Akram's Razor - Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America

Leave no arms merchant behind

Johann Hari has sharp piece on the OBL assassination and US foreign policy. Here's a choice excerpt:

Flawed US policy keeps Osama's message alive - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie

Osama Bin Laden is dead, but US foreign policy is still giving him what he wanted. The US is bleeding cash. The angry, fighting people in Afghanistan today are -- according to leaked CIA reports -- overwhelmingly "a tribal, localised insurgency" who "see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power". They have "no goals" beyond Afghanistan's borders.

Even General Petraeus, the new head of the CIA, says there are only 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in the whole of Afghanistan. One senior military official compared their intelligence on them to "Bigfoot sightings". Crunch the numbers, and you find the US is spending $1.5bn (€1.03bn) a year on each al-Qa'ida fighter in Afghanistan. Is there anyone alive, except the private defence contractors making a fortune, who thinks that is a sensible use of cash?

Emphasis added. And Republicans shrilly denounce "Obamacare" as spendthrift profligacy.  Yet when it comes to the Pentagon, the cat seems to have the tongue of the folks who insist we're too broke for even the most minimal trappings of a modern society (i.e., basic social spending), to the extent of blocking spending that undeniably saves us money.

To say this is a "guns vs. butter" quandary doesn't really capture the Kafkaesque reasoning, because we've basically abandoned any pretense that there even is a quandary, a need to invest in both objectives.  It's all guns.

Forget about the war's dubious morality, the huge human cost on both sides, its relentlessly counterproductive geopolitical consequences, the seeming impossibility of winning it, or the conspicuous absence of an exit strategy or success criteria on the part of its boosters. Let's just boil it down to the bottom line: How can we even afford this endless welfare program for arms merchants, defense contractors and corrupt warlords?

I want my tax dollars back.

The Arab Street is owed an apology!

Most of the time I post stuff about Denmark, it tends to be bad news--of course, if you're a Muslim observer of Danish politics there's often been, sadly, pretty good reason for that--so I thought I'd try to atone a bit by translating this very thoughtful and topical piece by a Danish pundit on the lessons of the Arab Spring.

One could quibble about a few small things (e.g., identifying Saudi-funded establishments as "ultra-orthodox"; their claim to orthodoxy is rather debatable), but I think his thesis is dead-on. For years, it's been customary to dismiss the Arab masses with this offensive shorthand that casts them as a mindless  herd of animals, and Western media need to eat some crow now that their lazy, dehumanizing cliches have been so spectacularly disproven.

[Moved it over to the Tikkun Daily blog.]

No doubt I've translated some things poorly, so Danes lurking out there are encouraged to chime in and correct any mistakes.

You'll note that this isn't in Jyllands-Posten (the newspaper that became an international household name by publishing the infamous political cartoons that launched a thousand protests, demonstrations and ugly stereotypes).  Denmark has a number of national newspapers. Unlike Jyllands-Posten, Politiken is on the Left--the Danish equivalent of The New York Times, not that I find the Gray Lady  particularly leftist most of the time--and when it comes to the cartoons and Danish Muslims it has almost been "The Anti-Jyllands-Posten."

Its then editor in chief, the recently deceased Tøger Seidenfaden, was very critical of the decision of his counterpart at Jyllands-Posten (Fleming Rose) to publish the cartoons--as was I at the time--and one of its most prominent columnists, Rune Engelbreth Larsen, has long been a one-man Danish answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center, exhaustively documenting the rising tide of xenophobia and Islamophobia within Danish society and giving the desperately-needed straight dope on the significance of the cartoons and the factors in their bizarre transformation from mole hills to mountains.

Speaking of how different Politiken's political role has been, the newspaper under Seidenfaden's leadership even went so far as to issue an apology last year to Muslims for the cartoons. They were reacting to an international class action suit by Sayyids (i.e., descendants of the Prophet, peace be on him). Ironically, here we part company, as I think this move was a big mistake, not to mention a pointless gesture given how Seidenfaden and Politiken had nothing to do with the cartoons in the first place.

