The Origins of a Holy Book

Modern research into Islam's origin and early years has been hampered by the paucity and inaccessibility of ancient texts, and the reluctance of Muslim governments in places like Yemen to allow wide access to them.

Later this spring, a team of scholars at Germany's Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences will complete the first phase of what will ultimately be an unprecedented, two-decade effort to throw light on the origins of the Koran.

The project, called the Corpus Coranicum, will be something that scholars of the Koran have long yearned for: a central repository of imagery, information, and analysis about the Muslim holy book. Modern research into Islam's origin and early years has been hampered by the paucity and inaccessibility of ancient texts, and the reluctance of Muslim governments in places like Yemen to allow wide access to them.

But, drawing on some of the earliest Korans in existence - codices found in Istanbul, Cairo, Paris, and Morocco - the Corpus Coranicum will allow users to study for themselves images of thousands of pages of early Korans, texts that differ in small but potentially telling ways from the modern standard version. The project will also link passages in the text to analogous ones in the New Testament and Hebrew Bible, and offer an exhaustive critical

commentary on the Koran's language, structure, themes, and roots. The project's creators are calling it the world's first "critical edition" of the Koran, a resource that gathers historical evidence and scholarly literature into one searchable, cross-referenced whole.

Critical editions - usually books rather than websites - are a commonplace in academia. University bookstores do a brisk business in critical editions of the world's best-known literary works, from "The Iliad" to "Hamlet" to "Das Kapital.Ó" As labor-saving devices for scholars and teaching aids for students, they can be invaluable. Presenting a novel or manifesto or play in its historical context helps readers to see the ways it was shaped by contemporaneous events and local attitudes, how it was built from the distinctive cultural building blocks at hand. Embedding a work in critical commentary - and critical editions often include essays that are sharply at odds with each other - gives readers a sense of the richness of possible readings of the text.

But the form takes on a special significance with holy books, where millions of people order their lives in accordance to what they see as divine language. Standard versions like the King James Bible or the regularized Cairo Koran (the version, first printed in 1924, that most Muslims have today) help to unite the faithful in one common reading of their holy book. A critical edition, on the other hand, by its nature, highlights the contingency of a text's creation and gives readers the tools to interpret it for themselves.

Among Koranic scholars, there's a great deal of excitement about the Corpus Coranicum, which will help them make better sense of a text that - despite the fact that millions regularly recite from it and live their lives according to its precepts - remains something of a historical and theological puzzle

"I think it is a big deal," says Jane McAuliffe, the editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an and the president of Bryn Mawr College, "it's a wonderful opportunity to do something that the field of Koranic studies has wanted to do for a long time."

At the same time, the impending publication of the Corpus has set off a small stir outside the scholarly world. Islam has a long and lively tradition of theological debate, but in recent years revisionist scholars in the Muslim world have been threatened, branded heretics, and even attacked for their work. Already, the creators of the Corpus Coranicum, in response to press coverage in Germany, have felt the need to publicly insist on al-Jazeera and in visits to Muslim countries that they have no intention of undermining the faith. In part what's to blame is the strict, austere form of Islam that is dominant in some parts of the world, but the friction also stems from the relationship all Muslims have to the Koran. To a mainstream Muslim, the Koran is not merely a divinely inspired text put together by disciples, as most modern Christians believe the Bible to be. It is the literal word of God, dictated directly to Mohammed. To question that is to insult the faith.

The fact that it will be born on the Web makes the Corpus Coranicum seem a quintessentially 21st-century project, but its roots actually extend back to the 1930s. Then, as now, Germany produced some of the world's leading Koranic scholars - proteges of the great 19th-century linguist, historian, and "Semiticist" Theodor Noldeke.

The archive that was to become the Corpus Coranicum was started by the German Arabist Gotthelf Bergstrasser, who traveled through Europe and the former Ottoman Empire photographing the old Korans he turned up. After Bergstrasser's death in a mountain climbing accident in the Alps, a colleague named Otto Pretzl took over, before he died in a plane crash while serving in World War II. That left the photo archive in the hands of a young scholar named Anton Spitaler.

