The New York Times reports: Mazen, a carpenter who organizes protests against President Bashar al-Assad in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, has torn down the posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that once decorated his car and shop.
Like many Syrians, Mazen, 35, revered Mr. Nasrallah for his confrontational stance with Israel. He considered Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party, as an Arab champion of the dispossessed, not just for its Shiite Muslim base but for Sunnis like himself. But now that Hezbollah has stood by Mr. Assad during his deadly yearlong crackdown on the uprising against his rule, Mazen sees Hezbollah as a sectarian party that supports Mr. Assad because his opponents are mainly Sunnis.
“Now, I hate Hezbollah,” he said. “Nasrallah should stand with the people’s revolution if he believes in God.”
Mr. Nasrallah’s decision to maintain his critical alliance with Syria has risked Hezbollah’s standing and its attempts to build pan-Islamic ties in Lebanon and the wider Arab world.
Though Hezbollah’s base in Lebanon remains strong, it runs an increasing risk of finding itself isolated, possibly caught up in a sectarian war between its patron, Iran, the region’s Shiite power, and Saudi Arabia, a protector of Sunni interests in the Middle East. Its longtime ally, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has distanced itself from the Assad government, moving its headquarters out of Damascus, and Sunni revolutionaries in Syria have explicitly denounced Hezbollah as an enemy. At home, its Lebanese rivals sense a rare opportunity to erode its power.
In a delicate adjustment in the face of these new realities — and the resilience of the uprising — Hezbollah has shifted its tone. In carefully calibrated speeches last month, Mr. Nasrallah gently but firmly signaled that Mr. Assad could not crush the uprising by force and must lay down arms and seek a political settlement. He implicitly acknowledged the growing moral outrage in the wider Muslim world at the mounting death toll, obliquely noted that the Syrian government was accused of “targeting civilians” and urged Mr. Assad to “present the facts to the people.”
Behind the scenes, Mr. Nasrallah personally tried to start a reconciliation process in Syria early in the uprising and is now renewing those efforts, said Ali Barakeh, a Hamas official involved in the talks.
“He refuses the killing for both sides,” said Mr. Barakeh, the Beirut representative for Hamas.
Mr. Barakeh said that Mr. Nasrallah visited Damascus in April of last year and briefly persuaded Mr. Assad to try to reach a political solution, with Hezbollah and Hamas acting as mediators. But as Hamas began reaching out to fellow Sunni Muslims in the opposition, the plan was scuttled by the Syrian government.
Last year, as the government of Bahrain violently suppressed an Arab Spring protest movement, an unlikely champion of the small Gulf nation emerged on Capitol Hill in Washington: Democratic Rep. Eni Faleomavaega, the delegate from American Samoa.
Faleomavaega, who has been a non-voting delegate in Congress since 1989 and is now the third-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, typically focuses on more local matters: the tuna industry, Pacific Islands affairs and securing federal funding for American Samoa.
But this week he is taking a trip to Bahrain, his second in the past year, both paid by the Bahraini government. It’s part of a year-long friendship the congressman has developed with the Gulf nation.
In March 2011, just weeks into the crisis, Faleomavaega emerged seemingly out of nowhere 2014 he has no history of commenting on Middle East affairs 2014 to enter a 2,500-word statement into the Congressional Record that closely echoed the Bahraini government’s spin. “Bahrain is under attack,” he said, painting protesters as violent, Iran-backed vandals representing “the worst kind of seditious infiltration from a foreign enemy.” He praised the Crown Prince for supposedly meeting protesters’ demands for democratic reforms.
“Mr. Speaker,” Faleomavaega said. “I have to ask why the demonstrators returned to protesting again, even after all their demands were agreed to.”
Just days before, the government had torn down the iconic Pearl Monument at the center of the protests, and Saudi Arabian tanks had rolled into Bahrain to back the government crackdown.
So, why is the delegate from American Samoa so interested in supporting Bahrain? Faleomavaega told ProPublica it’s because “Bahrain has been a key ally and supporter of U.S. security interests in this region of the world.” But there’s another connection: A lobbying firm run by a longtime friend and campaign contributor to Faleomavaega is working for the regime’s allies.
The lobbying firm, D.C.-based Policy Impact Communications, is headed by William Nixon, a former Reagan speechwriter and Hill staffer who describes himself as a close personal friend of Faleomavaega. In 2010, Nixon and his wife gave Faleomavaega $4,800, making Policy Impact the congressman’s second-largest organizational donor that cycle. (The largest donor was StarKist.) Faleomavaega raises less than most members of Congress, having taken in just $65,500 that election and just $15,800 in the current cycle. Nixon is also president of the Mormon church’s northern Virginia Mount Vernon Stake, of which Faleomavaega is a member. (American Samoa has one of the highest percentages of Mormons in the world, with more than 25 percent of residents belonging to the church, according to Latter-day Saints figures.)
In March 2011, a month into the Bahrain crisis and about two weeks before Faleomavaega entered that first statement into the Congressional Record, Policy Impact created the Bahrain American Council. The group is operated out of Policy Impact’s K Street offices. And its board is vice-chaired by a Policy Impact executive. The group says it focuses on promoting U.S.-Bahrain trade and “educating the public about the strategic importance of Bahrain.”
The council also has close ties to Bahrain’s government: It previously listed a top Bahraini official as a member of its advisory board. The council was set up by a group of Bahraini-American businessmen, according to Policy Impact, but details of who is funding the group are not public. Policy Impact’s Nixon said the firm has not registered with the Justice Department as an agent of Bahrain, which is required when a firm is lobbying for a foreign entity, because the Bahrain American Council is run by Americans.
