February 2011 was a month for the history books. In last month’s installment I wrote that Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson was triggered by the lack of respect he had experienced from a Congresswoman who wanted his vote. This was the same emotion which gave rise to the revolt in Tunis. It subsequently spread to Egypt and from there to other North African and Middle Eastern countries. Ordinary people cried out: we are not your pawns, we are human beings and we want our human rights, which have been promised to us in the Charter of the United Nations and, let us not forget, were to be supported by America in Obama’s speech at the University of Cairo on June 4, 2009!

            Let us now back up and re-visit the early 1960’s and Viet Nam. For those of us who were adults at the time this is not history one reads in books but something we read in newspapers and saw on TV. In 1963 the U.S. had only a small contingent of “military advisors” in that country which propped up the unpopular dictatorial Diem regime. We (Eisenhower and Kennedy) thought we had to do so lest South Viet Nam were to be reunified with the North under the Communist rule of Ho Chi Min. Unfortunately the Catholic Diem did not live up to his faith, which required charity and love thy enemy, but persecuted the Buddhists who formed at least 70 per cent of the population, as well as other groups he didn’t like. While most of the people who wanted reunification, regardless of the flag under which it was achieved, quietly or openly supported the Viet Cong, Hňa thượng Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, born as Lâm Văn Tức, took his master’s parting words, “Make of yourselves a light!” literally, and publicly immolated himself on June 11, 1963 in one of Saigon’s busiest intersections. Others of his order followed the example, and the TV pictures of burning human beings in saffron robes outraged the world. Washington decided that Diem had to go and conspired with that country’s military leaders to topple his regime, with the understanding that they would be better able to deal with the menace from the North.

The generals succeeded, but for good measure also killed Diem and his brother. Mrs. Diem was outraged at Washington’s betrayal and cursed Kennedy whom she made responsible for the death of her husband, although the murder had not been in the original plan. But as our former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, so nonchalantly said in regard to the Iraqi chaos he had helped unleash in 2003, “Stuff happens!” Five months after the murder of her husband the Catholic Kennedy was assassinated and I am sure that Mrs. Diem regarded this as an example of divine justice. She also predicted that her husband’s removal from power and murder would only produce more bloodshed, which was correct. Twelve years later, with millions of people dead and wounded in that country, the last Americans were evacuated by helicopters from the roof of the Saigon embassy on April 30, 1975. For the situation which unleashed Lâm Văn Tức’s self-sacrifice, and of which Americans had been kept in the dark please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c.

            But the match which lit the gasoline soaked monk remained in memory and the example was followed in January of 1969, in Czechoslovakia by Jan Palach who felt that he could not tolerate any longer the demoralization of his country under Communist dictatorship. Well, when Buddhists – “Asiatics” – do that it’s rather sad but for a Central European to publicly set himself aflame was totally unheard of. Communism had to go and it did, although it took another 20 years. First in the CSR, then in Poland; East Germany followed and eventually the Soviet Union. The march for freedom in Europe, which was achieved without bloodshed, did not go unnoticed in the rest of the world.

Our president, George H.W. Bush, to his credit, intended to seize the moment in 1991 and dragged the reluctant ex-terrorist Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli Prime Minister, to a conference table in Madrid to settle the Palestinian problem once and for all in a peaceful manner. Shamir came but the Palestinians were not allowed to plead for their country and had to be part of a Jordanian team. Arafat, who was the only one who had the power to negotiate on behalf of his people, had to stay in Tunis. Since he had no country, but wanted one, he still used Shamir’s previous tactics and was, therefore, a terrorist with whom one does not negotiate. Shamir had no intention to follow up on the recommendations of the conference and knew that whatever document the conference produced would remain just a piece of paper. His group of loyal followers in our country would undermine any enforcement of the concessions which Israel would necessarily have to make. This power lay in the hands of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee. http://www.aipac.org) which I have previously discussed here in several essays and can be consulted with the “edit find” function when the entire documents are downloaded. Some of the most important ones are, in alphabetic order, Annapolis Déjŕ Vu, December 1, 2007; The Israel Lobby, October 1, 2007; and Whither Zionism? Revisited, March 1, 2009. When Bush, the Elder, insisted that the loan guarantees Shamir had wanted would not be given unless the latter stopped settlement building, he had sealed his fate. In spite of the joy over the victory during the brief 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, reelection had become out of the question. He would have needed Jewish money but that went in overwhelming amounts to Bill Clinton. The latter learned the lesson and stayed away from the troublesome Middle East until the end of his second term when he thought he might be able to duplicate Jimmy Carter’s feat. Instead of peace with Egypt there would be peace with the Palestinians and the Nobel Prize would be his. It was not to be because the Israelis then, now, and ever had absolutely no interest in making any deal with the Palestinians which, by necessity, would force them to make territorial concessions. The conquered land in the West Bank and Jerusalem is being tenaciously held and settled because, according to the Bible, God had been promised it to them about three thousand years ago, although He is irrelevant for most other day to day activities. That this claim would be laughed at if any other religious or national group were to advance it does not matter.

