Western Policy on Israel-Palestinian Peacemaking Will Only Produce Humiliating Failure

By Barry Rubin

It’s truly remarkable about how international diplomacy on the Middle East, especially Israel-Palestinian issues, is so out of touch with reality. Consider the Quartet’s response to the mess at the UN. The proposal is for Israel-PA talks to start within a month, both sides to present proposals on borders and security within three months, and to reach a final agreement by the end of 2012.

This is insane. The premise here is that the PA is really eager to negotiate a compromise agreement with Israel. Everything that’s happened in the past three years—indeed the last 18 years since the Oslo agreement was signed—shows the exact opposite. The PA spent a year building its campaign for unilateral independence at the UN precisely to avoid negotiating with Israel at all.

Why then create a Western policy that is not only doomed to fail but certain to fail in the most obvious and humiliating way? The Palestinians won’t negotiate in a month, they won’t rush to present any proposals in three, and they certainly won’t reach a peace treaty in a year. It looks like the PA will reject the whole proposal—a step for which they will pay no penalty but in fact will get more rewards and concessions, and thus will be encouraged to ignore the West even more.

The dumbest possible thing to do is to put a strict time limit on talks when your spoiled and rejectionist “client” doesn’t want to cooperate. The outcome will make the PA look very bad but “fortunately” the media and Western governments won’t point that out. Instead, the PA will run out the one-year deadline, then complain that Israel is at fault and doesn’t really want peace. and then urge speedy Western concessions to the PA and pressures on Israel.

Could anything possibly be more predictable? Perhaps the only possible explanation is that the U.S. government, UN, and EU (I doubt the Russians do so) believe their own propaganda. They really think the PA can’t wait to make a deal if only Israel is forced to negotiate and some more concessions are offer. Haven’t they learned anything?

In addition, perhaps in a time when claimed victimhood is the only measure of what is just, morale, and proper for foreign policy, the Western governments can’t get out of the rut of seeing the Palestinians only as victims. This requires the West to “help” them escape victimhood as fast as possible. Instead, the Palestinian leadership’s goal is the “old-fashioned” concept of total victory and turning their adversaries into total victims.

They don’t want to cease being “victims”; they want to start being conquerers. Consequently, the Western governments think the Palestinians are in a hurry to improve their lot while, in fact, they are patient in seeking instead to grind Israel into the dust.

Meanwhile, veteran Fatah leader Abbas Zaki has openly explained that the whole UN gambit is an effort to get an independent state as a step toward wiping Israel off the map. If Western journalists, experts, government official, and various “peacemakers” understood how this truly represents the Palestinian position a lot of money, time, and lives would be saved.

Why Most of The Mass Media Can’t Report Honestly on Israel—Or Other Middle East Issues

By Barry Rubin

Underlying any other factor regarding attitudes toward Israel in the Media-University-Government (MUG) complex is the programmatic and ideological problem faced in honestly understanding and explaining Israel’s behavior.

To report truthfully would require comprehending and communicating the following two paragraphs:

–Most Israelis believe, on the basis of their experience during the 1990s’ Oslo era and with the “peace process” generally, that Palestinian leaders cannot and will not make peace, and that most Arabs and Muslims still want to destroy Israel. As a result, they explain, past Israeli concessions have made Israel’s situation worse, risks to show that Israel wants peace have not persuaded onlookers, withdrawals from territory have only led to that territory being used to launch attacks on Israel.

–In justifying their stance, Israelis cite the extremism of Iran; the advances of Hamas and Hizballah; the growing radicalism and Islamist influence in the Egyptian revolution, and other such factors. In addition, they worry that the Obama Administration policy is undermining Israel and enabling a growing extremism in the region. This is a prevailing viewpoint across the political spectrum.

I could have chosen to make additional points but this shows the main factors. Since the Israeli argument is so cogent and backed by facts and observable realities, it would be dangerously persuasive to those who actually get to hear it.

Instead, the muggers of MUG must insist:

–Peace would be easily and quickly obtained if not for Israel’s policies.

–Settlements and not Arab/Muslim positions are the factor preventing peace, even though it could be pointed out that if the Palestinians made peace all the settlements on their territory would be removed.

–If Israel only had a different government the peace process would rapidly advance.

–Obama and his supporters want to save Israel in spite of itself and they, not Israel’ own leadership, knows what’s best for the country.

–Israelis “know” that Obama is right which is why public opinion polls, statements, and evidence to the contrary is suppressed or spun away. American Jews can support anti-Israel policies in the firm belief that they are really “pro-Israel” policies.

–They have only replaced demonizing the “other” with romanticizing the “other.” Never underestimate the importance of ignorance or of its common form—believing that other people think and act just like themselves. The “great experts” really know very little about the issues. (I could give you a long and amusing list on that point.)

–It is far more pleasant to believe that conflict can be made to disappear, hatreds quenched. If they are all our fault than we can easily fix them.

(No sooner did I write this that up pops a great example of the genre! It’s all Israel’s fault, Netanyahu never showed he wanted peace, blah, blah, blah.)

Or, in short, “Why do they hate us?” because we’ve behaved so badly but we can fix it by behaving properly.

Consequently, the systematic misrepresentation isn’t because these people are mean or that they hate Israel as such (well, actually, a lot of academics but relatively few journalists or government officials do) but because their worldview and political line–including 100 percent support for Obama–requires it.

Equally, their systematic view that revolutionary Islamism isn’t a real threat but just a marginal movement of those who misunderstand Islam and want to hijack it, requires it. Equally, their systematic view that to portray certain peoples as hardline, intransigent, “irrational,” etc., is a form of racism and Islamophobia.

I constantly receive letters from Iranians, Turks, Lebanese, Egyptians, and Syrians about their despair at losing their country, being oppressed, or seeing so much bloodshed in their struggle for democracy and to avoid being crushed by Islamist or radical nationalist dictatorships.

Genuinely moderate Muslims in the West have similar complaints and experiences. One case that typifies many is of a courageous man who is shunned by the politicians, virtually barred from the two mosques in his small city, and sees those who threaten him being praised in the media and feted by local politicians.

