James Kirchick, writing in Ha’aretz doesn’t think so.
I saw the preview at the movies and was sickened. The “dictator” in the preview was a mixture of Orientalist stereotypes, but mostly mockery of Gaddafi. The movie apparently (I wouldn’t pay a nickel to see it.) is a celebration of “our” triumph over him less than a year after his sodomization and murder. It even includes clips of Obama and Hillary Clinton talking about him. The movie is the latest product of Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat” fame.
A while back Abe Foxman of the ADL worried about “Borat” because the supposed Kazak spouted crude anti-Semitic taunts that he thought might egg on bigots. But everyone was in on the joke. The movie showed what idiots the southern rubes were and the superiority of the non-bigoted viewers .
Foxman would better use his time worrying about the anti-Semitism on the hit TV show “Big Bang Theory”. There Howard, the very Jewish character, was for years shown as sex obsessed schmuck (nearly to the point of a Streicher cariacture) and his mother is portrayed as a crude vulgar woman who is never shown, but communicates with him by screaming from another part of the house, usually about his or her bowels.
According to Kirchick the dictator plays “a Munich Olympics-themed video game in which yarmulke-clad sportsmen cry “Oy Vey!” as they’re shot”. The Ha’aretz columnist is not alarmed by the anti-Semitism, far from it. The movie, for him, is just showing the “depressing reality” of Middle East societies steeped in racism.
It takes zero guts for Baron Cohen to satirize a bunch of demonized dead dictators. When is he going to do a funny bit about a president going over the daily Kill List in his bedroom, picking out who to obliterate while he clips his nails?
June 1, 2012 at 07:08
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Racism has become the new political correctness in Israel.
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Some 1 million Russians came here, about half of them non-Jews, and Israel knew how to absorb them. They are white. Tens of thousands of Africans came here and they are the new enemy. They are black.
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Israel is the most naive and racist country in the West
The migrants are less of a danger than what people think. The real danger is the way they are being treated.
By Gideon Levy
Israel is both the most racist and most naive country in the West. Racist, because in no other country can politicians make remarks about migrants as they do here and still remain in office another day; naive, because only now has Israel discovered the problem that has been facing the “first world” for years. Only in Israel can a parliamentarian from the ruling party describe the migrants as a “cancer,” and, far worse, it is only in Israel that she could do so knowing that her contemptible racism would merely gain her support.
It is only Israel that does not have a migration policy; it is only in Israel that the migrants are still officially known as “infiltrators”; it is only in Israel that the government incites the weaker classes against them and after violence breaks out, the prime minister makes do with a weak remark that “there is no place for this.” In fact, there is place for violence against the migrants: After all, what did we think? That when they are described as a cancer and called out for their diseases, threats, and dangers that there would not be an outbreak of violent crimes against them? That after all the intimidation and incitement, fear would not emerge in the poor neighborhoods and give rise to violence?
The residents of the neighborhoods are scared because there was someone who frightened them. They show hatred because there was someone who sowed hatred in their hearts for foreigners, and in particular black people. These black people are less dangerous than the residents were told but it is too late now because the seeds of hatred have already sprouted.
The government is conducting this fear campaign like it conducted other fear campaigns because this is the way it diverts public attention and anger from its failures. In this manner, it adopts the bad old ways of dark regimes, inciting against foreigners and frightening people about imaginary or exaggerated dangers so it can evade responsibility. Just as with other fateful issues, so it is with the subject of migration: The government’s policy is a non-policy, it is a case of burying one’s head in the sand and then screaming hysterically when everything explodes in one’s face.
After Israel carries out this mass experiment with human beings – allowing then to stay here but not allowing them to work, while showing no regard for their fundamental rights – it pretends to be surprised at a few criminal acts. When dealing with migrants, all the masks are pulled off. Racism has become the new political correctness in Israel.
Some 1 million Russians came here, about half of them non-Jews, and Israel knew how to absorb them. They are white. Tens of thousands of Africans came here and they are the new enemy. They are black.
