[WCUSP] Racism etc etc..

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Your have an interesting point, Marlene, about the separation that  you don't 
believe is made about Jewish people who "unsuccessfully work" to  change the 
mass slaughter...
  However, I can report at that at the Islamic Society of North  America's 
convention a couple of weeks ago, Muslims were told to pray for  Jews.   
   Love,
   Katharina
(two articles follow...)
----------------------------------
 Dear Arthur & WCUSP,

Excerpt:
Racism underlies the  Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running
amok in the Middle East.  The inherent racism of Zionism has found a
natural ally in the racist  imperial philosophy espoused by the
neoconservatives of the Bush  administration. The ultimate logic of the
Israeli-U.S. global war, writes  Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of
the Alternative Information Center in  Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the
"full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in  which one is not fighting a
policy, a government or specific targets, but a  'threat' identified with
a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all  non-Jewish communities.

Be it Hugo Chavez or others, it is amazing to me  that there are not
more Arabs & Palestinians that don't separate the  behavior & military
policies of Israel & the U.S. from Jewish people  who unsucessfully work
to change the mass slaughter which is taking place in  Lebanon &
Palestine.

Marlena Santoyo
-----------------------------------------------------------  
The following article by Rami El-Amine will appear in the Oct/Nov  issue
(#22) of Left Turn magazine and can be found online at MRZine, ZNet,  and
LeftTurn.org:

----------------------------------------------
We  thrash, curse for air
As our strangler declares, look
How violent the  Arab
-- Haiku for the Head Locked by Zein El-Amine

According to an  ABC-Washington Post poll taken in March 2006, a majority of
people in the US  believe that "Muslims are disproportionately prone to
violence," with 46  percent expressing a negative view of the religion, 7
percent higher than in  the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist
attacks. The poll also found  that 25 percent of people in the US admitted
to "harboring prejudice towards"  Muslims and Arabs. The institutional
effect of this racism is stark. The  earnings of Arab and Muslim men working
in the US dropped about 10 percent  since 9-11, according to a new University
of Illinois study. The drop in  wages was most dramatic in areas reporting
high crime rates. Robert Kaestner,  co-author of the study said there was
"an immediate and significant  connection between personal prejudice and
economic harm."

This should  not come as a surprise when you consider the extent of
anti-Arab/anti-Muslim  racism being perpetrated by governments and the media
around the world. The  past year has seen the mass publication of Danish
cartoons ridiculing Islam,  police brutality and repression against North
Africans in France, and a riot  against mostly Lebanese immigrants in
Australia -- all of which led to mass  protests and, in the case of France,
riots by Arabs and Muslims in  response.

While such blatant racism has not yet provoked a similar response in  the US,
it has not been because of any shortage of incidents:

-Last  year a Washington, DC, radio host continuously referred to Islam as  a
"terrorist organization" on his show (Paul Farhi, "Muslims Call Comments  by
WMAL Host 'Hate-Filled,'" Washington Post 26 Jul 2005: C01). 

-The  Coalition for a Secure Driver's License started a campaign to put up
"Don't  License Terrorists" billboards depicting an Arab holding a hand
grenade in  one hand and a driver license smeared with blood in the  other.

-Republican Congressman Tancredo of Colorado openly called for the  US to
preempt a terrorist attack by attacking Muslim holy sites like Mecca.  

War on Terror

Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is an indispensable  part of the so-called "war
on terror" or "the long war," as it is now  referred to, and US plans to
dominate the Middle East. By dehumanizing those  that the US is waging war
against, this racism makes their death and the  destruction of their
countries more palatable to the US public and quells  domestic resistance to
the war. Today it helps numb people to the deaths of  dozens of Iraqis per
day and the mass murder of Lebanese and Palestinians by  Israel.

Fomenting anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism has not been difficult  because, as
Noam Chomsky puts it, such racism has "long been extreme, the  last
'legitimate' form of racism in that one doesn't even have to pretend  to
conceal it." I do not want to minimize all the other forms of racism  that
run deep in this country, but there is indeed a certain legitimacy  and
respectability given to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism that is not found  with
other forms of racism. This legitimacy stems from the fact  that
anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism cuts across the entire political spectrum,  from
right to left. It is accepted and even practiced by those who would  not
tolerate other forms of racism. While the anti-racist record of  liberals
and some on the left is not the best, it is particularly bad when it  comes
to Arabs and Muslims.

Green Menace

Arabs have  historically been more the targets of this racism than Muslims.
This began to  change in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution because
it was no  longer just Arabs who were the enemy. The end of the Cold War and
resistance  to US hegemony, particularly by Muslims in the Middle East, made
Islam a  useful scapegoat for US imperialism -- its new bogeyman now that
communism  was gone. Books by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Samuel
Huntington's The  Clash of Civilizations became popular because they gave
"scholarly" backing  to the idea that Islam was the main threat to  Western
"civilization."

