Nothing to deny about, Israel has been accused of war crimes, its soldiers should stand up in an International Tribunal Court, and this bullshit of "self-defense" is not working as it used to in the past.
Isreal's main threat are plenty:
1) If the soldiers, officers, and politicians will be accused of war crimes, and proven guilty by the international court (who will be by all means possible), they cannot carry mass ethnic cleansing in the name of self-defense like this racist state used to do.
2) The accusation and proving of Israel as a war criminal nation based on the Gazza events will lead to the opening of all cases Israel has been involved as a war criminal (almost 24/7 in its lands against the Israeli Palestinians whom Israel tries to eradicate their identity as Israeli Arabs) , and its horrors elsewhere (such as 2006 war on Lebanon and Gazza, Beit Hannoun massacres, the 1996 Qana massacres, the law suits from Southern Lebanese on Israel, the 1982 invasion, Sabra-Chatilla Camps) and the list is really really long).
3) This leads to almost every politician in Israel's history to be held accountable (even if symbolically) that the Isreali "Defense" Forces are war criminals. Natanyaho is too scared of such an effect, because while he is defending Levni and Olmert from not being taken to the Tribunal, because for example Peres will go as well (Qana I massacre)
The Goldstone report was also sponsored by the UN Human Rights, the level of Israel's brutality on Gazza was too big for its allies: USA and UK to hide it or cover it up. Well, they didn't to hide it up! We got Mahmoud Abbass! He ordered, to the shock of the world, to withdraw the report's findings till six months (giving Israel and USA a lot of time to counter the Goldstone report and like many other reports--> Buried).
Abbass represents the new Palestinian elites, who are making money out of the PA. He sold out the Palestinians ages ago, and is paying lip services to everyone that sustain him in power. Hamas, the more radical alternative, also had committed blunters. Hamas, during the Gazza Holocaust, proved incapable of protecting its people, due to the fact that simply Hamas doesn't have the circumstances or funding to operate like Hezbollah when the latter humilated the Israeli infantry. Nevertheless, what do Hamas offer? They offered welfarism (covering 38% of the Palestinians in Gazza) amidst a brutal seige of the Israelis to keep Gazza locked out from the world. All reporters and official figureheads were not allowed to enter Gazza during the ethnic cleansing. However, Annahar reported two weeks ago that Hamas barred women from riding bicycles... again, where do we progress from here?
As a matter of fact, Goldstone himself complained that Israel didn't allow the investigators to enter Gazza through its lands. The answer is simple: Israel wants to get away with its ethnic cleansing---> Self-Defense logo again... lost its charm. Even the Obama administration is trying to cover this up, and the reason is simple, because the USA covered the attrocities of Israel against Muslim and Christian Palestinians. It is too embarassing. Yet, on a side note, I do believe Obama wants to be more strict with Israel, his problem is that his hands are tied over there. The only reason makes me think so because unlike all previous presidents during their mandates at the White House, Obama has very strong ties with a mighty Palestinian academic: Rashid Khalidi.
The summary of the Goldstone report is important, released by the UN, and can be found at their website
To all those pethatic supporters of Israel, do not preach me democracy and self-defense, you are racists and disgusting for supporting a nation that seggregates based on religion. As you see, the tides are beginning to turn against racism, slowly, but the tides are turning.
MFL
PS: Check www.zmag.org for more details on the updates!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
And the Lebanese Never Learn... (surprised?)
Not having a government is not noticed in Lebanon... some joke about it, and they are correct to joke about it; sadly, I notice that having a government eases down the tension between the bougeoisie of Lebanon.
Commenting briefly on the elections before proceeding to the incidents: Was anyone surprised of the results? Everyone claimed they are won, the 14th of March gathered the highest number of seats, and the Opposition gathered the highest number of votes; last but not least, Junblatt opened a minimarket for himself and became the actual veto vote on the government. Meanwhile, it was impressive that not much riots broke up on election days, nevertheless, while waiting for the government to form, we open the TV over here, we see bulletins telling us a grenade was thrown by a "mysterious" evil hand, and everyone denounces it. Tripoli became the source of clashes again, whereby "mysterious rpj" missiles fly, and then "mysterious" gunners reply back. Now wait, isn't that everyday news, I mean why I got bored from blogging on Lebanon? It is the same news, and everyone expects the results. Finally, a person died, stabbed brutally three times, who was supposed to hold a riot between two young groups. Hence, he became the latest in the line of martyrs for the "Lebanese cause", whatever the cause these days it is.
Are we surprised? Hell no, are we sad? Hell yes, I mean doesn't it bother you to hear a riot then you have to call your direct relatives first to check on them, and then call your friends who live there to double check, and finally call friends who actually might be in the region? Will we ever be used to that? Definietly not!
The reason for all of this is simple. All parties still preserve their militia weaponry. Access to arms is still cheap, and none of the political leaders are doing anything to stop it. This of course excludes the arms of Hezbollah which lost some credibility after last year's events of shoot-outs, at least in my own perspective, and also the Palestinian Refugee camps were at least three major factions have large stock of arms: Fatah, Osbat el Ansar, and PFLP-General Command (Gibreel's faction). In all of this chaos, we also had two coalitions going head to head in a militarily sense last year, one group overwhelmed the other, and the winner in these street to street shootouts had disarmed the loser and gave the light and middle ranged weapons to the Lebanese Army. The Lebanese army in such situations, where political parties clearly go and shoot at each other (ie the downfall of the government into militias) can do nothing but sit and watch. Last time the Lebanese army was ordered to bomb an armed political party, it was Hezbollah back in 1989. The result was Nabih Berri (then fresh of clashes with Hezbollah) told the Shiites to leave the army; guess what, they did! The army lost 60% of its units, and the army was threatened then (but yet again) to crumble down. The army these days are called to detect Israeli hidden cells (and may others be captured for the security of the citizens) but to be a riot intercepter: shoot out takes place, army comes, and case closed. Some are captured, but then we lack the follow-up on what happened. Hence, the army is really crippled to disarm anyone, probably not even We'am Wahhab's militants as well.
The reason these ugly incidents take place, like the Cola "mysterious" grenade (and whose echo rang in my ear the other day), is simple! The top leaders are soothing things down, but we see their second in command escalating (well except for Aoun and Jaajaa both competing to prove who is the real Lebanese Christian while Sami Gemayel and Suleiman Franjieh are just trying put their own political space in the mainstream. Walid Junblatt returned to be the pendulum of agreeing one day with this faction or that one, or even both at the same time. Bottom line is, each political party is driving a hard bargain on the government level, mainly Mr. Aoun wants his beloved adorable nephew, Jubran Bathil, to be a minister of interior, then a minister of something else (el-mohem: a minister), and Harriri. Harriri and everyone else would tell us on TV, "we are all happy about the atmosphere", but then their MPs and figureheads lash out on each other. This double tongue doesn't work out at all. Already people are overcharged, and the party militants won't hesitate to blow off some steam. The reason they would blow steam is for the fact simply they are fully convinced the leaders are representing their own sectarian interests (I would exclude the SSNP and the Democratic Left for two reasons):
1) The SSNP had been gaining a lot of grounds politically in Syria, and after last year's militant performance in Beirut, they are being rewarded; also for the fact they are the only official group in the Opposition that is secular (after all Aoun gave up years ago on secularism and preached Christianity). This allows Hassan Nasrallah to argue that whenever Sunni and Shiite militants collide (Future and AMAL to be exact), it is strictly political and not sectarian (same as Harriri) Of course, on TV, we see the MPs joking around, and the sort, hugging each other, laughing, and go back home to their fancy houses. I might exclude Ali Ammar (the MP that was actually a football player who takes in charge of agressively "purifying the chins" of those who mention Hezbollah badly. This guy is a walking time bomb to explode in the parliament. The fact that the Lebanese Communist Party walked out from the Opposition, means the SSNP are the only secular party within the Opposition, within the Lebanese borders.
2) The Democratic Left: Yes, you read that right. They are, much of my hate to them, back to the Parliament, even though with one MP. Why we may ask that question? Well they are the only group that is secular within the 14th of March, but also they carry the maryrdom of Samir Qassir in their files. For such a reason, again to preserve the monopoly of the 2005 - 2007 martyrs of figureheads, a DLM had to be elected. The other reason is the fact that the DLM figureheads, specially Elias Atallah, was the cofounder of the Resistance Front, which fought Israel skin to the teeth; hence 14th of March can use the fascinating relic of Elias Atallah to preach that they have militants that fought Israel in the past. We both remember how Prime Minister Seniora and Hassan Nasrallah competed about whose block was the resistance.
Main issue is: citizens are dying. The man who got stabbled, he may be a part of the Free Patriotic Movement, but he was a citizen, and not an armed militant. It gets worse, by-standers are getting wounded or killed (remember when AMAL's Berri spoke and couple recieved raining bullets? That case was closed swiftly). If we don't have Israel bombing over our heads, we have the political parties shooting at each other, with the occassion of someone mysterious releasing a missile from South Lebanon on Israel's Northern Frontier, and Israel replies with a massive bombardment on nearby villages as if these civilians shot the rockets. Security wise? Fantastic, what more can we ask?
The double tongue of the politicians of escalations and "love affairs of each other" caused this. The economic situation makes it worse, for people's lives are horrible in the country with minimum wages, and frustration goes on the "enemy". The "enemy" is not Israel, it is not the Qa'eda based Fatah Islam (whom we are still debating if it was Syria sending them through the borders or the US sent them), but each other. These riots just escalate more problems, for riots and hate bring more riots and fear, and eventually one day we will have those sporadic violence spreading across sensitive regions in less than 20 minutes. Of course, everyone will yell to their supporters: "go home" or "these parties are armed". I got news for you, a very nice juicy secret news for you: EVERYONE IS ARMED! What happened with the arms that the SSNP or AMAL carried with them? Still there under the banner of Resistance Arms! What happened with the weapons of 14th of March, apparently new ones can be bought easily, and with the latest military blunder of last year, they can learn from their mistakes (super yay for 14th of March, boohoo for the citizens). Having said all these, what about the Labenese in general?
This is why I watch few channels in Lebanon that go on Middle Grounds: LBC and NTV. The problem with NTV though, like Junblatt, they got a moodswing of their own as well: they swing between 14th of March, middle grounds, and the Opposition. By Middle Grounds, I sure do not mean "All the President's men", these people, like Ziad Baroud, will never be elected in a sectarian based state.
Anyways, the reason why I watch the LBC roundabout (yes, sure they put Jaajaa couple of minutes more than the rest) is the fact they ask everyone what happened and what they think. Well, what do they think?! Anyone noticed how the citizens of both sides of a conflicting regions go down screaming and yelling: "we have no problems with our neighbors", "we are all Lebanese", "Don't involve us with party politics", "Leave us alone". Anyone noticed as we sit on our chair (with a nice juicy glass of white wine in my hand) and notice how our proletariat hate what is going on? Notice that there are always a mini-angry crowd blaming the other party while the majority just expressing regrets? (glass finished in one sip after watching the old lady, heartbroken, saying to the politicians: leave us alone). The reason is that these political riots, including the mysterious Inerga (whatever spelled) missiles, and the hand grenades are just the beginning. They suit the politicians to divide the Proletariat according to their sects, and furthermore, and worse, they impose the political divisions on the Lebanese people. Thus, if affiliates of Sect A, but not party affiliates (perhaps some sympathy) has no issues with Sect B, on the contrary relations are fantastic, and these riots take place. Sect A, if losing casualties in this or that region, or even experiencing fear, doubts Sect B. What if some hot head militant that belongs to sect A, pays retaliates and hurts Sect B, the domino effect rolls. All politicians (including Hezbollah, our "defenders" and the "secular" Lebanese Forces) get what they want: isolated sects that clutch to the secatarian parties. Why? Simple... if Sect A for example supports Harriri, but its people are in good relations with Sect B (say supporters of Hezbollah), how to get neighbors to shoot at each other? Simple: bring the hooligans to do some riots, then viola! Fear of the other!
Who benefits: the politicians; who mourns: the proletariat
Who gets richer: the politicians; who mourns: the proletariat
Who goes to their rich houses, the politicians, who is getting poorer: the Proletariat.
The media of the parties are still charging the situation, depends on whenever Minister Baroud yells at them to cool it down aggressively or not!
Lately, these incidents (after the riots of three years, and of course 17 years of civil wars) seem normal to a lot of us. It is as if a Pavlov effect whereby we got accustomed to it!
As my beloved friend Darko said in two posts earlier, we are losing hope, I lost it ages ago, I mean I am still a Marxist, and not any Marxist, the one who still dreams to unite the world into a single classless society where everyone are equal (reminds us of John Lennon's Imagine; good song) I say, we have no choice, as activists to carry on with our belief and quest we can change Lebanon and the whole world (no, I am not doing an Obama ad. of Yes We Can), more like Connelly's logo of: Our demands most humble, we want the world. Neverthelesss, if we do not have the vision, what do we have on the ground? Sad pictures of Iraqis dying by the 100s every day while enjoying what Bush Jr. said: "Giving Freedom and Democracy?" (Side note: Bush Jr. I am still waiting for those damn Weapons of Mass Destructions, you did promise us they will pop up eventually).
It is now 6:51 in Beirut, I bid thee all good night/morning (yes, I am a night crawler, and had a whole rakwi of caffeine for myself in the afternoon)
PS: Doesn't my post on Iran, Hezbollah, and Wilayat el Faqih click on what happened on the elections over there? I love it when my analysis hits the right bullseye
MFL
Commenting briefly on the elections before proceeding to the incidents: Was anyone surprised of the results? Everyone claimed they are won, the 14th of March gathered the highest number of seats, and the Opposition gathered the highest number of votes; last but not least, Junblatt opened a minimarket for himself and became the actual veto vote on the government. Meanwhile, it was impressive that not much riots broke up on election days, nevertheless, while waiting for the government to form, we open the TV over here, we see bulletins telling us a grenade was thrown by a "mysterious" evil hand, and everyone denounces it. Tripoli became the source of clashes again, whereby "mysterious rpj" missiles fly, and then "mysterious" gunners reply back. Now wait, isn't that everyday news, I mean why I got bored from blogging on Lebanon? It is the same news, and everyone expects the results. Finally, a person died, stabbed brutally three times, who was supposed to hold a riot between two young groups. Hence, he became the latest in the line of martyrs for the "Lebanese cause", whatever the cause these days it is.
Are we surprised? Hell no, are we sad? Hell yes, I mean doesn't it bother you to hear a riot then you have to call your direct relatives first to check on them, and then call your friends who live there to double check, and finally call friends who actually might be in the region? Will we ever be used to that? Definietly not!
The reason for all of this is simple. All parties still preserve their militia weaponry. Access to arms is still cheap, and none of the political leaders are doing anything to stop it. This of course excludes the arms of Hezbollah which lost some credibility after last year's events of shoot-outs, at least in my own perspective, and also the Palestinian Refugee camps were at least three major factions have large stock of arms: Fatah, Osbat el Ansar, and PFLP-General Command (Gibreel's faction). In all of this chaos, we also had two coalitions going head to head in a militarily sense last year, one group overwhelmed the other, and the winner in these street to street shootouts had disarmed the loser and gave the light and middle ranged weapons to the Lebanese Army. The Lebanese army in such situations, where political parties clearly go and shoot at each other (ie the downfall of the government into militias) can do nothing but sit and watch. Last time the Lebanese army was ordered to bomb an armed political party, it was Hezbollah back in 1989. The result was Nabih Berri (then fresh of clashes with Hezbollah) told the Shiites to leave the army; guess what, they did! The army lost 60% of its units, and the army was threatened then (but yet again) to crumble down. The army these days are called to detect Israeli hidden cells (and may others be captured for the security of the citizens) but to be a riot intercepter: shoot out takes place, army comes, and case closed. Some are captured, but then we lack the follow-up on what happened. Hence, the army is really crippled to disarm anyone, probably not even We'am Wahhab's militants as well.
The reason these ugly incidents take place, like the Cola "mysterious" grenade (and whose echo rang in my ear the other day), is simple! The top leaders are soothing things down, but we see their second in command escalating (well except for Aoun and Jaajaa both competing to prove who is the real Lebanese Christian while Sami Gemayel and Suleiman Franjieh are just trying put their own political space in the mainstream. Walid Junblatt returned to be the pendulum of agreeing one day with this faction or that one, or even both at the same time. Bottom line is, each political party is driving a hard bargain on the government level, mainly Mr. Aoun wants his beloved adorable nephew, Jubran Bathil, to be a minister of interior, then a minister of something else (el-mohem: a minister), and Harriri. Harriri and everyone else would tell us on TV, "we are all happy about the atmosphere", but then their MPs and figureheads lash out on each other. This double tongue doesn't work out at all. Already people are overcharged, and the party militants won't hesitate to blow off some steam. The reason they would blow steam is for the fact simply they are fully convinced the leaders are representing their own sectarian interests (I would exclude the SSNP and the Democratic Left for two reasons):
1) The SSNP had been gaining a lot of grounds politically in Syria, and after last year's militant performance in Beirut, they are being rewarded; also for the fact they are the only official group in the Opposition that is secular (after all Aoun gave up years ago on secularism and preached Christianity). This allows Hassan Nasrallah to argue that whenever Sunni and Shiite militants collide (Future and AMAL to be exact), it is strictly political and not sectarian (same as Harriri) Of course, on TV, we see the MPs joking around, and the sort, hugging each other, laughing, and go back home to their fancy houses. I might exclude Ali Ammar (the MP that was actually a football player who takes in charge of agressively "purifying the chins" of those who mention Hezbollah badly. This guy is a walking time bomb to explode in the parliament. The fact that the Lebanese Communist Party walked out from the Opposition, means the SSNP are the only secular party within the Opposition, within the Lebanese borders.