However, in this new world, Israel can no longer avoid contributing its part to the absorption of migrants and refugees, even if they entered the country without permission. Millions of migrants have flooded numerous countries and they knew how to deal with them. Tens of thousands of Jews “infiltrated” countries of refuge during the years of darkness; in 1948, Palestinian refugees flooded the surrounding countries, and since then the flow has not stopped. Jordan is swamped not only with Palestinian refugees from then but also with Iraqi and Syrian refugees of today, and Turkey, too, has absorbed thousands of refugees from Syria. France’s population is becoming blacker and Britain’s is becoming more Muslim. This is the rough way of the world and Israel is part of it.
The incitement against the migrants not only ignores Jewish history and global reality, it ignores the reality of the future as well. And what will happen if one day the government’s campaigns of fear turn out to be true, heaven forbid, and Israel indeed faces an existential threat and tens of thousands of Israelis try to escape from here? What shall we say then to the world if it closes its doors to Israelis just as the doors are now being closed in the faces of the African migrants, many of whom are fleeing for their lives? How long will this perverse claim go on – that “Israel’s situation is different.” No one believes Israel must open its doors to all those who are knocking at them. No country has such an obligation. The influx of refugees here must be regulated, the migrants who have already arrived must be classified according to their distress and the dangers they would face if they returned to their homeland. Those who have the right to remain, must be taken care of – not with violence and not with hatred, which will not solve a thing, but by giving them the possibility of a decent life. Meanwhile the migrants are less of a danger than what people think. The real danger is the way they are being treated.
by Najwa Doughman and Sasha Al-Sarabi on June 2, 2012
Ben Gurion Airport
I am an American citizen. I went to American schools my entire life, graduated from an American university and work as an architect in New York City. Why was this happening to me? It all started with a simple question. “What is your father’s name?”
“Bassam.”
“Okay, please wait a few moments in the waiting room over there.”
Little did I know that my father’s Arab name would make me guilty until proven innocent. A “few moments” would turn into a 14-hour nightmare at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
Sasha Al-Sarabi and Najwa Doughman
I was hoping they wouldn’t separate me from my friend Sasha, whom I was traveling with. We had been warned about possible interrogations and security checks but were reassured that since we were both young, female professionals from New York City with American passports, it wouldn’t be a problem to enter Israel. It was going be my third visit and Sasha’s first.
Sasha was called in to be interrogated by a bleach-blonde pregnant woman and was led into a small office to the left of our waiting room. Twenty minutes passed until Sasha came out, walking quickly back to her seat.
She attempted to reassure me. “It’s going to be fine. They just want to see if we’re lying about anything.” But she was obviously flustered.
Now it was my turn.
“Najwa, come.”
– – –
“Do you feel more Arab or more American?” she asked. I had answered the ten previous questions very calmly, but with this question I looked back at the security official confused and irritated. She couldn’t have been much older than me—her business attire and stern facial expressions did not mask her youth.
“I don’t know, I feel both. Why? Does this affect my ability to get in?”
She ignored my question. “Surely you must feel a little more Arab, you’ve lived in many Middle Eastern countries.”
I did not see the correlation. I have never felt the need to choose. “Yes I have but I also lived in the US for the past seven years, and was born there, so I feel both.” My response did nothing to convince her.
“Hm. Will you go to Al-Aqsa?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Will you go to Jewish sites as well?”
“Yes, why not? We want to see everything.”
“But you have been here two times already. Why are you coming now for the third time? You can go to Venezuela, to Mexico, to Canada. It is much closer to New York, and much less expensive!”
I realized the conversation was going nowhere. “Right, but I wanted to come back here again. Don’t you have tourists who come back more than once?”
“I’m asking the questions here,” she replied disgruntled.
“Okay, we are going to do something very interesting now!” Her face transformed from a harsh stare to a slight smirk. She proceeded to type “www.gmail.com” on her computer and then turned the keyboard toward me. “Log in,” she demanded.
“What? Really?” I was shocked.
“Log in.”
I typed in my username and password in complete disbelief. She began her invasive search: “Israel,” “Palestine,” “West Bank,” “International Solidarity Movement.”
Looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have logged in. I should have known that nothing I did at this point would change my circumstances, and that this was an invasion of my privacy. Yet all the questions, the feeling that I had to defend myself for simply wanting to enter the country, and the unwavering eye contact of the security officers left me feeling like I had no choice. I was worried I would let Sasha down if I refused and that it would be the reason for both of our denials into the country.
