Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

The Jamestown Foundation, 10/29/2007

By Babak Rahimi (from Terrorism Monitor, October 25) -

The recent “pact of honor” made by two of Iraq’s most influential Shiite clerics, Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim—aimed at preventing violence and helping to maintain the “Islamic and national interest” of Iraq—appears to signal a significant shift toward stability in Iraq. The two leaders have pledged to enhance relations between their respective groups, merging media and cultural projects, and to refrain from launching negative propaganda against each other (Fars News Agency, October 6). Yet, more importantly, the pact calls for promotion of the legal-political order of post-Baathist Iraq, a major move that could give new life to Nuri al-Maliki’s government and curtail potential violence in the south. As the first official agreement between these two prominent leaders, the forged pact can also be recognized as a huge step in improving intra-Shiite relations. Not since the formation of the United Iraqi Alliance, which brought together a number of Shiite political parties under the spiritual leadership of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in 2003, has Shiite politics seen such a unified front. The struggle for domination between rival Shiite groups has caused huge problems in the south, especially after the December 2005 elections. Despite a number of attempts for reconciliation, the enmity between al-Hakim and al-Sadr and their militias has remained a major security problem, especially in the provinces of Basra and Maysan, where the two factions are vying for control over oil and territory.

Disagreements only intensified after the British withdrawal from Basra in early September, causing trouble for an already unstable Iraqi government seeking reconciliation over major political issues such as federalism and the distribution of oil. Seen in such a context, this new deal is made at a time when the “surge” strategy has gradually shown signs of relative military success in places like the eastern and central provinces, where al-Qaeda forces continue to lose the support of Sunni Iraqis. Yet, one important question remains to be answered: does the new pact promise any significant improvement in the country’s political situation at such a crucial stage in its history?

Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan » Blog Archive » Give Fareed Zakaria a Medal!, October 31, 2007

Fareed Zakaria deserves a medal for breaking with the mainstream media pack to slap down, with the requisite rudeness, the hysteria over Iran being manufactured by the neocons, opportunist Israeli politicians and the Bush Administration. Perhaps stung by having participated in a secret Bush Administration policy discussion to help shape the Iraq war policy before the invasion, Zakaria is acting with honor now to prevent another disaster. This while much of the rest of the media is futzing around asking the wrong questions on Iran and getting the answers that only the wrong questions can produce. Exhibit A: The Washington Post editorial suggesting that the only “alternative” to harsh new sanctions that most of the international community opposes is war, and then scolding “those who say they oppose military action — including a couple of the second-tier Democratic presidential candidates — to portray the sanctions initiative as a buildup to war by Mr. Bush. We’ve seen no evidence that the president has decided on war, and it’s clear that many senior administration officials understand the package as the best way to avoid military action. It is not they but those who oppose tougher sanctions who make war with Iran more likely.”

If and when a war with Iran, with all its terrible consequences that leaves many thousands dead and the U.S. in an even weaker position than it is now, those looking for explanations will do well to remember how their media failed them — with some honorable exceptions. Of course, the hysteria is being fed by the fact that it’s an election season here, and a bunch of mediocre candidates is trying to outdo one another by talking tough on Iran, which, as CNN tells us, has become the new Iraq as far as the presidential campaign is concerned.

Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad at his home in Rafah, Gaza Strip

Dion Nissenbaum’s Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, October 31, 2007

One of the first Hamas leaders I ever met in the Gaza Strip was Ghazi Hamad, who was then working as editor of a pro-Hamas newspaper in Gaza City.

Among journalists, Hamad was a favored barometer. He was a Hamas confidante who steered clear of some of the standard revolutionary rhetoric you would get from the more stalwart Hamas leaders.

Within Hamas, Hamad is a relative pragmatist and realist who has tried, with some success, to nudge the movement towards political moderation.

Hamad was among those who urged Hamas to run in last year’s legislative elections and ran as an unsuccessful candidate himself. When Hamas took power, Hamad became a spokesman for the new government and public face for PA PM Ismail Haniyeh.

But it now appears that Hamas moderates are being silenced as hard-liners re-assert their dominance.

Hamad has been quietly pushed aside after delivering a caustic critique of Hamas in an open letter to Hamas leaders.

