Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Saree Makdisi's One-State Solution: A Delusive 'Just Peace'

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Saree Makdisi's One-State Solution: A Delusive 'Just Peace'

by Gideon Spitzer

FrontPage Magazine

June 1, 2011

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/01/saree-makdisi%E2%80%99s-one-state-solution-a-delusive-%E2%80%98just-peace%E2%80%99/

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11380

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Recently, UCLA professor of English and advocate of a single state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict Saree Makdisi spoke in the student union at the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture, sponsored by the Penn Middle East Center (MEC), the English Department, the Greenfield Intercultural Center, and the Penn Arab Student Society, represented another in a series of events sponsored by the university-funded Middle East Center that brought known anti-Israel speakers to Penn, including UCLA's James Gelvin, Stanford's Joel Beinin, artists Reza Kanazi and Radio Rahim, and numerous film screenings. To get a better sense of the level of bias at MEC, consider the following: in the first four months of 2011, the MEC underwrote eight events co-sponsored by Penn for Palestine and associated groups, but none by the Penn Israel Coalition or other pro-Israel campus groups. Moreover, by inviting an English professor like Makdisi, whose academic specialty is eighteenth and nineteenth-century British poetry, MEC privileges his anti-Israel politics over his lack of specialized knowledge of the Middle East.

Makdisi began his commentary with an attempt "to reset and remember, first of all, that the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem together comprise a very small fraction of all of historic Palestine and only a minority of the Palestinian people actually lives in the occupied territories." While four million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, Makdisi asserted, six to seven million Palestinians live either in "forced exile or as citizens of the State of Israel," and "routinely they are left out of the equation of the status of how to resolve the conflict."

The point of this demographic discussion, as Makdisi would soon establish, was to lay the foundation of his version of a "just peace" between Palestinians and Israelis:

What I'm interested in…is a just peace, a peace that by definition has to take into account the rights of everybody involved in the conflict; that is to say, all Israelis and all Palestinians, the Palestinians living under occupation, the Palestinians living as second class citizens in Israel, and the Palestinians living in exile…everybody's rights have to be addressed.

The above quote reveals Mr. Makdisi's deep desire to erase the Jewish character of Israel. By making Palestinians outside of the West Bank and Gaza required participants any "just" resolution to the conflict, Makdisi proves his belief in the Palestinian right of return, and thus the assured destruction of the Jewish state. He reveals his acceptance of the classic Palestinian mythology of 1948 – which ignores Arab treatment of Jews (and each other) and focuses on what Jews did to Arabs. In a mendacious demonstration of his anti-Israel bias, Makdisi fails to mention the UN agency, UNRWA, which perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem in cahoots with Arab governments who provide Palestinians with pitiable treatment.

Speaking on the two-state solution's feasibility, Makdisi stated that, "the West Bank, the biggest single chunk of the occupied territories, has been so broken up by Israeli colonization and development, that the idea of trying to create a Palestinian state in this territory under the circumstances seems completely unrealistic and totally unworkable." Yet he revealed a seemingly different point when he said:

Even if…the Israelis were to withdraw tomorrow…from all of the West Bank… Even if it [said] Palestinians could have a real state with a real army, and real air force, real police, and real all the rest…would that address the rights of all Palestinians? And the answer of course is no it wouldn't because only a minority of Palestinians lives in the West Bank…. I think we have to think…beyond the occupied territories for a just resolution to this conflict.

The latter point reveals the subterfuge of Makdisi's earlier argument regarding the one-state solution's practical "unworkability." The ill-defined "just peace" of which he spoke that looks "beyond the occupied territories" into Israel proper, would of course destroy its character as a Jewish State.

Next, Makdisi turned his attention to so-called Israeli "apartheid":

If you look at the all of the laws that constituted South African apartheid, all the major laws, they have [the] exact equivalent in Israeli law inside pre-'67 Israel with respect to the Palestinian [Israeli-Arab] population.

As evidence, Makdisi cited the South African Population Registration Act, which assigned every citizen of the Republic of South Africa a racial identity that determined which neighborhoods they could live in and which schools they could attend, among many other restrictions. Makdisi claimed that, because Israel also notes on state-issued identification the religious background of its citizens, it practices apartheid. Yet Makdisi noted, "the main feature of South African apartheid was to exploit black labor…. Israel has never been interested… in Palestinian labor." Makdisi failed to mention the numerous other states who require citizens to register their religion with the government, including Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, and until 2000, Greece. His attempt to undercut the legitimacy of Israel within its pre-1967 borders adds Makdisi's voice to the insidious Arab propaganda whose notion of a Palestinian state includes not just the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, but the entire area of Israel.