She sifted through my inbox, reading every single email with those keywords. She read sentences out loud to her colleague, sarcastically reenacting and mocking old Google Chat conversations between Sasha and me about our future trip to Jerusalem. I squirmed in my seat.
The Israeli authorities have a notorious reputation for denying entry to Palestinians of all citizenships, and I had received all sorts of advice, solicited and unsolicited, on how to cope with the problem. The security officer opened an email from a friend living in Jerusalem who had advised me to remove myself from internet searches. “They are heavy on googling names at the airport recently,” he had written. “See if you can remove yourselves, not crucial but helpful.”
The security guard found this especially hilarious. With a laugh, she called her blonde colleague over and reread the sentence mockingly. “You can tell your friend, not only do we google you, we read your emails, too!”
I was beyond uncomfortable, uncertain of how else they would try to humiliate me. “Okay, I think you’ve read enough,” I said. “Is what you’re doing even legal? Can you please log out now?”
The guard became even more defensive. “You could ask me to log out, but you know what that would mean, right? Tell me to log out,” she dared me.
I was speechless. I felt completely helpless, furious, and exhausted; I was now entering my fourth hour of interrogation.
After reading several more emails, they wrote down every contact name, email, and phone number they could find. Finally, the interrogator said, “Okay you can go.” But before I could even feel the slightest sense of relief she added, “Good luck getting into Israel.”
Three more hours passed. A large bald man eventually approached us holding our passports. “Come with me,” he ordered. We walked straight across the hall to another waiting room, in front of two small offices.
“As of right now, you have been denied from entering Israel.” Despite the looming feeling I had after walking out of the interrogation room that my hours in this country were numbered, the words still stung with disappointment, frustration, and anger.
Sasha had had it. “Okay, I want a lawyer,” she said. “And I want to call the American embassy, now.”
The guard was not fazed by her requests. “Yes, yes, call whoever you want, after you do procedure.” He turned his back and walked away.
We peered into the office. A stout woman in uniform, about fifty years old, was taking pictures and fingerprints of a man sitting in front of her. Sasha was called in next. The woman told Sasha to sit in front of the camera.
“Wait, before you take my picture, can you tell me why we have to do this?” Sasha asked.
“This is procedure. This is how we do things in Israel,” the woman responded, looked back to her camera.
“You’re treating me like a criminal! I don’t want you to take my picture,” Sasha said. “We’ve already been denied. Why are you doing this?”
“You will take a picture and then wait in a facility until your flight.”
Sasha was persistent. “What facility? Our flight is in nine days! Why were we denied? We need to call the embassy now!”
“You will call after you take your picture. I don’t know why you were denied. My job is just to do procedure. When I go to America, the same happens to me. I get denied from America,” claimed the woman.
“No,” replied Sasha, “No, you don’t.”
After our pictures were taken, we officially felt like criminals. It didn’t help that two new female guards were now assigned to watch us at all times. The most humiliating thing was each guard couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Everywhere we went, they were right behind us. Even when Sasha went to the restroom, the security guard went with her. After about 30 minutes, six more security guards surrounded us to walk us to another room across the airport. It was as if all the shepherds had come to herd two small sheep.
We had not committed any crime. Our only sin was being born to Arab parents. It was then that we realized what a sheltered life we had lived. We had always read about racial profiling and heard accounts from family members and friends in college. We always sympathized and were infuriated by it, but never had we felt it first hand.
Sasha and I paced back and forth with anxiety while we were made to wait in the hallway. At one point I turned my head and noticed the female guards pointing at our attire and admiring Sasha’s pants. It hit me then, for the first time, that these guards were actually young girls, interested in fashion and trends, like we were. Under different circumstances, could we have actually been friends?
They led us into the next room, which was painted white and had an intimidating, large “Explosive Detection” machine. The guards proceeded to open our luggage. They picked through every single piece of clothing and every tube of makeup. They inspected my laptop and Sasha’s iPad, wiped each item with a cloth, and ran them through the machine. They x-rayed and scanned everything—twice.
