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      Two Deaths Raise the Specter of Lynching in California

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      On the morning of June 10, 2020, the body of a young black man, Robert Fuller, was found hanging from a tree in a park opposite City Hall in Palmdale, California. The police initially ruled the death a suicide. Suspicions were raised though when the body of a 38-year-old homeless African American man was discovered hanging from a tree in Victorville, a town some 50 miles south of Palmdale. Again, the police initially ruled the death to have been a suicide. A coincidence? Since these deaths occurred in the middle of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, it seems hard not to be suspicious. The FBI has now entered the case.

      Racially-motivated lynching was a primarily Southern and border-state phenomenon. The Tuskegee Institute’s database records some hundreds of these murders in the decades following Reconstruction. Until American entry into World War II in 1941, Southern mobs killed dozens of black people during the Depression decade. Since Congress was dominated by Southern legislators, bills seeking to make lynching a federal crime failed to be enacted into law. Astonishingly, this continues to be the case as of June 2020.

      Out of Fashion

      Despite violent Southern resistance to racial integration during the postwar civil rights era, between approximately 1958 and 1970, lynching went out of style. Race-based bombings and shootings took its place. Out of fashion but not out of mind. For example, on occasion, nooses were found in the lockers of newly hired African American policemen and firemen when they seemed to be breaking long-standing racial barriers in these professions.

      This brings us to Palmdale. Palmdale and the adjacent town of Lancaster are located about 35 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley, on the edges of the Mojave Desert. These communities are close to Edwards Air Force Base, the site of flight-testing of advanced fighter planes during the Cold War — the early sequences in the film “The Right Stuff” were located at Edwards. Rents and housing prices are somewhat lower than those in Los Angeles. Palmdale-Lancaster attracts largely lower-middle-class residents who don’t mind living in a high desert environment surrounded by Joshua trees and tumbleweed. In recent years, these communities have attracted a growing number of African American families for the same reasons that drew whites to the area.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Palmdale-Lancaster has a political history that draws our attention. During the postwar era, John Wesley Swift, initially a follower of the Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith, a prominent anti-Semitic preacher, founded his own church in Lancaster in 1948. Like Smith, Swift toured southern California seeking to revive the Ku Klux Klan in the Los Angeles area and beyond. The effort met with some success: A cross was burned near Big Bear Lake shortly after Swift’s visit. Swift also played a major role in the formation of the California Anti-Communist League and the equally racist and anti-Semitic Christian National Crusade.

      Our interest in Swift’s ecclesiastical career is based on the fact he was crucial in the transformation of what had been British-Israelism — a religious doctrine that asserted British people were the descendants of the 10 lost tribes of Israel — into the new postwar American religion of identity. From his church in Lancaster, Swift preached that the Jews were the “seed of Satan” and that people of color were sub-human “mud people” who should be deported from North America and returned to their countries of origin in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

      One of Swift’s congregants at his church in Lancaster was Richard Girnt Butler, an engineer working at a Lockheed Aircraft facility in the area. Michael Barkun, in “Religion and the Racist Right,” reports that Butler found Swift’s sermons electrifying and quickly became an adherent of the new religion: “He [Swift] was the total turning point in my life. The light turned on. He had the answers I was trying to find.”  

      Of Particular Interest

      In 1973, Butler left Swift and his Lancaster church behind and formed his own Aryan Nations (and Church of Jesus Christ Christian) at a compound near Hayden Lake in Idaho. Butler’s departure and Swift’s later demise was not the end of Lancaster-Palmdale as a location for radical-right activities.

      Of particular interest are the Nazi Low Riders (NLR). Originally a prison gang and an offshoot of the more widely known Aryan Brotherhood, the NLR first appeared outside California penitentiaries — the California Youth Authority especially — in the early 1980s. Despite its name, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League and other watchdog organizations describe the group as both violent and essentially white supremacist rather than anti-Semitic. Specializing in illegal drug trafficking, the NLR has been able to recruit members beyond its original cluster of young ex-inmates.

      The NLR has also proven durable. As of 2019, the group was still active. So far as our suspicions are concerned, the Low Riders have been visible both in the Palmdale-Lancaster area and San Bernardino County, where the town of Victorville is located. Several years ago, NLR members were arrested for attacking a black man in Palmdale.

      The Low Riders are hardly unique. California abounds with what the SPLC labels as hate groups. According to the SPLC’s annual report, in 2019 there were 88 such groups active in the Golden State, many of them clustered in the Los Angeles area. Not all of them, though, are sufficiently violent to carry out a nighttime lynching. Those that do would include the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division and Feurkrieg Division, some of whose members have already killed opponents.

      It may be that the two deaths by hanging mentioned at the beginning of this observation were suicides, as the police concluded originally. Or, if murder was involved and these really were lynchings, the perpetrators need not have had an affiliation with an organized group. Still, given the current heightened atmosphere in the United States, it is hard not to be suspicious.

      *[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Student Visa Debacle: All One Needs to Know About Trump’s Presidency

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      Let’s assume you had decided that American politics in the age of Donald Trump was simply too much, a risk of non-stop heartburn, high blood pressure and elevated angst. So, you checked out, perhaps burying yourself in literature or art, binging on TV or simply retreating somewhere off the grid. But November is fast approaching and, not wishing to neglect your patriotic duty to vote, it’s time to catch up now. But how?

      Just try digesting the bile fed the country and the world by Donald Trump! If only there were some way or some single issue that would make up for that time lost in your sublime isolation and could encapsulate all you needed to know about the leadership of Donald Trump without reading back issues of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist or this fair publication.

