Patriotism slips

The Pew political values survey conducted in December and January, says Carroll Doherty, reveals that 49% of Americans ‘completely agree’ that ‘I am very patriotic’. This is a big improvement on the 2003 figure of 56%. Astonishingly, the proportion of ‘very patriotic’ Republicans fell by an even greater margin from 71% to 61%.

However, 62% of all Americans confessed that they display the flag at home, in the office, or on their car. To their credit, only 41% of African Americans would admit to doing so, but that’s still a frighteningly high proportion. Apart from Blacks, a majority of every other sub population – men and women, young and old, Democrat and Republican, in every region – admitted to this bizarre fetish. The leaders were Republicans with 73% and those aged 65 and over with 71%.

More interesting results have emerged from the Pew Global attitudes survey of views in 47 countries during April and May. One surprising result in light of the patriotism results is that 6% of Americans surveyed said they had a ‘very unfavourable’ view of the US, with another 12% expressing a ‘somewhat unfavourable’ view. With only 80% of Americans reporting a very or somewhat favourable view of their own country, they just equaled the proportion in Ghana and fell behind the Ivory Coast with 88% and Kenya with 87%.

It will come as no surprise that 78% of Israelis had a favourable view of the US, but only 13% of Palestinians in the Territories and 9% of Turks. What was mildly shocking was that 56% of Venezuelans managed to sustain a favourable view of the US, although only 51% of Britons, 44% of Brazilians, 42% of Bolivians, and 16% of Argentines did so.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans acknowledged that US policy increased ‘the gap between rich and poor countries’. A majority in most countries surveyed recognized this, rising to a high of 73% in the Palestinian Territories and France. An astonishing 25% of Americans said ‘It's bad that American ideas and customs are spreading’. In Britain 61% agreed, as did majorities in most countries, large majorities in many, with as many as 90% opposing American ideas and culture in the Palestinian Territories.

Curiously, 63% of Britons and 73% of Canadians surveyed said they ‘like American music, movies and television’, as do majorities of 70% or more in nine other countries. They were least popular in Bangladesh (81%) and Pakistan (80%).

In another one of those bloody loaded questions, 23% of Americans said they ‘oppose the U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism’. Now how patriotic is that? Patriotic enough to accept the presupposition embedded in the question that the US is leading ‘efforts to fight terrorism’.

When asked whether ‘the United States promotes democracy wherever it can, OR the United States promotes democracy mostly where it serves its interests’, 63% of Americans chose the latter, as did large majorities in most countries. Only in Nigeria did a small plurality of 48% think the US promotes democracy wherever it can. Of course again, to answer the question at all means agreement to share the assumption that the US ever promotes democracy at all. Any scrutiny of the US political scene would reveal that the US doesn’t promote democracy, even in the trivial, limited sense of bourgeois liberal parliamentary democracy, right at home. They don’t even have preferential voting, which they call ‘instant runoff’ voting, and the Electoral College can still override the will of the majority of voters for President, as it did in 2000. Quite apart from all the corruption and registration scandals. Any meaningful form of democracy where ordinary people actually control our own society, that’s not on the agenda at all.

Thirty-four percent of Americans had ‘no confidence at all’ in George Bush, and 19% had ‘not too much confidence’. Only in Israel and six African countries did a majority have confidence in the leader of the free world. Osama bin Laden didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence either, with a small majority of 57% saying they had some or a lot of confidence in him in the Palestinian Territories. Ahmedinejad did slightly better, with a 64% majority in Bangladesh and 51% in Indonesia.

According to this poll, 54% of Venezuelans are confident in Hugo Chávez, a significantly higher proportion than the 45% George W Bush enjoys among Americans, but only a minority elsewhere – including 18% in the US.

In most countries surveyed, big majorities of up to 93% (in the Palestinian Territories) thought ‘the U.S. should remove its troops as soon as possible’ from Iraq. A smaller majority of 56% in the US thought so. Only in Kenya (59%) and Israel (58%) did majorities actually support keeping US troops in Iraq, with small pluralities in Nigeria and Ghana.

Regarding Afghanistan, only 42% of Americans thought ‘the U.S. and NATO should remove their troops as soon as possible’, but majorities or pluralities thought so everywhere else but Kenya, Ghana, Britain, Nigeria, the Czech Republic (45% each way), and of course, Israel, with a 59% majority saying to keep the troops there.

Only 34% of Americans thought ‘U.S. policies in the Middle East’ were fair, less than in Israel itself with 37% and, oddly, Venezuela, with 42%. Only 14% in Britain thought so, while only 90% in the Palestinian Territories realised that the US favoured Israel!

