More Nick Cohen

I might point out that a very similar exercise could be carried out on the work of Christopher Hitchens. Most people are vaguely aware that Hitchens opposed the first gulf war, but actually he went a lot further than that. In “For the Sake of Argument” he went out of his way to ridicule what he called “the peaceniks” (yes he actually used that phrase) who ‘back our boys’ but not the war. Hitchens argued (vociferously) that if you opposed the war you must by definition oppose the boys as well. Other pieces in that book accuse Bush senior of essentially causing that war, and are scathing about the culture and morality of the US army that fought it.

Moreover, most of Hitchens’ essays and articles from the mid to late nineties are online. In these pieces, articles calling for an invasion of Iraq or regime change are conspicuous by their absence. In face, Hitchens devoted few (if any) articles to Saddam Hussein. Instead, as his written work indicates, his real obsesssions at the time were Kosova, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Mother Theresa.

Hitchens’ claims that he experienced an ‘epiphany’ after 9/11 are also demonstrably false. Hitchens was giving what one might term the ‘orthodox left’ critique of such events well into 2002 (as was Cohen).

The real break with his comrades didn’t even occur with the invasion of Afghanistan. It occurred when it became clear that the invasion of Iraq was an inevitability. The same is true of Cohen (and, i suspect, most of the pro-invasion left). Moreover, the ‘change’ happened in that order. It is simply not true that either Hitchens or Cohen were calling for invasion of Iraq throughout the ’90s. They weren’t even calling for an invasion after 9/11. It was only after Bush made it clear that such an invasion was inevitable that suddenly Hitchens and Cohen realised that they had been in favour of such an action all along.

Cohen and Hitchens’ differences with their ex-comrades are not about Osama Bin Laden. They are not about radical Islam. They are not about religion, or ‘the Enlightenment project’. They are not about Afghanistan. They are, purely and simply, about the invasion of Iraq, and when they claim otherwise, they are lying.

I will say one more thing and then shut up: ‘Hitchens was giving what one might term the ‘orthodox left’ critique of such events well into 2002’ would be clearer and more accurate if written ‘Hitchens was clearly still on the ‘left’ (as that phrase is generally used, and not in the slightly unorthodox sense that Cohen and Hitchens now use it in) in 2002′. But this doesn’t alter the basic point: Hitchens’ ‘break’ with the left (as marked, probably, by his resignation from The Nation) was really about Iraq, not 9/11 or Afghanistan.

Sunday morning posting, not always such a great idea.

This cartoon provides a good explanation for Cohen and Hitchens sudden change of heart, I think. Finally, they’re getting a war they want, and they don’t care who is prosecuting it or what the consequences are.

Actually the phrase “reckless war” is Cohen’s; it appears shortly before “slippery British PM” and “capricious American President”.

Worth noting that the actual failing of the indecent British Left that Cohen is at pains to excoriate is that we’re insufficiently enthusiastic for the new Blairite program of banning political parties and deporting people for “justifying” terrorism. In other words, while Cohen has lots of harsh words for the “Audenite” tendency of apologists for Stalinism, he perhaps ought to have pointed out that their real moral failing was their opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Weird, though, that people can turn around like that, over the course of just a few months. I can’t imagine this switch being sincere and natural.

Blackmail? Bribes? Hypnosis? Head trauma? Mind altering drugs?

All of the above?

Its a sliding ratchet I think. One of the less attractive features of the left is arguing over minutae on the basis that if someone is even slightly wrong about some question or other next week they’ll be backing imperialism. Unfortunately as well as being unattractive it seems also to be often true. I love all the stuff about the ‘removal of fascist genocidal tyrants’ incidently. How this contradicts the theses that there is a lot more oppression around the world as a result of this war I’m not entirely sure.

“All of the above?”

All is revealed here. Ish. Well, not really. But there’s a nice simplistic cartoon to accompany the rant…

Anthony, any clues: how did it happen, how did you get mugged by reality? What triggered the epiphany?

Thanks.

In fact Saddam did promise free and fair elections in the last weeks before the war, although we had none other than Christopher Hitchen’s personal assurance that he didn’t mean it.

It’s this sort of wishful thinking I find amazing about some on the left, especially when they give elected politicians in the West absolutely no trust.

‘It’s this sort of wishful thinking I find amazing about some on the left, especially when they give elected politicians in the West absolutely no trust.’

You’ll all be delighted to hear that with this statement words just fail me.

Are you suggesting no change of opinion can be honest?

Are you so certain of your stances now?

From Cohen’s essay: “The least attractive characteristic of the middle-class left – one shared with the Thatcherites – is its refusal to accept that its opponents are sincere.”

I think that Hitch reached a tipping point of a sort. He received a lot of new information in the last 4 years (didn’t we all?) and likely kept on keeping on while processing internally.

Most of these conversions don’t happen on the Road to Damascus. They happen once you eventually get to Ananias’s house and the scales fall from your eyes.

The least attractive thing about the pro-war left is a refusal to engage in proper argument and resort to slurs and innuendo.

Exactly. What is it one would have to observe in Ananias’s house to start seeing Force Of Liberation Of The Oppressed in what he would previously regard (for decades!) as Evil Imperialistic Enterprise?

And not just Friedmanesk ‘right-war-for-wrong-reasons’ kinda stuff, but wholly embracing characters like Rumsfeld and Cheney, for chissake.

I vote for a minor head injury followed by an odd form of mid-life crisis. Maybe they all had a sudden crush on Ann Coulter or something.

‘We also learned that terrorists have (or at least had four years ago) the capacity to inflict large damage on America, ‘

Actually we didn’t learn this four years ago. If anyone casts their minds back to 1993 they will remember that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre attempted to create a situation whereby the North Tower would collapse onto the South Tower, killing everyone in both towers.

There is no excuse or reason to change your political views after 9/11. It was very obvious by 1993 that radical Islamists were prepared to commmit mass murder on American soil, involving the deaths of thousands of people. Anything you chose to believe as of, say, 1994, was still valid after 2001. Anything we since ‘discovered’ about radical Islam after 2001 was known to anyone who had eyes to see after ’93.

Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen, being journalists, were just as aware (probably more so) of the ’93 bombings as anybody else. And of course Cohen was against the Afghanistan war.

To repeat: neither Hitchens nor Cohen changed their political stripes because of 9/11. Nor did Cohen, at least, change his views because of Afghanistan. They did not change their views because of what they had suddenly ‘discovered’ about radical Islam. They changed their views because they supported Bush in his war against the secular, Ba’athist, not linked to Al-Qaeda, regime in Iraq. End of story.

“I had at one time fairly strident views (yet, increasingly standard leftist views) about Israel, which I now consider “moronic” and I would not hesistate to call them that if expressed by others (which they are – virtually daily) regardless of inconsistency with my past beliefs.”

I would also be interested in hearing which “facts” caused this shift in your opinion about Israel, Anthony.

Which facts might one learn over the last four years which one was’nt aware of before?

The outcome of successive interventions in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan, and the results of non-intervention in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere in Africa.

By the kind of criteria usually used by left-wingers, the worst of the interventions (Iraq) has produced a less bad result than the best of the cases of non-intervention. In no case of intervention did the west significantly colonise or annex land, or approriate resources.

Imperialism is, really and truly, dead. For anyone who understands what imperialism actually was, that has to change things.

soru

All these questions about “what facts” changed Hitchens’, Cohen’s or Anthony’s opinions arise from a misunderstanding of the logic of political side-taking. Everyone here assumes, in a way that is flattering to themselves, that their own political positions are based on a relentless application of rational inference to the million facts about this or that. What in fact happens is that by various heuristic means, we organize the facts and assign significance before seriously processing them. One such means is use of templates we inherit from our peers with whom we feel comfortable or with whom we agree on other things. Another might be an earlier template that we felt comfortable with in a similar but different situation. And so on. What these templates do is help organize the facts in various ways, including assignment of credibility, significance and so on. This way one person might regard Blair as sincere in his expressed concern for democracy and human rights in Iraq — a fact –, while another one might view this simply a cover for other real motives. Facts get interpreted and collated and processed in different ways. The template does most of the work. This is why political discussions are so frustrating. We hurl “facts” at each other and are amazed that the other person doesn’t make of them what seems so obvious to us. The only explanation we can think of is idiocy or immorality.

