therefore focus on building Islamic banking and finance on strong foundations and not waste time and energy on the sharia banking and finance equivalent of rocket technology. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to work out that what ASEAN shariah banking needs first is feet on the ground, and much stronger foundations.

Racists for democracy

noreply@blogger.com (myaljazeera) — Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:51:00 -0700

HOW LUCKY we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy.

This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.

The private member’s bill, proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev of the "Jewish Home" party, which sailed through its preliminary hearing, promises one year in prison to anyone who publishes "a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State", if the contents of the call might cause "actions of hate, contempt or disloyalty against the state or the institutions of government or the courts".

One can foresee the next steps. A million and a half Arab citizens cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. They want it to be "a state of all its citizens" – Jews, Arabs and others. They also claim with reason that Israel discriminates against them, and therefore is not really democratic. And, in addition, there are also Jews who do not want Israel to be defined as a Jewish State in which non-Jews have the status, at best, of tolerated outsiders.

The consequences are inevitable. The prisons will not be able to hold all those convicted of this crime. There will be a need for concentration camps all over the country to house all the deniers of Israeli democracy.

The police will be unable to deal with so many criminals. It will be necessary to set up a new unit. This may be called "Special Security", or, in short, SS.

Hopefully, these measures will suffice to preserve our democracy. If not, more stringent steps will have to be taken, such as revoking the citizenship of the democracy-deniers and deporting them from the country, together with the Jewish leftists and all the other enemies of the Jewish democracy.

After the preliminary reading of the bill, it now goes to the Legal Committee of the Knesset, which will prepare it for the first, and soon thereafter for the second and third readings. Within a few weeks or months, it will be the law of the land.

By the way, the bill does not single out Arabs explicitly – even if this is its clear intention, and all those who voted for it understood this. It also prohibits Jews from advocating a change in the state’s definition, or the creation of a bi-national state in all of historic Palestine or spreading any other such unconventional ideas. One can only imagine what would happen in the US if a senator proposed a law to imprison anyone who suggests an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

THE BILL does not stand out at all in our new political landscape.

This government has already adopted a bill to imprison for three years anyone who mourns the Palestinian Naqba – the 1948 uprooting of more than half the Palestinian people from their homes and lands.

The sponsors expect Arab citizens to be happy about that event. True, the Palestinians were caused a certain unpleasantness, but that was only a by-product of the foundation of our state. The Independence Day of the Jewish and Democratic State must fill us all with joy. Anyone who does not express this joy should be locked up, and three years may not be enough.

This bill has been confirmed by the Ministerial Commission for Legal Matters, prior to being submitted to the Knesset. Since the rightist government commands a majority in the Knesset, it will be adopted almost automatically. (In the meantime, a slight delay has been caused by one minister, who appealed the decision, so the Ministerial Commission will have to confirm it again.)

The sponsors of the law hope, perhaps, that on Naqba Day the Arabs will dance in the streets, plant Israeli flags on the ruins of some 600 Arab villages that were wiped off the map and offer up their thanks to Allah in the mosques for the miraculous good fortune that was bestowed on them.

THIS TAKES me back to the 60s, when the weekly magazine I edited, Haolam Hazeh, published an Arabic edition. One of its employees was a young man called Rashed Hussein from the village of Musmus. Already as a youth he was a gifted poet with a promising future.

He told me that some years earlier the military governor of his area had summoned him to his office. At the time, all the Arabs in Israel were subject to a military government which controlled their lives in all matters big and small. Without a permit, an Arab citizen could not leave his village or town even for a few hours, nor get a job as a teacher, nor acquire a tractor or dig a well.

The governor received Rashed cordially, offered him coffee and paid lavish compliments to his poetry. Then he came to the point: in a month’s time, Independence Day was due, and the governor was going to hold a big reception for the Arab "notables"; he asked Rashed to write a special poem for the occasion.

Rashed was a proud youngster, nationalist to the core, and not lacking in courage. He explained to the governor that Independence Day was no joyful day for him, since his relatives had been driven from their homes and most of the Musmus village’s land had also been expropriated.

When Rashed arrived back at his village some hours later, he could not help noticing that his neighbors were looking at him in a peculiar way. When he entered his home, he was shocked. All the members of his family were sitting on the floor, the women lamenting at the top of their voices, the children huddling fearfully in a corner. His first thought was that somebody had died.

