Ban the Dane... the return

I love Amman. Whenever I think my rants are moot, and I might run out of topics for this blog, I just buy the newspaper.

The problem is: I talk to intelligent, educated, modern, open-minded Jordanians, and it distorts my understanding of local reality. Thank God (yes!), the front page of the Jordan Times today runs a title on BOYCOTT...

Yes, aaaaagain, the old Danish cartoons story. The Amman general prosecutor decided to subpoena the Danish journalists for running the cartoons in 2006, and a new ban on Danish products is planned to start this week.

The story doesn't say if Danish insuline should be boycotted by hospitals and diabetics, since Denmark still produces 90% of it, despite Saudi's efforts to build a new plant.

I wish I could find online and publish on this blog the French cartoons of the 1970s on Jesus walking on the sea, and his disciples swimming around saying: "you should join us, the water's perfect !", and many others that even the Pope must have had a good laugh with.

So, we're still there. Some among us are still stuck into a timeframe where their religion is threatened by a cartoon. I remember the excellent movie "The name of the Rose" where the church was destroying and hiding some forbidden books of Aristotle and Aesop because they were funny and laughter was the enemy of God.

Also, yesterday I was discussing about Roberto Benigni's controversial efforts to laugh about everything. And he was right.

OK the cartoons were not funny. But that is their only crime, and the only reason I disagree with them. Voltaire said "I do not agree with you but I will defend to death your right to say it".

Laughter and caricature is a healthy way to point our own shortcomings, and this boycott reaction is the worst possible reaction.

A very funny actor, Desproges, once said: "One can laugh about everything, but unfortunetely not with everyone". I couldn't agree more.

Random thoughts, coming back from Europe

1. I was re-reading the short text by Kant: "What is enlightenment ?". Always a pleasure.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's reason without guidance from another. This immaturity is comes from lack of resolve and courage to use reason. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why a great proportion of men, long after having reached the age of maturity, gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their "guardians".

It is easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, I need not exert myself at all. Others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (especially women) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult.

Having first made their livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the cart to which they are harnessed, these "guardians" then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts."

2. 

I was glad to learn that Barack Obama won t

he nomination of the Democratic party. After all, this long fight against Hillary yielded a lot of exposure, and also toughened him for the fight to come with McCain, so in the end it was a good thing.

3. Even when the sun shines in Europe, it's never as much of a sun as the one in the Middle East. Actually, I doubt it's even the same. I'm glad to feel its rays back on me again.

 

Ben Laden and the Pope

Today, to my surprise, two personalities I generally disagree with, issued interesting statements.

The first was Osama Bin Laden

The second was the Pope Benedict.

1. Here is the first: "Osama bin Laden released a new message on Sunday that accused Arab leaders of sacrificing the Palestinians and called on Muslim militants in Egypt to help break the blockade of Gaza"

Well, we have to agree. There are about 50 jobs that a Palestinian CANNOT apply to in Lebanon. Official discrimination is in place in most of the Middle Eastern countries where Palestinians live. Since there is a policy of maintaining Palestinians under a refugee status, many Palestinians are born in exile and will never be given the citizenship of their country of birth, which goes against my belief in jus soli.

Unofficial discrimination is also a reality: ask a father from Lebanon or Egypt if he would give his daughter to a Palestinian husband.

Human Rights organizations issued many reports on Palestinian discrimination in the Middle East. Here is Amnesty International

Plenty of testimonies are available, like this one :"Being a refugee in Lebanon since my birth, I have witnessed and lived through all kinds of prejudices practiced against my people.Palestinians are not allowed to work in many jobs".

After so many statements that Egypt was supporting its "Palestinian brothers", why did Egypt close its border with Gaza ?

2. I had so many objections against the election of Pope Benedict XVI, especially considering his misguided youth when at the same age, young men aged 17 died in the resistance. Today Mr Ratzinger is using his position of moral authority and his ministry for a good cause: the ban on cluster bombs.

