The Jewish question

Uri Avnery Right from its founding, the state of Israel became the Holocaust-state. But we are not a helpless ghetto anymore – we have powerful armed forces, we can indeed do unto others as others have done unto us. The old existential fears, mistrusts, suspicions, hatreds, prejudices, stereotypes, sense of victimhood, dreams of revenge, that were born in the Diaspora, have superimposed themselves on the state, creating a very dangerous mixture of power and victimhood, brutality and masochism, militarism and the conviction that the whole world is against us. Can such a state survive and flourish in the modern world? European nation-states have fought many wars. But they never forgot that after a war comes peace, that today’s enemy may well be tomorrow’s ally. Nation-states remain, but they are becoming more and more interdependent, joining regional structures, giving up huge chunks of their sovereignty. Israel cannot do that. The vast majority of Israelis believe that there will never be peace. They are convinced that “the Arabs” are out to throw us into the sea. They see mighty Israel as the victim surrounded by enemies, while our “friends” are liable to stick a knife in our back any time. They see the eternal occupation of Palestinian territories and the setting up of belligerent settlements all over Palestine as a result of Arab intransigence, not as its cause. They insist that Israel be recognised as the “nation-state of the Jewish people”. This means that Israel does not belong to the Israelis (the very concept of an “Israeli nation” is officially rejected by our government) but to the worldwide ethnic-religious Jewish Diaspora, who have never been asked whether they agree to Israel representing them. It is the very negation of a real nation-state that can live in peace with its neighbours and join a regional union. I have never laboured under any illusions about the magnitude of the task my friends and I set ourselves decades ago. It is not to change this or that aspect of Israel, but to change the fundamental nature of the state itself. It is far more than a matter of politics, to substitute one party for another. It is even far more than making peace with the Palestinian people, ending the occupation, evacuating the settlements. It is to effect a basic change of [or “in”] the national consciousness, the consciousness of every Israeli man and woman. It has been said that “you can get the Jews out of the ghetto, but you can’t get the ghetto out of the Jews.” But that is exactly what needs to be done. Can it be done? I think so. I certainly hope so. Perhaps we need a shock – either a positive or a negative one. The appearance here of Anwar Sadat in 1977 can serve as an example of a positive shock: by coming to Jerusalem while a state of war was still in effect, he produced an overnight change in the consciousness of Israelis. So did the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993. So did, in a negative way, the Yom Kippur war, exactly 38 years ago, which shook Israel to the core. But these were minor, brief shocks compared to what is needed. A Second Herzl could, perhaps, effect such a miracle, against the odds. In the words of the first Herzl: “If you want it, it is not a fairy tale.”

