The Saker interviews Roger Tucker, author of the One Democratic State blog

After a lengthy break from making interviews, I am finally returning to this aspect of my work with what I consider one of the most interesting interviews I ever made. One of my readers (thanks RC!) pointed me to the website and work of Robert Tucker, truly an immensely interesting and courageous person whom I consider to be the living proof of the fact that no amount of propaganda and indoctrination can overcome the human desire for truth, freedom and justice. Robert, who was born as a American Jew (usually the most indoctrinated Jews anywhere on the planet, at least in my experience) simply says that "we are defined by our choices" yet these six simple words contain within themselves the assumption that we are *not* just defined by our environment or genetic makeup, a basic truth which both nationalists and racists have totally forgotten. I believe that being defined by our choices is a core element of our common humanity, that this freedom to choose is likewise a core element of our essence as human beings and that what I would call the "brotherhood of choices" is far more important in our lives than our ethnic origins (just recall the Parable of the Good Samaritan).

It is always a joy for me when any person breaks free from the ideological shackles he/she was born into and bursts into a life of true freedom of the spirit. This is a painful process which can only be completed through a great deal of suffering and anguish, but one which eventually leads to peace. I hope that Roger's example will inspire many others.

The Saker

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What happened to Hillel's teaching that the essence of Judaism, from which all else springs, is, "That which is hateful unto you do not do to your fellow human being"?
- When Abraham wept

The Saker: Please introduce yourself, tell us about the various organizations or websites you are associated with and what considerations brought you to get active in "Internet-based politics" (for lack of a better word)?

Roger Tucker: I think that I am a fairly typical product of my time, place and antecedents. I was born and brought up in Newton, one of the largely Jewish suburbs of Boston, populated then as now with a lot of professional and business types, particularly faculty of the major schools, like Harvard and MIT, doctors, lawyers, accountants et al. I rebelled against the whole shtick, heavily influenced by my mother, I think, who was a woman way ahead of her time but made the mistake of entering into a conventional marriage, one which suffocated her. Well, we are defined by our choices and inexorably reap the consequences.

I am part of two worlds that I have chosen. The first, following an evolution starting in my early teens, is the rather vast arena of Buddhism. At first it was Zen, and then in the early 70's I became a student of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan meditation master. The associated organization is Shambhala International, which acts as a container and transmitter of the teachings of this particular lineage. The second, which dates back only about five years, is the world of political activism. This is in stark contrast to my attitude and activities when I was a student in San Francisco in the 60's. I was very much a part of the local counter culture, which was involved in that remarkable spiritual revolution that was prologue to so much of what we take for granted these days, in spite of the fact that the counter-revolution was so emphatically successful. However, across the Bay in Berkeley, there was a political revolution of sorts going on, the Free Speech Movement, robust antiwar activity, heavy support for the Civil Rights movement, People's Park, and so forth. Well, identifying much more with the flower children, I dismissed most of that as the realm of the "politicals," as we called them, and went about my business.

About five years ago I found myself suddenly aware that I had been, like most people, in something like a state of hypnosis regarding the State of Israel and the profoundly malevolent influence its existence and activities were having on both international affairs as well as domestic realities back here in River City. So I kind of woke up, snapped out of it, and almost immediately concluded that there was one, and only one way out of the mess - and that is what is known as the One State Solution. Having come to this conclusion, one thing just followed another and I found myself setting up a website as a source of information, education and advocacy. That led (I won't go into the technical reasons why) to my current website.

What were the circumstances which brought you, a Jew, to turn to Buddhism? What about Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, have you ever considered these?

First of all, even as a youngster I never felt the slightest inclination to believe in God any more than I bought into the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. To me they were all childish productions of the mind that were best categorized by Freud as "infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies." But, atheism, of course, is not very satisfying spiritually - it is merely a negation of theism. So I set about actively searching for answers to the age old elemental questions that can best be summed up as "who am I - and what is That?" I felt sure that there must be, or must have been someone, somewhere, who had at least the slightest idea of what was actually what, but for a long time didn't feel that I could even be sure of that. I read The Way, by Lao-Tze, the Bhagavad Gita (and gave a talk on it to other young people), looked into Sufism and even joined a Quaker Meeting, and while a student at the Army Language School took a course in the history of Islam, but it wasn't until after I returned from a three year stint in the Army that I settled on Buddhism. This was precipitated by a lecture at Brandeis by D.T. Suzuki of Tokyo University. I came out of that talk with two distinct feelings. One was that I hadn't really understood a word that he had said. The other was that for the first time I had listened to someone who was privy to the truth about the nature of existence. Such is Zen. I remember the sense as I was walking out of the auditorium that I was two feet off the ground. I had the feeling that I was, finally, not alone. I have since come to the conclusion that there are religions and there are wisdom traditions, and the former are by-products of the latter, sort of like ossified husks that preserve the form but have discarded the essence. Among the wisdom traditions I happen to find Buddhism to be the clearest and most useful.

I don’t want to give the impression that I consider all religion to be detrimental to human understanding and development – that would be inaccurate and far too simplistic. On the contrary, all religions, as I said, contain the original, genuine spiritual inspiration and wisdom within them. Otherwise they would just dry up and blow away, offering nothing to sustain them. One could say that religious beliefs and practices could be graphed as a spectrum that ranges from hopelessly ignorant, dogmatic fundamentalism (the products of the back country madrassas in Afghanistan and Pakistan or those of the Saudi Wahhabists, the piney woods Assemblies of God and Bible Colleges in the southern U.S., the Hindu fanatics in the rank-and-file of the BJP of India, and the fetid Orthodox precincts of Brooklyn that send forth the genocidal settler-colonists in the West Bank).

At the other end of the spectrum are the saints and mystics, and ordinary people possessed of transcendental common sense, who may or may not identify as believers in one of the traditional theistic traditions, but who can’t really be distinguished from the practitioners of the wisdom traditions in their basic understanding. It would turn out to be a bell curve, no doubt, with the majority in the muddled middle, basically confused and kind of inwardly agnostic but going along to get along. People will express their natural yearning for spiritual understanding one way or another, and the gulf between belief in God and reliance on science and reason is not as wide as is popularly thought.

To a large extent the difference lies in the confusion between absolute and relative truth. Language itself evolved as a way of expressing relative truth, in order to distinguish between this and that, good to eat or not good to eat, threatening as opposed to harmless and so forth. In order to express absolute truth, that which goes beyond polarities and concepts and points directly to things as they are, art is born and language becomes metaphor, poetry, song and the voice of the spirit.

