The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (35 page)

April 13, 2011

Barack Obama Must Speak Out on Bahrain Bloodshed

Three days after Hosni Mubarak resigned as the longstanding dictator in Egypt, people in the small Gulf state of Bahrain took to the streets, marching to their version of Tahrir: Pearl Square, in the capital city of Manama. Bahrain has been ruled by the same family, the House of Khalifa, since the 1780s—more than 220 years. Bahrainis were not demanding an end to the monarchy, but for more representation in their government.

One month into the uprising, Saudi Arabia sent military and police forces over the sixteen-mile causeway that connects the Saudi mainland to Bahrain, an island. Since then, the protesters, the press, and human-rights organizations have suffered increasingly violent repression.

One courageous young Bahraini pro-democracy activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, has seen the brutality up close. To her horror, she watched her father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a prominent human-rights activist, be beaten and arrested. She described it to me from Manama:

Security forces attacked my home. They came in without prior warning. They broke down the building door, and they broke down our apartment door, and instantly attacked my father without giving him a chance to speak and without giving any reason for his arrest. They dragged my father down the stairs and started beating him in front of me. They beat him until he was unconscious. The last thing I heard my father say was that he couldn’t breathe. When I tried to intervene, when I tried to tell them: “Please stop beating him. He will go with you voluntarily. You don’t need to beat him this way,” they told me to shut up, basically, and they grabbed me . . . and dragged me up the stairs back into the apartment. By the time I had got out of the room again, the only trace of my father was his blood on the stairs.

Human Rights Watch has called for the immediate release of al-Khawaja. Zainab’s husband and brother-in-law have also been arrested. Tweeting as “angryarabiya” she has commenced a water-only fast in protest. She also has written a letter to President Barack Obama:

If anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the Al-Khalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American.

Obama condemned the Gaddafi government in his speech, justifying the recent military attacks in Libya, saying: “Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested.” Now that the same things are happening in Bahrain, Obama has little to say.

As with the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the sentiment is nationalist, not religious. The country is 70 percent Shia, ruled by the Sunni minority. Nevertheless, a central rallying cry of the protests has been “Not Shia, Not Sunni: Bahraini.” This debunks the argument used by the Bahraini government that the current regime is the best bulwark against increased influence of Iran, a Shia country, in the oil-rich Gulf. Add to that Bahrain’s strategic role: it is where the U.S. navy’s fifth fleet is based, tasked with protecting “U.S. interests” like the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, and supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely, U.S. interests include supporting democracy over despots.

Nabeel Rajab is the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights—the organization formerly run by the recently abducted Abdulhadi al-Khawaja. Rajab is facing a possible military trial for publishing the photograph of a protester who died in custody. Rajab told me: “Hundreds of people are in jail for practicing their freedom of expression. People are tortured for expressing their freedom of expression. Thousands of people sacked from their jobs . . . And all that, because one day, a month ago, almost half of the Bahraini population came out in the street demanding democracy and respect for human rights.”

Rajab noted that democracy in Bahrain would lead to democracy in neighboring Gulf dictatorships, especially Saudi Arabia, so most regional governments have a stake in crushing the protests. Saudi Arabia is well positioned for the task, as the recent beneficiary of the largest arms deal in U.S. history. Despite the threats, Rajab was resolute: “As far as I’m breathing, as far as I’m alive, I am going to continue. I believe in change. I believe in democracy. I believe in human rights. I’m willing to give my life. I’m willing to give anything to achieve this goal.”

June 9, 2010

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Framing the Narrative

They called it “Operation Sea Breeze.” Despite the pleasant-sounding name, Israel’s violent commando raid on a flotilla of humanitarian aid ships, which left nine civilians dead, has sparked international outrage. The raid occurred in the early-morning hours of May 31, as the six vessels laden with humanitarian aid were still in international waters, bound for Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinian residents are in their third year of an Israeli-imposed blockade. Israel has, from the outset, sought to limit the debate over the attack, and to control the images.

Israeli military boats and helicopters raided the vessels and took control of the flotilla. Nine of the activists on board the largest vessel, the
Mavi Marmara
, were killed at close range by Israeli commandos firing live ammunition. Nineteen-year-old U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan was shot once in the chest and four times in the head. Israel commandeered the six vessels and arrested the roughly 700 activists and journalists, hauled them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and kept them out of meaningful communication with family, press, and lawyers for days. The Israeli government confiscated every recording and communication device it could find—devices containing almost all the recorded evidence of the raid—thus allowing the state to control what the world learned about the assault. The Israelis selected, edited, and released footage they wanted the world to see.

Four days after their capture, most of the detainees were deported by the Israeli government, well after the story had been framed.

I caught up with two veteran journalists who were covering the Gaza Freedom Flotilla for Australia’s
Sydney Morning Herald
, chief correspondent Paul McGeough and his photographer, Kate Geraghty. They were in Istanbul, where they had been deported from Israel. They had spent time on most of the ships of the flotilla, but were aboard the smaller, U.S.-flagged
Challenger 1
when the raid occurred.

Geraghty described how she was shot with a Taser: “I was photographing Israeli commandos coming up a ladder. There was a white flash, this thing hit my arm. I was thrown a meter and a half. It hurt, and I immediately became sick, began throwing up.” She yelled that she and McGeough were from the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and one of the commandos responded, in English with an Australian accent, “We know you’re from the
Herald
.” Despite her breadth of experience covering conflict zones around the world, she found her maltreatment by the Israelis “more personal. They knew who we were, they stole my gear, they falsely imprisoned us when we were in international waters covering a legitimate story.”

I pointed out to McGeough the Rasmussen poll that found 49 percent of U.S. voters believe pro-Palestinian activists on the aid ships are to blame for what happened. He replied, “If ordinary Americans had seen below deck, the men with zip ties on their wrists, on their knees for hours, denied permission to go to the toilet, forced to soil their pants, women pleading to be able to give drinks to men, that may have changed their sense of what happened on the ships.”

When journalists are free to function, they can report the truth. The Israeli military has been forced to retract its claim that passengers aboard the flotilla were agents of al-Qaida. An Israel Defense Forces press release sent out two days after the assault says approximately forty flotilla passengers “are mercenaries belonging to the Al Qaeda terror organization.” The independent journalist Max Blumenthal says both he and an Israeli colleague asked the Israeli military press office to substantiate its claim. No evidence was provided, and one day later the press release was modified. The original headline was changed from “Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found to be Al Qaeda Mercenaries” to “Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers.”

McGeough told me: “This is what we do: We embed with U.S. forces in Iraq, and with Australian forces in Afghanistan. I’ve spoken to Israeli officials, and in the West Bank and Gaza I’ve spoken to Hamas, to young would-be suicide bombers, because that’s how we get stories. If you just tell one side of the story then people can’t have a sensible view of a dynamic conflict, in order to understand how it might be resolved.”

McGeough and Geraghty and all the other journalists have yet to receive their laptops, cameras, videos, photos, and other possessions from the Israelis. And Israel has said it will not accept an independent investigation of its raid. Israel’s continued attempts to hide the truth only further imperil the security of Israelis, Palestinians, and all those working for a just peace in the Middle East.

September 21, 2011

99 Percenters Occupy Wall Street

If 2,000 Tea Party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street on Saturday. They weren’t carrying the banner of the Tea Party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat “Don’t Tread on Me.” Yet their message was clear: “We are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.” They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.

One of New York’s better-known billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commented on the protests: “You have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.” Riots? Is that really what the Arab Spring and the European protests are about?

Perhaps to the chagrin of Mayor Bloomberg, that is exactly what inspired many who occupied Wall Street. In its most recent communique, the Wall Street protest umbrella group said: “On Saturday we held a general assembly, two thousand strong. . . . By 8 p.m. on Monday we still held the plaza, despite constant police presence. . . . We are building the world that we want to see, based on human need and sustainability, not corporate greed.”

Speaking of the Tea Party, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has caused a continuous fracas in the Republican presidential debates with his declaration that the United States’ revered Social Security system is a “Ponzi scheme.” Charles Ponzi was the con artist who swindled thousands in 1920 with a fraudulent promise for high returns on investments. A typical Ponzi scheme involves taking money from investors, then paying them off with money taken from new investors, rather than paying them from actual earnings. Social Security is actually solvent, with a trust fund of more than $2.6 trillion. The real Ponzi scheme threatening the U.S. public is the voracious greed of Wall Street banks.

I interviewed one of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest organizers. David Graeber teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has authored several books, most recently
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
. Graeber points out that, in the midst of the financial crash of 2008, enormous debts between banks were renegotiated. Yet only a fraction of troubled mortgages have gotten the same treatment. He said: “Debts between the very wealthy or between governments can always be renegotiated and always have been throughout world history. . . . It’s when you have debts owed by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation, more important than anything else. The idea of renegotiating them becomes unthinkable.”

President Barack Obama has proposed a jobs plan and further efforts to reduce the deficit. One is a so-called millionaire’s tax, endorsed by billionaire Obama supporter Warren Buffett. The Republicans call the proposed tax “class warfare.” Graeber commented: “For the last 30 years we’ve seen a political battle being waged by the super-rich against everyone else, and this is the latest move in the shadow dance, which is completely dysfunctional economically and politically. It’s the reason why young people have just abandoned any thought of appealing to politicians. We all know what’s going to happen. The tax proposals are a sort of mock populist gesture, which everyone knows will be shot down. What will actually probably happen would be more cuts to social services.”

Outside in the cold Tuesday morning, the demonstrators continued their fourth day of the protest with a march amidst a heavy police presence and the ringing of an opening bell at 9:30 a.m. for a “people’s exchange,” just as the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange is rung. While the bankers remained secure in their bailed-out banks, outside the police began arresting protesters. In a just world, with a just economy, we have to wonder, who would be out in the cold? Who would be getting arrested?

October 12, 2011

A New Bush Era or a Push Era?

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.