While Reverend Wright's timing is opportunistic and his motives are egotistical and narcissistic, his remarks on the United States are not terribly off mark. The United States support of dictators in the Middle East for the last 60 years, along with its sanctions against 5 Muslim countries did have alot to do with the September 11 attacks. Our abandonment of Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets was cowardly and has come back to haunt us. The toppling of an Iranian democracy, the support of the Shah and countless other monarchs and dictators surely has raised the ire of the current Islamist groups. Finally, our blind support of Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza and our blind eye to Palestinian refugees and their suffering have exposed us to the most violent currents of Pan-Arabism, Islamism, Arab Nationalism, Palestinian Nationalism and Secular Militarism.
Our treatment of African Americans in the past, including Slavery and Jim Crow Laws, coupled with regretful events such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the high number of African American inmates, the high penalty for crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine, the endless stream of fatal police brutality and the small number of African American college graduates have all contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism in the African-American community, of which Reverend Wright is merely a symptom.
We have to confront these subjects head on and address them fairly. Obama's presidency and Reverend Wright's sometimes shameful rants have exposed a tremendous fault line as well as a golden opportunity to begin to understand, and see from, the other's perspective. As much as Obama's candidacy has made us feel proud and optimistic about our nation's transcendence of race, Reverend Wright's sermons will make us recoil from our ugly reflection in the mirror. But both images are true.
We must begin to answer the questions that are implicit in these infamous sermons. Was September 11 a response to our own actions abroad or did they attack us because we are a beacon of liberty as president Bush would have us believe? Do we owe the African-American community an apology as a nation; do we owe them a museum? Where is the National Museum of the African-American Slave? It doesn't exist but the National Holocaust Museum (a memorial of a crime not perpetrated in US soil) is in Washington, DC.
Read More...
Collapse Post...
Henceforth, March 4th is a day that shall live in infamy. I have always respected Barack Obama, ever since he burst into the national spotlight, literally, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I esteemed him for his judgment on the Iraq war and admired his courage to speak out against the war when America was at its peak national hysteria.
While emasculated media organizations and frightened, disheveled Democrats tried to out-Rove Karl, Obama said, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.”
Yes, on October 2nd, 2002, a mere nine days before 77 senators committed our nation to a fight on the other side of the world against a secular dictatorship, hated by and itself at war with Islamists, a dictatorship with no connections to the September 11 attacks or AlQaeda, Obama said, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Yes, even then I loved Barack Obama. More recently I am inspired by his talk of hope. I am heartened by his high-mindedness even amid the vitriol being unleashed by the Clinton campaign. I am moved by his quiet anger at Clinton’s mud-slinging style of politics.
And until last night, I felt that Obama was graced by God, himself. I admit it. Perhaps it is because the problems we face are so monumental and overwhelming. Because the injustice that we are provoking and incurring is so damning that we need a Moses, a Mohammed, a Jesus or a Buddha to extricate ourselves from burning Baghdad, bondaged Palestine, bottomless deficits, Chinese lenders, stagflation, overcrowded prisons and crumbling America. Obama spoke to us in the language of kindness. He preached hope and unity. He extolled African Americans in the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a shrine of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, for tolerating homophobia and anti-Semitism. He is a product of Christianity and Islam, of whites and blacks, of Old World and New World, he is God’s gift to a tried and tired nation.
That is, until March 4th when he lost Texas, Rhode Island and Ohio to a mere mortal and not a magnanimous one at that. It was easy to forgive him his early losses: he was an unknown battling against the heir to the throne. He was David battling Goliath and a redeemed Ishmael under Abraham’s knife. He was the disparate Arab Armies of Mecca that defeated the Persians and the Romans. He was the American pilgrims who won the revolutionary war against all odds. Yes, his wins in Iowa and Super Tuesday were miraculous, nothing short of divine intervention. Obama’s win was simply a matter of people acquainting themselves with him and falling under his baraka, blessings in Arabic.
On March 4th, Obama broke my heart. I thought of him as I thought of myself once; if someone got to know me and what I was about, he would not turn away. I was wrong on both accounts. Like a jilted lover I saw the illusion of destiny vaporized before my eyes.
I wanted so badly to believe and so I did but I forgot that I am not a believer but naturally a skeptic. I don’t believe in the prophets before Obama and I don’t believe in his prophecy. And so I will still support him, not as a Godsend but as the human that he is. He gets my vote because he understands that the war in Iraq is why our economy is on its knees, our health is poor and our infrastructure is crumbling. He gets my vote because in a field of presidential contenders whose byline reads “complicit in Bush’s war,” his reads, “I don’t oppose all Wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”
Read More...
Collapse Post...
Born from the ashes of Palestine, Israel was recognized by Western countries in that fateful day of May 18, 1948. Since, Israel has fought several wars against its neighboring countries and non-state actors such as the PFLP, Fatah, HAMAS and Hizbullah but to no avail. Unfortunately for the entire region, neither Israel nor the Palestinians are any more secure or at peace since the establishment of Israel. Sixty years later, Israel has little precious to celebrate this spring. Its 5.5 million Jewish citizens occupy 4 million Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and a further 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are relegated to second-class citizen status as admitted by the US State Department in 2004. The no longer nascent state still struggles with fundamental questions of its essence: is it a democratic and Jewish state, which is inherently contradictory, or a state of all its citizens?
In the international community, Israel is viewed suspiciously and its belligerent attitude towards the Palestinians and, indeed, all its neighbors is strongly criticized. Outside of the United States, it is difficult to find broad support of Israel’s tactics or even its raison-d’etre, as a Jewish state. A 2003 poll of EU countries found that Europeans view Israel to be the most dangerous nation on planet earth. Few Arab and Muslim countries have relations with Israel and for those that do, it is a glacial, cold peace imposed from the top. It has long lost its vital friends, Shah’s Iran and Apartheid South Africa, and its relationship with Turkey is in utter disrepair. It is hard to find an African country that is supportive of Israel’s apartheid policies in the territories and even China and India handle their Israel relations with care.
