Israel Soldiers attack European peace activists.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
PERSPECTIVE: WISING UP TO THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION
PALESTINE won full membership of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris, a day
before the start of the 2011 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in
Doha, Qatar. With the necessary two-thirds vote cast by the 193 UNESCO
members needed for membership, Palestine garnered a majority of 107, 14
against, and 52 abstentions.
The decision seemed appropriate given that the
Palestinians have been deprived of educational, scientific and cultural rights
and opportunities to advance themselves.Those whose land was once occupied and
colonised would understand the importance of education because the lack of it
would cast a lasting impact long after the colonisers have left.
In that regard, it is difficult to comprehend why
there should be any objection at all, on anyone’s part, to the Palestinian
desire to be a full UNESCO member.More so an objection led by the United
States, a country that has benefited so much from education, scientifically and
culturally, and which is very much aware of its importance.
In fact, the US is concerned about losing out
following the decline of its educational achievements internationally.It is
therefore baffling to learn how the successful Palestinian bid could prove
costly to UNESCO because the US has a law that prohibits Washington from
funding any UN-affiliated body that accepts Palestinian membership.
The US is likely to withdraw its financial
contribution of about 22 per cent of the agenc y’s budget, even though this
will damage “core US interests” in a number of key countries, including
Afghanistan and Iraq undertaken by UNESCO, as warned by its director-general
Irina Bokova in the Financial Times.It is indeed ironic that the US can spare
billions of dollars to facilitate the blossoming of the Arab Spring to usher in
the future. And trillions were squandered to pursue regime change
militarily.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in
the US, who spoke at the summit, cited that the country spent 30 times more
militarily than for social development.This has resulted in the widening
inequalities in education among the US minorities, namely the Hispanics and
African-American population. He described this as a failure on the part of the
US. Palestinians need more opportunities to educate themselves and
preserve their cultural heritage which goes back thousands of years to the days
of antiquities.With the full UNESCO membership, they are better able to seek
UNESCO’s assistance in recognising several monuments in the occupied
Palestinian territories as world heritage sites that cut across
religio-cultural lines.The need for this was highlighted at the summit in the
Culture and Learning session, whereby the importance of transmitting traditions
from generations to generations is regarded as a crucial part of lear ning.
This is well illustrated by Chief Almir Narayamoga
Surui, leader of the Paiter Surui, an indigenous Amazonian tribe in Brazil,
whose population, language and way of life are being threatened with
extinction. Culture, after all, shapes approaches to education and
learning, and provides the basis for identity and diversity.The summit is
reminded yet again of the tens of millions of children who are not in school
and their dark world without the benefits of education when we fail to provide
for them despite the stated target of Millennium Development Goals on access to
basic education universally.
Instead, UNESCO director Professor Georges Haddad
said that education today is being turned into a “market” that puts “humanity
in danger”.In this respect the summit sent a powerful global message when it
celebrated a Laureate in Education for the first time. Sir Fazle Hasan Abed,
founder and chair of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, was honoured with
the Inaugural 2011 WISE Prize for Education in recognition of his work that
spans four decades to empower millions of poor children worldwide through
education by pioneering a system outside the prevailing one.
The US$500,000 (RM1.5 million) prize and a gold
medal aim to put education on the same pedestal as the various prestigious
international awards in other disciplines so as to raise public awareness of
the importance of Changing Societies, Changing Education, the theme of the
summit. WISE 2011 was attended by 1,200 participants from 120 nations. It
has indeed created another milestone in transforming education globally.
The writer is vice chancellor of Albukhary
International University
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Palestine should've got statehood by now - NST
2011/09/20
By W.Scott Thompson
IT doesn't seem rational. The cool-headed American president, seeking rapprochement with the Muslim world, reluctantly makes it clear that his rep at the United Nations will veto a Palestinian bid for statehood. Ah, it's the Jewish lobby in the United States, supporting a nutty state that wants it all, so long as it has its single backer in line.
Finally, I find a voice articulating precisely what is wrong in Israel. Carlo Strenger, a professor of psychology, writing in the International Herald Tribune, notes that while 87 per cent of the population supports the demonstrators for social justice et al., the "national-religious parties in the governing coalition... are based on the belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to what they call the Greater Land of Israel".
