suburbanmusings

“We will have Peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Golda Meir

Ah Israel/Palestine. There are few issues that provoke so much sound and fury from so many people with so little relation to the problem. Such is the emotion generated by the issue that I don’t claim to be able to influence anyone’s opinion, yet for what it’s worth I’d like to add my voice to the general din. Fools rush in . . .

As far as I can see it is abundantly clear to anyone who is not a fundamentalist settler or a fundamentalist murderer, that the only answer to the problem is a two state solution, with a divided Jerusalem and something close to the ’67 borders. Every right minded person knows the endgame (Hamas has its own version) so why the forty year wait for the denouement? The ‘separation barrier’ gets the headlines but the real roadblocks on the roadmap to peace are unseen, abstract and rhetorical; they are born of the sound and fury and they are far more damaging than any concrete wall.

While Israel might be the militarily superior power it is often on receiving end of attacks in the war of words. For example Israel is casually and bafflingly touted as an apartheid state, even though it is the only Middle Eastern state to offer Palestinians full political, legal and human rights. It is an absurd and pointless argument to make but it so widespread that it is even brought up in the world of international diplomacy. Part of the problem is that many, perhaps the majority, of those who want to fight for the existence of a Palestinian state also hate the Israeli nation and Israeli Jews as a whole. Golda Meir hit the nail on the head. Many of the arguments surrounding the issue don’t so much concern support for a Palestinian state but rather an all-consuming hatred of Israel. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winner to know that Islamists favour the destruction of Israel simply because it is a non-Muslim country. Only two Arab states have so far recognised Israel right to exist and you don’t have to do too much digging to uncover explicitly anti-Semitic comments made by Arab Governments. Nor is much research needed to gauge the prevailing mood of anti-Semitism on the Arab street. The issue is not so much ‘support for Palestine’ but ‘hatred of Israel’. This stance is echoed by ‘leftists’ and intellectuals in Europe and America. Sure there are difficult issues and Israeli Governments, like all Governments, do wrong as well as right, but again and again support for Palestine simply translates as hatred of Israel. When people start to accuse Israel of being an apartheid state then they just embarrass the Palestinian cause. Of course such rhetoric is bitter and empty but often support for a Palestinian state evolves into a manifesto for the right to kill Israeli civilians.

The Independent newspaper recently published a front page expose of abuses carried out by IDF forces in Hebron in which former IDF conscripts described how some of their comrades assaulted Palestinians and looted their property. The banner headline claimed to expose the IDF’s ‘Reign of Terror’, implying that the abuses carried out in Hebron were somehow acts of terrorism. If one was being supremely cynical then the headline could even be interpreted as a justification for acts of terrorism carried out by Palestinians. Abuses carried out by individual IDF soldiers are criminal and without justification, but they are not morally equivalent to suicide bombing and they do not justify murder. The IDF is guilty of failing to control its soldiers and it has failed to instil a proper code of conduct amongst its troops but it is not an IDF aim to attack and kill civilians, nor is it Israeli Government policy. Abuses carried out in the West Bank are criminal acts and they should be punished. Many Israeli soldiers, but not enough, have been convicted by the IDF, but how many militants have been tried by Hamas? If the actions of individual Israeli soldiers justified suicide bombing then suicide bombing would justify the actions of individual Israeli soldiers. It’s a ridiculous argument. The struggle for Palestinian sovereignty is a noble cause but the intellectual arguments in its favour have simply become excuses the murder of Israelis.

Both sides have committed atrocities in the past. The PLO murdered Israeli athletes and tourists, Ariel Sharon looked the other way when the Philangists butchered unarmed Palestinians. Neither side is innocent but in the last twenty years violence employed in the struggle for Palestine has been particularly shameful and abhorrent. Suicide bombings on buses and in discos, bars, restaurants and cafes do not further the cause of a Palestinian state. It is simply murder caused by hatred of Jews and there are no political grievances that can be used to justify violence. Ghandi overthrew British rule without resorting to murder, the IRA has put down its weapons, Serbia and Kosovo are pursuing a political resolution to their differences and Taiwanese accept their lack of statehood without resorting to the murder of Chinese civilians, why should Palestine be any different?. The actions of Hamas and Fatah simply shame the Palestinian movement.

The IDF is far from blameless but it does have a statuary right to protect its citizens. This is not hypocritical; bombing a disco in order to kill as many people as possible is not equivalent to killing a rocket team or a suicide bomber about to attack civillians. Since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 Hamas has continued to fire rockets at Israeli civilians and attacked border posts to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers. In the last seven years over 6,300 rockets have hit the town of Sderot alone. Military action to protect civilians against attack is justified; blowing up civilians to spread terror is not. I’m sorry but there it is. I re-iterate that the IDF is not blameless but if it wanted to terrorise civillians, a la Hamas, then it would have the weapons to do so with extreme ease.

