Avuncular American

Settlements, Statehood, Shalom: Israel & Palestine

The clichéd phrase "decision time" comes to mind more than ever when it comes to that other cliché, the Middle East Peace Process.  Ever since 1948, the Middle East War Process has necessitated its peace-making counterpart.  American Presidents from Truman to Obama have had to deal with Arab-Israeli wars or endemic violence.  Some take the job more seriously than others.  President Obama appears to have put it high on the list of his foreign policy priorities.

Yesterday I took part in a discussion sponsored by GRIP (Groupe de Recherche et d'Information sur la Paix et la Sécurité, a Brussels think tank on the moderate left), inspired by the publication of their new book, "Who Arms Israel and Hamas?" (image, left).  Answer: the US arms Israel, of course, but certain EU countries (notably France) remain important suppliers.  As to "who arms Hamas?" the book makes a weak stab (one slim chapter) at describing the homemade nature of their armaments, but it is clear that the authors have paid much more attention to documenting Israel's overwhelming arsenal.  More on this later.

My part of the discussion was a look at the possibilities for change in US Mideast policy under President Obama (my remarks, in French, are here).  Basically I only had to point to the clear engagement of the President from Day One: his first phone call to a foreign leader was to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas; his early appointment of world-class negotiator George Mitchell to restart stalled talks; and his "tough love" talk with Benyamin Netanyahu on Israeli settlements, reinforced with gusto by Secretary of State Clinton two days ago.  As the discussion was taking place yesterday in Brussels, further proof of intensified engagement was going on in Washington, with the visit of Mahmoud Abbas to the White House.

Compare this to the "engagement" of George W. Bush in the Middle East (see Iraq).   As far as the MEPP was concerned, it was a matter of going through the motions.  A lackadaisical eight years, where Bush and Condoleezza Rice temporized on ceasefire calls ("premature") during Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, and where Bush ended his Presidency by washing his hands, Pilate-like, while Israel pounded densely-populated Gaza prior to Inauguration Day 2009.

Okay, but now we have a new, engaged President at the helm.  He's made his decision.  But it's now decision time for Israelis.  And also for Palestinians.

Israel must decide whether peace with the Palestinians, and the chance for a long term relationship with all its neighbors, is more important than settlements on cheap (because taken by force) land that rightfully belongs to a future state of Palestine.

Palestinians must decide if having a state of their own in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is more important than perpetual pining for Haifa and Jaffa, which are Israeli now and will remain so.  And the PA must come to terms with the winners of the 2006 elections - Hamas.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which came about after much investment of time and effort by another American President, Jimmy Carter, and the Camp David Accords.  One of the confidence-building measures, assuring Israelis and Egyptians that there would be no more surprise attacks across their borders, was the creation of the MFO - Multinational Force & Observers - which still carry out their peace enforcement role.  The precedent is crucial, and the mechanisms are there, to be applied at the appropriate time along the Green Line.

In the negotiations that the Obama Administration will broker, this kind of security-conscious confidence-building will be absolutely essential.  It matters, of course, that Israel has a preponderance of weaponry, as the GRIP publication amply documents.  But armament hasn't procured Israel either peace or real security, and the continued occupation/siege of Palestinians makes Israel the equivalent of a garrison state.

It matters too that Israel feels threatened by the Hamas rockets, whether homemade or not.  In that sense, comparisons between sophisticated Israeli arsenals and subterranean Hamas caches are of limited utility.  To cede land, Israel must feel secure.  And if occupation of a hostile population and having the Middle East's most powerful military do not procure that security, then there is an opening for the concerted, rejuvenated MEPP that appears to be in the offing.

But Israelis and Palestinians have to want a peace/statehood settlement as least as much as does President Obama.  If they don't, then it will be more "process" than "peace."

Europe's Multiplicity of Messengers

At a recent Brussels conference on the international media, it took an octogenarian to cut to the heart of things: the creation of the European Union has helped prevent war on a continent that has known many wars, and was at the center of two World Wars in the last century. Ferdinando Riccardi of Agence Europe, an institution that predates the European Union which it covers for subscribers, has been aware of this message for the fifty-plus years he has been reporting from Brussels. War is news, but absence of war is, well, absence of news.

