The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in 1943. Essentially, some of the Jews who had been trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms against the German army. They were aware that Jews from the Ghetto were being systemically taken to death camps.
This essay is about comparing the current militant movement in Gaza, and more broadly among non-Jews in Palestine/Israel, to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There are some similarities and many differences. A lot can be learned about people by noting how they interpret this data.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place in the context of World War II and the Holocaust, which was Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. The situation in Gaza today is in the context of the aftermath of the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, known as Israel, and the contemporary U.S.-led "War on Terror."
While Adolf Hitler was raised as a Roman Catholic in Austria, where anti-Semitism (more properly, anti-Judaism) was virulent among the Church hierarchy, his stance towards Jews was essentially racist, not religious. While Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church agreed on many things in the 1930's (notably the need to exterminate socialists, atheists and communists), they disagreed on the disposition of the Jews in Europe. The Catholic Church sought to convert them.
Hitler, who had added racist doctrines to the Church's anti-Judaism, thought the Jews were genetically inferior (actually, different in a dangerous way). Converting them would simply allow their genes to mix more with his beloved concept of the Aryan race. Hitler and his more radical followers within the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis), decided to exterminate the Jews in the midst of World War II.
Anti-jewish laws came first, in the mid 1930's, but they were not much different than similar anti-Negro laws in the U.S., or discriminatory laws common in most of the world's nations at the time. Then came concentration camps, at first used to house political prisoners (atheists, socialists and communists), and then increasingly to use Jews for slave labor. Ultimately some of the concentration camps became death camps.
The Warsaw Ghetto, created in 1940, was effectively a concentration camp within a city. Perhaps 300,000 Jews were packed into about 1.25 square miles of city. Gaza is much less densely populated, currently estimated to have a population of 1.8 million enclosed in an area of 139 square miles. However, because Gaza is desert terrain, most of the population lives in Gaza City and other urbanized areas. In both the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza the citizens were (or are) not free to travel outside of the designated limits.
The Warsaw Ghetto was meant to be temporary; its residents were meant to be deported to death camps beginning in 1942. The residents of Gaza have been there, for the most part, since 1948 and have hereditary refugee status. They are being confined, not exterminated.
The "uprising" began around January 18, 1943. Only a small percentage of Jews, perhaps 1000, appear to have fought the Germans. This may have been partly due to a shortage of weapons. Still, the German army needed only about 2000 troops to regain enough control of the ghetto to continue the deportations.
The same is true of Gaza. While people, when given the opportunities in elections, voted for Hamas, and to a lesser degree for the PLO, the number of active Hamas militants is estimated at about 10,000 (estimated by Israel), but that includes irregular volunteers. The other resistance groups in Gaza appear to be much smaller than Hamas.
Tunnels played a crucial role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Tunnels were used to bring in food and weapons. Without tunnels, the earlier death rate in the ghetto from malnutrition and consequent disease would likely have been higher. In the end, many of the fighters used the tunnels to escape the fate of those who did not fight: transit to a death camp.
The various groups in Gaza did not build tunnels because the like to dig. The were dug for the same reasons the Jews had in Warsaw: to get supplies. And both some of the Jews and some of the Palestinians used the tunnels to get the weapons they needed to fight the army of the nation that had put them in their respective ghettos.
Very few German soldiers, officially just 17, were killed by the Warsaw Jewish resistance, and it is unlikely that the real total was over 100. The Germans disproportionately killed civilians, most of whom died from fires or smoke inhalation.
The army of Israel, and its air force, have elected to fight in a manner that kills far more civilians in Gaza than actual Hamas militants.
In both cases the resistance fighters were poorly armed compared to the army they fought. The Polish Jews had only one machine gun and a limited number of small arms. Gaza is confronted with an Israeli army far better armed than the German army was. In addition, Israel conducts much of its war on non-Jewish Palestinians from the air. The use of (mostly inneffective) rockets launched from Gaza is also a new phenomena.
So we have a paradox. In matching the contenders up, Hamas gunmen match up well with ZOB and ZZW, the Jewish Warsaw gunmen. The civilians of Gaza match well with the civilians of the Warsaw Ghetto.
And the Israeli state matches the Nazi German state well. And the Israeli Army matches the German army quite well.
But once racism, religious intolerance, or even nationalism enter the picture, this obvious way to connect the dots goes out the window. Racism makes it impossible to do a rational analysis of who is in the right, and who is being wronged. See my recent essay Ethical Asymmetry [July 22, 2014] for a treatment of the ethical problems resulting from bias.
