A Critical Look at the Left’s Flirtation with Islamic Fundamentalism
-from Communicating Vessels Magazine Issue 19
“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, nor to hate them, but to understand them.” Baruch Spinoza
THE WORLD HAS undoubtedly changed since the late 1980s. No one can deny that when the Berlin wall crumbled and the bureaucratic socialism of the Soviet Union imploded, the Western world was in a state of jubilant euphoria. You could view images of excited people chipping away at the wall that separated East Germany from West Germany. But in the years following those moments of joy, the market would claim its triumph and sovereignty over social experiment and social transformation.
The freedom of the individual was victorious over the Soviet cult of the collective. Each individual was supposed to fend for himself and not rely on an overarching state to take care of her needs. Expression, once the province of state-sponsored collective realism and agitprop, would now shift hands and be placed into the mitts of an elite concerned with form over meaning and content. Culture was to be a kind of consumption and a style you chose because of the freedom of the individual and the market. There was to be no culture but mass culture bought and sold as an industry.
This was an intimate part of the newly emerging consensus that followed the defeats of the social movements of the 1960s: liberal capitalism is ultimately what the majority wants and we might as well accept it as a flawed but fixable system. This was the period of Fukuyamas end of history thesis whereby we were supposed to believe that we have exhausted social endeavor and must accept the world for what it is. It was inevitable, according to Fukuyama, that people would choose liberal capitalism over dictatorship. It was almost as if, in Fukuyamas mind, we were genetically wired to choose such a path. But we are seeing the myth of a resilient and ever integrative capital exposed for what it is: a myth.
There is no question that this system has adapted to crisis after crisis and has managed to make it seem as if there is no alternative to it. Those actions and critiques that are frequently presented as fundamental breaks with the system are, more often than not, spectacular confrontations with financial capital. These tend to take the form of mass demonstrations against this or that multinational trade organization. We saw this in Seattle in 1999 and Miami during the meeting of the FTAA in 2003. Activists and genuinely concerned individuals descended on these and other cities intending to disrupt the meetings taking place. And when the meetings finished people went home and waited for the next big conference of state figureheads, private contractors and politicians to take place. People went back to their day-to-day wage labor jobs and continued to purchase the necessary life commodities. Nothing really changed.
A similar lack of critique was prevalent during the brief mushrooming of the anti-war movement at the time of the US bombing of Iraq in 2003. Even at its height there was a noticeable lack of ability to connect a distant and abstract bombing to our daily lives. When people tried to do this, on most occasions it was limited to referring to George W. Bush as a fascist. You also had the grab bag of conspiracy theorists who likened everything to Jewish control of America. In this view, Israel and the Jews were working behind the scenes ensuring that their interests were protected in America and Israel.
Hannah Arendt pointed out in the opening chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism that the primary historical myth of the Jews was resurrected by the Nazis to explain away social misery: that Jews were financiers concerned solely with improving their own lot and they were not in the least bit interested in contributing to the German nation. Arendt argues that myths tend to have elements of truth to them. In this case, there was a certain amount of truth in referring to Jews as financiers. Arendts argument was based in social, cultural and political history, not biology or other mystifications. The element of truth was that because of banishment and forced exile Jews had to develop their own survival skills in every facet of life: financially, politically, socially and culturally. The Nazis then took a fragment of truth, separated it from its historical context, used it to explain the whole and acted accordingly.
Our times are different than the 1930s in Germany. Nonetheless, we live in an age characterized by fragmentation. It takes effort to understand the complex workings of this system. The workings of it are incredibly abstract. It is as if the fantasy world of Kafka has become reality: the myriad piles of paperwork, the pencil-pushing bureaucrats and the halls of the powerful that cannot be easily demarcated and concretely found in the actual world are a part of life in the year 2007. Because of this, analysis and understanding has become myopic, incoherent, irrational, incomplete, ahistorical. Reference to Zionist Occupied Government, 9/11 being an inside job and chemical trails are frequently the norm in discussion about the state of the world. Conspiracy theory crowds out analysis that is grounded, historically based and intellectually sophisticated in part because next to no effort is required to crudely conclude that Jews control the world, George W. Bush is a member of a secret society and Dick Cheney is a distant relative of Adolph Hitler.
