Western news media has feasted on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s talk and the reactions to it as a rare political spectacle rich in personalities in conflict. But the real story of Netanyahu’s speech is that he is continuing a long tradition in Israeli politics of demonising Iran to advance domestic and foreign policy interests.
The history of that practice, in which Netanyahu has played a central role going back nearly two decades, shows that it has been based on a conscious strategy of vastly exaggerating the threat from Iran.
In conjuring the spectre of Iranian genocide against Israelis, Netanyahu was playing two political games simultaneously. He was exploiting the fears of the Israeli population associated with the Holocaust to boost his electoral prospects while at the same time exploiting the readiness of most members of US Congress to support whatever Netanyahu orders on Iran policy.Read More »
President Richard von Weizsäcker passed away 31 January and was very much celebrated in Germany for his brilliant presidency to normalize a Germany with a troubled past, even divided on top of that. But, by and large leaving out his global perspectives mentioned below.
His brother Car Friedrich was a nuclear physicist turned peace activist with a wonderful peace program, in one word: Weltinnenpolitik, world domestic policy (well, it depends on the country, some domestic policies are better than others; I would go for a Swiss coalition governance, federalism, direct democracy).
The president’s nephew Ernst Ulrich is an energy-environment leader, in Germany and through the UN in the world.
I have/had the privilege of knowing them all, and my tribute to Carl Friedrich when he passed away is an editorial dated 2 July 2012. Richard kindly sent greetings to the symposium on “Peace Studies and World Domestic Policy” on the occasion of my 80th birthday.
On March 3, 2015, The Telegraph and a few other major news surces broke the quite extraordinary story that the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee – the body that decides who is awarded the Prize – former Norwegian PM Thorbjoern Jagland had been demoted; it’s the first time it has ever happened.
It was during his chairmanship the will of Alfred Nobel was ignored most systematically – e.g. by awarding the world’s allegedly most prestigious prize to President Obama, the EU and Chinese human rights (but pro-war) Liu Xiaobo.
It’s about 7 years ago that a small group of Scandinavian scholars decided to investigate how this prize is managed. The basic research can be found in a book by Norwegian lawyer and author, Fredrik S. Heffermehl, The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted which was the first major result of the group’s work. It documents how this prize is “prestigious” only for those who either a) have never read Alfred Nobe’s will; b) don’t believe it should be interpreted with respect for his motives and goals and c) have very little knowledge about peace and peace research.
Nobel’s formulation in his will is short and clear – the Peace Prize shall go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” He calls such people “champions of peace”. More here.
Thus, the Nobel Peace Prize is not a do-good prize, not a human rights or environmental prize and not a pro-war prize. But it is a reward work for disarmament, anti-militarism and the abolition of warfare and people – be it politicians, scholars, activists – who are pro-peace, champions of peace. The legal challenges that the Nobel Peace Prize Watch has raised over the years can be found here.
The Nobel Peace Prize Watch
Over the years, the criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s work has increased. Seven years ago, I cannot remember that any journalist who interviewed me about the Prize had read the will. Now about 75% of them seem to have before they call.
Fredrik Heffermehl, Oslo, and Tomas Magnusson, Gothenburg, have now established the Lay Down Your Arms Association which was incorporated and registered in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2014 with a Scandinavian and an International Advisory Board. The Association’s first project has been to set up the Nobel Peace Prize Watch where you can acquaint yourself with the Prize, its history, background, the criticism over time, etc.Read More »
What the Chapel Hill police in North Carolina initially pitched to the world as ‘a parking dispute’ was the deliberate killing of three young and devout Muslim American students by an ideologically driven ‘new atheist’ killer named Craig Stephen Hicks.
What the The Economist unhesitatingly calls ‘terrorism in Copenhagen’ involved the attempted shooting of a Danish cartoonist who repeatedly mocks the Prophet and Islamic beliefs as well as the lethal shooting of a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue.
A friend understandably poses a serious question on Twitter that might have been dismissed as rhetorical overkill just a few years ago: “Are only Muslims capable of terrorism?”
