[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]

To the Editor:

My first response to Dr. Henry Gonshak's articles is that he writes in half-truths and colorful emotional rhetoric, telling only half the story. His long review-essay published in The Montana Professor is no more than Euro-American white studies. I personally hope I can be a professor and have a Ph.D. without becoming a "whore of imperialism." So much of Western intellectual tradition is just that.

Dr. Gonshak seems to overlook the fact that terrorism is a two way street. Many of us after 9/11 are still critical of US policies. Since the end of WWII, the US has carried out not only a number of direct military interventions, but has supported US-trained death squads in Central America, and also supported South Africa's war against front line States in Southern Africa. In the Middle East US policy has been one-sided, to say the least. Criminals attacked us, and they were evil. This does not lesson the hideous crimes against humanity that are daily coming from Washington.

Dr. Gonshak seems to make Arab and Islam one. This is not only a fallacy but an example of insulting ignorance. Turks are not Arabs, for example, and not all Muslims are Arabs, nor are all Arabs Muslims. Turkey is not a democracy, at least many Kurds feel that way. Not all Muslims are fundamentalists. His conflict of cultures seems a validation for colonialism, the control of a weak nation by a powerful one. US policy was, is, and will remain, short of a radical change, one of insensitive domination. After WWII the US dominated the region of the Middle East with an arrogant lack of historical or cultural awareness. Dr. Gonshak is all too forgiving of these past crimes, and therefore cannot know how to deal with a regional fundamentalism that is as ugly as any European Fascism. His anti-Arab (i.e., Palestinian) comments, in point of fact, are a typical example of American xenophobia, which has always been intolerant of the fact that Palestinians have an equal not a greater claim to the land. This dismissal of Palestinian rights comes off as regional Manifest Destiny: settlers against the indigenous people of the region. His half-truths refuse to deal with a settler state that cannot act in good faith and pull out the West Bank or Gaza, which only feeds the fundamentalist Muslim's hate. The One State Solution may be the only answer.

Dr. Gonshak's comments on women sound more like 19th century racialism than a real concern for Arab women. His heroic attack against Muslim terrorism, which I share, is weakened when he becomes a shameless apologist for the state-sponsored terrorism of Washington and Tel Aviv, both nations with dreams of Empire: one a regional Manifest Destiny, the other a global one. He fails to realize that fundamentalism, national chauvinism, and racism and intolerance are not only an Islamic problem. Dr. Gonshak's conflict of cultures overlooks US policy, which appears nothing other than one of insensitive domination.

Finally, Dr. Gonshak has a strange concept of democracy, one in which Western culture has a monopoly on righteousness. Democracy looks very different in a non-European setting where kinship and community concerns take priority over individual rights, more on this later.

Nearly all nation states are in fact multinational states. This goes beyond multiculturalism. We are talking about coherent communities that have historical continuity. The political struggle goes beyond equal rights for the individual and is predicated on mutual co-existence. Liberal civil rights--equal rights, equality of opportunity, private property, universal suffrage, majority rule, and due process--were important in the past and must be preserved, but they are inadequate models for the future.

Today, in all nation states, privileged groups are highly successful in using law to preserve or expand that privilege. Liberal civil rights must be preserved because they are the only tool the disadvantaged have in challenging that privilege. Too often established laws themselves seriously harm the disadvantaged groups. To accept these laws as final puts the oppressed groups in a position of on-going oppression. The struggle expands to one of co-sovereignty. The One-State Solution means being bi-national, which requires continual negotiations on the boundaries and definitions of nationality within the nation state. Nationalism of the dominant power all too easily comes off as national exclusivity and chauvinism. This of course leads to resistance, and the antagonism will never end until the Palestinian refugees' right of return is guaranteed. Complete equality for all Palestinians is of primary importance. Palestinian control over Palestinian communities is also a central concern. Within the larger nation state demands for worker's rights, women's rights, and equality among all Israel's citizens must be part of the daily struggle.

Michael Joseph Francisconi
History, Philosophy, and Social Science
UM-Western

Professor Gonshak replies:

In the introduction to my two-part article on the war on terrorism, I "welcomed responses from readers, whether you agree with me or not." The purpose of my article was to inspire debate on issues of enormous importance to America and the world. So, I'm pleased that Professor Francisconi has taken me up on my offer. Unfortunately, his dyspeptic letter puts words in my mouth. I defy Francisconi to find one sentence in my article that claims that "all Muslims are fundamentalists." Nor do I ever contend that "Western culture has a monopoly on righteousness." On the contrary, I spend several paragraphs disagreeing with Jean Bethke Elshtain's claim in Just War Against Terror that Christianity is more inherently compatible with democracy than Islam. I also write that "the Ottoman empire was in almost every respect--militarily, politically, scientifically--superior to its nemesis, Christian Europe." Nor is my article oblivious to America's misdeeds abroad, in Central America and elsewhere; in fact, I praise Noam Chomsky for "pointing out darker aspects of US foreign policy that have received too little attention, such as our fondness during the Cold War for backing friendly right-wing despots in Latin America." Nor do I ever claim that all Muslims are Arab, since I note "non-Arab Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, whose peoples practice a more moderate version of Islam."

But it's no surprise that Professor Francisconi distorts what I actually wrote, since his letter eschews reasoned, informed rebuttal in favor of ad hominem attacks. He dismisses my sincere plea on behalf of oppressed Muslim women as exhibiting nothing more than "19th century racialism," for reasons he never bothers to explain. His letter also accuses me of being anti-Arab, an American xenophobe, a validator of colonialism and (my favorite) a "whore of imperialism." But, according to Francisconi, I'm not alone in being a rabidly imperialistic hooker. On the contrary, in the next sentence Francisconi claims that "whore of imperialism" is an apt description of the entire "Western intellectual tradition"! Is that what he's teaching his students?

Turning to Israel, Francisconi damns the Jewish homeland as a "settler state that cannot act in good faith and pull out of the West Bank or Gaza." Apparently, Francisconi hasn't been watching the news, since (even as I write) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is planning a unilateral pull-out from Gaza that will involve the dismantlement of Jewish settlements. Nor does Francisconi appear aware that poll after poll shows that a clear majority of Israelis favor their country's withdrawal from the Occupied Territories in exchange for peace and a two-state solution. Francisconi's own answer to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a bi-national state under which "the Palestinian refugees' right of return is guaranteed." As I wrote in my article, "demographic realities (the Palestinians have a much higher birth rate than do Israeli Jews) ensure that such a state would soon have a Palestinian majority and a steadily dwindling Jewish minority." Allowing all the Palestinian refugees now living in Arab countries (many of whom haven't resided in Israel since the 1948 war) to return to their former homes within Israel proper would only tilt the demographic imbalance even further. In essence, Francisconi is calling for the Jewish state to commit national suicide.

In my article, I faulted many on the academic left for being virulently anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-Western, and for ignoring reasoned debate and instead simply tarring their opponents with demeaning epithets such as "racist" and "colonialist." I cite Professor Francisconi's letter as further proof of what I was talking about.

[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]