Monday 25 August 2014

The Guardian view on Pope Francis’s seeming leftward lurch

The pope is determined to take a critical view of capitalism

Editorial                                      Guardian/UK                        24 August 2014

 Pope Francis has never been a friend of North American capitalism. Now he is, or may appear to be, rehabilitating liberation theology, one of the most bitterly contested doctrines of the last century. He has praised the martyr Oscar Romero, murdered in his cathedral for opposing the junta in El Salvador, and speeded on the process of his beatification, which had been delayed in the Vatican. Francis has even lifted the suspension from priestly duties of Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a priest who took office as a government minister under the Sandinistas.

All this matters beyond the arcane nastiness of church politics. In the fierce and sometimes savage and bloody class warfare waged throughout Latin America both sides took theological comfort from Christianity. The right saw its opponents as godless communists, which many were; the left heard the direct command of Jesus to live with the poor and outcast. The Vatican came down firmly on the side of the oppressors.

This was in part because under John Paul II and his predecessors communism seemed obviously the greatest enemy, and Marxism the greatest delusion, to be facing mankind. To compromise with the oppressor would have destroyed the church in Poland. It followed – or appeared to – that to compromise with communism anywhere must be wrong. Yet there is a style of Marxism which comes close to agreeing with Catholics about the aboriginal wrongness, or original sin, of the world we now live in. The communist revolution and the second coming both hope to solve the same problems of injustice and suffering, although the return of Jesus has the advantage that it can’t be tested in practice. The faithful need not be disillusioned in the way that Marxists have so often been.

Communism has now been defeated so utterly that the church can afford to be magnanimous. What was good in it can be admitted and admired. The threat of violent revolution has receded. The necessity of other kinds of revolution remains. Francis himself has spoken of “flipping the tortilla” of change: famously he wants “a poor church, for the poor”. But this is still not a rehabilitation of liberation theology. Romero himself was not a liberation theologian but a theological conservative horrified by the bloodthirsty savagery of the junta in El Salvador.

 Nor is Francis a Marxist. He has said that he has Marxist friends but if he has any political views they are perhaps Peronist. That is not a category which makes sense in European terms, which will not bother him. Perhaps the most important message of this shift is that in future the Catholic church’s world view will be less defined by European intellectual currents – and even less by those in the US.

NOTE from Wikipedia: On June 4, 2008, he was elected by acclamation to preside over 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009.

Shortly after his election, D'Escoto stated during a press conference: "They elected a priest. And I hope no one is offended if I say that love is what is most needed in this world. And that selfishness is what has gotten us into the terrible quagmire in which the world is sinking, almost irreversibly, unless something big happens. This may sound like a sermon. Well, OK."

D'Escoto was appointed foreign minister after the Sandinista triumph (in Cuba) in 1979. He served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega's FSLN government from 1979 to 1990. The pope denounced him and two other priests, brothers Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal, who all served in the Nicaraguan government, because they did not resign from office and were therefore in violation of Church law. D'Escoto was suspended by the Vatican in 1985, together with the two other priests. The suspension stayed in place until August 2014, when Pope Francis lifted it.

Another war in Iraq won’t fix the disaster of the last

The Yazidis need aid, but military intervention by states that destroyed Iraq will deepen the crisis now tearing it apart

Seumas Milne                                      Guardian/UK                                         13 August 2014


Barely two years after US forces were withdrawn from Iraq, they’re back in action. Barack Obama has now become the fourth US president in a row to launch military action in Iraq. We’re now into the sixth day of US air attacks on the self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as Isis – the sectarian fundamentalists who have taken over vast tracts of Sunni Iraq and are carrying out vicious ethnic cleansing against minorities in the north.

The victims of this sectarian onslaught need urgent humanitarian aid and refuge. But the idea that the states that invaded and largely destroyed Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives should claim the cause of humanitarianism for yet another military intervention in Iraq beggars belief.

But of course it’s not just about the Yazidis or the Christians. As Obama has made clear, they’re something of a side issue compared with the defence of the increasingly autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan – long a key US and unofficial Israeli ally – and American interests in its oil boom capital Irbil, in particular. The US is back in Iraq for the long haul, the president signalled, spelling out that his aim is to prevent IS establishing “some sort of caliphate through Syria and Iraq” – which is exactly what the group regards itself as having done.

The idea that the states responsible for at least 500,000 deaths, 4 million refugees, mass torture and ethnic cleansing in Iraq over the past decade should now present themselves as having a “responsibility to protect” Iraqis verges on satire. The majority of Iraq’s million-strong Christian community was in fact forced out of the country under US-British occupation. The state sectarianism that triggered the Sunni revolt and rise of IS in Iraq – the ultimate blowback – was built into the political structures set up by George Bush.

Britain and the US – which didn’t want to “take sides” when Egypt’s coup leaders carried out one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in history last summer – are the last countries on Earth to bring humanitarian relief to Iraq. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have a responsibility to provide aid. But the record of western humanitarian intervention over the past two decades isn’t a happy one. In 1991, no-fly zones in Iraq allowed massacres of Shia rebels in the south and only functioned with thousands of troops on the ground in Kurdistan, followed by 12 years of bombing raids.

In 1999, Nato’s air campaign in Kosovo, also without UN authorisation, triggered a massive increase in the ethnic cleansing it was meant to halt. In Libya, in 2011, Nato’s intervention ratcheted up the death toll by a factor of about 10 and gave cover for rampant ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate killing. Its legacy today is complete state breakdown and civil war.

It might be said that the latest US bombing campaign in Iraq has greater legitimacy because the Iraqi government appealed for support. But it did so back in June, after which Obama stayed his hand until the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, could be replaced with someone more acceptable to the US.

