Israel plays Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza

This link will serve, a news story from The Globe and Mail yesterday, on how Hamas is armed by Iran with Syrian and Iranian-made rockets, particularly the Syrian-made M-302 Khaibar and Iranian Fajr-5 missiles. It cites Colonel Richard Kemp an analyst with London’s Royal United Services Institute, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Iran is … sending deadly weapons to terrorist organizations – via an elaborate network of secret operations around that world that aim to funnel rockets, missiles and other deadly weapons to be used to harm innocent civilians,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding: “Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing toward Israeli citizens.”

In other words, Mr. Netanyahu makes clear that Gazans are pawns of Khamenei and Assad, but despite knowing this his retaliation will be limited to the pawns, with all the killing of civilians that comes with carrying out such an operation in Gaza.

This is a repeat of the stubborn stupidity of Israel’s conduct of war in Lebanon in 2006, where it targeted civilian infrastructure and held a fragile Lebanese government responsible for the actions of Hezbollah, rather than attacking Hezbollah’s actual backers, the tyrant rulers of Syria and Iran.

The foolishness of this was highlighted at the time by the strategically smartest American president of the 21st Century (not a big claim) GW Bush:

You see the irony is what they need to do is get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s all over…

When Israel’s government declares the Iranian and Syrian regimes responsible for arming Hamas, and when it accuses Hamas of deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way, they make it clear that when they then go on to hit only targets in Gaza, and continue to contain Gaza’s population together with a Hamas regime that by the Israel government’s own account is happy to see them bleed, then Israel is playing Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza.

Assad and Khamenei are blessed to have an enemy like Israel, an enemy who will draw the world’s outrage while Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s militias get on with slaughtering Syrians across the border. And though Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that they have the ability to hit inside Syria, they’ll let Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s supply planes carry on flying.

Syria still needs a No-Fly Zone. It would serve the Israelis’ interests too, but they don’t seem to have the wit to see it.

At +972, Nobody should be a number: Names of those killed in Gaza, via Peter Beaumont.

#IsraeliEmbassy #Cairo

Tomorrow’s hangover will not be good. Below the fold, a snapshot of Twitter reports and reactions in recent hours from inside and outside Egypt, newest on top.

Making excuses

Via Poumista, a post by David Osler, Libya: revolution betrayed?, responding to Eammon McCann’s reminiscences in Socialist Worker of his meeting with Gaddafi in 1987, when McCann interviewed him for a Channel 4 documentary. I haven’t seen the film, but a print version of the interview was published by In Dublin magazine in February 1987.

It’s not an article I would recommend to the casual reader. Scholars of kitsch left anti-Western anti-imperialist politics may find it of interest, not for any novelty value but as a good example of its type. McCann’s main aim in the piece seems to have been to make excuses for Gaddafi’s transgressions, to diminish them as far as possible, despite necessarily acnowledging a few unavoidable facts as to the nature of Gaddafi’s rule, and further, to wherever possible call attention to the vices of Western leaders and Western media. A paragraph to illustrate the MO:

Amnesty International reckons the number of victims of Libyan terrorism at nineteen, fifteen of these being Libyans abroad ‘sentenced to death’ by the Revolutionary Committees. Yvonne Fletcher is among the four others. In the period in which these killings took place (1980 up to the present) US proxies in El Salvador and Guatemala killed an estimated 120,000 people.

19 against 120,000 makes for a conclusive argument, and let connection and context be damned. Here’s another choice bit, a quote from Gaddafi that goes unchallenged by McCann, describing Jewish American cabinet members as Israelis:

‘They have involved Israelis in their very government. I’m thinking here of Kissinger and Schultz. This is a great mistake. The American people should elect themselves a president who is qualified, and who will not involve Israelis.’

Enough of that. For anyone sufficiently curious, scans of the article are here: one, two, three, four, five, six.

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From another article on kitsch anti-imperialists and the intervention debate linked to at Poumista, a line to cut out and keep:

At the end of the day, their posture comes down to opposition to whatever the main imperialist bourgeoisies are doing. No matter what. Much that they do, most of what they do, should indeed be opposed. But to equate our long term, rooted, class opposition to these powers with deep opposition to every specific thing they do is not to be independent of them, but to be their slavish mirror image.

That’s from Why we should not denounce intervention in Libya, by Sean Matgamna, posted at Shiraz Socialist.

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Indeed we should not denounce it, but ask why it is still too little, and still too slow. Below is the Turkish ferry Ankara at Misratah port today, taking wounded on board to be treated in Turkey. The ship spent days several miles offshore because of shelling by Gaddafi forces. Apparently NATO forces advised the ship to stay offshore because it was unsafe to dock. What I don’t understand is why didn’t NATO forces escort the ship to ensure safe passage? The UN resolution that NATO are acting under is supposed to “protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” Looking at this ship docking days late in the empty port of Misratah, NATO seems to be failing in its mission.



Update 4 April: BBC News reports that the ship Ankara has now sailed to Benghazi before going on to Cesme, Turkey:

Turkey's Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, ordered the Ankara, a car ferry that had been turned into a makeshift hospital, into Misrata on Sunday after it had spend four days waiting for permission to dock.

The ship, which was also carrying medical supplies for doctors in Misrata, arrived under cover from 10 Turkish F-16 fighter jets and two navy frigates, Turkish consular official Ali Akin told the Reuters news agency.

With heavily armed Turkish police special forces standing by, the injured people were taken aboard and laid on mattresses on one of the car decks, above which saline drips were hung. Some were accompanied by their relatives.

Mr Akin said the ship had to leave early after a large crowd - including hundreds of Egyptians - pressed forward on the quayside hoping to escape.

The BBC's Jon Leyne, who went on board the Ankara, says many of the patients have extremely serious injuries, including some amputations.

Read more.

Gangsters

Live coverage of Egypt from BBC News, The New York Times, EA WorldView, The Guardian. Al Jazeera’s live stream.

