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No Time to abandon ship in Libya

No Time To Abandon Ship In Libya
Published in New Matilda, 30 August 2011
http://newmatilda.com/2011/08/30/no-time-abandon-ship-libya

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The NATO intervention in Libya has ousted the Gaddafi regime but will the allies expect their dues to be paid in oil, asks Joseph Wakim

While the Libyan ground rebels are now out to sniff out a rat, their aerial allies may soon land for another reason: oil.

When NATO’s mandate expires at the end of September, will they declare mission accomplished and go back home to Europe, pleased that they have rid the Libyans of their delusional despot? I think not. While NATO’s left hand has paid sky-high costs for the military mission, the right hand itches for a fair return on that investment.

The United Nations Security Council was at pains to differentiate the mission in Libya from the ill-fated mission in Iraq.

On 17 March, a more measured Resolution 1973 endorsed Operation Unified Protector in response to the “widespread and systematic attacks … against the civilian population [that] may amount to crimes against humanity”. NATO Member States were “to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians … under threat of attack … while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory”.

The resolution also called for an immediate cease fire, a no-fly zone, blocking the “continuing flows of mercenaries”, an asset freeze on funds, assets and resources “which are owned or controlled … by the Libyan authorities”, and an enforcement of an arms embargo — except the weapons smuggled via Tunisia from fellow Sunni country Qatar to arm the rebels.

Although NATO insisted that it would “always remain impartial” and “not take sides”, the Operation extended its 6500 strikes to non-military targets that may “incite acts of violence” such as satellite dishes, all to hasten regime change.

After all, this operation had cost the eight NATO members an estimated €1 billion at a time of austerity measures in Europe. Access to the oil fields and return on the financial investment was surely urgent.

Why such cynicism about this human rights mission? Because the NATO intervention turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed by other Arab governments, especially in the Gulf States and the Palestinian occupied territories, where those in power are already allies with the world’s sole superpower.

To compound the urgency, NATO failed to condemn the bounty on Gaddafi’s head. The NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil supported this initiative by businessmen to pay 2 million dinars “for the capture of Gaddafi, dead or alive”. Jalil also offered amnesty to “members of [Gaddafi’s] close circle who kill him or capture him”.

While the iconic image of a beheaded leader may bring rejoicing and relief, this is not what is called for by the UNSC resolution. Instead, it referred the situation to the International Criminal Court, “stressing that those responsible for … attacks targeting the civilian population … must be held to account”.

The foundations and constitutions of a post-Gaddafi Libya should be sealed not with blood but with the ink of trials, testimonies and truth. Surely, there has been enough collaboration between NATO and the NTC to caution against a bloodthirsty finale. Surely, NATO would know that disarming all the trigger-happy rebels may be tough if they become too wedded to their identity in this bloody and ironic revolution against a former revolutionary.

Indeed, it is peculiar that these pro-democracy protestors were labelled rebels since the popular uprising began in Benghazi on 17 February. In no other Arab “spring” has the movement earned this temporary tag, as their rebellion is virtually victorious. While horrific reports are emerging about mass graves for Gaddafi’s prisoners, there are also reports of rebels attacking the homes of civilians and of the mass killing of Gaddafi supporters.

So now the NATO eyes in the sky who navigated and facilitated the regime change plan to land and reap the benefits of their alliance.

Already, Italy has been reassured that prior contracts for oil extraction will be honoured. Germany expects a return on its €100 million in aid. Britain expects recognition for unfreezing Libyan assets that had been blocked by UN sanctions. France is queuing up for its fair share while inviting talks with “friends of Libya” in Paris on 1 September.

But the country who needs the oil revenue most is Libya itself, as oil constituted 95 per cent of its exports when it was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. The new caretakers of this nation need safeguards against the temptation and traps that Iraq fell into when the smell of money attracted new rats that bred on corruption and division.

These safeguards are covered by Resolution 1973 which calls for a panel of “eight experts” to address implementation, non-compliance, benefits, contracts and transactions that emanate from the related resolutions.
NATO, TNC and their cheer squads need to heed the UNSC resolution honourably, not selectively. Let us not repeat the mistakes of history where yesterday’s rebels become today’s allies, then tomorrow’s rogue rats to be trapped.

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Importing Islam from America

Importing Islam from America

Published on The Drum, ABC Online, 37 June 2011
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2773442.html#

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When Jesus is pitched against Mohamad, the winner may be APN Outdoor billboards.

The bold billboards spreading across Sydney by MyPeace inviting us to ask questions about Islam may be a novelty in Australia. But the wording and web-site is a carbon copy of the GainPeace missionary outreach project that was launched in Chicago in 2008. Our Australian version may be a timely cross (pun intended) between MySpace and GainPeace.

