The real poison is in Arafat's legacy

I never much cared for Yasser Arafat. It wasn’t the scrubby beard or the protruding eyes or the fact that he’d done away with a few of his chums or even the way he once forbad a photographer friend from taking a picture of his bald pate. It was the histrionics, the endless carping about the “peace of the brave” – a phrase he cribbed from de Gaulle – the way in which he would go on about child casualties (“even the little babies…”) and then his endless production in interviews of an old Palestine one pound note with its denomination in Hebrew and Arabic. Surely Jew and Arab could live again together?

  

He made so many concessions to Israel – because he was growing old and wanted to go to “Palestine” before he died – that his political descendants are still paying for them. Arafat had never seen a Jewish colony on occupied land when he accepted the Oslo agreement. He trusted the Americans. He trusted the Israelis. He trusted anyone who appeared to say the right things. And it must have been exhausting to start his career as a super-“terrorist” in Beirut and then be greeted on the White House lawn as a super- “statesman” and then re-created by Israel as a super-“terrorist” again.

In the end, surrounded in his Ramallah headquarters and shelled by Israeli tanks, his few visitors noted how old he looked, how sick. One Scandinavian diplomat who managed to visit him noted how he no longer wore socks, how he had a habit of picking loose skin from his feet during interviews, how the lavatories smelled.

Then came Arafat’s flight to Paris – the Israelis suddenly turning humanitarian on the old boy – and, even before his death, the first murmurings about poison. I didn’t take them very seriously. If he lives, I thought, the gossip will stop; if he dies, he will have been poisoned – as surely as Napoleon was poisoned by the Brits, as assuredly as 9/11 was a CIA plot. So he died. And so, of course, we were told he was poisoned.

Suha Arafat, who had been estranged from him for some years, began talking about his murder and from that moment, murder it became. I happened to hear second-hand from a French military nurse at the Bercy military hospital where Arafat was treated and where he died, that French medical authorities made extensive tests to see if Arafat had been poisoned, before and after his death. They found no trace of poison. And the French had bad relations with Israel at the time.

But as the years stretched out, no conversation, no mention of Arafat’s death could be without the word “poison”. When the accusations started, Israeli spokesmen even talked of the possibility that Arafat’s Palestinian enemies had done away with him. Israel, on the other hand, was proved to have tried to poison a Hamas official in Amman – King Hussein was told of the antidote and Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as part of the deal. Yassin was later assassinated by the Israelis, bombed in his wheelchair.

Then this month, when the scientists reported on the high level of polonium found in Arafat’s body, it started again. Perhaps it came, one interviewer suggested to me, in the depleted uranium shells the Israelis had fired at Arafat’s headquarters when he was trapped inside. Problem. According to my enquiries at the time, the Israelis had no depleted uranium shells in their ordnance inventory. That doesn’t mean they haven’t used them in other locations. But not at Ramallah.

And what actually is the evidence? He died in 2004, on 11 November, a suitable day since the Great War armistice marked the end of a conflict which gave birth to the Israeli “homeland” in Palestine. The Russian investigation is inconclusive. The French haven’t yet told us their results. The 60 samples taken from the old man’s remains and clothes led the Swiss investigators to say only that the evidence of polonium “moderately” supports the idea that he was poisoned.

I’m sceptical. Edward Said told me that Arafat said to him in 1985 that “if there’s one thing I don’t want to be, it’s to be like Haj Amin. He was always right, and he got nothing and died in exile.” Hunted by the British, Haj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, went to Berlin during the Second World War in the hope that Hitler would help the Palestinians. It was the greatest blunder any Palestinian has made. Arafat followed that blunder by going to Baghdad and embracing Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait, believing Saddam would “liberate” the land he called Palestine. Arafat wanted to believe Saddam. Like he wanted to believe the Americans. And the Israelis. And his legacy of vain trust has destroyed any hope of a Palestinian state. That is the poison we should be studying.

Knowing the enemy for 70 years

I’ve long grown weary of the way in which Time magazine, CNN, Fox News and other glories of American journalism like to map out the ethnic/religious/racial front lines of the Middle East. “How to tell a Sunni from a Shiite” was my favourite Time headline. But thanks to reader Lieuke Katz of Albuquerque, New Mexico, I’ve discovered that Time has been at this game for more than 70 years.

Katz has sent me a page from December 1941 which is headlined: “How to tell your friends from the Japs”. The article tries to help Americans to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese, an important task since the Chinese were (then) our allies. “Even an anthropologist, with calipers and plenty of time to measure heads, shoulders, noses, hips, is sometimes stumped,” the reader is told with almost fascist bluntness. So here we go:

“Chinese, not as hairy as Japanese, seldom grow an impressive moustache, Most Chinese avoid horn-rimmed spectacles. Although both have the typical epicanthic fold of the upper eyelid … Japanese eyes are usually set closer together… The Chinese expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open: the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant… Japanese are hesitant, nervous in conversation, laugh loudly at the wrong time. Japanese walk stiffly, erect. Chinese, more relaxed, have an easy gait, sometimes shuffle.”

