By IHSAN ALKHATIB, Ph.D, ESQ. Staff Writer
Dearborn, MI

“[S]tark reality of national selfishness behind the rhetoric of commitment to the cause of the Palestine Arabs”
Abdullah I changes the League’s attack plans to suit his dynastic ambitions
There are a many myths surrounding the Palestine question. Many of these myths are demolished by Avi Shlaim’s Collusion Across the Jordan, a book that serious supporters of Palestine would not only buy it and read it, they would also buy it and gift it to their friends. This article is the third article based on Shlaim’s invaluable book. This article deals with the 1948 war and the circumstances surrounding it as presented by Shlaim.
In his memoirs, the late Hussein of Jordan defends his grandfather by saying that he was basically a realist who saw the Zionist threat and tried to deal with it while other Arab leaders basically  spoke nonsense and did not prepare for the challenge. Shlaim responds to that by countering that Abdullah’s collusion with the Zionists was a self- interested ploy and at the expense of the Palestinians. The collusion of Abdullah I with the Zionists prevented the creation of a Palestinian state and thwarted the internationalization of Jerusalem- invaluable strategic goals for the Zionist movement.
A study of the record of that war is not only an exercise in understanding critical history but of understanding today’s Arabs and today’s Arab regimes. The sage saying of there is nothing new under the sun comes to mind when reading Shlaim’s description of inter-Arab politics. The following are questions answered by direct quotes, without quotation marks, from Shlaim’s book.
*Were the Arabs united in their confrontation with the Zionists in the 1948 war? A second major casualty is the notion of Arab unity which is so dear to the hearts of all Arab nationalists. In a very real sense this book is a case-study in inter-Arab conflict, rivalry, intrigue, an deception. It exposes the stark reality of national selfishness behind the rhetoric of commitment to the cause of the Palestine Arabs. It shows the Arab leaders to have been incapable of co-ordinating their diplomatic moves or their military strategy in face of the common enemy. When one looks at the military operations of the 1948 war, as dozens of historians have done, one gets one the familiar picture of a broad and united Arab coalition in confrontation with Israel for possession of the whole of Palestine. But the politics underlying this war give a very different picture of a tacit understanding between Abdullah and the Zionists, with limited territorial objectives on both sides, and with common interests which Abdullah did not share with his comrades -in-arms. In short, the Hashemite-Zionist connection is one of the keys to understanding how Palestine came to be partitioned , and why the Palestinian national movement suffered such a catastrophic defeat while the Jewish national movement realized its ambition of establishing an independent Jewish state over a substantial part of Palestine.
* Did the Arab contingents fight well enough that they posed a threat to the Jewish state? Did they do better than the petty politicians who “lost” Palestine? The amateurism in operational matters displayed by Arab politicians was fully matched by the political amateurism of the Arab military some of whom embodied the worst vices of both groups: the politicians’ bombastic trumpeting of Arab rights without due regard for the balance of forces, and the officers’ tendency to be diverted from their true task by political interests and political considerations…A swarm of Syrian and Iraqi officers buzzed around the building seemingly more familiar with the science of intrigue than with that of warfare. The distribution of funds, of commands, or rank, of operational zones, of arms and materials, all were objects of bargaining as intensive as any displayed in the city’s souks.’
* Did the Arab regimes commit the manpower and the resources needed for battle? Eleven days was the estimated duration of the campaign. To carry it out [East Jordanian officer]Tall asked that virtually all the Arab armies be placed under one supreme commander. In the opinion of informed observers, if those forces, prepared or not, could have been made available, Tall’s plan would have had every chance of success- ‘It was the stuff of which Ben Gurion’s nightmares were made.’ But the forces demanded by the young and very capable operations officer could not be made available and as a result Ben-Gurion’s worst nightmare did not come true. The forces actually made available by the Arab states for the campaign in Palestine were well below the level demanded by the Military Committee.
*Why was the original plan developed by the Arab League changed, who wanted it changed and what impact on the war did it have? The danger to the Jewish state [from the original war plan] did not materialize however, because the Damascus plan was not put into operation in the way that the Arab chiefs of staff had originally recommended. General Mahmud changed the plan by moving the Syrian army from the north to the southern tip of Lake Tiberias, alongside the Iraqi army. This change was made at the request of the Transjordanian authorities. The Transjordanians insisted on the concentration of their forces in the Jerusalem area, Hebron and the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarem Triangle, and despite all his efforts Mahmud was unable to persuade the m to act in accordance with the original plan….No doubt, the original agreement that Jews would not stand in his [Abdullah’s] way played a part here. Nevertheless, Abdullah did not subvert the Arab Leagues invasion plan in collusion with the Jews, he replaced it with a different plan tailored to serve his specific dynastic ambitions.
*  What is Shlaim’s assessment of the Arab leaders who were involved in the Palestine [ongoing} nakba? [w]hereas all the other Arab states sided with the Palestine Arabs in their conflict with the Jews, Abdullah pursued a policy of collaboration with the enemy. Does this make Abdullah the only villain in the Palestine story or are the other Arab leaders no less culpable? If Abdullah double-crossed his partners just as they were about to do battle with the Zionist enemy in Palestine, none of those partners appear in retrospect to have been a shining example of integrity or altruism. All betrayed by their actions the pan-Arab ideal they professed to be serving in their rhetoric. All displayed suspicion and anxiety lest their rivals should exploit the Palestinian Arab cause as a vehicle for promoting their separate regional ambitions. Indeed, it may be argued that the Arab League’s decision to intervene was rooted not in a common interest to save Palestine for the Palestinians or to defeat Zionist ambitions but in inter-Arab fears and rivalries… It is because the Arab military effort in May 1948 was in itself inadequate and related to wider societal factors and temperamental peculiarities, and because suspicion and conflicts of interest among the Arabs themselves was so pervasive, that it would be misleading to single out Abdullah’s deviousness and duplicity as the sole reason for the marked disarray in Arab League quarters on the eve of battle. Such a single-factor explanation may seem superficially plausible but it does not survive a more penetrating analysis of the kind offered by Wasfi Al -Tall.

BY GHASSAN RUBEIZ, Ph.D.
Columnist, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

