Feb. 12, 2009

Pink chaddis v the moral police

Groups in India which threaten violence against unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day are facing a backlash
Poorna Shetty

Fed up with running the gauntlet of Valentine’s Day in England – over-festooned card shops and smug co-workers touting bouquets – it was with relief last year that I discovered I’d be spending it working in Mumbai.

India, I surmised, probably did not celebrate Valentine’s Day. Wrong.

India, as a nation, adores Valentine’s Day. Indians embrace it as a holiday that goes beyond just being nice to your partner. Everyone – from the coffee guy to the gym receptionist who tried to hand me a red rose – was full of non-lecherous cheer. So I was shocked the next day to find the news awash with stories about far-right Hindu activists – from Shri Ram Sena to Bajrang Dal – who had beaten up unmarried couples and blackened their faces as a mark of shame for celebrating Valentine’s Day. Their justification was that the day is a western practice, and promotes “lust not love”.

This year, the same groups are out again in force. However, while the Indian government has been slow to act against these self-styled moral police, there’s a keen sense that the winds of change are turning against these groups.

For a start, although it is a serious issue, it is hard not to laugh at the blustering of Pramod Mutalik, leader of Shri Ram Sena. Mutalik insists that his men will roam Bangalore armed with video cameras, capturing any unmarried couples found celebrating Valentine’s Day and then force them to get married. In response, the brilliantly titled Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women has started a campaign on Facebook – which now has a whopping 28,496 members and counting – that calls on people to send the Sri Ram Sena a pair of pink chaddis (meaning underwear in Hindi) on 14 February as a sign of protest.

Bangalore’s police have also promised to come down very hard on any activists causing trouble, and while some have expressed outrage at having to be policed in the first place, it seems like a good short-term measure.

The irony is that the Hindu activists have unwittingly united most of the nation against their cause. Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan condemned the moral policing, and said Valentine’s Day should be seen as a “day of friendship and love and not as a western culture attack on the Indian culture”. The youth wing of the Nationalist Congress party are selling 10-rupee cards in Mumbai, at a monetary loss to themselves, because they don’t want the “Shri Ram Sena to dictate terms to people”, while the Earth Saviour Foundation in New Delhi plans to offer volunteers to escort couples on the day.

As Namrata Kotwani, who is campaigning against moral policing via her blog, underlines: “We choose to protest on Valentine’s Day for its symbolic value. We all have our personal interpretation of religion and no one has the right to impose his or her ideas on others.”

If Mutalik, with his hate-filled rhetoric, can turn a hardcore cynic like me into a fervent supporter of all these pro-Valentine groups, then he’s got no chance. As for all these rightwing groups who are so desperate to protect India from being influenced by sex, surely someone’s going to point out the elephant in the room? Namely, which country was responsible for the Kama Sutra? Hands up, please.

Simon’s  piece, entitled “Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?” can be seen at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml.

The J Street statement of support for Bob Simon can be accessed at http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/2747/t/3251/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2523.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Sunday blasted the Pope’s decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, calling the reinstatement “scandalous.” The Israeli museum’s fury marked another step in the row between the Catholic Church and world Jewish groups, who were outraged by announcements of the rehabilitation.

“The reinstatement is an internal Church matter…[however] denial of the Holocaust not only insults the survivors, memory of the victims, and the Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to rescue Jews, it is a brutal attack on truth,” Yad Vashem said in a statement.

British Bishop Richard Williamson was one of four traditionalist bishops to have his excommunication lifted Saturday, just days after he was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent – a move the Vatican said at the time was an act of schism.

“Even if the revocation of the excommunication is unrelated to Williamson’s comments regarding the Holocaust, what kind of message is this sending regarding the Church’s attitude toward the Holocaust?” Yad Vashem wrote. “Although we understand that Williamson’s statements do not represent the Church’s stance, we continue to hope that the Church will vigorously condemn these unacceptable and odious comments.”

I don’t watch much TV because it is so useless. They only bring Israeli generals and officials, ministers and reporters who are so uncritical of Israel that it is a waste of time. I mean after 1/2 an hour I turn it off.

But an hour ago or so something unbelievable happened. I turned on the TV and about 5 minutes into the program on the situation in Gaza, a Palestinian physician who worked in Israel many times and lives in Gaza with his children and knows Hebrew very well called the Israeli reporter in the studio (whom he knew very well) on his cell phone, and he was crying uncontrollably. He said that an Israeli tank just hit his house and injured or killed his children. This was live and it was unbelievable. The reporter kept his cell phone on for several minutes in the studio and you heard this physician shouting and crying into the cell repeating “Ya Allah why did they do it?” (in Hebrew). It was stunningly painful and obviously the Israeli reporter, who knew the physician, said that he would not turn off the cell in the studio, and we kept hearing the hysterical yelling of this poor Palestinian with his children bleeding around him. (I obviously could not see anything, I could only hear the man’s voice on his cell phone.) The reporter asked the physician where he lives and then asked the Israeli army on the air to send an ambulance to his home to help that family. After 3-4 minutes, the reporter excused himself and left the studio with his cell phone on to talk with the physician privately.

