April 15 - Discussion of Research Project assignment. The detailed instructions are in the Assignment File. For example, to find the GSS, simply click on the hyperlink in the first item. The first step is to browse the GSS, formulate hypotheses, and select variables to measure them. Then see if the variables need recoding and recode them if need be, giving them new variable names. Then do the cross tabulations and save copies. Then you can input them into Powerpoint, which is pretty easy to use and has instructions incuded. I gave you a file to work with, all you need is to edit it by inserting your material. If you want some Powerpoint Instructions, the ones from the University of Canberra are good. See the Assignment File for instructions. Check the Discussion List on Webct to look at ones that are already competed.
April 17: Terrorism in the U.S. PowerPoint on September
11 as a Turning Point in History.
The Dreadful Imposture? Was the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon a conspiracy by a group within the Pentagon?
White, Chapters 13 and 14
Policy Questions:
Since the operation began two weeks ago, Israeli troops
have combed Palestinian towns and refugee
camps that the Israelis say have been sanctuaries for
the militants.
Israeli troops have arrested and killed suspected militants,
including one who they say planned the suicide
bombing attack in Netanya during the Passover meal on
March 27, killing 26 and prompting the Israeli
military offensive. They have seized hundreds of weapons
and uncovered dozens of bomb-making factories
and retrieved explosive belts meant to be worn by suicide
bombers.
The strategy is meant to deal a punishing blow to militant
organizations like Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and
Hamas and rip up their infrastructure, the term the Israelis
use to describe everything from the hideaways
where bombs are assembled and guns are stashed to the
offices where the Palestinians keep their
paperwork and payrolls.
Then Israeli troops plan to withdraw and perhaps establish
a several-mile-wide defensive buffer zone in
an effort to fend off future attacks, Israeli military
and civilian officials said this week.
----
Text of Arafat's Statement on Terrorism
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Following is the full text of a statement issued Saturday
by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat on the
news agency WAFA, translated by The Associated Press
from Arabic:
The Palestinian leadership and His Excellency President
Arafat express their deep condemnation for all
terrorist activities, whether it is state terrorism,
terrorism by a group or individual terrorism. This
position comes from our steady principle that rejects
using violence and terror against civilians as a way
to achieve political goals.
We declared this position beginning in 1988 and also when
we signed the Oslo accords at the White
House, and we have repeated it several times before,
including our declaration on Dec. 16 last year.
After that, we did not find any Israeli response but
more Israeli escalation, a tighter siege, further
occupation of our people, refugee camps, cities, villages,
and more destruction of our infrastructure.
We strongly condemn all the attacks targeting civilians
from both sides, and especially the attack that took
place against Israeli citizens yesterday in Jerusalem.
We also condemn very strongly the massacre that was
committed by the Israeli occupation troops against
our refugees in Jenin and against our people in Ramallah,
Nablus and Tulkarem and also the brutal
aggression against the church in Bethlehem during
the last two weeks.
-------------
pril 14, 2002
Arafat Condemns Terror Attacks; Powell Meeting Is On
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
JERUSALEM, April 13 — Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell said today that he would meet with Yasir
Arafat on Sunday, after the Palestinian leader
issued a statement condemning terrorist acts against
civilians, and "especially the attack that took place
against Israeli citizens yesterday in Jerusalem."
The reference was to a suicide bombing on Friday that
killed six people. Following the attack, Secretary
Powell canceled a meeting with Mr. Arafat that had been
scheduled for today, and the White House
demanded that Mr. Arafat issue a statement condemning
terrorism.
That statement was issued this afternoon. In it, while
condemning the suicide bombing, Mr. Arafat also
railed at length against Israel for "escalation, a tighter
siege, further occupation of our people, refugee
camps, cities, villages, and more destruction of our
infrastructure."
..........
Danny Ayalon, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Sharon,
said: "Such a condemnation is not worth anything
coming from a man who is the top terrorist official.
Arafat is being two-faced. On one hand he has
statements published condemning terrorism, on the
other he incites violence and supports terrorism." Mr.
Arafat has issued similar condemnations of violence in
the past.