The group’s creation coincided with Bahrain’s hiring of several lobbying and public-relations firms to shore up its image in Washington and preserve its key alliance with the U.S. during the crackdown on protests.
Policy Impact’s Nixon told ProPublica that he and Faleomavaega have been “close personal friends [going] back almost before he was elected to Congress” in 1988, but that “there’s never been a quid pro quo on anything I’ve done professionally” with the congressman.
“When you give money to a congressman 2014 which I do; I’ve been in Washington since 1983 2014 there’s never an expectation of something for that money,” Nixon said. “Most often that money gets in the way of their ability to really assist you because it looks like something nefarious is under way.”
The Bahrain American Council appears to have worked closely with Faleomavaega from early on. It has featured his statements on Bahrain on its website, including Faleomavaega’s defense of Bahrain during a congressional human rights hearing in May. In Bahrain, both state-run and pro-government media have touted Faleomavaega’s various statements on the crisis (sample headline: “‘Democracy can’t be achieved through violence and blocking roads’, US Congress members said”). Last September, the Bahrain American Council’s president and an adviser to the king of Bahrain, Muhammad Abdul Ghaffar, met with Faleomavaega in his Capitol Hill office.
In October, Faleomavaega along with Reps. Donald Payne, D-N.J., and Lynne Woolsey, D-Calif., traveled to Bahrain on his first trip paid by Bahrain’s government. On the first night of the trip, the Bahrain American Council hosted a dinner honoring the members of Congress at the five-star Gulf Hotel in the capital, Manama. The Bahrain American Council’s president, Al Khalafalla, also accompanied the delegation in a meeting with the king. And the Bahrain American Council co-sponsored a speech by Faleomavaega in Manama in which he again criticized protesters and blamed Iran for stirring up unrest.
The congressional delegation also met with members of opposition party, Wefaq, but a party official later expressed disappointment with the meeting, writing that “the response of the delegation did not meet our expectation as it did not show enough understanding for the legitimate demands for reform.”
Faleomavaega, for his part, said in an email that he was introduced to the Bahrain American Council by Bart Marcois, a political operative who was, for a six-month period beginning last year, a vice president at Policy Impact.
Marcois is a former foreign service officer for the State Department and also former public affairs adviser to the government of Kuwait in Washington. He has also been active in Mormon outreach in the GOP, founding the Republican National Committee’s Advisory Council on LDS Outreach and running Eagle PAC, which was created in 2007 “to solicit money from Mormons for distribution to Republican congressional candidates,” according to Politico.
Marcois said he is a longtime friend of both Faleomavaega and Khalafalla, the head of the Bahrain American Council, and he introduced them early last year after the council was created but before he had joined Policy Impact.
“I’ve known [Faleomavaega] for a long time, and you can never predict what he’s going to get involved in,” Marcois said. “He doesn’t get involved in anything for somebody’s interests.”
Faleomavaega said he became interested in Bahrain because he is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and because the situation involves the alleged influence of Iran, which he believes is also extending to the Pacific Islands region.
“Due to the February 14, 2011 uprisings in Bahrain, which have yet to be resolved, I have a keen interest in our strategic and national security interests in this region,” Faleomavaega said in an email to ProPublica, “especially in view of Iran’s influence in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf region 2014 and whether it is subtle or overt, I am also concern[ed] that Iranian influence is now seemingly visible in South America and in the Pacific Islands.” As evidence, he pointed to Iran’s diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands.
Faleomavaega’s foray into the Bahrain issue isn’t the first time he has advocated for a faraway foreign country with a connection to Policy Impact.
In April 2009, the government of Kazakhstan, criticized by human-rights groups for its record under longtime dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, hired Policy Impact on a $1.5 million contract to “illustrate Kazakhstan’s progress on human rights” and to establish a Central Asia caucus in Congress.
Over the next few months, Policy Impact officials had four in-person meetings and one phone call with Faleomavaega, who was then chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, lobbying records show. In November 2009, Faleomavaega and Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., founded the Congressional Caucus on Central Asia.
Faleomavaega also praised Kazakhstan in a conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and robustly defended the country before a U.S. government commission that had been critical of Nazarbayev’s human-rights record. Faleomavaega pointed to Kazakhstan’s decision to give up its nuclear stockpile after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
“While human-rights groups continue to point fingers at Kazakhstan, I submit that only Kazakhstan had the moral courage to renounce nuclear weapons altogether for the sake of all mankind,” Faleomavaega said, also praising “President Nazarbayev’s leadership and commitment in the service of his people.”
In July 2009, Faleomavaega also traveled to Kazakhstan, telling a government official there, “I continue to argue with my colleagues about human rights in Kazakhstan,” according to a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. “I tell them you are only 18 years old. It took the United States 150 years to grant voting rights to African-Americans!”
Faleomavaega has denied that Policy Impact’s contract with Kazakhstan has anything to do with his involvement in the country, saying that he feels a special connection to the country because, like some islands in the Pacific region, it was the site of nuclear-weapons testing during the Cold War.
Nixon, the Policy Impact chairman, said that, as in the Bahrain case, “there was never ever a corollary between my relationship to the congressman and our representing Kazakhstan and the congressman’s interest in Kazakhstan.”
