Call for a Coalition Against Arming Theocratic States
By Lenni Brenner
It is time for enlightened Americans, religious or unbelievers, to unite in a coalition against arming theological states. Its immediate task would be to help defeat both parts of President Bush’s scheme to sell $20 billion worth of satellite-guided bombs, fighters and naval vessels to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and increase US military grants to Israel by 25%, to $30.4 billion over 10 years.
No mincing words: Since the beginning of the cold war against ‘godless Communism,’ one of Washington’s overriding Middle Eastern strategies, arming religious states, has been catastrophic for the region’s people. Bush’s extension of it guarantees more disasters for them and Americans.
The 7/28 New York Times described his strategy:
“[T]o contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies.”
Everyone old enough to cross streets alone knows that oil is the consideration. After WW ll, the US replaced Britain as the Gulf’s imperial overlord, and he seeks to dominate the economically crucial region. But the vast majority of Arabs and Iranians know, thru experience, that official Washington remains their nonstop enemy.
In 1948, Democrat Harry Truman, needing campaign funds from wealthy pro-Zionist Jews, recognized officially Orthodox Jewish Israel. He loaned it money used to buy weapons to drive hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians into exile. In 1953, Republican Dwight Eisenhower shifted gears. He brought Said Ramadan of the Muslim Brotherhood to the White House. The US patronized Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets and those Iranians and Arabs seeking to nationalize their countries’ imperialist owned oil industries.
That year, Eisenhower’s CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddegh for nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. It restored Shah Muhammad Reza Palevi’s “For the Shah, Iran and Islam” despotism. Regime opponents were tortured and murdered for 26 years. Eventually the Shia clergy broke with the US puppet, bringing him down in 1979. That’s their valid domestic claim to legitimacy. But their Islamic republic is brutal. Nevertheless, its millions of internal opponents, anti-regime Muslims, atheists, drinkers, feminists, gays, Marxists, Baluchi and Kurdish nationalists, etc., don’t want the US or Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear installations, or the US trying to replace the Ayatollahs with yet another marionette.
The US learned nothing from its Iranian debacle. That same year, Democrat Jimmy Carter secretly started arming Afghan Sunni fundamentalists against the Soviet-imposed regime in Kabul. They won under Republican Ronald Reagan, who allied with the Saudis in a jihad against ‘godless’ Communism. The first thing America’s fundos did was take away rights women had under the pro-Soviet regime. Then they fought among themselves, with the Taliban winning.
In 1991, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and old Bush sent thousands of troops to Saudia to protect the pro-American regime. Osama bin Laden, a leader of bipartisan Washington’s terrorist allies in Afghanistan, finally realized that the Saudi dynasty were American dependents. He broke with them and the ‘Crusaders’ and, in time, blew up the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocents.
“Blow back” is CIA slang for unforeseen negative consequences of its plots and 9/11 was truly the inevitable result of Washington’s using religious fanatics in its imperial machinations. Although bin Laden had broken with the dynasty, post-9/11 Saudia is absolutely unpopular here. Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi citizens. Americans, right to left, understand that they were inevitable end-products of the regime’s indoctrination.
The country’s male chauvinism is spectacular. Women must wear veils in public and can’t drive cars. They need their father or husband’s approval to leave the country. There is blatant discrimination against Shia Muslims. Open Christian churches are forbidden. So it isn’t surprising that the proposal to further arm this ultimate high-tech medieval regime has generated A to Z opposition to Bush’s scheme.
American Atheists, Inc., founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who got prayers tossed out of US public schools, warns that
“Bush’s plan to sell $20 billion of advanced military hardware to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and provide more aid to Israel threatens to further destabilize the region and fuel religion-based terrorism.”
Ellen Johnson, AA’s President, added that
“Creating jobs and economic opportunity, securing full rights for the region’s women, encouraging an authentic civil society with personal rights — all of this is needed to challenge the rampant clerical terrorism that plagues the Middle East.”