Now, I respect the good intentions at work and think the desire to turn a new page in Danish-Muslim relations was quite understandable, but the lawsuit was a farce. Its premise (that a group a Muslims who happen to be allegedly descended from the Prophet were especially harmed by the cartoons and somehow had legal standing to seek damages on his and/or the Ummah's behalf) was absurd, geopolitically counterproductive and self-evidently contrary to the precepts of international law.

That lawsuit reminds me of these short-sighted and ultimately dangerous campaigns by Middle Eastern countries to get the UN to outlaw blasphemy. It's rather embarrassing to see representatives of Muslim countries displaying such appalling ignorance of the fundamentals of law and Western political values  (though this is obviously intended more for domestic political consumption, not unlike the immoral, theocratic blackmail over family planning and abortion that Washington regularly engages in when Republicans are in charge). International law should only (and, indeed, ultimately can only) concern itself with the welfare of human beings, so the advocacy of pet religious dogmas or even religious faith itself simply has no place in such matters.

To go down any other road calls the entire legal edifice into question. And, besides, if these leaders had any understanding of law, they'd realize there already was a legal framework for taking action against Islamophobic demagoguery. To the extent real harm is being caused by such cases of "blasphemy," there  undoubtedly already is legal precedent under international law by virtue of their incitement of hatred between communities (not unlike how anti-Holocaust denial laws work).

But I digress, as usual.

Update: I've moved the translation over to Tikkun Daily blog.

 

An inspiring green initiative in Abu Dhabi, of all places

Here’s what I intended to share, before that Thailand thing sidetracked me.

Regular readers of my blog know that I don’t have many good things to say about the petro states of the Persian Gulf--e.g., my post on Khaleeji Consumption Disorder and other postcolonial malaises--but once in a blue moon something genuinely forward-thinking gets done in the Khaleej, too. A case in point is the Masdar city under development in UAE (Masdar means “source” or “root” in Arabic). It is a bold and fascinating experiment that could actually contribute valuable lessons for new paradigms in urban development, and not just in the Arabian Peninsula.

Critic’s Notebook - In Arabian Desert, a Sustainable City Rises - NYTimes.com:

Designed by Foster & Partners, a firm known for feats of technological wizardry, the city, called Masdar, would be a perfect square, nearly a mile on each side, raised on a 23-foot-high base to capture desert breezes. Beneath its labyrinth of pedestrian streets, a fleet of driverless electric cars would navigate silently through dimly lit tunnels. The project conjured both a walled medieval fortress and an upgraded version of the Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland.

The details are intriguing. It’s refreshing to see a major building project that takes the region’s climate and geography into account for a change. 

Here’s more, from   Masdar City: A Source of Inspiration | Renewable Energy World:

Much of the design will adopt local, vernacular architectural principles, but this will also be mixed with a lot of cutting-edge technology, some of it still in the experimental phase. The city will incorporate traditional medinas, souks and wind towers, and make use both of open, public squares and narrow shaded walkways to connect homes, schools, restaurants and shops. The buildings themselves will then adopt a wide range of passive measures, and should consume well under a quarter of the energy used by comparable buildings elsewhere in the region.

There will be no cars in Masdar City; indeed, no internal combustion engines of any type. Instead, there will be a network of electric trams (an LRT or light rail transit system, which will also link to the planned Abu Dhabi LRT system), and smaller, ‘personal rapid transit’ vehicles, effectively an automatic, driverless system of electric taxis controlled by a central computer. These will be programmed so that, once occupied, the passenger has privacy and no other passenger can board along the route.

All the energy used in Masdar will be renewably generated, not only the electrical power, but also that for heating, cooling and transport. The bulk of this is likely to come from solar of one form or another. There will be power generation for a smart grid from solar thermal power and concentrating PV, and also distributed PV throughout the city.

The NYT writer slips in some skepticism on the viability of this project.

