Hope in the Middle East

March 27, 2018

As the March Friends Jour­nal theme of Quak­ers and the Holy Land comes to a close, this week’s fea­tured arti­cle is one with hope. Sandy Rea shares sto­ries of teach­ing in var­i­ous parts of the Mid­dle East with his wife Stephanie Judson:

I fell in love with Lebanon: with the peo­ple, the sound of the lan­guage, the tastes of the food, and smells of the spices. Views to the Lebanon moun­tains from Beirut’s sea­side boule­vards and rooftops are entic­ing. Moun­tain vil­lages have pre­served their charm by keep­ing old­er homes with the blonde stone and red tile roofs. The hard-working and earnest teach­ers and the smart, business-minded shop own­ers are always glad to see for­eign­ers. There is an indus­tri­ous­ness, resilience, and pride in the Lebanese that con­tribute to the repeat­ed ris­ings from so many destruc­tions of the city.

Sandy also gives us his­to­ries of times in which Chris­tians, Mus­lims, and Jews have lived togeth­er in peace. It is pos­si­ble. Today Sandy is clerk of the Mid­dle East Col­lab­o­ra­tive of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, which is work­ing  on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region.

Resources on the Lebanon conflicts

August 11, 2006

Voic­es for Cre­ative Non­vi­o­lence is doing some orga­niz­ing around the fight­ing in Lebanon/Israel/Gaza. Check out “Beyond the Esca­la­tion of Injustice”:vcnv.org/beyond-the-escalation-of-injustice which calls for “direct engagement.”
Through them I found a link to “Jihad Against Hezbollah”:www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3412, the new piece from Steven Zunes, a very knowl­edgable writer for For­eign Pol­i­cy in Focus. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (this after­noon on the train) but it looks like good back­ground mate­r­i­al on the group.

Forsaking Diplomacy

August 10, 2006

In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resis­tance to an imme­di­ate cease-fire and its staunch sup­port of Israel have made it more dif­fi­cult for [US “Sec­re­tary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with oth­er nations, includ­ing some Amer­i­can allies, as they search for a for­mu­la that will end the vio­lence and pro­duce a durable cease-fire.…
Sev­er­al State Depart­ment offi­cials have pri­vate­ly object­ed to the administration’s empha­sis on Israel and have said that Wash­ing­ton is not talk­ing to Syr­ia to try to resolve the cri­sis. Dam­as­cus has long been a sup­port­er of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and pre­vi­ous con­flicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shut­tle diplo­ma­cy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are caus­ing irrepara­ble harm to the U.S. image in the Mid­dle East. High-sounding words about democ­ra­cy ring hol­low when we for­sake diplomacy.

Lebanon and Syria

March 5, 2005

The res­ig­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democ­ra­cy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and oth­ers are report­ing that “Syr­ia is about to announce its with­drawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How won­der­ful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thir­ty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civ­il war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause tur­moil. David Hirst, writ­ing in the guardian, won­ders whether the upheaval threa­t­ends to “desta­bi­lize Syr­ia and turn it into anoth­er iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the exam­ple of elec­tions, how­ev­er flawed, in occu­pied iraq and Pales­tine, has come this new, unsched­uled out­break of pop­u­lar self-assertion in a coun­try [Lebanon] where a sis­ter Arab state, not an alien occu­pi­er, is in charge.”
For the lat­est news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s spe­cial report on Syr­ia and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Non­vi­o­lence Board­’s thread on the “res­ig­na­tion of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297

A Terrorist Bombing by Any Other Name

August 20, 1998

What if in the weeks fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of the fed­er­al cour­t­house in Okla­homa City, the FBI had launched dozens of cruise mis­siles at the Michi­gan town where Tim­o­thy McVeigh had built his bomb? What if it had done so even when evi­dence was still mea­ger, when accounts were still con­tra­dic­to­ry? What if it did so with­out look­ing for less dra­mat­ic ways of serv­ing jus­tice? What if the mis­siles just killed and enraged more innocents?

