Letter from an Israeli Prison
by Cynthia McKinney
Original audio message available here:
http://freegaza.org/it/home/56-news/984-a-message-from-cynthia-from-a-cell-block-in-israel
A funny thing happened to me on my way to Gaza. Before I left for Gaza, I was giddy with excitement. The children needed school supplies. It was a last-minute, but urgent request. Please bring crayons for the children. And so I accpeted congtributions of crayola crayons, #2 pencils, pencil sharpeners, paint brushes, and crayola watercolors.
When I told people that I was going shopping to buy crayons for the children of Gaza, everyone wanted to donate. By the time I left, my suitcase could hold no more. So, full of expectation, I entered the airport in the U.S. headed once again to Larnaca, Cyprus where the Hope Flotilla, consisting of the "gree Gaza" and the "Spirit of Humanity" were to embark to Gaza.
The "Free Gaza" was to be donated to the people of Gaa so they could replace some of the boats confiscated or bombed by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead.
It was a beautiful dream. And dream it had to be because I had tried to get to Gaza before. At the outbreak of Israel's Ooperation Cast Lead, I boarded a Free Gaza boat, with one day's notice, and tried, as the U.S. representative in a mulitnational delegation, to deliver trhee tons of mnidical supplies to an already-besieged and ravaged Gaza. But, during Opertion Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16s raised hell fire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide.
U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory; and the people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.
The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international waters that carried medical supplies. That boat, the Dignity, was completely destroyed in its encounter with the Israeli military.
Again, on a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military. I am now known as Israeli Prisoner #88794. I am in cell number 5, Ramle Prison. How could I be in prison for collecting crayons for kids and trying to get the crayons to them?
The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime. And while in the cellblock, I have kaccess to my clothes and a cell phinbe, but not the crayons or any clothing that has the word "Gaza" on it. Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.
I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could color & paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.
But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream. My five cellmates have been here for about six months each. One is pregnant; they are all in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better. The CIA-installed puppet in Addis Ababa, President Meles, whom I have met, has put the once-proud, never-colonized Ethiopia into the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must flee their country because superpower politics became more important than human rights and self-determination.
My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfillment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel. Only after they arrived, Israel told them "There is no UN in Israel."
The police have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious, proud young women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christians. I, too, believed that marketing and failed to look deeper. The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped at Ramle.
And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that "hope," "change," and "yes we can" were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfillment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.
It was a slick marketing campaign, as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.
We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I, too, would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.
What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?
Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I've seen being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?
Let's change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity.
I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes.
I appeal to the United States Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel Country Report in its annual Human Rights Report.
I appeal, once again, to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.
I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle.
Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
I plan to go...who's with me?
Activists plan March to break Gaza siege
By Richard Hall
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
BEIRUT: A coalition of activists belonging to various Palestinian solidarity organizations are planning an international march in Gaza aimed at ending the blockade of the territory. The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.
"This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi," said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the "Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza," obtained by The Daily Star. "Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement," it added.
The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. "We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade," it said, adding that "We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign ... If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed."
Professor Norman Finkelstein, a political analyst and author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is one of the organizers of the march. "We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans," he told The Daily Star.
Finkelstein hopes that large numbers of international activists and world leaders will attend the march, and as a result, prohibit a violent response from Israeli authorities. "If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens - Israel can't shoot," he said.
"The first formal organizational meeting of the coalition is set for July 13," said Finkelstein. "We hope then to create an umbrella steering committee. Right now the working group consists of individuals who belong to organizations that have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as CodePink."
Members of the coalition are now contacting Palestinian solidarity groups around the world in preparation for the march.
By Richard Hall
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
BEIRUT: A coalition of activists belonging to various Palestinian solidarity organizations are planning an international march in Gaza aimed at ending the blockade of the territory. The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.
"This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi," said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the "Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza," obtained by The Daily Star. "Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement," it added.
The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. "We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade," it said, adding that "We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign ... If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed."
Professor Norman Finkelstein, a political analyst and author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is one of the organizers of the march. "We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans," he told The Daily Star.
