Thursday, January 22, 2009

Matt Yglesias waxes patriotic about freedom of speech

Matt Yglesias is right on target here, and I'm with him all the way:
Barack Obama aside, nothing makes me feel patriotic quite like a good European hate speech prosecution
... like the one in the Netherlands, for defaming Islam, that he picks up on.

And even if a principled defense of freedom of speech leaves you cold, it's worth considering Matt's very sensible analysis of why these types of politically correct, "multi-culturalist" censorship often backfire in practice:
This isn’t going to end anti-Muslim sentiment in the Netherlands, and it’s not going to help Dutch Muslims assimilate into European society. What’s more, this actually fuels the notion that the existence of a substantial Muslim population in your country is an intolerable threat to liberty. There are a lot of dimensions of social policy along which I think we can learn a lot from northern Europe, but the robust tradition of free speech in the United States is something we can and should be very proud of.
(Of course, we look good only by comparison.)

=> For a more extended (and passionate) argument on the same lines, I also recommend Glenn Greenwald's January 2008 piece on "The Noxious Fruits of Hate Speech Laws" in Canada and Europe.
I've written several times before about the oppressive, dangerous hate speech laws which are common -- increasingly so -- in both Canada and Europe, whereby the Government is empowered to punish as criminals citizens who express offensive or otherwise prohibited political views. [....] Here are the noxious fruits of hate speech laws: a citizen being forced to appear before the Government in order to be interrogated by an agent of the State -- a banal, clerical bureaucrat -- about what opinions he expressed and why he expressed them, upon pain of being punished under the law. This is nothing short of stomach-turning. [....]
In good Voltairean fashion, Greenwald chose for examples the legalized persecution of two people whose views he despises. But he still found the spectacle "stomach-churning," and correctly so.
For those unable to think past the (well-deserved) animosity one has for the specific targets in question here, all one needs to do instead is imagine these proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes. [....] Just like Bush followers who bizarrely think that the limitless presidential powers they're cheering on will only be wielded by political leaders they like, many hate speech law proponents convince themselves that such laws will only be used to punish speech they dislike. That is never how tyrannical government power works.
=> And by the way, in case anyone is wondering, I believe (like Greenwald) that the laws criminalizing Holocaust denial in some western European countries have outlived their usefulness, too. It's better to fight such pernicious idiocies with criticism, outrage, and contempt than with legal censorship. (Direct incitement to murder and the like are a different matter.)

Yours for freedom of expression,
Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Matt Yglesias
Jan 21, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The American Way

Barack Obama aside, nothing makes me feel patriotic quite like a good European hate speech prosecution:
A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

“In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to… draw a clear line,” the court in Amsterdam said.
Wilders is a boor and a bit of an idiot, but while I understand that this sort of thing happens on the continent it invariably strikes me as incredibly stupid. This isn’t going to end anti-Muslim sentiment in the Netherlands, and it’s not going to help Dutch Muslims assimilate into European society. What’s more, this actually fuels the notion that the existence of a substantial Muslim population in your country is an intolerable threat to liberty. There are a lot of dimensions of social policy along which I think we can learn a lot from northern Europe, but the robust tradition of free speech in the United States is something we can and should be very proud of.
------------------------------
Jan 21, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Free Speech

One reader wrote in with regard to my post on this Dutch hate speech prosecution objecting that my criticisms seemed too pragmatic and insufficiently focused on the question of principle.

So to be clear: I think as a matter of principle that people should be permitted to make offensive analogies about the Koran or anything else they care to. That said, I do think that principled belief in free speech is ultimately tied to practicalities. If I was genuinely convinced that for people of diverse faiths to coexist peacefully required an elaborate set of legal restrictions on offensive speech—with the only alternative being bloodshed and many deaths—then I’m not going to pretend that I might not flinch away from principle. But the principle of freedom of expression as a good solution for life in a diverse society has, I think, stood the test of time in the United States of America. And it does work, in part, precisely because it’s understood as a principle, as a civic commitment to a shared value. Which is perhaps a more complicated answer than some people are hoping for, but I think that in the real word questions of principle and questions of pragmatism are more intertwined than people sometimes care to admit.

Obama's Inaugural Address

I'm still mulling over Obama's speech and what it means. In the meantime, what follows are (mostly) some of my first impressions from Tuesday.

They're part of a conversation with Mark Kleiman at The Reality-Based Community. Tuesday evening I sent a message with some of my preliminary thoughts to Mark (partly in response to Mark's immediate reflections on the speech and the event--here & here--which are worth reading). He graciously suggested posting my message on his blog, and you can find it there (together with some of his commentary) as: Jeff Weintraub on Obama and the civic-republican tradition.

You can also read it below, along with a transcript of the speech itself. And you can watch Obama deliver his (First?) Inaugural HERE.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Hi Mark,

I just read your thoughts on Obama's Inaugural Address, and (as usual) I found them perceptive and largely on-target. I think we agree that it was not one of his soaring speeches (and was not designed to contain a lot of applause lines), but it was eloquent in a sober and austere way. I felt a kind of tension there as I listened to it, which made parts of the speech seem almost odd to me, and perhaps that was due in part to a characteristic of the speech that I think you noted correctly--that is, in some ways it was "a text for the eye more than the ear." But that's only part of the reason, because when I read the text my overall impressions were not that different from what they were when I heard it.