As part of the Islamic Circle of North America, and in the ruins of the Islamophobia tsunami that flowed after the September 11 attacks, GainPeace felt compelled to explain that “Islam is not synonymous with terrorism”.

Founder of the Australian equivalent MyPeace, Diaa Mohammad, confirms that this is borne out of frustration because Muslims “cannot reach Australians through mainstream media”. Unlike the ‘mediated accounts’, this project was “an act of desperation to find some other avenue to have their voice heard… because they’re trying to reach out to people directly”. Fed up with the negative banner headlines, MyPeace paid to create its own.

Diaa is brave to blame his own community for the misconceptions and embark on this quest to demystify Islam. But his benevolent intentions may backfire with malevolent results, as we have already seen with the recent vandalism.

Like GainPeace, he offers a toll free hotline, free translated Korans, and invites us to “converse live with Muslims… no question is off limits”. His four week billboard series commenced on 26 May with the message: “Islam: Got questions? Get answers”. This is disarming and brilliant marketing.

His second billboard “Jesus: Prophet of Islam” was more confronting and attracted more outrage than outreach. City Bible Forum responded with an Aussie Christians web site and launched a series of billboards commencing with “Dear Aussie Muslims: Glad you want to talk about Jesus. Love to chat more”. Founder Ian Powell announced that there will be four more billboard messages, changing every week.

At the time of writing this piece, his invitation for a friendly and respectful online chat has only attracted one Muslim (Zainab) who is single-handedly fielding questions about the divinity of Jesus from ten Christians.

This is a modest start that has been bogged down in selective citations from the Gospels to verify if Jesus was a prophet or God. It has shifted from conversations to conversions.

The intention of MyPeace was to “build bridges and extend a hand”, using Jesus as a common plank. With that intention, the billboard should have read:
“Jesus and Mary are holy to Muslims”. Relegating Jesus to a string of prophets was a premature trump card that has toppled the delicate discourse.

The message was akin to telling Muslims that Mohamad was at best a warrior for monotheism, or at worst a false prophet.

For Christians, the Nicene Creed declares the pillars of the faith. God is our Father, and Jesus was his “only begotten son”, who rose from the crucifixion after three days in accordance with the scriptures. The trinity, divinity and resurrection of Jesus are not optional endings. They are the core and climax of the faith, and testified as truth by the disciples whose eye-witness accounts are the four gospels.

For Muslims, the faith is summarised on the MyPeace and GainPeace websites. They quote from Saheeh (meaning ‘truth’) International, who have translated the Koran. This publishing house was formed by “three American converts to Islam” in 1989, and the impressive work of these female scholars has been extensively used for Da’wah (invitation or call to Islam) campaigns.

All these sites declare that “Monotheism is the foundation of Islam and its most important concept which cannot be compromised in any way… God is the only true deity and He alone is worthy to be worshipped… He is absolute”. With this interpretation, Christians are not monotheistic, so let us not beat about the burning bush – there is no happy medium or ‘compromise’.

MyPeace has as much right to pursue its mission as any Christian evangelical mission in Australia. Their American-style banners are a refreshing change to the banner headlines that equate Muslims with violence and hatred, rather than peace and love. They open up the conversation from us talking about them, to direct dialogue. It is a well overdue process of rehumanising the other and replacing the enigma with clarity.

Their illuminated billboards are an open invitation that show there is nothing to hide. This is a stark contrast to the Howard government’s ‘Be alert, not alarmed’ billboards in 2002 that created suspicion and division. Ironically, the buses that were feared to be targets of terrorism are now the targets of the MyPeace posters.

There are two big BUTS.

The billboards, banner headlines and online chats are two dimensional. Pseudonyms can hide behind banners and screens. The bottom line must move from “love to chat more” to “let’s have a coffee”. It needs to progress from FaceBook to meeting face to face. Otherwise the bridge will be virtual rather than real.

The dialogue must be about asking questions and listening to answers. It cannot spiral into a preaching forum on a chat room. If the intention is to convert, this must not be disguised as converse. Otherwise the opportunity is lost, and APN Outdoors will have won two new clients.

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Our humanity must prevail over our sovereignty

The High Court’s ‘Malaysian solution’ decision points the way.

Published in The Canberra Times, 6 September 2011
http://bit.ly/srklTw

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Last week’s High Court decision vindicated what human rights advocates have been pleading for years: humanity must prevail over sovereignty.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard assures us that a ”genuine sense of Australia’s national interest and our national spirit” is what guides the Government’s charter on boat arrivals seeking asylum. Yet this is exactly what was at stake with the Malaysia solution.
Our national anthem sings in joyful strains: ”For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share”. Indeed we have been ”renowed of all the lands” for our fair and welcoming character.

The Malaysian swap deal is a remnant of the condemned Pacific Solution: the cruel logic of dispatching desperate people to poorer neighbours: ”out of sight, out of mind”.