Danger Room: Horses, Camels, Rocks, Molotovs: Egypt’s Thug Tech.

CNN reports attacks on ambulances, intimidation of doctors, Cairo hospital: Ambulances rolling nonstop; menacing crowd outside.

Committee to Protect Journalists: Journalists under physical assault in Egypt.

It’s not orderly, it’s not stability, it’s not working. ABC News on frustration in the White House: President Obama ‘Very Concerned’ About Mubarak Delaying Transfer Of Power.

Jeffrey Goldberg: The Neocons Split with Israel Over Egypt, via HP.

Also at Harry’s Place, Perspectives on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which links to a number of arguments, and a news story I’ve been waiting for - Avi Issacharoff writes in Haaretz, Hamas worried upheaval in Arab world will spill into Gaza:

Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip are concerned about the effects of the upheaval in the Arab world, as Facebook messages call on Gaza residents to demonstrate against Hamas rule on Friday.

Several thousand people have joined the Facebook group calling for a protest against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip. Another Facebook group is calling for protests against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Far fewer people have expressed interest in that page, but Palestinian leaders in the West Bank also recognize that the protests in Tunisia and Egypt could spill over into Palestinian territory.

In what seems to be an effort to hold off possible demonstrations, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority will hold municipal elections in the near future, and senior Fatah officials said they are considering general elections as well.

In Gaza City, Hamas police used force earlier this week to disperse a small rally showing solidarity with Egyptian protesters. Police officers dressed in civilian clothing arrested six women and detained some 20 others, according to Human Rights Watch.

The women were taken to a police station, where policewomen insulted them and slapped one of them during an interrogation, according to the report. The protesters were told not to demonstrate again without Hamas police authorization.

More.

ModernityBlog has a round up of blog analysis, opinion, and speculation: Egypt, What Will Happen Next?

Bob from Brockley is on a million link march: Freedom’s Flame.

All Egypt posts here.

The Radio Bug

Sadly, the Speechification blog, main source for the last two radio posts, has gone off the air. You may still get some joy by searching Google’s cache of the site, at least for a limited time.

On the plus side though, BBC radio seems to be keeping ever more programmes available online for longer, for example The Age of the Genome, a four part Radio 4 series presented by Richard Dawkins from June is still available. Some Radio 4 programmes which are no longer available for streaming after a week, then turn up on the BBC World Service available indefinitely.

From across the Atlantic, here are three programmes looking back on the last seven years of war in Iraq, in order of my preference.

First, from This American Life on WBEZ, Iraq After Us, an outstanding hour of radio built primarily on interviews with Iraqis recorded in Iraq.

Second, on PRI’s The World, Reflections on Serving in Iraq, Former U.S. Army Captain Blake Hall interviewed by Jeb Sharp of How We Got Here.

Third, on WHYY’s Fresh Air, A Foreign Correspondent Reflects On Iraq War, Anthony Shadid of the New York Times interviewed by Terry Gross. The interview focuses on this story about the trials of a family trying to locate the body of a family member kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and dumped.

I had minor reservations on that last interview, to do with distracting comments by the interviewer, but I still recommend it.

Related, Roland Dodds writes, State Building in Iraq has Just Begun.

From those same three sources, let’s have some other topics.

Here’s a This American Life broadcast from 22nd of May 2009, Turncoat, on red-baiting amongst America’s Vietnamese population, on Brandon Darby’s trip from anti-cop anarchist activist to FBI informer, by way of encounters with one of FARC’s pals in Venezuela and a pro-Hamas bombing conspiracy in the US, and ending with reading a short story from Israel by Etgar Keret.

And another from PRI’s The World, Revisiting the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, lawyer Judith Armatta talks about her experience of monitoring the trial, and of her book Twilight of Impunity. Interviewer Jeb Sharp includes a report from the trial she recorded in 2003.

Three related blog recommendations: Café Turco, Greater Surbiton, and Americans for Bosnia.

One more from The World, in the science archive, Seeking the Roots of Kindness: The Life and Work of George Price, in which Oren Harman talks about his book, The Price of Altruism.

And a blog post related to that, at Stumbling and Mumbling, Gamu Nhengu and the context of justice, on altruism, asylum, and familiarity.

A bunch from WHYY’s Fresh Air: Mark Feldstein talks about Jack Anderson and Richard Nixon, ruthless journalist vs ruthless politician, David Bianculli talks about The Smothers Brothers (see earlier post), Eric Foner on the evolution of Lincoln’s thoughts on slavery, and Isabel Wilkerson on the Great Migration (see earlier).

Finally, not really radio, from Wolfgang’s Vault, a 1978 interview with David Bowie. You’ll need to register for this, but it’s free, it just means being put on their mailing list. More Bowie at Bob’s.

PICTURE CREDIT! The comic strip is The Radio Bug in ‘If 8:15 isn’t a good hour, what is?’ by Walt McDougall, reprinted in Jerry Robinson’s The Comics, an Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, soon to be reissues in a new edition. Copyright © Walt McDougall.

Calling Iran, Iran calling . . .

The New York Times is marking forty years of the Op-Ed page by republishing a selection from the archive, including this from 2005, Marjane Satrapi on Iran and Israel, and the politics of provocation.

Some BBC World Service radio to go with that: in part five of the World Stories series, Afshin Dehkordi compares the use of internet communications by Iran’s Green Movement with the use of telephone and tape cassette technology by the organisers of the 1979 revolution, interviewing journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, and veteran of 1979 Mohsen Sazegara.

And some related blog posts: Pedestrian on the Society of the Spectacle, and at EA, An Open Letter to All Experts Bashing “Twitter Revolution”.

At the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Iranian Blogger Hossein Derakhshan Receives Over 19 Years In Prison, and Terry Glavin on Hossein Derakhshan.

Image copyright © Marjane Satrapi.

