Dec 21, 2002 Op Eds

December 2002 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

Two items in the news of late illustrate just how much work the US government has got to do in selling its “war on terrorism” as a legitimate campaign of self-defense rather than a sinister “crusade” against Arabs and Muslims. For weeks Washington has been peddling a documentary film designed to be aired in the Islamic world as a means of demonstrating how well Muslims are treated in places like Ohio. Now this self-congratulatory exercise has been juxtaposed with reports that hundreds (and possibly thousands) of Muslims have been taken into custody in California. The contrast is fine fodder to America’s critics, but it should also be deeply worrisome to Americans themselves.
Like any other country, the United States has every right to protect itself, and the terrible tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, have justifiably resulted in more robust attempts to do just that. In addition, many of the people rounded up in California may well be guilty of overstaying their visas or some other violation of US immigration rules; some might even be outright terrorists. None of this warrants what amount to mass arrests, however, especially when the vast majority of those now in custody were detained in the very act of complying with a new regulation. It is one thing to ask all males over 16 from a slew of Muslim countries to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but it is quite another to treat them like a fifth column when they do so.
The detainees in California, most of them apparently of Iranian origins, are allegedly being held in shocking conditions. Some have reportedly been strip-searched, hosed down with cold water, handcuffed and shackled, and forced to sleep on concrete floors or standing up in overcrowded cells.
The entire sordid affair smacks of ploys that police forces use to apprehend dangerous criminals who have made themselves fugitives from justice. Even more alarmingly, it also echoes the ugly days of World War II, when the US government interned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans. That episode is not something of which Americans are proud, but there is a very real risk of succumbing to the same paranoia today.
The United States is not a great country because it has 13 full-size aircraft carriers capable of projecting power in every corner of the world or because its $10 trillion economy accounts for at least 20 percent of global output. These are mere byproducts of the qualities that have made America what it is: genuine freedoms backed by the rule of law. The US record is certainly not perfect, but by and large it has been one of near-constant progress. While it is difficult to argue with success, though, it is also all-too easy to let complacency undermine essential principles. This is not to mention the corrosive effect on Washington’s credibility when it boasts of how well it treats Muslims at home or seeks the support of their leaders abroad.
Some will say that taking Washington to task over this issue relies on a standard that most of the world’s countries could not possibly meet. Dozens of regimes, they will argue, commit far more grievous human rights abuses as a matter of course. They will be right. But since when have Americans been satisfied with being freer than North Koreans?

INS action against Muslim residents of Californian
Arab News, 21 December 2002
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It is hard not to sympathize with the hundreds of Muslims living in California who were arrested after they went to register, as newly required by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). These individuals — estimated by immigration lawyers to be between 1,000 and 2,500 — obeyed the summons and were carted off to prison as a result.

The American Civil Liberties Union has likened the INS behavior to the wartime incarceration of all ethnic Japanese. There have been understandable complaints that these measures are part of a wider targeting of Muslims living in the US, even those who have long been naturalized and are loyal US citizens. California Democratic Congresswoman Jan Harmon has called the action “legal entrapment”. The southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and eight other groups including the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Progressive Jewish Alliance have demanded that the scheme be scrapped, or deadlines extended.

However, it is important to inject a little perspective into what has happened. There certainly is a wave of anti-Middle East and anti-Muslim sentiment in America. But to put down every action that causes trouble to them to ethnic hate is to refuse to see the reality. Such refusal would mean a refusal to look at the reasons that contributed to the present situation.

The majority of those detained by the INS are suspected of being in violation of visa rules. California is packed with people from all over the world and of every religion, who have overstayed tourist visas and are working illegally. It is the misfortune of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria that they are from the first Muslim states to be required to register.

If, upon showing up at an INS office, a Muslim visitor is found to be in violation of his visa, then what are the authorities supposed to do? All states have immigration rules. Those who choose to disobey them must anticipate that if they are caught, they can expect punishment. Many of those who checked in with the INS last week knew they were illegals but probably hoped that there would be some provision, some official bending of the rules that would allow them to stay. As it turned out, there was no such thing.

However, the US authorities can be faulted for the manner in which they set about this exercise. The INS is very well-informed on the tens of thousands of foreigners who exist in the shadows of the Californian economy without proper papers. Indeed, it has been speculated that this body of “illegals”, generally working for the lowest wages, performs an important economic role. They must have known that the registration process would throw up hundreds of visa violations. They could therefore have made provisions for the violators to be treated with more dignity and humanity. Lawyers say that they are being shuttled round centers in prison buses, shackled and in handcuffs, as the system creaks under the strain. There are reports that men were forced to sleep standing up, or on concrete floors with no blankets. Some had been hosed down with cold water.

At the very least, the behavior of the INS is going to cause illegals from other countries to think twice when it is their turn to report for registration. The authorities may therefore have defeated the very objective they were seeking to pursue.

All the news that's fit to print, except unfavorable news about Israel
By Raff Ellis
Al-Jazeerah, 12/21/02

Everyone knows the above popular slogan, slightly modified of course, belongs to a major national newspaper. In today's world, such slogans have become entirely meaningless and are as hollow as the sound you get banging on an empty oil drum. Equally meaningless are the names of newspapers, which in yesteryear were meant to signify integrity in news reporting. The herald, tribune, sentinel, beacon, chronicle, etc. are names associated with the ancient tradition of information gathering and distribution. Sadly, that tradition has fallen victim to the corporate and political manipulation that has rendered unbiased reporting obsolete.

In today's world the information dissemination business operates like a pretzel factory where the stories are twisted, formed, sprinkled with the salt of bias and baked into a palatable product for consumption by an increasingly gullible public. The resulting "news" is meant to taste good and to be consumed without question.