Many have drawn parallels between this  scapegoating of Muslims to the red
scare during the Cold War, referring to it  as the "green menace." While the
comparison is appropriate, the concept of  the green menace is, in many ways,
much more insidious because it relies on  racism rather than ideology. It is
a more effective means of instilling fear  in people, deflecting their
attention from their everyday problems, and  mobilizing them against some
supposedly powerful enemy. That is not to say  that the red scare was not
(and still is not) used in a racist manner against  countries like Vietnam,
North Korea, China, Cuba, and against black activists  in the US. It is just
that the main communist bogeymen, Eastern Europe and  the Soviet Union, were
white Europeans.

The specter of the green  menace, on the other hand, relies on the fact that
Muslims look different  and, even if they do not look different, they have
distinct names, places of  worship, dress, and customs that can be easily
exploited to portray them as  the "other" -- different, prone to violence,
and barbaric. Also, in the age  of "full spectrum dominance," this racism
can be used to justify and mobilize  attacks on a huge swath of the world's
poor because Muslims are not only  present in large numbers in the Middle
East, but in Africa, Asia, and most  urban centers in Europe, the United
States, and Canada.

Having said  that, I have chosen to use the term "anti-Arab/anti-Muslim"
rather than just  one or the other because both groups -- and many others,
including Sikhs, who  are neither Arab nor Muslim -- are the targets of the
racism we are seeing  today. The piercing words, physical assaults, and
flying bombs and bullets do  not know nor care that we are not all the same.

Republicratic  Racism

The racist hysteria around an Arab company, Dubai Ports World  (DPW),
managing six US ports is a good example of both the uniqueness  and
pervasiveness of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism in the US. During the  public
debate over the deal, it was those who traditionally have at least  paid lip
service against racism, the Democrats, who were the most xenophobic  and, in
some cases, downright racist. At a rally in Newark, New Jersey,  attended by
a number of Democratic Congressmen, Senator Frank Lautenberg  (D-NJ)
described the port deal as an "occupation." He added that "we  wouldn't
transfer the title to the Devil; we're not going to transfer it to  Dubai."

The liberal group MoveOn.org was less blatantly racist but still  contributed
to the hysteria. On its website it asked people how it should  respond to
the "port security scandal." In their summary of the issue,  they
regurgitated the same distorted arguments politicians from both parties  had
been using, like "Dubai is . . . known as an international money  laundering
hub for Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks." Such use of  unsubstantiated
generalizations only feeds into the stereotype that the  Middle East is
crawling with terrorists. Of the five possible responses that  MoveOn.org
asked people to choose from, all but one fed into the anti-Arab  hysteria
whipped up around the deal. For example, one of the choices was  for
MoveOn.org to "[f]ocus on whichever course is most likely to stop the  ports
from being handed over to the UAE." The other was to "[s]upport  the
Democratic bill in the Senate banning all corporations owned by  foreign
governments from managing security at American ports." None of the  options
were about exposing the anti-Arab bias of both political parties and  the
media.

With Democrats and liberals taking such a right-wing  stance, it's no wonder
that Bush and some Republicans were portrayed as  supporting the deal because
they were friends of Arabs. In an op-ed piece in  the Washington Post,
liberal Richard Cohen says, "Maybe because Bush is a  Bush -- son of a
president who got to know many Arabs -- or maybe because he  just naturally
recoils from prejudice, his initial stance on this controversy  has been
refreshingly admirable."

Yes, remarkably, Bush may indeed be  a defender of Arabs. However, he is
selective in which Arabs he defends. Bush  is more than willing to protect
the rich Arab monarchies that lord over the  Gulf, but certainly not the
thousands of Arabs and Muslims that his racist  war on terror has maligned,
detained, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.  Nothing captures this fact and
the dehumanizing role of racism better than  the following words from a
letter Guantanamo Bay detainee Jumah Dossari gave  his lawyer before
attempting suicide:

The detainees are suffering from the bitterness of despair, the  detention,
humiliation, and the vanquish of slavery and suppression. I hope  you will
always remember that you met and sat with a "human being" called  "Jumah" who
suffered too much and was abused in his belief, self, dignity and  also in
his humanity. He was imprisoned, tortured, and deprived from his  homeland,
his family, and his young daughter who is in the most need of him  for four
years . . . with no reason or crime committed.
 
