The Reality Behind Isreal's War of Words

Again, today, another Syrian official reminded Israel of the disadvantages of war, its results would be catastrophic. Apparently Israel, with maximum under-estimation of its historic enemy, doesn't care.

The whole issue started with the arrival of Lieberman, an ultra-Zionist nutcase, and his clown, Ayalon. Displaying Israeli superiority complex, Ayalon insulted the Turkish ambassador in Israel. Ayalon argued that it was vengeance on what Turkey's spearhead, Mr. Tayeb Ordogan said in the World Economic Forum. The Turkish official simply highlighted the atrocities committed by the Israeli Defense Forces on Gaza. This was approved by the United Nation's Human Rights Committee, and voted on with a majority in the UN. Of course, the USA shut it down.

As Gaza's war left Israel militarily victorious, Israel hoped to boast its confidence in overcoming the defeat they suffered in 2006 by Hezbollah and the various civilian resistance movements (which included refugee relief, media wars, and exposing Israel for its real face: a Fascist state).

The plans of Israel backfired drastically. Ever since 2009, the majority of the world was disgusted by Israel's brutality. Another problem Israel faced is its arrogance, the majority of the world no longer looks at Israel as a victim, definitely, those World War II images were wiped out finally by its brutality on Gaza. As a matter of fact, a think tank in Israel argued that the entire world is hateful of Israel, and the last frontier was the United States. Even in the United States, according to the think tank, various informational hubs, university activists, left-wing activists, and others are exposing Israel for its reality, a fascist state that was based on ethnic cleansing. The think tank predicted that if Israel doesn't do anything drastic, Israel's final bastion for protecting its reputation (along where the real veto power lays) will collapse. Such a collapse is not any collapse, it is Israel's life-line supplier, the United States of America.

The Goldstone Affair played a role in exposing Israel's disgusting thoughts. Goldstone, a Zionist Jew himself, was traumatized to see what has happened in Gaza. A Zionist bashed Israel's Zionist regime for its inhumane activities. Israel accused its supporter of anti-semitism, which of course, remains the name of the game of shutting out critics. This reflected badly on Israel. As a matter of fact, 2009/2010 as two chronological years, appear as the breakdown of Israel's "anti-semitism" technique. Of course, Israel acknowledged that it used banned phosphoric bombs, and "persecuted" two high ranking officers. This accusation was launched during the July War on Lebanon as well as evidence of Israel's usage of banned weaponry. The world is fed up of Israel breaking International Law.

The blame of this hate, according to Lieberman and Ayalon, was directed on little Mahmoud Abbass, a clown that is selling everything in his power in the name of the Palestinians, and in the name of the 4.2 million Palestinian refugee (estimates on that number go as far as 7.2 million). Abbass, and the current form of Fatah, have been holding peace talks that was supposed to include 22% of historic Palestine. Earlier officials cut down the talks to 80% of the 22% of Palestine proper (preserving major settlements of the Zionists). Eventually, Sharon and his goons (special thanks to the Apartheid Wall and expanding settlements) cut down the negotiations to 42% of the 80%, which rotated around Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The last corner, as a matter of fact, had been gradually undergoing Palestinian expulsions while being replaced illegally by Zionist settlers. If anything, the Palestinians, according to Jonathan Cook (Disappearing Palestine), the Palestinians are left to negotiate for 42% of the 80% of the 22% of the 100% of their national homes. What a deal to the real natives of the land. It is not Abbass's fault, it is the fault of the world finally waking up to Israel's fascist mask.

The stubbornness of Israel to block settlements and give peace negotiations a chance angered the United States as well. Well, the United States, under AIPAC dominion, cannot react much. A group of congressmen in the US submitted a petition to the US Administration, that the United States should be more aggressive with Israel, the Israeli readers wondered how did AIPAC allow that to happen. Israel's non-democratic acts have reflected too long on US affairs. The United States' democracy itself is under threat because AIPAC should approve of congressmen.