For my part, when my wife and I watched the inauguration on TV, I found myself overcome with emotion to an extent that genuinely surprised me. Even the invocation by Pastor Rick Warren (!), who is hardly one of my favorite people, and which had a lot more Jesus in it than it should have, moved me almost to tears. Obama's speech, too. Even Joe the Biden's oath of office (which Justice Stevens, unlike Chief Justice Roberts, did not mess up). I guess when certain grand political rituals coincide with a historic occasion like this, the effect can be awe-inspiring.

I'm putting off writing down my own thoughts about the speech for my blog (and if I do post them at all, they'll be briefer and less substantial than yours were). But among other things, this speech once more reinforced an impression that struck me very early and very forcibly about Obama. You remark that a major theme of the speech has to do with the inextricable connection between freedom and responsibility (even "duties").
Insofar as a single dominant theme stands out in my memory, it was the responsibility of individual Americans to do their part in rebuilding the nation and the world.
This is right. One way to flesh this out, I think, is to frame it in a way that I did last January (Barack Obama on solidarity, citizenship, anti-semitism, & the legacy of Martin Luther King) and which my friend Andy Markovits and I spelled out more fully in May (Obama and the Progressives: A Curious Paradox):
[....] People often talk about Obama's soaring rhetoric, but what's the content of that rhetoric? To put it in terms that the Founders would have understood immediately, Obama has made civic patriotism and republican virtue central to the message of his whole campaign. He has consistently championed a politics of solidarity, active citizenship, national community, and the common good. Like Lincoln, Obama portrays the United States as a nation defined by certain constitutive ideals and charged with the project of imperfectly but continually striving to achieve, extend, and enrich these ideals in concrete ways ("in order to form a more perfect union"). Furthermore, Obama affirms and celebrates "the promise of America" (adding that "I know the promise of America because I have lived it"), while insisting that to fulfill that promise requires constant effort, civic engagement, shared sacrifices, and conflict as well as cooperation.

The most crucial requirement ("the great need of the hour," in a formulation borrowed from Martin Luther King) is active moral and political solidarity--not only to empower oppressed and underprivileged groups, but to bind together and revitalize a more comprehensive national community. [....]
That evocation of solidarity and responsibility conjoined with republican liberty, of the need to revitalize the political community (not as an alternative to government action, but as a necessary complement to it), and of a politics of the common good runs through his Inaugural speech, too--in a sober and serious tone, as I said. These themes tie together many of the specific passages you picked out.

And there's even an explicit invocation of virtue, which is more dicey nowadays. In fact, "hope and virtue" come together in the concluding paragraphs.

=> Of course, this talk of "virtue" is introduced and legitimized by quoting it from none other than the Alpha Founder George Washington. But did you notice something interesting about that historical tidbit?

The Washington-related passage in Obama's second-to-last paragraph referred to the terrible winter of 1776, when Washington's consistently-beaten army had retreated to Valley Forge and seemed about to melt away.

[JW: Mentioning Valley Forge was a slip on my part. The winter at Valley Forge came a year later, in 1777. In December 1776 Washington's army was camped across the Delaware River from Trenton, New Jersey. On December 26--my birthday--Washington gambled everything with an attack on the Hessian troops quartered in Trenton ... and won his first real victory.]

Obama's speech says:
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].
Now, what struck me immediately is that those quoted words are Thomas Paine's. They come from Paine's pamphlet "The American Crisis" (printed December 23, 1776), which begins with that well-known passage ...
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. [Etc.]
According the standard historical account (or legend) I remember learning in my youth [recounted here, for example], Paine actually wrote that tract sitting in Washington's camp, and Washington really did have it read aloud to inspire the troops.

(Did it actually happen that way? I'm not sure, but it's plausible, and it certainly could have happened that way. Perhaps a historian could confirm it. But that's neither here nor there. Whether or not Washington actually had Paine's tract read out to the troops, they're the sort of thing he would have had proclaimed.)

Still, it's a pity that poor old Tom Paine couldn't get some recognition in Obama's inaugural speech. (Reagan quoted him explicitly, you will recall, at the 1980 Republican convention.) Paine's revolutionary pamphlets were phenomenal best-sellers at the time, of course. And when Paine's audience read those words, they knew exactly what "virtue" meant in that context--that is, citizen virtue. That's what we need, for sure (among other things).

=> Well, now we have to hope for the best.

Yours for republican virtue,
Jeff Weintraub

====================
Mark Kleiman comments:

Two quibbles on secondary points:

1. As noted in an update to my earlier post, the story that Paine's words were written at Valley Forge can't be true; they were published the previous winter. It's still possible that Washington ordered them read at Valley Forge.