After they had gone through every one of our belongings, they proceeded to the body search. I was taken to the back of the room with one male and two female security officers. The room was smaller and closed off with a curtain. The older woman seemed to be training the younger one. She would murmur directions in Hebrew as the younger officer patted me in different places. The man stood right outside the half-open curtain. They scanned my body with a metal detector, and it beeped at the button on my jeans. “Take off your pants,” said the older officer immediately.
I lost my last nerve. “NO,” I responded. “We’ve already been denied. You searched everything. Why do I need to take my pants off after you’ve denied me? I will not take my pants off.”
“This is how we do things in Israel,” the woman snapped back. “You have to take them off.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then someone will make you.” They all walked out of the room.
I began crying and shaking as my mind went through a million different nightmares. Were they going to get more people to hold me down? What the hell is going to happen to us? I wanted to see Sasha and not be alone for a minute longer, but was too afraid of the consequences of leaving the room.
The guards returned a few minutes later with shorts taken from my luggage. “Fine,” they said. “Wear these.”
I struggled into them with tears streaming down my face. I stood ashamed and mortified as she patted me down all over again. I had never felt so humiliated, so degraded, and so violated.
Once my “security search” was over, I changed back into my jeans and returned to the white room. It was Sasha’s turn to be searched.
When this was over, two men from immigration services approached us holding our passports.
“Now you will be taken to a facility.”
“A facility? You mean a jail? Are we arrested? How long are we going to be there?”
“This is not jail. It’s a facility. This is where everybody goes that is denied entry from the State of Israel.”
They took all of our luggage and our phones and drove us about five minutes away from the airport to a gated, white building. All of the windows had double bars on them, and none of the doors had doorknobs. We walked through the dark halls and passed by open rooms filled with bunk beds.
“You can call your parents from my phone, not yours. Leave your phones here. But if it is an international call, use yours. Your flight back is at 8 am tomorrow morning.”
We called our parents, and he took us to our room on the second floor. Inside were ten bunk beds, four sleeping women, a sink, a bathroom, and a shower.
We both stared at the beds for a minute before lying down. The mattresses looked like they were made of duct tape, the room smelled of urine, and there was a grey, furry sheet on each bed. We folded my sweater in half to use as a pillow, and lay in the three-foot-wide bed together, looking up at the bottom of the bunk above us. “FREE PALESTINE, I Shall Return—Maryam 2006” and “21 Gaza Peace Activists detained” were scribbled on the wood. Reading those sentences over and over gave me an odd sense of peace, and we drifted into a restless sleep.
At about 5 am, the guard came to wake the Spanish woman in the bed beside ours. “Wash your face,” he told her. She sprung up, splashed water on her face, and waited for him to come back and unlock the door. We sat up anxiously in the bed waiting for our turn to leave.
At 6:15, a guard came and told us that the US embassy was phoning for us. My parents had called them from Virginia after our two-minute conversation to inform them of what was happening. Sasha answered the phone. “Oh, thank God, we’ve been trying to get in touch with you! This is Sasha. We’ve been through a lot the past few hours.”
“As I told your friend’s parents yesterday, there is really nothing we can do. I’m just glad that you’re going to be able to get on the next flight.” the woman said dispassionately.
“This is ridiculous. They went through my friend’s email. Is that legal?”
“Well, they can do whatever they want. There is nothing we can do. They are their own country, and they make their own rules.”
“If only you could see the conditions we are in. I just wish you could come and smell the room.”
“Oh, I’m really sorry, but at least you’ll be getting on the next flight,” her voice was annoyingly monotonous.
“I can’t believe we are funding this system. I understand the special relationship between America and Israel, but there is clearly something wrong with the way we are being treated”.
“Well, there’s a lot of things wrong with a lot of systems.” She clearly wasn’t going to help us.
“You are right. We should all just sit here and be complacent like you. Well, thanks for your call.” And Sasha hung up.
We had been desperately waiting for this call, and the amount of frustration we felt after receiving it was overwhelming. We had demanded over and over to be able to talk to the American embassy, hoping that being American would give us some sort of protection or a little sense of security. There is no difference between every citizen in America, we thought naively. Surely the US Embassy would rescue us and demand that we be treated like human beings. Surely they would reprimand the Israelis for their appalling practices and demand that they act like the democracy they claim to be.
