Dictatorships: Just Do It

Essentially, the concept of nation branding functions as a (normally privatized) form of propaganda. Because suppressing dissent, torturing protest organizers and using excessive force on unarmed demonstrators generally requires all hands on deck, autocratic regimes are occasionally forced outsource the management of their foreign propaganda to smaller public relations firms abroad.

In September, just a month after the biggest massacre of civilians in Egypt’s history, it was announced that the country's military bosses overseeing the mass killing were looking to hire professional apologists and advocates in Washington. I know what you’re thinking, “You mean that just one month after nearly 600 civilians were killed and nearly 4,000 people were injured in a pretty one-sided battle between state security forces and supporters of a democratically-elected president who those security forces had forced out, the state began shopping around the contract to advocate on its behalf in Washington? Why, golly, who want such a contract?”

Dear reader, let me tell you: The Glover Park Group! And think for a second. How much money would it take for you to sell your soul and go to the hill every day to convince legislators that a bunch murderous oligarchs are in fact worthy of taxpayer-funded military aid? How’s $250,000 a month sound? Some people would have serious problems with this arrangement. These are what I like to call “decent, reasonable human beings.” On the other hand there are people who would jump at the chance. In the immortal words of Willard Romney, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Unfortunately, as far as people go, corporations are sociopaths.

Take Bell Pottinger for instance. They have a reputation as being the definitive global advocates of the earth’s most powerful scum. From Belarus to Bahrain, Bell Pottinger seems to have no qualms about defending the most terrible opponents of human freedom and dignity around the world. In 2011, undercover reporters from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism went in to Bell Pottinger’s office posing as representatives of the Government of Uzbekistan and of said country’s cotton industry. Topic of the day: how best can Uzbekistan polish its awful record on the use of child labor in its cotton fields. During the interview Bell Pottinger representatives bragged to undercover journalist about their influence with the UK’s government and their ability to use “dark arts” to scrub their reputation on the internet. It was an embarrassing scandal for the firm, but fear not, corporations don’t have feels, and Bell Pottinger’s dark arts continue to be practiced. The firm is currently in the hunt for Bahrain’s new public relations contract.

“Nation branding.” The phrase itself should make you feel dirty. Really dirty. Like a Hosni-Mubarak-giving-you-a-foot-massage kind of dirty. The reason being: I work full-time at unpaid internship that pushes the US government and international actors to put more pressure on the government of Bahrain. It can be difficult working for no pay, sure, but I really love the work I do and the projects I get to work on, like drafting letters to congressmen, documenting human rights abuses, etc.

What really screws me up though, is that somewhere out there is a ‘Mirror, Mirror’ version of me interning at some soulless PR firm drafting press releases selling Bahrain as a great place for an international sporting event—if you consider driving a car really, really fast a sport. Don’t let political prisoners wasting away due to lack of treatment bum you out; never mind persistent allegations of torture; ignore the largely foreign police force imported from abroad to bludgeon the locals: This spring break it’s “Destination Bahrain: A nation on a Journey!”

Somewhere there are people as passionate about subverting natural inclinations of human solidarity (aka “dark arts”) as I am about undermining the efforts of despots. 

On Striking Syria

The use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war has triggered a new wave of international outcry, this time perhaps leading to an American intervention of some kind. However, there is not—as there has never been—any clear achievable objectives within the grasp of the American military in Syria.

President Obama’s foreign policy has consistently been marked by caution rather than boldness. He began his first term with little foreign policy vision beyond extricating America from Iraq and Afghanistan and returning American foreign policy to the pre-9/11 status quo. The President’s efforts have consistently been more devoted to domestic and economic agendas, perhaps understandably so. However, when the advent of the Arab Spring impressed a historic opportunity for transformation, Obama preferred a wait-and-see approach.

The time for caution in Syria however has apparently come to an end. Lebanon, never known as a paragon of stability, is becoming more and more drawn into the Syrian tragedy as refugees continue pouring in. Jordan is facing similar strains with refugees, while King Abdullah fends off his own domestic demands for reform. It’s clear that with the conflict in Syria threatening to pull its neighbors into the storm, that there are American interests at stake here, but the question remains: Can an American-led intervention stymie the carnage in Syria?

It is patently obvious that after the blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan, that there is little will for a full-scale invasion and long-term mission of nation building and regime change seen in during the previous decade. After the chemical attack US officials indicated that there would be an immediate strike, most assumed this would mean guided missiles. While the attacks have since been delayed as Obama seeks congressional approval, such a strike would do little to abate the conflict.

Assuming that such a campaign could completely eradicate Syria’s cache of chemical weapons—a dubious assumption at best—it has been made abundantly clear by the 100,000 dead that the Assad regime excels at slaughter by more conventional means. So should the mission entail strikes on all Syrian military installations? Such a campaign would no doubt have the capacity to topple Bashar Assad and allow the rebels to takeover, but the aftermath is wholly unknown. The rebels remain a fractious bunch; while there are elements of a moderate opposition, there are Qatari and Saudi proxies that likely want only to see Assad’s regime replaced with a more amenable Sunni autocracy and al-Qaeda affiliates like Jabhat al-Nusra that prefer a more religious brand of the same oppression.

