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.

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 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

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.

Congratulations. Since you’re so good at starving a caged population of almost a million and a half people to death and then, to add insult to injury, kill more people in one day than they’ve killed with their toy rockets in a year, only to be asked politely by the Bush Administration to “take care not to hurt people,” it’s clear that you are used to getting your way.

So perhaps, you being all good at getting your way without having to explain yourself, you would like to tell me how to explain myself to the Palestinian children I’m supposed to be tutoring tomorrow at Sabra? You know, Sabra? The Sabra Palestinian refuge camp? Does that ring a bell, Israel? Does it?

After, all, it’s American money, American weapons, and above all else, American complicity that’s at the heart of all this.

On second, thought, maybe I’ll skip Sabra tomorrow…

This weekend I spent Saturday morning finishing Robert Fisk’s book Pity the Nation and I read another book called Children of the Siege by Pauline Cutting. From the first, I wanted to share this excerpt from the last chapter that I read Saturday morning. The chapter discusses the Qana massacre in the early 90′s – A shelling attack by Israeli mortars on a United Nations-run refuge camp for Shi’a and Palestinians. Some of you might remember it making headlines after Israel was forced to admit, thanks to press action by Fisk, that they had lied about there being a flying drone airplane in the area watching what was happening, and thus admitting in a sense that they were aware they were attacking civilians and U.N. soldiers. The attack on the camp occurred almost immediately after Hezbollah took the unusual action of attacking an Israeli position only 100 meters from the camp – Indeed, in Lebanon, though it was usually civilians who suffered during the wars, it was always both sides (out of many) that were complicit in some way. From Pity the Nation:

In the years that followed, Qana would become a place of martyrdom, the mass grave beside the old UN barracks covered now with marble. There are headstones, many of them containing glass boxes with snapshots of children… A signpost tells visitors that this is an Arab ‘Holocaust’, neglecting to point out that 106 dead hardly compares to 6 million…

Yet if these victims had been Israeli – if 106 Israeli civilians had been slaughtered in Israel by Hezbollah gunfire – would not there be a far greater response? Would not every American president pay homage at the site/ Had the victims of Sabra and Chatila been Israeli, would not foreign statesmen be visiting the mass grave? But foreigners do occasionally visit Qana. Years after the massacre, Jennifer Lowenstein, an American Jewish woman who regularly arranges my lectures at a US university, came to Lebanon and wasked me to take her to Qana. I drove her to the mass grave and she took pictures of the shrine. She took a photograph of the insulting sign with its reference to a ‘Holocaust’. She seemed untroubled by it. Then she asked to meet Saadallah Balhas. I though this both a good and a bad idea. As a survivor who had lost 31 members of his family, his experience – on an individual, personal level – was of a holocaust. His loved ones had perished on a scale commensurate with that of many Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide.

I choose to share this passage because I spent Saturday afternoon with children at an educational center at a Palestinian refuge camp, the site of another Israeli and Christian massacre of Palestinians ten years prior. I won’t give too many details out of respect for the privacy of this school, its children, and the people living in this section of Beirut – Indeed, I didn’t go there on some sort of Refuge Safari, to see and feel something I would never know as an American, only to return to the comfort of East Beirut with an inflated sense of sensitivity and worldliness. Still, to read Fisk’s retelling of Qana in the morning and to spend the afternoon with Lebanon’s most vulnerable in the afternoon was something enormous for me, in particular because so many people in both the West and the Middle East discuss the fate of these children in relationship to far larger things than the children could ever hope to comprehend – The Holocaust of the Jews, for example, seems to justify any misdeed of the Israelis, whereas events like Qana and the 2006 war justify Hezbollah, and the plight of the Palestinians and the 1967 war justify any attack by Arabs against Western or Israeli targets or philosophies. This sort of philosophy makes a mockery of the fact that the children I spent time with on Saturday are incapable of commanding much of their destiny, their fate wrapped up in absurd international games of intrigue, violence, and stillborn-realpoitik.

Yet Fisk rightly points out that despite the fact that so many use the abhorrence of the past to justify the abhorrence of the present, they rarely think about the the most real victims, such as Saadallah Balhas, or anyone who lost the vast majority of their family to the violence of war crimes. Though the Holocaust is used to justify the military realities of the Israelis, it is also a fact that 6 million Jews perished in Europe, and that many living today know a similar story line for their family own as Mr. Balhas. As I sat watching these children on Saturday, it was rather heartbreaking to know that they, just like many other children of the Arab and Israeli world, grew up with the daily message that Qana, Sabra, 2006, 1967, or 1944 somehow justify, or are justified, by the extraordinary events of the past perpetrated by evil men who care little for the well being or the futures of 14 Palestinian children. Though it is impossible to make real comparisons between the Holocaust and the Palestinian diaspora because they are two entirely different sorts of things, Fisk is correct in making immediate comparisons between the victims of Qana and the victims of Auschwitz. Israel attacked helpless civilians with high-powered weapons, their shells turning the unprotected UN camp into a place of mangled humans and death. Fisk was there to see the immediate aftermath and his description of the bodies is horrifying. One cannot imagine how he found the words to describe what happens to hundreds of people after a wooden shelter they are hiding in is hit directly, and repeatedly, by modern cannon fire. But he did.

