“Romantic” revolutions and “humanitarian” missions

Arundhati Roy says-

“I love it when people accuse me of romanticising the Maoists. I believe in the romance of revolution.”

I never thought that someone could describe a revolution riding on bullets and bayonets as being romantic.

And-

“Naxalism had to be an armed movement. It’s not that they (Naxals) took to violence all of a sudden. They debated long before resorting to this form of struggle,” Roy said while delivering her lecture on ‘The War on People’ organised by Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, here.

“Besides, the followers of Mao were always armed men. But look at them, they are only using bows and arrows while security forces of the government are using the most sophisticated weapons.”

Bows and arrows indeed. Toys.

If those who had legitimate grievances fought only for that cause, and took up arms to accomplish that, it would be a just war, especially after decades of indifference and persecution. But once Mao’s ideology is brought in and they band together to replace the government with one of the Maoist variety, one cannot feel any sympathy for such a movement, not if one considers the bloodbath the reds are responsible for over the last century, all in the name of the “common good.”

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Israel. One cannot offer complete support to the country in the best of circumstances because it’s in the same league as the US, India and a few other western democracies—a country that is only (still) relatively free. Once the Islamic world, and Hamas, recognizes its existence, and the fact that a two-state solution is the only solution, there will be peace. Till then, its war. And there is no place for selective “humanitarianism” in such a war. Of course this is with reference to the flotilla raid and subsequent deaths. Two pro-Israel pieces. One, in the NYT, by the country’s ambassador to the US-

There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.

This is why the organizers of the flotilla repeatedly rejected Israeli offers to transfer its cargo to Gaza once it was inspected for military contraband. They also rebuffed an Israeli request to earmark some aid packages for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for four years.

In the recent past, Israeli forces have diverted nine such flotillas, all without incident, and peacefully boarded five of the ships in this week’s convoy. Their cargoes, after proper inspection, were delivered to non-Hamas institutions in Gaza. Only the Marmara, a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means such as fouling the propeller, violently resisted. It is no coincidence that the ship was dispatched by Insani Yardim Vakfi (also called the I.H.H.), a supposed charity that Israeli and other intelligence services have linked to Islamic extremists.

The other by Ed Cline-

The Mavi Marmara was a setup, designed to entrap Israel. Note that terrorists usually prefer to be referred to as “resistance” fighters, when in truth they are the aggressors. Oft times they are called “freedom fighters”; we should take that term literally, because it is freedom they are fighting.

Further, one must question the “humanitarian” compassion of the flotilla activists who were not terrorists. I have yet to hear of them organizing an underground railroad for Iranian dissenters. I don‘t recall them demonstrating in protest of the murder of Neda Soltani, the Iranian girl killed by a government sniper during the June demonstrations last year against the rigged reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Have they launched a raid on Cuban prisons to free political prisoners, or sent aid to Venezuelans suffering under Hugo Chavez’s impoverishing tyranny? No.

But when the regimes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela employ force against their political opposition, either in the streets or in violent purges, the silence of these “humanitarians” is deafening. We never hear of them organizing a flotilla with the purpose of “embarrassing” a dictatorship and bringing world opprobrium to bear on it.

These humanitarians are very selective of which tyrannies they oppose. If it’s a moderately free country, which Israel is, and especially if it is productive despite its socialism, then they’re against it. Never mind that its committed enemies wish to destroy it and initiate a second holocaust. Never mind the many Israelis murdered by Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and other “freedom fighters”; they were guilty by association and deserved to die. As for Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela — well, these are cultural matters beyond judgment and it would be arrogant to meddle in those countries’ affairs. Why, it would be the height of moral hegemony!

Shobhan Saxena of the TOI had this to say on the matter-

A new video released by the Israeli government shows one of the soldiers who took part in yesterday’s bloody attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla. In this propoganda clip, the Israeli soldier justifies the attack, claiming they were attacked first by the people on the flotilla. “It was a lynch,” says the soldier. “Every guy that came down the ropes was taken aside, and everyone there had metal rods, knives, slingshots, glass bottles.” Since the Israelis can only be victims, and never aggressors, the soldier tries to justify the cold-blooded murder of 10 people armed with “rods, slingshots and bottles.”