Radio in a bottle

I only recently came across the Speechification radio blog, via a post by illustrator Stephen Kroninger on the case of The Gorbals Vampire, a story of children, comics, and censorship, that began in a Glasgow graveyard in 1954, and led to the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955, a law that is still in force. A BBC Radio 4 documentary on these bizarre events is preserved at Speechification.

UPDATE 19th October: Speechification has gone off the air, along with its archive. I’m leaving the dead links in place in case of some future change of heart. You might also find cached copies of the blog via Google useful.

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Debunking the Islamisation Myth is a substantial attempt by Edmund Standing to distinguish between rational concern about radical Islamist movements, and irrational fears of Britain or other European countries being somehow conquered by political Islam, either via immigration or via conversion. Edmund Standing’s writings are mainly about the extremists of Britain’s racist far right, but he has also written on the extremism of political Islamism, and the interactions between political Islamism and the kitsch element on the left.

In the past I’ve disagreed with Standing’s views on immigration. I don’t know if his thoughts on that have now changed, but this current effort is a good attempt to tackle the problem of the racist right using concern over the extremist Islamist right to gain support for their divisive politics. Some reactions to it here.

Edmund Standing is a frequent contributor to Harry’s Place, a blog which has itself often been criticised for failing to adequately distance itself from racism and religious bigotry in its ongoing effort to cover extremist Islamism in the UK, this criticism being mainly in relation to the commenters it attracts. More on that topic by Flesh is Grass, Marko Attila Hoare, and Poumista.

Speechification has two BBC documentaries that complement the above particularly well: from Archive on 4, Hate against Hope, on the struggle against racist extremists in London’s East End in the 1970s and ’80s, and Turkey in Europe, on migration and Islam in Austria and in the Balkans.

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After that, a break for some music. Speechification is not just talk, here’s a Radio 3 documentary on outsider composer Moondog. There’s hours more Moondog radio with Irwin Chusid on WFMU here and here, and Mr Chusid blogs Moondog here.

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More recently on the WFMU blog, The Comedy Writer That Helped Elect Richard M Nixon, on the superficially counter-culture TV show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, its head writer Paul Keyes, and the media team of TV and ad men he worked with on Nixon’s campaign. (Spotted by Paul.)

The post details a substantial bit of American political and media history, and reading it is not easy in the WFMU blog format of white text on black. I printed the whole thing out, and it was worth the effort.

The post also goes into the Nixon White House campaign against another TV comedy show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. If, like me, you were unfamiliar with them, may I recommend the following clips in order of ascending madness: Boil That Cabbage Down, a folk song from Israel, and My Old Man.

And to wash that down, one last item from Speechification, The Life and Crimes of Lenny Bruce, a BBC Radio 3 documentary from 1996.

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The illustration for this post is a detail from my cover art for The Chesterfield Arrangements, music by Raymond Scott performed by The Metropole Orchestra with The Beau Hunks.

REWIND << ERASE

Last month’s post on Prof. Judith Butler concerned her view of feminism as only valid when tied to a narrowly anti-Western form of anti-imperialism. For her, feminists in places like Afghanistan must be hobbled like an entry for a three-legged race, while running against a murderous opposition burdened with no such restrictions.

Amongst other utterances, the post pointed to her statement on Hamas and Hezbollah in 2006. From the Radical Archives blog, a long extract with video:

This is Judith Butler’s reply to a bundle of four questions asked in Q&A during a 2006 teach-in at UC Berkeley about the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Audience members asked:

1. Since Israel is an imperialist, colonial project, should resistance be based on social movements or the nation-state?

2. What is the power of the Israel Lobby and is questioning it antisemitic?

3. Since the Left hesitates to support Hamas and Hezbollah “just” because of their use of violence, does this hurt Palestinian solidarity?

4. Do Hamas and Hezbollah actually threaten Israel’s existence, as portrayed in some media?

Judith Butler:

“Ok, well, I would just briefly say: I think its imperative to figure out what the mechanisms are of the various lobbies in the US – the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League – how they work to help to formulate US foreign policy toward Israel. I think there’s no question we need an honest, rigorous appraisal. I think there are some versions of it that strike me as perhaps a little too easily subscribing to conspiracy theories, and I think that there can be an antisemitic version, and there can be a really useful, critical version as well. I have no doubt it’s a very powerful lobby – I actually think of it as multifaceted – and I think we need more careful, rigorous analyses of it.

So you know the short answer is: one neither has to dispute the existence of such a lobby, or its power, to prove that one is not antisemitic; but neither does one have to accept every version of that, given that some versions are, I think, problematically bound up with conspiracy theories.

Similarly, I think: Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left. I similarly think boycotts and divestment procedures are, again, an essential component of any resistance movement.”

[[ audience claps]]

= = =

Thanks to Camila Bassi for pointing out this video in her essay “The Anti-Imperialism of Fools’: A Cautionary Story on the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard of England’s Post-9/11 Anti-War Movement”

NOTE: The questions start at 10:30 and Butler starts her answer at 14:55.

Today I read (via here and here) that Prof. Butler is claiming that she has been misrepresented. The following is from an interview this month with AVIVA-Berlin:

AVIVA-Berlin: How do you feel about the accusation that you have perhaps taken an anti-Semitic position concerning your statement about the Hamas and the Hezbollah as progressive social movements? Does that bother you more as a philosopher or on a personal level?

Judith Butler: Unfortunately, that clip was cut short and did not include all of my response. What I actually said was that although groups like Hamas and Hezbollah should be described as left movements, that like all left movements, one has to choose which ones one supports and which ones one refuses. They are "left" in the sense that they oppose colonialism and imperialism, but their tactics are not ones that I would ever condone. I have never supported either group, and my very public affiliation with a politics of non-violence would make it impossible for me to support them. The editing of my response was obviously an effort to distort my view, and I am very sorry that the distortion has been able to circulate as it has. Thank you for giving me the chance to clarify what I actually said and what I have always thought.

