Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (38 page)

BOOK: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

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204 His differences with: Eric Rouleau, “The US and World Hegemony, Why Washington Wants Rid of Mr. Boutros-Ghali,”
Le Monde Diplomatique
, November 1996; also see Paul Lewis, “Boutros-Ghali’s book Says Albright and Clinton Betrayed Him,”
New York Times
, May 24, 1999.

205 Kofi Annan’s rise: Alexander Cockburn, “Counterpunch Diary—Handmaid in Babylon: Annan, Vierira de Mello and the UN’s Decline and Fall,” available at
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08302003.html
.

205 The significance of oil: Cited in Tom Barry, “The U.S. Power Complex: What’s New,” Interhemispheric Resource Centre,
http://www.fpif.org/papers/02power/index.html
.

206
The Guardian
credited: George Monbiot, “Chemical Coup d’etat,”
The Guardian
(London), April 16, 2002. Subsequent examples and quotes are taken from Ian Williams, “The US Hit List at the United Nations,” April 30, 2002, circulated by Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, May 7, 2002. Williams is a writer for
Foreign Policy in Focus
and author of
The UN for Beginners
(New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, 1995).

207 When Robin Cook: Cited in Michael J. Glennon, “How War Left the Law Behind,”
New York Times
, November 21, 2002.

209 Outraged by the move: Evelyn Leopold, “Bitter Fight with US Leads to Compromises on Court,”
Sunday News
(Dar-es-Salaam), July 14, 2002.

209 An Amnesty International: “Amnesty Criticizes US, S. Leone Impunity Deal,”
The Monitor
(Kampala, Uganda), May 10, 2003, p. 6.

210 When it came to drafting: Chalmers Johnson,
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
(New York: Henry Holt, 2000), pp. 12-13.

210 Anatol Lieven: Anatol Lieven, “The Push for War,”
London Review of Books
, October 3, 2002, pp. 8-11.

212 On February 2, 2002: Joel Greenberg, “Protesting Tactics in West Bank, Israeli Reservists Refuse to Serve,”
New York Times
, February 2, 2002.

212 “By what inhuman calculus,”: See Edward Said, “What Israel Has Done,”
The Nation
, May 6, 2002, pps. 20-23.

213 Particularly illuminating: Told in his own words in the Israeli paper
Yediot Aharonot
, it was subsequently circulated on the Web by the well-known Israeli peace activist Uri Avineri. See Tsadok Yeheskeli, “I made them a stadium in the middle of the camp,”
Yediot Aharonot
, May 31, 2002, available at
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/kurdi_eng.html
.

213 In the words of the newspaper: Ibid.

214 The right-wing Israeli newspaper: Peter Beaumont, “Helicopter Pilot ‘Refused Order to Blast Palestinian House,’ “
The Guardian
(London), April 18, 2002.

214 Amira Hass: Amira Hass, “Vandalnacht: Operation Destroy the Data,”
Ha’aretz
, April 24, 2002.

215 In a recent interview: Benny Morris, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (An Interview with Ehud Barak),”
The New York Review of Books
49, no. 10, June 13, 2002, p. 42.

216 It began with scientific: A. Arnaiz-Villena, N. Elaiwa, C. Silvera, A. Rostom, J. Moscoso, E. Gomez-Casado, L. Allende, P. Varela, and J. Martinez-Laso, “The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness with Other Mediterranean Populations,”
Human Immunology
62, 2001, pp. 889-900; for the full story, see Robin McKie “Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians,”
The Observer
(London), November 25, 2001 and online at
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,605798,00.html
.

216 In this vein, Alan M. Dershowitz: David Villareal, “Dershowitz Editorial Draws Fire,”
The Harvard Crimson
(Cambridge, Mass.), March 18, 2002.

217 The
New York Times
recognized: Joel Greenberg, “Court Says Israel Can Expel 2 of Militant’s Kin to Gaza,”
New York Times
, September 4, 2002.

218 Here is a composite: Gordon Thomas, “America’s Gulag for Iraq’s VIP Prisoners,” available at
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/pubarchive_show_message.php?globeintel+141
; “U.S. Closes Notorious Baghdad Prison Camp,”
Agence France-Presse
, October 6, 2003 available at
http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/dg/Qiraqprison.RADy_DO6.html
.

219 Stephen Schwartz’s article: Stephen Schwartz, “Ground Zero and the Saudi Connection,”
The Spectator
, September 22, 2001.

220 Writing in the
Washington Post:
Sohail H. Hashmi, “Not What the Prophet Would Want: How Can Islamic Scholars Sanction Suicidal Tactics?”
Washington Post
, June 9, 2002.

221 The point of view: Hala Jaber, “Inside the World of the Palestinian Suicide Bomber,”
The Times
(London), March 24, 2002.

222 We need to recognize: As a secondary-school student in colonial Uganda, I remember having to memorize Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” This is what I remember of Tennyson’s tribute to the heroism of British soldiers who knowingly went “into the jaws of death”: “Cannon to right of them, / Cannon to left of them, / Cannon behind them / Volley’d and thunder’d; … Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / Rode the six hundred.”

