Opinion Editorials, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
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Bush vows decades of war for “democracy” in the Middle East
By Bill Vann
World Socialist Web Site: wsws.org
Al-Jazeerah, 11/16/03
In a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Thursday President Bush portrayed the military occupation of Iraq as only the first stage in a US crusade for “democracy” in the region that will continue “for decades to come.” Making clear that he will be deterred neither by the rising toll of American military casualties—30 more US soldiers have been killed this week—nor the proliferation of opinion polls showing growing domestic opposition to the war, Bush declared that Washington “has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” He indicated that his administration’s plans for future military interventions in the region are already at an advanced stage. “Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran, that freedom can be the future if every nation,” Bush said. “The establishment of a free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” This theme echoed a thesis advanced before the war by the right-wing ideologues in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who were the principal architects of the war. They claimed that a bold US military strike that quickly toppled the Saddam Hussein regime would spread “shock and awe” throughout the Middle East, causing the regimes in Iran and Syria to topple like dominoes and inspiring the Palestinian people to give up their resistance to Israeli aggression. These were the same people who charged that Iraq was well on its way to developing nuclear weapons and assured the American people that US soldiers would be welcomed as liberators and greeted with flowers. If anything, the horrific events in Iraq have united the people of the Arab world in hostility toward US imperialism. Far from seeing Iraq as “free,” the overwhelming view is that Washington has embarked on a new stage of colonialism, using its military might to seize control of oil resources and establish US hegemony over the region. There is broad sympathy for the acts of resistance fighters seeking to expel US forces from the country. That Bush persists in the pretense of a war for “democracy” is an indication that decisive sections of the American ruling elite are committed to the disastrous policy in Iraq, seeing any retreat as a strategic defeat for their global interests. The invocation of a uniquely American mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world as a mask for a predatory policy is not an innovation on Bush’s part, as he himself acknowledged. Bush compared his new Middle East doctrine to Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” US imperialism historically has cast the pursuit of its global ambitions as a demonstration of democratic benevolence. Wilson proclaimed that, unlike the European powers that sought geopolitical advantage and control over the world’s resources and markets, America’s sole purpose in entering the World War was to “make the world safe for democracy.” US intervention in World War Two was similarly portrayed as an entirely selfless crusade against German fascism and Japanese militarism. Throughout the period of the Cold War, Washington depicted every act of aggression—from the killing of 3 million people in the Vietnam War to the series of fascist-military coups that plunged most of Latin America into dictatorship—as a blow for “democracy.” Never, however, has there been a more hypocritical invocation of democracy than Bush’s speech before the NED—a body that was set up by the Reagan administration to provide a cover for acts of counterrevolutionary subversion that were previously done covertly by the CIA. Under conditions in which the US has conducted an unlawful war of aggression against Iraq and is ruling the country under a regime of military occupation, for Bush to pose as the champion of democratic liberation is an act of breathtaking arrogance and cynicism. It is also a warning that Washington has assumed the right to bring “democracy” to whatever nation it chooses, using similar methods. National sovereignty, international law and concern for civilian casualties will not be allowed to stand in its way. Bush went so far as to suggest that his new policy in the Middle East was a correction of what had been a flawed US policy in the region. “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,” Bush declared. Here, the US president suggests that Washington was guilty merely of benign neglect towards the democratic aspirations of the peoples of the Middle East. One would hardly guess from his potted version of history that the region’s greatest despots—from the Shah of Iran to the Saudi monarchy—were political instruments directly imposed or propped up by Washington as a means of dominating the region and its strategic resources and suppressing popular struggles for democratic rights and social progress. Where it suits its interests, the US will continue to rule through such client regimes. But Bush wants it known that Washington no longer feels constrained by this policy. Rather, in the name of “freedom” it is prepared to carry out directs acts of military conquest and colonial-style occupation. The US president’s speech left little doubt as to the identity of the next targets for US “liberation.” While not repeating his “axis of evil” warnings of 2002, he directly threatened Iran, which he linked to Iraq and North Korea in coining the phrase. The regime in Teheran, he warned, must “heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy.” Loss of legitimacy, under the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, would make Iran a candidate for US military-imposed “regime change.” The speech further equated the government of Syria with the Saddam Hussein regime that was toppled by the US invasion. “Dictators in Iraq and Syria promised the restoration of national honor, a return to ancient glories,” Bush declared. “They’ve left instead a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.” By