This picture popped up on Reddit yesterday, with the comment “This takes guts.”

The picture immediately moved me for a number of reasons, and so I posted it to my Facebook Profile with the following comment:

if you can understand that 95% of americans look at this picture and feel more terrified of the man with the flag than the man with the assault rifle, then you will understand the root of the problem, the conceptual basis of racism (and its implicit …self-justification), and the reason behind american acquiescence to apartheid

This started a spirited discussion, with a commenter remarking:

My understanding of the “root of the problem” (let me know if you agree with this interpretation): for those Americans who are not Arab or Muslim, an Israeli soldier has never and will never pose any threat to them or their identity. A small subset of Palestinian nationalists are associated with groups who preach hatred toward Americans and wish to… do harm to Americans. Many of the people who fear the nationalist more probably are racist, but as a white, Christian American, you could ask yourself, “Who out of these two people is more likely to dislike me on the basis of my superficial identity?” if they know nothing of your personal opinions. Similarly, who would you be more afraid of in Compton, an armed white police officer or an African-American man with black nationalist paraphernalia? The issue is that people are evaluated collectively rather than as individuals, but this is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it’s hard to avoid.

So how do you move forward?

I was not satisfied with that, and so responded:

the reason that americans’ don’t feel threatened by the man with the gun, either personally or on the level of ‘identity,’ is because they are one and the same. an american can’t feel threatened by anyone who would brandish a weapon against a palestinian, because on a self-justifiable level, that’s the only thing that makes sense. the american … attitude towards the israeli-palestinian reality is that, on looking at this picture, they don’t see one man with a gun and one man with a flag, but one man with the gun, standing between the one man with the flag and his terrorist cohorts, and oblivion. an american will look at this picture and feel threatened *on the behalf* of the man with the gun, because he represents the wall between ‘us and them.’ that’s because he’s white, wearing a soldier’s uniform, and brandishing a weapon that looks like the ones we see ‘our boys’ with in movies. a palestinian, on the other hand, would look at this picture and see an unarmed man standing up against a heavily armed man, one who they know cannot be held accountable for his actions. a palestinian looks at this picture and sees an allegory to his own existence.

so no, i disagree. if a black man in compton sees a white police officer, he sees whatever he sees (and i’m not black and i don’t live in compton so i won’t presume to know what that is…). i, however, know that if i was in compton and i saw that white cop, i’d feel that he was there to help *me.* and as an example, no matter how ‘enlightened’ anyone is, in his book ‘blink’ malcolm gladwell demonstrates that all white people will respond that way. regardless, the racism implicit in that gut-reaction is the belief that the white police officer is there for a good reason. he’s armed for a good reason. he can respond with force based on government authority, and for good reason.

the american looking at this picture doesn’t notice at all its explicit imbalance. he believes that the soldier is there for good reason, is armed for good reason, and is needed to maintain the barrier between the scary looking dark skinned man, and the West.

the american doesn’t just empathize with the soldier and fear the arab. the american *is* the soldier, and for that reason is incapable of empathizing with the arab.

The commenter responded:

the worst of what people do is what generates the most media attention. thus, americans learn about terrorist attacks by palestinians and become afraid of them as a group. people throughout the muslim world learn about american drones bombing wedding parties in afghanistan and are filled with generalized anger towards americans. the media doesn’t … help things, but they play on the way our minds work, and if you don’t personally know someone on “the other side,” it’s hard to break through those mental barriers. this is why getting to know you, will, is important in changing the perceptions of people in the middle east without much personal exposure to americans, and also why it is necessary that the average american gets to know one of the “scary dark people” as a person rather than a stereotype. your existence, sir, is validated

At this point we were obviously not getting very far, and probably in agreement, but because I am a jerk and this was my Facebook wall, I demanded the last word:

one in one hundred people i meet in the middle east are ‘filled with generalized anger towards americans.’ one in three americans i meet are “afraid of them (i assume you mean arabs) as a group.” it has nothing to do with terrorism or attack drones or media or anything. it’s the simple fact that americans feel that anyone on the wrong end of a … white soldier in green fatigues with an american-made weapon is, by definition, at fault and to be feared. feared to such a degree as to deem it an immediate threat. more threatening than the things that really hurt them, like usurious bank loans, or cancer, or drunk driving. i would venture that it’s not the media that programs the american to assume that the israeli is right and the palestinian is wrong – it’s the simple fact that calling into question the existence of the israeli soldier, let alone his actions, would expose the american to existential questions he or she is unwilling to ask. such as, “what does my support of the soldier and my fear of the arab, say about the ethics and morals i have as a human being.”

I think the important thing here to remember is that in this picture, it is the Israeli, not the Palestinian, that is armed, but to most of the West, it is the Palestinian who inherently looks scarier, even if the person knows nothing about their conflict, because he is of darker skin than the soldier. This has been proven in a number of studies, often referenced by Malcolm Gladwell in his books Blink, The Tipping Point, and Outliers. Even people of darker skin are proven to have this prejudice.

Well fine – But what is even more curious is that, in this case, the self-justification that immediately arises if the viewer knows anything about the conflict. If that is the case, then the viewer, if they are (as is likely the case if they are American) sympathetic to the Israeli cause, will say to him or herself “well of course the Israeli must be armed, the Palestinians are so mean looking and scary!” And they do not stop to question the moral issue at hand. At what point is it reasonable to assume that an unarmed man is more terrifying than an armed man, solely on the basis on prejudice? We do this all the time – we take guns out of the hands of citizens (as in the case in countless states, counties and municipalities), but we don’t question that police should be armed. Or, as the commenter points out, we feel less threatened by white police (even if we are not white) then blacks dressed as militants, and we support the police officer’s right to be armed, and to use deadly force, and are frightened if the black man is.

Of course that means that we have made a value judgment that the police officer (and the Israeli soldier) is armed because the opposition is so scary, but we fail to question the system of thought that leads to the value judgment – That is, that the police officer and the soldier are empowered by a state that is controlled by the very people that find the opposition threatening, thus completing a nice little bit of circular reasoning that ultimately grants power to the strong and stigmatizes the weak. The moment the weak choose to resort to violence in an effort to destabilize this unjust relationship between the powerful and the police, the stigmatization becomes even more justified, inevitably to the degree that the weak becomes a terrorist, and therefore may be fought, “without prejudice,” no matter how prejudicial the conflict really is.

1. I live at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. One can get a tan just by walking around
2. I spent Saturday at “Lazy B,” a wonderful little cabana-style resort south of Beirut.
3. I spent most of Sunday sitting in no-man’s-land at the Syrian border in the sun. For five hours. Just to be in Syria for forty five minutes.

I want to remark on this last point -  “Why did you go to Syria, Will?” Well, dear reader, it’s because my visa was going to expire and they changed the rules in Lebanon requiring an exit stamp to leave at the airport if you’re in your third month of a tourist visa. But I couldn’t get an exit stamp because my visa was going to expire in two days, so they told me ‘just go to Syria – you don’t need an exit stamp.’ Of course, going to Syria means waltzing into one of the most skeptical-of-Americans nation in the world – they purposefully make you wait forever if you’re American to dissuade you from coming back – or something, I’m not really quite sure (they fax the information to Damascus – who knows how long it sits next to a cup of coffee there). Luckily, they let me in after I got a mean tan – I had to be out of the country for “a few minutes” according to Lebanese authorities in order to renew my visa.

Unfortunately, I have renewed my tourist visa too many times, so they confiscated my passport on the way back into Lebanon, and I spent this morning at General Security sorting things out.

