What should US Muslims do?

MUSLIM intellectuals and professionals have been leaving their own societies in large numbers and flocking to North America in search of better opportunities. Jobs and prospects for better living conditions have become increasingly scarce in Muslim societies. In addition, many Muslims before coming to North America probably felt that they would join a stable and prosperous society.

Conditions in North America are no longer as rosy as Muslims felt when they were leaving their own societies in large numbers. Americans and, to a lesser degree, Europeans have blamed Muslims for the September 11 bombings. Unfortunately, the popular impression that exists in North America is that terrorism has come out of the traditional or fundamentalist belief systems of Muslims.

Therefore, Muslims face two central crises. One, they are perhaps no longer as welcome in North America as they were a few years ago. Secondly, Muslims are also feeling that the political and economic climate in the West is becoming increasingly inhospitable. There is no immediate possibility of the Israel-Palestine problem being resolved. Muslims sympathize with Palestinians’ sense of deprivation and share their feeling of indignation that American support of Israel is responsible for the situation in Palestine. In addition, the North American and European economies are no longer buoyant.

Muslims in North America have attempted to respond to the challenges and opportunities that Muslims face on this continent. There are those who think that Islam can undergo a revival in North America. This explains why Muslims have established large numbers of mosques and Islamic centres in North America. The thinking behind the establishment of Islamic centres and mosques is conservative. The sense is that Muslims should turn to their religion and culture.

Mosques do not present as many difficulties as attempts, though in small circles, to turn to more traditional forms of Islamic culture. Two such manifestations are the hijab and the kinds of schools that Muslims have established in North America. Such responses suggest that Muslims should resist westernization of their culture.

The central challenge that Muslims face is whether they can respond better to the challenges of modern society by turning to traditional forms of Islam. There is considerable evidence to suggest that some young Muslim students are no longer convinced that Islam can respond to the challenges of modern society. There is growing awareness that the Islamic shariah with its traditional ways of dealing with the question of Muslim women or with the traditional ways of following Islamic modes of punishment for dealing with social problems like theft or adultery would be unwelcome and out of place in a western society. Indeed, the British and European influence in some Muslim societies has been such that western legal systems have practically obliterated traditional Muslim legal codes.

It seems to some of us that the conceptual and philosophical apparatus that the Quran provides for dealing with social and ethical problems is much broader and innovative than what traditional or fundamentalist thinkers have credited to Islam. I have argued in some of my earlier articles that there are specific values and possibilities in the Quran, which would enable Muslims to set up democratic societies. What Muslims need to do is to fuse and bring together some of the disparate values that exist in the Quran through a process of conflation and thus create a liberal and democratic public philosophy for Muslim societies.

One can allude to the emphasis that is there in the Quran on the right that a Muslim has to ask questions of his rulers and leaders and also to the emphasis in the Quran on setting up consultative assemblies (the shura). Then there are equally creative ideas that the Quran puts forward for purposes of producing developmental change in a Muslim society.

There are certain central ideas designed to promote developmental change that the Quran expounds. The first is the emphasis that the Quran lays on ul al bab — men of understanding. The second is the idea of man being the architect of social change. There is the oft-quoted verse 13(11), which states that God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own thinking processes “with all their hearts and souls.”

Changes in thinking processes have to be reinforced by the control that man is encouraged to establish over resources both on this earth and in the Heavens, which have been placed at his disposal. From this idea Iqbal develops the concept of resources being created for man’s own use. According to Iqbal, man is not asking or a gifted paradise, but creates a paradise through his own labours and creative skills. Similarly, Iqbal suggests that man has to examine and re-examine his achievements constantly.

Commenting on the achievements and shortcomings of American democracy, James Bryce pointed out: “In no other country is the ideal side of public life so ignored by the mass and repudiated by its leaders.” American government is conscious of its global power and has a tendency to constantly assert dominance. In order to promote the objective of global dominance, American government is led into using its power to dominate and exploit the Muslim Middle East so that oil resources from that area may flow uninterrupted to American shores.