Much is made of Israel’s targeted assassination policy but I don’t think Israel takes those decisions lightly. It is worth bearing in mind that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin survived a targeted assassination attempt because the IDF limited the size of the bomb it used in order to minimise any civilian casualties. Sometimes a small number of civilians are killed in these assassinations but I believe this is morally justified. For example if a bomb maker is killed then it may save the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It is of course tragic when any innocent dies but if Adolf Hitler, by way of analogy, could have been assassinated at the cost of one or two civilian lives then it would have been absolutely justifiable. Again the IDF’s aim is not to kill civilians, but innocents are caught in the crossfire.

Palestinians (militants and civilians) make up a disproportionate number of victims in the conflict because the IDF possesses greater firepower and most battles are conducted in Palestinian areas. I disagree with many IDF tactics and they are often heavy handed and sometimes indiscriminate, however IDF incursions into Gaza have been limited in number and scope; Hamas rocket attacks have been endless. Again if the IDF wanted to kill Palestinian civilians it could do so without its soldiers leaving their barracks.

The most recent political trend is to accuse Israel of Collective Punishment, as if Hamas doesn’t use this tactic, yet Israel continues to send fuel, food and aid shipments to Gaza and Gazans are admitted to Israeli hospitals. Lat week two Israeli civillians were murdered by Hamas as they delivered aid to the Palestinian people. I don’t agree with Israel’s recent tactics but to accuse it of Collective Punishment is hypocrisy at the very least. When Britain fought Hitler was it expected to send food and fuel shipments to Germany? If people believe Israel is a terrorist state then it strikes me as strange that they should suddenly be outraged about it suddenly limiting fuel supplies, talk about having your cake and eating it! Considering how America rected to 9/11 and Sudan has dealt with Darfur then Israel is a model of restraint in comparison.

The violence of Hamas and Fatah is fuelled by hatred of Israel; but terrorism isn’t the only roadblock on the route to peace. Israeli settlers often racist, supremacist and fundamentally opposed to negotiations, are just as big an impediment to lasting peace. Settlement on Palestinian land, although sometimes technically legal, is based on religious supremacy and casual disregard for the peace process. The Israeli Government has destroyed some settlements but has secretly supported others. Yet the setters are opposed by a clear majority of Israelis; indeed Israeli citizens are often at the forefront of moves to disband settlements. Furthermore though the settlers are building on disputed land; they are not blowing themselves up in Palestinian cafes. Settlement and suicide bombing are not moral equivalents. I would personally like to see Israelis return to live behind the ’67 borders; but I am realistic enough to accept that this will not form part of the final peace settlement.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks on the road to peace concerns the ‘Right of Return’. Undoubtedly Palestinian refugees have suffered from the ongoing conflict, but an unconditional Right of Return is an obvious deal breaker for Israel. It would mean a clear Palestinian majority within Israel and, as Israel is a democracy, an end to the state of Israel itself. The end goal of peace in the Middle East means that sacrifices must be made on both sides and to press for the Right of Return is a clear hindrance to a final settlement. It is a sad fact that the world is full of refugees; from India to Darfur and Rwanda to Armenia. Indeed some 800,000 Israeli Jews were expelled from Arab states incurring property losses in excess of $1 billion, would they be compensated in any final settlement? To press for the right of return for all refugees is simply unrealistic, however desirable it may be. Should Native Americans be given property rights to the entire USA? Should African Americans be allowed to return to an African country of their choosing with ample compensation? Many of those considered to be Palestinian have never set foot in Israel or the Occupied Territories. My own father fled the violence of Ulster; does that make me Irish rather than English? Palestinian refugees remain rootless because most Arab countries steadfastly refuse to give them a permanent home and citizenship rights.

Israel is a country that respects the rights of individual citizens; it is the only Middle Eastern country to do so. It is a democracy with an independent judiciary, a strong code of law, a free press and trade unions. It is the only Middle Eastern country to provide Palestinian Arabs with citizenship, legal rights, democratic rights, the right to own property and the right to say whatever they want. Israel respects freedom of religion and the state provides Islamic and Christian education. Like any country in the world Israel is guilty of sins and transgressions and Israeli society represents the full spectrum of political opinion. The bottom line is that Israelis of all religions are free to question their Government and they are free to debate action carried out in their name. Equally they are free to follow their own beliefs and run their own lives. Any country in which the rights of the individual citizen are cherished is a country that should be respected. To blame ‘Israel’, or ‘Israelis’ for the crimes of the Israeli Government is equivalent to blaming all Palestinians for the crimes of Hamas. Criticism of Israeli policy is made by Israelis as much as anyone else, but hatred of Israel by Arabs and others has helped to condemn the region to forty years of war.

