Thursday, June 29, 2006

Who is murdering Iraqi civilians? (Norman Geras)

As Norman Geras correctly points out (on Normblog), some people seem to forget who is actually doing it. (See also here.) For example, whose work was this?
A coordinated wave of suicide attacks and remote-controlled bombs rocked the contested northern oil city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, leaving at least 22 people dead and wounding 43. .....
In a now familiar insurgent tactic, police and passersby who came to help were hit by a remote-controlled car bomb, which killed 13 civilians and wounded 17
Some people even seem to forget how many Iraqis are being systematically and continuously murdered by the so-called "insurgents." For example, when Congressman John Murtha created a political earthquake in November 2005 by calling for US withdrawal from Iraq, he said that "Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency." Actually, no. For several years now, the primary targets of the "insurgency" and the vast majority of its victims have been Iraqi civilians. And US abandonment of Iraq would have even more catastrophic consequences for Iraqis, leading almost certainly to an all-out civil war (which might be accompanied by intervention from neighboring states) and possibly to a victory by the coalition of fascists and theocratic fanatics at the heart of the "insurgency." It is understandable that, from the perspective of a US Congressman, the lives of US troops would take precedence over the lives of Iraqis. But at least we should keep the realities of the situation clearly in mind.

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Norman Geras (Normblog)
June 28, 2006
Wanton murder

Report of June 26:
A motorcycle packed with explosives detonated in the middle of a crowded market in Baquba, killing at least 18 people and wounding 20 others Monday evening, Iraqi police said. .....
The square is considered a Shiite holy place, and many of the victims were believed to be Shiite women and children...
A short time earlier, a bomb exploded in a Hilla market, killing at least six people and wounding at least 56 others, police said.
Report of June 23:
A car bomb targeting the mostly Shia population of Basra, in the south, left five dead. .....
[T]he Basra car bomb ripped through a market and nearby petrol station. Police said at least five people were killed and another 18, including two policemen, wounded.
Report of June 21:
The tortured bodies of two US soldiers were recovered in Iraq yesterday, after the two privates had been captured last week in an insurgent attack. An Iraqi official said they were "killed in a barbaric way", and an Islamist website claiming the killing for the al-Qaida group in Iraq suggested they had been beheaded.
Report of June 16:
A suicide bomber with explosives hidden in his shoes attacked a Shia mosque in northern Baghdad today, killing at least 10 people...
The bomber, who also injured 20 other people, struck just before Friday prayers at the Buratha mosque, where at least 85 people were killed on April 7 in an attack by four suicide bombers.
Report of June 13:
A coordinated wave of suicide attacks and remote-controlled bombs rocked the contested northern oil city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, leaving at least 22 people dead and wounding 43. .....
In a now familiar insurgent tactic, police and passersby who came to help were hit by a remote-controlled car bomb, which killed 13 civilians and wounded 17
Report of June 9:
That was followed about an hour later by a blast at a fruit market in the same area... Two women were among the 13 who died when the bomb detonated at the entrance to the market, severely damaging several shops, police colonel Ahmed Abod said; at least 39 people had been wounded.
A car bomb also exploded in Kadhimiya, a Shia area of north-western Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 17, police said.
Report of June 5:
A group of students on their way to end-of-year exams were among 21 people massacred by gunmen at a bogus checkpoint in Iraq's restive Diyala province yesterday, in one of the most shocking sectarian attacks in the country in recent weeks.
That's just a small number of reports from June 2006. As is now all too well known, I could easily have added to them. (See here, for example, those links which are for incidents in Iraq.) But they suffice as a backdrop against which to highlight what I want to, which is an argument by Gary Younge from a couple of days ago. He's writing about 'the slew of alleged atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq', and in this context he says:
To treat even these few incidents as isolated chapters is to miss the broader, enduring narrative. For these are not the unfathomable offshoots of this war but the entirely foreseeable corollaries of it. This is what occupation is; this is what occupation does. There is nothing specifically American about it. Any nation that occupies another by force will meet resistance. For that resistance to be effective, it must have deep roots in local communities where opposition to the occupation is widespread. Unable to distinguish between insurgent and civilian, occupiers will regard all civilians as potential insurgents and all territory as enemy territory.
And he concludes:
If the wanton murder of civilians is what it takes to complete your mission, there is clearly something wrong with the mission.
Let me make it clear that my point in drawing attention to the reports with which I began is not to draw attention away from any atrocities that have been committed in Iraq by US soldiers. At Haditha and elsewhere, if there have been transgressions of the laws of war by American personnel, then they should be investigated and prosecuted. What is breathtaking about Younge's piece, however, is the structure of justifying advocacy it contains. He talks of the wanton murder of civilians in order to delegitimize the US occupation, while passing over the fact that, almost daily, wanton murder is being committed by forces opposed to the occupation, and as a way of defeating not only the occupation itself but also political arrangements democratically voted for by the Iraqi people. It's just as if this weren't happening or else had no troubling moral implications in Younge's head. No, on the other side of things, there is just 'resistance' - almost like a natural phenomenon, beyond right and wrong, good or evil. How come it doesn't occur to him that if 'the wanton murder of civilians' - week in and week out - is part of the resistance to occupation, then there is 'clearly something wrong' with this so-called resistance? And how come he doesn't then go on to ask what it would mean if this so-called resistance were to enjoy the triumph of bringing about a coalition withdrawal? How come there isn't a two-sided assessment of the aforesaid 'mission', informed by all those wanton murders with which I began? It seems that wanton murder in Iraq doesn't show up on Younge's radar unless it's Americans who are responsible for it.

Of course, it's possible that Gary Younge is just a fiction put about by supporters of the Euston Manifesto.

Apropos... see André Glucksmann:
[T]he Iraqis have gone to the polls three times, each time in greater numbers, and they don't seem to regret the fallen dictator. Should the GIs and their allies now depart in a hurry, the way they did in Somalia? Even the most anti-American governments like France are crossing their fingers and hoping that they won't, and that the coalition won't abandon the terrain to the throat-slitters.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The real story in Gaza (Ami Isseroff)

The Israeli Army has just re-invaded part of Gaza to rescue an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped in a cross-border raid against an IDF outpost inside Israel. (Further discussion here.) We don't know yet how this operation will develop, and it may lead to unpleasant consequences inside Gaza and heavy political fallout elsewhere. So before the emotional intensity of reactions on the ground and around the world get out of hand, it is important to be clear about the background that led to this incursion. These matters are always complex, of course, but in this case the basic problem is that ever since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza last year, Gaza has been used by various Palestinian groups as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel--mostly by firing hundreds of rockets agains Israeli civilians in nearby communities inside Israel. The attack in which Gilad Shalit was taken hostage was just the last straw.

As Ami Isseroff noted on Monday ("The real story in Gaza and Sderot"):
Since 2001, the Popular Resistance committees and Hamas have lobbed about a thousand rockets of various types and increasing size into Israel. The most "popular" are the Qassam rockets of the Hamas, but there are other brands as well. It is unimaginable that any other country would have permitted such a sustained attack on its citizens without taking effective action, either military or diplomatic. [....]
The rockets and other terror are aimed at disrupting and impeding any moves toward peace, further Israeli withdrawals or normalization. The current rockets and attacks were aimed at ensuring that there would be no agreement on the Palestinian Prisoners' document, and they probably have hit their mark.
The practice of firing rockets at nearby Israeli towns like Sderot, inhabited mostly by low-income Middle Eastern Jews, did not end with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but instead has intensified. The Qassam rockets are quite inaccurate, and so far they have not managed to kill a large number of people. But it's only a matter of time before a lucky hit blows up a school or an apartment building. And, in the meantime, the cumulative psychological impact has been significant. A recent report ("Rockets Raining Down on Sderot") described the effects of this sustained bombardment on the population being targeted:
---------------
Years of Kassam rocket fire at Sderot have shattered the sense of normalcy in this desert town.
The fire has become so intense in recent weeks — often three or four rockets a day — that daily life here has come to a virtual standstill. Real estate values in town have plummeted, businesses have closed, people are moving away and nearly everyone says they live in constant fear of sudden death from above.
Sderot’s schools have been particularly hard-hit, and not just by the Kassams that have fallen on kindergartens, classrooms and schoolyards. [....]
The children have learned to huddle under their desks and put their hands over their heads, in a scene reminiscent of the 1950s United States. The difference is that the feared Soviet nuclear attack against the Americans never came, while in Sderot, the rockets are raining down.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” Hori says. “You don’t know when and you don’t know where.” [....]
Just two weeks ago, a rocket hit AMIT’s yeshiva high school in town. Nobody was injured.
But the damage in Sderot has been far more than physical: The rockets have terrorized an entire city and, in the process, transformed life here. [....]
Some parents have sent their children to live with relatives in safer cities. Others have pulled their kids out of school and insisted on keeping them home. A few have moved away — even though there are practically no home-buyers to replace them in a city that has become a target for Palestinian terrorists.
“Life here has been completely overturned,” says Arie Maimon, representative of the AMIT network of schools in Sderot. “It’s like Chinese torture, waking up three times a night to be rushed into a protected room. The situation is only getting worse.”
On Sunday, Maimon met with a representative from the Prime Minister’s Office to explain that Sderot schools need additional funding for reinforcing roofs and walls against rockets, additional psychological counseling for students and teachers and more field trips out of town.
But no amount of funding will stop the rocket attacks, he says.
“Money doesn’t solve everything,” Maimon says. “You sit here like a duck in a shooting gallery and wait for a miracle. That’s all.”
---------------

