Category Archives: Political Conflict
The Power of Just Not Giving a Damn
I think we under estimate the communicative and reconciliatory value of just “not giving a damn about some things.” There was a story in the paper last week about a 26-year-old boy, Ethan Saylor, with Down syndrome who went to the movies with a caretaker. When the movie ended his caretaker asked him to wait while she went to get the car. The boy walked back into the theater and sat down when the theater personnel came in and told him to leave. The theater manager called mall security who forcibly removed the boy from the theater while he was crying and calling for his mother. Somehow, while restraining the boy and wrestling him out of the theater he went into distress and died. The theater manager and the mall security agent were more intent on upholding rules and “doing their job” then they were concerned for the safety of Mr. Saylor. Who cares if this young boy was in the theater without a ticket? It was not something worth “giving a damn about.”
Along a similar vein, I was listening to Charlie Rose interview the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Khazaee. At the end of the interview Rose asked the ambassador if he had seen the movie Argo about the escape of some Westerners from Iran during the revolution. Khazaee said that he had seen the movie and there were numerous mistakes such as Iranian linguistic conventions for “hello” and “goodbye.” He then went on to demand the movie producers (that would be George Clooney) apologize to the Iranian people for this great insult. Such heated and indignant insults simply demand retribution! Again, I thought about how these demands for an apology were more damaging than anything else and tensions would diminish if people just “didn’t give a damn.” Read the rest of this entry
A Few Things That Needed to Be Talked about during Obama’s Visit
Obama’s visit to Israel was important but it probably suffer from too much media manipulation and too many platitudes. This is a time when Israel will be at the center of news stories around the world. And as tired as the world is of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there will be increased attention to the issue. For that reason alone it is a good time to influence the agenda and improve the quality of discourse that surrounds key issues in the Middle East conflict. There are three topics that deserve attention and could help move the resolution process forward by improving clarity and accuracy.
1.The first issue that could use some attention is the exaggerated tense relationship between Obama and Netanyahu. This is based simply on the notion that Obama is not sufficiently supportive of Israel. I grant you that Obama talks about Israel and the Middle East with greater nuance and understanding of what it will really take to solve problems but this does not detract from his support for Israel. He recognizes that Israel is essentially a mirror of the United States and, of course, the importance of security issues for Israel. Those who question Obama simply have to look at the record.
It took tremendous courage for Obama to confront the Arab League in Cairo in 2009 and unabashedly declare US support for Israel. Obama told them our support for Israel was steadfast. Expressing some well-placed defensible criticism of Israel (e.g. with respect to the West Bank) should be viewed as part of our support for Israel and its future state; it is certainly no sign of weakness.
2.A second misnomer is that Israel is not interested in peace, and amongst the Palestinians there is no one to talk to. Granted, Netanyahu is a stern negotiator who is not going to jeopardize Israel or give up much on his own watch. But as the saying goes, “there is a new sheriff in town” in the form of a reconstituted government that has moved, albeit slightly, to the center. The peace process is not easy and it never has been so I don’t expect it to change much. Still, Netanyahu has made more than a few conciliatory statements. He has come around to the recognition of a possible state for the Palestinians – at least he’s on the public record – and is capable of advancing the peace process.
The statement that there is nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side is also a common refrain that has the effect of shutting down the process and becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Abbas is respected enough and although he is not a powerful charismatic leader he is recognized as the legitimate leader who can make decisions in the name of his people. Abbas does have the challenge of doing something about Hamas and finding a way for future unity, but that seems to be a topic for the far future. Abbas must manage Hamas because most Israelis recognize that the only thing that followed their exit from Gaza was rockets. Israelis rightly claim that there is no evidence that conciliatory behavior on their part is reciprocated. Both sides are to blame for lethargic peace process.
