My Problem with Jimmy Carter's New Book

Defending his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter said this week that one of the two main premises of the book is "the horrible persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people." What Carter doesn't say in his sound bite is why the situation exists as it does today: that the Palestinians and millions of other Arabs surrounding Israel do not recognize Israel's right to exist and Israel is under constant military threat, forcing it to protect itself. Carter went on to say, "Israel needs peace and the Palestinian people need peace and justice and I hope my limited influence will help to precipitate some steps." He's implying that the Israelis do not need justice - the Israelis who suffer from regular domestic bombings, rocket attacks from across their borders, and rhetoric from Palestinian and other Arab leaders that all Jews should be killed.

I'm certainly not saying that everything Israel has done has been right or fair to the Palestinians, and I believe as much as anyone that what is needed first and foremost is peace. But if you believe that Israel has a right to exist, and if you believe that a people have a right to defend themselves from genocide, then how can you try to force them to stop defending themselves?

I haven't read the book, and don't intend to, for two reasons. The first is that I tried to read another of Jimmy Carter's books and couldn't get through it because it was so boring. (This even though I was a major fan of Carter's presidency and I read a lot of dense non-fiction.) The second is that the title is inflammatory and counter-productive and makes me not want to have anything to do with the content.

Carter should know that there are a lot of people in the west who believe that Israel does not have a right to exist, and the title of his book gives them justification to pursue those views. Anti-semites throw around the term apartheid to describe Israeli-Palestinian relations (as we learned in our recent Liberal leadership race). Whatever the fine points of his argument are (and I'm sure, knowing the man, that he has many good insights), his title is a blunder that will set back the cause of peace, not help it.

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Iran Pushing Lebanon into Civil War

From the Globe & Mail:

Founder lashes out at Hezbollah
by Mark MacKinnon

BAALBEK, LEBANON — Hezbollah has lost sight of its original principles, according to the founder of the militant Shia group, and it is pushing Lebanon toward civil war to serve the interests of its masters in Tehran.

In a rare interview at his guarded compound in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Sheik Sobhi Tufeili criticized Hezbollah and the movement's current leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for putting Iranian interests ahead of Lebanese ones in the country's flammable political standoff.

"The relationship of Hezbollah with Iran is [one of] complete, loyal submission," the bespectacled sheik said, a grey beard jutting out from his chin.

He said that while Shia groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon look to Tehran with deference, Iran sees Shiites outside its borders as expendable pawns to be used "if they need 1,000 Shiites to be killed here, or 1,000 Shiites to be killed there."

... In the current Lebanese political crisis, hundreds of thousands of protesters have answered Mr. Nasrallah's call to surround government offices in the centre of Beirut, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his pro-Western cabinet.

Neither side has shown any sign of giving in. Last night, Mr. Nasrallah called for demonstrators to remain in the streets for as long as it takes to topple the government. Tensions are high, particularly between Shia supporters of Hezbollah and Sunni Muslims who fiercely back the government. Mr. Siniora is a Sunni.

While Hezbollah says it is protesting against a government that is unrepresentative of most Lebanese and a puppet of the United States, Mr. Tufeili said such claims are really a smokescreen for the real goal: expanding Iran's influence in Lebanon and the region. He compared groups such as Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the organizations the Soviet Union once used to spread its influence abroad.

"They [Iran] use the Shiites all over the world for their purposes, just as the USSR used to do with communist parties all over the world. Today, Iran sacrifices these Islamic parties for their benefit."

Mr. Tufeili said Hezbollah's protests in Beirut are leading the country toward a conflict from which only outside forces will gain. While Iran and Syria are backing the Hezbollah-led opposition, the United States, France and some Sunni Arab states have lent support to the government.

... Mr. Tufeili's condemnation of Hezbollah was fierce and wide ranging. He said the party should give up its arms for the sake of civil peace and -- remarkably for someone who once opposed any ceasefire -- questioned the leadership's logic in provoking this summer's war with Israel.

The reason Lebanon's current crisis is so dangerous is that most Lebanese are more loyal to their sects than to their country, Mr. Tufeili said. He said that needs to change and that Lebanon's Shiites in particular must break the tradition of blindly following their leader.

For that to happen, he said, Iran needs to stop buying the community's loyalty with money. He said that when he was Hezbollah secretary-general, Iran was the movement's partner. Now, he said, it has long since become the master.

