MarcGopin.com

The current European headlines are dominated by France and Belgium’s impending face-veil legislation, but there is another, more important, story that isn’t getting as much attention—that of a quiet revolution throughout Europe of Muslim women emerging onto the political scene.

One of the most prominent examples is that of Salma Yaqoob in the UK. Yaqoob, a prospective parliament candidate, is the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life today. She herself wears a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She represents UK’s Respect party and has a pretty good chance of making history as one of the first British Muslim women MPs. There are other Muslim women running for seats in Birmingham, Bethnal Green, Bolton South and other cities.

Sadly, however, by virtue of being both Muslim and women, Yaqoob and others face opposition from all sides who don’t believe they belong in politics. They face resistance from conservative elements in their own Muslim communities, as well as more extremist elements. During Yaqoob’s campaign in 2005, she even faced harassment and death threats from al-Ghurabaa, an Islamic extremist group later banned under UK’s Terrorism Act.

On the other hand, many non-Muslim voters feel threatened by her as a Muslim. “I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she says. “I have to jump hurdles because of the way I look. Firstly, I have to make it clear that I don’t support terrorism, secondly, that I’m British, thirdly, that I don’t just lobby for Muslims and lastly, that I’m not a Trojan horse for sinister Islamist plots.”

But she has been winning even her fiercest critics. She says, “some people who made out fatwas against voting for a woman have now been saying that I’m the right candidate. I have been invited into mosques – some of which don’t even have facilities for women to pray – to give the Friday sermons.”

But the story isn’t that Yaqoob and others like her might bring the headscarf to Westminster, but that they are introducing to British electoral politics a constituency of Muslim women. She claims that her work in politics “challenges the old order, which treats our communities as silent voting fodder. And it was only possible because we united people around a progressive message of anti-racism and social justice”.

So as difficult as it might be, she isn’t giving up. And others like her throughout Europe aren’t giving up either. And THAT is the bigger story to tell.

Written by Aziz Abu Sarah

“Netanyahu and Lieberman are asking the world to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – I say uphold Jewish values! After all, it was Habakkuk the Jewish prophet who said ‘Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!’”, notes Aziz Abu Sarah. (Read the complete article on Middle East Online.)

The Palestinians who have lost their homes, on the other hand, have not been able to rally enough people to draw constant, vehement support. Fatah, Hamas, and the PLO are too busy with their own conflicts to be of any real help to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, and the international community is fond of offering their condolences and condemnations from the safety of the “moral high ground,” so as not to soil their shoes. Of the hundreds of thousands of “pro-peace” Arabs, Israelis, Europeans, and Americans, I haven’t heard of a benefactor has stepped forward to use his connections or finances to help these two families.

Yet my biggest disappointment is with the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement, of which I have been an active part for the last ten years. We hold thousands of workshops on dialogue groups and interfaith discussions, and preach peace and reconciliation. We have people sign declarations and accords. However, we are too divided within our own ranks and organizations to stand together when these incidents occur. Instead, we spend our time measuring our success by the number of workshops we create, the conferences we attend, and the size of our budget. It is time for a change. We must measure success by the people we mobilize and the difference we can make in hard times. A sharply worded press release is not success – success is a movement of Arabs and Jews showing up in thousands ready for action, demonstrating, writing, and sleeping in the tent with the new homeless families.

Read more by clicking here.

President Obama and President Abbas

Iran threat pushing Arabs closer to normalization with Israel
By Akiva Eldar

…Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa notes that peace is not a light bulb easily switched on, but admits that the Arabs have made public-relations blunders. “An Israeli might be forgiven for thinking that every Muslim voice is raised in hatred,” he writes, “because that is usually the only one he hears. Just as an Arab might be forgiven for thinking every Israeli wants the destruction of every Palestinian.” Khalifa urges the Arabs to communicate directly with the Israelis and tell them their story.

If Olmert’s defense of the settlements was grist for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mill, the Bahraini prince’s call for normalization made Obama’s weekend. The start of normalization between the nations is a key item on the president’s agenda. It’s the undertone intended to ease the creation of a blueprint for a final-status agreement.