This society is falling apart at the seams: the subprime mortgage crisis, the devaluation of the dollar, the ecological crisis, the disaster in Iraq, the cuts in wages and health benefits, the rise of religious fundamentalism coalesce and put the system to the ultimate test: will it be able to adapt and pummel on? or will its contradictions become so unbearable that the ship will have to be abandoned?
One thing is certain: critique and action do not challenge the whole at the moment. Rather than trying to understand and link pieces of the puzzle together people remain content with dubious and potentially dangerous partial explanations. An example of this is the argument that if America stopped funding Israel the world would be a much better place. The new books The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt and The Power of Israel in the United States by James Petras are fundamentally similar books.1 They go on at great length to expose the sometimes hidden and sometimes obvious links between US foreign policy and the Israel lobby in the US. There is no denying that there is an Israel lobby in the US. The extent of its influence and power is, however, up for debate. The power that it wields or fails to wield is, in our opinion, of negligible importance. By monomaniacally focusing on Israel, Saudi Arabia and America are taken off the hook.2 The authors of both books come to highly simplistic and clichd conclusions: if the US frees itself from the burdens of the Israel lobby, America can be free to determine its own foreign policy. America would have the power to bomb other countries to smithereens but it would be true Americans calling the shots, not those suspicious Jews (this is an implied, not actually stated).
Gone from this equation is the role of class in the making of modern society and the spread of commerce, the commodity and the fight for a classless and commodity-free world. This slipshod understanding and lack of real analysis has led countless leftists, radicals and other people down a path of unsavory alliances, a misreading of current realities and a gross oversimplification of what is occurring in Israel and Palestine and the rest of the Middle East.
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IF WE GO BACK in time to the 1950s and 1960s we can trace the popularity of largely secular pan-Arabist movements in the entire Middle East. The goal was to unite the Arab world into a federated union of nation-states. This general idea encompassed a broad spectrum of thought. The overriding theme of the movement as a whole, however, was a commitment to secularism and a desire to see Arabs united against Western colonialism. The Soviet Union was the satellite country of this nationalist movement and the long persecuted Shia Muslims constituted a sizable portion of it.
Until after the 1967 war between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, this movement held the hearts and minds of many Arabs. When Egypt was defeated, Nasser the Arab nationalist leader and Egyptian politician and his movement for a united Arab world was also defeated. The corruption, statism, bureaucracy and the belief that this movement was doomed to fail because of Israels easy victory in the war was a factor which lead to the birth of modern Islamic fundamentalism.
Israels quick and relatively painless triumph was a watershed event. In Tom Segevs marvelous 1967: Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East he examines how in a time of deep anxiety, economic depression and doubt about the future of the state of Israel, Israelis, by and large, saw in the war a sense of duty, purpose and hope.3 Following the war, large numbers of Israelis started to view their victory in religious and messianic terms. When the Western Wall was annexed and occupied in the Old City of Jerusalem, the religious element came out in might roars. It was believed that Jews finally got a hold of a piece of real estate associated with the Second Temple. Religious claims and counterclaims on the part of Arabs and Jews polarized the conflict and paved the way for what is going on today. Saudi Arabia and the CIA used Islamic fundamentalism to weaken Nasser and Arab nationalism before 1967. The US and Saudi Arabia were afraid that this movement would nationalize oilfields and tip the balance of forces in the region out of their favor. The same drive to keep friendly non-secular players in the field led the CIA to train and fund Afghani jihadis against the Soviet Union. Egypt following the death of Nasser in 1970 and Israel also had a stake in driving back the popularity of leftist and nationalist forces in the region.4
For a period until the late 1980s, large numbers of Arabs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza saw the conflict in terms that were more secular and nationalist in character. Women dressed in blue jeans, men sauntered down the streets in work shirts and pants and grew mustaches. The discussion was more rooted in explicitly nationalist language than it was in religious language. Then came the bankruptcy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other secular forces in the region. The PLO was involved in money laundering and other nefarious schemes, thus weakening their public image and popularity. Senior and high-ranking members of the PLO were living luxuriantly while Palestinians in the occupied territories were facing dire poverty, high unemployment rates and being under the thumb of the Israeli army.
