February 13, 2009

Journey of Understanding

One unintended casualty in the aftermath of 9/11 has been Australia-Pakistan cricket ties. No Australian team has visited Pakistan since, citing dread over perceived security threats and terror attacks. A recent book illustrates why and the impact on the Australian psyche of the spreading environment of fear.

Australia ’s previous Prime Minister, John Howard, was unduly enthusiastic in endorsing Bush Administration policies. This had an effect on the Australian domestic scene, with a noticeable rise in xenophobia with an anti-Muslim tilt.

For a large part, Australian politicos and media found it easier to join the bandwagon of using stereotypical terminology of hate and fear about the Muslim world and also about Australian Muslims living in their midst, particularly those of Lebanese descent residing mainly in Sydney. Among other things, it sparked Australia’s worst ever race riots during December 2005 in the Sydney area.

Resisting the wave of prejudice has been Peter Manning, a leading authority on the Middle East, who has a strong background in media and academia and is former head of News and Current Affairs at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Peter Manning is engaged to Carole Lawson, the sister of Geoff “Henry” Lawson, the former coach of the Pakistan Cricket Team, who was shabbily treated by the PCB.

Worried that negative imagery about Muslims had become an industry, Peter Manning along with Carole Lawson embarked on a journey to Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Occupied Palestine, and Israel. Out of it emerged a travelogue and an insightful commentary in the shape of a book entitled, “Us and Them: A Journalist’s Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East”. The Aussie author was especially fascinated by Syria in that he saw it as a hub of Mideast socio-political culture.

In large part, Peter found that Australian media parroted the US media coverage, demonizing and de-humanizing the Palestinians. In his visit to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, Peter found a dead town with signs of starving children begging, where he observed that Israel had destroyed 2000 years of Christian history in less than 40 years. Like former US President Jimmy Carter, Peter found Israeli practices akin to South African apartheid. His eye-witness observations were in striking contrast to the imbalance and misreporting that he found rampant in Australia.

While in the Middle East, he discovered many fallacies operating under the guise of fighting terror. And he found that many in the West were succumbing to fear and hatred stemming out of ignorance.

Peter’s journey involved considerable contact with street sentiment, and he was inspired to see a sign in Occupied Territories proclaiming that “fear builds walls and hope builds bridges.” He was able to connect with a sense of desolation, powerlessness, and anger of those living under occupation.

In an era mired in ethnic tensions and parochial prejudice, it is refreshing to see someone journey abroad to transcend the confines of tribalism and empathize with the universality of human sufferings. Once, Afghans journeyed to Australia during the mid-19 th century to explore its vast interior on camel. Now, an Australian journeyed to the Middle East to explore the source of global unrest.

Americans, for their part, have a hazy notion of the extent to which Israel has entrapped the US in a calamitous course in the Middle East. Americans who are in responsible positions, yet irresponsibly maintain a sycophantic posture toward Israel, are well advised to go to Gaza to see first-hand the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the recent Israeli onslaught on defenseless civilians, in flagrant breach of the international humanitarian law codified in the Geneva Conventions.

Peter also spearheaded a group of eminent Australians, including Geoff Lawson, in launching a campaign in mainstream Australian media under the caption, “The Slaughter in Gaza”, wherein the Australian government was urged to condemn Israeli atrocities.

The book highlights the usage of words which casts the Arabs and Palestinians in less than human light and finds it comparable to the manner in which the Nazis de-humanized Jews in Germany, Austria, and Poland. Also, it finds that Israel’s reliance on military might to subdue the Palestinians is doomed to failure.

Significantly, Peter concludes that the notion of two states living side by side is no longer viable, in that the point of no return has already been reached, and that a Zionist state based on ensuring the privileges of a particular ethnicity cannot be called a democracy.

There is scope here for being sanguine should this book stir Muslims in Australia and elsewhere to play a more proactive and vigorous role.

For Western policy-makers, international diplomats, and Middle East experts, Peter’s conclusion is especially instructive. He ends the book by stating, “ Israel is not building security for its people but rather a future full of hate, loathing and revenge. At the heart of the cycle of violence, as always, lies the cancer that is the occupation of Palestine.”