Tariq Ali on Gaza, Boycotts, and the One-state Solution in the LRB

Below you can find the full text of Tariq Ali's recent comments on Gaza for the LRB--one point of interest in particular is his mention of the US Army's recently published document on "Hamas and Israel" (Ali links to it as well), which notes that Hamas seemed ready to alter their position on Israel's 'right to exist' even before the blockade. Ali also refers to a recent call by 500 Israelis to Western Embassies in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions:

A few weeks before the assault on Gaza, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army published a levelheaded document on ‘Hamas and Israel’, which argued that ‘Israel’s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by Hamas in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence – legal, territorial, political and economic – has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking.’ Whatever their reservations about the organisation, the authors of the paper detected signs that Hamas was considering a shift of position even before the blockade:

It is frequently stated that Israel or the United States cannot ‘meet’ with Hamas (although meeting is not illegal; materially aiding terrorism is, if proven) because the latter will not ‘recognise Israel’. In contrast, the PLO has ‘recognised’ Israel’s right to exist and agreed in principle to bargain for significantly less land than the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it is not clear that Israel has ever agreed to accept a Palestinian state. The recognition of Israel did not bring an end to violence, as wings of various factions of the PLO did fight Israelis, especially at the height of the Second (al- Aqsa) Intifada. Recognition of Israel by Hamas, in the way that it is described in the Western media, cannot serve as a formula for peace. Hamas moderates have, however, signaled that it implicitly recognises Israel, and that even a tahdiya (calming, minor truce) or a hudna, a longer-term truce, obviously implies recognition. Khalid Mish’al states: ‘We are realists,’ and there is ‘an entity called Israel,’ but ‘realism does not mean that you have to recognise the legitimacy of the occupation.’

The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa. The alternative, clearly, is a single state for Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all. Certainly it seems utopian at the moment with the two Palestinian parties in Israel – Balad and the United Arab List – both barred from contesting the February elections. Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, has breathed a sigh of satisfaction: ‘Now that it has been decided that the Balad terrorist organisation will not be able to run, the first battle is over.’ But even victory has its drawbacks. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Isaac Deutscher warned his one-time friend Ben Gurion: ‘The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase “Mann kann sich totseigen!” — you can triumph yourself to death. This is what the Israelis have been doing. They have bitten off much more than they can swallow.’

Five hundred courageous Israelis have sent a letter to Western embassies calling for sanctions and other measures to be applied against their country, echoing the 2005 call by numerous Palestinian organisations for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the South African model. This will not happen overnight but it is the only non-violent way to help the struggle for freedom and equality in Israel-Palestine.

PAKISTAN

Today, as the American campaign in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province continues despite continued protests in Pakistan (protests which started after last Wednesday’s first publicly-acknowledged ground raid by American forces on Pakistani soil), a few notes on the current political situation in that country:

After some under-the-table dealings with the always-intrigue-inclined US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has been sworn in as president of Pakistan. As Tariq Ali noted recently in an article for Comment is free, Zardari is poised to be a particularly pliant leader, the Pakistani equivalent of neocon favorite Hamid Karzai. Zardari is indebted, after all, to American neoconservatives (most notably, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad) not just for his new position as president but also for reversing the freeze on his Swiss bank accounts (the second richest person in Pakistan, Zardari’s accounts had been frozen due to pending corruption charges).

To be fair, as Graham Usher points out in this week’s Al-Ahram, none of the charges leveled against Zardari by Pakistani intelligence agencies (for which the new president spent eleven years in jail) have managed to stick in court, and moreover, following Benazir’s death last winter, Zardari did managed to form the largest coalition in the history of Pakistan, unseating a military ruler in the process. But Zardari’s shady financial dealings, not to mention his disdain for Pakistani lawyers and his reluctance to restore the country’s judiciary—his fear of the rule of law, as Usher calls it—still leave him one of the most loathed figures in Pakistan, particularly among intellectuals and the urban middle class.