The Palestinian Authority has been unable or unwilling to stop these attacks. Until recently, it was probably a bit of both, but Hamas, which now controls the PA government, actually regards these attacks as quite legitimate. In a later post ("The mistake about disengagement"), Ami Isseroff spells out some of the implications:
---------------
The terror in Gaza was ostensibly aimed at ending the occupation. [....] The international community found it hard to condemn Palestinian terror in these circumstances.
Disengagement was supposed to have changed the rules.
There are no more settlements. [....] The victims of terror are no longer "settlers" in "illegal settlements" in "occupied territory." They are poor Israelis living a quite difficult and legal life in towns and kibbutzim and moshavim ringing the Gaza strip.
However, all sides still play by the old rules [....] The Palestinians continued a reign of terror and anarchy. Israel could not possibly allow the free flow of goods in and out of Gaza, because that would result in smuggling of heavy armaments and create a monumental security problem. The international community should be bending every sinew to ensure the success of disengagement and keep the peace. After all, the US and the rest of the quartet insist on a peaceful two state solution. Every Qassam rocket that lands in Sderot or Ashkelon pushes that possibility farther away. [....]
Disengagement was the right thing to do. We should never be sorry to have done what is morally correct, but now we have to show that we know we are right. [....] Nobody should die, and nobody should be killed, if at all possible, but the terror must be stopped. [....]

---------------

=> In my opinion, once Sharon had decided to pull out of Gaza, it would have been better to negotiate a handover with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority rather than withdrawing unilaterally. A negotiated handover might possibly have strengthened Abbas's position and helped to improve the political situation in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal. And, of course, it was a terrible mistake ever to build Israeli settlements in Gaza in the first place. But at the moment, all that is neither here nor there. There is no justification for these attacks, and as long as Gaza continued to be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel, the situation was eventually bound to become unsustainable.

And indeed, this was certainly a deliberate goal of the people launching these attacks. One purpose of this terrorist campaign has been to provoke Israeli retaliations, and it has done so, with the Israelis shelling areas from which rockets were being launched and sometimes causing civilian casualties in the process. The organized attack on the IDF outpost, in which several Israeli soldiers were killed and one was captured, clearly represented one more escalation. It has succeeded in provoking a full-scale crisis.

With luck, the IDF will be able to rescue the kidnapped soldier and withdraw quickly. But that's a best-case scenario. And, at all events, the underlying problems will remain--layers and layers of them. Meanwhile, the present crisis looks like a success for the terrorists and rejectionists on the Palestinian side, at least for the moment.

--Jeff Weintraub
===============
Ami Isseroff
(ZioNation - Progressive Zionism & Israel Web Log)
June 26, 2006

The real story in Gaza and Sderot: Who are the victims?

The media buzz over who was responsible for the deaths of the Ghalia family on Gaza beach obscured the real stakes in Gaza. Since 2001, the Popular Resistance committees and Hamas have lobbed about a thousand rockets of various types and increasing size into Israel. The most "popular" are the Qassam rockets of the Hamas, but there are other brands as well. It is unimaginable that any other country would have permitted such a sustained attack on its citizens without taking effective action, either military or diplomatic. The range and size of the Qassam rockets have been growing steadily. The Qassam 3 has a range of 10 KM and a payload of 10 KG. It is only a matter of time before communities in southern Israel will be suffering the equivalent of the London Blitz in miniature. In addition, the Al Aqsa Brigades have announced that with the help of Allah, they have developed chemical and biological weapons and will "surprise" Israel.

Almost everyone in the world knows who Muhamed Dura and Huda Ghalia are, but almost nobody knows the names of the eight to eleven non-Palestinian victims of Qassam rockets to date. Among them are Dorit (Masarat) Benisian, 3, Afik Zahavi, 4, Mordechai Yosepov, 49, Yuval Ababeh, 5 , and Ayala-Haya (Ella) Abukasis, 17 of Sderot, and Dana Galkowicz of Kibbutz Netiv Ha'asarah. They were totally innocent victims. They were not settlers or soldiers or any of the other categories that provide Palestinians excuses for the murders that are euphemistically termed "resistance."

The rockets also killed a Bedouin shepherd and his son near Nahal Oz (no names available) and three workers in Ganei Tal, a Gaza strip settlement. They were Bi Shudeh, Salah Ayash Imran and Muhammed Mahmoud Jaroun.

The rockets are terror weapons, and the people who operate them are criminals, every bit as evil as the Nazis who launched V-I and V-II rockets on London. That is the truth that is not told in any media account of the Gaza Beach bombings. Nor does it matter if more Palestinian Arabs were killed. In the end, allied bombings of Germany killed many more Germans than the number of British killed by the Luftwaffe. Nobody insisted that Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill were "war criminals."

Yossi Alpher writes:

I believe that the Israeli moral equivalency argument is a powerful one: terrorists deliberately target civilians; we don't, and when we hit civilians in the course of protecting ourselves, we agonize over it. There is an element of the "clash of civilizations" in this equation that we may have to call on in explaining to the world why the IDF has launched a massive retaliation against Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.
Why do we need to complicate matters with clashes of civilizations? Did anyone question the right of the British and Americans to bomb German cities and invade Germany after the Germans attacked Britain? The United States and Russia were clearly stronger than Germany. Did anyone say it was "unfair" that these "Goliaths" ganged up against the poor Germans? Did anyone count the German victims?

The rocket attacks are not "resistance" to "occupation," because Gaza is not occupied. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005, it was hoped that that Qassam rocket attacks would stop, but instead they increased. The international community did nothing but talk. Mahmoud Abbas did nothing but talk. The rockets kept falling - more and harder and more frequently.

In addition to the rocket attacks, there were numerous planned terror attacks, most of which were foiled by Israeli security forces. Most, but not all. It pleased Mahmoud Abbas and many others to refer to this reign of terror as a truce. Now that the scales have been tipped by the attack that killed two Israeli soldiers, Lt. Hanan Barak, St.-Sgt. Pavel Slotsker, and by the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, Mahmoud Abbas announces that he wants to "save the truce." What truce? Here is part of the announcement from WAFA, the PLO News Agency:

Abu Rdaina pointed out that the Israeli government has launched a series of threats. It would inflame the situation through waging a series of air raids or assassinations, stressing that the Palestinian Leadership completely refuses such escalation that would lead to a military catastrophe.
The Spokesperson said that the President urged the international Quartet, specially the US Administration to exert all possible efforts in an attempt to contain the situation and to prevent the escalation and the deterioration in the situation.
He asserted that the execution of the Israeli threats would have negative repercussions and would destroy the efforts to preserve the truce or to secure the life of the kidnapped Israeli soldier.
Even Joseph Goebbels did not have the nerve to plead with the British not to respond to buzz bombs, in order not to "inflame the situation."

The rockets and other terror are aimed at disrupting and impeding any moves toward peace, further Israeli withdrawals or normalization. The current rockets and attacks were aimed at ensuring that there would be no agreement on the Palestinian Prisoners' document, and they probably have hit their mark.

Israel has announced it will not deal with the Hamas, Popular Resistance Committees and Army of Islam, who are demanding release of prisoners. Israel insists on the return of Gilad Shalit alive. Chances that this will happen are slim.

Not dealing with the terrorists was a tough decision. It was the only possible decision, because giving in to such demands will only encourage further kidnappings and risk more lives.

Even those who want peace most desperately must understand by now that we cannot have peace in these circumstances.

When you next read or hear of Huda Ghalia, remember also Dorit (Masarat) Benisian, Mordechai Yosepov, Afik Zahavi, Yuval Ababeh, Ayala Abukasis, Dana Galkowitz and the other victims of the supposedly harmless Qassam rockets. Remember that in Gaza there is no longer an Israeli occupation, only a Palestinian aggressor. Palestinian rights do not include murder of children.

Ami Isseroff

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

"Can the Anti-Boycotters Please Stand Up?" - A response

Free Palestine wrote:
Dear Professor Weintraub,
If you are to going to talk about academic freedom, then perhaps you will look at the lack of academic freedom in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Blog: Altahrir
Post: Can the Anti-Boycotters Please Stand Up?
Sure. See below.

More generally, it is quite inaccurate for Laura Ribeiro to say in the piece referred to that these issues have been ignored by supporters of academic freedom who oppose blacklists of Israeli academics. This would be clear, for example, to anyone who had followed the discussions on the Engage website since it was first set up a year ago to oppose the AUT blacklist of Israeli academics.

Of course, opponents of academic blacklists--and others--could and should do more in this connection. But it's also true that people who put so much effort into promoting academic blacklists of Israelis (fraudulently called "boycotts") could be putting these energies more usefully and constructively into trying to protecting the academic freedom of Palestinians and helping to improve their conditions. In a piece he contributed to Engage back in May 2005, John Strawson made the basic point quite cogently.
---------------
For the past ten years I have been associated with Birzeit University through the European Consortium that supports the Institute of Law. This involves some academics mainly in Belgium and Britain who have been assisting in the teaching on a law masters program and increasingly becoming involved in research collaboration. Teaching at Birzeit over these years, I am fully aware of the impact of the occupation on education: checkpoints, roadblocks, violent settlers, IDF patrols, curfews, closures, military attacks – the re-occupation of the cities after 2000. In solidarity with my colleagues in Birzeit I think that generally I cannot accept invitations to Israeli universities until such time as they can accept such invitations on the same basis as I can – i.e. without having to apply for special permission. [....]