Can Muslims be courageous enough when they are being criticized to point out the glaring weaknesses in the dominant American global society? This has to be done in a constructive way so that Americans realize that a good deal of the opposition that they have provoked in the Middle East is because of their policies to support what may be called “friendly tyrants” lording over their Muslim and Arab subjects.

Muslims have to subject not only foreign societies to their criticisms; they have to constantly make sure that they review and examine the shortcomings of their own society. The Quran reminds Muslims in chapter 42, ash-shura (consultation), verse 40 that in their attempts to requit evil, they may replace it by another evil. In chapter 41:34, Muslims are reminded that in their attempts to repel evil, they should try to replace it with something better. Thus, the two central guidelines that the Quran is offering is that Muslims in their struggle against evil or tyranny should make sure that the end result is not another form of tyranny and that in their attempts to fight or repel evil, they should replace that state of affairs by something that is better.

As we have stated earlier, Muslims, who number about six million in North America, are facing certain immediate problems largely because of the September 11 bombings resulting in the destruction of Trade centres in New York and some parts of the Pentagon in Washington. These Muslim residents, many of whom have also become permanent citizens of either the United States or Canada, have come under a cloud of suspicion because the Americans wonder whether some of them have any loyalties or sympathies with the Al Qaeda or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In fact, the cloud of suspicion ranges to many other Muslim countries.

The question, therefore, arises as to what Muslims living in North America should do in order to assure Americans and Canadians that their loyalties primarily belong to the United States or Canada. Our suggestion is that mere assurances of loyalty will not suffice. We outline below some of the proposals that we are making in order to cement the ties of common citizenship between Muslims, Americans and Canadians. In addition, our suggestions also deal with the kind of constructive and creative role that Muslims can play, both within North America and in many other Arab and Muslim countries. Such a role will bring benefits, both to Canadians and Americans and also to the Muslim community living abroad and in Muslim and Arab countries. Our first suggestion deals with several proposals that we are making with regard to the transformation of the present Muslim community in North America into a community which reorganizes itself on the basis of a new commitment to a democratic/political culture. As we have already suggested earlier, Muslims have the advantage of the Quran emphasizing certain norms and values, which can help Muslims into building a democratic/political culture. We have already stated that the right to ask questions regarding policies or government actions is a right that the Quran emphasizes. Similarly, the requirement that the Muslim community should conduct its affairs through mutual consultation is another element, which will help Muslims to develop a democratic/political culture.

We have also cited verses from the Quran which clearly indicate how autonomous and self-reliant can the Muslims be in changing their social conditions by following their own initiatives and making attempts to utilize the resources that have been made available to them by God on this earth and in the Heavens. The poet Muhammad Iqbal has written a moving poem entitled ‘The Spirit of Earth Welcomes the Advent of Man.’ The central theme of this poem is that the natural resources have been placed at the disposal of man so that he can improve his economic and social conditions in this world.

Iqbal points out that the paradise that has been promised to a Muslim will not necessarily be a gifted paradise but a paradise which is a fruit of his own labours. If this poem were to become popular in Muslim lands, it could transform the lives of the great majority of the people and help them become industrially and economically productive.

The great challenges that Muslims face both in Muslim countries and in North America are that they are being told that Islam, as a social system, cannot cope with modern challenges. Indeed, Muslims are being accused of two things: 1) their traditional or fanatical Islam has produced terrorists, 2) the Islamic system, as a whole, is no longer capable of producing a society based on modern technology and industrial progress. Western society has gone far ahead of all Muslim countries. Our central suggestion is that Muslims can meet these challenges only by creating a new social movement based on widespread social awareness among all Muslims.

This new social movement, based on Islamic principles of social justice, is likely to create a new society which will move Muslims towards social democracy and greater social equality. This new movement will also improve enormously the status of women. The question that arises is, why is it that Muslim society has not created such a new social movement? We can cite two reasons. First, wherever Muslim military or other political leaders have seized power, they have been mostly interested in amassing personal power and being dependent on the support of important military and other groups.

