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June 19, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
Resources:
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June 19,
2002
The Road Forward
for
the Palestinian Movement
by Lenni Brenner
We live in a unique time. There were no public
opinion polls during the American revolution. But there are in
today's Palestine.
In May, Reuters reported, re Palestinian
Center for Policy and Survey Research interviews of 1,317 West
Bank and Gaza adults:
Support for terror bombings inside Israel
fell to 52% from 58% in December.
70% support for reconciliation with the
Israeli people after a peace agreement.
Arafat's popularity fell to 35%.... Only
39% approved of the way the Palestinian Authority has been conducting
itself.
The next most popular Palestinian was
Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader arrested by Israel ... for
terrorist acts, with 19%. Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin was
favored by 10%.
The poll's numbers must be put in context.
Sharon wants Arafat dead. But the US and Saudis fear that any
popular alternative leadership would be more 'extreme,' militarily
and/or politically, re treaty terms.
European public opinion is increasingly
pro-Palestinian. However, no one wants to waste relief money
on Arafat's crooks.
Most crucially, Palestinians, including
his popular base, see his regime as corrupt. He must talk of
elections "in the winter."
The 5/16 NY Times reported that
"Nader Said, a sociologist at Bir
Zeit University, said that some potential beneficiaries of reform
were 'the people who are behind the corruption. So how can we
trust them again to lead the society on a democratic basis?'"
He pointed to the greatest failing of
the Palestinian movement in the potential election:
"What is missing is the more liberal,
secular, democratic faction, which is not very organized."
The Times reports him warning "that
the United States views Arab states only as corrupt clients or
fundamentalist dictatorships. 'They can't see that there is a
potentially vibrant democratic movement in the Arab world.'"
The 5/19 Times quotes him:
"(T)he Israeli occupation had instilled
in Palestinians 'their defiance of authority in general, and
this sort of tendency for freedom - wanting personal freedom,
and not to be controlled.' At the same time, he said, 'even under
the worst of circumstances, Palestinians have admired Israeli
democracy.' Dr. Said said he used to walk on the Tel Aviv beach
with Israelis, while younger Palestinians now encounter them
at checkpoints. 'Palestinians 40 and above are more liberal than
Palestinians below 40.'"
There is a world range of Palestinian
communities. The percentages might differ from the study in specific
countries. Nevertheless, the broad results would reflect the
same camps, even after adding other elements.
Ahmed Jabril's PFLP-General Command is
numerically minimal. Likewise Abu Nidal's followers, with their
history of infamous attacks against the PLO in its best days.
Islamic Jihad is militarist and small,
unlike Hamas, which has a substantial structure, serving its
religious base.
Hizbullah is admired by Palestinians
for its role in driving Israel out of Lebanon. But there are
more youthful Hizbullah wannabes then there are members.
Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced, in
April, that it would not target Israeli civilians, "What
was happening is that we were delivering the wrong message to
the world." It would confine itself to suicide bombings
of military targets and settlers. However, they are reported
as taking credit for subsequent suicide bombers in Israel.
The Times calls them "a militant
wing of Yasir Arafat's Fatah." While, as secularists, they
use women bombers, as militarists, they have no political strategy
to replace to Hamas or Arafat.
The Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine made a cameo media reappearance when Sharon assassinated
its leader, and an infamous racist Israeli cabinet minister was
slain in retaliation. However, while they were a significant
force until Oslo, they are a shadow of their former strength,
without learning a thing, politically or militarily. But their
members and periphery among other Arabs were a substantial proportion
of the Arab student movement in the US before Oslo, and their
ex-members are now a significant proportion of the middle-aged
intelligentsia in the Arab world.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine also represents an important sociological element
among educated over-40s.
There are significant Arab leftover pro-Soviet
elements in Israel, and some co-thinkers in the occupied territories,
'2-staters' to the bone. For them, a democratic secular bi-national
state someday replacing Israel was and is "no better than
calling for a return to the Garden of Eden," as their Israeli-Arab
editor told me in 1983.
Within Israel, most Palestinian intellectuals
work with Israeli anti-Zionists in defense of Arab citizen rights.
A number of Palestinians have been influenced
by Trotskyists, in their variety, encountered in Israel, Europe,
the US. But, aside from Israel, where many Palestinians know
Lea Tsemel, Michael Warshavsky and others as full comrades, and
Algeria, Trotskyism is popularly insignificant in the Arab world.
A crucial new player is Al-Awda in the
US. A new Palestinian generation, born or raise in the US, intellectually
molded by its idealistic political traditions - and wise to its
sordid contemporary realities - plays a crucial role in this
country. As youth, they lack enough experience and, as activists
in a time of crisis, they haven't read deeply into Palestinian
or general history. But their strength is their prime thinking
mode: political, not military.
Fate made Edward Said an exile in the
country of his citizenship. Yet America, for all its contradictions,
made a democratic secularist of him, in the best sense of those
words. He and other US-based Arab intellectuals play a profound
role, legitimating the Palestinian cause among America's educated.
