[NYTr] Allan Nairn on Gaza Hunger, Military Repression in Indonesia

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven L. Robinson - activ-l

CounterPunch - Dec 8, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/nairn12082007.html


Questions of Logic and Activism:

Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia

By Allan Nairn

The UN World Food Program estimates that, in the wake of Israel's
cutoffs,"Food imports into the Gaza Strip are only enough to meet 41
percent of demand," (paraphrase by the UN-sponsored news agency, IRIN.
IRIN, Jerusalem, "Only 41 percent of Gaza's food import needs being
met," 6 December 2007), ie. Gazan food intake has been cut by a shock
59 percent.

Even a small cut in food consumption can stunt or kill already hungry
people, particularly infants in the brain-development stage.

The UN sponsored IRIN news service reports that "Israeli travel and
trade restrictions have led to a decline in purchasing power in Gaza. A
recent WFP survey found that of the 62 percent of people who said they
had reduced their expenditure in recent months, 97 percent reported a
decrease in spending on clothing and 93 percent on food."

IRIN cites the case of Naheda Ghabaien, "a mother of five in the Beach
refugee camp in central Gaza" whose husband "used to work three or four
days a week bringing home about US$10 a day" but now, post sanctions,
"only works a few days a month."

At least the Ghabaien family is getting some aid, unlike so many other
nutritionally threatened people around the world. Every twelve weeks,
another UN agency (UNRWA) gives them "amounts of rice, flour, oil and
sugar that can last for four to six weeks. The family rarely eats meat
anymore, relying mostly on vegetables."

"'When the agency food runs out,'" IRIN quotes Naheda Ghabaien as
saying, "we buy the food we need on credit from the grocer. When my
husband works, most of his daily earnings go to settling the debt."

The news agency notes that "(a)id workers say these sorts of coping
mechanisms are reaching their limits" and cannot keep yielding food for
Gaza's straitened people much longer.

Israel's government says that its sanctions are legal -- ie. are not a
disproportionate reprisal, which is a war crime -- so it is logically
saying that these food and other cutoffs are not worse than the Gazan
rocketing of Israel.

So, if that is the case, Israel should be willing to agree to a simple
switch: Gaza gets the power and right to effectively cut off 59% of
Israel's food (as well as being able to shut its electricity, fuel,
communications, medical supplies, travel rights, airspace etc.), and
Israel gets the right to rocket Gaza as Gaza has rocketed Israel, ie.
in a manner that has killed Israeli civilians at the rate of roughly
one every four months.

Would the Israeli government agree to this bargain that is strictly
based on its own legal logic?

Of course not. They'd be foolish if they did. They already bomb and
shell Gaza, and other places, at will, killing Palestinan and Arab
civilians at roughly the rate of ten for each Israeli civilian (for
statistics within the Occupied Territories, see the Israeli human
rights group, B'Tselem, http://www.btselem.org), and if anyone were to
cut more than half of Israel's food, as Israel is now doing to Gaza,
that place would immediately be leveled by Israel, and/or the United
States.

As in so many other cases, power, not a power-wielder's own legal logic,
prevails.

In Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country ostensibly critical of Israel
-- but whose killer armed forces have discreetly taken Israeli aid --
the President, Gen. Susilo, is in the process of appointing his
country's army commander as the overall armed forces chief, even though
it is not the army's turn in the supposed rotation.

Reuters, Jakarta (November 28, 2007) calls it "a move some observers say
will ensure [Susilo] the support of the powerful military in the run-up
to 2009 elections" (also see AFP, Jakarta, December 6, 2007, which
draws the same conclusion) which is required since, as political
Jakarta knows, no one wins and governs without the army.

The twist is that, a few years ago, when Indonesia started putting in
non-army men (ie. air force and navy men) as armed forces commanders,
this was hailed as progress and reform by the regime's academic and
political apologists.

Their somewhat self-incriminating argument was that since most civilian
killings were done by the army (which is true), things would be better
with the navy (that helped abduct many tens of thousands in
post-'99-vote Timor, and this year did a massacre in Java [see posting
of November 13, 2007, "Vomiting to Death on a Plane. Arsenic
Democracy."]) or the air force (that bombed Timor and Aceh) in charge.

If they believed their own logic they should now say that this
appointment of an army man is a regression, a conclusion unlikely to be
drawn, since the US Congress is just now deciding just how many
millions they are going to give these very armed forces.

In fact, the State Department this week was putting out urgent queries
around Washington that make it sound as if they are planning to openly
aid Kopassus, the most notoriously sadistic army unit, and,
historically, the most heavily US-trained one.

(Gen. Prabowo, the most notorious of all Kopassus commanders -- and
that is saying a lot -- did his training at Fort Benning and Fort
Bragg, among other places, and, his murderous record notwithstanding,
was once cited in a US Embassy memo as an example of the success of US
training, specifically the IMET [International Military Education and
Training] program. Prabowo once complained to an American that all this
had been a mixed blessing for him since, he said, some other Indonesian
generals made fun of him because he spoke English so well; he said they
called him "The American").

The phone number of the US Congress is 202-224-3121, the members of the
deciding Conference Committee are listed below, and the East Timor &
Indonesia Action Network, ETAN (http://etan.org/) has documented
background information and action suggestions, as a starting point.

Activism actually beat the US Executive (under presidents Bush I and
Clinton) and, through military aid cutoffs forced via Congress, helped
to bring down Suharto and free occupied Timor.

(Suharto's old security chief, Adm. Sudomo once told me that Suharto
fell because they failed to open fire early and thoroughly on the
Jakarta student demonstrators, because they feared further US aid
cutoffs, as were imposed after the '91 Dili, Timor massacre. As I left
his vast cement-bunker house, adorned with pictures of him and the US
golfer, Arnold Palmer, I realized that he probably hadn't paid
attention to who he was telling this story to, since on the way out he
gave me a book that condemned me for my actions at Dili, and after.)

Those activist victories were possible in part because Indonesia was
not a Washington priority. It was handled mainly by middle-level
bureaucrats. The big boys were busy with other killer forces. Likewise,
our entire fierce nine-year Congressional aid-cut struggle was ignored
by the US corporate media, which was in a way frustrating, but in
another way perhaps good, since that may have delayed the
counter-mobilization by Jakarta, US corporations, and the US
diplomatic/ military/ intelligence establishment that didn't get
serious until 1994 with the launching of the US-Indonesia Society lobby
group (in which Gen. Prabowo had a hand), and other initiatives.

Israel/ Palestine is an entirely different matter, top of the
government, media, and counter-mobilization lists. Efforts to change
that policy cannot hope to steal a march under the political radar. But
the distinguished -- and therefore, often vilified -- scholar of the
matter, Norman G. Finkelstein (highly praised by the most serious
figures, eg. Raul Hilberg, Avi Shlaim, while, at the same time, lied
about by others) believes that a slow shift in US opinion is underway,
starting, interestingly, among younger US Jews.

Power is one thing. Fact and logic are another. They should not be
confused.

The sooner people at our end, the trigger-end, honestly open their eyes
and simply see, the sooner people at the exit-end -- where the bullets
and food-cuts come out -- will stop having their own eyes forcibly and
permanently closed by death.

[Allan Nairn's blog, News and Comment, is at
http://www.newsc.blogspot.com/ ]