The example of General Ayub Khan of Pakistan, who ruled that country throughout the 1950s and 1960s, may be cited. Then, there is also the example of Col Nasser of Egypt who, again, functioned as a dictator and was handicapped all the time by the Egyptian involvement in conflicts with Israel. A third example may be that of Kamal Pasha of Turkey, who has left behind the legacy of entrenched secularism in which the military will not allow any majority party to come to power to disturb the Turkish secular system. Under this system, no Muslim party can disturb Turkish secularism.

Our suggestion tries to get around these problems by a new social movement in which Islamic public philosophy plays a central role. As a concrete example, we would suggest that a leader like General Musharraf of Pakistan, if he allows himself to be persuaded by a new Islamic social philosophy, can undertake to move Pakistan in that direction. This involves a radical break on the part of General Musharraf with his ideas of establishing a new government based on personal power and supported by the military oligarchy. He should be able to see that his regime, with a narrow social base, and lack of any clear commitment to Islamic social philosophy, will end up the same way as his military predecessors did in Pakistan.

If the new leadership in Pakistan, or any other society, were to undertake to launch a new social movement based on Islamic public philosophy, the country concerned will benefit immensely. Such a new social movement, with the power available to the new leadership, will have to undertake a process of massive persuasion to produce social change which will try to destroy all relics of a feudal society as well as the grave social disabilities that women suffer in that society.

The question remains, why such a new social movement, undertaken by a new political leadership is likely to be successful? We produce several different reasons for such a success. First, the new social philosophy may win enormous popular approval because it is based on the commitment of different social classes to a new and enlightened interpretation of Islam. We have already pointed out that in such a public philosophy, the commitment to democracy will flow from a new commitment of the people to a new and progressive form of Islam. Secondly, such a new movement will have to produce massive changes at the lower levels of society.

Islam will come to the assistance of such a movement because zakat (charity tax) is compulsory in Islam. This is a tax not as a gesture of goodwill or generosity but as the Quran says, the poor have rights on the incomes of the rich. Under this new social movement there is likely to take place a redistribution of political and economic power among the lower income groups. Such income groups, under this new redistribution, are likely to get better wages, better schools and better health facilities. Under the new system, we are hoping that power and change will move from the bottom upwards instead of the western approach, which is trickle down.

By making a firm commitment to democracy and by launching a systematic process of demcoratization, we can make two things clear: 1) Muslims do not subscribe to any form of a monolithic or fundamentalist form of an Islamic political system; 2) Through democratization we can unite the so-called elites and the rest of the Muslim masses.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at Queen’s University, Canada, and author of many books.

Why Karzai can’t deliver

MORE than two months after the Bush administration succeeded in engineering a new political order for Afghanistan by invoking the traditional instrument of Loya Jirga and installing a representative interim government headed by a key political ally, the country appears to be entering a dangerous phase of its troubled existence.

What happened on September 5 is a symptom of the same old malaise — internecine strife among warlords for power, money and pride — that Afghanistan has always suffered from, more conspicuously during the pre-Taliban era. It now threatens to stage a come-back. On that day, there was an assassination attempt on the life of interim President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar which he narrowly escaped, although he is now closely guarded by American special forces troops instead of local troops provided by pro-Northern Alliance defence minister. The attempt was preceded by a deadly car bomb attack on shoppers in Kabul, only three hours earlier, killing about 30 persons.

The two attacks, well coordinated and orchestrated, were apparently the work of some of Karzai’s rivals, probably from amongst the elements belonging to the Northern Alliance which has a heavy presence in the new government but is unhappy with some of his policies. Afghan officials, however, thought that Gulbadin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister, might have been responsible for the Kabul atrocity. Hekmatyar, who had taken refuge in Iran after being ousted from power by the Taliban, returned to Afghanistan in March this year.

