Translation: “The Israeli ‘Veto’ and ‘Moussa’s League’”

by Abd el-Bari Atwan in al Quds al Arabi
27/10/2008

We never imagined a time when Israel would impose its ‘veto’ on the participation of the Arabs in regional and international conferences, and to succeed in doing so with the utmost east, but it appears that everything is possible in this despicable time for the Arabs.

Yesterday the Jordanian government cancelled a Mediterranean conference on water in protest at Israel’s refusal of a delegation from the Arab League – on the grounds that it was not a Mediterranean country. Just like that. In bygone days, it was the Arabs who would refuse any Israeli participation to conferences they had been invited to, and would withdraw from the main hall of the United Nations General Assembly en-masse, if the Israeli delegate assumed the podium. The same would have been done by the Islamic and Third World countries in sympathy with the Arab cause. Now it is Israel which protests and opposes, finding support and sympathy from many nations, including the Arabs, sadly, to such an extent that all its wishes are fulfilled completely. Mr Amro Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League, fumed and thundered, attacking that Israeli ‘veto’ against his league’s participation in the “Union for the Mediterranean” and said, “I just cannot understand that an Arab League initiative can take place, in the absence of the League. We cannot accept such a travesty”.

What Mr Moussa does not wish to admit is that this Israeli arrogance would not have reached such levels as we have witnessed were it not for the ‘weak’ and ‘complicit’ positions of his league, and the eagerness with which it would participate in any conference or meeting that involves the Jewish state.
It may help to remind Mr Moussa of his own personal attendance to the Nobel Prize winners awards ceremony in Petra, Jordan early this year, with his famous tantrum that the organisers would not allow him, due to protocol, from addressing the audience, in response to the attacks of the Israeli president Shimon Peres in which he attacked the Arabs for not wishing peace. On that day, he withdrew from the ceremony, only to return to his seat after he was allowed to speak in the hall, just like any other participant.

The participation of the Arab governments in the organisation “Union for the Mediterranean”, launched by the French president Sarkozy last July was humiliating and according to the conditions set by the Europeans. In these, France insisted on the membership of all states in the European Union, with no exception, and with them Israel. Meanwhile the Arab states would not even insist on the inclusion of the Arab League. The Secretary General did not hold a press conference declaring his opposition to this, threatening to resign from his post in light of this inappropriate treatment of his League. In fact he did the exact same thing when he went to the peace conference in Annapolis, called for by the American president George Bush last November, to renew the Arab-Israeli peace talks. Mr Moussa said that the Arabs will not participate unless Israel committed to stopping settlement building and to lifting the siege on the Palestinian people. They [the Arabs] all attended, including the Secretary General, whilst the siege continued and the settlement building intensified.

The Arabs are the ones who are clamouring for Israel to normalise with them, not the opposite. The foreign minister of Qatar Sheikh Khaled Al Khalifa had called for a regional organisation including Israel, Iran and Turkey and in a position superior to the Arabs. What was the response of Mr Moussa to this unprecedented move? He praised this proposal, describing it as “deep” and reiterating that the Arab members of the league were to seriously consider it.

Such positions encourage Israel to impose a “veto” on the participation of the Arab League or of Arab states to international conferences. They also encourage European countries to support the Israeli position, since they know well that there is no such thing as Arabs who are able to take brave positions against this series of insults.

We are now faced with much more dangerous situations and we wish to hear Mr Moussa’s honest opinion towards them. For the president of the Jewish state Shimon Peres wants a complete peace with the Arabs, claiming that the two-partner peace talks have been proven a failure. That is, he wishes to return to what the Arabs had been calling for, and what Israel had rejected. However, Peres’ invitation is ‘mined’ since he wishes to negotiate on the basis of an Arab peace initiative after it has been modified, and returned to its original Saudi origin. This means the abandoning of the Palestinian right of return. In other words he wishes to sit on the negotiating table, with the Arab countries gathered, on the foundation of an Arab peace initiative after it has been modified, so the normalisation of relations before any withdrawal from the occupied territories, the lifting of the siege on the people of Gaza or even the dismantlement of one checkpoint amongst the six hundred points in the West Bank, or of a single “illegal” settlement, let alone any of the two hundred “legal” settlements. Legal, that is, according to the Israeli definition, which is any settlement built with government approval.

