IslÃ?’¢mic Fascism and Satyagraha in Palestine

The Revolution in IrÃ?’¢n in 1979 inaugurated a new era of politics in IslÃ?’¢m. There had been various revolutions and coups in the Middle East previously, but none had aimed so openly at creating a state of an overt theocratic nature. Previous ideology, like Gamal Abdel Nasser′s "Arab Socialism" in Egypt, after the Revolution of 1953, borrowed heavily from Western Marxist/leftist theory and practice. Nasser soon found an alliance with the Soviet Union more congenial that the alternatives. The very idea of Revolution, of revolutionary struggle, and of state run economics, not to mention the uniforms, the weapons, and the military organization, is derived from Western ideology and history, starting with the American Revolution but principally, in the 20th century, from the Russian Revolution. When Palestinian organizations began trying to practice guerrilla warfare, all of the rhetoric and precedent for this was borrowed from "national liberation" movement practices in Cuba, Vietnam, etc. When Israel occupied the Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank of the Jordan in 1967, Palestinian leaders hoped this would make possible a guerrilla war like that seen elsewhere. Their stated goal at the time was a secular state in Palestine, in which Jews would have equal rights with Palestinian Christians and Moslems. Some of the most radical Palestinians at the time were actually (or at least had been born) Christians.

A guerrilla war within Israel or the Occupied Territories never got very far. There just wasn′t enough space, and the Israelis were able to suppress internal military action. One response to this was to resort to pure terrorism, like airliner hijacking and the infamous murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Real guerrilla strikes could only be mounted from outside, from Jordan or Lebanon. King Hussein put an end to Palestinian military force in Jordan late in 1970 ("Black September"). That left Lebanon, where a civil war broke out in 1975. This fragmented the country and enabled the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to become a state with in a state, bombarding Israel occasionally from across the border, even if no more serious military operations could be mounted. The Israelis were not going to allow this, and invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982. The 1982 invasion was an ambitious project that went all the way to Beirut and aimed to drive the PLO right out of Lebanon. The Israelis succeeded in that respect, but the ferocity of their assault, and the atrocites committed, at least by their Christian allies, put them in a very bad light internationally. A withdrawl was arranged, with Western, including American, peacekeeping troops deployed.

Now the effect of the IrÃ?’¢nian Revolution began to be felt. The large Shi′ite community in Lebanon became energized under IrÃ?’¢nian influence. The foreign troops began to be attacked by suicide bombers, including a catastrophic bombing of U.S. Marine barracks late in 1983. The peacekeepers pulled out, and Lebanon lapsed back into civil war, with the new twist of suicide attacks and terror kidnappings and murders.

The suicide tactic was more of Shi′ite than of Orthodox IslÃ?’¢mic inspiration. In Middle Eastern history, the Shi′ites had usually been no more than a persecuted minority in IslÃ?’¢mic countries. The original and paradigmatic Shi′ite Martyr was H.usayn, the son of ′AlÃ?’®, who was killed in the hopeless battle of KarbalÃ?’¢′ in 680 against the forces of the Omayyad Caliph. Subsequently, the martyrdom of H.usayn would be commemorated by Shi′ites with practices, like self-flagellation, that seem much more characteristic of Christian self-mortification than of IslÃ?’¢m in general. Now, however, suicide tactics, like those of the Japanese kamikaze pilots, were discovered to be effective when more conventional forms of warfare, even guerrilla warfare, had failed.

Meanwhile, the Israelis had been funding conservative IslÃ?’¢mic groups among the Palestinians, hoping in this way to counter the influence of the revolutionary Marxist ideologies that seemed dominant in Palestinian guerrilla organizations. This turned out to be a mistake. The IrÃ?’¢nians had coopted the revolutionary ideology to their own purposes, and now this began to catch on with the Palestinians, among whom there were relatively few Shi′ites. In time, suicide bombers became the weapon of choice for Palestinian attacks on Israelis. A new era, of pure terrorist attacks, rather than attempts at the familiar forms of guerrilla warfare, had arrived.

