21st Century Vision

Shakespearian Tragedy, Act II

Scene 1, a blasted heath

There is something hypnotically inevitable in the relentless downward progress of events in the Middle East. It reminds me of Shakespearian tragedy where you sit through five acts watching things go from bad to worse, and everybody ends up dead. There is usually some moral to be drawn at the end, though, which I fear may be missing in the Lebanese play - unless it be that war never solves anything but usually makes things worse, which was pretty obvious to most of the audience from the beginning of Act I.

Act II sees the army of the so-far-victorious tyrant, having murdered the innocent families of his rival, preparing an army of invasion. The analogy breaks down there, so I'll drop it. Israel is apparently preparing to invade and occupy southern Lebanon, to deny it to Hezbollah. They tried that once before and eventually had to withdraw having lost hundreds of soldiers and achieved nothing. What makes Mr Olmert think this time will be any different? True, it will take Israeli civilians out of the firing line, which has to be a good thing, and not just from the Israeli point of view, but instead the Hezbollah rockets will have lots of juicy military targets. Meanwhile the people of the area will either be displaced or else have to try to live not only under occupation by a hated foreign power but in a virtual warzone - perhaps for years.

If any other country in the world - except for the USA - was known to be contemplating the invasion of another sovereign state, the outrage would be deafening - and Israel is a serial offender. Yet the news in this case is greeted virtually with a shrug, while negotiations at the UN drag on about what proportion of Israel's demands will be met by the supine world. A UN force in southern Lebanon - assuming it was, improbably, given enough teeth to do the job - while it would at least stem the bloodshed, would leave Israel with virtually everything it wants, Hezbollah with nothing, and the Lebanese back where they started decades ago.

Let us not omit also to draw the connection between the events in the wider Middle East - i.e. including Iraq, Iran and even (stretching a geographical point) Afghanistan - and the alleged attempt to blow up airliners which is the other main news of today. Commentators for years, even including the CIA, have spotted the connection between double-standards and lack of even-handedness in all the dealings of the US and the UK with that benighted region on the one hand, and the rise of terrorist activity on the other.

To most of us it is glaringly obvious that, faced with an intransigent, wilful and aggressive superpower which transgresses every tenet of your religion, the response will be mounting frustration, then rage, then a determination to strike back in any way one can. Since frontal attack is clearly hopeless, terrorism is the only answer. This is not to excuse or praise the terrorists. No amount of frustration justifies mass murder, particularly when your victims are not the immediate cause of the frustration. But it was predictable - and it was indeed widely predicted - that the mess in Iraq would fuel Al-Quaeda. It was similarly predictable - and predicted - that the current mess in Lebanon would draw more recruits to Hezbollah than were being lost as casualties. It seems probable too that some of those who have been pushed over the frustration threshold, but who don't happen to be in or near Lebanon, will join Al-Quaeda.

If you are stuck in a long queue at an airport in the next few days, blame Bush, Blair and Olmert.

Living in the comfort zone

Have you noticed that in the last couple of days Lebanon has slipped off the top news item?  The first week or so condemning Israel’s disproportionate response gave way to condemnation of western political responses then to debate about the rights of self defence and now it will still be “some days” before the UN resolution will be passed and Israel is planning a bigger ground offensive.  Invasion of Royal privacy takes over the news from the invasion of a sovereign state.

Iraq had slipped into the background over the last month with the sense that civil war is inevitable if not already there. Nowhere to be seen are Darfur where eight humanitarian workers were killed in July, the DRC where the post election euphoria gives way to ongoing violence, Sri Lanka where the two year old ceasefire is breaking down violently. All we hear of Yugoslavia, where quarter of a million people died violently ten years ago, is that the Croatian coast is the new place to invest, nothing of the one million displaced and impoverished people in the region.

What is this process of fading interest?  At first there is outrage that innocent civilians are being bombed, children and ordinary people like us.  Does the media carry this to engage us by identifying with those caught up in war? Do we crave to see these images, to prepare ourselves, even think how to protect ourselves, or perhaps to reassure ourselves that the comfort zone is still intact.  Then we have to blame someone…  At first it is Israel, a remote concept.  Then our politicians…  They are not doing their jobs properly. Then public interest begins to wane, there is more debate, the issues are too complex…  Is Hezbollah or Iran really to blame?   Anyway what will be will be.