2) The Democratic Left: Yes, you read that right. They are, much of my hate to them, back to the Parliament, even though with one MP. Why we may ask that question? Well they are the only group that is secular within the 14th of March, but also they carry the maryrdom of Samir Qassir in their files. For such a reason, again to preserve the monopoly of the 2005 - 2007 martyrs of figureheads, a DLM had to be elected. The other reason is the fact that the DLM figureheads, specially Elias Atallah, was the cofounder of the Resistance Front, which fought Israel skin to the teeth; hence 14th of March can use the fascinating relic of Elias Atallah to preach that they have militants that fought Israel in the past. We both remember how Prime Minister Seniora and Hassan Nasrallah competed about whose block was the resistance.
Main issue is: citizens are dying. The man who got stabbled, he may be a part of the Free Patriotic Movement, but he was a citizen, and not an armed militant. It gets worse, by-standers are getting wounded or killed (remember when AMAL's Berri spoke and couple recieved raining bullets? That case was closed swiftly). If we don't have Israel bombing over our heads, we have the political parties shooting at each other, with the occassion of someone mysterious releasing a missile from South Lebanon on Israel's Northern Frontier, and Israel replies with a massive bombardment on nearby villages as if these civilians shot the rockets. Security wise? Fantastic, what more can we ask?
The double tongue of the politicians of escalations and "love affairs of each other" caused this. The economic situation makes it worse, for people's lives are horrible in the country with minimum wages, and frustration goes on the "enemy". The "enemy" is not Israel, it is not the Qa'eda based Fatah Islam (whom we are still debating if it was Syria sending them through the borders or the US sent them), but each other. These riots just escalate more problems, for riots and hate bring more riots and fear, and eventually one day we will have those sporadic violence spreading across sensitive regions in less than 20 minutes. Of course, everyone will yell to their supporters: "go home" or "these parties are armed". I got news for you, a very nice juicy secret news for you: EVERYONE IS ARMED! What happened with the arms that the SSNP or AMAL carried with them? Still there under the banner of Resistance Arms! What happened with the weapons of 14th of March, apparently new ones can be bought easily, and with the latest military blunder of last year, they can learn from their mistakes (super yay for 14th of March, boohoo for the citizens). Having said all these, what about the Labenese in general?
This is why I watch few channels in Lebanon that go on Middle Grounds: LBC and NTV. The problem with NTV though, like Junblatt, they got a moodswing of their own as well: they swing between 14th of March, middle grounds, and the Opposition. By Middle Grounds, I sure do not mean "All the President's men", these people, like Ziad Baroud, will never be elected in a sectarian based state.
Anyways, the reason why I watch the LBC roundabout (yes, sure they put Jaajaa couple of minutes more than the rest) is the fact they ask everyone what happened and what they think. Well, what do they think?! Anyone noticed how the citizens of both sides of a conflicting regions go down screaming and yelling: "we have no problems with our neighbors", "we are all Lebanese", "Don't involve us with party politics", "Leave us alone". Anyone noticed as we sit on our chair (with a nice juicy glass of white wine in my hand) and notice how our proletariat hate what is going on? Notice that there are always a mini-angry crowd blaming the other party while the majority just expressing regrets? (glass finished in one sip after watching the old lady, heartbroken, saying to the politicians: leave us alone). The reason is that these political riots, including the mysterious Inerga (whatever spelled) missiles, and the hand grenades are just the beginning. They suit the politicians to divide the Proletariat according to their sects, and furthermore, and worse, they impose the political divisions on the Lebanese people. Thus, if affiliates of Sect A, but not party affiliates (perhaps some sympathy) has no issues with Sect B, on the contrary relations are fantastic, and these riots take place. Sect A, if losing casualties in this or that region, or even experiencing fear, doubts Sect B. What if some hot head militant that belongs to sect A, pays retaliates and hurts Sect B, the domino effect rolls. All politicians (including Hezbollah, our "defenders" and the "secular" Lebanese Forces) get what they want: isolated sects that clutch to the secatarian parties. Why? Simple... if Sect A for example supports Harriri, but its people are in good relations with Sect B (say supporters of Hezbollah), how to get neighbors to shoot at each other? Simple: bring the hooligans to do some riots, then viola! Fear of the other!
Who benefits: the politicians; who mourns: the proletariat
Who gets richer: the politicians; who mourns: the proletariat
Who goes to their rich houses, the politicians, who is getting poorer: the Proletariat.
The media of the parties are still charging the situation, depends on whenever Minister Baroud yells at them to cool it down aggressively or not!
Lately, these incidents (after the riots of three years, and of course 17 years of civil wars) seem normal to a lot of us. It is as if a Pavlov effect whereby we got accustomed to it!
As my beloved friend Darko said in two posts earlier, we are losing hope, I lost it ages ago, I mean I am still a Marxist, and not any Marxist, the one who still dreams to unite the world into a single classless society where everyone are equal (reminds us of John Lennon's Imagine; good song) I say, we have no choice, as activists to carry on with our belief and quest we can change Lebanon and the whole world (no, I am not doing an Obama ad. of Yes We Can), more like Connelly's logo of: Our demands most humble, we want the world. Neverthelesss, if we do not have the vision, what do we have on the ground? Sad pictures of Iraqis dying by the 100s every day while enjoying what Bush Jr. said: "Giving Freedom and Democracy?" (Side note: Bush Jr. I am still waiting for those damn Weapons of Mass Destructions, you did promise us they will pop up eventually).
It is now 6:51 in Beirut, I bid thee all good night/morning (yes, I am a night crawler, and had a whole rakwi of caffeine for myself in the afternoon)
PS: Doesn't my post on Iran, Hezbollah, and Wilayat el Faqih click on what happened on the elections over there? I love it when my analysis hits the right bullseye
MFL
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Anti-Semite?
To form critiques against the nation state of Israel is not to be antisemite, rather to assume that all Jews are Zionists is antisemitism. Israel's racist attacks on Palestinians and degradation of their way of living is antisemitism, even though both belong to same of origins. Zionism is a political racist movement, Judaism is a sect. There is a big difference when someone attacks Zionism for political reasons, and Judaism for racist reasons.
When I typed antisemite on the dictionary.com, it gave me prejudice or hated towards the Jews, that definition in fact is an error, the term Semites refer to the entire region. Semites include Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and also Hebrews. These are in geneal the Cena'anites. To the extreme non-Jewish Zionists in the US, get your facts straight!
Let us get this straight from the beginning, antisemitism refers to us all over here.
MFL
When I typed antisemite on the dictionary.com, it gave me prejudice or hated towards the Jews, that definition in fact is an error, the term Semites refer to the entire region. Semites include Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and also Hebrews. These are in geneal the Cena'anites. To the extreme non-Jewish Zionists in the US, get your facts straight!
Let us get this straight from the beginning, antisemitism refers to us all over here.
MFL
Monday, October 05, 2009
Oh... You Mean Israel Should Not Be Held Accountable?
Well, we all know how the UN never punished Israel for its war-crimes, while in Eastern Europe, if a soldier shot a rocket on a civilian village, they faced the International Tribunal.
This of course rotates on how the UN also disregards Israel's abuse of human rights whereby it has the total freedom to arrest anyone and torture them, whereby the innocent signs a confession of a crime he/she do not know off. The latest proof is the women released by the Israeli Chicken Forces, 7 of the women were independent and non-party affiliates, and the rest according to the Israeli officials were not involved in "terrorist" acts. Of course, Israel could have started negotiations by 2006, instead of bombing the hell out of the Palestinian civilians while not hurting Hamas. Instead, Bomb them to kingdom come, kill as many as possible Palestinians, get a way with this ethnic cleansing, then start negotiating and pretend to be the victim.
Now, Mr. Mahmoud Abbass, also requests the prolonging of the Gazza report. How it can be so? Human Right activists hailed the report; however, Abbass put himself in a more sticky situation. Israel, trying as allows to ignore the facts, that the Gazza Holocaust was simply "self-defense", that the civilians who died were not to be considered as victims, that the IDF does not commit warcrimes. The US itself (under Obama's leadership) didn't like the conclusions. So Israel is not a war crime comitter? My memory tells me that the country to commit the highest number of attrocities and butcheries on civilians is Israel, and so far none is held accountable.
While Fatah is demanding to prolong the vote on the report for "political reasons", elsewhere, fellow British activists are just doing their jobs right, which is seeking justice for the civilians killed. Henceforth, the accused warcriminal Yaalon called it "de-legetimise" the state rather than doing his duty and answer for the deaths of the 14 citizens. Of course, in his eyes, Israel did its duty by expressing "regret" on their death. Sure, if a soldier kills a citizen, he/she should face justice, if it is an IDF soldier, well, he/she are victims for shooting a civilian.
This is the arrogance of racist Zionists allowed to construct their own state.
MFL
This of course rotates on how the UN also disregards Israel's abuse of human rights whereby it has the total freedom to arrest anyone and torture them, whereby the innocent signs a confession of a crime he/she do not know off. The latest proof is the women released by the Israeli Chicken Forces, 7 of the women were independent and non-party affiliates, and the rest according to the Israeli officials were not involved in "terrorist" acts. Of course, Israel could have started negotiations by 2006, instead of bombing the hell out of the Palestinian civilians while not hurting Hamas. Instead, Bomb them to kingdom come, kill as many as possible Palestinians, get a way with this ethnic cleansing, then start negotiating and pretend to be the victim.
Now, Mr. Mahmoud Abbass, also requests the prolonging of the Gazza report. How it can be so? Human Right activists hailed the report; however, Abbass put himself in a more sticky situation. Israel, trying as allows to ignore the facts, that the Gazza Holocaust was simply "self-defense", that the civilians who died were not to be considered as victims, that the IDF does not commit warcrimes. The US itself (under Obama's leadership) didn't like the conclusions. So Israel is not a war crime comitter? My memory tells me that the country to commit the highest number of attrocities and butcheries on civilians is Israel, and so far none is held accountable.
While Fatah is demanding to prolong the vote on the report for "political reasons", elsewhere, fellow British activists are just doing their jobs right, which is seeking justice for the civilians killed. Henceforth, the accused warcriminal Yaalon called it "de-legetimise" the state rather than doing his duty and answer for the deaths of the 14 citizens. Of course, in his eyes, Israel did its duty by expressing "regret" on their death. Sure, if a soldier kills a citizen, he/she should face justice, if it is an IDF soldier, well, he/she are victims for shooting a civilian.
This is the arrogance of racist Zionists allowed to construct their own state.
MFL
Democracy and its preachers
Socialism Needs Democracy Like the Human Body Needs Oxygen - Leon Trotsky
The latest blabs on democratizing Iran by ousting its insane president Ahmadinejad had been rotating lately. Of course, as I wrote last year, the president is worthless, while it is the Wali el Faqih, currently Ali Khamanei, pulls all the major strings. This leads to the question: What is the use of throwing Mr. Ahmadinejad in the first place?
Nevertheless, my main interest is not writing about Iran at all currently, but rather on those capitalists who preach democracy, and lead a very normal life in the West. This is of course not to doubt the intentions of some of those who preach democracy, some of them have really the intent, but promoting the "US logic" of democracy in the Arab world yields zero feedback.
Democracy as we know it, took centuries to evolve in Western Europe, and rapidly in the US, with the African Americans hitting the streets to demand for their civil and human rights. Nevertheless, even in the West, where citizens get respect from their police force, democracy rotated around, to quote Karl Marx, electing the oppressors every certain time period.
Those preachers of Democracy of course come through several institutions, mainly through US AID, World Bank sponsored projects/proposals, and other institutions. As far as I know, both political parties of the US, whether Republican or Democrats, have branch parties across the globe, composed of ex-pats, seeking to promote the Western culture of democracy. However, if we consider the West as central and Western Europe (along with the US), then even there democracy is not really accessable for a lot of people. The US proletariat are as confused about the realities of the world due to media monopolation, and of course, they are alienated even from their surroundings due to the hectic business rush lifestyle to survive. Homeless people live in the streets of several US states, and if I remember correctly, there was an accusation between the Republicans and Democrats during Bush Jr's first election, that party representatives were going to the streets bribing the homeless with cigarettes to go and vote. Of course, we expect the preachers of democracy over there to come here. Latin Americans have been facing abuses all the time (even from African Americans), while several Arabs walk in fear due to fact any 'wild cowboy bill' can point at them and yell "terrorists".
Now I need to mention one tiny detail of all those "democratic crusades" that come to the Middle East and elsewhere (North Africa, Eastern Europe, others...), the majority of them come here because they are paid to come here. Their work involves think tanks, associations, organizations, and lectures. The bulk of their work ends up on a nice dry paper that nobody would read except few academics, and probably an official or two. Yet, emancipation on the ground provides fruitless communication. The fact that Ziad Baroud made it as a Minister due to his hard efforts and good reputation proves a victory of the local NGOs against such efforts of "democratization". Although Baroud's supporters in my opinion require a different post. Even Baroud, with the support of all the networks behind him, that include reforms & proposals, vanish into thin air at the first political instability that hits the area (whether local or regional). The main reason is: Democracy cannot begin except by empowering the proletarit to unify across the ethnic and sectarian borders.
The corrupt elites of the third world make sure that the status quo among the proletariat remain divided. It can be seculars, berbers, moderate Muslims, and Islamists in Morroco, or it can be sectarian isolation in Lebanon. The proletariat lack the means to identify their own rights, and their own strength if they are united. Now of course, someone will jump and say: our projects reach out grass root people on the ground and in rural areas. That person who actually jumped in front of me was a diet reformist in Kosovo. Well, the same person would jump anywhere in any country that wants to democratize. The Western preachers of democracy would assume that the people are ignorant of their rights, this can be solved by couple of workshops, some nice donations, and a nice group picture in the end of the event. So far, almost all nations excluding very few (even though those few as mentioned earlier have defective democracy) are still where they are: corrupt leadership at the expense of the people. My question to those crusaders of democracy would stem, why not change from their side of the continent? For example, why the activists won't ask the US administration why it still supports dictators like Moubarak and the Sauds regime. The support to these people thwarts democracy backwards, and bring instead Islamist groups as an option (due to the fact someone smart in the past thought that strengthening the Islamists would weaken the socialist tide in Asia and the MENA region.
In Lebanon at least, all those workshops, and all those conferences ended up in less than 24 hours when 14th of March and the Opposition hit the streets and shot at each other (not to exclude the heavy artillary exchanged between Hezbollah and Junblatt's PSP).
Socialism is the true path to democracy. Those in the West who sit in Lalaland and scream: "let us give them democracy" reminds me of the 16th - 19th century of Europe's colonial powers of taking in charge of "civilizing" the American continents, Asia, and Africa. I do believe the term was called "White Man's Burden". I guess now it transformed to "Western burden". Marxism is the real tool which breaks the grip of the elites on the proletariat over here, for the elites want their people to be divided into tiny ethnic and sectarian groups, that assists the flow of profits into their pockets, or their parties (as the case of Hezbollah benefiting from the funds from Iran, and the donations to the resistance). This is not an easy task, and its path is long; however, all other paths have been tried and they hit the wall. The current democratization processes include to preach a "common" person that they should vote, but democratization doesn't tell the person how he/she should form a unified front with other proletariats to safeguard their rights, for a vote is no longer a right. A vote is a game competition between the elties of the society. Instead, we have fancy conferences within the academic sphere whereby 20 professors travel abroad (to Beirut) to speak in panels, everyone dozes off, and whoever organized the conferences can click "check" next to his budget time plan sent to his donors.
They forgot that we inherited those democratic institutions from the colonial eras that were intended to divide and conquer. The elites kept them to safeguard, acquire, or renew their powers. Those crusaders of democracy should also know that the economic burdens of the proletariat, and how more "extra efforts" they should put to secure democracy (namely to sign a paper that they participated in workshop X or Y) are too much a waste of time.
I am sure more and more examples can be written on this topic
Let me be clear, there is no war but class war, end of story
MFL
The latest blabs on democratizing Iran by ousting its insane president Ahmadinejad had been rotating lately. Of course, as I wrote last year, the president is worthless, while it is the Wali el Faqih, currently Ali Khamanei, pulls all the major strings. This leads to the question: What is the use of throwing Mr. Ahmadinejad in the first place?
