The shaping of a New World Order

If the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system.

Mark LeVine

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112611181593381.html

I remember the images well, even though I was too young to understand their political significance. But they were visceral, those photos in the New York Times from Tehran in the midst of its revolutionary moment in late 1978 and early 1979. Not merely exuberance jumped from the page, but also anger; anger fuelled by an intensity of religious fervour that seemed so alien as to emanate from another planet to a "normal" pre-teen American boy being shown the newspaper by his father over breakfast.

Many commentators are comparing Egypt to Iran of 32 years ago, mostly to warn of the risks of the country descending into some sort of Islamist dictatorship that would tear up the peace treaty with Israel, engage in anti-American policies, and deprive women and minorities of their rights (as if they had so many rights under the Mubarak dictatorship).

I write this on February 2, the precise anniversary of Khomeini's return to Tehran from exile. It's clear that, while religion is a crucial foundation of Egyptian identity and Mubarak's level of corruption and brutality could give the Shah a run for his money, the situations are radically different on the ground.

A most modern and insane revolt

The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:

"It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us - but more specifically on them, these ... workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say ... All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?"

The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini's return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.

Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of "insanity" that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one's government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.

What was clear, however, was that the powers that most supported the Shah, including the US, dawdled on throwing their support behind the masses who were toppling him. While this is by no means the principal reason for Khomeini's successful hijacking of the revolution, it certainly played an important role in the rise of a militantly anti-American government social force, with disastrous results.

While Obama's rhetoric moved more quickly towards the Egyptian people than did President Carter's towards Iranians three decades ago, his refusal to call for Mubarak's immediate resignation raises suspicion that, in the end, the US would be satisfied if Mubarak was able to ride out the protests and engineer a "democratic" transition that left American interests largely intact.

The breath of religion

Foucault was also right to assign such a powerful role to religion in the burgeoning revolutionary moment - and he experienced what he called a "political spirituality", But, of course, religion can be defined in so many ways. The protestant theologian Paul Tillich wonderfully described it as encompassing whatever was of "ultimate concern" to a person or people. And today, clearly, most every Egyptian has gotten religion from this perspective.

So many people, including Egypt's leaders, have used the threat of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover to justify continued dictatorship, with Iran as the historical example to justify such arguments. But the comparison is plagued by historical differences. The Brotherhood has no leader of Khomeini's stature and foreswore violence decades ago. Nor is there a culture of violent martyrdom ready to be actualised by legions of young men, as occurred with the Islamic Revolution. Rather than trying to take over the movement, which clearly would never have been accepted - even if its leaders wanted to seize the moment, the Brotherhood is very much playing catch up with the evolving situation and has so far worked within the rather ad hoc leadership of the protests.

But it is equally clear that religion is a crucial component of the unfolding dynamic. Indeed, perhaps the iconic photo of the revolution is one of throngs of people in Tahrir Square bowed in prayers, literally surrounding a group of tanks sent there to assert the government's authority.

This is a radically different image of Islam than most people - in the Muslim world as much as in the West - are used to seeing: Islam taking on state violence through militant peaceful protest; peaceful jihad (although it is one that has occurred innumerable times around the Muslim world, just at a smaller scale and without the world's press there to capture it).

Such imagery, and its significance, is a natural extension of the symbolism of Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, an act of jihad that profoundly challenges the extroverted violence of the jihadis and militants who for decades, and especially since 9/11, have dominated the public perception of Islam as a form of political spirituality.

Needless to say, the latest images - of civil war inside Tahrir Square - will immediately displace these other images. Moreover, if the violence continues and some Egyptian protesters lose their discipline and start engaging in their own premeditated violence against the regime and its many tentacles, there is little doubt their doing so will be offered as "proof" that the protests are both violent and organized by the Muslim Brotherhood or other "Islamists".