I am going to repeat an old question here: what/who is a Jew? Do you still consider yourself as a Jew and, if yes, what meaning do you give to your "Jewishness".

The first part has a simple answer, though it's not the only answer. Like being human, or male or female, one is born that way. I was brought up to understand that one is a Jew if one's mother was a Jew, and my parents and their parents were Ashkenazim. The Nazis elaborated on that to include any forebears going back even three generations. The Israelis, likewise, due to their "demographic problem," have loosened the definition considerably, so that nowadays - if you're of the "right" nationality or ethnicity, you merely have to make some vague claim to being Jewish. You're a shoo-in if you're a white European, which accounts for the hefty number of recent Russian immigrants. The same thing happened in South Africa, under the Afrikaner regime, and for the same reasons.

When one looks at Jewish history, though, the whole picture becomes quite muddled. It appears that, contrary to popular belief (even among Jews), Judaism was for many hundreds of years a very actively proselytizing religion, and a very successful one at that. It has been known for some years that we Ashkenazim (the Yiddish speaking people) are the descendants not of the Hebrews but of the citizens of the Khazarian Empire, which was converted to Judaism back in the 8th Century AD. And due to the efforts of an Israeli historian by the name of Shlomo Sand we discover that many of the Sephardim (from Spain and Portugal) and most of the Mizrahim (Middle Eastern and Asian Jews, mostly North African) are descended from Berber people who were converted by a warrior Queen. His book is currently being translated from Hebrew into English and it will no doubt cause quite a stir, no matter how assiduously the Zionists try to repress and distort it. The ironic upshot of all this is that it turns out that there is no such thing as "the Jewish People," anymore than there was such a thing as Hitler's beloved "Aryan Race." Fascism is always built on some such mytho-history. The "misplaced concreteness," or reification, of such squirrelly collective terms as "the Jews," "White People," "Black People," “the Working Class” or “Capitalists” is such a cause of unnecessary suffering. I follow Ghandi’s example when he said when he was asked if he was a Hindu “Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.” We are all just people, human beings, with the same inalienable right to live in peace and dignity as anyone else, and the same moral responsibility to let others do likewise.

Why are you, a Buddhist Jew, active in the Palestinian question? Why is this topic important to you?

We are all faced with a question from early on, and one that never goes away. How is one to live one's life? I'm going to give a Buddhist answer and a Jewish one. The dharma talks about "the eightfold noble path," which has some similarity to the Ten Commandments, but much more nuanced and spiritually sophisticated. One of these is "right action." This is not defined - that is left to commentary - but it means to act lawfully, where the term dharma, best translated as "the teachings," or "things as they are," is understood to be the basis of proper behavior, what determines how you act in relation to others. This is further elaborated in the Mahayana tradition in the form of the Bodhisattva Path. In order to enter this path, one takes a vow to put others before oneself, indeed, to save all sentient beings. This may sound like a bit of overreaching, but one eventually comes to understand that, given the seamless inseparability of all that exists, there's really no choice. This becomes, at the very least, one's aspiration. But, as in all things Buddhist, how you go about it is left entirely up to you, and depends on the depth of your understanding and your commitment to the vow that you have taken. That's the Buddhist part. (It might strike some that there's an obvious similarity here to what Jesus taught, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. There's a great Zen anecdote about that, but no space for it here.)

So let's imagine a Buddhist who also happens to be a Jew, somebody like me. Let me note here that no one who meets me gets the slightest hint that I am "Jewish." I don't fit any stereotype, whether it's physically, linguistically or culturally. When I was bumming around Europe, the Middle East and Africa, people I met were often surprised when I told them that I was an American - I had to convince people. I wasn't ashamed of it particularly, although in certain circumstances I, as is still the custom among backpacker types, opted for passing as a Canadian to avoid unnecessary complications. When I found myself in Israel the first time, I wound up becoming a volunteer on a kibbutz, as much a matter of practical necessity as leftover Jewish romanticism. I soon discovered that the "volunteers" were considered a necessary evil by the kibbutzniks - free labor is free labor, a bargain at any price. They avoided any contact with the volunteers except as necessary to get the work done - so much for the original ideal of a communitarian agrarian socialism - it was all business. Whenever possible, I would get away and wander around the country, soon discovering that I was drawn to the Arab inhabitants, the Palestinians, who seemed altogether so much more attractive as people, so much more at home in the land. But I found that conversation would eventually get around to politics, and they would begin to get tense and the anger and frustration were palpable. I wasn't close at this point to putting two and two together, so I would begin to feel alienated and restive and would soon move on. This pattern of moving back and forth between the two peoples persisted during both of my sojourns in Israel in the early 70's. But I digress, which is fun, but perhaps confusing to the reader.

Going back to the meaning that I give my "Jewishness," I should relate that I was sent to Hebrew School to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah, which, in the Conservative Jewish tradition, as in the Orthodox, requires one to chant from the Haftorah in Hebrew. This comprised my Jewish education though I remember very little of it - I was not there willingly; my father insisted, more for social and family reasons than anything else, which was a common attitude among second generation Jews at the time. For those who don't know, the Conservative school was something of a compromise between the Orthodox (rare at the time except among those born in the old country - I think many of us felt that it was sure to die out completely in America; little did we realize how resilient such cultural artifacts are), and an American invention, Reform Judaism, a precursor to the type of Christianity that became dominant within the National Council of Churches starting in the 60's, a kind of catch-all that mimicked multi-activity secular institutions while paying lip service to whichever branch of the religion whose name it carried - a sort of social service oriented pastiche whose function was more that of providing some sense of community and social purpose than any semblance of pursuing a religious path. This has somewhat gone out of fashion in recent years, largely replaced by a more robust form that relies on magic and blind faith, signaling a return to traditional American revivalism with the tents replaced by TV and Monster Churches.

