Islam Palestine Blogger

2008-06-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

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2008-06-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

01: The Opening Invocation
01: Surah Al Fati-ha
Initializing our soul

01:01
In the Name of God, the One Spirit of All, Allah;
the Spirit of Compassion, the Compassionate Soul

01:02
Praised is the One Spirit of All;
the Lord of everyone's world,
all nations and creations;
now and in the hereafter.

01:03
The Spirit of Compassion, the Compassionate Soul;

01:04
the only Master on that Day of Reckoning.

01:05
"O Lord: We pledge our souls to you.
O Lord: We ask for the help of no soul but yours;

01:06
so, lead us to a path of righteousness;

01:07
the way of the people who were favored with your blessings.
Not the way of the people who had angered others;
nor the way of the souls that went astray".

2006-12-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

Bush at the crossroads of all conflicts
By Neal AbuNab

After 7 months of besieging Tyre, the legendary Greek King Alexander the Great built a bridge to connect the insolent island with land. He stormed the high walls with newly invented war machinery and killed every person in the city (333 BC). He provided future foreign conquerors with an important lesson: in the Middle East you have to kill everyone or they will battle with you till the end of time.

The crusaders remembered that lesson when they captured Jerusalem in 1099; they killed all of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. In 1258 the barbaric Mongol King Holako stormed Baghdad and burnt it to the ground. President George Bush conquered Baghdad in 2003 but left most of its people alive. He was a kind invader who gave people a choice: convert to a new religion called democracy or be killed. Most of them did not convert and they persisted in their old creed. He is now reaching a fork in the road and it is befitting that he went to Jordan this week to seek the inspiration of the gods for a new direction.

The Middle East has been and will always be the crossroads of all human conflicts. A more optimistic term is usually used when referring to the Middle East as the crossroads of all civilizations. It is the birthplace of human civilization and human misery. History has shown that any nation that wants to be on top must be in control of Jerusalem. When the British controlled the world Jerusalem was under their yoke. Before them, the Ottoman Turks possessed Jerusalem and they controlled half of Asia and Europe. We can keep going back in history to the Muslim Arabs and before them the Romans and before them the Persians and before them the Greeks. Every great empire is lured to its demise in the Middle East.

Today, the Star of David flies over Jerusalem and the children of Israel rule the world. They allied themselves with a young rising nation called the United States of America and ruled it from within. America became addicted to oil. The value of its dollar became addicted to the control of oil assets. So, Bush found himself like all the other emperors that came before him, in the unenviable position of having to conquer the Middle East or risk losing his empire’s wealth and power.

After more than three years of waging war in Iraq, Bush thought his enemies would be worn out. But his own army and his people at home who grew tired and worn out. The enemy is prepared to fight for another hundred years, unless Bush is prepared to do what Holako had done.

This week, one of the American Generals in Iraq warned that the sectarian violence might have developed its own unstoppable momentum. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq and he blamed them for all the anarchy. Next to him was Jalal Talabani, the highly ceremonial and powerless President of Iraq who did not denounce any of Ahamadinejad’s words.

The new game championed by Shi’a cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr; admittedly the most-influential figure in Iraq today, is to break down the Iraqi government and make it illegitimate just like the Lebanese and the Palestinian governments. The American forces obtain their occupational legitimacy from Al-Maliki’s government and if it loses support then the occupation would have to end abruptly.

Bush refuses to negotiate with Iran over the Iraq issue. Iran is going to make sure that it carves up a big and visible role in Iraqi politics. Bush will keep denying Iran a role in Iraq until the Maliki government disintegrates and a power vacuum emerges. The US and Iran are probably preparing for the next phase of Iraqi politics and each is grooming his own Iraqi strongman to be the next dictator.

King Abdullah of Jordan warned this week on ABC News that we could have three civil wars raging in the Middle East; Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. The Palestinians offered a cease-fire and it was accepted by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. Hours after the cease-fire took effect, Israeli forces stormed into Jeneen killing and abducting scores of Palestinians. The European Envoy, Javier Solana, called for International monitors to observe the cease-fire. It was summarily rejected by Amir Peretz, the Israeli defense minister. No one in America reported the killing of Palestinians in Jeneen. A couple of primitive rockets were fired by Palestinians from Gaza. Israelis released a statement saying that they will be restrained in their response. The US state department praised the Israeli response.

This vicious cycle of American officials sucking up to Israeli positions is something the Arab world has grown accustomed to. American officials never mention any of the daily violations that the Israeli military commits against the Palestinians or the Lebanese. This asymmetrical reporting maintains the benefit of US policy to the Israeli side, all the time.

Jimmy Carter’s new book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid” and the courageous interviews he’s been doing to promote his book may help America understand that all of its problems with Arabs and Muslims can end if they give Palestinians an independent state. Olmert asked the Palestinians this week to give up their right of return. Fat chance. His request is equivalent to asking the Israelis to strike from the bible any words that may give Israel a right to the land of Palestine.

The battle for the “right of return” is going to be waged in Lebanon as it inches ever closer towards a civil war. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be caught in the cross fire and they will be forced to choose between the path to Lebanese citizenship through the Sunni-Christian alliance or the path of resistance through the Shi’a-Hizbullah-Syria alliance. Both are rough roads and everyone is ready to sacrifice the Palestinians for their cause.

At this highly inflamed juncture in the Middle East, if Bush and Olmert are not prepared to do what Holako had done then they better sit down with their enemies and work out their differences, sooner rather than later. Delaying the inevitable will make the loss that much greater for the American people who never asked for a hundred year war with Arabs and Muslims. Staying the course to get “the job” done that was laid out, yet again, by Bush after his summit meeting with Al-Maliki, leads straight through the gates of hell.

2006-11-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

Iran’s technology revolution
By Neal AbuNab

Last week’s Ted Koppel Discovery Channel documentary painted a meticulously-framed picture of Iran to support a hostile mindset. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy; one always finds what he is looking for. He focused on the schisms of Iranian society much the same way that Iran always points out the schisms that exist in America. Koppel reminded Americans of the origin of this conflict when in 1954 the CIA toppled the democratically elected government in Tehran and appointed the Shah. Then, in 1979 the Islamic revolution kicked the Shah out and took over the US embassy and held up American hostages for over a year.

“Iran-the most dangerous nation” was the title of his show and the name said it all. It set out to prove just how much danger Iran presented to America and its darling Israel. Scenes of Iranian crowds marching in the streets chanting “Death to America and Death to Israel” faded in and out of the screen like a needle knitting all the stories together. By the end of the 2-hour documentary my mind surrendered to the message that Iran is America’s number one enemy.

It is the conclusion that any western viewer with an average education will reach. Koppel was laying the cultural foundation for the inevitable military confrontation with Iran. He began his story by saying: like any other country I visited which was ruled by an authoritarian regime…freedom of expression is almost non-existent…and women have to adhere to a repressive code of conduct. He interviewed political dissidents and people who’d been jailed by the Iranian regime and demonstrated how opposition views and newspapers were disappearing under the current president, Ahmadinejad. But he also showed the obsession of younger Iranians with the internet and western culture. They see American movies, dance to rap music and hold mixed sex parties at underground locations. The Iranian regime is obsessed with censorship and it shuts down numerous internet sites and spends lots of energy spying on its people.

They say that good things are either illegal, immoral or fattening. Iranians search for fun in breaking such prohibitions and doing naughty things in secret. “We used to drink in public and pray at home. Now, we pray in public and drink at home.” This is what Koppel heard everywhere he went in Iran. They are beginning to taste the fruits of peace and prosperity and women are teething for a sexual revolution. His photographer told him that her sister and the younger generation do not even know the name of their own president. Younger women in Iran today are mostly concerned with finding a career and having fun. Many of them are getting educated and rebelling against the rigidity of traditional customs. These are the signs of an affluent society in the making.

The brightest personal moment for Koppel in this episode happened when he clasped the hand of a young man who told him that he liked George Bush. A large portion of the documentary was devoted to the question of Iran’s nuclear energy program. But Koppel also reported that the price of Gas in Iran is 30 cents per gallon; people hardly pay any taxes; electricity and water services are highly subsidized, and education and healthcare are almost free. This was made possible by the skyrocketing oil prices.

Most Iranians believed that their nuclear program was peaceful in nature and that’s why they supported it. It was a matter of national pride to them to develop a home grown technology. Nuclear research sites are scattered all over the country and enrichment facilities have become numerous. Ahmadinejad announced last week that 30,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges will be installed within the next year. He also brokered peace between Syria and Iraq thereby making a goodwill gesture to the American negotiator indicating that Iran has something to offer in the way of stabilizing Iraq.

Koppel’s documentary closed by stating that the US had to negotiate with Iran over the Iraq issue, but at the same time it has to keep its military options open. That seems to be the current conclusion of most senior statesmen like Henry Kissinger and James Baker. The idea of national pride attached to the nuclear program is the easy explanation offered by most media. But the matter is more complicated and the Iranian regime is dealing with two vital issues regarding the nuclear program. The first one is called employment and the second one is called development of an industrial base.

More than 50% of Iran’s population of 70 million is under the age of 25 and about 800,000 people will be entering the job market every year. The nuclear program with its massive facilities under construction, provide employment for hundreds of thousands of people. This can not be simply shut down. It is like the nuclear construction boom of the sixties and seventies in America. Iran’s program has been set in motion irreversibly for the next 20 years.

Iran realizes that within the next 20 years there will be alternative sources of energy available to the industrialized world. Oil producing nations will be left in the cold if they do not use their current revenues to develop a real industrial base. Iran is building car factories, a defense industry and a home-grown technology base. CNN reported last week that Iran was making a breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research.

In the nineties Clinton worked so hard to complete the human genome project which produced the human genetic map in 1999. Stem cell research would’ve taken off in America if Bush had not slowed down the program because he “respected the sanctity of human life.” Iran, as well as the rest of the world, benefited from Clinton’s work and it had its Mullahs issue a religious Fatwa in 2002 that embryonic stem cell research was Halal and sanctioned by the Qur’an. They ruled that the “spirit” entered an embryo at the age of 121 days. Thus, aborting a fetus up until that point does not amount to killing a human life. Iran is bringing questions of religion and technology together in a way that is surpassing the Vatican’s pace.

Iran’s research program brought back movement to a rat’s paralyzed limb. Its stem cell research is more advanced today than America’s. Iran is in a hurry to build a solid home-grown technological base with scientists that can champion inventions in every field from electronics to medicine. This will provide opportunity to build factories that can employ millions of people and fuel a robust economy.

In the aftermath of the 1979 revolution Iran suffered from a massive exodus of scientists, educators and thinkers. In the eighties it suffered from the enormous toll of death and destruction imposed on it by Saddam Hussein. Today’s Iran does not look like a nation preparing for war. It looks like a nation hard at work trying to re-build itself and chart a path towards modernity. The erosion of the freedom of the press indicates that it has chosen to follow the Chinese model. These are state-mandated necessities that most people disagree with just like sacrificing civil liberties in America in the name of security.

Iran is trying to make itself look attractive to business leaders who prefer autocracy to achieve fast growth. It is creating a higher standard of living for its people and at the same time becoming the most influential player in the Middle East. Its nuclear program is the most visible symbol of the bubbling technological revolution. It seems determined to make the transformation to a fully industrialized self-reliant nation making it the first one in that region. It will never give up its nuclear program voluntarily. In fact, it is already talking about exporting the technology to places like Venezuela and Egypt.

2006-11-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hamas learns a hard lesson
By Neal AbuNab

Domestic policy and local issues have always played the primary role of bringing political parties to power. But no Palestinian organization has ever promised internal reform and won except Hamas. The struggle of Palestinians remains as a conflict with an external enemy in the first degree. Israel has made its policy of survival dependent on the methodical annihilation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians can talk all they want amongst themselves, conduct mock elections as if they are a free people, and have a so-called democracy but all that does not change the aim of their enemy.

All this internal fighting between Fatah, Hamas and the zillions of other factions has only served to strengthen the ruthless hand of their enemy. Since the death of Arafat, two years ago, the Palestinians have been engaged in an internal power struggle to replace him or to divide all that power that was concentrated in one person. Israel has taken advantage of their infighting by creating conditions on the ground that make it impossible for an independent Palestinian state to be established. Israel is toying with Palestinians like scientists experiment with mice in a laboratory. It feeds them for a day and starves them for a month. It imprisons them in a big camp and draws a maze for their leaders to follow. They jump through hoops and loops to please the master and when they reach that point Israel had already devised a new game plan.

Peace processes, wars, elections, international conferences, UN resolutions and many ridiculous ploys have all come and gone while Israel’s aim remained constant. The Palestinians are tired of being defeated by Israel. Collectively, they are incapable of fighting Israel and so they should do what they did back in 1948 and surrender their cause to the Arab League.

Hamas promised internal reforms when it came to power back in March. It has not delivered anything to the Palestinian people except economic sanctions. It has created more reasons for internal strife by hiring 6,000 Hamas fighters and making them part of the security force. It promised to create an army that can defend its people and instead it created another faction in the fragmented security apparatus. It promised things it could not deliver. The only thing it keeps talking about is resistance, fighting the occupation, denying Israel’s existence and renouncing all forms of negotiations with the enemy. I am sure they will remain faithful to their principles for hundreds of years. That is the nature of Arabs. Their leaders have made enormous personal sacrifices but they just don’t have the know-how to fight or to confront their enemy.

Since their election in January, many Hamas leaders have been either imprisoned or assassinated by Israel. Hamas had good intentions but in the arena of politics and governance it proved to be utterly incompetent, just like the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration. They have a lot of religious fervor and faith-based ideologies but they can not manage a grocery store. Politics is a secular business of managing power and wealth in the most pragmatic way. It is built on coalitions and compromises between conflicting interests.

Hamas has proven that it can not manage internal conflict and so it can not possibly manage the greater conflict with Israel. The Palestinian people are in dire straits and they can not find any food to eat because of the severe sanctions. No one in the world can stand up to Israel and break the financial blockade. Palestinians have no choice but to sit down and talk with their enemy.

The Arab League declared this week that it was going to break the financial blockade against Hamas and Amer Mousa urged Arab banks to start dealing with Hamas. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, urged the US to re-engage Israel in a peace process. Spain is championing an initiative to hold an international peace conference to bring the Arabs and the Israelis back to the negotiating table. Hamas said that it would attend a peace conference if organized by the Arab League. Israel said it would not attend such a conference.

A new Palestinian government will be formed in a matter of short weeks and Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, agreed to relinquish his position. The power struggle between President Mahmoud Abbas and the prime minister has been decided in favor of Abbas. The Hamas government collapsed because it could not pay the salaries of its employees for the past eight months. Instead of delivering economic prosperity Hamas brought ruin to the Palestinian economy.

Hamas was not ready to govern. It should have stayed as an opposition party and kept its principles and agenda unexposed to such a superior enemy. Now, the idea of resistance has been ridiculed and Hamas will have nothing to offer to its people. Palestinians don’t want to create a Muslim state and they don’t want religious zealots ruling over them. They want peace, prosperity, an end to humiliation, an ability to go to other countries and visit with their relatives, and most importantly they are looking for a dignified livelihood to feed their families.

They are tired of being defeated, massacred, starved, humiliated and imprisoned by Israel. They don’t care what Hamas or any Palestinian government has to say to Israel to achieve this goal. The world has proven that it has no authority over the state of Israel and nobody can force it to do anything it does not want to do, except Hizbullah. In the past three months, the incompetence of Palestinian leaders has squandered much of the moral victory achieved by Hizbullah.

Palestinians have proven that they would rather fight with each other over ministries and seats of power instead of fighting with their enemy. They allow young men to fire primitive rockets into a small settlement inside Israel called Sederot. The destiny of the Arab-Israeli conflict now rests in the hands of a bunch of 19-year olds from Gaza. They call this “resistance”. Somebody has to stop these kids from firing these fireworks that they call “rockets”. If Palestinians do not have real weapons to fight with they should not be staging such symbolic acts that only bring harm to their own people.