In comes the popularity of Hamas. Prior to its incarnation as Hamas, it was part of the Muslim Brotherhood which came out of Egypt in the late 1920s. The Muslim Brotherhood has been known historically for its virulent brand of anti-communism, anti-secularism and staunch support of clerical authority. The Muslim Brotherhood is still active in Egypt, though they have had to adopt populist language and slogans to maintain credibility. Their populist mask, so to speak, doesnt change the fact that they remain committed to forming an Islamic state.5 When Hamas was known as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, Israel funded them in an effort to build a counterweight to the mostly secular PLO (the PLO has, however, now adopted a language that sounds more and more Islamist). The funding they received was used to build mosques and other institutions devoted to the cause of militant Islam.
The growing strength of the Muslim Brotherhood was also responsible for attacks against secular Arabs and leftist institutions in Gaza. During the first Intifada of 1987 Palestinians were looking for guidance and direction from the PLO. When that didnt happen in the way many Palestinians wanted it to, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged with the new name Hamas and started to gain followers. Palestinians tended to see Hamas as stronger and better equipped to end the occupation. This was in contrast to the PLO which was, by this time, seen as self-absorbed and inept.
When Hamas gained notoriety and credibility, the attire of many Palestinians went through a change as well. It became more common for women to wear the headscarf and men grew out their beards and wore the appropriate tunic. The growing trend of using religious language to describe the conflict was accompanied by the rise of the ultra-orthodox Judaism and the settler movement in Israel. The movement reached its highpoint when Baruch Goldstein a devotee of the religious rights righteous cause opened fire at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, killing twenty-nine Muslims and injuring others. His shooting spree is regarded as retaliation for the assassination of his far-rightist friend, Mordechai Lapid, by Hamas in December 1993. Hamas was trying to upset the Oslo Accords that were signed in the same year. Feeling betrayed by the PLO and the Oslo Accords that kept the West Bank and Gaza under control by Israel, Palestinians elected Hamas over Fatah in the Palestine Legislative Council election of January 2006. It is unlikely that the majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas out of a desire to establish an Islamic state. Though it cant be denied that there is a growing Islamist movement in the occupied territories, the primary concerns of most Palestinians seem to be: practical solutions to the Israeli occupation, and ways of practically coping with the situation.
The election of Hamas reflects broader trends. The ousting of general Musharraf from Pakistan and the election of the Islamist Justice and Development Party in Turkey are useful indicators of peoples frustrations with secularists who have nothing substantial to offer. These regimes have repeatedly proven themselves to be corrupt and unable to prop up the economy and political and social system. President Ahmadinejad of Iran played the populist tune in the lead up to the 2005 elections and was elected based upon this. (Though it should be noted that the mullahs actually control Iran, not a puppet like President Ahmadinejad.)
There is a general crisis of secular political forces at the moment. They dont know what to offer and in comes the populist lingo of fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims. They at least have the ability to offer people redemption in an afterlife, unlike secularists whose campaign promises end up being orchestrated lies once they are elected into office. Populism, on the other hand, has the merit of addressing people where they are at when faced with economic and social insecurity. In Western Europe and America this has taken the form of anti-immigrant crusades and the erection of walls and barriers as a response to peoples social fears and anxieties. Protectionist presidential candidates in America are growing in popularity because of this.
The growth of Hamas, then, should be seen as part of the heightening of social tensions between secular and blatantly reactionary forces. Caught between this are those people who might be socially and religiously conservative but are not in favor of a religious state. They voted for Hamas in Gaza or Kadima in Israel because they see a rapid or gradual whittling away of a standard of living that has gone from horrible to even more horrible. In these instances, survival is of greater relevance than ideology
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RAFIK HARIRI: A FIGURE known as Mr. Lebanon was killed in Beirut on Valentines Day in 2005. A known philanthropist and a hugely rich man who pulled himself up from poverty with much help from wealthy Saudis, Hariri was committed to freeing Lebanon from Syrian domination. His assassination by Syria provoked the Lebanese independence movement to finally break free from Syrian occupation and influence. The independence movement came to be known as the cedar revolution and it attracted Lebanese citizens in droves. Syria was eventually ousted from the seats of power they occupied in Lebanon.6
But the independence movement faced a host of dilemmas. The Islamic fundamentalist group, Hezbollah, was skeptical of elements within the independence movement and was cautious about upsetting its relationship with Syria. What is more, Hezbollah and others expressed legitimate concern over the potential takeover of Lebanon by America and Israel after ejecting Syria.
