Tariq Ali, from revolutionary to novelist of islam

Twenty-five years ago Tariq Ali was a Pakistani revolutionary in London, a spokesman for the Trotskyist Fourth International and an inflammatory polemicist. Today he is just as polemical, but the professional revolutionary has given way to the writer.

At 64, Tariq Ali’s convictions haven’t dimmed; he just expresses them differently. He has done so most notably in his rather wonderful novel, “A Sultan in Palermo” (Verso, 1999), which was published this year in French. The first installment of a planned ‘Islamic Quintet,’ the book plunges deep into the past, to a time when the religion of Mohammed had a foothold in Europe. It was an era of peaceful cohabitation and tolerance between differing creeds.

A former Trot treading religious ground? It may seem surprising, but the proposition is coherent with Tariq Ali’s personal history. He was a 20 year-old Pakistani student from Lahore when he first arrived in London, to face the turmoil of political engagement and idealism of the 1960s. Later he confronted the backlash led by Margaret Thatcher and the rise of radical Islam.

89th Street met with Tariq Ali recently in Saint Malo, during the Festival of Astonishing Travelers.
Although his novel is only now being published in France, it is not the fruit of a sudden, post-9/11 interest in Islam, as has been the case of so many other recent books on the Muslim world. Tariq Ali, a self-proclaimed atheist, says his interest in European Islam dates to the first Gulf War, in 1991.

Located in 12th-century Palermo, the book features an enlightened Christian monarch, renowned Muslim intellectuals, scheming courtiers, great courtesans, and eunuchs with powerful ears. The religion of this place is tolerant. One of the novel’s protagonists would rather honor a woman five times a day than perform the five daily Muslim prayers.

The book’s hero, a Muslim, makes this astonishing commentary (paraphrase): “How curious it is that for five hundred years the destiny of the Jews has so often been linked to our own. Where they suffer, we suffer. Where we prosper they do. When they live in places we have not settled, they fail to defend themselves and are slaughtered like sheep. It’s the same thing here, in al-Andalus and al-Quds, in Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus”.

Tariq Ali evokes an Islam that is far from rigorous – far from a mythical Golden Age. There’s easily enough material in his book to attract a bushel of fatwas, but he has never received any threats.

The novel is situated at a historical turning-point, when the superficial harmony of relations between religious communities gives way, and begins to spiral downward into a violent clash of civilizations. Nothing and no-one seems able to prevent this. Any parallels with current events may not be entirely fortuitous. Tariq Ali, the former Marxist and enduring atheist, comes from a country that lies next door to the Afghanistan of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden.

He observes with unease the clash that is currently underway around us. Still, his comments on the contemporary situation are nuanced: he has not given up hope that a secular Muslim movement may emerge.

Today the country where Tariq Ali lives, Britain, is engaged in the Iraq war – a decision by Tony Blair that Tariq Ali sharply opposed. (He can be a sharp critic. Another of his recent books was translated into French as “Something is rotten in the state of Britain”). He believes that Britain will pay dearly for this decision, and that Blair’s Labor Party has lost its soul and will soon lose power.

Tariq Ali is still a powerfully engaged intellectual, though his long trail of combat has doubtless rid him of many of his illusions. He is also a novelist, and we await with anticipation the delivery of the next installment of his ‘Islamic Quintet’.

Source: Rue89
http://www.rue89.com/2007/05/31/tariq-ali

The Terrorist Walks

A Brutal Reply

The Terrorist Walks

By FIDEL CASTRO

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government of the United States and its most representative institutions had already decided to release the monster.

The backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who trained him and ordered him to destroy a Cuban passenger plane in midair, with 73 athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign travelers on board, together with its dedicated crew; those who bought his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and the devastation of a country for decades to come; those who empowered him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery of the laws of Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the terrible Operation Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who brought torture, death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.

Even though Bush’s decision was to be expected, it is certainly no less humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of “Por Esto!” a Mexican publication from the state of Quintana Roo later complemented by our own sources, Cuba knew with absolute precision how Posada Carriles entered from Central America, via Cancun, to the Isla Mujeres departing from there on board the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the Mexican federal authorities, heading with other terrorists straight to Miami.