Still, one wonders, despite the technical brilliance and the sensitivity to local norms, how a project like Masdar can ever attain the richness and texture of a real city. Eventually, a light-rail system will connect it to Abu Dhabi, and street life will undoubtedly get livelier as the daytime population grows to a projected 90,000.

To which I say, where are those “real” cities now? Based on my admittedly limited experience living in the Gulf in 2002, I suspect the writer is overlooking how compartmentalized public space already is in the Gulf is even in normal cities. Thanks to the brutishly inhospitable climate during much of the year, which drives everybody indoors; the deep-seated aversion of the minority of nationals (i.e., citizens) to fraternizing with the majority (foreign nationals) for various reasons; and the ethnically and linguistically balkanized nature of these societies that made up mostly of unassimilated laborers drawn from different parts of the world, it’s not like people are accustomed to interacting with strangers, anyway. (Am I wrong, oh readers with more experience in the region?)

In that respect, it reminds me a bit of Scandinavia, whose denizens are known for being a bit reserved and difficult to break the ice with, perhaps for somewhat similar reasons. (Which has it’s pros and cons. It may be harder to make friends, but when you do it means something, unlike in the USA, where forced friendliness and informality can make acquaintances appear to be more than they really are or wish to be.) My theory is that it’s mostly a function of climate and weather, as opposed to anything inherent local culture like Jante’s Law or Arabian mores. Whether you’re shivering in a fjord or roasting in a wadi, harsh weather that makes being outside uncomfortable prevents the emergence of a culture of outdoor socializing and makes people more reserved in public. They spend most of their social lives in subgroups of people they already know like family, co-workers, and so on, comfortably away from the elements and the public.

I’m more skeptical about the likelihood of Emiratis giving up their Toyota Land Cruisers for little underground cars.

While we’re talking about the environment, though, we should not lose sight of how incredibly wasteful and unsustainable the rest of the Emirates are on multiple levels. In his eye-opening expose of the abhorrent exploitation and short-sighted developmental vision upon which Dubai has long been based, Johann Hari wrote:

The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent:

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city [Dubai] in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

And there’s a lot more where that came from (not to mention the incredibly revolting but not particularly surprising torture scandal that broke out shortly after Hari’s article was published). The tidbit about human feces washing up on the beaches of luxury hotels as a result of grossly incompetent city planning was a memorable illustration of the shaky foundations of this city that aspires to be the Paris of the Persian Gulf.

Nearly three years ago, I wrote:

I want to see the the ameers of the Gulf boasting to the international media not about the latest glitzy prestige projects but of real strides in bringing about equality and justice in their own societies, and for working to put their God-given wealth to a higher purpose than currying favor with the international BCBG. That would be real leadership and vision.

I hope this Masdar is a sign of things to come. For a change, money well spent.

Local activism from abroad

This is quite random (not to mention old, as it's dated Nov 3, 2008), but having a background in ICT4D I found this report on a technology blog intriguing. It goes without saying that the Internet allows people to keep in touch in radically new ways while on the go and Skype is so widespread that its very name has become a handy verb for millions of Internet users, but who would've thought you could use the Internet to volunteer in a political campaign back home while sitting on another continent?

Wendy’s Blog: Skype for Obama, from Cairo to Colorado

I’m spending this election season in Cairo, Egypt, attending an ICANN meeting. Thanks to the Internet, that hasn’t stopped me from some final get-out-the-vote efforts. The time zones mesh up so that after meetings conclude here, I’ve been able to log in to my.barackobama.com, find a list of voters and a calling script, and call via Skype to remind them of polling places and encourage them to vote.

Isn’t the Internet grand? I’m at the ICANN meeting trying to keep ICANN from interfering with the flexibility that allowed that unexpected political outreach.

Lucky McCain's campaign didn't get wind of this. I can hear Palin's inevitable slogan now: "Obama campaign gets support from Al-Qaeda member."*

*  Swiftboat-ese for a person residing in the Middle East.