Several things might happen to shake this up in individual cases. In my own case, e.g., I had long taken a certain political position on some issue, and that framework required that people who take an opposite position need to be some combination of cretin and moral monster. But then I met someone whom I dearly loved who was neither a cretin nor a monster, but who subscribed to the opposite view. This particular event reverberated through my template in a certain way that I became much more ambivalent about my own position in that matter.

So I’m willing to believe that an evening with a Kurd shook Hitchens up and tore up his template. But what I’d have hoped this event might have done for Hitchens is to make him question his own style of argument in which anyone who is not completely on his side on any political issue is a moron or a person of bad faith. It is also disappointing that he has not gone over his earlier political positions, once expressed with equal disdain for opponents, and given himself and others an honest account off how his earlier template had misled him, and perhaps express something like a regret for his earlier disdain for opponents. But as far as I can make out, he has always been right in every position.

And if you think hegemony is the same thing as imperialism, should be placed in the same moral category, you seem rather ignorant about what imperialism actually was.

soru

I agree with Jasminidad, in that people rarely arrive (and revise) at political positions through a rational, linear thought process. It would be perfectly understandable for Hitchens and Cohen to have changed their positions simply by having dinner with a Kurd or reading a persuasive article by Kanan Makiya. Hitchens was a very stident supporter of intervention in the Balkans in the 1990’s (I believe Cohen was as well), and a longstanding supporter of the Kurds, so it’s not hard to see how he could change his position. But, like Jasminidad says, if you are going to undergo a drastic shift like Cohen and Hitchens have, common sense demands that you respect the views of those who were previously on your side.

I have to wonder if there’s a sort of transference going on with Hitchens and Cohen, that the scorn and bile they express towards their ex-comrades is a reflection of their own self-doubt as a result of their political metamorphosis.

Words ‘imperialism’ and ‘hegemony’ mean pretty much the same thing – domination. Empire and hegemon alike exercise control over other nations and territories.

Anthony, when you held your ‘left-wing’ views (before you looked at the facts) did you insult everyone who held the opposite (or even different) views, said they were fellow-travellers of fascism, etc etc, and now you do the same of people who hold those view?

Matthew, appreciate the kind words, but don’t agree with your analysis.

I think that before 9/11 many people on the Left had thought that most of the problems of the Middle East were simply due the policies of the West. A subset of this group interpreted the events of 9/11 in such a way as to question their assumptions, and draw new inferences. That Bin Ladenism or Islamofascism or whatever was an evil movement whose goals were deeply inimical to the West as well as harmful to the people of Middle East and Muslims all over. That this movement could not be propitiated by a number of Mea Culpas from the West, but had to be destroyed. That most of the Left were missing this and were blind. Different people came to this conclusion in different ways over different time periods. Using my template analysis, one of the things that often happens before the breaking of the template, when the person feels the comfort and security of the template ebbing away, is to redouble his commitment to and faith in the template. A person of this type usually restates his views based on the old template even more rabidly; like Nick Cohen on Afghanistan. But this doesn’t last long.

Another thing that happens is that some of them first modify the template a little bit and try to go on. This is only possible if they can get psychic comfort with the modestly-modified template. If the old peer group does not accommodate this modest change, they travel all the way to the complete adoption of the original deadly enemy, the rival template, getting the needed psychic support from this once rival group. This happened to many old Stalinists, who didn’t stop until they became extreme right-wingers. I would’t be surprised if this happens to Hitchens.

Of course, there is no logical reason why someone who suddenly understood the existence and danger of Islamofascism has to support the Iraq adventure, as Hitchens did and does. I’m deeply on the side that thinks that the West, for all its selfishness, is not the main problem for Muslims but Islamofascism is. I supported the ouster of the Taliban. I opposed The Iraq war as potentially counter-productive in the war against Islamofascism. Most liberals (in the US sense) as opposed to the so-called Left think like I do.

I also think that it is simplistic to think that Britain and Western Europe are going to save their skins if they would simply be good boys, to be patted on the back by Bin Laden, by doing things like Britain getting out of Iraq (which is good idea, in any case). Until and unless reformers in Islam are empowered, which won’t happen until Islamofascism is defeated, these little tactical things like getting out of Iraq won’t make any long-term difference. We’re in it for the medium haul — the only way it can end positively is if democrats and secularists stay calm and determined. While Iraq was a big mistake, the fundamental dynamic of Bin Ladenism has nothing to do with it.

Soru: Could you please spell out what you see as the differences between hegeomony and empire? Rather than just making dismissive and somewhat obscure comments? That would help the discussion.

I’m puzzled by the suggestions here that rightwards lurches by leftists are somehow unusual.

Slavoj Zizek points out that it is vulgar conservative wisdom that every good rightist should go through a phase of radicalism before seeing the light and disavowing their “irresponsible” youthful ideals…

And of course this subjective conversion process is invariably given a lumpen empiricist gloss – new “facts” suddenly and mysteriously come to light which make the erstwhile comrade realise the error of his/her ways. The world changed, not me, they solemnly intone.

In fact this phenomenon is so common that it has a plain and simple name, which those on the left should never forget: betrayal.

I have a blog post from last month dealing with some of the contradictory stances of the British Left. It was in response to Tariq Ali’s article in the Guardian. I think it fits in with the theme of this discussion.

I am very interested in which facts or arguments have made people change their mind about Israel.

I agree completely with Jasmindad (indeed, I myself wrote a couple of years ago) that people generally don’t simply change their worldviews based on a couple of new facts. Rather, they assimilate new facts into their previous worldview, and only change their worldview when the facts become so difficult to reconcile with the worldview that changing the worldview becomes the easier option. One element of that process is increasing polarization: those who persist in their old worldview will find themselves increasingly vehement in their dedication to it–given the effort they’ve expended reconciling it with inconvenient facts. Meanwhile, those who change their worldviews will justify their radical shift with similar vehemence.

In the case of Israel, the prevailing liberal-moderate view prior to 2000–in Israel and abroad–was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was being kept alive primarily by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hence the logic of the Oslo accords, which proposed a process for ending both the occupation and the conflict. The failure of the Camp David talks, and the subsequent Palestinian terrorism campaign, made that view increasingly less tenable, compared with the view that the conflict was being kept alive by Palestinian opposition to the very existence of a Jewish state in the region.

Of course, there have always been those on both sides of the debate who held the latter view from the beginning. However, for many of those who had held to the standard liberal-moderate view, the shift to a view of the conflict as a more fundamental one has caused them, in effect, to switch sides. That is, they were prepared to support the Palestinian cause to the extent of endorsing an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but they were not prepared to do so to the extent of endorsing the eradication of the state of Israel.

Hence the logic of the Oslo accords, which proposed a process for ending both the occupation and the conflict.

That it is a gratuitious misrepresentation of reality. Read someone knowledgeable, please.

FWIW, I used at one time to be a keen suppoter of Israel. I visited Jerusalem in 1998; just before the secomd intifada erupted. The level of oppression faced by the Palestinians, the amazing blindness to it apparent in the otherwise fine Israelis I talked to about it, and the way the most greedy and bigoted part of Israeli opinion rested wholly on unconditional US support all made me very pro-Palestinian since(it also BTW made stronger my conviction that religion is a terrible evil). But I don’t think that makes pro-Israelis automatically fools or knaves – my own history make me more tolerant of them than that.

It’s not that Hitchens or Cohen have changed their views that shits me – its the way they now refer to their former ideological comrades.

What Anthony said.

