An Alternate Witness

There's good reason that this documentary has won so many awards. I wish I'd had this film to show to my students at nerd camp. I showed them "Iron Wall" and it was good, but this has a much larger scope, historically and geographically, and it's a powerful reminder of why we as Americans, perhaps more than anyone, can't ignore this issue:

At Least As Far As We Can Tell

I want to dispel a rumor circulating on the Web about Jordan and its Palestinians. Actually, I'm surprised that Nas at the Black Iris hasn't already commented on it.

Word on the Web is that Jordan has begun revoking the Jordanian passports of its Palestinian citizens. According to rumor, the Jordanian government is uneasy in the wake of President Obama's speech in Cairo about where the Middle East Peace Process will go next. There is concern that Jordan will be asked to take all the Palestinians, which Jordan and Palestinians have always made clear is not a viable option, and the rumor goes that Jordan is revoking the passports of Palestinians to pre-empt any talk of Jordan as the new Palestinian homeland.

Several of my friends in the States have heard the rumor and asked me about it, so I've been asking around. First of all, there is this article in the Jordan Times. As I understand it, Palestinians in Jordan hold one of three kinds of ID: green cards, yellow cards or UN IDs. From this article, it is my understanding that Palestinians can, under certain circumstances, exchange one kind of ID for another, and that a small number of Palestinians do this every year. I understand from the article that this number has not changed significantly from recent years.

I've also asked a number of friends who have their fingers on the pulse of Jordanian politics, whether by professional or personal interest, or through family connections. What I have learned boils down to this: no one knows anyone, or has heard of anyone, whose Jordanian passport was revoked. In fact, the Interior Minister was recently on Amin FM, a local radio station, inviting anyone whose passport had been unjustly revoked to call in to the program, and no one did. I know, in Jordan one must take this with a grain of salt, and suspect that anyone who did call in wouldn't be allowed on air anyway, but it shows that the government is aware of the rumor, and trying to dispel it.

This is what I think happened: In the wake of the Gaza War, the Obama speech, and other recent developments in the Israeli/Palestinian issue, reporters have gone into overtime to find information about Palestinian issues. One of them found some data about the yearly turnover of green and yellow cards, and misconstrued it, or sensationalized it, and then it "went viral" as the term now goes.

This is what I tried to teach my students in my Islam course at nerd camp. When you read something in the newspaper, see it on TV, or especially when you find it on the Internet, think carefully about who wrote it, where they got their information, and what their personal biases are. A reporter might, as happened in one of the articles my students read, come to Algiers, interview half a dozen people there, and write an article about the evils of Islam, a religion that encourages so-called "honor killings." Now, my students had studied Islam for almost three weeks of 7-hour days by this time, so they knew right away that she had her facts wrong: honor killings are a cultural phenomenon in many predominantly Muslim countries that directly contradict the edicts of the Qur'aan. But even if you didn't know anything about Islam, would you say that half a dozen interviews with Algerians makes the reporter any sort of authority on Islamic practices?

My sources may be suspect for any number of reasons, but I feel fairly confident in saying that there's sufficient evidence readily available that casts at least a shadow of a doubt on this latest rumor about the revocation of Palestinians' passports.

Thanks, Josh!

This article by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman really stands out for me as encapsulating a large part of the reason why I have come to the Middle East to teach. In this article, Friedman talks about the experience of opening a girls' school in Afghanistan with Greg Mortenson, author of the amazing Three Cups of Tea and builder of more than 200 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Friedman gives us many wise words from Mortenson, including this passage:

“When a girl gets educated here and then becomes a mother, she will be much less likely to let her son become a militant or insurgent,” he added. “And she will have fewer children. When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited.”

I was just telling Keri last weekend that one of my goals as a Peace Corps Volunteer was to inspire great mothers, girls who would grow up appreciating the value of education, and, even if they weren't able to pursue it themselves, would push their own daughters to do well in school and go on to University. Someday maybe I'll make the kind of impact Mortenson is making.

Finally, this both surprised and encouraged me:

Mortenson said he was originally critical of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he’s changed his views: “The U.S. military has gone through a huge learning curve. They really get it. It’s all about building relationships from the ground up, listening more and serving the people of Afghanistan.”

I won't say too much, except that this article says many of the things I've been saying all along about being a critical supporter of Obama, not putting great blind faith in him to fix everything, but believing that he will respond to the will and the best interests of the people more readily than his predecessor, if we tell him what that is! (Thanks, Ryan!)

Published on Saturday, May 16, 2009 by The Progressive
Changing Obama's Mindset
by Howard Zinn

We are citizens, and Obama is a politician. You might not like that word. But the fact is he's a politician. He's other things, too-he's a very sensitive and intelligent and thoughtful and promising person. But he's a politician.
If you're a citizen, you have to know the difference between them and you-the difference between what they have to do and what you have to do. And there are things they don't have to do, if you make it clear to them they don't have to do it.
From the beginning, I liked Obama. But the first time it suddenly struck me that he was a politician was early on, when Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat in 2006.

Lieberman-who, as you know, was and is a war lover-was running for the Democratic nomination, and his opponent was a man named Ned Lamont, who was the peace candidate. And Obama went to Connecticut to support Lieberman against Lamont.
It took me aback. I say that to indicate that, yes, Obama was and is a politician. So we must not be swept away into an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of what Obama does.

Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders. It was good that we were cheerleaders while he was running for office, but it's not good to be cheerleaders now. Because we want the country to go beyond where it has been in the past. We want to make a clean break from what it has been in the past.
I had a teacher at Columbia University named Richard Hofstadter, who wrote a book called The American Political Tradition, and in it, he examined presidents from the Founding Fathers down through Franklin Roosevelt. There were liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. And there were differences between them. But he found that the so-called liberals were not as liberal as people thought-and that the difference between the liberals and the conservatives, and between Republicans and Democrats, was not a polar difference. There was a common thread that ran through all American history, and all of the presidents-Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative-followed this thread.

The thread consisted of two elements: one, nationalism; and two, capitalism. And Obama is not yet free of that powerful double heritage.

We can see it in the policies that have been enunciated so far, even though he's been in office only a short time. Some people might say, "Well, what do you expect?"
And the answer is that we expect a lot. People say, "What, are you a dreamer?"
And the answer is, yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society. We better hold on to that dream-because if we don't, we'll sink closer and closer to this reality that we have, and that we don't want.

Be wary when you hear about the glories of the market system. The market system is what we've had. Let the market decide, they say. The government mustn't give people free health care; let the market decide.

Which is what the market has been doing-and that's why we have forty-eight million people without health care. The market has decided that. Leave things to the market, and there are two million people homeless. Leave things to the market, and there are millions and millions of people who can't pay their rent. Leave things to the market, and there are thirty-five million people who go hungry.

