The WaPo’s Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler had an intriguing article in today’s paper, in which they described how the Bushies have tried to “secretly” shovel $2 million into Palestine in recent weeks in a last-minute attempt to influence the results of the parliamentary election that will be held there next Wednesday. (Here, also here.)
The idea was to give the now-ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) some small amounts of money to do very public things for which the PA’s ruling party, Fateh, could get credit. Wilson and Kessler write:
- In recent days, Arabic-language papers have been filled with U.S.-funded advertisements announcing the events in the name of the Palestinian Authority, which the public closely identifies with Fatah. Some of the events, such as a U.S.-financed tree-planting ceremony here in Ramallah that Abbas attended last week, have resembled Fatah rallies, with participants wearing the trademark black-and-white kaffiyehs emblazoned with the party logo, walls plastered with Fatah candidates’ posters, and banks of TV cameras invited to record the event.
“Public outreach is integrated into the design of each project to highlight the role of the P.A. in meeting citizens needs,” said a progress report distributed this month to USAID and State Department officials. “The plan is to have events running every day of the coming week, beginning 13 January, such that there is a constant stream of announcements and public outreach about positive happenings all over Palestinian areas in the critical week before the elections.”
This is distasteful on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin.
Maybe by saying that if the US government had truly wanted to bolster the political position of the PA’s Fateh leadership (with at its head that very decent man Mahmoud Abbas), then they could have done a lot more to provide solid political support for him a long, long time ago. Like back in 2003, when he was Prime Minister, and he pleaded and pleaded with the Americans to get serious about the peace negotiations that the Palestinians so urgently need if the dead weight of Israel’s colonial project is to be lifted from all the occupied Palestinian territories.
But they didn’t do a thing.
Or back throughout the whole of the past year, when Abbas was President, and he similarly pleaded with them to throw their weight behind the re-opening of peace negotiatinons. But they did nothing, and just continued shoveling billions of dollars to Israel’s Ariel Sharon even while Sharon steadfastly continued to refue to have anything at all to do with Abbas.
So now, the US “democracy cavalry”– led in its present campaign, according to the WaPo, by “a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who worked in postwar Afghanistan on democracy-building projects” (name of Larry Sampler)– thinks they can sweep into Palestine at the last minute and buy the election for Abbas with a few tiny, basically meaningless little projects for which the US taxpayers also have to buy publicity in Palestinian newspapers. It beggars belief.
Wilson and Kessler:
- Elements of the U.S.-funded program include a street-cleaning campaign, distributing free food and water to Palestinians at border crossings, donating computers to community centers and sponsoring a national youth soccer tournament.
When I read that I said to Bill the spouse, “Do they think Palestinians are stupid? Or cheap? Or what?” He said, “No, it’s not just the Palestinians… They think everyone except themselves are stupid.”
Oh, of course, along the way there it wasn’t only “consultant” Larry Sampler who made out like a bandit. There were also not one but two layers of other for-profit contractors involved. Everyone got a little bit of the skim.
Wilson and Kessler were smart enough to write that,
- The program highlights the central challenge facing the Bush administration as it promotes democracy in the Middle East. Free elections in the Arab world, where most countries have been run for years by unelected autocracies or unchallenged parties like Fatah, often result in strong showings by radical Islamic movements opposed to the policies of the United States and to its chief regional ally, Israel. But in attempting to manage the results, the administration risks undermining the democratic goals it is promoting.
Darn right they are.
In connection with the general topic of US-funded support for “democratization” projects around the world, I just quickly read this thought-provoking piece on Open Democracy by Sreeram Chaulia. He provides a fairly good round-up of the work of various US-financed INGOs (international NGOs) and GONGOs (government-reliant NGOs), especially in the recent “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. He has a good quote from Julie Mertus: “It’s not the NGOs driving the government’s agenda; it’s the US government driving the NGO agenda.”
One cavil with Open Democracy: They do carry some interesting articles on their website. But why don’t they put sources and other materials into their online articles? It’s quite pathetic for someone to use a good, poweful quote like that one and not give us a hyperlink to the source.
Elements of the U.S.-funded program include a street-cleaning campaign, distributing free food and water to Palestinians at border crossings, donating computers to community centers and sponsoring a national youth soccer tournament.
sounds eminently distasteful.
The plan isn’t “Secret”. Obviously the idea is to let the Palestinians know that the PA has a better connection to the US and to US money. The US has done a lot for Israel and why not get it to do even more for the Palestinians?
This is in line with the financial support the PA has been getting from the US, Europe, and even Israel.
My own preference would be for the party that genuinely represents the Palestinian will and worldview to be elected. If that is Hamas, so be it. My preferences, of course, do not matter.
This cynical US behavior reeks of the pervasive US-Zionist-inspired contempt of the humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people. The US prosecutes a Florida U professor for aiding terrorism because he helped feed starving Palestinian widows, but itself hands out food bribes at the Zionist prison gates in the West Bank.
