Suppression of Human Rights
excerpted from the book
Tinderbox
U.S. Middle East Policy and
the Roots of Terrorism
by Stephen Zunes
Common Courage Press, 2003,
paper
p10
Human Rights: Transforming a Moral Issue into a Political Tool
Human rights violations by foreign governments
and their lack of democratic institutions generally get the most
attention in the United States when a given administration has
called attention to them in order o mobilize domestic and international
opinion against a regime the U.S. government opposes. However,
every administration in recent years has aIso had to address,
at least to some degree, the less expedient phenomenon of responding
to public and Congressional pressure regarding the lack of democracy
and human rights in allied countries. Oftentimes, such official
responses would constitute little more than lip service and damage
control, but-since at least the 1970s-it has been difficult to
ignore completely. Most of the pressure has stemmed from grassroots
movements, ;sometimes amplified by sympathetic segments of the
media and members of congress. The resulting debates have covered
world regions ranging from East and Southeast Asia, to Eastern
Europe, to Latin America and to Africa, and have been particularly
vehement regarding regimes that directly receive arms and economic
assistance from the U.S. government.
Yet despite this surge in debate over
human rights policy, the very -region that receives the largest
amount of American arms and aid has been notably absent from the
public debate: the Middle East. Not only has there been mostly
silence from traditional human rights advocates in Congress, there
has not been much in the way of grassroots pressure, either. This
relatively docile response is not because the problem is small.
A large majority of countries in that region lack democratic institutions
and engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human
rights violations. In addition, three major recipients of U.S.
aid-Morocco, Israel and Turkey-have conquered all or parts of
neighboring countries by force, engaged in ethnic cleansing, and
continue to subjugate the population of these occupied territories
in defiance of the Geneva Convention and the United Nations.
Despite the poor human rights situation
in the Middle East, with the exception of certain intellectual
circles and the most committed human rights activists, there has
been little effort among American activists to support pro-democracy
movements in the Middle East. These struggles have not captured
the imagination of the grassroots organizations in recent decades
to the extent of human rights movements in Latin America, southern
Africa, the Philippines, or even East Timor. While established
human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch have generally given a proportional amount of attention
to human rights abuses in the Middle East, it has not resulted
in the same level of popular activism as have similar movements
regarding other parts of the world. This gives the United States
little incentive to change its policy of supporting repressive
governments.
In other parts of the world, even where
there may have been widespread repression, the United States has
insisted that competitive elections and other legal structures
are an adequate indicator of democracy. This is why even in the
case of El Salvador in the 1980s-where, despite formal competitive
elections, government-backed death squads murdered tens of thousands
of dissidents-the country was labeled a "democracy"
by the U.S. government and much of the American media. The Middle
East is more problematic, however, since some of America's closest
allies are absolute monarchies without even the pretense of democratic
institutions. As a result, successive administrations and the
media have frequently labeled such governments as "moderate,"
even if there was nothing particularly moderate in their level
of despotism. The term is used primarily in reference to governments
that have been friendly to the United States and its foreign policy
goals in the Middle East; it has also been used in reference to
governments that have been relatively less hostile towards Israel
and U.S.-led peace initiatives. In either case, there is virtually
no correlation between this label and a given government's record
on democracy and human rights. This is how Saudi Arabia, a fundamentalist
and misogynist theocracy that engages in widespread human rights
abuses, is labeled so frequently in the United States as a "moderate"
Arab regime.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, most Middle Eastern
states do have elections. They are usually formalities, however,
the primary purpose of which is to ratify the existing leadership.
The smaller emirates of the Persian Gulf, that generally eschew
any kind of formal elections, traditionally maintained legitimacy
through the majlis system, which provides for the direct petitioning
of grievances to royalty. In addition, monarchical succession
was not automatic to the eldest son or any single member of the
royal family; the successor was chosen by a consensus of tribal
elders based on his qualifications. It was the British, who dominated
the Gulf region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
that helped ossify the sheikly system to a largely inherited position.