Finkelstein hopes that large numbers of international activists and world leaders will attend the march, and as a result, prohibit a violent response from Israeli authorities. "If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens - Israel can't shoot," he said.
"The first formal organizational meeting of the coalition is set for July 13," said Finkelstein. "We hope then to create an umbrella steering committee. Right now the working group consists of individuals who belong to organizations that have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as CodePink."
Members of the coalition are now contacting Palestinian solidarity groups around the world in preparation for the march.
Repression (and Hope) in Honduras
Hondurans Pour into the Streets Demanding Zelaya’s Return
by Medea Benjamin
The day started out full of joy, as thousands of Hondurans converged in front of the National Institute of Pedagogy, intent on marching about three miles to the airport to greet the plane that was supposed to bring deposed President Zelaya back to Honduras.
"Our president's coming home today, this is going to be a great day," said Jose Rodriguez, a campesino who came from Santa Barbara with his farmer's group to join the anti-coup movement. The military tried to stop them from getting to the capital, so they had to divide up and take local buses from town to town. "It took us two days to get here, and we slept outside in the forest last night, but we had to be here," said Rodriguez.
A group of young girls came with their church from Olancho. They were determined to greet Zelaya, who they said was sent by God to be president. "The Cardinal is against our president, but he doesn't represent many of us in the religious community. Our pastor is against the coup and so are we," said Alejandra Fernandez, a 23-year-old university student.
I asked why she supported Manuel Zelaya, or "Mel", as his supporters call him. "The government said he broke the law and is guilty of 18 crimes," she said. "Do you know what they are?" She pulled out her cell phone and started to read from a list: He raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving lightbulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, made more scholarships available for students." Suddenly a crowd gathered around us and started chiming in. "He fixed the roads," said one. "He put schools in remote rural areas, like my little village, that never had them before," added another. "He let anyone go into the Presidential Palace and converted it from an elite residence to the people's house," said another.
"You see?," Alejandra smiled. "He is guilty of even more then 18 crimes. That's why the elite classes can't stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle."
The march wound its way through the streets of Tegucigalpa, gathering more and more people along the way. The massive crowd sang and chanted slogans like "No somos cinco, no somos cien. Prensa vendida, cuentenos bien" (We're not five, we're not 100, you sold-out press, count us well")-referring to the fact that the mainstream press has been ignoring or grossly undercounting the movement that had been holding street demonstrations every day since the June 28 coup.
"I've never had anything like this in my lifetime," said an ecstatic Miriam Nunez, a 46-year-old teacher from Tegucigalpa. "Look around you-you can't even see the beginning or the end of this march! It's full of teachers, students, campesinos, union workers, indigenous people. One thing the coup succeeded in doing is bringing together the social movements in a way that never exited before in this country."
What made the march particularly exciting is that as it approached the airport, there were rows and rows of soldiers and police in riot gear blocking their path. Each time the security forces tried to stop the crowd, there would be negotiations with the police, who would finally back down and allow the protesters to get closer and closer to the airport.
Luis Sosa, a university professor and anti-coup leader, was one of those negotiating with Police Commissioner Mendosa. "Mendosa and I went to school together 20 years ago and we play soccer together every Sunday. So he knows that if his men get rough with us, there will be hell to pay next Sunday," laughed Sosa. "But seriously, we're trying hard to maintain discipline among our ranks-taking sticks and rocks away from people who want to provoke violence-and the police say that as long as we are peaceful, they'll let us go all the way to the airport."
Sure enough, the crowd made it to the airport peacefully and waited patiently for Zelaya's plane to arrive. Suddenly, a plane flew in low and circled around the airport. The crowd went wild, cheering and jumping up and down, but became angry when they saw that the plane was not able to land. Military vehicles and soldiers were on the runway, making it impossible for the pilot to maneuver safely.