John Howard may have trumpeted about our right to ”decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. But the High Court decision implicitly reminded us of our moral, humanitarian and legal obligations.

The Pacific solution demonised asylum seekers and dropped every dehumanising name onto them ”short of bombing them”.

While the High Court has effectively detonated the Malaysia solution, a new book will trace the fuse that ignited the Pacific solution. Overboard was written by Wallkey-winning journalist Ghassan Nakhoul, the first Australian to have interviewed people smugglers. It reveals that it was a convicted ring leader of people smugglers who ironically vowed that if we ”turn back a boat, just once, no one will be coming”.

Overboard reveals that the then attorney-general Phillip Ruddock twice affirmed that ”the strongest message that has ever been given was the message to turn around boats”. In an interview on SBS radio in July 2001, one of the most notorious – and now prosecuted – people smugglers, Keis Asfoor, had this to say: ”If Australia closes the door and … a ship is turned back, I will stop this thing’.

Five weeks later, the government became ”accomplices in the conspiracy of alienating rejected humans”. The asylum-seekers who were rescued by the Tampa were turned back with spectacular media theatrics that guaranteed international headlines to ”send a strong message to people smugglers”.

In the light of this contaminated conception, the Gillard Government should distance itself from any offshore ”solution”.
To find a sustainable solution, the Government needs to redefine the problem.

The problem is not the dishonesty of the desperate humans who risk their lives to seek asylum. In Australia, more than 90per cent of these ”boat people” are deemed genuine refugees, unlike those who arrive by plane. The problem is not the people smugglers, many of whom see themselves as saviours, as they will always feed on the desperation.

Unlike the Howard government , which vilified the asylum-seekers, the Gillard Government treats them as victims of the real villains – the smugglers. But a different description emerges from both Overboard and the recent report by the Centre of Policy Development, A New Approach: Breaking the Stalemate on Refugees & Asylum Seekers: the latter states ”smuggling enterprises are innovative, entrepreneurial and easily move between legitimate and illegitimate activities”. Shifting the blame from asylum-seeker to people smuggler will never break the stalemate.

The problem is not the pull factors and the need to market Australia as inhospitable. All the money spent to prove that we are not a soft touch was misguided as asylum-seekers kept coming. There may have been fewer boats during the Pacific solution, but there were more people per boat, which meant that the voyage was more treacherous.

We cannot keep escaping the global problem of people fleeing from inhuman conditions, whether it is war, occupation, genocide, torture, persecution, famine or sinking islands.

Rather than a paranoid protection of borders, this requires global and regional cooperation, headed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The real problem is more the push factors than the pull factors. And the inconvenient truth is that we participate in military operations in favour of regime change in the name of human rights, which inadvertently and inevitably ”push” citizens to run for their life.

The Gillard Government should heed the warnings in the book and the recommendations of the report: maximum 30 days’ detention for adults, and 14 days for children, especially as 60per cent of those resettled in Australia are under the age of 25.

With rigorous on-shore processing, it is also recommended that mandatory detention is phased out and replaced with less expensive and less damaging alternatives.

The taxpayers’ money spent on inhumane detention centres is better spent on programs that arrange repatriation and resettlement.
With Australia only receiving 1.04per cent of the global total of asylum-seekers, we could take a fairer share off our poorer regional neighbours.

Refugees are among our most loyal and peace-loving citizens who take nothing for granted.

But the High Court reiterated that human rights should be taken for granted, and that this is genuinely our national spirit.

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It’s Democracy Stupid

It’s democracy stupid
http://bit.ly/rxbUSQ

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If the resistance is armed, it is terrorism. If the resistance is unarmed, it is extremism. If the resistance is verbal, it is anti-Semitism. And if the resistance is crushed, it is colonialism.

Attempts to redress Palestinian human rights have been check-mated with a litany of labels that are aimed to invalidate their every move.

It is ironic that the Greens candidates who dared to take a moral and non-violent stand against the Israeli occupation have copped the wrath of those who carry the political whips. Labels such as extremist, anti-Semitic and Nazi have been used as an emotional weapon to deride the lunatic left and mask many sobering facts. The antidote to a perceived vilification of Zionists appears to be to the vilification of the individual.

With swastikas and loaded labels smeared onto the Greens candidates, the individuals are placed in a defensive position where they are permanently tattooed as guilty – defeated Greens candidate for Marrickville Fiona Byrne, successful candidate for Balmain Jamie Parker, and Senator elect Lee Rhiannon.

It is a profound price to pay and a powerful tactic to silence future critics of Israel or supporters of the global Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

On cue, the major parties promptly paid their dues to Israel. Tony Abbott stated that “the Coalition completely rejects any campaign designed to weaken Israel…I call on the Prime Minister to pull her alliance partner into line”. He referred to the BDS as “nonsense”.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said his government “did not condone nor support any boycotts or sanctions against the Jewish state”.

