Blood
and blood,
blood
in your country,
in my name and in yours, in
the almond flower, in the banana skin,
in the baby's milk, in light and shadow,
in the grain of wheat, in salt/
***
Adept snipers, hitting their target
with maximum proficiency.
Blood
and blood
and blood.
This land is smaller than the blood of its children
standing on the threshold of doomsday like
sacrificial offerings. Is this land truly
blessed, or is it baptised
in blood
and blood
and blood
which neither prayer, nor sand can dry.
There is not enough justice in the Sacred Book
to make martyrs rejoice in their freedom
to walk on cloud. Blood in daylight,
blood in darkness. Blood in speech.
***
He says: The poem could host
loss, a thread of light shining
at the heart of a guitar; or a Christ
on a horse pierced through with beautiful metaphors. For
the aesthetic is but the presence of the real
in form/
In a world without a sky, the earth
becomes an abyss. The poem,
a consolation, an attribute
of the wind, southern or northern.
Do not describe what the camera can see
of your wounds. And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you're still alive,
and alive, and that life on this earth is
possible. Invent a hope for speech,
invent a direction, a mirage to extend hope.
And sing, for the aesthetic is freedom/
***
I say: The life which cannot be defined
except by death is not a life.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Five young Israelis who refused military service defied the separation between Israelis and Palestinians on Saturday evening to share their tales of prison, isolation, and struggle with an audience outside the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

They were four women and one man. All but one have already been to prison for their objection to serving in the occupying army. They slipped into Bethlehem in order to bring the message of the refusal movement to the Palestinians who face the guns wielded by their teenage peers every day.

“These soldiers don’t have to be bad people. They’re very ordinary people, but they’re doing these things. They are responsible,” said Sahar Vardi, 18, from Jerusalem.

Nearly a hundred Palestinians and third-country nationals crowded into a small theater to listen to the Israeli youths at the Alternative Information Center (AIC), a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization in the town of Beit Sahour.

On Tuesday Israelis are expected to elect the most right-wing government in recent memory, but these five, represent a countervailing force, however small, to an Israeli society that appears more than ever to be in the grip of right wing nationalism. In Tuesday's election, the top slot is expected to go to the right-wing Likud party, and the third largest share of the votes to Avigdor Lieberman’s “Israel Our Home” party, one of whose slogans is “No loyalty, no citizenship.”

“Refusing is a break from the Jewish-Israeli consensus,” said 22-year-old Alex Cohn, “It’s the beginning of a journey, not an end.” Cohn spent a total of five months in a military prison in 2005 for his refusal.

The refuseniks’ message of moral objection was welcomed by at least some of the Palestinians who attended the panel. One student from Bethlehem said, “Every day I go to school at the Al-Quds university, which is in a town next to Jerusalem. I have to pass through a checkpoint twice a day. So, statistically speaking, if I’m standing in front of five Israelis, they’re probably going to be pointing guns at me. Instead I’m standing here applauding you.”

The five each explained their decision to refuse in terms of their life experiences. For some it was visiting the occupied territories and witnessing the brutality of the Israeli army first hand. Tamar Katz, 19, visited the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron with the group Breaking the Silence, and found the formerly bustling Old Market a “ghost town.”

Katz has spent three separate terms in prison ranging from two to three weeks each. When she refused to wear an American donated military uniform during one of her terms, she was remanded to solitary confinement.

Eighteen-year-old Sahar Vardi said she has been active in Palestinian issues since the age of twelve, but it was not until she began attending demonstrations in the West Bank that she “realized who was responsible for [the occupation],” specifically, individual soldiers who are the ones who carry out the daily violence of the occupation. Before facing tear gas and Israeli bullets at a demonstration in the town of Bil’in, Sahar said she blamed the Israeli government, in abstract terms, for the occupation.

18-year-old Neta Mishly also went to the weekly demonstrations in Bil’in and recalled “what it felt like when the soldiers were shooting at me … I was just a 16-year-old girl.”

“I saw who the military is fighting against; it’s not another army, it’s normal people trying to live their lives,” said Mishly, who will likely go to prison in April.

“These soldiers are the same people we were supposed to be, the same as our friends and fathers,” said Mishly.

The young Israelis also talked about what 19-year-old Mia Tamarin called “the stamp of the refuser,” the social isolation they face in a society where everyone is a soldier. Tamarin, a committed pacifist who spent two years in an educational program where she met women from all over the Middle East, said that her decision to refuse also led her to leave home.

Alex Cohn also said he faced tension with his family. “When my brother heard he called me very angrily, saying ‘you’re going to rot in prison,’” he said, then recalling that his brother changed tones, “’You’re going to sit in prison and read books while I’m risking my life.’”

Israel’s rightward lurch going into Tuesday’s elections, Cohn said, “is like falling down a cliff. It’s a nightmare. We can only hope that people wake up from this nightmare.”

“But,” he added, “Maybe it will lift the mask of Israeli democracy, and there will be more pressure on Israel from the outside."

The ongoing bloodletting in the Gaza Strip and the ability of the Palestinian people to creatively resist the might of the world's fourth strongest army is being hotly debated by Palestinian political forces. The latest genocidal war which lasted 22 days, and in which apartheid Israel used F-16s, Apache helicopters, Merkava tanks and conventional and non-conventional weapons against the population, have raised many serious questions about the concept of resistance and whether the outcome of the war can, or cannot, be considered a victory for the Palestinian people. The same kind of questions were raised in 2006 when apartheid Israel launched its war against the Lebanese people and brutally killed more than 1,200 Lebanese.

At the beginning of the Gaza war, we were told by certain sectors of the Palestinian political leadership that "the two sides are to blame: Hamas and Israel" and that "Hamas must stop the launching of the rockets from Gaza." Resistance in all its forms, violent and otherwise, was considered, by these same people, "futile." Now that there are fewer bombs raining down on Gaza, the conflict focuses on whether the outcome of the war was one of victory or defeat. For the Israeli ruling class the answer is clear -- in spite of the fact that none of the objectives announced at the beginning of the war have been achieved. It is clear because they, like the defeatist Palestinian camp, simply use the numbers of martyrs, disabled and homeless to determine victory and defeat.

