[Peace-discuss] Recognizing unpeople

[Carl G. Estabrook]

[This is the sort of racism that AWARE should be concerned with - not  
the sort that's alleged as a defense of our murderous chief  
magistrate. --CGE]

Recognizing the ‘Unpeople’
By Noam Chomsky
On June 15, three months after the NATO bombing of Libya began, the  
African Union presented to the U.N. Security Council the African  
position on the attack – in reality, bombing by their traditional  
imperial aggressors: France and Britain, joined by the U.S., which  
initially coordinated the assault, and marginally some other nations.

It should be recalled that there were two interventions. The first,  
under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted on March 17,  
called for a no-fly zone, a cease-fire and measures to protect  
civilians. After a few moments, that intervention was cast aside as  
the imperial triumvirate joined the rebel army, serving as its air  
force.

At the outset of the bombing, the A.U. called for efforts at diplomacy  
and negotiations to try to head off a likely humanitarian catastrophe  
in Libya. Within the month, the A.U. was joined by the BRICS countries  
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and others, including  
the major regional NATO power Turkey.

In fact, the triumvirate was quite isolated in its attacks –  
undertaken to eliminate the mercurial tyrant whom they had supported  
when it was advantageous. The hope was for a regime likelier to be  
amenable to Western demands for control over Libya’s rich resources  
and, perhaps, to offer an African base for the U.S. Africa command  
AFRICOM, so far confined to Stuttgart.

No one can know whether the relatively peaceful efforts called for in  
U.N. Resolution 1973, and backed by most of the world, might have  
succeeded in averting the terrible loss of life and the destruction  
that followed in Libya.

On June 15, the A.U. informed the Security Council that “ignoring the  
A.U. for three months and going on with the bombings of the sacred  
land of Africa has been high-handed, arrogant and provocative.” The  
A.U. went on to present a plan for negotiations and policing within  
Libya by A.U. forces, along with other measures of reconciliation – to  
no avail.

The A.U. call to the Security Council also laid out the background for  
their concerns: “Sovereignty has been a tool of emancipation of the  
peoples of Africa who are beginning to chart transformational paths  
for most of the African countries after centuries of predation by the  
slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. Careless assaults on the  
sovereignty of African countries are, therefore, tantamount to  
inflicting fresh wounds on the destiny of the African peoples.”

The African appeal can be found in the Indian journal Frontline, but  
was mostly unheard in the West. That comes as no surprise: Africans  
are “unpeople,” to adapt George Orwell’s term for those unfit to enter  
history.

On March 12, the Arab League gained the status of people by supporting  
U.N. Resolution 1973. But approval soon faded when the League withheld  
support for the subsequent Western bombardment of Libya.

And on April 10, the Arab League reverted to unpeople by calling on  
the U.N. also to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza and to lift the  
Israeli siege, virtually ignored.

That too makes good sense. Palestinians are prototypical unpeople, as  
we see regularly. Consider the November/December issue of Foreign  
Affairs, which opened with two articles on the Israel-Palestine  
conflict.

One, written by Israeli officials Yosef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner,  
blamed the continuing conflict on the Palestinians for refusing to  
recognize Israel as a Jewish state (keeping to the diplomatic norm:  
States are recognized, but not privileged sectors within them).

The second, by American scholar Ronald R. Krebs, attributes the  
problem to the Israeli occupation; the article is subtitled: “How the  
Occupation Is Destroying the Nation.” Which nation? Israel, of course,  
harmed by having its boot on the necks of unpeople.

Another illustration: In October, headlines trumpeted the release of  
Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who had been captured by Hamas. The  
article in The New York Times Magazine was devoted to his family’s  
suffering. Shalit was freed in exchange for hundreds of unpeople,  
about whom we learned little, apart from sober debate as to whether  
their release might harm Israel.

We also learned nothing about the hundreds of other detainees held in  
Israeli prisons for long periods without charge.

Among the unmentioned prisoners are the brothers Osama and Mustafa Abu  
Muamar, civilians kidnapped by Israel forces that raided Gaza City on  
June 24, 2006 – the day before Shalit was captured. The brothers were  
then “disappeared” into Israel’s prison system.

Whatever one thinks of capturing a soldier from an attacking army,  
kidnapping civilians is plainly a far more serious crime – unless, of  
course, they are mere unpeople.

To be sure, these crimes do not compare with many others, among them  
the mounting attacks on Israel’s Bedouin citizens, who live in  
southern Israel’s Negev.

They are again being expelled under a new program designed to destroy  
dozens of Bedouin villages to which they had been driven earlier. For  
benign reasons, of course. The Israeli cabinet explained that 10  
Jewish settlements would be founded there “to attract a new population  
to the Negev” – that is, to replace unpeople with legitimate people.  
Who could object to that?

The strange breed of unpeople can be found everywhere, including the  
U.S.: in the prisons that are an international scandal, the food  
kitchens, the decaying slums.

But examples are misleading. The world’s population as a whole teeters  
on the edge of a black hole.

We have daily reminders, even from very small incidents – for  
instance, last month, when Republicans in the U.S. House of  
Representatives barred a virtually costless reorganization to  
investigate the causes of the weather extremes of 2011 and to provide  
better forecasts.

Republicans feared that it might be an opening wedge for “propaganda”  
on global warming, a nonproblem according to the catechism recited by  
the candidates for the nomination of what years ago used to be an  
authentic political party.

Poor sad species.

(Noam Chomsky's most recent book is ``9-11: Was There an  
Alternative?'' Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and  
philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,  
Mass.)

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/recognizing-unpeople-1326034449 
. All rights are reserved.
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