Nevertheless, my main interest is not writing about Iran at all currently, but rather on those capitalists who preach democracy, and lead a very normal life in the West. This is of course not to doubt the intentions of some of those who preach democracy, some of them have really the intent, but promoting the "US logic" of democracy in the Arab world yields zero feedback.
Democracy as we know it, took centuries to evolve in Western Europe, and rapidly in the US, with the African Americans hitting the streets to demand for their civil and human rights. Nevertheless, even in the West, where citizens get respect from their police force, democracy rotated around, to quote Karl Marx, electing the oppressors every certain time period.
Those preachers of Democracy of course come through several institutions, mainly through US AID, World Bank sponsored projects/proposals, and other institutions. As far as I know, both political parties of the US, whether Republican or Democrats, have branch parties across the globe, composed of ex-pats, seeking to promote the Western culture of democracy. However, if we consider the West as central and Western Europe (along with the US), then even there democracy is not really accessable for a lot of people. The US proletariat are as confused about the realities of the world due to media monopolation, and of course, they are alienated even from their surroundings due to the hectic business rush lifestyle to survive. Homeless people live in the streets of several US states, and if I remember correctly, there was an accusation between the Republicans and Democrats during Bush Jr's first election, that party representatives were going to the streets bribing the homeless with cigarettes to go and vote. Of course, we expect the preachers of democracy over there to come here. Latin Americans have been facing abuses all the time (even from African Americans), while several Arabs walk in fear due to fact any 'wild cowboy bill' can point at them and yell "terrorists".
Now I need to mention one tiny detail of all those "democratic crusades" that come to the Middle East and elsewhere (North Africa, Eastern Europe, others...), the majority of them come here because they are paid to come here. Their work involves think tanks, associations, organizations, and lectures. The bulk of their work ends up on a nice dry paper that nobody would read except few academics, and probably an official or two. Yet, emancipation on the ground provides fruitless communication. The fact that Ziad Baroud made it as a Minister due to his hard efforts and good reputation proves a victory of the local NGOs against such efforts of "democratization". Although Baroud's supporters in my opinion require a different post. Even Baroud, with the support of all the networks behind him, that include reforms & proposals, vanish into thin air at the first political instability that hits the area (whether local or regional). The main reason is: Democracy cannot begin except by empowering the proletarit to unify across the ethnic and sectarian borders.
The corrupt elites of the third world make sure that the status quo among the proletariat remain divided. It can be seculars, berbers, moderate Muslims, and Islamists in Morroco, or it can be sectarian isolation in Lebanon. The proletariat lack the means to identify their own rights, and their own strength if they are united. Now of course, someone will jump and say: our projects reach out grass root people on the ground and in rural areas. That person who actually jumped in front of me was a diet reformist in Kosovo. Well, the same person would jump anywhere in any country that wants to democratize. The Western preachers of democracy would assume that the people are ignorant of their rights, this can be solved by couple of workshops, some nice donations, and a nice group picture in the end of the event. So far, almost all nations excluding very few (even though those few as mentioned earlier have defective democracy) are still where they are: corrupt leadership at the expense of the people. My question to those crusaders of democracy would stem, why not change from their side of the continent? For example, why the activists won't ask the US administration why it still supports dictators like Moubarak and the Sauds regime. The support to these people thwarts democracy backwards, and bring instead Islamist groups as an option (due to the fact someone smart in the past thought that strengthening the Islamists would weaken the socialist tide in Asia and the MENA region.
In Lebanon at least, all those workshops, and all those conferences ended up in less than 24 hours when 14th of March and the Opposition hit the streets and shot at each other (not to exclude the heavy artillary exchanged between Hezbollah and Junblatt's PSP).
Socialism is the true path to democracy. Those in the West who sit in Lalaland and scream: "let us give them democracy" reminds me of the 16th - 19th century of Europe's colonial powers of taking in charge of "civilizing" the American continents, Asia, and Africa. I do believe the term was called "White Man's Burden". I guess now it transformed to "Western burden". Marxism is the real tool which breaks the grip of the elites on the proletariat over here, for the elites want their people to be divided into tiny ethnic and sectarian groups, that assists the flow of profits into their pockets, or their parties (as the case of Hezbollah benefiting from the funds from Iran, and the donations to the resistance). This is not an easy task, and its path is long; however, all other paths have been tried and they hit the wall. The current democratization processes include to preach a "common" person that they should vote, but democratization doesn't tell the person how he/she should form a unified front with other proletariats to safeguard their rights, for a vote is no longer a right. A vote is a game competition between the elties of the society. Instead, we have fancy conferences within the academic sphere whereby 20 professors travel abroad (to Beirut) to speak in panels, everyone dozes off, and whoever organized the conferences can click "check" next to his budget time plan sent to his donors.
They forgot that we inherited those democratic institutions from the colonial eras that were intended to divide and conquer. The elites kept them to safeguard, acquire, or renew their powers. Those crusaders of democracy should also know that the economic burdens of the proletariat, and how more "extra efforts" they should put to secure democracy (namely to sign a paper that they participated in workshop X or Y) are too much a waste of time.
I am sure more and more examples can be written on this topic
Let me be clear, there is no war but class war, end of story
MFL
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Returning Back to the Blogosphere
I have not opened the blog life since the Israeli brutality massacred the Palestinian citizens.
I am coming back to write, specially I missed writing on a lot of important and controversial incidents. As difficult it may seem from where I am currently and the situation I am in, I decided that writing is the most important tool to preserve the ideas. My email address will be activated in the next few days.
Last but not least, enjoy the latest brutality of the Zionist regime and their racist brutality.
Gaza peace protester is prisoner in own home
MFL
I am coming back to write, specially I missed writing on a lot of important and controversial incidents. As difficult it may seem from where I am currently and the situation I am in, I decided that writing is the most important tool to preserve the ideas. My email address will be activated in the next few days.
Last but not least, enjoy the latest brutality of the Zionist regime and their racist brutality.
Gaza peace protester is prisoner in own home
MFL
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Zionists: Philosophy of Fear and Hatred (Part I)
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing ~ Alexander Pope
Olmert's Speech
It came no surprise that Olmert's seize of fire justified Israel's butchery of 1200 Palestinians in the sense of the IDF defending the victims against terrorists. The timing of Olmert's 'unilateral' seize of fire was also perfect. He secured three goals through bloodshed:
• Making use of Bush's presence and unlimited support to Israel's atrocities till Bush's final moments
• Sending a signal to Obama that no one will obstruct Israel's bloody policies
• Making use of the International Media where all world attentions were focused on Obama's elections instead of the evidence of Israel's genocidal policies on the Palestinians after the media was more loose to wonder around Gaza.
This reflected on Obama's speech, where he mentioned global peace and hope, while not mentioning anything on Israel and Palestine, specially on the recent butcheries that took place. Luckily, U2 where there two days earlier to remind Obama on the Israeli/Palestinian question.
Fear of the Other: A Look at the Terrorists
Israel as always successfully integrated the fear of Palestinians. The nation of Israel is fully convinced that they live in the middle of an ocean of war mongrels of barbarians. The sporadic attacks of the Palestinians on the Israelis are depicted as terrorist attacks on a nation that wants to live peace. What the story is untold is the exact history on how Palestinians of 1948 were expelled from their homes, and the butcheries never stopped since that day. Almost on daily basis, Israelis are free to run, shoot randomly couple of Palestinians every day, and then argue that they were shot at. That was the case in 1948, and that is the case today. 9/11, where everyone assumes that the Arabs celebrate that day, was the greatest bad news for the Arabs. 9/11 brought the justification for Bush and Israel to do any activity they want in the name of "War of Terror" and open a full scale war under the banner of "Pre-Emptive Strikes".
Tarek Ali, in his book Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, divulges the primary reasons why Palestinians become militants. For these people are the terrorists that Israel is supposed to defend. This phenomenon is universal for the Israelis, bomb your victims to kingdom come, and drive them to join a militant group, which represents a liberation movement, and dub it terrorism.
" By making Ariel Sharon a co-leader in the 'war against terrorism', the regime in Washington consciously blurred the distinctions between national liberation and terror. The result has been catastrophic. Not a day passes without an email from Israel and Palestine informing me of the latest atrocity. The material on my computer would fill two large volumes if it were presented as evidence before a war crimes tribunal. One of these emails arrived on 9 July 2003 and is less typical because no young children were killed. It was sent to me by Palestinian Monitors:
In the early hours of this morning Israeli Special Forces and soldiers entered the West Bank town of Burkin, killing one man, seriously injuring his wife and arresting another Palestinian man. The Israeli army claims that they were fired upon when entering the village, so they returned fire, however according to Palestinian witnesses this is not true.
The Troops entered the village and went to the house next door to ours. My wife and I were sleeping on our roof when suddenly we heard some shots. We immediately entered our house. The shooting ended as soon as it began – only about four shots were fired. About 10 minutes later our door bell rang and it was Iyad and his wife. They had crawled to our front door, covered in blood and still bleeding. We called for an ambulance, and eventually it came. The medics said the soldiers had stopped them for only about 10 minutes.
We went over and spoke to Iyad's father to see what had happened and he told us the soldiers had entered his house and arrested his 20-year-old son Fadi. Iyad, his other son, and Khaloud, Iyad's wife, and their three children, were sleeping on a bed in the garden as it was too hot in their house. When the soldiers left after arresting Fadi they must have seen them and opened fire. There was no shooting from the Palestinians – just the Israelis. We saw the mattress where the couple had been sleeping and it too was covered with blood.
Iyad later died, according to the doctors at Rafidiya hospital in Nablus, from bullets to his throat and arms. Khaloud was shot in the face, and is currently in hospital in a critical but stable condition; their children, the eldest of whom is five years old, escaped uninjured.
With this going on every single day since 9/11 how can any thinking person be surprised that young kids are desperate to join one of the militant organizations resisting the Israelis. There is a purity and moral integrity in children that illuminates a struggle. A single hair on their head is worth more than all those who sit in judgement on them, let alone their killers. " (Tarek Ali, Bush in Babylon, Verso 2003 – Page 13 – 14)
Joe Sacco, during his visit to Palestine, quoted several Arab Jews arguing that Zionism came from Europe. The British mandate recorded several procedures of extortions of Zionists on local Palestinian Jews whereby the latter were forced to recruit Jewish labor and expel their own Palestinian Arab friends from their farms. The Ottomans' legacy also included tolerance and coexistence, which was more than comfortable for the World Zionist Organization to visit the Sultan and attempt to purchase Palestine. Of course, the final 9 years of the Ottoman empire changed radically when the nationalist Young Turks revolution took place. Bottom line, the policies of the Zionists, and their revisionist counterparts of Vladimir Japotinsky, stressed on expelling the expulsion of the local inhabitants of Palestine, and secure it to the Jewish nation. Hence, from their first moments of arrival to Palestine, their philosophy rotated around imposing the ethnic line. Suddenly, Palestinian Christians and Muslims suddenly found themselves gradually kicked out of their homes in Jerusalem, and elsewhere. Any Jew who didn't follow-up their program, the Zionists had all the means to extort and threaten the non-Zionist Jews.
King-Crane Commission and Lord Grey's Anti-Zionist Approach
As a revolutionary Marxist obliged to reconstruct history as it happened, we shall begin with the Zionist claims that Palestine was empty, The Zionists also had their cover-up in Europe. Supported by their vast network of contacts, and their advanced organization allowed them in World War I, the Zionists were able to receive offers from both, the Germans and the British, in regards to Palestine. Eventually, their socialist infrastructure allowed them to organize themselves better than the Palestinians who just immerged from the Ottoman dominion and jumped into British brutal rule and biased support to the Jews. As riots started to spring in the early 1920s and climaxed in 1929, the Zionists' propaganda was in jeopardy, Palestine was not an empty desert. Nevertheless the King-Crane commission proved the British wrong, sadly their advices were not listened to, and it meant that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians would begin shortly after the Versailles treaties. The report and statistics of the Commission were as follows (after visiting Palestine in 1919):
Out of 260 petitions in Palestine:
For Complete Zionist Program: 7 Petitions (2.7%)
Modified Zionist Program: 8 Petitions (3%)
Against the Zionist Program: 222 Petitions (85.3%)
The recommendations of the Commission actually warned against the implementation of the Zionist Program, which was facilitated by Lord Balfour, by saying:
'For a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State, nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accompanied without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.'
The Commission also accused Zionism of breaching the very concept of Woodrow Wilson's 'Right for Self-Determination', and warned against the implementation of the Zionist Program, whereby they argued:
"If that principle is to rule [US President Woodrow Wilson's Self-Determination], and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed on this." (in regards to the numbers given above)To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted (Wilson's Self-Determination), and of the people's rights, though it kept within the forms of law.
They summed the demands of the Palestinians as follows:
"We oppose the pretentions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country for we do not acknowledge their title, but consider them a grave peril to our people from the national, economical, and political points of view..."
The Commission recommended that the Zionist program be reduced drastically, : " In view of these considerations, and with a deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause, the Commissioners feel bound to recommend that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine a Jewish commonwealth should be given up."
In Parallel, Sir Edward Grey, who was Foreign Secretary of the British Empire from 10905 – 1916, exploded in the House of the Lords in regards to the Balfour Declaration: "It promised a Zionist home without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the population of Palestine. A Zionist home, my Lords, undoubtedly means or implies a Zionist Government over the district in which the home is placed, and 93 per cent of the population of Palestine are Arabs, I do not see how you can establish other than an Arab Government, without prejudice to their civil rights."
And prejudice was the correct term but the application was ethnic cleansing. The British mandate played a massive role in giving the Zionist Jews the right mechanisms.
Lt. – Col. W. F. Stirling, British Army Officer and Chief Staff Officer under T.E. Lawrence as well as ex-governer of Jaffa/Yafa) gave important testimonies on the riots that broke up that year in Jaffa (called in Arabic Yafa). In reaction of Jewish colonies expanding by that year, riots broke up between the Arabs and Jews:
"The [Balfour] declaration, however, coupled with the attitude of the Jews, caused the Arabs to fear an eventual Jewish domination; for while in stated that the British Government favoured the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Jewish interpretation of it, which was openly preached, suggested that we favored the conversion of the whole country into a national home for them. The Arabs, not unnaturally, took alarm. Poor an dinexperienced, they saw little chance of competing against their rivals, who were rich and clever, and who were also, as it seemed, being supported by the powerful British Government."
Riots broke out, while the government ordered that Hebrew, English, and Arabic to be used, the Zionist section refused to use the Arabic words. It is, in their nature, to divide the population as Jewish and non-Jewish. "Atrocities were committed by both sides, and some Arab women lying wounded in the fields were seen to have their breasts scythed off by Jewish colonists."
A final quote I will borrow from Stirling is on the ethnic character of Zionism. Most of the Jews were not Zionists, they regarded their fellow Christian and Muslim friends as colleagues. As I always mentioned, Zionism is the greatest bad news for Judaism. It is not recent that we saw the Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism. Zionism despised equality of the inhabitants of Palestine, and imposed this racial segregation:
"In the early days there were many Jews in Palestine who were not Zionists, but the pressure applied by the Jewish Agency became so great, and its Gestapo methods so severe, that few Jews dared openly express any other faith. Just before I left Jaffa a very important Jewish farmer from Richon-le-Zion sent a message asking if he could come and see me. I accordingly invited him to come to my office the following morning, but he refused to do that and asked for an appointment at my house after dark.
When he arrived he told me he had come to ask for my advice on a personal problem. He explained how, as a small boy, he had been brought to Palestine by his father, one of the biggest landowners of his village. Growing up there, he had made numerous friends among the little Arab boys of his own age. On his father's death he had taken over the property and naturally continued to employ his boyhood friends as herdsmen, ploughmen and teamsters. That morning, however, the Jewish Agency had ordered him to dismiss all his Arab employees and to engage some newly arrived Jewish immigrants at a wage-rate far excess of the pay of his Arab workmen. What should he do? If he dismissed the Arabs in the summary manner suggested, such bad feeling would be created, being a vindictive people, they might well burn his crops. Apart from this consideration, they also happened to be his friends. The Jews who had been proposed to him as labourers knew nothing about farming, and certainly nothing about the local conditions. The Arabs would work to all hours of the night if it were a question of getting a crop in before the rain; the Jews would down tools precisely at six o'clock, no matter what the weather. He now saw no possibility of working his land on economic lines, and he would inevitably go bankrupt." (Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, P. 219 – 237).
In his notebook, C.R. Ashbee (British Architect, Civic Adviser to the Palestine Administration), wrote:
"There is then the effort of clearing up and rebuilding a country, and the city of Jerusalem – for here the part is always greater than the whole – a country which to all men has a strange unreal sanctity. Palestine for most of us was an emotion rather than a reality."
"There was next the half-generous, wholly ignorant impulse, that this, as we English thought, empty land, this no man's land, this land lost to us when were last there in the days Edward Longshanks, might as we had now conquered it of the Turk be tossed to the Jews. So we thought."