Israel retaliates by killing 25 Palestinians for each rocket that lands in Sederot. The Palestinian government has no control over the numerous pockets of “resistance” groups that sprang up in the past five years. Palestinian society is fragmenting just like the Iraqi society. Poor Palestinians are attacking the rich and stealing from them. The middle class has almost disappeared. Any rich Palestinian who wants power is hiring a bunch of kids with guns and he patrols his neighborhood and declares himself as a Chieftain.

The Palestinian people as a collective have proven that they can no longer be the spearhead of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is time for them to reverse what Arafat had done in the seventies when he made all Arab states recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians. The PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and this generation of Palestinian leaders have all failed. They have delivered defeat upon defeat to their people. The ideologies of defeatism, self-enrichment, self service instead of public service, fake idealism instead of realism, and feebleness have all become ingrained in their approach.

They should nullify their corrupt Palestinian Authority, cancel the Oslo Agreement, hand their guns to Israel, and wave the white flag of surrender. Most of their rich leaders will end up in Paris and London where their families live in great big palaces. Hand the Palestinian cause to the Arab League and Iran. Let President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Sayed Hassan Nasrallah speak on behalf of the Palestinian cause.

2006-11-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Democratic Agenda for Arabs
By Neal AbuNab

Democrats will have a lot to be thankful for when they carve up their Thanksgiving Turkey this year, but it was not a liberal revolution that carried them back to power. This election was a referendum on Bush’s presidency. The people have spoken and their dissatisfaction with the neo-conservative leadership created a political tsunami that swept the Republicans out of power. Most people voted against the Republicans because of their deep dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Iraq, the botched-up war on terror against Bin Laden, the economy and corruption in politics. In their entire campaign, the Democrats have not offered one specific plan to address these grievances. They rode the wave of dissatisfaction and kept criticizing while deliberately shying away from offering specific plans or concrete measures.

The Democratic plan was engineered by Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The duo pierced through the presumed shield of Republican invincibility fashioned by Karl Rove; the architect of three consecutive successful elections for Bush and the neo-conservatives. They devised a sensible plan to regain the favor of the Reagan Democrats. They recruited former Republicans like James Webb in Virginia and ran him against a formidable foe like Senator George Allen. They figured that the country had begun its swing back to the center but it had not passed that point yet. They ran people who had a strong reputation of being socially conservative like Claire McCaskill in Missouri to recapture the heart of America. They succeeded in striking a fine line which triggered a political tsunami of epic proportions. This election will go down in history as a pivotal turning point which shaped the rest of America’s destiny.

The new whiz kids of politics turned a midterm election into a national campaign and drove a stake through the heart of neo-conservatism. Bush realized the incoming danger a couple of months ago when he created the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Commission. He was hedging his bet in case the Republicans lost control of the Congress. Most of the die-hard neo-conservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz, were shuffled out of the glare of the public eye at the beginning of Bush’s second term. But Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, refused to tone down his “in-your-face” rhetoric. He was the throbbing passionate heart of the neo-conservative leadership while Vice President Dick Cheney remained as the dispassionate brain calculating what was best for America.

The neo-conservatives live and die by the idea of clear cut victory or defeat. This election was a clear cut defeat. This humiliating and shameful defeat was most evident in the way Rumsfeld was immediately fired the next day. We can now confidently declare the death of the neo-conservative doctrine. They will be remembered as a secretive gang of reckless leaders who insisted on the righteousness of their incompetence and attempted to make America a dictatorship. The message out of this election to the rest of the world from America is one of hope and possible renewal of goodwill. The world will breathe a momentary sigh of relief and watch America’s next move cautiously.

But the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party can not really claim victory in this election. The real winners in this election were the regular conservatives who deserted the Republican Party and voted for conservative Democrats. In Michigan, voters rejected Affirmative Action and the Republican Senate candidate, Michael Bouchard, who could not shake Bush off his back. Varying degrees of this sentiment prevailed all over the nation. The new leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was very much aware of this fact when she offered reconciliation and cooperation with the Bush administration.

The Democrats won because of the conservative movement which is still very much alive, and the Republicans lost because they fought with their own neo-conservative dictators. The leadership of the Democratic Party sees its mandate as getting things done in the next two years while paving the way for the White House in 2008. The conservatives of the Reagan legacy led by James Baker have gotten the real mandate in this election to recapture the Republican leadership. Newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is a Baker protégé whose creed is pragmatic politics and diplomacy.

This friction between the Baker camp and the Cheney camp surfaced as soon as Bush declared his clear intentions of invading Iraq. But Bush had been pushed by the Saudi Royals and the pro-Israel lobby to attack Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein. The Saudi Monarchy invested all of its assets in the Bush camp and he needed their help to beat the Democrats. Subsequently, they were rewarded immensely by skyrocketing oil prices that quadrupled their revenues. The Democrats have a grudge and a bone to pick with the Saudi Royals.

The Democratic leadership is now evading the question of Iraq and pointing to the highly anticipated Baker-Hamilton report, due out next month, as the first benchmark. They are reluctant to inherit the mess of Iraq in much the same way that Bush has now become eager to bequeath it to them. The answer lies in working out a compromise that allows the Democrats to take credit for anything that may succeed in Iraq, while at the same time assuring Bush that he won’t be facing a trial similar to Saddam Hussein’s. This difficult task was thrown in the lap of the Dean of diplomacy; James Baker.

Baker will face hard-nosed negotiations with the new brains of American politics; Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer. They are both Jewish and ardent supporters of Israel. Emanuel’s parents came from Israel and he volunteered in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He has strong Zionist convictions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Senator Joseph Lieberman waged a campaign against the will of the Democratic Party and prevailed. By a twist of fate he was handed the power to give Democrats the absolute majority in the Senate. He will be the most powerful power broker in the Senate for the next two years. He is Jewish, extremely pro-Israel and pro-war in Iraq. Jewish intellect and leadership will now dominate the moral argument within the Democratic Party.

Domestically, they will push an agenda to roll back some of the extreme measures of the Military Commissions Act and restore some of the lost civil liberties. In the Middle East, they support the idea of occupation but they see the Bush administration as losing the war in Iraq. Their opposition to the war does not stem from a conviction that it was either illegal or immoral. They oppose Bush’s strategy which has not brought victory.

Their strategy will most likely follow the Israeli model of unilateral disengagement. American troops will redeploy out of population centers and get out of the Sunni-Shi’a cross fire. Their focus will be on minimizing troop casualties thereby getting the Iraq story off the American TV screen. They will tighten their grip on the countryside and all points of egress and ingress. They will not cut the defense budget. On the contrary, they will acquiesce to more defense spending to build more bases in the Middle East.

The gates of hell have opened up in Iraq and it will be easy to sell the idea that we need to get out of the way of Muslims slaughtering each other. In fact, we may even encourage them to do that while we stand watching from a safe distance and making sure that no side ever wins. We did that for eight years when Iraq waged a war against Iran from 1980-88. We can do that again for another decade.

The neo-Democrats will put Saudi Arabia in the cross hairs while opening a direct dialogue with Iran and Syria. There will be serious attempts to neutralize Iran’s threat to Israel using the carrot approach. They will use the fact that Bin Laden is still on the loose to re-define the war on terror and wage their campaign for the White House.

In short, we have two years of policy re-alignment that lies ahead. There will be massive gridlock, partisan fighting, and investigations. The wave that carried Democrats to power demands accountability from the Bush administration. Too many lives were destroyed in the past five years and some neo-conservatives will surely pay a heavy price for this defeat.

2006-10-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

How to fix US Democracy
By Neal AbuNab

Sweeping changes have to be made to restore the faith of Americans in their system of government. Recent polls have found that only 18% of Americans approved of the performance of congress. Of course, these numbers reflect on the poor Republican leadership but there is also a sense of hopelessness that nothing will ever come out of a new congress.

The Democrats have an excellent chance of regaining control of the House of Representatives and they will have to live up to higher expectations from the American people. The issues that surfaced in this campaign are more structural in nature. They question the utility of the system. Campaign finance and low voter turnouts are the two most chronic ailments that ironically shield the system from the benefit of real change and rejuvenation.

Elected politicians have no incentives to level the playing field so that their potential foes can unseat them. Every member of congress is like a feudal Lord; they sit there for 20, 30 or even 50 years. My own congressman, Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) has been in the House for 40 years. My stomach turns every time I go to the voting booth and punch or fill in the circle next to his name. I am disgusted of a system that calls itself democratic when I have to vote for the same person every two years.

My congressman does not need my vote to win the elections. I, the regular voter, have very little power to influence any decision in this system. I write to my congressman and I send him emails but his power had become so entrenched that he does not even need to answer me. And he never does.

Our congress is not accountable to the people. The President chooses a policy course that 70% of the people disagree with, and the Supreme Court is appointed by the President. The original ideas contained in the constitution have become empty words used by powerful politicians to inspire us (the naïve masses) to give them contributions.

It is estimated that a record 2.4 billion dollars will be spent on this election season. This money will reappoint at least 80% of the same 435 feudal Lords we call the lower House of Representatives. They will spend 2.4 trillion dollars of our money as next year’s government budget. Those who financed the campaign get rewarded by receiving a hefty return on their political investment. Small investments of $1,000 and under may receive a “thank you” note.

Judgeships and special legislations cost at least $100,000 in this system. It is a capitalist democracy. If you have money you can invest in it and you have to tell them what you want in return. The gun lobby represented by the NRA buys politicians to tell us that guns on our streets are the greatest guarantee against government tyranny. Then, they give them laws that expand their markets. Seniors represented by AARP pay politicians to tell us that our elders must live in comfort and dignity. Insurance companies, churches, energy companies, defense industries, and lobbyists for every type of imaginable business interest pay politicians to sing their tune. It is a free market where power and influence are sold to the highest bidder.

People who care about advancing their own agendas contribute money to politicians. If they don’t care enough then they won’t dig into their pockets. That’s the way professional politicians see it. But the constitution gave equal participation to everyone. So, the idea of buying influence makes this democracy only accessible to people with wealth. The constitution did not make democracy a privilege. Equality of influence is supposed to be the right of every citizen. Democracy was intended to create a free market of ideas but because it can be bought and sold, it has turned into a massive marketing campaign of targeted ideas.

If you have no money then you can sit at home, receive the pamphlets in the mail, watch the TV ads, and then go out and vote for the lesser of two evils. If nothing else, it’ll give you a thrill for a moment when you fill in the circle next to the name of the leader of your choice. But a feeling of disappointment sets in as soon as you leave the voting precinct. You already know deep down inside that nothing will ever change. The only two choices on the ballot got there in the first place because they were able to raise the money to become viable candidates. Their names appeared on the ballot not because of you but in spite of you. Incumbent politicians sitting in office have an advantage of filling up their coffers in exchange for favors years ahead of an election. That’s why they will never abolish this system.

Money should have no place in a democracy. It enslaves society to a set of ideas and a class of leaders that serve the interests of special groups of people at the expense of the silenced majority. Contributions should be banned from politics altogether and all campaigns should become publicly funded. A qualified candidate who collects the required petitions to run for a public office can apply for campaign funds. Candidates competing for the same office will receive an equal amount of money to fund their campaigns. This will open the door of democracy wide open to every person who is willing to do the hard work of leadership. Free from the obligations of investors, a leader can focus on doing what is right instead of what gets him more money for re-election.

It is estimated that 28 billion dollars will be earmarked by politicians in this year’s budget. This is unnecessary pork barrel spending reserved by elected politicians to reward the people who financed their campaigns. It is cheaper for the taxpayer to pay 2.4 billions to fund the campaigns instead of 28 billions.

Most people who don’t vote fail to see a direct benefit coming to them from their vote. They view Government as a permanent monkey riding on the back of the people. It is a tool of taxation and a source of constant struggle for power between corrupt politicians. If conservatives are disappointed with their GOP they stay at home and if Democrats are excited they go out and vote. Politicians compete to suppress the vote of their opposition. The system works towards the goal of achieving a low voter turnout. There is a self-defeating mechanism in this system.

Then, politicians reprimand us the voters for not getting involved to change the system. But they won’t listen to us unless we give them money. And if we have money to give to them it won’t be in our favor to change the current system. Community leaders blame their communities for not participating and individual voters say shame on us for allowing ourselves to become so helpless.

If voting is a basic right guaranteed by the constitution then it should become a compulsory obligation of citizenship, just like jury duty. In times of war, young men are drafted involuntarily into the armed forces to defend their nation. We are now facing a crisis and a structural breakdown in the system of government. These times call for such measures so we can begin fixing the most glaring defects in our system.

2006-10-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Iraq is terminally broken
By Neal AbuNab

He just arrived in America fresh from Iraq. The deep lines in the face of this 40-year old Chaldean Iraqi speak silently of the sorrow and sadness of his people. He is very happy to be in America and he’ll never go back to Iraq.

Earlier this year he was kidnapped in Baghdad and held for 24 days as a hostage. His kidnappers claimed to be Sunni Muslim and they demanded a huge ransom for his release. They kidnapped him in the name of Jihad and they received hundreds of thousands of dollars to release him in the name of their jihad.

While in captivity, he was abused verbally and tortured physically. His Christianity was denigrated and he was slapped around as a worthless Kafir or infidel. He showed me his back which was used as an ashtray by his captors. It was dotted with black marks of cigarette burns that burrowed small holes like volcano craters. As a Muslim I felt deeply ashamed of my cruel Muslim brothers.

Back in the days of Saddam Hussein this man was a major supplier of alcohol in the Baghdad area. His life was good and even by American standards he was a millionaire. But now he tells me that Iraq had become hopeless and killing is the only game in town. He says that Iraqis are bracing for a long and protracted civil war like the 15-year war of Lebanon.

He might be right because I watch the Arabic TV stations and their version of the news is different from what is shown in America. The commentators here are fighting the wars of “staying the course” or “cut and run” while the commentators in the Arab world are mostly turbaned Imams extolling the virtues of Ali, the prophet’s nephew. One might wonder about a historical figure like Ali and his relationship with what’s going on in Iraq today. The Shi’a Imams are arguing that only in the days of the Umayyad rule (661-750) were Shi’a believers killed based on their religious identity. They were persecuted because they believed that Ali was more deserving of the Caliphate; the Supreme leadership of Islam.

This is a religious dispute over 1,300 years old and it was not settled back then and it is being used today to fuel the sectarian violence. The Shi’a Imams are making their case that Muawiya, who established the Umayyad rule, had little faith in his heart and it was Ali who was filled with the faith of Muhammad since his childhood. By focusing on this ancient argument they are creating a long-sought legitimacy for the rule of Shi’a over Sunnis.

This is irrelevant in toady’s politics except that it widens the gulf of animosity between traditional Sunnis and Shi’a. Sunnis do not consider Muawiya as a revered figure like Ali, but they respect the fact that he expanded the Muslim empire from India to Morocco and united it under one banner. He is nicknamed as the genius of Arab politics.

Some Iraqi Shi’a Imams are equating the ways of Sunni terrorists with the ruthlessness of the Umayyad rulers. They claim that Sunni terrorists are killing them today just because they are followers of Ali. Shi’a terrorists, on the other hand, are only retaliating for the killing initiated by Sunnis.

This started almost three years ago and the vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-revenge has entrenched itself. Too many people have already died and no one in Iraq is calling for forgiveness. Prime Minister Maliki is shuttling between religious and political leaders calling for reconciliation and power-sharing. Most Sunnis are highly skeptical of his motives as he had not called for an end to de-baathification.

The Sunni-Shi’a argument cuts deep across the Arab and Muslim world. A coalition of seven Sunni insurgent groups, including Al-Qaida of Iraq, called this week for the establishment of a Muslim state and a caliphate out of Baghdad. They offered a plan to divide Iraq into three states. The plan was almost identical to the one that democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Joseph Biden, had outlined earlier this year.

But most Arabs and Muslims have now become involved in this civil war in one form or another. The Sunni Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia do not want to see a Shi’a state on their northern border. They want to keep Iraq united under a Sunni ruler. Jordan has an interest in maintaining insecurity in Iraq as it has been very good for its economy. Syria and Iran want to keep the US military bogged down in Iraq so they do not become the next target. Egypt’s Mubarak wants to capitalize on Sunni phobia of Shi’a power and he sends messages that a Shi’a state in Iraq is unacceptable. Almost everyone is united in rejecting the foreign occupation.