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      Lucky for you, there is. Consider the US decision on July 6 to cease student visa issuances to foreign students intending to study at any one of America’s 4,000-plus universities and colleges and hundreds of boarding and secondary schools in the event those institutions went to all-online classes as a result of the pandemic. The decision affected not only those first-time students starting their schooling in the US in the fall. It also would have impacted those already here studying, or perhaps in their respective countries or elsewhere abroad for the summer for jobs, internships, research or family and would not be able to return to complete their studies if their respective institutions moved toward all-online instruction.

      It’s All About Reelection

      The first lesson one would learn is that for Donald Trump, it’s all about his reelection in November. Obviously, schools out of session or forced to resort to online classes to minimize pandemic health risks would not be a good look for his campaign. Among so many other things, it’s imperative for him that students are back in school and parents and guardians are back on the job, creating the vital economy on which he’s staking his reelection. He has no other achievement on which he can count.

      How does he do that? That is the second lesson of this sordid affair. His administration has utterly failed to present a cogent, effective plan for combatting the virus, which would have reduced infections, hospitalizations and, most importantly, deaths, and would have allowed these institutions to reopen in the fall, as those in Europe are planning to do. In fact, he’s effectively surrendered to the virus and resorted to a trademark of his presidency: bully the target group into submission.

      For elementary, middle and high schools, that has meant threatening those that resort to online classes with loss of federal support monies. That could mean billions in lost income for public schools already facing horrendous budget cuts. For colleges and universities, it was the visa suspension or cancellation policy. That is, institutions open classrooms or lose the income from more than a million foreign students who study in the US annually. That amounts to some $41 billion in tuition, fees, boarding charges, etc. Some 425,000 jobs may also be at stake.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A third lesson in understanding the US administration is how it approaches major policy decisions affecting the nation and its people. There was no consultation, no outreach to university presidents or educational organizations, no public vetting in advance, no intergovernmental policy deliberation, not even proforma sounding of businesses to get their thoughts. Rather, Trump brandished the blunt club of student visas and held it over the heads of these institutions. It was Trump’s way, or pay.

      Moreover, little thought was given to the economic contributions of these foreign students to the economies where they live and study. Restaurants, bars, apartment complexes, car rentals and dealers, shops, barbers and hair salons, grocery stores and many other businesses had already suffered when the majority of these institutions closed in late winter and the spring to minimize the risk of COVID-19 on their campuses. Now, Trump was going to foreclose any possibility of these businesses salvaging the year. It was a thoughtless, self-centered push to bend others to his misguided, ham-fisted will.

      Put Up a Wall, Even Against Legal Visitors

      Lesson four, and not surprising, is that there was also no thought given to the intangible contributions that foreign students make to their institutions and communities in terms of exposure to different cultures, languages, ideas, values and perspectives, all of which contribute to the uniquely enriching experience of university study in the US. Inability to understand this contribution is another characteristic of the Trump presidency, its xenophobia. That was always evident from his constant drumbeat over erecting a wall along the US-Mexican border.

      There was yet a fifth lesson, this administration’s patent inability to foresee the secondary and tertiary effects of its decisions and resultingly to be caught flatfooted when they arise. In this case, the administration was clueless to the firestorm of reaction that followed the announcement of the visa policy. Institutions such as Harvard and MIT immediately mounted a legal challenge. Universities in 20 states and the District of Columbia joined together to file a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. Petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of foreign and American students — the latter of whom vote, by the way — flooded the administration and Congress.

      Major professional associations representing university admissions and counselors also issued strong statements in opposition to the administration’s ill-considered move. Media had a field day pelting the administration with all manner of justified criticism of the policy. Even administration supporters, including Republican members of Congress, were left scratching their heads in wonder how this would make Trump look good or benefit the country.

      Of course, it didn’t. At all. The administration was forced to back down from the visa edict only days after issuing it. The decision to announce it in the first place was a blunder of colossal proportions and emblematic of a presidency and administration foundering, heedless to the needs of the nation or to the damage it does when it acts on virtually every policy issue based on distorted impulse or dyspeptic gut instinct.

      So, to our somnolent citizen seeking to exit the torpor of three and a half years of escapism, there you have it. While you blissfully slumbered, America was led by a bullying, single-mindedly reelection-obsessed, blundering, club-wielding, visionless xenophobe. Now, ponder those and the many other failings of this president and apply them to foreign policy, national security, economic policy, racial equality and justice, trade, climate policy and more, and you’ve got a pretty fair idea of the state of the country under Donald Trump. You’re all caught up!

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      COVID-19: Balancing Health Emergencies and Human Rights

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      The COVID-19 pandemic has led to governments around the world imposing state emergencies under the pretext of protecting public health. Such measures, which have included both partial and full lockdowns to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, have had an impact on fundamental freedoms. These rights, which are highlighted under international human rights law (IHRL), include access to health care, non-discrimination, privacy, free speech, freedom of movement and peaceful assembly.

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      On April 30, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) categorically stated that under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — the human rights treaty of the UN — governments are not allowed to deviate from their human rights obligations and commitments while combating a global pandemic. This statement was released after a majority of officials served notices to the UNHRC about the declaration of state emergencies and the restrictive measures that undermined their human rights obligations under the ICCPR. Nonetheless, all restrictive measures enforced to combat the pandemic must meet the IHRL framework and comply with the purposes and principles of the UN agency.

      Moreover, the UNHRC asserted in its statement that many other countries had imposed similar restrictive measures without formally notifying the UN body about the derogation of certain human rights. The UNHRC advised states against neglecting their obligations under international human rights law by resorting to excessive emergency actions.