"I beg [Iran] to leave us," he said. "Don't take us into civil war. If you can't leave us, don't harm us. We're fed up with wars and destruction."

Related Posts
The Israelis and Lebanese Need Our Help
Perspectives
Threat and Opportunity

Terrorism in the '70s

Terrorism didn't start on September 11, 2001. It's been around for a long time, and we've had more serious bouts with it in the past.

Back in the 1970s there was loads of terrorist activity from groups like the IRA, PLO, Beider Meinhof, Red Brigades, FLQ, and SLA. Airport security was very tight (the laxness of the last 25 years could be viewed as an anomaly). I was strip-searched and heavily patted down on more than one occasion. Once in the Geneva airport I watched a security guard squeeze all the toothpaste out of a tube. I was never able to carry my Swiss Army knife on a plane. In the summer of 1973 I passed through airports in Tel Aviv, Beirut, Tehran and Athens, and security was unbelievable; we were constantly surrounded by soldiers with machine guns. Passengers had their cameras dismantled with screwdrivers. It was scary, but I didn't complain - I welcomed the protection. Lots of things were getting blown up that summer, including part of the Athens airport.

Nowadays we hear a lot of discussion of why the Islamic terrorists are attacking us and what we have done to cause their anger. In the '70s there was less of that sense of western blame. The stated goal of groups like the SLA and Beider Meinhof was to overthrow western democracy and bring about the revolution. Those organizations were largely made up of middle class, educated westerners - not a group that seemed particularly oppressed. Back then, even the IRA garnered very little public support, although the Irish people were widely seen to be treated very unfairly by Britain. The IRA was a band of criminal thugs who committed crimes to finance their operations, who trained with and supported other terrorist organizations, and who killed innocent civilians. Likewise, there was public sympathy for the Palestinians, but the PLO were seen as murderers rather than champions of the cause - partly because many people understood at that time that Arab governments were ensuring that the Palestinians stayed in refugee camps so they would generate an army to fight Israel.

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A Jewish Perspective

The following is the text of a speech given at a solidarity rally for Israel on
Sunday July 23, 2006 in London by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks:


We have come together today
To stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel
And to say a simple prayer.
Ribbono shel olam,
Let your people Israel live in peace.
Let there be an end to bloodshed and violence.
Let there be an end to hostility and hate.
Let Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev come home.
Let Israel’s defence forces come home.

What else did Your people ever want,
Except the right to live with security, without fear, in peace?
Almighty G-d, let your people Israel live in peace.
Today we stand in solidarity with Israel,
And rarely have I felt so proud of Anglo-Jewry as I have done these past few days.
Especially of our young people.
Last week 1300 of them, from youth groups right across the religious spectrum,
Went out to Israel.
Every one of them, or their families, might have said: no. Not now. It’s too dangerous.
Yet almost none of them did.
I want to say to every one of those young people: Kol hakavod. You make us proud.
And today I want a message to go forth from us to Israel to say: Israel, you make us proud.
In a mere 58 years, in a country half the size of Lake Michigan, you have done things that are unbelievable.
You have gathered together Jews from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than eighty different languages and out of them made a great nation.

You have taken a land with no natural resources and turned it into one of the great economies of the modern world.
You have created a democracy in a part of the world where no one thought it possible.
You have taken a desolate land and made it blossom and bear fruit.
You have developed medical technologies to save life.
Wherever in the world there has been a natural disaster, you have been among
the first to offer humanitarian aid.

Through six decades under almost continuous threat you have given the world poets and philosophers and musicians and novelists whose heart is Jewish and whose love is for all humanity.
You have taken the language of the Bible and made it speak again.
You have taken a people from the valley of the shadow of death and made it live again.
You have taken hope itself – hatikvah shnot alpayim – and made it breathe again.
Israel: you are our people and our pride and we stand with you today.
Why then does a people who have consistently said Yes to life and No to death,
Who have consistently said Yes to peace and No to terror,
Find itself today fighting in Lebanon and Gaza?
The answer is so simple, yet so unbelievable, that we must hear it clearly and unequivocally:
Israel is fighting today in Lebanon because six years ago it withdrew from Lebanon.
Israel is fighting today in Gaza because one year ago it withdrew from Gaza.
And Israel discovered the terrible truth spoken by the late Mother Theresa
That no good deed goes unpunished.
Every gesture of goodwill undertaken by Israel has been seized on by its enemies as a sign of weakness.
Every Israeli effort towards peace has led without exception to an increase in violence against Israel.
The Oslo Peace Process led directly to the first Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel.
Taba: the most generous offer Israel ever made to the Palestinians, led directly to the most concerted set of terrorist attacks against any nation in modern history.
The Gaza Withdrawal, the most painful act Israel has ever had to undertake, led within less than a year to 1,000 Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets including schoolchildren.
And finally the Lebanon withdrawal, undertaken by Israel six years ago in full compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. That resolution was immediately broken by Hizbullah, about which the United Nations special envoy to Lebanon warned at the time, in November 2000: “Such breaches of international peace and security in the south threaten to ignite a new spiral of violence with tragic consequences for the civilian population.”

