Putting in My Two Cents Against Homophobia

In my humble estimation, true faith is supposed to infuse the mind with spirituality and expand it’s horizon beyond the material world. Unfortunately, to some of our fellow Syrian bloggers, those who have been recently all tied up in knots about homosexuality, religion is more like a mental straightjacket. It makes them unable to reason, to see anything beyond the confines of their self-imposed straightjacket. They are consequently irrational, intolerant, and impossibly arrogant as they pass judgment on whole groups of people whom they know nothing about beyond their distorted stereotypes. The arguments that they use are naïve to the point of being juvenile. Moreover, some of their attempts at arguing on the basis of scientific evidence only further exposed their ignorance. They have all the right to believe that homosexuality is un-natural and a sin, but they have no right to demonize people to the point of justifying violence against them. I know that the retort will be that none of the bloggers directly suggested harming homosexuals but their failure to censure comments left on their post that explicitly speak of violence says volumes about their mindset.

And why this sudden interest in censuring homosexuals? Is homosexuality really threatening the very fabric of Syrian society? How about rampant corruption, lack of free speech, the absence of some basic human right, political prisoners, honor killings, to mention just a few ills? Of course addressing these topics takes some courage; it doesn’t take much courage to write a post opposing homosexuality.

The deep-seated hatefulness displayed by some of these bloggers suggests that there is more to it than just hitting an easy target. These guys really feel threatened by homosexuality; they speak of homosexuals as they were strange alien creatures out to decimate the world as they know it. Well, I got news for them; if they think they have not been tainted by interactions with homosexuals, they are wrong. This may send their paranoid minds over the edge, but surely there is an uncle, an aunt, a cousin, a niece or a nephew that they cherish who is a closeted homosexual. Will they want to “throw them off the roof of the tallest building” if they found out that they are gay? The fact is homosexuals existed since the dawn of humanity; they are what they are most likely because of a combination of nature and nurture. They are not the result of a distorted upbringing or a permissive society; they are just more visible in a permissive society and more closeted in more conservative societies. The other fallacy perpetrated by some of the bloggers is that homosexuality defines all aspects of their life, and therefore according to them, there are no redeeming qualities to their life. Homosexuals’ sexual preference, right or wrong, is only one aspect of them as human beings; it does not preclude them from being successful and productive members of society. That I have to make such a seemingly obvious statement is a testament to how distorted the perceptions are and the reason why an intelligent and reasoned conversation about this topic cannot occur in the Syrian blogosphere at this point in time.

On a positive note, I would say that the call for a week of blogging against homosexuality was largely a flop. Those who took up the call were few and far between and there were almost as many posts criticizing the whole premise.

Waltzing with Death

I will never forget that night in mid-September of 1982 when we saw the flares light up the sky over southern Beirut, the orange glow outlining the silhouette of a darkned and shattered city. We were sleeping on the balcony of a friend's apartment on this sweltering night in West Beirut. There were several of us, men and women, brought together like flotsam by the turbulent waves that dislocated our lives that summer. Social conventions go out the window during war and conflict; we sought the safety of an improvised pack in this still half-deserted city.

We knew that the flares were Israeli, having watched in disbelief and anger as Israeli tanks and troops made their way into West Beirut only a couple of days before. Lest anyone forget the treachery of Begin and his henchman Sharon, the Palestinian fighters had by then been escorted out of Beirut by sea under an agreement that stipulated that Israel would, in turn, not enter the city. What we failed to realize that night is what kind of horror the flares were both illuminating and facilitating.

Ari Folman, the director of "Waltz with Bashir", was there that night and some of the flares I saw were fired by him. His movie is an animated documentary of his quest to remember and reconstruct the events of the summer of 1982 by interviewing other Israelis soldiers who served with him. Folman's is unflinching in his approach to the subject and the result is one of the most powerful indictments of the folly of war in general and of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon in particular. Most of all, Folman is very clear about the culpability of the Israeli army, especially the senior commanders including Sharon, in the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla. Just as the image of the flares and its connection to the massacre is seared in memory, Folman uses images of the flares in a repeated surreal scene of soldiers emerging form the sea to forwarn of the horrors to come. As he peices together the reality from the fragments of memories of his comrades in arm, it becomes clear that the flares are being fired to facilitate the killing field perpetrated by the Phalangists brought into the camp by the Israeli army. With the Palestinian fighters all gone, and the phalangists penchant for cruelty well known by their close allies, the Israelis, what other purpose was there to bring into the camp other than to commit a massacre?Late in the movie, Folman switches seamlessly from animation to some of the most graphic images of the massacre. At this point in the movie, with my heart in my throat, I could not contain myself anymore, not only because I remembered these exact images from 1982 but also because the images were eerily similar to what we just witnessed in Gaza.

It has been several days since I have seen the movie and yet I cannot seem to get out from under its dark cloud. Saddest of all for me is to think that it has been twenty seven years since this war and yet it is as if we are stuck in time, as if our part of the world is doomed to live in conflict and war forever impervious to the lessons of history.

Holocaust at the Oscars

Winslet, 'Waltz,' and how Hollywood likes its Jews
By Bradley Burston. Haaretz, Feb. 23, 2009

Hollywood is about message. It is not, strictly speaking, about subtlety, nor idle fretting over obvious irony.