Then, in a mystifying twist detailed in a 2008 Wall Street Journal article, Spitaler began to claim, falsely, that the photo archive had been destroyed in 1944 by an Allied bombing raid. Spitaler kept up this deception until the early 1990s, when he revealed to a former student of his named Angelika Neuwirth that he still had all 450 rolls of film. He offered to give them to her - she is today the head of the Corpus Coranicum project - and he died a decade later without explaining himself.

According to Islam, the Koran is a series of revelations Mohammed was given through the Angel Gabriel, starting in 610 AD and ending with Mohammed's death two decades later. Those revelations were recorded and compiled by Mohammed's followers. In the religion's early years, little need was seen for a standardized text - Mohammed and most of his followers were illiterate and as a result the Koran was meant to be recited rather than read (a tradition that remains central to Islam). Transmission was mainly oral, with written texts simply an aid. But within decades of Mohammed's death, conquests had ballooned the size of the Muslim empire and many of the original disciples were themselves aging and dying, and one of Mohammed's successors decreed a standard written version to unify the growing faith. In a pre-printing-press world, however, the process took time, and alternate versions continued to be written and read for decades, and perhaps centuries.

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Modernity And Morality

To be civilized you should have western habits and consumption patterns and also have to mimic western way of life. On the top of that list comes women's liberation. That is, if women in your culture are not 'liberated' by discarding the traditional garb or dress, you must be 'oppressing' your females, and you are uncivilized!

The values that I grew up with and learned as a child born in South Asia nearly half a century ago are quite different than the ones preached and practiced today in the West. In our zeal to be called civilized we have automatically assumed it to equate with modernity. Thus, in our political jargon when our western leaders talk about being civilized they mean how well we have adopted the modern western way of life. That means, to be civilized you should have not just an ordinary wired telephone but a wireless/cellular phone, TV, cars, computers and other amenities of the western modern life - running faucets, western habits and consumption patterns. Minus those modern amenities, you simply are not civilized. But that is not enough! You have to also mimic western way of life. On the top of that list comes women's liberation. That is, if women in your culture are not 'liberated' by discarding the traditional garb or dress, you must be 'oppressing' your females, and you are uncivilized! It is no accident that France and its president, born of a broken family and himself a playboy, Nicolas Sarkozy are now defining how the 'cultured' and 'civilized' French society ought to look like.

Sarkozy is married, if I am not mistaken his third time, to Carla Bruni, a singer who is more known for exhibiting her naked body than her voice. So, as you can guess: hijab and Muslim veil, worn by many traditional Muslim women, are unacceptable in that 'emancipated' country whose 'civilized' natives still have not learned the basic hygiene, let alone the true meaning of morality. If you care not to expose your kids to sex, you better switch off the TV after sunset. In such countries of sin and immorality, where sometimes you can't distinguish a real politician from a part-time pimp and a prostitute, and, (probably pertinently so,) run by racists and bigots, it is no wonder that immigrants with their conservative values and family-oriented culture and tradition are considered a direct threat to the very foundation of those states. It is that age-old cry and fury of the 'liberated' inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah: you must be like us in order to reside here; there is no place for the Prophet Lut (Lot) or his righteous kind!

Sarkozy is surrounded by guys like Bernard Kuchner who not too long ago is accused by hard-hitting investigative journalist Pierre Pean in "The World According to K." of a "possible conflict of interests" in working as a consultant in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo while serving as government-appointed head of a public body supporting health services in Africa. In the Netherlands the far-right, anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders of the PVV has won major gains in local elections, with results indicating that he may dominate the political scene in the run-up to the general election in June. After winning the election, Wilders told cheering supporters at a rally in Almere, "We are going to conquer the entire country ... We are going to be the biggest party in the country. The leftist elite still believes in multiculturalism, coddling criminals, a European super-state and high taxes." Wilders likens the Qur'an to Hitler's Mein Kampf and wants Muslim immigrants deported.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's Christian Democrats remain the largest party in the Netherlands, but for how long? On March 18, 2010, the PVV gave up trying to form a governing coalition in Almere, where it won more seats than any other party. In a press release, the party said most of the other parties had refused to give ground to PVV demands on what it describes as "essential issues". The PVV's demands included a ban on headscarves for city council workers and in all institutions and clubs "which get even one cent of council money." The ban would not have applied to other religious items such as Christian crosses and Jewish skull caps. Is it anything but blatant discrimination and religious bigotry?