The curious aspect of the AUT boycott activists is that they do very little about actual solidarity with Palestinian Universities. The simple, although less headline grabbing tasks of making institutional links, developing teaching and research activities, enabling academic and student mobility, mobilizing educational resources, developing and maintaining academic contacts, seem low on their agenda. I just wonder what they were doing during the terrible years of Sharon’s war against the Palestinians? In my opinion the priority should be the building of effective links with Palestinian Universities. This is a positive contribution that extends academic freedom. [....]

I do not think that an academic boycott of Israeli universities is correct in principle. Boycotts of universities always undermine academic freedom which must be seen as undesirable. The Chinese occupation of Tibet (for nearly 5 decades) has not provoked a call for a boycott for this reason. Exchanging ideas, debating issues, working on common projects, collaborative publishing ventures are valuable in and of themselves.

The university sector in Israel is currently under attack from the right wing for being too liberal, particularly on the Palestine question. Many academics need our support. [....]

There is much original work being undertaken on history and politics, which undermines many of the reactionary ideas which are used to justify the occupation, settlements and the wall. [....]

Academics at the end of the day, have little power in the political arena. However, what we can do is through teaching, research, publication and broadcasting attempt mobilize ideas for freedom. Working with people positively seems far more likely to help create conditions that will end the occupation than the negative boycott. The boycott is a call to do nothing about the occupation at all – and it plays directly into the hands of a growing body of Anti-Semitism in Europe where the boycott has a long tradition.
---------------

It is quite possible to be simultaneously pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, and in fact I think that is the right position both morally and practically. It is also possible to be anti-Israeli under the guise of being pro-Palestinian, while supporting actions that in practice are simultaneously harmful to Israelis and Palestinians--and, in some cases, to the principles of academic and intellectual freedom as well. The second approach, unfortunately, seems to be more common than the first one.

Yours for academic freedom & political sanity,
Jeff Weintraub
======================
-------- Original Message --------
Subject:Petition Supporting Academic Freedom for Palestinians
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:49:13 -0400
From: Jeff Weintraub
To: undisclosed-recipients

I have just signed this on-line Petition Supporting Academic Freedom for Palestinians, and I urge others to consider doing so as well. It was apparently written by the historian John Womack for FFIPP (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace).

=> I signed it with some reservations and hesitations, and it seems only fair to spell some of them out.

In principle, I would welcome the opportunity to sign a petition that
  • defends academic freedom for Palestinians and criticizes conditions that effectively undermine Palestinian institutions for scholarship and higher education;
  • condemns the unjust and politically lunatic long-term policies of permanent occupation and large-scale settlement pursued over the decades by a succession of Israeli governments (above all Likud governments, starting in the late 1970s, but unfortunately not by them exclusively);
  • and makes it clear, by its closing call for "sustained reconciliation," that there is no necessary incompatibility between being pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli.
Therefore, I wish that this particular petition had been written a little more carefully (starting with the title).

The second paragraph of the petition, in particular, contains several statements on significant issues that are misleading or simply inaccurate. Without going into detail, I want to indicate that my strongest concerns involve the fact that the second paragraph several times asks us to condemn the building of the so-called "Separation Wall"--not the route of this barrier, but the barrier per se. "And now, the building of the Separation Wall, which constitutes a clear infraction of international law [etc.]" Well, this is simply untrue. This barrier--which was first advocated by the Israeli peace camp, before it got hijacked by the Sharon government--may or may not be a good idea (and if there were no systematic campaign of terrorism that indiscriminately targets Israeli civilians, there would be no need for it at all). But if it were built along the Green Line, it would raise no problems of international law whatever, and Israel's right to build such a defensive barrier is morally and legally unimpeachable.

The third paragraph of the petition rephrases this issue in terms of WHERE this barrier has been built: i.e., "we oppose the building of the settlements and the Separation Wall on Palestinian lands...." I am quite willing to endorse this position when it is framed this way, but unfortunately the preceding paragraph says something different, and this is not a minor point. Many people do claim that this barrier, wherever it is built, is in itself a violation of international law and constitutes some kind of "apartheid wall" (which is a bizarre position for people who also claim to support a two-state solution based on partition of what was once the British Palestine Mandate). That position is simply wrong (as well as politically pernicious and counter-productive) and it bothers me that signing this petition could be taken as endorsing it.

This petition raises other concerns as well, but that one strikes me as the most important and troubling..

=> Nevertheless, on balance and overall, it seems to me that this petition makes a worthwhile and useful statement that ought to be endorsed by people who genuinely support both academic freedom and a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian (and Arab-Israeli) conflict.

=> And I would add that people who signed this petition because they genuinely want to "Support Academic Freedom" should also want to sign this Anti-Blacklist Petition (described HERE).

Yours for academic freedom & political sanity,
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. Incidentally, another sentence in the second paragraph struck me as a little odd: "With the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and especially in recent years with the increased Israeli militarization of the territories, Palestinian institutions of higher education have become devastated by the effects of war." The problem with this formulation is that, before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, there were no "Palestinian institutions of higher education". In the grand scheme of things, I don't regard this error as so crucial, and it doesn't affect the fundamental issues at stake. (So I hope no one will deliberately misread me as claiming that this somehow justifies the occupation.) But this does seem like the kind of thing a major historian should know about.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Academic blacklists from McCarthyism to anti-Zionism (Geoffrey Wheatcroft)

People who obsessively promote efforts to punish Israeli academics for their government's actions and to exclude them from being published, hired, financially supported, or allowed to participate in conferences unless they make approved political statements like to describe such measures as academic "boycotts." I have pointed out more than once that this label is misleading and dishonest, involving either deliberate propaganda or ideological self-deception. The accurate name for a practice of this sort is an academic blacklist. As Geoffrey Wheatcroft spells out even more explicitly in this Financial Times article (reproduced by Engage), it is also a form of unvarnished neo-McCarthyism.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub

====================
Financial Times
June 26, 2006

Boycott rooted in McCarthy's unhappy legacy

No single word in the political vocabulary has been more used and abused over the past 50 years than “McCarthyism”. Part of the unhappy legacy of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s brief but lurid career as a demagogue in the early 1950s was to leave a term which has since been so overworked as to be almost meaningless.

Along with the related “witch-hunt”, this word is an incantation recited in an attempt to deflect any awkward charge, false or true. It is not so much unusual as well-nigh unique to hear the term used in a context where it means something valid: to condemn the proposed boycott of Israeli universities and academics.

A prolonged campaign, which recently began again in earnest, has been waged within the British university teachers’ union to impose such a boycott. (Like McCarthy, the unfortunate Captain Charles Boycott gave his name to the language, although a little unfairly in his case. When he was a land agent in Ireland in the 1870s, and although there were other such men evicting tenants more ruthlessly, it was he whom the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell singled out to be ostracised “as if he were a leper of old”.)

Advocates of this boycott have consciously modelled it on a previous campaign against South Africa a generation ago, and a deliberate political comparison is made when Israel is condemned as an “apartheid state”. The rights and wrongs of that are another matter. What almost nobody noticed at the time – though this struck me then, when I was reporting from South Africa – was that the campaign against apartheid used methods not similar but identical to those of McCarthyism: boycotts, blacklists and loyalty oaths.

More precisely, those were the means used not so much by McCarthy himself (whose own favourite technique was the reckless smear or unsubstantiated allegation) as by the broader anti-communist campaign in the US in the decade after 1945, which became known somewhat unhistorically under the label of “McCarthyism”. Hollywood screenwriters or directors with communist connections would be placed on blacklists, and fellow-travelling academics could lose their jobs – but they might retain them if they purged themselves by abjuring communism.

Thirty years later, entertainers and sportsmen who had worked in South Africa were likewise placed on blacklists. They, also, could purge their offence if they denounced apartheid. Any argument that these methods were illiberal or even totalitarian was met with the insistence that apartheid was so evil that considerations of academic freedom or individual rights had to be overridden.

Those boycotters would invariably say: “I have always supported academic freedom, but my hatred of apartheid is even greater,” which was not only hypocritical but an elementary category mistake. And since Stalin killed the equivalent of the entire black population of South Africa, that could have been argued in the earlier case also. Those who opposed that South African boycott used to counter that many academics had been among the strongest critics of the apartheid regime, but this was, in turn, what barristers call a bad point. It conceded that an individual scholar’s political views should be the criterion by which he – and his work, and his suitability to work in the larger, international academic community – were to be judged.

Now the same thing has happened again. Those who oppose the boycott say that many Israeli academics have been brave critics of the settlements, and maltreatment of Palestinians, while supporters say that Israeli scholars who publicly denounce their government’s policies may be exempt. But this is the same error as before. What should be done with an Israeli scholar, a physicist or philologist, say, of the highest academic repute, who happens to support the annexation of the West Bank? If there were to be a boycott, it would surely be more honourable if it applied to all Israelis regardless of political outlook.