Denounced and publicly challenged with exact information on the matter, since April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country more than a month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months to admit that Luis Posada Carriles had entered through the Florida coast illegally on board the Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.

Not a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he set off in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed by the government of the United States to physically eliminate me.

It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba to spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself.

Throughout almost half a century, everything was fair game against our small island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be independent. Florida saw the installation of the largest station for intelligence and subversion that ever existed on this planet.

It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a time when the few medical specialists they left us had no experience treating war wounds.

Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and grenades for Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two well synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100 workers and wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue attempts.

It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time when there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria and fungi to attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to attack human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American laboratories and were brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the service of the United States government.

Add to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they were condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two life sentences and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each of them in a different prison.

Time and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of death. They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using appropriate tactics and strategies, and especially preserving unity around their political and social vanguard, there can be no force on this earth capable of defeating them.

I think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for our people, –using the minimum of fuel and transportation– to show their feelings to the workers and the poor of the world.

Havana, April 10, 2007.

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/castro04142007.html

The Generation of IEDs and iPods

From Jihad to McWorld

The Generation of IEDs and iPods

By VIJAY PRASHAD

On September 3, 2006, the weekend before the Fall term opened, two young boys from Connecticut were killed. Eighteen-year-old Private 1st Class Nicolas Madaras of Wilton died when a roadside bomb (an IED) exploded next to his humvee in Baqubah, Iraq. In Ramadi, on that same day, another bomb killed nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal Phillip Johnson of Enfield. Madaras, who had coached soccer, hoped to return to the U. S., go to college and study nursing. Another soldier gone, another college career squandered. Total U. S. fatalities in Iraq now top 3,250.

That same day, twenty-two Iraqis died in eight separate incidents, from a suicide car bomb in Al-Kamarah to an explosion in New Baquba (in the latter, a father and his four children were killed as they drove in their family car). Not long after, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released a remarkable study. It found that 654,965 more Iraqis have died since 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions. Shortly after the study appeared, the President said that it was “not credible,” but “I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and it troubles me and grieves me.”

My college has not been without its casualties. In November 2006, a Trinity alumnus, Schuyler Haynes, was killed by a IED in Baquba. Named for an ancestor who was a Revolutionary War general, Philip Schuyler, Haynes (40) had served the U. S. armed forces in Panama, Kosovo and in a previous tour of Iraq. It is likely that at least one if not two of my current students will find themselves on a troop transport to the next insane war to assert U. S. dominance.

The deaths of Madaras and Johnson marked my first week of classes. Before me sat smart, eager students, most of whom are the same age as Madaras and Johnson, and of those Iraqis whose names I do not know. My students are eager to learn about the world, to find meaning in the chaos that greets them in the newspapers, on television and from our political establishment. They were just about teenagers during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and have since grown into young adults as war upon war has unfolded around them. The inconvenience of airports is routine for them, so too is the news about lives lost, cities devastated. For our students, the generation of IEDs and IPods, there is no comprehensive narrative that links together the contemporary histories of globalization and populist rage. If they do not have a narrative or many narratives that try to explain why more than half the 275 “world opinion leaders” told the International Herald Tribune that “American policies or actions in the world were a major cause of the September 11 attacks,” we will fail them. Our students see animosity against the US government, and against US-based corporations, but there is little attempt to carefully parse the arguments of the antagonized and learn from them. If we seek not to understand the complaints and address them in some fashion, the only solution is to kill anyone who has animosity against us. The military solution is predicated upon such thoughtlessness.

War is distant for our students, as for us. We read about it, see images from it: war is a spectacle for us, nothing corporeal.