That “message” is not new, in fact it is of such glaring self-evidence that it is now almost invisible. Too bad, and too bad that the campaign for the European Parliament is such a yawn, as described recently by The Economist’s Charlemagne. The European Parliament, says Charlemagne, “is worse than dull: it does not work properly. Like a student union, only with better expenses, it spends an inordinate amount of time on subjects way outside its mandate, such as foreign policy and defence.”  Most Belgians are aware of regional elections scheduled alongside the European Parliament elections next month; voting for MEPs is almost an afterthought for many.

For the international journalists gathered at the conference organised by IERI, “who speaks for Europe?” is more than a matter of whom to phone for an interview. Labib Fahmy, Brussels correspondent for Al-Jazeera, spoke of “misunderstood Europe,” the victim of its multiplicity of institutions (Commission, Council, Parliament). Sounding like an Arab Henry Kissinger, he asked “who is Europe?” American readers will be surprised to learn that Fahmy’s struggle to explain Europe to his audience (“Inside Europe”) has languished, while, “despite difficulties,” the Stateside program “Inside Washington” carries on.

Quentin Dickinson (a Frenchman with Scottish forebears) of Radio France Internationale (RFI) has covered the European Union from Brussels for years, and has seen the evolution of Europe’s spokesmen. From the days when spokesmen knew more about the subject than about spin, to today’s tendency to hire “communications” experts, with the result that the experienced journalist hardly consults them if he or she is looking for hard news.

Last word to the dean of the international Brussels correspondents, Ferdinando Riccardi.  When Agence Europe was started, the European Union had morphed from its precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community.  That economic, technocratic underpinning - for what in reality is a unique experiment among nation-states, that of surrendering pieces of sovereignty in the name of national interest - still dogs the EU.  “Brussels,” instead of being synonymous with lofty ideals of peace on the European continent, is in most Europeans’ minds another way of saying mindless bureaucracy.

Let’s see what happens if and when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.  Will there be a super-spokesman, or will he or she just be another “president” with a small “p?”

Swords Into Screwdrivers: Surviving War's Aftermath

Well, actually it's bayonets into screwdrivers, gardening tools - anything but their original intended use.  And German helmets, thousands of them, turned into buckets.  Our Memorial Day weekend tour of World War I battlefields in northern France wasn't just a look at the order of battle, but the disorder after battles.

At the Chemin des Dames, which is best known in France for the senseless offensives triggering the 1917 Mutiny (see Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory), the Caverne du Dragon museum has a great temporary exhibit (photo at left) running through December 15, 2009.  "Après la guerre, Aisne 1919," the exhibit shows how this department was 90% destroyed by four long years of war, and only in the early 70s did it again reach its pre-WW I population.

If the housing in northern France has a certain drab uniformity to it - the most solid are pleasant red brick buildings, the most rickety might have questionable asbestos siding - it's in part because they had to rebuild much of it from scratch starting in 1919.  Some people were still living in "temporary" dwellings until after World War II.

To the west of the Aisne is the department of the Somme, best known to the descendants of the British soldiers who died there in there hundreds of thousands.  History-minded tourists making their way by car or by train between Paris, Brussels, or London would do well to stop in the town of Peronne, where probably the definitive museum of World War One - l'Historial de la Grande Guerre - is located.

L'Historial has a permanent collection in ideally-presented conditions - spacious, well-lit, and explained in French, German, and English.  They also have temporary exhibits, and the current one, with dozens of "cartoon" drawings by French artist Jacques Tardi (poster lower right), is crackerjack.  It runs through August 23, 2009.

Taking his inspiration from stories told and retold by his grandparents, Tardi's drawings are an antidote to the kind of generic war commemoration that approaches war glorification, if provided without context.  Now, I'm the first to line up to present a wreath on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, but Tardi reminds us that the soldiers in the mud see no glory in war, and would rather that it all just end right now rather than hope for posthumous honors.

Tardi's modern drawings are well matched by those of German WW I veteran Otto Dix, whose famous sketches of ghostly gas-masked soldiers and rotting corpses capture the horror that was the Western Front in the First World War.