With the addition of strong American backing in subsequent years,
several of these Arab monarchies have evolved from their relatively
open traditional tribal governing structures to ones more closely
resembling modern bureaucratic authoritarianism. As a result,
human rights abuses have increased in a number of these countries
and the legitimacy of these governments is being challenged to
a growing degree from within. Popular resentment cannot help but
expand beyond the regime in question to its chief foreign patron
as well.
As with other parts of the world, the
U.S. government will often downplay the human rights abuses of
its allies and exaggerate the abuses of its adversaries. To cite
some recent examples: in the State Department's annual human rights
report, the description of the Sultanate of Oman was changed,
as a result of pressure from department superiors, to downplay
the authoritarian nature of the regime. For example, in the 1991
report, Oman is described as "an absolute monarchy;"
a more recent report simply refers to the sultanate as "a
monarchy without popularly elected representative institutions.''
More recently, the 2000 human rights report noted how Egypt's
military courts "do not ensure civilian defendants due process
before an independent tribunal." However, thanks to pressure
from above, all references to these unfair tribunals were dropped
from the 2001 report even though they continue. The State Department
has even allowed Israeli officials to review and edit its human
rights report on Israeli practices in the occupied territories
prior to publication, substantially toning down the original analysis.
Even Iraq had its lack of democracy and poor human rights record
downplayed by U.S. officials during its invasion of Iran in the
1980s. Only after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was the record
corrected and Iraq's violations prominently exposed.
One of the more striking examples of the
U.S. government's lack of concern for human rights regards the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is recognized in
U.S. courts (and elsewhere) as "customary international law"
and as the "authoritative definition" of standards of
human rights. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration, perhaps
the most famous part of the document, guarantees the right of
individuals to leave and return to their own country. The Clinton
Administration, in a break with previous administrations, ended
U.S. support for its universal application, such as in the annual
confirmation of United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 194 guaranteeing the
right of return for Palestinian refugees. Even before the United
States formally reversed its stance, American officials rarely
mentioned it, emphasizing only the first part (the right to leave)
regarding Soviet Jews or other victims of oppression in Communist
countries. When the issue involved allied governments, however,
the right of return was notably omitted.
Rampant double standards also fuel resentment
of the United States. American officials have condemned Iraqi
repression of its Kurdish minority-at least since the 1990 Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait. Meanwhile, just to the north, the United States
has armed the Turkish armed forces in their repression of its
Kurdish minority. Strict enforcement of reactionary interpretations
of Islamic law by Iranian authorities are highlighted as examples
of the perfidy of that regime, while even more draconian measures
enacted in Saudi Arabia are downplayed or even rationalized as
inherently part of their culture. The right of self-determination
for Kuwaiti Arabs while under Iraqi occupation was vigorously
defended, but not the right of Palestinian Arabs under Israeli
occupation or Sahrawi Arabs under Moroccan occupation. Martial
law in NATO ally Turkey during the 1980s was largely supported,
while martial law in the Warsaw Pact nation of Poland during that
same period was strongly condemned and resulted in U.S. sanctions.
The United States has publicly advocated the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein so the people of Iraq could choose their own leaders,
but this right to choose their own leaders is something virtually
no other Arab people have ever known, including those who live
under regimes supported by the U.S. government.
U.S. aid to Israel has generally increased
as the government's repression in the occupied territories has
worsened. Similarly, aid to Morocco increased as that country's
repression in occupied Western Sahara and even within Morocco
itself continued unabated. The United States largely welcomed
the 1992 military coup in Algeria that nullified that country's
first democratic elections. American forces failed to stop widespread
repression, even Iynchings, of Palestinian residents of Kuwait
immediately after the country's liberation from Iraq; these anti-Palestinian
pogroms, in reaction to some Palestinian residents collaborating
with Iraqi occupation forces, constituted collective punishment
based on ethnic origin, a particularly serious violation of international
law.