This Israeli arrogance, and Arab submission, appears at a time when the economies of the Western world, the main pillars of support for Israel, are collapsing, and the world political map is being redrawn with new great powers such as China, Russia, India, Brazil and Iran (there is no sign of the Arabs, nor will there be for the foreseeable future), and with America facing two defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Logic tells us that the Arabs should take a much braver approach in dealing with Israel and its European and American allies. Especially since they now possess huge financial resources due to the returns from oil (1 trillion dollars a year). Yet what we see happening is the exact opposite, for they have grown accustomed to insult and to receiving blows with no right to complain from the pain.

Mr Moussa can rest assured that Israel will not pay any attention to his protests, and will continue to use its ‘veto’ against his organisation, or any other governments participating in it, for it knows well that Arab governments are eager to normalise with it and unconditionally, begging it to lead an Israeli-Arab alliance against Iran, the new enemy of the Arabs. Gone from his mind is the fact that Israel now boycotts Arabic satellite stations for their criticism of its occupation and its criminal activities, using the excuse that they are “unprofessional” or “lack objectivity” and refusing the statements of some Arab journalists if they deviate from its instructions on providing coverage and portrayed it as a force of occupation and injustice, the case of al Jazeera being the most prominent of many.

In conclusion we would like to say, Mr Moussa, that the Arab peace initiative will be modified according to Israeli conditions, and we will see Arab nations normalising for free amongst the countries that have not yet normalised with Israel. We would like to stress to him that even if he were to extend an invitation to it to join the Arab league, it would reject it out of disgust and arrogance. How could Israel accept this when it has the final say in the Mediterranean union as it is, and invitations are flooding in for it to join regional groupings with Arabs, Turks and Iranians and by Arab government officials themselves?

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"Syrians die in US helicopter raid"

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تقاسيم على مقام الصبا

Some guy doing great Taqasim in the Saba maqam.

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Aramco World Magazine do sometimes have some great articles about Arab history. Here is one on Muslim Sicily.

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Philosophy and.... the Oud

At the time of the Islamic conquests, philosophers and educated men had, by and large, accepted the Aristotelian view of the world. In this metaphysics, all of reality was composed of earth, wind, fire and water categorised into two broad categories of dry and hot, cold and wet. The heavier elements, earth and wind, gravitated to the centre of the universe whereas the lighter elements fire and air moved upwards and away from it. Surrounding the universe was the ether, a fifth element. The earth was considered to be at the centre of this universe. The elements had a hierarchy of importance with the earth considered the lowliest whilst the higher up you moved in the elemental chain the more worthy the element up until ether. Beyond that were the angels/demons/gods and so on, who were all subservient to The One if you were a neo-Platonist or "The Unmoved mover" if you were a strict Aristotelian. The earth was considered in the sub-lunar layer of this cosmology, the planets were beyond that and the outer limit were the stars, which rotated around the earth and possessed their own, higher, intellects and were closer in the hierarchy to this One and His influence. The fact that there was generation and corruption on the earth, as well as any movement at all, was due to the mixing and churning of these elements in the sub-lunar level. As a result, we and all other creation were a mix of these elements and conditions to varying extents. Where you were born and what stars were in the sky at the time influenced your character and fortune and these continued to exert an influence indirectly on you as a result of their effect on one or more of the elements within you.

The early Muslims largely accepted this view of the world and any educated man worth his salt was to have some grasp of these concepts. Revelation was concerned mainly with the conduct and morality of individuals and the nature of their relationship with their creator rather than reveal what some today call "scientific truth". Anyhow, the early Arab philosophers picked up on these strands of thought as the Greek texts began to be translated and the first Arabic philosopher al-Kindi pondered the nature of The One in his "On First Philosophy", only parts of which remain extant, before writing extensively on everything from the soul and the natural sciences to the making of swords and lenses. This understanding of the human body as a mixture of these four elements was the basis of medical knowledge and how physicians would deal with various symptoms in their patients. One method they used, which I had heard of before, was music. It was only I read a plaque in the Azm palace in Damascus on music that I understood the importance of it. The early Ouds had four sets of double strings, the fifth, middle one, being added by Zeryab in al Andalus during the period of Islamic rule.

Each of these four strings corresponded to one of the four elements and when plucked in different combinations and ways, were supposed to stir the necessary parts of the body or human emotion and had beneficial effects on them. The highest cord on the Oud, the zir, was yello and represented yellow bile. The second set of strings, the mathna, were red and associated with blood. The third set, the mathlath, were white and were related to phlegm whilst the fourth set, bam, were associated with the colour black and yellow but I do not know what they corresponded to in the human body.