      COVID-19 Pandemic and Human Rights

      There are several non-negotiable human rights principles enshrined in the IHRL framework. These include the right to life; no torture and slavery; a fair trial before a court of law; no imprisonment for breaches of contractual obligations; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and the right to recognition as a person. Consequently, Article 4(1) of the ICCPR states:

      “In [a] time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin.”

      This does not mean that other human rights obligations can be shelved during a public health emergency against the principle of legal proportionality of restrictive measures. But there is a set of laws that consist of both procedural and substantive legal requirements. States have to meet these guidelines while combating the COVID-19 disease without eschewing their human rights obligations under the IHRL framework.

      On the other hand, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has underscored that balancing “the economic imperatives with the health and human rights imperatives during the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be one of the most delicate, daunting and defining experiences for all leaders and all governments. Their place in history will be decided by how well or how badly they perform over the coming months.”

      Pre-Derogation Measures by States

      As a general rule during health emergencies, states must announce the human rights provisions from which they have decided to relax and inform other nations through the UN secretary-general about their intentions. However, if states decide to extend the duration or geographical coverage where the derogation of rights takes place, they must issue additional notifications.

      Similarly, there is a need for immediately notifying officials in case of the termination of derogation. Pragmatically speaking, emergency measures can only restrict other human rights according to the “extent strictly required under the exigencies of the situation.” This must be as outlined in the General Comment No. 29 under Article 4 of the ICCPR.

      These steps consider the duration, location and scope of measures imposed during a state of emergency. However, countries must ensure that enforced measures are necessary, legitimate, non-discriminatory and proportionate to the emergency situation. These steps were incorporated in the Guidance on Emergency Measures and COVID-19 issued by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 27.

      Derogation Under Regional Human Rights Frameworks

      Guidelines for regional human rights protection (RHRP) are complementary pillars of the IHRL framework to protect and promote human rights. Similar derogation provisions are incorporated in the RHRP framework. For example, Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is based on the draft Article 4 of the UN Draft Covenant on Human Rights, which later became Article 4 of the ICCPR and Article 27 (1) of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR).

      But the protocol of derogation cannot be used if a state is simply unable to guarantee the fulfillment of human rights under the ECHR, the ACHR and the RHRP. In other words, a country cannot hide behind the option of relaxing human rights policies under exceptional circumstances if it is unable to even uphold them during normal times. On the contrary, a state is obliged to announce the measures taken that might involve the relaxation of its requirements under the RHRP.

      Yet in March and April, several European countries notified the secretary-general of the Council of Europe about their plan to derogate from their human rights obligations as per the ECHR. Despite this, they had to resort to emergency powers within the IHRL framework while responding to a health emergency like COVID-19. In addition, emergency powers must be temporary, with a vision of restoring normalcy at the earliest.

      Second Wave?

      It is evident that there is no clarity about the number of governments complying with the requirements of the derogation protocol under the ICCPR while dealing with the pandemic. There is every chance that the novel coronavirus will soon result in a second wave and once again derail life as we know it. This would lead to repeated lockdowns, and human rights would be part of the conversation.

      It is clear that states have to be on their toes to fulfill their IHRL obligations. During this crisis, governments must avoid instances of sidestepping their human rights requirements. Such violations must be probed and the culprits brought to justice.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Lucrative Art of Sportswashing

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      When it was announced on July 9 that the great British road racing cyclist Chris Froome was departing Team Ineos for Israel Start-up Nation, there was some surprise amongst the racing fraternity — not about his leaving Ineos, where relations were said to be fraying, but about where he was headed. As the BBC’s Matt Warwick put it: “Froome has gone to a team who, up until … last October, were in pro cycling’s second division … Think Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona to play in the English Championship, and you’ll get the idea.”

      The man bringing Froome to Israel is 61-year-old Israeli-Canadian billionaire businessman Sylvan Adams. Adams has unabashedly appointed himself Israel’s ambassador at large, whose remit is to use his wealth and the vehicle of sport to improve the image of the country he now calls home. That sounds suspiciously like sportswashing, but Adams says that is not the case: “We’re not trying to cover up our sins and wash them away with something. Actually we’re just being ourselves and it’s not washing, it’s sport. It’s not called sportwashing, it’s called sport.”

      A New Narrative

      Adams likes to boast about bringing in celebrities like Lionel Messi for a football friendly, or Madonna when Israel hosted the Eurovision song contest. He doesn’t talk about the fees he paid to bring them in — it is all about telling positive stories, creating a new narrative. And he insists that what he is doing is not political. Adams is prepared to acknowledge that the Israelis “live in a bit of a rough neighbourhood, and we have issues with our neighbours, but that’s not the whole story.” And in his relentlessly sunny version of reality he sees but one dark cloud: “By just focusing on one aspect of life here, you are necessarily distorting the true picture and necessarily creating, and I hate to say it, fake news.”

      One of his biggest coups and one he is building on with the acquisition of Froome was to secure the first leg of the famed Giro d’Italia for Israel in 2018. Adams is himself an amateur racing fanatic: He built the Middle East’s first velodrome in Tel Aviv and named it after himself. He says that, though it took a little convincing, the Giro organizers were eventually won over and the deal was done. Again, no mention of fees. “When I brought the Giro here and we had helicopter footage from the north to the south over three beautiful days, people saw it and it looked like the Giro. Really, it was fantastic,” Adams proudly recalls.

      Embed from Getty Images

      One doubts, however, that the footage caught the concrete wall that slashes through the land and divides Palestinian families, the illegal settlements implanted in the West Bank, the olive groves uprooted and destroyed, the nearly 2 million Palestinians crammed into the 365 square kilometers of the Gaza Strip. With a mantra of good news and pleasing views, Adams hopes that what many others see as sportswashing and what he insists is just “sports” will further facilitate the process of Israel’s normalization with the Gulf states.