That failure led in 2004 to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 which called categorically for the disarming of militias in Lebanon. Again rejected. This time Kofi Annan himself protested to the Syrians. The effect? The arming of Hizbullah with weapons that threaten the very heart of Israel.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon.
Israel does not want to be in Lebanon.
It does not want to do any of the things it is now doing.
It accepted in good faith the commitment of the United Nations that it would not have to.

It is acting today only because the international community has failed to ensure that its neighbours met their obligations when Israel met hers.
Israel, the Israel we know and love, is a people that pursues peace, yearns for peace, sings about peace, needs peace.
For 58 years it has done everything a nation could do in pursuit of peace, and it has been rewarded instead with violence and terror.
It has done what the world has asked it to do, and the result has been that it has been left vulnerable and alone.

Which of us does not weep when we see the news day after day?
Does any of us, God forbid, take satisfaction at the devastation of Lebanon?
Is that who we are?
Let me be clear and unambiguous.
We weep not just for Israel
But for the people of Lebanon also.
Lebanon was once a great country,
A centre of civilization
A beacon in the Middle East --
Until Jordan drove the Palestinians out of Jordan into Lebanon
Until Syria used them to terrorise the Lebanese
Until Iran armed and funded and manipulated them;
Until the whole country of Lebanon, every man, woman and child, became a
hostage.
And so a great country was destroyed and reduced to ruins.
And today Israel is fighting in Lebanon so that Israel should not become, G-d forbid, another Lebanon,
As any country in the world will become
If it lacks the clarity and courage to say No to terror and Yes to peace.

Tragically Jews have learned over the centuries
That when their enemies speak of killing them, driving them into the sea, wiping them off the face of the earth, they mean what they say.
What Hizbullah and Hamas have said in word and deed is:
We will kill you if you stay
And we will kill you if you leave.
We will kill you if you retaliate
And we will kill you if you don’t retaliate.

What can Israel do but to seek to end the terror
That threatens and is meant to threaten its very existence?
When alone among the 192 nations that make up the United Nations, after 58 years it still finds its very right to exist denied?
Friends, let me tell you what is wrong with terror. It is not just that it murders the innocent: the young, the old, the defenceless, the uninvolved.
It is that it murders innocence itself.
It turns virtue into weakness, decency into vulnerability.
And if we, if Israel, if Europe, if America do not take a stand against terror, if we ignore it as the world ignored it for so long, then it will leave a stain on the human future that no tears, no regrets, will ever remove.

The battle Israel is fighting today is not for itself alone.
It is for the sake of all those who say no to terror
No to the desecration of life
No to killing in the name of God
Whether they live in Bali or Beslan, or Madrid or Mumbai.
And therefore let me end with simple words of prayer:
Ribbono shel olam: Be with your people Israel now.
Hear their cry
Heed their tears
Listen to this, our prayer on their behalf.
Grant peace to all your children, Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.
Help us live together, respecting one another.
Help us cherish life.
Help us to use the powers You gave us, to heal, to mend, to build.
We ask of You, Almighty God, just one thing:
You who make peace in high places,
Help us make peace down here on earth.

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The Israelis and Lebanese Need Our Help

What is needed, for both Israel and Lebanon, is for the international community to send in forces to enforce UN Resolution 1559 by ousting the Hezbollah militia completely from southern Lebanon. Israel should not have to be doing this alone. This situation is causing avoidable deaths on both sides (mostly Lebanese) and Israel is taking a huge PR hit that will increase its security risk for years, perhaps decades.