It is almost in everybody’s interest to keep the war alive in Iraq. The only way to stop this madness is through a Muslim-Muslim reconciliation initiative where everyone will convene under the auspices of a Muslim conference and strike a deal like the Taif Accords of 1990, which ended the Lebanese civil war. The framework of the solution has to be fashioned by all Muslim nations. Iraq has become their problem.

The Bush administration did not start the religious war but its invasion of Iraq was the catalyst that sparked this disintegration. Whenever President Bush is in real trouble he calls on the power that was behind his father’s presidency, and the ultimate Republican diplomat, former Secretary of State James Baker. He called him in 2000 to lead the Supreme Court battle over Florida’s election results. Now, he has appointed him along with former congressman Lee Hamilton to chair a study group on Iraq. Their report is due in December, not surprisingly after the elections. Baker predicts that the report’s recommendation will be somewhere in between “cut and run” and “stay the course”.

This is a major shift in Bush’s unwavering stance. The Democrats deserve the credit for this shift as they have been very disciplined in broadcasting the same message in this campaign. Patrick Murphy, a young army captain running for congress in Pennsylvania, answered the President’s radio address last Saturday by saying: “staying the course is not visionary, it is blind. Standing still and staying the course is not resolute, it is reckless.” I heard the same punch lines used by Senator John Kerry in New Hampshire and by Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House, in California. They are all singing the same hymn lines whether in New York or in Minnesota.

They have adopted the Karl Rove modus operandi in running campaigns and Bill Clinton seems to be heavily involved in the current campaign to take back the House. It looks like President Bush has already factored in the expected Republican defeat by calling on Baker to work out the compromise with Democrats. The Iraqi debacle will belong to the US Congress in 2007.

Early next year, we can expect US troops to redeploy from Iraq to Afghanistan where they will resume the war on terror. As for Iraq, we can expect with confidence the disintegration and the dismantlement of that state in the near future.

2006-10-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

Tyranny is winning
By Neal AbuNab

After the 1967 war in the Middle East the dark ghost of defeatism descended upon the heart of Arabs. Their governments declared a state of emergency. They suspended the constitutional rights of individuals and spent their money stockpiling weapons. The threat of Israel was the overriding concern in every country and people gave up their human rights and freedom because of national security. They never recovered from that loss. The Egyptian government today, like many other Arab governments, is still operating under a state of emergency. People gave up their freedom to the government thereby creating all these entrenched dictatorships. Guess what happened to all the weapons they bought and the great armies they built. They used them against their own people. Anyone who opposed the government became a traitor and a collaborator.

The same dark ghost is descending upon the heart of America. The Patriot Act pales in comparison with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The new law which was passed by both houses of Congress on September 29th gives the Bush administration absolute power over the lives of its enemies. The law was opposed by most Democrats except for a few like Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan who is running for re-election this year and does not want to appear soft on national security.

The law authorizes the government to hold suspected enemies in detention indefinitely. It also allows the government to torture the detainee and then try him in a military court. The government continues to spy on its own people under the sanitized term of “warrantless wiretaps” program.

The suspected terrorist which is the intended target of this law is most likely a non-US citizen but the law will apply equally to a US citizen. Most of us are not concerned for the welfare of a person who is trying to kill us. This is the argument that made such a law sail so fast through the congress. The problem is that we are dealing with a huge bureaucracy called the government which is known for committing mistakes all the time.

A five-year old boy was featured on national news this week as a suspected terrorist. His name has been on the No-fly list for 4 years. Every time his parents went to the airport they ended up missing their flight because of hours of interrogation. The government promised to correct the mistake years ago.

Let’s say you are a poor soul whose name is similar to a wanted person some where. They will tap your phone and if you speak a foreign language and make phone calls overseas then you will become a suspect. Somebody may decide to pick you up for interrogation. On a dark night they will break through your front door and arrest you while you sleep in your comfortable home with your wife and children. Your family is not allowed to visit you or to ask about you. You are not allowed to ask why you’d been arrested and you can not inquire as to the nature of the charges against you.

While you rot in a secret detention center the interrogators will wake you up at night and play loud music for 24 hours. They will deprive you from sleep and drown you in a bucket of water. If that is not enough to extract a confession they can put you in a freezer and throw water at you till you shiver and turn blue.

Eventually, you will confess and sign a statement to whatever they say. Then, you will be taken to a court where your tormentors can present your confession to a military tribunal and you will not be able to see or rebut the evidence against you. It is called secret evidence and the government will not allow you to see it because it compromises national security. Then, you will be sentenced to life in prison or execution based on the evidence that you will never see. This can happen to any American as a matter of law.

Does this scenario sound familiar? It is the typical operation of any despotic regime including most of the regimes in the Arab world. This is what Americans have surrendered to their government. So, in my opinion the terrorists are winning. We started out this war to spread freedom and to eradicate violence and tyranny. We have escalated the level of senseless violence in this world by invading Iraq and now we are importing tyranny from the Middle East.

America is supposed to be exporting its democratic values to the Middle East but instead we are importing dictatorship from there. The Military Commissions Act is a victory for dictatorship in the world and Arabs can take the credit for it. It is easy to wage war against a people whom you disagree with. It is very easy to drop bombs that destroy life but try building the life of one human being. That is the real jihad.

The Bush administration also shares in the credit for advancing the cause of dictatorship and tyranny. Its love for secrecy and intolerance was finally realized by this new law. In the name of national security it has a blank check to torture all it wants and to detain as many people as its heart’s content.

If the Patriot Act assaulted civil rights the Military Commissions Act strangled the spirit of the US constitution. If terrorists hated our freedom, as Bush always claims, and they attacked this freedom on 9/11, then this new law accomplishes what the terrorists had always targeted. Our congress is handing victory to the terrorists on a silver platter.

Americans have lost so many lives and Arabs have lost more lives and they are all dying for freedom. Arabs want to be free from colonial powers, occupations and propped up puppet regimes. Americans want to be free to pursue a dignified livelihood without insecurity or fear. It is easy to let freedom thrive in this world because it is the air that every human being breathes. It just requires people who do not need to kill other people whom they disagree with.

Some day in the near future when we’d all become slaves of our own fears we will have a great shrine in Washington for Freedom. It will say: US Freedom, Born 1789 Died 2006.

2006-10-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

Paralysis in the Middle East
By Neal AbuNab

Muhammad Odeh, a local Palestinian Hamas leader in Ramallah was assassinated by masked gunmen the same day US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, was there visiting with President Mahmoud Abbas. It was probably a small token of affection offered to please the visiting dignitary; a sacrifice at the altar of peace. Clashes between Hamas and Fatah left a dozen people dead and over a 100 wounded in the past week. It is a clear indication of how deeply divided Palestinians have grown over the past few months.

Fatah’s patience had run out. Abbas declared that he had reached a dead end in negotiations with Hamas over a national unity government. He threatened to use his constitutional powers to dissolve the parliament and the current government. But the current constitution does not give him such powers. No problem. This is the Middle East and if he can get the US to consent to it he’ll do it any way. I think the Bush administration has had enough of negotiations in the Middle East to form “unity” governments whether it is in Iraq, Lebanon or Palestine. The same story is happening in all of these newborn democracies; they’re all engaged in violent ways to resolve their power struggles and political differences.

This is a clear manifestation of Bush’s policy in the Middle East. His famous words last month declared clearly that “for decades we pursued policies of stability in the Middle East and like a mirage they did not lead to peace.”

Dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are more stable and peaceful in nature. But if Bush is determined to go on with his democracy project then instability is bound to reach these countries also.

The idea that democracies in the Middle East are peaceful in nature is a fallacy; Lebanon and Israel are two democracies that dueled to death over the summer. If people knew the nature of Arabs they will realize that each one wants to be a leader of his own people. A capitalist democracy modeled after the US will only inflame power struggles and sectarian passions in the Middle East. A genuine social democracy that offers free healthcare and education to its people, like most European nations do, has a chance of flourishing in the Middle East.

The Bush administration has dug itself a black hole in that part of the world. If “denial” describes its mindset, as journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his latest book, then Paralysis has become the state of politics in that region. Such paralysis is most evident in Palestinian politics. Hamas won the elections, formed a government and then sat under siege for the past 7 months. The Palestinian economy has been virtually wiped out and one has to admire Hamas’s endurance but feel so much pity for the victimized general population of the occupied territories.

Hamas agreed to a unity government with Fatah, based on the “prisoners’ document”, which calls for recognizing Israel and a Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders. Abbas met with Bush a couple of weeks ago in New York and it seems like Bush vetoed the agreement. Everything fell apart when Abbas got home and like he said negotiations were back to “square one.” The US wants Hamas to renounce violence and recognize the legitimacy of all previous accords between the PLO and Israel.

Such accords were nullified by successive Israeli governments starting with Netanyahu in 1996 and ending with Sharon and Olmert. How could the US ask Hamas to recognize accords renounced and nullified by Israel? It is a trap that leaves Hamas no choice but to go into conflict with Fatah and Abbas.

Most Palestinians will trust Hamas to negotiate with Israel as Fatah had proven its willingness to give the store away for the personal benefit of its rich leaders. That’s why the US and Israel prefer to negotiate with Fatah, and will continue their financial stranglehold over the Hamas government till it collapses under the weight of the starving man in the street. Hamas and Fatah are locked into a waltz of death and there is no way out.

But such gridlock, confined to Washington in the past, has traveled to the Middle East and has become the hallmark of politics there. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and his Kadima Party have a 22% approval rating and the government has lost its disengagement mandate. Olmert is in no position to even appear as if he is giving anything to the Palestinians. Cracks in his coalition may widen and then his government would suddenly collapse.

The Taliban is staging a comeback in Afghanistan and wherever you look in the Muslim world there are grievances and injustices. Most are committed by Muslims against Muslims such as deprivation of basic human rights and wholesale robberies of the wealth of nations. Nothing is moving forward.

The problem is that the average American voter has very little knowledge or interest in the region. Polls have shown that almost 75% of Americans don’t know where Israel is and so most of them can not connect the direct relationship between the misery of Palestinians and the threat to their national security. They will argue forever that Arabs and Israelis want to fight with each other all the time, as if America had nothing to do with it.

In the large political landscape of America, the Palestinian “problem” is like a pimple on the ass of an elephant. Everyone in the world tries to tell the elephant (Bush and the Republicans) that this pimple has to be squeezed before it turns into a tumor, which can kill the elephant. However, the Bush administration is only concerned in chasing the flies off that pimple. Bin Laden used the Palestinian pimple as one of the reasons for attacking America and Al-Qaida continues using it to attract more recruits.

The US is the only power that can squeeze this pimple and break the stalemate. It can do that through direct negotiations with Iran and Syria. But Bush is pursuing a path of “victory” and he still hangs on to the idea that decisive win-lose military solutions are possible, even after the failed experience with Hizbullah.

Secretary Rice’s visit to the Middle East was in response to domestic political pressures ahead of the elections to combat charges of incompetence from the Democrats. It has little to do with pursuing peace in the Middle East. The world is in dire need of courageous leaders in Washington to break this vicious paralysis.

2006-10-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

Mel Gibson predicts fall of U.S.
By: Neal AbuNab

Sometimes it feels like we're always in a race with time. We're always in a hurry to get things done or racing to get somewhere fast or just trying to meet somebody else's deadline. Being in a hurry is part of our nature. Impatience to fulfill our most basic needs is imbued in our creation. A baby cries forcefully demanding its milk while a fully-grown corporate executive pounds his fist on the table demanding work be done.

We're always racing but we never seem to catch up. Now, superstar Mel Gibson is telling us to relax and enjoy the ride before it all ends in 2012. Whenever this man speaks, somebody makes him apologize. The other day he took his new movie, "Apocalypto," to a film festival to promote it and made some remarks critical of the Iraq war and the decline of our civilization.

Gibson's work in movies like "Braveheart" and "Patriot" demonstrate that he is a "for God and country" type of man. God weighed heavily on his heart when he made "The Passion of the Christ," which infuriated the Jewish institution in America. Then he made his famous anti-Jewish remarks on July 28th when he was arrested for drinking and driving. He cursed at the officers and told them, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in this world." Obviously, he was disturbed by the Israel-Lebanon war.

The following day he ate his words and groveled in one apology after the other to the Jewish community. They let the storm die down but they never forgave him and he lost some film contracts in the end. Then, he pleaded no contest to the drinking and driving offense on August 18. The judge ordered him to get treatment for alcoholism and to do some public service work. On August 20, the "Los Angeles Times" wrote an editorial calling for disqualifying Mel Gibson from doing public service announcements because he was not a good role model. The paper said, "Gibson should be declared celebrity non-grata, left to wrestle with his own demons in private, as most other bigoted people get to do. Obscurity would be the most fitting punishment for the man."

What do they want from the man besides the whole hearted apology that he made? Maybe he has to check himself into an "Anti-Semitism Rehabilitation Center" to cleanse himself of any critical thoughts of Jews. After completing such a program he will be singing their praises and preaching that they are God's chosen people. Otherwise, he should re-consider his entire existence as a public figure. I am sure that Mel has millions and millions of dollars so he can afford to speak his mind freely. That's why his apology is sincere and Jews must accept it and move on. The Pope made anti-Muslim remarks and then he apologized. No one called for his resignation or told him to cancel his existence as a public figure. We have to foster an atmosphere of dialogue that can accept the honest truths of all points of view.

In the latest remarks, Mel Gibson drew a parallel between the United States and the doomed Mayan civilization; the subject of his latest movie. He said, "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again." To illustrate his point he asked, "What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

Everyone is critical of the Iraq war but why did such benign remarks draw any attention at all? It is because of the Jewish connection and the implication that Jews are bringing this civilization down. Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, made the linkage for us, stating, "If Jews are responsible for all the world's wars, then by that logic, they are responsible for the war in Iraq." He wants the 50-year old Oscar winning director to "put matters like that to rest. Until he does, it just hangs over him."

Gibson is a devout Christian and his politics are mostly conservative. He may have offered such scathing criticism of the Iraq war to appease the mostly anti-war Hollywood crowd. It seems like he needs to hire a political consultant these days, somebody like Dick Morris who advised Clinton. His anti-war remarks have now probably alienated his core group of conservative supporters and his anti-Jewish remarks alienated the Hollywood crowd and Democrats. Will all this affect his popularity or potential sales at the box office? Probably no. I predict the opposite will happen.

More people will see his movies than ever before. His remarks represent strong undercurrents in the political discourse. The Rapture Theory and the prophecy of the End Times are current topics discussed by most evangelists and media talk shows. Gibson seems to believe in these ideas and predicting the end of this world is a fulfillment of his convictions. He said, "I don't mean to be a doomsday guy, but the Mayan calendar does end in 2012, boys and girls." He seems to be giving us a hint about the end of our world as the United States falls to its doom like the Mayans did.

The concept of the End Times has been in the subconscious of man since the beginning of time, when he invented the idea that he was created in an instant by a Supreme Being we call God. Any race that has a starting point must also reach a finish line. If God created Adam about 10,000 years ago and started this human race, then at some point we are going to get tired of running in this marathon. There will be an end to this race.

We will inevitably reach our doom because of the deeds of our own hands. That doesn't mean the end of human existence. It is simply the end of the rat race that we have created with our own hands, where we turned ourselves into mere robots in a huge industrial machine.

It may also be the end of our racist thinking when we begin to see all humans as equals regardless of their "race, color, religion, or ethnicity." There is always a silver lining in every cloud and the end of our current way of life might also be the starting point of the God-given promise of a spiritual way of life. Mel Gibson might be right after all when he said, "I don't mean to be a doomsday guy."

2006-09-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

The Pope is wrong and violence is wrong
By Neal AbuNab

Several churches in the occupied Palestinian territories were firebombed and attacked by overzealous Palestinian Muslim youths. It was one of the angry reactions to the Pope’s comments that enveloped the Muslim world last week. But this kind of extreme reaction is abhorrent. As a Muslim Palestinian I find myself embarrassed by the misguided anger of our youth. I offer a most sincere apology to all Palestinian Christians and to the entire Christian world for such despicable acts. The violent reaction is inexcusable but I blame the dire economic and political conditions for this violence rather than the Pope’s remarks. In the past few months, Palestinian youths have vented their anger against almost every institution whether it was their own parliament or the buildings of the United Nations.

