Forum Post: If you want to read the inside story on the Arab world
Posted 11 years ago on March 29, 2013, 8:34 a.m. EST by ericweiss
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interview with King Abdullah
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/monarch-in-the-middle/309270/?single_page=true
Fyi, "The Treason of Intellectuals", by Chris Hedges :
from which : "The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks” - who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens— did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.
"The moral cowardice of the power elite is especially evident when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians. The liberal class, in fact, is used to marginalize and discredit those, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, who have the honesty, integrity and courage to denounce Israeli war crimes. And the liberal class is compensated for its dirty role in squelching debate.
“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take,” wrote the late Edward Said. “You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.”
“For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence,” Said went on. “If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”
ad iudicium ...
I wouldn't say that it is so much as an inside story. He is the biker King. Jordan maintained much more communication with Israel then people are aware of.
“Isratine.” I agree that a two state solution may have been possible up till about 2006 or even when Hamas came to power. At that point it was pretty much over.
I'm a fan of a three state solution.
Gaza & the West Bank are
geographically disconnected
economically disconnected
politically disconnected
religiously disconected
Isn't THREE obvious ?
Hmmm. Ever heard of 'bantustans' ?! Or the phrase 'divide and rule' ?!! So, like South Africa - how about a 'One State Solution' ?!!! Thus, further consider :
"Rabbis for Palestine - A One State Solution For All" [5:12] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjNJacDvPo ;
"Inevitability of the One State Solution", by John Mearsheimer [63:05] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq9PsXRbAzM ;
"The Stuttgart Declaration for a One-State Solution in Palestine", by Lawrence Davidson : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27359.htm ;
"Endless ‘debate over two-state solution’ is cover for the real story, annexation of West Bank", by Philip Weiss : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33518.htm ;
"Jimmy Carter - Netanyahu has Abandoned The Two-State Solution in Favour of Greater Israel", by Raphael Ahren : http://www.timesofisrael.com/jimmy-carter-netanyahu-has-abandoned-two-state-solution-in-favor-of-greater-israel/ &
"The death of the Israel-Palestine two-state solution brings fresh hope", by Rachel Shabi : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/israel-palestine-two-state-solution .
For you to try to claim that ''King'' Abdullah somehow speaks for anyone else other himself and other such oligarchic, anti-democratic, entrenched (self)interests - really is quiet a stretch and teeters on the edge of laughable actually. Re-read "the inside story of the Arab world", starting with this from your link :
fiat lux ; fiat pax ; fiat justitia ruat caelum ...
FROM THE INTERVIEW:
The king noted that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, had, along with his loyalists, quite obviously made the decision to open fire against demonstrators and rebels. More than 70,000 Syrians have been killed in the uprising against Assad’s rule; forces under his command have committed unspeakable crimes against their countrymen. The danger for the entire region is acute. Jordan is working quietly with Israel and the United States to monitor the whereabouts of Assad’s chemical weapons. And Jordan is already being overrun by Syrian refugees—almost 400,000 as of late February. “The minute you get a Syrian coming across, there’s no way you can turn them back and say our border is closed,” the king told me. So far he has kept his word, maintaining a northern border open to fleeing Syrians.
Which is not to say that the Hashemites don’t harbor visceral dislike for the Brotherhood. Abdullah expounds on that dislike to many of the Western visitors he receives—in part because he believes his Western allies are naive about the Brotherhood’s intentions. “When you go to the State Department and talk about this, they’re like, ‘This is just the liberals talking, this is the monarch saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is deep-rooted and sinister.’ ” Some of his Western interlocutors, he told me, argue that “the only way you can have democracy is through the Muslim Brotherhood.” His job, he says, is to point out that the Brotherhood is run by “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and wants to impose its retrograde vision of society and its anti-Western politics on the Muslim Middle East. This, he said, is “our major fight”—to prevent the Muslim Brothers from conniving their way into power across the region.
Abdullah is wary of Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, whose Justice and Development Party is, he believes, merely promoting a softer-edged version of Islamism. (“Erdogan once said that democracy for him is a bus ride,” Abdullah reports. “ ‘Once I get to my stop, I’m getting off.’ ”) He sees Erdogan as a more restrained and more savvy version of Mohamed Morsi, who set back Muslim Brotherhood’s cause in Egypt by making a premature play for absolute power. “Instead of the Turkish model, taking six or seven years—being an Erdogan—Morsi wanted to do it overnight,” the king said.
If the king is wary of Erdogan, he is decidedly unimpressed with Morsi, whom he recently met in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The two men were discussing the role of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. “There is no depth there,” Abdullah told me. “I was trying to explain to him how to deal with Hamas, how to get the peace process moving, and he was like, ‘The Israelis will not move.’ I said, ‘Listen, whether the Israelis move or don’t move, it’s how we get Fatah and Hamas”—the two rival Palestinian factions—“together.” When Morsi remained fixated on the Israelis (“He’s like, ‘The Israelis, the Israelis’ ”), Abdullah said, he tried to reiterate the importance of sorting out “the mess” on the Palestinian side.
Abdullah told me that “behind closed doors, the Muslim Brotherhood here wants to overthrow” the government. I noted that the Brotherhood has his portrait on the walls of their offices. “They don’t believe in the constitution of Jordan,” he replied. “They won’t swear on the constitution. They will only swear on the constitution of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their allegiance is to the murshid,” the supreme guide, or leader, of the Brotherhood, who is based in Cairo. Abdullah said that when Brothers win election to parliament, and swear to follow the text of the Jordanian constitution, they get a fatwa—a religious ruling—stating that “you can put your hand on the Koran but what you swear on the Koran is nonbinding” when you’re declaring fealty to a secular document.