Israel is in a fight for its life. It has been trying to get Lebanon to remove Hezbollah and its thousands of rockets from its border for years. Hezbollah has spent the last six years attacking Israel, building bunkers in civilian areas, bringing more Iranian rockets into Lebanon from Syria, and preparing to attack Israel.

There is a pretty good argument that Israel has been too soft, both in not striking sooner and in telegraphing its bombing targets by dropping leaflets to warn Lebanese civilians. (You wonder how all that damage you see on the news could have resulted in only 400 Lebanese deaths? I don't mean to trivialize the hardship to the Lebanese, but Israelis have died because the Israeli military is trying to limit Lebanese casualties.)

Iran is trying to build nuclear bombs, and at the moment the front line is in Israel and Lebanon. If the Israelis and Palestinians signed a peace accord tomorrow, it wouldn't make one whit of difference to Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and their regional aspirations. In the west, we are all benefiting from what Israel is doing. When/if Iran gets nuclear bombs, it won't just be Tel Aviv that's a smoking rubble.

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Perspectives

As I continue to think about the conflict in the Middle East I am trying to better appreciate the Iranian perspective. I suspect that last year's "leaked" US government statements about nuking Tehran probably caused this situation, especially after the US called Iran part of the axis of evil and made it clear that it was thinking about bombing or even invading the country... no country wants to end up like Iraq. Iran is trying to develop nuclear capabilities and is working on long-range missiles that could hit Europe, and the US is desperate to stop it. Even if another goal of Tehran is to occupy parts (perhaps all) of Iraq and vastly increase its domination over the Middle East, probably the immediate cause of its aggression against Israel is related to defending itself from the US.

Pinned down between Iranian missiles in the Gaza strip and southern Lebanon, Israel would make a heck of a hostage. Even if Israel prevails, the only way it can do so is to bomb Lebanese civilians with its US-funded military, which will increase hatred of the US in the Arab street. And Iran has set itself up as a Muslim protector and a major player, which will help it garner support when and if it is attacked by the US. Finally, as I reported in a previous post, Iran may be using this diversion to move along its nuclear program.

As to the Israeli perspective, Israel's immediate strategy is to disarm Hezbollah and make it impossible for Iran and Syria to send reinforcements. To that end, Israel bombed the Beirut airport and the Beirut-Damascus hiway. Hezbollah hid itself in the civilian population, which is why Israel is bombing civilian areas. As to its long range goals, Israel has made it clear that it wants a sovereign Lebanon that is free from Iranian and Syrian control.

Along with the rest of the world, I'm horrified by the widespread killing in both countries, but I think Israel has a strong case that its actions are a proportionate response and are justified:

- Israel tried all diplomatic methods to remove the military build-up on its border. Since 2000 when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah moved in, the UN has repeatedly demanded that Hezbollah leave the area and has called on the Lebanese government to remove them.
- Israel did not attack until it was attacked... many times over the last few years by Hezbollah in its hiding places across the Lebanese border. Throughout this conflict, Israel has been bombed continuously by Hezbollah.
- Before bombing civilian areas, Israel drops leaflets warning residents that the area will be bombed. Unlike Hezbollah, Israel is not bombing civilian areas because it wants to kill civilians; it is doing so because it is the only way to destroy Hezbollah's military capability and cut off reinforcements from Syria and Iran.
- It is vital to the security of Israel that it defeat Hezbollah. That's why the US is not asking for a ceasefire. There are two reasons why Israel can't hold back. One is that Hezbollah has an estimated 15,000 rockets in Lebanon aimed at Israel; as with the Cuban missile crisis, that situation can't be allowed to continue. The other is a deadly psychological consideration: if Israel doesn't win and win decidedly, it will look weak and its enemies will attack more ferociously.

Israel can and probably will beat Hezbollah, and the Lebanese might even kick out the foreign agitators who have been wrecking their country for decades. But lasting peace isn't possible until there is some sort of detente between the US and Iran. A US-Iranian peace accord might provide assurances that the US will not invade Iran, with Iranian concessions on its weapon build-up, or something like that.

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Threat and Opportunity

The Iran-Syria alliance has a lot to gain from their bold move to destabilize the Middle East. By instigating and arming Hamas and Hezbollah to provoke Israel, Iran has vastly increased its influence on the Arab street and has moved a step closer to unseating Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and becoming the dominant power in the Arab world. (That would probably explain why the latter three countries condemned the Hezbollah attack on Israel.) But there's another way to look at this situation: things have been going quietly bad in southern Lebanon for the last six years, and we now have an opportunity to change their course.