From its long and increasingly popular history in Lebanon particularly Southern Lebanon Hezbollah was able to speak to Lebanese anxieties regarding the nearly inevitable recolonization of the country by America and Israel.
As an organization, Hezbollah was established as a result of the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982. Shia Muslims were driven from their homes and emboldened by the Israeli assaults on them. Prior to these assaults, most Lebanese Shia Muslims did not regard Israel as the primary enemy.7 If there had been no military confrontations in 1978 and 1982, Hezbollah would probably not exist.
Since its inception in the 1980s, Hezbollahs actions have gained them renown and respect by scores of Lebanese. Their numbers continue to grow and they have developed social welfare programs in blighted areas (much of the relief effort after Israels bombing campaign in 2006 was taken up by Hezbollah) and they have joined the political process as a party to be contended with. Hezbollah is very much a part of daily life to those living in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been able to use the political system and its street credibility to bring itself a substantial base of support. It would be simplistic to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization (it does indeed have its armed wing that historically hasnt been worried about civilian casualties and loss of life).
None of these factors change the groups ideology and attachment to militant Islam. Like Hamas, Hezbollah has had to adapt to changing social, political and economic conditions. It has had to sound less specifically Shia Muslim and more Lebanese. Even so, during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared that his organization was fighting for the whole Muslim world. When the conflict came to an end, Nasrallah changed his tune. Nasrallah spoke with a degree of regret regarding his taking of two Israeli soldiers. He also talked about how sometimes wars are necessary but as Muslims we dont like them. Shrewd and smart. Islamism and populism rolled into one.
The cunning calculations of both Hamas and Hezbollah are geared to attract people who lack bread and the basic necessities of life. When people are in such a dire predicament, who can blame everyday Palestinians and Lebanese for looking to both groups for practical help? In the last few years, however, I have witnessed a problematic trend: radicals and people on the left seem to be constantly issuing apologies for Hezbollah and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. On numerous occasions I have found that it goes beyond mere apologies. I have been told by people on the left that Hamas and Hezbollah are not that bad and we need to endorse them because they are the only forces on the ground willing to fight the imperialists. This is in many ways a reactionary backwards turn from leftist cheerleading for pan-Arabist movements during the 1960s. At that moment the left was at least backing a largely secular movement, albeit one that looked with high regard to bureaucratic state socialism. Not much time was spent in the 1960s trying to determine the actual content and practice of said pan-Arabist movements. In some ways, it was much the same as it is today: there are movements fighting Western colonialists and we need to get behind them. The difference is largely in the fact that contemporary movements in the Middle East are inspired by militant Islam. This makes it essential for radicals and leftists to issue their apologetics and assurances to skeptical fellow secularists that these movements are being maligned by America and Israel. According to people Ive had conversations with, it is a Zionist myth and lie that Hezbollah receives funding from Iran and Syria. In the frightening world of such people we no longer have to consult the facts reducing reality to a caricature will do.
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IT IS TRUE THAT the US, Israel and Western European countries have insisted on labeling Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Because they have stamped this label on both groups, they refuse to negotiate with them. The refusal on the part of Western governments to negotiate with the democratically elected Hamas has meant collective punishment for Palestinians. Until Hamas renounces violence, suspends hostility by acknowledging the state of Israel and honors the terms of previous agreements, Western governments will not negotiate with them in good faith. One set of stronger nation-states hypocritically denounces and judges weaker and far less powerful political groupings: that is the essence of the world we live in.
Similarly, Hezbollah is on the State Departments list of terrorist organizations. Again, the ultimatum seems to be: do what we say, even though you have a large base of support, and we will commence talks with you.
These realities have a direct impact on the daily lives of Palestinians and Lebanese. But they dont alter the aims of Hamas and Hezbollah. Both groups have at different times pledged to wipe Israel and the Jews off the map, have utterly disgusting views on women and gays and both project an image of machismo males fighting the Zionist beast. Their symbolism, orientation, propaganda and references to fighting for an Islamic state should set off alarm bells in the heads of secularists.