While scholars have been using the term "Islamism" for the mix of ideology in the IrÃ?’¢nian revolution and the movements inspired by it, a term already exists in Western politics for such a thing, and that term is "fascism." An often nearly meaningless term of abuse (still loved by the recent Left), "fascism" can actually be given a fairly precise meaning. It represents, in the first place, a collectivist and totalitarian ideology. This is largely of Marxist inspiration, with political forms pioneered by Lenin and then copied with admiration by Mussolini and, especially, Hitler. The fascists themselves, like Mussolini (who coined the term), often came from a leftist and socialist political background -- Lenin wrote newspaper articles praising Mussolini in the days before World War I. Their new inspiration, however, was to abandon the international struggle of the workers and to embrace nationalism, especially a strongly racialistic and mystical nationalism. Elements of socialism remained. Private property might be left nominally in private hands, but its owners were expected to serve the Nation, and merely private purposes, let alone use for alien loyalities or ideology, was to be strongly condemned and suppressed. Hitler′s Germany witnessed a social leveling unknown in earlier Germany: Where the Imperial Army had required noble blood for its officers, the Nazi Army was as much of a meritocracy as possible given its racial criteria (Mussolini was unable to go as far). Fascism thus assumed the character of a "Revolution from the Right," with a distinctive mixture of conservative and radical elements. Stalinist Russia itself began to take on some of these features, as Stalin found it expedient in wartime to begin appealing to Russian nationalism and even to the Church, with increasing attacks on "rootless cosmopolitans" -- which meant, not good Marxist internationalism, but, most precisely, the Jews.

The IrÃ?’¢nian revolution was definitely "from the Right," embodying some of the most reactionary ideas imaginable. At the same time, it didn′t need the nationalism or racism of European fascism. Both of these were artifacts of 19th century secular ideology, the latter even a kind of application of Darwinism. The Ayatollah Khomeini had no interest in this stuff, since secularism of any sort was alien. Such nationalism as modern IrÃ?’¢n had seen was itself based on the Shi′ism adopted by the Safavid ShÃ?’¢hs. Khomeini needed only to extend and strengthen this, eliminating the civil authority and Western secularism represented by the ShÃ?’¢h and introducing a rigorous religious moralization of society, returning to the imaginary ideals of the Time of the Prophet. This IslÃ?’¢mic version of Calvin′s Geneva, however, now had all the modern trappings of revolution and armed struggle, which owed little to the history of IslÃ?’¢m and much to Marxism, Fascism, and "National Liberation." Private life was invaded by the State in a way that traditional IslÃ?’¢m might have found appalling, and religious dissent, as in the Baha′i community, was annihilated. Even the ancient religion of IrÃ?’¢n, Zoroastrianism, most of whose adherents had long fled to India (the Parsis), saw its ancient practice of sky burial (on the "Towers of Silence") prohibited. As with European fascism, private property was not itself attacked (that would be contrary to IslÃ?’¢mic law), but modern banking and finance could be attacked (charging interest is contrary to IslÃ?’¢mic law), and so vaguely socialist and anti-capitalist economic policies could be promoted. This, of course, all but ruined the IrÃ?’¢nian economy. IrÃ?’¢nian weakness then tempted Saddam Hussein of Iraq into a land grabbing attack. In the following lengthy war (1980-1988), the Iraqis could only be repulsed with suicidal banzai charges resulting in thousands of casualties.

Meanwhile, a Holy War (JihÃ?’¢d) was being conducted by Orthodox Muslims in Afghanistan, against the Soviet Union. IrÃ?’¢n had little direct involvement in this, and the fight was even supported by the country regarded by IrÃ?’¢n as the "Great Satan," i.e. the United States. This was fertile ground, however, for the new radicalized IslÃ?’¢mic ideology. And as the Palestinians would adopt Shi′ite suicide tactics, the Afghan MujÃ?’¢hidÃ?’®n in their own desperate and ruthless struggle absorbed the reactionary and totalitarian aspirations of the IrÃ?’¢nians. This meant that when the Soviets were gone, the MujÃ?’¢hidÃ?’®n could easily find their next enemy, the friend of Israel, the Great Satan itself, erstwhile ally or not.

