From the Lebanon Daily Star
A Holy Month of Spiritual Richness
and Urgent Political Challenges
“The vast majority of ordinary, decent, God-loving Muslims are…morally ravaged by the few criminal terrorists among them.”

The first day of Ramadan in most of the Islamic world marks the start of what has always been a very special month of deep spirituality, introspection, material self-control, and religious piety for Muslims everywhere. These days, however, Ramadan is much more than that. This Ramadan is a moment of profound challenge for all Muslims, who face the ugly specter of being squeezed by three equally untenable and debilitating forces: two in their own societies and one in the West.

First is the barbaric militancy of a small number of Muslim terrorists who now operate throughout the world, using modern communication technology to disseminate and amplify their ghastly inhumanity, including kidnappings, bombing civilians, beheadings, and other such deeds that run counter to every moral fiber and principle of the Islamic faith. Second is the prevalence of autocratic, sometimes dictatorial, governance systems in many Middle Eastern and other predominantly Islamic societies. Their thin veneer of participatory or democratic politics is outweighed by the perpetuation of power that is centralized in the hands of small groups of unaccountable people. These two indigenous problems that plague many Muslims are compounded by a clear tendency in the West, especially in the US, to fear and demonize Islam as a whole, including through using military force, economic sanctions, media misrepresentation, and diplomatic pressures.

“Muslims everywhere must start reclaiming their faith’s public identity and global perception from those extremists and killers.”

The vast majority of ordinary, decent, God-loving Muslims are uncomfortably squeezed between these three terrible forces—at once morally ravaged by the few criminal terrorists among them, immobilized by their own autocratic political systems, and politically assaulted by growing segments of the West. This is not a situation that can be allowed to persist. These tendencies will cause irreparable damage to the societies in questions, while sparking greater strife between Islamic and Western societies.

Muslims must rise to the challenge of reversing all three trends. This Ramadan is a moment whose spiritual intensity is matched by the great urgency for Muslims and Islamic societies to define themselves via their rich and humanistic values. It is tragic that many people throughout the world today would associate Islam with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden, and others of their ilk who are a great travesty of basic Islamic values. Religious leaders, scholars, public figures, media personalities, activists, and concerned citizens in Islamic societies would do well this Ramadan to go beyond the basic tenets of this holy month. Muslims everywhere must start reclaiming their faith’s public identity and global perception from those extremists and killers who have managed to hijack them in recent years.
—from an editorial in the Daily Star, Lebanon

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By Husain Haqqani
Why Muslims Always Blame the West
“The focus on external enemies causes Muslims to admire power rather than ideas. Warriors, and not scholars or inventors, are generally the heroes of common people.”

When Pakistan’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, warned against the descent of an “iron curtain” between the West and the Islamic world, he appeared to put the onus of avoiding confrontation only on the West. The Palestinian issue and the pre-emptive war in Iraq have undoubtedly accentuated anti-Western sentiment among Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. But the conduct and rhetoric of Muslim leaders and their failure to address the stagnation of their societies has also fueled the tensions between Islam and the West. Relations between Muslims and the West will continue to deteriorate unless the internal crisis of the Muslim world is also addressed. After 9/11, General Musharraf switched support from Afghanistan’s Taliban to the US-led war against terrorism. He has since received a hefty package of US military and economic assistance and spoken of the need for “enlightened moderation.”

According to an opinion poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, 86% of Pakistanis have a favorable view of General Musharraf while 65% also support Osama bin Laden. Quite clearly some Muslims find it possible to like Musharraf, who is regarded by the US as the key figure in the hunt for bin Laden, while admiring his quarry at the same time. The contradiction speaks volumes about the general state of confusion in parts of the Muslim world. Instead of hard analysis, which thrives only in a free society, Muslims are generally brought up on propaganda, often state-sponsored. This propaganda usually focuses on Muslim humiliation at the hands of others instead of acknowledging the flaws of Muslim leaders and societies.