Muslims all around the globe seem to have become hyper-sensitive to critical remarks and they are easily aroused by verbal assaults on their religion. It is a sign of insecurity for a culture that feels cornered, under siege and does not like or know how to be comfortable under a microscope.

Islam is going through a renaissance and it is hard to predict what it would look like in the end, but being in the spotlight is sure to have a sanitizing effect. The Pope has every right to speak his mind freely about a religion that has competed with and threatened his own for the past 14 centuries. He is in the business of selling spirituality and he is reacting to a threat that is eroding his market share. He is the head of the “Central Spiritual Agency” and he has the final say so whether we go to heaven or to hell.

Islam came and divulged this authority and decentralized spirituality so that every person became individually responsible for determining his own destiny; whether it be heaven or hell. The prophet Muhammad is the only messenger of God whose exact words survive till today. The story of Moses was written by his so-called followers 600 years after his death. Jesus never intended to create a new religion but it was his former tormentor (Saul a.k.a. St. Paul) who capitalized on his pain and created the Central Spiritual Agency, where they handed “deeds to heaven” to all the faithful willing to kill the infidel in a crusade to occupy the holy land.

Yes, I have heard it many times before; the Pope has apologized for the crusade. And it is time to move on and accept that ideas and theologies are not to blame for the endless crimes of man against man. The Pope was wrong to insist on quoting an ignorant Byzantine emperor and he was wrong in offering a half-hearted apology. I do not question the sincerity of his motive in creating an opening for real dialogue, but I suspect that he wants a piece of the limelight focused on Islam these days. His struggle or jihad has a different objective from the Muslims’ jihad. He is combating the idea of irrelevancy and he has conceded that Europe has succumbed to reason and secularism. He wants a piece of the action in reforming Islam which Bush and Blair seem to have monopolized for the past five years. Muslims on the other hand appear as if they are resisting reform like it was the plague. They want to do it at their own snail’s pace without pressure or interference from the outside.

I don’t blame them because no institution will ever accept reform from the outside and especially from its competition. True reform always happens from within. Reformers from the outside are more interested in breaking down a competing institution and demolishing it in the name of reform. That was Reagan’s strategy towards the Soviet reforms championed by Gorbachev back in the eighties. Certain Western powers seem convinced that they can follow the same playbook with Islam. They are mistaken and their insistence on this flawed strategy will only cause the breakdown of their own institutions. Islam is very strong in its flexibility and malleability and it is only a matter of time for its people to control the debate from both sides of the game. Islam has a tendency to suck in every reformer, thinker and theologian into its cosmic allure.

The western media has blamed the Pope for inciting violence in the Muslim world. Scenes of burning effigies of the Pope play to the benefit of Republicans in this election season and they strengthen the Catholic Church in the US, which generates more than half of the Vatican’s revenues.

But I blame Muslim politicians mainly in Pakistan and Turkey who were the first ones to jump on this opportunity and ride a wave of demagoguery that inflamed the passions of their ignorant flocks. It is the same type of ignorance that issued a decree to kill Salman Rushdie for writing a book. Instead of engaging in constructive and enlightening rebuttals of the Pope’s allegations, they incited people to violence. The Pope’s remarks were wrong and the reaction was wrong, and no two wrongs can ever make a right.

The Pope seems to accept and preach the premise that Islam was spread through violence. He has not refuted or repudiated this ancient Byzantine distortion. I would like to debate the Pope and show him that no idea as noble as Islam could have spread so fast and so wide by the use of force. If he studies his own history he will find that his own Vatican papacy rose to dominance because of Islam. The founder of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne (742-814), was educated at the hands of a Christian priest who spent most of his youth learning in Arabic the civilization of Islam in Spain. This priest became Pope Leo III and with his student, Charlemagne, they subjugated and Christianized the Saxons and other Europeans by force.

It can be argued that Islam saved Christianity and Judaism from demise. The respect and confirmation of the divinity of Moses and Jesus are clearly established in the Qur’an. Such clear words from God, prior to the revelation of the Qur’an, did not exist.

I urge Muslim scholars to engage the Pope in an honest interfaith dialogue that does not shy away from highlighting stark differences while at the same time creating an open, respectful and peaceful flow of information that educates the curious masses on all sides. Islam is a decentralized religion and Muslims will not be happy to have an Ayatollah or a politician debate the Pope, because each sect and each group has its own opinion on the subject. The Pope is going to be debating many Muslims on this subject for a very long time.

And we should by all means have a constructive dialogue that will bring more peace and harmony to this world instead of creating more reasons for hate and violence. A civil interfaith dialogue that develops a higher level of tolerance, openness and acceptance of differences is very much needed. Faith is supposed to create harmony with existence and seek peaceful means to resolve differences between people.

The Abrahamic faith with its three branches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is in dire need of reform so that they all stop fighting each other and agree that they all basically worship the same God.

2006-09-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

Good riddance to Dick DeVos
By Neal AbuNab

Dick DeVos, Michigan’s Republican candidate for governor, cancelled an appearance with AAPAC (Arab American Public Affairs Council) members scheduled for last Wednesday citing family issues. He apologized for the cancellation and called it a misunderstanding. The news of this cancellation attracted attention and it was perceived as an insult to the Arab American community. But such insults are not new to the Arab American voter, as most local politicians have become adept at pacifying this voter segment without ever giving them any substance.

The local media reported that the DeVos campaign had concerns about pro-Hizbullah comments made by AAPAC’s President and Publisher of "The Arab American News," Osama Siblani, during the latest Israeli-Lebanese war. Some of these comments were highlighted in an article published by the "Detroit Jewish News." Its editor mounted an attack on Siblani, Abed Hammoud and AAPAC for arguing that Hamas and Hizbullah were freedom fighters. He urged local politicians and candidates "not to attend AAPAC events or accept contributions from the group because of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and arguably anti-Semitic comments by its leaders.”

The DeVos campaign complied with the Jewish request and cancelled the meeting. In an article on Septemeber 7th, the "Detroit Jewish News" claimed full credit for the victory over AAPAC. The article quoted Greg McNeilly, campaign manager of DeVos for Governor, as saying: “DeVos supporters initially made campaign leaders aware of the activities and statements of AAPAC leaders, and then saw Sklar's JN column. After independently verifying the statements, McNeilly said they told AAPAC that "they are not willing to come and have that connection."

But on Monday, September 11, Dick DeVos met with a handful of community leaders, including Osama Siblani, Abed Hammoud, and Imad Hamad, and apologized to them for what he called “mistakes” committed by his campaign. Our green candidate will soon learn that such political blunders are career breakers. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is stepping down next year because of his mishandling of the Israeli-Lebanese war and simply acting as George Bush’s poodle. Apparently, Dick DeVos wants to avoid sinking in the Middle East’s political quick sand. But the story has already developed legs of its own and it promises to develop further, and possibly gain national attention.

The DeVos campaign has not disavowed the Jewish claim of victory. This defeat for Arab Americans facilitated by DeVos is a major problem for a candidate who is trying to sell himself as a bridge-builder and a catalyst for harmony and peace. Just like Bush’s poodle, DeVos appears to be the Jewish community’s poodle. And on this occasion I would like to thank Mr. Dick DeVos for creating such a mess out of a simple campaign stop, which he requested in the first place. He saved us the embarrassment and the awkwardness of being cordial to him and to his Republican Party. He may have also provided our community with a real incentive to go out and vote in this election.

We know where Dick DeVos stands on the most important issue to our community; namely the Arab-Israeli conflict. He stands with his boss, George Bush, squarely on the side of Israel. A vote for Republicans is a vote for war and a vote for Democrats is a vote against the war. President Bush has already framed the debate of this mid term election and you can either vote for “staying the course” of war or you can vote for searching for peace. Republican candidates in Michigan including DeVos and Senate candidate Michael Bouchard have fallen in line and have chosen to be the yes men of Bush.

If DeVos had taken the time to understand the context of Siblani’s and most Arab American leaders’ comments in support of Hizbullah he may have understood how the leaders of this community served America’s interests first and foremost. Their comments reflected the prevailing sentiment of 90 percent of the Lebanese population. They were not a blanket statement of support to Hizbullah and its past actions. They were in support of defending Lebanon’s sovereignty from a barbaric indiscriminate attack waged by Israel. They certainly did not support Hizbullah’s attack on the U.S. Marines in 1983, and on a visit to Lebanon last year, Siblani urged pro-Hizbullah supporters not to chant “death to America” in their protests. Siblani and all Arab American leaders do not support the enemies of America even if they are Hizbullah. But they believe, like most Americans do, in the inalienable right of the Lebanese people to defend themselves against the merciless aggression of a foreign state.

Good riddance to DeVos and to his warmongering party. This episode revealed to Michiganders the kind of incompetence that the Republican Party has become famous for. His campaign ads claim that he is an experienced chief executive. The way he has mismanaged this simple campaign meeting speaks volumes of his abysmal skills. Just like his boss George Bush, Dick DeVos is a man born with a silver foot in his mouth. His speeches echo the familiar themes of Bush’s campaign of 2000. Bush claimed to be a uniter, just like DeVos is claiming, but ended up being the greatest divider since Richard Nixon. DeVos has already created a wedge between Arabs and Jews in Michigan.

Bush claimed to approach foreign policy with “humility” and not to commit our troops to “nation-building” mistakes. He turned out to be the most insensitive arrogant American President the world has ever seen. I suspect DeVos will act the same way if he becomes the next governor of Michigan.
By listening to the "Detroit Jewish News," DeVos proved to be even dumber than his boss, George Bush. He has already resorted to the politics of exclusion and applied sanctions against Arab Americans before taking office. His boss did not do that till after he took the oath of office. He met with Arab American leaders several times on the campaign trail and was able to pacify them by acting “nice” without ever giving them any substance.

Wayne County will decide who the next governor of Michigan will be just like it did four years ago when it gave Jennifer Granholm a lead of 200,000 votes over her Republican opponent. On Election Day, November 7, at least 100,000 Arab American voters will go to the polls in Wayne County and cast their votes. They may not cast the deciding vote but they will vote for somebody to be the next governor of Michigan. That is a fact that Dick DeVos and his Jewish appeasers can not help. They can not deny them the right to vote. They will most likely vote for somebody who did not insult them. Thank you to the "Detroit Jewish News" for making this choice clear to most of us.

2006-09-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

The Neo-Crusaders
By Neal AbuNab

President George Bush is delivering one speech after the other selling the so-called successes of his war on terror and re-defining what he viewed as “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century”. For the next month he will be talking terror 24/7 and unveiling new initiatives on surveillance, detention, interrogation, spying and trials. But most people are more interested in the state of the economy as this issue had climbed back up to become the number one priority of the American people.

This is good news for the Democrats as most polls show that Americans favor their party to run the economy. But Bush’s economy is closely tied to his war on terror as he had transformed America’s economy in the past five years turning factory workers into security guards, air marshals and soldiers. America’s peace-time industries especially car manufacturing suffered the greatest damage. Bush was in Michigan this week but he refused to meet with auto makers or entertain their needs. Motown’s big three are limping along as their sales slump in a shrinking market.

The big economic boom is taking place where oil and defense industries are based mostly in the southwest of this nation. Michigan has one of the hardest hit economies and its recession is entering the sixth year. In Detroit, which was declared the poorest city in America along with Cleveland, teachers are on strike and lawlessness is rampant. It looks more like a land out of Africa or the Middle East, and it is hard to believe that it is part of the America that most white people want to protect from the Mexican “invasion.”

But Bush has little concern for the millions of Americans who live in dire conditions of poverty and despair. He is obsessed with his crusade on terror. In his speech on August 31st he said: “this is a pivotal moment for the Middle East.” I think it is also a pivotal moment for the United States of America. Unfunded government commitments stand at 48 trillion dollars, according to the government’s General Accounting Office. There will be yearly budget deficits for as far as the eye can see. Bush who just turned 60 represents the generation of baby boomers who will be retiring by the millions in the next 10 years.

The biggest business in America will be in retirement homes and caring for the elderly. This is the single biggest threat to the national security of America. It is called the broken social security and healthcare systems. Where will the money come from to support the tens of millions of retirees?

That is not the concern of our short-sighted President who urged that “we should all agree that the battle for Iraq is central to the war on terror.” Polls already show that most Americans do not see the war in Iraq as part of the overall war on terrorism. The Democrats submitted a letter to the President this week outlining a new strategy in Iraq to refocus the military’s efforts and re-direct it against the self-professed enemy of America; namely Al-Qaida and Bin Laden.

As long as he remains in the White House, Bush is determined to push forward in his crusade against the “totalitarian ideology.” The neo-conservative movement witnessed a sudden eclipse of glory because of the failed Iraqi adventure, but a handful of diehards are hanging on very stubbornly. I call these individuals the “Neo-Crusaders” and Donald Rumsfeld has emerged as their chief theoretician and high priest. That’s why the Democrats are championing a no-confidence measure in the Congress to force the secretary of defense to resign. He offended his critics when he called them “appeasers of fascism.”

Terrorism is a law enforcement issue if America’s overall policy seeks peace in this troubled world. The Democrats want to re-direct funds to strengthen homeland security, local law enforcement agencies, and plug all the vulnerabilities especially at seaports and borders. But Bush stated very clearly that “we have ended the days when we treat terror as a simple law enforcement matter.” His overall policy is one of waging a continuous war and he admitted that “the calm in the Middle East was like a mirage…years of pursuing stability failed to produce peace.”

But peace is the inevitable destiny of mankind. Just take a look at the graveyards and see how peaceful they are. Maybe this is the type of peace that Bush has in mind for all of humanity. He has not said a single word about the Palestinian issue, which is seen by the rest of the world as central to ending the legitimate Arab and Muslim grievances that fuel disdain and hatred for America. Baghdad has become the center of Bush’s universe while the rest of the world sees Jerusalem holding the key to terrorism or peace.

How convenient was it for the Neo-Crusaders when last weekend Al-Qaida’s number two, Aiman Al-Zawahiri, released a video tape kicking off the election season and providing Bush with all the talking points to define the enemy and its twisted ideology. An American convert by the name of Adam Ghadan was the star of the movie. He offered Americans to convert to Islam which will put an end to his group’s Jihad. Comedian Bill Maher was the first one to heed the call and he testified that “there is no God but one God and that Muhammad is his messenger.” By definition he’s become a Muslim and so he is now exempt from the wrath of Al-Qaida.

Most Americans who paid attention to Adam Ghadan were insulted and if they took him seriously they would instantly convert and become believers of the Bush doctrine. How convenient was the timely release of that video. Just like the Bin Laden video that was released three days before the Presidential elections of 2004. It swayed just enough votes to give Bush a second term. Maybe the Democrats should seek such a mutually benefiting relationship with states like North Korea or Iran. It just might break the unholy alliance of Al-Qaida with the Neo-Crusaders, and let them win an election for a change.

2006-08-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

The War of Jesus and Allah
By Neal AbuNab

Every group commemorates the anniversary of September 11th with a notion reflecting its own angle of the world. Staunch Republicans are using the occasion to remind the world of the importance of waging war. Democrats point out the incompetence of Republicans in waging the wrong war in Iraq. Believers in Armageddon and the concept of the End Times paint a scenario of a fatalistic escalation of hostilities with Islam leading up to the end of this world.

A thoughtful friend of mine, also a devout Christian, offered his frank view of 9/11. He said to me: “as long as your God is not my God we will be at war.”

Naively, I’ve always thought that God is the God and that all of humanity must’ve come to this realization, which some of us take for granted, a long time ago. Apparently not. My friend who holds an advanced University degree said that his God was Jesus while my God was Allah. I tried to explain to him that Allah is not a name of a God and that Arab Christians also worship Allah. He did not believe it. In his view, the war on terrorism was a war to decide whose God is right, once and for all. Is it Jesus or is it Allah?

President Bush has defined the enemy we’re fighting as “Islamo-fascists” and his rhetoric seems to be directed to the Christian base that my friend belongs to. They want to hear that this war is between Jesus and Allah. Donald Rumsfeld gave a long speech this week and accused his critics that they were “morally confused.” He argued that the rise of fascism in Islam is just like the rise of Nazism in Germany in the late thirties. Many far right commentators have been pressing this argument for years but it seems like the administration is now ready to embrace it.

