AI-Generated Video of the Mona Lisa Rapping Sparks Strong Reactions From Viewers

A visitor takes a photo of the painting Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, 

Gao Jing–Xinhua—Getty Images

BY MALLORY MOENCH
APRIL 21, 2024 

The internet has reacted strongly to an artificial intelligence-generated video of the famous subject of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting singing along to a rap that actor Anne Hathaway wrote and performed.

The polarizing clip, which has elicited reactions online ranging from humor to horror, is one of the tricks of Microsoft’s new AI technology called VASA-1. The technology is able to generate lifelike talking faces of virtual characters using a single image and speech audio clip. The AI can make cartoon characters, photographs, and paintings sing or talk, as evidenced in footage Microsoft released as part of research published on April 16.

In the most viral clip, the woman in the Mona Lisa painting sings, her mouth, eyes and face moving, to “Paparazzi,” a rap Hathaway wrote and performed on Conan O’Brien’s talk show in 2011. In another Microsoft clip, an avatar sings, and in others generated from real photos, people speak on common-place topics.

The videos quickly gained traction online: One post on X, formerly Twitter, on April 18 featuring the singing Mona Lisa clip and others had garnered seven million views as of Sunday.




The online reactions were swift, strong and across the board. Some enjoyed the clips, with one commenter posting that the Mona Lisa video had them “rolling on (the) floor laughing.” Others were more wary or even disturbed. “This is wild, freaky, and creepy all at once,” one said. “Another day, another terrifying AI video,” another lamented. “Why does this need to exist? I can’t think of any positives,” one commenter criticized.

Microsoft’s researchers addressed the risks of the new technology and said they have no plans to release an online demo or product “until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations.”

“It is not intended to create content that is used to mislead or deceive,” the researchers wrote. “However, like other related content generation techniques, it could still potentially be misused for impersonating humans. We are opposed to any behavior to create misleading or harmful contents of real persons, and are interested in applying our technique for advancing forgery detection.”

“While acknowledging the possibility of misuse, it's imperative to recognize the substantial positive potential of our technique,” they said. “The benefits—such as enhancing educational equity, improving accessibility for individuals with communication challenges, offering companionship or therapeutic support to those in need, among many others—underscore the importance of our research and other related explorations. We are dedicated to developing AI responsibly, with the goal of advancing human well-being.”

The latest development in AI comes as governments around the world are scrambling to regulate the new technology and legislate against its criminal misuse.

One example is deepfake pornography, where the face of an individual is superimposed onto an explicit picture or video without their consent, an issue that even affected Taylor Swift earlier this year. In the U.S., while 10 states criminalize deepfakes, federal law does not, and multiple bills have been introduced in Congress to rectify this.

HAPPY EARTH DAY

PAKISTAN

Analysis: To build or not to build — the Iran pipeline conundrum

Zofeen T. Ebrahim 

Published April 20, 2024 

THE long-term project, which came to be known as the ‘Peace Pipeline’, has faced significant delays due to geopolitical pressures, sanctions on Iran and financial hurdles within Pakistan.—AFP/file

THE rooftop of Vaqar Zakaria’s home in Islamabad is strewn with photovoltaic panels that he says have lowered his electricity bill to virtually nothing. This is countered by the stark contrast in his rising gas costs. “From a steady Rs800 a month, it has risen to Rs4,000 in the last six months,” he says.

Mr Zakaria, head of environmental consulting firm Hagler Bailley Pakistan, is fortunate to have a gas supply at home. His situation highlights a nationwide energy paradox, where advancements in one sector are negated by crises in another.

“If only Pakistan had imported Iranian gas back in the late 1990s when there were no sanctions,” Mr Zakaria told The Third Pole, recalling a time when prices were far cheaper “at just $2 per million British thermal units (mmBtu)”.

A participant in some of the early discussions, Mr Zakaria remembers strategising over the proposed 2,775km pipeline that promised to link Pakistan’s energy supply directly to Iran’s abundant gas reserves.

Between the threat of US sanctions on one side and possible Iranian penalties on the other, experts question whether the ‘Peace Pipeline’ will be a panacea for the country’s energy crisis

The long-term project, which came to be known as the ‘Peace Pipeline’, has faced significant delays due to geopolitical pressures, sanctions on Iran and financial hurdles within Pakistan.

Iran’s proven natural gas reserves, estimated at 1,203 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) as of December 2021, are second only to Russia.

Ten-year wait

In February this year, the caretaker government decided to dust off the 2009 agreement, approving the construction of the first phase or 80km stretch (of the total 780km pipeline) from the Iranian border to Gwadar.

Meanwhile, Tehran has issued a deadline: finish the pipeline segment by March 2024 or incur financial repercussions amounting to nearly $18bn — a sum that could prompt international arbitration.

“We are very reluctant to take this drastic step,” Hassan Nourain, the consul general of Iran in Karachi, told The Third Pole, adding, “but the gas company of Iran is a national company and belongs to the people of Iran. It invested $1bn years ago. Now, the Iranian parliament is pressuring the government to decide the fate of this project”.

Iran had already fulfilled its part of the agreement by completing 1,100km of pipeline from the South Pars gas fields to the Pakistan border. Then in 2014, it extended the deadline by an additional decade, on Pakistan’s request, he added.

But Islamabad is also feeling the pressure from the US. Last month, Donald Lu, the US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia cautioned Pakistan against importing gas from Iran, as it would expose it to US sanctions.

In response, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch made a case for national sovereignty; since the pipeline is being built within Pakistani territory, “we do not believe that at this point there is room for any discussion or waiver from a third party”, she said.

Nonetheless, Thomas Mont­gomery — the acting US mission spokesperson in Pakistan — offered the following words of caution: “We advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions.”

The US has been pushing Pakistan to seek green alternatives; through its development agency it has helped add almost 4,000 MW of clean energy to Pakistan’s grid since 2010.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed of the ruling PML-N highlighted the tension between national sovereignty and the US: “We invite its meddling by abdicating our own autonomy for decisions on our core interests.”

Despite the warnings from its longstanding ally, Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told The Third Pole that the energy infrastructure project would proceed, signalling Pakistan’s intention to assert its autonomy: “We will go ahead with construction of the pipeline,” he said.

Waiver favour

While Pakistan grapples with Iran’s deadline, the land in Gwadar earmarked for construction has yet to be acquired, according to government insiders.

Micheal Kugelman, director of the Wilson Centre’s South Asia Institute in Washington, summarises the predicament: “Pakistan is seemingly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea — build the pipeline and risk being sanctioned, or don’t build it and get slapped with a massive fine.”

Ahmad Irfan Aslam, the former law minister in the caretaker government that greenlighted construction of the 80km section of the pipeline, points out Pakistan’s reliance on the US for “everything from economic bailouts to its security”. He warned any waiver request would necessitate complex negotiations.

“We cannot bear American sanctions. We will present our stance to the US,” Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik told journalists last month. “Iran has been told multiple times that we need their gas.

We want to complete this project but without any sanctions,“ he had said.

Mr Montgomery confirmed Pakistan has yet to present a formal waiver request. With Pakistan in a tight spot, Mr Aslam suggested exploring a deadline extension and seeking a waiver, which “would require support from both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

But as tensions mount in the Middle East over the war in Gaza, with new US sanctions against Iran announced on April 18, Mr Kugelman said it was unlikely that the US would grant Pakistan a sanctions waiver to proceed with the project.

Economic feasibility

Pakistan has around 19.5 Tcf of proven gas reserves, sufficient for just 12 more years, based on current annual consumption levels.

“The only advantage to have Iranian gas is if there is a guarantee of firm supply at favourable rates,” said Haneea Isaad, an energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

Although Khawaja Asif said the government was “looking towards raising funds from international banks”, Mr Zakaria warned that securing investment may prove challenging.