These people often have similar symptoms. They are depressed, often closed to tears, deeply frustrated and bewildered. What makes their lot even more bitter is the lack of sympathy for the Western MUG that praises their enemies (and all of ours) at the same time. They, too, are victims of the same syndrome that Israel suffers from.

One of the worst things in life is for someone to wake up and discover he’s been supporting evil. Indeed, not only an evil in the abstract but forces and ideas that threaten his own freedom and happiness. A lot of people in the West have already woken up but many more need to do so.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
 

It's Not About Israeli Panic or Isolation But Western Unreliability

"Then was the palm of the hand sent from before Him, and this writing was inscribed: MENE MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing....Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." --The Book of Daniel

By Barry Rubin

Agence France Press reports that the Palestinian bid for UN recognition of unilateral statehood is “causing diplomatic panic” in the United States and Israel.

While Israel is certainly concerned, I think “panic” is totally wrong as a description. After all, Israel’s overwhelming interpretation is that the UN event will change nothing. As for U.S. panic, where has the Obama Administration been for the last year when this outcome was totally predictable?

The Associated Press says that Israel is “increasingly isolated” ahead of the vote. I don’t think that’s how Israelis look at this either. We know that cynicism makes sense—various countries will vote for the resolution or abstain purely to get popularity points with Arab and Muslim-majority states and then do nothing.

The most important effect on Israel is that it will never again listen seriously to these countries' advice or criticism since they don't keep their most basic promises or commitments. Saying Israel is panicking or isolated suggests that Israel should want to make more concessions, striving to please the West, and depending on its support in exchange. We're over that, dude. Just because Israel still tried to be polite don't think it's stupid.

Now, if you want to see a real crisis, go to the Financial Times which reports as follows: ”Tunisia and Egypt have received only a fraction of funds promised by the international community to support their transition to democracy, according to the two countries’ finance ministers.”

So after all the outpouring of devotion to the supposedly great democratic outpouring of the profoundly oppressed people living under horrible dictatorships, these two countries and their people will be left twisting in the wind. They face financial situations actually worsened by the months of upheaval, lost tourist revenue, and frightened off investors. And they will not get real help from the West. What is the relationship of these news items?

Simple. Western countries don’t keep their commitments to Israel. They also don’t deliver on their supposed sympathy for Arab peoples who—according to the Western states—are struggling for independence and rebelling against unacceptable economic situations. That means instability, civil war, and massive suffering becomes more likely in Egypt and Tunisia. In other words, the West is not reliable. If that’s true, why should anyone listen to its advice? Why should Israel take big risks or make large concessions in exchange for Western promises.

The Palestinian Authority, which breaks all of its commitments, is rewarded. It refuses to negotiate with Israel for almost three years and Israel is criticized for not negotiating. It daily incites violence and Israel is blamed for being violent and overreacting. It slaps President Obama in the face repeatedly and only Israel is criticized for alleged ingratitude to America's president. The Turkish regime becomes increasingly repressive and tramples on Western interests only to be praised.

Become more moderate? The PA would be crazy to behave that way since the West generally punishes moderation and rewards those who are antagonistic to it.
Amazingly, Western governments and leaders don’t even notice such things.
Here are two key principles that are going to guide Israel's policy no matter who is prime minister:

1. The Arab and Muslim world has shown Israel that it makes no sense for Israel to make more concessions or take risks because in general they are not going to change their goal of wiping it off the map. That doesn't mean they will actually do anything but that will remain their theoretical goal and their rhetorical stance. Nothing--repeat nothing--Israel will do or say will change this.

Here's an example. The Palestinian Authority ambassador to Lebanon (anyone remember that the PLO signed the Oslo agreement promising it wouldn't conduct international relations?) explains that even if there is a Palestinian state no Palestinian refugee, inside or outside that country's boundary, will become a citizen. Why not? Because this might weaken the Palestinian case for demanding that all such refugees be allowed to go live in Israel where, of course, they would work to turn Israel into another Arab, Muslim, Palestinian state that would eventually be incorporated in Palestine. So much for a "two-state" solution solving the problem.

2. The Western world has shown Israel that it makes no sense for Israel to make more concessions or take risks because in general they are not going to change their perception that Israel is at fault for the lack of peace and has not shown its desire for peace after 20 years of strenuous Israeli efforts to negotiate peace. This is also despite the fact that Israel has made huge concessions, withdrawn from territory, and advocated talks on almost a daily basis. You are about to betray every previous commitment to Israel made in the peace process in exchange for its risks, concessions, and compromises--risks that have brought the death of hundreds of Israelis.

Therefore I say unto you: Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin.
Mene Mene, your policies have failed and you will be voted out of office or subvert your own countries' interests until someone finally notices.
Tekel, you have proved yourselves unworthy of our trust.
Upharsin. We are going to ignore you from now on.

You can write that Hitler can be appeased; Stalin wants compromise; Ayatollah Khomeini's a reasonable guy; Turkey's Islamist regime is a great role model for the Middle East; the "Arab Spring" is leading toward moderate democracy; and the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate, secularist organization. You can say that the moon is made of green low-calorie cheese whose mining will provide green jobs.

It doesn't matter.

Guess what? Israel isn't isolated. You are. From reality. And that's what counts.

As the nature of the coming Middle East crises becomes impossible to ignore, you are the ones who will suffer humiliating defeats and shocks that will force you to change your policies or be changed for other leaders.

As Omar Khayyam's poetry puts it:

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

And, believe me, nothing gives you the finger like Middle East reality.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com 

Why Supporting Unilateral Palestinian Independence Is A Deadly Mistake

By Barry Rubin

Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Fatah West Bank grassroots' (Tanzim) group and under a life sentence in an Israel prison, has said that if the United States vetoes a unilateral Palestinian statehood proposal at the UN, there will be massive riots. To underline the point, he called such a decision a “historic, deadly mistake.” 

