Posts Tagged ‘As’ad AbuKhalil’
Unspoken Rule of Engagement in Middle-East? When did the USA administrations felt like speaking with the people in ME?
Posted January 28, 2020
on:THE ANGRY ARAB: US Violated Unspoken Rule of Engagement with Iran
When did the USA administrations felt like speaking with the people in ME?
By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News
Something big and unprecedented has happened in the Middle East after the assassination of one of Iran’s top commanders, Qasim Suleimani.
The U.S. has long assumed that assassinations of major figures in the Iranian “resistance-axis” in the Middle East would bring risk to the U.S. military-intelligence presence in the Middle East.
Western and Arab media reported that the U.S. had prevented Israel in the past from killing Suleimani. But with the top commander’s death, the Trump administration seems to think a key barrier to U.S. military operations in the Middle East has been removed.
The U.S. and Israel had noticed that Hezbollah and Iran did not retaliate against previous assassinations by Israel (or the U.S.) that took place in Syria (of Imad Mughniyyah, Jihad Mughniyyah, Samir Quntar); or for other attacks on Palestinian and Lebanese commanders in Syria.
The U.S. thus assumed that this assassination would not bring repercussions or harm to U.S. interests.
Iranian reluctance to retaliate has only increased the willingness of Israel and the U.S. to violate the unspoken rules of engagement with Iran in the Arab East.
For many years Israel did perpetrate various assassinations against Iranian scientists and officers in Syria during the on-going war. But Israel and the U.S. avoided targeting leaders or commanders of Iran.
During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the U.S. and Iran collided directly and indirectly, but avoided engaging in assassinations for fear that this would unleash a series of tit-for-tat.
But the Trump administration has become known for not playing by the book, and for operating often according to the whims and impulses of President Donald Trump.
Different Level of Escalation
The decision to strike at Baghdad airport, however, was a different level of escalation.
In addition to killing Suleimani it also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a key leader of Hashd Forces in Iraq.
Like Suleimani, al-Muhandis was known for waging the long fight against ISIS. (Despite this, the U.S. media only give credit to the U.S. and its clients who barely lifted a finger in the fight against ISIS.)
On the surface of it, the strike was uncharacteristic of Trump. Here is a man who pledged to pull the U.S. out of the Middle East turmoil — turmoil for which the U.S and Israel bear the primary responsibility.
And yet he seems willing to order a strike that will guarantee intensification of the conflict in the region, and even the deployment of more U.S. forces.
The first term of the Trump administration has revealed the extent to which the U.S. war empire is run by the military-intelligence apparatus.
There is not much a president — even a popular president like Barack Obama in his second term — can do to change the course of empire.
It is not that Obama wanted to end U.S. wars in the region, but Trump has tried to retreat from Middle East conflicts and yet he has been unable due to pressures not only from the military-intelligence apparatus but also from their war advocates in the U.S. Congress and Western media, D.C. think tanks and the human-rights industry.
The pressures to preserve the war agenda is too powerful on a U.S. president for it to cease in the foreseeable future. But Trump has managed to start fewer new wars than his predecessors — until this strike.
Trump’s Obama Obsession
Trump in his foreign policy is obsessed with the legacy and image of Obama. He decided to violate the Iran nuclear agreement (which carried the weight of international law after its adoption by the UN Security Council) largely because he wanted to prove that he is tougher than Obama, and also because he wanted an international agreement that carries his imprint.
Just as Trump relishes putting his name on buildings, hotels, and casinos he wants to put his name on international agreements. His decision, to strike at a convoy carrying perhaps the second most important person in Iran was presumably attached to an intelligence assessment that calculated that Iran is too weakened and too fatigued to strike back directly at the U.S.
Iran faced difficult choices in response to the assassination of Suleimani. On the one hand, Iran would appear weak and vulnerable if it did not retaliate and that would only invite more direct U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian targets.
On the other hand, the decision to respond in a large-scale attack on U.S. military or diplomatic targets in the Middle East would invite an immediate massive U.S. strike inside Iran.
Such an attack has been on the books; the U.S military (and Israel, of course) have been waiting for the right moment for the U.S. to destroy key strategic sites inside Iran.
Furthermore, there is no question that the cruel U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran have made life difficult for the Iranian people and have limited the choices of the government, and weakened its political legitimacy, especially in the face of vast Gulf-Western attempts to exploit internal dissent and divisions inside Iran. (Not that dissent inside Iran is not real, and not that repression by the regime is not real).
