The Age of Incitement

September 25, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Thomas Friedman wants to see a movie.  So do I.

Radio and movies made mass incitement possible and effective in the development of fascism (Italy) and nazism (Germany.)  Now, add the Internet to the tools available.

The movie is called “Rabin: The Last Day.” Agence France-Presse said the movie, by the renowned Israeli director Amos Gitai, is about “the incitement campaign before the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin” and “revisits a form of Jewish radicalism that still poses major risks.” This is the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish radical.

A worker fixes a new memorial sign for the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the centre of Tel Aviv November 3, 2005. Ten years after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot at a peace rally by an ultranationalist opposed to his talks with the Palestinians, the Jewish state is seeing a resurgent swirl of rumour and speculation about his death.

A worker fixes a memorial for the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the centre of Tel Aviv 

“My goal wasn’t to create a personality cult around Rabin,” Gitai told A.F.P. “My focus was on the incitement campaign that led to his murder.” Sure, the official investigating commission focused on the breakdowns in Rabin’s security detail, but, Gitai added, “They didn’t investigate what were the underlying forces that wanted to kill Rabin. His murder came at the end of a hate campaign led by hallucinating rabbis, settlers who were against the withdrawal from territories and the parliamentary right, led by the Likud (party), already then headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted to destabilize Rabin’s Labor government.”

I hope many many see the movie and interpret not only Israeli history, connected to its present, of course, but U.S. history.  The extreme right has an almost total monopoly on radio incitement and has had for decades.  It’s a backhanded tribute to the American people that only 34% think Donald Trump is the greatest leader of the free world.

Filed under Israel, Middle East, Movies Tagged with , , , , ,

Refugees: America’s Responsibility

September 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Excellent Op-Ed by Steve Hilton:

While we can argue forever about the causes of conflict in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore the impact of American foreign policy on what’s happening in Europe. It was shocking to see an “expert” from the Council on Foreign Relations quoted on Saturday saying that the situation is “largely Europe’s responsibility.” How, exactly? The Iraq invasion (which could reasonably be described as “largely America’s responsibility”) unleashed a period of instability and competition in the region that is collapsing states and fueling sectarian conflict.

There are plenty of comments to his post, several asking what responsibility Russia and Iran have, particularly in Syria.  As usual in human affairs the choices vary from bad to worse.

It’s crazy that, as Nicholas Kristoff points out, that “…the World Food Program was just forced to cut 229,000 refugees in Jordan off food rations because it ran out of money…” There’s an example of losing a dollar to save a dime…

One think I have not heard anything of is what kind of organizing might be encouraged among the refugees — while still in the camps, and when disbursed around Europe.  It’s an enormous cohort of educated and talented people which, if they are like most refugees, will retain strong feelings for the lands of their birth for decades.  What might emerge if their social capital can be encouraged to grow and find a way to slow and halt the on-going disasters, then to stabilize and re-build what they have lost?

Filed under Human Rights, Middle East, Migration Tagged with ,

Syria: Journalist Mazen Darwish Released

August 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment

One of Syria’s boldest journalists, Mazen Darwish, has been released after three years [five months and 23 days] in Syrian prisons.  He was the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression when he was arrested in February 2012 for “promoting terrorist acts.”

Syria Darwish

In a letter smuggled out of prison in 2014 he thanked English PEN for its award to him as International Writer of Courage.

“…we are today, paying the high, bloodsoaked price of that collusion [of silence over Salman Rusdie’s fatwa] , and finding ourselves the main victims of the obscurantist ideology now infiltrating our homes and our cities. What a great shame that it has taken us all of this bloodshed to arrive at the belief that we are the ones who will pay the price for preventing those with whom we disagree from expressing their views – and that we will pay with our lives and our futures. What a shame this much blood has had to be spilled for us to realise, finally, that we are digging our own graves when we allow thought to be crushed by accusations of unbelief, calling people infidels, and when we allow opinion to be countered with violence. The disastrous consequences of this are clearly evident today across the Arab world, and especially in Syria, my country, where the ugliest forms of fascism and the dirtiest kinds of barbarism are practised in the name of both patriotism and Islam in equal measure.