counterposing the supposedly unique evils of Iran and Syria to what he indicated were strides toward democratic reform in countries ruled by US-aligned despots, Bush left no doubt that behind his freedom-loving pretensions his administration is prepared to utilize the most brutal methods in pursuing US geopolitical interests. While castigating Iran—where elections and public demonstrations are routine—as illegitimate from the standpoint of democracy, Bush held out Saudi Arabia—where political parties, unions and human rights groups are all outlawed and the entire nation is ruled as the possession of the royal family—as a beacon of hope for the region. “The Saudi government is taking the first steps toward reform, including a plan for gradual introduction of elections. By giving the Saudi people a greater role in their own society, the Saudi government can demonstrate true leadership.” Never mind that the Saudi regime routinely tortures prisoners, carries out public floggings and amputations, and executes citizens for the “crime” of homosexuality. It belongs to the “democratic” camp because the royal family has agreed to allow elections for 30 percent of the positions on a consultative counsel—three years from now. Similarly, Bush praised Kuwait’s royal family for having a “directly elected national assembly.” That those allowed to participate in elections make up no more than 5 percent of the country’s total population does not bear mentioning, given Kuwait’s unstinting support for US interests in the region. Oddly absent from Bush’s remarks on cultivating democracy in the Middle East was any mention of the state of Israel. Indeed, his only reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to repeat Washington’s ritualistic insistence that the problem can be resolved only by the Palestinians ceasing any resistance to the 36-year-old illegal Israeli occupation. “Palestinian leaders who block and undermine democratic reform, and feed hatred and encourage violence are not leaders at all,” Bush declared. “They’re the main obstacles to peace, and to the success of the Palestinian people.” The Palestinians, and indeed people throughout the Arab world, are laboring under the misconception that the “main obstacle to peace” is the occupation itself. How democracy is supposed to emerge under conditions of military occupation—together with the seizure of Palestinian land for Zionist settlements, extra-judicial assassinations, the demolition of homes and the paralysis of economic life through the use of roadblocks, curfews and a security wall dividing Palestinians into unlivable ghettoes—Bush neglected to spell out. The US has opposed holding elections in the Palestinian territories because it knows that the Palestinians would choose leaders who are not to Washington’s liking. “Instead of dwelling on past wrongs and blaming others, governments in the Middle East need to confront real problems, and serve the true interests of their nations,” Bush declared, in an oblique reference to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Is the presence in their midst of Israel—armed to the teeth by Washington, possessing nuclear weapons and with aggressive aims against every one of its Arab neighbors—not a “real problem”? The “real solution” is hardly a surprise: “Successful societies privatize their economies and secure the rights of property.” This is the policy being realized in Iraq by the fiat of the US proconsul Paul Bremer: the wholesale privatization of the Iraqi economy, with the profitable sectors placed on the auction block for purchase by foreign capital and the less profitable enterprises liquidated, along with the jobs of their workers. A key strategic aim of US imperialism throughout the region is to break the existing state control over oil production and reserves and open them up to the direct control of the US-based energy conglomerates. What the implementation of this policy would mean for the Arab masses can be seen in the path to “freedom” taken in the 1990s in the former Soviet Union, where half the country’s population was plunged into poverty in order to create 17 billionaires. An obvious question posed by Bush’s speech is what, precisely, his credentials are as a champion of democracy. “As we watch and encourage reforms in the region, we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization,” he told his audience at the NED. “Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own cultures. They will not, and should not, look like us.” Does this mean that presidents will be selected in these countries based on a counting of the vote, rather than having the loser installed by a decision of politically aligned judges? Will these presidents not arrogate to themselves the right to declare any of their citizens “enemy combatants” and order their indefinite detention without charges, hearings or trials? Bush did not make it clear if he is prepared to allow for cultural differences on such questions. The methods and policies that the Bush administration is employing in the Middle East and internationally are an extension of those it employs within the US itself. This is an unelected government that has assumed unprecedented police powers at home, while engaging in a vast transfer of wealth from the masses of working people to the financial elite. In the Middle East, it seeks to impose neocolonial rule by means of military force in order to seize control of the region’s oil wealth and assure a new source of profits for the largest shareholders of US-based corporations. This is the criminal substance of Bush’s democratizing pretensions. There is an element of madness in the assumption that such a policy can be implemented without any regard for the bitter legacy of colonialism in the Middle East and the history of protracted and bloody struggles waged by national movements against foreign domination. This delusion that the Arab peoples are ready to welcome US armies sent in the name of “democracy” is already producing a tragedy in Iraq. Its extension throughout the region will ignite popular revolt and bring US imperialism face-to-face with catastrophe. Bush’s speech has met with virtually no serious criticism within either the media or the Democratic Party. The pretense that US policy is motivated by idealism and democratic philanthropy is generally accepted, even in the face of the profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton and other firms that enjoy the most intimate ties with the Bush administration. Opposition to the policies of conquest and colonialism upon which Washington has embarked will have to come from those elements of American society that are being forced to bear its costs, both economically and in the lives of young soldiers sent to fight and die—that is, the broad mass of American working people.