      He points to the presence of teams from Bahrain and the UAE in the 2018 Giro race held in Jerusalem as evidence of building friendly relations and the race itself as a “bridge of peace.” And he talks of meeting Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of the king of Bahrain, a fellow racing enthusiast and head of the Bahrain Cycling Team. Adams was part of the Israeli delegation that went to the Bahraini capital Manama last year to discuss financing Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century,” which is where he met Prince Nasser. The prince has been credibly accused of torturing protesters in 2011.

      Though the allegations against Nasser are widely known and the subject of conversation and controversy within the racing community, this news seemed either to have escaped Adams or he knew and wasn’t troubled: “I went to the palace. We had a private meeting. I told him about the velodrome and sent him an invitation.” Good news then.

      More Good News

      Continuing on the good news front, Manchester City, owned by a senior member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, had its two-year ban from Champions League football lifted on July 13. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned UEFA’s February ruling that punished the club for being in breach of Financial Fair Play regulations. Although Manchester City had “obstructed” UEFA in its investigation and shown “disregard” for the principle of cooperating with the authorities, CAS determined that as concerned the central finding — that the team’s Abu Dhabi ownership had played a shell game, disguising what was its own funding as independent sponsorship — “most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred.” That does suggest rather strongly that at least some of the breaches were established and others disallowed on a technicality.

      It is widely accepted that, in building Man City into a football behemoth, club executives played fast and loose with the financial rules. Now with this decision, it is accepted that Abu Dhabi, with the payment of a €10-million fine ($11.4 million), knocked down from the €30 million UEFA had levied, can get away with it.

      For those in the business of sportswashing, that’s very good news. That and the fact that fans will look away from the unsavory, will see sport as an escape with no political intersections. As Sylvan Adams, the sportswashing denier, puts it: “I’m reaching sports fans who don’t dislike us. I’m not talking to the haters; haters gonna hate, and you know we live in a happier world. We don’t hate, we’re open, we’re free-thinking people. I’d rather live in our world. The world’s a little sunnier and nicer in our world rather than spewing hate all the time.”

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why Making Hagia Sophia a Mosque Again Is Good News

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      The reaction to the decision by Turkish authorities to turn Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque has been illuminating. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accused of playing religious politics. If so, he is not alone. When Pope Francis describes himself as “pained” by the news and says his thoughts are with Istanbul, as if some natural disaster had befallen the city, he too is playing religious politics.

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      The fact that this building — with one of the largest freestanding domes in the world — has stood the test of time and conflict at all is a miracle. Yet since 1934, it has stood silent, but for the passing voices and feet of tourists, as a museum.

      Given its stature as a place of spirituality, this is an astonishing fact. Imagine the Notre Dame in Paris or St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome — or indeed the myriad religious sites built upon older religious sites — spending close to a century as museums.

      Western Hypocrisy

      Despite this, the media in the West have been almost uniform in their condemnation. UNESCO, which designates the building as a World Heritage Site, has criticized the move. Western media have noted the reaction of liberals in Turkey, lamenting the undermining of the secular state.

      The condemnation is, of course, based on a key distinction between Hagia Sophia and the likes of Notre Dame and St. Peter’s Basilica. The distinction — emphasized in almost every media report — is that Hagia Sophia was built in 537 by Justinian as the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the spiritual center of the Byzantine Empire. It only became a mosque in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.

      Notre Dame de Paris in France © beboyGiven this history of conquest, it’s a wonder that Hagia Sophia is here at all. Consider the religious sites desecrated by conquerors with new faiths, from the Temple of Solomon to the Bamiyan Buddhas. Yet Mehmed II’s first act was to hold the Islamic Friday prayers in Hagia Sophia. He may have been a Muslim, but he recognized the sheer spiritual power and majesty of this building and honored it. 

      The Ottomans removed icon frescoes and mosaics and replaced them with Arabic calligraphy, but the spiritual life of this amazing building continued under new owners. That is a testament to the building and the comparative moderation of the conquerors.

      The Mezquita of Cordoba

      The idea that Hagia Sophia is a museum, and that this is a balanced compromise between faiths, has become received wisdom. Yet the truth is that turning Hagia Sophia into a museum was hardly an act of religious tolerance. Far from it, the move was a culminating act in a decade of cultural revolution in Turkey, in which the regime of republican leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pulled up the Ottoman inheritance by its roots.

      It was not a generous gesture to the Greek Orthodox Church, but a symbolic attack on the power of Islam in Turkey. It remains that to this day. Unspoken in today’s debate is the fact that Hagia Sophia became a museum in an era when the Sufi brotherhoods of Turkey were outlawed, the adhan (call to prayer) could no longer be called in Arabic and religious dress was prohibited. Into recent times, Sufism has remained persecuted and the whirling dervishes perform for tourists — rites that the secular establishment had largely destroyed in any real sense. 

      Given this backdrop, the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum takes on a different complexion, as if spirituality itself were a museum, which is after all what Ataturk intended by such a move. Turning the building back into a place of worship can then be seen as one more step in the reemergence of an older Turkish cultural inheritance. 

      Inside the Mezquita of Cordoba in Spain © Matej KastelicThe fact that Hagia Sophia was once a cathedral is no barrier to it now being a mosque. Consider the Mezquita in Cordoba, one of the finest architectural monuments in the Iberian Peninsula (and itself built on the site of an earlier Visigoth church). It was perhaps the greatest mosque in Muslim Spain, before being converted into a cathedral in 1236 by King Ferdinand of Castile.

