|
At
the reception desk of the War-Against-Terror Coalition, there lies
an application form for new partners. After stating his name,
country and function (king / president / emir / dictator /
tyrant), the applicant is invited to answer the question: "Do
you have local opponents that you wish to have branded as
terrorists and dealt with accordingly?"
Nearly
all the applicants so far have answered this question with great
enthusiasm. Vladimir Putin designated the Chechnyian rebels, Spain
mentioned the Basque ETA, Turkey the Kurds, India the Kashmiris,
just to mention a few of a long list. In short, every potentate,
big and small, pointed a finger at the people he oppresses, hoping
that the United States will help him get rid of their war of
liberation. "Send in the big bombers," they beg,
"and blow these miserable terrorist bandits sky-high!"
All
this might remind students of history of events nearly 200 years
ago. After the downfall of Napoleon, the tyrant who promoted
liberty throughout Europe, the rulers of the continent decided to
set up an insurmountable wall to any further aspirations of
national and social liberation. "All this nonsense about
democracy, freedom, equality and constitutions has to stop once
and for all," they told each other.
And
so in 1815 the Czar of all the Russians, the Emperor of Austria
and the King of Prussia signed an agreement, which they called the
Holy Alliance, to institute the rule of God in Europe. Abusing the
name of the mild and vaguely socialist rabbi from Nazareth, they
created in reality an international mafia of the Iron Fist.
Wherever an oppressed people dared to raise its head in rebellion,
all the rulers of Europe would band together, one for all and all
for one, to help their threatened colleague. The Russians, for
example, sent troops to squash the Hungarian and Italian
rebellions against Austria; the secret services of all cooperated
against the socialists and anarchists.
Almost
all the rulers of the continent joined the Alliance, as did
England in practice, without doing so formally. The Pope, vicar of
Christ, did not, and neither did the Ottoman Sultan, who, not
being a devout Christian, had to oppress his many peoples without
outside help.
Henry
Kissinger, one of the modern admirers of the alliance and its
major statesman, the Austrian Prince Metternich, credits it with
maintaining order in Europe for many decades. Less
morally-handicapped historians might point out that this unholy
coming-together of reactionary princes held up the progress of
Europe throughout the 19th century, denying liberty to many
peoples and allowing narrow-minded kings and aristocrats to hold
on to their privileges against far more productive and forward
looking social forces. Nothing very holy about that.
Under
the umbrella of the War Against Terror, a new Holy Alliance is in
the making. George W. Bush is now the supreme judge who decides
who is a terrorist and who is not, as once a mayor of Vienna
decided who is a Jew. (Karl Lueger, who was elected in 1897 on an
anti-Semitic platform, once cheered a Viennese team at a football
match against Hungarians. Told that the Viennese team is Jewish,
he answered: "What the hell, it's I who decides who is a
Jew!")
The
inherent danger of this development is that the new alliance will
hold up the most needed reform of the 21st century: the narrowing
of the gap between North and South, the rich and the poor nations.
The abominable outrages of Osama bin Laden and his ilk may be
seen, in times to come, as the first manifestation of the coming
fight of the teeming billions of deprived and oppressed members of
mankind against the privileged few, who almost literally drown in
their own fat. The timely recognition of this problem and a
determined efforts to deal with it, while there still is time, may
prevent an imminent world-wide disaster. Fighting for the
unlimited Western hegemony and monopoly of the world's riches,
camouflaged as anti-terrorism, will lead to a world-wide
catastrophe in the future.
In
the meantime, George W. Bush and his advisors, female and male,
will have to decide whether Arafat is a terrorist or an ally in
the new equation. Ariel Sharon, an unofficial ("Don't call
me, I'll call you") member of the coalition, insists that he,
like Putin, has the right to call his enemies terrorists, so that
he can bomb the Palestinians back to the stone-age and lock them
up in some disconnected Bantustans.
The
Pentagon and Condoleeza Rice agree, the State Department doesn't.
The national interests of the United States clearly point to the
recognition of Palestine as a corner-stone of peace and stability
in the Middle East. Domestic politics points in the opposite
direction.
It
remains to be seen whether Kissinger's dictum that "Israel
has no foreign policy, only a domestic one" applies to the
United States, too.
*
Uri Avnery is a journalist, writer and activist. He is a
former member of the Knesset, founding member of the Israeli
Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and founder and president of
Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) organization. He was subject to
assassination attempts by religious Zionists. His works
include The Other Side of the Coin with a description of
war atrocities in 1948, Israel Without Zionists, and My
Friend, the Enemy, translated into many languages.
Source:
www.gush-shalom.org
Posted with permission.
|
