SteamedPenguin

Every once in a while you'll hear a tidbit about how Israelis are mistreating Palestinians. Usually when something really terrible is perpetrated, like when a settler goes into a Mosque to kill people praying, or when the state of Israel sees fit to bombard the Church of Nativity for over a month, causing damage to century-old structures. While it is good that the world sees this the immensity of these acts make the actions of the state of Israel seem like abberations. The perception of these acts as so terrible and the resulting hue and cry raised over these acts obscures the small daily crimes perpetrated by Israel against Palestine and Palestinians, the accumulation of which is far more drastic in result than a massacre here or the desecration of a cultural landmark there.

I received these images a while back but haven't had the right context to write about them. I realized today that there never is a right context. These images don't show abberations in the behavior of the state of Israel but only one type of behavior exhibited daily by the state of Israel.

Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:

Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 00: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 03: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Note the part where Article 18 says: "maternity cases" as the next images shows destruction of a section of a clinic that is assigned to maternity care"

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 06: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Here the Israeli military destroyed an Ultrasound machine:

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 05: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

When a healthcare organization has not committed an offence then the convention states that it can't be punished. Destroying this clinic is collective punishment, intimidation and terrorism. It punishes Palestinians collectively for offences unlisted, it intimidates law abiding Palestinians to stop them from taking care of Palestinians, and it is terrorism because the only reason to destroy property in such a way is to induce fear for the purpose of stopping Palestinians from taking care of sick people. Not just sick Palestinians but any sick person who walks through the doors of a clinic because that is what healthcare workers do.

Wolfensohn is going to cry to Condi 'My Penis is an Oil Tanker' Rice about how bad the Palestinians and Israelis are treating him:

Wolfenson said he was close to a decision to return home and added that he will convey his worries to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after she arrives in Israel on Sunday evening.

More at Ha'aretz

Palestinians and Israelis have played the diplomacy game longer than Bush has been sober. While both play within the general game that the US sets through policy both use their respective positions to play as best they can. The Palestinian Authority has never really understood the parameters of the game, and therefore play pretty badly, but they have moments where they seem to be able rise above their endemic stupidity and corruption to make a brilliant play. But hey, even a chimpanzee can come up with something higher intelligences think is art, even if they only play with sticks and feces.

The Israelis are playing more and more dangerous games. They are coming up hard against the 15-20 year population limit which will turn the 'Jewish' state into a minority state. After over sixty years of racially cleansing Palestine the Zionists are coming to a world where they are the minority in Palestine. People like Sharon are smart enough to see it, but I think most Israelis are not ready for the consequences and are not able to appreciate the fact that the State of Israel as we have known it for the last 60 years is in its' twilight.

The Palestinian Authority can play stupid. Yes Palestinians are dying, yes they are becoming miserable and more desperate on a day to say basis. Sometime you can see desperation percolate as the minutes go by, but what is that in comparison to the power the Palestinian Authority can reap when the Palestinians get a state. Whatever that state may be. Say Israel faces the music and allows Palestinians to becomes "Israeli" citizens, then the PA is poised to reap the goodwill of that exchange for several years and be a political power amongst Palestinians. On the face of things they will have brought this change. Another scenario is that the US forces the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza or both separately, in order to wash its hands of us. This would also leave the PA in a position of power, for a while, but very likely short lived and forced to share with Hamas. Either way, time is on their side, despite the high costs. They already sold out the essence of the Palestinian struggle and given up any claim to Palestinian principles so the misery of several million Palestinians isn't something that weighs too heavily on their conscience.

