Irony 101: Israel Peace Week

With the passing of every year, Israel Peace Week becomes that much more of a grotesque irony. Two years ago, Students for Israel, the host of this inauspicious event, had to combat the continued international ill-will following Israel’s massacre in Gaza, in which Israeli fighter jets bombed the world’s largest open-air prison camp (thanks to Israel and their loyal ally, the now-deposed Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak) and killed 1,400 Gazans, many of them women and children. Shamelessly, Students for Israel glossed over this ‘crime against humanity,’ as the international jurist Richard Goldstone (himself a self-proclaimed ‘Zionist’) suggested in his UN-sanctioned investigation of the Gaza War, and instead chose to hand out Chinese fortune cookies filled with ‘fun facts’ about Israel.

This year, however, Israel Peace Week could take the cake and become the darkest of ironies. Israel is not just waging a large propaganda campaign here in the U.S. aimed at winning U.S. public support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities (an attack that would include either the use of nuclear-tipped missiles or some of the largest conventional weaponry known in the world), but is also running an international terrorist ring aimed at assassinating Iranian Government officials and nuclear scientists.

This past month, in fact, two such things have been uncovered in the U.S. press. First, U.S. officials suggested that the Israelis were behind the targeted attacks on nuclear scientists (all of them engaged in civilian nuclear development work), contracting out the work to a U.S.-designated terrorist group and former Saddam ally, the MEK. Then, U.S. intelligence documents noted that the Israeli Mossad had acted as CIA operatives and recruited Jundallah (a radical Sunni group with affinities to al-Qaeda) to kill Iranian Government officials. Even the Bush administration, the documents suggested, were furious with this.

But don’t expect a mention of this during Israel Peace Week. Not a word will be said of continued Israeli aggression to regional neighbors, Iran and Lebanon, nor about the conditions in Gaza and the West Bank (much less about Palestinian hunger-strike prisoner Khader Adnan). That is the whole point of Israel Peace Week: to distract us from Israeli crimes. But what I’m interested in is this: what if things were different and what if Israel Peace Week lived up to its name?

If Students for Israel were at all interested in a ‘democratic, peace-seeking Israel’ as their website suggests, then their advocacy would be obvious. For instance, instead of propping up the fictitious accounts of Israeli goodwill to its neighbors (such as the water-sharing plans with another favored Arab dictator, King Abdullah II of Jordan), the group would advocate for a nuclear-free Middle East – such as the one that 64% of Israeli Jews supported in a WPO Poll this past December. That position would make sense and serve a purpose, as it has been the U.S. and Israel who have been the most staunch opponents of a nuclear-free zone in the region. Interestingly, too, it was Iran, all the way back in 1974, who first championed the idea of such. Perhaps, then, Israel Peace Week would do well to play catch-up with Israeli Jews, who have to live in the hostile environment engendered by their country’s militant posturing, and explicitly advocate for Israeli nuclear disarmament and Iranian nuclear transparency. Very quickly, I promise, Israel Peace Week would find the allies they so desperately seek on campus.

Perhaps, too, Students for Israel could advocate for the U.S. and Iran to renew diplomatic talks at the highest level, as such reconciliation will help Israel avoid prolonged conflict. This would align well with the sentiments of Israeli Jews as well (the ones Students for Israel are ostensibly representing), 57% of whom do not favor an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. That would, of course, mean breaking with the notion among some Jewish-Americans that they understand the “existential threats” facing Israel better than Israeli Jews themselves. If playing politics with other people’s lives (Iranian and Israeli in this case) is not standard fare for Students for Israel, however, then Israel Peace Week will focus on creating an environment conducive to renewed U.S.-Iranian talks based on mutual respect.

Finally, Israel Peace Week could advocate for an end to Israel’s aggressive posture in the region. Despite all the talk of the “existential threats” Israel faces, it is without debate that Israel occupies the mantel of military supremacy in the Middle East (outside of the United States). That fact highlights the true threat from Iran to Israel: a nuclear-armed Iran would limit Israel’s freedom-of-action in the Middle East. But that “threat” need not be one – especially if Israel is the ‘peaceful’ nation Students of Israel proclaim it to be. Rather than seek freedom-of-action, which allows Israel to bomb Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, etc., with virtual impunity, Israel can accept the Beirut Declaration of the Arab League (for which Iran has also signaled approval) and rejoin the community of nations in the Middle East.