Pretty much echoes my own shift over the past half-dozen years. And it was a very small shift at that — mainly a disillusionment with Arafat accompanied by the dawning realization that some people would never accept any sort of Israel on “Muslim” territory. Like Nick Cohen (and Harry’s gang, and others), however, I don’t feel that my left-liberal politics have changed. It’s a certain “left” that’s lost its moorings and begun to drift — rightwards, by any rational definition — largely propelled by purblind anti-Americanism. Bush is a disaster, but he’ll be gone in three years. Islamism is far greater longterm menace and and it pains me to think that many more 9/11’s and 7/7’s will happen before some members of the middle class “left” begin to realize that they’ve compromised their core principles.

Nice argument David, but the “colonisers” are now in Amsterdam, Madrid, Hamburg and Leeds.

“Hence the logic of the Oslo accords, which proposed a process for ending both the occupation and the conflict.”

That it is a gratuitious misrepresentation of reality. Read someone knowledgeable, please.

Well, it’s an oversimplification, of course. The Israelis involved–Rabin, Peres, Beilin–certainly believed that they were proposing a process for ending both the occupation and the conflict. The Palestinians involved, on the other hand, thought they were setting the stage for the phased capitulation and eventual annihilation of the state of Israel. When I wrote the above characterization, though, I was focusing strictly on the standard liberal-moderate perspective, and hence omitted the more radical one.

Islamism is far greater longterm menace and and it pains me to think that many more 9/11’s and 7/7’s will happen before some members of the middle class “left” begin to realize that they’ve compromised their core principles.

Curious, because I feel the same about Cohen, the shoal at Harry’s Plaice and others. I suppose it depends on what you think your core principles are.

I have no time for straitjackets like that, and the worst straitjacket the left has at the moment is its unhealthy obsession with opposition to America.

Why is it unhealthy obsession? In America we have a couple of fellas controlling 10,000 nuclear warheads and the most powerful military in the world, with unprecedented asymmetry vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

The guy on top of all that (supported by a small messianic cult) is taking – openly – like a religious nut, asserting his right to attack anyone he feels like at any time, his right to ignore international laws and institutions, his right to coerce the world into accepting a particular economic and political system he finds supreme. And he is serious about it; he, apparently, really believes that this is his mission assigned by God.

Yeah, talk about bin Laden – an insignificant and powerless by all measures wingnut sitting in a cave in the middle of nowhere who, moreover, has absolutely no ambitions outside the Islamic world. Yeah, right, he’s really scary. Come on.

No, as far as I am concerned, this split is about American (or Western in general, or Jewish for some) supremacist messianic ultra-nationalism.

Posted by Brendan · August 7th, 2005 at 6:24 am

Hitchens’ ‘break’ with the left (as marked, probably, by his resignation from The Nation) was really about Iraq, not 9/11 or Afghanistan.

I think that brendan is being a little hard on Hitchens here. Hitchens has always been a stout opponent of Islamic (and all religious) fundamentalism. He has also been a long time supporter of anti-fascist nationalists.

It is true that his first response to the 911 attacks was an orthodox example of the leftist “why do they hate us” critique of US foreign policy:

One day into the post-World Trade Centre era, and the question “how” is still taking precedence over the question “why”.

With cellphones still bleeping piteously from under the rubble, it probably seems indecent to most people to ask if the United States has ever done anything to attract such awful hatred. Indeed, the very thought, for the present, is taboo…So the analytical moment, if there is to be one, has been indefinitely postponed.

what does the president mean when he says so portentously that “we shall make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbour them”? It looks like a distinction without a difference, and gives a momentary impression of being decisive, while actually only confusing the issue.

But very soon (two months) afterwards Hitchens had framed the War on Terrorism as a Clash within Civilizations, between those who sectarian militants who lived by faith and those secular moderates who lived by reason.

I feel certain as never before, this is a war between those who are for faith, those who are for holy books, for the word of God, for acts of faith – and those who believe in reason – and its almost perfectly joined. I couldn’t be more ready to spend the rest of my life fighting it – which I’m absolutely sure I’m going to have to do.

By the end of the month, after the Afghan war started to go well, Hitchens was openly deriding leftwing peaceniks:

There’s no pleasing some people, but as a charter supporter of CND I can remember a time when the peace movement was not an auxiliary to dictators and aggressors in trouble. Looking at some of the mind-rotting tripe that comes my way from much of today’s left, I get the impression that they go to bed saying: what have I done for Saddam Hussein or good old Slobodan or the Taliban today?

brendan is correct to say that Hitchens decisive break with the Left came during the run up to the Iraq war. So Long, Fellow Travelers

I think that alot of left wing men become more attracted to the politics of cultural identity and national security as they approach middle age. Esp. once they have gotten over their anger at the status insults associated with the modest political economy of their youth.

It should also be noted that both Cohen and Hitchens are of Jewish extraction. It is not hard to imagine their feelings about political movements, such as Islamic fundamentalism or Baathist fascism, that aim at the destruction of national Jewry. Blood is commonly thicker than ideology.

Some responses to John C. Halasz:
“..such heuristic templates are not only confined to political matters, but operate much more widely..”

No question. I was just specializing for the immediate goals.

“..heuristic templates are .. accessible to reflection and modification when appropriate,.without requiring any ‘conversion experiences’..”

Up to a point, yes. But it would be impossible to subject all basic premises, some of them not even articluated to the agent himself, to reflection and modification constantly. These implicit assumptions can only be brought out for potential change in some kind of collision with reality. (This is all based on a view of thinking as computation, and the computational complexity involved in subjecting all premises to reflection all the time.)

Re. his analysis of the distinction between Liberals and Leftists, it is all fairly complex, and for my current purposes, I don’t need to get into it in detail. All I said in my post was that most US Liberals supported US action in Afghanistan, but begged off when it came to Iraq, whereas the Left (a small group in the US and a larger group in the UK) opposed both. I was merely using this case to illustrate my point about how 9/11 affected different template holders differently.

Re. his analysis of why Islamofascism is not a good term, perhaps he’s right, but doesn’t really matter for the ways in which 9/11 and aftermath shattered various world views. The bottom line is that some of those whose world views were shattered reacted by deciding that it was not the time for the West to beat its breast, but time to identify Bin Laden and his philosophy as the enemy to fight, while others continued to hold the West as the author of its own misfortunes. That I belong to the former grop was really incidental to my point in the post. It may help to know that as a native of India, I have an even more than usual amount of scepticism about the West, but again, the same origin also gives me a different-from-usual perspective about self-authorship of the problems of that and nearby parts of the world.

“That is, they were prepared to support the Palestinian cause to the extent of endorsing an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but they were not prepared to do so to the extent of endorsing the eradication of the state of Israel.”

There is a bizarre tendency to give Israel credit for offers it has not made. Israel has never offered to end the occupation of all the territory taken in 1967, and indeed spent the period between Oslo and Camp David massively expanding settlements in the West Bank/Jerusalem, which it did not offer to give up at Camp David or Taba. Since Israel has not yet offered to end this occupation, it would be far too soon to draw the conclusion that the Palestinians will not accept anything but the eradication of the State of Israel. What the Palestinians have not been willing to accept is 100,000s of thousands of settlers remaining in the land Israel conquered in 1967.

“Does it mean that a sort of Islamophobia is realively common in India, or is it something else?”

The usual story is that Indian politics has moved over the decades from Congress secularism-and-corruption to BJP Hindu chauvinism-and-corruption, vis attacking mosques etc.

It’s Poland I can’t understand.

abb1: “Interesting, I noticed in international polls that Poland and India are usually the only two somewhat pro-Bush countries….Does it mean that a sort of Islamophobia is realively common in India, or is it something else?”