The Palestinian problem was allowed to fester. The Israelis built more settlements, partly with our tax money, erected a virtual apartheid wall from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and when we complained they acted on the principle enunciated by Moshe Dayan, “The Americans give us money, they give us weapons and they give us advice. We take the money and the weapons but ignore the advice.” This stance reminded me of words our grandmother told us and had been told to her by our grandfather, “Wenn man dir gibt, so nimm, wenn man dir nimmt so schrei.” Whenever someone gives you something take it, but whenever someone takes something from you then yell bloody murder! This maxim has worked marvelously for the Israelis, especially after the 1967 war, but is likely to come to an end in this century because another match has been lit.  

On December 17, 2010 an obscure young Tunisian in an obscure little town decided he couldn’t take it anymore. Mohamed Bouazizi of Sid Bouzid was 26, unemployed, and tried to support his family by selling produce on the street. The authorities asserted that he did not have the proper permit and when a female law-enforcement officer slapped him in the face this was the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s neck. Not only was the slap itself intolerable but for a woman to do this to an Arab man was twice the insult. He went to the governor’s office to complain but was turned away without being listened to. He then vowed publicly that he would set himself on fire, and when that had no effect he followed through on the threat an hour later in front of a government building. In former years the episode would have gone unnoticed but no longer; we are “wired.” The Internet and cell phones have connected us to remote parts of the world and when something dramatic happens to one of us the rest of the world instantly knows about it. We have become one huge organism although we, as yet, don’t want to draw the consequences from this fact. News of the self-inflicted Auto da fé, first sparked local riots, which were brutally responded to, but they subsequently spread to the capital. When huge crowds of unemployed and underemployed people appeared in the streets President Ben Ali got frightened and left the country for safer pastures. Tunisians celebrated their Jasmine revolution, although the freedom they had temporarily achieved is still on shaky ground.

The spark lit by Bouazizi jumped across Tunisia’s neighbor, Libya which initially remained calm, to Egypt plagued by similar problems as Tunisia. These consisted, apart from the dictatorial regime, of a well-educated citizenry which had no possibility to use its talents. Let me now digress and relate a few personal experiences from the middle1980’s when I had been invited by my colleague Dr. E. Reynolds of London, England, to participate in a week-long epilepsy training seminar for Middle Eastern physicians in Kuwait. The Iran-Iraq war was on and we could hear cannon fire from the Shatt el-Arab. The local organizer was originally from Iraq and since I knew that the next International Congress for Epilepsy was scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in 1987, I asked him naively if he would come and we would meet again there. He looked at me astonished and asked, “Would you, as an American, have gone to Berlin in 1942?” It had totally eluded me that, apart from Egypt and Jordan, Israel is still at war with the rest of the Arab world. 

Since the Kuwaitis not only paid for the trip and all its attendant expenses but also gave me a handsome honorarium I thought I might as well take the opportunity and spend it in Egypt, a country I had long wanted to see. The flight over the Sinai was impressive. I was especially struck by the ravines in the mountains which in earlier millennia must have carried water and while admiring the view I was served with an excellent goulash accompanied by Viennese waltzes on the speaker. The relevant aspects of the Egypt visit were twofold. In War&Mayhem I described my visit to a “pharaonic village” which immediately reminded me of gypsy huts I had seen and photographed at the outskirts of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, during my stint as a Wehrmacht soldier. The point here is my conversation with the cab driver. By the way wherever I am I always talk with the drivers because they represent the genuine voice of the people. He was trained as an engineer, had continued his studies in America but had subsequently gone back to his family. Since there was no job for him, he resorted to taxi driving which occasionally earned a reasonable baksheesh. This was my first inkling that all was not well with the Mubarak regime. In Luxor I admired not only the magnificent temple and Karnack as well as the Valley of the Kings, with the obligatory visit to Tut’s tomb, but also had a hankering to go for a sail on the Nile.

I stayed at the Winter Place Hotel which is famous not only because Lord Carnarvon as well as Howard Carter had stayed there, but the first skulls X-rays of Tutankhamen, obtained by Prof. Harrison’s team of Liverpool University, were developed in one of its bathrooms. Thanks to the generosity of the Kuwaitis I could afford it. Falluccas were docked near the hotel and after lunch one day I engaged a late middle aged Egyptian to take me on a brief sailing trip. Initially all went well but then Shu, god of the wind, decided to take a nap and the man with his boy, who was about 10 or so, had to paddle. Fortunately Shu felt their plight, woke up after a while and we got safely back to our shore. But in the interval a brief conversation took place which burdened me with guilt for the rest of my life. It consisted only of two sentences because his English was limited and my Arabic non-existent.

