Having watched its original pretext offered for the invasion and occupation of Iraq crumble before the entire world, the sole remaining superpower has shifted its justification to one of an ideological nature. The banner under which the United States is now marching is one of “bring democracy to the undemocratic Middle Eastern countries and enforce the Western version of freedom on those nations’ peoples.”
Having designed a new world order that best suits its interests, the US has embarked on a messianic mission to impose the system of government of its choice on whatever countries it chooses, using military force at sometimes and political pressure and economic blockade at others.
Doesn’t the imposition of a certain political system on a free, independent and sovereign country constitute a naked intervention in the internal affairs of that country?
Successive American administrations consider Israel an oasis of democracy in the Middle East desert, while sidestepping the fact that all the leaders who governed the Jewish state are extreme right-wingers hailing from the military. The selection of Israeli leaders depends on how sanguinary they prove themselves to be while serving in the military. On the other hand, successive American administrations have always considered other countries in the region as being regimes ruled by dictators and tyrants. These administrations tend to forget the fact known to every one — that freedom of expression has been restrained in the democratic state of Israel since its founding under the pretext of protecting the country’s security.
For more than 57 years now, Israel has been committing every conceivable violation of human rights, notably freedom of expression, either directly or indirectly against its own people, the Israeli Arabs who remained in Palestine after 1949 Jewish massacres against the Arabs. Israeli Arabs who lived under direct military rule until 1966 have been denied not only freedom of expression but political and social rights guaranteed to them under international and local conventions. Indirectly, freedom of expression is denied under the laws introduced during the British colonial rule of Palestine which decide who is allowed to publish newspapers and how, thus denying the Palestinians the right to have their own papers. Until this day, some of these laws that date back to the years 1933 and 1945 are still being applied, although they have been drawn as emergency military laws. Israeli civic organizations have been demanding the abolition of these laws but the government keeps ignoring such demands.
The most serious Israeli violations of the freedom of expression followed the 1967 war and Israeli occupation of Arab lands. Military rule was imposed on the occupied lands and again with the uprising of the Palestinian people. The oppression was not just confined to the freedom of expression and the harassment and detention of both Palestinian and foreign journalists but extended to the continuous humiliation of Palestinians at Israeli military checkpoints, beating them, confiscating equipment from Palestinian reporters and preventing them from taking pictures or reaching the places of events they want to cover.
In the US, Iraq war in addition to heightened security at home and pressure to identify confidential sources continue to dominate press freedom issues. The American Press Association report accused the Bush administration of violating freedom of the press and listed the US among countries in the American continent that violate freedom of the press. It also cited the case of a New York Times female reporter who, a US Court ruled, could be jailed if she continues to refuse to answer questions about her sources before a grand jury.
It also cited the case of a Time magazine reporter against whom a court issued a jail sentence of up to 18 months for refusing to testify. And the magazine was fined.
A recent conference organized by the college of journalism at Cairo University on the future of the media in the Arab world called for a wider margin of freedom and respect for the other opinion. It urged an Arab media strategy encouraging complementary roles and coordination in a manner that achieves the aspirations of the Arab people.
This brings the question of who is more democratic and practices more freedom of expression: Israel that continues to live under military rule or the Arab countries and their people who hold their leaders in high respect. Does the region really need the kind of democracy preached by the West in order to become like Israel? The West would be dead wrong if it thinks that the imposition of its culture and values would solve the problem. Imposing something from outside is the problem itself. So, why don’t leave the people of the region alone so they choose their own destiny and kind of government that represents their own interests?
