Just World News with Helena Cobban

I was planning to do a series of blog posts from the big conference I went to early this week at the Al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at AUB, in Beirut. But I confess I got a bit busy doing a few other things– some of them nitpicky editorial things to do with finishing the manuscript of my book, some having to do with actually spending some good time with some good people. So I postponed and postponed doing that blogging… And now, Stan Katz, the former head of the American Council of Learned Societies, who was also there, has beaten me to it and done a pretty good job of blogging the conference.
He did so in these three posts on the blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education: 1, 2, 3.
As Stan noted there, it was truly international gathering– even if not yet sufficiently so. The 50 or so presenters included scholars from Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, occupied East Jerusalem, Turkey, Germany, the UK, Netherlands, France, along with roughly 25 from the US. The conference’s title was “Liberty and Justice: America and the Middle East”. It was certainly notable that it was taking place just days before His High Excellency President G.W. Bush launched on his imperial-scale tour of his Middle East outposts… Checking up, no doubt, on the state of “Liberty and Justice” in Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries he’s visiting. But that was a very different kind of “east-west” interaction!
One lack at the conference that I noted was the absence of any Iraqi scholars. Iraqis have, after all, been at the receiving end of most of the US’s policy in the region over the past five years. What do they have to say on the conference’s topic? I do not know whether the conference organizers had invited any, and they failed to attend; or whether none had ever been invited. The inviting process did seem a little haphazard in some ways. But one thing that was clear was the outreach and effort the organizers had undertaken in order to secure the participation of four or five scholars from Tehran. That was an excellent thing to do. I wish I’d spent more time trying to get to know the Iranian participants.
One of the sessions that Stan Katz attended, but I didn’t, was on the challenge of teaching American studies in the Middle East. He wrote:

The speakers included the head of a new MA program at Teheran University in Iran (who seems, from his utterly colloquial language, to be an American), the director of the program at the University of Jordan in Amman, and a young graduate student from Al Quds University in East Jerusalem… In each case, though, there seemed to be considerable student interest in studying America, which in the year 2008 is both surprising and encouraging.

I don’t know why he finds this surprising? The US is the dominant power in this region, and members of subordinated or “challenger” nations always have an intense need to understand the inner workings of the big imperial power. It is often a matter of sheer survival to be able to do so. I have always found that any random group of non-Americans, anywhere in the world, knows a lot more about the internal workings of US politics and society than any random group of US citizens knows about the internal workings of any other society, including neighboring Canada or Mexico. It is not just a question of the near-saturation of the world’s public media with US-made cultural products, though that is one factor. But even more concretely, it is dictated by the intense need that members of weaker nations have to be able to understand the imperial power so they can optimize their chances of surviving under its domination…
And then, I’m not sure that Stan or anyone should easily jump to the conclusion that the desire of Middle Easterners to study America is “encouraging”, as such– except inasmuch as it indicates that there exists a large desire to understand other people across even some extremely thorny political divides. But if, as presenter Scott Lucas said– and I agree– we should be trying to decenter America within the global discourse, then we should applaud efforts by Middle Easterners to study Chinese society, or Indian society, or the cultures of Latin America or Europe as being equally “encouraging.” Perhaps, above all, we should consider the efforts of academics anywhere to look objectively at– and do something about– the situation of their own societies to be the most encouraging step of all?
From this perspective, I think maybe one of the biggest and most lasting outcomes the conferences might have been the participation in it of around two dozen US scholars. These were mainly not scholars of the Middle East, but scholars in one or another portion of “American studies”. So by coming to Lebanon– a country that throughout the past decades of US hegemony in the Middle East has been buffeted around by the political forces loosed on the region by that hegemony– these American Americanists probably had a bigger chance to learn something about their (our) country’s real role in the world than they would have from consuming thousands of hours of CNN or other parts of the MSM. They had the chance, in Beirut, to meet as colleagues with peers from Iran, Palestine, and other “exotic” and demonized countries. They had the chance to go and witness at first hand some of the effects that the US’s strong support (and heavy mid-war military re-supply) of Israel’s 2006 assault had on the people and country of Lebanon… What an excellent way for them to learn some more about America’s role in the world.
“Liberty” and “justice”, indeed.
I wish the conferences organizers had put the words in scare-quotes like that in the conference title? But I suppose the multiple ironies embedded within the title as it stood were plain enough to see.
Many of the American Americanists were interesting people. In his introductory remarks, CASAR director Patrick McGreevey did an effective job of underlining the ironies embedded in the “Liberty and Justice” title. Including, he reminded us of George W. Bush’s fall 2001 vow that he would “bring Osama bin Laden to justice– or bring justice to him,” which always struck me as a classic example of the misuse of the discourse of (true) justice.
First of all, what kind of justice would it be, that we would seek to bring OBL to? Would it look anything like the form of (miscarriage of) justice to which Saddam Hussein was brought? A hastily convened, US-dominated kangaroo court, which issues a death sentence and then carries it out in an extremely inflammatory manner?
I’m reminded of the words of ANC leader Rejoyce Mabudhafasi when I asked her what she wished had been done to the authors and upholders of the apartheid system– and she said something like, “We could never be the kind of people who do to them what they did to us, and nor would we want to be. So I think only the Almighty can decide what to do to ‘bring justice’ to them.” I do feel that way about OBL– though I am of course also strongly of the opinion that the man’s capacity for doing harm and violence, which he retains to this day, urgently needs to be incapacitated, a goal that can be achieved in any number of ways…
And then, what sort of justice might it be, that we would seek to bring to OBL? I don’t imagine that GWB was thinking of assembling a traveling courtroom and then parachuting the whole thing in, black robes and lawyers and lawbooks and all, once the US military had found OBL, wherever he might be by that point. I rather strongly suspect that the “justice” GWB was thinking of bringing to him instead was a targeted assassination– such as the US and Israel have made something of a habit of carrying out against suspected adversaries over recent years.
But that is, it seems to me, a profound abuse of the whole concept of justice. And not one that we should just slyly wink at, or go along with.
… Anyway, I realize I’m getting off the topic a little here. I just want to say I really appreciated the opportunity to be at the conference. I met some really interesting people and heard some great discussions. It also felt really good to be able to re-connect a little with some of my friends in Beirut, though sadly I didn’t have nearly enough time to re-connect with everyone I wanted to.
Oh, I did learn something very interesting indeed about the cluster bombs issue while I was there. This was from Timur Goksel, the wise and well-informed Turkish diplomat who was head of UNIFIL’s info operations from 1978 through 2002 or so. He said that one explanation he had heard for the Israelis stunningly large scale of use of cluster bombs was that the bombs were out of date and needed to be disposed of. So since disposal of any kinds of bombs is a not-cheap and sometimes risky business, the relevant decisionmakers in the IDF had thought why not lob all of those out-of-date cluster bombs into Lebanon and force Lebanon and the UN pay the price?
And as we all know, the price in human lives and livelihoods lost, as well as in $$$, has been huge– and it continues to be exacted to this day. I don’t have the figures easily to hand, but this late 2006 report from Haaretz says that the battalion commander of an IDF rocket unit “stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. By 30 August, 2006– just 16 days after the ceasefire went into effect– UN clearance experts had found “100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites” in south Lebanon.
The “dud rate” of the bomblets was reported at the time to be extremely high, and I do recall that some reports also noted that many of the cluster bombs that had been fired into Lebanon had had a production date of “1974” on them… So yes, the idea that the IDF might need to dispose of them seems to make a lot of sense.
Also, a large proportion of the cluster bombs that were fired were fired in the very last days of the war– during that strange and terrifying three-day period during after the terms of the ceasefire had already been agreed, but before it went into effect.

