Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
9.1.09
3.1.09
And now, a public service announcement
RAWI Condemns Israel's Aggression in Gaza
RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers, condemns in the strongest possible terms the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Various news agencies around the world have reported the terrible impact of Israel's military aggression in Gaza, which has resulted in nearly 400 Palestinian deaths, the majority of them children and civilians.
A particularly gruesome illustration of Israel's brutality can be found in its effect on specific households, such as the Hamdan family, who lost two daughters, the Balusha family, who lost five daughters, the Absi family, who lost three daughters, and the Kishku family, who lost two daughters. In all, Israel has killed over fifty Palestinian children.
Commentators on the political right have applauded Israel's destruction of Gaza and the massacre of civilians, in the same way that they applauded the deadly economic strangulation preceding the current military violence. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum went so far as to accuse the Palestinians of photographing children pretending to be injured.
It is the response of traditional liberal media that has been most disturbing, however. Nearly all corporate media in the United States and a majority of its progressive forums have conceptualized Israel's attack as retaliatory, a position that has no basis in fact and that would be unjustifiable even if it were true. In fact, the majority of American media appear to believe that the death of Palestinian civilians is an unfortunate byproduct of their own innate barbarity. Famed Israeli writers and noted doves David Grossman, writing in the New York Times, and Amos Oz, quoted in Ha'aretz, appear to be much more preoccupied with the purity of the Israeli soul and with finding a quieter way to suppress Palestinian resistance than they are with the belligerence of their government.
We deplore that media continually emphasize Israel's retaliation as if to simultaneously justify and absolve its cruelty. We would point out that most of the Gazans are refugees who are indigenous to the villages and cities Israel claims to now be protecting. Gaza's population does not consist of irrational Muslim extremists who inexplicably dislike Jews and take a perverse joy in undermining Israel's timeless and innocent democracy, as American news outlets relentlessly suggest; it consists of people who have been systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited. Nor does this population exist outside of history; it is engaged in a colonial war against a powerful state that has long undertaken a program of ethnic cleansing.
RAWI calls on artists and writers of all cultural backgrounds, nationalities, faiths, and political affiliations to vocally condemn Israel's extensive human rights violations, along with the odious discourses of justification that allow those violations to continue.
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No comment really necessary. Given that Israeli ground troops have just entered the Strip, condemnation is the minimum necessary response.
RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers, condemns in the strongest possible terms the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Various news agencies around the world have reported the terrible impact of Israel's military aggression in Gaza, which has resulted in nearly 400 Palestinian deaths, the majority of them children and civilians.
A particularly gruesome illustration of Israel's brutality can be found in its effect on specific households, such as the Hamdan family, who lost two daughters, the Balusha family, who lost five daughters, the Absi family, who lost three daughters, and the Kishku family, who lost two daughters. In all, Israel has killed over fifty Palestinian children.
Commentators on the political right have applauded Israel's destruction of Gaza and the massacre of civilians, in the same way that they applauded the deadly economic strangulation preceding the current military violence. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum went so far as to accuse the Palestinians of photographing children pretending to be injured.
It is the response of traditional liberal media that has been most disturbing, however. Nearly all corporate media in the United States and a majority of its progressive forums have conceptualized Israel's attack as retaliatory, a position that has no basis in fact and that would be unjustifiable even if it were true. In fact, the majority of American media appear to believe that the death of Palestinian civilians is an unfortunate byproduct of their own innate barbarity. Famed Israeli writers and noted doves David Grossman, writing in the New York Times, and Amos Oz, quoted in Ha'aretz, appear to be much more preoccupied with the purity of the Israeli soul and with finding a quieter way to suppress Palestinian resistance than they are with the belligerence of their government.
We deplore that media continually emphasize Israel's retaliation as if to simultaneously justify and absolve its cruelty. We would point out that most of the Gazans are refugees who are indigenous to the villages and cities Israel claims to now be protecting. Gaza's population does not consist of irrational Muslim extremists who inexplicably dislike Jews and take a perverse joy in undermining Israel's timeless and innocent democracy, as American news outlets relentlessly suggest; it consists of people who have been systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited. Nor does this population exist outside of history; it is engaged in a colonial war against a powerful state that has long undertaken a program of ethnic cleansing.
RAWI calls on artists and writers of all cultural backgrounds, nationalities, faiths, and political affiliations to vocally condemn Israel's extensive human rights violations, along with the odious discourses of justification that allow those violations to continue.
------------------------------------------------------------------
No comment really necessary. Given that Israeli ground troops have just entered the Strip, condemnation is the minimum necessary response.
15.12.08
Essential Reading
Senate Armed Forces Committee report on torture. Blame for this hideous violation of decency and, not coincidentally, massive blow to US national interests, goes all the way to the top. Yes, I'm looking at you, W and Rummy. Oh, and the usual suspects in the neocon cabal - Feith, Wolfowitz et al. It's not a long read, and is an important one.
In other news, capitalism is eating itself, in the form of rapacious financial operators running around looking for people to blame for their own collective and individual failings. Farce.
22.5.07
Turkey Decides
One of the best-selling books in Turkey in the past few years was one in which Washington DC is destroyed in a nuclear explosion caused not by an Islamist radical, but by a Turkish military intelligence officer desperate to save his country from US occupation. Metal Fırtına (Metal Storm) by science fiction writer Orkun Ucar and journalist Burak Turna, is a near-future political thriller in which the United States, fresh from its occupation of Iraq, invades its NATO ally Turkey. The heroes of the book include the country’s present Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the armed forces General Staff, who work together to pull political and diplomatic victory out of military defeat. Yet the real-world political crisis gripping Turkey today sets Mr. Erdogan and the military on a dangerous collision course. Americans need to pay attention.
