Communicative Action: Ahmadinejad to Americans...

At the Arabist blog, I learned of a letter issued by Iran's Ahmadinejad, by-passing the White House this time and going straight for the American people. Here is the Washington Post take on the open letter .

Even more interesting is the Fox website inviting its viewers to send back some letters.

The BBC's article is here. And here is the International Herald Tribune's reporting on the letter:

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told the American people on Wednesday that he was certain they detested President Bush's policies - his support for Israel, war in Iraq and curtailed civil liberties - and he offered to work with them to reverse those policies.

The call came in the form of a six-page letter in English addressed to "noble Americans" that discussed "the many wars and calamities caused by the U.S. administration." It suggested that Americans had been fooled into accepting their government's policies, especially toward Israel.

"What have the Zionists done for the American people that the U.S. administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors?" Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote. "Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?"

This was the latest public step by Iran's president to promote a dialogue with the United States. He wrote a letter to Mr. Bush in May, calling on him to shift his policies and open a discussion, but it was dismissed by the White House as irrelevant to the central issue dividing them - Iran's nuclear program. Then Mr. Ahmadinejad challenged Mr. Bush to a public debate, also dismissed by the White House.

In short, Ahmadinejad has everyone in a buzz, but is anyone analyzing the words behind the words?

The Derailment of Religion

As many invariably are everyday, today I was involved in a discussion about terrorism. The debate was stimulating, and greatly frustrating. I felt the compulsion to speak up.

We can all agree that terrorism is a scourge that we must defeat. The question then becomes how.

The implications of the discussion left me feeling very upset. Although nothing was made explicit, the overriding subtext was a microcosm for what I view as the whole problem with the approach to the "War on Terror" (aside from the fact that waging a war on an act rather than an actor is rather curious, if not senseless).

Approaching the problem of terrorism with the presumption that the answer lies in something inherent to Islam is both foolish and counterproductive, not to mention offensive. It is as foolish and offensive as posing a question such as "Is there something inherent to Christianity that makes Christian states more prone to the invasion and occupation of non-Christian states?" This is a ridiculous question that takes us no where toward resolving the issue of abuses of the laws of war, for example.

Equally, a state which is explicitly founded on religion and uses its religion as a pretext for all its actions, such as Israel, is never faced with a question such as "Is there something about Judaism which makes Jewish Israelis more prone to inhumane treatment of Palestinians?" Such a question would not be posed because not only is it racist, but also because it is counterproductive.

Yet, the world feels the compulsion to pose such questions about Islam without reflecting on the consequences, let alone the bigotry. I am not making these points in defense of Islam, but rather because I feel the questions are epiphenomenal and lead us down the wrong path. Lashing out in anger and shrouding oneself in delusions is not a defense strategy.

Combating terrorism requires that we stop thinking of the "other" as though they were Martians or bogeymen. People do bad things for rational reasons with whatever means they have. We must get to those reasons and address them, as well as stifle their means.

You can't fight what you don't know no matter how strong your convictions may be. All you end up doing is punching at air.

Hagel Fever Is On!!

After my last post, I realized that there is actually a growing ground swell of Chuck Hagel supporters. Check out this blog: Chuck Hagel For President 2008

And in today's Post, David Ignatius lays out some of the reasons why the time has come for Chuck..... music to my ears.

Hagel's Moment?
By David Ignatius
A month ago the idea that Sen. Chuck Hagel would make a serious run for the Republican presidential nomination would have been a non-starter. As an outspoken critic of President Bush on Iraq and other issues, Hagel's way was blocked. His best hope was nomination by a quixotic third party in an online convention.
It's a measure of the step change brought about by the Nov. 7 elections that Hagel is now seriously exploring a GOP presidential bid. The Republican blowout, he says, reflected a "breakdown of confidence and trust in governance" and opened the way for what he believes will be "the most wide-open presidential race since 1952." The Nebraska senator says he will make a formal decision in the next two months on whether to run.

What would make a Hagel candidacy interesting is that he can claim to have been right about Iraq and other key issues earlier than almost any national politician, Republican or Democratic. Though a Vietnam veteran and a hawk on many national security issues, he had prescient misgivings about the Iraq war -- and, more important, the political courage to express these doubts clearly, at a time when many politicians were running for cover.
Hagel warned about the dangers of invading Iraq in a Feb. 20, 2003, speech in Kansas. He noted that America stood "nearly alone" in advocating military force to disarm Iraq and cautioned against "a rush to war." Some of Hagel's premonitions were almost eerie: "What comes after Saddam Hussein? The uncertainties of a post-Saddam, post-conflict Middle East should give us pause, encourage prudence and force us to recognize the necessity of coalitions in seeing it through." He urged the Bush administration to transfer postwar oversight to the United Nations as soon as possible, and he admonished Iraq boosters to "put aside the mistaken delusion that democracy is just around the corner."