I find it deeply disturbing that while the Chapel Hill tragedy is given marginal media attention except among groups previously worried about Islamophobia and racism, The Economist considers that important principles of Western liberal democracy are at stake apparently only in the European context.
In the words of Zanny Minton Beddoes, the new editor of the magazine: “Jacob Mchangama, a lawyer and founder of a human-rights think-tank called Justitia, told me it would be a disaster if his country were to grow faint-hearted in its defense of free speech. ‘There can be no truce in the struggle between secular democracy and extremism,’ he says. Above all, politicians should avoid the trap of saying or implying that violence was really the fault of provocateurs, or that religious insult was to be equated with physical injury. Giving in to that sort of relativism would be letting down those followers of Islam who were brave enough to stand up for free speech, and indulging in a sort of “bigotry of low expectations”, said Mr Mchangama, whose paternal forebears were Muslims from the Comoros Islands. A good point.”
I am quite sure that this is not a good point, at least as phrased by Mr. Mchangama.
Of course, governments should take action to protect all who are violently threatened, but to refuse to regard Islamophobic messaging as a species of hate speech while so regarding anti-Semitic slurs or Holocaust denial is to combine two things that are both unacceptable: ignoring the root causes of political extremism and pathological violence; and prohibiting and punishing anti-Semitic utterances as hate speech while treating anti-Islamic or Islamophobic speech as requiring protection from the perspective of ‘freedom of expression.’ Read More »
If there is such a thing as a “frozen conflict” the best place to look is not in Eastern Europe but in Korea where after years of merciless war that ended in 1953 there was an armistice, a line was drawn across the Korean peninsular and its two halves went their separate ways- one, the south, to fast capitalist development and the other, the north, to stultifying dictatorship that seemed to do only one thing competently – build nuclear bombs. Today there is no war on the Korean peninsular but there is no peace.
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all tried to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear bomb program and to bring to a close the military stand-off between north and south. All their attempts have come to naught, not just because of North Korean stubbornness but also because of Republican majorities in Congress which have constantly undermined what seemed to be breakthroughs in negotiations.
Now Obama has summoned up the strength to return to the ring. The two countries’ nuclear envoys have been discussing the idea of “talks about talks”. A majority of long time observers are doubtful that after two decades of on/off negotiations that real progress can be made.
But they forget the major progress made by Clinton Read More »
The world is full of unnecessary violence and human suffering. Do you know anyone who’d like it to continue like that?
If we educate ourselves and look outside the box, we can create a better world for all. Peace and security can be learnt, making conflict illiteracy and most of the violence a thing of the past.
Below is how – not in a column of 800 words but in a twice as long mini text book. It’ll enable you to think new thoughts and take the first steps into a hitherto closed but beautiful landscape.
Here we go:
Conflict happen. They are basically a good thing. There is no human community without conflict – and if there were it would be a dictatorship, or utterly boring. But how good are we – citizens, media and politicians – at dealing with conflict? Why do we often see violence where it could have been avoided and large violence where only a little, applied early, could have stopped large and long wars?
First a couple of ‘credos’ based on a few decades of experience:
• Conflicts are usually much more complex than presented by the parties and those who intervene in them; many have existential dimensions too.
• If we could learn to analyse and understand conflicts and reduce early, over-emotional side-taking – like we have medical expertise investigating diseases and treating patients instead of condemning them – we would have a more peaceful and just world with much less suffering.
• Conflicts is a problem standing between parties – their solution is not located only in individuals but in changing everybody’s goals, attitudes, behaviour and visions of the future.
• Conflicts can be solved/managed better if we address them sooner rather than later.
• The moment violence has been introduced we face a much bigger problem: the original issue plus the humiliation, anger and wish for revenge. Read More »
Let’s be cautiously optimistic; the meeting did not break down and a ceasefire document was signed. But that is a minimum in this extremely tense situation. One would have hoped for more than what seems to be a revision of the first Minsk agreement.
What are the next steps for this ceasefire agreement to lead to a peace plan, the two things being vitally different?