But on the American side, it's also a bit more complicated. There is a tendency in human relations for backers of a leader, an idea, an ideology to outflank that idea in its own predilections.
The famous lobby backs positions in America that Israeli defence planners consider absurd. After George W. Bush's election, the neo-cons of America fancifully laid out plans of redrawn borders in the Middle East ludicrously favourable to Israel. That suited the rabbinate in Israel, though it didn't fit the majority of American Jews who argued for "reasonable" behaviour by Israel, peace and settlement (as opposed to "settlements") over intransigence or defiance of world opinion and the American presidency itself.
Read the "J Street" studies in Washington and you see the work of highly intelligent American Jews who see the ultimate fatuity of the lobby's implicit endorsement of the rabbinical position. Instead of seeing an orthodox "majority", they realise the demographic inevitability of an apartheid Israel swamped by Muslim majorities when you include the occupied territories that Netanyahu can't envisage giving up.
The "debate" in America has now become ludicrous, as analysts try to justify the "necessity" of an American veto to head off the Palestinian authority's drive for statehood.
To my astonishment, a former National Security Council official, writing no less for the Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that even if such a state were to gain recognition it would sacrifice much of its long-term goals.
Robert Danin thus says that while achievement of some United Nations status might enhance leverage in bargaining with Israel, "accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades.
In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute -- one of scores around the world -- not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many".
Let me see if I got this right. Gaining international recognition and a rightly deserved place at the table lowers Palestinian legitimacy, because there's no "diplomatic framework" that has sanctioned the new position, as if the UN is not the highest one of all.
But, of course, that place at the table precisely enshrines some of the Palestinian agenda. Has any historical grouping of people ever preferred a moral high position to hard-grounded realities, like statehood? Ask the heirs of Mahatma Gandhi. He used the moral high ground not for an "existential position", but for the leverage it provided for nationhood.
In my lifetime of watching politics, I've never seen such meretricious and specious argument by supposedly smart people.
In the real world most of us inhabit, Palestine will win some sort of international recognition that manifestly ups the ante and puts Israel even more on the defensive, however much the rabbis may not give a hoot. America looks ridiculous, and the Muslim world, far from preferring some theoretical statelessness for Palestine, is further inflamed.
It may be worth noting that it wasn't just the Israeli ambassador that was rescued from the mobs in Cairo; it was his whole 80-strong embassy. And it took six hours of negotiations among the authorities in Cairo, Netanyahu and Obama himself to achieve even that. So Netanyahu expects Obama to pull his chestnuts out of the fires he's lit all over the world?
There just may be some limits to the recklessness of the Israeli leader, imposed by realities all around him, however much the rabbinate will put its collective head in the sand. As I write, the International Herald Tribune headlines "Israel at Sea, Adrift and Alone" by Thomas Friedman, a most influential Jewish-American writer.
The writer is emeritus professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, United States
Source : Palestine should've got statehood by now http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/19sct/Article/#ixzz1ZgbnH3f9
By W.Scott Thompson
IT doesn't seem rational. The cool-headed American president, seeking rapprochement with the Muslim world, reluctantly makes it clear that his rep at the United Nations will veto a Palestinian bid for statehood. Ah, it's the Jewish lobby in the United States, supporting a nutty state that wants it all, so long as it has its single backer in line.
It must be a bit more complicated. James Rosenau, an American political scientist, 43 years ago presented the world as a series of "systems", in which one variety was a "sub-dominant system" or one where a minority dominates the overall state system. Sounds like Tea Party America.
But his example then, and still could be, was the rabbinical ultra-orthodox Israeli bloc that through constitution, biblical text and emotional sway, dominates the state, and makes deviation from its desired course near-impossible. The 1967 victories in the Six-Day War simply gave them proof of God's will to restore their right to the world of King David, no matter what's happened in the intervening two-and-a- half millennia.
But his example then, and still could be, was the rabbinical ultra-orthodox Israeli bloc that through constitution, biblical text and emotional sway, dominates the state, and makes deviation from its desired course near-impossible. The 1967 victories in the Six-Day War simply gave them proof of God's will to restore their right to the world of King David, no matter what's happened in the intervening two-and-a- half millennia.