This approach fails to acknowledge that none of the so-called "objectives" of the war have been achieved: Hamas is still in power; rockets are still being launched; no pro-Oslo forces have been reinstated in the Gaza Strip. The question now being raised by some Palestinian intellectuals and political forces, after the (un)expected brutality of the Israeli occupation forces, is "was it worth it?" The "it" here remains ambiguous depending on the reaction of the listener/reader. What is of interest here is the radical change that some national forces, especially the left and their intellectuals, have gone through in their mechanical, as opposed to dialectical, interpretation of history and their role, thereafter, in its making.

The war on Gaza has emerged as a political tsunami that has not only put an end to the fiction of the two-state solution and brought liberation rather than independence back to the agenda, but it has also created a new Palestinian political map given the intellectual debate vis-a-vis the outcome of the war. This new classification of the Palestinian intelligentsia and ruling classes has led to many ex-leftists joining the right-wing anthem of Oslo and its culture of defeatism. Not unlike the Oslo intelligentsia, the new pragmatic left is characterized by demagogy, opportunism and short-sightedness. The conduct of these NGOized intellectuals (those emerging from western-funded "nongovernmental organizations" -- NGOs) does not show any commitment to their national and historical responsibility.

Michel Foucault's famous formulation, "where there is power, there is resistance," helps us to theorize the political and, hence, the cultural resistance, represented in some of the (post)war discourse. Within the context of resistance, it is worth quoting Frantz Fanon's definitions of the role of the "native intellectual" during the "fighting phase": "[T]he native, after having tried to lose himself in the people and with the people, will ... shake the people ... [H]e turns himself into an awakener of the people; hence comes a fighting literature, and a national literature."

On the other hand, there are intellectuals who, according to Fanon's theorization, "give proof that [they] [have] assimilated the culture of the occupying power. [Their] writings correspond point by point with those of [their] opposite numbers in the mother country. [Their] inspiration is European [i.e. Western] ..." Hence the adoption of the Israeli narrative by some intellectual sections, including NGOized leftists, whereby Israel was exonerated of its crimes: "we are to blame for what happened;" "we were not consulted when Hamas started the war!" and "the people are paying the price, not the resistance movement;" "Hamas should have renewed the truce;" "we cannot afford to lose so many lives; Hamas should have understood this;" "there was no resistance at all on the streets of Gaza; resistance men ran away as soon as they saw the first tank."

By the same token, one would also condemn the Algerian, South African, French, Vietnamese, Lebanese and Egyptian resistance to occupation. The same logic was used by the Bantustan chiefs of South Africa against the anti-apartheid movement, by the Vichy government of France, the South Vietnamese government, the reactionary Egyptian Forces against the progressive regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, and even by the Siniora-Jumblatt-Geagea-Hariri March 14 coalition in Lebanon in 2006.

Obviously, these intellectuals' assimilation of the Western mentality, through a process of NGOization, and hence Osloization, makes them look down upon the culture of resistance as useless, futile and hopeless. Resistance, broadly speaking, is not only the ability to fight back against a militarily more powerful enemy, but also an ability to creatively resist the occupation of one's land. The Oslo defeatists and the neo-left camp fail to use people power creatively or even to see that it exists. They are defeated because they want to fight the battle on Israel's terms -- through the adoption of an Israel-Hamas dichotomy, rather than apartheid Israel vs. the Palestinian people -- instead of looking at their strengths: that they are the natives of the land, they have international law supporting their claims, they have the moral high ground, the support of international civil society, etc.

One good lesson from the South African struggle is the way it tried to define resistance and its adoption of what it referred to as "the four pillars of the struggle" to achieve victory over the apartheid regime: armed struggle, internal mass mobilization, international solidarity, and the political underground. Alas, none of these pillars seem to fit within the paradigm of the Palestinian neo-left.

The principled critical legacy of the likes of Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon is no longer the guiding torch of the NGOized left -- the secular democratic left which is supposed to be, as Said would argue, "someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations [or donors], and whose raison d'etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug." A fascinating, and timely, remark by Hungarian philosopher George Lukacs points the way that the NGOized left should be talking right now: "When the intellectual's society reaches a historical crossroads in its fight for a clear definition of its identity, the intellectual should be involved in the whole sociopolitical process and leave his ivory tower."

Decolonizing cultural resistance insists on the right to view Palestinian history as a holistic entity, both coherent and integral. It also reflects a national and historical consciousness that Palestinians are able to be agents of change in their present and future regardless of the agendas of western donors, the Quartet and other official "international" bodies. Yet we see that the neo-democrats of Palestine are unable to acknowledge Palestinian agency because they refuse to respect the will of the people as expressed through the ballot box. This position is meant to synergize with that of their donors and international bodies who have worked hard over the last two years to delegitimize Palestinian agency.

This lack of political consciousness and the search for individual solutions -- the major characteristics of defeatist ideology -- contradict the collective national reality of the colonized Palestinians. Political consciousness must begin with a rejection of the conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation and the Quartet (Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union) on the majority of Palestinians and even more crucially, a rejection of the crumbs that are offered as a reward for good behavior to a select minority of Palestinians. Indeed, class consciousness is dialectically related to the struggle for national liberation. It is the interests of some NGOized groups, ex-leftists, and neo-liberals, whose defeatist perspective on the outcome of Gaza 2009 is being disseminated with the help of some unpopular media outlets, which is at stake here -- not the interests of the Palestinian people who have gained even more legitimacy through their steadfast resistance to the Israeli bombardment.

Osloized and NGOized classes argue that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict is the establishment of two states which basically means the creation of an independent Palestine on 22 percent of Mandate Palestine. They maintain that the only way to reach independence is through negotiations, though more than ten years of negotiations have not moved the Israeli position at all. The establishment of a Palestinian state is not mentioned in any of the clauses of the Oslo agreement, thus leaving the matter to be determined by the balance of power in the region. This balance tilts in favor of Israel, which rejects the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, in spite of its recognition of the Palestinian people and its national movement the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). No Israeli party, neither Labor, Likud nor Kadima is ready to accept a Palestinian state as the expression of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The impasse negotiations have reached has proven the oppositional camp correct.

Hence the "shocking" results of the 2006 elections, in which Hamas won the majority of the seats of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Both liberals and leftists were "surprised" and even felt "betrayed!" Accusations of the "immaturity" and even "backwardness" of the Palestinian people have been thrown around since then. Nothing was mentioned about the failure of "the peace process;" nor the end of the two-state solution, and thereafter, the necessity and need for a new national program that can mobilize the masses; a program that is necessarily democratic in its nature; one that respects resistance in its different forms and, ultimately, guarantees peace with justice.

