har Klassekampen avtale med, og dette blir vel omsett og trykt relativt
snøggt. Men sidan eg har lagt ut fleire tekstar om same tema, mellom anna av
Zogby, tenkte eg kan henda dette kunne vera av interesse
Two Souls
by Uri Avnery
One has to pity this man, Bush.
When he was elected, almost by accident, he was a local politician without
any international experience. He would have been hard put to locate half the
world’s states on the map.
Since then he has been sleepwalking around the world, pushed hither and
thither, sometimes listening to one of his handlers, sometimes to the other.
He moves in circles, zigzags, forwards and backwards.
He tells Sharon to withdraw immediately - "I repeat, immediately!" - and
when Sharon laughs in his face he declares that Sharon is a Man of Peace. He
calls for an international conference and kills it before it is born. He
fantasizes about the "vision" of a Palestinian state and humiliates the
leader of the Palestinians every day. He brings himself and his office into
disrepute.
What’s happening here?
Well, Bush is torn between two mighty forces that are pulling him in
opposite directions.
On the one side, there is the domestic political pressure. The Jewish lobby
is, of course, one of the strongest in the United States. The Jewish
community is highly organized on rigid, authoritarian lines. Its electoral
and financial power casts a long shadow over both houses of the Congress.
Hundreds of Senators and Congressmen were elected with the help of Jewish
contributions. Resistance to the directives of the Jewish lobby is political
suicide. If AIPAC were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten
Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it at once. This
lobby frightens the media, too, and assures their adherence to Israel.
But nowadays, even the power of this mighty lobby does not match the
influence of the Christian fundamentalist lobby, dominated by the evangelist
preachers. It puts the fear of God into the leaders of the Republican Party.
George Bush Jr. remembers well that his father was forsaken by this lobby,
when he failed to obey it.
This fanatical religious lobby appears to be extremely pro-Zionist.
"Appears", because there is a darker side to it. According to its
theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a
Jewish state on all its territory, so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus
Christ possible. The evangelists don’t like to dwell openly on what’s comes
next: before the Coming, the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who
don’t will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This
is basically an anti-Semitic teaching, but who cares, as long as they
support Israel.
The combined might of the two lobbies is being brought to bear on Bush every
time he tends in the direction of the Arabs. There other powerful factors
are at work: the Arab governments and the Arab oil. The kings, presidents,
Emirs and Sheikhs are subservient to the United States, but they are afraid
that the suffering of the Palestinians will push their people into
rebellion. They infect the Bush family with their fears. The Bushes, of
course, are heavily involved with oil.
In Washington, as in Jerusalem, all problems are translated into personal
struggles. The pro-Sharon faction is headed by the extremist Secretary of
Defense, Rumsfeld, and his even more extreme deputy, Wolfowitz. They have
Vice President Cheney on their side, and also, so it seems, the National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, whose legs aroused the vocal admiration
of Sharon. Opposing them, almost alone, is the Secretary of State, Powell,
supported by the experts of his department. Every time Rumsfeld and Co.
convince Bush that he has to satisfy the Jewish-Christian lobby in order to
win elections, along comes Powell and convinces him at the last moment that
the national interests of the United States demand the opposite.
This week Bush received Mubarak. Sharon at once invited himself to the Oval
Office, obviously believing that Bush is so weak-minded that he is always
influenced by the last person he has listened to.
That is the struggle that meets the eye. Underneath, perhaps, a more
profound struggle lies hidden. My friend Afif Safieh, the PLO delegate in
London, believes that two souls have dwelt in the American nation from
birth.
The one is that of the original settlers, the destroyers of the Native
Americans, the slavers, a soul that adores brute force and cherishes the
myth of the Wild West, that supports tyrants around the world. This soul
identifies itself automatically with the Zionist settlers and the expulsion
of the Arabs. Sharon is their man.
The other one is the soul of Thomas Jefferson (in spite of the fact that he
was a slave-owner, too, of course) and the framers of the constitution; of
Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves; of Wilson, whose 14 Points
proclaimed the right of self-determination; of Roosevelt, who helped to save
the world from Hitler; an idealist, liberal and freedom-loving soul. This
one tends nowadays towards the Palestinians.
The first soul occupies Bush’s heart, the other one knocks on the doors of
his mind. It will be interesting to see which one wins.
[The author has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades. Over
the years, he has written three extensive biographical essays about him, two
(1973, 1981) with his cooperation.]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 11-07-02 MET DST