Enough is enough. It’s time to declare Israel a terrorist state. That’s what it is. It reacts to slingshots with machine guns.

A terrorist state. I guess if the JuD flew a plane across the LoC on a “humanitarian mission” into Kashmir, he would expect the Indian army to look the other way. And if the plane was brought down, then that would be a “terrorist act,” and India a “terrorist state.”

One more thing. I don’t understand the bows and arrows vs. guns, and broken bottles vs. guns, argument. Guns can kill. So can arrows and bottles. A weapon is a weapon.

Assisted suicide, crazy Britain etc

All countries are crazy to some extent. But the British, they have elevated craziness to an art-form. This-

As a piece of legal grotesquerie, the attempted arrest of the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has its funny side. The biggest joke lies in the role of the UN. It was the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed the report by the retired South African judge Richard Goldstone on the Gaza conflict, in which Israel as well as Hamas was accused of war crimes.

The fun lies in the membership of this august body, and guardian of all our rights. Currently those empowered to sit in judgment on the Israeli democracy include Cuba, China, Russia, Kirghizstan, Djibouti and Qatar. In a non-democracy, of course, Ms Livni would have had no bother; with no elections to dislodge her she would still be a minister, and so exempt from arrest. There must be a lesson there.

[...]

How well I remember sitting through finger-wagging lecturettes on how to achieve a truly ethical foreign policy, given to our Foreign Secretary in private meetings in the interstices of UN debates by drug-running South American prime ministers or presidents, bribe-grabbing Arab princelings, or the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the twist in whose lips, an English tabloid was disrespectful enough to suggest, had come about through an incurable addiction to lying.

Under our pristine, ultra-democratic system (any politically motivated Joe can apply for an arrest warrant under the International Criminal Court Act, 2001) and indulgent lawyers, Britain is a soft touch for propagandistic exercises like the one we have seen. And whatever the real reason that Tzipi Livni didn’t in the end come, the ruse most certainly succeeded.

Their minds filled with selective TV imagery of the Gaza conflict, the reaction of many a fair-minded Brit to the idea of seizing a former Israeli minister will be: “Why not? They’re trying the Serbs, aren’t they? And it’s the UN, isn’t it?”

and this-

A businessman who fought off knife-wielding thugs after his family were threatened has been jailed for 30 months.

The case prompted renewed debate over the level of force that house-holders can use against raiders.

Munir Hussain, chairman of the Asian Business Council, was praised by a judge for his “courage” in defending his wife and three children from an attack — but then jailed for the violence of his response. One of his attackers was spared a jail sentence.

The incident occurred when the Hussain family returned from their mosque during Ramadan to find three intruders wearing balaclavas in their home. Hussain was told that he would be killed. His family’s hands were tied behind their backs and they were forced to crawl from room to room. Hussain, 53, made an escape after throwing a coffee table and enlisted his brother Tokeer, 35, in chasing the offenders…

Walid Salem, one of the intruders, suffered a permanent brain injury after he was struck with a cricket bat so hard that it broke into three pieces.

Did the dacoit deserve to have his head bashed in? Probably not. But once you attack someone and issue death threats making it a “your life or mine” case, you shouldn’t expect the victim to serve you tea when the tables are turned. This isn’t a case of some kid stealing trinkets or a hungry man stealing bread, but a home invasion involving death threats and assault. Though the judge is right-

“If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.”

he should have considered that the beating was part of a single event, not calculated revenge. Such judgments, and varied judgments at that, can lead to a chilling effect on self-defense.

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I don’t know when the SC will come to its senses on the question of “right to life.” In the Shanbaug case, it asks the lawyer-

“Do you mean right to life includes right to die?”