A greater threat than al-Qa'eda

As this dynamic of nonviolent resistance against entrenched regime violence plays out, it is worth noting that so far, Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have had little - if anything - of substance to say about the revolution in Egypt. What they've failed to ignite with an ideology of a return to a mythical and pure beginning - and a strategy of human bombs, IEDs, and planes turned into missiles - a disciplined, forward-thinking yet amorphous group of young activists and their more experienced comrades, "secular" and "religious" together (to the extent these terms are even relevant anymore), have succeeded in setting a fire with a universal discourse of freedom, democracy and human values - and a strategy of increasingly calibrated chaos aimed at uprooting one of the world's longest serving dictators.

As one chant in Egypt put it succinctly, playing on the longstanding chants of Islamists that "Islam is the solution", with protesters shouting: "Tunisia is the solution."

For those who don't understand why President Obama and his European allies are having such a hard time siding with Egypt's forces of democracy, the reason is that the amalgam of social and political forces behind the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt today - and who knows where tomorrow - actually constitute a far greater threat to the "global system" al-Qa'eda has pledged to destroy than the jihadis roaming the badlands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen.

Mad as hell

Whether Islamist or secularist, any government of "of the people" will turn against the neoliberal economic policies that have enriched regional elites while forcing half or more of the population to live below the $2 per day poverty line. They will refuse to follow the US or Europe's lead in the war on terror if it means the continued large scale presence of foreign troops on the region's soil. They will no longer turn a blind eye, or even support, Israel's occupation and siege across the Occupied Palestinian territories. They will most likely shirk from spending a huge percentage of their national income on bloated militaries and weapons systems that serve to enrich western defence companies and prop up autocratic governments, rather than bringing stability and peace to their countries - and the region as a whole.

They will seek, as China, India and other emerging powers have done, to move the centre of global economic gravity towards their region, whose educated and cheap work forces will further challenge the more expensive but equally stressed workforces of Europe and the United States.

In short, if the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system than the one that has dominated the global political economy for decades, especially since the fall of communism.

This system could bring the peace and relative equality that has so long been missing globally - but it will do so in good measure by further eroding the position of the United States and other "developed" or "mature" economies. If Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and their colleagues don't figure out a way to live with this scenario, while supporting the political and human rights of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, they will wind up with an adversary far more cunning and powerful than al-Qa'eda could ever hope to be: more than 300 million newly empowered Arabs who are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

The meaning of strangulation

Israel has been strangling the Palestinian economy since the occupation began [GALLO/GETTY]

By: Mark LeVine

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/2010616131858756851.html

The remarks were not made in anger or haste, as were the now infamous, flippant and ill-conceived comments that cost White House reporter Helen Thomas her job, if not her legacy. Instead, they were made quite deliberately, with an air of thoughtfulness, while leaning over a lectern, as if lecturing to a class.

Thomas was forced into retirement for declaring that Jews "should get the hell out of Palestine," but New York Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful politicians in the US, has avoided any criticism or even major press coverage for remarks he made only days later that supported the continued "economic strangulation" of Gaza; in part, because, he essentially argues, the inhabitants of the benighted Strip are not Jewish.

Schumer made his remarks during a brief talk to the Orthodox Union, a well-known politically conservative Jewish educational, outreach and social service organisation.

The talk covered several foreign policy issues, including Iran and Israel/Palestine. When the topic turned to the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla Schumer began by explaining that the "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution". But that is not all, he continued: "They don't believe in the Torah, in David."

Because of this, and because they chose to elect Hamas, Schumer went on to argue, Israel is right - and the US should support its desire - "to strangle them economically until they see that's not the way to go".

Indeed, whether deliberately or because he does not understand the nature of Israeli policies vis-a-vis Gaza, Schumer did not actually use the word "blockade;" instead describing Israeli actions as a "boycott".

Only when Palestinians see the light, "when there's some moderation and cooperation, can [they] have an economic advancement".

Opinions that matter

With all due respect to Helen Thomas and her illustrious career, she was merely a columnist, with no political power and a relatively small readership. When she adopted opinions or arguments that contradicted the facts or were morally problematic, they were easily rebutted in the public sphere.

Charles Schumer, however, is an extremely powerful senator who serves on some of that body's most powerful committees, such as banking and judiciary.

