Edward Said 19 Nov

To: Retort

Said's latest in Counterpunch
Nov 19,2001

Suicidal Ignorance
By now, at least, it should be clear: the US just doesn't get it. Time for 
a change of policy.
By Edward Said
The extraordinary turbulence of the present moment during the US military 
campaign against Afghanistan, now in the middle of its second month, has 
crystallised a number of themes and counter themes that deserve some 
clarification here. I shall list them without too much discussion and 
qualification, as a way of broaching the current stage of development in 
the long, and terribly unsatisfactory history of relationships between the 
US and Palestine.
We should start perhaps by re-stating the obvious, that every American I 
know (including myself, I must admit) firmly believes that the terrible 
events of 11 September inaugurate a rather new stage in world history. Even 
though numerous Americans know rationally that other atrocities and 
disasters have occurred in history, there is still something unique and 
unprecedented in the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings. A new 
reality, therefore, seems to proceed from that day, most of it focused on 
the United States itself, its sorrow, its anger, its psychic stresses, its 
ideas about itself. I would go so far as saying that today almost the least 
likely argument to be listened to in the United States in the public domain 
is one that suggests that there are historical reasons why America, as a 
major world actor, has drawn such animosity to itself by virtue of what it 
has done; this is considered simply to be an attempt to justify the 
existence and actions of Bin Laden, who has become a vast, over-determined 
symbol of everything America hates and fears: in any case, such talk is and 
will not be tolerated in mainstream discourse for the time being, 
especially not on the mainstream media or in what the government says. The 
assumption seems to be that American virtue or honour in some profoundly 
inviolate way has been wounded by an absolutely evil terrorism, and that 
any minimising or explanation of that is an intolerable idea even to 
contemplate, much less to investigate rationally. That such a state of 
affairs is exactly what the pathologically crazed world-vision of Bin Laden 
himself seems to have desired all along -- a division of the universe into 
his forces and those of the Christians and Jews -- seems not to matter.
As a result of that, therefore, the political image that the government and 
the media -- which has mostly acted without independence from the 
government, although certain questions are being asked and criticism 
articulated about the conduct of the war itself, not its wisdom or efficacy 
-- wish to project is American "unity." There really is a feeling being 
manufactured by the media and the government that a collective "we" exists 
and that "we" all act and feel together, as witnessed by such perhaps 
unimportant surface phenomena as flag- flying and the use of the collective 
"we" by journalists in describing events all over the world in which the US 
is involved. We bombed, we said, we decided, we acted, we feel, we believe, 
etc., etc. Of course this has only marginally to do with the reality, which 
is far more complicated and far less reassuring. There is plenty of 
unrecorded or unregistered scepticism, even outspoken dissent, but it seems 
hidden by overt patriotism. So, American unity is being projected with such 
force as to allow very little questioning of US policy, which in many ways 
is heading towards a series of unexpected events in Afghanistan and 
elsewhere, the meaning of which many people will not realise until too 
late. In the meantime, American unity needs to state to the world that what 
America does and has done cannot brook serious disagreement or discussion. 
Just like Bin Laden, Bush tells the world, you are either with us, or you 
are with terrorism, and hence against us. So, on the one hand America is 
not at war with Islam but only with terrorism, and on the other hand (in 
complete contradiction with that, since only America decides who or what 
Islam and terrorism are), "we" are against Muslim terrorism and Islamic 
rage as "we" define them. That there has been so far an effective Lebanese 
and Palestinian demurral at the American condemnation of Hizbullah and 
Hamas as terrorist organisations is no assurance that the campaign to brand 
Israel's enemies as "our" enemies will stop.
