Thursday, March 31, 2011

Unrest in Arab World Could Lead to Mideast Peace

By Raanan Geberer
Originally Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — By now, everybody knows about the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, not only in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria, but in nations that most people weren’t even aware of, like Bahrain.

Everyone also knows that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most burning issues in the Middle East. If it’s not the Number One problem — that “honor” probably belongs to the tension between Iran and the Arab world — it’s certainly in the top three.

Some people in the West, mainly hard-core conservatives, fear this revolutionary development and are certain that takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood is right around the corner. Maybe it is in, but maybe more democracy is around the corner instead. We’ll have to wait and see.

If the Arab regimes are transformed, at least partially, into genuine democracies, this could definitely help efforts to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For years, Arab regimes and their controlled media have been emphasizing hatred of Israel 24 hours a day. Viewers of state TV stations are exposed to hysterical tirades about Israel and the Palestinians that often crosses the line into anti-Semitism. Israel is characterized as being propped only by the United States, and as an entity that is certain to fall on the “day of revenge.” The Arab leaders do this in order to take their people’s minds off the real problems in their countries. And more than 60 years after the establishment of Israel, Palestinian refugees, depending on the particular country, often are given very little or no rights from their “brother Arabs” and still are forced to live in squalid “refugee camps.”

I’m not saying that Israel is blameless. Certainly, Israel frequently violates international law and flouts U.N. resolutions by permitting settlement activity in the West Bank, by imprisoning Palestinian suspects for months without charging them, and by its continued blockade of Gaza. Israeli soldiers harass Palestinians at checkpoints on a regular basis. Even within Israel, Arab villages offer much fewer essential services than Israeli towns.

Even so, if democracy in the Arab world comes to pass, a free discussion of the issues can only help the situation. Arab leaders may come forward with their own peace initiatives rather than cynically calculating that they have more to win from peace than from a no-war, no-peace situation.

And even if Israeli leaders typically respond with their own hard-line tactics, the Israeli public may finally start questioning certain outdated assumptions that are at the heart of Israeli culture (“The Arabs respect only strength,” The non-Jewish world hates us no matter what we do”) and become more open toward peace.

For those who are sincerely interested in Arab-Israeli peace, Arab democracy can only be seen as a step forward.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Does Obama Have a Double Standard

By Raanan Geberer
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Recently, when the people of Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and finally Libya simultaneously revolted against dictatorial rules, no one was more vociferous in his praise of these popular revolutions than President Obama.

After a brief silence of a few days when a successful revolt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak broke out, Obama made statements that there is no doubt that the people demand change, and that we were at a historic moment. He later hailed Mubarak’s decision to resign.

In the case of Libya, perhaps because Libya was never an ally of the United States, Obama was even more forthright. He first made statements demanding that dictator Moamar Khadafi stop the violence against his own people, and soon demanded that Khadafi step down in favor of rumors yet to be determined.

But if you look much closer to home, you’ll see a situation where Obama has suddenly become timid. Starting in Wisconsin and then spreading to Ohio and Indiana, public employees, including teachers, firefighters and others, and their supporters in state legislators are leading huge protests and sit-ins against right-wing Republican governors’ efforts to take away collective bargaining rights from public-employee unions.

Many observers believe that this is just the first salvo in an effort to de-legitimize public-sector unions in general, and possibly, eventually to destroy the union movement in the private sector, or what remains of it, as well.

Since the 1930s, the union movement has been one of the greatest supporters of the Democratic Party. But what does Obama say about the situation in Wisconsin? Almost nothing! The most he’s said is that he’s "troubled” by the fact that the governor of Wisconsin is “making it hard for unions to collectively bargain.” That’s the equivalent of scolding someone for jaywalking across the street.

Contrast this statement with the strong statements on issues of all sorts made by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson, and we see why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual nowadays.

In the face of a Republican opposition that holds in contempt not only Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal but even many of the Progressive-era reforms of Theodore Roosevelt, the Democratic Party needs stronger leadership, one that doesn’t hesitate to defend its power base.

It’s time to run a primary candidate against Obama, even if that candidate can’t win, just to wake Obama up. We don’t need another Jimmy Carter—we need another William Jennings Bryan.