Although examples of bias run across the spectrum of special interests, the most egregious examples come from the treatment of news about the Middle East. Criticizing the state of Israel is not good policy in America, either for newsmen or politicians. Therefore, the best examples of media bias come from the lack of coverage of bad acts. Here's a sampling of the accounts you missed.

Item 1. United Nations relief workers in Afghanistan were summarily shot by government troops as they awaited transport to their billets. The soldiers ordered the workers to kneel down and face the ground, then unexpectedly showered them with a barrage of bullets, killing seven and wounding many others. What! Oops, my mistake. It wasn't UN workers and Afghanis; it was Palestinian workers in Rishon Lezion of the West Bank shot by Israeli soldiers on May 20, 1990, as they awaited transport to Gaza.

Item 2. Jewish men in Basra, Iraq, were stripped naked at gunpoint in the street and forced to walk home in utter humiliation while their friends and relatives looked on. You guessed it. It wasn't in Iraq but in the West Bank city of Nablus on November 24, 2002 where Palestinian men were forced to undress by Israeli soldiers. "They forced Yasser Sharaf, 25, to take off all his clothes including his underwear...They ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears," Palestinian fireman Samir el Lifdawi said of one of the men. To compound the humiliation, a Reuters photographer recorded the scene.

Item 3. The former chief mufti in Saudi Arabia openly advocated a 'Final Solution' to annihilate the Jews. Speaking at the widely broadcast sermon marking the end of Ramadan, he declared of the Jews: "Allah shall return their deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable." You guessed it; I did it again. The reason you never read this shocking and provocative story is that it happened in Israel and it was former chief rabbi Ovadia Yossef, who is also a founder and spiritual leader of the religious Shas party (Israel's third largest political party). He made these remarks in a speech marking the end of the Passover fast, openly advocating a 'Final Solution' to annihilate the Palestinians.

Item 4. Egyptian troops invaded the Jewish quarter of Cairo and desecrated the Hebrew temple by blowing up the entrance, causing serious damage to the structure. After entering, they defecated and urinated inside the temple, arresting the rabbi and the cantor before leaving the premises. You're catching on; it didn't happen in Egypt but in Jenin and Dura, Palestine, and it was Israeli soldiers and a mosque, not a Jewish temple. The opprobrious behavior occurred in Jenin on 24 November 2002, and in Dura on 25 September 2002. In Jenin, Israeli soldiers blew up the entrance to the mosque and then entered without taking their boots off, tore up religious texts and arrested the imam and muezzin (caller of prayer) before leaving the premises. In Dura, the Israeli troops urinated and defecated inside the Mosque and placed the Israeli flag atop the building's minaret.

Had these stories been atrocities against Jews or Israelis instead of Palestinians or Arabs, the headlines would have screamed out at us. The President and various congressmen would have loudly and subserviently condemned such acts, and I guarantee it wouldn't have been with the mild rebukes we've heard such as, "It was a bit heavy handed."

I could continue with a lengthy rendition of the many atrocities, including rape and robbery, in addition to wanton murder by Israelis that go undocumented in the American press. Israel's supporters don't like this kind of publicity and do all in their power to suppress their publication. The media, in order to keep up its unflinching support for Israel, continue to portray the occupiers as the underdog, struggling to survive against the Moslem hordes of Arabia. They are a democracy after all and couldn't possibly behave in such a reprehensible fashion, could they?

In addition to the non-reporting of actual events, we see an irresponsible penchant for reporting non-events from so-called "credible sources," which, of course, remain anonymous. Recent examples include reports that Al Qaeda is setting up terrorist cells in the West Bank. This intelligence was attributed to an e-mail message reportedly sent by an Al Qaeda operative and validated by none other than Israel's prime minister, who, by the way, has no vested interest in having that rumor widely circulated. Of course, after having been slammed, spammed and spoofed, we all know how tough it is to fabricate bogus Internet messages. Only later did we find, from foreign sources of course, that Mossad agents have been recruiting people to set up such cells.

Another example is Canada's recent decision to place Hizbullah on its terrorist list based largely on the report that that group's leader had issued a call for suicide bombings around the world against both American and Israeli interests. A reporter in England, who has been previously implicated in filing false stories, fabricated this startling report. The fact that Hizbullah's leader never said this hasn't made the rounds yet.

Of course, once the canard takes wing, it's almost impossible to undo the damage. Disinformation from news media is so rampant today that the journalistic standard of verifying sources has gone out the window.

The irony is that many of these events are reported or discussed in the Israeli press but can't seem to make it across the ocean into U.S. newsrooms. The man on the street in America is generally unaware of these happenings and, if our esteemed news organizations get their wish, he will remain that way.

All the news that's fit to print. Indeed.

[Raff Ellis lives in the United States and is a retired former strategic planner and computer industry executive. He has had an abiding and active interest in the Middle East since early adulthood and has traveled to the region many times over the last 30 years.]

Raff Ellis encourages your comments: rellis@YellowTimes.org

America's liberals: What went wrong?

By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org,

Al-Jazeerah, 12/21/02

You might think from the way the progressive press laments Al Gore's decision not to run for President again that there had been a genuine loss to liberalism in America.

But that's not quite the way I see it. Although few candidates ever came better groomed for high office than Mr. Gore, it is his performance in the 2000 presidential election that must be lamented.

Yes, he won the popular vote - teaching a new generation of Americans that being elected is no guarantee of winning under the arcane and anti-democratic provisions of America's 18th century Constitution. But with an opponent like George Bush, Mr. Gore should have won that vote by a large enough margin to make the entire business of Florida and the Supreme Court irrelevant. He should have, as they used to say, "mopped the floor with" an opponent as inarticulate, unimaginative, and with such a questionable background as Mr. Bush. But he didn't.