Hagel was also early to understand the importance of talking to Iran, another idea that has since become commonplace but at the time took political guts. In a July 10, 2003, speech on the Senate floor, he said that a direct U.S. dialogue with Tehran about the nuclear issue might be necessary. In a Nov. 15, 2005, speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he was emphatic: "The fact that our two governments cannot -- or will not -- sit down to exchange views must end."

Such outspoken criticisms of Bush policies had put Hagel outside the respectable Republican perimeter -- until Election Day. Hagel delivered his own blunt postmortem in a Nov. 16 speech to a conservative political action committee, GOPAC. The message of the election, he said, "is the American people saying you failed." Republicans had become so focused on keeping power that "we came loose of our moorings."

Hagel went on to criticize his party's failings in language you rarely hear in the usual pre-masticated sound bites of today's politicians. On GOP ethics lapses: "When you blow past the ethical standards and you play on the edge of legality, you're in trouble." On Bush administration foreign policy: "You cannot have a foreign policy based on divine mission. We tried that in the Middle Ages, that's what the Crusades were about."

It strains credulity to imagine that a GOP controlled by Bush and Karl Rove could learn to love Hagel, but, as the Nebraskan says, this is a time of "transformational politics." A more practical problem is that if Hagel does decide to seek the nomination, he will be competing for the same niche as the GOP front-runner, Sen. John McCain, who has been on his "straight-talk express" longer than has Hagel. And although McCain's centrist halo has been tarnished by his efforts to woo the far right, he remains a far more polished speaker and campaigner than Hagel. But on Iraq, Hagel has a clearer stance than does McCain, whose call for a big increase in troops is out of step with both the recommendations of U.S. military commanders and the public mood.

Hagel likes to evoke the Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower, another former military officer who could be devastating in his criticism of the policies advocated by the military-industrial complex. "This was a real Republican president," he told the GOPAC audience.

Will that pre-Reagan Revolution message play to the party faithful in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008? Will the Bush administration's problems become so severe that Republicans would embrace a senator from the radical center? The very fact that Hagel is mulling a campaign reminds us that American politics turned a corner this month and that we are in new territory.

Chuck Hagel Has My Vote

In this already-started presidential election season, it is often hard to find anyone who not only knows what they are talking about, but also respects voter intellect. Chuck Hagel is that kind of guy. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be in the running.

Originally an economist, my inclination is to reach for a Republican answer, but when they went off the reservation with W, one had no choice but to go left. Hagel offers a hope.... He has a moral center that is informed and he does not fear speaking his mind.

I was elated this morning when I opened the Post and saw that he had an opinion piece. I read it with excited anticipation, wanting to know what would make this mind speak out... and I was not disappointed.

How often have we heard a Republican senator (other than Lincoln Chafee) point to Iraq as a colossal mistake? More interesting, he reminds us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In other words, "America cannot impose a democracy on any nation..." He chastises the policy of the US for taking its eye off the ball. "And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat which was there, and not in Iraq." Not that it actually matters, but that is coming from a Vietnam vet.

For those who wonder why we even bother to have a Congress in view of its rubber stamp status these past years, Hagel seems to agree. After funding over $500 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan "dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations," it is time for Congress to fulfill its obligation. As Hagel states, "Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years."

That is refreshing! Now, how can we get him to run??

Leaving Iraq, Honorably
By Chuck Hagel (Sunday, November 26, 2006; Washington Post B07)

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no formal communication.

What does this tell us? It tells us that regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work in their own self-interest -- without the United States. This is the most encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East.

We are a long way from a sustained peaceful resolution to the anarchy in Iraq. But this latest set of events is moving the Middle East in the only direction it can go with any hope of lasting progress and peace. The movement will be imperfect, stuttering and difficult.

America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission.

The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.

The writer is a Republican senator from Nebraska.

Flying While Muslim

If you Google the newly ubiquitous phrase "Flying While Muslim", you will get a wide swath of curious links all sharing one thing in common - their phobia. Some guide apprehensive and fearful Americans, who happen to be Muslim, offering advice on how to get through airport procedures without being pulled aside or even arrested for the crime of "Flying While Muslim".