Probably one of the most ghastly aspects of Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is the training of young martyrs for the cause. These martyrs strap bombs to their pubescent waists and ignite them in crowded areas. In the documentary Hot House we are given a view into the minds of members of Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The director chats with them inside Israeli prisons. The result of the interviews is an honest if chilling examination of the martyr culture born from said groups. One woman who was responsible for organizing the suicide bombing of a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem expressed no remorse when interviewed. She spoke in a detached and purely metaphysical way about the martyr and how his deed will allow him to enter a dreamy, otherworldly kingdom. When you start to view the world in such a rigidly metaphysical and theological way, you can justify any action you take. The martyr of the Sbarro bombing was further venerated when universities did their best to stage simulated exhibitions of his act which included mock bloody parts and pieces of pizza. When another person was interviewed in the film he said he intends to raise his yet to born children to be martyrs for the cause.8 Nasrallah of Hezbollah has referred to Jews in the way only demagogues and spewers of vile verbiage can do: they are despicable, weak and feeble in every way shape and form.9 Hezbollah does its best to spin lurid stereotypes of Jews and they breed people on a daily diet of fanaticism.
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DURING ISRAELS BOMBING of Lebanon in the late summer of 2006 I attended an anti-war rally here in Portland. The rally was attended by a small number of individuals and organizations opposed to the bombing. The bombing disgusted me. But aspects of the rally itself also disgusted me. The Lebanese flags on display were a minor annoyance in comparison to other things that struck me as being off. The energy was unmistakably anti-Israel and anti-America. Dont get me wrong. I am no lover of Israel or America. But there seemed to be a complete lack of proportion and balance. Voices of solid anti-nationalist, internationalist were absent. That was to be expected. It was about tolerance and multiculturalism. A respect for diversity. Valuing the differences of those present. I kept thinking that this respect for diversity only went so far. If I wouldve gotten up on the podium and denounced all organized religion and all nation-states, I got the sense that I wouldve been violently ejected from the stage or booed off of it for being intolerant of diversity. Similarly, if I wouldve denounced the state of Israel and Hezbollah from the podium, I suspect I wouldve experienced a large amount of hostility. So much for diversity and the airing of perspectives.
I was amazed at how many people there were willing to side with the right-wing and reactionary Hezbollah against the equally as right-wing and reactionary government of Ehud Olmert. I spoke to two members of the International Socialist Organization and they both expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah. According to them, we need to support those who are fighting the imperialists and Hamas and Hezbollah are doing that. They thought my perspective of internationalism and solidarity against all despots (not just the big visible ones like Israel and America) and organized religion was a cloudy and impractical idea. I tried explaining what happened during the Iranian revolution of 1979: sectors of the left and other radicals worked with Islamic fundamentalists to overthrow the shah. Once the mullahs took over they executed secularists, leftists and others who didnt agree with their Islamic absolutism. I told them that if a situation like that happened again, they as well as others would be some of the first to be hanged. They werent hearing it. I was wasting my breath. I talked to others and argued my viewpoint. Some maintained a stunned silence as I spoke. It was as if I was breaking a taboo by advocating against religious fundamentalism and nation-states as a whole. Other people repeated the nonsense about having to support a force like Hezbollah in order to level the playing field in the area.
What struck me was the way we were supposed to endorse something official and abstract like Hezbollah rather than those directly impacted by the bombing. There were luckily a few people there who saw the need for this and were simply angry at the bombing. There were some truly compassionate individuals there. Nonetheless, I felt extremely out of place (I get the feeling of being out of place at most rallies and marches but I was particularly alone at this one).
Towards the end of the rally there was plenty of flag waving and even a recitation of the Lebanese national anthem, I believe. Furthermore, the sight of aggressive men singing martyr songs appalled me. As that transpired, I decided it was time to leave.