So when Israelis woke up before dawn on Monday to watch the 81st running of the Oscars, the message was clear enough. Hollywood knows exactly how it likes its Jews: Victims. Civilian victims. Targets of genocide. None of this Goliath stuff. None of these pre-emptive, disproportionate, morally amorphous behaviors.

My wife, the child of Auschwitz survivors, saw it right off, even in the dark. Even before they announced the winner of the Best Actress award.

Against a well-deserved paean to eventual winner Kate Winslet, a giant screen showed hunted, gaunt, clearly doomed figures. "This is how Hollywood likes its Jews," my wife said. "Hunched over and dressed in rags."

Minutes before, as if to underscore the Hollywood principle that Jewish history ended in the Holocaust, and Israeli history ended with "Exodus," the Oscar ceremony enlisted Liam Neeson - star of the ultimate Hollywood version of the Good Christian-Bad Holocaust epic, Schindler's List - to deny the Oscar to a film showing Jews not as they may have been, but as they, in fact are.

The narrative of Israel has become increasingly uncomfortable for the limousine left of Hollywood. Not necessarily because of the specifics of occupation and overkill. No, there are wider problems with these Israelis. Their story arc doesn't work.

They are neither cutesy, comedic Yiddishers nor noble, chiseled, ascetically moral kibbutzniks. They bear as much resemblance to Zohan as Adam Sandler does to Tsipi Livni. Israelis are complicated, angry, unhappy, family-oriented, insular, often flawed human-beings. Perhaps, in the Hollywood context, the problem with these Israelis, is that they are not identifiable as Jews at all.

Last year, "Beaufort," an exceptional Israeli film about IDF soldiers at war in Lebanon was one of the five nominees, but lost to the Austrian entry, in which a Jewish concentration camp prisoner forges currency for the Nazis.

This year, "Waltz with Bashir," an extraordinary, soul-shattering Israeli film about IDF soldiers at war in Lebanon, was one of the five nominees. Its only conmnection to the Holocaust, however, is an uncomfortably authentic one. As Neeson's announcement suggested, with his small but ringing note of incredulity, a nominee it will forever stay.

There were at least eight films classed as Holocaust-based, released in 2008. "Waltz with Bashir" was not one of them. But in dealing with searing honesty about war, memory, the violent death of innocents, as well as about the complex darkness at Israel's heart, it has fundamentally more to do with the Holocaust than any of the eight.

Ari Folman, the director of "Waltz with Bashir," is also the son of Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust informs the film in ways that Hollywood is literally incapable of imagining. Because this is the real thing.

"Waltz with Bashir" was not made for Hollywood, it was made for human beings. It was made for the people who went through the horror it shows, and who are still going through new horrors which feel exactly as unbearable.

The story of how Hollywood likes its Jews has been told before, of course, never more succinctly - or with a heavier cargo of irony - than when Kate Winslet played a satirized version of herself in a 2005 episode of the U.K. series "Extras." Winslet, then winless in four trips to the Oscar nomination altar, explains to series star Ricky Gervais, why she's decided to act in a Holocaust film.

Gervais: You doing this, it's so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust.

Winslet: God, I'm not doing it for that. We definitely don't need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it. It was grim. Move on. I'm doing it because I noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated four times. Never won. The whole world is going, 'Why hasn't Winslet won one?' ... That's why I'm doing it. Schindler's bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming outta their ass ...

Gervais: It's a good plan.

This year, despite general agreement that her performance as a 1950s-era Connecticut housewife in Revolutionary Road was far better than her role as a former SS guard in The Reader, life imitated Gervais, and the Oscar was finally Winslet's.

Back in Israel, meanwhile, the debriefing of the Academy Awards had begun. On an early morning television news show, Meital Zvieli, the lead researcher for "Waltz with Bashir," said that despite their disappointment, the crew members watching in Israel felt that, in any case, "The film won." It had been seen by people who needed to see it, people who in many cases began to speak to their families about their own experiences only after having experienced the film.

That may be the only point that really matters.

In the end, the cultural distance from the Jews of Hollywood to the Jews of Israel may be impassible. The oldest and most basic need of the Jews who invented the film industry, the compulsion to reinvent themselves, early on developed into the need to reinvent the Jewish people.

There, after all these years, the industry remains. Perhaps, after all these years, it's time for Hollywood, at long last, to take seriously and with intelligence another piece of Gervais' scripted advice.

Move on.

Home Again: To Lattakia and Back

My last interaction with Syrian authorities did not go well, yet I felt surprisingly calm this time around. My wife, did not share my confidence and waited nervously in the car with the children as I walked with our driver into the Arida border checkpoint to have our passports checked.

The place was inauspicious to say the least. A ragged Syrian flag flew over the station. The building itself was rundown. Inside, the offices were dirty and filled with idle men, some in uniform and some in civilian outfits –leather jackets preferred-, milling about in a haze of cigarette smoke. By contrast, the offices of the Lebanese border checkpoint we just passed were tidy if somewhat bare. The uniformed personnel, clean shaven and in crisp uniforms, dealt with travelers in a professional way. Once inside the passport office, our driver, a veteran of the Beirut-Lattakia line, told me to let him do the talking. With a handshake here and there, the necessary show of deference to the officers, and a couple of minor but apparently necessary “tips”, we cleared the border in about thirty minutes.