At the same time, US arms are now being supplied directly to Kurdish forces, independently of the central government, fuelling the disintegration of the Iraqi state. And IS – whose sectarian ideology is in reality only a more violent version of the Saudi regime’s, the west’s most important ally in the Arab world – is consolidating its hold on western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it is in effect allied with the US and its friends.

Selective humanitarian intervention without UN and regional authorisation is simply a tool of power politics, not solidarity. To imagine that the solution to the disastrous legacy of one intervention is to launch yet another is delusional folly. Its rise is a tragedy for both peoples. But another round of US and British military

intervention would only strengthen IS and boost its credibility – as well as increase the risk of terror attacks at home. The likelihood is that it can only be overcome by a functioning state in both Iraq and Syria. That in turn demands a decisive break with the sectarian and ethnic politics bequeathed by a decade of war and intervention. [Abridged] Twitter: @SeumasMilne

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/13/war-in-iraq-yazidis-aid-military-intervention

The sponsors of ideology find they have made a monster

Having spent billions, the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are finding that money can't buy loyalty
Paul Vallely                   Independent/UK                            24 August 2014
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Thanks to the immediacy of television, innocent civilians in Syria were writhing from gas attacks before our eyes, with the blame laid on their own government. Yet despite a red line having been crossed by this use of chemical weapons, the international community decided against air strikes on the Assad regime. Instead we encouraged two oil-rich Arab states, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to continue arming rebel groups to oust the ruthless dictator in Damascus. Now, thanks to those weapons, one of the groups has grown into the Frankenstein's monster of the so-called Islamic State whose brutal fighters have swept through Syria and Iraq, crucifying and beheading like a deadly inhuman tide.
Saudi Arabia has been a major source of financing to rebel and terrorist organisations since the 1970s, thanks to the amount it has spent on spreading its puritan version of Islam, developed by Mohammed Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century. The US State Department has estimated that over the past four decades Riyadh has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) into charitable foundations in an attempt to replace mainstream Sunni Islam with the harsh intolerance of its Wahhabism. EU intelligence experts estimate that 15 to 20 per cent of this has been diverted to al-Qa'ida and other violent jihadists.
The only other official Wahhabi country is Saudi's Gulf neighbour Qatar, which is, per capita, the richest country in the world. It likes to paint itself as a more liberal and open version of the Muslim sect. Its newest and biggest mosque is named after Wahhab, but this is the fun, football-loving version. There is no religious police force or powerful class of clerics to enforce morality. Qatar's Al Jazeera television network stands in contrast with the region's state-controlled media, and the Qataris are investing in the West, including the London Stock Exchange.
But that is not the crucial difference. Where the Saudis tend to support restrictive strong-man regimes like their own across the Arab world, the Qataris, throughout the Arab Spring, have backed grassroots Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The tiny country has given $200m to Hamas, which is constantly firing low-grade rockets from Gaza into Israel. It is more open-minded towards the Shia Muslims of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, whom the Saudis see as enemies. It even has good relations with the Taliban. And it has been the biggest funder of the Syrian rebels, with sources in Doha estimating it has spent as much as $3bn in Syria alone.
 The result of all this is that Qatar and Saudi have channelled funds, arms and salaries to different groups in Syria. Until last year they were creating rival military alliances and structures. But their efforts at discrimination have been in vain. On the ground the rebel groups have been porous, with personnel switching to whichever was the best supplied. Fighters grew their beards or shaved them off to fit the ideology of the latest supplier. Many moved to whichever group was having most success on the battlefield. Key Qataris and Saudis felt it didn't matter as long as the result was the fall of Assad. But eventually two of the most extreme groups began to dominate, and eventually one of them, Jabhat al-Nusra, lost dominance to the other, Isis – the ruthless and potent force which has declared itself the Islamic State.
Only towards the end have the funders realised the error of their strategy. The Qatar government has stemmed the flow of funds. At first it believed it could change the ideology of those it funded once the war against Assad was over. But now it realises it was creating a sleeping monster, as the Saudis had done when they financed the Taliban to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. In April, the Saudis sacked the head of their intelligence services, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who had been responsible for the details of arming the Syrian rebels. His blunders led to the massive empowerment of the kind of grassroots Islamism which is the greatest threat to the Saudi claim to be the leader of global Islam because of its vast wealth and its custodianship of the holy city of Mecca.
They have left it too late. The genie is out of the bottle. Some funds continue to flow from wealthy Qatari individuals and from conservative Saudi preachers collecting funds through their television shows. But the terrorists of the Islamic State, who were earning $8m a month from a Syrian gas field where they have established robust logistical lines, have added a further $1m a day from the half dozen Iraqi oilfields they have seized. Worse still, the conflict in Iraq has solidified into religiously defined ethnic identity lines.  [Abridged]
Paul Vallely is visiting professor in public ethics at Chester University
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/too-late-the-sponsors-of-ideology-find-they-have-made-a-monster-9687723.html

My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.

 By Desmond Tutu Pub. By Haaretz Aug. 14, 2014 

A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens ... as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.

I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”

I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land. “I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar. Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.

We have also witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar. It is a movement that is gathering pace.

Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred. We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from. We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled “terrorist” were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.

We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.

The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.

Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders. But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically. At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.

The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo. Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.

It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.

Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel’s policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreement settlement in the future that is acceptable for all.

The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.

I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence. But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.

No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.

Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence. Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.

The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.

The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine. 

My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.

It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state’s policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.

People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.

Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.

Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free. He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.