Daniel Seidelmann, Annapolis and the “Jerusalem paradigm” | openDemocracy, October 31, 2007

Sit any Friday afternoon on the corner of el-Wad Street and St Stephen’s Road in Jerusalem’s Old City, just opposite the Austrian hospice. Thousands of Muslim worshippers throng to the mosques on Haram al-Sharif. Additional thousands of Orthodox Jews flock to prayers at the Western Wall. And the brown-robed Franciscans bearing the cross turn the corner and proceed to the Third Station of the Cross. Lest this picture appear overly idyllic: CCTV security cameras are ever-present, as are patrols of the Israel border police, while a handful of messianic Jewish settlers dart out of the Muslim quarter alleys.

In that one small scene, you can see it all. Three mutually incompatible religious narratives (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and two mutually incompatible national narratives (the Israeli and the Palestinian) cohabit the same sacred and secular space, not larger than three square kilometres in size. Jerusalem has an undeserved reputation for being nitroglycerin - any random jolt causes it to explode. That’s nonsense. For the past 1,300 years, Jerusalem has been the counter-paradigm to a “clash of civilisations”. It isn’t “fuzzy-warm” or “touchy-feely”, and no “it’s-a-small-world-after-all” tunes waft in the air, but it works.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news. Jerusalem’s Old City is also the playground for Muslim, Christian and Jewish exclusionary fundamentalists who seek, respectively: jihad, armageddon and wars of Mitzvah. Jerusalem may not be nitroglycerin, but if handled poorly, i.e., by allowing the radical fundamentalists to romp freely, it becomes a small atomic device.

The crucible

The forthcoming Annapolis meeting - at a date yet to be confirmed (possibly 26 November 2007) - is not merely an attempt to substantively address the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also (and perhaps foremost) an attempt to realign the forces of moderation in the middle east into a powerful, albeit uneasy, coalition that will not only combat but provide a positive option in face of an ascending radical Islam. As such, Jerusalem will not only be a prominent item on the Annapolis agenda. It will also be the physical embodiment of Annapolis’s goals - a non-violent interface between Islam, the Arab world and the west; or alternatively, an embodiment of Annapolis’s worst dreams - the place where the tectonic plates of Islam and the west crush and grind one another, with all that ensues.

For decades, Jerusalem has been peddled as the “most difficult to solve” and left to some undetermined future date. No longer: Jerusalem’s time has come. Regardless of how counterintuitive this may sound, seriously addressing the final-status issues relating to Jerusalem is one of the easier ways of generating high dividends at a reasonable cost.

Saladin Sultan and one of his five children stand in the bare family living room in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip. Dion Nissenbaum/MCT.

Dion Nissenbaum, Conditions worsen in Gaza as Israel tightens grip, McClatchy Washington Bureau | 10/29/2007 |

“The situation is so bad that you really prefer to die,” Sultan said. “I prefer to die rather than to live a life like this.”

In the four months since Hamas seized effective control of the Gaza Strip in a brutal military takeover, Israel has cut off the desolate region from the outside world and created a political crisis for the Islamist militant group now leading the government here.

Popular support for Hamas appears to be dwindling as frustration builds.

While Hamas managed to restore a semblance of safety to the Gaza Strip, it has failed to do much more. The Hamas-led government enjoys virtually no international recognition. Israel and the United States have rushed to shore up Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has championed the international campaign to marginalize Hamas.

Now Hamas is confronting intense internal fissures.

Ghazi Hamad, one of the best-known Hamas pragmatists in the Gaza Strip, has been effectively sidelined after criticizing the militant group for leading the Palestinians into an international political ambush.

Iraqi dam ‘at risk of collapse’, BBC, October 30, 2007

The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned.

In May, the US told Iraqi authorities to make Mosul Dam a national priority, as a catastrophic failure would result in a “significant loss of life”.

However, a $27m (£13m) US-funded reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress.

Munson: All those rightly outraged by American and Israeli policies in the Middle East should condemn this antisemitic rhetoric just as emphatically as the neoconservatives do. The fact that neoconservatives and right-wing Israeli extremists exploit this kind of language does not mean it can be ignored.

MEMRI, October 31, 2007

TV Channel Affiliated with Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Beri in Show on Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Jews Use Drug Trafficking to Control World, Subjugate Other Nations

The following are excerpts from a Lebanese TV report on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The report aired on NBN TV on October 22, 2007.