European poll identifies Israel and US as greatest threats to world peace By Brian Smith 8 November 2003
A recent European Commission public opinion poll has found that 59 percent of respondents believe Israel represents a threat to world peace. This put Israel at the head of the poll with the US, North Korea and Iran in joint second place at 53 percent, followed by 52 percent for Iraq, and 50 percent for Afghanistan. The poll was undertaken by Eurobarometer and interviewed 7,500 people, (500 from each European Union member state). Each person was shown a list of 15 countries and asked to indicate which they considered to be a threat to world peace or not. Other countries on the list included Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Somalia and the European Union (EU) itself. The survey also indicated that two thirds of Europeans believe that the US-led war on Iraq was wrong. The poll’s findings were slammed by the Israeli government and press. The Israeli embassy in Brussels said that it was “not only sad but outraged. Not at European citizens, but at those responsible for forming public opinion.” Israeli minister for Diaspora affairs, Natan Sharansky, accused the EU of anti-Semitism and invoked the Holocaust—stating that the EU “would do well to stop the rampant brainwashing against and demonising of Israel before Europe deteriorates once again to dark sections of its past.” The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre condemned the poll for defying logic. It also accused Europe of anti-Semitism and demanded that the EU should be thrown out of the so-called Quartet group (the US, the United Nations, Russia and the EU) and excluded from the Middle East “peace process”—the ongoing efforts to foist Washington’s “Road Map” on the Palestinians and bring the intifada against Israel to an end. Israeli ministers have recently been insisting that a modern definition of anti-Semitism should include criticism of the way the State of Israel chooses to protect itself, defining that criticism as an overt attack on Israel’s survival and therefore on the Jews as a people. Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom was one of the few who rejected claims of anti-Semitism. He linked the poll to Europe’s efforts (and particularly France’s) to position itself as an alternative or at least a counterweight to the US. “This isn’t necessarily a matter of anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian; it’s a much broader issue of expressing views different from the US, to establish itself as a power.” He cited a number of recent incidents of Israeli-European cooperation, including the EU’s foiling of a Palestinian initiative to send the “separation fence” issue to the international court at The Hague. Former Israeli foreign minister Alon Liel also warned against knee-jerk reactions. “Our natural predilection is to pull out of the drawer our usual weapon of self-defence—the weapon of anti-Semitism—but this is probably the wrong place to do so.” The polls varied substantially across Europe, with as few as 48 percent of Italians considering Israel a threat and as many as 74 percent of the Dutch. Israel was, however, considered the greatest threat to peace by the vast majority. The Greek poll was the exception as it considered the US, with 88 percent, to be the greatest threat to peace followed by Israel, with 61 percent. European Union ministers and spokespersons were keen to distance themselves from the poll’s findings. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, condemned the results and telephoned Ariel Sharon’s office. He claimed to be “surprised and indignant” at the findings and said that he was convinced that they did not represent the real attitude of Europeans towards Israel. Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini claimed that the poll was based on an ambiguous question, and criticised the “false signal” that the survey sent out. European Commission president Romano Prodi expressed his concern about the findings and portrayed them as an expression of anti-Semitism rather than an accurate indication of public hostility to Israel’s brutal subjugation of the Palestinians. They “point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand,” he said, and “to the extent that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical.” Interestingly, there was no attempt to find a similar excuse for public fear of the US as a threat to world peace. Britain, meanwhile, it has been revealed, is selling arms to Israel in breach of its own guidelines, knowing full well that the equipment is intended for use in the Occupied Territories. Exports approved by the British government this year cover categories including leg-irons, electric shock belts, and chemical and biological agents. They also include categories covering mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, military explosives, and infrared and radar sensors. According to British government arms control guidelines, exports will be blocked “if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression” or to “provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions,” or “if there is a clear risk that the recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country, or assert by force a territorial claim.” It is hard to identify any other use for electric shock belts than internal repression, but in any event, Israel clearly fulfills all of these negative criteria.