Moreover the consequences of an American strike are similarly unknown. It’s unlikely that Assad and his allies would not launch their own assault on American targets or on America’s allies. It may end in yet another conflagration between Hezbollah and Israel or retaliatory attacks on American targets elsewhere in the region. While Assad’s response is unknown, it is clear that the refugee crisis would only be exacerbated. Even the mere threat of an American strike has increased the traffic of refugees fleeing Syria, adding to the existing strains in Lebanon and Jordan. In any event, the scenario only suggests escalation, not resolution.

That is not to say that America is powerless, but rather that its military might represents the wrong type of power. Diplomatic channels are still available to the White House.

•  Restore relations with Russia. There has been too much distance placed between Moscow and Washington over little more than the Edward Snowden embarrassment. Meanwhile lives are at stake in Syria, where American-Russian cooperation is still possible.
  
• Work with Assad’s allies. To isolate Assad, America must reach out to all who are supporting him including Russia, China, and even Iran. If America is truly motivated by humanitarian concerns it will be humble enough to work with allies, competitors and enemies alike to find a solution.
  
• Work with the America’s allies. The United States wields considerable influence with the countries in the Gulf like Qatar and Saudi Arabia who are the primary patrons of Syria’s rebel groups, some of which function as proxies on behalf of their financiers rather than the Syrian people. Condemn such actions and support those that facilitate a ceasefire rather than escalation.
  
• Assist with neighboring countries with aid and relief efforts. The key to containing the chaos will be assisting the host countries with coping with the added strain of refugees. This is particularly important in Lebanon and Jordan, where political instability is already an issue.
  
• If possible, work with Assad too. If Assad will talk, then talk to him. The idea has been floated that perhaps Assad is working to carve out a smaller enclave for his Alawite minority, allowing for a separate state to be formed elsewhere. It’s a highly problematic and morally bankrupt proposal, but if it ends the immediate bloodshed, giving the idea consideration may assist an effort toward a ceasefire. Allowing for Assad’s truncated political survival may provide a short term solution to the conflict, while allowing Russia, China and Iran to maintain one of their favored strategic partners. It’s not an idea that has a pleasant taste, nor is does it please foreign policy realists or idealists, but it may be one way of saving lives and stabilizing the situation so as create potential for further progress.

America has many advanced missiles but none of them nor all of them function as a magic bullet. A military effort will neither end the suffering of the Syrian population nor realize any aspirations for democratic change.

Democracy in Egypt: There is no military solution

Muhammad Morsi is a bad president. Let us allow a brief re-cap for the uninitiated: Morsi has failed to protect Egypt’s minorities, including Shiites and Christians; under his administration, the economy has continued to crumble with inflation rates ever out of control; crime is a persistent problem as police and the interior ministry remain unsolvable Gordian knots beyond the reach of reform; Morsi oversaw the ham-fisted imposition of a grossly inadequate constitution; and who could forget in late 2012 when he infamously, albeit temporarily, made himself pharaoh, placing himself beyond the reach of judicial oversight. The tamarod (rebel) campaign, a grassroots initiative circulating a petition of no confidence in Morsi and his administration, had collected over 22 million signatures before mass protests erupted on June 30.  This is devastating for his Freedom and Justice Party (the Muslim Brotherhood's political party) considering that Morsi was only elected with about 13 million votes.

On July 1 the Egyptian military issued an ultimatum to Morsi in a televised statement, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt's Defense Minister, threatening that if Morsi fails to solve the crisis the military will “be obliged by its patriotic and historic responsibilities and by its respect for the demands of the great Egyptian people to announce a roadmap for the future and the steps for overseeing its implementation, with participation of all patriotic and sincere parties and movements.” The announcement was met by raucous excitement, and military helicopters trailing Egyptian flags flying over Tahrir square were met cheers.   Many activists have greeted the military’s threat with approval, including Mahmoud Badr, a spokesman associated with the tamarod campaign, saying that the ultimatum “crowns our movement.”

But if the year of Egypt’s rule under the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) should have taught Egyptians anything it is this: Beware of Egyptian generals bearing gifts.

Now making a comeback, the popular slogan “the people and the army are one hand” was wildly popular after Hosni Mubarak’s departure on February 11, 2011. Indeed it was the military’s refusal to participate in Mubarak’s oppression that led to his eventual ouster. But it is tragically short-sighted to view the army as purely expressing solidarity. The military has been the ultimate power in Egypt since the 1952 officer’s rebellion, and after sixty years of rule they have gotten use to their position of power, notoriously associated with corruption funded in large part by US foreign aid.

Activists in Egypt need to understand that the ultimate political power in Egypt is and has always been the military. Mubarak was the face of this power and the military supported him until continued support became impossible. A year of SCAF rule made it clear that the military powers did not have much interest in governing so much as they did in finding ways of maintaining their power and privilege.

Under SCAF's leadership, Egypt’s activists witnessed numerous violent encounters with the state, including the Battle of Muhammad Mahmoud Street, and the Maspero massacre, to name but a few. Moreover, Morsi’s economic perils, though they certainly accelerated during his administration, were nevertheless crises continued from the period of SCAF rule. Moreover, while Morsi and the military bosses did not see eye to eye on many issues, it is apparent that they had a modus vivendi not the least of which included special provisions in Morsi’s constitution that safeguarded that privileged status, including military trials for civilians.

It is obvious that Egyptians have had enough of Morsi, and it would be mad to demand Egyptians to put up with his ineptitude for another three years. However, arguing that Morsi must step down and that civilian rule must, even temporarily, be swept away by the military and for the military is no solution at all. The premise that the military is a sufficient institution for the transition to democracy is evidentially false. The SCAF model readily demonstrated this absurdity. The military is not the answer to the problem; the military is the underlying, ultimate problem, the key obstacle to be overcome if Egypt is to ever find stability and its citizens find the freedom and dignity that they currently demand.