Nonetheless, if the Iranian regime were to open an all-out war against the U.S., this would certainly cause great harm and damage to U.S. and Israeli interests.
Iran Sending Messages
In the last year, however, Iran successfully sent messages to Gulf regimes (through attacks on oil shipping in the Gulf, for which Iran did not claim responsibility, nor did it take responsibility for the pin-point attack on ARAMCO oil installations) that any future conflict would not spare their territories.
That quickly reversed the policy orientations of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which suddenly became weary of confrontation with Iran, and both are now negotiating (openly and secretively) with the Iranian government.
Ironically, both the UAE and Saudi Kingdom regimes — which constituted a lobby for war against Iran in Western capitals — are also eager to distance themselves from U.S. military action against Iran.
And Kuwait quickly denied that the U.S. used its territory in the U.S. attack on Baghdad airport, while Qatar dispatched its foreign minister to Iran (officially to offer condolences over the death of Suleimani, but presumably also to distance itself and its territory from the U.S. attack).
The Iranian response was very measured and very specific. It was purposefully intended to avoid causing U.S. casualties; it was intended more as a message of Iranian missile capabilities and their pin point accuracy. And that message was not lost on Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, sent a more strident message. He basically implied that it would be left to Iran’s allies to engineer military responses. He also declared a war on the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, although he was at pains to stress that U.S. civilians are to be spared in any attack or retaliation.
Supporters of the Iran resistance axis have been quite angry in the wake of the assassination. The status of Suleimani in his camp is similar to the status of Nasrallah, although Nasralla, due to his charisma and to his performance and the performance of his party in the July 2006 war, may have attained a higher status.
It would be easy for the Trump administration to ignite a Middle East war by provoking Iran once again, and wrongly assuming that there are no limits to Iranian caution and self-restraint. But if the U.S. (and Israel with it or behind it) were to start a Middle East war, it will spread far wider and last far longer than the last war in Iraq, which the U.S. is yet to complete.
As’ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the “Historical Dictionary of Lebanon” (1998), “Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), and “The Battle for Saudi Arabia” (2004). He tweets as @asadabukhal
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Note 1: The US military base in Iraq, Ain Assad, was demolished by the Iranian missiles, and scores of US military personnel were injured and dispatched to Germany and Kuwait. The Netherland decided to vacate its soldiers from this base to Kuwait: They experienced the fright of a lifetime.
Note 2: Hezbollah of Lebanon delivered a final warning to Israel: Any assassination of its members anywhere around the world by Israel, Hezbollah will retaliate. And Hezbollah delivered on its promise and did retaliate on the assassination of 2 of its fighter in Damascus. Israel had vacated all its military bases in the Galilee and the civilians went into shelters for 3 days waiting for the attack.
Note 3: So far, Syrian regime avoided any clear declaration for retaliation on assassinations on its soil or the frequent Israel missiles destroying weapon depots in Syria.
33 years ago: Lebanon reports progress in negotiation with Israel?
Amine Maaluf was spokesman for the Lebanese delegation and reported from Israel town of Netanya.
The agreement was Not signed: Syria put on the pressure of Amine Gemmayel.
Israel ended up withdrawing its troops from south Lebanon, in 2000, without preconditions
Asad Ghsoub shared this link
Pierre Abi Saab
#أمين_معلوف في الـ 1983
شكراً Asad Abukhalil

Fouad Ajami and his legacy
The news of Ajami’s death triggered a competition among American journalists: they all wanted to express how much they loved him and admired him.
They all spoke about his “grace” and one Zionist publication called him the “genuine Arab hero.” The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were quick to publish glowing obituaries.
Fouad Ajami is not the only Arab Zionist (and I am using the word Zionist here as a description and not as an insult, which it is for all of us anti-Zionists who measure the ideology by its devastating impact on the lives of Palestinians and Arabs and by its blatantly racist discourse) but he may have been the first Arab Zionist to advocate publicly for his Zionism.
Ajami’s career is a political career and not an academic one.
Academic careers in the top US universities are specifically and rigidly structured and designed: those who are not graduates of the “elite US universities” don’t even get short-listed for jobs.
Yet, Fouad Ajami went to school at Eastern Oregon College and received his PhD at the University of Washington, Seattle. It is certain that he is the only graduate of the University of Washington who got an offer from Harvard University (he turned it down).
When Martin Peretz and other Zionists at Harvard were lobbying for the university to hire Ajami, he demurred. He set his own conditions: that he did not want to teach undergraduates. They explained to him that all faculty at Harvard teach undergraduates.