Of course, Natanyaho and his goons were hoping for a face save. Hence, Haiti as a disaster took place, and Israeli media made sure to provide coverage for the 200 IDF units. This actually put Israel in trouble. Gaza remains shattered, burnt to the ashes, as Israel still inflicts a siege on it (well now Moubarak is helping Israel too).A lot argued that this was low blow to cover up for Gaza. In my opinion, I agree. When some Natanyaho officials bragged that they were the only ones to help Haiti, he didn't notice the billions of dollars coming from his Arab neighbors. Of course, some IDF soldiers may have the intent to help; however, these are the soldiers of an institution that is accused of war crimes against humanity.

The IDF as a matter of fact is facing another front, a rebellion from its veterans, those who were forced to serve in that fascist disgusting army, and decided to go in the open exposing Israel's "glorious brave army" for looting, humiliating, insulting, degrading, torturing, and even killing Palestinian citizens. The movement, Breaking The Silence, currently is touring the United States, again, the stronghold of Israel's propaganda centers, and I sure hope they can have listening ears.

The on-going attempted arrests which made Levni herself, another war criminal, a temprary fugitive in Britain also sored relations between Israel and the UK. Israel attempted to change the British law to make its war crimes an exception. The British audience were angered by Israeli arrogance while the leadership of Brown was totally embarassed. The law will not change.

Another damaging effect was the assassination of a Hamas figurehead in Dubai. That alone also got Israel alienated with France, England, Ireland, and other countries. This again goes down to the blunderous acts of Ayalon and Lieberman. As a matter of fact, these two clowns are soring relations between Israel and United States to the extent Israel's Peretz is negotiating with the United States, instead the foreign minister.

Israel also is irritating the United States as well, it depends on US funds and weapons, but Israel also has its own military trade, which ends up selling arms to China. AIPAC cannot justify that as well.

Such attempts have pushed the ruling elites of Israel to go and push for media war with Syria and Lebanon. Lebanon is always under threat from Israel, and Nasrallah pledged that if they go to war, it will not be a joy ride for their armies. This goes into Israeli calculations that Hezbollah had upgraded its missiles to repay Israel with "eye for eye, ear for ear", hence Nasrallah's famous speech, Ben Gurion's Airport for Beirut's Rafiq Harriri Airport. Syria pledged to rush for the aid of Lebanon, but not morally, rather militarily this time. The Lebanese are fed up of Syria's moral support then harvest victories on their backs. This also means if Israel targets Syria, it will rain rockets from Lebanon as well. Two fronts that I am certain Israel will be left in total loss. The Israeli Air Force is not that comfortable also, Nasrallah last year announced it that Hezbollah "has the capacities to shoot down Israeli Airplanes". If that is a fact, then, not just Israel is in trouble, but other regimes as well, specially the "peaceful" countries that surround Israel: Egypt and Jordan. Of course, this collission doesn't exclude the future confronation between Iran and Israel. Russia, which recieved a pleasant visit from the Israeli government, disregarded "Israeli favors" and sold Iran its latest state of the art Defense System.

The entire regimes of Jordan and Egypt are standing on the fact that "nothing can be done with Israel". The superior airforce of Israel allowed these two countries, among others, that nothing can be done to face the Israeli army. If Hezbollah accomplishes greater victories against Israel, specially by hindering Israeli Air Force, the regimes might not be able to justify to their people why the peace treaty stands. Of course, The Israeli Lobby Book, argues how Egypt and Jordan are the second and third most funded countries in the US agenda, after Israel. The two flanks of Israel will face rough time in controlling their people's wrath, who all are not happy with the peace treaty. Hence, if Hezbollah proves a real victory in a war against Israel, Moubarak in specific may be overthrown in the end of the day. Of course, I won't feel any sorrow towards his son not taking over "the presidential throne".

