World Press on Yasser Arafat, Catholic Sex Abuse and Covid-19 Vaccine: New Age Islam's Selection, 11 November 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
11 November
2020
• Yasser Arafat: Modern Era’s Saladin
By Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan Ndc, Psc (Retd)
• The Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis Is Far From
Over
By Elizabeth Bruenig
• Five Questions To Ask About Pfizer’s Covid-19
Vaccine
By Arthur Allen
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Yasser Arafat: Modern era’s Saladin
By Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
November
11, 2020
Yasser
Arafat speaks at the United Nations in 1974. At the end of his speech, Arafat
shook his finger at the delegates and declared, "I have come bearing an
olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from
my hand."
-----
The west
saw him as a terrorist; to the rest of the world he was an intrepid warrior
trying relentlessly to right the wrong his nation was done in 1948. He was
fighting to regain for his nation a country which was cynically snatched away
from the Palestinians through a mix of British treachery and western hypocrisy.
To his people, he was an icon of the struggle for freedom. Unfortunately, he
did not live to see the full fruition of his dreams, a Palestinian state.
Sixteen
years ago on this day Yasser Arafat, who had assumed the nom de guerre Abu
Ammar, passed away under questionable circumstances that have not quiet been
answered satisfactorily. But this is not the occasion to dwell on the
circumstances of his death; suffice it to say that doubts remain regarding the
cause of it even today. Instead, let us look at the man who dominated global
news and influenced world and in particular Middle Eastern politics, for a good
part of four decades, with a dispassionate eye.
Yasser
Arafat and Palestine are linked umbilically, and one day his name may become a
symbol for the state of Palestine. He was one person with three personae—leader
of a freedom movement that was being participated in by more than one group
fighting for the liberation of Palestine, each with their individual
ideological leanings, an acclaimed leader of a stateless nation whose homeland
had been usurped, and an administrator of a nebulous state entity that went by
the name of Palestinian Authority—a leader with people but no well-defined
state.
According
to Adam Shatz, the well-known literary editor at the London Review of Books,
"In the Arab imagination, Palestine is not simply a plot of land, any more
than Israel is a plot of land in the Jewish imagination. As the Palestinian
poet Mahmoud Darwish has observed, Palestine is also a metaphor—for the loss of
Eden, for the sorrows of dispossession and exile, for the declining power of
the Arab world in its dealings with the West." And it was to right the
wrong, to retrieve the loss and revive the Arabs that Arafat dedicated his
life. Those who belittle Arafat as being merely a symbol rather than a leader,
caring more about the state than his legacy, often forget that a person cannot
be one without being the other, but that first and foremost he has to be a
leader before he can assume the status of an icon. Near the end of his life
Arafat had subsumed himself within the people saying, "Each Palestinian is
Yasser Arafat, who is part and parcel of the Palestinian people, the great
people, who will stand fast until doomsday."
He is often
vilified for his failure to transform the Oslo Accord into a permanent peace,
unfairly, overlooking Israel's contribution to the failure of the 1993 Accord.
Given the disparate and divergent views within the Arabs and within the
Palestinians, since, by the concept of the Palestinian struggle,
"Islamicists and others hoped the struggle was to end Israel's existence,
while Palestinian nationalists believed the battle was for the West Bank and
Gaza", reconciliation and bringing the various groups together was a tall
order. That led to a deficit of trust between the stakeholders. In return for
Israeli recognition of PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians, PLO
accepted Israel's right to exist, thereby, risking Arafat's own future. He is
criticised for acceding to the Accord since he could not achieve a Palestinian
state during his lifetime. But the critics do not realise that the Accord was
not an end in itself since it was meant to be a prelude to future negotiations.
Yasser Arafat may not have lived to see success but that the Palestine issue
remains at the top of the global agenda is because of him.
The Oslo
Accord was bound to fail, being flawed ab initio. What else could be the fate
of a treaty that did not address the fundamental abrasive issue for the
Palestinians—illegal settlements? Giving in to the pressure of the
rejectionists, Rabin refused to include the settlement freeze clause. This saw
settlement double between 1993 and 2000. If Arafat is blamed for not clamping
down on violence, Israel can be blamed, according to a Hamas leader, for
"misusing such negotiations to win time with a view to imposing more
realities on the ground." Violence was as a reaction to Israeli actions.