The institution I attended was Temple Emeth - 'emeth' meaning 'truth' in Hebrew. In recent years I have found this increasingly ironic as I have become aware of the almost totally mythical nature of the stories that Jews have told about themselves over the centuries, much of which is contained in the collection of folklore called the Jewish Bible. And with the advent of political Zionism, we have a full blown fascist mytho-history that is almost entirely fabricated. But somehow I absorbed something of the wisdom tradition that must have provided the seed for the whole thing, as can be found in every theistic religion if one looks hard enough. Certain words resonate in my mind, like “truth,” “justice” and "righteousness," which somehow encapsulates the notion of what in Buddhism we call "right action." It was all quite legalistic, stemming from the famous Ten Commandments and immersed in the injunction to "fear God," for he is a "jealous God." I never had the slightest inclination to believe any of the theistic claptrap, but something about how one should live one's life properly did make sense. The wisdom essence seems to be contained in the Golden Rule. I just looked up a variation that was handy, “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you,” which was attributed to Rabbi Hillel. A Google search then came up with other sources for those exact words, Confucius and Jesus of Nazareth (according to the Gospel of Matthew). One could also say that this formula sums up Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. It’s all of a piece.

All of this is leading to an answer to the question of why I am concerned with the Palestinians, of why it's important to me. I am not particularly attached to Palestinians as such. They are neither better nor worse than anyone else. Everyone is, as it is put in Shambhala Buddhism, "basically good." But perhaps because I am Jewish, I feel that I have a special responsibility to the millions of people who are suffering at the hands of some of my fellow Jews, and I particularly object to this being done in my name. But really it's a moral imperative. What's basically wrong with political Zionism (the Jabotinskian variation that gained the upper hand in Israel in the 1930's and has had a tight grip on power ever since) is that it directly and flagrantly violates the bottom line of all genuine spiritual traditions. That is to say, it is intrinsically evil, and must be opposed by anyone who has even the most rudimentary understanding of the difference between right and wrong, be they of whatever religious, ideological, ethnic or national persuasion.

What was the reaction of your Jewish relatives and friends to your conversion to Buddhism?

This question I can dispense with quickly, but it does bring up an interesting point. As for relatives, I am close only to my brother, who very generously keeps me from starving and, to a much lesser extent, my father, who kept me from starving while I was growing up. They are aware of my Buddhist connection, but are not particularly curious about it. I put this down to the fact that they are secular - my brother is agnostic and my father's Jewishness is a matter of identification with the tribe - his pro forma relationship with the religion is, as with most Jews of his generation, more a matter of sentimentality and attachment to some sense of tradition and community than anything else.

I have many Jewish friends, but pretty much all of them are also Buddhists. It might help to point out that just as English is the world's second language, Buddhism, if my take on this is correct, is the world's "second religion." I don't know how many people (a lot) have told me that if they weren't a This or a That, or if they were to identify with any spiritual path, they would be Buddhists. I don’t mean to imply that one path is “better” than another. For example, my brother is one of the kindest and wisest people I have ever known, yet the only spiritual discipline (if one could call it that) that one could ascribe to him has been so-called secular humanism. He is a self-taught student of the Western Enlightenment, whose sages were the likes of John Locke, David Hume, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

I should add that "conversion" is not an accurate term in this context. One converts to a religion, and there is a distinction between religions and spiritual (or wisdom) traditions. Religions, as I’ve said, are institutions that grow out of wisdom traditions, a process akin to ossification, or the production of a husk around a seed. The wisdom which is experienced and transmitted by elders, shamans, mystics, practitioners of spiritual yogas, sages, etc., becomes solidified into a masquerade, usually with elaborate trappings and political responsibilities in support of the state. Religions, almost always theistic, are founded on blind faith, dogma. One can no more "convert" to a genuine spiritual discipline than one can convert to physics or gardening.

The Internet is buzzing with discussions about the Neocons and the "Jewish/Israel/Zionist Lobby". What is your taken on these concepts? Is it correct to conflate them and use them interchangeably as is often done? Norman Finkelstein often repeats that it is wrong to speak of a "Zionist Lobby" because the leaders of the "Lobby" are not at all Zionist in their outlook; according to him, all they are interested is their power. Noam Chomsky says that it is wrong to speak about an "Israel Lobby" because, according to him, the USA is using Israel and not the other way around.

First off, I like the term "Zionist Lobby" because it is the most concise and accurate. "Israel Lobby," which is the common usage, comes close, but Israel is entirely the creation of Zionism, and therefore not quite as descriptive. Why Finkelstein disagrees I have no idea, but one must bear in mind that he is what we call a "soft" or "closet" Zionist. He, like other soft Zionists such as Jimmy Carter or Uri Avnery, who immediately come to mind, are still supporting the chimerical notion of the "two state solution." It is for this reason that I consider them to be more a part of the problem than the solution, in spite of their otherwise useful contributions to the general debate, particularly their insistence on viewing Palestinians as fellow human beings rather than cartoon characters with suicide belts strapped to their waists.

But can one really speak of a "Neocon Lobby" when referring to AIPAC, the ADL, or the CPMJO?! Aren't all these organizations Israel-centric? And if they are, does this not justify speaking about a "Zionist Lobby" or "Israel Lobby"? Furthermore, the fast majority of Neocons, but not all, are Jews and pretty much all members of AIPAC/ADL/CPMJO/etc are Jews also. Should one then speak of a "Jewish Lobby"? Please give us your nomenclature, your choice of words in regards to this issue: in your opinion who is representing whom,..

As for the neocons, that term refers to a very specific group of people composed primarily of Jews who started out on the Left and then, under the influence of Leo Strauss, philosopher, and the other wing of the Chicago School associated with Milton Friedman, economist (both of whom were Jewish), migrated to the Right. Strauss is considered to be the father of neo-conservatism, and is a perfect candidate for the role of the real Dr. Strangelove. As pro-Israel sentiments have historically been more prevalent among the Democrats than the Republicans, Neocon Lobby is a non-starter (as would Neolib Lobby, for the same reason). I have a certain fondness for a term coined by James Petras, Zionist Power Configuration, because it not only references the various formal organizations that are considered to comprise the Israel Lobby, but includes all of the various individuals, corporations, associations as well as the vast army of collaborators, fellow travelers and sympathizers that have made support of Israel a fundamental plank, if not THE fundamental plank of both of the two major political parties (who, by the way, I collectively refer to as the Republicrats).

