27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
AN END TO TERROR: Students protest in Calcutta
Letters to the editor
Abhorrent vacuum
Sir- Thank you for your coverage of the events of last week in Washington and New York City. The mainstream press here in the US is context-less and cites events in a virtual historical vacuum. The digging process for solid information is arduous, but I appreciate the coverage in your weekly.
My organisation works with teachers to use historical events and an examination of human behaviour to provide insight, both moral and historical, to young people so that they will become informed and active participants in a democracy. I have struggled this week to encourage teachers to look at the context and history of these emotional events, and to encourage their students to deconstruct the language of nationalism and war. Again, your publication has been helpful.
Finally, I struggle as a Jewish American to prod my community to use the same ancient bar for measuring civility and justice for Palestinians as they do for others, and to look long and hard at the realities of human rights abuses and such before mouthing platitudes about safety and history. And again, your publication provided me with solid facts to combat such platitudes.
I am trying to be a voice, especially for teachers, for tolerance and understanding, as I'm sure you've read about anti-Arab-American sentiment here. One would think that with the lessons of Japanese internment in the country we wouldn't lapse into a repeat of 1942. I'm trying to pull some speakers together to go to schools and give a human face and voice to the tags "Arab," "Muslim," etc. The scholar and writer Ali Abunimah resides here in Chicago, and I'm talking to our national office about using him as a speaker, but from his website he appears to be quite busy. Do you know of Arab-American writers, scholars, speakers, or activists who live in Chicago who'd be willing to go to schools to speak?
Rachel Koch
Programme associate, Facing History and Ourselves
www.facinghistory.org
Sagging props
Sir- Your writers are deceiving the Egyptian people. There are many groups pressuring the US government in favour of the Palestinians. The Palestinians enjoy a great deal of support in the US -- at least, they did until 11 September. Thanks to a few Arab fools, that support has virtually dried up.
The Arab terrorists did irreparable damage to the Palestinian cause in the US. Your writers find it difficult to understand why so many Americans support Israel. It's really quite simple. Just ask yourself: how many Jewish terrorists have killed Americans in the last 50 years?
Roger D McKinney
Tulsa, Oklahoma
US
Scales of justice
Sir- On behalf of all Egyptians and Arabs, Muslims, Christians or Jews, we offer our deepest condolences and sorrow for the tragic events that took place on Tuesday 11 September; we condemn terrorism and will never support actions that lead to the loss of innocent lives, regardless of their nationalities. To all those condemning the Arabs, Muslims, and Bin Laden without evidence, let me point out that McVeigh did not represent all Americans or Christians, only himself. Though it may not be the time to point fingers, we have to understand why this is happening -- when a group is pushed to the point of desperation, anything is to be expected from it.
Terrorism and cowardice go hand in hand. A terrorist will plant a bomb and watch it explode from a distance without endangering his life; a person with a belief and cause will sacrifice his life to be heard and to draw attention to that cause.
If anyone is to be condemned, it is you, Mr Bush, for your incompetent administration; you have allowed groups to become desperate enough to do anything. You have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the situation in the Middle East, and have dealt with the area with arrogance and a lack of understanding.
Just the other day I saw Palestinians running away from Israeli soldiers with horror in their eyes -- the same horror that we all saw in the eyes of Americans fleeing the World Trade Center. Why is the first justifiable: is it because it has the blessings of the US administration? The US has to reconsider its biased policies and use the same scale of justice all over the world if it is to assume the role of world leader. Mr Bush, there has been a lot of blood shed since you took office in January.
Mr Bush, please do not show your muscles in order to placate the US public by rushing to retaliate. That will only lead to the loss of more innocent lives, and more acts of retaliation. The world does not want more bloodshed.
Mr Bush, as the only superpower, the US has a responsibility toward the world; the world's problems can only be resolved through a dialogue, not a monologue.