Ideological differences within Arab societies will slow the process of their liberation. While people are well aware that their rulers are barriers to freedom, they are not yet fully committed to protect all minorities, offer women their inalienable rights and tame the religious institution.
The dramatic spread of Arab revolts and the ease of ousting President Ben Ali and Mubarak have raised unrealistic expectations about the speed of political and social change in the Middle East. It may take the entire twenty first century to fulfill the promises of the Arab Spring.
Resistance to social change is universal. After the American Revolution of 1776, it took about ninety years and a civil war to acknowledge that slavery is an evil. It took an additional hundred years to issue historic civil rights legislation. And today every society on earth has its liberals, who push for change and conservatives who pull for discipline.
The great news is that the process of change in the Arab world has already started with immense courage. The marathon race for freedom started in January 2011, and the contestants are running at different speeds.
Some Arab uprisings have already achieved the first level of liberation: political reform or regime change. Constitutional reform, the second stage of the struggle, has proven to be tough. And the third level, liberty in the practice of religion, has yet to start.
A few societies are in the front in this race. Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco have already accomplished the first stage of liberation.
Other societies are struggling hard to complete the first phase: revolts confront obstinate, insecure, entrenched and tough regimes in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.
Rightly or wrongly, some rulers consider their systems relatively shock resistant: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Jordan.
Syria’s allies are out of this race; the Spring of Lebanon and the future wave of uprising of the Palestinians are tied to the fate of the Assad regime. The Syrian rule supports the powerful Lebanese Hizbullah and the Palestinian Hamas. Both movements treat the “Spring” as a diversion and continue to target the highly unpopular Israeli occupation.
In stage two, the struggle for constitutional reform, the participation of women and other civic groups are particularly important.
Tunisia and Morocco are well into the second stage, but Egypt is faltering. The shaky progress in Egyptian constitutional change is a result of marginalization of secular parties and the prohibitive interference of the military.
The marginalization of women is symptomatic of a wider syndrome of power grabbing in the post Mubarak era. To a large extent, Arab resistance to change is a product of a severe gender gap. The status of women in society is the best indicator of the future.
Revolt in stage three, the struggle for religious freedom, is dormant. Reviewing the paradigm of religious socialization is crucial.
Here again, women have a strong stake in religious freedom; it is men who define religious practice. Would the empowerment of women indirectly lead to a spiritual renaissance? To bring about this “miracle” the women and youth movements should form a strong alliance in every Arab society.
At the present, reform for religious liberty is blocked. It is hard to advocate for secularism, for the right to interpret faith, to change affiliation, to marry “outsiders” and to have civil marriage. Egypt, a lead country in Arab affairs, has a special problem in religious freedom; to sustain their power both Mubarak and Sadat exploited religious differences within Muslim groups, and between Christians and Muslims.
Resistance to religious reform is reinforced by several factors. Family law is under the administration of religious authority. Secularism is confused with atheism or Westernization. Religious education is dull and literal. Science education is shallow.
International and local politics reinforce religious triumphalism. The highly political and provocative American religious fundamentalism reinforces homegrown Arab fanatic movements. Not unrelated to cross-border theological war is the Arab Israeli conflict, which perpetuates religious tension throughout the region. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians would facilitate inter-religious harmony.
It is difficult to imagine a sudden rush to the street to protest against religious institutions. It is also hard to imagine a well tested methodology for a religious intifada. But in one way or another- Insha a llah- reason will ultimately prevail, and clerics will be guided to concentrate on faith, rather than on monopoly of social legislation.
Regime change, constitutional reform and a new outlook on faith indeed take decades to mature. Can Arabs wait that long to install a system of freedom, equality and religious liberty? The answer is not clear.
Are there are indications for some optimism?
We have already witnessed the miraculous speed of social change in an age of digital communication. Close interdependence of nations ought to accelerate genuine external support for the Arab Spring. The slow, but certain, withdrawal of American forces from the region will favorably impact social change. Mounting pressure for respect of universal human rights will have an effect on the Arab conscience.
Moreover, countries like Egypt and Yemen, two nations with a desperate need for revenues, can hardly survive without openness to modernity. Another sign of hope is in the Arab youth: They are no longer ready to accept political lies.
An uprising is the first step toward societal awakening. While modern technology has significantly accelerated, the art of reconstructing nations remains primitive.

By JOSTEIN GAARDER and
THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN
Courtesy NY Times

IT is tempting to view Anders Behring Breivik, the self-described Christian crusader behind the July 22 massacre in Norway, as an isolated case of pure evil. Yet history has taught us that such acts of violence rarely occur independent of their social and cultural surroundings. The assassination of Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, on a Stockholm street in 1986, like the January shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords outside a shopping mall in Arizona, took place at a time when caustic antigovernment rhetoric was widespread.
Mr. Breivik managed to commit two terrorist attacks in a single afternoon. But the hatred and contempt from which he drew his deranged determination were shared with many others throughout the international right-wing blogosphere.
The racism and bigotry that have simmered for years on anti-Islamic and anti-immigration Web sites in Norway and other European countries and in the United States made it possible for him to believe he was acting on behalf of a community that would thank him. As John Donne famously put it, “No man is an island … every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Norway’s security police had estimated that only a small number of Norwegians belonged to domestic right-wing extremist groups in 2010 and that they did not pose a security threat — an estimate that clearly has turned out to be erroneous. There may be only a few known members of ragged and powerless white-power groups, but the thousands of right-wing extremists who don’t belong to recognized groups are harder to pin down.
The global Islamophobic blogosphere consists of loosely connected networks of people — including students, civil servants, capitalists, and neo-Nazis. Many do not even see themselves as “right-wing,” but as defenders of enlightened values, including feminism.
The Islamophobes of Norway have no manifesto, but they share three fundamental views: that Norway is in the hands of a treacherous, spineless, politically correct elite that has betrayed the pure spirit of Norwegian culture by permitting demographic contamination; that Muslims will never be truly integrated (even if they pretend to be); and that there is a Muslim conspiracy to gain political dominance across Europe.

Hatred of Muslims and resentment of the left — one of us has repeatedly received resentful diatribes against the “multiculturalist elite,” and was mentioned in Mr. Breivik’s own writings — is not confined to Norway. Mr. Breivik has praised Gates of Vienna, a Web site that compares contemporary Europe to long-ago wars with the Ottomans. He has praised writers like Bruce Bawer, the American author of “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,” and Bat Ye’Or, the pseudonym for the British author of the conspiratorial “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.” He is an enthusiastic reader of the virulently anti-Islamic blog of Pamela Geller, an American who leads the group “Stop Islamization of America” and gained notoriety for her opposition to an Islamic center near ground zero in Manhattan.
Europe’s new right is, in other words, not neo-Nazi; it has swapped anti-Semitism for Islamophobia. After a hiatus of several hundred years, fear of Islam reemerged around 1989, as the Cold War was ending and Iranian mullahs issued a fatwa against the British writer Salman Rushdie. It gained popularity as increasing numbers of Muslims entered Europe as immigrants in the 1990s, and became widespread in the aftermath of 9/11. Traditional racism may actually be waning in several European countries, but hostility toward Islam and animosity toward Muslim immigrants and their children is on the rise.
Norwegian society is changing, and rapid immigration has no doubt led to tensions. In a country of under 5 million people, the number of immigrants and their children has doubled to over 550,000 in the last 15 years. Many of them are Poles and Swedes seeking work, and their presence is uncontroversial. Others have arrived as refugees and asylum-seekers from countries like Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia. And a substantial number have come to Norway to join relatives or spouses already in the country. About 200,000 — including more than 30,000 Pakistanis — have roots in Muslim countries.
Because of our healthy economy, fueled by North Sea oil, controversies over immigration tend to concern culture rather than economics. The perception that immigrants are patriarchal and insular has sparked controversies over everything from school excursions to swimming lessons to disrespect for female teachers. Yet many “new Norwegians” fully participate in society. Indeed, some of them were at work in the government buildings destroyed last week; others were taking part in the Utoya summer camp.
Conceding that a culturally diverse society raises knotty and complex social and political questions is one thing. It is quite another to state that a multicultural society is impossible, or that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Yet the blogosphere to which Mr. Breivik belonged took these views as a basic premise.
It is too early to tell if anything positive can emerge from this tragedy. In the upcoming elections, Norway’s Labor Party will likely receive many sympathy votes and the right could be adversely affected by its associations with Islamophobia. In the long run, the situation is less certain. In other Scandinavian countries, Social Democrats have been pushed to the right by anti-immigration parties. We hope that Norway’s longstanding consensus about immigration and integration policies will not be eroded.
Until last week, Norwegian authorities did not see the far right as a security threat. Mr. Breivik has now shown that those who claim to protect the next generation of Norwegians against Islamist extremism are, in fact, the greater menace.
Jostein Gaarder is the author of “Sophie’s World” and many other books. Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo.

