Erdogan Again

BY AMOS

In the past two years, we have seen repeated crises in Turkish-Israeli relations. Most of these were set off by Turkish condemnations of Israeli policies and military operations. A few of these spats involved warnings issued by the Turks to both Israelis and American Jews that recognition of the Armenian Genocide by either Israel or American Jewish organizations would lead to irreparable harm to the Turkish-Israeli relationship. Time and again, Israeli commentators and politicians have tried to assuage the Turks as well as the Israeli public. "Everything is okay," and "military relations continue to be excellent and are immune from these political disturbance. Those sounding this line, however, are running out of credibility very quickly. Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan , seems intent on destroying ties between the two countries. Until now, the highlight was his angry outburst at Davos (see clip below). The recent cancellation by Turkey of an air force drill that was supposed to have included Israel also caused a stir. But Erdogan's remarks (Ha'aretz) today, ahead of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's meeting in Istanbul, take the cake.

Erdogan's statements included a defense of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and the incredible assertion that Muslims are incapable of carrying out genocide (I will not mention the obvious here; suffice to say that millions of Armenians feel very differently about this matter). Erdogan also charged that Israel had committed worse crimes in Gaza than Sudanese paramilitary forces had in Darfur. All this comes on the heels of the General Assembly's endorsement of of the Goldstone report. It is clear that the current Turkish government does not believe that Israel is an important ally. However important the ties between the armed forces of the two states might be, Erdogan's attacks on Israel since 2007 make him an enemy rather than a friend of the Jewish state.

Jimmy Carter at Berkeley

Berkeley students lining up to see President Carter (May 2, 2007)

If you put 1,500 college students in a room and make them listen to 30 minutes of canned analysis followed by some valedictory banalities from a failed ex-president, they will still give the man a standing ovation. After all, many of them waited in line for two hours to get tickets.

The funny thing is that those who have been involved in "the struggle" for years (well, semesters) probably left the room wondering about the future of the resistance ... with "friends" like him. First, President Carter denied that Israeli policies in the West Bank were racist. Then, he explained that he never claimed that "events and conditions in Israel" constitute apartheid. Why then does his book carry the subtitle Peace not Apartheid? As As'ad AbuKhalil has said, it is clear that while

Jimmy Carter gave his new book a strong title ... he lacks the courage to defend it. He always waffles when he is asked to explain it.

Instead, Carter admitted that he chose the title to provoke and to get people to pay attention. If he made an argument to the effect that Israel engages in a policy of apartheid in the West Bank, I missed it. In lieu of such an argument, he told the audience that he simply "can't think of any word that describes the situation more accurately."

I have heard many people invoke "apartheid" when describing Israel's policies in the territories. On my walk to campus, I pass by signs urging me to "boycott apartheid Israel" every day. It is also true that the term is thrown about with abandon by some on the Israeli far left. But I have never heard a rigorous argument for this, especially not one that actually makes reference to the situation in South Africa. I don't find these comparisons any more convincing than I find the equation of Israeli policies with Nazism.

Aside from the apartheid question, there isn't a whole lot to get excited about. Carter's vision of peace sounded suspiciously close to the one articulated by the Zionist left for years. In Carter's view, the Palestinian refugees should not be allowed to return to Israel proper but would be compensated by an international fund; half of the Israeli settlements should be annexed to Israel as part of a territorial exchange with the Palestinians; and guaranteeing Israel's security from terrorism is as important as the creation of a stable and prosperous Palestine alongside it.

On top of that, Carter spent the first ten minutes of his speech sucking up to the Zionists. First, he highlighted his efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry, including his interventions to help neo-liberal and hawkish refuseniks like Natan Sharansky. Then, Carter spoke proudly of his role in prohibiting U.S. companies from cooperating with the Arab League boycott of Israel by engaging in "secondary boycotts." He also talked about his role in setting up the commission that planned the construction of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Time and again, he invoked the visions of "justice and righteousness" in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Jewish tradition; he sounded almost like Michael Lerner.

