Response to violence in Palestine and Pakistan

[Shortly after publication of my article on what to expect in 2010, a reader has sent comments to the New Age, where my article appeared. Here below is my response to his comments.]

In the letter below, Mr. Elahi seems to misunderstand my views about Palestine. In my New Age article I mentioned that in the Muslim world President Obama will be weighed on the basis of his success or failure to deliver peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Palestinian issue has remained the burning issue in the Muslim psychic. That is the Muslim reality today from Bosnia to Bangladesh, Turkey to Tanzania, and Indonesia to Morocco. As I hinted, President Obama seems handicapped to deliver what he promised to the world. It would be insane to deny the Israel Factor for such failures to deliver. The Obama plan for the troubled region was not torpedoed by either Hamas or Mahmoud Abbas but by Netanyahu who continues to build new settlements, blockades Gaza and confiscates Palestinian land. And the Obama administration has come to terms with that reality, mindful of the power of the Lobby. Stating such is not giving air to any “conspiracy theory” or playing, what is commonly dubbed as, the “Muslim victimization” card but stating mere facts, which somehow are always ignored by our pro-Israeli friends like Mr. Elahi. Look at the US position inside the UN or inside the Capitol Hill that still tries to condone Israeli war crimes. Where is that “change” people had come to expect from the Obama administration? How long can President Obama and his administration hoodwink global citizenry?

Mr. Elahi's position in favor of Israel is long known, but is indefensible given Israel's brutal practice and persecution of the Palestinian people that goes on uninterrupted even to this very day. What the Israelis did last year in Gaza are nothing short of War Crimes, as also opined by the UN Fact-finding Goldstone Report (see: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm).

Mr. Elahi has previously called for embracing a Gandhian strategy in dealing with expansionist leaders of Israel. He seems oblivious of the fact that such tactics simply didn't and will not work inside Israel. Israeli leaders are not British leaders of Gandhi’s time! They are worse. Just look at what is happening with the Palestinian Gandhis inside Israel today. As I write, three such individuals Mohammad Othman (arrested on September 22, 2009 at the Allenby Bridge crossing, while returning from addressing the Norwegian national pension fund about divestment from Elbit Systems, a major Israeli military contractor), Abdallah Abu Rahmah (a leader of the weekly nonviolent protests against the Apartheid Wall in Bil'in, arrested in his home in the early morning hours of December 10, 2009-International Human Rights Day ) and Jamal Juma' (coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was arrested on December 16, 2009) - all non-violent activists and leaders within the Palestinian camp are now behind Israeli prisons. Where is Mr. Elahi's outrage against such Israeli detention without charges? One should not ignore the historical fact that the Palestinian Intifadah and its extreme version, played out in the Occupied Territories, did not just happen for no reason. The continuing Israeli expansionist policy, war crimes and persecution are the factors that seeded the birth of such violent resistance tactics that we are witnessing. For decades before the 1980s, there were hardly any such actions taken by the Palestinian people. Of course, there were some plane hijacks, but these were too few to be considered serious or problematic of the scale we see today.
Israel's arbitrary detention and persecution of dissenters such as Mohammad, Abdallah, and Jamal-Palestinians who are leading a nonviolent movement of protest against Israeli apartheid and in support of campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel-stand as a crucial test of whether the Obama Administration singles out Israel for a special exemption from its human rights rhetoric when the Secretary Clinton pledged that the Obama Administration would hold itself accountable to universal human rights standards:
"By holding ourselves accountable, we reinforce our moral authority to demand that all governments adhere to obligations under international law; among them, not to torture, arbitrarily detain and persecute dissenters, or engage in political killings. Our government and the international community must counter the pretensions of those who deny or abdicate their responsibilities and hold violators to account."
How hypocritical does Secretary Clinton sound when we compare her rhetoric against concrete actions! Truly, more and more President Obama's policies in the Muslim world are sounding like those of the Bush W. era. And that is unacceptable and bad for our world.

Here in this short response, I shall not dwell upon the subject of current violence inside Pakistan because of the time it would take for an objective analysis of the sad situation there. Suffice it to say that like any nominal Muslim, I strongly condemn violence in any form. While I condemn such internecine violence reaping the Pakistani society today, it would be too foolish for anyone to ignore foreign complicity to initiate and sustain such madness either. Let’s not forget that there was no Af-Pak Taliban before the current vicious cycle of violence that had its root in the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan and the drone attacks inside Pakistan. As an ardent student of history I can definitely predict that with outside players and factors gone, Pakistan would be much better off today.

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