Most of the confusion about terminology stems from the conflation of three distinct terms, "Jews," "Israelis," and "Zionists." Jews are the people who self-identify as Jews and are considered Jews by others. The basic idea is that of a tribe or a people descended from Abraham of Chaldea (in what is now Iraq) and his progeny. Although that is probably 99% mythology and 1% history, it's the general view. Many people are under the impression that it refers to people who practice the Jewish religion - that was actually true, by and large, for perhaps a thousand years or so, when Judaism was an energetic proselytizing religion, but hasn't been for at least the last 200 years. Israelis are the people who are considered to legitimately reside in Israel (they don’t have such a thing as citizenship, as it would hinder their peculiar policy towards their Palestinian population. And Zionists are those who buy into that particular ideology, which is, in essence, the belief that the Jews deserve a nation state of their own and that they had the right to establish a state in Palestine, and to maintain it there no matter what.

Jewish Lobby is a total non-starter. For one thing, most American Jews feel a great deal of ambiguity towards Israel and Zionism. There is the subliminal tribal attraction counterbalanced by a natural repugnance, on the part of people who are otherwise secular, tolerant, progressive children of the Western Enlightenment and so forth, to an ethnocentric, fascist and violent ideology. Then there is the fact that the influence of Jewish Zionism is wholeheartedly buttressed by the far more populous Christian Zionists, who are very much a part of my preferred term, Zionist Power Configuration. And if that term sounds too clumsy, Zionist Lobby will do fine. But I usually say Israel Lobby because it is the most popular term and it isn't entirely inaccurate.

..who is the dog and who is the tail"?

I consider the relationship between the U.S. and Israel to be basically symbiotic, but "who is the dog and who is the tail" depends on the specific time and context. The term USrael comes in handy in this respect. Both regimes are under the impression that they are using the other, but I think the Israelis are winning that one hands down. Israel couldn't survive for a month without the all out support of the U.S., and most of official Washington appears to still buy into the notion that Israel is a useful proxy in advancing the interests of American hegemony in the Middle East (principally control of their petroleum resources). That the truth is actually just the opposite is a notion that doesn't seem to have penetrated at all inside the Beltway (perhaps we could start referring to the Beltway as the Separation Highway and DC as the Domestic Green Zone. How about the U.S. Permeable Membrane that allows money in but filters out any genuine concern for human beings and the planet).

Tell us about the Jewish opposition to the Neocons and the Lobby: who is it composed of, what does it stand for and what exactly does it oppose - the Neocons? Zionism? The State of Israel? What are the main expressions of this anti-Neocon Jewish movement, the progressive readers of Tikkun or Orthodox Jews like the members of Neturei Karta International?

This question is directly addressed in "A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism", by Yakov M. Rabkin. It is listed on the Books Page of my website .

'This book sheds light on religious anti-Zionism, which, demographically and ideologically, represents the most serious threat to Israel as a State and as a collective identity. In fact, it is a more grievous and dangerous challenge than Arab and Palestinian hostility. The State, by increasing its achievements, leads the country straight into an abyss. To paraphrase Marx, one could say that Israel, by virtue of its spectacular development, is digging its own tomb.' (from Noam Chomsky’s review)

In the West most Jewish opposition comes from secular Jews who see the Occupation as the main problem, as well as people like myself who view Zionism as an inherently fascist ideology, and its product, the State of Israel, as a criminal enterprise that has no more legitimacy as a modern nation state than La Cosa Nostra has as a normal corporation. Tikkun, the creation of Rabbi Michael Lerner, a close friend and advisor to the Clintons, represents a group of (mostly secular) progressive Jews who are somewhat New Agey and conventionally postmodern, similar to the Jewish Renewal movement (more spiritual), whose most prominent teacher is Rabbi Zalman-Schechter. In spite of their disgust at Israel's behavior and compassion for the Palestinians, these people are all soft Zionists insofar as they support Israel's "right to exist."

More broadly, what role does religion vs secularism play in the issue of Israel, the Lobby and the Neocons? Is religious piety a reliable indicator of the political leanings of a Jew?

It plays a divisive and negative part in Israeli politics, as the religious parties have an influence far exceeding their numbers, but is a non-issue with regard to the Lobby and the Neocons, who are overwhelmingly secular. As for religious piety, I don’t think it’s any different from its role in any of the theistic religions – its basic function is to maintain a bulwark against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, known in Buddhism as samsara (the wheel of birth and death, the world of confusion and suffering, the natural result of continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again and expecting a different result). As this bulwark is an artificial construction, all available spiritual energy is diverted from actually dealing with things as they are into shoring up what is essentially a house of cards. I suppose one could say that the Neturei Karta are the exception that proves the rule, at least in terms of their attitude towards the “Jewish State,” which they consider to be an oxymoron. Joe Lieberman is an example of an Orthodox Jew who appears to be schizophrenic when it comes to separating his general views, which tend to be relatively sane and humane, from his fanatical devotion to Israel. This is not all that uncommon among Zionists in general. One would think that the cognitive dissonance would be deafening, but it has been said that our ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously is a big part of what makes us human.

How are people like you who support Palestinian rights and who live in the USA seen in Israel?

That’s difficult for me to say – one can only guess. There is an enormous diversity of opinion about just about everything in Israel, but a recent survey that found more than 80% of (Jewish) Israelis have a strong anti-Palestinian bias demonstrates that government fostering of paranoia and hatred has been largely successful. On the other hand, another survey found that upwards of 40% would emigrate if they could, including a majority of Holocaust survivors, who are allocated less than enough to live on in spite of the huge amounts of money Israel has managed to extort from Europe and North America (especially Germany). The organized pursuit of this blood money is based on the exploitation of guilt about the Holocaust. This extortion racket and its associated spinoffs, such as the Holocaust Museums, has been termed “the Holocaust Industry.”

Do you hear the "if you lived here you would see differently" line very often?

Yes, something like that, but much more common are screams of sarcasm and hatred from Zionist true believers, though my guess is that those mostly come from Brooklyn, the center of Jewish religious fanaticism and the source of the bulk of the settler-colonists in the West Bank.

What is your position on the "Two State" vs. "One State" issue? In your opinion, is it possible for Israel to be a democracy and a "Jewish State"? Have you read Jonathan Cook's book Blood and Religion: the Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State and, if yes, what do you think about it?

Advocating One State is the project that I’m engaged in. I wrote to Jonathan at one point – we have had a long standing correspondence – and asked if he specifically advocated One State in Blood and Religion (because I hadn’t read it). His answer was “..the book doesn't specifically advocate one state (although i do) because that wasn't the goal i set myself with this book. instead the book demolishes the idea both that israel can be a jewish state and democratic and that a jewish state has any interest in peace with the palestinians -- with of course the very clear implication that the only solution would therefore be one, secular and democratic state…" I took this as a “yes,” and included it in my listing of books advocating One State, which had been the reason I had asked.