Moreover, through his representation of New York, the state with the largest Jewish population in the US, he is a leading pro-Israel voice in congress who has the ability directly to impact the nature of US policy towards Israel and the Middle East more broadly.

In other words, what Senator Schumer says actually can cost people - Palestinians, Israelis, Americans - their livelihoods and even their lives, not to mention help prolong or alleviate one of the world's most intractable conflicts. And yet no one in official Washington even blinked.

To consider the implications of these comments, it is worth considering what would happen if any Arab or Muslim, never mind a US senator, explained that because Israelis do not support a two-state solution, and do not believe in the Quran - that is, have not converted to Islam - and have voted in one of the most right-wing governments in their country's history, the US, or the world more broadly, is justified in trying to "strangle Israel economically" until it moderates its policies.

Imagine the uproar. Consider what would happen to the person - a columnist or congressman - who made such a comment. Yet hardly anyone has even noticed, never mind considered the implications of Schumer's remarks, which on YouTube have garnered about 1,500 views. Not a single major US newspaper has even written, let alone editorialised, about them, in contrast to the plethora of editorials and op-eds in response to Thomas' remarks, one clip of which has been viewed well over 1.6 million times.

It is hard to know what to call Schumer's argument that, because Palestinians "don't believe in the Torah, in David," they can be strangled.

He specifically says "there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death," but he does not quite explain how "strangling" an economy that has already been nearly destroyed during 40 years of occupation can do anything but cause immense suffering to the people living in it, as numerous reports by the UN, Israeli, Palestinian and international aid organisations have documented in great detail.

Indeed, to "strangle" an entire people economically can only mean to try to destroy their ability to survive as a national group, which is a crime against humanity.

Official bigotry unchallenged

These are among the most ethnically and religiously bigoted and even inciteful public remarks by a senior American politician I have heard in a long time.

And the fact Schumer could make them without a hint of anger, as if he was merely stating the obvious, and feel no need to recant them after video of the talk was circulated on the internet (several calls to Schumer's press secretary asking for clarification were not answered), is as telling as it is worrisome.

It is also worth noting that besides the moral problems associated with his positions, almost every one of his arguments are factually inaccurate. The strong majority of Palestinians continue to support a two-state solution (74 per cent in an April 2009 poll), even thought the process meant to achieve it has delivered little but misery for them for almost two decades. They moderated their ideology and behaviour as part of Oslo and were met with an ever more intensive occupation in response.

Israel has, in fact, been strangling the Palestinian economy since the inception of the occupation, "de-developing" not just Gaza but the West Bank until Oslo, and then closing off the Territories physically while ensuring that they could not develop an autonomous economy as the central component of Oslo's economic protocols.

Indeed, it is precisely the intensification of the occupation that led to the breakdown of negotiations, the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada, the massive violence of Israel's response, and the election of Hamas in response to these dynamics. Even senior Israeli generals have admitted that their harsh actions have only strengthened Hamas.

Collective punishment

Schumer also fails to realise that by advocating the "economic strangulation" of Gaza he is calling for collective punishment of a civilian population in order to change its political beliefs or views.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he should know that this is essentially the definition of terrorism used by the US government, which in several federal statutes, including the Patriot Act, define terrorism as involving acts that "appear to be intended ... to intimidate or coerce a civilian population ... to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion [or] affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping ..." (USA Patriot Act, Title VIII, Sec. 802).

Israel's policies of economic strangulation have clearly - and admittedly - been intended to force a change in behaviour, and are inseparable from its policies of assassination and kidnappings which have also been practiced by the US under the guise of drone strikes and renditions (it is also likely not coincidental that Senator Schumer also supported the use of torture by the Bush administration in 2004).

How does Senator Schumer think advocating economic strangulation will actually improve Israel's security, help moderate Palestinians, or, as should be a major concern for a US senator, improve the US' position in the eyes of the Muslims world as his party's president, Barack Obama, has been trying to do since taking office?

Moreover, his comments suggest that if Israel manages to choke Palestinians into compliance, the most he is willing to support is the sort of "economic peace" or development promised by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as an alternative to actual sovereignty and independence. If so, that would put him in direct confrontation with Obama's strongly-stated support for Palestinian statehood.