3.The issue of the settlements has to be discussed more specifically and thoroughly. Israel suffers international condemnation and all the unpleasant epithets that go with it because of the settlements. There have been periods of time during settlement freezes when peace talks were supposed to flourish. But that rarely happens. This is because the role of the settlements is exaggerated. Even freezes on development cannot draw attention to realistic solutions. And both sides are equally to blame for perpetuating the conflict by constant references to the settlements. And undue focus on the settlements is part of this sentiment around the world that the Middle East can be pacified if only the Israelis and Palestinians would solve their problems. The Arab spring has brought the problems of the Middle East into sharp relief all of which have little to do with Israel and Palestine.
In the end, it is the quality of discussion and analysis that will make the difference in the peace process. Obama’s visit will help fortify relationships between the US and Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority. Obama should recommit to pressuring Iran and that will pacify the Israelis. But real progress requires more effortful deliberation designed to sharpen preferences and ameliorate differences.
The Palestinians are the New Cubans: The Emerging Red-Green Alliance
Karagiannis and McCauley have written an excellent article on the interesting alliance between the left and political Islam. It can be found here. A summary is below.
By Emmanuel Karagiannis, Ph.D. and Clark McCauley, Ph.D
It seems that the end of Cold War has brought an end to the enmity between communism and Islamism. Indeed, there are growing signs that an informal alliance is forming between political Islam and the radical Left, both at the state level and the level of groups and movements. Tehran has reached out to left-leaning regimes in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, offering energy and trade. Europe’s Islamists and leftists have also joined forces. In March 2012, British firebrand socialist Galloway and his pro-Hamas Respect Party scored a sensational victory in Bradford West (a heavily Muslim-populated district) by-election, gaining 55,9 percent of the vote. Although this emerging alliance may appear as a tactical marriage of convenience between two fundamentally different political philosophies opposing the West, Reds and Greens have more in common than they dare to admit.
First, Islam and communism emphasize group goals over individual interests. Both seek to establish a society based on sacred texts: the Quran for the Islamists and the works of Marx and Lenin for leftists. Furthermore, they offer a vision of a just society that can be created on earth: the Marxist utopia of a classless communist society parallels the utopian vision of a restored Caliphate. Both claim to represent an absolute truth that would lead to the salvation of mankind. Both have an eschatological view of history that includes the inevitability of a final battle between good (socialist progress / Dar al-Islam) and evil (capitalist reaction / Dar al-Harb), and both can justify violence to achieve this goal.
Islamists and leftists have been keen to present themselves as part of the wider anti-globalization movement. A common denominator of the anti-globalization movement is its claim that big capitalism is inherently unjust in serving the interests of Western elites to the detriment of (working and Muslim) masses around the world. It is hardly a coincidence that Hezbollah’s new manifesto, published in December 2009, spends a great deal of time attacking “an economic system that only views the world as markets that have to abide by America’s own view”. Also, leftist groups have championed the cause of anti-globalization as the preferred form of anti-imperialism. The rationale has changed but leftists’ enemies are the same.
Moreover, both Islamists and leftists have portrayed the United States as the foremost imperialist power. This kind of framing resonates well for both, but for different reasons. For leftists, the U.S. involvement in the greater Middle East is outright imperialism the way Lenin described it. For the Islamists, American wars in the Middle East are just another episode in a long line of Western interventions to grab resources and land from the ummah. It is not rare to see pro-Hezbollah banners and posters of Nasrallah in leftist demonstrations in European cities.
Opposition to Israel has been another common obsession for Islamists and leftists. What brings together Islamists and leftists is deep hate for what, in their eyes, Israel represents. From the Islamist point of view, the establishment of the Jewish State was orchestrated by the Christian West to steal Muslim land in a repetition of the Crusades. For leftists, Israel must be fought as Washington’s colonialist ally in the Middle East. Recognizing Israel as the keystone of the Red-Green alliance, Iran’s President Ahmadinejaz has made the Palestinian issue his ideological core. He knows that for the radical Left, from Latin America to Europe and North Korea, the Palestinians are the new Cubans—the new Vietnamese who need international solidarity. By extension, befriending Iran is a logical thing to do for anyone who supports the Palestinian cause. Much to Tehran’s delight, Venezuela and Bolivia suspended diplomatic ties with Israel following the Gaza crisis in 2009, as did Nicaragua in response to the Gaza flotilla raid in June 2010.
