Unpalatable Democracy

Common Sense
John Maxwell

When foraging bees find a new source of food, they return to the hive and perform a little dance in front of the hive. This dance is full of significance. Depending on how the bee moves, up and down and side to side, and how it waggles its body, it tells its fellow workers where the new food source is, what sort of food is there and whether there is much of it or just a little.

This enables the hive to decide whether to send more workers to gather the food and how many of them to send. That's how a beeline begins.

Bees are social animals, that is, they live in communities, and like all other social creatures, bees communicate with each other just like whales, parrots, dogs and human beings.

Journalists are the human equivalent of the forager bees and of the sentry bees. In another analogy, journalists may be described as the social equivalent of the immune system (sentries and guards) and of the animal senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

We have taken on one of the hardest tasks in human society, to deliver the news, the information without which the community would be blind, deaf and open to attack by all sorts of predators from other large animals to the most minute and lethal viruses like HIV/AIDS.

Which is why, next to oxygen, water and food, the freedom to communicate, freedom of expression, is the most basic of human rights. Democracy cannot exist without freedom of expression because democracy is the child of freedom of expression. Without the freedom to express ourselves, we are slaves, no more, no less.

I had believed in the veracity and honour of American news magazines until the time, as a schoolboy, when I read a report in Time about something that had happened in Jamaica. That salutary confrontation shattered forever my illusions about the Press; working as a journalist obliterated whatever was left in the detritus of my naivete.

On Tuesday, for instance, I was flabbergasted by the fact that Mr Bush was not attacked on all fronts by the Press of the world for repeating an old, long discredited canard: "On September 11, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction."

A few minutes earlier Mr Bush had said: "To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of goodwill and respect for one another, and I will do my part."

I cannot understand how anyone could, in 2006, utter those two sentences in the same speech and not be conscious of the fundamental contradictions between the two sets of words. And, if the president meant what he said about respect, he should have enough respect for his audience and his own reputation to be able to pronounce the word 'nuclear' properly.

For me, that failure indicates not only a lack of good manners but a callous disregard for the opinions of anyone but himself. He clearly believes that not only can he get away with anything, but that it is his right to be able to get away with whatever he chooses to do. Psychiatrists have a word for people like that.

The world's Press is not much different, nor are many of the world's governments. CNN's Wolf Blitzer, as might be expected, was quick off the mark on January 26: "President Bush called for democracy, but he may have cause to regret it following a landslide victory by the militant Islamic group Hamas, which in the past has sent out waves of suicide bombers in Israel."

Blitzer's intro to the story was an exhortation to prejudice. Had he tried even to achieve minimal balance, he could have said that Hamas has faithfully observed a ceasefire with Israel for the past two years and had declared that it was prepared to continue that ceasefire. But Blitzer, like many other famous Western journalists, is not too concerned with the truth in the sense that the truth is a statement of all the relevant facts.

Among these relevant facts is that Hamas has rigorously observed a ceasefire with Israel for the last two years. In November 2004, Sheik Hassan Yousef, then recently released from an Israeli prison after serving a 28-month sentence, was a top leader of Hamas on the West Bank. He said then that Hamas would consider a formal ceasefire, if Israel reciprocated, if Israel was prepared to release Palestinian prisoners, withdraw from occupied land and stop targeted killings of militants.

"The truce should have a price," he said. "There is no truce from one side. The truce should be two-way. But a truce with continued Israeli aggression is not acceptable to us."

Most westerners who read such words don't understand what Sheik Yousef meant by Israeli aggression.

According to Al Jazeera, Israel is terrorising Palestinians by sending fighter jets to break the sound barrier over Gaza. "Low-flying F-16 fighter jets break the sound barrier above populated areas, creating thunderous shock waves which shake buildings, break windows, blow off doors, and cause widespread panic, fear, and hysteria."

Initially, the attacks came as a response to a barrage of rockets fired by resistance groups into Israel. Eventually, the rockets stopped, but the booms continued. Recently, Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israel in reprisal for the Israelis' 'targeted assassination' of two of its leaders. This brought back the sonic terror, collective punishment, proscribed under the laws of war.

Eyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist, says the attacks poroduce an array of psychosomatic effects ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety attacks, seizures and nausea to nosebleeds and miscarriages.

"Although it is not lethal, it can lead to death indirectly, of unborn children, it can lead to highly traumatising effects on children particularly, and adults too," he says. "I have seen children who have changed completely after being subjected to sonic booms, from sociable to clingy and anxious, crying all the time.

"Some of them do not eat or sleep as they used to. Older children have difficulty concentrating, while others became violent."

Seems like a very good way to create more terrorists.

Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli military historian, told Aljazeera.net: "You haven't seen anything yet; I would argue the Israeli army so far has been nice and has not done anything serious."

And what do you make of the Israeli practice of destroying the livelihoods of Palestinians by demolishing their farms and olive groves and stealing the olive trees?