By waging a proxy war, Iran has insulated itself from direct military reprisal. However, it is not guaranteed to escape unscathed. Iran's areas of vulnerability in this conflict include the following:

1. Hezbollah may be destroyed
The Israeli strategy is to destroy Hezbollah as a military presence in Lebanon. The Hezbollah presence in southern Lebanon amounts to only about 5,000 (very well-armed) soldiers, working with up to a thousand Iranian soldiers. It is going to be difficult to find them because they are shielding themselves in the civilian population, but they are still beatable. Israel might succeed on its own or a western-led peace process might finally put some teeth in the resolution to demilitarize southern Lebanon. If Hezbollah is beaten, Iran loses a fighting force it has put a great deal of energy into arming and supporting, and the possibility of Middle East peace is greatly increased.

2. World opinion may be starting to understand the Israeli dilemma
When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 Hezbollah was supposed to withdraw as well, but instead it continued to move missiles into the region - all aimed at Israel. So while some commentators are trying to paint Israel's bombardment of Lebanon as a land grab or a hate-filled killing spree, most analysts and governments see that Israel has its back against the wall and needs to solve the problem of tens of thousands of missiles pointed into its territory from just across its border.

3. Syrian influence in Lebanon could be diminished
If Israel can rout Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, it might weaken the strangle-hold on the Lebanese government that is enjoyed by Hezbollah and Syria. The effect of this conflict on long-term power structures in the region is largely going to be determined by how the peace is brokered. With most western and many Arab countries seeing that this was Iranian-Syrian aggression, the eventual cease-fire, with possible deployment of UN peacekeeping forces and new UN resolutions, may address the issue of Syrian influence in the democratic country of Lebanon.

4. The Iran-Syria alliance could be weakened
Politically, Iran seems invulnerable, but it relies a great deal on Syria, and Syria is very vulnerable. Iran is the dominant power, but Syria has the important ties with Arab militias. The military wing of Hamas is headquartered in Damascus. As Daniel Byman wrote in 2003 in the journal Foreign Affairs, "Although Syrian leaders do not have Tehran's close ideological and personal ties to Hezbollah, Damascus' leverage is actually much greater. Syria serves as a conduit for Iranian military supplies and often determines the timing, location, and scope of Hezbollah attacks. Moreover, Syrian intelligence on Lebanon is superb; unlike the United States and Israel, Damascus knows the identity and location of Hezbollah's core leadership. Syria also... has demonstrated its skill and ruthlessness by disarming every militia there except Hezbollah. Damascus essentially exercises a veto over Hezbollah's operations, as it has demonstrated by shutting down strikes against Israel when it has suited the regime's purposes."

As the New York Times reported today, "The United States and its Arab allies might persuade Syria to end its decades of supporting terror and reconsider its close ties with Iran."

5. Iran's true goals are being exposed
In the last couple of weeks, many media articles have reported on the Iranian troops that are currently fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the enormous amounts of money the Iranians are pouring into Hezbollah, the Iranian-made rockets being shot into Israel, and Iran's motivation in destabilizing the region. Daniel Schorr wrote in the Christian Science Monitor this week that Iran is using this war to divert attention from its nuclear program. (One piece of evidence for this is that Hezbollah invaded Israel on the first day of talks in Paris about the Iranian nuclear program.) Finally it may become common knowledge that what's going on is not about Israeli-Palestinian land negotiations (although those are extremely important); it's about who will control the Arab world.

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Finger in the Dyke

News in Israel and Lebanon this week has been upsetting, stressful, and worrisome. I'm a worst case scenario kind of guy and my mind jumps ahead to wild speculations, such as: Bush & Co are not up to the task of mediating peace -> the Europeans may step in to the vacuum -> the Europeans are anti-Israel -> Israel's security will be pushed to the limit -> Israel will nuke somebody.

If Israel uses an atomic bomb, the whole world enters a new era of nukes. It's the worst worst case scenario there is. It was my biggest worry during the Gulf War (remember those germ warfare-tipped scud missiles Sadaam sent into Israel?). I wonder how close Israel came to nuking Baghdad then. I'm glad I wasn't a fly on the wall in those discussions.

