Perhaps Israeli commentators dominating the American airwaves recently are right. If the Palestinians were in Israel’s proverbial shoes, they would have done the same thing. If the Palestinians were a persecuted minority in Europe, a third of whom were killed during a massive Holocaust and then escaped to a land with weaker states where they can establish their state by force, if the Palestinians adopted the ethnic nationalism model from the mother continent which brought about their original demise and started treating the indigenous population as a Jew among nation, if the indigenous population rose up to protect their rights and sovereignty on the land, if the Palestinians then resorted to “defending” themselves, then, yes, the Palestinians would be carrying out a ruthless, indiscriminant, annihilistic attack against the indigenous people of Gaza, a war against every man, woman and child. This is true because of the simple nature of human beings. Jewish Israelis are not intrinsically evil or inherently more bloodthirsty than their fellow conspecifics.
While human beings are social animals who evolved to live cooperatively and peacefully in large groups ranging from tribes to nations and while they have evolved the capacity for sacrifice and risk taking in the interest of the larger group, they have also evolved to be racist, discriminatory and gruesomely violent against other tribes or nations. Humans have killed, maimed, and cleansed the earth of competing nations to secure more resources and power for their own. This unfortunate aspect of human nature stems from the fact that human groups who do not compete for survival simply get outcompeted by other more violent groups. It is undeniable that brave promoters of justice still exist within a nation such as the Israelis Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy, Nomika Zion, and Amira Haas have demonstrated in Israel’s Gaza war, but the vast majority of people in a nation are cowardly, self-absorbed, slavish and opportunistic. While learned cultures play a part in educating and modifying human nature, human nature is more instinctual, more potent and more enduring. As culture changes over centuries, human nature is molded over millions of years. The latter fact would explain why people of varied and discrete nations such as WWII Japan and Germany, Antebellum America, Early Egypt, the Ottoman and Roman Empires, looked away as their nations pillaged, killed, enslaved.
At the same time, humans are rational and have a strong sense of self preservation which is why no people would walk to their certain national death by provoking an equally powerful enemy unless their survival hinged upon it. This is the reason why the cold war which lasted forty years never materialized a charred world as far as the United States and the Soviet Union are concerned and it is also why India, as much as it would like to give Pakistan an Israel-style drubbing, will not. Deterrence works. Modern examples are too numerous to delineate but here goes a few: American public opinion turned against the genocide of Vietnam and the illegal invasion of Iraq only after significant American casualties returned home; Sudan’s government of Omar El Bashir only started taking the rebels in Darfur seriously after he was indicted for war crimes in the Hague; South African Apartheid ended only after a significant economic blockade was enforced on the White-dominated government. Iran and Syria helped foment the insurgency in Iraq because they knew if Iraq were a picnic, they would be next. The neoconservatives were already calling Syria a low-lying fruit even as the carnage in Iraq was intensifying. These examples are not given to promote war but to demonstrate a clear-eyed unsentimental calculus of the situation at hand. Peace is desirable and achievable but only between to equal partners, both of whom have much to lose from war.
To negotiate with Israel, the Arabs need a deterrence capability. Israel must have something to lose beside its 13 soldiers to 1200 Palestinians. First, it is Arabs who must confront Israel and not just Palestinians, because Arabs have a shared cultural, historical and socioliguistic ties that bind all Arab nations together. From the onset of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab world has been deeply involved. Finally the Arabs must be part of the solution because Palestine is part of the Arab nation, and human nature will not allow its abandonment. In order to stop Palestinians from becoming the next American Indians and to prevent the territories from turning into the next Indian reservations, the Arab countries must be able to deter Israel’s onslaught in three main ways.
First, Arab governments must be overthrown. Only democratically-elected governments are responsive to the people no matter how corrupt, inefficient, and slow. Second, Arabs must build their military deterrence such as Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran are doing at the moment. Finally, the focal point of Israel’s strength, the United States pro-Israel community, must be chipped at, its media monopoly diluted and organized lobbying counterbalanced. Arab and Muslim Americans can affect the outcome of this conflict and effect an Israeli-Palestinian peace more easily than any other group of Arabs or Muslims in the world.
This must be done in two and simultaneous ways, Arab and Muslim Americans must raise money to establish grants and scholarships to create incentives for young Arab and Muslim Americans to go into fields related to media, communications, journalism and entertainment. Visibility is everything in the media war. Second, Arab and Muslim Americans must organize and form a powerful lobby that will allow Congressmen, Senators and Representatives, to oppose Israel without committing hari kari. I have written about an Arab/Muslim Lobby on KABOBfest before here and here. We have a sympathetic president who has given audience to Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said but he is no good if the US Congress opposes him every step of the way. Arabs and Muslim Americans must work on their deterrence, simply educating an uninterested and unaffected American public about Israel’s atrocities will get us nowhere.
