Getting Your Victims to Love You

To mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Arab-Israeli schoolchildren are expected to negate their very identity, writes Azmi Bishara

If you want to understand the magnitude of the Palestinian tragedy and the depths of their dilemma take a look at the recent decree issued by the Israeli Ministry of Education which in essence asks Jewish and Arab schoolchildren to sign the Israeli declaration of independence as part of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel.

In a statement distributed to the schools the ministry's Society and Youth Administration set the following objectives for the jubilee: "To commemorate the passage of 60 years since the establishing of the state of Israel in the Arab and Jewish educational system; to strengthen the sense of belonging to, pride in and love for the 60-year-old state among all who attend educational institutes; to help all Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze and other youth to form a clear vision of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; to inspire a sense of responsibility and social commitment among the young and to encourage them to become active participants in the affairs of society."

A quick glance at this text is sufficient to realise that there are no Palestinian Arabs in Israel; they are to be Israelis first, and "Muslims, Christians, Druze and others" second. The Arab student, according to this inspirational educational aim, is to love Israel, be Israeli and feel proud -- no more, no less. How commendable such a memorandum would be if distributed (with the appropriate nationality change) to fledgling citizens in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. In Israel, though, it would be hard to come up with a more grotesque document.

There is a very persistent mode of colonialism at work here. It was not enough for this colonialist drive to seize a people's land, kick out the inhabitants, bring others to take their place and destroy the fabric of an entire society, and then justify this on the grounds of a divine promise while, in the same breath and with the same degree of sincerity, regarding itself as a secular national liberation movement. No, it insists that its victim must admire it and recognise not only its existence but its historical legitimacy. It is determined to imprint itself beneath its victims' skin through the ritual signing of a declaration of independence that simultaneously celebrates their own defeat.

The Zionist colonialist enterprise is unique in its perpetual obsession with identity, its insistence on playing the role of victim, and the unyielding persistence with which it seeks to legitimise itself by inspiring the admiration of its victims, as if it has done them a great favour by liberating them from their national territory and identity and taking these "burdens" on its own shoulders. In return for such magnanimous sacrifices it expects its victims to display their gratitude by standing with it in its struggles and to share its distress at having been forced to inflict such disasters on others. At any display of ingratitude by those victims -- when, for instance, they try to reassemble their torn national self -- it wags its liberal-minded finger at them and reproaches them for reverting to nationalist demagoguery, chauvinism and other such outmoded fashions in this age of globalisation.

Only Israel has the right to be chauvinistically nationalist, monopolising for itself the privilege of suffering the tribulations that arise from this: its victims, meanwhile, must express their appreciation or, at the very least, learn to live with it.

The manifestations of chauvinism and of the infatuation with nationalist symbols are ubiquitous: in national anthems, patriotic marches, quasi- military scouting societies, flags on every schoolhouse and licence plate, in the laws that are promulgated with seasonal regularity on how to treat Zionist flags and symbols. Surely this indicates a national chauvinism and degree of fanaticism rare in today's world? Having school children, even Jewish school children, sign the national independence declaration takes nationalism to the level of religious rite, with the schoolchildren, pen in hand, mystically embodying the venerable founding fathers of the nation. If the Arabs did anything remotely similar Israel would not be able to contain its sarcasm.

Israel officially rests on an ultranationalist ideology which is continually reproduced across all shades of the political spectrum. But it surpassed itself with this Ministry of Education decree asking Arab students to sign its declaration of independence. Colonialist thought and action have dressed themselves up in the garb of equality and political correctness. There shouldn't be any discrimination between one schoolchild and the next, it appears to be saying, whereas in fact it is the height of racial discrimination: the Jewish pupil is being asked to affirm his ethnic self (or critically couched: to negate his individuality and assimilate the identity of the national project); the Arab pupil is being asked to negate his ethnicity and distort his identity through identification with the colonialist project that exiled his people and denied their existence.

