If you’ve ever wondered why the public tolerates politicians who lie to them it’s likely that they “don’t have a high expectation that they’ll tell the truth” in the first place, a noted ethicist says. As a result,  explains Michael Josephson, “when they lie we are generally less offended in principle. That doesn’t make their lying acceptable; it just explains why there is a high tolerance level for it.”

Josephson is one man who should know. He is founder of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Los Angeles, Calif., and is a well-known radio commentator on the subject. In an interview that appeared in “The Long Term View” magazine published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Josephson noted that former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley was re-elected from prison in part because “People’s self-interest sometimes is to keep a liar in office if he lies for you as well as against you.”  Josephson said, “So, I think it’s very complex as to whether, even if we hate lying, we’re going to tolerate it.”

“If it is perfectly acceptable for politicians to lie, and they can do so without fear of recrimination, then why should they tell the truth?” he asks.

Josephson pointed out that in a democracy it is as if “each citizen were in effect a public official,” one who requires accurate information otherwise they cannot govern. This is even more true of Congress so that “Democracy is being undermined because people do not know if they can trust the information they’re getting.”

He gave as an example the Patriot missile system which the public initially was led to believe had a superb on-target average in the first Gulf War but whose percentage of hits was actually much less than advertised. “Now, how can we as a democracy make critical decisions about what defense systems to use and how much money to spend if we can’t believe the figures?” Josephson asked.

“Going to the next level, even the military doesn’t know what to believe as we find out that defense contractors are lying on their testing data, which is apparently true as well,” the ethicist continued. When this happens, “we are in an extraordinarily precarious situation” and “The level of mistrust is extremely high; it is at the point where it is truly dangerous.”

Josephson says that “every lie is a kind of land mine” and the majority of lies are not discovered but when they are “the land mine explodes and destroys trust.”

He noted that among high school students 70 to 80 percent admit that they cheat, yet less than two percent get caught and of those, only half are punished. “People must decide to treat honesty as such an important value that being dishonest will result in punishment.” He also stressed, “We have to reward people for telling the truth.”

“In performance reviews, we must evaluate whether or not a person is trusted by his co-workers, customers, clients, etc., as well as whether the person produced good results,” Josephson said.

He noted that up to one of every four resumes contain misrepresentations yet only one in five of those workers were fired “and that was only because their bosses weren’t satisfied with their work. So who said cheaters never prosper or that honesty is the best policy?” Josephson asked. One reason lying is so potent, he says, is “because it works.”

Americans need to create a society where losing is acceptable, otherwise people will do anything, including lying, in order to win, the noted ethicist says. And he warns, “If we get to a point where no one is trusted, it will be very hard, if not impossible, for democracy to succeed.” #

The Massachusetts School of Law, publisher of “The Long Term View,” was founded in 1988 to provide a quality, affordable legal education to students from minority, immigrant, and low-income backgrounds who would otherwise not be able to obtain a legal education

By Sherwood Ross

(Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

The human race stands on the verge of nuclear self-extinction as a species, and with it will die most, if not all, forms of intelligent life on the planet earth. Any attempt to dispel the ideology of nuclearism and its attendant myth propounding the legality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must directly come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8, 1945, and violated several basic provisions of the Regulations annexed to Hague Convention No. 4 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), the rules of customary international law set forth in the Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923), and the United States War Department Field Manual 27-10, Rules of Land Warfare (1940). According to this Field Manual and the Nuremberg Principles, all civilian government officials and military officers who ordered or knowingly participated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been lawfully punished as war criminals. The start of any progress toward resolving humankind’s nuclear predicament must come from the realization that nuclear weapons have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but rather have always constituted illegitimate instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behavior.

 THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The use of nuclear weapons in combat was, and still is, absolutely prohibited under all circumstances by both conventional and customary international law: e.g., the Nuremberg Principles, the Hague Regulations of 1907, the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I of 1977, etc. In addition, the use of nuclear weapons would also specifically violate several fundamental resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly that have repeatedly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as an international crime.

Consequently, according to the Nuremberg Judgment, soldiers would be obliged to disobey egregiously illegal orders with respect to launching and waging a nuclear war. Second, all government officials and military officers who might nevertheless launch or wage a nuclear war would be personally responsible for the commission of Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol 1, and genocide, among other international crimes. Third, such individuals would not be entitled to the defenses of superior orders, act of state, tu quoque, self-defense, presidential authority, etc. Fourth, such individuals could thus be quite legitimately and most severely punished as war criminals, up to and including the imposition of the death penalty, without limitation of time.

 THE THREAT TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945 prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense as recognized by article 51 thereof. But although the requirement of legitimate self-defense is a necessary precondition for the legality of any threat or use of force, it is certainly not sufficient. For the legality of any threat or use of force must also take into account the customary and conventional international laws of humanitarian armed conflict.

Thereunder, the threat to use nuclear weapons (i.e., nuclear deterrence/terrorism) constitutes ongoing international criminal activity: namely, planning, preparation, solicitation and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocol I of 1977, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, inter alia. These are the so-called inchoate crimes that under the Nuremberg Principles constitute international crimes in their own right.

The conclusion is inexorable that the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, maintenance, storing, stockpiling, sale, and purchase as well as the threat to use nuclear weapons together with all their essential accouterments are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law. Thus, those government decision-makers in all the nuclear weapons states with command responsibility for their nuclear weapons establishments are today subject to personal criminal responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles for this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism that they have daily inflicted upon all states and peoples of the international community. Here I wish to single out four components of the threat to use nuclear weapons that are especially reprehensible from an international law perspective: counter-ethnic targeting; counter-city targeting; first-strike weapons and contingency plans; and the first-use of nuclear weapons even to repel a conventional attack.

 THE CRIMINALITY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

As can be determined in part from the preceding analysis, today’s nuclear weapons establishments as well as the entire system of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by all the nuclear weapon states are criminal — not simply illegal, not simply immoral, but criminal under well established principles of international law. This simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons can be utilized to pierce through the ideology of nuclearism to which many citizens in the nuclear weapons states have succumbed. It is with this simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons that concerned citizens can proceed to comprehend the inherent illegitimacy and fundamental lawlessness of the policies that their governments pursue in their names with respect to the maintenance and further development of nuclear weapons systems.

 THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE/TERRORISM

Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind. Nonetheless, a small number of governments in the world community continue to maintain nuclear weapons systems despite the rules of international criminal law to the contrary. This has led some international lawyers to argue quite tautologically and disingenuously that since there exist a few nuclear weapons states in the world community, therefore nuclear weapons must somehow not be criminal because otherwise these few states would not possess nuclear weapons systems. In other words, to use lawyers’ parlance, this minority state practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism practiced by the great powers somehow negates the existence of a world opinio juris (i.e., sense of legal obligation) as to the criminality of nuclear weapons.

There is a very simple response to that specious argument: Since when has a small gang of criminals — in this case, the nuclear weapons states — been able to determine what is legal or illegal for the rest of the community by means of their own criminal behavior? What right do these nuclear weapons states have to argue that by means of their own criminal behavior they have ipso facto made criminal acts legitimate? No civilized nation state would permit a small gang of criminal conspirators to pervert its domestic legal order in this manner. Moreover, both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal made it quite clear that a conspiratorial band of criminal states likewise has no right to opt out of the international legal order by means of invoking their own criminal behavior as the least common denominator of international deportment.  Ex iniuria ius non oritur is a peremptory norm of customary international law.  Right cannot grow out of injustice!

To the contrary, the entire human race has been victimized by an international conspiracy of ongoing criminal activity carried out by the nuclear weapons states under the doctrine known as “nuclear deterrence,” which is really a euphemism for “nuclear terrorism.” This international criminal conspiracy of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by the nuclear weapons states is no different from any other conspiracy by a criminal gang or band. They are the outlaws. So it is up to the rest of the international community to repress and dissolve this international criminal conspiracy as soon as possible.

 THE HUMAN RIGHT TO ANTI-NUCLEAR CIVIL RESISTANCE

In light of the fact that nuclear weapons systems are prohibited, illegal, and criminal under all circumstances and for any reason, every person around the world possesses a basic human right to be free from this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism and its concomitant specter of nuclear extinction. Thus, all human beings possess the basic right under international law to engage in non-violent civil resistance activities for the purpose of preventing, impeding, or terminating the ongoing commission of these international crimes. Every citizen of the world community has both the right and the duty to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons systems by whatever non-violent means are at his or her disposal.  Otherwise, the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs, and the planet earth will become a radioactive wasteland.  The time for preventive action is now!

by Francis A. Boyle

VJ Day, 2009

Threats of right-wing violence have doubled in the past year. What is behind the latest upsurge in the movement to create a Christian theocratic state?

When Scott Roeder, the murderer of Wichita Kansas abortion clinic provider Dr. George Tiller, had his day in court, he spent much of his rambling self-defense quoting the words of another abortion clinic assassin, Reverend Paul Hill. In the 1990s my own research had brought me into conversation with others in the inner circle in which Hill and Roeder were at that time involved. So it was a chilling experience for me to realize that this awful mood of American Christian terrorism—culminating in the catastrophic attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Builiding—has now returned.

Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance. And it is not just Roeder. When members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan and Ohio recently were arrested with plans to kill a random policeman and then plant Improvised Explosive Devices in the area where the funeral would be held to kill hundreds more, this was a terrorist plot of the sort that would impress Shi’ite militia and al Qaeda activists in Iraq. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees, which has closely watched the rise of right-wing extremism in this country for many decades, declares that threats and incidents of right-wing violence have risen 200% in this past year—unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African-American president in US history. When Chip Berlet, one of this country’s best monitors of right-wing extremism, warned in a perceptive essay last week on RD that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the groundwork for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct.