In the past, the enemy was defined as an isolated group of fanatics that did not represent Islam. But five years later this group seems to have swelled up and expanded instead of what people were led to believe this war would do, which is to make fanatics shrink and die. The administration has finally warmed up to broadening the definition so that Iran can fit neatly as the “head of the snake” of Islamo-fascism. The administration already knows that it has missed the boat on initiating any military action against Iran. This option is off the table and Iran has already called the bluff, but the administration is currently waging an election campaign and making its own base of voters believe that it still has a military option.

The Bush administration is desperate and wants to win the elections in November at almost any cost. The reality is that people are tired of war and not just in this country but all over the Middle East. The Democrats are poised to regain control of the US Congress which will turn Bush into a lame duck President for his remaining two years in office. The Democrats will end the war in Iraq in a hurry and will begin negotiations with the so-called “Islamo-fascists” who truly control the new rising Middle East.

The label itself is pure hate-speech because it offends every self-respecting Muslim on this earth. Some times I wonder about the actions of President Bush and how clueless he sounds when he talks about the Middle East. The more they repeat Islamo-fascism the bigger this group will grow. It is called the radicalization of Islam and they are causing it. There is no Islamo-Liberal or Islamo-Moderate. Muslims have too long and too rich of a history to accept the ignorant labels of others, especially when others are clueless about Islam. The administration is developing a new product under this brand name, and packaging it basically for domestic consumption. There are no adherents or followers of Islamo-fascism out there in the real world that exists beyond the bubble of the Rose Garden.

The war started out against the Afghani Taliban regime and less than 2,000 Arab fighters from Al-Qaida. Five years later, the enemy expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon to Iran to Syria to Sudan to Somalia and reached South American shores in Venezuela and Bolivia. Is Hugo Chavez an Islamo-fascist? The last time I checked he was still a Christian.

The truth of the matter is that this President is slowly uniting the entire world against America. An objective measurement of the success of this war should be in the form of quantifying the enemy. Five years ago it used to be 15 million people who lived in Afghanistan. Today, America’s Muslim enemies alone number 200 million people if we apply the lowest estimate, taking into account only the countries that the Bush administration had declared as “terrorist.”

Bush often cites the ultimate objective of Osama Bin Laden as creating a super Islamic state from Morocco to Indonesia. In historic terms no one has been able to unite all Arabs or Muslims except two men in the last fourteen centuries; the prophet Muhammad and Saladin. Iran’s President, Ahmadinejad, with all his fiery speeches can only ignite a fraction of the passion that President Bush inflames when he speaks. But it is anti-America passion that he inflames. Bush has an uncanny way of insulting people of the Middle East, Muslims and almost every person who does not agree with him. He has united Arabs and Muslims more than any leader in modern history.

Unintentionally, President Bush is doing what Bin Laden could only dream about. He has united the sentiments of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. He has served the cause of Islam very well. He will go down in the history books as the Chief Islamo-fascist Jihadist of the 21st century. He will wear his own label till the end of time.

Jesus and Allah called for peaceful means to resolve differences. Maybe that’s something all humanity can agree on instead of creating more labels to justify more killing of God’s creatures.

2006-08-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hizbullah of Iraq
By Neal AbuNab

In 1799 Napoleon Ponaparte wrote to the Jews offering them the land of Palestine. His army was encamped outside Acre near Haifa. He assured the Jews that their new homeland would be protected by the French Empire. The interests of France in creating an Israel outweighed the interests of the Jews at that time. Napoleon figured to hit two birds with one stone; get rid of the Jews of Europe and plant them in a land that had a long history of resisting the domination of western Christians. He knew that the Jewish state will always be at war with Arabs and so he offered the backing of his powerful army. Napoleon’s primary aim was to inject a source of constant threat and instability in a region that never complied with western interests.

In that vein of thinking he was a visionary man well ahead of his time. His “Israel” project never got off the ground but the historic offer provided future European leaders with a new tool to combat Islam and make good use of the Jews. The idea was picked up by the British Empire in its Balfour Promise of 1917 and then later championed by the USA in 1948.

Today more than ever the interests of the Bush administration lie in destabilizing the Middle East and keeping it under the threat of war for the foreseeable future. This guarantees the flow of oil from divided Arab fiefdoms and ensures that the revenues from this oil never go to strengthen the overall political power of Muslims.

Peace in the Middle East is not good for America; that’s been the long-standing policy of President George Bush. In the nineties and in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Bill Clinton adopted the policy of negotiations to maintain America’s sole supremacy. Clinton was the embodiment of that policy as he met with Syria’s late Hafez Al-Assad, gave a speech to the Jordanian parliament and toured the refugee camps of Gaza. His ability to converse with almost everyone and the popularity of his personality promoted the values of America to the Muslim world. His relentless pursuit of peace in the Middle East gave birth to the idea of an “honest broker.”

The Republicans led by Bush changed the policy of negotiations to one of isolation. They argued that America can maintain its status of the “only superpower” by destroying opposition and dissention. They embarked on a project of demonizing enemies in preparation for waging war. The axis of evil was defined as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. China and Japan have experienced enough wars and destruction in the past century that they have lost the stomach for a confrontation with North Korea. So, the chances of having another war in the Korean peninsula were slim to none. This eliminated North Korea from being the first target.

The attacks of 9/11 provided Bush with a golden opportunity to begin his “isolate and destroy” approach to foreign policy. Osama Bin Laden may hate America but as a dumb strategist every action he has ever undertaken has helped Israel and the Republicans. Bush enjoyed the support of almost everyone in the world when he went to war in Afghanistan. But everyone was under the impression that this moron, Bin Laden, and his brigade of illiterate followers will all be wiped out and the world would move on. Instead, the Bush administration let him go in the mountains of Pakistan and allowed his network to live. It was a “convenient” blunder of incompetence which gave birth to the “war on terrorism”.

Iraq was attacked next because it was the weakest link in the axis of evil. Meanwhile, Sharon in Israel isolated the Palestinian Authority and then destroyed it. Iran was surrounded by US troops from both sides and it was next on the list. 2005 was the most suitable year to strike Iran but the US military feared the violent reaction of the Shi’a population in Iraq. Things in Iraq and domestically did not go Bush’s way in 2005 and his doctrine began wobbling as he talked about negotiations and diplomacy; an approach that is foreign to his isolationist personality.

In June 2005, Iran had an election and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became President. He had figured out the “isolate and destroy” approach which doesn’t need much brainpower to figure. He adopted the exact opposite approach of “connect and build”. He struck strategic alliances with most Muslim nations and re-started the nuclear energy program to confront Bush’s doctrine head on. This week Iran asked for serious negotiations regarding its nuclear program and the US refused opting to run to the United Nations to ask for a resolution to isolate Iran economically. The Palestinians asked for negotiations and Israel refused. And the Syrians asked for negotiations and the US and Israel refused.

Iraq today stands like Lebanon in 1983. Back then, Lebanon was occupied by Israeli forces and a civil war that took advantage of sectarian differences had been raging for about 7 years. Every major power in the world was fighting its own war on Lebanese soil. Hizbullah was born with a single aim to eject the Israeli occupier.

Iraq today is the focus of world powers and on its land shall be fought the battle for American supremacy. The “isolate and destroy” policy inside Iraq has been defeated. De-baathification has failed and turned into a Shi’a-based campaign to strip Sunnis of any remaining political power. The entire population of Iraq sees the American occupation as the main cause of Iraq’s insecurity. Most Iraqis blame America for fanning the flames of sectarian hatred and keeping the country unstable so that the forces of occupation remain in Iraq.

The conditions are ripe for the birth of a Hizbullah of Iraq. It is only a matter of time for the US to clash with the Shi’a of Iraq in a big way. We saw a preview of that clash a couple of years ago when Muqtada Al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia were almost wiped out by US forces. Today, the Mahdi militia has become a force of about 15,000 fighters and Al-Sadr is the most vocal Shi’a critic of the occupation. He is the most likely candidate to lead a Hizbullah of Iraq. A couple of weeks ago he mobilized almost 300,000 Iraqis who demonstrated in Baghdad waving the flag of Hizbullah and chanting against America and Israel. They will probably fight the US forces who will attempt to disarm all the militias in the upcoming months.

“My critics want to leave Iraq before the job is completed”, declared a defiant Bush in a press conference on August 21. He wants to kill the terrorists in Iraq so that “we don’t have to face them here.” This argument has become a domestic partisan issue and Bush is determined to “stay the course” and lead Republicans to another victory in this November’s elections. Rumsfeld’s beefing up of US forces in Iraq may indicate an imminent large-scale military operation in the works.

The confrontation between Iran and the Bush administration will remain military in nature till the end of Bush’s term. Israel let him down in Lebanon but it is asking for another round, and it is approaching the current cease-fire with an attitude of “run away today to fight another day.”

If Democrats win in November, the occupation of Iraq is over. Bush has one last chance to make his case and it will be in the form of an all-out military campaign in September. If he can create a perception that the US had won the battle for Baghdad the Republicans will win the elections. Otherwise, his war is over and everyone will negotiate with each other starting December of this year.

2006-08-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

Israel’s historic defeat
By Neal AbuNab

This is not Israel’s first defeat and it won’t be its last one. But it will go down in the books of history as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hizbullah defeated Israel the first time on May 25, 2000. The current Lebanese government was so ashamed of that victory that it banned all celebrations this year. We still celebrated in Dearborn and the Lebanese Consul in Michigan joined us at the Bint Jebail club.

The significance of today’s victory is that the war was waged on all fronts and Hizbullah and Lebanon came out ahead. On the military front where Israel has always behaved like a wild beast that can not be tamed or deterred, it was dealt a severe blow. In the air campaign it conducted more than 10,000 sorties that delivered more bombs than the combined nations of NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999. Every bomb cost Israel about $40,000 while Hizbullah delivered approximately 4,000 Katyusha rockets that cost about $300 each.

It was an asymmetrical war conducted on the cheap but delivered the maximum effect for Hizbullah. Israeli missiles were striking fear in the heart of Lebanese civilians and the Katyusha’s were striking a similar fear in the hearts of Israelis. The Israeli air force with its state-of-the-art technology and weapons was neutralized by World War II-type rockets. Its precision-targeting systems killed hundreds of civilians while the antiquated technology of Katyusha’s killed only a handful of Israeli civilians.

Israelis claim that they had bombed Lebanon back to the Stone Age and that is victory. This is the logic of force that they deeply believe in. It’s like having a 20-year old beat up a 2-year old and calling it a victory. It is downright repulsive and criminal in nature. They are right when they say there is no moral equivalence with Hizbullah’s methods. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, challenged them to fight like men and to park their F-16’s and fight on the ground. After three weeks they answered the call and began their ground invasion. They pushed thousands of troops into southern Lebanon and every time they declared victory in a town they retreated from it the following day.

Over 100 Israeli Merkava tanks which cost $40 million dollars each were destroyed. When it became clear that the ground war was producing “diminishing returns” they agreed to a cease-fire. Wars are all about expectations and objectives. Israel has the fifth strongest military force in the world equipped and financed by billions of US taxpayers’ money. Israel was not only expected to crush Hizbullah easily but also to make an example of it in order to build a new Middle East that dares not question the right of Israel to exist.

Israel declared war on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah and to release its two captured soldiers. It failed in achieving both objectives. The US had taken it for granted that Israel would crush Hizbullah and so it began working on a UN Resolution that provided International legitimacy to Israel’s aggression. It assured its allies that Hizbullah had no chance in surviving the assault and that the resolution should just reflect the facts on the ground. Henry Kissinger is famous for saying that “war is just another instrument of diplomacy.” He gained notoriety when he negotiated with the Vietnamese while bombing them into submission.

And so the US in the person of its top diplomat, Condy Rice, focused its diplomacy to reflect the expected defeat of Hizbullah; a fait accompli in the eyes of the administration. She went to Beirut to check on the pulse of Hizbullah. It was still beating. French officials went to Beirut to check for themselves and they found the pulse to be very strong. They also found that 90% of the Lebanese people had become united behind Hizbullah. And by the fourth week all the Arab countries lined up behind Hizbullah and an Arab League delegation went to New York to negotiate.

This was the first time Arabs united on one position and they all stuck to it. It was truly a historic moment and it only came about because of Hizbullah’s inspired resolve to defend Lebanon. The US stalled while Israel promised victory in a matter of days. In 1982, it marched to the Litani River in 3 hours. After 4 weeks of fighting it was still stuck in Bint Jebail, barely 5 Km north of the border. Then, last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, gave an all-out ground invasion order pushing 30,000 soldiers into Lebanon. They met with resistance they had never seen before.

Hizbullah fighters began hunting Israeli tanks and bulldozers like a spider that invites flies to its deadly web. Israeli soldiers were reminded of the Lebanon “mud” they had left six years ago. A Hizbullah fighter talked to a CNN reporter after the war ended and described how one Israeli soldier was injured in the middle of one of these small border towns. His buddies would not come back for him and he laid there on the ground crying and begging Hizbullah fighters not to shoot him. They did not. But he died later of his wounds because Israeli soldiers waited too long before they came back to get him.

The myth of the Israeli soldier was shattered forever. It was replaced by a new reality on the ground. A reality that will be legendized and will become the new myth; that Hizbullah can not be defeated. Olmert realized this fact in less than 24 hours after giving his orders. On Thursday evening Israel declared that it was ready to accept a UN Resolution that declared a cease-fire. On Friday, UN Secretary General Kufi Anan, said: “war is the utter failure of diplomacy.” Then, they passed UN Resolution 1701 calling for the cessation of hostilities between the two parties.

Lebanese civilians were the greatest losers in this war. But their pain did not move the entire world to put a stop to the Israeli attack. It was Hizbullah’s fighters who proved that a military solution was impossible that put an end to the battle. Hizbullah proved that Israel can destroy the entire country of Lebanon and turn it into rubble but it can not defeat its fighting spirit. Nasrallah proclaimed that the Arabs had scored a “strategic historical victory against Israel.” On Monday night, fireworks lit up the skies of Beirut in celebration and a genuine sentiment of deep pride was evident on the faces of all Arabs. It was the first time in history that Israel was defeated militarily and diplomatically.

As for the Lebanese civilians Hizbullah began rebuilding their destroyed homes the next day. Many Lebanese investors lost their life savings in this war. This is a valuable lesson for them that unless their economic accomplishments are insured by political gains their efforts will always be at risk. It is the lesson that they refuse to learn even here in Dearborn. We’ve been telling them for years that all their money has no value and all their beautiful new buildings on Warren Avenue have no value unless city hall pays attention to their causes. Instead of having the mayor of Dearborn cut ribbons for new Arab businesses let’s see him march with us in our protests. He managed, as always, to keep his distance from the Arab pain. And so did every city councilman.

Arab money has no value without local politicians fighting to protect it by making our views mainstream to the American people. Unfortunately, this war has proved that most of our elected representatives are too afraid to champion Arab causes. The blind love for Israel is dragging America to hell and elected politicians must have the courage to face that reality.

This is the first time Arab pain has emerged triumphant. A handful of courageous politicians felt our pain and championed resolutions demanding an immediate cease-fire. But one of these politicians stands tall in our community. He was at every protest and he showed a deep commitment to social justice. He is Gary Woronchak, our elected commissioner in Wayne County. He proved to be a true friend of the Arab American community.

Our business leaders who are sobbing for their lost money must learn how to reward the politicians who stand with us and how to punish those who stood on the sidelines. President Bush has taught us that “you’re either with us or against us” and our business leaders must learn this fact if they hope to protect their investments in the future.

Hizbullah has released the Arab spirit and the genie is out of the bottle. The winds of liberty and freedom are blowing very hard in the Middle East and they are led by the two flags of Hizbullah and Hamas. America can choose to stand on the side of freedom or stay with the tyranny of Israel and the Kings of Arabia. The choice is simple and it will become clearer with every passing day.