LINK: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102824.html

There is no question about the Arab push toward normalization for years now. Saudi Arabia, the most reactionary country of all,  has been offering normalization for most of this decade, very publicly, and successive Israeli governments have ignored the offer of something that Israelis used to fantasize about back in the ’60′s. There is no broad strong constituency in Israel to say yes, and therefore there is no government that will say yes. Worse still, we may soon see a strike in Lebanon that will heighten the focus on Iran and distract from the United States and the Quartet’s pressure to freeze settlements and begin a process toward two states.

What is tragic is that Israelis are being hoodwinked by a government controlled by a settler minority into believing that there are no peace partners. For those of us deeply immersed in the Arab world it is a deep shock to see the Israeli community so terrified of peace offers. There will come a time that solutions will be imposed from without, or there will come a time for a one state solution. This may not be a bad thing if it happens slowly and nonviolently. Belgium tolerates an uncomfortable split right down the middle and no group has swallowed the other alive. But we all know that this has been much more bloody.

In the meantime, the tried and true and frustrating simple path is the arithmetic of equal cooperation and collaboration between peoples. This does not sit well wtih the Arab governments or Fatah or Hamas; and states in general do not trust at all their own people, or people to people work. Laws in Israel and Palestine and Syria, and many other countries are designed to keep their peoples apart.

But, in my opinion, the stubborness of Israeli Jews on these matters is born of a level of fear, insecurity, frustrated dreams, politician-driven manipulations, inherited wounds and paranoia that can only be healed–that i have only witnessed to be healed thousands of times–by authentic, profound relationships and cooperation. It is the only way that the full truth of the past and present emerges. It is painstaking work but there may be no way around it. The only way for Palestinians and Jews to face the worst in each of their communities is to develop enough collaboration based on honesty, equality and mutual prosperity, to develop a united front. This has worked the world over and it can work in the less than Holy Land as well.

By Kobi Skolnick
In the last few weeks, there have been many developments in the Middle East conflict. People around the world have been following the speeches of President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as Hosni Mubarak’s essay in the Wall Street Journal. This high-level discussion signals a shift in policy and progress toward peace. However, some skeptics wonder if this is just another phase in a cycle of false hope. After all, it is not difficult to imagine another suicide bombing in one of Israel’s cities, or an ill-timed Israeli Defense Force operation in the Palestinian Territories, both of which would immediately make peace look like a mere fantasy.

This danger has always existed in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Even when top leaders sign treaties, on the ground there remains a deep enmity between Israelis, Palestinians, and the Arab world. With this in mind, it should be clear that the situation on the ground must change in order to transform the conflict, and pressure must come from the people as well as from leaders. Yet, for years there has been a vast disinterest in supporting peace-building efforts on the grassroots level.

Changing the reality on the ground is not an easy task. As a former Israeli settler, I have spent many years working with grassroots peace initiatives, and at times I have found the obstacles overwhelming. Between Israelis and Palestinians is a dynamic of extreme stereotyping and skewed perspectives. For many Israelis, a Palestinian is seen as someone who would kill them if he had the chance. For Palestinians, a Jewish-Israeli is either a settler with a gun or a soldier at a checkpoint. This fear and paranoia have created a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies and violence, and in the last six years the two communities have become increasingly radicalized. On both sides, a new generation of young people is being raised up to espouse the belief that killing is the only way to solve differences.

I understand these feelings of passion and hate. Growing up, I experienced violent trauma when a group of students were killed near me, and this trauma left me with overwhelming hatred and the awful desire to take revenge. This desire was directed against an enemy that had no face and no name. When I imagined the Palestinians I would kill, I imagined only cruel expressions and fiery eyes filled with hate toward me and my family. Now I realize that this image was closer to that of an animal than to a human being.