In the French-speaking Quebec province of Canada Premier Jean Charest this week proposed an anti-niqab bill. The proposed law is misguided and described by the Ottowa Citizen as a clumsy, politically-charged hammer. The newspaper says, "Of the 200,000 or so Muslims in Quebec, maybe a few dozen women wear a niqab, a veil that covers the entire face except for a slit for the eyes. To draft legislation singling out such a tiny minority suggests the law has more to do with pandering to fears about immigration -- specifically, the failure of some immigrants to integrate -- than solving any real, non-aesthetic problem posed by niqabs... The anti-niqab bill is clearly meant to be a political statement, and an ostentatious one at that, not unlike the infamous code of behaviour drafted by the Quebec town of Herouxville in 2007 that prohibited all sorts of practices, real or imagined, that are associated with immigrants. The joke was that Herouxville had virtually no immigrant population." The editor is absolutely right, but will the racist politicians in Quebec see the light, or follow their racist cousin in France? Never mind a westerner's preference for almost everything artificial and unnatural, cosmetics and perfumes to hide his/her natural imperfections and bad body odors, are the modern amenities the real measures of civilization?

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Let's consider TV. It has both positive and negative sides. There is no doubt that it allows us to learn about our planet and galaxy. A peasant in Lalmonirhat in Bangladesh can now get a glimpse of life in Louisiana, USA - located on the other side of the globe without ever having to sail or fly there. But news, history, geography, health and science are not the only things shown on TV. Seldom do we realize that with TV, we have brought violence and sex into our family rooms, and not the kind of things family members can watch together in the same room! Just turn on any major channel in the USA between 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. You will see soap operas about dysfunctional families where everyone seems to be cheating - husband cheating his wife and vice-versa, let alone the unmarried guys and gals whose preoccupation seems all about sex. In places like Germany and France, it is much worse; you can hardly find a channel in the evening that is free of showing sexual stuffs. If this kind of lifestyle is what a western civilization has ended up producing who in the right mind would need this poison?

Unfortunately, a dominant culture is like a magnet that attracts others to mimic its ways. Many in the third world and developing countries are, therefore, learning those bad ways faster and unquestioning. Take a look at the beaches in South America where traditional bikinis worn by women are getting fast replaced by G-string bikinis. It is no surprise that we see many young boys in South Asia today with earrings, a practice that was not known or seen in the past. Many youngsters are now addicted to drugs -- another statement to show off their borrowed modernity and liberated soul. Many possess illegal arms. It is not difficult to find a strong correlation with a rise in sex-related crimes, violence and divorce in these societies today. Women in traditional homes are discarding natural herbs for synthetic cosmetics!

In this culture of modernity often times it is the large and small screen actors that become the role models to copy. The things that they wear become our fashion and style. We are not shocked any more to learn that most Hollywood actors live immoral lives; they are into drugs and sex. Divorce and sex scandal are rather common facets of life in the Hollywood. The hottest topic that dominated the media the last week was all about sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. It is obvious from the reports unearthed thus far that Pope Benedict has a long history, dating at least back to 1979, of condoning such sexual abuses within the Church. As a micro-manager all his life, he was on the top of all such affairs and cannot now evade accountability. He allowed the transfer of molester priests that preyed on children. There are also questions about Benedict's directive as a Vatican cardinal in 2001 that bishops worldwide were to keep pedophilia investigations secret under threat of ex-communication. Regrettably, the church leaders chose to protect the church instead of the children.