Ear­li­er today the Unit­ed States attacked two nations accused of har­bor­ing the ter­ror­ist team respon­si­ble for the recent bomb­ings in East Africa. Telling the world that “our tar­get was ter­ror,” U.S. naval ships fired seventy-five to one hun­dred cruise mis­siles into a busy urban neigh­bor­hood of the Sudanese cap­i­tal of Khar­toum, a city of 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple, and at a lightly-populated tar­get in Afghanistan.

It is a sol­id prin­ci­ple of both inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy and non­vi­o­lent action that the more peace­ful options are exhaust­ed first. No sig­nif­i­cant diplo­mat­ic efforts have been made with the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment in Afghanistan to extra­dite reput­ed ring­leader Osama bin Laden. No Unit­ed Nations res­o­lu­tions have been passed for inspec­tion of the reput­ed chem­i­cal weapons fac­to­ry in Sudan (local offi­cials say it’s a fac­to­ry for med­ical drugs).

If the chem­i­cal plant had been in a Euro­pean cap­i­tal, it is all but cer­tain that the U.S. would not have fired dozens of cruise mis­siles with scant evi­dence and no pre­lim­i­nary diplo­mat­ic effort. But Khar­toum is the cap­i­tal of a mil­i­tar­i­ly weak African nation. While Clin­ton claims to be sad­dened at all the African lives lost in the bomb­ing at the embassy in Kenya, yet he has lit­tle regard for the lives of Africans in the neigh­bor­ing Sudan.

Jus­tice takes time. It needs the care­ful weigh­ing of evi­dence by neu­tral par­ties. It took over a year for inves­ti­ga­tors to col­lect the evi­dence sur­round­ing the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and for Tim­o­thy McVeigh to be con­vict­ed of the crime. But while jus­tice might take time, pol­i­tics requires imme­di­a­cy, dra­ma. Clin­ton is a politi­cian and he knows that tough mil­i­tary adven­tures against pip-squeak coun­tries is the fastest way to ral­ly bipar­ti­san domes­tic sup­port in times of trou­ble. Con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians have stopped the ever-louder calls for his impeach­ment over the sex and per­jury scan­dal to ral­ly behind him and mut­ter the famil­iar impe­ri­al­is­tic clichés about pol­i­tics stop­ping at the water’s edge. But it is time to stop play­ing pol­i­tics with Third World lives.

“Our tar­get was ter­ror” said Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, but so was his solu­tion. The only way Amer­i­ca knows to respond to two bombs is to set off seventy-five bombs. The only way it know to avenge the death of hun­dreds of inno­cent Africans is by threat­en­ing the lives of hun­dreds of oth­er Africans. Ter­ror­ist bomb­ing by any oth­er deliv­ery method is just as dead­ly and it is just as dis­rup­tive to inter­na­tion­al world order.

As cit­i­zens, Amer­i­cans have grown too com­pla­cent about these mis­sile launch­es against unarmed cities. These attacks have become too famil­iar a part of U.S. pol­i­cy. Too few ques­tions are asked, either imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the bomb­ing or in the years after­ward. Ter­ror­ist mis­siles are not effec­tive means of appre­hend­ing crim­i­nals or serv­ing jus­tice. Ear­ly reports from Afghanistan are that bin Laden is safe and con­tin­u­ing to plan fur­ther attacks against Amer­i­cans. In the last decade, mis­sile attacks have been used against Libya, Lebanon and Iraq but in no case have they dam­aged the ene­my and have in fact only strength­ened the anger and the resolve of their supporters.

As before, the mis­siles were launched by com­put­er from ships hun­dreds of miles away. We nev­er see the smoke and the fire, we nev­er smell the blood, we nev­er see the ter­ror in the eyes of the chil­dren. Chil­dren whose night­mares will now fea­tured scream­ing mis­siles from unseen ter­ror­ists known only as Amer­i­cans. Chil­dren whose dreams will be the taste of revenge.

Osama bin Laden has won. He won by pro­vok­ing the U.S. to shun it’s ideals of democ­ra­cy and jus­tice to wal­low with him in the mud of orga­nized inter­na­tion­al ter­ror. Two hun­dred and fifty mil­lion Amer­i­cans have now joined bin Laden’s cru­sade to avenge ter­ror­ist vio­lence with more ter­rror­ist vio­lence. It is time to stop all ter­ror, it is time to speak out against all violence.