I remember, once or twice, hearing some tough words from Mr. Gore and thinking perhaps he had found his voice, only to be quickly disillusioned over the next day or two. Well, what could you expect from someone who chose to open his campaign by speaking about family values?

My God, we'd had an earful of that tired, insincere, and exploitative theme from Republicans over the previous couple of decades. You might say Mr. Clinton's impeachment was the family values impeachment, spearheaded, as it was, by a Republican leader who was sleeping with a staff member and a gross, pompous old phony who used to go nightclubbing with someone else's wife.

I know some will say the impeachment was about honesty, but, please, where is there recorded a single honest word from Gingrich, Hyde, Thurmond, Helms, Armey, DeLay, or Gramm?

Of course, apart from being the phony family values impeachment, it was an embarrassing demonstration of incompetence. All that massive effort and expense without so much as having taken a head count on the likelihood of success?

Mr. Gore's ineffectual campaign never touched this claptrap and hypocrisy. He was afraid to do so, even though he had a record as one of the straightest arrows in Washington. He simply ignored a massive, steaming heap of garbage that had been left on America's front lawn in Washington. Yet, he managed to blame Mr. Clinton for his loss.

It is with no regret whatever that I wave goodbye to Mr. Gore, not that I believe there is another at-all-likely candidate of any real merit waiting for his or her chance. (Note: I include her despite knowing that over vast stretches of America this is as grievous an error as denying the self-evident truth that all women should wear frilly aprons and bake cookies, a la Tipper. She won't be missed either. Is there not something hopeless in that ridiculous nickname for a middle-aged person?)

Now we have Mr. Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond. Suddenly, there is a deluge of articles and comments about how terrible his words were, about how Republicans are in bed with racists. Well, Mr. Lott has a very long record, and Mr. Thurmond has an even longer one. The greatest disgrace concerning these men is that a large body of Americans has voted repeatedly over decades to keep them in high office. Perhaps, most ridiculous of all, American liberals seem to forget that Mr. Thurmond started as a Southern Democrat.

In the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt prodded the great Franklin to speak against the horrible lynchings of black people in the South, but the President felt that politics would not permit this. Southern Democrats were a key part of his political coalition, and Southern Democrats were segregationists, and far worse in a number of cases. So Franklin kept quiet on lynching, and, in some southern states, lynchings continued to be occasions for family picnics. I can't resist pointing out the historic family values connection here.

The evolution of the contemporary "southern strategy" in American presidential elections is based on little more than the fact that the same people who used to be Southern Democrats (the Republican party having become anathema in the south for more than a century after Mr. Lincoln's "evil" Civil War) switched to being Republicans after the Civil Rights movement and Mr. Johnson's "evil" voting rights legislation of the 1960s. Such is the slow path of progress.

Poor Trent forgot himself and will now likely pay the price. Neanderthal Republican hacks like columnist Jeff Jacoby already have the kettle to the boil for rendering Lott's hide, a fact which should alert us that some deeper political reason lies behind these rare Republican chest thumping displays over principles of decency. Again, I will wave goodbye with not a twinge of regret, although sure in the knowledge that no better person waits to take his place. I can't help feeling scorn over American liberals' satisfaction at Lott's pathetic statement - pathetic, that is, when weighed in a balance against a lifetime's work in the cause of backwardness and stupidity.

Of course, thanks in part to Mr. Gore, we now have a President for whom competence is not even an issue. He is the first Disney World-diorama President, capable only of looking as though his plastic coated, mechanical jaw actually makes the sounds coming from his computer chips. He has earned a place in history though, having demonstrated that the presidency itself is now a Constitutional institution of questionable relevance. The druid-priests to imperial plutocracy who scurry around the White House keeping his servomotors running and downloading new sound bites onto his chips - the creatures actually now running America - could do just as well or badly if the Bush display were packed up and stored away in the Smithsonian's basement.

Perhaps most pathetic is American liberals' constant looking to the Democratic Party as savior. Many progressive sites on the Internet display counters with the number of days remaining in Bush's term. "Excuse me!" as many Americans annoyingly say when making a rude point, but are we talking about the same Democratic Party that has not said a word about mistreatment of prisoners, torture, and murder since 9/11?

Mr. Clinton's foreign policy, while lacking the Appalachian-throwback character of Mr. Bush's, was often belligerent, often badly conceived, and largely reflected the same set of interests. Dare I also mention Mr. Johnson launching into what was to become the holocaust of Vietnam? Or the charming Mr. Kennedy trying repeatedly to assassinate Mr. Castro, beginning the flow of troops to Vietnam, creating the corps of professional thugs called the Green Berets, and nearly engulfing the world in nuclear war? Or Mr. Truman's dangerous fiasco in Korea? The same jingoistic, imperialist impulse remains dominant.

But I suppose there is relief in longing for a friendlier face like Mr. Clinton's. That way you can feel a whole lot better about what is going on. And it still will go on, no matter whether Bush remains or not.

From the world's point of view, there is actually some painful merit in Bush's holding office. I believe already, without the President's crowd fully realizing what they've done, forces have been set in motion for historic realignments in international affairs. Bush's Texas-barbecue-and-lethal-injection crowd is driving all civilized nations on the planet to reconsider aspects of their relationship with the United States, something that likely will have profound consequences over the next few decades.