By FRANK SCOTT
Columnist
San Rafael, CA

When major media echoed Obama’s “winding down” military operations in Afghanistan it merely repeated Viet Nam era lies . As that war became so costly that it could only be continued at bargain rates, the USA removed some of its troops and turned the major killing responsibility over to the Viet Namese. “Changing the color of the bodies” enabled mind managers to proclaim that hostilities were “winding down”. They actually continued for several more years until defeat was so imminent we were forced out before cracking the nation’s social and financial structure.
Now, we’re told that troops who weren’t there when Obama took office would soon come home, leaving more troops there than before he was elected and switching the policy to automated robot killings. This drone assassination technique has had great success at murdering innocent people when an errant robot hits families having dinner instead of cults plotting terror. Is this change we can believe in or the imperial status quo pursued under a multi-cultural president? We can only shudder at how long it may take a hacker to turn one of these things around and send it back to its point of origin.
As murderous peace continues in Iraquistan  and the depressing recession continues ending at home, the president of nimble talk and spineless walk proclaims change in policy towards Israel; he will separate his scraping from his bowing. This is wildly lauded by those desperate to find something to praise in a failed regime which owes its future to the nearly imbecilic opposition. When Netanyahu treats the American congress like an AIPAC meeting and that congress behaves as a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate Israel, Americans need to wonder why they put up with such nonsense and how much longer it will be tolerated by the rest of the world, if not nature itself.
The Libyan slaughter continues as the European hit team trying to perpetuate the white man’s empire are running into the cost of warfare as their societies show signs of crumbling from within. Workers fight savage cuts to public spending while their privately controlled governments kill Libyans to maintain their former control of Africa. Under Khadaffi, the latest in a demonized line of leaders of former colonies ,Libya became a prosperous country with the highest standard of living on the continent. It has played a major role in attempting to organize the former European dominated region into an independent member of what passes for an international community controlled by very few nations and even fewer banks. While hagiography may overdo his virtues, the delirious propaganda  about the Libyan  leader should come from people wearing propeller beanies and drooling on themselves. Unfortunately, they look like typical class servants to power as they spout incredible tales of terror that have less relation to reality than do the ravings of a Fox TV commentator. The revival of a Reagan era script that called Khadaffi a madman bent on global destruction should clarify the foreign policy of presidents as allegedly different as arch-conservative Reagan and arch-liberal Obama: There is no difference.
The system is the same, whether represented by a speech reading flunky from the old all-white school or a speech reading flunky from the new half-white academy.
The global rule of finance capital has brought the system closer to collapse than it ever was under industrial-productive domination. While the devastation of environments owes its beginning to the profit accumulation lust of private capital, production at least created commerce that benefited some, though always at the expense of others. Nevertheless, the rising material status of a growing middle class in many nations could help cover the blight on global conditions that were the cost of this advance. But under financial rule profiteers greatly decline in numbers as their obscene wealth grows, inequality increases and those formerly able to enjoy some benefits of material production are reduced to buying the goods and services of survival on credit. This contradiction between a shrinking minority that expands its wealth at the expense of a growing majority that pays for it with debt and poverty is leading to social explosions .
Outside the castles and casinos of affluence masses are beginning to create the most dangerous threat minority rule has ever faced: democratic majorities threatening to take control of political, economic and natural environments. Nothing terrifies the imperial rulers more and present vicious attacks on pubic spending in the developed states and on disobedient regimes in the developing ones are signs of their terror.
Citizens of the USA are threatened with more devastation of what pitiful social services remain in order to assure growing wealth for a minority and continued wars all over the world. Even supposedly untouchable programs like social security are menaced by a president afraid he may be thought not pragmatic enough to be refinanced by his masters. But his disgraceful performance is exactly what they hired him to give.
In Europe, Africa and across the Arab world social desperation is bringing on an aroused population demanding transformational and not simply rhetorical change. The level of desperation here in the USA has hardly reached a point of total social breakdown, but if  the conscious desire for democracy doesn’t come soon and create a majority out of minorities, it will.
Motivated humanitarians who try to reach Gaza with compassionate letters of support would be better advised to descend on Washington DC with letters of contempt. Attention needs to be focused on the imperial center from which not only Israel but the entire axis of domination originates. It is long past time for the American people to take action, and that action should begin and end right here in the USA.

By JAMES ZOGBY

When it comes to Israel, politicians in Washington can get hysterical, making the stupidest of statements or acting idiotically. Evidence of such behaviour is common and varied; this week, for example, newly-elected Republican senator for Illinois Mark Kirk called for the US to use military means to stop Freedom Flotilla 2 heading for Gaza to break Israel’s siege. He said that the United States should “provide all the necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli naval forces in order to stop the ships before they pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives in danger”. When and how would or could unarmed activists and peace campaigners on ships heading for Gaza “pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives in danger”?

Apparently, it is not an issue of concern for this Senator that dozens of American citizens are on board those ships (including retired US military personnel), or that any hostile action by US forces could endanger the lives of US citizens. Nor does the low esteem in which America is held in the Middle East as a result of the wars in which it is engaged appear to bother Mr. Kirk.
Meanwhile, the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has written to the US Attorney General calling for participation in flotillas trying to break Israel’s immoral and illegal siege of Gaza to be prohibited because such participation is “illegal”. He doesn’t say under which law it is illegal, but that doesn’t bother someone planning, it is claimed, to stand for the Republican nomination for President of the USA; a scary thought indeed.

In Washington, the US Senate voted unanimously for a resolution expressing “its opposition to bring Hamas into a government of national unity” through the recent Palestinian reconciliation agreement. The Senate statement pointed out that Palestinian efforts to obtain recognition for an independent state of Palestine at the United Nations “reflects an absence of commitment towards the peace negotiations [which] will have repercussions on the continuation of American aid” to the Palestinian Authority.

In the course of the discussion on the wording of the resolution, Republican Senator for Maine Susan Collins accused the United Nations of having a “documented record of being hijacked” by the Palestinians to be used against Israel. Her Democratic colleague for the state of Maryland, Ben Cardin, denounced the efforts of the United Nations, describing them as “a unilateral attempt by the United Nations to establish a Palestinian state”. This is sheer and utter nonsense, of course, but since when did that bother top US legislators? Neither Collins nor Cardin have ever expressed any concern that the US Congress has been hijacked by the powerful Israel Lobby in the United States, such as when it voted to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision which had a devastatingly negative effect on public perceptions of America across the Arab world.

This is not harmless chit-chat for these are professional politicians. What they say and do has consequences beyond the shores of North America. It is clear, though, that American politicians are incapable of dealing with Middle East issues impartially due to an inbuilt bias towards Israel. The resultant political, economic, financial and military cover that they give to the Zionist state serves to encourage hardliners in the Israeli government to expand their settlements and aggressive policies. The Arab voice isn’t heard in Washington on anywhere near the same level.

All of the above statements and others like them point to more than simply pro-Israel political hysteria (serious though that is) or stupidity. They are direct evidence that a just conclusion to the Arab-Israeli conflict remains a distant dream and that America has lost all claim to be an honest broker for peace.

BY GHASSAN RUBEIZ, Ph.D.
Columnist, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

The Middle East spring will take time to blossom and widen its scope. Nation-building reformers must pay increased attention to two important barriers to democracy: overextended clerical power and tolerance for gender inequality.

Initially, public protest achieved rapid results by ousting the head of the state in Tunisia and then in Egypt. This initial success has encouraged revolts in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, not to mention other less serious uprisings. However, after Tunisia and Egypt, the revolts have lasted more than expected and they are still active, bloody and inconclusive. In the second cycle of rebellion, the national armies have sided with the regimes against the protestors.

The challenge for Egypt and Tunisia is to rebuild the new political system through a participatory process. These two countries could provide a model of social change.

In Egypt, the military and the religious establishment have dominated national policy since Mubarak was ousted; so far civil society groups have only played a timid role in the new government. Secular reform groups are struggling to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood movement for shaping the future. If the Egyptian army and the religious establishment continue to decelerate and dilute reform, the country would collapse again. A second revolution will then follow, as fear of the ruling authority is a thing of the past.
In Tunisia, on the other hand, the new government has been relatively responsive to civil society and the lessons (responsible governance, freedom and equality) of the revolution are clear to the army and the religious establishment. It helps that Tunisia is more secular than Egypt.

It is less cumbersome to change structures and rulers than to change ideas. It may not be hard to identify the dictator and demonstrate for his removal. But it is not at all simple to acknowledge and remove socio-religious barriers to democracy.