Nope, no glory for these soldiers, who are almost all gone now.

And, in places like the Aisne and the Somme, it will take another 700 years to unearth the unexploded ordnance from the butchery.

Now, that's collateral damage for you.

Irish Abuse Report: The Wages of Theocracy

"A theocracy in all but name" is what the late Irish author John McGahern called his country, especially in the mid-20th century post-independence years, when the Catholic clergy wielded power well beyond the church pulpit.  Power to incarcerate children, and, according to a report just released, power that resulted in the abuse of those same children.

I haven't read the report (available at the above BBC link), but the news reports surrounding its release recall two films on the subject.  "Song For a Raggy Boy" (2004), reviewed here, was dramatically over-dramatized, but apparently spot-on as far as content showing abuse at the hands of "religious," as they were called.

Superior in both dramatic content and credibility is the 2003 film "The Magdalene Sisters," a harrowing account (in part because it portrays events happening as late as the Sixties) of life in a reform school for girls.

Ireland has largely moved on from being the "priest-ridden land" that it once was.  The very fact of the abuse report's publication proves that.  But the damage caused by priests, brothers, and I regret to say, nuns (other than a few disciplinarians, my memory of Irish nuns remains positive) to thousands of children over decades is incalculable.

To say nothing of the lasting damage caused to the Catholic Church.

Theocracy: a concept of governance best left in the Dark Ages.

(Celtic cross clip art from "Ireland Fun Facts" [sic] website)

Check Into the Parliament Hotel

Gluttons for punishment can check out the Guardian's special page on the furore over parliamentary profligacy in the UK.  There's everything from toilet seats to televisions.

Others, recognizing the utility of parliamentary democracy as long as it does not go the way of the Roman Senate, might want to check into the "Parliament Hotel," my suggestion for reigning in costs and giving elected representatives a better sense of being on the job, not on the take.

(Image thanks to the real Parliament Hotel in Cape Town South Africa, where Pretoria and Cape Town share in hosting the seat of government - the cabinet has to shuttle back and forth when Parliament is in session, perhaps not the best example of efficiency, but it does spread the wealth.)

So here is my proposal for Parliaments from London to Luanda, by way of Capitol Hill: find a decent hotel near your national assembly, buy it with stimulus funds, renovate it into adequate but Spartan suites, and make your congresspeople, MPs, senators, or deputies stay there when parliament is in session.  Presumably they are representing constituents from a home district, so that's where they should have their home.  But when they are in _______ (fill in the name of the capital city), they stay in their parliamentary hotel suite.

I'm not talking about a fold-down bed in the office (in this season of European Parliament elections, French TV showed an MEP in his minuscule office, pulling down what I swear was a couchette-sized "bed" for those late-night sessions).  No, Hotel Parliament would provide a spacious suite where the elected official could relax, even set up a kids' room for when they come to see the big city, and grab a snack at the in-house cafeteria when she doesn't feel like cooking).

Unfortunately for the Mother of Parliaments, all the attention on the expenses row has somehow created the impression that UK MPs are the worst offenders.  The BBC provides a nice, if limited, comparison of parliamentary perks in a number of European countries, where Italy comes out - again - as the most generous (they are already the highest paid MEPs) to its deputies:

Political journalists Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo have exposed the excesses of the political class in a new book, The Caste: How Italian Politicians Have Become Untouchable.

How about the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, collectively known as Congress?  Ouch.  When you have to have detailed sets of rules about "Officially-connected travel paid by a private source" and "Travel unrelated to official duties and paid for by a private source," you know that you're entering ambiguous territory.  That terrain is called lobbying, and I daresay that the current imbroglio in Britain over reimbursement for moat-cleaning would pale in comparison to a full disclosure by Americans in Congress.

"Many Members travel home more than 40 times a year," says the helpful Congressional Management Foundation, which provides an eye-opening budget guide for the freshman Congressperson.  Try doing that - plus hiring staff for Washington and home district offices - on the average $1.3 million (2005 figures) in public money allotted and you'll understand just one of the reasons that American politicians look for help from lobbyists.  We know, of course, that such assistance does not come for free.