But, thankfully, this series of events brought to bare one of those keen little existential moments that sometimes come along and really force an expatriate to come to grips with their experience. This Sartre-ian moment was made extra poignant, I believe, because I am approaching (tomorrow) my eight month anniversary in Beirut, and will be returning to America in two weeks.

So before I go and jump the shark here with some shmrarmy expatriate psychological meandering (although I already have), let me illustrate the situation I faced this morning with the nice Lieutenant in charge of interrogating (that is to say, politely questioning and taking everything I had to say absolutely at face value… seriously) me:

Lieutenant: “What is it you’re doing in Lebanon.”

Me: “How much time do we have?”

Lieutenant: “All the time in the world.”

Me: “Well we’re going to need it…”

But then I drew a blank, as I always do when people ask me what I’m doing here. Because I didn’t know – and I said as much, although I did go through the logistics of it all – who I’d worked for, where I’d quit, etc etc. – I didn’t really think more of it until after things got sorted out and I was told I’d get my passport back tomorrow with the appropriate visa and got in a cab for home.

“What is it you’re doing in Lebanon.” Why am I here? Why is any expatriate in Lebanon, let alone the Middle East – citizens of this region aren’t ignorant; they know the type of press the Middle East gets in the West. They know Americans in particular think that Lebanon is sand dunes, camels and war (when Orlando Bloom lands near Tyre in the movie Kingdom of Heaven which is set during the crusades, he literally lands on rolling Suadi-style sand dunes, and is immediately challenged by a dark-skinned sword-waving mean-toned Arab to a fight to the death).

I admit I didn’t know much about Lebanon before I came, but I knew it wouldn’t be sand dunes and camels (there are neither in Lebanon as far as I can tell). I didn’t know about war, but I assumed it would be relatively safe, an assumption that turned out to be quite true. I knew that most pictures that accompany stories about Lebanon are of the bombed out Holiday Inn – cropped out of that picture are the Lebanese Canadian Bank Headquarters, the Intercontinental Phoenicia Hotel, the Sea, and a new high-rise development under construction.

And then it struck me, on the cab-ride home – Another man had already put the equation into words, and all I had to do was realize where I stood in that equation:

“And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” – Barack Obama, Inauguration Speech

When I heard these words five months ago, I and my peers were shocked at the simplicity yet profundity of the image – the statement it made, the weight that it carried, and the challenge it proposed.

Clearly Obama was directing this statement towards the Middle East, where corruption and deceit, so often supported directly through American aid, or indirectly through American acquiescence, is the status quo here, as is blaming the West for nearly everything. His words were straightforward yet poetic – understanding of the legacy of the past, yet pointing towards a future with different rules and different expectations.

Well good for Barack Obama – I read here that his speech writer is 27. I’m sure the kid has never been to the Middle East or the larger Muslim world, although obviously President Obama has.

And this gets me to my point – Sure, it’s nice that Obama said that. Bush said similar things (minus the imagery and skilled oration). Ameriacn foreign policy is supposed to be designed to change closed fists to open and welcoming hands, though we all know that isn’t true.

In fact, Obama and the State Department owes every American living in the Middle East who isn’t a soldier or arms dealer an enormous thank you.

For who will be there to shake unclenched fists? You’d best be sure that it will eventually be some member of the State Department – Eventually. But we – those of us who live here – we’re the ones that will be changing minds and extending hands, even as our State Department issues travel-warnings to places like Lebanon that are equivalent to:

“Traveling to Lebanon will result in your immediate death.”

So, President Obama, I would like to issue you a challenge, as you did five months ago to the tyrants, dictators and extremists of the world – don’t build bridges that you and your establishment secretly intend to blow up later, and likewise, don’t rebuild bridges you blew up in the past if you intend to do it agian.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the bridge being constructed on the Damascus highway in Lebanon that I past by on Saturday – It was blown up by the Israelis with American-made weapons in 2006 for the reason that “Hezbollah might use the bridge to send Israeli hostages to Syria” as if this sole bridge was the only passable transit to Syria, and its destruction was instead not obviously a part of an Israeli attempt to punish the Lebanese as a whole by destroying their infrastructure.

The lessons are obvious – The American government has to do more than just shake hands – That’s the easy part. Myself and the many Americans who live here are busy trying to get those fists to unclench:

• Lesson 1: I am here for the simple reason that I like shaking hands, and this is a part of the world where the West needs to be doing more hand-shaking. Our President said as much.
• Lesson 2: The minds that control clenched fists have long memories and short fuses. Rebuilding a bridge that your foreign policy and foreign aid were responsible for blowing up is not a proud moment for a nation.
• Lesson 3: Few foreigners who live in the Middle East have “tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter strong and more united” – But all foreigners who live in the Middle East know that, though old hatreds may someday pass, lines of tribe will never dissolve, and that it will be private expatriate citizens, independent of government, that play the true role in “ushering in a new era of peace.”

For we are the ones that draw suspicion – we are the ones that take the risk to leave everything for foreign shores in a part of the world that our friends and family are convinced is “dangerous” – without our effort and our presence Obama’s words would ring hollow.

I believe that our reasons for leaving America and finding a new home in the Middle East are not so diverse – We knew, before President Obama said it, that we were doing more for our country and for peace with our physical presence here than the building of any bridge by the American government can accomplish.

Especially if that bridge was destroyed by American smart bombs, just three years ago.

…

More Beirut Stories are coming soon.

I will never be able to repay the debt I owe to those who’ve made this possible – even here, I see that truly it takes a village to raise Will Donovan. Perhaps more here than anywhere.

Who has arrived in Lebanon without family, with limited finances, with no contacts, and with a degree in Religion, and built a business from nothing? To those of you who have done so, you know how hard it is. To those who have not, perhaps you can imagine.

To those who have treated me like a brother, God Bless you. You will always have a place in my heart. I could not have done this without you.

To those in particular who have opened your homes and your hearts to me, thank you. There are no words to express my gratitude.

Lebanon… Lebanon is a country that order forgot, despite certain appearances to the contrary. And Beirut is a city that is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, easy yet impossible, open yet confounding. It is almost impossible to imagine or fathom the emotional, professional, or personal extremes one must grapple with to achieve the most remote success here – but maybe not so impossible – Like America, it is both crowded and lonely, aggravating and pleasing.

And I will return to America shortly to see old friends, family, and others, and I will fail spectacularly in my ability to vocalize some sort of approximation as to what Lebanon is, and what this country means to me.

How will I, for example, juxtapose freezing winter nights in a dirty hostel in Gemayze with waking up in my breezy Hamra apartment? Or counting the equivalent to pennies in order to eat, with five-course steak dinners in biblical Byblos? Or cutting project costs by 90% to earn clients, when two months later one project earned me a year’s equivalent at the Daily Star?

As Nick puts it, Lebanon is the kind of country where you struggle to choose where to have brunch on Sunday mornings, even as elections threaten to boil over into civil or regional war with even the slightest provocation by dozens of parties.

If someone ever takes stock of the expatriate life in Beirut and writes it down accurately and cohesively, I wonder how they’ll do it. Will they remark at the perpetual poverty of those AUB students who burn their allowances and rent money at Hamra and Gemayze bars? Will they marvel at the serene calm of Cafe Rawda (where I am currently writing this entry long-hand), even as he or she is surrounded by screaming Lebanese children and the constant babble of Hijab-ed women smoking endlessly on nargile? Will they make the reader see that that is actually the definition of serene? Or that this time affords one to do things like read, write, learn Chess, leave the cell phone and computer at home, and then walk along the corniche for an hour?

