FACING UP TO THE PAST
Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Nov 1-7, 2006
Gamil Mattar* seeks an end to the morally corrosive guilt that infects
international relations
"There have been plenty of words of condemnation of suicide bombers
but few on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in particular the attacks
on civilian installations," MP Andrew Turner told a panel on the
Palestinian question and the war against Lebanon.
"Indeed, they [UK parliamentarians] blamed Hizbullah and the seizing
of two soldiers for the conflict in Lebanon and for Israel’s reaction
to the seizing of those soldiers." In contrast, "Human Rights Watch
condemns both sides pretty unequivocally for breaches of international
law and of internationally recognised human rights. It condemns
Hizbullah for taking hostages and using the soldiers as pawns to
negotiate the release of prisoners held in Israel… and it condemns
Israel over the lawlessness of its attacks on South Lebanon, for the
extraordinarily high level of civilian casualties that followed."
"Those were the tactics of the Nazis in 1939 and 1940 — attacking
fleeing civilians from the air," he added.
Jews in the House of Commons and throughout Britain were deeply
offended and demanded an apology from the MP for comparing Israel
defending itself with the Nazi Holocaust. The head of the Conservative
Party asked Turner to apologise, which he did. Israeli leaders, and
Zionist leaders in Britain, went away satisfied; they had benefited
considerably.
The whole incident provided an opportunity to remind the British
public, and the wider world, of the holocaust, which is a permanent
feature of the agenda of Israeli leaders and Zionist lobbyists
abroad. The incident also proved a gift to Israel and British Jews
since, in asking a member of his party to apologise, the Conservative
leader landed exactly where Israel and British Jews want him.
Henceforth, whenever his party so much as thinks of criticising
Israel they will be able to remind him that it has anti-Semites in
its ranks. Finally, the attack against Turner worked to re- instill
in European leaders the fear of the axe of being labeled anti-Semitic
which hovers over the heads of anyone who dares criticise Israel or
ignore the facts of German history as it is currently being related.
In East and Southeast Asia, people are discussing the future of
their relations with Japan under a new, strongly nationalistic prime
minister who has shown no inclination to express regrets over his
country’s imperialist policies towards its neighbours. China is not
alone in insisting that Japan apologise unequivocally for the crimes
it committed in Manchuria and Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese war
and World War II. Both Koreas, too, have demanded an apology for
the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula and the inhuman and
degrading treatment meted out against its inhabitants by the occupation
authorities. The Philippines has similarly demanded an apology from
Japan for forcing Filipino women into sexually servicing Japanese
soldiers during World War II.
Japan has so far resisted offering an apology these countries find
acceptable. Simultaneously, it remains aware that the issue could
flare up whenever an Asian government finds it convenient to exploit
it politically. A notable instance occurred last year when student
demonstrations erupted — or, more appropriately, were staged —
against Japan, in the course of which demonstrators trashed and burned
Japanese commercial establishments in several Chinese cities.
Given China’s current circumstances the phenomenon is likely to
resurface with every new domestic crisis, particularly those fed by the
growing income gap, the lack of freedom and growing popular demands.
More recently France and Turkey came to loggerheads over a law passed
by the French National Assembly criminalising denials of the Armenian
Holocaust that took place in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
Ankara denies the genocide, insisting that Armenians died
in the Russo-Turkish War after siding with the Russians. The
Armenians, however, insist that hundreds of thousands of them were
indiscriminately slaughtered at the hands of Turkish forces.
As in eastern Asia contemporary politics have been instrumental in
igniting this almost century-old fuse. In some Western nations, there
are vested interests strongly opposed to Turkey’s admission into the
EU, and willing to go to great lengths to forestall this prospect. In
addition in France, as in Germany, Netherlands, and elsewhere, there
is growing xenophobia targeting Muslims in particular, and manifested,
in part, in increasingly strident demands to restrict immigration
and in overt hostility to immigrant communities.
On the other side of the equation Turkey remains bent on
Westernisation; a fundamental part of the secularism upon which the
modern Turkish state is founded. Simultaneously, Islamist forces,
as well as the increasingly active Kurdish Labour Party, have the
Ataturkists bristling.
It is difficult to imagine that Ankara will back down from its position
or even offer a gesture that would make it seem as if it were backing
down. Far more likely is that Turkey will respond in kind, accusing
France of never having apologised for the atrocities it perpetrated
in Algeria. The ploy is interesting in that it may well work. France
is not in an enviable position on this issue, for while there is no
hard documented and incontrovertible proof of an Armenian genocide
for which the Turks should apologise, there is abundant evidence of
French crimes in Algeria.