And what of Palestine? I wholeheartedly support the Palestinians’ right to a state; how that state is run is a matter for the Palestinians themselves. In the Gaza strip the democratically elected Hamas Government has burned down discos, libraries, cinemas and Christian bookshops. The Hamas Government does not currently respect the rights of the individual. An independent Palestine may become a democracy governed by the rule of law with individual freedom enshrined in the constitution. Equally it may become a democratic theocracy along the lines of the Gaza mini-state. We can only hope that the Palestinian leadership chooses the path that leads to peace and democracy. One thing that is clear is that Palestinians cannot hope to achieve anything militarily, Palestinians are infinitely worse off today in comparison with eight years ago when the second intifada started.

Hamas cannot defeat Israel militarily and it cannot achieve Palestinian statehood without formally ending the war. Yet still it presses for the destruction of Israel. Truly Hamas hates Israel more than it loves Palestine.

If with wine you are drunk, be happy,
If seated with a moon-faced beauty, be happy,
Since the end purpose of the universe is nothingness;
Hence picture your nothingness, then while you are, be happy!

It is a thousand years since the great Persian philosopher Omar Khayyam wrote those words (or something along those lines), so why are they still taboo in mainstream Islamic society? Sure there are plenty of individual Muslims who profess their faith in public and drink and fornicate in private but they are outnumbered and out shouted by the zealots, and the radicals and the hardliners. When Salman Rushdie published his rather mild criticism of Islam in 1989 there were popular riots from Bangalore to Bradford. Why has free thought and public criticism disappeared from mainstream Islam over the last millennium? Where is today’s Omar Khayyam? Is he shackled in an Iranian prison? Or was he butchered in the street like Theo Van Gough?

After witnessing the uprising of the Sudanese Wahhabists in 1898, Winston Churchill wrote a withering critique of Islam, declaring that “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world at this time”. He was wrong about many things but he was right about appeasement and I concur with his views on Islam and, perhaps, by extension all organised religion. I’ll reconsider my views if I hear the following sentiments freely discussed in Tehran, Riyadh and Kabul.

O Mullah, We do much more work than you,
Even when we are drunk, we are still more sober than you,
You drink people's blood and we drink the grape's blood,
Let's be fair, which one of us is more immoral?

P.S. I'm sure it rhymes better in classical Persian.

What is it about the Royal Family that makes otherwise normal British people lose all sense of reason and principle? Today it was revealed that Prince William had used an RAF Chinook, (at £15,000 an hour), to transport him and his brother to a stag party on the Isle of Wight. And what was the reaction of the press? – ‘LOL Oh Wills what are you like? Chortle, you’ve done it again, remember when your brother dressed up as a Nazi? He he he’. Well something along those lines anyway.

In September 2006 Corporal Mark Wright of the Parachute Regiment spent 6 hours bleeding to death in Helmand, Afghanistan, because the RAF didn’t have enough properly equipped Chinooks to rescue him from a minefield. Now is it just me or is there absolutely nothing amusing about the millionaire princes expropriating a valuable Chinook to go on a bender?

The argument for the abolition of the monarchy is such a no-brainer that I don’t feel the need to present it in detail. There’s no point anyway, after executing one King we have spent the last four hundred years indulging the Royal Family like a spoilt child. If the French Revolution had spread to England it would have failed; the masses would have gathered at the palace, pitchforks and flaming torches in hand, the Queen (whichever one it was) would have appeared at the balcony and declared ‘Let them it cake’, and the revolutionaries would have collapsed in hysterics. ‘LOL, Oh what is she like? – Let them eat cake – snigger, I just love her impish sense of humour. Chortle. Why don’t people leave the Royals alone anyway? Let them eat cake, ha ha ha.’ And with that the revolution would be over.

The world of international affairs is a grim place in 2008; Mugabe looks like he will cling onto power, people actually take George Galloway seriously and the Human Rights Act is paving the way for Europe’s unconditional surrender to neo-fascism, but listen to Cut Copy’s ‘In Ghost Colours’ and you will find your faith in humanity restored. The Melbourne group’s sophomore effort sounds like a record that launched a thousand antipodean beach parties, barbecues and all-round piss-ups and now, as summer draws near, it’s the Northern Hemisphere’s turn. Referencing European house, New Order and 1980s synth-pop, and with more hooky ‘wu-hoooos’ than you can shake a stick at, ‘In Ghost Colours’ should be the soundtrack to the summer. This isn’t bloghouse; this is the first great record of 2008.