Ironically enough, something comparable can be found the other way round. Any journalist who wants to work for the Springer group in Germany must make a declaration of support for Israel’s right to exist. Why should they? Fighting oppression is admirable but to insist that no one in a free society should have to make any kind of political statement in order to get a non-political job is to fight for a more vital principle still.

[Norman Geras asks: "More vital or as vital? In any case, vital." --JW]

The writer is author of The Controversy of Zion,which won an American National Book Award and, most recently, The Strange Death of Tory England (Penguin)

Darfur - "a steady drip of death" (Julie Flint & Mick Hartley)

I noted in a previous post [Darfur - Continuing betrayal and accelerating catastrophe (Eric Reeves)] that Julie Flint was one of the more serious and well-informed analysts of the Darfur atrocity to argue that the Abuja "peace agreement" might possibly be made to work. But at best this was a hope more than an expectation. As Mick Hartley points out, she is rapidly giving up this hope.
---------------
Julie Flint, one of the most knowledgeable writers on Dafur, and [co-]author of Darfur: A Short History of a Long War , in Lebanon's Daily Star:
It's time to say it, loud and clear: The newborn Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is on its death bed. Without determined action to save it, the war in Darfur will continue - a steady drip of death, more or less according to the season and the mood of the Sudanese government, while hundreds of thousands of Darfurians become permanent residents of displaced camps where the Janjaweed roam.
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The crucial point is that whatever the DPA says on paper, it was an agreement between two sets of war criminals, one big and one small--the Khartoum government, which is the prime architect of the Darfur genocide, and one of the least representative rebel groups. The real victims of the conflict, the black civilian population of Darfur, were not represented. And unless this agreement is is seriously enforced and monitored by the outside world, it is clear that it will do nothing at all to protect them.

You can read the rest of Flint's Daily Star article below.

Mick Hartley also quotes from a recent BBC report on the process by which the Darfur catastrophe has been spreading to neighboring Chad:
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The BBC, meanwhile, report on increased Janjaweed attacks in Chad:

As Sudan's feared Janjaweed militia step up their cross-border attacks into Chad, there is worrying new evidence that some Chadians have joined forces with the Janjaweed to attack their own countrymen.
Victims of attacks say that some Chadians are acting as "guides" to the Janjaweed, directing them to certain villages and suggesting which cattle to steal.
Many victims also say that some Chadians are taking part in the actual killings. [...]
Some people believe they are now being attacked by the Janjaweed as revenge for having helped their Sudanese neighbours in the past.
As is often the case in such conflicts, the humanitarian price is high.
Many of the displaced, who are camping on the outskirts of Sudanese refugee camps for security, have little access to food, clean water or shelter.
The displaced Chadians tell very similar stories to their Sudanese refugee neighbours.
"There is no security," said Aze Hamat, 23, who lost her father and two brothers in an attack.
"They take our cattle, kill men, even rape women," she said.
"If they find a pretty woman they will take her across the border, where she is raped. Sometimes the women are dumped back in the bush afterwards. Sometimes they are never seen again."

---------------

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Daily Star (Lebanon)
June 20, 2006

A moribund peace between war criminals
By Julie Flint

It's time to say it, loud and clear: The newborn Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is on its death bed. Without determined action to save it, the war in Darfur will continue - a steady drip of death, more or less according to the season and the mood of the Sudanese government, while hundreds of thousands of Darfurians become permanent residents of displaced camps where the Janjaweed roam.

The two signatories of the DPA are those in whom Darfurians have least trust - Sudan's government and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) controlled by Minni Minawi. Sudan's leaders are serial war criminals; Minawi is a brutal dictator - increasingly rejected even by his own Zaghawa tribe. Neither has changed its spots since signing up for peace.

On May 20, two weeks after signing the DPA, Minawi ordered the detention of Suleiman Gamous, who, as humanitarian coordinator of the SLA, made it possible for NGOs to work in rebel areas, allowing tens of thousands of civilians to survive away from the crowded and insecure displaced camps of government-controlled Darfur. Gamous gave the SLA some credibility with the international community. He also helped hundreds of foreign journalists move safely around rebel-controlled areas. But Gamous was critical of Minawi's leadership and like most Darfurians reportedly doubts whether this peace can work. Relatives who visited Minawi's chief of staff to ask why he had been seized were told: "I can shoot Gamous and sodomize you. We will force the peace on you!" They were then tied, pistol-whipped and burned with cigarettes.

Gamous has been held in solitary confinement and without charge for a month now. He is injured - whether by accident or enemy action is not yet clear.

The government's behavior in the 40 days since it signed the agreement has been equally deplorable. On June 10, as the United Nations Security Council met in Fasher, government forces and Janjaweed attacked Galol in central Darfur. One of the founders of the SLA, a man who supports peace, e-mailed me that day: "Thirty civilians have been killed and many injured while the UN ambassadors are in Fasher. The government does not respect or care about the international community. Please do your best to show that."

But it is those who forced the DPA through who should be condemning - publicly - all the violations of their partners in peace. Unless they do so, starting today, they and their peace will lose all credibility, all virtue. The DPA has value, but it is weak on implementation. Few believe the international community has the will - or perhaps even the weapons - to force Khartoum to honor an agreement which, if implemented, will see it lose the political game when Darfurians elect their own representatives in three years' time. Darfurians have to be shown that this peace, although flawed, can work for them. This means meeting deadlines, forming committees, stopping Khartoum's security officials from taking them over and, above all, shouting from the rooftops every time a signatory steps out of line. It is not enough to slap wrists behind closed doors. The people of Darfur need to hear the "peacemakers" being called to account or they will never have any faith in the peace.

Instead we have a deafening silence. There has not been a word of condemnation about the attack on Galol; not a word of reproach to Minawi. The government and Minawi are now the good guys, to be coddled. Those who doubt the peace - admittedly for a very mixed bag of reasons - are the bad guys, to be bullied, condemned and threatened with sanctions.

As US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Zoellick told doubters in the final 24 hours of the Abuja process: "I am a good friend and I am a fearsome enemy." Pity the Darfurian refuseniks: slaughtered by the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed, and now on the receiving end of Zoellick's fearsome enmity.

Washington's support for Minawi - especially within the fragmented Zaghawa environment - appears to be based on the assumption that he is the strongman of Darfur, the man who can deliver peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Minawi's Zaghawa tribe comprises, at most, 8 percent of the population of Darfur and is itself divided, with more and more rejecting Minawi's leadership.

The Fur, historic rulers of the sultanate which gives Darfur its name, make up 26-30 percent of the population. If either of the SLA's two factional leaders has a political vision it is Abdul Wahid Mohammed al-Nur, the Fur chairman of the SLA. If either has support outside his own tribe, it is Abdul Wahid. (Not one of Abdul Wahid's key negotiators in Abuja was Fur; Minawi's, by contrast, were all Zaghawa.) As a leader of the independent Darfur Forum said in March: "All the main tribes are against Minni Minawi. Minni is a thug, Abdul Wahid is an innocent. But he is a good man and still has the solidarity of most of the tribes of Darfur."

The bias to Minawi is just one of the reasons why the peace agreement will fail unless steps are taken to redress it. Minawi is weak - in everything except his weapons and his willingness to use them - and has been for months. Today he controls only a few pockets of territory in North Darfur, the land of his own Zaghawa tribe, and has difficulty connecting the rump of his forces there with the bulk of his forces in South Darfur. The list of commanders and localities he has lost since signing the DPA is lengthening with every passing day - Biz Maza, Sayyah, Jebel Issa, Kulkul. The abuses of his men, hundreds of kilometers outside their own borders, have isolated the Zaghawa as they have never been isolated before. Minawi's acceptance of the peace agreement is reason enough for most Darfurians to reject it.

If the DPA is to survive, those who forced it across the finish line must turn their attention to the commanders who, unlike Minawi, have popular support. Rather than antagonize them, they must help them unite, organize and join an inter-communal dialogue that can put right some of what is wrong with the DPA. Without this, the DPA will be what Zaghawa are already calling it: "the Ila Digen peace" - the peace of Minawi's clan.

Julie Flint has written extensively on Sudan. She is the author, with Alex de Waal, of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War." She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

More mysteries from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey

Let me just start by saying that we all know people's responses to questions on attitude surveys are often mysterious (not to mention ambiguous), and the results of such polling always have to be taken with a grain of salt. Answers are often affected by very minor and superficial details in the wording of the questions, and I suspect people often use their responses to blow off steam or to strike poses rather than giving their genuine considered opinions. I recognize all that, so I don't want any of you to think that I'm taking these particular results too seriously, or that I'm naive enough to think that they all have clear and significant meanings.

Nevertheless ... the results of the last survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project continue to generate a certain amount of curiosity and puzzlement, and I can't help feeling intrigued about some of them.

=> A week or so ago, there was some buzz regarding changes in respondents' attitudes about the US and Israel around the world since 2005. Among other things, Europeans expressed more favorable views toward Israel and, correspondingly, significantly less favorable views about the Palestinians. (Britain & Spain were partial exceptions ... and, in fact, the ferocity and one-sidedness of Spaniards' hostility to Israel remain quite striking. For some reason, the results also indicated that Spain is more strongly anti-American than other major European countries--even France--and that unfavorable attitudes toward the US have increased quite sharply since 2005. Between 2005 & 2006, favorable opinions of the US went from 41% to 23%.)