It is very strange, but I find it impossible to find any evidence in that clip of the Professor’s comments being edited in any way. What do you think?

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Added: The comments of the Professor’s that kicked off my first post were made when she refused a prize at the 2010 Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin, declaring that the organisers were complicit in racism. It seems difficult to find specifics on what is at the centre of this allegation. In her statement she said that “Some of the organizers explicitly made racist statements or did not dissociate themselves from them,” but I haven’t seen any examples given of these racist statements. In a comment at Bully Bloggers she goes into a little more detail, but without giving sources or references:

I was asked by the organizers to supply evidence for my charge of racism, so I showed them several sites where their members and sponsors referred to the archaic and pre-modern character of “arab cultures” as a way of explaining putatively high rates of attacks on gay people on the part of arab youth. Groups like Maneo have actively sought to institute racial profiling as a police practice. They see this as part of “self-defense” rather than as explicit racism. Their framework assumes that there are queers and there are migrants, which means that they efface migrant queers in their very way of thinking. I suggested in one interview that maybe they should do some studies on the rise of right-wing racism in Germany, its links with homophobia, or indeed concentrate on homophobia in the Catholic Church.

Without knowing what sites and comments she’s talking about, it’s hard to know what to make of it all, other than to note that she isn’t as worried about anti-Catholic sectarianism as she is about racism and anti-Muslim bigotry.

I haven’t yet found any other references online to Maneo advocating racial profiling, so don’t know the truth of it. Maneo did contribute comments to this 2008 Spiegel Online story on migration and homophobia in Germany, and without sounding to my ears like a gang of racist nationalists. I’d be interested in hearing other views, particularly with sources.

Related, via Bob: Gay Imperialism, and Israeli Pinkwashing., and in Gay City News, Berlin based journalist Benjamin Weinthal writes What Drives Gays and Lesbians to Bash Israel?

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Added: Meanwhile in Afghanistan . . .

Anti-imperialism über alles

Via Harry’s Place, read philosophy prof Judith Butler on how war-waging types are instrumentalising people, specifically gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans and queer people. (My spell-checker doesn’t dig that coinage, let’s try it in American: instrumentalizing? Nope. Guess this machine is out of date.)

The context for this was the 2010 Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin, which Judith Butler felt was not cool, at least not as cool as the alt. edition, Transgenialer CSD. On that I have no opinion. But on the instrumentalificationising business? Ah yes. First, here’s the relevant paragraph from her Berlin speech, refusing a prize on Christopher Street Day:

We all have noticed that gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans and queer people can be instrumentalized by those who want to wage wars, i.e. cultural wars against migrants by means of forced islamophobia and military wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. In these times and by these means, we are recruited for nationalism and militarism. Currently, many European governments claim that our gay, lesbian, queer rights must be protected and we are made to believe that the new hatred of immigrants is necessary to protect us. Therefore we must say no to such a deal.

And from last year, here’s Judith Butler talking to Nina Power:

NP: To the horror of many on the left, feminism and (to a lesser extent) gay rights were invoked as democratic values in the case for war in Afghanistan and Iraq (‘freeing’ women from the burka, for example). How do you understand the contemporary relationship between feminism (and gay rights) and war?

JB: There are at least two problems here. The one has to do with the sudden instrumentalization of “gay rights” or “women’s rights” to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a move that suggests that we are actually fighting a culture, a religion, or an entire social structure rather than a particular state or its government. The notions of emancipation instrumentalized for such purposes are clearly imperialist, and assume that liberation means adopting certain kinds of cultural norms as the most valuable. But this argument is really treacherous in my view, since it overrides the actual political movements already underway in such countries that are working out specific political vocabularies and claims for rethinking gender, sexuality, and domination.

The second problem is that lesbian/gay rights, and the rights of sexual minorities, need to join with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-war movements and are, in many instances, already joined together. There is no bona fide feminism, for instance, that is not also anti-racist. Similarly, there is no struggle for the rights of sexual minorities that is worthy of the name that does not affirm the cultural diversity of sexual minorities. Further, it is important to understand “minoritization” strategies as effecting both sexual and religious minorities - another reason why complex alliances are crucial.

To try and understand what is meant here, I’m going to start with the sentence “There is no bona fide feminism, for instance, that is not also anti-racist.” This seems clear enough. Feminism, the struggle for women’s rights, must be a struggle for universal women’s rights unlimited by race. But this is presented as a “for instance” in relation to the preceding sentence, declaring “lesbian/gay rights, and the rights of sexual minorities, need to join with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-war movements.” The implication then would seem to be that those not joined with anti-war movements are not bona fide lesbian/gay rights campaigners, are not bona fide feminists, not bona fide anti-racists.

So Judith Butler’s answer to the question on the contemporary relationship between feminism and gay rights and war is that there are no real feminists who are not part of the anti-war movement.

And continuing to work backwards to the previous paragraph, where arguments on women’s rights are deployed in relation to the war in Afghanistan, then “the notions of emancipation instrumentalized for such purposes are clearly imperialist, and assume that liberation means adopting certain kinds of cultural norms as the most valuable.” Let’s be clear what notions these are: the struggle for women’s education, for the right to vote, the struggle to stop forced marriages of young girls, in short the struggle for equal political and economic rights. These notions, because they have been deployed in support of the war against the Taliban, they are now regarded by Judith Butler as imperialist. They are no longer bona fide feminist notions, because they are not anti-war.

Forget that the Taliban are a deadly repressive misogynist organisation created, nay instrumentalised, by little imperialists in Pakistan’s military, because the only imperialism Judith Butler recognises is Western Imperialism: worse than the lash, worse than acid in the face, worse than public execution in the football stadium.

In her Berlin speech, Judith Butler says, “In these times and by these means, we are recruited for nationalism and militarism.” Hum. On nationalism and militarism then . . .