After an absence of about thirty five years, I was back on Syrian soil. Yet, there was no emotional catharsis, no melodramatic falling to the ground in a puddle of tears. More than anything, what I felt was a sense of bemused disbelief. Besides, any elation at being home again was dampened by my irritation at the sleaziness of the transaction at the border and the embarrassment I felt in front of my kids at the lousy first impression they got of Syria. But, as parents are often wont to do, I underestimated my childrens' maturity. They were unfazed by what they saw; they understood what was important and what this trip meant to me. For the next three short days, I took in all the sights, sounds and smells hoping to trigger long dormant memories buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

The coastal plain to Lattakia was wide, a welcome relief from the narrow and overbuilt Lebanese coastline. Some of the villages and small towns we drove through looked poor and neglected. The first familiar sight on the road to Lattakia was the imposing Mar'ab castle on a hill overlooking Banyas, a sight that always fired up my imagination as a child. As we approached the outskirts of Lattakia, I recognized nothing . The city's population has quadrupled since I lived there as a child and its physical outlines has grown significantly. Closer to the port I started recognizing my old Lattakia. Across from the old seaport, my grandmother's house, sandwiched between between a church and a mosques is now gone, replaced by the apartment building where my aunt and cousins live. A couple of blocks east, my grandfather's house, where I was born, still stands, old and rundown. The northern part of Baghdad street where we later lived looked familiar with many of the same pleasant 1950s and 1960s vintage two and three story apartment building surrounded by small gardens. Further south, Baghdad street used to end in a small traffic circle surrounding an ancient roman column beyond which was scrub and empty rocky terrain descending down to the sea. Today, the area is packed with upscale apartment buildings and it is bordered by the the new southern corniche.

In the short time we had, we tried to see as much as we can. We drove throught Shateh el Azrak beach area where I first waded into the sea. It is now sadly overbuilt. Next we drove further North into countryside to ancient Ugarit where the alphabet was born. That afternoon we made our way up the mountains East of the city. The temperature dropped precipitously as we drove up the mountain. Slunfeh, our destination was shrouded in dense fog. We managed a quick visit to the family's old summer home before making our way down to Haffeh. From there we veered off to the South to visit see the Salaheddin castle. From the vantage of the opposing hill and against the backdrop of the green wooded mountains behind it, the view is breathtaking (see banner photo above). Salaheddine's castle sits like a crown on top of a steep, narrow hill in the midst of a wooded valley. To reach it, one has to descend to the bottom of the narrow valley and then ascend the steep hill to the base of the castle wall. We explored the grounds of the castle excitedly for an hour before rain forced us to retreat back into our car and continue our descent back to Lattakia.

As vivid as childhood memories are of places, their importance comes from their associated remembrance of people, of family. My kind grandmother has long since passed away as have many of her siblings who formed much of our extended family. Sadly, as is the case of many Syrian families, subsequent generations slowly dispersed to the four corners of the world. Many left seeking new opportunities, others became unwilling political exiles. My aunt, a lawyer, remained as have her two children, my cousins. Distance and prolonged separation has led to strained relations between my father and his sister over the past few years, yet none of that was evident in the warm and generous reception we got from my aunt and her husband. I met my two cousins now adults, only one of whom I had seen before and then only when she was an infant. I, in turn, introduced them to my wife and kids. My wife, the more extrovert of the two of us, hit it off with my aunt’s husband, a energetic Levantine gourmand, as they discussed the finer points of Syrian cuisine. Now we definitely know that the Lattakian knafeh bi narain* (love the name) is the best knafeh bi jibin** anywhere on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We talked, we tried to catch up and almost instantaneously the three and a half decade gap disappeared. Once family, always family.

On our way back to Beirut, we stopped in Tartous, took a quick boat ride to the Island of Arwad and returned to meet with Abu Fares and his lovely wife for lunch. I had been looking forward to this meeting for a long time. It is curious to think that you can have an affinity and a familiarity for someone that you have never met. That these sentiments were only reinforced when I met Abu Fares is perhaps a testament to the communicative power of the blog. Alas, after too brief an encounter, we had to continue our journey back to Lebanon.

Middle age crises manifest differently in different men. Some seek out a sports car that they always fancied while others, grieving their lost youth, seek out a younger woman. Since I could care less for a sports car and already have my younger woman (OK, only two years younger), all I wanted was to go home. I needed it as an anchor at this stage in my life. This trip has done that for me and more. Perhaps the best feedback I got is from my father who did not quite understand my obsession with wanting to visit Syria. As we were making our way back to Beirut, my aunt called tell him how happy they were at having seen me and my family, and I in turn relayed to him the warm and generous reception we received. He told he how glad he was that I went and that what I did was not only good for me but for the whole family. For the first time in many years, my father is inquiring about whether he too can go home.

* Knafeh: Middle Eastern sweet filled with cream or cheese. bi narain: literally, with two fires; refers to the knafeh being browned on both sides.

**Knafeh bi jibin: cheese filled knafeh.

The End of the Two-State Solution?

Not long ago, the idea one state solution used to thought of as an impossible idea held by a radical fringe, a non-starter especially among most Israelis who were raised on the Zionist ideal of Israel as a Jewish state. Sasa recently pointed out the increasing interest among some Palestinians and Israelis about the one state solution. So it is notable that yesterday, the hard-hitting investigative CBS network show 60 minutes had a segment discussing this topic entitled: "Time Running Out for A Two-State Solution." This obviously comes in the wake of the senseless war on Gaza but also because of the abject failure of the flawed Oslo agreements.