Britain: Anti-terror legislation opens up broad attack on civil liberties By Chris Marsden 8 November 2003
Two court verdicts last month have not only highlighted the anti-democratic nature of the legislation passed on the basis of supposedly fighting terrorism post-September 11, but added significantly to the draconian powers the Labour government and the police have accrued to themselves. On October 29, 10 men accused of being involved in international terrorism lost an appeal against their detention without charge or trial since 2001. The men were arrested solely on the say-so of Home Secretary David Blunkett, who alleges that they were connected to groups linked to Al-Qaeda. Most of them have been held for the past two years in high-security prisons or mental hospitals. The 10 were interned under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which added to the powers contained in the Terrorism Act 2000 and came into force two months after the September 11 bombings. Sixteen foreign nationals have been held under its remit. Under the ATCSA, non-UK nationals certified as “suspected international terrorists and national security risks” by the home secretary can be detained without charge or trial for an unlimited period. Detention can be based on secret evidence—which the detainee and their counsel cannot see, hear, or challenge. The appeal was also heard largely in secret by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a panel of three judges and no jury. As a result of these Kafkaesque procedures, the names of only two of the detainees are known. One, Jamal Ajouaou, is a Moroccan citizen who has already agreed to return to his home country. The other is Palestinian asylum seeker Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a 32-year-old father of five who has lived in Britain since 1995 and is now held in Broadmoor high-security mental hospital. The remaining eight are known only by a letter of the alphabet. None have been accused of actual crimes, but only of membership of one of the 39 organisations proscribed under the Terrorism Act. Representatives of the security services presented testimony, and the men were not allowed to know the nature of this evidence against them. In making its verdict, SIAC operated on the assumption that the government only had to prove it had “reasonable grounds to suspect” the men were linked with terrorism. Admitting that the evidence presented would not stand up in a court of law, the judges’ ruling stated that “the standard of proof is below a balance of probabilities.” The judgement also explicitly considered whether evidence might have been extracted against the defendants from people who were tortured. It ruled that if that had occurred, the evidence would not necessarily be dismissed by the court. Evidence extracted through torture is already used by the Republican administration in the United States against detainees held at Camp X-Ray on Guantanamo. US officials have admitted that its own interrogators use such methods as holding prisoners in prolonged painful positions, sleep and light deprivation, and withholding access to food, water and medical attention. Worse still, they also allow the transfer and detention of prisoners in other friendly countries where worse crimes can be committed with impunity. Now Britain’s government and judiciary has made clear its intention to avail itself of this sordid and tainted “evidence.” Commenting on the verdict, Blunkett said: “The new anti-terror laws were in response to the public emergency to ensure that foreign nationals, who we believe are international terrorists posing a risk to our national security and who we want to deport but are unable to for a variety of reasons, are not allowed to remain in the UK unchecked. Those detained are free to leave the UK voluntarily at any time and two have done so.” This is a crude falsification. The detention powers in part four of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act are immigration powers that can presently only be used regarding foreign nationals. They allow for detention of a foreign national whom the government wants to deport but cannot. And in this is the lie, for the reason the individuals concerned cannot be deported is because they face death, torture or inhuman and degrading treatment in their home state—so sending them back would be against international law. They could be accepted by a third country, but this is highly unlikely given that they have been publicly identified as members of terrorist groups. In the majority of cases, therefore, Blunkett’s claim that those detained are free to leave means that they are free to chose between possibly being detained in Britain for the rest of their lives and going back to face a possible violent death. Amnesty International called the judgement a “perversion of justice.” It commented, “Disconcertingly, the