In his final defense of the one-state solution, Makdisi argued that the "democratic and secular" nature of such a potential new state would, "treat all its citizens equally; that would safeguard the rights of everybody." No suggestions were offered on overcoming the barriers to a single-state solution: economic integration, issues on immigration, and the control of the defense forces, to name a few. Furthermore, Makdisi disregarded a century of poor relations between Jews and Arabs in the region, offering no explanation of how such historical legacies would be overcome in a new bi-national state. As for self-determination, Makdisi said that it, "can take many, many, many forms" and asked, "why can't we invent our own forms? Why do we have to import the ones that work [from Europe]?"

As to what these new "forms" of self-determination might be, he offered only vague references to "cultural and aesthetic autonomy." Asked by an audience member how Jews and Israelis should react to the fact that a single-state solution would leave Jews without their own state and Arabs with twenty-two states in which they are the majority of the population, Makdisi responded with the uncaring and prejudiced suggestion that Jews have to, "just get on with their lives." So much for Makdisi's "just" peace.

Despite his criticism of the two-state solution and its impracticability, Makdisi suggested few realistic strategies to implement a single state. His lecture rested upon pipe dreams of Israeli-Palestinian unity, all undergirded by the implicit desire to undercut and destroy the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. Like other anti-Israel academics before him, Makdisi has an uncanny ability to propagate double standards and fallacy as fact. Penn and its Middle East Center would do well to invite specialists in Middle East studies capable of offering straightforward, unbiased analyses of the region's problems rather than those from unrelated disciplines whose principal qualification, so to speak, is their hostility to Israel.

Gideon Spitzer is a political science and history major at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

Daniel Greenfield article: The Great Error of Israeli Normalization

The Great Error of Israeli Normalization

Posted: 31 May 2011 08:45 PM PDT

Israel has celebrated its 63rd independence day, but it is a hollow celebration in a country that is less independent than it has been in decades. Rather than working within regional and global realities, its leaders instead fanatically pursue normalization and stabilization. But normalcy and stability are illusions in the Middle East, as the past few months have reminded us.

Pursuing stability with unstable regimes is doomed from the start. Normalization relies on peace achieved through agreements with Arab leaders. But such agreements are always hostage to the corruption of the Arab governments and their desperate need for bigoted populism. Even an agreement with the relatively stable Egypt was not able to outlast a single government. The less stable Palestinian Authority breaks agreements as soon as it signs them.

The Camp David Accords, jewel of the normalization crown, have proven to be worthless. The Oslo Accords were discredited in far less time than that. Had Israel given in to pressure and exchanged the Golan Heights for a peace treaty with Syria-- that agreement would no longer be worth the paper it was written on. And yet in January, the Obama Administration was aggressively pushing Israel to turn over the Golan Heights, for which so many IDF soldiers gave their lives, for exactly that.

Arab leaders don't understand the Western obsession with treaties. Nor do they consider them to be binding in any way. To them an accord or an agreement is nothing but a statement of their interests, which becomes obsolete the moment their interests change. There is no such thing as a permanent peace agreement that binds nations and peoples. All treaties with Arab leaders are signed with individuals and their families. They do not represent any permanent reconciliation or normalization. That can only be achieved through intermarriage and complete cultural blending.

Arabs view the Israeli pursuit of peace as insecurity. When Israel talks about how much it wants peace, it loses face. The Arabs view such talk as a sign of weakness, an admission of guilt by thieves who now want to strike a bargain to avoid what's coming to them, or a disingenuous claim to cover up plans for war.

The culture of the Shouk, the middle-eastern bazaar, is the bluff and the mind game. To assert a lie confidently is to strengthen your bargaining position, to speak the truth softly is to be thought a liar. Everyone knows what they want, but no one comes right out and says it. No one but a tourist or a sucker. If you come out and say that you want peace, then you're either a sucker, a coward or looking for an excuse to start a war. Arab states assume all three things about Israel. Often at the same time. Because our behavior confuses them as badly as they confuse us.

Israel demonstrates superior force and then sues for peace. It surrenders to terrorists and then it bombs them. It retreats and then talks about a permanent settlement. Arab behavior often looks crazy to outsiders, but our behavior looks much more crazy to them. We think that they say one thing and do another. They think the same thing about us. And with good cause.

Arab leaders speak the language of the region. Israeli leaders speak some bizarre Western dialect that is foreign to the region and its sensibilities. Arab leaders assume that foreign diplomats who don't understand that what they say isn't what they mean are either idiots or being disingenuous. Confused? You're now an honorary diplomat. And Western emissaries either end up believing everything they hear to not believing anything they hear. But their problem is that they confuse the poetry of the words with the content of the message.