The Palestinians have been irritated by what they perceive
as a double standard from Washington, with
pressures on the Palestinians to condemn suicide bombings,
but no condemnation of the heavy casualties
inflicted by the Israeli Army on Palestinian civilians,
which the Palestinians refer to as "state terrorism."
------------
Israel's agreement to allow a United Nations fact-finding
mission came after unsparing criticism of the
Israeli military operation in Jenin by a senior envoy
of the organization, Terje Roed-Larsen. "However just
the cause is, there are illegitimate means, and the
means that have been used here are illegitimate and
morally repugnant," he told Reuters after viewing
the destruction for the first time this week. His remarks
have caused shudders of anger in Israeli society, and
become a prominent element of a pitched public
relations battle.
Today, Palestinians in Jenin buried 35 victims of the
fighting in a mass grave in an olive grove, covering
all in white shrouds and some with purple flowers, not
long after the last Israel troops pulled out.
At the same time, the Israeli defense minister, Benjamin
Ben-Eliezer, said the confirmed toll of
Palestinians killed in fighting in Jenin was 48, of whom
45 wore uniforms and 2 wore suicide-bomb belts,
he said. The Palestinians have said hundreds were killed.
In his denunciation of the Israeli campaign, Mr. Roed-Larsen
also suggested that the tactic was
short-sighted. "Israel's operation may have dismantled
the physical infrastructure of terror, but this is
easily rebuilt," he said. "Meanwhile, the mental infrastructure
of terrorism is building up, the mentality of
hate and confrontation, and this is very difficult
to undo."
Israel acknowledged that Palestinians were suffering,
but said such problems in the West Bank were an
offshoot of a necessary military campaign, and that United
Nations descriptions of the problems were
irresponsible and overstated.
"The effects are distorted; the effects are untrue"
said Gideon Meir, a senior official in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. "Are the Palestinian people under
stress? The answer is yes. But does Israel want them to
be under stress? The answer is no. The problem here
is the terrorists, who had to be stopped from
murdering more Israeli civilians."
The centrist newspaper Maariv published a front-page column
today by its editor in chief that described
Mr. Roed-Larsen as "a good friend and an enthusiastic
supporter of Yasir Arafat." It said the United
Nations official "simply is not capable of distinguishing
between good and evil."
The continued fighting and verbal sparring came as the
United Nations said problems faced by the region's
Palestinians had become grave, and Mr. Roed-Larsen complained
that Israel had not done enough to
relieve suffering.
Popularity
of 2 foes is risk to peace
Arafat and Sharon have their people's support - and little reason to compromise.
By Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer April 22, 2002
JERUSALEM - To call them intractable foes is to
understate their mutual loathing.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has publicly
regretted not killing Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
Arafat calls Sharon a bloodthirsty butcher
who will never be a partner for peace.
Yet as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensifies,
each leader appears to be rising in the eyes of his constituency, complicating
an already dysfunctional
relationship and prospects for
peace.
Sharon declares Israel is at war with Palestinian
militants, takes the fight to them aggressively with a military campaign
that leaves destruction in its
wake, and sees his job-approval rating soar -
from 40 percent to 60 percent - in one month.
Arafat, hunkered down in his bunker with the symbols
of the Palestinian Authority toppling all around him, sees his popularity
soar among ordinary
Palestinians who, like their leader in Ramallah,
are besieged in their cities and villages and identify with Arafat's confinement.
Sharon's popularity helps stave off, at least
for now, an anticipated challenge for the leadership of Israel by former
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a
staunch hawk.
Arafat's popularity rehabilitates him, restoring
his status as a leader despite Israel's destruction of his trappings of
power.
Yet both men are deeply ideological and not driven by popularity alone, analysts say.
"I would not take the seeking of popularity as
the main motive of Arafat or Sharon. Popularity serves as an instrument,"
said Yehezkel Dror, a Hebrew
University professor of political science and
adviser to former Israeli prime ministers.
Popularity can be a base for taking risks that
lead to breakthroughs, such as when President Richard M. Nixon used his
first-term popularity to open
relations with communist China.
