Fareed from optimism

 In “Why the United States can be optimistic about the Middle East” appearing in the August 6th issue of the Washing Post, Fareed Zacharia makes a good point that Americans can be too pessimistic regarding challenges and problems in the world. He cited Nixon’s fears of a multipolar word in the wake of Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets representing the Soviets winning the Cold War rather than making a fatal error, Japan would overtake the US economically, Saddam Hussein was an “intolerable danger” and that President Obama was taking a step back to say Iran doesn’t spend that much on its military compared to anyone else. He is an optimist and not a Chicken Little. With nukes put on hold, we don’t have to worry about the Iranian military because we’re big and they’re small -- despite Tehran handily exporting terror and destabilizing Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Yemen on a tight budget.

Fareed makes a great point with his list but the opposite list can be made too, the US sometimes has too much hubris fueled optimism and we find ourselves often using our 20/20 hindsight to learn from the past. US complacency in manufacturing and underestimation of international competitors set back the many people and created the “rust belt” in the US, an error we are still paying for. We thought we could make peace with the new Iranian regime in 1979 and instead saw witness to rise of modern Shia terrorism and then the Sunni response in what would become Al Qaeda and other groups. We believed that the US could sponsor radical Islamic groups in Afghanistan and never pay a price for it and then later we believed we could simply ignore Osama Bin Laden and paid for both errors with 9/11. Osama claimed some inspiration from the bombing of US troops in Syria and the subsequent US pullout by President Reagan, another moment of overconfidence leading to unpredictable problems. We believed we could we could ignore the Yugoslavian break up with the Serbian ethnic cleansing and leave it to European members of NATO to resolve and instead go fix Somalia which was a disaster and we ended up bombing Serbia despite trying to stay out. In 1991 we decided not to topple Saddam Hussein believing he would be quickly toppled internally while under sanctions and no fly zones. The US had the hubris to think it could ignore World War I and World War II and ended up in both. Sometimes our hubris leads us to costly errors we have to live with. Very recently Americans thought electing an African American President twice meant we turned a corner on intuitional racism only to learn in places like Ferguson that we still have serious institutional problems.

Our collective glass is frequently half full of something that stinks and whether we call it optimism or pessimism – it’s the kind substance we should not imbibe when we need to make sober decisions on Iran that we will have to live with for a long time.   The problem with pessimism and optimism is that they obfuscate rather than describe the problems we face. I find myself very skeptical but I want the debate and I would like the debate to be something more than a political jousting match. I would love to see thoughtful people like Fareed Zacharia make the case for caution and to stand against anyone who doesn’t want the nuclear agreement with Iran to be carefully vetted in public. We neither want to lose the chance to have a good deal with the Iranians nor create a situation where war is inevitable and costly.  

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.

The Price Tag is always wrong

I don’t usually condemn specific terror attacks as I find it a hollow gesture when it comes from secular Chicago. Horrified by the price tag arson attack that killed 18 month old Ali Saad Dawabsha and now his father Saad Dawabsha who also died of his injuries, I feel compelled to take moment to wish the survivors of this attack the strength and courage to move forward, enough strength for their grief to be manageable and hopefully a good physical recovery for Riham Dawabsha the wife and mother and Ahmad Dawabsha their four year old son. Religious violence is all the same evil with only the religion’s name changing.  I condemn the evil inflicted on the Dawabsha family without reservation and qualification. I am deeply wounded to see people of my own faith fall prey to engaging in terrorism and hatred.  I am also somewhat buoyed to see the near universal condemnation of this terrorism by Israelis of all political stripes and hope that Israeli society will find the strength and means to eliminate radical evil wherever it comes from and I hope everyone remembers the Dawabsha family as Israeli society figures out how to prevent Price Tag attacks in the future. 

Senator Chuck Schumer Opposes Iran Nuclear Deal

Chuck Schumer was rumored to be seriously considering opposing the nuclear deal with Iran and is now the first senior Democratic leader to do so, “The very real risk that Iran will not will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals to too great” is a fine encapsulation by Senator Schumer of the flaws with the agreement. Yet, these can be mitigated by a strong and aggressive containment policy. Senator Chuck Schumer implies a deeply important point by not making Iran’s acquiring nukes that centerpiece of his opposition; the United States has no policy to restrain a sanction free Iran from exporting terrorism and destabilizing the Middle East. Implied in a Chicago Tribune/AP article, “Chuck Schumer deals blow to Obama, opposes nuclear deal” that the Senator while in opposition would not campaign hard against the nuclear agreement. Nonetheless, he’s making a good decision and hopefully it will enable other leaders to avoid a bad deal but the nature of Senator Chuck Schumer’s dissent implies surrounding the deal with better US policies and perhaps altering the deal could create something that benefits all parties. The President, like all presidents who are in a political tight spot, has been echoing President Kennedy but I think he should check out Senator Chuck Schumer’s profile in courage and catch the Senator’s cameo on “The Daily Show. “ If you’re an American who has been thinking about writing your senator, now is the time. 