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At a talk given on 11 September at the London Review Bookshop--coinciding with the release of his latest book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Tariq Ali offered a brief political history of Pakistan, as well as an analysis of the most recent developments--some, according to Ali, quite unprecedented--in Pakistani politics: last year's "forced arranged marriage" between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf; Bhutto's assassination; the election of her widower (and current head of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party), Asif Ali Zardari, as Pakistan's president; and the raids carried out in recent weeks by US Special Ops in the border regions of Pakistan, unsanctioned by the Pakistani government. Pakistan's dependence on the United States (coming mostly in the form of military aid) and the US's "partial dependence" on Pakistan as a regional ally dates back, Ali says, to the early 1950s, when the US was appealed to by Pakistani political elites to fill the vacuum left by the British on the eve of the creation of the Pakistani state. The US's interest in the region lay primarily in India, according to Ali, until India become a major player in the non-Aligned movement and the US, fearing a Vietnam-style "domino effect" in the region, began assembling a network of security pacts, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Central Asian Trade Organization, and the Baghdad pact, all of which were buttressed by the United States and Great Britain. The years 1958-1969 saw a military dictatorship (that of Ayub), backed by Washington, until mass mobilizations in October 1968--calling for Pakistan's withdrawal from all security pacts with the West--toppled the regime, and eventually led to the secessionist movement in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Ali was quick to point out that the 1968 insurrection in Pakistan was the only one of the fabled mass movements of '68 that actually succeeded. The dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, from 1977-1988 was, according to Ali, the darkest period of Pakistan's history to date; it "brutalized" the political culture of Pakistan, and brought religion to the forefront of Pakistani politics in a way that was unprecedented in the history of the state. During the Zia dictatorship, the state poured money into Islamic organizations, giving them control of education and communication ministries, which facilitated the spread of their anti-secularist and anti-radical messages. Mass purges of these elements in the country's political establishments ensued. As in Afghanistan, the money Washington gave to Pakistan's leadership during this time went toward funding those who are now denounced as terrorists, and Pakistan during this period (particuarly during the Afghan-Soviet war) was conceived of in Washington as a frontline in the war not on terror, but on communism.

As far as recent developments go, Ali finds that the mobilizations in favor of the embattled judiciary that consumed Pakistan during the last 18 or so months of Musharraf's rule as the most pivotal, and heartening, events in recent memory in Pakistan--though notes that these were so little reported on in the Western press because of Pakistan (and Musharraf's) perceived status as allies of Washington and Britain. He laments the ease with which the PPP accepted that Benazir's son should inherit leadership of the party, with her widower at the helm until her son comes of age. Calling Asif Ali Zardari "the most corrupt politician even in Pakistan's chequered history", he notes that if it comes out that Zardari had prior knowledge of Bush's secret order authorizing raids into Pakistan, his time as President will surely be cut short. Ali also remarked on the unpredecented warning the head of Pakistan's military gave to Washington, saying that if American forces do mount an invasion into the sovereign territory of Pakistan, they will be resisted. And though he is loath of conspiracy theorizing, Ali did wonder whether or not the recent raids, aimed at creating a "mini-war" situation in Pakistan, were designed to bolster the campaign of John McCain. Ali ultimately finds an "incredibly grim situation" in Pakistan at the current moment, with little to no alternative for a population caught between the military and political corruption that have been part and parcel of Pakistan virtually from its founding. With the war in Afghanistan going horribly (and with the vast majority of the Pakistani population being fundamentally opposed to NATO actions in the region), Ali says that the next weeks and months in Pakistan are critical; yet he admits that more innocent people can be expected to die as Washington toys with the idea of opening a new front in its sorrowful "war on terror". The solutions for Pakistan are land reforms, to modernize the countryside and bring the poor peasantry of Pakistan into a national political dialogue, as well as a regional solution involving India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia (because NATO and the West are so completely mistrusted), aimed at bringing about at least twenty years of peace so that the Pakistani population might have time to psychologically recover, and so that social reconstruction might be given a chance.

Paging Cohn-Bendit, Bensaid

For the Guardian, Tariq Ali reflects on the various irruptions in progressive politics that took place between 1965-75, on this, the anniversary of the founding of the 22 March movement in Nanterre in 1968. We're generally wary of nostalgic evocations of '68, as well as its totemic status in Western left politics; Ali's piece, however, is analytic rather than elegiac.

Well-Made World 28

A mishmash for today's update.

First, we turn to yesterday's referendum in Venezuela, which ended in defeat for Hugo Chavez and his plan for advancing Venezuela along the path to a 'socialist' state. Tariq Ali, calling attention to the unprecedentedly low turnout among voters, proposes--while citing analysts of Venezuelan politics--that Chavez's main mistake was to rush the referendum process, which gave the Venezuelan populace little time to take in its implications, while also giving his critics, both in Latin America and Washington, that his rule is an authoritarian one. Ali, ever hopeful, says that this is not, by any stretch, Chavez's downfall.

We turn now to the recent "peace conference" in Annapolis, which Azmi Bishara has termed "Madrid redux"--an analogy all too depressing in its accuracy. Bishara is far too coherent and attentive to detail for us to venture any quick summation of his article, so we must turn you, with no undue urgency, over to him.

