OutRage and Queer Youth Alliance went to the protest march at Trafalgar Square to show their support for people of Palestine. But they also urged the Palestinian Authority to halt the arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals.
As soon as they arrived at the square members of the two groups were surrounded by an angry, screaming mob of Islamic fundamentalists, Anglican clergymen, members of the Socialist Workers Party, the Stop the War Coalition, and officials from the protest organizers, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
Assuming the story is accurate, that something like this occurred is disgusting and unacceptable.
And from later in the article….
“Having experienced the pain of homophobia, we deplore the suffering inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli government”.
Another protester, Peter Tatchell, said: “Gay Palestinians live in fear of arrest, detention without trial, torture and execution at the hands of Palestinian police and security services. They also risk abduction and so-called honor killing by vengeful family members and vigilante mobs, as well as punishment beatings and murder by Palestinian political groups such as Hamas and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement”.
Reports of homophobic and sexist abuses by Palestinian authorities have greatly cooled my enthusiasm for “free Palestine” politics (you may have noticed I’ve posted a lot less about Israel lately). It’s become increasingly clear, I think, that a free Palestine will not provide freedom for Palestinian lesbians, gays, and other sexual minorities; and will not provide freedom for many Palestinian women. So what do we mean, when we say we want to “free Palestine”? Is all this effort just to free straight, male Palestinians, while other Palestinians will have to be content with having one fewer boot upon their necks?
This is one reason I’m attracted to the “one Israel” solution some radical leftists are advocating – the idea that Israel should accept that it now effectively owns and rules the West Bank and Gaza, and give everyone living there full citizenship and equal rights, including the right to vote in Israeli elections. Unlike the two-state solution, the one-state solution promises some degree of freedom for even lesbian and gay Palestinians, freedom they’d be unlikely to experience under a government derived from the PLO.
For the time being, however, the PLO is desperately dependant on support from Western liberals. That support should be contingent on the PLO ceasing to violate the rights of its gay citizens..
I’d be surprised if a “free” Palestine even provided democracy for its citizens, much less gay rights. They may be the darlings of the left, the last colonized people on earth, but the Palestinians, left to run their own country, would probably have no better human rights record than any other country in the region.
My view is–a pox on both their houses. But at least Israel tries, a little.
I was alsk appalled when I read this story. It definitely shows the tremendous strength of intolerance.
Funny, I’ve recently beeen having the same thoughts.
Having time on my hands ( unemployed ) and getting bored
just annoying fundamentalist christians I have for a while
been attempting some kind of online dialogue with Muslims
on subjects like gay rights.
http://www.islamonline.net/ is sort of a typical site.
I have been incredibly dissapointed – the most “moderate”
of the Muslims I come across are about on a par with our
extreme fundamentalists on subjects like gays, womens rights
and church/state seperation.
And there are very few “moderates”.
Two other things are striking. I have heard about the anti-semitism,
but it is virulent and common. Everything is the fault of “the jews”
who control the US – even those of us named O’Neill ( secretly jewish I guess).
And the conspiratorial thinking. Almost anything that happens in
the world is actually a behind the scenes plot – probably
orchestrated by Mossad.
I have always been very sympathetic to the plight of the
Palestinians – I think they’ve received the worst deal since
the USA met the Cherokee, and they deserve justice and a
homeland.
And I think the was Israel acts is despicable and reminscent
of the Nazis.
I think our policy of unhestiatingly supporting Israel is
terribly one sided and helps no one – not our position
in the Middle East, not the Israeli citizens who wish to
find a peaceful accomidation, and certainly not the Palestinians.
But there is one argument that the Israelis have repeatedly made,
and which I have always previously dismissed, which is basically:
“You cannot deal with these people”.
That argument has taken on more and more resonance the more
I get to know them.
I’ve started to have a “plague on both your houses” outlook, I admit,
and although I still have sympathy for the plight of Palestinians –
indeed most of the middle east – it is hard to have a lot of
sympathy for someone who is largely suffering from self-inflicted
wounds.
Another reason that American liberals should be wary of supporting anything that will increase Muslim fundamentalist power is that it tends to come back on our lives in America. I know more than one conservative who argues against equal rights for gays and women by saying, “Well at least we don’t execute, etc. like they do in Muslim countries,” an attitude that the Bush administration seems to share.
I really think the mainstream liberals and the mainstream conservatives both are wrong about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trouble is, I don’t see much of a solution.
While I agree that the Palestinians have gotten a raw deal, they’re still behaving abominably by the standards of Western liberalism. Women’s issues, gay issues, even basic freedoms are lacking–and I’m not optimistic about their future, either.
On the other hand, the case can still be made for a moderate pro-Israel stance, even from a traditionally left-wing point of view. Recall that not so long ago, Zionism itself was a left-wing issue; it’s only been in the last 30 years that it’s migrated to the right. Israel has always had a fairly decent record of treating its own citizens well; if it were to withdraw from the territories most of the other abuses would stop. Israelis enjoy political and intellectual freedom; they also have produced an amazingly successful socialist system, one which few other countries can match–and a voluntary one at that.
But… So long as they’re razing homes, shooting children and the like… I can’t really feel comfortable supporting them, either.
so i take it y’all are also witholding your taxes, given the less-than-stellar record the US federal government has in terms of gay & lesbian rights…?
i think there’s some real confusion going on here.
not all Palestinians are Muslim fundamentalists. not all Palestinians are represented by or support the PLO.
i don’t believe that the struggle for rights can be partitioned off into separate categories. if you really care about the plight of gays & lesbians in Palestine there are some concrete things you can do. but one of those things is most certainly not supporting the state of Israel.
p.s.
i find it interesting to hear the political system in Israel described as “voluntary,” given its mandatory military service.