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.

Best cases fall short for Iran Agreement

In my last post, I came out against the Iran Nuclear agreement partly because there is nothing Iran or the US agrees on. A contract that is entirely dependent on its minutia is useless. At least during the SALT treaties with the Soviet Union both sides could agree on MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction as something to be avoided. Iran like North Korea or Yasser Arafat seems prepared to say whatever we may want to hear in exchange for money but I don’t see an Iran that wants to engage the world on anything but Tehran’s terms and their terms require the export of terrorism. The agreement looks more like administration legacy building than a good deal. As we know, presidents like to shoot dice for legacy at a craps table called the Middle East. A friend pointed out Secretary of State John Kerry has delayed the opening or the Cuban Embassy by a month so he could attend and make a historic speech. Thinking about future text books and history books is job one but they also have a case to make on Iran.

Iran has been compliant in the interim agreement, while good is closer to not messing up a first date than a prediction of marital bliss. John Kerry was emphatic that inspections are worthwhile and it is better to have inspectors on the ground than not to -- a great point. We would have to rely on other intelligence to know how far along Iran is toward having nuclear missiles and while inspectors could fail us they are less likely to do so than other kinds of intelligence. However, this is a glorified security camera but with more blind spots and sometimes actors like Iran and North Korea either don’t care about being seen or will “turn off the cameras” by kicking the inspectors out. Kerry argued we would know if Iran violates the agreement, this is less true. We will know if they obviously violate the agreement but it’s a large country and some things that are illegal like designing nuclear war heads will probably never be known to us should Iran choose to violate.  We would certainly know if they begin illegal production at existing facilities but if Iran keeps building new nuclear power plants as they announced after the agreement they will do then we may have a game of whac-a-mole. Kerry also repudiates the 28 delay on inspection by stating the clock starts ticking within 24 hours and 28 days is a maximum delay but he did not go further and say more than a day might be treated as contemptuous of the agreement but did mention radioactive materials could be found even 6 months after usage. I don’t see much victory or usefulness in an agreement that lets inspectors find trace amounts of radiation 24 days much less 6 months after the damage is done. Ultimate security is with Iran seeing the agreement as in their interest, if we don’t have that then the inspectors are of little use and we really don’t have real agreement. The Ayatollah thinks having nukes and exporting terror are well within his rights and his nations rights and the rest of the world just gets in his way.

Kerry declared additional sanctions would not stop the nuclear program, true we don’t really know if delaying the onset of nuclear weapons until Iran has an improved ballistic missile system is to our advantage. It seems like we are being delayed more than Iran is. Another very important point is sanctions relief are phased in based on compliance and can be ‘snapped back.” Much has been made of “snapback sanctions,” Secretary Kerry points out that once a breech is determined snap back sanctions are automatic unless the UN votes to delay them and the US can veto such a vote. A fair point but the UN can’t enforce sanctions and it is fair to assume Russia, Iran and China and perhaps Turkey will be off sides for the snap and the sanctions will be fumbled. Also mentioned, the IRGC is against the agreement because it wants a nuclear cover for the Iranian expansion of power and influence. That may be true, but a policy like this cannot just be determined or defended by making the IGRC unhappy. The US and our allies really need to know this is in our best interest and not in Iran’s perceived worst interest and being in their worst interest bodes poorly for willing compliance.

Secretary Kerry also renewed his, ‘support our play’ pitch stating that overturning the agreement would harm US credibility and lose assistance with current sanctions. While true, it is the administration that put our back to that wall, supporting them when it is not in our best interest is a bad precedent. Supporting a bad idea is also a blow to our credibility with our allies.  Whether the agreement is worse than overturning the agreement in terms of US credibility is probably only contingent on the quality of the nuclear agreement. Whether the negative repercussions of overturning the agreement are unacceptable and do both sides benefit from this agreement and can Iran be trusted can all be answered with “no.” Iran’s nuclear program only serves aggressive purposes, they do not yet have the delivery system to make good on a bomb so they benefit from the lifting of sanctions and the US loses because we get a more difficult Iran that we are less effective in fighting plus we get a worse nuclear problem down the road. The consequence of congress sobering up the White House campaign to a legacy are likely to fill our allies with confidence rather than undermine US credibility. Overturning a bad deal cannot be so terrible a blow to our prestige.  

