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----- Original Message -----
From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Middle East Socialists Network" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 6:13 PM
Subject: [MESN] [fwd] Uri Avnery on the Holy Alliance, past and present
[The following article of Israeli columnist/peace activist Uri Avnery
puts the
wars and the challenges of the present world in historical perspective.]
THE HOLY ALLIANCE
Uri Avnery - Nov. 17. 2001
At the reception desk of the War-Against-Terror Coalition,
there lies application form for new partners. After stating his
name, country and function (king / president / emir / dictator / tyrant),
the applicant is invited to answer the question: "Do you have
local opponents that you wish to have branded as terrorists and
dealt with accordingly?"
Nearly all the applicants so far have answered this question with
great enthusiasm. Vladimir Putin designated the Chechnyian rebels,
Spain mentioned the Basque ETA, Turkey the Kurds, India the
Kashmiris, just to mention a few of a long list. In short, every
potentate, big and small, pointed a finger at the people he oppresses,
hoping that the United States will help him get rid of their war of
liberation. "Send in the big bombers," they beg, "and blow these
miserable terrorist bandits sky-high!"
All this might remind students of history of events nearly 200
years ago. After the downfall of Napoleon, the tyrant who
promoted liberty throughout Europe, the rulers of the continent
decided to set up an insurmountable wall to any further aspirations
of national and social liberation. "All this nonsense about democracy,
freedom, equality and constitutions has to stop once and for all,
" they told each other.
And so in 1815 the Czar of all the Russians, the Emperor
of Austria and the King of Prussia signed an agreement,
which they called the Holy Alliance, to institute the rule of
God in Europe. Abusing the name of the mild and vaguely
socialist rabbi from Nazareth, they created in reality an
international mafia of the Iron Fist.
Wherever an oppressed people dared to raise its head in
rebellion, all the rulers of Europe would band together, one
for all and all for one, to help their threatened colleague. The
Russians, for example, sent troops to squash the Hungarian
and Italian rebellions against Austria; the secret services of all
cooperated against the socialists and anarchists.
Almost all the rulers of the continent joined the Alliance,
as did England in practice, without doing so formally. The
Pope, vicar of Christ, did not, and neither did the Ottoman
Sultan, who, not being a devout Christian, had to oppress his
many peoples without outside help.
Henry Kissinger, one of the modern admirers of the alliance
and its major statesman, the Austrian Prince Metternich, credits
it with maintaining order in Europe for many decades. Less
morally-handicapped historians might point out that this unholy
coming-together of reactionary princes held up the progress of
Europe throughout the 19th century, denying liberty to many
peoples and allowing narrow-minded kings and aristocrats to
hold on to their privileges against far more productive and
forward looking social forces. Nothing very holy about that.
Under the umbrella of the War Against Terror, a new Holy
Alliance is in the making. George W. Bush is now the supreme
judge who decides who is a terrorist and who is not, as once
a mayor of Vienna decided who is a Jew. (Karl Lueger, who
was elected in 1897 on an anti-Semitic platform, once cheered
a Viennese team at a football match against Hungarians. Told
that the Viennese team is Jewish, he answered: "What the hell,
it's I who decides who is a Jew!")
The inherent danger of this development is that the new
alliance will hold up the most needed reform of the 21st
century, the narrowing of the gap between North and
South, the rich and the poor nations. The abominable
outrages of Osama bin Laden and his ilk may be seen,
in times to come, as the first manifestation of the coming
fight of the teeming billions of deprived and oppressed
members of mankind against the privileged few, who
almost literally drown in their own fat. The timely
recognition of this problem and a determined effort to
deal with it, while there still is time, may prevent an
imminent world-wide disaster. Fighting for the unlimited
Western hegemony and monopoly of the world's riches,
camouflaged as anti-terrorism, will lead to a world-wide
catastrophe in the future.
In the meantime, George W. and his advisors, female and male,
will have to decide whether Arafat is a terrorist or an ally in the
new equation. Ariel Sharon, an unofficial ("Don't call me, I'll call
you") member of the coalition, insists that he, like Putin, has the
right to call his enemies terrorists, so that he can bomb the
Palestinians back to the stone-age and lock them up in some
disconnected Bantustans.
The Pentagon and Condoleeza Rice agree, the State Department
doesn't. The national interests of the United States clearly point to the
recognition of Palestine as a corner-stone of peace and stability in
the Middle East. Domestic politics points in the opposite direction.
It remains to be seen whether Kissinger's dictum that "Israel has no
foreign policy, only a domestic one" applies to the United States, too.
---------------------------------------------
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