Obama's Eloquent Words: Substance or Empty Rhetoric?

No matter what one thinks of Barack Hussein Obama, today was undeniably a historical and transformative day in American politics and possibly world politics. It was a particularly poignant and emotional day for African Americans but also, by extension, for other under-represented minorities in the United States. Moreover, the ascendance of an African-American to the highest office in the most powerful Western country will also certainly have implications on race relations and the integration of immigrants in Europe.

There is litte doubt that the world as whole will fare better from this day on if for nothing else than the departure of G W Bush and with him the architects of the disastrous neo conservative doctrine. The biggest question that concerns me is whether America's Middle East foreign policy, immune to major changes from president to president, will change substantially with this new and different type of American president. If the carefully crafted words of his inauguration speech are any indication, there is hope.

Obama's speech is replete with references that reflect an expansive vision of what is good for America in the context of what is good for the whole world rather than the narrow, myopic, inward looking vision of his predecessor. This is a radically different stance than the "you are with us or you are against us", fortress America mentality of Bush. The tone is conciliatory and there is no invocation of unrealistic fear by the repeated use of the word terrorist, a word rendered meaningless in the last eight years. In fact that word does not appear once in the speech.

It remains to be seen if Obama's actions in the next four years remain faithful to the pledges he made in his inaugural speech. We can only hope. Below are selected portions of his speech:

"And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more."

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

Some Americans Get It!

Why should we care? Because the United States is the de factor sole world superpower and until that "passionate attachment" between the United States and Israel is broken, no peace or justice in the Middle East is possible. That break will only happen when enough Americans, especially Jewish Americans, like the author below, realize that continued blind support for Israel will insure that the region will remain mired in conflict, instability and insecurity for generations to come to the detriment of all concerned.

When Israel expelled Palestinians:
What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead?

Randall Kuhn
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Washington Post

In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."

Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.

Gaza: The View From Over Here

It has been ten days since my return from Lebanon and Syria. From the overwhelming coverage of Gaza in the Middle East, I stepped into the near silence about Gaza here. In the local paper, Gaza is relegated to the inner pages. Any letter to the editor critical of Israel has to be coupled with a pro-Israel letter for "balance" but not the other way around. Of course there are no disturbing photographs of Palestinian casualties. TV network news is not much better; a story about what dog Obama is getting his girls preceded a snippet about Gaza the other day. The difference between CNN and CNN International is striking. The accepted story line, the result of lazy journalism, parrots the official Israeli lie: Hamas broke the ceasefire, Israel had to respond. To his credited one CNN host exposed that lie yet that fact didn't seem to catch on. Members of the US government, with rare exceptions, fell over each other to demonstrate their loyalty to Israel. Congress passed a resolution supporting Israel's right to self-defense! Congressman Mark Kirk, Republican from Illinois, showing his predilection to kiss ass said: "To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it's time to take out the trash." The lame duck president, even in the face of mounting a humanitarian disaster, didn't seem pressed to call for a ceasefire and is talked out of voting yes on the Security Council resolution by a last minute call from Olmert. Meanwhile as Israel fails to abide -once again- with a UN resolution and is roundly condemned by the ICRC and UN relief agencies for its many violations of the rules of war and its murder of aid workers, over 1000 Palestinians have lost their lives, thousands wounded and Gaza is physically pulverized. So as people around the world -if not governments- express their revulsion at Israel's barbarity, the American people, whose government is complicit in this tragedy are living in blissful ignorance.


On the other hand, as this video shows, some Jewish supporters of Israel cannot be accused of living in blissful ignorance but in state of hateful paranoia.

Of course there have also been demonstrations in support of Gaza and dissenting Jewish voices,
but it is all to no avail. The "Israel right or wrong" dictum of American politics, is cast in stone; anyone seeking to change can kiss their political ambitions goodbye.

Israel Admits: No Hamas Rockets During Ceasefire

For those who still believe -like most American mainstream media- that Israel started this war because Hamas broke the ceasefire, here is even more evidence of Israel's lies.

Oxford Professor Deconstructs Israel's Casus Belli

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

* Avi Shlaim, * The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas. It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

The Ruins of Gaza City: An Eyewitness Account

A heart wrenching and personal description of the extent of the devastation in Gaza City by an Palestinian AP writer. It also exposes the Israeli lie that they were only after Hamas rockets and militants.

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer –

I live alone in my office. My wife and two young children moved in with her father after our apartment was shattered. The neighborhood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the government buildings on my beat have been obliterated.
After days of Israeli shelling, the city and life I have known no longer exist.

Gaza City, with some 400,000 people, stopped supplying water when the fuel ran out for the power station driving the pumps. We listen to battery-run radios for news, even though the outside world watches what's happening to us on television. The Hadi grocery where we once shopped is closed. Food is scarce all over town.

Three days after Israel began its airstrikes against Hamas militants on Dec. 27, my apartment building was shaken by bombs aimed at a nearby Hamas-run government compound.
My brother took a picture of the room where my boys, 2-year-old Hikmet and 6-month-old Ahmed, once slept. Their toys were broken, shrapnel had punched through the closet and the bedroom wall had collapsed. I don't know if we will ever go back.

There are other pictures that haunt me. The Israeli army issued a video of the bombing of the Hamas-run government compound, which it posted on YouTube. In it, I also can see my home being destroyed, and I watch it obsessively.