Monday 18 August 2014

In Ferguson the violence of the state created the violence of the street

Gary Younge                                      GuardianUK                                   Monday 18 August 2014 

In 1966, Martin Luther King started to campaign against segregation in Chicago only to find his efforts thwarted by violent mobs and a scheming mayor. Marginalised by the city’s establishment, he could feel that non-violence both as a strategy and as a principle was eroding among his supporters. “A lot of people have lost faith in the establishment … They’ve lost faith in the democratic process. They’ve lost faith in non-violence … [T]hose who make this peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution inevitable...” The next year there were more than 150 riots across the country, from Minneapolis to Tampa.
As the situation escalates in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where police recently shot an unarmed black man as he walked down the street, many are clearly losing faith. As the first day of curfew drew to a close, hundreds of police in riot gear swept through the streets, using tear gas, smoke canisters and rubber bullets against an increasingly agitated crowd.
Protesters insist the police action was unprovoked. Police say it followed shootings, firebombs, looting and, crucially, an attempted attack on the area they are using as a command centre. In a statement explaining his deployment of the national guard, the governor, Jay Nixon, blamed “the violent criminal acts of an organised and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk.”
Such statements ignore the nature, scale and source of the problem. When an 18-year-old is shot in daylight for walking down the middle of the street holding his arms up; and when his shooter is whisked out of town by the state, then the residents of Ferguson were clearly already “at risk” from those who would commit “premeditated criminal acts”. What could be more “deliberate” and “coordinated” than releasing a video that claims to be of Michael Brown stealing cigarillos the same day the police release the name of the policeman who shot him, when the alleged theft had nothing to do with the shooting.

For some then the police have come too late to the notion that they are there to “protect” lives. “The law,” wrote James Baldwin, “is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer.” Those who call for law and order now must understand that there is no order because men with badges have been acting lawlessly.
As I wrote after the riots in London three years ago: “Insisting on the criminality of those involved, as though that alone explains their motivations and the context is irrelevant, is fatuous. To stress criminality does not deny the political nature of what took place, it simply chooses to only partially describe it…When a group of people join forces to flout both law and social convention, they are acting politically.”

For good reason, the nature of such rebellions troubles many. Resistance to occupation is often romanticised but never pretty. And Ferguson – a mostly black town under curfew in which the entire political power structure is white, with a militarised police force that killed a black child – was under occupation.
Riots are also polarising. People ask: what could violent protest possibly achieve? It is a good question. But it only has any validity if they also question the nature of the “peace” preceding it. Those who call for calm must question how calm anyone can be in the knowledge that their son, brother or lover could be shot in such a way.
People have a right to resist occupation, even if we don’t necessarily agree with every method they use to do so.
As I also wrote, following the British disturbances: “[Riots] are the crudest tool for those who have few options. By definition, they are chaotic. Rich people don’t riot because they have other forms of influence. Riots are a class act.”
Nobody in their right mind wants more violent protests. But nobody wants more Michael Browns either. And those two things – the violence of the state and the violence of the street – are connected. “A riot,” said Martin Luther King, “is the language of the unheard.” The people on the streets don’t donate thousands of dollars to anyone’s campaign. They don’t get a seat at any table where decisions are made or have the ear of the powerful. But with four black men killed by the police in the country in the last four weeks, they have a lot to say, and precious few avenues through which to say it. The question now is who’s listening.     
[Abridged]

It’s no longer only Christians who shape UK foreign policy

Mary Dejevsky                             Guardian/UK                                       18 August 2014

Canon Andrew White, interviewed by the BBC about the dwindling number of Christians in Iraq, suggested that the British government should mount an airlift to bring 20,000 to 30,000 of them to safety in the UK. Local churches, he said, would support them. The arguments were set out most forcefully by the bishop of Leeds in a letter to David Cameron, which had been written, he said, with the support of the archbishop of Canterbury.

In it, the bishop contrasted the “notable and admirable” focus by politicians and media on the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi minority with the “increasing silence about the plight of tens of thousands of Christians”. “Despite appalling persecution,” he went on, “they seem to have fallen from consciousness. His observation is not wrong. Only four months ago the prime minister was saying that the UK “should be more confident about our status as a Christian country” – yet he and his ministers have been conspicuously slow to acknowledge, let alone do anything about, the expulsions of Christians from many parts of the Middle East.


And there is one obvious reason. Less than a year away from a general election in which immigration is likely to loom large and Ukip threatens incursions into hitherto safe Tory territory, the last thing a Conservative-led government needs is the arrival of tens of thousands of new asylum seekers, however valid their case for refuge might be.

This time last year, when the international outcry over Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons was at its height, the government offered no welcome for Syrian refugees, insisting that it was giving generously to provide camps in the region. A similarly hard line is evident now. Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries and even Australia are offering homes to new Iraqi refugees, but not Britain – even though our role in the Iraq war could be seen as leaving us with some moral responsibility.


There is, though, rather more in play here than raw numbers of potential asylum seekers. The prominence of the bishops, and their stress on the plight of displaced Christians, highlights something else: the competing pressures on UK foreign policy from the demographic changes taking place in Britain. It is not just migration that will be at issue in the next election, but the ability of this country – with or without Scotland – to function in the future with a single, agreed set of interests abroad.

The conflicts afflicting what might be called the greater Middle East, but not just this region, pose the question with a particular clarity. The UK t is not only a Christian country, and if persecuted Christians are privileged above other asylum seekers, how might this be interpreted by the growing non-Christian (especially Muslim) part of the population? What political or social effects might it have?