Report on the Arabic Blogosphere

Dustin over at His Peace Upon Us, a thoughtful and recommended new Christian blog dedicated to dialogue between Christians and Muslims, reports on  a very interesting study of the Arabic-language Blogosphere.  Its title is "Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent" and its authors are Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey.

Dustin writes:

The Berkman Center for Internet Study and Security did a massive study on the Arabic blogosphere. Who blogs? What do they blog about? You can read the summary of the report at the Berkman Center site.

I found it interesting that they blog more about human rights than they criticize Western culture and values. That’s probably not what most would expect.

Very interesting indeed.

Haven't read all of the report, but 3 interesting details jump out at me:

• I'm not suprised that Saudi bloggers hold a decent sized chunk of the Arabic Blogosphere--They've got money, a strong sense of national idenity, and fewer distractions during their leisure time (e.g., cinemas are still verboten in ABBR title="Kingdom of Saudia Arabia">)--but judging by this report Kuwaitis seem markedly more active online than their fellow GCCers in Qatar, UAE and Bahrain. Forget the populations and populations' citizenship/foreigner breakdowns, but it surely this is disproportionate. (A prediction, given the Khaleeji Consumption Disorder epidemic: Soon we will hear of Gulf states rushing to  buy cutting-edge bloggers from Africa to write under their flags, like they do Olympic athletes.)

• Arabic Bahais. Not the first thing you think of, but they're out there, and very legitimately speaking out against the discrimination they face. (Speaking of which, there is something pathetic about the need some feel to harass these peaceful people. If you're offended by their rejection of Islam or concerned about the message its sends, try focusing your energies on giving them less reason for doubt instead of seeming to prove them right.)

• I might've overlooked something in the complete report, but I don't see any discussion of Arab Christian bloggers. I wonder what the explanation is for this apparent disparity. Are they not as active online? Did the researchers perhaps give inadequate attention to their networks?

What I'd really like to see is a study of the contemporary contours and groupings of the Salafi/Wahhabi corner of the Blogosphere, which has gone through a lot of changes (not to mention a huge amount of in-fighting) since their heyday online in the early days of the Internet, when it claimed or influenced some of the best known Islamic websites and fora.

I'm sure there are oodles of somewhat relevant "threat assessment" reports in the intel/security arena, but doing this right would be a very difficult undertaking even experienced researchers who master Arabic fully, as the ideological and doctrinal nuances are so fine (and, to many outsiders' eyes, trivial). The background required to really understand the changes isn't likely to be picked up just by lurking in their forums. (Perhaps Berkman needs to hire Umar Lee as a consultant.)

Update (2009-07-21): Had a typo in my excerpt from His Peace Upon Us. Wrote "KSA" instead of "Berkman Center site" at the end of the 1st paragraph.

Past thoughts on nonviolence

Am still mulling over Gorenberg's piece, but while those wheels make their glacial turns in my head, here's a snippet I wrote last year on this subject in reaction to one of Mark Steyn's trademark artful-but-intellectually-wanting rants against Muslims.

My thinking has evolved somewhat since then, but it raises some concerns that I think remain valid.

Akram's Razor - "The resurrection of Willie Horton in the age of Islamophobia ":

Then there's how baldly hypocritical Steyn's Gandhi-invoking rhetoric is given his conflict-stoking ways. You have to admire the cheek of hawks who loudly call for no-holds-barred confrontation and who mock peace activists as clueless idealists that can turn around and chide Muslims for not being pacifists like them.

You can be a great admirer, as I am, of Muslim pacifists like Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Jawdat Said while conceding that there are cases today where Muslim peoples are caught between Scylla and Charybdis that makes pacifism--which is never an easy path to walk--ineffective as a means of resistance to oppression.

Were people in most key conflicts involving Muslims today to embrace the noblest ideals of Gandhian non-violence in their struggles it is doubtful that their tactics would work as they have in the past.