Will they appropriately describe the Beirut club scene in all its over-glorified detail, commenting on the degree to which it simultaneously rivals the best parties in the world, yet still manages to suck the soul, and the host’s wallet, dry? Will they remind the reader that the reason the parties are so great is because everybody seems to have acquiesced to the end of the world, long ago? BO18 was built on the scene of a massacre – is it an act of defiance to the abyss or is it a counterpart?

What will be written of children that we encounter who speak three languages fluently but who will struggle to find work in ten years? Or of our Lebanese friends who are caged by their passport inside a country that could explode at a moment’s notice?

Perhaps more importantly, how will they quantify the experience of living in a Mediterranean paradise that still bares striking scars of wars that most of us never saw and cannot understand?

Suffice to say, anyone who attempts to write it down will face a paradox, largely because we have become, in due time, a piece of the landscape, and therefore are not really capable of defining its periphery. No matter – that will be left to the poets, which I thank God I am not.

To be perfectly frank, I’ve lost large pieces of myself here, and those missing-portions of me have been replaced by something else entirely. I have witnessed profound unfairness, and also the gentle kindness and hospitality, of which I have already remarked. I’ve seen the consequences of spectacular failures in domestic and foreign policy, and I am unlikely to forget them easily.

I’ve learned to keep my head out of the clouds, even as I used to admire the cloudy malaise of a life lived longing for a deeper truth – But I’ve become convinced that a survivalist and an intellectual do not walk the same path – In fact, I find that they are so often tragically at odds with each other, especially when they are one and the same disaffected, but ultimately, more-worldly, individual.

I’m rambling – I admit.

And it’s not as if enough people read this blog anyways to pretend that what I write holds some consequence – But if you are reading, and you do care, let me say the following: I have not yet made up my mind.

What is Lebanon? It is an interesting question. I am not necessarily suited to answer it, but for reasons that I’ve shared here and with others, it is likely answer-less because there are so many “Lebanons” – there are as many Lebanons as there are people who have experienced it for a day, a week, a year, or a lifetime.

I myself do more than just live here – over time I chose to abide by its few rules. This had several consequences, the most important being that by learning to live by Lebanon’s few rules, I left behind a life lived by many rules. And doing so has changed me, and not in some way that might be quantified as “better” or “worse.”

This dichotomy (better versus worse) is something of an obsession in America – and I find it reasonable by its own right, but also misguided in its aims. For the mission of tracking life on the basis of “better” versus “worse” is the trapping of “progress” and I am really very suspicious of this goal’s aims. For what sort of life, or society, can be gridded on axes of time and progress – we are not budget items to be treated or thought of as optimize-able.

Nowhere is this more true than places like Lebanon where the goal of progress has been so clearly abandoned. There is nothing here that could be objectively tracked by labels “good” and “bad” anyways. There is only us. And we are, here, surrounded by cheesy high-rises and five-star hotels, refugee camps and two-dollar cab fairs. But (like Sisyphus) we find that we are happy.

Like anywhere else, we are detainees by our own volition, and it will take more than revolutions to end that cycle of captivity – but at least here we are closer to the edge – it is easier to look back, and also to look over the precipice.

To digress, I tried to watch several American movies this week, and I had to turn them all off before the credits ever started rolling. What is it with the trite characters, the obvious storylines, the cookie-cutter personas on-screen, that we love to watch in America? How can a human being be captured in a two hour window or even a few scenes – we don’t give a few hours of dreaming the same credibility in our lives, and at least those are self-produced, self-affecting, and self-important.

How dare we then reduce our own lives to those of our on-screen counterparts – into little slices of manipulative nonsense?

How can we stomach such easily digestible and wholly inaccurate caricatures of our own lives? How can we credit such enormous self-impact to actors we don’t know – to depth-less forms that we are told to recognize as ourselves? Have we lost our minds?

And when the consequences of popular culture and hyper-reality are tabulated, what becomes of us?

By whose measure must we obey the standards of a system that is designed to program us with this qualified conformity to a quantified system of good and bad – why pay the slightest attention to a system that is so obviously corrupt and contrived and so single-minded in its purpose to produce the forced and forceful apartheid of our individual and collective reality? Who walks out of a movie theater any more aware of the obvious and immediate parallels between the ghettos of Warsaw, Gaza and Los Angeles? And who is any more likely or willing to do something about it?

It’s just embarrassing.

Lebanon has shown me the striking imbalance of the system itself – of its perpetual call to conflict, and its disgusting demand for conformity.

Indeed, the boundary of civilization is a red light at an intersection at midnight on an empty block that still demands one’s compliance to brake and signal.

Well. People don’t stop for red lights here.

For all this country’s ills, the Lebanese don’t need to watch City of God to see punishing poverty. They don’t need to watch Hostel to see torture, or Saving Private Ryan to see war. They aren’t required to watch Superbad to define the coming of age of a teen, or to see High School Musical to witness the pornographic overtones of a society gone mad.

The Lebanese dance when there is rhythm worth dancing to, cry when their homes are buried by American-made and Israeli-deployed smart bombs, and are perfectly aware of, and content with, the pornographic evidence of a society gone mad.

They are not so easily fooled by rigged elections that favor the powerful and the status quo, nor are they so lacking in awareness as to miss the fact that there are few promises in this world, and the time and place that one is born bares the most significant consequence as to whether a child will grow up to be wealthy.

They do not have adjustable rate mortgages or 0% interest credit cards, but they can get cheap loans for plastic surgery.

And they will, as far as I can tell, never stop to consider what might happen is they fail to brake (or even yield) at a red light at midnight. Or even at noon.

So to my friends and family, ignore my new-found impatience with well-formed and orderly lines at Starbucks, or Black Berry wielding captains of industry, whether they be twenty, forty or sixty.

I’ve finally realized what Ecclesiastes meant – and though I’ll embrace the vanity of the Western lifestyle both in Beirut and in America when it suits me, I will never again set myself in alignment to it. The order of our lives, I’ve learned, is nothing compared to the order of life’s unexpected impositions, and that is a fact no matter what family or time one is born into. Whether we choose to sit quietly while the world and its well-heeled and well-bred leadership flush us down the drain, or instead make the choice to recognize and reject the cost of the Americanized corporate primacy that demands near total-vanity, is up to us.

The Lebanese and those who live among them will smile as they purchase souped up BMW’s that they can’t afford, or blow a good chunk of next month’s rent on a night out, but they do so knowingly, and are aware that there are more important things than money: Family, friendship, connections, favors, wasta, and relaxing at Cafe Rawda watching the sun set. They know that a bank can repossess their car, but for the most part they’ve seen enough to know that such transient things hold little weight when compared to the value of kin and clan. And as such they reject the very basis of modern capitalism: An individual is not a credit score, and that almost nothing is under control.

Beirut is nothing more than that question, and that answer – and I cannot thank enough, or be more weary, of the paradox that I’ve discovered here – perhaps equally of importance, I’m keenly aware that this paradox is everywhere – it is unavoidable. And neither the television nor Google will ever educate us properly as to the truth of the matter.

I can only wonder at what its taught me so far, and what it holds further down the road.

Eight months in Beirut – we’ll just have to see what happens next.

I wanted to share these: The first is from the nightclub White, the second from Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, and the third are from the Sea Club Sporting (they call it a beach club but there’s no beach so I refuse to honor that title, even though it’s an awesome place.

First, White – didn’t expect to be back so soon but I had a great night out there and managed to get some reasonable pictures with the phone.

