Secrecy News -- 04/01/02 (Cloaks)
Aftergood, Steven
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 26
April 1, 2002
** PALESTINIAN NONVIOLENCE: A ROAD NOT TAKEN
** STATE DEPT HISTORIANS WARN OF "FRICTION" WITH CIA
PALESTINIAN NONVIOLENCE: A ROAD NOT TAKEN
Late last month, Palestinian television stations began broadcasting a
six-part series on the history and practice of nonviolent resistance.
With the ascendance of Palestinian suicide bombers, however, the
Palestinian resistance to Israel has embarked on a radically opposite
course.
The TV series, entitled "More Effective Force," was favorably reviewed
by PLO official and Bir Zeit University philosophy professor Sari
Nusseibeh, writing in the Arabic newspaper Al Quds.
"Resorting to the strategy of nonviolence and its weapons by a primarily
unarmed people can directly deprive the Israelis of the advantage of
being the stronger military power," Prof. Nusseibeh wrote. "It will
redefine the rules of the game in the battlefield and enable the unarmed
Palestinians laboring under the burden of occupation to take the
initiative and launch an attack that cannot be repulsed."
See his March 20 commentary, translated by the CIA's Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/03/aq032002.html
Prof. Nusseibeh's published remarks stress the tactical advantages of
nonviolent resistance, but do not quite encompass its philosophical
underpinnings of loving the enemy.
"My non-cooperation has its root not in hatred, but in love," Gandhi
wrote. ("National Independence in Not Enough").
Likewise, Martin Luther King admonished an angry crowd after his house
was bombed: "We want to love our enemies -- be good to them. This is
what we must live by, we must meet hate with love. We must love our
white brothers no matter what they do to us." (Quoted lately by K.
Anthony Appiah in the New York Review of Books).
Love of Israel is not a prominent theme in Prof. Nusseibeh's essay,
which also includes not a word of criticism of Palestinian violence and
goes so far as to say that the "Palestinian struggle is one of the few
brilliant examples in the history of struggles for national
independence."
It is pointless to criticize Palestinians or Israelis for not achieving
the ideal of Gandhian nonviolence. Hardly anyone has achieved it.
But an understanding of that ideal helps to illuminate the profound evil
of the suicide bombers, who have nevertheless been embraced as "martyrs"
by the Palestinian mainstream.
Briefly put, the practice of nonviolent resistance (ahimsa) affirms the
humanity of one's opponent even when that opponent is acting with the
utmost injustice. Under the right circumstances, nonviolence can elicit
a change of consciousness in the opponent, while laying the foundation
for a common future. As improbable as it sounds, its truth has actually
been demonstrated.
By contrast, the suicide bombers negate the humanity both of their
targets and of themselves, while undermining any hope for a common
future. As embodiments of radical hatred, these murderers deliberately
seek to kill non-combatants, and do not distinguish between young and
old, or even, most recently, between Arab and Jew. Theirs is a mindset
that has the potential to extinguish life on Earth.
Unless the Palestinians can find it within themselves to delegitimize
the cult of murder-suicide, they will continue to pose a danger to their
neighbors and themselves, and any future independence they may win will
be unstable.
"I cannot love Moslems or Hindus and hate Englishmen," Gandhi wrote.
"For if I love merely Hindus and Moslems because their ways are on the
whole pleasing to me, I shall soon begin to hate them when their ways
displease me, as they may well do any moment."
STATE DEPT HISTORIANS WARN OF "FRICTION" WITH CIA
=20
"Significant friction between the [State Department Historian's Office]
and the CIA ... frustrated the timely compilation and publication" of
the official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series,
according to the latest annual report of the State Department Historical
Advisory Committee.
"The CIA continues to deny HO [Historian's Office] historians the right
to quote or cite material from the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs),"
wrote Committee Chair Robert D. Schulzinger in a cover letter to
Secretary of State Colin Powell. "The President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board (PFIAB) denies HO historians the ability to consult, cite
or quote PFIAB records."
"These denials set a dangerous precedent and may compromise the
integrity of future FRUS volumes," Prof. Schulzinger wrote.
"The FRUS series is a jewel in American democracy," the new annual
report said.
The report referred discreetly to the CIA's continuing efforts to block
release of a pending FRUS volume on Greece, Cyprus and Turkey, which it
termed "a vexing issue."
The report was transmitted to the Secretary of State on February 28 and
made publicly available last week. The text is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/state/hac01.html
******************************
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to majo...@lists.fas.org with
this command in the body of the message:
subscribe secrecy_news
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to majo...@lists.fas.org with this command
in the body of the message:
unsubscribe secrecy_news
OR email your request to safte...@fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: safte...@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691