As usual every conversation starts with, “Where are you from?” When I said, “America,” he asked, “Take my son to America.” The request was utterly sincere because he saw no future for the boy in his country. I felt that it was impossible for me to grant his request but was so ashamed that I remained mute. Contrast this with another conversation I had with a cab driver in Rhodos which I visited a few years later, courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s money, where I had likewise been invited to participate in a course on epilepsy. Next to Egypt, Greece had always held a special attraction for me and in Rhodos I even found Rodini Park, which established some kind of kinship.  The cab driver asked the usual question of “where are you from?” and I said America; he replied, “America is good, Rhodos is better!” He was right because a life like in Rhodos is indeed worthy to be lived. The island has a long history. According to the Iliad it had supplied some ships for Agamemnon’s fleet when he went to Troy; it was known for its philosophers in Greco-Roman times and the Colossus of Rhodos, which guarded the harbor, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A third taxi cab ride, this time in the current century and in Vienna was likewise relevant. The driver was Egyptian and vented his fury on Mubarak and his regime. At the same time he castigated America for perpetuating that dictator simply because we want to make the Middle East safe for Israel, while at the same time guarding our oil supply, which largely has to travel through the Suez Canal. Although the cab driver knew that I was from America we talked in German and that may have loosened his tongue.

This was the Egypt America did not want to see and which exploded on February 11.To this must be added that the average American has only a very limited interest in history, which at times even extends to that of his own country. When George H.W. Bush announced at the beginning of the Gulf War that he would “bomb Iraq into the stone age,” I was appalled. Iraq is just the modern name for Mesopotamia which, together with Egypt, had laid the foundations for our civilization and this was to be obliterated! One really wonders if a country, which is led by such ignorance and disrespect for others, can retain its pre-eminence in the world.

As far as Egypt is concerned the main mental image the average American tends to have is of “Ol’ Pharaoh” who refused to let Moses and his people “Go” as it says in the Negro (dare I still use this word?) Spiritual. Protestant America reared on the Bible’s Old Testament has a thoroughly distorted view of ancient Egypt. Social justice was not invented by Amos and the other biblical prophets in the first millennium BC. They were latecomers who had cribbed from the then proverbial “wisdom of Egypt.” I have discussed this to some extent in The Moses Legacy (which can be downloaded from this site) and would like to encourage readers to familiarize themselves with the contents of the chapter on Moses. Jewish writers also have belittled the Egyptians for not having had a written book of law, thereby implying that it was a lawless or autocratic society with a thin upper crust and a fearful, ignorant slave population on the bottom. When one reads ancient Egyptian literature this was far from true and I would encourage whoever reads these pages to familiarize themselves with The Dawn of Conscience by James Henry Breasted. Unfortunately the book is out of print but available in major libraries and ought to be digitized.

The Egyptians didn’t need law books and their concomitant curse, lawyers whose job it is to twist words. Their laws were written, as the Bible recommends to the Israelites, into their hearts. They had a conscience and the hallmark of the society was Maat: the goddess of truth, justice and order. I have discussed the concept previously (Our Need for Maat; August 1, 2007) as well as in The Moses Legacy and The Jesus Conundrum and will, therefore, use only one example which bears a direct relationship to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation. It is the story which has been called “The Eloquent Peasant,” and can be found in Breasted’s book as well as in Ancient Egyptian Literature by Miriam Lichtheim.  The original papyrus was dated to the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 BC) but the oral version may well have been older. At any rate: Khun-Anup was a poor peasant from an equally poor village whose family was on the verge of starvation. He, therefore, loaded some donkeys with the meager products of his village to trade them for barley at Heracleopolis. But on the way he had to pass the house of Nemtynakht, a greedy rich man, who devised a plan to rob the peasant of his goods. He made the passage for the peasant and his donkeys so narrow that he had to trespass on the edge of Nemtynakht’s grain field. Donkeys tend not to be aware of property rights and one of the animals helped itself to a mouthful. This was the pretext for Nemtynakht to claim the legal right to confiscate the donkeys including their wares. For good measure he also gave the peasant a sound thrashing when he complained about the theft. But Khun-Anup knew his rights and sharply criticized the rich man for his disrespect of Maat. When this proved fruitless the peasant betook himself to the local governor, Rensi, who had a reputation for justice. The governor put the situation before his council but, as cronies do, they favored Nemtynakht and opined that the peasant was probably lying. When Khun-Anup was told of this outcome he went before Rensi himself with a discourse on the duties of good government and an appeal to Maat. The governor was impressed but did not immediately act on the peasant’s request. Instead he informed pharaoh who advised that Rensi should play a little game and pretend not to hear. Now we need to know that “not to hearken,” was one of the most severe offenses a public official could commit. Khun-Anup was aware of this major sin but did not know that a game was being played and his pleas became increasingly sharper including the words, “Do justice [Maat] for the sake of the Lord of justice … For justice is for eternity. It descendeth with him that doeth it into the grave when he is placed in the coffin and laid in the earth. His name is not effaced on earth, but he is remembered because of right. [Breasted’s translation]” Since this speech was also of no avail another similar one followed. Rensi then betook himself again to Pharaoh who ordered a complete inquest into the matter. It revealed that the peasant’s claim was just and not only his property, but also that of Nemtynakht was restored to him.