It should be mentioned that although the recent American and Israeli agreement on the need for a Palestinian state appear to be in concert, a closer look reveals that the Israelis are still just playing a delaying game that conveniently masks the consistent view of political Zionism that all the land from the Euphrates and the Nile constitutes “Greater Israel.” At the same time the Israeli people, like any other people, have a genuine desire for peace and security, which must be pandered to. However, there are cracks in this wall of deception, as Olmert’s recent pronouncement indicates. The establishment American view is purely pragmatic. It continues to see Israel as its advance guard in the Middle East, and there is some impatience to finally see borders clearly drawn and some sort of stability arrived at so that the project of fully establishing U.S. hegemony in the region can be realized without all the distracting fuss.

While Jimmy Carter speaks of an Apartheid-like regime in the Occupied Territories he is very careful to stress that he doe not refer to Israel proper. Jonathan Cook's book focuses on the Israeli Arabs and their legal status and he makes the claim that their status inside the Israeli society is also very much Apartheid-like. Do you agree?

Very much so. Carter is an interesting case of a moderately intelligent person who tries very hard to do the right thing. As such, he is that rare case of a religious person who is genuinely compassionate and I have a lot of respect for him, in spite of the numerous shortcomings of his book on Israeli Apartheid, which includes the fact that he writes atrociously. That such a person, so deeply steeped in both American and Israeli mytho-history, was able to let his conscience dictate such a departure from the conventional wisdom as to actually label Israeli policy as apartheid (a commonplace in the Israeli internal discourse) bespeaks considerable moral courage. At the same time he’s unable to perceive that the Israeli Arabs, so-called, are very much the victims of apartheid as well. A mere glance at the numerous restrictions they live under; their second-class status when it comes to social services, allocations for education, medical services, infrastructure, and so on; the fact that Israeli identity cards are based on religion; that land ownership of 90% of Israel is administered by the Jewish Land Trust and is available only to Jews…well, you get the idea. They don’t have drinking fountains labeled “Jews Only,” but that’s about the only difference between the situation in Israel and that of the Jim Crow South or of South Africa under the Nationalists.

What is your view of modern anti-Semitism? Do you agree with Norman Finkelstein when he says that this is largely an invention of the ADL or with Michael Neumann when he says that the very concept of anti-Semitism has been so overused as to become meaningless?

There’s some truth to both of those assertions, but a comprehensive view of anti-Semitism would involve a much more detailed and nuanced exposition. Finkelstein is referring to the ADL version as the official, mytho-history of innocent Jewish victimhood. It conveniently omits any serious discussion of the causes of the almost universal hostility that Jews engendered in numerous countries over the millennia. I should amend that – this hostility occurred almost exclusively in European countries, in contrast to the Islamic world for example. This is because the only Jews with this history are the Ashkenazim, the descendents of the Khazars, a turko-finnic people who themselves were leftovers from the hordes of Attila the Hun. There is as yet, as far as I know, surprisingly little good historical material on the Khazarian Empire and its subsequent manifestation among the Ashkenazim. It would be a terrific subject for some aspiring PhD student of History.

As for Neumann’s assertion, it’s true as far as it goes, but one must ask how and why that happened. The problem could be said to be encapsulated in the fact that the only real “semites” with whom I am familiar speak Arabic as their native language. And it becomes even more of a muddle as one looks closer. Suffice it to say that “anti-semitism” has become little but a propaganda device used as part of the whole Zionist disinformation project. Anyone who criticizes Israel or its raison d’etre Zionism is automatically labeled an “anti-semite,” and if they happen to be Jewish like me, they are by definition “self-hating Jews.” Anyone who can’t see through this shallow, knee-jerk logic wouldn’t be reading this.

It gets really interesting when one looks at the heavily Zionist influenced intellectual fads that swept American universities in the ‘70s. From multiculturalism to identity politics, from victimology to the criminalization of hate crimes, everything conveniently fit the Zionist playbook. Political correctness was probably the most insidious of the lot, as it was a bid for Orwellian mind control. Fortunately, young people turned out to be resilient and the thought police are having a rougher go of it these days, not that they aren’t still working at it. Perhaps the most dangerous result of this effort has been the criminalization of speech in a dozen or so European countries, with the Germans, not surprisingly, being the worst offenders. The result has been legislation against questioning any details of the official version of the Holocaust, as determined by the priesthood of the new Inquisition. This is a subject outside the scope of your question, but it deserves much more discussion than it gets outside of the insular world of the Historical Revisionists (the officially sanctioned Holocult term is “Holocaust Deniers.”)

I should also point out that both Finkelstein and Neumann are what I have called "soft Zionists" – they too continue to advocate the fantasy of the two state solution. I think that the only way to overcome this lingering problem is by offering free courses in intensive map reading. And if any of your readers find that idea intriguing, the best maps I know of are in Jeff Halper’s book Obstacles to Peace: A Reframing of the Palestinian - Israeli Conflict.

Do you think that most of the vocal critics of Israel, the Lobby or Zionism are harboring a maybe well-concealed but deeply felt hostility towards Jews?

In some cases it’s not well-concealed at all. There are numerous white supremacist and/or “Christian” sites that publish anti-Zionist material. I avoid linking to them for obvious reasons. Then there is the curious case of David Duke, whose Klan past has the effect of devaluing his writings on the subject, but he’s actually quite good on the subject these days, though I assume that most people don’t read his stuff when they see his name on it. Then there are Ziopedia and Israel Shamir. One can find relevant material on their sites that is hard to find elsewhere, but the general odor of Judeophobia permeates the environment around them so it’s kind of touchy. Most One Staters strenuously dissociate themselves from both, but I am inclined to be more inclusive, and I occasionally link to material I find on their sites. Then there’s Joachim Martillo’s blog, Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel, which is well worth a look. It’s difficult to classify, starting with the curious fact that he is neither Ashkenazi or Jewish. But he is quite erudite, and produces a considerable amount of material that is original and is based on an extensive knowledge of Jewish history and religion. This is the after effect of a youthful enthusiasm to convert to Judaism and an associated commitment to learning everything he could about it.