You can't leave it to the market. If you're facing an economic crisis like we're facing now, you can't do what was done in the past. You can't pour money into the upper levels of the country-and into the banks and corporations-and hope that it somehow trickles down.

What was one of the first things that happened when the Bush Administration saw that the economy was in trouble? A $700 billion bailout, and who did we give the $700 billion to? To the financial institutions that caused this crisis.

This was when the Presidential campaign was still going on, and it pained me to see Obama standing there, endorsing this huge bailout to the corporations.

What Obama should have been saying was: Hey, wait a while. The banks aren't poverty stricken. The CEOs aren't poverty stricken. But there are people who are out of work. There are people who can't pay their mortgages. Let's take $700 billion and give it directly to the people who need it. Let's take $1 trillion, let's take $2 trillion.

Let's take this money and give it directly to the people who need it. Give it to the people who have to pay their mortgages. Nobody should be evicted. Nobody should be left with their belongings out on the street.

Obama wants to spend perhaps a trillion more on the banks. Like Bush, he's not giving it directly to homeowners. Unlike the Republicans, Obama also wants to spend $800 billion for his economic stimulus plan. Which is good-the idea of a stimulus is good. But if you look closely at the plan, too much of it goes through the market, through corporations.

It gives tax breaks to businesses, hoping that they'll hire people. No-if people need jobs, you don't give money to the corporations, hoping that maybe jobs will be created. You give people work immediately.

A lot of people don't know the history of the New Deal of the 1930s. The New Deal didn't go far enough, but it had some very good ideas. And the reason the New Deal came to these good ideas was because there was huge agitation in this country, and Roosevelt had to react. So what did he do? He took billions of dollars and said the government was going to hire people. You're out of work? The government has a job for you.

As a result of this, lots of very wonderful work was done all over the country. Several million young people were put into the Civilian Conservation Corps. They went around the country, building bridges and roads and playgrounds, and doing remarkable things.

The government created a federal arts program. It wasn't going to wait for the markets to decide that. The government set up a program and hired thousands of unemployed artists: playwrights, actors, musicians, painters, sculptors, writers. What was the result? The result was the production of 200,000 pieces of art. Today, around the country, there are thousands of murals painted by people in the WPA program. Plays were put on all over the country at very cheap prices, so that people who had never seen a play in their lives were able to afford to go.

And that's just a glimmer of what could be done. The government has to represent the people's needs. The government can't give the job of representing the people's needs to corporations and the banks, because they don't care about the people's needs. They only care about profit.

In the course of his campaign, Obama said something that struck me as very wise-and when people say something very wise, you have to remember it, because they may not hold to it. You may have to remind them of that wise thing they said.

Obama was talking about the war in Iraq, and he said, "It's not just that we have to get out of Iraq." He said "get out of Iraq," and we mustn't forget it. We must keep reminding him: Out of Iraq, out of Iraq, out of Iraq-not next year, not two years from now, but out of Iraq now.

But listen to the second part, too. His whole sentence was: "It's not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq." What is the mindset that got us into Iraq?

It's the mindset that says force will do the trick. Violence, war, bombers-that they will bring democracy and liberty to the people.

It's the mindset that says America has some God-given right to invade other countries for their own benefit. We will bring civilization to the Mexicans in 1846. We will bring freedom to the Cubans in 1898. We will bring democracy to the Filipinos in 1900. You know how successful we've been at bringing democracy all over the world.

Obama has not gotten out of this militaristic missionary mindset. He talks about sending tens of thousands of more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama is a very smart guy, and surely he must know some of the history. You don't have to know a lot to know the history of Afghanistan has been decades and decades and decades and decades of Western powers trying to impose their will on Afghanistan by force: the English, the Russians, and now the Americans. What has been the result? The result has been a ruined country.

This is the mindset that sends 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and that says, as Obama has, that we've got to have a bigger military. My heart sank when Obama said that. Why do we need a bigger military? We have an enormous military budget. Has Obama talked about cutting the military budget in half or some fraction? No.
We have military bases in more than a hundred countries. We have fourteen military bases on Okinawa alone. Who wants us there? The governments. They get benefits. But the people don't really want us there. There have been huge demonstrations in Italy against the establishment of a U.S. military base. There have been big demonstrations in South Korea and on Okinawa.

One of the first acts of the Obama Administration was to send Predator missiles to bomb Pakistan. People died. The claim is, "Oh, we're very precise with our weapons. We have the latest equipment. We can target anywhere and hit just what we want."
This is the mindset of technological infatuation. Yes, they can actually decide that they're going to bomb this one house. But there's one problem: They don't know who's in the house. They can hit one car with a rocket from a great distance. Do they know who's in the car? No.

And later-after the bodies have been taken out of the car, after the bodies have been taken out of the house-they tell you, "Well, there were three suspected terrorists in that house, and yes, there's seven other people killed, including two children, but we got the suspected terrorists." But notice that the word is "suspected." The truth is they don't know who the terrorists are.

So, yes, we have to get out of the mindset that got us into Iraq, but we've got to identify that mindset. And Obama has to be pulled by the people who elected him, by the people who are enthusiastic about him, to renounce that mindset. We're the ones who have to tell him, "No, you're on the wrong course with this militaristic idea of using force to accomplish things in the world. We won't accomplish anything that way, and we'll remain a hated country in the world."

Obama has talked about a vision for this country. You have to have a vision, and now I want to tell Obama what his vision should be.

The vision should be of a nation that becomes liked all over the world. I won't even say loved-it'll take a while to build up to that. A nation that is not feared, not disliked, not hated, as too often we are, but a nation that is looked upon as peaceful, because we've withdrawn our military bases from all these countries. We don't need to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on the military budget. Take all the money allocated to military bases and the military budget, and-this is part of the emancipation-you can use that money to give everybody free health care, to guarantee jobs to everybody who doesn't have a job, guaranteed payment of rent to everybody who can't pay their rent, build child care centers.

Let's use the money to help other people around the world, not to send bombers over there. When disasters take place, they need helicopters to transport people out of the floods and out of devastated areas. They need helicopters to save people's lives, and the helicopters are over in the Middle East, bombing and strafing people.
What's required is a total turn­around. We want a country that uses its resources, its wealth, and its power to help people, not to hurt them. That's what we need. This is a vision we have to keep alive. We shouldn't be easily satisfied and say, "Oh well, give him a break. Obama deserves respect."

But you don't respect somebody when you give them a blank check. You respect somebody when you treat them as an equal to you, and as somebody you can talk to and somebody who will listen to you.

Not only is Obama a politician. Worse, he's surrounded by politicians. And some of them he picked himself. He picked Hillary Clinton, he picked Lawrence Summers, he picked people who show no sign of breaking from the past.

We are citizens. We must not put ourselves in the position of looking at the world from their eyes and say, "Well, we have to compromise, we have to do this for political reasons." No, we have to speak our minds.

