Category Archives: Terrorism

NATO in Chicago: A Meaningless Demonstration

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Now that the NATO Summit has swept out of my city, the local press can’t stop fawning over the performance of the Chicago police – and gloating over how silly and meaningless the mass demonstrations turned out to be in the end.

Mission accomplished. With all of the focus on the Chicago streets, I guess we were successfully distracted from the truly meaningless demonstration that was the NATO Summit.

As for me, I’m in full agreement with Stephen Walt, who has correctly pointed out that this massive, fancy, expensive, city-paralyzing event was little more than a “fig-leaf” for NATO – a pageant designed to put a happy face on an Afghanistan war that is hugely unpopular and has suffered from ever-changing objectives from the very beginning.

Actually, Obama’s summit pledge “to responsibly wind down the war” by the summer of 2014 is worse than a fig leaf – it’s simply not true. Earlier this month, Obama visited Afghanistan and signed a pact with Afghan president Hamid Karzai that will ensure a US military presence in Afghanistan until at least 2024. (This agreement was first made in secret, then when the news leaked out, the administration vehemently denied it. Later they conceded it was true, making no attempt to explain why they lied in the first place.)

And please don’t be fooled by the explanation that NATO will be ending “combat operations” by 2014.  Officials have openly stated that these post-2014 “non-combat” troops will continue to launch “anti-terror” raids – which is simply just another way of saying they will continue to do what they’ve been doing all along.

But for the most powerful rejoinder to the farce that was NATO in Chicago, I strongly encourage you to read this important piece by Gary Younge, who pointed out the irony (or if you prefer, the utter hypocrisy) of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s boast that the summit was “an opportunity to showcase what is great about the greatest city in the greatest country.”

The murder rate in Chicago in the first three months of this year increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year, giving it almost twice the murder rate of New York. And the manner in which the city is policed gives many as great a reason to fear those charged with protecting them as the criminals. By the end of July last year police were shooting people at the rate of six a month and killing one person a fortnight.

This violence, be it at the hands of the state or gangs, is both compounded and underpinned by racial and economic disadvantage. The poorer the neighbourhood the more violent, the wealthier the safer. This is no coincidence. Much like the NATO summit – and the G8 summit that preceded it – the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it…

The paradox inherent in a city like Chicago hosting a summit like this not only lays bare the brutal nature in which these inequalities are maintained at a global level, but it lends us an opportunity to understand how those inequalities are replicated locally.

Chicago illustrates how the developing world is everywhere, not least in the heart of the developed. The mortality rate for black infants in the city is on a par with the West Bank; black life expectancy in Illinois is just below Egypt and just above Uzbekistan. More than a quarter of Chicagoans have no health insurance, one in five black male Chicagoans are unemployed and one in three live in poverty. Latinos do not fare much better. Chicago may be extreme in this regard, but it is by no means unique. While the ethnic composition of poverty may change depending on the country, its dynamics will doubtless be familiar to pretty much all of the G8 participants and most of the NATO delegates too.

The gated communities – like the one in which Trayvon Martin was killed – have been erected on a global scale to protect those fleeing the mayhem wrought by our economic and military policies. This was exemplified last March when a boat with 72 African refugees fled the NATO-led war in Libya. When the boat found itself stranded it sent out a distress signal that was passed on to NATO which had “declared the region a military zone under its control”, and then promptly ignored it, as did an Italian ship. The boat bobbed around in the Mediterranean for two weeks. All but nine on board were left to die from starvation, thirst or in storms, including two babies.

A meaningless demonstration indeed…

War on Iran: Recent Must Reads

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A few voices of sanity as the drumbeats for a US and/or Israeli military strike on Iran reach a fever pitch. First, here’s Gary Sick’s smart blog post addressing Ronen Bergman’s egregiously alarmist cover story in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday:

Bergman’s dramatic statement that “I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” is also nothing new — it simply changes the date. We heard the same thing a year ago from Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, and two years before that from uber-hawk John Bolton, who confidently predicted that the U.S. and/or Israel would strike Iran before George W. Bush left office.  It is becoming almost an annual ritual.