There are two basic objections. The “agreement” is not a sign the US and Iran actually agree on anything. We have a contract with lots of rules can and the US doesn’t seem prepared for the consequences of this contract.  The Ayatollah is like Arafat in that he is willing to accept anything the West wants to concede but hasn’t really come to terms with anyone on anything, being agreeable is not the same thing as reaching an agreement. We are willing to trade sanctions on Iran’s activities for delaying Iran going nuclear but the immediate problem of Iranian expansion is both made worse and goes unaccounted in US policy much less what to do when Iran has an arsenal of nuclear missiles in 8-10 years. If we had an aggressive containment strategy that rolls Iran and its proxies back into Iran then maybe some kind of agreement would be in our best interest but I don’t see a US that is ready to deal with Iran much less make a deal.

President Obama has said that getting Iran into the world economy and into the thick of international diplomacy will alter Iran for the better. While that is a fine ambition, a noble statement and certainly a truism for societies not run by a “Supreme Leader” we have no indication that Iran wants to integrate into the world community or that increased trade with countries like Turkey will actually constrain Iran from exporting terror against the Gulf States, against Lebanon, Syria and Israel. We may be more in danger of radicalizing nations like Turkey than deracializing Iran.   The US needs deep vision and a long term strategy in dealing with problems like Iran, this agreement shows how weak we are on both items. Congress needs to take this agreement apart, see if anything can be salvaged, help the White House determine how we deal with Iranian expansion going forward with or without an agreement and be more than ready to force a veto and override it if the agreement can’t be repaired.  Frequently, President Obama asks the question, “What is the alternative to an agreement” meaning the West would need to bomb Iran’s program to delay Iran going nuclear but this agreement doesn’t really change that need. The alternative is containing Iran which we need to do anyhow, let sanctions strangle Iran’s economy and if necessary take out sites including missile production sites to set Iran’s nuclear clock backward. I hope the US Congress will be more sober than the Whitehouse, when is Secretary Kerry’s flight to Cuba? Will be able to open his flight snack just by talking to it, he seems to thinks he can talk nuts into opening up. 

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.

State Department to lower costs of Palestinian terrorism

The crime of terror is perpetually under reported, the media only cares about death tolls, paying little attention to blown off limbs, disfigurement, blindness, living with shrapnel in one’s body, psychological damage. Usually there is a just a quip referring to the damage as ‘No one killed but several injured in explosion” and frequently I have to stop myself from glossing over the blub and take a moment to remember what “injured” really means. These crimes are committed by terrorists, so there is almost no chance to find any means of redress, no chance to find justice for these crimes. However, dozens of victims found a way to sue under the Anti-Terrorism act and they won! Years of injustice perpetuated by Palestinian terror groups against Americans will finally be addressed but the US may intervene on behalf of the Palestinians. The State Department wants to scuttle a potential 218.5 million award in damages because the “State Department fears could weaken the stability of the Palestinian Government” according to Eric Tucker article “US likely to intervene in Palestinian terror case” appearing in the August 5^th Chicago Tribune but such an intervention would be tragedy. The Palestinian Authority could have settled this on their own, they could have made peace with Israel and came up with a legal mechanism for dealing terror law suits fairly and they can still pay this off over time which means they should be able to afford to pay for their crimes and they are getting off rather cheaply. Government intervention would cast a shadow over every other future legal action against terror contemplated by any American, our American government should never find itself protecting terrorists who harm US citizens from us courts, citizens who have committed no crime other than to travel with the belief our nation wants to protect them deserve the complete support of State Department. If the US thinks it is in the best interest of the US to help the Palestinians so be it but it will never be the America’s interests to allow our citizens to be murdered, maimed and traumatized by terrorists, and semblance a rational State Department policy on this issue is lost in the woods and the State Department should declare it will not intervene against the law suit as a matter of policy. 