Consider also the latest fighting in Gaza. The UK has traditionally behaved as a staunch ally of Israel. This time, the government’s sympathy for Israel’s actions went too far for Sayeeda Warsi, a Foreign Office minister who is also a Muslim, who resigned from her post. Lady Warsi represents a big electoral loss to the Conservatives, who still struggle to appeal to voters from ethnic minorities.

A mixed society, in which ethnic and religious groups can have their say, is possible, and Britain has been more successful than many countries in bringing this about. But translating this into a coherent foreign policy is not so easy, as different groups, wielding different degrees of influence, want to shape it according to their own, at times mutually exclusive, interests.

This is not a uniquely British dilemma. The Turkish populations of Germany and Austria are a factor in the foreign policy decisions of those countries, and in the US anti-Castro exiles who once dictated Cuba policy are being superseded by Latin Americans arguing for easier immigration. The extent to which religious difference threatens to impinge on UK foreign policy, however, is new, and will only grow. No wonder Cameron is wary of granting the bishops’ request to save persecuted Christians before others, but his very hesitation speaks eloquently of changing times, at home as well as abroad.


[Abridged]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/18/christian-foreign-policy-persecuted-iraqis-diverse      

Eyeless in Gaza

 Uri Avnery                                          Gush Shalom                                            16 August 2014

THE TROUBLE with war is that it has two sides. Everything would be so much easier if war had only one side. Ours, of course. There you are, drawing up a wonderful plan for the next war, preparing it, training for it, until everything is perfect. And then the war starts, and to your utmost surprise it appears that there is another side, too, which also has a wonderful plan, and has prepared it and trained for it.

When the two plans meet, everything goes wrong. Both plans break down. You don't know what's going to happen. How to go on. You do things you have not planned for. And when you have had enough of it and want to get out, you don't know how. It's so much more difficult to end a war than to start a war, especially when both sides need to declare victory. That's where we are now.

HOW DID it all start? Depends where you want to begin. Like everywhere else, every event in Gaza is a reaction to another event. You do something because the other side did something. Which they did because you did something. One can unravel this until the beginning of history. Or at least until Samson the Hero.

Samson, it will be remembered, was captured by the Philistines, blinded and brought to Gaza. There he committed suicide by bringing the temple down on himself and all the leaders and people, crying out: "Let my soul die with the Philistines!" (Judges 16:30) 

If that's too remote, let's start with the beginning of the present occupation, 1967. In February 1969, I warned: "(If we go on) we shall be faced with a terrible choice - to suffer from a wave of terrorism that will cover the entire country, or to engage in acts of revenge and oppression so brutal that they will corrupt our souls and cause the whole world to condemn us." I mention this not (only) to blow my own horn, but to show that any reasonable person could have foreseen what was going to happen.

IT TOOK a long time for Gaza to reach this point. Yasser Arafat, son of a Gaza Strip family, returned to Palestine and set up his HQ in Gaza. A new airport was built. Plans for a large new sea-port were circulating. If the port had been built, Gaza would have become a flourishing commercial hub. The standard of living would have risen steeply, the inclination of the people to vote for a radical Islamic party would have declined.

WHY DID this not happen? Israel refused to allow the port to be built. Contrary to a specific undertaking in the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel cut off all passages between the Strip and the West Bank. The aim was to prevent any possibility of a viable Palestinian state being set up. 

Gaza sank into misery. In the 2006 Palestinian elections, under the supervision of ex-President Jimmy Carter, the people of Gaza gave a relative majority to the Hamas party. When Hamas was denied power, it took the Gaza Strip by force, with the population applauding. The Israeli government reacted by imposing a blockade. Practically nothing was let out, which is incomprehensible from the “security” point of view of weapons “smuggling” but clear from the point of view of “strangling". Unemployment reached almost 60%.

The Strip is roughly 40 km long and 10 km wide. In the north and the east it borders Israel, in the west it borders the sea, which is controlled by the Israeli navy. In the south it borders Egypt, which is now ruled by a brutal anti-Islamic dictatorship, allied with Israel. As the slogan goes, it is "the world's largest open-air prison".

BOTH SIDES now proclaim that their aim is to put an end to this situation. But they mean two very different things. The Israeli side wants the blockade to remain in force, though in a more liberal form but under strict supervision. No airport. No sea-port. Hamas must be prevented from re-arming. The Palestinian side wants the blockade to be removed once and for all, even officially. They want their port and airport.

THERE CAN be no real solution for Gaza without a real solution for Palestine. The blockade must end, with serious security concerns of both sides properly addressed. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank (with East Jerusalem) must be reunited. The four "safe passages" between the two territories, promised in the Oslo agreement, must at last be opened.

There must be Palestinian elections, long overdue, for the presidency and the parliament, with a new government accepted by all Palestinian factions, recognized by the world community. Peace negotiations, based on the two-state solution, must start and be concluded within a reasonable time. Or do what Samson did: commit suicide.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1408109792/ [Abridged]

Another war in Iraq won’t fix the disaster of the last

Seumas Milne                                    Guardian/UK                              13 August 2014

Barely two years after US forces were withdrawn from Iraq, they’re back in action. Barack Obama has now become the fourth US president in a row to launch military action in Iraq. We’re now into the sixth day of US air attacks on the self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as Isis – the sectarian fundamentalists who have taken over vast tracts of Sunni Iraq and are carrying out vicious ethnic cleansing against minorities in the north.

The victims of this sectarian onslaught need urgent humanitarian aid and refuge. But the idea that the states that invaded and largely destroyed Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives should claim the cause of humanitarianism for yet another military intervention in Iraq beggars belief.