[JW: As I explained earlier, I confused the issue by carelessly mentioning Valley Forge. Washington's camp in December 1776 wasn't at Valley Forge--that came a year later, in the winter of 1777--but once we correct for the actual location, the story is historically plausible.]

2. I find "too much Jesus" - a reaction I've encountered from others - a surprising response to Warren's invocation. Mine was just the opposite. Warren quoted Jesus (whom he referred to first by his Hebrew name, Yeshua) as I might quote Socrates: that is, as a human teacher to whom Warren is personally indebted for various insights. That's a long way from identifying Jesus as the Messiah, let alone worshipping Jesus as God.

Warren recited the Lord's Prayer, but didn't call it that; stripped of the title, it's recognizably (even in English translated from Greek) a very nice but fairly conventional piece of Hebrew religious poetry, which wouldn't be out of place in the Book of Psalms or the Saturday-morning synagogue service.

So while atheists and practitioners of non-Abrahamic religions might reasonably have felt left out, Warren's prayer wasn't really a specifically Christian one, let alone an Evangelical one.

And except for the mention of Jesus, the rest of the invocation could have been given just as well by a mainstream liberal Protestant minister, or a liberal rabbi. If Obama-ism has no greater triumph than persuading a mega-church entrepreneur to give such an ecumenical prayer, then I say, on behalf of my fellow fighters against superstition and bigotry, dayyenu! It is sufficient unto us.

[JW: On reflection, I think Mark is right about this--or at least more right than I was..]

Update Just in case you had any doubt, former Maryland Governor Bob Erlich wants to remind you that contemporary Republicans are not civic republicans. Oh, and they're a little bit literacy-challenged, as well.

=========================
New York Times
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you.

CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!

PRESIDENT OBAMA: My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

I thank President Bush for his service to our nation...

(APPLAUSE)

... as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

(APPLAUSE)

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

(APPLAUSE)

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

(APPLAUSE)

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.

The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...

(APPLAUSE)

... and lower its costs.

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.

MR. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

(APPLAUSE)

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

(APPLAUSE)

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.

With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

(APPLAUSE)

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those...

(APPLAUSE)

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

(APPLAUSE)

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.

It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.

These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

(APPLAUSE)

So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you.

(APPLAUSE)

And God bless the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Monday, January 19, 2009

The bravery of Afghan schoolgirls

As Norman Geras correctly says, this is "a story of courage against moral barbarity." (Also highlighted by erudito at Thinking-Out-Aloud and by Terry Glavin.)
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.” [....]
The background was explained in a December 22 piece by Helene Gayle, President of CARE USA ("In Afghanistan, Education Under Attack"):
Few things symbolize progress in the fight against poverty better than the face of an educated girl. And I was fortunate enough to see hundreds of them during a trip to Afghanistan in 2006. Those faces, eager and alert, lit up the courtyard of a new school built to educate 1,000 girls in central Afghanistan's Bamian province.

Gone were the days of Taliban rule, when girls were forbidden to study and women weren't allowed to teach. Afghanistan's future leaders could learn -- out in the open.

Perhaps that is why last month's brutal attack on a group of Afghan schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar was so heartbreaking. The students were walking to school in uniforms. Two men wielding water pistols drove by on motorcycles and sprayed battery acid.

They took aim at that same symbol of progress, the one that has inspired me and so many others.

At least three of the girls were hospitalized for severe burns on their faces, according to media reports. Afghan authorities later reported that they had arrested 10 Taliban militants in connection with the attack.

One of the girls spoke courageously from her hospital bed, with yellow ointment covering an eye damaged by the acid. "I will go to my school even if they kill me," she told reporters. "My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies."

The world must stand behind her. The people of Afghanistan, if given the proper support, can produce a generation of educated students--boys and girls--capable of lifting their country up again. [....]
Let's hope so.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
New York Times
January 13, 2009
Afghan Girls, Scarred by Acid, Defy Terror, Embracing School
By Dexter Filkins

[Photos here.]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.

The girls burst through the school’s walled compound, many of them flinging off head-to-toe garments, bounding, cheering and laughing in ways that are inconceivable outside — for girls and women of any age. Mirwais has no regular electricity, no running water, no paved streets. Women are rarely seen, and only then while clad in burqas that make their bodies shapeless and their faces invisible.

And so it was especially chilling on Nov. 12, when three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst.

The attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that is battling the government and the American-led coalition. Banning girls from school was one of the most notorious symbols of the Taliban’s rule before they were ousted from power in November 2001.

Building new schools and ensuring that children — and especially girls — attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Some of the students at the Mirwais school are in their late teens and early 20s, attending school for the first time. Yet at the same time, in the guerrilla war that has unfolded across southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have made schools one of their special targets.

But exactly who was behind the acid attack is a mystery. The Taliban denied any part in it. The police arrested eight men and, shortly after that, the Ministry of Interior released a video showing two men confessing. One of them said he had been paid by an officer with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to carry out the attack.

But at a news conference last week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said there was no such Pakistani involvement.