The current minister of education and culture, to whom credit is due for this enlightened brainstorm, represents the liberal wing in the Zionist establishment. The Zionist left, as historically represented by the Zionist Labour Movement and its offshoots, was the practical founder of the Israeli state project: it took up arms and fought the Arabs, forged relations with Britain and then the US, demolished the Palestinian national project and built its own on the ruins. It is the author of such notions as Arab-Israeli co-existence based on Arab- Jewish fraternity, or a shared hatred between Israel and the Arab poor for Arab reactionaries and the Arab upper classes (the contemporary representatives of which Israel is wooing to conclude peace treaties and alliances against the Arab poor and against Arab nationalist, pan-Arab and Islamist "extremism"). This Zionist left was originally opposed to the liberals that allied themselves with the Zionist right. However, the Zionist left has now shifted to ally itself with the liberals in Israeli society, and from these ranks surfaced the warped idea that Arab schoolchildren should sign the Zionist national independence document.

I will not, of course, attribute to the Zionist state all conceivable evil, let alone the power of diabolical magic, as some less familiar with the nature of its project might do. Nor will I confuse my analysis of the Ministry of Education's decree with the justifications cited by its authors. Zionist liberals obviously have a different take than mine on the decree. They regard the declaration of independence, which in one paragraph calls for the equality of all citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex, as a relatively progressive document, certainly when compared to the prevailing racist political culture that has infected schools and young people. As such, signing this document becomes an act of enlightenment, reviving the "universal values" upon which Israel was founded. At the same time, the liberals who proposed the idea will not be open to attack for being "soft" or being "traitors", because all they have to do to prove their loyalty and patriotism is to point to the most important Zionist text.

Whatever value this justification has extends only as far as the battle to determine the nature of the prevailing culture among a Jewish Israeli public. It does not wash in Arab-Israeli society. To the Arabs discrimination is not a phenomenon of recent progeny that has taken a sudden dangerous turn with the spread of a racist culture among Jewish school kids. It existed well before the occupation of 1967, regardless of the sanctities mouthed in Israel's declaration of independence. Israeli liberals believe that by appealing for a withdrawal from Arab territory occupied in 1967 they are calling for Israel to return to its original nature, as if prior to 1967 Israel was a model of democracy, human rights and equality. They think that by opposing the occupation they are affirming an earlier, better citizenship. But the fact is that citizenship never had anything to do with equality for Arabs.

At the same time that the independence of the Zionist state was proclaimed on the land of Palestine the Haganah was preparing to take over the whole of Palestine and expel all its Arab inhabitants. Then, after the official establishment of the state and the provision of the declaration of independence calling for equality of all citizens went into effect, the Arabs were put under martial law and laws were passed to confiscate their land. They were systematically discriminated against in every walk of life.

Permit me to assume the role of devil's advocate for a moment:

Up till now, Azmi, you've only talked about Zionist practices, whereas the document under discussion is fine. Just because practice strayed from the text, why throw out the baby with the bath water?

Firstly, the Israeli declaration of independence is not an abstract theory. It was meant to go into effect upon proclamation and to shape the process of nation-building on the basis of its constituent provisions, notably the definition of Zionism as a national movement to establish a state on the basis of an exclusive self-acclaimed historical and religious right based on Biblical scriptures and the "uninterrupted" continuity of the Jewish presence in Palestine.

But what about that paragraph on "equality"?

The document was also intended to camouflage the nature of the Zionist colonialist enterprise, and it performed it function. The commitment to the principle of equality was one of the prerequisites for Israel's acceptance into the UN. The declaration of independence is not a theory that went awry in application. It was the official proclamation of an ideological vision that was, in fact, being applied in practice. This was not just a vision for a colonialist project to be erected on the ruins of Palestinian society but for a state in which national affiliation is defined by a religious affiliation. Clearly, in this context a nationalist rite of transubstantiation that involves putting a pen to that piece of paper means one thing when performed by a Jewish pupil and an entirely different thing when performed by an Arab one. In the first case, it is an affirmation of the pupil's unified national and religious identity, in the second it is a psychological, moral and cultural mutilation.