“Neither the development finance institutions nor western and Middle Eastern banks will lend for the project in view of US sanctions placed on Iran, which will also make it difficult for Pakistan to pay for the gas received from Iran,” he said.

Pakistan’s best bet may be to build the pipeline with financing from China or some other external source, notes Mr Kugelman.

Among possible funders is Russia. Senator Mushahid Hussain told The Third Pole that, “Russia has offered to fund the initial $160m for the 80km of Pakistan-Iran pipeline.”

Iran, said its consul general, “would be happy to provide technical and engineering support in building the pipeline”.

But Pakistan faces a complex energy transition, marked by growing demand and discussions centred on the immediate challenges of costs, legal action and geopolitical dynamics.

As Islamabad prepares to host Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on an official three-day visit from April 22, Isaad warns against viewing Iranian gas as a panacea for Pakistan’s energy needs, emphasising it is “another imported

commodity and subject to geopolitical considerations and linked to global oil prices“.

Published in collaboration with The Third Pole at Dialogue Earth. A detailed version of this article can be accessed on their website and Dawn.com

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2024

Rule by law

Reema Omer 

Published April 20, 2024 

The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists


IN recent years, the rule of law has become a buzzword in Pakistan’s political discourse, with a multitude of voices expressing support for this ideal.

For example, the election manifestos of all three major political parties — the PPP, PML-N, and PTI — contain claims of their commitment for ‘the rule of law’ and promises to prioritise it in their policies and legislation.

In practice, however, we see ‘the rule of law’ being weaponised and stripped of its fundamental values, taking on whatever meaning that fits the political objectives of those invoking it.

In its reply submitted before the Islamabad High Court earlier this week, for example, the Ministry of Interior defended its arbitrary ban on the social media platform X/Twitter, claiming the ban “upheld the rule of law and principles of democratic governance”.

We also hear government officials claim secret military trials of civilians accused of involvement in the May 9 riots and the conviction and seven-year sentence of Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi in a farcical case involving “fraudulently going through a marriage ceremony” are necessary for establishing “the rule of law” in the country.

‘The rule of law’ is being weaponised, taking on whatever meaning that fits the political objectives of those invoking it.

Earlier, we saw Nawaz Sharif’s political opponents and detractors celebrate his lifetime disqualification from contesting elections after a determination by the Supreme Court that he was no longer ‘sadiq and ameen’ as a victory for ‘the rule of law’.

As these illustrations show, like in other authoritarian states, the rule of law has been distorted to mean ‘rule by law’ in Pakistan. It is used to justify the arbitrary implementation of bad laws without adequate safeguards for the protection of fundamental rights or meeting due process requirements.

The authoritarian reconfiguration of the rule of law as ‘rule by law’ appropriates the language and rhetoric associated with the emancipatory, liberal idea of this concept to consolidate state power, undermine democratic values, victimise political opponents, and impede the fundamental rights of citizens.

Unlike the rule of law, ‘rule by law’ is almost always associated with the use of law as an instrument to serve the ends of those in power. It allows the state to use law to control its citizens, but never allows law to be used by the citizens to hold the state accountable.

It is, therefore, important to understand what ‘the rule of law’ means and identify its core values. Doing so would allow more effective support of the legal and political reforms to advance it and challenge perversions of the rule of law rampant in our political discourse.

Although the concept of the rule of law can be traced back at least to ancient Greece, it has become much more widely discussed in the last three decades, with engagement from jurists, scholars, international organisations, as well as the United Nations.

For the UN, the rule of law is “a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of the law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency”.

This definition encapsulates at least eight distinct but related principles.

The first principle captures the essence of the rule of law dating back to Aristotle: The rule of law is a “government by laws and not by men”, which means no one is above the law and all persons and institutions, including the state, are accountable to the law.

Second, the law must be publicly promulgated so that people know the consequences of their actions.

Third, the law must be appropriately defined and government discretion sufficiently limited to ensure the law is applied in a non-arbitrary manner. A.V. Dicey, for example, warned against laws that gave people in positions of power “wide, arbitrary, or discretionary powers of constraint”. Vague laws also undermine the rule of law because they leave the door open to selective prosecution and interpretation, based on discriminatory policies of government officials and the personal predilections of judges.

Fourth, the law must be applied equally and without discrimination to all persons in like circumstances.

This fifth principle embodies a substantive rather than a procedural guarantee of the rule of law, and provides that the laws in a society that honours the rule of law must be just and consistent with international human rights norms and standards. This substantive requirement is essential, as it distinguishes a government under the rule of law from a government operating with a rule by law. In a number of authoritarian states, for example, some of the elements of the rule of law are present, but unless the laws are just, society is not governed by the rule of law.

Sixth, legal processes must be sufficiently robust and accessible to ensure the enforcement of such laws and human rights protections.

Seventh, the independence of the judiciary must be guaranteed. This means judicial power must be exercised independently of other branches of the state, and individual judges must adjudicate matters before them impartially.

And eighth, citizens and other members of society must have the right to participate in the enactment and refinement of laws that regulate their behaviour.

These principles — and consequently, ‘the rule of law’ — are largely absent in Pakistan. Instead, the garb of the rule of law is being used to establish its very antithesis — ‘rule by law’.

The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists.
reema.omer@icj.org
X: @reema_omer

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2024

Politics of self-defence

Sikander Ahmed Shah 

Published April 20, 2024 

ISRAEL’S April 1 attack on Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus — which killed senior Iranian military commanders — was a clear and unprecedented violation of international law. It was an armed attack on both Syria and Iran whose sovereignty and territorial integrity were violated under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Diplomatic missions and consular premises in particular are inviolable under customary international law, as well as Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 and Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, both conventions which Israel is party to. Diplomatic missions are considered the sovereign territory of the sending state, and as such, Israel’s armed attack was technically conducted on Iranian soil as much as it was on Syrian territory.

The International Court of Justice has held the inviolability of diplomatic premises in all circumstances, including during international or non-international armed conflict. In the seminal ICJ case ‘Concerning the United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran’ (1980), when armed Iranian students stormed and took over the US embassy in Tehran, the ICJ found Iran guilty of violating the law of diplomatic and consular relations and, inter alia, ordered the restoration of the US embassy in Tehran to US possession. More recently, on April 11, Mexico filed a complaint against Ecuador in the ICJ demanding its expulsion from the UN when Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican embassy without the latter’s consent and arrested former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, who had been given political asylum by Mexico and was taking refuge in its embassy in Quito.

Under the law of armed conflict Iran, not just for the attack on its diplomatic premises but also for what it describes as “repeated military aggressions”, invoked its inherent right of self-defence codified under Article 51 of the UN Charter to strike Israel with over 300 drones and missiles 13 days after the attack. (A suspected Israeli attack on Isfahan has followed) Article 51 states “[n]othing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the UN Security Council [UNSC] has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security”.

Under customary law, an act of self-defence must be necessary and proportionate. Its necessity must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation” as outlined by US secretary of state Daniel Webster in the 19th-century Caroline incident. However, the definition of what an instant response is, is based on state practice and can extend beyond days or even a few weeks following the triggering attack. For example, following 9/11, the US formally informed the UN it was invoking the right of self-defence when it attacked Afghanistan on Oct 7, 2001, which was considered a timely response by the UNSC.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes were an attempt to not appear weak in the eyes of the Iranian polity.

Virtually all projectiles fired by Iran towards Israel were intercepted by Israel, the US, UK, France, and Jordan, resulting in no fatalities and minimal damage to Israeli military installations. For many, the irony of the West’s failure to intercept a single Israeli missile or drone targeted at Palestine — many of them provided by the West itself — in the face of its demonstrated defensive capabilities was palpable; despite Western rhetoric on championing human rights and international law, it continues to proffer moral and materiel support to Israel in its pogrom against the Palestinians.