On the far end of the airport, a group of mostly young people tried to get through the fence to make their way to the tarmac. According to Al Jazeera cameramen Alfredo Delara, some of them started throwing stones and bottles at security forces. The troops responded by lobbying tear gas and then firing their weapons in the air. Suddenly, at least one soldier pointed his weapon directly at the crowd.
"A young boy was hit right in the head, his brains gushing out. He was killed instantly," said Delara. "His mother came running, screaming hysterically ‘My son, my son, they've killed my son.'" Others in the crowd were wounded and it was reported that another person was killed.
Between the violence and the fact that President Zelaya was forced to fly on to El Salvador, the crowd became despondent. The organizers tried to keep up their hopes. "Perhaps the United Nations will send peacekeepers," one of the leaders shouted through the sound system. The crowd cheered and yelled, "We want the blue helmuts, we want the blue helmuts."
"Can you believe this?," asked indigenous leader Berta Caceres, her eyes welling up with tears. "Now they are killing our people. Where will this end? We need the international community to step in and stop the crazy people who have stolen our country."
Meanwhile, another piece of news circulated-that the government had just moved up the curfew from 10pm to 6:30pm. The crowd rushed to disperse, fearing they could be arrested for violating the curfew. But they vowed to keep up the fight. "We will be marching again tomorrow, come join us," the leaders announced. "This struggle is not over."
"If they think that were are going to give up, they are badly mistaken," said Caceres. "The events of today make us more determined than ever to overthrow this terrible coup."
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org ). She is part of a delegation an International Emergency Delegation to Honduras that includes members of Nonviolence International, Global Exchange, CODEPINK and Rights Action. For more information or to join the delegation, contact Andres@nvintl.net.
by Medea Benjamin
The day started out full of joy, as thousands of Hondurans converged in front of the National Institute of Pedagogy, intent on marching about three miles to the airport to greet the plane that was supposed to bring deposed President Zelaya back to Honduras.
"Our president's coming home today, this is going to be a great day," said Jose Rodriguez, a campesino who came from Santa Barbara with his farmer's group to join the anti-coup movement. The military tried to stop them from getting to the capital, so they had to divide up and take local buses from town to town. "It took us two days to get here, and we slept outside in the forest last night, but we had to be here," said Rodriguez.
A group of young girls came with their church from Olancho. They were determined to greet Zelaya, who they said was sent by God to be president. "The Cardinal is against our president, but he doesn't represent many of us in the religious community. Our pastor is against the coup and so are we," said Alejandra Fernandez, a 23-year-old university student.
I asked why she supported Manuel Zelaya, or "Mel", as his supporters call him. "The government said he broke the law and is guilty of 18 crimes," she said. "Do you know what they are?" She pulled out her cell phone and started to read from a list: He raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving lightbulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, made more scholarships available for students." Suddenly a crowd gathered around us and started chiming in. "He fixed the roads," said one. "He put schools in remote rural areas, like my little village, that never had them before," added another. "He let anyone go into the Presidential Palace and converted it from an elite residence to the people's house," said another.
"You see?," Alejandra smiled. "He is guilty of even more then 18 crimes. That's why the elite classes can't stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle."
The march wound its way through the streets of Tegucigalpa, gathering more and more people along the way. The massive crowd sang and chanted slogans like "No somos cinco, no somos cien. Prensa vendida, cuentenos bien" (We're not five, we're not 100, you sold-out press, count us well")-referring to the fact that the mainstream press has been ignoring or grossly undercounting the movement that had been holding street demonstrations every day since the June 28 coup.
"I've never had anything like this in my lifetime," said an ecstatic Miriam Nunez, a 46-year-old teacher from Tegucigalpa. "Look around you-you can't even see the beginning or the end of this march! It's full of teachers, students, campesinos, union workers, indigenous people. One thing the coup succeeded in doing is bringing together the social movements in a way that never exited before in this country."
What made the march particularly exciting is that as it approached the airport, there were rows and rows of soldiers and police in riot gear blocking their path. Each time the security forces tried to stop the crowd, there would be negotiations with the police, who would finally back down and allow the protesters to get closer and closer to the airport.