It was surreal and immensely painful. You heard the guy’s pain so very clearly and loud. It was not clear how many people were killed in that house.

Guardian, Jan. 14, 2009

The Northern Ireland example is instructive. Through dialogue even the most implacable of enemies can make peace

The smart money in the Middle East is always on pessimism. Events can be relied on to get worse and worse. But perennial gloom has a flaw. Its unstated assumption is that the war between Israelis and Palestinians is somehow unique – that it is the only conflict in the history of the world that cannot be solved or even ended.

Yet even as the horror continues in Gaza, it’s worth recalling that people were once just as fatalistic about battles now long settled. Whether it was apartheid in South Africa or the 30-year bloodshed in Northern Ireland, there were plenty of dark days when the blood seemed as if it would never stop.

Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland, once a byword for strife, is now an invocation of hope. If republicans and unionists – who once wished each other dead – can sit in government together, then surely Israelis and Palestinians are not fated to fight for ever.

That message is in the air just now, with both the Irish prime minister and Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams urging the warring parties of the Middle East to learn their lesson and begin “dialogue”. Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been citing his own Northern Ireland experience as a useful precedent. Is he right? And if he is, what exactly are the lessons?

It’s a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same: none ever are. The wildest elements of the IRA were never committed, even rhetorically, to the destruction of Great Britain. Yet Hamas’s charter does call for the eradication of the state of Israel. (Those close to the organisation insist the document has in effect lapsed.)

Moreover, whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. There was state collusion in killings, but the British army did not bomb entire buildings in the Falls Road because it suspected an IRA cell lurked within.

Nevertheless, there are important similarities. The two sides were fighting over the future of a small piece of territory. The unionist majority often complained that it stood alone, uncomprehended by the rest of the world. Demographics mattered, the notion that one group might soon outnumber the other. And religion was never far below the surface.

My goal, however treacherous, is to set aside the political blame game that has characterized the debate, and to focus on the terrible civilian conditions inside Gaza with the hope that the plight of Gazans will foster expedited preparation for an emergency international relief effort to address the humanitarian crisis that grips Gaza now and which will surely get far worse in the days ahead.

Whenever Gaza’s guns go silent, tens of thousands of Palestinians caught in the crossfire between Hamas militants and Israeli forces will haltingly emerge from the rubble to survey the terrible destruction that has befallen them as winter rains add more misery to the situation.

Entire blocks of stores and homes have been destroyed; services have been disrupted; and families have endured a barrage of fire and counterfire rendering what passes as normality in Gaza a distant memory. If Gaza was destitute and replete with misery before the latest Middle East war, it surely will face an even bleaker existence in the days ahead.

Conditions throughout Gaza were bad enough for its inhabitants before the fighting — an economic blockade by Israel, and Hamas’ Islamic extremist economic disorder had collectively transformed Gaza into a state of perpetual depression.

But things have gone from very bad to much worse in recent days as fighting has escalated.

At this hour, Gazans have almost no electrical power, and are under almost a round-the-clock blackout. Store shelves are empty, urgent medicine is in short supply, and only a few homes have running water since there is no fuel to run the water pumps. Sewage is flowing in the streets, and medical authorities, who cannot cope with the flood of civilian victims, are concerned that this witch’s brew will breed a terrible post-conflict pandemic of assorted maladies that will only lead to more deaths. Under such conditions, most would flee becoming refugees again, but in Gaza there is nowhere to run. The borders are sealed and there is no escape.

Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi on Hamas TV: Dispatch Those Sons of Apes and Pigs to the Hellfire – On the Wings of Qassam Rockets

Following are excerpts from a speech by Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on December 31, 2008.

Safwat Higazi: “Being killed is nothing new to us. It is what we desire and hope for. It is martyrdom, by Allah. This is Allah’s victory coming to us. It is Paradise with the first drop of blood of the martyr.[...]

“Allah is with us, and there is nobody with them. Allah is our God, and there is nobody with them. We say to them: We are not equal. Our dead go to Paradise, while your dead go to the Hellfire.” [...]