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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Gaza
Hamas
Showing posts with label Hamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hamas. Show all posts
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Hitler and the problems of National Self-determination
"The most believing Protestant could stand in the ranks of our movement next to the most believing Catholic, without ever having to come into the slightest conflict of conscience to his religious obligations." - Adolf Hitler, Mein KampfThe idea of national self-determination is closely linked to American President Woodrow Wilson and the post-World War I peace settlements. Nations are conceived of along ethnic, linguistic, racial and cultural lines. National self-determination provides that each group of people who constitute a definable nation has the right to their own national government.
The Democratic Party lauds Woodrow Wilson as a great President, a man of progressive (liberal) ideals who was also a man of peace and yet led the U.S. to its first great international war victory. A closer examination reveals a more complex picture, in which Wilson, a college professor turned politician, was a conservative racist who turned against his own idea of national self-determination as soon as he saw its global consequences, which did not sit well with his Aryan, racist agenda.
[Who's lying to you Litmus Test: if Woodrow Wilson was not a racist, why did racism remain legal in the U.S. after he had two terms as President?]
As I write this, ethnic and religious conflicts continue to escalate. Israel is bombing parts of Palestine it made into reservations for the natives when it got tired of its ethnic cleansing chore. Kurds are asserting their rights to recognition as a nation. The lines drawn by Wilson's colonial-era pals of the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires are still not working, largely due to their failure to correspond to natural national boundaries.
But there is another important consideration: the negative consequences of stressing ethnic cultures, religion, and nationalism.
After World War I Poland was created from former parts of Germany (and a bit of Russia). There was a substantial German-speaking population within the new Poland. The new Austria was German speaking, Roman Catholic, and highly anti-semitic.
Meanwhile, a lot of other cultural nations thought they should have the same rights as the Poles. Famously, Ho Chi Minh demanded independence for Vietnam, but he represented just one of hundreds of nations seeking self-determination. The Brits and French gave the right to self-determination to exactly one nation within their empires between World War I and World War II (the Republic of Ireland, but Britain kept Northern Ireland). The lesson was clear: only losers in wars might get dismembered into smaller nations with borders drawn on ethnic lines.
It should not be surprising that Hitler's Germany had strange allies in World War II (some in hostile neutrality, like Ireland). In almost every colony of the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch empires there were groups hoping Hitler would win, and in many cases fighting against the British or French.
While Britain won the war (and the French empire was re-instated), the cost was so high it was unable to maintain much of its empire afterwards. National revolutions, often led by Communists, lined up much more of the world along lines of national self-determination.
Many of the new nations had sub-nations within them. Vietnam had Roman Catholics and Buddhists who did not like communism or each other. India had many sub-nations that had be be invaded by Mahatma Gandhi's tanks to persuade them that they were not to be allowed to exercise their own rights to self-determination. Most African nations had multiple rival tribal or clan groups arbitrarily thrown together.
And a whole bunch of European Jews who survived the Holocaust decided they needed a land of their own, the land their ancestors had abandoned almost two thousand years earlier. They invaded Palestine, kicked out most other Palestinians, and set up a racist state they call Israel.
The United States of America, for all of its legendary past faults (genocide, racism, etc.), meanwhile has developed a new model. I just call it the Modern state. It is not based on race or religion, though there is nationalism. It is based on ideals tempered with pragmatism: liberty of conscience, a semblance of equality under the law, and pragmatic good government: good roads, fair schools, and not too much air pollution, even a bit of a social safety net, as long as taxes are not too high.
But this modern America had advantages in developing. Not just a lot of resources that were easily stolen from the natives, but a population (excepting black slaves) who came here more or less voluntarily at an exceptional time in history. At a time when people were questioning revealed religions like Christianity and Islam. At a time when Republics were a reality and were moving in the direction of becoming Democracies. And when agricultural and industrial revolutions were getting underway that would raise the standards of living for almost everyone.
I believe people have a right to self-determination, but I believe they should be cautious with that right. The Nazis determined that no Jews, atheists, or communists would be allowed to live in Germany. Then they decided to greatly enlarge Germany. That is not the example I am hoping other nations will follow.
When a people has been deprived of their own nation for a long time, and has been treated poorly by the nation(s) they inhabit, I think they might benefit from setting up as a nation-state. Thus I favor Kurdish and Palestinian states, among others. But ... I hope they are modern states, or turn into modern states. I hope the people choose to join the modern world, with modern values: equality and justice for all. Not states based on religious or ethnic tests.
When there is equality and justice for all, it does not matter which government rules us, nor which ethnic group we descend from or identify with.
It is sad that America's leaders after World War II (mirroring the equally culpable leaders of the U.S.S.R.) sought to create a new commercial-imperial global system run from Washington D.C. America's making enemies so readily, and imposing our will when possible with bombs, assassinations, rigged elections and embargoes, marred our international image and robbed our modern system of moral authority (as did discrimination in the U.S. against non-whites, until around 1970).