      Today, a cathedral stands in its center and it remains illegal for a Muslim to kneel there in prayer. Yet few Spaniards would countenance it being converted into a museum as an act of magnanimity toward Islam, nor are there calls from global institutions for Spain to do so. Requests by the Islamic Council of Spain to allow Muslim prayer have been opposed by the Vatican and Spanish ecclesiastical authorities.

      The Loss of Greek Anatolia

      Converting Hagia Sophia back into a mosque reflects the present reality of modern-day Turkey, which is that of a Muslim-majority population. Just as you expect Westminster Abbey in London to be a Christian place of worship, it’s natural that Hagia Sophia should be a Muslim place of worship, with due interfaith dialogue and public access.

      This contemporary reality doesn’t negate the very real tragedy of the loss of Greek Anatolia. That loss is far more recent than 1453. The same regime that turned Hagia Sophia into a museum was also responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia of Greek Orthodox communities. Over 1 million Greeks were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and sent as refugees to modern-day Athens and Thessaloniki.

      Today, you can wander through their empty churches in Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, or at sites like Karmylassos (Karakoy) in southwest Turkey, where an entire ghost town is left sprawled on the hillside as a brutal reminder of the wholesale removal of a people and culture. 

      What was done in the name of creating an ethnically Turkish republican state was barbaric, just as what was done to create an ethnically Greek republican state. Ethnic nationalism accepts no gray areas, and ordinary people are its victims, on both sides of the dividing line.

      In Support of Islam

      Yet the violent forces that produced that ethnic cleansing also produced the zealous ideology of Westernization that uprooted the Ottoman legacy in the land of modern Turkey. It means a seam of bitterness and division runs through the very heart of the modern state. 

      Inside Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey © Artur Bogacki / ShutterstockIt is disingenuous of Western observers to say that Hagia Sophia should remain a museum for the sake of religious tolerance. If tolerance and moderation are our goals, then we should welcome the return of the call to prayer to Hagia Sophia, just as we would welcome the return of church bells at Notre Dame, had it been turned into a museum by secular revolutionaries.

      To welcome it is to support moderate Islam. To not do so is to leave moderate Muslims in a curious bind, not wishing to create conflict, yet expected to disapprove of seeing the spiritual centerpiece of Turkey’s largest city being devoted once more to worship. It also turns the building into a focal point for the more extremist.

      The remarks of Pope Francis are astonishing for a religious leader. That he is “pained” by the idea of such a site of spirituality being turned from a museum back into a place of worship smacks of the worst kind of bigotry. Must it only be “my god” who is worshipped, both here and in former mosques elsewhere?

      Equally, secular outrage is disingenuous. This is a religious building. The secularists are right to resist attempts to constrain their lifestyle, such as the prohibition of alcohol or sexual freedoms, just as Muslims in Turkey have chafed at secular restrictions on their own lifestyles. But Hagia Sophia is a religious space, first and foremost.

      The historic mistake was turning Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934, in a cultural revolution that has impoverished Turkish society ever since. Whether the pious nationalists of the ruling party will usher in a moderate or yet more divisive era for this unique building, only time will reveal.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The One-State Reality to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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      The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been raging for over seven decades, and the prospects for peace have never seemed more distant than today. The two-state solution, which was once the most widely-accepted remedy for the impasse, has lost traction, and efforts by the United Nations and other intermediaries to resolve the dispute have got nowhere.

      In 2018, a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University found that only 43% of Palestinians and Israeli Jews support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was down from 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews who favored a two-state concept just a year prior.

      In October 2019, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, described the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories as “a multi-generational tragedy.” He said to the Security Council that Israeli settlements — which are illegal under international law — on Palestinian land represent a substantial obstacle to the peace process.

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      US President Donald Trump, who is seen by some observers as the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman, has billed himself as Israel’s best friend in the White House. Trump has overturned the US position on many aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the dismay of the Palestinian people and leadership. His administration has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law.

      In January, the Trump administration unveiled its long-awaited peace plan. Dubbed the “deal of the century,” the 181-page document was promoted by Washington as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian factions have rejected the proposal as overly biased and one-sided in favor of Israel.

      Ian Lustick is an American political scientist holding the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an advocate of what he calls a “one-state reality” to solve the conflict. His latest book, published in October 2019, is called “Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.”

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Lustick about the ongoing skirmishes between the Israelis and Palestinians, the declining traction of the two-state solution, the BDS movement and the US support for Israel.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity.

      Kourosh Ziabari: In your 2013 article in The New York Times titled “Two-State Illusion,” you note that Israelis and Palestinians have their own reasons to cling to the two-state ideal. For the Palestinians, you write that it’s a matter of ensuring that diplomatic and financial aid they receive keeps coming, and for the Israelis, this notion is a reflection of the views of the Jewish Israeli majority that also shields Israel from international criticism. Are you saying that these reasons are morally unjustified? Why do you call the two-state solution an illusion?

      Ian Lustick: I do not argue they are morally unjustified. I am seeking to explain why they persist in the face of the implausibility if not the impossibility of attaining a negotiated two-state solution. I am trying to solve the puzzle of why public agitation for it continues by these groups, one that wants a real two-state solution and one that does not, even though the leaders of each group know that the two-state solution cannot be achieved. The key to the answer is a “Nash Equilibrium” in which both sides, and other actors as well — the US government and the peace process industry — can get what they minimally need by effectively giving up on what they really want.

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      The mistaken idea that Israelis and Palestinians can actually reach an agreement of a two-state solution through negotiations is an illusion because so many people still actually believe it is attainable when it is not.