First on nationalism:

In his essay, Notes on Nationalism, George Orwell presented a view of nationalism as something other than just allegiance to one’s country of birth or residence. He defined it as, “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” He pointed out that “nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the USSR without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.” And further, “transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia.”

I think all this clearly applies to contemporary anti-imperialism. It is a Western phenomenon that is overwhelmingly anti-Western, with little or no interest in any imperialism that can’t be blamed on the US, with no coherent positive alternative to promote, and to its adherents all other arguments are secondary. Judith Butler adheres to this negative transferred nationalism of anti-Western anti-imperialism.

And now on militarism:

Here, via the Radical Archives, is Judith Butler on Hamas and Hezbollah:

Similarly, I think: Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left.

So, Hamas and Hezbollah, two military organisations backed by a murderous and extremely misogynist authoritarian theocratic state; these she can be just a little bit critical of while embracing them as part of a global left. But a military that helps the Afghan government in a struggle against murderous misogynist thugs operating across their southern border, a struggle that is backed by the overwhelming majority of the population of Afghanistan; for such a military the only word she has is ‘imperialist’.

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To learn about some of the feminists of Afghanistan that Judith Butler regards as not bona fide, read Terry Glavin’s articles on the women of Parwan, Shamsia Sharifi, Yasameen and Raziea, Afghan Soccer Heroes, and Sitara Achakzai.

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Earlier on this blog: interviews with helpless Afghan women instrumentalised by Western Imperialism here.

More on how Western anti-war feminists can’t deal honestly with Afghanistan here.

More on post-modern anti-imperialists unable to think straight here and here and here and here.

An old favourite: an anti-imperialist on fluffy issues in Afghanistan.

UPDATE: The prof says she didn’t say what she said. As they say in our house, “Ha ha, very funny, my name’s Bugs Bunny.”

Numbers

First, a poll from April by the Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre, a Palestinian NGO. On voting intentions should there be an election, it gave a figure of 16% support for Hamas in Gaza compared with 42.7% for Fatah. 40.9% of respondents in Gaza said the West Bank government was doing a better job than the Gaza government, compared with 26% saying the reverse.

And yet quite a number of people seem under the impression that Hamas is the more popular party with the Palestinian population, at least judging by commenters at the New Statesman. (Via Bob.)

Everyone knows that the Gaza flotilla killings were a massive defeat for Israel in the battle for public opinion, but how big a defeat? Michael J Totten links to a poll:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters believe pro-Palestinian activists on the Gaza-bound aid ships raided by Israeli forces are to blame for the deaths that resulted in the high-profile incident.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 19% of voters think the Israelis are to blame. Thirty-two percent (32%) more are not sure.

More here. It would be interesting to see polls from other countries.

Michael Totten also links to another poll story from a year ago:

A survey conducted by the Boston Review in its May/June issue shows that nearly 25% of American non-Jews blame “the Jews” a moderate amount or more for the financial crisis.

Original story here.

Mick Hartley brings news of further criticism of the survey published by The Lancet in 2006 claiming a death toll of 600,000 in the Iraq War. The survey has now been questioned by Professor Michael Spagat of the Department of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London:

Professor Spagat's research analyses the high-profile Burnham et al (2006) survey that estimated 601,000 violent deaths in the Iraq war and says it is unreliable, invalid and unethical and resulted in an exaggeration of the death toll.

According to the study all credible evidence suggests that a large number of people have been killed in the Iraq war. However, injecting inflated and unsupportable numbers into this discussion undermines our understanding of the conflict and could incite further violence”, says Professor Spagat.

More here. Earlier posts on the Lancet survey here and here.

Finally, at Ghosts of Alexander, AfPak Conference: Opinion Polls Make You Dumb. (Oopsy.)

Gaza on the back of an envelope

Caution be damned, here we go:

The argument for the blockade of Gaza is that if it is lifted, Hamas will be free to re-arm, and Iran will increase its influence in the area.

The arguments against the blockade are that it causes hardship to the population, prevents development of the legitimate economy, encourages the illegitimate smuggler economy, and fails to prevent Hamas re-arming.

I’d make one more argument against the blockade: it reinforces the primacy of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the lives of Gaza residents. This might seem a bit too obvious, but I read little or no comment on the possibility of changing Gaza’s relationship with the world to something broader than the dysfunctional Israel-Palestine binary relationship.

I think long term peace depends not just on improving the binary relationship, but on diminishing its importance relative to other relationships between Gaza residents and the wider world.

My back of an envelope solution is to put Gaza’s port under the control of a UN Port Authority mandated by the UN Security Council, with control over customs, security and economic development in the port area.

I fully trust this is a solution that will please no-one. The history of UN Oil For Food in Iraq comes to mind, as does UN failure in the Bosnian war. A UN regime at the port would no doubt be unable to stop smuggling and corruption, and would probably offer new possibilities in this area. It would be unable to stop Hamas re-arming. But these downsides are likely in any case.

Here are a couple more things a UN Port Authority would not do. It would not exert any control over Palestinian politics in Gaza outside of the port area. It would not prevent Israel or Hamas from waging war. Again, no change there.

So what could change? A UN Port Authority should have as part of its mandate the greatest possible development of economic and cultural connectivity between Gaza and the wider world. It should be an active investor in developing the port as an international shipping centre, not just a deposit point for aid. It should allow and encourage a legitimate economy to develop. It should facilitate the free flow of information between Gaza and the wider world. It should facilitate the free passage of people from and to Gaza.

A UN Port Authority could open the door for Gaza to step outside of the Israel-Palestine binary relationship.

Military and political failure

Links and video from Martin (version with sound here), comment and discussion at Abu Muqawama, London street blogging from Francis.