 Courtesy: The Independent

Malala and Nabila: worlds apart

On October 24, 2012 a Predator drone flying over North Waziristan came upon eight-year old Nabila Rehman, her siblings, and their grandmother as they worked in a field beside their village home. Her grandmother, Momina Bibi, was teaching the children how to pick okra as the family prepared for the coming Eid holiday. However on this day the terrible event would occur that would forever alter the course of this family's life. In the sky the children suddenly heard the distinctive buzzing sound emitted by the CIA-operated drones - a familiar sound to those in the rural Pakistani villages which are stalked by them 24 hours a day - followed by two loud clicks. The unmanned aircraft released its deadly payload onto the Rehman family, and in an instant the lives of these children were transformed into a nightmare of pain, confusion and terror. Seven children were wounded, and Nabila's grandmother was killed before her eyes, an act for which no apology, explanation or justification has ever been given.

This past week Nabila, her schoolteacher father, and her 12-year-old brother travelled to Washington DC to tell their story and to seek answers about the events of that day. However, despite overcoming incredible obstacles in order to travel from their remote village to the United States, Nabila and her family were roundly ignored. At the Congressional hearing where they gave testimony, only five out of 430 representatives showed up. In the words of Nabila's father to those few who did attend: "My daughter does not have the face of a terrorist and neither did my mother. It just doesn't make sense to me, why this happened… as a teacher, I wanted to educate Americans and let them know my children have been injured."

The translator broke down in tears while recounting their story, but the government made it a point to snub this family and ignore the tragedy it had caused to them. Nabila, a slight girl of nine with striking hazel eyes, asked a simple question in her testimony: "What did my grandmother do wrong?" There was no one to answer this question, and few who cared to even listen. Symbolic of the utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

Selective Memory

It is useful to contrast the American response to Nabila Rehman with that of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was nearly assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban. While Malala was feted by Western media figures, politicians and civic leaders for her heroism, Nabila has become simply another one of the millions of nameless, faceless people who have had their lives destroyed over the past decade of American wars. The reason for this glaring discrepancy is obvious. Since Malala was a victim of the Taliban, she, despite her protestations, was seen as a potential tool of political propaganda to be utilized by war advocates. She could be used as the human face of their effort, a symbol of the purported decency of their cause, the type of little girl on behalf of whom the United States and its allies can say they have been unleashing such incredible bloodshed. Tellingly, many of those who took up her name and image as a symbol of the justness of American military action in the Muslim world did not even care enough to listen to her own words or feelings about the subject.

As described by the Washington Post's Max Fisher:

Western fawning over Malala has become less about her efforts to improve conditions for girls in Pakistan, or certainly about the struggles of millions of girls in Pakistan, and more about our own desire to make ourselves feel warm and fuzzy with a celebrity and an easy message. It's a way of letting ourselves off the hook, convincing ourselves that it's simple matter of good guys vs bad guys, that we're on the right side and that everything is okay.

But where does Nabila fit into this picture? If extrajudicial killings, drone strikes and torture are in fact all part of a just-cause associated with the liberation of the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere, where is the sympathy or even simple recognition for the devastation this war has caused to countless little girls such as her? The answer is clear: The only people to be recognized for their suffering in this conflict are those who fall victim to the enemy. Malala for her struggles was to be made the face of the American war effort -  against her own will if necessary - while innumerable little girls such as Nabila will continue to be terrorized and murdered as part of this war without end. There will be no celebrity appearances or awards ceremonies for Nabila. At her testimony almost no one even bothered to attend.

But if they had attended, they would've heard a nine year old girl asking the questions which millions of other innocent people who have had their lives thrown into chaos over the past decade have been asking: "When I hear that they are going after people who have done wrong to America, then what have I done wrong to them? What did my grandmother do wrong to them? I didn't do anything wrong."

Murtaza Hussain is a Toronto-based writer and analyst focused on issues related to Middle Eastern politics.

Was Jammu massacre planned?

Millions of people were brutally killed by communal mobs under the tutelage of erstwhile Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir in the winter capital in the months of October and November in 1947, but, one of the biggest genocide and ethnic cleansing in the contemporary times hardly finds a mentions in the pages of history.  

Each year, India— ‘the world’s largest democracy’— commemorates, April 1919, Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in which British army’s Brigadier General Reginald EH Dyer fired over crowd for nearly ten minutes and killed hundreds and left thousands injured, but why has been a large scale genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jammu Muslims been pushed under the rugs of oblivion? 