Why do these false alarms keep going off? Bergman suggests an answer with disarming honesty: “Some have argued that Israel has intentionally exaggerated its assessments to create an atmosphere of fear that would drag Europe into its extensive economic campaign against Iran…” To this, the ubiquitous “senior American official” adds that “It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States.” In other words, Israel benefits by keeping the pot near the boiling point so that no one can ignore the Iran issue, even for a moment.

Tom Englehardt’s op-ed in Al Jazeera English:

The only issue seriously discussed in this country is: How exactly can we do it, or can we do it at all (without causing ourselves irreparably greater harm)? Effectiveness, not legality or morality, is the only measurement. Few in our own little world (and who else matters?) question our right to do so, though obviously the right of any other state to do something similar to us or one of our allies, or to retaliate or even to threaten to retaliate, should we do so, is considered shocking and beyond all norms, beyond every red line when it comes to how nations (except us) should behave.

This mindset, and the acts that have gone with it, have blown what is, at worst, a modest-sized global problem up into an existential threat, a life-and-death matter. Iran as a global monster now nearly fills what screen-space there is for foreign enemies in the present US moment. Yet, despite its enormous energy reserves, it is a shaky regional power, ruled by a faction-ridden set of fundamentalists (but not madmen), the most hardline of whom seem at the moment ascendant (in no small part due to US and Israeli policies). The country has a relatively modest military budget, and no recent history of invading other states. It has been under intense pressure of every sort for years now and the strains are showing. The kind of pressure the US and its allies have been exerting creates the basis for madness – or for terrible miscalculation followed by inevitable tragedy.

And this one is a few weeks old already, but it’s still haunting my dreams: Mark Perry’ deeply disturbing expose for Foreign Policy that describes how Israel recruited members of a terrorist organization to fight their covert war against Iran. If you have any doubt about how reckless Israel has become in its determination to bring down the regime in Iran, please take the time to read this one.

The kicker:

While many of the details of Israel’s involvement with Jundallah are now known, many others still remain a mystery — and are likely to remain so. The CIA memos of the incident have been “blue bordered,” meaning that they were circulated to senior levels of the broader U.S. intelligence community as well as senior State Department officials.

What has become crystal clear, however, is the level of anger among senior intelligence officials about Israel’s actions. “This was stupid and dangerous,” the intelligence official who first told me about the operation said. “Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they’re supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don’t think that’s true.”

State-Sponsored Mosque Desecration: I Express My Outrage

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Last week I received an email request from the New Israel Fund (NIF) to sign a rabbinical statement condemning the recent desecration of a mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba-Zangariya in the north of Israel. Of course I signed without hesitation. It was a sick, racist act that deserved to be condemned from every quarter.

Thus my deep dismay when I did not receive any similar request when the Israeli army demolished a mosque this week in West Bank village of Kherbet Berza – for the third time. (An incident, btw, that was scarcely covered by the western media.)

As per usual, the administration claims additions to the mosque were built “without a permit.” Naturally no such permits are issued when the Israeli government is interested in creating facts on the ground – this case being the northern Jordan Valley. (The news item above was released last year following the first demolition.)

Of course it’s easy to condemn racist acts of individuals – apparently it’s more difficult (or “complicated”) when this kind of thing is carried out by a government. I have no such difficulty: terror is terror whether perpetrated by one person or by the state.

So for the record (and using the same language as the NIF statement) I’d like to take this opportunity to:

express my deep sadness and outrage at the destruction of a mosque in the West Bank village of Kherbet Berza. I condemn this act as an affront to God, the values of our Torah and the international standards of basic human rights.

I extend a hand in friendship and solidarity to the leaders and residents of this small village, a prayer for their safety and peace in the days to come, and a hope that the government that perpetrated this despicable act will be held to account.

And while we’re expressing concern for the welfare of Bedouins, this recent announcement offers some cause for deep dismay as well:

The Civil Administration (CA) is planning to expel the Bedouin communities living in Area C in the West Bank, transferring some 27,000 persons from their homes. In the first phase, planned as early as January 2012, some 20 communities, comprising 2,300 persons, will be forcibly transferred to a site near the Abu Dis refuse dump, east of Jerusalem.