Worse, since the money has been accepted by Fatah, it irredeemably dooms the legitimacy among most Palestinians of any Fateh election success. This is so obvious and inevitable, that one must infer the US/Israeli motive to be a huge reactionary Hamas victory which will, in turn, be manipulated by Zionists and their US sympathizers to renounce “negotiations” and unilaterally advance the Zionist expropriation program to steal as much of the West Bank lands as possible.
Timothy your last post is a thing of beauty.
I agree that this is stupid and demeaning behavior by the US government. But it raises an awkward question. The PA has received a lot of money over the years from the international community, especially the Europeans and the Arab countries. If the PA imagines that a few million American bucks for a tree-planting ceremony, a street-cleaning campaign, and some food handouts is going to make a difference in how Palestinians see Fatah, one has to ask, why weren’t they doing these things, and more important ones, all along? Unfortunately, we all know the answer: a huge portion of that money disappeared into the bank accounts of Fatah bigwigs and their cronies.
It’s only now that they’re about to get their teeth kicked out in the election that they can bring themselves to make a few paltry gestures.
Supposedly so many people support Hamas because they provide so much community service. Because of the schools or doctors or whatever Hamas provides people seem willing to overlook its call for the destruction of Israel and its fundamentalist ideology. Helena, are you as repulsed by the support people give Hamas just for these good-deeds as you seem to be regarding any support gained by U.S. street cleaning and donating computers and stuff?
Because of the schools or doctors or whatever Hamas provides people seem willing to overlook its call for the destruction of Israel and its fundamentalist ideology.
I am sorry, but I don’t get your point. Every ME obersver is supposed to know that radical Ilsamists are essential part of Arab societies. Now what?
Sometimes, Israeli news are just bizarre…
2006-01-24 Diagnosis: gerontocracy
The difference is, Hamas does charity because it lives there. It will have to continue living there between elections. We do charity all over the world to trick people into voting for pro-American sellouts at minimum cost to ourselves, then go back to screwing them over until the next election. American capitalist politicians have perfected the techniques they use to get votes at home, and are taking them on the road to global conquest. Note that in 2000 and 2004, when bribery wasn’t enough, those elites turned to other methods. They even are letting their own country collapse (New Orleans, Medicare) because they can rule America and the world from the safety of their gated communities using the strings of fear and bribery. It doesn’t matter that revolutionaries are also corrupt, it only matters that those who are both corrupt and powerful must be destroyed over and over in as many horrible ways as possible. Because the day any human accepts that he must cede control of his life to the rich, he become a subhuman.
Um, Super, I agree with most of your sentiment, but not with the idea that any human must be destroyed over and over in as many horrible ways as possible…
Gandhi said the way to stop your enemy being your enemy is to make him your friend. I agree with you that there are people and institutions in this world that are both v. corrupt and v. powerful, and that they cause much more harm and suffering around the world than anyone else. We need to find ways to convert those people (and the people who run the harmful institutions) to a more humane view of life. To invite them to join us in engaging in more egalitarian and respectful and much less fear-ridden ways of being in the world. Threatening to “destroy” them doesn’t seem like a working strategy to me…
“Because they live there” is a reason? I’ve heard that in New York the New York Mafia used to do a lot of community service, like building community centers, to get local people to support them. And some local people did, never mind the Mafia being criminals. But the New York Mafia lives in New York. So does that make this all right like Hamas living in Palestine make them buying off people with their community goodies all right? Hamas does charity to get votes and brainwash recruits into their fundamentalist dogma about destroying Israel. Not really much different from the vote buying motivations pointed of U.S. groups pointed out by Helena, but no one ever calls Hamas out on it.
Helena I wanted to make that point myself. The last time super390 posted he kept using the word “destroy” over and over again. He seems to have an inherent bloodlust and is using all this violent-revolution rhetoric as his means of satiating that bloodlust. His posts are disturbing.
The political trick of providing services for the people can eventually become a never-ending cycle of support. This is the trick that the people are playing on their leaders. You may not believe that the PA, Hamas or the US Government has your interest at heart but they might be induced to provide some good government in return for being allowed to stay in power.
Sneaky people, those masses. May they be ever trickier.
Probably how democracy started…
Super390:
Your problem isn’t that your intent is evil but that you’ve been induced to trust the wrong people. Figuring out who to trust is the hardest problem. Take the same critical eye to your own leaders that you take to the Bush administration. Be fair but be relentless.
Two bits of text follow. The first is an email(with some redaction for personal reasons) from a member of the team that Helena criticizes so roundly and from such a moral high perch. The email introduces the second bit of text, which is a rough translation of a letter to the editor of a small Palestinian paper from Ali Al Khalili; a poet and author in Palestine.
~~~~~~~~text 1 follows~~~~~~~~~
I realize everybody’s inboxes are filling up and perhaps I am overstepping my role a little bit here, but I feel like this is a good time to try to introduce another perspective on what we are all doing, so we don’t risk getting caught up in the negatives of our work.
