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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2014 |
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
9
opinion
Australia: Isolated no more
Julia Baird
Contributing Writer
CHAPPATTE / LE TEMPS (GENEVA). GLOBE CARTOON
This Israeli election matters
Thomas L.
Friedman
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has set
new elections in Israel for March 17. Israel has had critical elections before,
but this could be its most important, because the Israeli right today is no
longer dominated by security hawks
and free-marketeers like Netanyahu. It
is dominated by West Bank settlers and
scary religious-nationalist zealots like
Naftali Bennett, who, if they run the
next government and effectively annex
the West Bank, will lead Israel into a
dark corner, increasingly alienated
from Europe, America and the next
generation of American Jews.
At the same time, the neighborhood
Israel lives in has never been so full of
threats. If the Israeli center-left and
center-right want to avoid the South African future that the Israeli far right is
offering them, then they have to create
a coalition that can persuade the Israeli
silent majority that they understand,
and can blunt, those threats — and allow Israel to securely withdraw from
most of the West Bank, either in a negotiated deal with the Palestinians or unilaterally.
‘‘The importance of the 2015 election
cannot be too highly emphasized,’’ Ari
Shavit, the Haaretz columnist wrote
last week. ‘‘This time the question isn’t
about the price of an apartment or cottage (cheese), but whether there will be
a home for us at all. This time the
struggle isn’t about convenience but
about the core of our existence. Because this time the forces threatening
Israeli democracy and the Zionist en-
terprise from within are unprecedented
in their power.’’
So how might the Israeli center contest this foundational election? The
best approach I’ve heard comes from
Amos Yadlin, Israel’s former chief of
defense intelligence, and the pilot who
dropped the bomb through the roof of
Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor.
Yadlin, who now directs Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, argued to me that Israel’s center needs to
run on the core values of its founding
prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
That is an Israel, he said, ‘‘that understands the limits of power of a small
country,’’ and is focused solely on building ‘‘a state that has a Jewish majority,
a state that is democratic where all citizens are equal, a
state that is secure
How might
even in a threatening
the country’s
environment and a
center contest state whose higher
this foundamoral caliber is as
tional
valued as it was in
the past.’’ And that
election?
means a state with a
clear, secure border
with its Palestinian neighbors.
Yadlin is a tough-minded analyst. He
worries that the Israeli right is completely out of touch with the nation’s
standing in the world and the left with
the dangers in the neighborhood. While
he knows that all his Ben-Gurion goals
may not be achievable (and Israel may
not have a Palestinian partner), he
wants the next Israeli government to get
caught trying — and trying again — to
achieve them. What distinguishes him
from Netanyahu and the Israeli right is
that Yadlin is not looking for excuses to
say that Israel has no negotiating partner, the way Netanyahu did out of fear
that genuine negotiations about borders
would blow up his right-wing ruling coalition, or the way the Jewish settlers do,
because they know genuine negotiations
would blow up their messianic vision for
forever controlling the West Bank.
Yadlin says he wants the next Israeli
government to take ‘‘all of Israel’s innovative spirit and brains’’ and apply
them to ‘‘out-of-the-box thinking’’ to
find a secure way forward. He sketched
three paths for me based on the Israelidesigned traffic management application Waze.com. ‘‘As with Waze, if one
route is blocked, one recalibrates and
chooses a different route to the same
destination,’’ said Yadlin. ‘‘We propose:
the bilateral negotiations route; the
Arab Peace Initiative route; and the independent route.’’
The preferred route, argues Yadlin,
‘‘is that of bilateral negotiations with
the Palestinians to reach a permanent
agreement. If this track is impossible,
as was proven in 2013-14, then it is time
to move to the second route, that of a
revised Arab Peace Initiative.’’ Try to
leverage the willingness of Arab states
to normalize relations with Israel if it
reaches a deal with the Palestinians.
The more the Arab states put on the
table, the more Palestinians can, in effect, offer Israel and the more cover
Palestinians will have for concessions
they will have to make. ‘‘If this route,
too, proves to be blocked,’’ he said, ‘‘we
must move to an independent track
that will ensure that the viable twostate solution is kept. Israel will deploy
along borders that guarantee a Jewish
majority and a secure state.’’
Netanyahu will still be a formidable
candidate, but, interestingly, his popularity plummeted when he called for
new elections. I know why: Israelis,
though dubious about Palestinian intentions and terrified of their region,
are tired of a leader who keeps telling
them: There is no exit, everyone hates
us and the future will be full of yesterdays. In a country whose national anthem is ‘‘Hatikvah’’ — ‘‘The Hope’’ —
the prime minister came to symbolize
the opposite to many Israelis, who still
want someone with the attributes of
Ben-Gurion to test and retest whether
hope is possible. The Israeli candidate
or party that understands that will
have a great chance of winning.