“Military leaders in the Muslim world have consistently taken advantage of the popular fascination with military power.”

The focus on external enemies causes Muslims to admire power rather than ideas. Warriors, and not scholars or inventors, are generally the heroes of common people. In this simplistic “us vs. them” worldview, both Musharraf and bin Laden are warriors against external enemies. Ringing alarm bells about an iron curtain between the West and the Islamic world without acknowledging the internal flaws of Muslim rulers and societies helps maintain the polarization as well as the flow of Western aid for the flawed rulers.

In the post-colonial period, military leaders in the Muslim world have consistently taken advantage of the popular fascination with military power. The Muslim cult of the warrior explains also the relatively muted response in the Muslim world to atrocities committed by fellow Muslims. While the Muslim world’s obsession with military power encourages violent attempts to ‘restore’ Muslim honor, the real reasons for Muslim humiliation and backwardness continue to multiply. In the year 2000, according to the World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries (at purchasing price parity) was $27,450, with the US income averaging $34,260 and Israel’s income averaging $19,320. The average income in the Muslim world, however, stood at $3,700. Pakistan’s per capita income in 2003 was a meager $2,060.

National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from economic productivity, technological innovation, or intellectual output but from the rhetoric of “destroying the enemy” and “making the nation invulnerable.” Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilizations as much as specific Western policies. Ironically, Western governments have consistently tried to deal with one manifestation of the cult of the warrior—terrorism—by building up Muslim strongmen who are just another manifestation of the same phenomenon.
—Haqqani is a leading journalist, diplomat, and former advisor to Pakistani prime ministers.

By Dr. Derek Summerfield
Palestine:
The Assault on Health,
and Other War Crimes
“The man begged the soldiers to let him pass so that he could take her to hospital. The soldiers refused, and a Palestinian doctor…was obliged to attempt a physical examination, and to give the girl an injection, through the wire.”

Does the death of an Arab weigh the same as that of a US or Israeli citizen? The Israeli army, with utter impunity, has killed more unarmed Palestinian civilians since September 2000 than the number of people who died on September 11, 2001. In conducting 238 extrajudicial executions, the army has also killed 186 bystanders, including 26 women and 39 children. Two-thirds of the 621 children (two-thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of the cases to the head, neck, and chest—the sniper’s wound. Clearly, soldiers are routinely authorized to shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat. These statistics attract far less publicity than suicide bombings, atrocious though these are too.

Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza—a system of military checkpoints splitting towns and villages into ghettos, curfews, closures, raids, mass demolition and destruction of houses (more than 60,000), and land expropriations—has made ordinary life impossible for everyone, and is driving Palestinian society and its institutions towards destitution. Moreover, Israel has been constructing a grotesque barrier that, when completed, will total over 400 miles—four times longer than the Berlin Wall. Extending up to 15 miles into Palestinian territory, the real purpose of the wall is permanently to lock more than 50 illegal Israeli settlements into Israel proper. This is expansive, aggressive colonization, in defiance of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the United Nations General Assembly resolution of last July.

“How are we to affect this shocking situation
which, to this South African-born doctor,
has gone further than the excesses of the apartheid era?”

Last year a UN rapporteur concluded that Gaza and the West Bank were “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.” The World Bank estimates that 60% of the population is subsisting at poverty level ($2/day), a tripling in only three years. Half a million people are now completely dependent upon food aid, and Amnesty International has expressed concern that the Israeli army has been hampering distribution in Gaza. Over half of all households are eating only one meal per day. A study by Johns Hopkins and Al Quds universities found that 20% of children under five years old were anemic, 9.3% were acutely malnourished, and a further 13.2% chronically malnourished. Doctors note a rising prevalence of anemia in pregnant women and low birth-weight babies.