"Hypothetically, if the United States succeeds
in getting the Israelis and Palestinians together, Sharon could make a
far-reaching peace proposal," Dror
said. "Having proved his toughness, he can say,
'Now it's time to sacrifice to achieve peace,' "
Yet rising popularity also creates a double bind, other analysts said.
One of the reasons Sharon is popular is that he
has confined Arafat to his Ramallah compound, said Tel Aviv University
sociologist Yochanan Peres, an
expert on Israeli public opinion.
"But Arafat can't speak about peace or even react
favorably to a gesture from Sharon without being released first," Peres
said, otherwise it looks as if he
is capitulating to American and Israeli demands.
"As long as there is a high perception of threat
from suicide bombings, Israelis will continue to support Sharon. Where
he will lose support is where he
shows reluctance to use harsh measures against
the Palestinians," said Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shikaki, himself
under curfew in Ramallah.
Compounding the situation, each side thinks it is winning despite contradictory facts on the ground.
"The Israelis think they are winning because
after 18 months of fighting, what have the Palestinians gained? More than
1,000 Palestinians are dead.
Their economy is destroyed. They did not gain
one inch. Israeli troops can enter Palestinian areas at will," Shikaki
said. "Who in their right mind can
define this as victory except crazy people?
Israelis feel they are winning because they have been able to deny the
Palestinians
any gains from the use of
violence."
Shikaki said Palestinians also feel victorious.
"The Palestinians believe they are winning for
a simple reason: Israelis are discovering that no matter what they do they
cannot bring about security for
themselves," he said.
"Previously, Palestinians felt they had to accept
Israeli dictates, whatever Israel dished out. Their backs were to the wall.
Now, Israel knows Palestinians
can fight back and hurt them. We are still
able to send them live bombs that explode in their faces and create a balance
of power."
....
Facing rising floodwaters, a Middle East scorpion asked a Middle East tiger for a piggyback ride.
"But you'll bite me," said the tiger.
"If I bite you, we'll both drown," said the scorpion. "Where's the logic in that?"
So the tiger agreed to ferry him, and the scorpion bit.
As they sank, the tiger reminded the scorpion of what he had said.
"Don't be silly," said the scorpion. "Whoever said there's any logic in the Middle East?"
-----------
Sri Lanka
Meet the new democratic Tigers
Apr 11th 2002 | KILINOCHCHI
From The Economist print edition
UNTIL September 11th Velupillai Prabhakaran was arguably
the world's most audacious
and successful terrorist. His Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam had murdered a Sri Lankan
president and a former Indian prime minister, and
nearly managed to assassinate Sri
Lanka's current president. They had killed nearly
every Tamil politician of consequence
with views more moderate than Mr Prabhakaran's. The
LTTE's female “cadres” perfected
the craft of suicide bombing. Their cause: the liberation
of the Tamils in Sri Lanka from
oppression by the country's Sinhalese majority.
On April 10th Mr Prabhakaran emerged from self-protective
seclusion to face the press
for the first time in a decade. Gone was his signature
Tiger camouflage dress, and with
it the image of dictatorial ruthlessness. His new
costume is a safari suit, his new line
peace and the trappings of democratic politics.
Mr Prabhakaran's performance at least bodes well for the
peace process, which began soon after Sri Lanka elected a
new government in December, though his professed conversion
to democratic norms is less convincing. Mr Prabhakaran
seemed to go further than ever before towards hinting
that he might give up his goal of secession from Sri Lanka,
stating that though the time was “not yet” ready for
the demand to be dropped, it could be reconsidered if the Tamils'
right of self-determination were recognised. Sri Lanka's
prime minister hailed his remarks as a step forward.
Although ceasefires and peace talks have failed before
in the two-decade long war between the government and the
Tamil minority, which lives mainly in the north and east,
there are greater grounds for optimism than usual.
On April 9th the road linking Colombo, the capital, to
Jaffna, the Tamils' cultural centre in the north, was opened for
the first time in 12 years. Restrictions on the flow
of goods into Tamil controlled areas, a major grievance, have been
eased. Mr Prabhakaran says the new Sri Lankan prime minister,
Ranil Wickremesinghe, and mediation by Norway, have
improved the odds that the latest peace process will
work. He did not dwell on recent bans on the LTTE by Britain and
Canada or the military stalemate between the rebels and
the government, which sharpen the incentive to talk.
