‘Contesting Religions’ in Atlanta

I’ve been at a conference in Atlanta for the past couple of days. It’s organized by the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and the general theme is global religious issues.
I admit that one of the main reasons I came was because I was supposed to be on a panel with the Israeli writer Avishai Margalit and the Iranian scholar Abdel-Karim Suroush– both of them people I was interested in meeting. So neither of them was actually here. I was a bit taken aback to discover that. But as it happens I’ve met lots of really interesting people and participated in lots of really interesting discussions.
Highlights have included listening in on a discussion among African scholars of indigenous African religions and Chinese scholars of indigenouse Chinese (folk-)religions, and gaining an idea of both the hardiness and the richness of some of those traditions; participating in a workshop on religion and violence today, where some really deep and significant differences emerged; lots of conversations; a talk by UN Population Fund head Thuraya Obeid, yesterday; and a performance of jazz and gospel music by the Atlanta Community Jazz Choir this evening.
Sorry this is such a lame little report here. I’m a tired, tired person. This morning I actually gave a 30-minute plenary presentation on “Religion and Violence”, in which I wanted to present some of my Africa work to this group. Some very, very supportive reactions; some not so much so. That’s okay.
My bottom-line theseis was something along the lines of, that at and after times of intense trauma social breakdown, people often turn to religion and religions have a lot of influence over people’s lives, thinking, and behavior; at this point, religions can do one of two things: they can either work to heal people’s hurt and enrol these people in broader projects of social healing, or they can harden people’s sadness into anger and steer them toward vengefulness and punitiveness, which often come cloaked in the garb of “justice”…
Oh well, I know I haven’t expressed it well here. I talked a bit in the afternoon workshop today about the truly amazing way the Mozambican people managed to trasncend all the hurt from their lengthy and atrocious civil war by using approaches based on blanket amnesty and wide use of social healing. And this German scholar afterwards kept insisting to me, “But there has to be justice! What about justice??” What could I say? “Hey, don’t attack me I’m just reporting what they did and telling you that from every perspective I know of it surely seems to have worked. If the Mozambicans say they are satisfied with the results, what standing do you (or I) have to tell them, No it didn’t?”
L’esprit de l’escalier, here. That’s why I have the blog… Tomorrow, we go to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Museum.

ICTY case management

I see from a piece by Marlise Simons in the NYT today that Theodor Meron, the President of the Internatinal Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and the prosecutors there, have started trying to speed things by organizing a lot more plea bargains than previously.
This is in line with the more expedited case management at ICTY and its sister-court for rwanda, ICTR that the US has been urging for a while. Simons’ piece notes that ICTY has finished trying 40 people already and has 27 others “preparing for trial”. It makes some sense to me, as the trials at the ICTs are incredibly expensive and long-drawn-out.
I have a piece coming out in Boston Review soon about the ICTR, which goes into some of these same issues of cost and case management. (Also, of relevance to the situation inside Rwanda.) At ICTR, the “record” on number of cases completed is far worse– around 12 to date, only. But at least at ICTR, the Prosecutors started out with a more well-thought-out strategy of focusing on the “big fish” and not letting the court’s time and resources get distracted into going after small fry, which is how ICTY started out.
Also, at ICTR, they probably got their hands on a greater proportion of the real top people they were going after than they did at ICTY. There, most notably, Mladic and Karadzic are still running loose…
What does all this actually achieve, for the peoples of Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, though? That’s what I’m trying to investigate– well, with particular reference to ICTR. I do understand that at the level of “global” policy, these courts are establishing an impressive new body of case law on matter dealing with atrocities, etc., etc. (And providing a lot of well-paid jobs for a small coterie of international lawyers.)
But at the end of the day, law is supposed to serve people, not the other way round. Have the $1 billion or so that’s gone into ICTY and more-than-$500 million that’s gone into ICTR actually been well spent? Have these two projects contributed to strengthening national reconciliation in those societies and ending the previous cycles of violence?
I think “the jury’s still out” on those questions. (Not that ICTY and ICTR even have juries, anyway.)
But amidst the general enthusiasm for war-crimes courts that most people in the human-rights movement have gotten swept up by in recent years, it’s worth remembering that amnesties and a spirit of forgiveness have often actually, historically, played a central role in building a general climate of peacefulness and reconciliation, and thus bringing the commission of acts of atrocious violence to and end. That is–or should be–a goal of the human rights movement, too!