Faleomavaega is the second delegate to represent the unincorporated territory of American Samoa (population: 68,000) in the House since the position was created in 1978. Like the other four non-voting delegates in the House 2014 from the District of Columbia and three other island areas 2014 Faleomavaega hires staff with taxpayer money (more than $1 million per year), can introduce legislation and, in committee, possesses the same powers and privileges as full members of Congress. But he cannot vote on matters before the full House.
Faleomavaega is set to move just one spot away from the top Democratic position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. While he is the third-ranking Democrat, he will move to the No. 2 slot next year with the retirement of Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y. Nothing in the House rules would bar him from chairing the committee someday, though he would have to be nominated by the Democratic caucus.
Yousef Munayyer writes: Last week, the Israeli central bureau of statistics reported future trends which indicate the proportion of Palestinian Arabs in Israel will increase significantly by 2059.
Well, I have news for those arguing for a two-state solution will rescue a “Jewish and Democratic State.” Not only does the occupation make a liberal Zionist state impossible through the fundamental contradiction between a Jewish state and a democratic one, but to hope for a “democratic” Israel is foolish.
Think about what “democratic” Israel would be like. In order to insure a Jewish majority, the state will have to continue to not only discriminate against the Palestinian citizens in Israel but also continue to treat them as a “demographic threat.”
Numerous Israeli laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Because of a 2003 law, Palestinians like me can’t reside in Israel with their Palestinian spouse from outside of “Israel proper.” This means that if I want to live in Israel, my wife from the West Bank cannot live with me. Yet Jews are exempt from this hardship. These laws exist to prevent what Netanyahu refers to as a “demographic spillover”; the movement of Palestinians into Israel, which would threaten the state’s desired Jewish majority.
In fact, since the establishment of the state, its laws have marginalized the Palestinian minority. From the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which was used to expropriate hundreds of thousands of dunams of Palestinian land and is still being used today, to a series of other legalistic measures, the Israeli state effectively and significantly targeted the Palestinian minority.
Today, there are roughly 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, just over 20 percent of the population. This proportion would be even higher, perhaps 25 perecent, if not for the extraordinary influx of over one million immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia in the past 20 years—a demographic feat unlikely to be repeated.
In 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Finance Minister, argued that the “demographic threat” was not from the West Bank and Gaza, but rather from Palestinian citizens of Israel. He stated that 20 percent would be problematic and would have to be managed, but 35 to 40 percent would mean the end of the “Jewish State.” The state perceives that Palestinian wombs threaten its very nature.
Haaretz reports: Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared Sunday that German Nobel laureate Gunter Grass is a persona non grata in Israel, after Grass published a poem last week which was highly critical of Israel and its policies.
Yishai harshly condemned Grass’ poem, and said that he is declared a persona non grata in Israel for wearing SS uniform in the past.
“Grass’ poems are an attempt to guide the fire of hate toward the State of Israel and the Israeli people, and to advance the ideas of which he was a public partner in the past, when he wore the uniform of the SS,” Yishai said. “If Gunter wants to continue publicizing his distorted and false works, I suggest he do it in Iran, where he will find a supportive audience.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also issued a harsh condemnation of Grass’ poem on Sunday, during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Lieberman said that Grass’ poem is the expression of “egoism of so-called Western intellectuals, who are willing to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of crazy anti-Semites for a second time, just to sell a few more books or gain recognition.”
Lieberman called on European leaders to condemn statements that could possibly influence public opinion toward anti-Semitism. “We have witnessed in the past how small seeds of anti-Semitic hate can turn into a large fire that harms all of humanity,” said Lieberman.
In his poem, which was published in several European newspapers last week, the 85-year-old author claims that Israel’s nuclear reactor – and not Iran’s – presents a threat to world peace. Grass’ poem calls for Germany to cease supplying Israel with submarines, and warns against an Israeli strike on Iran.
Grass’ poem entitled “What must be said” drew strong criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well. “His declarations are ignorant and shameful and every honest person in this world must condemn them,” Netanyahu said.
In an interview published in Germany on Saturday, Grass claimed that his poem was meant to target the current Israeli government, not the country as a whole. “It’s that which I criticize, a policy that keeps building settlements despite a UN resolution,” said Grass.
The Guardian reports: Britain is exporting surveillance technology to countries run by repressive regimes, sparking fears it is being used to track political dissidents and activists.
The UK’s enthusiastic role in the burgeoning but unregulated surveillance market is becoming an urgent concern for human rights groups, who want the government to ensure that exports are regulated in a similar way to arms.
Much of the technology, which allows regimes to monitor internet traffic, mobile phone calls and text messages, is similar to that which the government has controversially signalled it wants to use in the UK.
The campaign group, Privacy International, which monitors the use of surveillance technology, claims equipment being exported includes devices known as “IMSI catchers” that masquerade as normal mobile phone masts and identify phone users and malware – software that can allow its operator to control a target’s computer, while allowing the interception to remain undetected.
Trojan horse software that allows hackers to remotely activate the microphone and camera on another person’s phone, and “optical cyber solutions” that can tap submarine cable landing stations, allowing for the mass surveillance of entire populations, are also being exported, according to the group.
His perception of Israel was so radically altered he felt compelled to write at the Huffington Post: “If you are a friend of Israel, you must watch Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land.”
The ideologically inclined are likely to read a strong political message in what Steves wrote, but my hunch is that his post was prompted by something else — an everyday concern he has as a travel writer.
Every seasoned traveler knows two things:
1. The most interesting way of experiencing another culture is through deep immersion, and
2. the most common obstacle to that experience is the tourist trade.