Iran claims it informed the US prior to initiating its attack, stating that it would be conducted in a manner to avoid provoking a response from Israel. Following the attack, Iran stated that its armed response was concluded and that it did not seek any further escalation, indicating that the attack was largely symbolic and its objectives were primarily political.

It appears that Iran is catering to its domestic audience; given the internal challenges the regime has been facing, including civil unrest attributed to economic meltdowns and political repression, one can argue that Iran’s retaliatory strikes were an attempt to not appear weak in the eyes of the Iranian polity.

Iran is also focused on regional dominance, with its influence established in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq. Given the inability of the powerful yet fragile autocratic regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE to meaningfully intercede in the Palestinian genocide or take legal action against Israel, as has been commendably done by South Africa and Ireland against Israel for genocide, and Nicaragua against Germany for complicity in Israel’s genocide at the ICJ, Iran sees an opportunity to exert influence over the populations of these competing Middle Eastern countries, further consolidating its dominance. One silver lining emerging from the affair, however, is that progressive European states such as Spain and Ireland, have since become increasingly active in advocating for the formal recognition of Palestine as a high contracting party at the UN and public support in the US, particularly among young Americans, is shifting towards the Palestinians.

The biggest challenge facing the contemporary ‘rules-based world order’, however, is the abject failure of the UNSC to maintain international peace and security, its primary obligation and responsibility under the UN Charter. To date, no binding Security Council resolution has been issued under Chapter 7 in relation to Israel’s actions towards Palestine, which would come with the sanctions and enforcement powers necessary to prevent Israel from its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. Should use of force by Israel or Iran be deliberated in the near future at the UNSC, the US, UK, and France would likely continue to veto any Chapter 7 resolutions against Israel as they have done in the past, while Russia and China can be expected to veto similar resolutions against Iran, especially after Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus or Iran’s response.

With the proliferation of sophisticated weaponry, including nuclear weapons in Israeli and arguably Iranian hands now, proxy wars in the region are escalating into direct military confrontations between regional states. This trend represents a disquieting shift in the maintenance of global peace and security, and particularly for the people of Palestine, who have a vested right to sovereignty and self-determination.

The writer is former legal adviser to Pakistan’s foreign ministry, and faculty, Lums Law School.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2024

PAKISTAN

Faizabad inquiry debate

Muhammad Amir Rana

Published April 21, 2024

The writer is a security analyst.


THE Faizabad sit-in inquiry report is another chapter in the country’s probe commission history. However, it falls disappointingly short of fixing responsibility or uncovering substantial evidence.

Like its predecessors, the report has stirred controversy but has not reached a concrete conclusion. Key figures are now surfacing with ‘new facts’, suggesting that further investigation may be warranted. However, any such endeavour will likely meet the same fate as the report.

One significant critique of the report is its notable failure to address the Supreme Court’s explicit directive concerning the timing of and rationale behind the submission and the withdrawal of review petitions about its judgement.

Specifically, in its ruling on Nov 13, 2023, the Supreme Court anticipated that the inquiry commission would thoroughly investigate the factors contributing to the failure to implement the Faizabad dharna judgement and examine the context surrounding the submission and withdrawal of the review petitions. The report’s failure to adhere to this directive raises concerns about the thoroughness and impartiality of the investigation. The report risks its credibility and effectiveness by neglecting to address such a crucial aspect of the Supreme Court’s instructions.

The recommendations, outlined in the report, as conveyed by the media, lack exclusivity, having been previously suggested and incorporated into policy documents concerning the mitigation of violent extremism and internal security. Emphasising a ‘zero tolerance’ stance towards violent extremism, the report urges the government to reassess its policies and target the underlying causes of this threat. It advocates for enhanced coordination among the law-enforcement agencies, Pemra, and the interior ministry to monitor social media for content that breaches legal standards.

Furthermore, the commission identifies shortcomings in implementing the National Action Plan and proposes reforms within the criminal justice system to bolster the anti-terrorism agencies. In its concluding remarks, the report directs both the federal and provincial governments to actively monitor and prosecute individuals promoting hate, extremism, and terrorism.

The leaked report neglects the imperative for state institutions to abandon the use of religious and extremist groups for political purposes. The rise of the TLP exemplifies this trend, as its popularity is fuelled by emotional rhetoric rooted in radical ideology and its manipulation by state entities for political goals since 2018. Despite losing backing from these institutions in 2024, the TLP managed to amass even more votes, reaching 2.89 million, compared to the 2.2m votes it garnered in 2018. This highlights the urgent need to confront the fusion of extremist factions with political interests. Addressing this issue is crucial to safeguarding the integrity of political processes and preventing further entrenchment of radical ideologies within the political landscape.

There is an urgent need to confront the fusion of extremist factions with political interests.

The TLP’s support base remains steadfast, primarily due to its leadership’s effective utilisation of religious narratives, a practice the state has been unable to curtail. The influence of the leadership of banned groups, including sectarian outfits, has left its imprint on even the official counter-narrative strategy called Paigham-i-Pakistan, in which alterations have been made to appease the TLP leadership.

The TLP has never acknowledged this official narrative, nor has the state effectively employed its counter-narrative in the public sphere. The TLP has capitalised on the state’s inadequate response, refining its tactics and presenting itself as ‘modern’ by including the protection of religious minorities’ rights in its manifesto. However, it remains staunch in its core agenda regarding blasphemy.

Meanwhile, state institutions cannot combat ideology solely through administrative measures; instead, they must permit moderate religious scholarship to emerge in the country, offering a counterbalance to toxic narratives.

In his book The Fallacy of Militant Ideology: Competing Ideologies and Conflict Among Militants, the Muslim World, and the West, author Munir Masood Marath argues that ideology serves as the “centre of gravity” for terrorism and extremism, emphasising the importance of understanding militants’ belief systems to counter these threats effectively. Marath, a police officer, contends that societal and state perceptions of religious narratives are often oversimplified. Religious institutions play a pivotal role in shaping and propagating these narratives, with seminaries influencing students and local clergy (ulema) outside the formal education system, influencing society as a whole. This “informal religious indoctrination” arises from the marginalisation of religious education, leaving the secular population reliant on less qualified imams.

The state still needs to devise a comprehensive strategy to address the challenges of radical groups like the TLP effectively. State institutions believe they can manage extremism through engagement and disengagement tactics. However, genuine innovation arises only when academic campuses are granted the freedom to explore ideas, with the state as a guardian of this freedom. Otherwise, groups promoting exclusivity find favour with state institutions.

It is worth noting that sometimes these groups become overly confident and challenge the state’s authority or undermine its interests, as the TLP has done, making it tough to maintain smooth relations with the Western world.

The state institutions must acknowledge that despite the existence of 40,000 seminaries, 500 public and private religious institutions, and a vast network of religious groups and parties, Pakistan still needs to cultivate scholarly minds comparable to those found elsewhere.

Without addressing this deficiency, the state will continue to bow to radical groups, as in 2021 when the TLP took to the streets to pressure the government to expel the French ambassador. Despite efforts by police and paramilitary forces, they struggled to control the fanatical elements. Under pressure from the TLP, the government opted to remove several TLP leaders, including Saad Rizvi, from a terrorism watch list and rescinded the group’s proscribed status.

The sit-in commission report has brought attention to these compromises without holding anyone accountable, exonerating almost everyone involved in the 2017 sit-in. Consequently, this report has once again thrust the TLP into mainstream discussions as it seeks to garner attention in the mainstream media.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2024

SMOKERS’ CORNER: PERNICIOUS POLARISATION

Nadeem F. Paracha 

Published April 21, 2024 

Illustration by Abro


Currently, one of the most frequently used words in political discourses is the term ‘polarisation’. Recent studies demonstrate that a majority of countries have been suffering deep political polarisation. But political polarisation is nothing new.