Other links take you to sites filled with various degrees of Muslim bashing and outright racism. Such misanthropes have latched on to Muslims as the object of their hate-filled phobias. Still others cry out in well-founded indignation against the racist trajectory which is once again rearing its ugly head in this country. I even found a few movie and other artistic projects focusing on the sorry phenomenon which has become a constructed reality in the US since the disaster of 9/11. Overall, my query yielded 10,000 hits.

As we get ready on Thursday to be thankful for the many blessings of our lives including this great nation, many Muslims in the US are continuously reminded that being American for them carries another burden. Many came to this country to escape discrimination and lack of civil liberties in their land of birth, only to face it in their adopted land. The irony of their predicament is especially palpable. However, most American Muslims were born here and for them this is their homeland; they know nor want any other.

Yet, does America want them? Unfortunately, no Mayflower can carry those unwanted, discriminated against to newly discovered continents. This is it..... a reality we should all accept... or better yet, embrace, for our collective benefit.

We may not be a melting pot, but can we at least be a healthy tossed salad (hold the nuts)?

Unfortunately, for 6 American Muslim imams (clerics), Thanksgiving may be the last sentiment they feel today. It would appear that US Airways succumbed to the racist phobias of one of its passengers and pulled these 6 men off a flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix yesterday. To add insult to injury, the 6 men were then handcuffed and arrested by the police and detained for hours. Their crime: Flying while Muslim. They were later released and, if you can believe it, today when they tried to catch another flight to Phoenix, US Airways refused to sell them tickets!

I really don't understand what is going on here. Has racism cloaked in stubborn idiocy triumphed in America? Has rule of law and the bill of rights become faith-contingent? I ask these ridiculous questions hoping that, in fact, they are ridiculous.

Yet, what is really disturbing about this hideous event is the behavior of the police. On what basis were these men denied their civil liberties, humiliated, arrested and detained? On the basis of the fears of one ignorant woman on the flight who heard the men praying and decided that was an expression of "anti-American sentiment"? Is that how we treat our citizens?

On the other hand, is such behavior surprising in view of our government's blow-by-blow abrogation of basic civil liberties starting with suspending habeas corpus and trial by jury, unauthorized wire-tapping, and detainment without charges?

Well, we should be thankful because according to the Washington Post:
"The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said it has opened an investigation.

US Airways Group Inc. issued a statement saying that it is interviewing crew members and ground workers about what happened."

I am sure that will go far towards winning the hearts and minds abroad .... and healing at home.

So, as we sit down to our turkey tomorrow, let's think twice before passing on the salad.

Deja Vu in Iran: Iraq All Over Again But Worse

Will someone, please, get the bullies off the playground, or, at least, call in some adults?

From the man who opened our eyes to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the single event which many have pointed to as the turning point in the failed US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Seymour Hersh has a new warning siren out in this week's New Yorker concerning Part Two of the Bush Administration's vision and strategy for a New Middle East...... Operation Iran.

It is almost funny, if it were not so offensively sad that this administration seems to be accountable to no one, not even the American voter. One would think that after the "thumping" they took on Nov. 7 , they would sound a more conciliatory tone.... I won't even suggest that they may have learned their lesson, because true to their modus operandi, fear is a more effective impetus than either conscious or shame.

And now with the full measure of the debacle in Iraq still not accounted for, the drum beat is on for preventive war with Iran. As Hersh points out, leading neoconservatives are already doing their own "thumping".... of their chests,

In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”

The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”

Perhaps, there is some hope that wiser ones will step in and save the administration from itself....

President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”

However, according to Joshua Muravchik, what the US needs to get back on track is to be saved by some more good 'ol neoconservatism:

Fix the Public Diplomacy Mess. The Bush administration deserves criticism for its failure to repair America’s public diplomacy apparatus. No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to do that. We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?

In other words, while the neocons are busy pointing out how wrong the Bush Adminsitration got it, they are ignoring the fact that they are the ones who gave it to them in the first place! .... And now they want us to turn to them for help!!!All I can think is SCREAM!

From Child Pleasure Brides to Perspective

Is there a universal truth to morality? Is there a baseline we can all agree on, or are there intervening variables such as poverty, culture, and indifference? Do we see the other as worthy of the same humanity as we see in ourselves? So many questions, each pregnant with possibility, yet aborted with each point and counter-point..