Maria Maalouf: “On land and in the heavens – the use that American and Israeli Zionism makes of the weapon of drugs in order to thwart intifadas and revolutions cannot be justified by the American claims about the intensification of the struggle on land, as long as the Jews purport to have their own private god in the heavens, who commanded them to annihilate the nations and peoples of the world, using drugs and causing anxiety, and numbing the mental, psychological, and physical capabilities of non-Jews, as written in the Talmud or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”Isn’t it true that these Jewish plots to corrupt the peoples were described by American ‘plot-disrupters,’ such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, and even by some Jews, like Alfred Lilienthal, and even Karl Marx, who, more than 150 years ago, exposed in his book On the Jewish Question that there was an instinct within the Jewish individual that drives him to take control of the world, by means of illegal money – which is known today as ‘money laundering?’” […]

Lisa Miller: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

“Perfected Jews” may have been Coulter’s version of saying “completed Jews,” which in some conservative evangelical circles means Jewish converts to Christianity. The phrase came into the mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was popularized by groups like Jews for Jesus who claimed they could retain their Jewish identity and practice while at the same time believing in the divinity of Jesus (a claim that most mainstream Jewish theologians find ludicrous). For them, “completed” made better sense than “converted,” because in their view they weren’t abandoning their Jewishness. Today these same people use terms like “fulfilled Jews” or “believing Jews.” “By believing that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel, we’ve been completed in our Jewish identity by embracing the hope of our people,” says David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus. The term “completed Jews” has filtered into the evangelical world. In 2001, the Christian addiction-treatment group Teen Challenge came under fire when an executive there said in a Senate hearing that some Jewish clients became “completed”–or Christian.

When you take a deep breath, you see that from a Christian perspective, the term “completed Jew” makes a certain kind of sense. For Christians, Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Pentateuch. He is the risen Lord and the way to salvation. For a Christian, the Torah is just half of the story. For a Jew, the Torah is the whole story; the phrase offends some Jews because it implies that without Jesus, they are incomplete or imperfect.

Here, then, is the question that underlies Coulter’s mouthing-off: why should I, a Jew, be offended because Coulter or any other Christian believes that her religion is superior to mine? The difference between Jews and Christians is 2,000 years old and rests on this fundamental: Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come. Each group believes at some basic level that theirs is the right, best path, or they would choose a different one. In a nation that protects the religious freedom of all with all its might, at a time in history when Jews in America may proclaim their own religious truth without fearing for their lives, why not imagine a polite way to talk about our differences instead of pasting them over or throwing rhetorical bombs? The problem with Ann Coulter is not, in this particular case, that she thinks her way is more perfect than mine but that she incites and revels in hate talk for profit. Nobody’s perfect, least of all Coulter–and I’m not worried about what she thinks about me.

Acting out of frustration in Gaza - Haaretz, October 30, 2007

One can appreciate the frustration behind the defense establishment’s proposal to sporadically cut the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip: Powerful Israel stands by helplessly while Qassam rockets continue falling on Sderot and the Negev. And these are attacks that in the not-so-distant future may become increasingly more accurate and effective.

The operations carried out by Israel Defense Forces units in Gaza - in which a paratrooper was killed and a Golani Brigade soldier was seriously injured yesterday - are becoming more complicated, according to briefings, because they are increasingly encountering better organized and trained foes.

It is easier for Israel to attack a reactor in Syria than hit nearby Beit Hanun, because it is difficult, if not outright impossible, to avoid civilian casualties there. Cutting off the supply of electricity, fuel and baby food is also a blatant blow against civilians - and only against them. One cannot claim that there will not be a serious humanitarian effect on the Gaza residents when, from the onset, they are subject to a permanent humanitarian crisis.

Attacking infrastructure is always problematic, and many believe that it never achieves anything, even if carried out in response to action targeting Israeli civilians. The inherent assumption in applying more severe sanctions against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip is that it is easier to bring down Hamas than to defeat it in battle or talk with it, and that every blow against Hamas contributes to the strengthening of Mahmoud Abbas. This is the new idee fixe guiding Israel’s policy in the territories, at least until the Annapolis summit. This approach may collapse, just like the ones that preceded it.

The Gaza Strip is not independent, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The babies of Gaza depend on the government of Israel more than the Hamas government, and the decision to punish them for the Qassam rockets does not contribute to the safety of the residents of Sderot.