      Ziabari: As you’ve explained in your writings, the favorable two-state situation envisioned by Israel is one that ignores Palestinian refugees’ “right of return,” guarantees that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel and controlled by Israel, and fortifies the position of Jewish settlements. On the other side, the Palestinian version of the two-state solution imagines the return of refugees, demands the evacuation of Israeli settlements and claims East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Do you think the two sides will ever succeed in narrowing these stark differences?

      Lustick: No. The elements of the two-state solution that would make it acceptable to Palestinians are those that make it unacceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews who now have firm control of the Israeli government and of the Israeli political arena. But once a one-state reality is acknowledged, then both sides can agree that Jerusalem should be united and accessible to all who live within the state, that refugees within the borders of the state, at least, should have a right to move to and live in any part of the state, and that owners of land and property seized illegally or unjustly anywhere in the state can seek redress, or that discrimination in the right to own and inhabit homes anywhere in the state must be brought to an end.

      Ziabari: You are an advocate of a one-state solution to the decades-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict. What are the characteristics of such a country? Do you think Israelis and Palestinians will really agree to live alongside each other under a unified leadership, share resources, abandon their mutual grievances and refuse to engage in religious and political provocation against the other side while there are no geographical borders separating them?

      Lustick: I do not advocate a “one-state solution” in the sense that I do not see a clear path from where we are now to that “pretty picture” of the future. I instead seek to analyze a reality — a one-state reality — that is far from pretty, and thereby not a solution. But that reality has dynamics which are not under the control of any one group, and those dynamics can lead to processes of democratization within the one-state reality that could produce a set of problems in the future better than the problems that Jews and Arabs have today between the river and the sea.

      The substantive difference I have with advocates of the “one-state solution” is that they imagine Jews and Arabs “negotiating,” as two sides, to agree on a new “one-state” arrangement. I do not share that view as even a possibility. But within the one-state reality, different groups of Jews and Arabs can find different reasons to cooperate or oppose one another, leading to new and productive political processes and trends of democratization. That is how, for example, the United States was transformed from a white-ruled country with masses of freed slaves who exercised no political rights whatsoever into a multiracial democracy. Abraham Lincoln never imagined this as a “one-state solution” — it was the unintended consequence of the union’s annexation of the South, with its masses of black, non-citizen inhabitants, after the Civil War.

      Ziabari: Several UN Security Council resolutions have been issued that call upon Israel to refrain from resorting to violence against Palestinian citizens, safeguard the welfare and security of people living under occupation, halt its settlement constructions and withdraw from the lands it occupied during the 1967 war. Some of the most important ones are Resolution 237, Resolution 242 and Resolution 446. There are also resolutions deploring Israel’s efforts to alter the status of Jerusalem. However, Israel has ignored these formal expressions of the UN and seems to face no consequences. How has Israel been able to disregard these resolutions without paying a price?

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      Lustick: The short answer to this is that the Israel lobby has enforced extreme positions on US administrations so that the United States has provided the economic, military, political and diplomatic support necessary for Israel to withstand such international pressures. The reasons for the Israel lobby’s success are detailed in my book and can be traced, ultimately, to the hard work and dedication of lobby activists, the misconceived passion of American Jews and evangelicals to “protect” Israel, and the fundamental character of American politics which gives a single-issue movement in foreign policy enormous leverage over presidents and over members of Congress.

      Ziabari: You’ve worked with the State Department. How prudent and constructive is the current US administration’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the implications of decisions such as recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, cutting off funding to UNRWA and closing down the PLO office in Washington, DC? Will the “deal of the century” resolve the Middle East deadlock?

      Lustick: US policy has, for decades, been unable to realize its foreign policy interests in this domain for reasons I explained earlier. Now that the opportunity to do so via a two-state solution has been lost, the policies of the Trump administration hardly matter, except that by not emphasizing America’s emphasis on democracy and equality, it postpones the time when Israelis and Palestinians will begin the kinds of internal struggles over democracy and equal rights that hold promise of improving the one-state reality.

      Ziabari: Is the Trump administration working to silence criticism of Israel by painting narratives that are unequivocal in censuring Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic? Do you see any difference between Trump’s efforts in protecting Israel against international criticism with those of his predecessors?

      Lustick: Yes. The Trump administration has sided in an unprecedentedly explicit way with the extreme wing of the Israel lobby and with extreme and intolerant right-wing forces in Israel. 

      Ziabari: The proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, who believe that denying Israel economic opportunities and investment will serve to change its policies regarding the Palestinian people, are widely smeared as anti-Semites. Is the BDS movement anti-Semitic?

      Lustick: There may be some anti-Semites among BDS supporters, but the movement itself is no more anti-Semitic than the Jewish campaign to boycott France during the Dreyfus trial was “anti-French people.” In fact, as it becomes clearer to everyone that successful negotiations toward a two-state solution will not occur, the significance of the BDS movement will grow rapidly. 

      It is an effective way to express, non-violently, an approach to the conflict that emphasizes increasing justice and quality of life for all those living between the river and the sea. Its focus is not on the particular institutional architecture of an outcome, but on the extent to which values of equality, democracy and non-exclusivist rights to self-determination for Jews and Arabs can be realized. Nor do BDS supporters need to agree on which forms of discrimination, at which level, they focus on. Some may target sanctions against every Israeli institution, but many will target the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as radically different rights and protections accorded to Arabs vs. Jews in the West Bank, in the Jerusalem municipality or in southwest Israel, including the Gaza Strip.