Then there are stories of the media not telling the truth, as we if had all forgotten that truth is the first casualty of war… was it 27 or 57 people who died? Was the picture doctored?  Were the journalists under the control of the fighters?  In any case there is a limit to the number of people in these dreadful situations we can feel empathy for and still enjoy our lives in the comfort zone.  We move on and put the misery into a different category, something that can’t be helped, to be felt sorry for, not to be feared.  The Lebanon, like Iraq, will become part of the background reporting of violence somewhere else, contained and controlled but not likely to effect us…

How wrong this is and at the back of our minds we know it.  The real fascination is for our own safety.  Could this spread? Have Syria and Iran got directly involved?  How will people get their revenge?

Our politicians play a high risk game for control of the earth’s resources.  They will not be voted out for wars in someone else’s back yard as long as the oil keeps flowing and our comfort zone is protected.  But what are they storing up for the future?   There have been some and will be more breaches of the comfort zone unless, as has been said many times on this blog, we begin to return the resources.

The Palestine/Israel conflict is a microcosm of our world.  National boundaries made up by world powers without popular support at the end of WW2; resources, the West Bank, taken by military power; a land in the comfort zone surrounded by others in poverty; an unequal military machine.  Israel’s response to threats has been predominantly military, which has not reduced the threats. The tragedy continues and will do so until the resources are returned.

Is it possible to learn from this?  Or will our political processes always elevate those who believe that violence is necessary to keep us in the comfort zone?  The most pressing human problems are how Liberty, Equality and Fraternity can regain respect in the global political agenda and how to encourage our fellow citizens to look beyond the comfort zone.

Getting the picture

A distinction is commonly drawn between the mindset of the pessimist, who is said to see the bottle as half empty, and the optimist, who is said to see it as half full: a tired cliche gesturing towards an unimportant truth.

Much more fundamental is the distinction between two types of thinking which have deep consequences for how we analyse political issues and world events.  It isn't about left and right, or about liberal and conservative, though it has implications for these polarities. It isn't about good and evil either, though as we shall see it perhaps helps explain why some people think in these terms. What is in issue is whether we try to see the wider background, the deeper causes, of an event, or whether we are inclined to ignore the context and make judgments on immediate appearances.

The difficulty with the claim that someone, or some social movement or regime is evil is not whether we can have a working definition of what "evil" is. The problem lies elsewhere. To attribute actions to "evil", or even "pure evil", is first of all to avoid the effort of analysing the origins of the behaviour, the context in which it arises, the place it occupies in an exchange of gestures perhaps spread over a long period of time.  We are all familiar with the tabloid denunciation of some particularly heinous crime or political group as evil or terrorist.  What we are less familiar with is any attempt by those newspapers to see the lives and background of the perpetrators as a whole, the neglect, injustice and oppression to which they may have been subjected: as Samuel Beckett says somewhere, "and the less we thought about it the more certain we were". But secondly, by declining to analyse that underlying causal chain we neatly abolish our own part in the genesis of the crime or terrorist attack through our collusion with the processes which generate criminal propensities and terrorist motivations: our prosperity in the face of poverty, the oppression and slavery that made our societies rich and others poor, the contempt we show for other cultures in our drive to control the earth's resources.

So it is not a question of dissolving responsibility for actions: taken literally "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" is seductive moral nonsense.  Nor is it just a question of despairing at the lazy failure of powerful institutions to have regard for the roots of the problems they claim to respond to, often in our name.  No, at bottom, it is a self-interested and often bullying refusal by the owners of loudest voices to see their own (and our) implication in the chain of cause and effect which leads to the deed complained of.  Putting things into the larger context - which of course can never be complete - does not abolish responsibility.  Taking things out of context on the other hand has the effect of dissipating our own responsibility and placing it wholly on the "evil" agent.

What a perfect example of the clash between these modes of thinking we have had in the last few days in relation to the war in the Middle East. Some have tried to grasp the historical origins of the conflict, some the politics, some the economic interests.  Many have familiarised themselves with aspects of Islam and Judaism of which they were previously ignorant.  People have dusted off their copies of Securirty Council resolutions 242 and 1559 (and many others).  A whole new generation have felt an obligation to understand what we see unfolding so tragically on our television screens. By contrast on those same screens this evening (7th August) we saw President Bush repeatedly asserting "Hezbollah started this".

You cannot get lazier (or more self-serving) thinking than that.