Jewish Israeli views on peace, security

Every year, Tel Aviv University’s prestigious Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies conducts and then reports on a wide-ranging study of public attitudes in Israel on peace and security issues.
(Not wide-ranging enough for my humble tastes, since they like many other public opinion surveyors in Israel poll only Jewish Israelis, and not the 20 percent or so of Israeli citizens who are ethnically Palestinian/Arab… I mean, can you imagine someone in the US conducting a poll that charted only the attitudes of “white” Americans, and then presenting that as the views of “Americans” in general?)
Well anyway, dropped into my mailbox today the little report on this year’s Jaffee Center survey, which was conducted mainly in April this year. According the Exec Summary of the report,

    Israelis were more optimistic regarding prospects for peace and supportive of the measures required to move the peace process forward compared to the respondents of the 2002 survey. For example, 59% of respondents in 2003 supported the establishment of a Palestinian state … in the framework of a peace agreement, up from 49% in 2002… Those who agreed to abandon all but the large settlement blocs [i.e. blocs of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank] increased from 50% in 2002 to 59% in 2003.

So, perhaps some modestly good news there.
Also good news: the survey has annually, since 1986, asked the general question as to whether respondents would choose peace talks or increasing military strength as the most effective way to avoid another war with Arabs. Between 1986 and 2001, the percentage who chose “peace talks” dipped beneath 50% only once– that was in early 1995. But the responses to both the 2001 and 2002 surveys on this question showed “peace talks” chosen by significantly fewer than 50%. This year, it was back up again– to 56%. Still well short of the high levels of 1991 and 1992, which look to my eye to be in the low 70s. But still, the trend line is up.
What a pity, though, if Israelis are “feeling” a little more secure and accommodationist only because they think their army has succeeded in penning the Palestinians inside the razor-wire fences that ring every West Bank city except Jericho, and that cut Gaza up into segments, or behind that monstrous wall that is now snaking its way through the heart of the West Bank.
(Have you noticed that the US Army has decided to put a fence all around Saddam’s home town of Auja, near Tikrit? Wonder where they got that idea from… )
Anyway, another thing I wanted to write here about the latest Jaffee Center report is something that appears only near the back of the report. It appears that since as long ago as 1987, this survey has routinely asked respondents if they think the Israeli government should “encourage the emigration of Arabs from Israel”. And in at least three of the surveys they have now explicitly asked respondents if they favor “transfer”, that is, the forcible ethnic cleansing, of, firstly, the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, and secondly, of the Palestinians of the occupied territories.
The results on this question are disquieting–no, I would say almost literally sickening. Support expressed for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel out of their ancestral homeplace (and present state of citizenship) was at 24% in 1991, at 31% and 33% in April this year.
I guess that’s why they don’t administer the survey the survey to Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens. “Excuse me, ma’am, do you think the government should ethnically cleanse you out of this country?” It could seem a little tasteless.
Views of respondents on ethnically cleansing the Palestinians out of the occupied territories are even more upsetting: 38% of support in 1991; 46% in 2002, and 46% again this year. (How’s that again about favoring peacemaking over military strength? Who do these respondents think they’re going to make peace with?)
So, disquieting, yes. Sickening, yes. But here’s something else. If a “reputable”, “mainstream” Israeli research organization can go around the streets of (Jewish) Israel asking such questions as these as part of a calm, objective survey of people’s attitudes, does this asking in itself actually help to normalize the whole sick idea of transfer in people’s minds? (“I mean, if even the Jaffee Center people with their clipboards are proposing this as one discussable option, that must mean it’s kosher to talk about it don’t you think?”)
Kosher? Talking about ethnic cleansing in the modern day and age (and after everything the Jewish people themselves have gone through in their history)? I wonder if the survey-askers got any expressions of sheer outrage and horror at the idea of “transfer” from any of the people they talked to?
Actually, I don’t know how quite how I feel about this asking. (“Good evening, sir, I’m from a prestigious research center in Washington DC and we’re conducting a survey on people’s views on the reintroduction of lynching?”) I suppose I’m glad to know the sick truth about how extremist the attitudes of many Jewish Israelis are.
And definitely now that this survey has been done, its results should be widely publicized.
You cannot, alas, link directly to the text of this year’s survey report yet. But if you click here, you can find, on pp.27-31 of last year’s survey, a lengthy discussion of the views that those respondents expressed on both the “encouraging emigration” question and that of forcible “transfer.” You can also, of course, read the whole of last year’s report right there, too.
Tell me what you think about the Jaffee Center folks even asking these questions.

Marine’s Girl being silenced– or not?