Just to refresh the memory, let's take a look at some of the paragraphs in the document that the Arab-Israeli student is expected to sign:

" The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

"Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, immigrants and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

"In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

"This right was recognised in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917..."

Arab students in Israel are now being asked to countersign this negation of their own existence. Moreover, when they reach the celebrated paragraph about equality, they find that it is taken from the vision of the prophets of Israel and appears almost as an afterthought to the Jewish right of return:

"The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

Headlong to More of the Same

While the US continues to ignore its citizens, next month's peace conference seems fated to mimic the same old empty rhetoric, writes Azmi Bishara

In The Washington Post of 10 October, Harold Meyerson observes that if the erosion of individual rights in the US as a result of Bush's war on terror wasn't enough, there is a development that is "even more corrosive to American democracy: the erosion of majority rule". Apparently he's right. A Pew Research Centre poll in September indicated that 54 per cent of Americans supported bringing US forces home immediately, 13 per cent supported a timetable for withdrawal and only 25 per cent favoured keeping troops there and not setting a timetable.

Decision-makers side with the 25 per cent. They want US forces to stay in Iraq for an indefinite period, as they have in South Korea (50 years until now), in the opinion of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, among others. Presidential candidates, on the other hand, tend to be vague on withdrawal even though if the Democrats are elected it will be on the strength of American voters' opposition to the war in Iraq now that it has proven such a disaster.

Not that this is all that surprising. While the peaceful rotation of power is a fundamental component of a democracy, in the opinion of the high priests and savants of political theory, it is not an especially pivotal component. For the most part, power is rotated among people of the same party, or of the two major parties, without bringing a significant change in policy, especially those policies related to the essential nature of the national economy, the Central Bank, the US's central foreign alliances, national security, and the basic principles of the constitution. It is thus difficult to identify the contours of change on the basis of the success of a Republican or Democratic candidate in the US. To a considerable extent, politico-economic circumstances and the expectations of voters at the end of an incumbent's term determine the actions of his successor, leaving only a narrow margin for difference, regardless of the successor's political party affiliation.

In "established democratic systems" parties and presidents follow one another to the helm within the framework of the system's basic principles. In the US, the rivalry between the two major parties takes place within the ruling establishment and, moreover, since statistical considerations compel them to compete over the centre of the spectrum of public opinion, the rhetoric and platforms of rival candidates are often very similar. Little wonder therefore that, to the surprise and dismay of her liberal supporters, Hillary Clinton suddenly espoused conservative views. Not only does she not regret voting in favour of the war on Iraq when the issue came before Congress, she now refuses to rule out prolonging the military option in Iraq just as she refuses to rule out the option of war against Iran.

There are countries in which elections mean a choice between two different worlds, which is to say that the polls can actually result in radical foreign and domestic policy changes. The Ukraine and Lebanon spring to mind. But these are countries that have not yet matured into "established democratic systems".

This is not to say the peaceful rotation of power excludes the possibility of major political turning points in established democracies. The rise of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Thatcher and Reagan, for example, can only be understood as radical shifts in the US's or the UK's domestic or foreign policies arising from the results of national elections. On the other hand, those who subscribe to the theory above can claim that even in these instances the shifts were an inevitable reflection of larger forces, such as changes in the economy, the times, the nature of the forces of production and the like, as opposed to changes in persons and individual temperaments. Moreover, such instances are relatively rare, no more frequent than the sweeping changes similar exigencies compel upon dictatorships, whether these changes occur in the form of peaceful reforms or of coups and non-peaceful means of the rotation of power.

The difference between citizens of a democracy and citizens of a non-democratic government does not reside in their ability or lack of ability to alter policy, but rather in their respective rights and the nature of their citizenship.

Meanwhile, all indications are that the US is irrevocably bent on confrontation in the Arab region, a policy shared to varying degrees by its Arab and European allies and, of course, Israel. Their aim is to expunge such givens as Arab solidarity, the Palestinian cause and even the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to isolate and seal off everything that represents that "past" without resolving any issue unless by settlement with Israeli national consensus.