This is the position that the abolitionists were in before the Civil War, and people said, "Well, you have to look at it from Lincoln's point of view." Lincoln didn't believe that his first priority was abolishing slavery. But the anti-slavery movement did, and the abolitionists said, "We're not going to put ourselves in Lincoln's position. We are going to express our own position, and we are going to express it so powerfully that Lincoln will have to listen to us."

And the anti-slavery movement grew large enough and powerful enough that Lincoln had to listen. That's how we got the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

That's been the story of this country. Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that's what we have to do today.

Thanks to Alex Read and Matt Korn for transcribing Zinn’s talk on February 2 at the Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., from which this is adapted.

I want to thank Gabe for linking to this brilliant column of The Daily Dish that so brilliant utilizes George Orwell, one of my all-time favorite political commentators, to pillory Dick Cheney. It reminds me of the summer I spent house-sitting for my mother's Kiwi friend Pat, the summer I read 1984 in its entirety for the first time. I sat there at the dining room table, stroking the cats and the epileptic dog in turn, and wondering if George W. Bush's speechwriters were cutting and pasting straight from Orwell, and whether they could see the satire in it....

I was clued into this YouTube video on this article on NPR. As someone said at our house the other night, the women of the Arab world are so eloquent, and don't get nearly enough air time!

The New York Times

April 19, 2009
Editorial
The Torturers’ Manifesto

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

The abuses and the dangers do not end with the torture memos. Americans still know far too little about President Bush’s decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans — a program that has since been given legal cover by the Congress.

Last week, The Times reported that the nation’s intelligence agencies have been collecting private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans on a scale that went beyond the broad limits established in legislation last year. The article quoted the Justice Department as saying there had been problems in the surveillance program that had been resolved. But Justice did not say what those problems were or what the resolution was.

That is the heart of the matter: nobody really knows what any of the rules were. Mr. Bush never offered the slightest explanation of what he found lacking in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he decided to ignore the law after 9/11 and ordered the warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ overseas calls and e-mail. He said he was president and could do what he wanted.

The Bush administration also never explained how it interpreted laws that were later passed to expand the government’s powers to eavesdrop. And the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that everything associated with electronic eavesdropping, including what is allowed and what is not, is a state secret.

We do not think Mr. Obama will violate Americans’ rights as Mr. Bush did. But if Americans do not know the rules, they cannot judge whether this government or any one that follows is abiding by the rules.

In the case of detainee abuse, Mr. Obama assured C.I.A. operatives that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal. We have never been comfortable with the “only following orders” excuse, especially because Americans still do not know what was actually done or who was giving the orders.

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

'Nuff said!

I want to applaud National Public Radio (www.npr.org) for airing a series this week called Israel's Barrier. It reassures me once again that this is a news outlet truly interested in balanced coverage of both sides of the stories they cover. I remember a commentary in the Jordan Times back in 2006 criticizing NPR's coverage of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war as being biased in favor of Israelis. This was when I realized that most of NPR's anchors are Jews, proud to say so on air, but it's also when I recognized that many of their leading producers have Muslim names. About the same time, I also heard that NPR was the only American news agency not cutting their reporting staff in Iraq. I have since listened to NPR with a very critical ear, but I have to say, I think they come down pretty hard on Israel, while being quite critical of Hamas and the PLO as well. All in all, for Arab issues as well as other topics, I think NPR is doing a pretty good job of bringing balanced coverage of the Middle East to American listeners (tho, admittedly, to the kind of listeners who are already less likely to be afraid of "them A-raaabs!").

For those who would say that Islam is restrictive to women, and especially those who say that Shi'ism is the worst of these, I recommend this interview from my friend Chris's blog.

Israel's military condemned soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle's cross-hairs with the slogan "1 Shot 2 Kills," and another of a gun-toting child with the words, "The smaller they are, the harder it is."

--Matti Friedman, Associated Press

I can't say that I'm surprised, and there are many reasons for my reaction. As I said over and over again in defense of American soldiers after the Abu Ghraib incident, in a war zone, a soldier has to learn how to de-humanize his enemy, or else he can't do what a soldier has to do in war. I have to think that this would be even more the case for a young Israeli soldier, who has to serve in the military regardless of his opinions on the IDF, unless he's willing to face a year of solitary confinement in jail. I'd like to say that I would, in that position, have the moral fortitude to be a refusenik, but the fact is that I'm not in that position, and I'll never know how I would respond. I do know that, despite my moral fortitude, I can be taken in and brainwashed as easily as the next guy, even if Rotary Youth Exchange brainwashing (not better, not worse, just different! peace one friendship at a time!) is pretty benign in comparison! What both Israelis and Palestinians have endured over the last 60 years is frankly beyond my comprehension, and I just know that it must make it that much easier for each side to demonize the other!

Nor am I saying that the bad taste in cartoons is one-sided, either! My pro-Israel friends will surely point out that

Hamas-controlled media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis, and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted characters.

Hamas also mocked Israeli suffering, staging a play about its capture of an Israeli soldier in which it makes fun of the serviceman crying for his mother and father.

But in light of recent reporting by the United Nations, I find this kind of talk on Israel's part to be, at best, disingenuous, and at worse, pure hypocrisy:

On Monday, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his troops.

"I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army. I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with," Ashkenazi told new recruits. Gaza "is a complex atmosphere that includes civilians, and we took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent."

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fire rockets from heavily populated areas, and Israel says Hamas is to blame for the civilian deaths because it leaves the military no choice but to attack them there.

U.N. human rights experts said Monday that Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian as a human shield during the Gaza offensive. The military ordered the boy on Jan. 15 to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in a Gaza neighborhood and enter buildings before them, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.

Israeli army spokesman Capt. Elie Isaacson denied the military used human shields, saying "morals and high ethical standards are paramount" in the army. [all emphasis mine]

Reuters has provided more examples of UN claims as to how Israel violated human rights and international law in their Hannukah offensive last year:

In one [incident], [the Sri Lankan human rights lawyer] said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.

My hat goes off, as well, to UN special rapporteur Richard Falk, who was banned from entering Gaza previous to the Hannukah offensive because of what Israel perceived as an anti-Semitic bias, but who continues to call for

an independent experts group to probe possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas. [He] also suggested that the U.N. Security Council set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal.

There's all kinds of ranting and raving going on around the United States and among Americans abroad about the new stimulus package Pres. Barack Obama is trying to put through Congress, about how it's too little too late, how it's just the same as the Bush stimulus that didn't work. People are complaining that the government isn't coming down more harshly on AIG for using government bailout award bonuses to their executives (contractually obligated bonuses which, incidentally, amount to only 0.03% of the government's total AIG bailout). My roommate's new complaint is that Pres. Obama is now reversing his campaign slogan of "the fundamentals of the economy are wrong" to echo the old Bush comment that "the fundamentals of the ecnomy are strong."