A 2021 study published by Sweden’s V-Dem Institute explored the degrees of political polarisation in 202 countries. The study had to go as far back as 1950 to fully determine the roots of the current status of political polarisation in various countries.

According to the study, in the last 70 years, many countries have faced waves of severe political polarisation. Many such waves emerged and then receded. However, in countries where polarisation continued to simmer, it gradually mutated to become ‘pernicious polarisation.’

Pernicious polarisation is one of the most chronic forms of polarisation. It is often the outcome of unaddressed political and social tensions in a society. These can lead to polarisation, which is largely manageable but, if not properly managed, it can then become pernicious.

In the 2019 book Democracies Divided, Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue mention the following countries that are currently facing pernicious polarisation: United States, India, Turkey, Venezuela, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Poland and Kenya.

The V-Dem Institute study too mentions these but also includes Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Colombia, Georgia and Mexico. According to another study by the V-Dem Institute, ‘toxic polarisation’ is now present in 32 countries, compared to just five in 2011.

In countries like Pakistan, where political polarisation continues to simmer and is not addressed, it can gradually mutate to become ‘pernicious polarisation.’ Can it ever be reduced?

When various distinct political and social cleavages merge into becoming two consolidated blocs, the focus on addressing cleavages individually and according to merit dissolves, because the blocs become like tribes that begin to identify with the political and social identity of their bloc. Each bloc is made up of various economic, racial, ethnic, religious and sectarian groups, but they become strictly tied to the ‘ideology’ of their bloc.

The ‘ideology’ in this context is not really a set of any proper economic, social and political programmes as such. It is more of a belief in which one bloc thinks it is righteous, compared to the other bloc that is viewed as being unrighteous. This belief continues to harden and generate increasing mistrust and animosity between the blocs.

The space for dialogue and discourse between the two continues to shrink. Society gets split in the middle between two sets of beliefs, with no desire for any kind of reconciliation. Both want the complete elimination of the ‘other’. It doesn’t matter if this is achieved through an election, a dictatorship, or a ‘hybrid’ system. It also doesn’t matter if, in this context, stark exhibitions of contradictions also come into play.

For example, in Pakistan, which has been facing pernicious polarisation as well, if one bloc begins to support the renewal of economic ties with India, the other bloc starts to accuse it of “betraying the Kashmir cause”.

When the accusing bloc (after believing that the other bloc has been politically weakened) does an about-turn and starts to support ties with India, the bloc that had previously supported this now begins to accuse the other bloc of betraying the Kashmir cause. Achieving any kind of a consensus becomes almost impossible in societies split by pernicious polarisation.

Almost every society has had at least some form of ethnic, religious, racial and sectarian tensions. However, from the 1960s, most of these were somewhat overcome with varying degrees of success. Political tensions and differences were largely viewed as being ‘natural’ and capable of being resolved through pluralism and nationalism. But pernicious polarisation cuts deeper. It can also seep into purely social settings.



According to a 2020 report published by the Institute of Family Studies, marriages between supporters of the two major parties in the US have been rapidly decreasing. Today, a Democratic Party supporter is far less likely to tie the knot with a supporter of the Republican Party, and vice versa.

In Pakistan, there have been incidents in which young men and women who support the bloc driven by the narratives of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Khan’s cult of personality have stopped talking to their parents and colleagues who they see as being part of the other bloc. The other bloc is mainly a coalition of supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and of some smaller anti-PTI groups.

The other bloc is quite vocal about calling the Khan-led bloc a ‘cult’ that should be ‘deprogrammed’ because the people in it are ‘brainwashed’ and, thus, a threat to both the state and society. The space for any meaningful dialogue between the two has been shrinking due to a mutual lack of trust.

However, one can posit that the pro-Khan bloc has led the way in strengthening pernicious polarisation in Pakistan — so much so that, in 2023, Khan warned that no one would marry the children of men and women who supported his opponents.

However, the good news is that, according to the V-Dem study, just 20 percent of the countries in the grip of pernicious polarisation have failed to decrease the levels of this strand of polarisation. The study notes that countries that succeeded in bringing down the levels of pernicious polarisation had to go through at least one of the following ‘major systemic shocks’: a foreign intervention, an independence struggle, violent conflict, or regime change (primarily in a democratising direction).

An all-out war with one of its neighbours may see the intensity of pernicious polarisation decrease in Pakistan. But a regime change in April 2022, although achieved through constitutional means, actually increased the severity of the polarisation. Those studying political polarisation also explore the role of the mainstream and social media in this.

In Pakistan, both forms of media have facilitated the increase in the levels of polarisation by taking the side of one bloc or the other. One set of media personnel see themselves as ‘defenders of democracy’ that wish to oust the military from politics, while the other set are claiming that it is safeguarding the country from ‘cultish’ political antagonists who have ‘invaded’ important state institutions.

So what’s the solution? The aforementioned jolts mentioned in the V-Dem study are not the only way pernicious polarisation can be addressed. In Pakistan’s context, other, less alarming, jolts can work as well.

The speedy recovery of the economy, for example, can decrease the intensity of polarisation here. Polarisation in the country started to become increasingly pernicious when the economy began to go into a swift decline from 2018 onwards. It is still struggling.

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 21st, 2024

‘Adopt or miss train’: Artificial Intelligence’s relentless rise gives journalists tough choices

AFP 

April 21, 2024 

PERUGIA: The rise of artificial intelligence has forced an increasing number of journalists to grapple with the ethical and editorial challenges posed by the rapidly expanding technology.

AI’s role in assisting newsrooms or transforming them completely was among the questions raised at the International Journalism Festival in the Italian city of Perugia that closes on Sunday.

What will happen to jobs?

AI tools imitating human intelligence are widely used in newsrooms around the world to transcribe sound files, summarise texts and translate.

In early 2023, Germany’s Axel Springer group announced it was cutting jobs at the Bild and Die Welt newspapers, saying AI could now “replace” some of its journalists.

Generative AI — capable of producing text and images following a simple request in everyday language — has been opening new frontiers as well as raising concerns for a year and a half.

One issue is that voices and faces can now be cloned to produce a podcast or present news on television. Last year, Filipino website Rappler created a brand aimed at young audiences by converting its long articles into comics, graphics and even videos.

Media professionals agree that their trade must now focus on tasks offering the greatest “added value”.

“You’re the one who is doing the real stuff” and “the tools that we produce will be an assistant to you,” Google News general manager Shailesh Prakash told the festival in Perugia.

The costs of generative AI have plummeted since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, with the tool designed by US start-up OpenAI now accessible to smaller newsrooms.

Colombian investigative outlet Cuestion Publica has harnessed engineers to develop a tool that can delve into its archives and find relevant background information in the event of breaking news.

But many media organisations are not making their own language models, which are at the core of AI interfaces, said University of Amsterdam professor Natali Helberger.

The disinformation threat

According to one estimate last year by Everypixel Journal, AI has created as many images in one year as photography in 150 years.

That has raised serious questions about how news can be fished out of the tidal wave of content, including deepfakes.

Media and tech organisations are teaming up to tackle the threat, notably through the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, which seeks to set common standards.

From Wild West to regulation

Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has expanded its media rights brief to defending trustworthy news, launched the Paris Charter on AI and journalism late last year.

“One of the things I really liked about the Paris Charter was the emphasis on transparency,” said Anya Schiffrin, a lecturer on global media, innovation and human rights at Columbia University in the United States.