Christian Warrior, Sacred Battle

Though these new forms of violence are undoubtedly political and probably racist, they also have a religious dimension. And this brings me back to what I know about Rev. Paul Hill, the assassin who the similarly misguided assassin, Scott Roeder, quoted at length in that Wichita court room last week. In 1994, Hill, a Presbyterian pastor at the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion activist movement, came armed to a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. He aimed at Dr. John Britton, who was entering the clinic along with his bodyguard, James Barrett. The shots killed both men and wounded Barrett’s wife, Joan. Hill immediately put down his weapon and was arrested; presenting an image of someone who knew that he would be arrested, convicted, and executed by the State of Florida for his actions, which he was in 2003. This would make Hill something of a Christian suicide attacker.

What is interesting about Hill and his supporters is not just his political views, but also his religious ones. As I reported in my book, Terror in the Mind of God, and in an essay for RD several months ago, Hill framed his actions as those of a Christian warrior engaged in sacred battle. “My eyes were opened to the enormous impact” such an event would have, he wrote, adding that “the effect would be incalculable.” Hill said that he opened his Bible and found sustenance in Psalms 91: “You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day.” Hill interpreted this as an affirmation that his act was biblically approved.

One of the supporters that Paul Hill had written these words to was Rev. Michael Bray, a Lutheran pastor in Bowie, Maryland, who had served prison time for his conviction of fire-bombing abortion-related clinics on the Eastern seaboard. Bray published a newsletter and then a Web site for his Christian anti-abortion movement, and published a book theologically justifying violence against abortion service providers, A Time to Kill. He is also alleged to be the author of the Army of God manual that provides details on how to conduct terrorist acts against abortion-related clinics.

Recently Bray has publicly defended Paul Roeder, the Wichita assassin, saying that he acted with “righteousness and mercy.” Several years earlier, another member of Bray’s network of associates, Rachelle (“Shelly”) Shannon, a housewife from rural Oregon, had also attacked Dr. George Tiller as he drove away from his clinic in Wichita. She was arrested for attempted murder.

When I interviewed Bray on several occasions in the 1990s, he provided a theological defense of this kind of violence from two different Christian perspectives. In the remainder of this essay, I’ll summarize from Terror in the Mind of God some of my observations about these theological strands behind their terrorism in the 1990s—and which, amazingly, are surfacing again today.

Theological Illogic

The more traditional Christian justification that Bray used for his violence was just-war theory. He was fond of quoting two of my own heroes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, in what I regard as perverse ways. Bray thought that their justification of military action against the Nazis (and an attempted assassination plot on Hitler’s life Bonhoeffer was involved in) was an appropriate parallel to his terrorism against the US government’s sanctioning of legal abortions. It seemed highly unlikely to me that Bray’s positions would have been accepted by these or any other theologian within mainstream Protestant thought. Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr, like most modern theologians, supported the principle of the separation of church and state, and were wary of what Niebuhr called “moralism”—the intrusion of religious or other ideological values into the political calculations of statecraft. Moreover, Bray did not rely on mainstream theologians for his most earnest theological justification.

The more significant Christian position that Bray and Hill advanced is related to the End-Time theology of the Rapture as thought to be envisaged by the New Testament book of Revelation. These are ideas related, in turn, to Dominion Theology, the position that Christianity must reassert the dominion of God over all things, including secular politics and society. This point of view, articulated by such right-wing Protestant spokespersons as Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have been part of the ideology of the Christian Right since at least the 1980s and 1990s.

At its hardest edge, the movement requires the creation of a kind of Christian politics to set the stage for America’s acceptance of the second coming of Christ. In this context, it is significant today that in some parts of the United States, over one-third of the opponents of the policies of President Barack Obama believe he is the Antichrist as characterized in the End-Times Rapture scenario.

The Christian anti-abortion movement is permeated with ideas from Dominion Theology. Randall Terry (founder of the militant anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue and a writer for the Dominion magazine Crosswinds) signed the magazine’s “Manifesto for the Christian Church,” which asserted that America should “function as a Christian nation.” The Manifesto said that America should therefore oppose “social moral evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.”

At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mike Bray found particularly appealing: Reconstruction Theology, whose exponents long to create a Christian theocratic state. Bray had studied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

Leaders of the Reconstruction movement trace their ideas, which they sometimes called “theonomy,” to Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-century Presbyterian professor of theology at Princeton Seminary who took seriously the sixteenth-century ideas of the Reformation theologian John Calvin regarding the necessity for presupposing the authority of God in all worldly matters. Followers of Van Til (including his former students Bahnsen and Rousas John Rushdoony, and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North) adopted this “presuppositionalism” as a doctrine, with all its implications for the role of religion in political life.

Recapturing Institutions for Jesus

Reconstruction writers regard the history of Protestant politics since the early years of the Reformation as having taken a bad turn, and they are especially unhappy with the Enlightenment formulation of church-state separation. They feel it necessary to “reconstruct” Christian society by turning to the Bible as the basis for a nation’s law and social order. To propagate these views, the Reconstructionists established the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas, and the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California. They have published a journal and a steady stream of books and booklets on the theological justification for interjecting Christian ideas into economic, legal, and political life.

According to the most prolific Reconstruction writer, Gary North, it is “the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ.” He feels this to be especially so in the United States, where secular law as construed by the Supreme Court and defended by liberal politicians is moving in what Rushdoony and others regard as a decidedly un-Christian direction; particularly in matters regarding abortion and homosexuality. What the Reconstructionists ultimately want, however, is more than the rejection of secularism. Like other theologians who utilize the biblical concept of “dominion,” they reason that Christians, as the new chosen people of God, are destined to dominate the world.

The Reconstructionists possess a “postmillennial” view of history. That is, they believe that Christ will return to earth only after the thousand years of religious rule that characterizes the Christian idea of the millennium, and therefore Christians have an obligation to provide the political and social conditions that will make Christ’s return possible. “Premillennialists,” on the other hand, hold the view that the thousand years of Christendom will come only after Christ returns, an event that will occur in a cataclysmic moment of world history. Therefore they tend to be much less active politically.

Rev. Paul Hill, Rev. Michael Bray, and other Reconstructionists—along with Dominion theologians such as the American politician and television host Pat Robertson and many other right-wing Christian activists today—are postmillenialists. Hence they believe that a Christian kingdom must be established on Earth before Christ’s return. They take seriously the idea of a Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States.

These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envisaged a new federalism that would allow individual states to experiment with religious politics on their own. When I asked Bray what state might be ready for such an experiment, he hesitated and then suggested Louisiana and Mississippi, or, he added, “maybe one of the Dakotas.”

Not all Reconstruction thinkers have endorsed the use of violence, especially the kind that Bray and Hill have justified. As Reconstruction author Gary North admitted, “there is a division in the theonomic camp” over violence, especially with regard to anti-abortion activities. Some months before Paul Hill killed Dr. Britton and his escort, Hill (apparently hoping for Gary North’s approval in advance) sent a letter to North along with a draft of an essay he had written justifying the possibility of such killings in part on theonomic grounds. North ultimately responded, but only after the murders had been committed.

North regretted that he was too late to deter Hill from his “terrible direction” and chastised Hill in an open letter, published as a booklet, denouncing Hill’s views as “vigilante theology.” According to North, biblical law provides exceptions to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13), but in terms similar to just-war doctrine: when one is authorized to do so by “a covenantal agent” in wartime, to defend one’s household, to execute a convicted criminal, to avenge the death of one’s kin, to save an entire nation, or to stop moral transgressors from bringing bloodguilt on an entire community.

Hill, joined by Bray, responded to North’s letter. They argued that many of those conditions applied to the abortion situation in the United States. Writing from his prison cell in Starke, Florida, Paul Hill said that the biblical commandment against murder also “requires using the means necessary to defend against murder—including lethal force.” He went on to say that he regarded “the cutting edge of Satan’s current attack” to be “the abortionist’s knife,” and therefore his actions had ultimate theological significance.

Bray, in his book, A Time to Kill, spoke to North’s concern about the authorization of violence by a legitimate authority or “a covenental agent,” as North put it. Bray raised the possibility of a “righteous rebellion.” Just as liberation theologians justify the use of unauthorized force for the sake of their vision of a moral order, Bray saw the legitimacy of using violence not only to resist what he regarded as murder—abortion—but also to help bring about the Christian political order envisioned by the radical dominion theology thinkers. In Bray’s mind, a little violence was a small price to pay for the possibility of fulfilling God’s law and establishing His kingdom on earth.

For most of the rest of us, even a little violence is a price too high to pay for these fantastic visions of Christian politics and for America’s recent return to Christian terrorism.

Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his book Terror in the Mind of God (UC Press). He is the editor of Global Religions: An Introduction and is also the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State and Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution, both from UC Press.

By Mark Jurgensmeyer

19 April, 2010

Alternet.org

(Jerusalem 18.04.2010) Kairos Palestine expresses its outrage and dismay about a new Israeli military order that will categorize tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank as “infiltrators” – ostensibly because they lack the proper permits – and give military officers sweeping control over their deportation. We condemn this action and call upon churches worldwide to publically demand the revocation of the order regarding “Prevention of Infiltration” (Amendment No. 2) issued by the Israeli military authorities.

1. subject to almost immediate deportation,
2. potentially subject to a jail term of up to seven years, and

c)    responsible for funding his/her own detention and deportation.

Furthermore, the military may delay an individual’s appearance before an appeals committee for up to eight days, despite the fact that it may command his/her expulsion within 72 hours of the order, which means, in effect, that people may be deported without any kind of legal hearing (cf. Amendment to section 3 C.D).