Sadly, Jumah Dossari is only one of thousands of Arab and Muslim  prisoners,
many of them nameless, being "detained" in US prisons and unknown  "black
sites" around the world, including here in the US at places like  the
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The Anti-war  Movement

United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and others in the anti-war  movement, as
well as generally perceived progressive groups such as the Green  Party sat
out the DPW deal "controversy" and, more importantly, the whole  anti-Muslim
cartoons debate. There were protests on every continent, led  mostly by
Muslims who saw this as part of a broader war on Islam by  non-Muslims -- one
that they were actually finally allowed to act on, as  opposed to more
egregious aspects of the war on terror like torture,  imprisonment, and
occupation that their rulers do not want to rock the boat  over. The failure
of anti-war groups in the US to organize any events in  solidarity with
Muslims worldwide, let alone even put out statements  condemning their
publication, helped reinforce the perception that the  anti-war movement is
not concerned with anti-Arab/anti-Muslim  racism.

On the positive side, some of the anti-war groups who are part of  UFPJ have
been organizing speaking tours of Iraqis. US Labor Against the War  (USLAW)
organized a tour of six Iraqi trade unionists around the country in  June
2005, and in early 2006; Code Pink brought several Iraqi women to the US  on
a powerful tour involving Cindy Sheehan and other families of US  soldiers
killed in Iraq. Such events are very effective in combating racism  because
they humanize Iraqis and help break down stereotypes about Arabs  and
Muslims. The Green Party has also been good about issuing  statements
condemning the government's targeting and racial profiling of  Arabs and
Muslims. However, if groups are genuinely concerned and committed  to
bringing about a just peace in the Middle East, then an explicit strategy  of
confronting anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism needs to be a central  and
consistent part of their work.

The failure of some anti-war groups  to take anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism
head-on may be due to the small number  of Arabs and Muslims involved, and
organizations' lack of movement on these  issues then reinforces the lack of
Arab and Muslim involvement. For example,  there is only one Muslim (and no
Arabs) on UFPJ's Steering Committee. While  UFPJ does manage to have Arabs
and Muslims speak at their actions and events,  they are generally not
involved in organizing with UFPJ on any consistent  basis. 

Islamophobia and Zionism

The failure of many in the US  antiwar movement to fight
anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is often rooted in  conscious or unconscious
acceptance of two interconnected racist ideologies  of Islamophobia and
Zionism. A good example of this is the anti-war  movement's wary response to
Hamas' overwhelming victory in this year's  Palestinian legislative
elections.

The election was immediately seized  upon by Zionists to tighten the
occupation and add to the already heightened  racism against Arabs and
Muslims in the US. While US and European leaders  were mobilizing the world
against the new, democratically elected government  of Hamas (punishing the
entire Palestinian people in the process) on the  grounds that it did not
renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel,  few in the anti-war
movement were exposing the virulent anti-Arab racism  found at all levels of
the Israeli government, which is actively working to  ensure that a
Palestinian state will never exist, refuses to give equal  rights to
Palestinians (and all non-Jewish residents of Israel), and is  killing
Palestinians on a daily basis. At the annual conference of the  America
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC, in March,  the
Israeli Ambassador to the UN commented: "While it may be true . . . that  not
all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly  all
terrorists are Muslim." This comment was applauded and went unchallenged  by
the media or any of the Congresspeople in attendance.

Calls for the  ethnic cleansing or "transfer" of Palestinians are not
uncommon in Israel,  even at the highest levels of the government because
Zionism -- a product of  European colonialism -- sees a Jewish majority and
Jewish-privileged state as  being incompatible with respecting the rights of
the indigenous inhabitants  of historic Palestine. Rehavam Zeevi, the
Minister of Tourism assassinated by  the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) in 2001, called  Palestinians "lice" and "a cancer" and
openly advocated their forced  transfer. In March, Zvi Bar'el, a regular
columnist for the Israeli paper  Haaretz wrote, "Israel's problem is not
Hamas, strong or weak; the problem is  with the Palestinian people, who chose
it. They have to be changed or  eliminated if one wants quiet. . . ."
Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel  Is Our Home party, the largest party
in the sizeable Russian bloc in Israel's  new Knesset, supports what is
essentially a plan to ethnically cleanse Israel  of its Palestinian citizens.
Sergei Podrazhansky, the editor of one of  Israel's Russian language dailies,
said "I know that even the most left-wing  person in Israel wants to wake up
and not see any Arabs here." The annual  poll by the Center for the Struggle
Against Racism shows that comments like  these are not isolated views. The
poll found that 68% of Israeli Jews would  refuse to live in the same
building as an Arab and 40% believe "the state  needs to support the
emigration of Arab citizens" (Eli Ashkenazi and Jack  Khoury, "Poll: 68% of
Jews Would Refuse to Live in Same Building as an Arab,"  Haaretz 22 March
2006). 