He unexpectedly took on to speak against the production of these bombs. A cluster bomb is a bomb that subdivides into many smaller bombs scattered indiscriminately on the ground, many of which do not explode after impact. These smaller bombs just lay there for months or years, until a civilian, usually a child, picks up this funny-looking piece of plastic, and gets maimed or killed.

The largest producers of cluster bombs, of course, do not support this ban. That would be China, Russia, Israel, and of course the US.

It's a bit sad that these statements come from people I dislike (the Pope) or despise (Bin Laden). The statements stand out because of the personalities of their authors, being who they are. It would be more comforting if they came more often from people that we do support.

The REAL Iron-Man

Okay... Let's breathe and change topics a minute. Check out Yves Rossy, the Swiss pilot.

I want a pair of these !

About "heroes" in the Middle East: with the Black Iris, I don't understand why so many otherwise reasonable people here cannot be at all critical of Hassan Nasrallah. That includes some European observers, fascinated by the guy. 

Why isn't Lebanon entitled to try and have a government with the monopoly of legitimate violence, as any other State (in the definition of Max Weber) ? What's so great about having a sectarian State within a State, supported by foreign powers ?

Do I have the right to use my mind ?

Should I apply my reason only to things confined to my country of citizenship, or do I have the right to observe, study, and build a reasonable informed opinion on things related to the rest of the world ?

As a great admirer or travelers and observers, Ibn Battuta was always a long-time hero for me. He travelled from Morocco to Central Asia, Afghanistan, China and the Arabic peninsula. He was an acute observer and "journalist", commenting on local habits, and often acting as a judge, using his wisdom and common sense.

No one has infinite knowledge, but wisdom and common sense are universal tools that one can apply in China as well as in Timbouctou.

But today I am more and more weary of the criticism of change in sectarian societies: change (especially in the sense of open democracy and separation of religion and state) is bad, because change comes from the outside. Change is a new form of colonialism, with soft power.

There is a legitimate suspicion in that criticism. Even if it is flawed, I can understand it because by definition it comes from closed societies.

That is why change should mostly come from within one country's borders. The biggest job is done in the field by local, grassroots NGOs.

Let only the Egyptian NGOs tackle FGM in Egypt, only Jordanian NGOs tackle "honor killings" in Jordan, only Muslim NGOs tackle women's rights in Islam, only Israeli NGOs criticize Israel.

Not because they're the only ones who share these principles and values. But because they -at least- cannot be accused of neo-colonialism and of being insensitive to local cultures.

My conclusion, after years of working with NGOs is, maybe there is no place yet in the world outside Euro-America, for a cosmopolitan community of observers of Politics, a fraternity of freethinkers, because at the local level there will always be the obstacle of  "if you don't come from here, you have no right saying what you think because it just means you want to impose your values".

No amount of time traveling, studying customs and languages can give the legitimacy needed by closed societies in order to listen to new ideas and think about changing.

But it's vital that we look beyond our own problems, that we imagine solutions.

Happy (?) Birthday Israel

So... today's the day. Happy birthday Israel. But... are you really happy ?

It's a year of 60th anniversaries: May 14, 1948: Israel was born (May 15: Nakba started). A few months later: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued.

I keep finding it funny that the United Nations created in a few months' interval a State based on ethnic preference, and a Declaration that condemns ethnic/religious discrimination.

Funny also that one year before, India (also formerly under British rule) gained independence and was partitioned along ethnico-religious lines with Pakistan, forming two "ethnically homogenous" (!) States. Of course the ensuing massacres did not teach anyone anything, nor did the refugee situation in both countries, and the lingering territorial problem. Well, at least India is now a Democracy that has a Muslim President. That's not likely to happen soon in Israel.

It took me some time to get to see the point of Palestinians, because at first I did not question the wisdom of the UN decision to create two States in 1947-48. I thought all the current problems came from the post-1967 situation, the occupation of territories, the settlements, the wall, etc.

But applying a cartesian approach, I decided to get rid my my preconceptions and started to question the legitimacy of this UN decision, 60 years ago, to create these two "monoethnic" entities, and to question the philosophy behind it.