That said, the amended order suggests that the new definition of “infiltrator” will apply first and foremost to:

• Gazans living in the West Bank whose addresses are still registered in the Gaza Strip and to to their West Bank-born children and
• to Palestinians who relocated to the West Bank under family reunification provisions.

Many other sectors may be targeted as well:

• Jordanians residing in the West Bank;
• Palestinian residents of Jerusalem;
• foreign-born spouses of Palestinians and
• foreign citizens working in the West Bank, particularly with NGOs and Human Rights groups.

The implications of the new order are multi-faceted. It is:

• A flagrant display of military power;
• a destructive and cynical command that reduces thousands of people into “illegal aliens” in their own homes;
• a threat that, regardless of the extent of its implementation, will confine Palestinians in their villages and further sever them from vital economic, health, education, and social centers and is
• “another improper step toward creating demographic changes in the West Bank and entrenching a regime which discriminates between people on the basis of religion and nationality” as it has been written in a joint letter sent to Ehud Barak by a group of nine NGOs .

The above factors will create greater fear and insecurity among Palestinians, which, in turn, may lead to violence and endanger any prospect for a peace with justice in the whole region.

A Statement by Kairos Palestine

• To support us and intervene in this latest encroachment on Palestinian rights;
• to contact Israeli officials and denounce the military order;
• to contact your own national embassies in Palestine/Israel, as well as Israeli embassies in your own countries, and urge them to pressure Ehud Barak and other members of the Israeli government to prevent its enactment.
• to inform the wider public in your different communities and networks and the media about these inhumane actions.

In every case, please emphasize that the order will not only wrongly criminalize thousands of people, but also that it will further damage efforts towards peace with justice in Palestine/Israel.

“Through our love, we will overcome injustices and establish foundations for a new society both for us and for our opponents. Our future and their future are one. Either the cycle of violence that destroys both of us or peace that will benefit both” (Kairos document 4.3).

Letters demanding the revocation of the amended order should be sent to:

Ehud Barak

Minister of Defence

Ministry of Defence

37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya

Tel Aviv 61909, Israel

Fax: +972 3 691 6940

Email: minister@mod.gov.il

Salutation: Dear Minister

Your own national embassy in Israel

And please copy any emails to: Kalimatuna@gmail.com.

Kairos Palestine (www.kairospalestine.ps) is a group of Palestine Christians who authored “A Moment of Truth” – Christian Palestinian’s word to the world about the occupation of Palestine, an expression “of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering”, and a call for solidarity in ending over six decades of oppression. The document was published it in December 2009. 

In today’s rapidly globalizing world, relations between states and between different communities need a firmly moral basis. Clearly, as long as such relations are premised, as they are today, simply on unequal power and economic structures, sustained peace and justice will remain elusive, and ongoing conflicts can only linger on or even further exacerbate. While generally-accepted secular contemporary human rights norms are an obvious ingredient in developing this moral basis for international and inter-community relations, they are, in themselves, insufficient. Given the salience of religion globally (and also of conflicts that are sought to be justified by appeals to religion), the moral basis for such relations needs also to draw on existing religious/spiritual resources. A key task in this regard is to recover, articulate and promote religious traditions or interpretations that reflect or champion justice, peace and solidarity transcending communitarian bounds, being grounded in a firm faith in ethical monotheism. These traditions can make a valuable contribution in developing the moral basis that we seek today to govern inter-community and international relations, providing them with a vital transcendental dimension that contemporary secular human rights discourses lack. This paper seeks to develop this argument by building on the insights of a key medieval Indian religious figure Dara Shikoh, focusing particularly on his quest for developing a consensus between conflicting religious communities and their conflicting truth claims.

Dara Shikoh’s quest for a universal Sufi ethic

Dara Shikoh, eldest son of the Mughal Emperor of India, Shah Jahan, and heir apparent to his throne, was born near Ajmer in 1615 C.E.1 It is said that before Dara’s birth, Shah Jahan had paid a visit to the tomb of the great Chishti Sufi mystic, Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer and there had prayed for a son to be born to him, since all his earlier children had been daughters. Thus, when Dara was born great festivities were held in Delhi, the imperial capital, for the Emperor now had an heir to succeed him to the throne.

Like any other Mughal prince, Dara’s early education was entrusted to maulvis attached to the royal court, who taught him the Qur’an, Persian poetry, and history. His chief instructor was one Mullah ‘Abdul Latif Saharanpuri, who developed in the young Dara an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the speculative sciences, including Sufism. In his youth, Dara came into contact with numerous Muslim and Hindu mystics, some of whom exercised a profound influence on him. The most noted among these was Hazrat Miyan Mir (d.1635 C.E.), a Qadri Sufi of Lahore whose disciple he later became. Hazrat Miyan Mir is best remembered for having laid the foundation-stone of the Harmandir Sahib or Golden Temple at Amritsar at the request of his close friend, Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru of the Sikhs. The strand of Qadri Sufism that Miyan Mir represented, which he must have bequeathed to his disciples, including Dara, thus appears to have been extremely catholic and accepting of spiritual truths in other traditions and communities. This must be seen as in marked contrast to the ‘orthodox’ ‘ulema associated with the royal courts, the vast majority of who appeared to champion a misplaced Islamic or, more exactly, Muslim supremacism, not just denying the possibility of spiritual worth in other faith traditions and communities but also going so far as to advocate their suppression and extirpation.

After Dara was initiated into the Qadri Sufi order, which he describes in his Risala-i Haq Numa as ‘the best path of reaching Divinity’, he came into contact with several other accomplished mystics of his day, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, including Shah Muhibullah, Shah Dilruba, Shah Muhammad Lisanullah Rostaki, Baba Lal Das Bairagi, and Jagannath Mishra. Dara’s willingness to freely interact with, among other, non-Muslim seekers of the truth marked an understanding of Islam that was in contrast to the court ‘ulema. It was perhaps more in line in keeping with the original Quranic vision, which regards all communities as having been the recipients of divine revelation through prophets, all of who taught a common, universal din, the same primal religion of surrender to the One that was preached by the last of them, the Prophet Muhammad.

Dara’s close and friendly interaction with non-Muslim mystics led him to seek to establish bridges of understanding between Sufism and local or Indic forms of mysticism. In pursuit of this aim, Dara set about seeking to learn more about the religious systems of the Brahmins. He studied Sanskrit, and, with the help of the Pandits of Benaras, prepared a Persian translation of the Upanishads, which was later followed by his Persian renderings of the Gita and the Yoga Vasishta. Throughout this endeavour, his fundamental concern was the quest for the discovery of the Unity of God, seeking to draw out commonalities in the scriptures of the Hindus and the Muslims. One can see this quest as a search for the recovery of the original vision of both the Quran and of the Indic scriptures, the former having been clouded by excessive ritualism in the name of the shari‘ah and Muslim communalism, the latter by widespread corruption, ritualism and caste prejudice. If, as Dara possibly believed, the core of Islam, understood here in the sense of the primal din taught by all the prophets, including the Prophet Muhammad and the prophets sent by God to India, was monotheism (Arabic/Farsi/Urdu: tauhid, Hindi: ekishvarvad), his quest in drawing parallels between the Quran and the Upanishads can be seen as an effort to recover, highlight and stress this monotheism—the basic common core of divine revelation that could bring about a grand reconciliation between Muslims and Hindus. This project of unity was to be based on the principle of tauhid, regarding the differences of language, custom and ritual that distinguished Muslims and Hindus from each other as secondary, and, indeed, ultimately speaking, immaterial in the eyes of God.

Dara expresses this concern in his Persian translation of the Upanishads, the Sirr ul-Akbar (‘The Great Secret’) thus:

“And whereas I was impressed with a longing to behold the Gnostic doctrines of every sect and to hear their lofty expressions of monotheism and had cast my eyes upon many theological books and had been a follower thereof for many years, my passion for beholding the Unity [of God], which is a boundless ocean, increased every moment. […] Thereafter, I began to ponder as to why the discussion of monotheism is so conspicuous in India and why the Indian [Hindu] mystics and theologians of ancient India do not disavow the Unity of God, nor do they find any fault with the Unitarians.”

Dara’s works are numerous, all in the Persian language, only some of which are readily available today. His writings fall into two broad categories. The first consists of books on Sufism and Muslim saints, the most prominent of these being the Safinat ul-Auliya, the Sakinat ul-Auliya, the Risala-i Haq Numa, the Tariqat ul-Haqiqat, the Hasanat ul-‘Arifin and the Iksir-i ‘Azam. The second consists of writings on parallels between Muslim and Hindu mysticism, such as the Majma’ ul-Bahrain, the Mukalama-i Baba Lal Das wa Dara Shikoh, the Sirr-i Akbar, and his Persian translations of the Yoga Vashishta and the Gita.