Adolf Hitler was not a self-made man. Germany, Austria and Turkey surrendered at the end of World War I, after Woodrow Wilson and his allies had promised a just peace. Instead the defeated Central Powers were treated to dismemberment and economic pillage. Hitler blamed this "stab in the back" on Jews and communists, and an angry nation elevated him to power. Nor were the Zionists who fought to create Israel in Palestine self-made: they were Hitler's creation. Hamas, in turn, was created by the Israeli Zionists.
We need the opposite chain-reaction. Self-determination based on nationalism or religion is not necessarily bad, but it is just as dangerous as imperialism. I hope when people assert their right to self-determination, they determine that they want equality and justice for all humans, not a new round of sectarian conflict.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Obama Raids Peace Activist Homes
The FBI, acting on orders from President Barack Obama, raided the homes of eight antiwar activists on Friday, September 24, according to the New York Times [see FBI Searches Antiwar Activists' Homes]. The homes were ransacked, but rather than arresting suspects they were asked to report to a Grand Jury. The victims appear to be highly respected peace activists. The office of the Minneapolis Anti-War Committee was also raided.
Doubtless President Obama felt empowered to attack his leftist critiques because of the failure of civil rights activists to defend right-wing militia members who were previously arrested on phony charges. Any failure to respond to the current provocation will doubtless lead to Obama trying to use further arrests and intimidation to prop up his failing presidency.
Over the years the ruling elite of the United States, including the national security apparatus and every President and Congress, Republican and Democrat, has tried to use "national security" as a rational to limit citizen's rights of free speech and assembly. I assert another right: to give material support to anyone I feel justified to give it too. The elite's enemies are not my enemies. I may not like the religious fervor of Hamas, for example, but if I want to give to a Hamas charity, that is my human right. If the U.S. government tries to deny that right, I say they have no right to govern me.
Of course I don't know the particulars of the case the FBI is prosecuting. "The warrant said agents were gathering evidence related to people “providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support” to terrorist organizations, and listed Hezbollah, the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia." I have no fondness for any of those three organizations, but I see no reason why each American citizen should not make his or her own judgment. The activists say they were just protesting U.S. foreign policy. Is that now grounds for harassment, as it was during the Vietnam War?
The judgment of the security apparatus, and their current puppet Obama, is bad. The U.S. security apparatus like the rulers of Saudi Arabia, even though they are dictators pushing radical Islam and oppressing their women subjects in particular. They love Israel, even though it ignores the private property rights of Palestinians. They hate Cuba, because that government ignored the private property rights of American organized crime syndicates and allied itself with Stalin's apprentices. I could go on and on, but the point is: what is the point of freedom of speech if we can't differ with the Federal Government on foreign policy? The U.S. government used to be allied with Joseph Stalin's regime (from 1940 until 1946); it has supported and even installed numerous right-wing dictatorships over the decades. That is good judgment? That represents the American people?
At times the U.S. has insisted on elections in other nations, only to overthrow elected governments when the voters chose leaders the U.S. did not like. It happened in Algeria in 1991, and more recently it happened in Palestine. If the Taliban won an election in Afghanistan, what would Barack do?
I don't have very much material support to offer to any group out in the world that I think will make the world a better place. Nothing that would begin to counter the billions in aid the U.S. gives annually to Israel, for example. But I repledge myself to dismantling the security apparatus of the United States and our mis-ruling class. It is a long shot, but it's what is right.
The only U.S. foreign policy worth pursuing is the complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces back into the United States. At least if they waste our taxpayer dollars in the United States, it would provide some local employment for civilians.
I am thinking I am going to, if I can get the "free" press to turn out, put a dollar bill in an envelope and send it to Hamas through the U.S. mail. Will Obama's thugs arrest me over a dollar? Will anybody join me? I'll supply both the dollar and the stamp!
Doubtless President Obama felt empowered to attack his leftist critiques because of the failure of civil rights activists to defend right-wing militia members who were previously arrested on phony charges. Any failure to respond to the current provocation will doubtless lead to Obama trying to use further arrests and intimidation to prop up his failing presidency.
Over the years the ruling elite of the United States, including the national security apparatus and every President and Congress, Republican and Democrat, has tried to use "national security" as a rational to limit citizen's rights of free speech and assembly. I assert another right: to give material support to anyone I feel justified to give it too. The elite's enemies are not my enemies. I may not like the religious fervor of Hamas, for example, but if I want to give to a Hamas charity, that is my human right. If the U.S. government tries to deny that right, I say they have no right to govern me.