When Ajami was being pursued by Harvard back in the 1990s, Mohsin Mahdi (one of the first Arabs to get tenure at Harvard) was outraged. I was in Mahdi’s office at the time, and he was (in his own quiet way) fuming at the very idea. He gave me a clip from The Harvard Crimson in which an “unnamed” professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard was quoted as saying that Ajami’s reputation is political and not academic. Mahdi told me that it was him, but insisted that his identity not be revealed.
It is not that Ajami was despised by Arabs but here is somebody who got anointed by US establishment media as the foremost Arab expert (after Bernard Lewis) while his colleagues in Middle Eastern studies never held him in high esteem.
But Ajami, and this may be surprising to American readers, was never really known among Arabs the way Bernard Lewis was known through his translated works. Ajami was more of an American phenomenon, the product of American Zionism.
Ajami was quite known and deeply despised by Arabs in the US.
In fact, when Ajami started to spew his hate and contempt for Arabs in the US media, many were shocked and expressed disbelief that one of their own would take those positions. (I was one of the shocked listeners)because his generalized rambling didn’t make sense to me)
I remember once at a dinner with Arab students in the DC area, a Kuwaiti student shared his theory about Ajami. He said that it is not possible for an Arab to take such extreme Zionist positions and that Ajami must have a secret plan.
“What plan are you talking about?” I asked him. He said that Ajami is carefully working his way up the American establishment hierarchy and then, he finished the sentence. I asked, “and then what? liberate Palestine?”
There is a reason for why Ajami rose in prominence in the media and foreign policy establishment. His first job was at Princeton where he got to befriend Bernard Lewis.
But even Lewis could not secure him a tenured job at the Department of Politics. His second job was at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (he succeeded Majid Khadduri who lobbied for his former student, Elie Salem of AUB).
Ajami’s first book, The Arab Predicament was a hit, but he never was able to go beyond it. The verbally gifted man spoke and wrote in a flowery language that captivated the attention of American viewers and readers.
His book spoke about poetry and translated Arabic poems and discourse to English language readers. There were very few original insights in the book, as Hanna Batatu always told me, but it was a useful book in Middle East studies classes.
Ajami’s later books were not imitations of, but more like caricatures of the original. The flowery language got old and repetitive, and the policy recommendation became more and more pronounced and provocative.
The Zionists loved Ajami and he became a sought-after media guest and congressional and government expert. This is a man who once told a congressional committee that the “Sunnis are homicidal and the Shia are suicidal.” (It is turning that homocidal and suicidal go hand in hand, by force of repetitive habit?)
I was watching the event on C-Span and I was struck that everyone in the room laughed. If one is to replace the word “Jewish” with “Arab” in all the rhetoric and analysis of Ajami, one would rightly be accused and condemned as an anti-Semitic.
But Ajami’s name and accent served him well. He was “one of them” but testifying to their brutality, “atavism” and “culture of terrorism.”
Ajami was willing to express views that Westerners were, at that time, reluctant to say publicly.
He gave a respectable cast to the racist discourse about Arabs and shared inside views about “their culture.” Ajami was incapable of speaking for a few minutes without reminding viewers that he is a proud American — he would always preface his remarks by, “We Americans.” Ajami is like the one Jewish person who gets invited to anti-Semitic conferences to attest the views about Jews held by anti-Semites.
But the usefulness of Ajami waned after September 11, 2001.
There were many imitators and racism against Arabs and Muslims became quite widely acceptable in polite and impolite companies. There were also many Arab and Arab-American imitators in the US and in Europe.
They wanted to achieve prominence by bashing Arabs. Bassam Tibi played that role in Germany, others played similar roles in Western countries. But the limits on discourse against Arabs were lifted and the ability to capture attention by resorting to extreme positions stopped working because extremism (against Arabs and Muslims) became part of the mainstream (the liberal and conservative mainstream).
The director of the right-wing Hoover Institution described Ajami as “one of the most brilliant Middle East scholars of our times” and all media later copied that title. None of them wondered whether the conservative director had the qualifications to assess the status of Middle East studies and its scholars.
But the criteria are political and ever since the first Gulf war, Ajami became a politician writing advice and instructions to policy-makers. The era of the Bush administration changed Ajami: even his flowery language was gone. He started to speak and write like Republican consultants and vulgar neo-conservative pundits.
Nuance was never Ajami’s forte. Ajami’s cheerleading role in the Bush administration earned him high honors in the Bush White House who bestowed one of the highest honors a president can bestow on a citizen. After all, Ajami predicted that Arabs would greet the American invasion and occupation of Iraq “with joy.”