According to Al Jazeera: The Israeli army has been destroying, uprooting and in some cases stealing Palestinian olive trees in several parts of the West Bank. Ayed Hureibat, a Palestinian owner of one property, said: "They uprooted the huge olive trees with the jackhammers, trimmed the bigger branches with large electric saws and then lifted the trees aboard awaiting trucks apparently in order to replant them elsewhere in Israel. It is theft in broad daylight."

Hureibat said soldiers threatened to shoot and kill villagers who sought to protest the Israeli action. "I told one of the soldiers to allow me to speak to the officer in charge of the operation. He told me go speak with Allah."

Then there is the destruction of homes: Between 1967 and 1987, hundreds of houses were destroyed. According to UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency in Palestine), between October 2000 and January 2004, 3,062 homes were completely or partially demolished and 2,524 homes needed repair in the Gaza Strip following attacks by the Israeli military.

"Since the beginning of the second Intifada (Al Aqsa), Israel has killed 749 children, 22 per cent of the overall death toll. Of the Palestinians injured, 42 per cent are children."

The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, which provided the above quotation, also says:

"Palestinian children suffer from the Israeli policies of assassinations, injuries, home demolitions, imprisonment, and bereavement.

This is all in addition to the harsh living conditions of poverty, over-crowdedness, malnutrition, and inability to access necessary educational and health facilities resulted from checkpoints and closures. It is needless to say that children's basic rights, guaranteed by different international conventions, are systematically violated by the Israeli government."

"Children have the right of protection against violence and physical and psychological torture. Three hundred and ten Palestinian children, among them 12 females, are still imprisoned in Israeli jails. One hundred per cent of these children have been exposed to different physical and psychological torture. Seventy-eight of these children are suffering from serious physical problems."

Four years ago, writing from Amsterdam, I reported in my column ('Those Without Sin', March 2002) "Israel, under Ariel Sharon, has been targeting not only journalists, but ambulances, doctors and nurses, women and children as well as Palestinian policemen and even Yasser Arafat himself."

The International Red Cross, not known for taking sides, last week condemned Israel's attacking Red Cross and Red Crescent vehicles and workers. "It is absolutely contrary to all the rules of international humanitarian law that these symbols, these emblems and the people wearing them be targeted."

These abuses are a small part of the barbaric treatment meted out to the Palestinian people by Israel and particularly by Sharon. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that Israelis are united behind such policies.

Hundreds of Israelis have gone to jail for refusing to fight in this unjust war against the Palestinians and others - men and women - are constantly engaged in the process of making peace with the Palestinians and helping them in various ways, including by filing lawsuits against the army and the government to stop some of the worst abuses.

I would guess that most Israelis, if they were able to get out from under the official miasma of fear and hate spread by the right wing, would opt for a just peace with the Palestinians and that the Palestinians would opt for a just peace with the Israelis.

The problem is that there are powerful interests in Israel and in the western world who don't want peace and are prepared to do anything to prevent it. The opportunity at this moment is not to decide where the balance of terror lies, but to face facts and work for peace.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said a few days ago: "Obviously, if you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders I think that all the governments should recognise that administration and let them form the government as decided by the people themselves."

He went on to say Israeli security confirmed "to me, [that] Hamas leadership in August of 2004 pledged themselves to apply a ceasefire and they haven't committed any actions of violence in the last 18 months. This indicates what they might do in the future, but it also indicates another thing I think is quite interesting. That is that Hamas is a highly-disciplined organisation and if they say 'We will not have any violence from our people', I think they can enforce what they say."

That American savant, Henry Ford, once said that his customers "can have a Ford in any colour they want, as long as it's black". Our modern Henry Fords, the Bush/Rumsfeld/Rice axis, also believe that you can have a democracy in any style you want, as long as it is controlled by the US.

Fifty years ago, the United Nations was controlled by the United States, Western Europe and an obedient bloc of Latin American satellites. Today, democracy is breaking out all over. And the Bush/Rumsfeld/Rice cabal don't like it one little bit.

They much prefer what I call the Haitian solution, in which the voice of the people is stifled, and their freedom of expression is suspended until the world runs out of oil.

The Americans supported what they called Haitian democracy, until they discovered that President Aristide was convinced that he was president not only of Haiti, but of the Haitian people. Their response was to try to starve the Haitians into submission, and when that failed, to depose the president, kidnap him and transport him - as the French did Toussaint - to the other side of the Atlantic.

Last week a coalition of lawyers in Haiti and outside launched a petition in the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, (IACHR) the Supreme Court of the Americas, accusing the United States of responsibility for the coup which deposed President Aristide and unleashed upon the Haitian people, a barbaric and murderous regime, stifling their human rights, including their most fundamental, the right to be who they choose and to govern themselves in their own way.

When the United States was hauled before the World Court by Nicaragua, the US insisted that it did not recognise the competence of the court and refused to pay the damages awarded to Nicaragua. Since the IACHR was partly created by the US, that excuse won't work this time.

Mr Bush should be told the story of the English King Canute, whose courtiers convinced him that he commanded so much power that he could command the tides of the ocean to moderate themselves. When he essayed to prove that thesis, all he got was wet feet and probably pneumonia.