Related posts:
- Jordan Seeks Nuclear Power. Israelis Crap pants.
- Jordan Bids For Power Within The UN
- Defying Oppression: People Power In Action
- Rahm: Kneel Before the Awesome Power of the Arab-American Lobby
- The Real Criminals are in Power
You forgot the fact the “the Palestinian problem” is the making of the Arab world. The problem could have been solved years ago with a little bit imagination and will. This is what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Jews thown out of the Arab countries. 60% of Jordanians are Palestinians, still Palestinians live in camps after 60 years!! The Arab world needs a pawn like the Palestinians against Israel. This saves them from the hardship and turns everyones attention conveniently from their own misery.
You are quite right that the Arab governments need to be overthrown, but unfortunately democracy does not work well with poorly educated people. They are manipulated by extremist clerics who can turn peace loving people into Hamas like terror organizations.
You say that all people are basically the same. True, but depending what religion you teach them and in what way makes a huge difference. If you teach hatred and martyrdom from the cradle, you will find that it is hard to make these people live peaceful co-existence no matter what you do. The question is not about negotiating with Israel, the question is about accepting the fact that Israel exists and is not going anywhere and learn to live with that reality.
Posted by Arno | January 17, 2009, 2:33 pmMost Arabs don’t care that Israel exists as long as it doesn’t occupy 5 million Palestinians. The establishment of Israel was a historical injustice but the current occupation of Palestinians is an ongoing injustice. Your assumption that Arabs are uneducated is also wrong. The literacy rates in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine are all above 94%. The problem is not that Israel exists. The problem is that Palestinians are neither given a state to live in nor are they given the vote in Israel. Israel can’t be an Apartheid state forever.
Posted by Sama Adnan | January 17, 2009, 2:54 pm“First, Arab governments must be overthrown. Only democratically-elected governments are responsive to the people no matter how corrupt, inefficient, and slow.”
Once you finish the first part, get back to us. There is not ONE democratic Arab country (I will give you 0.25 for Lebanon). Just this process will take you decades. Currently the only real alternative to the dictators are the Islamists. Not a good prognosis. But I give you kudos for identifying the main problem in the Arab world, lack of democracy.
Posted by Anonymous | January 17, 2009, 3:23 pmI have to disagree with this entire socially darwinistic post. As far as the final message, I do not believe the answer to anything inherently good is an Arab/Muslim Lobby.
At all.
Such lobbies adopt an exclusivist framework — such is AIPAC. Lobbies seek to solve only those problems they see as affecting them personally — and only up until they cease affecting them personally. There exists little or no regard for anyone else, leading to a strategy that can (and probably will) negate other struggles in the name of their own.
This is already Zionism. The participation in the lobby system is the acceptance of a system that will always find another group or other groups to dispossess, opress, exploit, imprison, and/or kill for their own purposes.
The struggle is the same across all marginalized groups — which is why the Third World stands with Palestine stronger than most of us do. It’s overtime Arabs and Muslims stopped trying to fit into Whiteness. This is exactly what an Arab/Muslim lobby would do.
Further, the problem (and therefore, the solution) cannot be boiled down to lobbies. They certainly play a role in this country, but insofar as they fit this country’s goals quite nicely.
The U.S. is an inherently racist political structure, and it happens to have an interest in remaking the Middle East. Please trust that if the U.S. thought Palestinians could serve the U.S.’s expansionist, capitalist project better than Israel could, a Palestinian lobby would be welcome with open arms.
Let’s think about what it is we’re really fighting for. Let’s be careful what we ask for.
Finally, Barack “No Comment” Obama is not sympathetic — he is an opportunist. I’m don’t understand how this isn’t already clear. Like Arabs need to overthrow their governments, we need to overthrow our own.
Posted by QuiQui | January 17, 2009, 5:13 pmQuiQui, I think you’re overly idealistic about any given system of government. We are not trying to adhere to Whiteness but participating in the system of our country. There is nothing racist about lobbying for a certain cause about which you care deeply, no more racist than writing a blog about it.
Fighting for a Palestinian state by lobbying the US government does not negate other causes nor should one oppose other causes because one supports the rights of Palestinians to live in freedom. In our government, lobbying is a part of the democratic process. There would be nothing wrong with AIPAC if they were advocating peace and harmony in the Middle East instead of a superior Israel that punishes whoever challenges its superiority.
Finally, this post does not attempt to understand or explain social darwinism for it doesn’t exist. Evolution occurs at the level of the individual not the group but the post seeks to explain the evolution of human nature in a group setting. There is no denying that the majority of people are complicit and complacent in any society until the atrocity affects them directly.