Al Arabiya

Reporters Without Borders

 

Filed under Art & Culture, Human Rights, Middle East Tagged with , ,

Breaking the Silence in Israel

May 11, 2015 by Leave a Comment

“TEL AVIV — The war last summer between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and reduced vast areas to rubble. On Monday, a group of Israeli veterans released sobering testimony from fellow soldiers that suggests permissive rules of engagement coupled with indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to the mass destruction and high numbers of civilian casualties in the coastal enclave.

“The organization of active and reserve duty soldiers, called Breaking the Silence, gathered testimonies from more than 60 enlisted men and officers who served in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.

… “The 240-page report, “This is How We Fought in Gaza 2014”, was released Monday and accompanied by videotaped testimony that aired on Israeli news programs.”

Washington Post

Also from Tel Aviv, Philosophy professor, Anat Biletzki, sees the “Protective Edge” operation as one among several markers on the road moving from implicit understanding to explicit expression.

In Israel, we are used to hearing that everything is more “complex” than one might think. Situations are typically described as variegated, imprecise or intangible and they seem almost intentionally so. Implicitness — about politics, religion, military actions, and human rights — rules. But I would argue that that situation has changed. In the past year in Israel, things have become clear and precise. Things have become explicit.

The government that will be formed this week is the most clearly articulated, narrowest, most right-wing, most religious and most nationalistic government ever assembled in Israel. A combination of the fundamentalist Orthodox clerical parties with the nationalistic chauvinism of the Jewish Home, led by Naftali Bennett who makes no attempt to hide his annexation plans, has been orchestrated by Benjamin Netanyahu in no uncertain terms. Along with Likud, Netanyahu’s home, which is the largest party in Israel today, and Kulanu (All of Us – a breakaway of Likud), this whole bloc is unambiguous in its Jewish, nationalistic agenda.

… When the Firm Cliff fighting officially started, the Israeli media, whether on its own or while quoting political, cultural, religious and military leaders, was replete with clearly voiced messages of racism and hate toward any and all Arabs or Palestinians. “Death to the Arabs,” a call previously shrugged away as an instigation used mainly by erstwhile extremists and soccer fans, could be heard loud and clear. And antiwar protesters, now encountering without police protection the so-called “nationalist” supporters of the war, heard the loud and explicit “Death to the Leftists.” The long-brewing enmity between Jew and Arab, which had always been understood but sometimes unspoken, came out in full force, rising to the boiling surface. We were facing the nebulous — but no less substantial for that — move from the implicit to the explicit.

Filed under Israel, Middle East, War Tagged with , ,

Water Watch: Saudi Arabia Sends a Warning

April 25, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Very interesting report at revealnews.org about the big money exploitation of Saudi aquafers — now depleted and disaster looming.

 

By / April 22, 2015

A decade ago, reports began emerging of a strange occurrence in the Saudi Arabian desert. Ancient desert springs were drying up.

The springs fed the lush oases depicted in the Bible and Quran, and as the water disappeared, these verdant gardens of life were returning to sand.

“I remember flowing springs when I was a boy in the Eastern Province. Now all of these have dried up,” the head of the country’s Ministry of Water told The New York Times in 2003.

The springs had bubbled up for thousands of years from a massive aquifer system that lay underneath Saudi Arabia. Hydrologists calculated it was one of the world’s largest underground systems, holding as much groundwater as Lake Erie.

So farmers were puzzled as their wells dried, forcing them to drill ever deeper. They soon were drilling a mile down to continue tapping the water reserves that had transformed barren desert into rich irrigated fields, making Saudi Arabia the world’s sixth-largest exporter of wheat.