Next, a frightening and bizzarre experience at Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, which might as well have been somewhere in the Mid West or Boston or something. A truly strange experience to walk out of Beirut and into Chilli’s!

Finally, the wonderful club Sporting – I took a 360-Degree set of shots from where we (Me, Catherine and Nick) were sitting – you can see Rouche, the Sea, South Beirut, and the Ferris Wheel at the Amusement Park.

I also had lunch at the restaurant at the Club, which sits above the main pool areas – we were sitting to the far right:

That’s all for now – Hope all is well with everyone

I am going to post a long email I wrote to Ned recently. Some back story (from Ned):

An Ithaca alum went to Palestine last summer and wrote a piece about her work with the palestinian civilians who are affected by the war. She wrote an editorial supporting the civilians who usually get lumped together with Hamas and blamed for the conflict. This piece was published in the IC View, an Ithaca Newspaper sent to parents and alums, and available online for students. Many of these alums, family members, and students rose up in arms against this particular piece, calling it an anti-jew piece, and a pro-hamas piece. I’ve read it a couple times, and with the exception of a sentence i think she worded incorrectly, I can’t find any evidence of this. The president of IC came out and issued a formal apology stating that a new process of review for pieces submitted to the IC View is going to be instated, and he forced the editor to also publish an apology. To me (and many other students and alums) this piece was not in the wrong, and what they’re instating sounds a whole lot like Censorship. Can you read these and give me some insight as someone who is both geographically close and has great interest in the area it involves as to if I’m in the wrong here, and this piece should not have been published, or if the school is merely being pushed around by some donors.

Emily’s article: http://ithaca.edu/icview/5148/
President Rochon’s Response: http://www.ithaca.edu/icview/5269/
Maura’s Apology: http://www.ithaca.edu/icview/5270/

This situation literally infuriated me. If you read this girl’s article, it is ANYTHING but an anti-Israeli or a pro-Palestinian piece. Anything but. Please see image to the left if you have any doubt. The boy in the yamaka and the girl in conservative dress are clearly attacking an old woman wearing a hijab. ’nuff said – This stuff happens. The men in the background wearing green are Israeli soldiers…. sure don’t look like they’re doing much, does it?

So I sat down and wrote Ned back. This is what I wrote. It is long, and it is a diatribe, and it has spelling errors, and it has grammatical errors, and it is in all lower case. Sorry for all of that. But it was how I felt at the time, and I pray that Ned puts down the theatrical stuff for a few minutes and spends some time trying to bring academic integrity back to his school. I invite any comments or questions.

ned – to call this a pro-hamas piece is rather pathetic, given that it addresses the west bank, where hamas does not maintain any control – the west bank is controlled by israel, and politically under the guidance of the palestinian authority, which is governed mainly by the fatah political organization, a remnant of the palstininian liberation organization (PLO).

to call it incendiary is rather pathetic too – consider for example your friend’s statement that:

“But challenge them they must. When it comes to Israeli settlement activity, much more is at stake than the allocation of land and resources. Unchecked settler extremism is fostering a culture of violence that shapes the perspectives and experiences of everyone there. Its legacy will touch West Bank communities — no matter their ethnic composition — for generations to come.”

She is essentially saying that it is the responsibility of the Israeli soldiers who occupy, police, and essentially govern the west bank to control the situation and stop any violence perpetrated by anyone against anyone. it would be, for example, ridiculous (although it has happened) for an irish police officer in boston to not stop a mob of irishmen (whom we by blood related to, you and i) from beating up an italian baker. the irish police officer is tasked with defending the community, the state, and the constitution of both Massachusetts and the united states of america. as such, he (or she) is charged with defending the integrity of the law – the law in israel is quite clear on one thing, however – that israelis have more rights that palestnians living within the confines of occupation in the west bank (or ‘greater israel’ depending on how you look at it), but it is the responsibility of israeli soldiers to protect anyone in israel (including the west bank) who is under duress. palestinian included.

i’m really at a loss here – there is nothing inflammatory about what she has to say. she could have, for example, come to beirut and seen the children i tutor at sabra – the children who’s families are forbidden to return to their ancestral homeland, forbidden from working in the lebanese economy, and who underwent extraordinary stress at the hands of the phalangists and the idf and the amal group during the civil and camp wars of the 80′s, when many thousands of palestinian civilians were killed here in lebanon.

she could have said many things – she could have attacked the occupation, she could have attacked the very nature of the settlements – their illegality under international law, their conspicuous concordance to genocide, their overall obsenity to justice. she could have said all sorts of things – but the one thing she does not do is support hamas, support violence, support terrorism, be it israeli or arab – she does not call for the end of the occupation, she does not call for the end of settlements, she merely states that it is the responsibility of those who choose (or are forced) to live in the west bank to be good neighbors. to strengthen the bonds of peace.

those living in america clearly do not understand the conflict for what it is, especially the place of hamas – hamas does not operate in the west bank. hamas operates in gaza – both gaza and the west bank share commonality in terms of israeli durress, and palestinian heritage, but in terms of leadership, they are quiet different – also in terms of israeli existence in those two spaces, they are quite different. israel unilaterally “pulled out” of gaza in 2006 so theoretically there are no israelis there (theoretically) – this is not the case in the west bank – not only is israel there in force, but they make no qualms about calling it an occupied area – in fact they generally assume that it is not the west bank – that it is israel, and not palestine. and even if they ‘pulled out’ of the west bank, they are not under any circumstances going to give up settlements or certain areas of the west bank (such as the five star resorts on the dead sea)

so – what’s my point. my point is that nothing she wrote warrants an apology – she presents both sides in her article. almost nothing justifies violence and absolutely nothing justifies terrorism – she is merely stating that people should be aware that there is consistently violence perpetrated against palestinians by israeli settlers in the west bank – the west bank if an occupied zone which the international community generally recognizes as such, as does israel. it is therefore the basic human responsibility of israel to ensure that the quality of life, and the human security, of the palestinians living within their confines are at the very least reasonable – forget settlements, forget occupation, forget all of that – it is completely reasonable for your friend to address the issue that israeli soldiers must, at the very least, prohibit israeli settlements from acting violently against their palestinian neighbors, just as it is their responsibility to keep palestinians from attacking israelis. that is a fact of life.

your friend is not saying, for example, that ‘this is what i heard is going on’ – she is saying ‘this is what i saw.’ what she saw was through a window, a looking glass, of course – what she saw was just a slice of the picture, a small portrait. but what she saw is far more illustrative and demonstrative of the reality on the ground and the condition of the west bank than any american who has not been there can say. it is morally abhorrent and inconceivably anti-academic to suggest that what she is saying is somehow anti-semetic or pro-terrorism – she was not in gaza, therefore she has nothing to say about hamas. and though fatah can easily be called a terrorist organization, it still lacks the basic features of scholarly intelligence and academic pursuit to suggest that this young lady, emily mcneil, was doing anything other than telling her side of the story. she said what is plainly obvious to anyone who has actually been there: that what is happening to the palestinians in the west bank is rather tragic, given that the least the israeli soldiers tasked with guarding could do is protect them from violence, foreign and domestic.

so personally, i think you should tell anyone who has anything to say about it to pack a bag and travel to ramallah, or come to beirut and see what it’s like first hand. nobody has the right to talk about it unless they’ve been there and seen it. nobody has the right to tell anyone else’s story but their own. your president rochon should be marginally ashamed of his suggestion that this has anything to do with telling both sides of the story – if anyone at your school has been to southern israel and wishes to talk about the horrors of knowing that hamas could shoot a mortar into their living room, let them. if anyone at your school has been to sri lanka and wishes to discuss the horrors of the war between the tamil tigers and the government, let them. if anyone at your school has been to native american reserves and wishes to discuss their poor condition, let them. let them. let them tell their own story about what they say.