Some of my colleagues lost their houses to the shelling as well, and are sleeping on mattresses spread across the floors of an apartment upstairs from The Associated Press bureau.
On Tuesday, I stood outside my apartment building but didn't dare enter. I was worried the remains of the nearby compound might again be shelled.

Othman, the owner of the Addar restaurant where my wife and I bought takeaway when we were both working, put up aluminum sheeting over the broken windows to stop looters. On the pavement, phone and power lines were tangled together like twine.

Driving to central Gaza City, I took the road where Gaza's two main universities are. It was covered with shards of glass, telephone cables, electricity wires and flattened cars. This road was once crowded with students, taxis and street vendors.

The Mazaj coffee shop on Omar Mukhtar street, Gaza's main thoroughfare, was shuttered. It was popular with wealthy university students and foreigners working for nonprofit agencies because it served really good Guatemalan coffee — rumored to have been smuggled in through the same tunnels under the Egyptian border the militants used to bring in weapons.
Al Dera, a beautiful hotel on the Mediterranean shore, was a place where young men and women smoked water pipes and flirted, and where families went for dinner on Thursdays.
Those days are gone now.

On Tuesday, the only shop I found open was the Shifa pharmacy run by my friend Eyad Sayegh. He's an Orthodox Christian, and I stopped to wish him a Merry Christmas — Eastern churches celebrate Christmas on Wednesday. Eyad told me he forgot it was Christmas.

All the landmark buildings I covered as a reporter have vanished. The colonial-era Seraya was the main security compound for the succession of Gaza's rulers — the British, Egyptians, Israelis, the Palestinian Authority and then the rival Palestinians of Hamas. We used to fear the Seraya, where the central jail was. Now it's rubble.

The Al Shuhada mosque on the eastern corner of the compound, where I prayed every day, was one of the few in Gaza with good air conditioning. A local philanthropist who liked Moroccan architecture redecorated the interior with intricate wooden arabesques and Quranic verses etched on the roof. The roof caved in when the Israelis bombed the jail next door.

Of the presidential office overlooking the sea, only a few walls remain. For many Gazans it was a symbol of our statehood, even though President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the Fatah movement, hasn't been there since Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007.
Someone planted a Palestinian flag on the building's remains. The huge gate at the western entrance still stands, giving an illusion of something big behind it.

And across the city, the Parliament house is half destroyed. It used to tower above the Unknown Soldier park and the shops that lined downtown Omar Mukhtar Street. On Jala Street, one of Gaza's main roads, I saw about 30 boys around a leaky irrigation tap on a traffic island. They were clutching empty soft drink bottles and jerry cans, trying to fill them with water. Samir, who is 9, told me his family has no water at home and he wanted to bring enough for a bath because he and his brother smell. That's a problem for most people in Gaza right now. In my father-in-law's building, residents throw out bags of spoiled food. With no power, refrigerators don't run and fresh food quickly rots.

There were few cars on the roads, and most of those were media cars, ambulances and vehicles packed with civilians. Some looked like they were fleeing, with mattresses tied to the roofs, but who knows where they can go.

Israeli helicopters flew overhead. I heard blasts in the distance. The roads were ripped apart by explosives. I drove into downtown Gaza, trying to prove to myself I can still do something I have done so often before — drive through my city. I reached the Catholic Latin Patriarchate School I attended, where my late father — also an AP correspondent — used to bring me every day. The building was undamaged. I stood in front of it, wondering if I will ever be able to walk my children to this school.

Helping Gaza

I have been unable to find the right words to describe my anger and sorrow at Israel's cold blooded assault on the people of Gaza and the equally cold-blooded response of most of the worlds' governments. But the most outrageous response, or lack thereof is that of Egypt's cowardly Mubarak who does not have the balls to unilaterally open the Rafah crossing to help save Palestinian lives. Individually, there is little I can do to stem the violence, but rather than fuming helplessly about the injustice of it all, I can help fund charities whose assistance the people of Gaza will sorely need long after the violence stops. The list below is of excellent charities that provide help to Palestinians.

• United Palestinian Appeal

• Palestine Children's Relief Fund

• ANERA: American Near East Refugee Aid

• Save the Children Fund, Gaza Crisis Fund

• Oxfam Gaza Crisis

I have just donated to three of these charities and challenge anyone reading this post to do what they can to help. Also, disseminate the above links to friends and let me know in the comment section if you donated.

Revising Zionist History

Abu Hazem, in a comment to my lost post, brought to my attention this article by Schlomo Sand, a professor of history from Tel Aviv University and author of Comment le people juif fut inventé. The article summarizes Sand's thesis and I thought it intriguing enought to provide a link to it. It is titled: Israel deliberately forgets its history. An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East (Read More).

Cracks in the Israel's Fortress Mentality?

Much of the success of Israel over its sixty years can be accounted for by it strict adherence to and enforcement of a collective, uniform Zionist narrative. Israelis who dissented from this narrative are promptly marginalized. Three generations on, however, the fanatic settlers not-withstanding, there seems to be an increasing number of Israelis who are challenging the basic tenets of this narrative.

Avaraham Burg, a onetime speaker of the Knesset has created outrage in Israel with his book, recently translated into English: The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes. None of Burg's assertions are new or earth shattering, but any non-Jew who made these same assertions would be promptly labeled anti-Semitic. The novelty here is that such ideas are being expressed by a mainstream Israeli figure. Consider this statement:

• “I realized that Israel had become an efficient kingdom with no prophecy. Where was it going? What is a Jewish democratic state? What does it mean that Jews define themselves by genetics 60 years after genetics were used against them?”