Mamdouh El-Rashidi
Zamalek
Beyond rhetoric
Sir- As an American citizen, student, and husband who has been blessed with a lovely wife of Egyptian heritage, my concern regarding the 11 September incidents is fraught with complexity. The atrocious incidents themselves elicited first disbelief, then sorrow, and then -- quite briefly -- anger. Immediately, I realised that my personal world (family, friends, community) and the greater world (states, ideologies, nature) would never be the same. Though this last sentiment seems mired in cliché, I knew while witnessing the final collapse of the WTC towers -- live, as it occurred -- that something was changing inside me.
Now, despite the knowledge that the United States has historically participated in much agitation against disparate groups around the world, despite the understanding that my government has at times acted irresponsibly in foreign affairs (and also has neglected to admit such transgressions both to the world and the American public), despite the fact that I deplore the tactics used by the IDF against innocent Palestinians, I am also worldly enough to know that each US criticism has a counter-argument which contains truth. Though I note that some opinions expressed in Al- Ahram Weekly do not attempt to engage these counter-arguments, those of us who seek a wider understanding of the repercussions of 11 September are pleased that a forum expressing an Egyptian point of view (and perhaps a wider pan- Arab, pan-Muslim viewpoint) does exist.
Yet I must point out that the US press has no exclusive claim to rhetorical content; the Weekly and other Middle Eastern news services are also guilty of dishing out rhetoric. Unfortunately, all this rhetoric makes the key issues that much harder to decipher. I would appeal to all journalists to tone it down -- rhetoric only obfuscates. I encourage every reader, every intellect -- from West to East -- to look past the "party line," and to ignore social, political, or religious jingoism, so that he might see both the tragedy of 11 September and the potential for future tragedy born of ignorance. May the loving God, who has endowed us with the capacity to discern right from wrong, protect us all.
Mark Sedgwick
US
General conclusions
Sir- I was looking for some other points of view concerning the events of the past week. I appreciate your paper being available on the Internet.
Concerning Arab and or Muslims in America, I want to let you (and the Muslims in America) know that most of us are not ignorant enough to believe that they are responsible. In fact, on Tuesday evening, I tried to get e-mail addresses to some Muslim mosques to let them know they have support in the community. I also go out of my way to teach my students why it is wrong to judge an entire group of people by the actions of some (no one tried to kill ex-military white guys after Tim McVeigh was found guilty!), and that Islam is a peaceful religion (from what I have studied of it).
Since you seem to have connections here, please let people know our hearts go out to them as well, and hopefully ignorant Americans will learn not to take their anger out on innocent people.
Sue Konarske
US
Shameful allies
Sir- It came as a shock to many of us in the US to see Egypt's weak response in regard to the WTC attack. After talking to several people I know in diplomatic circles I was told that it was typical -- you take what you can get from us ($2 billion a year) and have neither the courage nor the ethics to show friendship at a time when we are facing one of the biggest crises in our history.
Your paper made the point of our involvement with Iraq. Perhaps you don't remember, but we were begged by Kuwait, and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia, to be involved. I agree with you now: we should have let you people die for yourselves instead of fighting for you, it was a mistake that cost a hundred American lives. Of course the US also patrols no-fly zones. This serves the purpose of trying to stop more massacres on the Kurds. More Kurds have been killed in massacres by the Iraqis than Palestinians killed in the uprising. Evidently no one in Egypt loses sleep over them, why is a Palestinian life worth more than a Kurdish one to you people?
Most offensive is trying to deny what is obvious all over the world: it is the work of Muslim extremists. While you try to point the finger at US policy as the cause you ignore the reality: the fanatics of that religion have inflicted violence all over the world for a long time. India, for example, has suffered greatly because of Muslim extremists. You people are cowards and I'm ashamed my country is willing to call you an ally.
Sara Welsh
Los Angeles, California
US
Rejected letter
Sir- I was dismayed to hear about a letter in Al- Ahram Weekly (20-26 September) from a "Jim Albrecht -- US." This is a shameful letter blaming and condemning the people of Egypt in a mean spirit for the actions of a few irresponsible persons who may have thought Americans got what they deserved.
