Friday, June 15, 2007
Con Coughlin speaks truth: Fundamentalists threaten Israel from all sides
The creation of a mini Islamic state in Gaza now appears the most likely outcome as the militant Palestinian group Hamas strikes against the more secular-minded government of President Mahmoud Abbas...
...Even before this week's violence, activists had been busy attacking cafés, video shops and restaurants that serve alcohol or sell what are regarded as subversive Western films.
An internet café at the Jabaliyah refugee camp was bombed because zealots believed its customers might be exposed to pornography or pop music. The desire to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law even resulted in a gunman attacking a UN primary school because it allowed young boys and girls to mix together in the playground...
...Hamas makes no secret of the fact that it now receives most of its financial and military support from Iran. The Iranian government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hamas leadership in June last year, in which it agreed to fund the militant group to the tune of £400 million...
...Ordinary Palestinians, it is true, in both Gaza and the West Bank, are suffering hardship. But this is not because of a lack of funds entering the Palestinian territories: it is because successive Palestinian administrations have made no effort to distribute the resources available equably among the population.
Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves...
Meanwhile, back in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal says "The Devil made me do it": Hamas was 'forced' to take over Gaza Strip
So now Israel has Syria and Iran at their borders with no way to end it when the violence starts up outwards again in earnest. As jsinger points out in the comments, here's your live preview of what things would like like if Israel were to ever lose a war (actually, a mild preview in my view), and also the type of civil war that would develop rather quickly if Arabs were ever allowed "back" in any sort of numbers.
This is what happens when you try to pound a square peg into a round hole. People have been treating Palestinian Arabs as though they have some sort of government and civil society. They don't and never have. You can't stuff tribal strongmen into suits, pose the like Western democrats, give them seats at the UN and pretend they're just like the other people who call themselves "President" and "Prime Minister." It's a disaster waiting to happen. The expats who ooze around college campuses and who've coopted the lingo of the West don't represent anything about the society back "home." Welcome to disaster.
"Not surprisingly, many Palestinians who were previously agnostic about their Muslim heritage have found themselves embracing the Hamas cause, more out of economic necessity than religious obligation."
The quote above is from the article by Coughlin. This reminds me of how many people will probably blame Israel for the meltdown of Palestinian society and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Gaza. They'll say that the turn to Islamic fundamentalism was caused by desperation. And they'll say that, with a 40-year-long occupation, the habits of violence had long become ingrained and that there was no opportunity to develop a civil society They'll be partly right, of course, but only partly.
It's too bad we can't see how the society would've developed under normal circumstances, although surrounding Arab states don't indicate cause for optimism. It probably either would've been an authoritarian state like Syria or Egypt or a tenuous democracy mired in sectarian and clan loyalties, like Lebanon.
One article I read fairly recently in a magazine (I think it was a symposium on a world without Israel in Foreign Policy Magazine), stated that Palestine would've developed as a peaceful, "mercantile" nation. Somehow, I doubt that very much.
Some comments to Coughlin's piece were priceless.
Meanwhile, back in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal says "The Devil made me do it"
Telling of so much. Listened to NPR this morning and they interviewed the a Columbia prof, could be wrong but I believe it was Joseph Massad, and while commenting upon the deleterious quality of what is occurring in Gaza, he nonetheless forwarded the same type of passive voice and inverted moral quality in defense of what is occurring.
Try imagining, just try imagining, any western (including Israeli) reporter making excuses for some Israeli policy on the basis that, if they didn't have those inter-generational Arab refugees aka "Palestinians" do deal with, then things would be so much nicer in the M.E. and in Israel proper. The constant threat of missiles and mortars launched into civilian populations, the threat of sniper fire into those same populations, the threat of homicide/suicide bombers, the constant offensive tactics/strategies instigated via proxy representatives of Syria, Iran, Saudi, Egyptian and others, etc.
Never mind that such is the truth, and most certainly proximates the truth more than the inverted moralizings and propaganda forwarded by the Mashaals and Massads of the world. Facts and proximate orders of truth are not what the press and trans-nationalist salons at the E.U., the U.N. and elsewhere major in, rather it's feel-good and PC illusions. A sad, and tragic, fact that is.
It was probably Rashid Khalidi. He's really been making the NPR rounds.
Sol, yes, that does ring true. I don't follow these two, I confess, with a great deal of specificity, so am not sure if they diverge very much and admit I tend to view this "dynamic duo" from academe through a similar lens.
Just now reading Martin Kramer over at sandbox, so yes, he reflects upon the interview in some detail. What is both striking and representative (and rhetorical tactic imo) in Khalidi's NPR interview is precisely that "dialectical" quality Khalidi forwards: first seeming to assign agency and responsibility to Hamas and Fatah - while also removing the broader inter-generational Arab refugee ("Palestinian") polity from that agency - but then pulling the rug out from under that assignment of responsibility even further and more dramatically, assigning "real" blame to the U.S. and to Israel. In other words he uses a type of rhetorical "shell game," flim-flam or sleight-of-hand: by NPR he's effectively given credit (and giving himself credit) for assigning responsibility, but then makes two moves, one subtle and one that is more Machiavellian still, in order to disavow that agency and responsibility. I.e. a type of taqiya or similar rhetorical strategem/tactic.
(And the reason I placed the term dialectical in ironic quotes above is due to the fact that it's not really a sincerely motivated dialectic as such, rather it is a type of rhetorical tactic and tergiversation, that taqiya tactic or quality referred to - which in fact is also a type of dispensation used by both Muslims and Islamicsts more specifically. That's important to note because qua dispensation it effectively serves to salve the conscience - or much rather shapes and molds the conscience - in a manner that supports the idea that ultimate truth is being served. I.e. something very elemental is occurring in all this, not something marginal or peripheral or something that might otherwise strike a blow against one's own conscience or the conscience of the collective, the Ummah.)
So if it's Israel's fault that Palestinians have been turning more to Islamism - what is Egypt's excuse, or Syria's? Both those nations' governments have severely repressed the MB, which is apparently growing in strength. An Islamist rebellion in Algeria has claimed at least 100,000 lives, and that's a low estimate. Hezbollah is holding Lebanon hostage and the Taliban is threatening Afghanistan. Forces in North Africa have threatened Spain.
I don't think people can attach blame to the West, to Israel, or even to economic conditions for a movement whose time might simply have come. It's been around for decades - in fact extreme strains of Islam have always been present. And the Iranian Revolution, though the mullahs are Shi'a, surely gave impetus to Islamist forces everywhere.
I think what might have caused these movements to reach critical mass is simply the population explosion in the Middle East. There are just more people to give political heft to any movement but the combination of more people with more poverty, which is occuring because of a lack of productivity and resource management throughout the region, might be driving the fundamentalists more than the secular movements. Plus, there's probably a reaction against the West and against modernity in general.
I think it will burn itself out in time but at what cost?
And what about these extreme population bursts? Egypt's population doubles every 17 years, the Palestinians', every 15 years. That's going to cause severe hardship.
Yet, it seems to be politically incorrect to mention this, especially among proPalestinians, who accuse Israel of "genocide".