topic by
D
4/10/2002 (4:55) |
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Long but interesting.
Friday 5 April 2002
by John Chuckman
www.counterpunch.org
April 5 2002 -
War between Islam and the nations of the West?
There have been a
good many careless words printed and broadcast in America touching on this
simplistic idea. And an American president who lacks the most superficial
knowledge of the world or its history offers no reassurance, as he lurches from
one misstatement to another, that this idea is not being incorporated into
national policy.
The concept of Islam as an intrinsically violent, anti-progressive opponent in
the modern world is both ignorant and dangerous. The new prominence of this idea
in America provides a good measure of the distorted information that exists in
our political environment. It's almost as though the bloody, parochial views of
Ariel Sharon on the nature of Palestinians had been exalted to a world view,
worthy of every statesman's consideration.
How easily we forget that the history of organized Christianity provides almost
certainly the bloodiest tale in all of human history.
The Crusades, that dark saga of Christianity written in blood and terror,
continued sporadically over hundreds of years. They served little other purpose
than gathering wealth through spoils and sacking cities and easing the periodic
domestic political difficulties of the papacy and major princes of Europe.
We hear of the treatment of women under Islam in certain places, not remembering
that Christian women were left locked in iron chastity belts for years while
their husbands raped their way across the Near East. And the character of
Saladin, hard warrior that he was, shines nobly in history compared to the moral
shabbiness of Richard Lionheart.
Europe wove a remarkable tapestry of horrors in the name of Christianity from
the beginning of the modern era. There was the Holy Inquisition, the Expulsion
of the Jews from Spain, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Thirty
Years' War, the English Civil War, the St Bartholomew Massacre, Cromwell's
slaughter in Ireland, the enslavement and widespread extermination of native
peoples in the Americas, the Eighty Years' War in Holland, the expulsion of the
Huguenots from France, the pogroms, the burning of witches, and numberless other
horrific events right down to The Holocaust itself, which was largely the work
of people who considered themselves, as did the slave drivers of America's
South, to be Christians.
Over and above the conflicts motivated by religion, European and American
history, a history dominated by people calling themselves Christian, runs with
rivers, lakes, and whole seas of blood. Just a sampling includes the Hundred
Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, the slave
trade, the French Revolution, the Vendee, the Napoleonic Wars, the Trail of
Tears, the Opium War, African slavery in the American South, the American Civil
War, the Franco-Prussian War, the massacre in the Belgium Congo, the Crimean
War, lynchings, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II.
How anyone with this heritage can describe Islam as notably bloodthirsty plainly
tells us that immense ignorance is at work here.
What limited knowledge I have of Islam is enough to know that there is no
history, despite bloody characters like Tamerlane, to overtop Europe's excesses,
and, in some cases, there has been generosity of spirit exceeding that shown by
Christians.
The Moorish kings of Spain tended to follow the same tolerant attitude towards
religion that the classical Romans had done. The Romans allowed any religion to
flourish, often officially adopting the gods of a conquered people, so long as
the religion represented no political threat to Rome's authority.
People today point to a well-publicized excess like the Taliban's destruction of
ancient statues, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that the
religiously-insane Puritans, direct ancestors of America's Christian
fundamentalists, ran through the beautiful, ancient cathedrals of England after
the Reformation, smashing stained glass, desecrating ancient tombs, destroying
priceless manuscripts, and smashing sculptures.
A remarkably tolerant society flourished under the Moors in Spain for hundreds
of years. Jews, Christians, and Muslims were tolerated, and the talented served
the state in many high capacities regardless of religion. Learning advanced,
trade flourished.
During the centuries of the Jewish Diaspora, the Arab people of the Holy Land
looked after the holy places and largely treated Jewish visitors with
hospitality and respect. There was none of the bitter hatred we see today. All
this changed at the birth of modern Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians
from places they had inhabited for centuries.
No reasonable, decent-minded person can deny that the manner of Israel's rebirth
did a great injustice to the Palestinians. And the great powers, first Britain
and then the United States, had entirely selfish motives in seeing this done.
Under the original UN proposal for Israel, there were to be two roughly-equal
states carved out of Palestine, and the city of Jerusalem was to have an
international status. More than half a century later, what we have is an Israel
that covers three-quarters of Palestine and militarily occupies the rest.
Yet somehow, the burden of appropriate behavior, in a fuzzily-defined 'peace
process' leading to some fuzzily-defined Palestinian state at some undefined
date, is always placed upon the Palestinians. They are supposed to live
patiently, exhibiting the peacefulness of model citizens in Dorothy's Kansas,
while under a humiliating occupation in order just to earn the privilege of
talking to Israel about the situation.
I often wonder how Americans, with their Second-Amendment rights and hundreds of
millions of guns, would behave under such circumstances. Would they patiently
wait decade after decade, watching 'settlers' fresh from other places build on
what was their land? Watching bulldozers flatten their orchards? Watching their
people harassed and often demeaned at checkpoints as they simply travel from one
point to another near their homes? Not being able to so much as build a road or
a sewer without the almost impossible-to-get permission of the occupying
authorities? Being told that only their patient behavior can earn them the right
to talk with those who control their lives?