Burston, It’s Judeo-Fascism Month in Israel - Haaretz, October 30, 2007

You may have noticed that conservative students and their mentors have just concluded “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on American college campuses. The goal, according to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was to “draw attention to a leading issue of our time, radical Islam and terrorism.”

I mention this only because, for those readers living in Israel, the event would have been easy to miss. Not only because it was taking place thousands of miles away, but because of a concurrent local campaign which is still going on. Inexorable, inescapable, it has reached every home in the nation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Judeo-Fascism Awareness Month.

The campaign can be seen to be more effective by far than its American counterpart. Perhaps this is because it cannot be ignored. Perhaps it is because it is led by the Judeo-Fascists themselves.

They are a compelling group. You can’t take your eyes off them. There is Larissa Trimbobler, who plays the beloved if dubious Sarah to Yigal Amir’s Shabbatai Zvi. Then there are the apostles. There is singer-screedwriter Ariel Zilber, who appears either to be permanently self-medicated, or in need of being. There is Avigdor Eskin, the prince of pulsa denura. There is Yigal Amir’s mother Geula, the molder of young minds, everyone’s favorite day care provider. And then there are the disciples, the rank-and-defile, the hilltop hopheads, the gunslinger grunge and grange society of the wild West Bank, the Kahane worshippers, the Muslim-baiters.

Under Hamas, Gaza is besieged - Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2007

GAZA CITY — The streets are quiet now and the electricity works most of the time. Crime is down and even weapons smuggling is at least being regulated. But four months after Hamas seized control of Gaza, the already precarious economy has been sent into a tailspin as the militant Islamic group reigns over a pariah state.

Although Hamas’ claims that its June takeover has brought peace and order to Gaza bear some credence, its four-day military rout of the Fatah faction has ushered in an abysmal new chapter for the 1.5 million people crowded into this impoverished coastal sliver.

Now more than ever, Gaza is besieged: from the outside by economic sanctions and from the inside by a continuing battle of wills between Hamas and Fatah loyalists.

“Nothing is moving. It’s never happened before,” said Omar Shaban, an economic analyst here. “The backbone of the economy is being destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the government in Gaza, led by deposed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, continues to hang on through a combination of guile, force and repeated calls for steadfastness from a beleaguered population.

Fatah activists are rounded up and beaten. Members of the security forces are paid with handfuls of cash. New taxes levied to boost revenue have doubled the price of cigarettes and other items.

In response to the Hamas victory, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders in an attempt to strangle an organization that still calls for the Jewish state’s destruction. The international community has largely gone along with the closure. Only Israeli commercial goods and limited humanitarian shipments are allowed in. On Sunday, Israel reduced fuel shipments into Gaza. Nothing is allowed out, leaving merchants on the brink of bankruptcy with their goods accumulating storage fees at border terminals.

In theory, the economic cordon is designed to turn the population of Gaza against the Hamas government. Polls have suggested that support for Haniyeh’s government may be slipping among Gaza residents as their suffering deepens, but Hamas officials seem serenely untroubled at the prospect.

Levy, The importance of a failed summit - Haaretz, October 29, 2007

Israel is going to Annapolis as if by force. The prime minister’s hands are tied. If he were to dare to raise the core issues, which are the only thing to be discussed there, then his political fate would be sealed. Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have already announced that in such an event, they will bring down his government. One can assume that Ehud Olmert, the survivor, is aware of this danger. Despite the lofty agreements that he will achieve - or not, it will seem as if his biweekly talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas never took place. Eli Yishai won’t permit it, Avigdor Lieberman is making threats and even Ehud Barak is making sour faces. An Israel that refuses to discuss the core issues is an Israel that does not want peace. There’s no other way to put it.

All this is made even more serious by the context in which the summit is being held: Israel never had as few excuses for evading progress toward peace, the ambient climate was never more conducive to progress. The terror card cannot be played again, because the terror has abated. Qassams landing on Sderot and a childish assassination attempt are not a reason to evade the peace process. This low level of terror will, unfortunately, continue to accompany Israeli-Palestinian relations for years to come. We must learn to live with it, and above all recognize that it will not stop in the absence of an agreement that will put an end to the occupation.

There is more. The security issue is much greater today on the Palestinian side. Israel can no longer continue to mouth slogans about security, after seven years in which it killed 4,267 Palestinians, 861 of them children and teens, in comparison to 467 Israelis who were killed, according to data from B’Tselem.