"It can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world against American hegemony."

George Galloway, 2005.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7352093.stm

Shutup George.

Buried away on page 18 and wedged between two large adverts there was a rather disturbing story in today’s edition of The Times. On Monday Colin Cook, a British Muslim, won a wrongful dismal tribunal against King Fahad Islamic School in London. Cook was dismissed from his teaching post at the school after revealing systematic cheating in GCSE examinations. A senior employee at the school, which is funded by Saudi Arabia, warned Mr Cook to withdraw the allegations stating, “This is not England. This is Saudi Arabia”. Reassuringly the tribunal found that the school was, in fact, in England and as a result is subject to English law. For all intents and purposes though it seems the school may as well be in Saudi Arabia. During the course of the tribunal it was revealed that the school used Saudi textbooks that likened Christians and Jews to “monkeys and pigs”. Pupils were encouraged to believe that all religions apart from Islam were worthless, and one book referred to the “repugnant characteristics of the Jews”. Another passage that you won’t find promoted in the national curriculum stated “Those whom God has cursed and with whom he is angry, he has turned into monkeys and pigs. They worship Satan.” The school denies teaching racial hatred and claims the passages were “misinterpreted”, though they later got rid of the books. Perhaps that is so, but one wonders for what reason Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada send their children to the school. Maybe it’s just for the excellent tennis courts.

In the early 1980s Deng Xiaoping broke with the official Communist Party line and proclaimed to the Chinese people “To get rich is glorious”. Of course party officials, Mao especially, had lived a life of luxury for decades, but Deng’s first tentative steps towards a free market system unleashed the seemingly inexorable rise of the Chinese super-economy. The achievements of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ are staggering; an average economic growth rate of 9% for the last twenty-five years, a six-fold increase in per-capita incomes and 400 million people pulled out of poverty. China is seen as economic juggernaut with the potential to outmuscle America in the coming century, but serious questions are beginning to be asked; for how much longer can China continue with double figure growth rates? How is it going to deal with endemic corruption and inflation? What happens when organised labour starts to demand political rights? And why do people think that China will be a stronger economic and cultural force than America - how many Chinese brand-names can you list?

In the thirteenth century China was richer and more technologically advanced than Europe but over the next seven hundred years Europeans transformed their society whilst Chinese power stagnated and declined. By the time the Communists managed to seize power in 1949 it was difficult to know where to start in order to reform the Chinese economy; hundreds of millions of peasants eked out a living on tiny plots of land, illiteracy was endemic, industrialisation had barely begun, feudalism was still in place, violence, corruption and opium addiction were rife and the average life-expectancy for a Chinese peasant was still under forty years. The challenge facing the Communists was monumental and their first solutions weren’t exactly efficient. Though Mao may have helped lay the foundations for China’s industrial sector and though his education reforms helped to spread literacy, his strict Marxist philosophies crippled China for decades. The Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster and caused the deaths of around seventy million Chinese; the Cultural Revolution plunged China into the nightmare of an Orwellian state in which free thought was punished as treason. After thirty years of Communism China’s living standards had barely increased, if at all, and 70% of Chinese still lived as peasants, growing just enough food to feed their own families.

For Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, the situation was clear; Communism simply could not achieve the economic growth rates of capitalist countries; as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore displayed all too clearly. Deng’s pro-market reforms probably saved the Communist Party from revolution and helped to transform China into a world power, but once the capitalist genie was released there was no way of putting it back in the bottle.

China’s growth since 1980 has been truly staggering but it has been built on two sets of foundations that are beginning to reach the end of their usefulness. The Chinese resurgence has been built on foreign companies using cheap Chinese labour to manufacture their products, indeed foreign companies account for around 55% of China’s exports. While this investment has been crucial in allowing China to develop, it cannot continue to increase indefinitely. For a start as Chinese wages start to increase foreign firms are attracted to countries such as Vietnam, which can offer even lower paid workers. Secondly just about every company that is likely to invest in China has already done so and it is unclear how far foreign investment will continue to increase. Critically China has failed to produce its own global-brand companies and it is increasingly at the mercy of international markets. Japan and South Korea managed to produce companies which owned the intellectual property rights to the goods they were producing; China has singularly failed to take that next step. Nor has it been able to provide a highly skilled workforce to justify the higher wage demands of its workers.