Interestingly enough, it was not speeches that gave me a new perspective. Although great speeches are important, it requires planning to create the mechanisms by which Israelis and Palestinians can meet and work together. For me, I only changed my perspective when I realized that Israelis and Palestinians could relate as humans, regardless of our divergent narratives. This realization came when I met with Palestinians in a safe setting, where I could share my pain and ask the questions I had always wanted to ask. Even in my work, I have found these meetings are the single-most effective tool for neutralizing radicalization. People need a place to express the trauma of loss and grief, in a forum where they can share the injustices they have suffered. Through this process, old perceptions erode and it becomes possible to see the human on the other side.

Because I have been involved in many projects like this, I have learned how to break down the image of Palestinians as a homogeneous enemy entity. I am aware that there are Palestinians who still want to kill me just because I am Jewish-Israeli, but I also know there are many more with whom I can share my thoughts, ideas, and dreams. Today I have many dear Palestinian friends who I feel delighted to share moments in life with, and for me this makes the prospect for peace more palpable.

As the Israelis and Palestinians seem poised on the edge of entering peace talks yet again, I find myself fearful that the talks will end as they have before, with a major violence incident reinforcing false assumptions, and with extremist factions celebrating the continued bloodshed. We cannot let that happen. Our generation can choose to change our ways and in turn change our future. We need to go beyond government negotiation and political tradition, and increase our support for people-to-people efforts on the grassroots level.

In response to current events, people sometimes ask me “Is peace really possible?” The unspoken question is “Is peace practical? Isn’t it just chasing after the wind?” Although years ago I might have answered differently, today I can truly say yes, peace is possible. It is not magic, and it is not an empty fantasy. When people meet with each other and break down preconceptions, peace becomes as palpable and real as any stone or wall, and just as lasting.

The tumultuous events of recent days have further confirmed just how destructive militant American thinking about Iran has been. As President Obama understood and said relentlessly in the past year, there are clearly a huge amount of people to engage in Iran, probably the majority. Of course, the overwhelming question will be how to reach them. But the damage has been done to the conservative regime, and events on the ground in Iran, in addition to events in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Gaza, intimate a re-alignment is emerging across the Middle East, a move of Islamic political movements toward the center and away from radicalism, as Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the Palestinian scholar,  has wisely noted. A wise president, and a wise Congressional leadership, will not squander the opportunity to engage.

Reported in the Washington Post, this Rand study, a bastion of American military thinking, should be read by all who think that attacking Iran is the only option for making the Middle East safe. The vestiges of neoconservative ideology continue to disintegrate.

By Aziz Abu Sarah

Al-arabiya news agency reported over 1.5 million came out to the streets today in support of presidential candidate Mr. Hossein Moussavi. This is the biggest protest by the Iranian people since the 1979 Iranian revolution. It is remarkable that this protest took a non-violent approach, which was called for by Mr. Moussavi who led the protest himself. The next few days will be very critical for the future of Iran and a potential for a democratic transformation.

kharroubi at Sharif University

It is  very important that we blog about the Iranian elections and expose to the world the Iranian choices. Read here on Karroubi’s platform to open up the universities. There are conflicting polls on who is ahead, with state polls putting Ahmedinijad ahead, obviously. Ahmadinijad controls all the public television stations, which is what the vast majority of the country has access to. But the youth are with the reform candidates so they are trying to utilize every social media possible to reach the voters anyway. Therefore, Ahmadinijad is blocking Facebook as much as he can. Karroubi, like Obama, is focused on the internet, the youth, the disenfranchised. This is an unfair fight for the future of the people of Iran, and I believe it is the deciding factor for the future of peace and war in the Middle East. Candidate Moussavi is saying more what Westerners want to hear, and he is favored to win or face off the President according to some polls. But democratic elections are not and should not be about what Westerners want to hear, it is about human needs, and which candidate do they believe will fulfill those needs. Unfortunately, whether the candidate espouses violence against others is less important to most people than their basic needs. But democratic elections that lead to peaceful international relations must be about candidates that most successfully appeal to basic human needs, and the future of a country, while simultaneously refraining from building those promises on the basis of hatred of foreigners. The current president has chosen this latter path, and we should study carefully these reformist candidates and support whoever can provide the most democracy and economic rights together with a nonviolent approach to diplomacy and international relations.  Karroubi is embracing much more basic human needs, economic justice, and basic freedoms, and he is rising fast. This intimates a much more enlightened foreign polcy, even though he is wisely not making that the center of his campaing.