Newsweek took a stab a month after 9/11. Its international editor, Mumbai-born Fareed Zakaria, wrote an essay under the headline, “Why They Hate Us.” On the cover of the issue (dated October 15, 2001) a young boy in a white turban held aloft a Kalashnikov. Zakaria claimed that 9/11 could be explained by “the sense of humiliation, decline and despair that sweeps the Arab world.” Arabs, he wrote, “feel that they are under siege from the modern world and that the United States symbolizes this world.” A generation of social scientists had already walked down that path. As modernization theorists, they championed modernity as the antidote to tradition. The histories of colonialism and of the uneven integration of the formerly colonial world into the circuits of capitalism did not bother them. Secular education systems combined with the mass media propagation of new ideas would shatter traditional frameworks. Commerce and integration into world capitalism would finish the job. At least this was the view of W. W. Rostow in his 1960 classic, The Stages of Economic Growth. Zakaria’s is a variant of this, but it remains far too simplistic: Modernity (us) is the torment of tradition (them), and our freedoms and fun enrage them into un-freedom and fundamentalism.

* * *Granta, founded at Cambridge University in 1889, dedicated the 77th issue of its new series to the proposition, “What We Think of America” (Spring 2002). A series of well-regarded writers, including Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh, Chile’s Ariel Dorfman and Canada’s Michael Ignatieff, produced short reflections on America. Harold Pinter, the playwright who won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, lamented the loss of life of those who had the temerity to challenge the way the world had been ordered. Why did the thousands of Indonesians, Chileans, Nicaraguans and others die, Pinter asked? “They died because to one degree or another they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression which is their birthright. On behalf of the dead, we must regard the breathtaking discrepancy between US government language and US government action with the absolute contempt it merits.”

From Canada, in a widely circulated Internet statement, Sunera Thobani, who presided over the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, challenged the notion that the wars to come in revenge for 9/11 had a benign motive. She worried that the US President’s rhetoric shortly after 9/11 invoked the US people to seek blood (“they don’t care whose blood it is, they want blood”) in vengeance. The peace marches, she wrote, contest this idea of the nation, but those who seek peace are politically weak, even if morally strong. Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to oppose the open-ended declaration of war passed in September 2001, concurred with Thobani. “We have a chance to demonstrate to the world,” she wrote in a statement, “that great powers can choose to fight on the fronts of their choosing and that we can choose to avoid needless military action when other avenues to redress our rightful grievances and to protect our nation are available to us. We must respond, but the character of that response will determine for ourselves and for our children the world that they will inherit.” In addition, the character of the response will define nation’s sense of itself and sense to the world.

In 1995, I read political scientist Benjamin Barber’s Jihad Versus McWorld. Barber retooled modernization theory, to argue that McWorld, the soulless corporation, meets its antithesis in Jihad, the fanatical fundamentalist. Such an account asks us to believe that if there are more IPods in the world, there will be less IEDs. Globalization, in other words, will undermine the basis for all manner of atavism.

But, my own work, now completed in The Darker Nations, suggests that Jihad is actually the twin of McWorld. Take Pakistan as an example. The International Monetary Fund, the advance guard of corporate power, pushed the state to cut back on funding for educational and health-care services. Into the breech came the Islamic charities, many funded by the Saudi government, and some even enjoying the largesse of the US Treasury (during the Afghan War of the 1980s). They educated and healed the lower middle class, drawing in vast numbers of people into their organizations. The growth of the Islamic Right in Pakistan is a product of McJihad, the unified effect of both globalization and fundamentalism.

* * *Dulce bellum inexpertis: war is sweet to the inexperienced.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/prashad04112007.html

Iraq: A Prominent Arrest and Strained U.S.-Shiite Relations

Summary
U.S. troops detained the son of top Iraqi Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim on Feb. 23 as he was returning from Iran. The incident is a sign of growing tension between Washington and its principal Iraqi Shiite partner, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which also happens to be the most pro-Iranian of all Iraqi Shiite factions. This is a reality that the United States is just now coming to terms with, and it bodes ill for U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.

Analysis

Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim — the leader of Iraq’s ruling Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, and head of the country’s most powerful Shiite group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — was detained Feb. 23 as he was returning from Iran via the Badrah border crossing in the southeastern governorate of Wasit. Ammar is a senior leader of SCIRI and the secretary-general of a SCIRI-run charitable foundation. Though there are conflicting reports about what actually happened, SCIRI-controlled Al Furat television reported that Ammar was detained.