He reported, in the 2/4 Nation, that
"(A) new secular nationalist current
is slowly emerging. It's too soon to call this a party or a bloc,
but it is now a visible group with true independence and popular
status.... In mid-December, we issued a collective statement
... calling for Palestinian unity and resistance and the unconditional
end of Israeli military occupation, while keeping deliberately
silent about returning to Oslo. We believe that negotiating an
improvement in the occupation is tantamount to prolonging it.
Peace can come only after the occupation ends. The declaration's
boldest sections focus on the need to improve the internal Palestinian
situation, above all to strengthen democracy, rectify the decision-making
process (which is totally controlled by Arafat and his men),
assert the need to restore the law's sovereignty and an independent
judiciary, prevent the further misuse of public funds and consolidate
the functions of public institutions so as to give every citizen
confidence in those that are expressly designed for public service.
The final and most decisive demand is a call for new parliamentary
elections."
Now Said has written a manifesto, PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS NOW. He asks:
"What then is to be done if the
old basis of Palestinian legitimacy no longer really exists?
Certainly there can be no return to Oslo, anymore than there
can be to Jordanian or Israeli law. As a student of periods of
important historical change, I should like to point out that
when a major rupture with the past occurred (as during the period
after the fall of the monarchy because of the French Revolution,
or with the demise of apartheid in South Africa before the elections
of 1994 took place), a new basis of legitimacy has to be created
by the only and ultimate source of authority, namely, the people
itself. The major interests in Palestinian society, those that
have kept life going, from the trade unions, to health workers,
teachers, farmers, lawyers, doctors, in addition to all the many
NGOs must now become the basis on which Palestinian reform --
despite Israel's incursions and the occupation -- is to be constructed.
It seems to me useless to wait for Arafat, or Europe, or the
US, or the Arabs to do this: it must absolutely be done by Palestinians
themselves by way of a Constituent Assembly that contains in
it all the major elements of Palestinian society. Only such a
group, constructed by the people themselves and not by the remnants
of the Oslo dispensation, certainly not by the shabby fragments
of Arafat's discredited Authority, can hope to succeed in re-organizing
society from the ruinous, indeed catastrophically incoherent
condition in which it is to be found."
Said's call is a profound development.
It is hard to see the situation on the ground from my eagle's
nest in Manhattan. Therefore I don't know if the democratic forces
have the present strength to convene such an assembly, counterpoised
to Arafat's election, that would be seen by Palestinians as representative.
But I enthusiastically endorse the spirit of his proposal. The
democratic secularist camp most organize itself, and come before
the people as totally opposed to Zionism, Arafat and suicide
bombers of any ideology.
"War is nothing but the continuation
of politics by other means." So declared Karl von Clausewitz.
His profundity is studied in every government military academy
in the world. Extend the axiom to read revolution is nothing
but the continuation of politics by other means, and the strengths
and weaknesses of all major anti-Zionist elements fall into place.
An immense change in the thinking of
significant numbers of players, Arab and Israeli, is the sine
qua non for a safe political landing for the ordinary folks of
both nations. The stark question is: Are there enough people
of both ethnicities to kick off a secular democratic revolution?
Because the alternative - even the slightest discrimination in
any thing secular - is X number of Arab dead, Y number of Israeli
dead, X number of Arab refugees, Y number of Israeli refugees.
Palestinian democratic secularists can't
be pacifists. But for them, violence is only an arrow in their
political quiver. While their cosmic wish list ends in one bi-national
Palestine/Israel for all of 'Mandate' Palestine, they must presently
work with most West Bank-Gaza Palestinians, under the gun, who
would settle for two states.
They are not united as to economic vision.
Few call themselves Marxists, or devote much thought to economics,
past painful awareness of poverty in Palestine and Lebanon. But
none are hostile to the left.
Beyond them, many of the Arab Stalinoids
above have contradictory attitudes towards Israelis and Jews.
A Trotskyist Jew, I worked with the PFLP in the 80s without the
slightest problem. They were Maoists, then pro-Soviet. But they
were democratic secularist at least in that they worked with
numerous Jews and Israelis. However, at heart, they were nationalists.
They never accepted Lenin's criteria for membership in Communist
Parties in all countries: They must be open to all who accept
its principles, be they, in this case, Palestinian or Israeli,
and publish in Hebrew and Arabic.
Culturally, you can be the direct descendant
of a cat, dog, rat or snake, as the saying goes. But, if you
are human politically, you must be treated equally and welcomed
into a Marxist movement.
De facto nationalists, they competed
in the nationalist 'armed struggle' Olympics, which, for them
and the PLO, became increasingly fanatic. But that was then.
Now ex-members, wiser after failure, are a prime recruitment
audience for a consistent binationalist approach along the two
Said's lines.
Before 9/11, terror bombs were demoralizing
young educated atheist Zionist Israelis, who began to look at
want ads abroad. But after 9/11 and the US "crusade"
against terrorism, Zionism got a new lease on political life.
The Israeli economy is in terrible trouble. Many Israelis will
leave. But the crazies won't, and with America not stopping them,
they can slaughter and devastate the Palestinian economy.