“The [Jews], who are as smooth as a viper, and who lick their lips as [does] a speckled snake, will never live with us in peace and harmony. They deserve to be killed. They deserve to die. They are the ones at whom the Qassam rockets should be fired. You should not care if you hit a man, a woman, or a child. Just like they killed your children – kill their children. Just like they killed your women – kill their women. Just like they destroyed your mosques – destroy their places of worship. Destroy… everything over there.”

(IsraelNN.com) A new prayer written specifically for the besieged residents of southern Israel was approved this week by the Rishon LeTzion, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.

The prayer, which several youth movements have already adopted, has been distributed among both religious and secular Israelis. The seven-line supplication asks G-d to protect residents of the south and IDF soldiers fighting terrorism. It also asks Him to grant wisdom and strength to Israel’s leaders.

It can be recited at any time, but is being recommended specifically for times in public prayer when brief personal prayers are offered, and whenever a rocket launch is reported….

English Translation
“May it be Your Will, L-rd our G-d and G-d of our forefathers, that You will have mercy on us and on all the residents of the south.

Protect us in the bounty of your kindness and spread out over us the shelter of Your peace.

Strengthen the arms of the fighting soldiers who protect us and give their souls for us.

Protect them and guard them from all misfortune.

Foil the plans of our haters and enemies; “Their swords shall plunge into their hearts and their bows shall break.”

Sovereign of the Universe, give our leaders wisdom and courage and strength of heart to annihilate all of our enemies, and let the prayer of King David, may he rest in peace, come true regarding them: “I shall chase after my enemies and I shall catch up to them and I will not return until they are destroyed.” Amen.

It has been common for educated Israelis to think, and Israeli diplomats and American Jewish leaders to present, the settler community of Hebron as a kind of radical nuisance. Presumably, the settlers are a side-show of a defensive strategic policy, a touch of hubris gone wrong, a little understandible selfishness after centuries of self-effacement-anyway, a line that can be moved when the time is right, certainly not a country within a country that has grown, SimCity-like, into something the size of the Jewish colony in Palestine in 1946.

In this view-not entirely wrong-the settlers were post-1967 Israelis only more so: people who took classical Zionist ideas about settling the Land of Israel a little too seriously, or took the Jews’ election a little too literally, or accepted cheap mortgages from the Jewish Agency a little too opportunistically; people who have randomly scattered themselves in the occupied territory in a now obviously failed effort to annex the holy land, or just to show that Jews can live everywhere in it.

The settlers, presumably, have settled under the nose of a forbearing, once vaguely sympathetic Israeli government, otherwise preoccupied by encirclement and terror. But they are people whom the Israeli government-if it ever had a real peace partner in the Palestinians, and not jihadist terrorists firing missiles, or sending in suicide bombers-would clear out in a great show of sovereign will. The recent clearing of the “House of Contention” by the Israeli Army is proof, so the argument goes, of the Israeli army’s residual power. The more recent breakdown of the cease fire with Hamas is proof of how Israel faces an existential threat, and dares not be distracted by the settlers.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s picked up the scent of power, is defining a new centrism by triangulating these poles. He knows that Israelis have lost patience with Judeans, or at least the disquieting ones. He’s made a show of purging one of the most fanatic of the settlers, Moshe Feiglin, from the 20th. position in the Likud list for the Knesset (though many more remain in the top 30); and he is simultaneously telling us that both the peace talks Olmert conducted with the Palestinian Authority, and the “time of retreat” in Gaza, are over. No two-state solution will compromise the existence of Kiryat Arba (no more than the unity of Jerusalem), he says. But neither settler zealots nor Palestinian terrorists, presumably, will be allowed to challenge the existence of the state. Each side-some now, some later-will be forced to change their behavior by Israeli state force.

I WENT TO Hebron a couple of weeks ago, as part of a delegation of Israelis hoping to show a measure of solidarity with an Arab family who’s patriarch, Abed el-Hai, had been shot at point blank range defending his home from one Kiryat Arba settler as the House of Contention was being cleared. There is no need to sentimentalize this gruff, stolid man-whose many barefooted grandchildren, sticky from holiday candy and twittering over our cell phones, will be run over by global forces if peace should ever come. But let’s just say that a day in Hebron focuses the mind.

You think out from Hebron, and the holes in the common wisdom become obvious, well, certainly less abstract. A different pattern takes shape, and virtually every premise of the common wisdom falls away.