No matter how unlikely it may seem, leftists and Islamists have come closer in recent years. Despite a long history of animosity and conflict, the two sides have joined efforts to confront the United States, Israel, and the West. Antiglobalization, anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments have provided a common framework justifying joint action for the sake of working and Muslim masses.
Blogsphere Battles in the Galaxy of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
New media are still establishing some definitional clarity but they tend to be differentiated on the basis of seven concepts as typically described by Nancy Baym in Personal Connections in a Digital Age. They are interactivity, temporal structure, social cues, storage, replicability, reach, and mobility. In modern political conflicts one is dealing with technological as well as political issues; that is, the communicative content that characterizes the relationship between conflicting groups circulates through new media that allow for increased contact and interactivity. The Israelis and Palestinians, for example, now fight their battles in competing blogspheres as well as on more traditional looking battlefields.
The blogsphere has two qualities that make it a perfect electronic location to continue the ongoing battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. First the blogsphere is egalitarian and after overcoming some simple entry barriers anyone can participate. The ideology displayed in various blogs is on an equal basis with the other side and creates a space that transcends time and place. A less affluent Palestinian can operate an electronic platform on par with the Israeli. Second, the blogsphere shrinks distances such that one side’s case can be advanced from anywhere. The blog as an electronic space has energized confrontation and made a discourse possible that is more concerned with values, moral legitimacy, and argument.
An army of Israeli blogs (see, for example pro-Israel blogs) confront an army of Palestinian blogs (see, for example, Sabbah) in such a way that the political arena intersects with the international public sphere. These blogs are active at many levels including institutional, individual, and national. One interesting quality is the effect on the discourse of blogsphere communication that originates and lives in non-territorial space. In other words, there is no argument about where to meet or the symbolism of a physical location because the meetings are in electronic space and, from my own casual observations, lends itself to a more moderate environment. Moreover, the blogsphere media are cue rich such that messages can be appealing to a variety of senses. This has, of course, its disadvantages because of the easy availability of manipulation.
My own travels throughout the blogsphere in the galaxy of Israel and Palestine have resulted in two conclusions about this form of new media contact. One, both sides use arguments that are most advantageous to their own interests. The Israelis blog mostly about security and terror and the Palestinians about occupation. The world is most sympathetic to Israeli security concerns as well as its opposition to terrorism, but the international community also sympathizes with the struggles of the Palestinians. Interestingly, this aptly characterizes the conflict with the two sides performing individual narratives without much engagement of the other. Even in the blogsphere it seems to be the “dialogue of the deaf.” Both sides are also particularly personal; they relate personal instances and stories designed to increase the emotional intensity of the issues. They take personal instances and place them within the framework of national conflict. This is a classic characteristic of intractable conflicts when the society is saturated with the ethos of the conflict. Both sides utilize all electronic qualities of the blog including photographs, connections to other sites, and visuals.
Secondly, the blogsphere battles are filled with calls to action. Both sides use the blog to initiate campaigns designed to delegitimize the other side. Calls for boycotts and confrontations are common. Blogs in conjunction with other social media such as Facebook have demonstrated some success at organizing and arousing political action.
I should note in conclusion that access to the Internet and the blogsphere holds potential for increasing dialogic intimacy between the two sides as well as remaining a platform for conflict. The Internet can provide a channel of contact for productive communication if proper conditions are established. There are more than a few instances of successful contact where the qualities of new media such as distance shrinking genuinely serve the purposes of interaction between the two groups.
New Media Revolutions: The Problems
Facebook must be truly a magical medium. It cannot only reconnect you with your old high school friends but whip up a democratic revolution in its spare time. It received so much initial credit for the Arab Spring that political activists in places like Egypt began to question whether or not they were sufficiently committed or worked hard enough. Well, that was all an exaggeration but it is the case that Facebook had at least “something” to do with influencing the uprisings.