Algerian bombs drove out the French colons
because De Gaulle decided to cut France's loses. When he left
they fled. However, the colons didn't have 200 atom bombs. Israel
does.
Suicide bombers drove Zionism out of
Lebanon. Most Israelis realized that more soldiers died because
Israel was there, than would die in attacks from Lebanon. But
the present bombings reinforce the right wing. They accept, with
ex-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, that they "may have thousands,
or even scores of thousands of years of terrorism before us."
That's longer than written civilization
has existed. Fanatic Zionists live, expecting to die, killing
Palestinian fanatics.
Americans below the government level
are increasingly critical of Sharon. But, thanks to the suicide
bombers, few move towards the Palestinians. Americans now tend
to see a holy war between 2 sects of screwball ham-haters. This
doesn't make Israel more popular, but it is hard to envision
significant elements coming over to the Palestinians re ending
US aid to Israel, if suicide bombs continue.
The Palestinian movement is at a crossroad.
Arafat is a disaster, and so are suicide movements. It is up
to the Palestinian intelligentsia to present an alternative to
Arafat and Hamas & Co. And that can only be done on the basis
of a thought out long range political program, for a democratic
secular bi-nat ional Palestine/Israel, and a political strategy,
extending from Arab general strikes and running in Israeli elections,
thru running in elections and/or Said's Constituent Assembly
in the Palestine Authority.
Nor is it possible to ignore miserable
conditions in much of the Palestinian diaspora. Arafat isn't
the only Arab plague afflicting Palestinians. Many regimes treat
Palestinian communities as pariahs legally, while accommodating
to US oil imperialism. Lebanon immediately comes to mind as denying
legal equality.
Political strategy must determine democratic
secularist policy towards each and every militarist move by any
and all players, Arab or Israeli. That requires secularists,
of both nationalities and all religions or none, to go beyond
lecturing Hamas for its military and political sins, to mobilizing
the masses, where ever possible including Hamas' ranks, for disciplined
peaceful mass marches against the occupation, that can call to
the world for aid in the struggle against oppression.
Von Clausewitz insisted that the defense
had a natural advantage in war. This applies fully in Palestine/Israel.
Even in Napoleon's age, von Clausewitz emphasized the importance
of world opinion. It is for defenders because it is basically
civilian.
When Zionist troops oppress Palestinians,
the world takes increasing note. But that same civilian public
sympathizes with Israel when Palestinian bombers blow up teenagers
in a pizza parlor.
Keep uppermost in mind that Israel is
armed by Washington. If you fight Zionism in Palestine, and don't
have a political-military strategy designed to win Americans
over to demanding an immediate halt to all military aid to Israel,
you guarantee Zionism an unending supply of weapons to defeat
you.
Palestinian democratic secularists, world-wide,
and their democratic secular Israeli counterparts, must set up
an emergency internet conference to discuss Edward Said's latest
call. Candid discussion will help publicize their ideas within
the broader Palestinian community, and the new movement can determine
whether to run in Arafat's election or indeed set up a provisional
counter government, or both.
Arafat is now in no position to stop
a determined effort to run a democratic secular slate. To do
so would lose him his credibility with Europe.
For Israel, from now on, with the eyes
of the world on it, to ban a Palestinian/Israeli list, calling
for a secular bi-national state, would be a world PR disaster.
Israel's last - and best - card is to
present itself abroad, particularly in America, as the victim
of Kamikazis. If it refuses to allow a list to call for bi-nationalism
and America's "wall of separation between church and state,"
Zionism's hold over the public will collapse here, with enormous
repercussions in Israel and the Arab world.
Last year, I challenged Steven Cohen,
a Zionist scholar, from the floor, at a forum. I quoted the 12/14/81
NY Times:
"The military relationship between
South Africa and Israel, never fully acknowledged by either country,
has assumed a new significance with the recent 10 day visit by
Israel's Defense minister, Ariel Sharon, to South African forces
in Namibia along the border with Angola.... Mr. Sharon... reported
that South Africa needed more modern weapons if it is to fight
successfully against Soviet-Supplied troops."
Cohen's response was that "talking
about Israel and South Africa is always a show-stopper. But we're
not facing the African National Congress."
This was his meeting, he had the last
word from the podium. In that context, his answer was perfect.
But the answer to his perfect answer is to create a Palestinian/Israeli
version of the ANC. B follows A. If you denounce Israeli apartheid,
where is your ANC?
Study it, copy its successes, learn from
its failings. Palestinian intellectuals have hitherto been increasingly
successful in media-protesting against Zionism. But that is still
in the realm of words. Words, a viable program, are more crucial
now then ever. However it is time to walk the talk, to organize
and mobilize Palestinians and progressive Israelis for equality
and victory.
Expect no miracles. Even with such an
organization, with a correct strategy, there is a long struggle
before victory. But without such an organization, there is a
long struggle ahead, without victory.
Lenni Brenner
lives in New York City. He can be reached at: BrennerL21@aol.com
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