RubinReports
Barry Rubin
“It has been reliably reported that Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani, a 37-year-old Iranian, was sentenced to death on Monday.” There are three things that make this sentence of great significance. First, Zamani is the first Iranian sentenced to death by the regime for demonstrating against the Islamist government’s stealing of the June 12 election. There are, however, a lot more people still to be tried, probably after being tortured. Zamani was charged with waging war against God, insulting what is holy, propaganda activity against the Islamic regime, actions against national security and illegally exiting Iran.
Zamani’s testimony is going to be used against a lot of those currently held prisoner because, probably after being tortured himself, he made wild claims in court about his being an agent of the shah who had been groomed by U.S and Israeli intelligence to sow confusion.
This is also important because at the moment the United States is engaging Iran that regime is stirring up hysteria about American subversive plots on which all internal opposition is blamed. Among many other things the Iranian government is doing, this is not the behavior of rulers who are moving toward making a deal with the United States and its allies.
Second, how do I know about this? Because the death sentence was publicized by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), located in New Haven, Connecticut. Now, however, the U.S. State Department has cut off funding for this center. Why? Because the Obama Administration is engaging Iran, not viewing it as an enemy or even as a repressive, aggressive dictatorship.
Third, the U.S. government has not seriously protested and certainly not taken any action regarding the trials, the election-stealing, the appointment of a wanted terrorist as minister of defense, the promotion of a key man in hiding Iran’s nuclear program to head of the Basij, the concealment of a huge nuclear enrichment facility, and dozens of other actions of the Iranian regime.
The reason is the Obama Administration’s philosophy, which misunderstands the nature of international affairs. It believes that you can either engage or put on pressure, not both. Yes, I know that there are meetings going on behind the scenes and constant reassurance from the administration that it is working on sanctions. But this is so low-key and deliberately designed not to scare Iran as to be ineffective for anything except persuading those dissatisfied with the policy to be patient.
So here’s the combination of what we see: defunding those who monitor human rights in Iran, ignoring the regime’s extreme repression, and engaging it in a way that for all practical purposes can be called uncritically. (Yes, I know that there are some State Department statements at press conferences expressing formal concern but this is the minimum the administration can get away with to assuage domestic critics.)
Meanwhile, a small event virtually ignored in the United States shows how what once would have become a major scandal is now brushed aside.
The Egyptian-born Dina Mogahed, a White House advisor on the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, appeared on a television show in Britain to praise Islamic Sharia law. She said the Western view of Sharia is "oversimplified" and, "The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with Sharia compliance.”
The sophistication of her thought can be shown by the fact that Mogahed contradicted her own statement. According to the Daily Telegraph, she:
“Admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with `maximum criminal punishments’ and `laws that... to many people seem unequal to women,’ but added: `Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.’"
In other words, most Muslims also misunderstand Islam, too.
The equally big problem is that she was appearing on a London-based television program of the Hizb ut Tahrir party, a revolutionary group that is viciously antisemitic and seeks to overthrow every moderate regime in Muslim-majority countries in order to create a caliphate ruling under Sharia law.
A Sharia law, I might add, that Mogahed either thinks they either do or don’t understand properly. If she thinks they misunderstand it, however, she certainly didn’t say so on the program.
In a recent previous program, members of the group attacked all existing Western law as merely “man-made,” condemned the Western system as a “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism,” and said women (presumably including Mogahed) should not be permitted to hold any important jobs in government.
This is standard Islamist ideology, but why is a White House advisor validating it by her appearance, failing to contradict such ideas, and in some ways even agreeing with the same basic approach?
Presumably, this is what nowadays passes for moderate Muslims.
(Oh by the way, at almost the exact moment the show with Mogahed was being made, Hizb ut Tahrir was leading violent riots in east Jerusalem over a false claim that Jews were assaulting holy places on the Temple Mount.)
During the broadcast, she described her White House role as "to convey... to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want."
The problem here is that--based on her interview and statements elsewhere--she apparently thinks that most Muslims want Sharia law to apply at least over themselves in the United States. That's pretty shocking.
Clearly, the problem is that in defining “Muslims” she is not backing those few who are courageously advocating a moderate, reformed Islam but those who hold radical Islamist views. She might mean that most Muslims don't correctly understand their own religion because, for example, they believe that any Muslim who wants to change religions should be killed. But Mogahed is certainly not campaigning against these interpretations.
Under any previous criteria, Mogahed should resign right now. But she won’t and no one will ask her to do so.