It's easy to see what is wrong in the pure logic of an ethnically based country today. Let me take an example: Aliyah.

For those who are not familiar, Aliyah is the "Law of Return" that says that even if I have no connection whatsoever with Israel, know no one there, don’t speak Hebrew, and know nothing of Judaism, I am still entitled to immediate Israeli nationality, based on my “race”, because one of my ancestors was Jewish (and therefore I'm "ethnically Jewish" if that makes any sense to anyone). In the meantime, Palestinians will not enjoy equal  rights.

Let's see what it would mean in another context. It's as if the USA issued automatic citizenship to "ethnic" White Anglo-Saxon Protestants from all over the world, and denied that same citizenship to Native Americans, while forcing those "Indians" out and restricting them to reservations.

Oh wait... That's what happened in America... But that was in the 19th century. They got away with it then, there was no one to look over their shoulder. But in the middle of the 20th century and a fortiori in the 21st century still, it looks bad.

This is exactly why renowned historian Tony Judt says Israel is "an anachronism":

"The very idea of a "Jewish state"—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

(...)

In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will; where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed; where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them; in such a world Israel is truly an anachronism. And not just an anachronism but a dysfunctional one. In today's "clash of cultures" between open, pluralist democracies and belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-states, Israel actually risks falling into the wrong camp."  (see full article)

Tony Judt is, might I add, Jewish. Like many other Jews, he questions this philosophy of mixing ethnicity and State, as clearly a notion of the infamous past. Other Jews who think like this include Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Rony Brauman and others. Google their names + "One State Solution" and you'll get plenty more references.

Since it's Israel's birthday, I mention only the Israelis who question the ethnic principle, but of course plenty of Palestinians also think the same, starting with the late Edward Said.

So there is hope. You can see it, for example, in Galilee - where Jews and Arabs live in a region relatively free from state interference. I saw the other day a BBC report on the city of Jaffa, where Jews and Arabs have always and still live together, in stability.  Jaffa is not particularly exceptional, this situation can be repeated everywhere.

I also meet  more and more Jews and Palestinians (Christian and Muslims) who see in this option a better way to achieve stability, long-term security, and economic prosperity.

One State Solution means a secular state, with clear separation of religion and politics, under the protection of the UN and the US, that would protect and guarantee the rights of Jews and Arabs, equally, that would actively mix them in schools, and develop the poorest parts of the country (Gaza), like the reconciliation process did in South Africa.

What about past grievances ? Already a number of Palestinian and Israeli historians started working together to achieve a common narrative for the history of this land. In his book, Ambassador Dennis Ross, chief US negociator during the Oslo process, argued that "the problem was the differing narratives of the two sides and the failure to reconcile the conflicting perspectives". Re-writing a common history book for both sides is one of the tools of engineering a reconciliation process.

Some have said that Israel is reproducing South African apartheid, so indeed there is hope. What  South Africa did 15 years ago, ending the apartheid and starting a process of peace and reconciliation within ONE single state, seemed almost impossible at the time. Yet they did it, and although South Africa is not home yet, the violence of the 80's is long gone, and it's the most vibrant economy on the continent. It has a Black President, and the Blacks did not start killing the Whites frantically.

Many Jewish organizations are not happy with the state of things (to mention a few: “Rabbis for Human Rights”,  "Israeli Human Rights Group", "Israeli Peace Group", "Fellowship of Reconciliation", etc). Hava Keller, an old grandmother who was once an Israeli soldier, now speaks for Palestinians, much like White activists were advocating for Blacks' rights in South Africa. There's hope. Check Yesh Gvul, that group of Israeli soldiers who protest against their army. 

This anniversary is the oportunity to say "Israel is not home yet. Maybe it was wrong of the UN to create it that way 60 years ago. Let's not deny Israel its right to exist, but let's give it the chance to become, at last, a modern, open democracy, with equal rights  for all, so that Jews and Palestinians can live in peace together on the same, undivided land."