The solution in the short term is obviously Morsi’s resignation followed by elections, but the long term goal for Egyptians must be the reigning in of military privilege and power that has gone too long unchecked.

The Limits of Ethnocracy: Racism, Zionism, and the Future of Israel

My piece on the effects of prescribing a racial character upon the state of Israel was published in Muftah.

"Last week, Yariv Levin, a Likud Party lawmaker, proposed a new Israeli Basic Law to the Knesset that would make “the right to realize national self-definition in the State of Israel… unique to the Jewish people.” Previous incarnations of the basic law imbued the state with a Jewish identity, but never before had this been wielded explicitly to affirm the exceptionalism of Jews.

"The apparent uniqueness of this right to “self-definition” for Jewish citizens—and therefore its denial for non-Jews—has led critics to accuse Levin and the Likud of attempting to prioritize Israel’s “Jewish character” over its democratic commitments."

Read the full article.

An atheist's (I guess) response to Rizvi

What follows is a response to Ali A. Rizvi's article published in the Huffington Post May 3rd, 2013.

I’m an atheist, and while I don’t consider it an integral part of my identity, I do get a little irritated by the people that speak for us unaffiliated types. Ali A. Rizvi’s article regarding the “root causes” of Islamic extremism was well-received by noted veterans of the so-called “new atheist” movement. That’s to be expected, because he dutifully reproduced their most treasured errors.

Rizvi begins by linking the Barbary pirates and privateers of over two centuries ago to contemporary extremists in that the ultimate motivation of both peoples is their religious faith, Islam. Later in the article Rizvi is much more explicit: “To us [the new atheists], the "root causes" of jihadist terrorism are the same today as they were” in 1786. It’s a pretty stunning admission of ignorance. Such a monolithic approach to both Islam and sectarian violence can only be described as such.

Same as the old new atheists, Rizvi overemphasizes the religious heritage of his cast of characters rather than their broader circumstances. With the Barbary pirates, the motivations are clear for Rizvi: Islam did it.

The new atheists are always decrying the label of “Islamophobia,” but they’re conflated with Pamela Gellar and Daniel Pipes because they too view the actions of Muslims with a completely different standard than they view the actions of others. The Muslim-ness of an individual is the essential feature for understanding their actions.

When anyone speaks about the pirates that marauded around the Caribbean during that same time period there’s no discussion about their religious background because it’s absolutely irrelevant. It’s obvious that pirates are motivated by greed, but when the participants are Muslims they’re automatons of their faith, completely different from other life forms.

When people look back at the Spanish conquest of the “new world” it’s possible to blame the whole mess—the rapes, the pillage, the exterminations of numerous peoples and cultures—on Christianity. After all, the Spanish empire was incestuously linked to the Catholic Church. Christopher Columbus said of the enslaved Arawak people, “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.” So is the Holy Trinity the “root cause” here? Nonsense! Columbus and the conquistadors were motivated by gold, silver, and slaves. The presence of Christianity is purely coincidental.

Rizvi ridicules those who would probe past his simplistic answer seeking a “root cause.” It’s a bizarre question for Rizvi for whom the answer is so obvious, so uncomplicated. Of course Rizvi doesn’t immediately address why the majority of Muslims are not mujahideen or pirates. Though Rizvi makes the qualification that “most Muslims are good, peaceful people,” the conclusion is unavoidable: If Islam is the “root cause” of Islamic extremism, then it must follow that every Muslim has a shard of Osama bin-Laden within them, and that is simply a bridge too far.

So what are the root causes? They’re not the caricature of “American imperialism…, U.S. foreign policy, globalization, AIPAC [and] Islamophobia” that Rizvi suggests. Pakistan is a good example if we’re searching for root causes, but we must to go beyond religious identity: only 52% of the population completes grade five; 62% of the adult population is literate; 60% of the country is below the poverty line. The Pakistani state is a grossly illiberal, unfree state, not to mention a tumultuous conflict zone. The situation may seem unimaginable, but on top of all this we must add the daily terror experienced by people in North Waziristan and elsewhere who live under threat of American drone strikes. Naturally, most Pakistanis focus on survival, improving their own immediate conditions, and are perfectly rational, hospitable people, but it hardly needs pointing out that these are not conditions that produce a culture of progressive, liberal-minded progressives.

It’s a terrible mixture: abysmal education standards, widespread poverty, a scarcity of human freedom, and an obvious cord of fear to tie them all together. Now imagine that tomorrow Islam is completely removed from Pakistan. Does the state turn into an inclusionary, liberal democracy? Are economic hardships ameliorated, the people educated? To my fellow atheists: I’m sorry, but religion isn’t the problem and its eradication is no silver bullet.

Rizvi calls into question the religiosity of the “good, peaceful” Muslims by saying that they cherry-pick their religion. The question of cherry-picking is an important one, but again the new atheists enter the debate having already found their villain and thus avoid investigating further. From the majority of Muslims and Christians that lead peaceful lives to the Barbary pirates and Spanish conquistadors, all people compose their religious beliefs a la carte to suit their pre-existing aesthetics. Though these are formed by one’s environment and religion is a component, it’s not a “chicken or the egg” debate.