Those interested in both peace and Israel will adopt this as part of their platform. Those who word-play to distort the truth will continue to parade in “fun facts” as their favored nation-state continues its four-decade old military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; engages in illegal assassinations of Iranian civilians; and threatens its regional neighbors with mutually-assured destruction. Words have meaning, and it looks like we will have to await another year before this darkest of ironies – Israel Peace Week – loses its color and takes its namesake seriously.

Apologetics for Apartheid

This Op-Ed piece appeared in the BU Daily Free Press Thursday. It is a response to the general harassment that Students for Justice in Palestine has endured on campus from Students for Israel, Hillel, the ADL, and other groups that prefer the shadows to the light. Thankfully, we at SJP have rejected the intimidation and forged ahead with Israel Apartheid Week:

Judging by the temperature on campus, the Israel-Palestine conflict is starting to gain traction and attention among students. As a representative for Students for Justice in Palestine, there could hardly be better news. For too long, the legitimate rights of the Palestinians have been submerged under the unfortunate alliance between U.S. geopolitical strategy in the Middle East and Israel’s project of occupation and expropriation. Now, the balance has shifted a bit, and for the first time ever perhaps, the Israel apologists are on the defensive. Unsurprisingly, their response has been to try to silence and shut down opposition groups on campus, like SJP, and downplay or gloss over Israel’s brutal crimes. This is why Students for Justice in Palestine have chosen to erect a mock apartheid wall: no longer will Israel’s crimes go unmentioned and unknown to campus audiences, especially when the U.S. is the sole enabler left for the Greater Israel project.

Israel’s apologists claim sensationalism on our part by building the mock apartheid wall, but they can only claim such so long as students on campus remain ignorant of the facts on the ground.

For one thing, it is difficult to ‘sensationalize’ something that is very real. The real Wall, if part of it were placed in front of Marsh Chapel tomorrow, would tower over the mock wall Students for Justice in Palestine built this week. The real Wall is, in many places, 25 feet tall, often dressed in sniper towers designed to enforce arbitrary buffer zones with live bullets. Moreover, the real Wall extends twice as long as Israel’s recognized border, close to 440 miles in length.

Despite the leaflets Students for Israel pass out, which claim the ‘Security Fence’ (a lesson in the propaganda of semantics) was built to stop Palestinian terror, close to 85% of the real Wall is built over Israel’s recognized border, the Green Line, and onto Palestinian land. In this light, the true purpose of the Wall becomes clear: the Wall is built, on the one hand, to insulate the major Israeli settlements – all of which are illegal under international law – from Palestinians living in the West Bank and incorporate them into the project of Greater Israel, and, on the other hand, to harass, frustrate, and intimidate Palestinians into destitution. The Wall’s location is the clue in judging intent. For, if security concerns were the true justification for the Wall, then the Wall would be built on Israel’s recognized border, not inside the West Bank. As B’tselem, the major Israeli human rights group, has said, the Wall’s purpose is the ‘de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank…[so that] 60 [Israeli] settlements will be situated on the Israeli side.’

Perhaps the most important declaration on the Wall’s illegality came from the International Court of Justice in 2004. There, the Court held that the Wall was illegal under both international humanitarian and international human rights law. The Court, which took into full account Israel’s security justifications, found that the Wall violated Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, insofar as the Wall’s purpose was to assist the illegal settlement enterprise. The Court ruled that Israel must end construction of the Wall; remove those parts of the Wall built over the Green Line; and compensate those Palestinians who suffered economic deprivation due to the illegal positioning of the Wall. Thus far, Israel has refused to abide by any of these commands from the world’s highest-ranking court.

These are not controversial issues. The weight of authority lies on the side of those who condemn the continued expropriation of Palestinian land; the continued demolition of West Bank homes; the harassment and imprisonment of Palestinian youth; the apartheid conditions in both Israel proper and the West Bank; etc. The entire world condemns Israel’s four-decade long brutal and repressive military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — outside of the U.S.

But this is also why Israel’s apologists on campus, whether it be Students for Israel, Hillel, or, more recently, the ADL, are so desperate to silence student debate and discussion and accuse Students for Justice in Palestine of ‘sensationalizing’ this issue. Not unlike the case of apartheid in South Africa, the U.S. is the last man standing, willing to once again sacrifice its moral standing to continue offering critical diplomatic, economic, and military support for the brutal Israeli occupation regime. As long as students ignore these issues, Israel’s occupation wins. But when attention is drawn to the conflict and students on campus are organized in defense of Palestinian rights, Israel’s apologists are forced to resort to more back-handed tactics as their defense of Israel’s occupation is called out for what it is: apologetics for apartheid.