Tamils in Mallavi, a town in the Tamil-controlled Vanni
area, dutifully echo their leader's optimism. “We are confident
the people in charge will do the needful,” said the manager
of the local branch of the Bank of Tamil Eelam.
No one seems to take issue with Mr Prabhakaran, whose
picture adorns most shops. Monuments to martyred Tigers
overshadow temples and churches, seemingly supplanting
the local religions. In Vanni, a region that has been
bypassed by time, Mr Prabhakaran commands a Führer's
awe rather than the mere respect accorded to ordinary leaders.
But Mr Prabhakaran is striking democratic poses. He promised
that parties besides the LTTE would be allowed to
operate in the north-east. The Tigers have recently apologised
to Muslims, whom the LTTE expelled from Jaffna in
1990. “The Tamil homeland belongs to the Muslim people,”
he declared. The LTTE has an interest in placating them.
They are an important minority in the east, which Mr
Prabhakaran regards as part of his realm; a party representing
them is a pillar of Mr Wickremesinghe's government. Without
their co-operation, Mr Prabhakaran will find it hard to
unite Sri Lanka's north and east under Tamil rule.
What of other alleged sins in Mr Prabhakaran's past?
He dealt with them through a mixture of denial and diversion.
The killing in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi, a former Indian
prime minister, was a “tragic incident”. The charge that the LTTE
presses children into its army is “unacceptable”.
What about the liquidation of opposition Tamils? “We are adopting
new strategies,” said Mr Prabhakaran.
His democratic pretensions will be tested when and if
an interim administration takes over the government of the
north and east. That is to be a main subject of negotiations
in Thailand, probably starting next month. That is also
when airy talk of peace will encounter the realities
of power. There is now some hope that Sri Lanka's government and
the Tamil minority will find ways to share it. It still
seems less likely, though, that Mr Prabhakaran will concede any of
it to other Tamils.
--------------------
Sri Lanka
The Tiger comes out of his lair
Apr 11th 2002
From The Economist print edition
But on the main issue of independence for the Tamils,
it is not yet certain how much has changed
FOR the first time in more than a decade, the commander
of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, emerged from the
jungle this week to talk to the
outside world. He pledged his commitment to peace, and
promised that the days of
suicide bombings are over. He even spoke of his Tamil
Tigers laying down their arms,
and went out of his way to praise Sri Lanka's prime minister,
which is a first. This is all
part of an encouraging pattern that started in February
with the announcement of a
ceasefire in an intractable war that has killed more
than 60,000 people in the past 19
years.
The ceasefire is holding, more or less. And it does now
look as though peace talks
between the Tigers and the government will start early
next month. Sri Lanka has domestic flights again (they were
suspended for years for fear of tigerish hijackers),
and the main road north towards Jaffna from Colombo has
re-opened. All of these solid achievements, though, will
quickly break down if the peace talks do. And whether or not
that happens will mainly revolve around that word “eelam”,
which means “homeland” but is silent about just what a
homeland should be.
In the past, Mr Prabhakaran has always taken the maximalist
route, insisting that an eelam should be a fully
independent state for Sri Lanka's Tamils to live in.
There are good arguments for one. The Tamils have indeed suffered
much wrong at the hands of the Sinhalese majority since
independence, and the north and east of the island, where
the eelam would be, have very few Sinhalese inhabitants
these days. Why should not the area become independent,
like Eritrea or East Timor?
There are also, however, strong arguments against:
the putative new country would legitimate a vicious campaign of
ethnic cleansing in the “Tamil” areas by the Tigers,
backed up by atrocious terrorism outside it. A homeland for Tamils
in that part of the island has no strong basis in
history. Most of all however, it is simply unrealistic. No Sri Lankan
leader, even if he or she wanted to, could win approval
for giving away so much territory, a constitutional change that
would require a two-thirds vote of parliament.