The political problem with the “One Israel” solution is that it would come across as a territory grab. See how much annoyance there is at Israel having annexed the suburbs of Jerusalem, above and beyond the fact that they’re occupying territories they haven’t annexed.
Another political problem is that it would remove the one leverage the Israelis have been trying to hold over the heads of the Arabs. “If you want these territories back, then stop trying to massacre us and eradicate our country!”
The practical problem with it is that you’d quickly get a country with a Muslim majority. And then the fundamentalists would take over because, brother, they do that, and most of the moderate Palestinians have already been killed off by their fellow Palestinians (far more than the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis). That would be the end of Israel, and I don’t think Israel should be expected to commit suicide. It has a 20% Arab population already, and that’s citizens, not counting the occupied territories.
hi Barry. You have two points: One should support for rights of Palestians be contigent on the support of their movement for feminsim, gay rights and other democratic norms? Two is the ultimate solution a one state solution.
OK on one, I seriously doubt that Palestinian gays, women and secular liberals are better off being murdered, tortured and starved by the Israeli government than living under a repressive Palestinian regieme. Very seldom are people better off being repressed by a foreign power than by a domestic government. I remember you seriously considered supporting the invasion of Iraq at one time because it would end the sanction regieme. Well the overwhelming majority of people in Iraq now have access to less health care, worse quality water than the did under Saddam under the sanction.
One way to measure this is to talk to Palestian gays and women and secular liberal. How many of them want the U.S. left to cut off what little support it gives the Palestian people until the Palestinian people take good stands on this issue?
Now what about the idea of secular democratic state in greater Palestine? Not a new idea; it was the PLO’s original position. Here is the problem. The majority of Jews in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip overwhelmingly oppose it. The majority of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank adn the Gaza strip overwhelmingly oppose it.
A two state solution is only solution that has a chance in hell of getting the support of both peoples. A majority of Palestians might accept a one state solution in which all the Jews were deported to NY, a majority of Israelis a one state solution in which all Palestinians were deported to Jordan. But the only solution that could conceivable win a majority of people on both sides is a two state solution.
It is also worth remembering that support for Islamic fundamentalism is comparatively new among Palestinians. They were once a brilliant ,welle educated secular people. Years of repression, including destruction their educational system by Israel has driven them into the arms of fundamentalists. Do you need social welfare in Palestine? Fundamentalist organizatins are pretty much the only place you can get it from? Want your kid to have some sort of eductation there? Local fundementalist funded schools are your only chance.
We should oppose strongly all the undemocratic strains in the Palestian movement, – anti-gay, anti-woman. But that does not give us the right to support the continued oppression of the Palestianian people; and that means supporting the actual struggle – not the ones we wish existed.
Again, before you decide to make your support contigent, ask actual Palestinian feminists, and actual Palestinian gay rights activists.
“so i take it y’all are also witholding your taxes, given the less-than-stellar record the US federal government has in terms of gay & lesbian rights…?”
Well, no, because then I would go to jail, and I would be a far less effective advocate there than I am now. Plus going to jail sucks for other reasons too.
“not all Palestinians are Muslim fundamentalists. not all Palestinians are represented by or support the PLO.”
I never said either of these. I suspect, though, that a hypothetical Palestinian state would do far worse than Israel now does at protecting gay rights–among many other types of rights.
“i find it interesting to hear the political system in Israel described as “voluntary,” given its mandatory military service.”
I was referring to the kibbutzim, which are indeed voluntary. They are essentially communes, but you can leave if you want it. The kibbutz is also one of the most effective models of collective economic organization around.
As to military service, no, it isn’t voluntary. But then again, perhaps we too would have a draft if so many of our neighbors were so intent on blowing themselves up in shopping malls.
I don’t doubt that many Palestinians–most of them even–are decent human beings, worthy of better treatment than Israel now gives them, and certainly worthy of better leaders than the ones they have. Until they get their acts together and show a bit of respect for human rights, though, I just can’t see supporting them.
I shared the issues this is talking about on some of my Islam related lists and I got a very thoughtful letter from a gay Muslim imam — he’s a really amazing guy — he basically agrees with Ampersand that it’s horrific and hard to deal with the idea of supporting the national rights of people who don’t support your own natural rights. I will post summaries follow-up discussion (if any) that comes out of it. Muslims and Palestinian activists need to be discussing the issue of how to build coalitions with liberals who are their natural supporters if they are against liberal values themselves.
To me, the only answer to the Israeli/Palestinan war is a NO-STATE SOULUTION—-neither a Palestinan OR Jewish state.
In fact, I basically advocate an eradication of national soverginity as we know it accross the globe. It was all a cruel lie for Third World peoples, anyway (and for this argument, I include the Semitic peoples—Arab and Jew both—of the Mideast) Israel, for example, would not last for a New York second without U.S. aid.
For the 3rd World, it was a case of using the master’s tools to dismantle his house, in the words of feminist Aude Lorde.
It won’t be easy—especially given so-called “globalism,”—which is really corporate imperialiam—but it’s the only way to go, IMHO.
