Welcome to the new Middle East

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I was reading recently how the most modern armies are increasingly frustrated by the mismatch between their firepower and their ability to win hearts and minds. Some of us would say that it is precisely the shock and awe of their weapons which builds hostility to them around the world and makes it so hard for them to win popular support in their own countries, let alone in those that they attack.

They can win the military battles without much difficulty, they say, but they repeatedly stand to lose the political argument.

There's a lot in that. Although even on the military front, the big powers aren't doing so well. The US and Britain have not defeated the resistance in Iraq, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and Israel _the biggest military power and the only nuclear power in the Middle East_has failed in its objective of crushing Hizbollah in Lebanon. This is despite bombing roads, bridges, flats, oil refineries, airports and petrol stations.

Hizbollah is in fact much stronger in Lebanon than a month ago, its support hardened and widened by the Israeli aggression. To many people it is regarded as the victor in this particular battle. In Israel a major political crisis is brewing as the Israelis contemplate the unthinkable _defeat.

When it comes to hearts and minds, however, things are much worse than that. The invasion of Lebanon, overlaid on the other disasters in the region, has created far more opposition to the US, Britain and Israel, and far more support for those who oppose them.

Don't think this will stop Bush and Blair in their tracks though. As Seymour Hersh spelt out in such detail in his New Yorker article, the US was fully informed and behind this attack, which was planned long before the capture of two Israeli soldiers (whose release has not been included in the ceasefire)_the incident which formed the alleged basis for the war.

It was clearly seen by the US as the first phase in the war against it major adversary in the region, Iran. Since the Lebanon ceasefire, attention has now turned again on the Iranian regime. We shouldn't expect Bush to be chastened by his proteges' failure in Lebanon.

The last refuge of this scoundrel government faced with a foreign policy running the gamut from disaster to catastrophe is to play the terrorist card. Iran= Hizbollah=terrorism=people who blow up planes by concocting bombs out of Lucozade bottles. Home Secretary John Reid is agitating for 90 day detention as a result of the alleged plot uncovered last week for the 'British 9/11.'

It takes people's minds and newspaper headlines from the war and the growing rebellion against Tony Blair within the Labour Party. It also builds up hysteria against young Muslim men in particular and there is growing disquiet, I think, in the Muslim community about these repeated raids.

Don't get me wrong. Such attacks have nothing to do with genuine protest against the war or anything else and if there is evidence then these people should be arrested and charged. But we have been here before.

The Forest Gate brothers had equally lurid headlines about a chemical bomb, chemical vests and so on. One was shot. The police now say there was no evidence. There was the alleged plot to blow up Manchester United football ground by Iraqi Kurds.They were all released without charge. Then there was the supposed ricin plot in north London, used in 2003 by Colin Powell as evidence of terrorist threats in the lead up to war.

Except there was no ricin and no plot.

Too much media speculation and intelligence leaks simply cannot be stood up. If that keeps happening, no wonder people become cynical of government motives.

8/15/2006 03:17:00 PM | Permalink

History lessons

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

In the early 1930s many people campaigned to make aerial bombardment illegal. People realised that the development of aircraft could herald a new and bloody form of warfare. So it was seriously suggested that planes could only be developed for peaceful purposes and that bombers would be outlawed.

History shows how tragic that campaign's failure was. In the 1930s, the fascist powers intervened on the side of Franco in Spain. The bombing of the ancient Basque town of Guernica, so dramatically portrayed by Picasso, was only the most famous. Then followed the Second World War where many of the cities of Europe were damaged or destroyed from the air.

My home city of London was one of them. My primary school still had its air raid shelters (used to store old desks and sit on in the summer). London suffered the Blitz from 1940 to 1941 and then the rocket attacks from V1s and V2s in 1944 and 1945.

The Israeli hawks now justifying their attacks on Lebanon repeatedly try to draw parallels between those bombings and what is happening in north Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel and Likud hardliner, said recently that Britain and the US bombed the German city of Dresden in response to the V2 attacks and they should therefore understand Israel bombing Beirut.