But of course it’s not just about the Yazidis or the Christians. As Obama has made clear, they’re something of a side issue compared with the defence of the increasingly autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan – long a key US and unofficial Israeli ally – and American interests in its oil boom capital Irbil, in particular. The US is back in Iraq for the long haul, the president signalled, spelling out that his aim is to prevent IS establishing “some sort of caliphate through Syria and Iraq” – which is exactly what the group regards itself as having done.

 The idea that the states responsible for at least 500,000 deaths, 4 million refugees, mass torture and ethnic cleansing in Iraq over the past decade should now present themselves as having a “responsibility to protect” Iraqis verges on satire. The majority of Iraq’s million-strong Christian community was in fact forced out of the country under US-British occupation. The state sectarianism that triggered the Sunni revolt and rise of IS in Iraq – the ultimate blowback – was built into the political structures set up by George Bush.

Britain and the US – which didn’t want to “take sides” when Egypt’s coup leaders carried out one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in history last summer – are the last countries on Earth to bring humanitarian relief to Iraq. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have a responsibility to provide aid. But the record of western humanitarian intervention over the past two decades isn’t a happy one. In 1991, no-fly zones in Iraq allowed massacres of Shia rebels in the south and only functioned with thousands of troops on the ground in Kurdistan, followed by 12 years of bombing raids.

In 1999, Nato’s air campaign in Kosovo, also without UN authorisation, triggered a massive increase in the ethnic cleansing it was meant to halt. In Libya, in 2011, Nato’s intervention ratcheted up the death toll by a factor of about 10 and gave cover for rampant ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate killing. Its legacy today is complete state breakdown and civil war.

 It might be said that the latest US bombing campaign in Iraq has greater legitimacy because the Iraqi government appealed for support. But it did so back in June, after which Obama stayed his hand until the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, could be replaced with someone more acceptable to the US.

At the same time, US arms are now being supplied directly to Kurdish forces, independently of the central government, fuelling the disintegration of the Iraqi state. And IS – whose sectarian ideology is in reality only a more violent version of the Saudi regime’s, the west’s most important ally in the Arab world – is consolidating its hold on western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it is in effect allied with the US and its friends.

Selective humanitarian intervention without UN and regional authorisation is simply a tool of power politics, not solidarity. To imagine that the solution to the disastrous legacy of one intervention is to launch yet another is delusional folly. Its rise is a tragedy for both peoples. But another round of US and British military intervention would only strengthen IS and boost its credibility – as well as increase the risk of terror attacks at home. The likelihood is that it can only be overcome by a functioning state in both Iraq and Syria. That in turn demands a decisive break with the sectarian and ethnic politics bequeathed by a decade of war and intervention. [Abridged] Twitter: @SeumasMilne

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/13/war-in-iraq-yazidis-aid-military-intervention

Monday 11 August 2014

Iraq crisis: West’s ‘mandate’ is limited by national borders – and don’t dare mention oil

Robert Fisk                          Independent/UK                          10 August 2014

 In the Middle East, the first shots of every war define the narrative we all dutifully follow. So too, this greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis in Iraq. Christians fleeing for their lives? Save them. Yazidis starving on the mountain tops? Give them food. Islamists advancing on Irbil? Bomb them. Bomb their convoys and “artillery” and their fighters, and bomb them again and again until…

Well, the first clue about the timeframe of our latest Middle East adventure came at the weekend when Barack Obama told the world – in the most disguised “mission creep” of recent history – that “I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem [sic] in weeks – this is going to take time.” So how much time? At least a month, obviously. And maybe six months. Or maybe a year? Or more? After the 1991 Gulf War – there have actually been three such conflicts in the past three-and-a-half decades, with another in the making – the Americans and British imposed a “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq and Kurdistan. And they bombed the military “threats” they discovered in Saddam’s Iraq for the next 12 years.

So is Obama laying the groundwork – the threat of “genocide”, the American “mandate” from the impotent government in Baghdad to strike at Iraq’s enemies – for another prolonged air war in Iraq? And if so, what makes him – or us – think that the Islamists busy creating their caliphate in Iraq and Syria are going to play along with this cheerful scenario. Do the US President and the Pentagon and Centcom – and, I suppose, the childishly named British Cobra committee – really believe that Isis, for all its medieval ideology, is going to sit on the plains of Ninevah and wait to be destroyed by our munitions?

 No, the lads from Isis or the Islamic State or the caliphate or whatever they like to call themselves are simply going to divert their attacks elsewhere. If the road to Irbil is closed, then they’ll take the road to Aleppo or Damascus which the Americans and British will be less willing to bomb or defend – because that would mean helping the regime of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom we must hate almost as much as we hate the Islamic State. Yet if the Islamists do try to capture all of Aleppo, besiege Damascus, and push on across the Lebanese frontier – the largely Sunni Mediterranean city of Tripoli would seem a choice target – we are going to be forced to expand our precious “mandate” to include two more countries, not least because they border the one nation even more deserving of our love and protection than Kurdistan: Israel. Anyone thought of that?

And then, of course, there’s the unmentionable. When “we” liberated Kuwait in 1991, we all had to recite – again and again – that this war was not about oil. And when we invaded Iraq in 2003, again we had to repeat, ad nauseam, that this act of aggression was not about oil – as if the US Marines would have been sent to Mesopotamia if its major export was asparagus. And now, as we protect our beloved Westerners in Irbil and succour the Yazidis in the mountains of Kurdistan and mourn for the tens of thousands of Christians fleeing from the iniquities of Isis, we must not – do not and will not – mention oil.