      Ziabari: The settlement of disputes between Palestinians and Israelis requires a reliable and effective mediator, one in which both parties have trust. Which government or international organization is most qualified to fulfill this role?

      Lustick: The time for mediation or negotiation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as two groups, has effectively passed. That is no longer what is crucial. What is crucial are political processes within each group and across them. African Americans became empowered over generations, not because an outside mediator helped arrange an agreement between whites and blacks, but because gradually self-interested whites saw opportunities in the emancipation of and alliances with blacks. 

      This approach does imagine a long-time frame, but when states with democratic elements are confronted with masses of formerly excluded and despised populations, that is the kind of time it takes to achieve integration and democratization. In addition to the American case vis-à-vis blacks, consider how long it took to integrate Irish Catholics into British politics after Ireland was annexed in 1801, or how long it took South Africa to integrate and democratize its long excluded and oppressed black majority.

      Ziabari: And a final question: Will the unveiling of President Trump’s “deal of the century” change anything for the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Some Middle East observers say it is just a green light for Israel to go ahead with annexing more Palestinian territory. Others believe Israel doesn’t need such an endorsement and has been annexing Palestinian lands anyway. What do you think about the deal and how it will transform the demographics and political calculus of the region?

      Lustick: The Trump plan is a hoax. In the pages it devotes to its own justification appear all the Israeli government’s favorite propaganda lines. The “negotiations” that produced it were between the most ultranationalist and fundamentalist government in Israel’s history and a group of “Israel firsters” in the White House who are just as extreme, though substantially more ignorant. Advanced originally as a plan to give Palestinians a higher standard of living instead of a real state, it actually proposes no money for Palestinians until they become Finland. Only after that will Israel be empowered, if it wishes, to grant them not a state, but something Israel is willing for Palestinians to call a state but existing within the state of Israel.

      If realized as written, the plan would be an archipelago of sealed Palestinian ghettos. By awarding Israel prerogatives to patrol, supervise, intervene and regulate all movement to and from those ghettos, the plan affirms the one-state reality while offering Israel at least temporary protection against having to admit and defend apartheid by describing itself as a two-state solution. This is Palestine as Transkei or Bophuthatswana. As a plan, it has no chance of being implemented. Its real function is to give temporary cover to the deepening of silent apartheid.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America Is a Nation in Darkness

      by

      As America’s 2020 Independence Day fades from memory, many things are clearer. Americans love to go to beaches and bars as their petri dishes of choice, masks are a better idea than they were before Independence Day, there will never be a national pandemic response as long as Trump is president, and it is beyond time for Trump to wear a ball gag in lieu of a mask. It is also clear that way too many Americans know way too little about the history of their nation and even less about the birth of the nation.

      Independence Day is celebrated on July 4, the date in 1776 when the Continental Congress ratified the text of the Declaration of Independence. However, it is a safe bet that most Americans know more about the contents of a margarita than they do the Declaration of Independence.

      America’s Problem With Racism Has Become Clearer

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      Some will note Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words near the beginning of the document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

      Practically no one will know that immediately following these words, the Declaration goes on to state: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  

      Much of the rest of the document is a list of grievances against the British king and his minions leading to the conclusion that the colonies should be free and independent states absolved of any allegiance to the British Crown and free of any political connection to Great Britain. So there you have it, a quick history lesson. But before moving on to the US Constitution, pause a moment and actually think about what should be the cornerstone of this document: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

      We know that the “self-evident” language was never actually self-evident, and that the notion that all men are created “equal” remains at the core of America’s living historical lie, birthed even before there was a Declaration of Independence. But the part that presents the solution, the path forward, is a declaration that government deriving its powers from the consent of the governed should be how a nation organizes itself to provide for and protect its sovereignty and its people, how it defines and enables life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

      Broken Government

      Now with America’s national government completely broken, the consent of the governed nowhere to be found, and the actual right of the people to alter or abolish their government at issue with every new and imaginative effort to suppress voting, the Declaration of Independence rings hollow. But if it means anything today, it is to be found in the concept that human beings living within some demarcated landmass should be free to institute a “new” government around a set of principles and organizational mandates required to protect public safety and provide some foundation for societal well-being.

      There have been times before, and surely now it is America’s time again — the time to wrest power from the corrupt and corrupted, the venal and the vengeful. There is Trump’s Independence Day performance, practically begging the nation to again take up arms against itself. There is significant social unrest because aged institutions have failed for centuries to include a huge swath of those supposedly equal folks. There is the daily inventory of undermined governance rendering the present government incapable of protecting public safety and promoting social well-being.

      And most of all, there is the sight of our government “leaders” standing by unmasked as the fools that they are, while death and disease permeate the land. I want to be clear about this: Trump has blood on his hands, McConnell and most Republican politicians at the national and state levels have blood on their hands. And, those around Trump who have enabled his vile ignorance to prevail have blood on their hands. America’s present government is literally draining the life from this land.

      Today’s catalog of legitimate grievances is even stronger than those of 1776, for they demonstrate just how far the nation has strayed from its lofty ambition. Today, when we well know that the words “all men are created equal” rang hollow then but seem even more devoid of meaning now, the failure to fight hard enough for that ideal in modern times dwarfs the earlier willingness to fight for words that meant so much less then.

      A New Revolution

      Without wishing for a renewed revolutionary war, I do wish for a new revolution. The time has come to stop America’s national retreat from an imperfect union to an even more imperfect union. In a nation that loves its Constitution, just reading the Preamble should be enough to know that the text to follow has failed us miserably: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” 

      Not one objective set out in that Preamble to the US Constitution is happening now. The institutions brought to life by that document in the text that follows are not working today to meet any of the lofty goals set forth in the Preamble. Think about it, read each one carefully, reflect on gaping societal divisions, reflect on today’s attorney general, reflect on marchers in the streets demanding racial and social justice, reflect on US allies discarded like vermin, reflect on poverty and lack of access to meaningful health care laying waste to many, and reflect on warriors in our streets supposedly “protecting” us from ourselves.   