So, while "Hotel Parliament" would not solve all the dilemmas of parliamentary expenses, it would at least remove one excuse for all these contraventions of arcane rules.  Make sure the hotel security people keep lobbyists out of the lobby.

Maniacal Missionaries, Myanmar to Mideast

Those crazy American citizens who stir up trouble overseas!  The "Swimmer," aka John Yettaw, who got Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into hot water with the country's dictators, apparently just wanted to give the (Buddhist) woman a (Christian) Bible.  No wonder the US State Department publicly expressed its outrage over the arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, while quietly sending consular officials to meet with the "missionary" in jail.

Embassies have to do that, even though the Amcit has single-handedly given the Burmese junta just what it needed to set back the cause of democracy in Myanmar (Burma) another few years.  In some countries (think Mexico), the "arrest/detention of American citizens" requires a considerable investment of Embassy time.  (Image: the US Consular service flag, State Department).

I remember being contacted by Egyptian security officials, who had arrested an American citizen on the steps of Alexandria University.  Actually, the arrest was a way of saving him from physical harm, as he was intent on distributing Bibles to the students.  Even though Egypt has a sizable Christian minority, they know better than to proselytize in the Muslim-majority country.

But in addition to these unofficial freelancers, the US has something far more dangerous: a cadre of people in the Pentagon and in the US military bent on spreading their Christian beliefs, at the point of a gun.  In the Middle Ages, they called that the Crusades.  That is the last thing that the US needs with thousands of troops surrounded by millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In fact, religion is exactly what the region does not need more of.

Today Frank Rich of the New York Times gave readers a tip on an outrageous example of religious infiltration into the Rumsfeld Defense Department: a series of Powerpoint slides put up by GQ Magazine - cover sheets to the Secdef's daily Worldwide Intelligence Update for the President.  "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith," intones Isaiah 26:2, superimposed on a pic of US tanks kicking up the Baghdad dust.

Think that's just some Powerpoint Ranger's innocent fiddling with pixels?  Then read Jeff Sharlet's chilling article in the May Harper's, subtitled "The Crusade For a Christian Military."  I refrain from writing the title, as I don't want search engines to pick out what incendiary stuff "the Faith Element" (a group of Special Forces in Iraq who thought the locals were ready for some Old Time Religion) liked to scrawl on their tanks.

Those consular officers in Burma might get the Swimming American out of jail and on a plane back home.  But it's going to take a huge amount of diplomacy (and a strict secular line from our new administration to its armed forces) to undo the damage caused by the zealots of the previous lot.

Religion - keep it at home, and don't mix it up with defense or diplomacy.

Multilateralism, Sovereignty, and Homeowner Associations

In my Brussels apartment building (there are about 25 units, mostly owner-occupied), we have a homeowners association ("HOA").  I'm on the board this year, for my sins.  The board is a sort of pin-cushion, navigating the middle ground between cheapskate owners who want top-quality services but at bargain-basement fees, and the management firm that oversees maintenance, projects, etc.

It occurred to me that being in a condominium (where the "Nazis" aren't always those who you might expect) is a bit like a country belonging to a multilateral organization.  You have to sacrifice a bit of sovereignty, a bit of that freedom to do as you damn well please, in exchange for those things that are feasible in numbers.

For individuals, that might mean living in an urban or semi-urban setting, where there is intellectual stimulation and where you don't have to use a car to accomplish any task beyond mowing your lawn.  You don't always have to live in a condo or apartment complex to live this way, but there is a greater density of population, even for single-family dwelling urbanites.  You're going to get along with some of your neighbors, and some will never cease to be a pain in the neck.

When it comes to countries, some opt for the constraints of belonging to multilateral organizations because they see safety in numbers: tiny Luxembourg, hemmed in between France and Germany, was occupied (actually, annexed) by the latter in the two world wars.  For Luxembourg and other countries coming out of the 20th century's cycle of wars, surrendering a bit of sovereignty to organizations like NATO and the European Union was a bargain they were willing to strike.