But this is not an even fight with the State doing everything it can to suppress the reform candidates. They all support the development of nuclear technology–but that has never been the problem. It is not the technology, it is the intent of its use, and it is clear that Moussavi and especially Karroubi are trying to steer the country in a completely opposite direction than the demagogue who runs it now.  So please learn more and spread more about these candidates.

Mahdi Karroubi

NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 18

Find the courage to watch the slow death of an unarmed demonstrator in Palestine. Shamai Leibowitz, veteran Israeli Jewish human rights activist in Pursuing Justice reflects on evidence of an Israel Defense Forces murder of an unarmed and un-threatening demonstrator in the Palestinian village of Bil’in. You be the judge.

Bil\’lin

Did you notice what a sunny, beautiful day it is in the film? Does it remind you of the day on the beach in Camus’ The Stranger?  The simplicity of killing, the natural beauty that can coexist with it and not be somehow implicated in a crime against humanity? Are you haunted by Biblical verses on oppressing strangers and God driving people out of  promised lands? Such warnings are a strange and timeless echo of history that screams back at the banality of murder that Camus depicts on the warm, sunny beach. Camus’ stranger, no love, no feeling at all, just the hot feel of the gun. The Bible’s stranger, hot with moral emotions, love, hate, oppression, consequences, outrage. Such wild exaggerations, both of them, Camus and the Bible, the Atheist and the God-intoxicated prophet. And then there is us.

As far as I can tell from years of interviews and studies, it would seem that the IDF considers nonviolent resistance to be an even greater threat to Israel than violent resistance. It is the only way to explain expulsions from Israel of leading nonviolent resistance activists, beginning decades ago with Mubarak Awad, at the same time that Sharon and others shut down the PLO and allowed Sheik Yassin to build Hamas over thirty years ago.

This is not surprising in the history of immoral occupations. Nonviolent, principled, moral resistance is far greater a threat to continued land annexation than is extremist rhetoric and violence. What is especially poignant in the Palestinian case is that between Israel’s tacit support for the extremists to the Arab world’s funding of extremist positions in Palestine it has left nonviolent democrats as orphans of history. But this is the responsibility of all of us, not the poor thirty year old man nonviolently protesting thirty meters away from heavily armed courageous soldiers separated from the protesters by barbed wire fences and trenches. At great risk to their personal safety they aimed at his chest and shot him with a high powered rifle in order to defend Israel’s right to exist. Watch him die, study the human exchange.

As I reflect on the rhetoric around Israel’s right to exist, I truly understand why it is such an emotional term for Jews. But I must say as an American that America has a right to exist–but not at the moment of Abu Ghraib. If I was a fly on the wall at Abu Ghraib and I could do anything to stop the massive torture of innocent young men randomly rounded up from around Iraq, if I could waive a magic wand at that moment and give back the thirteen colonies to England, I would. Anything to stop the degradation, the depths of human depravity and sin. I would gladly have British troops march into my home, charge me exorbitant fees for tea, and live with the fact that as an American I forfeited my freedom by failing to stand strongly for justice.

So I wonder about ‘rights’ of states to exist and the unconditionality of that. I am haunted by the conditionality of fateful deeds, the laws of cause and effect, and the odyssey of crime and its consequences. Crime has a life of its own, just as the events depicted in this video will have a life of their own. I certainly know that Palestinians are also paying a price for their actions in the past decades as they sought a way to regain their land, and fate has dealt them a heavy blow for both their tactical and their moral mistakes.

But the grand and seemingly invincible uniforms of the IDF soldiers in this film, their faceless superhuman image, it all seems weak to me in the face of the judgments of history. In the United States there are exceedingly powerful men who orchestrated the torture who are wondering what constellation of events in the United States may clear the docket enough for Congress and the American people to demand payment for what they did. The mighty who I feared just a few months ago have fallen.