Rather than encourage democratization
in the Middle East, the United States has reduced-or maintained
at low levels-its economic, military, and diplomatic support of
Arab countries that have experienced substantial liberalization
in recent years. For example, Jordan received large-scale U.S.
support in the 1970s and 1980s despite widespread repression and
authoritarian rule. In the early 1 990s, when it became perhaps
the most democratic country in the Arab world-with a relatively
free press, opposition political parties, and lively debate in
a parliament that wielded real political power within a constitutional
monarchy-the United States suspended foreign aid. Similarly, aid
to Yemen was cut off within months of the newly reunified country's
first democratic election in 1990.26 The official explanation
for the cutoff of U.S. support for these two countries was because
of their failure to support the United States in its war against
Iraq. However, the reason these governments could not back the
American war effort was because their leaders-unlike those of
their more autocratic Arab neighbors that supported the war-needed
to be responsive to their citizenry, who generally opposed the
war, because they had relatively open political systems. By contrast,
American support for dictatorial regimes-such as Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and the smaller Gulf emirates that backed the U.S.-led
war effort-increased during this period.
As Newsweek magazine observed, in reference
to Pakistan, "It may be a good thing that Pakistan is ruled
by a friendly military dictator rather than what could well be
a hostile democracy." As British journalist Robert Fisk noted,
"Far better to have a Mubarak or a King Abdullah or a King
Fahd running the show than to let the Arabs vote for a real government
that might oppose U.S. policies in the region."
Even with repressive regimes the United
States does not support, calls for a change in government do not
mean the United States is necessarily interested in democracy.
For example, despite public announcements of support for democratic
change in Iraq, Richard Haas, former Director of Middle East Affairs
on the National Security Council, observed, "Our policy is
to get rid of Saddam, not his regime."
Despite worldwide trends toward democracy
and greater individual freedom throughout the world, the United
States has helped perpetuate the rule of absolute monarchs in
the Persian Gulf through billions of dollars in military sales
and generous arrangements for economic investments. Many Arabs
oppose these corrupt royal families to the point that they were
not sorry to see the Kuwaiti government temporarily overthrown
by Iraqi forces in 1990. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has demonstrated
outright hostility towards democratic trends in neighboring Yemen-the
only republic on the Arabian Peninsula-with no apparent American
objections.
In recent years, the United States has
rationalized its support for autocratic regimes in the Middle
East, North Africa and Central Asia as a regrettable but necessary
means of suppressing the Islamic opposition. In many respects,
this policy closely parallels the decades of support during the
Cold War of repressive right-wing governments in the name of antiCommunism.
The result is similar, however: the lack of open political expression
only encourages large segments of the oppressed populations to
ally with an underground-and often violent and authoritarian-opposition
movement. In Islamic countries, that often means extremist Islamic
groups. As Hafez Abu Saada, secretary general of the Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights said, "Politics is prohibited
in this society in general, but the government can't close the
mosque." Furthermore, the lack of a free press means that
for many Muslims who do not believe the official media, the only
alternative source of information comes through the Internet and
other anonymous alternative sources, exposing them to extremist
propaganda, including conspiracy theories, without any credible
countervailing sources of information.
Rather than disliking American democracy,
most Middle Easterners are envious of it and are resentful that
the American attitude seems to be that they are somehow not deserving
of it. The anti-terrorist coalition the United States has built
for its military response to the September 2001 attacks-centered
around alliances with the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia, the
military regime of Pakistan and the crypto-Communists that rule
Uzbekistan-has been labeled "Operation Enduring Freedom."
It's an irony lost on few Middle Easterners.
Supporting Repression in Islamic Countries
Saudi Arabia
One of the many ironies in U.S. Middle
East policy is that a nation founded in one of the world's first
republican revolutions is now the major of the world's few remaining
absolute monarchies. For the past twenty years, the United States
has been on record that it is willing to use military force to
repel not just external aggression against U.S. allies in the
Gulf, but internal challenges as well. There is little question
that U.S. economic and military support has kept the hereditary
rulers of the Middle East in power as despots far longer than
a more natural evolution of social change would have otherwise
allowed. When U.S.-trained SANG forces pushed an anti-regime uprising
in 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared " I will not permit
[Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran," referring to the successful
uprising that had ousted the U.S.-backed Shah two years earlier.