And, finally, it is being reported that, in fact, Iran began bowing to international pressure as early as 2003 by ending its project to develop a nuclear arsenal. That, though, is not stopping French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner from sticking to the militaristic line vis-a-vis Iran that he's encouraged since being brought into the fold of Nicolas Sarkozy's government, or from Stephen Hadley saying that pressure must still be kept on Iran to not, er, misbehave. Hypocrisy, while suffering a slight setback, still rules the day!

Well-Made World 23

Today, one-half of No Empires attended a lecture by Slavoj Zizek at the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities in London. We normally reserve little sympathy for Zizek's popular obtuseness--not to mention his deplorable rock star-cum-intellectual demeanor--but he remains a powerful and intellectually responsible force of the Left. We bring to you Zizek's piece from today's Guardian, which gives, in crystallized form, the basis of today's lecture. Zizek in person, incidentally, is sloppy as fuck, and given to any number of distracting nervous tics.

Tariq Ali weighs in on the bloodshed that awaited Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan, pointing out not only the vanity that characterized her 'show of strength' in the streets of Karachi, but also the outstanding charges of corruption against her which may yet find her serving time behind bars, to the hypocritical pleasure of the Musharraf government and its demand for "justice."

In an incredible interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the recent Nobel-prize recipient Doris Lessing called out Americans for failing to view 9-11 in the context of the "terrible" actions of the IRA in England. After making this somewhat far-fetched comparison (and without making allowances for the differences between sustained colonial resistance that, as this article from the Guardian points out, resulted in the deaths of more than 3,700 people over thirty years, as opposed to terrorist acts that killed almost 3,000 people in one day), Lessing went on to praise Lee Bollinger's treatment of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling it "marvelous!" Uh, well done, Doris.

Well-Made World 17

Europe

Loose directs us to a missive from Terry Eagleton, on the Guardian's blog, calling curtains on Britain's centuries-old tradition of subversive/contrarian writers--making an exception for Harold Pinter, who, Eagleton admits, may only be offering a form of "champagne socialism." Unsurprisingly, TE's examples are overwhelmingly male, though he does toss in the obligatory Virginia Woolf/"Three Guineas" reference, and notes the brief flashes of Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing. Still, Eagleton's contemporary targets (Larkin, Hare, Rushdie, Amis the Younger, et al.) are worthy ones.

The "War on Terror"

Some of the most "well-behaved" prisoners at Guantanamo, many of whom have been slated for release for upwards of a year, have recently been awarded new freedoms including access to select films once a week and limited access to tv. This and other "concessions" to detainees, rather than softening the image of the atrocious conditions at Guantanamo, highlight the absolute horror that is the system, and the dangerous paranoia that prevents detainees from doing just about anything. Read Andy Worthington on these new developments here.

Near East/ The "Muslim World"

No Empires admits to our own lack of analytical depth re: the situation obtaining in Pakistan since the military coup that put Gen. Pervez Musharraf in (increasingly shaky and dubious) power in 1999. It is, without a doubt, a country that has, for ideologically nefarious reasons, found itself swirling in the politics of George Bush's "War on Terror." But this month's seige at the "Red Mosque" in Islamabad, which had been brewing for months, certainly helps us place things in some perspective, at least as much as the previous crisis over the Pakistani judiciary did. We defer, for the moment, to Tariq Ali, who finds that the Pakistani electorate is hesitant to side with either of the groups--in Ali's words, "the Judges or the jihadis"--that have drawn the ire of Musharraf's authoritarian regime.

Richard Falk takes on the difficult, and often morally/politically dubious, task of drawing parallels between the approach of Israel and the "international community" toward Gaza, and the record of "collective atrocity" left in the wake of the Third Reich. There is, of course, nothing that galls Israel's supporters more than equivalences of this sort, which Falk is extremely careful in drawing out; what is preferred, of course, is an Israeli monopoly on the legacy and moral resonance of the Holocaust, which is cynically used to justify Israel's deplorable behavior. For more on what has been called "The Holocaust Industry", see the work of Norman Finkelstein.

The Independent has published a downright horrifying preview of interviews with American veterans of the War in Iraq, conducted by the Nation magazine. It's all here: utterly racist disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians; hackneyed "information-gathering" techniques; unencumbered bloodlust; and psychological destruction of both civilians and G.I.'s. Harrowing reading ahead, but is anyone all that surprised?

An IRIN report reveals that the Iraqi Ministry of Finanace is now offering life insurance, as well as bodyguards, to Iraq's university professors. Iraq's education system was once the envy of the Near East; a decade-plus of UN-sponsored economic sanctions--not to mention Saddam Hussein's well-documented paranoia and anti-intellectualism--irrevocably changed this situation. George Bush's war has brought the death of more than 200 professors, and the flight of thousands more.