There were 100,000 settlers before the agreement and now the number hit 750,000
settlers living illegally in the occupied West Bank. Currently, Israel has
annexed 30 percent of the occupied territory under Trump's so-called "Deal
of the Century" announced on January 28 this year. It refers to Jerusalem
as "Israel's undivided capital" and recognises Israeli sovereignty
over large parts of the West Bank. Trump's acknowledgement of Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel and the latest Middle East peace plan has pushed back any
immediate resolution of the problems, including the implementation of Oslo
Accord.
The US and
the west are known for their hypocrisy as far as terrorism is concerned. But
their greatest hypocrisy is labelling Yasser Arafat as a terrorist. Not
surprisingly, these critics do not see their own faces in the mirror,
particularly the Israelis; for them it is convenient to overlook history
selectively. At least the leaders of Israel, a country that was born out of a
violent terrorist movement, have no moral right to label any other group or
nation fighting for their independence as terrorists. Recall the name Irgun,
the Jewish right-wing underground movement in Palestine, founded in 1931, an
extremist nationalist group which called for the use of force to establish a
Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. It has many terror acts to its
credit, including the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946. Interestingly,
this very terrorist group was subsumed in the Israeli defence forces after
Palestine was given away to the Jews, in 1948. Perhaps the names Menachem Begin
and Yitzhak Shamir would jog our memory too. Apart from the fact that they were
the sixth and seventh prime ministers of Israel, they were also leaders of this
terrorist organisation. Several Israeli politicians and prime ministers are
offsprings of Irgun members. And for the US to apply the terrorist label to
others is like the pot calling the kettle black. It was fined by the ICJ in
1986 for its support for, and acts of, terror in Nicaragua. Even Nelson
Mandela's name remained on the US terrorism watch list till 2008. His ANC was
dubbed a terrorist organisation during the period of the Cold War.
Sixteen
years after Yasser Arafat's death, people are still dissecting his legacy. His
name has become synonymous with Palestine and its aspirations. He can be
credited with reviving the Palestinian cause after the serious reverses of the
1967 Arab Israeli War along with his generation of Palestinian leadership by
bringing the disparate groups under one umbrella and giving it an identity and
a revolutionary character. He wanted to give peace a chance, but Israel had
other plans. Even after more than 70 years, Israel continues to be motivated by
Golda Meir's view that: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people...
It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't
exist."
----
Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan, ndc, psc (Retd),
is a former Associate Editor of The Daily Star.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/strategically-speaking/news/yasser-arafat-modern-eras-saladin-1992717
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The Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis Is Far From Over
By Elizabeth Bruenig
Nov. 10,
2020
After the
Catholic sex abuse crisis exploded into headlines in 2002, the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops promulgated standards that would guide the
American church’s efforts to protect children. In May 2002, the editorial board
of USA Today met with an American bishop who would play an important role in
shaping the new regulations.
“We haven’t
been focused on the Lord; I’m trying to do that,” he told them. “As I see the
bishops losing credibility in many areas, I want to try to be as good a bishop
as I can be. I’ve got a long way to go.” It now seems that bishop, Theodore
McCarrick, had further to go than it seemed.
But the
report the Vatican released Tuesday on Mr. McCarrick’s history of sexual
misconduct before he was removed from the College of Cardinals and defrocked in
2019 sheds harsh light on the church’s unfinished response to the sex abuse
crisis. It indicates policy weaknesses and dangerous habits that must be
corrected so figures like Mr. McCarrick cannot again wreak havoc on future
generations of Catholics.
Mr.
McCarrick’s own history of abuse underscores the gaps left by the standards he
helped craft in 2002.
While the
charter improved the church’s policies on sex abuse prevention and its
management of allegations, it was directed specifically at shielding children
and youths from the predations of priests. As Mr. McCarrick’s exploits show, it
isn’t just children who are at risk of sexual exploitation in the church.
While Mr.
McCarrick did sexually abuse children, some of the more egregious of his
offenses were committed against adults, namely seminarians he met during his
tenure as a bishop in New Jersey. In the report, it is clear that his peers and
superiors were convinced his case wasn’t particularly urgent because Mr.