I totally reject the tone and spirit of this letter and believe it was written to stir up anger and sectarian strife at a time of high emotions and sorrow over the devastating attacks on America. I have too much love and respect for the people of Egypt to add insult to injury!
The letter entitled "From God, with Wrath" was written by sheer coincidence by another Jim Albrecht, or by someone who wants to use my name to stir up trouble and create turmoil. I would never write such a letter.
Reverend Dr James A Albrecht
Anderson, Indiana
US
All of us
Sir- I currently live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota -- a smallish city in the centre of the continental US. I have lived in several places throughout the US and I spent two years in Tanzania, East Africa in the early 1970s. If there's one thing I have learned from having lived in different places, it's that one's perspective shifts depending on where one is standing. This is a very humbling realisation. In my experience, anyone who is completely self-assured of anything -- the superiority of his nation, political beliefs or religious faith -- is either an ignoramus or a lunatic.
Having travelled as much as I have, and having a curious mind, I endeavour to keep up with current events from as many perspectives as I am able. In this spirit, I have been visiting Al-Ahram Weekly's Web site regularly ever since I first came across it several months ago. I have always found your analyses of world, especially Middle Eastern, affairs to be thoughtful and illuminating. It pains me to read some of the readers' letters you received regarding your coverage of the 11 September terror attacks in the US. I read nothing in your coverage that indicated a glee in the loss of life and destruction that was wrought in the terror attacks.
What I have gained from reading your (and other) analyses of the matter is an appreciation that the terror attacks, if they were of Middle Eastern genesis, stemmed from a context -- the US's current involvement in the Middle East: uncritical support for Israel; ongoing murderous sanctions on Iraq; support for repressive, unpopular governments (called "allies" in the US media) in Arab/ Muslim countries; etc. If I relied on mainstream US media reports, the only explanations I would have would be that the terrorists came from a culturally and psychologically retrograde part of the world and that they were driven to homicidal and suicidal rage because they felt threatened by our pop culture exports and because they were (insanely) jealous of our material success.
As you point out, in the immediate aftermath of tragedy, one's emotions tend to dominate one's intellect. Such an effect probably explains a lot of the most hateful verbiage directed against Arabs and Muslims (and your newspaper) by Americans since 11 September, but the truth is, Americans have, for the most part, always been at best unsympathetic to the travails of Middle Eastern peoples.
Many in the West and the East attribute the friction between the two regions to a struggle of Christianity vs Islam -- as if there is some greater, cosmic significance to events. A casual reading of history would expose that as too fatuous an explanation: the divide between West and East predates either Islam or Christianity. The competition between West and East had become the well- established stuff of myth and poetry before Homer. The root cause of our current troubles is simply the age-old human tendency to divide humanity into "us" and "them." Just whom the ideas "us" and "them" encompass can vary with time and political expediency. When the Christian West was not united in waging "holy" crusades against Muslims (and Orthodox Christians) in the East, it was engaged in fratricidal wars among Western nations. The same sort of process went on in Eastern history.
The fact that Israelis routinely gun down children in Palestine, or that the US and Britain smugly enforce an evil sanctions regime against Iraq does not justify the horror of 11 September. Neither will the tragedy justify the US's bombing of civilian populations in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- as seems imminent. President Bush has warned Americans not to expect a quick victory over terrorism. The scale of the retribution he implies makes me fear that an escalating war of tit for tat will result in the deaths of millions. The following might seem like an odd sentiment coming from the middle of North America (and I do not claim that my thinking is representative of that of my neighbours), but I feel much more threatened by what my president might do next, given the things he's said over the past two weeks, than I am by Osama Bin Laden (if he is, indeed, the "mastermind" behind the tragedy).