Perhaps, though, an eelam can be something less than an
independent state. Still nominally on offer is a new
constitution which would have given a high degree of
autonomy to the Tamil areas, while having them remain within
Sri Lanka. The offer needs to be improved if it is likely
to attract the support of even the moderate Tamil groups, but it
is at least possible that such proposals could be approved
by the Sri Lankan parliament with the necessary majority.
Both main parties, that led by the prime minister, Ranil
Wickremesinghe, and that of the president, Chandrika
Kumarantunga, agree in principle on autonomy for the
north and east. The onus is on the president to move further
than she has so far.
That leaves the Tigers. Mr Prabhakaran's statements this
week were not completely discouraging (see article). He
continued to insist on statehood for the Tamil Eelam,
dashing any hope of a quick peace when negotiators meet next
month. But optimists say he would hardly have ceded so
large a principle so early in the process, and for so little. He
was, anyway, intriguingly ambiguous, saying that the
conditions for abandoning the principle had “not yet” arisen, and
that the policy could be re-examined. It is now up to
both government and rebel leader to think creatively. For the first
time in many years it seems, at least, that there is
a measure of goodwill.
Letters to the Editor on Middle East Terrorism. These are to be used for an in-class exercise today.
Class on April 24:
LaTanya Scott and LaShonda Shivers
From Commentary, May 2002, p. 29
Joshua Muravchik, "Hearts, Minds and the War Against
Terror"
United Nations Secretary General Kofi
Annan...proposed a world treaty against terrorism in the aftermath of September
11. Appealing for "moral clarity," Annan condemned "the deliberate
taking of innocent life, regardless of cause or grievance. If there
is one principle that all peoples can agree on," he added, "surely it is
this." So cautious and anodyne was the wording of the roposed
treath that North Korea itself proclaimed its support. Not so the
Islamic Conference, which turned it down flat. Even when Annan "gambled
his moral authority" (in the words of a UN diplomat) by a personal appeal
to a meeting of the Conference, the Islamic states would not budge or
accept any compromise unless a blanket exemption were included for terrorist
actions against Israel. At its meeting in Malaysia in Early April,
the Conference reaffirmed its stance.
If there is "one moral principle that
all peoples can agree on," in short, it is not this one. For most
Muslim states (Turkey excepted), "terrorism" is a concept defined not by
the nature of the act but by the cause in whose name it is undertaken,
or by the identities of the perpetrators and the victims. Almost
any military action by Israel is considered terrorism, almost any
violence against Israel is resistance. For some large number
of Muslims, the same would seem to apply if the term "United States" is
substituted for Israel.
Sheik Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the top scholar
of Al Azhar University in Cairo, said on Friday that all Israelis -- men,
women and children -- were ''forces of occupation,''
according to a translation of the statement by the Middle East Media
Research Institute, a translation service in
Washington that opposes the militants. Therefore, the sheik said, ''martyrdom
operations'' were the ''highest form of jihad
operations.''
According to the institute's translation, the sheik
added that suicide attacks were ''an Islamic commandment until the people
of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel
Israeli aggression to retreat.''
Today he amended those remarks to advise that
no Muslim blow himself up ''in the midst of children or women, but among
aggressors, among soldiers.''
Yassir Arafat's wife also endorsed suicide bombing, see Ethics of Suicide Bombing.
Chapter 15: Technological Terrorism:
Technology gives new power to terrorist groups, not just
high powered rifles vs. 19th century bombs, but poison gas as with Aum
Shinrikyo in Japan (a highly egalitarian society, attacked by religious
cultists), anthrax, and atomic weapons.
See "Queda
Leader Said to Report A-Bomb plans"
Cyberterrorism?
Sabotage of nuclear plants, dams? One thing the author did not anticipate
was hijacking a plane and flying it into the World Trade Center.
What else might be coming that we have not anticipated?
Chapter 16: The Media
The "Global Village" was supposed to tie the world together, to help us to understand each other, but the result has been to spread hatred more widely, e.g., by watching scenes of Israeli attacks in the West Bank. People react differently to these scenes depending on their ethnicity, nationality and politics.
We have seen Osama bin Laden's effective use of satellite television. The US persuaded out networks to broadcast less of his stuff, based on the theory that he might be using it to send coded messages. But they may also have been concerned that he was being persuasive, at least to potential supporters.