Reality, nuclear deal with Iran and why I vacillate

There are two truths about any contract that are true here; a contract must be good for both parties and if a contract must be read and quoted throughout the life of the contract than it is not worth signing because a contract is an agreement rather than a rules of war. President Obama is triangulating the US, Israel and even Iran into a deal that is seemingly unassailable not because there are not plenty of things terribly wrong with it but because the negotiations themselves have destroyed our most important tool against Iranian expansionism – sanctions.  We are trading an Iran declaring it is a nuclear power by virtue of it exploding a nuclear bomb in its soil by freeing up its economy so that it can improve its middle class, improve its weapons systems and export terror. A good contract is a reference point for a dispute with both sides sometimes violating the letter but not the spirit of an agreement. This contract will be the work of two antagonists attempting to milk the most out its terms at each other’s expense and so we may have a contract but no agreement. Cold War agreements at least had MAD as a mutual interest but that is missing here. Tehran wants trade and a nuclear tipped missile, Washington wants an Iran that is an ally of the US if not a friend to fight ISIS, politically restrained by trade with rivals such as the US and Turkey but relatively defanged.

Will the deal prevent Iran from getting the bomb? No, nothing can prevent a nation from creating a nuclear device if it wishes to have one, especially not a country as large and sophisticated as Iran. North Korea was able to do it and they can’t feed themselves.

Will the deal at least delay Iran from getting the bomb? Maybe, it’s a big country and they could find facilities to develop a nuke but they have given up on centrifuges so they would have to purchase plutonium which is possible depending on whether Russian shipments are inspected. Iran has announced the purchase of two new power plants and one has to presume more in the future, we may have a lot of busy inspectors and a lot of trails to follow just to make sure Iran is not producing a nuclear weapon. However, just having a bomb is one thing but delivering it on a missile that can go a long distance is further away, the Iranians have a Shahab 3 but they plan for a Shahab 5 which will be much larger. So while the bomb may seem delayed the missile is not only not delayed but will be easier to produce quickly thanks to the lifting of sanctions. So have we delayed a bomb for longer than they were prepared to wait for the right missile to carry it, probably we have failed. The reality of Iranian missile development makes a sham of the nuclear agreement more than any other point of failure.  

Will ending the sanctions bring Iran back into the brotherhood of nations? They have a “Supreme Leader” and “Supreme Leader” is a euphemism for a Pol Pot, Hitler, Jim Jones and supporting such leaders is like going on a date with Bill Cosby but bringing our own ludes, handing them to him when the drinks arrive, covering our eyes and playfully counting to ten. Iran like Cosby may be able to put on a fine show of being decent family guy when doing so brings in a lot of money but Iran is going to keep exporting terror and destabilizing nations because that’s what they believe their purpose in life is and by “they” I just mean the Ayatollah who is the only opinion that matters in Iran because he is the “Supreme Leader.” So, no.

Are our allies on board with the agreement?  Yes but there signs of a lack of enthusiasm. Jacques Audibert, a senior advisor to President Hollande, suggests Congress turning down the deal will put the US in a stronger negotiating position down the road by contradicting the idea that sanctions will implode because we don’t allow bank transaction with non-compliant groups is too great a risk and claims that Iran would come back to the negotiating table weaker than before. This is an amazing statement and at minimum suggests deep ambivalence of the current deal by an important European ally, perhaps the EU.  With no obvious interest in fighting the agreement beyond security, cold feet in Paris is both surprising and worth considering.  Nonetheless, I think we would lose China, Russia and possibly India on the sanctions and they might see enough incentive to find ways around the dollar for practical as much as long term political reasons.

Should we support the Iran deal? Specific problems include the fact sanctions disappear but current terrorist activities are not only not diminished but will increase under this agreement, Iran’s ability to purchase and export weapons systems to terrorist organizations will increase, Iran’s missile development program is not only not diminished but will increase under this agreement, Iran’s ability to create a nuke is diminished but could easily go underground for years. If found, Iran has 24 days to clean up a clandestine site and the slowing down of the nuclear development may not actually slow down the deployment of a nuclear warhead to deliver the nuke with. I have been vacillating greatly on supporting the agreement. My support is for two basic reasons; sanctions were not preventing Iran from expanding its influence or from exporting terrorism for which we relied on sanctions rather than containment to effect positively. Delaying breakout time is good for the US and our allies even if it does not affect nuclear missile production which seems to my eyes to be several years away, although an intelligence analyst would know far better.  Supporting the agreement because we have already lost everything we have to lose makes sense unless we believe a single French Presidential advisor,  we will have lost the international support for sanctions and they are not coming with a snap or even a loud whistle. We can impose unilateral sanctions but that still leaves Iran far better off than before negotiations. The reason to support a deal comes with a necessary understanding, the US must now directly or by supporting its allies confront Iran’s proxies and drive them out of existence in a containment policy for Iran. We have to make this change regardless if we sign, so we might as well sign since the damage to us is already done. We need to make our congressmen aware that an aggressive containment policy is required until either Iran frees itself or it renounces terror outside its borders.  The fact is sanctions were not preventing Iran from destabilizing the region but the problem is the agreement does not replace the sanctions with anything and that is what we must demand of congress and the president. We need to have consequences for Iran exporting terror and consequences for Iran violating the nuclear agreement in place.

