Opinion

by William Bache
03 February 2009

San Antonio, Texas - Nothing would telegraph the message that "America is back" in the Middle East with a balanced, smart-power policy better than for US President Barack Obama to immediately send a US Naval hospital ship to Gaza.

The deployment of a hospital ship should be the centrepiece of a highly visible American-led, sea-based disaster response and humanitarian relief effort. This action will help restore America's global image as a nation that cares about the downtrodden, who are, in this case, predominantly Muslims and Arabs.

The time is right for the dramatic deployment of a humanitarian relief task force to respond to the desperate needs of the people locked in the Gaza Strip. Over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed– and over 5,000 wounded – by military violence. Most of the casualties are civilians who were caught in brutal combat operations in densely populated urban areas. "I have seen only a fraction of the destruction. This is shocking and alarming", said UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon after his visit to Gaza on 21 January.

Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care.

The visible and explicit support of this war by the Bush administration was not in the great humanitarian tradition of the United States. Something must be done to counter Bush's legacy. The US military possesses great capabilities to support humanitarian relief efforts in the area, and can make a real difference in relieving human suffering.

"Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care."

There are two US Navy hospital ships, each with a self-contained definitive treatment facility with 12 fully-equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, radiological services, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, a CAT scan and two oxygen-producing plants. Helicopters can deliver patients to the ship while it is at sea. As non-combatant vessels they are protected by The Hague and Geneva Conventions, and therefore free from any military interference.

The movement of medical supplies and of the US military hospital, pre-positioned in Israel, to Gaza or Egypt to support casualty triage and the efforts of local medical personnel should start immediately. The helicopters from a US aircraft carrier can provide medical evacuation from the triage area in Gaza to the hospital ship and/or to airfields in Israel or Egypt for subsequent medical evacuation to Europe or the United States.

The 18-month Israeli embargo of Gaza has resulted in the degradation of the electrical power infrastructure and failure of the sewage treatment system. A US Navy nuclear submarine can provide emergency electrical power for Gaza this winter, as one did for the Virgin Islands after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Military construction battalions, especially the famous Navy "Sea Bees", should be part of the effort to restore critical infrastructure degraded by the embargo and combat operations.

President Obama should immediately direct his Secretary of State and Defense Secretary to coordinate an American inter-agency disaster response effort.

To show our willingness to work with everyone interested in taking care of the widows, orphans and wounded of the Gaza disaster, Arab countries should be invited to provide Arabic-speaking medical personnel to work side-by-side with Americans on the hospital ship.

President Obama could again make history. A deployment of the hospital ship in Gaza would be remembered by Arabs everywhere for generations to come.

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William Bache, of VIM Consultants, is a retired US Army Colonel, writer and interfaith study facilitator based in Istanbul. This article originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate blog and was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 3 February 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

by Gershom Gorenberg
30 October 2008

JERUSALEM – A neighbour in Jerusalem asked me to write to his American father-in-law, who has been showering him with emails attacking Barack Obama. At a local bakery, the owner suggested in a whisper that I might talk sense to the tourist proclaiming in a New York accent, between sips of strong Israeli latte, that she was voting for John McCain. Old friends in California worry to me that elderly Jews in Miami think that McCain is better for Israel. "Remember 2000," they tell me darkly. Every vote counts.

I suspect that something even more emotionally powerful than electoral math is at stake. My friends are frightened of the shame of a mother or uncle staining the family, or the tribe, with the wrong vote–a vote purportedly cast out of concern for Israel. From where I sit, this would be a shame, because the reasons Obama is better for Israel's security are the same reasons he is better for American security.

by Peter Ryan

It would be racist not to vote for Obama simply because he is black. Wouldn't it be equally racist not to vote for Obama because he was "Arab"?

If we needed any further evidence that prejudice against those of Arab descent has become the last publicly acceptable form of racism in American society, we have only to turn our attention to developments in the Presidential campaign these past few weeks. The most hostile attacks lobbed against Senator Obama? He's a Muslim. He's an Arab. He has a foreign name.

Above: A collection of photoshopped images on the web trying to peg Obama as a Muslim or an Arab and a T-shirt emphasizing his full name.

Obama, in fact, is not an Arab. Nor is he a Muslim. He is a Christian with a deeply rooted faith in Jesus Christ which he speaks of openly, as he did at the Saddleback Forum. At the forum, Rick Warren, one of the most influential evangelicals of his day, expressed a deep admiration and personal affinity for both Senator Obama and Senator McCain.