One thing is certain: in the months before the attack, the Taliban had moved into the Mirwais area and the rest of Kandahar’s outskirts. As they did, posters began appearing in local mosques.

“Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School,” one of them said.

In the days after the attack, the Mirwais School for Girls stood empty; none of the parents would let their daughters venture outside. That is when the headmaster, Mahmood Qadari, got to work.

After four days of staring at empty classrooms, Mr. Qadari called a meeting of the parents. Hundreds came to the school — fathers and mothers — and Mr. Qadari implored them to let their daughters return. After two weeks, a few returned.

So, Mr. Qadari, whose three daughters live abroad, including one in Virginia, enlisted the support of the local government. The governor promised more police officers, a footbridge across a busy nearby road and, most important, a bus. Mr. Qadari called another meeting and told the parents that there was no longer any reason to hold their daughters back.

“I told them, if you don’t send your daughters to school, then the enemy wins,” Mr. Qadari said. “I told them not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”

The adults of Mirwais did not need much persuading. Neither the bus nor the police nor the bridge has materialized, but the girls started showing up anyway. Only a couple of dozen girls regularly miss school now; three of them are girls who had been injured in the attack.

“I don’t want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives,” said Ghulam Sekhi, an uncle of Shamsia and her sister, Atifa, age 14, who was also burned.

For all the uncertainty outside its walls, the Mirwais school brims with life. Its 40 classrooms are so full that classes are held in four tents, donated by Unicef, in the courtyard. The Afghan Ministry of Education is building a permanent building as well.

The past several days at the school have been given over to examinations. In one classroom, a geography class, a teacher posed a series of questions while her students listened and wrote their answers on paper.

“What is the capital of Brazil?” the teacher, named Arja, asked, walking back and forth.

“Now, what are its major cities?”

“By how many times is America larger than Afghanistan?”

At a desk in the front row, Shamsia, the girl with the burned face, pondered the questions while cupping a hand over her largest scar. She squinted down at the paper, rubbed her eyes, wrote something down.

Doctors have told Shamsia that her face may need plastic surgery if there is to be any chance of the scars disappearing. It is a distant dream: Shamsia’s village does not even have regular electricity, and her father is disabled.

After class, Shamsia blended in with the other girls, standing around, laughing and joking. She seemed un-self-conscious about her disfigurement, until she began to recount her ordeal.

“The people who did this,” she said, “do not feel the pain of others.”

Even Robert Fisk can't buy the Israelis-are-Nazis line

As I remarked a few years ago, in response to another piece by the veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk:
Fisk is always biased, often quite dishonest, and at times (like all of us) wildly wrong. A lot of what he's written over the years has been misleading and pernicious (though a lot of it has not). But as I've said more than once in the past, I have never been able to feel straightforwardly hostile toward Fisk, even at his worst moments. A major reason for this is that I am convinced that he genuinely hates injustice and human suffering.
And every once in a while, his sense of perspective reasserts itself, too. For example, in the piece below.
No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza's one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches.
=> Aside from being rambling, which is not unusual for Fisk, this piece has a few problematic formulations (and one or two that strike me as less than honest). But its main thrust seems to me serious, correct, and important nevertheless. And since it comes from someone whose record of violent hostility against Israel (and of genuine sympathy for Palestinians) is impeccable and unquestionable, it might have some impact on the kinds of people whose hysterical ravings Fisk would like to tamp down a bit.

Some highlights:
Israel's savagery in Gaza has also been compared to a "genocide" and – of course – a "holocaust". The French Union of Islamic Organisations called it "a genocide without precedent" – which does take the biscuit when even the Pope's "minister for peace and justice" has compared Gaza to "a big concentration camp".

Before I state the obvious, I only wish the French Union of Islamic Organisations would call the Armenian genocide a genocide – it doesn't have the courage to do so, does it, because that would be offensive to the Turks and, well, the million and a half Armenians massacred in 1915 happened to be, er, Christians.

Mind you, that didn't stop George Bush from dropping the word from his vocabulary lest he, too, should offend the Turkish generals whose airbases America needs for its continuing campaign in Iraq. And even Israel doesn't use the word "genocide" about the Armenians lest it loses its only Muslim ally in the Middle East. Strange, isn't it? When there's a real genocide – of Armenians – we don't like to use the word. But when there is no genocide, everyone wants to get in on the act.

Yes, I know what all these people are trying to do: make a direct connection between Israel and Hitler's Germany. [....]

I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War – whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers, most recently used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler's hand and said – in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise – "The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews... They have definitely solved the Jewish problem." The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza's one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches. [....]

The issue, surely, is that war crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol. There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children. [JW: Curiously enough, there's no mention of Hamas war crimes, but let that pass.]

I should add that I had a sneaking sympathy for the Syrian foreign minister who this week asked why a whole international tribunal has been set up in the Hague to investigate the murder of one man – Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri – while no such tribunal is set up to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians.