The Middle East spring should not only be concerned with the removal of dictators and replacing them with democratically elected leaders. A corner stone of democracy is the extent to which minorities are protected and afforded equal rights. Reform should focus on building political systems which provide equal opportunity to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religious affiliation or gender. A major unacknowledged barrier (the elephant in the room) to these democratic ideals is the conservative religious establishment.

No society can go far in social development without restricting the power of religious authorities, which are often self-serving and biased against roles of women. Women are the largest and most significant vulnerable group in the Middle East. Bringing democracy to the region cannot be done without confronting a flawed patriarchal social order which is bent on perpetuating gender inequality and preserving outmoded family legislation, education and institutions.

In a free society, women have equal opportunity to men in education, access to health services, jobs and political office. Religious authorities should be encouraged to revise outmoded laws of personal statutes regarding marriage, divorce, burial and inheritance. Moreover, adult citizens should be allowed to choose and define their faith, interpret scripture, convert to other religions, or to abandon faith if they choose to.

So far, no Middle East society has rebelled against religious totalitarianism. The fear to criticize religious authority is deeper than the fear to criticize political authority.

Religion is deeply rooted in the culture of the Middle East. In this region, there are already three religious states, where the law of the land is scripture-based: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Moreover, in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Bahrain, religious affiliation dominates political power distribution.

In different ways the politics of Syria and Israel is faith biased: The Alawites, an ethno-religious community rules much of Syria and Israel considers itself a Jewish state. Religion plays a role in Israel’s identity, its roots and alliance with the Evangelical right. Yet, both Syria and Israel resent being labeled sectarian.

Even regional experts dodge the issue of religious reform.  During the past decade, United Nations scholars from the Arab world easily identified political freedoms as one of three major societal deficits. The scholars were equally frank when they declared marginalization of women to be the second development deficit.  However, these scholars failed to consider religious intolerance as an important social problem. Instead, the vague concept of “Knowledge deficit” was judged to be the third root-cause of Arab stagnation. The scholars, then and now have been too timid in confronting the religious establishment as a source of limitless taboos. Sexual and religious taboos, literalism in following scripture and hero worship of spiritual authorities forcefully dampen the intellectual curiosity of the Arab child and adult.

Visionary leadership and new legislation for the protection of religious minorities and women are badly needed to stabilize the new regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. If Tunisia and Egypt succeed in achieving genuine transformation in governance and protection of minorities, the model they would provide to the rest of the region would be too strong to resist. However, if Egypt and Tunis appear stuck on ideas of the past in their post-revolutionary rebuilding, the ruling reactionary forces in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain would gain momentum and frustrate the protestors.

A strong and democratic Egypt would limit Israel’s indulgent and insensitive attitude toward the occupation. The Netanyahu government will find it hard to preserve a bilateral peace partnership with a regionally-backed, democratic Egypt.

Tourists and foreign investors would flood Egypt and Tunisia if and when they find these two revolutionary countries to be stable, safe, tolerant and friendly to minorities.

The extent to which Egypt and Tunisia integrate tolerance and empowerment of women in nation building will dramatically affect the rest of the region.

By FRANK SCOTT
Columnist
San Rafael, CA

“Back during slavery there were two kinds of Negros. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negros got too much out of line, he held them in check. He put them back on the plantation.” Malcolm X

America seemed to achieve a great victory when Obama was elected president, both overcoming its wretched racist history and sending a positive message to humanity. But if Malcolm were alive he might point out that an African-American running the plantation for his masters does not change anything but the skin tone of the person serving those masters.

Accepting such cosmetic change when our “plantation” needs radical transformation may be too costly a price to bear.

Our economy inflicts greater loss on the majority while a minority sees its profits rising. Public service is under vicious assault as corporate capital, private wealth and foreign interest – Israel’s often placed far above our own – attempt to reinforce the crumbling structure of minority wealth by weakening the foundation under everything else. And presiding over this imperial plantation is a 21st century model of Malcolm’s house Negro, keeping the global field hands in line.

Often a verbal fumbler when thinking on his feet, Obama’s ability to “give good speech” makes many react to him with uncritical praise. Some of his detractors call him a socialist, a Muslim or an alien, depending on the depths of their stupidity or racism. But his employment seems assured given the dreadful opposition offered by corporate capital’s other ruling party, though there has been growing criticism from former supporters as conditions move from bad to worse.

While too many Americans accept hyphenated national identity, the president’s Kenyan father makes him truly African-American. But millions born here and wearing that label are more deeply rooted in the USA than most other Americans. They should not tolerate being reduced to a divided and conquered minority, and at this point in history neither should the rest of us. We ought to reject outdated and imposed divisions that diminish our mental capacity into permanent subservience to ruling power. That social malady finds us supporting a “white” house occupant as an agent of the majority while he maintains a system that profits a minority at our expense.

The symbol of democracy at the top is no different from finance capital’s congressional servants who, like puppets on strings, applauded the Israeli president when he addressed what might as well have been his Knesset. Their excitement was for AIPAC campaign contributions which assure maintenance of a racial supremacist state that threatens our future and would vanish without our financial and military support.

Our government – with rare exceptions – serves financial masters who buy it in election sales that are sham performances of democracy. It is employed by an oligarchy laughing all the way to the bank it stocks with our money which it then loans to us at exorbitant interest rates. That’s part of the perpetual economic scam of a system that always enriches an idle minority by robbing the working majority.

We should all be “people of color” turning beet red in shame at having been repeatedly manipulated and swindled in the interest of these masters. They use outside menace and inside divisional diversity to set people against one another as their profiteering shreds the social and environmental fabric to leave us naked against the elements of harsh reality. That reality cannot be tolerated any longer, here or in the rest of the world.

Libya, a nation long critical of western domination and the “house” Arab regimes which support it, is being destroyed under the guise of freeing it from a despot. Sound familiar? The atrocity of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan threatens to last longer than all 20th century wars combined. Iran continues to be fanatically demonized and European capital is attacking its people with undisguised fury. As trillions are spent on death and destruction that brings more misery and terrorism, an imperial world leader rhetorically offering positive change is negatively furthering the status quo of war, nuclear power and the wealth of his masters.

Many of the minority living in the symbolic master house at the top of the economic pyramid are doing lavishly well. The rest of us are the overwhelming majority that lives in an environment under growing and race threatening assault. Democratic control needs to be taken by the power of the people in that field of humanity. House servants of capital, no matter what ethnic, racial or sexual hyphenation they wave like a flag, are working for their wealthy masters and against democratic interests.

The sooner we drop divisional nonsense that says the skin tone, sex or beliefs of people makes them somehow different humans, the sooner we will begin solving our problems. Minority masters have put those ideas in our heads and their house servants reinforce their propaganda. We need to cure ourselves of a mental illness that assures physical failure for civilization. Peaceful prosperity cannot be achieved under the present distribution of humanity’s wealth, which goes primarily to a minority at everyone else’s expense. This government serves that minority. The workers in the symbolic field need to “get out of line” in Malcolm’s words, reject servants of their masters and take that house of government for their own. The changes that would bring about will impact far beyond the symbolic nature of a speechmaker for the housemasters and extend to being a change maker for the USA and beyond.

BY AMEL AHMED
Guest Writer

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen once compared his rule to dancing on the heads of snakes. Earlier this year, Saleh would stumble, as protests engulfed the small, fractured nation and succeeded in bringing together military officials, politicians, tribal chiefs and demonstrators.  The notoriously wily leader known for maintaining power through a network of patrimony and cronyism was caught off guard when, inspired by the Arab Spring, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets to demand an end to Saleh’s 33 year rule. Now in its fourth month, the longest uprising of the Arab Spring thus far, it is a testimony to both the protesters determination and Saleh’s stubborn politics.