When he says, “deadly,” he means it. Indeed, Barghouti, the leader of the Fatah grassroots' (Tanzim) organization on the West Bank, is in prison precisely because he organized massive deadly riots after the Palestinian Authority (PA) rejected a compromise peace with Israel that would have given them a state in 2000. In other words, they’re intransigent and then start a war when they don’t get everything they want. 

It’s the basic tactic in the terrorist playbook: Give me everything I want so I can better destroy you in the long run or I will kill you in the short-run.

And it is encouraged by the basic tactic often used by Western governments: We feel your pain, understand that you are a victim, and will give you as much as possible. Those concessions are rejected and then more are demanded.

This doesn’t make sense to most Western observers: Aren’t the Palestinians desperate for a state and to end a terrible “occupation?” In fact, though, Israel pulled completely out of the Gaza Strip six years ago this month and the Palestinian Authority (PA) has now governed almost all West Bank Palestinians for the last 17 years. 

In fact, the PA is not in a hurry to negotiate a deal for several reasons. 

First, the moderates in the PA are very weak compared to the radicals who still run Fatah, its ruling party. Second, the PA is still competing with revolutionary Islamist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip in a race to prove its militancy. Third, almost nothing has been done to prepare the Palestinians for a compromise peace and two-state solution alongside Israel. Finally, most Palestinian leaders still think that total victory and Israel’s extinction is possible, desirable, and just. Many in the West—whether intentionally or not—encourage that last belief by hostile policies and beliefs regarding Israel.  

That doesn’t mean Israel is willing to give everything or that its policies are perfect. But the mood in Israel today, and for the last dozen years or more, is ready—even eager—for a lasting, stable two-state solution. The differences over borders and other issues can be argued at the negotiating table and are possible to resolve in a genuine exchange of compromises and concessions on both sides.

But since 1993, the Palestinian Authority has made several agreements with Israel. In exchange for being handed control over the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank; billions of dollars in aid; the supply of weapons; the return of tens of thousands of Palestinians to these territories; and many other benefits, the PA promised to do various things in return. These include an end to incitement to kill Israelis; stopping terrorism; and negotiating in good faith for a comprehensive agreement.

Since Hamas attacked Israel with rockets and mortars setting off a war in December 2008, the PA has refused to negotiate with Israel. When President Barack Obama in September 2009, announced he wanted to hold direct talks in Washington, the PA refused. In 2010, when Israel, at the request of President Barack Obama, froze all construction on settlements for nine months, the PA again wouldn’t talk.

Instead, the PA came up with a new strategy, why negotiate a compromise agreement with Israel when it could go to the UN and be handed an independent state without having to make any concessions? No need to reach a deal with Israel over borders, refugees, east Jerusalem, security guarantees, agreeing that the conflict is completely finished, or recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” (the Palestinian constitution says that Palestine will be an Arab and Muslim state), just get a vote in the General Assembly!

This, of course, is not a solution to the conflict but a way of avoiding a negotiated solution to the issue. It is not a way to end the conflict but to ensure that the conflict continues and more lives are lost on both sides. 

The underlying problem is that the PA and its allies among Arab and Muslim-majority states want to wipe Israel off the map. If they want a Palestinian state on the basis of an agreement with Israel that goal could be accomplished within months. But because such a peace arrangement would block the advance toward the ultimate goal it is undesirable. 

But suppose that the UN did agree to recognize Palestine as a state, meaning that the Security Council approved and the General Assembly voted to do that? Immediately, the state of Palestine would have no incentive to reach a deal with Israel. Instead, it could do things like trying to import weapons from abroad; allow Arab armies to send forces onto its soil, and even allow cross-border terrorist attacks on Israel. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas, a terrorist group that openly calls for genocide against Israel and all Jews, would be in effect part of an internationally recognized government.

If Israel then responded to any attack, the state of Palestine would go to the UN, declare Israel to be the unprovoked aggressor, and the automatic majority in the General Assembly would back it up no matter what the facts. The possibility of real negotiations, much less a peace treaty, would be set back for years. And in a region increasingly heading toward revolutionary Islamism in many places, a deteriorating security situation overall plus this new development would bring war. 

Far from helping the situation, then, the UN gambit is likely to lead to less peace, no hope of a negotiated settlement, and more bloodshed.    

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at <http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com>

A Lesson from Egypt for American Politics

By Barry Rubin

Recently, the Egyptian minister of agriculture blamed the fact that some exported food products were infected with bacteria and killed almost 50 European consumers on an Israeli plot. The deputy prime minister explained that Muslim-Christian strife in Egypt (i.e,, Muslim extremists attacking Christians) is fomented by Israel. Internal conflict is generally blamed on the triumvirate of Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia.

But if the minister of agriculture spoke about bad quality control, perhaps the problem could be fixed. If the deputy prime minister criticized Islamic and Islamist incitement, the violence might be halted. No such luck.

Conspiracy theories and scapegoating are central to the Arabic-speaking world’s debates. But there are many lessons for the West from that malady. Unfortunately, the wrong lesson has been drawn: Let’s copy them!

Most obviously, dictatorial regimes use scapegoating to turn their people’s enmity toward others and create dependence on themselves. Radical movements also use scapegoating and conspiracy theories to muster mass support.

But there’s another important factor that gets less attention: If external saboteurs are responsible for a problem, nothing has to be done to fix it. In other words, all you have to do is wipe the offenders’ country off the map and the problem would go away. You don’t need to improve agricultural inspections or to teach Egyptian Muslims to respect Christians; you just have to make a speech denouncing the “real enemy.”

Twenty or thirty years ago, most would have said that this kind of behavior would go away as enlightenment and education spread. But it has gotten worse, spread more than ever to the West, and is now being extended by “education” in the form of school indoctrination.

Years ago, the literature on analyzing the problems of the modern Third World focused on development studies. The question was how a country needed to change in order to become advanced, democratic, and enjoy high living standards. Various specific remedies were prescribed: more education, import-substitution, fostering free enterprise, government-backed infrastructure projects, and so on. In short, action and changing attitudes were required to achieve success.

