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A new vision for the Middle East

By Alice Aslan - posted Friday, 9 July 2010


Lawlessness is the greatest challenge of our times. The US has been the leader in spreading this lawlessness for many decades across the world. In the previous century, the capitalist US was in constant competition with the communist Soviet Union for the exclusive hegemony of the world.

Back then the US distinguished its friends from its foes depending on their ideological affiliation. Those countries that belonged to or flirted with the communist bloc deserved to be crushed by the US, using Machiavellian methods.

During the Cold War, the US preferred spreading lawlessness to contain the spread of communism in the world. It manipulated and encouraged non-state terrorism by co-operating with terror organisations in order to overthrow communist governments in Asia, Africa and South America. And it financed its proxy wars by engaging in the drug trade.

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Moreover, the US supported the Islamist movements against the Godless communists, a common enemy, in Muslim countries. Afghanistan became the greatest casualty in this American holy war against communism. With the defeat of the Soviet Union, a civil war broke out between different Islamist groups, and finally the Taliban came to power.

The long term war on communism in Afghanistan culminated in 1 million dead out of a population of about 20 million; 1.5 million maimed; 5 million refugees and internal displacement of almost everyone (Mahmood Mamdani, 2005, Three Leaves Press, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror).

The US brewed terrorism, creating Muslim terrorists like Osama bin Laden for the sake of fighting communism. When the Cold War came to an end some Muslim jihadists turned against the US, which they considered an evil oppressor.

Eventually terrorism hit the world’s sole superpower like a boomerang with the 9-11 terror attacks. In response, the US kept spreading lawlessness and, instead of targeting only those responsible, it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, punishing these nations by destroying their countries.

Now the US government is plotting against Iran, a nuisance for American interests in the Middle East, on the grounds that it poses a threat for this strategic region, despite research showing that Iran does not have enough military power to be a threat.

The US also exacerbates the current lawlessness by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the atrocities of Israel, the protector of American interests in the Middle East. As Sydney journalist Antony Loewenstein - a dissenting Jew - chronicles, Israeli forces recently opened fire on peace and humanitarian activists aboard a six-ship aid flotilla in international waters, which was aiming to break the Israeli siege on Gaza, and killed nine Turkish activists.

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The Israeli government, as usual, tried to explain away the murders with the self-righteous claim that those aboard the aid flotilla were violent terrorists and Israel was exercising its right to self-defence.

After the 9-11 attacks, such terrorism claims have been widely used by Western countries as a pretext to defend their unlawful acts. But how can a group of peace activists pose such a threat to Israel, a country with one of the most advanced military in the world?

Besides occupying the Palestinian lands for decades, constant appropriation of more Palestinian territory for Jewish settlement, and suffocating and oppressing Palestinians by demolishing their houses and destroying their livelihoods, the recent flotilla attack is only one of the latest items in the long list of Israeli crimes.

Israeli forces killed another activist in 2003. Rachel Corrie, a young American student activist, who knelt before a Palestinian home acting as a human shield to stop the house’s demolition was brutally crushed to death by a bulldozer of Israeli Defence Forces in the Gaza Strip.

As Noam Chomsky, a constantly dissenting American Jew, points out, Israel launched “the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds”. As a result of this operation, about 1,400 Palestinians were killed.

Following each Israeli crime, the uncritical Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel always defend the indefensible, and raise the same shrill cry, blaming the critical voices for singling out Israel for such crimes. As some commentators have rightly suggested, this disproportionate interest in Israeli crimes, rather than those of North Korea, Burma, Tibet, Sudan and Zimbabwe is justifiable.

Israel is considered a Western democracy and gets almost unconditional support from the US, and democratic Western countries, at least in theory, are not supposed to commit such crimes. But if they do, they must accept the criticism and scrutiny that comes as a result.

Israel, to dispel criticism, claims that it is the only democracy among all the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East. But isn’t Israeli democracy selective? Democracy for the Israeli-Jews, and despotism towards Arabs and Palestinians.

Israel’s defenders also try to quiet criticism against its state crimes by accusing critics of anti-Semitism. But isn’t it irrational to discount criticism of Israel by labelling it as anti-Semitic, just as it would be irrational to discount all criticism against the US as anti-American or criticism against Muslim countries as Islamophobia?

Furthermore, if all racisms including anti-Semitism are unacceptable, should not all Jews also condemn the racism against and inhumane treatment towards Arabs and Palestinians in Israel?

The reason for US reluctance to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is obvious: the more conflicts there are in the Middle East, the easier it is to control and rule this strategic region with its natural energy resources. Israel also enjoys its privileged status in the eyes of Americans by purporting to be fighting against the so-called Palestinian terrorists as part of the US holy war on terrorism.

Israel has many excuses to maintain its brutal military strategies against the Palestinians instead of making peace. It claims that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. In fact, in the past Israel used Hamas, an Islamist political movement in the Occupied Territories, against the secular nationalism of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

However to Israel’s dismay, Hamas grew more powerful, and now it is the democratically elected government of Palestinians. Hamas is also accused of refusing to recognise Israel. As Noam Chomsky reminds us, “political parties do not recognise states”.