With the end of the neo-conservatives, the banner of "the spread of democracy" beneath which this clique paraded fell, leaving its less deceptive partner, "the fight against terrorism", in place. The banner that has effectively and flagrantly taken the place of "democracy" is "American hegemony", by which is meant the imposition of a single all- encompassing form of control over the material and mental region located between the preservation of Israel and oil, and the areas adjacent. The fall of "democracy", in turn, removed any vestiges of embarrassment and discomfort among Arab neo-cons and neo-liberals whose regimes, which they served in the days of Washington's neo-conservatives, now feel threatened or at least open to blackmail by America's number one ally. Indeed, gone now is even the slightest compunction at siding with Israel (militarily or non-militarily) in its confrontation against other Arabs.

Putting aside, just for the moment, the various details governing the daily moods and concerns of the people, which are echoing through the Lebanese press, between the lines of various meetings and in official statements, it is possible to capture a general idea. It is actually a pretty obvious one: when caught in a policy of regional confrontation such as that which is currently being engineered it is difficult for those in the crosshairs of that policy to come to an agreement. The rest is detail. This is an analysis, of course, not a value judgement. With regards to the latter, the policy of confrontation is no less than a crime and madness.

If the Lebanese were left to themselves, they would have no alternative but to come to an agreement. But the first to refute such an assessment are the Lebanese "factions" and their pundits. They will tell you that agreement on their presidency is a regional and international affair. "It's always been that way," they say and for proof they show how they've always welcomed international and Arab efforts. Still, one can not help but to believe that if the Lebanese had their say, they would reach a reconciliation, in spite of UN resolution 1559, from which all active players in Lebanon had distanced themselves when it was issued with expressions ranging from opposition to outright condemnation. But such was not to be the case, and now the acceptance of that resolution has become a prerequisite for engagement in any talks over the presidency, thanks to the imposition of the policy of regional confrontation, or to the players' seizing at this policy as an ally in their domestic power plays.

The situation as it stands can be broken down into the following inferential equation: the US is pursuing a confrontationist, anti-conciliatory policy in the region; consensus over the presidency of Lebanon (among other things, we add cautiously) is a regional and international matter; and local reconciliation is an unlikely outcome of international confrontation.

If this is true, then what is all the discussion about in Lebanon? Not, of course, that we want the newspapers there to shut down, depriving their owners of the income they make out of news, official statements and the like. But is it possible that the following holds true: that the US regards developments in Lebanon since the Syrian withdrawal as an accomplishment it seeks to sustain? In this case, it would not want that accomplishment to be jeopardised by an internal conflict with an unpredictable outcome and it would, therefore, want to encourage its allies there to reach a local agreement, so long as the accord remains local, in the sense of a local anaesthetic, which is to say applicable solely to Lebanon so as not to alter its overall policy of regional confrontation.

Of course, the foregoing scenario presumes that all decision-making power rests in Washington's hands alone and that the US is capable of doing what it pleases whenever it pleases. Were this presumption correct then one could accept, in theory, the possibility of that scenario. But even then, we would find that the US regards the implementation of Resolution 1559 an international concern worthy of fighting over. In Lebanon, it is not so much the person of the president that counts, but the makeup of the government he forms after he is elected, and the position of this government on 1559. Indeed, the implementation of the latter was the very issue that Israel had officially declared the aim of its war on Lebanon. It was not in the least interested in internal Lebanese dialogue or concord.

Ultimately, the subject is a political one in the end. National concord, like any political conciliation in the world, is contingent upon domestic parties capable of applying their independent will in realistically assessing their opportunities for achieving their objectives and then upon their willingness to compromise in order to avert hostilities with unforeseeable consequences. Consensus is synonymous with the theory and practice of realism.