There is no accountability in punditry. Witness how all those who were wrong about Iraq in 2003 have risen again and are dispensing advice and knowledge about the country in US media.
Ajami was unrepentant: in his last column for the Wall Street Journal, he singled out Obama and Maliki for criticisms. They alone were responsible for the mess in Iraq. America was, of course, blameless.
Ajami left a harmful legacy for Arabs.
He charted a new course in Middle East analysis in the US (and the West in general): people should not be shy about expressing bigotry and hostility to Arabs anymore. The field is wide open.
He also left many questions unanswered with his death. His bitterness toward Arabs and his need (in every statement and every interview) to remind people that he was an American spoke of a psychological condition.
We will never know why somebody would have such deep contempt and hatred for his people and the culture in which he was born. His avowed Zionism was only an expression of that condition.
Dr. As’ad AbuKhalil is a professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus, a lecturer and the author of The Angry Arab News Service. He tweets @asadabukhalil.
Is Israel’s Bombing of Syria just a matter of Domestic Politics? Is all wars fundamentally within internal politics struggles?
Posted March 27, 2013
on:Is Israel’s Bombing of Syria just a matter of Domestic Politics? Is all wars fundamentally within internal politics struggles?
On January 30, 2013, Israel stroke twice inside Syria, and reportedly hit a convoy of anti-aircraft weapons heading to Lebanon according to Israeli and western news agencies. According to Syrian state media, the Israeli strike targeted a military research facility.
After the news broke, many questions were raised:
What was the target of the Israeli attack?
Was the strike in Syrian or Lebanese territory?
Did a strike even happen? Was this the start of a regional war?
As is usually the case with attention-grabbing events in Syria, multiple interests groups inside the country quickly proclaimed the strike as a vindication of their respective positions.
But as days turned to weeks, it seemed the Israeli strike had less to do with events inside Syria and more to do with domestic Israeli politics
Yazan al-Saadi posted on Mar 18, 2013 in Muftah:
A sign showing the distances to Damascus and a cut out of a soldier are seen at an army post from the 1967 war at Mt. Bental in the Golan Heights, overlooking Syria. (Photo credit: AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
The Strike Vindicates All
There were several narratives that emerged from inside Syria about the strike.
For those who found themselves, willingly or unwillingly, aligned with the Syrian regime, the strike was perceived as another indicator of a sophisticated conspiracy to declaw the Syrian state and thereby weaken resistance toward Israel.
That the strike was met with only muted outrage from many in the Syrian opposition, as well as countries inside and outside the region, seemed to substantiate this logic (declaw the Syrian state).
For those who opposed the Syrian government, the regime’s failure to respond to the attacks – beyond the usual wearisome claims about waiting for an appropriate “time and place” to act against Israel – demonstrated its inherent weakness and unwillingness to match flowery rhetoric with action.
Prominent commentator and academic As’ad AbuKhalil perfectly encapsulated this view in a blog post for Al-Akhbar English:
And the Syrian regime, despite its pathetic lack of a response to past acts of Israeli aggression against Syria, is now in a more difficult position. If it does not act in response to Israeli aggression, it will be quite embarrassing for the regime to justify the use of fighter jets and helicopter gunships in its internal conflict (for purposes of regime preservation), but not for defending Syrian territory against Israeli attacks. The Syrian army, which has by and large remained loyal to the regime, could face major defections in protest against this regime reluctance. But if the regime responds to Israeli attacks, Israel can inflict severe damage to the military power of the regime, which is needed to protect the regime. Either way, the regime could suffer, although it would change the contours of the conflict if it were to respond against Israel in a major way.
Interestingly enough, this position was echoed by Elliot Abrams, an American diplomat and extreme ally of Israel, who recently wrote about the attack and compared it to a previous Israeli strike on Syrian territory in 2007.
Abrams noted:
The Israeli assessment of Syria’s likely reaction was correct. The Israelis believed that if (they and we) spoke about the strike, Assad might be forced to react to this humiliation by trying to attack Israel. If, however, we all shut up, he might do nothing—nothing at all. He might try to hide the fact that anything had happened. And with every day that passed, the possibility that he would acknowledge the event and fight back diminished. That had been the Israeli theory, and the Israelis knew their man.
Indeed, the Syrian regime did not respond militarily to the recent strike, just as it failed to respond in 2007. This lack of an armed response is quite incredible when one remembers how quickly the Syrian military was able to shoot down Turkish planes in June 2012.