I came across the below article concerning the regrettable practice of subjecting young girls to the paying paws of degenerate men who prey on the realities of poverty and desperation. In this case, the sad story comes out of Egypt, and it is a reality that I knew existed yet failed to speak against...... Ignorant parents and family sell these young girls to stave the hunger and need of their siblings, and themselves. It is a sad story that has been playing itself out in the various forms of the human slave trade. Same stories abound from China, to India to Albania...

Yet, from afar, we ask questions such as those I started with above. Where is the humanity of those girls? Is it worth quieting the hunger of others? And from where I sit, what right do I even have to ask?

Then there is the gift of perspective, distance and observation we can embrace. While I can empathize, I can not sympathize.... And, I can declare with certitude, and perhaps a spot of righteousness, that there is a baseline, and we are all accountable.

From Reuters
EGYPT: Minors sold for prostitution under guise of marriage
CAIRO, 16 November (IRIN) - Hanadi was a teenager when she was sold into a short-term marriage by her father. "When I was 14, my father told me I was to be married to a man from Saudi Arabia," said Hanadi, who did not want to use her real name.

"Later on, I discovered that my father and the man had agreed I would stay with him for a month, until he returned home [to Saudi Arabia] at the end of the summer. There was never any intention for us to remain together any longer than his holiday in Egypt."

Hanadi is now 20 years old. She lives in a shelter run by Cairo-based NGO the Hope Village Society, which cares for street children.

"Hanadi did not know at the time, but when her father agreed for her to spend a month with the Saudi tourist, he was paid a large sum of money in return in the form of a dowry, which she never had a share in," said Yasser Sobhi al-Okeili, who helps run the centre Hanadi lives in.
"Nor was the marriage officially registered, though she did not know it at the time. Eventually, after a failed marriage of her own choice, she found herself living in the streets. Many girls who have suffered a similar fate end up as street girls," al-Okeili said.

Although there is no specific law that bans the sale of girls and women into such temporary marriages, which amount to prostitution, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Egypt is a signatory, forbids the sale of children and bans marriage under the age of 16, said Mohamed Tag el-Din Labib, Hope Village Society training and research director.
In addition, Egyptian law bans both prostitution and the marriage of girls under 16. "Minors in prostitution are sent to a sort of corrective centre, where conditions are often as bad if not worse than they are in adult prisons," said Nihad Abul Qumsan, director of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights. "The man involved is not usually prosecuted, but rather acts as a witness in a trial."

However, rights workers say that because minors often go through at least some of the steps that would make a marriage seem legitimate make it difficult for any of the involved parties to be held accountable or be prosecuted. In addition, parents are almost always either in charge of a transaction of this kind, or at the very least are involved and have given their consent.

Superficially legal
When young girls are set up to be sold for sex, the matter is very often rendered superficially legal as the couple sign a civil marriage contract and are divorced upon the departure of the male party, or no marriage contract is signed at all, as was the case for Hanadi.
According to Qumsan, rules can be circumvented in a number of ways, including falsifying birth certificates or not registering the marriage at all.

Because of this, few statistics or studies on the matter exist. The government's General Department for Women's Affairs does not directly target this practice, according to a ministry official in the women's department speaking on condition of anonymity.

Similarly, rights advocates in several civil society organisations contacted by IRIN said they do not deal with the phenomenon outside the framework of violence against women.

Local activists agree that the main reason for early temporary marriages, as well as other forms of child exploitation such as child labour, is extreme poverty.

"Money is always the main incentive," said Malaka al-Kurdi, director of a campaign combating violence against women at Cairo-based NGO Alliance for Arab Women. An estimated quarter of Egypt's approximately 80 million inhabitants live just on or below US $2 per day, the United Nations-defined poverty line.


al-Kurdi added that the experience of going through a temporary marriage whose sole purpose was the gratification of the male partner was enough to affect a girl for life, particularly in a conservative society such as Egypt.

"The phenomenon is simply inhuman, in that a girl who undergoes such an experience is bound to lose out on her childhood," al-Kurdi said.

Hanadi believed it unlikely, despite her young age, that she would ever become fully reintegrated into society as a respected citizen. "After what I went through, no one respects me. The man I married after the Saudi left used to beat me and use me as a sex worker, inviting friends and acquaintances to the house and forcing me to sleep with them," said Hanadi.

"It was horrible. He kept all the money he made from me, of course, and for me it was a living nightmare," she added.

For Palestinians, Life is Nasty, Brutish and Short

Another day, another massacre, another "mistake" we are all to ignore....this time in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, where dozens have been mutilated, their bodies spewed in all directions, most women and children... another day the sun shines over Gaza. And, the march towards the extermination of the Palestinians goes on...