It is this lack of a political vision and a clear-cut ideological program that allows for the contortions of the Osloized classes. It is this lack that makes it prepared to recognize a "Jewish state" alongside a Palestinian state, including the legitimization of discriminatory practices applied by Israel against its non-Jewish, i.e. mainly Palestinian citizens and residents since 1948, and the end of the right of return of more than six million of refugees. What we are constantly told, is either accept Israeli occupation in its ugliest form -- i.e. the ongoing presence of the apartheid wall, colonies, checkpoints, zigzag roads, color-coded number plates, house demolitions and security coordination supervised by a retired American general -- or have a hermetic medieval siege imposed on us, but still die with dignity. The first option seems to be the favorite of some NGOized "activists."

The new, much-needed program, however, must make the necessary link between all Palestinian struggles: the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel's ethnically-based discrimination and rights violations of more than one million Palestinian citizens, and the 1948 externally displaced refugees. Gaza 2009 was not a defeat but a victory, because in Gaza the Israelis shot the two-state solution in the head; it is a victory achieved with the blood of those children, men and women who sacrificed their lives so that we could live and continue to resist, not surrender. Those Palestinians that are mourning the demise of the two-prison solution are out of step with new facts on the ground: there can be no going back to fake solutions and negotiations; it is time for a final push to real freedom and statehood. They can join other Palestinians, and internationals, in their demand for a secular, democratic state in Mandate Palestine with equality for all or they can walk into the dustbin of history.

Whenever Israel has an election, pundits begin the usual refrain that hopes for peace depend on the "peace camp" -- formerly represented by the Labor party, but now by Tzipi Livni's Kadima -- prevailing over the anti-peace right, led by the Likud.

This has never been true, and makes even less sense as Israeli parties begin coalition talks after Tuesday's election. Yes, the "peace camp" helped launch the "peace process," but it did much more to undermine the chances for a just settlement.

In 1993, Labor prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo accords. Ambiguities in the agreement -- which included no mention of "self-determination" or "independence" for Palestinians, or even "occupation" -- made it easier to clinch a short-term deal. But confrontation over irreconcilable expectations was inevitable. While Palestinians hoped the Palestinian Authority, created by the accord, would be the nucleus of an independent state, Israel viewed it as little more than a native police force to suppress resistance to continued occupation and colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Collaboration with Israel has always been the measure by which any Palestinian leader is judged to be a "peace partner." Rabin, according to Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, "never thought this [Oslo] will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state." He was right.

Throughout the "peace process," Israeli governments, regardless of who led them, expanded Jewish-only settlements in the heart of the West Bank, the territory supposed to form the bulk of the Palestinian state. In the 1990s, Ehud Barak's Labor-led government actually approved more settlement expansion than the Likud-led government that preceded it headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Barak, once considered "dovish," promoted a bloodthirsty image in the campaign, bolstered by the massacres of Gaza civilians he directed as defense minister. "Who has he ever shot?" Barak quipped derisively about Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the proto-fascist Yisrael Beitenu party, in an attempt to paint the latter as a lightweight.

Today, Lieberman's party, which beat Labor into third place, will play a decisive role in a government. An immigrant who came to Israel from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Lieberman was once a member of the outlawed racist party Kach that calls for expelling all Palestinians.

Yisrael Beitenu's manifesto was that 1.5 million Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel (indigenous survivors or descendants of the Palestinian majority ethnically cleansed in 1948) be subjected to a loyalty oath. If they don't swear allegiance to the "Jewish state" they would lose their citizenship and be forced from the land of their birth, joining millions of already stateless Palestinians in exile or in Israeli-controlled ghettos. In a move instigated by Lieberman but supported by Livni's allegedly "centrist" Kadima, the Knesset recently voted to ban Arab parties from participating in elections. Although the high court overturned it in time for the vote, it is an ominous sign of what may follow.

Lieberman, who previously served as deputy prime minister, has a long history of racist and violent incitement. Prior to Israel's recent attack, for example, he demanded Israel subject Palestinians to the brutal and indiscriminate violence Russia used in Chechyna. He also called for Arab Knesset members who met with officials from Hamas to be executed.

But it's too easy to make him the bogeyman. Israel's narrow political spectrum now consists at one end of the former "peace camp" that never halted the violent expropriation of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and boasts with pride of the war crimes in Gaza, and at the other, a surging far-right whose "solutions" vary from apartheid to outright ethnic cleansing.

What does not help is brazen western hypocrisy. Already the US State Department spokesman affirmed that the Obama administration would work with whatever coalition emerged from Israel's "thriving democracy" and promised that the US would not interfere in Israel's "internal politics." Despite US President Barack Obama's sweet talk about a new relationship with the Arab world, few will fail to notice the double standard. In 2006, Hamas won a democratic election in the occupied territories, observed numerous unilateral or agreed truces that were violated by Israel, offered Israel a generation-long truce to set the stage for peace, and yet it is still boycotted by the US and European Union.
Worse, the US sponsored a failed coup against Hamas and continues to arm and train the anti-Hamas militias of Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired on 9 January. As soon as he took office, Obama reaffirmed this boycott of Palestinian democracy.

The clearest message from Israel's election is that no Zionist party can solve Israel's basic conundrum and no negotiations will lead to a two-state solution. Israel could only be created as a "Jewish state" by the forced removal of the non-Jewish majority Palestinian population. As Palestinians once again become the majority in a country that has defied all attempts at partition, the only way to maintain Jewish control is through ever more brazen violence and repression of resistance (see Gaza). Whatever government emerges is certain to preside over more settlement-building, racial discrimination and escalating violence.

There are alternatives that have helped end what once seemed like equally intractable and bloody conflicts: a South African-style one-person one-vote democracy, or Northern Ireland-style power-sharing. Only under a democratic system according rights to all the people of the country will elections have the power to transform people's futures.

But Israel today is lurching into open fascism. It is utterly disingenuous to continue to pretend -- as so many do -- that its failed and criminal leaders hold the key to getting out of the morass. Instead of waiting for them to form a coalition, we must escalate the international civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israelis to choose a saner path.

Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009 10:12 EST
Salon Radio: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti on Israeli elections

To listen to this interview, click PLAY on the recorder below:

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who was a former candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in 2005, finishing second to the ultimate winner, Mahmoud Abbas. He's also held various positions in the Palestinian Authority and is a physician as well. Dr. Barghouti, thanks so much for joining me today.

Mustafa Barghouti: Thank you. It's nice to talk to you.

GG: The Israelis are holding a national election tomorrow, and most polls, if not all, predict that the winner of the election will be Likud, or at the very least, that the next prime minister of Israel will be Benjamin Netanyahu.

You're a long-time advocate of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians; what do you see as the implications for a Netanyahu victory in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations?

MB: Well, unfortunately, I must say that the election of Netanyahu -- and Lieberman with him -- simply means one thing: that this is end of the peace process, and the end of the possibility of peace based on two state solution. The problem is the timing. This election, this move to the extreme right wing comes at a time when the whole option of the two state solution is almost gasping due to the building of settlements in the West Bank and the creation of apartheid rule, and with such elections, this can be like the death sentence to two-state option, unless, of course, unless, there will be a different policy and a serious move from the side of the United States, which is probably the only country that has the leverage to pressure Israel to stop this terrible movement towards racism and apartheid.

GG: I want to ask you about that in a minute, that is, prospects for a new U.S. policy under President Obama, but first I'd like to just follow up a little bit about the end of the two state solution, or negotiations in the event of a Netanyahu victory.

You were part of a 60 Minutes report several weeks ago concerning expanding settlements in the West Bank in which you made the argument that the ongoing expansion of West Bank settlements and the extent to which those settlements now exist have already made a two-state solution, if not impossible, close to impossible, because the only way that a two state solution could ever be viable is if those settlements were dismantled.

Is there any viable political party in Israel, not just Likud, but even Labour or Kadima, that you think would actually really make a meaningful attempt to dismantle settlements such that a two-state solution could be possible? Would it really matter, in other words, if it's Likud as opposed to the other parties?

MB: Well, that is of course one of the problems, or one of the major problems, that practically the differences on the issue of settlements and the issue of Jerusalem is really non-existent when it comes to comparing parties with each other. Both Netanyahu, Kadima leader Livni, and Barak, the three of them all refuse the possibility of sharing Jerusalem. All of them refuse the possibility of stopping settlements and removal of settlement blocks that are consuming almost 50% of the land of the West Bank. And all of them are not ready even to discuss the issue of Palestinian refugees.

So, in that sense, there is certain right-wing consensus in Israel, and this is, in my opinion, a result of international community policy which made Israel feel that it has impunity and is unaccountable to the world community and irresponsible towards international law, and practically it has become even irresponsible towards itself, because I don't think there is anything to be proud about when in ten years from now the Israelis discover, or five years from now, the Israelis, that they are the worst apartheid system in human history. I don't think something promising for the Palestinians or Israelis to see that one of the main outcomes of these elections is a prolonged, long-lasting horrible conflict that is unmanageable. That's why unfortunately I see the election of Netanyahu as well as Lieberman, as a serious shift towards racism, and it's a reflection of serious, in my opinion, sickness.

Because fear and hate are the most motivating emotions now, unfortunately, in Israeli society. They have to be substituted for a different kind of approach. But that cannot happen, as I said, without a serious, different approach from the international community.

GG: Speaking of the international community, there was an argument that some people made, that the Israeli attack on Gaza was so brutal and so horrifying to watch, given that it was a trapped population that was defenseless and incapable of escaping the bombs that were falling on them, the artillery shells that were shot at them, that, although one is highly reluctant to try and find anything positive out of that horrible situation, that there was a sense that having the world watch that particular attack could actually make headway in changing popular opinion towards Israel and the Palestinians.

There was a column today by the Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who argued much the same thing about Netanyahu's election, which is, the reality is that when it came to the Palestinian situation, that whether Labour or Kadima or Likud won, would make only symbolic differences, and Netanyahu's victory would actually highlight what Israeli policy really is to the world, and make world opinion more opposed.

Do you see that as possible?

MB: Well, it's a possibility, but it's not guaranteed. We could also, if the United States decides to maintain the same old policy of Bush, we could see even more racism in Israel, and more brutality against Palestinians. Under Likud and under Lieberman. Lieberman is a fascist. But, in one way what you're saying is correct, that the only difference between Livni and Netanyahu is that we have two extremists, one with make-up and the other one without make-up. That's how I feel. That's the only difference.

But at the same time, accepting the election of Netanyahu, and again accepting this move towards a person like Lieberman, is going to mean that Israel probably will have even larger license to kill Palestinians. During the war on Gaza, Israel conducted several very serious offenses against international law. They launched a war, they created this war, they started it, it wasn't Hamas that started it. They deliberately targeted civilians and killed 1,350 people, most of whom were civilians. They conducted and they still conduct collective punishment. They used illegal weapons like white phosphorus, DIME weapons and the "flashettes." And they prevented even care for the injured people and attacked medical facilities, including thirteen of doctors and nurses who were killed in the attack.

And, not only did they use disproportionate force, but Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel, comes out declaring - declaring, with full courage - that he is going to continue to use disproportionate force. And not only that he's violating the international law, he's declaring that's he's violating international law. And many world community leaders remain silent. This feeling of impunity is responsible for what is happening.

But if we look at the political aspects of the war on Gaza, what did it achieve? It did not stop the missiles; they were stopped because Palestinians decided to stop them. It did not weaken Hamas as they promised; it actually weakened one person, or one line, which is Abbas, whose popularity today sits at 13%. And Hamas got stronger in terms of popularity, in terms of support --

GG: Is Hamas stronger in your view among residents of the West Bank as well, in the aftermath of what happened in Gaza?

MB: Their popularity increased in the West Bank more than it did increase in Gaza Strip. That's what the polls say. But at the end of the day the world has to see that Abbas and his group, Fatah, represent in the best case scenario only 25% of the Palestinian community. There's a third chunk - less than one third now is with him, one third is with Hamas, and another one third is with us, with people like us, with the democratic opposition in Palestine. And as long as certain countries insist to deal with only 25% of the Palestinian population, they will of course not create a situation where a Palestinian government is capable to develop.