"What have you done to us!" one of the women cried, "What did we do to you?"

"You have destroyed the family," another shouted, "You have finished us!"

It appeared that the governor had called the family and told them that Rashed had refused to fulfill his duty to the state. The threat was clear: from now on, the extended family, one of the largest in the village, would be on the black list of the military government. The consequences were clear to everyone.

Rashed could not stand up against the lamentation of his family. He gave in and wrote the poem, as requested. But something inside him was broken. Some years later he emigrated to the US, got a job there at the PLO office and died tragically: he was burned alive in his bed after going to sleep, it appears, while smoking a cigarette.

THESE DAYS are gone forever. We took part in many stormy demonstrations against the military government until it was finally abolished in 1966. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I had the privilege of voting for its abolition.

The fearful and subservient Arab minority, then amounting to some 200 thousand souls, has recovered its self-esteem. A second and third generation has grown up, its downtrodden national pride has raised its head again, and today they are a large and self-confident community of 1.5 million. But the attitude of the Jewish Right has not changed for the better. On the contrary.

In the Knesset bakery (the Hebrew word for bakery is Mafia) some new pastries are being baked. One of them is a bill that stipulates that anyone applying for Israeli citizenship must declare their loyalty to "the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State", and also undertake to serve in the army or its civilian alternative. Its sponsor is MK David Rotem of the "Israel is Our Home" party, who also happens to be the chairman of the Knesset Law Committee.

A declaration of loyalty to the state and its laws – a framework designed to safeguard the wellbeing and the rights of its citizens – is reasonable. But loyalty to the "Zionist" state? Zionism is an ideology, and in a democratic state the ideology can change from time to time. It would be like declaring loyalty to a "capitalist" USA, a "rightist Italy", a "leftist" Spain, a "Catholic Poland" or a "nationalist" Russia.

This would not be a problem for the tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews in Israel who reject Zionism, since Jews will not be touched by this law. They obtain citizenship automatically the moment they arrive in Israel.

Another bill waiting for its turn before the Ministerial Committee proposes changing the declaration that every new Knesset Member has to make before assuming office. Instead of loyalty "to the State of Israel and its laws", as now, he or she will be required to declare their loyalty "to the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State of Israel, its symbols and its values". That would exclude almost automatically all the elected Arabs, since declaring loyalty to the "Zionist" state would mean that no Arab would ever vote for them again.

It would also be a problem for the Orthodox members of the Knesset, who cannot declare loyalty to Zionism. According to Orthodox doctrine, the Zionists are depraved sinners and the Zionist flag is unclean. God exiled the Jews from this country because of their wickedness, and only God can permit them to return. Zionism, by preempting the job of the Messiah, has committed an unpardonable sin, and many Orthodox Rabbis chose to remain in Europe and be murdered by the Nazis rather than committing the Zionist sin of going to Palestine.

THE FACTORY of racist laws with a distinct fascist odor is now working at full steam. That is built into the new coalition.

At its center is the Likud party, a good part of which is pure racist (sorry for the oxymoron). To its right there is the ultra-racist Shas party, to the right of which is Lieberman’s ultra-ultra racist "Israel is our Home" party, the ultra-ultra-ultra racist "Jewish Home" party, and to its right the even more racist "National Union" party, which includes outright Kahanists and stands with one foot in the coalition and the other on the moon.

All these factions are trying to outdo each other. When one proposes a crazy bill, the next is compelled to propose an even crazier one, and so on.

All this is possible because Israel has no constitution. The ability of the Supreme Court to annul laws that contradict the "basic laws" is not anchored anywhere, and the Rightist parties are trying to abolish it. Not for nothing did Avigdor Lieberman demand – and get – the Justice and Police ministries.

Just now, when the governments of the US and Israel are clearly on a collision course over the settlements, this racist fever may infect all parts of the coalition.

If one goes to sleep with a dog, one should not be surprised to wake up with fleas (may the dogs among my readers pardon me). Those who elected such a government, and even more so those who joined it, should not be surprised by its laws, which ostensibly safeguard Jewish democracy.

The most appropriate name for these holy warriors would be "Racists for Democracy".