Nir Rosen has an amazing report in The National from a Sunni town in Lebanon where gunmen block the Beirut-Damascus road and send suicide bombers to blow up Shiites in Iraq:
A couple comments. Neoconservatives are at heart an element of American identity politics. They arose in some measure out of sociological resentment, as Jacob Heilbrunn demonstrated, and as I knew in my Jewish-son-of-a-CCNY grad bones, and they think in very sectarian terms. It's fascinating that their plans for the Middle East, which included cementing the Jewish occupation of Arab lands in Palestine by engineering an American occupation of Arab lands in Iraq, have helped uncap sectarian fervor across the region. Yes, it was all there, and people are responsible for their own actions, and Lebanon lacks any cohesion as a society, thanks in part to invasions from its two neighbors. But America has helped. The warriors that Rosen meets often have American grenades and pistols that were marketed in Baghdad. Secondly, there is a lot of talk about suicide terrorism by Sunnis in this piece, the glory of it, and I'm reminded that Robert Pape's realist model for suicide terrorism actually held in Iraq: it was a tool used by Sunnis against the Shiite majority. There was a religious difference and a sense of political dispossession, as he said there must be, in Dying to Win.
An issue that arises from this piece is, How long can Israel continue to tamp down the tremendous sectarian fervor within its amalgamated borders? Rosen again:
So sectarianism is a disease rushing throughout the Middle East, enabled by the U.S. Somehow it horrifies the American public more, as westerners, to see suicide terrorism in a "western" society, Israel. But Israel is partaking of the same "us-ness" madness that everyone else in the Middle East is partaking of, in its case Zionism, privileging Jews, oppressing Arabs. This is further argument for why Americans horrified by the neocon takeover must elect Obama, a man who makes no reference to his race except in the most allusive terms and who really doesn't think in those terms, notwithstanding the youthful explorations so beautifully recorded in his first book; his rise will be a great signal to the world of the relaxation of identity politics. And maybe it can help Israel to be a country of its citizens. And Lebanon and Iraq too…
P.S. There is also a dramatic/witty piece in the National from Suzy Hansen, about the connections in Istanbul between the headscarf, feminine honor, and a neighborhood's honor.
Related posts:
- I was with the neocons– (Then I went to the Middle East)
- Israel Is In Crisis. Or, How Violence Shapes Identity in the Middle East
- As US power dwindles, Middle East politics will continue to shift
- Prominent Authors Cannot Say What Any Fool and Fukuyama Know: Palestinian Issue Helped Fuel 9/11 Attacks
- (Oy) Obama chooses 3 Jews as Middle East envoys
{ 2 comments }
I'm not sure why you attribute "cause" to the neo-conservative effort, as affecting ANY relationship between factions/clans in Lebanon or elsewhere in the middle east.
Clearly those division pre-date, post-date and are much more intense than the "identity" politics of Jewish support for Israel, or Irish support for the Ireland, or Palestinian American support for Palestine.
I'm also surprised at your reference comparing Hezbollah (posed as a moderate) compared to Sunni (presumably Al-Quaida like).
There was a UN Farsi translator on Fresh Air last night, who sited that he thought that Iran was naturally more moderate than it is given credit for, and is possible in US relations. He also reiterated that Abhenijidad has only limited power authorized to him, and the person with ultimate power is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni.
I was disappointed that the New York sounding (almost "Jewish" or Italian) translator believed that the quote "wipe them off the map" came from a New York Times translation, and not the Iranian Press Service factually (though he did describe the Iranian Press Service translations as often very innaccurate), or even from Al-Jazeera (that the New York Times quoted as their source).
He did say that Iran really doesn't care that much about Israel/Palestine, and that although Abhnijidad has permission to speak about it, it differs from the perspective and importance in the eyes of the Supreme Ruler.
Iranians chanted "Death to Israel" on Friday as Islamist students unveiled a book mocking the Holocaust in an Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day annual parade to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
And in Gaza City, the Islamist Hamas movement that has ruled the impoverished Palestinian territory since June 2007 marked the day by calling for more suicide attacks on Israel.
The book "Holocaust," published by members of Iran's Islamist Basij militia, features dozens of cartoons and sarcastic commentary.
Education Minister Alireza Ali-Ahmadi attended the official launch of the book in Tehran's Palestine Square.
The cover shows a Jew with a crooked nose and dressed in traditional garb drawing outlines of dead bodies on the ground.
Inside, bearded Jews are shown leaving and re-entering a gas chamber with a counter that reads the number 5,999,999.
Another illustration depicts Jewish prisoners entering a furnace in a Nazi extermination camp and leaving from the other side as gun-wielding "terrorists."
Yet another shows a patient draped in an Israeli flag and on life support breathing Zyklon-B, the poisonous gas used in the extermination chambers.
Iran does not recognise the Jewish state, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attracted international condemnation by repeatedly predicting Israel is doomed to disappear and branding the Holocaust a "myth."
The commentary inside the book includes anti-Semitic stereotypes and revisionist arguments, casting doubt that the massacre of Jews took place and mocking Holocaust survivors who claimed reparations after World War II.
One comment, in a question-and-answer format, reads: "How did the Germans emit gas into chambers while there were no holes on the ceiling?" Answer: "Shut up, you criminal anti-Semite. How dare you ask this question?"
In 2006, the Islamic republic hosted a conference of Holocaust deniers and revisionists and a mass-circulation Iranian newspaper held a cartoon competition on the subject.
On Friday, tens of thousands of Iranians marched in Tehran, chanting "Death to Israel," declaring solidarity with the Palestinians and calling for Jerusalem and Israel to be handed to the Palestinians.
Demonstrators carried placards bearing slogans including "Israel will be destroyed, Palestine is Victorious" and "Holy war until victory," and they also torched American and Israeli flags.
In Gaza, a Hamas parliamentarian called for more suicide attacks against Israel as thousands of Palestinians marched to mark Al-Quds Day.
"We call on all the factions to undertake efforts to contain the enemy and halt its aggression by planning martyrdom operations," Ahmed Abu Helbiya told a crowd of more than 2,000 protesters.
Friday's Iran protest follows a fresh verbal attack on Israel by Ahmadinejad.
In an address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, he said "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."
Quds Day was started by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, who called on the world's Muslims to show solidarity with Palestinians on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan.
The demonstration was held under an official slogan: "The Islamic world will not recognise the fake Zionist regime under any circumstances and believes that this cancerous tumour will one day be wiped off the face of the earth."
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