2006-08-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

The war of words and images
By Neal AbuNab

“I appeal to you from a wife to another wife to tell me if my husband is still alive”, Karnit Goldwasser, the wife of captured Israeli soldier, Ehud Goldwasser, made her appeal on live television from the studios of Fox News on August 6, 2006. Shlomo, the father of the soldier, appeared with his daughter-in-law and thanked the American Jewish community that helped bring them to America and organize their appearances. Karnit and Ehud had been married for only 9 months when Ehud was “kidnapped” on the last day of his military duty. Karnit told her story to the American people with wedding pictures intertwined with fond memories and longings to live a peaceful and happy life.

Peace and happiness were denied to this couple by the Hizbullah terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying Israel with their hateful ideology. It is a gut-wrenching human story conveyed with such strong emotions that garner the immediate sympathy of any peace-loving human being.

That is the story of Israel in the US media. It is the story of a human tragedy of epic proportions. The story of a persecuted people that escaped total annihilation in Europe and ran off to the land promised to them by God to live in peace and security.

Fox News is the champion of this story as it tells it with great care hosting military experts, terrorism experts, and guests that demand forcefully from the President to declare that “Islam is evil”. The rest of the TV media has somewhat cooled off on its “unconditional love for Israel” message and began focusing on the horrific images of death and destruction coming out of Lebanon. MSNBC is almost approaching the line of balanced reporting which infuriates the lovers of Israel. Pat Buchanan has become the leading contrarian voice answering to the compelling arguments made by seasoned neo-conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Mort Zuckerman, Fred Barnes and William Crystol.

The story of Israel as told to Americans has always been a human story. The labyrinth of politics in the Middle East poses a sort of a mental challenge to the collective mind of America. Since the early days of President Harry Truman there was a conscious decision made on the part of media handlers to reduce this story down to over-simplified human terms and to tell it from the eyes of the victimized Jew. Arabs rarely appeared in this story till the seventies and the eighties, when they began blowing up planes and taking hostages, and so the “terrorist” brand name coined by Israel began sticking.

Why did Arabs blow up planes? The answer offered was simply because they hated Jews. Why do they hate them? Because Arabs are like Hitler and the Nazis of Germany; they have an ideology of hate. Why did Arabs attack America on 9/11? Because they hate Americans. Why do they hate Americans? Because they have an ideology of hate. These simple answers formed the basis of the easy-to-follow logic of “terrorism for dummies”, which allowed savvy Republican strategists to win one election after the other in the past 5 years. This logic formed the basis of the war on terror. But the democrats may have signaled that they are not buying any more of this logic, as they nominated this past week in Connecticut a relatively unknown political entity; Ted Lamont, and rejected the trigger-happy longtime war cheerleader veteran Senator Joe Lieberman.

Ever since the eruption of the latest war in the Middle East, Americans have showed that they have a renewed appetite for more information. This race was championed by cutting-edge journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper with his famous “AC360” 2-hour News program. In his search for the story he went to Beirut, Cyprus and Israel. But the time he spent outside of Israel pales in comparison.

In the past two weeks, I would say he’d gone totally “native” and joined his emotions with the Israelis. He is depicting the glory of the Israeli army as it confronts a coward enemy that hides behind human shields. He is faithfully broadcasting the story of immense sacrifice and pain which shows clearly on the faces of Israeli soldiers going into battle. He “embedded” for a weekend with an army unit that went into Lebanon and the report he filed was similar to media “embeds” with the US army in Iraq. The idea is to depict Israel’s fight as America’s war. His reports succeeded in painting a human image of the Israeli army with strong connotations that they are fighting for God and country, and that they are confronting the enemies of America and the enemies of western civilization. The intended conclusion for every viewer is that they are doing us a favor, and so they deserve our wholehearted unconditional support.

The written word echoes more in the mind of man and so the colossal newspaper industry has pretty much stuck to the logic of “terrorism for dummies.” Its unilateral approach has starved intellectuals out of the market and inhibited the political evolution of American society. The same columnists and editors keep hammering the same message over and over again. But too much medicine can kill the patient. The love of Israel has been shoved down the throat of Americans for so long that some are throwing up involuntarily.

The war of words and images to capture the hearts and minds of Americans is the bedrock of public policy and diplomacy. This media war that shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict for the past 60 years has always been unfair and unbalanced. A non-profit organization by the name of www.IfAmericansKnew.org has been making this case for years. Its numerous studies prove how biased the US media coverage is towards Israel. One of its typical studies shows that reporting Israeli children’s death takes place routinely at a rate almost 7 times greater than reporting the death of Palestinian children, as a result of the violent conflict. This deliberate policy is aimed at making the humanity of Israelis more precious than the humanity of Arabs. If people only hear about Israelis being killed their innate sympathy will gravitate towards the victim.

The US will never have a balanced foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American interests till we have a balanced coverage of this conflict on the TV screens.

The Arab story as told often to America consists of abstract statistics and quick images while the Israeli story has a human face. Israeli pain is more valuable than Arab pain. This is evident in the statistics of casualties; 100 dead Israelis so far compared with 1,000 dead Lebanese. Almost every Israeli casualty is reported with a human story showing the unjust nature of the death, family members crying and a whole community grieving and burying its precious members. The time allocated to tell the story of one Israeli death is about ten times that of the Lebanese death. This keeps the balance of emotions always shifted on the side of the Israeli victim whose life has been magnified to bond with the viewer’s life.

No one in America hears about the Lebanese prisoner Samir Al-Qintar imprisoned by Israel since 1979, and sentenced to 453 years. No one in America hears about the 70 elected Palestinian legislators kidnapped over a month ago and thrown in Israeli jails. No one in America hears the story of the Palestinian Parliament Speaker, Aziz Duwiek; abducted from his house in Ramallah last week and tortured by Israeli interrogators in jail. No one in America hears about the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Each has a gut-wrenching human story to tell. Their mothers went on a hunger strike last April to get the attention of the world but no one took notice. No one takes notice of the Arab pain unless it is translated to violence that causes Israeli pain.

In the US media, Israelis always appear through personal stories with kids and names. Their pain and anguish moves us to tears while Arabs are nameless, faceless and their death is a deserved punishment. Arabs die because of their hate and anger while Israelis die because of their love for humanity. The systematic de-humanization of Arabs makes it easier to strip them of morality. This is a deliberate policy to de-humanize, demoralize and demonize a whole people. This way, selling the idea that they simply hate us becomes easier.

Hate-mongering is very important for a group of policymakers as it leads to fear-mongering which keeps war-mongering alive. All this adds up to a whole bunch of money that the defense industry is making, and the idea of Israel is a vital factor in its profitability equation.

2006-08-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

Israel loses first round
By Neal AbuNab

Israel has lost the first round of this grueling match with Lebanon. Most observers agree that the current war will not be decided by a “knock-out” punch from either side. The two-day lull in the air campaign, last week, allowed both sides and the world to tally the points scored so far. Israel suffered its greatest loss in the humanitarian argument which gave Hizbullah the deciding points for this round.

When this war started there was so much temptation for escalation and Israel just could not resist. Its disproportionate response has passed the line of immorality to criminality. Lebanon today is the Kosovo of the Middle East. The massacre in Qana, this past week, reminded us of the massacre of 41 civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak by Serbian forces in January 1999. When the world saw that massacre there was a turning point in public opinion and Qana did that last week. The world just can not stand by idle watching the mangled bodies of innocent women and children.

By the end of March 1999 Nato forces were pummeling Serbia and cornering its criminal regime headed by Slobodan Milosovicz. The population of Kosovo was terrorized by the brutal Serbian forces, much the same way as Israel is terrorizing the Lebanese today, and millions left their homes and ran for the mountains of Albania. If we replay the images of that dispossessed population fleeing Kosovo in April 1999 it will almost replicate what happened in southern Lebanon last week. There is good and evil. But back then, the United States led by President Bill Clinton stood on the side of good and rallied the entire world against evil. Back then, Serbia stood alone with Russia against the world. Today, the United States stands alone with Israel against the world.

Israeli officials stress that there is no “moral equivalence” between their fight and Hizbullah’s. They are right. They are on the side of evil and Hizbullah is on the side of good. Hizbullah is defending its own civilian population from the merciless destruction of Israeli firepower. Israel has unleashed the flames of hell against defenseless civilians and even declared bridges as its enemy. Hizbullah is defending its own land and the right of Lebanese people to live in that land in peace and security.

Israel apologizes to the American people, who paid for its bombs, for killing Lebanese civilians in cold blood. But in the same breath it defiles the memory of these victims by blaming them for their own death. It sends leaflets to Lebanese civilians ordering them to leave their homes or else be killed. Israel believes that by warning these civilians it has obtained a moral justification to kill them.

Let’s turn this “moral equivalence” around and suppose that Hizbullah sent leaflets to all Haifa residents to evacuate or be killed. The world will react “disproportionately” in its outrage and condemnation of Hizbullah. Jews all over the world will accuse Hizbullah of trying to commit a “holocaust”; an idea monopolized by Jews and therefore Lebanese and Palestinians can never be the victims.

Israelis claim that all they want is to “live in peace” and live a normal life like Americans do. Isn’t that what the Lebanese and the Palestinians want also? But Israel’s concept of morality is discriminating and she sees that only Jews deserve such a basic human aspiration. How could they live in peace on a land they had stolen from Palestinians? Hizbullah sends its rockets to northern Israel to tell them that the land does not belong to them. Hizbullah is defending the rights of Palestinians who own Haifa, but instead had been forced to live in wretched refugee camps in Lebanon since 1948. Don’t they have a right to live in peace and live a normal life like Americans do?

When Hizbullah arrested two Israeli soldiers occupying its land the US called it a “kidnapping”. But when Israeli commandoes kidnapped five Lebanese civilians from a hospital 70 Km’s away from Israel, in Baalbeck, the media called it a “daring arrest”. But the US media has been playing this game of criminalizing any legitimate activity against Israel for the past 60 years. They twist the meaning of words so that Israel’s actions are shrouded in a cloak of legitimacy while the actions of Arabs are always suspect in nature.

However, the US media has not served American interests and has rendered the majority of Americans ignorant about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The truth is as bright as sunshine and it will burn through the spin provided by the Bill O’Reilly’s of this world. Americans see hundreds of thousands of peace-loving defenseless people fleeing their homes, cities turned into rubble and atrocious massacres. What is the world doing about that? They ask and their President, George Bush, tells them: we’re sending humanitarian aid to the Lebanese and bombs to the Israelis.

Israel is fighting on the side of evil. Hizbullah is fighting on the side of good. God is on the side of good and so I don’t have a shred of doubt that Hizbullah will prevail in the end. The Qur’an says: “Anyone who pledges his allegiance to God; to His messenger and to the believers will have joined the Party of God that is destined for victory.” (Chapter 5, Verse 56). Of course, Hizbullah means the Party of God and its name was inspired by the Qur’an as its moral legitimacy.

Israel kills innocent civilians, apologizes and then blocks the United Nations from condemning its actions. A UN resolution passed last week called the Qana massacre “regretful” and it “deplored the violence”. Israel has lost the war for the hearts and minds of people and whoever loses the media war usually loses the morality war, the diplomatic war and eventually the military campaign.

A recent poll showed that almost 90% of the Lebanese people support Hizbullah and most Arab Americans reflect that sentiment. Its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, declared on Thursday that all of its military actions are a direct reaction to Israel’s aggression. If Israel stops attacking then Hizbullah will stop reacting just like it did in those two days. World public opinion has reached a critical mass and has become united in asking for an immediate cease-fire. Israel and the US stand alone bare and naked in their warmongering intentions. They are still convinced that they can smash Hizbullah and extract it from its roots.

Last Wednesday marked the 22nd day of this war and Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, rang the bell for round two of this match. He said that Israel will push its ground forces deep into Lebanon and will only give up the territory to an international force. Shortly afterwards, the highly anticipated massive ground invasion commenced and fierce battles raged with black smoke rising from towns all along the border.

I expect round two to bring an escalation in destruction and casualties on both sides and it may entice Syria to jump into the fray. This round will be longer than the first one and more gruesome in nature, as the stakes have been raised even higher. All this sits well with the embattled Republicans who will enter the upcoming election season united with Israel in a global war against “Islamo-fascism” and “terrorism.” May God save the American people from the ignorance perpetrated upon them by their own leaders.

2006-07-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

The New Middle East
By Neal AbuNab

This past week, Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, did a lot of “photo op” stops in Beirut, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Rome which demonstrated that the Bush administration is fully engaged in the latest conflict. She marketed an old project with a new label called the “new Middle East”. The new American vision is serious and it is about creating a linkage between Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. President Bush referred to this emerging vision in a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki. He lumped the war against all of these “terrorist” forces in the Middle East as one war between good and evil. Of course, Israel and America stand on the side of “good” and people who oppose this will stand on the side of evil. The US and Israel are absolutely determined to crush “totalitarian” organizations in the new Middle East (how about the Saudi regime?). There will be no resistance to the idea of Israel in their new Middle East.

President Bush threw Al-Qaida, the Iraqi Baathists, Hizbollah and Hamas all in one basket. He called them “the enemies of democracy”-without mentioning that Hamas and Hizbollah were democratically elected- and claimed that they were only interested in creating totalitarian theocratic regimes in the Middle East. This large umbrella can provide Israel with international legitimacy to continue its ethnic-cleansing of Lebanon from the forces of “evil.” But the US administration is doing more than that. It is actually pushing Israel to score a clear military victory in Lebanon which it could not get in Iraq. It rushed to Israel 500 laser-guided bunker busting missiles that went straight into the neighborhoods of southern Beirut seeking the political leadership of Hizbollah.

In the battlefield, Hizbollah has sustained more beating than anyone ever expected. Israel has never faced an Arab enemy like Hizbollah. In the 1967 war, Israel crushed Egypt, Jordan and Syria in less than 6 days. Spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Mark Regev, admitted this week that a military solution for the current conflict is virtually impossible. He is countering American claims that Hizbollah can be eliminated. America is pushing Israel beyond its capacity to win this war. Even Shimon Perez, Israel’s deputy Prime Minister, acknowledged how critical this war is when he said: “this war is a matter of life and death for Israel.” Crushing Hizbollah will guarantee Israel another 20 years of uncontested life.

Rice went to the Middle East to sell the American-Israeli plan of disarming Hizbollah and occupying most of southern Lebanon by an international force. She armed herself with UN Resolution 1559, which called for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon- which it did last year- and for the disbanding of all militias. The rest of the world that met in Rome asked for an immediate cease-fire and for discussions to follow at the UN. But Rice insisted on a “sustainable” cease-fire that disarmed Hizbollah before ending the Israeli offensive. She wants the international community to hold Hizbollah down while Israel punches it to death. This diplomatic escalation is a direct reaction to Hizbollah’s strength on the ground. Shimon Perez estimated that Hizbollah’s force was no more than 7,000 fighters. The Bush administration can not comprehend how such a tiny force is standing up to Israel’s mythical military might.

America will agree to a cease-fire only when Hizbollah is ready to surrender. The conditions of this cease-fire will form the basis of a unilateral disengagement plan with Lebanon and Syria. Israel wants to eliminate the need for negotiated solutions with the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. The new game plan is to have its security guaranteed by United Nations resolutions.

In Beirut, Rice proposed the terms of this agreement to members of the Cedar Revolution, like Walid Jumblat and Amin Gemayel. They agreed that Hizbollah must be disarmed and that the southern half of Lebanon will become a buffer zone guaranteeing Israel’s security. Lebanese Speaker of the House, Nabih Berry, called it “a recipe for internal conflict and civil war.” Fouad Siniora, Lebanese Prime Minister, went to Rome to undo some of the damage inflicted by Rice in Beirut. He proposed a 7-point plan that reflected the common view of his coalition government. He is trying to hold on to a very fragile consensus that the US is working so hard to break. Victory for Israel is not possible unless the unity of the Lebanese people is broken. It is the same story at the Palestinian front.

Rice accepted in essence the exchange of prisoners and the return of Shebaa farms to Lebanon. But she rejected point number one: an immediate cease-fire. Turkey and others accepted Rice’s argument as long as Hizbollah agreed to disarm voluntarily. This implied direct negotiations with Hizbollah, Syria and Iran, which Rice rejected. The new Middle East that she carries in her womb does not care about the interests of Syria or Iran, and does not negotiate with “terrorists”. She wants to give birth to a new Middle East that readily accepts and applauds unilateral disengagement plans conceived by Ehud Olmert.