Degrees, doctorates and dishonesty

Kamila Hyat The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor The text of the citation was read out at the Karachi University where a beaming Mr Rehman Malik, clad in a green and gold robe plus of course the traditional mortar cap, could easily be mistaken as the work of a comic writer, commissioned to produce a script for a stage play. The text describes Mr Malik – now of course ‘Dr’ Malik, as a former ‘brilliant student’ of the university. Without access to academic records, we of course have no way of ascertaining whether this is true. But certainly most citizens have been left stunned by other aspects of the citation, which states among other extraordinary claims that as Pakistan faced the brunt of terrorist violence, Rehman Malik “with his leadership qualities and dedication strategised the operational plans and led the war on terror to contain Taliban throughout the country. The terrorists’ network stands broken due to his aggressive management of law-enforcement agencies with singular and extraordinary leadership skills and qualities”, these feats apparently going a long way to boost the morale of the nation. Beyond this, Mr Malik is credited with providing “strategic and operational support to the government of Sindh to combat and contain the miscreants operating in Karachi which helped to root out the menace of anti-social elements and thus maintaining a stable law and order situation in Karachi. It has since been improved considerably and normalcy has retuned in Karachi. He has been pleading the national cause and the unmatched sacrifices of Pakistan in war on terror in UN, Interpol and other international forums very effectively and professionally.” The unknown, and unacclaimed, individual who wrote out the flowery phrases of the document which continues at length along the same vein clearly has a big future ahead of him or her as a fiction writer. But moving beyond the surreal and coming back to reality, it is obvious no one believes what has been stated in this document. Mr Malik is widely regarded as a buffoon, what with his comments about aggrieved girlfriends or wives being behind target killings in Karachi. The doctorate will not change this image. All it really does is highlight the wider issue of academic dishonesty, even at the most prestigious institutions in our land. The fierce debate raging at KU, where 307 members out of the academic staff of 550 have questioned the award and the manner it was made, with the university’s vice chancellor and Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad apparently using his influence to grant the degree without consulting the University Syndicate as required as per the usual protocol. Perhaps Dr Ebad will consider retrieving the degree and the sycophancy which underlies it, following the latest threats of a PPP-MQM fracas following the decision by the Sindh PPP leadership – under pressure from dissenters backing Dr Zulfikar Mirza – to take back a decision to restore the controversial local bodies system to the province, as the MQM had demanded. Of course this is not the lone example of academic controversy surrounding doctorates and other degrees. Senator Babar Awan refused, despite the pages of printed information put out, that his ‘doctorate’ was received from a ‘degree mill’ college in Hawaii, forced to shut down by the US authorities several years before he claimed to have obtained his degree from it by correspondence. The existence of a degree held by the president is equally dubious, since the UK authorities have no information whether the college he says he attended and from where he obtained what he thinks is a BEd degree even exists anywhere on the British Isles. But in many ways all this is irrelevant. Whether or not a person holds a degree is in some ways unimportant; it makes no difference as far as their standing as a legislator goes. And of course the 2009 Supreme Court ruling, followed by legislation to eliminate the essentially undemocratic decision made by a dictator is welcome. What is far more disturbing is the dishonesty inherent in attitudes towards academic degrees – and of course so much else in our lives. This was highlighted by the 2008 drama as the Higher Education Commission declared degree after degree put forward by the legislators to be fake. Perhaps the distortions in our sense of morality were exemplified by the comments made by Balochistan Chief Minister Aslam Raisani who sagely remarked at the height of the debate that a “degree was a degree”, whether it was fake or authentic. This of course raises a quite unique philosophical debate, with one tempted to ask Mr Raisani if we have reached a point where distinction between truth and false has become so blurred that it is indistinguishable. Coming back to the fierce controversy raging at KU over the Malik doctorate issue raises new questions about the state of higher learning in our country. It seems degrees and other academic honours have lost their worth. Universities around the world are increasingly reluctant to accept academic qualifications from Pakistan, and PhD theses sometimes contain material that one would expect an eighth grader to produce with ease. This of course is not the fault of the student but of the system that produces such people and determines the limited scope of our educational system. Plagiarism is commonplace with entire paragraphs stolen off the internet. At the Punjab University, even professors have been found guilty of such academic dishonesty. We need to find ways to save our institutions of higher education. The farce permitted at KU must not take place again. In the past our institutions were respected. And they produced scholars, thinkers and scientists and didn’t pandering to political needs. The HEC, the future of which remains dubious, has made some attempt to stem the slide towards disaster. Universities are losing esteem among the people because of the way important decisions are made and the manner in which events take place especially when someone who hardly commands any respect in the eyes of citizens steps down from the academic stage clutching the gilded scrolls of academic excellence.

