AMERICA SHOULD WORRY
Before sharing my views, let me alert this new website’s visitors to the fresh and stimulating perspectives that can be found by clicking on the “Contributing Writers” button at the top of this page. You will accost ten gifted writers. The subjects these authors discuss range from India’s “Feminist Maulana” who died 110 years ago to the life experiences of a contemporary American writer, from polarization in today’s U.S. to surprises in today’s Bangladesh.
Also covered are modern Nigeria’s dilemmas, the xenophobia that sadly divides Africans, the secret for becoming a citizen peacebuilder in any country, a cricket player’s impact, a summarized history of democracy in our world, and what six recent books tell you about American politics and culture!
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Whether the Middle East’s frightening conflict might spiral into nuclear calamity is probably our world’s most serious current anxiety. Meanwhile the U.S. ought to worry about its fallen prestige.
The willingness of the world’s mightiest power to continue to supply state-of-the-art weapons, limitless ammunition and equally limitless funds for Netanyahu’s irrational campaign may or may not become a hot election issue in the U.S. It has in any case seriously damaged America’s image.
While it was well understood that Hamas’s attack a year ago merited a stern response, people everywhere have been offended by the scale and character of Israel’s subsequent bombings in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. As everyone knows, these bombings have not spared children, women or the elderly, have flattened homes, schools and hospitals, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee again and again from makeshift roofs.
Why the U.S. hasn’t used its leverage with Israel to arrest the violence and goad its government towards a cease-fire (and a longer-term solution) is being widely asked.
Combined with Israel’s resolute rejection of a two-state solution, the nature of its reprisals suggests that those presently dictating the nation’s policies nurse an unrealizable dream: the removal from Israel’s neighborhood of Palestinians and Palestine’s sympathizers in Lebanon. Apart from being an impossibility in practical terms, this dream recalls a morally reprehensible wish nursed only by ethnic cleansers and pursuers of “final solutions”, which can also be said about the “goal” of erasing Israel which some of Israel’s enemies in the region harbor.
In a video interview carried on October 6 by the Indian news portal The Wire, Omar Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University and a former IDF soldier, told Karan Thapar that he stood by what he had recently written in The Guardian of the U.K., which was this:
“It was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions … The ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory.”
In his interview with Thapar, Bartov underlined a point that others too have made, which is that as its biggest military, economic and political backer, the U.S. could have told Netanyahu that Israel would be on its own if it wasn’t prepared for talks and an immediate cease-fire.
QUESTIONS FROM ALLIES
People in the U.S. should know that the governments of three important nations that usually support Washington, namely France, Japan, and Australia, have expressed positions on Palestine that differ notably from Washington’s. While continuing to condemn Hamas’s attack a year ago, these governments are pushing for a two-state solution and have indicated disapproval if not shock at the disproportionate nature of Israel’s reprisals. This is what France said on May 1:
“The two-state solution is the only way to build a just and lasting peace. [France] will continue to demand an immediate and lasting cease-fire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and a full and unimpeded humanitarian access. The laws of war, the principles of precaution and proportionality, and international humanitarian law must be abided by all.”
Here is what Japan’s foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said last November:
“The Gaza Strip is an indivisible piece of a ‘two-state solution’. Japan hopes that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be governed under a reformed and reinforced Palestinian Authority in the near future… The rise in extremist settler violence committed against Palestinians is unacceptable, undermines security in the West Bank, and threatens prospects for a lasting peace.”
https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Japan-MOFA.pdf
And on September 28, this is what Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, told the U.N. General Assembly:
“Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. All lives have equal value.
“War has rules. Every country in this room must abide by them. Even when confronting terrorists. Even when defending borders.
“Israel must comply with the binding orders of the International Court of Justice, including to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.
“The world cannot wait… Earlier this year, Australia voted in this General Assembly in support of Palestinian aspirations for full membership of the UN. We have sanctioned Israeli extremist settlers and will deny anyone identified as an extremist settler a visa to travel to Australia. But individual country actions alone are not moving the dial.
“The world cannot keep hoping the parties will do this themselves; we cannot allow any party to obstruct the prospect of peace.
“As I have said for many months, Australia no longer sees Palestinian recognition as the destination of a peace process, but a contribution of momentum towards peace.
“Australia wants to engage on new ways to build momentum, including the role of the Security Council in setting a pathway for two-states, with a clear timeline for the international declaration of Palestinian statehood.”
The language used by other nations is much stronger. The free rein it is giving to Israel, along with funds and arms, has isolated the U.S. from world opinion and troubled its close allies. Americans should be asking themselves and their leaders a simple question: “Why are we backing subjugation, humiliation, and ethnic cleansing in the Middle East?”
INDIA’S PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS
Results that have just come in from two province-level elections in India show, firstly, that, defying predictions and exit polls, Narendra Modi’s BJP has retained office in the Hindi-speaking north Indian state of Haryana, and, secondly, that the opposition INDIA bloc has won comfortably in the union territory of Jammu & Kashmir, where, however, new laws have made the elected legislature weak before the territory’s New Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor.
The Haryana result is a setback to what seemed to be a momentum in favour of the opposition and comes as a disappointment and a surprise to many including myself who thought that pro-democracy forces were making a promising come-back in the Indian mainland. The J&K result, on the other hand, is a welcome rebuff to plans to weaken democracy even further in one of the saddest and most beautiful parts of the world.