Lebanon does not have a president, and has only a caretaker government. The deadlock over how the next ruling coalition (president plus PM plus cabinet) is to be composed continues… There have been a couple of incidents in the south of the country– one in which a UN peacekeeping patrol was targeted, and one in which a couple of Katyushas were fired over the border into Israel… Many parts of the broader Middle East are tense because of President Bush’s imminent visit to the region and the near-clash between US and Iranian naval forces yesterday in the Persian Gulf. Normally, any such regional tensions could be expected to lead to a rise in tensions inside Lebanon.
But here’s the thing: the little part of Ras Beirut where I’ve been staying since Friday seems remarkably calm and free of tensions or fears of imminent escalations of violence. And so, as far as I can see, do the major Lebanese media.
I’d expected that talk about the political crisis here and the fears of descent into renewed civil strife might dominate the conversations of Lebanese friends and colleagues. They really haven’t. People seem, in general, to be sullenly habituated to the idea that the present uneasy status quo might continue for quite a while. It’s not that things are great here; everyone seems to recognize that. But there is not the degree of fear, and of concomitant political and physical mobilizations for fighting that I thought I might find.
I guess the big confrontations among internal forces came in 2005: the big Hariri memorial march of March 14; and then the equally big pro-Hizbullah and FPM march of the month that followed. Since then there has been, basically, a stand-off between these two huge blocs within the Lebanese body politic. The M14 people won some gains, of course, with the Syrian withdrawal and other developments at that time. But the Hizbullah-led bloc made some gains with the political outcome of the 33-day war in mid-2006. Neither of those shifts was decisive.
In December ’06, Hizbullah and FPM launched their big “sit-in around the Serail” to try to force the M14’s PM, Fuad Suiniora, out of office. But that didn’t work– and neither were the government forces able to end the sit-in by force and open up the Hariri-created New Downtown for (Saudi shopping-led) “business as usual.” So the stalemate between the two sides became routinized. The large forests of the protesters’ tents still stand in many open areas of the downtown– but they are largely empty.
Not having a president or a government continues the routinization of the stalemate. The atmosphere, in general, seems to be, “It’s not wonderful, but we can live with it. And it sure is better than doing anything that could risk another war.”
I’d like to note the wisdom and maturity with which all those legitimately involved in internal Lebanese politics have worked to prevent any resumption of (or slide into) outright civil war over the past three years. Of course the country hasn’t been violence-free in these years: there have been 14 or is it 15 ghastly car-bomb attacks against pro-M14 figures; between them, these have killed scores of people. There was also the really inhumane fighting in and around the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp over this summer, which was provoked by salafi jihadists who had congregated there from many parts of the Muslim world. They were then answered with a massive use of force on the part of the Lebanese army, accompanied by many horrendous atrocities against the residents of the camp…
Once again, the poor Palestinian civilians there, who have no protection against either the implantation of the salafists or the depradations of the Lebanese Army, were showing that being stateless in today’s world is to exist in a situation of extreme vulnerability.Once again, they were the punching bags of Lebanese political forces who sought to use violence against them for their own political ends. (In this case, the anti-Palestinian battles served to unite Lebanese from many factions around Army Commander Michel Suleiman, as the next President… The streets here are now plastered with posters hailing him as “The saviour.”)
So it is not that there is no political violence here. There is. But still, it feels very different from I was here when the country was poised on a knife-edge, in April 1975.
I am willing to admit I could be completely wrong! I have only been here four days, much of it doing things other than doing reportorial investigations. Maybe somewhere just out of my current (necessarily constricted) line of sight, some political forces or small dedicated networks are working hard to produce some kind of massive crisis that could embroil the whole country– and maybe, a large enough proportion of Lebanese would become jolted by that into resuming their civil war. But somehow, things just don’t feel that way…