This article is over a year old, but still very relevant in explaining the horror of being a homosexual in Palestinian territory. It is very harsh on the Palestinian authority, and just as much human rights community for ignoring this problem:
“International human rights monitors have all but ignored gay Palestinians’ plight. The U.S. State Department’s recently released human rights report for 2001, for instance, blandly notes, “In the Palestinian territories homosexuals generally are socially marginalized, and occasionally receive physical threats.” As Ganon explains it, “The Palestinian human rights groups are afraid to deal with the problem. One Palestinian activist told me that Israelis need to raise the issue because they’ll be shut down if they try to. Amnesty Israel is sympathetic but their mandate is limited to Israeli human rights violations. And the international human rights groups say they’ve got a long list of pressing issues. When Israeli police harass Arab Israeli homosexuals, I send out reports, and then–oh, you should see how quickly the human rights organizations get in touch with me to investigate. The hypocrisy is unbelievable.””
The article gives a clear answer to what Palestinian gays would do, if asked. They would go to Tel Aviv.
I strongly oppose the one-state solution simply on demographic grounds. It would quickly become majority Palestinian, and as such would resemble the P.A.’s human rights record more than it would Israel’s.
I favor a unilateral withdrawal from most of the territories — essentially a unilateral imposition of the final Clinton plan that was rejected by Arafat. That would return over 95% of the occupied land to the Palestinians — all contiguous territories — with Israel retaining only those areas adjacent to pre-1967 Israel that have been built up with developments.
That would solve the issue with minimal population transfer, cut off support for Palestinian militants who would no longer be fighing for independence, but only for land.
Then, there should be massive aid contingent upon cleaning up human rights abuses and curbing terrorism. Is it worth giving up the abuse of homosexuals and murder of Jews in order to help all of your own people.
I cannot think of anyone who could object to this plan, except Israeli extremists who don’t want to give up any land, and Palestinian extremists who think it is worth giving up a homeland in order to continue killing Jews and fighting for the final 4% of their land.
Yeah, what Gar Lipow said. Neither side wants a one-state solution. I think the best course out of a host of dismal choices would be to support the two-state solution, and then apply pressure to the Palestinian state to improve their human rights record.
This is a disturbing thread. Given that the US has a record of killing innocent people all over the globe and that we are a democracy, how exactly is it that we think we have the right to tell the Palestinians they don’t deserve a state? Given our circumstances, we are arguably worse than they are.
And Israel–well, it’s a Jewish democracy because the bulk of the Arab population was ethnically cleansed in 1948. They don’t deserve their freedom either.
Maybe there’s some small innocuous country which hasn’t oppressed anyone whose citizens live up to the standards people are setting here. But neither the US nor Israel qualify.
Donald, the question, for me, isn’t “do individual Palestinians deserve a state, deserve to live in freedom, deserve civil rights, etc.” Of course they do, as much as anyone else does.
The question (for me) is, “given my limited time and resources, does it make sense to make supporting the Palestinian Authority a top priority, especially since there’s little reason to think that the PA is going to give all individual Palestinians freedom and civil rights? Or would I do better to spend those time and resources on another issue?”
If I AM going to work for the independance of the PA from Israel, I’m not going to blindly accept a “we’ll do the IMPORTANT work of putting the PA in charge today, and less important things like stopping the PA’s support of anti-gay abuses will have to wait until after that” formulation of the issues.
Of course, it now occurs to me that you may not have been responding to me at all, but just to other people on the thread, in which case my reply to you was a bit on the irrelevant side. Sorry ’bout that.
Two state solution seems the only possibility demographically.
As for gay Palestinians, give them persecuted refugee status (if applicable) in immigration to the U.S. Ditto for women threatened by honor killings, a FAR LARGER CATEGORY than gay Palestinians. Straight men need not apply unless they have been tortured by the Palestinian government, ie, are standard-issue political refugees. Really, the Palestinians will have to learn to govern themselves at some point if a two-state solution occurs, and if they implode, they implode.
“The question (for me) is, “given my limited time and resources, does it make sense to make supporting the Palestinian Authority a top priority,”
I agree completely. If all of the protests and U.N. resolutions and worldwide attention against Israel were directed against, say, Sudan, where there is an actual honesttogod genocide taking place that threatens to match Rwanda’s (30,000 killed, 1.2 million displaced with current — and rising — projected death toll of 350,000).
All I hear are news reports and protests against “4 militants killed in Gaza” or “10 houses bulldozed.” Is it a bad thing? Yes. Is it a waste of my time to think about it when 30,000 non-Arab Sudanese are being killed, or many more sub-Saharan Africans are dying of AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition.
You bet.
i agree with Donald… this is a disturbing thread. mostly it’s just sad to see Palestinians once again being singled out & demonized, held accountable for the actions of a few of their number, castigated for crimes every government on the face of the planet is guilty of…
who here thinks it’s easy being gay here in the US? do you ever wonder why so many street kids are queer? it’s because they grew up in small towns & suburbs & other less than tolerant places where they were harassed, abused, ostracized, assaulted, &, yes, even threatened with death, by fundamentalists both religious & otherwise.
they fled their homes & made their way to the big cities where they hoped to find others of their kind, hoping for some measure of security or acceptance. some went to the “authorities,” only to find that often the authorities don’t give a shit about them & that, in fact, often the law would send them back home, back to more isolation, abuse & pain.
and so, like the queer Palestinians profiled in the article cited above by Richard, they end up homeless & broke, often drug addicted, working as prostitutes… & ultimately, sad as it sounds, this is a better life than what they had to face at home.