On other fronts, Olmert has yet to state in detail his position on the conditions and limitations for a settlement. He uses that old "trial balloon" tactic: he lets others do the talking. Until recently, Olmert had been playing both sides of the fence, with Lieberman's Shas Party on one side and Barak's Labour Party on the other. Then he realised that Barak was not on the other side of the fence, but instead busily trying to outflank him on the right. Barak, for his part, realises that Netanyahu is his most powerful rival and he also believes that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is too week to deliver on Israel's conditions for a settlement.

Olmert has not forgotten that Barak lost his coalition government on the road to Camp David and that Netanyahu's government fell on his way back from Wye River. Olmert, on the other hand, succeeded in regaining some of his ratings and in winning over all the Israeli media in favour of a "peace process" and demographic separation in general. This is what won him over to Sharon, which, in turn, lifted his popularity ratings further.

Undoubtedly, Olmert also bears in mind that what raised his popularity ratings was not peace or his willingness to make concessions, but rather the "process" itself. From his perspective, then, the best option is to keep this process going without making "concessions". This is impossible, of course, which is why he has to offer small tips from time to time so as to strengthen the position of the "Palestinian partner" in Palestinian society.

Therefore, the only thing we can expect from the Annapolis peace meeting is for it to strengthen the peace process. As far as that meeting goes, the Israeli prime minister has only two major concerns. There has to be a prospect of some kind of declaration of understanding so as not to have to face the consequences of a reverberating failure, and there can be no "concessions" which could jeopardise his coalition. What all parties in that coalition share is an ability to realistically appreciate the prospects of the Annapolis meeting. And they can realistically expect that the US president will not pressure Israel.

On the Palestinian side, when some Hamas leaders say that talks are in progress with Fatah in this country or that, they look like unsteady tightrope walkers. More importantly, they are effectively belittling the importance of discussing opposition to the Bush meeting in November and sidelining the need to discuss the behaviour of the PA. The ultimate effect of such statements is to make Hamas appear interested primarily in returning to a power- sharing arrangement with Fatah.

Yet it is not Fatah that is ruling the PA at the moment, but rather a certain political trend, most of whose main figures either came from outside Fatah or had never held key positions in that movement. The only reason this trend freed itself from Hamas was so that it could have the leeway to play out its version of a settlement process to the accompaniment of a lot of international fanfare. It has no interest in going back to Hamas, which is why its response to Hamas statements is that no such talks are in progress and that there will be no dialogue. The proponents of this trend are very persistent and single minded. They have a project and they are determined to subordinate any details, such as dialogue, to the implementation of their project and what they hope to gain out of implementing it.

There are undoubtedly many Fatah members who have no objection to speaking with Hamas. There are also many who oppose the PA presidency's way of handling things. Perhaps these are the people Hamas should be speaking with, without claiming that they are speaking with Fatah in general and in a way that establishes common ground to build on towards the development of a political programme. Surely this is the only way to prevent the imposition on the Palestinians of a political map that features only an unjust settlement on one side and a self-serving PA project on the other, with no politicised opposition with a viable political vision in between.

US ًًWar Insanity

Only sustained action, not piecemeal and polite entreaty, can help block America's voracious military-economic machine from devastating the region, writes Azmi Bishara

A Pentagon general returning to work today after 20 years of retirement would be in for a surprise. Two decades ago his country had just emerged victorious over the international communist order after some 40-odd years of political, cultural, economic and intelligence warfare, which erupted in countless regional conflicts, revolutions and coups in various areas of the globe, and in which his agency had invested all its energies and resources. So he would have set off into his golden years confident that America was safer and more secure now that it had bested what Ronald Reagan had dubbed the "Evil Empire". His confidence would have been fortified by the fact that the last arms appropriations bill that president had submitted to Congress amounted to a half a trillion dollars in today's terms, the effect of which was to lure the shattered Soviet economy into another arms race. Imagine that retired general's surprise, 20 years down the line after his government laid to rest that mortal enemy to freedom and the American way of life, that his president, today, in 2008, has asked Congress to approve a military budget for this era of peace equivalent in actual terms to the size of the 1987 budget, which is to say in the area of $505 billion.