AI editorial guidelines are updated every three months at India’s Quintillion Media, said its boss Ritu Kapur. None of the organisation’s articles can be written by AI and the images it generates cannot represent real life.

Resist or collaborate?

AI models feed off data, but their thirst for the vital commodity has raised hackles among providers. In December, the New York Times sued OpenAI and its main investor Microsoft for violation of copyright.

In contrast, other media organisations have struck deals with OpenAI: Axel Springer, US news agency AP, French daily Le Monde and Spanish group Prisa Media, whose titles include El Pais and AS newspapers.

With resources tight in the media industry, collaborating with the new technology is tempting, explained Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia University’s journalism school. She senses a growing external pressure to “Get on board, don’t miss the train”

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2024

WHY WAR IN PALESTINE WILL CONTINUE
The recent military conflict between Iran and Israel only diverts attention from the real crux of the problem.

Ejaz Haider 

Published April 21, 2024 


“Where did you come from?”
“From Poland.”
“When?”
“1948.”
“When exactly?”
“March 1, 1948.”

A heavy silence prevailed. All of them began to look around at things they had no need to look at.
Said broke the silence, saying calmly: “Naturally we didn’t come to tell you to get out of here. That would take a war…”….
“I mean your presence here, in this house, our house, Safiyya’s and my house, is another matter. We only came to take a look at things, our things. Maybe you can understand that.”
She said quickly: “I understand, but…”
Then he lost his composure. “Yes, but! This terrible, deadly, enduring ‘but’…”

Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani



“Your Majesty, the image given of me in the Arab press is that I am very hard. It’s not true. I have lived my life dreaming of a nation and a state, so I can understand the Palestinians. If you are angry over what we are doing to face the Palestinian uprising, it is not that we do not understand. We understand their dreams very well, but unfortunately here we have a conflict between two dreams… we agree to the Palestinians having a dream, but they should understand that it is impossible.”

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to the King of Morocco — quoted by Mohamed Heikal in Illusions of Triumph: An Arab View of the Gulf War

“The obstinate fact is this: the Israelis don’t understand any language but force,” he said. “This is history — without force, they will give you nothing.”

Veteran PLO fighter Mahmoud Ajrami in the Financial Times, May 24, 2021

“Talk to whom? That’s the kind of conversation between the sword and the neck.”

Ghassan Kanafani responding to a question about why Palestinians don’t just talk to Israelis

Now that some of the euphoria has lifted, it is possible to re-examine the Israeli-PLO agreement with the required common sense. What emerges from such scrutiny is a deal that is more flawed and, for most of the Palestinian people, more unfavourably weighted than many had first supposed. The fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony…only temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.

Edward Said, ‘The Morning After’,
London Review of Books, October 21, 1993

THE PROXIMATE

The latest iteration of Palestinian armed resistance against Israel’s colonial-apartheid state began on October 7, 2023, with an attack on Israelis by Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters on land occupied by Israel. The many battles, kinetic and non-kinetic, in this long war have entered the seventh month.

Israel’s response has been brutal and genocidal. The Israeli targeting strategy — bombing homes, tall buildings, hospitals, bakeries, prayer places, people moving to safer zones or collecting aid packages, aid workers, civil defence personnel, paramedics, journalists — and a very high tolerance threshold for civilian casualties have already been discussed at length by several international media outlets, including Israeli publications such as +972 and Local Call. That account, in granular detail, cannot be bettered and is widely available to readers and viewers around the world.

At the time of writing this, the talks to obtain a ceasefire have stalled. There were and are many proposals on the table, but Hamas and Israel are sticking to their positions: Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli withdrawal; Israel wants a temporary ceasefire, return of Israeli captives and the freedom to continue its war to “destroy” Hamas’ fighting capability, a euphemism for exterminating and expelling Gazans and occupying Gaza to make way for illegal Israeli settlements.

Then, on April 1, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate building in Damascus, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officers, including two generals. That action, illegal under relevant provisions of international law, threw the region in a tizzy. Iran promised a response and delivered one on the night of April 13 with an unprecedented attack on Israel from Iranian soil, using direct attack munitions and land-attack cruise and ballistic missiles.

The recent military conflict between Iran and Israel only diverts attention from the real crux of the problem — the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine and its ongoing genocidal actions in Gaza. Ejaz Haider explains why it is important to look at the wider picture of Zionism’s plans in the region and the place of Palestinian resistance to it

The attack generated fears around the world about a likely Israeli response, resulting in vertical and horizontal escalation across the region. The Israeli war cabinet meetings, at the time of writing, had agreed on a response but have remained divided over when and how.

During this episode, news about ongoing violence in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) was pushed to the sidelines. That violence continues unabated, though with a spike in attacks on the Palestinians in the OPTs by illegal Israeli settlers, who are always protected by Israeli security forces.

But this is just the immediate or proximate, if you will. This war did not begin on October 7. It has a much longer trajectory. Consider.

THE LONGER CONTEXT

Look again at the quotes above. They are there for a reason. Juxtapose what Kanafani, Ajrami and Said are saying with what Shamir said to the King of Morocco: Palestinians have a dream but that dream is impossible. What dream is that, especially since Resolution 181 of the United Nations passed on November 29, 1947 and the war that followed it?

That dream, shattered multiple times through subsequent wars in 1967 and 1973, is to have a Palestinian state, where Palestinians can exercise the right to return, a state which is not just an administrative authority but a sovereign state. It is this dream that Shamir told the King is impossible.

For most of the world, Oslo I (1993) and Oslo II (1995) were to take care of this problem. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had been recognised as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority was to govern the affairs of its people and all would be well. There would be talks about a final settlement after five years of Oslo II.

That was not to be. As Said and many others at the time — and many since — pointed out, the Oslo Agreements effectively ended Palestinians’ right to resist. They also entrapped the Palestinians into perennial subjugation by a settler-colonial state.

Why and how? The agreements didn’t address Israeli violence or incursions into Palestinian towns and camps, Israeli illegal settlements, Palestinian refugees’ right to return and Israel’s control of land, sea and air.

As Said wrote in the LRB article: “In his September 13 press conference, [Yitzhak] Rabin was straightforward about Israel’s continuing control over sovereignty; in addition, he said, Israel would hold the River Jordan, the boundaries with Egypt and Jordan, the sea, the land between Gaza and Jericho, Jerusalem, the settlements and the roads. There is little in the document to suggest that Israel will give up its violence against Palestinians.”

This is also clear from Rabin’s speech to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, where he presented the Oslo II Agreement: “We would like this [Palestinian Municipal Authority (PA)] to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

He then went on to explain how the arrangement would work: “The first stage of this redeployment of [Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)] will be carried out in three areas…: Area A — or the ‘brown’ area… will include the municipal areas of the six cities — Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah, and Bethlehem. Responsibility for civilian security in this area will be transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

“Area B — or the ‘yellow’ area includes almost all of the 450 towns and villages in which the Palestinians of the West Bank live. In this area, there will be a separation of responsibilities. The Palestinians will be responsible for managing their own lives, and Israel will have overall responsibility for the security of Israelis and the war against the terrorist threat. That is, IDF forces and the security services will be able to enter any place in Area B at any time.

“The third area, Area C, or the ‘white’ area is everywhere that is not included in the areas that have been mentioned until now. In this area are the Jewish settlements, all IDF installations, and the border areas with Jordan. This area will remain under IDF control.

“Areas A and B constitute less than 30 percent of the area of the West Bank. Area C, which is under our control, constitutes more than 70 percent of the area of the West Bank.”

Thirty days after this speech, on November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated. He is widely known as someone who wanted peace. That might be true, but not even he believed in allowing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. The quotes from his speech make the situation clear.