I don’t mean to be harsh, but this is where terms like “Islamophobia” lose their meaning. First off, many active self-identified Muslim politicians regard that Muslims are faring politically better under Indian democracy than almost anywhere else, including assuredly most Muslim countries. The President of India is a Muslim, and he was also the head of the agency that developed the nuclear bomb and the missiles. A good number of Bollywood male superstars are Muslim, and surprisingly, many female stars are Muslims too. The latter didn’t get there by wearing hijabs, not to speak of Burkhas. The richest man in India is a Muslim who runs a multi-billion dollar IT company. Because of the first-past-the-post system, Muslim vote can make a huge difference in most constituencies, and most politicians try to court the Muslim vote. All this is not to take away from the periodic anti-Muslim eruptions, the latest example of which was the Gujarat massacre of a few years ago. But let us not forget that the inaction by the central government against the state politicians who were behind the massacre was one of the major reasons why the ruling party coalition lost power. Also, given that India’s Muslim populations runs to more than 100 million, and many of them as miserably poor as most Indians, it is pretty amazing that few of them have heeded the call of Bin Laden. (Incidentally, Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek columnist, is the son of the late Rafiq Zakaria who was a stalwart secular Indian Muslim political leader.) So, calling India “Islamophobic” is about as far from reality as possible. This is in spite of continuing middle class Hindu feelings of resentment against Muslim rule in India for several centuries.

I think there are several reasons for the general pro-US feelings emerging in India, at least among the Indian middle classes. The first is that, similar to Poland, though to a much lesser extent, many Indians have sons, daughters, relatives, friends who have immigrated to the US and who generally bring positive stories about the US. The US is a large customer of Indian IT services, a true bright spot in the Indian economy. There is a general sense that opening of the economy has been good for India, and the US is seen as the model here. Post-Cold war realignments in world politics made the US pay more attention to India, which was appreciated in India very much. Bill Clinton was treated as a rock star when he went to India, with even Communist party MPs behaving like teenage girls at a Beatles concert. I don’t think Bush is remotely that popular, but because of Kashmir terrorism (at least what most Indians consider as terrorism), there is a lot more sympathy in India for the US and Britain vis a vis terrorism than in many other countries. There is simply no issue that Indians care about on which the US is strategically on the other side, while on many issues the US and India are on the same side. These things do tend to make for friendly feelings.

“And the usual story would be wrong. The BJP coalition lost power at the Center to the Congress-Left coalition more than a year ago. The latest visit by Manmohan Singh is considered in India a big success, and India and the US have signed MOUs involving provisions that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Simply put, the thawing of relationship between India and the US transcends Republican-Democratic party politics in the US, and the BJP-Congress party politics in India.”

Maybe – but the facts you give are not relevant. The fact that BJP lost power last year, does not mean that BJP-isation of Indian politics is over, just as Blair has continued Thatcherism in part, all French Presidents, even left-wing ones, are Gaullist etc. MOUs are relationships between governments, whereas what ABB1 was talking about was public opinion. US has many MOUs with lots of countries where public opinion is opposed to US policies. Popular Hindu chauvinism and assimilation of US GWOT with India’s actions in Kashmir are possible explanations for Indian public opinion re. US. But if you have alternative explanations for Indian public opinion re. US policies, I’d like to hear them.

…it’s (from at least two commenters above… Abb1, of course), it’s the Jews!

Fergal, please cease and desist, asshole.

er just a clarification so my point is not distorted. I was suggesting that Hitchens Jewishness or otherwise was utterly irrelevent to his political position.

I’m still in something of a state of shock concerning Jasmindad’s mail I have to say. After all a few years ago a couple of thousand of muslims are massacred. This massacre is helped along by the local state government (of Gujarat). Municipal vehicles are used to help flatten muslim shrines after the killing, electoral roles are used to hunt muslims through the street etc.

So far there has been no proper bringing to justice of those responsible and many Muslim’s dispossed are still living in refugee camps still too terrified to return home.

Apparently its not possible to say that Islamophobia is a problem in India because, after all, at the last elections the government responsible was voted out (its a triumph for democracy) and in any case its all the fault of Islam because, don’t you know, people are still rather resentful about the Mughals (that is stuff that happened two hundred years ago or more).

I’m partly shocked because its a testement to the truth about what one poster said about the ideology of Hindutva having had a deep impact (I almost expected Jasmindad to start whittering on like that useful idiot V S Naipal about the ‘damage to the Hindu psych’). I’m also genuinely uneasy about the way in which left wing secular arguments are turned on their head to conceal something which any leftist worth their salt would be shouting from the roof tops if they had anything to do with Indian politics. The disgraceful soft peddling of the terrifying reality of Islamophobia in India today.

A civil servent at a conference in Gujarat stated that given the provocation it was a testement to Hindu tolerence that the riots (they were in fact pogroms of course in the proper sense) were so shortlived. One genuine Indian leftist responded by saying that first of all the civil servent was a disgrace to Hinduism if this was their definition of tolerence. And secondly they were a disgrace to the Indian state for speaking as if that state represented the values of Hindu’s as opposed to the population as a whole.

Indian citizens hunted down on the streets like dogs in major cities, calling fire services, police etc to help them as they were burnt alive by mobs in their houses backed up by local municipal authorities, ignored and left to die for two whole days. “You should resign for even daring to say what you have said today”.

That I think is a wholly appropriate response.

I think anyone who is capable after this of claiming that an election two years later means that there is no problem with Islamophobia in India is certainly no leftist of any kind.

And it rather re-enforces the point that much of this argument is to do with people who were once on the left collapsing happily back into whatever form of reaction they feel most comfortable with. How anyone in India can be obsessed with the oppressiveness of Islamic Fundementalism and claim to be on the left. Just like western liberals happy not to have to worry about racism anymore apparently Indian liberals no longer need feel guilty about Communalism. Just blame Islam!! A kind of ersatz liberalism reigns.

As a young woman in hijab abused on the streets of London said on Newsnight the other day. The world is going mad.

Jasminidad, I am by no means an expert on Indian politics, but it was my understanding that it was discontent with “India Shining” among Indians, particularly among rural Indians, that cost the BJP the 2004 election. If backlash against the Gujarat riots was the reason for the BJP’s loss, how can you explain the fact that Gujaratis overwhelmingly voted for the BJP 10 months after the riots in December 2002, but then voted against the BJP in 2004?

There is a bizarre tendency to give Israel credit for offers it has not made. Israel has never offered to end the occupation of all the territory taken in 1967, and indeed spent the period between Oslo and Camp David massively expanding settlements in the West Bank/Jerusalem, which it did not offer to give up at Camp David or Taba.

This is a beautiful example of exactly the phenomenon Jasmindad and I have been describing. One needn’t “credit” Israel with having offered to surrender 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, to recognize that it offered to surrender over 90 percent of it. (The vast majority of the settlements expanded during the Oslo period were in the remaining portion, which Israel no doubt hoped to keep, as a “border adjustment”.)

As for the Palestinian side, they never made any counteroffer of any kind at Camp David or Taba, never made any indication of being willing to end the historical conflict on any terms, continued their terrorist campaign sporadically right through the Oslo period, and returned to it full-tilt soon after rejecting the Camp David offers out of hand.

Now, one could, if one wished, fit the above facts into a worldview in which the issue is still the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, rather than the existence of Israel itself. One would do so–as diehard pro-Palestinian advocates, such as Otto, have done–by focusing on Israel’s small deviations from 100 percent accommodation of Palestinian demands, while ignoring, explaining away, or otherwise excusing the actions of the Palestinian authority, which were always fully consistent with a “phased strategy” of viewing Oslo as a stepping stone to Israel’s elimination.

But for most people–even those originally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause–the fit eventually becomes too exhausting, and changing worldviews, however wrenching, becomes the easier course.

Naturally, to many of those who make the switch, hangers-on to the old worldview tend to look ridiculous, while the dedicated adherents to the old worldview must, given their enormous investment, view defectors from it as dangerous traitors. Hence the ugliness that Chris noted in disputes between recent “converts” to a new worldview, and continued adherents of the old one.

I would hope changing one’s opinion was a frequent, almost daily thing. So many things need deepe insights, so many beliefs turn out to be wrong.

The process of continual correction is called science and one of the things that makes us human is uncertainty.

I know a fair deal about Iraq. I felt uncertain about the invasion and hoped deeply. The argument that it was racist to believe these peple incapable of democracy and they deserved human rights. It struck me deeply.

It always does. It struck me with Kosovo. I also knew that many who passionately defended one intervention and called any who questioned “inhuman” took an opposite stand on the other.

