http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECaMeMl6--4
Robert Spencer gives a short speech about Iraq at the Heritage Foundation.
http://jihadwatch.org/
Robert Spencer’s blog on current issues of the war in Iraq. Unabashedly conservative, his blog gives an ultra-conservative view on the war.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
AIPAC Debate
For this blog, we are supposed to respond to a four minute segment of the McNeil News Hour Debate, specifically regarding to The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (released March 23, 2006) by John Mercheimer (a professor at the University of Chicago) and Stephen Wald (a professor at Harvard), and The Deadliest Lies by Abraham H. Foxman (director of the anti-defamation league).
The whole discussion was sparked when, “A year ago, two American political scientists raised a storm with an article asserting that Israel and its supporters in the United States have far too much influence over American policy.” Meircheimer and Wald assert that the US’s support of Israel is a “strategic liability” for America. Conversely, Foxman insists that The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy is built on “half-truths” and “distortions.”
For the McNeil Debate, Mercheimer and Wald were invited on the show to comment, as well as Foxman. Basically, Mercheimer and Wald believe that were it not for AIPAC, we would not have gone to war in Iraq, which was a bad move (also according to them).
I personally think we would have gone to war anyway, support AIPAC, and think that if anything, AIPAC doesn’t have enough influence in America.
As a side note, one of the most powerful images I saw in the AIPAC videos was the poster where someone had written ‘Holocaust’, but had rendered the o’s into handcuffs with a pair of hands grasping upward through them.
The whole discussion was sparked when, “A year ago, two American political scientists raised a storm with an article asserting that Israel and its supporters in the United States have far too much influence over American policy.” Meircheimer and Wald assert that the US’s support of Israel is a “strategic liability” for America. Conversely, Foxman insists that The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy is built on “half-truths” and “distortions.”
For the McNeil Debate, Mercheimer and Wald were invited on the show to comment, as well as Foxman. Basically, Mercheimer and Wald believe that were it not for AIPAC, we would not have gone to war in Iraq, which was a bad move (also according to them).
I personally think we would have gone to war anyway, support AIPAC, and think that if anything, AIPAC doesn’t have enough influence in America.
As a side note, one of the most powerful images I saw in the AIPAC videos was the poster where someone had written ‘Holocaust’, but had rendered the o’s into handcuffs with a pair of hands grasping upward through them.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Carter
The thirty-ninth President of the United States is a professed Christian, and bases his insights and conclusions on the background of his faith. Considering the fact that we all do this in some shape or form, I was impressed that he simply admitted it outright. Although I did not agree with all of his observations and beliefs in his book, I do respect his ability to write what he sees as truth, putting all of his cards on the table, and his repeated attempts for a peaceful solution in such a volatile area.
According to Carter, "There are two interrelated obstacles to permanent peace in the Middle East: 1. Some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Arab land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and 2. Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories."
Carter believes that the United States has all but abandoned the effort for serious peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and so it is basically up to "the International Quartet to implement its Roadmap for Peace. "For this to occur, there are three key requirements: "1. The security of Israel must be guaranteed. 2. The internal debate within Israel must be resolved in order to define Israel’s permanent legal boundary. 3. The sovereignty of all Middle East nations and sanctity of international borders must be honored."
Carter holds to his old opinion that the people want peace, it’s the leaders that are in the way. He offers proof of this idea with public opinion surveys, "Over the years, public opinion surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis favor withdrawing from Palestinian territory in exchange for peace, and recent polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a two-state peace agreement with Israel, with nearly 70 percent supporting the moderate Mahmoud Abbas as their president and spokesperson."
Carter’s bottom line is this: "Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens-and honor its own previous commitments-by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions." But, however eloquent and reasonable as his proposal seems to be, I for one can never accept it, and I can’t see it ever being truly accepted for any more than a decade.
According to Carter, "There are two interrelated obstacles to permanent peace in the Middle East: 1. Some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Arab land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and 2. Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories."
Carter believes that the United States has all but abandoned the effort for serious peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and so it is basically up to "the International Quartet to implement its Roadmap for Peace. "For this to occur, there are three key requirements: "1. The security of Israel must be guaranteed. 2. The internal debate within Israel must be resolved in order to define Israel’s permanent legal boundary. 3. The sovereignty of all Middle East nations and sanctity of international borders must be honored."
Carter holds to his old opinion that the people want peace, it’s the leaders that are in the way. He offers proof of this idea with public opinion surveys, "Over the years, public opinion surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis favor withdrawing from Palestinian territory in exchange for peace, and recent polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a two-state peace agreement with Israel, with nearly 70 percent supporting the moderate Mahmoud Abbas as their president and spokesperson."
Carter’s bottom line is this: "Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens-and honor its own previous commitments-by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions." But, however eloquent and reasonable as his proposal seems to be, I for one can never accept it, and I can’t see it ever being truly accepted for any more than a decade.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wild Thorns
Wild Thorns (according to the dustjacket) is, "a chronicle of life in Israeli-occupied West Bank." It opens with the young Palestinian Usama crossing the border into Israel, and we are given immediate insight to his character; "A romantic, right? No way! Not since the training, the shooting, the crawling on all fours; such things make a man unromantic in thought and deed."