The other factor crucial to Chinese growth has been the huge rate of personal savings amongst China’s poor. Because China does not have a free health service or national pension scheme China’s peasants are forced to save a huge portion of their incomes. This has allowed the Communist Party to use money deposited in the banking system to invest in a world class infrastructure, opening the country up to international trade in the process. However the practice of state investment has outlived its usefulness and the Central Government is losing control over local Government spending, which is one factor causing the economy to overheat and inflation to spiral. Inflationary pressures are already starting to hit China’s poor and it is a point not lost on the Communists that runaway inflation led to the collapse of the Nationalist Government.

Furthermore China is still trapped between two economic systems; a situation that could have fatal consequences for the Communist Party. The state is still responsible for producing 30% of GNP and twenty of China’s biggest companies are still state owned. But this attachment to central planning is extremely damaging to the economy; state-companies are not allowed to go bankrupt and so are bailed out with public money. This means there is no incentive to take risks and productivity is still extremely low amongst the Chinese workforce. Also the standard of Chinese output is beginning to be questioned after several scandals in the U.S. and Europe involving Chinese goods. Without competitiveness and incentives for risk-taking Chinese companies will never be able to compete with their Western and Asian rivals. The banking system is also controlled by the state and as a result it is massively corrupt and poorly run. Indeed corruption is estimated to cost the economy up to 16.9% of GNP each year. China cannot hope to devop a truly world class economy until it has an independent and properly regulated banking system.

Because China is trapped between two systems it is now the world’s most economically unequal country. More than 200 million peasants are still trapped in Maoist rural poverty and there are over 100 million migrant workers searching for a better life in China’s cities. China needs to create 23 million jobs each year to ease chronic unemployment, but at present employment is only growing by 1% each year. As the Special Economic Zones become increasingly wealthy while the rest of the country continues to live in Maoist squalor, the potential for huge social unrest increases.

The political apparatus of the Chinese state remain fiercely undemocratic. Trade Unions are banned, the judiciary is controlled by the party and there is no independent oversight in any part of society. The regime still clamps down on public dissent remorselessly, but cracks are beginning to appear. Each year thousands of demonstrations are held ilegally by members of the newly created industrial working class. They have plenty to complain about; from poor working conditions and a lack of labour rights to limits on religious freedom and the apocalyptic destruction of the local environment by Chinese industry. Unlike in 1989, protestors today are armed with mobile phones, digital cameras and e-mail accounts. Who knows how another protest on the scale of Tiananmen Square would turn out today?

The pro-market reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping have saved served China well and in all likelihood saved the Communist Party from revolution. However after two decades of growth China is now at a crossroads. The Communist Party knows that the road to a fully capitalist system eventually leads to the introduction of democracy, individual rights and an independent judiciary; the holy trinity of the capitalist societies. But that would spell the end for the Communist Party. The regime cannot undo the reforms it has already implemented, nor can it leave the status quo; the pressures already bubbling under the surface could erupt violently given time. The party has been forced to acknowledge that class warfare is now over and that the country’s future rests with the capitalists. Effectively that means there is no longer any reason for the party to stay in power and the rationale for democracy is essentially unarguable. The party has thus sought to buy itself time by distracting its citizens with nationalism; the classic trick of any Orwellian tyranny. The party has become the state and any criticism of the party is therefore treason. Old antagonisms with Japan, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama are stoked up by the Government to encourage patriotism from a Chinese public indoctrinated by thirty years of Communist brainwashing. But nationalism cannot provide the answer to all of life’s problems and without elections to channel dissent there is no way to express opinion except through protest and eventually violence. Furthermore the party cannot create an economy to rival America’s without moving to a pluralist society based on the values of the European Enlightenment. If citizens do not have property rights, if they are not protected by the rule of law, if intellectual property is not safeguarded and if they do not live in a free society then there is no incentive to take risks and as a result economic output stagnates.

The Communist Party has abandoned Communist theory because it does not work. They have tried to adapt the economics of capitalism whilst severing it from democracy and the rule of law. The Party’s only real rationale for staying in power is its trusteeship of the economy. Yet the economy may soon reach a plateau and it cannot continue to expand forever without the Communist Party relinquishing its power over society. It’s a kind of Catch-22 situation you may say.

China is now hard wired into the global economy and unrest and upheaval in the Chinese dragon would have profound effects for us all. However with each new generation of Chinese leaders the power of the party is eased ever so slightly. China today equates to England in the 1820s and a newly created working class and bourgeoisie will eventually begin to lobby ever harder for political rights and greater economic freedom. China may one day evolve into a liberal democracy; indeed it is hard to see the future leaders from my generation maintaining the status quo. The question is can the party survive that long? A nightmare scenario would see a weakened and paranoid Communist Party launching an invasion of Taiwan to regain its grip on power.