and let’s not even get into what it’s like for queers who find themselves for whatever reason incarcerated in our federal prison system….
yes, right here in the wonderfully democratic US. is it any wonder that such abuses take place in a war-torn society that has been under continual military assault for decades, wherein the space for political participation has been restricted to those who excel in the language of violence because most people are simply trying to stay alive? dig it, repression breeds repression. ever wondered about how Saddam stayed in power? it wasn’t because his people thought he was the best ruler ever…
there’s a proverb about stones & glass houses… how does it go again?
actually that’s not my real question – the main thing i’m wondering is what exactly y’all mean by “support”?
because if you believe that “the Palestinians, left to run their own country, would probably have no better human rights record than any other country in the region” or if you’re starting to feel that it may be true that “You cannot deal with these people” then i seriously doubt many Palestinians are going to be interested in your support at all.
some more questions:
Jason: you affirm that we’d be more likely to have a draft here “if so many of our neighbors were so intent on blowing themselves up in shopping malls.” i’m assuming you mean that the reason Israel has mandatory military service is because of suicide bombers? interesting point, given that there were no suicide bombers before 1994…
& Richard: you didn’t finish your sentence & i’m wondering how it was going to end: “If all of the protests and U.N. resolutions and worldwide attention against Israel were directed against, say, Sudan….” If they were… then what? The genocide would stop? Has the occupation of Palestine recently ended & I haven’t heard about it?
Richard wrote:
Out of curiosity, Richard, do you feel the same way about news reports of Israelis being killed – that they’re a waste of time, since the number of Isrealis killed in this conflict is so tiny compared to what’s going on in Sudan?
Barry – you say:
>given my limited time and resources, does it make sense to make supporting the Palestinian Authority a top priority, especially since there’s little reason to think that the PA is going to give all individual Palestinians freedom and civil rights? Or would I do better to spend those time and resources on another issue?”
The problem is:
1) Your position was not about making the Palestinian rights a top priority. You said
>he PLO is desperately dependant on support from Western liberals. That support should be contingent on the PLO ceasing to violate the rights of its gay citizens.
So until the PLO improves it’s position on gay rights, you will give it no support – presumably not even verbal or petition signing or stuff that takes little effort:
2) Taking your revised position – this is an argument that you have objected to in other contexts. At any time there is always a “worst thing in the world”. It really is not a valid argument to say that no one should spend effort against a particular evil because it is not the worst one in the world. That is an argument the Bush administration has used lately – our torturers are not as bad as Saddams torturers, so why so much attention?
3) There are some very good arguments why the Paelestinian issue should be a significant issue for American. The U.S. provides major aid to Israel. It is our leading recipient of U.S. foreign aid -by a long shot. Especially if you consider that foreign aid to Egypt from the U.S. is mostly a reward for no longer being a threat to Israel. Our aid is a significant portion of their GDP – not an overwhelming percent, but at least 1% or more – which is a fairly big deal. And our military backing is also pretty important. So our policity has a hell of a lot of influence there. In fact many analysts insist that there would be a two state solution in place today if the U.S. was willing put pressure on Israel. In short it is a major U.S. resposibiltiy because we have the power. And therefore making it a priority greater than zero or near the bottom is morally required of the U.S. left.
4) It is also important strategically. Israel continuing to opress the Palesitians is a major source of instability in the world. It is a recruiting tool for Al Queda and the most reactionary fundamentalists that has only recently been exceeded by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is also a scapegoat a lot of repressive Arab regimes use to divert popular anger and stay in power. Don’t underestimte this; having a foreign enemy that does genuinely evil things your populace genuinely finds offensive is always a give to a dictator.
5) The PLO does not in fact rely on support by the western left, which gives it very little. This may be one of the reasons it has drifted towards fundamentalism.
Another is the mistake Israel made back in the 70’s by funding Hamas to create an alternative to the PLO. Well they certainly suceeded; sometimes I wonder if it really was a mistake – whether making their enemy more intrangsinent was not actually the goal. It certainly helps make sure that there is “nobody to talk to”.
—
real email is garlpublic then at sign and comcast then dot and then net.
Out of curiosity, Richard, do you feel the same way about news reports of Israelis being killed
Certainly. It’s all part of the “cycle of violence” reporting. I don’t actually distinguish between the two, since they’re usually paired.
“Palestinian militants killed a pregnant Israeli settler in response to the murder of Palestinian leader . . .”
“Israeli soldiers bulldozed a dozen homes in response to mortars lobbed from the refugee camp that killed . . .”
Do I personally believe that the media is biased against Israel and in favor of Palestine? Yes, I do. I recognize that as my own bias, based on my own personal understanding on who was ultimately “responsible” for the curent situation — and I can see how it would be reasonable to disagree if you put less weight than I do on the Arab nations’ instigating the 1967 War in which the occupied territories were first occupied and Arafat’s rejection of Clinton’s 2000 peace proposal and more weight on, say, incidents of Palestinian expulsion in 1948 or the Israeli settlement instigations of the 1980s.
But that’s not relevant here. To directly respond, I would be very happy to trade all coverage of Israel (both pro and con) for coverage of parts of the world, such as Sudan, where the human rights abuses are so much greater.
To respond to jam: If the world focused on Sudan instead of Israel, then I believe that there would be fewer overall human rights abuses and illegal murders. The Sudanese military feels free to run rampant because they (rightly) think the world doesn’t care.