I wonder why not. For is it not significant – or a bit relevant – that Kurdistan accounts for 43.7 billion barrels of Iraq’s 143 billion barrels of reserves, as well as 25.5 billion barrels of unproven reserves and three to six trillion cubic metres of gas? Global oil and gas conglomerates have been flocking to Kurdistan – hence the thousands of Westerners living in Irbil, although their presence has gone largely unexplained – and poured in upwards of $10bn in investments. Mobil, Chevron, Exxon and Total are on the ground – and Isis is not going to be allowed to mess with companies like these – in a place where oil operators stand to pick up 20 per cent of all profits.

 Indeed, recent reports suggest that current Kurdish oil production of 200,000 barrels a day will reach 250,000 next year – providing the boys from the caliphate are kept at bay, of course – which means, according to Reuters, that if Iraqi Kurdistan were a real country and not just a bit of Iraq, it would be among the top 10 oil-rich countries in the world. Which is surely worth defending. But has anyone mentioned this? Has a single White House reporter pestered Obama with a single question about this salient fact?

Sure, we feel for the Christians of Iraq – although we cared little enough when their persecution started after our 2003 invasion. And we should protect the minority Yazidis, as we promised – but failed – to protect 1.5 million genocided Armenian Christians from their Muslim killers in the same region 99 years ago. But don’t let’s forget that the masters of the Middle East’s new caliphate are not fools. The boundaries of their war stretch far beyond our military “mandates”. And they know that our real mandate includes that unspeakable word: oil. [Abbrev.]

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-crisis-wests-mandate-is-limited-by-national-borders--and-dont-dare-mention-oil-9660393.html

Gaza blockade must end

The UN should mandate an end to the siege of Gaza as a first step towards a settlement

Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson                Guardian/UK               5 August 2014

 ‘There is no humane or legal justification for how the Israeli Defence Force is conducting this war, pulverising with bombs, missiles and artillery large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools and hospitals.’
Israelis and Palestinians are still burying loved ones killed during Gaza’s third war in six years. Since 8 July, more than 1,800 Palestinian and 65 Israeli lives have been sacrificed. Many in the world are heart-broken in the powerless certainty that and despite the latest ceasefire, it seems that more will could die yet; that more are being killed every hour. This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move towards peace, when a reconciliation agreement among the Palestinian factions was announced in April.
This was a major concession by Hamas, opening Gaza to joint control under a consensus government that did not include any Hamas members. The new government also pledged to adopt the three basic principles demanded by members of the International Quartet (UN, US, Europe, Russia): non-violence, recognition of Israel, and adherence to past agreements. Tragically, Israel rejected this opportunity for peace and has until now succeeded in preventing the new government’s deployment in Gaza.
Two factors are necessary to make the unity effort possible: at least a partial lifting of the seven-year sanctions and blockade that isolate the 1.8 million people in Gaza; and an opportunity for public sector workers on the Hamas payroll to be paid. These requirements for a human standard of life continue to be denied. Instead, Qatar’s offer to provide funds for the payment of employees was blocked by Israel and access to and from Gaza has been further tightened by Egypt and Israel.
There is no humane or legal justification for how the Israeli Defence Force is conducting this war, pulverising with bombs, missiles and artillery large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools and hospitals, displacing families and killing Palestinian non-combatants. Much of Gaza has lost its access to water and electricity completely. This is a humanitarian catastrophe.
There is never an excuse for deliberate attacks on civilians in conflict. These are war crimes. This is true for both sides. Hamas’s indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians is equally unacceptable. However, two Israeli civilians and a foreign worker were killed by Palestinian fire as opposed to an overwhelming majority of civilians among the Palestinians killed more than 400 of whom were children. The legal need for international judicial proceedings should be taken seriously, to investigate and end these violations of international law.

The UN Security Council should vote a resolution recognising the inhumane conditions in Gaza and mandate an end to the siege. The resolution could also acknowledge the need for international monitors who can report on movements to and from Gaza, as well as ceasefire violations. It should then enshrine strict measures to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. Members of the Elders, a group of independent leaders working together for peace and human rights, hope that these will continue and reach fruition.
Unity between Fatah and Hamas is stronger than for many years. We believe this is one of the most encouraging developments of recent years and welcome it warmly. This presents an opportunity for the Palestinian Authority to reassume control over Gaza – an essential first step towards Israel and Egypt’s lifting of the blockade.
The Palestinian Authority cannot manage that task on its own. It will need the prompt return of the EU Border Assistance Mission to cover not just Rafah but all Gaza crossings. Egypt and Israel would, in turn, cooperate with international monitors backed by a UN Security Council mandate to protect civilian populations.
It cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor – one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people – can the west begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the west’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result. Ultimately, however, lasting peace depends on the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel.      [Abridged]

• Jimmy Carter is a former US president. Mary Robinson is a former president of Ireland. Both are members of The Elders, a group of independent leaders working together for peace and human rights

Commemorating WW1

 Ian Harris                            Otago Daily Times               8 Aug. 2014

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” As countries around the world begin solemnly remembering the outbreak of war 100 years ago, those opening words from the constitution of Unesco are a fitting reminder that the quest for peace is never done. And as commemorations continue over the next four years, people would do well to make that truth their central theme.

The constitution goes on: “Ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.”

 So though remembrance in each country will naturally highlight its own experience of the war that failed to end war, there is much at this distance to commend any effort to look into the minds of men who fought on the other side as well. That would help reveal how the powers of Europe early last century stumbled their way towards war through ignorance, mistrust, nationalism and militarism, buttressed by the more noble sentiments of loyalty, duty and honour.