In the meantime, both George Bush and Tony Blair have realised that indeed 
something needs to be done about Palestine, even though I believe there is 
no serious intention of changing US foreign policy to accommodate what is 
going to be done. In order for that to happen, the US must look at its own 
history, just as its media flacks like the egregious Thomas Friedman and 
Fouad Ajami keep preaching at Arab and Muslim societies that that is what 
they must do, but of course never consider that that is something that 
everyone, including Americans , also needs to do. No, we are told over and 
over, American history is about freedom and democracy, and only those: no 
mistakes can be admitted, or radical reconsiderations announced. Everyone 
else must change their ways; America remains as it is. Then Bush declares 
that the US favours a Palestinian state with recognised boundaries next to 
Israel and adds that this has to be done according to UN resolutions, 
without specifying which ones, and while refusing to meet Yasser Arafat 
personally.
This may seem like a contradictory step also, but in fact it isn't. For the 
past six weeks there has been an astonishingly unrelenting and minutely 
organised media campaign in the US more or less pressing the Israeli vision 
of the world on the American reading and watching public, with practically 
nothing to counter it. Its main themes are that Islam and the Arabs are the 
true causes of terrorism, Israel has been facing such terrorism all its 
life, Arafat and Bin Laden are basically the same thing, most of the US's 
Arab allies (especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia) have played a clear 
negative role in sponsoring anti-Americanism, supporting terrorism, and 
maintaining corrupt, undemocratic societies. Underlying the campaign has 
been the (at best) dubious thesis that anti-Semitism is on the rise. All of 
this adds up to a near-promise that anything to do with Palestinian (or 
Lebanese) resistance to Israeli practices -- never more brutal, never more 
dehumanising and illegal than today -- has to be destroyed after (or 
perhaps while) the Taliban and Bin Laden have been destroyed. That this 
also happens to mean, as the Pentagon hawks and their right-wing media 
machine keep reminding Americans relentlessly, that Iraq must be attacked 
next, and indeed that all the enemies of Israel in the region along with 
Iraq must totally be brought low, is lost on no one. So brazenly has the 
Zionist propaganda apparatus performed in the weeks since 11 September that 
very little opposition to these views is encountered. Lost in this 
extraordinary farrago of lies, bloodthirsty hatred, and arrogant 
triumphalism is the simple reality that America is not Israel, and Bin 
Laden not the Arabs or Islam.
This concentrated pro-Israeli campaign, over which Bush and his people have 
little real political control, has kept the US administration from anything 
like a real re- assessment of US policies towards Israel and the 
Palestinians. Even during the opening rounds of the American 
counter-propaganda campaign directed to the Muslim and Arab world, there 
has been a remarkable unwillingness to treat the Arabs as seriously as all 
other peoples have been treated. Take as an example an Al- Jazeera 
discussion programme a week ago, in which Bin Laden's latest video was 
played in its entirety. A hodge-podge of accusations and declarations, it 
accused the US of using Israel to bludgeon the Palestinians without 
respite; Bin Laden of course crazily ascribed this to a Christian and 
Jewish Crusade against Islam, but most people in the Arab world are 
convinced -- because it is patently true -- that America has simply allowed 
Israel to kill Palestinians at will with US weapons and unconditional 
political support in the UN and elsewhere. The Doha-based moderator of the 
programme then called on a US official, Christopher Ross, who was in 
Washington to respond, and then Ross, a decent but by no means remarkable 
or even fluent Arabic speaker, read a long statement whose message was that 
the US, far from being against Islam and the Arabs, was really their 
champion (e.g. in Bosnia and Kosovo), plus the US supplied more food to 
Afghanistan than anyone else, upheld freedom and democracy, etc.
All in all, it was standard US-government issue. Then the moderator asked 
Ross to explain why, given everything that he said about US support for 
justice and democracy, the US backed Israeli brutality in its military 
occupation of Palestine. Instead of taking an honest position that 
respected his listeners and affirmed that Israel is a US ally and "we" 
choose to support it for internal political reasons, Ross chose instead to 
insult their basic intelligence and defended the US as the only power that 
has brought the two sides to the negotiating table. When the moderator 
persisted in his questioning about US hostility to Arab aspirations, Ross 
persisted in his line too, more or less claiming that only the US had the 
Arabs' interests at heart. As an exercise in propaganda, Ross's performance 
was poor of course; but as an indication of the possibility of any serious 
change in US policy, Ross (inadvertently) at least did Arabs the service of 
indicating that they would have to be fools to believe in any such change.