As a child growing up in Bangladesh, I remember the story of a rickshaw puller who stopped by a well to help a village girl to put her water pitcher on the head. Neither the doer of the kind act nor the beneficiary had to utter a single word; he knew the kind of help the girl needed. After he was able to place the water pitcher on the head of the girl, he left for his rickshaw while the girl left for her home. No "thank you" was even needed to be uttered by the girl. It was all that natural - giving and receiving. That is what real civilization is all about: where each member of the society does continuous small acts of charity without expecting reward or recognition. It is also free of hypocrisy or pretension.

Surely, a society and civilization that prides in its modernity where immorality, sex and abuse are engrained into its very core, and fascist inclinations are interwoven with its sinful and faulty character cannot be the role model or guiding light for anyone, much less for others with strong life-giving and -sustaining ethics, values and mores.

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Islam and the Gender Equity Movement

The mere proposal of an All-Africa Muslim Women formation nearly caused brouhaha at a conference I recently attended.

Some righteous males started pontificating about women wanting to dethrone them from their God-given seat of being the centre around which the life of a woman should revolve. They accused women of wanting to beat them in the marvelous game of smoking cigarettes, wearing trousers and sleeping around. If this was aimed at intimidation and muting and mutilating the women's voice, I must say, this is a strategy that seems to be working very well for the blessed man. The most enthusiastic and articulate woman activist started giving men assurances that they are by no means feminists. She stressed that they want to organize themselves precisely to preach to the women who are not dressed properly, that women can police the behavior of deviant women who wear trousers or don't put on scarves better than men can ever do. The males who defended such a forum did this on the basis of enabling women to impart religious education to children and other, with emphasis on the usual message we hear from the pulpit: Islam provides rights to women, but it is men who dispense these rights.

My support for the idea was informed by an expectation that it will serve as a platform for women to challenge male-centric expressions of Islam, push for a fiqh that allows the voices and experiences of women to be articulated and to unapologetically confront the inequities and injustices that women face in society. I had thought that such a platform would raise issues such as women leadership and women scholarship in Islam, access to education, decent and adequate space for women in places of worship, women representation in Mosque committees and on the board of Muslim schools and other Islamic institutions. Thanks to the all-powerful protestation and rave of the male voice, this was shrinking into a place for women at a table laid out by men, with strict instructions not to forget that this is a men's world.

As the vigorous debate went on the voices of the women were getting muter and muter. This vindicated my observation that patriarchal, chauvinist and sexist men deliberately make generalizations and equate the feminist and gender equity movement with women smoking cigarette, drinking beer, tearing off their bras, discarding motherhood in order to intimidate and bully women away from the struggle against gender-based inequities and injustices. The same Muslim men who rile against the Islamophobic painting of Muslims with one brush find it so easy and comfortable to stereotype the feminist and gender equity movement as a lobby of immodest, anti-men, wild women. They deliberately ignore the diversity of the strands and perspectives within the feminist movement.

The reality of the matter is that as a political, cultural and/or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women, and concerned with issues of gender difference, women rights and interests, feminism addresses a range of issues and causes most of which are compatible with the Islamic call towards justice for all. These issues and causes include campaigns for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily integrity and autonomy, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; or workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; against misogyny; and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women.

In addition to ignoring the validity and legitimacy of the many issues and causes addressed by the feminist and gender equity movement, those who bash women's rights and gender equity also deliberately or ignorantly don't recognize the diverse theories, philosophies and currents within this movement. In their zeal to portray feminists as all being frustrated, estranged, elite white and black women, the 'haters' lump liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, environmentalist feminism, anarchist feminism, individual feminism, post colonial feminism and Black feminism or Womanism together. What seem to be lost to the gender equity bashers is that at its very birth Islam transformed the gender dynamics in society by recognizing the full personhood of women, placing a prohibition on female infanticide, recognizing inheritance, turning marriage into a social contract rather than a status, making dowry to be a nuptial gift to the women rather than a bridal-price paid to the father, and providing inheritance and property rights to women at the time such rights were unknown of.