Dara on Tauhid as the basis of human unity

Dara’s Muslim critics, particularly among the Sunni ‘ulema (in his own time, down to our own) berated him for allegedly renouncing Islam or for allegedly mixing Islam with ‘infidelity’. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, Dara’s commitment to Islam was unquestionable, although, obviously, his understanding of Islam was in marked contrast to that of his ‘orthodox’ Sunni critics, particularly on the question of recognising, accepting, respecting and even celebrating religious truths in other communities, particularly the Hindus, whom the ‘ulema regarded as infidels and polytheists who deserved to be exterminated, or, at least, to be crushed and subdued. Dara’s understanding was hardly an aberration even within the larger Muslim Sufi fold, for numerous other Indian Sufis made much the same arguments. Dara located himself firmly within the broader Sufi Muslim tradition, as is evident from the numerous works on Sufism that he penned, including the Safinat ul-Auliya, a biography of several leading Sufi saints, his first work, composed in 1640 C.E., and the Sirr ul-Auliya, his second biography of various Sufi saints. Unlike the Sakinat ul-Auliya, which deals with Sufis of various orders, this book discusses only the Qadri Sufis of India. Here Dara explicitly declares his Qadri credentials, confessing, ‘Nothing attracts me more than this Qadri order, which has fulfilled my spiritual aspirations’. Dara’s third book on Sufism, the Hasanat ul-‘Arifin or ‘The Aphorisms of the Gnostics’, consists of the sayings of 107 Sufis of various spiritual orders. In his introduction, Dara explains why he wrote the book: “I was enamoured of studying books on the ways of the men of the Path and had in my mind nothing save the understanding of the Unity of God.” This thirst to comprehend the principle and meaning of tauhid—the core of not just the Quran, but all other forms of divine revelation as well prior to the advent of the Prophet Muhammad, and indeed the uniting principle of all of them, placed Dara firmly within the Islamic tradition, as broadly understood.

In line with numerous other mystics, Dara, as is evident in his writings on Sufism, was bitterly critical of ritualism in the name of religion, which tended to substitute for genuine devotion and which also served to build walls of division between various communities. In the Hasanat ul-‘Arifin, Dara bitterly criticises self-styled ‘ulama who, ignoring the inner dimension of the faith, focus simply on external rituals. His critique is directed against mindless ritualism emptied of inner spiritual content, and he challenges the claims of religious professionals who would readily trade their faith for worldly gain. Thus, he says:

May the world be free from the noise of the mulla

And none should pay any heed to their fatwas.

As for those religious scholars and priests who claim to be religious authorities but have actually little or no understanding at all of the true spirit of religion, Dara writes, ‘As a matter of fact, these are ignoramuses to themselves and learned to the ignorant’, and adds the following couplet:

Every prophet and saint suffered afflictions and torments,

Due to the vicious and ignominious conduct of the mullah.

The term ‘mullah’ here is thus not a class just limited to Muslims alone. It comes to stand for exploitative religious professionals associated with every community whose tradition is associated with one or the other prophet or saint. Its parallel in the Hindu tradition would be the pandit, whom numerous Indian mystics roundly berated for precisely the same reasons. These men, who thrive on opposing true religiosity, have, Dara would probably argue, a vested interest in stressing and magnifying differences, based largely on language, customs and rituals, between different communities, turning a blind eye to the basis of all true religion—tauhid—consciousness of which alone can unite people beyond narrow, ascriptive communal boundaries. In another of his works on Sufism, Tariqat ul-Haqiqat, Dara articulates tauhid as the basis of an ethic that can unite all human beings irrespective of communitarian labels in the following verse:

You dwell in the Ka‘aba and in Somnath [a famous Shaivite temple]

And in the hearts of the enamoured lovers.

In his Risala-i Haq Numa, Dara discusses the various stages on the Sufi path, where the seeker (salik) is shown as starting from the ‘alam-i nasut or ‘the physical plane’, and, passing through various stages, finally reaching the ‘alam-i lahut or ‘the plane of Absolute Truth’. Some of the physical exercises employed by the Sufis that are described in the Risala-i Haq Numa are shown by Dara to be similar to those used by the Hindu Tantriks and Yogis. These include astral healing and concentration on the centres of meditation in the heart and brain. Further, he suggests that the four planes through which the Sufi seeker’s journey takes him—nasut , jabrut, malakut and lahut—correspond to the Hindu concept of the avasthanam or the four ‘states’ of jagrat, swapna, shushpati and turiya. By stressing the similarities, or identicalness, of the concept of the planes in both Hindu and Muslim mystical systems, Dara seems to argue that, at root, both stem from a common tauhidic tradition, the differences between them, as suggested by their different terminology, being apparent—only linguistic—and not real.

Dara on the religious systems of Hindus

Medieval Muslim ‘ulema in India, as has been suggested earlier, generally (with notable exceptions) regarded the Hindus as polytheists, and some of them even went so far as to refuse to accept them even as ‘People of the Book’ (ahl-i kitab), who could be granted protection in return for the payment of the jizya. This attitude of theirs was a principal cause for a deep-rooted and long-standing tradition of hostility between Hindus and Muslims. It was premised on a notion of Muslim communal supremacism, which some noted Sufis actively protested against as un-Islamic, and not warranted by their understanding of Islam and tauhid. Dara can be classed in this category of Sufis, who not only denounced Muslim communalism but also actively sought to explore a common spiritual basis for unity between Hindus and Muslims, rooted in tauhid.

In pursuance of this aim, Dara wrote extensively on the religious systems of the Hindus, following in the tradition of several Muslim mystics and scholars before him. Like several Muslim Sufis, he saw the possibility of some religious figures of the Hindus having been actually been prophets of God, and certain Hindu scriptures as having been of divine origin. Thus, for instance, he writes in the Sirr-i Akbar that a strong strain of monotheism may be discerned in the Vedas and opines that the monotheistic philosophy of the Upanishads may be ‘in conformity with the Holy Qur’an and a commentary thereon’.

In his quest for an empathetic understanding of the Hindu religious systems, Dara spent many years in the study of Sanskrit, and for this purpose employed a large number of Pandits from Benaras. Several contemporary Sanskrit scholars praised him for his liberal patronage of the language. Prominent among these was Jagannath Mishra, who, it is said, was once weighed against silver coins at Shah Jahan’s command and the money given to him. He was the author of the Jagatsimha, a work in praise of Dara, and of the Asif Vilasa, a treatise written in praise of Asif Khan, brother of Nur Jahan, wife of Shah Jahan. Other Sanskrit scholars who were patronised by Dara included Pandit Kavindracharya, who was granted a royal pension of two thousand rupees, and Banwali Das, author of a historical work on the kings of Delhi from Yudhishtra, a key figure of the epic Mahabharata, to Shah Jahan, for which he was honored by Shah Jahan with the title of Sarvavidyanidhana.

The most well-known of Dara’s several works on the religious sciences of the Hindus is his Majma ul-Bahrain (‘The Mingling of the Two Oceans’). Completed when Dara was forty-two years old, this book is a pioneering attempt to build on the similarities between Sufism and certain strands of Hindu monotheistic thought, and it is these two that the ‘two oceans’ in the book’s name refer to. He describes this treatise as ‘a collection of the truth and wisdom of two Truth-knowing groups’. It is, in terms of content, rather technical, focussing on Hindu terminology and their equivalents in Islamic Sufism. The basic message that this book conveys is summed up in Dara’s own words thus: ‘Mysticism is equality’, and, he adds, ‘If I know that an infidel, immersed in sin, is, in a way, singing the note of monotheism, I go to him, hear him and am grateful to him’.

The Majma-ul Bahrain is divided into twenty-two sections, in each of which Dara seeks to draw out the similarities between Hindu and Sufi concepts and teachings. Thus, for instance, the Hindu notion of mutki, he says, is identical with the Sufi concept of salvation, denoting the annihilation (fana) of the self in God. Or, for example, the Sufi concept of ‘ishq (love) is said to be identical with the maya of the Hindu monotheists. From Love, says Dara, was born the ‘great soul’, alternately known as the soul of Muhammad to the Sufis, and mahatman or hiranyagarba to the Hindus.

Dara’s translation of certain Hindu scriptures into Persian represents a landmark in the process of developing bridges of understanding between people of different faith communities in medieval India, in which certain Sufis played the leading role. One of Dara’s earliest attempts at translation was his rendering of the Gita into Persian. Keenly interested as he was in the philosophy of Yoga, Dara also had the Yoga Vasishta, one of the earliest Sanskrit texts on Yoga, translated into Persian. The translator of the text opens his treatise with praises of God and the Prophet Muhammad thus:

“Gratitude, adoration and submission are offered to the One, the Sun of whose glory shines in every atom of the cosmos and where grandeur is manifested in the entire Universe, although He is hidden from all eyes and is behind the veil; boundless benedictions in all sincerity and faith free from error, omission or sanctimoniousness to that choicest product of His creation, to that personification of all that is best, the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and Allah’s blessings be upon him, and the same to the Imam ‘Ali, the object of his love.”

The translator then quotes Dara as saying:

“My chief reason for this noble command [to have the Yoga Vasishta translated] is that although I had profited by pursuing a translation of the Yoga Vasishta ascribed to Shaikh Sufi, yet once two saintly persons appeared in my dreams; one of whom was tall, whose hair was grey, the other short and without any hair. The former was Vasishta and the latter Ram Chandra, and as I had read the translation already alluded to, I was naturally attracted to them and paid them my respects. Vasishta was very kind to me and patted me on the back, and, addressing Ram Chandra, told him that I was brother to him because both he and I were seekers after truth. He asked Ram Chandra to embrace me, which he did in exuberance of love. Thereupon, Vasishta gave some sweets to Ram Chandra, which I also took and ate. After this vision, a desire to cause the translation of the book intensified in me.”

Dara established close and cordial relations with mystics from various backgrounds. Among these were several Yogis and sadhus, about some of whom Dara also wrote. One such sadhu was Baba Lal, follower of the renowned Sufi-Bhakti saint Kabir and founder of a small monotheistic order named after him as the Baba Lalis. Many of the teachings of this sect can be traced to a distinct Sufi influence. A summary of these teachings is to be found in Dara’s Makalama Baba Lal wa Dara Shikoh, which consists of seven long conversations between the Baba and Dara held in Lahore in 1653. These seven discourses were composed originally in Hindawi, and were later translated into Persian by Dara’s chief secretary, Rai Chandar Bhan. As in the case of Dara’s translation of the Yoga Vasishta, this text focuses particularly on certain similarities in the teachings of Hindu and Muslim mystics.