The coherence of the Palestinian health system is being destroyed. The wall will isolate 97 primary health clinics and 11 hospitals from the populations they serve. Qalqilya hospital, which primarily serves refugees, has seen a 40% fall in follow up appointments because patients cannot enter the city. There have been at least 87 documented cases (including 30 children) in which denial of access to medical treatment has led directly to deaths, including those of babies born while women were held up at checkpoints.

The checkpoint at the entrance to some villages closes at 7 pm and not even ambulances can pass after this time. As a recent example, a man in a now fenced-in village near Qalqilya approached the gate with his seriously ill daughter in his arms, and begged the soldiers on duty to let him pass so that he could take her to hospital. The soldiers refused, and a Palestinian doctor summoned from the other side was also refused access to the child. The doctor was obliged to attempt a physical examination, and to give the girl an injection, through the wire.

There are consistent reports of ambulances containing gravely ill people being hit by gunfire, or detained at checkpoints while drivers and paramedics are interrogated, searched, threatened, humiliated, and assaulted. Wounded men are abducted from ambulances at checkpoints and sent directly to prison. Clearly marked clinics are fired on, and doctors and other health workers shot dead on duty.

Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have lambasted the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) for its silence in the face of these systematic violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees the right to health care and the protection of health professionals as they do their duty. Remarkably, IMA president Dr. Y. Blachar is currently chairperson of the council of the World Medical Association (WMA), the official international watchdog on medical ethics. A supine BMA appears in collusion with this farce at the WMA. Others are silenced by a fear of being labeled ‘anti-semitic,’ a term used in a morally corrupt way by the pro-Israel lobby in order to silence others. How are we to affect this shocking situation, one which to this South African-born doctor has gone further than the excesses of the apartheid era?
—Derek Summerfield is honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London

>>> NEWS BRIEFS >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jewish and Arab Israeli Youth Look
“Through Other’s Eyes”
They visited and photographed each other’s homes and communities.

The Quebec-Israel Committee and the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts last week opened an exhibit, “Through Other’s Eyes,” in Montreal. It is an innovative youth photography project that brings Israeli Arab and Jewish youth together to learn photography. To complete the course, they visit and photograph each other’s homes and communities.

A 12th-grade class visiting the exhibit recently at the Jewish Community Centre in Toronto shared their impressions. “I was very impressed with this exhibit. I think the program itself is a fantastic idea, and a great way to promote dialogue between Jewish Israeli and Arab Israeli youth. I think the photographs really showcase the fact that these two cultures share more than many people think.” Another student added, “I felt that the show very potently represented the youth of Israel from the perspective of teenagers. The images spoke to something that North Americans do not really understand and as such, was quite powerful.”

The exhibit continues until November 12.
—http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/October2004/22/c3568.html

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One Third of Gaza Settlers Resigned to Leaving

One-third of the settlers slated for evacuation under the disengagement plan are resigned to the idea that they might have to leave their homes, Disengagement Authority Director Yonatan Bassi said in Jerusalem recently. Meanwhile, thousands of disengagement opponents protested with rallies last week in cities nationwide, with a central event in Jerusalem. But according to Bassi, many settlers are also privately willing to take practical steps to ensure that their families’ needs are met should the government’s plan be implemented.

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“As scarce as truth is,
the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”
—Josh Billings
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Senior Sharon Adviser Reveals True Goal of Gaza Withdrawal

“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass in a Ha’aretz interview. Weisglass, who was one of the initiators of the disengagement plan, added, “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission…all with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,” he said. “It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

Evacuation is like Violating Shabbat

Former chief rabbi and the most prominent rabbi of the religious-Zionist sector, Rabbi Avraham Shapira, has called on soldiers and policemen to refuse orders to evacuate settlements. In an interview Rabbi Shapira said that God-fearing members of the security forces should notify their commanders that just as they would refuse to an order to cease upholding the Sabbath or eat non-Kosher meat, they would refuse to uproot Jews from their homes.

Vatican & Chief Rabbi Slam Assault on Patriarch
“…He was raised to see Christianity as idol worship,
which is forbidden by the Torah."