Opposition Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop referred to Lee Rhiannon’s pro-BDS comments as “extreme”, “highly prejudicial” and “deeply troubling”. This should come as no surprise given that Ms Bishop attended the Kevin Rudd-led delegation of 17 parliamentarians to the Australia Israel Leadership forum last December.

Trade Minister Craig Emerson referred to BDS as a “disgusting policy” and praised the Marrickville voters for rejecting this “Greens extremism”. The applause from Israel was almost audible from Australia.

If any of these whip crackers bothered to research the facts about the BDS, they would struggle to find any extremism. The BDS campaign was founded in 2005, one year after the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s wall, built on occupied Palestinian territory, to be illegal. Contrary to the scaremongering of its critics that compares the BDS campaign with Nazi propaganda, the Palestinian Civil Society BDS founder Omar Barghouti articulates the genesis and inspiration.

“We the representatives of Palestinian civil society call upon international civil society organisations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era….We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call for the sake of justice and genuine peace.”

Anchored in international law and universal human rights, the BDS campaign has three stated goals: ending the occupation including the dismantling of the wall; equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel; the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as per UN resolution 194.The movement categorically rejects all form of racism including anti-Semitism, and has attracted support from Jewish civil groups both within Israel and in the Diaspora.

Where exactly is the extremism with this vision that is “rooted in a century-old history of civil, non-violent resistance against settler colonialism, occupation and ethnic cleansing”? The extremism is more likely to be found in the anti-BDS propaganda, comparing this unarmed resistance to the Nazi boycott of Jews in 1930’s, whereby “dehumanizing them…is a vital step on the way to genocide”.

Australia’s bipartisan loyalty to Israel is apparently in question when the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate in three months. Is this because the major parties need to save face with Israel or Australia?. Over 100 Australian leaders have ‘graduated’ from the Rambam Israel Fellowship, including Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Alexander Downer and Bill Shorten. The six day program is engineered by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. By their own admission, the Rambam organisers have declared that “for the money we invest in, you can’t ask for better results”.

The latest vilification of the BDS campaign is yet another example of a return on this investment.

Ironically, Ms Gillard has declared that “we are ready to support sanctions against Iran if it does not comply with the obligations placed on it by the international community”. But Israel will remain exempt from that same moral principle.

The BDS was borne out of frustration, where armed resistances and two Intifadas have failed to produce peace. The verbal resistance via successive negotiations and ‘road maps’ also failed. Hence, the BDS attempts to do what governments have failed to do. The most recent example of a non-violent and civil campaign took place across Israel’s borer on 30 January, where the Egyptian Third Army deliberately and collectively disobeyed their president’s orders to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. The momentum inspired a domino effect across the region.

If indeed the Greens senators cause a rethink of the Middle East foreign policy, this is not daunting. This is democracy. It may indeed be a logical extension of a Roy Morgan national poll in June 2009 which found that 42 per cent of Australians found Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘not justified’, compared with 29 per cent who found them ‘justified’.

In our democracy, our politicians should shape our foreign policy based on our population and our national interests, not based on lubricated lobbying and ‘behind the scenes’ engineering.

Joseph Wakim is founder of Australian Arabic Council

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Politicisation of Asylum Seeker funerals reeks of xenophobia

Coalition comments are not a case of poor timing – they lack all humanity.

Published in The Age, 16 February 2011
http://bit.ly/epZ2iX

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MY WIFE is buried not far from the three victims of the Christmas Island tragedy in Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery. During my regular visit this week, I was saddened by the bleaker plight of my fellow mourners, but ashamed by the opportunistic politicisation of this tragedy.

The fact that my wife was buried in Sydney was a decisive factor that led my family to stay put rather than move back to Melbourne, where we spent most of our life. It was essential that we could regularly visit the site which is now sacred to our family.

If the victims of the shipwreck tragedy of December 15 were buried on Christmas Island, the grave sites would remain abandoned and inaccessible to the relatives. Joe Hockey respectfully declared that “to be there for the ceremony to say goodbye” was totally understandable. It should go without saying, unless what you are saying is that the victims should be blamed for their tragedy. Indeed, this was what his colleague, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison, implied when he questioned the cost to the taxpayer of these funerals. Morrison has fanned the flames with his concession that “the timing of my comments was insensitive”.

Does this mean that a debate about funeral costs for shipwrecked asylum seekers should be adjourned, and this will be the extent of our interest in this global humanitarian epidemic?

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was quick to contextualise the division within his party and regurgitate his boat-stopping, vote-buying mantra – “the most humane thing you can do is put in place [border protection] policies that stop the boats”.