The most important American ally in the
Islamic world is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is run exclusively
by a royal family that allows no public dissent or independent
press. Those who dare challenge the regime or its policies are
punished severely. There is no constitution, no political parties
and no legislature. It was under such an environment of repression
that bin Laden and most of his followers first emerged.
Support for these family dictatorships
has been a prevailing theme of U.S. policy for several decades,
a view shared by the British when they were the dominant outside
power. According to Harold Macmillan, who served as prime minister
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it is "rather sad that
circumstances compel us to support reactionary and really rather
outmoded regimes because we know that the new forces, even if
they begin with moderate opinions, always seem to drift into violent
revolutionary and strongly anti-Western positions." More
bluntly, F. Gregory Gause III, a contemporary specialist on Saudi
Arabia at the University of Vermont, noted how "The truth
is the more democratic the Saudis become, the less cooperative
they will be with us. So why should we want that?"
British-based journalist and author Dilip
Hiro describes how the United States does not support democracy
in the Middle East because "it is much simpler to manipulate
a few ruling families-to secure fat orders for arms and ensure
that oil price remains low-than a wide variety of personalities
and policies bound to be thrown up by a democratic system."
In particular, says Hiro, elected governments might reflect the
popular sentiment for "self-reliance and Islamic fellowship."
Indeed, to link arms transfers with the
human rights records of America's Middle East allies, for example,
would lead to the loss of tens of billions of dollars worth of
sales for American arms manufacturers, which are among the most
powerful special interest groups in Washington. It could also
risk the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Saudis have
invested in the American economy. With the exception of Israel,
none of America's allies in the region could really be considered
democracies, yet none require democratic institutions in order
to fulfill American strategic objectives. Most observers acknowledge
that close strategic cooperation with the United States tends
to be unpopular in Arab countries, as are government policies
that devote large amounts of public expenditures towards the acquisition
of weapons, most of which are of American origin. Were these leaders
subjected to the will of the majority, they would likely be forced
to greatly reduce arms purchases from and strategic cooperation
with the United States. In short, democracy among Middle Eastern
countries is seen as potentially damaging to American policy goals.
Uzbekistan and Central Asia
Central Asia offers a particularly ironic
twist in U.S. policy. In some cases-such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Turkmenistan-the United States has allied with old-line Communist
Party bosses from the Soviet era who are still in power as a means
of countering the growth of Islamic movements in those countries.
(This contrasts with previous decades, when the United States
supported such Islamic movements to counter the Communists.) This
comes despite the fact that, in part because of the strong Sufi
influence, most Islamic movements in Central Asia-with the notable
exception of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)-are actually
fairly progressive and moderate as compared with some of their
Middle Eastern and North African counterparts.
In the case of Uzbekistan-the United States'
closest ally in the region-the radical orientation of its Islamic
opposition is a direct result of the Karimov regime's imprisonment
and torture of nonviolent Muslims who dared to worship outside
of state controls. Attacks by the dictatorship's armed forces
against the IMU have resulted in widespread civilian casualties,
not just within Uzbekistan, but also in neighboring Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan. Amnesty International documented widespread human
rights violations during the 2001 counter-insurgency campaign,
where "villages were set on fire and bombed, livestock were
killed, houses and fields destroyed." However, the U.S. State
Department saw the Karimov regime's actions quite differently,
declaring "The United States supports . the right of Uzbekistan
to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity from the violent
actions of the IMU, and commends the measures in the course of
the current incursions to minimize casualties and ensure the protection
of innocent civilians."