As a result, it’s important to get streetwise not so much because foreigners — and especially Americans — are easy targets for one kind of scam or another, but because those who profit from tourism tend to be the least faithful representatives of their own culture. That’s why, as Steves often says, the authentic experience is most often going to be found by going off the beaten track. And this quest for authenticity makes the traveler watch out for false promises.
A good travel writer has little patience for travel guides that paint deceptive pictures — where charming turns out to be tacky or a popular destination turns out to be a tourist trap.
But now, when Steves says he’s been duped, he’s describing a much higher level of misrepresentation. Israel is not the country he took it to be and their is for him a measure of insult in this discovery.
No one takes kindly to being treated like a sucker.
Rick Steves does not have a political axe to grind, but he does have a genuine appreciation of other cultures and an awareness of the degree to which most Americans are ignorant about the rest of the world.
On the road, you learn that ethnic underdogs everywhere are waging valiant but seemingly hopeless struggles. When assessing their tactics, I remind myself that every year on this planet many languages go extinct. That means that many heroic, irreplaceable little nations finally lose their struggle and die. There are no headlines—they just get weaker and weaker until that last person who speaks that language dies, and so does one little bit ethnic diversity on our planet.
I was raised so proud of Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry and Ethan Allen—patriotic heroes of America’s Revolutionary War who wished they had more than one life to give for their country. Having traveled, I’ve learned that Patrick Henrys and Nathan Hales are a dime a dozen on this planet—each country has their own version.
I believe the US tends to underestimate the spine of other nations. It’s comforting to think we can simply “shock-and-awe” our enemies into compliance. This is not only untrue…it’s dangerous. Sure, we have the mightiest military in the world. But we don’t have a monopoly on bravery or grit. In fact, in some ways, we might be less feisty than hardscrabble, emerging nations that feel they have to scratch and claw for their very survival.
We’re comfortable, secure, beyond our revolutionary stage…and well into our Redcoat stage. Regardless of our strength and our righteousness, as long as we have a foreign policy stance that requires a military presence in 130 countries, we will be confronting determined adversaries. We must choose our battles carefully. Travel can help us understand that our potential enemies are not cut-and-run mercenaries, but people with spine motivated by passions and beliefs we didn’t even know existed, much less understand.
Growing up in the US, I was told over and over how smart, generous, and free we were. Travel has taught me that the vast majority of humanity is raised with a different view of America. Travelers have a priceless opportunity to see our country through the eyes of other people. I still have the American Dream. But I also respect and celebrate other dreams.
I’ve long been struck by the obvious parallels between America and Israel, both of which built their foundations on ethnic cleansing. Cliff Brown explores this theme in the following video: “Two tragedies: American and Israeli injustice”
What changed my views on Israel? I lost my ignorance of both history and current events in the Middle East.
I decided to educate myself instead of forming my views from received wisdom. Though I knew (and know) many Jews, I did not know one Palestinian. I made it my business to discover the truth of the Palestinian situation for myself as can anyone who has access to the Internet.
Rick Steves is the Mr Rogers of travel shows. I picture him as someone who probably smiles even when he’s asleep. So if this guy gets upset about something, it has to be serious.
Here’s Steves’ commentary from one of his shows several years ago while visiting Israel:
Tourists become pilgrims at Israel’s Holocaust Memorial. All visiting heads of state are brought here to Yad Vashem. The Memorial Museum chronicles the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany. Artist David Olere left an excruciating record in these drawings of his 26 months in Nazi concentration camps. He was a prisoner at Drancy, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk and finally liberated from Ebensee in 1945.
The boxcar monument is a chilling reminder of Hitler’s master plan to eliminate Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill and political dissenters. Train loads were carted away.
And here along the “Avenue of Righteous Gentiles”, trees are planted to honor non-Jews who risked their lives to help the persecuted. Yad Vashem imprints on visitors a searing impression of the horror. One must recognize the cause and the enormity of the Holocaust to understand the history of modern Israel.
The sky-scrapers of Tel Aviv are exclamation points which seem to declare that freedom is worth fighting for. The fruits of all the struggle may best be enjoyed here in the cosmopolitan heart of Israel. My best tip for enjoying Tel Aviv: see it as a fun-loving resort, just the opposite of Jerusalem.
Tel Aviv’s waterfront promenade is the place to rock to the rhythm of contemporary Israel — foamy cafes, sugar-sand beaches and the Mediterranean. With a “use it or lose it” approach to the good life, young Israelis embrace the present.
But then something happened… Yesterday, at Huffington Post, Steves wrote:
I’ve been duped.
Do you know the frustration you feel when you believed in something strongly and then you realize that the information that made you believe was from a source with an agenda to deceive?
I just watched a powerful and courageous documentary called Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land. It certainly has its own agenda and doesn’t present balanced coverage. Still, it showed me how my understanding of the struggles in the Middle East has been skewed by most of our mainstream media. I saw how coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian problem is brilliantly controlled and shaped. I pride myself in understanding how the media works… and I find I’ve been bamboozled.
Invest 75 minutes in watching this, because most of the time we only hear one viewpoint when it comes to the interminable struggle in the Holy Land. While this documentary would never be shown on commercial TV in the USA, it can be viewed online (Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land). In my view, many Palestinians live under inhumane conditions, and U.S. taxpayers help to make it happen. Please, watch this and then share your impressions.