Apart from this being a narrow and xenophobic perspective, the concepts do not flow.

Rather than being fixated on border protection and channelling taxpayers’ money at the symptoms, it makes more sense to understand the inhumane conditions from which these asylum seekers are fleeing.

For example, Australia was a proud partner in the US-led coalition that forced regime change in Iraq in 2003. This strategy unleashed a civil war that has rendered the country so unsafe that thousands of citizens have fled. How could we be complicit with the bombardment of Iraq, then blame the victims when they land on our shores seeking refuge?
Australia is also a proud partner of many of the undemocratic countries in the Middle East that have driven this desperation for a new homeland. Our political leaders are happy to shake hands and raise glasses for the cameras with Israeli, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders. But when families flee from the oppression of these same regimes, we halt them with the same hands and call it ”border protection”.

How extreme do conditions need to be for families to endure border after border, detention after detention, queue after queue, then risk what is left by paying smugglers who dispatch them onto the wild seas?

We hear rumours that boat people are future terrorists, queue jumpers or risk takers and must never set foot on our soil.

Many of us were even sucked in by the ”children overboard” rumour in 2002. Yet most refugees I have met are the exact opposite; they love law and order and have kissed Australian soil. Where are the statistics to verify how many asylum seekers were ultimately deemed to be telling the truth all along and granted refugee status?

Like us, these people also hear rumours about a safe passage to Australia’s friendly shores, where they will live happily ever after. Like us, they too get sucked in. They find that the boat is overcrowded, with no life jackets, and the ocean voyage is treacherous. Many perish at sea with no funerals, no faces and no names. After all, they had no citizenship, no home, no passport, and no record of their departure. If they survive to reach Australian waters and are intercepted, they are then at the mercy of interpreters and officials who need to make a prima facie assessment before the detention and deprivation ensues.

Tony Abbott’s proposed tougher border protection looks superficially at the symptoms of a far more serious humanitarian crisis – a crisis that Australia cannot pretend to have clean hands over, as we have been complicit and supportive in sustaining the very regimes that have become intolerable for these people. Only when we face the international sources of these asylum seekers, rather than the symptoms, will we seriously find a solution to ”stopping the boats”.

If the Catholic Abbott asks what Jesus would do, he would find a familiar story about a family fleeing persecution. Herod ordered a mass murder and the parents feared for the life of their baby. They were prepared to cross as many borders as necessary to save his life.

The problem with the politics is not the timing. It is the tapping into the simplistic victim-blaming that absolves us from any responsibility for the plight of fellow humans. Cemeteries remind us of our common humanity that temporary politicians prefer us to forget.

Joseph Wakim is founder of the Australian Arabic Council and a former Victorian multicultural affairs commissioner.

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Time has run out for the Arab stroingman

Published in Australian Financial Review, 31 March 2011
http://bit.ly/w1jLRn

Arab strongman

Bil rouh, bil dam, nafdeek ya za’eem!

This chant has echoed from the pro-government rallies across the Arab world, but never from the lips of the revolutionaries. The chant is akin to Long Live the King, although the literal meaning is with our soul, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you oh leader.

It is indeed this (un)dying devotion to one saviour and this investment into one invincible demi-god that needs to be drummed out of the marching movement if a new chapter and indeed new constitutions are to be written in Arab history.

As the masses of genies are freed from their bottles and shake off their shackles, the truth is also unbottled: the stronger the leader, the weaker the citizens. The revolutionaries are not about propping up a strongman, but reminding the world that strength of a society is judged by how it treats its weakest citizens.

The legacy of the ‘strongman’ or za’eem is not peculiar to Arab culture, or the twentieth century. We have seen similar icons in Asia, Russia and Europe and they have earned entire chapters in history books as well as nouns named after them such as Stalinism, Reaganism, Thatcherism and Maoism.

The legacy of the Arab strongman was borne out of desperation, not wisdom. From Biblical stories such as the exodus from Egypt, we know that a population who feels oppressed and deprived needs hope which is too often vested in one man. When that strongman dies or disappoints, then another is quickly elevated and crowned.

I have seen this za’eemism throughout Lebanon and Syria, where banners bearing the faces of these local leaders take up a three storey building. In Australia, the election posters can be wrapped around a light pole. The zai’eem becomes literally larger than life. His every move is escorted by an entourage and sirens bringing both sides of traffic to a standstill, akin to Moses parting the Red Sea. By contrast, Australian MPs catch public transport and rub shoulders with their electorate.

It is ironic that some of the Arab strongmen who are now fending off a revolution were themselves originally revolutionaries or rebels. Muammar Gaddafi joined the Revolutionary Command Council in Libya and in September 1969. He staged a bloodless coup against King Idris, thereby abolishing the monarchy. While Gaddafi may have conquered his foes, who were his friends? While he plotted the exit of a monarch, what plans did he have for his own eventual exit?