Luis Sosa, a university professor and anti-coup leader, was one of those negotiating with Police Commissioner Mendosa. "Mendosa and I went to school together 20 years ago and we play soccer together every Sunday. So he knows that if his men get rough with us, there will be hell to pay next Sunday," laughed Sosa. "But seriously, we're trying hard to maintain discipline among our ranks-taking sticks and rocks away from people who want to provoke violence-and the police say that as long as we are peaceful, they'll let us go all the way to the airport."
Sure enough, the crowd made it to the airport peacefully and waited patiently for Zelaya's plane to arrive. Suddenly, a plane flew in low and circled around the airport. The crowd went wild, cheering and jumping up and down, but became angry when they saw that the plane was not able to land. Military vehicles and soldiers were on the runway, making it impossible for the pilot to maneuver safely.
On the far end of the airport, a group of mostly young people tried to get through the fence to make their way to the tarmac. According to Al Jazeera cameramen Alfredo Delara, some of them started throwing stones and bottles at security forces. The troops responded by lobbying tear gas and then firing their weapons in the air. Suddenly, at least one soldier pointed his weapon directly at the crowd.
"A young boy was hit right in the head, his brains gushing out. He was killed instantly," said Delara. "His mother came running, screaming hysterically ‘My son, my son, they've killed my son.'" Others in the crowd were wounded and it was reported that another person was killed.
Between the violence and the fact that President Zelaya was forced to fly on to El Salvador, the crowd became despondent. The organizers tried to keep up their hopes. "Perhaps the United Nations will send peacekeepers," one of the leaders shouted through the sound system. The crowd cheered and yelled, "We want the blue helmuts, we want the blue helmuts."
"Can you believe this?," asked indigenous leader Berta Caceres, her eyes welling up with tears. "Now they are killing our people. Where will this end? We need the international community to step in and stop the crazy people who have stolen our country."
Meanwhile, another piece of news circulated-that the government had just moved up the curfew from 10pm to 6:30pm. The crowd rushed to disperse, fearing they could be arrested for violating the curfew. But they vowed to keep up the fight. "We will be marching again tomorrow, come join us," the leaders announced. "This struggle is not over."
"If they think that were are going to give up, they are badly mistaken," said Caceres. "The events of today make us more determined than ever to overthrow this terrible coup."
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Meet Ezra Nawi
Unlikely Ally for Residents of West Bank
By ETHAN BRONNER
SAFA, West Bank — Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.
Watching him call for an ambulance for a resident and check on the progress of a Palestinian school being built without an Israeli permit, you might have thought him a clan chief. Then noticing the two Israeli Army jeeps trailing him, you might have pegged him as an Israeli occupation official handling Palestinian matters.
But Mr. Nawi is neither. It is perhaps best to think of him as the Robin Hood of the South Hebron hills, an Israeli Jew helping poor locals who love him, and thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt. Those army jeeps were not watching over him. They were stalking him.
Since the Israeli left lost so much popular appeal after the violent Palestinian uprising of 2000 and the Hamas electoral victory three years ago, its activists tend to be a rarefied bunch — professors of Latin or Sanskrit, and translators of medieval poetry. Mr. Nawi, however, is a plumber. And unlike the intellectuals of European origin with whom he spends most Saturdays, he is from an Iraqi Jewish family.
“My mother gave birth to me in Jerusalem when she was 14,” said Mr. Nawi, who is 57 and one of five siblings. “So my grandmother raised me. And she spoke to me in Arabic.”
His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer.
“I don’t consider my work political,” he said between phone calls as he drove. “I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”
For his activist colleagues, Mr. Nawi’s instinctual connection to the Palestinians is valuable.
“Ezra knows Palestinians better than any of us,” said Amiel Vardi, a professor who works closely with him. “This is not only because of the language, but because he gains their confidence the minute he starts talking with them. He has all sorts of intuitions as to what should be done, what are the internal relations — things we hardly ever notice.”