I am at a loss to say anything else except that I pray that the day comes when the human race will transcend the consciousness of "us" vs "them" and come to see every human tragedy as a tragedy for all of "us," not a special affront by "them" against "us," or a victory of "us" over "them." In the shorter term, I pray that the people who have the power to give orders to soldiers and bomber pilots make their decisions with wisdom and mercy.
Peace, Salaam.
Lloyd Gaarder
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
US
Bear-baiting
Sir- I am what we in the US call a WASP: a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I was once a soldier for this country and consider myself a patriot. With this in mind, what I am about to tell you and your readers will shock you. For years, I have supported the self-determination of the Palestinian people and have had many Muslim friends as well as Jewish. The whole Palestinian situation going back to World War II has left the Palestinian people almost as an afterthought of the world, their lands taken and their people displaced. Early tactics of terror hurt the position of the people but still I did not blame them for the acts of a few radicals and supported the people's cause for self- determination. Finally, leaders rose from the ashes such as Yasser Arafat to show the way through peaceful demonstration and seeking world support by peaceful means. But for every two feet in a positive direction, the cause would slip one back due to hotheads and specifically targeted media coverage of the same. It has been as it has been and is what it is.
Last week, the World Trade Center disaster shook the US not to its knees but to its feet. In my life, I have not seen such resolve to bring supported terrorism to an end. The scenes of those misguided Palestinian youths smiling and celebrating the disaster to our country angered the people to the core, worse than any terrorist act ever done by Palestinian radicals. I knew in my bones that those of education and wisdom knew the attack couldn't have hurt their cause worse. Before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in World War II, a famous Japanese spy sent the message "The bear is looking the other way," meaning the USSR had no plans for war with Japan. The same message applies now, for the US has bigger fish to fry than the Palestinian issue.
Your paper is therefore most likely right on the button when it states that the US will not only look the other way while Israel increases its antiterrorist units but support that effort and the Palestinian innocent will pay the price along with the guilty. What the American people need to hear from the Palestinian moderates is a cry of support and a total separation between their rightful cause and that of world terrorism. For without this cry, the Palestinians will again be an afterthought in American and Western minds and thus their cause will be neglected again. The effort this time falls three feet back. I encourage your paper to cover the support of the Palestinian people to end this era of terror, for "The bear is looking the other way."
Bill Damron
US
Sympathy for innocence
Sir- In his article this week (Al-Ahram Weekly, 20-26 September), Hani Shukrallah asks rhetorically: "How many tears were shed or candles lit -- in Britain, the US or Germany -- for Mohamed Al-Dorra and the thousands of other Palestinian children killed or maimed during the past year alone?" The answer is: very many tears were shed. Should I insult your humanity by asking how many Arabs cried for the Israeli children killed in the same conflict? Such tragedies are reported in the Western media, and a great sympathy for the Palestinian people is felt in our countries, as for the Iraqi people.
I have spoken to many people over the last week, every one of whom is deeply concerned that the Afghan people -- who have suffered miserably for 20 years, and now suffer under the Taliban -- should not end up the victims of the appalling behaviour of their leaders. I do not know one person who has expressed hatred for Arabs or Muslims as a result of what has happened, nor one who is unaware of the dangers of harming the innocent in retribution.
Your columnists constantly ascribe only the basest motives to our countries, and people. Well, we do have our militants -- the men of hate -- who doesn't? So, we are told, we maintain sanctions against Iraq out of a racist lack of concern for Iraqi children, and think only of the oil. In truth, Western governments believe that Saddam will use an end of sanctions to rearm, then renew aggression against his neighbours. In the awful calculus of strategic morality, that leads to more suffering, not less. I don't believe that such fear justifies the continuance of sanctions that cause so much civilian suffering, but I do think there's a high chance the strategists' fears are justified, and untold destruction will be wreaked on the Arab countries by "Saddam resurgent" in the future.