The causes of World War 1 are more complex than the patriotic catch-phrases of 1914 would suggest. While all participants blame “the enemy” for the catastrophe, historians now apportion the responsibility more evenly. They also note one missed opportunity after another to keep the peace, as had been managed in earlier crises.

But the final say went to those in every country who had come to think of war as necessary, inevitable, even desirable. And the military brass counted on a short, sharp offensive that would be over in weeks.

 This is no time for drum-beating, and Germany and France are setting the right commemorative tone. Bitter rivals for hundreds of years but now the twin foundation of European unity, they are marking the centenary with dignity and mutual respect.

Last Sunday, on the 100th anniversary of Germany’s declaration of war on France, their presidents attended a joint ceremony in the once hotly contested region of Alsace. A month earlier Germany invited a French political scientist with links to both countries, Alfred Grosser, to address a special session of Parliament in Berlin.

Grosser was born in Germany. His father won the Iron Cross in World War 1. But when the Nazis barred Jewish veterans from the association of Iron Cross winners, the family moved to France. The invitation to Grosser was in recognition of his tireless work for reconciliation between his two homelands, strengthening the defences of peace in the minds of men.

Early last century the churches were more influential than today in shaping people’s minds, and usually finished up being co-opted by the spirit of the times. Former Oxford history professor Herbert Butterfield showed how subtly corrupting it is when foes enlist God, as they usually do, and proclaim their conflict to be “a war for righteousness”. In 1914, he says, German churchmen were convinced on the information available to them that Germany was innocent of blame – “but there is not the slightest doubt that British churchmen were in exactly the same case”. God, King (or Kaiser) and Empire made up a powerful brew.

 Germany’s Catholic bishops last month acknowledged the guilt churches shared for the war. “Many bishops, priests and faithful took the side of those welcoming the war as a chance for spiritual and moral renewal,” they said. But in the national blindness they failed to perceive the suffering of the war’s victims, “and realised too late the consequences of absolute loyalty to their respective nations.”

 In England philosopher Bertrand Russell, jailed for opposing the war, condemned it as “trivial, for all its vastness”, adding: “No great principle is at stake, no great human purpose is involved on either side.” Lacking those, the war was essentially about redistributing power.

And for that, 9 million servicemen and 7 million civilians died, 21 million more were maimed or wounded, and millions of families suffered the trauma of loss. They will be remembered as war cemeteries are spruced up, lawns sprout white crosses, vigils are held and, in a dramatic gesture, a sea of red ceramic poppies covers the grassy moat of the Tower of London. A hundred years on it is right to remember their sacrifice, question the reasons for it, discern the modern-day parallels – and then resolve to strengthen the defences of peace in the minds of men and women.

This Islamic State nightmare is not a holy war but an unholy mess

  Jonathan Freedland                                  Guardian/UK                           8 August 2014

 In a voice pleading and in despair, the woman who had fled for her life asked: “What century are we in?” She was an Iraqi Christian, reached by the BBC World Service even as she sought to escape the self-declared Islamic State, or IS (formerly Isis). “They will sell us,” she said. “They will rape us.” Her words echoed this week’s tearful warning to the Iraqi parliament from a Kurdish MP who described the fate befalling her fellow Yazidis. “Mr Speaker, our women are being taken as slaves and sold in the slave market.”

The year is 2014 and yet 40,000 followers of a 1,000-year-old faith are huddling on a mountainside said to be the final resting place of Noah’s Ark, fearing their women are to be dragged to a slave market. As the woman asked, what century are we in?

When news reports speak of ancient sectarian loathings, when the gap between Sunni and Shia comes down to a theological dispute originating in the seventh century, when the Islamic State declares its defining mission to be the restoration of a caliphate from the same period, then it is tempting to believe this is indeed the curious fate of our supposedly modern era – that we are being drawn back to a medieval or pre-medieval world of holy war and wholesale slaughter in the name of religion. The irony of it seems so rich: that just as technology is accelerating, making once impossible feats of connection routine, so the clock is turning backward, towards a new dark age of beheadings and enslavement, a fearsome army threatening a tiny sect with that ancient ultimatum – bow to our god or die.

From the vantage point of avowedly secular Britain, where even the most watery form of Christianity has become a minority interest, the persistence of religion is indeed one of the 21st century’s great surprises. For so long, progress and the decline of faith – what enlightened types prefer to call “superstition” – were thought to be symbiotic if not synonymous. As the world advanced, as more of its people got running water, TV and smartphones, surely the old, primitive beliefs would fade. But the Middle East has confounded that now quaint conviction. Large swaths of states that were once secular – the Ba’athist republics of Iraq and Syria used to revere nationalism over Islam – are now under the black flag of IS, ruled by a Qur’anic scholar who has anointed himself caliph.

Yet neat though it is to see return to holy war as the motif of our age, it might be wrong. The rolling advances of IS – brutal and laden with treasure, conquering one city or stronghold after another – may indeed resemble the world of several centuries ago but not in the way we’ve imagined. It is instead a story that is both ancient and very modern.

 According to
Toby Dodge, the scholar of Iraq at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), what’s driving IS, or at least making its phenomenal success possible, is not pre-modern religious zeal so much as a pre-modern absence of state power. The state structures of both Iraq and Syria have all but collapsed. The result is a power vacuum of a kind that would have been recognised in the lawless Europe of seven or eight centuries ago – and which IS has exploited with the ruthless discipline of those long ago baronial warlords who turned themselves into European princes.