Egypt’s Revolution

While the jubilant celebrations in Tahrir Square (‘a complete eruption of humanity’, reports The Guardian’s Jack Shenker) leave us with an indelible image of the revolutionary fervor with which the Egyptian people resisted a decades-old regime these past three weeks, and the first steps towards a political revolution are now in-the-making, it is important to bear in mind that the first revolution on the streets of Egypt was a social one. It is hard not to look back and weep at the strength and dignity of the human spirit – whether it be the image of the ‘human chain’ Coptic Christians formed around Muslim demonstrators during morning prayers last Friday, the day following the pro-Mubarak thugs’ violent response to the peaceful demonstrations, or the image of Egyptian demonstrators sleeping on the tracks of Army tanks, risking their bodies to prevent the Army’s potential violent response, or the image of Muslim worshippers rising from evening prayers after hearing that a partial victory had been won and Mubarak had been forced to step down – understanding that a social transformation took place, one in which the people of Egypt recognized their power and withstood the regime’s waiting game. Instead of falling under the burden of a collapsed economy and a two-week-plus stasis, in which Mubarak remained defiant (and delusional) to the end, the Egyptian demonstrators turned up the volume, increased the numbers, and forced what started as protest to end as revolution.

More importantly, the Egyptian people threatened the regime to its core, as Egypt’s conscript Army and dissatisfied officer corps started to dissent from the ranks of the Army and join the people of Egypt across the barricades and in the heart of Tahrir Square. Such actions hint at a collapsed regime, a sign that the fall of Mubarak will not be the last stone removed from the Egyptian state’s apparatus. The people of Egypt were remarkably clear in their demands, despite the fact that no real public leaders emerged as the face of the movement to articulate them aloud to the rest of the world. That is to the advantage of the Egyptian revolution, for now those demands will need to be met: the fate of the revolution does not sit at the seat of one man, but rather is spread amongst the sisters and brothers, the mothers and fathers, the daughters and sons, who comprise the Egyptian people. This was, at heart, a true social transformation, and the remnants of the regime will not be able to steal it away from the people. From a long distance, I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Egyptian revolutionaries and praise them for showing the rest of us the depths of human resolve.

It’s an Info-War (Part II)

In response to the release of State Department cables last week, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton noted that the cables highlight that “concern about Iran is well-founded, widely-shared, and will continue to be the source of the foreign policy that we pursue with like-minded nations.” The cables had exposed the fact that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s (dictator-)President Hosni Mubarak urged the U.S. to war with Iran in private conversation, all the while maintaining a façade of diplomatic courtesy towards Iran for their respective domestic audiences.

The day following, on DemocracyNow’s radio program, Noam Chomsky seized on this gap between public and private allegiances and noted the “profound hatred for democracy” contained in Clinton’s remarks, as she conflated the “widely-shared” concern with Iran’s phantom nuclear-weapons program among Arab dictators with the wider Arab world. Chomsky cited a recent Brookings Institute poll on the state of Arab public opinion, in which 57% of Arab respondents believed that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would be a good thing for the Middle East region, compared to just 21% who said it would not be a positive development. (Just as a side note, too: out of all the participating countries, Egyptian respondents believed that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would benefit the region the most (82% of Egyptians believed so) – a direct rebuke to Clinton’s conflation of the views of the U.S.-allied dictator Mubarak with those of his subjects.)

Moreover, respondents did have “widely-shared concerns,” just not at the targets Washington expects. When asked what two countries pose the biggest threat to the Middle East region, the overwhelming response was Israel (which polled at 88%) and the U.S. (which polled at 77%). Iran, meanwhile, came in a distant fifth as just 10% of respondents believed that Iran posed the greatest threat to the region. Results like this are anathema in U.S. policy circles – which gives all the more reason to prop up sympathetic U.S.-allied dictators who understand the threat of Iran “acquiring nuclear weapons” and who will, in private, support the U.S.’s sanctions regime.

