[Mb-civic] Arafat and Kerry: How Images Eclipse Reality

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1112-33.htm

Published on Thursday, November 11, 2004 by 
CommonDreams.org  
Arafat and Kerry: How Images Eclipse Reality  
by Ira Chernus 
  
As John Kerry conceded his political death, Yasir Arafat lay at the 
door of physical death. It was mere coincidence. But coincidence 
provokes thought and points to truths that might otherwise go 
unnoticed. 

The differences between the two leaders are so large and obvious 
they need hardly be mentioned. In their younger years, Arafat led an 
armed resistance, while Kerry criticized his nation's resort to arms. 
Later, Arafat became the elected leader of his people. Kerry never 
quite made it. Arafat influenced world events coonsiderably more 
than Kerry. 

But with both passing from the scene simultaneously, one naturally 
reflects more on the similarities between them. Both were skilled 
professional politicians. Yet both are recognized (at least for now) 
more for their failures than their successes. And in both cases, the 
failures came mainly because they were transformed by their 
opponents from real people into symbolic images. The public saw 
imagery rather than reality. That was the political death knell for 
both. 

Kerry fell victim to the skilled manipulation of Karl Rove and the 
Bush campaign staff. They took a true believer in conventional 
values -- free enterprise, individual moral responsibility, bourgeois 
self-restraint, American greatness and hegemony -- and turned him 
into a symbol of a hedonistic 1960s counterculture. Millions went to 
the polls convinced that a vote for Kerry was a vote for total moral 
relativism. "If it feels good, do it" was Kerry's code, they somehow 
convinced themselves, though this bizarre belief was a million miles 
from the Democratic candidate's truth. From there, it was an easy 
step to an even more bizarre belief, that Kerry has no moral values 
and therefore lacks the strength to defend us against immoral 
terrorists. 

The hedonistic counterculture exists mainly in the imagination of 
frightened Republicans. Kerry's involvement in that counterculture 
exists solely in the imagination of frightened Republicans. Yet the 
fear was so great that the Bush campaign had little trouble getting 
the image to eclipse the reality. That slick sleight-of-hand did more 
than anything else to put Bush back in the White House. 

Something very similar happened to Yasir Arafat. Arafat risked his 
political career by shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak 
Rabin to seal the Oslo Agreement. As a later Israeli Prime Minister, 
Benjamin Netanyahu, once put it, by that handshake Arafat agreed 
to make himself and the Palestinian leadership the "sub-
contractors" for Israel's occupation forces. Palestinians would now 
do the dirty work of eliminating violent resistance to the occupation. 
At least that's how the Israelis understood it. 

When Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister in 2001, with a new 
intifada raging, he felt that Arafat had not lived up to the Oslo 
commitment. He wanted a new Palestinian leader who would be a 
faithful "sub-contractor." So Sharon and his government decided to 
launch a massive public relations campaign depicting Arafat as a 
sponsor of terrorism, sworn to destroy Israel. Arafat was the only 
stumbling block, the PR blitz insisted. Peace would be possible only 
when he was removed. 

This Israeli plan was no secret; it was reported (though with little 
fanfare) in the New York Times. Yet it succeeded amazingly well. 
Many Israelis who had cheered the Oslo Agreement and accepted 
Arafat as a partner for peace were soon convinced that he was just 
the opposite. Nothing Arafat said or did could change their minds. 
Image replaced reality. 

These Israelis, like Bush voters, were moved mainly by fear. Except 
for a minority of religious zealots, few Israelis have any aggressive 
designs to take over the West Bank. Most who accept Sharon's 
policies are sincerely (although wrongly) convinced that Arafat and 
"the Palestinians" (as if all were one monolithic bloc) want nothing 
less than the destruction of Israel. Therefore, they say, any 
compromise with the Palestinians would endanger the very 
existence of Israel. Sharon turned Arafat into the prime symbol of 
that frightening fantasy. Israeli fears were so close to the surface, so 
easily tapped, that Sharon found the job surprisingly easy. 

In the U.S. and in Israel, truth disappeared because frightened 
people grasped at a false image. They hoped to ease their fears by 
politically defeating a symbol of their fears, a scapegoat. This is 
nothing new. All over the world, all throughout history, frightened 
people have sought safety by substituting image for reality. 

Of course it has never worked. It never can work. When people 
define their security in opposition to an image of threat, they need 
that image to feel secure. They need to feel threatened in order to 
feel secure. That only confirms their sense of identity as threatened, 
frightened people. Naturally, they end up feeling more threatened 
and frightened. 

In the U.S. and Israel today, there is an even deeper irony. The root 
of the fear grows out of rapid cultural change. Most of the people 
who vote for Bush or Sharon are not mean or nasty. They are nice 
people, the kind you would want for neighbors when your kids get 
sick. They are merely victims of the paradox of postmodernism: to 
get more freedom, it seems, we must give up, or at least question, 
our belief in eternal values or permanent reality. 

Awash in a constantly shifting stream of digital media images, many 
people feel that they are losing their grip. They desperately seek 
something that won't change, some permanent values they can 
base their lives on. They want something that feels like a genuine 
dependable reality. That's the only way they can feel that life is truly 
meaningful. 

Yet their fear of change and their desperate desire for a permanent 
reality leads them to look for someone to blame. So they accept 
images in place of reality. They take their problem -- the triumph of 
images over reality -- and try to turn it into the solution. Naturally, 
that only makes their problem worse and their fear greater. 

There is one reality that can never be eclipsed by imagery: the all 
too real death and suffering that has been created, and will continue 
to be created, by the policies of the Bush and Sharon 
administrations. People around the world will continue to struggle 
against the Bush and Sharon imagery, because their consciences 
are shocked by that deadly reality. 

As we struggle, we should not fall into the mistake of our political 
opponents. It will not help us to wage political struggle against our 
own fantasies. We should focus on reality. In the current political 
environment, the most powerful realities are the fears fanned by 
imagery. The fact that those fears are unrealistic does not make 
them any less powerfully real. 

If we want to overcome the Bushes and Sharons of the world, we 
must find a way to deal constructively with the fears that keep them 
in power. It is a terribly difficult problem. Arafat and Kerry both 
learned that the hard way. Their sad fates should move us to 
continue the political struggle, not only more passionately but more 
realistically. 

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of 
Colorado at Boulder and author of American Nonviolence: The 
History of an Idea. chernus at colorado.edu 

###
 
 

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