The entry of one billion citizens into the liberal democracy club would be a great day for liberty on planet earth; but if the country starts to descend into instability we could well have a difficult century ahead of us.

The same debate seems to be ranging amongst the Politburo and it is difficult to know which faction is winning. One thing we know for sure is that the Communist Party is going to find it extremely difficult to relinquish its grip on power.

At the Sixteenth Party Congress in November 2002 Chairman Mao’s former aide, Li Rui, publicly stated:

“Chinese and foreign histories prove that autocracy is the source of political turmoil. As the collapse of the Soviet Union shows, the root cause is autocracy. Modernisation is possible only through democratisation. This is the trend of the world in the twentieth century, especially since the Second World War. Those who follow this trend will thrive; those who fight against this trend will perish. This rule applies to every country – and every party.”

Let’s hope his supporters win the debate; for everyone's sake.

There was both good news and bad news for Britain this week. First the bad news; the (alleged) terrorist, Islamist, racist, fascist, supremacist and (self-declared) leader of Al Qaeda in Europe, Abu Qatada, has effectively been given leave to remain in Britain permanently by the Court of Appeal. Qatada, who has called for the killing of the wives and children of policemen in Egypt, has already been convicted of terrorist offences in his native Jordan, so you might think it was perfectly reasonable for our Government to deport him at Jordan’s request? Alas no, you see Jordan has a reputation for indulging in a little bit of torture to ease the passage of justice, which means a great deal of hand-wringing all round. Although the British Government obtained a written guarantee from Jordan that Qatada would not be tortured, the Court of Appeal ruled that his deportation would breach the Human Rights Act. So it seems that sometime soon Abu Qatada will again be free to preach to Muslims about the inferiority of the sub-human Kaffir; there’s something ironic there, I just can’t place my finger on it . . . .

So what’s the good news you may well ask? Well it’s one in the eye for the permanently outraged uber-PC brigades who are indignant that we may be infringing the civil rights of repulsive, murderous fascists. Now it’s clear that the concept of an independent judiciary is still alive and well in the country of its birth, perhaps Shami Chakrabarti et al will take their indignation to Jordan and other countries that practice, ahem, a less than transparent legal system. Perhaps they may also stop judging the West against unimpeachably high levels of morality whilst encouraging ‘liberation’ groups to indulge in murder, torture and terrorism.

Personally I’d be happy to see Abu Qatada deported to a lifetime of imprisonment in a Jordanian prison, I certainly wouldn’t loose any sleep over what may await him there. As far as I’m concerned he lost his right to asylum in the UK when he (allegedly) advocated the murder of British citizens. The fact that a monster like Qatada gained asylum in the UK using forged papers and was then allowed to preach hatred for ten years whilst we continued to deport Zimabwean democracy activists, is a terrible inditement of our asylum system.

That’s the society we live in then, we don’t mind hosting a man who preaches hatred and violence towards us, as long as we don’t infringe his civil liberties. How British is that?

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”

L.P. Hartley's 'The Go-Between' is perhaps one of the most poignant novels of the last century. The story of a small boy’s brutal loss of innocence at the end of a long, hot summer perfectly parallels the tragedy that engulfed Europe in August 1914 and the privileged inhabitants of Brandham Hall brilliantly evoke all the swagger, optimism and confidence of Edwardian Britain in the run-up to the Great War.

Europe at that time was enjoying the fruits of one hundred years of peace and unprecedented advances in living standards and technology. The Industrial Revolution had spread from Britain across the continent and the motor car, the aeroplane and the telephone had recently been invented. For the first time in human history ordinary people had access to disposable incomes, leisure time, labour rights and political enfranchisement. In popular myth the summer of 1914 was long, hot and glorious; in that final summer of peace it would have been easy to imagine that the twentieth century was destined to be synonymous with peace and goodwill on earth.

In my home town there is a street of Victorian and Edwardian townhouses, grand and imposing they epitomise the confidence and wealth of the era. The last houses on the street bear the date ‘1914’ and it is hard not to feel a slight sense of melancholy when one thinks of how that world of optimism and innocence was suddenly and brutally destroyed.

