FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

Fatah’s sixth General Assembly has issued several hard-line resolutions in recent days, saying it would not renew peace negotiations with Israel until all Palestinian prisoners are released from Israeli jails, all settlement-building is frozen and the Gaza blockade is lifted. It also vowed to struggle against Israel “until Jerusalem returns to the Palestinians void of settlers and settlements” and pinned the blame for the death of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat on Israel.

I might add that the statement on Jerusalem is ambiguous, and some observers think that it refers to both East and West Jerusalem.

What are we to make of this? Several things come to mind:

• It shows the importance in Palestinian politics of always being the most radical. Anyone who appears to be willing to compromise with the hated Zionists  loses popularity in a place where 77% of the people think that “the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists”.

• It shows that Fatah doesn’t plan to take the path of negotiation with Israel to bring a Palestinian state into existence — either because they would rather wait for a military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Hamas, etc. to weaken Israel enough so that it can be destroyed, or because they think the US will simply hand them a state on their terms.

I think there is a lesson here for the US administration. If there is any substance at all to Barack Obama’s statement that he is “absolutely committed to the security of Israel”, this goal is not served by arming and training the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA)  ‘security’ forces in hopes of creating a moderate entity that will be able to resist Hamas and also serve as a nucleus for a peaceful Palestinian state.

And note that the non-Hamas Palestinian movement is definitely moving in the more radical direction. Al-Jazeerah recently interviewed a number of young, educated Palestinians and asked them about the relevance of the PLO today. They came up with statements like this:

I believe our people are fed up with negotiations and compromises and will choose to go back to resistance to ensure no more compromises and to hinder the submissive approach that characterises the PLO right now…

We need people that are politically [socially? — ed] more liberal than Hamas is but who also care about the interest of their people, maybe this will give a push to more independent figures to take the lead.

If Fatah presented a programme that is stronger and takes into account people’s choices maybe they still have a chance. On the other hand, if Hamas came up with better strategies to confront the siege maybe it will also still have a chance.

Or this:

The PLO should not exclusively utilise political talks, and the political agenda must not threaten our right of resistance.

Or this:

The PLO in its current form is not relevant to the cause or to the Palestinians. The cause was sold out long ago. I don’t think they even remember what the cause is…

The future is gloomy. I think people have to go back 60 years, remember the Nakba and all that happened and start working all over again.

This one mentions ‘nonviolence’, but the end is still the same:

I believe that we, Palestinians, are still in a liberation phase against the Israeli occupation given the dead end tunnel of political negotiations, sign agreements and the paralysed Palestinian Authority institutions…

The Israeli matrix of control – land annexation, construction of settlements, separation wall, bypass roads, control of borders, etc – create no opportunity for a viable and sovereign Palestinian Authority beyond its physical existence.

The remaining unviable and Israeli controlled 22 per cent of historical Palestine for Palestinians holds no optimism for the future. The annexation of Jordan valley makes land percentage even less.

However, I do also believe that the PLO has to refresh its blood and open its nerves to represent all spectrums of Palestinian factions who I believe should revolve around the PLO’s political agenda in affirmation to right to self-determination and right of return but consider an expansion in the methods of resistance represented in article 10 of the Palestinian National Charter to include non-violent resistance as well.

Reformed PLO should reconsider the 1988 officially endorsed two-state solution which – in my opinion – signals the starting point for the collapse of the Palestinian national project.

I think we are finding out that a two-state solution that would be barely acceptable to both sides is moving farther away every day, if indeed it ever was anything more than wishful thinking on the Israeli side combined with creative ambiguity from the Palestinians. I believe that most Israelis and Palestinians understand this.

I suspect that most of the world’s governments also get it, and unfortunately would be happy to see the Palestinian goals achieved. Just about the only place where the idea of “two [peaceful] states for two peoples” is seen as achievable seems to be the White House.

My suggestion — since there does not appear to be a solution that would make the Palestinian Arabs happy while still maintaining the principle of Jewish self-determination — is that the US should stop trying to impose one.

I would like to see the Obama administration do what it can to reduce the proven threats to peace in the region: the huge missile buildups in Lebanon and Syria, the legitimization of Hamas, and of course the Iranian nuclear threat.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, PLO

President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan spoke yesterday on “A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans”. The full transcript of his speech is here.

Brennan begins by emphasizing the administration’s commitment to the use of military power  and other forms of action such as law-enforcement and economic interventions “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida and its allies” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I think we have seen that the administration does appear to be taking this narrowly defined conflict seriously.