As atheists, we ought to be able to start out with the principle that religions were created by humans, and hence humans are responsible, but it has become a required characteristic of atheists that we also take up the mantle of “anti-theist.” It is not enough to simply remove oneself from religious practice.  The orthodoxy propagated by atheism’s celebrities suggests that we must also be polemicists. Religion is made into Satan, the boogeyman, the root of all evil that we must condemn as the unmistakable source of misery and cruelty. Religion is seemingly the first cause of “patriarchy, misogyny, slavery, tribalism, xenophobia, totalitarianism and homophobia” in spite of the fact that most of these terrible things were a part of human society long before the invention of religion.

No religion today is the same as it was two-hundred years ago. Religion is practiced by people, and as people vary and change so does religious practice. I’m perfectly comfortable with criticizing religion and debunking superstition, but let’s be serious: religions don’t kill or enslave or maim people; people do. Human society is a deeply complex organism and it has many tangible problems far more malignant—and more assailable—than religion.

The Pro-Israel Lobby: Narratives, Not Money

My article on the Pro-Israel lobby was published in The Daily Beast.

"The nature of the pro-Israel lobby’s influence on the American political system has been raised again this year by senatorial confirmation hearings, policy conferences, sequestration, and White House initiatives. This influence is typically attributed to campaign contributions, but this view is unsophisticated. The power of the pro-Israel lobby is, in fact, defined by the dominance of various pro-Israel narratives in American culture.

"The standard line that pro-Israel sentiment is defined by dollar signs is easily refuted. The two largest pro-Israel contributors—the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and J-Street—together approximated $3.25 million in lobbying in 2012. While this sounds substantial, it’s a meager .09 percent of the total $3.28 billion spent on overall political lobbying that year."

Read the full article.

Interest > Values Part 2: WHY America’s Foreign Policy Continues to Fail its People and its Victims

See Part 1 here

The following was written on April 18, 2013. Some of the details discussed below may be incorrect as news is still unfolding.

On April 15, 2013 there was a wave of bombings in Iraq—20 carbombs and a handful of roadside explosives—that claimed that lives of 31 people and injured more than 200. On the other side of the world that same day two small IEDs (improvised explosive devices) exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon; three people were killed and over 100 were injured.

Innately, the survivors of these tragedies are more concerned with their own victims than they are of the other’s. This is the inevitable shortcoming of a state’s foreign policy: the often insular and arbitrary nature of tribalism that exists in human societies today is the primary obstacle to what we might hope to call a just foreign policy. Most often this tribalism realized by competing forms of nationalism, but other such tribes are recognized as sectarian, ethnic, and economic groups.

How does a tribe formulate a policy of interaction with another based on mutual respect and interest? Why would any tribe be interested in the just treatment and wellbeing of another? The ethical consistently yields to the advantageous. A tribe of any kind is an inherently exclusive outfit prone to the binary classification of humanity into “us” and “them.” In modernity tribes are empowered to abhorrent extremes with bomber aircrafts, tank squadrons, and weapons of mass destruction. It is long past time that these tribal affiliations be recalculated if not entirely obliterated.

Most models of societal organization require some sort of arbitrary underpinning of identity and often entail the mediation and marshalling of intra-societal relations, often for the purpose of resource management. This is directly contrasted with the monopoly on the inter-societal relations that the political elite tend to wield. In some societies this power may be diffused over a group; in others it may boil down to a single individual. However—especially in state structures—foreign relations are typically not the concern of the people, that is, until it is a matter of security.

State structures, in fact, have a vested interest in keeping their constituents focused inward, unable to see over the walls of localism. This empowers the political elite with the ability to easily manipulate the public into war, more often than not packaged within a framework of threats to security. In order to determine the truth value of claims of communist influence in Vietnam, weapons of destruction in Iraq, or Israel’s utility as a strategic asset, Americans often do not have a frame of reference beyond immediate events reported by the media and state or corporate propaganda. This vacuum of knowledge—combined with the existential imperative of production imposed by capitalism—assists the state in conducting a foreign policy unimpeded by such notions as “values” championed by naïve masses or radical fringe opposition. It takes only a glance at polls of voter priorities to see that even at the height of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” only 40% of the electorate prioritized foreign policy when calculating their choice of representative in 2007; in 2012—a more typical year—this number had shrunk to 9%.

It is a natural phenomenon that people are drawn to concern themselves only with their immediate surroundings, and it is difficult indeed to contemplate the importance of an earthquake a million miles away, particularly when you are told that the victims of said calamity are your enemies. But is ambivalence toward suffering so different from the exploitation thereof? America’s tawdry relationship with Saudi Arabia—perhaps the most odious regime of our time, save North Korea—is evidence enough that we are perfectly comfortable enjoining our so-called national interest to alliances that compromise our most basic values of liberty, justice, and equality.

However, I do not think this is a choice, and if it is, it is certainly not one made consciously. Americans who go to their local gas stations do not think of the geopolitical maneuvering, underhanded politics, and economic exploitation that go into delivering their fuel. Even if they did, in most cases it would be difficult to make an alternative choice. The one million Americans that are employed in the American defense sector cannot be assumed to support every terrible regime that utilizes their products or every military operation the United States executes. So long as the majority of Americans remain disinterested in these events, the power of influence will remain in the hands of those few whose profit margins are built on structures of human despair. It is the political and economic elite that created this system and continue to desperately maintain it. An informed populace legitimizes the failures of American foreign policy by reproducing popular conceptions of American moral superiority and purity of arms that still manage to survive in spite of the catastrophic war in Iraq, the inexcusable support for the crushing of popular, nonviolent resistance in Bahrain, and the steadfast championing of conquest and occupation in Palestine.