In a radio interview, Burg gives a telling anecdote about the centrality of the Holocaust to the Israeli narrative. He recounts the story of a colleague leaving to Poland on a business trip only to return prematurely a couple of days later. When he asked him what happened, his friend said that while traveling by train across Poland it all came back to him: the trains, the concentration camps, the gas chambers. He could not take it and promptly returned to Israel. The problem was his friend was an Iraqi Jew with connection whatsoever to the holocaust. In his book, Burg asserts that Israel has become a self-justifying Sparta, that Israel should not be a Jewish state and that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be changed. The English version of the book, interestingly, is a watered down and skips over some controversial statements he made in the original manuscript such as the assertion that the Israeli government will pass a law prohibiting the marriage between Jews and Arabs.

Why should I care? Because no real sustainable Middle Eastern peace is possible when Israel's very identity is based on the concept of perpetual victimhood and perpetual conflict.

HM the Amnesiac

Henry Gustav Molaison, a man suffering from post operative amnesia died a week ago at the age of 82. Until his death, Molaison was known to the world as HM, the amnesiac who helped neuroscientists understand the processes involved in short and long term memory. For the first 27 years of his life, Molaison suffered from intractable seizures. In 1953, in a drastic attempt to treat his seizures, his doctors resected his brain's temporal lobes. His seizures improved tremendously but he lost his ability to acquire new memories.

Imagine this, for 55 years until his recent demise, this man lived with memories he acquired in the first 27 years of his life. None of the life experiences of the last five decades have lasted more than thirty seconds, the average duration of short term memory. He was unable to remember anything new he saw, read. smelled, tasted or heard. One can also imagine that any emotion aroused by these new sensory experiences would be equally lost. Nothing stuck; not the sight of a beautiful woman, nor a gorgeous scenery, nor a sublime painting, nor a catchy melody, nor an enchanting scent. The taste of a delicious new dish would dissipate into the ether as soon as the meal was over and the name and appearance of a new friend would elude him as soon as he turned his back. It is hard to overestimate the importance of memory to our existence, to our humanity and to our life's experience.

Molaison's tragic life fascinates me. For as much as he has helped neuroscientists understand the brain's memory processes, I am intrigued by Molaison, the human being and how his memory deficit affected his personality and his outlook on life. Since we are the sum total of our life experiences, was Molaison then the same man at 82 that he was at 27? And if so were his established memories more vivid because there were so few memories for a man of his age or had his memories faded with the passage of half a century? And how does a man like him face life every morning?

I can imagine him waking up every morning full of optimism and wonder at all of his new experiences, his mind, a nearly blank slate, unencumbered by the unpleasantness of the recent past. The quarrel with a friend or the illness of a loved one would be forgotten as would be all the trickle of grim news about war, pestilence and hunger from around the world. On the other hand, I can imagine him waking up flat-affected, somewhat confused by his inability to interpret his new experiences without the context of any similar recent experiences. That last description of him, I believe, is the most likely to be accurate. We learn from experiences carefully laid down in our memory. We are conditioned by these experiences. Without the context of these experiences, it is difficult for us to interpret new ones or even assign values to them. Molaison's amnesia left him unable to build on the ebb and flow of good an bad life experiences and instead committed him to live a diminished life, lived in increments of thirty second slices each completely disconnected from the next.

Al-Khalil (Hebron) in Their Words

The article below is from the New York Times today as it finally deems it fit to write something about the continuing violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinian residents in Hebron. See here settlers shooting Palestinian men at point blank range. It is interesting that NYT chose to put pogrom in parentheses. Typically pogroms is a term that Israelies reserve exclusively for violence against jews; so it is telling when Olmert, the architect of the 2006 war on Lebanon, uses that word to describe what the sttlers are doing. He is not the first, a Haaretz article on December 5th, also used the pogrom label in the title of a story on the Hebron violence.

Olmert Slams "Pogrom", Palestinians Still Fearful
December 7, 2008
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday that attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians last week were a "pogrom" and that Israeli police must end "intolerable leniency" toward such violent offenders.
"As a Jew, I am ashamed of other Jews doing such a thing," Olmert told his cabinet, referring to a shooting incident.
But in the West Bank city of Hebron, where at least three Palestinians were wounded by gunfire on Thursday after troops cleared dozens of hardline, religious settlers from a large building, many locals were skeptical of such Israeli promises.
"We're expecting to be attacked again at any time by the settlers," said Bassem al-Jabari, as he and other neighbors looked at the evacuated site on Sunday. "No one cares about us."
Olmert, who has resigned over a corruption scandal but stays on as caretaker until after a February 10 election, has lately taken to describing settler attacks as "pogroms," using the Russian term for violence against Jews a century ago that drove some to emigrate to Palestine and, in time, establish the Israeli state.
"We are a people whose historical ethos is built on the memory of pogroms," Olmert told his cabinet, according to a statement. "The sight of Jews standing with guns and shooting at innocent Palestinian civilians can only be called a pogrom."
His latest remarks were among his strongest yet. They follow the broadcasting of video apparently showing a settler shooting and wounding Palestinians, as well as stone-throwing and other violence across the West Bank, including the torching of olive groves, which Palestinians leaders described as "waging war." Olmert said he was pressing for prosecutions and "an end to the intolerable leniency ... toward settlers who break the law." An Israeli court remanded one settler in custody on Sunday over the shooting allegation and released another on bail.
The United States, which failed in efforts to broker a peace in this final year of George W. Bush's presidency, has described the settlement of half a million Israelis in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in 1967 as an obstacle to peace.
Olmert says Israel should clear outposts but draw borders with a new Palestinian state to ensure major settlements, deemed illegal under international law, are incorporated into Israel.