We can try to appeal to the better nature of people until we are blue in the face. However, until we realize that most people are simply uninterested, we would be wasting our time.
Posted by Sama Adnan | January 17, 2009, 5:32 pmI agree with Sama that a crucial piece of any reform and eventual justice in this matter will require domestic forces to pressure and influence our own government. In fact, of the 3 points he lists here it may the more attainable of them, and also possibly help along the other 2.
So, for those who want to take action – ought we form a new group?
Posted by alfannaan | January 17, 2009, 6:51 pmHey Alfannaan, I wrote a blog in December about the different groups that exist and that CNI is the one we should work with. I am trying to get the leadership of CNI to change the organization to a lobby instead of just an educational organization. If they do, then we should work with the Council for National Interest. Here is a link to my post about them: http://www.kabobfest.com/2008/11/arabmuslim-american-lobby.html
Posted by Sama Adnan | January 17, 2009, 7:41 pmSama – just read that earlier blogpost of yours. Good piece.
I have to say, I don’t get these naysayers whose only comments are to criticize taking any kind of active role in bringing about change (ie lobbies=bad), yet have no, or only very vague, suggestions of their own.
I will click on over to CNI and check them out.
Posted by alfannaan | January 17, 2009, 8:08 pmAnd one more thing though – I do think there’s something to educating the American public. While I agree that working directly with congress is the priority, adding to the public discourse, shifting its direction, goes hand in hand with this effort – especially with the amazing relatively new low-cost high-return tool of the internet. Besides, there needs to be something we po’ folks can do – lol.
Posted by alfannaan | January 17, 2009, 8:13 pmI agree with the basic notion as expressed in the Arab/Muslim Lobby piece, and CNI certainly seems like a good candidate. But I think the goal needs to be redefined. The two-state solution is dead. I’m not just talking about the latest barbarism in Gaza or even the seemingly undoable tangle of Jewish-only settlements and roads in the West Bank. I think we need to realize something more basic, that the Right of Return has always been the elephant in the room and that it, much more than percentages or land swaps or whatever, is the real background issue that ultimately makes the 2 state solution impossible. It’s remained mostly in deep background mind you, but every time the negotiators supposedly get close, there it is again. The refugees being told sorry you’re screwed but they of course have never given up their right even if it seems more distant than ever.
Gaza the past few weeks has perhaps become relevant in one sense. The Palestinian wretched of the earth in Gaza (and elsewhere watching from their camps) appear to have realized more than ever that the only thing they have left are their claims to their most basic rights. Take our the emotionalism of that, and what I’m saying is that their determination to not give up the Right of Return is reinvigorated. You can’t screw them and expect peace. That option, if it was ever there, is clearly gone.
So if you want to build a lobby (and believe me, if done right, I want to be a part of it), you have to build it with the right goal in mind. That goal must be one state for all between the Jordan and the Med, with a constitution that guarantees the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and then equal rights for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion. In other words, the goal has to be the South African model, not the Indian-Pakistani partition model. The lobby needs to be part of a broader international effort, reaching out to Palestinian groups such as al-Awda, Israeli groups such as Zochrot, and any other group that recognizes the crucial nature of the Right of Return and equal rights for all. In fact it has to be. The politicians aren’t leading here, neither Fatah nor Hamas and certainly no one in the Israeli or US establishments. Change has to come from building a clear goal based on a moral principle. The supporters of it may be small now, anyone advocating it may be derided as unrealistic or worse, but start working, build a head of steam, and remember that history is made by those with the will to guide it. One state with equal rights for all, that must be the goal of a true Palestine lobby. Try to build a lobby on a two-state basis, and it will just be dashed against the rocks sooner or later.
Posted by NonArab-Arab | January 17, 2009, 10:47 pmSorry to keep blathering on as I always do, but I think Saree Makdisi makes the point of what the goal of such a lobby should be far better than I do:
“Separation will always require threats or actual violence; a genuine peace will come not with more separation, but with the right to return to a land in which all can live as equals. Only a single democratic, secular and multicultural state offers that hope to Israelis and Palestinians, to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.”
Posted by NonArab-Arab | January 17, 2009, 11:28 pmThis is the biggest piece of trash I’ve have ever read on this blog. What a low, Kabobfest. What a low.
Sama, you say it is human nature to be racist, discriminatory, etc etc etc. And in your comments, you have said it is individuals who have interests, not groups. Yet you lump people into Arab and Muslim groups, or into a lobby system. Please tell me, if it is individuals who have interests, not communities, how was it that they decided to work together on anything? You make zero sense. This is equally directed to your fan Alfannaan who is equally confused. The two of you should go be confused together. Elsewhere.