The enormity of American power is too vast to be trusted to the elite few, while the many remain concerned with their local world to serve as a democratic check on how that power is used. It is this shortcoming that prevents America from attaining a foreign policy prioritizing the best of American values over the hungry cannibalism of imperial power and economic greed.

An Uncomfortable Stone

On March 7^th, 1965 around 600 people began to march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. A few weeks before during a separate nonviolent demonstration about voting rights Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young black man, was shot by a state trooper while defending his mother and subsequently died. At Jackson’s funeral Martin Luther King, Jr. declared him “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” The march from Selma to Montgomery, in-part organized by King, was as much about remembering Jackson’s sacrifice, his martyrdom, as it was about continuing his crusade.

Called “Bloody Sunday,” the march was blocked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge that leads out of Selma by Alabama’s State Troopers. The procession of marchers, unarmed, was assaulted by state security forces. Their throats filled with tear gas, their bones broken with batons and nightsticks, the marchers were literally beaten back into Selma.

It would be two weeks later before 3,200 protesters began the successful march from Selma, walking approximately twelve miles a day and sleeping in fields before they successfully reached Montgomery. When they arrived on March 25, their numbers had swelled to 25,000.

In Montgomery, Alabama, that same day King spoke:

Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now… Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.
 

Let us therefore continue our triumphant march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on segregated housing until every ghetto or social and economic depression dissolves, and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing. Let us march on segregated schools until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past, and Negroes and whites study side-by-side in the socially-healing context of the classroom.

…I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?"…How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?"

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again."

How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."

…How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In August of the same year, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Over twenty years later, on the opposite side of the earth, there was yet another uprising taking place. Called the first intifada, in December1987 the Palestinian people rose up to resist Israel’s military occupation. The resistance of the first intifada, as opposed to the second, was characterized almost exclusively by acts of nonviolence and civil disobedience.

Israel’s Defense Minister at the time was Yitzhak Rabin, he famously told commanders of the military regime in the West Bank to crush the uprising, to “break their bones” in order to “re-instill fear” into the protesters. Rabin denied that he meant the words literally, though one wonders how bones might be broken figuratively. Israel’s Attorney General, Yosef Harish, ordered Rabin to instruct troops to use more restraint in the wake of “numerous complaints of cruel treatment to the inhabitants” of the occupied territories. By March of 1988, four months after the intifada began and twenty three years after the march from Selma to Montgomery was concluded, 111 Palestinians were dead.

By 1993, the intifada had been called off by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), now in negotiations with Israel about the creation of what they believed would be a proto-Palestinian state. Rabin, the bone-breaker, was now Israel’s Prime Minister and thus a primary character in the negotiating drama. The Oslo Accords, as the results of negotiations were called, ostensibly represented an interim period of Palestinian autonomy. For the Palestinians, this implicitly meant that statehood and self-determination, so long out of reach, was finally at hand.

For Rabin, this meant something else entirely. For Rabin, the Oslo accords and the creation of Palestinian autonomy structures represented the further consolidation—not the retreat—of Israeli power. “The Palestinians will be better at [“enforcing order”] than we were,” explained Rabin,

because they will allow no appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent the [Israeli] Association for Civil Rights from criticizing conditions there by denying it access to the area. They will rule by their own methods, freeing, and this is most important, the Israeli army from having to do what they will do.[1]

Beyond the duties of the indigenous police service, was the structure of the Oslo itself. Rabin championed the concept of the separation of Israeli and Palestinian peoples. First, the West Bank was trifurcated into three different areas. Area A was under full Palestinian control (3% of the West Bank’s surface area); Area B was to under Palestinian administrative authority and Israel controlling security (25%); Area C was under the strict purview of Israel (72%). For Palestinians the divisions were concrete, though Israeli forces would stage numerous incursions in to Area A. Israel instituted a rigorous permit regime over these divisions; Israeli citizens with Israeli permits were (and still are) given numerous privileges (access to roads, to subsidized housing in illegal settlements, immunity from prosecution in Palestinian courts), while permits for Palestinians served to arbitrarily grant and deprive them of access to employment, education, healthcare and freedom of movement.

Palestinians and Israelis are expected to at all times be readily distinguishable. Israeli fuel tanks were meant to be one color, Palestinian fuel tanks another. Roads were constructed specially for Israelis while Palestinians were forced to use roads that wound around Israel’s illegal settlements; journeys of just a few miles could take hours navigating through checkpoints and around roadblocks and closures—if of course a Palestinian had the appropriate permission. Meanwhile, new Israeli settlements were constructed and old settlements were expanded at a previously unheard of pace. Rabin’s plan for peace through all of this was boiled down to an easily packaged slogan: “Them over there; us over here.” Those familiar with South Africa’s history will readily recognize the similarity with the system of apartheid; those familiar with the history of America’s south will immediately recognize similarities as well.

On March 21 2013—forty-eight years to the day after King’s historic march from Selma to Montgomery—President Barack Obama laid from a stone from King’s memorial on Rabin’s grave.