First, what no one talks about, it seems: A rather large UN peace-keeping and peace-making force with a unit of some 8.000-10.000 robust military from countries completely neutral to this conflict. The classical three legs: military, civil police and civil affairs, perhaps 20.000 in all.
Why the military component? Because the OSCE can monitor and report but it cannot enforce. And because the parties don’t trust each other. And why should this agreement be more durable than the first without it?
If on the 16th of February some shots are again fired by a madman on either side, hell will break lose and accusations fly. And if this agreement doesn’t hold either, we are close to a large-scale war and the U.S. will pour in its weapons (if not before).
Prefatory Note This post is a much modified piece published a few days ago in AlJazeera English, and republished elsewhere on line. As many have now done it tries to enlarge the context in which the Charlie Hebdo events are understood beyond a highlight film clip in ‘the war on terror.’ The alleged link between the Chouachi brothers and Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) allows the attack on Charlie Hebdo to be experienced as the French 9/11, and with this a return of France to a status of post-colonial geopolitical relevance.
Without grasping the relevance of how the dominant treat the dominated within our societies and throughout the world, we are consigning ourselves to many repetitions of the private and public horrors experienced in France on January 7, 2015.
There is some common ground, but not much. The killings in Paris last week were horrifying crimes that expose the vulnerability of democratic societies to lethal vigilante violence, whether facilitated from outside or as a spontaneous expression of homegrown psychopathic alienation. Beyond this naked, morbid reality associated with the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, police officers, and the supermarket hostages there is nothing but darkness, and in that darkness some dangerous monsters lurk.
We can be again thankful for the moral clarity of Pope Francis who a few days ago in the impromptu setting of a plane taking him from Sri Lanka to Manila shined a light upon the darkness. Unlike those who so ardently wielded the slogan “Je suis Charlie” the Pope understood that free speech without limits is an invitation to indulge the worst negative impulses that will then operate as viruses destroying the vital organs of the body politic.
What Pope Francis underscored was the impossibility of reconciling dignity with hurtful insults,Read More »
I visited Iran for a third time in December last year, participating in the international UN-endorsed conference, WAVE – World Against Violence and Extremism.
I gave interviews to some ten agencies and media but the longest was this exclusive one by a passionate and very professional 24-year old Iranian journalist, Kourosh Ziabari, for the esteemed Iran Review.
The distorted image of Iran
TFF has been engaged with an in Iran the last three years. We believe that the general image in Western media – covering almost only Iran’s nuclear program, human rights violations and Iran as a threat to the world – is neither objective nor fair.
It conveniently omits the harmful effects on the Iranian society of Western policies since the days of the US-UK coup d’etat against the democratically elected President of Iran, Dr. Mossadegh, in 1953.
Whether intended or not, this type of media coverage risks contributing to deeper conflict and legitimise future violence – rather than mutual understanding and peace.
It is therefore imperative to go there and see for yourself. More about that in the next TFF PressInfo.
What TFF tries to do in Iran
TFF has these aims with its work in Iran:
a) Fact-finding: to simply learn first-hand about its history, culture, people and how they think on all levels; by traveling around and interviewing people, as many and different as possible.
b) To influence the image in the West of IranRead More »
By chance I was reading César Vallejo’s poem, “Black Stone on a White Stone,” in a translation by Geoffrey Brock, and was struck by the opening stanza:
I’ll die in Paris in the pouring rain
a day I have a memory of already.
I’ll die in Paris—I won’t try to run—
a Thursday perhaps, in Autumn, like today.
Without being literal, I was reminded that I could appraise my death while alive, and not leave a final reckoning to some solemn memorial event in which speakers are challenged to find humorous anecdotes to lighten the occasion, otherwise uttering honorific platitudes quite unrelated to the experiential core of my being.
I had been thinking quite a bit recently about ‘lost causes.’
Recently I gave a lecture at Columbia University on this theme, inspired by Edward Said’s seminal late essay “On Lost Causes” (1997) in which he ties together the ‘nobility of failure’ as portrayed in literature with his own unswerving dedication to the Palestinian struggle for a just peace. On that occasion, Read More »
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