The Israelis are in the unenviable position of having won almost every single battle, having scored almost every point, having dominated the enemy so thoroughly only to see themselves lose the war. Right now world Jewry is centered in the US and Israel, and with the economic situation for the Israeli state becoming more and more tenuous over the next 15-20 years their prospects for recruiting more Israelis are very low. At this stage almost anyone who is going to emigrate already did. Despite highly publicized trips to Israel, nominally free, filled with propaganda, brainwashing, and lots of emotional arm twisting, more people are leaving Israel, for Europe, Canada and the USA, than are coming in. Palestinians have a much higher reproductive rate that Israelis, and the reproductive rate is not about to go down as the economy totally gets destroyed and more and more people become ultra religious. Between the anvil of poverty and the hard hammer of Occupation ignorance and desperation are being born in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen. Higher Palestinian reproductive rates spell doom for Israel. Israel has always had a hard time selling its image. Only the facts that the occupation happened "long ago" and that Arabs and Jews have been fighting "forever" and that the occupation is "fait accompli" has given Israel the veneer of respectability, but as the Palestinian population keeps rising the veneer is eroding as the State of Israel ceases to have legitimacy as a "Jewish" state. At some point the fragmented West Bank and Gaza might become self-governed, but they'll be self-governed slums and right next to the pristine white Riviera style homes of the European settlers. Coming only within a generation since the end of Apartheid, these images are deadlier than a thousand suicide bombers.

Where does this leave the Americans? American policy had centered around using Israel as a fulcrum to move the Middle East. The actions in the Gulf War have given rise to a situation where Israel is becoming more and more obsolete and expensive. The US cannot have an about face that is too quick or it will risk looking weak in the Middle East. Should it cut Israel loose it would signal a free for all against Israel that could strengthen too many opposition parties in the state the US is trying to cultivate pro-US regimes in. After the first Gulf War American policy makers began realizing that it is cheaper to have people 'voluntarily' support you than to grind them into the ground to achieve the same object. The Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Egypt are such examples. Especially where the local regimes are already weak domestically on a variety of issues. Yet, the Americans can't be seen as being too friendly to Israel, at least not unacceptably so. So who is sent in to pass these rocky rapid? Is this intrepid band of adventurers lead by people who are articulate, versatile, and capable of dealing with so many nuances of the Middle East? No, they send in the most dogmatic, inflexible, inarticulate, and plain stupid gang that can't shoot straight. At the time where the USA needs more capable leaders American hobble themselves by electing not the smartest and the brightest, but people who reflect them so honestly as to be painful. Venal, vindictive, provincial, ignorant, xenophobic, misogynistic, short sighted, dogmatic, corrupt, and arrogant are not traits that are helpful to have when you are trying to lead the world from over six thousand miles away and never have come together so clearly as they have in the second Bush Administration.

They send in a succession of envoys, special envoys, friends, people of interest, Big Names, and characters to massage the "Palestine Problem" all of which are destined to fail. The Palestinian Authority isn't stupid enough to trust the US so completely as to undo themselves, and like chimpanzees cornered by hunters that aren't above flinging shit at the US as last resort. The Israelis on the other hand know full well how expendable they are. If need be the US would cut them loose without a second thought and as the situation gets less favorable to the US Israel is jockeying for a better position hoping that when the fall comes, it doesn't come to hard.

For all its might though the American game is impotent. The Neocons in power haven't yet realized the magnitude of changes coming across the Arab world. Their destabilization of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have too many consequences their simplistic world view cannot grapple with. What has not happened yet is somebody calling them on their game. Nobody has yet made the decision to deal with the unknown instability and forsake the current instability that everyone thinks they know.

People talk about the 'realities of the Middle East', the weight of history, and people bred to do this and that, what people haven't confronted yet is that we are for the time being prisoners of little else but out our conceptions. The danger is always there for those people who think that change is not in the air when it is, very few people recover from that mistake. So many agencies making the same mistake has the ingredients of great comedy, tragedy, or most likely, both. Whatever the change though, the people who are paying for it are the people who always pay for it. While governments may lose power and prestige the ordinary person on the street is more likely to lose their life.

Right after the bombings happened a friend asked me about the meaning of it all; the bombings in Amman, what al-Qaeda means, and other stuff.

Let's start by the place of Jordan in the Middle East.

Jordan is a small country bordered by Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. The size of the country is further diminished by most of it being desert and arid hills, leaving the population in a fairly narrow band running North to South along the Palestine border. The Jordanian economy is negligible, last I checked the Jordan, with a population size close to New Zealand has a annual deficit close to the annual surplus of New Zealand.

Things have changed over the last ten years for sure, I just don't have the number on me, I doubt things have changed that much though.

