The Palestinian government is going to submit their application for a full statehood in the UN tomorrow, 23 September, US time. It is a historic proposal. It is hoped that the UN will accept it in an equally historic decision. Already more than half of the UN members have recognized Palestine as a state. In a recently announced opinion polls the majority of the respondents in all the countries surveyed, even in the US, have supported the expected application. If the US will veto the move in the Security Council, she will disregard all those writings on the wall. It will also greatly damage her own national interests.
Mr.Obama's General Assembly speech yesterday, 21 September, naturally gave some portion of it(7 minites out of 40) to this question. But it was all on a trodden path. He said peace should be worked out in the direct talk of Israel and Palestine. But the US have heavily supported Israel, and have been arming her from the head to the foot for many years. When certain elements in Palestine were duly elected by the people, the US and Israel refused to recognize them as the legitimate partner to talk to.
Mr.Obama referred to the recent history of the persecution of the Jewish people and said 'Those are the facts'. Nobody is disputing those facts. It is irrelevant to talk about them here. It is irrelevant also in the sense that the current issue is not the Jewish people versus the Palestinians, but between the present state of Israel versus the Palestinians.
Moreover those are by no means all the facts. The Israelis, no matter how they might have been persecuted, have come to a land already inhabited by the Arabs. Some may say that it is their ancient home. If that claim is to be accepted, the whole of North America, for example, could be claimed by their original inhabitants, their own indigenous peoples.
Obama said 'there are no short-cuts'. He is not even offering a one year's time for the negotiations to be over, as he did last year. Few speeches can be so welcome to one side and so unwelcome to the other. It must have been for pure home consumption. If so it will speak a lot of the anti-Muslim feelings in the US.
Just before he turned to this issue he was talking of the Arab Spring, and specially of the rights of the Syrian people. It seems that the Arab Spring and the Palestinian issue are totally compartmentalized, and there seems to be very little to learn from one in order to enrich the thinking on the other. So there was nothing new in the speech, which would have been more befitting to an Israeli president. This is not the way to enthuse the world with the hope for change, of which Obama once spoke so often.
Palestinian question is not the only one about which the US may very well change their policy so that the existing tensions can be blown off--Iran, DPRK, Cuba, and so on. It is still within the US' power to do this. The fully-packed audience at the General Assembly may have expected something more conducive to peace, and change, while hoping against hope, and have been disappointed. The 'fact' that there was hardly any applause would testify to this.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten Years On, Are We Any Wiser?
Tenth anniversary of 9/11 has been marked by an attack on the Israeli Embassy at Cairo. It might have looked a second 9/11 to many Israeli-backing Americans. But they should try to find out why Israel has become such a target, just as the Americans should have tried to think about why it was they who were attacked ten years ago? If the Americans had done it, ten years on, we would find ourselves in a different world.
The US have not done so because President Bush gave the war-cry, 'Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists'. A sheer dichotomy, where neutrality is impossible, persuasion has no place, all the Muslims of the Middle East origin have been looked at with suspicion, the dictators like the Musharraffs and the Mubaraks have come under the US umbrella in the name of anti-terrorism so that they can reinforce their position vis-a-vis their own people. No reasonable and less violent alternative to the Afghan and the Iraqi invasion has been seriously examined. As the consequence, while mourning over the death of thousands of 9/11 victims, we have to face the fact that more than 200,000 have lost their lives in these two and related operations, with all the wrath and desperation aroused by it.
The weapons of mass destruction, which should have been the only excuse for invading Iraq at all, have been nowhere to be seen, and one is naturally tempted to the conclusion that the US and Britain wanted to destroy Saddam Hussein, to 'regime change', to acclaim themselves to be the defenders of democracy, to lessen the threat to Israel, and to incorporate Iraq into the global market economy.
Still why was it that there was very little of critical attitude in the US journalism at the time. I vividly remember that a newspaper of New York Times' calibre, while invasion was unfolding, put the names and photos of more than a dozen of its correspondents and indicated where each of them was located every morning. Some were proudly marching in Army tanks. Have they had any serious reflection upon it?
Not only the issues of terrorism, invasion, democratization and dictatorship were not discussed. Those of poverty, corruption, joblessness, drawbacks of globalization were not, either. The recent Anna Hazare's fast in India is one answer to such questions. Already at the time of the Atlanta Olympics, it was said that the tourists' visit to the fashionable quarters of the city did little to spill the benefits over to the back streets.