Criticism of Israel’s policies is not automatically anti-Semitic (see J-Street for an example of a pro-Israel, pro-peace group). In fact, the irony is that for Israel’s hard-liners, their clever PR strategy could be their own worst enemy. While Israel certainly deserves security on its land, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory (in Gaza and the West Bank) degrades Israel and drives Palestinians to desperation. The question of whether Israel is conducting a brutal military occupation or a reasonable defense against terrorism gets no real airtime. If we care about the long-term security of Israel, we have a responsibility to understand what our government is funding and supporting.
I believe that watching this documentary is a painful first step to finding a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. If you are a friend of Israel, you must watch Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land.
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land was made in 2003 during the Second Intifada. Very little of its content will come as news to regular readers of this site. What is striking about Rick Steves’ reaction to the documentary is that it reveals the degree to which Americans who are cosmopolitan and reasonably well-informed about the world still by and large have a deeply distorted view of Israel. When the veil falls away they are shocked by what they discover.
Ignorance provides the bedrock of the United States’ close relations with Israel and as that ignorance erodes, more and more Americans will become angry and ashamed about the role they unwittingly played in the support of a state whose brutality has for so long and so effectively been hidden from American eyes.
One of the paradoxes of the way the U.S. media covers the rest of the world is that on the one hand, the only matters that merit attention are those which are deadly serious — wars, famine, catastrophes, and crises of one kind or another — and yet at the same time these stories are told with as much depth as a comic book cartoon strip.
Iran is ruled by “mad mullahs” plotting to get their hands on nuclear weapons. A “noose” of sanctions is being tightened around the country to force its leaders to back away from their diabolical efforts.
In this narrative the country of 70 million ordinary people and their everyday lives is lost.
In a new feature, “Iran Standard Time,” Tehran Bureau is offering some of the details of life and lives in their minute richness — the kind of details that get lost by a media which fixates on danger and ignores people.
Tehran Bureau: “This weather is terrible for chicken farmers,” jokes Hossein, a dark, wiry man in his late 20s, as he looks at the sunrise over the Persian Gulf, largely blotted out by a dense sandstorm. “The sand gets caught in chicks’ throats and they suffocate.”
Hossein, who supplies Tehran’s jujeh kebab vendors by personally slaughtering 2,000 chicks every 45 days, is one of around 200 passengers aboard the Hormuz, a rusted ship docked in Iran’s biggest port, Bandar Abbas, waiting for the weather to clear to sail to the Emirati city of Sharjah. He is from Bastak, a tiny ancient Iranian town in the southern stretch of the Zagros mountain range. Its 6,000 inhabitants speak a Middle Persian dialect, and most of them move between these hot highlands to the even hotter irrigated deserts of the UAE for business or to see their migrant relatives.
Flanking Hussein on the sunny deck is his friend and hamshahri (town-fellow) Ali, a skinny onion farmer who is adroitly peeling a orange with his large cracked hands, and fortuitously, Farzin, a professor of water resources from Shahrekord University. The professor says that our current predicament is the result of winds sweeping across lands that have been affected by the region’s five-year drought. “The drought is strong in the southwest near Iraq and Saudi and in the northeast, near Afghanistan,” he explains with the aid of a map he carries around. “In Shahrekord, we are in the Zagros Mountains, which used to have a very snowy climate. Now we just get rain.”
We are on the last Iranian vessel to cross the now world-famous Strait of Hormuz before Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. It’s filled with people who were too late or too broke to find a flight during the notoriously busy final days of the Persian year, when Iran experiences an exodus for the two-week break. What the demob-happy passengers don’t know yet is that they will be spending Nowruz at sea, as a ten-hour delay stretches into a two-day waiting game.
I had spent the day before in Bandar Abbas, against the emphatic advice of my guidebook. Bandar, a sweltering town even in spring, is home to some of Iran’s best beaches — even if classical aesthetes might demur over everything aside from its clear water. Thronged with visitors from all over the country hitting the Persian Gulf for the holidays, the scene is a very Iranian affair: girls flying kites, boys on camels or quad bikes, men smoking, families picnicking, litter everywhere, women swimming in full hejab, and morality beach police enforcing strict swimwear rules (don’t wear it). The women of Bandar mostly forgo the chador and northern Iran’s stark black sartorial style, opting instead for colorful sari-like gowns, which drape over their heads and shoulders. [Continue reading…]
By John Robertson, Professor of History, Central Michigan University
With the publication of Belen Fernandez’s The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, Verso Press inaugurated a new series, called Counterblasts, with the intention of reviving a tradition of polemic that it traces back to the fiery political pamphleteers of the 17th century. Obviously, then, Ms. Fernandez was not supposed to produce an impartial, dispassionate analysis of the collected works of the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning chief foreign affairs correspondent. Rather, she has come up with something that the American public in general (and students of US foreign affairs and public diplomacy especially) undoubtedly need more: a systematic, detailed take-down of the neo-liberal bias, myopic US-Israeli chauvinism, and general intellectual shallowness that almost scream to be noticed in Friedman’s writing. Yet, lamentably, Friedman has been enshrined as a sort of American “Everyman’s” go-to guy for understanding what’s happening in the world, what needs fixing, and how “we” can and should do it.