Although the equation had flipped on Saleh, he did not alter his modus operandi, opting instead to treat the crisis as if it was a minor impasse. He attempted to bargain his way out and coupled empty promises with brute force. Saleh initially offered not to run for reelection in 2013 and stated that his son, Ahmed Ali, head of the elite Republican Guard, would also not run. It was the same promise he made in 2005, when after initially announcing that he would not run in the 2006 elections, he reneged just three months before elections. This time however, the people rebuked his offer. Demonstrators wanted nothing less than an immediate transfer of power and made clear that they were in it for the long haul. Protests soon spread to other cities and Saleh responded with violence, particularly in the city of Taiz, where demonstrators have been hit the hardest.

The watershed moment that would mark a major turning point in the conflict was the March 18 attack against protesters. On that day, known as “Bloody Friday,” fifty-two demonstrators were killed when  government snipers fired on them. The incident resulted in mass defections and resignations from top officials, including several Yemeni ambassadors. To spare himself the embarrassment of further defections, Saleh sacked his entire cabinet on March 20th.

Just one day after the move, General Ali Muhsin, Saleh’s half-brother and chief military advisor,  defected, signaling the first major blow to the regime. On March 21, Muhsin pledged to protect the demonstrators in Change Square. According to Yemen expert Gregory Johnson, the defection signaled a break between Saleh’s immediate family and the rest of his supporters in the military. “Ali Muhsin is by far the most powerful figure in the military and his announcement opened the floodgates, as officer after officer has now come out supporting the revolution.”

Muhsin’s break with the regime is viewed with cynicism by demonstrators and experts alike. According to Johnson, Muhsin is preparing himself for a post-Saleh future. “His announcement puts him in position to head the military or military council under the next government.  This is something a number of prominent Yemenis were waiting for.  Not because they liked Ali Muhsin, they don’t.  But because he commands so much loyalty within the army.”

Soon after Muhsin’s defection, Saleh’s own tribe, the Hashid confederation, issued a statement a few days after the attacks asking Saleh to leave peacefully. The Hashids, Yemen’s most powerful tribe, are headed by the Ahmar brothers, who according to political analyst Abdullah M. Hamidaddin, have long been encroaching on Saleh’s authority. “They’ve been challenging Saleh’s access to more power for some time now. They had a score to settle with Saleh but they did not dare to confront him directly until the youth took to the streets. This is a power struggle between Saleh, Ali Muhsin, & the Ahmar brothers. The youth were the playing field.”

The ten brothers inherited leadership of the Hashid tribe in 2007, after the death of their father, Sheikh Abdullah. Sheikh Abdullah founded Yemen’s largest opposition party, the Islamist Islah. He was considered Saudi’s main ally in Yemen and his sons maintain strong ties with the country. According to Johnson, “The descendants of al-Ahmar and Saleh increasingly view each other as competitors for the same shrinking pie of political power.  The contest for control of the state is now said to be, in a bit of an Arabic pun, one between the two Bayt al-Ahmars, House of al-Ahmar.  The reference is to Shaykh Abdullah’s surname and the president’s home village, Bayt al-Ahmar.”

The power struggle between the families centers around Hamid al-Ahmar. A successful businessman, he heads the Islah party and is considered the most politically ambitious of the brothers. The Islah party threw its weight behind the opposition early on, setting up tents in Change Square and providing financial support to the opposition. The pan-Arab daily Al Quds al Arabi named Hamid al-Ahnmar as one of three candidates most likely to succeed Saleh. The other two were the president’s son, Ahmed, and his nephew Yahya.  According to Johnson, “the list is suggestive of the centralisation of politics in Yemen over the past three decades. The contest for control of the state is now said to be one between two families. This process of consolidating power has morphed to the point where the military and intelligence command structure – the true power of the state – resembles the family tree of Saleh’s own tribe.”

Like Ali Muhsin, the Ahmar clan is also viewed with much suspicion. Their influence reaches deep, to the chagrin of many activists and organizers at the Square. Even more troubling is Islah’s close alliance with Ali Muhsin’s 1st Armored Division. According to Salah al-Sharafi, founder of the Union of Movements for Independent Youth, Islah is attempting to control the movement. “They think they can buy this revolution. We don’t trust them. They were for the GCC agreement when many of us weren’t and they’re still trying to force us to support the plan.” Sharafi’s sentiments are shared by many of the revolutionaries, who believe the plan is nothing more than a means for Saudi to control Yemen through proxy leadership. “We want a Yemen-initiated  plan with no outside interference. The Saudis will work hard to place their strongman Hamid al-Ahmar in power, but we will work hard to prevent this,” says Sharafi. “If Ahmar continues to try to control the movement through his agents in Islah, we expect violence. We are here, we are independent, we are not afraid of Islah. We will make our own alliances with tribes.”

The Beginning of the End
On May 23, one day after Saleh refused to sign the Gulf-Cooperation Council-backed initiative for the third time, Shaykh Sadiq al-Ahmar, the eldest son and official head of the Hashid tribal federation, announced

his support for the opposition. It would signal the second major blow to Saleh’s regime. Violent clashes ensued between Ahmar fighters and security forces in Hasaba, a suburb of capital city Sana’a and home to Shaykh al-Ahmar. The violence left Hasaba in ruins and at least 120 dead.

The third and decisive blow to the regime came June 3, when Saleh and several top officials were injured during an attack against the presidential palace. As details of the attack are made more public, all signs point to it being an inside job. Medical sources in Saudi, where Saleh is being treated, say he suffered from burns on forty percent of his body and a collapsed lung. The day after the attack, Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi took over as acting president. While crowds in Change Square celebrated Saleh’s departure, Yemeni officials insisted on state television that Saleh’s absence was temporary. However, some experts believe a return to power is unlikely. “He is heavily sedated and quite disfigured, as I understand things,” according to Grant Hopkins, former political consultant in Yemen and Founder of ICEX, a geo-political consulting firm. “Even with a full recovery it will take at least a year for him to heal. I doubt that he will ever return. The real issue is what his son is doing.”

Just who’s running the country presently depends on who you ask. Vice President Joe Biden phoned al-Hadi and said that the US would immediately recognize his authority. However, Yemen experts and much of the local press believe that Saleh’s son Ahmed Ali is the de facto ruler. Saleh’s son and his three nephews control important sectors of the military and security apparatus. In an interesting move, Ahmed moved into the presidential palace soon after his father’s departure while al-Hadi continued to work out of his office in the Ministry of Defense. According to Johnson, al- Hadi is not seen as a strong player. “When Saleh needed a southerner for balance, he chose Hadi, who was everything he was looking for: loyal, weak, and from the south.” Ali Muhsin’s division now stands guard at al- Hadi’s home, purportedly protecting him from the military arm of  the state  he now leads.

Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani,  a political analyst in Yemen and co-founder of the Democratic Awakening Movement, says the extent of Ahmed’s authority is limited by the political wing of the government and the amount of respect al-Hadi commands from all parties. “The resort to violence did not work for the president, in his full capacity, and with all the top lieutenants beside them. Now they’re gone. The prime minister is badly injured. The speaker of parliament is injured. Two deputy prime ministers are injured. So, how could the son and the nephews continue the violent confrontation without the support of a political arm?”
With the current power vacuum, of utmost concern to the West is the threat of al-Qaida.  Hopkins believes the US will use this time to selectively target suspected al-Qaida targets in a unilateral campaign. “It makes sense. In a political vacuum it has been my experience that going on the attack is the best defense.” Indeed, this week the U.S. stepped up its covert campaign in the south of Yemen and targeted militants linked to al-Qaeda with armed drones and fighter jets. Strikes reportedly killed al-Qaeda operative Abu Ali al-Harithi and several other militant suspects. Four civilians were also killed.