=> Lately, I've noticed discussions about some curious patterns in attitudes about and by Muslims, especially in Europe. For example, according to this Pew report on "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other" ...
Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance. Meanwhile, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.
No surprises there, I guess. But some of the details are more surprising. For example ...
The chasm between Muslims and the West is also seen in judgments about how the other civilization treats women. Western publics, by lopsided margins, do not think of Muslims as "respectful of women." But half or more in four of the five Muslim publics surveyed say the same thing about people in the West.
I find the opposition in attitudes here less surprising than the fact that it's asymmetrical. (That is, it's clear that Muslims are more likely to see westerners as "respectful of women" than vice-versa. I suspect that men & women in Muslim countries responded differently to this question.)

It's also worth noting that Muslims living in Europe and the US were much more likely to describe westerners as "respectful of women" than Muslims living in non-western Muslim countries. (I suspect that for many Muslims living in countries like Pakistan or Jordan, their main sources of information about western treatment of women are movies, internet pornography, and the sermons they hear in mosques.)
For the most part, Muslim publics feel more embittered toward the West and its people than vice versa. Muslim opinions about the West and its people have worsened over the past year and by overwhelming margins, Muslims blame Westerners for the strained relationship between the two sides.
To quote the punch-line of a famous Sidney Morgenbesser joke, "yeah, yeah."

=> But now here is a real surprise:
---------------
But there are some positive indicators as well, including the fact that in most Muslim countries surveyed there has been a decline in support for terrorism. [....]
In Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia, there have been substantial declines in the percentages saying suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets can be justified to defend Islam against its enemies. The shift has been especially dramatic in Jordan, likely in response to the devastating terrorist attack in Amman last year; 29% of Jordanians view suicide attacks as often or sometimes justified, down from 57% in May 2005.

Confidence in Osama bin Laden [just think about that phrase for a second! --JW] also has fallen in most Muslim countries in recent years. This is especially the case in Jordan, where just 24% express at least some confidence in bin Laden now, compared with 60% a year ago. A sizable number of Pakistanis (38%) continue to say they have at least some confidence in the al Qaeda leader to do the right thing regarding world affairs, but significantly fewer do so now than in May 2005 (51%). However, Nigeria's Muslims represent a conspicuous exception to this trend; 61% of Nigeria's Muslims say they have at least some confidence in bin Laden, up from 44% in 2003.

The belief that terrorism is justifiable in the defense of Islam, while less extensive than in previous surveys, still has a sizable number of adherents. Among Nigeria's Muslim population, for instance, nearly half (46%) feel that suicide bombings can be justified often or sometimes in the defense of Islam. Even among Europe's Muslim minorities, roughly one-in-seven in France, Spain, and Great Britain feel that suicide bombings against civilian targets can at least sometimes be justified to defend Islam against its enemies.
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These shifts might appear to support the analysis offered by Brendan O'Leary & Karin von Hippel --the key factor that reduces Muslim support for terrorist murder of civilians is the perception that Islamist terrorists are directly targeting Muslims, especially Sunni Muslims. Perhaps one possible implication is that, on balance, the ongoing conflict in Iraq is reducing (expressed) Muslim support for terrorism around the world?

However, before we get too excited about this reduced "confidence in Osama bin Laden," it's worth bearing in mind that, according to the poll results, a solid majority of Muslims deny that he had anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. (This is especially bizarre given that bin Laden himself has already admitted it ... but we all know that when the will to believe or disbelieve is strong enough, no amount of evidence can overcome it.)

Curiously enough, the only country in which the proportion of Muslims willing to admit Arab involvement in the September 11 attacks was (slightly) higher than the proportion denying it was (of all places) France. At the other end, only 15% of Pakistanis are willing to admit it, followed by 16% in Indonesia and (this surprised me) Turkey (!).

=> With respect to Europe, the two countries where some of the polling results struck me as especially puzzling and intriguing were Spain and Britain.

In most major western European countries and the US, majorities of non-Muslims expressed overall "favorable" attitudes toward Muslims (whatever that means). For example, the relevant figures were 54% in the US, 65% in the US, and 63% in Britain (and the percentages expressing explicitly unfavorable impressions were relatively small.) The biggest exception is Spain, where only 29% indicated a positive overall view of Muslims. (This was followed by Germany, with 36%.) Curiously enough, Muslims in Spain do not reciprocate this dislike--82% expressed overall favorable attitudes toward Christians. (On the other hand, 91% of Muslims in France expressed an overall favorable attitude toward Christians, which looks suspiciously high to me, so it's hard to know what these figures really mean.)

Furthermore, according to the Pew report ...
- Fully 41% of the general public in Spain says most or many Muslims in their country support Islamic extremists. But just 12% of Spain's Muslims say most or many of the country's Muslims support extremists like al Qaeda.
These relatively high proportions of Spaniards explicitly expressing dislike and distrust of Muslims can't be attributed exclusively to the Madrid mega-terror attack, since a similar (though admittedly much less deadly) terrorist attack occurred in London.

And it's not just Muslims. When asked about attitudes toward Jews, relatively few western respondents said that they don't like Jews. In some cases, this may simply mean that respondents know that explicit expressions of anti-semitism are no longer respectable, so the figures should be taken with a grain of salt, but the comparisons between countries are still illuminating. "Favorable" ratings of Jews were 77% in the US, 74% in Britain, 86% in France, and 69% in Germany. Even in Russia, 59% of respondents claimed to have an overall favorable impression of Jews. In Spain, the corresponding figure was 45%, by far the lowest in western Europe. On this questions, Spanish Muslims agree, with 29% expressing overall favorable impressions of Jews. Again, this figure is lower than for Muslims in Britain, Germany, and France.

(World-wide figures for Muslims, in Europe as well as Muslim-majority countries, tend to support the hypothesis that anti-semitism is epidemic among Muslims. This is no surprise. In Jordan, for example, only 1% indicate favorable attitudes toward Jews--and perhaps that was an error in transcription. The corresponding figures are 2% for Egypt, 6% for Pakistan, 15% for Turkey, and 17% for Indonesia. It's interesting to note that Muslims in Europe express lower levels of hostility against Jews than Muslims in non-western countries. In France, the proportion of Muslims expressing favorable attitudes toward Jews is actually a majority, 71% ... but here, I admit, I am a bit skeptical that they really mean it.)

So what is it about Spain? Are Spaniards really so much more anti-semitic, Islamophobic, and anti-American than other western Europeans, or are they just more honest about it? And in either case, why? Perhaps some of you who know more about Spanish society, culture, & politics than I do have some thoughts on this matter?

=> Then there's Britain. Some of the questions here have to do with a cluster of findings captured in the title of a recent Guardian article: "Poll shows Muslims in Britain are the most anti-western in Europe". What's odd is that there is a "significant mismatch" in this respect.
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The poll, by the Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project, asked Muslims and non-Muslims about each other in 13 countries. In most, it found suspicion and contempt to be mostly mutual, but uncovered a significant mismatch in Britain. [Actually, there is also a mismatch in Spain, though in the opposite direction. --JW]

The poll found that 63% of all Britons had a favourable opinion of Muslims, down slightly from 67% in 2004, suggesting last year's London bombings did not trigger a significant rise in prejudice. Attitudes in Britain were more positive than in the US, Germany and Spain (where the popularity of Muslims has plummeted to 29%), and about the same as in France.

Less than a third of British non-Muslims said they viewed Muslims as violent, significantly fewer than non-Muslims in Spain (60%), Germany (52%), the US (45%) and France (41%).

By contrast, the poll found that British Muslims represented a "notable exception" in Europe, with far more negative views of westerners than Islamic minorities elsewhere on the continent. A significant majority viewed western populations as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral. Just over half said westerners were violent. While the overwhelming majority of European Muslims said westerners were respectful of women, fewer than half British Muslims agreed. Another startling result found that only 32% of Muslims in Britain had a favourable opinion of Jews, compared with 71% of French Muslims.
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"David T" at the group blog Harry's Place spelled out some of these matters a little further ("What British Muslims Think" - June 23, 2006) ...
---------------
The Pew Global Attitudes project survey, as reported in the Guardian, finds as follows:

Public opinion in Britain is mostly favourable towards Muslims, but the feeling is not requited by British Muslims, who are among the most embittered in the western world, according to a global poll published yesterday.
...
The poll found that 63% of all Britons had a favourable opinion of Muslims, down slightly from 67% in 2004, suggesting last year's London bombings did not trigger a significant rise in prejudice. Attitudes in Britain were more positive than in the US, Germany and Spain (where the popularity of Muslims has plummeted to 29%), and about the same as in France.
Less than a third of British non-Muslims said they viewed Muslims as violent, significantly fewer than non-Muslims in Spain (60%), Germany (52%), the US (45%) and France (41%).

By contrast, the poll found that British Muslims represented a "notable exception" in Europe, with far more negative views of westerners than Islamic minorities elsewhere on the continent. A significant majority viewed western populations as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral. Just over half said westerners were violent.

While the overwhelming majority of European Muslims said westerners were respectful of women, fewer than half British Muslims agreed.

Another startling result found that only 32% of Muslims in Britain had a favourable opinion of Jews, compared with 71% of French Muslims.

Across the board, Muslim attitudes in Britain more resembled public opinion in Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia than elsewhere in Europe.