I enjoy my twitter (that’s me @dellis2) and Facebook accounts and they represent truly important advances in technology and the puffed up power of information networks. But as of now their media created images remain more potent than the reality; the impact of online activists is exaggerated although not unimportant. Marc Lynch, writing in Foreign Policy (Twitter Devolutions), argues that the power of social media must be tempered, that activists and academics sang the praises of these new media too loudly and they are subject to more criticism than has been levied. Moreover, the gritty politics that follow these uprisings is more important for shaping political life, yet if you judge by news coverage new media seem to have little to do with this. Facebook and twitter only seem to rear their heads during times of revolution. Off-line politics is turbulent but remains more central to the struggle for transition from authoritarian systems to more democratic ones. Below are some questions and issues that must be addressed with respect to new media because on the one hand new media get too much press, but on the other they are truly impactful. This means our understanding must be more nuanced.
1. Why do social media seem to get more attention or have more impact during revolutions or times of upheaval? During quiet times Facebook seems to offer little more than a pleasant pastime or benign exchange of information. There is still a tinge of awe surrounding new technology that lends technologically laden significance to a story that it carries. The story is not trivial because it is circulating on new media; on the contrary, it is important. When there is a crisis or political instability Facebook and Twitter seem to structure stories quickly as “good vs. evil” or “right vs. wrong.” I would guess, and I have yet to see data on such an effect, that any flurry of new media activity has a polarizing effect that results in binary oppositions such as “right vs. wrong.”
In the article cited above, Lynch observed that during the most active times in Cairo the Muslim Brotherhood and the non-Islamist online community structured their Twitter and Facebook exchanges exactly as described. Every time a story was critical of the Muslim Brotherhood it was quickly shared and reinforced by additional stories critical of the Brotherhood. And the same was true of the other side, every story critical of non-Islamist political activists was redistributed and shared by the Muslim Brotherhood thus perpetuating spirals of polarization. Habermas’s glorious inclusive and democratically aesthetic public sphere was nowhere to be found.
2. Why is it that social media are better at organizing and stimulating upheaval then routine politics? The new media seem to love energy and issue-driven controversies rather than the slow work of building political organizations. Again, Lynch points out that Twitter and Facebook were more successful at merging once disparate coalitions than mobilizing masses of voters. Perhaps Facebook is simply easier and faster and works best when a political situation is amenable to faster organization. Moreover new media can quickly employ the power of visual and auditory messages that increase their impact. Violence or a grisly death can be captured immediately on a cell phone and uploaded within minutes. This captures the attention of activist groups and encourages involvement. There is a “thrill” to new media because of its speed and multisensory impact that is not present during routine politics.
3. The political strengths of Twitter and Facebook can be easily challenged by any regime willing to be as repressive as it needs to be. Places like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iran and Syria, are finding new ways to interfere with online activism including shutting them down when necessary. After enough pressure, and it does not take much, citizens and active account users will simply stop participating in online activity in order to avoid persecution and even violence. The possibility of harassment and arrest make it quite easy to withdraw from the online community.
The various social media did not create revolutions in Egypt or the Arab spring, but they did play a role. They have undermined traditional models of information and helped elites and activists empower themselves in order to facilitate change. But if we hail the opportunities for elites and activists to encourage democratic changes, we have to also recognize the problems and limitations of these new forms of communication. At the moment, given the instabilities still raging in Egypt and other countries, no advocate for new media would want to take credit for the current political realities.
Obama’s Anti-Democratic Assassinations: His Robot Killers Will Get You!
If Bush and Cheney had commissioned the white paper and used its justifications there would’ve been an outcry about Darth Vader and his minion perpetrating evil throughout the land. But Obama can have a “kill list” and no one says much. Nevertheless, the document is about as anti-democratic as you can get.
Here is the White paper on drones. It is used as a justification for targeted assassinations. I must say this issue taxes one’s ability to support broader political concepts, important as they may be, over a gut reaction. What I mean is that killing Al Qaeda operatives who are racist, sexist, anti-democratic, and potential threats to the United States doesn’t bother me much. But a couple of chief White House officials sitting in a room making the decision by themselves – essentially being judge, jury, and executioner – with no political or democratic oversight does bother me. The white paper focuses mainly on when lethal operations against a US citizen are justified. The paper makes for interesting reading because it seeks to clarify the issues but actually underscores their ambiguity and problems. Let’s take a look at a few of the issues of interest.