Egypt
The United States has traditionally justified
its support for authoritarian regimes on the grounds that the
alternatives would be worse: during the Cold War, the fear was
from forces of the left and, more recently, it has come from anti-American
Islamists. However, the United States is also quite willing to
support Middle Eastern governments that suppress liberal democratic
movements. A particularly vivid example of this lack of concern
for democracy involves Egypt, by far the largest Arab country.
In May 2001, the increasing authoritarianism of U.S.-backed dictator
Hosni Mubarak was demonstrated in the quick conviction of Dr.
Saad El-Din Ibrahim and twenty-seven associates in what was widely
seen as a serious blow against Egypt's burgeoning pro-democracy
movement. Dr. Ibrahim and his colleagues served with the Ibn Khaldun
Center for Developmental Studies, a think tank dedicated to the
promotion of civil society in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.
In 2000, the Egyptian government shut down this internationally
renowned center, known for its study of applied social sciences
in Egypt and the Arab world. Its monthly publication, Civil Society,
had been an important source of information and analysis for scholars
across the globe. The Center had also engaged in the monitoring
of elections and providing workshops in civic education. For these
activities, Dr. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year jail term.
The closure of the center and the jailing of its staff was clearly
intended to deter other academics from pursuing similar research
and related activities, thereby limiting the free exchange of
ideas crucial to advancing political pluralism in Egypt and other
Arab countries. The convictions were the latest in a series of
repressive government measures against other Egyptian scholars,
democrats, and human rights activists, as well as gays and feminists.
The Ibn Khaldun Center advocated just the kind of liberal democratic
values that U.S. foreign policy supposedly upholds, yet there
was little reaction from the Bush Administration until August
2002, when it was announced that no additional foreign aid allocations
would be considered until his release. This did not affect current
foreign aid, however, and no additional allocations were under
consideration anyway.
Egypt's corrupt and autocratic government
is the second largest recipient of U.S. economic and military
assistance in the world, surpassed only by Israel. Concerns by
pro-democracy groups in Egypt and human rights organizations in
the United States that such aid is only making further repression
possible have been rejected by the State Department, which still
insists such aid is necessary to "push the peace march forward."
As long as the Mubarak regime knows that U.S. aid will flow regardless
of its violations of internationally recognized human rights,
there is little incentive for political liberalization. The growing
anti-American sentiment in Egypt stems not as much from U.S. support
for Israel as it does from U.S. support for Mubarak's dictatorial
rule.
Turkey
Turkey is another Middle Eastern country
where the United States has aided conflict and repression. For
over fifty years, the Turkish republic has received large-scale
military, economic, and diplomatic support from the United States.
It was U.S. support of the pro-Western government of Turkey in
the late 1940s-along with its neighbor and historic rival Greece-against
perceived Soviet-instigated communist threats that many historians
point to as the origins of the Cold War. At NATO's southeastern
flank, Turkey's strategic location relative to both the former
Soviet Union and the Middle East made that country, after Israel
and Egypt, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid-primarily
military-in recent decades. Direct grants of armaments were phased
out only as recently as 1998; arms sales to and ongoing strategic
cooperation with Turkey continues.
Turkey has yet to acknowledge its genocide
against its Armenian population over eighty years ago in which
over one million civilians were slaughtered. In order to appease
its Turkish client, the U.S. government has refused to publicly
acknowledge that the genocide even took place, despite the widespread
historic documentation of the atrocities.
p20
The fifteen million strong Kurdish minority, located primarily
in the eastern part of the country, has suffered enormously under
Turkish rule. There have been periods when simply speaking the
Kurdish language or celebrating Kurdish festivals has been severely
repressed. In addition to being denied basic cultural and political
rights, Kurdish civilians have been the primary victims of a Turkish
counter-insurgency campaign ostensibly targeted at the Kurdish
Workers Party (PKK), a Marxist-led guerrilla group fighting for
greater autonomy. The Turkish regime has capitalized on the PKK's
use of terrorism as an excuse to crush even nonviolent expressions
of Kurdish nationalism. The United States has been largely silent
regarding the Turkish government's repression but quite vocal
in condemning what it sees as Kurdish terrorism.
