[statecom-discuss] an interesting article

[mikeheichman at verizon.net]

The Neo-Barbarians
  
 Written by Michael Warschawski    
 Tuesday, 24 October 2006

>From an ethical point of view, history never stands in the same place: if
it doesn’t move towards less oppression and 
more justice, it moves towards less rights and more barbarism. Paraphrasing
the German revolutionary socialist Rosa 
Luxemburg, who predicted twenty years before the rise of Nazism, “either
socialism or barbarism,” we can say today 
that the 21st century will be “either the rule of Right or the law of the
jungle.” It seems, however, that in the first 
decade of the third millennium, the law of jungle is taking the lead. 

In an article published one month ago in Haaretz, Israeli journalist and
analyst Tom Segev tried to challenge the 
common idea that the global political context of our time is much worse
than it used to be, let’s say, two decades 
ago. According to Segev, war, oppression and destruction have characterized
the political reality of our planet during 
the last five decades, and nothing has changed either qualitatively or even
quantitatively in the recent past. Segev 
goes further yet, claiming that the “clash of civilizations” is not a new
phenomenon, but has been characteristic of 
the previous decades, though under different labels. 

There can be no doubt that the four decades following WWII were not
peaceful, and during this period more than 76 
million human beings perished, in wars, revolutions and through
mass-repression by dictatorships.* It is also true 
that during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the “north” conducted a colonial war
against the “South,” and the “West” a 
“civilization war” against the eastern communist bloc. 

There is, nevertheless, a qualitative difference between the present
situation and the forty years that followed the 
victory over fascism. Three main factors limited the hegemonic aspirations
of the USA following WWII: 
	
• 	The existence of the Soviet superpower; 
	• 	The strength of an organized  working class in the imperialist
countries; 
	• 	The effects of the memory of  the horrors of fascism on international
public opinion, and the perceived 
illegitimacy  of unilateralism, military aggression, etc. 

Due to these factors, the big powers were obliged to maneuver under the
pressure of huge political opposition (anti-
colonial movements, mass democratic oppositions) and constantly needed to
invent pretexts with which to provide 
legitimacy for their wars and acts of repression throughout the world. 

However, 50 years after the victory over fascism, these constraints no
longer bind the big imperialist powers—the US 
in particular. Unilateralism, “preemptive” wars, colonial ventures, etc.,
are once again legitimate, or, more precisely, 
no longer challenged in a way that could seriously harm their perpetrators.
With the absence of a powerful 
opposition, the new neoconservative leadership of the Empire has been able
to create a new “global discourse,” 
which, at least partially, has been able to conquer the minds of
substantial parts of those who are the victims of the 
Empire. The four main elements of this discourse are: 
	• 	
The collapse of Soviet Union is the ultimate evidence that capitalism is
the only viable way; 
	• 	
(Western) civilization is threatened by a new global enemy: terrorism; 
	• 	
A global-permanent-preemptive war is necessary to protect civilization
against the new Barbarians  (terrorism/Islam) 
and their allies; 
	• 	
In this war for the survival of civilization, there cannot, and should not,
be any constraints: all the  norms and 
conventions of the past fifty years are caduc. 

And, indeed, in their crusade for what they call “the New American
Century,” i.e. the imposition by force of the total 
hegemony of their empire under the shallow pretext of a “war against
terrorism,” the US administration has declared 
a lack of relevance to every moral constraint and international regulation, 

Already in 2003, George W. Bush announced that the Geneva Conventions are
obsolete in the war against terrorism. 
Guantanamo was opened in violation not only of international law, but also
of the law of the United States of 
America. In order to deprive suspected terrorists of any kind of protection
or rights, the same administration 
decided to invent a new category of detainees: neither criminal nor
prisoners of war, but “suspected terrorists.” 

The similarity between the US and Israeli practices is astonishing: already
in the 1970s, the Israeli military authorities 
announced, in the Israeli Supreme Court, as well as in international
conferences, that, in the case of the Occupied 
Palestinian Territories (OPT), the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
Moreover, since the late 1960s, Palestinian 
political prisoners have been categorized as neither criminal prisoners nor
political detainees; and the “secret prison” 
discovered by Attorney Lea Tsemel, near kibbutz Ma’anit, in 2003, is a
twin-brother of Guantanamo. 