Ammar likely is involved in transferring money and weapons on behalf of Iran to Iraqi Shia, and could also be spying on the United States. The arrest is an indication of a strain in relations between the Bush administration and its closest Iraqi Shiite ally. The timing of the arrest suggests the United States is only now realizing the problems associated with the fact that SCIRI, which also has an allied militia called the Badr Organization, is also Iran’s main proxy in Iraq.

Thus far, U.S. forces have gone after the radical al-Sadrite Bloc and its armed wing, the Mehdi Army. The arrest of Ammar shows that the United States no longer trusts even the mainstream Shiite groups. If this situation escalates, it could push SCIRI further into the Iranian camp. Moreover, it could even align the various Shiite groups (that have been fighting against each other) against the United States.

U.S. interests in Iraq require that Washington drive a wedge between Iraqi Shiite groups and their Iranian patrons. Ammar’s arrest seems to suggest that this is becoming a less-viable option.

Source: Stratfor
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=284764&selected=Analyses

Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet.

Hyped claims of nuclear weapons with no evidence to back it up … Why does that sound familiar?

 

It’s déja vu. This time the Bush gang wants war with Iran. Following a carefully orchestrated strategy, they have ratcheted up the “threat” from Iran, designed to mislead us into a new war four years after they misled us into Iraq.

Like its insistence that Iraq had WMD, the Bush administration has been hyping claims that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, has found no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says there is plenty of time for negotiation with Iran.

Bush has sent two battle carrier groups, replete with nukes, to the Persian Gulf, and a third is reportedly preparing to follow. In support of Bush’s case that Iran poses a danger to the U.S., three unnamed American officials ceremoniously trotted out metal parts found in Iraq and claimed Iran supplied them to kill our soldiers in Iraq.

This “evidence” — or “packaging,” as the Associated Press calls it — doesn’t pass the straight face test with most reputable observers. “The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the ‘highest levels’ of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops,” according to Monday’s Washington Post.

Saturday’s New York Times cited information gleaned from “interrogation reports” from Iranians and Iraqis captured in the recent U.S. raid on the Iranian embassy in northern Iraq. They allegedly indicated money and weapons components are brought into Iraq over the Iranian border at night. If those people indeed provided such information, query what kind of pressure, i.e. torture, might have been applied to encourage their cooperation. Recall the centerpiece of Colin Powell’s 2003 lies to the Security Council about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda came from false information tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

Any Iranian weapons in Iraq may belong to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite resistance group the U.S. used to support. There could be old Iranian munitions lying around which are left over from the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. A former high-level U.S. military officer told me it was not uncommon to find large caches of weapons around Iraq. He cited the 2004 discovery of 37,000 American Colt 45 handguns in a warehouse near the Iranian border on the Iraq side, likely procured “when Saddam was our friend.” The United States armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict.

The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, released last week, concluded that Iranian or Syrian involvement is “not likely to be a major driver of violence” in Iraq.

Paul Krugman wrote that even if Iran were providing aid to some factions in Iraq, “you can say the same about Saudi Arabia, which is believed to be a major source of financial support for Sunni insurgents — and Sunnis, not Iranian-backed Shiites, are still responsible for most American combat deaths.” Indeed, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. But as Krugman mentions, the Bush administration’s “close personal and financial ties to the Saudis” have caused it to downplay “Saudi connections to America’s enemies.”

American troops are still fighting in Afghanistan. Yet the Bush administration hasn’t complained about the Taliban attacks on Afghanistan that originate in Pakistan, a country with documented nuclear weapons. Of course the Bush administration is cozy with the Pakistani regime.

The government of Israel, which also has nukes, is fueling the call for an invasion of Iran. On February 7, the Los Angeles Times cited Israeli politicians and generals warning of a “second Holocaust” if no one fails to prevent Tehran from acquiring nukes.