The patriarchal and sexist brigade within the Muslim community thrives on political apathy, low culture of reading, decline in popular education and lack of access to material by classical and contemporary Muslim scholars who tackle these issues outside the framework of literalist and a-contextual fiqh. According to the catalogue of the list of books in our libraries and bookstores, and our curriculum in Muslim institutions, Qasim Amin's Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Mar'a) (1899) was never written and the feminist undertones in the works of the first woman to undertake Quran exegesis - Aisha Abdal Rahman - aka Bint al Shati (Daughter of the Riverbank) - are just a figment in the imagination of modernist scholars.

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How many Madressa and Dar-ulooom graduates know that women's assertion of their right to be acknowledged, listened to and heard starts with the female companions of the prophet Mohammed (s) demanding to know from the prophet (s) why Allah does not address women directly in Quran - to which the Almighty responded by henceforth using the phrase 'believing men and believing women' when addressing the believers? And that this woman activism gender equity tradition continues in the medieval period and the eighteen century with Ibn Arabi arguing that women could achieve spiritual stations as equally high as men and Nana Asma'u - the daughter of the prominent and eminent reformer Uthman Don Fodio - pushing for literacy and education of Muslim women. How many Madressa teachers tell their students of the founding of the University of Al Karauine by Fatima al-Fihri in 859 CE? How many of our children know that 26 of the 160 Mosques built in the 12 and 13th century during the Ayyubid dynasty were funded by a women's charitable trust (Waqf) and that half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were women?

Needless to mention the obvious example and inspiration behind women's active participation and leadership in public political, economic, social and cultural affairs women were the mothers of the believers, Khadijah (RA), Aisha (renowned scholar of hadith and military leader), Fatima (RA) (the beloved daughter of the prophet).

And the prophet's (s) words of praise to the women of Medina: 'How splendid were the women of the ansaar; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned in the faith.' The prophet's (s) words clearly articulate that guarding one's chastity, spirituality and righteousness does not dictate invisibility in public affairs. This is a sufficient rebuttal of the myth that women scholarship, leadership and activism are equal to the loss of shame and decency. What about stressing in the rules of modesty the language and tone we use when talking to our employees and house-helpers most of whom are old enough to be our parents, irritating cat-calls, suggestive looks and gestures towards women in the streets or passes at our house-helpers? How many men who rap about modesty talk down to their wives and treat them like they are dolls?

How many of the men who rant about modesty use vulgar, derogatory and degrading language, are rude to people, and give shabby treatment to their aged parents and grandparents? How many of these men are equally enraged when they witness girl-children below the age of eighteen being handed over in arranged/forced marriages to adults, and how many speak out in outrage against honor-killings and the disowning of children by their parents for marrying outside the village, race, tribe, and sect. How often do we rebuke men for strolling around the beach with bare chests and walking the streets in Bermudas? It seems like for many of us males, modesty and chastity has little to do with God and the integrity of the individual but a lot to do with controlling women's body, voice and movement to ensure that our wives and our daughters remain our property.

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Islam's European Reformation?

The controversial Tariq Ramadan's latest book promotes a "Western" version of Islam. Is he the "Muslim Martin Luther"?

Late last month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton lifted a six-year visa ban on the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, an Oxford professor and Europe's premier voice of reformist Islam, had been prohibited by the Bush administration from entering the U.S. on the grounds that he had given money to the Palestinian militant group Hamas - a charge he vigorously denied. Ever since, Ramadan has polarized public opinion in both America and Europe: the left lauds him as a "Muslim Martin Luther," while the right demonizes him as an extremist in sheep's clothing. Despite the passionate debate, neither side has shown much interest in the substance of Ramadan's message - conveniently summarized in his concise new book, What I Believe (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Ramadan wrote What I Believe as "a work of clarification." In it, he emphasizes that his goal is to fashion a distinctively "Western" expression of Islam that does not require Muslims to choose between their national identities and their religious one. According to Ramadan, a person can be both fully Muslim and fully French, British, or German; these multiple identities shift and blend depending on the situation we face.