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"We arrived in Damascus in the light of the crescent moon. It seemed appropriate enough. This, after all, is the city Muhammad refused to visit, because he preferred to save paradise for paradise, the city that was conquered by Muslim armies AD635, and that remained under Islamic rule of various kinds until 1918. Even now, with a government fiercely committed to the ideal of the secular state, Syria is largely a Muslim country – but one, you quickly find, in which Muslims, Christians and Jews share the richest of histories." (Thanks Serene)

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"Iraqi secret police believed that the notorious Palestinian assassin Abu Nidal was working for the Americans as well as Egypt and Kuwait when they interrogated him in Baghdad only months before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Hitherto secret documents which are now in the hands of The Independent – written by Saddam Hussein's brutal security services for Saddam's eyes only – state that he had been "colluding" with the Americans and, with the help of the Egyptians and Kuwaitis, was trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qa'ida." (Thanks Serene)

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Who I write for and why in English...

I've been asked recently by one reader why I write in English and who I write for. That is a very good question and one which deserves an answer. With regards to the second part of the question, I write mainly for myself, that is, I wish to put down somewhere my reflections and thoughts on what is happening in the Arab world. This amazing part of humanity has offered, and continues to offer, so much that is meaningful to the world. In spite of continuous aggression and occupation, physically and intellectually, it has confounded the most concerted efforts to subdue it. It is vibrant, diverse and individualist in a true sense, unlike the monotone consumer societies of empire. So when I write, I am writing to discover what it means to come from this world, hence the raw nature of some of my posts. The further I write, the more solid the articulation of myself and my identity becomes, as if the text and I have some bizarre relationship that allows us to grow together.

That leaves us with my choice of language, which is English as some of you may or may not have noticed by now. My English is slightly better than my Arabic because the schools I was educated in believed that the West is superior to our Arab societies (they didn't realise it but it was taken for granted that this was the case). So they thought they were doing me a favour by making me more employable and integrable in today's "global" culture. They were right to some extent, my current abode is in the heart of this "global" culture, better known as the heart of capitalism to some. I like to call it "The Little Satan" due to it's relationship with the United States of America. That I can write any good Arabic at all is only due to a conscious effort on my part over the past few years and I may decide to write in it one day, but currently my context is outside the Arab world and I write best about what I know best. I am planning to move back up there one day and when that happens I will most probably write in Arabic and with as much vigour.

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Safar- Le Trio Joubran

Amazing clip...enjoy...

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"My Iraq Adventure"....

Another clueless American on Iraq, "I was told that the American flag is there for the soldiers to see when they're being moved from the helicopter to the hospital.". I do wish they'd stop being so good to everyone.

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The cheapest commodity in the world...

"Pressure is growing on Dubai's newest and largest hotel resort to free a whale shark from its aquarium." Please note that the resort is the new Atlantis resort, owned by a company known worldwide for its multi-million dollar gambling venues.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to see how the Emirates slave labour has been doing then please click here.

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Quote for today

"It is very complicated," she said. "Those Eastern people are not like we are."

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تسقيف تسقيف

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Gambling to be legalised in the Gulf?

It looks like plans to introduce widespread gambling into the Gulf are already underway with massive investments being carried out on Palm Island. Purely speculating of course, it is no coincidence that Kerzner International now has a foot on the island with its new Atlantis resort. It's also no coincidence that the QE2 was sold off as a £50 million investment to Dubai, again as a 'hotel'. It doesn't take much imagination to see it sail in international waters off the coast and well stocked up with whiskey, prostitutes and lots and lots of gambling. There I was thinking they were going to sail it to Gaza to break the seige...

When I read more about these things, it just reminds me how much I don't like rich people. I mean the rich people you don't hear about because they are rarely in the news, the ones that really do bank in obscure principalities in central Europe, in the Carribean and other places. The ones that can pay half a billion pounds sterling in 500 foot yachts armed with missile defense systems and a built in submarine, coupled with 50 crew and an armed detachment of British mercenaries from the SAS - the mercenary factory of choice for those who want to overthrow central African republics (think Mark Thatcher) or unreasonable Gulf Sheikhs, such as what happened in Oman. Is it any coincidence that the capital of choice for so many of these people is London? Is it not fair to say that we all, those of us who choose to remain (greedy for our big break) in these cosmopolitan cities, stand guilty of shared theft? I think it is.

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It's funky to be from...the Kingdom!

Another manifestation of "Cool Arabia"?