TENSIONS, VIOLENCE
In Hebron, troops now occupy the building, dubbed "House of Peace" by the dozen or so settler families who refused to obey a court order to leave last month. A Palestinian denies selling it to them and is asking Israeli courts to return his property.
Mohammed al-Jabari, who lives close by the building, on a strip of hillside separating Hebron's ancient center from the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, said neighbors were glad the army was now in control: "It's better now. There is respect for the law. When the settlers were here, there was no law."
Longer term, however, his neighbors are not optimistic.
Jabari and other householders, mostly also from the Jabari clan, living in flat-roofed houses among patches of field and olive trees around the evacuated building recount a year or more of tension and clashes with the Jewish former occupants.
Though the allegations could not easily be verified, tales of rocks thrown at homes, women intimidated, a dead dog tossed into the courtyard of the local mosque, a horse poisoned, and so on were repeated by several Palestinians living close to a hard core of settlers. These see expansion in Hebron, which is home to the tomb of Abraham, as a religious and nationalist duty.
Israeli troops protect some 650 Jews living in the center of Hebron, a city of 180,000, as well as surrounding settlements.
Palestinians say Israeli forces turn a blind eye to settler attacks while punishing Arabs who resort to violence: "It's double standards," Issa Amro, 28, a human rights activist.
He said local people were particularly fearful that settlers are allowed to carry rifles: "There is an Israeli soldier to protect every one of them," Amro said. "Why do they need M-16s?"
Another neighbor, using his nickname Abu Firas, recalled how his children had been terrified as settlers attacked their home with burning material and stones on Thursday: "They burned our homes with the protection of the Israeli state," he said.
"Right now, I see no Israeli government. I see gang law," he added, surveying the hillside from a cemetery where at least two Muslim headstones have been daubed with a star of David.
"The only way to end this is for Israel to pull all settlers from the West Bank. It's a fight for survival. It's us or them."

Keeping the Syrian Blogosphere Civil

I started reading blogs for about a year before I started my writing my own. I read many Lebanese blogs and the few Syrian blogs that were out there. The discourse among the Lebanese blogs often degenerated into gratuitous verbal attacks. By contrast, discussions among Syrian bloggers, rarely if ever, got contentious. I smugly attributed this difference to the generally more congenial nature of Syrians. So I was surprised by one of Razan's recent post where she describes the venom with which some self-righteous religious Syrian bloggers have been denigrating others whose points of view they found objectionable to the point that they have suggested these blogs be destroyed by hackers. Razan wrote that the reason she turned off the comments function on her blog is that she was the target of some of this venom. Perhaps I should not be surprised, with the exponential increase in the number of Syrian blogs, it was only a matter of time before some self-appointed thought police took it upon themselves to purge the Syrian blogosphere of ideas that THEY deemed inappropriate.

Both Dania and Abu Fares have posted on this topic following Razan's lead but given the critical importance of this issue, I felt that as many bloggers as possible need to make their voices heard.

That Razan was one of the target of these zealots is not surprising. She is perhaps one the most outspoken and fearless Syrian blogger. She never shies away from saying what's on her mind even if it trespasses into territory that is taboo by Middle Eastern standards. I admire her courage, her energy and her strength even if I don't always agree with her. Razan's passion is matched only by her compassion as exemplified by her work on behalf of the Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared. Zealots may want to silence voices like Razan's, I on the other hand, would like to see more young Syrians in her mold start to speak up.

The proliferation of Syrian blogs with strong religious points of view is a reflection of the changes in Syrian society as a whole. But, I think such blogs likely over represent this societal trend because whereas expressions of deep religious convictions is publicly acceptable, expressions of political (or social) convictions that run against the norm is frowned upon and may come -in the case of politics- at a high price. Nevertheless, blogs with diverse religious points of views is a welcome addition to the Syrian blogosphere. Unfortunately, a few among these, are works of zealots who are not only unwilling to consider other points but want those points of views they consider offensive eliminated.

I have a problem with zealots of all kinds: political, secular or religious. Among religious zealots, Muslim zealots irk me the most precisely because I am Muslim. I find the zealots' narrow and rigid mindset and their intolerance nonsensical. To me, true faith comes out of a conviction reached through a deliberate thought process that considers many alternatives. Zealots would rather have believers as unthinking automatons, like donkeys with blinders following edicts without understanding them. Zealots expose their own deep-seated insecurity when they jump to silence any criticism of their religion as if their faith is a fragile house of cards. It is not; I believe that one should deal with such criticism head on and there is never a need to muzzle dissenting voices. Hearing what others say about you, no matter how unpleasant, often leads to necessary self-examination. Finally, intolerant zealots rightfully extol the various achievements of Islam over the last millennium but forget that Islam flourished most when it was at its most open and tolerant.