Israel, worried about Shia Iran’s nuclear ambitions, backs Bush’s sales to Sunni Saudia. But some pro-Zionist Congressional Democrats are opposed. They claim that the Saudi regime backs Sunni terrorists in Iraq, killing American troops. More important. they fear for Israel if the dynasty were to be overthrown. Alternative regimes, left or Al-Qaeda, would be serious foes. They feel that increasing US arms to Israel can’t compensate it for the risk that the weapons sold to the Saudis would ultimately be used by its determined opponents.
When Israel is denounced for its crimes, Zionists typically respond by asking ‘why is Israel being singled out? Why aren’t people also crying out against Saudi Arabia’s crimes?’ Israel shouldn’t be singled out. Americans must oppose arms going to all governments violating human rights. But aren’t these Democrats now singling out Saudi Arabia? Why aren’t they likewise excoriating Israel for its political sins?
Moshe Katsav just resigned as Israel’s President. The Attorney General announced sufficient evidence to indict him for raping his office manager. Eventually he pled guilty to committing an indecent act under coercion. This is usually punished by up to 10 years imprisonment but he got a one-year suspended sentence. Twenty-thousand people demonstrated in the streets, demanding that he go to prison.
Katsev was President of an Orthodox Jewish state. Every morning an adult Orthodox male thanks God for “making me a man, not a woman.” Women thank him for “making me what I am.” They are segregated in Orthodox synagogues. Wives can’t divorce their husbands in the country’s religious courts and there is no civil divorce. If their husbands won’t divorce them, they can’t remarry. There are thousands of women in this situation.
“Reform Judaism” is America’s largest Jewish sect. “Conservative Judaism” its 2nd largest. Orthodoxy is 3rd, ca. only 10% of US Jews. There are Reform and Conservative Israeli rabbis, but they can’t perform legal marriages. Only Orthodox rabbis can. And of course there is no Israeli civil marriage. Israel’s Palestinian minority must also marry in religious ceremonies. In the ultimate theocratic state comedy, an Israeli supreme court judge had to go to Cyprus to marry a Conservative woman.
Theoretically, all Israeli male Jews must serve in the military. Some Orthodox become regular soldiers. But others do their hitch in Orthodox-only units, shielded against contact with Jewish women soldiers who might be menstruating. Another 11% of 18 year olds are completely exempt from the military so they can study theology, while Israel’s many atheists must kill or be killed, fighting for a state rooted in their legal inequality.
Orthodox superiority over rival Judaic sects is superimposed on massive colonial inequality for native Palestinian Muslims, Christians, Druze and atheists. In 1948, Israel drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. The truth is in the uncensored University of California edition of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Memoirs, published after his 1995 assassination by a Zionist:
“‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the legion. The inhabitants of Rami watched and learned the lesson. Their leaders agreed to evacuate voluntarily, on condition that the evacuation was carried out by vehicles.”
Religious inequality went further after Israel’s 1967 victory. All ‘Israeli’ settlements in the West Bank are Jews-only, even though 1.4 million of Israel’s 7.1 million citizens are Palestinian. Some of these, male members of the Druze sect, Muslim Bedouins, and some Christians, fight in Zionism’s wars. Yet none can live in the settlements. And some Jews-only settlements are Orthodox-only. Not even atheist Zionists can live in them.
Bush just signed an “Advance Democracy Act,” requiring the State Department to develop strategies helping tyrannies turn into democracies. No one takes it seriously. The pro-Bush NY Sun reported that “passage into law comes as Mr. Bush himself has abandoned most of his democracy promotion agenda.” The Gulf arms deal means the end of “any remnant of public pressure for these states to afford their citizens the rights to assembly, free speech, or petition.” And Bush and the Democrats wouldn’t dream of applying the law to Israel. To hear them tell it, ‘Israel,’ with its legal ethnic, religious and sexual inequalities, ‘is the only democracy in the Middle East.’