Do We Really Remember Hiroshima Day?

August 6^th was Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the first use of a bomb so powerful that it would come to threaten the existence of the human race. Only two such devices have ever been used, but now, a decade after the end of the cold war, the world faces new dangers of proliferation happening in India, Pakistan, China, Iran and Israel.

The events in the Middle East today do not bode well for the cause of non proliferation and the conflict there will encourage rather than discourage Iran to have nuclear weapons. When large and all powerful armies unleash their might on others whether it is in Lebanon, Iraq or Afghanistan then the response of the military weak is threefold as their only options to resist overwhelming military might.

First they adopt policies of advanced guerrilla warfare – the asymmetric war – where they do not face armies in set piece conflict but engage in hit am run missions – something that Hezbollah is very effective at.

Others see the damage that mass bombing can do to innocent civilians when advanced military nations use their high tech bombs. Their response to this is terrorism to hit back at the civilian population of the West. They see that as part of warfare as legitimate as the bombing of civilians from aircraft.

Finally some nations will seek nuclear capability as will some “guerrilla organisation to be used as a deterrent or in self defence. More daunting is the possibility of “terrorists” using such capability to attack the West!

Hiroshima day should give us all a pause for thought and a determination to seek peace through negotiation and the rule of law. But to do this we need to create a fair world where different cultures and approaches to modernity are respected and where all get a fair share of the world’s scarce resources.

It is a difficult task but the only alternative is the road mutually assured destruction for us all. 

Ceasefire now

Roger Hallam reports from the Stop the War demonstration calling for an end to attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

The marchers at today's demonstration in London (5th August) had many messages in mind. Some strident voices labelled Bush, Blair and Olmert war criminals.  Others, echoing a chant from the Vietnam war era, asked "Bush, Blair, CIA, how many kids have you killed today?".  And indeed as the march passed an apparently deserted - but as our picture shows, extremely well defended - US embassy in Grosvenor Square, parallels with the great anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s were all too obvious (click on the pictures to enlarge). Other banners and cries of protest reflected the long and intensifying agony of the Palestinian people, and alongside them the new wave of Lebanese demonstrators, people who perhaps had thought their trials were coming to an end.

The emerging map of protest was to some extent written in the dress of the women: from the Middle East, anything from the full burka to the chador and the mere hijab or, as with many women from Lebanon, dressed in the European manner as if for an outing to a West End which they were however passing through with very different thoughts in mind; and alongside them women of every national background in every possible style of casual western dress.

The crowd reserved special warmth for those Jews, Israelis or living in the West, who had the clarity of mind and strength of principle openly to oppose the actions of an Israeli government apparently bent on moral suicide.  While in his speech to the rally in Parliament Square, Bruce Kent drew attention to the courage of those refusing military service in the Occupied Territories, our photographs show two more local points of view:  the orthodox rejection of Zionism, and the more secular Jewish demand for justice for the Palestinians. Alongside them was the usual bewildering mix of currents that make up the great river of dissent in New Labour Britain.  The Green Party, concerned as always about the overheating of the planet, wanted an end to "Global Warring", some utopians called outright for the overthrow of capitalism, and a lady wore a large apron emblazoned with the sensible injunction to "Make Tea, not War".

Enfield and the Barnets UNA managed only a token presence (along with friends in the photo from the Civil Society Forum); but we know that behind the tens of thousands on the streets today were hundreds of thousands more who shared the objectives of the march.

What looks like a weakness of demonstrations such as these, but which is actually a strength, is the absence of the big battalions, in the form of large, disciplined contingents from labour movement bodies, often with prickly relationships with each other.  Today was more about individual conscience, that force which scarcely is a force, but which has a habit of sweeping away the arrogance of leaders entrenched as they believe behind the ramparts of the state. As Big Ben called time on the rally in Parliament Square, what was the message which could be distilled from all those minds and voices brought together by Stop the War?  Really it came to one thing:  an immediate ceasefire.  Why, oh why, did it take Blair so long to get it?

Keep track of further Stop the War initiatives

Another plea to the foreign secretary

A few days ago this blog reported on a letter sent by Lord Hannay, Chair of UNA-UK, to Margaret Becket, protesting at the UK's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. In view of the continuing deterioration of the situation there, he has now sent another, more strongly-worded letter:

Dear Foreign Secretary,

I am writing now again on behalf of the United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK) on the crisis in the Middle East to express the deepening dismay of our membership at the failure of the international community and, in particular, leading countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to take effective action to bring the fighting to an end.