McCarrick preyed mostly on adults.
There
appears to be confusion among prelates throughout the document as to whether
what had transpired between Mr. McCarrick and these seminarians ought to be
seen as consensual sexual activity between adults — which would be a sin and an
error, by the church’s count, though not necessarily a career-ending disgrace —
or as something much more insidious and abusive.
Pope Francis
has since expanded the church’s definition of “vulnerable adults” from those
without the mental or physical capacity to resist sexual advances to include
those who have “some deprivation of personal freedom,” which could include seminarians and junior
priests who rely on their bishops for ordination, promotion and favorable
appointments.
Yet even
that definition can be easily misconstrued. The Vatican ought to clarify that
any sexual contact suggested or initiated by a superior in the church hierarchy
involving an inferior will be met with the same rigorous reprimands — including
removal from one’s post and possibly laicization — as similar offenses
committed against children. Likewise, priests, seminarians and other adult
victims of clergy sex abuse need reliable ways to report misconduct with
transparent accountability and no threat of retaliation.
The church
is also due for a slew of cultural reforms. According to the report, Mr.
McCarrick was able to coerce seminarians into bed with him by creating an
atmosphere of fearful cooperation at Seton Hall’s Immaculate Conception
Seminary School of Theology. I have heard many similar, recent accounts from
seminarians across the country, involving a number of clergy members. Sexual
abuse in Catholic seminaries has been well known since at least 1983, when the
author Paul Hendrickson published “Seminary: A Search,” detailing his own
experiences. The Catholic seminary system is long overdue for a thorough,
independent investigation into these disturbing patterns.
As a
character study of Mr. McCarrick, the report offers another important area for
review: the spiritual formation of its clergymen. Mr. McCarrick’s sexual
behavior seemed at times juvenile, arrested; he clearly felt lonely and longed
for intimacy and was unable to find a licit way to channel those emotions. If
policies regarding the Catholic clergy and sex aren’t going to change, then
something must, and it’s reasonable to begin with the way those considering
holy orders are taught about the nature and goodness of sex.
Then there
is the problem of bishops. While America’s bishops have vowed to hold
themselves accountable for sexual abuses via a hotline for tips and procedures
for investigation of bishops by senior bishops, those policies allow for no oversight
from laypeople. But lay participation in accountability processes is crucial,
because laypeople provide a perspective less entwined with the interests of the
church hierarchy, and because trust and transparency are sorely lacking in the
church.
Tuesday’s
report is, I suspect, as remarkably unflinching as it is precisely because it
was written by a layperson, the American lawyer Jeff Lena, who was given vast
investigative power by the church. It should be seen as a model for
accountability processes for bishops and other senior church officials going
forward.
The church
stands at a crossroads. It can continue to fight legislation that would empower
victims to seek redress and respond to abuse long after the fact, such as the
suspension of statutes of limitation in sex abuse cases. Or it can confess the
way it asks us to confess, and repent the way it asks us to repent: Fully,
openly, over and over again, as often as it takes, as painful as it is.
----
Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) is an Opinion
writer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opinion/McCarrick-Catholic-sex-abuse.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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Five Questions to Ask About Pfizer’s Covid-19
Vaccine
By Arthur Allen
Nov. 10,
2020
Pfizer’s
announcement on Monday that its Covid-19 shot appears to keep nine of 10 people
from getting the disease sent its stock price rocketing. Many news reports
described the vaccine as if it were our deliverance from the pandemic, even
though few details were released.
There was
certainly something to crow about: Pfizer’s vaccine consists of genetic
material called mRNA encased in tiny particles that shuttle it into our cells.
From there, it stimulates the immune system to make antibodies that protect
against the virus. A similar strategy is employed in other leading Covid-19
vaccine candidates. If mRNA vaccines can protect against Covid-19 and,
presumably, other infectious diseases, it will be a momentous piece of news.
“This is a
truly historic first,” said Dr. Michael Watson, the former president of Valera,
a subsidiary of Moderna, which is currently running advanced trials of its own
mRNA vaccine against Covid-19. “We now have a whole new class of vaccines in
our hands.”
But
historically, important scientific announcements about vaccines are made
through peer-reviewed medical research papers that have undergone extensive
scrutiny about study design, results and assumptions, not through company press
releases.