All of this is justified criticism, and since the early Bush years, I've applauded any critique of governmental policy, because genuine critical thinking about the government became a scarce commodity under George W. Without a doubt, Pres. Obama ran on a platform that included fixing what's wrong with the economy, and he should be expected to follow through on that promise. And I believe that he will, not merely because it will help get him re-elected in 2012, but also because I think he genuinely believes in the American promise.

However, we cannot and should not rely on the goverment alone to fix the problem. For a start, the government can't do it alone. Indeed, for the government alone to make any sort of dent in the economic crisis would mean mortgaging our grandchildren and great-grandchildren's futures with an even greater ballooning of the national debt than George W. Bush foisted upon them. Even if the government had the money to make a difference, though, would they really be able to implement quick and effective policies? National government is by definition cumbersome and slow, and it is exactly that quality of our goverment that helps protect us from too much dictatorship and oppression. Primarily, however, the goverment is too large and impersonal to see what individual communities need and what solutions individual problems warrant.

That's why I've been so excited to see a trend of Do-It-Yourself Stimulus peppering the news.

Sit-In Leads To Green Revolution
The first inkling I got of this was when my roommate started talking about a factory in Chicago where 240 workers were staging a sit-in after their factory was foreclosed with just 3 days notice. The complaints included the fact that Bank of America had been awarded funds in the stimulus package precisely to keep it from foreclosing on businesses and pushing up unemployment. This commentary by UC Santa Barbara's Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein explains why factory sit-ins are both rare and significant. The conclusion of this event is even more exciting than the effectiveness of this kind of civil disobedience. Just a month ago, the factory was bought by a California company making energy-efficient windows, making this a green revolution, too!

Several other cases have come to my attention more recently of mid-sized businesses and even individuals stepping up to the plate and sacrificing to help those even worse off in this economic crisis.

Hospital Cutbacks
From the Boston Globe came the story of the President and CEO of Beth Israel Hospital who, faced with the need to slim the budget, took a hard look at "the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them are immigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were just scraping by." He also recognized that the interactions of food servers and people who pushed wheelchairs with patients were a vital part of the practice of medicine at his hospital. So instead of announcing job cuts as he had originally thought, he asked his employees to

"...do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.

"Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

And, having been asked, his workers were more than happy to give up cost-of-living increases, bonuses, a few vacation days and a little sick leave if it meant that everyone would keep their jobs.

Public Defenders
I remember reading a year or two ago that the Public Defenders office somewhere in the Upper Midwest was unable to keep lawyers on their payrolls. With mounting costs of law school and little to no chance of scholarships and other financial aid, new lawyers had so much debt piled on their shoulders that they couldn't afford to work for the public good, no matter how desperately they might have wanted to. The goverment was considering options to forgive those loans just to keep enough lawyers in the Public Defenders office to do what the Constitution demands. According to this article, the economic crisis may be helping public services, and at a time when lawyers are desperately needed to deal with the flood of foreclosures and bankrupcies rocking the country.

Philanthropy Rising
Even individuals are ponying up and doing what they can to help those worst effected by the economic crisis. This article explains how Salvation Army Kettles have raised record donations this past Christmas season, funds desperately needed in such times. I've also read that donations to church social action funds are also on the rise.

So while the economic situation in America may be bleak, I think that for many people, this crisis is bringing out the very best parts of the American spirit, that can-do attitude that got our nation to the top of the global pigpile to begin with. It renews my faith in the power of human compassion. I just watched Will Smith's "Independence Day" yesterday, and I still believe that what that movie says is true:
When the going gets tough, Americans get going!

Waltz with Bashir is an animated Israeli docu-drama, nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009 and winner of many other awards. On the surface, it is a film about a former IDF soldier's attemts to reconstruct his memories of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in Beirut in 1982. Much to my surprise, however, it was actually the post-Modern pastiche of time that appealed to me most about this film. Generally speaking, I hate post-Modernism (even though it makes my Goucher Girls flinch when I say so), but this film used the techniques of post-Modernism to great effect. In particular, the juxtaposition of times and genres mimicked the way the mind recalls repressed memories in response to unexpected stimuli like an old song, the casual comment of a friend, or an image seen on the news.

As much as this is a film about the 1982 Lebanon-Israel War, I had a feeling very early on in the film that this was also about the 2006 Lebanon-Israel War. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I feel like the 2006 War awakened in Israel some old wounds dating back to the 80s, and that it also energized the peace movement generally. I would like to think that this movie, Waltz With Bashir, reflects a shift in Israeli culture that is becoming increasingly aware of the toll that the endless conflict with its neighbors is having on the Israeli psyche.

But it's probably just wishful thinking from the eternal optimist!

Nas is a very brave man, and everyone interested in free speech in the Middle East should be reading his blog!

...since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.

"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach....

Asma Gull Hasan's article in Forbes Magazine, My Muslim President Obama, reflects many of the reasons I've also heard here in Jordan about why people here are so excited to see Pres. Barack Obama in the White House.

...Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim.

Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim.

I've heard this from many imams and sheikhs in the United States, when I say that I am Unitarian Universalist. "Oh, Unitarian? Well, that's practically Muslim!" Initially, it always strikes me that this is merely because the translation of Unitarian into Arabic, tawHeed, means "unity of God" (as opposed to trinitarianism: Father, Son and Holy Ghost), which is a central tenet of all Islam, or "oneness with God" which is the ultimate goal of Sufi Islam. But on further reflection, it becomes apparent that Unitarians and Muslims have a very simliar agenda of social justice, too, and see the world in a very similar way. There is an aya (verse) in the Qur'aan that says, "I have made you into tribes and peoples so that you might know each other better," and this is very much like the Unitarian view of the world: that all the varied cultures and religions of the world help us to understand ourselves, our communities, and our common humanity better.

The rationalistic, Western side of me knows that Obama has denied being Muslim, that his father was non-practicing, that he doesn't attend a mosque. Many Muslims simply say back, "my father's not a strict Muslim either, and I haven't been to a mosque in years."

This reminded me of all the times in the village that my students' mothers would say, "Do you see how Maryah dresses? Are you paying attention to how Maryah treats others? Have you noticed that she put her sweater back on because she thought your father was coming through the door? She's a much better Muslim than you are! Why can't you be as good a Muslim as Maryah?" They all knew I wasn't Muslim. One mother even suspected that I wasn't a believer of any sort, but it didn't stop her from telling her daughters that I understood Islam and lived the tenets of Islam better than they did!