Such plans do not tolerate opposition, resistance or negotiations. These plans will be dictatorially imposed on the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians; in the name of all peace-loving democratic nations. Olmert’s plan is simple with all of Israel’s neighbors; security buffer zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. These plans are perfectly suited for the Bush administration’s policy in the war on terror. The idea is to prevent real peace from ever taking root in the Middle East while at the same time giving a false sense of security to Israel.

Israel was created in the Middle East to keep tensions alive and to keep Arabs divided. The US does not want Israel to have real peace with its neighbors or to have thriving democracies in the Middle East. The role of Israel is to keep war alive. Rice even alluded to that in Ramallah when she said: “the real problem is that there has not been a sustainable peace in the region.” She was trying to lay the blame on everyone else but the United States. No one holds the key to peace in the Middle East except the United States. History did not start two or three weeks ago when a couple of Israeli soldiers were captured.

The purpose of Rice’s trip was to tighten the grip on Hizbollah, within Lebanon and outside. She paved the way for an upcoming UN resolution that blames Hizbollah for the current war, calls for disarming it, and provides a mandate for the Israeli army to invade and occupy southern Lebanon. The current thrust is to define to the world that Hizbollah is the problem and not Israel. Discussions at the UN will focus on these questions: was Hizbollah justified in capturing the two Israeli soldiers? Was Hizbollah trying to save Hamas or did it have the interests of Lebanon at heart? Is Hizbollah to blame for the utter destruction of Lebanon? Hizbollah’s rockets to north Israel; is that a terrorist action?

All of a sudden Israel has become so keen on implementing the will of the international community as stated in resolution 1559. What happened to all the other resolutions like 242, 338 and so many others that called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and to allow all refugees to return to their homes? How about deploying an international force in Gaza and the West Bank?

Arab League Secretary, Amer Mousa, has the right idea. He called for declaring all peace initiatives in the Middle East as dead. He wants all the Arab countries to go back to the United Nations and simply ask for the implementation of UN resolutions passed.

We are thankful for America’s humanitarian assistance to Lebanon. The US has already floated the idea of one billion dollars in re-construction aid once this war ends. How about saving American taxpayers some money by sending fewer bombs to Israel! It makes you wonder if these career politicians ever use the logic of common people. We spent billions of dollars on missiles that destroyed Baghdad and now we’re wasting tens of billions more pretending to repair that damage. We spent billions in building the Palestinian infrastructure and its authority and now we give billions to Israel in the form of bombs to destroy all of it. The Lebanese borrowed billions of dollars to rebuild their nation and now we rush laser-guided missiles to Israel to bring all these buildings down.

At this rate, when Rice is ready to give birth to the new Middle East; other Arab capitals like Damascus, Amman and Cairo will have followed in the glorious footsteps of Baghdad, Gaza and Beirut.

2006-07-22T04:21:00.000-07:00

Israel drags America to hell
By Neal AbuNab

We told America not to go into Iraq because it would be fighting Israel’s war with the Arabs, but no one listened. Now, we tell America do not be a cheerleader for Israel as it destroys every living thing in Lebanon. But America has become deaf and it only hears the gospel coming out of Tel Aviv. If you think the last week in the Middle East lasted forever brace yourself because this war will go on for months if not years.

President Bush has clearly sided with Israel and justified its slaughter as part of his “war on terror.” We have been reminded over and over that Hizbollah is a terrorist organization. Even heads of prominent Arab American organizations, like Nihad Awad of the Muslim CAIR; stated on Fox News that “yes” he considered Hizbollah a terrorist group. Unfortunately, he is scared and his views do not reflect the true sentiments of Arabs and Muslims. I, like the greatest majority of Muslims, do not find a shred of justification to call Hizbollah a terrorist organization. In fact, we consider them the champions of Arab dignity and the few Muslims left in this world with the courage of conviction to sacrifice their own lives for the right thing.

But Nihad Awad is not alone and he joins his apologetic Arab leaders; like Hosni Mubarak and the elite Monarchs, in condemning his own kind. All these people are dishonest and they do not serve the interests of America. We love the American people more than they do and that’s why we fight so hard to tell America the truth. It won’t be long till America realizes that with friends like Hosni Mubarak who needs enemies!

The war in Lebanon is a contest of willpower and determination. I listened carefully to the words of the two leaders who really own the moment; Ehud Olmert of Israel and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah of Islam. I consider both the children of Abraham and whoever wins the moral argument will prevail in the end.

Olmert ordered the assassination of Nasrallah and has been chasing him all over Beirut with his missiles and bunker busters. This action lacks morality as it violates the sanctity of immunity afforded to leaders. Olmert ordered the destruction of civil life and infrastructure in Lebanon. He killed hundreds of people and dispossessed hundreds of thousands who fled the country. Nasrallah’s response has been so far measured and restrained.

The Qur’an says: “O people who say we believe: stand up for God and become witnesses for justice. Do not be traumatized by the evil you receive from other people; that it would prevent you from practicing justice with them. Uphold justice and that will bring you closer to what is right. Do what is right by God; for it is certain God has expert knowledge of all your work.” (Chapter 5, Verse 8).

Nasrallah has followed the mandate of morality more than Olmert, despite the claims that Israel is doing its best not to kill civilians. Nasrallah stated in a speech last week that he intentionally avoided hitting the Petrochemical installations in Haifa because of “unpredictable consequences” to the civilian population. Israeli Rabbis issued a religious ruling that sanctioned the killing of Arab women and children. It is a clear violation of the morality mandate that recognizes the sanctity of all human life.

The evil we receive from others should never traumatize us and cause us to dehumanize them. As a Palestinian I’ve had to practice this principle all my life to heal myself of the trauma of the 1967 war that made me homeless; and demanded that all Palestinians bless the Israelis and thank them for their evil. But Israel and America are deeply traumatized by suicide attacks. The current war between Israel on the one side and the Lebanese-Palestinians on the other side could very easily spread to engulf the whole Middle East from Tehran to the Mediterranean. Many Americans may say: so what, nuke them all and be done with this s- - t (Bush’s descriptive word for the current war).

This is the careless attitude that elected Bush for a second term and only bows to forceful behavior. Bush has marginalized America and turned it into a dumb cheerleader for Israel. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said recently: “this president has turned into a city councilman from Brooklyn and he has outsourced US foreign policy to Israel, Sharon and Olmert.” 9/11 is not a sacred cow that we have to revere, and in its holy name constantly justify the destruction of other countries. America needs to get over this trauma because the injustice it is inflicting on the rest of the world is only perpetuating this vicious cycle.

If right after 9/11 America said to Muslims: let’s come together and decide what is right and what is wrong, and with that moral compass let’s together eradicate what is evil. Then, Muslims would’ve told America: return to the Palestinians their rights in a secure and independent state; and eliminate economic tyranny in the Middle East. Tell all your Royal friends in the oil-rich Arab countries to go to Switzerland where they can live out the rest of their days grazing in the green fields. If this had been done by now, the world would have moved on to a new promise, and the root causes of “terror” would have been eliminated. We would have $20 per barrel oil and Palestinian boys would be marrying Jewish girls. Imagine what that world would’ve looked like? All humanity dancing in a circle of love.

Instead, Bush chose to do the exact opposite. He justified further repression of Palestinians as “self-defense”, and killed more Arabs in Iraq to protect the fat Sheikhs. We are stuck in a medieval time warp and America’s wealth and strength have become a brutal tool of vetoes and tyranny. The only solutions left are military and violent in nature. Israel wants to eliminate Hamas and Hizbollah. It does not care about the “collateral” human misery that stands in its way. Hizbollah wanted Arab prisoners out of Israeli jails but even if this demand is now met it will not suffice. Hizbollah can not go back to Lebanese politics as usual and justify the demolition of Lebanon to free up prisoners. Nasrallah said: “if war is what you want then war is what you will get.”

This is the final conflict in the Middle East. The stakes are too high for Hizbollah to lose. But what is victory for Hizbollah? To hold out and to keep this war raging for as long as possible. If Israel can not declare victory in two or three weeks, the whole world will demand that it stops its aggression. Then, US diplomacy will try to broker a cease-fire that exchanges prisoners and empowers Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Saniora, to hold Hizbollah accountable for the demolition of Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Hizbollah will raise the stakes on the ground and will begin to show the Muslim world what victory looks like. It is likely to strike the heart of Tel Aviv so that Israelis begin a massive exodus out of Israel. Then, Olmert will escalate more and mobilize a full-scale ground invasion and re-occupation of Gaza and Lebanon in the name of “self-defense”. Syria can not afford to have Hizbollah eliminated, and so it will jump into the war. The war with Syria will go on for a couple of months while it receives its share of the beating. By this point, Iran will have mobilized the Shi’a population in Iraq against US troops.

The mid-term elections will focus on the threat of Iran, national security and the raging war on terror in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. The Republicans will win the elections and the Bush administration will strike Iran in December. War will rage for the following two years from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to Tehran, and beyond to Kabul and Islamabad. And instead of humanity dancing in a circle of love it will have its final embrace with death.

2006-07-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

Voting is a religious duty
By Neal AbuNab

There is a primary election on Tuesday, August 8, 2006. It is the duty of every Muslim to go out and vote.

Is this a religious Fatwa or edict? Yes, it is and I urge the Imams and leaders of the Muslim community to echo the same sentiment. Congregating in thousands has to be translated into a movement that secures the basic rights of a community.

The Qur’an says: “When the angels of death swoop in to collect the souls, that renounced their own rights; the angels will ask: what did you do while you were on earth? The dead souls will say: we were treated as the hapless on this earth. The angels will answer: did God not create an expansive earth that you could freely roam in? These souls will find their permanent shelter in Jehannam (hell), and it is an awful destiny.” Surah 04-97 (Chapter 4, Verse 97).

A hapless person is exactly what we were in the Arab world. We were ill-fated, unfortunate and saddled with helplessness. All because of our weak, tribal and mostly autocratic systems of government. We are a strong people as individuals but as a collective we have become the hapless on this earth. We came to this nation to improve our lives and indeed God has created “an expansive earth” that we could freely roam in and realize our dreams.

We came to America for prosperity, wealth, and a chance to pursue a dignified livelihood. We did that for the past 20 years and it proved to be inadequate. All of our wealth, money and hard-earned dreams can disappear overnight if we don’t have the political muscle to back it up. Our money has no value just like Saudi Arabia’s money because it is not spent in dignifying the lives of Muslims or creating a social value for our existence. We can work all our lives and be remembered as the people who panted after the dollar and died lonely, miserable and without a shred of dignity. Why? Because we sold our souls to the devil and made money our God.

We see it every where; a brother willing to deceive his own brother to cheat him out of a few measly dollars. Our leaders in the Arab and Muslim world are crippled because they have to beg for US aid. The real problem is that the value of the Muslim human being has plunged to the lowest level. And it is his own doing.

Why do we deserve every bit of misery inflicted upon us? Because we have renounced our own rights. We are economic refugees in this country and we don’t want to be involved in politics. Our past actions indicate that we do not believe social justice is important. The erosion of our civil rights has not moved us to a life of social activism. The government can wiretap every phone call we make, monitor our financial transactions, place us as suspects on secret lists and scrutinize our lives under its big microscope. All without the oversight of a court or the orders of a judge.

But the message we have sent through our scant political involvement is that we agree with the government, as long as it leaves us alone to collect a few more dollars. We will even help the government strip us of all of our civil rights. Some of us are willing to act as informants and high level operatives to neutralize any opposition from our own community. We have renounced our own rights and according to the Qur’an we will find our permanent shelter in Jehennam (hell). We need to reclaim our rights through elections.

The most important tool available to us in this political system is voting. In the past 4 years we have hardly used this tool. As a collective, we have shown very little interest in voting. It is the bedrock of Shura in Islam or participation. It is the best tool available to us to moderate some of the extremely disenfranchised voices in our midst.

We have to transform our community from economic immigrants to political immigrants. We have always vacillated between Democrats and Republicans. Our nature is like the nature of the majority of Americans; we are a morally conservative socially liberal community. We fit right in the center but we are forced to find a permanent home to the left of that center within the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party talks to us as a way to pacify us and it has the audacity to tell us that its policies are good for us. Republicans are not interested in real dialogue. They want to dictate the terms of surrender. They are obsessed with national security and they believe in the logic of “might is right.” Their solution to every problem is greater enforcement, more aggression and more defense spending.

The Democrats are searching for their soul to offer a viable opposition plan. They talk to us and they adopt some of the things that we tell them. They still view us as human beings with basic rights afforded to us under the constitution. They are the champions of anti-discrimination and civil rights. We may not be totally happy with their suave indecisive narratives, but the Republicans have slammed the door in our face.

Our issues are simple and they can be described in two phrases: social justice and participation. This applies everywhere whether in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq or in Dearborn City Hall. In this primary, we must forget that a Republican slate even exists on the ballot.

Here, locally we have some excellent Arab American candidates like Adel Harb, Sam Salamey, Alex Shami and David Turfe. These candidates are making a great contribution in activating our community and upgrading its political awareness. They all deserve our most sincere gratitude and support. David Turfe, Alex Shami and Adel Harb were all members of the Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC). It was founded on the idea that one day its members will run for public office.

David Turfe is running for a Judgeship in Dearborn Heights. Alex Shami is running for State Senator and his name will be on the ballot in Dearborn and parts of Detroit. Adel Harb and Sam Salamey are competing for a Judgeship in Dearborn.

The fact that they are both competing for the same position should not dismay some people and cause them to think that they are breaking up the Arab vote. It is a free country and each candidate is convinced that this is the right time for him to run. Their efforts within the Arab community are extremely helpful and exciting. They are both campaigning very hard in the non-Arab community and this helps the unity of Dearborn and makes it stronger. I don’t believe that any political group within our community should fall into the temptation of endorsing one of these candidates over the other. It is not a good message to send to young aspiring leaders.

One thing I know for certain; all these Arab American candidates are helping us pave our way out of Jehannam (hell) and God-willing into paradise.

2006-07-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

There is no winning in Iraq
By Neal AbuNab

Polls show that 70% of the Iraqi population believes that killing an American soldier in Iraq is a legitimate act of resistance. With such poll results there is no possibility of winning the war in Iraq.

It is only a matter of time for the elected officials in Iraq to start singing the hymns of their own people. Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, has already suggested 2007 to be the year of US troop’s re-deployment. His current initiative that started a dialogue with Sunni groups is aimed at convincing the insurgency that America is sincere in withdrawing from Iraq, as soon as the security situation improves.

But insurgents are not regimented armies that take orders from a stable political leadership. Most Americans believe that the core of the insurgency consists of foreign Arab fighters led by Al-Qaida. That is not true. The insurgency was founded and continues to be financed by the dethroned Iraqi Sunni leadership. The fuse of the insurgency was lit up in July 2003, when former Ambassador Paul Bremer announced his militant de-baathification process.

Americans were reeled into de-baathification by their Shi’a allies who paved the way for the invasion and provided Bush and Blair with some credibility to sell the war to their constituents. De-baathification was sold to the Americans as a necessity and they were led to believe that it was possible to purge the country from Baathists and Saddam loyalists. This is another false premise.

Baathists are in essence Arab nationalists and their ideas of defeating colonialism and rejecting foreign occupations have a wide appeal; not just in Iraq but across the Arab and Muslim world. Saddam Hussein repressed the Shi’a and Kurdish populations of Iraq but in doing so he was serving America’s interests. He killed a million Shi’a Muslims in his 8-year war with Iran, and for that he deserves to be tried as a war criminal along with his American accomplices. Donald Rumsfeld visited him in 1983 and brought him a gift in the form of tons of chemical weapons to gas his Iranian Shi’a enemies.

Before he invaded Kuwait in 1990, Saddam got a nod of consent from the American ambassador in Baghdad. Everyone knows that Kuwait is more of a bank account than a country. It was carved out of Iraq by the British to protect their interests from American hands. Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, got the exiled Kuwaiti Sheiks to put up all their billions to finance the “liberation” of Kuwait. She reeled in a reluctant George Bush, Sr., with his mighty army that sat idle in a bad economy to lead the charge.