When asked ‘Who is mostly responsible for the fact that the Palestinians do not have a state of their own – Israelis or the Palestinians themselves?’, only in Israel did a majority (64%) blame the Palestinians. Pluralities did so in a number of countries, though, including 48% in the US. A plurality of 25% in Britain blamed Israel. Oddly, only 47% of Palestinians blamed Israel and 10% blamed themselves.

When asked about their view of Hamas, 27% of Palestinians on the Territories were ‘Very favourable’ and 35% somewhat favourable. Jordanians, most of whom are also of Palestinian ethnicity, were also 62% favourable. In Bangladesh, however, 82% favoured Hamas. Only 54% in the Palestinian Territories had confidence in the quisling Abu Mazen, less than the 67% in Egypt, but much more than the 31% Ehud Olmert enjoys among Israelis

In what I found the most interesting question, 77% in the Palestinian Territories and a remarkable 31% in Israel said ‘the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists’. Majorities also said so in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Malaysia. In the US and Britain an unsurprising 12% arrived at the obvious conclusion. Only in Sweden, Canada, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine did as small a proportion realise that the Jewish state is built on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Festival of the repressed

Natan Sharansky, veteran of nine years in the Soviet Gulag, writes in the International Herald Triibune that he, Vaclav Havel, and José Maria Aznar had convened a conference in Prague over the weekend ‘whose goal was to determine the best way to help support the spread of democracy and human rights’. Gracing the proceedings was none other than ‘President George W. Bush, who put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11’ who ‘came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward "ending tyranny in our world"’.

Among those attending were ‘voices courageously devoted to the non-violent struggle for human rights - including Saad Eddin Ibrahim of Egypt, Garry Kasparov of Russia, Alexander Milinkevich of Belarus, Junning Liu of China, Mudawi Ibrahim Adam of Sudan and Mamoun Homsy of Syria’.

Curiously, he doesn’t mention whether Azmi Bisharat was there.

Only in the last three months, more than 20 democratic dissidents were sent to prisons in Syria, Cuba, Vietnam and other countries without drawing international rebuke or sanction.

Meanwhile, you don’t even have to be a dissident, or Israeli, or even in Israel to be sent to and Israeli prison without charge and above all ‘without drawing international rebuke or sanction’. Just a few weeks ago,

Israeli forces seized a Palestinian cabinet minister and 32 other Hamas officials in overnight [24 May] West Bank sweeps designed to intensify pressure on the Islamic faction.

Not to mention the ones they abducted nearly a year ago, on 29 June 2006.

Welcome to Hamastan

Lest I be accused of laying into an easy mark, I just wanted to make it clear that even though Dennis Ross may appear to be a gibbering idiot with about as firm a grasp on current events as the Leader of the Free World, he is in fact a respected author and intellectual think tank nabob.

The writer was director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton. He is counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His new book is "Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World."

So says the blurb at the end of his article in yesterday’s Washington Post.

…Both Israelis and Palestinians were wondering about the consequences of Gaza's becoming, in their word, "Hamastan."

…Some said Israel should let weapons and ammunition get to Fatah forces in Gaza to battle Hamas. I also heard from Palestinians and Israelis alike that Egypt could do much more to prevent Hamas from receiving smuggled arms and money through the Sinai tunnels running into Gaza.

As if we didn’t know that Israel was doing precisely that – sending Fatah militants off for arming and training by the US and sending them back into Gaza effectively to launch an insurgency against the elected ‘government’ of the Palestinian Authority. Note that when Ross writes, ‘Israel should let weapons and ammunition get to Fatah forces’, he acknowledges that it is Israel that has full control of what goes into Gaza.

All those I spoke with were worried about the consequences of Gaza's becoming an Islamist enclave. They saw it offering inspiration to other Islamists throughout the Middle East and providing a new haven for Islamists of all stripes.

But since Israel fully controls ingress to Gaza, how will they get in?

They feared it would spell the end of even the possibility of a two-state solution. Most were convinced Hamas would never accept peace with Israel.

There has never been a possibility of a two state ‘solution’ that provides justice for the Palestinians, especially the 1948 refugees and the ‘Israeli Arabs’, or a really politically and economically viable Palestinian state. Dennis Ross preferred not to ask whether Israel would ever accept peace with Hamas, or anyone. Or if he did, not to report the answer,

Interestingly, there was consensus among Israelis and Palestinians on the dangers of Gaza's becoming a failed state. No one thought it would be easy to isolate and contain -- or had any clear ideas on how to respond to such a development.