The difficulties of Palestinian life in the West Bank have been well documented: Israeli military checkpoints, a rising separation barrier and Israeli settlers. But in this area, the problems are more acute. The Palestinians, many of them Bedouin, are exceptionally poor, and the land they bought decades ago is under threat by a group of unusually aggressive local settlers. The settlers have been filmed beating up Palestinians. Settlers have been killed by Palestinians. But Mr. Nawi said that the law inevitably sided with the Israelis, and that occupation meant there could be no equity.
“The settlers keep the Palestinian farmers from their land by harassing them, and then after several years they say the land has not been farmed so by law it is no longer theirs,” Mr. Nawi said. “We are only here to stop that from happening.”
That is not the view of the settlers.
“He is a troublemaker,” asserted Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities in the area. “It’s true that from time to time there is a problem of some settlers coming out of their settlements to cause problems. But people like Nawi don’t want a solution. Their whole aim is to cause trouble.”
True or not, Mr. Nawi is now in trouble. Having spent several short stints in jail for his activism over the years, he now faces the prospect of a long one. He is due to be sentenced Wednesday for assaulting an Israeli policeman two years ago during a confrontation over an attempt to demolish Palestinians’ shacks on disputed land on the West Bank. The policeman said Mr. Nawi struck him during that encounter. Mr. Nawi denied it, but in March a judge convicted him.
What is left of the Israeli left is rallying around him, arguing that Mr. Nawi is a known pacifist who would not have raised his hand against anyone.
“Since I’ve known the man for decades and seen him in action in many extreme situations, I’m certain that the charge is untrue,” David Shulman, a Hebrew University professor and peace activist, wrote in the newspaper Haaretz. Of Mr. Nawi, he added, “He is a man committed, in every fiber of his being, to nonviolent protest against the inequities of the occupation.”
Mr. Nawi attributes his activism to two things: as a teenager, his family lived next door to the leader of Israel’s Communist Party, Reuven Kaminer, who influenced him. And he is gay.
“Being gay has made me understand what it is like to be a despised minority,” Mr. Nawi said.
Several years ago, he had a relationship with a Palestinian from the West Bank and ended up being convicted on charges of allowing his companion to live illegally in Israel. His companion was jailed for months.
Mr. Nawi said harassment against him had come in many forms. Settlers shout vicious antigay epithets. His plumbing business has been audited, and he was handed a huge tax bill that he said he did not deserve. He is certain that his phone calls are monitored. And those army jeeps are never far behind.
He is not optimistic about his coming sentencing, although he is planning an appeal. And he says the Israeli news media have lost interest in the work he and his fellow activists do. But he does not stop.
“I’m here to change reality,” he said. “The only Israelis these people know are settlers and soldiers. Through me they know a different Israeli. And I’ll keep coming until I know that the farmers here can work their fields.”
By ETHAN BRONNER
SAFA, West Bank — Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.
Watching him call for an ambulance for a resident and check on the progress of a Palestinian school being built without an Israeli permit, you might have thought him a clan chief. Then noticing the two Israeli Army jeeps trailing him, you might have pegged him as an Israeli occupation official handling Palestinian matters.
But Mr. Nawi is neither. It is perhaps best to think of him as the Robin Hood of the South Hebron hills, an Israeli Jew helping poor locals who love him, and thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt. Those army jeeps were not watching over him. They were stalking him.
Since the Israeli left lost so much popular appeal after the violent Palestinian uprising of 2000 and the Hamas electoral victory three years ago, its activists tend to be a rarefied bunch — professors of Latin or Sanskrit, and translators of medieval poetry. Mr. Nawi, however, is a plumber. And unlike the intellectuals of European origin with whom he spends most Saturdays, he is from an Iraqi Jewish family.
“My mother gave birth to me in Jerusalem when she was 14,” said Mr. Nawi, who is 57 and one of five siblings. “So my grandmother raised me. And she spoke to me in Arabic.”
His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer.
“I don’t consider my work political,” he said between phone calls as he drove. “I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”
For his activist colleagues, Mr. Nawi’s instinctual connection to the Palestinians is valuable.