A while after that experience a friend was describing to me an anti-war rally in London that occurred around the same date. This rally was cluttered with people chanting, We are all Hezbollah. A nice, simple chant to arouse your spirits. No context or understanding is necessary. I stand with my friend when he told me that he refuses to be a part of any rally where people are chanting such a slogan. A friend of his was actually at that rally and was blown away by this leftist endorsement of an avowedly anti-semitic, anti-gay, anti-women group. The magazine Left Turn devoted a few articles in their October 2006 issue to Israels bombing of Lebanon. Bilal El-Amine in an interview from that issue apologizes for Hezbollah and has the gall to state that Hezbollahs goal is not to create an Islamic state in Lebanon. Really? Well, it depends on the day you ask the ruling clique of Hezbollah what their goals are. In one breath Nasrallah says he wants to spread his interpretation of Islam everywhere and a short time later he talks in pragmatic and liberal terms. He is like any other politician. The difference lies in Nasrallahs shrewd use of rhetoric, and Hezbollahs apparent flexibility in confronting particular situations. I find Left Turns capitulation to Islamism disturbing but not that surprising. In the same issue, El-Amine wrote another article telling us that Hezbollah has been maligned and misunderstood by certain critics on the left. I dont doubt that to a limited extent. They do more than attack innocent civilians. Does any of this alter the fact that they are socially conservative and reactionary? No! In the absence of class-based solidarity they fill a void. Because they fill a void does not mean they should be embraced with open arms (after all, Hezbollah, as an organization, would have no problem putting those who disagree with them through the meat grinder, so to speak, if they had the opportunity as the mullahs of Iran did following the 1979 revolution).
Leftist support for Hezbollah and Hamas coincides with a few general social and political trends: the decline of bureaucratic state socialism in the 1980s and the rise of identity politics, multiculturalism, political pluralism and the end of utopian dreaming in the 1990s. Flipping through the pages of Left Turn reveals a lack of class analysis, and there is obviously no effort made to understand the commodity society we live in. Everything seems to be subsumed under a broad banner of identity politics, multiculturalism, tolerance for diversity in a queasy and politically correct kind of way. There is also a commitment to pragmatic politics and an inability to articulate ideas and news beyond canned clichés and slogans.
Many on the left are experiencing a crisis of identity. This crisis expresses itself, on the one hand, in an acceptance of the defeat of bureaucratic state socialism and, on the other hand, a quest for something that will breathe life, motivation and inspiration into a left that is moribund and shrinking in size. Islamism is within immediate grasp and the proletariat seems defeated, so why not latch onto militant Islam? It might not live up to the ultimate goals of many on the left (a secular, democratic and socialistic state) but it is at least tangible and actively, to employ a catchall twaddle phrase, resisting. (Have you ever noticed how a sizable chunk of the left needs reassurance that there is always a movement worthy of support and aid in the foreground? What these movements are moving toward and for are rarely examined critically. Praise and cheer are apparently the only ingredients we need.)
Months ago a person in Portland told me we need to bring representatives from Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah and Islamic Jihad to the US in order to attend a peace conference hosted by anti-war activists and sympathetic organizations of the left. An individual who maintained a completely straight face said this to me. This person earnestly wants to make such a meeting happen. In practical terms, he was never able to coherently explain to me what such a meeting would endeavor to solve or discuss. This was brought up in a conversation I was having with him about Islamic fundamentalism and the Middle East. When I criticized his ideas on the Middle East and militant Islam, he selectively interpreted my argument and launched back by suggesting, in not so many words, that I was a Zionist stooge with imperialist notions regarding the Middle East. He immediately changed his whole demeanor and tone and appeared to become very suspicious of my character and political motivations. I was aghast. This was during the course of a discussion in which I thought I was being politically balanced on the issue of Palestine, Israel, Iran, Lebanon and the like. Apparently, I was too balanced for him. It didnt end there. Another person who was part of the conversation referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as being heroic. When I asked her if she would want her young grandson to strap a bomb to his chest and detonate it in a crowded area, she said no. But she regards martyr culture as heroic and a positive part of the fight against imperialist aggressors. She then, without context or coherence, said she likes Hezbollah. I wonder how much they would like her and her general orientation towards secularism. It was impossible arguing with these people who had already decided on the righteousness of Islamic fundamentalist groups.
A few years ago a housemate of mine pulled out a copy of a book that intended to prove the truth of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I looked at the book and told him that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was proven to be a Czarist forgery. He then told me this book makes counterclaims to that thesis thus conclusively revealing the truth of Jewish power. He insisted on proclaiming this book exposes the world for what it is (isnt it funny how a book can single-handedly explain every intricate detail and inner working of the world we live in sounds a bit like the religion of the true believer to me). His paranoia rose and he said he should have never ordered it from the internet because those in power might come after him for ordering and reading a work that exposes their doings. I was in a state of shock. This relatively smart and sensitive person had bought into a myth about Jewish power.