The flyover frenzy

Tasneem Noorani It is not only that the urban population of Pakistan is on a sharp increase. Every year, 134,000 cars and 835,000 motorcycles are being added to Pakistan’s increasingly congested roads, not to mention the numberless rickshaws, to enable urban commuters to travel to workplaces and homes. The main response of the government, whether in Islamabad or provincial capitals like Lahore or Karachi, is to build flyovers and widen roads, even if this involves cutting old roadside trees. The provincial governments think this “progress” is going to get them votes while it incidentally eases traffic: the resulting relief in traffic is merely temporary and the impact on their vote banks at best remains doubtful and to be proven in the future. Like the population increase, the maddening traffic is growing exponentially in our cities, becoming such a scourge that it makes one wish one were living in a village. Countless billions of rupees are spent on flyover-building and road-widening projects, even though they only benefit the owners of cars, not the less fortunate Pakistanis who have few other means of viable transport in the absence of functioning public transport, like buses. The motorbikes and rickshaws used by those who can afford them in the latter group only serve to clutter the roads still further. All over the world, governments spend far more money on betterment of public transport, rather than on flyovers and wider roads. London, whose public transport we admire so much, is a fine example of this. London was spending £4 billion in subsidy on public transport every year until two years back when I had the opportunity to interact with its top public transport body, Transport for London (TFL). In Delhi, the government spent $4 billion on making the subway, apart from putting 3,000 state-of-the-art buses on city roads. Less than a decade ago, the city government in Karachi started 50 CNG buses with great fanfare, but because the model was unsustainable, they were discarded not too long after the launch. The government introduced a scheme of 8,000 CNG buses and even allocated money in the PSDP, but so far not a single bus has come onto the road. Similar headlines have been made in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the Islamabad administration has been making promises for the improvement of public transport in the country’s capital. But there are no additional vehicles on the roads there. In Punjab the government introduced the concept of exclusivity of routes and franchising. That experiment is in tatters. This was partly because of a court order striking down exclusivity and partly because the government was incapable of managing and supervising such a fleet even if it were owned by private operators. So after six decades public transport in all cities consists of the crudest buses driven by untrained drivers. In Faisalabad an experiment in organisation of public transport with the involvement of the community and owners of public service vehicle was started in 1993. A legal entity was created by the commissioner (your truly was the incumbent), which laid down the rules of plying PSV (public service vehicles) in the city. The FUTS (Faisalabad Urban Transport System) provided support to the owners of vehicles to make sure their investment gave them good returns. It was a smashing success. But it was deliberately undone by the-then government in Lahore, which wanted to introduce the franchising system all over the province. Because the model of FUTS was sustainable and realistic, it still limps along in Faisalabad and provides the bulk of public transport, without government support. In 2008, when the new government in Punjab came into power, a task force was set up to find a solution for public transport in the province. I was made chairman of that task force because of my Faisalabad experience. After due deliberations, it was decided to set up a company which would handle all matters pertaining to regulating and organising public transport in Lahore, while the ownership of vehicles would be private. The Lahore Transport Co (LTC) was the first organisation after the demise of the PRTC more than 20 year ago which provided the capacity to the government to run public transport. In all the provinces, public transport is expected to be managed by the transport department, which is actually manned and trained to make policy rather than regulate and run buses. Unlike other countries we have no organisation with specialists like transport planners, fare specialists and public transport engineers. The LTC was the first in this respect. The LTC started with great promise, by finding urban transport specialists (a rare commodity in Pakistan), making systems and setting up an electronic surveillance system to track and monitor buses. We offered an attractive subsidy package to investors to bring new buses and run them and the LTC was to regulate the investor’s buses, with the guarantee that he would make a 20 percent return on his investment. Despite all kinds of allurements, the investor was reluctant to come forth because of apprehension on account of the government’s track record on paying subsidy in time. He needed assurance of at least five years for the recovery of the cost of his vehicle. Only one foreign investor, with a promise of 200 buses, showed interest and reportedly is now bringing 110 buses. We pleaded with the government to place the budgeted money with the LTC, or in any arrangement where the investor would know that if the government changed his investment would be safe. But we were told that the government resources did not allow it to withdraw such a large amount in one go. However, a few weeks later the flyover of Kalma Chawk was launched, where about the same amount of money that the LTC required to bring buses on the roads was spent on brick, mortar and cement. There is no hope for public transport in cities without the government paying out substantial subsidies. If subsidies are needed in any sector, it is in public transport; as evidenced by experience in the rest of the world. But in our country the politicians’ priority seems to be infrastructure expenditure like flyovers, underpasses, wider roads rather than subsidised public transport through a transparent and sustainable system which a special purpose company like the LTC is capable of providing. It is time we stopped pampering and subsidising the motorist by building roads and flyovers and started channelling that money into public transport to enable affordable decent, comfortable transport to the public so that the mad rush to add more cars, motorcycles, and Quingqi would abate, and a modicum of order can return to our roads. The alternative is sick cities with clogged arteries in the next five years.