Likewise, children living throughout the Palestinian diaspora are victims of aggression and global foreign policy, but really they are like the victims at Qana in the sense that they do not ask to fight, and they are in no position to take command of their situation. Perhaps this is why some, only a mere 10 years older than the kids I saw on Saturday, chooose to fight back. It is extraordinary how a child’s wonder and peace at 5 can be so perfectly mangled by the weapons and realities of war by 15.

What is perpetrated against the Palestinians both in Lebanon and elsewhere is sanctioned by America, and is most often with the use of American weapons and American money. The inevitable violent response is usually armed and funded by both our allies and our enemies. I was thus held with obvious suspicion by everyone I met at the camp, and I felt shell shocked and complicit in their plight upon my departure.

Karma too, I could tell, was moved by the experience. We decided it would be best to go to the beach. We talked a lot about our pasts and our futures, and how they seemed to rapidly be catching up with our presents. I took a picture of the Mediterranean Sea:

After that we had sushi for lunch, hung around for the afternoon, and then I went home to take a nap. In the evening, I went to Captians Cabin in Hamra to interview the owner, Andre, for a story I’m writing about his bar that will run in Tuesday’s paper. I’ll post it as soon as it is up.

That’s all I got for now – it’s been a strange weekend, but a good one I guess. I spent today sleeping, and I’m looking forward to a productive week.

Click here for the Original Article from the Daily Star, Published November 26th, 2008

BEIRUT: Agreements, not controversy, dominated a discussion at the American University of Beirut (AUB) on Tuesday between Rami Khouri and Michael Young, the former a regular contributor to The Daily Star’s Opinion section and the latter its editor. The debate was sponsored by AUB’s Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), and entitled, “The Middle East Policies of the Bush and Obama Administrations.”

Khouri and Young agreed in principal on a majority of subjects. The event largely focused on the realities of a post-Saddam Middle East, the persistence of Arab dictatorial regimes and their de facto support by America both militarily and politically, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Basic disagreement, which remained cordial and often unspecific, came in the form of Khouri’s optimism for the future Obama administration’s ability to achieve success in the Middle East, versus Young’s pessimism that the incoming president-elect will lack the means and the leverage to achieve much in the way of progress.

Regarding Iraq, Young’s perspective was that the removal of Saddam Hussein and the Baathist regime in Baghdad was ultimately a positive event, both for Arabs and for the West. He lamented with an equal hand both the extreme failures of the US military and the Bush White House to adequately prepare for the complex realities of post-Saddam Iraq, but also the Arab response to Saddam’s removal from power. On the latter issue, Young insisted that not only did the Arab world prove itself incapable of finding progress and success after Saddam’s ousting, but that its anti-American reaction to the second Iraq war and subsequent Iraqi occupation was both counter-productive and, on the part of “Arab liberals,” unfortunately cynical.

In Iraq, Khouri said, “the totality of the [American] enterprise was a calamity,” but that simultaneously the removal of Saddam’s regime can be counted as an, “American success.” However, Khouri went on to say that “I think the vast majority of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been a calamity.”

Khouri and Young disagreed on whether the Bush administration could have achieved more with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli situation, and also whether the future Obama administration would find success in that arena.

As Khouri noted, “American involvement was not evenhanded, and intervening in Palestinian elections on the part of Abbas and Fatah was a huge mistake which led to its marginalization and de-legitimatization.” He was cautiously optimistic that Obama would build positive momentum.

Young, on the other hand, believed that, “by and large the Bush administration has been like any other,” and though he was “not one to blame the victim,” he was under the impression that “no matter how much America involves itself in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discussions it will not succeed due to the complex dynamics of the parties themselves.”

Doug Mills/The New York Times

And so it did. Surrounded by expats, Lebanese Americans, and Lebanese of all religious and ethnic shades, I drank profusely and watched CNN as my country seemingly came to its senses and pulled itself from the brink of self-destruction. Indeed, for my generation, this is the first time in our modern lives that we can be proud of our executive leadership, and of the voters who selected it. I was in awe as the cynicism of the Americans with me in Beirut this evening washed away. Trust me, no American is more cynical than a young American in Beirut. Here we see first hand the disaster that is American foreign policy, and many moved clear across the world to escape the America represented by the only Executive they truly knew: That of George W. Bush.

It was said on BBC World tonight that President Bush told President-Elect Obama that the election day was “awesome,” in his congratulatory call. Such are the times and the years and trials we have lived through, and God Willing, somehow survived, since 2000.

My new boss Marc remarked to me today, with excitement, trepidation, and the cynicism of a westerner towards the United States of this past decade, of the irony of my arrival the day before  the most important American election of the modern era, and that I would begin to work on the day after. He dared not even suggest that Obama could pull it off.