Support for the "transfer" or expulsion of  Palestinians is evident in the US
as well, particularly among  neoconservatives. In response to a suicide
bombing in Israel in August 2001,  two neoconservative Washington Post
columnists, Michael Kelly and Charles  Krauthammer, called for the expulsion
of Palestinians. So it was no surprise  to read the rank racism in
Krauthammer's column following Hamas' recent  election victory. He said, "By
a landslide, the Palestinian people have  chosen these known stances:
rejectionism, Islamism, terrorism, rank  anti-Semitism, and the destruction
of Israel in a romance of blood, death and  revolution."

The US media, and even many activists, perpetuate the  steroetype that Hamas
wants to destroy Israel, rather that listening to what  Hamas has to say
about its goals. Hamas' leadership has often publicly  committed to end
violent resistance and enter into negotiations to resolve  the main
impediments to a just peace for the Palestinians. In a July 11  Washington
Post Op-Ed by the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh from  Hamas,
described the conditions necessary to make this possible:  "[R]ecognition of
the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and  the rights of all
its people . . . reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and  stopping Israeli
attacks, assassinations and military expansion. . . .  Statehood for the West
Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and  resolving the 1948
Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of  international legitimacy
and established law."

Colonial  Mentality

Israel's colonization of Palestine has actually been the source  of much of
the anti-Arab/anti-Muslim ideas that have been accepted by the  mainstream.
The propagation of the idea that Palestinians are Arab and Muslim  fanatics
not deserving of rights and equality, let alone their own state, has  been an
indispensable part of the process of the creation, expansion, and  support of
the state of Israel since 1948. What has helped these ideas spread  and
become "legitimate" in the US are not neoconservatives like Krauthammer,  but
liberal supporters of Israel who are actively involved in the  Democratic
Party and social justice causes. While this has changed over the  past six
years as more people have begun to identify Israel with US  imperialism and
apartheid South Africa, supporters of Israel still play an  important role in
making these ideas acceptable, particularly on the left  (see the Arab
Women's Solidarity Association's "The Forgotten ' -ism:': An  Arab American
Women's Perspective on Zionism, Racism and Sexism").

For  example, in response to the US Green Party (USGP) Resolution 190 calling
for  divestment from Israel, opponents have started a "Let 190 Go"  campaign
complete with its own website, www.advocatesforisrael.org. A number  of
prominent leftists and former candidates of the Green Party like  Stanley
Aronowitz and Marakay Rogers have been pushing to repeal the  resolution.
While most have been careful to avoid racist arguments (a  difficult thing to
do when supporting a racist state), many have cited a  letter from the
Israeli Green Party (IGP) in their effort to convince more  Greens to repeal
the resolution. The letter is rife with arguments based on  racist
stereotypes, like "Did you know that in the Palestinian media there  is
glorification of violence and of suicide bombers?"

In arguing  against the resolution, one prominent global justice activist and
member of  the DC Statehood Green Party (DCSGP) said, "I feel if the USGP
party won't  listen to fellow Greens in Israel . . . my continued membership
or enthusiasm  for our party is going to shrink . . . as Green Values . . .
seem to have  changed with this stupid resolution." But he exposed the
colonial mentality  of so many supporters of Israel when he said that it all
boils down to the  fact that "Israelis should have human rights too and
quality of life doesn't  have to suffer in order to improve the
Palestinian's." In other words, he is  concerned about Israelis having to
give up their swimming pools so that  Palestinians could drink and water
their fields.

Worthless Arab  Lives

The tragic consequences of the failure of the anti-war movement in  the US to
challenge anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism were laid bare during  Israel's bloody
invasion of Gaza and Lebanon. The public support for or, at  best,
indifference to such massive loss of innocent life and virtual  destruction
of entire countries and territories can only be fathomed in the  context of a
racism that basically says that Arab and Muslim lives are  worthless and
dispensable. In what other situation would the blatant  targeting of
civilians and civilian infrastructure and the carrying out of  not one but
three massacres in the span of a week by a close US ally -- with  explicit US
approval and military support -- be tolerated? Add to this the  fact that
something similar continues to take place in Gaza and dozens of  Iraqis are
dying every day under the US occupation in Iraq.

Nothing  exemplifies this dehumanization better than the case of Private
Steven D.  Green, the US soldier who raped a young Iraqi girl along with
several other  soldiers and then killed her and her entire family in the town
of Mahmudiyah.  Well before this incident, Green had said in an interview
with a Stars and  Stripe correspondent (now AP reporter) that he came to Iraq
to kill people.  He said, "I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out
at a traffic  checkpoint and it was like nothing. . . . Over here, killing
people is like  squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like
'All right, let's  go get some pizza.'" I'm not sure what's more problematic
-- what Green said  or the fact the reporter never reported it until charges
were filed against  Green.