They should also make clear how and why Israel has created disjointed Palestinian towns through checkpoints and roadblocks; how Palestinian movement is entirely dependent on Israel; how and why the IDF and Israeli police can raid and enter any area, including Area A, with impunity. But most importantly, how these “interim” agreements have (a) become the status quo, (b) turned the Palestinian Authority and its security forces into Israeli collaborators, and (c) put a nail in the coffin of any final settlement.

The Israeli rightwing was opposed to the accords. After Rabin’s assassination, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu rose to power. Neither had any intention of following up on the interim arrangements to a final settlement. Israel continued to expand its illegal settlements, created a strong chokehold on areas under nominal PA control, and increased its military and intelligence activities in Palestinian towns.

On the Palestinian side, Hamas and the PIJ were opposed to the accords and “warned that a two-state solution would forgo the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created.” Said in his LRB article called it “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.”

Today’s Israeli government comprises people who believe in expelling Palestinians from Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel]. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current National Security Minister, had threatened to kill Rabin. Along with Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right current finance minister, he is also an illegal settler.

This is of course a very sketchy account. But the essential point is simple: Israel, artificially created as a Jewish state, simply cannot exist alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. This has been made clear by a number of Zionists. Their argument: “If we allow Palestinians to return, what will become of the Jewishness of the Jewish state.”

Neither one state nor two states works for Israel. As discerning observers have noted, given what happened to the Oslo Accords, the two-state solution only lives in sham bureaucratic platitudes.


There were and are many proposals on the table, but Hamas and Israel are sticking to their positions: Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli withdrawal; Israel wants a temporary ceasefire, return of Israeli captives and the freedom to continue its war to “destroy” Hamas’ fighting capability, a euphemism for exterminating and expelling Gazans and occupying Gaza to make way for illegal Israeli settlements.


The head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat (left), Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres (centre) and Israeli prime minister Yitzakh Rabin (right) jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 after the first Oslo Accord was signed in 1993: the Oslo Agreements effectively ended Palestinians’ right to resist and entrapped them in perennial subjugation by a settler-colonial state | Reuters



SOME HISTORY IS IMPORTANT

The idea of political Zionism is credited to Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State. But Herzl, a Jewish journalist and essayist who was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is considered the father of Israel, was not the first Jewish writer to have presented this idea. Zionism predated Herzl.

The idea in several forms was gestating among European Jews who were actively a part of European socio-political turmoil in the 18th and 19th centuries. As German historian Michael Brenner describes it, “Nationalism was a characteristic trait of life in 19th century Europe, and Jews were right in the middle of it.” They had “witnessed and often participated in the struggles for unity and independence of European nations, from the Polish rebellions against the Czarist Empire to the Italian Risorgimento and the struggle over German unification.”

It was “no coincidence that the most significant precursors of Zionism came from the much-contested border areas of Europe or explicitly mentioned the fight for sovereignty of European nations as an inspiration of their own (proto-)Zionist writings.”

Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878), born in Sarajevo, and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874), born in West Prussian Thorn, were two contemporaries who believed that Jews could not passively await the arrival of the Messiah. Their approach was very different from many ultra-orthodox Jews (including rabbis) who were to later oppose Herzl’s political Zionism.

Alkalai, in fact, came up with a novel interpretation and pointed to “a precedent in the traditional Jewish idea of a first, temporary, Messiah from the house of Joseph, who would lead a militant struggle to open the way for the final arrival of the real Messiah from the house of David.”

This two-stage interpretation looked at Zionism, in terms of a return to the Biblical idea of Eretz Yisrael, as the form of a collective Messiah of the house of Joseph, which would then lead to the arrival of the real Messiah. As Brenner puts it, “He thus legitimised the return of the Jews and the establishment of their state in Israel by his quite original theological interpretation.”

Kalischer, while not going for a novel exegesis, however, argued in his 1862 treatise Seeking Zion (German: Drishat Tsion) that Jews could not passively wait for the Messiah. “Instead, he called for human intervention to hasten the coming of the Messiah. The colonisation of the Land of Israel was one measure he suggested.”

Speaking with me, American policy scholar Barnett Rubin, who is known here because of his work on Afghanistan and Central Asia, talked about false messiahs. That account is contained in a long article he wrote for the Boston Review titled, ‘False Messiahs: How Zionism’s dreams of liberation became entangled with colonialism.’

But a little known and often forgotten fact is that Jewish political and religious Zionism came much later. It was preceded by Christian (later, Protestant) Zionism. Jordanian-Palestinian Professor Joseph Massad takes the idea back to Christian millenarianism during the crusades. British Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer argues this point in his book Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon? and says that, “Christian Zionism is the most dominant and destructive expression of Zionism today.”

Meanwhile, Donald E Wagner, author of Anxious for Armageddon and who teaches at North Park University in Chicago, notes that, “Christian Zionism…views the modern state of Israel as the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy, thus deserving our unconditional economic, moral, political and theological support.”

What we are witnessing today is a coming together of Jewish Zionism, which has now transformed into Religious Jewish Zionism, and modern Protestant millenarianism that is pegged on the Second Coming of Christ.

This is where theology, politics and geopolitical interests intersect. The ‘return’, essentially the stealing of Palestinian land, not only fulfilled a promise for the Jews but also provided them the support of Christian millenarians and, presumably, secular, democratic Western governments.

Benjamin Netanyahu standing in front of a portrait of Theodor Herzl: while Herzl is considered the father of Israel, he was not the first Jewish writer to have presented this idea | AFP



WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

This sketchy background of a very complex history should give the reader some idea about why, despite the Oslo Agreements, no solution to the Palestinian colonisation is in sight; why Israel continues to insist on keeping Gaza as an open prison and the OPTs as areas that are effectively controlled by Israeli military and intelligence services; why Israel can, at will, curtail freedom of movement, raid, arrest and kill Palestinian men, women and children; and why Israel continues to expand illegal settlements in the face of UN resolutions by destroying Palestinian properties and land. Most importantly, it explains why Israel will never agree to a sovereign Palestinian State.

The two-state solution, as noted above, is a red-herring. Take, for instance, the US position: first in 2011 and now two weeks ago, the US has killed Palestine’s application in the UN Security Council for a full state status. The US insists that, until a final settlement, Palestine cannot have full status.

But while mouthing the two-state bromide, it has failed to force Israel into moving towards final settlement talks or stop it from expanding its illegal settlements. Last September, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the UN with a map of Israel that showed Gaza, OPTs, Galilee and the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, the US never objected to his brandishing of that map.

That map is Eretz Yisrael. Israel cannot openly show Jordan and parts of Syria and Lebanon in that map because of geopolitical sensitivities, but there’s more to Eretz Yisrael than the ‘River to the Sea’ slogan. When a reporter once asked Menachem Begin about the borders of Israel, Begin responded by saying, “But they are given in the Bible.”

As Rubin wrote in an article for the website Mondoweiss, titled ‘Redemption through Genocide’: “In the wake of the 1967 War, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook’s teaching that the commandment to ‘conquer and settle’ the Land of Israel was equal to all the other commandments, inspired [ultranationalist Jewish settler movement] Gush Emunim. Fulfilling that commandment is the greatest tikkun [acts of repair] and will hasten the footsteps of the Messiah. ‘The army of Israel,’ Kook taught, ‘is the army of Hashem [God].’”

Expansion, repair, the promised land, the return of the Messiah, the army of God — none of this squares with a settlement with the Palestinians.

THE PLACE OF VIOLENCE

This is where the Palestinian armed resistance comes in. International humanitarian law legitimises wars of national liberation. The Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 describes such resistance as a protected, universal and essential right of occupied people.