5) The PLO does not in fact rely on support by the western left, which gives it very little. This may be one of the reasons it has drifted towards fundamentalism.
I believe that Arab countries contribute $45 million per month to the P.A. and the EU contributes $10 million per month. Those two sources accounts for over half of the P.A.’s budget. “Very little” is a relative term. In fact, support has dropped recently due to allegations of misuse.
It’s sort of a Catch-22. You have to threaten to withhold funds in order to maximize your leverage, but if you actually withhold the funds, then you have no more leverage.
According to the EU itself:
“The EC is now the most important financial donor to the Palestinians, providing badly needed humanitarian assistance, support to refugees, development assistance and support to the Palestinian Authority. EC and other international donor assistance to the Palestinian Authority have been essential for the PA to carry out basic public services. The importance of EC donor support was recognised at the most recent Ad Hoc Liaison Committee meeting of international donors (including the EU, US, Norway, and the World Bank) in Rome on 10 December 2003.
Total assistance from the European Community budget in support of the reform process and in response to the worsening economic and humanitarian crisis stands at €570 million for 2002-2003. This covers assistance to the PA, an emergency fund for the Palestinian private sector, rehabilitation of municipalities, preparations for elections, assistance to refugees, food aid, support to the health sector, institution building and judicial reform.”
Umm EU does not equal “the left”. To be left, you must left of mainstream.
By your own figures Arab nations which are much poorer than the EU provide 4.5 times the aid the EU does – not a rebuttal to your argument since that is still significant but a supporting point about priority.
—
real email address may be obtained from previous posts in this thread.
I’m sorry I haven’t been responding more to the posts on this thread, by the way; I’m just too busy to spend much time blogging this week.
Gar wrote: Taking your revised position – this is an argument that you have objected to in other contexts. At any time there is always a “worst thing in the world”. It really is not a valid argument to say that no one should spend effort against a particular evil because it is not the worst one in the world.
Point well taken, and I have to agree with you. Therefore, I’m about to revise my position yet again. :-) (This shouldn’t surprise anyone; my position on Israel/Palestine issues is clearly in flux, and thus likely to be frequently revised).
For me, what it comes down to is that because people cannot fight for every good cause in the world, they need some way of choosing what to fight for. I think it’s reasonable if people choose to fight for the good causes that engage their passions. It’s therefore perfectly legitimate for any individual to be passionately focused on Israel/Palestine issues, even though other areas have higher death counts.
However, I have the same right to prioritize issues by my passions. And the more I consider what a likely PA government would be like, for women and for sexual minorities, the less my passions are engaged by a cause that calls for the PA having their own country to rule.
On the other hand, I’m not about to have my passions engaged by pro-Israeli politics either; on the contrary, the Israeli government clearly (to me) has a shocking and disgusting disregard for civilian life, and has not negotiated in good faith.
One question for you, Gar. You write “We should oppose strongly all the undemocratic strains in the Palestian movement, – anti-gay, anti-woman.” What actions should that “strong opposition” consist of, specifically?
* * *
Richard, our disagreement runs even deeper than you may realize. I don’t believe that Arafat turned down Clinton’s offer; on the contrary, that’s just the pro-Israel spin on a more complex situation. The bottom line, however, is that the negotiations continued after Camp David. What ended the negotations were the Israelis deciding to leave the negotiating table when Sharon was elected.
The fact that this sequence of events is overwhelmingly reported as “Israel made a good offer, Arafat refused to negotiate” is evidence that the press is NOT biased in favor of the Palestinians.
Read through the whole New York Review of Books article. It was long. Don’t know if I really disagree with anything in it. The “final offer” was hazy and left several issues open to interpretetation. Barak wouldn’t give away his bottom line. the Israelis were playing hardball by scrapping interim deals for a final “endgame.” The fact that the issues were “complex” does not, in my mind, shift the final blame away from Arafat.
For me, it comes down to the substantive bottom line — the actual reasons that Arafat would not agree. From the article:
“The Camp David proposals were viewed [by the Palestinians] as inadequate: they were silent on the question of refugees, the land exchange was unbalanced, and both the Haram and much of Arab East Jerusalem were to remain under Israeli sovereignty.”
Possibly so. Possibly the deal rejected by Arafat was not the best deal possible in terms of final borders and maximum number of Palestinians allowed to return to Israel. I simply do not see that as an ‘excuse’ for the renewed bloodshed and the launching of the intifada. How many lives was it worth to get from what Arafat rejected to what he would have accepted? In my mind, none.
Assume that the Clinton plan was imposed unilaterally by the UN or the US, and that all gray areas were resolved in favor of Israel (no right of return for anyone, only limited land transfer of poor land from pre-1967 Israel). In your mind, would the newly formed country of Palestine have a right to go to war against Israel to get the rest? By not accepting the offer, that is what they did.
But the “who is right” argument is secondary to my main point, which is, “Irrespective of who is right, how much should we care?”
In terms of overall extent of harm (inflicted on Israel and Palestine combined): we should care about places like Sudan a lot more than places like Israel.
In terms of moral weight of harm (i.e., is this a situation where both sides have reasonable positions, and the issue is “complex”, or is one side completely without moral backing): Sudan is comparable to Rwanda with clearcut good guys and bad guys. Israel is muddier with enough sins and reasonable justifications to go around on both sides.