Bush Sr. could have easily removed Saddam and his regime in 1991 but that was never an objective. Saddam Hussein was the darling of American conservatives in the 1980’s. He only fell out of grace and became a Hitler after attacking Israel with Scud missiles. He was the only Arab leader in recent time to make good on his threats to Israel. He became a symbol of Arab pride and the leading voice of Arab nationalism. That’s why they decided to take him out in the end and to cage him like an animal. They wanted to make an example of him to any aspiring pan-Arab leader.

Four million Sunnis in Iraq were criminalized by Paul Bremer’s order to de-baathify. Their properties were seized and they became outlaws. A few months before the invasion of March 2003, the Sunni generals in the Iraqi army received secret payments from the CIA to order their troops not to fight with the invading American army. They were promised an important role in a post-Saddam Iraq but instead they found themselves chased by American soldiers. They fled to neighboring Jordan and Syria where they established a safe haven to promote resistance and fuel an insurgency.

The exiled Shi’a clerics came back to Iraq and by the nature of their close ties with Iran they sought to distance themselves from the Americans. Young Sheikh Muqtada Al-Sadr attempted with his Mahdi militia to establish autonomy from the American occupation but his rebellion was quelled. He was pardoned and offered to join in the political process. In the last election his party won an impressive number of seats in the parliament and it ended up with a couple of cabinet posts in the government. Many of his loyalists joined the police force and occasionally they conduct their own raids against Sunni targets. These death squads, within the Iraqi police force, are only interested in revenge and in executing ex-baathists. In the last month alone, 8,000 unidentified Iraqi bodies were delivered to the morgues.

The last group of insurgents is the foreign Sunni Arab fighters, like the slain Zarqawi. They serve at the pleasure of the Sunni population. Killing Al-Zarqawi was not a victory in the war on terror because there is plenty more where he came from. You kill more of them and they kill more of you and the vicious cycle of killing just keeps on escalating. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims seeking martyrdom and most are smarter than Zarqawi. They seek eternal life through death and American soldiers are running away from death. How can you defeat somebody who sees death as a victory?

Bush and Blair invaded Iraq under the false premise of WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction). When Bush declared “mission accomplished” in May 2003, he was not lying. There was nothing left to do but to build permanent military bases over the oil fields. Then, the looting began and under pressure from the media US soldiers were called in to police the anarchy and to control the criminal activity. Then, they decided by default that the new objective was to create a democracy. But you can not create a democracy without leveling the playing field. Democracy, to Sunnis, became a code word for creating legitimacy to the Shi’a rule over the Sunnis.

Now, victory in Iraq is undergoing the final phase of re-definition. The Bush administration is emphasizing “security” as the only measure of success. They gave up on all the other facets of nation-building such as infrastructure, power, healthcare, education, etc… They had security in the first place and then they caused insecurity with their own decisions; and they still claim that killing more terrorists will bring security.

You can have security restored in Iraq in one month if you outlaw de-baathification and guarantee equal rights to all Sunnis. In Al-Anbar province where insurgents roam the streets freely, 90% of the population is unemployed. And because they are Sunnis they are unemployable.

Bush peddles the idea that “we will fight the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here.” The opposite is a truer statement: “we created a fertile training ground for terrorists in Iraq which can be exported to the rest of the world.”

After 9/11 there was a need for retaliation and to kill as many Arabs as possible. Over a hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed in the past 3 years. If that is not enough then “we will stay the course till our mission is accomplished.” The Bush administration went into war on behalf of oil companies and if $3 per gallon is not enough then “we will stay the course” till we reach $5 per gallon.

Staying the course and doing the same old thing while hoping for a different outcome is no longer a viable option. The solution in Iraq is political in the first degree and requires policy changes regarding Iran, Syria and the Palestinians. An honorable withdrawal from Iraqi cities is still possible without losing face or jeopardizing local police control. This is not a “cut and run” policy. It is a policy to stitch a wound that we had opened, so we can signal to Arabs that we’ve had enough of killing and we want peace.

2006-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

Palestinians trap Israel in Gaza
By Neal AbuNab

Last Sunday, a handful of Palestinian fighters attacked a couple of Israeli tanks, just north of the Gaza Strip at the Kerem Shalom settlement. They killed two soldiers, injured four and took one as a prisoner. The fighters had worked on the tunnel they crawled through for months.

This military target is a legitimate one for the Palestinian militias because the Israeli army is the primary agent enforcing the policy of occupation on the Palestinians. An important principle is at stake here for the Palestinians: making a clear distinction between lawful resistance and terrorism. The Palestinians did not kill civilians with a suicide bomb, they attacked a military target.

The Israeli army goes into a Palestinian town every day and arrests suspected militants. This is the first time Palestinians have arrested an Israeli militant. Israeli politicians want to nip this in the bud so it does not become a new Palestinian habit. But the abduction of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank seems to be the new strategy of resistance. The Hamas government is asking for the release of Palestinian prisoners as a legitimate quid-pro-quo. The issue of Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails is high on Hamas' agenda, as no one in the world has shown any concern for their plight.

Israel responded with Operation Summer Rains, massing 5000 troops at the border. A principle dear to the heart of Israel is at stake in this brewing storm also: any form of resistance is terrorism and we do not negotiate with terrorists.

Two days after the Palestinian raid, twenty four hours prior to the launch of Operation Summer Rains, Fatah and Hamas ended three weeks of negotiations by inking a deal that promises to preserve Palestinian unity, recognizes Israel's existence and focuses armed resistance against the Israeli army in the territories occupied after the 1967 war. Thankfully, the tactic of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians was removed from the Hamas agenda.

That's why Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was quick to escalate military action. On Wednesday morning, Israeli missiles and artillery ripped through the only electric generation station in Gaza and turned it into ashes. Critical bridges were also destroyed to slice Gaza into three pieces. More than 1.3 million Palestinians who live in the most densely populated sliver of land on earth were left without power and water. This is another tactic that Israel has used before to exert more pressure on Palestinian militants. It is called collective punishment and falls in the same category with home demolitions, bulldozing large tracts of farmland and enacting crippling economic sanctions.

The U.S. Secretary of State had urged all parties to give diplomacy a chance. Palestinian President Abu Mazen assured everyone that he was working feverishly to secure the release of the captured soldier. But Olmert, who had hugged him only a couple of days earlier in Jordan, held him and the Syrian regime responsible for the operation.

It was a diplomatic error such that Israel has rarely committed in the past. Whenever Palestinians were divided Israel always drove a bigger wedge between them to split them further. This time, it drove Abu Mazen and Fatah to stand with Hamas.

Israel committed another error by using the big stick instead of just waving it; its military abducted 64 Hamas officials including 28 members of the Palestinian parliament and cabinet ministers, including the speaker and the deputy prime minister, on Thursday. It is showing all signs that it is prepared to up the stakes in this game even if it means war with Lebanon and Syria. It stated that these lawmakers will be indicted on terrorism charges and will not be released even if their soldier is released.

Israel wants to crush any form of resistance and demonstrate unequivocally that it has zero tolerance for the idea. Hamas wants to prolong this agony and re-open the debate on terrorism and redefine the strategy of resistance. Its new strategy of focusing on the occupied land of 1967 and attacking soldiers will have enormous appeal to the Arab and Muslim populace. It recaptures the moral ground of this debate and pressures Arab governments to adopt the same position.

The White House defended the incursion into Gaza as "self-defense." It is providing diplomatic cover for Israel to have carte blanche in Gaza. Egypt fortified its border with Gaza by sending 2,500 soldiers to prevent a massive influx of Palestinian refugees. It is preparing for the worst case scenario.

Palestinian hard-core militants are salivating at the prospect of Israeli tanks rolling down their streets. They will not go out and fight the Israeli army in open fields. The Israeli army is familiar with the perils of urban warfare and if it goes into Gaza there will be massive civilian casualties.

The Palestinian group that holds the Israeli soldier is an offshoot of Hamas and Israel claims that it answers directly to the Khaled Mashaal faction in Damascus. That's why four Israeli jet fighters flew over Latakia on Wednesday shaking the windows of Syrian President Bashar Asad. All this saber-rattling by the new Israeli government serves as a warning to its foes that it is ready to wage all-out war if anyone dares to support the besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

But this unchecked defiance may backfire on Israel. This new government appears to be all too eager to flex its muscles and to prove its faithfulness to Sharon's iron-fisted doctrine.

Palestinian fighters in Gaza see the massing of Israeli troops as a high-stakes poker game. Israeli politicians said that they are not ready to re-occupy the heart of Gaza. They just want to have their soldier back. Palestinians have asked for the release of their jailed women and minors under the age of 18; which amounts to about 400 of the estimated 10,000 prisoners in Israeli jails. This seems like a perfectly reasonable request to the majority of Palestinians.

It is a high-stakes poker game and if Palestinians call their bluff and the Israeli army does not invade Gaza and fully demolish it, then Israel will have to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for its soldier. And this will be the beginning of new negotiations with Israel based on a whole new Palestinian footing.

2006-06-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

Palestinian power struggle
By Neal AbuNab

Since electing Hamas earlier this year, every Palestinian has become a terrorist till proven otherwise. In legal lingo it is called an “unindicted co-conspirator”. The logic is that if they talk like terrorists, act like terrorists and elect indicted terrorists as their leaders then they must be terrorists. This logic was fiercely argued by the Detroit News editor, Nolan Finley, back in February in his article entitled: “Palestinians failed democracy, not the other way around.” It is a logic that caters to the prevalent American public opinion, which was confirmed by the US Congress when last month it passed the “Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act.”

Let’s take this logic one step further because that’s where Israel is headed; every Palestinian is a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode. What do we do about it: we isolate them by building massive prison walls around their towns, starve them and hope that they would start killing each other. That’s exactly the policy Israel has followed in the past three years. When Palestinian gunmen began shooting at each other over a month ago the Israeli government could not contain its euphoria and began releasing statements that expressed “concern” for the humanitarian plight of Palestinians. The media responded positively to the signal and began covering the “plight of Palestinians” focusing on the “violent” factor that controlled their society.

In the past week, the US media has heightened the speculation about a Palestinian civil war. Palestinian militia battles that left 20 people dead so far have attracted more media attention than the suffocating Israeli blockade and the daily shelling and air raids. I think the media is marketing the idea that Palestinians can not get along with anyone even their own people. This leaves Israel with the same solution that America is pondering in Iraq; do not get caught up in a civil war. Israel is steering public opinion to equate Palestinians with Iraqis, the same way it did in March 2002 when it equated its invasion of the West Bank to America’s “Operation Anaconda” in Afghanistan to root out Bin Laden. Considering the superficial level of information that reaches the American public, this does not seem like a hard sale.

I have contended for the past 20 years and from the very first spark of the 1987 Intifadha that the Palestinian cause had become a public relations battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. Young boys throwing rocks at soldiers will not liberate Palestine but if done consistently and without escalation it will draw the attention of the world to solve the problem. It succeeded in convening the 1991 Madrid International Peace Conference. But Palestinians have lost the majority of their gains since 9/11 and the term “terrorist” appears to be sticking. This term is efficient and convenient to describe anyone who disagrees with America’s or Israel’s policies. It is applied liberally much the same way that many Muslims apply the term “Kafir” which means infidel, and both terms are designed to dehumanize anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their narrow interpretation of a certain creed. The prospect of peace diminishes as more Palestinians are branded “terrorists” and more Israelis and Americans are branded “kafir”.

Overplaying the current Palestinian power struggle in the media bolsters the claims of Israel to a unilateral disengagement. In fact, Newsweek reported this week that Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has authorized shipments of M-16 machine guns to go to Palestinian President Abu Mazen’s security force. Israel is hedging its bet in case Abu Mazen does not succeed in turning Hamas around; more guns in Palestinian hands will result in a higher likelihood for an all-out Palestinian civil war.

Nothing more would please Israel’s heart if Palestinians actually followed in the footsteps of Iraqis and began shooting and killing each other indiscriminately. It is the most perfect scenario for Israel at this juncture. But Palestinians are one of the most homogeneous people that live in the Middle East. They have very little sectarian or religious differences. All Muslims of Palestine are Sunnis and the Christians practice traditions similar to the Muslims. In their entire history they have never been divided by differences.

Most Palestinians see the infighting between Hamas and Fatah as a struggle for power. It has no roots for spreading in Palestinian society and political differences are not strong enough to pit a neighbor from his neighbor. The umbrella of common misery always unites them. And if they forget, Israel reminds them of their misery with daily missile attacks to assassinate their leaders.

The struggle for power surfaced after Hamas won two-thirds of the Parliament and felt no compelling need to form a unity government. But the Quartet including the United States and Europe cut off all aid to the Hamas-led government and Arab countries could not deliver on their promise to rescue Hamas financially. Palestinian President Abu Mazen is labeled as a “moderate” and money will flow to him but not to the government. He has beefed up his Presidency institution with Fatah leaders that headed the previous government.

He wants to control foreign policy and the security apparatus which includes all the armed forces. Hamas wants to create a national army out of its militia. The Palestinian Interior Minister created such a force last month and deployed 2,000 Hamas policemen in the streets of Gaza. They were stationed across the street from Fatah policemen and the friction erupted in gun battles.

The government institution is fighting with the presidency institution and the parliament does not hold the decisive card. This struggle will play out for at least another month till Prime Minister Ismail Haniya hammers out the details of a power-sharing agreement with the President, Mahmoud Abbas.

There are two options on the table: a national unity government or a national referendum to be held on July 26. Both options represent a defeat for Hamas. But Hamas over-promised in its election campaign and has so far under-delivered to the Palestinian people. It campaigned to root out corruption and to continue the armed struggle against Israel.

Its campaign of suicide bombings (2001-2004) struck fear in the heart of Israel. It caused the idea of Zionism to collapse as more Jews left Israel than incoming immigrants. It turned the demographic equation around in favor of the Palestinians. But they lost much of their moral grounds as images of blown-up civilians were shown on TV screens across the globe. They also lost a lot of sympathy from the American people.

Hamas, then entered into the political arena in 2005 and decided that image was important and so it suspended its suicide attacks. It held on to the notion that it will not recognize the existence of Israel. But it did not predict that it could not afford this political posture. All financial aid was cut off four months ago and this has effectively crippled it.

When a political party campaigns for any issue it should have the power to deliver on its promises if it wins the elections. But Hamas’s campaign played on the emotions of Palestinians and had no idea how to deliver. Now, it needs to make concessions in order to survive.

Its leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, called for a unity government last Monday. It is a more palatable face-saving means than the referendum. Polls already show that more than 70% of Palestinians will vote in favor of recognizing Israel in return for a Palestinian state to be established on the 1967 borders.

Ongoing negotiations between Hamas and Fatah involve world powers that have a stake in the conflict. Hamas goes back to Iran for approval and Fatah goes back to Washington. Fatah wants the prime minister position to be filled by a spineless Washington lackey like former Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei. Hamas won’t give up the position and wants money to flow directly to the government. The European Union signaled that it will be ready to resume monetary assistance to the Palestinians in July. But it will route the money through Abbas.

The Palestinian people have no oil or natural resources to speak of. The only thing they still have is a deed to a holy land. Israel wants them to “Quit Claim” that deed for the cheapest price. Recognizing the existence of Israel is not the same as recognizing its right to exist. Hamas has signaled that it is willing to do the former but not the latter.

Fatah argues that recognizing the existence of one’s own enemy is practical. Israel enjoys the unwavering support of the mightiest nation on earth; the USA. The Palestinians can not act irresponsibly by picking a military fight with Israel, that they have not a shred of hope in winning. Hamas’s agenda of an armed struggle is impractical and puts Palestinian society in grave danger.

But that doesn’t mean that they have to give up diplomatic resistance. They have much to learn from the Iranian diplomacy that has thus far prevailed in the nuclear game. Hamas can recognize Israel’s existence without recognizing its right to exist, which will guarantee it some breathing room to cut its teeth in diplomacy.

Hamas has made policy changes to regain some sympathy from the American people. Like I said 20 years ago, the Palestinian cause has become a public relations battle and whoever gains the sympathy of Americans has the upper hand in this conflict.