The great interest that Dara had in exploring monotheistic strands in Hindu philosophy led him, finally, to translate fifty-two Upanishads into Persian. The text that he prepared, the Sirr ul-Akbar (‘The Great Secret’) was completed in 1657. Here, he opines that the ‘great secret’ of the Upanishads is the monotheistic message, which is identical to that on which the Qur’an is based. The text begins with praises to Allah and the Prophet Muhammad thus:

“Praised be the Being, that among whose eternal secrets is the dot in the b of the bismillah in all the Heavenly Books, and glorified be the Mother of Books. In the Holy Qur’an is the token of His glorious name; and the angels and the heavenly books and the prophets and the saints are all comprehended in this name. And the blessings of the Almighty Allah be upon the best of His creatures, the Holy Prophet Muhammad and upon all his family and upon all his Companions!”

Dara then proceeds to detail the purpose behind translating the Upanishads. He writes that in the year 1050 A.H. he visited Kashmir, and there he met Hazrat Mullah Shah, whom he describes as ‘the flower of the Gnostics, the tutor of the tutors, the sage of the sages, the guide of the guides, the Unitarians accomplished in the Truth’. Thereafter, he says, he was filled with a longing to ‘behold the Gnostics of every sect and to hear the lofty expressions of monotheism’. Hence, he says, he began his search for monotheism in other scriptures as well, including the Torah of the Jews (Taurat), the Gospels of Jesus (Injil) the Psalms of David (Zabur), and, in addition, the books of the ancient Hindus. He notes with approval the fact that certain Hindu ‘theologians and mystics’ (‘ulama-i zahiri wa batini) actually believe in One God, but laments that ‘the ignoramuses of the present age’, who claim to be authorities in matters of religion, have completely distorted this fundamental truth. His search for traces of monotheism in the religious systems of the Hindus stems, he says, from his faith in the Qur’an, which states that God has, from time to time, sent prophets to all peoples to preach the worship of the One. Thus, he goes on to add:

“And it can also be ascertained from the Holy Qur’an that there is no nation without a prophet and without a revealed scripture, for it has been said: ‘Nor do We chastise until We raise an apostle’ [Qur’an: XVII, 15]. And in another verse: ‘And there is not a people but a warner has gone among them’ [Qur’an: XXXV, 24]. And at another place: ‘Certainly we sent our apostles with clear arguments, and sent down with them the Book and the Measure’ [Qur’an: LVII, 25].”

Accordingly, says Dara, he travelled to Benaras in 1067 A.H., where he assembled several leading Sanskrit Pandits to translate the Upanishads, in an effort to draw out from the scriptures of the Hindus the hidden teachings on monotheism which are, he says, ‘in conformity with the Holy Qur’an’. Having explored the teachings of the Upanishads, he writes that they are ‘a treasure of monotheism’, although, he notes, ‘very few are conversant with this, even among the Hindus’. Hence, he says, there is an urgent need to bring to light this ‘Great Secret’ so that the Hindus can learn the truth about monotheism as contained in their own scriptures and, in addition, Muslims, too, can be made aware of the spiritual treasures that the Upanishads contain. He goes so far as to claim for the Upanishads, in their original forms, the status of divinely revealed scriptures, claiming that the Qur’anic verse which speaks about a ‘protected book’, which ‘none shall touch but the purified ones’ [Qur’an: LVI, 77-80] literally applies to them, because some of the verses of the Qur’an are to be found in their Sanskrit form therein. This conclusion can indeed be contested, although the sincerity of Dara’s effort to draw parallels between the Hindu and Muslim mystical systems and to stress their common core of tauhid as a uniting principle and the basis of an ethic of universal human understanding and solidarity cannot be so easily dismissed as his detractors did, causing him to be killed at the command of his younger brother and rival to the Mugahl throne, Aurangzeb Alamgir, in the year 1657.

Dara’s relevance in today’s age

Tauhid, or belief in and surrender to the One, formed the aim of Dara’s spiritual quest. Tauhid was also the basis of his effort to develop a rapprochement between people of different communities, most notably Hindus and Muslims. The ethical monotheism that Dara stood for, and which indeed all the prophets had preached, was the basis, and, indeed, real intention of all divine revelation, Dara stressed. The differences in rituals, language, manners and customs, which served to build barriers of division and hostility between different peoples in the name of religion, he seems to have believed, were, ultimately, meaningless, particularly if they were taken as ends in themselves, as many conventional religionists did in Dara’s time—and still do.

Commitment to tauhid is not, Dara suggests, simply a matter of personal belief. Rather, it must necessarily translate into practical action on the social plane. The fact of the unity of God must also be reflected in a deep and abiding commitment to struggling for the unity and solidarity of humankind, beyond all ascriptive differences, working together to fulfil the purposes of God’s creation plan. That struggle for unity, harmony and peace, one whose challenge we continue to be faced with, is demanded precisely by the commitment to tauhid, the core the universal din preached by all prophets, Dara would probably have insisted. This, however, might seem easier said than done. Peace cannot be had without justice, and in the face of oppression—in the name of religion, nation, community, gender and so on. In the absence of justice, calls for peace are easily reduced into appeals for preserving an iniquitous status quo and remaining silent in the face of oppression. Calls for justice without peace can only mean endless chaos and ceaseless rounds of revenge and retribution. Dara himself fell prey to a system of injustice despite his life spent in quest for peace and human solidarity transcending narrow boundaries, being accused of apostasy by orthodox clerics and sentenced to death by his power-hungry brother.

 By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,

18 April 2010

Dearest Janet,

It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut today. Twenty-five years ago this week since the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatilla. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night. Enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust. Fortunately not enough to make the usual rain created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square, one of several so named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told me that on Sunday September 19, 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys castrated, Christian crosses carved into some of the bodies.

As you later wrote to me in your perfect cursive:

“I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an ally wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.”

Today Martyr’s Square is not much of a Memorial to the upwards of 1,700 mainly women and children, who were murdered between Sept. 15-18. You would not be pleased. A couple of faded posters and a misspelled banner that reads: “1982: Saba Massacer”, hang near the center of the 20 by 40 yard area which for years following the mass burial was a garbage dump. Today, roaming around the grassless plot of ground is a large old yellow dog that ignores a couple of chicken hens and six pullets scratching and pecking around.

Since you went away, the main facts of the massacre remain the same as your research uncovered in the months that followed. At that time your findings were the most detailed and accurate as to what occurred and who was responsible.

The old 7-storey Kuwaiti Embassy from where Sharon, Eytan, Yaron, Elie Hobeika, Fradi Frem and others maintained radio contact and monitored the 48 hours of carnage with a clear view into the camps was torn down years ago. A new one has been built and they are still constructing a mosque on its grounds.

I am sorry to report that today in Lebanon, the families of the victims of the massacre daily sink deeper into the abyss. No where on earth do the Palestinians live in such filth and squalor. ‘Worse than Gaza!” a journalist recently in Palestine exclaims.

A 2005 Lebanese law that was to open up access to some of the 77 professions the Palestinians have been barred from in Lebanon had no effect. Their social, economic, political, and legal status continues to worsen.

“It’s a hopeless situation here now,” according to Jamile Ibrahim Shehade, the head of one of 12 social centers in the camp. “There are 15,000 people living in one square kilometer,” Jamile runs a center which provides basic facilities such as a dental clinic and a nursery for children. It receives assistance from Norwegian People’s Aid and the Lebanese NGO, PARD. “This whole area was nothing before the camps were here and there has been very little done in terms of building infrastructure,” Shehade explained.

Continued misery in the camps has taken a heavy psychological toll on the residents of Sabra and Shatilla, aid workers here say. Tempers run high as a result of frustration from the daily grind in the decrepit housing complex. In all 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon tensions and tempers rise with increasing family, neighborhood, and sect conflicts. Salafist and other militant groups are forming in and around Lebanon’s Palestinian camps but not so much here in the Hezbollah controlled areas where security is better.

In Sabra-Shatilla schools will run double shifts when they open at the end of this month and electricity and water are still a big problem.According to a 1999 survey by the local NGO Najdeh (Help), 29 percent of 550 women surveyed in seven of the 12 official refugee camps scattered across Lebanon, have admitted being victims of physical violence. Cocaine and hashish use are becoming a concern to the community.

There is some new information about the Sabra-Shatilla massacre that has come to light over the years. Few Israelis but many of the Christian Lebanese Forces, following the national amnesty, wanted to make their peace and have confessed to their role. I have spoken with a few of them.

Remember that fellow you once screamed at and called a butcher outside of Phalange HQ in East Beirut, Joseph Haddad? At the time he denied everything as he looked you straight in the eye and made the sign of the cross. Well, he did finally confess 22 years later, around the time of his youngest daughter’s confirmation in his local parish. Your suspicions were indeed correct. His unit, the second to enter the camp, had been supplied with cocaine, hashish and alcohol to increase their courage. He and others gave their stories to Der Spiegel and various documentary film makers.

Many of the killers now freely admit that they conducted a three-day orgy of rape and slaughter that left hundreds, as many as 3,500 they claim, possibly more, of innocent civilians dead in what is considered the bloodiest single incident of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a crime for which Israel will be condemned for eternity.