John Chuckman encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org

Palestinian society plunked between a rock and a hard place

By Abdeljabbar Adwan

The Daily Star, 12/21/02

The Palestinians’ friends ask them to do certain things, while their enemies warn them of doing others. In the meantime, the Palestinians’ enemies threaten to punish them for actions undertaken by one individual with the support of no more than a dozen others …
These, unfortunately, are all different aspects of the skewed view of Palestinian society as a society that can be led unquestioningly by a single viewpoint. In other words, both the Palestinians’ friends and enemies perceive them as a monolithic whole a dictatorship that obeys the words of a single leader.
The fact of the matter is that Palestinian society is extremely politicized, which makes it full of different (and often contradictory) political and logistical ideas on how to conduct the struggle with Israel. In addition, Israel’s success in using violence to found a nation and disperse the Palestinian people has caused a certain sector of Palestinian society to copy it blindly. Moreover, many Palestinians have despaired of the very idea of peace, thanks to 50 years of betrayal and treachery by the Great Powers.
For example, it is not at all correct to say (as Israel maintains) that Yasser Arafat could prevent suicide attacks from taking place. Israel even holds Arafat responsible for attacks carried out by Hamas and then emasculates the very Palestinian security force it expects to prevent such attacks from taking place. These suicide bombings or shootings are usually followed by a regime of collective punishment against all Palestinians, which includes blockades, curfews and armed strikes targeting children. All this to avenge acts of resistance carried out against Israelis (both in the Occupied Territories or in 1967 Israel) that were not planned and perhaps not even supported by the victims of “Israeli retaliation.”
On the other hand, we have the Palestinians’ so-called friends demanding that they adopt a unified position and a single program of action. These demands are not directed at the majority of Palestinians; no, all Palestinians are asked to adopt a single position, since they all have been suffering. These demands ignore the fact that different human beings perceive things differently. In fact, because of their traumatic history, the Palestinians are less likely than other peoples to agree to adopt unified positions.
In politically stable countries, there are almost no differences between major parties. Palestinians, Israelis, Indians, and other peoples living in areas of tension express amazement at the noisy political arguments that go on in the US, Britain, Germany, and other stable societies that believe they have problems. If these societies realized what others are going through, they would see how trivial their own problems are.
There are many Palestinian factions and movements, with different and sometimes clashing ideologies and outlooks. Each of these has its own outside connections with sides hostile to each other. Even when most Palestinian factions were united under the PLO umbrella, not all Palestinians agreed with the course pursued by the organization. Not many people recognize that the sum total of supporters of all religious, secular, leftist, and anarchist movements is barely more than a quarter of the Palestinian people. Yet this is what opinion polls and the only election held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip tell us.
In contrast to other democracies, the
Palestinians cannot hold free elections
under occupation and in exile. That was
why armed factions which usually represent people of average intelligence always had the upper hand.
Under pressure from friend and foe alike, the Palestinians tried over the whole of last year to unite. Major Palestinian factions held many meetings, most recently last October in Cairo when Fatah and Hamas met under Egyptian stewardship. Yet these meetings all failed to produce an agreement, since circumstances on the ground had not changed.
Hamas like Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party rejects the Oslo Accords, and is not prepared to pursue their path. By contrast, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front are prepared to accept a just peace that restores the territories occupied in 1967 to the Palestinian people and ensures the establishment of a Palestinian state that would negotiate outstanding issues with Israel. Fatah, meanwhile, is split, with supporters of both points of view among its ranks. All these parties have Arab and Muslim connections that differ among themselves regarding the best way to settle the conflict.
What further complicates matters is Israel’s deliberate policy of pouring fuel on the fire whenever the situation calms down. This, together with the absence of international agreement on the shape of a political settlement, allows each party to believe that it can realize all its aims with no need for compromise.
As a matter of fact, Sharon wants the situation to remain tense in order to enhance his election chances. He wants to further radicalize Palestinian society and encourage feelings of revenge among Palestinians so as to destroy the Palestinians’ quest for democracy and the chances for holding Palestinian elections.
On the other hand, Hamas does not distinguish between the Likud and Labor. Given the choice, Hamas would prefer to see Sharon remain in office so that he can complete the process of dismantling the peace process (which it believes offers too many concessions to Israel).
American and Israeli conditions for resuming the peace process (essentially anti-Hamas) cannot be fulfilled by Arafat precisely because of the situation created by Israel. By its hostility to any chance for peace, attacks on Palestinian security forces, destruction of the Palestinian economy and making intolerable the lives of ordinary people, Israel has played into Hamas’ hands and has diminished Arafat’s ability to influence events.
Palestinian politics is in need of a combination of factors that are extremely difficult to assemble: regular elections free of the shackles of Israeli occupation, and guarantees of a peaceful settlement under UN supervision that would protect each side from the other, punishing transgressors but without resort to collective punishment.
Only through such a combination of measures can radical forces opposed to peace on both sides be marginalized. In other words, there is a role for the international community to play. The United States cannot go on arming and bankrolling one side, not pressing for peace, and feigning neutrality, and then expect to escape the consequences of such a policy.

Abdeljabbar Adwan is a Palestinian analyst.

Could the Iranian revolution die on its feet?