But I fear that Brennan — and Obama’s — overall conception of the threat we face falls short of reality.

Brennan says, correctly, that the enemy isn’t “terrorism”:

As many have noted, the president does not describe this as a “war on terrorism.” That is because terrorism is but a tactic – a means to an end – which, in al-Qaida’s case, is global domination by an Islamic caliphate.

So if it isn’t a war on terrorism, what is it a war on? And here is where the disturbing aspects of the administration’s view appear:

Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against jihadists. Describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term “jihad,” which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in its speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam. [My emphasis]

Instead, as the president has made clear, we are at war with al-Qaida, which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda. These are the terrorists we will destroy; these are the extremists we will defeat. [My emphasis]

Doubtless Osama bin Laden believes that his jihad against the US is a “holy struggle for a moral goal”. But Brennan’s definition leaves out the historical meaning of ‘jihad’ as an expansionist, offensive struggle against non-Muslims, an aspect which is still very much part of the concept in the minds of many present-day Muslims (for an exhaustive and persuasive analysis of this topic, see Daniel Pipes: “Jihad and the Professors“).

While it is important to say that — at least as yet — the US is not “at war with Islam”, the enemy that we are facing is more than just al-Quaida and “its extremist allies”.  It is militant Islam, which emphasizes violent, offensive jihad as a fundamental part of Islam. As Daniel Pipes points out, jihad in this sense was highly important in the past and has been reemphasized by modern Islamist thinkers like al-Banna and Qutb.

Militant Islam is rapidly becoming more and more prevalent in the Muslim world; one just has to look at the inroads Hamas has made in the Palestinian movement for an example.

There seems to be a worldwide trend toward fundamentalism in the three major monotheistic religions, while many ‘moderate’ sects are losing influence and membership. I don’t know the reason for this, but it is certainly affecting Islam as well as Christianity and Judaism, and the traditional sense of ‘jihad’ is part of Islamic fundamentalism.

Compounding his failure to recognize the problem as broader than just a few “extremists”, Brennan takes an unfortunate turn in his discussion of how to deal with it:

Even as the president takes a more focused view of the threat, his approach includes a third element – a broader, more accurate understanding of the causes and conditions that help fuel violent extremism, be they in Pakistan and Afghanistan or Somalia and Yemen.

The president has been very clear on this. Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism. But just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death.

Extremist violence and terrorist attacks are therefore, often the final, murderous manifestations of a long process rooted in helplessness, humiliation and hatred. Therefore, any comprehensive approach has to also address the upstream factors, the conditions that help fuel violent extremism. Indeed, the counterinsurgency lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan apply equally to the broader fight against extremism.

We cannot shoot ourselves out of this challenge. We can take out all the terrorists we want – their leadership and their foot soldiers – but if we fail to confront the broader political, economic and social conditions under which extremists thrive, then there will always be another recruit in the pipeline, another attack coming downstream. Indeed, our failure to address these conditions also plays into the extremists’ hands, allowing them to make the false claim that the United States actually wants to keep people impoverished and unempowered.

Brennan tries hard to distinguish this position from the discredited one that “Poverty [causes] violence and terrorism” by suggesting that lack of education, poverty and repression may not be the primary causes, but create the conditions under which “ideologies of violence and death” flourish. It’s a weak argument.

I think Brennan underestimates the pull of the militant Islamic ideology itself, especially in Arab cultures. After all, the leadership of radical groups like al-Quaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. are all well-educated, and in the case of bin Laden, quite wealthy. It can be argued that in some cases — like the Palestinian Arabs, who have probably been the recipient of more Western ‘development’ aid than any other similar group — there are cultural pathologies that work against political stability and economic development, as well as making the culture fertile ground for radical ideologies.

So when Brennan suggests that we need to attack these ‘conditions’ as well as fight ‘extremists’, he misses two points:

1. The ‘extremists’ are not just a small group of crazies, but part of a significant faction of fundamentalist Muslims who — while they may not themselves engage in violent jihad — accept the ideology of militant Islam which promotes it. As long as this is the case, there will always be a supply of ones who are violent.
2. Unless the cultural issues that make it hard for societies to develop in what we Westerners see as a positive direction (democracy, economic development, fair allocation of resources, etc.) can be counteracted, Western attempts to ameliorate poverty, lack of education and political repression will be seen as so much cultural imperialism.

The solution isn’t going to be easy. Maybe there isn’t any, besides continuing to fight the shock troops of militant Islam.

