Islamicists, secular nationalists, and violence (was: Re: "Not Our Place to Dictate..." (was Re: Rutgers Conference...)

["LouPaulsen" <LouPaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>

In the course of her post today, YF writes:

> As soon as I offered a critical analysis of the costs and
> consequences of the tactics adopted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, some
> marxmail subscribers suggested that I must be in favor of a two-state
> solution; that I will cease organizing against the Israeli occupation
> soon; and other non sequiturs and falsehoods.  Those who made such
> remarks couldn't have believed that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would
> actually change their tactics, just because I or anyone else in North
> America for that matter made any remark critical of them.  What
> caused the outrage was basically the very fact that I criticized
> Hamas and Islamic Jihad, stating that deliberate and indiscriminate
> attacks on civilians, especially inside the Green Line, are neither
> just nor expedient, thus not in keeping with the standards of
> revolutionary conduct in a liberation movement.

Leaving aside the continuing serious difference between YF and myself on the
other main points at issue, I am struck by the fact that YF believes that in
condemning what she calls "indiscriminate attacks" she believes she is
writing against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.  This is consistent with her "iron
cage" post of yesterday, where she counterposes the Palestine Authority
(identified with Oslo) to Hamas/Islamic Jihad (identified with the second
intifada).  In fact, attacks inside the green line with civilian casualties
have not been the province of Islamicists.  There have also been the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs' Brigades.  I am particularly aware of this because they claimed
responsibility because they carried out the Beit Yisrael attack on March 2,
2002, which she challenged me on directly and which I have been researching.
This attack was a reprisal for attacks on the Balata and Jenin camps of
March 1.  This attack on the camps was heralded as an attack directly on the
Brigades.  The Brigades are viewed by the US as much of a "terrorist threat"
as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The position of the Israeli government is that the Brigades are under the
direct control of Arafat.  Marwan Barghouti, Fat'h's secretary-general in
the West Bank, currently awaiting the verdict of his trial by an Israeli
tribunal, a trial which provoked infinitely more attention in the rest of
the world than in the US, was charged with being the leader of the Brigades.
Naturally I don't accept Israeli statements as good coin.  I have no
information about who the Brigades are related to other than press accounts.
But all these press accounts say that the Brigades are a nationalist
formation, not Islamicist, much more in the same kind of milieu as the
Tanzim, the Fat'h militias.

The point is that the tactics being used in Palestine are not just the
creation of Islamicist politics.  Many sectors are using them.  The press
accounts go on to say that the Brigades originally confined their attacks to
the West Bank, but went inside the Green Line essentially because the grass
roots demanded it.  The further point is that it is a mistake to view the
second intifada as an Islamicist phenomenon.

Lou Paulsen
Chicago


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