Looking at the situation in that hypothetical light may offer a better
appreciation for what the Palestinians have endured with considerable patience.
The simple fact is that it has been the clear policy of Israeli governments over
the last half century to avoid, at all costs, the creation of a Palestinian
state. Every effort at delay, every quibble over definitions, every tactical
shift that could possibly be made has been made, many times over, in an effort
to buy time, hoping that time alone will somehow make the problem of the
Palestinians go away.
This policy may have changed, ever-so-slightly, under Mr. Barak from one of
preventing the creation of a Palestinian state to one of preventing the creation
of a viable Palestinian state, but that is not the same thing as 'the great
opportunity missed' that has been dramatized, over and over again, in America's
press. And even this slight change in policy remains unacceptable to many
conservatives in Israel.
And when the Palestinians, morally exhausted by endless waiting that yields no
change, resist the occupation they are under with the limited, desperate means
they possess, they are regarded as unstable lunatics who don't love their
children. A number of apologists for Israel's worst excesses have repeated this
theme, an extension of a remark attributed to the late Golda Meir about peace
coming 'when the Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate
us.' The actual quote from Ms. Meir that is most applicable here is one she made
to the Sunday Times of June 15, 1969, 'They [the Palestinians] did not exist.'
We are repeatedly told that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and
it is defending itself against malevolent forces. This vaguely-defined image of
enlightenment versus darkness appeals to Americans. But democracy has never been
a guarantee of fairness or decency. It is only a means of selecting a
government.
Under any democracy, a bare majority of people with an ugly prejudice can
tyrannize over others almost in perpetuity. Indeed, this very experience is a
large part of the history of the United States, even with its much-vaunted Bill
of Rights. But Israel has no Bill of Rights, and what's more important for
actual day-to-day fairness and decency, the very will to act in a fair manner
appears to be absent. What else can one say where assassination, torture, and
improper arrest have been management tools of government for decades?
Israel's politics are highly polarized, undoubtedly far worse than those of the
United States, and the balance of power needed to form any parliamentary
coalition is always in the hands of far-out religious parties. The interests of
these people are anything but informed by enlightenment values and democracy,
holding to views and ideas, as they do, that predate the existence of democracy
or human rights.
It is not an exaggeration to say that killing the Philistines or tearing down
the walls of Jericho are regarded as current events by a good many of these
fundamentalist party members. A number of their leaders have, time and again,
described Palestinians as 'vermin.'
The extreme conservatives receive many special privileges in Israel that distort
the entire political mechanism. For example, their rabbis decide the rules
governing who is accepted as a Jew or what are acceptable religious, and
religiously-approved social, practices. The students in the fundamentalist
religious schools traditionally have been exempt from the army. In effect, they
are exempt from the violent results of the very policies they advocate.
These parties generally believe in a greater Israel, that is, an Israel that
includes what little is left of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, minus its
current undesirable inhabitants. It has been the view of Israeli government
after Israeli government over the last half century to consider Jordan as the
Palestinian's proper home. Thus, when Israeli governments talked of peace, it
meant something entirely different than what Palestinians meant.
And when, finally, an offer for a Palestinian state was made by Mr. Barak at
Camp David - an offer that, by all reports, was made quite angrily and
contemptuously to Mr. Arafat - under any honest, rational analysis, it reduced
to one for a giant holding facility for people not wanted in Israel. How
surprising that Mr. Arafat left in anger when after days of being subjected to
good-cop/bad-cop treatment by Mr. Clinton and Mr. Barak, this was the end
result. Surely, this was an immensely-frustrating disappointment to the
Palestinians after years of effort and compromise to achieve and implement the
Oslo Accords.
Mr. Bush's War on Terror, a mindless crusade against disagreeable Islamic
governments, has had the terrible effect of casting the bloody-minded Mr. Sharon
in the role of partner against the forces of terror and darkness. He has
received a new mantle of legitimacy for continued destruction and delay, for
continued injustice against those too powerless to effectively oppose him.
As Israel's leaders well know, the Palestinian population is growing rapidly.
Rapid population growth is the general case for poor people throughout the
world. Israel's highly organized and costly efforts to support Jewish
immigration reflect awareness of this fact. But a combination of large birth
rates on one side and heavy immigration on the other is a certain formula for
disaster in the long term. The region's basic resources, especially water, will
sustain only a limited population.
A large population, outsizing its resources, almost certainly is the major
underlying reason for the immense slaughters and numberless coups and civil wars
of Western Africa in recent years, a region whose population growth has been
high but whose usable resources are limited. And the history of civilization
tells us that vast changes and movements of population have been far more
decisive in human affairs than atomic weapons.