The gory event being systematically erased from the pages of history has made it difficult to trace the bloodbath. Questions about the systematic killings at a mass level and the hidden hands to change Jammu’s demography even after 65 years seek clear answers.

Documents unravel that the events of time in Jammu that changed fate of millions received least reportage. Was the authoritarian Maharaja working under a plan and did he impose a blanket ban on noting down the gory events? Perhaps one would never know the details, but has been chronicled is: Around 500,000 Muslims were killed with military precision in Jammu in the months of October and November. ("Prejudice in Paradise", communalism combat,  Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, 2005. http://www.indianet.nl/indpk146.html)

Such was the intensity of this carnage in the province that about 123 villages were ‘completely depopulated’.

While the decrease in the number of Muslims in Jammu district alone was over 100,000. Thousands of Gujjars were massacred in local mohallas and the villages within Jammu cantonment area were completely burnt down. Kuthua almost ‘lost’ fifty per cent of its Muslim population.

The Muslims numbered 158,630 and comprised 37 per cent of the total population of 428,719 in the year 1941, and in the year 1961, they numbered only 51,690 and comprised only 10 per cent of the total population of 516,932. 

The Dogra state troops were at the forefront of attacks on Muslims. The state authorities were also issuing arms not only to local volunteer organizations (RSS) but to those in surrounding East Punjab districts such as Gurdaspur.

“The Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu and those who had gone there from outside (referring to RSS from Gurdaspur and surrounding areas) killed Muslims there. Their women have been dishonored. This has not been fully reported in the newspapers. The Maharaja of Kashmir is responsible for what has happened there.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, volume 90, page 115 and 298).

The state administration had not only demobilised a large number of Muslim soldiers serving in the state army, but Muslim police officers had also been sent home.

The idea was to create a Hindu majority in the Jammu region. Eighteen per cent fall in Muslim population in the region from Census 1941 to 1961 was noted after Muslims were butchered.  

Names of the places were immediately erased to conform to new ownership. Urdu Bazar became Rajinder Bazar and Islamia School became Hari Singh High School. Almost 95 per cent of left-over properties which should have in the normal course been taken over by the state government were given to looters and rioters (Daily Telegraph of London dated 12 January 1948). These properties continue to be under the illegal occupation of looters and their descendants.

Out of a total of 8 lakhs Muslims who tried to migrate, more than “237,000 were systematically exterminated by all the forces of the Dogra state, headed by the Maharaja in person and aided by Hindus and Sikhs.” (“The Master and the Maharajas: The Sikh Princes and the East Punjab Massacres of 1947,” Ian Copland).

Local media too perpetuated in intensifying the killings and exodus. For example, a Jammu-based Hindu paper boasted that ‘a Dogra can kill at least two hundred Muslims’ which illustrated the communal level to which the media and parties had sunk.

Then emergency administrator, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah too conceded genocide and ethnic cleansing in his speech two weeks later at Jammu. But he put the blame on victims and said: “Jammu Muslims are to be large extent themselves responsible for what has happened to them, because though in a minority, they had, by their words and deeds, let their tongues in favour of Pakistan.”(The Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir p. 332, P N Bazaz).

However, in Sheikh Abdullah’s autobiography, Atish-e-Chinar (page 312), he writes that the carnage received an impetus after the arrival of Union Home Minster Sardar Patel, Union Defence Minister Baldev Singh along with the Maharaja of Patiala, a person known for his anti-Muslim bias, in Jammu. The trio had met various Hindu organizations and delegations, after which the massacre attained a great momentum. Fanatics, aided and abetted by government forces, started burning down village after village inhabited by Muslims. Women were abducted, raped at will.

Even the daughter of the Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas, the front-runner political figure, was not spared. Many women preferred death than falling prey. “His family suffered in all possible ways during ethnic cleansing of Jammu. Several of his sisters and brother were killed. His family members were specifically targeted because of his proximity to Muslim League. His youngest daughter was recovered from an Indian Army camp after the massacre of Jammu Muslims.” (Sheikh Showkat Hussain, “19 Profiles”). 

GK Reddy, an editor of the Kashmir Times in a statement published in the daily Nawa-i-Waqt wrote: “I saw the armed mob with the complicity of Dogra troops killing the Muslims ruthlessly. The state officials were openly giving out weapons to the mob.”

Ironically, explanations of the violence –both in India and Pakistan – always have portrayed the killing as erratic and spontaneous, many with the aim of ‘blame displacement’. Each country floated the subsequent course of violence as a ‘reaction’ to the ‘action’ and in many cases as ‘self-defence’. But the execution of Jammu Muslims breaks the meta-narrative created around the communal killings during partition.