Fernandez’s take-down is based on an almost exhaustive winnowing of Friedman’s NY Times columns as well as his several best-selling books (starting with his 1989 From Beirut to Jerusalem). She structures her presentation within three principal yet frequently overlapping categories of Friedman’s supposed expertise: America, the Arab/Muslim World, and the Special Relationship (i.e., the US-Israel relationship). Throughout, she bolsters her arguments with detail so profuse and tightly packed that a brief review such as this can hardly do it justice. But from that skein of specifics Fernandez is able to draw out specific tropes, methods, and assumptions that are woven throughout Friedman’s work:
“USA! USA!” : The United States is almost always (and, in Friedman’s view, most obviously) the right model for the rest of the world, and “we” have the right and obligation to fix the world – the Middle East, in particular – whenever and wherever we choose. Just as obviously the right model is Neoliberal free-market capitalism and globalization; just ask the countless factory owners and local elites who tend to be Friedman’s go-to people for sourcing his analyses.
“They” can “Suck.On.This”: Especially when it comes to the Middle East, Friedman’s prescriptions (all too often posited as what “we should do”) frequently combine the aforementioned assumption that America has the right “to do” something with the swaggering machismo that comes with knowing that “we” have the biggest and shiniest tools in the military box. Teddy Roosevelt spoke of America walking softly and carrying a big stick. Thomas Friedman, on the other hand, has been too eager for “us” to whomp someone (usually a Middle Eastern someone) with that stick, and in the aftermath trumpet “Suck on This” (as he did so infamously during an interview with Charlie Rose after the US invasion of Iraq).
When push comes to shove, Israel good, Arabs bad. Surely, Friedman has written critically of Israeli policies at times, and he deserves credit for doing so. But over the long haul, he has maintained an almost bred-from-birth conviction in the rightness of Zionism and Israel that he seems completely unable to examine or question. Individual Israelis whom he singles out tend to be heroes, in his estimation. Unfortunately, Friedman consistently couples that with a tendency (which Fernandez is able to spotlight consistently in Friedman’s work) toward a homogenizing reductionism and essentializing of Muslims, Arabs, and “their” culture that would make Bernard Lewis or Fouad Ajami proud. Nor does Friedman’s work tend to demonstrate much breadth or real depth in his understanding of Middle Eastern history. That’s surprising – and disappointing – in the work of someone who undertook Middle East studies at both Brandeis and Oxford. It’s also why the vast majority of mainstream scholars of modern Middle Eastern history cite his work only as a target for criticism.
Collateral damage. Friedman’s work all too often reflects his seeming refusal to recognize – or inability to empathize with – the suffering and human toll taken by US and Israeli military action. In Friedman’s world view, death and destruction (unless it happens to Americans or Israelis) is all collateral damage for the greater good. This stands in stark contrast to the work of other journalists (such as Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Robert Fisk, and Nir Rosen, all of whom Fernandez recognizes) whose work reflects not only their long experience “on the ground” in the Middle East, but also their much greater capacity to bring basic humanity to bear in their commentary and analyses.
Ironically, among the foremost in this regard was Friedman’s late colleague at the New York Times, Anthony Shadid. (One wonders if they had much contact with each other; it surely doesn’t show in Friedman’s work.) Shadid possessed a remarkable ability to connect with people on the ground, and seemingly in their souls, and then to share those encounters in lyrical, moving prose. Fernandez’s prose, though surely not as lyrical as Shadid’s, is in its own way very moving. It is more precise and intense – and often searingly sarcastic. It is also suffused with impassioned conviction that sometimes bleeds into anger and even ad hominem put-downs that, one might argue, detract from the incisiveness of her analysis.
Nonetheless, what Belen Fernandez makes plain as she scalpels into Friedman’s opus is that his position atop the pyramid of the American foreign-affairs commentariate rests more on attitude than on intellect. Moreover – and much more troubling – it is symptomatic of biases that widely infect the American mainstream media’s coverage of the US’s actions, policies, and attitudes toward the rest of the world in general, and the Middle East in particular.
Fernandez’s book deserves to be read widely and discussed in depth. After doing so, one may be much less prepared to say the same for the work of Thomas Friedman.
Roy Eidelson writes: Shortly after learning about the American Psychological Association’s (APA) late February announcement of its new Member-Initiated Task Force to Reconcile Policies Related to Psychologists’ Involvement in National Security Settings, I found my thoughts turning to the School of the Americas, Blackwater and perhaps even more surprisingly, the Patagonian toothfish. Those may seem like a strange threesome, but they share one important thing in common. All have undergone a thorough repackaging and renaming in a marketing effort aimed at obscuring – but not altering – some ugly truth.
The School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, became infamous for training Latin American soldiers who returned home and engaged in repressive campaigns involving rape, torture and murder of political dissidents. To combat its negative image, the school was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, but the nature of its activities remain largely unchanged. During the Iraq War, Blackwater, a private military company supported by hundreds of millions of dollars in US government contracts, gained international notoriety on many counts, including its use of excessive and often deadly force against Iraqi civilians. The company therefore renamed itself – twice – first as Xe Services and then again as Academi, with essentially the same core businesses. As for the Patagonian toothfish, it’s wrong to blame the fish itself. But in an effort to spur sales, merchants renamed it Chilean sea bass (for similar reasons, the slimehead fish is now known as orange roughy instead).
Sadly, the same repackaging and renaming strategy of illusion and deception characterizes the APA’s latest gambit to both protect and disguise the role of psychologists as purveyors of harm. But to fully understand this new ploy – a so-called “task force” to produce a comprehensive document of all APA ethics policies relevant to psychologists in national security settings – it’s helpful to first review some disturbing history.
