In July 2006, I wrote an article in reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Part of that article was published on my blog under the title Israel: The Right to (Self) Defend and not to (Collectively) Punish. However, I never got around to publishing the other part of the article which was a more personal perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it joined scores of other articles that I have never completed or published for one reason or the other.
As Israel’s 2014 ground offensive in Gaza continues unabated, I have gone back to my archives to unearth this long forgotten article which I am now sharing with my readers – unedited – exactly eight years after I wrote it. Needless to say my views remain unchanged by events of the last eight years and by the ongoing offensive in Gaza. Read on:
Continue reading "Israel and the Jewish Paradox (A Personal Narrative)" »
As I watch the wall-to-wall news coverage on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and listen to heated debates over the (ir)rationality of her controversial and ultimately fatal return to Pakistan, I keep thinking of a recent discussion on a Cameroonian internet forum where members were asked to name their heroes. To me, the word “hero” does not describe godlike, infallible or perfect human beings, but regular folks doing extra-ordinary things. In fact, it best describes flawed and even damaged individuals who are able to go beyond their flaws and fears to answer to the call of destiny not because of the absence of risk, but in spite of huge risks to life limb and liberty. The Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, the Mandelas and many more faceless people the world over fall in this category.
The first annual Global Peace Index, which ranks countries according to their level of peacefulness, was recently made public. The index was compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The data were drawn from the United Nations, the World Bank, peace groups and the magazine researchers' own assessments. 
Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.
I have tried very hard to be “intellectual” and “academic” about what is going on in Lebanon, and to rationalize Israeli actions as a desperate act of self preservation (in fact this article was initially conceived in that mold), but I cannot just bring myself to accept that conclusion. There is no justification, moral, legal or otherwise, for the complete destruction of a country and its infrastructure, and for the indiscriminate killing of innocent and hapless civilians as it happened in Qana, in the name of the right to self defense. 
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