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Finally, it is always important to have a sense of what passes for accurate information in the Arabic-speaking world and the level of rationality on which its elites operate. In an interview on al-Jazira television, October 6, Fadil al-Janabi, former head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, was interviewed from his safe haven in Damascus.
Might not Western governments like the chance to question Janabi on what he knows about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program? Well, they can’t, you see, because he is being protected by the Syrian dictatorship.
Might not his extradition or availability for interview be a condition for engagement and other benefits given to Syria?
Alas, we live in an era in which democratic countries are just supposed to make concessions to radical terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships. (When I read that sentence I said to myself: Surely that should be toned down and is too polemical. But on consideration it seems completely accurate.)
There is a story, still unconfirmed, that the European Union is about to sign a very beneficial economic deal with Syria without any agreement on the part of Damascus regarding human rights, the sponsorship of terrorism, or anything else in that regard.
Janabi repeated several times his contention that the United States and Israel murdered 1,500 Iraqi scientists. The interviewer noted in passing that this seemed “a rather large number,” but Janabi responded it was an underestimate.
Being challenged to deal with facts seriously, confusing ideology with reality, and simply making up whoppers is all too common in the Arabic-speaking world, as no one knows better than frustrated Arab liberals. One reason for this is that the region lacks the strong Enlightenment heritage and institutions that are supposed to rein in such craziness—free newspapers, open-minded universities, for example—that exist (used to exist?) in the West.
Thus, when the UN Goldstone Commission goes to Gaza and interviews Hamas officials and Gazans living under their rule (either supporting the regime or intimidated by it), all sorts of lies about Israel’s behavior during the Gaza war is made up. The UN Commission then collates it, prints it up, and the next thing you know Libya and other such regimes are posing as champions of human rights setting the international agenda.
Meanwhile, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center loses its U.S. government funding. Guess we’ll have to depend for our information about what’s going on in the Middle East on Libya, Dina Mogahed, Hamas, and Hizb ut Tahrir.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
It is my personal opinion that ‘writing the wrongs’ constitutes propaganda that is poorly checked and inaccurate. This is not a personal attack on the author(s), but a stand against the spread of information that deliberately defies accountability for human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and the deliberate use of degrading and generalised material on the real problems of Palestinian statelessness.
ReplyDeleteDon’t fund ignorance, make your own mind up.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/JBRN-7VYHMS?OpenDocument
http://globalpolicy.org/home/189-israel-palestine/48266-israel-vs-human-rights.html
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2009&country=7748
http://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/israel-and-occupied-territories
http://www.rsf.org/en-rapport154-Israel.html
http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/By+Symbol?SearchView&SearchOrder=1&WV=Y&Query=israel&sufs=1
http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/crisisgroup?q=israel&ie=UTF-8
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/annual-report-2008-israel!OpenDocument
It is my opinion that Barry Rubin nails it in every respect. The remark the previous poster made in regard to the "crimes committed by Israel" during the Cast Lead operation ignores the reason for the operation in the first place. Like the small fact that Hamas and other Islamic groups were sending thousands of un-aimed rockets towards Israeli towns near the border with Gaza, killing, maiming and terrorizing the citizens of Sderot and Ashkelon for example. Israel defends its citizens, the Arabs try to kill them, and often their own if they don't tow the party line. Your ignorance of the actual situation on the ground is obvious. Do your homework before posting falsehoods. And FYI, during Cast Lead, Israel as always, did everything humanly possible to warn the civilians where not to be during the fight, including with phone calls, dropped pamphlets etc., and always sought to minimize civilian death as it always does. Israel's military is the most humane fighting force on the face of the planet. Jews believe in life and peace, Arabs believe in murder, torture, strapping suicide vests on children with Down's Syndrome and other such humane acts. Their goal, plain and simple is the absolute domination of Islam throughout the entire world, and they don't even hide the fact! How some people can still put their names to a post that is so uninformed is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteIn my post I should have addressed the previous posters statements more clearly, and for that I apologize. First :
ReplyDeleteJustJames "but a stand against the spread of information that deliberately defies accountability for human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and the deliberate use of degrading and generalised material on the real problems of Palestinian statelessness."
