the human province

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.

Oh happy day:

Douglas Feith (LAW ’78) may not have devised an exit strategy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but according to the former Bush administration official, a group of Georgetown professors apparently had no trouble coming up with an exit strategy for him.

The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.

I've long thought that morally and politically, it would be a great move if the Lebanese government were to invite Lebanese Jews who left during the civil war to Europe and America to come back. And if Beirut were really clever, it would appoint a Lebanese Jew to a ministerial position or as an ambassador to the UN or the US. This would help turn the Lebanese-Israeli conflict into a national one instead of a religious one. In 2006, it would have been a tremendous PR move to have a Jewish minister criticizing the systematic destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

In this context, Bahrain has made a really smart move:

A Jewish woman, Huda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is set to become Bahrain's ambassador to Washington, sources close to diplomats told Gulf News on Thursday.

"Huda is Bahrain's nominee for the post and this is of course very good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," Faisal Fouladh, a Shura Council representative, and Western diplomats said.

Huda, a businesswoman, was the first Jewish woman to sit in the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of the bicameral legislature, replacing her uncle. A Christian woman, Alice Samaan, also sits on the council which has 11 women, compared with only one woman MP, Lateefa Al Gaood, in the 40-member lower house.

I was checking out the State Department's blog today to see if they had said anything there about Israeli ambassador Gillerman's remarks that Carter was a "bigot" and an "enemy of Israel" when I came across this post about Cambodia's war era debt to the US:

Cambodia’s debt to the U.S. totals $162 million, but with arrears factored in could reach approximately $339 million. This debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities (e.g., cotton, rice, wheat flour) to Cambodia in the early 1970s -- during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Lon Nol era -- and financed with USDA loans. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the regime ceased servicing this debt, and interest accumulated over the next three decades. In February 2006 -- after many years of deadlock followed by a fruitful series of negotiations -- an agreement in principle was reached on the amount of Cambodian principal owed to the U.S.

The Cambodian government, however, remains reluctant to sign a bilateral re-payment agreement due to domestic political obstacles on accepting responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime, viewed by many Cambodians as an illegal and illegitimate government. Furthermore, many Cambodian observers believe a good deal of this assistance never arrived. They contend that Cambodia only served as a conduit for moving the USDA-financed commodities to other locations in Asia and that the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people did not benefit from the loans, even if some Cambodian individuals did gain. Finally, some argue that it is fundamentally unfair that Vietnam, which is far better off economically and was America’s major adversary in the war, was granted a form of debt forgiveness from the United States, while an innocent bystander to that conflict—Cambodia—is offered nothing.

The U.S. has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors.

Putting aside for a moment the irony of American lectures on "international law principle," there are some other things to consider here. 

Considering the fact that the covert American bombing campaign of Cambodia that killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people was also one of the factors that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed literally millions of people, you'd think that we could give Phnom Penh a pass on their paltry $339 million debt, incurred after a pro-American military putsch, by the way.

Given the context in which the debt was incurred, and that more than half of the debt is interest, and since we're currently spending over $400 million every day in Iraq, you'd think we could be a good sport and forgive the Cambodian tab.

On a somewhat related note, This American Life once did an excellent piece about US-Cambodian trade agreements. You might think that such a topic is boring. You'd be wrong. Give it a listen here by clicking on "Full episode."

(Via TPM) Ha'aretz reports Benjamin Netanyahu, hawkish Israeli "ally" of the US, as saying that 9/11 was good for Israel:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

This actually mirrors comments made by Netanyahu on the day of the attacks:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ''It's very good.'' Then he edited himself: ''Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.'' He predicted that the attack would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

With friends like these, right?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

The French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, along with the French research institution, CNRS and Sciences-Po, have begun an Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence with the help of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. The project is under the direction of Jacques Sémelin, whose 2005 book on genocide (which I have but have yet to read) has recently been translated into English and published by Columbia.

The site's still pretty bare bones for the moment, but it's designed to provide information of mass violence based chronologically and geographically, so when it's done, you'll be able to click on any country you want to get information about mass violence in that country. There's also an encyclopedia of terms that looks to be pretty complete.

Strangely enough, for a French initiative, it's only available in English for the moment. The international advisory board includes scholars like Omer Bartov, Samantha Power, Frank Chalk, Antonio Cassesse, Ben Kiernen, René Lemarchand, William Schabas and Eric Weitz, just to name a few.