Sometimes even the girls would say it to each other. Some of the neighborhood girls liked to come and cook lunch at my house once or twice a week. (It was a great deal for me, because they cooked, washed up, and scrubbed my floors to thank me for having them!) One day we had a particularly large group of the cousins over, and they kept saying they wanted to make more food, and I kept saying, "It'll be enough, it'll be enough!" And when we had all eaten our fill, there was no food left on the mat on the floor. The oldest of the cousins said, "Maryah, you cook by the sunna!" Sunna are the traditions of the Prophet Mohammad and his Companions. "Why is that?" I asked. Safa' replied, "The Prophet Mohammad said that one should never make more food than one can consume in one sitting." Of course, this made perfect sense in the Eighth Century Arabian Peninsula, without refrigerators to keep the food from spoiling. "You, Maryah, never make more food than you can eat in one sitting. We never do that. Our mothers always make enough for several meals."

Asma Gull Hasan's article, however, gets right to the heart of one of the things I love most about Islam. The most important thing in Islam is intention, and when it comes to Judgement Day, one's actions and one's intentions count equally towards one's eternal reward or punishment. Even if one was not a practicing Muslim, but had all the right attitudes towards his brothers and God, one can still achieve Paradise. I think this is what Ms. Hasan means when she says Pres. Barack Obama is a Muslim. He is a generous, well-intentioned man who tries to help others and create a more just local and global community as much as he is able, and this is the very heart of Islam.

It started with Taylor Mali. I wanted to go back and hear "Like Lilly Like Wilson Like," to relive that moment where he says,

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn't matter what you pack
them with so long as they open
at the right time.
O God, Lilly, I want to say
you make me feel like a teacher,
and who could ask to feel more than that?

Before I knew it, I was on YouTube, watching Taylor Mali pontificate on "Miracle Workers":



YouTube is addicting, it's no secret, and I got sucked in, watching Taylor Mali work his magic on the first episode of Def Poetry Jam with one of my favorite spoken word pieces, "What Teachers Make":



What can I say? I'm a teacher at heart! But once I was listening to Def Poetry, I was reminded of some of the more weighty poets that I love who have appeared on Def Poetry. I actually saw Amir Sulaiman for the first time at Indiana University - Bloomington at an event hosted as part of Muslim History Month by the Muslim Students Association, where he put 9/11 in perspective with "Danger":



But when it comes to putting 9/11 in perspective, no one has more lyrically expressed a perspective quite like hers better than Suheir Hammad in "First Writing Since":



Please, lose yourself in Def Poetry and other such spoken word on the Internet. I can spend hours listening to this kind of thing!

In these days of bloodshed, blockade and brutality, and in this time of happiness, honored promises and hope, I offer the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeing to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sunctuary to those who would not accept segregation....

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that we shall overcome.

Let us recall that it was his hope that drove Rev. King, his hope and that of those who believed him that ultimately triumphed over centuries of oppression, even genocide, of the black man, and his hope that allowed Barack Obama to be where he is today. Since the beginning of Senator Obama's campaign for president, the slogan "Audacity of Hope" was derided as an empty phrase meant to obscure a lack of focus, a dearth of policy. But we believed in him; he made us hopeful after 8 long years of secrecy and deception. If Dr. King could speak of hope in the face of all the violence that still faced the people whose champion he was, then we should be able to retain that audacity of hope that has inspired us thus far. President Obama is only in his first week of office; let's not judge him yet!

From the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee:

Yesterday, at around 11:30 a.m. (EST), President Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay detention center. In addition, the order formally:

* Bans torture and inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations.
* Closes the CIA’s secret prisons and ends the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods that have included abhorrent procedures like water-boarding.
* Provides the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all U.S.-held detainees.
* Establishes an interagency task force to lead a systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.

We applaud our new president for taking this important step on his second day in office. UUSC believes that any government-sponsored acts of torture, under any circumstances, are profoundly immoral, unjustified, and illegal. These practices can and must be ended now.

President Obama expressed the values and beliefs of all Americans of conscience in his inaugural speech when he stated, “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

Show President Obama that he has the support of the American people to act on his beliefs. Take action — let him know that you support his executive order!

Visit our website to read UUSC’s recommendations to Congress to end torture and illegal detention.

Thank you for supporting UUSC's efforts to restore civil liberties.

Sincerely,

Myrna Greenfield
Director of Outreach & Mobilization

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is (technically, but only loosely) an organization with religious affiliations, but the Unitarian Universalist Association is happy to cooperate with anyone with the same humanitarian intentions. Please support us.

There's such a Catch-22 in all this conversation here in the Middle East about President Obama's character, intentions and potential actions. People are asking each other if President Obama really wants change in the Middle East, whether he really is the idealistic humanist democrat that his words portray him as, and how much the people who voted for him really care about his Middle East policy. I am also hearing and reading a lot of debate as to whether President Obama will rise above domestic concerns (read: the economy) and American self-interest (read: AIPAC) to engage his administration in the politics of the Middle East, if so, will the Congress support or impede him in such an endeavor, and can the United States even accomplish the peace, freedoms and prosperity that Arabs hope Obama will bring to their region. Many people here are optimistic, like the newest Jordanian blogger I'm following, The Arab Observer. Others are less trusting of rhetoric, including my friend Kinzi and many who responded to the Observer's opinion.

There's certainly plenty of debate as to how much power the American government has over the issue of Israel/Palestine, or of democratic and human rights reform anywhere in the region. Certainly the United States pumps plenty of money into controversial regimes in the region, starting with Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but definitely not ending there! If America cut off the tap, would that weaken oppressive regimes enough to be overthrown by the will of the people? If so, would the United States extend the same humanitarian aid to a regime that had overthrown America's former allies?

There's no doubt that foreign aid is needed in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. If the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were to suddenly stop all its programs in part or all of the region, humanitarian crisis would surely follow. Saudi Arabia and Iran may have the oil resources to provide some sort of substitute for USAID, but would they extend that aid? If so, what strings would be attached, and how would people in the Middle East or beyond react? Judging by the reaction to Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah, which do provide extensive and vital social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon, I think the reaction of the Western powers would be far from desirable.

On the American side, there are plenty who question why we should help people in the Middle East who don't seem to want to help themselves. Of course, Black Iris made an eloquent argument in the post "Somewhere Near the Israeli Embassy In Amman...." for why it is so difficult for people in this region to press for change and reform from within. On the other hand, change and reform will never be successful if they are imposed entirely from without.

The whole debate reminds me of an amazing experience I had as an undergraduate at tiny Goucher College in Baltimore. Professor Emeritus Froehlicher, who had a dramatic life that included working for the resistance to the Nazis, and then coordinating the translators and interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials, convened a group of professors, most from the Modern Languages Dept, and me and my former roommmate. We each read the opinion pages of newspapers in different languages, and convened to share what we had found. One French professor invited the Johns Hopkins University professor who was teaching her Arabic to bring us the Arab perspective, and he showed us magazine after magazine calling for America to bring an end to Egypt's and the region's woes. America, he said, was the only country with the political, economic, military and cultural power to effect real change in the Middle East, and if Americans really believed in their founding principles, how could they not save the Middle East? He had to leave early, but it's the rest of the conversation that has really stuck with me.