The fascist mix of IslÃ?’¢mic ideology soon becomes evident even in books published in the United States. Daniel Pipes quotes from a 1989 book by Shamin A. Siddiqi (Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in American Perspective or The Need to Convert Americans to Islam) that IslÃ?’¢m "pinpoints the shortcoming of capitalism, elaborates the fallacies of democracy, [and] exposes the devastating consequences of the liberal lifestyle" [Commentary, November 2001, p. 23]. This says it all -- a leftist/collectivist attack on capitalism, a leftist/rightist/totalitarian attack on democracy (the Foreign Minister of South Africa recently called Cuba the "most democratic country in the world"), and a leftist/rightist/totalitarian attack on a liberal social order. Pipes and others have been warning for some time about the growth of anti-liberal, anti-modern, and anti-American ideology within organized IslÃ?’¢m in the United States.

As the 1990′s went on, organization and planning for attacks on the United States, and their execution, moved along steadily. A bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 was followed by attacks on American troops in Saudi Arabia, bombings of American Embassies in East Africa, the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Aden harbor, frustrated attempts at bombings in the United States in 2000, and finally the horrific hijackings and suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. Many of the perpetrators (not the suicide ones) and accomplices of these attacks were eventually caught and tried. Many revealed their ties to the terrorist network in Afghanistan. The United States was willing to treat much of this as a law enforcement problem, and was more worried about drug production in Afghanistan than in its terrorists, but the attacks on American soil and the deaths of so many American in 2001 made it a matter of open war in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Israelis had come to a realization that they were stuck with the Palestinians and that some sort of accommodation was in order. The PLO returned home as the "Palestinian Authority" and Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza and much of the West Bank. Just as everything seemed about to be fixed, the ultimate Palestinian demand, the right to return to pre-1948 homes, resurfaced, and Israeli unwillingness to consider this set off new resistance and new suicide bombings -- even as many Palestinians clearly did not want Israel to continue to exist in any form, and wanted Jerusalem returned to IslÃ?’¢m, intentions that could not be allowed by any Israeli government. The attitude of the Israeli public hardened, and the mastermind of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, regarded by many as a war criminal, Ariel Sharon, was elected Prime Minister.

Another source of IslÃ?’¢mic discontent has been over Iraq. After Saddam Hussein failed to gain anything with his war on IrÃ?’¢n, he turned his attentions to Kuwait, which he invaded and occupied in 1990. In 1991 a large coalition of Arab and Western counties threw the Iraqis out. They left behind, as threatened, burning oil fields, even though they had been warned that this tactic might set of an ecological disaster on a global scale. Fortunately it didn′t, and the fires were out by 1992, but it revealed the level of ruthlessness and irresponsibility in the Iraqi dictator, who had previously used poison gas against Kurdish rebels and is famous for participating in and enjoying the torture of his enemies. Shi′ite and Kurdish rebellions were sparked by the defeat on the battlefield, and unfortunately the decision was made that the survival of Hussein was probably better than the IrÃ?’¢nian intervention that Shi′ite success might bring, or the anarchy that might result from Shi′ite and/or Kurdish success in any case.

Saddam Hussein′s good behavior was thus to be assured by UN inspectors and UN economic sanctions. Hussein eventually kicked out the inspectors, and began to blame the sanctions for poverty, starvation, and disease among the Iraqis. However, the sanctions allow for the sale of Iraqi oil to pay for food and medicine; nor do they prohibit free economic and humanitarian aid. In fact, Hussein deliberately allows people to starve, for the propaganda value, and uses his income to pay for palaces, for the rebuilding of his military, and for what may still be his chemical and biological weapons programs. Although he plastered AllÃ?’¢hu Akbar, "God is Greatest," on the Iraqi flag after the war, it is hard to imagine a less religious and more cynical ruler than Hussein. The Ayatollah Khomeini himself said that he would rather drink poison than make peace with Saddam Hussein (he did anyway). So it is especially pathetic to see Hussein and Iraq represented as martyrs to IslÃ?’¢m and victims of the United States.