This begs the question:
Is the powerful security and military apparatus in Syria truly for the benefit of confronting imperialism and Zionism, or, as AbuKhalil suggests, simply a tool for regime preservation? The answer, of course, depends on where you stand on the conflict inside Syria.
For those opposed to the Assad regime, the lack of a Syrian response to the usual Israeli belligerence continues the pattern of non-confrontation, and provides further evidence that the regime’s rhetoric of resisting Zionism and western imperialism is illusory. Consequently, for the Syrian opposition, the attack was counter-productive and in fact shored up more nationalist support for the Syrian regime.
For those who support the Assad regime view that the Israeli attack was as confirmation of a conspiracy to weaken the ‘resistance axis’, and justify the lack of a Syrian response to the strike as a matter of political pragmatism.
An Israeli Affair
At first blush, events inside Syria may seem to explain the Israeli strike. After all, with the on-going instability inside the country, the time appears ripe for Israel to attack a government that has historically claimed to oppose the Israeli state.
While this explanation is convenient, other issues are clearly at play. Since its inception in 1970, the Assad regime’s relationship with Israel has gone from full-blown war to détente. The Israelis feel comfortable with the regime, and understand how it functions.
Alteration of the Syrian government, by contrast, offers new challenges and uncertainties. While a new Syrian government may not embrace resistance as before, it may also challenge the Israelis more aggressively. It is a risk the Israeli government is not willing to take, especially given the region’s recent volatility.
Even if Israel was interested in weakening the Syrian regime, bombing a government arms convoy seems unlikely to dent the regime’s capabilities, nor does it otherwise justify the risks associated with military action. There must be more to the story. The timing of the strike may offer a clue as to the real motivations behind the attack.
Israeli Elections
Eight days prior to the strike, the Israeli legislative elections concluded with the ultra-right wing Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, eking out a bitter victory.
Despite winning the majority of parliamentary seats, Netanyahu’s party suffered losses, particularly due to the surprising growth of Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party, which came in second with 19 seats.
Among the Western press, Lapid is presented as a foil to the ultra-right wing Netanyahu. For many Western media outlets, the aggressiveness and racism from Netanyahu and other right wing Israeli politicians has become increasingly troubling.
Dubbed the ‘Israeli center,’ the very photogenic Lapid leads a party that is supposedly representative of Israel’s secular center. Lapid and his party are, however, nothing short of a chimera or as the Israeli historian, Tom Segev, called him, “a kind of anti-Orthodox Likud lite.”
Shortly after parliamentary elections concluded, tensions surfaced between Netanyahu and Lapid over controlling positions in the new coalition government. The prime minister position was a particular source of dispute, causing tensions and delays.
The Israeli strike on Syria, and sensational prophesies about a chemical weapons response from the Syrian regime, seemed to work in favor of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies.
For Netanyahu and his peers, the strike offered another opportunity to demonstrate their ‘toughness’ to the Israeli public. As any observer of Israeli politics knows, war and adventurous military strikes are common tools used by Israeli leaders to streamline and shore up popular support. Indeed the bet appears to have paid off, as the new Israeli cabinet remains dominated by the right-wing.
The strike on Syria is no different.
It did not harm the Syrian regime’s military capabilities. It did not help the armed opposition groups fighting against the regime. It was not comprehensive, or followed by more strikes. It was, however, driven by domestic Israeli politics.
Conclusion: The Need for Patient Analysis
Admittedly, like most things relating to Syria these days, it is hard to have much confidence about analysis on the Israeli strike. While thoughtful critique should continue, it is important to recognize this fact and to take time to reflect critically on events before passing judgment.
Historical truth is, however, always a good place to start.
It is an indisputable fact that the Syrian regime has been part and parcel of the region’s system of control, with other dictatorships and monarchies desperately trying to hold back the wave of people power demanding self-determination and liberty from domestic and foreign oppression.
While Syria relationship with Israel may seem antagonistic, Syria has been a reliable partner for decades, unwilling to enter into any military dispute with Israel. It is a relationship the Israelis covet and are fearful of losing. The strike must be assessed against this backdrop. It is the only way to come as close to the truth as possible.
*Yazan al-Saadi is a staff writer at Muftah.
Good or bad? A tribute is a tribute: on late Ghassan Tueni
Tueni joined the Syria Social National Party (SSNP), the Lebanese branch, early on in his youth while the leader Antoun Saadeh was exiled in Argentina. When Saadeh returned to Lebanon in 1947, he dismissed Tueni and scores of other leading members for transforming the party into a Lebanese party and not representative of the Syrian people (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq).