The power of non-violent resistance lies in the shame and aversion it inspires in mainstream observers who feel implicated in the conflict. This reaction is only possible in the context of media that attempt to accurately report on the human suffering of a conflict. A partisan or indifferent media shortcircuits the system. (As does one that disseminates bloodless, "Nintendo wars"; or one that eagerly enlists in a wartime government's disinformation campaigns.)

When the media systematically ignore or play down violence against one side of a conflict, folks back home in Peoria never have the chance to get revolted/shamed/irritated/outraged enough for non-violent resistance to have a chance at succeeding. Nonviolence requires vocal public support, which in turn requires public awareness. Yet like the old Zen koan about the tree in the forest, the sicing of dogs on Black civil rights worker by white policemen would never have "happened" were it not for the presence of TV cameras that forced mainstream viewers to confront the evil of the Jim Crow system in which they all played a part as citizens.

As much as one wants to advocate nonviolence, what good would adopting Gandhian tactics do in, say, Chechnya, where the Western media pays little attention to the ongoing slaughter and violation of human rights. Were Chechens to march, holding hands, on the Russian tanks singing Negro Spirituals, their foremost accomplishment would probably be to reduce wasted bullets. By the same token, in the Occupied Territories, unless a camera crews happen to be about the only folks granted the luxury of nonviolent protest are Western tourists. Palestinians who stick flowers into IDF gun muzzles are likely to catch a gun butt or rubber bullet in the face. So their options are a lot more limited than those of protesters in Western societies, where law enforcement and officialdom fear bad press.

Fair enough, but kindly direct me to all the non-Palestinian Gandhis out there today.

Needless to say, I don't often find myself tempted to link to The Weekly Standard on much of anything, let alone the Middle East peace process. Its editor Bill Kristol is, after all, a proverbial hawk and neocon, one of the thought (mis-)leaders whose Ahab-like ideological obsessions and truly abysmal geopolitical prognostications helped drag America over the cliff after 9/11 into a chasm of dangerous war-mongering and grossly unconstitutional lawlessness.

Nonetheless, the current issue has an cover article worth pondering by progressive Israeli Mideast analyst and activist Gershom Gorenberg entitled "The Missing Mahatma: Searching for a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King in the West Bank".

He reflects on the oft-lamented absence of non-violent resistance from the Palestinian struggle for independence today (though we must remember that the First Intifada was largely non-violent, a fact that didn't prevent Israeli forces from literally firing a million of rounds of ammunition on Palestinian protesters during its first 6 weeks). American media treatments of this topic--a veritable literary genre in the case of some benighted pundits--are often terminally myopic and hypocritical, and though Gorenberg is a kindred spirit I inevitably have some issues with his take. Still, his is a sensitive and thoughtful exploration of a difficult and mine field of a topic that deserves to be pondered.

The article begins with an fictional account set in the near future of a Palestinian imam leading protesters on a US Civil Right era-style march to pray at Al-Aqsa that ends violently and in an international PR fiasco that forces the Israeli government to negotiate with him etc. etc. It then analyzes the realworld historical factors that make this scenario seem so agonizingly fanciful. An intriguing historical footnote that he explores is the case of a 1980s Palestinian activist--now an American professor--who practiced non-violent resistance and was summarily deported by Israel (not to mention marginalized within the PLO before then).

I still need to digest the piece a bit more before I comment further, but in the meantime here are some observations on the problematic political backdrop of most MSM discussions of this as posted in my comment on Gorenberg's post announcing the piece on the South Jerusalem blog.

A sensitive and thought provoking analysis of a complex and important issue.

This question is near to my heart as a Muslim who believes in nonviolence, but I am often struck by how little moral standing so many of those who pose it to Palestinians have on the matter given how rare a commitment to nonviolence is.

As much as I hope and pray for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I don’t think it’s a big mystery as to why a Palestinian Gandhi has yet to emerge. In how many other of the world’s conflicts have we seen such an ethic take root? Gandhi and MLK were extraordinary leaders whose charisma and vision could change the rules of the game. Such leaders don’t grow on trees.