Nevertheless, this attitude is part of the mix of IslÃ?’¢mic fascism, one of whose abiding sources of power is resentment over the poverty and powerlessness that characterizes Middle Eastern and other IslÃ?’¢mic countries and communities -- Saddam Hussein is praised just because he "stood up" to the West. Since the real explanation for this continuing poverty and powerlessness is the lack of the rule of law and of protections for a modern, liberal, capitalist society, the real explanation is emotionally intolerable and must be rejected. As Daniel Pipes says of "Islamism": "Wherever that seditious and totalitarian ideology has gained a foothold in the world, it has wrought havoc, and some societies it has brought to utter ruin" [op.cit. p.24]. All that lies at hand for an alternative explanation are the hoary cliches of Marxism-Leninism. Everything can be blamed on colonialism, imperialism, and the international conspiracy of Americans and Jews to exploit the oppressed and thereby dominate the world economy -- seamlessly blending Marxist analysis with the tradition of Tsarist and Nazi anti-Semitism. The fascist affinity of reactionary inspiration for leftist ideology is thus strongly reinforced. Die-hard Western enemies of capitalism, free trade, and "globalization" thus happily provide conceptual and rhetorical tools that confirm IslÃ?’¢mic fascism in its sense of being wronged and of fighting righteously against evil, "by any means necessary." The defeat of the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler, and the later fall of Communism, were thus preludes to the same tactics and resentments, against individualism and capitalist modernity, being taken up in a new geo-political, and intensely reactionary, cause.

The solution to most of the ills of the IslÃ?’¢mic world is in principle easy. Democracy, the rule of law, a tolerant and secular government, and the protection of property rights in an open economy are the keys to modern life, prosperity, and the kind of power that is envied in the Great Satan.

The great festering wound, in the view of many Moslems and Arabs, and the source of much anti-Americanism in the IslÃ?’¢mic world, that is the problem of Israel and the Palestinians, is not so easily -- if even the general solution were really so easy -- resolved. Conflicting claims to the same land are involved. Now, the Israeli view tends to be that their enemies simply don′t like Jews, don′t want to concede the existence of a Jewish state, and so are determined on Israel′s, and her people′s, destruction. The IslÃ?’¢mic world, after all, was quite content with the partition of India, since this produced an IslÃ?’¢mic state, Pakistan, despite its displacement of millions of people. But the partition of Palestine was not accepted, just because it was not to the benefit of the same partisans. Also, what Palestinians often don′t realize is that most Israelis now, and the ones most adamant about concessions to Palestinians, are not European immigrants, like the original Zionists, but Jews who have been displaced from other Middle Eastern counties, whether by choice, or because the hostility of Arab governments drove them out. The story of these Jews, after a fashion, is similar to that of many Palestinians themselves, who fled or were driven out of their homes in British Palestine.

On the other hand, individual Palestinians, including Christians, are not bound by the expectations or purposes of the IslÃ?’¢mic world, or of particular Arab governments, let alone Pakistan. Their ownership of homes in the Mandate, preserved in the British land records, is independent of claims of Jewish refugees against Egypt, Iraq, or Yemen. Nor can their claims be dismissed and disqualified as the fruit of anti-Semitism. It is unlikely that their dispossession by anyone else would have been accepted with any better grace than they have accepted dispossession by the Jews. The conflict has certainly fostered anti-Semitism, but it doesn′t make any sense to ascribe it to anti-Semitism. The Israeli attitude has tended to be that Israel is a fact and that when it comes to their lost homes, Palestinians should just get over it. But this is a surprising attitude in people who claim to have returned to their ancestral homes after 2000 years -- two millennia of "remembering Zion." If Jews can remember their homes since the days of Vespasian and Titus, it is not surprising if Palestinians can remember their homes since the days of Harry Truman. The implication here is that the homes of Palestinians must somehow mean less to them, must somehow be less memorable, than the homes of the Jews. This may even be true; but, unfortunately, if the Palestinians were lacking a cultural system, ideology, or religion to identify themselves with the land, they have now certainly acquired it, often in the worst way.

What Israelis fear the most, and have every reason to fear, is massacre. Having fled the monumental slaughter inflicted by the Germans, a foundational sentiment of Israel is the determination, "never again." Israel thus always acts unapologetically in whatever way seems necessary for its defense and for the preservation of the lives of its citizens. This has often seemed admirable and paradigmatic as an example of a country protecting its citizens (e.g. the ambitious and successful 1976 raid on Entebbe airport in Ugandu to free victims of an airline hijacking). The approaches and ideologies, whether secular or religious, to which Palestinians have adhered have never been such as to calm this most fundamental fear of the Israelis. Instead, it is well known in Israel and elsewhere that, however mild and conciliatory Palestinians leaders often are in the foreign press or when speaking to foreigners, the rhetoric in the Arabic language press is usually violent and vicious, conjuring images of attack, conquest, mastery, and annihilation. They sometimes don′t seem aware that foreigners, and especially many Israeli Jews, can read Arabic. And, when this duplicity may be exposed, the response is sometimes that the Israelis themselves are engaged in their own massacre of the Palestinians, rather like the Nazi genocide itself. Now, Israel has certainly killed Palestinians, sometimes gratutitously; but the truth is that Israel has long been in the position of being able to kill as many of them, or all of them, as Israel might like. Israel in fact has not engaged in mass murder but has been rather more intent on making life uncomfortable enough for Palestinians (seizing land, blowing up houses, denying building permits) that they will simply leave.