Tueni published a scathing diatribe of the 24-hour mock trial that ended in the execution of Saadeh by a government of a pseudo-State that tacitly supported the creation of Israel.
Tueini later rejoined the party after Saadeh was executed and was elected deputy as a member of the SSNP in the 50s.
An-Nahar is no longer such a leading free opinion daily: people still think that it remains “leading” to this day…For example, Israeli scholars of the Arab world still cited Al-Hawadith magazine because they still think that it is as popular was it was back in the 1970s.
Tueni mimicked the successful journalistic formula of the US: the use of weekly supplements, the division into sections, the sensational use of pictures on the front page, and the introduction of technology when newspapers were very old-fashioned in the Arab world.
Tueni was mostly able to sustain the preeminence of his daily in Lebanon thanks to the financial support from Gulf countries and from other Western powers during the Cold War.
An-Nahar and its publishing houses were intensely involved in anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War. A book on the cultural Cold War in the Middle East would have a special section about An-Nahar.
Ghassan Tueni was made famous in the world community when he delivered a speech at the UN demanding “let my people live…” during the 17 year-long civil war.
Ghassan Tueni believed that the civil war was instigated and planned by foreign powers, (superpowers and regional powers), though the Lebanese people know that they were and still are dried branches, ready to burn for failure to reform and change their social/political structure since 1943…
A few people are angry for heaping all the good qualities and attributes on Ghassan Tueni.
“It is one thing to see the March 14 (Hariri and Saudi-funded) press in Lebanon paying tributes to Ghassan Tueni. But to see Western media talking about him is to be reminded about the extent of propaganda and its disconnection to reality.
When David Ignatius, for example, writes about Ghassan Tueni and his contribution to Arab media, you have to question if he knows what he’s talking about?
How can someone who does not know the language and culture of a region comment on press in that culture?
What is the value of my comments on Chinese media if I don’t know Chinese? That only shows that those are recycling conventional wisdom and established propaganda clichés.
The New York Times carried a glowing obituary of Tueni and singled him out as the most important Arab journalist. Funny, the New York Times even linked him to the “Arab spring” as if anyone in the new Arab generation followed his writings.
Who in Tunisia or Saudi Arabia knows who Ghassan Tueni is?
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, for example – whether you like it or not – is known and read throughout the Arab world. Tueni never had that stature outside the Near East region.
Abdul-Bari Atwan is another Arab journalist who is known and read throughout the region, particularly due to his Al Jazeera appearances, but Tueni never enjoyed that kind of acclaim.
Sami Moubayed wrote another glowing tribute and claimed that Tueni was courageous about support for “freedom” – even Saddam spoke about the virtues of generic freedom.
Moubayed spoke about the courage of Tueni when the man was never known for his political courage and made peace with whoever dominated Lebanese politics (his son, Jubran was in fact outspoken against the Syrian regime).
For decades Al Nahar exhibited racist anti-Syrian rhetoric. But Western media don’t know better.
Elias Khoury in Al-Quds Al-Arabi even referred to Tueni as “revolutionary”. Various tributes talked about his love of “freedom”.
Yet, George Hawi (late assassinated communist leader) in his book published by Dar An-Nahar put it best: “Tueni supported freedom only when he was out of power, and only occasionally”.
Tueni is the champion of the counter-revolution in the Arab world. He has been aligned with the conservative Arab regional and international order throughout the decades. His paper was part of the propaganda devices of the US during the Cold War.
The paper was successful and effective in the 1960s up to the eruption of the Lebanese civil war in 1975.
Tueni, far from being a courageous critic of regimes, was aligned with successive regimes in Lebanon.
For example, Al-Nahar, under Tueni, praised President Bishara al-Khoury before belatedly joining the opposition, and it remained faithful to the terrible rule of President Camille Chamoun. It was critical of President Fouad Chehab but only on behalf of the right-wing coalition of the Hilf (“the alliance”) in the 1960s.
An-Nahar was aligned with the regime of Elias Sarkis and Tueni had the most influential political role in the administration of Amin Gemayyel – probably one of the worst and most corrupt administrations in contemporary Lebanese history.
People forgot (or pretended to forget) that Tueni served as the overall coordinator of the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations that produced the still-born May 17 Agreement. The paper never raised its voice against the repression of Amin Gemayyel.