This leads to the question, how desperate is Natanyaho. Is he willing to make the blunders of Olmert and open two fronts? The Gaza front in the past was easy, but the Lebanese Front was devestative. Can Israel easily go to war with Syria and Lebanon? Is Israel going to destabilize its two allies, Egypt and Jordan? Natanyahou's blunders already pushed Syria and Turkey to reconcile. As a matter of fact, now Turkish citizens do not need VISA to go and visit Lebanon or Syria, and vice versa.

My Question is: For How long the United States is willing to allow Israel go on a rampage of racism, fascism, terrorism, and acts of war against humanity. Obviously the Iranian dilemma, Haiti bravery, escalation of political tensions in the Middle East didn't cover up anything.

Actually, I do have one more remark, while the Israeli movie, Ajami, is reeping awards on a global scale. Israel attempted to promote the film as an Israeli product done by the Israeli Arabs, the same Arabs who regard themselves as Palestinians, but under gunpoint, they are suffering cultural genocide. The actor in the film, who was then nominated for an Oscar, was brutally beaten up by the Israeli Army, and arrested. Another slap in the face, and another bullet in Israel's supposed democracy.

The final embarassment is the fanatic religious surges within Israel that are becoming more and more public. The gender division of women and men on buses, the attempts to ban internet, and the non-protected Palestinian Christians of Jerusalem who were threatened not to celebrate Christmas, reflects badly on Israel. For how long those idiots of the Neo-Christians want to support Israel?

J-Street was targeted last week by Ayalon as he refused to meet with J-Street Affiliated US Congressmen, which also triggered another fiasco between USA and Israel. J-Street is attempting to counter AIPAC, and in a short period of time had been assembling a lot of Jews there. Of course, Israel considered them "the enemy" because there is one color of Judaism, that is, Zionism. The Jews should be liberated from Zionism, because Zionism is holding every Jew in the world its hostage. If they disagree, just like Pape and Goldstone, they are traitors, self-hating Jews, and Muslim Lovers, in the eyes of the Israeli government. The latest escalations of the Israeli government will not shed its reality. Zionist Israel is losing its legitimacy.

MFL

Ironies and Lebanon's Democracy

One of the biggest contradictions about Lebanon is the symbolism it represents.
For starters, Lebanon represents co-existence and the symbol of peace, where 18 sects co-exist with each other. The Lebanese President even praised the Lebanese model as "a model of coexistence". The other face of Lebanon is the fact it is the next of sectarianism. Sectarian wars that exploded in 1958, 1975 – 1990, 2008, are a proof also that Lebanon is a model for war. I am certain that a lot of Lebanese abroad spend a lot of their time explaining to the world that Lebanon is divided according to sectarian lines, but all Lebanese love each other. Personally, I agree with the former position, sectarianism is imposed from above, and was legitimated since the French mandate. Like all 19th and early 20th century colonial empires, the French mandate imposed a political body that was aimed to divide the communities in order to renew their mandate. The French are gone, but that type of a regime, that suits the traditional family leaders, remained. Few politicians are exceptions to the norm, they bulldozed their way and became integrated into the system. Coexistence also includes the abolishment of sectarianism towards the Palestinian refugees, seek common solutions with them, and the obliteration of racism towards foreign labor (unless they come from the West, then they are treated with royalty).