Prof. Froehlicher had grown up under the Nazis. Most of the other teachers in the room had grown up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Russia. They started describing how they had felt the same way about America. If America really wanted to cover the world in democracy and freedom, why weren't they doing anything? Why wasn't the United States using its superpowers to tear down that wall, to fix their problems in the Soviet states and satellites?

But what really brought down the Berlin Wall, and ultimately the Iron Curtain? It wasn't American democracy and power. It wasn't American President John F Kennedy saying, "Ich bin ein Berliner," or Pres. Ronald Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Perhaps America and its presidents served as an inspiration, or as that vital ray of hope, but in the end, it was the people behind the Wall, behind the Curtain who brought it down. It was the grassroots resistance movements of the Polish Spring, the Velvet Revolution, and the Catholic Church. It was the ordinary East German citizens who chose to believe a bureaucratic error and converged peacefully on the wall. It was the lowly East German borderguards who made the humanitarian choice to disobey their standing orders to shoot anyone trying to cross that border. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, America may well have facilitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nothing America did directly caused it.

I hope that people in the Middle East take inspiration from Barack Obama, as Americans are doing, and do find the audacity to hope. But it is incumbent upon us all to remember that hope alone will never be enough. It is our responsibility, as Mahatma Ghandi said, to be the change we want to see in the world. It's not enough to believe in change; you have to work for it.

by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

As read at the Inauguration of America's 44th President Barack Obama

Feast of the Sacrifice and no sacrifice
No money nor goats
Yet each one a sacrifice
Hurting
Hurting from hunger and thirst
Hurting from fear and belittlement
And sacrificing soul and property

Feast of the Sacrifice and each one
Is Ishmael
Beneath the hand of the Greater
The sacrifice smaller and weaker
Watching the weapons
And hurting
Hurting from lack of power
And lack of voice
And lack of help
Not self-help
Nor the help of friends

Feast of the Sacrifice and each one
Ishmael without Gabriel
Where is Gabriel?
Where is the messenger?
Where is the voice of the Just
Telling the sacrificer:
Stop!
The intention suffices.
The symbol of your intention suffices.

Christmas without Nativity
Without gifts or blessing
But with destruction
Christmas, and the gifts
They are destruction
And destruction of houses and wealth
That is temporary destruction
Yet the destruction of families and childhood
And feelings of safety and hope
That is eternal destruction
And it's destroying the future
The future of individuals
As well as the nation's.

Christmas is birthing
Fear and despair
And anger and hatred
In the hearts of the children
The children of Palestine
And the children of Israel

Hannukah without light
Neither light nor oil
Nor the light of hope
No light in the temple
Nor light in the church
Nor light in the mosque
Not the hope of safety
Nor of justice
Nor of peace
Nor of aid
Not on the holy days
Nor on normal days

Of course, like all translations, it sounds far better in the Arabic in which I originally wrote it; more internal cohesion and repetition, more obvious religious allusions. But someone was bound to ask for a translation, so here it is.

You should read the full article on SabbahBlog, but here's your teaser, from Chris Hedges:

This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter-let's stop pretending this is a war-is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel's borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.

....

I called [Yuri] Avnery at his home in Israel. He is Israel's conscience. Avnery was born in Germany. He moved to Palestine as a young boy with his parents. He left school at the age of 14 and a year later joined the underground paramilitary group known as the Irgun. Four years afterward, disgusted with its use of violence, he walked away from the clandestine organization, which carried out armed attacks on British occupation authorities and Arabs. "You can't talk to me about terrorism, I was a terrorist," he says when confronted with his persistent calls for peace with the Palestinians. Avnery was a fighter in the Samson's Foxes commando unit during the 1948 war. He wrote the elite unit's anthem. He became, after the war, a force for left-wing politics in Israel and one of the country's most prominent journalists, running the alternative HaOlam HaZeh magazine. He served in the Israeli Knesset. During the 1982 siege of Beirut he met, in open defiance of Israeli law, with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He has joined Arab protesters in Israel the past few days and denounces what he calls Israel's "instinct of using force" with the Palestinians and the "moral insanity" of the attack on Gaza. Avnery, now 85, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in 1975 by an Israeli opponent, and in 2006 the right-wing activist Baruch Marzel called on the Israeli military to carry out a targeted assassination of Avnery.

"The state of Israel, like any other state," Avnery said, "cannot tolerate having its citizens shelled, bombed or rocketed, but there has been no thought as to how to solve the problem through political means or to analyze where this phenomenon has come from, what has caused it. Israelis, as a whole, cannot put themselves in the shoes of others. We are too self-centered. We cannot stand in the shoes of Palestinians or Arabs to ask how we would react in the same situation. Sometimes, very rarely, it happens. Years ago when Ehud Barak was asked how he would behave if were a Palestinian, he said, ‘I would join a terrorist organization.' If you do not understand Hamas, if you do not understand why Hamas does what it does, if you don't understand Palestinians, you take recourse in brute force."

The public debate about the Gaza attack engages in the absurd pretense that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, whose security and dignity are being threatened. This blind defense of Israeli brutality toward the Palestinians betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. The lesson of the Holocaust is not that Jews are special. It is not that Jews are unique. It is not that Jews are eternal victims. The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not-no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against-you are culpable. And we are very culpable. The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs are all part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid the U.S. gives to Israel. Palestinians are being slaughtered with American-made weapons. They are being slaughtered by an Israeli military we lavishly bankroll. But perhaps our callous indifference to human suffering is to be expected. We, after all, kill women and children on an even vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bloody hands of Israel mirror our own.

....

"Hamas will win the war, no matter what happens," Avnery said. "They will be considered by hundreds of millions of Arabs heroes who have recovered the dignity and pride of Arab nations. If at the end of the war they are still standing in Gaza this will be a huge victory for them, to hold out against this huge Israeli army and firepower will be an incredible achievement. They will gain even more than Hezbollah did during the last war."

Chris Hedges, who writes a weekly column for Truthdig that is published every Monday, is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, and spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Hedges, who has reported from more than 50 countries, worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. He is the author of the best selling “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” which draws on his experiences in various conflicts to describe the patterns and behavior of nations and individuals in wartime. The book, a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was described by Abraham Verghese, who reviewed the book for The New York Times, as “...a brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling book whose greatest merit is that it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally.” Hedges ... speaks Arabic and spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times.

It's only amusing because it's true....

[translated from original Spanish source] - via fpp.co.uk January 11, 2008

NOTE the twelve golden and infallible truths that the media are obligated to adopt:

1. In the Middle East, the Arabs always attack first and Israel always defends itself. This defense is called 'retaliation'.

2. Neither Arabs, Palestinians nor Lebanese have the right to kill civilians. This is 'terrorism'.

3. Israel has the right to kill civilians. This is called 'legitimate defense'.

4. When Israel massively kills civilians, the Western Powers ask to her do it with courtesy or politeness. This is called 'reaction of the international community'.