If we were two American citizens in a Syrian or Iranian “facility,” would the American embassy’s reaction be the same? Would Obama himself not have made a statement by now, demanding our release? If we were Americans of Polish or Chinese descent, would we have been treated this way? American citizens are usually given a three-month visa upon arrival. Why were we an exception? There are a lot of things wrong with a lot of systems, but when we are funding one with billions of our tax dollars, this means that we are supporting it.
An hour later, which seemed like an eternity, the guard showed up. It was now 7:30 am, which was only thirty minutes before our flight. This turned out to be no problem, as we were driven straight to the steps of the airplane. Our passports were given to the captain of the Air France flight. When we arrived in France, three policemen waited for us at the door of the plane, took our passports from the captain, and led us down the stairs of the airplane straight into their police car.
“Does this happen often?” Sasha asked.
“Every day,” replied the officer.
When news of the Houla Massacre first appeared, the usual radical skepticism reserved only for the Syrian revolution ensued. Many claimed they wanted to wait to ‘wait for the facts’, because, as you know, they frequently accuse the Syrian opposition of ‘faking’ massacres to garner public sympathy. As news kept pouring out, we finally learned that the UN observers arrived to the scene in Houla, and confirmed that a massacre had taken place. The news was confirmed by activists on the ground, foreign news outlets, and the UN observers, and we were all waiting on the regime’s information outlets to see what they would have to say about the matter. When the regime news outlets finally did say something about the massacre, they reported it with what they said was another massacre in al-Shumariyeh, which many pro-regimers were describing as a ‘counter-massacre’. Yet, when the news of the Houla Massacre was finally confirmed by all sides, we entered the second stage of radical skepticism: who did it? The regime reported it as ‘armed terrorist gangs’, and the opposition reported it as being committed by agents of the regime.
Since then, an increasingly prevalent argument in an attempt to claim the regime is innocent is the functionalist argument. The functionalist argument, exemplified by this post, argues that the regime could not have perpetrated the massacre in Houla because states usually operate according to their interests, and the Assad regime did not benefit at all from the Houla Massacre, and thus, could not have perpetrated this massacre.
First of all, to make this argument in the first place, one has to completely close their eyes to the thousands of Syrians already killed by the regime. Was it, then, in the regime’s interest to open fire at protesters? To imprison thousands? Was it in the regime’s interest to arrest and deport Salameh Kaileh (which many, even people who normally defend the Syrian regime, decried)? Was it in the regime’s interest to destroy Baba Amr? In order to make the functionalist argument in regards to Houla in the first place, one has to act like that the Syrian regime has been innocent up until this stage, as if this is a new development. After all in order to ask, “Why would the Assad regime massacre people?” one has to have had their eyes closed for over a year. They also have to be ignorant of the Hama Massacre in 1982. How did the regime benefit from that massacre? Well, it put down an uprising for one. This time they were trying to do the same thing, except they messed up because people actually found out about it.
Second of all, the functionalist argument is correct in stating that states usually operate according to their own interests. However, to make this argument about the Syrian state specifically shows a lack of knowledge as to what comprises the Syrian state. The Syrian state has two components: one is formal, the other informal. The formal component is the “official” state apparatus. It is made up of the normal institutions of the state, that is, the military, the police force etc. The informal component of the Syrian state is the “shabiha state.” Shabiha are groups of thugs and mercenaries who are loyal to the regime but who do not fall under the official state apparatus. Why have shabiha in the first place? Because, unlike the official state apparatus, which is (at least, in theory) guided by state logic, rationality, and have self-defined goals (for example, put down the protest movement), shabiha represent the irrational, brutal, vengeful, regressive, and tribal component of the Assad regime. It resembles a mafia more than a state apparatus, and that is why it is an informal part of the state.
The fact that the shabiha do not operate according to state logic is exemplified in this article by Syrian dissident Yassin Al Haj Saleh. In the article, Saleh tells an anecdote from the 1980s that gives us insight into how the Syrian shabiha operate:
“By the 1980s the shabiha were untouchable and operated with impunity in the coastal city of Latakia. The late respected Syrian intellectual Elias Marcos, once recalled that he had been sitting in a cafe in Latakia when shabiha members entered and amused themselves by forcing patrons to lie on the floor beneath their tables. They killed a young man who objected to their insults; they used threats to obtain property and possessions for reduced prices or for free; their leaders raped attractive young women; and they offered to resolve disputes in exchange for a hefty commission from both sides, ensuring victory for the party that paid the most.”