Another excuse that no longer washes is the “no partner” one. Israel has never had an easier peace partner than Mahmoud Abbas. True, he represents barely half the Palestinian people - Olmert represents an even smaller proportion - and true, it would be preferable if the Palestinian team going to Annapolis were to include Hamas, but that is no reason not to try. We destroyed Yasser Arafat as a partner - and the time has come to regret it - but we can no longer use the weakness of his successor as an excuse: Israel did all it could to create that situation. The Arab world, too, is more open to Israel and to peace than ever. Israel is methodically destroying the Arab League’s resolution and the Saudi peace plan, but they are still on the table and sending out an unprecedented message of hope to Israel.

Basra fight pointless, says British commander - Telegraph, October 28, 2007

One of the most senior British commanders in Iraq has claimed that there is no point in fighting on in Basra, likening British troops in the city to “Robocop” and admitting that innocent people were hurt as a result of their actions.

The officer, who spoke to The Sunday Telegraph on condition of anonymity, said commanders had concluded that a military solution was no longer viable.

“We are tired of firing at people,” he said. “We would prefer to find a political accommodation.”

The officer, who is responsible for thousands of troops, said the decision to pull soldiers out of the centre of Basra last month came after commanders concluded that using Iraqi forces would be more effective. “We would go down there [Basra], dressed as Robocop, shooting at people if they shot at us, and innocent people were getting hurt,” he said. “We don’t speak Arabic to explain and our translators were too scared to work for us any more. What benefit were we bringing to these people?”

British forces have struck a deal with Shia militias to withdraw to a single base at the international airport in return for assurances that they will no longer be attacked.

Bil’in - Four nonviolent activists wounded in Bil’in’s weekly protest, October 26, 2007
Source : IMEMC

by George Rishmawi

At least four nonviolent activists have been wounded in the weekly nonviolent anti-wall demonstration in the village of Bilin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday.

A number of International and Israeli peace activists joined the villagers of Bilin in their weekly protest carrying banners condemning the harassment of the Palestinian prisoners by the Israeli police. The protestors demanded the international committee of the Red Cross to pressure Israel to probe the death of one of Mohammad al-Ashqar few days ago in the desert jail of Ketsiot.

Protestors walked through the streets of the town and attempted to go to the olive orchards behind the annexation wall. However, they were stopped by the Israeli soldiers who placed barricades on the way to prevent the villagers from reaching their olive trees.

Troops threatened to shoot anyone who attempts to go through the barricade. As the protestors attempted to walk through, troops fired several gas and sound bombs and rubber-coated metal bullets at them wounding four.

Benziman, One, two, three, testing - Haaretz, October 28, 2007

Experience teaches that subjecting the Palestinians to collective punishment - roadblocks, curfews or economic pressure - has not brought the desired result. Just the opposite: it increases the terror organizations’ motivation to strike at Israel, and increases the number of potential suicide bombers. In addition, the use of collective punishment damages Israel’s image and efforts to gain international understanding for its position in the conflict with the Palestinians. Common sense would thus suggest avoiding this method. To put it simply, in terms of costs versus benefits - the idea of harassing Gazans to the point of depriving them of fuel and electricity deserves to be shelved in light of the price Israel will have to pay for implementing this plan. It can be inferred based on what Olmert told Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Friday that he understands this: A statement released after the two leaders met in Jerusalem said the prime minister promised his guest that Israel would not cause a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If that is the case, then what is the point of publicizing Israel’s plans to impose wide-ranging sanctions on Gaza’s population? Either the intention is to harass them mercilessly, in which case one may question the value of the prime minister’s promise to the PA leader; or to harass them only to a “tolerable” degree - in which case, what’s the point in harassing them?

There is a moral message to the decision, too: When Israel assassinates terrorists and injures innocent bystanders, it claims in its defense that that was not its intention, and that the terror organizations’ operational methods force it to act as it does. It is doubtful that this argument passes the test of morality, since some might argue that if Israel knows from the start that its actions will harm innocent victims, then it should avoid such actions. How much more so when the state walks, eyes wide open, into a moral and legal trap, in preparing to knowingly impose a collective punishment whose purpose is to harm tens of thousands of completely innocent people. So what should be done to combat the Qassams? Instead of trying economic siege and power outages and limited raids and ground campaigns and targeted assassinations - how about trying to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians founded on a genuine Israeli willingness to give up the territories?