It is said that there are 14 million jobless in the US, and President Obama's recent Job Speech said the US would 'win the race to the top'. She may very well do so. But the point is she cannot do it apart from simultaneous efforts to make the world less armed, less violent, less military alliance-bound, less poor and less jobless.
Here we have to come back to the beginning, and ask again why Israeli Embassy has been attacked, and that by a people who so courageously and persistently stuck to the non-violent means in their anti-Mubarak struggle. Here I would only say this much. If the US vetoes the expected Palestinian application to a UN membership, it would be another historic mistake in the US Middle East policy, showing that, a decade on, she has hardly learnt anything.
The US have not done so because President Bush gave the war-cry, 'Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists'. A sheer dichotomy, where neutrality is impossible, persuasion has no place, all the Muslims of the Middle East origin have been looked at with suspicion, the dictators like the Musharraffs and the Mubaraks have come under the US umbrella in the name of anti-terrorism so that they can reinforce their position vis-a-vis their own people. No reasonable and less violent alternative to the Afghan and the Iraqi invasion has been seriously examined. As the consequence, while mourning over the death of thousands of 9/11 victims, we have to face the fact that more than 200,000 have lost their lives in these two and related operations, with all the wrath and desperation aroused by it.
The weapons of mass destruction, which should have been the only excuse for invading Iraq at all, have been nowhere to be seen, and one is naturally tempted to the conclusion that the US and Britain wanted to destroy Saddam Hussein, to 'regime change', to acclaim themselves to be the defenders of democracy, to lessen the threat to Israel, and to incorporate Iraq into the global market economy.
Still why was it that there was very little of critical attitude in the US journalism at the time. I vividly remember that a newspaper of New York Times' calibre, while invasion was unfolding, put the names and photos of more than a dozen of its correspondents and indicated where each of them was located every morning. Some were proudly marching in Army tanks. Have they had any serious reflection upon it?
Not only the issues of terrorism, invasion, democratization and dictatorship were not discussed. Those of poverty, corruption, joblessness, drawbacks of globalization were not, either. The recent Anna Hazare's fast in India is one answer to such questions. Already at the time of the Atlanta Olympics, it was said that the tourists' visit to the fashionable quarters of the city did little to spill the benefits over to the back streets.
It is said that there are 14 million jobless in the US, and President Obama's recent Job Speech said the US would 'win the race to the top'. She may very well do so. But the point is she cannot do it apart from simultaneous efforts to make the world less armed, less violent, less military alliance-bound, less poor and less jobless.
Here we have to come back to the beginning, and ask again why Israeli Embassy has been attacked, and that by a people who so courageously and persistently stuck to the non-violent means in their anti-Mubarak struggle. Here I would only say this much. If the US vetoes the expected Palestinian application to a UN membership, it would be another historic mistake in the US Middle East policy, showing that, a decade on, she has hardly learnt anything.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Anna Hazare Ends Fast (3)
I have discussed Anna Hazare's movement in the past two pieces. Here I want to check what I wrote by the Outlook magazine Special Number of 5 September on "The People versus Parliament".
Historian Ramachandra Guha, we will recall, said that corruption is one of the three more recent challenges to the idea of India(see 18 February column). In the Special also, one writes 'The issue is common people across the country asking why they must bribe, when they pay taxes and follow the law'(p.52), and another says '...corruption is not a half-, but the absolute, truth in our lives now'(p.54).
So it is a universal phenomenon.
Some people are quite critical of the media in connction with the movement. Look at this. 'Television's lack of objectivity has meant that really important questions are also not being discussed: like the dictatorial tendencies of Team Hazare, the flaws in the Jan Lokpal Bill...'(p.24). Another wonders if the media want to project the movement as 'focused on the solitary issue of corruption'(p.34).
The ruling Congress has been trying to 'describe Anna Hazare as part of an RSS conspiracy'(p.26), and 'The crowds, it is said, comprise reactionary Hindu communalists virulently opposed to Muslims, OBCS and Dalits'(p.33).
Quite naturally the JP movement is discussed as a possible historical parallel, and P.N.Dhar is quoted as saying that 'Nobody shed a tear for the demise of the rule of law and constitutional means of changing governments'(p.44). Meant to be a warning on the present?
It is a very significant observation that 'For a movement to succeed, it must be based on truth, public support, and religious harmony'(p.34). This could very well be a standard for judging any movement, including those in the past.
Opinions are bound to differ. Between the two Bollywood men who are friends, one thinks that 'It is a rare moment when India has come together as a nation', while to the other, 'Democracy is about bestowing power to the people, but this(Anna's Jan Lokpal)creates a superstructure that has absolute power'(p.54).