Of course I don't know the particulars of the case the FBI is prosecuting. "The warrant said agents were gathering evidence related to people “providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support” to terrorist organizations, and listed Hezbollah, the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia." I have no fondness for any of those three organizations, but I see no reason why each American citizen should not make his or her own judgment. The activists say they were just protesting U.S. foreign policy. Is that now grounds for harassment, as it was during the Vietnam War?
The judgment of the security apparatus, and their current puppet Obama, is bad. The U.S. security apparatus like the rulers of Saudi Arabia, even though they are dictators pushing radical Islam and oppressing their women subjects in particular. They love Israel, even though it ignores the private property rights of Palestinians. They hate Cuba, because that government ignored the private property rights of American organized crime syndicates and allied itself with Stalin's apprentices. I could go on and on, but the point is: what is the point of freedom of speech if we can't differ with the Federal Government on foreign policy? The U.S. government used to be allied with Joseph Stalin's regime (from 1940 until 1946); it has supported and even installed numerous right-wing dictatorships over the decades. That is good judgment? That represents the American people?
At times the U.S. has insisted on elections in other nations, only to overthrow elected governments when the voters chose leaders the U.S. did not like. It happened in Algeria in 1991, and more recently it happened in Palestine. If the Taliban won an election in Afghanistan, what would Barack do?
I don't have very much material support to offer to any group out in the world that I think will make the world a better place. Nothing that would begin to counter the billions in aid the U.S. gives annually to Israel, for example. But I repledge myself to dismantling the security apparatus of the United States and our mis-ruling class. It is a long shot, but it's what is right.
The only U.S. foreign policy worth pursuing is the complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces back into the United States. At least if they waste our taxpayer dollars in the United States, it would provide some local employment for civilians.
I am thinking I am going to, if I can get the "free" press to turn out, put a dollar bill in an envelope and send it to Hamas through the U.S. mail. Will Obama's thugs arrest me over a dollar? Will anybody join me? I'll supply both the dollar and the stamp!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
2008 Made History
I think 2008 made history. You think 2008 was historic. But it is hard to tell which years mark major changes in our civilization until decades, perhaps centuries later. Events that seem historic to us now may not even get a sentence in the history books of 2200, yet events we did not hear of yet may seem earth-shaking in retrospect.
When American war ships "opened" Japan in 1854 [See U.S. Bullies Japan], newspapers noted the event. No one in the U.S. and Europe, however, expected Japan to become anything other than another subjugated Asian nation.
This year Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and George W. Bush became the most unpopular American President since Abraham Lincoln. [Honest Abe won the 1860 election with only 40% of the popular vote, and in 1864, even with the Confederacy not voting, he won the election with only 55% of the vote.]. Conversely Herbert Hoover won 59% of the vote in 1928; no one foresaw the economic unraveling of 1929-1933.
This week, to cap off what most consider to be the worst year in American history since maybe 1932, Israel launched a large scale air attack against Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip. This because Hamas occasionally was lobbing a mortar or crude missile into occupied Palestine as an act of defiance. Why should the Palestinians not be able to use the land that has been stolen from them for target practice? Especially since their aim is so bad?
I doubt the timing had anything to do with the cease fire ending or Hamas missiles. It probably had the secret blessing of President Bush in advance. Bush will claim he can't, as a lame duck, do anything, and Barack Obama will be able to treat it as an accomplished fact. Those who hope Barack will stand for justice for the Palestinians are truly deluded. It's a brilliant strategy for Israel: enrage 1 billion Moslems, most of whom will find it easier to take out their anger on the U.S. than on Zion. Then, attacked by Moslem patriots, the U.S. will feel an even closer emotional bond to Israel.
But what is on everyone's mind is the economy. Negative overall economic growth is treated as a far greater disaster than global warming, the U.S. engineered famine in Somalia, or even the disintegration of support in Afghanistan for the U.S. puppet government.
I don't expect Barack Obama to straighten out these problems. The economy is likely to right itself during 2009 as long as the banking system is restored to soundness. Like any President, he will take credit for anything good that happens on his watch, and will be blamed by the other party for anything bad that happens. I believe Obama will turn out to be the first black imperialist U.S. President. Part of my plan for 2009 is to point this out, constantly, to the Democrats who should be in the Green Party but continue to drink Democratic Party kool-aid. But if I am wrong, I will admit it, even cheer as he withdraws all U.S. troops stationed outside our own territories.
On a positive note, the Internet continues to bind the world together. Whether that is good or bad is anybody's guess. Iranian mullahs can eye American cam girls, and American teenagers can read Al-Qaeda propaganda. We can all read what individuals think now, not just the news (or misinformation) their governments or corporate news networks want us to read.