What interest does the Syrian state have specifically in the shabiha committing any of the actions mentioned above? If we zoom in on each specific incident, it has none. How does forcing everyone in a cafe to lie on the floor benefit the Syrian state? It doesn’t, in the short-term. But if we look at the bigger picture, incidents like this invoke fear of the shabiha, who know that at the end of the day, they have the state backing them. The state has no interest in these specific incidents, but it has an interest in maintaining fear of shabiha, which in turn translates to fear of the state.
Now, back to Houla. Shabiha are mercenaries who are not guided by usual state logic. Their goal is to invoke maximum fear, with no fear of consequences. The story is that the army shelled the residential neighborhoods of Houla, and the armed shabiha went in and perpetrated the massacre. Perhaps the regime did not directly order their shabiha to massacre children in Houla. Perhaps it ordered an attack and sent its troops and shabiha to commit it, not knowing exactly how far their shabiha would go. But shabiha do not operate according to regime survival logic, but primal logic. They do not have calculated goals. Their goal is to invoke the maximum amount of fear. This is why the regime has shabiha in the first place, because its level of brutality invokes terror in the general population. Given the shabiha’s irrational use of force to scare its enemies, or any potential enemies, the argument that the regime couldn’t have perpetrated the Houla massacre because it had no interest in doing so is defunct. And even if the regime did not directly order the Houla massacre, it bears full responsibility for the actions of its shabiha in Houla. The regime uses its shabiha because it knows that they can be excessively brutal and chaotic with their violence. Thus, sending shabiha into a residential neighborhood was a recipe for disaster, even if the regime did not intend it to be. Let no one say that the regime could not have committed the massacre because it had no interest in doing so. A shabiha state operates with impunity and no fear of consequences. Just because there were consequences this time(for once) in the form of international outrage, does not mean that the regime was incapable of committing it.
See also this article from the WP
by Annie Robbins on May 29, 2012 14
Nidal Izziden Fattash
This is a story of an amazing bittersweet twist of fate, of a mother’s love for her son and how she stepped in to save his dreams in a system designed to crush Palestinians.
On May 23, Israeli forces stormed the dormitory of An-Najah University in Nablus. They arrested Nidal Izziden Fattash, a graduate student, hours before he was due to present his master’s thesis to the university committee. He had just completed his project at 2 am.
Nidal’s mother, a school principal, had helped her son throughout his MA degree, and knew the subject of his research well.
“It had been three weeks since I’d seen Nidal, he had been engaged and busy working on his final project which forced him to stay at the university in Nablus. I kept in touch with him through Facebook and phone calls,” she said.
After finding out about his arrest, Nidal’s mother headed to work with thoughts racing through her head.
After consulting with the university administration and several teachers, she decided to represent her son by presenting his final MA project to the university committee.
With a confident voice and sheer determination, Nidal’s mother discussed her son’s final project and answered all of the committee’s questions on the subject.
She was later told by the university that Nidal had passed his presentation and successfully obtained his MA degree.
“I did this for Nidal in revenge against the Israeli occupation, who tried to crush my son’s happiness, and to deliver a message to the whole world that there is a strong Palestinian will which can’t be conquered,” she said.
Nidal Izziden Fattash is still being detained by Israel’s military occupation authorities. The charges against him are unknown.
I would like to congratulate Nidal on his master’s degree.
Let’s hope Israel releases him shortly. Arresting someone hours before finalizing a dream that takes years of study and effort to achieve seems particularly cruel and heartless. But it is what we’ve come to expect from this military occupation.
May 30th, 2012
by Medea Benjamin
Shakira, 4, was disfigured in one of Obama’s drone attacks.