Outside of the Israeli military presence Jordan has been a CIA station and base of operations for over thirty years. Actually, until the first invasion of Iraq, Jordan was the biggest US presence in the Middle East outside of Israel. Having US support gave Jordan a much needed cash influx over the years. More recently Jordan has become a much more active military support area for the US in the second invasion of Iraq. Providing a much needed thoroughfare for mercenaries to enter Iraq. It is brisk, and lucrative business. Lastly, while the Jordanian monarchy gives a lot of lip service to the Islamicist factions they are a monarchy and the preservation of the monarchy trumps many other things. They've also had their share of troubles with local Islamicists.

For clarity, Islamicists are political factions using the language and perceived philosophy of Islam to achieve their aims. They are frequently called Muslim Fundamentalists and other similar names, but such names are ridiculous as well as insulting to the fabric of Islam. Their use reeks of ignorance if not at its worst, malicious slander of over a billion people.

So why does Al Qaeda attack Jordan now? Let us be clear, this is not just an attack against American interests in Jordan, this is an attack on Jordan.

Jordan is Vulnerable to Attacks on Tourism

Since the Jordanian economy is not something to write home about they are very dependent on Tourism. Millions of dollars have been spent to maintain, promote and create places where niche tourism has a foothold. Conservations efforts in Jordan are largely maintained as economic currency. The Red Sea, Wadi Rum, Petra, and many other tourist destinations, as well as some biblical ones, are all very heavily promoted and protected.

Hitting Jordanian tourist hotels is meant not only to hurt the US companies that manage them, but to hurt and punish Jordan and Jordanians. Weakening tourism is designed to make the monarchy make concessions to the Islamicists.

Hitting Jordan is an Attack Against the USA

Hitting a country so closely allied with the USA sends a message to the US government. Stay out of Jordan. As far as threats go this one is fairly marginal. You don't threaten the school bully by picking on the kid under the school bully's protection. Unless of course you are trying to send a message to other kids: "See? The bully cannot protect you from us. We will hurt you." This is an attack against American prestige.

Aside from laying out what this attack is, it is helpful to lay out what the attack is not.

Members of al-Qaeda make all sorts of noise about supporting Palestine. It is doubtful that a bunch of uneducated sheep-herders can even find Palestine on a map. Let us be clear, al-Qaeda never has or ever will be a supporter of Palestine or Palestinians. At best they are defending Muslim holy areas under non-Muslim control, at worst they are just a bunch of xenophobic barbarians who just dont like jews. Not liking Jews never has and never will translate to support for Palestine. This I mention only to make sure that one understands that attacks on hotels that are frequented by Israeli tourists are meant to attack the hotels for the most part.

Al-Qaeda is expanding its base of operations and they are picking on some of the weaker links: Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It is notable that they have not done any work in Syria or Lebanon, and in Palestine they are a non-entity.

It is not likely that al-Qaeda will find much of a base of operation within Jordan. The backlash from this operation will limit al-Qaedas support base, with or without American intervention. Jordanians like their standard of living compared to what itr could be, and their measures of liberalization and democracy, while limited, give them enough of a platform to see better horizons. Compared to Egypt and Saudi Arabia they consider themselves lucky.

I've always enjoyed designing flags and family seals. Recently with the aid of Inkscape designing has become a much easier process, which is pretty cool as far as I am concerned, but even cooler is their use of WordPress to power their news section.

Something that has been keeping me thinking is a socio-political movement than goes beyond the old-school Pan-Arabism. Some people might wonder why. While some people are very strong supporters if Middle Eastern cultural and political independence they do not identify as Arab and I think we need to make better overtures to have them better represented. A point in case are many Kurds thinkers and freedom fighters who are our natural allies against Imperialism. Another strong case can be made for Iranis who, while technically aren't Middle Eastern, so regularly get lumped in with Middle Easterners that it makes them our allies. In any case, increasing more cultural and political points of view makes for a stronger movement.

New Dawn

So in thinking about flags and a pan-Middle-Eastern movement I came up with a flag I just call "New Dawn." The inspiration came from some Kurdish flags, and the flag uses the traditional pan-Arab colors in addition to yellow which covers the Kurdish red, green and yellow colors. Iran is represented by the red, green and white colors. One comment I've gotten is that the black and yellow combo gives off a nice vibe that says: don't fuck with me. Which I appreciate as the opposite of: I'll fuck with you.