In terms of potential effects on the outcome: With dozens of UN resolutions and protests, the situation is Israel is hardly “better.” With Sudan, we haven’t even tried.
Hi,
Regarding this argument about whether we should care about justice in Sudan and genocide in Africa rather than Palestine, first of all, I don’t understand why we consider these things zero-sum, as if we can’t care about both. Second, the reason why a lot of American activists rightly focus on the palestinian issue is because of the amount of support our country gives to Israel. This is an issue American citizens could influence or exert pressure about.
On teh other hand the US already has sanctions in place re: Sudan. The US congress already regularly castigates Sudan. As Sudan receives little help or support from the US, American activists marching for or against it will do little or nothing. Also, the Sudanese issue is not really well understood and is complex. There are peace initiatives going on and NGOs have been working on it for years; but activists seem more interested in picking a side and attacking the other.
Also, sorry to post twice. I have received word from two Muslim gay activists on the palestinian issue who state that they work full time on the issue of homosexual rights in Muslim countries. This is also a very complex issue. Palestine is, incidentally, not the only national entity (guess it still is not a country) that has major civil rights issues re: gays. (for instance in a certain country marital rights for gays is seen as really, super controversial.) I live in Egypt and it has major human rights issues re: gays and no one is protesting that on the streets of the US. This requires, in my opinion, a different approach; something to do with more communication and less blame and attack and counterattack, but I am not sure what the best approach is. I do know that the gay activists I mentioned above are being very proactive and positive about the problem and they are able to make inroads in it. I don’t see that US liberals, who are not Muslim and not Arab themselves, will convince Muslim Arabs that their cultural views re: gays are wrong and in need of change; I don’t think cultural attitudes are changed by advice or arm twisting from outside.
Apropos of Sudan, there is a new blog called “Passion of the Present” that collects information on the crisis in Sudan. Very useful.
The May 23 post links to the International Crisis Groups report. It includes 13 practical recommendations, such as:
“2. The U.S., EU member states and other donor governments should approach Libya, Chad, other neighbouring countries and the SPLA with a view to establishing alternative routes and channels not subject to Khartoum’s veto for delivering humanitarian aid to Darfur by land and air.”
This is in response to those who believe that petitioning the government for a more active role in Sudan in fruitless simply because they give more aid to Israel. Or who believe that any attempt to divert attention away from suffering Palestinians is necessarily part of a Zionist plot.
y’know Richard, contemptuous dismissals of “suffering Palestinians” is probably not the best way to convince people of the rightness of your cause… i don’t think anyone here has said that the Sudan is not worth paying attention to. like Anna pointed out, this is not a zero-sum game.
incidentally, who the hell said anything about a Zionist plot?
My “zionist plot” comment was hyperbolic. It was a response to ampersand’s question when I criticized the attention given to Palestinian deaths, and he asked what I though about the attention given to Israeli deaths. It ended up on a tangent about what was “responsible” for the violence, which was not my point at all, and about which arguing is pointless — any reasonable observer would see that both sides are responsible, and that the blame could reasonable be allocated up to 75% to either side, but certainly no less than 25% to the other.
The implication, though, was that if I was coming in with a pro-Israel agenda, then my moral argument regarding Sudan would be less credible.
My point was that there is a moral imperative to focus on greater harms — that to a certain extent it is a “zero sum” game, and even worse focussing intently on a relatively small problem at the expense of a larger one turns it into a “negative sum” game because you are helping to save a marginal dozen lives at the expense of a million Sudanese.
I don’t buy that there will always be a “worst thing in the world” and therefore you are free to pick your issues so everything gets covered.
Some issues are covered to death, some are not. If the “worst thing in the world” is getting tons of attention, a person should feel free to focus on a lesser problem that is unaddressed. When an undercovered issue is, in fact, a greater harm than a “covered to death” one, then there is a moral imperative to change focus rather than focus on the lesser harm.
“…what was “responsible” for the violence, which was not my point at all, and about which arguing is pointless — any reasonable observer would see that both sides are responsible”
really? well, count me in on the side of the unreasonables then… that’s one of the more ahistorical comments yet on this thread, & that’s saying something.
Jason: you affirm that we’d be more likely to have a draft here “if so many of our neighbors were so intent on blowing themselves up in shopping malls.” i’m assuming you mean that the reason Israel has mandatory military service is because of suicide bombers? interesting point, given that there were no suicide bombers before 1994…
Cheap shot, man.
In 1948, when Israel was founded, the majority of Arabs weren’t doing the suicide bomber thing either. Back then, they were talking about pushing the Jews into the sea instead, finishing the good work that Hitler had started.
In those circumstances, and given that Israel was the target of several genocidal wars of aggression in the meantime, I don’t think a draft is such a bad idea.
It must be very easy living in your blackandwhite world, jam.
I’d would be nice to come visit some day.
Hi Barry. I should have come back earlier. I wasn’t in much disagreement with what you said (on any issue ever)–what I objected to was this tone that I perceived in what had preceded me that the Palestinians were particularly undeserving.
As for your one-state solution, I’ve never been real happy with the notion of a Palestinian state headed by Arafat and his cronies on the remnants of the land Palestinians used to live in. A democratic one-state solution with guaranteed rights for all always seemed to be the obvious fair solution and binationalism the only truly moral form of Zionism, but 56 years later it might be impossible to get both populations to agree to this. Oddly enough, many Americans (especially the more mainstream type of war critic) are always talking about how difficult it would be to bring democracy to Iraq with its divisions, often with the underlying implication being that they are too irrational to live together in peace. Nobody in the mainstream points out that the same thing could be said about Israelis and Palestinians, because that kind of critique is only supposed to be leveled at the Other.