1. Kiryat Arba, with surrounding settlements, is a solid town of about 10,000 people and growing. Many of its youth were born there, marinating in a peculiar and vicious righteousness. But there can be no Palestinian state if Kiryat Arba remains; to keep its residents under Israeli sovereignty, you would have to cut the southern West Bank in half, and keep checkpoints all along the route from Gush Etzion. Kiryat Arba’s residents would never accept Palestinian citizenship, even if this were offered. Imagine offering Klansmen rule by Stokely Carmichael, or Martin Luther King, for that matter.

2. According to army intelligence, and demonstrated precedent, a substantial number of Kiryat Arba residents would be willing to violently resist the Israeli army. Reserve army units-young men from Herzliya or Netanya-will tell you the settlers are out of their minds. But this is not the only army. An increasing number of junior officers conducting the occupation come from the movements and homes of the settlers. The army is there, soldiers say, to keep the peace. But in any case, this means enforcing the status quo, in which settlements naturally expand.

3. There is nothing random about what the settlers are doing. In Hebron, the idea is to create a land bridge from Kiryat Arab to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It is Abed el-Hai’s bad luck that is home is in the way, in the wadi below Kiryat Arba, which the settlers want to turn “Jewish.” Most nights, Kiryat Arba residents throw rocks, garbage, and bags of urine into his yard.

In the area known as H-2, where the settlers have rights under the Wye Agreement (you know, the agreement then-prime minster Netanyahu negotiated in 1998), the Arab population has declined from about 35,000 to 18,000.

The road from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb has a yellow (that’s right, yellow) line on it, indicating that no Arab is allowed to walk on it; the settlers push their baby-strollers freely, while army jeeps patrol up and down, and Arab kids watch from third floor windows, many of them with iron screens to protect them from rocks, etc.

The settlers have set up a synagogue on the land of Ja’abri family-another family in the way-which the Israeli High Court has declared illegal, and the army has taken down over 30 times, only to have the “minyan” rebuild it. During prayers, their children often throw rocks, etc., onto the homes of the Ja’abris. A stone’s throw in the other direction is the grave of, and monument to, Baruch Goldstein.

4. Multiply the Hebron problem by twenty, and you have the real, grotesque problem that occupation has engendered. Jerusalem is the radioactive core of it. Try to evacuate Kiryat Arba by force and tens of thousands will stream down from yeshivot in Jerusalem to stand with them.

No Israeli leader wants to deal with facing down the new Judeans-or can, without destroying Israeli social solidarity. I have written here before about how all fanatics live within concentric circles of support. No matter who wins a majority in the next election, about half of Israeli Knesset members will be from circles which the settlers count on-National Orthodox, Shas, Leiberman’s Russians, Haredi-people concentrated in and around Jerusalem, whom the settlers will tell you would be in settlements themselves if they had the guts; people who will nevertheless apply the “values” the settlers stand for to Jerusalem.

Again, Netanyahu has demoted Feiglin. But the government he will form will rest on this Judean coalition. And if Livni-Barak win, they will face an opposition nearly the size of their own, with many sympathetic members, and a fear of resting their coalition (as they will have to) on the Arab parties.

5. Hamas is growing in power-in the West Bank, too-directly as a result of this grotesquery. It is absurd to think of Gaza as a separate matter. Nor will the Hamas leadership be intimidated by shows of force. Actually, they thrive on it-precisely because eruptions of violence allow them to be seen as the steadfast opposition to the inertial expansion of Israeli occupation. An Israeli attack on Gaza, which must be bloody, will be play right into Hamas’s hands.

6. True, Israelis on the coastal plain are increasingly appalled by the settlers, and will tell you so. Livni’s biggest applause line at the Globes business conference last week was her insistence that, under her leadership, peace talks with the Palestinians will continue. But taking on the settlers is another matter. It is more politic to talk about smashing Hamas, whose missile attacks on Shderot truly are insufferable.

7. Netanyahu speaks of “economic peace” as alternative to the peace process. This is also absurd. Palestinians cannot build businesses with 500 checkpoints across the West Bank. Those checkpoints are mainly to protect the settlers.

WHERE DOES THIS leave us? The simple fact is, this problem is too big for Israel. We will need the world’s involvement; anyone who tells you different is either covering for the settlers, or afraid for electoral reasons to appear squishy about Israeli autonomy, or arrogant, or ignorant, or thick, or all of these at once. This post is not the place to describe what involvement means, though the contours of a two-state deal have been obvious for many years. The point is, what Hebron represents cannot be solved by this deal in a few decisive months, like the evacuation of the Sinai was. New changes to the landscape will take years. Or the landscape will look like Bosnia.

Perhaps the saddest part of all of this is that first patriarch of Hebron, Abraham, never turned promised land holy. When faced with contention, as his herdsmen quarreled with Lot, he said something unforgettable but forgotten: “Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”