"There was then – and here came the rub – a certain chivalrous reaction, and it came with greater knowledge. This country, it appeared, belonged after all to other people and they, too, had helped us win the war [WWI]. Who were these other people? What right had we to mortgage their inheritance? Might it not be a breach of trust? We have recently begun to find out the truth, to answer some of these troublesome questions."
The greater knowledge, clinging round the word "self-determination," came as an eye-opener. It showed us two things: first, that we were after all, as far as Palestine was concerned, only a part of Christendom; Greek, Italian, French, German, Russian, also had a share in the Holy Land, perhaps a greater share than we, even as St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St. Louis did more for Palestine, and meant more for the world, than Richard Coeur-de-Lion or Edward Longshanks. It showed us next there were also the Arab and the Moslem to be reckoned with, him to whom the Holy Land actually belonged , to whom the Holdy Land was equally holy, and whose record and achievement it – Amr, Abdul Malek, Al-Mamun , Saladin , Kalaoun , Kait Bey – were far greater than ours. We were learning a little history. "
Next Chapter: Roots for Zionist Tactic of the Modern Day
Olmert's Speech
It came no surprise that Olmert's seize of fire justified Israel's butchery of 1200 Palestinians in the sense of the IDF defending the victims against terrorists. The timing of Olmert's 'unilateral' seize of fire was also perfect. He secured three goals through bloodshed:
• Making use of Bush's presence and unlimited support to Israel's atrocities till Bush's final moments
• Sending a signal to Obama that no one will obstruct Israel's bloody policies
• Making use of the International Media where all world attentions were focused on Obama's elections instead of the evidence of Israel's genocidal policies on the Palestinians after the media was more loose to wonder around Gaza.
This reflected on Obama's speech, where he mentioned global peace and hope, while not mentioning anything on Israel and Palestine, specially on the recent butcheries that took place. Luckily, U2 where there two days earlier to remind Obama on the Israeli/Palestinian question.
Fear of the Other: A Look at the Terrorists
Israel as always successfully integrated the fear of Palestinians. The nation of Israel is fully convinced that they live in the middle of an ocean of war mongrels of barbarians. The sporadic attacks of the Palestinians on the Israelis are depicted as terrorist attacks on a nation that wants to live peace. What the story is untold is the exact history on how Palestinians of 1948 were expelled from their homes, and the butcheries never stopped since that day. Almost on daily basis, Israelis are free to run, shoot randomly couple of Palestinians every day, and then argue that they were shot at. That was the case in 1948, and that is the case today. 9/11, where everyone assumes that the Arabs celebrate that day, was the greatest bad news for the Arabs. 9/11 brought the justification for Bush and Israel to do any activity they want in the name of "War of Terror" and open a full scale war under the banner of "Pre-Emptive Strikes".
Tarek Ali, in his book Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, divulges the primary reasons why Palestinians become militants. For these people are the terrorists that Israel is supposed to defend. This phenomenon is universal for the Israelis, bomb your victims to kingdom come, and drive them to join a militant group, which represents a liberation movement, and dub it terrorism.
" By making Ariel Sharon a co-leader in the 'war against terrorism', the regime in Washington consciously blurred the distinctions between national liberation and terror. The result has been catastrophic. Not a day passes without an email from Israel and Palestine informing me of the latest atrocity. The material on my computer would fill two large volumes if it were presented as evidence before a war crimes tribunal. One of these emails arrived on 9 July 2003 and is less typical because no young children were killed. It was sent to me by Palestinian Monitors:
In the early hours of this morning Israeli Special Forces and soldiers entered the West Bank town of Burkin, killing one man, seriously injuring his wife and arresting another Palestinian man. The Israeli army claims that they were fired upon when entering the village, so they returned fire, however according to Palestinian witnesses this is not true.
The Troops entered the village and went to the house next door to ours. My wife and I were sleeping on our roof when suddenly we heard some shots. We immediately entered our house. The shooting ended as soon as it began – only about four shots were fired. About 10 minutes later our door bell rang and it was Iyad and his wife. They had crawled to our front door, covered in blood and still bleeding. We called for an ambulance, and eventually it came. The medics said the soldiers had stopped them for only about 10 minutes.
We went over and spoke to Iyad's father to see what had happened and he told us the soldiers had entered his house and arrested his 20-year-old son Fadi. Iyad, his other son, and Khaloud, Iyad's wife, and their three children, were sleeping on a bed in the garden as it was too hot in their house. When the soldiers left after arresting Fadi they must have seen them and opened fire. There was no shooting from the Palestinians – just the Israelis. We saw the mattress where the couple had been sleeping and it too was covered with blood.
Iyad later died, according to the doctors at Rafidiya hospital in Nablus, from bullets to his throat and arms. Khaloud was shot in the face, and is currently in hospital in a critical but stable condition; their children, the eldest of whom is five years old, escaped uninjured.
With this going on every single day since 9/11 how can any thinking person be surprised that young kids are desperate to join one of the militant organizations resisting the Israelis. There is a purity and moral integrity in children that illuminates a struggle. A single hair on their head is worth more than all those who sit in judgement on them, let alone their killers. " (Tarek Ali, Bush in Babylon, Verso 2003 – Page 13 – 14)
Joe Sacco, during his visit to Palestine, quoted several Arab Jews arguing that Zionism came from Europe. The British mandate recorded several procedures of extortions of Zionists on local Palestinian Jews whereby the latter were forced to recruit Jewish labor and expel their own Palestinian Arab friends from their farms. The Ottomans' legacy also included tolerance and coexistence, which was more than comfortable for the World Zionist Organization to visit the Sultan and attempt to purchase Palestine. Of course, the final 9 years of the Ottoman empire changed radically when the nationalist Young Turks revolution took place. Bottom line, the policies of the Zionists, and their revisionist counterparts of Vladimir Japotinsky, stressed on expelling the expulsion of the local inhabitants of Palestine, and secure it to the Jewish nation. Hence, from their first moments of arrival to Palestine, their philosophy rotated around imposing the ethnic line. Suddenly, Palestinian Christians and Muslims suddenly found themselves gradually kicked out of their homes in Jerusalem, and elsewhere. Any Jew who didn't follow-up their program, the Zionists had all the means to extort and threaten the non-Zionist Jews.
King-Crane Commission and Lord Grey's Anti-Zionist Approach
As a revolutionary Marxist obliged to reconstruct history as it happened, we shall begin with the Zionist claims that Palestine was empty, The Zionists also had their cover-up in Europe. Supported by their vast network of contacts, and their advanced organization allowed them in World War I, the Zionists were able to receive offers from both, the Germans and the British, in regards to Palestine. Eventually, their socialist infrastructure allowed them to organize themselves better than the Palestinians who just immerged from the Ottoman dominion and jumped into British brutal rule and biased support to the Jews. As riots started to spring in the early 1920s and climaxed in 1929, the Zionists' propaganda was in jeopardy, Palestine was not an empty desert. Nevertheless the King-Crane commission proved the British wrong, sadly their advices were not listened to, and it meant that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians would begin shortly after the Versailles treaties. The report and statistics of the Commission were as follows (after visiting Palestine in 1919):
Out of 260 petitions in Palestine:
For Complete Zionist Program: 7 Petitions (2.7%)
Modified Zionist Program: 8 Petitions (3%)
Against the Zionist Program: 222 Petitions (85.3%)
The recommendations of the Commission actually warned against the implementation of the Zionist Program, which was facilitated by Lord Balfour, by saying:
'For a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State, nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accompanied without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.'
The Commission also accused Zionism of breaching the very concept of Woodrow Wilson's 'Right for Self-Determination', and warned against the implementation of the Zionist Program, whereby they argued:
"If that principle is to rule [US President Woodrow Wilson's Self-Determination], and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed on this." (in regards to the numbers given above)To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted (Wilson's Self-Determination), and of the people's rights, though it kept within the forms of law.
They summed the demands of the Palestinians as follows:
"We oppose the pretentions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country for we do not acknowledge their title, but consider them a grave peril to our people from the national, economical, and political points of view..."
The Commission recommended that the Zionist program be reduced drastically, : " In view of these considerations, and with a deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause, the Commissioners feel bound to recommend that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine a Jewish commonwealth should be given up."
In Parallel, Sir Edward Grey, who was Foreign Secretary of the British Empire from 10905 – 1916, exploded in the House of the Lords in regards to the Balfour Declaration: "It promised a Zionist home without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the population of Palestine. A Zionist home, my Lords, undoubtedly means or implies a Zionist Government over the district in which the home is placed, and 93 per cent of the population of Palestine are Arabs, I do not see how you can establish other than an Arab Government, without prejudice to their civil rights."
And prejudice was the correct term but the application was ethnic cleansing. The British mandate played a massive role in giving the Zionist Jews the right mechanisms.
Lt. – Col. W. F. Stirling, British Army Officer and Chief Staff Officer under T.E. Lawrence as well as ex-governer of Jaffa/Yafa) gave important testimonies on the riots that broke up that year in Jaffa (called in Arabic Yafa). In reaction of Jewish colonies expanding by that year, riots broke up between the Arabs and Jews:
"The [Balfour] declaration, however, coupled with the attitude of the Jews, caused the Arabs to fear an eventual Jewish domination; for while in stated that the British Government favoured the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Jewish interpretation of it, which was openly preached, suggested that we favored the conversion of the whole country into a national home for them. The Arabs, not unnaturally, took alarm. Poor an dinexperienced, they saw little chance of competing against their rivals, who were rich and clever, and who were also, as it seemed, being supported by the powerful British Government."
Riots broke out, while the government ordered that Hebrew, English, and Arabic to be used, the Zionist section refused to use the Arabic words. It is, in their nature, to divide the population as Jewish and non-Jewish. "Atrocities were committed by both sides, and some Arab women lying wounded in the fields were seen to have their breasts scythed off by Jewish colonists."
A final quote I will borrow from Stirling is on the ethnic character of Zionism. Most of the Jews were not Zionists, they regarded their fellow Christian and Muslim friends as colleagues. As I always mentioned, Zionism is the greatest bad news for Judaism. It is not recent that we saw the Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism. Zionism despised equality of the inhabitants of Palestine, and imposed this racial segregation:
"In the early days there were many Jews in Palestine who were not Zionists, but the pressure applied by the Jewish Agency became so great, and its Gestapo methods so severe, that few Jews dared openly express any other faith. Just before I left Jaffa a very important Jewish farmer from Richon-le-Zion sent a message asking if he could come and see me. I accordingly invited him to come to my office the following morning, but he refused to do that and asked for an appointment at my house after dark.
When he arrived he told me he had come to ask for my advice on a personal problem. He explained how, as a small boy, he had been brought to Palestine by his father, one of the biggest landowners of his village. Growing up there, he had made numerous friends among the little Arab boys of his own age. On his father's death he had taken over the property and naturally continued to employ his boyhood friends as herdsmen, ploughmen and teamsters. That morning, however, the Jewish Agency had ordered him to dismiss all his Arab employees and to engage some newly arrived Jewish immigrants at a wage-rate far excess of the pay of his Arab workmen. What should he do? If he dismissed the Arabs in the summary manner suggested, such bad feeling would be created, being a vindictive people, they might well burn his crops. Apart from this consideration, they also happened to be his friends. The Jews who had been proposed to him as labourers knew nothing about farming, and certainly nothing about the local conditions. The Arabs would work to all hours of the night if it were a question of getting a crop in before the rain; the Jews would down tools precisely at six o'clock, no matter what the weather. He now saw no possibility of working his land on economic lines, and he would inevitably go bankrupt." (Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, P. 219 – 237).
In his notebook, C.R. Ashbee (British Architect, Civic Adviser to the Palestine Administration), wrote:
"There is then the effort of clearing up and rebuilding a country, and the city of Jerusalem – for here the part is always greater than the whole – a country which to all men has a strange unreal sanctity. Palestine for most of us was an emotion rather than a reality."
"There was next the half-generous, wholly ignorant impulse, that this, as we English thought, empty land, this no man's land, this land lost to us when were last there in the days Edward Longshanks, might as we had now conquered it of the Turk be tossed to the Jews. So we thought."
"There was then – and here came the rub – a certain chivalrous reaction, and it came with greater knowledge. This country, it appeared, belonged after all to other people and they, too, had helped us win the war [WWI]. Who were these other people? What right had we to mortgage their inheritance? Might it not be a breach of trust? We have recently begun to find out the truth, to answer some of these troublesome questions."
The greater knowledge, clinging round the word "self-determination," came as an eye-opener. It showed us two things: first, that we were after all, as far as Palestine was concerned, only a part of Christendom; Greek, Italian, French, German, Russian, also had a share in the Holy Land, perhaps a greater share than we, even as St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St. Louis did more for Palestine, and meant more for the world, than Richard Coeur-de-Lion or Edward Longshanks. It showed us next there were also the Arab and the Moslem to be reckoned with, him to whom the Holy Land actually belonged , to whom the Holdy Land was equally holy, and whose record and achievement it – Amr, Abdul Malek, Al-Mamun , Saladin , Kalaoun , Kait Bey – were far greater than ours. We were learning a little history. "
Next Chapter: Roots for Zionist Tactic of the Modern Day
Saturday, January 17, 2009
War Crimes and Puppies...
Beirut of the July War 2006 seems heavenly compared to Gaza of January 2009...
Israeli atrocities never ended...
In the words of UN officials go as follows:
"A spokesman for Unrwa in Gaza, Chris Gunness, said: "There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed."
This is not the first time the UN has talked about war crimes in Gaza.
Earlier this month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said some Israeli actions reported in Gaza might warrant prosecutions for war crimes. "
On Thursday, Israel bombed three hospitals at the same time. This falls down as self defense.
Just like the seize fire of Lebanon in 2006, where the Arab Ministers assembled 'bravely', before leaving to New York, after a month of bombardment, they are taking the credit of stopping the war. The same is done by Mr. Puppy Ban as well. Israeli leadership is supposed to meet today to vote on a unilateral decision. Like always, they didn't do anything but massacres in the end result. Some argue that they want to maximize damage on the Palestinians of Gaza prior to Obama taking the Presidential seat, such as bombing 50 targets over the night.
As a matter of fact, Israel shelled again a UN school, but this time from an IDF tank. Death tolls in less than a month has totalled according to the UN 1203, and among them 400 children. UNRWA spokes man said:
"The Israeli army knew exactly our GPS co-ordinates and they would have known that hundreds of people had taken shelter there," he said.
"When you have a direct hit into the third floor of a UN school, there has to be an investigation to see if a war crime has been committed."
Picture from here
The UN at the top level been in a state of chaos, while Mr. Ban indirectly appeared helpless in front the Lebanese Parliament, elsewhere:
The president of the United Nations General Assembly has accused Israel of violating international law with its war on Gaza in which almost 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them civilians.
"Gaza is ablaze. It has been turned into a burning hell," Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann told an emergency session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
He said Israel's offensive was "a war against a helpless, defenceless and imprisoned people" and accused Israel of carrying out attacks on civilian targets.
"The violations of international law inherent in the Gaza assault have been well documented: collective punishment, disproportionate military force [and] attacks on civilian targets, including homes, mosques, universities, schools," he said.
He also rebuked UN member-states for their lack of action over the crisis, saying: "The [UN Security Council] may have found itself unable or unwilling to take the necessary steps to impose an immediate ceasefire, but outsourcing that effort to one or two governments, or through the quartet, does not relieve the council of its own responsibilities under the UN charter.
"The council cannot disavow its collective responsibility. It cannot continue to fiddle while Gaza burns."
(link)
Nobody dares not to compare Karadzic to Olmert.
On a side note, yesterday's summit in Qatar witnessed Mauritanya and Qatar 'suspend' ties with Israel on the economic and political level. Suspend doesn't mean end actually, but it was enough to put Egypt's leadership in a more shameful position.
Israel also continues to reveal its true form of hypocracy even from the inside. Other than barring out the media from covering Gaza, they also barred out two of the three parties that run to their parliament from the Arab side.
"This racist government want us out of the Knesset during the war on Gaza," Mr Tibi told the BBC's Fouad Abu-ghosh.
"They are accusing us of supporting the terror while they are killing children in Gaza," he added.
President Moubarak (el Sharmout)
Moubarak speaks that he helped Gaza, what a hypocrite. He claims he allowed 1000 tons of aid through Egyptian borders and pressured Israel, and even had the nerve to say that Egypt hospitalized a 100 Palestinian. Funny he allowed Israel to bomb the hell out of Gaza, arrest pro-Gaza supporters, and shattered the Arab leaders from taking serious decisions against the genocide. Funny, Egypt can simply cut ties with Israel. Just when the seize fire is about to take place, Moubarak is taking credit for it "I demand Israel to stop its activities now", which also coincides with Israel voting on the unilateral decision. He also blames the Palestinian militants by 'listening to reason' and be quiet in order to lift the blockade. He kept the Rafah Corridor closed all the time and the Egyptian army shot at Palestinian refugees... what a bullshiter. He is a simply-sold out. Now he wants to organize a big summit to rebuild Gaza, again trying to shove Egypt as the central player in Arab affairs, at the expense of Palestinians facing starvation. One day, either him or his son will have a bad ass revolution. He is hilarious on how he ordered Israel to practice 'self-restraint'. Traitor! Even Turkey at least demanded the barring out of Israel outside the UN.