In a taped message the day before September 5 attack, he called for a “holy war” against the government and appealed to “all true Muslim Afghans” to rise up against the US and its allies (meaning Karzai). He himself was a pro-US militia leader in the past. But the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, and a section of the western media blamed the attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The rise in violent incidents, in which some important figures have also been killed, raises the question whether the western coalition members and the US were doing enough to ensure the success of the Karzai regime. The existing political situation underscores how difficult it may become for the United States to withdraw any time soon and, as stated by the Central Command chief, Gen Tommy Franks, on August 16, it will have to stay there for years to “ensure that the government in Kabul was able to effectively govern the whole country.”

In the last six months, at least a dozen senior figures in Karzai’s administration have been killed in violent attacks. They include a vice-president, a cabinet minister and a provincial governor. The ex-king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, and defence minister, Mohammad Qassim Fahim, have escaped attempts on their lives. In each case, there were allegations that it was organized by the factions within the governing coalition.

After September 5 shootout, Hamid Karzai again formally called for extension of the operation of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to other major cities — a demand the US government is unwillingly to concede. It contends that the rest of the country is still under US military command and that a massive hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants is still going on. However, America’s poor investment in Afghan security has now started impinging on the ability of the Kabul regime to function effectively. The influence of the central government is steadily shrinking. The countryside has become more and more insecure and lawlessness is on the rise in the capital itself which is where the ISAF’s peace-keeping role is confined at present.

In recent days, the US military has also deployed artillery in Afghanistan for the first time. But it is to counter mortar and rocket attacks by Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters and has nothing to do with the security of Afghan officials. What is difficult to understand is that the Americans are neither willing to let the ISAF operate beyond Kabul, nor do they want to commit their own troops for peace-keeping purposes as that could make them easy targets of terrorists. Nor are they inclined to speed up the creation of an Afghan army which can ensure a degree of stability and halt the growing slide towards anarchy.

Gen Tommy Franks told Congress last month that only 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers could be trained by the end of this year and another 13,000 by the end of 2003, but that the deadline may be met as planned looks doubtful.

According to the Washington Post, some US officials privately concede that the US policy in Afghanistan is hamstrung by President Bush’s aversion to broad-based “nation-building” and his refusal to expand the ISAF role outside Kabul. This approach — “high on the rhetoric of commitment and low on the level of engagement — amounts to a calculated gamble that things will work out.” But, it goes without saying, that Washington runs great risks in failing to protect Afghanistan’s post-Taliban regime from an array of forces that threaten to weaken or destroy it.

Such an approach, some US policy-makers argue, can put America’s broader agenda — control over natural resources in Central Asia — in danger. The foremost condition for the success of this agenda is to make the Kabul regime capable of mobilizing public support for a long-term US military presence in the region. This it appears unable to do under the present circumstances. Equally vital is the need for protection of the proposed Daulatabad-Gwadar oil and gas pipelines that will pass through more than 700 kilometers in Afghanistan — a territory believed to be one of the most dangerous in the world. But the American policy-makers may have different ideas for their ultimate objective.

Outside Kabul, it is the warlords or tribal chiefs whose word is law in their respective territories, not the writ of Kabul. The Americans know this. And, no pipelines can be laid and made functional unless the warlords guarantee their safety. So, the Americans have opted to appease these warlords for the purpose and win them over by meeting their needs, be it in terms of money or influence.

According to the Washington Post, the US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, has been advocating “a very loose central government with very little central authority” as part of a proposal to give greater autonomy to tribal and ethnic leaders. One senior official recently commented: “History suggests that Kabul will be the first among equals but you are unlikely to have a strong central government that will dominate.”

A recent report in The Observer, London, reveals that ‘bin bags’ full of US dollars were flown recently to Afghanistan, sometime on military planes, for distribution among key regional warlords. Gul Agha Sherzai, Governor of Kandahar, Hazrat Ali, a commander in Nanagahar, and several others have been “bought off” with millions of dollars in deals brokered by US and British intelligence, according to the report.