Added: Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion by George Friedman at STRATFOR. An excerpt:

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked [...] they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Israel’s Gaza policy since the 2005 pullout has been a combination of incomplete control and inconclusive war, while having to bear complete responsibility for the consequences. This doesn’t seem sustainable. The alternatives are difficult in both the direction of more control at great cost and in the direction of less control while maintaining active deterrence at unknown cost. I favour the latter as more within the realm of the possible, but I’m uncertain.

Added 3rd June:

This is not the way we put an end to war, writes Terry Glavin.

Flesh is Grass on the Gaza flotilla.

Two more from Abu Muqawama: The Limits of Military Operations, and Two Thoughts on Israel.

A series of posts at the maritime strategy blog Information Dissemination: Israeli Actions Are Stupid But Legal, More Thoughts on the Gaza Flotilla, InfoWar Observations, a short one, Priorities, on the value of Israeli manufactured drones to the Turkish military, and a longer one, On Bloggers and Battleships, looking at possible lessons for the US Navy.

Added 4th June:

Iranian blogger Pedestrian condemns the Israeli action, but detects double standards amongst some of Israel's critics in the Western Left:

As usual, pro-peace activists are busy organizing events and writing blog posts and I thank them for that. But I wonder where a lot of them were when Ahmadinejad was murdering his own citizens?

….. Oh! I remember now! They were busy writing articles supporting him.

I guess murder is only murder if Israel does it.

What angers me about their response to Iran is not that it matters (in the end, the situation in Iran will not change for better or worse no matter what they do). But that they are responsible for the very double standards they accuse the West of and which we Iranians and Arabs are all too well accustomed to.

All the main green leaders have condemned the murders on the flotilla. And I’m glad they did. They are reaffirming one of the most admirable positions of the green movement:

Che ghazeh, Che Iran, Margh Bar Zaleman.
Whether in Gaza or in Iran, down with all tyrants.

I don’t agree with everything else in her post, but then that’s what the comments thread is for.

Added 5th June:

Bigots on the left, bigots on the right, Bob from Brockley surveys a depressing prospect.

In The New York Times, a reconstruction of events including an account by protester Dr Mahmut Coskun. The close of the article:

In Istanbul, the activists had come home and Dr. Coskun was remembering the raid. He was bitter that commandos had not let him help a bleeding man, instead delivering occasional kicks, he said, and forcing the passengers to lie face down on the deck, handcuffed, for hours.

He was also angry at the young men who fought the commandos. He rebuked one of them for bragging about having beaten an Israeli.

“I told him, just because you wanted to flex your muscles and drag three soldiers down, nine people ended up dead.”

But most of all he was stunned that the Israelis had used their guns on the activists.

“We expected them to come on board the ship, and to take us hostage, but we never thought they would use live bullets to do it,” he said.

27 January: another day of remembrance, of solidarity, of fighting back.

Today Alec contrasts the stupid bigotry of councillor Terry Kelly with the bravery of Denis Avey.

In recent days Mick Hartley posted on Polish bishop Tadeusz Pieronek who recently claimed that “the Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention”, and on the Nazi propaganda aimed at Iran in the Second World War that set a precedent for some of Ahmadinejad’s recent rants.

Earlier this month, Terry Glavin on the vileness of Britain’s noisiest apologist for the theo kleptocracy in Tehran.

Pilger links

Reading this, I felt it necessary to gather together links on a few John Pilger stories that had stuck in the mind over the years:

Martin Shaw, Research Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, on Pilger's downplaying of Saddam Hussein's responsibility in the suffering of the Iraqi people.

BBC special correspondent John Sweeney on the same topic.

Historian Marko Attila Hoare on Pilger's denial of genocide in Kosovo.

Martin Shaw on the same topic. (Also here.)

Ian Black, diplomatic editor of The Guardian, writing on Pilger's conspiracy theories about NATO action in Kosovo in 1999. The column by Pilger that he was responding to is here.

Pilger's support for those deliberately targeting civilians in Iraq.

Pilger's defence of the deliberate targeting of civilians in Israel.

Added, Pilger misrepresents the views of Independent Jewish Voices. (Thanks to Flesh is Grass.)

Added, 1 March 2010, Oliver Kamm on John Pilger’s approval of Gilad Atzmon:

“I’d like to know - and I invite him to comment on it - why Pilger is citing this bigot as a voice of conscience and an advocate of justice.”

More on Pilger and Atzmon at Engage and the CST blog.

Added, 10 June 2010, Michael Ezra takes on just one paragraph from  Pilger’s latest cornucopia of conspiracy theory. This is on the Vietnam War, though the Pilger New Statesman piece it comes from, The way to lie about another war, also raves on about Israel, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Japan, and Oxbridge, all sites of “master illusions” and “black propaganda”. Oh yes, the quotation marks come thick and heavy in this piece of “journalism”. See also Mick Harley’s comments.

Another collection of Pilger links can be found on David Thompson’s blog, including one to a post by Tim Blair in 2004 reproducing Pilger’s declarations that American, British and Australian soldiers in Iraq were “legitimate targets”, and that:

“I think the situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we’re likely to see an attack on Iran, we’re likely to see an attack on North Korea and all the way down the road it could be even an attack on China within a decade.”

Oliver Kamm collected criticisms of Pilger’s documentaries on Cambodia and on nuclear weapons in his 2006 post, Celebrating John Pilger.

Added, 19 December 2010, lawyer David Allen Green provides a legal commentary on Pilger on Assange. (Via Shiraz Socialist.)

Added, 5 June 2011, Denying Rwanda: An Open Letter to John Pilger, by Adam Jones PhD, author of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers 2010. (Via Max Dunbar.)

Added, 16 September 2011, Decline and Fall, Peter Ryley on Pilger and Libya.

Added, 30 October 2011, “Most egregious” competition, Gene of Harry’s Place compares comments by right wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and John Pilger, on the Obama administration’s intervention against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

A commenter responding to that post helpfully links to a 2008 article by Sunny Hundal, The racist flip side of anti-imperialism, which begins:

What do Ralph Nader, John Pilger and Ayman al-Zawahiri have in common?