Isn't it funny he is repeating the same demands of the Doha summit where he refused to participate in?
The following demands will be taken to Sunday's Kuwait summit for pan-Arab approval:
- Strong condemnation of Israel
- Israel withdraws from Gaza
- Legal liability for Gaza "crimes"
- Re-opening of crossings
- "Sea-bridge" to supply Gaza
- Assist Palestinian reconciliation
- Establish Gaza rebuilding fund
Moubarak this is your self-restraint
(Pic taken from al-Jazeera main page)
no comment on Condi and Levni signing an agreement on blocking arms to Gaza which means Israel can have the perfect US coverage for bombing Gaza anytime they want?
Unilateral Seize Fire?
Israel are supposed tonight to be holding a meeting for their miniature government to vote on a unilateral seize fire. This seize fire is meaningless if they do not withdraw of Gaza. I remember perfectly clear what seize fire means to the Israeli in 1982, whereby they vote on a seize fire, but can continue moving wherever they want. If shot at, the IDF will reply with all brutality. This was one of the first slaps of the US diplomats in Lebanon then realizing how dirty the Israelis are when they agreed to a seize fire but proceeded moving towards the Syrian army which shot at them. Seize fire has to be a seize fire in motion and location. That is another plan to show how Israel wanted peace by stopping their inferno arsenal on the Palestinians, then be shot at (if they don't withdraw from Gaza and open the blockades).
Finally
Anyone feels to play darts on Mahmoud Abbas's picture?
Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabre el Thani (Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Qatar) exposed why Mahmoud Abbas failed to come in a dialogue manner on phone calls that took place five times from Doha to Abbas:
"Why are you not attending the Doha Summit, you are the president of the people, you are responsible for your people, and your presence is important"
Abbas: "I called Omre Moussa, he said there is no summit"
el Thani: Why didn't you call us?
Abbas: I need an authorization to leave, I cannot leave
El-Thani: We can fix you an authorization to leave
Abbas: I cannot leave, there are a lot of pressure on me, if I leave, I would seal myself to a sacrifice...
Afterwards Qatar sent one of its planes to bring Hamas. This exposes to what extent Moubarak, Abbas, and Isreali leadership are intertwined...
Time to dismantle the Arab League as a whole or move its HQ elsewhere...
MFL
Israeli atrocities never ended...
In the words of UN officials go as follows:
"A spokesman for Unrwa in Gaza, Chris Gunness, said: "There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed."
This is not the first time the UN has talked about war crimes in Gaza.
Earlier this month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said some Israeli actions reported in Gaza might warrant prosecutions for war crimes. "
On Thursday, Israel bombed three hospitals at the same time. This falls down as self defense.
Just like the seize fire of Lebanon in 2006, where the Arab Ministers assembled 'bravely', before leaving to New York, after a month of bombardment, they are taking the credit of stopping the war. The same is done by Mr. Puppy Ban as well. Israeli leadership is supposed to meet today to vote on a unilateral decision. Like always, they didn't do anything but massacres in the end result. Some argue that they want to maximize damage on the Palestinians of Gaza prior to Obama taking the Presidential seat, such as bombing 50 targets over the night.
As a matter of fact, Israel shelled again a UN school, but this time from an IDF tank. Death tolls in less than a month has totalled according to the UN 1203, and among them 400 children. UNRWA spokes man said:
"The Israeli army knew exactly our GPS co-ordinates and they would have known that hundreds of people had taken shelter there," he said.
"When you have a direct hit into the third floor of a UN school, there has to be an investigation to see if a war crime has been committed."
Picture from here
The UN at the top level been in a state of chaos, while Mr. Ban indirectly appeared helpless in front the Lebanese Parliament, elsewhere:
The president of the United Nations General Assembly has accused Israel of violating international law with its war on Gaza in which almost 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them civilians.
"Gaza is ablaze. It has been turned into a burning hell," Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann told an emergency session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
He said Israel's offensive was "a war against a helpless, defenceless and imprisoned people" and accused Israel of carrying out attacks on civilian targets.
"The violations of international law inherent in the Gaza assault have been well documented: collective punishment, disproportionate military force [and] attacks on civilian targets, including homes, mosques, universities, schools," he said.
He also rebuked UN member-states for their lack of action over the crisis, saying: "The [UN Security Council] may have found itself unable or unwilling to take the necessary steps to impose an immediate ceasefire, but outsourcing that effort to one or two governments, or through the quartet, does not relieve the council of its own responsibilities under the UN charter.
"The council cannot disavow its collective responsibility. It cannot continue to fiddle while Gaza burns."
(link)
Nobody dares not to compare Karadzic to Olmert.
On a side note, yesterday's summit in Qatar witnessed Mauritanya and Qatar 'suspend' ties with Israel on the economic and political level. Suspend doesn't mean end actually, but it was enough to put Egypt's leadership in a more shameful position.
Israel also continues to reveal its true form of hypocracy even from the inside. Other than barring out the media from covering Gaza, they also barred out two of the three parties that run to their parliament from the Arab side.
"This racist government want us out of the Knesset during the war on Gaza," Mr Tibi told the BBC's Fouad Abu-ghosh.
"They are accusing us of supporting the terror while they are killing children in Gaza," he added.
President Moubarak (el Sharmout)
Moubarak speaks that he helped Gaza, what a hypocrite. He claims he allowed 1000 tons of aid through Egyptian borders and pressured Israel, and even had the nerve to say that Egypt hospitalized a 100 Palestinian. Funny he allowed Israel to bomb the hell out of Gaza, arrest pro-Gaza supporters, and shattered the Arab leaders from taking serious decisions against the genocide. Funny, Egypt can simply cut ties with Israel. Just when the seize fire is about to take place, Moubarak is taking credit for it "I demand Israel to stop its activities now", which also coincides with Israel voting on the unilateral decision. He also blames the Palestinian militants by 'listening to reason' and be quiet in order to lift the blockade. He kept the Rafah Corridor closed all the time and the Egyptian army shot at Palestinian refugees... what a bullshiter. He is a simply-sold out. Now he wants to organize a big summit to rebuild Gaza, again trying to shove Egypt as the central player in Arab affairs, at the expense of Palestinians facing starvation. One day, either him or his son will have a bad ass revolution. He is hilarious on how he ordered Israel to practice 'self-restraint'. Traitor! Even Turkey at least demanded the barring out of Israel outside the UN.
Isn't it funny he is repeating the same demands of the Doha summit where he refused to participate in?
The following demands will be taken to Sunday's Kuwait summit for pan-Arab approval:
- Strong condemnation of Israel
- Israel withdraws from Gaza
- Legal liability for Gaza "crimes"
- Re-opening of crossings
- "Sea-bridge" to supply Gaza
- Assist Palestinian reconciliation
- Establish Gaza rebuilding fund
Moubarak this is your self-restraint
(Pic taken from al-Jazeera main page)
no comment on Condi and Levni signing an agreement on blocking arms to Gaza which means Israel can have the perfect US coverage for bombing Gaza anytime they want?
Unilateral Seize Fire?
Israel are supposed tonight to be holding a meeting for their miniature government to vote on a unilateral seize fire. This seize fire is meaningless if they do not withdraw of Gaza. I remember perfectly clear what seize fire means to the Israeli in 1982, whereby they vote on a seize fire, but can continue moving wherever they want. If shot at, the IDF will reply with all brutality. This was one of the first slaps of the US diplomats in Lebanon then realizing how dirty the Israelis are when they agreed to a seize fire but proceeded moving towards the Syrian army which shot at them. Seize fire has to be a seize fire in motion and location. That is another plan to show how Israel wanted peace by stopping their inferno arsenal on the Palestinians, then be shot at (if they don't withdraw from Gaza and open the blockades).
Finally
Anyone feels to play darts on Mahmoud Abbas's picture?
Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabre el Thani (Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Qatar) exposed why Mahmoud Abbas failed to come in a dialogue manner on phone calls that took place five times from Doha to Abbas:
"Why are you not attending the Doha Summit, you are the president of the people, you are responsible for your people, and your presence is important"
Abbas: "I called Omre Moussa, he said there is no summit"
el Thani: Why didn't you call us?
Abbas: I need an authorization to leave, I cannot leave
El-Thani: We can fix you an authorization to leave
Abbas: I cannot leave, there are a lot of pressure on me, if I leave, I would seal myself to a sacrifice...
Afterwards Qatar sent one of its planes to bring Hamas. This exposes to what extent Moubarak, Abbas, and Isreali leadership are intertwined...
Time to dismantle the Arab League as a whole or move its HQ elsewhere...
MFL
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Doha Conference, A Great Divide, and A Whirlpool of Ironies
The Doha Conference:
'They come in fancy planes while the people are dying...'
As the number of Palestinian casualties jumps to 1133, those rotten Arab countries so far offered nothing to Palestine. Just as Israel got away in dissecting the West Bank, the massacres of Gaza are exceeding all forms of butcheries. More than 20 Palestinians had been located under the ruins of a building, which means some of them died out of suffocation. Of course, this is dubbed self – defense by Israel.
Conferences and more conferences
The split of the Arab League peaked officially today. Saudi Arabia and Egypt clearly displayed their muscles by blocking the Qataris from having a quorum to meet under the patronage of the Arab League, and take decisions in that regard. This however doesn't mean Qatar is a weakling compared to the former two. Qatar managed to gather 13 voters within the Arab league despite Egypt and Saudi Arabia's obstructions, even though that was not enough to hold a quorum. The Saudi Regime and their allies the Egyptian Regime never forgave how Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani took the lead in spearheading a Lebanese Dialogue that brought a temporary peace to Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Abbas still argues that the peace treaty is under threat, and still unaware that there never was anything called Peace. The Israeli war-machinery never stopped to do peace. Elsewhere the Doha conference kicked off in order to discuss different means of halting the war. Again, no results, but interesting headlines popped out.
Hamas's Mishaal was present, which is natural. Where there is no Fatah, there is Hamas. Hamas repeated their insistence on halting the butchery of the innocent civilians. He argued that Israeli Forces should withdraw from Gaza, cut their war, end the blockade, open the routes of Gaza, and hold Israel accountable for their war crimes. He insisted on how the Palestinians are practically unarmed. He insisted on the time factor, where as they speak, more citizens are dying. Hamas had secured its representation of the Palestinian resistance and the sufferings of the people of Gaza. He also stressed on how Israel is trying to invent new realities, something that Rice supported. In her own words, the seize fire will not take place or else a temporary peace will take place and a new war. Nevertheless, she failed to mention who is the real aggressor on the issue. Mishaal also described the harsh conditions the people of Gaza are living through, and equated his resistance to that of Hezbollah where he argued that it was the same resistance that expelled Israel from the Southern Lebanese region and Gaza. He also highlighted that the resistance of the Palestinians is capable to achieve victory, mainly because they can remain alive after Israel bombed everything. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, Israel's main purpose is not to dismantle Hamas, rather the Zionist country needs Hamas to gain more funds, arms, and settle internal scores in the elections. For example Ehud Barak jumped 17% in the Israeli opinion when the offensive started, which made him the primary competitor to Levni for the Prime Minister position. Nevertheless, Mishaal's pleas to save the Palestinians was fully felt, but the method he gave his pleas, with a steadfast position, allowed him to divulge the charisma he has. Unlike Abbas who is begging the international community to send an international force, similar to UNIFIL, but to bring Hamas under control so that he can live in peace Israel; hence disregarding all the demonstrations that took place in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, to which he barely expressed anything.
I have to admit, what nerves of steel Meshaal displayed, specially in less than 24 hours the Israelis killed his colleague, Hamas's minister of interior Said Siam, along with his brother and son.
The Syrian President
The Syrian President spoke next, as always, he took the leadership of opposing the Israelis and fighting for the Arab cause. He gave credit to the Lebanese resistance for defeating the Israelis in 2000 and 2006, and how both the Lebanese and Palestinians are exporting the spirit of resistance to elsewhere in the Arab world. Indirectly, he separated the Arab world to those who surrender, and those who are resisting. He also argued how those who achieve peace by resisting an occupier, and those who accept peace in seeking their own interests. He also, to give himself credit for the July war, also stressed on the importance of standing next to a country. Although as far as I remember, Syria made money on Lebanon's expense due to the July war, he refused to open a front on his side, denied any Israeli missiles falling on Syrian grounds, and probably the credit he takes is using his land to smuggle weaponry to Hezbollah and their allies.
Nevertheless, the Syrian president, in my personal opinion scored highly in the face of other Arab leaders. While it is true that the majority of the Arab citizens are frustrated by their helplessness, he used the 1970s language of the 'Arab revolutionary' where he summarized that time is not on the Israeli side, but he got philosophical on how each generation becomes more wrathful to Israeli brutality. Throughout his speech, he also hinted to Egypt and Saudi Arabia on their unwillingness to do anything about the on-going massacres. He also expressed the distrust of the Arab world in the International Court to hold Israel accountable.
Finally, his contribution to the summit is by suspending the indirect negotatiations with Israel, spoke in an apocalyptic manner in regards to Gaza and the Golan Heights witnessing a new victory, and the importance of funding the Palestinians with all means possible, ranging from materialistic aid to moral boast.
Lebanese President
The Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, was next to speak. Unlike the days of Emil Lahoud, for once the Lebanese President's speech was different than what the Syrians wanted him to deliver. The other side of the story, Michel Suleiman's travel to Qatar was dubbed as Hezbollah and Amal imposing their demands on the Lebanese President to travel. Nevertheless, the speech he read in Doha was quiet different. Again, the Suleiman succeeded in copy pasting demands of what was known as the 'Opposition' and 14th of March demands. The Prince of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, back in the July war was regarded a 14th of March supporter, now he is regarded as an 8th of March follower.
President Suleiman's speech began with how Lebanon 'victoriously' extracted UN resolution 1701, and insisted on how Israel continued to breach it. He gave credit to the Lebanese citizens, the Lebanese resistance, and the Lebanese army for crushing the Israeli offensive of 2006. Nevertheless, Suleiman's speech rotated around on keeping Lebanon out of war with Israel, and stressed on how Lebanon's role is non-alignment, whereby its role is to tackle those rifts in the Arab World. Of course, he didn't give any hints on Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or any other country, rather projecting on how the Arabs should be united and gave a long-run period for that, which till then probably half of the people of Gaza would be killed.
Nevertheless, being a president of country that defeated Israel on three different eras, he had the aura to escalate, but didn't escalate beyond providing sympathy to the people of Gaza. Prince Hamad bin Khalifa hailed the President as being part of the resistance when he was the head of the Lebanese Army.
It has to be noted, that the Qatari Prince, and the Lebanese & Syrian Presidents, appeared while reading their speeches as if they are in the middle of an Arabic reading test. Other than Meshaal's eloquent Arabic, the others repeated several times Arabic words, and corrected grammar rules as they read.
The Moon Islands , Mauritania, and Iraq
The Moon islands are a couple of small islands that were glued into a republic. While repeating the atrocities of the Israelis, and like the earlier presidents, blamed the Arab leaderships for taking so much time in taking any actions, proposed to form a committee from the attendees, and tour around the major players in the International Community to raise awareness against the Israelis, and properly to unify media efforts in exposing the Israeli brutality, mainly to the Western audience.
Mauritania was probably the most hilarious country of them all. Just recovering from a military coup and preserving a peace treaty with Israel, all eyes went on the speaker. Nobody understood anything what he said, as his Arabic was rather very weak, and he didn't discuss anything about cutting ties with Israel. He did condemn the Israeli brutality, based on what was understood, but that was it. Everyone issued relief sighs of 'Thank Heaven the torture is over' when he finished.
The Iraqi Vice President was next, as much as he condemned the Israeli aggression, he reiterated Iraq's historical role in standing next to Palestine. Nevertheless, he didn't express anything about the US intervention in Iraq, nor whether Iraq as a nation state still exists theoretically with all the cantons present there. But I also realized that their minister of education was targeted in a bomb there, and I wondered for how long this man will stay alive.
Iran's Ahmadinejad
As probably participating as a guest, he expressed his ideas as well. We all know what Iran's role in arming Hezbollah, and giving them the right technology in beating Israel's ass out of Lebanon, then watching how their infantry were sitting ducks to Hezbollah's warriors. Who would thought that those Merkava tanks are destructible? Not complaining on seeing a popped out tank of that caliber. Yet, the Iranian president repeated the same words where Israel's attrocities in Lebanon and Palestine had been repeating themselves for so long, and demanded that the leadership of Israel should be held in a court.
In Parallel...
