Turning Truth on its Head to Defend the Indefensible

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Turning Truth on its Head to Defend the Indefensible

Who Are the Real Terrorists in the Middle East?

The Refugees' Fury Will Be Felt for Generations to Come

On August 1, Tony Blair delivered a major speech on foreign policy to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. The Prime Minister used the occasion not to call for an end to hostilities in the Middle East but rather to intensify the Anglo-American offensive against what he referred to as the “arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East”, and what he has decided to call “reactionary Islam”. Tony Blair made his position very clear, “This is war,” he declared, “but of a completely unconventional kind.” To win this war, Blair argued, there needs to be an “alliance of moderation”, which fights for what the Prime Minister likes to call “global values”. In using this term, he is not referring to the values of the defence of sovereignty, the outlawing of crimes against peace and humanity, which the world’s people shed their blood to establish in the defeat of Hitlerite fascism. No. What Tony Blair means by “global values” are the Eurocentric values of neo-liberal globalisation enshrined in the Paris Charter, which the Anglo-America alliance and the other big powers are attempting to impose throughout the world. This “export of democracy” has now become a war “not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century”.

            The Prime Minister presents a view of the world in which Israeli Zionism is the victim, in which there is a struggle between “reactionary Islam” and “moderate mainstream Islam”, in which the invasion of other countries is undertaken by the US in order to “protect its and out future security”, and in which the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is continued to save those countries from violence and “religious extremism”. In short, he presents a picture of a world that does not exist in reality, in which truth is turned on its head. In Tony Blair’s world there is no history and legacy of colonialism, no history of the peoples and resources of the Middle East being bartered and exchanged by Britain and the other big powers according to their own selfish interests. In this world there is no arbitrary removal of uncooperative regimes and imposing of reactionary ones, nor secret provision of military technology to the Israeli Zionists. For Blair there is no state terrorism of Israel, the Anglo-American alliance and the other big powers, only the threat of “reactionary Islam” and “global Islamist terrorism” that apparently feels threatened by the spread of “global values”. Thus does Tony Blair attempt to justify the further intensification of the Anglo-US agenda of the so-called “war against terror”.

            Of course, even Blair is forced to admit the reality of the Palestinian cause. But even here he presents the issue not as one concerning the rights of the Palestinian people, which have been trampled on by British governments for nearly 200 years, but rather that the problem is Hamas and “reactionary Islam” which has not only  “provoked” Israel in Gaza but now in Lebanon too. It might be thought that according to this warped logic, Blair should be remonstrating with Israel not to be so “provoked”, but he does not draw that conclusion. Instead, he goes out of his way to defend the actions of the war-mongering Zionist regime, and presents himself as the champion of democracy and modernization fighting against “reactionary religious extremism”.

            In his speech, Blair was also forced to admit that few in the world are convinced by his spurious arguments, since most people’s thinking is based on their own experience of the real world. “Convincing our own opinion of the nature of the battle is hard enough,” was the way he put it, adding that what is also required are means “to empower the moderates to defeat the extremists”. For Blair this means increasing interference and intervention in the Middle East to establish the “arc of moderation and reconciliation”. It means establishing regimes that accept the Eurocentric values of the Anglo-American alliance and the other big powers. It also means intervening in Palestine in order to establish what he referred to as a “viable Palestinian government”, continuing the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and continuing to threaten Syria and Iran.

            For Blair what is required, as he openly admits, is a Middle East and Islam that is “open to globalisation”; that accepts the values, dictate and hegemony of the Anglo-American alliance; that does not dare to resist nor take hold of its own destiny. Blair’s speech highlights the fact that the Anglo-American alliance views the Middle East, or West Asia, as a key battleground that must be secured if it is to be in a position to dominate the whole of Asia in the future, and that views this global struggle as ideological as well as military and economic. Blair’s speech highlights the dangerous path pursued in foreign policy by the British government, the fact that as recent events in Lebanon have again shown, the big powers will use any means to crush the resistance to their aims, turn truth on its head, and present any justification in order to advance and defend their interests.

By Oren Ben-Dor*, July 26, 2006

As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.