Closer to home, Israel is increasingly finding itself surrounded by hostile groups that have no addresses. Already HAMAS from the south and Hizbullah from the north are shrinking Israel’s rocket-fire-free zones. Moreover, it finds itself so thoroughly entangled with the Palestinians of the West Bank, an entrapment only exacerbated by the Gaza withdrawal since many Gaza settlers moved to West Bank settlements.
Within Israel, the nation no longer recognizes its early secular and socialist roots. Although a relatively rich country, its rabid capitalism has confined a quarter of its citizens to living below the poverty line. It has become increasingly religious, discriminating against non Jews and even liberal Jewish citizens. Its large orthodox population complicates life for Jewish liberals who have been consigned to Tel Aviv and its suburbs. Israel’s supposedly fringe population of settlers, accused by all of ruining the chance of a Palestinian state, can no longer be termed a fringe: the settler population in the West Bank exceeds 450,000 Jews which is almost 10% of Israel’s entire Jewish population. At its 60th birthday, Israel has become a state within a state: a democratic, secular state within a theocratic, fanatical one.
However, all is not lost for Israel, yet. It has a strong economy and a thriving democracy for its Jewish citizens and it can still count on the support of the world’s only superpower. Yet, it will not be enough. This is the moment of truth for Israel, as important a moment as its inception. Israel will have to decide the course it is wishing and willing to take. Either negotiate an end to the occupation with the Palestinians, starting with a freeze of all settlements and culminating in a secure and independent Palestinian state or live in Eretz Israel with an Arab majority. Is Israel going to give birth to a Palestinian state or is it going to vanish into the pages of history? The choice is clear. The alternatives are ethnic cleansing through genocide and more expulsions, a state of affairs even its tentative democracy, its stable economy and its relations with West cannot sustain.
The good news for Israel is that the Arabs have already committed themselves to a two-state solution in the Beirut and Riyadh summits. Even Iran has vowed to accept whatever resolution is accepted by the Palestinians. Israel should negotiate with the Palestinians without preconditions including HAMAS, a prospect that 67% of Israelis supported as early as July 2006. The Palestinian Authority, including HAMAS, has already agreed in principle to a two-state solution. Israel’s rhetoric of a dearth of peace partners serves only to perpetuate its self-inflicted wound. As Shimon Peres once warned his compatriots, “He, who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”
Read More...
Collapse Post...
As Arab Americans across the country eulogize Senator Barak Obama’s enlightened foreign policy positions and vociferously campaign for his nomination, we should understand that a president can only do so much. This is largely due to the fact that a monarchy-wary nation imposed formidable checks on the presidential powers of the executive branch. Our Congress can obstruct the president at every turn through purse strings, impeachments and, even, withholding declarations of war if it chooses to do so.
Past presidents who have been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause were severely limited by a Congress that simply toes the Israeli line, even President Bush’s aid to the Palestinians was often restricted by Congress to pay for Israeli expenditure such as building checkpoints in 2005. If Congress finds President Bush too pro-Palestinian, surely Senator Obama is in for a ride.
America’s one-sided support of Israel and the Israeli prism through which it views Middle Eastern policy are detrimental to American national interests, a fact that has been much debated, regurgitated, and confirmed by pundits and academics alike. The reason for the seeming contradiction is domestic policy. The pro-Israel lobby machine with all its think tanks, civil rights organizations, pro-Israel PACs, journalists, and politicians has a strong presence in Washington’s halls of power and even more impressively they put their money where their loud mouths are.
The combination of a strong lobby and an American public that is ignorant and uninterested in Palestine and, yes, Israel makes for a very pliant Congress, a good reason why you have probably never seen a senator or a representative of the House criticize Israel on national media. To do so would be political suicide. There are a few brave souls like James Abourezk who have paid a dear price and a few exceptions like Chuck Hagel of Nebraska who spoke out for Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese war.
Yet, still, we don’t see Chuck Hagel running for president. Despite Barak Obama’s strong pro-Israel stance during the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006 and his insistence that Israel has a right to defend itself as Gazans broke free from their oversized prison, Israeli media slaps him with the crippling label: “bad for Israel”, as if they ever knew what was good for her. The reality is an American president that is good for Israel must help wean the country off the Palestinian lands it occupies.
As it turns out, Barak Obama simply has to play the game if he is to win the presidency. His good intentions to the Palestinians are well known. He has recently commented that “no body is suffering more than the Palestinian people” and somehow still managed to stay in the race for the democratic nomination. When Howard Dean remarked that the United States should be unbiased in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the democratic primary in 2004, the walls of his campaign collapsed right around him.
Mr. Obama is also refreshingly diplomatic about handling Iran and the nuclear threat that it poses. His understanding of foreign policy would make it unlikely that he plays the stooge for any set of advisers as has happened with the current president. Moreover, his stance toward Arab dictators may not be as conciliatory.
Our hope in the Man of Hope should not be overstated, however. This is still the same political system with the same players. A strong and credible Arab Lobby is sorely needed. There are a few Arab and Muslim civil rights groups like the ADC and CAIR, educational ones such as the AAI, but there is no political action committee that can lobby the US government on behalf of Arab and Muslim Americans, and indeed all Americans, to find a just solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to reverse its more pernicious side effects: sclerotic Arab dictatorships and a deficit of human rights in the region.
At the end of the day, Barak Obama is the best possible choice for Arab Americans but he will not suffice. Or as he so beautifully put it, we are the change we seek!
Read More...
Collapse Post...