Before Barack Obama has even taken office or signed a single bill, all three have dismissed him as a sellout by using racial slurs. One might be tempted to say, “at least give the guy a chance,” but that would be a futile exercise.

The activist Ralph Nader and documentary filmmaker John Pilger both referred to him as an “Uncle Tom”, while, more recently, al-Qaida No 2 al-Zawahiri said Obama was “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, and lumped Obama together with Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell as “house slaves”.

The Pilger column referred to is here.

Iran, Israel, Palestine

(image from Raye Man Kojast)

The Guardian News Blog is covering today’s Green Movement protests during Quds Day in Iran.

The Guardian's former Iran correspondent Robert Tait is monitoring events from Istanbul. He writes: Ahmadinejad was giving a live interview on IRIB's Channel Two from the scene of Quds Day. As he spoke, viewers could clealy the chants of "Ahmadi, Ahmadi, resign, resign" - this all over live TV. Apparently Ahmadinejad was aware of the chants and their effect on the interview. He is said to have become flustered and quickly wrapped up the interview.

Much more, including snippets of Ahmadinejad’s speech today blaming the formation of Israel on the British (huh?) and again denying the Holocaust.

New York Times News Blog coverage.

BBC News on today’s events.

From Raye Man Kojast, Moussavi’s recommended slogan for Quds Day demonstrations:

Put down your gun For I am weary from seeing this bloodshed Whether in Lebanon or Gaza Whether in Quds or Iran

Lots more today from Raye Man Kojast.

From Pedestrian, chants heard today in Iran:

argh bar Roosiyeh - Death to Russia Roosiyeh Haya Kon, Keshvaremoon ro raha kon - Russia, leave our country alone! Na Ghazeh, na Lobnan, janam fadayeh Iran - My life belongs to neither Gaza nor Lebanon - but Iran Che Ghazeh, che Iran, margh bar zaleman - Whether in Gaza or in Iran, death to tyrants

More. Also from Pedestrian, Today, and What We Are After, while her friend Naj has a laugh at the official version, and shows the early editions of tomorrow’s front pages.

From Tehran Bureau, Co-opting Quds Day, and Quds Day Updates.

Via Azarmehr, a message of solidarity to the people of Iran by Mubarak Awad:

My Dear People of Iran, For the past thirty years, the Iranian regime has used the cause of the Palestinian people as a way to distract from its own oppressive rule. I thank the people of Iran for showing their support over the years with the people of Palestine, especially because on this day of Qods, the people of Iran suffer under the kind of unelected oppression that is comparable in some ways to that suffered by Palestinians. As a Palestinian, life-long fighter for the freedom and independence of Palestine and a leader of the first Palestinian intifada, I strongly condemn the Iranian regime’s violations of human rights and repeated use of violence against the nonviolent Iranian protesters, activists and prisoners. I stand in complete solidarity with and support for the Iranian people and am confident that with their resilience, they will achieve a free and democratic Iran to raise their children in and have a good life. In unity, Mubarak Awad

More on Mubarak Awad at Nonviolence International, International Peace & Conflict Resolution at American University, and Wikipedia.

Azarmehr also links to videos of today’s events, here, here, here, and here.

The Times has a report today on the degree of violence unleashed by the regime in response to the post-election protests:

The Times has been given access to 500 pages of documents - a small fraction of the total - that include handwritten testimony by victims, medical reports and interviews. They suggest that security forces have engaged in systematic killing and torture to try to break the opposition.

[...] The documents suggest that at least 200 demonstrators were killed in Tehran, with 56 others still unaccounted for, and that 173 were killed in other cities. These are several times higher than the official figures. Just over half of the 200 were killed on the streets. They were beaten around the head or shot in the head or chest as part of an apparent shoot-to-kill policy - there are no reports of demonstrators being shot in the legs.

The rest here.

More posts on today’s protests at From Tehran With Love, ModernityBlog, Harry’s Place, Francis Sedgemore, Fat Man on a Keyboard, Enduring America.

Update: for morning after coverage in english language mainstream press, see the SWJ Roundup for 19 September, with 68 matches for the word ‘Iran’.

Update 21 September: Harry’s Place points to a video of demonstrators in Iran tearing down a Hezbollah banner with the headline Hezbollah: More Popular With Elderly British Trots Than With Young Iranians.

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Some interesting background on the ongoing issue of Iran’s nuclear programme, and the question of whether Israel might attempt military action to impede it:

Joshua Pollack at Arms Control Wonk puts together a brief history of military missions to prevent nuclear weapons development, beginning with World War II actions in Telemark, Norway, and including Iranian and Israeli air attacks on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1980 and 1981, and Iraqi attacks on partially complete Iranian nuclear power plants at Bushehr in 1984, ’85, ’86 and ’87.

A commenter on that post gives a link to a detailed story from Air Enthusiast (issue 110, March/April 2004) which maintains there was a high degree of co-operation between Iran and Israel in their attacks on Osirak.

Tall tales of the high seas

The opening verse of the sea shanty, Jack the Whaler, goes like this:

What’s more delight on a winter’s night

Than to sip a glass of grog,

And hear the old men spin their yarns

Before a burning log,

They tell their tales of monstrous whales

And of sights that they have seen,

It makes your hair stand end on end

and your stomach turn quite green.

And the folklore tradition described in this song is a living one, with new tales being spun out of the old, stories mysterious and creepy enough to send a shiver down the spine of the listener. Mysterious like the one about pirates raised from a watery grave by the all-powerful Mossad to plunder ships off the coast of Sweden. Creepy like the tale of The White Ship which steals children away when their parents aren’t looking, in order to cut out their kidneys, livers, and hearts.