I also know that in the years after Clinton said “never again” in response to Rwanda that perhaps 4 milion died in the Congo, 2 million in Sudan, atrocities almost beyond imaginging in Siera Leonne, Liberia, Uganda… numbers in total exceeding the Europen holocaust. And I also know that the vast majority who passionatel and sincerely proclaim idealistic respect for human rights someplace don’t even have my vague grasp of these numbers and the tragedy.

I feel decent people should have hoped, desperately hoped it would work. In the months after the invasion the hope was strong. A few months later it was disturbing. And then I discovered the most vocal advocates of the war didn’t really care if it worked.

We were starting to see problems. It has come to light that many of these problems had been at least partially predicted in reports the Rumsfeld Pentagon ignored. James Fallow’s Atlantic article gives some documentation

http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=185

But we could all see things going wrong. Some pro war vehicles such as the Weekl Standard criticized, but most praised and praised the most perfect of wars. Now it is widely admitted that Bremer was a failure, even Feith says so. It is also admitted that perhaps we should have had enough troops to seal ammo dumps and close borders. Sending a Marine battlion around the villages near Syria to drive guerillas into the desert because there aren’t enough troops to block escape years after these havens started organizing is not (contrary to the rightwing arm chair generals) a brilliant victory.

But these people don’t care about success there, they care about propaganda wars here. And they truly believe in “faith based reality.” If the prss just reported good news all would be well, but those damn traitors!

And those who opposed the war because they allegedly cared about the Iraqi people? Well we’re there. Do we have responsibilities? How could we nmake it work?

Perhaps too late and sadly there is often a satisfaction in this. Bush F&&KED UP! Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Yeah with the housing bubble looking ready to slowly deflate knocining into all the other unstable aspects of the economy, the situation over there a mess, it looks increasinly like democratic victory next year.

But what to do about these poor people? Our trops and the people whose lives we crashed into? I don’t know.

I know the right was off on the wrong track when they decided after 9/11 that the way for the American people was to show patriotism was to buy things. But despite old maid harping about this has the opposition showed strengt, intelligence and courage in confronting our *shared* situation?

Everyone has all these damn answers. Except lots of us who dn’t realy have a voice. We have these “leftist” idiots some of whom who rant one way, then change sides and go on with the same absolute certainty they had before in the same manner as rightist idiots. And we have pompous people with well considered positions which are often primarily considered as ways to show how clever these people are.

Then we have I don’t know and I think one thing one day and another thing the next day. I wish there was a bit more of this confusion in the dominant public discourse. It might indicate people trying to figure out a way. People actually caring, rather than playing partisan games.

johng,

(i) You’re outraged at the various bad things that happened and continue to happen to Muslims in India. You seem outraged that I seem to be less outraged than you, or worse, that I am nonchalant. In that you are quite mistaken. The single most awful thing that can happen to India is for its minorities, especially Muslims, not to feel integrated into the nation.

(ii)I think the trend is positive, which makes me optimistic. I don’t know if you simply disagree, or disagree and are further outraged that someone would think that the trend is positive. What can I say? I think the trend is positive.

(iii) I disagree with you about the Indian economy and its direction.

(iv) This makes no sense to me: “How anyone in India can be obsessed with the oppressiveness of Islamic Fundementalism and claim to be on the left.” Huh? Are you saying that someone who claims to on the left shouldn’t feel outraged by the recent decision by the Muslim Personal Law Board that the woman who was raped by her father-in-law has to divorce her husband because of their interpretation of Islamic law? If this is remotely your definition of what it takes to be on the left, please consider me not belonging to it. Not that I ever presented myself as being on the left or right. My economic and social hero nowadays is Amartya Sen, whose economic theories are vastly more complicated than what pass for economic theories on the left.

This discussion is already off-topic, but I’d be happy to talk with you further by email if you are interested.

Best regards.

Dan Simon:
“One needn’t “credit” Israel with having offered to surrender 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, to recognize that it offered to surrender over 90 percent of it. … [by] focusing on Israel’s small deviations from 100 percent accommodation of Palestinian demands”

You are just not aware enough of how much it is to ask a society to agree to racist settlement blocs on its conquered territory. Seeking to maintain racist settler colonies is not a small deviation from 100 accomodation with Palestinian demands. It’s an extraordinary demand, a decision not to seriously try to make peace. If the United States said that it would only return 90% of Iraq to the new Iraqi government, and that it would put 100,000s of settlers into previously Iraqi territory, but otherwise it was open to negotiation, that would quite right not be seen as meeting most Iraqi demands, nor would critics be seen as die-hard Iraqi supporters. Israel just needs to stop seeking territorial expansion, and remove all the settlers, not the Gaza 2%, if it seriously wishes to make peace.

Otto,

I’m not sure what you mean by racist settlement blocks on its conquered territory. If anything, Israel/Palestine is the best example of a completely non-racial cultural/religious split, since both the Israeli state and the Palestinians are at least somewhat multi-racial. If anything, if one wants to ignore multi-racial groups on both sides, they are exactly the same race. It’s like discussing the Northern Ireland conflict as a racial one. Bizarre.

Historically, people accomodate themselves to settlers in their conquered territory in many ways. The post WWII Germans seem to have accomodated themselves, as have the Finns. Even Pakistan and India have accomodated themselves, though not always happily. Even Mongolia seems to have accomodated itself to the loss of most of its country to Russia and China. I don’t think one can claim as a historical truth that peace is impossible without a removal of settlers and a return to preexisting borders. That appears to be false.

I think it is more useful to ask why the current situation is untenable and what is the right course of action to take next, not to make blanket statements that are unlikely to happen.

abb1,

Why do you think the current situation is less stable than under the Taliban? The current government is internationally recognized, controls more of the country (if only through indigenous warlord proxies) than the Taliban ever did, and the resistance to its rule is forced to seek refuge in Pakistan instead of operating out of bases within the country, which the Northern Alliance was consistently able to do.

I don’t think Afghanistan was an international intervention. I think it was an attack on a country which had allied itself with a movement that killed thousands of Americans. It was a war, undertaken to defend the US against attack in accordance with international law which allows states to undertake aggression for self-defense. In this, so far, it seems to have been successful, even though the American leadership was completely incompetent and used it as an excuse to try an adventure in Iraq.

Giving up Osama bin Laden would have saved Afghanistan from attack. The Taliban government chose not to do this, and paid the price for harboring someone who attacked the US and planned to continue to do so.

It has nothing in common with Kosovo really, which was undertaken for entirely different aims.

I do actually want to make one thing clear about this discussion on Gujarat. It began when Jasmindad responded to a question about whether Islamophobia might explain the opinion polls on Bush in India and Jasmindad responded by suggesting that Islamophobia was not a problem in India as Muslim’s did well there and the fact that they had not become Islamic Fundementalists was presented as further evidence that Islamophobia was not a problem in India. To say that the issues surrounding the polls on Bush might be more complicated is one thing. To try and suggest that Islamophobia is not a serious problem in India is frankly mindboggling. It was perhaps all the more peculiar given the reference to Gujarat which was regarded as not significant evidence because of the more recent election result. Lets think of the awful possibility that 2000 people from another minority had been killed. Substitute for Muslims any other minority and imagine how such an argument would be percieved by any sane human being.

At this stage I thought that this might simply be a kind of reflex nationalism. However think of the implications of the following argument. Apparently most Indian citizens have no reason to be too keen on Muslims because of the experiance of the Mughal Empire (in India, it should go without saying, to introduce Mughal rule in this way is pregnant with ideological and normative connotations), but apparently caste equations and the rather grubby and unlovely horsetrading of electoral politics, protect them from immediate threat, and indeed ‘their prospects are quite good’ (presumably unless something goes wrong with political alliances at the local level).

Well I hope there prospects are good as well but this is hardly an argument against Islamophobia being a problem in India is it? Rather the reverse. Indeed the belief that the existence of the Mughal Empire explains why there are tensions between Hindu’s (lets not slip into Hindutva mode and start treating Indians as interchangable with Hindu’s) and Muslims itself rests on an Islamophobic interepretation of recent history (an interpretation which, yes, excercises a strong hold on the middle class).