When Ghassan’s son, late Jubran (assassinated), took over the paper, it no longer pretended to adhere to the cloak of journalistic objectivity. It became vulgar and sectarian, and played a partisan role in the Lebanese conflict.
Khouri talked about hiring leftists, but it would be more accurate to say that the Tuenis, father and son, only tolerated leftists after they become ex-leftists.
The ideology of the paper was unmasked even during the times of Ghassan. He said so in the book Sirr Al-Mihnah (“Trade Secret”): The three intellectual and political influences in his life were Charles Malek, Camille Chamoun, and Antoun Saadeh.
Malek and Chamoun inspired him all his life and he adhered to their conservative and right-wing agenda in the paper. His long time editor-in-chief, Louis al-Hajj, spoke of the services that the paper rendered to Pierre Gemayyel (founder of the right-wing Phalanges Party) and even revealed the sectarian mindset of the paper.
Tueni played an important political role in Lebanese politics and society. He promoted conservative and right-wing notions and themes under the guise of a liberal bourgeois framework. But he was always cautious politically and his editorials were only daring in favor of this traditional politician against that traditional politician.
In the Arab Cold War, Tueni’s paper earned tremendous financial benefits due to its stance in favor of the anti-communist coalition (Al-Hayat and An-Nahar were the voices of anti-communism and of the Arab regimes of oil and gas).
While the stature and political significance of the paper declined, it continued to do well financially. However, this was only due to a corrupt monopolistic scheme that its Lebanese Forces’ ally, Antoine Choueiri, arranged whereby most revenues from the ad market would end up at the paper at the expense of all other papers in Lebanon.
Tueni left an already insignificant newspaper. An-Nahar belongs to a bygone era. The arena is now taken over by new outlets and publications. But there is no denying that Tueni was influential a very long time ago”. End of As’ad AbuKhalil post
Ghassan Tueiny shouldered his responsibilities when his dad died and his elder brother died and had to run a daily in young age.
He had a full-life.
He lost his brother. He lost all his three children, the latest was Jubran, assassinated.
He lost his first wife Nadia. He remarried at the age 70… How many of us can claim that we have a life?
Good or bad, a tribute is a tribute for an engaged and active life. Compassion and passionate occasions were plenty to disseminate and flow around…
Ghassan Tueini knew how to lead people and go the extra mile in sustaining a daily and its employees, train journalists and reporters and maintaining Lebanon a base for freedom of expression when dictatorial regimes all around forced their intellectuals to flee to greener pasture for free opinions…
One-sided Non-violent revolution: Even in “democratic” systems?
Claiming to be in revolt connote a change in political system. Any political party claiming to be against a political system is tantalizing to think of as a “revolutionary” party. For example, an extremist Islamic party abhorring a communist system can claim to be “revolutionary”. Consequently, being a revolutionary does not necessarily lead to any kind of association with programs targeted to be for the well-being of communities…
It is the social and economic programs, detailed and engaged among communities, that project the necessity for reforms, based on the deficiencies of the current system from recreating and revising programs which are demonstrating to be short of breath for any significant improvement and development.
Apparently, the documentary “How to Start a Revolution” by Ruaridh Arrow was screened at the Zionist Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. It comes at a time when Foreign Policy magazine has decided that Gene Sharp “has inspired Arab spring protesters.”
The New York Times decided—without any evidence whatsoever—that Gene Sharp has inspired a non-violent revolution throughout the Arab world. Can anyone claim that governments in any of the revolutions, anywhere, never used and abused of violence against mass demonstrators, marchers, extended sit-ins…? Do thousands of revolted citizens who were killed, injured, humiliated, rounded up and put in jails, teargazed…didn’t submit to violence?
Can anyone who joined “Occupy Wall Street” protest in the scores of US cities claim that violence was not their daily staple by police forces? Can we claim that a revolt was non-violent simply because the masses of political disobedience were the only party refraining from using arms, clubs, teargas, camels…?
No, the Arab uprisings have not been non-violent at all: the Egyptian people revolted violently in Suez and other places, and attacked government buildings,offices of Hosni Mubarak’s party. police stations throughout the country, and offices of Hosni Mubarak’s party…
The Libyan uprising degenerated, with NATO intervention, into multiple wars inside Libya, and is turning more vicious after Qadhafi assassination, though the news media refrain from covering this insidious tacit civil war…
In Tunisia, the rebels also attacked government buildings…and the violence has not subsided yet…
In Yemen, the killing and violence from both sides didn’t subside and has turned to an ugly civil war…
What about Bahrain were the Gulf Arab “States” and Western medias are doing their best to not cover the continuing atrocities committed by these self-appointed absolute monarchs…?