Hopefully only a fool, Swedish or otherwise, would believe such stories, but still, for all the excitement of the new, I’ll stay with the tall tales of times safely past.

Be good now, children, or The White Ship will get you!

(Another kind of Swedish story from the history books here.)

Pages taken from Burl Ives’ Sea Songs of Sailing, Whaling and Fishing copyright © 1956 Burl Ives. Earlier samples here and here.

How and Why

On Afghanistan, Abu Muqawama is more used to talking about ‘how we fight’. In response to this he turns to ‘why we fight’, starting here, continuing here.

Also from AM, on arguments of War and Law, particularly with regard to Israel, he repeats a point worth repeating, in paraphrase: just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s smart.

Not Iran

It’s hard to keep your eyes pointing in all directions at once . . .

Iraq, and Thoughts on Intervention, by Roland Dodds. Added: Ibn Muqawama on Joe Biden, Iraq envoy.

At the SWJ, Pentagon planners should study Somalia, not just Hezbollah.

Sietske in Beirut writes on conversations she has. Not many dead, according to the papers.

Via Mick Hartley, Riots in China. Mick has also paid particular attention to the Uighurs being released from Guantanamo, fleshing out their tale with information on ongoing repression of Uighurs by the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang. Since his last round up on the story, The New York Times has published a report on the Uighurs settled in Bermuda.  

Georgia’s Hard Slog to Democracy by Michael Cecire, at Michael Totten’s blog. Related at the NY times, Russia’s Neighbors Resist Wooing and Bullying.

Also from Michael Totten, A Conversation with Robert D Kaplan. This does include discussion of Iran, along with China’s involvement in Sri Lanka, Russia and its neighbours, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However I’d like to highlight an exchange at the end regarding Israel’s failure in counterinsurgency, material relevant to the essay topic set in an earlier post here.

Kaplan: You know what’s interesting? The Israelis. They’ve been great at defeating structured Arab armies, but they haven’t figured out how to deal with a few thousand insurgents in South Lebanon or in Gaza. What did their wars in 2006 and 2009 in Lebanon and Gaza get them? MJT: It got them fewer rockets for a while, but it’s temporary. Kaplan: Yeah. MJT: I don’t know what they should do. They can’t put a David Petraeus in Gaza or Lebanon. It won’t work. Kaplan: No. MJT: And they can’t fight a counterinsurgency from the air because that’s just absurd. Kaplan: Yeah. They haven’t been able to solve this problem at all. MJT: I’m glad it isn’t up to me what Israel should do. There aren’t any good options. Maybe they should hold Syria accountable. Syria is at least a state with a return address and national interests. I don’t think the Syrian government is particularly ideological. It isn’t like the Iranian government. Syria isn’t an ideology, it’s a state. Kaplan: It wants to survive. MJT: Maybe the Israelis should lean on Assad. They can’t lean on Hamas or Hezbollah. They can’t lean on Beirut because Beirut is too weak to do much. Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, the idea of bombing highway overpasses near Beirut to punish Lebanon for Hezbollah is ridiculous.

Kaplan and Totten point to Israel’s failure to develop of a true counterinsurgency campaign, but positive suggestions are still lacking. Tackling the Syrian regime may be relevant, but does not address the absence of a population-centric strategy. Any takers? 

Update: Vigilant as I try to be, one direction I didn’t think to look was down.

A talk by David Kilcullen

Part of the Authors@Google series, this is an hour long, so too much to summarise, but to encourage you to listen here’s some of what he covers:

He gives a clear explanation of the main theme of his book, The Accidental Guerilla, on how the wrong war-fighting strategies make insurgencies worse. He talks about recent American and British mistakes in counter-insurgency, at one point paying particular attention to the British experience in Basra. He praises the Danish military in Afghanistan, which is nice to hear. He also talks of how aid projects need to be informed by counter-insurgency thinking in order to be effective. And he talks about Pakistan, and the insurgency there that scares him much more than Iraq or Afghanistan.

Now your essay topic for this week: what would a proper counter-insurgency approach to Gaza look like? Hint: containing the population together with the enemy, thus allowing the enemy to consolidate its control of the population, that is not it.

Via Abu Muqawama. Also at Abu Muqawama, Sleepwalking into Helmand, on recent British experience in Afghanistan.

In fear of the people - 5

Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Marjane Satrapi speaking on Wednesday at the European Parliament in Brussels on behalf of the Moussavi campaign. More details at The New York Times.

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In the previous post I noted that The Guardian was the only UK national paper to lead on Iran yesterday. The paper’s news blog has also been excellent at providing rolling coverage. See here for today’s updates.

However, as Norm points out, the paper’s leading Stalin apologist Seumas Milne has proved as reliably wrong as ever. Like Galloway, it seems Milne never met an ‘anti-imperialist’ he didn’t like, no matter how murderous. Milne was The Guardian’s comment editor from 2001 to ’07 and is currently an associate editor. A paper that pays Milne’s salary is a paper I would be embarrassed to spend money on.

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More from today:

From Martin, We just want to be normal, ctd. 

From ModernityBlog, Not just rich kids in Iran.

Today’s updates from The New York Times.

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On the broader implications of events in Iran:

The Poor Mouth points to an article from AP on reaction in the Arab world.

Andrew Sullivan on making the Russian connection, follow up here, and here.

Talking of Russia and Caspian Sea oil and gas, if relations between Iran and the West change considerably, it would make the Russian threat to the Caucasus fuel route via Georgia much less critical.

Michael Totten on the view from Beirut.

A lot of focus has been put on what these events might mean for Israel regarding the Iranian regime’s support for Hamas and Hizbollah, its threats regarding Israel’s existence, its promotion of Holocaust denial, and its nuclear weapons programme. However another aspect to consider is the lesson that it is not Iran’s population that is the problem, in fact they are showing themselves to be the solution. There might be something to learn here regarding how security is to be achieved for Israel closer to home.