And this is an outcome of Israeli-dictated policy, which in my opinion does not want to see any strong leadership in Palestine, they don't want to see unified leadership, and then they can have the excuse and say we cannot have a peace process, because there isn't a leader who can deliver.

GG: That, of course, is the main argument that many people on behalf of Israel make, which is that even if there were an Israeli government which wanted a meaningful process of negotiation towards a two-state solution or some other solution, that it would be impossible given that the Palestinians themselves are so fractured that there's no real leadership with whom the Israelis could negotiate.

Is that, regardless of who's fault that is or what has caused that, is that true -- do you agree that that is a serious impediment at the moment to trying to restart negotiations?

MB: No, I don't, because I think Palestinians can easily be unified if Israel removed its objection to the formation of a national unity government in Palestine. We managed - I was the main mediator of the construction of the first national unity government; we had a very good government that represented 96% of the Palestinian spectrum. We had a government that had a rather flexible political program. We were promised by many world leaders, including some American leaders, that that government would be recognized, and then it was Israel that launched a campaign to undermine that national unity government and its impact. So, we had the best democratic elections in the whole Arab world. We had the model of democracy, and it was thwarted by Israel, when Israel arrested one-third of the members of our legislature, who are still in Israeli jails.

So, the key to peace is that Israel accept our right, like their right, to democratically and openly and freely choose our leaders. If they recognize our right of freely choosing our leaders, like the people of Ireland chose their leaders, like the people of South Africa had the right to choose their leaders, like Senator Feinstein said, in the inauguration of President Obama, when she introduced him, and she said that very important sentence. She said: the root of democracy is the right of the people to freely choose their leaders.

If that is applied to Palestine, you can have a unified leadership tomorrow. But Israel has to accept our right of choosing our leaders. What Israel is doing is transforming the area into an apartheid system; they want, not Palestinian real leadership, they want cantons and something like a Vichy government, something like a security agency occupation. They want to choose for us who should be our leaders, and who should negotiate on our behalf, and of course the outcome would be a very weak leadership, and then they will say, we have a weak leadership that we cannot negotiate with.

The basic problem is, Israel up to this moment does not want to negotiate because Israel does not want to share the land, and does not want to accept our right as human beings, as equal human beings who are entitled to freedom and dignity, like Jewish Israelis have.

GG: A couple more questions, and just a couple, I know our time is a little bit limited. When you were running for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in 2005, you were subjected to all sorts of extraordinary restrictions regarding your ability to speak to the Palestinian people, even your mobility within Palestinian land.

Could you talk about some of the restrictions that were imposed upon you even as you were running for president of the Palestinian Authority?

MB: During the period of six, seven weeks, I was subjected to several attacks from the Israeli side. I was basically arrested or attacked eight times, in seven weeks. At one point I was stopped at a checkpoint with my people and I was beaten by the Israeli soldiers. I was arrested three times inside Jerusalem because each time, even when I had a permit to go to Jerusalem, and meet with President Carter there, they, after the meeting, they arrested me and practically kidnapped me for a few hours.

GG: And Jerusalem was where you were born, right?

MB: I was in East Jerusalem, exactly. I worked in East Jerusalem as a medical doctor for 14 years in the major hospital there, and still they prevent me from reaching the people in Jerusalem and they arrested me.

And nevertheless, even with all these harassments, we really got almost 34% of the vote, if you exclude the violations of the election campaign. But, 34% was, or at least 30% was a very strong indication of how much people really want change. They gave us these votes when we were a party that was only two years old.

GG: Now, one of the things you had mentioned earlier is that the only real hope for any of this to improve, regardless of the outcome of the Israeli election, is for there to be a genuine change in U.S. policy towards Israel and specifically towards its involvement in forcing Israel to become more receptive to genuine negotiations.

What are the expectations that Palestinians generally have, and what are your expectations specifically with regard to what you expect to see? Obviously you can't say for sure, but, what are you looking for, what are the early signs, as you see them?

MB: Listen - Palestinians have watched the rise of Barack Obama, and then his election, with great enthusiasm. Like many people of the world. They see in him a potential for great change. What we want Obama to do, is to apply his values, the values on the basis of which he was elected, and the values he spoke about in his inauguration speech, to the Palestinian situation. And I think he's a guy, who cannot say, I don't know, because he knows. And I think he's a president that is probably the most sensitive president among them all to the issue of racism and discrimination, and the kind of treatment that Israel is doing to us.

So we have a lot of hope that he will create that change. Of course, he knows he's encountering an establishment that is biased to Israel. Of course we know - and he spoke about the powers of the lobbyist that he once encountered - and one of the largest lobbies here [in the U.S.] is the Israeli lobby, which has been instrumental in preventing peace in the region, and has been instrumental in preventing a fair and effective American policy. And that's where the challenge stands. So, we would like him to create that change.

Look, the United States has great leverage over Israel. You are paying, the Americans, the American taxpayers, are paying Israel every rise of the sun every morning, $10 million - every day you pay to Israel, officially. If you count the amounts that American people donate to Israel, it's even larger than that.

You're talking about Israel being the largest recipient of American aid money, although it is a rather developed country with a GDP income that is close to United States' income. And still, it is the largest recipient of military aid. It is the country that is allowed to market American military technology worldwide at costs that are less than American costs, so that it would make profits, and the United States has great leverage if it decides it wants to push Israel.

Not towards harming Israel, but towards a more reasonable policy. That is, in the long run, in the best interests of all people in the region including Israelis. That situation we have today is the situation of funding like a totally spoiled child, which is Israel, that has gone beyond any control, that has violated all the rules, and now Israelis are violating all aspects of human rights in the most vicious way. If the United States wants to improve its image in the Middle East, if it wants to be widely respected as a fair country worldwide, I think this is the challenge, the Palestinian question.

GG: You mentioned earlier that, Avigdor Lieberman, whose party will probably come in third place, maybe even ahead of the Labour Party, is outright fascist and racist, and I think it's very difficult for anyone to dispute that. These things, though, don't generally happen without some cause.

When you look at the move to the Right of the Israeli electorate, how much of that do you attribute to rockets that are being shot by Hamas and what the perception of the part of the Israelis is, that there are substantial parts of the Palestinian society that don't want peace with the Israelis either?

When you talk to Palestinians, and they say to you, what is it that we need to do or we need to change in order to make peace more likely, what proportion of the blame or the cause for all of this do you attribute to the Palestinian side?