But what worries me most is not that the presidential elections have gone negative. It's not that some candidates feel that they can get away with completely baseless accusations and inneundos. What really worries me is not the campaign itself but what the campaign has revealed: there is a big chunk of this country that still feels it's okay to be racist as long as their targets are Arab. And there is a even bigger chunk of this country that sees any Muslim, regardless of their world view or ideology, as "an enemy."

by James Zogby

Today my office issued the following statement, which includes my comments:

Dr. James Zogby says, "Enough is enough!"

Washington D.C. - October 11, 2008 -We are disturbed by the degree to which 'Arab' has become the metaphorical mud to sling against your opponent. This week, for example the Republican Jewish Coalition released a document in which they use the term Pro-Arab as a pejorative accusation. For his part, Rush Limbaugh has joined in by declaring that Obama is in fact an Arab American. Then, on Friday, after a supporter called Senator Barak Obama "an Arab", Senator John McCain came to the defense of of his political opponent by saying, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen..." From this we are left to infer that an Arab man is less then a "decent family man."

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, says, "Enough is enough! From the beginning of this campaign there have been those who have used Muslim and Arab in an effort to smear Barak Obama. This exploitation of bigotry and the stoking of racist fires to forward an agenda is reprehensible. This is not only offensive to the Arab Americans, but to all Americans. As any ethnic group who has ever been used to scare the electorate knows, this is a dangerous game that tragically can ends with innocent people being hurt.

And while We are pleased to see that the senator is trying to dispel rumors about Senator Obama, but we feel the need to point out that Arab Americans are also decent men and women with the full rights of citizenship as enumerated under the constitution. Arab Americans are part of the great melting pot that is this country's strength. We work towards peace in the Middle East along side our Jewish partners. We raise our sons and daughters to be model citizens of this nation. We serve this country with honor. The suggestion that any ethnic group is treacherous and Anti-American is unacceptable, dangerous, and unbecoming of such a great nation.

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Video of McCain responding to the "He's an Arab" comment:

by Bilal Y. Saab and Bruce Riedel
16 September 2008

Washington, DC - The indirect negotiations between Syria and Israel that began last May have gone as far as they can. Their purpose – to break the ice between the two states after eight years of not talking, and to test one another’s resolve over certain issues – has been achieved. Now, Syrian President Bashar Assad wants to move forward, as evidenced in his proposal to Israel for direct peace talks at a recent four-way summit in Damascus involving Syria, Turkey, France and Qatar.

But Assad knows there are still two big uncertainties surrounding the prospects of a historic peace deal with the Israelis: the position of the next US administration and the results of a possible Israeli election. While Assad is grateful for the role Turkey has played so far in hosting four rounds of negotiations (a fifth is scheduled for 18-19 September, according to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan), and for France’s pledge of help in any direct Syrian-Israeli talks, he is only interested in a peace agreement with Israel if it is mediated by the United States.

An agreement endorsed by Washington would not only guarantee the return of the Golan to Syria (in exchange for a long-term security deal with Israel), but also – and perhaps more significantly – end Syria’s isolation in the world. The most important lesson Bashar Assad learned from his father is that good relations with Washington, more than any other foreign capital, serve Syria’s strategic interests. But, until a new US administration is in place, he knows there’s little point in proceeding with the negotiations he’s proposing.

by James M. Wall

When Israel would not allow the Palestinian soccer team to practice in Gaza, the team held its practice sessions in Egypt. The documentary film Goal Dreams reminds us of the implications of that decision. Palestinians from Chile, New York and Spain who were trying out for the team arrived in Egypt with little difficulty, but Palestinians who had to travel the few miles from Gaza to Egypt were delayed for several days at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt for "security reasons."

The same Israeli-controlled border crossing was more hospitable to a recent group of Palestinians entering Gaza from Egypt. Fatah, the political party favored by the U.S. and Israel in the current Gaza internal conflict, was allowed to bring in as many as 500 troops. According to the Washington Post (May 18), these troops were trained in Egypt "under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter Hamas."

The U.S.-trained Fatah forces are under the command of Palestinian national security adviser Mohammed Dahlan, who was appointed by President Mahmoud Abbas under pressure from the U.S. Tony Karon, a senior editor at Time.com, describes Dahlan as "the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington's anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet" (tonykaron.com)-a reference to the Chilean military dictator installed with the help of the U.S. after a 1973 military coup led to the overthrow and death of President Salvador Allende.

JERUSALEM - Four years after it was first presented, the Arab Peace Initiative is finally coming to centre stage. Rumours of behind the scenes meetings and negotiations on the Initiative between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Saudi national security advisor Prince Bandar bin Sultan have been strengthened by reports that the Saudi prince is trying to modify the Initiative so that it will be more acceptable to Israel.

by Gershon Baskin