Obviously this was a story and real life may well have been different but the concept of how one ought to conduct oneself including officials, as well as pharaoh himself, clearly existed. Had there not been justice in the realm, the Egyptian dynasties could not have existed for the thousands of years they did. The story obviously also reminds one of the hard headed judge who initially refused to listen to the plight of a poor widow but eventually relented as told in the gospel of Luke. Dignity and justice are what people want from their governments and when they are consistently refused, they will rebel. In a way Khun-Anup’s plight of bygone millennia, was quite similar to that of Mohamed Bouazizi, but when the governor of his province refused to listen to his complaint it was not a game, and it led to the known fatal outcome. Yet, when officialdom does not listen to the just complaints of its people it invites retribution and that is what we are currently seeing in the Middle East and North Africa.

We must now ask: what is America’s role in all of this turmoil? Our administration officials are currently thoroughly confused and have no idea what to do because the concept of Maat eludes them. They preached human rights for all but when they are taken at their word they don’t know what to do because their friendly dictators are under siege. President Obama, the latest champion of freedom and dignity for all, has now also been exposed in the Arab world as a windbag who says the right things but when the chips are down does the opposite. I am referring to his actions on February 18 which showed to the Arabs that America does not really care for them but only for the Israelis. I am referring, of course, to the infamous veto of the Security Council Draft Resolution to condemn Israeli settlements on occupied territory in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Susan Rice, who vetoed it, obviously only did what she was told, was embarrassed, but had to follow orders. It is Obama who has to shoulder the blame.

Let us take a closer look at that Resolution. All it really said was that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the resolution all final issues within one year should be resumed and stressed their urgency; it reaffirmed the illegality of settlements on occupied territories and that they constitute a major obstacle to a just and lasting peace; both parties were to behave according to international law and act on previous agreements and obligations. It also stated that “Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory; including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard.” There is nothing in this resolution which American administrations have not subscribed to in the past but yet it had to be vetoed. Support came from 130 countries and 14 Security Council members with America the lone dissenter.   

Why did Obama act the way he did? The answer is simple, he put re-election above justice and thereby violated the pledge he gave to the Arab world in his speech at Cairo University in June of 2009. This cost him the trust of the Arab and Muslim world who will henceforth disregard his words and we may have to brace ourselves for more anti-American feelings, which may well translate themselves into official policy by newly elected leaders in the Muslim world. Apart from Palestinians, Pakistanis are especially incensed. Ask yourself how you would feel if a member of your innocent family: wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, sister were to be regarded as “collateral damage” in a war against the Taliban which is none of your concern. When the killing is done by a drone which is operated by someone who sits in Virginia, Nevada or some other State of the Union at a video-console and with his joystick unleashes death and destruction your anger would be even greater. Is this what America really stands for? Would you be satisfied if you got some money for your loss, as tends to be the practice? The fact that there are aspects of life, such as respect and dignity, which cannot be bought, has yet to sink in. But it may well be brought home in a rather painful manner in the not too distant future when Pakistan’s U.S. friendly government falls victim to the fury of its people.

There exists a misconception in our country. The people who demonstrated and are demonstrating today in the various Middle Eastern countries and Libya do not necessarily want democracy. They want a government which is honest, provides essential services and justice which are all encompassed within the one word MAAT. If we look at our own country, the beacon of democracy, we can readily see that we are falling far short of this mark. Although we elect our “leaders” the election process is deeply flawed and the two major parties have only one main goal to gain and then stay in power. Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the solution of the vast problems the country faces is as rare as the proverbial blue moon. This is not a model which should be advertised for the rest of the world to follow.

As long as a country has a Constitution which guarantees equal rights to all of its people and not only abides by it but also listens to, and acts, on the legitimate concerns of the citizenry it doesn’t matter if the titular head is a king/queen, as for instance in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and others, an Emir as in the Gulf States, or a President as is the case in Democracies and Republics.

 As far as Egypt is concerned we can only hope that its current military government will respect the lessons of its own history; hearken to the voice of the people, and re-establish Maat in their country. In so doing it would set a powerful example not only for Arab and Muslim countries, but for the rest of the world which so sorely needs it.