By Joseph Samaha

The Daily Star, 12/21/02

The beating of war drums in the Gulf could have been expected to calm the passions of the feuding parties in Iran. But nothing of the sort has occurred. Indeed, the opposite may be happening, as every “minor” problem a court sentence against an individual, for example rapidly develops into an issue that brings the fate of the whole regime into question. And as Iran becomes increasingly polarized, the forces capable of containing crises and confrontations by brokering short-term accommodations grow weaker.
The big news is that civil society is showing tremendous dynamism. But the bad news is that this dynamism, which expressed itself in successive elections, is prevented from translating into policy. And it is being subjected to attempts to curb it, which make simmering tensions liable to explode at any moment.
The scenes on the streets and in the universities give the impression that elections were never held in Iran, and that they never produced a majority and a minority. The balance of power in the Majlis (Parliament) has been offset by recourse to the country’s intricate constitution. But offsetting the balance doesn’t annul the conflict. So the confrontation has moved outside the legislative institutions, where “numbers” cease to be decisive and things are no longer subject to a vote by MPs.
The parliamentary majority lacks organizational capacity on the street. Its grassroots are mobilized, but not regimented in a manner that enables them to wage a potentially violent conflict. This current also lacks credible leadership. Its leaders are no match for the Old Guard, especially when the latter are supported by the Revolutionary Guards. More importantly, these forces don’t have a common and clear program. Outwardly, they appear willing to respect the principle of velayet-e-faqih, the theoretical underpinning of the regime. But they provoke doubts about that by challenging the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Many observers agree that a greater part within this majority has come to espouse views that the Islamic Republic cannot tolerate if it wants to remain Islamic. Making them public would foment a radical split and risk all-out conflict. But keeping them under wraps weakens the capacity of the “reformists” to mobilize, and makes it unclear into what future they want to lead Iran.
In contrast, the parliamentary minority enjoys the support on the streets of well-organized groups with clear goals. The said parliamentary minority can also hide behind the judiciary in order to appear to be upholding inviolable decisions. And it can identify with the supreme leader, on whom the constitution confers powers unmatched in any other parliamentary system. Moreover, these forces have a strong interest in escalating any confrontation, as they feel capable of settling the conflict violently and preventing things from getting completely out of their control.
But while the balance on the streets differs from the balance inside the Majlis, it does not override it. The minority remains a minority, and that prompts it to play a more cautious game, as resorting to naked repression would turn it into an even smaller minority as successive elections have demonstrated.
The continuing relationship between Khamenei and President Mohammed Khatami is the safety valve in the current Iranian situation. But the notion that the two men hold the keys to the game and control it is inaccurate.
Khamenei is a genuine leader of his followers. He doesn’t become suspect in their eyes when he makes calculated climbdowns. The reason for that is simple. The battle the conservatives are waging is founded on the concept of the supreme leader’s infallibility. Violating that principle would destroy their legitimacy completely. That gives Khamenei room for maneuver, as his followers cannot do without him. Without his cover, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij would be reduced to mere militias, which could be infiltrated and paralyzed by the splits in society.
It is Khatami who is in a difficult position. It’s not clear whether he is the most reformist of the conservatives or the most conservative of the reformists. He can’t go along with his voters’ wishes to the end, both because he might not believe in them, and because he is conscious of the cold calculations of the balance of power. When he appeases, he seems to betray the trust that millions placed in him. And when he escalates, he seems to break the rules of the game under which he reached the office of president. One can be sure that his popular power base wants more than he is delivering, and that the genuine reform that his voters demand may leave no place for him in the future.
The Mikhail Gorbachev syndrome haunts Khatami. His attempt at partial reform led to a wholesale change in the structure of the regime and resulted in the dismantling of the party, the state and the bloc, as forces unleashed by perestroika pressed for a radical overhaul. It’s not clear who might become Iran’s Boris Yeltsin, but what is happening there makes it legitimate to wonder whether the regime can develop from within. Messing with velayet-e-faqih in Iran could have the same outcome as messing with the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat did in the former Soviet Union.
Saying that the war drums have failed to pacify the internal conflict doesn’t go far enough. One must bear in mind that the all-but-declared policy of the United States is that Iran is the next target after Iraq. Indeed, if Baghdad succeeds in avoiding war by complying fully with UN inspections, change in Iran might be brought to the top of the US agenda. That, incidentally, is the order of priorities which Israel favors and has long lobbied for.
The threats Washington issues against Tehran certainly seem to have a role in intensifying Iran’s internal conflicts. One could go further and suggest that we are witnessing a kind of bidding process by the major currents in Iran over the terms of the relationship with the US. The main issue is not the fate of the country’s frozen assets or its weapons programs, or its attitude to the Middle East crisis, but how it might behave in the event of war on Iraq.
It could be argued that Iranian attitudes in this regard are highly ambiguous. But the ambiguity is telling. While acting as if they are counting on a stake in the new Iraq, the rival groups in Iran are in reality looking to do deals with the US administration concerning their position in Iran proper. They behave as though they are waging a battle of self-defense on the Iraqi front lines. But Washington may not care for either of the two leading currents engaged in the struggle, who oppose each other while agreeing not to tamper with the brass tacks of the Islamic Republic.
Washington is entitled to hope that its pressure leads to a Soviet-style transformation, given that the Iranian people increasingly favor a positive relationship with the United States. For America has something in Iran that it lacks in Iraq: a home-based opposition apt to build its pro-American preferences on a foundation of assured public support.
This may entail harsh measures, but so would freezing the status quo or turning the clock back. The Iranian revolution as Imam Khomeini wanted it is no more and the Islamic state as we have known it is in trouble. There’s nothing to prevent what happens in nature from happening in Iran: sometimes, trees die while still standing.