Your friend, Um Ahmad, still lives in the same house where she lost her husband, four sons and a daughter when Joseph, a thick-set militiaman carrying an assault rifle bundled everyone into one room of their hovel and opened fire. She still explains like it was yesterday, how the condoned slaughter unfolded, recalling each of her four sons by name, Nizar, Shadi, Farid and Nidal. I asked Joseph if he wanted to sit with Um Ahmad and seek forgiveness and possible redemption since has now become a lay cleric in his Parish. He declined but sent his condolences with flowers.

Do you remember Janet, how we used to walk down Rue Sabra from Gaza Hospital to Akka Hospital during the 75-day Israeli siege in ’82, as you used to say “to see my people”? Gaza Hospital is gone now. Occupied and stripped by the Syrian-backed Amal militia during the Camp Wars of ’85-87. Its remaining rooms are now packed with refugees. One old lady who ended up there recited how it’s her 4th home since being forced from Palestine in 1948. She survived the Phalangist attack on and destruction of Tel a Zaatar camp in 1976 fled from the Fatah al Islam Salafists in Nahr al Bared Camp in May of this year and wore out her welcome at the teeming and overwhelmed Bedawi camp near Tripoli last month.

Most of your friends who worked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society are gone from Lebanon. Our cherished friend, Hadla Ayubi has semi-retired in Amman, Um Walid, Director of Akkar Hosptial, finally did return to Palestine following Oslo, still with the PRCS. And its President, Dr. Fathi Arafat, your good friend, passed away in December of 2004 in Cairo less than a month after his brother Abu Ammar died in Paris. They both loved you for all you had done for their people.

That trash dump near the Sabra Mosque is now a mountain. Yesterday I did a double take as I walked by because I saw three young girls-as sweet and pretty as ever I have seen — maybe 7 to 9 years old in rags picking thru the nasty garbage. Their arms were covered with white chemical paste. Apparently whoever sent to scavenge sought to protect them from disease. As I climbed thru the filth to give them my last 6,000 LL ($4) they managed a smile and giggle when I slipped on a broken thin plastic bag of juicy cactus fruit skins and plunged to my knees.

In some areas of the camps there are mainly Syrians. Selling cheap ‘tax free’ goods. Still some Arafat loyalists. Mainly among the older generation. Palpable stress among just about everyone it seems. One young Palestinian explained to me his worry that with the upcoming Parliamentary election to choose a new President scheduled for September 25, there may be fighting and his October 6 SAT exams may be cancelled and he won’t be able to continue his studies.

When you and I last spoke Janet, it was on April 16 of that year and I was en route to the Athens Airport to catch a flight to Beirut to be with you, you told me you were working on evidence to convict Sharon and others of war crimes.

Twenty years later, lawyers representing two dozen victims and other relatives attempted to have Ariel Sharon tried for the massacre under Belgian legislation, which grants its courts “universal jurisdiction” for war crimes.There had been great expectations about the case among the Palestinians and their friends, since as you remember, Sharon had already been found to bear “personal responsibility” in the massacres by an Israeli commission of inquiry which concluded he shouldn’t ever again hold public office. But hopes were dashed when the Belgium Court, under US and Israeli pressure, decided the case was inadmissible.I regret to report that all those who perpetrated the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla escaped justice. None of the hundreds of Phalange and Haddad militia who carried out the slaughter were ever punished. In fact they got a blanket amnesty from the Lebanese government.

As for the main organizers and facilitators, their massacre at Sabra-Shatilla turned out to be excellent career moves for virtually all of them.

Arial Sharon, found by the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry ” to bear personal responsibility ” for allowing the Sabra-Shatilla massacre resigned as Minister of Defense but retained his Cabinet position in Begin’s Government and over the next 16 years held four more ministerial posts, including that of Foreign Minister, before becoming Prime Minister in February, 2001. Following the Jenin rampage US President Bush anointed him “a man of peace.”

Rafel Eytan, Israeli Chief of Staff, who shared Sharon’s decision to send in the Phalange killers and helped direct the operation was elected to the Knesset as leader of the small ultra rightwing party, Tzomet. In 1984 he was named Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in 1996. He currently serves as head of Tzomet and is jockeying for another Cabinet position in the next government.

Major-General Yehoshua Saguy, Army Chief of Intelligence: found by the Kahan Commission to have made “extremely serious omissions” in handling the Sabra-Shatilla affair later became a right-wing Member of the Knesset and is now mayor of the ultra-rightist community of Bat-Yam, a little town near Tel Aviv.

Major-General Amir Drori, Chief of Israel’s Northern Command: found not to have done enough to stop the massacre, a “breach of duty”, recently was named as head of the Israeli Antiquities Commission.

Brigadier-General Amos Yaron, the divisional commander whose troops sealed the camps to prevent victims from escaping and helped direct the operation along with Sharon and Eitan was found to have” committed a breach of duty”. He was immediately promoted Major-General and made head of Manpower in the army, served as Director-General of the Israeli Defense Ministry and Military Attaches at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He is currently working for various Israeli lobby groups as a scholar in ‘think thanks’.

Elie Hobeika, the Chief of Lebanese Forces Intelligence, who along with Sharon master-minded the actual massacre fell out with the Phalange in 1980s under suspicion that he was involved in killing their leader, Bachir Gemayal.

He defected to the Syrians, acquired three Ministerial posts in post-civil war Lebanon Governments, including Minister of the Displaced (many thought he know a lot about this subject) of Electricity and Water and in 1996, Social Affairs.

On January 24, 2002, twenty years after his involvement at Sabra-Shatilla he was blown up in a car bomb attack in East Beirut. Two of his associates who were also rumored to be planning to ‘come clean’ regarding Sharon’s role were assassinated in separate incidents. A few days before Hobeika’s death he stated that he might reveal more about the massacre and those responsible and according to Beirut’s Daily Star staff who interviewed him, Hobeika told them that his lawyers had copies of his files implicating Sharon in much more than had become public. These files are now is the possession of his son who, following Sharon’s death, may release the files.

They still remember you in Burj al Buragne camp. A few weeks ago one old man told me: “Janet Stevens? No, I didn’t know her. He paused and then said, .Oh!..you mean Miss Janet! She spoke Arabic…I think she was American. Of course I remember her! We called her the little drummer girl. She had so much energy. She cared about the Palestinians. That was so long ago. She stopped coming to visit us. I don’t know why. How is she?”

And so, Dearest Janet, I will be waiting for you at Sabra-Shatilla , at Martyrs Square, on Saturday, September 15, 2007.

You will find me patting and mumbling to that old yellow dog. He and I have become friends and we will pay our respects to the dead and I will reflect on these past 25 years and we will watch for and wait for you. You will find us behind the straggly rose bushes on the right as you enter.

Come to us, Janet. We need you. The camp residents need you, one of their brightest lights, on this 25th anniversary of one of their darkest hours. You were always their mediator and advocate…and until today you are their majorette for Justice and Return to their sacred Palestine.

Forever, Franklin

Janet Lee Stevens was born in 1951 and died on April 18, 1983, at the age of 32, at the instant of the explosion which destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut. Twenty minutes before the blast, Janet had arrived at the Embassy to meet with US A.I.D. official Bill McIntyre because she wanted to advocate for more aid to the Shia of South Lebanon and for the Palestinians at Sabra, Shatilla, and Burg al Burajneh camps, stemming from Israel’s 1982 invasion and the September 15-18 massacre. As they sat at a table in the cafeteria, where she had planned to ask why the US government has never even lodged a protest following the Israeli invasion or the Massacre, a van stolen from the Embassy the previous June arrived and parked just in front of the Embassy. Almost directly in front of the cafeteria. It contained 2,000 pounds of explosives. It was detonated by remote control and tons of concrete pancaked on top of Janet and Bill, killing 63 and wounding 120. Remains of Janet’s body were found two days later, unidentified in the basement morgue of the American University of Beirut Hospital by the author. She was pregnant with our son, Clyde Chester Lamb III. Had he lived he would be 24 years old. Hopefully taking after his mother he would, no doubt, be a prince of a young man.

By Franklin Lamb

17 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Dr. Franklin Lamb is an American who has dedicated the best years of his life and more to the service of Palestinians. This is a letter to his wife Janet, that was published in Counterpunch, on the anniversary of the Sabra & Shatila Massacre, on Sept. 14, 2007 Today is the anniversary of the US Embassy Bombing in Beirut..  A very sad day for Mr. Lamb.  Please let him know that you have read his story. fplamb@gmail.com .

Franklin Lamb’s book on the Sabra-Shatilla Massacre, now out of print, was published in 1983, following Janet’s death and was dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens.Lamb, Franklin P.: International legal responsibility for the Sabra-Shatilla-massacre / Franklin P. Lamb – Montreuil: Imp. Tipe, 1983 – 157 S. Ill., Kt.He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It has taken capitalism about 250 years to generate enough waste and pollution to press dangerously against nature’s limits. With such a damning record, there should be no grounds to expect a different outcome in the future.

Yet the mainstream discussion about how to tackle the climate crisis still assumes that, this time around, capitalism can be made sustainable.

In an April 3 Sydney Morning Herald piece arguing for capitalists to take a leading role in resolving the climate crisis, Paddy Manning said it “was an article of faith for this column” that a free market could respond effectively to the challenge of climate change. But, struggling to come up with Australian capitalists responding positively to the challenge, he was forced to admit: “Faith is needed, because climate change is proof of colossal market failure.”

The appeal of green capitalism — what US ecologist Amory Lovins has dubbed “the profitable solution to climate change” — is obvious. It promises to save the planet, maintain economic growth and make lots of people lots of money.

It offers the hope that there is an easy way out of the crisis — that we can halt climate change without resorting to fundamental social change.

But it ignores the fact that capitalism’s need for endless growth and ever-higher consumption is the root cause and main driver of the Earth’s environmental distress.