In fact, if Turkey, Algeria or other countries of Africa and Asia felt
like it, they could raise any number of problems over the humanitarian
crimes committed by colonial powers, many of which are still within
living memory of the peoples of colonised nations.
Neither Chirac, nor any other leader of Belgium, Netherlands, Italy,
the US or other western powers, is about to let his country be the
first, or only, nation to apologise to peoples that until not so long
ago — sometimes well into the second half of the 20th century —
were regarded as second class human beings.
Islamist leaders have demanded an apology from the Catholic Pope for
a notorious paragraph in a speech he delivered in Germany and they
are still demanding apology after apology from Denmark. And were it
not for the fear that infected Arab and Muslim political leaders in
the wake of 11 September, they would probably also demand an apology
from Berlusconi for the remarks he made while prime minister of Italy.
In Central and South America indigenous peoples, and those of mixed
descent, are demanding compensation for centuries of deprivation
and displacement, and for the acts of genocide perpetrated against
them since the Spanish conquest. Only recently has the voice of this
large segment of the populace of the Americas had the opportunity
to make itself heard. Leading minority figures affirm that their
campaign is developing in the direction of an "organised uprising",
the primary aim of which is to secure an apology from the governments
of Spain and Portugal for the crimes and cruelties inflicted upon
them by colonial authorities and, later, by the ethnically Spanish
dominated governments that followed independence. I suspect the world
will soon be hearing much more from the increasingly active movements
representing more than 50 million indigenous Americans whose cultures
and civilizations were shattered and, in some cases, wiped off the map.
For more than two centuries, the non- Russian peoples of Central Asia
and the Caucasus have resisted the attempts of Tsarist, Soviet and
Putinist Russia to alter their identities and cultures by overwhelming
their countries with large influxes of white Orthodox Christian
Russians. Today these peoples, especially those of the northern
Caucusus and of the recently independent nations of Ukraine, Georgia
and the three Baltic states, have the right to demand an apology
from Moscow, at the very least for the practices of the Stalinist
period which ushered in nightmarish oppression, genocide and the mass
transfer of peoples.
Other peoples of whom we have never heard but who probably lived
on the islands of the South Pacific and South Atlantic — now
populated primarily by people of European descent — will have no
such recourse. Having been vacated from their islands, for military
purposes, as was the case with Diego Garcia, or having died out or
been killed off, they have no progeny to press for an apology for
the destruction of their cultures and identities.
Our world will remain a dismal place in which people die in the
thousands because of the refusal of wealthy nations, which formerly
colonised these peoples’ countries, to come forward with sufficient
aid to rescue them from starvation. Congo, Sudan, Somalia and the
countries of West Africa spring immediately to mind. At the same
time other peoples — in Palestine, Iraq and countries targeted by
the project to create a New Middle East — are dying culturally and
spiritually because of blockades and foreign occupations forced on
them by more powerful nations in the interest of their self-serving
economic and political plans.
Civilization must begin afresh. Perhaps what is needed to set it
off on the right track is an international charter drawn up and
signed by the representatives of the member nations of the UN, of the
nations that have yet to attain independence and of the minorities in
existing nations. Under this charter all signatories would submit a
written declaration, to be appended to the charter and regarded as an
integral part of it, in which they confess to and apologise for the
injustices they perpetrated against other peoples and which, in turn,
are officially accepted by the peoples in question.
I doubt that those who are laying the groundwork for ever more
horrendous tragedies, in the name of the clash of civilizations,
the fight against terrorism, the war against the axis of evil and
other such headings targeting Arab and Muslim peoples, will like this
suggestion. But then neither will many others who are growing angrier
and more embittered by the day under the pressures of oppression,
economic strangleholds and flagrant injustices.
The world is plummeting towards an appalling precipice and is being
pushed ever more rapidly in that direction by extremists of all
political and religious hues, by racists and bigots from all races
and faiths. These are the type of people neither inclined to give
apologies nor accept them. Would Israel and the Zionist movement accept
an apology by Europeans and others for crimes perpetrated against the
Jews? Would Israel apologise for the crimes it perpetrated against
the Palestinians and the Arabs, who are still a party in this conflict?
I believe that an official exchange of apologies and acceptances
of apologies between Israel and other countries, and between other
countries and other peoples would usher in a new era in international
relations, in which rights are restored to the dispossessed, feelings
of guilt fade and even the thirst for vengeance subsides.
* The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and
Futuristic Research.
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