5. Neither Palestinians nor Lebanese have the right to capture Israeli soldiers inside military installations with sentry and combat positions. This has to be called 'kidnapping of defenceless civilians'.

6. Israel has the right to kidnap as many Palestinians or Lebanese as they wish and at any time or place. Their present figures are about 10,000 imprisoned, 300 of whom are children and one thousand women. They do not need any evidence about their culpability. Israel has the right to detain such kidnapped prisoners indefinitely, even if they are people democratically elected by Palestinians. This is called 'imprisonment of terrorists'.

7. Whenever the word 'Hizbollah' is mentioned, it is compulsory to add in the same phrase 'supported and financed by Syria and Iran'.

8. When 'Israel' is mentioned it is absolutely forbidden to add 'supported and financed by the United States'. This could give the impression that the conflict is uneven and that Israel's existence of is not after all at risk.

9. In any statement about Israel, any mention of the following phrases is to be avoided: 'occupied territories', 'UN resolutions', 'Human Rights violations' or 'Geneva Convention'.

10. Palestinians, as well as Lebanese, always are 'cowards' hiding behind a civil population that dislike them. If they sleep in military accommodation with their families, this has a name: 'cowardice'. Israel is entitled to annihilate with bombs and missiles such barracks where they sleep. This is to be called a 'surgical, high-precision action'.

11. Israelis speak English, French, Spanish or Portuguese better than the Arabs. That is why they deserve to be interviewed more frequently and have better opportunities to explain to the audience at large the above rules, from 1 to 10. This is called 'media neutrality'.

12. Any person in disagreement with the above rules is to be branded a 'highly dangerous anti-Semitic terrorist'.

Last Thursday, The Economist offered a historical analysis of the current conflict in Gaza that strikes me as not only cool and collected, but also as relatively even-handed. "The Hundred Years' War in Palestine" criticizes the common complaint by Israelis that Palestinians are unwilling to compromise:

The fact that the Arabs rejected the UN’s partition plan of 60 years ago has long given ideological comfort to Israel and its supporters. Abba Eban, an Israeli foreign minister, quipped that the Palestinians “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. Israel’s story is that the Arabs have muffed at least four chances to have a Palestinian state. They could have said yes to partition in 1947. They could have made peace after the war of 1947-48. They had another chance after Israel routed its neighbours in 1967 (“We are just waiting for a telephone call,” said Moshe Dayan, Israel’s hero of that war). They had yet another in 2000 when Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defence minister and then its prime minister, offered the Palestinians a state at Bill Clinton’s fateful summit at Camp David.

This story of Israeli acceptance and Arab rejection is not just a yarn convenient to Israel’s supporters. It is worth remembering that it was not until 1988, a full 40 years after Israel’s birth, that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) renounced its goal of liberating the whole of Palestine from the river to the sea. All the same, the truth is much more shaded than the Israeli account allows. There have been missed opportunities, and long periods of rejection, on Israel’s part, too.

Instead, The Economist argues that both sides have missed opportunities, and gives fair descriptions why these were well-considered and supportable positions on both sides in their historical contexts.

The Economist then goes on to explain how things have changed in recent years.

One far-seeing Zionist, Vladimir Jabotinsky, predicted in the 1930s not only that the Arabs would oppose the swamping of Palestine with Jewish immigrants but also that “if we were Arabs, we would not accept it either”. In order to survive, the Jews would have to build an “iron wall” of military power until the Arabs accepted their state’s permanence. And this came to pass. Only after several costly wars did Egypt and later the PLO conclude that, since Israel could not be vanquished, they had better cut a deal. In Beirut in 2002 all the Arab states followed suit, offering Israel normal relations in return for its withdrawal from all the occupied territories, an opening which Israel was foolish to neglect.

The depressing thing about the rise of Hamas and the decline of the Fatah wing of the PLO is that it reverses this decades-long trend. Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections of 2006 had many causes, including a reputation for honesty. Its victory did not prove that Palestinians had been bewitched by Islamist militancy or come to believe again in liberating all of Palestine by force. But if you take seriously what Hamas says in its charter, Hamas itself does believe this. So does Hizbullah, Lebanon’s “Party of God”; and so does a rising and soon perhaps nuclear-armed Iran. Some analysts take heart from Hamas’s offer of a 30-year truce if Israel returns to its 1967 borders. But it has never offered permanent recognition.

The article also sets the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into its global context, noting that they two sides are not acting independently, and never have been:

For too long the conflict in Palestine was a hostage to the cold war. America was once neutral: it was Eisenhower who forced Israel out of Gaza (and Britain out of Egypt) after Suez. But America later recruited Israel as an ally, and this suited the Israelis just fine. It gave them the support of a superpower whilst relieving them of a duty to resolve the quarrel with the Palestinians, even though their own long-term well-being must surely depend on solving that conflict.

It may be no coincidence that some of the most promising peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians took place soon after the cold war ended. But now a new sort of geopolitical confrontation stalks the region, one that sets America against Iran, and the Islamist movements Iran supports against the Arab regimes in America’s camp. With Hamas inside Iran’s tent and Fatah in America’s, the Palestinians are now facing a paralysing schism.

This is the conclusion of the writers at The Economist, and I find it a very compelling one:

Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel “winning” in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this.

From the Facebook Group One Million Strong Calling Obama To Support an Immediate Ceasefire In Gaza:

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
- Barack Obama (www.barackobama.com)

This is a broad-based, diverse group composed of individuals of different races, creeds, religions, sexual orientations, and walks of life. We have come together to affirm our commitment to fundamental human rights and we call on President-Elect Barack Obama to make good on his campaign promise of ushering in an era of “change we can believe in.”

President-Elect Obama inspired America by reminding us that the ideals of life, liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness can only be realized by one if enjoyed by all – not just in the United States, but across the world. The Gaza Strip is facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions which has been clearly documented by reputed international observers such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Save the Children, Oxfam, and Amnesty International. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to call on President-Elect Obama to lend his inspiring support to worldwide calls for an immediate ceasefire, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. In doing so, President-Elect Obama will stand alongside human rights advocates and organizations the world over, including leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Jewish Voices for Peace.

There can be no clearer way for President-Elect Obama to demonstrate his commitment to making real his promise of a new and better era for the world. And there can be no better way for us to make true the promise of democracy than to join together and press President-Elect Obama to act on his beliefs.

Please note: This group is devoted solely to ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Therefore, moderators reserve the right to remove any posts that detract from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and/or are discriminatory or abusive.
Also, in an effort to maintain the security of the group, we will under no circumstances be adding any additional administrators.

The success of this group hinges on you and your efforts. So, please forward widely, invite others to join, and encourage them to do the same!