While the U.S. wastes its soldiers' lives and what is left of its industry on subduing its colonies, China and India are making great economic, political, and cultural strides. More importantly, most trends worth watching are transnational. Even the localization, anti-globalization folk are now a global phenomena. Imagine a world in which peace, protecting the environment, and knowledge of the real world are the dominant paradigms. That would be history worth making. And that is what this Natural Liberation blog is about.
When American war ships "opened" Japan in 1854 [See U.S. Bullies Japan], newspapers noted the event. No one in the U.S. and Europe, however, expected Japan to become anything other than another subjugated Asian nation.
This year Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and George W. Bush became the most unpopular American President since Abraham Lincoln. [Honest Abe won the 1860 election with only 40% of the popular vote, and in 1864, even with the Confederacy not voting, he won the election with only 55% of the vote.]. Conversely Herbert Hoover won 59% of the vote in 1928; no one foresaw the economic unraveling of 1929-1933.
This week, to cap off what most consider to be the worst year in American history since maybe 1932, Israel launched a large scale air attack against Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip. This because Hamas occasionally was lobbing a mortar or crude missile into occupied Palestine as an act of defiance. Why should the Palestinians not be able to use the land that has been stolen from them for target practice? Especially since their aim is so bad?
I doubt the timing had anything to do with the cease fire ending or Hamas missiles. It probably had the secret blessing of President Bush in advance. Bush will claim he can't, as a lame duck, do anything, and Barack Obama will be able to treat it as an accomplished fact. Those who hope Barack will stand for justice for the Palestinians are truly deluded. It's a brilliant strategy for Israel: enrage 1 billion Moslems, most of whom will find it easier to take out their anger on the U.S. than on Zion. Then, attacked by Moslem patriots, the U.S. will feel an even closer emotional bond to Israel.
But what is on everyone's mind is the economy. Negative overall economic growth is treated as a far greater disaster than global warming, the U.S. engineered famine in Somalia, or even the disintegration of support in Afghanistan for the U.S. puppet government.
I don't expect Barack Obama to straighten out these problems. The economy is likely to right itself during 2009 as long as the banking system is restored to soundness. Like any President, he will take credit for anything good that happens on his watch, and will be blamed by the other party for anything bad that happens. I believe Obama will turn out to be the first black imperialist U.S. President. Part of my plan for 2009 is to point this out, constantly, to the Democrats who should be in the Green Party but continue to drink Democratic Party kool-aid. But if I am wrong, I will admit it, even cheer as he withdraws all U.S. troops stationed outside our own territories.
On a positive note, the Internet continues to bind the world together. Whether that is good or bad is anybody's guess. Iranian mullahs can eye American cam girls, and American teenagers can read Al-Qaeda propaganda. We can all read what individuals think now, not just the news (or misinformation) their governments or corporate news networks want us to read.
While the U.S. wastes its soldiers' lives and what is left of its industry on subduing its colonies, China and India are making great economic, political, and cultural strides. More importantly, most trends worth watching are transnational. Even the localization, anti-globalization folk are now a global phenomena. Imagine a world in which peace, protecting the environment, and knowledge of the real world are the dominant paradigms. That would be history worth making. And that is what this Natural Liberation blog is about.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Democracy, Ethiopia and Palestine
Before I rag on President George Bush, not as an individual but as the head of the ruling class in the United States of America, I want to demonstrate how universal his problem is.
Today's blog is about democracy and U.S. policy in the world, using Algeria, Palestine, Somalia and Ethiopia as examples.
I know quite a few people who define themselves as democracy advocates and specialists in the U.S. They devote substantial parts of their lives to issues like Instant Runoff Voting and the dangers of voting machines that do not produce paper trails. They rail at Bush for what happened in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.
Yet even many of them have trouble distinguishing between democracy and their getting their way. They tend to believe that if they are in the triumphant majority, democracy is working. But when they are in a minority when the votes have been counted, they suspect foul play. I've seen this scenario played out within the Green Party and in non-profit organizations too many times to count. I admit I have had this reaction myself.
So why be surprised that George Bush and cronies equate democracy with getting their own way? I believe George Bush believes democracy is a good thing. It is the best form of government. It made him president. He'd like to see a democracy in Iraq, in Somalia and Ethiopia and even in Saudi Arabia. The problem is he wants the people of these nations to democratically decide that they agree with him and with U.S. policy objectives, which are usually set by corporate interests. He's been willing to sacrifice democracy to other goals. You might say it is human nature; but it is still wrong.
Today the New York Times had a good, long article: In Ethiopia, Fears and Cries of Army Brutality by Jeffrey Gentleman. Bush has made the Ethiopian government a major ally. It has, by African standards, a strong army and its rulers are Christian. The nation is roughly half Christian, half Islamic, much like Sudan. Its own political opposition, and rebels, tend to be Islamic. It has the form of a democracy, but in fact the government panicked during the buildup to the 2005 elections and suppressed the opposition by, well, killing as many of them as they could.