Anywhere. Avrum makes a good point that I would extend far beyond the region: Where are the NON-PALESTINIAN Gandhi’s? Where are the leaders of American and European countries (which are not wracked by conflict, poverty and second-class citizenship) who promote nonviolence in anything other than empty rhetoric?

Are Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, Israelis, ad infinitum, any more demonstrably committed to nonviolence than Palestinians? Once you factor in circumstances, I’m not sure the answer’s a yes.

This doesn’t apply to Mr. Gorenberg’s piece, but I would argue that much of the MSM talk about the absence of a “Palestinian Gandhi” is so politically one-sided and morally inconsistent that it actually undermines the cause for peace in the Middle East. You don’t promote peace by chiding one side for not being Gandhian while the other is still actively pursuing its goals militarily.

Richard Silverstein at  Tikun Olam-תקון עולם and Paul Woodward at War in Context  have sharply critiqued aspects of the essay. I think the objections they raise are necessary, even if I would give Gorenberg more benefit of the doubt in terms of the politics of the piece.

It's a difficult subject to write about, especially given all the blinkered baggage the MSM brings to it, so my hope is that he follows it up with a discussion of some of its other dimensions and contradictions.

Israeli econ. blockade devastates 52% of Gazan households

Israel's curious pursuit of "peace" with Palestinians. Consider it a reverse Marshall Plan.

MIDEAST: Poverty in Gaza Hits "Unprecedented" Level (IPS)

In both the West Bank and Gaza, young people aged 15 to 24 are the most likely of any group to be unemployed, while the number of households in Gaza below the poverty line has reached an historic high of nearly 52 percent, according to a new report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) issued Thursday.

There's more.

More like "Rest in peace."

Johann Hari: The loathsome smearing of Israel's critics

Examples like this is why I get such a kick out of the complaints about the supposedly inordinate influence of CAIR and Muslims in general in American politics. As if Muslims can generate a fraction of the heat constantly unleashed by all these pro-Israeli pressure groups.

But frank discussions of the predations against open debate by the imaginary yet curiously powerful and visible Israeli Lobby is to traffic in conspiracy theories, so I'll shut up. Conspiracy theories about pro Israeli pressure groups whose influence is legendary in Washington and who've even been demonstrated to be extremely conspiratorial (Does plotting to infiltrate Wikipedia count?) are offensive, you see. The only conspiracy theories permitted today are those concerning American Muslims and organizations like CAIR.

HT: Omer Subhani

Johann Hari: The loathsome smearing of Israel's critics - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.

My own case isn't especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me "a Jew-lover", "a Zionist-homo pig" and more.

Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn't controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile "pro-Israel" writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

Tikun Olam on Hamas & the "destruction of Israel" canard

Richard Silverstein over at Tikun Olam posted a gutsy debunking of the latest "evidence" being held by war-mongerers up as proof of Hamas (and, by unspoken but unmistakable extension, all who support the Palestinian right to self-defense) being frothing at the mouth with genocidal anti-Jew hatred. This kind of hysterical and offensively dehumanizing rhetoric is not only misleading and dis-informative vis-a-vis the realities on the ground in the conflict, but highly counterproductive to the cause for peace in that it obfuscates rather than illuminates.

Specifically at issue is a recent claim by the Israeli paper Maariv that a recent statement by Hamas committed it to, surprise, the destruction of Israel. The actual statement does not support this sweeping declaration.