Ramadan's intellectual agenda reflects his own unconventional upbringing: his maternal grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical group that championed the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt and which launched the modern era of Islamist politics. Ramadan's father, Said, was one of al-Banna's senior deputies, and after al-Banna's death, he went into exile with his family in Geneva. There, he committed his life to preserving and disseminating al-Banna's legacy. The first of Said Ramadan's children born in Europe was Tariq. Caught between the Islamist cauldron of Egypt and cosmopolitan Geneva, Tariq grew up parsing his multiple and seemingly competing identities. As he writes, "I am Swiss by nationality, Egyptian by memory, Muslim by religion, European by culture, [and] universalist by principle."

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U.S. Can't Afford Military Aid to Israel

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to "go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work." One week later, he sent his FY2011 budget request to Congress, which included a record-breaking $3 billion in military aid to Israel.

This requested increase in U.S. weapons to Israel -- part of a ten-year $30 billion agreement signed between the two countries in 2007 -- qualifies on both counts as a program that the United States can't afford and that doesn't work in establishing a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Data published recently by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation shows that U.S. military aid to Israel comes at a financial and moral price that this country cannot afford to pay. Its website reveals that this same $3 billion earmark for Israel could be used instead to provide more than 364,000 low-income households with affordable housing vouchers, or to retrain 498,000 workers for green jobs, or to provide early reading programs to 887,000 at-risk students, or to provide access to primary health care services for more than 24 million uninsured Americans.

If U.S. weapons were going to Israel for a good purpose, then perhaps a coherent guns versus butter debate would be appropriate. However, Israel repeatedly misuses U.S. weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians who are forced to live under its illegal 42-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

During the Bush Administration, Israel killed at least 3,107 innocent Palestinian civilians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. Israel also injured thousands more innocent Palestinians and destroyed billions of dollars of Palestinian civilian infrastructure including homes, schools, factories, government buildings, and even Palestine's only airport. The severity and scale of this killing and destruction were made possible by hi-tech U.S. weapons provided to Israel at taxpayer expense.

And during Obama's first year in office, Israel continued to misuse its stock of U.S. weapons to entrench its apartheid policies toward Palestinians by maintaining its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip -- collectively punishing its 1.5 million Palestinian residents by severely restricting the flow of humanitarian relief -- and building illegal Israeli-only colonies on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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Obama names U.S. envoy to Islamic Conference

President Obama announced Saturday the appointment of Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer, to be his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Obama made the announcement in a video conference to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. In his message, Obama called Hussain "an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff," who would strengthen his policy of outreach to the world's Muslims.

Obama has made repairing U.S. relations with the Islamic world an important element of his foreign policy, an effort highlighted by his call for a "new beginning" in a speech in Cairo last June.

In the statement Saturday, Obama said Hussain has "played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo," and would continue to do so in his new position. Obama noted that Hussain is a Hafiz of the Koran, someone who has memorized the holy Islamic text.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference comprises 57 nations with a goal of promoting Muslim unity.

As a deputy associate counsel to Obama, Hussain has worked on national security, new media, and science and technology issues, according to a White House statement. He previously worked as a trial attorney for the Justice Department and as a legislative assistant on the House Judiciary Committee.

Hussain attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his law degree from Yale Law School. He holds master's degrees in public administration and Arabic and Islamic studies from Harvard University.

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Gaza and Lebanon: Beware the Iron Wall, the Coming War

The Israeli military may be much less effective in winning wars than it was in the past, thanks to the stiffness of Arab resistance. But its military strategists are as shrewd and unpredictable as ever. The recent rhetoric that has escalated from Israel suggests that a future war in Lebanon will most likely target Syria as well. While this doesn't necessarily mean that Israel actually intends on targeting either of these countries in the near future, it is certainly the type or language that often precedes Israeli military maneuvers.

Deciphering the available clues regarding the nature of Israel's immediate military objectives is not always easy, but it is possible. One indicator that could serve as a foundation for any serious prediction of Israel's actions is Israel's historical tendency to seek a perpetual state of war. Peace, real peace, has never been a long-term policy.

"Unlike many others, I consider that peace is not a goal in itself but only a means to guarantee our existence," claimed Yossi Peled, a former army general and current Cabinet Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

Israeli official policy - military or otherwise - is governed by the same Zionist diktats that long preceded the establishment of the state of Israel. If anything has changed since early Zionists outlined their vision, it was the interpretation of those directives. The substance has remained intact.