This same Ethiopian government was asked by the U.S. to invade Somalia (a war crime) to overthrow the Islamic Justice Courts, a popular democratic (if religious) movement that had brought both peace and justice to most of Somalia. Ethiopian troops are still in Somalia.
This week we also saw the final triumph of corruption in the Palestinian Liberation Organization: the PLO has agreed, in return for money to feed their bellies, to be the puppet government of Israel and the United States over the Palestinian people. Again, there was an agreement to try democracy, backed by the U.S. When Hamas proved to be more popular with the Palestinians than U.S.-approved choices, an economic blockade was established. This was a crime against humanity. Now the PLO, which won only a minority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in the last elections, is claiming to be the legitimate government of Palestine.
This pattern of pretending that democratic governments should be appointed by the President of the United States rather than elected by the actual voters of the actual countries involved is not George W. Bush's invention. It has been around for a long time. It included a CIA-sponsored coup against secular socialists in Iran that led, eventually, to the current Islamic regime coming to power. In Algeria when Islamic parties did well in an election in 1992 the military staged a coup to keep them from running the government. Note 1992 is long before the current War of Terror began.
If people subscribe to the Islamic faith always are kicked out of government when they win an election, what will they think of democracy? Why bother with peaceful methods?
Democracy means allowing for change, even when you disagree with the current majority. While the U.S. was founded as a Republic by a small band of mostly slave-owning rich white men, for the most part as the franchise (right to vote) expanded to other groups we have not had a problem with individuals trying to set themselves up as lifelong dictators. The only exception was President-for-Life Franklin D. Roosevelt, and following his grasp at permanent power the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution was passed limiting Presidents to two terms.
I don't expect George W. Bush to try to mess with the 22nd Amendment. He may be replaced by a like-minded person, or he may not.
Democracy, for all its problems, is the least bad form of government. We should support democracy in other nations, but not by interfering in their internal affairs. This means allowing political parties like Hamas to govern when they win elections. And it means withdrawing all aid from countries like Ethiopia that do not respect the election process.
Background on Ethiopia
Background on Somalia
My blogs on Somalia
Background on Palestine
Today's blog is about democracy and U.S. policy in the world, using Algeria, Palestine, Somalia and Ethiopia as examples.
I know quite a few people who define themselves as democracy advocates and specialists in the U.S. They devote substantial parts of their lives to issues like Instant Runoff Voting and the dangers of voting machines that do not produce paper trails. They rail at Bush for what happened in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.
Yet even many of them have trouble distinguishing between democracy and their getting their way. They tend to believe that if they are in the triumphant majority, democracy is working. But when they are in a minority when the votes have been counted, they suspect foul play. I've seen this scenario played out within the Green Party and in non-profit organizations too many times to count. I admit I have had this reaction myself.
So why be surprised that George Bush and cronies equate democracy with getting their own way? I believe George Bush believes democracy is a good thing. It is the best form of government. It made him president. He'd like to see a democracy in Iraq, in Somalia and Ethiopia and even in Saudi Arabia. The problem is he wants the people of these nations to democratically decide that they agree with him and with U.S. policy objectives, which are usually set by corporate interests. He's been willing to sacrifice democracy to other goals. You might say it is human nature; but it is still wrong.
Today the New York Times had a good, long article: In Ethiopia, Fears and Cries of Army Brutality by Jeffrey Gentleman. Bush has made the Ethiopian government a major ally. It has, by African standards, a strong army and its rulers are Christian. The nation is roughly half Christian, half Islamic, much like Sudan. Its own political opposition, and rebels, tend to be Islamic. It has the form of a democracy, but in fact the government panicked during the buildup to the 2005 elections and suppressed the opposition by, well, killing as many of them as they could.
This same Ethiopian government was asked by the U.S. to invade Somalia (a war crime) to overthrow the Islamic Justice Courts, a popular democratic (if religious) movement that had brought both peace and justice to most of Somalia. Ethiopian troops are still in Somalia.
This week we also saw the final triumph of corruption in the Palestinian Liberation Organization: the PLO has agreed, in return for money to feed their bellies, to be the puppet government of Israel and the United States over the Palestinian people. Again, there was an agreement to try democracy, backed by the U.S. When Hamas proved to be more popular with the Palestinians than U.S.-approved choices, an economic blockade was established. This was a crime against humanity. Now the PLO, which won only a minority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in the last elections, is claiming to be the legitimate government of Palestine.