Voice your opinion, and press President-Elect Obama to take action:
http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision

For background and further information:
1.
International Committee of the Red Cross Press Release
“Gaza: plight of civilians traumatic in 'full-blown humanitarian crisis'”

2.
CNN news report
“Patients lying everywhere”

3.
Amnesty International USA statement on the crisis

4.
Amnesty International Urges U.N. Security Council Not to Fail Civilians Caught in Gaza

5.
BBC reporting from a hospital in Gaza. Interview with European doctor at hospital.

6.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Report on Gaza

7.
Save the Children Launches Major Appeal to Assist Children in Gaza

8.
B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, acts primarily to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government, which rules the Occupied Territories, protects the human rights of residents there and complies with its obligations under international law.

9.
“Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.”

10.
Israeli offensive puts families’ and aid workers’ lives at risk, Oxfam warns.

Yesterday I tried to wax eloquent on what I believe Americans know, don't know and want to know about the Arab world. Today, let me show you this book review of What the Arabs Think of America by long-time Middle East correspondent Andrew Hammond. I'm not impressed with the quality of the reviewer's writing, but I think Hammond's book must be an interesting read, and one that supports my own observations that, whatever Arabs may think of American policy, they do like Americans.

A year after the publication of the entertaining and well researched “Popular Culture in the Arab World,” Andrew Hammond has come up with another engaging title: “What the Arabs Think of America”. The author strongly dispels the notion that after Sept. 11 the Arab world — and especially Muslims — hates America. This book tries to show there is hardly any connection between the way Arabs feel toward American policies and American culture.

Anyone traveling through the Middle East is bound to notice signs of American consumerism, a lifestyle embraced by a large majority of Arab youth. According to the UN Arab Human Development Reports, about 38% of the population of Arab League member states are minors. Nowhere is this more visible than on Arab TV screens where western entertainment appeals to youth. Free-to-air satellite channels offer around the clock US sitcoms, reality TV, chat shows and movies.

Other reviewers have been more eloquent in their description and review of the book.

Review

“This is a well-documented and timely volume since there are currently few other works dealing with the same subject. The book is based on the author's....thorough knowledge of Middle Eastern countries, their history, and politics before and after 9/11/2001; interviews with Arabs of various political persuasions and social strata; his own witnessing of events; and writings of political analysts and novelists.”–MultiCultural Review

“[a] timely and informative study.”–Arab News

Product Description

For hundreds of years, pilgrims to Mecca have paused in the narrow mountain pass known as Mina to cast stones at the three pillars of the Jamaraat in a symbolic casting out of the Devil. Recently, someone added graffiti to the central pillar, four Latin letters of the English script - Bush. These days, Americans and America provoke strong opinions from Arabs of all sorts, from politicians and journalists to the ordinary men and women of 'Arab Street'. Their voices aren't always heard in the West, but for over a decade British journalist Andrew Hammond, based in the Middle East, has been listening to what they have to say, and in this book they are heard loud and clear. Many of the issues are political. What do the Arabs think of American support for Israel or its close relationship with Saudi Arabia? How have they reacted to the American occupation of Iraq? But American influence in the Arab world isn't limited to politics. What is the Arab view of American film, television or the latest hip-hop or rap music? And what, for that matter, do Arabs think of Americans themselves, their life-style, attitudes and character? Incorporating interviews with individuals of all sorts from all over the Arab world, What the Arabs Think of America gives voice to the unheard partner in a relationship in crisis. After an introductory chapter describing the historical background, six chapters are devoted to issues of crucial importance to Arabs: 1) 'Domestic America' (exploring Arab enthusiasm for American pop culture, admiration for the US as a land of freedom, and ambivalence about religion in America); 2) 'The Palestinians' (showing how US policy towards Israel and Palestine has come to dominate Arab views of the US in recent years); 3) 'The Iraq Project' (articulating Arab theories about American motives for the invasion and reactions to the occupation, including the Abu Ghraib scandal); 4) 'Peace with Egypt' (highlighting the general Arab view that America's brokerage of the 1979 Camp David agreement deliberately split the Arab world in its opposition to Israel); 5) 'The House of Saud' (reviewing Arab distrust of the close relationship between the ruling Saudi royal family and the US since the monarchy allowed US companies to drill for oil in the 1930s); and 6) 'The Sudanese Card' (exploring Arab dismay at American support of south Sudanese Christian separatists at war with the Islamic north). A short chapter speculating on likely future developments in the Arab-America relationship concludes the book. A Chronology, Glossary (of Arab institutions, political parties, historical events, etc.), Biographies (of key Arab figures) and Bibliography help orientate the reader.

So for those of my friends in America who are interested in learning more about what the Arabs think of us, and for those of you who are worried about my safety in this time of protests, I think this book would both be accurate and reassure you.

While I know that Rashid Khalidi is a controversial figure in the West, and his friendship with Barack Obama was portrayed by many of Israel's supporters as highly undesirable, I think he makes some very valid points in this New York Times Op Ed, and I can't help but find his conclusion compelling:

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

However, I find his title, "What You Don't Know About Gaza," to be presumptive. It's a common thread for academics and those of us expats who are living in the Middle East to assume that Americans are largely ignorant of the truth of things here. Perhaps the most famous example is the Website If Americans Knew. Certainly the conversation we had over Skype the other night with my roommate's friends back in Michigan suggests that Americans are largely ignorant of the reality on the ground here.

On the other hand, the very incidence of that conversation indicated that Americans are searching for answers. This was what impressed me most about Americans when I returned from Jordan the first time in 2005. In the case of my roommate's friends, perhaps these questions were not surprising, coming from students of political science asking about governance and peacemaking issues in the Palestinian Territories. In 2005, I expected my father and my college friends to ask me hard questions about the Arab World, and they have never disappointed that expectation. What shocked me was that everyone had questions about the Arab World, Islam, and the Middle East. I was fielding questions from gas station clerks, from housewives, from friends and family friends who had hardly ever been more than 100 miles from home and had definitely never left the US of A. Not only did they have hundreds of questions, but they really listened to my answers, and didn't assume that they knew what was really going on in the Middle East.

There was then and, I believe, continues to now be a strong sense in the United States that we need to learn more about the Middle East and Islam, that it is an increasingly important influence on our lives. Yes, progress is slow, and yes, the current economic woes in the US will probably slow it further. There are many issues in the world, both domestic and international, and while the Middle East is high on my agenda, I recognize that for many people, there are other priorities. But I think it may be disingenuous to suggest that Americans are ignorant of what Gaza is really like.

Then again, I have my own set of blinders. I'm reminded of the night in November 2000 when my family sat around the dinner table in bewilderment. "I don't know anyone who voted for Bush. Do you known anyone who voted for Bush?"
"No. I don't know anyone who voted for Bush. Do you know anyone who supported Bush?"
And so it went, around the dinner table. We didn't know anyone who wanted a Bush regime. Until finally someone said, "Maybe we just don't know the right people!"