Of course such racism is dismissed as the words and actions of  some crazed
individual. But Green's comments --- like those of Oklahoma City  bomber
Timothy McVeigh, who fought in the first Gulf War and said similar  things --
are the logical outcome of the racism being espoused at the highest  levels
of government and in the media. In response to the dozens of  Lebanese
civilians that were being killed in the early days of Israel's  assault, US
Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said with no regrets: "There's  no moral
equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli attacks  on
Lebanon and those killed in Israel from malicious terrorist  attacks."
Meanwhile the mainstream media portrayed the war as being between  equals
even though over 1200 Lebanese, almost entirely civilians, and only  157
Israelis, more than two-thirds soldiers, were killed.

Instead of  immediately challenging this and other lies, UFPJ reinforced the
perception  of a symmetrical war propagated by the media by mentioning first
in  communications their concern for "the loss of life on all sides . . .  all
attacks on civilians" and front-loading condemnations of Hezbollah,  without
necessarily even getting to the point of the grossly uneven death  and
destruction in Lebanon and Palestine caused by Israel. Although  the
statements UFPJ released improved as the slaughter of Lebanese  and
Palestinians continued unabated (partially due to feedback  from
Palestine-solidarity activists), they did not even call for a day  of
decentralized protests around the country.

To get a sense of how  conservative UFPJ was around the invasion of Lebanon,
one need only compare  their statements and actions to anti-war groups and
individuals in other  countries. A widely distributed and lauded video
during the fighting was  British MP George Galloway's interview on Sky
Television (Britain's Fox) in  which he not only exposes the media's bias
toward Israel but challenges the  widely accepted view in the West that
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.  This argument needs to be made
because after 9-11 most people in the US don't  need to hear anything beyond
"this is a terrorist organization" to make up  their mind about who is right
and who is wrong. Therefore, challenging the US  government labels of
"terrorist" would go a long way toward shifting the  debate in this country
on issues related to the "war on terror."
The  reason no one in the US has done what Galloway did is that in addition
to  Islamophobia there is a level of acceptance of the lies about Islamism,
even  by radicals. For example, the anti-capitalists who blog  at
www.threewayfight.blogspot.com posted an entry titled "Defending My  Enemy's
Enemy" during Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon in which they  argued that
while Israel is the clear aggressor in the conflict and needs to  be opposed,
it doesn't mean the left should support Hezbollah. The bloggers  argue:
.Hezbollah is essentially a right-wing political movement. Its  guiding
ideology is Khomeini-style Islamic fundamentalism. Hezbollah's  political
ideal, the Islamic Republic of Iran, enforces medieval religious  law,
imposes brutal strictures on women and LGBT people, persecutes religious  and
ethnic minorities, and has executed tens of thousands of leftists and  other
political dissenters.
If it's not already, this argument will one  day become part of one of
Hillary Clinton's or even George Bush's (minus the  part about LGBT people)
speeches justifying a war on Lebanon and Iran. Even  though the entry is
insignificant in terms of the number of people who  probably read it, it
articulates a political view that a lot of the left,  particularly anarchists
and anti-authoritarians, subscribe to but are not as  open about -- hence
their conspicuous absence from a lot of the organizing  against Israel's
invasion.

These kinds of arguments ignore the fact  that Hezbollah gave up on fighting
for a theocracy long ago. It is an  established political party in a
multi-ethnic and -religious state in which  they have the support and
admiration of the other ethnic and religious groups  and work closely with
those on the left as well as the right. Additionally,  Hezbollah's recent
victory was not just a victory over the Israeli apartheid  state but a major
blow to US imperialism, the main source of oppression and  exploitation in
the world. It could possibly have a libratory effect not just  in the Middle
East but also in Latin America, Africa, and  Asia.

Understanding Islamism

In short, proponents of  anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism can be broken down into
several groups. One  consists of the Pipes and Krauthammers of the world who
see Islam as  inherently violent, authoritarian, intolerant (anti-Semitic,
misogynist,  etc.), and therefore a natural breeding ground for terrorists.
Another group  says that it is not Islam but political Islam or Islamism that
is the source  of terrorism -- that Islamists have twisted what is otherwise
a "good"  religion for their own fanatical purposes. Fluctuating between
these two  groups is the majority of people in the US, who, according to  the
ABC-Washington Post poll cited earlier, have for now apparently bought  into
the first group's blatant racism.