Finally, it might serve Senator Schumer to know that within Islam there is in fact an acceptance of the Torah and David, as the Torah (tawrat in Arabic) is considered one of the Holy Books of God, whose corruption by humans led to subsequent revelations until the final, according to Islamic theology, uncorrupted revelation, that comprised the Quran. Moreover, David is considered a prophet and another set of books, the Zabur, or songs/psalms, is attributed to him.

Perhaps if Schumer understood this basic theological relationship between Judaism and Islam, he might be less predisposed to imagining that Israelis and Palestinians are inevitably at odds, and that the latter will act irrationally and with malice against Israel no matter what Israel does and therefore the safest policy from Israel's perspective is, if not actual strangulation, at least continuous repression.

Obama's challenge

If Schumer thinks this way, many if not most of his colleagues, and the majority of the American media and political spheres, do as well.

If this is what he is up against, no wonder Obama is finding it so hard to change US policy towards the conflict.

It would be one thing if Schumer's views impacted only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But his remarks to the Orthodox Union also touched upon Iran, and did so in a way that provide some alarming insight into what is likely the consensus of the senate about the goal of US policies towards the Islamic Republic.

Specifically, Schumer described a bill presently in reconciliation between the house and senate that would prevent any company that sold gasoline directly or indirectly to Iran from selling oil products in the US. If passed, such a bill would significantly impact Iran because while it is a major petroleum exporter, Iran in fact imports a larger share of the gasoline it uses for domestic consumption.

After describing the bill and its potential impact, Schumer added off-handedly, as if it was too obvious really to need mentioning, that "the whole idea is to bring the Iranian regime down".

He added: "There is a lot of discontent ... the people of Iran want economic advancement above all ... If we can stop that economic advancement we can hurt the country economically. That might be the spark that brings the people ... that brings the regime, which is fundamentally not popular and works by fear, down."

It seems that to Schumer what is good for Israel in Gaza is good for the US in Iran; engage in blatant attempts at regime change, even if doing so is a violation of international law; hurt or strangle a country economically in order to cause the people to suffer enough that they rise up against the government to whose existence you are opposed; and if none of that works, keep applying more pressure, until, presumably, there is no choice but to take military action.

Senator Schumer's words seem to represent the mainstream of opinion inside the Washington political establishment. They would seem, thus far, not to be the official policies of the Obama administration, but if the president does not articulate a clear agenda that includes bold action to break the logjams in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Iran and the Western powers, Schumer's views will likely become the de facto fall-back strategy of whatever administration is in power in two years' time.

And this will most likely mean a lot more suffering for Palestinians and Iranians, and ultimately, for Israelis and Americans as well.
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Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).

What Goldstone Says About the US

By: Mark LeVine

Opponents of the Goldstone report might well be hoping that after its lopsided condemnation in the US House of Representatives and successful relegation back to the UN's Human Rights Commission, the report will become little more than an historical footnote in a decades-long conflict.

This might in fact occur, given the imbalance of power between the contending sides. But historians can do a great deal with footnotes.
When the glare of history is finally shone upon the whole affair, it might well turn out that the reasons for such vehement opposition from US politicians, and only tepid (at best) support for it among other major powers, have far more to do with their own geostrategic interests than with protecting Israel.

Back Story

The report, written by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, has caused uproar in Israel and the US for its alleged bias against Israel and avoidance of serious criticism of Hamas. The condemnation, House Resolution 867, passed by a 344-36 vote.
Before the vote on the resolution, Goldstone sent a letter to members of Congress refuting most of the allegations contained in it. But his rebuttal did not lead to substantive changes in the report's accusations and apparently had no effect on the vote.

Given the way in which opposition to the report unfolded it would be easy to conclude that this is merely another case of the vaunted Israel lobby shutting down any debate over Israel's actions in the Occupied Territories.

