samsedaei.com Blog

While terrorism has been the most important topic of discussion in Washington since 2001, what continues to be considered an irrelevant subject to discuss is American policy toward Israel, which terrorists have used as one of their most important reasons for attacking us. Our government, academic and media institutions indoctrinate us into accepting America’s unconditional support for Israel out of the fear of getting dismissed as irrelevant or even getting branded as anti-Semite. An example is many people’s knee-jerk reaction to President Carter’s latest book on the Middle East, or the reaction by Bill Maher – the host of Real Time with Bill Maher, who is someone that I like — to Michael Scheuer, the former head of CIA’s Bin Laden Unit in a recent exchange. But as someone who has lived under Iran’s propaganda machine for almost two decades, loves this country and doesn’t want to see another terrorist act against it, I strongly believe we should reconsider our unconditional support for Israeli policies.

This blogger recognizes Israel’s right to exist, but not its right-wing unilateralism and policies. While the American government has repeatedly portrayed the image that it is in support of peace in the Middle East, it has been the biggest single force in blocking peace and the creation of a democratic Palestine side-by-side with Israel for over thirty years.

Establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights following the 1967 six-day war have long been recognized as illegal by the United Nations Security Council, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the states parties to the Geneva Convention and International Court of Justice. In the face of the will of the international community, Israel has refused to follow through with its complete withdrawal from the occupied territories with the full support of the United States.

Despite America’s stated policy of support for a double-state solution, it has been a major obstacle in the path to reaching that very end and contributed to the radicalization of opposing forces in the Middle East. In the early 1970s, Sadat offered a full peace treaty to Israel in turn for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. While Sadat’s offer was closely in line with Washington’s policy, the U.S. put its support behind Israel’s rejection of the plan as the latter preferred to have its army under General Sharon expand into the Egyptian Sinai, driving Bedouins out, demolishing their homes and building all-Jewish cities and villages. It was rejection of this plan that led to the ignition of the 1973 war and gave rise to the Gush Emunim settler movement and the consequent Palestinian resistance during the first Intifada. In 1976, Syria initiated another peace treaty, calling for a two-state settlement on the international borders backed by the major Arab states and Arafat’s PLO, with very much the same wording as that of internationally ratified U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. United States, once again alone, rejected the offer. During the Camp David Accord in 1979, Sadat made the same offer he had made eight years earlier with an amendment to recognize Palestinians’ national rights. Once again, Israel and the United States became the only two countries in the international community to reject the offer. And in December of 1989, as Washington announced “Baker Plan,” which was Washington’s official endorsement of Israel’s unilateral rejectionism, the U.N. General Assembly called for an international peace conference to reach a diplomatic settlement based on the pre-1967 borders, which guaranteed the security of all states in the region. The vote was 153 to 3, with the U.S., Israel and Dominica opposing.

Following Arafat’s democratic election in 1996, the U.S. was the sole power to refuse to accept democratic elections in Palestine out of the fear that Arafat would be elected again, giving him farther democratic legitimacy. In September of 2005, Ariel Sharon let the U.N. know that he was going to use any means necessary to disrupt Palestinian elections if Hamas was permitted to run, because of Hamas’s “commitment to violence.” Based on that logic, Palestine should do the same to Israel if Likud or Labor ran, and Iran should have the right to disrupt U.S. elections next year. The fact is that despite America and Israel’s pro-democracy rhetoric, they have an impeccable record of only supporting democracy and elections if their outcomes are favorable to their interests.

In the meantime, Israel continues to consume disproportionately large segments of Palestinians’ natural resources, including 80% of water extracted from the West Bank, which has left Palestinians some of the most water-deprived people in the world. In addition, Moshe Negbi, a leading Israeli legal analyst informs us that while Israel claims to be a democracy, its courts have been contributing to the deterioration of democracy by complying to the “thugs of the racist fundamentalist right” by committing acts like imposing a six-month sentence on an interrogator for torturing a Palestinian to death or another for murdering an Arab child, just to name a few. He is not the only Israeli who vocally criticizes his country’s outright and brutal violations of human rights. Others include, diplomatic correspondent Akiva Eldar, reporter Amira Hass, historian Idit Zartel and Journalist Gideon Levy, all of whom are prominent and mainstream figures in their own fields.

There are three major factors that explain why the U.S. has blocked peace in the Middle East: 1) The power of the absolutist pro-Israeli lobby in America, backed by Jews from the right and also the left, and their influence in Washington; 2) The strength of the American defense lobby, which earns billions of dollars in sales of weapons to Israel because of the conflict and Israeli aggression; and 3) Christian conservatives who have somehow convinced themselves that existence of a peaceful Israel justifies its unilateral, undemocratic and right-wing policies.

It is impossible here to reveal more than the tip of the iceberg of the role that the right-wing U.S. and Israeli politicians have played in continuing the occupation in the face of international opposition. America’s silence about Israelis’ nuclear weapons with the latter’s lack of membership to the NPT while maintaining such harsh rhetoric with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, which is legally allowed to enrich uranium as a NPT member is an example of the kind of outright double standard that the United States has been following in its foreign policy. Israel has also maintained a close relationship with the military government in Burma and repeatedly given authorizations to Israeli military contractors to sell weapons to Burma, which the latter is now using to crack down on pro-democracy protests, shooting and killing peaceful protesters and monks and cutting off people’s contact with the outside world.

Regardless of how you feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is now little doubt among intelligence experts that while there is certainly a radical and irrational element to terrorism, terrorists do not attack us out of hatred for our freedoms, but they do so because we continue to place the self-interests of this country before the defense of our principles and suppress any debate that is sought to address this self-defeating strategy.