More government terror. I express my deep sadness and outrage…

Massacre in Norway: “The Answer to Violence is Even More Democracy”

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So much to say about Friday’s tragic massacre in Norway. Chief among them: the death (I hope) of our misguided assumptions that terrorism must necessarily = Islamism.

Much has been written about the immediate media speculation – most notably by the New York Times – that this attack was carried out by an Islamist terror group. As journalist Ahmed Moor correctly points out, these assumption reveal just how deeply this meme is ingrained in the American consciousness – one that cuts across right-left political lines.

I’m also in full agreement with Moor when he says the real “Clash of Civilizations” is not between the West and Islam, but between “normal, sane people of the world and the right-wing zealots who see doom, destruction, hellfire and God’s Will at every turn:”

Anders Behring Breivik, Mohammed Atta and Baruch Goldstein are all cut from the same rotten cloth. Anwar Al-Awlaki and Glenn Beck – the peddlers of the faith – all share the same core afflictions.

These men are insecure, violently inclined, and illiberal. The outside world scares them. They hate homosexuals and strong women. For them, difference is a source of insecurity. Their values are militarism, conformism, chauvinism and jingoism. Worst of all they seek to pressure us into compliance while they work frantically to destroy themselves – and the rest of us with them.

All indications are that the hate-mongers – who are on the same side of this war, irrespective of religion – are winning in America. The unreflective, superficial, wan editors of the NYT are an indication of just how successful the right wing has been at eviscerating the left.

Terror expert Robert Lambert actually warns that ultra-nationalists pose an even greater threat than al-Qaeda, citing a disturbing litany of European plots that were foiled before they were able to be carried out. (Of course, as the example of Timothy McVeigh tragically reminds us, we Americans should not be so blase as to assume ultra-nationalist terror is only a European problem.)

What should be our response?  I can think of none better than that of Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg. (Oh, would that we had heard these kinds of words from President Bush following 9/11):

This is a message from all of Norway: You will not destroy us. You will not destroy our democracy or our quest for a better world. ..This night we will comfort each other, talk with each other and stand together. Tomorrow we will show the world that Norway’s democracy grows stronger when it is challenged…

We must never cease to stand up for our values. We have to show that our open society can pass this test too, and that the answer to violence is even more democracy, even more humanity, but never naivete.  This is what we owe to the victims and to those they hold dear.

May the memory of the victims be for a blessing.

Happy Independence Day?

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Ynet Photo: Avihu Shapira

Saw this in Ynet this morning, from an article covering Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations in Israel. Caption: “Tens of thousands visited IDF bases.”

My first thought: the famous picture of the Palestinian baby in a bomb vest that got some major play in the Jewish press some years back.

My second thought: those Jews who claim Palestinians harbor a “culture of death” should take a good long look at this picture.

My third thought: this recent picture of an Israeli preschool – another image that stopped me in my tracks.

I really don’t know what else to think…

Osama Bin Laden: Was Justice Done?

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On nights like this one, we can say to those families who lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: justice has been done (President Obama, May 1, 2011)

I can’t say that.

In Jewish tradition, there are two different terms for “justice.” The first is mishpat, which is generally understood to mean “retributive justice.” In other words, we apply mishpat when we settle our disputes by right rather than by might, through due process of law rather than by resorting to revenge or vigilantism. Jewish – as well as American – values teach that law must be held in the highest regard by any community that considers itself a free society.

By this standard, justice was certainly not done when bin Laden was summarily executed by extra-judicial assassination. Many American leaders have repeated that terrorists have declared war on American values. What does it mean, then, when we fight them by betraying the very values of justice that we purport to uphold?

Louise Richardson, whose book “What Terrorists Want” is the wisest book on terrorism I’ve ever read, hits right it on the head:

Had we captured bin Laden alive and then resisted the very human urge to exact revenge and instead handed him over to an international court of impeccable rectitude and reputation for trial on charges against humanity, we would have deprived him of glory and demonstrated, even to the skeptical, the vast difference between his values and ours (p. 198)

(Though I hold tight to this moral conviction, I have no illusions that trying bin Laden in an international court would have been anywhere near the realm of political possibility. Just last month, the White House gave up on its intention to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a New York civilian court. Attorney General Eric Holder now says Mohammed and four other 9/11 terror suspects will face a military trial at, you guessed it, Guantanamo Bay.)