The Clinton Administration justified its
eleven-week bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999 on the grounds
that atrocities such as the Serbian repression of the Kosovar
Albanians must not take place "on NATO's doorstep."
Ironically, similar ethnic-based repression on an even greater
scale had been already taking place for a number of years within
a NATO country. During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States
supplied Turkey with $15 billion worth of armaments as the Turkish
military carried out widespread attacks against civilian populations
in the largest use of American weapons by non-U.S. forces since
Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Most of this took place during
President Bill Clinton's first term. Over 3000 Kurdish villages
were destroyed and over two million Kurds became refugees in an
operation where more than three-quarters of the weapons were of
U.S. origin. The fifteen-year war cost over 40,000 lives.
The Kurds are a nation of more than 25
million people divided among six countries. Their struggle for
self-determination has been hampered by the sometimes bitter rivalry
between competing nationalist groups, some of which have been
used as pawns by competing regional powers. While Iraqi repression
against the Kurds has at times received coverage in the U.S. media,
the situation for Turkish Kurds during the past decade has been
even worse, but has gone relatively unnoticed since the human
rights abuses have been committed by a strategic ally of the United
States. Human Rights Watch, which has also criticized the PKK
rebels for serious human rights violations, has documented how
the U.S.-supplied Turkish army was "responsible for the majority
of forced evacuations and destruction of villages.''
On several occasions, thousands of Turkish
troops have crossed into Iraqi territory to attack Kurdish guerrillas
and civilians there as well. These incursions have taken place
in areas that, since 1991, were declared by the United States
to be "safe havens" for the Kurds. These Turkish attacks
have been far greater in scope than Saddam Hussein's 1996 forays
into Iraqi Kurdistan that resulted in large-scale U.S. air strikes
in response. By contrast, when it came time to respond to Turkey's
assaults, President Clinton stood out as the only international
leader to openly support the Turkish regime. According to then
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, "Turkey's an ally.
And we have no reason to question the need for an incursion across
the border."
The United States provided a major boost
for Turkey's fight against the Kurds in 1998 when the Clinton
Administration successfully pressured Syria to expel PKK leader
Abdullah Ocalan. In February the following year, the United States
assisted Turkish intelligence agents in locating Ocalan in Kenya,
where he was kidnapped, brought to Turkey and initially sentenced
to death. Despite what most observers saw as prejudicial treatment,
the Clinton State Department refused to question the fairness
of the proceedings. Since then, a cease-fire, a more moderate
PKK leadership and a lessening of Turkish repression has given
some hope for a peaceful settlement to the conflict, though hundreds
of nonviolent Kurdish dissidents remain in jail.
The denial of the degree of Turkish repression
has continued under the Bush Administration. In an interview on
July 14, 2002 with CNN Turkey, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz declared that "one of the things that impresses
me about Turkish history [is] the way Turkey treats its minorities."
Such pandering to the Turkish government
was rationalized during the Cold War as necessary to back a key
ally that bordered the Soviet Union. Today, while this veneer
is gone, the policy continues.
p24
Supplying Repression from Israel
Israel has by far the strongest democratic
institutions of any country in the Middle East. Unfortunately,
such respect for individual freedom and human rights is largely
restricted to areas within its internationally recognized borders
and primarily to its Jewish citizens. Indeed, Israeli occupation
forces in the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza Strip are
perpetrating some of the worst human rights violations taking
place in the Middle East today. As an important American ally,
however, criticism of U.S. support for Israeli repression is extremely
difficult within mainstream political discourse in the United
States.