Joseph Samaha, editor in chief of the Beirut daily As-Safir

The ebb and flow of Israeli extremism

By Muna Shuqair

The Daily Star

In Israel, moderation and extremism are not usually determined by ideological considerations. Most Israeli politicians alternate between extremism and moderation depending on their positions in government and their determination to maintain these positions for as long as possible.
On the other hand, the small numbers of Israeli politicians who adopt fixed positions under all circumstances are ideologically motivated either religiously or politically to do so.
Yitzhak Rabin, for example, is still deemed to have been a man of peace. Many Israelis and Palestinians (including Yasser Arafat) still praise Rabin for his ability and readiness to make peace; they lament his demise because he was the more important partner in the Oslo peace process.
Yet was it not Rabin who instructed Israeli soldiers to “break the bones” of Palestinian stone throwers in the first intifada? Rabin the hard-liner, however, subsequently metamorphosed into a political moderate who agreed to the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian areas and thus became one of the symbols of peace in the region.
This example shows how Israeli politicians move from moderation to extremism and vice-versa depending on the general mood in the country, and according to how extreme their opponents are. This type of behavior is not restricted to rivalries between political parties; it extends to competitions within parties as well. In the recent leadership battle in the Likud primaries between Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the latter who used to project himself as a statesman who could lead negotiations with the Palestinians tried to outflank Sharon by calling for tougher measures against the Palestinians.
Political office brings with it certain responsibilities. Moreover, US pressure is usually effective in softening the positions of Israeli hawks once they assume office, making them realize that they have to demonstrate a degree of flexibility and make concessions (which they know will remain theoretical under prevailing political circumstances).
But how will this trend of hardening attitudes reflect on the next Israeli Knesset?
In the recent Likud internal elections, Netanyahu loyalists made significant gains. Opinion polls show that the Likud will win at least 38 out of 120 Knesset seats in the Jan. 28 elections, while Labor will only get 20.
This means that despite winning more mandates than it has in the current Parliament, the Likud will still be unable to form the next government on its own; it will still have to share power with other parties. Yet in the light of Labor leader Amram Mitzna’s refusal to take part in a coalition government unless Sharon moderates its guidelines, the Likud leader has to choose between doing Mitzna’s bidding in order to be able to form a Likud-Labor coalition, or try to form a coalition of far-right and religious parties, which will expose him to political blackmail. In this case, Sharon will have to adopt even more hard-line policies.
Israeli society has been adopting increasingly forceful positions for at least 10 years. The Israeli right has been making steady inroads thanks to several factors, including the first Palestinian intifada, the militarization of the second intifada, Palestinian suicide bombings, and international consensus on the need for an independent Palestinian state.
Moreover, because of the fluctuation between moderation and extremism at all party levels, there are no discernible differences between the Likud and Labor anymore. This was why Labor’s Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer joined Sharon’s Likud-led government, and why a center-right Likudnik could be more relevant to the peace process than a center-right Labor leader.
Another new development in Israeli politics has been the emergence of conflicting positions within political parties. Labor, realizing that it had become nothing more than a poor imitation of Likud, chose Mitzna as leader in an effort to regain its lost identity.
No party, however, can change the public mood in Israel; the situation is the other way round, as a matter of fact, with parties having to go along with the political climate prevalent in society which in turn is influenced by regional and domestic factors.
More extremism on the part of Israeli politicians will minimize the chances for making concessions and consequently minimize the possibilities for peace with the Palestinians.
The competition among Israeli political parties for ever more extremism has compounded the marginalization of Israel’s peace camp, already weakened by the hardening mood of society. For the peace camp to witness any sort of revival, moderate policies have to make a comeback. This will take a long time during which it must be shown that the religious and political right is unable to achieve security for Israel, and that only peace could do that. Only when ordinary Israelis realize that the right has been unable to achieve anything for them can the forces of moderation rise once again.

Muna Shuqair, a Jordanian political writer

Canada nervous as Iraqi endgame nears
By Nihal Kaneira | Gulf News, 21-12-2002

On the face of it, at least, there is a sense of inevitability about it. U.S. President George W. Bush, not finding the 'smoking gun' he was looking for in the 12,000-page Iraqi declaration, is rattling his sabres and flexing muscles again.

The Iraqi report has just been branded a sham, and its prohibited weapons list 'inaccurate and incomplete,' and in violation of the demand in the United Nations Security Council resolution 1441.

The president claims U.S. intelligence knows better, has evidence as to where the Iraqi President Saddam Hussain has stashed them.

But instead of laying them out on the table and allowing the UN weapons inspectors to go and locate the weapons not included in the declaration, Bush is indicating that his administration wants to orchestrate the search strategy from now on, direct UN inspectors to places in Iraq where they may be able to find the elusive nuclear, chemical and biological stockpiles that would prove Saddam to be a liar and a cheat.

Diplomatic offensive

To drive home the point that he means business, Bush is about to make another important speech, demanding UN Security Council action. He has also started pre-positioning the U.S. military forces throughout the Middle East and has launched a high-pressure diplomatic offensive to secure support for a military coalition against Iraq.

A team of senior U.S. diplomats and defence experts are now circling the globe, visiting 51 countries, including Canada, soliciting commitments to go to war, if Baghdad fails to fully comply next time round.

Does this mean this is the start of the endgame, the countdown to another war in the Gulf? Or, is this more pressure being applied on Saddam to see whether he is ready to blink? Whatever the case, the aggressive U.S. approach is making everyone nervous.

Canadians included. Ottawa is once again under intense pressure to make up its mind about what to do on Iraq. Leaders here are having trouble deciding on a coherent Iraqi policy that would satisfy the Washington because most Canadians are still firmly against Canada going to war in Iraq.

As they see it, the Bush administration is in too much of a haste to invade Iraq. Americans are more interested in unearthing a 'smoking gun' for this purpose in order to oust Saddam than getting rid of any weapons of mass destructions.

The new demand for a more stringent weapons strategy is designed to goad Baghdad into resisting, push the Iraqi leader further against the wall and provoke him into doing something foolish. So that U.S. can use that as the pretext for launching the long-planned invasion.

Most Canadians are ready to give Bush the benefit of doubt, that his almost paranoid fear of another September 11-type terrorist attack is driving this aggressive policy.

But this indecent haste with which Washington is pursuing this policy is making them apprehensive, question U.S. motives in Iraq.

Why not give the evidence that U.S. has to the UN arms inspectors? What try to ram rod them into searches without respecting Iraqi sovereignty, their traditions, their customs? Why humiliate a whole nation just because the powers that be in Washington can't seem to get over the fear that the next terrorist attack on the United States would be a chemical, biological or a nuclear weapon made in Saddam's Iraq.