The Middle East Strategy at Harvard is one of those sites that I continue to read even though (nay, because) it makes me want to smash my head against the computer screen. Some of the pieces on they are interesting and intelligent, but some are really, really stupid. Salzman's most recent piece falls into the latter category. I haven't read Salzman's book, but I had a feeling that I might not like it, since his description of it and Stanley Kurtz's review smacked a little bit too much of another Kurtz. I hadn't made up my mind, though, and thought that while Kurtz's review in the Weekly Standard might be oversimplifying the region a little, the book must be more nuanced. But Salzman's most recent piece on MESH makes me not want to read his book at all.

He seems to be arguing that since people in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran think that scholars are spies in the first place, it doesn't do any harm to be one. (Harry Matthews takes this idea to a hilariously genius extreme in his most recent novel.) And besides, those who are against working with the Pentagon are really just a bunch of haters:

It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

...For many anthropologists, cooperating with the Pentagon would be cohabiting with the Devil. It would be siding with power, capitalism, whites, men, heterosexuals, and thus with the evil forces in the universe. When it comes to the American military, cultural relativism does not apply.

Personally, I don't know much about Human Terrain Teams, but I do know that I'd have some very ambivalent feelings about working for the government, particularly if it meant working on Iraq. On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment that as long as the US is going to do whatever it wants, a lot of damage control can come in the form of academic advice and research -- damage control that might mean saving lives, both American and Iraqi. On the other hand, I also sympathize with the idea that one wouldn't want to get sullied by having anything at all to do with the whole enterprise. In any case, it's a complicated subject for which I've got very mixed feelings.

But does Salzman really think that those who might have qualms with working at the Pentagon are self-loathing whites who equate the idea with "cohabiting with the Devil"? I mean come on, while I'm sure there are some idiots on both sides of the argument, there really isn't any need for straw men, right? It sounds to me like Salzman has an axe to grind with some of his colleagues.

I'm not generally fond of Jeffery Goldberg's work when it comes to the Middle East, so I was pretty skeptical about the Atlantic's big Israel story this week. (I haven't read it yet, so I'll reserve judgment until then.)  One thing that's very interesting though, is that Goldman has dug up some old pieces on Palestine and Zionism that appeared in the Atlantic.

So far, I've only had the time to read William Ernest Hocking's 1930 piece, Palestine: An Impasse? You can tell that these old pieces have been scanned, because there are a few mistakes with indentations, quotes and even a couple of letters ('d' for 'cl'), but this article really warrants being read. Here are a couple of meaty extracts to whet your appetite:

If we in America, Jews and Gentiles, could see things as they are in Palestine, we should recognize as axiomatic three things: (1) That nothing like the full plan of Zionism can be realized without political pressure backed by military force; (2) that such pressure and force imply an injustice which is inconsistent with the ethical sense of Zionism, undermining both its sincerity and its claim; (3) that every increase of pressure now meets with increasingly determined Arab resistance, within and beyond Palestine. Hence the question which political Zionism must answer is whether or not it proposes to-day, as in ancient times, to assert its place in Palestine by aid of the sword.

To many Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, in spite of its careful safeguarding of all existing civil and religious rights, is understood as obliging Great Britain to 'do something' for the Jews. Many Zionists have the same conception. And the Arab mind inquires: What can Great Britain now do for Zionism which is not against the Arabs? What favor can it show which is not favoritism? If the question is capable of an answer, it needs to be a dear answer, plainly spoken. Great Britain is serving Zionism. It is doing so not only by maintaining security and order in the land (with some lapses), but by furnishing the administrative staff without which no such settlement would have been possible, and by creating new opportunities. Under the older Ottoman regime, foreign Jews were at a disadvantage: they—like other foreigners—could acquire land only in the name of Ottoman subjects. These disabilities are now removed; as is often said, Jews are now in Palestine by right, not on sufferance. Why press for more than this equitable opening, when more means a reversed injustice? The rural and industrial centres already founded need no more than an equal legal status for their normal peaceful development. The great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus needs no more than this on the legal side to realize its destiny. And this university, be it said, under the prophetic leadership of Dr. Judah Magnes, is the symbol of all that is best in Zionism. For the true and attainable Zion is the Zion of culture and faith, not the Zion of political nationalism.

It is indeed a bitter thing to the sincere Zionist that his ideal community cannot have in that unique spot of earth its perfect body as well as its perfect soul. What I have to say, I say with deep personal regret. For I went to Palestine seized with the idea of Zionism and warmed by the ardor of Jewish friends to whom this vision is the breath of life, prepared to believe all things possible. I came away saddened, seeing that to strive for the perfect body, as things now are, can only mean the loss of soul and body alike. To pursue any campaign for a more vigorous fulfillment of 'the British promise,' to force cantonization on Palestine and so to repeat the standing grievance of divided Syria, to press for any further favor of the state, is to work blindly toward another bloody struggle involving first the new settlements, then Great Britain, then no one knows what wider area. In this we have been assuming that on the issue of Jewish dominance the Arab mind is irreconcilable. Is this true?