This morning, Nick, myself, and Nick’s flat-mate made our guesses for what the electoral votes would look like in the evening, when the dust settled. I am amazed at how far our cynicism had taken us, and how beaten and deflated a generation we belong to.  For though we all agreed that Obama would win, even in the face of  every poll declaring Obama the likely winner, even in the face of 100,000 person crowds and an enormous financial advantage, we mustered only the slightest confidence in an Obama victory:

I believed that Obama would receive 283 points. Nick believed that Obama would receive 336 points. Andrew went with 325.

So now, I am a believer, and feel perhaps that “Yes We Can” is a striking motto for my time here in Beirut. I have to believe that if we have come this far, if the American people, so complicit as we are in the re-election (and clear mandate) of President Bush in 2004, so complicit as we are in our acceptance of a horrendous war and unprecedented Republican cronyism on Wall Street, so complicit even in the many declarations that Obama surrounded himself with terrorists and was a Communist and everything else, if WE of all people, we as a nation, can elect a man of such stature, so dissimilar from the politics of the past 8 years, the first African American President-Elect in our country’s history, than I believe we can do anything.

Congratulations, America, you didn’t blow it, even without me there to supervise. I thank you for that, more than I can say.

The story amazes me. A Texan woman, campaigning for McCain in Pittsburgh, went to the police late last week, claiming that while being mugged by a 6’4” black man, he noticed that she had a ‘McCain sticker’ on her car and proceeded to carve a “B” into her face and assault her until she ‘turned into an Obama supporter.’ The media flipped out, and conservative talk radio went nuts. Both campaigns denounced the assault, and the woman, a budding celebrity in her early twenties, received calls from both Obama and McCain.

Within 24 hours, the story began to unravel. There was no footage of the woman at the ATM where she said she’d been mugged. The bruises on her face appeared self inflicted. The “B” she said had been carved into her face had two serious flaws: It appeared to have been cut with a butter knife, and was backwards, as if it’d been haphazardly cut in the mirror. Anyone facing her would have cut a “B” facing the right way. She failed a polygraph and subsequently told the police she made it all up.

So I have a serious point of contention here -

That nobody is making a bigger deal about the chosen description of the man she said assaulted her is just sick.

Am I the only person who’s noticed that, though the lying woman was rightly called a liar in the press, no one is calling her an ignorant race baiter and racist? An America where nobody makes a huge deal about her belligerent description is Sarah Palin’s America, the new Republican party’s America – An America made up of inexcusable lies that are merely ignored unless they are useful.

We have a long history in this country of racially-motivated murders that sprung from these exact sort of accusations. How many have died at the hands of the mob thanks to claims of assault by white women against black men?

Barack Obama’s stunning rise to power, and on the edge of a historic presidential championship, was supposed to herald the end of this sort of deranged racism. Indeed, conservative commentators have made it clear that they believe the case of Obama justifies the end of affirmative action.

Instead, we have this pitiful, disgusting, and illuminating story of a young Texan woman who apparently thought she could convince the world that a person sitting on top of her would carve a backwards “B” into her face – oh yeah, and he was totally black. Perhaps she should have attributed the strange occurrence to the black man’s ignorance of the English language? Maybe her Texan sensibilities encouraged her to believe that Ebonics uses backwards letters?

Or maybe this story highlights the barrel-bottom reality of American conservativism: Young Texan woman travels to the scary north to try to spread the “conservativism ideals” of the south to western Pennsylvania, and instead packs into her carpet back the very racism she sought to ferment. And maybe it also highlights the dreadful state of our educational system – Did she ever stop to think, as she looked into a mirror with a butter knife, that the image of her face staring back at her was flipped? Take a look at this picture:

Young lady, how sick are you, really? And how sick is our press? Yes, she’s a liar. Liar liar pants on fire. Lying rarely ever hurt anyone, except when it’s this sort of lie. What she is, is a hate-mongering racist liar playing with fire in a building that is burning to the ground. Why didn’t she stop to think how terrifying and destructive her lie would be in the heart land of America where the legacy of the lynch mob lives on? How much more entrenched would the Angry Black Man stereotype have been? Don’t just call her a liar, call her what she is:

A perfect representation of the expiration date sticker on the side of the party of Reagan. Conservativism is supposed to be a set of ideas – A philosophy, with firm guidelines and an important history. It is sick jerks like Karl Rove who twisted the ignorant herd of Americans with “conservative values” (who apparently now believe in lying, self aggrandizement, self mutilation, and hateful racism) into the fold of the real conservative movement, and convinced the intellectual Right to go along with it. Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave. As are Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

The legacy in this country when it comes to African Americans is abysmal. This race-baiting case is the worst symptom of the virus that is American racism.

That nobody is making a bigger deal about the chosen description of the man she said assaulted her is just sick.

If you cannot see the video, (like if you’re receiving this in an e-mail), please click here: http://williamcurtisdonovan.com/2008/10/actually-this-is-more-important