From
the Editor: Akhtar
Mahmud Faruqui
September 23, 2005
The President’s
Address
President General Pervaiz Musharraf
spoke with characteristic candor at the Council
of World Jewry and American Jewish Congress (AJC)
dinner in New York on Saturday. Rightly described
as “the quintessential Muslim leader of moderation,
decency, reason, and acceptance of pluralism”
by 77-year-old US legislator Tom Lantos, the President
demonstrated both vision and individual courage
when he made the solemn urging to Tel Aviv: “I
have always believed that courage required to compromise
and reconcile is far greater than that required
to confront and I appeal to Israel to show that
courage.
“Israel must come to terms with geopolitical
realities and allow justice to prevail for the Palestinians.
The Palestinians’ desire for freedom and nationhood
is as intense as that of any other people. They
want their own independent state and they must get
it.” True.
“The leaders of today must change the course
of events instead of merely reacting to a series
of catastrophic events such as 9/11 and 7/7”.
Israel has the right to stay as a country but the
Palestinian question must be addressed amicably
in a peaceful manner.
The dinner was indeed a very rare occasion, indisputably
a watershed event. Jack Rosen, Chairman of the American
Jewish Congress and Council for World Jewry, observed
that the “President recognized the right of
Israel to exist, he called for reconciliation between
Muslims and Jews, and he talked about the pains
of past years of anti-Semitism. You couldn’t
have asked for anything better than that.”
This perhaps is a propitious occasion to reiterate
and recall what we have earlier stated in these
columns:
“With scarcely a peep from the American professorate
or intelligentsia, we have all succumbed entirely
to the promiscuous misuse of language and sense,
by which everything we don’t like has become
terror and what we do is pure and simple good, to
fight terror, no matter how much wealth, and lives,
and destruction is involved. Swept away are all
the enlightenment precepts by which we attempt to
educate our students and our fellow citizens, replaced
by a disproportionate orgy of vindictiveness and
self-righteous wrath of the kind that only the wealthy
and the powerful, it would seem, have the right
to use and act upon…”
The multi-dimensional nature of the human tragedy
enacted in the Middle East could have hardly been
more truthfully spelled out than in this graphic
observation of Edward W. Said. As the death toll
mounts and casualties multiply, there is little
to suggest that words like remorse, compunction,
or empathy have any meaning in contemporary lexicon.
The resultant suicide-bomber acts staged by hapless
Palestinians, including hijab-sporting teen-age
youthful girls, is a cause of concern. So are the
innocent Israeli civilians gasping for precious
life and helplessly scrambling for help. It is a
haunting spectacle – on both sides of the
religious divide.
“Both the Palestinians and the Israelis are
experiencing a bloodbath, though of a varying degree.
In this swiftly spiraling human catastrophe the
question of paramount importance is: Does Islam
or Judaism preach violence and should the losses
experienced by the adherents of the two Abrahamic
faiths be incurred in such a wanton fashion given
the fact that both Muslims and Jews have stakes
in the region and neither one can succeed in surviving
at the expense or exclusion of the other? A spirit
of mutual accommodation must prevail in any strategy
or scheme of initiatives chalked out to bring about
peace in the region. Israel, with its marked military
superiority, is better poised to take the initiative.
It must, as well-known peace negotiator George Mitchell
observed, realize that “a military victory
is an illusion” and the two parties should
“get back to the negotiating table.”
His message for the Palestinians is equally important:
the pool of suicide bombers has multiplied lately
but it is not going to achieve the Palestinian objective
of an independent state.
“As for the other main actors on the world
stage, there is little to suggest that the West
would act with promptitude to reign in the two combatants.
What is particularly disconcerting, while the UN
Security Council has asked Israel to check its adventurism
against the Palestinians the US has held Arafat
responsible for the latest round of violence! With
the situation presently obtaining the catastrophe
is likely to compound as time passes. The death
count of helpless Palestinians and innocent Israeli
victims of suicide bombers will multiply.
“A glimmer of hope comes from the majestic
portals of the Vatican where the Pope in his Easter
address emphasized the paramount importance of coexistence.
The Beirut Declaration, offering peace to Tel Aviv
in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from
all occupied territories, is a manifestation of
the same spirit. The US could play a pivotal role
in mustering support for such peace initiatives.
It has acted nobly in Bosnia and Kosovo and rescued
Europe in the two world wars. It alone has the power
to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to the
negotiating table to ensure that the two arrive
at an arrangement which ensures the well being of
both.
“If memory serves right, it was Charles Dickens,
the well-known English novelist, who had observed:
“Let’s conserve a livable world. Let’s
contemplate existence.” A sane advise. One
that both the Palestinians and the Israelis need
to heed today. Conflicts are created and ended by
human beings.”
This piece was written a few
years back. Recent happenings, including Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza and the mood at the Saturday
dinner hosted by the Council of World Jewry and
American Jewish Congress in New York, are hopeful
signs that the world is beginning to realize the
pressing need to contemplate existence. Let’s
resolve to conserve a livable world.
- afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