The way this mother of all propaganda myths, that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel's right to exist, is relentlessly exploited by Arab-baiters and Islamophobes to achieve their own nefarious agendas reminds me of the way Khrushchev's infamous "We will bury you" line--which while hardly conciliatory was not a threat but an unsurprising prediction (i.e., that the USSR would outlive its ideological competitor)--was spun by American Cold War hawks as a grave threat and justification for jingoism and the promotion of the then nascent Military-Industrial State that now so dominates American foreign policy. President Eisenhower, in a moment of breathtaking statesmanship and prophetic foresight, warned  the nation about this constellations of destabilizing forces in his farewell address in 1961. (A little known, and profoundly frustrating fact: In his first draft of this speech, Eisenhower rightly dubbed this dangerous behemoth the "Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex". Tragically, he marred his courageous jeremiad by dropping Congress out of concern about embarrassing Congressional allies. In doing so, he inadvertently let the perhaps the most egregious and inveterate offenders off the hook, as Congress is the enthusiastic enabler of this endless orgy of pork and corruption.)

Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place » Maariv Mistranslates Hamas, Stoking Fires of Anti-Arab Enmity

Again, we can argue whether Hamas has a faulty grasp of history. But the main point as far as Jerry Haber and I are concerned is that we not allow Maariv, JTA and the thousands of right-wing commentators who have grasped this botched translation job to argue that Hamas has gone from being in favor a unitary state combining Palestinians and Jews; to an exterminationist position advocating the elimination of Jews from all of Palestine.

Why is this important? Sure, pro-Israel ideologues are going to argue what's new and who cares. Hamas hates us. The statement whether accurately quoted or not merely confirms this. But I'll tell you why it is important. What people in political conflicts say matters. When words are put into someone's mouth that they did not say–this can matter even more. Demonizing Hamas by turning them into genocidaires serves the interests of the pro-Israel right. That's what JTA and Maariv have done. They may have done so inadvertently or carelessly rather than maliciously. But they have done so nonetheless. And given the powder keg of hatred that is the current Middle East what we don't need more of is provocation and distortion. Reality is bad enough without introducing incitement into the equation.

Silverstein's succinct explanation of why this matters and why it warrants widespread consideration is dead-on. I'd add to his excellent points one more that is perhaps implied by the others.

This is not just about Hamas, or even the Palestinians. The double standards and hysteria that undermine MSM analysis of Hamas constantly bleed over into general discussions of Muslims and Arabs. Rare is the debate in Washington about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against Israeli violence. (A bit of an understatement, as such evenhanded discussions of the Middle East appear in the Beltway with less frequency than Halley's Comet.) Yet rarer still is for such a debate not to culminate in the clicheed accusation of the defender of Palestinians being "pro-Hamas" and, ipso facto, pro-terrorism. In most cases, it's a dirty trick, a cheap diversionary tactic, employed to short-circuit legitimate and rarely heard debate, not to mention tar principled critics of Israeli policies as beyond the pale of civilized debate. But it's lethally effective--in a intellectually thuggish sort of way--at silencing dissent and intimidating others into ostracizing those thus labeled.

There are many problems with the way Hamas "support" is spun in American politics. The more obvious involve 1) how its reasoning (such as it is) ignores the, shall we say, paucity of "rooting options" for observers to almost any military conflict, 2) the many different possible motivations that can be behind "support" for Hamas or any other large, organizationally-complex and widely popular insurgent movement like it; and 3) the selective nature and constantly focus nature of "political support" in general.

To speak to #1, most conflicts involve two primary combatants, both of which fight dirty, and the Arab-Israeli war is no different.  Remaining scrupulously neutral is rarely an option and one's own background and affiliations are quite naturally determinative in most cases for one's allegiances. Even if one takes the demonization of Hamas at face value, to expect Arabs and Muslims not to instinctively side with it to some extent--even if only for the simple political reason that it claims to champion the Arab/Muslim cause--in this conflict is, I think, either astoundingly naive or betrays an incredibly blinkered view of the evidence (i.e., it overlooks how to neutral observers neither side appears wholly a victim or villain, and treats Israel's inevitably biased narrative of the conflict as self-evident). Putting aside the question of the legitimacy or lack thereof of Israeli justifications for what it does, do Beltway pundits honestly expect Arabs and Muslims to side with Israel in a conflict with fellow Arabs and Muslims?   When you get down to it, that is the absurd subtext to the sanctimonious outrage over widespread reluctance to endorse Washington's demonization of Hamas, however problematic a representative of Palestinian aspirations to freedom and equality  it may be.