Lebanon is "Modern and European" but also "Backward". Sure, wherever the Lebanese go, everyone calls Beirut as the "Paris of the East", or dub Lebanon "Switzerland of the East". Of course the difference is, Paris with all its historic glory, is the symbol of academic discussions on racism exploding there: what it means to be a real French. Switzerland is famous for its historic breakthroughs in patching up its communities and enjoy a prosperous peace. Lebanon on the other hand, enjoys a unique night life that is undisputed by any capital in the world. Dubai, Tel Aviv, Istambul, and others tried to recreate that "rich night life" in Lebanon, but so far it didn't reach Beirut's standards. Nevertheless, Beirut, was the city that demolished on daily basis. Theodor Hanf highlights the remarkable phenomenon, during the 1975 – 1990 civil war, how Beirut was rebuilt itself every time there is a seize fire. Nevertheless, it gets demolished again. After the end of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 2006, Beirut automatically restored its night life after the Israeli siege of Lebanon was lifted. As a matter of fact, while Israel was bombing Lebanon, nightlife was also booming in Beirut's nightlife. Couple of pub and nightclub managers told me that their profits maxed out to a new level (two in Ras Beirut, two in Gemayzi) during the Israeli aggression. The time when night life plumbed down was during the 2008 mini civil war we experienced, everyone hid in their houses with few peace activists who were trying to build a front for peace. However, nightlife is not a standard measure for modernity. Such a belief makes some people to become backward. Backward is not to have a religious community as well. It is about sectarianism. Backward is not remembering that the politicians need the people, and not as it currently stands, the people need the leaders.

Lebanon is the beacon of "democracy in the Middle East", but Lebanon is ruled by feudal lords. Hence, is it really democratic when the bourgeoisie elites meet up for months and months discussing the layout of the electoral constituencies whereby most of the results are already determined by the borders and alliances? Sure, Lebanon has a democratic competition between two gigantic coalitions, nevertheless, the results of the competitive coalitions appear when only few constituencies determine the real victor. Usually, such constituencies, have the real balance of power. Another side of the coin is how sectarian or political minorities appear to be beaten up by the supporters of the majority. The elections of 2009 showed how even minorities in the same sect are beaten up. Hence, elections in general rotate around how many traditional figureheads will return. The electoral platform of a party or candidate doesn't matter much, it rotates around who is a real Shiite, Christian, Druzi, and Sunni, in the eyes of the voters. Other voters, who are not really that low in number, vote on the premises of choosing between "the lesser evil". In that sense, who will ruin Lebanon's economic statures less than the others. This boils down usually to two coalitions which we already have. Last but not least, Lebanon's "democratic" system is usually hostage for the elites. They spend a lot of time of choosing a government that suits all the tastes of the elites, and that doesn't save the Lebanese from political tensions. As a matter of fact, the stressing-out-of-the-people phenomena contributes in creating sectarian walls.

There is no war but class war
MFL

The tree-lined bunkers that could change the face of the Middle East

An Excellent Article by Robert Fisk, taken from here

It looks like a hop, skip and a jump. There's the first electrified fence, then the dirt strip to identify footprints, then the tarmac road, then one more electrified fence, and then acres and acres of trees. Orchards rather than tanks. Galilee spreads beyond, soft and moist and dark green in the winter afternoon - a peaceful Israel, you might think. And a peaceful Lebanon to the north, tobacco plantations amid the stony hills, just an occasional UN armoured vehicle to keep you on your toes. "Major Pardin says you cannot take pictures," a Malaysian UN soldier tells me. Then a second one says the same. Then along comes a Lebanese army intelligence officer and stares at our papers. "OK, you have permission," he declares, and I snap away with my old 36-frame real-film Nikon; the fields, the frontier fence, the high-tech surveillance tower on the horizon. This must be the most photographed border in the world.

Of course, the gentle countryside is an illusion. Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues in the Israeli government have been announcing that the only "army" of Lebanon is the Hizbollah, the Iranian-armed and Syrian-assisted guerrilla force whose bunkers and missiles north of the Litani river might just tip the balance in the next Hizbollah-Israeli war. And Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah, has been making some even more interesting threats: that his forces will "change the face of the Middle East region" if there is another war with Israel. No-one is in much doubt about what this means. The newly resurfaced Lebanese roads near the border - courtesy of Hizbollah money - suggest that someone might want to move men at high speed towards the frontier. Perhaps even to cross the border.