The Arab League's official meeting of foreign ministers FINALLY agreed for calling the opening of the borders of Gaza. In a nutshell, that is the biggest crap I ever heard for a while. After three weeks of butchery, the Arab League till this day simply issued out such a decision? After what, 1133 (so far), had been killed, and over 5000 wounded? Isn’t it ironical that such decisions come out when Israel is so close to accept a seize fire agreement? That doesn't stop the butchery of the Palestinians...
Collisions also took place in the West Bank between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. In a large demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza, a small group raised the flags of Hamas, where the PA security beat and arrested them. Hence, Abbas reinforces the division between Fatah and Hamas. BBC's article, under the title of Gaza and West Bank: Growing Divide explains it in a nice way.
Bush's final speech:
Bush hailed himself as giving democracy for different countries; some of those he named were Lebanon, Kosovo, and Iraq.
I accuse Bush of being the biggest liar the world has ever seen, and makes Saddam Hussein look like an angel next to him. For starters, Bush didn't do anything to Lebanon, he sold out on his allies (yet again) the 14th of March, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. The expulsion of the Syrian army didn't come from Bush, rather a strong reaction of the Lebanese on the assassination of Harriri and the fact they were fed up from their crap. As a matter of fact, it was his 'Green Card' to the Israelis that allowed all those Lebanese and Palestinian citizens to flourish.
Kosovo was totally irrelevant to Bush's policy, It was Bill Clinton's policy to the Balkans that gave Kosovo its independence, amidst never-ending chaos in the Balkans that secured Kosovo its independence.
Finally, Iraq, Bush gave them no democracy at all. He shattered a country into a three way ethnic divisions, and gave the al-Qaeda the space to crawl into Iraq. His war on terror cost the Iraqis over 650,000 citizens, and that was prior to the execution of the tyrant Saddam. He waged a war on Iraq under the banner of saving the Americans from weapons of mass destruction which were never found, then turned out Jesus inspired him. He also ruined the US economy, which in turn ruined the global economy by spending over 800 billion dollars a year on upgrading weapons, and producing unneeded weapons that no way a group of Qaeda or even the Iraqi regime was able to counter.
Democracy in Bush meant also to support the Moubarak regime, the Saudi regime, and the Jordanian regime. This led the Muslim Brotherhood in specific to grow even stronger in Egypt, while Saudi Arabia's instability is growing even more.
I will tackle his farewell speeches in details. But I would like to add one note: Afghanistan:
His 'War on Drugs' prior to his 'War on Terror' made him a buffoon in protecting his own citizens, when he was warned. Earlier US Administrations funded the Taliban who were actually needed to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Actually in a period of four months prior to 9/11, he disregarded the issue of Bin Laden wanting to strike the US, and gave the Taliban government almost 45 million dollars in fighting drugs and opium. Ironic, isn't it?
Bush is responsible for almost every civilian's death that took place, for promoting dictatorships, and even funding terrorists like al-Qaeda. So the hell with you Bush, and I sure wish there is a hell, to see you rotting in it.
'They come in fancy planes while the people are dying...'
As the number of Palestinian casualties jumps to 1133, those rotten Arab countries so far offered nothing to Palestine. Just as Israel got away in dissecting the West Bank, the massacres of Gaza are exceeding all forms of butcheries. More than 20 Palestinians had been located under the ruins of a building, which means some of them died out of suffocation. Of course, this is dubbed self – defense by Israel.
Conferences and more conferences
The split of the Arab League peaked officially today. Saudi Arabia and Egypt clearly displayed their muscles by blocking the Qataris from having a quorum to meet under the patronage of the Arab League, and take decisions in that regard. This however doesn't mean Qatar is a weakling compared to the former two. Qatar managed to gather 13 voters within the Arab league despite Egypt and Saudi Arabia's obstructions, even though that was not enough to hold a quorum. The Saudi Regime and their allies the Egyptian Regime never forgave how Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani took the lead in spearheading a Lebanese Dialogue that brought a temporary peace to Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Abbas still argues that the peace treaty is under threat, and still unaware that there never was anything called Peace. The Israeli war-machinery never stopped to do peace. Elsewhere the Doha conference kicked off in order to discuss different means of halting the war. Again, no results, but interesting headlines popped out.
Hamas's Mishaal was present, which is natural. Where there is no Fatah, there is Hamas. Hamas repeated their insistence on halting the butchery of the innocent civilians. He argued that Israeli Forces should withdraw from Gaza, cut their war, end the blockade, open the routes of Gaza, and hold Israel accountable for their war crimes. He insisted on how the Palestinians are practically unarmed. He insisted on the time factor, where as they speak, more citizens are dying. Hamas had secured its representation of the Palestinian resistance and the sufferings of the people of Gaza. He also stressed on how Israel is trying to invent new realities, something that Rice supported. In her own words, the seize fire will not take place or else a temporary peace will take place and a new war. Nevertheless, she failed to mention who is the real aggressor on the issue. Mishaal also described the harsh conditions the people of Gaza are living through, and equated his resistance to that of Hezbollah where he argued that it was the same resistance that expelled Israel from the Southern Lebanese region and Gaza. He also highlighted that the resistance of the Palestinians is capable to achieve victory, mainly because they can remain alive after Israel bombed everything. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, Israel's main purpose is not to dismantle Hamas, rather the Zionist country needs Hamas to gain more funds, arms, and settle internal scores in the elections. For example Ehud Barak jumped 17% in the Israeli opinion when the offensive started, which made him the primary competitor to Levni for the Prime Minister position. Nevertheless, Mishaal's pleas to save the Palestinians was fully felt, but the method he gave his pleas, with a steadfast position, allowed him to divulge the charisma he has. Unlike Abbas who is begging the international community to send an international force, similar to UNIFIL, but to bring Hamas under control so that he can live in peace Israel; hence disregarding all the demonstrations that took place in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, to which he barely expressed anything.
I have to admit, what nerves of steel Meshaal displayed, specially in less than 24 hours the Israelis killed his colleague, Hamas's minister of interior Said Siam, along with his brother and son.
The Syrian President
The Syrian President spoke next, as always, he took the leadership of opposing the Israelis and fighting for the Arab cause. He gave credit to the Lebanese resistance for defeating the Israelis in 2000 and 2006, and how both the Lebanese and Palestinians are exporting the spirit of resistance to elsewhere in the Arab world. Indirectly, he separated the Arab world to those who surrender, and those who are resisting. He also argued how those who achieve peace by resisting an occupier, and those who accept peace in seeking their own interests. He also, to give himself credit for the July war, also stressed on the importance of standing next to a country. Although as far as I remember, Syria made money on Lebanon's expense due to the July war, he refused to open a front on his side, denied any Israeli missiles falling on Syrian grounds, and probably the credit he takes is using his land to smuggle weaponry to Hezbollah and their allies.
Nevertheless, the Syrian president, in my personal opinion scored highly in the face of other Arab leaders. While it is true that the majority of the Arab citizens are frustrated by their helplessness, he used the 1970s language of the 'Arab revolutionary' where he summarized that time is not on the Israeli side, but he got philosophical on how each generation becomes more wrathful to Israeli brutality. Throughout his speech, he also hinted to Egypt and Saudi Arabia on their unwillingness to do anything about the on-going massacres. He also expressed the distrust of the Arab world in the International Court to hold Israel accountable.
Finally, his contribution to the summit is by suspending the indirect negotatiations with Israel, spoke in an apocalyptic manner in regards to Gaza and the Golan Heights witnessing a new victory, and the importance of funding the Palestinians with all means possible, ranging from materialistic aid to moral boast.
Lebanese President
The Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, was next to speak. Unlike the days of Emil Lahoud, for once the Lebanese President's speech was different than what the Syrians wanted him to deliver. The other side of the story, Michel Suleiman's travel to Qatar was dubbed as Hezbollah and Amal imposing their demands on the Lebanese President to travel. Nevertheless, the speech he read in Doha was quiet different. Again, the Suleiman succeeded in copy pasting demands of what was known as the 'Opposition' and 14th of March demands. The Prince of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, back in the July war was regarded a 14th of March supporter, now he is regarded as an 8th of March follower.
President Suleiman's speech began with how Lebanon 'victoriously' extracted UN resolution 1701, and insisted on how Israel continued to breach it. He gave credit to the Lebanese citizens, the Lebanese resistance, and the Lebanese army for crushing the Israeli offensive of 2006. Nevertheless, Suleiman's speech rotated around on keeping Lebanon out of war with Israel, and stressed on how Lebanon's role is non-alignment, whereby its role is to tackle those rifts in the Arab World. Of course, he didn't give any hints on Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or any other country, rather projecting on how the Arabs should be united and gave a long-run period for that, which till then probably half of the people of Gaza would be killed.
Nevertheless, being a president of country that defeated Israel on three different eras, he had the aura to escalate, but didn't escalate beyond providing sympathy to the people of Gaza. Prince Hamad bin Khalifa hailed the President as being part of the resistance when he was the head of the Lebanese Army.
It has to be noted, that the Qatari Prince, and the Lebanese & Syrian Presidents, appeared while reading their speeches as if they are in the middle of an Arabic reading test. Other than Meshaal's eloquent Arabic, the others repeated several times Arabic words, and corrected grammar rules as they read.
The Moon Islands , Mauritania, and Iraq
The Moon islands are a couple of small islands that were glued into a republic. While repeating the atrocities of the Israelis, and like the earlier presidents, blamed the Arab leaderships for taking so much time in taking any actions, proposed to form a committee from the attendees, and tour around the major players in the International Community to raise awareness against the Israelis, and properly to unify media efforts in exposing the Israeli brutality, mainly to the Western audience.
Mauritania was probably the most hilarious country of them all. Just recovering from a military coup and preserving a peace treaty with Israel, all eyes went on the speaker. Nobody understood anything what he said, as his Arabic was rather very weak, and he didn't discuss anything about cutting ties with Israel. He did condemn the Israeli brutality, based on what was understood, but that was it. Everyone issued relief sighs of 'Thank Heaven the torture is over' when he finished.
The Iraqi Vice President was next, as much as he condemned the Israeli aggression, he reiterated Iraq's historical role in standing next to Palestine. Nevertheless, he didn't express anything about the US intervention in Iraq, nor whether Iraq as a nation state still exists theoretically with all the cantons present there. But I also realized that their minister of education was targeted in a bomb there, and I wondered for how long this man will stay alive.
Iran's Ahmadinejad
As probably participating as a guest, he expressed his ideas as well. We all know what Iran's role in arming Hezbollah, and giving them the right technology in beating Israel's ass out of Lebanon, then watching how their infantry were sitting ducks to Hezbollah's warriors. Who would thought that those Merkava tanks are destructible? Not complaining on seeing a popped out tank of that caliber. Yet, the Iranian president repeated the same words where Israel's attrocities in Lebanon and Palestine had been repeating themselves for so long, and demanded that the leadership of Israel should be held in a court.
In Parallel...
The Arab League's official meeting of foreign ministers FINALLY agreed for calling the opening of the borders of Gaza. In a nutshell, that is the biggest crap I ever heard for a while. After three weeks of butchery, the Arab League till this day simply issued out such a decision? After what, 1133 (so far), had been killed, and over 5000 wounded? Isn’t it ironical that such decisions come out when Israel is so close to accept a seize fire agreement? That doesn't stop the butchery of the Palestinians...
Collisions also took place in the West Bank between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. In a large demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza, a small group raised the flags of Hamas, where the PA security beat and arrested them. Hence, Abbas reinforces the division between Fatah and Hamas. BBC's article, under the title of Gaza and West Bank: Growing Divide explains it in a nice way.
Bush's final speech:
Bush hailed himself as giving democracy for different countries; some of those he named were Lebanon, Kosovo, and Iraq.
I accuse Bush of being the biggest liar the world has ever seen, and makes Saddam Hussein look like an angel next to him. For starters, Bush didn't do anything to Lebanon, he sold out on his allies (yet again) the 14th of March, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. The expulsion of the Syrian army didn't come from Bush, rather a strong reaction of the Lebanese on the assassination of Harriri and the fact they were fed up from their crap. As a matter of fact, it was his 'Green Card' to the Israelis that allowed all those Lebanese and Palestinian citizens to flourish.
Kosovo was totally irrelevant to Bush's policy, It was Bill Clinton's policy to the Balkans that gave Kosovo its independence, amidst never-ending chaos in the Balkans that secured Kosovo its independence.
Finally, Iraq, Bush gave them no democracy at all. He shattered a country into a three way ethnic divisions, and gave the al-Qaeda the space to crawl into Iraq. His war on terror cost the Iraqis over 650,000 citizens, and that was prior to the execution of the tyrant Saddam. He waged a war on Iraq under the banner of saving the Americans from weapons of mass destruction which were never found, then turned out Jesus inspired him. He also ruined the US economy, which in turn ruined the global economy by spending over 800 billion dollars a year on upgrading weapons, and producing unneeded weapons that no way a group of Qaeda or even the Iraqi regime was able to counter.
Democracy in Bush meant also to support the Moubarak regime, the Saudi regime, and the Jordanian regime. This led the Muslim Brotherhood in specific to grow even stronger in Egypt, while Saudi Arabia's instability is growing even more.
I will tackle his farewell speeches in details. But I would like to add one note: Afghanistan:
His 'War on Drugs' prior to his 'War on Terror' made him a buffoon in protecting his own citizens, when he was warned. Earlier US Administrations funded the Taliban who were actually needed to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Actually in a period of four months prior to 9/11, he disregarded the issue of Bin Laden wanting to strike the US, and gave the Taliban government almost 45 million dollars in fighting drugs and opium. Ironic, isn't it?
Bush is responsible for almost every civilian's death that took place, for promoting dictatorships, and even funding terrorists like al-Qaeda. So the hell with you Bush, and I sure wish there is a hell, to see you rotting in it.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Israel and the Arab Divide
Kosovo of 1998 Looks Heavenly Compared to Gaza...
The Israeli army killed almost in one day an extra 100 Palestinian in one day, the wounded exceeded 5000, whereby 50% of them are elderly, women, and children. These are the Hamas soldiers. Newly born babies are dying or on the brink of death, water is almost depleted, and Israel of course argues that they are targeting Hamas. They even justified to Mr. Ban that Hamas operatives shot from the UN building before bombing it as an excuse. The real alibi was of course to demolish whatever supplies the UN held in Gaza for people living in months of blockade, followed by this butchery.
Israel also started bombing News Agency to cut down on reporters' activities . The News Agency building suffered an Israeli artillery, but Zionist sympathizers would answer, they simply retaliated.
On a bigger scale, anti-Israeli activities have been spreading around the world. The Arab World is also witnessing a great rift since 1936. This doesn't mean that Qatar and Syria are lovers of the Arab cause. The Palestinian issue had always been hijacked by Arab dictators to profit from political points. Just like in Lebanon during 1976 where the Syrians and Egyptians competed who is more 'Palestinian' and Arab, the same is taking place on a regional scale. Qatar, after hosting last year the Religious Dialogue, with war-criminal Levni as a VIP guest, surprisingly called Arabs to boycott Israel, cut diplomatic ties, and stop normalizations. This sounds awekward since Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is rumored to have a nice house in Tel Aviv, and not to forget that he has an Israeli Commercial & Diplomatic hub on his own land, along with the biggest US military base after Iraq. We also remember that Qatar opened its lands for US laser guided missiles to be delivered to Israel in order to bomb Lebanese citizens.
Forgetting the past, al-Assad directly supported Qatar's call for an urgent meeting, whereby we do not know how it will stop the Israeli offensive. Only 13 countries replied to it, while Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, are blocking the meeting of the emergency summit to take place. Jordan's King to this very day remain silent. Everyone is using Palestine to score political points to gain regional power. Saudi Arabia lost drastically in Lebanon after Qatar hosted the Lebanese dialogue to generate the Doha Accords. Israel is enjoying its ally, the US, pulling strings on the Arabs to fight with each other. Of course, to all of them, regional power is more important than human lives.
Israel, unlike Serbia, is getting away with its massacres of the Palestinian people. Finally I agree with the Kuwaiti MP, who proposed in the Parliament to move the Arab League from Cairo to Venzuela.
MFL
The Israeli army killed almost in one day an extra 100 Palestinian in one day, the wounded exceeded 5000, whereby 50% of them are elderly, women, and children. These are the Hamas soldiers. Newly born babies are dying or on the brink of death, water is almost depleted, and Israel of course argues that they are targeting Hamas. They even justified to Mr. Ban that Hamas operatives shot from the UN building before bombing it as an excuse. The real alibi was of course to demolish whatever supplies the UN held in Gaza for people living in months of blockade, followed by this butchery.
Israel also started bombing News Agency to cut down on reporters' activities . The News Agency building suffered an Israeli artillery, but Zionist sympathizers would answer, they simply retaliated.
