Israel is raining destruction upon Lebanon in a purely defensive operation, according to the White House and most of Congress. Even some CNN anchors, habituated to mechanical reporting of “Middle East violence,” sound slightly incredulous. With over 300 Lebanese dead and easily 500,000 displaced, with the Beirut airport, bridges and power plants disabled, the enormous assault is more than a “disproportionate response” to Hizballah’s July 12 seizure of two soldiers and killing of three others on Israeli soil.
“WAR,” proclaimed the three-inch headline in Ma‘ariv, Israel’s leading daily, the day after Hizballah launched its cross-border attack on an Israeli army convoy on July 12. With the onset of Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon that evening, its aerial and ground incursions into Gaza were transformed into the southern front of a two-front conflict. But are the two fronts, in Lebanon and Gaza, part of a single war? Speaking in such terms risks misidentifying what really links Israel’s actions on its northern and southern borders.
The captivity of Israeli solider Gilad Shalit is over two weeks old, with no sign of a breakthrough, and a second front with Hizbullah now threatens to divert world attention from the conflagration in Gaza.
Following Israel’s grievously disproportionate military rejoinder to Shalit’s capture, over 70 Palestinians, including several civilians, and one Israeli soldier lie dead. A Gazan power plant insured by American taxpayers lies in ruins. Even Time magazine wants to know: “Where is the U.S.?”
Five-year-old Layan cupped her hands over her ears and screwed her eyes shut when she tried to describe the effect of a sonic boom. She said the sound scares her, even though her father, Muntasir Bahja, 32, a translator, has told her “a small lie to calm her”—that the boom is nothing more than a big balloon released by a plane and then popped.
Should the police be able to arrest you based on your religion and then imprison you indefinitely while they search for a crime to charge you with?
Of course not. The very idea flies in the face of American jurisprudence, whose traditions guarantee due process, equal protection and the presumption of innocence. The law works to prevent—not facilitate—arbitrary detention.
But that is not what a federal judge in Brooklyn recently ruled. According to District Judge John Gleeson, the U.S. government has the right to detain immigrants on the basis of their race, religion or national origin, and it can legally imprison immigrants indefinitely as long as their eventual removal from the country is “reasonably foreseeable.”
If you doubt that we are still “a nation of laws,” you haven’t visited the American Civil Liberties Union web site to peruse the thousands of pages of government documents concerning the “war on terror” made available through Freedom of Information Act litigation. While Bush administration policy may have developed in defiance of our proudest and most important legal principles—habeas corpus, the prohibition of torture, and the separation of powers, to name but three—there is no shortage of legal reasoning.
As Iraq continues to slide into civil war, there is certainly a crying need for fresh thinking. Though he finally admits sending a few “wrong signals” with his Iraq policy, President Bush still calls for staying the course. Not every alternative suggestion, however, is a good one.
The latest bad idea is the “Bosnification” of Iraq.
Once again, President George W. Bush is hinting at preventive war—this time, ostensibly, to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Given the catastrophe that followed Bush’s last “non-proliferation war” in Iraq, and the deceit employed to sell it, one would expect the public to rebel against the recent rumors of airstrikes on Iran.
When Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” in October 2005, the world appeared to be light years away from the end of history. It seemed that ideologues had once more taken the reins of power and rejoined a battle in which there could be no parley or negotiated truce—only the victory of one idea over the other.
Diyarbakır, the political and cultural center of Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces, displays its beauty in springtime. The surrounding plains and mountains, dusty and barren during the summer months, shine in shades of green and the rainbow colors of alpine flowers and herbs. Around the walls of the old city, parks bustle with schoolchildren, unemployed young men and refugees who were uprooted from their villages during the Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s.
A low-key but injudicious war of words briefly broke out between Israel’s two most senior judges in the wake of the May 2006 decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law. A temporary measure passed by the Knesset in July 2003, the law effectively bans marriages between Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Israeli citizens.
“All options are on the table,” says President George W. Bush when asked about press reports that the Pentagon is drawing up plans to bomb Iran to derail the nuclear research program there. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shoots back: "The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity." Even if Bush’s saber rattling is merely a psychological ploy, and even if the Iranians are also just blowing smoke, the danger is that the cycle of threat and counter-threat could spin out of control.
04.28.2006
In the early morning of April 14, 2006, Mahmoud Salah al-Din Abd al-Raziq, a Muslim, entered the church of Mar Girgis (Saint George) in Alexandria’s al-Hadra district and stabbed three parishioners who had gathered for a service. Abd al-Raziq then proceeded to attack worshippers at two other churches, according to police accounts, before being arrested en route to a fourth. Nushi Atta Girgis, 78, died from his stab wounds, while several others were injured, some severely.
By giving up his bid to retain his job, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq raised hopes on Thursday of a way out of the political impasse that had prevented the formation of a new government. But the premise that this political process will put Iraq onto a path to stability is doubtful.
A deeper problem compounds the sectarian differences plaguing Iraqi society: Iraq’s middle classes are under severe attack, and with them the prospect for real democracy. These middle strata, especially the educated and professional, form the backbone of any mature society.
As President George W. Bush said in his second inaugural address, and as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last summer at the American University in Cairo: “America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom and to make their own way.”
Contradicting their lofty rhetoric, the Bush administration, along with the European Union, is undermining democracy and U.S. credibility in the Middle East by sabotaging the result of the January 25 Palestinian elections. In completely rejecting the outcome they are also effectively giving up the biggest “carrot” in their arsenals for influencing Palestinian Authority policy.
No matter how Israelis vote tomorrow, they will likely be voting for a future of insecurity and conflict. The three major political parties—the right-wing Likud, the “centrist” Kadima and the so-called left-wing Labor—have not offered them a genuine peace option.
Despite the talk of possible Israeli withdrawals from parts of the West Bank, a new consensus has emerged among these parties that East Jerusalem and Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank should be annexed to Israel. This would violate international law, destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state and condemn the Middle East to ongoing strife.