Sure, there are downsides: in the UN, the US and other democracies have to listen to lectures on such things as human rights from countries to whom waterboarding is just a prelude to the really nasty stuff.  But, as the senior George Bush found when confronting Saddam Hussein in 1991 with much of the world standing behind him, there is strength in numbers.

In the many issues facing President Barack Obama, from climate change to universal health care to rekindling the economy, it's worthwhile to consider this trade off between public and private, between solidarity and individualism, between living in a condo vs. a MacMansion.  Just today, in the New York Times, you can read about how several American communities are thinking the unthinkable - "car-reduced communities," like they have in Germany.

European media have been intrigued by the possibility of an Obama Administration breakthrough on making health care available to most Americans - something that is a given here, just part of what it means to be a civilized democracy.

Yes, those "Condo Nazis" exist, but they can be tamed, and probably a worse enemy is the "condo dropout," the person who doesn't bother showing up at the annual meeting.  In this current situation of multiple world crises, no country can drop out from issues of mutual governance, where the problems are beyond the power of one country to solve.  It's good to see that the US is rejoining the "HOA."

Pope Visits the Over-Promised Land

For those keeping track of Pope Benedict's progress in The Holy Land, press agencies say that he just landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, where he made a statement calling for free access to Jerusalem for the faithful of the three religions that venerate sites in that city.

I'm not there, but I do know a bit about the spell Jerusalem can cast over people, even those that are not particularly religious.  I spent some time there in the seventies and the eighties, mostly on the Arab side, before travel between Arab East Jerusalem and its natural Palestinian hinterland became a nightmare for the inhabitants.

Here's what brought me to use the Promised Land in the title of this post, rather than the "Holy Land" of Vatican parlance.  It was the sight of the Pope on Mount Nebo in Jordan, purported to be the place where Moses first saw "the Promised Land."  His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had also made the pilgrimage to Mt. Nebo in 2000.  He too wanted peace, but little of that has happened in the interim.

It's probably sacrilegious of me to say this, but isn't it a bit presumptuous of a religion to claim a particular territory based on a promise by its own deity?  How about the Philistines?  Maybe they had a promise too?  I guess theirs wasn't written on tablets.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years to the late 19th and early 20th century, and the Philistines - now as Arab Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian - got to deal again with foreigners bearing more promises, this time from Europeans called Sykes, Picot, and Balfour.  Promises that compromised their rights to a home and a country.

Palestinian writer Ghada Karmi wrote about how 19th century Zionists sent a delegation of rabbis to Ottoman Palestine, to scout out prospects for settlement by European Jews.  They reported back: “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.”  The "bride" was the Holy Land, but the "other man" were the Palestinian inhabitants who had seen Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and British rulers come and go.  But they couldn't withstand the people to whom the Land had been Promised.

You can get mired in controversy about Palestinians and Philistines, about whose land - those promises - and about something called the Middle East Peace Process.  I suppose the Pope has to give the MEPP a try, and he does bear a responsibility for the welfare of the Middle East's dwindling Christian population.  But the Pope will come, and he will go.

In yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail, Fouad Twal, the Pope's Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, told reporter Patrick Martin that "at the end of the visit the Pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences.”  He might have added that when the Pope returns to Rome, all those restrictions that make life hell on earth for Christian (and Muslim) Palestinians - temporarily eased during the Pope's visit - will be reinstated.

And the "Palestine" that remains after continuous Israeli chipping, walling, and bypassing will still look like this.

Still Walking - Aruitemo aruitemo

Did the ladies of the Brussels film club CinéFemme purposely choose to screen the sneak preview of Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo is the original Japanese title) on Mother's Day?  If so, good on them, though the film is more an ode to family than just to mothers.  Here is what director Kore-Eda Hirokazu says of his inspiration for making the film:

In the past five or six years I lost both my parents.  As an ungrateful eldest son who used the demands of his profession to excuse my long absences from home, I find myself troubled by regrets, to this day.  "If only I'd been more..."  "Why did I say that then..."  Still Walking is a film launched by the experience of regret that we all share.

It's worth reading the rest of his Director's Statement on the film's official site (image at left).  Be sure to have the sound on for a taste of the delicately beautiful soundtrack.