Israel pursuing the mirage of permanent peace and brotherhood is one of the dumber things they have ever encountered. There is no such thing in the region. The Arabs hate the Persians. The Sunnis hate the Shiites. The Egyptians hate the Saudis. Bedouin clans that live side by side for centuries have blood feuds that have gone on for centuries. Look at Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, any Arab country under a microscope and you see a whirling mass of smaller entities who only stop fighting when a stronger force gets in the way.

Everyone in the Middle East hates everyone else, and will go on feeling that way until the end of time. The only way to stop your neighbor from cutting your throat, stealing your car or making off with your daughter-- is to threaten to do the same thing to him. And worse.

Israeli leaders of another generation understood this regional reality. But the distance between the men who drained the swamps and fought bandits, and the men who live enclosed in the massive population density of the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area, up there with London, Moscow, Tokyo and Rio De Janiero, has grown too great. They are intimately familiar with Tel Aviv, Paris and Brussels. But they have no understanding whatsoever of the people they live among.

Urbanization in civilizations means that the people who have the most awareness of an external threat, are cut off from the centers of power. Too many Israelis have come to think of Arabs as people like them who happen to speak a different language. Cousins they just don't get along with. Few would have been stupid enough to make that mistake seventy years ago. But insularity, multicultural propaganda and the popularity of surface elements of Arab culture have made it ubiquitous.

The New Middle East is a fairy bubble born out of that myth. And no matter how many times it bursts, there are still those who chase after it.

There can be no permanent peace or normalization with the Arab world, except within the context of regional realities. Those realities are that Arab leaders are obligated to publicly hate Israel, while privately cooperating on issues of mutual interest. Any written treaty is worthless, but oral agreements can work, so long as they benefit both sides. The Arab Street will go on hating Israel, as they have hated religious minorities and anyone who is different from them in any way. There will be no brand new Middle East, just the same old one as before.

The difference between the Middle East as it was and as it is, is window dressing. These are still borderline feudal societies with the important families controlling the land and the government. And the peasants having barely enough to tie their shoes together with. The Arab world consists of ramshackle post-colonial governments run by powerful families. The parliaments and ministers, the bureaucrats and officers, are generally the sons of powerful families, their nephews, distant cousins, and anyone else who can be counted on to be loyal to the tribe. Whether the men at the top call themselves sheiks or colonels, they rely on the support of that oligarchy, and rule through some combination of bribery and armed force. The Arab Spring is nothing more than prominent families and religious factions fighting it out for supremacy.

If Israel is to survive in the Middle East, it will only be able to do by accepting those realities, and maintaining its existence by demonstrating and using the power it has. The only normalcy and stability it can have is that the Arabs will accept that it is not going anywhere. Something that had already been accomplished in the late seventies, only to be trashed by bleeding heart leftists in the nineties. Only by making it clear that it will not be destroyed, undermined or bullied into giving up, will that reassert itself.

The State of Israel exists in a violent and unstable part of the world. That violence will be part of its reality for as long as it is there. There should be no more land for peace or peace initiatives of any kind. They do far more harm than good. Like any bad neighborhood, the only thing to do is secure your property, keep watch over it, move along anyone who doesn't belong there, and keep a weapon handy at all times. Only then can you reach a limited understanding with the local gangs and even gain their respect. That is the regional reality. You don't achieve regional normalization by signing a few accords and turning over some land. Instead you do it by turning your presence into an indisputable fact. And if you work with that regional reality, then the regional reality will work with you.

IW Blog: Have Christians Gone Overboard in Outreach to Muslims?

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Have Christians Gone Overboard in Outreach to Muslims?

by David J. Rusin • May 31, 2011 at 11:03 pm

http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2011/05/have-christians-gone-overboard-in-outreach-to

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In the Muslim world, Islamists increasingly target Christians for persecution; in the Western world, Christians increasingly target Muslims for outreach. Extending a hand to followers of Islam can be praiseworthy, but the lengths to which some Christians have gone may come as a shock. Consider a few recent cases on the congregational level:

Muslims using churches for prayer. Last year, Muslims awaiting construction of their mosque accepted a neighborly offer to pray at Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee. An analogous arrangement exists at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. (Interestingly, each of the two Islamic communities is stained by radicalism: the first via Yasir Qadhi and the second via ICNA.) Opposition has grown rapidly, with Anglican priest Mark Durie contending that Muslim worship has "no place in a Christian church" due to Islam's differing view of Jesus and prayers that chide Christianity.

Christians distributing Korans. In response to Christian pastor Terry Jones burning the Islamic holy book on March 20, leaders of Salt Lake City's Wasatch Presbyterian Church pooled their money to purchase Korans, which later were passed out for free at an area store. This was done to help "push back against the lunatic fringe," said Russell Fericks of the church's governing board. "We're not afraid of the truth," he added.