Capitalism is an infinite project on a finite planet.

Given the dire climate threat we face, which requires immediate action to cut emissions, the illusion of green capitalism is also a dangerous diversion.

Take British economist Nicolas Stern’s 2006 review on the economics of climate change. Stern famously called climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”. He said strong action to cut emissions “must be viewed as an investment, a cost incurred now and in the coming few decades to avoid the risks of very severe consequences in the future”.

It sounds great. But delve into the report a bit deeper and its conclusions are chilling.

Stern said: “Paths requiring very rapid emissions cuts are unlikely to be economically viable.” And: “It is difficult to secure emission cuts faster than about 1% per year except in instances of recession.”

“These limits to the economically feasible speed of adjustment constrain the range of feasible [emissions] stabilisation trajectories”, he concluded.

Yet what is feasible for maintaining capitalist economic growth is unfeasible for the future of human civilisation. To have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change, far bigger cuts are needed in a much shorter timeframe than the market system can tolerate.

For example, the group of leading climate scientists who authored the 2009 report, The Copenhagen Diagnosis, said industrial nations like Australia must cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels in just ten years. That’s about four times faster than Stern allowed for.

The gap between the economics and the science cannot be bridged. Either we choose a “healthy” capitalist economy or we choose a healthy planet. We can’t have both.

At December’s Copenhagen climate conference Bolivian President Evo Morales caused a stir when he put the blame for global warming squarely on capitalism: “We are here to save Mother Earth … The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the Earth then we must end that economic model.”

Too extreme? Too simplistic? For Australian author David McKnight the answer would be yes. He told the April 3 Sydney Morning Herald that “waiting until capitalism is abolished means accepting that climate change will continue to occur in the meantime”.

But opposing capitalism is hardly the same as just waiting for the revolution. We are running out of time to stop climate change — no delay in action can be accepted. There is too much carbon in the atmosphere already. To succeed, we need a broad social movement strong enough to take on the powerful vested interests that stand in the way of change.

Such a movement has the potential to democratise society, overturning the dictatorship of capital.

The point is that the climate movement should not be afraid of its own conclusions. If it allows its goals to be shaped by what is feasible in a capitalist economy then it has already failed.

However, if it refuses to compromise on the measures needed to fix the climate then it will ultimately have to confront, and remake, the whole system.

McKnight is an old lefty who has become more conservative as time has passed. But the climate crisis has prompted others to shift their political views in the other direction.

One example is James Gustave Speth, a former environmental advisor to the Carter and Clinton administrations and onetime head of the United Nations Development Program. Once known as the “ultimate insider”, Speth now doubts climate change can be dealt with at all under capitalism.

It hasn’t meant he has given up. Rather, Speth has fired up.

In his 2008 book, Bridge at the Edge of the World, he said: “In the end, we need to trigger a response that in historical terms will come to be seen as revolutionary — the Environmental Revolution of the twenty first century. Only such a response is likely to avert huge and even catastrophic environmental losses.”

Simon Butler

17 April, 2010

Greenleft.org.au

The dominoes are knocking over each other at such a rapid pace that India should not be surprised if Naxalites and Maoists find curious backers in the highest echelons of the State. Not because people up there are particularly endeared to Naxalite strategy and tactics, but some of them are reconsidering their options and have realized that in this insane rush towards ramrodding India into a neo-liberal Valhalla, a large majority of the citizens of India are being ripped apart, torn asunder and shoved into the gutters, sewers, swamps and bogs of this nation. Something is going wrong and if a course correction is not made now, things are going down the tubes to hell in a hand basket. The collateral damage has been so obvious that no less than the Central Government’s own offices have declared the attempts at displacing the “poorest of the poor” (the PM’s own words), and the forced evacuation and hamletization of aboriginal people, as the “biggest land grab since Columbus. ” Whoever drafted that phrase or statement is an extraordinarily thoughtful and historically wary person. Because she or he knew what was around the bend. And it has come about faster than the powers ever imagined. It was supposed to have been done surreptitiously, quietly and with the fanfare and dog and pony show associated with 9% growth drowning out the screams of the displaced. It did not pan out that way.

Indians, be they analysts, economists, bureaucrats, historians, scientists, advocates, IAS officers and even retired senior commanders in the services are not unconscious and ahistorical babblers. After all Indians bore the brunt of the British Empire for two hundred years. The process of colonization is such that it leaves behind a genealogy of awareness, of remembrance, the ability to connect the dots and not be taken for a ride. Indians pass on the lessons of their parents’ generation to their next in line. To put it bluntly, Indians are not fools. They do not take kindly to the incessant repetition of official speak. Just as Iraqis and Afghanis aren’t either. Indians know that occupation, whether it is by goras or by their proxies are never tolerated quietly.

The sons and daughters and the grandchildren of freedom fighters, of Gandhian activists, of Sarvodaya activists, followers of Vinoba Bhave, of the Congress Socialists, of the followers of “Nehruvian socialism”, of the followers of JP Narayan, of those the British chose to call “terrorists” and old-style retired Communists from the Tebhaga and Telengana period, know where “the buck stops.” They may not be supporters of the Maoists, but they know that this time around, something is going terribly wrong and this mad race to “modernize” India has only one group of takers—those who salivate over the glam and glitter of Ratan Tata, Narendra Modi, the Ambanis, the Jindals, the Mallyas and their main backers, Chidambaram, Ahluwalia, Kamal Nath and a handful of others.

The dominoes are beginning to fall. And despite the clear cut statement by the PM’s office that all statements on the Maoist issue will only come from the Home Minister’s office, within twenty four hours, Mr. Digvijay Singh spoke up, and he is no small fish.

“He (Mr Chidambaram) is treating it purely as a law and order problem without taking into consideration the issues that affect the tribals,” Digvijay Singh, wrote in the Economic Times. Further on he went on to say, “We can’t solve this problem by ignoring the hopes and aspirations of the people living in these areas… In a civilised society and a vibrant democracy, ultimately it is the people who matter,” he added.

The chips are going to fall, one by one. It is only a matter of time, before Indians from all walks of life will speak up. It does not have to be the tireless voices of the Roys, the Navlakhas, Sundars, Bhusans, Himanshu Kumars only. And it will not be the voices of Justice PB Sawant and Suresh, Professor Yash Pal, Drs. Giri, Bhargava and Subramanium who officiated in the Indian Peoples Tribunal either. Soon other journals and magazines will join Tehelka, Outlook, Mainstream, Open magazines and occasionally The Hindu and even 24 Ghanta (the Kolkata TV channel), as well. Because, there is a tradition in India of quietly re-visiting the past and not simply concocting a present. There is a tradition of thoughtfulness and a renaissance mentality that gently warns against the rabid promotion of the “us and them” dichotomy. There is a tradition in India of being alert to upstarts who want to steal the show.

Actors, actresses, scientists, sports personalities will also speak up. News channels, despite the corporate sponsorship they enjoy, will eventually break their bondage and slip in the truth from the hills and rivers of Dandakaranya. There is a limit to how much an entire nation can be duped into this proto-fascist frenzy. Shades of George Bush, post-911! It lasted for a while and Ms. Susan Sonntag, Gore Vidal and a host of others were similarly brutally abused for questioning the rabid war-mongering and xenophobia that followed. So will it happen in India. Even in the Bombay movie tradition, there is a long list of Sahnis, Kapoors, Azmis, Abbas, the heirs in Bengal of Bijon Bhattacharya and Shombhu Mitra and the musical tradition of Salil Choudhury, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and others all over the country will come out and have their voices be heard.

This is a fork in the road. And if you take the wrong end of the fork, there is no retreat. Hidden agendas will not work in this India. Whether you are a Maoist supporter or not, the facts are clear that the Maoists are NOT on the wrong side of history. You cannot juggle the reality by endlessly discussing the dichotomy of law and order versus development. This is a falsification of the debate. To thump your chest and bemoan the plight of “ our Jawans” as the CPI(Marxist) and the BJP recently did in Parliament, smacks of the same anti-intellectual tradition that followed 911 in the US.

The Maoists have, as per their own interpretations, clearly figured out what is going disastrously wrong and they have chosen to highlight this. Their fight has been a fight of resistance, albeit violent. And while the Maoists did not choose violence as their first step ( the counter-Maoists can continue to whine away about the Maoists constitutional edict to seize power by armed struggle etc, highlighting the aspect of power seizure as if it is an overnight coup d’état and not a long drawn out struggle for structural change) they have no choice but to defend their gains. For a long time, the fathers and mothers of liberalization sold the story to the media and who in turn parroted it out, day in and out that India needed to “liberalize.” Behind that well chosen misnomer, the Indian state sold a bill of goods to India’s proto-gullible middle class that questioning this “liberalization” would amount to un-patriotic activity. And the bloggers, twitterers, facebookers went all out to spread the same gospel. Well, that balance is now being tipped. Scores of blogs and sites have now hit out hard against this one sided misrepresentation.