Then along came various Marxists, radical nationalists, and political con men (Barack Obama’s father was one of them) who argued that underdevelopment wasn’t a malady based on long history, social backwardness, and bad policies but rather was a crime perpetrated by the West. In this vision, what was needed was to confiscate domestic wealth from private hands and — even more important — battle the evil West’s exploitation. One solution was a form of global welfarism, endless payments from the West to make up for its imperialism. New crimes were also invented (global warming—whether or not that is a real phenomenon it is ridiculous to make it the basis for transfer payments) to demand reparations.

Literally millions of people have died or suffered because they were run over while going down this wrong road. Note that the countries that have done the best in rcent years — India, China, South Korea, for example — threw this scapegoating notion into the garbage basket. Those that continue to whine rather than work to fix their problems are becoming basket cases

I’ve been told directly by an Arab friend who had been to China the following story that he claims is true:

Arab visitor: “How do you Chinese deal with the fact that you suffered so much from foreign invasion and imperialism?”
Chinese official: “We got over it.”

Israel’s Bureau of Statistics reported recently that Israeli cows produced an average of 10.2 kg. of milk in 2009, outperforming cows in the U.S. (9.3 kg. per cow), Japan (7.5), the EU (6.1) and Australia (5,6).

So the equivalent of what’s happening in the understanding of underdevelopment would be if the EU leaders complained that Israel and the United States were sabotaging their cows rather than deciding to study the methods used by these countries, improving their own practices, or even buying some of the — if you’ll excuse the expression — cash cows for themselves.

But there’s more: conspiracy theories have conquered large parts of the West in another way. The key word here is “racism,” though there are others like “Islamophobia.” Rather than analyze the actual cause of issues, these conspiracy theories are being tossed around.

People want to criticize something involving Islam? It can’t be due to intolerance in the Muslim-majority world, unlikeable things about Sharia law as presently practiced, or terrorism, so it must be Islamophobia with charges of racism thrown in also even though they don’t apply.

People want to define marriage as it has been always defined in Western history (even in pre-Christian times), as between one man and one woman? They cannot make a historical or sociological argument because it must be homophobia. (Remember here we are not talking about what people decide to do for themselves exercising freedom or even the regulations governing things like pension funds or hospital visits, but what the government approves officially.)

People want to criticize what is in practice unlimited immigration or Obama’s presidency? Must be racism.

As with Stalin’s secret police, new conspiracies must be invented and new thought-criminals found to justify the regime’s rule, repression, and the salary of the witch hunters. Thus, since there aren’t enough real racists or homophobes or Islamophobes around, new ones must be discovered, declared to be enemies of the people, and purged.

I often meet good, well-intentioned people who believe everything they see in the mass media. Don’t underestimate the size of this group. And who would have believed that college professors could be turned into screaming lynch mobs baying for blood?

The current ruling establishment in the United States uses the same rhetorical response to the Tea Party or Glenn Beck (demonization) as Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad employ against their opponents. (Note, I am referring to the propaganda, not the gunfire.) The issue is not whether the target being demonized is right or wrong or makes mistakes but the fact that the mass or mainstream or elite audience has no idea at all what they are actually saying.

Regarding the economy, the same principle holds. Rather than have an intelligent discussion of how out-of-control, often-wasted deficit spending and excessive regulation is destroying the country, we are told that the real problem is a conspiracy of private-jet-riding capitalists and their paid agents to fool the American people and take them back to the age of racism.

Let me summarize:

–A wise president puts into effect policies that work.

–A smart president sees his policies aren’t working and changes them.

–An Egyptian president says the Israelis ate my homework; an Egyptian-style president says headwinds, his predecessor, a Japanese earthquake, and just plain bad luck ate the economy.

–This American president says that the Japanese earthquake ate my economy. And he blames the local equivalent of Zionist imperialist running dogs such as Bush, the Republican minority in Congress, ATMs, Arab revolts, the Japanese earthquake, the Internet, workers manufacturing too many corporate jets, taxes being too low, bad luck, and “headwinds” because his policies aren’t working and then doubles down on the aforementioned policies. Then his supporters call critics greedy racists for not supporting the failed policies.

As I said earlier, when a country is unable to discuss its problems honestly and intelligently, it is unable to fix its problems.

What’s supposed to happen is that both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, agree that government spending must be cut steeply and regulations reduced. They disagree by how much but both see the same needed policy response. Instead, we get a new theory of economics in which food stamps “create” jobs, strangling regulations help the economy, gigantic debts are great, and anyone who espouses economic sanity is evil.

And this most anti-liberal form of scapegoating and bigotry against the “other” is now supposed to be what liberalism is? No, it has more in common with how Arab dictatorships are governed.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at http://www.gloria-center.org 

Norway Terror Attack: Lessons and Illusions

 by Barry Rubin

Once one gets beyond the polemics and clichés, there is a huge amount that could be learned from an honest discussion about the mass murders in Norway. Let’s look at some of them.

An editorial in the New York Daily News contains both valid points and dangerous silliness. It begins:

In his ravings, Anders Behring Breivik, confessed to having murdered 76 people, repeats a familiar refrain: He killed to save his country, his continent and Western civilization itself from an attempted takeover by Islam.

The trouble with a 1500-page manifesto is that one can find almost anything in it. For example, people, groups, and sites who have been cited once or twice in that manifesto are now being called complicit with the murders. In the case of one group in that position, Breivik actually attacked them for being non-violent! Another author in the United Kingdom had two articles footnoted by the killer that didn’t even deal with Islam. Now people are being incited to go after her in revenge.

Of course, Breivik did see Islam as a threat, but he didn’t attack mosques, he attacked two government targets: a camp of the ruling party and a government building. Thus, the main target was not an “Islamic takeover” but his view that the country was being destroyed by left-wing policies, of which unlimited immigration is one. I have no agenda in making that point, but it is surprising that this hasn’t been a bigger focus of the discussion. Breivik was not a single-issue guy.

A second question is whether his violent action “proves” that there is no such problem regarding Islam. Radical Islamist violence is not mindless. It is a response to a problem. Many view this problem as the oppression of Muslims. My opinion is that it is a strategy for revolutionary takeover, a radical Islamist government, and the fundamental transformation of society. Of course, this is far more likely in Muslim-majority societies.