A vast migration tragedy
William Lacy Swing
GENEVA Amid the multitude of World
War II horrors, few tug at mankind’s
conscience like the voyages of refugee
boats whose passengers died fleeing
war, mass murder and genocide: the
schooner Mefkure, sunk in 1944 on the
Black Sea, taking over 300 lives, or the
Struma, with almost 800 fatalities in
those same waters two years earlier.
Then there was the notorious St.
Louis, which in 1939 left Hamburg for
Havana, with more than 900 German
refugees aboard. They were forced back
to Europe after Cuba, the United States
and Canada all balked at letting them
land. We now know hundreds of those
returnees perished in the war.
Yet those tragedies pale in comparison with what is happening today. In 2014
more migrants have died traveling —
nearly 5,000 — than there were passengers and crew on those three voyages.
Migrants can die by the hundreds,
most recently in September, when as
many as 500 lives were lost off the coast
of Malta. But they also die by the tens
and dozens, almost daily, disappearing
into the waters of the Mediterranean
and Red Seas, the Caribbean, the Gulf
of Aden and the Bay of Bengal.
Our group, the International Organization for Migration, has data showing
that 2014 will be the deadliest year for
migrants on record. Our final figures, to
be published later this month, will more
than double the 2,378 deaths we reported last year. In the Mediterranean alone
this year, some 3,400 migrant men,
women and children have drowned —
a fivefold increase over 2013. Altogether, the number of migrant deaths in 2014
on land and at sea stands at 4,868.
Will 2015 be even worse? It well could
be, unless we commit to making
changes in how we view migration —
and how we manage it.
First, let’s take stock. Migration is
not a catastrophe, nor is it an invasion.
Often, it isn’t even an emergency. It is,
as throughout history, an inevitability.
People move to improve their lives,
whether that means access to a better
food supply or simply a better chance of
surviving conflict. The International
Organization for Migration calculates
that at least 232 million people now live
outside the borders of their homelands.
Yet only a fraction of that population is
fleeing distress, what we consider
‘‘desperation’’ migration.
Second, we must acknowledge the
many factors behind the migration
surge. Demography is the biggest. For
the most part, migration is a byproduct
of the quadrupling of the human population over a single century, an unprecedented event in the life of our species.
Rising global consumption means
rising international labor demand, which
offers citizens of poor countries the prospect of rising family incomes. That spurs
reunification migration for many families or, in cases of individuals, yearnings
from youths looking abroad for new careers, better education or simply a Facebook account to connect with peers
who’ve already migrated to new lives.
That’s part of another ‘‘pull’’ factor:
communication. Advances in technology do not only spread news of opportunities faster than ever before around
the globe. They also speed cash to those
entrepreneurs, legal and otherwise,
who move migrants and put those new
opportunities within reach.
That leads to the third task before us:
rediscovering our compassion. Sadly,
mass migration has led to a cruel irony:
the rise of unprecedented anti-migrant
sentiment worldwide. Certainly countries have a right, indeed an obligation,
to control their borders. And, yes, economic downturns make migrants easy
scapegoats for unemployment or depressed wages. Throw in post-9/11 security concerns, and it’s not difficult to
understand why indifference to migrants’ hardships has led to hostility,
fear and resistance to their arrival.
But that’s merely an explanation —
and one that we no longer can accept.
Increasingly, we see that policies that
criminalize migration invite lethal consequences. Migrants unable to find safe,
legal means of travel will turn to some of
the planet’s most vicious criminal gangs
for relief, which often leads to recklessness, even murder.
At Lampedusa,
Nearly 5,000
Italy, last year I
people have
watched as 366
died on land
corpses were preand at sea in
pared for burial, vic2014, double
tims of unscrupulous
last year’s
criminals in Libya
who were willing to
number.
stuff migrants into
unsafe vessels bound
for Europe. A year later the tragedy has
only worsened, with more horrific incidents of drowning. Often the passengers themselves realize how unsafe the
crafts are and refuse to board. Often
they are battered into submission, tortured and then forced out to sea.
At the International Organization for
Migration we have heard of nearly
identical crimes taking place off the
coasts of Bangladesh and Thailand, and
recently have chronicled the rising tide
of death on routes connecting the Horn
of Africa with the Arabian Peninsula.