The next thing that caught my attention was the section on house of Usama’s cousin Nuwar. "The house is always dirty,’ Nuwar said sadly. ‘See?’ She ran her hand lightly along the balustrade and showed him the dust on her finger. ‘And to think,’ she said, ‘that people are still proud of owning big houses like this. It’s an outdated way of life, it doesn’t work anymore. This house needs at least three servants, but it doesn’t even have one- except me!’ Usama nodded. ‘Yes, the time when everyone had servants is over,’ he said. ‘Does that bother you?’ ‘No, it’s natural. It’s up to us to learn how to look after ourselves." At first this section depressed me. The idea of people losing their way of life felt disheartening. But then, I realized it was simply an example of change. No society can stay the same; a society in stasis will atrophy. Besides, can I truly feel badly for people who no longer have their servants and have to take care of themselves?
The rest of the book is an emotional journey, with interesting characters interspersed. However, it wasn’t until the very end that my attention was caught again. The last few paragraphs just stunned me with their clear juxtaposition of the turmoil throughout the novel with the life right after: "The house lay in ruins. The men dispersed. The women came down from the roofs. Adil slipped away from the crowd, cutting through the narrow back streets and heading for the main square. He stood on the pavement watching the people on their way home, on their way to work. They lived their everyday lives stoically, silently. Nothing had changed. The square stood where it always had; the town clock ticked slowly as it always had. Only the flowers seemed to have grown larger, taller; otherwise nothing had changed...The liquorice and carob-drink peddler clashed his cymbals rhythmically...People went about their buisness, buying vegetables, fruit and bread." After everything that has happened in this novel, there is still no impact to the rest of the town, much less the country.
The next thing that caught my attention was the section on house of Usama’s cousin Nuwar. "The house is always dirty,’ Nuwar said sadly. ‘See?’ She ran her hand lightly along the balustrade and showed him the dust on her finger. ‘And to think,’ she said, ‘that people are still proud of owning big houses like this. It’s an outdated way of life, it doesn’t work anymore. This house needs at least three servants, but it doesn’t even have one- except me!’ Usama nodded. ‘Yes, the time when everyone had servants is over,’ he said. ‘Does that bother you?’ ‘No, it’s natural. It’s up to us to learn how to look after ourselves." At first this section depressed me. The idea of people losing their way of life felt disheartening. But then, I realized it was simply an example of change. No society can stay the same; a society in stasis will atrophy. Besides, can I truly feel badly for people who no longer have their servants and have to take care of themselves?
The rest of the book is an emotional journey, with interesting characters interspersed. However, it wasn’t until the very end that my attention was caught again. The last few paragraphs just stunned me with their clear juxtaposition of the turmoil throughout the novel with the life right after: "The house lay in ruins. The men dispersed. The women came down from the roofs. Adil slipped away from the crowd, cutting through the narrow back streets and heading for the main square. He stood on the pavement watching the people on their way home, on their way to work. They lived their everyday lives stoically, silently. Nothing had changed. The square stood where it always had; the town clock ticked slowly as it always had. Only the flowers seemed to have grown larger, taller; otherwise nothing had changed...The liquorice and carob-drink peddler clashed his cymbals rhythmically...People went about their buisness, buying vegetables, fruit and bread." After everything that has happened in this novel, there is still no impact to the rest of the town, much less the country.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Men in the Sun
Ghassan Kanafani’s 1962 work Men in the Sun features three male Palestinian refugees of different generations heading for Kuwait. The storyline and theme of the text is highly political, although Kanafani generally avoids being preachy. However, after doing a little background work, I found that Kanafani wrote all of his texts specifically to stir up resistance against Israel. Kanafani was a writer and journalist from Acre, the editor of al-Hadaf. A member of the Political Bureau of PFLP and its spokesperson, he published their newspapers (Al-Ray, The Opinion). Kanafani was killed by a car bomb on July 8, 1972 in Beirut.
The characters are Abu Qais (the eldest), Assad (middle-aged), and Marwan (youngest). They represent the different outlooks and troubles of the situation for those immigrants of the time who smuggled themselves through borders in the hopes of a better life. Their route was out of Jordan and across Iraq, where they met up in Basra. Because the action is as much internal as it is external, we see into the characters than we would have otherwise.
The eldest, Abu Qais, has a wife and son. He leaves his refugee camp at the urging of his wife; "In the last ten years you have done nothing but wait. You have needed ten big hungry years to be convinced that you have lost your trees, your house, your youth, and your whole village. People have been making their own way during these long years, while you have been squatting like an old dog in a miserable hut. What do you think you were waiting for?" Assad’s uncle gives him fifty dinars, on an agreement that when Assad comes back with money, he’ll marry his cousin. Marwan is 16, idealistic and unable to put up with his father and his father’s new wife.