As I sit to write, my mind is filled with issues including the glorious results of the recent US elections. America has finally remembered that there are 3 branches of government for a reason!

Yet, I can not clear my thoughts long enough from the deafening cries coming from the hell that is Gaza and the West Bank. I can't even find the presence of mind to lay out, point-by-point, the number of international laws that Israel, not only flaunts, but spits on, with glee and impunity. New territory in state terrorism continues to be mapped by Israel.

But where is the world community? Where is the United Nations? Right now, the Security Council debates the new atrocities, and once again, all await a US veto of any resolution which would be so insolent as to suggest that Israel should be held to the same standards of international law and peaceable respect for the rights of others as it demanded of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran.

Has the world decided that Palestinians are sub-human? Or have we reached the point where no one really cares? Was Nietzsche right? Have we arrived to the point of the last man? What is the end of the "defense" of Israel against the sub-human Palestinians????? For too many Palestinians life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" with the short, as one professor noted (in a different context), being the best part.

Jennifer Loewenstein has put it just right:

"Nightmare in Beit Hanoun - How Gaza Offends Us All
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
An opened jaw with yellowed teeth gaped out of its bloodied shroud. The rest of the head parts were wrapped in a plastic bag placed atop the jaw and nostrils, as if to be close to the place to which it once belonged. The bag was red from the pieces that were stuffed inside it. Below the jaw was a human neck slit open midway down: a fleshy, wet wound smiling pink and oozing out from the browned skin around it, the neck that was still linked to the body below it. Above him, in the upper freezer of the morgue lay a dead woman, her red hennaed hair visible for the first time to strange men around her. More red plastic wrapped around an otherwise absent chin. She was dead for demonstrating outside a mosque in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza where more than 60 men sheltered during the artillery onslaught by Israeli tanks and cannons.

Most of the others still had their faces intact. They lay on their silver morgue trays stiffly as unthawed frozen food. One man had a green Hamas band tied around his head; he looked like a gentle shepherd from some forgotten, pastoral age. Another's white eyes were partially opened, his face looking out in horror as if he'd died seeing it coming. Then a muddy, grizzled blob on the bottom left tray, black curls tangled and damped into its rounded head and blessedly shut eyes. A closer look revealed a child, a boy of 4: Majed, out playing his important childhood games when death came in like thunder and rolled him up in a million speckles of black mud. The other dead had already been taken away.

Muslim burials take place quickly, a god-send to the doctors, nurses and undertakers who, at the hospitals and morgues, desperately need the space for next batch of casualties who would sleep on the same sheets, same steel-framed beds, in the same humid heat, in the same close, crowded, grief-stricken rooms, often on the floors, with the same tired, unpaid attendants doing their rounds without the proper supplies to help them if they were still alive. And some would die on the operating table like the young man gone now to the Kamal Adwan hospital morgue when his wounds became too much for his body to bear. Two young girls preceded him earlier the same day. Blessed are they who leave this human wasteland washed and shrouded for a quiet, earthy grave.

Today the hospitals will be filled beyond capacity again when the 18 civilian dead from a pre-dawn attack on Beit Hanoun -- women, men and children blasted out of their sleep into human chunks -- roll out of the ambulances and into the freezers of Shifa or Kamal Adwan hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip. How dare they sleep in their houses at night when the tanks are barking out commands.

Do you believe this was an accident? that an international investigation will ever take place? Like after Jenin? Like after Dan Halutz and his 2000 pound bomb which was dropped on an apartment building in Gaza City killing 15 people, 9 of them women and children? Like after the siege of Jabalya in the fall of 2004? Like after Operation Rainbow in Rafah? Like after Huda Ghalia's family was blasted into nothingness during an outing on a Gaza beach? Will US eyes, glued to their glaucousy TV screens to find out which marketed candidate won the corporate-managed midterm elections, ever know that that another massacre of Palestinians took place?
At Shifa hospital, Gaza's central hospital, where Dr. Juma' Saqa and his staff cope with the daily shortages of supplies from kidney dialysis machines to fans and clean linens; where cancer medications are unavailable to the increasing rate of cancer patients and elective surgeries, such as for hernias or tonsils, are a thing of the past. This is where doctors and nurses witness how the water that Gazans drink causes innumerable ailments, rotting teeth, anemia in children and kidney dysfunction because of its brackish, poisonous quality. This is where children lie half naked in their beds, white tape across their noses holding tubes to their faces so that they may eat or breathe-- like Ahmad aged 3, also from Beit Hanoun, who took a bullet in the right side of his belly that exited on the left. His mother stands over him passively, grateful. Ahmad, at least, is going to live. But for what?