I should add, however, that the Hague tribunal may well be pointing the finger at Syria and I would still like to see a tribunal set up into the Syrian massacre at Hama in 1982 [see HERE] when thousands of civilians were shot at the hands of Rifaat al-Assad's special forces. [....]

What this is really about is international law. It's about accountability. It's about justice – something the Palestinians have never received – and it's about bringing criminals to trial. Arab war criminals, Israeli war criminals – the whole lot.
Sounds good to me.
And don't say it cannot be done. [....] Just leave the Second World War out of it.
Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub
=========================
The Independent (London)
Saturday, January 17, 2009
When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War out of it
By Robert Fisk

How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis?

Exaggeration always gets my goat. [JW: Coming from Robert Fisk, this is a bit rich. But OK, OK.] I started to hate it back in the 1970s when the Provisional IRA claimed that Long Kesh internment camp was "worse than Belsen". It wasn't as if there was anything nice about Long Kesh – or the Maze prison as it was later politely dubbed – but it simply wasn't as bad as Belsen. And now we're off again. Passing through Paris this week, I found pro-Palestinian demonstrators carrying signs which read "Gaza, it's Guernica" and "Gaza-sur-Glane".

Guernica, as we all know, was the Basque city razed by the Luftwaffe in 1937 and Oradour-sur-Glane the French village whose occupants were murdered by the SS in 1944. Israel's savagery in Gaza has also been compared to a "genocide" and – of course – a "holocaust". The French Union of Islamic Organisations called it "a genocide without precedent" – which does take the biscuit when even the Pope's "minister for peace and justice" has compared Gaza to "a big concentration camp".

Before I state the obvious, I only wish the French Union of Islamic Organisations would call the Armenian genocide a genocide – it doesn't have the courage to do so, does it, because that would be offensive to the Turks and, well, the million and a half Armenians massacred in 1915 happened to be, er, Christians.

Mind you, that didn't stop George Bush from dropping the word from his vocabulary lest he, too, should offend the Turkish generals whose airbases America needs for its continuing campaign in Iraq. And even Israel doesn't use the word "genocide" about the Armenians lest it loses its only Muslim ally in the Middle East. Strange, isn't it? When there's a real genocide – of Armenians – we don't like to use the word. But when there is no genocide, everyone wants to get in on the act.

Yes, I know what all these people are trying to do: make a direct connection between Israel and Hitler's Germany. And in several radio interviews this past week, I've heard a good deal of condemnation about such comparisons. How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis? How can anyone compare the Israeli army to the Wehrmacht? Merely to make such a parallel is an act of anti-Semitism.

Having come under fire from the Israeli army on many occasions, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. I've never understood why strafing the roads of northern France in 1940 was a war crime while strafing the roads of southern Lebanon is not a war crime. The massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps – perpetrated by Israel's Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli soldiers watched and did nothing – falls pretty much into the Second World War bracket. Israel's own estimate of the dead – a paltry 460 – was only nine fewer than the Nazi massacre at the Czech village of Lidice in 1942 when almost 300 women and children were also sent to Ravensbrück (a real concentration camp). Lidice was destroyed in revenge for the murder by Allied agents of Reinhard Heydrich. The Palestinians were slaughtered after Ariel Sharon told the world – untruthfully – that a Palestinian had murdered the Lebanese Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel.

Indeed, it was the courageous Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz of the Hebrew University (and editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica) who wrote that the Sabra and Chatila massacre "was done by us. The Phalangists are our mercenaries, exactly as the Ukrainians and the Croatians and the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organised them as soldiers to do the work for him. Even so have we organised the assassins of Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians". Remarks like these were greeted by Israel's then minister of interior and religious affairs, Yosef Burg, with the imperishable words: "Christians killed Muslims – how are the Jews guilty?"

I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War – whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers, most recently used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler's hand and said – in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise – "The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews... They have definitely solved the Jewish problem." The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza's one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble is not in question [JW: actually, this statement, which Fisk has made before, is simply stupid] – though I was amused to read one of Newsweek's regular correspondents calling it "splendid" last week – but that does not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol. There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children. [JW: Curiously enough, there's no mention of Hamas war crimes, which are certainly "not in question," but let that pass.]

I should add that I had a sneaking sympathy for the Syrian foreign minister who this week asked why a whole international tribunal has been set up in the Hague to investigate the murder of one man – Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri – while no such tribunal is set up to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians.

I should add, however, that the Hague tribunal may well be pointing the finger at Syria and I would still like to see a tribunal set up into the Syrian massacre at Hama in 1982 [see HERE] when thousands of civilians were shot at the hands of Rifaat al-Assad's special forces. The aforesaid Rifaat, I should add, today lives safely within the European Union. And how about a trial for the Israeli artillerymen who massacred 106 civilians – more than half of them children – at the UN base at Qana in 1996?