1. It is assumed that the President of the United States can respond to Al Qaeda on the basis of his constitutional responsibility to protect the country. The president can act quickly and on his own regard even in the case of an American citizen if that citizen is deemed to pose a threat or considered a member of an armed force challenging the safety of the United States. The legal question becomes whether or not a lethal operation against the US citizen is protected by the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
The issue includes the matter of where the US citizen is located such as on a battlefield or in another country and if he or she is afforded any special constitutional protection. The paper concludes that killing a US citizen can be justified even if it is outside the United States.
2. The strongest defense of immediate violent action is the concept of “imminence.” Imminence is a well understood concept in the literature on politically protected speech. That is, one has many freedoms of speech available but cannot create a clear and present danger, cannot create danger that is imminent or about to happen immediately. The old tried-and-true example of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is applicable here. I can advocate aggressive action against the collective group (e.g. the police) in the political theory or hypothetical sense but I can’t tell someone to go get a gun and kill the person next to them. I cannot create with my speech or my symbolic behavior imminent danger.
This issue of imminence has been a conundrum for the government and the white paper solves the problem by redefining imminence because it is too difficult a standard to meet. It is just too difficult to show that an Al Qaeda operative whether he or she is a citizen or not is posing an immediate and imminent danger to the United States. Thus the white paper argues that the president or high-level official only needs to decide that the person of interest is a “continuing” threat to the US. This is a much easier standard to reach. In fact it is extremely vague and means that the target of interest does not have to be posing any genuine immediate threat, perhaps has never been charged with a crime, and may not even be in the United States or nearby. But they are a “continuing” threat if they are simply known to be an associate of Al Qaeda.
3. The absolute worst thing about the white paper is its claim that the government need not ask anyone’s permission, is required to make its case to no court, before carrying out a targeted assassination of US citizen. Again, a couple of governmental officials can make this decision on their own, can create a kill list, without acknowledging any additional authority. They can kill American citizens and don’t have to answer to anyone. This is dangerous business and clearly a direction contrary to the history and development of the United States.
In one opinion (see http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/justice-departments-white-paper- targeted- killing) court cases are clearly cited that require the government to afford a citizen due process before depriving him or her of life or liberty. This due process seems to evaporate even when explaining that some sort of due process might reduce the errors and mistakes that result in taking innocent lives. The white paper argues that it is not subject to judicial review, and even argues that review “after the fact” is not legally required. Hence, one cannot question the government’s decision about targeting a citizen even after the fact. One can at least imagine the security problems associated with getting a priori permission but these did not describe the importance of at least after-the-fact judicial review.
These justifications for targeted killing seem extravagant and potentially dangerous. Moreover, some sort of a priori judicial or congressional oversight is not difficult to establish.
Israel, Islam, and the Muscular Left
Hezbollah rockets often have sayings written on them such as “Remember the Khaybar, the armies of Mohammed will return.” Or it is not uncommon in a moment of victorious joy to hear a Muslim call out “Remember the Khaybar.” Khaybar was a battle in 629 where the prophet Mohammed defeated Jewish tribes. This victory is typically recalled in the chants and sayings expressing military victory and the defeat of the Jews.
The old European left, forged in the fires of Nazism and Fascism, identified with Jews and the struggling State of Israel. The left understood Jewish suffering and supported the State of Israel as a justifiable political collective deserving of national and political identity. Israel was understood to be emerging in the tradition of freedom and the struggle against oppression of all types. This was a time in the history of the left when they made distinctions and substantive decisions. It was a time when oppression and terrorism were clearly unacceptable and could not be justified by any argument. Historically, leftist and progressive political ideology was responsible for the defeat of Nazism, Fascism, and the development of human rights.