I think the thing that depressed me the most was the fact that not one of them reached Kuwait. In fact, the three of them suffocatein a water tanker. As an American who loves her happy endings, I never want to read this book again simply because none of the protagonists succeeded in their goal. For the record, I HATE downer endings, and with the relentlessly slow pacing of this book, the ending made the whole experience intolerable. I had to watch three of my favorite romantic comedies to put me in a good mood again.
The characters are Abu Qais (the eldest), Assad (middle-aged), and Marwan (youngest). They represent the different outlooks and troubles of the situation for those immigrants of the time who smuggled themselves through borders in the hopes of a better life. Their route was out of Jordan and across Iraq, where they met up in Basra. Because the action is as much internal as it is external, we see into the characters than we would have otherwise.
The eldest, Abu Qais, has a wife and son. He leaves his refugee camp at the urging of his wife; "In the last ten years you have done nothing but wait. You have needed ten big hungry years to be convinced that you have lost your trees, your house, your youth, and your whole village. People have been making their own way during these long years, while you have been squatting like an old dog in a miserable hut. What do you think you were waiting for?" Assad’s uncle gives him fifty dinars, on an agreement that when Assad comes back with money, he’ll marry his cousin. Marwan is 16, idealistic and unable to put up with his father and his father’s new wife.
I think the thing that depressed me the most was the fact that not one of them reached Kuwait. In fact, the three of them suffocatein a water tanker. As an American who loves her happy endings, I never want to read this book again simply because none of the protagonists succeeded in their goal. For the record, I HATE downer endings, and with the relentlessly slow pacing of this book, the ending made the whole experience intolerable. I had to watch three of my favorite romantic comedies to put me in a good mood again.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
History of the Middle East
The first section that really caught my attention was around the middle of the page, concerning the discovery of oil. In Wikipedia, it said, "Another turning point in the history of the Middle East came when oil was discovered, first in Persia in 1908 and later in Saudi Arabia (in 1938) and the other Persian Gulf states, and also in Libya and Algeria. The Middle East, it turned out, possessed the world's largest easily accessible reserves of crude oil, the most important commodity in the 20th century industrial world. Although western oil companies pumped and exported nearly all of the oil to fuel the rapidly expanding automobile industry and other western industrial developments, the kings and emirs of the oil states became immensely rich, enabling them to consolidate their hold on power and giving them a stake in preserving western hegemony over the region. Oil wealth also had the effect of stultifying whatever movement towards economic, political or social reform might have emerged in the Arab world under the influence of the Kemalist revolution in Turkey."
What snagged me is how this made an impact on the American Industrial Revolution. According to another Wikipedia article, "The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and under licence to Benz, in France by Emile Roger. By 1900 mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States." In particular, the Ford Model T was "the most widely produced and available car of the era," especially between 1908 and 1927. Trains had already been around and popularized in the US by the 1850’s, but cars are the real gas-guzzlers.
The other section in the Middle East article that I found engaging was the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. According to Wiki, "Egypt under Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel, ending the prospects of a united Arab military front. From the 1970s the Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, resorted to a prolonged campaign of violence against Israel and against American, Jewish and western targets generally, as a means of weakening Israeli resolve and undermining western support for Israel. The Palestinians were supported in this, to varying degrees, by the regimes in Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq. The high point of this campaign came in the 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism and the reception given to Arafat by the United Nations General Assembly. The Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991 by the UNGA Resolution 4686."
I confess I was rather shocked that the UN had ever thought Zionism was a form of racism. I have certainly never thought it could be interpreted that way, and am still rather confused as to how they came to that conclusion. Anyway, it seems to me that the majority of fighting in the Middle East today is over oil, Israel, or a combination of the two. So, I thought this covered a lot of pertinent information.
What snagged me is how this made an impact on the American Industrial Revolution. According to another Wikipedia article, "The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and under licence to Benz, in France by Emile Roger. By 1900 mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States." In particular, the Ford Model T was "the most widely produced and available car of the era," especially between 1908 and 1927. Trains had already been around and popularized in the US by the 1850’s, but cars are the real gas-guzzlers.
The other section in the Middle East article that I found engaging was the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. According to Wiki, "Egypt under Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel, ending the prospects of a united Arab military front. From the 1970s the Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, resorted to a prolonged campaign of violence against Israel and against American, Jewish and western targets generally, as a means of weakening Israeli resolve and undermining western support for Israel. The Palestinians were supported in this, to varying degrees, by the regimes in Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq. The high point of this campaign came in the 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism and the reception given to Arafat by the United Nations General Assembly. The Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991 by the UNGA Resolution 4686."
I confess I was rather shocked that the UN had ever thought Zionism was a form of racism. I have certainly never thought it could be interpreted that way, and am still rather confused as to how they came to that conclusion. Anyway, it seems to me that the majority of fighting in the Middle East today is over oil, Israel, or a combination of the two. So, I thought this covered a lot of pertinent information.
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