Overall I would say that the best informed, most intelligent, articulate and compelling “critics of Israel, the Lobby or Zionism” are just that, and are no more judeophobic or “anti-semitic” than I am, and you will find all of them on my website(s), as long as their work is written in or translated into English. There’s a contributor’s page on my old site that is now a couple of years out of date, but has some detail about all the writers who wrote at least three pieces that I referenced.

What is the purpose of your website? What kind of people is it addressed to and what makes it different from other websites trying to provide good information about the Middle-East?

It is meant to inform and educate, and hopefully help as many people as possible to come to the conclusion that there is only one viable solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and that is the establishment of one democratic state in the land currently comprised of Israel, the Occupied West Bank, and the besieged ghetto of Gaza. Those people of whom I speak are not those whose minds are adamantly made up, but of that relatively small but potent group of people whose minds are still open. Most of all I want to reach ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, for they are the ones who will have to do the hard work of realizing this seemingly impossible but absolutely necessary goal. This is not to say that we don’t need the support of people everywhere, particularly in North American and Europe, whose governments are ignoring their own best interests by going along with the U.S. in propping up what has been accurately termed “the Zionist Entity.” (It’s not a nation state like other nation states, for reasons we don’t have the space to go into here, so what else should one call it?). One could look at One State advocacy as a public health project. I have elsewhere compared Israel to a malignant tumor embedded in the body politic. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to contemplate what happens when such a growth is not only suffered to survive, but is widely nourished and sustained. And bear in mind that the body I refer to is not just Palestine and the Middle East, but the entire world.

If one visits my links page, you will find six websites (one of which is my old one) listed at the top that specifically advocate One State. They all agree on the reasons why this would be a wise, just and workable solution, but they differ in the same way that works of art in the same genre that deal with the same subject matter differ – their creators are individuals with their own unique styles and points of view. So you will find that Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada clearly reflects the outlook of a Palestinian American, while Mazin Qumsiyeh’s Human Rights Web is a product of his background as a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem. Haidar Eid’s One Democratic State Group (Gaza) is unmistakably a view from that tragic enclave. The Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism grew out of the Zionist hounding of Joel Kovel for publishing his book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. Joel, John Siglar (the creator of An Online One State Bibliography in English), and I are all American Jews, but each with our own perspectives and background.

My particular approach is characterized by a quote I have attached to an image on the site’s home page that combines the Israeli and Palestinian flags – “Only connect…” It can be found in E.M. Forster’s Room With A View, but he liked it so much he inserted it as a sort of aphorism at the beginning of “Passage to India.” It says a lot in only two words, and it is my approach to the website, which carries the banner Your One Stop Source For Real (not Faux) Reporting on Israel/Palestine, Zionism, the Middle East, Pax Americana, and Related Matters. It is indeed all connected, and one can’t really put the whole puzzle together, and fully comprehend it, without all or at least most of the pieces.

How can somebody best help you in your work?

Well, I’m so glad you asked! I stopped maintaining one-state.net because the web design front end I was using became no longer compatible with the new operating systems and I’m not a code warrior. The current Google site is OK, but lacks much of the functionality that I would like. So the first answer is technical help. For that and numerous other reasons, I could make good use of some financial assistance, including solving the first problem. There’s a Donations page on the old website that still works, or people could email me if they have something to offer, even if it’s just helpful suggestions.

Thank you very much for your time and for your important work!
-------
Roger Tucker is author of the One Democractic State website and a student and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism who grew up as a Jew in the Boston suburbs. He has traveled widely, including two stints in Israel, and now lives quietly in North Carolina. Aside from watching the birds and the deer in his backyard, he collects and disseminates articles on his website "Your One Stop Source For Real (not Faux) Reporting on Israel/Palestine, Zionism, the Middle East, Pax Americana, and More." He also writes some pieces himself, - By the Editor - most of them advocating the One State Solution. He can be reached at rtucker41@earthlink.net.

Freedom Fry - Happy birthday to GNU!

Iran holds Egypt liable for Israeli crimes

Press TV reports:

A senior Iranian official says Egyptian support for Israel makes Cairo accountable for any crime committed in the Gaza Strip.

"Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing and tightened the siege (of Gaza)," said Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts, at Tehran's Friday prayers.

Tel Aviv placed the Gaza Strip under a blockade after the democratically-elected Palestinian government of Hamas took control of the coastal area in mid-June 2007.

The UN Human Rights Council declared on Tuesday that Israeli policies against the Palestinians and the blockade of the Gaza Strip as "crime(s) against humanity."

In response to the UN report, Israeli ambassador in Geneva Aharon Leshno Yaar said Tel Aviv "remains committed to reinforcing areas in which we are succeeding and bettering those areas that need improvement."

According to UN human rights rapporteur Richard Falk, however, Tel Aviv was responding to what he described as low-level criticism by "normally cautious UN officials". Falk suggested Israeli crimes to be worthy of an International Criminal Court investigation.

Despite its objection, Israel was forced to permit deliveries of humanitarian aid and gas to Gaza on Tuesday after days of full closure of all Gaza crossings.

On Friday, Ayatollah Khatami said "certain Arab leaders" should also be investigated by international courts for aiding and abetting Tel Aviv in its crimes.

"Certain Arab leaders should be tried as 'betrayers' for all Israeli crimes in the occupied lands and the Gaza Strip," the Iranian cleric continued.

Records show that since the imposition of the blockade, 260 patients have died, 75 percent of Palestinian kids are suffering from malnutrition, and 40 percent of ambulances have stopped working due to the lack of gas, Khatami added.

The Hamas movement has urged the international community to force Israel to lift the siege after the release of the UN Human Rights report.

"If the UN says that the tight siege on the Gaza Strip is a war crime, we wonder why Arab leaders do not demand the reopening of the Rafah crossing," said Barhoum.

The Rafah crossing connects Egypt to the Gaza Strip inhabited by some 1.5 million Palestinians.

9 Is Not 11 (And November Isn't September)

by Arundhati Roy for Tom Dispatch

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11." And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, U.S. Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys," he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It's odd how, in the last week of November, thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara -- one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all are Indian nationals, which obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you might not have heard that ordinary people, too, died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness.

The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of "India shining" and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center.

We're told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn't on TV. Yet.

So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

Terrorism and the Need for Context

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit, and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography, or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try to place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that, though nothing can ever excuse or justify it, terrorism exists in a particular time, place, and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hard-line Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias, and Democracy, and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world.