However, U.S. support for Israel in the
face of its poor human rights record is a major source of anti-American
sentiment throughout the Arab and Islamic world. Human rights
violations by the Israeli government have traditionally upset
Muslims more than comparable or even worse human rights violations
by Islamic governments. This comes in part because many Muslims
see Israel as a colonial-settler state created in the interests
of Western imperialism. There is also concern over the religious
significance of Jerusalem, the third holiest city in Islam, being
under what they view as a foreign occupation. The economic and
political burdens from the Palestinian Diaspora on other Arab
countries, combined with anger over the trauma from exile and
the oppression of occupation experienced by the Palestinians,
has made this perhaps the single most important issue in international
politics for most of the world's Muslims. Added to this is the
tendency for some Muslim governments, particularly in the Arab
world, to use the plight of the Palestinians as a means to distract
their populations from domestic concerns.
Many United Nations reports and resolutions
critical of Israeli human rights violations, while in the most
part valid, have lacked credibility because these efforts were
supported by some of the world's most tyrannical states. Even
in the United States, some groups that raise concerns about Israeli
human rights violations have been noted for the failure to also
criticize Arab regimes that violate human rights. Such organizations
may sometimes attract followers who do not uphold a universal
concern for human rights, but carry a hidden-and sometimes not-so-hidden-anti-lsrael
or even anti-Semitic agenda.
As a result, many Americans sympathetic
with Israel are concerned that making even legitimate criticisms
of Israel's human rights record may in some ways encourage anti-Semitism
or lead to accusations of harboring such motivations. When a number
of peace and human rights organizations, politicians, and academics
with a strong universal commitment to democracy and human rights
have raised the issue of human rights violations by Israel or
the subject of democratic rights for Palestinians, they have been
subjected to unfair denunciation. As a result, critics of Israel's
human rights record and of U.S. complicity in Israeli repression
in the occupied territories are even more on the margins of political
discourse than are those who criticize U.S. support of its repressive
Arab allies. In addition, because Israel's leadership has publicly
endorsed Western values regarding democracy and human rights and
has created exemplary democratic institutions for its Jewish citizens
that surpass any other Middle Eastern country, it is hard for
many Americans to understand why the human rights policies of
a democracy in a region dominated by dictatorships should be challenged.
Furthermore, while there are certainly widespread Israeli violations
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights against Arab populations
under their control, Israel's most egregious violations of human
rights generally fall under the Geneva Convention, which is less
likely to be cited by those raising issues of human rights.
p33
Understanding "Our Commitment to Freedom"
To those in the Arab and Islamic world,
U.S. defense of Israeli repression against their Palestinian brethren
is perhaps the most sensitive of a whole series of grievances
regarding American callousness towards internationally-recognized
human rights in the Middle East. Yet it is the U.S. support of
repression by regimes of Islamic countries that Muslims know the
best. Morocco and Turkey, like Israel, have utilized American
weapons in the occupation and repression of other peoples. Uzbekistan,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Islamic countries have suffered
under autocratic rule maintained, in varying degrees, through
American military, economic and diplomatic support.
In a major White House speech on U.S.
policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in June 2002,
President Bush insisted that democratic governance and an end
to violence and corruption must be a prerequisite for Palestinian
independence. This came across as particularly ironic, given that
his administration-as well as previous administrations-has so
strongly supported a series of violent, corrupt and autocratic
regimes throughout the Middle East and beyond. Millions of people
watched the president of the United States demand that the Palestinians
create a democratic political system based upon "tolerance
and liberty" while at the same time befriending other Middle
Eastern governments that are among the most intolerant and autocratic
regimes in the world. It was ironic that President Bush specifically
criticized the Palestinian Authority's lack of a fair judicial
system. It was the same infamous State Security Court he criticized,
which has carried out some of the worst human rights abuses, that
was established with strong U.S. support and was once praised
by Vice President Al Gore when he visited Jericho in 1994.
Until the extent of the repression and
the American complicity in the repression is recognized, it will
be difficult to understand the negative sentiments a growing number
of ordinary people in the Islamic world have towards the United
States. Therefore, self-righteous claims by American leaders that
the anger expressed by Arabs and Muslims towards the United States
is because of "our commitment to freedom" only exacerbates
feelings of ill-will and feeds the rage manifested in anti-American
violence and terrorism.
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