I am attaching an op ed that I really hope you will take 2 minutes to read. It was written by a well known Palestinian poet and independent journalist and appeared in a local paper the day after we organized the street painting event in Hebron and Ramallah. (Sorry for the slightly rough translation.)
I found this article particularly interesting (it made me somehow depressed and happy at the same time) because it highlights how a regular person felt when he saw our street painting event.
It is also relevant in that it highlights how events like this can change perceptions- he mentions the idea of “social intifada” to channel the energy of youths to do something good rather than something violent. The article also supports a notion we have discussed, in terms of not focusing events only during election season, but making them an ongoing campaign that can keep people positive and motivated even during hard times (of which there are likely to be more ahead) when they would be tempted to stray.
Anyway, I hope you find this intervention helpful in keeping ourselves positive. We, together, are really doing something out here…
~~~~~~~~~~~text 2 follows~~~~~~~~~
May God bless you and give you health, our beloved children and grandchildren.
Written by Ali AlKhalili
On Friday morning, I was so thrilled when I saw dozens of school and university students painting the streets’ sides in the downtown of Ramallah. They were doing that enthusiastically and in high discipline.
I even got happier when I knew that social voluntary work is a part of a large program supervised by the Palestinian authority and few NGO’s.
My morning was beautiful, and I thanked the old woman who encouraged me to get out of my house today, because I got the chance to meet these working young faces and arms.
I stood near the Manara lions watching each organized movements and each brush while coloring white, black and red, as if it is adding lively beats to a huge wild painting, full of live and hope. I almost wanted to give them a hand, but I only stood there and shouted loudly: “god give you the health”. Then I murmured a part of a poem for Abu El Ataheya, says that the heaven’s aromas are in the youth.
Before I go on with my regular way in the new painted clean streets, I felt so safe that we are really worth this civilized scene. I was remembering the activities that happened in the few first years of the Intifada, the activities that grew under the support of the whole community, especially the youth. Can we in these difficult days get back that social voluntary working spirit which we left out? Instead, our youth people were accused with being violent and corruptors.
What happened in Ramallah and Hebron and what will happen in the rest of our cities is a bright indicator that we will for sure get that spirit back. All what we need to achieve our social voluntary Intifada is the programs that the authority, NGOs and the civil society institutions take part in. involving the youths will increase their self-esteem and their ability to be responsible and giving, and to help ending the chaos.
We do not want these programs to be happening only in few seasons and occasions, like the elections for example, because this can contain negative phenomena that can damage the social voluntary work. We want it to be a continuous and creative, and to involve the youth so they can feel the results of their efforts day after day. The youth has a serious chance to build their country and protect it from destruction and chaos.
I’d like to end with a popular poem line that says, “I wish the youth comes back one day, so I can tell it what being old did to me.” But for me, I will tell it nothing, it will be enough to come back. In fact, it always comes back, comes in the children and grandchildren. God gives you health.
Ah– are you “the” LS? That is, the Larry Sampler Special Forces person so much involved with this scheme? Or are you just someone pretending to be him?
If you are he, welcome to Just World News. We should talk more. I’d love to ask you some questions about this whole project– and how you feel about it at this point. Why don’t you send me an email to authenticate yourself, and send me a phone # where I can call you later in the week.
One quick point: I was never criticizing the content of any of these little ideas: giving food and water to weary travelers, organizing soccer leagues, etc– why on earth would you think I would object? What I was criticizing was the political context in which these projects were pursued. So while the email you send is quite touching it is also fundamentally irrelevant to the case I was making.
… Well, it didn’t turn out too well for “your guys” in Fateh after all, did it? If you’d bothered to try to learn anything serious about Palestinian politics before you launched this last-minute– and for some people, I’m sure, fairly profitable– scheme, you should perhaps have perused some of my many writing on the subject over the years. (Or those of other experts.) This would have been as good a place as any to start…
I’m someone pretending to be him.
You’re welcome (for posting the text. I just thought you’d appreciate a perspective from an actual Palestinian; since that was the subject of the blog…)
Why do you persist in calling Fateh “my guys.” They weren’t. If there was anyone who was “our guy” it would have been the Office of the President (through whom the projects were identified, evaluated, selected, and eventually executed).
And I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “special forces person.” Just people. some trying to do good things; some doing bad things; and some writing about them.
And what do you consider to be “fairly profitable”? Do you mean “Fair” and “profitable”? In which case, I’m not sure I’d see what the issue was ~grin~
And how are you “sure” that it was fairly profitable for “some”? You seem to use the same vague sources (and journalistic style) as Scott Wilson… I’m pretty sure (not to be confused with being “pretty” and “sure”) it was ~not~ profitable; it was a not-for-profit venture and, like any US project related to Palestine, it had more oversight and interested observers than Brad and Angelina spotted naked on a blanket. The money went where it was supposed to go: To Palestinian partners doing things to make Palestinians proud of something and to generate some small spark of optimism and sense of hope for the future.