Quite how these kinds of opinions relate to Sen rather puzzles me. In terms of economics I attempted in sketchy and polemical fashion to draw connections between recent attitudes in sections of the Middle Class and liberalization. There does seem to be such a connection. The recent election result reflected a backlash against these tendencies, from those less better off.

I am further disturbed by the way, yet again, the conclusion is that the problems of Muslims are down to their ‘feelings’ rather then the ‘feelings’ of the murderous barbarians who killed large numbers of them. Until Indian citizens shoulder their responsibility to prevent their fellow citizens being treated in this fashion any concern they have for the well being of Muslims in India should be treated with utter contempt. The same people who complain about the personal laws are the people who raped muslim women with red hot pokers. Lets remember what we’re actually talking about here. Deeply sinister.

HB: This is over the top. The conflict in Kosovo was an anti-imperialist and self-determination movement by the Kosovars against Serbian imperialism that was completely peaceful for a decade and turned violent because that was the only way they could get what they wanted. Kosovo is almost surely less of a mess than it was in 1989, since 90% of the population is once again eligible for state and state-owned enterprise employment. There is a clear way for Kosovo’s situation to improve and that is to give it independence, which is the clear desire of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants. It will be a lot better off than East Timor very quickly.

DB: Listen, Kosovo is a Serbian province and traditionally has been. When a change of population occurs in a nation (in this case the majority became Albanian due to a higher birth rate) it doesn’t change the nature of the governing authority from overseer of a republic to overseer of a colony. So what the Albanian ethnic community there may have wanted may have been a legitimate aspiration but did NOT require a resort to violence. To answer you with your own point of view, the violence which happened in the 1990s was very mixed, much of the initial provocation issuing from the fundamentalist KLA. And while, if your eye is on the Albanian ethnic community there, you may say that things have gone well for Kosovo, it has been disastrous for the ethnic Serbian/Macedonian communities who have largely been ethncally cleansed in the same manner as we supposedly went to war against Yugoslavia for. On top of this, public assets and industries have, through clear breach of international law, been privatised against the will of the population so that an enormous wealth transfer has taken place. The peace keeping mission is falling apart and the original and only legal remit, to lawfully return Kosovo to the Serbian authorities, is being mooted again, once again outside the ambit of international law.

Many peoples want to secede from their nation states. In borderlands anywhere in Central Europe there are ethnic spillovers that would see an explosion of small wars and a descent into chaos if they all claimed this right. Its simplistic to see that aspiration as necessarily having automatic legitimate force. For instance, if Kosovo seceded in 1989, could the Serbs in non contiguous regions where they dominated, secede from Kosovo? This is not an arcane point. When Quebec attempted to secede in 1995, some indigenous peoples in Quebec indicated that they too would seek seccession from Quebec. (What then if the English community there chose to secede?)The Q provincial government of course said it was out of the question. It was Quebec territory. By what authority did the Quebec government assume the right to secede whilst denying it to others? Part of it was the integrity of that land as part of Quebec. The same arguments many Canadians use to say Quebec is immutably part of Canada.

So lets be clear, the KLA was NOT an anti-imperialist movement, it was a nationalist movement. Kosovo was not a separate, fully autonomous republic that came into the hands of Serbia via imperialist means. It was an integral part of Serbia with special autonomous rights.

HB: What precisely is Afghanistan returning to? Do you mean the period of warlordism after the fall of the Communist government in the 90s or the Taliban? Be more specific please.

Well yes. Did I have to be more specific? Warlordism, a total lack of permanent government control outside the confines of Kabul, a return to the trunctaion of rights of women and of the unempowered in general.

HB: Why do you say it is US-financed? Who exactly is the US financing?

DB: Haiti : This is why: The International Republican Institute, chaired by John McCain, was a key funder and organiser of the murderous then-opposition the Democratic Convergence ( a convergence with negligible support in Haiti). It gets its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy which is financed by US taxpayers.

The most violent elements of this ‘Convergence”, are those who led the brutal overthrow of Aristide (Chamblain, Phillipe etc). The ‘uprisings’ against Aristide were also the result of this NED funding.

What genocide in Colombia are you talking about, and who precisely is going to carry it out? Do you mean an indigenous genocide?

Well yes, this has been an ongoing persecution against indigenous peoples that has seen thousands of people murdered per year (continuing under Uribe) and the displacement of millions of people since the 1940s. Indigenous leaders are killed in large numbers so that there is little effective ability to organise. This amounts to hundreds of thousands of deaths since the War and results in the removal of indigenous people from their own land. Should most of indigenous Columbia secede then from the three of four European dominated cities, since this clearly fits your notiion of ‘imperialism’ better than Kosovo?

The results are mixed for intervention as you say. But not much. For every E Timor (handed over to the UN by the Australian authorities) or Sierra Leone there are multiple interventions that are clearly and deliberately exploitative. There’s nothing mixed about intervention in Iraq, intervention in Afghanistan, in Haiti, in the attempted overthrow – sponsored by our friend NED – of Venezuela, US intervention in Columbia, Somalia, French intervention in Central Africa – all of these are pretty clearly disasters that, had there been a will to find legitimate forms of non-exploitative intervention or if they’d just been left alone, would have produced better outcomes for the people of those nations.

johng: I think we might have reached the end of the line on this discussion, but I do not yield first place to you in regarding the Gujarat (and the earlier Sikh) massacres as outrages that Indian citizens should be ashamed of. Beyond that, I think you are losing it, in statements like: “The same people who complain about the personal laws are the people who raped muslim women with red hot pokers.” Many liberal Muslims complain about personal laws and they sure as hell didn’t rape anyone. My point about political alliances was that both lower caste Hindus and Muslims make common political cause against upper caste Hindus is to make the further point that the lower caste Hindus, i.e., the vast majority of Hindus, do not have Islamophobia. I still hold by that.

“Until Indian citizens shoulder their responsibility to prevent their fellow citizens being treated in this fashion any concern they have for the well being of Muslims in India should be treated with utter contempt.” This is posturing rather than contentful, since the implication is that I or anyone else who thinks that the trend in India is positive do not wish to shoulder such responsibility. My loathing for Hindutva-types is beyond measure. But I think you are quite incapable of nuance if you think that anyone, including Muslims, who wish to challenge the special Civil code for Muslims is a Hindutvadi. The only person to resign from Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet when the Rajiv got the Lok Sabha to pass a bill to overturn the Supreme Court ruling on the Shah Bano case, which in turn overturned the Muslim Board judgment, was a Muslim.

Just as I suggested in one of my early posts, your frame answers all the questions for you re. India, and in response to any attempt to give you an alternative frame, all you have is to imply that the other person is immoral somehow, or a Hindutva type, or whatever. At an intellectual level I have contempt for it, but I am willing to give you a pass on the grounds that your heart is in the right place. After all, a person who is outraged by Gujarat massacres can’t be all bad.

Jewishness can be considered an ethnicity. This is a banality, and associates me with no unsavoury personalities. Discriminating against Jews as such is a form of racism, for example. (Advocating or excusing or belittling settler colonialism does however put you in line with many many unsavoury personalities).

“Even the UN no longer officially believes that “Zionism is Racism”. It’s a shame that you still seem to think that is true.”

I didn’t say that Zionism is racism. I say that putting privileged settler colonies whose membership is defined by ethnicity onto conquered territory (and removing the local inhabitants, because they are not Jews) is racist. If Israel just stopped doing that, and offered to remove all those settlements it has imposed, then I would not be criticising Israel (nor would lots of other people). Stop the racist actions, and the criticism will cease.

The new government is less stable because unlike the Taliban it has no control over most of the country, if I am not mistaken.