Last November, the US paid Badshah Khan Zardan, a commander in Khost, an estimated 400,000 dollars to train and equip his fighters to patrol the border with Pakistan. The arrangement came to an end when Karzai installed a rival as regional governor and armed clashes erupted between the two. According to The Observer, some commanders in Khost are competing with each other to have access to a particular pick-up truck (worth 40,000 dollars) which has become a local status symbol by trying to make claims before Americans that they have killed certain number of Taliban or Al Qaeda remnants.

While millions of dollars are being offered to chosen warlords, the promised international aid money for infrastructure such as roads, irrigation and power projects, and services has not been forthcoming, nor is it likely to come before 2003. Only about a third of the 1.8 billion dollars for this year, half of it from the US, has been delivered and 80 per cent of the funds have been used for food deliveries and other emergency services. Kabul does not have enough money even to pay salaries to its employees.

The US officials tend to put most of the blame for this situation on the failure of other western coalition governments to provide the funds they had pledged for this year, and the latter, in turn, refer to the worsening security situation which they say is not conducive to investing funds in any infrastructure project. Michael Ware of Time magazine says he has heard the people saying that they were better off under the Russians.

The US is ‘buying’ regional warlords for several reasons. Initially, the purpose was to seek their assistance in the overthrow of the Taliban regime. Then, their role was vital in the on-going military operations to comb and wipe out the Al Qaeda remnants. Now, it is to prevent their opposition to the long-term US presence itself.

A refusal to think ahead

IT’S ironic at best, dangerously absurd at the worst, that a year to the week after President George Bush made his initial decision to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan all the debate now is focussed on Iraq and there is barely a word on the president’s pledge to “smoke out” Osama.

Yet no one has produced hard evidence of complicity linking Iraq with Al Qaeda. Neither is Bush visibly pulling out the stops to hunt down bin Laden in the mountains of Pakistan where he is said to be hiding out. One can only conclude that this Administration is not drawn to the boring business of stealthy slow police work. It seems to prefer what the Germans used to call a “frischer, frvhlicher Krieg (a short jolly war). But the Bush administration is arguably not much worse than its predecessors

The fact is that Osama bin Laden could have been caught and arraigned in an American courtroom long ago. Just as there is now ample evidence in retrospect that the US missed a half dozen chances of forestalling September 11 if its intelligence, immigration and police systems had been more integrated and better run, there are plenty of reasons for thinking that the Clinton administration in particular is to blame for letting Osama slip through its fingers for lack of a coherent legal strategy.

Last October Samuel Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, was quoted in the Washington Post about an earlier effort to run Osama down. In a remarkable confession he admitted that Sudan offered to turn him over to U.S. marshals but “we have this thing called the Constitution, so to bring him here into the justice system I don’t think was our first choice. Our first choice was to send him to some place where justice is more streamlined”. Three colleagues of Mr Berger made it clear what Mr Berger meant: “they hoped that the Saudi monarch King Fahd would order Mr Osama bin Laden’s swift beheading”.

The Sudan instead expelled Osama to Afghanistan and from there he planned the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the American destroyer in Yemen and finally the devastation in New York and Washington. This is one of the many unanswered questions that have never had a full airing.

Successive administrations, including this one, have also failed to explain why they have decided to work so closely with the forces that sponsored and financed the Islamic militants of Al Qaeda- the military infrastructure of Pakistan. The Musharraf dictatorship has pulled off the incredible feat of persuading Washington that its regime alone can prevent the “Talibinization” of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, although some fundamentalist groups were not very long ago the military’s partners of choice that were used to create and sustain the Taliban.

This latter day mistake goes back to the 1980s when, beginning with the Carter Administration, the US, with appalling lack of foresight decided my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

The U.S., falsely exaggerating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as the first step in a lunge through the impassable terrain of Afghanistan and Pakistan to a warm water port on the Arabian Ocean, worked with Saudi Arabia to funnel arms through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency to the fundamentalist militants of whom bin Laden was one.