One can only guess at what Obama may have meant by such a gesture. What could it possibly mean to bring the memory of a man who struggled against the forces of segregation and racism, who was imprisoned by and bled under the scourge of state power, to Israel and rest it on the final resting place of Yitzhak Rabin, a champion of “separation” that fought with truncheon and tear gas to crush a nonviolent uprising, that oversaw the defense of military occupation, killing hundreds and imprisoning thousands? There is no rational answer to be gleamed. The only thing the two men had in common was that they were both gunned down by assassins before their visions could be realized.

Whatever analogy that Obama hoped to make between the two men must logically end there. The visions that they strived for were intrinsically, irreconcilably different.

---

[1] Massad, Joseph. The Persistence of the Palestinian Question. 2006. Pg. 98.

Interest > Values, Part 1: HOW America’s Foreign Policy Continues to Fail its People and its Victims

The New America Foundation recently hosted a debate between Douglas Ollivant and Joel Raybun entitled “Can we call Iraq a Success?” However, it quickly became clear that the definition of success had only one criterion: did the adventure serve America’s “national interest?”

At one point Peter Bergen, the moderator, asked the participants to give their perspective on how safe the country was—likely the most way an Iraqi might define such “success.” Ollivant declared that three rules ought to be followed for anyone that wants to stay safe in Iraq:

1. Don’t go to a Shia Mosque on Fridays or join in Shia religious processions (Bad news for a majority of the population)  
2. Don’t be a “moderate Sunni” (So… be an extremist?) 
3. Don’t stand near any member of Iraq’s security services (Ideally, the people paid to keep Iraqis safe.)

These rules would ordinarily indicate a sever failure, however Ollivant was the debater arguing that Iraq was indeed a success. The failure of the Iraqi state to create a decent, safe environment for its people isn't as critical to Iraq’s overall success  as defined by its return to the global market and its ability to frustrate Iran’s schemes. His opponent, Rayburn, was more explicit about how American interests are in danger in Iraq, rousing the specter of Iraq nationalizing its oil. One would think that as a matter of respecting a nation’s sovereignty and right to self-determination, this type of rhetoric would be a little more muted given the United States fractious history with opposition and resistance to nationalization efforts.

The issue of Iran loomed in the background of this debate, but it deserves to be brought to the fore here. In 1953 the CIA, collaborating with British intelligence and the Iranian Shah, annihilated the constitutional part of Iran’s constitutional monarchy. Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq was ousted after he nationalized Iran’s oil. Once the Shah was restored as an absolute monarch he began ruling as an absolute thug without the frustrations of popular leadership to frustrate him. Meanwhile British corporations were free to resume exploiting Iran’s natural resources, sharing the profits with the Shah and the Americans while cutting the Iranian people out of the deal as much as possible. After over two decades of authoritarian rule, the Iranian people overthrew the Shah in 1979 after which a fanatical regime came to power that was far more dangerous than the democratically elected, populist Mossadeq.

Assuming that in the short term depriving the Iranian people of democracy served America’s short-term national interest (dubious, at best), I don’t know of anyone serious who would say that this is true in the long-term.

The events that proceeded from the coup and the subsequent revolution tell of the shortcomings of American power beyond “blowback.”  Saddam Hussein immediately recognized that his old Persian rivals were weakened and saw the opportunity to not just oppress more Shiites, but also—of course—acquire Iran’s oil. Hussein was certainly power hungry, but the Iranians weren't wholly innocent either. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, fresh off of a successful revolution, began encouraging Shiites to rise up elsewhere in the region. Obviously this would make Hussein’s regime nervous, as a Sunni minority ruling over a Shiite majority, but it also made most of the other odious regimes in the region nervous. As it turns out it wasn't just Shiites in Iraq and Iran who were cursed with the rotten luck of having oil under their feet. Shiites in the Eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula were in the same boat; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq were countries with oil based economies, ruled by authoritarian Sunni regimes—and all were to some extent allied with the United States. To this day, the Gulf States typically oppress every member of their citizenry, but special, brutal attention is paid to their Shiite populations.

When Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, these Gulf States—while weary of Hussein’s ambitions—were wholly supportive of quelling these Shiite upstarts. The United States was as well.

Not only was the US still dealing with the hostage crisis, but Iran’s open support of an international Shiite uprising was making America’s oil-powered friends nervous. Throughout the Iran-Iraq war the United States materially supported both Iraq and Iran. The US considered Iran an obvious enemy and it was fully aware of Hussein’s broader, regional ambitions. Seeing the two states go to war was a foreign policy gift as the they would both likely end up distracted in the short term and weaker in the long run. US supported Iraq with detailed intelligence about Iranian troop positions, and had its allies in the region supply Iraq with American made weapons. The support to Iran was covert at the time, but the details are well known at this point, dramatized in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair where the profits from arms sales to Iran were used to fund the notorious contras in Nicaragua

The export of American made arms is directly related to the defense industry in America. When politicians talk about defense spending, they’re really talking about a specific type of jobs program or stimulus package. There’s no question that these transfers of arms serve to bolster America’s economy, particularly manufacturing jobs that in most every sector besides defense have been shipped overseas for the past few decades.

It’s not difficult to find out where these arms eventually end up.

Periods of conflict are lucrative boom seasons for war profiteers. The Iran-Iraq war was one such boom; the most terrible war the Middle East has ever seen, it lasted eight years and claimed over a million lives. Even when it became known that Iraq was using chemical weapons on civilian populations, the arms kept flowing. US politicians may have reeled at this revelation, but stopping the conflict wasn't explicitly in line with American interests.