In short, you are. The Northern Alliance had artillery, the taliban remnant is lucky to scrape up a mortar. The taliban’s relations to regional warlords was rather more shaky than you seem to think, too.

soru

soru

Re. Palestinian behaviour, I cannot think of any behaviour of theirs that would license their ethnic cleansing or legitimate the imposition of settler colonies on their territory. Israeli behaviour (which we are discussing) is not in this way enabled or excused by Palestinian behaviour. And on the other hand, putting racist settler colonies into a conquered territory is likely to produce extraordinary resistance and lack of cooperation. This is a general point, as I have tried to indicate by reference to what would happen if the US adopted the same policy of settlement and territorial change in Iraq. Do you disagree? I am glad the experiment is not being attempted.

Re. Oslo, we have been through this before I think: If you were one of those who supported Oslo on the basis that Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories including East Jerusalem would be a plausible basis for peace, that policy has not been tried. Rather settlement expansion continued all through the 1990s, and Israel did not offer to remove them at Taba or Camp David. Now it is possible that the Palestinians will not settle for anything except the destruction of Israel – but the fact that they would not accept 100,000s of settlers at Camp David does not show it, and it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that it does. Israel has only to say: I want peace without territorial aggrandisement from the 1967 war, and she would be much closer to peace, much less criticised, and frankly much more likely to end the loss of lives to which you refer.

Otto:

First of all you have failed to address my description as “Jewishness” as a religion and not a race. You have at least decided that they are an “ethnicity”, but I’m not sure that is much of an improvement.

Also, you and David continue to demonize all Israeli’s in their treatment of Palestinians.

Are you seriously stating that there is not one single Israeli Jew who wishes to make peace?

The point of the ‘settlements’ was to be ‘land for peace’. The Israeli’s trading the land captured in a defensive war for peace.

Or at least a state of ‘not war’.

It worked with the Egyptians.

Perhaps you are too young to remember the scenes of Israeli troops forcably removing ‘settlers’ from places like Yamit.

[Extra points to you if you can identify the Israeli who was in charge of “Southern Command” and authorized that use of force.]

They are purposefully provocative to try to get the Palestinians to come to the conclusion that peace – or lack of violence – is to be preferred over continual terrorist attacks.

There really isn’t a “racial” component to it at all. There isn’t even a necessiarly “religous” component to it.

Any Israeli, Jew, Christian or Muslim can apply to live in one of the ‘settlements’. At least those of a ‘secular’ nature.

Those religous outposts deemed “illegal” under the Oslo accords get torn down from time to time. You should note also, that under the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Authority agreed that those Jewish Settlements which existed
before the accords could stay. And that they should remain under Israeli jurisdiction.

[Look it up if you don’t want to believe me].

Even though you claim to accept that Zionism is not Racism, you still suggest that the ‘settlements’ are racist.

Based on the facts of which I am aware you are wrong.

Are some Palestinians mistreated by some Israelis? Not doubt about that.

Are all Israeli’s racist pigs who hate Arabs? It seems that you two seem to think so. But a quick perusal of the Israeli press would lead an objective observer to conclude otherwise.

Are all Palestinians’ terrorists just waiting for the right opportunity to murder Jews? While you seem to ascribe that feeling to ALL Israelis, I doubt even Ariel Sharon would share such a view.

DB,

The KLA were an anti-imperialist movement. Let me explain more clearly. Before Milosevic came to power, Kosovo was an autonomous province within Yugoslavia that largely ran its own affairs. After Milosevic came to power in the late 80s, Kosovan autonomy was destroyed by fiat, all the Albanians in the government, universities, hospitals, many government-owned enterprises and security services were fired. In the case of the security services, they were replaced by Serbian goons, largely recruited from scum in Kosovo and in Serbia proper. It definitely was an outside occupation and was enforced by repressive measures.

Despite this, the major non-Serb political forces in Kosovo organized a completely non-violent political movement to resist the virulent Serbian national/fascist movement of the time. And the world ignored them and kept ignoring them, except for G.H.W. Bush warning Serbia not to crack down on Kosovo. So the occupation continued.

Eventually, people tired of a non-violent movement (after ten years) and armed themselves to evict their oppresors. They also cleverly got NATO on their side, and won a huge propaganda victory when Serbian forces decided to ethnically cleanse the province of its Albanian population (some 90% of the population).

Since the end of the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs have attempted to create their own ethnically cleansed region of Serbia north of Mitrovica (with the collusion of French and Italian soldiers), while tit-for-tat ethnic cleansing occurs south of Mitrovica, and large numbers of Serbs and Romany have fled the province. Mass graves of Kosovar albanians have been found in Kosovo and Serbia proper, and some graves of Serbs have been found as well.

It’s clear that Kosovo should become independent, and that that will ensure a multi-ethnic character to the province, once Kosovars can stop worrying about the Serbian army invading and killing and ethnically cleansing them once again.

It’s a textbook example of anti-imperialism and struggle for self-determination in a contiguous area tha arguably had the right of secession in Yugoslavia anyway.

So I disagree with you strongly.

Damn, I knew I made a mistake in mentioning Israel – guaranteed to create heat, not light. I’ll resist the temptation to respond to dan simon for fear of further sidetracking the thread. And I’d never bother responding to the abb1s of this world – there’s no point in discussing things with people whose first response is “well, you must be an anti-semite then …” (how do you know I’m not Jewish, you idiot?).

The point I wanted to make wasn’t about the ME at all. The point I wanted to make is that changing your views in response to new facts you observe should induce compassion, not spite, towards those who have not observed these facts, and humility because there may be other facts you have not yet observed which will lead to a change of mind again.

And I’d never bother responding to the abb1s of this world – there’s no point in discussing things with people whose first response is “well, you must be an anti-semite then …” (how do you know I’m not Jewish, you idiot?).

Wtf are you talking about?

Hektor,
There is no essential racial difference between Israelis and Palestinians, and most people there realize it.

Hmm, I hope most people realize that there are no essential racial differences, period. Those who make ethnicity-based laws and policies obviously don’t.

Otto,

I still don’t see why you say racism. At least some of the settlements accept diverse religious and ethnic groups, including “Arabs”. There is discrimination on the basis of citizenship, but then every country in the world discriminates on that basis. It does seem like some of them discriminate on a sectarian basis, but in that case, any non-Jewish Palestinian who wished to live in a settlement could convert to Judaism (remaining of Arab ethnicity) and live in those settlements.

So at least some of them are sectarian, and all of them discriminate based on citizenship, but that does not make them “racist”. Maybe people think being “racist” is worse than being “sectarian”, and I can see arguments that way, but there is no essentialist “racist” discrimination if anybody can live there if they convert. This isn’t the same idea as South Africa or the American South, where the average person too dark to pass couldn’t stop being black, no matter what they did.

From your point of view, sectarianism of this type might be worse or better than racism, but it isn’t the same thing.

…in that case, any non-Jewish Palestinian who wished to live in a settlement could convert to Judaism (remaining of Arab ethnicity) and live in those settlements.

Lol. You seem amazingly accommodating in this one case, compare to your wrath against the ‘Serbian goons’.

Now, I suppose the Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims could dye their hair and convert to Christianity – that would be the best way to avoid persecution, correct?

No abb1,

I’m not accomodating at all, merely being precise. I don’t support sectarian settlements and I am strongly against sectarianism in general. But there is a difference between sectarianism and racism, and that is precisely what we are talking about. I’m not saying one is worse than the other, merely that they _are_ different. There are plenty of nasty things to call the Israelis that are correct without making up things to call them that are not correct. Using racism in this case impedes understanding.

The Kosovar example is instructive, because there are many Kosovars that are Orthodox Christian, and they were ethnically cleansed just like all the other Kosovars.

David Bracewell,

The Serbs clearly had plans for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovars before the bombing, and they clearly put them into practice. This wasn’t some descent into savagery, it was a efficient operation where people were crowded into trains by neighborhood and city and sent out of Kosovo. This wasn’t a mob action, it was calculated and done with military precision. So you can’t exculpate the Serbs that way.