but do not for a minute believe that this was anything other than an unfair crucifixion of your friend, ms. mcneil – she has my full support, as does any american who is sympathetic to those who suffer possesses the right to discuss their witness to that suffering. call her a liar if you wish, but it is not the responsibility of the editor, mss. stephens, to suggest that there was somehow something wrong with the editorial process. a paper should be balanced over a period of its lifetime, and not get caught up in the need for a ‘point-counterpoint’ on a day to day basis. when it comes to israel, for example, if you have an inflammatory anti-israeli statement and an anti-palestinian statement, is that really the sort of discourse one wants for a student newspaper?

or in fact is it better that we get first-persons from people who have seen what has happened first hand, and allow people to have their own responses. student newspapers sole responsibility is to present the reality of the students it serves to inform. this is an ithica student who went to the west bank and saw what she saw. she did not accuse israel of doing anything other than failing, as far as she was concerned, to meet its basic duty to defend the people it chooses to control. the west bank is 100% in the control of israel – therefore it is their responsibility to protect those who are there. let anyone who chooses to disbelieve ms. mcneil travel there and see first hand.

that’s all i have to say – at the very least – let anyone who realy knows that ms. mcneil could not have been discussing hamas come forward – hamas does not operate in the west bank. hamas operates in gaza – the two territories are separated by hundreds of square kilometers and many tens of thousands of israeli soldiers. they are fairly mutually exclusive.

to support peace and non-violence is the duty of any sane and moral human being. to me, all ms. mcneil is calling for is the proper protection of under the control and influence of israel by israel. that is what is fair. there is nothing in her article calling for the end of the jewish state – those who would dare to question her should take a long hard look at themselves and ask “am i really calling for balance of a school newspaper, or am i merely pro-israeli and refuse to accept a discourse in my school paper that allows for some light to shine on the palestinian side of things.” it is essentially censure masked as freedom of speach. it is unacceptable at a institution of higher learning.

seriously though if anyone really wants to see what goes on, tell them to visit beirut – my guest room is waiting for them, or ramallah in the west bank – i have many friends there who would gladly take-in any american who wants to see what life is like there, and treat them like a king. tell anyone who wants to see what it is like to look into the eyes of innocent palestinian children and civilians – and to try to explain why they are forbidden from a homeland, forbidden to live in the homes their grandparents and great grandparents lived in for generations. then they’ll know that it is the duty of any freedom-loving american to know that truth: and one must see it for themselves. ms. mcneil did exactly that – she went to west bank. a brave thing. then she chose to share her thoughts with her community in an academic setting – equally brave. it is the most un-reasonable thing in the world to place this young woman in the same camp as terrorists.

that’s it. that’s all i got. hope this helps. frankly, i’m stunned and saddened. i wish your president rochon would be open to the idea that honest discourse does not require a point-counterpoint of equally inflammatory statements. it requires first-hand experience and reasoned discussion – ms. mcneil provided that and your campus crucified her. shame.

all my love and prayers to you,

will

There were two comments to my article on his blog, and I felt, being the objectionist pain in the you-know-what that I am, that I should respond in turn, and that I should parade them here for all to see.

The two initial comments were as follows:

It is interesting to read his perspective. Thank you for sharing it.

Bill

Thanks Bill – I appreciate it. The second:

It was an interesting article. I disagree with almost of all of it. Obviously if I had a solution to the problem I would not be posting on a site anonymously because I would be too busy picking up my Nobel Peace Prize. I tend to think that most middle east powers do not want peace because the ability to point out the plight of the palestinians helps keep them in power. Hamas really doesn’t want peace if they did they would atleast try to go a short time and not fire rockets at civilians and see what happens. (I said rockets not “firecrackers” as is stated in the article). The palestinians are used and abused but not by Israel rather by the mid east countries who claim to care about them.

Well alright, “anonymous” whoever you are, I wish you would clarify what “almost” means, because you ended up saying something relatively similar to what I did. Couldn’t quite figure out where the bulk of your disagreement was… although your outrageous and disgusting claim that the Palestinians are “The palestinians (sic) are used and abused but not by Israel rather by the mid east(sic) countries who claim to care about them” is just that: Disgusting.

I also loved how the only proper noun in that sentence that was capitalized was the word “Israel.”

Although Arab regimes might use the Palestinian Problem to their advantage (as I acknowledged in my own article to a significant degree), never, not even during Black September, has an Arab country so fundamentally abused the Palestinians the way the Israelis have.  Black September was a war between Jordan and the PLO, and it resulted in many civilian deaths, so parallels can be drawn to the current conflict, but Black September and the events preceding it and following it pale in scale and/or scope  to the Israeli occupation, and systematic destruction, of the Palestinian people since 1948. By the way, for those of you who only know of Black September as the terror group that murdered Isareli athletes at the Olympics in 1972:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan

In other words, it’s been a long time since the Arab regimes did anything other than use the Palestinians as a political bargaining chip. But Israel did this to the Palestinians last week:

So who’s doing the abusing?

So I responded with the following two comments – I’m not sure if I totally agree with my own highly simplistic and contrived analogy(ies), and anyone who knows me is likely to say, “Well Will we all know you believe in the children’s right to punch the father in the face if he hits them and you didn’t really make a big deal about that” but come on – I’m dealing with a certain audience here. Anyways, here’s how I replied:

it’s funny, anonymous, because i basically said the same thing you did. at the end of the day, you have to look at the palestinians as the following: you have a mother and a father. the father’s a drunk and the mother gambles. the father sits at home all day beating his children, the mother goes to the slots all day gambling away the government check. when the mother comes home and the father accuses his wife of wasting their government check at the slots, she gets around the issue by accusing her husband of beating the children.

in this part of the world, the father is israel, the mother is the arab governments and the palestinian leadership, the government check is american tax dollars, and the children are normal palestinians. there are no winners in this solution – at the end of the day, the parents are to blame for their abuse of their children and the american government is to blame for funding the whole enterprise (israel=2.5+ bil a year, add up american support for arab regimes and you’ll get something similar, plus much much more if you add iraq)

it is only a matter of moral judgment whether you want to blame the father or the mother for hurting the children more. obviously americans tend to side with dad. isarel is in the right, and screw the terrorists. the kids had it coming anyways.

at the end of the day, the mother’s family (the arabs) blame the father for smacking the kids around. what’s sad is that in the middle east scenario, the father’s family (the israeli’s and the americans) don’t blame the father, but blame the children. it is this misplaced blame that i specifically called out in my article – the refusal to empathize with the palestinian people is a fundamental incapability for most, but not all, americans and israelis – the children are ‘asking for it’ for some reason. if a father had 13 kids (1300 in gaza dead) and he killed all of them, and only 3 were thugs, we would hold the father responsible before we pointed the finger at anyone else. why can’t we apply the same basic standard to palestine? why is it always the palestinians fault? israel occupies the palestinian people – why should we celebrate their ‘right to defend themselves’ when they go out of their way to do so in a manner that fundamentally is aimed at hurting innocents? have you seen what israel’s phosphorous bombs have done to the children of gaza? and are you aware who manufactures these weapons? when the day comes when palestinian/israeli negotiations are even handed, our tax dollars and foreign policy will be far less blood-stained.

