Security Apartheid by Ginan Rauf


Amidst all the horror visiting Lebanon recently, a young woman from Beirut, Rasha, a Canadian citizen, shows us a third way as she actively resists an obscene system of apartheid security writ large upon a global scale. Her letter appears in Juan Cole's invaluable blog where she writes:

        '' Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport. I was in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at age two. I have never gone back for lack of opportunity and occasion, no other reason.  I have the choice to sign up for the evacuation., but the European and North American governments have been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, Danes and the Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries '' out of the kindness'' of their governments have been systematically left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their economies and babies who adjust the dynamism of their demographies, were left to fend or shelter under the shells'' 

Lebanon is now a humanitarian disaster. Nowhere is safe. Conveys of fleeing civilians are bombed. Ambulances and patients on stretchers aren't being spared. Estimates are that 500,000 people have been displaced or made refugees. Needless to say, the majority of those killed are non-combatants. Juan Cole reports in his blog that a milk factory has been hit. Schools are now housing refugees.

It is very telling that amidst all this destruction privileged sectors from the North are being given passage on luxury cruise lines. The speed with which foreign nationals are being evacuated, of course, is subject to political considerations. Meanwhile Lebanon is being left to its fate yet again. 

The lesson here is quite simple/straightforward. If you don't have money or a foreign passport or happen to be a poor domestic worker from Bangladesh, your chances of getting on Noah's ark decrease dramatically.  

Safety zones are the name of the game. The escalating violence in Lebanon, then, doesn't merely fuel extremism. It exposes the deep cynicism and moral bankruptcy of what can be called apartheid security. The closer you are to the white metropolitan center, the more likely you are to get safe passage.

With apartheid security you don't even need religious extremists to preach hate or promote intolerance. Just bomb the Shiite neighborhoods and plant the fear of contamination or casual association in the primal psyche. Tolerance   becomes a costly affair and fear an awesome deterrent.    

The Israeli bombing campaign slyly tries to reinforce sectarian divisions in a country recovering from memories of a traumatic civil war. But it is by no means clear whether this onslaught will succeed in shattering national unity or forging new solidarities. It may end up de-legitimizing moderate Arab regimes  incapable of protecting their vulnerable citizens or satisfying their collective craving for dignity. 

Human solidarity is the natural target of those who seek to conquer by dividing and spreading an individualistic ethos of separate but safe. But if nowhere is safe in the Arab world, then, the Israeli aggression may end up giving rise to a transnational solidarity of the highly vulnerable.

Thus, we discern two classes of people: the refugees who are denied safe passage and the repatriated who have the wherewithal to recover swiftly and with minimal damage in situations of extreme danger.

Incidentally, those left behind in the aftermath of Katrina happen to be the ones having the hardest time getting back in. They are America's internal refugees who aren't easily repatriated or generously accommodated. Should natural disasters intensify due to the looming threat of global warming, the refugees shall suffer trebly as victims of economic inequities, apartheid security and environmental injustice.

Perhaps this is the secular modern day version of punishing the sinners and whisking away the raptured to safety and blissful zones of hyper-security.

Only in this case it is the G8 countries that are in the business of selective salvation. Such are the surgical methods of cleaning up bad neighborhoods and clearing the terrain for more indiscriminate bombing. Is it any wonder, then, that many await great saviors and crave charismatic leaders to deliver salvation? Cedar revolution aside, Lebanon has been abandoned by her friends and Arab brothers for the time being.

Yet amidst the horror of this increasingly two tiered world, a multiplicity of third ways emerges to thwart the imperial will. The resistance to security apartheid becomes a variant of remaining behind in solidarity with the global natives.

Robert Fisk has remained behind, in places like Baghdad and Beirut, as a prophetic witness to the inhumane destruction of our terrible era. His tireless reporting on behalf of suffering innocents is a living testament to the fact that human solidarity based on human compassion is far more important than any sort of abstract unity based on dogma or shared faith. 

Amidst all this raining horror Robert Fisk remains behind as a prophetic witness to the destruction of our terrible era. His tireless reporting on behalf of suffering innocents is a living testament to the fact that human solidarity based on human compassion is far more important than any sort of abstract unity based on dogma or shared faith. He has embedded himself amongst the suffering civilians. 