When asked what the impact of the French Revolution had been, Zhou Enlai famously replied that it was “Too early to tell”, and so it is with the Great War. The immediate effects of the war are obvious and have been covered extensively. The carnage of the Great War easily eclipsed all of humanity’s other wars. An entire generation of young men was lost; Great Britain lost 750,000 citizens. France and Germany each lost more than two million, with catastrophic results for their societies. That Adolf Hitler managed to survive both the entire war and the subsequent influenza epidemic is one reason I doubt the existence of a benevolent God. In all perhaps ten million lost their lives in those four years. The British Empire was fatally weakened and four other empires disappeared completely. Just as poignantly the innocence and optimism of the pre-war era was lost forever.

The trauma and brutality of the war led many to pursue new philosophies and ideas. Some people became nihilistic others looked to the scientific theories of Communism to obtain happiness for humanity. Understandably many, especially those who had fought in the war, became committed pacifists determined that conflict should be the ‘War to end all wars’. Perhaps the bravest and most far-sighted approach to the aftermath was the Wilsonian Doctrine of international co-operation and the creation of the League of Nations, the protype for the UN. But the Treaty of Versailles achieved peace for a mere twenty years and even today the limits to the effectiveness of the UN are obvious. In fact many of the problems that the world is struggling with today are direct consequences of the Great War. Most wars create trauma and upheaval that lead to subsequent and related wars. The Great War had been the most terrible war in history so it should be no surprise that its consequences were just as terrible and far-reaching.

The first devastating impact of the Great War was that it created the breeding ground for the second even more destructive world war. Indeed World War Two was simply an extension of World War One and Hitler’s aggressive nationalism was the direct heir to the Kaiser’s militarism. World War Two was staggeringly destructive, perhaps seventy million died, the Jewish race in Central and Eastern Europe was totally wiped out and much of Europe’s priceless architectural heritage was destroyed forever. Without World War One the Nazis would not have risen to power and Europe would not have been dragged into that second terrible conflict.

If there had been no Great War then the Russian Communists would never have been able to claim power in 1917. As a result we would never have had the Cold War and the world would not have spent the last fifty years divided into two competing ideologies.

Without the Cold War we would not have had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and as a result Osama bin Laden may have remained a feckless and anonymous Saudi millionaire. Islamism may have still become a powerful force, but I doubt that we would have had 9/11 and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’.

Many of the nation states created by the war have not survived the century. Some, like Czechoslovakia dissolved peacefully, others, notably Yugoslavia where the war began, collapsed in an orgy of destruction. The nation states of the Middle East, over which so much blood has been spilt, simply did not exist before 1918. Would Israel have been created if the two world wars had not occurred? It is debatable. Iraq, another post-1918 creation, has survived one century; it may be lucky to survive another.

The European colonies could not have lasted forever but would their dissolution have been as swift without the two world wars? Perhaps a more gradual emergence of political freedom in what is now the Third World would have enabled the new nation states to avoid the curse of dictatorships, civil wars and basket case economies.

Violence begets violence and many of the wars of the twentieth century, the bloodiest century in human history, were direct consequences of the events of 1914. Indeed as we struggle to cope with the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan today, we are dealing with the results of that mad rush to war ninety four years ago.

The Great War is often seen as a war that was fought for no obvious reason, as Captain Blackadder put it, “It was simply too much effort not to have a war”. In recent years, however, revisionist historians have written about the necessity of the war and the tactical brilliance of military leaders such as Field Marshal Haig, theories which I remain to be convinced about. Dr Gary Sheffield argues that the conditions for war were deliberately initiated by the aggressive military powers, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He points out that Britain, France and the USA fought a war defending (admittedly imperfect) liberal democracies against the extreme nationalism of the Kaiser. The argument that the consequences of allowing Imperial Germany to prevail would have been far worse than fighting the war, is something I certainly agree with. Indeed one could argue that the war was the prototype for liberal interventionism; after all Britain entered the war to save Belgian sovereignty and advocated self-determination for oppressed peoples throughout the duration of the conflict. Once the war had started Britain had no choice but to stop German imperialism by military means.

However I do believe that the war could have been avoided without having to cave into the Kaiser's meglomania; in my view the failure to prevent the conflagration must rank as Britain’s greatest foreign policy failure. It may have been possible to keep the Kaiser contained without having to fight a war, but the British Government seems to have relished the opportunity to defeat Imperial Germany in open combat. The Government seemed disinclined to look for a peaceful solution to the Kaiser's militarism and the policy of making pacts with France and Russia against Germany simply made war inevitable. For his part King George V was too obsessed with his own life of luxury to bother making any overtures to his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. Hubris pervaded Georgian/Edwardian society and Britain was certainly guilty of militaristic posturing towards Germany, as Blackadder also said, “We can hardly be absolved from blame on the imperialistic front”. Crucially neither France nor Britain realised that a European war had the potential to utterly destroy European civillisation. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Gray, must be blamed for failing to make it clear to the Kaiser that Britain would enter the war against Germany; although he did have the prescience to remark to a friend on the eve of war, "The lights are going out all over Europe; and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime". If the USA had publicly guaranteed France’s sovereignty then war might been avoided, but at that stage America was reluctant to recognise its de-facto position as the world’s policeman.

