|
Uri Avnery
/ 17.11.01
The Holy Alliance
At the reception desk of the
War-Against-Terror Coalition, there lies an 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 a 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 efforts 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.
To discus this article:
hagalil.com/forum
haGalil onLine 20-11-2001 |