And on the whole, British Muslims were more pessimistic than those in Germany, France and Spain about the feasibility of living in a modern society while remaining devout.


The Pew poll found that British Muslims are far more likely than their European counterparts to harbour conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks. Only 17% believed that Arabs were involved, compared with 48% in France.

There was general agreement that relations are bad, but Britons as a whole were much less likely than other Europeans to blame Muslims. More Britons faulted westerners (27%) than Muslims (25%), with a third saying both are equally responsible.

British Muslims were less ambivalent. Nearly half blamed westerners.

Pew also reports that, globally:

Muslims differ over whether there is a struggle in their country between Islamic fundamentalists and groups wanting to modernize society. But solid majorities of those who perceive such a struggle side with the modernizers.
Posted by david t at June 23, 2006 12:37 PM | TrackBack
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"Across the board, Muslim attitudes in Britain more resembled public opinion in Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia than elsewhere in Europe." That's odd, isn't it? Why should that be?

Curious,
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. Regarding "Why British Muslims stand out," some informed speculation from James Wimberley (at The Reality-Based Community).

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Saving Darfur - Another Zionist plot, of course (ZNN)

[Also posted on Zionism News Network]

Here is the opening passage from the latest report on Darfur by the indispensable Eric Reeves::
For those vaguely hopeful that genocidal destruction in Darfur might somehow be halted by a UN peace support operation, or that there would be good faith observance of the terms of the Abuja (Nigeria) “Darfur Peace Agreement,” this has been a very bad week. Blaming a conspiracy of Jewish groups for the large chorus now calling for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, President Omar al-Bashir felt particularly unconstrained in expressing his views about a UN peace support operation in the increasingly violent region:
“Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has escalated his rejection of the UN deploying peacekeepers in Darfur, saying they would be neo-colonialists and accusing Jewish organizations of pushing for their deployment.”
Speaking of a UN deployment, al-Bashir declared:
"‘This shall never take place,’ al-Bashir told reporters at a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki Tuesday. ‘These are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country.’
Of course, the Sudanese government is not the only one to interpret opposition to genocide in Darfur as simply one more Jewish/Zionist plot. For some other recent examples, see HERE and HERE.

As for the rest of the story about the ongoing atrocity in Darfur, see Darfur - Continuing betrayal and accelerating catastrophe (Eric Reeves).

--Jeff Weintraub

Darfur - Continuing betrayal and accelerating catastrophe (Eric Reeves)

Eric Reeves, "The UN Security Council and a Final Betrayal of Darfur" (June 16, 2006):
Over two weeks ago Jan Egeland, UN humanitarian chief, warned of “a catastrophic situation developing in Darfur unless international donors act soon to bolster a beleaguered African peacekeeping force in the Sudanese province. ‘We either get good news in the next few weeks, or we have catastrophic news later,’ Jan Egeland [said]” (Associated Press [dateline: Brussels], May 30, 2006). No reasonable reading of statements or developments of the past two weeks by UN, US, or European officials---or any other international actors---suggests that any “good news” is in the making. Khartoum remains obdurately opposed to the kind of force necessary to halt genocidal destruction in Darfur and the increasing bleeding of ethnic violence into Chad. Egeland’s “catastrophic news” will not be long in coming.
Eric Reeves, "Khartoum Adamantly Refuses Urgently Required UN Forces in Darfur " (June 24, 2006):
For those vaguely hopeful that genocidal destruction in Darfur might somehow be halted by a UN peace support operation, or that there would be good faith observance of the terms of the Abuja (Nigeria) “Darfur Peace Agreement,” this has been a very bad week. Blaming a conspiracy of Jewish groups for the large chorus now calling for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, President Omar al-Bashir felt particularly unconstrained in expressing his views about a UN peace support operation in the increasingly violent region:
“Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has escalated his rejection of the UN deploying peacekeepers in Darfur, saying they would be neo-colonialists and accusing Jewish organizations of pushing for their deployment.”
Speaking of a UN deployment, al-Bashir declared:
"‘This shall never take place,’ al-Bashir told reporters at a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki Tuesday. ‘These are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country.’
Back at the beginning of May, when a "peace agreement" was signed in Abuja, Nigeria between the Sudanese government and one of the main rebel groups in Darfur, Eric Reeves offered a pessimistic--though not entirely dismissive--assessment of the probable consequences of this agreement, "Why Abuja won't save Darfur". His main point was that although some of the provisions of this agreement looked promising on paper, the key question was whether the Khartoum government would actually implement any of them, especially since it had never complied in good faith with any similar agreements it had signed in the past. In particular, this agreement meant nothing unless a serious international peacekeeping force was actually sent to Darfur to protect the victims of the ongoing slow-motion genocide and to monitor and enforce the terms of the agreement. He argued that there was little reason to feel confident that this would actually happen.

Unfortunately, the answer is now clear. The Khartoum regime has no intention of allowing this to happen, and the so-called "international community" shows no signs of seriously pressuring them to abide by the agreement..

=> Some other serious analyses written at the time of the Abuja agreement took a slightly more hopeful view (mostly because all the available alternatives looked so totally awful). Two of the most substantial and convincing of these assessments were offered by the journalist Julie Flint, one of the best informed and most authoritative analysts of the Darfur atrocity (co-author, with Alex de Waal, of the indispensable Darfur: A Short History of a Long War), and by the consistently intelligent and perceptive Jonathan Edelstein, who blogs under the pseudonym The Head Heeb.

On May 11 Edelstein sent me his "analysis of what the Abuja treaty does and doesn't include, and what needs to be done going forward" ("Darfur: Treaties and Beyond"). This was my response at the time.
---------------
Thanks. Your analysis is, as usual, sharp and well informed. In some ways, it dovetails with an assessment that Julie Flint recently published in the Lebanon Daily Star, and Flint is an exceptionally knowledgeable and seriously concerned analyst of the Darfur atrocity.

But the tone of your analysis strikes me as over-optimistic ... essentially for the reasons suggested by Eric Reeves. Your basic point is that the agreement doesn't look that bad on paper, IF it is actually implemented. But that's the rub. I notice that the Khartoum regime has still not agreed to the presence of a UN "peacekeeping" force to monitor, let alone enforce, this agreement. (Which means that, if it does eventually agree, it will try to make sure to impose conditions that render any such force toothless and ineffective.) Without outside intervention, the record of the Khartoum regime suggests that the old cliché probably holds--i.e., that the agreement will turn out not to be worth the paper it's written on.

Furthermore, your second point, "provide for the refugees," points to a crucial missing dimension. So far, this is an agreement between the Khartoum government and some of the rebel groups. But the core of the conflict long ago turned into something different--namely, an all-out assault on the "African" civilian population. They matter more than either of the parties to the "agreement," and so far they remain outside its scope.

So the basic question really remains what it was before this "agreement" was signed--trying to protect the civilian population against further mass murder & the threat of starvation, and trying to create the conditions that will allow the survivors to return home. It's clear that this will require sustained outside pressure and involvement. If this agreement helps facilitate that, then it might turn out to be part of the solution. If it serves as a substitute for, or distraction from, this kind of outside involvement, then it may simply provide a cover for the Khartoum regime to continue exterminating the Darfuris without interference.

My impression is that we should hope for the best, but not expect it.
---------------

=> Well, now we know. Conditions on the ground have not improved, the outside world has proved unable and/or unwilling to take effective action, and the Khartoum government has increasingly dropped any pretense that it intends to comply with the Abuja accord.. All this was already becoming apparent a month ago. For example, a May 30 editorial in the Washington Post (see Darfur - The killing continues) began by emphasizing these realities.
It's been more than three weeks since a Darfur peace accord was signed, bringing hope for an end to the genocide in Sudan's western territory. Since then the news has been terrible. The two rebel factions that refused to sign the peace deal have continued to snub it. Violence between rebel factions has generated blood-curdling attacks on civilians. Human Rights Watch has reported fresh evidence of atrocities committed by government-backed Janjaweed death squads across the border in Chad. The cash-strapped U.N. World Food Program has been forced to reduce the already meager rations it distributes to 6 million Sudanese, including 3 million in Darfur. And Sudan's government has waffled on the crucial question of whether it will allow in an expanded peacekeeping force, without which violence, hunger and mass death are likely to continue.
And now the Khartoum government has stopped waffling and has made it unambiguously clear that it will not accept any serious peacekeeping force in Darfur.