So as Abu Fares stated in his post, I welcome and encourage interaction among Syrian blogs. Although several people seem to draw a clear line among secular and religious blogs, I thinks it is more like a continuum. Frank exchanges and debates among blogs of opposing viewpoints is only possible when they are free of personal attacks, condescention and threats.

Coming Home!

Very soon, I will be going home ... for a visit. It has been about three decades since I last set foot on Syrian soil. I am exhilarated and I am anxious; I cannot wait to go and yet there are lingering fears holding me back. What if all my longing and all the pent up emotions acquired during years of separation turn out to be illusory and false emotions? What if I set foot in the city of my birth and felt nothing?

Certainly the Lattakia of my childhood has long since vanished and most of my extended family, that boisterous tribe consisting of my father's aunts, uncles and cousins, is scattered in the four corners of the world. Yet close family members remain. My aunt, my father's only sibling, and my two cousins remain in Lattakia. And if the physical features of Lattakia have changed radically, my grandfather's house where I was born and the house where I grew up as a child remain as touchstones of my past. In the end though, my connection with this land is more a state of mind. This is the land of my birth; it is the land of my ancestors. In no other place on this planet can I make that same claim. In no other place can I claim such deep roots and in doing so, carry within me the historical memory, good and bad, of my place of origin. These facts help orient and anchor me, they provide with a context and a perspective on life and of my place in this world. Calling any other place home somehow rings hollow; I feel like an impostor.

But could it be that, after all these years away, I will feel like an impostor in the land of my birth? I don't think so. I am too old to be a sentimental fool or to be beholden to unrealistic nostalgic dreams. I am ready to take in Syria as it is, not as I think it should be. This trip will be as much an exploration as a return to my roots. I will be introducing Syria to my children and reintroducing it to myself. There is much to see and much to do.

(Photo: From Lattakia online; my grandmother's old house in the foreground; now replaced by a concrete monstrosity)

October 26 American Raid Into Syria Not the First

According to this New York Times article, Donald Rumsfeld, with approval from the White House, authorized in the spring of 2004, secret incursions by special forces anywhere in the world as part of the American global war on terrorism. According to the article, among the dozen or so previously undisclosed attacks, there have been one or more that occured in Syria other than the recent October 26th cross-border attack into Al-Sukkarieh. Attacks on diffferent countries required different levels of administration approval with attacks on Syria and Pakistan requiring presidential approval.

This information makes the timing and circumstances of the October 26th incursion all the more intriguing. Was it a "secret" operation gone bad with the slaughter of innocent civilians? or was it meant to be a public warning to Syria? Either way, GW Bush personally approved the attack! It also raises questions about the previous American incursions into Syria: where did they occur, what were the targets and who was aware of their occurence?

Making My Case for Obama as President

Before I make my case for Obama, I feel the need to make a disclaimer. Although I am intrigued by the man, I am not starstruck by him as my previous posts will testify (see here, here, here, here).

I first made my case for Obama in a post in December of 2006 at a time when he was an undeclared candidate and most of my arguments in his favor still stand. That Obama, on November 2, 2008, looks more like a conventional American politician of the Democratic party should not come as a surprise. The American presidential campaign process inevitably pushes candidates toward the mainstream, the center of their respective political party. Yes, he made the compulsory visit to AIPAC and trip to Israel, and in an effort to appear tough on foreign policy he made some unsettling remarks about his support for U.S. cross border attacks into Pakistan. And yes, he has treated Arab and Muslim Americans as if they were politically radioactive, not because he thought they were, but because the Republican xenophobes made them so. It took a Republican, Colin Powell, to publicly point out that McCain "No Ma'am, he is a good family man" response to a bigoted supporter's claim that Obama is an Arab, is patently offensive.

Yet despite all of that, I will be voting for Obama because of who he is and not what he is saying in the heat of the campaign. This is unquestionably a defining moment in American and world history. In my twenty two years of living here, I have never seen Americans as angry, as passionate about change and yet at the same time as polarized as they are in these elections. Moreover, the candidate with the only reasonable choice for a new beginning comes in a flavor that Americans have never experienced in an American president: Not white and not with a reassuring Anglo-Saxon name; Christian, at least, but whose middle name is Hussein and who learned to recite the Fatiha in school in Jakarta. And yet, early on, Obama managed to mobilize and ignite the political passions of a group that are typically politically apathetic, the young. This constituency took easily to Obama because unlike older generations of Americans, Obama's exoticism was never an issue. Their classmates and friends were just as likely to be white as South Asian, Oriental, African or Middle Eastern. This a generation that is more globally connected and aware than their more insular parents. It is the constituency that created an unconventional campaign that overcame the well-heeled political machines of some of his opponents.

Obama as president will cause a paradigm shift in the way the United States views itself and the way the rest of the world views the United States. How that translates into real changes in United States foreign policy remains to be seen. Specifically, the foreign policy towards the Middle East, as ingrained as it is, is not likely to change quickly. Obama has promised to close Guantanamo and leave Iraq, all good, but he has said little about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I trust he will bring an intelligent and nuanced understanding of foreign policy that will be a radical change from the idiotic "you are either with us or against us" approach of the current administration. A less combative, arrogant and condescending president may even open up some diplomatic space to allow for contacts and talks with axis of evil veterans such as Syria and Iran.

If this is not a ringing endorsement, it is as close as I can get. For anyone still on the fence, the emergence of Dick Cheney yesterday from his cave in the Rockies to endorse McCain, should have sealed the deal. The world cannot afford another four years of neocon madness.