According to Clive Jones, a Yemen expert and Professor at Leeds University, Saleh inflated the threat of al-Qaida to make his rule appear indispensible to the West. “Playing on primordial fears of jihadi threats determines a hierarchy of values that inevitably links the fate of Yemen’s President to wider western security interests. It is in effect a dependency relationship but one perhaps where inflation of threat is realized in the political capital that Saleh has accrued externally.” Saleh depended on this capital to help him survive through the latest impasse. He continued to play the terrorism card and many accuse him of orchestrating the recent conflict in the southern Yemeni city of Zinjibar. Hundreds of armed militants belonging to al-Qaeda took control of the city on May 27 after military posts were abandoned. Several top defected generals accused President Saleh of intentionally ceding territory to the militants. Saleh would later send in troops to resolve a problem he created, according to a statement released by nine defected generals. In the same statement, they called on other officers to defect and support the opposition. “In reality, Saleh has not been all that cooperative in the war on terror,” says Iryani. “Saleh has only given lip service to fighting terrorism, which is why the U.S. was forced to use the drones to pursue extremists.” According to Iryani, “A democratically elected president would do a more efficient job in eradicating the few hundred al-Qaida members in a way that is sensitive to the people of Yemen.”

According to Hopkins, the real wild card is the Houthis, a Zaidi Shia rebel group based in Saada, a city in Northern Yemen. The Houthis have been engaged in violent clashes with the state since 2004 and claim that they are defending their community against state aggression and discrimination. In late 2009, clashes broke out between Houthi rebels and Saudi forces along their common border. Both the Saudi and Yemeni governments accuse Iran of aiding the rebels, a claim that Iran denies. Hopkins believes their role will be critical and integral to a future Yemen state. “They were dealt a lethal campaign in 2009-10 bought and paid for by the Kingdom. They survived. The Saudis fear them but this may not be a time for resurrecting new hostilities in Saada,” says Hopkins. “The Kingdom, no doubt , will see the hidden hand of Tehran and will shout that message to the roof tops. But unless the US is in agreement, that will be a hollow crie de couer. I would hope that Washington would not misread the politics of this a second time.”

Where does this messy, convoluted equation leave the opposition youth? According to Jones, the political field is still determined by tribal allegiances. “This ultimately will determine the dispensation of power in Yemen in the short to medium term future at least. Even the rifts in the military hierarchy that have so rattled Saleh have tribal context.”  Khaled al-Anesi, human rights attorney and one of the main organizers in Change Square, is more optimistic and believes that the ball is now in the opposition’s court. “In this equation, the opposition has the upper hand and should ask for something more.” Specifically, the opposition has two demands. The first, is the establishment of a presidential council composed of five to seven people who will lead Yemen in a transition government until elections. The second demand is the establishment of a national council, composed of 100-150 members who will be charged with promoting dialogue among the different factions and creating a new constitution.  Its members, according to al-Anesi, will be selected from different tribes, parties, and experts. The GCC stipulates that elections should occur two months after the transfer of power. Opposition organizers however, want to hold off on elections for a few months longer. “Two months is too soon for elections. We need to rebuild our country and create a new constitution,” says al-Anesi. “The Gulf countries are attempting to rush the process because they want to change the face of the system only. We want to change the entire system. The youth will continue the revolution for as long as need be. It’s not an easy mission. We expect a power struggle.  The tribe will try to claim powerbut the youth know what they want and will not rest until they attain all their rights.”

Unlike al-Anesi, Iryani believes the youth movement will not stand in the way if the general political community comes to a resolution.  “I think what they are doing- the sit-ins and marches- is a healthy thing; it keeps them vigilant and prevents the process from being hijacked. They are the safeguard of the revolution. They will not allow the Ahmars or the ruling party to strike a deal at their expense.”  Iryani believes that the youth are still in charge of the revolution and that the military wing is limited in its authority. “The military, tribal, religious elites are not the masters of the Square. If we’re talking about firepower, than the tribe and military have a monopoly- but they’ve been proven irrelevant in advancing this peaceful revolution. I do not think the youth will be dominated or intimidated by these tribal and military forces.” Iryani remains optimistic and believes that with Saleh now out of power, the nation is fast approaching a peaceful transfer of power. For their part, the youth have succeeded in bringing together different factions under one banner, something that no leader in Yemen’s modern history has succeeded in doing without feeling like they were dancing on the heads of snakes. Whether that unity will survive through this latest, volatile phase in Yemen’s history remains to be seen.

Stuffing my backpack before setting out to board The Audacity of Hope, the U.S. boat to Gaza, I got a familiar-sounding call from yet another puzzled friend, who said as gently as the words allow, “You know you can get killed, don’t you?”

I recognize this caution as an expression of genuine concern from friends. From some others—who don’t much care about Gaza’s plight and/or who do not wish us well—the words are phrased somewhat differently: “Aren’t you just asking for it?”

That was the obligatory question/accusation at the end of a recent interview of me that was taped for a BBC-TV special scheduled to air this coming week as we try to break—or at least draw attention to—Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and the suffering it inflicts on the people there.

I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials “would be happy if something happened to us.” They are, I am reliably told, “perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV.”

I mention this informal warning for the benefit of anyone who may have harbored hope that the U.S. government would do something to protect us American citizens from the kind of violence used by the Israelis against last year’s flotilla. It seems best to be up-front and realistic about what to expect.

Two millennia ago, “Civus Romanus Sum” automatically won lawful treatment and free passage for Roman citizens in trouble. It was a matter of pride and a benefit of being part of a powerful empire. Today, the contrast could hardly be starker. It is sad fact that “Civus Americanus Sum” would engender ridicule, rather than respect, if invoked in an attempt to secure basic rights for those of us working for justice for the Palestinians.

Americans also face the reality that they are put in harm’s way by the view held by millions around the world—and especially in the Middle East—that the United States is partly responsible for the injustices and the humiliations that Palestinians face daily.

So I want to turn around the question/warning to me about safety and direct it to fellow citizens who will not be aboard The Audacity of Hope:

“You know you can get killed, don’t you?”—if the U.S. government continues to enable Israel in keeping a million and a half Gazans in a densely populated open-air prison with few prospects for a normal life. It is a no-brainer. The longer that goes on the more likely it becomes that many more Americans will become the target of terrorists seeking to inflict some pain on the great power that stands behind Israel whatever it does.

Oppression of Gazans: Catalyst for Violence

We already know of two suicide bombs famously targeted against Americans that can be traced to outrage at U.S. support for Israeli oppression in Gaza.

The 290 people aboard Northwest Flight 253 were spared on Christmas Day 2009 when the “underwear bomber” was prevented from setting off an explosive over Detroit. A week later, seven CIA officials were not as lucky. They were killed by a suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan. More about these two incidents later.

In recent interviews about Gaza and about my reasons for going on The Audacity of Hope, I have avoided focusing on pragmatic/utilitarian considerations like exposing injustice, inducing change, and thereby making Americans more secure. Rather, I have called attention to what is more bedrock for me—the oft-repeated biblical admonition to show special concern for the widow, the orphan, the refugee.

All too often, I have watched eyes glaze over and overheard muted comments regarding what planet I might be coming from. For most folks, such concern or compassion, if any, seems to stop at the water’s edge. After all, the widow, the orphan, the refugee might be a “terrorist.”

Bedrock American virtues like honesty and honor seem in very short supply these days, having been pretty much sacrificed on the altar of fear and overweening concern for “security.” Americans have been so desensitized by years of multi-colored “terror” warnings and politician demagoguery that nothing is now more important than the safety of the American people. Most citizens utter not a murmur as they watch their tax dollars enable the worst kinds of brutality abroad.

Or they train themselves NOT to watch, preferring the diversion of late-breaking news on Congressman Anthony Weiner’s photogenic “junk.”

It is mostly to such folks that I include the facts that follow, acknowledging that many of you readers are likely to be quite familiar with some or all of them. It is for the nonreaders, like perhaps some in your own family or your neighbors, that I feel a need to make one more effort to expose this reality: By turning a blind eye to Israeli brutality in Gaza, our government and our media make Americans a great deal LESS safe and secure.