Moreover, large amounts of what became a multi-billion dollar program were siphoned off to ignite the now nuclear-dangerous insurrection against Indian rule in Kashmir and Pakistan even used Al Qaeda camps to train operatives who were to deployed in anti Indian terrorism.—Copyright Jonathan Power

Low point of powerlessness

SIXTY years ago, the Jews of Europe were at the lowest point of their collective existence. Herded like cattle into trains, they were transported from the rest of Europe by Nazi soldiers into death camps where they were systematically exterminated in gas ovens. They had offered some resistance in Poland, but in most places they first lost their civil status, then they were removed from their jobs, then they were designated official enemies to be destroyed, and then they were.

In every significant instance they were the most powerless of people, treated as insidious, potentially overpowering enemies by leaders and armies whose own power was far, far greater; indeed, even the idea of Jews representing a danger to the might of countries like Germany, France, and Italy was preposterous.

But it was an accepted idea, since with few exceptions, most of Europe turned its back on them during their slaughter. It is only one of the ironies of history that the word used most frequently to describe them in the hideous official jargon of fascism was the word “terrorists,” just as Algerians and Vietnamese were later called “terrorists” by their enemies.

Every human calamity is different, so there is no point in trying to look for equivalence between one and the other. But it is certainly true that one universal truth about the Holocaust is not only that it should never again happen to Jews, but that as a cruel and tragic collective punishment, it should not happen to any people at all.

But if there is no point in looking for equivalence, there is a value in seeing analogies and perhaps hidden similarities, even as we preserve a sense of proportion. Quite apart from his actual history of mistakes and misrule, Yasser Arafat is now being made to feel like a hunted Jew by the state of the Jews.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the greatest irony of his siege by the Israeli army in his ruined Ramallah compound is that his ordeal has been planned and carried out by a psychopathic leader who claims to represent the Jewish people. I do not want to press the analogy too far, but it is true to say that Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were in the 1940s. Israel’s army, air force and navy, heavily subsidized by the United States, have been wreaking havoc on the totally defenceless civilian population of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

For the past half century the Palestinians have been a dispossessed people, millions of them refugees, most of the rest under a 35-year old military occupation, at the mercy of armed settlers who systematically have been stealing their land and an army that has killed Palestinians by the thousands.

Thousands more have been imprisoned, thousands have lost their livelihood, made refugees for the second or third time, all of them without civil or human rights.

And still Sharon makes the case that Israel is struggling to survive against Palestinian terrorism. Is there anything more grotesque than this claim, even as this deranged killer of Arabs sends his F-16s, his attack helicopters and hundreds of tanks against unarmed people without any defences at all.

They are terrorists, he says, and their leader, humiliatingly imprisoned in a crumbling building with Israeli destruction all round him, is characterized as the arch-terrorist of all time. Arafat has the courage and defiance to resist, and he has his people with him on that score. Every Palestinian feels the deliberate humiliation inflicted on him as a cruelty without political or military purpose except punishment, pure and simple. What right does Israel have to do this?

The symbolism is truly awful to register, and is made even more so by the knowledge that Sharon and his supporters, to say nothing of his criminal army, intend what the symbolism so starkly illustrates. Israeli Jews are the powerful ones; Palestinians their hunted and despised Others. Luckily for Sharon, he has Shimon Peres, perhaps the greatest coward and hypocrite in world politics today, going round everywhere saying that Israel understands the difficulties of the Palestinian people, and “we” are willing to make the closures slightly less onerous. After which not only does nothing improve, but the curfews, demolitions and killings intensify.

And of course, the Israeli position is to call for massive international humanitarian aid which, as Terje-Rod Larsen correctly says, is in effect to cajole international donors into actually underwriting the Israeli occupation. Sharon must surely feel that he can do anything and not only get away with it completely but somehow even to manage a campaign whose purpose is to give Israel the role of victim.

