|
In my view, Rantissi and Yassin were war criminals. On that level, their demise was well-deserved.
That is a different question than whether killing them was a good idea or whether it will accomplish what Sharon and his people would like it to accomplish.
In terms of advancing any viable popular struggle against oppression, the demise of Hamas leaders and Baathist thugs is irrelevant, as would be the demise of Osama.
The analogies between Hamas and al Qaida and Saddam's Baathist regime are both false.
The analogy to al Qaida is the better of the two. Hamas is a nationalist organization seeking to liberate a nation from what it sees as colonial occupation. Al Qaida is an internationalist organization seeking a pan-Islamic uprising against Western domination. What they have in common is a religious ideology based on a narrow and puritan version of Islam and a belief that there are no innocents among their enemies.
The Palestinian people have legitimate grievances against Israeli occupation. The Israelis seized the land in the 1967 war and agreed to UN Resolution 242, which mandates that the land will be returned for a peace agreement. However, starting with Begin's 1977 declaration that the West Bank and Gaza are "an integral part of Israel", the state of Israel has confiscated Palestinian property in the occupied territories in order to make way for housing in which Palestinians cannot live and is accessed on roads on which they cannot travel. If that isn't a legitimate grievance (not to mention a violation Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention), then I don't know what is. As long as the nature of the Israeli occupation is to assert the supremacy of Jews over Palestinian Arabs in land where over 90% of the population is the latter, there will be resistance.
Nevertheless, recognizing the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances against Israeli occupation doesn't mean we need to approve of Hamas' tactics or embrace its overall goals. Its principle goal -- the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of Jews and their descendants who immigrated to Israel since 1948 -- is unjust and unachievable. Of its tactics much has already been said and it would be redundant to say more here.
An achievable goal for the Palestinian resistance would be to build a viable, sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza that would co-exist with Israel with borders based on (but not necessarily identical with) the 1949 armistice. This can be achieved through tactics, either violent or nonviolent, that do not target Israeli civilians.
People in Islamic nations, like people in developing nations everywhere, have good reason to fear the spread and dominance of global capitalism. Al Qaida exploits this discontent and fear, but Osama's overall goals remain more nebulous than those of Palestinian nationalists. Is Osama seeking a federation of Islamic states that would stretch from Morocco to Mindanao? Is he seeking personal power for himself? Is he seeking to establish a political hierarchy in which devout Muslims have more rights than others? Or is he just a mad man who, like another mad man who comes to mind, is striking out at perceived evil doers?
Osama has also exploited resentment of the exporting of Western culture to places where its excesses offend local sensibilities. However, this "Western cultural imperialism" is an accidental by-product of global capitalism. What is essential to the masters of transnational corporations is that the wealth of the global South flows to the global North and into their coffers, not that people on the Arab street learn to appreciate the banality of American television and Playboy magazine.
Osama has less to do with solving these problems than he thinks. Much of what he resents about Western domination is a problem to peasants and working people in Catholic Bolivia as it is in Islamic Indonesia. An international movement to resist global capitalism must be founded on principles common to the victims of global capitalism; this is not Islamic fundamentalism. In the long run, Osama is irrelevant and al Qaida is not viable.
Osama needs to be stopped, but stopping him will not alleviate the discontent that he has successfully exploited. If nothing is done about that, then local resistance to global capitalism and "Western cultural imperialism" will continue.
The analogy with Iraq is completely false.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is nothing more than an irrelevant sideshow in the war on terrorism. It has to do with what is discussed above only insofar at it is an attempt to impose on the Iraqi people the kind of global capitalist regime that Osama resents. It certainly had nothing to do with ridding Saddam of weapons of which he had long since been rid or with associations with terrorists he did not have.
No one is longing for a return of Saddam to power. The sooner he is completely out of the way, the better. We shed no tears for his sons. However, we keep in mind that Saddam was no less brutal his people at the time of the invasion than he was when the US government armed him in the 1980s. To say that the invasion was about ending Saddam's regime and bringing democracy to Iraq is absurd. To say that Bush is now going to turn "sovereignty" over to Iraq is to engage in an Orwellian use of the word sovereignty. Bush has imposed a regime on Iraqi people that has engineered the sale of Iraq's assets and natural wealth to foreign interests. That is colonialism, not liberation. Bush will leave foreign troops in place under a constitution that prohibits the Iraqi government from nullifying the sale of the country from under its people. That is colonialism, not sovereignty.
The Iraqi people know this and are resisting. Thus, "this has been tough weeks" in Iraq. It will get tougher.
Nevertheless, Osama doesn't have the answer to the problem that is manifest in Bush. Killing Osama and defeating Bush won't hurt anything, but neither by itself will solve anything. Likewise, killing Hamas leadership may not hurt Israel, but Israel's biggest problem is that leaders like Sharon continue to hand the Palestinians legitimate grievances that justify resistance.
We, the common people of the world, must take matters into our hands. We need to know where we want to go and how to get there. Bush and Sharon are part of the problem; right wing terrorism, manifest in al Qaida and Hamas, is not the solution.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