This is further corroborated by UNGA’s 1974 Resolution 3314, which not only prohibits states from “any military occupation, however temporary” but also affirms the right “to self-determination, freedom and independence […] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[…] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination.” The resolution also recognises the right of the occupied to “struggle…and to seek and receive support” in that effort. This is further corroborated by UNGA resolution, A/RES/37/43 of December 3, 1982 which “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples…all available means, including armed struggle;…” (italics added)

International Law is very clear. The rest is geopolitical baloney. Hamas’ October 7 attack, despite the very high cost to Gaza and Gazans, has served to sharpen focus on Israel’s real objective: expel Palestinians from occupied territories and create Eretz Yisrael from the River to the Sea.

Ajrami, who trained hundreds of Hamas and PIJ fighters, advised them to be patient and bide their time: “Let the beast sleep until you are ready,” he said. But when the time is ripe, “Bring the beast to me, and we will slay it together.”

Hamas knew how Israel would respond: brutally and vengefully. In strategic terms, begetting the expected Israeli response was key to creating an international public relations disaster for Israel. That is precisely what has happened.

For the first time in its artificial history, Israel has lost the support of not only a number of states but people around the world. It is in the International Court of Justice dock on the charge of committing genocide and its actions have also put Germany in the dock.

The United States, its strongest ally, is in a quandary — it is stretched in geopolitical terms, from Ukraine to the South China Sea to the Middle East. The Global South, to use a loose term, no longer considers it an honest broker.

This does not mean that Israel will relent. It won’t. It also retains the capabilities to put up a fight and it will. A mix of political and religious Zionism means it cannot have a single, inclusive state in Palestine; nor can it allow a sovereign Palestine as part of a two-state solution — unless, the US and its Western allies develop some basic moral compass.

In the interim, Israel will become even more brutal. It is locked in a paradox of its own creation: such are the very conditions of the problem that the solution to the problem is rendered impossible. American author Joseph Heller called it Catch 22.

Equally, as the Hamas attack and subsequent horizontal escalation have shown, the rules of engagement in the Middle East have changed. To quote the IDF spokesperson Lt-Col Peter Lerner, the Axis of Resistance has created a “ring of fire” around Israel.

Resistance groups are in this war and its many battles for the long haul. They have seen how this iteration has created second- and third-order effects for Israel and the US. With the growing commodification of weapon systems, platforms and associated technologies, capabilities are becoming diffused and spreading laterally. That fact has consequences for more iterations of this war.

There are two ways of dealing with this: either the Western world leans heavily and decisively on Israel to deliver a sovereign Palestinian state or the war will continue. Its continuation will have unintended and catastrophic consequences.

As TS Eliot said in East Coker:

“Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness
must grow worse.”

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider
Published in Dawn, EOS, April 21st, 2024

Big ask for FEMA homes for Maui fire survivors meets resistance

Andrew Gomes, 

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Sun, April 21, 2024 

Apr. 21—A state and county objective to produce temporary new homes for Maui wildfire survivors is being hampered by the federal government.

A state and county objective to produce temporary new homes for Maui wildfire survivors is being hampered by the federal government.

Gov. Josh Green and other local government leaders early this year asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to build 1, 000 homes as part of a multilevel government effort to relocate evacuees of the Aug. 8 Lahaina disaster, including many who have been living in hotel rooms for nearly nine months.

But FEMA has pushed back on the request, only committing to build 169 modular homes in Lahaina under a contract expected to be awarded May 24.

So a goal shortfall of 831 homes exists, despite extra lobbying by Green, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen and members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

The 169 homes also represent a 331-home shortfall from 500 expected FEMA-built homes described in a memorandum of understanding signed by state, county and FEMA officials in January as part of a "Maui Interim Housing Plan " that aims to provide 3, 000 homes for survivors.

"Our collective goal is to move all individuals and families who are in short-term hotels into long-term stable housing by July 1, 2024, " the MOU states.

As of last week, about 900 households with 2, 300 individuals remained in hotels, down from about 8, 000 people initially.

Previously, reasons for FEMA's resistance to building 1, 000 homes were not publicly clear or even known to some local government leaders who have been frustrated by the federal agency's stance.

Last resort The reason, according to FEMA, is that the agency's core mission and main capabilities don't include building new homes for emergency disaster relief.

Building new homes is an "absolute last alternative " to what the agency typically provides, said FEMA spokesperson Victor Inge.

FEMA typically deploys trailered mobile homes for disaster survivors displaced from housing, if requested by state or local government officials. Such units—commonly known as travel trailers and equipped with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms—could have been shipped to Maui. FEMA has thousands of these units available, and Inge said the cost to deliver and connect them to utilities isn't an issue for the agency.

Green, however, decided such homes were not a desirable or dignified choice.

As a result, the state-and county-led housing relief plan for wildfire evacuees remains more challenging and could take longer than expected to achieve.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, during an April 10 congressional budget hearing for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that includes FEMA, called the sought-after 1, 000 homes desperately needed because not enough existing housing on Maui is available to temporarily rehouse fire evacuees.

A large part of the rehousing effort has involved FEMA leasing existing homes, which is inflating rents and displacing some Maui residents in favor of fire survivors.

Case, who noted that Bissen was in the room for the hearing, said FEMA's help with Maui fire recovery has been tremendous and praiseworthy.

The agency as of earlier this month had approved $49 million for survivor assistance, including $21 million in rent assistance, and has spent over $1.7 billion for debris removal and other work carried out by other federal entities. FEMA also is helping to pay for the reconstruction of a state library and low-income housing project destroyed in Lahaina.

Still, Case urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to have FEMA depart more from its standard approach to emergency relief housing.

"It's not really going to do the job, " Case said. "The very unique circumstances of the Maui housing market make it very difficult for you to follow your standard approach."

Mayorkas acknowledged the challenge, but was noncommittal on building more homes. "We are looking at all our options, " he said.

U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, whose district includes Maui, also has pressed federal officials to build more temporary homes and not rely so much on FEMA leasing existing homes.

"We need to have these temporary housing structures available, " she said in an interview. "It is going to take people years to be able to rebuild their homes."

Bissen has also let FEMA know how crucial it is to have new temporary homes for survivors of the fire that destroyed around 3, 500 residences and killed 101 people.

"A pre-existing shortage of housing units has only been exacerbated by the loss of homes due to the wildfires, " he said in a statement in March shortly after appearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. "Now, paired with the unintended displacement of local tenants due to rental rates inflation and already displaced fire victims, we are in critical need of federal support to increase capacity for long-term housing options to house fire victims."

Big ask Much was made of a partnership announced in early January where Green said FEMA was designing multiple sites to house up to 500 households as part of an effort between the agency, the state, Maui County and nonprofit organizations to provide 3, 000 homes for fire survivors by July 1.

"This partnership is unprecedented and critical to our collective success as a state, " Green said in a statement announcing the partnership.

By February, local government officials were asking FEMA to build 1, 000 homes.

These homes, according to Maui County, were envisioned at three sites in West Maui and one in Central Maui. The breakdown of units was :—130 in Lahaina—213 in Kaanapali—257 in West Maui—400 in Waikapu In late January, FEMA was pursuing the Kaanapali project not far from Lahaina on 63 acres of fallow agricultural land zoned for residential use within a larger parcel long slated for an expansion of Kaanapali Resort.

But by late February, state and county officials were discouraged by what they described to Hawaii lawmakers as reluctance or push-back from FEMA over the 1, 000-home request.

Refusals Some of the frustration at the Legislature over the issue was because the state faced having to pay for many fire survivors staying in hotels where the cost for lodging plus services including meals was $1, 000 a day per household.

During a Feb. 29 Senate Ways and Means Committee briefing, Sen. Donna Kim (D, Kalihi-Fort Shafter-Red Hill ) pressed state disaster response officials over why other alternatives to hotels weren't being pursued.

Kim asked why FEMA didn't deliver travel trailers to Maui.