The US military budget is equivalent to all the other military budgets in the world put together and five times larger than the combined military budgets of the countries the US has identified as its potential enemies (according to an article by Richard Betts, director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, that appeared in the Chicago Sun- Times of 28 October).

Now, the sceptic may argue that the foregoing comparison is unfair because it fails to take into account the need for exceptional costs to cover the wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. To this one can answer, firstly, that Iraq and Afghanistan are no "exceptions". Any 80-year-old in America would be hard put to recall a time when his country was not either at war or preparing for war. Contrary to the first 150 years of US history, the last 80 is an unbroken record of moving from one conflict or military intervention to the next in the course of what might be described as the unfolding emergence of the American Empire we see today. Secondly, the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are funded through supplementary spending bills outside the federal budget. If you added the $142 billion funnelled into those wars to the 2008 defence appropriation bill you'd arrive at $650 billion, or 25 per cent more than the US's military budget for 1968, at the height of the Cold War and the arms race and at a time when the US was involved in the fiercest military intervention in its history, the war in Vietnam.

Certainly American defence budgeting is shaped by other motives apart from the need to fund the army and the country's current wars. One powerful incentive is scientific and technological research and development, especially in areas that are transferable between the military and civilian industries, and without the outlays for which major US firms would not be able to stay afloat in the capitalist struggle for survival. Regardless of the existence or nature of perceived threats to US national security, the military budget and technological research and production complex form a mainstay of the imperial economy. It creates jobs, develops civil industries and generally pumps life into the entire machine. In other words, contrary to the claims of free market economy pundits, that industrial, scientific and technological development proceeds apace without the intervention of the state, the state, in fact, puts its full weight behind the research, development and production infrastructure. This is one of the factors that have given the US an edge over other countries in many areas.

The American military budget doesn't just fund research into antiballistic missile shields, battle related psychological shock and stress syndromes, not to mention the development of the state propaganda and media machine. With the development of cyber command technology, sophisticated cybernetics research has received such an enormous chunk of defence spending outlays that US cities are vying with one another to serve as bases for research centres and headquarters dedicated to protecting the computer and data networks belonging to government agencies, banks and even the Pentagon from hackers and viruses, which are purportedly to become the next major weapons of "global terrorism" against the West. As is the case with all major technological leaps, the consequences of investment into cybernetics research and development are certain to bring both benefits and banes to future generations.

What concerns us here is that this economic dynamic may be instrumental in, if not exactly actively propelling the US into, military conflicts through the lobbies that represent the constituent members of the military-research-industrial complex, at least in exacerbating international tensions, magnifying threats and generally working to create a climate conducive to more profitable activity. Like the Zionist political and media establishment, the American military-economic establishment, too, has its own representatives, journalists, organisations and staffers in Washington. I would venture that there's some unspoken law that tells them to exaggerate the strength of the enemy and to fuel tensions and, when things begin to appear to spiral out of control, to present events as some form of conspiracy. At any rate, I have no doubt that Bush's statements regarding the forthcoming ability of Iranian missiles to strike targets in the US and the spectre of a third world war should Iran obtain a nuclear bomb, and Rice's remarks that Iran now presents the greatest danger to American national security, will go a long way towards satisfying the US military-economic establishment's craving for humungous budgetary allocations.

All of which leads us to another world, the other face of progress: escalation occurs for reasons that pose as "rational" in the sense that they seem to present logical arguments for deploying military allocations, or, perhaps, gaining control over the world's major oil reserves, or, perhaps, serving the interests of Israel. In fact, however, these rationalisations exploit stereotypical ideas and images that are far from rational. The stereotypes may already exist in latent form, but they are concertedly magnified and channelled through the press, populist politicking, Hollywood-type films and other media until they form a prevailing culture. It is in this constant subliminal mobilisation of the mass public that resides the other impetus to technological progress.