In particular we deplore:

• The continued deaths of civilians, including the large loss of life at Qana, and in many cases the targeting of civilians.
• The failure of Israel and Hezbollah to agree to an immediate ceasefire, and the unwillingness of the US and the UK to do so.
• The failure of the Israeli government to agree to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s request for a joint UN-Israeli or international investigation into the killing of four UN observers in the Khiyam area of southern Lebanon. (If the deaths were unintended, what does Israel have to fear from an independent investigation?)

While we recognise the importance of disarming Hezbollah, as demanded by Israel and as required under Security Council resolution 1559, we believe that Israel’s current military tactics will not achieve this goal. Instead, Israel is coming under increasing and justifiable criticism whilst Hezbollah appears to be gaining widespread support, particularly in Arab countries.

UNA-UK calls upon the British government to promote forcefully to all the parties a solution which would include a robust international force, with UN Security Council authorisation and a Security Council mandate, and to ensure effective respect for this mandate by Hezbollah and Israel. We believe that all five permanent members of the Security Council should be directly involved in the mounting of this international force with a view to increasing its credibility and effectiveness, and that the UK government should press the case for this with the US administration.

Yours sincerely,

Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Chair of UNA-UK

Time to stand up and be counted

Is this picture something you can live with?

If you are a newspaper reader you have probably seen it already. It's been the rounds, but it doesn't lose its power. Children are dying like this in Lebanon every day in astonishing numbers: 45% of the dead are children. Since only about 30% of the population are children, what does that say about the Israeli targetting?

It is time for those of us who are appalled and repelled by such statistics and such pictures to do whatever we can about it. There are plenty of things you can do:

• Join the national emergency demonstration on Saturday. It assembles at noon at Speakers Corner, Marble Arch before marching via the US embassy to Parliament Square, and is expected to be big. If you can, bring children's shoes to join a mountain of them outside Downing Street, symbolising our horror at Tony Blair's complicity in war crimes. Mind you, he won't be there - he's doing a runner to Barbados.
• Publicise the march - join your local Stop The War group distributing leaflets, or just tell your friends. It's so easy with email.
• Write to your MP. Of the local MPs, Andy Love has come out firmly in favour of an immediate ceasefire and has publicly castigated Blair for his refusal to call for one; David Burrowes is against an immediate ceasefire (see further down this blog for their responses to our letter); Joan Ryan is still in hiding, but as a loyal Blairite and a minister with a job to lose she is unlikely to stick her neck out for the sake of a few Lebanese children's lives; Theresa Villiers we haven't yet heard from either - we wait with interest to hear what her position on the subject is. David is open to reasoned argument, Joan deserves to feel the pressure, Andy deserves to feel that he has support from his local community and Theresa - who knows? So do write to whichever of them serves your local area. Non-locals too!
• Better still, go to see him/her. Someone who bothers to write a personal letter gets attention; someone who goes so far as to turn up at an MPs surgery gets more, and you can get all of your points and your passion across.
• Sign a letter to Blair asking him to call for an immediate ceasfire.
• Watch, and then publicise, a 6-minute video
• Attend a public meeting tonight (Thursday) about the situation in Lebanon organised by Haringey Stop The War at La Fontaine Lebanese restaurant, 16 Turnpike Lane, N8. It starts at 7.30.
• Give money to one of the emergency appeals, e.g. Oxfam's, Save The Children or your own personal favourite.
• Give money to Stop The War to cover the expenses of the demo
• Above all, do something. We are criticisng Tony Blair for his criminal inactivity, so to be inactive ourselves would be hypocritical.

Diplomatic dissent

Nearly two years ago we reported a meeting at the London School of Oriental and African Studies at which three retired leading British diplomats dissected the decision to go to war in Iraq (see "Unrepentant Diplomats").  Today in the Guardian one of them, Oliver Miles, former UK ambassador to Libya and Greece, comments on Tony Blair's new foreign policy tour d'horizon. 

What are we to make of Tony Blair's speech in Los Angeles on Tuesday about the struggles (or, as he would maintain struggle, in the singular) going on within the Muslim world as well as between it and the west? The most striking thing about it is what it leaves out.