On May 29, The New York Times published an extraordinarily in-depth look at the intimate role President Obama has played in authorizing US drone attacks overseas, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is chilling to read the cold, macabre ease with which the President and his staff decide who will live or die. The fate of people living thousands of miles away is decided by a group of Americans, elected and unelected, who don’t speak their language, don’t know their culture, don’t understand their motives or values. While purporting to represent the world’s greatest democracy, US leaders are putting people on a hit list who are as young as 17, people who are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law.
Who is furnishing the President and his aides with this list of terrorist suspects to choose from, like baseball cards? The kind of intelligence used to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?
Why should the public believe what the Obama administration says about the people being assassinated by drones? Especially since, as we learn in the New York Times, the administration came up with a semantic solution to keep the civilian death toll to a minimum: simply count all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The rationale, reminiscent of George Zimmerman’s justification for shooting Trayvon Martin, is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Talk about profiling! At least when George Bush threw suspected militants into Guantanamo their lives were spared.
Referring to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the article reveals that for Obama, even ordering an American citizen to be assassinated by drone was “easy.” Not so easy was twisting the Constitution to assert that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees American citizens due process, this can simply consist of “internal deliberations in the executive branch.” No need for the irksome interference of checks and balances.
Al-Awlaki might have been guilty of defecting to the enemy, but the Constitution requires that even traitors be convicted on the “testimony of two witnesses” or a “confession in open court,” not the say-so of the executive branch.
In addition to hit lists, Obama has granted the CIA the authority to kill with even greater ease using “signature strikes,” i.e. strikes based solely on suspicious behavior. The article reports State Department officials complained that the CIA’s criteria for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. “The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.”
Obama’s top legal adviser Harold Koh insists that this killing spree is legal under international law because the US has the inherent right to self-defense. It’s true that all nations possess the right to defend themselves, but the defense must be against an imminent attack that is overwhelming and leaves no moment of deliberation. When a nation is not in an armed conflict, the rules are even stricter. The killing must be necessary to protect life and there must be no other means, such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation, to prevent that threat to life. Outside of an active war zone, then, it is illegal to use weaponized drones, which are weapons of war incapable of taking a suspect alive.
Just think of the precedent the US is setting with its kill-don’t-capture doctrine. Were the US rationale to be applied by other countries, China might declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York City as an “enemy combatant” and send a missile into Manhattan; Russia could assert that it was legal to launch a drone attack against someone living in London whom they claim is linked to Chechen militants. Or consider the case of Luis Posada Carrilles, a Cuban-American living in Miami who is a known terrorist convicted of masterminding a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Given the failure of the US legal system to bring Posada to justice, the Cuban government could claim that it has the right to send a drone into downtown Miami to kill an admitted terrorist and sworn enemy.
Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence, called the drone strike campaign “dangerously seductive” because it was low cost, entailed no casualties and gives the appearance of toughness. “It plays well domestically,” he said, “and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”
But an article in the Washington Post the following day, May 30, entitled “Drone strikes spur backlash in Yemen,” shows that the damage is not just long term but immediate. After interviewing more than 20 tribal leaders, victims’ relatives, human rights activists and officials from southern Yemen, journalist Sudarsan Raghavan concluded that the escalating U.S. strikes are radicalizing the local population and stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants. “The drones are killing al-Qaeda leaders,” said legal coordinator of a local human rights group Mohammed al-Ahmadi, “but they are also turning them into heroes.”
Even the New York Times article acknowledges that Pakistan and Yemen are less stable and more hostile to the United States since Mr. Obama became president, that drones have become a provocative symbol of American power running roughshod over national sovereignty and killing innocents.
One frightening aspect of the Times piece is what it says about the American public. After all, this is an election-time piece about Obama’s leadership style, told from the point of view of mostly Obama insiders bragging about how the president is no shrinking violent when it comes to killing. Implicit is the notion that Americans like tough leaders who don’t agonize over civilian deaths—over there, of course.
Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer suing the CIA on behalf of drone victims, thinks its time for the American people to speak out. “Can you trust a program that has existed for eight years, picks its targets in secret, faces zero accountability and has killed almost 3,000 people in Pakistan alone whose identities are not known to their killers?,” he asks. “When women and children in Waziristan are killed with Hellfire missiles, Pakistanis believe this is what the American people want. I would like to ask Americans, ‘Do you?’”
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org), cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
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