Both sides try to manipulate the media, e.g., filming
last year of Israelis dropping a young Israeli man head first out of a
building and dancing with joy at his death, youth in the west bank celebrating
the World Trade Center attack. They try to censor the footage.
The Israelis kept the media out of the West Bank as best they could during
their "massacre".
Video: Palestinian
Militants Kill Informers.
Chapter 17: Policy, Liberty, Security and the Future:
"Racial Profiling" is in ill repute in the US because
of its use against blacks and hispanics in the war against drugs
Perhaps unjustifiably so, see The
Myth of Racial Profiling and Race
and speeding in New Jersey. Contrast with the ACLU
argument that its statistics are irrefutable. In my view,
profiling is not justified in these cases because the drug interdiction
is doomed to fail in any event. The negatives clearly outweigh the
positives in traffic stops on the NJ Turnpike. In investigating other
crimes, this may not be true, and it may not be true in fighting terrorism.
See Jihad in America.
Do we need profiling? New legal theories? The ACLU says no.
U.S.
Weighing New Doctrine for Tribunals
By NEIL A. LEWIS - NY Times - April 21, 2002
WASHINGTON, April 20 — Uncertain
about how they will be able to prosecute many of the nearly 300
prisoners detained at a naval
base in Cuba, Bush administration officials are considering a new legal
doctrine
that would allow prisoners to be brought before military
tribunals without specific evidence that they engaged in war
crimes.
The new approach would make it an offense to have been
a senior member or officer of a Qaeda unit that was
involved in any of the regular crimes of war, like mistreatment
of civilians.
One administration official said the effort came out of
increasing uneasiness that the interrogations of the prisoners,
who were taken from Afghanistan to the naval base at
Guántanamo Bay, had not yielded enough information to
charge very many with traditional war crimes.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
said the questioning was going slowly and the prisoners were
largely uncooperative. No one, the official said,
has confessed to any atrocity or violation of the laws of war. Nor,
the official added, have the interrogators had much
success in getting prisoners to provide information that could be
used against other captives.
Another official said the new approach would allow military
prosecutors to charge some captives even without
evidence from witnesses or documents that they committed
war crimes.
"It could be enough to show that they were part of a group and furthered its aims," this official said.
"They would be shown," the official said, "to be a part
of a group that did things like killing civilians and
noncombatants, attacked targets with no military value
or took or killed hostages" — the traditional roster of war
crimes. "Also engaging in torture," the official said.
Officials said the legal mechanism for charging someone
with being a member of a Qaeda unit involved in crimes
was not complete but would probably be detailed in a
document to guide military prosecutors.
Administration lawyers have already begun work on the
issue, officials said, and expect that their efforts will produce
the document, which would be formally issued by the Defense
Department.
Prof. Detlev Vagts of the Harvard Law School, an authority
on the law of war, said the government appeared to be
trying to build a military version of the civilian
charge of conspiracy.
In the Nuremberg trials after World War II, the Allies
declared the Nazi special police, the SS, a criminal
organization. But Professor Vagts said that, in the end,
no
one was ever charged simply on the basis of membership
in the SS.
People were usually prosecuted for war crimes on testimony
by witnesses or, in the case of senior officials, on the
extensive records the Nazi authorities kept. No equivalent
documentation exists in Afghanistan.
The unease about what to do with the prisoners is occurring
after the administration, notably the Defense
Department, spent considerable effort drafting regulations
for the military tribunals. A government lawyer said White
House officials were becoming increasingly concerned
that the tribunals, authorized despite great criticism, might not
be put to much use.
That seems unlikely now, officials said, with the capture
in Pakistan last month of Abu Zubaydah, believed to be the
director of operations for Al Qaeda and thus the highest-ranking
official of that organization in United States custody.
Mr. Zubaydah, Justice Department officials have said,
is a near-ideal candidate for a tribunal trial.
One official said the major unanswered question was whether
the military would seek the death penalty for Mr.
Zubaydah, an issue to be deferred until he is interrogated
and his cooperation is evaluated.