As for the zero-sum thing advocated by Richard, there’s some logic to it, but in the end I think it’s a bad approach, both morally and pragmatically. Chomsky uses it, though not with the same emphasis as Richard–Chomsky says it is his duty as an American citizen to focus chiefly on American crimes, partly because they are the ones he can influence the most. I have no objection to an individual focusing on the crimes that bother him or her the most (I do this and probably everyone does), but it’d be a disaster if everyone thought the same way and only spoke about the same issues to the exclusion of others. (To Chomsky’s credit, he is associated with ZNET and they clearly don’t follow his zero sum philosophy on human rights advocacy.)
As for the Sudan, yes, it should be a high priority, but then on the pure body count standard the health crisis in the poor countries of the world stands at the very top. Millions of preventable deaths each year, when an amount of money much smaller than the Iraq war is costing would put a stop to many or most of them. Also, it’s unpleasant and a bit suspicious to me that when Darfur comes up, so many people feel it necessary to compare it to the death toll of the Palestinians, as though American indifference to other humanitarian catastrophes were caused by our touching regard for Palestinian welfare. As you sort of imply and I’ve said elsewhere, nobody says we shouldn’t be putting stories about Hamas suicide bombings on the front pages when other atrocities kill far more people.
Finally, while speaking of Palestinians, their suffering isn’t limited to the actual number killed–malnutrition among children has greatly increased but since that doesn’t get much coverage I don’t know the numbers offhand. And yeah, the suffering is partly the fault of the suicide bombing campaign.
BTW, when I put in the email address, is that something everyone can click on, or is it just available to you? I always put in fake ones, out of a mixture of paranoia and privacy, but would put in the real one if it were limited to you and your blogging collective (or whatever it is you’ve got going here).
Jason: i’m sorry you feel that responding to glib oversimplification with facts amounts to a “cheap shot.” and, speaking of oversimplification, once again you are holding an entire range of peoples & cultures (“Arabs”) responsible for the political ideologies of a fundamentalist minority. as before, Israel gets to be complex (kibbutzim as well as Likud) whereas Arabs are all just looking to finish “the good work that Hitler started” (guess it was only a matter of time before the Nazi comparisons started)… and all of this in a strange effort to justify state-sponsored slavery (i.e. the draft). it’s like holding every US citizen responsible for the deranged dribblings of Bush, Falwell, Limbaugh & whatever other fascist of the month has gotten hold of a microphone. i think maybe one of the roots of your general confusion is the delusion that people choose their “leaders” instead of having them imposed upon them by force. for example, the mufti of Jerusalem during WWII was indeed an anti-Semitic psycho. did he represent the entirety of the Arab world? hardly… especially insofar as he was appointed by the British.
& Richard: i’m sorry that you feel that anyone who disagrees with your misinformed perspectives on Israel/Palestine is therefore living in a “blackandwhite” world. i’m thinking you must have assumed that i believe the Palestinians (y’know, all of them no matter who they might be) to be “blameless.” what i’m actually objecting to is your ascribing the quality of “reasonable” to a reductive & simplistic analysis which ignores radical inequalities of power & which asserts that there’s only two sides to the conflict when in fact there are many.
you engage in similar reductive analysis regarding the current horror in Sudan as being a case of “clearcut good guys & bad guys.” as Anna pointed out, the situation in the Sudan is a bit more complex than that. if anyone’s interested in an analysis/account of Sudan that gets beyond white hat/black hat i would suggest checking out Douglas Johnson’s “Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars” (Indiana University Press, 2003) as a pretty good place to begin…it’s got some flaws, but in general it does an excellent job of articulating the complexity of both the history of Sudan as well as the difficulties presented in resolving the current nightmare.
despite my disagreements with him, Richard is absolutely right to say that the situation there is worthy of active attention & effort. i don’t know what the effective course of action would be, however. Clinton’s strategy (bombing pharmaceutical plants) didn’t do much good. media attention doesn’t necessarily do much either (witness Israel/Palestine which does get covered & has just gotten worse & worse). sanctions? since they worked so dandy in Iraq we might want to conceive of some kind of alternative here as well…
I am re-reading the comment thread several days after last seeing it and wanted to point out that while I am stressing the complexity of the Sudan conflict I also am not trying to apologize for the Northern hardline military dictatorship. I agree that they have for the most part handled themselves very, very badly and there are systemic problems in their conduct of their side of the conflict. But the conflict continues to be difficult and thorny and a lot of outside parties have been getting the sides to the table and working on the issue for years and it is kind of easy for Congresspeople and others with a vested interest in promoting religious one-ups-man-ship to paint the conflict as North bad, South good.
Let’s see, where to start….
“Jason: i’m sorry you feel that responding to glib oversimplification with facts amounts to a “cheap shot.””
–You knew perfectly well that Israel had compelling reasons for a draft before 1994. I trusted you to understand those, but I see my trust was misplaced.
“and, speaking of oversimplification, once again you are holding an entire range of peoples & cultures (“Arabs”) responsible for the political ideologies of a fundamentalist minority.”