That's what the Israelis suspect, too - and it makes sense of Nasrallah's warning last week. The Hizbollah claimed that the 2006 war with Israel was a "divine victory" - it didn't feel that way to us in southern Lebanon at the time - yet even Israel admits it was a near-defeat for its own ill-trained soldiers. But how would Israel react if the Hizbollah managed to enter Israel itself? Israeli army commanders are talking about this in the Israeli press. A fast, dramatic spring across the frontier to the west - in the direction of Naharia, perhaps, or a grab at the settlement of Kiryat Shmona - and Hizbollah would announce it had "liberated" part of historic "Palestine". Israel would have to bomb its own territory to get them out.

This is no game. The Israeli army wants to revenge itself on the Hizbollah, which humiliated it in 2006. Nasrallah - on giant-wide screens, for security reasons - often talks as if he's the Lebanese president. Did the Israelis really think al-Qa'ida or the Hizbollah were behind the attempted killing of two Jordanian diplomats between Amman and the Allenby bridge, Nasrallah asked. No friend of al-Qa'ida, Hizbollah would have succeeded in blowing them up if it had been involved. The crowd roared its agreement.

But the threats continue. The Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, says that the Lebanese government will be held responsible for any future war and the Lebanese have had the usual warnings from Israel. Lebanon's infrastructure will be attacked, its bridges and highways destroyed, its villages erased. Israel, Mr Barak has been saying, was restrained in 2006 - when it attacked Lebanon's infrastructure, destroyed its bridges and highways and erased its villages. Plus ça change.

But there's a good deal of "change". Syria is being courted by the Obama administration. Its old allies in Lebanon - Druze leader Walid Jumblatt among them - are uttering honeyed words to Damascus. Indeed, Jumblatt has been meeting both Nasrallah and his old enemy Michel Aoun, and concluding that he is three-quarters of the way down the road to Damascus. And President Assad of Syria has been visiting Tehran again, to assure the Islamic Republic of his ever-loyal support.

You can see the way everyone is thinking. And here's the big question, the camel in the room. If Israel ignores Obama and attacks Iran's nuclear sites - a real aggression if ever there could be - the Hizbollah could fire rockets into Israel, perhaps even revealing its new anti-aircraft missile capacity. Hamas might join in from Gaza. Hamas is a tin-pot outfit; the Hizbollah is not. An Israeli attack on Iran will unleash Iranian military power against America. But part of that power is Hizbollah in Lebanon. This is serious business.

Over Christmas, a parcel "from a foreign country" was delivered to three Hamas officials in Beirut and blew up, killing all of them. Last week, a bomb exploded in a building in southern Lebanon owned by two Hizbollah officials, wounding three children. One of them, 11-year-old Diana Zreik, had her left leg amputated. It looks like a glance at the past, to the 1970s, when Israel posted letter-bombs to its enemies in Lebanon.

The United Nations has been complaining at the increase in Israel's overflights of Lebanese territory. The Lebanese army has been opening fire on Israeli aircraft flying over the border - useless, of course, because the Americans don't give the Lebanese army weapons that can hurt Israel - while US Senator John McCain has dropped by in Beirut to complain about the Hizbollah's weapons which, under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, are supposed to be in the hands of the Lebanese army. This is the same resolution that should prevent Israeli overflights.

And what do those overflights show? "We see Hizbollah expanding inside Lebanon and its growing influence, political and otherwise," Barak said last week. "We again wish to make clear to the Lebanese leadership that we see everything, and we will hold the parties which cause increased tension responsible... the situation can quickly deteriorate." Thank you, Israel. Especially if Israel attacks Iran.

Party of God: Hizbollah and the politics of Islamic resistance

* Hizbollah, which can be translated as Party of God, is a Lebanese, Iranian and Syrian-backed, Shia Islamist political movement with a paramilitary wing known as "Islamic Resistance". It emerged in 1982 as a small militia force with the aim of ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon.

The movement is now a major player in Lebanese politics with its own satellite TV network, a radio station, and a vast network of social programmes from housing to agriculture. According to Hizbollah's manifesto, the Lebanese people must be free to choose what form of government they want, but they are strongly encouraged to pick the option of Islamic government. The movement's original goal of turning Lebanon into an Islamic Republic has been abandoned.

* Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah became Hizbollah's Secretary General in 1992. A popular and charismatic figure, his face appears from billboards and hoardings across Beirut and south Lebanon. The deeply religious 49-year-old studied theology in Iran and is noted for his fiery sermons, excerpts of which are sometimes heard on mobile phone ringtones.

* Israel tried to kill Nasrallah during the month-long war it fought against Hizbollah in 2006. The conflict followed a Hizbollah attack on an Israeli army convoy patrolling the border with south Lebanon. Nasrallah now says Hizbollah will defeat Israel in any new conflict. "I promise you that should a new war with the Zionists erupt, we will crush the enemy, come out victorious and change the face of the region," he said last week.

IDF Kidnaps Lebanese Citizen on Lebanese Grounds

A shepherd, leading his flock, was kidnapped by the Israeli Deranged Forces as he was tending his sheep close to Shiba'a Farms. The IDF crossed and "arrested" him. The article is found here

As for the Israeli media, as always, they distorted the news, as Israeli army arrested a Lebanese carrying an army knife. Excuse me, if the poor lad was a shepherd, it is natural to have a knife wondering around. Haaretz, also failed to mention that the citizen was kidnapped on Lebanese grounds, rather claimed that the victim was in Sheba'a farms.

Then, of course, Israel wonders: Why Hezbollah are so damn popular in Southern Lebanon? Need a clue? Their brutality!

Israel Is Becoming as Religious as Saudi Arabia

In Saudi Arabia, activists are doing their best to empower women against all odds. Israel on the other hand, is heading exactly towards the opposite direction, becoming as religious as Saudi Arabia fundementalists. Currently, they are half way in legalizing gender seperation on buses and elsewhere, a phenomenon that exists in the Arab Gulf areas. I can arrogantly say that Lebanon is more religious moderate than a country ruled by a fascist organization called Zionism, holding its own Jews as hostages by speaking in their name, and gradually becoming more and more religious zealots. Anyone want to tell me this is democracy (other than the fact non-Jews are also treated as class B or class Z citizens?)

This article below was written in Haaretz's staff

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said on Sunday that Israel would allow the ultra-Orthodox community continue to run their private bus lines segregated by gender, but could not officially recognize the practice on public bus lines.

The minister was responding to a petition sent by the Israel Religious Action Center and a women's rights group to the government and to the Egged and Dan transportation companies.

Katz declared in his response that Israel does not disapprove of buses which separate between men and women to accommodate the Hardi community, but that segregation could not become institutionalized.

The minister added that buses should be permitted to hang signs explaining the ultra-Orthodox community's request to separate seating between men and women, however the request could not be enforced if passengers chose not to adhere to it.

Kats also said that violence and the disruption of order on segregated buses must be stopped, and instructed professional security forces on the matter.

Currently, there are 56 segregated bus lines operating throughout the country, a total of 2,108 buses a day. All the buses will be permitted to remain segregated so long as they choose to, but passengers will not be forced to adhere to the decision, only to respect it at will.

Most of the buses cater to ultra-Orthodox passengers.

"The minister expressed a worthy attitude towards the ultra-Orthodox community and he understands the publics' needs," Rabbi Shimon Stern of the Rabbis Transportation Committee said in praise of the decision.

Segregated buses are a relatively new phenomenon in Israel, with the first one appearing 10 years ago on a line between Jerusalem and neighboring Beit Shemesh

(MFL final note: Religion is the Opium of the Masses)

The Business of the Holocaust Memorial

Anyone who objects to Israel's fascism and racism becomes anti-semite. This politics of anti-semitism of attempting to shut down opponents of Israel is losing its touch. Embarassingly, non-Zionist Jews are currently (after the Palestinians) the biggest victims of Zionism. The Zionists should realize that their tactics are no longer working except probably in the United States, and even there, the voices of the Palestinian victims are becoming heard ( when more than 50 congressman petitioned to Obama to be more strict with Israel's on-going fascist settlements, and the commentary of Haaretz wondered: "How did AIPAC allow that to happen"). I never knew that the US representatives have to answer to AIPAC on everything that relates to the Palestinians.