One thing about which I’m certain is that our position is not improved when we do not publicly face the fact that militant Islam is far more than a few violent extremists. It may well be the future of normative Islam.

Technorati Tags: John Brennan, Obama administration, terrorism, militant Islam

Recently I mentioned some Israeli Arab organizations (funded by the New Israel Fund among other foreign sources) which espoused Palestinian nationalist aims in the guise of civil rights.

This is sometimes hard for Americans to understand, who immediately think of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s in the US. But African American demands were (mostly) for civil rights within the framework of the United States of America. The groups I mentioned — and many Arab citizens of Israel — believe that their civil rights are precluded by living in a Jewish state. They have elided the difference between civil rights and national aspirations.

They see the flag and the national anthem as not only “not belonging to them” but a limitation of their rights — which they believe include full self-determination for the Arab minority within Israel, even though it is a minority.

It’s instructive to compare their feelings with those of Diaspora Jews living in countries which were explicitly Christian. There is no doubt that they had a feeling of “not belonging” at the times of religious holidays, etc. — even when these weren’t associated with pogroms! But the Jewish nationalists — i.e., Zionists — felt the need for a Jewish state, not a desire to change their host countries into non-Christian nations.

Palestinian nationalists claim that their situation is different — that they are the original ‘owners’ of the land and therefore need special treatment, like a veto power over all Knesset decisions, etc. This is not a demand for ‘civil rights’: it implies that Israel is not a legitimate state and should be replaced by an Arab state.

Arab Member of the Israeli Knesset Ahmed Tibi, speaking to the Fatah convention in Bethlehem this week, expressed the point of view clearly:

Speaking of Arabs like himself who have Israeli citizenship, Tibi said: “We are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people, we are the original residents of the place and we will never leave it. We are the owners of these lands and we are not guests… Let he who arrived last leave first.”

Israel, he said must not only freeze the settlements in Judea and Samaria but dismantle them. There will be no peace “as long as there are settlers,” he said. “The land must be clean of settlers,” he then proclaimed, “because the settlements are a cancerous growth on the body of the Palestinians.” He received loud applause as he added: “Get out of the Palestinian lands, get out of our souls!” — IsraelNN

This is a good example of what I call the “two (Arab) state solution”: a racist apartheid state of Palestine in which Jews are not permitted to live, next door to an ‘Israel’ with an Arab — but not a Jewish — right of return, an ‘equal’ distribution of power between Jews and Arabs, and national symbols suitable for a ‘state of its citizens’.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, often referred to in the Western press as an extremist or worse, responded sharply:

“Our central problem is not the Palestinians but Ahmed Tibi and ilk – they are more dangerous than Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad combined,” Lieberman said…

Lieberman said that whoever listened to the Fatah conference understood that the problem was not the words of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but rather Tibi’s speech.

“Tibi’s speech is in total contradiction to the Declaration of Independence that talks about the renewal of the Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. Ahmed Tibi and his ilk are Israel’s true problem. The country has to decide whether it is a democracy that will defend itself, or a suicidal one.”  — Jerusalem Post

Unfortunately, Lieberman — who proposed the controversial ‘loyalty oath’ for Israeli citizens — is not extreme in worrying about the radicalization of the Arab minority. Americans need to understand that their analogies to African-American civil rights do not work here. At some point, one of the following must occur:

• The Arab citizens of Israel will accept the idea of living in a Jewish state

• The state of Israel will stop being a Jewish state — and soon become an Arab one

• There will be a civil war, and one side will kick the other out amid great bloodshed

The compromises suggested by the Left and the Right — that there is a solution in the framework of civil rights that will satisfy the Arabs without ending the state’s Jewish character, or that the Arabs can be paid to migrate to the soon-to-be-created state of ‘Palestine’ — are unrealistic.

So which will it be?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, Ahmed Tibi, Avigdor Lieberman

For security reasons, you must be registered and logged in to post a comment on this blog. But because of a deluge of fake users, I’ve had to turn registration off!

So if you are not registered, and you want to comment on a post here, please send an email to info [at] FresnoZionism [dot] org. I will register you and give you a password, which you can then change if you wish.

I’ve spent a huge amount of time the last couple of days — time which I could have used for writing, for my day job, or for sleeping — updating the code and deleting hacker-inserted exploits which were adding invisible links to blog pages (they are invisible to us, but Google sees them and then treats this site like a spammer).

Somehow this is related to the fake users.

To my chagrin, the hackers are not anti-Zionists or Hamas terrorists who view me as a menace, but rather the types selling fake Viagra and pirated software.

Thanks, again, for your patience.