But in the last couple of decades the intellectual left has lost its moral compass and has now never met a minority group that did not consider oppressed. The European and American left are getting weaker and less able to defend themselves as a voice of moral legitimacy and progress. Israel is a very good case in point. Once, Israel was the darling child of the left because they had suffered so much discrimination, betrayal, and extermination. 50 years ago the State of Israel was bathed in the celestial glow of growing political strength and national identity. A longtime oppressed people were reconstituting themselves in their ancient homeland.
I grant you the changing conditions on the ground – settlements, checkpoints, and Israel’s military strength. But this is part of what I mean when referring to the left’s inability to make distinctions and decisions. They seem to be unable to distinguish between the peaceful and democratic trends in Israel and a discriminatory religious state. The left’s ideology has circled around and flanked itself. They now see everything filtered through a colonialism lens and robotically take the side of the smaller minority group. This is true in Vietnam, Rhodesia, Israel, and other causes such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The rigid blindness caused by this colonialism lens is evidenced by the number of political regimes that are thoroughly authoritarian and repressive but still receive the sympathy of the left, especially the European left. And they have occasionally made the distinction between vulnerable European Jews and Israel as a modern-day Sparta, but this distinction between Israel and Jews is indefensible. The left’s ideological criticism of Israel coupled with Islam’s blatant anti-Semitism makes for a combustible situation. Even Christopher Hitchens, who later in life gravitated toward the muscular left in his support of the Iraq war, maintained his criticism of Israel right up until his end.
A Muscular Left
I would encourage you to read a statement on muscular liberalism called the Euston Manifesto. It is a document that tries to reinvigorate progressive politics by focusing on egalitarian liberalism and democratic commitments that are true to authentic liberal values in the actual tradition of the term and not so flexible so as to include defending all sorts of anti-liberal causes such as extremist Islam. Muscular liberalism makes no apology for tyranny; there are no excuses to “understand” violence and repressive regimes that harm their own people and stifle political progress. The muscular left does not countenance apologies and drawn out explanations designed to justify violence and repression.
Egalitarian politics has always been a staple of the liberal tradition especially between ethnic communities because even after peace treaties are signed it is interpersonal and cultural equality and respect that makes for lasting peace. A muscular liberal tradition accepts differences of opinion and perspective as normal and requires contentious issues to be solved through the communication process. The only legitimate battles are rhetorical and argumentative designed to manage conflict.
The left must remember that it once apologized for Stalinism and Maoism. The modern version of these apologetics is making excuses for suicide terrorism and religious extremism. Muscular liberalism challenges anti-democratic forces wherever it sees them – even if they emerge from historically oppressed groups.
How to Respond to Radical Islam
The post below was originally published in HartfordFAVS. You can access it here.
There are two ways to begin to approach the problem of radical Islam. The first is political and sees radical Islam as a problem of political will and development. The first question to ask here is, “what are the goals of an Islamist group?” Is the goal one of military takeover of the geographic area, or the spread of ideological and religious Islam? Take the case of the Gaza Strip and Hamas. Much of Hamas is militaristic and seeks political control of the Gaza Strip. Other elements, mostly smaller elements, want to impose religious law and work with offshoot groups that are Salafi-Jihad groups.
Hamas in Gaza receives international attention for its conflict with Israel but they also compete with other groups that are more radically Islamist in nature – even though the numbers are small and they are poorly organized. The competition is between principles of political Islam and not so much about military strength. There are more than a few members of the Hamas leadership who have little interest in debating political Islam and find these Salafi-Jihad groups to be annoying at the moment. Most Hamas leadership prefers to spend their time threatening Israel and organizing the Gaza Strip rather than finding new ways to express political Islam. In fact, there are times when Hamas has quite an oppositional and antagonistic relationship with these religiously-based groups. One leader of a radical Islamist group a couple of years ago challenged Hamas and declared in Islamic emirate in Palestine and demanded that Sharia law be imposed. At present, Hamas resists these groups and prefers to keep them at a distance while they maintain their more contentious relationship with the PLA and Israel.