For my part, I yearn to see to see credible, non-violent vehicles for change emerge, but that has yet to happen on either side, as Israel regularly engages in violence every bit as illegal and reprehensible  as Hamas, and often with a far higher body count resulting.  And the ever worsening dynamics of this conflict don't encourage the emergence of nonviolent political actors, either. (A fact that suits hardliners in control on both sides just fine.) So one is left having to choose the lesser of two evils, and I don't think that choice is self-evident to informed people who care about peace and justice in the region.

Call me crazy, but I don't think you can pursue peace by selectively condemning violence, by outlawing one side's crimes while whitewashing those of their (in this case, far more powerful) opponents.  When the international community begins to treat violence against Palestinians with the same standard as it does that committed by Palestinians, the kinds of absolute calls for demilitarization routinely targeted at Hamas will have moral authority.  Until then, it more often than not serves as hasbara by proxy and on balance probably undermines rather than furthers the cause of peace.

Issue #2 concerns how, whatever one thinks of it,Hamas is not simply a terror organization. Providing health clinics to the poor, employing large numbers of people in quasi-governmental bodies and fielding a range of candidates in elections aren't exactly the hallmark of terror cells. However one judges their military actions from a moral standpoint, they clearly are a complex, hybrid movement that manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways in Palestinian society. Even accepting the one-sided Beltway line on Hamas' violence,it is asinine to expect Palestinians to reduce Hamas to its military wing given its complex, multi-faceted role in their lives. Ergo, it is unjustified to treat all forms of political support for Hamas as an endorsement of terror. It just doesn't follow.

And #3 isn't rocket science. Support for someone or something at a particular point in time in particular circumstances does not mean unconditional support for the same in all times and circumstances. Most people don't draw up ledgers to tally the sum of merits and and demerits of given political actors before supporting them. Such choices arise out of gut reactions and based on passions stirred up by current events which may or may not be consistent with their broader values. But these subtleties and elementary insights into human psychology are conveniently forgotten by Islamophobic ideologues the success of whose fear-mongering campaigns relies on such simplistic, decontextualized charges.

But all these are fairly obvious, I think, to anybody with a reasonably open mind and commitment to fairness. What is not intuitive to those of us doomed to primarily consume the often woefully  superficial and unconsciously pro-Israeli MSM analysis of Hamas is that it has evolved and moderated over time in important ways. Despite the importance of this fact for the prospects for peace, these transformation has gone unacknowledged by Western and especially American observers in the MSM.

Anyway, this post ended up being far longer than intended. I will leave you with this excerpt from   Khaled Hroub's eye-opening analysis of Hamas' political development in openDemocracy.net, "Hamas's path to reinvention":

An internal shift from religion-based to politics-defined struggle is reshaping Hamas's identity. Khaled Hroub, author of "Hamas: A Beginner's Guide", explains how it has happened and criticises the west's failure to understand this key Palestinian trend.
9 - 10 - 2006

A remarkable yet mostly overlooked transformation has been taking place within the thinking and political practice of Hamas over the past few years. The process started long before the radical Palestinian movement's victory in the legislative elections of 25 January 2006 in the West Bank and Gaza. Its essence has been a shift in the justification behind Hamas's "hardline" positions: in particular, from their rejection of any concession over the "land of Palestine" on religious grounds (based on the claim that Palestine is waqf [endowment] for successive Muslim generations which no one has the right to compromise on), to a political and pragmatic argument for this stance.

Fat chance these important facts, nuances and developments will trickle "up" into the discourse of the MSM or Washington policy circles. If fanatical, irrational Jew-hating Palestinians don't exist, they must be created for the cameras. Otherwise, there might have to be dialog and meaningful concessions by the victors as well as the losers.  Perish the thought.

Update (2008-01-23): A few stylistic tweaks and fixed typos.