The answer lies partly in the fact that for the Arab, whose local attachments are peculiarly strong, Palestine, beside being his home, is also a holy land. It lies partly in the fact that to his mind Palestine is not a separate province: it is an integral part of Syria, with Damascus as its natural trading and cultural capital, while Syria is an integral part of greater Arabia. In his dream of a free Arab empire, Damascus may have served as capital for the whole; or Syria, together with Palestine, may have constituted an autonomous province. In any case, the new Arabia through Palestine reached the western sea; while Palestine as a part of Syria became a partner in that new and proud political enterprise. The expulsion of Feisal from Damascus by the French was a cruel mutilation of this dream. The mandate for Palestine excludes it from the imagined kingdom and shuts that kingdom from the Mediterranean. Even so, political arrangements may be unmade. But village settlements are a more final obstacle—they build a human barrier and put an end to hope. The progress of Zionist colonization thus becomes for the Arab national outlook a culminating stroke in a series of breaches of faith.

...The two enemies of peace in the Holy Land are fanaticism and fear. The movement of the modern spirit within all creeds is having for one of its beneficent effects the gradual melting of fanaticism without argument. Fixed and antagonistic dogmas are transforming themselves into alternative sets of symbols which can dwell together. But fanaticism is kept alive and sharpened by fear; clashes at the Wailing Wall are symptoms of political rather than religious apprehension. These fears of displacement, of national thwarting, must be put to rest; and they can only be quieted by unequivocal public commitments, renouncing the intention to dominate and to exclude. If there is to be peace within the gates of Jerusalem, the first condition, as I see it, is that Zionism publicly disavow its unholy alliance with Western military power, and therewith (following the lead of a recent resolution within the Jewish Agency) its purpose to dominate in Palestine.

Hocking's solution is finally a binational, or more accurately a multi-religious, state under the mandate of Britain, a solution that is obviously out the question as far as British rule is concerned. Nonetheless, he brings up a fundamental conflict between the Zionist body and the Zionist soul, the latter being crushed by what it would take (has taken) to create a Jewish state -- something Avraham Burg's new book is about.

I'm a little uneasy with the idea he has of keeping Palestine technologically "backward" so as to keep Palestine as a multi-religious spiritual land above all else. But that's a small detail in an otherwise insightful analysis of the situation. To my mind, he really hits the nail on the head when he points out the violent and unjust conditions that would be necessary to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Goldberg, for his part claims that Hocking is arguing for "an exclusive Arab right to the territory of Palestine," which is silly when you read the piece. What he does do is analyze the Jewish right to Palestine:

This claim of right, based on a mission which it is felt a religious disloyalty to compromise, cannot be shaken in the Jewish mind by analogies from history or international law. To urge that the same reasoning which leads the Jew to claim Palestine after eighteen hundred years would give the Arab a right to Spain after seven hundred years is quite sound so far as it appeals to the ordinary flux of historic conquest and possession; but it wholly misses the sense of this 'organic indissoluble connection,' this right of destiny. Such a right has the force of a religious conviction for those who have that vision; it has the weakness of subjectivism for those who do not share it.

He, correctly, I think, calls the Jewish right to Palestine a subjective one for those who do not believe in God's covenant with the Jewish people and an ineluctable truth for those who do.

On a completely different note, I know that this blog has been focusing on Israel a lot lately. This reminds me of a woman whom I used to date who was doing her doctoral thesis on Jewish communities in the Middle East. She told me that if I was going to be with her, I'd have to deal with the three following things: "1. I am insanely jealous; 2. I smoke in bed; and 3. I'm obsessed with the Jews."

So at the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with Israel, I'd just like to say in my defense that with the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the Nakba, there's plenty of material to comment on these days.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, I just looked at my stat log, and Israel is where a good part of my hits come from, after the US, France and Lebanon. So shalom, dear readers, and happy passover!

When I saw the previews for the new (for me, anyway) American reality television show, American Inventor, I thought that maybe the medium would be used for something more useful than "The World's Most Shocking Videos of People Getting Shot in the Face While Being Ejected From a Moving Car." After watching the show today and seeing two grown men come close to tears, I'm convinced that it's just another opportunity for people to watch their fellow compatriots humiliate themselves on international television in hopes of making a quick buck or earning their 15 minutes of fame.