Still, one cannot help but to remark on the quantities of deliberate lies or unintentionally held myths about the countries and peoples targeted by these campaigns. These are the lies and myths that will be pressed into the service of escalating tensions with an eye to possible recourse to force, in particular against those countries that resist imperial hegemony and strive to promote themselves as powers within their geographical spheres. Regardless of our own opinion of such countries, surely there is something perverse in our parroting the claims and stereotypes produced by the American propaganda machine. After all, why should anyone in the Third World accept the premise that the US should be the party empowered to determine who may or may not possess nuclear energy and who may or may not pose a threat if they possessed it? The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons since that technology was invented; secondly, it used this weapon against heavily populated cities; and thirdly, this occurred when it alone had a monopoly on that technology. Even after other countries joined the nuclear club, that instance has remained the only time in history that nuclear weapons were used. No socialist country ever used one, not even on the eve of the collapse of that order. Nor has any Islamic country, or India, or any other country. Only the US holds that laurel.

But instead of alarm at its audacity to claim itself the sole judge on matters of nuclear proliferation and instead of horror at Israel's monopoly in this region of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, we find sarcasm directed at Mohamed Al-Baradei's "naïve" attempt to uphold the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of which the US was a founding father. The Nobel Prize laureate, whom the West had virtually hailed as a hero, believes that the IAEA should determine how to inspect nuclear technology if an agreement is reached with Iran and how to act if an agreement is not reached. This seems perfectly reasonable. But political commentators and the media have immediately fallen in line with the whims and caprices borne of the arrogance of American might. It is shocking that American political discourse has been adopted uncritically. And political it most certainly is; which means that it is not neutral and that it is meant to lead to the conclusions the US wants everyone to draw.

Anyone who accepts the precedent of branding an official government agency of one country as a terrorist organisation without this label being applied to any other government agency in the world, including certain Israeli ones with their protracted history in the planning and practice of terror, will fall for any categorisation in the American pegging system the ruling criteria for which have nothing to do with objective standards and everything to do with Washington's formulation of the pretexts for doing exactly what it wants. Washington's arguments convince few abroad. Not that this matters to it, since it has the might and power to make its definitions stick. It almost intervened militarily in Darfur on the grounds of its (and the Zionist lobby's) classification of the horrific violence there between agricultural and nomadic tribes -- a conflict that successive Sudanese governments have exploited in different ways through their shifting alliances -- as "Arab genocide against Africans".

Opponents of US policy will get nowhere by trying to convince the US of the errors of its definitions. Their only chance of success resides in their ability to persuade it that in putting its definitions into effect in one locale it will place its interests at risk in another. This is something that cannot be accomplished in an academic conference on terrorism and the definitions thereof. Warding off the natural culmination of a policy of confrontation and its attendant psychological warfare and mobilisation requires sustained struggle. It also entails a certain type of awareness. There's a difference between taking a stance against war on Iran while simultaneously criticising Iranian policy and a stance against war on Iran while blaming Ahmadinejad for courting American aggression. The latter position is actually an elegantly turned around way of supporting the war. And it meshes nicely with the American position, which, officially at least, is not war at all costs but rather if Iran doesn't agree to certain conditions then Iran is responsible for the consequences.

Few countries, including Israel, go on the warpath without offering assorted justifications. The difference in this case is that some people in this part of the world are chorusing America's justifications for going to war against Iran. I imagine that, in part, this echoing of America's position has its origins in a curious argument. It holds that America is a crazy country and that its president is off his rocker, so other governments would be wise simply to do as he says because otherwise their leaders will be held responsible for the catastrophes that descend on their countries. Suddenly, all those governments in the world that are normally accused of being irrational are expected to be more rational than the world's sole superpower and the man who leads it. But if American foreign policy is really that irrational surely this must be a solid enough reason to oppose it, for the only service the above-mentioned argument performs is to aid and abet a form of international blackmail.

Opposing the war, as noted above, requires sustained action. This is the time not for futile arguments but for building a pro-peace coalition or an anti-war movement, which has taken shape elsewhere in the world but not in this region yet.