Advocating Radicalism
For Advocacy Group Bloggers, Hamas, Fatah Violence Has its Upsides.
Impressionable young people, even those perusing advanced degrees at such prestigious schools at Georgetown and Columbia University, can be forgiven for some naiveté in commenting on the great complexities of Middle East violence. But this week, blog entries featured on the Advocacy Project’s website from these students - who, as ‘Advocacy Project Peace Fellows’ are serving as volunteers at NGOs such as the Alternative Information Center - stretched the concept of ‘looking on the bright side’. The Advocacy Project is a Washington, D.C.-based NGO whose funders include the Dutch Government, the Italian Embassy, the Open Society Institute, World Vision, and UNICEF.
“The pictures in international media of masked and heavily armed men roaming the streets, coupled with reports that donors are withdrawing aid, give the impression that life has stopped. It has not. With conflict comes resourcefulness…” opined Erin Wroblewski of Georgetown University, who is volunteering with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in East Jerusalem. Amali Tower of Columbia University, who is volunteering with the Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour, was “impressed by the strength of Palestinian civilians under pressure.” Eliza Bates, also of Columbia, was at first unsure whether it was just fireworks she was hearing (though later she revealed it was actually gunfire): “I’ll never understand how people in a conflict zone could be so fond of fireworks, but Palestinians love them,” she gushed.
Such reactions reveal a certain disconnect - for these volunteers have little or no words of reaction concerning such horrific images as summary executions in the streets and hospitals, bodies flung from the top of multiple story buildings, or the destruction and looting of churches in Gaza. Indeed, behind this myopic focus stands a more serious problem. A look at the website content of the host of these blogs, The Advocacy Project — which coordinates projects and activities with politicized NGOs in the Palestinian Authority - reveals that this organization fosters scholarship and activism with clear pro-Palestinian bias.
A significant example of such bias and politicization can be seen in a February 2007 featured report by Iain Guest, director of The Advocacy Project, (”Defending Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory - Challenges and Opportunities” ). The report offers only a brief mention of Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel - omitting any mention of the past year’s suicide bombings. By contrast, they offer a far lengthier, detailed run down of Israel’s alleged “intensification of war and occupation.” The sources, such as OCHA, relied upon in the report are questionable. Moreover, the report includes remarks such as, “Palestinians are disillusioned with the current peace model which is based on the Oslo Accords. The Accords made no reference to international human rights law, which may explain why the last decade has been so violent and abusive.” The report fits a general pattern of NGO research which tends to ignore or erase the overall political and security environment within which complex events unfold in the Palestinian Authority. Such one-sided reports omit the context for Israeli security or defensive measures. Palestinian radicalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and gross government corruption in the Palestinian Authority are glossed over or ignored. Rather than advocating for peace, therefore, the work of the Advocacy Project and its blogging fellows serve to exacerbate the conflict.
Seems to me “Israeli radicalism,” “Jewish religious fundamentalism” and the “security context” in which Palestinian decisions are made are far more often ignored. In fact Israel has dominated the debate for so long (at least in English language media) that one never hears these terms at all.