That danger would only arise, of course, if Gaza were any kind of state, with a government and an economy and control of its borders and the like. Gaza was fully isolated and contained before the ‘withdrawal’ one of whose principal aims was to demonstrate how Palestinians couldn’t ‘govern themselves’ without the beneficent guiding hand of the occupation authorities.

Among some I heard an interesting proposal: Let's make the West Bank work -- socially, economically and institutionally -- then hold up our model of success in contrast to the failure of Gaza, where functional unemployment is close to 70 percent. Let Hamas preside over a dysfunctional, lawless state. We will build our own. Let's create understandings with Jordan and Israel for at least economic confederation and security. And if Hamas still hangs on in Gaza, perhaps there can be a "three-state solution."

Sounds good in theory, but I doubt it would work.

That would be some theory. As Israel commemorates forty years since it reclaimed jurisdiction over the ‘united Jerusalem’ and Judea and Samaria, how is Fatah, who, Ross acknowledges, ‘lost the elections because of their divisions, the corruption of the old guard and their inability to respond to the needs of the Palestinian public’, or any group of Palestinians, going to ‘make the West Bank work -- socially, economically and institutionally’. They are not in control. They can’t even walk to school or buy bread without interference. And Ross thinks they’re going to create a model state!

No matter how sensible confederation between the Palestinian state and Jordan might be, at least economically…

It might make sense to someone who, like Dennis Ross, hasn’t consulted a map and doesn’t realise that Israel controls the Jordan Valley and all access between the West Bank and Jordan. He goes on to admit

Moreover, while West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have much that divides them, they still have a common identity as Palestinians; the creation of a Palestinian state without Gaza would be an endless source of grievance and irredentism.

But after this brief return to Planet Earth, off he goes again to explain how it’s up to Egypt to prevent the ‘state’ of Gaza from arming itself against its sworn enemy and it’s up to ‘us’ to help ‘rebrand’ Fatah ‘to compete socially, economically and politically’ with Hamas.

Nothing embarrasses these guys.

The next rocket

The other day, I got an email from my old mate, David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. You know, last (Northern Hemisphere) summer, the AJC established the Israel Emergency Assistance Fund ‘to marshal resources to help residents of Israel's north besieged by Hezbollah's rocket war’. Now, the AJC is collecting money ‘to respond with solidarity and assistance for Israelis of all ages who are living under extremely difficult conditions, uncertain when and where the next rocket will land.’ Because of the severe stress imposed on the innocent civilians of Sderot by the terrorists who don’t appreciate the freedom they gained when Israeli troops ’withdrew’ almost two years ago, the AJC ‘pledged assistance to the construction of a psychological services center for the city's residents.’

Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal… reminded us that Hamas has stockpiled more than 12,000 rockets in Gaza, and these have only one intended purpose. We hope that the international community will prevail upon the Palestinian Authority to restore order in Gaza, and, first and foremost, to end once and for all the unprovoked rocket attacks on Israelis.

Needless to say, Israel has never stockpiled any weapons whatsoever and has only ever treated the Palestinians with the utmost gentleness. So if rockets and shells should happen to inadvertently land on residential buildings somehow, the survivors, if any, have no need for any psychological resilience centres.

Improved behavior

Writing in yesterday’s NY Times, Stephen Erlanger points out that Palestinians had good reason to welcome the Mecca deal, which will put at least a temporary halt to the utterly counterproductive fighting between those aligned with Hamas and Fatah that the US and Israel have done so much to fuel and encourage.

He also notes that the agreement places the US in a bit of a pickle,

The United States will also be reluctant to dismiss the Saudis’ accomplishments as brokers of the accord, given Washington’s interest in creating a broader moderate Arab coalition, including Egypt, Jordan and the Persian Gulf countries, to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional reach.

Of course it remains a mystery how a country like Egypt, or especially Saudi Arabia, earns the reputation of moderation that all the media accord them. After all, there are those who believe that women are entitled to vote, or at least drive, in a country aspiring to the label of moderate. I’ve even heard some of the punishments meted out to Saudi wrongdoers called ‘barbaric’. Perhaps most importantly, if these countries are so moderate, how is it that Israel became ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’? If Israel is the only democracy, then clearly Saudi Arabia is not democractic. I suppose it must be a moderate hierocratic feudal monarchy.

Another thing that keeps coming up in the coverage is the role of the Quartet. In Friday’s Time, for example, Elaine Shannon writes,

On its face, the agreement signed in Mecca between Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party and Khaled Meshal of Hamas, falls far short of the principles of the international mediating group known as the Quartet, composed of the U.S., United Nations, European Union and Russia, that a unity government must recognize Israel, reject violence and commit itself to the peace process.