There is incontrovertible evidence that in the years following the 9/11 attacks, psychologists served as planners, consultants, researchers and overseers to the abusive and torturous interrogations of prisoners in the US “global war on terror.” Multiple reports of wrongdoing emerged, such as one from the International Committee of the Red Cross describing psychological coercion techniques at Guantanamo Bay as “tantamount to torture.” APA members and others responded with outrage and clamor. It was immediately clear that the world’s largest psychological association needed to engage in a careful and transparent examination of whether professional ethics allow psychologists to serve in aggressive operational roles, such as detention and interrogation activities involving national security detainees. Tragically, however, APA’s leadership decided to take a very different path. They chose to rubberstamp the status quo without any meaningful deliberation whatsoever. [Continue reading…]
Christian Science Monitor reports: Twenty-five cents a gallon – that’s about how much some international energy experts say the tough US sanctions on Iran’s oil industry are costing Americans at the pump.
As US consumers cope with gas prices that are approaching an average of $4 a gallon, some international trade experts say the cost of the sanctions the US imposes – as in the case of the Iran measures – is something political leaders should discuss more openly. Instead, they say, most politicians act as if sanctions affect only the country targeted – something these experts say isn’t true.
“The approach is always that the costs are for them and the benefits are for us,” says Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a Washington lobbying organization that generally opposes economic sanctions. “The Iran case is interesting,” he adds, “because of the impact of sanctions on our energy sector.”
What sanctions? Top five countries buying oil from Iran.
Energy experts say it’s difficult to pinpoint precisely how much sanctions on Iran are costing consumers as they filter down to the gas pump. But Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a Washington nonprofit organization that studies energy economics, says it’s possible to make an estimate.
The sanctions the US and other countries have slapped on Iran’s energy sector and on its central bank (aimed at curtailing its oil exports) are costing Iran about 300,000 barrels a day in exports, Mr. Pugliaresi estimates. When added to other factors affecting the international oil market, that decrease in exports may have added about $10 to the current price of a barrel for crude, he says.
And that $10 increase translates roughly to about a 25-cent increase in the cost of a gallon of gas in the US, Pugliaresi says.
THE GLORY: One can read the Exodus story as a shining example of all that is good and inspiring in the annals of humanity.
Here is the story of a small and powerless people that rises up against a brutal tyranny, throws off its chains and gains a new homeland, creating a revolutionary new moral code on the way.
Seen in this way, the Exodus is a victory of the human spirit, an inspiration for all downtrodden peoples. And indeed, it has served this purpose many times in the past. The Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of the American nation, were inspired by it, and so were many rebels throughout history.
THE OTHER SIDE: When one reads the Biblical text attentively , without religious blinkers, some aspects gives us food for other thoughts.
Let’s take the Ten Plagues. Why were the entire Egyptian people punished for the misdeeds of one tyrant, Pharaoh? Why did God, like a divine Security Council, levy on them cruel sanctions, polluting their water with blood, destroying their livelihood with hail and locusts? And, even more gruesome, how could a merciful God send his angels to murder every single Egyptian firstborn child?
On leaving Egypt, the Israelites were encouraged to steal their neighbors’ property. It is rather curious that the Biblical story-teller, who was certainly deeply religious, did not omit this detail. And this just a few weeks before the Ten Commandments were handed down to the Israelites by God personally, including “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.
No one seems ever to have given much thought to the ethical side of the conquest of Canaan. God promised the Children of Israel a land which was the home of other peoples. He told them to kill these peoples, expressly commanding them to commit genocide. For some reason, He singled out the people of Amalek, ordering the Israelites to eradicate them altogether. Later, the glorious King Saul was dethroned by His prophet because he showed mercy and did not murder his Amalekite prisoners-of-war, men, women and children.
Of course, these texts were written by people living in times long past, when the ethics of individuals and nations were different, as were the rules of war. But the Haggadah is recited – today as before – uncritically, without any reflection on these horrible aspects. Especially in religious schools in Israel today , the commandment to commit genocide against the non-Jewish population of Palestine is taken by many teachers and pupils quite literally.
INDOCTRINATION: This is the real point of these reflections.
There are two sentences in the Haggadah that always had – and still have – a profound impact on the present.
One is the central idea on which almost all Jews base their historical outlook: “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us”.
This does not apply to a specific time or to a specific place. It is regarded as an eternal truth that applies to all places, all times. “They” is the entire outside world, all non-Jews everywhere. Children hear this on Seder evening on their father’s knee, long before they are able to read and write, and from then on they hear or recite it every year for decades. It expresses the total conscious or unconscious conviction of almost all Jews, whether in Los Angeles, California, or in Lod, Israel. It certainly directs the policy of the State of Israel.
The second sentence, which complements the first, is a cry to God: “Pour out your wrath upon the nations that do not know you…for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home…Pour out your wrath on them! May your blazing anger overtake them! Pursue them from under the heavens of the Lord!…”
The word “nations” in this text has a double meaning. The Hebrew word is “goyim”, an ancient Hebrew term for “peoples”. Even the ancient Children of Israel were called a “Holy Goy”. But over the centuries, the word has taken on another meaning, and is understood to refer to all non-Jews, in a very derogatory way. (As in the Yiddish song “Oy, Oy, Oy, / Drunk is the Goy.”)
To understand this text properly, one has to remember that it was written as a cry from the heart of a defenseless, persecuted people who had no means to take revenge on their torturers. To raise their spirits on the joyful Seder evening, they had to put their trust in God, crying out to Him that he should take revenge in their stead.