On a bigger scale, anti-Israeli activities have been spreading around the world. The Arab World is also witnessing a great rift since 1936. This doesn't mean that Qatar and Syria are lovers of the Arab cause. The Palestinian issue had always been hijacked by Arab dictators to profit from political points. Just like in Lebanon during 1976 where the Syrians and Egyptians competed who is more 'Palestinian' and Arab, the same is taking place on a regional scale. Qatar, after hosting last year the Religious Dialogue, with war-criminal Levni as a VIP guest, surprisingly called Arabs to boycott Israel, cut diplomatic ties, and stop normalizations. This sounds awekward since Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is rumored to have a nice house in Tel Aviv, and not to forget that he has an Israeli Commercial & Diplomatic hub on his own land, along with the biggest US military base after Iraq. We also remember that Qatar opened its lands for US laser guided missiles to be delivered to Israel in order to bomb Lebanese citizens.
Forgetting the past, al-Assad directly supported Qatar's call for an urgent meeting, whereby we do not know how it will stop the Israeli offensive. Only 13 countries replied to it, while Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, are blocking the meeting of the emergency summit to take place. Jordan's King to this very day remain silent. Everyone is using Palestine to score political points to gain regional power. Saudi Arabia lost drastically in Lebanon after Qatar hosted the Lebanese dialogue to generate the Doha Accords. Israel is enjoying its ally, the US, pulling strings on the Arabs to fight with each other. Of course, to all of them, regional power is more important than human lives.
Israel, unlike Serbia, is getting away with its massacres of the Palestinian people. Finally I agree with the Kuwaiti MP, who proposed in the Parliament to move the Arab League from Cairo to Venzuela.
MFL
Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis vs. Israeli Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza
Taken from here
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli troops are pushing deeper towards Gaza's towns and cities as thousands of Israeli reservists enter the conflict for the first time. Israeli warplanes continue to bombard targets across northern Gaza and in the town of Rafah on the southern border with Egypt. Meanwhile, Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into southern Israel.
The Israeli military is continuing to surround Gaza City, and many residents in the outlying suburbs are moving into the city center. A Palestinian human rights group told The Guardian newspaper up to 90,000 Gazans, more than half of them children, had fled their homes across the territory. Israel and Egypt have refused to open their borders to allow Gazans to flee the fighting.
The death toll now stands at nearly 900 Palestinians, many of them civilian, including 275 children. Another 4,100 Palestinians have been injured. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians hit by rocket fire and ten soldiers. Four of those soldiers died in friendly fire incidents.
Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the territory's one-and-a-half million residents in urgent need of food and medical aid. The BBC reports the main hospital in Gaza is close to collapse with patients reportedly dying because of a lack of specialist doctors and basic medical equipment.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the offensive was nearing its goals but that the assault will continue. Olmert also spoke out in defiance of the UN Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire, saying, "Nobody should be allowed to decide for us if we are allowed to strike." Both Hamas and Israel have rejected the UN resolution. Meanwhile, talks between Hamas and Egyptian officials are continuing in Cairo.
We turn now to a debate on the issue. Attorney Lanny Davis is with us. He's a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project, former special counsel to President Clinton. He joins us from Washington, D.C. Joining us on the line from Beersheba, Israel is Neve Gordon. He's the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of Israel's Occupation.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Lanny Davis, you're in full support of the Israeli invasion. Tell us why.
LANNY DAVIS: The right of self-defense. When terrorism kills innocent civilians intentionally, there isn't a civilized nation in the world that wouldn't attack back to try to prevent that terrorism. I use "terrorism" with a very specifically defined expression. When a party shoots to kill innocent civilians intentionally for a political purpose, including one's own citizens to be exposed to death for political purposes, that's terrorism. So I support the right of self-defense against terrorism, as any country would if this were happening, I believe. And the United States certainly would. If Rochester were being exposed to mortars and rockets from Montreal, I believe that the United States would not sit idly by and allow the Canadians to do that. So I think the first and most foremost right is the right of self-defense against terrorism, which is intentional killing of civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue proportionality, the number of people we've seen dead, close to 900 Palestinians, over 200 of them children, overwhelmingly civilian, versus the thirteen Israelis who have died, ten of them soldiers, four of them in friendly fire.
LANNY DAVIS: Yes, it's very disturbing that there are so many more deaths and suffering by innocent people in Gaza. I grieve and regret that as a human being, as an American, as a Jew who has supported a Palestinian state ever since I was a child and have been very critical through the years of the Israeli government not supporting a Palestinian state until just recently. So I grieve for those numbers, but I don't understand the word "disproportional."
Number one, if it was one child, if it was your child who was intentionally killed by a terrorist, and you asked your government to respond, and in order to respond, the people who launched the rockets placed their rockets among schoolchildren and innocent civilians deliberately—and that is an undisputed fact that Hamas has located its rocket launchers deliberately among civilians in schools, beneath hospitals—then that unfortunate and terrible tragic death of innocent civilians has to be more attributed to Hamas's calculated strategy of exposing its civilians to death, but certainly does not take away from my first statement of the horror and the grief of any innocent civilians, whether it's one child in Israel or a hundred children in Palestine or in Gaza. To me, they're equally tragic. There is no disproportionality. They're equally tragic.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon, you and your family have spent a good deal of time in a bomb shelter against the Hamas rockets in Ben-Gurion University, in the area around Ben-Gurion University where you live. You have called for the invasion to end now. Why?
NEVE GORDON: I would call for the invasion not to begin. We just had a rocket here about an hour ago, and the issue—I agree with some of what Lanny says. First of all, I agree with the idea of a basic right to self-defense. And the right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It's an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it's all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they're resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence.
About between ten and twenty people, Israelis, have died from rockets in the eight years that rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. During the same amount of time, 4,000 Israelis have died from car accidents. And yet, we don't see an outrage against the terrorism on the streets in Israel. But from these twenty people, we're allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip and bomb them from the air into their cage and kill 275 children. And Lanny says that it's not about disproportionality, but it is. Disproportionality is a term from international law. And by saying that he doesn't agree with it, he's defying international law.
And Israel has been defying international law and international agreements and international decisions from 1967, or probably from before. One of these decisions is that Israel must return these territories. And by maintaining and holding onto these territories through violent means, Israel is creating a situation where basically all the doors in the Gaza Strip are closed except one door. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, said it. Israel has closed all the doors in the Gaza Strip again, except for the mosque doors. We've closed the school doors. We've closed the economic doors. We've closed the medical doors. And so, and then we're surprised that we have to deal with Hamas.
So I think we need to change the hard drive, and the hard drive has to be that you don't solve things through violence. You solve things—you solve diplomatic issues, political issues through negotiations and talks. And it's about time that Israel sat down with Hamas and started negotiating with them. Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. We don't need to like them. I don't like them. But they are the elected government, and we need to sit down and talk with them and not bomb them.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, your response?
LANNY DAVIS: Well, first of all, I appreciate—Professor Gordon and I probably have the same heart, and we probably have the same empathy, and we probably have the same goals of a two-state solution where people negotiate peace. And I appreciate Professor Gordon is sitting in a situation where his family is exposed to death, and I'm sitting safely here in Washington. So I don't mean to be judgmental, and I greatly respect what the professor just said, but I focus on facts, and I'm sorry to say that I must disagree with the professor's misstatement of certain facts, or omission might be also accurate.
Let's start with the international law issue. It is a violation of international law to deliberately launch rockets from within civilian areas. Article 53 of the Geneva Accords expressly says that. Yet the professor forgot to mention that. It is not a violation of international law to defend yourself if you're not intentionally targeting civilians. The Hamas is intentionally targeting civilians. The professor forgot to mention the distinction between defending yourself and tragically killing civilians in trying to find those who are launching missiles against you intentionally to kill civilians.
And finally and most importantly, I share the professor's desire for negotiations. And as I said, since I was a child, contrary to my father's strong views, I favored a Palestinian state, independent, and I still do. But Hamas's stated public objective is the destruction of Israel. There isn't a civilized country in the world that would sit across the table from a party that is launching terrorist—and it is defined as terrorism to intentionally kill civilians, as opposed to military. Nobody denies that's what Hamas is doing. And to sit across the table from an organization that says, "We will not recognize you. We want to destroy you, and we will use terrorism against your innocent children," is impossible. We did sit across the table from Fatah. We do have the beginnings of a negotiation with Mr. Abboud [sic.]. And we certainly do have the Fatah opposed to the terrorism of Hamas. After all, they were expelled by a military coup by Hamas.
So all of the issues that I believe the professor and I have in common, we should at least agree on basic facts, and the overwhelming one that I don't think the professor would deny is Hamas's aim is terrorism, to kill innocent civilians, and its objective is the destruction of Israel, not the recognition of Israel, not two states that can live side by side in peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon?
NEVE GORDON: The problem is the—yes, intentions are important, but the facts are more important. And the fact is that Israel is the one that's doing the harm to—much more harm to civilians than the Hamas ever did and ever will do. Israel has killed in the past two weeks 275 children, and not Hamas, regardless of the intentions. You mentioned the school. Israel is dealing with a propaganda war. Israel is the one that disseminated a video of Hamas shooting rockets from a school, a video that's almost two years old, claiming that the video was taken a day or two earlier. So Israel is in a propaganda war. Yes, the Hamas is fighting out from a civilian population, but Israel has the choice whether it's going to bomb the civilian population ore not, and it is intentionally deciding to bomb the civilian population. So in terms of intentionality in bombing areas where there are civilians, Israel is acting like a state terrorist. So, if your definition of terrorism doesn't take into account the identity of the actor—and state actors can also be terrorists—then when you bomb a school and when you bomb a university and when you bomb a neighborhood and you're killing much more civilians than militants, then you're doing something that is an act of terror.
And I have a problem. I think my views are pro-Israelis. I would like to see Israel existing in the Middle East sixty years down the line, and not only the first sixty years. And the only way for Israel to continue to exist in the Middle East is if it changes its approach towards the region and see itself as a leader of peace and not a belligerent actor in the region. And Israel has been living on the sword. Some of our neighbors have been living on the sword. But we have to come out and say we no longer want to live on the sword, because those who live on the sword, as the Bible tells us, also die on the sword. We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO—you mentioned Fatah—the PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us. If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro—by changing our approach, we're actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we'll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon and Lanny Davis, we're going to break, then come back. Then, we will be joined by Congress member Dennis Kucinich, speaking to us from Cleveland, one of five Congress members to vote against the resolution in support of Israel. And then we'll be speaking with Jewish women who are standing up to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, one in Toronto, one here in New York. A major protest is planned today outside the Israeli consulate at 5:00 in the afternoon. Lanny Davis is former attorney, former special counsel to President Clinton. He is currently an attorney, and he's a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project. Neve Gordon is in Beersheba in Israel, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are attorney Lanny Davis, senior adviser, spokesperson for the Israel Project in Washington, D.C., and Professor Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, author of Israel's Occupation. I want to talk about why Israel invaded at this point. What is your understanding of this? They said Hamas broke the ceasefire. Professor Gordon, is that the reason you feel that this happened?
NEVE GORDON: Hamas did launch an incredible amount of rockets at the end of the ceasefire. Israel actually is a first actor that broke the ceasefire on November 1st, when it attacked in the Gaza—November 4th, when it attacked in the Gaza Strip.
I think the actual reasons have to do—the two major reasons—with rebuilding the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006 in Lebanon and the upcoming Israeli elections. Both Labor and Kadima, the two out of the three major parties, were behind in the polls against BB Netanyahu's Likud, who was blaming them of being soft on the Palestinians. And I think the timing, in terms of the elections, which are on February 10th, was perfect to show that Kadima and Labor, that are in party, know how to be tough on the Palestinians. And in fact, already in the polls we see that Labor has added almost 50 percent to what it had before the war began. So I think there's some cynical political issues and reputation issues that played a dramatic part in initiating this war.
I think that Hamas also acted—or miscalculated and acted totally wrong, that it launched the rockets on Israel. I think, strategically and morally, it was a mistake. But I'm not sure Israel had to react through such a war. I think through diplomatic means it could have been stopped.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, are you concerned about the blockade not only on the Palestinians, but also on information? The New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, CNN have all filed a complaint with the Israeli prime minister not allowing international press into Gaza. Why do you think Israel is not allowing press in?
LANNY DAVIS: Well, first of all, I don't want to duck your latter question, because I'm in favor of greater media going into Gaza so they can report the facts rather than false reporting. I'd like to get back to that.
But let me start with your use of your word "blockade." That's an inaccurate or at least a biased word. I don't say that you intended it that way, but it is. There is a blockade of tunnels and any other means of access that the Hamas has used to allow the import of these rockets from Iran. This is an Iranian-subsidized operation, just like Hezbollah. And yet, 165 trucks of humanitarian, medical, food aid went into Gaza yesterday from Israel. It is the Egyptians that have blocked access. You must ask the Egyptian government, "Why are you blocking access?" Because they know these tunnels have been used by Hamas not to resupply their people with food and medical aid, but with rockets who are placed among civilians, next to schools, under hospitals, to kill civilians in Israel. So "blockade" is really, I think, a word that needs to be changed. It's a selective blocking of terrorist war instruments that are being supplied primarily by Iran, and the Egyptian government has the ability to open those tunnels, and they see the same danger as does Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me put that question—
LANNY DAVIS: On the issue—
AMY GOODMAN: Just one sec—on the issue of the blockade to Professor Neve Gordon, which predates the Israeli invasion, the total blockade of Gaza that many people have been challenging around the world. Can you explain what that blockade is, Professor Gordon?
NEVE GORDON: Well, since Hamas was elected into government in a democratic election, Israel decided basically to economically boycott the Palestinian people, and particularly Hamas and the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, and is basically controlling all the borders and deciding who can enter and who can leave and what can enter and what can leave. And it is actually allowing a certain amount of humanitarian aid, and it's allowing this humanitarian aid, according to Israel's own claims, in order that there won't be a humanitarian catastrophe. So, basically, Israel is saying, "We'll allow 165 trucks so there won't be a humanitarian catastrophe, so we can continue the war against Hamas." So it's a kind of new war ethics, a war ethics that you're fighting against not another military, but militants in an armed wing of an organization that are within the civilian population, and so you're basically attacking the civilian population, and you're saying, "We don't want a catastrophe to happen, so we can continue attacking you." There's something very cynical about it and something horrific about it.
And so, actually, there has been a blockade on Gaza, and it's been a very severe blockade on Gaza. And even Israel claims that there's been a blockade on Gaza and saying that Israel allows humanitarian assistance to enter so it can continue bombing them is very, very cynical.
LANNY DAVIS: Let's agree on a basic fact here. Ms. Goodman, you used the expression "absolute blockade" a second time after I said the first use of your expression "blockade" was inaccurate or imbalanced. So I would like to suggest that you at least say "partial blockade," because it is not aimed at anything other than preventing munitions and rockets coming in from Iran. That's a fact. And ask the government of Egypt whether they agree. Secondly—
NEVE GORDON: If a Palestinian wants to import a car—
LANNY DAVIS: Professor, professor, let me just—let me just make one other point.
NEVE GORDON: —a car, he can't import the car. If a Palestinian wants to import a cow, he can't import a cow.
LANNY DAVIS: I really—I really wanted to interrupt you badly, but I appreciate you have a lot to say, and I'd like you to allow me to finish.
I am very surprised that you don't start with the fact that we agree on: all Hamas has to do is stop sending terrorist rockets aimed at civilians—you've never disagreed with me on that; we agree on that—and make peace with Israel. That's all they have to do, the same way that Mr. Abboud [sic.] and the Fatah have done in the West Bank, which is flourishing.
And secondly, most importantly, the occupation ended. In 2005, Israel took all of its troops out. Faced with a state or a terrorist state or a government that says, "I'm trying to destroy you, and I'm going to send rockets to kill your civilians," is the reason why the economic boycott, as you call it, would occur in any civilized country in the world. If Canada or Mexico had a destruction objective of the United States and were launching rockets against Houston or against Boston—if you think the United States or any other country in the world would allow that to happen without at least economic boycott while allowing humanitarian aid, then I would beg to differ with you.
On the media, Ms. Goodman, I—
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, we began with you—I just—we're going to have to wrap up because we're headed to Dennis Kucinich.
LANNY DAVIS: OK. Well, just a quick comment on the media, which I didn't answer. I think that there ought to be more exposure, and there should be more openness with the media. I think Israel is moving in that direction. I certainly think that the propaganda, for example, a false report that an Israeli tank shot on a UN convoy, took forty-eight hours for the United Nations spokesperson who put that statement out to say, "Well, I'm not so sure." That was a forty-eight hour time gap. Everybody still believes it happened, because the withdrawal of the statement or the modification of the statement didn't get the front-page headlines that the statement did.
So we have to be very careful that when we get our media into Gaza, that we get people who are objective reporting the facts as to where are these missiles. Are they under schools? Are they in hospitals? And if so, is that an act that is a violation and a war crime in and of itself? That's why I want the media in Gaza, to prove the war crimes being committed by Hamas are where they're placing their rockets.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, we began with you; we will end with Professor Neve Gordon in Beersheba.
NEVE GORDON: I have two comments to make, one related to protest in media. 700 Israelis have been arrested since this war began, because they protested this war. This has not made it to an international media, and it's an act of intimidation by the state against those who protest the war.