      It is truly unfortunate that the world had to watch a black man die in the street before our eyes amid a raging tableau of disease and despair for many finally to see what America has become. When national institutions born centuries ago fail so completely to protect lives and save lives, they have failed in their original purpose.

      Now is the moment for we the people to argue loudly that the time has surely come to fundamentally alter what we have and replace it with something much better.

      *[A version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      COVID-19 and Populism: A Bad Combination for Europe’s Banks

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      As Germany takes over the EU’s rotating presidency, Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that the bloc is facing a triple challenge: the coronavirus pandemic — in retreat but still requiring constant vigilance — the EU’s steepest-ever economic downturn and political demons waiting in the wings, including the specter of populism. With the pandemic somewhat under control, European policymakers’ focus is shifting toward the knock-on effects of months of lockdown.

      Economies in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe (CESEE) are in a particularly precarious situation, as a number of factors, from bad debt to populist legislation, are cramping the ability of the banking sector —which performs a vital role in stabilizing the economy through loans, payment holidays and other forms of financial support to local businesses in times of crisis  — to withstand a potential economic downturn.

      Bad Loans on the Rise

      A troubling report recently released by the Vienna Initiative (created during the 2008 financial crisis to support emerging Europe’s financial sector) has indicated that CESEE banks are facing a wave of bad loans, or non-performing loans (NPL), caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that could last past 2021. The issue of bad debt is by no means limited to CESEE countries, but the problem is exacerbated by populist political decisions in many nations in the region.

      European banking regulators had previously estimated that EU banks had built up adequate buffers to withstand a certain number of bad loans, with “strong capital and liquidity buffers” that should allow them to “withstand the potential credit risk losses.” But many banks in the CESEE region, operating in more volatile economies and with their reserves already whittled away by populist measures, are uniquely vulnerable if hit by too many NPLs.

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      At the heart of the problem is the fact that an excess of NPLs can drain banks’ capital reserves, making them reliant on support from governments and central banks. If the regulators and politicians don’t then put the necessary measures in place to support banks, the entire economy could be in danger of collapsing.

      Lenders in countries including Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia and Bulgaria have sought reassurance from national authorities in recent months that they will receive the necessary protections should restrictive COVID-19 measures last much longer, particularly if the continent is hit by a second wave of the virus before a vaccine or an effective treatment is found. At present, it is unclear whether governments across Europe will be willing to continue with the same level of support packages to businesses and employees. 

      It’s not just a matter of renewing special coronavirus provisions. In return for providing additional financial support to businesses, lenders understandably expect reciprocal measures from governments and central banks. These include favorable tax measures, or the relaxation of excessive levies, so that banks are able to maintain their reserve levels, a lowering of countercyclical capital buffers and a guarantee of emergency financial support from central banks if necessary.

      Populist Measures Exacerbate Financial Strain

      In the wake of COVID-19, banking sector outlooks have already been revised to negative in several countries including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia. These problems are in danger of being intensified by populist political decisions in many CESEE countries, where governments have a tendency to see punitive measures on banks as an easy way of shoring up popular support.

      In particular, many CESEE countries’ financial sectors are still suffering from 2015 decisions to convert loans taken out in Swiss francs into loans denominated in the euro or the local currency. The conversions came in response to a sudden surge in value of the Swiss franc, which had previously allowed lenders to offer low-interest loans. The forced conversions benefited borrowers but left the country’s banks to pick up the tab, making it difficult for them to build up capital buffers.

      While some countries which carried out the forced loan conversions, like Hungary, at least provided lenders with euros from the central bank to ease the blow, others, such as Croatia, left banks to shoulder the full loss. Croatia’s loans conversion, pushed through quickly ahead of the 2015 parliamentary elections, was applied retroactively, foisting a bill of roughly €1 billion on the country’s banks, many of which are subsidiaries of financial institutions from elsewhere in the EU. A pending court ruling on whether or not Croatian borrowers who had taken out Swiss franc loans could apply for further compensation could impose another €2.6 billion in losses on the banks at the worst possible time.

      Nor is the controversial loans conversion the only policy sapping CESEE banks’ capital reserves. As part of its coronavirus recovery plan, the Hungarian government announced a special tax on both banks and multinational retailers back in April. The additional banking tax was worth HUF 55 billion ($176 million). Prime Minister Viktor Orban had already announced the toughest COVID-19 measures of any central or eastern European country, including a suspension of all loan payments until the end of the year. The move ignored a call from Hungary’s OTP Bank for a reduction in taxes to help banks deal with the pandemic’s fallout.

      A number of other countries in the region, including the Czech Republic and Romania — though Romania later eliminated the levy — have raised banking taxes in recent years, making it harder for the financial sectors in these emerging economies to respond to the crisis and has left it in a more precarious position should the effects of COVID-19 continue into 2021.

      The CESEE region’s financial sector suffered greatly in the wake of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, and much work has been done in the intervening years to shield the sector from future downturns. The Vienna Initiative report, however, makes it clear that the region’s banks still face headwinds due to the COVID-19 crisis. Hopefully, policymakers across CESEE will take heed of the report’s findings and realize that trying to scapegoat banks in these uncertain times will only make them more vulnerable, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of loan defaults expected over the next 12 months.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More