What this is really about is international law. It's about accountability. It's about justice – something the Palestinians have never received – and it's about bringing criminals to trial. Arab war criminals, Israeli war criminals – the whole lot. And don't say it cannot be done. Wasn't that the message behind the Yugoslav tribunal? Didn't some of the murderers get their just deserts? Just leave the Second World War out of it.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Israel declares a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza

It has now been 22 days since Israel launched its military operation against Hamas in Gaza on December 27, 2008. It was never clear how the fighting would end, but we may now be seeing the beginning of the endgame--though one has to say that tentatively.

Today Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire to take effect at midnight (Greenwich Mean Time).
BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen says the question now is whether Hamas decides to lick its wounds and regroup - or whether it gambles on dragging Israel into a war of attrition.
So what will this unilateral cease-fire mean concretely? Hard to know, but here are some immediate reactions and speculations.

=> This has been a war of terrible dilemmas, about which it has been impossible to feel confident or unconflicted. Israel was certainly justified in responding to the resumption of Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilian communities, which have been hit by thousands of these rockets over the years. (And the range of Hamas's rockets has been increasing, as Michael Walzer pointed out so they don't pose a static threat.) But the fact that something is, in principle, justified doesn't necessary make it a good idea, and in this case the dangers and drawbacks were pretty obvious.

Among other things, it wasn't clear whether and how military action could compel Hamas to cease those attacks, and no serious person expected either that this operation would break Hamas's control over Gaza or that Israel had any desire to re-occupy Gaza. At the same time, the longer this fighting went on, the more it increased death and suffering for Palestinian civilians in Gaza (and for Israelis, though Israel is both more concerned and more able than Hamas to protect its civilians). So Israel had both moral and practical reasons not to want to get sucked into an open-ended war.

As early as the first week of fighting, accordingly, several people--including David Grossman and my friend Gershon Shafir--proposed that Israel should unilaterally declare a cease-fire and essentially dare Hamas to respond. As Gershon put it in concluding his piece:
The strongest argument in favor of such an approach is that all the available alternatives--including the currently stated Israeli policy of seeking ‘to educate’ or eliminate Hamas--lead nowhere and can only yield disastrous and counterproductive results, along with unnecessary human suffering. Israel has made its point. Now it should know when to stop.
Something like that may be happening now, but after the weeks that have passed, the circumstances may be different.

Up to now, neither Israel nor Hamas has been willing to accept an unconditional cease-fire. The public position of the Israeli government has been that any cease-fire would have to be "durable and sustainable." It hasn't been entirely clear to observers like me what they meant by this in practice, but at least part of what the Israeli government seemed to be looking for were post-conflict arrangements that would make it more rather then less difficult for Hamas to smuggle more advanced weaponry into Gaza. Hamas, for its part, wanted conditions that would relieve Israeli pressure on its operations and on Gaza in general, allow it to claim victory, and increase its public support among Palestinians vis-a-vis Fatah.

But it would appear that decision-makers on both sides have been finding increasing reasons--and perhaps facing increasing pressures--to halt the fighting.

=> According to informed analysis from various sources, from the very beginning there has been some division of opinion within the Israeli government about when and under what conditions to stop. As Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff reported in Haaretz earlier this week ("Who is really winning the war in the Gaza Strip?):
Defense Minister Ehud Barak is very fond of marathon consultation sessions. This week he invited to his office a group of reserve generals who all retired from active duty in recent years. All but one advised Barak to end the operation quickly and withdraw from Gaza before things started to get more complicated. The most effective Israeli deterrence, they said, had already been achieved by the end of last week. When Barak asked just when, in their opinion, Israel ought to pull out of Gaza, most of the participants answered: Yesterday. This week, the defense minister was convinced that the operation had exhausted its usefulness.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, too, who at the operation's outset had waged fierce battles with Barak over questions of substance, public credit and political dividends, now holds the same view. But the lousy relations among the Livni-Barak-[Prime Minister] Olmert triumvirate have created a balance of fear: None of them wants to be painted as the soft "dove" throwing a wrench in the military campaign and dictating a swift end to it.
This triumvirate, including Olmert, seem to have reached the collective conclusion that enough is enough.

Some have speculated that they wanted to take this step before Barack Obama's inauguration, or perhaps just before something went terribly wrong. It is also possible that the Israeli government has received international assurances, confidential or semi-public, that some serious measures will be taken to control the flow of more advanced weaponry to Hamas. It may mean something that in UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's statement on Friday calling for a unilateral cease-fire declaration--which he delivered standing next to Hamas's bitter enemy Mahmoud Abbas--Moon spoke explicitly of the need for a "durable and sustainable" cessation of violence, since that phrase has become a diplomatic code. (Or, on the other hand, that may mean nothing in particular.)

=> In the meantime, there were also signs that elements in the Hamas leadership were starting to feel increasingly shaken and threatened by the Israeli assault, enough that they felt some urgency about stopping the fighting.

Up to a point, Hamas could presumably regard the death and suffering of Palestinians at Israeli hands as a propaganda bonanza from which it could only benefit. But Hamas's own military and organizational apparatus are considerably more vulnerable to Israeli attack than, say, Hezbollah's. All during the war between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006, for example, Hezbollah could continue to rain thousands of medium-range Iranian rockets on northern Israel, turning cities like Haifa into ghost towns. In the current round of fighting in Gaza, by comparison, Hamas has continued to fire rockets at Israel, but in dwindling numbers.

That may help explain why at least some Hamas figures gradually began to express interest in a cease-fire proposal worked out by the Egyptian government--which is no friend of Hamas. Early on in this conflict,
Egypt presented [Hamas] with a cease-fire proposal that, at first glance, seemed to stand no chance of being accepted: an immediate, unconditional cease-fire, entry into negotiations over a new hudna ("truce" - during which the cease-fire would be maintained, in the absence of a determination as to when the border crossings would be opened) and, in the third stage, a renewal of the talks between Fatah and Hamas that would lead to the formation of a unity government and require a Palestinian Authority presence at the border crossings. Then, and only then, would the Rafah crossing be opened - one of Hamas' prime objectives in this war. The Egyptians were essentially telling the organization that the crossing would remain closed for many more months.

Several times during the past 10 days, Hamas announced that the Egyptian formula was unacceptable because it hurt Palestinian interests. Two days ago, the tone changed. Salah al-Bardawil, the Hamas-Gaza representative to the Cairo talks, held a press conference during which he praised the Egyptian efforts to obtain a cease-fire. The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, made similar statements. Bardawil even went so far as to emphasize that the Egyptian initiative is the only one the organization was considering, thereby dismissing all other mediation efforts, including those of Qatar and Turkey.
But in these matters there may be some disagreement between the Gaza-based portions of the Hamas leadership and the top leadership based in Damascus, who are presumably willing to fight to the last Gazan. As Harel & Issacharoff reported this morning:
In a series of blows during the past 24 hours, the most severe since the Israel Defense Forces operation began in the Gaza Strip 20 days ago, Hamas was brought very close to surrender.

It is unlikely that we will see white flags, because the group recognizes that this would have a devastating effect on its image. But the Israeli military pressure has destroyed most of the Palestinian defenses in the heart of Gaza City, a day after the group had to agree in principle to the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire a deal it is not very happy with. [....]

The latest move has is risks. The IDF is constantly concerned that a single mistake may lead to mass killing of Palestinian civilians, or a surprise attack by Hamas that may affect public opinion in Israel. This nearly happened yesterday when UNRWA facilities were hit. [....]

Meanwhile it seems that at least the Hamas leadership in Gaza has began to fathom the seriousness of its position. Two Hamas leaders in the Strip, Razi Hamad and Ahmed Yusuf, accused the group's leadership in Damascus of "bringing a terrible disaster on Gaza."

The two are considered members of the pragmatic wing of the party, and charged the Damascus-based leadership with making a terrible mistake in ordering Hamas to foil the extension of the cease-fire agreement with Israel in December.

However, in Damascus it is not clear that the message has been received. Ramadan Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians will continue their resistance in Gaza and the city will not surrender because "victory is imminent."

The head of the Hamas politburo, Khaled Meshal, who is central in the decision that led to the events in the Strip, spoke in Damascus last night of a Palestinian "victory in Gaza." [....]
What all this means--assuming, of course, that the analysis is accurate--is that what Hamas will actually do in response to the Israeli cease-fire declaration is not easy to predict. So we don't now what happens next, even in the short run.

I hope that Hamas finds some politically viable way to accept a cease-fire. This would bring the fighting and destruction to a stop--at least for the moment, and perhaps even for a while. Then it will become possible to assess the human and material costs of this mini-war and to consider its possible long-term political consequences.

I don't pretend to know at this point what those will be (even assuming that fighting doesn't simply resume soon, which it might). But I would be willing to offer one surmise. It has become a standard cliché among journalists, pundits, and other analysts to proclaim that one political consequence of this blow-up will be to strengthen support for Hamas among Palestinians. Maybe, but I'm inclined to doubt it, and it certainly doesn't strike me as inevitable. I have no doubt that, for many Palestinians, these events have further inflamed anger and hatred against Israel. But once the aftermath begins to sink in, some of those same Palestinians might also conclude that Hamas helped to bring "a terrible disaster on Gaza" with nothing to show for it--which is in fact what happened.

Of course, if the Hamas leadership makes a calculation along the lines I have just suggested, that might also give them an incentive to reject a cease-fire right now.

But all this is speculation. I guess we'll see. Meanwhile, let's hope for the best. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis deserve this unending misery.

Shalom,
Jeff Weintraub

UPDATE - Sunday, January 18: Hamas and other "Palestinian resistance factions" allied with it have responded by declaring a temporary cease-fire in Gaza. According to the BBC News report:
A statement read by a Hamas spokesman said the group would hold fire for a week to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip.

The move came hours after a unilateral Israeli ceasefire came into effect. [....]

Many people are hoping that a ceasefire will last, but no-one on either side of the border will be surprised if the fighting starts up again, our correspondent adds. [....]