Can Self-Interest Prompt More Common Sense?

I am guessing that only a direct, fact-based appeal has much chance of prompting many Americans to push—if only out of self-interest—for a more utilitarian and, incidentally, a more moral approach to the festering wound of Gaza.

The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) will not array the facts as they should be arrayed (if they mention them at all). And, of course, that goes in spades for TV “news.” Yet, it is not difficult to connect the dots, once you know what they are.

What follows is intended for people like the fellow who recently flipped an obscene gesture at me after reading my bumper sticker, which says simply, “God Bless the Rest of the World Too.” It is for those who choose to express their exclusive concern for just one segment of humanity by chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” It is for those who have never heard of, or blithely reject, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise admonition that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

What You Won’t Hear on the Evening News

— Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divide-and-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

— The bulk of Hamas’s popular appeal—like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon—stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the tangible help they give to oppressed Palestinians.

And don’t take my word for it. Here’s what James Clapper, director of national intelligence, included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34-page “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 10. It was completely missed, for some reason, by the FCM:

“We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. … In some cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.

“In last year’s threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that extremists may take advantage of a government’s inability to meet the health needs of its population, highlighting that Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s provision of health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to legitimize those organizations as a political force. This also has been the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”

I hope, readers, that you were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these “terrorist” movements garner public support by providing people life-saving medical care.

— It was on that record of public service (and also on the PLO’s richly deserved reputation for corruption) that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel, and Europe wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.

— Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that thereupon the White House ordered CIA operatives in 2007 to try, with the help of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. (See “The Gaza Bombshell” by David Rose in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad story.)

— Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing Gazans to bare subsistence levels and 45 percent unemployment.

— From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame duck, Israel launched air and ground attacks on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel’s stated aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza. Right. President-elect Barack Obama said nothing.

Guilt by Association

The United States is widely seen as responsible for Israel’s aggressive behavior, which is hardly surprising. It is no secret that Israel enjoys financial ($3 billion per year), military, and virtually unquestioned political support from Washington.

What is surprising, in the words of widely respected Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, is “how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.,” and how it is taboo to point this out.

Take for example former CIA specialist on al-Qaeda Michael Scheuer, who had the audacity to state on C-SPAN: “For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world … is to just defy reality.”

The Likud Lobby had already succeeded in getting Scheuer fired from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for his forthrightness, and the Israeli media condemned his C-SPAN remarks as “blatantly anti-Semitic.” There can be a high price to pay for candor on this neuralgic issue.

Yet, perhaps the most flagrant and egregious example of this syndrome is the unprecedentedly brief career—six hours—of former ambassador Chas Freeman as chair of the National Intelligence Council.

On the morning of March 10, 2009, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair welcomed Freeman to the job overseeing all U.S. intelligence analysis and praised his “long experience and inventive mind.” That afternoon, the White House succumbed to pressure from the Likud Lobby and told Blair that Freeman had to go.

Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for U.S. public office.”

Freeman’s credentials were impeccable. He is not only widely regarded as one of the brightest foreign policy specialists around, but he also had this weird addiction to speaking truth to power. No way was he going to trim intelligence analysis to the desires of the Likud Lobby. That was simply unacceptable. After all, Freeman might have braced the president with the reality of how Washington’s blind support for Israeli behavior is risking American lives—not to mention the U.S. equities in the entire Middle East.

Let’s move at this point from the general to the specific and show how Israel’s attacks on Gaza and oppression of its inhabitants have already inspired a number of anti-American terrorist acts—with more and bigger to follow, as the night the day.

Christmas Day Bomber: From Yemen to Detroit

Remember Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who almost downed Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009? What was his motive, and how was this 23-year-old Nigerian of privilege persuaded to do the bidding—however amateurishly—of al-Qaeda in the Persian Gulf?

An Associated Press report quoted Abdulmutallab’s Yemeni friends to the effect that he was actually “not overtly extremist.” They pointed out, however, that he was angry over Israel’s wanton slaughter of more 1,400 Gazans a year before. It was a brutal offensive, by any reasonable standard, but one that was defended in Washington as justifiable self-defense.

Nor was Abdulmutallab the only terrorist motivated by the carnage in Gaza. When the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaeda announced that they were uniting into “al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula,” their combined rhetoric railed against the Israeli attack on Gaza.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Afghanistan

How does a 32-year-old Jordanian medical doctor, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, from a family of Palestinian origin get radicalized to the point where he decides to blow himself up in order to kill seven American CIA operatives and a Jordanian intelligence officer? Al-Balawi’s suicide bombing, near Khost, Afghanistan, occurred on Dec. 30, 2009, just five days after Abdulmutallab’s attempt fizzled.

Though most U.S. media stories treated al-Balawi as a fanatical double agent driven by irrational hatreds, other motivations can be gleaned by looking at his personal history. Al-Balawi’s mother told Agence France Presse that her son had never been an “extremist.” Al-Balawi’s widow, Defne Bayrak, made a similar statement to Newsweek. In a New York Times article, al-Balawi’s brother was quoted as describing him as a “brilliant doctor.”

So what led Dr. al-Balawi to take his own life in order to kill U.S. and Jordanian intelligence operatives? His brother said al-Balawi “changed” during the three-week-long Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. Al-Balawi actually volunteered with a medical organization to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, but was promptly arrested by Jordanian authorities, his brother said.

Adding insult to injury, the Jordanian intelligence service coerced al-Balawi into becoming a spy to penetrate al-Qaeda’s hierarchy and provide actionable intelligence to the CIA. We know the rest of the story. Taking full advantage of amateurish tradecraft by his CIA and Jordanian handlers, al-Balawi exacted his revenge.

“My husband was anti-American; so am I,” his widow said later, adding that although her two little girls would grow up fatherless, she had no regrets.

So, what does all this have to do with Gaza? Readers, please take out a piece of paper. You will have five minutes to answer that question in three sentences or less. (Those who get their information only from the New York Times and Washington Post will be given an additional five minutes because of that handicap.)

Moribund Fourth Estate

I continue to be amazed at how many otherwise well-informed Americans express total surprise when I refer them to 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s explanation regarding his motivation for attacking the United States, as cited on page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report:

“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

One can understand how even those who make an honest effort to follow such key issues closely can get confused. Five years after the 9/11 Commission Report, on Aug. 30, 2009, readers of the neoconservative Washington Post were given a diametrically different view, based on what the Post called an unidentified “intelligence summary”:

“KSM’s limited and negative experience in the United States—which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills—almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist. … He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country.”

Apparently, the Post found this revisionist version politically more convenient, in that it obscured Mohammed’s actual explanation implicating “U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” It is much more comforting, if a bit of a stretch, to view KSM as a disgruntled visitor who nursed his personal grievances into justification for mass murder.

An unusually candid view of the dangers accruing from the U.S. identification with Israel’s policies appeared several years ago in an unclassified study published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board on Sept. 23, 2004. Contradicting President George W. Bush, the board stated:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights.”

Are we starting to get the picture of what the United States is up against in the Muslim world—and, more important, why? An enhanced PR effort is not going to do the trick. And yet it seems as though the U.S. political/media establishment is incapable of confronting this reality and/or taking meaningful action to alleviate the underlying causes of the violence.

Eye for an Eye

Revenge has not always worked out very well in the past—and particularly not in spirals of violence beginning in Gaza.

Does anyone remember the brutal killing of four Blackwater contractors on March 31, 2004, when they took a wrong turn and ended up in the Iraqi city of Fallujah—and how U.S. forces virtually leveled that large city in retribution after George W. Bush won his second term the following November?

How many know of the epidemic of horribly disfigured babies born there since, believed to be the result of depleted uranium and other U.S. weaponry?