Quintessentially Japanese, but also universal, Still Walking is a couple of hours which represent 24 hours in an extended family's life.  Grandparents, middle-aged children, and grandchildren spend a good amount of the time enjoying Grandma's cooking.  But Tampopo this is not.  It's much more akin to Un dimanche à la campagne (A Sunday In the Country) by Bertrand Tavernier.

We all know that family reunions can be stressful, and the Yokoyama family's anniversary for a missing member is no different.  You don't choose your family, and they don't choose their in-laws, and what do you have in common after all these years apart anyway? 

Actually, for those who fear having to keep up with subtitles, dialogue is minimal, and often the silences are equally eloquent.  Though this is in an ordinary house in a pleasant seaside town and not a cramped Tokyo salary man's apartment, the occidental viewer does come away with an appreciation of our more generous interior spaces.

A.O. Scott of the New York Times had this to say of Still Walking at last year's Toronto Film Festival:

This is exactly the kind of film — quiet, modest, untroubled by ambitions of importance — that risks being lost in the news media shuffle. And yet it is so completely absorbing, so sure of its own scale and scope that while you’re watching it the rest of the world fades into irrelevance.

Well, that's absolutely right.  Watch Still Walking, learn a bit about ordinary lives in Japan, come to care about the Yokoyama family, and appreciate what family you have - for they (nor you and me) will not last forever.

Unfinished Business: France's Colonial Liberators

64, not being a memorable number, doesn't have the same symbolism as, say, 65.  I'm talking about commemorations, as in today's ceremonies throughout France and other European countries, marking the beginning of the end of World War II - "V.E. Day."  Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945 - sixty four years ago.

Bill Clinton did the right thing by traveling to Moscow for the last big one, the 50th in 1995.  We tend to forget the crucial Soviet role in defeating the Nazis these days - but Russian President Medvedev won't let that happen.

Forgotten too are the promises made to rectify the unjust treatment of "colonial" troops who helped liberate France in the Second World War (the photo at left is of one of the Algerian tirailleurs buried in the First World War cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette, regularly desecrated by vandals).

Today French President Nicolas Sarkozy, marking the anniversary of the German surrender at Reims, decided to travel to the Mediterranean coast, the scene of the landing by (mostly colonial) French forces in August 1944, and today a gathering of much of France's naval might.

"France will never forget their sacrifice," said the President of the colonial soldiers, nor their "admirable courage."  Perhaps.

But by choosing this particular site and by singling out the colonial troops, he called attention to one of the major items of unfinished business in post-war France: how it is that 64 years after the end of the war, the average metropolitan French war veteran gets an $800 monthly pension and the average North African gets about $100?

Was this a conscious decision to make them return to their villages in the Atlas Mountains?  Separate them from their children, born in France?  Many of these veterans still have only limited rights when it comes to length of stay in France.

"Les oubliés de la République," as they are called by an association of the same name (logo below right), do indeed appear to be forgotten by the Republic that they helped save.  As one of their members noted wryly on French radio, "will the last indigène get a state burial and then be forgotten?"  Indigènes, the 2006 film that brought then-President Jacques Chirac to pledge an end to discriminatory treatment of the colonial veterans, was a reasonably good war film that portrayed a group of North African French soldiers, "Band of Brothers" style.  It packed a powerful ending: a few minutes of flash-forward showing one of the heroes in present-day France, eking out a living in a decrepit one-room apartment.

The disgraceful treatment of these French soldiers of color began early, and not only at the hands of the French.  As German troops blitzkrieged their way through Belgium and France in May-June 1940, some 17,000 African soldiers were killed, many executed by the Germans after they had surrendered.  But the Allies were little more enlightened in matters of color.  Last month the BBC unearthed documents that showed how American and British generals insisted that their French counterparts constitute photogenic "all-white" units to parade through liberated Paris.

On this day of solemn commemoration and pious hypocrisy, "Les oubliés de la République" reminded us that President Sarkozy's first act in office was to give a generous "bouclier fiscal" or tax cut to his wealthier constituents.  And that it would cost a fraction of that bill to give the dwindling ranks of "les oubliés" a decent living.