This pattern of pretending that democratic governments should be appointed by the President of the United States rather than elected by the actual voters of the actual countries involved is not George W. Bush's invention. It has been around for a long time. It included a CIA-sponsored coup against secular socialists in Iran that led, eventually, to the current Islamic regime coming to power. In Algeria when Islamic parties did well in an election in 1992 the military staged a coup to keep them from running the government. Note 1992 is long before the current War of Terror began.
If people subscribe to the Islamic faith always are kicked out of government when they win an election, what will they think of democracy? Why bother with peaceful methods?
Democracy means allowing for change, even when you disagree with the current majority. While the U.S. was founded as a Republic by a small band of mostly slave-owning rich white men, for the most part as the franchise (right to vote) expanded to other groups we have not had a problem with individuals trying to set themselves up as lifelong dictators. The only exception was President-for-Life Franklin D. Roosevelt, and following his grasp at permanent power the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution was passed limiting Presidents to two terms.
I don't expect George W. Bush to try to mess with the 22nd Amendment. He may be replaced by a like-minded person, or he may not.
Democracy, for all its problems, is the least bad form of government. We should support democracy in other nations, but not by interfering in their internal affairs. This means allowing political parties like Hamas to govern when they win elections. And it means withdrawing all aid from countries like Ethiopia that do not respect the election process.
Background on Ethiopia
Background on Somalia
My blogs on Somalia
Background on Palestine
Friday, June 15, 2007
Sad End to a Marxist Experiment in Palestine: The PLO
Today by all reports Hamas has, at least temporarily, eliminated the Palestinian Liberation Organization from power in the Gaza Strip. The PLO still dominates in the West Bank of Palestine and PLO member Mahmoud Abas is still President of the territorial (not national) government, but its dominance is shaky.
The PLO might serve as textbook example of how not to run a national liberation organization. The PLO's record, or course, is mixed by whatever reasonable standards you judge by. Formed in 1964 out of a convention of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO faced a strong Israel with conflicting support from Arab nations. While its ideology was clearly nationalistic, most of its factions were also Marxist, in the socialist-to-communist spectrum. In the mid-1960's and into the 1980's the strength of the Soviet Union and China and the success of Marxist and nationalist wars of national liberation against the U.S. and European empires made the PLO's embracement of Marxism seem rational.
Rather than my repeating more PLO history, please see the Wikipedia article Palestinian Liberation Organization or one of the PLO's own web sites.
The key point is: the PLO engaged in a multi-faceted political and military war to regain Palestine from the Israeli occupation. The did it with very little help from non-Palestinian Arabs. They made enormous sacrifices; many of those who were not killed spent long periods in prisons. They put the plight of the Palestinian people back on the world's agenda. So how did they lose the support of the people in Gaza and the West Bank?
It is only fair to state that failure is always a political problem. With the U.S. supplying and shielding Israel, with the strength the Israeli economy and military, and with little meaningful support from Saudi Arabia, the PLO program of driving off the Israelis had no chance of success. Any organization would have failed given those odds. You can always count on people for blaming the PLO for not doing the impossible; Palestinians, to some extent, blamed the PLO for its failures.
But in other areas the PLO failed when it might have succeeded. They failed to find a way to build an economy. They allowed their leadership structure to become a house of economic corruption. And they failed to provide a workable philosophy for the Palestinians in refuge camps.
Marxism competed quite successfully with the organized, traditional religions between about 1850 and about 1990. It promised pie on a plate rather than pie in the sky. It promised equality for working people and equality for all ethnic groups; it led the world in establishing the equality of women on a large scale. The social-democratic (as opposed to Leninist-dictatorial) style of Marxism is still going strong in some nations. But in the Palestinian towns and refuge camps it began to sound as hollow as Catholicism sounded to many Europeans during the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's.
I did not believe this when I first heard it. I met at political meetings (in Berkeley, of course) two Palestinian students who were Marxists of the Leninist variety. But one day they told me that they were considering switching to supporting an Islamic organization. This was back around 1983. Why would educated, rational people embrace an irrational religion? Because they already knew, way back then, that the PLO was a failure. That its Marxism was a shell; that it had become an organization devoted to fleecing the people rather than leading them to a utopia.
Over the years I have thought back to that conversation many times. I don't care much for organized religion (see my Religion pages). I believe that religious people are just as apt to be hypocritical and corrupt as atheists. But I have observed, in history and in current times, that some times an organization comes together that is not corrupt, and the people in the organization maintain that character for a considerable period of time.
Most of the time most of the people find it easier to put up with corruption than to do something about it. Corrupt organizations usually have the power to punish honest people. But some times situations become so bad that ordinary people will reject corruption and even fight it.
That is what happened in Palestine, and the organization that embodied the purity of spirit necessary to fight corruption just happened to be Islamic. This is not to say that Islam was not founded primarily as a moral and ethical organization; its history clearly shows that it was. But Islam was also corrupted early; for many of its adherents the seizure of booty became its primary attraction even before The Prophet died.