"The issues addressed are as much personal or domestic as they are global. The artists have chosen not to focus on negative perceptions of the Middle East or artistic and intellectual clichés associated with the region and instead present a contemporary world view that is as unpredictable as it is beautiful."

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Colonialism in philosophy

Whilst in Eurasia, I was surprised by the attitudes of friends and family who learned of my interest in philosophy. One person's jaw literally dropped when they heard what my Masters degree was in, "You've gone all the way to London to study philosophy?". Others worried about my soul and warned me of the dangers of losing myself in its treacherous waters. In many ways I'm not surprised, the attitudes of many people towards the subject mirrored similar attitudes people in the West had, but not to Philosophy with a capital P but with Arabic philosophy in specific. It is perhaps typical that the mentally colonised would belittle their own capabilities, imbue the philosophy of the occupier with awe and fear and internalise the colonisers attitudes towards the subject.

For a long time I puzzled as to why books on the history of philosophy were so dismissive towards the entire body of Arabic philosophy. According to one scholar, Dimitri Gutas, attitudes towards it are essentially based on orientalism, whereby the dominant view held in much of the West was that Arabs and Muslims were simply incapable of clear philosophical thought, being somehow 'naturally' inclined towards religious fanaticism and despotism. No attempt by any orientalists was made to even consider the vast body of texts which were still untranslated because of this attitude. What little there was to be read simply got reinterpreted in a way which reinforced this attitude, either consciously or unconsciously. The older these studies became, the more authority they seemed to hold in the minds of those who followed. Gutas argued that there were four attitudes which were rooted in this orientalist approach to Arabic philosophy and were largely responsible for the decline in interest in it or mis-interpretation of it.

The first attitude views Arabic philosophy as nothing but a mystical and exotic mish-mash of ideas and beliefs. This attitude has perhaps the weakest of orientalist foundations and quickly dissipates as we find that its proponents were usually either not bothered with investigating further or were themselves working with extremely limited sources, unaware of the wealth of this area.

A second attitude, one which I first noticed in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy but which carried on from earlier attempts, portrays Arabic philosophy as, at best, some caretaker or intermediary of Greek philosophy. Once Europeans were sufficiently prepared they then carried the torch forward, being much better suited and disposed to make use of such texts than the backwards Muslim peoples. This attitude continues on from the first and is hardly surprising as a conclusion.

The third attitude views Arabic philosophy as nothing more than an endless struggle between philosophy and religion. Each trying to outdo the other and prove its own truth. It ignores the profound impact that philosophy had on Islam itself and belittles the huge efforts of those within the tradition who pursued genuine philosophical enquiries. This attitude in particular was a Western concern. The majority of philosophers at the time believed in some form of religion and the nature of debate was usually centred on either epistemology or how logical propositions really were. In the first, the discussions were on how prophets were able to make the statements they did with no philosophical backgrounds. The second area of discussion was usually with regards to the logic of their propositions and of what nature these were. Were they demonstrative, dialectical, sophistical or something else. The fact that Western scholars miss this point may be to their misunderstanding of the nature of many texts made by Arabic philosophers. They forget that Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazali were primarily lawmakers and as such, texts they made which might appear to be concerned with the religion vs. philosophy debate were in fact legal texts to do with the legality of philosophical pursuits under Islamic law, and not under Arabic philosophy. The confusion increases when legal debates and legal styles are considered to be representative of all Arabic philosophy texts

Finally, we are told constantly that Arabic philosophy ends with Ibn Rushd and that the torch from there passes on to the West. This gives the impression that no philosophy was carried out, or is carried out, in Arabic or Islamic lands today. One scholar, Henry Corbin, mentions this fallacy numerous times and yet had been largely ignored. He cites numerous philosophers that I had never heard of who would have, and continue to be, amazed by the pre-eminence given to the al-Ghazali/Averroes debates. In fact they would have been mostly unaware of the attention given by the West to this matter. No attention is paid to any original work which continued to be produced after Ibn Rushd.

Between these four positions, according to Gutas, we are given the lense with which to view Arabic philosophy. This prevents us from seeing it as only philosophy and I think that those who have helped in shaping this could only be called colonialists of the mind. That some Arabs would internalise these positions and take them as their own only shows what mental occupation is capable of doing to somebody but recognising it as such is the first step in a truly free continuation of Arabic thought in all its multitude and diversity beyond the confines of Western colonialism.