This is not surprising since  Pipes, et al. are given free reign in the op-ed
pages of the Washington Post  and New York Times and appear extensively in
the media. They also have the  ears of a large number of politicians,
including their fellow neocons in the  administration. But the main reason
for the growth in the number of people  who feel Islam is inherently prone to
terrorism is the paucity of people  exposing and combating these ideas. Even
those who say Islamism is the  problem and not the religion itself end up
feeding into stereotypes of  Muslims because their arguments are based on
generalizations -- that all  Islamists are reactionary and even fascistic --
and the false belief that  there are other stronger secular forces and
factors that are being ignored by  the media.

A good example of this could be seen on the USLAW tour of  Iraqi trade
unionists. A number of people stressed that the tour was a good  way to show
that there was a more progressive alternative to the Islamists  and Baathists
when it came to opposition to the US occupation. One problem  with this is
that it overstates the role unions play in the opposition to the  occupation.
But the bigger problem is that the leaders of one of the unions  doing the
best work against the occupation, the General Union of Oil  Employees in
Basra (GUOE), clearly sympathize and have close relations with  the Islamist
Moqtada Al Sadr. I would even venture to say that the majority  of the Basra
oil workers -- who have gone on strike several times, including  most
recently in February 2006, over economic as well as political issues  like
privatization and the occupation -- are supporters of Al  Sadr.

The GUOE and its leaders are a perfect example of why a more  dynamic
understanding of Islamists -- one that does not lump them all into  one
homogenous group and dismiss them as reactionaries -- is needed. While  only
a minority of Muslims might consider themselves Islamists, a large  number,
maybe even a majority, support them. This is especially the case  among the
poor and marginalized.

As the Islamists have steadily filled  the vacuum created by the
disintegration of the left (a direct result of US  intervention in the
region), they have taken on some of the language and  politics of the left,
becoming the main force in resisting the ravages of  poverty, imperialism,
and authoritarian rule. As a result, they have also  gained the support of
some non-Islamist political activists and co-opted  others, becoming the
hegemonic force in opposition to the ruling regimes and  their imperial
backers.

Islamists

This is not to say that all  Islamists are progressive, but that they are not
uniformly reactionary.  Moreover, each Islamist group or party differs from
the other in significant  ways. They are products of their own distinct
histories, shaped by different  colonial experiences, class struggles, and
imperialism.

For example,  Hamas and Hezbollah reflect the experience of a much poorer and
oppressed  population than Al-Qaeda. As a result of not being based in any
one country  and who its leaders are, Al-Qaeda says and does very little for
workers and  the poor. Hezbollah takes positions against privatization and
neoliberalism  and for workers' rights that have historically been taken up
by the left in  Lebanon. Moreover, like some of their fellow Shiite
Islamists in Iraq,  Hezbollah is not trying to create a theocracy through an
Islamic revolution  but work within a democratic system to ensure the rights
and aspirations of  the Shiites, the most downtrodden in Lebanese society.

In contrast, those  groups who hold or have held state power like the
Islamists in Iran and the  Taliban in Afghanistan are more right-wing and
authoritarian, ruthlessly  suppressing any resistance. Almost all the groups
that are allowed to operate  openly -- or in the case of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, semi-openly --  provide a wide range of social services
to the poor.

Hamas and  Hezbollah have also been shaped by a resistance struggle against
Israeli  occupation and US imperialism. In Iraq, the Sadrists took up arms
against the  US occupation while their fellow Shiite Islamists in the Dawa
Party and the  Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)
supported it.  Hezbollah, and now Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,
all participate  in elections while Al-Qaeda and other Islamists reject them.

Even on the  question of women's rights there are differences, with the level
of  involvement of women in the day-to-day activities of each group being  an
indicator of how supportive they are of women's rights. With Al-Qaeda,  the
Taliban, and most of the Islamist groups in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, there  is
little or no involvement of women and little or no support for  women's
rights. On the other hand, Hamas and the Egyptian Brotherhood ran  women
candidates; some even won. And women are openly involved at many levels  in
Hezbollah (for more on this, check out the documentary The Women  of
Hezbollah airing on Link TV).

They'll Never Win

Exposing and  ending anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism needs to be a priority in
the anti-war  movement and the left in general. Doing so will not only bring
more Arabs and  Muslims into the movement, but also undercut the racist basis
of support for  the war. It will also alleviate the sense of isolation and
powerlessness that  so many Arabs and Muslims feel as a result of being the
targets of war and  racism.

Such blatant injustice combined with a lack of any effective mass  opposition
to the US-backed murder of so many innocent Arabs and Muslims  is,
ultimately, what pushes people to resort to terrorism. On the other  hand,
what the resistance in Lebanon has accomplished shows a  successful
alternative to such desperate and, ultimately, counterproductive  tactics.
It has also shown how quickly things can turn in this seemingly  overwhelming
struggle to stop the US war machine.