Israel would like to start a war with Iran and supports this desire by citing a quote from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel should be wiped off the map. But this is an erroneous translation of what he said. According to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who said the “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” Cole said this “does not imply military action or killing anyone at all.” Journalist Diana Johnstone points out the quote is not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the Zionist “regime” occupying Jerusalem. “Coming from a Muslim religious leader,” Johnstone wrote, “this opinion is doubtless based on objection to Jewish monopoly of a city considered holy by all three of the Abramic monotheisms.” Iran has not threatened to invade Israel.

Indeed, only 36 percent of the Jews in Israel told pollsters last month they thought a nuclear attack by Iran posed the “biggest threat” to Israel. Americans concur. Seventy-five percent want negotiations in lieu of war with Iran.

Yet Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, all beholden to the Israel lobby, have bought into Bush’s dangerous rhetoric about Iran.

It would be sheer lunacy to make war on Iran. Three former high-ranking U.S. military officers and a coalition of 13 British think-tanks and faith groups have warned that an attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences.

Bush probably won’t ask Congress to bless his Iran war. He will provoke a confrontation and then claim we have to fight back. Last year, the New York Times documented a January 2003 meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, where Bush “talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation [with Iraq], including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire.”

A nuclear attack on Iran would violate U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any attack would violate the U.N. Charter. All treaties we ratify become part of U.S. law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Twelve European, international, and U.S. legal and human rights groups issued an open letter warning of the illegality of any offensive military action by the U.S. against Iran.

Congress has tied itself in knots over a non-binding resolution on Iraq. If our elected representatives responded to their constituencies instead of the Bush gang’s fear mongering, they would stand up to him and pass a modern day Boland Amendment forbidding military action against Iran.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published in June.

Source: AlterNet
http://alternet.org/story/47994/

Iraq Alternative

Iraq Alternative
By: Robert Cogan, Ph.D.

The USA isn’t a football team. We can’t just try harder or drop back 10 and punt. That’s what proposals for surges or timed withdrawals amount to. Whatever surges must recede sometime. And while a surge is ongoing, no one can tell whether it is wiping out the resistance beneath or just covering it up! Withdrawal risks general war among Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran over Iraq and more than Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Having rid Iraq of its dictator, nothing requires us to leave our troops sitting ducks in a cross fire between fanatical Muslim sects.

Consider the following as a proposal for a “least bad” alternative. If you saw people fighting, you might try to pull them apart. Our troops could escort Iraqi’s willing to emigrate or move to regions of fellow Kurds, Shia and Sunnis. Consider the rule “All Baghdad’s Sunnis west of the Tigris, all Shia east of Tigris.” Of course this can’t be completely accomplished, nor would it bring total peace. But the US could move the Iraqi government to an isolated, hardened US base. There, its independence could be protected from Sadr and Iran. Those elected officials who go willingly remain members of the US sponsored elected government of Iraq. Give the Green Zone to Sunnis moving from east of the Tigris. Let the militias police their own turf.

Most of Iraq’s oil fields lie along its border with Iran. US troops could be redeployed to low population areas between the oil fields and Iran. They would be containment forces like in Europe since WWII and in Korea. They could protect Iraq’s oil fields from Iran and see to it that Iraq’s oil wealth got distributed reasonably once its’ oil industry was modernized by oil companies. Our government is incapable and unwilling to reconstruct even New Orleans. So if our troops are withdrawn from Iraq, the US will surely not assist Iraq in any rebuilding. A danger that Bush could start war with Iran would need to be decreased by Congress making a binding resolution forbidding first use of military power across Iran’s border or funds would be cut off. Iraqi’s should not be happy with oil Production Sharing Agreements, but under this alternative they might be left in greater safety and some reconciliation and reconstruction funds.

To all US service personnel: Thanks for your service. With Bin Laden still at large, Afghanistan unwon, our ports and borders insecure, we need you redeployed more effectively and safer. And may everyone tell Bush and Congress to work smarter in this way, not harder!

–
Robert Cogan a retired professor of Philosophy. Dr. Cogan taught logic, critical thinking and social philosophy for 40 years, mostly at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. In retirement Dr. Cogan is a Borough Councilman. He can be reached at robert.cogan@gmail.com.