Most Canadians also cannot understand the U.S. opposition to giving Baghdad a second chance to correct any errors or omissions on its weapons list, if it has made such omissions. No second chance for Iraq, said presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, this week. "It is too late for any amendments. This was Iraq's last chance to inform the world in an accurate, complete and full way about its arsenal."

From a Canadian perspective, such hard-nosed positions are making the U.S. look arrogant and conceited, and they recoil from wanting any part of it. To government leaders it seems ludicrous why the White House should hesitate to pass on any information it has about any hidden Iraqi arsenal to the UN weapons inspectors if such information can play a pivotal role in deciding whether another war in the Gulf can be avoided.

In their eyes, the new weapons regime, mandated by the UN last month, seems effective enough to do the job, provided the UN weapons inspection team is given a reasonable amount of time.

Iraqis have co-operated and the inspections so far have not led to any confrontations like in the 1990s. Even the Iraq's monitoring directorate has praised the new inspectors for their 'professionalism' and the respect they have shown for Iraqi tradition and values.

"It seems that things are now engaged, and have gone well so far," says Ron Cleminson, a Canadian former weapons inspector and member of a UN expert advisory group. "The inspectors are getting a degree of co-operation from Iraqis with no real glitches."

Message

As a result, Cleminson believes the inspectors are in a much better position this time round to detect discrepancies more quickly. But the message coming out of Washington is increasingly negative and increasingly bellicose, which makes the task of unearthing any prohibited weapons doubly harder and Iraqis twice as more nervous.

According to an Arab diplomat in Ottawa, no one can be sure about what happens next, but the reluctance on the part of Bush administration to give a free hand to the arms inspectors or put out the evidence against Iraq, like President John F. Kennedy did when the former Soviet Union denied it had any missile batteries installed in Cuba in 1961, showed that White House is more interested in a confrontation with Saddam than resolving this conflict peacefully.

"Maybe they have evidence," the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "Maybe they don't. We don't know one or the other for certain. But one thing is clear. The White House seems to feel time is running out and has decided to push the envelope. The question is whether the other Security Council members would go along?

"Or, is this all more muscle flexing designed to tighten the screws on Saddam one more notch to see if he is ready to blink?"

The world will know soon enough. Bush officials are due to complete its analysis of Iraq's long declaration and take the contradictory evidence to the Security Council, perhaps to get the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to go after the hidden weapons.

Blix will report back about Iraq compliance by January 27, and the decision about war should not be long delayed thereafter.