Most importantly,  however, Lebanon has shown that we, Arabs and Muslims, can
be locked up,  tortured, and bombed but we will never stop resisting US and
Israeli efforts  to beat us into submission. Nothing captures this better
than the words of  Kamel, a shopkeeper who refused to leave Nabatiyeh, one of
the hardest hit  towns in south Lebanon: "Look around you, they have
destroyed much of  Nabatiyeh, but that is all they can do, destroy people's
homes and  livelihoods. They can't destroy our spirit and that is what they
don't  understand and why they will never win this  war."


----------------------------------------------------------
----

Rami  El-Amine, an Arab/Muslim activist and writer, is a founder and former
editor  of Left Turn magazine. His article, "The Shia Rise Up," in the Summer
2004  issue of Left Turn also appeared on ZNet, Muslim WakeUp, and Dissident
Voice  as well as a number of other websites and blogs. He can be reached at
qawom  (at) mutualaid.org. 
--------------------------------------------
==========================================

http://www.counterpunch.com/christison09122006.html


September  12, 2006

The Moral Bankruptcy of Israel's Founding Idea

The Coming  Collapse of Zionism


By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA  Analyst


Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who  have
noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously  on
Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see,  the
total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?

Can it be that the  deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that
Israel's bankruptcy is  evident only to those who already knew it, those
who already recognized  Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle
that underlies  it?

Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming  the
ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as  the
exclusivist state of Jews?

Racism has always been the lifeblood of  Israel. Zionism rests on the
fundamental belief that Jews have superior  national, human, and natural
rights in the land, an inherently racist  foundation that excludes any
possibility of true democracy or equality of  peoples. Israel's
destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the  natural next step
in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely  because that
ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's  rights,
it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and  no
territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography  to
accommodate those unlimited rights.

Zionism cannot abide  encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its
total domination over its  own space -- not merely of the space within
Israel's 1967 borders, but of the  surrounding space as well, extending
outward to geographical limits that  Zionism has not yet seen fit to set
for itself. Total domination means no  physical threat and no demographic
threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally  secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews
hold all military power, Jews control all  natural resources, all
neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This  was the message
Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither  Hizbullah
nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue  to
exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's  supreme
authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery.  Zionism
cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in  the
preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not  Zionist
is a potential threat.

In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its  wildly reckless violence to destroy
the nation, to make of it a killing zone  where only Zionism would reign,
where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate  themselves, as they had
during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last  occupation, from 1978
to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first  week of bombing,
describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four  Lebanese army
logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to  keep
Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned  on
him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No  one
is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff  Dan
Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air  Force
said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s  had
dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle  of
the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the  start
of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years  ago
Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel,  the
remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.

The  cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake
Lebanon, at  least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab
population and  unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster
bombs, of which Israel's  U.S. provider is the world's leading
manufacturer (and user, in places like  Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in
mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small  bombs over a several-acre area.
Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to  explode on impact and are left
to be found by unsuspecting civilians  returning to their homes. UN
surveyors estimate that there are as many as  100,000 unexploded cluster
bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in  southern Lebanon.
Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and  injured by
this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last  month.

Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian  areas is
not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of  military
objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of  Israel's
cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN  humanitarian
coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the  cease-fire took
effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution  was in the
works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended  to be
more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to  the
preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or  in
some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did  vast
damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled  a
coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil  and
benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the  Syrian
coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in  residential
apartment blocks, being transported in ambulances, and fleeing in  cars
flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv  act
of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish  dominion.

In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are  unable to
return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled  or
unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been  cleared
by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah,  except
incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its  U.S.
acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not  conducting
terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of  military
exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated  by
Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the  absolute
certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a  war
against a population that was not totally subservient, that had  the
audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to  Israel's
will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who  are
not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish  hegemony.

Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or  another since
its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's  longest
suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The  Zionists
thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem,  the
problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the  flight
of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the  way
of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state.  You
can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not  Jewish.
Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with  the
capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought  had
disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening  the
Zionists' Jewish hegemony.

In the nearly 40 years since then,  Israeli policy has been largely
directed -- with periodic time-outs for  attacks on Lebanon -- toward
making the Palestinians disappear for certain.  The methods of ethnic
cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of  agricultural land and
resources, economic strangulation, crippling  restrictions on commerce,
home demolition, residency permit revocation,  outright deportation,
arrest, assassination, family separation, movement  restriction,
destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax  monies,
starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all  of
the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state  in
all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the  slow
strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people  are
crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode  Island,
Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in  a
month's time -- killing civilians, destroying civilian  infrastructure,
making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are  being murdered
at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate.  Such is the
value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of  things.

Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide  (ElectronicIntifada,
September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of  resistance to
Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to  implement an
ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted  in
Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying  Palestinians,
mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the  local
press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is  that
continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction  or,
if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is  far
more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing.  Pappe
recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and  any
accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel  to
turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national  security
agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the  current
round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even  more
drastically."

And here is the crux of the situation today. Will  anyone notice this
horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly  exposed by its
wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza  the total
bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of  the
Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded  see
this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to  turn
away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name  of
keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?

Since Israel's crazed run  through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed
observers in the alternative and  the European and Arab media have noted
the new moral nudity of Israel, and of  its U.S. backer, with an unusual
degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is  a new awareness of growing
Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering  viciousness of Israeli-U.S.
actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma  Nabulsi, writing in the
Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate  wrath of an enemy
driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged,  only stopped."
American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5,  2006) observes
that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to  Israel, for
it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in  order
to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the  Lebanon
war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist  Edward
Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term  ethnic
cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way  in
which the West and the western media accept and underwrite  these
policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment  values."

Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently  running
amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found  a
natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by  the
neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of  the
Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski  of
the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is  the
"full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting  a
policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified  with
a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish  communities.

The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations,  being promoted
both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the  rationale
for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a  leading
Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram,  August
10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is  divided
into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is  accurate,
then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all  moral
opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has  always
been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of  its
U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are  superior
to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the  very
basis of the state.

In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon,  Arabs and Muslims have a
sense, for the first time since Israel's  implantation in the heart of
the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that  Israel in its arrogance
has badly overreached and that its power and its  reach can be limited.
The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel  Warschawski
speaks of -- the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a  new
high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that  assumes
Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic  clash
between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East -- has  been
seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What  it
is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime  pursuing
absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative  regime in
the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony.  As
Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview  with
Charlie Rose a week into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and  Hamas
in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of  hegemony,
are the political response of populations "that have been degraded  and
occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by  the
Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as  we
see now, the direct support of the United States."

Those oppressed  populations are now fighting back. No matter how much
Arab leaders in Egypt,  Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and
Israel, the Arab people now  recognize the fundamental weakness of
Israel's race-based culture and polity  and have a growing confidence
that they can ultimately defeat it. The  Palestinians in particular have
been at this for 60 years, never disappearing  despite Israel's best
designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world  of their
existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world  is
taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.

Something in the  way Israel operates, and in the way the United States
supports Israel's  method of operating, must change. More and more
commentators, inside the Arab  world and outside, have begun to notice
this, and a striking number are  audacious enough to predict some sort of
end to Zionism in the racist,  exclusivist form in which it now exists
and functions. This does not mean  throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel
will not be defeated militarily. But  it can be defeated psychologically,
which means putting limits on its  hegemony, stopping its marauding
advance through its neighborhood, ending  Jewish racial/religious
domination over other peoples.

Rami Khouri  contends that the much greater public support throughout the
Arab world for  Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel
and for the United  States because it means resistance to their imperial
designs. Khouri does not  go further in his predictions, but others do,
seeing at least in vague  outline the vision of a future in which Israel
no longer enjoys ultimate  dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living
in Britain, a jazz musician and  thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in
Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what  he calls global Zionism, by
which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It  is the Lebanese,
Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says,  who are "at
the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel  and the
U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans  and
Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the  Zionist/neocon
bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an  historic event"
and a "dead entity."

Many others see similar visions.  Commentators increasingly discuss the
possibility of Israel, its myth of  invincibility having been deflated,
going through a South Africa-like  epiphany, in which its leadership
somehow recognizes the error of its racist  ways and in a surge of
humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities  and agrees that Jews
and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary  state. British MP
George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the  possibility of
"an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its  international
backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass  of
opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously  invincible
minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power  on the
basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable.  Short
of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve  the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway - along with many others --  sees
only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is  on
fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state  down
on their heads."

This increasingly appears to be the shape of the  future: either Israel
and its neocon supporters in the United States can  dismantle Zionism's
most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary  state in
Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is,  or
the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable  now.

Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be  destroyed by
the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before  their
expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting  the
Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial  sense,
Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is  justice
and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately  defeating
Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on  the
condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror,  or
finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which  no
people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent  on
imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on  another
Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked  in
Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.

We have  reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by
Israel, Bush,  and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate,
only they may be  strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world
that lies on the other  side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable.
Justice can ultimately  prevail.

-----------------------------

Kathleen Christison is a  former CIA political analyst and has worked on
Middle East issues for 30  years. She is the author of Perceptions of
Palestine and The Wound of  Dispossession.




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