Representing

Surely, some audience members must have wondered, Carter would say something about the Zionist conspiracy to control the American discourse on Palestine. He did, sort of, but first he emphasized that he had "never believed that Jews control the media," and that "the overwhelming support for Israel comes from American Christians like [him]." Interestingly enough, a murmur went through the crowd when Carter began his sentence about "major news organizations," as if in anticipation of some lethal blow; it died down quickly as he finished the next clause.

Representing something else

According to Carter, the "powerful influence of AIPAC" constitutes only an "additional factor." And there is nothing wrong with the lobby, "which is exercising its legitimate right to pursue the goal of defending the most conservative governments of Israel."

To top it all off, Carter kept saying such nice things about ordinary Israelis, shifting the blame solely onto "the leaders of Israel, AIPAC, and most of the vocal leaders of American Jewry." Indeed, among the latter - the rabbis - Carter claimed, there were many who, in private conversation, told him that "given the American climate, it was almost impossible for them to criticize Israel."

President Carter began his talk with the claim that few people have had as many opportunities to get to know the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he has. I am sure that Carter has done some very valuable work in the region, especially as an elections monitor (no sarcasm intended here). But I was a bit perturbed by the state of his knowledge at some points of the talk - though this was usually marginal to the argument.

For example, Carter referred twice to the "three [sic] Israeli soldiers that the Palestinians are holding." He advocated that Israel swap these for "9,800 Palestinian prisoners" held by the country. Did Carter's people never brief him on the fact that Hizbullah, not Palestinian militants, is holding two of these soldiers?

Carter was very sanguine about the prospects for peace in the region. In his view - which certainly does not lack adherents - "the growth of Islamic extremism is directly related to the continuing bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians." He even felt it necessary to add that it is "foolish to say otherwise." Muslim animosity for the West is mostly "because of the Palestinians' plight." The notion that Iraqis will stop killing each other and that al-Qaeda will throw in the towel as soon as the Israelis leave the West Bank is ridiculous and dangerous (for Americans). It will be disproved as soon as some idiot actually tries to turn it into policy.

The former president is equally optimistic about the future of Palestine, after "the occupation" - that great metaphysical evil - has been scourged. Given the reports coming daily out of Gaza, I have to admit that I almost laughed out loud (I wasn't the only one) when Carter remarked that "the Palestinians, in their own area, have almost perfect democracy." Don't expect to find a lot of reporting on this in the Western media, but see Avi Issacharoff's article on the democratic situation in Gaza right now.

Finally, I was a little confused by the answer Carter gave to a question from the audience on what the U.S. should do about Darfur. Carter explained that he had met Bashir; "he's a devout Muslim, which is part of the cause of the war between the north and south." Was Carter really confused about the location of Darfur and the causes of the genocide there?

Angry Arab at Berkeley

Sean O'Neill (l.) and As'ad AbuKhalil (r.)

Professor As'ad AbuKhalil of California State University - Stanislaus, the man also known as "Angry Arab," addressed a crowd of about 50 student and community activists at UC Berkeley on Thursday night. His short lecture was part of an event organized by Berkeley's Stop the War Coalition. He was followed by a former marine, Sean O'Neill, who started as a freshman at Berkeley after serving two tours of duty in Iraq. The messages delivered by the two could not have been more different.

AbuKhalil spent much of his time criticizing both the anti-war movement at places like Berkeley, as well as the state of campus activism in general. Strangely enough, he began his lecture with an attack on what he called "the new pet cause: Darfur." He then lambasted those devoting their time to stopping the genocide in Sudan:

This is seen as a safe cause. Parents think that this is an issue where kids can be active. They don’t know that the U.S. is an accomplice in Darfur, along with the Janjaweed. I worry about how people like [New York Times columnist Nicholas] Kristof are marketing a tragedy like Darfur as kitsch. It’s used as a substitute for activism that’s needed to prevent crimes occurring at a rate that’s larger than what’s happening at Darfur.