The eventual game plan was to hold on to power at all costs, and groom a son to inherit the throne. Thus, yesterday’s hero becomes today’s tyrant, and one strongman was merely replaced by another.

Herein lies the problem with this tribal tradition. The taste of power becomes so addictive that the status quo of emergency rule (such as Algeria, Syria and Libya) is sustained across generations, and opposition voices are silenced by secret police (mukhabarat). The strongman’s fear of losing power actually renders him weak, and ironically creates a climate of mutual fear as his citizens dare not challenge the chief lest he invokes the marshal law.

It takes a genuine strongman to have a succession plan and understand that he is the humble servant of the people, not the reverse. It takes a genuine strongman to declare a successful mission accomplished and having the wisdom to plan succession. It takes a genuine strongman to read the seasonal winds and know when to hand over the baton.

This tradition of revering a life-long strongman was conveniently exploited by Western interests who helped carve up the map of the Middle East in the first place, after the collapse of the Ottoman empire a century ago. The strongman created stability as he contained the tribal and sectarian diversity within his country. The strongman yielded a return on western investments because he arranged to sustain himself for the long haul. The strongman had an insatiable appetite for more power and wealth. The strongman was much easier to manipulate than a democratically elected government, in a region where Israel would claimed to have a monopoly on democracy.

His western benefactors were happy to prop him and pour money into his military machines if the strongman was happy to pour oil into western economies, as was the case with our strongman in Egypt Hosni Mubarak and our strongman in Iraq Saddam Hussein. As we could see in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the poverty of the people and human rights violations never distracted the western friendships.

The revering of a strongman has no place in the revolution or Arab contemporary culture. The young revolutionaries now seek ideals such as freedom, democracy, accountability and human rights, rather than a single-handed savior. Indeed, strongmen such as Gaddafi and Mubarak hail from their grandfathers’ generation. These citizens have seen how the concentrated power of the strongman ultimately causes powerlessness of the people.

This means regular elections that are free and fair, and where various political parties can flourish. These need to be promoted in such a way to transcend tribes, sects and clans, who may have traditionally voted for their own strongman. Among the political parties, it should be expected that there is a Muslim political party (Brotherhood) in a predominantly Muslim state, just as there is a Christian Democratic Party in Australia.

As Marshall law and emergency rule are systematically being dismantled after over forty years, promised in Algeria and Syria, the new constitution needs to etch provisions akin to a Bill of Rights.

The Arab League has its headquarters next to Tahrir Square in Cairo and marks the 60th anniversary of its charter this month. This is both the time and place for the architects of new constitutions to prohibit the strongman and ensure that the next chapter is a za’eem-free zone.

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Ironies in Jesus’s crucixion

Crucixion Ironies

Published in The Advertiser on 22 April 2011
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/wakim-ironies-in-jesuss-crucifixion/story-fn6br25t-1226043079362

THERE was a terrible connection between Jesus’s trade and his torture, writes Joseph Wakim.

THE most tragic death in human history hides an ironic twist.

Two millennia ago, Jesus of Nazareth was charged for treason, mocked as King of the Jews, then crucified.

But the chilling connection between his trade and his torture is as twisted as his crown of thorns.

“Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Joseph and Mary?” narrates the gospel of Mark.

The major tools of a Jewish carpenter would have been wood, hammer and nails – the exact tools of his crucifixion!
As if the false accusations were not enough. As if the betrayal by his closest friends was not enough. As if the death sentence was not enough.

But to add vinegar to the bitter experience, this carpenter was to see his beloved tools of construction transformed into the weapons of his destruction.

As a guitar player who loves to compose beautiful music, and polish every part of my instruments, this would be as cruel as hanging me by my strings and forcing me to swallow plectrums.
At the time of this crucifixion, Jesus could have been condemned to many other forms of capital punishment.

He could have been thrown into a snake den, stoned like Mary Magdalene, trampled by horses, beheaded by a sword, burned at the stake or fed to a lion’s den. The intention of this public torture was ostensibly to terrorise onlookers and deter crime.

The Romans inflicted this on non-citizens and slaves as the most dishonourable death imaginable, and historians depict the naked
shame as even more humiliating than Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

However, criminals who were Roman citizens were spared this slow agony and sentenced to swift decapitation instead.
Crucifixions were executed for 10 centuries, commencing with the Persians about 600 BC then finally outlawed by Roman emperor Constantine in 337 AD, before he himself converted to Christianity.

With the condemned criminal forced to carry the cross, another loaded layer had to be shouldered by this carpenter.
Imagine his relationship with that wooden cross. He would have appreciated its texture and identified the original tree.