=> These developments and their significance are laid out in two recent analyses by Eric Reeves, both of which deserve to be read in full: "The UN Security Council and a Final Betrayal of Darfur" (June 16, 2006) and Khartoum Adamantly Refuses Urgently Required UN Forces in Darfur (June 24, 2006). Some highlights follow.
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"The UN Security Council and a Final Betrayal of Darfur" (June 16, 2006):

Despite rapidly escalating violence throughout Darfur and eastern Chad, the UN Security Council refuses to push for urgent measures to protect civilians and humanitarians. Instead, deferential Council members have repeatedly insisted that the genocidaires of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum will determine whether an international force deploys to Darfur, even as the regime continues to send explicit signals that it has no intention of allowing for such deployment. In short, all evidence suggests that the only protection for a region the size of France will continue to be a radically inadequate African Union (AU) force---and that most of eastern Chad will continue to be without security of any kind. This continuing exclusive reliance on the AU, whose performance has recently deteriorated badly, comes even as “reports from the UN and the AU indicate that violence against civilians in Darfur has doubled since the May 5 peace deal” (Associated Press [dateline Khartoum], June 7, 2006).
The AU itself increasingly recognizes that it simply cannot provide the security required in Darfur or implement the merely notional “Darfur Peace Agreement,” which has been overwhelmingly rejected by Darfuris in the camps and elsewhere as wholly inadequate in addressing their security concerns” [....]
But even were the Security Council to find the political will, over Khartoum’s objections and a menacing Chinese veto threat, to pass a resolution authorizing deployment of a UN peace support operation with Chapter 7 authority, the timeline is unconscionably long. As UN peacekeeping head Jean-Marie Guehenno recently confessed:
"‘A six-month timeline between the decision to deploy and the deployment is a more practical timeline especially if you think of the logistical conditions in Darfur,’ [Guehenno ] said. ‘January 2007 is a much more realistic date.’" (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], June 12, 2006)
But half a year from now hundreds of thousands of Darfuris may have died from the consequences of previous genocidal destruction and the increasingly likely evacuation of humanitarian workers who are also victims of the chaotic violence. [....]
At the same time, humanitarian conditions in Darfur are becoming increasingly desperate. In an extremely ominous development, a cholera outbreak has been reported in South Darfur [....]
THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESPONSE
With this vast tableau of human suffering and destruction as backdrop, with uncontrolled violence threatening ever more acutely thousands of humanitarian workers and critical aid operations, the UK ambassador to the UN Security Council offers these words to the people of Darfur and eastern Chad:
“The leader of the Security Council delegation, British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, said the envoys spent the day trying to reassure Sudanese officials. ‘There is no question this is an intervention force,’ he said. ‘We gave the clear message that any force will be here with the consent and cooperation of the Sudanese government.’” (Los Angeles Times [dateline: Khartoum], June 7, 2006) [....]
Mr. Parry is entirely representative of the UN Security Council in putting the need for Khartoum’s “consent,” as well as its claims of national sovereignty, before the desperate security and humanitarian needs of the almost 4 million conflict-affected persons in Darfur and eastern Chad. [....]
The timing of this perverse deference is savagely ironic, coming just as the lead prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has offered an update on the ICC investigation of massive crimes against humanity in Darfur---crimes which, under the principle of an international “responsibility to protect” unanimously accepted by all countries at the September 2005 UN World Summit, should incinerate Khartoum’s claims of national sovereignty in determining how Sudan’s civilians are protected.
“The UN-backed court probing war crimes in Darfur has documented thousands of civilian deaths, hundreds of alleged rapes and a ‘significant number’ of massacres that killed hundreds of people at once, the [ICC] top prosecutor said Wednesday [June 14]. Many witnesses and victims have reported that three ethnic groups in particular---the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa---had been singled out for attack in Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a report to the Security Council.” [ ]
“‘In most of the incidents...there are eyewitness accounts that the perpetrators made statements reinforcing the [ethnically] targeted nature of the attacks, such as “we will kill all the black” and “we will drive you out of this land,’” his report said.” (Associated Press [dateline: UN, New York], June 14, 2006)
We should compare these findings with the extant documentary evidence urging genocide, of the sort reported by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal in their superb “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War” (2005):
“The ultimate objective in Darfur is spelled out in an August 2004 directive from [Janjaweed paramount leader Musa] Hilal’s headquarters: ‘Change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.’” (page 39) [....]
KHARTOUM’S RESPONSE
Having granted Khartoum the power to veto any UN deployment, the UN Security Council might have expected an appropriately conciliatory response from Khartoum. Instead, as the following compendium suggests, the regime’s genocidaires have made clear they have no intention of allowing an international force into Darfur. This ensures the genocidal status quo. [....]
KHARTOUM AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
The issue here is essential, since Khartoum has long demonstrated its willingness to flout the will of the international community when assured of support from China, Russia, and the Arab League. Only such support emboldens Khartoum in its continuing refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court: [....]
CATASTROPHE
Over two weeks ago Jan Egeland, UN humanitarian chief, warned of “a catastrophic situation developing in Darfur unless international donors act soon to bolster a beleaguered African peacekeeping force in the Sudanese province. ‘We either get good news in the next few weeks, or we have catastrophic news later,’ Jan Egeland [said]” (Associated Press [dateline: Brussels], May 30, 2006). No reasonable reading of statements or developments of the past two weeks by UN, US, or European officials---or any other international actors---suggests that any “good news” is in the making. Khartoum remains obdurately opposed to the kind of force necessary to halt genocidal destruction in Darfur and the increasing bleeding of ethnic violence into Chad. Egeland’s “catastrophic news” will not be long in coming.
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Khartoum Adamantly Refuses Urgently Required UN Forces in Darfur (June 24, 2006):

For those vaguely hopeful that genocidal destruction in Darfur might somehow be halted by a UN peace support operation, or that there would be good faith observance of the terms of the Abuja (Nigeria) “Darfur Peace Agreement,” this has been a very bad week. Blaming a conspiracy of Jewish groups for the large chorus now calling for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, President Omar al-Bashir felt particularly unconstrained in expressing his views about a UN peace support operation in the increasingly violent region:
“Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has escalated his rejection of the UN deploying peacekeepers in Darfur, saying they would be neo-colonialists and accusing Jewish organizations of pushing for their deployment.”
Speaking of a UN deployment, al-Bashir declared:
"‘This shall never take place,’ al-Bashir told reporters at a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki Tuesday. ‘These are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country.’ [....]
“Jan Pronk, the top UN envoy in Sudan, said in a statement Wednesday that [head of UN peacekeeping Jean-Marie] Guehenno and the Security Council delegation had stressed that ‘the UN will not intervene in the country,’ nor will it deploy troops, without the consent of the Sudanese government.” (Associated Press [dateline: Khartoum], June 21, 2006)
“[Jean-Marie Guehenno] also insisted that UN peacekeepers would ‘only go to Darfur in full cooperation from the Sudanese government.’” (Associated Press [dateline: Khartoum], June 22, 2006)
“So long as the government of Sudan is not prepared to accept a peacekeeping operation in Sudan, there is no peacekeeping operation in Sudan---just as simple as that,’ [Guehenno] said.” (UN transcript of press conference by the AU and UN Technical Assessment Mission to Darfur [Khartoum], June 22, 2006)
“The AU’s top diplomat, Alpha Oumar Konare, visited Darfur on Tuesday and said nothing could be done without the consent of the Sudanese government. ‘Nobody can impose anything on Sudan,’ he told reporters in El Fasher.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], June 20, 2006)
Convinced by these repeated professions that it may reject any UN deployment that has a real ability to halt the violence in Darfur---or to undertake the various critical tasks of civilian and humanitarian protection, or to arrest war criminals and genocidaires on behalf of the International Criminal Court---Khartoum has the luxury of contemplating a range of responses, presciently outlined in the recent International Crisis Group (ICG) report:
“Over the longer term, Khartoum’s delaying tactics seem intended to achieve one of three possible outcomes, all of which would be disastrous for the people of Darfur:
“[1] Prevent a transition from [the AU mission] to a UN mission. Khartoum is aware that this is probably not realistic, given the international environment, but continues to hedge, presumably to extract concessions on the mandate, composition and operations of the eventual UN force.
“[2] Limit a UN mission to a Chapter VI mandate, which would severely compromise its capacity to protect civilians and probably render compliance with the DPA entirely voluntary, while denying the force meaningful capacity to prevent or respond to ceasefire violations. Given the likely persistence of violence in Darfur for the foreseeable future, it would also expose peacekeepers to higher risk.
“[3] Postpone deployment long enough for the DPA to unravel or become unenforceable. Khartoum enjoys military superiority and has divided the rebels during the negotiations. It may seek to buy time and relative freedom of action to alter the situation on the ground significantly before UN deployment.” (page 16)
THE DARFUR PEACE AGREEMENT ALREADY COMPROMISED
Al-Bashir’s vicious bombast of this past week did much to obscure what is perhaps the more significant news: the Khartoum regime has missed the first key deadline stipulated in the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), signed in Abuja on May 5, 2006 (with additional days added to the “starting time” as the AU futilely sought to make the agreement more inclusive of the Darfuri rebel movements). Thus by June 22, 2006 Khartoum’s National Islamic Front regime was obliged to,
“present to the Ceasefire Commission a comprehensive plan for neutralising and disarming the Janjaweed/armed militia specifying actions to be taken during all phases of the Ceasefire. This plan shall be presented before the beginning of Phase 1 (i.e., within 37 days of the signing of this Agreement [i.e., June 22, 2006]) and implemented within the timeframes specified in this Agreement.” (Paragraph 314, Darfur Peace Agreement).
“This plan shall include milestones to be achieved by the Government of Sudan and certified by the AU Mission in Sudan in accordance with the timelines in this Agreement. These milestones shall include, but not be limited to, the following:
“[a] The Government of Sudan shall restrict all Janjaweed/armed militia and [the paramilitary] Popular Defense Forces to their headquarters, garrisons, cantonment sites or communities and take other steps to contain, reduce and ultimately eliminate the threat posed by such forces.
“[b] The Government of Sudan shall completely disarm the above forces of heavy weapons.
“[c] Consistent with Article 30, paragraph 457, the Government of Sudan shall ensure that no Janjaweed/armed militia pose a threat to the Movements’ assembly and disarmament.” (Paragraph 315, DPA)
Not only has this “comprehensive plan” not been presented by Khartoum, two days after the deadline---and almost two years after the UN Security Council first “demanded” that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed---but there is no sign that such a detailed “plan” will be forthcoming. And if a “plan” is eventually presented, there is simply no reason to believe that it will govern Khartoum’s actions any more than an explicitly stipulated deadline of the DPA has. In its predictable fashion, Khartoum is testing the international waters to see what the response will be to missing the first significant deadline in the peace agreement. Given the resounding silence from the UN, the EU, and the US, the regime will draw the only conclusion possible: the DPA is a document that needn’t be taken seriously, and it changes military realities in Darfur only on paper.
Other DPA deadlines have slipped as well, further reflecting a lack of AU administrative capacity and Khartoum’s notorious ability to stall and forestall meaningful international action. [....] The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks provides a useful overview of the rapid collapse of the Darfur Peace Agreement:
“‘There is nothing, there is no progress on the implementation of the DPA,’ Hafiz Mohamed, Sudan programme director for the London-based advocacy group Justice Africa, said. ‘That is a great worry---a lot needs to be done.’” [....]
Julie Flint, an extraordinarily well-informed source on Darfur and co-author of “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War,” noted recently:
“The government's behavior in the 40 days since it signed the agreement has been equally deplorable. On June 10, [2006] as the United Nations Security Council met in Fasher, government forces and Janjaweed attacked Galol in central Darfur. One of the founders of the SLA, a man who supports peace, e-mailed me that day: ‘Thirty civilians have been killed and many injured while the UN ambassadors are in Fasher. The government does not respect or care about the international community.’” (Daily Star [Lebanon], June 20, 2006)
It is not simply that Khartoum does not “respect or care about the international community”: the regime has nothing but contempt for the UN and other international actors. A brutally destructive attack on civilians the very day the UN Security Council was meeting in el-Fasher (capital of North Darfur) is entirely in character.As ICG notes in its report, despite Khartoum’s signing of the DPA the regime continues to flout its terms and previous international commitments [....]
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Something has to change. It is clear that the Khartoum government has no intention of stopping the Darfur atrocity, so the responsibility falls on the rest of us.
--Jeff Weintraub