On my last visit to Turkey in 2005 Metal Fırtına seemed to be everywhere—in the headlines as much as the bookstores—as the country’s intellectual elite agonized over the chauvinist mood that seemed to have swept the country. There were many flag-waving demonstrations in response to perceived insults to ‘Turkishness,’ be they from Kurdish youths demonstrating in the streets, or writers addressing the massacre of Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Fast forward to 2007, the year in which the events of Metal Fırtına are set. Turkey’s streets are full of demonstrators once more. In January, thousands marched in Istanbul in solidarity with the murdered Armenian journalist (and patriotic Turkish citizen) Hrant Dink. In late April, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Istanbul ‘to defend secularism.’ And on May 1st almost 600 supporters of Turkey’s labor movement were arrested as thousands tried to rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The present crisis goes beyond party politics. What is at stake is the nature of the Republic. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, secured 357 out of 361 votes cast by members of the People’s Assembly in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Gul’s center-right party (known by its Turkish initials AKP) has been in government since 2002. In government, but not fully in power. For while sovereignty rests with the National Assembly, any government serves only at the pleasure of the military, the self-appointed guardians of the principles of the Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924, who have intervened in politics with coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, and by pressuring an Islamist cabinet to resign in 1997. The military warned that it had concerns about the election. The Constitutional Court, at the request of the main secularist opposition party, then annulled the vote.
The AKP represents Islamist politics of a peculiarly Turkish kind, a fusion labelled by some ‘Muslim Democracy.’ The party is socially conservative, but has not pushed an overtly Islamist agenda. It has frequently stated its commitment to the principles of the Constitution, including Ataturk’s version of secularism. It has presided over a period of successful economic reform, the revitalization of Turkey’s commercial and cultural capital, Istanbul, and some tough but broadly positive negotiations with the European Union about Turkey’s eventual membership. Mr. Gul has led those negotiations, and was put forward for the presidency as being less controversial than Mr. Erdogan, less likely to provoke the military to intervene. And yet here we are again.
Mr. Erdogan responded to the setback in combative form, calling on the Assembly to approve early elections and setting out a package of constitutional reforms including making the Presidency directly elected by popular vote. The Assembly elections may show that Mr Erdogan represents the majority of his country rather better than do the opposition and the senior ranks of the military. They may not: uncertainty is the essence of democracy. The AKP is not the enemy of democracy, nor of the West, nor of Ataturk’s Republic. We must hope that if Mr Erdogan wins a new mandate, Turkey will show itself to be a mature democratic republic rather than lapsing back into the pattern of periodic crises and military interventions that has marred past decades.
On my last visit to Turkey in 2005 Metal Fırtına seemed to be everywhere—in the headlines as much as the bookstores—as the country’s intellectual elite agonized over the chauvinist mood that seemed to have swept the country. There were many flag-waving demonstrations in response to perceived insults to ‘Turkishness,’ be they from Kurdish youths demonstrating in the streets, or writers addressing the massacre of Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Fast forward to 2007, the year in which the events of Metal Fırtına are set. Turkey’s streets are full of demonstrators once more. In January, thousands marched in Istanbul in solidarity with the murdered Armenian journalist (and patriotic Turkish citizen) Hrant Dink. In late April, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Istanbul ‘to defend secularism.’ And on May 1st almost 600 supporters of Turkey’s labor movement were arrested as thousands tried to rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The present crisis goes beyond party politics. What is at stake is the nature of the Republic. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, secured 357 out of 361 votes cast by members of the People’s Assembly in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Gul’s center-right party (known by its Turkish initials AKP) has been in government since 2002. In government, but not fully in power. For while sovereignty rests with the National Assembly, any government serves only at the pleasure of the military, the self-appointed guardians of the principles of the Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924, who have intervened in politics with coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, and by pressuring an Islamist cabinet to resign in 1997. The military warned that it had concerns about the election. The Constitutional Court, at the request of the main secularist opposition party, then annulled the vote.
The AKP represents Islamist politics of a peculiarly Turkish kind, a fusion labelled by some ‘Muslim Democracy.’ The party is socially conservative, but has not pushed an overtly Islamist agenda. It has frequently stated its commitment to the principles of the Constitution, including Ataturk’s version of secularism. It has presided over a period of successful economic reform, the revitalization of Turkey’s commercial and cultural capital, Istanbul, and some tough but broadly positive negotiations with the European Union about Turkey’s eventual membership. Mr. Gul has led those negotiations, and was put forward for the presidency as being less controversial than Mr. Erdogan, less likely to provoke the military to intervene. And yet here we are again.
Mr. Erdogan responded to the setback in combative form, calling on the Assembly to approve early elections and setting out a package of constitutional reforms including making the Presidency directly elected by popular vote. The Assembly elections may show that Mr Erdogan represents the majority of his country rather better than do the opposition and the senior ranks of the military. They may not: uncertainty is the essence of democracy. The AKP is not the enemy of democracy, nor of the West, nor of Ataturk’s Republic. We must hope that if Mr Erdogan wins a new mandate, Turkey will show itself to be a mature democratic republic rather than lapsing back into the pattern of periodic crises and military interventions that has marred past decades.
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