For example, Zionist visionary, Vladimir Jabotinsky stated in 1923 that Zionist "colonization can...continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through." He was not then referring to an actual wall. While his vision took on various manifestations throughout the years, in 2002 it was translated into a real wall aimed at prejudicing any just solution with the Palestinians. Now, most unfortunately, Egypt has also started building its own steel wall along its border with the war-devastated and impoverished Gaza Strip.

One thing we all know by now is that Israel is a highly militarized country. Its definition of 'existence' can only be ensured by its uncontested military dominance at all fronts, thus the devastating link between Palestine and Lebanon. This link makes any analysis of Israel's military intents in Gaza, that excludes Lebanon - and in fact, Syria - seriously lacking.

Consider, for example, the unprecedented Israeli crackdown on the Second Palestinian Uprising which started in September 2000. How is that linked to Lebanon? Israel had been freshly defeated by the Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, and was forced to end its occupation of most of South Lebanon in May 2000. Israel wanted to send an unmistakable message to Palestinians that this defeat was in fact not a defeat at all, and that any attempt at duplicating the Lebanese resistance model in Palestine would be ruthlessly suppressed. Israel's exaggeration in the use of its highly sophisticated military to stifle a largely popular revolution was extremely costly to Palestinians in terms of human toll.

Israel's 34-day war on Lebanon in July 2006 was an Israeli attempt at destroying Arab resistance, and restoring its metaphorical iron wall. It backfired, resulting in a real - not figurative - Israeli defeat. Israel, then, did what it does best. It used its superior air force, destroyed much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The resistance, with humble means, killed more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers during combat.

Not only did Hizbullah had penetrated the Israeli iron wall, it had also filled it with holes. It challenged, like never before, the Israeli army's notion of invincibility and illusion of security. Something went horribly wrong in Lebanon.

Since then, the Israeli army, intelligence, propagandists and politicians have been in constant preparation for another showdown. But before such pending battle, the nation needed to renew its faith in its army and government intelligence; thus the war in Gaza late December 2008.

As appalling as it was for Israeli families to gather en masse near the Israeli Gaza border, and watch giddily as Gaza and Gazans were blown to smithereens, the act was most rational. The victims of the war may have been Palestinians in Gaza, but the target audience was Israelis. The brutal and largely one-sided war united Israelis, including their self-proclaimed leftist parties in one rare moment of solidarity. Here was proof that the IDF still had enough strength to report military achievements.


Of course, Israel's military strategists knew well that their war crimes in Gaza were a clumsy attempt at regaining national confidence. The tightly lipped politicians and army generals wanted to give the impression that all was working according to plan. But the total media blackout, and the orchestrated footage of Israeli soldiers flashing military signs and waving flags on their way back to Israel were clear indications of an attempt to improve a problematic image.

Thus Yossi Peled's calculated comments on January 23: "In my estimation, understanding and knowledge it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north." Further, he claimed that "We are heading toward a new confrontation, but I don't know when it will happen, just as we did not know when the second Lebanon war would erupt."

Peled is of course right. There will be a new confrontation. New strategies will be employed. Israel will raise the stakes, and will try to draw Syria in, and push for a regional war. A Lebanon that defines itself based on the terms of resistance - following the failure to politically co-opt Hizbullah - is utterly unacceptable from the Israeli viewpoint. That said, Peled might be creating a measured distraction from efforts aimed at igniting yet another war - against the besieged resistance in Gaza, or something entirely different. (Hamas' recent announcement that its senior military leader Mahmoud al- Mabhouh was killed late January in Dubai at the hands of Israeli intelligence is also an indication of the involved efforts of Israel that goes much further than specific boundaries.)

Will it be Gaza or Lebanon first? Israel is sending mixed messages, and deliberately so. Hamas, Hizbullah and their supporters understand well the Israeli tactic and must be preparing for the various possibilities. They know Israel cannot live without its iron walls, and are determined to prevent any more from being built at their expense.

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