Second, regarding what Lanny said, that no country would allow another country to bomb its citizens, he's right. He forgets one essential fact, and that is the occupation. And Gaza was not—is still under occupation, because Israel controls all of its borders, and the West Bank is under occupation, and East Jerusalem is under occupation. And the act—the first, the initial, the primordial act of violence is the occupation. The rockets are a reaction to that act of violence. And so, we have to keep in mind that within—it's not between a state and another state. It's been between an occupier and an occupied.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Professor Neve Gordon in Beersheba, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of Israel's Occupation. Lanny Davis, senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project, attorney and former special counsel to President Clinton. Thank you both for being with us.
LANNY DAVIS: Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli troops are pushing deeper towards Gaza's towns and cities as thousands of Israeli reservists enter the conflict for the first time. Israeli warplanes continue to bombard targets across northern Gaza and in the town of Rafah on the southern border with Egypt. Meanwhile, Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into southern Israel.
The Israeli military is continuing to surround Gaza City, and many residents in the outlying suburbs are moving into the city center. A Palestinian human rights group told The Guardian newspaper up to 90,000 Gazans, more than half of them children, had fled their homes across the territory. Israel and Egypt have refused to open their borders to allow Gazans to flee the fighting.
The death toll now stands at nearly 900 Palestinians, many of them civilian, including 275 children. Another 4,100 Palestinians have been injured. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians hit by rocket fire and ten soldiers. Four of those soldiers died in friendly fire incidents.
Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the territory's one-and-a-half million residents in urgent need of food and medical aid. The BBC reports the main hospital in Gaza is close to collapse with patients reportedly dying because of a lack of specialist doctors and basic medical equipment.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the offensive was nearing its goals but that the assault will continue. Olmert also spoke out in defiance of the UN Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire, saying, "Nobody should be allowed to decide for us if we are allowed to strike." Both Hamas and Israel have rejected the UN resolution. Meanwhile, talks between Hamas and Egyptian officials are continuing in Cairo.
We turn now to a debate on the issue. Attorney Lanny Davis is with us. He's a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project, former special counsel to President Clinton. He joins us from Washington, D.C. Joining us on the line from Beersheba, Israel is Neve Gordon. He's the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of Israel's Occupation.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Lanny Davis, you're in full support of the Israeli invasion. Tell us why.
LANNY DAVIS: The right of self-defense. When terrorism kills innocent civilians intentionally, there isn't a civilized nation in the world that wouldn't attack back to try to prevent that terrorism. I use "terrorism" with a very specifically defined expression. When a party shoots to kill innocent civilians intentionally for a political purpose, including one's own citizens to be exposed to death for political purposes, that's terrorism. So I support the right of self-defense against terrorism, as any country would if this were happening, I believe. And the United States certainly would. If Rochester were being exposed to mortars and rockets from Montreal, I believe that the United States would not sit idly by and allow the Canadians to do that. So I think the first and most foremost right is the right of self-defense against terrorism, which is intentional killing of civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue proportionality, the number of people we've seen dead, close to 900 Palestinians, over 200 of them children, overwhelmingly civilian, versus the thirteen Israelis who have died, ten of them soldiers, four of them in friendly fire.
LANNY DAVIS: Yes, it's very disturbing that there are so many more deaths and suffering by innocent people in Gaza. I grieve and regret that as a human being, as an American, as a Jew who has supported a Palestinian state ever since I was a child and have been very critical through the years of the Israeli government not supporting a Palestinian state until just recently. So I grieve for those numbers, but I don't understand the word "disproportional."
Number one, if it was one child, if it was your child who was intentionally killed by a terrorist, and you asked your government to respond, and in order to respond, the people who launched the rockets placed their rockets among schoolchildren and innocent civilians deliberately—and that is an undisputed fact that Hamas has located its rocket launchers deliberately among civilians in schools, beneath hospitals—then that unfortunate and terrible tragic death of innocent civilians has to be more attributed to Hamas's calculated strategy of exposing its civilians to death, but certainly does not take away from my first statement of the horror and the grief of any innocent civilians, whether it's one child in Israel or a hundred children in Palestine or in Gaza. To me, they're equally tragic. There is no disproportionality. They're equally tragic.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon, you and your family have spent a good deal of time in a bomb shelter against the Hamas rockets in Ben-Gurion University, in the area around Ben-Gurion University where you live. You have called for the invasion to end now. Why?
NEVE GORDON: I would call for the invasion not to begin. We just had a rocket here about an hour ago, and the issue—I agree with some of what Lanny says. First of all, I agree with the idea of a basic right to self-defense. And the right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It's an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it's all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they're resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence.
About between ten and twenty people, Israelis, have died from rockets in the eight years that rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. During the same amount of time, 4,000 Israelis have died from car accidents. And yet, we don't see an outrage against the terrorism on the streets in Israel. But from these twenty people, we're allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip and bomb them from the air into their cage and kill 275 children. And Lanny says that it's not about disproportionality, but it is. Disproportionality is a term from international law. And by saying that he doesn't agree with it, he's defying international law.
And Israel has been defying international law and international agreements and international decisions from 1967, or probably from before. One of these decisions is that Israel must return these territories. And by maintaining and holding onto these territories through violent means, Israel is creating a situation where basically all the doors in the Gaza Strip are closed except one door. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, said it. Israel has closed all the doors in the Gaza Strip again, except for the mosque doors. We've closed the school doors. We've closed the economic doors. We've closed the medical doors. And so, and then we're surprised that we have to deal with Hamas.
So I think we need to change the hard drive, and the hard drive has to be that you don't solve things through violence. You solve things—you solve diplomatic issues, political issues through negotiations and talks. And it's about time that Israel sat down with Hamas and started negotiating with them. Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. We don't need to like them. I don't like them. But they are the elected government, and we need to sit down and talk with them and not bomb them.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, your response?
LANNY DAVIS: Well, first of all, I appreciate—Professor Gordon and I probably have the same heart, and we probably have the same empathy, and we probably have the same goals of a two-state solution where people negotiate peace. And I appreciate Professor Gordon is sitting in a situation where his family is exposed to death, and I'm sitting safely here in Washington. So I don't mean to be judgmental, and I greatly respect what the professor just said, but I focus on facts, and I'm sorry to say that I must disagree with the professor's misstatement of certain facts, or omission might be also accurate.
Let's start with the international law issue. It is a violation of international law to deliberately launch rockets from within civilian areas. Article 53 of the Geneva Accords expressly says that. Yet the professor forgot to mention that. It is not a violation of international law to defend yourself if you're not intentionally targeting civilians. The Hamas is intentionally targeting civilians. The professor forgot to mention the distinction between defending yourself and tragically killing civilians in trying to find those who are launching missiles against you intentionally to kill civilians.
And finally and most importantly, I share the professor's desire for negotiations. And as I said, since I was a child, contrary to my father's strong views, I favored a Palestinian state, independent, and I still do. But Hamas's stated public objective is the destruction of Israel. There isn't a civilized country in the world that would sit across the table from a party that is launching terrorist—and it is defined as terrorism to intentionally kill civilians, as opposed to military. Nobody denies that's what Hamas is doing. And to sit across the table from an organization that says, "We will not recognize you. We want to destroy you, and we will use terrorism against your innocent children," is impossible. We did sit across the table from Fatah. We do have the beginnings of a negotiation with Mr. Abboud [sic.]. And we certainly do have the Fatah opposed to the terrorism of Hamas. After all, they were expelled by a military coup by Hamas.
So all of the issues that I believe the professor and I have in common, we should at least agree on basic facts, and the overwhelming one that I don't think the professor would deny is Hamas's aim is terrorism, to kill innocent civilians, and its objective is the destruction of Israel, not the recognition of Israel, not two states that can live side by side in peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon?
NEVE GORDON: The problem is the—yes, intentions are important, but the facts are more important. And the fact is that Israel is the one that's doing the harm to—much more harm to civilians than the Hamas ever did and ever will do. Israel has killed in the past two weeks 275 children, and not Hamas, regardless of the intentions. You mentioned the school. Israel is dealing with a propaganda war. Israel is the one that disseminated a video of Hamas shooting rockets from a school, a video that's almost two years old, claiming that the video was taken a day or two earlier. So Israel is in a propaganda war. Yes, the Hamas is fighting out from a civilian population, but Israel has the choice whether it's going to bomb the civilian population ore not, and it is intentionally deciding to bomb the civilian population. So in terms of intentionality in bombing areas where there are civilians, Israel is acting like a state terrorist. So, if your definition of terrorism doesn't take into account the identity of the actor—and state actors can also be terrorists—then when you bomb a school and when you bomb a university and when you bomb a neighborhood and you're killing much more civilians than militants, then you're doing something that is an act of terror.
And I have a problem. I think my views are pro-Israelis. I would like to see Israel existing in the Middle East sixty years down the line, and not only the first sixty years. And the only way for Israel to continue to exist in the Middle East is if it changes its approach towards the region and see itself as a leader of peace and not a belligerent actor in the region. And Israel has been living on the sword. Some of our neighbors have been living on the sword. But we have to come out and say we no longer want to live on the sword, because those who live on the sword, as the Bible tells us, also die on the sword. We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO—you mentioned Fatah—the PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us. If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro—by changing our approach, we're actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we'll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Neve Gordon and Lanny Davis, we're going to break, then come back. Then, we will be joined by Congress member Dennis Kucinich, speaking to us from Cleveland, one of five Congress members to vote against the resolution in support of Israel. And then we'll be speaking with Jewish women who are standing up to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, one in Toronto, one here in New York. A major protest is planned today outside the Israeli consulate at 5:00 in the afternoon. Lanny Davis is former attorney, former special counsel to President Clinton. He is currently an attorney, and he's a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project. Neve Gordon is in Beersheba in Israel, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are attorney Lanny Davis, senior adviser, spokesperson for the Israel Project in Washington, D.C., and Professor Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, author of Israel's Occupation. I want to talk about why Israel invaded at this point. What is your understanding of this? They said Hamas broke the ceasefire. Professor Gordon, is that the reason you feel that this happened?
NEVE GORDON: Hamas did launch an incredible amount of rockets at the end of the ceasefire. Israel actually is a first actor that broke the ceasefire on November 1st, when it attacked in the Gaza—November 4th, when it attacked in the Gaza Strip.
I think the actual reasons have to do—the two major reasons—with rebuilding the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006 in Lebanon and the upcoming Israeli elections. Both Labor and Kadima, the two out of the three major parties, were behind in the polls against BB Netanyahu's Likud, who was blaming them of being soft on the Palestinians. And I think the timing, in terms of the elections, which are on February 10th, was perfect to show that Kadima and Labor, that are in party, know how to be tough on the Palestinians. And in fact, already in the polls we see that Labor has added almost 50 percent to what it had before the war began. So I think there's some cynical political issues and reputation issues that played a dramatic part in initiating this war.
I think that Hamas also acted—or miscalculated and acted totally wrong, that it launched the rockets on Israel. I think, strategically and morally, it was a mistake. But I'm not sure Israel had to react through such a war. I think through diplomatic means it could have been stopped.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, are you concerned about the blockade not only on the Palestinians, but also on information? The New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, CNN have all filed a complaint with the Israeli prime minister not allowing international press into Gaza. Why do you think Israel is not allowing press in?
LANNY DAVIS: Well, first of all, I don't want to duck your latter question, because I'm in favor of greater media going into Gaza so they can report the facts rather than false reporting. I'd like to get back to that.
But let me start with your use of your word "blockade." That's an inaccurate or at least a biased word. I don't say that you intended it that way, but it is. There is a blockade of tunnels and any other means of access that the Hamas has used to allow the import of these rockets from Iran. This is an Iranian-subsidized operation, just like Hezbollah. And yet, 165 trucks of humanitarian, medical, food aid went into Gaza yesterday from Israel. It is the Egyptians that have blocked access. You must ask the Egyptian government, "Why are you blocking access?" Because they know these tunnels have been used by Hamas not to resupply their people with food and medical aid, but with rockets who are placed among civilians, next to schools, under hospitals, to kill civilians in Israel. So "blockade" is really, I think, a word that needs to be changed. It's a selective blocking of terrorist war instruments that are being supplied primarily by Iran, and the Egyptian government has the ability to open those tunnels, and they see the same danger as does Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me put that question—
LANNY DAVIS: On the issue—
AMY GOODMAN: Just one sec—on the issue of the blockade to Professor Neve Gordon, which predates the Israeli invasion, the total blockade of Gaza that many people have been challenging around the world. Can you explain what that blockade is, Professor Gordon?
NEVE GORDON: Well, since Hamas was elected into government in a democratic election, Israel decided basically to economically boycott the Palestinian people, and particularly Hamas and the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, and is basically controlling all the borders and deciding who can enter and who can leave and what can enter and what can leave. And it is actually allowing a certain amount of humanitarian aid, and it's allowing this humanitarian aid, according to Israel's own claims, in order that there won't be a humanitarian catastrophe. So, basically, Israel is saying, "We'll allow 165 trucks so there won't be a humanitarian catastrophe, so we can continue the war against Hamas." So it's a kind of new war ethics, a war ethics that you're fighting against not another military, but militants in an armed wing of an organization that are within the civilian population, and so you're basically attacking the civilian population, and you're saying, "We don't want a catastrophe to happen, so we can continue attacking you." There's something very cynical about it and something horrific about it.
And so, actually, there has been a blockade on Gaza, and it's been a very severe blockade on Gaza. And even Israel claims that there's been a blockade on Gaza and saying that Israel allows humanitarian assistance to enter so it can continue bombing them is very, very cynical.
LANNY DAVIS: Let's agree on a basic fact here. Ms. Goodman, you used the expression "absolute blockade" a second time after I said the first use of your expression "blockade" was inaccurate or imbalanced. So I would like to suggest that you at least say "partial blockade," because it is not aimed at anything other than preventing munitions and rockets coming in from Iran. That's a fact. And ask the government of Egypt whether they agree. Secondly—
NEVE GORDON: If a Palestinian wants to import a car—
LANNY DAVIS: Professor, professor, let me just—let me just make one other point.
NEVE GORDON: —a car, he can't import the car. If a Palestinian wants to import a cow, he can't import a cow.
LANNY DAVIS: I really—I really wanted to interrupt you badly, but I appreciate you have a lot to say, and I'd like you to allow me to finish.
I am very surprised that you don't start with the fact that we agree on: all Hamas has to do is stop sending terrorist rockets aimed at civilians—you've never disagreed with me on that; we agree on that—and make peace with Israel. That's all they have to do, the same way that Mr. Abboud [sic.] and the Fatah have done in the West Bank, which is flourishing.
And secondly, most importantly, the occupation ended. In 2005, Israel took all of its troops out. Faced with a state or a terrorist state or a government that says, "I'm trying to destroy you, and I'm going to send rockets to kill your civilians," is the reason why the economic boycott, as you call it, would occur in any civilized country in the world. If Canada or Mexico had a destruction objective of the United States and were launching rockets against Houston or against Boston—if you think the United States or any other country in the world would allow that to happen without at least economic boycott while allowing humanitarian aid, then I would beg to differ with you.
On the media, Ms. Goodman, I—
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, we began with you—I just—we're going to have to wrap up because we're headed to Dennis Kucinich.
LANNY DAVIS: OK. Well, just a quick comment on the media, which I didn't answer. I think that there ought to be more exposure, and there should be more openness with the media. I think Israel is moving in that direction. I certainly think that the propaganda, for example, a false report that an Israeli tank shot on a UN convoy, took forty-eight hours for the United Nations spokesperson who put that statement out to say, "Well, I'm not so sure." That was a forty-eight hour time gap. Everybody still believes it happened, because the withdrawal of the statement or the modification of the statement didn't get the front-page headlines that the statement did.
So we have to be very careful that when we get our media into Gaza, that we get people who are objective reporting the facts as to where are these missiles. Are they under schools? Are they in hospitals? And if so, is that an act that is a violation and a war crime in and of itself? That's why I want the media in Gaza, to prove the war crimes being committed by Hamas are where they're placing their rockets.
AMY GOODMAN: Lanny Davis, we began with you; we will end with Professor Neve Gordon in Beersheba.
NEVE GORDON: I have two comments to make, one related to protest in media. 700 Israelis have been arrested since this war began, because they protested this war. This has not made it to an international media, and it's an act of intimidation by the state against those who protest the war.
Second, regarding what Lanny said, that no country would allow another country to bomb its citizens, he's right. He forgets one essential fact, and that is the occupation. And Gaza was not—is still under occupation, because Israel controls all of its borders, and the West Bank is under occupation, and East Jerusalem is under occupation. And the act—the first, the initial, the primordial act of violence is the occupation. The rockets are a reaction to that act of violence. And so, we have to keep in mind that within—it's not between a state and another state. It's been between an occupier and an occupied.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Professor Neve Gordon in Beersheba, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of Israel's Occupation. Lanny Davis, senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project, attorney and former special counsel to President Clinton. Thank you both for being with us.
LANNY DAVIS: Thank you so much.
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