223 The Kookist movement: This section draws from Armstrong,
The Battle for God
, pp. 261-63, 281-87, 345-49. My conclusion, though, differs from that of Armstrong, who tends to equate the religious right with religious fundamentalism and all forms of the religious right with political terrorism.

224 The Gush supplied 20 percent: Every possibility of peace pits the Gush against secularists in government. The first such possibility followed Anwar Sadat’s historic journey to Jerusalem in 1977 and the signing of the Camp David Accords between Begin and Sadat the following year. To comply with the accords, Israel decided to evacuate the settlement of Yamit in Sinai. Moshe Levinger declared that Zionism had been infected by the “virus of peace” and led thousands of settlers back to Yamit. Levinger “reminded the settlers of the Jewish wars against Rome during which 960 men, women and children had committed suicide in the fortress of Masada rather than submit to the Roman army. But when consulted by Gush rabbis, Israel’s two chief rabbis ‘ruled against martyrdom.’ “Levinger tore his garments in mourning. See Armstrong,
Battle for God
, pp. 66-72., 287. The second possibility for peace followed the first Palestinian intifada (1987) and the signing of a second accord at Camp David, in which Israel promised to evacuate part of the West Bank; the Gush were enraged. 224 A recent Israeli human-rights: For figures on the number of settlers over the decades, see Saeb Erekat, “Saving the Two-State Solution,”
The New York Times
, December 20, 2002. There are two contrasting figures for the number of settlers in the West Bank: 220,000 as against roughly 400,000. The lower count excludes Israeli settlers in Palestinian East Jerusalem, on grounds that since it has been legally incorporated into the state of Israel, the Israelis who move into it cannot be counted as settlers. The result is a restricted count of Israelis settled in
the rest of the West Bank
, that which is
forcibly occupied
by Israel, but excluding Palestinian East Jerusalem which is
forcibly incorporated
into Israel.

224 According to Amira: Amira Hass, “No End to the Growing Settlements Insult,”
Ha’aretz
, July 2, 2003.

225 Palestinian Homes: Jeff Halper, coordinator, Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, “A Test of the Road Map,” July 29, 2003 available at
http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=125
. Like any rogue state, Israel, too, claims that sovereignty is a limitless license to trample on citizens’ rights.

226 Second, the spread: There is a parallel with the Palestinian situation, in which not only has Arafat been able to build nine different security agencies with American help—as, indeed, have other Arab autocracies—but that the very helplessness of these agencies in the face of the Israeli onslaught has given rise to a militarism from below, in the form of street gangs. Hanan Ashrawi’s comments on this are illuminating: “Of course, there have been different cultures at work here. There is a culture of militarisation, a culture of revolution.” Ashrawi contrasts the history of prewar Palestine, long before Israel was conceived, as “a center of enlightenment” in the region and argues that militarism has been fueled from two sources: from “among the people who came back from exile to set up a government” and from among those on the street who found this government unable to protect them against settler encroachment. See Avi Machlis and James Drummond, “Colliding Cultures Hamper the Palestinian Road to Democracy,”
Financial Times
(Johannesburg), June 28, 2002.

226 ANC president Oliver Tambo: Anthony Sampson,
Mandela, The Authorized Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), p. 350.

227 The final lesson: From this point of view, it is instructive to recall the short history of suicide bombing in Lebanon and the conditions that led to its cessation. Hizbullah pioneered suicide bombings in Lebanon following the 1983 Israeli occupation. Islamic Resistance (al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah), created by Hizbullah in 1983—and comprising members who were combatants in time of need, returning to normal occupations when not required—claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings against the U.S. embassy and the U.S. and French military compounds and was credited with prompting the withdrawal of the Multi-National Forces (MNF) in 1984. At the same time, it was the Israeli withdrawal in 1985 that created the political conditions for an end to suicide bombing in Lebanon. See Nizar Hamzeh, “Lebanon’s Hezbullah: From Islamic Revolution to Parliamentary Accommodation,”
Third World Quarterly
14, no. 2, 1993, pp. 2, 8.

Conclusion: Beyond Impunity and Collective Punishment

229 Notwithstanding: Salman Rushdie, “This is About Islam,”
New York Times
, November 2, 2001.

232 Under his leadership: See Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa,
Report
, vol. 2, p. 30, para. 124.

233 The first was when guerrillas: Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, “Terror and the Privatized State: A Peruvian Parable,”
Radical History Review
(winter 2003), pp. 150-63.

234 The best-known CIA-trained terrorist: Arundhati Roy, “The Algebra of Infinite Justice,”
The Guardian
(London), September 27, 2001.

234 Bin Laden was not the only: Three days after 9/11, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) issued a public statement expressing “sorrow and condemnation for this barbaric act of violence and terror” and then added:

But unfortunately we must say that it was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama Bin Laden has been the blue-eyed boy of [the] CIA. But what is more painful is that American politicians have not drawn a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country and are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader. “RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks in the US,” September 14, 2001, available at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html
.

235 The bomb was made of: Cooley,
Unholy Wars
, pp. 223, 236-37, 243, 245.

235 In 1995, the former CIA director: Alfred McCoy, “Drug Fallout: The CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade,”
The Progressive
, August 1, 1997.