Another benefit of being here in Lebanon is being able to watch Hizbullah’s TV station, al-Manar. I have only watched a little of it on this trip– certainly, nothing like a “representative sample” of their programing. (Oh, I just saw on the crawl at the bottom there just now that Israel’s Winograd Commission has announced it will delay publication of the weighty second portion of its report into the failings of the 33-day war until January 30. Could that possibly be, um, a slightly politicized decision?)
Anyway, I did want to blog about a fascinating children’s program I saw on the channel on Friday afternoon. I’d been working rather hard for some hours by then, doing some close editing/revision work on my Re-engage book, and by late afternoon I just wanted a break. So I was flipping channels on the t.v. in the hotel room and came to Manar, in the middle of a kid’s program called, I think, “Bayt al-Boyout.” (“House of many homes”). The very able main presenter was a young-ish woman dressed in hijab in different shades of blue, who was sitting in a set like a beautiful big children’s playroom– with a sign-language interpreter sitting beside her. The presenter (I never did catch her name) was conducting a conversation with a group of some four or five cute-looking kids of around 5-7 years old, all of whom were either blind, severely visually impaired, or deaf; and the presenter was conducting normal kindergarten-type activities with them, including reading then a story and asking them questions.
What was excellent about this program in my view was the light but intentionally educational way in which the presenter showed viewers that these are full, normal, human children who happen to be differently abled. When she conversed with the two deaf kids, she did so “through” the sign-language interpreter. There was even a little cartouche in the bottom-left of the screen where the signer’s work was constantly on display for viewers with hearing disabilities.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything on kids-with-disabilities in many hours of watching children’s programing in the US that was as well done as this. (But that was a long time ago, I guess.) Also, this program was thankfully not interrupted by any ads– for gross sugary drinks or foods, or anything else.
Toward the end, the presenter developed one of the topics mentioned in the children’s book she had just read to the kids, and asked two or three of the children if they had ever argued with their younger siblings. The kids she asked said “Yes,” and said the arguments had been over toys or the t.v. “And what did you do?” she asked. Both the kids said, “I hit my little brother [or sister}.” The presenter continued by asking: “And then what happened? Did that solve the problem?” Each kid in turn said No, that the little sib just became peskier yet… So then the presenter said that it would be probably be more productive for the kids to talk about their disagreements/ concerns/ complaints to the sibling, rather than hitting them, and in that way they could work out how to take turns with the toy in question or the t.v. program, and still stay good friends with them.
Doesn’t this seem like a good lesson for any children’s show, anywahere, to leave with its viewers?
Isn’t it interesting that the kids’ show produced by Hizbullah is promulgating this message?
Now, Hizbullah’s political leadership has never publicly expressed any desire to solve its problems with Israel through discussion rather than force. But– and this is a big caveat– it has always been eager to be included in indirect negotiations with Israel and other parties over the terms for a ceasefire in the hostilities between them; and once ceasefires have been agreed, it has generally stuck to their terms quite carefully. Its observance of previously agreed ceasefires– in 1993, 1996, and 2006– has not been total. But its infractions have been considerably less serious and numerous than those of Israel.
And meantime, the US– and Israel– both steadfastly stick to and repeatedly proclaim their political stance of refusing to sit down and deal with their grievances against Hizbullah through discussions rather than through force. (Though, as we have seen, when they have found themselves in an impossibly tight corner they have been prepared, in practice, to sit down and negotiate an indirect ceasefire with them.)
So maybe the political leaderships on all these sides would benefit from sitting down– separately, if they prefer this– to watch this educational episode of “Bayt al-Boyout”, so they can learn some lessons about how talking through differences is better than simply lashing out with violence and intimidation against the other party?
But it occurs to me that Israel and the US are both physically far, far stronger than Hizbullah, and both have used violence on a far grander scale than anything Hizbullah has ever used. So perhaps they both need to learn the program’s lesson about not hitting your younger siblings even more than anyone else?