The other word for justice is tzedek, or “distributive justice.” According to this definition, we promote justice whenever we strive to eradicate the inequities in our society, be they imbalances of wealth, power, or privilege.

By this measure, our execution of bin Laden represents the tragic failure of imagination that our government calls the “War on Terror.” We are sadly deluded if we believe we will end terror through the force of our military might. We will never fully eradicate terrorism – but we can certainly mitigate it by taking responsibility for the ways our nation may be contributing to the global injustices that create breeding grounds for terrorists around the world.

Now that we’ve killed bin Laden, are we ready to have a real national conversation about the hundreds of military bases our country maintains around the world, our ongoing wars in three Middle Eastern countries, and our unconditional military support for Israel’s occupation? For all of the billions of dollars we are pouring into our national military machine, might we be prepared to contemplate, as Richardson suggests, “the adoption of a comprehensive development agenda to address the underlying or permissive causes of terrorism?” (p. 221)

No, I do not believe justice, in any sense of the word has been achieved here. Visceral satisfaction, relief or grim pleasure, perhaps, but not justice.

Not In Your Local Paper: Egyptian Muslims Protect Coptic Community With Their Bodies

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Muslims protect and greet Orthodox Christians leaving the church where Alexandria bomb blast took place. (Photo: REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih)

An important and inspiring report out of Egypt. From AhramOnline:

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

Sorry to see that this story has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. It seems to have been broken by the Egyptian press, but other than a report on WaPo’s online edition, I could only see it covered via the blogosphere.

What else is new? When it comes to Islam, it seems, the actions of an extremist minority is considered newsworthy while the courage of the Muslim majority flies right off the radar screen.

Be sure to pass this one on…

The Yemen Bomb Plot: Thoughts From a Chicago-Area Rabbi

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More than a few people have asked me for my reaction on last week’s failed al-Qaeda bomb plot out of Yemen that reportedly targeted Chicago synagogues.

So here are a few disconnected thoughts:

First and foremost, I’ll say it was incredibly heartening to receive so many calls of concern from friends and colleagues of all faiths. The very first such calls came from two friends from the Islamic community, who expressed their shock, outrage and solidarity in no uncertain terms.

An excerpt from the statement released by the The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago:

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago stands with our faith partners and the Jewish community in condemning the recent terrorist act to send explosives through cargo airlines to Jewish organizations in Chicago…

“We are thankful to our law enforcement agencies to uncover this plot before it could cause any harm,” said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, chairperson of the Council. “Illinois Muslims stand united with our Jewish partners and organizations in condemning this terrorist and heinous act. There is no place in Islam for terrorizing innocent people or spreading mayhem.”

Those who chronically ask why Muslim leaders are loath to condemn terrorism would do well to read the numerous such statements that were released last week by Islamic communities and organizations around the world.

Another thought:

Like many, I was surprised to learn that authorities eventually came to believe that the bombs were not actually meant to target synagogues, but were rather intended to explode in planes midair. Though the synagogue addresses on the packages understandably alarmed the Jewish community, it’s now becoming clear that this incident occurred within a much larger political context.

Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt rightly noted this point in a blog post:

Whatever the target may have been, the more obvious point is that these groups are still hoping to make Americans pay a price for our policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. They are angry about our close ties with Saudi Arabia, by the drone attacks the United States is conducting in Yemen and Pakistan, and by our unstinting support for Israel. And even though AQAP’s main target appears to be the Saudi regime, America’s unpopularity throughout the region makes attacking the United States a useful recruiting tool.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald made a similar point in his inimitable style:

I’m sure that escalated military activity in Yemen along with roving bands of CIA hit squads will go a long way toward solving the problem of anti-American hatred in that country and the Muslim world generally. If only we kill more of them and bring more violence to their country, they’ll stop wanting to mail bombs to ours.