You might address such dilemmas when describing Westerners' motivation in dealing with Iraq, and other conflicts, rather than ascribing genocidal tendencies to us. Sadly, in Al-Ahram Weekly this week I have read many sweeping generalisations about the opinions of Westerners, or "whites," toward other people which bears no relationship to the real sentiment in our countries. A nice starting definition of racism might be "tending to characterise the morality, opinions or worth of people by their ethnic group." I've read a great deal of racist writing in Al-Ahram this week.
Andrew Hunter
UK
Just like Suez
Sir- One terrible aspect of this "attack on America" has been the backlash on innocent Arab American citizens in the United States, which has even included murder. The authorities and the vast majority of the American people deplore these actions, and those guilty of such acts are being brought to justice!
When I was 11 years old and attending the Cairo American College, the Suez crisis occurred and all Westerners were subject to much the same abuse now occurring in America. I remember being out at night with my brother and mother and having to run for safety when an impassioned speech by Nasser had just ended, sending angry Cairenes out into the nearby streets. A kind elderly Egyptian helped us avoid this mob.
Later, when we were safe in America, men came to our apartment and tried to kill my father, who had stayed behind to continue his work at the US embassy.
May we pray to our one God that these troubles will quickly end and that the world will be a safer place for our children and their children.
Tom O'Keefe
Las Vegas, Nevada
US
Listen to the signals
Sir- A friend e-mailed me and asked me if we (in the region) had just grown used to violence. I don't think anyone could have watched those planes hit the towers and then watched them collapse and not have been shocked. Those sights and the very human side of it with thousands of people missing under the piles of concrete and steel: those are images I think you have to be somewhat inhuman not to have sympathy for. There is no question in the minds of the people in the Middle East that this is an atrocity.
However, in the Middle East, our sympathy is tempered by the fact that, for a year now, we have had other images also impressed on us. We have watched Palestinian funerals, we have heard reports about the torture of Palestinian children by Israelis, and we have watched tanks and helicopter gunships fire rockets at Palestinian towns. Leaders have been assassinated, with civilians and children caught in the explosions, roads have been blocked, a whole people put under siege, land confiscated, and bulldozers have torn down houses and orchards, with livelihoods destroyed. In the middle of all this we have heard the US administration constantly condemn the Palestinians for using "violence," otherwise known as throwing rocks and firing a few rifles. We have seen the US unequivocally support Israel regardless of what it does, without even a hand slap, much less anything substantial. I do not condone the suicide bombings in Israel. But there seems to be no understanding in US diplomacy that when you corner and trap people, they turn vicious because they have no other options.
Have the Arab states (as distinguished from the general public) been exemplary in their conduct in the conflict? Of course not. We have more than our fair share of dictatorships and corrupt monarchies (supported by the US and Europe). Nor do I think that the hijackers' motivation was the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But it is necessary to understand that there are nuances to regional, national, and individual affiliations and allegiances that will change depending on the circumstances and threats faced. Arab countries are not all the same. Not all Arabs are Muslims either, again a common misunderstanding of the American public because nobody ever reports that Palestinians have one of the highest proportions of Christians in the Arab world.
The extremists in the Middle East have reduced these complexities to Islam against the West and the double standard of US policy in the region substantiates their claims. Because of the double standard, extremist thought (if not action) has become almost mainstream in the region. The language used by the US is disturbing and a response in kind: good versus evil, like the crusades or Huntington's clash of civilisations. Bombing Afghanistan?! As if that will go down really well with popular Muslim sympathies. It would be difficult to find a more miserable target. The place is already a humanitarian disaster zone of epic proportions. Brute force will only reinforce perceptions of the double standard and, just as American recruits are signing up for the military in response to this attack, new recruits will sign up for terrorism. America considers itself the force for freedom and justice in the world, and the most effective way to fight the terrorists would be to prove itself to be just that in the Middle East region.
Iman Soliman
Vice-president
Social Planning, Analysis and Administration Consultants
Cairo
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