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Meanwhile, setting Spain altogether apart from several other European countries is the fact that its history is deeply intertwined with Islam. Regardless of the fact that for centuries Spain's leaders have fought viciously and consistently to eliminate all trace of this legacy, memory of Al-Andalus and Muslim rule in Spain continues to constitute an extremely important part of both the Spanish and the Arab-Islamic identity. One indication of how deeply enmeshed the Arab legacy is into Spanish consciousness is an old popular joke: "The Arabs occupied Spain for 800 years, and they still haven't left."

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On travelling with an Arab "passport"

I sit with the man and his wife, and countless others, for hours on end. We are all the same, we speak the same language. It is only as we are about to land that I notice a nervous activity as people begin to fill landing cards. These people are unfortunate enough to have the wrong paper work. They are flying with Arab passports. There are usually two ways many people decide to approach this. One is that Arabs are being unfairly targeted, that we have been given a bad name, or simply that we should do more to be accepted into this system and so that people finally see us as the same as everyone else, so that our "passport" regains its value and respect which it so deserves. I for one don't care, I'll use the devil's passport to fly into his country. The acceptance that those people crave means that they surrender to this unfair "international" system, one which is designed to forever keep imperialists on top.

The logic of this system goes like this: You must never break the rules of the system, otherwise you risk chaos and many bad things will happen. If I break the system, it is in order to save it. Without the system you are all jeapardised. So I break the system for your own good, in other words, I am the system. You must protect me as I protect myself.

The only way to get out of this mess is to simply play the system and stop being stupid. Just get that meaningless piece of paper which will get you out of trouble and make your life easier when you travel. Force the system to discriminate against you again but this time in the open and because of your skin colour, religion or ethnicity or your financial status - the way it always has. At least this way everybody gets to see it for what it is, a big fat lie.

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We all love you Big Brother!

Discretion is the better part of valour and nowhere is this more the case than in Eurasia. It seems that ingrained in every Eurasian's mind is a deep reluctance to publicly discuss politics whether inside or outside the country. The situation is certainly not as bad as it was in Saddam's Iraq, or today's occupied Iraq for that matter, but it is bad. Sentencing is quick and hard for those who happen to get caught, an example for others of course. This is the case regardless of the persons intentions or political affiliations, you could easily land into trouble even if you are singing praises for the "right" side simply for being prominent enough to be noticed or heard. One side effect of this is that the system produces the exactly right type of "intellectual" that it needs - the morally bankrupt type. I have always disagreed with many Eurasian bloggers about this and I still firmly hold the position that making a martyr of yourself verges more on the stupid than the brave. If you are in Eurasia, keep your head down and find another way to get your point across. Now smile your biggest smile and sing your praise to Big Brother.

:-)

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Cool Arabia

I had the chance to spend a considerable amount of time watching Arabic satellite channels over the past few weeks and one thing struck me almost immediately - how very Saudi a lot of it is. This is probably not a surprise, but it would be interesting to see how and when (and by whom) the decision was made to start a concerted and massive PR campaign for the Saud family's private kingdom (formerly the Hejaz). In the many adverts, you almost always see a smiling woman in a fresh and attractively wrapped hejab promoting the latest product. Slick adverts show you a situation that could be in any metropolitan city in the world, but there is always the innocuous appearance of a man in a galabiyah or a woman in a hejab placed discreetly and professionally. Saudi music is also increasingly popular thanks to the many degenerate music channels such as Rotana and Melody that now grace our airwaves. The new Saudi Arabia is hip, trendy and forward looking. Ramadan and Eid are commercialised with enticing and orientalised adverts whilst Arab countries now vie for tourist traffic through specially designed adverts catered for the Gulf [Saudi] family - for an example just look at the recent adverts for Egypt which, apart from being demeaning for the country, are aimed exclusively for these Gulf tourists. LBC has, for some time now, also been quite happy to take part in this phenomenon and routinely shows programmes where Wahhabi sheikhs handle queries from the many faithful. It goes without saying that the "It's cool to be Saudi" ads are now standard on the channel but something like this would have been impossible to imagine in the late eighties. I guess this is hardly surprising considering the countries political climate and the neo-liberal vision that Hariri had for it before his untimely demise. "Cool Arabia" has been born, where it is funky and hip to be from "The Kingdom" or KSA as some like to call it.

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On a slightly different subject, does anybody know what the situation is with Prince Walid bin Sultan regarding Syria? I hear he has now pulled most of his investments out of the country apart from the Four Seasons hotel. I've also heard - unreliably - that Prince Bandar's son is being held incommunicado for the Mughniyeh killing in Syria.

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