… A Saudi banker turned water detective put together the pieces in 2004 and published the now seminal report “Camels Don’t Fly, Deserts Don’t Bloom.” Elie Elhadj’s investigation revealed the culprit: Wealthy farmers had been allowed to drain the aquifers unchecked for three decades.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Saudi landowners were given free rein to pump the aquifers so that they could transform the desert into irrigated fields. Saudi Arabia soon became one of the world’s premier wheat exporters.

And, as to California?

For the past two years, stories similar to Saudi Arabia’s have been bubbling up in the Central Valley, which produces about 10 percent of America’s agriculture. Wells are going dry, farmers are forced to chase water ever deeper underground, and the ground is sinking.

California scientists warn that they have little idea how much groundwater is left, or how long it would take aquifers to refill even if all the pumping stopped now.

Some California aquifers have been so depleted by irrigated farmland that the state is now pumping water that trickled down more than 20,000 years ago. Rainwater won’t recharge these ancient aquifers. When it’s gone, it’s gone – at least for the next 800 generations or so.

Read All 

Filed under Climate Change, Middle East, Water Tagged with , , ,

Feminists in Iran

March 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

During all the fear-mongering about Iran and repugnance at the position of women in fundamentalist Islam, it’s good to read that amazing changes, mostly unseen in the West, are happening for the women of Iran.  Here from a BBC report

The revolution, Farah says, was very good for women.

“The revolutionists supported women coming out of their homes to demonstrate. They used women to show their strength, but they never anticipated these women also believed in their right to exist outside the home,” Farah remembers.

… Iran’s genies were let out of the bottle. The same genies have gone on to become active members of theological schools and hold positions as judges and engineers. “I don’t care what they spread, radical or fundamental, whether I believe in it or not, they have a voice, it makes me happy,” Farah says proudly.

There’s no greater evidence of women in the workplace, than where we’re sitting [on the Tehran underground], surrounded by women on their way to work. It’s another outcome the Ayatollah hadn’t expected, but with Iran’s economy battered by the revolution, women had no choice but to join the workforce.

Iran and Women

“It forced men to acknowledge that their wives could go out and earn money,” Farah says. Growing up, Farah only remembers affluent families allowing girls to work outside the home. Now, she says, “Nearly all boys prefer to marry a girl who has a permanent job and good salary. Often the women work harder, and longer hours than their husbands, so they do more of the housework – cleaning and preparing meals.”

Much more, with photos….

Filed under Middle East, Women Tagged with , ,

Where ISIS Came From

August 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

In thinking about ISIS and their campaign of terror, I don’t have any better ideas about the best response than anyone else I’ve read recently.  I do notice however several things about their origins:

At the top the organization is the self-declared leader of all Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a radical chief executive officer of sorts, who 1) handpicked many of his deputies from among the men he met while a prisoner in American custody at the Camp Bucca detention center a decade ago.

He had a preference for military men, and so his leadership team 2) includes many officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army. (Disbanded by the US invasion)

They include former Iraqi officers like Fadel al-Hayali, the top deputy for Iraq, who once served Mr. Hussein as a lieutenant colonel, and Adnan al-Sweidawi, a former lieutenant colonel who now heads the group’s military council.

The pedigree of its leadership, outlined by an Iraqi who has seen documents seized by the Iraqi military, as well as by American intelligence officials, helps explain its battlefield successes: Its leaders augmented traditional military skill with 3) terrorist techniques refined through years of fighting American troops, while also having deep local knowledge and contacts. ISIS is in effect a hybrid of terrorists and an army.

NY Times; Hubbard and Schmitt

These three points can be expanded by several others.  Not only 3) techniques but logistics of 4) supply and 5) delivery have been developed against American forces.  They know where to get guns, gas, food and water, and how to get all of it to blitzkrieging company sized units.  As any student of warfare can tell you, these are not incidental to taking and holding territory and killing the enemies, they are central.  Had the Americans not invaded Iraq, or carried out the war they way they did, it seems safe to say the practices honed thereby would not exist — at least to such a high degree. These points do not even mention the high-grade and heavy equipment and ammunition left, which have been scooped up and used with some degree of skill. So, 6 ways in which ISIS sprang from American actions.