The bottom line for me: though we are justifiably concerned about anti-Semitism, we’d might at least be equally concerned over US policies and actions in the Middle East – and the ways they create a fertile breeding ground for these kinds of extremist ideas.

Still another thought:

Ironically enough, immediately before the news of this event broke, my wife and I had just watched the recent documentary “Defamation,” a film which vividly explores the ways anti-Semitism is experienced – and too often exploited – by Israel and the American Jewish community.

So yes, I’ll confess that following the incident among the many thoughts racing through my mind was the somewhat jaundiced conclusion: “Boy, will our community will make political hay out of this one…”

Sure enough, not long after we learned of the bomb plot, it was reported that several Jewish communal leaders in NYC lobbied elected officials to dramatically increase Homeland Security funding for Jewish institutions – and urged their constituents to do likewise.

I can’t help but agree with Mondoweiss’ take on the affair:

While these people may have been sincerely reacting to an immediate dramatic threat, there seems to be a bit of opportunism at play here. Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine, details instances like this where individuals, governments, and organizations take advantage of human-made or natural crisis to promote actions that will significantly advance their political, economic, and/or ideological plans.

A final semi-related thought:

The Jewish community would be foolish not to be vigilant about anti-Semitism – as well as the safety of our communal institutions. At the same time, however, I do believe our community must resist the temptation to view anti-Semitism as somehow unique or separate from other forms of prejudice.

When these kinds of troubling events occur, our community is too often tempted to circle the wagons and view the issue somehow as “us against the world.” Too often, we fail to see how anti-Jewish prejudice is inseparable from all forms of bigotry.

At the end of the day intolerance is intolerance. Whether we’re happy to admit it or not, we’re all in this together.

Protest the FBI Raids – Support Freedom of Dissent in post 9/11 America!

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On September 24, the FBI raided eight homes and offices of antiwar activists in Chicago and Minneapolis and subsequently issued a summons for them to appear before a grand jury in Chicago.  I won’t go into the details of this egregious violation of the Constitutional rights of US citizens because this Democracy Now piece (part one above, part two, below) does a thorough job in covering all the sordid details. (You can read the transcript here.)

If you live in the Chicago area (and are outraged at the increasing criminalization of dissent in post 9/11 America), I encourage you to attend a rally to against the raids and support of the peace activists subpoenaed by the FBI on Tuesday, October 5 at 8:30 am outside the Dirksen Federal Building, 230 S. Dearborn Avenue, Chicago.

If you can’t attend the rally, please join me and a growing list of signers who have added their names to the following interfaith statement (to sign, send an email to MMcConnell@afsc.org):

We are people of faith and conscience who condemn the recent FBI raids in Chicago as a violation of the constitutional rights of the people and organizations raided. They are a dangerous step to further criminalize dissent. The FBI raids chisel away and bypass fundamental constitutional rights by hauling activists before grand juries under the guise of national security. An overly broad definition of “material support for terrorism” in the June 2010 US Supreme Court ruling concerns us as people of faith who continue to be actively engaged in humanitarian work and peacemaking.

The real illegitimate activities are U.S. foreign policies that support war and occupation. We believe that peacemaking is a sacred commandment.  We feel compelled to work to end military solutions that kill and maim innocent people, destroy civil society institutions, create massive poverty and dislocation of people from their homelands, militarize our own nation and continue to create more animosity against the United States, thus undermining our security.

We are committed to a just peace in Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. Some of us have visited these conflicted areas and accompanied those most affected by the violence. Some of us have permanent staff and volunteers working nonviolently for a peaceful resolution to these conflicts. We all stand opposed to the United States’ and all nations’ support of military aid and military intervention in these countries. The infusion of military aid has exacerbated violence rather than resolved it.

We believe in a divine spirit of justice and hope that promotes understanding and equality of all humanity. We refuse to remain silent in the face of the latest efforts of the FBI to chill dissent against war by invading homes of peace activists and calling a grand jury with sweeping powers to manufacture fear. We denounce the use of fear and the far-reaching labeling of critical dissent as “terrorism” that tramples on not only our right, but our duty to dissent as people called to a moral standard of justice for all.