–As I understand it, the vast majority of Arabs– even in liberal countries like Egypt–believe that Israel ought to be eliminated. An awful lot of those come very close to advocating genocide. By contrast, the vast majority of Israelis would prefer to live in peace with their neighbors, and would even prefer to withdraw from the territories. Yes, there are exceptions on both sides. There are plenty of Israelis who are viciously anti-Arab, and I would condemn these. There are also plenty of Arabs who might be willing to accommodate Israel as well. Good for them, but the majorities speak for themselves.
“whereas Arabs are all just looking to finish “the good work that Hitler started” (guess it was only a matter of time before the Nazi comparisons started)”
–Would you like me to supply you with quotes? A remarkable amount of the early anti-Jewish propaganda was basically ripped off from the Nazis themselves. It is certainly a Nazi comparison, but unlike most, it a comparison that is quite well-justified by the historical record.
“i think maybe one of the roots of your general confusion is the delusion that people choose their “leaders” instead of having them imposed upon them by force.”
If the current leadership in the Arab world is completely unrepresentative of the people, then where are the pro-democracy revolts? Where are the people standing up for human rights? The only rebellions I can see in the Arab world right now are coming from al Qaeda and other people even worse than the current crop of autocrats.
Jason,
There are many people in the Arab world who want reform and aren’t fundamentalist/terrorist. The fact htat you don’t know about them does not mean that they do not exist.
Recently a coalition of human rights groups here in Cairo came out with a declaration regarding ARab political reform. Now you tell me. If a bunch of people in the ARab world do something, and the Western media ignores it, did it really happen? Like that tree in the forest.
I think it is comforting for Westerners to tell themselves that Arabs all believe x or y or z rather than actually doing some research — and I don’t mean reading agenda-filled silliness like MEMRI’s selective translations of the worst elements of the Arab media, also done to prove the point that Arabs are all racist and subhuman.
Anna,
Thank you for the information; I was not aware of these developments. For the record, I’ve also complained about how MEMRI has some serious problems–I know better than to trust it. See this article from my blog, for example:
http://positiveliberty.com/2004/04/language-memri-power.html
Also, please note I never said that “all Arabs believe” anything. Of course that would be a racist statement, and of course I condemn it. It seems jam misquoted me above, a misquotation I failed to notice the first time around. Given jam’s style of argument, I can only surmise that the misquoting was done on purpose, and maliciously.
I should have called him on it. Instead I copied and pasted without reading carefully, and for this I am very sorry.
What I did say was that at times, a majority of Arabs have wanted to destroy the state of Israel. This is the truth, and I refuse to retract it.
Jason,
Well I can’t argue with the phrase as you have now couched that “at times, a majority of Arabs have wanted to destroy the state of Israel”. Yeah, and at times Israel has had a majority that favored ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and people saying really racist things about Arabs like Golda Meir saying if you put Arabs in a sieve most of them would fall through or others calling them animals, vipers etc.
The hard thing about this conflict is that a person involved in it can hold contradictory thoughts about it in his head at the same time because it is an emotional subject for him. So I can talk to an Arab person, for example an Egyptian, who can rail on and on about Israel in the most emotional of terms and call for its destruction based on having seen really gruesome photos of dead kids shot by snipers or whatever.
But that same person, in the next half hour, can bring up the fact that if only Arafat had listened to Sadat he would (expletive) have an (expletive) country now that would be a much better deal than any of the deals made since. No calls for destruction of Israel here. Just a wish that Camp David had really worked on a greater scale than it did.
Well, which is it? Peace with Israel or destruction? And I want to ask all these people who are always quoting Arab emotional rhetoric and pointing to it as some sort of reason for Israel’s actions or evidence that Arabs are collectively insane or uncivilized: Do you really take the call for destruction seriously? To me I equate this sort of rhetoric on the part of the Arabic speaker to be sort of akin to the rhetoric that I heard when I last visited the US in October of 2001 and I heard people calling for bombs and stuff to be dropped on OBL and those who support him because they were in grief and shock and were really angry. These were people that are normally quite rational.
Should I take from this that there is clear evidence that Americans are animals or that they are completely destructive? No, that would be confusing heated emotion, which leads people to express themselves really strongly, with something far more general, if I extrapolated from this that Americans are generally like this or that this reflects something about the American mindset.
So parsing as you have, I could tell you that at times, a majority of Americans have wished or emotionally felt that something radical and drastic should be done in response to a great tragegy; in fact many have been looking at American newspapers from WWII that railed about the Japanese in the strongest of racist terms, etc. — but that would be silly because people say (or be manipulated to say) things in the heat of the moment that they do not really, continuously, truly, believe or want to implement.
what did u expect yes gay rights are important. but this is the middle east i think ur pushing it by asking for an end to the halt the arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals. during the 50’s the middle east found the idear of secular and demoncratic goverments every appealing. many were formed most eaither turned corrupt and became the oppressors they had fought against (such as the batha party led by saddam hussien of iraq) while rest such as the ones in iran and syria were derailed by western super powers.eg. america sponsored death sqauds and replaced them with brutual dictators such as the shiar of iran.
now an idealogy has been formed which threatens to take the middle east back to the time of the 8th centuary after all it makes sence. the west for the muslim world has only ment pain and suffering. they do not think of freedom when they of the west instead they think of death sqauds and oppression. since the secular and demoncratic goverments have failed it makes sence for the muslim to return to their proud and successful goverments ran during the 8th century of this means the persecution of gays and other such minority groups. i know this dose not justify the perescution and injustice of homosexuals but at the verry least it dose help u understand the reasons behind the persecution