While Hamas's aim of destroying the state of Israel (See Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement) has motivated its most militant members, I suspect that is not the main reason it has such widespread popular support in Gaza.
Nor do I think the PLO lost support because of its godless Marxism. I don't think many Palestinians have either a free-market capitalist or an anarchist critique of Marxist state-socialism. I don't think they hated Yasser Arafat on a personal level.
It is all about honesty versus corruption.
This is an important lesson for all political organizations. Party leaderships that are filled with parasites, as in the Democratic and Republican Parties in the U.S.A., can survive during periods of moral decay and economic prosperity. But new parties can be built based on honesty and justice, and when times are rough these organizations may grow at surprisingly rapid rates.
The PLO might serve as textbook example of how not to run a national liberation organization. The PLO's record, or course, is mixed by whatever reasonable standards you judge by. Formed in 1964 out of a convention of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO faced a strong Israel with conflicting support from Arab nations. While its ideology was clearly nationalistic, most of its factions were also Marxist, in the socialist-to-communist spectrum. In the mid-1960's and into the 1980's the strength of the Soviet Union and China and the success of Marxist and nationalist wars of national liberation against the U.S. and European empires made the PLO's embracement of Marxism seem rational.
Rather than my repeating more PLO history, please see the Wikipedia article Palestinian Liberation Organization or one of the PLO's own web sites.
The key point is: the PLO engaged in a multi-faceted political and military war to regain Palestine from the Israeli occupation. The did it with very little help from non-Palestinian Arabs. They made enormous sacrifices; many of those who were not killed spent long periods in prisons. They put the plight of the Palestinian people back on the world's agenda. So how did they lose the support of the people in Gaza and the West Bank?
It is only fair to state that failure is always a political problem. With the U.S. supplying and shielding Israel, with the strength the Israeli economy and military, and with little meaningful support from Saudi Arabia, the PLO program of driving off the Israelis had no chance of success. Any organization would have failed given those odds. You can always count on people for blaming the PLO for not doing the impossible; Palestinians, to some extent, blamed the PLO for its failures.
But in other areas the PLO failed when it might have succeeded. They failed to find a way to build an economy. They allowed their leadership structure to become a house of economic corruption. And they failed to provide a workable philosophy for the Palestinians in refuge camps.
Marxism competed quite successfully with the organized, traditional religions between about 1850 and about 1990. It promised pie on a plate rather than pie in the sky. It promised equality for working people and equality for all ethnic groups; it led the world in establishing the equality of women on a large scale. The social-democratic (as opposed to Leninist-dictatorial) style of Marxism is still going strong in some nations. But in the Palestinian towns and refuge camps it began to sound as hollow as Catholicism sounded to many Europeans during the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's.
I did not believe this when I first heard it. I met at political meetings (in Berkeley, of course) two Palestinian students who were Marxists of the Leninist variety. But one day they told me that they were considering switching to supporting an Islamic organization. This was back around 1983. Why would educated, rational people embrace an irrational religion? Because they already knew, way back then, that the PLO was a failure. That its Marxism was a shell; that it had become an organization devoted to fleecing the people rather than leading them to a utopia.
Over the years I have thought back to that conversation many times. I don't care much for organized religion (see my Religion pages). I believe that religious people are just as apt to be hypocritical and corrupt as atheists. But I have observed, in history and in current times, that some times an organization comes together that is not corrupt, and the people in the organization maintain that character for a considerable period of time.
Most of the time most of the people find it easier to put up with corruption than to do something about it. Corrupt organizations usually have the power to punish honest people. But some times situations become so bad that ordinary people will reject corruption and even fight it.
That is what happened in Palestine, and the organization that embodied the purity of spirit necessary to fight corruption just happened to be Islamic. This is not to say that Islam was not founded primarily as a moral and ethical organization; its history clearly shows that it was. But Islam was also corrupted early; for many of its adherents the seizure of booty became its primary attraction even before The Prophet died.
While Hamas's aim of destroying the state of Israel (See Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement) has motivated its most militant members, I suspect that is not the main reason it has such widespread popular support in Gaza.
Nor do I think the PLO lost support because of its godless Marxism. I don't think many Palestinians have either a free-market capitalist or an anarchist critique of Marxist state-socialism. I don't think they hated Yasser Arafat on a personal level.
It is all about honesty versus corruption.
This is an important lesson for all political organizations. Party leaderships that are filled with parasites, as in the Democratic and Republican Parties in the U.S.A., can survive during periods of moral decay and economic prosperity. But new parties can be built based on honesty and justice, and when times are rough these organizations may grow at surprisingly rapid rates.
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