Finally, I find a voice articulating precisely what is wrong in Israel. Carlo Strenger, a professor of psychology, writing in the International Herald Tribune, notes that while 87 per cent of the population supports the demonstrators for social justice et al., the "national-religious parties in the governing coalition... are based on the belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to what they call the Greater Land of Israel".
Their bet is Israeli demography ultimately, with patience, leads to an "Orthodox Jewish majority", just so long as the state doesn't give up the West Bank, with its numerous Israeli holy sites of the pre-Common era. Got that?
I won't bother to refute their conviction, since it's all but self-explanatory in its fallacies. The important part is the depth of their conviction and their unwillingness to negotiate one iota of any of this away. The pressures of the outside world can be left to that world to deal with on its own. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who may not technically be of their number, shares their belief, if only out of bullheadedness and (for now) the desire to show his ability to knock Barack Obama into his own self-dug hole.
I won't bother to refute their conviction, since it's all but self-explanatory in its fallacies. The important part is the depth of their conviction and their unwillingness to negotiate one iota of any of this away. The pressures of the outside world can be left to that world to deal with on its own. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who may not technically be of their number, shares their belief, if only out of bullheadedness and (for now) the desire to show his ability to knock Barack Obama into his own self-dug hole.
But on the American side, it's also a bit more complicated. There is a tendency in human relations for backers of a leader, an idea, an ideology to outflank that idea in its own predilections.
The famous lobby backs positions in America that Israeli defence planners consider absurd. After George W. Bush's election, the neo-cons of America fancifully laid out plans of redrawn borders in the Middle East ludicrously favourable to Israel. That suited the rabbinate in Israel, though it didn't fit the majority of American Jews who argued for "reasonable" behaviour by Israel, peace and settlement (as opposed to "settlements") over intransigence or defiance of world opinion and the American presidency itself.
Read the "J Street" studies in Washington and you see the work of highly intelligent American Jews who see the ultimate fatuity of the lobby's implicit endorsement of the rabbinical position. Instead of seeing an orthodox "majority", they realise the demographic inevitability of an apartheid Israel swamped by Muslim majorities when you include the occupied territories that Netanyahu can't envisage giving up.
The "debate" in America has now become ludicrous, as analysts try to justify the "necessity" of an American veto to head off the Palestinian authority's drive for statehood.
To my astonishment, a former National Security Council official, writing no less for the Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that even if such a state were to gain recognition it would sacrifice much of its long-term goals.
Robert Danin thus says that while achievement of some United Nations status might enhance leverage in bargaining with Israel, "accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades.
In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute -- one of scores around the world -- not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many".
Let me see if I got this right. Gaining international recognition and a rightly deserved place at the table lowers Palestinian legitimacy, because there's no "diplomatic framework" that has sanctioned the new position, as if the UN is not the highest one of all.
But, of course, that place at the table precisely enshrines some of the Palestinian agenda. Has any historical grouping of people ever preferred a moral high position to hard-grounded realities, like statehood? Ask the heirs of Mahatma Gandhi. He used the moral high ground not for an "existential position", but for the leverage it provided for nationhood.
In my lifetime of watching politics, I've never seen such meretricious and specious argument by supposedly smart people.
In the real world most of us inhabit, Palestine will win some sort of international recognition that manifestly ups the ante and puts Israel even more on the defensive, however much the rabbis may not give a hoot. America looks ridiculous, and the Muslim world, far from preferring some theoretical statelessness for Palestine, is further inflamed.
It may be worth noting that it wasn't just the Israeli ambassador that was rescued from the mobs in Cairo; it was his whole 80-strong embassy. And it took six hours of negotiations among the authorities in Cairo, Netanyahu and Obama himself to achieve even that. So Netanyahu expects Obama to pull his chestnuts out of the fires he's lit all over the world?
There just may be some limits to the recklessness of the Israeli leader, imposed by realities all around him, however much the rabbinate will put its collective head in the sand. As I write, the International Herald Tribune headlines "Israel at Sea, Adrift and Alone" by Thomas Friedman, a most influential Jewish-American writer.