I don’t intend to demonize Serbs. I just don’t think they are willing to face up to their actions in the Balkan wars and have real war crimes trials of their former leaders or repudiate their ideology. They clearly don’t have the best interests of 90% of the population of Kosovo in mind, so it’s better for everyone that they no longer are in control of it. Kosovo will remain a mess until it gains independence and is able to actually have some economic stability and international legitimacy. That is the best path. The Serbs are already moving in the path of democracy and peace with their neighbors, and accession to the EU will demand that they continue down this path. I don’t see the problem – Serbia without Montenegro and Kosovo and Bosnia and various other irridentist claims is likely to be a much more democratic and humane place.

The broader point is that just as Serbians are not willing to face up to their past, we simply refuse to face up to ours and refuse to demand that nations with whom we have had alliances, ad hoc or otherwise, like Croatia, face up to theirs.

We played to fiercely reactionary Croation nationalist sentiments in the early 1990s which led to the neo-Fascist Tudjman moving Croatia toward the very place we found unacceptable for Serbia. The US armed and trained the Croations and helped them in the worst ethnic cleansing of the war, Krajina. Apart from a few minor officials and thugs being held to account, we have never demanded of ourselves or our ally the same soul-searching that we demand of Serbia. Now why is this? And why was the collapsing of a nation, Yugoslavia, which had been a byword for toleration such a Western priority? Altruism?

Instead of supporting liberal Yugoslavian forces and encouraging the continuation of this toleration during a difficult but not intractable 1980s Milosevic tenure, we deliberatley used Milosevic (Germany and the US in the forefront) to ‘trigger’ a collapse of Yugoslavia which lead Milosevic from low level abuses to full scale military intervention.

If our actions are of the same order or worse we first have a duty to look to our own shortcomings before we look to the abuses of others. And our actions were clearly designed from the early nineties to drag Yugoslavia within the Western sphere of influence and we were prepared to collapse the internal order of a nation and interfere in its sovereignty by legislating (US) and declaring (Germany) the desirability of republic independance of what were effectively the internal provinces of Yugoslavia – as ‘internal’ for instance as a US state which have theoretically the right to secede (imagine Mexico legislating for the unravelling of the US and you get the picture).

The idea that Serbia needs to self reflect is right, but who is demanding it and do they have the moral authority to do so? We have a criminal court in the Hague. Why is Blair not there now? The answer is of course that the Western international order has little desire to see ‘justice’ done. It merely wishes to impose victor’s justice which is no justic at all because it is buried in hypocrisy. To repeat the words of the US proesecutor at the Nuremburg war crimes trial

“To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of whole.”

Further…

“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.”

DB,

Sorry, but Croatia still doesn’t have accession talks with the EU because of Ante Govina, so I would argue that we are holding Croatia to account. Several Croatian generals are in the ICC now. Stipe Mesic just apologized for the flight of the Serbs, some of which was called for by the Krajina government, after they ethnically cleansed Karjina of Croats and Muslims. Is it enough? Probably not. Is it way more than the Serbs have done – absolutely yes.

Look at the Serbian response to Srebrenica. Lots of people still don’t believe that mass killing happened there. Most Serbs still believe that mass graves of Kosovars don’t exist, or that bodies of Kosovars weren’t put into vans and buried in rivers in Serbia.

They still haven’t handed over many of their war criminals or tried them in their own courts, and recently they seem to have settled on paying off war criminals so that their families can reap benefits from their crimes.

I can’t see any comparison to any other group in the former Yugoslavia. Serbia is still wallowing in victimhood, though the situation is improving.

The EU seems to have the authority to demand reflection, and it seems to be working, though more slowly for Serbia. Montenegro and Croatia seem to be learning the drill rather more quickly.

I can understand why certain posters wish all the Israelis’ are ” … as racist as it can be, it’s the textbook case of racism …”.

And endlessly repeat the same.

They can sleep peacefully at night knowing the Palestinians terrorists they support are not murdering innocents.

Not at all. The terrorist are only doing their heinous acts because their opponents are “racists”.

I find it difficult to accept that a poster has actually talked with even representative sample of 100,000+ ‘settlers’. And can then supposedly and confidently state that “the vast majority” are racists.

But since it makes him feel justified in his anti-Israel feelings, I’m not surprised he would post such an obvious lie.

Sorry, abb1, that comment about accusations of anti-semitism was meant for fergal (see post 77), not you.

And yeah, maybe it’s sloppy to call what goes on in Israel “racist”, but it is definitely not nice. I dunno that my experience was as extreme as abb1’s, but Israeli attitudes certainly were disconcerting – most seemed happy to accept the cheap land and cheap labour while being *wilfully* blind to whose land and labour it was. And I did meet some genuine religious extremists (most of whom were born in New York).

abb1 you are STILL wrong.

Are you aware that some of those “racist”
settlers are actually considering Palestinian Citizenship?

Heres the link …

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/world/12347357.htm

And gosh … guess what … even Hamas has no problem with it. You would think that they would take great umbrage with “racist Jewish Settlers” staying in Gaza.

It is, simply, a SECTARIAN dispute. Not a “racial” dispute.

And note what has happened within this thread.

It has gone from “All Israelis are incurable racists [even Israeli Arabs?]” to the Israeli’s are “not nice”.

And it happened just because a few of us objected to some posters use of inappropriate pejoratives.

Ted, I think it would be just a great idea for them to apply for Palestinian residency or citizenship. I can’t really understand all this fuss with ‘evacuation’, especially by force; indeed, all they have to do is to ask the new authorities for a residency permit.

I suspect Mr. Cohen is just doing this to make a rhetorical point, though. Notice his “It’s a dictatorship here, it’s a dictatorship there. So what’s the difference?”. Well, the Palestinians just had an election, and their leader is not a war criminal like some.

Are suicide attacks on Israelis merely sectarian then? Is there nothing anti-semitic about them?

Yet, in contradiction to your claims for Palestinians now, according to you this was a purely sectarian dispute.

You don’t think that inflicting 3 or more times the death toll on overwhelmingly civilian Palestinians, collective punishment via deliberate attacks on population centres and the real Zionist narrative stretching from the late 19th century etc belies your claims to their purely sectarian outlook a little?

If I should imagine Israeli pain in the comparitive manner that you posit, then how much more should I imagine Palestinian pain? Three times more? Do I then draw conclusions about the inflicters of this pain via these numbers? Palestinians only a third as culpable as Israelis?

And then should we assign a linear blame on numbers of people purged from their land and numbers of people locked down on their land? I mean, I’m applying your formula here, but your attitude doesn’t square with the results of it – if you’re claiming to apply values of fairness and justice. Do we need to look to a different formula on all those issues in order that I can understand your outlook?

Ah – ‘suicide bombers’. Like ‘driving Israelis into the sea’ another catch all idiocy that tells us nothing but permits Israel everything.

The feeble ‘I would rather wait for ages at an Israeli check-point than sit next to a suicide bomber on a bus, but that’s a matter of personal choice’ should read ‘I would rather have three times the chance of being killed as a Palestinian (impoverished, probably purged from my place of origin, stripped of my human rights and under a racist government) than have a third the chance of being killed by the people my government persecutes’. That is an honest phrase based in the reality. And we can see how feeble it is, because you wouldn’t rather be in this Palestinian reality at all, of course.

By the way, I’ve seen the Israeli report delineating the large number of non-civilian IDF-inflicted casualties and it has been discredited by the observations of all the major human rights organisations working in the occupied territories. You should be ashamed for supporting such lies that make a legitimate military target of young boys throwing rocks.

For those interested in the grotesque disparity – http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

Re double standards: I just applied your standard for Israel, Tom, to the Palestinians. When I do, you accuse me of Israel-bashing. I am understanding your outlook, but applying it to both sides of the conflict. Should I poke one of my eyes out?

Our societies do not support morally, militarily, politically and economically the regimes you say I hold to a different standard to Israel – at least not even faintly to the same degree . On the contrary, I want the standard to be the same. Israel (and Saudi) should be treated much as we now treat Syria and Iran – on the outside looking in until they adopt civilised standards towards the millions who are held under its racist laws and colonisation – the farce of the Gaza strip pullout – veiling further incursion into Jerusalem and the West Bank, notwithstanding.