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Further thoughts on the Presbyterian anti-terrorism resolution (Ami Isseroff)

This follows up my recent item about the vote by the US Presbyterian Church, at its 2006 General Assembly, to condemn terrorism and suicide bombing--"no matter who is the perpetrator or the target"--in explicit and unequivocal terms. (For further details, see HERE.)

In some ways, it's easy to sympathize with this slightly exasperated reaction (from an exchange between two other correspondents):
Your comment about the Presbyterians pretty much sums up what constitutes a victory these days -- Christians coming out against suicide bombers! Well, I guess that's something. Perhaps tomorrow they will take a courageous stand against beheadings.
And it is also worth noting that a quarter of the delegates voted against this resolution, so it's clear that condemning terrorist suicide bombing was not considered at all non-controversial.

But in fact that is part of what makes this action by the Presbyterian Church significant and potentially valuable--if it proves to be a first step that inspires imitation. As Ami Isseroff correctly points out (on MidEastWeb):
This resolution is astonishing because it is so obviously right that it was almost impossible to expect that it would happen. It is a moral "enabling act" that gives everyone a banner that can be used as the standard of anti-terror forces. If it is carried out conscientiously, and emulated by other religious groups and NGOs, it can at last create an effective lobby against terrorism. It is a lobby that does not further the narrow interests of any political opinion, religion or ethnic group. It is a lobby that can be and should be supported by every religion and non-religion from Atheists to Zoroastrians, and every nation and ethnicity from Arabs to Zulus.

If we want to have any future for the Middle East, we have to hope that the PCUSA, and everyone else, will realize the potential of the moral force of this resolution.

We'll see whether or not this turns out to be overly optimistic. Read the rest below.

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Ami Isseroff (MidEastWeb)
June 24, 2006

Presbyterian anti-terror resolution: A lifeline for the Middle East

A little heralded resolution of the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA may have extended a lifeline to the Middle East on a critical issue.

Sooner or later, everyone will understand that the Middle East is doomed unless we can lick terror. There will be no bright future, no democracy, no freedom, nothing worthwhile, if different groups of bandits are allowed to hold the world hostage to their whims. The entire Middle East will increasingly resemble Beirut during the civil war. The rest of the world is involved too, but the Middle East is the prime target and the major arena of terrorist action.


Because terrorism is an international plague, it cannot be beaten without international action. International action has been impossible because governments, communities, NGOs and religious leaders have insisted on manipulating definitions of terror to exclude their own particular brand of terror, or to advance the particular political cause they espouse. A near-universal conspiracy of journalists has euphemized the people who cut off heads and blow up people during religious observances as "militants," a word that used to be applied to advocates of women's suffrage. In the Middle East, these malefactors are often termed "martyrs" and terrorism is often called "resistance." Fatuous academic doctrines teach that suicide bombing is an act of altruism.

The term "terrorist" is only used when the explosions happen in one's own country, and the victims are members of one's religion or ethnic group. When a small U.S. Muslim organization tried, not long ago, to organize a Muslim protest against terror, the attempt fizzled because it was ridiculed by the U.S. Muslim community.

Since then, the Middle East has slowly learned a few lessons, paying a terrible tuition. As Jeff Weintraub points out, people are unwilling to condemn terror as long as it might advance their favorite cause, and will only rally to condemn terrorism when they finally understand that it is aimed at them:
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Most people are willing to condemn this sort of "terrorism" in vague and general terms, but in practice their attitude often depends in large part on whom they see as the targets of terrorist attacks. When the targets seem appropriate, then there is a common tendency to make excuses for terrorism, to find special justifications for it, to try to change the subject, or even to deny that these particular attacks really constitutes terrorism at all (as opposed to, say, "resistance"). Unfortunately, even when people claim to oppose "terrorism" in general, in practice they often make exceptions until they feel that their group is being targeted.
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The terror strikes in Sinai, the strike in Jordan that killed about 60 people at a wedding, and the continuing use of terror in Iraqi sectarian violence, have finally changed a few minds about terror. At least, most normal people now agree that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was filth. Typically, there is an attempt to blame the filth on someone else and insist he was an American "asset" (agent) or an Israeli agent. This dawning recognition has not as yet, really coalesced into an international will to wipe out terror, whatever its source. Tortuous verbal and moral acrobatics are used to justify the proposition that whereas it is an evil crime to kill Shi'a worshippers in a mosque in Baghdad, or Muslim worshippers in the cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, it is "legitimate resistance" for a suicide bomber to kill people celebrating a Passover Seder in a hotel in Nethanya. A large portion of "liberal" opinion lends legitimacy to the execrable means and ends of the Hamas ("democratically elected") and the Hizbullah ("legitimate resistance"), and there is, a sector of opinion, much smaller, but equal in moral and logical folly, that is willing to praise - or justify - the mad thuggery of Baruch Goldstein and other Israeli settler extremists.

The Presbyterian General Assembly, overruling their commissioners, approved the following resolution:

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We, the 217th General Assembly (2006) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declare that any suicide bombing, no matter who is the perpetrator or the target, constitutes a crime against humanity.

While international law, through various treaties and international consensus affirms the criminality of such acts when linked to a government, it is crucial that the church and the world affirm the culpability of individuals and groups that assist in carrying out suicide bombings [and terrorism] through financial or logistical support and that civil or military authorities who fail to exercise adequate powers of control over perpetrators and fail to take appropriate measures, be held accountable. The international community and faith community as a whole are obligated to prevent and call for international judicial prosecution of all those aiding and abetting these crimes.

We instruct our Moderator and Stated Clerk to encourage our leaders in the U.S.A., our ecumenical partners, our interfaith partners, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the United Nations Security Council to make suicide bombing a matter of declaration and legislation under national laws, and to raise this issue with all appropriate international agencies as appropriate.

We hereby pledge and instruct the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Washington Office of the PC(USA), and the Presbyterian UN representatives to take every opportunity to publicly and officially condemn suicide bombings [and terrorism] and to help empower victims of such attacks to be able to bring those who plan and inspire suicide bombings to the bar of international justice. Further to instruct the Stated Clerk to notify the United Nations, the World Court, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other appropriate human rights organizations of the 217th General Assembly (2006)'s position on this topic, and ask for their collaboration in amending international law, especially international criminal court elements of crime; Article 7 entitled "Crimes Against Humanity."

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This resolution is astonishing because it is so obviously right that it was almost impossible to expect that it would happen. It is a moral "enabling act" that gives everyone a banner that can be used as the standard of anti-terror forces. If it is carried out conscientiously, and emulated by other religious groups and NGOs, it can at last create an effective lobby against terrorism. It is a lobby that does not further the narrow interests of any political opinion, religion or ethnic group. It is a lobby that can be and should be supported by every religion and non-religion from Atheists to Zoroastrians, and every nation and ethnicity from Arabs to Zulus.

If we want to have any future for the Middle East, we have to hope that the PCUSA, and everyone else, will realize the potential of the moral force of this resolution.

Ami Isseroff