Don’t celebrate an enemy’s death...

Daily Times, June 12, 2006
WASHINGTON DIARY: Dushman mray te khushi na kariay? —Dr Manzur Ejaz

We all know that if there are some Jewish individuals in the neo-con cabal that pushed for the Iraq invasion, this does not implicate every Jewish person. Not all the neo-cons are Jewish and there are many like Mr Berg who opposed the war to the extent of forgiving his son’s murderers. This is surely not easy

“Terminated” — read the headline of a newspaper. It declared the death of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. From President George Bush down to the average political analyst, everyone has declared victory in Iraq. The media celebrated the death of a human being as if cockroach had been squashed.

However, one man, as far as the media reports indicate, reminded me of Mian Mohammad Baksh’s famous verses:

“Dushman mray te khushi na kariay, sajnan wi mar jana

Deegar te din aaya Mohammad, sham pai dhal jana”

(Don’t celebrate an enemy’s death: dear ones are going to die too. The day has reached the afternoon mark and will end as the sunset arrives).

The man was none other than Michael Berg whose son was beheaded, allegedly by Zarqawi or his men. Commenting on Zarqawi’s death Mr Berg lamented “I have no sense of relief, just sadness that another human being had to die... I have learnt to forgive a long time ago, and I regret mostly that that will bring about another wave of revenge from his cohorts from Al Qaeda.”

Mr Berg’s son, Nicholas Berg, was first detained by the US security agencies. Then he fell into the clutches of the insurgents. After keeping him in captivity for three weeks they beheaded him and the video recording of the death was posted on the Internet. It was alleged that Zarqawi was present at the beheading.

However, Mr Berg does not believe this and says that the government has been lying about everything since it decided to invade Iraq. Why would they tell the truth about his son’s death? He also accuses the FBI of detaining his son on false suspicion, not allowing him to leave Iraq on time.

Furthermore, while speaking to Fox News, he did not accuse Zarqawi of being “responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq”. He said, “I think George Bush is... George Bush is the one that invaded this country, George Bush is the one that destabilised it so that Zarqawi could get in, so that Zarqawi had a need to get in, to defend his region of the country from American invaders.”

It takes a lot to forgive your son’s alleged murderer and to understand the political essence in such circumstances. It is interesting that Michael Berg, an anti-war pacifist, belongs to a Jewish family. Therefore, it is not easy to look at human situations in black and white or to box people according to one’s mental convenience as one of my readers from Lahore suggested. The latter accused columnists of being hypocritical when they use the term neo-cons without explicating its Jewish identity.

To be fair we all know that if there are some Jewish individuals in the neo-con cabal that pushed for the Iraq invasion, this does not implicate every Jewish person. Not all the neo-cons are Jewish and there are many like Mr Berg who opposed the war to the extent of forgiving his son’s murderers. This is surely not easy; I wish my friend from Lahore or I could find such courage in similar circumstances.

Furthermore, the supreme leadership, even within the neo-con group, has not been in Jewish hands: George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice are all fundamentalist Christians. Of course prominent Jewish cohorts like Paul Wolfwitz and Richard Perle have played important roles in the run-up to the Iraq war but the fact remains that the Republican Party and Southern Evangelical Christians have provided the backbone for the interventionist foreign policy and for steering the country towards the extreme right domestically. Ironically, most Jewish neo-cons, unlike their Christian counterparts, are socially liberal.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Iraq war was meant to secure Israel’s future and the Jewish lobby has worked very hard to push the US towards it. However, it is worth remembering that the US, as the sole superpower, has her own impulses and compulsions. This time its interests coincided with Israeli interests in the Middle East region; the next time they might complement the priorities of another partner in another continent.

It is also true that most Jewish immigrants have a soft corner for Israel as do most Indian and Pakistanis expats for their respective homelands. Nonetheless, unlike many Muslim immigrants, the Jewish component is a very significant one in the US peace movement. On other domestic issues, Jewish Americans are enlightened and aligned with the Democratic Party more than any other religious or ethnic minority.

For example, after a few years of disillusionment post-9/11, Pakistani-Americans have resumed their pro-Republican Party conservative stance in US politics. According to reports, a crowd of prosperous Pakistani-Americans showed up for the re-election campaign and fundraising party of one of the most conservative, pro-war, senators from Virginia, Sen George Allen. So, it is very difficult to sort out which of the two is, inadvertently or otherwise, supporting the Iraq war more effectively — the pro-Republican Party Pakistanis or the Jewish Americans.

We know that Jewish-American presence in the anti-war groups is very significant and Michael Berg is not the only Jewish person to side with the Iraqi patriots against the US army. But his was the sole voice telling America that “Dushman mray te khushi na kariay, sajnan wi mar jana”.

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com