If you read only the Fawning Corporate Media, you would blissfully think that the killing of the four Blackwater operatives was the initial step in this particular cycle of violence; that it was started by fanatics who—along with their neighbors—got the pummeling they deserved from U.S. forces. You wouldn’t know that the killings represented the second turn in that specific cycle.

In Gaza on March 22, 2004, nine days before the Blackwater incident, Israeli forces assassinated Sheikh Yassin, a founder of Hamas and its spiritual leader—by then a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheelchair. That murder, plus sloppy navigation by the Blackwater travelers, set the stage for the next set of brutalities in Fallujah.

The Blackwater operatives were killed by a group that described itself as the “Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade.” Pamphlets and posters were all over the scene of the attack; one of the trucks that pulled around body parts of the mercenaries had a poster of Yassin in its window, as did store fronts all over Fallujah.

But Blackwater contractors are American, you may be thinking. Why would the “bad guys” in Fallujah blame the Americans for Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza? If you have read down this far and cannot figure that out, you may wish to go back to reading The New York Times.

Et Tu Petraeus?

Even the sainted Gen. David Petraeus, in a rare moment of candor in March 2010, admitted in written testimony to Congress that Israeli behavior endangers U.S. troops. His testimony included the following:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the Middle East. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. … Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

Petraeus’s statement is obviously true, but he quickly came to regret his truth-telling, desperate to retract it out of fear that he had offended America’s influential neocons and the Likud Lobby—and that he might end up like Ambassador Chas Freeman.

Many neocons regard any suggestion that Israeli intransigence on Palestine contributes to the dangers faced by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan—or by the U.S. public from acts of terrorism at home—as a “blood libel” against Israel.

So, when Petraeus’s testimony began getting traction on the Internet, the general quickly emailed Max Boot, a neocon writer based at the high-powered Council on Foreign Relations, and began backtracking on the testimony. The groveling was stomach turning but informative:

“As you know, I didn’t say that,” Petraeus said, in a March 18, 2010, email to Boot. “It’s in a written submission for the record.” (No doubt the general, who is soon to take the helm at the CIA, will be more careful in the future not to let his underlings slip hard truths into his written testimony.)

The “horse’s mouth” email exchange was made public by James Morris, who runs a Web site called Neocon Zionist Threat to America. He said he acquired them by chance, after he sent an email congratulating Petraeus for his testimony. In responding, Petraeus forgot to delete the trail of emails with Boot in which they collaborated to find ways to knock down the story of the general’s implicit criticism of Israel. (For details, see ConsortiumNews.com’s “Neocons, Likud Conquer DC, Again.”)

Back to the Flotilla

As we embark on The Audacity of Hope and its humanitarian mission to Gaza, we can expect no help from the likes of Petraeus, senior NSC officials, or, for that matter, President Barack Obama, who last year maintained a studied silence when Israeli forces killed nine passengers and wounded 50 in stopping a similar international flotilla.

One of those killed, 19-year-old Furkan Dogan was a U.S. citizen as well as a citizen of Turkey. Did he have time to tell the Israeli attackers, “Civus Americanus Sum”? Would it have done him any good?

In trying to piece together my own motivation in going joining other Americans on The Audacity of Hope, I was reminded of Daniel Berrigan’s autobiography, To Dwell in Peace. Dan is reflecting on his own motives in joining eight others burning draft cards with homemade napalm on May 17, 1968, in Catonsville, Md.:

“It was only after the Catonsville action that I came on a precious insight. … Something like this: presupposing integrity and discipline, one is justified in entering a large risk; not indeed because the outcome is assured, but because the integrity and value of the act have spoken aloud.

“When such has occurred, matters of success or efficiency are placed where they belong: in the background. They are not irrelevant, but they are far from central. …

“There was a history of such acts of ours. In such biblical acts, results, outcome, benefits are unknown, totally obscure. The acts are at variance with good manners and behavior. …

“More yet: everything of prudence and good sense points to the uselessness, ineffectiveness of such acts. And, finally, immediate and perhaps plenary punishment is bound to follow. [Yet] one was free to concentrate on the act itself, without regard to its reception in the world. Free also to concentrate on moral preparation, consistency, conscience.

“One had very little to go on; and went ahead nonetheless. Looked at in this light, the ‘little’ appeared irreducible, a treasure.”

Thanks, Dan. I certainly could not have said it better. And you would be proud to know the company I shall be keeping on The Audacity of Hope.

My thanks, also, to those intrepid readers who many have made it down this far.

By Chris Hedges

In Franz Kafka’s short story “Before the Law” a tireless supplicant spends his life praying for admittance into the courts of justice. He sits outside the law court for days, months and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted. He sacrifices everything he owns to sway or bribe the stern doorkeeper. He ages, grows feeble and finally childish. He is told as he nears death that the entrance was constructed solely for him and it will now be closed.

Justice has become as unattainable for Muslim activists in the United States as it was for Kafka’s frustrated petitioner. The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, wasting away in supermax prisons. These citizens posed no security threat. But they dared to speak a truth about the sordid conduct of our nation that the state found unpalatable. And in the bipartisan war on terror, waged by Republicans and Democrats, this ugly truth in America is branded seditious.

The best the U.S. government could offer as evidence of Fahad’s crimes was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment and that the acquaintance eventually delivered these to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government is overly concerned with a suitcase full of waterproof socks taken to Pakistan. The reason Fahad Hashmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College. Fahad was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were to me unpalatable, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, he accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.

It has been a year since his 15-year sentence was pronounced in a New York courtroom. He is now held in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colo. He is isolated in a small cell for 22 to 23 hours a day. He has only extremely limited contact with his mother, father and brother, often going weeks without any communication. Between his transfer to Florence last August and this March he was permitted only one phone call. The rule of law in America, especially if you are Muslim, fits Kafka’s grim parody. The tyranny we impose on those held in Guantanamo, Bagram and the secret CIA “black sites” we impose on ourselves. This is and always has been the disease of empire. Empire imports the crude and brutal tools of control and violence back to the homeland. It creates internal as well as external colonies.

We no longer have freedom; there is only the appearance of freedom. We are consumed by an endless and vague war on terror in which the perfidiousness of our enemy, whose number, location and nature are never clearly defined, justifies the shredding of constitutional rights, torture, kidnapping, detentions without charges or trials and an occult-like battle against an absolute evil. And if you think the state intends to limit itself to the persecution of Muslims, especially once there is an increase in domestic unrest and instability, you know little about human history.

I spoke Saturday night to Fahad Hashmi’s father, Syed Anwar Hashmi. The elder Hashmi came to the United States from Pakistan when Fahad was 3 and his other son, Faisal, was 4. He worked for more than two decades as an accountant for the city of New York. He came, as most immigrants have, for his children. He believed in America, in its fairness, its chances for opportunity, its freedoms. And then it all crumbled when the state proved as capricious and cruel as the Pakistani dictatorship he had left behind. On the day of his son’s arrest, he says, “my American dream became an American nightmare.”

Three law enforcement officials appeared at his home in Flushing, Queens, on June 6, 2006, to inform him that Fahad, who had been in London completing a master’s degree in international relations, had been arrested at Heathrow Airport on terrorism charges. Fahad, after fighting the order for 11 months, was the first American citizen extradited under the post-9/11 laws. He was taken in May 2007 to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan and placed in solitary confinement.

“I came to this country from Pakistan nearly 30 years ago, in 1982 with my wife and two young boys,” Fahad’s father said. “Coming from a Third World country, we were full of hope and looked towards America for liberty and opportunity. I had an American dream to work hard and give my sons good educations. I worked as an assistant accountant for the city of New York, six days a week, nine hours a day, including overtime, to support my family and to send both my kids through college. We all became U.S. citizens, and my sons fulfilled my dreams by completing their undergraduate and postgraduate education. I was very proud of them.”

Courtesy http://www.truthdig.com/