"The trailers are extremely costly, " said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Kim then asked if the cost was more than $1, 000 a day, and Hara said he was unsure.

"Why wouldn't we be exhausting all the possibilities ?" Kim said. "It's not like we're creating this new. They've used it in other states and it's worked."

Luke Meyers, disaster management coordinator in the Office of the Governor, told Kim that sending FEMA trailer housing to Maui was cost prohibitive, but also said that it was Green's decision to not bring in FEMA mobile homes.

In a statement later, a representative of the governor said, "Governor Green objects to establishing 'refugee camps' and 'trailer parks' for wildfire survivors who have endured such devastating trauma."

During a March 27 wildfire response presentation, Green said he had talked to other state governors who accepted FEMA trailer housing for disaster assistance and regretted it.

"They ended up resulting in a lot of chaos and conflict, " Green said.

A request for Green to explain details of such trouble was not answered last week.

One highly publicized incident occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 where many FEMA travel trailers deployed in Louisiana and Mississippi were found to have high levels of formaldehyde.

Green during his March 27 presentation acknowledged that it is a big ask for FEMA to build 1, 000 homes on Maui.

"We know it's difficult for FEMA to justify large builds because they are really supposed to be an emergency response agency, " he said.

Shifting plans FEMA appeared to embrace the 213-home Kaanapali project when it published a draft environmental assessment for the plan Jan. 24. Yet nearly three months later, no commitment has been made to build these homes.

Inge on April 9 said no timetable exists for possibly developing the Kaanapali site. "It's still on the table, " he said.

On Thursday, FEMA announced that land lease negotiations had resumed with the landowner of the Kaanapali site, and that design work is complete. Still, whether FEMA moves ahead with development remains uncertain.

The only home-building commitment FEMA has made to date on Maui is for 169 homes on state-owned land in Lahaina long planned for a largely affordable-housing subdivision called Villages of Leali 'i.

The site for what FEMA has named Kilohana is next to an area where the state Department of Human Services is developing 450 modular homes purchased from four manufacturers. The state's project, Kala 'iola, is expected to cost $115 million. That cost breaks down to about $118, 000 per unit on average, though 26 community buildings are also part of Kala 'iola.

An initial phase of Kala 'iola with 270 homes and some community buildings are expected to be ready for occupancy in August.

For FEMA's Lahaina project, the agency is soliciting contractors to provide and install manufactured homes ranging from under-500-square-foot units with one bedroom to under-1, 000-square-foot units with three bedrooms.

Inge said a contract is expected to be awarded May 24. A timetable for development remains uncertain.

Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire amplifies Maui housing crisis

AUDREY McAVOY
Sat, April 20, 2024

The Rev. Ai Hironaka, resident minister of the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, walks in the parking lot as he visits his temple and residence destroyed by wildfire, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. An acute housing shortage hitting fire survivors on the Hawaiian island of Maui is squeezing out residents even as they try to overcome the loss of loved ones, their homes and their community.

 (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

HONOLULU (AP) — A single mother of two, Amy Chadwick spent years scrimping and saving to buy a house in the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But after a devastating fire leveled Lahaina in August and reduced Chadwick's home to white dust, the cheapest rental she could find for her family and dogs cost $10,000 a month.

Chadwick, a fine-dining server, moved to Florida where she could stretch her homeowners insurance dollars. She’s worried Maui’s exorbitant rental prices, driven in part by vacation rentals that hog a limited housing supply, will hollow out her tight-knit town.

Most people in Lahaina work for hotels, restaurants and tour companies and can’t afford $5,000 to $10,000 a month in rent, she said.

“You’re pushing out an entire community of service industry people. So no one’s going to be able to support the tourism that you’re putting ahead of your community,” Chadwick said by phone from her new home in Satellite Beach on Florida’s Space Coast. “Nothing good is going to come of it unless they take a serious stance, putting their foot down and really regulating these short-term rentals.”

The Aug. 8 wildfire killed 101 people and destroyed housing for 6,200 families, amplifying Maui's already acute housing shortage and laying bare the enormous presence of vacation rentals in Lahaina. It reminded lawmakers that short-term rentals are an issue across Hawaii, prompting them to consider bills that would give counties the authority to phase them out.

Gov. Josh Green got so frustrated he blurted an expletive during a recent news conference.

“This fire uncovered a clear truth, which is we have too many short-term rentals owned by too many individuals on the mainland and it is b———t,” Green said. “And our people deserve housing, here.”

Vacation rentals are a popular alternative to hotels for those seeking kitchens, lower costs and opportunities to sample everyday island life. Supporters say they boost tourism, the state's biggest employer. Critics revile them for inflating housing costs, upending neighborhoods and contributing to the forces pushing locals and Native Hawaiians to leave Hawaii for less expensive states.

This migration has become a major concern in Lahaina. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit, estimates at least 1,500 households — or a quarter of those who lost their homes — have left since the August wildfire.

The blaze burned single family homes and apartments in and around downtown, which is the core of Lahaina's residential housing. An analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found a relatively low 7.5% of units there were vacation rentals as of February 2023.

Lahaina neighborhoods spared by the fire have a much higher ratio of vacation rentals: About half the housing in Napili, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of the burn zone, is short-term rentals.

Napili is where Chadwick thought she found a place to buy when she first went house hunting in 2016. But a Canadian woman secured it with a cash offer and turned it into a vacation rental.

Also outside the burn zone are dozens of short-term rental condominium buildings erected decades ago on land zoned for apartments.

In 1992, Maui County explicitly allowed owners in these buildings to rent units for less than 180 days at a time even without short-term rental permits. Since November, activists have occupied the beach in front of Lahaina's biggest hotels to push the mayor or governor to use their emergency powers to revoke this exemption.

Money is a powerful incentive for owners to rent to travelers: a 2016 report prepared for the state found a Honolulu vacation rental generates 3.5 times the revenue of a long-term rental.

State Rep. Luke Evslin, the Housing Committee chair, said Maui and Kauai counties have suffered net losses of residential housing in recent years thanks to a paucity of new construction and the conversion of so many homes to short-term rentals.

“Every alarm bell we have should be ringing when we’re literally going backwards in our goal to provide more housing in Hawaii,” he said.

In his own Kauai district, Evslin sees people leaving, becoming homeless or working three jobs to stay afloat.

The Democrat was one of 47 House members who co-sponsored one version of legislation that would allow short-term rentals to be phased out. One objective is to give counties more power after a U.S. judge in 2022 ruled Honolulu violated state law when it attempted to prohibit rentals for less than 90 days. Evslin said that decision left Hawaii's counties with limited tools, such as property taxes, to control vacation rentals.

Lawmakers also considered trying to boost Hawaii's housing supply by forcing counties to allow more houses to be built on individual lots. But they watered down the measure after local officials said they were already exploring the idea.

Short-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. Some predicted legal challenges.

Alicia Humiston, president of the Rentals by Owner Awareness Association, said some areas in West Maui were designed for travelers and therefore lack schools and other infrastructure families need.

“This area in West Maui that is sort of like this resort apartment zone — that’s all north of Lahaina — it was never built to be local living,” Humiston said.

One housing advocate argues that just because a community allowed vacation rentals decades ago doesn't mean it still needs to now.

"We are not living in the 1990s or in the 1970s,” said Sterling Higa, executive director of Housing Hawaii's Future. Counties “should have the authority to look at existing laws and reform them as necessary to provide for the public good.”

Courtney Lazo, a real estate agent who is part of Lahaina Strong, the group occupying Kaanapali Beach, said tourists can stay in her hometown now but many locals can't.

“How do you expect a community to recover and heal and move forward when the people who make Lahaina, Lahaina, aren’t even there anymore?” she said at a recent news conference as her voice quivered. “They’re moving away.”