One can hardly accept an analysis of Middle Eastern politics that does not mention nationalism. Nor is there any mention of occupation (except for an assertion that the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan is not about occupation). In the important section on the Middle East peace process, there is no mention of Israeli settlement building, nor of the wall, which the international court of justice has found to be illegal. Nor is there any detail about the present crisis... He also fails to mention the resupply of bombs to Israel by the US via British air bases, contrary to declared British arms control policy.

The second point to make is that much of the speech shows a bias towards Israel. Having sat on the fence for so many years, I am something of an expert on this. Blair's unthinking adoption of the Israeli side of the story is visible in the account he gives of contentious areas such as what provoked the present crises in Gaza and Lebanon, and in his description of the removal of Israeli settlers from Gaza as "disengagement" (which it was not) and a "brave step" that should have been the opportunity to restart the peace process.

There is little indication that he has grasped the horror of what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon; still less that he is aware that Lebanon today is a repeat of what happened when Israel invaded last time. This is in strong contrast with the empathy he shows for Israelis who feel that their existence is under threat from their neighbours, a feeling that is real enough but which in terms of experience of suffering and death simply does not match the horrors that Palestinians and Lebanese have lived through in the last generation.

To lump together the Taliban, al-Qaida, Hizbullah and Hamas under the heading "reactionary Islam" is oversimplification to the point where it interferes with the facts. The description of what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan as "battles between the majority of Muslims in either country who wanted democracy and the minority who realise that this rings the death knell of their ideology" might just pass in an army recruitment pamphlet, but not as serious conversation between consenting adults.

An obvious difficulty about the simplistic division of the Arab world into democrats and terrorists is that so many states, let alone individuals, defy definition as either. There is a feeble attempt to address Egypt, a friend but no democrat, but no mention at all of the richest and perhaps most influential state in the region, Saudi Arabia.

And it's irritating to be told again: "So many people told us that, 'You just don't understand it: people in Iraq aren't interested in democracy.'" Who were these people? My Iraqi friends are deeply interested in democracy, but they object to the idea of voting under foreign occupation and are horrified at the extent to which confessionalism, the division of Sunni from Shia, dominates the form of democracy they are now offered.

Tony Blair's disregard for the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) emerges most clearly not from his pro-Israel positions, as against any pro-Arab advice he may be thought to have received from the camel corps, but from his insistence that the invasion of Iraq did not contribute to the proliferation of terrorist violence. An FCO memorandum leaked last year contained advice to the contrary. I doubt whether many people would side with Blair.

So is there nothing in the speech at all? Yes, there is the insistence that the Middle East peace process is central - though even this is preceded by a paragraph of apology to the effect that, "I know it can be very irritating for Israel to be told that this issue is of cardinal importance," etc, etc. Let us hope that this insistence leads to action: it is about time. But this is not the first time it has been said.

This speech will not be remembered as a policy milestone.

David Burrowes MP Rejects Immediate Ceasefire!

With the situation in the Middle East worsening, we sent some questions about the massive bombing of Lebanon to our four local MPs. Andy Love MP has already answered making clear his view that the Israeli bombing was a disproportionate use of force and that there should be an immediate cease fire. David Burrowes MP has now sent in his answer and has given a very different point of view. This is what he said,

May I assure you that I am listening to the concerns expressed by you and many other constituents about the conflict in Israel-Lebanon. It is a tragedy to see the many deaths, particularly innocent civilians both young and old. It is also of great concern that parts of Lebanon have been destroyed. Of course I want to see a ceasefire and the end of violence and destruction in this region. In many ways it would be easier to join the call for an immediate ceasefire. However I am reticent to do so because of the nature of this conflict and the need to have real peace and resolution rather than politicians engaging in posturing. We are not dealing with a war between sovereign states but rather between a terrorist organisation responsible for years of deliberate killings of innocent civilians and intent on eliminating Israel and its people and Israel which for all its failings is a free democratic nation seeking to protect its citizens.

I am therefore supporting steps for a ceasefire base around an agreement to bring the South Lebanese border back under control ideally by the sovereign Lebanese military but more realistically in the short term by the UN and to secure the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Steps also need to be urgently taken to provide humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese and to restore their broken infrastructure and civil institutions. A real danger is that the vacuum left by the conflict will be filled by terrorist militia as has happened in Gaza.

Britain and the EU need to proscribe Hezbollah in all its entities as a terrorist organisation and seek the full implementation of UN resolution 1559.