It’s an ‘international mediating group’. Presumably it mediates between those two warring countries, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And it enunciates principles. And those principles are, that the PA ‘government’, the government of a ‘country’ that, as Virginia Tilley pointed out not long ago, exists only in the future, if not just the imagination, ‘recognize Israel, reject violence and commit itself to the peace process’. The mediation makes curiously few demands on the other party to the ‘peace process’. None, actually. Nor on itself, either. After all, the Quartet set itself the task of achieving a final solution to the Palestine problem by 2005.

The Economist, too, writes of ‘a requirement from the Quartet of foreign peacemakers’ – the requirement that Hamas recognize Israel. I’m not going to belabour the point about what recognizing Israel’s ‘right to exist’ would entail. Even the Christian Science Monitor ran a piece by one John V. Whitbeck last Friday week covering that.

To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them.

And others have commented on the obvious danger of recognizing an Israel with undefined borders for any Palestinian Authority that really believed that the result of all this peace process rigamarole will eventually be an actual Palestinian state. After all, it’s not as if the entire West Bank and Gaza weren’t small enough already.

Erlanger goes on in the same vein about the agreement constituting

a challenge for the Bush administration, which, along with Israel and several European countries, wants the new government to meet three benchmarks for normal relations: recognize the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Without the three — and the Mecca accord does not accept them — an international boycott on the Palestinians would continue.

And here it is starting to become apparent that it’s not just the Quartet setting impossible benchmarks for the PA. Israel itself is in on it.

Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn and Avi Issacharoff went even further, reporting

Israel made a diplomatic effort over the weekend to prevent any of the Quartet's conditions from being watered down as a result of the Mecca agreement. The Quartet's foreign ministers issued a statement on Friday reiterating its demand that any Palestinian government renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect peace deals in order to receive Western aid.

It makes it look almost as if the Quartet, far from mediating between two warring sides, is actively taking one side and enforcing demands on the other.

Never at a loss for cynicism, the editorialists down at the NY Times said today,

Before Europe and the United States will release aid to the authority, Hamas must recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

Two points emerge from this. First and most obvious is that it’s the PA whose aid is being withheld. That is a few million dollars that support the basic infrastructure that allows Palestinians to live, largely through public sector employment. Withholding that aid is, as everybody has observed, holding the Palestinian people to ransom for exhibiting the chutzpah of electing the wrong party to the PA ‘government’. One of the things that goes unsaid is that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are cut off from each other and the outside world and have absolutely no way to survive without the withheld aid. Another is that nobody is withholding any of the billions of dollars the Israeli government gets each year, even though they have violated every agreement and every UN resolution, even though they continue to build their wall and their settlements explicitly to create ‘facts on the ground’ that will prejudice any future outcome, and even though they have abused the military aid the US gives them by, for example, deliberately strewing southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last hours of their attack with the intention of inflicting more and more casualties long after the ceasefire came into effect.

The other point – somebody has to say it – is that there are no agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. The PA can only claim to represent those who live in the occupied territories, and that not very well. The million and a half or so 1948 ‘Israeli Arabs’ never get consulted about any of this, even though they have a very important stake in the outcome. And neither do the millions of refugees from Ben Gurion’s successful ethnic cleansing program in 1948. I’d cut the Times some slack and allow that maybe it’s just sloppiness, but I’m quite sure that their real intention is to forget about all those other Palestinians.

Anyway, they go on to speculate that the prospect of a bunch of Saudi aid

might help show Hamas the advantages of improved behavior. But Riyadh should make clear that continued aid will require clear proof that the new government is reining in terrorism.

As if the Times were some kind of authority figure empowered to judge Hamas’s behaviour as if it were some naughty child sitting in the corner. As if they were unaware that Hamas had restrained its own militias from attacking Israeli targets for over two years with very few lapses in the face of provocation after provocation by the Israeli war machine.

Whether Hamas is prepared to take that crucial step is doubtful. Israel and the United States should encourage it by making clear that an all-out effort against terrorism would radically improve the negotiating climate — and open the aid spigots.

As if they didn’t realize that a PA attempt to disarm militias would launch a new civil war, the very pretext, indeed, that Israel used for never complying with any of its ‘obligations’ under the original Road map. As if they didn’t recognize the right of the Palestinians to take up arms against the occupation.

But credit where credit is due. The wise persons down the Times observe

Mr. Bush has wasted more than six years without coming up with a serious policy for reducing violence between Israel and the Palestinians and promoting diplomacy.

And of course, neither he nor his successor ever will, until the US addresses the cause of the ‘violence’ and starts making some demands on the instigator and withholding aid from Israel.