But the Special Number talks of 'the open school of democracy at the Ramlila Maidan'(p.32) where 'the Anna movement has opened wide the shrinking space for protesting against the state'(p.33), and Medha Patkar, the Narmada activist, was 'linking corruption to land, forest and Dalit rights'(p.33). Yogendra Yadav, political scientist, who 'joined the movement after an intense argument with himself about its ideological nature' referred to 'the movement's potential to encompass issues other than corruption'(p.34).
Almost summing up, it says 'the Ramlila Maidan is now a site where thousands of wounds demand succour; it is where a million mutinies dotting the country have found expression; it is the vent through which the free-floating anger of India seeks release; it is the new seminary of politics where the new Indian is being defined and refined'(p.35). This is in spite of the fact that in the rural India the impact of the movement is yet to be felt.
What about the corporate sector? India is being seen as a country where it is 'difficult...to do business here. And to do so honestly, virtually impossible', and therefore 'big business could find to its discomfort that it is seen as part of the problem-and not a victim'(p.52).
In view of the fact that there are three Lokpal Bills at present, including one by the government, what is the practical solution? The Editor-in-Chief suggests that Anna Hazare's and Aruna Roy's groups should 'hammer out a single draft'. If it can be done, it would wipe out the misgivings that the present movement, by shaking the 'structure', would reinforce the neo-liberal thinking in India's economic management. 'Seize the moment', as Vinod Mehtaji says.
Historian Ramachandra Guha, we will recall, said that corruption is one of the three more recent challenges to the idea of India(see 18 February column). In the Special also, one writes 'The issue is common people across the country asking why they must bribe, when they pay taxes and follow the law'(p.52), and another says '...corruption is not a half-, but the absolute, truth in our lives now'(p.54).
So it is a universal phenomenon.
Some people are quite critical of the media in connction with the movement. Look at this. 'Television's lack of objectivity has meant that really important questions are also not being discussed: like the dictatorial tendencies of Team Hazare, the flaws in the Jan Lokpal Bill...'(p.24). Another wonders if the media want to project the movement as 'focused on the solitary issue of corruption'(p.34).
The ruling Congress has been trying to 'describe Anna Hazare as part of an RSS conspiracy'(p.26), and 'The crowds, it is said, comprise reactionary Hindu communalists virulently opposed to Muslims, OBCS and Dalits'(p.33).
Quite naturally the JP movement is discussed as a possible historical parallel, and P.N.Dhar is quoted as saying that 'Nobody shed a tear for the demise of the rule of law and constitutional means of changing governments'(p.44). Meant to be a warning on the present?
It is a very significant observation that 'For a movement to succeed, it must be based on truth, public support, and religious harmony'(p.34). This could very well be a standard for judging any movement, including those in the past.
Opinions are bound to differ. Between the two Bollywood men who are friends, one thinks that 'It is a rare moment when India has come together as a nation', while to the other, 'Democracy is about bestowing power to the people, but this(Anna's Jan Lokpal)creates a superstructure that has absolute power'(p.54).
But the Special Number talks of 'the open school of democracy at the Ramlila Maidan'(p.32) where 'the Anna movement has opened wide the shrinking space for protesting against the state'(p.33), and Medha Patkar, the Narmada activist, was 'linking corruption to land, forest and Dalit rights'(p.33). Yogendra Yadav, political scientist, who 'joined the movement after an intense argument with himself about its ideological nature' referred to 'the movement's potential to encompass issues other than corruption'(p.34).
Almost summing up, it says 'the Ramlila Maidan is now a site where thousands of wounds demand succour; it is where a million mutinies dotting the country have found expression; it is the vent through which the free-floating anger of India seeks release; it is the new seminary of politics where the new Indian is being defined and refined'(p.35). This is in spite of the fact that in the rural India the impact of the movement is yet to be felt.
What about the corporate sector? India is being seen as a country where it is 'difficult...to do business here. And to do so honestly, virtually impossible', and therefore 'big business could find to its discomfort that it is seen as part of the problem-and not a victim'(p.52).
In view of the fact that there are three Lokpal Bills at present, including one by the government, what is the practical solution? The Editor-in-Chief suggests that Anna Hazare's and Aruna Roy's groups should 'hammer out a single draft'. If it can be done, it would wipe out the misgivings that the present movement, by shaking the 'structure', would reinforce the neo-liberal thinking in India's economic management. 'Seize the moment', as Vinod Mehtaji says.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)