But these boom seasons come and go. The regular recipients of America’s military hardware don’t use them on their neighbors; they typically use them on unruly populations under their sovereignty. This is especially true of the aforementioned Gulf States; barring North Korea, these regimes represent the most repressive regimes on the planet. The biggest recipient of US aid in the Middle East for the past few decades has been Israel, which has maintained a strict military occupation over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, not to mention recurring wars and occupations in Lebanon. Even with the advent of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s military aid has only gone up. Additionally the creation of the PA was essentially the creation of a new customer, receiving aid monies in the millions per annum. Stepping into the small spaces that Israel retreated from, the PA has picked up the same mantle of population control.

All of these ‘interests’—be they access to natural resources, arms sales, corporate interests, the interests of America’s allies—run absolutely counter to America’s mythology that it serves as a ‘force for good’ in the world. The notion that American power is a moral force that stands for democracy and peace directly contradicts the reality that the ‘national interest’ mentality has at times created.

American power is a force that deserves to be treated with respect and responsibility. The use, misuse, or disuse of that power can determine whether people live or whether they die, whether they live free or in bondage, in peace or in fear, in poverty or in prosperity. Americans cannot delude themselves by thinking that their own self-interest directly coincides with what might be good for the millions of people whose lives are at stake when American power manifests around the world. At best the concept of America’s national interest represents a naiveté of the purest form, one demonstrated by the most recent adventure into Iraq. At worst the concept represents a myopic worldview characterized by xenophobia, selfishness and neotribalism. In either case, the “national interest” ought to be critically reexamined, if not dismantled altogether.

A Tale of Two Cities in Palestine

On 11 January, a group of around fifty Palestinian activists created a village. Named Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun), it was comprised of about 25 tents including a clinic and an administrative center. Organized by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee in the West Bank, the activists planted the posts of their tents in the area that the Israeli government calls E-1.

Recently designated for construction, the construction of the E-1 settlement block would connect Israel’s settlements around East Jerusalem with Ma’ale Adumim, yet another settlement block that is constructed deep in the center of the West Bank. More than simply being illegal, as all Israeli settlements beyond the ‘Green Line’ are, the completion of the project would likely mean the annihilation of a viable Palestinian state and therefore a two-state solution. Its announcement has resulted in an irregular amount of outcry even from Israel’s closest European allies.

Under the Oslo Framework, the West Bank was divided into three different areas. In Area A—comprising the larger population centers and around 3% of the West Bank’s land—Palestinians have full administrative authority and are responsible for security. Palestinians are allowed to build in Area A within certain Israeli-imposed restrictions. Area B (25%) tends to make up the outlands of the populous cities of area A and includes smaller towns and villages and serves as a buffer between Areas  A and C. While it is under Palestinian administrative control, security responsibilities are shared with Israeli in these areas. Construction here is permitted only with express Israeli permission. Area C comprises the rest of the occupied West Bank—approximately 72% of the land. Under full Israeli authority, Palestinian construction here is completely forbidden, though illegal Israeli construction goes on with impunity.

Bab al-Shams was built in Area C.

The Israeli government’s first response to the village was to declare it a closed military zone and hand out eviction notices to the activists. This is a familiar method that Israel employs to dispossess Palestinian living in areas that Israel wishes to incorporate as part of its borders in a final status arrangement. The organizer’s of Bab al-Shams were prepared for this and were able to get an injunction from an Israeli court delaying the eviction order. The Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration was able to overturn the injunction by claiming to Israel’s High Court that there was a “pressing security need” to evacuate the nascent village. Approximately 48 hours after it was created, Bab al-Shams was vacant save for the few Israeli soldiers left behind to prevent Palestinians from returning.

The city of Rawabi tells a different story.

Rawabi is a billed as the first planned Palestinian city. While not directly involved the project falls well within the realm of Fayyad’s initiative of forging a Palestinian state with or without Israel’s permission. Funded by predominantly Qatari investors (like numerous construction projects in Hamas-controlled Gaza), Rawabi is estimated to cost near $1 billion upon its completion. Ground was broken in Rawabi in 2010, but the first residents of the city are projected to arrive sometime this year.

While Rawabi lies within Area A, it has not been immune from Israeli obstruction of different sorts. In order for construction to proceed smoothly, the Palestinians began with Israel as far back as 2010 about an access road part of which would run through Area C. As of today, the lack of such a road is still a problem, however the investment company and the workers have continued to build despite this hardship.

The residents of the nearby Israeli settlement, Atarot, are not thrilled about their new neighbors either. The access road desired by Palestinian builders runs, Israeli settlers say, too close to the road used by Atarot’s colonists. Aliza Herbst, spokeswoman for the Yesha Coucil expressed satisfaction at this turn of events, “I’m really glad the road is there to prevent them from building that city… and yay for us that we have established those communities so that the problem exists.”

More worrying than the predictable obstruction from certain parts of the Israeli government and the Yesha Council, are the criticisms coming from Palestinians activists. The harshest critics from this community come from quite notable sources like Electronic Intifada, the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions movement, and numerous local Palestinian groups that assert that the Rawabi project serves to normalize the occupation.