History reminds us that closing our
hearts to the misfortunes of others is a
recipe for disaster. Sadly that is what’s
happening in many parts of the world,
with avoidable and tragic consequences for migrants seeking safety.
WILLIAM LACY SWING is the director general
of the International Organization for
Migration.
Australia’s remoteness is, for those of
us who live there, possibly the greatest
thing about it.
We are, in the main, undisturbed.
There have been some exceptions; in
the Second World War, Japanese planes
bombed us in the north, and their midget submarines slunk into Sydney Harbor in the south, sinking a ferry. But
generally, we are safe.
This is the way we like it. (Even if we
had a rather awkward debate about
whether a former prime minister actually called us ‘‘the arse end of the
world.’’) The author Bill Bryson probably spoke for a lot of Americans when
he wrote, ‘‘Australia is mostly empty
and a long way away. Its population is
small and its role in the world consequently peripheral.’’ It is ‘‘stable and
peaceful and good. It doesn’t need
watching, and so we don’t.’’
Until now. For 16 excruciating hours
this week, we all watched anxiously as a
50-year-old Iranian refugee, Man Haron
Monis, held 17 people hostage in a Lindt
cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The hostages held hands up against
the window, pinning up a black flag with
white Arabic writing on it. The city grew
still as office buildings were evacuated
and workers piled into ferries under an
incongruously peaceful blue sky.
Three people died, including the hostage taker, after the police saw a flash of
gunfire and stormed the cafe. The other
two were a 38-year-old mother of three
and the cafe’s 34-year-old manager.
There are many questions as to how
multiple warnings about Mr. Monis
were ignored. How was someone
charged with being an accessory to the
murder of his 30-year-old ex-wife allowed out on bail — not once, but three
times in the last year?
And why was he not on a terror watch
list? Even the prime minister, Tony Abbott, was baffled by this. Mr. Monis had
sent hateful ‘‘condolence’’ letters to the
families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan
between 2007 and 2009. After he was
charged with sending these ‘‘grossly offensive’’ letters by mail, he declared
that he would in the future deliver them
by hand. He managed to escape a two-
PETER PARKS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
year jail sentence and was given 300
hours of community service instead, but
he appealed. Just three days before he
staged the siege, his appeal to have this
conviction overturned was rejected.
When he left court he told reporters,
‘‘This pen is my gun, and these words
are my bullets. I’ll fight with these
weapons against oppression to promote
peace.’’ Until he got real bullets.
When will we take violence against
women more seriously? This man had a
long record of vicious harassment of his
wife before being implicated in her brutal death. He had been charged with
more than 40 allegations of indecent and
sexual assault from seven women who
had come to see him in Sydney when he
had purported to be a ‘‘spiritual healer’’
with black magic powers. The most recent charges were made in October.
Finally, how did he manage to get a
gun when we have such stringent gun
laws?
While the alarm from this ‘‘lone
wolf’’ attack will lead some to argue
that we need more laws to expand surveillance and security, the laws already
in place should have been sufficient to
alert the police to the danger he posed.
The measures the government is introducing to counter the heightened terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State
— surveillance and foreign-fighter laws,
including a clause that could put journalists in jail for up to 10 years for disclosing information on special intelligence
operations — would not have looped Mr.
Monis further into any net. Authorities
already could have legally monitored
his phone and Internet activity.
Possibly worst of all, the greatest
message might be that there is none. A
mentally ill, angry or paranoid man
might simply have used the words Islamic State as a crude vessel for his
morphing identity, and fundamentalist
violence as a vehicle for his own multifaceted hatred. Australian Muslims,
both Shiite and Sunni, had disowned
him repeatedly. He did not have an Islamic State flag in his possession; he
asked for the police to deliver one as
part of his (unmet) conditions.
As the prime minister said, this was
one disturbed man carrying out a ‘‘sick
fantasy.’’
Perhaps the most heartening part of
the Australian response was the enormous wave of concern that arose expressing fear that the siege would result
in aggressive behavior toward Muslims.
The hashtag #illridewithyou arose
after the shootings when one woman
told another who had taken off a head
scarf to put it back on, and that she
would walk with her to ensure she
would not be harassed. As people raced
to post their own offers of riding with
anyone who traveled in fear, thousands
placed bouquets of flowers in Sydney’s
business district, a long, solemn carpet
of respect and regret.
Australians can no longer rest on our
remoteness, and our laid-back identity
has been punctured. But if tolerance can
seep through the holes, it will be a triumph for all who oppose the pall of terror, and the pull of the violence that can
capture the imagination of a madman.
JULIA BAIRD
is an author based in Sydney.