Whether or not the war was avoidable or morally justified, the fact is that it happened and many people around the world are living with the consequences. At a time when many are calling for an end to interventionism and as new superpowers vie for power in Asia, our leaders must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of 1914; if only for the sake of our descendants.

"I feel absolutely nothing for this country. I have no problem with the British people . . . but if someone attacks them, I have no problem with that either.”
Hassan Butt, 2004

“We are allowed are own mosques, our own schools, our own slaughterhouses, our own graveyards, we are citizens of this country . . . how could this country be the Land of War?”
Hassan Butt, 2008

He claims that he helped to smuggle seven hundred British Muslims, including Mohammed Siddique Kahn, into terrorist training camps in Pakistan, he states that he raised tens of thousands of pounds for Islamist terrorist groups and radicalised dozens of British Muslims; but could Hassan Butt be the spearhead in the fight against Islamism in the U.K.?

Butt is one of several former hard core radical Islamists with enough intelligence to realise that he had been brainwashed by a murderous and thoroughly un-Islamic philosophy. Together with men such as Shiraz Maher and Ed Hussain, Butt has left the world of terrorism and has since campaigned tirelessly to help de-radicalise dozens of British Muslims. These former Jihadis have looked at their own experiences and surroundings and rejected the idea that Britain is an enemy of Islam.

They understand that the British state has looked after them and their families, that it has provided them with health care, education and security and allowed them to assert their religious identity in a way that is prevented in much of the Muslim World. Sadly their view is seldom seen in modern British Islam. The British state has managed to prevent dozens of terrorist attacks, it has prosecuted and jailed hundreds of Islamic terrorists and it has infiltrated several terrorist cells. However MI5 has stated that it is monitoring 30 terrorist groups, almost two thousand individuals and that around 20% of British Muslims are sympathetic to Islamist terrorism in the U.K. With statistics like that future terrorist attacks in the U.K. are almost inevitable, despite the best efforts of the security services.

We are playing a numbers game; unless we manage to minimise Islamism in the UK then the terrorist threat will remain severe for decades to come. Mainstream British Islam is in a state of paralysis and denial. First generation immigrants do not understand what has happened to the second generation and Muslim pressure groups prefer to blame British foreign policy rather than admit to the massive problem within British Islam. The Muslim Council of Britain’s spokesman Inayat Bunglawala states that Butt is “Wrong to argue that we do not need to revisit some of our own murderous actions overseas and examine whether they have contributed to the spread of violent extremism” That’s the same Inayat Bunglawala who once praised Osama Bin Laden as a “Freedom fighter”. Other mainstream Muslim groups have also chosen to bury their head in their sand, or worse support, condone and excuse terrorism.

Butt, Maher, Hussain and others understand the huge extent of radicalisation amongst British Muslims because they lived in that world for years, indeed they personally radicalised hundreds of their peers. They can do what no non-Muslim could ever do; they can go into our mosques and youth clubs and defeat the preachers of hate on their own terms, they can use the holy book against them. Ed Hussain has helped to set up the Quilliam Foundation which aims to revive a pluralistic Western Islam, divorced from the hatred of Wahabism. For his part the less articulate, but more down to earth, Butt has been de-radicalising the same working class Muslims that he encouraged to become suicide bombers. He has been beaten up and stabbed for his efforts.

However while MI5 and the Home Office are trying to encourage men like Butt, Greater Manchester Police seem determined to arrest him. Butt, who is certainly not publicity shy, is writing a book about his time as an Islamist and Greater Manchester Police recently seized the unfinished manuscripts as part of an investigation into his alleged terrorist activities. I understand that the law is independent from the Government, but surely it is not above the wit of the police to liaise with their colleagues at MI5. Butt may have committed crimes in the past but incarcerating him in Belmarsh now would be counterproductive in the extreme. I have already written in this blog that we are fighting a counter insurgency against Islamic terrorism which we cannot win by military or legal means alone. We need to win the battle, not so much for hearts, but certainly for minds, and men like Hassan Butt represent the best weapon in our arsenal. If we imprison Butt then not only will we loose our most effective weapon but we will also discourage others from following in his footsteps.

Even if Butt only de-radicalises one British Islamist, that may be one atrocity prevented on Britain’s streets.

http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/