So did
Pfizer’s stock deserve its double-digit percentage bump? The answers to the following
five questions will help us know.
How long
will the vaccine protect patients? Pfizer says that, as of last week, 94 people
out about 40,000 in the trial had gotten ill with Covid-19. While it didn’t say
exactly how many of the sick had been vaccinated, the 90 percent efficacy
figure suggests it was a very small number. The Pfizer announcement covers
people who got two shots between July and October. But it doesn’t indicate how
long protection will last or how often people might need boosters.
“It’s a
reasonable bet, but still a gamble that protection for two or three months is
similar to six months or a year,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Food and
Drug Administration panel that is likely to review the vaccine for approval in
December. Normally, vaccines aren’t licensed until they show they can protect
for a year or two.
The company
did not release any safety information. To date, no serious side effects have
been revealed, and most tend to occur within six weeks of a vaccination. But
scientists will have to keep an eye out for rare effects such as immune
enhancement, a severe illness brought on by a virus’s interaction with immune
particles in some vaccinated persons, said Dr. Walt Orenstein, a professor of
medicine at Emory University and former director of the immunization program at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Will it
protect the most vulnerable? Pfizer did not disclose what percentage of its
trial volunteers are in the groups most likely to be hospitalized or to die of
Covid-19 — including people over 65 and those with diabetes or obesity. This is
a key point because many vaccines, particularly for influenza, may fail to
protect the elderly though they protect younger people. “How representative are
those 94 people of the overall population, especially those most at risk?”
asked Dr. Orenstein.
Both the
National Academy of Medicine and the C.D.C. have urged that older people be
among the first groups to receive vaccines. It’s possible that vaccines under
development by Novavax and Sanofi, which are likely to begin late-phase
clinical trials later this year, may be better for the elderly, Dr. Offit
noted. Those vaccines contain immune-stimulating particles like the ones
contained in the Shingrix vaccine, which is highly effective in protecting
older people against shingles disease.
Can it be
rolled out effectively? The Pfizer vaccine, unlike others in late-stage
testing, must be kept supercooled, on dry ice around 100 degrees Fahrenheit
below zero, from the time it is produced until a few days before it is
injected. mRNA quickly self-destructs at higher temperatures. Pfizer has
devised an elaborate system to transport the vaccine by truck and specially
designed cases to vaccination sites. Public health workers are being trained to
handle the vaccine as we speak, but we don’t know for sure how well it will do
if containers are left out in the Arizona sun too long. Mishandling the vaccine
along the way from factory to patient would render it ineffective, so people
who received it could think they were protected when they were not, Dr. Offit
said.
Could a
premature announcement hurt future vaccines? There’s no way at present to know
whether the Pfizer vaccine will be the best over all or for specific age
groups. But if the F.D.A. approves it quickly, that could make it harder for
manufacturers of other vaccines to carry out their studies. If people are aware
that an effective vaccine exists, they may decline to enter clinical trials,
partly out of concern they could get a placebo and remain unprotected. Indeed,
it may be unethical to use a placebo in such trials. Many vaccines will be
needed in order to meet global demand for protection against Covid-19, so it’s
crucial to continue additional studies.
Could the
Pfizer study expedite future vaccines? Scientists are vitally interested in
whether the small number who received the real vaccine but still got sick
produced lower levels of antibodies than the vaccinated individuals who
remained well. Blood studies of those people would help scientists learn
whether there is a “correlate of protection” for Covid-19 — a level of
antibodies that can predict whether someone is protected from the disease. If
they had that knowledge, public health officials could determine whether other
vaccines under production were effective without necessarily having to test
them on tens of thousands of people.
But it’s
difficult to build such road maps. Scientists have never established correlates
of immunity for pertussis, for example, although vaccines have been used
against those bacteria for nearly a century.
Still, this
is good news, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former F.D.A. deputy commissioner. He
said: “I hope this makes people realize that we’re not stuck in this situation
forever. There’s hope coming, whether it’s this vaccine or another.”
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Arthur Allen is a reporter for Kaiser Health
News and the author of “Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest
Lifesaver.” This essay was copublished with Kaiser Health News.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opinion/pfizer-vaccine-covid.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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