Joint Christian-Muslim worship. On May 22, St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, held an interfaith service that reportedly began with the Muslim call to prayer and incorporated readings from the Koran — even during Communion. "I've grown concerned about the demonization of Muslims. I want Montclair to develop an understanding of the religion," Rev. Andrew Butler explained.

Half church, half mosque. A project in the Stockholm suburbs aims to graft a mosque onto an existing church. Bishop Bengt Wadensjö of the Church of Sweden, which owns the property, recently described this as a way to "demonstrate how people can get along together regardless of culture, language, or faith." The plan is to renovate the current facility, expand space rented by Catholics, sell land to a Muslim group, build an adjacent mosque, and link the structures through a "communal foyer" to create "God's House."

In addition, peculiar examples of individual Christian leaders reaching out to Muslims by mixing their faith with Islam include a Belgian Catholic bishop urging everyone to call God "Allah" in 2007, an American emergent church pastor joining the Ramadan fast in 2009, and an Episcopal minister in Missouri practicing aspects of Islam during this year's Lent.

There is nothing wrong with outreach to Muslims. However, when pursued in ways that come off as highly deferential and spiritually confused, it can embolden Islamists by suggesting that Christians are uncertain and weak. Encouraging tolerance of Muslims is laudable, but the unreciprocated trend of Christians effectively promoting Islam is troubling.

Related Topics: Holidays, Interfaith, Lobby Groups, Mosques / Imams, Multiculturalism, Prayers David J. Rusin This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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R. Ibrahim in FPM: 'Raped and Ransacked in the Muslim World'

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Raped and Ransacked in the Muslim World

by Raymond Ibrahim

FrontPageMagazine.com

May 31, 2011

http://www.meforum.org/2920/raped-and-ransacked-in-the-muslim-world

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Huwaini: "When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her"

Plundering the possessions, lives, and dignity of Christians in the Islamic world: is this a random affair, a product of the West's favorite offenders—poverty, ignorance, grievance—or is it systematic, complete with ideological backing?

Consider the very latest from the Muslim world:

Pakistan: Muslim landowners used tractors to plough over a Christian cemetery in order to seize the land illegally. A young Christian mother was raped by six men. "In both cases, police covered up for the culprits."

Iraq: A Christian youth was kidnapped and decapitated: his family could not pay the €70,000 ransom demanded by his abductors. "The murder was meant to intimidate Christians so that in the future they will more readily pay ransom demands."

Egypt: Christian girls continue to be abducted and forced into conversion or concubinage (which amount to the same thing) and "kept as virtual slaves."

None of this is surprising listening to popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini:

If only we can conduct a jihadist invasion at least once a year or if possible twice or three times, then many people on earth would become Muslims. And if anyone prevents our dawa or stands in our way, then we must kill them or take as hostage and confiscate their wealth, women and children. Such battles will fill the pockets of the Mujahid who can return home with 3 or 4 slaves, 3 or 4 women and 3 or 4 children. This can be a profitable business if you multiply each head by 300 or 400 dirham. This can be like financial shelter whereby a jihadist, in time of financial need, can always sell one of these heads (meaning slavery) [translated by Nonie Darwish; original Arabic recording here].

Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, he was invited to "clarify" his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were "taken out of context," he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.)

According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation—in the course of waging an offensive jihad—the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis, are to be seized as ghanima or "spoils of war."

Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority—boasting that it has an entire chapter named "spoils"—and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement.

Huwaini said that infidel captives, the "spoils of war," are to be distributed among the Muslim combatants (i.e., jihadists) and taken to "the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold." He referred to these latter by their dehumanizing name in the Koran, ma malakat aymanukum—"what your right hands possess"—in this context, sex-slaves: "You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema."

"In other words," Huwaini concluded, "when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her."

Lest Muslims begin attacking all and sundry, however, Huwaini was careful to stress that Islam forbids Muslims from plundering and enslaving nominal or even "heretical" Muslims, such as Shias. He used the Iran-Iraq war as an example, saying that a Sunni man is not permitted to enslave and abuse a Shia woman, "for she is still a Muslim and thus considered free."

Unfortunately Huwaini's position is not "radical." One is reminded of when Sheikh Gamal Qutb was asked on live TV if Islam permits men to rape their female captives. The one-time grand mufti of Islam's most authoritative university, Al Azhar—the institution that once gave us the "adult breast-feeding" fatwa—refused to answer and, when pressed, became hostile and stormed off the set.

Let us now return to the atrocities that opened this article and ask: In light of the above, is it any wonder that Christians under Islam are routinely raped and ransacked, even as the "humanitarian" West yawns?

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum

Related Topics: Sex and gender relations, Slavery Raymond Ibrahim This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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