The reality is that conspiracy theory is growing in general, not just conspiracies related to Jewish domination. All the same, in the Arab world dissemination of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is commonplace. Its popularity has grown by leaps and bounds, as have the medieval Christian blood libel accusations. The idea is basically that Jews sacrificed Christians for the purposes of making matzo. The contemporary Egyptian program Horsemen without a Horse recycled such conspiracies to paint a broad picture regarding Jewish influence and power.
The examples abound. To make it clear: I do not believe that myths about Jewish influence can be separated from the growing irrationality and thoughtlessness of the world we inhabit. Lack of thought gives rise to easy explanations and support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Meanwhile, those nation-states that currently have the big guns and technological and military supremacy the US and Israel continue to ratchet up their commitment to taking care of Hamas and Hezbollah. The meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis, Maryland in November 2007 was actually about how to deal with the growing Shia arc in the Middle East. There was also discussion of Hamas and its growth in popularity. Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US are genuinely worried about the rise of regimes in the region hostile to their dictates. For that reason, they need to come up with a plan to rein them in.
* * *
WE ARE LIVING IN a world that has gone completely mad. In Melvilles Moby Dick Captain Ahab perhaps encapsulated the mood of our age: All my means are sane; my motives and objects mad.
There should be no endorsement for either mad side in this conflict. Our goal should be to extend international working class solidarity whenever it shows its face and to extend solidarity to people living in those regions, not the organizations that claim to represent them. There is not much on the horizon in the Middle East and around the world that looks promising. A few signs of life come out here and there. In Egypt there had been an ongoing textile strike with its shortcomings. Even so, the strike movement distanced itself from militant Islam and focused on everyday realities faced by workers and the poor. This in itself proves that the conflicts cant be reduced to Islam versus democracy. The strikers expressed concerns that are universal to those who work wage labor jobs in the West and the Middle East.10 If anything changes significantly in the region it will be due to the strides of everyday people forming their own independent strike committees, village and neighborhood associations and cultural guilds, cooperatives and clubs. Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah would then cease to have leverage. That, I believe, is unlikely at the moment. In an area like Gaza, Hamas is one of the key forces on the ground dealing with the poverty and deprivation people face daily because of Israeli occupation.
But even with all of this bad news, there is still a cultural element in the Middle East committed to oral storytelling and poetry. This is an aspect that keeps many people going in the occupied territories of Palestine and beyond.
May Arab storytellers of the streets, now enjoying an unaccustomed popularity, create one day soon imitators in our American and European squares. -Andre Breton, Arcanum 17
We, too, need to keep dreaming. In my dreams, I sometimes imagine a world without religiously inspired political violence and carnage. I am convinced that this vision offers far more than the self-righteous zealotry promoted by Hamas and Hezbollah.
- For a stimulating rebuttal of Mearsheimer and Walt, see Stephen Zunes, The Israel Lobby: A Progressive Response to Mearsheimer and Walt, in the November/December 2007 issue of Tikkun magazine.
- To read a good account of the power of Saudi Arabia, see Asad AbuKhalil, The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004).
- Tom Segevs work is an incredibly absorbing read. It does, however, have its weaknesses. He refers to only Israeli documents and fails to consult Arab sources. This makes it difficult to discern the mood of surrounding Arab countries in relation to Israel. In any case, the book is a masterpiece.
- For more on this, see Robert Dreyfuss, Devils Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004).
- For a peek into the changing face of the Muslim Brotherhood, see James Traub, Islamic Democrats? in the April 29, 2007 edition of the New York Times Magazine.
- The reader is advised to consult Nicholas Blanfords fast paced Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and its Impact on the Middle East (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006) for a discussion of the cedar revolution and Hariris assassination.
- Fouad Ajamis The Vanished Imam: Musa Al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca and London: Cornell University, 1986) provides a solid background history of the Shia of Lebanon and the populist cleric Musa Al Sadr.
- Anne Marie Olivers and Paul F. Steinbergs The Road to Martyrs Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) is an intense study of martyr culture and should be read by those who want to better understand it.
- This is paraphrased from Nasrallahs words quoted in the editorial from the Fall 2006 issue of the Fifth Estate (PO Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220).
- For a worthwhile assessment of the recent strikes in Egypt, see the article Class Struggle in Egypt in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Internationalist Perspective (A.M., PO Box 40231, S.I., NY 10304).
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