He was at it again on the news last night, saying that Londoners suffered similar to Israel during the Blitz. There are analogies between the Second World War and the present situation, but not the ones Netanyahu thinks there are.

Take weapons. The V2 was a state of the art rocket, the weapon of mass destruction of its day. It resulted in very high civilian casualties, there was no warning and no defence against it. It could be fired hundreds of miles. Compare this to Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket, also first developed in the Second World War, which has only limited range. The discrepancy in casualties tells the story. While over 1000 Lebanese had died by yesterday, just under 100 Israelis had (two thirds of them soldiers). Israel's attacks are closer to the blanket bombing carried out by the major powers on Britain, Germany or Japan.

Or take attacks on civilians. In 1949 collective punishment was outlawed by the Geneva conventions because of the Nazi killings of civilians in response to supposed terrorism by the resistance in countries such as France and Italy. The resistance came from the local people and was supported by the local people. The Italian town of Marzabotto saw around 2000 mainly women and children killed by the SS in response to partisan attacks. In the tiny hill town of Civatella more than a hundred men including their priest were massacred while attending mass on the town's saint's day.

Yet in Lebanon and Palestine the illegal collective punishment of civilians has been used repeatedly supposedly to attack Hizbollah and Hamas. Precisely because Hizbollah and Hamas have mass support, including representatives in government, this punishment both targets the whole population and tends to increase support for the organisations.

The treatment of the Lebanese government today has parallels with the Munich settlement in 1938, when Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, dealt with Hitler to the advantage of Germany and to the disadvantage of Czechoslovakia. Today, Britain and the US are willing to back Israel's invasion of Lebanon in a UN resolution which gives nearly everything that Israel wants while denying Lebanon its sovereignty.

Netanyahu uses the Second World War because he knows that the Holocaust, the most terrible act of that or any war, means so much to Jews everywhere. But the more you look at the parallels, the more you see Israel not as a small power defending itself, but as the biggest and best armed aggressor in the region.

8/08/2006 12:45:00 PM | Permalink

You figure it out

Sunday, August 06, 2006

What a march. Called at a week's notice, in the middle of the holidays, and we still got 100,000. Nearly all the coaches from outside London were full and turned people away. The police said 20,000, although this was a figure revised down from the 30-50,000 they were saying informally at 1pm _and loads more joined after that.

These police figures have a political edge. On February 15 2003 the police figure officially issued was 750,000. They later revised that to 1 million but not before Rupert Murdoch's Sunday papers had quoted the lower figure _ the only papers to do so. We put it at closer to 2 million, backed up by a poll and an urban geographer who calculated it was over 2 million.

So the aim is to minimise the protest, although it has less and less effect the bigger the marches are, because so many people go on them, tell their friends and family, and become used to _if no less angry at_ the under- or non-reporting.

Some of the media are rather predictable, though. I think it must be compulsory for BBC journalists to ask 'but it won't do any good, will it, what's the point of marching?' type of questions. Surely a more apt question should be directed at cabinet ministers. 'Why do you repeatedly ignore mass protests even though the protesters have a record of being proved right about Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror?' Some hope.

It's claimed Blair was in Downing Street when the march passed so he must have heard the cries and boos which went on for more than two hours as people stopped to lay children's shoes at the Cenotaph and then went to the rally in Parliament Square.

The march united a great wave of people against what is happening in Lebanon, Palestine and across the region. But even as it was ending, the press was hailing the possible UN resolution as reason for a ceasefire.

Today there's even more of that. The inconvenient opposition of the Lebanese government to a settlement which would allow Israel to occupy part of its country is blithely waved away. The presenter of tonight's Channel 4 News chided the Lebanese representative to the UN, saying surely the main thing is get a ceasefire.

How would we feel if Sussex was invaded and London bombed, and we were told that to stop the bombing we had to put up with the invasion? The fact that journalists can even put it like this shows how much they accept the government agenda.

The next couple of days can be very important, and those of us who demonstrated need to make clear that we don't accept a ceasefire which penalises Hizbollah, the Lebanese people and the Palestinians but allows Israel to continue its aggression. Peace can't be at any price.