The writer is emeritus professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, United States
Source : Palestine should've got statehood by now http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/19sct/Article/#ixzz1ZgbnH3f9
Tony Blair: Time to go? - Al Jazeera
History of salesmanship
Blair started his career with the Labour Party in the mid 1980s as a junior parliamentarian and became its spokesman for six years. Three years later, he was the party's candidate for prime minister under the slogan: "Things can only get better." And things did get better - for him, but not necessarily for the country. He won the elections in a landslide and changed the rebranded the party "New Labour". During his tenure, public relations superseded reform in government, promoting "Cool Britannia" against the backdrop of mounting nepotism and financial discrepancies. Blair's so called Third Way (with selected ideas from British sociologist Anthony Giddens) left the British economy in shambles and its society in a terrible malaise. The liberalisation of the banking sector and financial services left London far more exposed than its European partners when the financial crisis hit. Things got much worse during his second term when Blair turned to foreign affairs. He sold George W's "global war on terror" after 9/11, earning him the title of "Bush's poodle". The low point of British politics came against the backdrop of Blair's enthusiastic support for Bush's invasion of Iraq. Despite the terrible fiasco of the occupation and the revelation that the war's justifications were false, Tony continued to sell the expired and rotten policy without shame.
From selling war to peddling peace
Many demanded that he be put on trial for war crimes. But in the age of empire, he was appointed as the point man for the Middle East peace process. He went on to defend Israel's policy in the West Bank. He promoted its "humane occupation" each time Israel removed one of its several hundred roadblocks and checkpoints that choke life and living in Palestine. Tony Blair was nowhere to be seen during the first nine days of Israeli's 2008 war on Gaza. He was on holiday. Even today's British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was irritated: "People in the Middle East are entitled to ask themselves, 'Where is Tony Blair?'" When 500 people were getting killed in the impoverished Gaza strip, Blair - according to his aide - was working tirelessly (at the private opening of an Armani store in London) to mediate a ceasefire. Arguably, Blair's part time job as Quartet special envoy says as much about his capacity to rebound as it does about Washington's disrespect for the Arabs; about a humiliated and divided Middle East, or about the nature of the "peace process" itself. It also says much about the so-called international Quartet, that the Bush administration appointed the body to prelaunch its sponsored negotiations in 2002, which were, of course, an utter failure. Why would the Secretary General of the United Nations that represents the whole community of nations accept being a junior partner in a geopolitical configuration? It is beyond me. Or, for that matter, why should Europe or Russia have their own seats at the negotiating table? Who said these hypocritical, cynical entities could deliver peace in the Middle East? Be that as it may, the Arabs can't fire President Obama or Russian Prime Minister Putin. They cannot ask Ban Ki-moon to step aside. They could, however, end the Quartet's mission. They could at least tell the Quartet to fire its special envoy before he becomes persona non grata. He is already unwelcome in Palestine. In retrospect, Palestinians reckon it's unfair to call Tony a poodle. Poodles are harmless.
Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.
Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011929183947664140.html
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Palestine & UN: History of a double standard - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
Failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's 40-year occupation, in the words of UN former Secretary General Kofi Annan, would “continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality”.
No cause has consumed as much UN paper work as the plight of the displaced and occupied Palestinians. But hundreds of its resolutions on Palestine have not been respected let alone applied for over half a century.
Nowhere has the UN ideals and mechanisms been more mired in power politics than in Palestine. The efforts to neutralise UN intervention have been championed mainly by the United States. This week’s efforts by the Obama administration working on behalf of Israel took advocacy into a whole new level.
Washington has vetoed more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions critical of its policies some of which were drafted by its European allies. A quick look at today’s Middle East makes it clear that such obstructions worked for the interest of neither party, nor for peace and security in the region.
Cold-War rivalries have also contributed to UN paralysis in the Israeli Palestinian-Arab conflict, which explains why more than half of the 690 resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from 1947-1990 have been ignored.
But what justifies sidelining the UN ever since, while keeping it at an arm’s length from a two decades of Peace Process?
The short answer is a double standard.
All major post-Cold War conflicts have seen direct UN involvement including, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and of late, Lebanon, South Sudan. Not the Palestine problem. It was deferred to the US sponsored diplomatic process even though Washington’s close relations with Israel rendered it anything but an impartial broker.