So what is the best way to challenge and perhaps overcome radical Islam? These groups are very extreme, wishing to reestablish the Caliphate and bring all Muslims under a single rule, and removing anyone (especially Israelis) from what they considered to be Islamic holy land. And they usually classify declared Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran as illegitimate because they are not Islamic enough. This leads to infighting among Islamist groups and is troubling and destabilizing for governments. Governments in Central Asia and other places have contributed to the problem by engaging in strong repression. This radicalizes the group and forces them to respond even more aggressively. Worse yet, these groups can give governments a license to carry out violent retaliation that usually exacerbates the problem. Below are some suggestions for dealing with groups with a dangerous agenda and a threatening form of political Islam. All of these suggestions are based on the assumption that authoritarian political systems, which are economically undeveloped and lack legitimate democratic outlets for conflict resolution, contribute to the popularity of these groups and encourage citizens to turn toward them.
- Governments confronting extremist Islamic groups must establish conditions for these groups to operate within legal confines of democracy. In other words, the government should allow Islamist groups to organize and express themselves on the basis of free symbolic behavior. This allows citizens to begin the habits of listening to alternatives. Imposing repressive sanctions on these grou I ps drives them underground and radicalizes them.
- Begin a program to work with young people explaining the consequences of political Islam. People in a community in general should develop more knowledge about religious issues and various leaders. What will it mean for the state to adopt or Islamic principle and its governance? Include in these discussions secular political groups as well.
- Allow democratically defended opportunities for criticism and complaints. This must be done within the confines of the law and proper modes of political expression. The press of course can be a good platform for the presentation of issues and ideas.
- Use the language of Islam to understand the language of extremist Islam. That is, the best way to challenge the political ideology of extremist Islam is within the discourse of Islam itself. This will require using imams and scholars to engage in such debate.
- Maintain proper control of police and security forces. They should be used mainly to control and manage criminal behavior and not to stifle political activity.
Steps in this direction will prevent Salafi-jihad groups from radicalizing and going underground which makes them only more secretive and difficult to manage. By eliminating the conditions under which these groups thrive, it becomes possible to control them. The process is difficult and slow but more open political systems, economic development, and freedom of expression will keep these groups exposed and under more control.
Photo Manipulation by Hamas in Gaza
Photo manipulation has been with us a long time. There are two types of manipulations: the first is to alter the image and the second is to simply deceive the viewer about the content or story behind the image. Lesser artists tried to copy the great masters and pass them off as originals. In later years images were touched up with ink, double exposure, and airbrushing. But the possibilities for manipulation of photographic images with the advent of the digital age increased exponentially. It also has become easier to copy and send images such that they circulate and take on a reality of their own. An image can be false or deceptive but millions of people have been exposed to it before discovering the deception. Take the example below:
This is the sort of disinformation that can be easily spread by manipulating images. The picture of the dead child spread quickly across the Internet and was described as a dead girl in the arms of the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The child was killed during the Gaza war in December 2012 and, as reported by Palestinian sources, was killed by an Israeli rocket. But according to Honest Reporting, a website that tracks deception and manipulation, the child was not killed by Israel but rather an errant rocket fired by Hamas. This image spread through Twitter and Facebook and imprinted itself in the minds of many before the correction.
The picture below is of an Israeli child wounded by Palestinian rockets. You can see the Hebrew lettering on the jacket of the man holding the child and, as the picture points out, the coat of arms in the upper left is of the city in southern Israel Kiryat Malakhi.
In a very real sense, everything about a photographic image has the potential for manipulation and untruths. Beginning with the choice of lens, available light, and how close or far to stand from the subject a photographer makes ethical decisions. And it is certainly possible to manipulate an image in the interest of increasing accuracy or improving the emotional impact for artistic reasons. But these composition decisions are more controllable and subject to standard considerations than blatant lies about the content of a photograph.
The press has a particularly important relationship between photographic images and their publication. There is a fiduciary relationship between the press and the public. And the press should not be in the position of corrupting this relationship. Granted, simply uploading an image to the Internet and making a false claim about it is easier because the individual and the Internet audience have no fiduciary relationship. This does not make the act of lying about an image any less despicable but the perpetrator gets away with it because he’s not turning a sound relationship into an impure one.