Each night in Gaza City that first week in November, explosions sounded in the northeastern corner of Gaza: a succession of bullets, booms, bombs, canon fire. On the first night of the onslaught we could still see lights from Beit Hanoun 10 miles from us blinking and twinkling as if nothing were really happening; it was all a dreamófireworks, a distant celebration perhaps. But then, by the second night only a swath of blacked out space lay in the place of Beit Hanoun, electricity-less and water-less as the booms continued unabated for an hour or more and the hum of the pilot-less drones circled round again and again above us, above Beit Hanoun, above Gaza, automated people-monitors taking stock of the activity below. Nobody from Beit Hanoun could leave by day to get to work without announcing to the tanks and the drones that he was prepared to sacrifice his life for a semblance of normalcy. All men between the ages of 16-35 were rounded up onto trucks and hauled away for "questioning". What will happen to them and their families? Will anyone follow up? Will they add to the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, left to rot while their wives and children, sisters, brothers, parents go on struggling to survive?

There lies Gaza stretched 28 miles long in a tumbledown graying, decaying heap, yawning, tired, wretched, full of garbage. Tape gauze over your nose to avoid the smell of sewage and burning trash. Try not to notice the metal-shuttered shop fronts, the empty stores, the proliferation of horse- and donkey-carts clopping along the streets for lack of fuel, the ribs of the tired beasts jutting out from their bellies as boys whip them along to keep going. The joke is the cerulean blue sky illuminating the rubbish tip, the palm trees and purple flowers beaming in the November sun ñ natural non-sequiturs, like the box of fresh chocolates offered to the journalists filming the woman's wounded son as she yells out her frustrations and horror at the Americans and the Israelis who are killing her family. Why? She asks. Why, why, why?
Ask Mark Regev, Israel's eager, hideously sincere government spokesperson. On CNN's international news he tells us in earnest that this is Israeli self-defense. The Qassam fire into Sderot and Ashkelon must stop. Israelis have the right to defend themselves. The "operation" in Beit Hanoun will not stop until the Qassams stop. Each word drivels out of his mouth into a bubble of obscenity for everyone watching from the vantage point of Gaza. Verbal pornography, sado-masochistic jargon from the prince of Hasbara leaks onto the dust like poisonous bile bought, paid for and sought after by the lords of power and their occupying machinery.
The shoddy, home-made Qassams hiss like cornered alley cats when they are fired into the skies. Stupid and bestial, they zing across the border like crazed beasts not knowing where they are going. They'll dash forever like this until the occupation of Palestine ends. The Gazans know this, Hamas knows it, Fatah knows it, the PFLP knows it; In Israel, Labor and Likkud know it, Meretz knows it, Yisrael Beiteinu knows it, Shas knows it; Peretz, Olmert and Lieberman know it, Sharon knew it, the Israeli people know it, official America know this, so 40 years after 1967 and 58 years after 1948, why is the occupation not yet over?

Because Israel does not want it to end. Because Israel wants the land and the resources without the people. Because you have to eviscerate a culture in order to maintain total control over it. Because the United States says that's just fine with us, you serve our purpose well. You help make the war on terror convenient. You help fit Iraq into the scheme. You'll help us with Iran as well. Who the hell cares about a million and a half poverty-stricken Gazans and their dust, their sand, their stinking, crumbling heap of a disaster area homeland?

What a terrible shame it is that Gazans have not yet attained the status of Human in the eyes of the Western powers, for the resistance there will continue to be an enigma until this changes. For now, however, the slaughter will continue unabated.

Leaving Gaza 6:30am Saturday morning, November 4th 2006, I hear a loud explosion. My cab driver picks me up and we drive down the main street in Gaza City toward Erez. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there is a smoldering mass of wreckage in front of me, a car surrounded by boys picking at its still-hot exterior. Inside are four blackened, seared human shapes, crispy at the touch, faceless from the burns, charcoal, shreds of steaming cloth, a smell of barbecued human flesh, sirens in the distance. Burnt and vaporized metal looks like what you see in a science fiction movie. Burnt humans look like singed paper mache monsters whose pieces fall off at the hint of a breeze.

Gaza is sorry for these indiscretions, this poor taste, this unseemly topic of conversation. You are right to express your indignation. How Dare Gaza Speak of These Things!? But it can no longer contain its secrets even with the blockade of visitors to its vile shores; its voice is shrill even when sublimated through the layers of media deceit. The smoke rises higher in the skies each time. The prison is imploding and the resistance will never end."