Officials said the administration's new doctrine was
being fashioned to create an offense different from what lawyers
call a status crime. The Supreme Court has rejected
status crimes, in which it is an offense merely to be a member
of a group, like the Communist Party.
The new doctrine, lawyers said, is an effort to comply
with rulings that require not only membership in a group but
also some identifiable connection to its aims. In this
case, the new guidance would probably require a finding that a
prisoner was not only a member of Al Qaeda but also that
he furthered its aims.
Although the Defense Department's regulations do not
provide for review of tribunal verdicts by civilian courts,
lawyers for people convicted by the tribunals are
certain to ask federal courts to intervene. That is probably one
reason the new guidance appears to consider Supreme
Court precedents in similar cases.
After World War II, for example, the court upheld a conviction
by a military tribunal of a Japanese commander
whose troops committed atrocities in Manila while he
was elsewhere in the Philippines.
April 29 - Student Reports. At least some of them are posted in the discussion board on our WEBCT site.
Comparison of news coverage on al-Jazeera and CNN.
If there is time, we can begin reviewing for the fourth exam.
Evaluation forms to be distributed.
May 1 - Review for fourth exam.
RAGE
AND REASON
by DAVID REMNICK from The New Yorker, May 6, 2002.
Will anyone listen to the P.L.O.'s voice of restraint?
Issue of 2002-05-06
Posted 2002-04-29
RAGE AND REASON
by DAVID REMNICK
Will anyone listen to the P.L.O.'s voice of
restraint?
Issue of 2002-05-06
Posted 2002-04-29
Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestine Liberation
Organization's chief representative in Jerusalem, is
perhaps the most moderate adviser in the councils
of Yasir Arafat. (He is no doubt the only one to
have worked on a kibbutz or to have written a
graduate-school essay at Harvard on Wittgenstein
and the role of jokes in philosophical discourse.)
On many issues of moment within the Palestinian
hierarchy—the morality of suicide bombings, the
wisdom of Arafat's rejection of the Israeli offers
at Camp David and at Taba, the refugees'
demand for the "right of return" to historical
Palestine—Nusseibeh disagrees, publicly and in
all languages, with the hard men of the P.L.O. and
Hamas, and even with Arafat (to the extent that
Arafat reveals himself). To him, "martyr
operations" are blatantly "immoral," the flat
rejection of the Israeli proposals a "major missed
opportunity," and the right of return a painful
delusion best forgotten. It is not obvious why
Arafat, who craves the support and supposed
authenticity of the maximalists of Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, appointed a mild man in corduroy
and tweed to run the East Jerusalem portfolio. As
a scholar and as the scion of a distinguished
family, Nusseibeh wields about as much street
credibility in the refugee camps of Nablus as a
duke among the sansculottes. He has no muscle
to offer Arafat, no immediate value, except,
perhaps, as an ornament of democracy where
democracy hardly exists. There is no argument to
be made for Nusseibeh's power—unless one
happens to believe in the power of restraint and
rational thought.
After completing a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic
philosophy at Harvard, in 1978, Nusseibeh began
teaching at Bir Zeit University, in the West Bank,
a center for both higher learning and elementary
politics. At first, Nusseibeh kept out of public life,
concentrating instead on problems of logic and
moral philosophy; but eventually he was
dragooned into academic politics—union issues
and the like—and then into Palestinian politics
generally. Nusseibeh was not mild in his opinions
about the occupation. He demanded that the
Palestinians in the occupied territories either be
annexed as equal citizens of Israel (with the
knowledge that in such an arrangement Arabs
would eventually become a majority, ending the
Jewish state) or, the more likely prospect, be
made citizens of a new country, adjacent to
Israel, called Palestine. And yet in the early
eighties Nusseibeh outraged many of his fellow
faculty members, and members of Arafat's Fatah
organization, by attending a conference at
Harvard to meet with Israeli politicians. As
Palestinian politics grew more radical, Nusseibeh
insisted on a rhetoric of moderation and on
contact with the putative enemy. During the first
intifada, he was quoted in the International
Herald Tribune as saying, "I think it is a kind of
exorcism to throw a stone at Satan," but he threw
no stones himself and pressed for a "generally
nonviolent" uprising. To call for the elimination of
Israel, he argued publicly, was irrational; the
Jews, he said, had a deep historical connection to
Jerusalem just as the Arabs did. This was not, in
all circles, a popular argument. One morning, on
the Bir Zeit campus, several masked members of
a Jordan-based branch of Fatah jumped
Nusseibeh. He was badly beaten and one of his
arms was broken.