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University has been getting an incredible amount of attention in the media, political and activist circles around the country. As someone who was born in Iran and lived in Tehran for 17 years, I want to give you my assessment of how I believe Ahmadinejad’s visit will be viewed elsewhere in the world with the main conclusion that as he said his goodbyes to the audience in the university’s hostile environment, one thing became clear: regardless of what you may think of his values (or lack thereof), he proved to be the savviest person in the room.

Let’s begin with the massive protests. It was no surprise that there were thousands of people in the streets of New York protesting unconditional freedom of speech and his right to speak his mind. He knew that the city was home to over two million Jews, and that he would face massive protests. But that is precisely the martyr-like image that he was intending to create. Standing on that stage after a hostile introduction by the Columbia University president and in the face of thousands of protesters may have made him look lonely and illegitimate in the West. But to the eyes of many around the world, he looked like a hero and someone who was speaking what they are likely to consider “the truth” in the face of a bully. On August 31, this blogger wrote that one of the main reasons why the United States has not effectively addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and vetoed 47 UN Security Council Resolutions against Israel (14 under Bush II, 7 under Clinton, 7 under Bush I, and 19 under Reagan) is the strength of Jewish lobby in America and “the willingness of millions of Jews in America, including many liberal ones who normally support sensible foreign policies, to roll over, make an exception, keep silent and even vocally cheerlead America’s support for the Israeli occupation.” Massive protests in New York very much reinforced that assertion as almost all of the signs related to Iran’s nuclear program and none relating to its actual human rights violations. I would have had a lot more admiration for the protesters if they focused more on Iran’s primary crimes on women, youth, homosexuals, Baha’is and political dissenters instead of a predicted imaginary military attack against Israel that has not happened. Iranians will watch the protests and see that the main concern of the American people is not the oppression of Iranians, but Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

The president of Columbia’s criticisms of Ahmadinejad’s crimes before his speech was very constructive. But Bollinger did the cause of free speech and America’s image in the Middle East a great deal of disservice when he went on for almost 19 minutes name-calling Ahmadinejad before allowing him to speak and not really thanking him for accepting Columbia’s invitation to speak. Ahmadinejad scored a second point when he criticized the Columbia president for giving the audience what he called a “vaccination” before Ahmadinejad had a chance to speak. He said that in Iran, they allow students and professors to freely exchange ideas without instructing them how they should feel about things. That, of course, cannot have been farther from the truth. Nonetheless, many in the room related to his argument, promoting the students to applaud, hence ridiculing those who introduced him. It is understandable why Columbia would be inclined to give such an introduction to defuse some of the pressure that was asserted on the university due to massive criticisms of the institution for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak. But he went too far, which gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to successfully attack back and score some sympathy.

But the most tragic part of the event was the Q and A segment. The Iranian regime is as vulnerable with regards to its domestic policies as America is with regards to its foreign policy and war in Iraq. It is true that Iran has occasionally funded various groups that have been hostile to U.S. interests. But the United States has done the very same thing to Iran and much more. An example which Ahmadinejad pointed out to was Reagan’s sales of weapons to Saddam, which he used against in Iran for eight years. I can still vividly remember the sound of sirens, duct taped living room windows and American-funded air strikes.

And yet, most of Bollinger’s questions focused on Iran’s foreign policies. By keeping the focus on international issues, Columbia gave him an easy way to turn the conversation around time and again and criticize American policy. One question was why Iran was enriching uranium, which Bollinger naively ended with “would you stop?” And why should they stop? There is no evidence that they are building a bomb, they are a member of the NPT, which gives them the right to enrich uranium, and their two main open enemies — Israel and America — both possess nuclear weapons, with the former not being a member of NPT and the latter breaking its rules by not moving toward the treaty’s ultimate goal: elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Many Iranians hoped that Columbia would take this opportunity to keep the focus of questions on Iran’s brutal domestic policies. And yet, of the five or six questions that were asked, astonishingly, only one related to human rights, with women and homosexuals put together in one question as if they didn’t deserve their own individual questions. But for the most part, the questions that were asked of him were significantly superficial. This is not because questions with regards to anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric aren’t important. But rather, they are nothing new! Iran has been issuing such empty rhetoric since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Yet that’s what they have been: empty rhetoric for domestic consumption, not an official policy declaration. But human rights crimes, stoning of women for infidelity, arresting unmarried people for dating or holding hands in public and killing homosexuals for being have been going on for almost three decades. As someone who was arrested in Tehran at age 16 for the crime of being on a date, I can attest to that fact. Here are some questions Bollinger should have asked: Will you allow women to have the right to initiate divorce from their husbands or obtain a passport without the consent of their husbands? Will you allow boys and girls to date or go to school together? Do you promise that the people in Iran can be safe in publicly criticizing you or the Supreme Leader Khomeini? Will you guarantee people’s rights to wear whatsoever clothing they choose in public? Will you allow people to convert away from Islam to other religions? Would you support a free UN-administered referendum for your people to vote on whether they want an Islamic republic or a secular democratic republic? If yes, will you respect its outcome?

Without asking these significant questions or any meaningful understanding of more than 2,500 years of Iranian history, Columbia provided an environment for Ahmadinejad to criticize American policy, divert every viewer’s attention from the country’s brutalities and oppression and play to the audience’s idealist beliefs that scored him more applauses than any meaningful challenge to his stance and record on issues that mattered the most.