I don't know where you get this idea of no accountability for human rights in Israel. Israeli Arabs are CITIZENS, have the same rights as Israelis for the most part. (certain security is necessary for obvious reasons) Israeli Arabs have use of Israeli schools, hospitals, and everything else Israel offers it's citizens. Their are Israeli Arabs in Israel's government. MK's. There is no such thing as "Occupied Territories" that is Arab propaganda. In 1967, when Israel was attacked by Syria, Israel and Jordan, Israel took and held a small amount of land for defensive reasons mostly, the Golan Heights being a prime example. Israel was too vulnerable to fire from the heights and had to keep it. Israel gave up the vast amount of territory it had won--that's right WON--when you are attacked in a war, and you hold territory, that territory becomes YOURS. The reason that the "Palestinian" Arabs have it so bad, is that they still live in the 7th century, and like it that way. What have they done with all of the billions of dollars they have received from the world to improve conditions for their citizens since Hamas took over Gaza, when Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza? Nothing is the answer--they used all of that money to buy better missiles from Iran to use against Israel. Incidentally, when polled, neither the "Palestinian" Arabs, nor the Israeli population wants a two state solution. I'm waiting for Obama to get it.
As a Human Rights researcher whose job it is to research and write about these issues, I feel I should point out that writing or researching Israel is extremely difficult with some major info issues so it is near impossible to make statements like 'palestinian arabs have the same rights as Israelis for the most part'unless, like me, you've spent weeks on end trawling through constitutional, national, policy and court law and can back up statments with objective sources.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, You are right that the basic law makes few distinctions in writing, but in practise there are several ways in which the application consistently and indirectly denies the equal rights of arab-israelis. For example, even on a relatively obscure level,the right to carry arms is different for arab israelis and 'naturalised' Israelis and that any job in security, on the rail or trains,andin the police/IDF/ARMY is therefore largely restricted from arabs or palestinians. The spousal rights are also different for arab israelis or palestinians who have partners across Israel's many internal 'lines' and arbitrary 'borders' - Israelis can cross these lines but so called arab israelis get checked and searched, humiliated and often denied crossing from one town to another etc to see their own families.
These are just relatively obscure examples in Israel itself - as for accountability, I don't say anywhere that Israel is accountable for its Human Rights as we all know that Israel is largely immune from international criticism, intervention and its own laws on enforcing human rights in practise.
If you care to look, the human rights situation is widely condemned in places like Rwanda, Belize and Zimbabwe where extra-judicial or secret police arbitrarily violate both human rights laws and so called national laws; Israel also has several 'extra-judicial' groups that are not subject to the same laws, and even the IDF are widely recognised as having impunity from anything other than token prosecutions in secetive millitary courts for actions that violate human rights.. but Israel isn't flagged with anywhere near the same urgency as say, Zimbabwe.
Finally, I would rather you do some research of your own than call my post 'uninformed'; you'l find plenty to keep you occupied if you start with the list I provided.
ps. NONE of this post has even started on Israeli accountability for its actions in occupied territories as the list is frankly far too long to waste here.
Justjames,
ReplyDeleteUnlike you, I have not spent weeks or months researching this subject for myself, I have spent DECADES doing my research.
So, you are a human rights researcher? For whom may I ask, UNHRW or some other Palestinian apologist organization that is sooo fair to Israel? Have you spent much time in Sderot I wonder? Have you seen the children running for the bomb shelters when the sirens go off, sometimes too late?
You asked me about sourcing, I can provide you with plenty of eye witnesses to the rocket fire, suicide bombings (that were so prevalent before the security barrier went up) that blew up school buses, cafes where tourists gather etc. Those poor innocent Palestinians. Please.
Your sources are just more of the same, Palestinian apologists all, none to be taken seriously. One only need to glance at your list. The very names of your sources speak for themselves.
The reason your Palestinians get checked and double checked is to make sure they are not bombers wearing belts or are on a list of known terrorist operatives, we need to do more of that in the US with the threat of global Islamic terror.
The US in fact called on the Israelis to help secure our transportation systems (and other targets) against attacks as they have so much experience fighting terrorism of the Muslim sort.
I have got to laugh out loud when I read where in your post that:
"we all know that Israel is largely immune from international criticism, intervention and its own laws on enforcing human rights in practise."
That is the most ridiculous thing I have read in some time, and I read some pretty outrageous things. Israel is criticized all the time for many things they have not done, or done in self defense. Funny, you don't mention any of the Arab states when you talk about human rights, when everyone with eyes that reads know all about their sharia law and all of the human abuses that that entails.
I am sure you don't condemn the human rights abuses in say China, Tibet, Russia, Darfur (which you did not even mention) etc. etc. etc., with the same fervor that you do the Israelis, despite Israel's stellar record of respect for human rights--excepting for those who want to murder them. The UN is a joke in the way deals with Israel and appeases the Arabs, and most Americans know it.
The only thing the Arabs have ever given the world in the last several hundred years is terrorism and militant Islam. What a boon to society. Oh and yes, they sell us oil. Lots of it.
Yep, you sure sound informed and unbiased to me. Not.