The Daily News continues:

Breivik’s belief is the photo negative of al-Qaeda’s contention that the United States and its allies are hell-bent on destroying Islam.

That’s a clever point and has some merit. But after studying Islamism for 30 years, I’d say that equally or more important — and certainly the one used more in inner and sophisticated Islamist circles — is the idea that the real crime of the West is “preventing” Islamist revolutions by supporting existing regimes. On this one, they are right generally. The first argument is propaganda; the second is programmatic.

To argue that Western governments want the Islamists to win and take over their societies is paranoid. To argue, though, that Western governments follow bad policies that make it look that way has a lot of merit. Left-wing movements — as in Norway — hope that the Islamists will benefit them. They are wrong. An analogy here is the Communist Party in Germany (at Stalin’s orders, of course) arguing that the growth of the Nazis would benefit them at a certain point. They were dead — literally — wrong. That doesn’t mean the Communists were pro-Nazi, it meant that they were disastrously stupid.

But the next contention of the editorial is more questionable:

The belief, that Islam at large conspires to triumph over all Judeo-Christian society, is a delusion.

Of course, the trick here is to say “Islam at large,” that is all the Muslims, everywhere and all the time. So yes the extremists on the Breivik channel do help the people who say that the threat is a “delusion.” But if radical Islamism gains hegemony and then largely controls the dominant devision of contemporary “Islam,” then it will be no illusion at all.

For now, we know that large elements of Muslims — especially revolutionary Islamists and notably the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the far less significant al-Qaeda — want that triumph because they say so all the time. So do Hamas and Hizballah and Iran’s government, less often perhaps but often a lot. They can quote extensively from Islamic texts — the same ones that “counter-jihadists” point out — and thus persuade Muslims a lot more easily that they represent “authentic Islam” than can moderate Muslims.

That’s one big reason why “reform” or “moderate” Islam is so weak. Others include the fact that the radicals are willing to kill and intimidate people, have more supporters, and have more money.

What most decidedly isn’t a delusion is:

• Revolutionary Islamist movements seek to take over all Muslim-majority countries.

• Where they have taken over they seek to transform those societies permanently into Islamist-run dictatorships. Iran and the Gaza Strip are the two most prominent current examples.

• Revolutionary Islamists seek to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence. In practice, they also seek to get rid of Christians. Their seizure of power is against Western interests.

• In Western countries, Islamists seek to gain hegemony over Muslim communities both ideologically, religiously, and through instituting Sharia.

• More speculatively, they dream of total conquest. Of course, that is more speculative, less likely, and far longer-term.

The fact that the last paragraph is pretty unlikely does not invalidate the previous four paragraphs.

A lot of the discussion among “anti-jihadists” is based on quoting from Muslim religious texts, clerical interpretations, and political statements by Islamist groups. The mass media simply refuses to deal with this evidence. That’s why the arguments can easily be labeled fantasies. Yet if you can provide dozens of quotes and hundreds of actions as examples, who is it engaged in “paranoid and poisonous fantasies”?

I partly agree with the editorial’s statement that:

Demonizing a religion rather than those who pervert it is destructive and only wins sympathies to radical fanatics.

I wouldn’t use the word “pervert,” which implies the Islamists are lying. They are using material that actually is in Islam and if one doesn’t understand that then one is powerless to deal with it. But there’s also a nice irony in the quote: which “radical fanatics” are we talking about? The editorial no doubt wants to refer to radical fanatics like Breivik. It is also true, however, that it wins sympathies for the “radical fanatics” who deny that there’s a problem. And those people are far more powerful than the murderous Breiviks, a group that one can count so far on the fingers of one hand.

In fact, the editorial then proves my point:

Counterjihadists are fighting an imaginary enemy. In the United States Muslims constitute less than 1% of the population. In Europe, it is about 7%….[Muslim immigrants]…seek to practice their faith and to assimilate.

The editorial — and the mass media generally — defuses a serious discussion by making the only issue as to whether Muslims will take over. But the immediate dangers are different.

First, will the pool of potential terrorists and their supporters grow? We can add up attacks that total far more than the one in Norway. When, for example, a convert is inspired to murder a military recruiter in Arkansas or a radicalized Muslim opens fire at Fort Hood, this should be a warning bell. Will the number of attacks steadily increase?

Second, will Muslim communities be taken over — or at least the most energetic activists in them — by radical Islamists? There is real reason to believe this has been happening in many places. While one can show to a far more limited extent that “creeping Sharia law” in the West is affecting non-Muslims, it is certainly affecting Muslims.

And when, to cite just two examples, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a leading judge support the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in Great Britain, can anyone call that a delusion?

Third, Muslims who want to “assimilate” may be targeted or even killed by Islamists, who might be receiving state subsidies. Virtually every “honor killing” is against a woman who wants to assimilate. And since moderate Muslims are few, subject to intimidation, and receive little or no support from the Western establishments, those who often control these communities inhibit assimilation and teach people not to do so.

Any Muslims who are secular in their behavior, want to stop being Muslims, or who believe themselves properly religious but disagree with the extremists are being victimized.

When a woman is murdered in an “honor killing” or has her rights trampled on by Sharia as radically interpreted, she is also a Muslim. Often, governments have turned these people over to control by the radicals. They also finance the radicals, either because of the looseness of Western laws, misguided “multiculturalism,” or a conscious belief that helping radicals who aren’t committing terrorism this week will ensure there won’t be terrorism in future.

Fourth, there are real decisions to be made: Should public schools allow prayer (only, in the US) for Muslims? Can women wearing a veil have that picture on their driver’s license? Are cab drivers going to be allowed to refuse seeing-eye dogs? Will governments register polygamous marriages and give social welfare benefits on that basis? What is the definition of practicing their faith?

And then non-Muslims are being affected by being forced to observe Sharia law in an increasing number of cases, small in the overall extent of society, yet narrowing the freedom of those who experience it.