Folks– Marine’s Girl, who has been writing a great blog for the past 5-plus weeks that provides “Insight on being the girl friend of a Marine in Iraq. Opinions of news items of the day, politics, and relationships” is being intimidated into silence.
I’ve only had a link up to her blog for a few days, though I’ve been reading it quite a while longer. She’s taken down most of the content that was previously on the blog. But if the blog is still up on the web at all, you should go read this, and this— as well as anything else you can still find up on her blog.
“First they came for the Jews, and no-one said anything… ” You know how the rest of that goes.
Don’t let them do anything to this plucky, insightful person or her boyfriend! At the very least, send her a message of support.
Update, Monday a.m.: So it seems that MG actually has powerful supporters within the USMC, as well. Check this. I guess it’s not quite all handled yet, but it looks on the way to being so.
Great news, MG! And please, please, get all that content that you’d taken down back up onto your blog a.s.a.p. You and your guy are our Hemingway so far, for this war!

Iraq: the best sense yet

This was my first attempt to post this text, which is from a speech given November 4 by my old friend Ghassan Salameh. But I only had a highly imperfect version of it, as published in The Daily Star (Lebanon). Shame on them! Evidently editing standards there must have plummeted since I worked there back in 1974-75…
Anyway, I’ve now cut out the whole substance of this post, and direct you to the next post, where a better version of the text is now posted. (Sadly, though, I couldn’t do the whole line-break thing for such a long text there.)
Still, it’s an interesting text. Check it out. I’m keeping this one here as a placeholder only because Advanced Calc already posted an interesting Comment on it, which I didn’t want to lose.

JWN “Golden oldies” section added

This week, I added a new section of “Golden oldies” to the sidebar at the right of the “Main” (a.k.a. “Main Index”) page. Check it out! It so far features some of my earliest JWN posts, from February and March 2003. Including several pre-war predictions that now look pretty prescient.
I also, fairly often, re-organize the “Links” section on that sidebar. So you should check that out, too, and visit some of the new items I feature there. I took off Salam/Pax’s blog because he hasn’t posted anything serious there for about a month.
Future plans: I’m considering mining some of the “Golden oldies” from my Al-Hayat columns and putting some links to them up on the sidebar, too. But I need some help from my filial technical advisor for that. Tarek, call your mother!
Finally, can anyone out there advise me how, in MT, to (probably retrospectively) tag some of my posts as “Golden oldies” so that the listing of them can be automatically generated by MT rather than me having to painstakingly write a bunch of new HTML into my “Main Index” template every time? Leave a comment here with the advice, or write me. Thanks!

Shin Bet ex-chiefs speak out

Four retired chiefs of Israel’s fearsome and ultra-repressive Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency have now added their voices to those in Israel calling for more reliance on realistic diplomacy with the Palestinians, and less reliance on brute force.
This speak-out is very important, since the Shin Bet plays a major role in administering the harsh control system that the Israeli authorities maintain over the three million Palestinian residents of the occupied West bank and Gaza. It also comes just two weeks after Israel’s highest-ranking military officer, IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, also publicly urged the government to ease up on the harsh administrative violence (my term, that) that it imposes on the Palestinians.
It seems the four Shin Bet veterans spoke together to one or more reporters for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. One key quote picked up and highlighted by the WaPo in its front-page story today was this, from Avraham Shalom (SB head, 1980-86):

    We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully… Yes, there is no other word for it: disgracefully.

The group spoke out forcefully against the Sharon government’s long-sustained attempt to marginalize Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
(Arafat, it should be noted was democratically elected by the Palestinians of the occupied territories in 1996 in the only territories-wide elections the Palestinians there have ever been allowed to hold under Israel’s now 37-year-long military occupation. Those elections were deemed free and fair by US and other election monitors. If they were repeated today, he would once again win. Sharon, of course, would prefer a Quisling figure to “negotiate” with, but hasn’t found one yet.)
The WaPo piece, by Mollly Moore, reported of the SB veterans as follows:

    The group was particularly critical of Sharon’s attempt to sideline Arafat and declare him “irrelevant” — also a key tenet of President Bush’s Middle East policy.
    “It was the mother of all errors with regard to Arafat,” said Shalom, who has worked as an international business consultant since leaving the government. “We cannot determine who will have the greatest influence over there. So let us look at the Palestinians’ political map, and it is a fact that nothing can happen without Arafat.”