As popular protests grow worldwide, the organized Zionist counter-response has been to complain that anti-semitism is on the rise. Only a few days ago Harvard University President Lawrence Summers issued a statement to the effect that an anti-divestment campaign led by professors — an attempt to pressure the university into divesting itself of shares in American firms selling military equipment to Israel — was anti-semitic.

A Jewish president of the country’s oldest and richest university complains of anti-semitism! Criticism of Israeli policy is now routinely equated with anti-semitism of the kind that brought about the Holocaust, even though in the United States there is no anti-semitism to speak of.

In the US, a group of Israeli and American academics are organizing a McCarthy-style campaign against professors who have spoken up about Israeli human rights abuses; the main purpose of the campaign is to ask students and faculty to inform against their pro-Palestinian colleagues, intimidating the right of free speech and seriously curtailing academic freedom.

A further irony is that protests against Israeli brutality — most recently Arafat’s humiliating isolation in Ramallah — have taken place on a mass level. Palestinians by the thousands defied curfews in Gaza and several West Bank towns in order to go out on the streets in support of their embattled leader. For their part, the Arab rulers have been silent or powerless or both together. Every one of them, including Arafat, has for years openly stated a willingness for peace with Israel; two leading Arab countries actually have treaties with it. Yet all Sharon gives in return is a kick to their collective bottoms. Arabs, he says repeatedly, only understand force, and now that we have power we shall treat them as they deserve (and as we used to be treated).

Uri Avnery is right: Arafat is being murdered. And with him, according to Sharon, will die the aspirations of the Palestinians. This is an exercise short of complete genocide — to see how far Israeli power can go in sadistic brutality without being stopped or apprehended. Sharon has said that in the event of a war with Iraq, which is definitely coming, he will retaliate against Iraq, thus no doubt causing Bush and Rumsfeld the nightmares they rightly deserve.

Sharon’s last attempt at regime change was in Lebanon during 1982. He put Bashir Gemayel in as president, then was summarily told by Gemayel that Lebanon would never be an Israeli vassal, then Gemayel was assassinated, then the Sabra and Shatila massacres took place, then after 20 bloody and ignominious years the Israelis sullenly withdrew from Lebanon.

What conclusion is one to draw from all this? That Israeli policy has been a disaster for the entire region. The more powerful it becomes, the more ruin it sows in the countries around it — to say nothing of the catastrophes it has executed against the Palestinian people — and the more hated it becomes. It is power used for evil purposes, not self-defence at all. The Zionist dream of a Jewish state being a normal state like all others has come to the vision of the leader of Palestine’s indigenous people hanging on to his life by a thread, while Israeli tanks and bulldozers continue to wreck everything around him.

Is this the Zionist goal for which hundreds of thousands have died? Isn’t it clear what logic of resentment and violence is at work in all this, and what power will come from the powerlessness that can now only witness but will certainly develop later? Sharon is proud to have defied the entire world, not because the world is anti-semitic but because what he does in the name of the Jewish people is so outrageous. Isn’t it time for those who feel that his appalling actions do not represent them to call a halt to his behaviour?—Copyright 2002, Edward W. Said

War debate

DEMOCRATS and Republicans are accusing each other of playing politics over going to war in Iraq. Both are right. Which is why the nasty dispute between Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and President Bush about who’s really interested in America’s national security epitomizes where the Iraq debate should not be headed.

Instead of engaging in name-calling and political advantage-seeking, the White House needs to make as persuasive a case as it can for war and Congress needs to scrutinize it on its merits. Young Americans will be sent off to fight Iraq, if it comes to that. They and their families deserve to know exactly what is intended and how it will get done.

With November elections looming and the economy looking sicker, the temptation for Republicans to focus on war is natural.

President Bush crossed a line. Bush appears to have realized this, declaring in the Rose Garden on Thursday that the debate “will be conducted with all civility” and signalling compromise on a proposed United Nations resolution.—Los Angeles Times