The final sentence of the editorial says:

Those who see “Muslim domination” and “creeping Sharia law” around every corner are imagining things. Their fictions only feed extremism.

True enough. Nobody should see anything “around every corner.” But saying that the problem is only imaginary and ignoring the real problems is also a fiction that will “only feed extremism,” including Islamist extremism, the triumph of the most radical interpretations of Islam, and extremists who want their own societies to decline.

The Road to Serfdom and the "Arab Awakening"

By Barry Rubin

You want to know what's wrong with the study and analysis of the Middle East in the West in a single sentence? Ok, here it is:

Edward Said is treated like a guru and hero; Fouad Ajami isn't.

Said never took the slightest risk and lived a life of greatest privilege. He was lionized by the intellectual elite. His work was taught in universities and shaped the worldview of a generation of professors and students.

Yet what Said said was disastrous for the Arabs themselves and for Western intellectual life. He told the Arabs that they were innocent victims who didn't need to do anything differently, thus guaranteeing they stayed on the wrong road. He backed the Palestinian cause as perfect (despite some criticisms of Arafat's dictatorial tendencies and corruption) and thus didn't use his influence to turn it toward moderation--away from radicalism, terrorism, and hatred--and a genuine two-state solution.

Equally bad, he undermined Western pragmatism, Enlightenment values, and scholarship by a Stalinist-type campaign to discredit all preceding work on the region and substitute for it propaganda.

I will never forget standing at the door of a Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual meeting session listening to Said recite with hatred in his voice a list of scholars who he said were "enemies of the Arabs" to what can only be called a howling mob of professors. I had the honor of being on that list.

At that moment, I thought to myself: "I am witnessing the death of scholarship in American universities." If we had been living in a Middle East society, the audience would probably have erupted from the hall to beat up or kill those "enemies of the people."

Many years after his influence gained virtual hegemony, I am not aware of a single book authored by any of his followers that is of lasting value in the study of the modern Middle East. Not one. On the other hand, environmentalists should protest the forest murders to manufacture paper wasted on the ideological junk that is turned out on the region by academics today.

While Said came from an incredibly rich family and was raised from childhood as a Westerner (I personally witnessed him wearing earphones to hear the Arabic translation into English at a Palestine National Council meeting), Fouad Ajami came from a poor Shia Muslim family and grew up in a Lebanese village.

Ajami's brilliance, balance, and genuine adherence to democracy along with his people's welfare has been rewarded in the West with a response ranging from intellectual persecution to mere neglect.

He's also a great guy in person. Only a few days ago, a Lebanese student told me about meeting Ajami, who he didn't know, on a train ride and how friendly and kind Ajami behaved toward him. I also had an extensive conversation with a childhood friend about how Said used to make fun of the Arabs in private in terms that would shock the socks off the Politically Correct gang.

I'm leaving out a lot of detailed anecdotes about both men that demonstrate my thesis.

Pick up book and almost any article by Ajami and you will meet with a truly creative and incisive mind. Arguably, he is the greatest living thinker on the contemporary Middle East. (Lest anyone misread this as a slight toward Bernard Lewis, I would say he is the greatest living Middle East historian.)

If the West and the Arab world listened to Ajami rather than Said they would be both far better off.

All of this is by way of introduction to Ajami's latest article, "The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt," published in the Wall Street Journal. He raises the hitherto neglected economic angle on the Arab world's recent history and opens the door to a fascinating comparison with Western history. Ajami also adds an important point in understanding what went wrong in the Arab world.

Though I already knew the basic points he made, Ajami's article inspired me to see these issues in a different way. I reprint here in its entirety:

"The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt"

By Fouad Ajami
 
Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2011

The late great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek would have seen the Arab Spring for the economic revolt it was right from the start. For generations the Arab populations had bartered away their political freedom for economic protection. They rose in rebellion when it dawned on them that the bargain had not worked, that the system of subsidies, and the promise of equality held out by the autocrats, had proven a colossal failure.

What Hayek would call the Arab world's "road to serfdom" began when the old order of merchants and landholders was upended in the 1950s and '60s by a political and military class that assumed supreme power. The officers and ideologues who came to rule Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Yemen were men contemptuous of the marketplace and of economic freedom.

As a rule, they hailed from the underclass and had no regard for the sanctity of wealth and property. They had come to level the economic order, and they put the merchant classes, and those who were the mainstay of the free market, to flight.

It was in the 1950s that the foreign minorities who had figured prominently in the economic life of Egypt after the cotton boom of the 1860s, and who had drawn that country into the web of the world economy, would be sent packing. The Jews and the Greeks and the Italians would take with them their skills and habits. The military class, and the Fabian socialists around them, distrusted free trade and the marketplace and were determined to rule over them or without them.

The Egyptian way would help tilt the balance against the private sector in other Arab lands as well. In Iraq, the Jews of the country, on its soil for well over two millennia, were dispossessed and banished in 1950-51. They had mastered the retail trade and were the most active community in the commerce of Baghdad. Some Shiite merchants stepped into their role, but this was short-lived. Military officers and ideologues of the Baath Party from the "Sunni triangle"—men with little going for them save their lust for wealth and power—came into possession of the country and its oil wealth. They, like their counterparts in Egypt, were believers in central planning and "social equality." By the 1980s, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni thug born from crushing poverty, would come to think of the wealth of the country as his own.

In Libya, a deranged Moammar Gadhafi did Saddam one better. After his 1969 military coup, he demolished the private sector in 1973 and established what he called "Islamic Socialism." Gadhafi's so-called popular democracy basically nationalized the entire economy, rendering the Libyan people superfluous by denying them the skills and the social capital necessary for a viable life.

In his 1944 masterpiece, "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek wrote that in freedom-crushing totalitarian societies "the worst get on top." In words that described the Europe of his time but also capture the contemporary Arab condition, he wrote: "To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, it is not enough that a man should be prepared to accept specious justification of vile deeds; he must himself be prepared actively to break every moral rule he

has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for him. Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments must have no moral convictions of their own."