            While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.

            What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.

            Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.

            The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.

            Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.

            To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.

            Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas – the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause – the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence.

            The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis – all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.

            The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.

            Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak.

            In Hebrew, the word elem (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word almut (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.

* The writer teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at University of Southampton.

By Karma Nabulsi, August 2, 2006, Guardian

People walk the dusty, broken roads in scorching summer heat, taking shelter in the basements of empty buildings. In Gaza and Lebanon, in the refugee camps of Khan Younis, Rafah and Jabaliya, in Tyre and Beirut, in Nabatiyeh and Sidon, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children seek refuge. As they flee, they risk the indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that can not be assuaged, only stopped. Ambulances are struck, humanitarian relief convoys are struck, UN observers are struck. Warning leaflets are dropped from the sky urging people to abandon their homes, just as they were in 1996, 1982, 1978, 1967 and 1948. The ultimately impossible decision in Gaza and Lebanon today is: where does a refugee go?

In Beirut in July 1982, after surviving a bomb that destroyed a seven-floor apartment block next door to me, burying alive more than 40 people taking refuge in its cellar, some of us began to sleep on the roof; there is no refuge from this terror, there is only resistance. Fifteen of the 37 children killed in Qana on Sunday were disabled; their families could take them no further north, according to the Lebanese MP Bahia Hariri.

            From June to August 1982, Israeli aircraft flying over Lebanon dropped "smart bombs" on children's hospitals in Shatila camp, Gaza hospital, Acre hospital and 11 of the country's orphanages, killing dozens of disabled children. They had nowhere else to shelter. The roofs had been painted with huge white crosses visible from the sky.

            That war did not give Israel the security it claims to seek, and nor will this one. In 1948 Palestinians fled after hearing news of the massacres in villages by Haganah forces and receiving leaflets dropped from the sky telling them to run for their lives. This week their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are being killed with impunity in the refugee camps of Gaza, where they are trapped. Last Friday alone more than 30 Palestinians were killed, with no international condemnation and barely a mention in the press. In Qana they were also trapped. "We couldn't get out of our neighbourhood because there are only two roads leading out and the Israelis bombed them both several days ago," said Mohammad Shalhoub, a disabled 41-year-old survivor.

            The US and Britain are claiming that no ceasefire is possible until there is an international force that will implement United Nations resolution 1559. Yet the Lebanese prime minister issued a seven-point plan in Rome last week, consistent with international law and agreed by all elected parties in Lebanon (including Hizbullah), that had as its first requirement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. It is implementation of the dozens of UN resolutions that Israel has flouted for more than 50 years with protection from the US – and now from Britain – that will stop this conflict.

            The capture of a soldier from an occupying army in Gaza, and of two soldiers on the Lebanese border by local resistance, in an attempt to force the release of thousands of illegally detained Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, should have been dealt with by Israel in the framework of the laws of war and with a proportional response. Instead, by launching this massive attack, Israel has destroyed the social and economic infrastructure of a sovereign nation, Lebanon, just as it is destroying the infrastructure of a democratically elected administration in occupied Palestine.

            It is producing generations of refugees who will also resist. Power stations, bridges, key manufacturing and food factories in Lebanon are ruined, the entire industrial estate of Gaza pulverised. The ancient city centre of Nablus has been demolished. Whole villages in south Lebanon and sections of refugee camps in Gaza have been obliterated. These too are war crimes. If Britain will not stop Israel, nor condemn it, then under the Geneva conventions it is complicit in those crimes.

            Before seeking the implementation of UN resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah, Britain must seek with more sincerity the implementation of UN security council resolutions 242 and 338, which demand the immediate withdrawal of Israel from lands illegally occupied in the 1967 war, including the Golan Heights, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. There is hardly a statesman or citizen in the world today who cannot see that it will take outside intervention to stop Israel inflicting this terror. Calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and working towards the implementation of all UN resolutions addressing this conflict, will restore to the international community – and Britain in particular – the legitimacy it has squandered by allowing months of war crimes to go by, witnessed but uncondemned and unconstrained.

            Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow.

*· Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University. She is the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law.