What a shock to discover today, then, that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates echoed Clinton’s remarks and noted the “general support in the region for applying the sanctions and for doing what we can to make the sanctions effective.” Continuing, Gates said that there is a “broadly shared concern” with “Iran’s overall aggressive behavior with respect to Hezbollah and Lebanon and other places around the world.” Interesting, then, to recall that not more than two years ago, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was polled as the region’s most admired leader, mostly due to Hezbollah’s ultimate defiance of Israel’s invasion in summer 2006. Meanwhile, in the Brooking Institute poll, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan polled at the top in the region’s most respected figure category, followed in order by Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Nasrallah rounding out the top four. (Sadly, the long-deceased Saddam Hussein polled better than President Obama.) It goes without saying that all of the names at the top acted in defiance of the United States and Israel in recent times, and the Arab world apparently responded to such defiance with quiet ovation and applause.

The Obama administration’s attempt to conflate the views of Arab dictators with those of their subjects is, as Chomsky noted, evidence of a “profound hatred for democracy,” but it is also one more example of the intense info-war being fought. The more Clinton and Gates beat it into people’s heads (and perhaps their own) that the world does all feel the same way the United States does about Iran and its so-far non-existent nuclear weapons program (and I mean the United States in the most narrow sense: its political class), then the more either political support or public apathy they will receive for a targeted regime of sanctions and then ultimate war on Iran.

Once again, then, we must fight this through our own targeted program, first informing ourselves, engaging and discussing with others, and then educating them on just who are the U.S.’s friends in the Middle East (a Saudi dictatorship that funds radical al-Qaeda-like movements; an Egyptian President that has committed one fraudulent election and human rights abuse after another; an Israeli apartheid regime that is engaged in a long-term project of ethnic cleansing; etc.) and what this means for Arab attitudes towards the U.S. Perhaps, then, we can start to identify the gulf between elite and public opinion here in the U.S. (where, unsurprisingly, public attitudes match those of Iranians when it comes to belief that “common ground” can be found between the two nations) and reconfigure U.S. policies on their basis.

It’s an Info-War!

Strange, but the UN Human Rights Commissioner decries the pressure the U.S. is exerting on third-parties (Paypal, Mastercard, etc.) to drop Wikileaks, and within the hour (or close to it), Paypal’s General Counsel, John Muller, issues a statement saying that the State Department had zero communication with Paypal concerning Wikileaks – a direct contradiction to what Paypal’s Vice President Osama Bedier said the day earlier about being pressured by the State Department. (Bedier walked backstage following his interview at a tech conference and the audience was later informed that the State Department did not apply pressure directly to Paypal, but had instead just publicized its initial letter to Wikileaks, which Paypal saw. Apparently, Paypal’s legal and public-relation advisers were quick to the catch.)

Meanwhile, as Wikileaks faces the brunt of cyberattacks on its operation (perhaps from Internet mercenaries hired by the U.S. government), U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said today that the Justice Department would be looking into the attacks on Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, and others. (Interestingly, Holder declined to comment on whether the U.S. had applied pressure to the companies to drop Wikileaks, a far cry from the expected denial.) The Dutch are the first on the trail, arresting a 16-year old teenager who admitted to participating in the attacks against the companies.

The Orwellian nature of this assault on Internet freedom is almost too much to bear, coming as it does on the same day the U.S. announced that it will be host to UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day in 2011. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley’s twitter feed ran rampant this afternoon in newspeak, going so far as to claim that while the U.S. protects journalists around the world, Julian Assange is putting at risk those working in authoritarian societies by releasing the State Department’s cables. Perhaps Crowley missed the recent report from Reporters Without Borders documenting the heavy death toll and kidnappings suffered by journalists in Iraq – the result of the U.S. invasion (and, in some cases, deliberate targeting by the U.S. military). In fact, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement last week sharply criticizing the attacks aimed at Wikileaks and decrying the way the U.S. and France have fallen “into line with [China’s restrictions on the press].”

But the State Department and the U.S. government understand exactly what they are doing: controlling the limits of debate and discussion in the U.S. The Pew Research Center’s poll yesterday shows that – to an extent – the plan is working: 60% of the U.S. public think that the State Department cable release “harms the public interest,” compared to the 31% of Americans who feel the opposite. Not surprising results, considering the scare stories emanating from the Obama administration and the Stalinist rhetoric issuing from the halls of Congress. The task ahead for us, then, is to discuss, inform, and educate people on what the cables reveal and why transparency matters. It’s an info-war out there (not just a cyber-war), and we all have a role to play in it.