The proposed coalition’s constant task must be education. Few Americans are familiar with Washington’s Middle Eastern history. Few know their party’s role. Even fewer understand the theological distinctions between Sunni and Shia Islam, or know that Israel has no civil marriage or divorce. The young never heard of the Shah. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was Reagan’s favorite among his Afghan anti-Soviet “freedom fighters,” but how many voters know that he is now killing American troops? How many can explain the conflict between Palestinian Hamas and Fatah or why the US backs Fatah?
The coalition must establish a “just the facts, ma’am” website where everyone can get the details re the above topics and more. Among other things, the public should be able to conveniently read the program of the major political players in the region, theological or secularist.
Members must agree to its prime demand, no weapons to theocratic states, anywhere. But disagreement is inevitable re how to get to a democratic secular Middle East in a democratic secular world. That’s good because debates between members, and with supporters of Washington’s policies, would attract attention to the coalition message.
Every wannabe presidential candidate of every party expected to be on the 2008 ballot should be questioned, ASAP, re arming religious states, and the public should be informed of their answers or failure to answer.
Given the disastrous history of Democratic and Republican arming of religious fanatics, the coalition and the public would benefit from debating whether it should endorse a candidate of a 3rd party committed to ending arming religious states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel, but with the proviso that individual members would still be free to vote as they wished.
There are existing rival coalitions dealing with aspects of the Middle East. Many demand that the US get out of Iraq. Others call for justice for Palestinians, others oppose war with Iran. US gays speak out against gay executions in Iran. Feminists demand equal rights for Afghan women. The proposed coalition should always act as a catalyst trying to unify the broad movement in action. In general, it should ask to speak at anti-war rallies on issues related to its mandate and, where invited to do so, help build such actions, especially among secularists.
Allow me a personal theological/political point as the proponent of such a coalition. I’m an atheist. But the new movement shouldn’t be an atheist front. There are atheist Zionists. There are atheist Arab nationalists who use terror against Israel. But every July 4th, Americans remember Thomas Jefferson, a deist, not an atheist, who did his best to separate church and state in his new republic. The new coalition can end arming of bigot states if it educates America about what he meant by religious freedom.
Some readers are atheists, some are religious. That’s fine. His last written words were about his Declaration of Independence and its meaning for the world. If you are interested in scrolling him up to our times and building such a coalition to operate in their spirit, contact me:
“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.
The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
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Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at 10, and a left political activist at 15, in 1952. He was arrested 3 times during civil rights sit-ins in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in prison when a court revoked his probation for marijuana possession, because of his activities during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.
Immediately on imprisonment, he spent 4 days in intense discussion with Huey Newton, later founder of the Black Panther Party, whom he encountered in the court holding tank.
He was an antiwar activist from the 1st days of the Vietnam war, speaking frequently at rallies in the Bay Area. In 1963 he organized the Committee for Narcotic Reform in Berkeley. In 1968 he co-founded the National Association for Irish Justice, the American affiliate of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.
He worked with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), the legendary “Black Power” leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in the Committee against Zionism and Racism, from 1985 until Ture’s death in 1998.
Brenner is the author of 4 books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Jews in America Today, and The Lesser Evil, a study of the Democratic Party. His books have been favorably reviewed in 11 languages by prominent publications, including the London Times, The London Review of Books, Moscow’s Izvestia and the Jerusalem Post.
He has written over 120 articles for many publications, including the American Atheist, New York’s Amsterdam News, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, The Atlanta Constitution, CounterPunch, The Jewish Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Middle East International, The Journal of Palestine Studies, The New Statesman of London, Al-Fajr in Jerusalem and Dublin’s United Irishman.
In 2002 he edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.
It contains complete translations of many of the documents quoted in
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall.
In 2004 he edited Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State:
Writings on Religion and Secularism.
He blogs at www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner and can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.