How Jimmy Carter is Saving Israel

By Firas Ahmad

The January 13th issue of the Economist included an essay titled “Diaspora Blues” with the following byline: “Jews around the world should join the debate about Israel, not defend whatever it does.”

The significance of this statement, in what is the most respected periodical of political analysis in the English speaking world, should not go unnoticed. It represents a shift in the discourse on Israel and the future of the Middle East, and could be a harbinger for tangible and lasting peace in the region. The byline tacitly acknowledges the proposition set forth in recent months that debate on Israel does not exist in certain circles, and that this lack of discussion is as bad for the Israelis as it is for the Palestinians. The fact that similar sentiments are now discussed openly is a testament to the efforts of a few high profile individuals.

The most prominent of them is Jimmy Carter, the former US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner. His recent book, provocatively titled Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, courted enough controversy to remain on several bestseller lists since its release, recently reaching number four on Amazon.

The book is an utter catastrophe for the Israel lobby in the US. To be clear, it is not because of its content, but rather because of its author. None of the observations Carter makes in the book are revelatory. What is ground-breaking is the fact that people are actually listening. Carter has brought his full weight to bear on the issue as a former president and one of the most respected statesmen and advocates for peace in the world. There are few individuals who can match Carter’s credentials and gravitas, so his book simply cannot be ignored or casually dismissed. The Israel lobby did not ignore it, assigning its chief pit bull, Alan Dershowitz, to a full force assault on Carter’s credibility and character. Based on book sales and the appearance of public discussion, as exemplified by the recent Economist article, it seems that assassinating Carter’s character may not be the best strategy.

As Carter argues, the situation in Israel is similar to the issues that faced South Africa more than a decade ago. The occupation of Palestine is unsustainable, as was the apartheid regime that ruled until 1994. The minority of voices in Israel and the US that are perpetuating it are creating a policy distortion that supports an unsustainable reality. By attempting to remove this distortion, Carter is doing a service to Israel as much as the Palestinians.

The Blacks of South Africa, under the leadership of luminaries like Nelson Mandela, were able to tell a compelling enough story that they garnered support from virtually the entire world. While a number of factors contributed to the fall of apartheid, international pressure played a critical role in isolating South Africa politically, economically and culturally to the point where life for the whites was becoming miserable enough to force change. If Palestinians are to learn anything from the South African experience, it is that a willingness to compromise, coupled with international pressure, can make a difference. The problem that the Palestinians face is the fact that their story is written by their occupiers. The Blacks of South Africa, whose struggle was also violent and bloody, were perceived as a community fighting against injustice. Not so for the Palestinians, who are generally perceived by Americans as irrational extremists and terrorists. That is what Carter is trying to change, by filling a gaping vacuum in leadership on the issue. Palestinians always lacked charismatic leaders like Mandela or Desmond Tutu to communicate to the world on their behalf. While the plight of Blacks and Palestinians may be similar, the perception is not.

These distorted perceptions contribute to the fact that debate on the topic of Israel in the US at the policy level remains severely impaired. Elected US officials do not openly critique or seriously debate Israeli policy. Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, said of Carter’s book: “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.”

Carter is keenly aware that until the internal politics of the US allow for this debate to take place, it will be impossible for international pressure to bring about change in the occupied territories. He is hoping to spark enough public discussion about Israeli policy to impact a critical mass of policy makers, legislators and ordinary people. Carter is attempting to reshape the Palestinian narrative for American audiences into a struggle against injustice. If he is successful, he opens the possibility for the US, and then the rest of the international community, to pressure Israel into a reasonable settlement.

In a strange sort of way, Carter could become the Mandela of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is attempting to reframe the conflict in a manner that could lead to a peaceful resolution for both sides. If it works, Carter would have achieved more for Israeli security, Palestinian dignity and Middle East peace than anyone over the past 30 years.

Source: Islamica Magazine
http://www.islamicamagazine.com/online-analysis/how-jimmy-carter-is-saving-israel.html