A time is coming when there will be an answer to all of this, and it will be fateful. I do not relish the cycle of crime and its consequences. It leaves everyone as empty as Adam, Eve, and Cain, as they faced a world empty of Abel. There is no happiness in justice, only the tragic necessity of righting wrongs and evening out the sufferings of humanity.

There is a better way, however, and it is to be found at the side of those demonstrators in Bil’in. The greater their numbers and the more consistent their nonviolence and the more we join them the more absurd that violence will become. This is the way to create a new fate, a fate that is in our hands.

Syrian Ambassador to the United States gives an important interview to CNN. The story is significant because Moustapha lays out the parameters of a separate Syrian/Israeli peace track, while also stressing the importance of a ‘comprehensive’ peace for Israel, which must include the Palestinian track. He also stresses that Lieberman is a more honest face of Israel than Livni and Olmert, considering the atrocities in Gaza. He would rather engage the real deal in Israel rather than deal with fake rhetoric. The nuances of his position are quite revealing of the different positions of Syria and Fatah. There is also praise for Obama and Mitchell, but caution that Mitchell’s job is harder than Ireland due to the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

It Is What They Will Do that Matters
By Aziz Abu Sarah

Political pundits are all asking the same question these days about Israel: what will Netanyahu do? Will he continue the peace process? Will he trigger violence again like he did in 1996, when he opened the tunnel near the Al-Aqsa mosque without coordinating with the Muslim Waqf? Will he hurt the relationships between Israel, the US, and Europe?

It has been interesting watching many Israeli officials racing to defend Netanyahu’s administration and his extremist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. This list of staunch defenders has grown to include current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, and even the well known peace supporter President Shimon Peres. They all are scrambling to reassure the world that the rightist government will be supportive of the peace process, despite recent speeches and violent threats made by key players in the government, including Netanyahu and Lieberman.

In the last few weeks Netanyahu himself has backed off his pre-election promise to discontinue peace negations, instead stating that he will proceed with the negotiations. It is a small consolation for Palestinians, however, that Netanyahu has chosen to join the never-ending peace process which seems to lead to nowhere more often than not.

A few months ago, Palestinian-Israeli MK Dr. Tibi told me that as a physician he had a “diagnosis” for the disease that is preventing the Israelis and Palestinians from reaching an end to the conflict. The disease is the process, he said, and the politicians have fallen so deeply in love with the process that they have forgotten that there should be peace at the end of it. Foreign Minister Livni has commented that we should continue negotiating, but not hurry to come up with a resolution here. Dr. Tibi has a different perspective. “Well, this conflict is sixty years old, how much longer should we wait?”

At this point, Mr. Netanyahu is looking to avoid international criticism by continuing the “peace process”. He still can build more settlements, and it is being reported that he already agreed to build 3000 new units in East Jerusalem, demolish more homes in East Jerusalem, continue the closure on Gaza, and continue other occupation policies. This is not a new policy. The Kadima-Labor government of the last three years continued building settlements in the West Bank, started the closure in Gaza, continued building the Separation Wall, confiscated Palestinian land, and continued the occupation. However, the Kadima-Labor government was labeled pro-peace because they were willing to negotiate and make great speeches supporting peace, even while adding more checkpoints within the Palestinian territories than ever before.

It is time to demand higher standards from Israelis and Palestinians who profess to be “pro-peace.” It is time to demand that the Israeli government be willing to end the occupation, dismantle the settlements, and end the racist policies it has instituted against the Palestinians. It is time to demand that the Palestinians be united in supporting a lasting peace with Israel, end an era of violence, reform corruption, and heal division within their own ranks. It is time for the world to hold both the Israeli and the Palestinian governments accountable for their actions, and to not be satisfied with empty declarations and political posturing. It is time to expect real negotiations from both sides, with the goal of ending the conflict. Then, with higher expectations in hand, the world can hope for a real peace to take shape.