This well describes the decades-long brutal dictatorship of Syria's Hafez al-Assad, and now his son Bashar's rule. It is said that Hafez began his dynasty with little more than a modest officer's salary. His dominion would beget a family of enormous wealth: The Makhloufs, the in-laws of the House of Assad, came to control crucial sectors of the Syrian economy.

The Alawites, the religious sect to which the Assad clan belongs, had been poor peasants and sharecroppers, but political and military power raised them to new heights. The merchants of Damascus and Aleppo, and the landholders in Homs and Hama, were forced to submit to the new order. They could make their peace with the economy of extortion, cut Alawite officers into long-established businesses, or be swept aside.

But a decade or so ago this ruling bargain—subsidies and economic redistribution in return for popular quiescence—began to unravel. The populations in Arab lands had swelled and it had become virtually impossible to guarantee jobs for the young and poorly educated. Economic nationalism, and the war on the marketplace, had betrayed the Arabs. They had the highest unemployment levels among developing nations, the highest jobless rate among the young, and the lowest rates of economic participation among women. The Arab political order was living on borrowed time, and on fear of official terror.

Attempts at "reform" were made. But in the arc of the Arab economies, the public sector of one regime became the private sector of the next. Sons, sons-in-law and nephews of the rulers made a seamless transition into the rigged marketplace when "privatization" was forced onto stagnant enterprises. Of course, this bore no resemblance to market-driven economics in a transparent system. This was crony capitalism of the worst kind, and it was recognized as such by Arab populations.

Indeed, this economic plunder was what finally severed the bond between Hosni Mubarak and an Egyptian population known for its timeless patience and stoicism.

The sad truth of Arab social and economic development is that the free-market reforms and economic liberalization that remade East Asia and Latin America bypassed the Arab world. This is the great challenge of the Arab Spring and of the forces that brought it about. The marketplace has had few, if any, Arab defenders. If the tremendous upheaval at play in Arab lands is driven by a desire to capture state power—and the economic prerogatives that come with political power—the revolution will reproduce the failures of the past.

In Yemen, a schoolteacher named Amani Ali, worn out by the poverty and anarchy of that poorest of Arab states, recently gave voice to a sentiment that has been the autocrats' prop: "We don't want change," he said. "We don't want freedom. We want food and safety." True wisdom, and an end to their road to serfdom, will only come when the Arab people make the connection between economic and political liberty.

Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is co-chairman of Hoover's Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

The Race in The Mid East To Fill the Vacuum Created By Lack Of U.S. Leadership

By Barry Rubin 

In the absence of U.S. leadership, others want to direct the Middle East. The battle is becoming a competition of radicals for run the region. That’s what happened in the 1950s and 1960s and it isn’t good. Then, the competition was between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Today, the contestants are Turkey, Iran, and a radical Egypt, with Iraq and Syria sidelined due to internal issues. Meanwhile, the Saudis have been forced to take over leadership of the remaining moderate Arab states (the Gulf sheikdoms, plus Morocco and Jordan) since they can no longer depend on America for protection.

The Egyptian foreign minister has warned Iran not to try to intervene too much in the Gulf, posing as protector of Saudi Arabia and the smaller states. This is a hint that Egypt wants to resume its pre-Sadat role as leader of the Arab world. Cairo will see itself as protector of the Muslim, Sunni, and Arab world against Persian, Shia Muslim Iran; Turkish Turkey; and Jewish Israel. With Iraq turned inward and Syria turned upside down, Egypt is the only remaining Arab state that can make a play for region-wide power.

That Egypt wants to stop Iranian expansion is a good thing, but that the next government—a radical, possibly Islamist one, will have its own ambitions isn’t. I predict that Egypt and Iran will tussle over who will be the patron of Hamas and that Egypt will win. It also seems likely that a radical, Islamist-influenced Egypt would be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jordan, too.

The Saudis are also reaching out. Their leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in sending troops to Bahrain and tightening the security links among the members is another sign that they aren’t depending on the United States any more. Equally impressive is the GCC’s invitation to Jordan to join, a total break with past policy. This is a good thing since the Jordanians need help (particularly money) to stay stable and fend off Iranian influence and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.

Iran’s ambitions are well-known but the statement of parliament speaker Ali Larijani (generally regarded as a “moderate” on the Islamic republic’s political spectrum) is still an escalation. He said that Tehran will “protect” Muslim states from U.S. and Israeli aggression. Clearly, this doesn’t include Libya where the Iranians hope that the United States and NATO will overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi and open the way for a radical Islamist dictatorship.

Of course, Iranian protection implies that regime’s hands around the neck of other countries. The regime now has Lebanon as a satellite, tremendous influence in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, patronage over Hamas, and an alliance with Turkey and Syria. That’s a pretty good situation. And once it has nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime believes it can do whatever it wants and nobody will complain too much.

Then there’s Turkey. It is foolish and certainly outdated to see Turkey as somehow on the “West’s” side against Iran. First, Turkey is allied with Iran to a large extent. Second, if and when the two countries differ it is about how to carve up others. Kemal Ataturk’s wise injunction—the equivalent of George Washington’s avoiding “foreign entanglements”—of “peace at home, peace abroad” is being thrown on the garbage heap with all of his other hard-earned wisdom.

I don’t like the use of the word “Ottoman” to apply to post-Ataturk Turkey as there are simply too many differences and confusing nuances. After all, in modern history, despite the fact that its sultan was also the Muslim caliph, the Ottoman Empire functioned internationally as a normative power, not an Islamist state. It was also a status quo power seeking to preserve an existing empire and easily forming alliances with European states.

The new Turkey is ambitious, Islamist, anti-Western, and not likely to be a force for stability. In his victory speech, reelected Prime Minister Erdoğan did not mention Europe or the West even once. Though the Western media didn’t notice it in praising the victory of the Turkish Islamists he spoke as a Muslim leader. .

Breaking with the orientation of the Turkish republic since the 1920s, Erdoğan began his speech by praising, “All friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku and Nicosia.”

He added: “The hopes of the victims and the oppressed have won,” and, “Beirut has won as much as İzmir. West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakır. The Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans have won, just as Turkey has won.”