Yet while Israel's supporters no doubt took the lead in pushing the resolution, there is a back story to this drama that has likely played an equally, if not more important, role in the firestorm it has generated.
Why would the House go so far out of its way to stamp out even the consideration of war crimes accusations against Israel? And why would Barack Obama, the US president, have pressured Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, not to push the report in the UN when he had to know that such actions would cost Abbas most of his little remaining credibility among Palestinians?

Accessory to War Crimes

There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, if Israel is guilty of committing systematic war crimes across Gaza and the West Bank, then the US, which supported, funded and armed Israel during the war, is an accessory to those crimes.

Goldstone explains in no uncertain terms that Gaza was not an aberration in terms of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Rather, it marked not only a continuation of Israel's behaviour during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, but "highlights a common thread of the interaction between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians which emerged clearly also in many cases discussed in other parts of the report.
It referenced continuous and systematic abuse, outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment contrary to fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and human rights law".

"The Mission concludes that the treatment of these civilians constitutes the infliction of a collective penalty on those persons and amounts to measures of intimidation and terror. Such acts are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and constitute a war crime," the report says.

Put simply, if there is blood on Israel's hands, than it is has dripped all over America's shirt.

Israel could not and would not have engaged in the level of wholesale destruction of Gaza painstakingly catalogued in the report without the support of the outgoing Bush administration, and acquiescence of the incoming Obama administration.

Israeli Narrative Challenged

Not only that, but on the same day the report was released the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel's military leadership is preparing the country for yet another invasion of Gaza in the near future.
It is not clear how much of Gaza is left to be destroyed, but the report's detailed discussion of Israel's attacks on innumerable homes, mosques, schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities show what lengths Israel will go to to punish Gazans, and Palestinians more broadly.

There is also the larger context of the peace negotiations. If Israel can be guilty of humanitarian crimes at this level, then it puts the entire Israeli narrative about the occupation - that it is ultimately about preserving the country's security - into question.

In fact, the report declares precisely this, in paragraph 1674, when it argues that the Gaza invasion "cannot be understood and assessed in isolation from developments prior and subsequent to it. The operation fits into a continuum of policies aimed at pursuing Israel's political objectives with regard to Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole".

Almost everyone outside the US, including in Israel, understands that the occupation has always been about settlement, not security, since Israel could have militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 indefinitely without establishing a single settlement, and could withdraw from all its settlements tomorrow and maintain a military occupation until it felt secure enough to turn the territory over to Palestinians.

As famed general Moshe Dayan once put it, the settlements in the Occupied Territories are essential "not because they can ensure security better than the army, but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the IDF would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population".

But the US remains heavily invested in maintaining this security narrative; both because it is the core of the strategic alliance between the two countries with all the military, strategic and financial implications that come with it, and because, as with the Gaza invasion, the settlement enterprise could never have proceeded without US support, or at least acquiescence.

This dynamic continues to operate today, as the same day House Resolution 867 was passed, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, explained that the US preferred to return to peace talks even without a settlement freeze, despite the fact that not stopping settlement construction during negotiations has been deemed by former senior Israeli negotiators such as Moshe Ben Ami and Yossi Beilin as among the single biggest factors dooming the Oslo peace process.

The Obama administration refuses even to push the parameters painstakingly set by his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, before leaving office, to which both Israelis and Palestinians were very close to agreeing.
Alarming precedent

One has to wonder whether the US Middle East policy-making establishment, which is dominated by defence and security interests, is even interested in bringing about a speedy resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Beyond what the Goldstone report says about America's role in Israel's actions, the report holds a mirror up to US actions in its 'war on terror'. In so doing it paints for US policy-makers and politicians a more frightening picture of a future in which all countries are held accountable for their actions.

Here it becomes clear that, as it has been for four decades, Israel is both the spear and the shield for the projection - and protection - of US power in the Middle East. It engages in activities the US cannot do openly, and it acts as the first line of defence when US interests might be attacked diplomatically.

In going after Israel, the report, however unintended, is going after the US, which has committed many of the same crimes (of which Israel is accused) in its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps through its drone attacks, in Pakistan and other countries. This is the report's true danger, and why - from the US perspective - its accusations against Israel cannot stand.