Catching the Fire of Moral Depravity: What Israel and Guantanamo Have In Common

Last night I watched an overdue, yet deeply moving, dramatization of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The movie, Catch A Fire, starring Derek Luke and Tim Robbins, shows how humans have the capacity to inflict indignity, torture, pain, suffering, and other beastly manifestations on their fellow human beings with the audacity of moral self-righteousness that in a clinical setting could clearly be labeled as a depraved form of psychosis.

Derek Luke plays the innocent black South African who cared for his community in an apolitical way, provided for his family and tried to stay out of trouble. Tim Robbins plays the white Africans anti-terrorism tzar who in his struggle "to protect his people from the terrorists" reluctantly takes delight in torturing suspects. We see on screen the birth of a terrorist in the face of unspeakable injustice.

Yet, why has the South Africa story of moral depravity taken so long to make it to Hollywood? I will put forth a hypothesis - because it has too many parallels in the world today that we are not willing to either admit or deal with.

Apartheid South Africa could easily be Israel's Gaza and West Bank. Palestinians are today the world's black South Africans. The main difference is that while the US and the West reluctantly did not back South Africa, at least not toward the end, we are backing Israel. Hence, we accept all the "we are protecting our people" self-righteousness they utter and assuage ourselves by reorienting our moral compass - or rather throwing it overboard.

More recently, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, CIA secret torture prisons, and the 2006 Military Commissions Act are all one long slide down the slippery slope of internalizing and accepting a moral contradiction. Yet, we tell ourselves it is OK because we are in a war to "protect ourselves against the terrorists". In the process, we are descending into a moral dark hole and losing what we are trying to protect and project - our moral standing, pride and freedom.

Hence, the movie is just too close for comfort. It's a mirror we just don't want to look in to.

For those concerned with the latest Israeli onslaught and continued criminal behavior against the Palestinians, see the gallery of pictures on Al Jazeera showing Israel's army aiming at and killing unarmed women in cold blood.

Where is the world's sense of human decency, justice, equality and honor? Apparently those seem to be fungible platitudes rather than steadfast principles... And I am clearly a hopeless fool.

Yet, perhaps there is a shimmering light. Some voices are trying to be heard above the fray. From today's Haaretz comes a shocking repudiation of Israel's quick march toward total disregard, with complete impunity, for human life. What is even sadder is that the entire world does not even seem to care. Perhaps when the messenger is from within their own ranks, people will listen.

"By Gideon Levy
A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days - and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: "You've won 12:0," and the soldiers grin broadly.

This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap. Proof of this came at the end of the week from the big mouth of Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, who occasionally says true things. "The IDF's excessive sensitivity to human life led to some of the failures in the Lebanon war - and this should not happen," Stern told Channel 7. Stern should be praised for these forthright words: Those who embark with unbearable lightness on a futile war of choice cannot allow themselves the luxury of showing sensitivity for the lives of their soldiers. In war, soldiers not only kill, but are also killed. This should have been stated in advance.

But the general's remarks are also tainted with hypocrisy: Those who over a few months kill more than 1,000 Lebanese and 300 Palestinians for dubious reasons do not have the right to speak about sensitivity to human life. The fact that the public protest against the war did not take off demonstrates that after having lost all sensitivity for the lives of others, we are also gradually losing sensitivity for the lives of our children who are killed in vain. The contempt for human life starts with the lives of Arabs and ends with the lives of Jews.

What a long way we have come since the talk, as hypocritical as it may have been, about "the purity of arms." This concept has been totally deleted from the lexicon. What a long way we have come since the time when we took pride in the fact that, unlike the Arabs, we tried not to kill innocent civilians. And now we have arrived at the shocking reality of the second Lebanon war. For example, the number of people Israel killed is not only almost 10 times higher than the number of people Hezbollah killed, but the number of soldiers Hezbollah killed is three times higher than the number of Israeli civilians they killed, while the number of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel is about three times the number of Hezbollah fighters. So whose arms are purer?

A journalist from The Guardian who is currently in Israel was shocked to hear that these figures have not been the subject of public discussion here. The current stage of the moral decline began with the targeted assassinations in the territories. When they began, there was still an argument over their legality and justness. Who remembers that the assassinations were once limited, declaratively at least, to "ticking bombs"? The High Court of Justice, in its cowardice, has evaded taking a stance on this issue for years, despite the petitions on its doorstep. And the assassination project grew and expanded until it reached monstrous proportions.