The Holy See and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel issued a joint condemnation of a recent assault on the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, when he was spat at by a yeshiva [Jewish religious school] student in the Old City. In a joint statement released in Rome, the Vatican and the Chief Rabbi called on religious authorities to publicly protest actions of disrespect toward religious persons, symbols, and holy sites. The statement gave as an example “the desecration of cemeteries and the recent assault on the Armenian archbishop.” The yeshiva student, Natan Zvi Rosenthal, has met with the heads of the Armenian community and apologized for his actions. He explained that he was raised to see Christianity as idol worship, which is forbidden by the Torah.

The joint statement also calls on all the relevant authorities to respect the “sacred character of Jerusalem and to prevent overt and immodest actions which offend the sensibilities of religious communities that reside in Jerusalem and hold her dear.”

In a separate report, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau sharply condemned the recent spate of Jews harassing and spitting at Christian ministers in Jerusalem. The former chief rabbi described it as “spitting in the face of Judaism.” Lau says conduct of this nature is dangerous, ugly, and morally reprehensible. He warned that such incidents are liable to contribute to anti-Semitism in the Diaspora, and Jerusalem municipality “cannot rid itself of responsibility for these actions.” Rabbi Lau said “protection of everything sacred to other religions is one of the justifications for Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem, whose legitimacy will be undermined if spitting becomes prevalent.”
—Lekarev Report, Jerusalem

Israel on a Collision Course with Europe

A secret report prepared by the Foreign Ministry warns that Israel’s global standing could deteriorate in the coming decade and could even resemble the pariah status of apartheid South Africa, Army Radio said two weeks ago. The report says Israel and Europe will find themselves on a collision course that will cause serious economic and diplomatic damage to Israel. It examines various scenarios for the development of Israel’s relationship with Europe and Russia and says Europe’s international stature is strengthening.

In light of ongoing European criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a more powerful Europe could weaken Israel’s position. Europe fiercely objects to the route of the West Bank separation fence, and EU foreign ministers called this week for the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw from the northern Gaza Strip. The report says a new form of anti-Semitism is developing in Europe, one which denies Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state.

Sanhedrin Renewed in Tiberias
“… it was foretold that it would be renewed, and from here
it will be relocated to Jerusalem.”

A unique ceremony, probably only the second of its kind in the past 1,600 years, apparently took place in Tiberias on October 13th: The launching of a Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the Land of Israel. News reports are sketchy. The Sanhedrin, a religious assembly that convened in one of the Holy Temple chambers in Jerusalem, comprised 71 sages and existed for several hundred years until roughly 425 CE. An attempt to reconvene the Sanhedrin was made several centuries ago in the Galilee town of Safed, but opposition of other leading rabbis soon forced the end of the endeavor.

One of the leaders of last month’s attempt to revive the Sanhedrin is Rabbi Yeshai Ba’avad. He said that the 71 rabbis “from across the spectrum have received the special ordination, in accordance with Maimonides’ rulings, over the past several months.” Rabbi Ba’avad explained that the membership of the new body is not permanent: “What is much more crucial is the establishment of this body. The goal is to have one rabbinic body in Jerusalem that will convene monthly and issue rulings on central issues. This is the need of the generation and of the hour.”

Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who heads the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, is one of the participating rabbis. “Whether this will be the actual Sanhedrin that we await, is a question of time,” he said, “just like the establishment of the State. We rejoiced in it, but we are still awaiting something much more ideal. It’s a process. Our Talmudic Sages describe the ten stages of exile of the Sanhedrin from Jerusalem to other locations, until it ended in Tiberias. This is the place where it was foretold that it would be renewed, and from here it will be relocated to Jerusalem.”

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“Ralph, pay attention to the people you disagree with…
If you only listen to people you agree with, you never learn.”
—Ralph Milton, editor of Rumors e-zine, on his Dad’s early advice

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