“Ezra knows Palestinians better than any of us,” said Amiel Vardi, a professor who works closely with him. “This is not only because of the language, but because he gains their confidence the minute he starts talking with them. He has all sorts of intuitions as to what should be done, what are the internal relations — things we hardly ever notice.”
The difficulties of Palestinian life in the West Bank have been well documented: Israeli military checkpoints, a rising separation barrier and Israeli settlers. But in this area, the problems are more acute. The Palestinians, many of them Bedouin, are exceptionally poor, and the land they bought decades ago is under threat by a group of unusually aggressive local settlers. The settlers have been filmed beating up Palestinians. Settlers have been killed by Palestinians. But Mr. Nawi said that the law inevitably sided with the Israelis, and that occupation meant there could be no equity.
“The settlers keep the Palestinian farmers from their land by harassing them, and then after several years they say the land has not been farmed so by law it is no longer theirs,” Mr. Nawi said. “We are only here to stop that from happening.”
That is not the view of the settlers.
“He is a troublemaker,” asserted Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities in the area. “It’s true that from time to time there is a problem of some settlers coming out of their settlements to cause problems. But people like Nawi don’t want a solution. Their whole aim is to cause trouble.”
True or not, Mr. Nawi is now in trouble. Having spent several short stints in jail for his activism over the years, he now faces the prospect of a long one. He is due to be sentenced Wednesday for assaulting an Israeli policeman two years ago during a confrontation over an attempt to demolish Palestinians’ shacks on disputed land on the West Bank. The policeman said Mr. Nawi struck him during that encounter. Mr. Nawi denied it, but in March a judge convicted him.
What is left of the Israeli left is rallying around him, arguing that Mr. Nawi is a known pacifist who would not have raised his hand against anyone.
“Since I’ve known the man for decades and seen him in action in many extreme situations, I’m certain that the charge is untrue,” David Shulman, a Hebrew University professor and peace activist, wrote in the newspaper Haaretz. Of Mr. Nawi, he added, “He is a man committed, in every fiber of his being, to nonviolent protest against the inequities of the occupation.”
Mr. Nawi attributes his activism to two things: as a teenager, his family lived next door to the leader of Israel’s Communist Party, Reuven Kaminer, who influenced him. And he is gay.
“Being gay has made me understand what it is like to be a despised minority,” Mr. Nawi said.
Several years ago, he had a relationship with a Palestinian from the West Bank and ended up being convicted on charges of allowing his companion to live illegally in Israel. His companion was jailed for months.
Mr. Nawi said harassment against him had come in many forms. Settlers shout vicious antigay epithets. His plumbing business has been audited, and he was handed a huge tax bill that he said he did not deserve. He is certain that his phone calls are monitored. And those army jeeps are never far behind.
He is not optimistic about his coming sentencing, although he is planning an appeal. And he says the Israeli news media have lost interest in the work he and his fellow activists do. But he does not stop.
“I’m here to change reality,” he said. “The only Israelis these people know are settlers and soldiers. Through me they know a different Israeli. And I’ll keep coming until I know that the farmers here can work their fields.”
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Letter to John Dear, SJ
The following letter is in response to John Dear's June 9 column
Dear Fr. John Dear:
Jesus says absolutely nothing about abortion, so for the life of me (no pun intended), I can't understand why Christians could ever take it more seriously than outright murder, war, poverty, or even adultery. Jesus spoke out against these things, but he didn't speak out against abortion.
I would rather not speak to why he did not. I do not know the cultural practices regarding abortion in that particular region in the first century and whether they were frowned upon or accepted.
But regardless of what abortion was or was not at the time, the question I would like to pose is why it is considered a grave sin in the current moral/political context. I am sure you could cite me various references to the Catechism, but I am not a Catholic and am not beholden to any Catholic teachings or practices. However, I consider myself a moral person as well as a firm believer in nonviolence and progressive social change. I am not against any religion that carries this agenda, and I am certainly in agreement with you personally on most, if not all, other issues.