In Syria, the situation is now regularly labeled a “civil war.”
Changing a political system is not the same as gradually reforming a system, through unbiased election laws, and unbiased media coverage that usually favor the power-to-be system…Even lukewarm reform demands are confronted with blood and flesh by the system in order to sending “strong messages” that law and order is the sin-qua of any dominant system…
“Sharp disturbingly has no problem promoting his influence. He starts the movie by talking about the oft-used evidence of the spread of his ideas: that his books have been translated into more than 30 languages. He keeps talking about the translation of one of his books (prominently featured in the film) into Arabic.
This claim is dishonest: Sharp knows that his books were not translated through the initiative of Arab fans. They were translated by his own Einstein Institution, through external funding provided to his organization.
Jamila Raqib (who was featured in the film as his devotee) contacted me a few years ago when the Institution funded the translation of the books. They asked me to supervise the translation process and verify the accuracy. The books were too uninteresting for me, and I turned down the job and I referred them to a friend.
How could Sharp convince himself that the translation of his work into multiple languages is evidence of his influence when he knows that he himself commissioned the translation of his own work?
Politically speaking, Sharp has been working largely in sync with US foreign policy goals. He promoted his non-violent agenda against the communist governments during the Cold War, and his partner (a former US army General) talked about his work under the tutelage of the Republican International Institute.
If Sharp is keen on promoting non-violence, why does he not preach non-violence to the US government which practices more violence than most countries of the world? And why has Sharp preached non-violence to Palestinians but not to Israelis? His project of non-violence seems in the interest of the most violent governments in the world today.”
Can we dismiss the theory of Gene Sharp’s so-called inspiration the non-violent nature of the “Arab spring” uprising? What does the documentary “How to Start A Revolution” say?
AbuKhalil resumes: “It is not easy to finish the movie: there is no story, really. It focuses on Gene Sharp in his old age, in his house in Massachusetts. In the basement of the house works the executive director of his Albert Einstein Institution. Director Sharp struggles to make his case, and the movie has the feel of a promotional movie of a cult.
The movie could not provide any evidence of Sharp’s influence. Consequently, it invites four men to confirm that Sharp has inspired revolution. One man is from Serbia, and another from Georgia, and one is from Egypt, and the fourth, a Syrian from London.
Each one of the four was tasked with providing a testimonial (clearly under prodding from the interviewer behind the camera) to the effect that “yes, Sharp inspired the revolution”. That was it. The film was crude in contrasting images of revolutions and protests with a close up of Gene Sharp’s face in his house.
And the movie claimed falsely that governments around the world have been attacking Gene Sharp’s works due to his influence. Sharp himself, without any evidence, claimed that the Russian government set on fire two printing presses because they carried his books. The film claimed that protesters in Iran were convicted on following the instructions of Sharp — and again no evidence was presented.
The second part of the movie focuses on the Egyptian and Syrian cases.
In the Egyptian case, the movie brings in a guy and introduces him to us as “a leader of the Egyptian revolution.” I personally have never heard of the guy, but you had to believe that he is the leader of the revolution. This Egyptian “leader” said: “yes, Sharp inspired the Egyptian revolution”.
The Syrian guy, Ussama Munajjid, was even funnier. He lives in London but the film introduced him as a “leader” of the Syrian revolution. We saw him in his office uploading footage from cameras that he “had placed” all over the country, as the film alleges. If this guy’s testimonial was not enough, he was flown to Boston to be filmed while listening to Sharp’s advice.
It is not difficult to mock the writings of Sharp. His instructions for revolution are too basic and common-sensical to be credited to Sharp. The film even suggests that he was behind the idea of beating pots and pans in Serbia, when Latin Americans have engaged in this form of protests for decades, long before Sharp’s books were translated (at his own initiative) to Spanish.
Sharp suggests that protesters should wave flags, as if they did not think of that prior to the publication of Sharp’s books!
The message of Sharp in the film is condescending and patronizing, although his firm belief in his own international influence has a tinge of self-delusion. He believes that he — the White Man — alone knows what is the best course of action for people around the world. He preaches to Arabs that they were wrong in insisting on the resignation of the leader: he urges that the downfall of the government be stressed instead, as if Arab popular chants did not aim at that.
Sharp (or his one Egyptian fan in the film) may have not heard of the nine bombings of the Egyptian pipeline to Israel. That was not in any of Sharp’s books.” End of quote