To end this post, I will tell you a story. When I saw the picture below, by an Israeli artist, painted on walls in Tel Aviv, it reminded me of it. Alexander the Great, in order to unite his Empire and avoid future clashes between Persians and Greeks, planned to create a new class by intermarriage of Macedonian and Persian families. He ordered his most prominent soldiers and officers to marry Persian women. He himself married foreign, Roxanne of Bactrian. But this is another story...

Good night, and good luck :)

ps. As I'm still awake, I heard that a rocket fired from Gaza wounded 14 Israelis in Ashkelon. Tomorrow's going to be the Israeli response. Business as usual.

Occupation 101

1. I just went to see "Occupation 101", the documentary on Palestine by Sufyan Omeish (thanks, Lina !)

At first, I thought this movie was exactly what the title says: a 101 documentary,  for people with no clue about what is going on in Palestine. One more of these. In Europe, as opposed to America, we've been quite extensively exposed to documentaries about Palestine.

I was wrong. It's not one more of these. After 15 minutes, the specificity of this documentary started revealing itself. Clearly, it's destined to an American audience (hence the choice of statistics that will appeal to American taxpayers about how their money's being spent). But, the specificity is that the majority of the witnesses who speak against Israeli occupation are Israeli Jews.

This makes it all the more interesting, especially when shown to a Middle Eastern audience. It shows anti-Zionist Israeli Academics, journalists, Human Rights lawyers, activists, etc, bashing their country's policy. And that is refreshing. Humanity.

I thought I had seen it all before but the first image that caught my attention was indeed quite disturbing: Israeli soldiers using stones to break the limbs of prisoners. To be frank, the only thing these images come close to, in their sheer brutality, are World War II documentaries about the way the Germans treated the Jews. Sadly. It is quite unpleasant to draw the parallel. Also, the parallel with South Africa's apartheid is underlined.

I am normally quite weary of the use of the image of children in documentaries. I think it usually relies too much on pathos to be honest. But there is a quite rare interview of a very articulate little girl who has to be no more than 7 years old, and who talks extensively of her own experience, with her own references. She complains vehemently that her clothes always smell of gas, but she can't throw them because they're the only ones she's got, and she couldn't enjoy her new rings, because her house and belongings were destroyed.

As I said, I hate to see sad children in docs, because there are sad children everywhere, and that doesn't say much. There are also sad children who suffered bombings in Israel. But this little girl, she's not sad. She's angry, disappointed, and righteously indignated, in the way a reasonable adult would be.

I dare anyone who sees that sequence to be able to speak, with that lump in the throat, immediately after listening to her.

There are the inevitable Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky interviews, always interesting. A couple of "refuznik" Israeli soldiers, one old woman who was an Israeli soldier in 1948 and speaks against occupation. This is quite new, too.

It's undeniably a powerful documentary, not just one more of the same. For me, I did learn new things, which is, after all, why I'm in the Middle East at all. 

2. More on this "honour killing" story in Jordan. Everyone says that religion has nothing to do with it, that it's a minority of lunatics who perform those crimes. But I'm wondering if any formal condemnation will come from the mosques in the next Friday sermons. If a few clerics could come out and be vocal and clearly condemn those practices, maybe it would help educate the perpetrators.

3. I was wondering why many Jordanians don't like debating politics and exploring different options on a number of issues. I think I might have found at least one part of the explanation.

If you live in a system where your voice does not count, will you bother to express it ? I wonder how many Jordanians actually vote. And if they vote, I wonder if the vote has any influence on the outcome of the country's policies. Surely, if you cannot choose your leader and the way the government spends your taxpayer's money, you're not going to bother debating about policy options on education, religion, human rights, etc. Especially in an executive monarchy, without accountability (that I know of).

So that would explain why debate seems sterile and useless, and why some people feel they cannot do anything to promote change. It must feel very disempowering, can't blame them.

Yet, Jordan seems to do quite fine. Better than its neighbours. Better than Egypt, and definitely better than Lebanon. For now. For how long ?