One op-ed referred to the Palestinian businessman in charge of Rawabi’s development, Bashar Masri, as a wakil, which the author chose to translate as ‘subcontractor’ but is more often used in reference to collaborators. There’s no doubt that a project of this size requires a large degree of, at the very least, cooperation with Israel, however the use of the term “collaborator” as often used in revolutionary vernacular is hyperbolic if not grotesque. It is estimated (quite conservatively I imagine) that Rawabi will add $85 million to the Israeli economy when all is said in done. Though there is a prohibition on buying products made in Israeli settlements, logistically, said one engineer, raw materials like cement powder and sand had to come from Israeli companies.

Yet another criticism ties into the neoliberal, “free market” aspects of Fayyad’s state building strategy, including the introduction of “Fannie Mae-style” mortgage institutions in order to allow more Palestinians to buy homes on credit and experience the joys of debt.

These two cities represent two very different modes of nonviolent resistance. The Palestinian elite in the West Bank are firmly committed to forging a society under the banner of Fayyadism within and in spite of the constraints placed upon it by the Israeli military occupation. The activists of the popular committees aim to defy those constraints.

Numerous authors, as well as the project’s developers, have admitted the tenuous nature of Rawabi. Though the project has been in planning since 2009, four years later basic questions of about the cities survival linger. Where will its water supply come from? How will a town with a capacity of 45,000 residents function without the abovementioned access road? What becomes of Rawabi in the event of more political turbulence: an Israeli re-occupation, Palestinian factional infighting?  None of these questions have clear answers. It is very much possible that Rawabi—an ambitious albeit controversial and thorny project—might be blown away and destroyed as easily as Bab al-Shams.

Then again, Bab al-Shams has hardly blown away. As the Israeli army was bulldozing the empty tents left by the grassroots activists, the Palestinian Authority created a village council for Bab al-Shams, cementing the Palestinian claim to the land. Moreover, the activists of the Popular Committee have continued to create new villages creating new points of contact with the Israeli occupation and exposing it more and more every Friday. From Bab al-Shams to Bab al-Karama to al-Manatir and most recently Canaan, activists continued to employ this tactic of confrontation.

The Rawabi model, while working within the constraints of the occupation and even in cooperation with its overseers, offers a high risk, high reward potential for Palestinians. The Bab al-Shams model, while it has yet to produce any tangible results for Palestinian society, represents a beacon of hope and defiance. Both, however, with all of their flaws and controversies are national endeavors expressing a deep yearning for self-determination.

In closing, one final point about these two models: the Rawabi model is inherently limited, both by the very real constraints imposed upon a Palestinian society whose every aspect is controlled by an occupying power and by the imaginary lines drawn up in the Oslo Accords. Area A’s meager allotment will inevitably run dry and Palestinian construction will cease or spill over into Area B or C. The Rawabi model, while perhaps ambitious, will inevitably intersect or be subsumed by the model presented at Bab al-Shams.

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Complicating the “Israel Lobby” and America’s Support for Israel

The Senate confirmation hearing for Chuck Hagel has temporarily revived the discussion (I won’t call it a debate) about the so-called Israel lobby. Stephen M. Walt and John Mearsheimer’s 2007 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has become a rallying point for critics of America’s relationship with Israel and its apparently unshakeable pillar of support, the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). It was no doubt a controversial work, and was accused of anti-semitism in more than one instance. However, I think such an accusation is unfounded. A more reasonable review of Walt and Mearsheimer’s work and the facts that surround American support for Israel lead one to conclude that rather than anti-semitism, this view is founded on laziness.

We should not discount that AIPAC has quite a bit of sway; after all they spent roughly $2.7 million during election year 2012. That’s substantial sum of money, but it pales in comparison to other more lucrative motivations for Washington’s support for Israel. For fiscal year 2012, “despite tough fiscal times” the US pledged $3 billion in foreign military financing (FMF) to Israel. FMF effectively functions as a gift card acceptable at any of America’s domestic defense contractors.

Here is where the heavy hitters of political lobbyists really enter into play.

The Apache helicopter, named after a near-eradicated indigenous population, is used without any sense of irony by the Israeli military and is produced by Boeing who in 2012 contributed over $15 million to the American democratic process. The Apache is normally outfitted with Hellfire missiles that Israel employs in its policy of “targeted killings;” these Hellfire missiles are manufactured by Lockheed-Martin, who spent another $15 million on political lobbying in 2012. These two pillars of the “defense industry” are by no means alone, but if isolate just these two they collectively outspend AIPAC ten times over.

Military spending is certainly a key factor in the decisions of policy-makers. Reuters reports that representatives of the industry in question are saying that as many as 100 million jobs could be lost as a result of cuts in defense spending. Moreover, military spending is regarded as a form of stimulus for the manufacturing sector of the US economy.

In short, if we’re focusing on lobbying power as measured by money spent (the most sensible measurement considering the current state of campaign finance), surely we can admit the corporate ideology of the arms industry factors in far more than the political ideology of the “Israel lobby.” The arms manufacturers and their lobbyists, purely as a function of maximizing profits, do not influence politicians toward a pro-Israeli or anti-Palestinian stance. They influence politicians simply toward militarism and support for militarism under the familiar buzzwords of “security” and “stability.”

I am a staunch opponent of Israeli policy, but it’s simply dishonest to suggest that America’s relationship with Israel exists because, in Hagel’s words, “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people.”  No one talks about the strength of the Egyptian lobby or the Saudi lobby or any of the other contemptible allies that America supports with military assistance and sales; this is because the influence of the arms industry is endemic beyond the reach of relatively minor political action committees like AIPAC.

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