It is by now commonly accepted by scholars all around the world that this “human nature” argument is a fallacy. You have taken no societal, cultural, political variable to make your sweeping claims. Do you understand what eugenecism is?
The whole of your argument has just excused 61 years of Palestinian ethnic cleansing because it is in Israel’s “human nature” to kill.
You are the worst of the movement, and your ideas should be denounced. You have a lot to prove before I believe you are not a collaborator or a spy.
This is disgusting.
Posted by Anonymous | January 18, 2009, 6:00 amI managed to read some of comments. I give Sama Adnan the thumbs up for putting the Palestinian cause in the context of human evolution. A great response to every Zionist apologist who equates the victim with the aggressor. Israel, as history taught, will most certainly collapse for its animalistic ways, like all the cultures that lost in the war of morality.
Posted by b-cell | January 18, 2009, 7:27 am“You are the worst of the movement, and your ideas should be denounced. You have a lot to prove before I believe you are not a collaborator or a spy.”
Get over yourself – that is a ridiculous thing to say. And I am sorry you think there is no value in organizing to affect change. Blather on if you like about whatever -ism. Some of us are trying to find solutions.
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To NonArab – the one state idea: more on this later when I have more time. It’s certainly not new and has run into many obstacles, but it does present a lot of interesting arguments.
Posted by alfannaan | January 18, 2009, 4:44 pmYa Alfannan, I look forward to your comments. I of course recognize as you say it is not new, but I think it now has new urgency and potential.
Posted by NonArab-Arab | January 18, 2009, 6:00 pmI don’t see why you consider it an either/or situation: either you organize to influence politics directly, or you educate people. You have to do both is you’re to have any chance of success.
I could never support another AIPAC-style lobby for anything. The ability of lobbies to subvert the democratic process is part of the problem, not part of the solution. There is an enormous backlash developing in this country as it is against the Israeli lobby as people become aware of just how powerful it is and how destructive it has been to America’s interests and America’s standing in the world.
Politicians support Israel because the Israeli lobby can deliver votes and money, not because of racism or anything else. If Arabs could deliver votes and money, politicians would support any Arab cause you care to name.
But delivering votes requires education, to get Americans to understand the injustice that Palestinians live under and that it is not in our interests to alienate 1.5 billion Muslims to cater to the whims of 5 million Israelis. Otherwise, they will just keep voting for the status quo.
It is no coincidence that politicians who toady to the Israeli lobby also toady to the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, finance industry, and other capitalist power structures that have abused and bankrupted this country for years. Many people are fed up and want to see the political system reformed if not overhauled altogether. To do that we need to have a different calibre of leadership running the country than the one we have, and we have to educate people to vote for and support that kind of leadership, as well as being ready to mobilize to shut the system down whenever our leaders fail to do what we have elected them to do.
You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that movement should it ever occur. In my opinion, your goal should be to work with all the players looking to reform our system, who would like to see America withdraw its support for Israel on humanitarian as well as pragmatic grounds, and also cease supporting dictatorships in the Middle East and elsewhere. The goal should not be an Arab lobby, but Arab advocacy as part of a larger pro-democracy movement.
I would imagine that most Americans who support the Palestinian cause do so out of anger at the horrible injustices and brutality that the Palestinians have endured under the Israelis. What Israel is doing is immoral and barbaric, and moral, civilized people simply cannot countenance that.
But there is more to the anger than that. There are many injustices in the world that are far worse than what the Palestinians have endured, as the Zionists never cease to remind us. Why the Palestinian cause in particular attracts our interest and our anger so much is that our government is paying to make this happen, and we are therefore implicated in the crime. We also see our government’s unblinking support for Israel as an outgrowth of the generalized corruption in our political system, and anger at the corruption in our system is translated into anger against all the manifestations of that corruption. To be blunt, it pisses us the fuck off an organization as sleazy as AIPAC can exert as much control as it does over our political system. You don’t want some Arab lobby to become a lightning rod for Americans’ disaffection with their political system the way AIPAC is becoming.
Posted by Sean | January 19, 2009, 12:11 am“You don’t want some Arab lobby to become a lightning rod for Americans’ disaffection with their political system the way AIPAC is becoming”
I whole-heartedly agree, Sean. But there is no reason that a pac formed with a narrow interest has to be sleazy. It also need not necessarily be identified as ‘Arab’. It also need not spread disinformation, threaten to end people’s careers and on and on. And if we wait until the entire system undergoes a real and complete change, well our grandkids may be old at that point. I believe there is a way to work within the system, while still making efforts to improve it, and thereby affect some real change.
Posted by alfannaan | January 19, 2009, 12:35 pm