What crimes might AbuKhalil have been thinking of? No doubt, the crimes of the American occupiers of Iraq. Throughout his talk, the professor blamed the U.S. for the "654,000 people who have died in Iraq" since the invasion. Of course, a large number of those civilians who have died in Iraq were killed by fellow Iraqis, most of them "insurgents." But in an amazing exercise in obfuscation, AbuKhalil suggested that most of the civilian deaths were not being caused by the "Iraqi resistance." The proof? A 2005 book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape, according to which only 20% of the acts of violence by anti-American forces in Iraq are aimed at civilians. Of course, AbuKhalil conveniently glossed over the more important statistic: the number of civilian deaths. A car bomb that kills 60 civilians in Baghdad counts as 1 act, while a total of 4 ambushes of Iraqi Security Forces or IED attacks on American soldiers, might kill 5 combatants.

Although AbuKhalil admitted that a small number of the Iraqi insurgents were terrorists, he called the large majority of the "resistance" a legitimate struggle against colonial occupation. The professor chastised the anti-war left in America for accepting the depiction of the Iraqi insurgency as terrorism. From the Western media, he said, you would think that the large majority of acts of violence were perpetrated against civilians. But most are aimed at "American troops and the Iraqi puppet forces." But AbuKhalil did not stop there.

For Angry Arab, the biggest problem of the anti-war movement is that it continues to "worship the troops."

Why should you support the troops when they are on a mission of colonization, destruction of a society. This is the same culture that produced Abu Ghraib, the massacre of Haditha, the rape. Because of the worshipping of troops by liberals and conservatives alike. Even if it will offend many, we have to say no. We oppose the troops, if they’re engaged in a war against a country that is far away and has not hurt us.

He called on the anti-war movement to change course:

We have been way too intimidated on the Left about coming out to support in principle the resistance against the American occupation in Iraq.

AbuKhalil also warned that the Democratic Party would be no better than the current administration. They would simply be smarter about pursuing the "Bush Doctrine." This message was well-received by at least half of the audience, members of which spoke disparagingly about "liberals" and the Democrats. For this hard core, all of Iraq's problems would immediately be solved by an American withdrawal. And indeed, for them, it is America which caused the division and strife in the region in the first place. As AbuKhalil said:

the festering sectarian warfare [in Iraq] is largely the doing of the U.S. government. The U.S. went to Iraq and exploited Sunni-Shi’ite differences. Sectarian warfare began because of deliberate actions of U.S. In Iraq, people married across sectarian lines, unlike in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is now deliberately funding Sunni fighters. I believe that a secular formula is best in a place like Lebanon or Iraq. But it is not up to me to tell Iraqis what they should do. I believe that no agreement reached by people under occupation is valid. No election under occupation is valid. These are puppet elections. Once the U.S. troops leave, the Iraqis will be more than capable of coming up with their own solutions.

The rest of the audience consisted of activists who probably identified more with the anti-war Democrats, including a number of people who were former servicemen, like Sean O'Neill, who spoke after AbuKhalil. Only in a place like Berkeley, would an eminently reasonable person such as O'Neill have been forced onto the defensive, trying desperately to explain that "you have to speak to Americans in their language" if you want to stop the war. Like O'Neill, I support a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to safer bases in the Gulf. Hence, I hope that the anti-war movement does not listen to AbuKhalil. On the other hand, I do hope that Americans at large do hear what the Angry Arab has to say, for there is nothing more damning to his various causes than his glorification of the "resistance fighters" killing innocent people in Iraq daily, and his derision of the campaign on behalf of the people of Darfur.

Unfortunately, "the professor" - as O'Neill deferentially called him several times - left immediately after he finished speaking and answering questions. To be fair, AbuKhalil had a long drive home ahead of him. But to me it only reinforced my impression of him as someone who put more stock in his celebrity status than in sincere discussion. It was also rather disrespectful.

More to follow from Noah K, who also attended the lecture with me.