MB: Listen. Israel has been actually very good at abusing and using things like the rockets and other military forms of action to undermine and delegitimize and dehumanize Palestinians. I personally believe in non-violence; I believe that it's more effective. I believe that conducting military interaction with Israel is like committing suicide, because Israel is so powerful from a military perspective.

At the same time, I think our cause will have more integrity if we use non-violent methods - this is what I have been advocating. But the power of non-violence is strictly connected with the power of solidarity of the international community. This has been the case in South African struggles; this has been the case in many other non-violent struggles all over the world, and that's why when I explain to Palestinians, and even to Hamas people, and they ask me this question, why do you think it is important to have international opinion on our side, and I explain that. And then they ask me, how could non-violence be powerful and strong, and then I give them the examples of Martin Luther King. Now, the election of Obama is, in my opinion, the greatest success of Martin Luther King's non-violent approach to struggle.

But, you see, to strengthen our line of non-violence, we need some different position from the international community. What happened during the war on Gaza was just shameful. They - not only the United States administration, but many, many world leaders simply violated the basic moral standards when they refused to criticize Israel, when they could not tell Israel enough is enough and slaughtering children is not a way of finding a solution.

That's why I think, what I tell to my fellow citizens, is that our non-violent approach is the best way, and we're practicing this. But non-violence does not mean you surrender to your oppressors. Non-violence does not mean you give up your right to be free. Non-violence does not mean you become hostages of your occupier, as has happened to the Palestinian Authority under Abbas in the West Bank. That is the issue. Non-violence does not mean that Palestinian government should oppress its own people to prevent them from even non-violently expressing their views and their demands for freedom.

So, these things have to be clear, and I am a strong believer that the future of our struggle will be non-violent; I believe in non-violence; I believe in democracy; I believe we can provide Palestinians with better options, to have better health care, to have better education, better social system, but I am convinced, like every reasonable Palestinian, that none of that can happen unless we are free, totally, from occupation and oppression. Unless we are free, knowing the cause of all these problems, which is occupation.

Violence is a symptom of the disease, and as a medical doctor I learned that you have to deal with the cause of the disease, not just with the symptoms. And the cause has been 41 years of oppression and occupation, 60 years of partition, and the most important thing is the lack of justice towards the people who are called the Palestinians.

GG: Well, Dr. Barghouti, thanks so much for taking the time. I think most Americans hear very frequently from members of the Israeli government and people who advocate the Israeli side and very rarely from actual Palestinians living the occupied territories, so I appreciate your taking the time in order to explain your position. Thanks so much.

MB: And thank you for giving me the opportunity. Thank you, sir.

Feb. 9, 2009
Gershon Baskin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Several weeks ago I wrote that the war in Gaza "may have really been a 'war of no choice.'" Following the recent leaks from the talks about the "imminent" release of Gilad Schalit, I have decided to expose what I already knew before the war began.

Two weeks before Israel launched its attack on Gaza in response to a breakdown of the tahadiyeh (the cease-fire) with three weeks of barrages of Kassam rockets and mortar shells against its civilian population, I had met with a senior Hamas personality in a European capital. This person is connected and in contact with the Hamas leadership in Gaza and in Damascus. Over the past 950 days since the abduction of Schalit, he has transmitted messages for me back and forth to the Hamas leadership in Damascus, including a letter from Noam Schalit to Khaled Mashaal on September 8, 2006 that led to the release of the first sign of life from Gilad, which was received by the Egyptians on September 9, 2006.

We spent several hours talking about the conditions to renew the tahadiyeh. Since the abduction of Schalit on June 25, 2006, my involvement behind the scenes has been in holding unofficial talks with various Hamas leaders in Gaza, Damascus and elsewhere, all seeking to advance the negotiations to bring Gilad home. For two and half years I have been trying to bring about a direct secret back-channel bypassing third party mediators in order to speed up the process.

INITIALLY WHEN Hamas proposed such a channel, about one month after the abduction, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected it with a knee-jerk response that "we don't negotiate with terrorists." About a year later, I received permission from the government to see if it was possible to open up the direct secret back channel. Until two weeks before the Gaza war, Hamas refused.

My talks with the Hamas leader in Europe focused on two main issues: convening a secret direct back channel and linking the prisoner exchange for Schalit's release to the renewal of the cease-fire and the ending of the economic siege on Gaza. For about two years Hamas has rejected the linking of the prisoner exchange with the cease-fire and the end of the siege. Since, however, this was the initial position of Hamas immediately following the abduction of Schalit, as was communicated to me some three weeks after the abduction - a call for a cease-fire, opening the borders and the prisoner exchange - I appealed to the Hamas leader to go back to the original demands, but to include an agreement to bypass the Egyptian mediators through a direct secret back channel.

Our talks led to his agreement to get the approval of the Hamas leadership for this proposal. We concluded our talks with a note handwritten by him on the new proposed framework. We agreed that I would approach the Israeli leadership, and he would get the approval of the Hamas leadership. We further agreed that both of us would be directly involved in the talks along with others who would be appointed by the leaders on both sides.

I returned to Israel and 10 days before the war broke out I wrote to Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that Hamas was willing to open a direct secret back channel for a package deal that would include the renewal of the cease-fire, the ending of the economic siege and the prisoner exchange for the release of Schalit. I further indicated that Hamas would be willing to implement the agreement on Rafah which included the stationing of Palestinian Authority personnel loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in Rafah and a return of the European monitors. I communicated the same message to Noam Schalit and asked him to make sure that Ofer Dekel, who is charged with the Schalit file by the government, received the Hamas "offer."

I waited for a response from one of the people who received my letter.

Nothing. No response. When the war broke out I understood that the decision to go to war had already been taken and that the government preferred to teach Hamas a lesson rather than negotiate a new cease-fire and the release of Schalit. I understood that the leaders believed that they could bring about a regime change in Gaza, even if this was not the stated goal of the war. Why would we negotiate with Hamas if we expected to bring about the fall of Hamas?

OVER THE PAST DAYS the media has been filled with reports that there is a new breakthrough in the talks for the release of Schalit: "Hamas is willing to link the end of the economic siege with the release of Schalit." When I read this I said to myself - enough lies and spins.