SIAC ruled that under the ATCSA the burden of proof that the Secretary of State has to meet to justify internment of the ten is not the criminal standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ but, instead, is even lower than that needed in a civil case. “The shockingly low burden of proof, which the SIAC ruled that the Secretary of State had met, violates the right to the presumption of innocence to which anyone subject to criminal proceedings is entitled... “Furthermore, Amnesty International is alarmed that today’s judgements by the SIAC may have relied on evidence extracted under torture. Some of the secret evidence relied upon by the Secretary of State reportedly includes statements which were obtained at Bagram airbase and elsewhere in American custody, where there have been serious allegations of torture. Under international law any statement that has been established to have been made as a result of torture is inadmissible.” Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said of the verdict, “I have two questions for the Home Office. If they are so convinced these men, held in jail for nearly two years, are involved in terrorism, why will they not put them on trial? Is it because they know that this so-called evidence has been obtained from prisoners tortured by the secret police of countries regarded as friendly to Britain but with a proven record of human rights abuse? “The fact is that we are following the example of the US and allowing our dirty work to be done in the torture chambers of foreign countries.” He added that the men “expect now to remain locked up for the remainder of their lives. Each knows that he has been involved in no action in support of terrorism. Since the largest percentage of the hearings have been held in secret no one knows what in particular has been said against him. A number have been said to be members of groups of which they have never heard... Secrecy has been chosen over due process and is a dangerous precedent for the future, not just for these detainees. Their arrest and continuing detention without due process marks the entry of this country into a new dark age of injustice.” In a letter to the Guardian, Sherman Carroll of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture pointed to the significance of the low-key response to the abuse of democratic rights, asking rhetorically, “People can now be locked up, perhaps for ever, on the basis of secret evidence because they might be ‘linked’ to terrorist groups? Yet you report this only on page six?” The reporting of the verdict elsewhere in the media was if anything more low-key than that of the Guardian—a response echoed the next day when the courts issued another verdict directly threatening civil rights. On November 30, civil rights campaigners lost their appeal to the High Court against Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens and Blunkett for employing special powers to stop and search under the Terrorism Act 2000 against peaceful demonstrators at Europe’s largest arms fair, held at the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands in September. The case was brought by Liberty on behalf of a student, Kevin Gillan, and a freelance photo-journalist, Pennie Quinton. Dozens of protesters were stopped and at least 2 of the 154 people arrested were detained under the Terrorism Act. The court found that “The exercise and use of the power was proportionate to the gravity of the [terrorism] risk.” Justice Henry Brooke added, by way of mitigation, “If there were any question of the police using these powers as part of day-to-day policing on the streets of London, there would be considerable force in this submission.” But routinely employing these powers is precisely what the police can now do, and in fact have been able to for years. Testimony to the hearing revealed that London has been operating under an undisclosed state of emergency for the past two years, with the police granted the necessary special powers. Authorisations under the Terrorism Act have been in force for the greater London area continuously since February 19, 2001, allowing random searches of buildings and people under Section 44 of the act for a period of up to 28 days with the agreement of the home secretary. Liberty noted that no one could say how many other counties were presently covered by the extraordinary police powers. The judges made only one concession by granting the civil rights campaigners permission to appeal against their decision to the Court of Appeal because a matter of wide public importance had been raised. But the record of the judiciary so far argues powerfully against placing any confidence in it as a restraint on an increasingly authoritarian government and police apparatus.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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