In talking about the Middle East, he wasn’t including Israel; in the Caucasus, he didn’t mean Armenia or Georgia; and as for the Balkans he didn’t mean Greece or Croatia or Yugoslavia.

As a Turkish journalist explained:
“The fact that he mentioned Sarajevo, while avoiding mention of Europe, clearly shows that he sees himself as the leader of the Muslims and that of those Muslims who are oppressed, not by their regimes, in the view of Erdoğan, but by the Christian West. So, Erdoğan’s world view, based on juxtaposing the oppressed East vis-à-vis the imperialist West, is here to stay.”

Is it of some concern that the leader of Turkey speaks in the same terms as the leader of Iran? You wouldn’t know it from Western coverage.

One point that isn’t properly understood is that if Iran, post-secular Turkey, post-Mubarak Egypt, and Syria (though sidelined by its own internal problems for now) may be contending to some extent, it isn’t good for Western or U.S. interests. They’re squabbling about who gets to devour what.

In this context, the battle over Syria should be understood. It is widely claimed that Turkey has broken with the Syrian regime as if this were a humanitarian impulse. There are proposals to use Turkey as a mediator and even reports that President Barack Obama is consulting Turkey about what to do in Syria.

Big mistake. True, Turkey has been allied with the dictatorship of President Hafiz al-Asad. But the revolution has posed a dilemma for Ankara. Asad is good. After all, he hates the United States (though the Obama administration doesn’t seem to notice) and Israel, supports revolutionary Islamists (Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents), and is an ally of Iran. Iran and Hizballah, both of them Shia Muslim, prefer their ally Asad, who claims to be Shia Muslim.

But for the (Sunni) Islamists in Ankara, the Islamists in Damascus are better. The Turkish regime doesn’t want a moderate, pro-Western democratic government in Syria; it wants an Islamist, even more anti-American government in Syria.

So the Middle East is returning to a higher level of conflict and eventually bloodshed, in part thanks to U.S. bumbling. It’s a typical story. Obama thinks American power is evil and bullying, but by withdrawing it (except for the bizarre adventure in Libya), he is contributing to anarchy and the destruction of legitimate U.S. interests.
By the way, notice that—at least for the moment—the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflict is of no importance in all this. Yet that’s the issue the West is obsessed with, usually in ways that would weaken Israel and thus strengthen all of its enemies.

It’s a very sad and even more dangerous story. The hope is that as all these problems and disasters become more visible, the Western democracies will wake up and change their policies. Every minute counts.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are teased and other articles are available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.   

The UN And Bin Laden, More Proof The World Body Should Be Ignored

There is no greater example of the fact that the United Nations has become an irrelevant organization in today's world than its reaction to the death of terrorist fiend Osama Bin Laden.  Anne Bayefsky reported that the United Nations is not too happy with the Bin Laden take-down.

The U.N.’s top human rights official [Navi Pillay] took time this past week to concern herself about the treatment Bin Laden received as he was killed. She demanded to know “the precise facts surrounding his killing” for the purpose of determining its legality. According to Pillay, “counter-terrorism activity…in compliance with international law” means “you’re not allowed…to commit extra-judicial killings.” And this requirement would only be satisfied if the Americans had stuck by what she claimed was their “stated…intention…to arrest bin Laden if they could.”

In the warped mind of the leadership of the United Nations, killing the worst terrorist in the world is "extra judicial."

On Friday, two professors and part-time U.N. “experts,” Christof Heyns and Martin Scheinin, issued a joint statement on Bin Laden’s killing. The two academics claimed that “the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially-decided punishment.” They also insisted that the U.N. was entitled to receive “more facts” “to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards.” Those standards would be violated, they claimed, unless “the planning of the mission allowed an effort to capture Bin Laden.”

That's a mistake, terrorism is not a crime, it's an act of war. Calling it a crime suggests that the terrorists can be arrested and in the context of jurisprudence could spend a few years in prison, talk about how they hate their moms to prison therapists, and get out all rehabilitated and ready to sing Kumbayah.
There is nothing further from the truth.  Bin Laden believes that it is he and his radical form of Islam is in the right, and the Western World is what needs to be rehabilitated. 

Under the laws of war, combatants are a “legitimate” target for attack. A protocol to the Geneva Conventions defines a legitimate military target as one “which…makes an effective contribution to military action and whose…destruction…offers a definite military advantage.” This description fits Usama bin Laden. Bin Laden’s killing was, therefore, a justifiable homicide and incurs no liability. There was no necessity that the Navy SEALs must have intended to arrest him or make an effort to capture him alive.

Allow me to put this a different way.  Bin Laden declared war on the United States, he killed thousands of innocent American civilians and our heroes overseas. At the time he was killed there was evidence Bin Laden was planning a new attack on the US this time he was going to attack the commuter rails. Killing that terrorist was a matter of self-defense.  Personally, I don't care if Bin Laden had a gun in his hand when he was shot dead, if he remained free he would have killed more Americans. If he remained alive his terrorist network would have probably killed others in an attempt to get their leader back.

The United Nations has no desire to fight terrorism, even though they have been trying for years the world body has not even been able to define terror.  The reason? Because they want to be able to exclude terrorism against Israel in their definition.

The UN's refusal to confront terror makes it irrelevant in today's world, as it is the key issue facing the United States and the World. Despite all of the deaths caused by the terrorist menace the UN is still convinced that if they keep their heads in the sand long enough the problem will just go away. Terrorism should not be treated as a mere crime as Christof Heyns and Martin Scheinin suggested, it is a fight for our lives. That is a fact obvious to anybody who lived through 9/11 or has a family member fighting for this country overseas. It is obvious to people in Spain or Great Britain, who lived through/or had family killed during terror attacks in their countries, it is obvious to Israeli's whose country celebrates its 63th birthday tonight, and has been on the front lines in against terrorism for much of that time.

Whether Bin Laden was killed with a gun in his hand or not, by killing the terror chieftain the navy seals did the right thing. If the UN objects, maybe we should save ourselves some money by holding back US funding of the the world body.