Welcome to the second edition of WIN, and thank you for your overwhelmingly supportive response to the first. Your letters, subscriptions, donations, and word-of-mouth promotion help fuel not only this project, but all of the War Resisters League's important work. In this issue, Eric Laursen looks at Lebanon, Israel, and an unsteady ceasefire, Wendy Schwartz remembers the incomparable activist Norma Becker, and Yeidy Rosa details the myriad conscientious objector movements throughout Latin America. We also say goodbye to G. Simon Harak, WRL's Anti-Militarism Coordinator and our resident Iraq expert, who spearheaded the Stop the Merchants of Death campaign and worked until his departure on a strategy conference to boost work against war profiteers around the country. Simon, you will be missed!
In response to a sullen summer, this fall season bustles with a particularly high level of activism. Whether the 34-day Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, the ongoing violence in Iraq, the continued chest-beating toward Iran, or the Senate's approval of a $448 billion Pentagon budget, this summer has presented as many challenges as opportunities to movements for peace and justice.
A crucial yet strangely under-discussed challenge is the chronic fear and fear-mongering of terrorism, and the threat of "Islamofascists"-the latest "Bushism." This summer also marks the first criminalization of toiletries, thanks to the well-timed and questionable "UK terror plot," the outcome of which has been inconclusive and ultimately inconsequential considering that the goal-to instill senseless fear-was accomplished.
The campaign to scare civilians worldwide not only rolls on but seems to have prompted new levels of racist hysteria. On August 20, following the alleged "terror plot," passengers on a Manchester-bound flight from Malaga, Spain, refused to allow the plane to leave until two men who were thought to be speaking Arabic were removed. Two days later, Amar Ashraf, a British Muslim pilot traveling as a passenger was forced off a transatlantic flight before takeoff, and interrogated by armed police officers.
And on August 12, Iraqi peace activist Raed Jarrar who works with Global Exchange, was not allowed to board a flight at JFK airport because he was wearing a shirt that read "We will not be silent" in Arabic and English. Jarrar was forced to change his shirt by airport security, who told him wearing such a shirt was akin to "going to a bank with a t-shirt reading 'I am a robber.'"
How, as activists, do we organize under a blanket of such real/unreal fear? How, as true antiracists, do we organize in a time of such flagrant and widely accepted anti-Arab racism? Without a broader campaign against the rhetoric and racism of the "war on terror," somehow each new crop of "anti-horrible things the Bush Administration is doing" and "coalitions against potential invasions of Middle Eastern countries" seems to miss a more fundamental point: violence feeds on fear and racism. How can we confront this fact that is so obvious it tends to be overlooked?
In many ways, fears of "Islamofascists," have colored left movements in the United States as well, to the point that the histories of Middle East countries-riddled with colonialism, Western-backed coups and dictatorships, and exploited sectarian divisions-are forgotten. As Eric Laursen points out in discussing Hizbollah's pivotal role within Lebanon and the rush to condemn them as reactionary, leftists are often quick to "apply ideological litmus tests to Islamic cultures," and either begin finger-wagging or refrain from taking stands. As radical nonviolent activists, we have been and will continue to be challenged to find the line between the recognition of struggles against oppression and the uncritical endorsement of them.
If we are to end war and its root causes, it's imperative for nonviolent activists within this country to first remember and take responsibility for our direct line of involvement in such conflicts. As in the case of Lebanon and Palestine, we must act against the millions of our tax dollars arming the Israeli military each year.
We must move from confusion to clarification, from paralysis to action, working for peace with justice while carving space for nonviolent movements to flourish and nonviolent alternatives to be realized.