In a charged piece for Al-Ahram Weekly, reprinted at the Electronic Intifada, Columbia's Joseph Massad rails against the subversion of Palestinian democracy that has been taking place over the past year-and-a-half.

Following her death on March 16, 2003, the parents of Rachel Corrie (subject of one of the best plays in recent memory, finally brought to the Minetta Lane theater last winter) filed a civil suit against Caterpillar, Inc. the American company that has a contract with Israel and provides it with the bulldozers that are regularly used to destroy Palestinian homes, a particularly long-standing and odious instance of illegal collective punishment. A judge dismissed the case in 2005, but Corrie's parents have moved to have the case reopened, citing the spuriousness of Caterpillar's original argument that they just couldn't possbily have known, and therefore have taken responsibility for, what Israel intended to do with their bulldozers.

The U.S.

The New York Times reports on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which would see the installment of hundreds of cameras to monitor car (and, presumably, foot) traffic from the East River to the Hudson, to the tune of $90 million.

In a piece for Le Monde Diplomatique, Alex Cockburn writes on the sluggishness of the American anti-war movement, and points out that, for an anti-war demonstration to be "memorable and effective," it has to be "edgy, not comfortable"--something No Empires has grappled with recently, in the wake of our attending in June the first-ever protest specifically directed against the Israeli occupation.

Rudy Giuliani's campaign takes a hit in the South, as Rep. David Vitter becomes ensconced in his own hypocrisy. Sinner! No Empires isn't sure who we'd like to see drop out, or drop dead, first: Giuliani, or John McCain.

Well-Made World #5

• No Empires will never understand why the US Army thinks this scheme will work.
• The ever-reliable, and brave, Patrick Cockburn interviews one of the most infamous "jackals" (Tariq Ali's phraseology) of the new Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, who, incredibly, was left off of the original "NO EMPIRES HATES" list.
  
• Sorry to be blunt, Mr. Tenet, but fuck your book tour, and fuck you. Too little, too late.
• Ashley Dawson explains that "while the World Bank's official inquiry denounces the Goodfellas-style strong-arm tactics and scatological language he employed during his tenure as president, it fails to focus on the broader forms of corruption promoted by Wolfowitz. Nor does it allude to the disastrously wrong-headed lending policies that ensure that the Bank's baneful influence will linger long after Wolfowitz's exit." She cites "fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic" appointment procedures at the World Bank and points to a "cronyism at the top extends far beyond Wolfowitz's shady package for his girlfriend" before going on to discuss the Bank's disasterous energy lending policies, which, of course, are unlikely to change once the Bank drops Wolfowitz.
• Bill Fletcher is a former president and executive of the TransAfrica forum, and he's rightly skeptical about the Obama candidacy.
• Ali Abunimah, the indefatigable, continues to push for a one-state solution in Palestine/Israel.
• Yesterday, the NYPD released as-yet-classified internal documents regarding its (extensive/costly/downright fucking frightening) preparation for the actions taken against the Republican National Convention in 2004. The New York Times, apparently looking to flex its "social conscience" muscle behind the ACLU (Mr. Keller, No Empires is not buying it!) has some feedback.
• No Empires supports single-payer health insurance, though this may, for now, be a losing battle: "The US ranked last [among Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand) in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician."
• Regular contributor John Loose brings us an update on Washington's continuing and nefarious machinations in Venezuela.

well-made world #2

• "Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack." tariq ali on "bush's zombie," tony blair.
• haaretz's indomitable amira hass on biometric "smart cards" for palestinians.
• the latest on the abduction of bbc reporter alan johnston, who no empires respects as the pre-eminent western journalist working in gaza at the time of his kidnapping.
• electronic iraq on the destruction of the tigris, now a "graveyard of bodies"
• today in the bronx at about 2:30pm, no empires noticed road blockages--duly enforced by NYPD trucks and vans--between 161 st and 158 st on river avenue, directly under the 4 train, outside of yankee stadium. see this article about the singing of "god bless america" at the stadium during the seventh inning. no empires does not approve.
• no empires loves bernie williams.

LATE EDIT(S):
Taking its place alongside Dreams of a Nation, curated by Columbia's Hamid Dabashi--and developed concurrently with a volume of the same name printed by Verso and featuring essays by Michel Khleifi, Bashir Abu-Manneh, Ella Shohat, Joseph Massad, and Dabashi--is the Emily Jacir-curated Palestinian Revolution Cinema. Review at the Electronic Intifada.

and thanks to john loose once again,
more on blair by tariq ali.