Growing up Palestinian, in a firmly agnostic and socialist household gave me a lot of time to consider the world around me growing up. Between the Israeli Occupation that scarred us for the last 57 years, the innate conservatism of the Middle East, and the religious fundamentalism that is engulfing a region in extreme stress I certainly felt like a fish out of water. That is not the story though.

Living in Palestine leaves you with many things to ponder and often no time to ponder them. Even when you are doing absolutely nothing, especially when you are under curfew for forty days, you are worried about how things are going. So even when you think you have time to meditate on the world around you the intrusions of life under occupation take even that small luxury away. Sometimes to better grasp the situation you live in you have to leave and observe it with a distant eye. That, however, is also not the story.

The story is this: it is the unexpected encounters that so enrich your life. Even when you think your live is nice and tasty like rice pudding with raisins and almond slivers, that hint of cinnamon and a touch of dark chocolate powder make all the difference. Actually sometimes you don't even notice the tastes in the rice pudding proper until that cinnamon brings it out. Then you notice more fully how the raisins taste when they burst on your teeth and mix with the sweet, milky, starchy pudding. A little bubble of fruity goodness that hangs there.

I came across an article recently that made me appreciate my rice pudding better. I know Palestine. I can talk ad nauseam about policy, politics, history, intentions, motivations, fears, tears, jokes, etc. Palestine is what I do and yet I managed to miss the raisins in the pudding until I got a nice little hint of cinnamon that profoundly changed my perception of my situation.

Growing up I was involved in dialog groups with Israelis, and often came across Israelis. In the US I come across Zionists, wannabe-Zionists, and Israelis of different shades. It isn't an occasional thing to hear "What do you want? You lost the war. We won, now leave us alone." Often the variation is "We won the war, that's the way it is. Why try to change the unchangeable?" Mind you I always thought this line of argumentation so bizarre and brain damaged that it isn't worth a response. Now I can't. I realize now that these arguments aren't about me, it is about them. Whoever uses these arguments, and generally speaking the formula 'We can't change the world', isn't trying to quiet me. More specifically, they aren't trying to quiet me because of what I am saying or doing, they are trying to quiet the voices in their conscience that my actions or words bring up. They think their little talismans of defeat can keep away the ghosts of social responsibility.

That's what activism for social justice, freedom, and tolerance is; responsibility towards others and accountability for ones' own actions. When people discard their accountability and come up with 'Just let it go already' they want to taint you with their weakness and their lack of accountability. There is no place for them to feel comfortable with your demands, even if unsaid, so they try to put you in a space where you don't rattle their timid minds.

I don't quote religious texts except with irony or because something funny or dirty was in the pages, but the parable of the Good Samaritan is instructive and at least in some circles well recognized enough to make sense. So this dude from Samaria is going through some desolate valley and finds some poor schmoe in a ditch. Apparently this dude was beset by thieves and bandits and left for dead. So this nice Samaritan picks the guy up and takes him to a place where he's taken care of. In the bible there is a different version but that's really about heaven and hell, and sinning. I don't care if you sin. In fact I probably encourage it. All I want is that you go out and be activists for social justice. Let's get back to the story though; The good Social Justice conscious Samaritan helped the poor guy out because the Samaritan is accountable to himself as well as the world around him. Leaving the guy to die in some gully means that the next time it is he himself who could be the poor schmoe in the gully except there is no Social Justice conscious Samaritan to help him out. This is not a world a Samaritan or anyone wants to live in realistically.

We live in an interconnected world. We only survive because of the goodwill of others. You can hem and haw about it with political tracts, you can invoke Hobbes, Locke, Plato, and a whole bunch of other dead people but the social contract that binds us is simple: Don't allow me to be hurt and I won't allow you to be hurt. There is no need for philosophy courses or ethics manuals to make that clear.

Social responsibility and accountability towards oneself and to others isn't a luxury, and it isn't an affectation, it is a basic tool of survival in a dangerous world. Denying that impulse and drowning it out is denying tens of thousands of years of basic human survival.

Wouldn't it be the ultimate cosmic joke if we didn't die because of global warming, nuclear winter, or mutant bacteria run rampant, but because we pretended not to give a shit?