I’m not of either of  the two camps currently giving ‘expert’ advice on what should be done about the carnage, neither those who claim that had Obama been tougher in Syria two years ago this would not have happened, and so the lesson is to Get Tough Now, nor with those who say a) this has nothing to do with American interests, or b) American intervention will only fuck it up more, therefore, from both at this end: do nothing.

I come from the ‘citizen of the world’ camp, which used to be a commonplace among many of my friends.  The threatened and the dead along the ISIS trail are not neighbors as near as those in California, but they are neighbors nonetheless.  What should, and what can, be done to stop the carnage?  What is available to those out of danger to help those deeply in it, which will not repeat the catastrophic errors enumerated at the top?  How can the guns, gas, water and food to the fighters be pinched and choked off until their threshing machine comes to a halt?  How can the fuel of war-is-wonderful, god approves, be diluted?

Filed under Middle East, War Tagged with ,

Malaki Steps Down

August 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment

A step back from the edge but the cliff is still crumbling and the wind blowing hard.  What next?

Nouri al-Maliki has stepped down as Iraq’s prime minister and given his backing to Haider al-Abadi as his successor, Iraqi state TV reported.  Al Jazeera

Filed under Iraq, Middle East Tagged with ,

From Iraq: Backing Away from A Civil War Within A Civil War

August 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

BAGHDAD — Iran endorsed Iraq’s new prime minister-designate on Tuesday, dealing a devastating blow to Nouri al-Maliki as even the incumbent’s most loyal militia turned its back on him.

After eight years in office, Maliki has refused to step aside as Iraq’s prime minister, vowing to fight the nomination Monday of Haider al-Abadi to form a new government. But he was left with nowhere to turn for support Tuesday as he lost the backing of Tehran, which wields significant influence over Iraqi politics. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a militia that has supported Maliki in the past, also said it supported the decision of Iraq’s Shiite politicians to nominate Abadi.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, congratulated Abadi, Iraq’s religious leaders and political parties on the appointment, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

 

WaPo

Filed under Iraq, Middle East, War Tagged with ,

War Itself is an Act of Terror

July 25, 2014 by Leave a Comment

IN THIS war, both sides have the same aim: to put an end to the situation that existed before it started.Once And For All!

To put an end to the launching of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, Once And For All!

To put an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt, Once And For All!

So why don’t the two sides come together without foreign interference and agree on tit for tat?

They can’t because they don’t speak to each other. They can kill each other, but they cannot speak with each other. God forbid.

THIS IS NOT a war on terror. The war itself is an act of terror.

Uri Avnery

The Toll, day by day

West Bank Protest of Gaza Shelling

West Bank Protest of Gaza Shelling

Now, the West Bank joins in. As Avnery says, “History has shown time and again that terrorizing a population causes it to unite behind its leaders and hate the enemy even more,” and is so showing now.

What would a self-defense  look like that had as a strategic objective diminishing the motivation to attack? It wouldn’t start out with round ups, lock ups, shooting back regardless of the consequences.  If Gary Cooper in High Noon had gotten into the show-down while towns people stood in the path of fire, let’s say a tow-headed little boy got his face blown away, he would have been run out of town, not hailed a hero.

In this year of a terrible war starting, 100 years ago, we can see the slow drift again, of bad intelligence, wrong predictions, miscalculation,  contempt for them, blinding pride in us, though it’s worse now.  Then the Austrians didn’t like the Serbs nor the Serbs their Imperial occupiers; now Israelis loath the Palestinians and vice-versa.  Exterminist rhetoric is coming from both sides and any, small, good ideas are lost in the din.

I wonder sometimes, in my cynicism, if pictures of dead pets were shown instead of people, if the will to cease-fire would be found?

Filed under Middle East, War Tagged with , , , ,

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