If the Palestinians wish to exploit the moral possibilities of their position, that they have a good claim to their old homes in Palestine, that the actions of the Israeli Occupation are often contrary to International Law (which they are), then they should do so in a way that does not undercut their own moral ground and does not give precisely the wrong impression to the Israelis, and to disinterested observers. This can be done, not with the traditional Middle Eastern rhetoric and practice of violence, but with the very modern device of non-violent resistance, MahÃ?’¢tmÃ?’¢ Gandhi′s Satyagraha, or "truth force."

When I was a student in Beirut in 1969 and 1970, a Catholic priest once suggested that Palestinian refugees who wanted to go home should simply get up and walk across the border into Israel. There was no more than a fence there. A large crowd could trample it down. The Israelis always feel justified in violent responses to violence. Dead Israelis mean deadly retaliation. Although this is usually protested by some, most Western opinion sees it as at least understandable, which it is. If Palestinians, however, were to cease killing Israelis and deliberately adopt a non-violent approach, then Israel would be in no position to justify or explain deadly retaliation to anyone. In doing this, Palestinians could do a number of things simultaneously: (1) Cease threatening Jews with death; (2) convey the determination to live on peaceful and friendly terms with Israelis, since the purpose of Gandhi′s practice is to make friends with your enemies; and (3) to do what Palestinians say they want most, simply to go home. Nor is this just a matter of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories or refugee camps. Israel has expelled some Israeli Arabs from their ancestral villages, even though these people are Israeli citizens and still live in Israel. In terms of non-violent resistance, all these Israeli Arabs need to do is reoccupy their old villages, or block roads and stage sitdown strikes at the point where they might be forcibly prevented from going there.

It is clear that such practices are a difficult and alien concept in the Middle East, and Palestinians have largely never done anything of the sort. There is no local tradition of non-violence as in India, or of peaceful civil disobedience as in the United States. Instead the ideals are all of armed victory and conquest. This is unfortunate, to say the least. Unlike Saddam Hussein, who would be happy to simply murder his enemies, even if they delivered themselves to him peacefully, Israel must be sensitive to Western public opinion, including Western liberal Jewish opinion, all of which is vulnerable to images of non-violent protestors being attacked by police or soldiers. As it is, Palestinian practice and rhetoric plays mainly to an IslÃ?’¢mic audience, and only clumsily to the West. The occasional Palestinian can score points with articulate and reasonable appearance and arguments (like Hanan Ashrawi), but such points are then lost with the next suicide bomber, or the next murdered Israeli tossed from a window into the exultant mob.

The problem of the Palestinians is thus the problem of IslÃ?’¢mic fascism in general, which is that it is necessary for some prestigious and charismatic leader, whether political or religious, to denounce the violence, resentment, and hatred and to articulate the sensible alternatives in an appealing way. Frankly, this seems unlikely. The traditions of liberal, tolerant society, of non-violence, and of secularism may be just too alien in the IslÃ?’¢mic world. I can hope otherwise, but what the radical ideologues want is war, Holy War. As it happens, war is what they now have, as American bombs fall on Afghanistan and American commandos drop in out of the night. We will have to see how this works out -- certainly, when a Texan is President, it is a bad time to mess with the United States of America. Saddam Hussein wanted the "Mother of Battles" in 1991, and he got it. But he did not do well out of it. The rhetoric of the Afghan terrorists is now of IslÃ?’¢m against Christians and Jews. So far, they seem to have done poorly in rallying actual IslÃ?’¢mic governments, as opposed to radical demonstrators, around them. If they lose, and their terrorist networks are rooted out, it may be a particularly sobering moment for the Palestinians. At such moments, soul searching and reexamination are possible. Perhaps even Satyagraha in Palestine is possible.