Nusseibeh summoned up that day with a wry
smile. "I remember it well," he said to me. "I'd just
finished delivering a lecture at the university on
liberalism and tolerance."
Recently, an article in the
Jerusalem Post warned that Nusseibeh is a "con
man," who plays the "good cop" in a media dumb
show "orchestrated by Arafat." Nevertheless,
leading politicians, including Israel's foreign
minister, Shimon Peres, and its defense minister,
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who are not in the habit of
endorsing enemies of the state, have praised
Nusseibeh as a courageous and trustworthy
interlocutor.
"When they went to Camp David and Arafat said
afterward that we didn't get what we thought we
should, people in the territories felt that their
suspicions about Israel were vindicated. From the
Palestinians' perspective, Barak did not come as
far as they thought he should. So Arafat came out
of Camp David feeling angry with Barak, and
Barak, because he didn't get a proper or positive
response and felt he went out on a limb, felt
betrayed by Arafat and the entire P.L.O.
leadership. And Clinton, who wanted his Nobel
Peace Prize, and wanted it to be done in ten
days, also walked out feeling angry."
The biggest problem, as Nusseibeh sees it, is that
neither side contained its anger, and so "the
system of discussion was blown to smithereens."
Each side indulged its worst suspicions about the
other: an increasing number of Israelis felt that
Arafat had been unmasked as a messianic
terrorist who had never really wanted
compromise except, perhaps, as a tactic; the
Palestinians felt confirmed in their suspicion that
Israel had no intention of giving up the settlements
or their general dominance. According to
Palestinians, Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount,
the most disputed of all pieces of land, was the
spark that set off the "cycle of armed violence."
According to Israelis, the uprising had been
planned months before.
"On the
whole, the Palestinian reaction to the Israelis was
basically haphazard, emotional, out of anger," he
said. "Israeli action toward the Palestinians was
very determined, planned, and cold-blooded.
This is why I thought from the beginning that a
strategy was being worked out to provoke the
Palestinians and draw them into a battle of which
they are not the masters—namely, of violent
confrontation. The goal is the destruction of the
Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority, to be
followed by the implementation of a Sharonian
regime of what peace should look like for the
Palestinians. Which is basically to give the
Palestinians something that they can call a state,
maybe something like forty per cent of the West
Bank and Gaza, but under total security scrutiny
by Israel." He added, "The good thing about
Sharon is that he is a very systematic and
straightforward thinker, and determined. He tells
you what he wants to do and does it. Sharon has
a vision."
"Look, I am not sure that the Palestinian people
know what they are about," Oren said at one
point. "They have been offered a state so often: in
1937, they were offered a state, bigger than the
Jewish state, by the Peel Commission, and they
turned it down; they were offered partition in
1947 by the United Nations, and they turned it
down; and then there was Camp David, and they
turned that down. It raises the question, then, if a
people cannot seize a historical opportunity, what
kind of people are they? Instead, they are basing
their identity on victimhood, and that feeds the
suffering."
For Oren, and for many Israelis left, right, and
center, Arafat revealed himself as untrustworthy
after he ended the negotiations with the Israelis in
2000 without offering a counter-proposal,
insisting, yet again, on the Jews' lack of a
historical connection to the Western Wall and on
the right of Palestinian refugees abroad to return
to Israeli territory. Such a return, Oren said, "is a
euphemism for not recognizing Israel's right to
exist."
I mentioned Sari Nusseibeh and his statement,
deeply unpopular among his own people, that the
Palestinians will have to give up the right of return
and recognize Israel's right to a secure existence if
there is ever going to be a real peace.
Oren smiled indulgently, as so many Israelis and
Palestinians do at the mention of Nusseibeh's
name. "Sari is a wonderful guy," he said, "but how
many divisions does he have?"