Not only was Palestinian Israeli conflict snatched out of the world body, most relevant US resolutions critical of Israel were ignored by the US sponsors.
Only after the peace process failed to yield a solution a decade later, did the Bush administration allow the United Nations to join, and even then, only as a junior partner in a newly formed International Quartet that includes the European Union and Russia, all of whom are members of the UN!
Meanwhile, Israel has disregarded tens of resolutions, “censuring”, “calling”, “urging”, “recommending”, or “condemning” its attacks, settlement, deportations, occupation, etc.
Likewise, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions fell on deaf ears. The only time the UN was allowed to act, was in 1997 when it sent few international unarmed observers to the occupied city of Hebron. Alas, they weren’t mandated to speak publicly about the ongoing violations.
For the past four decades, Israel has violated all relevant UNSC council resolutions such as the resolution 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure of status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
It also rejected Resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. The only UN Security Council Resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, i.e. 242 of 1967, was also systematically violated. Israel has been expanding its settlement activity when the resolution notes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force".
Paradoxically, Israel was created by a UN recommendation for Partitioning Palestine in 1947, and was accepted as a new UN member on the basis of its commitment to respect its resolution, and specifically UNGA 194 regarding the return of the Palestinian refugees.
Now that all other venues have been tried and failed, including 18 years of bilateral negotiations, the UN Security Council must carry its responsibilities by demanding that Israel carry its obligations under UN charter and by recognising the Palestinian right for self-determination in a state of their own. Period.
Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst.
He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.
Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011921105321715717.html
No cause has consumed as much UN paper work as the plight of the displaced and occupied Palestinians. But hundreds of its resolutions on Palestine have not been respected let alone applied for over half a century.
Nowhere has the UN ideals and mechanisms been more mired in power politics than in Palestine. The efforts to neutralise UN intervention have been championed mainly by the United States. This week’s efforts by the Obama administration working on behalf of Israel took advocacy into a whole new level.
Washington has vetoed more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions critical of its policies some of which were drafted by its European allies. A quick look at today’s Middle East makes it clear that such obstructions worked for the interest of neither party, nor for peace and security in the region.
Cold-War rivalries have also contributed to UN paralysis in the Israeli Palestinian-Arab conflict, which explains why more than half of the 690 resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from 1947-1990 have been ignored.
But what justifies sidelining the UN ever since, while keeping it at an arm’s length from a two decades of Peace Process?
The short answer is a double standard.
All major post-Cold War conflicts have seen direct UN involvement including, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and of late, Lebanon, South Sudan. Not the Palestine problem. It was deferred to the US sponsored diplomatic process even though Washington’s close relations with Israel rendered it anything but an impartial broker.
Not only was Palestinian Israeli conflict snatched out of the world body, most relevant US resolutions critical of Israel were ignored by the US sponsors.
Only after the peace process failed to yield a solution a decade later, did the Bush administration allow the United Nations to join, and even then, only as a junior partner in a newly formed International Quartet that includes the European Union and Russia, all of whom are members of the UN!
Meanwhile, Israel has disregarded tens of resolutions, “censuring”, “calling”, “urging”, “recommending”, or “condemning” its attacks, settlement, deportations, occupation, etc.
Likewise, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions fell on deaf ears. The only time the UN was allowed to act, was in 1997 when it sent few international unarmed observers to the occupied city of Hebron. Alas, they weren’t mandated to speak publicly about the ongoing violations.
For the past four decades, Israel has violated all relevant UNSC council resolutions such as the resolution 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure of status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
It also rejected Resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. The only UN Security Council Resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, i.e. 242 of 1967, was also systematically violated. Israel has been expanding its settlement activity when the resolution notes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force".
Paradoxically, Israel was created by a UN recommendation for Partitioning Palestine in 1947, and was accepted as a new UN member on the basis of its commitment to respect its resolution, and specifically UNGA 194 regarding the return of the Palestinian refugees.
Now that all other venues have been tried and failed, including 18 years of bilateral negotiations, the UN Security Council must carry its responsibilities by demanding that Israel carry its obligations under UN charter and by recognising the Palestinian right for self-determination in a state of their own. Period.
Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst.
He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.
Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011921105321715717.html
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