What did this war achieve? What has changed? Has Israel gained its military deterrence? Has Israel changed the security reality in the South? Is Gilad Schalit at home? Has Hamas reduced its basic demands for the release of Schalit? No, no and no! Israel is negotiating now for exactly what could have been achieved without going to war. Israel spent $1 billion on the war, caused some $2 billion worth of damage in Gaza, more than 1000 people have been killed, thousands of lives have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived through weeks of terror; millions of Palestinians suffered the bombardment of their towns, cities and refugee camps - what is the result? More hatred, more extremism and more support for fanatics and their ideas - on both sides of the Gaza border.

If the transition government of Olmert does bring Schalit home before the new government is formed, it will pay the exact price that it could have paid nearly 950 days ago. The price then was as unreasonable as it is today; the problem is that there is simply no other way of bringing Gilad home. Hamas has not changed its price. The war in Gaza did not create any positive developments. It has not changed the price. It has not enabled a new breakthrough. It has weakened the moderate leadership of Abbas. It has weakened the moderates in Gaza. It did not achieve the goals that our leaders hoped it would.

The war was supported by 94 percent of Israelis because they really believed it was a "war of no choice." Lies, lies and lies. There was a choice. That choice was made - our leaders preferred war regardless of the cost. We don't negotiate with terrorists. We won't talk with Hamas. They don't recognize our right to exist, and we don't recognize that they were elected in democratic elections. Instead we hit them first and then we talk. We planned the war rather than planning how to avoid the war. That is the doctrine of the government. Now we can talk with Hamas? Isn't that what the government is doing today?

Perhaps the talks are not direct, but we are negotiating with Hamas.
The agreement that will be reached will be exactly what I proposed to Olmert, Barak and Livni 10 days before the war began.

The writer is the Co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org

Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday Jan. 28, 2009 05:01 EST
The 60 Minutes report on growing West Bank settlements

(updated below - Update II)

The Jerusalem Post today reports that, according to a newly released study by Peace Now, "the number of new structures in the West Bank settlements and outposts increased by 69 percent in 2008, compared to 2007" and "the settler population grew from 270,000 in 2007 to 285,000 in 2008." Earlier this week, the leading candidate to be Israel's next Prime Minister, Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, said that while he "has no intention of building new settlements in the West Bank," he "would let Jewish settlements expand in the West Bank if he's elected prime minister."

When it comes to explanations about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Americans are typically inundated with reports about the indiscriminate, civilian-targeting violence engaged in by Palestinian religious fanatics and other extremists who oppose the very existence of Israel. But they hear little about their Israeli counterparts -- the religious extremists and radical nationalists who, with the tacit and sometimes active support of the Israeli Government and military (funded and armed by the U.S.), continue to take over more and more land in the West Bank, imposing ever-harsher and more oppressive conditions on West Bank Palestinians. All of that is making a two-state solution increasingly difficult to envision, if not close to impossible.

Continuing the clear and positive trend of finally having a more balanced discussion of Israel in the U.S. media, 60 Minutes' Bob Simon, on Sunday night, broadcast a very good report focusing on how this settlement expansion occurs, the destructive mentality of the Israeli settlers, the devastating impact which settlement expansion has on the lives of Palestinians, and the ways in which settlement expansions -- by design -- are making a Palestinian state increasingly inconceivable. It also provides a very clear sense of how difficult is the task of Obama envoy George Mitchell, an outspoken opponent of West Bank settlements, who is in Israel today to begin his mediation efforts. [As he typically does whenever there is criticism directed towards Israeli actions in the U.S. media, the increasingly self-caricaturing Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League immediately sprung into action, angrily denouncing 60 Minutes for what he called a "journalistic hatchet job on Israel"].

Much has been made of Barack Obama's ability to present a new and better American face to the world -- and the initial steps have been a clear improvement in many realms (including the appointment of George Mitchell) -- but in much of the world, particularly the Muslim world, perceptions will change (understandably so) only if those pretty words are backed up by actions:

In contrast to the enthusiastic reception Obama's victory has garnered around the world, the Arab world has been more cautious about the new U.S. president - with most skeptical that American policy in the region will change substantially.

"I can't be optimistic until I see something tangible," said Hatem al-Kurdi, 35, a Gaza City engineer who saw parts of the interview. "Anyone can say nice words, but you have to follow with actions."

After earlier dismissing Obama as following the same policies as Bush, officials from the militant Palestinian Hamas group, which rule the Gaza Strip, softened their stance.

"In the last couple of days there have been a lot of statements (from Obama), some of them very positive, and choosing this George Mitchell as an envoy," said Ahmed Youssef, a senior Hamas official interviewed on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news network. "I think there are some positive things we have to count."

In the West Bank, Haytham Rafati was not as optimistic.

"I heard Obama, his tone is different, but I can't believe that any U.S. president can be different when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Rafati, 30, who works in Ramallah. "I will believe Obama is different in his approach to the Islamic world only when I see him pulling out his forces from Iraq and pressing Israel on the Palestinian rights."

Every issue written about here -- civil liberties, restoration of the Constitution, imposing limitations on our virtually limitless surveillance state, decreasing the extent to which our government and political culture are so militarized -- depends, in large part, upon our extricating ourselves from these endless Middle East conflicts. The 12-minute 60 Minutes segment, which is highly recommended for those who haven't seen it, conveys a very clear sense of how difficult that task is going to be and how the blame for this conflict is hardly confined to one side:





UPDATE: In an extremely positive review of Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya TV, Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch notes that, in the interview, Obama himself made the critical point: "But ultimately, people are going to judge me not by my words but by my actions and my administration's actions." Symbolic acts can be important and powerful, and their impact shouldn't be discounted (Kevin Drum, for instance, suggests Tehran as the choice for the major Muslim capital in which Obama's Middle East speech should be delivered; imagine the positive impact that might make). But as is true with the Executive Order directing the closing of Guantanamo, Obama will and should be judged not on the symbolic aspects of his Middle East policies but on what he actually does.



UPDATE II: In comments, LibertarianLeft makes an important point that can't be emphasized enough:

Enabling Israel's self-destruction

The irony, of course, is that by making a two-state solution impossible, Israel is hurtling down a path likely to lead to its destruction as a Jewish state due to demographics.

American diplomatic and financial pressure on Israel to halt the construction of West Bank settlements and ultimately dismantle them -- and to come to an agreement based roughly on the Arab League’s two-state proposal -- is the only hope that country has for long-term survival.