8/06/2006 09:39:00 PM | Permalink

The gathering storm

Friday, August 04, 2006

This morning we received signatures for our statement calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon from 200 people on the Isle of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. Tom in our office tells me that this represents a fifth of the island's population.

Probably none of them will make our demo in London tomorrow, but they are only a fraction of the movement which is building into a great crescendo of protest. One of the sheets of signatures had attached to it a Labour Party membership card to be returned to number 10.

Our office is in an incredible state. Dozens of people pass through every day and at any time there are 20 or 30 in the building. The sandwich bill alone adds up to £50 a day. There are people of all ages here, but especially young people who are outraged at what has happened.

Two young people from Kuwait brought in a flyer for a benefit in east London on Sunday night. A young Saudi has been leafletting different parts of London all week. Young women with and without hijabs are making placards, loading the van, looking for banners, photocopying and phoning.

The stewards' meeting tonight promises to be big with people from all over.

Demonstrations can't happen _ or not on the scale we expect tomorrow_without this level of organisation and commitment. And movements only thrive when they begin to harness this energy and commitment in all sorts of different ways. It was like this when we first began almost five years ago, over the war in Afghanistan. It was like this in the run up to the Iraq war, and again in November 2003 when George Bush came to town.

So this mood and involvement is something special again. It seems to me the biggest crisis Blair has faced since the war itself, as even those Labour MPs who backed him so loyally over the previous wars are turning against him.

Even at this last minute people are booking tickets on coaches, leafletting tubes and getting their friends and families to come. If we are right, this will be very large, and will catch the mood and the moment. A perfect storm is gathering, and the prime minister is at its centre.

8/04/2006 05:43:00 PM | Permalink

A blow for civilisation

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

What a grim start to August this is. Three British troops killed in Afghanistan, another hit by a mortar at a camp in Basra (the first British soldier to be killed in this way). Dozens killed every day in Iraq. But more than anything else the Israeli aggression on Lebanon.

There are now 10,000 Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil. This assault on a supposedly sovereign country is one of the most atrocious actions at a time when atrocities come thick and fast.

I have often wondered how in the 1930s the 'international community' turned a blind eye to or even condoned Mussolini's attack on Abyssinia or Franco's overthrow of a democratic government in Spain. Yet today we have governments, including our own, refusing to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the grounds that it would not achieve a sustained settlement in the region.

True, given the historic injustice meted on the Palestinians since 1948, which will not be solved by a ceasefire.

Would it, on the other hand, stop the killing of refugees, the rising death toll of children, the bombing of hospitals, the destruction of Beirut, a city only just rebuilt after the last war, and the destruction of the last vestiges of peace in the Middle East?

Most people, excepting Tony Blair, George Bush and the Israeli government, would probably think that was worth it.

On the subject of the prime minister, his speech in California seemed to me very far from the coded attack on George Bush spun by Downing Street. It consisted of an echo of the 'axis of evil' speech _ the 'arc of extremism', an attack on Iran and Syria, and a retread of the 'clash of civilisations' theory. His contempt for Labour opinion was demonstrated by him delivering it while loving up to Rupert Murdoch and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a swish California resort.

Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about western civilisation replied he thought it would be a good idea.

The more you see of the 'war on terror' the more you can can see what he meant.

I have, incidentally, seen no reference in the press to the fact that Baalbek, the latest target for the Israelis, is the site of some of the most dramatic and beautiful ancient Roman buildings, including massive temples to Dionysus and Jupiter. So much for civilisation.

I visited Baalbek three years ago and shudder to think what is happening to the town and its people now.

This week I ended my holiday early to come back for our emergency demonstration this Saturday in London. Our office is buzzing as I haven't seen it for a long time. We have more people in it than I've ever seen, the phones, e mails, inquiries, don't stop and people constantly come in to pick up leaflets, posters, make placards.

We have a great route, from Hyde Park via the US embassy and Downing Street to a rally in Parliament Square. I think it will be a mega demo. Which will be a small blow for civilisation against the Bush and Blair barbarians.

8/02/2006 03:39:00 PM | Permalink