One consequence of this easy deception is a loss of faith in the photojournalistic profession and the power of the visual image. Since the goal of political photographs or journalistic photography is to reproduce accurately some social or political reality a powerful source of truth and emotion is lost as confidence in the accuracy of images diminishes.
To extend the Churchillian metaphor from the photograph above, truth has to get its pants on faster. This is an issue of the distribution of images rather than their compositional manipulation. Visual processing is powerfully analogic and impressionistic and only takes a few seconds. The old refrain of “a picture being worth 1000 words” is true enough. The deadening cynicism that results from exposure to too many manipulated, exaggerated, and false visual images makes it even more difficult for quality images to do the work for which they are intended. These visual “lies”, perpetrated mostly by Hamas detract from the peace process and exacerbate the conflict rather than mediate it. Agreement on disallowing these practices must be part of a final peace process, otherwise truth will not only be slow to get its pants on it will trip over itself.
Someday Hamas and Israel Will Talk
There is only one solution to the current fighting in Gaza and that is some sort of negotiated agreement. It sounds naïve I understand but until that time we will have little more than the standard conflict resolution mistake of “more of the same.” Deliberation in any form is impossible until the two sides are sufficiently willing and we are certainly not there with respect to the Israelis and Palestinians, especially the Palestinians in Gaza. But if that day ever comes the deliberative conditions below will be important.
Deliberation is a powerful normative ideal to strive for and in its heart it is concerned with the careful and balanced consideration of alternatives under conditions of democratic fairness. To transform the deliberative ideal into actual communication is essentially to operationalize deliberation and lower its level of abstraction. It is to take a theoretical ideal and convert it to symbolic behavior. But this operationalization is never easy or direct. Deliberative democracy is also primarily concerned with democratic decision making, whereas deliberative communication is, shall we say, messier. Deliberative communication includes broader intersubjective meaning creation and is inclusive of many forms of discourse and linguistic structures. Moreover, the polysemic nature of communication, where messages can take on a variety of meanings depending on context and other factors, makes identifying qualities that make communication “deliberative” even more difficult. But as I have noted in other places, deliberation is not one big philosophy seminar characterized by rational argument only. It must include the possibility that judicious argument and sound decision making can take many communicative forms. In general, deliberative communication has the following five characteristics.
(1) There is a confrontation of perspectives and argument is the primary communication mechanism for adjudicating differences. Argument takes the form of reasoned opinion where a speaker is required to support reasons and defend against critique. This includes evaluating materials, judging the quality of sources, and defending background assumptions. It is also true that some forms of reasoning maintain ideological dilemmas.
(2) There is a relational component to deliberation whereas participants respect the other and genuinely listen to their perspectives. Participants actually engage one another and avoid monologues that do not take up the perspective of the other. Participants acknowledge autonomy and mutuality in a civil and respectful manner.
(3) Consensus is the goal to strive for. This includes will formation such that the collective is ultimately committed to decisions. In order for consensus to be a goal deliberators must be concerned with disagreement. Disagreement is an indication of the diversity that is inherent in divided groups. Deliberative communication should include participants having their own views critically examined because of the presence of disagreement. This improves the quality of opinions. Consensus is a goal but lower levels of agreement are acceptable.
(4) The position of authorities, tradition, and power are up for discussion in deliberative communication. Participants must meet the objective of the meeting but other foundational assumptions are acceptable topics for deliberation. As Young explains, “Truly democratic deliberation must not rule out self interest, conflicting interests, or relatively emotional or intuitive expressions. . .” (p. 472) (Young, 2000).
Deliberative communication must allow for equality and symmetrical power relations as much possible. People must be on equal footing and no one should unfairly dominate the interaction. Reciprocity would be an important indicator of equality. These forms of communication are specifically suited to diversity and pluralism that are consequences of ethnopolitical divides.
For more detail see Donald Ellis (2012). Deliberative Communication and Ethnopolitical Conflict. Peter Lang Publishers.
Peace and Conflict Politics 