Remember that the next time a conservative Saudi cleric Arab starts preaching about the dangers of foreign cultural intrusions and all the alleged ''authenticity'' of a fundamentalist state. Fisk is living the third way. As far as I am concerned he is an honorary native by affiliation and sheer dedication to social justice. I tip my hat, if not my veil, to this fiercely independent conscience that stands in solidarity with the haq (truth/justice) otherwise known as advocating on behalf of innocent civilians in the more vital task of affirming life.  

There are other voices choosing the third way, embed with suffering civilians in acts of resistance that continually thwart the imperial will and abhor the destruction in rains from above. Marcel Joyce writes the following in an article that appeared in truthout.com:

         '' I throw my lot in with civilians, the ones who want to study and work and cook and love and be with their families and maybe watch a little television in the evening. The people my government dismisses as collateral damage The people in the crossfires. The people who would, if this was happening in America, be my loved ones. The people who would be me.''2

The third way resists the Manichean narrative that makes increasing swathes of the globe a raging crossfire and pits one civilization against another in a clash propelled by imperial ambition.

The third way resists security apartheid by staying behind and defying the descent into the barbaric. We hear it in the words of another woman writing with a message from Lebanon named Zena el-Khalil who refuses to succumb to the oppressor by becoming a macabre and inverted image of the oppressor. It is part of a larger attempt to disentangle from the obscene enactment of apartheid security and transcend the vicious cycle of mutually assured cultural degradation:

                "Tell them about people like me, that despite all of this, I have still not learnt to hate. They can take everything from me but not my dignity. Not my morals and beliefs. They will never break my spirit.'' (identify this source)

Zena addresses her words to Israeli citizens, demonstrating as she does the possibility of dialogue between the dignified, the urbane and the peace loving. They are the interlocutors currently absent on the world stage, our civilian hope for a cease fire. Let it be recalled that in the midst of the bombardment a woman from Lebanon held out the hope for talk and coexistence.

The dignified stance of Zena and Rasha is a simultaneous form of third way resistance to the cowardly stance of Arab leaders who always run for cover but whose multiple betrayals are becoming increasingly distasteful to their people. They are fueling the extremism that we should all fear.

Will the west support emerging alternatives and listen to Zena's pleas?

Or will indifference to human suffering herald a quieter migration, a quitting of America amidst the ashes of the Cedar revolution. Mission accomplished?

Rawi member Ginan Rauf Rawi will be teaching  Arabic at the University of Conneticut this fall. Special thanks to Laszlo Nagy for invaluable help with editing.

Featured Writers


FICTION WRITER: Susan Muaddi Darraj
Susan Muaddi Darraj is associate professor of English at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland ...


POET: Dima Hilal
Dima Hilal is a poet and writer, born in Beirut and raised in California, where she studied at the University of California ...


Original Arab American writing:

Voices from the South
Four Lebanese Women
...

Summer Rain
Andrea Assaf
I wash my body in Beirut as missiles rain...

Salti Dispatches from Beirut
Rasha Salti reports on the situation in Lebanon for RAWI

Laila Halaby's letter to an Israeli soldier
Normally in letters I start out by wishing the person to whom I am writing good health and spirits.

Mohja Kahf's letter to a friend entitled "Israel is Godzilla"
From where I sit: Israel has been Godzilla backed by super-Godzilla...

To see Kahf's essay 'The Israelyville Horror?' please go to the homepage of www.MuslimWakeUp.com

Security Apartheid
Ginan Rauf
Amidst all the horror visiting Lebanon recently...

My Family in Lebanon
Hayan Charara -
I have stopped counting the dead. A single death is more than this world can afford...

Elmaz Abinader poems - Two for Hayan
(nothing new)
(My Father's House is a Terrorist Target) 

Word from Dahiyeh, Lebanon
by editor of ArteNews Maymanah Farhat (electronic intafada)


 Featured Artist:

war ration(allies)

al-iqaa


 Advertisement: