Fred Halliday has a new column at openDemocracy, calling us back to the universalist ethos of Isaac Deutscher and Hannah Arendt:
What Isaac Deutscher and Hannah Arendt noted contains truths that the contemporary middle east, and the world, sorely need. Their relevance is to much more than the Arab-Israeli question; it applies in principle to any of the numerous other national or inter-ethnic conflicts across the world where local rhetoric and partisan solidarity from outsiders have reinforced each other in a dance of death, as if one side were angels and the other devils …. In regard to the middle east, Muslims and Arabs across the world identify with the Palestinians (or, more recently, Hizbollah) on ethnic, religious and communitarian lines; Jews do the same, in support of Israel. Even many of those Jews who oppose the policies of the state of Israel speak as Jews (“not in my name”).
There is an enormous historical regression involved here. It involves seeing membership of a particular community, or claims of affinity, ethnicity or religious association with others, as conveying particular rights (or particular moral clarity) on those making such claims. In purely rational terms, this is nonsense: the crimes of the Israelis in wantonly destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure, and the crimes of Hizbollah and Hamas in killing civilians and placing the lives and security of their peoples recklessly at risk, do not require particularist denunciation. They are crimes on the basis of universal principles – of law, decency, humanity – and should be identified as such.
(In this regard, ethnic and religious diasporas are among the last people who can offer rational explanation or moral compass in regard to such events. Recently, when interviewed by a BBC panel set up to consider accusations of bias in regard to the Arab-Israeli dispute, I was given a list of the British-based groups the panel had consulted – Muslim and Arab on one side, Jewish and Zionist on the other. My recommendation to the panel was to ignore completely what any of them said and to question whether they should have any standing in the matter.)
Read the rest — it’s important.
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