in a sense, in gaza and the west bank, israel and the palestinian authority work in congress to make palestinian lives miserable. you are correct – the arab regimes are completely in on the game – but when will we hold both mom AND dad responsible and stop blaming the children – it is the dead-beat abusive father and the absentee monetarily-incapable mother who are at fault.

wd

The thing was, it bugged the heck out of me that he/she specifically called out my use of “firecrackers” to describe Qassam rockets… when in fact that’s really all they are. So I decided I would do “anyonymous” one better and agree with him/her:

one more thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

versus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks

i guarantee you that firecrackers have killed more people in the past 5 years than qassam rockets, so maybe you’re right – best i call them rockets not firecrackers. if hamas had firecrackers and not qassams, they might actually be accomplishing something.

further, if you study the technical specifications of a qassam, you’ll also find that the sophistication of the device itself, both in guidance capacity and in payload, is marginal in comparison to a modern firecracker. the same is true for the likelihood that the thing is going to kill somebody. again, this supports your argument that we should call them ‘rockets’ and not firecrackers – although, anonymous, obviously for a reason for which you had not anticipated.
at the end of the day, neither hamas nor any representative body of the palestinians are military capable of meeting the israeli military in any form of combat, “unconventional” or not. as such, the israeli response to hamas “rockets” (as you describe them) into southern israel these past few weeks is equivalent to you throwing rocks at my house and me coming out the front door and shooting your family with an anti-tank missile.

Anyways that’s what got said – thought I’d share. Thanks to my father for giving me a sounding board for my rabid pro-Palestinian beliefs – I know he opperates in a far more conservative and pro-Israeli environment than I do, and I hope I don’t get him into any sort of trouble…

A friend of mine replied with a lengthy note on Facebook. Though I disagreed with him, it would be ridiculous to just delete his comments. Instead, I feel like some discussion between Americans on Palestine and Israel, though it amounts to nothing and neither of us have a shred of legitimacy to discuss this topic, is in order. As I don’t want to make this solely about what he said, I’m just going to write freely. I know it will come across as disjointed, but this is what I have to say in reply.

First of all, Olmert is obviously an idiot. This is just a matter of fact. Any politician who actually gets caught in the Middle East for taking bribes is an idiot. However, Livni and Barak hardly count as positive changes for Israeli military or domestic policy, and furthermore quite frankly Gaza cannot be a successful operation by any rubric except by body count. As to the former, Livni and Barak seem to believe that Israeli Arabs, much less Palestinians who have legitimate legal claims to much of Israeli territory, and who represent at least 20% of the Israeli population, will just “go away” once there is a “solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” That’s lunacy – Livni and Barak’s insistence on the failed philosophy of Israel as a cohesive Jewish state demonstrates their ineligibility as forward thinking leaders and politicians, much less progressives. As to the latter – Any military operation which seeks to impose upon a largely civilian and entirely urban population its military-will is incapable of being successful – enormous casualties is really the only outcome of such an operation. As the movie says, ideas are bulletproof. If the Israeli rubric of success is just to kill lots of people, well it will likely be successful in this regard. But Hamas represents a political ideology that is likely larger than itself as a political institution – such a thing cannot be vanquished by military might. It can only be vanquished by economic prosperity, something that Israel has kept from Gaza from possessing since the beginning of the siege following their election into power in 2006.

That “this war will end” is a misnomer – this is not a war that can be finished. It is a war instead that will continue to exist as long as the current status quo of de facto occupation continues in Gaza and the West Bank. And as long as this status quo is left as it is, which seems to be the mantra of the ruling elites of both the Israelis and the Arabs, then there will continue to be a need for the Israeli and Palestinian military institutions. This isn’t about calling something terrorism – Using phosphorous on civilian populations is just as terrorist as shooting firecrackers at Israeli towns. These days, both Hamas and the IDF can point to uniforms, standard military capabilities backed by small arms and air support (although I’m giving Hamas quite a lot of credit in referring to their rockets as “air support”), and democratic legitimacy – This isn’t about terrorism, it’s about a nation and a sudo-nation maintaining a constant state of war that cannot be concluded without some semblance of justice. So no matter what the United States does, this war will not be finished until Palestinians enjoy equal rights and freedoms as Israelis.

It isn’t within the power of the United States anymore to get a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty signed. Who can blame Syria for calling of peace talks as soon as the fighting in Gaza began two and a half weeks ago? Syria calls off the talks because Israel goes to war so Syria ends up looking like the offended party. How exactly is America supposed to solve that?

If Palestine had a functioning government, a system of law and order, jobs, food, water, and electricity, and specifically if it had all these things because they were purchased and built and they were self-sustained institutions, it would represent a threat to Israel that Israel could not accept. Here’s why: If Palestine was a real country, with a real flag and a real seat at the table at the UN, then it could conscript a real army that wasn’t “terrorist,” could legally purchase it’s own “non-terrorist” arms, and could legally engage Israel  in international war tribunals. The United States gives enormous amounts of money, as does Israel, to the Palestinians and to those who maintain their lives, in an effort to keep the Palestinians from achieving self-sustainability. This a rubric that neither Israel nor the current (and likely future) American administration are likely to change.

It is not the up to me or to anybody to label Hezbollah as it is usually labeled (terrorist), nor is it up to or me or to anybody to decide whether it is the prerogative of the Lebanese military to “kick” them “out” of Lebanon. Doing so under the rubric of the West would require a terrorist label to be placed on every country in the world. For there isn’t a single nation that has not engaged in similar behavior as Hezbollah, as far as terrorist-related activities are concerned. Marine bases in Beirut in ’82? Sandanistas in Nicaragua. Agent orange. Who built Sadaam Hussein for Christ’s sake? And these are just American examples – go looking for them, you’ll find them everywhere. Everyone is complicit of terrorism under the Western rubric of terrorism.

The thing is, with Middle Eastern militant groups, it’s usually not so simple as some silly thing like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” But it’s not really that complex either. As far Southern Lebanon was concerned, their attitude was, You cross this line, you come into my side of this line, I fight back. You do so with jets, cruise missiles, chemical weapons? Don’t be surprised when I fire 40,000 Russian and Chinese missiles at you. Hezbollah is a militant force like any other – it happens to be one that is political infatuated with the destruction of the West. Guess what – The West happens to be politically infatuated with the destruction of Hezbollah.

Only the problem is that the people who actually suffer when the rich wage war… are the poor – Thank you Sartre. And both Israel and Hezbollah have very very very rich friends.

But to suggest that they can just be “kicked out” is as absurd as to say that the Palestinians or the Arab Israelis can just be kicked out. That’s not because I do or do not support Hezbollah – That’s because you’re talking about so many people that without the wholesale liquidation of the people of Southern Lebanon, such a feat would be impossible. It doesn’t matter how strong the Lebanese military is – Nor is it necessarily the prerogative or the capacity of the Lebanese military to do such a thing.

It is a correct assessment however that the ’06 war only strengthened Hezbollah, just as the current military adventure into Gaza is likely to only strengthen Hamas.

But how is one to accomplish financial security under the circumstances of apartheid? Such financial security cannot exist under occupation. But while “Israel has been killing terrorists for years,” it has done so, at some times quietly, at some times loudly, by making the term “terrorist” a blanket label, first for Palestinian, then for Arab, then for Muslim in general. And it is under the auspiciousness of Israeli and American policy that the Palestinians became terrorists on the basis of their demand for their ancestral territory.