(During the Seder ritual, the door is always left open. Officially, that is to allow the Prophet Elias to enter, if he should miraculously rise from the dead. In reality it was to allow the Goyim to look in, so as to disprove the anti-Semitic libel that Jews baked their unleavened Pesach bread with the blood of kidnapped Christian children.)
THE LESSON: In the Diaspora, this craving for revenge was both understandable and ineffective. But the founding of the State of Israel has changed the situation completely. In Israel, Jews are far from being defenseless. We don’t have to rely on God to take revenge for the evils done unto us, past or present, real or imagined. We can pour out our wrath ourselves, on our neighbors, the Palestinians and other Arabs, on our minorities, on our victims.
That is the real danger of the Haggadah, as I see it. It was written by and for helpless Jews living in perpetual danger. It raised their spirits once a year, when they felt safe for a moment, protected by their God, surrounded by their families.
Taken out of this context and applied to a new, completely different situation, it can set us on an evil course. Telling ourselves that everybody is out to destroy us, yesterday and most certainly tomorrow, we consider the grandiloquent bombast of an Iranian bigmouth as a living proof of the validity of the old maxim. They are out to kill us, so we must – according to another ancient Jewish injunction – kill them first.
So, on this Seder evening, let our feelings be guided by the noble, inspiring part of the Haggadah , the part about the slaves who rose up against tyranny and took their fate in their own hands – and not the part about pouring out our wrath.
Meanwhile, Christians around the world are focusing their attention on the central bloody image of their faith: a man nailed to a cross.
Whatever might be said of the virtues of the monotheistic faiths, their roles in the promotion of warfare and the glorification of violence, seem inescapable. No wonder Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have made such a volatile mix.
David Ignatius writes: President Obama has signaled Iran that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent public claim that his nation “will never pursue nuclear weapons.”
This verbal message was sent through Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited Khamenei last week. A few days before traveling to Iran, Erdogan had held a two-hour meeting with Obama in Seoul, in which they discussed what Erdogan would tell the ayatollah about the nuclear issue and Syria.
Obama advised Erdogan that the Iranians should realize that time is running out for a peaceful settlement and that Tehran should take advantage of the current window for negotiations. Obama didn’t specify whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium domestically as part of the civilian program the United States would endorse. That delicate issue evidently would be left for the negotiations that are supposed to start April 13, at a venue yet to be decided.
Erdogan is said to have replied that he would convey Obama’s views to Khamenei, and it’s believed he did so when he met the Iranian leader on Thursday. Erdogan also met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials during his visit.
The statement highlighted by Obama as a potential starting point was made on state television in February. Khamenei said: “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. . . . Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”
The challenge for negotiators is whether it’s possible to turn Khamenei’s public rhetoric into a serious and verifiable commitment not to build a bomb. When Obama cited this statement to Erdogan as something to build on, the Turkish leader is said to have nodded in agreement.
But the diplomatic path still seems blocked, judging by recent haggling over the meeting place for negotiations. Istanbul was expected to be the venue, but the Iranians last weekend balked and suggested instead that negotiators meet in Iraq or China. U.S. officials see this foot-dragging as a sign that the Iranian leadership is still struggling to frame its negotiating position.
The Erdogan back channel to Iran is the most dramatic evidence yet of the close relationship Obama has forged with the Turkish leader. Erdogan, who heads an Islamist party that is often cited as a model by Muslim democrats, has been a key U.S. partner in handling Syria and other crises flowing from the Arab Spring uprisings.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports: A war of words between Turkish and Iranian leaders intensified Thursday, threatening to delay or even scuttle a new round of talks between Iran and world powers, and raising fresh doubt about whether Tehran will bargain over its disputed nuclear program.
One day after Iranian leaders ruled out talks in Istanbul next week because of Turkey’s position on the Syrian uprising, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Iran of dishonesty.
“It is necessary to act honestly,” Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, according to Reuters. The Iranians “continue to lose prestige in the world because of a lack of honesty.”
The broadside marked a remarkable turnabout for Erdogan, who has worked hard for years to cultivate ties with Tehran. He has repeatedly taken Iran’s side in its dispute with the West over its nuclear development efforts.
The Guardian reports: Egypt’s presidential race was thrown into further turmoil when a former ally of Hosni Mubarak announced that he had decided to run, and supporters of another candidate flooded Tahrir Square protesting that he was being pushed out by allegations his mother was a US citizen. Omar Suleiman, who was the ex-president’s intelligence chief, has inside influence that will make him a likely frontrunner in the elections, to be held on 23 and 24 May. His main opponent is likely to be Khairat el-Shater, candidate of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.
Suleiman, a former general who appeared on television in February 2011 to announce that Mubarak would step down, said earlier this week that he had decided not to run. But he issued the statement on Friday on the state-run Mena news agency saying he had changed his mind after hundreds of supporters held a rally urging his candidacy.
“I can only meet the call and run in the presidential race,” he said. He had previously blamed organisational and financial constraints for not standing.
Suleiman must get 30,000 supporters to sign a petition before he can officially submit his application to stand in order to meet the official filing deadline on Sunday. Meanwhile thousands of supporters of another candidate, Hazem Abu Ismail, took over Tahrir Square on Friday to protest against what they said was a conspiracy brewing against their presidential candidate, regarding the supposed US citizenship of his late mother.
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Rick Steves is the Mr Rogers of travel shows. I picture him as someone who probably smiles even when he’s asleep. So if this guy gets upset about something, it has to be serious.