The group also criticized Sharon’s insistence that all Palestinian violence should stop before the Israelis even consider moving toward a negotited settlement. They called for Israel to make the “painful concessions” needed for a permanent peace– and to do so unilaterally, if necessary.
Those concessions, they said, should include evacuating at least some of the Jews-only settlements Israel has (quite illegally) planted inside the occupied territories. They did not specify how many of the roughly 400,000 settlers should be taken back to Israel’s own land.
Moore reported that “several” of the former chiefs also criticized the massive barrier that israel is building in and around several key areas of the West Bank. Once again, Shalom seemed notably outspoken on this, saying:

    It creates hatred, it expropriates land and annexes hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the state of Israel. The result is that the fence achieves the exact opposite of what was intended.

In addition to Shalom, those who participated were Yaakov Peri (SB chief 1988-95), Carmi Gillon (1995-96), and Ami Ayalon (1996-2000).
To me, the participation of Ayalon is not at all surprising. He has also been publicly engaged in a very forward-looking joint project with Al-Quds University President sari Nuseibeh to gather signatures from both Israelis and Palestinians in support of a statement calling for “two states for two peoples” with a shared Jerusalem, etc etc.
Nor is the participation of Peri totally surprising, since I think I’ve seen his name associated with some previous faintly pro-peace moves.
That of Carmi Gillon surprised me a lot, however. Isn’t he the person behind the creation of “Memri”, a very intelligent but very skewed attempt to “explain” to westerners that most Arabs are anti-Semites and can’t be trusted? If that is the same person, then perhaps he should look to changing the basically inflammatory and blood-libellous slant of “Memri”. On the other hand, if it IS the same person, it is also really great to see people changing their minds and their public positions in the light of overwhelming physicial and moral facts.
What bugs me, as a taxpaying US citizen is why our President and Members of Congress are still so far from speaking these same kind of home truths (and, let me add, backing such words with a smart reallocation of US economic incentives.)
Since when did one side in a conflict get to veto the leader legally elected by members of the “other” side? Where would we be if the Palestinians and Arabs all went from saying “We don’t like Sharon” (which is probably true) to saying “Because we don’t like him we refuse to negotiate with him”?
Sharon’s insistence on marginalizing Arafat has been outrageous, all along. But instead of simply telling him that, and reminding him of the old home truth that “You don’t make peace with your friends– you make peace with your enemies!”– the US administration and nearly every single member of Congress has just indulged Sharon and gone along with his bullying attempt to tell the Palestinians who can and who cannot represent them.
Well, at least now Prez Bush has said he’s for full democracy in the Middle East. That’s a relief! Now, maybe, he can “persuade” Sharon to let the Palestinians make their own choice about who gets to lead and represent them?
What do you think? Is it about to happen? Hey, I’m sitting on the edge of my chair here…
Actually, what all of us who are US citizens can and should do is write our representatives, enclose a copy of Moore’s article, and tell our representatives that democracy and true representativity for the Palestinians, fair and balanced negotiations on the Palestinians’ many claims, and the committed use of US aid dollars to promote a just and sustainable outcome, is the only way forward.

Iraq-“iffy”-cation– yet more

I got some nice reactions to the CSM column that came out today. Of course, Iraq-iffy-cation has become quite the big topic, all of a sudden.
It’s very hard to tell what-all the Bushies’ plans (if they have any) currently are. Is the huge military escalation a sort of “last gasp” before they all ignominiously “redeploy offshore”? A precedent for that would be having the battleship New Jersey hurling Volkswagen-size marine munitions into villages in Lebanon in late ’83/early ’84 even as the brass were actively preparing for-indeed, even as they undertook– the withdrawal of ground forces from the whole country.
A sort of petulant, retributive, and very shortsighted way to exit any country, let me note. I wrote about that whole episode not long ago, here.
But nah. I don’t think that “covering a withdrawal” is what the present bombardments and escalation in Iraq are all about. (Though I would truly love to be wrong on that.) So far, it looks to me more like the petulant, retributive, and shortsighted part of what happened in Lebanon, but without any underlying strategic plan.
Looks like they’re trying to bomb the bejeesus out of the Iraqis while saying they want to build a democratic constituency of Iraqis with whom they can peacefully negotiate Iraq-iffy-cation as soon as possible?
And this fits together how????
You know what? People have been mainly looking at the challenges of Iraq-iffy-cation through some very limited lenses. In the mainstream discourse, most people’s memories only seem to go as far back as– oh, Afghanistan, 2002.
So that’s why you get all these mainstream headscratchers saying oh, so, “wisely” things like, “What we need in Iraq is a Hamid Karzai figure!” or, even more pretentiously, “Maybe we should move to a loya jirga model there instead.”
What horse-@#$%. People, let me say, “I know something about Iraq, and Iraq is no Afghanistan!”
They tried the Hamid Karzai model there already, remember: the suave westernized long-time emigre who could work smoothly with the Americans…

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