One of the unspoken causes of the second part of the Iraq war initiated by George W. Bush was the fraying of the sanctions regime. Russia and France were even found to have been attempting to secure oil deals with Iraq in a post sanctions environment so a nuclear agreement may really put off a hot war with a nation far stronger than Iraq if only due to the number of willing bodies that could be thrown at US forces inside Iran.  We won the war but lost the peace and the support of many of our allies on the UN. President Obama has offered us a genuine alternative to Iraq but is an alternative to Iraq relevant and as it a good alternative? An Iran that exports more terror and instability is not good and is worse than or at least as bad as an Iran that breaks up and finds itself in a state of civil war.

Losing the opportunity to have international inspectors inside Iran alongside the cost to US prestige and trust if we don’t approve the deal could leave us in the position of needing to attack Iran immediately, possibly with nuclear weapons as we would not have the support of any of our allies. The damage to us happened in the negotiations, there’s no point in treating the nuclear agreement as something valuable except as leverage to make the price of signing an aggressive containment strategy against Iran which pushes it out of Middle Eastern side of the Persian Gulf and the Levant. The sanctions were the result of our unwillingness to directly confront Iran and its proxies now that the sanctions are effectively gone we must move to contain Iran. The eventual nuclear break out will hopefully mean less if Iran is contained within its borders and has no ability to export terror or if we are lucky the regime will finally implode before they can build a nuclear tipped missile. Let’s call our congressmen and let them know the minimum price of the agreement is aggressive containment and the price of an Iranian breach is an attack on their facilities and destroying their ability to produce weapons systems but even so congressional approval should not be political, Congress should be certain this is a good deal. I have been vacillating but I can’t support the deal for a few reasons; the US has no post signing stance on Iran to guide us as sanctions disappear, Iran shows no good will toward the agreement which means in practice they are against making it unworkable and I am ultimately uncertain this agreement on its best day is good for the US other than very real benefit of bolstering the prestige and credibility of the administration that negotiated it.  While the negotiations have laid bare our short comings in depending on sanctions to deter Iran, the agreement does not appear to leave the US in a stronger position to deal with Iran other than to possibly delay its nuclear breakout to a point in time where it can load nuclear weapons onto missiles, so I cannot support this agreement in its current form. 

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.

The new KKK is radical Islam

Radical Islam is the 21st century version of the KKK, the sooner we understand that, understand what radical Islamic revolution seeks to protect, the sooner we can begin eradicating it through liberating minds and people. In terms of its scope, it’s genocidal tendencies Radical Islam is comparable to Nazism, the Comrade Rouge or the Houthis but in terms of political agenda is really a successor to the KKK. Like the KKK, radical Islam seeks to preserve a way of life at the expense and domination of other groups. In the case Wahabbist variation it is the “protection” by domination of Sunni Arab against minorities such as the Shia, The Druze, Copts, Berbers, Circassians, Jews, Kurds, Yazidi, Assyrians, Syria, Mehari, Arameans, Baha’i, Mandeans, and others who exist as religious groups, ethnic groups, ethno-religious groups and many of whom live as a majority in substantial territory dominated by Sunni ethnocentric groups.

The KKK was a terrorist group that formed after the South lost the civil war as a response to the freeing of slaves and desire to maintain a form of tyranny over the “other.” Like Islamic radicals they believed in their own superiority and the superiority of their “civilization” and furthermore they believed themselves to be moralistic “Knights” in the cause of their religion and that such a cause could be used to justify the targeting and murder of innocent civilians in the name of both religion and race.