Historians suggest that it was an olive tree, which compounds the pain as olive branches were waved to welcome him into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday”.
It was the Mount of Olives where he sought solace and prayed before being apprehended. Now this scent of a sanctuary would become the pillar of his persecution.
Upon this wood, the carpenter would bleed, weep, embrace, until its total weight would fall upon him, and he would be crushed by his craft.

Even the nails that were used to pin his bloody body were literally twisted. As if the humiliation was not enough, the iron nails were removed and re-used for subsequent crucifixions, to cut costs that should not be wasted on criminals.

Imagine a carpenter who admired perfect nails watching as crooked and infected tools pierced his limbs.

When my late wife had endured so much suffering in her last weeks during Lent, she would reflect on the pain and injustice inflicted upon Jesus to lighten her load.

Indeed, the woes of our world wash away into insignificance.

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What if the Oslo terrorist was Ahmed Brevik?

What if the Oslo terrorist was Ahmad Breivik?

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2825888.html#

Published on The Drum, ABC Online

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5 August 2011

If the Oslo terrorist suspect Anders was Ahmad, the blame game would have revealed a double standard.

Right-wing ideologues and hate peddlers both in Europe and Australia have hastily ducked for cover and denounced Anders Breivik as a deranged psychopath. They have tip-toed away from the crime scene, insisting that there is no blood on their hands.

By contrast, Muslim leaders step up to the podium, denounce acts of violence and assume a position of responsibility when any misguided Muslim commits a crime in the name of Islam. Rather than shy away, they face the press gallery, even if the criminal is a psychopath. They are cornered to be accountable, with a microphone and camera pointing to their head, as if there is something intrinsically evil about their creed.

If Anders was Ahmad, he would have been promptly linked with some Islamic organisation. The terrorist tag would have begged a series of questions about the sources of the evil.

Counter-terrorism intelligence would have investigated the ‘supply chain of hate’ that stems from subjective interpretations of the Koran, to the toxic sermons of firebrand Imams, to underground hate groups against western infidels, to illegal suppliers of weapons, to bomb-making internet sites, to those cowards who glorify the mass murder of innocents, and promise the martyrs some reward in a perverted paradise.

But Anders Breivik’s terrorist act was re-diagnosed once it was confirmed that a white European was responsible. Our-post mortem zoomed in on his internal psychosis rather than zoomed out to his external supply chain, hence allowing the hate peddlers to keep peddling away.
London mayor Boris Johnson declared that “It wasn’t really about ideology or religion. It was all about him.”

Similarly, British journalist Simon Jenkins claimed that “The Norwegian tragedy … is so exceptional as to be of interest to criminology and brain science, but not to politics.”

Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung dismissed any link between the terrorism and the rise of right-wing populism is “akin to modern superstition”.

His defence lawyer Geir Lippestad is also feeding the pathology diagnosis with his client’s recent plea that any psychiatric assessment must be done by a Japanese expert because they understand “the concept of honour”. When did we last hear of any Muslim terror suspect having any psychiatric assessment?

In any crime, the diagnosis determines the deployed.
Oslo TerroristIf Breivik’s crime was misdiagnosed as pathology, then psychologists are deployed to understand his victimhood, vulnerability, anger and violence.

But if his crime was correctly diagnosed as terrorism, then intelligence experts would have been deployed to crack the supply chain of hate, all the way back to the hate mongers of the ideology.

The experts would have interrogated the sources who supplied Breivik with this ideological ‘fertiliser’, the sources who sowed the seeds to germinate the ‘terror cells’ for his Muslim-free utopia, and make them all accountable. The experts would expose his school (madrassa) of thought and identify his peers (shabbab), and make them all accountable under relevant hate crime legislation, exactly like Muslim leaders.
Disowning is an unacceptable cop-out, and the same standard must be applied to the responsible right-wing elders.

Did the hate peddlers ever stop and think that maybe one person, one day may take their rhetoric, policies, propaganda, scaremongering and Islamophobia to the next level and literally fulfil their Muslim-free fantasy with the ultimate solution?

Despite all the speculation that Anders Breivik acted alone, his 1,518 page manifesto, 2083 – A European Declaration Of Independence, is testament that he thrived in the ‘good company’ of many mentors and vehement voices. He loved people who hated Muslims. In a bizarre twist of alliances, he subscribes to both neo-Nazi and Zionist ideologies. As the Arab adage states, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and neo-Nazis are increasingly demonising Arabs as the new Semitic target, viewing “Israel as an outpost of Western civilisation in the mortal struggle with barbaric Islam”.

His mentors in his manifesto did not advocate killing Muslims, but killing the multicultural policy that sustains “deconstructing Norwegian culture and mass importing Muslims”. Hence, he did not attack the dirty water, but the tap itself, blocking the pipeline and supply chain of another generation of these policymakers.
After years of wolf whistling, did the hate peddlers never suspect that one day someone may howl back heroically with a ‘martyrdom operation’ with a soldier’s salute to their ideology?