Among the things he said are:

"There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

"We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire… we hacked, burned, set on fire… we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it… I have just one last wish… let me be sentenced to death… I don't care if I'm hanged... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay... I will finish them off… let a few more of them die... at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die."

And where in Side A's scheme of things would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by M. S. Golwalkar , who became head of the RSS in 1944. (The RSS is the ideological heart, the holding company of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, and its militias. The RSS was founded in 1925. By the 1930s, its founder, Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, a fan of Benito Mussolini's, had begun to model it overtly along the lines of Italian fascism.)

It says:

"Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."

Or:

"To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently, in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence that left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jihad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest.

Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, a militia of the RSS) to join the Shiv Sena (another rightwing nationalist party). Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was reelected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.

The RSS has 45,000 branches and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition L. K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats, and police and intelligence officers.

And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organizations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.

A Close Embrace of Hatred, Terrifying Familiarity, and Love

On this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes, and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us.

Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India, left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries, and passes down, a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity, but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths.

India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by L. K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it.

By 1998, the BJP was in power at the center. The U.S. War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy.

This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism on the subcontinent -- and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and L. K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express, and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was behind the Mumbai strikes.

The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organization called the "Indian Mujahideen." Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.

Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen, and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously.

In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state, is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. And neither will war.

Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighboring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian Army.

Releasing Frankensteins

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war.

As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the U.S. expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade.

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.

Nobody, least of all the Pakistani government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs, and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world are mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistani government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India.

If, at this point, India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before.

If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbors.

It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary.

Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men, armed with guns and gadgets, exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard, and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals, and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion, or nationality.

(Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S. and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.)

But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill -- and be killed -- mesmerized their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news.

Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.)

Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people, and inflict as much damage as they could, before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered.

Collateral Damage

When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious.

So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar." I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir.

"You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for?

Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theater, spectacle, and symbolism, and today the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as TV anchors were being condemned by other TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation.

We had the death of former Prime Minster V. P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness."

His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever."

Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

A Shadowy History of Suspicious Terror Attacks

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state.

It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid oversimplifications like the Police are Good/Politicians are Bad, Chief Executives are Good/Chief Ministers are Bad, Army is Good/Government is Bad, India is Good/Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that, in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles.

It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation.

Eventually, the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S. A. R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him, but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offense.

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19th of this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists," known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists."

There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics, and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.

In response, the BJP and L. K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying to do so was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national." Of course, there has been no enquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a Sessions Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted two kilograms of RDX (explosives) and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir).

Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured, and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man, Swami Dayanand Pande, and Lt. Col. Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu nationalist organizations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat.

The Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists." L. K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25th, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the blasts in Malegaon (a predominantly Muslim town). The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonizing, and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces.

My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said. "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting."

For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement, as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So, according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police.

This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters." This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world, and yet refuses to ratify the international covenant on torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

The Monster in the Mirror

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?

There are those who point out that U.S. strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse.

If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The U.S. military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire.

(Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?)

Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S. allies/agents (including India) and U.S. interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11.

George W. Bush, the man who led the U.S. response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people.

Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the War on Terror?

Homeland Security has cost the U.S. government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland.

We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbor; we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize, will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world.

If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.

Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go.

Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.

What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain -- it would be naïve to say end -- terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says "Justice," the other "Civil War." There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.

Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. A tenth anniversary edition of her novel, The God of Small Things (Random House), for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, will be officially published within days. She is also the author of numerous nonfiction titles, including An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. This piece was published by Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com.

Former ISI chief Hamid Gul - Mumbai attacks, 911 "inside jobs"

The former head of the Pakistani ISI was interviewed by CNN's Fareed Zakaria recently. He had interesting things to say. Here is the transcript of the interview:

ZAKARIA: General Gul, you know that the United States has given four names to the United Nations of ISI officers whom it would like to place on an international terrorist list. You are one of those four names.

What's your reaction to that.

GEN. HAMID GUL, FORMER PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE CHIEF (via broadband): I think this is a frame-up, a total frame-up. I have - I have my own (ph) voice. And I raise. I have a position which I express freely, openly. I'm like an open book.

This is preposterous. This is wrong. This is fallacious. And if my government does not ...

ZAKARIA: What are the charges against you?

GUL: ... XX me, they ...

ZAKARIA: What are the charges against you?

GUL: Their charges are that I am helping the Taliban and al Qaeda. And what - this is so generalized. And particularly, there is the mention of Sarajo Din Nohani (ph), whom I have never seen in my life. I don't know who he is. I knew his father, Jalal ud-Din Nohani (ph), way back when I was D.G. ISI. But that's been a long time ago.

I have nothing to do - I have no means to help them. But, of course, my position is that Americans have aggressed in Afghanistan. And whoever is resisting, the resistance there is justifiable.

So, that is my position. I will maintain that position. If that becomes the basis of dubbing me as terrorist, then I would say, it's all right.

But other than that, to say that I'm practically involved in any kind of help - absolutely wrong. I am not that at all. ZAKARIA: General Gul, when you read about these attacks in Mumbai, and you see - when you read about the attacks in Mumbai, this is a three-stage, amphibious assault in which the boats were commandeered, the captain and crew then killed.

They maintained radio silence. They split up into pairs. They know their locations. They make a few false targets to draw the first responders there.

This seems like a military operation.

Isn't it likely that there was some special forces or intelligence assistance given to these attackers?

GUL: Indeed. I think that this was a very sophisticated operation. There is no doubt about it. It has rocked the - and I have all my sympathies for India - they rock this huge country for 72 hours. And they really don't know how to react and respond to this.

But when you look at the full spectrum of possibilities, who could have done it, then one knows that Samjhauta Express was a similar case, in which Pakistan ISI was accused. But it turned out that it was the militant Hindus themselves who had killed 68 passengers in that train, and that it was an inside job.

Now Colonel Srikant Purohit, who is a serving army officer, he has been caught in this particular case. And the whole thing has turned around.

So, obviously, there is an inside job.

ZAKARIA: If it turns out, as the one surviving terrorist says, that these people were trained in Pakistan in four separate locations, do you think it would be retired ISI people? Who would be training these groups?

GUL: Not necessarily. It is a question of motivation only. If somebody is motivated, then it is - because what kind of weapons did they use? That's very important. They used flashing (ph) calls (ph). They used the hand grenades. And this is - this doesn't require a great deal of training. And, of course, these weapons are also available in the open market.