We will kill you if you go to school (Ingrid Robeyns & Mick Hartley)

Ingrid Robeyns, a Belgian philosopher and economist who teaches at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and occasionally posts at the group blog Crooked Timber, recently made an important point in a very careful and measured way. Responding to this news item ...
Take the latest one from the Taliban: they have warned that in North-West Pakistan they will kill all girls who still go to school on January 15th, and that they will blow up schools who will enrol female students after that date.
... Robeyns commented:
Among some groups of ‘Western’ feminists, perhaps especially within academia, there is a reluctance to draw attention to extreme instances of human rights violations in ‘non-western’ countries, especially in (predominantly) Muslim countries. The argument behind this position is that by highlighting the oppressions of women by some Muslim leaders or groups, one is playing into the card of Islamophobia, and contributing to the polarising rhetoric of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. [....]

I think such concerns are in many instances justified. Nevertheless from time to time I am struck by the intensity of the violence against women and girls by some groups or leaders in the world (and clearly this is by no means just a Muslim issue). Moreover, it would be hard to deny that it is of a different order than the disadvantages or hampering social structures experienced by mainstream groups of women in Europe or North America.
OK, some might find the way that Robeyns formulated her reflections a bit mild and even excessively apologetic (you can read her whole post HERE and judge for yourself). But her basic point is right and important.

=> For more on women's life in Swat with the Taliban (via the blunt and unapologetic Mick Hartley), here are some highlights:

PAKISTAN: Militants announce ban on girls' education in Swat
SWAT, 1 January 2009 (IRIN) - "They [Taliban] are savages and we're like a helpless herd, with no one to protect us," said Sikander Ali, father of four girls, speaking to IRIN on the phone from Swat valley.

He was reacting to news that militants had ordered a ban on girls' education from 15 January. Swat valley (in the North West Frontier Province), which has a population of 1.8 million and lies some 150km northeast of Peshawar, has been a hotbed of Islamist militancy for the past two years.

Ali, a government official, had heard the recent warning by Shah Dauran, deputy leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) of Maulana Fazalullah on a clandestine FM radio station. "He said we must take our daughters out of all schools - private or public - by 15 January 2009 at the latest. Failing this, he said the schools will be bombed and violators would face death. He also said they will throw acid into the faces of our daughters if we don't comply, like their counterparts did in Afghanistan some months back."

"It is feared that the extremists will carry out their threats," said Ibrash Pasha, provincial coordinator of the Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE).

If this happens an estimated 40,000 girls will be kept out of school, said Dawn newspaper. [....]

In the past year education has been severely disrupted in the valley. There have been unannounced curfews, schools have been blown up or set on fire. The worst example was the attack on Sangota Public School in October.

Herald, a monthly newsmagazine, reported in August 2008 that there were 566 girls' schools in Swat, including four government higher secondary schools, 22 high schools, 51 middle schools and 489 primary schools. Of these, 131 have either been set alight or closed, rendering 17,200 girls school-less.

In the past year over 150 schools (most of them girls' schools), were destroyed - albeit when the pupils were absent.
One killed, Pakistan's dancing girls flee Taliban
Pakistan's celebrated dancing girls are fleeing in fear of their lives as Taliban militants increase their strength in the North-West Frontier Province.

The bullet-riddled body dumped in the centre of Mingora's Green Square sent two clear messages to people in the Swat Valley's largest town: "un-Islamic vices" will no longer be tolerated, and the Taliban are effectively in control.

The woman, known only as Shabana, was found slumped on the ground, strewn with banknotes, CDs of her dance performances and photographs.

Local Taliban commander Maulana Shah Dauran broadcast a warning on one of the group's radio stations: his men had killed her and if any other girls were found performing in the city's Banr Bazaar they would be killed "one by one".
Women Are Not Allowed in This Market
Markets: Taliban have also banned women from markets. “Women are not allowed in this market,” reads a banner installed in front of a three-storey market, which was once called ‘Women’s Market’. “We were dealing in women’s garments and cosmetics and were doing a reasonable business. However, we cannot even earn enough money to pay the rent and electricity charges of the shop since the ban has been imposed on women’s entry in the market,” said a shop owner.

Another shop owner said he had not seen a woman in the whole Mingora Bazaar in the past month. “They [Taliban] have ordered the killing of women seen in market areas,” he said. [....]
The Taliban in the North West Frontier
On the heels of their crusade against girls going to schools, the Taliban have now issued new dictum in the areas under their sway asking parents of the grown up daughters to marry them to militants or "face dire consequences".

This new force-marriage campaign is being run in most of the areas in the Pakistan's troubled NWFP through regular announcements made in mosques to congregations.

Such instances have come to light recently through some of the affected women daring to go to authorities for justice rather than meekly surrender to the militants’ dictates.

Salma, who teaches in a primary school in Peshawar, told the Dawn newspaper that Taliban have told families to declare in mosques if they have unmarried girls so that their hand could be given in marriage, most probably to militants. [....]

She also said the Taliban in the Swat valley of NWFP have threatened women with dire punishment, if they are found outside their homes without identity cards and a male relative accompanying them. [....]
--Jeff Weintraub