Attempts to amplify his pathology and downplay the ideology also attempt to straightjacket any public discourse about the dangers of mainstreaming extreme right-wing views. His views echo some of the xenophobic platforms of political parties such as Norway Progress Party, Danish People’s Party, Swiss People’s Party, Swedish Democratic Party, Dutch Party of Freedom and True Finns.

If we fail to render these same leaders accountable for the ultimate ugly manifestation of their utterances, we do so at our own peril. The double standards between Anders and Ahmad create a chasm wide enough for the hate peddlers to escape with impunity.

Joseph Wakim is a freelance writer and former Multicultural Affairs Commissioner for Victoria.

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An unholy union to deport refugees

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Before our pragmatic politicians are wedded to the offshore solution, they may need to check who is hiding under that bed.

The new vows may amount to a civil marriage of convenience with enormous ‘discretionary options’ for the legal guardians, but they breach previous vows regarding rights of children and rights of refugees.

When the celebrant asks if anyone objects, 54 per cent of the congregation will say ‘I do’, according to a recent Nielsen poll. Such is the disconnect between Australian voters who prefer a humanitarian onshore solution, and the federal leaders seeking a political offshore solution.

Australiawas the first place on the planet to give birth to an offshore solution in 2001, buoyed by the war on terror and the Islamophobia.

Only two other countries conceived similar solutions. The first was aborted and the second was abandoned.

In 2003, Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, floated ‘A new vision for refugees’, whereby asylum seekers would be interned then deported to ‘transit processing centres’ in non-EU counties such as Albania, Ukraine and Russia. Modeled afterAustralia’s offshore ‘solution’, these ‘refugee reservations’ would be as ‘close to home’ as possible.

The accommodation was to be minimalist – ‘the cheaper the better’ – to serve as a deterrent for potential refugees. With barbed wire fencing, these ‘zones of sanctuary’ were more like concentration camps. They made a mockery of article 3 of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention which banned signatory states from sending refugees to countries where political instability reigned. Like the High Court of Australia, the EU torpedoed the Blair vision, and left behind a skeleton.

In 2009, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi initiated a push-back agreement with Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi, whereby African refugees caught at sea are sent toLibya, the typical point of departure. While the refugee numbers did not drop, only a 10th of the annual 14,000 reached Italian shores while the rest experienced push-back toLibya. Human Rights Watch condemned the policy andLibya’s dangerous detention camps – “What they are trying to do is outsource this responsibility to countries likeLibyawho are not party to international refugee and human-rights conventions.” This familiar verdict, and the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, left behind another skeleton.

InAustralia, Liberals are chest-beating about fathering this brainchild but ashamed to acknowledge the real mother. Shadow immigration spokesman Scott Morrison trumpets that the ‘Coalition has always supported offshore processing. We have a patent on it.’

But the birth certificate of the offshore solution is a bombshell. Walkley-winning journalist Ghassan Nakhoul accidentally witnessed the birth of the offshore solution, and commemorates its 10th birthday with a revealing book Overboard to be launched today. He was the first Australian journalist to interview a people smuggler who ironically and inadvertently conceived the offshore solution.

The birth certificate declares that Phillip Ruddock, then the attorney-general, twice affirmed that “the strongest message that has ever been given was the message to turn around boats. In an interview on SBS radio in July 2001 [with Ghassan Nakhoul], one of the most notorious – and now prosecuted – people smugglers, Keis Asfoor, had this to say: IfAustraliacloses the door and … a ship is turned back, I will stop this thing.”

Five weeks later, the Howard government took his advice and turned back theTampa, as ‘accomplices in the conspiracy of alienating rejected humans’.

Today, both major parties are keen to ensure that any children borne out of this solution are towed away ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Their human faces and pleas must be hidden from home ‘theatres’, so the Gillard Government can save face over the High Court embarrassment.

Given the Prime Minister’s latest vow to ‘smash what is truly evil – people smuggling’, surely she should distance herself from this contaminated conception. Surely, the two skeletons under the bed should be a deterrent.

InAustralia, there is only 1.1 refugee for every 1,000 people, which is 0.1 per cent of our population, and boat arrivals are much less. Yet they trigger a disproportionate amount of agitation, because it goes to the heart of what our Prime Minister calls ‘our national spirit’.

The solution will continue to bounce between the chambers of Parliament and the chambers of the High Court for so long as it is seen through a political prism – the number of dollars it costs, the number of votes in Parliament, the number of boats arriving, the number of detainees. It is not about numbers at all. It is about our fellow humans and our moral responsibility to be compassionate which cannot be measured numerically.

We need to smash the political prism that reduces refugees to mere numbers