In recent months, almost no day has gone by without Palestinians being killed in Gaza. Instead of asking why, we get a prime minister who boasts to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about "300 terrorists" dead within four months, as if killing in itself were an enormous achievement. This is the lesson from Ehud Olmert, and it is immeasurably more grievous than all his alleged corruption affairs. No one asked who these fatalities were, whether they all deserved to die, and what benefit Israel derives from this wholesale killing.

Beyond the terrifying number of civilians killed, including dozens of women and children, we should also ask whether every armed person in Gaza - and there are tens of thousands of them - deserves the death penalty, without a trial. The day the IDF began the targeted assassinations, our sensitivity to human life was doomed to be erased. The IDF has been operating in the town of Beit Hanun for several days now. Operation Autumn Clouds is ostensibly intended to target Qassam launchers, but meanwhile it has only brought more Qassams on Sderot - besides the killing, destruction and terror it sows in the heart of the 30,000-resident town. I was at the Beit Hanun home of the Abu Ouda family twice recently. The first time was when a shell destroyed the family's home. The second time was when soldiers killed the father, his son and his daughter, who were innocent of any crime. And this was before Operation Autumn Clouds.

And how is the Israeli press covering Autumn Clouds? In Maariv on Thursday, you needed a magnifying glass to find an offhand reference to the killing of 10 Palestinians in one day; it was the same for Yedioth Ahronoth. The two newspapers with the country's largest circulation demonstrate a disgusting level of dehumanization. The statement by Yedioth Ahronoth's military commentator, Alex Fishman, that one of the operation's goals is drilling the troops for the "big operation," does not stir any protest. That the IDF is embarking on a "training operation" in a dense population center, sowing death and destruction - does this not show a frightening contempt for human life? The daily killing in Gaza receives scant mention. Futile operations aimed at restoring the IDF's lost honor do not arouse any debate about their aim, morality or chances of succeeding. No one wonders about the extent of Qassam damage versus the extent of the killing and destruction - including the bombing of the power station - in Gaza, where a million and a half people are encaged, impoverished and hungry.

These futile operations will not stop the Qassams, which are aimed at giving us and the rest of the world a painful reminder of the imprisoned and boycotted Gaza residents' distress, which no one would notice if it were not for the Qassams. The way to fight the Qassams is to stop the boycott, sit down at the negotiating table and reach an accord. Otherwise, we will continue to slide and become immune to their loss of life, and soon to our loss of life as well. Listen to Major General Stern."

More on the Israeli Lobby

Despite the uproar and where you may fall in the debate, the paper published by two International Relations gurus, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, earlier this year did achieve one important feat.... It broke the taboo on the debate itself, breathing life once again into the 1st Amendment. We can at least now ponder the impact of the Israeli policy on our foreign policy without worrying about the stigma of being branded with the big anti-"S" word. (By the way, semitism is not exclusively synonymous with Judaism.)

More importantly, the main point made by M and W is that the Israeli lobby may not be doing either the US or Israel any favors.

I do think that perhaps we can all agree that the Israeli lobby, while perhaps not homogeneous or monolithic, is sizable, effective, and real. And we can openly question and debate whether US foreign policy in the Middle East has been wise and whether this wisdom or lack thereof was/is at all impacted by the Israeli lobby's formidable reach in the US democratic process.

The abstract of the M and W paper reads:

In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

Well, this debate may be getting even larger. This weekend, the Council on the National Interest is running a full-page ad in the New York Times on this very issue. Whether this is a smart move the weekend before we all go to vote on Tuesday depends on how you intend to vote....

From the advert:

By its refusal to deal with Hezbollah as an insurgency that has converted to governance in Lebanon, the United States gave a blank check to Israel, allowing her to attack Lebanon for 34 days and destroy much of the rebuilding that had occurred in the last ten years. The absence of dialogue with emerging Islamic nationalist movements continues to erode our credibility in the region. Congress, under the encouragement of the Lobby, supports the muzzling of sensible diplomacy in favor of confrontation in Lebanon, in Palestine, and with regard to Iran.

While Lebanon burned, so did Gaza and the West Bank. Following the war, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immediately announced plans to expand the largest settlement in the West Bank and canceled plans to withdraw from smaller settlements. The U.S. made ineffective efforts to persuade him to delay the construction announcement. We are doing even less to promote a real peace process in the Middle East. While Palestine collapses into chaos and civil war, neither we nor the Israelis have a policy that leads to defining Israel’s final borders and ending the vindictive and humiliating occupation.