Specifically, the idea of treating a Western-allied state, Israel, and a resistance movement, Hamas, as equally capable of committing war crimes and being held accountable for them, sets an alarming precedent for the US as its engagement in Iraq stretches on indefinitely and deepens in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Why not hold the US (or Pakistan, China, Russia, or India for that matter) to the same standards as we hold the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or opposition movements in Kashmir, Chechnya or Tibet? None of these powers would allow this to happen.

Universal Jurisdiction

Moreover, the report condemns the "Dahiya doctrine," which involved the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations.

Although claiming to work hard to protect civilians in the countries it is occupying, one of the primary complaints against the US by citizens of Afghanistan or Iraq is the frequent killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure, particularly if it could be deemed to be "supporting infrastructure" for "terrorists".

And when such abuses are committed, paragraph 121 of the report reminds the world that "international human rights law and humanitarian law require states to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute allegations of serious violations by military personnel".

This is an indirect stab at the US judicial system, which has so far failed to hold anyone but a few low-level soldiers accountable for the numerous abuses committed by the US in Iraq and the 'war on terror' more broadly.
Perhaps the most dangerous suggestion in this regard is the report's call for applying "universal jurisdiction" to the conflict.

As paragraph 127 states: "In the context of increasing unwillingness on the part of Israel to open criminal investigations that comply with international standards, the mission supports the reliance on universal jurisdiction as an avenue for states to investigate violations of the grave breach [of the] provisions of the Geneva Conventions."

There is no power that wants its officials or military and security personnel subject to prosecution by other countries.

Uncritical Victimology

In this regard, it is not coincidental that the same day resolution 867 was passed an Italian court convicted 23 former CIA agents of participating in the illegal rendition of an Italian imam, who claims he was subsequently tortured in captivity.

In June, the Italian newspaper il Giornale published an interview with Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA's Milan station chief, in which he admitted, "Of course it was an illegal operation. But that's our job. We're at war against terrorism".

This is a crucial statement, for it reveals that the US establishment believes that in a 'war on terror', there are no legal limits to what it can do. And if Israel is condemned for the same attitude, this would vitiate America's ability to take whatever actions it desires, however illegal, to pursue its interests.

Obama might not take such actions, but his successors might. And if another major terrorist attack were to occur on US soil, there is little doubt that the gloves would once again come off, whether Obama wanted to keep them on or not.

In such a situation, the psychology of uncritical victimology that characterised post-9/11 America will be crucial to enabling such policies to be (re)put in place.
As the report quotes an Israeli professor (paragraph 1703): "Israeli society's problem is that because of the conflict, Israeli society feels itself to be a victim and to a large extent that's justified and it's very difficult for Israeli society to move and to feel that it can also see the other side and to understand that the other side is also a victim." This problem is equally difficult for Americans to overcome.

Report's Historical Imprint

Among the final coincidences accompanying the passage of resolution 867 was its release the day after Clinton held a high-profile meeting in Morocco to champion the country's recent official promotion of democracy.

But in her celebration of the Moroccan example she neglected to mention that press freedoms, the core of any democratic system, are suffering increasing restrictions in the country. Freedom of speech or challenging the country's political-economic elite remains heavily circumscribed, especially when it comes from the country's principal Islamically motivated opposition movement.

Of course, Clinton cannot push too hard for democracy in the Muslim world; democratically-elected governments would not tolerate many of the US' core policies in the region, from uncritical support for Israel to its own military and economic alliances and activities.

The day after her Morocco meeting, Clinton was in Egypt, meeting once again with the Egypt's autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak, with not a word about democracy.
Against such policy interests, it might well be that the Goldstone report will be relegated to history without being acted upon.

What few of its opponents understand is just how big an imprint this most exhaustive study of the Israeli occupation will leave.

It might not help Palestinians and Israelis achieve peace today, but future historians will likely look upon it as a crucial document in exposing the realities of the American dominated Middle Eastern system for the world to see.
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Mark LeVine is currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His most recent books include Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009) and Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine (Rowman Littlefield, 2008).