This is not the worst thing that has happened in history – No doubt about it. But it is still pretty damn horrible. And at least when my ancestors in Ireland, France, and England faced similar circumstances, they had freedom of movement. How can one defend a nation that refuses to allow those under its occupation the right to travel freely. And that goes the same, by the way for those Arab nations that have equally limited the freedom of movement of the Palestinians. But while those Arab nations gladly welcome the problem in order to further their own interests, they did not create the problem, and though they sustain it to a degree, they are not the linchpin of that sustainment.

Whatever the case is, neither Obama nor Clinton are in a position to do anything about it. The reality of the “Palestinian Problem” is ultimately an offshoot of the “American Problem.” In this part of the world, Americans have backed every conceivable power that ultimately exists, in a highly colusionist form, in a way that maintains the Palestinian status quo. If it’s not Israel, it is Egypt. If it isn’t Egypt, it’s Jordan or Syria or Lebanon. If it’s not in the Levant, it’s in the Gulf, where America’s real allies are, and where those allies require Palestine to continue to be a “Problem” as much as their Arab friends in the Levant need them to be. At least in the 70′s the Gulf had backbone to sacrifice their profits for something they supposedly believe in. Although my fair assumption is that America would start blowing people all to hell if there was another embargo.

Wherever you go it seems, you hear about Palestine. If it’s in America or Israel – They’re terrorists. If it’s somewhere else, they’re freedom fighters or they’re victims or brothers or however they would like to put it. I’ll say one thing I never hear about Palestine though – I never hear them talked about in the terms that a nation is discussed. Palestinians are never referred to as something to be considered on a technical-logistical level of nation-state unless it is as a bargaining chip. Israel’s way of dealing with the problem is to economically bankrupt the Palestinians while denying them their right to their ancestral home. But trust me it is just as politically expedient for the rest of the Arab world to maintain that situation – as long as there is a Palestinian problem, there can be no solutions at home.

And all the while, children are dying. They are dying because of American made weapons. They are dying because those who are in power believe that Israeli lives are apparently infinitely more valuable than Palestinian lives. They are dying because so many lack the will to do what is right, and because those who possess the will to do what is right lack the means to act. And as this war is fought longer into the 21st century, there will surely be more Hamas’s, more Hezbollahs, and more Israeli “operations.” The cycle will continue and the only thing that is assured is that more Palestinian children will die or will grow up around death, despair, and economic incapacitation.

And remember that that economic incapacitation is a creation, not of the Palestinian people, but by those that occupy them, manipulate them, and occasionally kill them either individually or en masse.

So long as the occupation continues, so long as Israel and its allies are under the impression that the solution the Palestinian problem is merely to reshape the status quo of one occupation into another, there can be no “financial security of [Israeli] neighbors.” So long as Israeli’s come up with happy little ways to describe this scenario such as Israelis might someday forgive the Palestinians for killing our children, but Israelis may never forgive Palestinians for causing Israelis to kill theirs, as if that some how justifies the whole bloody thing, there will be nothing but 100% complicity on the part of the West, the Israelis, and the Arab governments, and we shall all burn in hell together as the blood of children is spilled on the streets of Gaza.

Anyways, I don’t mean to take it out on my friend here, but really, to boil the whole thing down to: Olmert’s an idiot, Livni and the “moderates” will solve everything, Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists who need to be pushed out the door as one would shake dust from a rug, and at the end of the day, whatever else happens really isn’t Israeli’s problem… is, to say the least, an unfair characterization of the situation.

And that is especially the case when we consider that, right now, as we speak, as we sit in our homes and drink our God damn Starbucks, tanks and planes are killing people who have nothing to do with it, who’s children have nothing to do with it, who’s parents have nothing to do with it, who’s grand parents had nothing to do with it. That’s a fact.

Because, if you go to war with a whole city on the basis that there are some bad guys in there, you wind up with dead people who you had no right to kill. Don’t blame them if they’re still upset about it when the smoke clears.

Many say they skip demonstrations out of opposition to organizers

BEIRUT: Protests continued in Lebanon and around the world this week, calling for an end to Israeli hostilities and global action to stop what the UN Human Rights Council on Monday called “grave” abuses committed over the past 18 days of violence in the Gaza Strip.

As Israeli tanks moved closer toward the center of Gaza City Monday, and the death toll rose beyond 900 lives, many of them women and children, The Daily Star went to the Beirut neighborhoods of Achrafieh and Mazraa for a local perspective on whether protesting against the Israeli war in Gaza would be effective in ending hostilities.

Respondents generally expressed pessimism, believing that protesting against the current war, both locally and abroad, would have little effect on international action to halt the violence that has cost so many Palestinian lives over the past few weeks.

Many said that their political apathy, and their lack of faith in the political parties that are often demonstrating, namely Hizbullah, kept them from participating in protests. This attitude was manifested on the streets of both Achrafieh and Mazraa.

In Achrafieh, Mariet said: “I don’t think that protesting will accomplish anything. I’m not political, so no I would not protest.”

Nearby, George echoed her sentiments: “No, it’s not going to change anything. I’m not political, so I won’t protest myself, but even if I was, protesting is not going to change the situation in Gaza.”

Colette, 40, said: “I reject Israel’s policy and I blame the Lebanese government for its lack of action regarding Gaza. I regret that only Hizbullah and Palestinians are protesting in Lebanon. I don’t support Hizbullah so I cannot protest with them.”

Two younger women nearby, Samia and Nour, echoed her sentiments, that they wished to protest, but did not wish to protest or stand with Hizbullah. But they said they were, “shocked by the deaths of children and women.”

Down the street, Amir, an Armenian living in Beirut, expressed a similar lack of faith in any progressive action stemming from protesting, but went further in his analysis: “Look, it’s a genocide, and I’m Armenian. I know all about that. But it doesn’t matter what [protesters] say … How many times have there been protests? Protests of 1.5 million people even! Is there any change? There has been 25 years of war, at least. The problem is political and when we’re talking about politicians, what will protests accomplish?”

Still, Amir believed that “if someone has a view to resist, and he’s defending his home, let him resist, and let him protest.” Regarding global protests, he said: “Maybe it will have an effect. I don’t know.”

Claude, 55, said: “I regret that Christian parties are not organizing protests in Achrafieh. For some it might seem like Gaza’s situation is a Muslim problem, but all Lebanese people should be concerned. I recognize Israel’s right to defend itself as well as the Palestinians.’ I think Lebanon’s government is the best among Arab governments … It gave $1 million to the Gazans and I am expecting good results from it. Giving money is [better] than protesting in the streets.”

Nadine took a more radical tone. “I’m very shocked by this systematic targeting of innocents such as children and women in Gaza, but I can’t help thinking that it is not Lebanon’s problem. Lebanon should try to focus on its own problems. Our best solution is isolation. We welcomed Palestinians in our country 60 years ago and it created a lot of problems. Media are always defending the weakest, but I don’t think that the weakest are always innocent. All these protests are useless. We should focus on the next legislative elections. Besides, in a democracy, the only legitimate way of protesting is to vote.”

In Mazraa, Osama told The Daily Star that “protesting isn’t going to change anything, and ultimately it won’t bring anything good for the Palestinians.”

However, further down the street, Mohammad was more vocal: “Israel is doing something terrible. They’re using phosphorous bombs, committing war crimes, and they should stop it. There is no reason for this war, and if there is a reason, they should give us one. There are poor people in Gaza, women and children. How can they say this war is with Hamas? However, I don’t believe that the Palestinians who are here and in [the Occupied West Bank] are doing enough.” Asked about protesting specifically, he replied, “I don’t know. It gives an opinion, and that’s important. I will protest if I feel I have to.”