In short, I would like to approach abortion primarily from a rational, political perspective. I will admit right now that I do not think abortion is desirable or necessarily moral or righteous, but I feel that it can be equally or more undesirable or immoral to raise a child you cannot adequately love and support. Furthermore, I do not consider giving your child up for adoption an acceptable alternative to abortion in all circumstances. We can discuss this further, if you would like.
I would like to begin the political/radical discussion on abortion by referring to your recent column on the Dr. Tiller murder. I found it to be quite lacking in balance and clarity. Dr. Tiller is put in the same category as a person who would wage war or commit murder (defined by the laws as something quite far from abortion). You may believe that Dr. Tiller was misguided at best or a “murderer” at worst, but it is clear that George Tiller had a wide global following from progressives for his willingness to perform late-term abortions at great personal risk and despite heavy criticisms. He has been credited with saving women’s lives, and he is known as a mild-mannered man who never lashed out at his opponents. Yet he was threatened, spied on and had to be escorted to work by federal marshals. He survived an assassination attempt years ago and still continued his practice.
The news program Democracy Now! featured him prominently as a hero and a martyr. While I do not agree with the clear pro-abortion angle taken by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! aired speeches given by Dr. Tiller that warmed my heart. He was a firm advocate for women’s equality. He trusted that women knew what’s best for their bodies. This is something that few men are capable of doing. Your column did not once address reproductive rights or the oppression of women in this country. Dr. Tiller addressed these points in words and in actions, and I believe that this is why he was really killed — not because Mr. Roeder thought he was a “baby killer.”
I know you are coming from a far more progressive and logical standpoint than the people behind Tiller’s murder, but by putting abortion in the same category as murder or war, I believe you are treading in dangerous waters. How is aborting a potential life the same as killing someone who lives outside her mother's womb? I'm not saying abortion is a good thing, but how can anyone in all seriousness confuse abortion with outright murder? They are not the same thing.
It is quite unfortunate that the real message I glean from many so-called “pro-life” males to women is simple: We (and/or the government) are in charge of your bodies. We can impregnate you, forcibly even, but it is “immoral” for you to abort the fetus. And if any man dares to help you abort, he is just as guilty of “murder.”
I, for one, expect much better from a secular society that ostensibly favors equality among sexes.
Respectfully,
Matthew Johnson
Dear Fr. John Dear:
Jesus says absolutely nothing about abortion, so for the life of me (no pun intended), I can't understand why Christians could ever take it more seriously than outright murder, war, poverty, or even adultery. Jesus spoke out against these things, but he didn't speak out against abortion.
I would rather not speak to why he did not. I do not know the cultural practices regarding abortion in that particular region in the first century and whether they were frowned upon or accepted.
But regardless of what abortion was or was not at the time, the question I would like to pose is why it is considered a grave sin in the current moral/political context. I am sure you could cite me various references to the Catechism, but I am not a Catholic and am not beholden to any Catholic teachings or practices. However, I consider myself a moral person as well as a firm believer in nonviolence and progressive social change. I am not against any religion that carries this agenda, and I am certainly in agreement with you personally on most, if not all, other issues.
In short, I would like to approach abortion primarily from a rational, political perspective. I will admit right now that I do not think abortion is desirable or necessarily moral or righteous, but I feel that it can be equally or more undesirable or immoral to raise a child you cannot adequately love and support. Furthermore, I do not consider giving your child up for adoption an acceptable alternative to abortion in all circumstances. We can discuss this further, if you would like.
I would like to begin the political/radical discussion on abortion by referring to your recent column on the Dr. Tiller murder. I found it to be quite lacking in balance and clarity. Dr. Tiller is put in the same category as a person who would wage war or commit murder (defined by the laws as something quite far from abortion). You may believe that Dr. Tiller was misguided at best or a “murderer” at worst, but it is clear that George Tiller had a wide global following from progressives for his willingness to perform late-term abortions at great personal risk and despite heavy criticisms. He has been credited with saving women’s lives, and he is known as a mild-mannered man who never lashed out at his opponents. Yet he was threatened, spied on and had to be escorted to work by federal marshals. He survived an assassination attempt years ago and still continued his practice.