“Islamic State are jihadis with MBAs,” says Dodge, speaking of a movement so modern it has
its own gift shop. He notes its combination of fierce religious ideology, financial acumen and tactical nous. “It’s Darwinian,” he adds, describing IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his inner circle as those strong enough to have survived the US hammering of al-Qaida in Iraq between 2007 and 2009. But what has been crucial, Dodge says, is “not ancient hatreds but this collapse of state power”.

 Which partly explains IS’s choice of targets. It attacks wherever it sees a gap, an area of weakness where the state’s writ does not run or that will be too feeble to resist. So when IS’s advance south to Baghdad was repelled, the organisation turned and looked for vacuums to fill. Christian areas were one such target; the remote Sinjar stronghold of the Yazidis is another. With a merciless appetite for territory, IS hunts down any patches of Iraq or Syria it believes can be conquered easily.

Which brings us to the new aspect of the geopolitical landscape. It relates again to the absence of power, this time at the global level. The analyst Ian Bremmer says we live in a G-Zero world, one in which we don’t have one true superpower, let alone two. The US is weaker than at any time since 1945, unable to force a breakthrough in Ukraine or Syria or, most recently, Gaza.

Islamic State may wrap itself in the flag of jihad, but its success owes more to medieval lawlessness than medieval religious enmity – helped by the very 21st-century decline of the global behemoth. Our world is being shaken, but the persistence of religion is more a symptom than a cause. The larger problem, as old as mankind, is power and the lack of it. For sometimes weakness can be just as dangerous as strength.

Twitter:
@freedland,

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/08/islamic-state-nightmare-not-holy-unholy-mess-iraq
 

Monday 4 August 2014

Quotes

Walter Brueggemann quotes:

"Prophetic speech… is not an act of criticism. It is rather an act of relentless hope that refuses to despair and that refuses to believe that the world is closed off in patterns of exploitation and oppression." (p81)

"For a long time, establishment Christianity has thought that the claims of the gospel really fit hand-in-glove with the values of U.S. society- that this is a Christian nation. What’s happening to us is that we’re becoming increasingly aware that the claims of the gospel - that relationships are based on mutuality - are on a collision course with the dominant values of U.S. culture, which are premised on relationships of exploitation and based on consumerism."  (p 210)

"Christian churches today… have so much to defend in terms of social position and privilege that their speech is largely domesticated." (p206)

"It seems to me that it is right to say that the prophet’s mission is to insist that there is another purpose surging through the historical process, and occasionally you can see that purpose if you pay attention - and that is exactly what Jesus’ parables do." (p206)

From Walter Brueggemann’s book on Jeremiah, Like Fire in the Bones, 2006. 

Lloyd Geering: “Today it is also necessary to learn about other religions and develop respect for their place in our world. Not uncritically, though. Every religion has its intolerant, even fanatical fringe.”

Robert C. Koehler: “Memorial Day (is) a day of notorious short-sightedness about whom and what we’re supposed to remember. The convention of remembering “the sacrifice of our troops” requires us to maintain remembrance, as well, of a perpetually lurking enemy from whom we were protected. Subbing for enemies of the past, who are now (perhaps) our allies, are the enemies of the future.”

Peace: “These days absence of war is regarded as peace.  But peace really connotes absence of fear. There would be peace only when no part of the world is afraid of or exploited by any other part… If here be peace in our (personal) life, it will affect the whole world.” Vinoba Bhave

 Kahlil Gibran:  “The light of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us.  So it is with great men (and women) who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities.”

A Sufi Master was asked: “What is best, courage or generosity?” The Master replied: “Those who are generous do not need courage.”

 The Quest for Peace and Justice:
"...But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964


One of the oldest Christian communities has been destroyed as the Sunni Caliphate spreads

 Robert Fisk                  Independent/UK              27 July, 2014

For three years, the Arab revolutions cast “Palestine” and Palestinians to the fringe of memory in the Middle East. And now the new bloodbath in Gaza has pushed to the corner of our consciousness the continuing tragedy of the Christian exodus.
As the Christians of Mosul fled their cruel, new “Sunni Caliphate”, photographs of the city’s Syriac-Catholic church, fire blazing from its windows, only made inside pages in the Middle East press.

That two of the world’s most-hated, born-again Christians – George W Bush is one and the other, a British citizen, is unmentionable – should have destroyed one of the oldest Christian communities in the lands of Christ, remains a most brutally ironic testament to their folly.
 Both, of course, would no more acknowledge this today than the Christians of the Middle East can ignore it.

And inevitably, the Christians in the great cities lying between the Tigris and the Mediterranean are asking why no Muslims are condemning their tragedy.
“What are the moderate Muslims saying?” the Lebanese Catholic Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Rai, asked acidly last week. “We do not hear the voices of those who denounce this.”

Indeed not. The Caliphate’s threat to the Christians – convert, be taxed or die – contradict, in the words of the Chaldean Patriarch, Archbishop Louis Sako,  “1,400 years of history and of the life of the Muslim world and of coexistence between different religions and different peoples”. Archbishop Sako spoke, too, this week of how Iraq itself had become a “humanitarian, cultural and historical catastrophe”. But he added that Christians in the region must remember that the Koran demands respect for minorities and that the Christian people must also remain respectful to Muslims and show “patience and endurance”. Which, I would have thought, might be turning the other saintly cheek a bit too far.
But of course, the new Caliph of Mosul has applied restrictions to all Shia Muslims as well as the Yezidis, the Sabeans and the Turkomens. And there have been street demonstrations in Beirut just last week – jointly, by Muslims and Christians – to both condemn the treatment of the Christians of Mosul and the Palestinians of Gaza.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/one-of-the-oldest-christian-communities-in-the-lands-of-christ-has-been-destroyed-as-sunni-caliphate-spreads-9631796.html