At a jewelry shop in Mazraa, Samer said: “Locally, I don’t think protests will accomplish anything. But globally, I do think so. Perhaps it will change the stance of people in Europe or America to see protesters standing with the Palestinians. But in the Arab world, no. It will not change anything. So no, I would not protest myself here in Lebanon. It is meaningless here.”

Ahmad, a 21-year-old journalist in Mazraa, was more positive. He told The Daily Star that “Lebanon is the only Middle Eastern country where you can protest without fearing to be arrested, unlike Egypt or Syria. We all know that protesting in Beirut can create a ‘domino effect’ in the Arab world.”

But unfortunately, Amhad’s sentiments were not shared by most Beirutis, who felt that no amount of vocal protests would change or solve the Gazans’ current predicament as they face violent siege at the hands of the Israeli military.

Occupied Jerusalem: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon. The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire an an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Fourteen of the council’s fifteen members voted in favor of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israeli’s main ally, had initially been expected to vote in line with the other fourteen, but Rice later became the sole abstention.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote… we did not want her to vote in favor,” Olmert said.

“I said ‘get me ‘President Bush on the phone.’ They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me. ‘I told him the United States could not vote in favor,’” Olmert added. “It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor.”

In the early 1990′s, he started Gush Shalom, a left wing, secular Israeli party. Avenery first served in the Israeli Knesset in 1965, so he knows Israeli politics well.

Avnery is part of a small group of Israelis that are speaking out against the Israeli war in Gaza.

In 1975 an Israeli settler seriously injured Avenery with a knife. The Israeli settler movement often calls for the Israeli Defense Force to carry out a “targeted killing” against Avenery for the good of the State of Israel.

Below is an article he has written about the current war and seige in Gaza, reproduced in full. Thank you to Gary Collins for passing this on. I have made some headings to make it easier to scan.

How Many Divisions?

By Uri Avnery, January 10th, 2009

An old but classic photo of a Palestinian boy facing down an Israeli tank

NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.

Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.

IN THIS WAR, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army – with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks – and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.

Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government (“The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets”) has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all.

Only when the horrible scenes from Gaza started to appear on Western TV screens, did world public opinion gradually begin to change.

True, Western and Israeli TV channels showed only a tiny fraction of the dreadful events that appear 24 hours every day on Aljazeera’s Arabic channel, but one picture of a dead baby in the arms of its terrified father is more powerful than a thousand elegantly constructed sentences from the Israeli army spokesman. And that is what is decisive, in the end.

War – every war – is the realm of lies. Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor.

The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.

An example of this process surrounds the most shocking atrocity of this war so far: the shelling of the UN Fakhura school in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army “revealed” that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.

Later the official liar claimed that “our soldiers were shot at from inside the school”. Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees.

But the admission made hardly any difference anymore. By that time, the Israeli public was completely convinced that “they shot from inside the school”, and TV announcers stated this as a simple fact.

So it went with the other atrocities. Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas terrorist. Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment building an arms cache, every school a terror command post, every civilian government building a “symbol of Hamas rule”. Thus the Israeli army retained its purity as the “most moral army in the world”.

THE TRUTH is that the atrocities are a direct result of the war plan. This reflects the personality of Ehud Barak – a man whose way of thinking and actions are clear evidence of what is called “moral insanity”, a sociopathic disorder.

The real aim (apart from gaining seats in the coming elections) is to terminate the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the imagination of the planners, Hamas is an invader which has gained control of a foreign country. The reality is, of course, entirely different.

The Hamas movement won the majority of the votes in the eminently democratic elections that took place in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. It won because the Palestinians had come to the conclusion that Fatah’s peaceful approach had gained precisely nothing from Israel – neither a freeze of the settlements, nor release of the prisoners, nor any significant steps toward ending the occupation and creating the Palestinian state. Hamas is deeply rooted in the population – not only as a resistance movement fighting the foreign occupier, like the Irgun and the Stern Group in the past – but also as a political and religious body that provides social, educational and medical services.

From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not “hide behind the population”, the population views them as their only defenders.

Therefore, the whole operation is based on erroneous assumptions. Turning life into living hell does not cause the population to rise up against Hamas, but on the contrary, it unites behind Hamas and reinforces its determination not to surrender. The population of Leningrad did not rise up against Stalin, any more than the Londoners rose up against Churchill.

He who gives the order for such a war with such methods in a densely populated area knows that it will cause dreadful slaughter of civilians. Apparently that did not touch him. Or he believed that “they will change their ways” and “it will sear their consciousness”, so that in future they will not dare to resist Israel.

A top priority for the planners was the need to minimize casualties among the soldiers, knowing that the mood of a large part of the pro-war public would change if reports of such casualties came in. That is what happened in Lebanon Wars I and II.

This consideration played an especially important role because the entire war is a part of the election campaign. Ehud Barak, who gained in the polls in the first days of the war, knew that his ratings would collapse if pictures of dead soldiers filled the TV screens.

Therefore, a new doctrine was applied: to avoid losses among our soldiers by the total destruction of everything in their path. The planners were not only ready to kill 80 Palestinians to save one Israeli soldier, as has happened, but also 800. The avoidance of casualties on our side is the overriding commandment, which is causing record numbers of civilian casualties on the other side.

That means the conscious choice of an especially cruel kind of warfare – and that has been its Achilles heel.

A person without imagination, like Barak (his election slogan: “Not a Nice Guy, but a Leader”) cannot imagine how decent people around the world react to actions like the killing of whole extended families, the destruction of houses over the heads of their inhabitants, the rows of boys and girls in white shrouds ready for burial, the reports about people bleeding to death over days because ambulances are not allowed to reach them, the killing of doctors and medics on their way to save lives, the killing of UN drivers bringing in food. The pictures of the hospitals, with the dead, the dying and the injured lying together on the floor for lack of space, have shocked the world. No argument has any force next to an image of a wounded little girl lying on the floor, twisting with pain and crying out: “Mama! Mama!”

The planners thought that they could stop the world from seeing these images by forcibly preventing press coverage. The Israeli journalists, to their shame, agreed to be satisfied with the reports and photos provided by the Army Spokesman, as if they were authentic news, while they themselves remained miles away from the events. Foreign journalists were not allowed in either, until they protested and were taken for quick tours in selected and supervised groups. But in a modern war, such a sterile manufactured view cannot completely exclude all others – the cameras are inside the strip, in the middle of the hell, and cannot be controlled. Aljazeera broadcasts the pictures around the clock and reaches every home.

THE BATTLE for the TV screen is one of the decisive battles of the war.

Hundreds of millions of Arabs from Mauritania to Iraq, more than a billion Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia see the pictures and are horrified. This has a strong impact on the war. Many of the viewers see the rulers of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority as collaborators with Israel in carrying out these atrocities against their Palestinian brothers.

The security services of the Arab regimes are registering a dangerous ferment among the peoples. Hosny Mubarak, the most exposed Arab leader because of his closing of the Rafah crossing in the face of terrified refugees, started to pressure the decision-makers in Washington, who until that time had blocked all calls for a cease-fire. These began to understand the menace to vital American interests in the Arab world and suddenly changed their attitude – causing consternation among the complacent Israeli diplomats.

People with moral insanity cannot really understand the motives of normal people and must guess their reactions. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin sneered. “How many divisions have people of conscience?” Ehud Barak may well be asking.

As it turns out, they do have some. Not numerous. Not very quick to react. Not very strong and organized. But at a certain moment, when the atrocities overflow and masses of protesters come together, that can decide a war.

THE FAILURE to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.

Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.

If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.

What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.

In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.