We can see this in the policies and behavior that have informed both the Wahabbist Sunni movements, Iranian Shia and so called Islamist movements occurring in the various nations such as Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, the Pan Arab movements of the 20th century and the Pan Islamic movements that seem to have currency today.  While American racism in the post-civil war period did directly aspire to move beyond US borders, it was informed by Manifest Destiny which is very similar to Arab/Islamic claim on the Middle East and other nations as well as justification for both ethnic suppression, genocide and terrorism. Add to this fire the particularly bloody nature of a Balkanization a process that began in post Ottoman Europe but continues in Central Asia and the Middle East today and stoked by European colonialism in The Middle East, Communist Empires in the Balkans and Central Asia and Military led democracy and strong man rule to perpetuate and support racism.  While the Klan still exists, the Klan era was approximately a 100 years starting as a purely Southern Movement during reconstruction and becoming a national movement in the 1920s and marginalized by the end of the 1970s. However, the only indigenous movements in the Middle East have primarily been Jews in Israel, Kurds in Iran, Iran, Turkey and Syria and Shia/Sunni conflicts. Everyone else has found that propaganda against their ethnic identity, ethnic cleansing and genocide, linguistic domination and often systematic discrimination at home has either kept ethnic people too fearful, isolated or currying favor with strong man groups such as awful Assad Dynasty.

The good ole boys club of radical Islam and Islamism are pretty similar to the good ole boys of the American South which includes demanding women be modest, men claiming they are the protectors of women, men and women must not have relationships outside their groups and if they then they should be punished, murdered and or raped for doing so and similarly the women of outside ethnic religious groups are both considered dirty, immoral but can be violently used as sexual objects. Rape seems to be the primary attraction for many in joining ISIS.

Critical differences between American Terrorism via the KKK and Islamic and ethno-Islamic terrorism which is the success of ethnic cleansing where dominant Muslim and Arab groups have frequently been successful at ethnic cleansings since the end of World War II. The influence of the Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Hussein, the Nazi influence in Iran   (Which convinced Persia to itself themselves Aryan or Iran!) and on Bathism in Syria and Iraq as well as on former Syrian groups such the Palestinians and Jordanians and finally Egypt. The influence is twofold, one is the idea of ethnocentric spheres, so there is an “Arab World”, an (Pan) Arab State, “Arab lands” but there is also either or communist fascistic dictatorship as modeled by both Hitler and Stalin but in either case the appeal is ethnocentric and or religious. The Bath party in Iraq could at various times be said to be communist but the cult of personality and the pronounced racism were clearly fascist.  Middle Eastern States were able to force their domination by Linguistic oppression by propagandizing Christians into believing they are Arab and forcing them to the neglect their own languages and history often while ethnically cleaning them. The Islamic State has taken this further by pairing forced conversion with slavery and genocide but the idea is deeply rooted in Wahhabism and 20th century expressions of racism, a circumference of land must be held by single group (In this case the group if nominally Islamic but Arab is implied) and competition must literally be wiped out yet these same policies brought the House of Saud to power during the first world war.  The same inspiration for “The Arab League” which is the supposed body of states that represent the Middle East with its Arabs despite the Copts, Berbers, Jews, Kurds and many, many other groups that live there.

Genocide and ethnic cleaning is not new.  The genocidal attacks on Armenians by the Ottomans (during the Ottoman’s Turkish Nationalism phase or Young Turk movement) is the start but the 1929 Massacres. One could argue this had started with the Ottoman Conquest of Palestine with the 1517 attacks against Jews. Certainly the 1838 attack by Druze and Muslims on Safed for three days (by this time Jews were the majority in Jerusalem) and also during this time the Aleppo Massacre of 1850, the Druze Maronite Massacre of 1860, Huaran Massacre against Druze in in 1909 as well as the Armenian Genocide of 1915 all demonstrate why the KKK and Nazi movements would easily find a home amongst Sunnis and Shia.  What is being preserved by all this murder? Entitlement, privilege, superiority and land. The natural question is why is there Islamic terrorism in the West? Besides Spain (formerly Andalusia) and Sicily there are no claims to Western European land but there is no lack of terrorism in France and Italy. The reason is primarily local, prejudice justifies tyranny at home. 

While racism may be compatible with both Islamic radicalism and strong man rule in the Middle East, while ethnocentrism and patriarchy remain deeply relevant to many people, the long term way forward is the confrontation and  devaluation of racist beliefs by nations, NGOs and world organization that too frequently either support ethnocentrism or believe it is a necessary evil. 

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.