So it appears that not only in the short term, but over some much longer time
horizon, Israel and the Palestinians are on a deadly collision course.
There is hope. Modern societies have all experienced a phenomenon called
demographic transition. This term simply means that, faced with a reduced death
rate, people's normal response is a reduced birth rate, yielding a net result of
slow, or even negative, population growth. Couples prefer to have only two or
three children who are almost certain to survive instead of six or more, at
least half of whom die before growing up. This is the reason why modern
countries depend entirely on migration for growth, or to avoid actual decline,
in population.
Israel, populated largely by people from Europe and North America and being a
fairly prosperous society, follows the pattern of advanced nations. The West
Bank and Gaza, with some of the world's highest birth rates, do not. Now, the
only way to trigger demographic transition is through healthful measures like
adequate diet, good public sanitation, and basic health care, especially
measures for infant care. These things done, nature takes a predictable path and
people stop having large families.
But these are not measures that can be accomplished quickly, and the need to get
on with them should add some sense of urgency to ending the occupation and
helping the Palestinians achieve a state with some degree of prosperity.
By now, it should be clear that life in Israel for the foreseeable future cannot
be quite the same as life in Dorothy's Kansas no matter who leads the
government. No one has been more ruthless or bloody-minded than Mr. Sharon, and
he has only succeeded in making every problem worse.
Yet life in Israel similar to Dorothy's Kansas - that is, a life as though you
were not surrounded by people seething over injustice and occupation and steeped
in poverty - is a condition that Mr. Sharon insists on as a precondition even
for talking about peace. Somehow, Mr. Arafat, with a wave of his hand, is to
make all the violence disappear. This is not only unrealistic, it is almost
certainly dishonest.
Israel herself, in any of the places she has occupied, and despite having one of
the best equipped armies in the world, has never been able to do that very
thing. All those years in Lebanon, and the violence continued at some level for
the entire time. Indeed, a new enemy, Hizballah, rose in response to Israel's
activities. It is simply a fact that there has always been some level of
violence in any place occupied by Israel. How is Mr. Arafat, with his limited
resources and in the face of many desperate factions, supposed to be able to
accomplish what the Israeli army and secret services cannot?
And were he to try running the kind of quasi-police state one assumes Israel
favors, with regular mass arrests of suspects, how long would he remain in
power?
Moreover, Mr. Sharon treats Mr. Arafat with utter contempt, dismissing him as
insignificant, and has destroyed many of the means and symbols of his authority.
How can a leader, treated as contemptible, exercise authority? For all his
faults, and he has a number of them, Mr. Arafat has demonstrated through many
compromises related to the Oslo Accords that he is a man who sincerely desires
peace and a constructive relationship with Israel.
Mr. Sharon's entire adult life has been dedicated to killing. I do believe there
is more blood on his hands than any terrorist you care to name. Mr. Sharon first
made a name for himself with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when a force under his
command blew up forty-five houses and killed sixty-nine people, most of them
women and children.
Nearly thirty years later, in 1982, he was still at it when Lebanese militia
forces under his control murdered and dumped into mass graves, using
Israeli-supplied bulldozers, between two and three-thousand civilians in the
refugee camps called Sabra and Shatila.
Mr. Sharon was responsible for the disastrous invasion of Lebanon which saw
hundreds of civilians killed by Israel's shelling of Beirut and precipitated a
bloody civil war in which thousands more died.
Mr. Sharon's policies of assassination and bombing have succeeded only in
multiplying the suicide bombings beyond anything in recent memory. It is almost
impossible to imagine this man as capable of making a meaningful gesture towards
peace. Yes, of course he wants peace, peace on his terms, a cheap peace without
giving anything, but by definition that is not peace for the Palestinians.
We always hear about what is required of the Palestinians for peace, but a
genuine peace requires some extraordinary things on Israel's part.
First, she must at some point accept a Palestinian state. This condition is a
necessary one, but it is far from sufficient, for she must be prepared to
generously assist this state towards achieving some prosperity, reducing the
causes of both run-away population growth and the dreary hopelessness that
causes people to strap bombs to their bodies.
Most difficult of all, it is hard to see how Israel can avoid some level of
violence during a period of Palestinian nation-building. This is something no
ordinary state would consciously embrace, but then Israel is no ordinary state.
The norms of Dorothy's Kansas simply do not apply. The hatreds generated by a
half century of aggressive policies are not going to just melt away, but if
there is enough genuine, demonstrated goodwill, it does seem likely that such
violence would be minimal. It is an unappetizing risk that almost certainly
needs to be taken, for no one is going to run a police state on Israel's behalf
in the West Bank.
Considering the immense difficulty of these things and political barriers that
exist against them in Israel, it does not seem likely that peace is coming any
time soon. The prospect seems rather for low-grade, perpetual war, paralleling
that Mr. Bush so relishes speaking of. For someone of Mr. Sharon's turn of mind,
this may be a wholly acceptable alternative.
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