If the evidence is there, then I am one of the people who would say, yes, India really has been done a great deal of wrong. We have said - and Pakistan government policy has been very clearly enunciated - that we will punish them. Bring the evidence, we'll take them to task. But so far, no bodies have been shown, no faces have been shown. And this man has not also been brought before the cameras.

I think the evidence has to be, because you cannot, on the basis of accusation alone, start taking actions which can unleash historical kind of changes. And this would be a watershed in the relationship between India and Pakistan, and we have to be very careful about it.

ZAKARIA: But are you confident that the ISI does not have links, formal or informal, with Lashkar-e-Taiba?

GUL: I have no linkages with them. But I do understand the character of an organization. It's a highly disciplined organization, unlike the other organizations. Their political appointees can be infiltrated.

In the ISI, it is only the uniformed personnel who come and serve for two to three years. And then they revert back to their parent services. So, they are bread-and-butter. Their career advancement, their promotion chances - they all lie with the three armed services, that is, navy, army and the air force.

So, there is one organization, intelligence organization, which would remain absolutely on the line. That would be the ISI.

Unless you say that, OK, the army is behind it, the Pakistan government's policy is this. ISI cannot do a maverick job like this. It is unbelievable.

ZAKARIA: The president of Pakistan, Mr. Zardari, the day after the attacks, said that he would send the head of the ISI to India to cooperate. The next day it was revealed that, effectively, the army chief of staff had overruled him.

Is that appropriate for the elected head of state to be overruled by the head of the army?

GUL: Well, I think it was a good thing that they withdrew their decision. And besides, sending the D.G. ISI is something totally - Indians should not have demanded this, and Pakistan should not have accepted to send him, because it was only an accusation at that time.

And it was not a question of cooperation, it was a question of interrogating, summoning him. In fact, the word "summon" was used. And that was an affront to the national honor of Pakistan and that of the Pakistan armed forces.

ZAKARIA: Do you think we should be thinking of al Qaeda as a terrorist group? I know that there was a conference in January 2001, which you attended, at which you felt that bin Laden was better described as a religious warrior, and should not actually be thought of as a terrorist.

GUL: No. We said, unless the evidence is brought up against him, then he is not a terrorist. It's wrong. 9/11's full evidence has still not emerged. It is still shrouded in mystery.

A lot of people have a lot of misgivings about that. And it's not only me. I think a lot of people in America would be thinking the same way. There are scientists, there are scholars, who have written articles on it.

So, I think to dub a man as terrorist - because I know, I heard him twice say on radio, or something like that, and I think it was Osama - not only that, but Mullah Omar also said that he did not believe that Osama had carried out that act. So, that is still a mystery, and it needs to be resolved. Americans have still to set up a proper commission, an inquiry commission, into this event. I think that's very important. And I think President-designate Obama would do well to set up an inquiry commission into this.

ZAKARIA: What is your hunch as to who did - who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks?

GUL: Well, I have been on record, and I said it is the Zionists or (ph) the neocons. They have done it. It was an inside job.

And they wanted to go on the world conquerors. They were looking upon it as an opportunity window, when the Muslim world was lying prostrate. Russia was nowhere in sight. China was still not an economic giant that is has turned out to be.

And they thought that this was a good time to go and fill (ph) those strategic areas, which are still lying without any American presence. And, of course, to control the energy tap of the world.

Presently, it is the Middle East, and in future it is going to be Central Asia. So, there are many, many XX. And, of course ...

ZAKARIA: But you think ...

GUL: ... XX.

ZAKARIA: But you think who would be ...

GUL: That's what I also think, yes.

ZAKARIA: Who is at the heart of - who do you think was at the heart of plotting 9/11?

GUL: At the - it's very difficult, really. I wouldn't point my finger at it.

But I think it was planned in America. And at least one knows that it was done in Germany, as far as the reports go.

But I think the heart of planning was inside America, because the job was done there. But not a single person so far has been captured, caught, interrogated inside America, even though this entire episode took place there.

ZAKARIA: But you've said that the people behind it were the Zionists, neocon conspiracy. Do you mean by that American Jews? Do you mean Israel?

GUL: No Israel. I will not - because Jews are also divided into - not all Jews are bad. Of course, there are a lot of things common between Jews and Muslims.

In fact, they are the closest to us religion-wise, because some of their scriptures are respected by us. Their prophets are our prophets. They have the injunctions in Torah are very much similar to injunctions in the Holy Quran. So, there are things which are very common.

But there are those people who are very ambitious, who have a certain agenda of their own. And I think they have turned the world upside-down, because of those ambitions or their fears.

So, fear and ambitions are two things which have come together as far as Zionists are concerned. And they are trying to drive the policies of America. And unfortunately, the American people are suffering because of that.

Neo-cons Still Preparing for Iran Attack

By Robert Dreyfuss for Information Clearing House

What, exactly, does president-elect Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neo-conservatives who want to bomb Iran?

A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners and neo-cons expects Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail - and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of US strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a US Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.

It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the George W Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Obama and the announcement on Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neo-cons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw US forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless "war on terror" rhetoric of the Bush era.

'Kinetic action' against Iran

When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama - including Tony Lake, United Nations ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to vice president-elect Joe Biden or secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton - have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.

Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen US-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge". The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.

Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal US-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb'," and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the US ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, at some time in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.

WINEP is correct that the US must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a US-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the US must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran.

Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the US would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the US deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.

Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the US hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for president George H W Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Republican Daniel Coats and Democrat Chuck Robb, and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neo-cons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neo-cons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.

The report of the Coats-Robb task force - "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" - went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any US-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock'."

Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "prepositioning military assets" coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action".

That "kinetic action" - a US assault on Iran - should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the US would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc".

This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and cause havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these - and mean it - can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.

Palling around with the neo-cons

At a November 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neo-conservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the US has taken the last step for peace - before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the US have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.

"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."

The Coats-Robb report, "Meeting the Challenge", was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neo-conservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the AEI. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no", although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent US bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:

If US forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone.

The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Obama's eminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.

Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Senator John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neo-conservative movement.

UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world".

Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table".

Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under president Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree - and, if so, why they're still palling around with neo-conservative hardliners.

Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, is a contributing editor at the Nation magazine, whose website hosts his The Dreyfuss Report, and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.