Whatever else it says, Bush's America remains a unilateralist power, in the 
world, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, everywhere. It shows no sign of 
having understood what Palestinian resistance is all about, or why Arabs 
resent its horrendously unjust policies in turning a blind eye to Israel's 
maleficent sadism against the Palestinian people as a whole. It still 
refuses to sign the Kyoto convention, or the War Crimes court agreement, or 
the anti-land-mine conventions, or to pay its UN dues. Bush can still stand 
up and lecture the world as if he were a schoolmaster telling a bunch of 
unruly little vagrants why they must behave according to American ideas.
In short, there is absolutely no reason at all why Yasser Arafat and his 
ever-present coterie should grovel at American feet. Our only hope as a 
people is for Palestinians to show the world that we have our principles, 
we occupy the moral high ground, and we must continue an intelligent and 
well-organised resistance to a criminal Israeli occupation, which no one 
seems to mention any more. My suggestion is that Arafat should stop his 
world tours and come back to his people (who keep reminding him that they 
no longer really support him: only 17 per cent say they back what he is 
doing) and respond to their needs as a real leader must. Israel has been 
destroying the Palestinian infrastructure, destroying towns and schools, 
killing innocents, invading at will, without Arafat paying enough serious 
attention. He must lead the non-violent protest marches on a daily, if not 
hourly basis, and not let a group of foreign volunteers do our work for us.
It is the absence of a self-sacrificing spirit of human and moral 
solidarity with his people that Arafat's leadership so fatally lacks. I am 
afraid that this terrible absence has now marginalised him and his 
ill-fated and ineffective PA almost completely. Certainly Sharon's 
brutality has played a major role in destroying it too, but we must 
remember that before the Intifada began, most Palestinians had already lost 
their faith, and for good reason. What Arafat never seems to have 
understood is that we are and have always been a movement standing for, 
symbolising, and getting support as the embodiment of principles of justice 
and liberation. This alone will enable us to free ourselves from Israeli 
occupation -- not the covert manoeuvring in the halls of Western power, 
where until today Arafat and his people are treated with contempt. 
Whenever, as in Jordan, Lebanon and during the Oslo process, he has behaved 
as if he and his movement were just like another Arab state, he has always 
been defeated; only when he finally understands that the Palestinian people 
demand liberation and justice, not a police force and a corrupt 
bureaucracy, will he begin to lead his people. Otherwise he will flounder 
disgracefully and will bring disaster and misfortune on us.
On the other hand, and I shall conclude with this now, leaving the subject 
for my next article to develop in detail, we must not as Palestinians or 
Arabs fall into an easy rhetorical anti-Americanism. It is not acceptable 
to sit in Beirut or Cairo meeting halls and denounce American imperialism 
(or Zionist colonialism for that matter) without a whit of understanding 
that these are complex societies not always truly represented by their 
governments' stupid or cruel policies. We have never addressed the currents 
in Israel and America which it is possible, and indeed vital, for us to 
address, and in the end to come to an agreement with. In this respect, we 
need to make our resistance respected and understood, not hated and feared 
as it is now by virtue of suicidal ignorance and indiscriminate belligerence.
One more thing. It is also far too easy for a small group of unexceptional 
expatriate Arab academics in America to keep appearing on the media here in 
order to denounce Islam and the Arabs, without having the courage or the 
decency to say these things in Arabic to the Arab societies and peoples 
they so easily rail against in Washington and New York. Nor is it 
acceptable for Arab and Muslim governments to pretend to be defending their 
people's interests at the UN and in the West generally, while doing very 
little for their people at home. Most Arab countries now wallow in 
corruption, the terror of undemocratic rule, and a fatally flawed 
educational system that still has not faced up to the realities of a 
secular world.
But I shall leave that all until my next article.