The news program Democracy Now! featured him prominently as a hero and a martyr. While I do not agree with the clear pro-abortion angle taken by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! aired speeches given by Dr. Tiller that warmed my heart. He was a firm advocate for women’s equality. He trusted that women knew what’s best for their bodies. This is something that few men are capable of doing. Your column did not once address reproductive rights or the oppression of women in this country. Dr. Tiller addressed these points in words and in actions, and I believe that this is why he was really killed — not because Mr. Roeder thought he was a “baby killer.”
I know you are coming from a far more progressive and logical standpoint than the people behind Tiller’s murder, but by putting abortion in the same category as murder or war, I believe you are treading in dangerous waters. How is aborting a potential life the same as killing someone who lives outside her mother's womb? I'm not saying abortion is a good thing, but how can anyone in all seriousness confuse abortion with outright murder? They are not the same thing.
It is quite unfortunate that the real message I glean from many so-called “pro-life” males to women is simple: We (and/or the government) are in charge of your bodies. We can impregnate you, forcibly even, but it is “immoral” for you to abort the fetus. And if any man dares to help you abort, he is just as guilty of “murder.”
I, for one, expect much better from a secular society that ostensibly favors equality among sexes.
Respectfully,
Matthew Johnson
Friday, June 12, 2009
The US War on Yugoslavia: Ten Years Later
By Stephen Zunes
Professor of Politics and Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco
Posted: June 5, 2009 11:05 AM
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a "good" war, in contrast to the Bush administration's "bad" war on Iraq.
And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn't as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled. Unless there's a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world.
Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia's autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra‑nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority.
Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA's leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It's a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn't hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomous status within a greater Serbia.
Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO's insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed upon the country's sovereignty.
Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary -- particularly against the stronger party -- to secure an agreement, but it can't be presented as a fait accompli. This "sign this or we'll bomb you" attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war's illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn't the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs -- unable to respond to NATO air attacks -- turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending.
While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which -- despite their limitations -- were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn't have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren't affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn't request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it's widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period.
Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and -- as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more -- caused serious environmental damage. Almost as many Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia's repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn't intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened -- in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala's slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen "on NATO's doorstep," he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey's denial of the Kurds' linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia's repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which -- unlike many other cases around the world -- support for those being oppressed didn't conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO's credibility.).
The war also benefited influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren't needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic's campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for "non-Article 5 crisis response," essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO's realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO's ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn't approved by any of the respective countries' legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia's autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia's autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation.
The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an "aviary conundrum," where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn't force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren't the way to bring peace and security.
As long as such "conflict resolution" efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
Professor of Politics and Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco
Posted: June 5, 2009 11:05 AM
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a "good" war, in contrast to the Bush administration's "bad" war on Iraq.
And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn't as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled. Unless there's a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world.
Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia's autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra‑nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority.
Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA's leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It's a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn't hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomous status within a greater Serbia.
Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO's insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed upon the country's sovereignty.
Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary -- particularly against the stronger party -- to secure an agreement, but it can't be presented as a fait accompli. This "sign this or we'll bomb you" attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war's illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn't the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs -- unable to respond to NATO air attacks -- turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending.
While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which -- despite their limitations -- were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn't have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren't affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn't request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it's widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period.
Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and -- as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more -- caused serious environmental damage. Almost as many Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia's repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn't intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened -- in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala's slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen "on NATO's doorstep," he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey's denial of the Kurds' linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia's repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which -- unlike many other cases around the world -- support for those being oppressed didn't conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO's credibility.).
The war also benefited influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren't needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic's campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for "non-Article 5 crisis response," essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO's realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO's ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn't approved by any of the respective countries' legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia's autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia's autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation.
The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an "aviary conundrum," where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn't force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren't the way to bring peace and security.
As long as such "conflict resolution" efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
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