War countdown: Syria bracing for 1 million Iraqi refugees

An Arab press review, By The Daily Star, 12/21/02

Ibrahim Hamidi, Damascus correspondent for the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, quotes unnamed but informed sources as saying Syria has initiated logistical measures in anticipation of a cross border flood of up to one million Iraqi refugees in the event of the United States launching its war on Iraq.
He says that although Damascus remains firm in opposing an American war on its neighbor, President Bashar Assad “had given instructions, in the course of a meeting of the National Progressive Front last October, that logistical preparations be made to ‘give refuge to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis’ while reiterating that Syria sticks by ‘Iraq as a country and a people and not by the regime or its opponents.’”
Hamidi says the number of refugees that is anticipated was revised upward to 1 million “in light of the decision by Jordan to close its border to Iraqis aged between 18 and 40, and in view of the facts that the Syrian-Iraqi border is 600 kilometers long and that Damascus keeps good relations with both the Iraqi regime and the Iraqi opposition.”
The sources tell Hamidi that at a meeting to carry out Assad’s directives headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa Miro, a decision was made to entrust preparation of the logistics to an 11-member ministerial committee led by Deputy Premier Naji Outri. The committee has since established contact with the United Nations Development Program’s resident representative, Tawfik bin Amara, to help provide the necessary for receiving up to 1 million Iraqis.
Hamidi goes on to quote diplomats as saying that the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has been officially authorized to continue manning Al-Hol Camp in Al-Hasaka, northern Syria, which had accommodated some 15,000 Iraqi refugees during the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis over Kuwait. The UNHCR has now requested permission to set up five other camps with the capacity to hold 200,000 refugees each.
The Syrian authorities are also taking “concrete steps to set up mobile hospitals” along the border with Iraq. And while the Syrian Red Crescent is recruiting volunteers and setting up facilities in the Tanaf region, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been authorized to do the same in Deir al-Zor in anticipation of having to move into Iraq.
Asaad Haidar, in a news analysis from Paris for the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal, suggests that President Assad wanted to stop over in Paris on his way home this week from a four-day state visit to Britain to repay in kind French President Jacques Chirac’s lightning visit to Damascus on conclusion of the Francophone summit in Beirut last October and keep alive their one-on-one consultations on world affairs.
But he says the 90 minutes of talks between the two leaders at the Marini Palace, next to the Elysee, were focused on Iraq. Syria, a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, wanted to know how France, one of the five permanent members, reads Iraq’s 12,000-page arms declaration.
According to Haidar, France’s position on the Iraq crisis can be summarized thus:
l It guards against a unilateral US war without UN authorization;
l It will not participate in any American-led war outside the UN umbrella;
l It would resort to military operations if a state like Kuwait were attacked by Iraq.
“Regrettably,” says Abdelbari Atwan, publisher and editor of pan-Arab Al-Quds al-Arabi, the war on Iraq “is approaching.” In an assessment to the Security Council of Iraq’s arms declaration, Washington’s UN ambassador, John Negroponte, declared Iraq was in “material breach” as it was lying when it reported that it had no “ongoing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) programs,” adding: “There are material omissions which in our view constitute another material breach.”
Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix reinforced Negroponte’s analysis, telling the council in his initial report that Iraq’s declaration did not include data on some chemical and biological agents that inspectors wanted clarified.
“An opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot of evidence,” Blix said.
But he added that he had no evidence to prove Iraq still had doomsday weapons and challenged countries, particularly the United States, to back up their charges.
“The Iraqis, for their part,” Atwan writes, “say their arms declaration does not contain new information because they have nothing new to add neither concerning their now-defunct nuclear program nor in the realm of chemical and biological weapons.
“The US administration does not want to believe the Iraqis because, very simply, it is bent on the occupation of Iraq. It continues to mass its forces in the region. It has just declared that it will be sending another 50,000 ground troops to beef up those already deployed in the Gulf” both on aircraft carriers and in air and land bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Atwan says war on Iraq “is certain, but not imminent.” It will be launched at the set date, “probably in mid-February.” The countdown for the war is under way and the US tactic is to collect points until the war becomes justified and the UN Security Council approves a resolution for its initiation.
Blix, he says, is under “intense American pressure and could ultimately give Washington the pretext it is looking for” through his demand that Baghdad provide him with the list of scientists working on weapons of mass destruction programs to debrief them outside Iraq.
Atwan says the US administration has already tried to lure the Iraqi scientists by offering them all kinds of “sweeteners,” including financial incentives and permanent residency in the United States for them and their families. It is not farfetched for one or more of them to be tempted, as happened to President Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, whom the CIA lured to Jordan, where he gave away Iraq’s WMD secrets just when former UNSCOM chief Rolf Ekeus was about to declare Iraq free of doomsday weapons.
“It is not unlikely for the United States to use the forged testimony of one or another defecting Iraqi scientist to mug and invade Iraq,” Atwan argues, adding that the only brightness in this gloomy scenario is that “support for the war is waning” among Americans, Europeans and other peoples around the world.
Walid Shoucair, writing in Al-Hayat and noticing that the US federal government posted a $159 billion budget deficit in 2002 and that the states experienced an estimated $50 billion shortfall in fiscal 2002, shares Atwan’s view of the unavoidability of a US war on Iraq, if only “because those holding power in Washington, meaning the neoconservatives, see in the war (or wars) they intend waging a way out of America’s economic crisis.” Inasmuch as the fall of Saddam’s regime will ultimately help reduce oil prices, which can only benefit the US economy, the boom in the US arms manufacturing industry is bound to prop up the economy.
In this context, says Shoucair, it is worth recalling what the American media has written about the connections between Bush administration officials and military contractors.
He lists Vice-President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, who was earning $120,000 a year as a director of Lockheed Martin; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had close connections with the Center for Security Policy (a small, extremely effective missile defense advocacy organization); Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, was a partner in a law firm representing Lockheed Martin; Pete Aldridge Jr., undersecretary for acquisition technology and logistics at the Defense Department, was president of McDonald Douglas Electronic Systems Co. before becoming CEO of Aerospace Corp; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, was with Northrop Grumman Corp; Stephen Cambone, principal deputy undersecretary of defense policy, was technical director of the research directorate at the National Defense University; Peter B. Teets, Undersecretary of the Air Force, is the retired president of Lockheed Martin; and Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, was executive vice-president for General Dynamics.
Raghida Dergham, Al-Hayat’s New York bureau chief, says in her weekly commentary that the Pentagon, under Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, “is not only overflowing with deadly and extremist national militarism, but with fanatical hatred” against most things Arab and Muslim and everything Palestinian.
The Pentagon’s claim that it has “proof” of Iraq’s possession of doomsday weapons is open to question in American circles and by the other UN Security Council permanent members, she says.
The main reason why the Bush administration is so anxious to question Iraqi scientists outside Iraq and offer them safe havens “is because it does not have the hard evidence it claims is in its possession. The Pentagon convinced the administration that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, but all indications are that the Pentagon only holds circumstantial and undocumented evidence collected from Iraqi dissidents who have long left Iraq. The frantic clamor for scientists is to save face by perhaps falling on someone whose testimony can be used to justify to the world community and to American public opinion a war on Iraq.”
Dergham says that “half the American public” is still waiting for “concrete proof” that Iraq is lying.
Consequently, the best thing Baghdad can do is to continue cooperating with the inspectors by acceding to all their demands. Full compliance is crucial, she argues, because of the following developments:
l The crisis in Venezuela, which meant that crude shipments by the world’s No. 5 oil exporter nearly stopped when 14 percent of America’s crude oil requirements come from the Latin American country.
l Allegations that Iran has been secretly engaged in building large facilities to produce nuclear weapons, procuring materials from India and China via phony front companies to camouflage a drive to enter the nuclear club.
l American public opinion is bound to ask why Iraq and not Iran, if it is proven that the latter is developing military nuclear capabilities.
l The decision by North Korea, which sits alongside Iraq and Iran in the “axis of evil,” to unfreeze its nuclear program, thereby challenging George W. Bush’s concept of striking preemptively at any nation which the United States decides is developing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorism.
l The new projections being released of the costs to wage the war and then rebuild Iraq. Not counting the war costs, and leaving aside humanitarian needs, which will be massive, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that reconstruction of Iraq alone will take between $25 billion and $100 billion.
At the same time, Dergham writes, “the American public will not hesitate not even for a moment in supporting a war and an invasion if Iraq is verified to have concealed weapons or programs of mass destruction or to be cheating and omitting and if it does not accede to all the arms inspectors’ demands, even if they are provocative or insulting.”
“This is to say that the Iraqi leadership has a chance to sway American and world public opinion in its favor if it changes its customary tack. The Pentagon, on the other hand, faces the task of convincing US public opinion before taking on its next task of disinforming world public opinion,” she concludes.

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