Instability in the Middle East has so many causes these days that it's hard to see how things can ever get better. A catalyst is that the US occupation of Iraq is widely seen as both illegitimate and a failure, so in one fell swoop the US has lost both respect and fear.

The bombings and border incursions by Hamas and Hezbollah are not about getting Israel to draw a new border. A Palestinian state is not even the point anymore, if it ever was. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran and Syria are all working towards restructuring the Middle East... and there is a whole lot of jostling as to who will run the show. Part of the deal is to wipe out Israel, but Jordan could be next. (Article 6 of the Hamas covenant says that Hamas "strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine... this is the law - namely that no part of Palestine may be given up - and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the time of Islamic conquests the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till Judgement Day."

Israel is just the finger in the dyke. And the past 25 years have shown that when Israel makes concessions, Arab extremist aggression escalates. When Israel stands tough, the dyke holds. Israel is bombing the bejeezus out of Lebanon, and next it's going to invade and probably go door to door throughout the south, routing Hezbollah. It's heartbreaking to think of the destruction in the beautiful country of Lebanon, but it's not clear that there's any hope for the region if they don't.

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Clash of Civilizations

It's so easy to get mesmerized by the invasion of Iraq and general strong-arm tactics of the US that I sometimes forget that this may not be the main front in the evolution of Arab-Western relations.

In my previous blog The Burqa, I detailed some of the upheaval in northern European countries surrounding tension between Islamic and non-Islamic communities. The Dutch, Danish, and others are having some tough times. Politicians have been murdered. Some laws that address the tensions seem to go too far.

We may be lucky that these tensions are coming to a head in northern Europe, which has long had a reputation as the most tolerant and progressive place in the world. My guess is that they'll work it out, tensions will subside, their societies will be better off for it, and they will provide a model for the rest of the world to follow.

After all, our society is firmly committed to multiculturalism. All kinds of disparate groups co-exist in Canadian society who don't assimilate, such as Old Order Mennonites, new age religious cultists and native Indians. I don't see why the most traditional, fundamentalist Muslims shouldn't be able to maintain their faith and co-exist just as well.

There have had to be some compromises. After losing a 10 year legal battle, Old Order Mennonites were forced to install electricity to refrigerate milk in their dairy barns, and they have to put orange triangles on the back of their horse-drawn buggies. So far Ontario has rejected Sharia law (though narrowly) and polygamy.

But consider the case of 81-year old Doukhobor Mary Braun, who burned down a British Columbia school in 2001 and refused to wear clothing at her trial. There were no major outcries against her anarchist-arsonist-nudist sect. In fact, there was a great deal of unsolicited support.

Prior to 9/11 I wouldn't have worried so much about the future of Muslim/non-Muslim relations in the West. It's a tense time all around, but I'm starting to feel that the western intolerance may be temporary.

I'm not quite as sure about Muslim intolerance, but then I know a lot less. Two recent columns in Al Jazeera (link and link) make me a bit worried.

But we have to distinguish between issues in Arab countries and issues in western countries. For example, I'm appalled at calls to execute Abdul Rahm for converting to Christianity, and we should speak out against it: but that is the internal business of the Afghans. However, the murder of Pim Fortuyn is very much the business of Holland because he was a Dutch politician killed in Holland. Similarly, we have to be careful not to conflate Muslims in Pakistan who riot to protest Danish cartoons with Muslims in Toronto who have orderly protests.

There is a movement for reform in the Arab world. This special section in Al Jazeera pulls together a number of discussions about ways to reform Arab states and even Islam.

Of course, outside of domestic issues, the two big problems in Western-Arab relations are Israel and the US, and I don't know if there's any reason to feel that there's hope on those fronts.

I'm not sure how much Israeli/Arab peace is up to the Israelis. They have to protect themselves from the stated goal of genocide by their neighbors. While they have made some missteps in the peace process, they seem to have made a legitimate effort time and time again that was rebuffed. I don't think the situation can improve until the Palestinians want it to.

The US is a very different problem. I wouldn't be surprised if members of the current administration are prosecuted for war crimes one day, but their disastrous middle east policies could turn on a dime in the next election. However, the US practice of "spreading democracy" around the world, which also means spreading US business interests, is deeply entrenched and may not be called off so easily. Anyone around the world who has the strength to push back is going to want to do it, and that doesn't bode well for the world.

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