Of course it does! But the lawyer, probably apprehensive about the case based on previous “pro-life” decisions says-

“She is going through a torture of a life. Is this human rights? Should the medical authorities not be activated to do something? This is not a case to be left aside and forgotten. The apex court must lay down some guidelines.”

and-

“Is not keeping the woman in this persistent vegetative state by force-feeding violative of her right to live with dignity guaranteed by Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution?”

There is only one thing the court should worry about in “right to die” cases: that the request, whether current or left as part of a living will, is genuine and that murder (for whatever reason) is not being disguised as suicide. The right to life is all encompassing—absolute.

What needs to be done in cases where no such wish exists but the person is in a vegetative state is an open question, and even though ET writes that-

the woman … does not want to live any more. Doctors have told her there is no chance of any improvement in her state. So she, through her ‘next friend’ … decided to move the SC with a plea to “direct KEM Hospital not to force-feed her.”

I don’t see how a brain-dead person could make such a request (there are conflicting reports on the same). Which suggests that this really isn’t a “right to die” case but a “put her out of her misery” one. Without a request from the person in question, this is an ethical dilemma and one cannot simply side with “human rights activists” making a “humans rights” case. If it is the latter, the SC should concentrate on that aspect of the case and not walk down a blind alley. If it is the former, the answer should be a resounding yes. That might be expecting too much from it, but miracles do happen.

Democratically-elected terrorists

The Economic Times editorializes-

The Israeli air assault on Gaza, fierce even by Israel’s brutal standards, has once again highlighted the complicity of the US and the UK in the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people. The stated aim — destruction of Hamas — is only part of what Israel wants to accomplish with this latest campaign.

Israel wants to create a fresh crisis, just as the new President takes over in the US, which further delays the larger political resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. The attacks are also a continuation of the Israeli project of denying Palestinian rights while reinforcing the idea of supremacy of its army.

[...]

Since Hamas’ election victory in 2006, Israel faced a democratically elected Palestinian government, which was just not as ready to bend over backwards as Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

It is undeniable that Hamas’ ideology is embedded in a certain conception of nationalist Islam, and that a major issue is its official position of not recognising the state of Israel. But equally indisputable is the fact that it was electorally chosen by the Palestinians precisely because of the rampant corruption within, and inefficacy of, the Palestinian Authority.

The ‘middle path’ at work again. The Palestinians elected the Hamas to govern themselves – fine. But when it comes to Israel-Palestine relations, the Hamas does not recognize Israel. And neither does most of the Islamic world – Jordan and Egypt are notable exceptions. Not only that, Hamas is a terrorist organization hell bent at wiping Israel off the face of the earth, a dream it shares with so many other Islamo-fascist terror groups and Islamic theocracies and republics. That it does not have the capability, yet, in no way means that its intentions are any less dangerous. That is why all this bull-shit about democracy must stop – now. Democracy does not grant legitimacy to terrorists, although many world ‘leaders’ would like to see that happen. Every one who wants Israel to show restraint needs to know what Hamas’ ideology is-

On 25 January 2006, after winning the Palestinian elections, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar gave an interview to Al-Manar TV denouncing foreign demands that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist. After the establishment of Hamas government, Dr Al-Zahar stated his “dreams of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it…I hope that our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine (including Israel). This dream will become real one day. I’m certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land”. He also “didn’t rule out the possibility of having Jews, Muslims and Christians living under the sovereignty of an Islamic state, adding that the Palestinians never hated the Jews and that only the Israeli occupation was their enemy.”

I would like to see editors and world leaders negotiating with people who do not recognize their right to exist – it should be, well, a piece of cake. There is but one solution to the whole conflict – an agreement where the entire Arab world recognizes the State of Israel. If that does not happen, one of these days, Israel will find that the only way it can prevent rockets from killing its people is by carpet-bombing the entire Gaza strip.

In this excellent NYT article, Benny Morris explains the Israeli position, especially their fears. Western ‘democracies’ do themselves a great disservice when they look at Israel as the aggressor. If Israel goes, so will the West.