Chomsky also points out that “if the US and Israel not only do not recognise Palestine, but have been acting for decades to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form”, then why would Hamas recognise Israel?

Besides, it is important to understand the political and social circumstances that have caused Palestinian militancy, in particular in terms of suicide bombers. Understanding does not mean endorsing suicide bombings, which are as indefensible as the Israeli murders. But understanding the root causes of such militancy helps to formulate the right political strategies to prevent them.

As academic Ghassan Hage points out, Israel treats Palestinians as non-humans, and denies them all political and socio-economic opportunities (Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society, 2003, Pluto Press). Young people, in particular men, who have almost no chance of living a meaningful life under such circumstances, become suicide bombers as a stand against Israeli oppression and for the independence of Palestine.

The Israeli state deceives the Israeli public into believing that all Palestinians are primitive, bloodthirsty terrorists, and terrorism is a genetic problem - although a study shows that Jews and Palestinians share a similar gene pool, not the sociological and political product of the horrors of the occupation (Amira Hass, in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim).

Many Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, are happy to cast Palestinians as terrorists since this legitimises the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. They are almost hardwired to believe that Jews are entitled, as the victims of Holocaust, to behave in this way, Consequently, they are now mostly hardened and callous when it comes to the sufferings of Palestinians.

But what of this Jewish obsession with depicting themselves as first-class victims? What about other peoples’ sufferings? Are non-Jewish Holocaust victims less important? Does the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Turks have less significance? What about the millions of Indians who died as a result of the man-made famine in the 19th century when the British Empire imposed free-market economy on the colonial world? (Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts.)

What about millions of others who became the victims of mass murders and genocides but were never recorded in history books? Why do we need to compare people’s sufferings at all and rank them in terms of importance? Isn’t each life valuable? And shouldn’t every sufferer count?

Israel is the product of British colonialism of the previous century, and has become the base of American imperialism in the Middle East. Anthropologist and political scientist Mahmood Mamdani argues that the main reason for the overwhelming US public support for the Jews in Israel is, rather than the Jewish lobby and donors, the American belief that Jews are not colonisers, but settler-natives who have returned to their homelands. This belief is in parallel to the fact that Americans do not view their ancestors as colonisers who destroyed the native Indian population, but as mere settlers.

However, the US interests in the Middle East seems to be at the heart of American support for Israel and its lawless actions. This gives Israel its illusion of absolute power. But can Israel forever behave like an imaginary state of the US albeit located in the Middle East? What would happen if the US and Western interests shift, and the Middle East loses its strategic importance? Can Israel always rely on its nuclear weapons, and military forces for its security? Doesn’t the real sense of security come from making peace and co-operating with the others in the region?

As many Jewish dissenters have asserted, Israel has become a suicidal state since rejecting negotiation and compromise. Therefore it might totally alienate itself, becoming a pariah state like South Africa and its apartheid regime.

To avoid these consequences, Israel needs to negotiate with Hamas for a just solution, whether a one- or two-state solution, based on withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian lands and recognition of Palestinians as equals. Israel also needs to reform itself, replacing the discriminatory state based on ideological Judaism with a new one based on equal citizenship.

At the same time, it is also undeniable that unfortunately many Muslims have anti-Semitic views. They often confuse anti-Semitism with the criticism of Israel. But if all racisms including Islamophobia are wrong, shouldn’t Muslims also be concerned for anti-Semitism?

Although many Muslims give unconditional support to Palestinians, they do not care as much about the human rights violations and oppression of different minorities in their own countries. Their concern for Palestinians is mostly based on Muslim religious solidarity against a non-Muslim Jewish other. They seek “justice as retaliation” for their own kind. But a genuine concern for justice requires seeking justice for the sake of justice for everyone.

In fact, Arab and Muslim countries in the region, mostly hypocritical accomplice states and US-Israeli allies, have also used Palestinians as political pawns to negotiate their own political, economic and military interests with the US and Israel.

For instance, Egypt which helps Israel with the siege on Gaza Strip, and Saudi Arabia, an unconditional ally of the US and Israel, deserve as much condemnation as Israel itself regarding the plight of Palestinians. The example of Turkey’s tough stance against Israel following the recent flotilla attack, and also putting long-term diplomatic pressure on Israel are the only ways to genuinely help Palestinians.

Arab and Muslim countries cannot forever blame everything on colonialism, imperialism, Israel and the US. They need to learn to take responsibility for the peace and stability in their region. This is only possible by creating a new vision for the Middle East based on building democratic, secular societies with human rights and minority rights.

Nations with strong civil societies can much better negotiate their rights against an imperial power, and make better use of their own natural resources for the common good. It is important to isolate the hardliners and extremists on every side, and build trust between Arabs, Jews, Muslims and others to provide long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.

In this new vision, Israel can also have a respectable place - on condition it recognises the land rights and human rights of Palestinians.

It is time to build bridges, not to burn them. Arabs, Jews, Muslims and all the other ethnic and religious minorities should co-operate. If everyone does the right thing, even the Middle East can change, and become the coolest place on earth.

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About the Author

Alice Aslan is an artist, thinker and activist passionate about arts, culture, ideas, justice and wildlife.

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