If India was the same nation, it was some fifteen years ago, it would not attract much attention, either internally or externally. The times have changed. Today, what happens in Dantewada is written about in Washington DC, in San Francisco, in Moscow, in Amsterdam, London, Singapore, Paris and Johannesburg within hours. Call it what you will, there are representatives of the new media, stationed everywhere, picking up on each other’s pronouncements and belting out stories instantaneously. And some of these stories do not bode well for the folks who quietly promoted the camp of the suave and cocky Mr. P. Chidambaram. Because word has gotten around that within the ruling corridors that there is considerable double taking or to put it somewhat euphemistically some soul searching going on. Mr. Chidambaram had some vague notions that one day he would be an applicant for the position of the PM of this country. Dynasty or not, the Gandhi family knows that Chidambaram is a chip of the old block. For those of you who remember, this is the progeny of the Old Congress Syndicate. The ruling class of India are not a monolithic block and they continue to have their own skirmishes and cock-fights like Morarji Desai and Sanjiva Reddy on one side and the VV Giris, Indira-clan on the other side. Let us not forget that out of the Indian electorate of 714 million, 153,482,356 voted for the Congress party (21% of the electorate) and Manmohan Singh had to run in Assam and Chidambaram required a recount to get their seats. Within the UPA, there are plenty of forces who are not going to put up with the high-handedness of the Chidambaram coterie.

Somewhere amongst the denizens in India’s ruling corridors there are families, groupings, influences that have a long lineage going back to India’s struggle to free itself from Britain. In that lineage, non-alignment did well. Playing one superpower against the other. Despite the hidebound theories of the ruling classes’ propensities, the fact is that after all is said and done, the ruling class is not united. On the one hand there are the outright compradors and on the other side are the compromisers who desperately wish for a new superpower. There has always been an Indian state of mind, which eventually shakes itself out of its torpor and calls a spade a spade.

The people of India and I mean those who do not read blogs and do not know who George Dick Obama could be, vote with their fists, when they are kicked around too much. Mrs. Indira Gandhi found that out. The BJP realized that in no time. Karat and Yechury smarted under the same blows and Buddhadev Bhattacharya is going to find it out pretty soon. Even though voter turn out in India is still hardly anything to be proud of, when Indians do vote they vote with their minds.

By Trevor Selvam

17 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

More than three quarters of the U.S. Senate, including 38 Democrats, have signed on to a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly rebuking the Obama Administration for its confrontational stance toward Israel.

The letter, backed by the pro-Israel group AIPAC, now has the signatures of 76 Senators and says in part:

We recognize that our government and the Government of Israel will not always agree on particular issues in the peace process. But such differences are best resolved amicably and in a manner that befits longstanding strategic allies. We must never forget the depth and breadth of our alliance and always do our utmost to reinforce a relationship that has benefited both nations for more than six decades.

A similar letter garnered 333 signatures in the House, and its support marks almost unified Republican support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, along with strong, but more divided, public Democratic discomfort with Obama’s policies in the region.

Signatories include key Democrats like Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer, and Robert Menendez as well as all but four Republicans, with signers including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Scott Brown.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin, however, did not sign; nor did Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry and ranking member Richard Lugar.

The full Senate letter, circulated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Johnny Isakson, is here.

Dear Secretary Clinton:

We write to urge you to do everything possible to ensure that the recent tensions between the U.S. and Israeli administrations over the untimely announcement of future housing construction in East Jerusalem do not derail Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations or harm U.S.-Israel relations. In fact, we strongly believe that it is more important than ever for Israel and the Palestinians to enter into direct, face-to-face negotiations without preconditions on either side.

Despite your best efforts, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been frozen for over a year. Indeed, in a reversal of 16 years of policy, Palestinian leaders are refusing to enter into direct negotiations with Israel. Instead, they have put forward a growing list of unprecedented preconditions. By contrast, Israel’s prime minister stated categorically that he is eager to begin unconditional peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Direct negotiations are in the interest of all parties involved – including the United States.

We also urge you to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds that tie the United States and Israel together and to diligently work to defuse current tensions. The Israeli and U.S. governments will undoubtedly, at times, disagree over policy decisions. But disagreements should not adversely affect our mutual interests – including restarting the peace process between Israel and her neighbors and preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

From the moment of Israel’s creation, successive U.S. administrations have appreciated the special relationship between our two nations. Israel continues to be the one true democracy in the Middle East that brings stability to a region where it is in short supply. Whether fighting Soviet expansionism or the current threats from regional aggression and terrorism, Israel has been a consistent, reliable ally and friend and has helped to advance American interests. Similarly, by helping keep Israel strong, the United States has helped to reduce threats to Israel’s security and advance the peace which successive Israeli governments have so avidly sought.

It is the very strength of our relationship that has made Arab-Israeli peace agreements possible, both because it convinced those who desired Israel’s destruction to abandon any such hope and because it gave successive Israeli governments the confidence to take calculated risks for peace. As the Vice President said during his recent visit to Israel: “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the U.S. and Israel.” Steadfast American backing has helped lead to peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

We recognize that our government and the Government of Israel will not always agree on particular issues in the peace process. But such differences are best resolved amicably and in a manner that befits longstanding strategic allies. We must never forget the depth and breadth of our alliance and always do our utmost to reinforce a relationship that has benefited both nations for more than six decades.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Johnny Isakson

United States Senator

By Ben Smith

In the 1960s, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane sang, in “White Rabbit,” about when “the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go.” Now, in a surreal, through-the-looking-glass moment, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the almost classic definition of a pawn, has done exactly that. In a series of angry, frustrated outbursts, Karzai has declared that the United States is acting like an invader and occupier, that “there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” that the heavy-handed US and NATO military operations could transform the insurgency into a “national resistance” and that he himself might throw in his lot with the Taliban. He said, not without reason, that the Obama administration was trying to undercut his efforts to reach a settlement with the Taliban. And an Afghan who attended a meeting with Karzai told the New York Times, “He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.” 

The idea that the urbane Karzai, educated in India, might join the Taliban is highly unlikely. Installed in 2001 with US support, Karzai has acquired a well-deserved reputation for tolerating rampant corruption and for making power-sharing deals with violent warlords. And he was almost universally accused of engineering widespread fraud during his re-election bid last August. Still, he has a point, and although he is at best an imperfect vehicle to represent nationalist opinion, Karzai is accurately reflecting the feelings of an increasing number of Afghans about the US occupation, now in its ninth year–feelings no doubt inflamed by recent Afghan government allegations that US Special Operations forces tampered with evidence to cover up their killing of civilian women near Gardez.

Karzai has also launched, apparently without US support, a significant peace initiative. Earlier this year he unexpectedly declared that he would seek to reconcile with top-level Taliban leaders, and he announced his intent to convene a tribal jirga, or council, in May to discuss how to bring the Taliban back into Afghan political life. In March Karzai met with representatives of one of the three main insurgent groups, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party, whose delegates presented a peace plan predicated on a negotiable withdrawal date for US and NATO forces. The plan, according to the delegation, was also acceptable to the main Taliban leadership.

Despite the oft-repeated claim by US government officials that the war has no military solution, Washington has offered little or no support for Karzai’s peace efforts. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Karzai’s meetings with Hekmatyar’s representatives “premature.” American officials have long insisted that US troops must first deliver punishing blows to the Taliban before talks are considered. The Pentagon has telegraphed its plans to launch an all-out offensive to seize control of Taliban-dominated Kandahar beginning in June, following hard upon its mini-offensive to oust the Taliban from Marja, a key district in Helmand province.

But the news on the military front isn’t good. Despite the trumpeting of the supposed US victory in Marja–touted as the first concrete demonstration of the effectiveness of the surge of 30,000-plus troops ordered by Obama in December–the situation there is fast unraveling. The Taliban’s shadow governor for the region has come back, and the insurgents have “re-seized control and the momentum,” according to Maj. James Coffman, a US civil affairs leader in the area. “The Taliban are everywhere,” a tribal elder told a reporter on the scene. The United States can’t afford too many victories like Marja.

Karzai reportedly opposed the Marja offensive. In early April he told tribal elders in Kandahar–where his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, heads the provincial council–that he isn’t enthusiastic about the planned US attack there either. Ahmed Wali, a notoriously corrupt wheeler-dealer and reputed drug kingpin, also maintains quiet links to Taliban officials. Such ties would be important, perhaps crucial, if there is any hope of a negotiated deal. But astonishingly, a US military officer recently threatened Ahmed Wali with death if he’s caught talking to the Taliban.

What does it mean when the president of the country the United States is occupying says he might join the insurgency? What does it mean when a US officer threatens to kill the president’s brother for meeting with the insurgents? What does it mean when the president opposes major military offensives launched by the occupying power? Here’s what it means: that the US enterprise in Afghanistan is hopelessly misguided.

It’s possible the United States is the only player that doesn’t realize that its strategy can’t work. Karzai is angling for a deal, although whether he can survive in a post-American Afghanistan is open to question. The Taliban and their allies, including Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party, are exploring their options for a political accord. Likewise, India and Pakistan, the two key outside players in Afghanistan’s drama, are maneuvering to gain advantage.

Pakistan, of course, created the Taliban in the 1990s as a cat’s paw for extending influence in Afghanistan. Since then the Pakistani army and intelligence service have maintained not-so-covert ties to the Taliban, and they continue to see the organization as a potential ally even though they have arrested some key leaders recently as a result of US pressure. India, for its part, long supported Karzai’s allies in the old anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. But recently the startling news emerged that New Delhi is making plans to open direct lines to the Taliban. That could mean India does not want to cede to Pakistan the sole power to bring the Taliban to the bargaining table.

In his December speech announcing the surge, Obama declared that US forces would begin to withdraw in July 2011. Whether or not he holds to that date, all of the region’s players are making plans based on the notion that the occupation can’t last much longer. It certainly can’t be sustained much longer in the United States politically–the burden it places on the budget in a time of economic crisis and vast deficits is too great, and the likelihood of quick battlefield successes is diminishing. Though Obama has already carried out two major reviews of Afghan policy, it’s time for a third. And this one has to center on the question of how to engage all of the stakeholders in Afghanistan’s tragedy in search of a political accord.

Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.

By Robert Dreyfuss

15 April, 2010
The Nation

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