In addition, according to both the US neoconservative leadership and the
Israeli government, the aim of wars is no 
longer to win a battle, to conquer a territory or to change a regime, but
to destroy states and to dismantle whole 
societies. 

The state of Israel—but also the great majority within Israeli society—have
fully internalized this neoconservative 
analysis and the strategy which logically follows. In fact, in the last
decade, Israel-Palestine has been the laboratory 
for such a strategy, and the Palestinians its guinea pigs. This is the
case, even on the level of armament, as the 
leftwing Italian newspaper El Manifesto has recently confirmed, unmasking
the utilization of one of the new and 
most barbarian type of bombs manufactured in the US and used in the last
offensive against the civilian population 
of Gaza. 

The Israeli war against the Palestinians is clearly aimed at destroying
Palestinian society and transforming the 
Palestinians from a nation into scattered tribes, as the Americans are
trying to do in Afghanistan and in Iraq. 

Indeed, all wars are barbaric, but the Israeli war in the OPT (and its
broader context, the endless preemptive war 
against terrorism) represents a new stage in modern barbarism. Though the
definition of “genocide” is wrong, one 
can adopt Bir Zeit University Professor Salah Abdel Jawad’s from definition
of “sociocide,” or Israeli sociologists’ 
concept of “politicide.” 

The land on which the Palestinian nation is rooted is being stolen by
“legal settlements” and “illegal outposts,” 
provoking more and more “self-transfer”; the Wall is atomizing Palestinian
society into isolated cantons; new laws 
and regulations are aimed at limiting the entry of Palestinians into the
Palestinian territory, as well as their capacity 
to move within their own territory; the democratically elected
representatives of the Jerusalem population have been 
expelled from their city, and dozens of ministers and legislative council
members kidnapped and jailed, as hostages 
for an eventual exchange of prisoners. 

On top of all these evils are the horrors of Hebron, where the local
population is subjected to daily harassment by 
the settlers and the Israeli military, and denied normal access to a
substantial part of their city, and the martyrdom 
of Gaza, which has been the target of an economic blockade and systematic
Israeli bombardments, destroying the 
basic infrastructure and slaughtering hundreds. 

Needless to say that all these crimes, some of which have been described as
crimes against humanity by Human 
Rights Watch, are not provoking any sanctions, or even protest by the
so-called international community. Impunity 
to the barbarians is the new norm, from Iraq to Gaza. As for the Israeli
“peace camp,” it entered into a deep coma 
the day Ehud Barak returned from Camp David, swallowing the big lie about
the “existential danger” threatening 
Israel with a certain amount of emotional release. 

The similarity between the strategy and methods of Israel and those of the
US, raises the question of who is the dog 
and who is the tail, or, in other words, who is moving whom: is the Israeli
lobby pushing the US administration 
according to the needs of the Zionist State, or the US administration
pushing Israel to implement its global war 
policy in the Middle East? 

In reality, this is a wrong question: there is neither a dog nor a tail,
but one global war of re-colonization, and one 
aggressive monster with two ugly heads. Neoconservative strategies were
elaborated jointly by US and Israeli 
politicians and thinkers, and implemented simultaneously, though one cannot
deny that Israel had the opportunity 
to test this strategy and these methods before the USA, Israeli neocons
having won the elections four years before 
their American counterparts. 

The US and Israel—but also Blair’s Great Britain, Italy of Berlusconi and
even Romano Prodi, and increasingly other 
western countries—are conducting a world-war against the peoples of the
planet, with an unhidden agenda: to 
impose, by violence and/or threat, the rule of the Neoliberal Empire. This
global war is a crusade of the Neo-
Barbarians against human civilization. 

The role of Israel in this partnership is to eradicate all forms of
resistance to the Empire in the Middle East, and first 
of all the emblematic Palestinian resistance, which, at this moment in
history, is a line of defense not only for the 
Palestinian people, but for all the peoples and nations of the Middle East,
from Lebanon to Iran. This is why support 
for the Palestinian resistance needs to be understood as a strategic
priority for all the enemies of Barbarism, in the 
Middle East as well as in the rest of the world. 

* “Democide Since World War II” By R.J. Rummel (numbers for 1945 – 1987).

 

Michael Warschawski is an Israeli activist and co-founder and co-chairman
of the Alternative Information Center 
(AIC). 
 Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 October 2006 )





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