Instead, the U.S. has been behaving like the enabling spouse of an alcoholic, making endless excuses and paying the bills while indulging in a shared denial of reality. The self-styled friends of Israel in the Lobby and in Congress are may love the Jewish state, but they're helping the object of their affection to destroy herself.

Indeed. The very restrained efforts back in 1991 by Bush 41 and his then-Secretary of State Jim Baker to pressure Israel to cease settlement expansion in the West Bank (by conditioning further U.S. aid on its cessation) provoked the intense scorn of what Bush called "the power of the pro-Israel lobby," and to this day, Baker is despised and demonized as "anti-Israel" and even "anti-Semitic" by the allegedly "pro-Israel" Right in the U.S. because of that very mild attempt to use the massive amounts of American aid to influence Israeli actions. Yet imagine how much better off Israel would be (to say nothing of the U.S.) had Bush and Baker succeeded (rather than been thwarted) in those efforts.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald
Friday Jan. 30, 2009 05:37 EST
Increasing even-handedness in the Middle East

It's now rather clear that the debate in the U.S. over Israel and the Middle East is becoming increasingly more balanced and open, and there are even some very preliminary though encouraging signs that the Obama administration will take a more even-handed approach. As I wrote about the other day, the truly excellent report by 60 Minutes' Bob Simon, focusing on the destructive impact of expanding West Bank settlements, was a startling departure from the rules governing what normally would be aired in such venues with regard to Israel.

As one would expect, there were angry reactions and recriminations aimed at Simon and 60 Minutes from the same groups that, for years, have been stigmatizing even-handed discussions of Israel as illegitimate, or worse. But now, there is an important counter-weight to those efforts: J Street, which is well on its way to ending the monopoly that right-wing groups have long wielded in the U.S. when it comes to purporting to speak for Americans Jews and defining the allegedly "pro-Israel" position. J Street has launched a project praising the Simon/60 Minutes report, and has organized a letter-writing campaign to CBS in support of that segment, to balance the campaigns of criticisms from the right-wing "pro-Israel" groups. You can read about J Street's position here, and participate in their letter-writing campaign to CBS here (the full, lengthier and more detailed statement sent by J Street via email is here).

Obama's decision to name George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy (as opposed to, say, the hopelessly biased Dennis Ross) may turn out to be one of the most significant steps he will take. Consider the reaction that decision has generated.

On PBS's News Hour this week, Jimmy Carter (who, with his success at forging an Israel-Egypt peace agreement, probably did more for Israel's security than any foreign leader in the last century) said that Obama's "choice of an envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is absolutely superb, and it shows that he's going to take a more balanced position between the Israelis and their neighbors." J Street's Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, "enthusiastically" praised the selection of Mitchell, saying that it "signals the President's serious intention to inject new thinking and fresh perspectives into America's efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Even Noam Chomsky, while questioning Obama's commitment to changing American policy in the region, said that "George Mitchell is, of the various appointments that have been made, the most decent, let's say. He has a pretty decent record."

Meanwhile, advocates like Abe Foxman are actually criticizing Obama for Mitchell's appointment on the revealing ground that Mitchell is too "even-handed" -- an absurd criticism that, unsurprisingly, is defended by people like The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, in a piece entitled "The Case Against Even-Handedness." Notably, AIPAC has said nothing regarding their position on Mitchell's appointment.

Only time will tell whether the appointment of Mitchell presages real change in U.S. behavior, but whatever else is true, the presidential appointment of a Middle East envoy with a real history of even-handedness, and who therefore prompts praise from the likes of Jimmy Carter, J Street and Noam Chomsky, and anger from the ADL and The New Republic, is a significant and encouraging departure from the suffocatingly one-sided approach that has been so destructive for both the U.S. and Israel.

Signaling a similar sea change was the rather bitter dispute that broke out yesterday on a Davos panel featuring, among others, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres. The leaders of the two traditionally close nations argued angrily over the Israeli attack on Gaza, with Erdogan accusing Peres of shrillness because he has a "guilty conscience," and then storming out after accusing the panel's moderator, The Washington Post's David Ignatius, of extreme bias in according Peres far more time to speak than the other panelists (Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations and Amr Moussa, the Arab League’s secretary general), all of whom were critical of the Israeli attack on Gaza. For his confrontation with Peres over Gaza, Erdogan arrived in Turkey yesterday to a "hero's welcome."

It's important to underscore the supreme importance of significantly changing the U.S. approach towards the Middle East. One sometimes encounters the claim that the issue of U.S. policy towards Israel is separate, or even a distraction, from domestic efforts to restore Constitutional values and the rule of law, rein in limitless surveillance powers, and limit the influence of the permanent military and intelligence factions inside Washington. But those issues aren't separate. They're inextricably linked, and progress in the latter is impossible without real changes in the former.

It's precisely our endless and direct involvement in all of the various Middle East conflicts that plays a vital role in enabling the prevailing climate of militarization and the ever-expanding Surveillance State in the United States. It's clichéd at this point, but nonetheless true, to point out that it is our involvement in foreign conflicts and the maintenance of external threats that uniquely justifies infringements on core liberties and the expansion of state power. A nation involved in foreign wars will inevitably act like a War Nation at home. That's just a universal truth.

In the mid-1960s, Martin Luther King began devoting far more of his efforts and attention to emphatically (even radically) opposing the war in Vietnam than almost any other issue. As a result, he was criticized, even by his own supporters, on the ground that his anti-war efforts were a distraction from, even at odds with, his work on racial equality and social justice. In an April, 1967 speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York, he addressed that criticism and explained why efforts to change American foreign policy and to reform its domestic practices were, in fact, inseparable:

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. . . .

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. . . .

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. . . .

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Even those who recognize the existence of that rarest of entities -- a just war -- should acknowledge that constant involvement in an endless series of wars, as our Middle East policies currently ensure, causes "America's soul to become totally poisoned." It's just not possible to make real progress in the domestic aims of restoring the Constitution and reversing our military and intelligence expansions if we are simultaneously enabling and blindly supporting Israel's various wars (and therefore dragging ourselves into those wars), while we ourselves continue to wage our own never-ending conflicts in the Middle East. All of those issues aren't merely related but are completely intertwined.

-- Glenn Greenwald

The Spokesman

 

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on Earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace, unspeakable and perfect.