Gideon Levi just trashed the leadership once again over here

Mazen Kerbaj's Cartoon: My day to day life exactly

This exactly what happens to me when I talk to a sectarian person:

Lessons of the Ethiopian Airlines: Chauvinism and Political Points

The tragic horrible death of the Ethiopian airlines led to a shock, and a week of mourning. In what was a stand-off between the different reactionary parties in regards to several reforms, the plane crash bought some time.

There are several shocking events that generated prior and after the terrible crash which left several people of different nationalities mourning.

The first event were the reforms to be discussed in the Parliament.

The first focused on reducing the voting age to 18. The advocator to such change came as a surprise, at least in terms of parliamentary blocs, Nabih Berri and his hooligan AMAL. This of course, provides a trauma for me, since AMAL are notorious to enter fist-to-fist fights with almost anyone (a tend that has been operational since the days of the Lebanese Civil War). Nabih Berri, for the past three months or so has advocated all types of change, supporting Ziad Baroud's proposals, and seems to be trying to bring back the legacy of Imam Moussa Sadre's goals for reform back in the 1970s. Berri was involved in sparking the "Cancelation of Sectarianism" act, protecting the Ta'ef Accords (ironically), the Age Act reform, and giving strength to the Parliament (which was shut down for over two years by Berri himself).

The clash of reforms began with the head of the Reform and Change bloc, with lunatic General Aoun, and the other two Christian parties: Lebanese Forces and Phalange. The fear from the voting age reform scared the Christians that they will be overwhelmed by 'Muslim Votes'. The Christian parties eventually proposed that the Immigrants would have the right to vote under the basis that one reform cannot go without the other. This of course hinders all possibilities to implement the age 18 voting law. Since, the new age of the new parliament began under the banner of "Age of Love and Flirtations" among the elites, it was natural that the two camps in Lebanon bickered each other along the same alliances.

Just like the 14th of March and Opposition collisions, historical insights are highlighted and others forgotten, specially when Berri attacked Aoun that the latter was not present to forge the Ta'ef Accords.

The showdown between these two reached its climax when the infamous Monday parliamentary meeting was supposed to take place. Hezbollah attempted to sooth the situation, and it was anticipated that most of the blocs (pro Harriri or not) were going to avoid the making of such a meeting by making sure that the Parliament's quorum was not met. The different news media reported that meetings between AMAL and the Free Patriotic Movement remained taking place till 4:00 in the morning. The same day, the tragic death of the Ethiopian Airlines took place. This saved the politicians of the embarrassment of shooting down the parliament's meeting to take place.

Naomi Klein dubbed the Haiti disaster as Shock Capitalism, with highlights to Israel's 'humanitarian' activities to cover away its past sins in Gaza which turned world opinion against it. This is exactly what took place in Lebanon. A national mourning day took place, the parliamentary session was postponed.

The Lebanese-Ethiopian tragedy

As the plane collapsed, and all efforts took place in a very remarkable manner to salvage survivors, Lebanese pride rose up. Everyone on facebook, msn, and whatever placed a Lebanese flag with a black strip on their profiles. This is indeed a human tragedy.

All politicians diverted their attention into supporting the Red Cross and the Lebanese Army to save the survivors.

Nevertheless, Lebanese fascism sprang. Several Ethiopian blue collar proletariat in Lebanon were denied entrance to the hospitals in order to identify the bodies of their beloved. That is a typical country of contradiction: Co-existence and racism, tolerance and intolerance, and finally democracy and tyranny.

The incident itself was preceded by a controversial acts of beating activists in front of the Egyptian embassy because the activists there found it unusual to attack the apartheid wall of Israel, while Egypt's Moubarak is building another Iron Wall on the Rafah route, to force "coexistence between Hamas and Fatah".

Back to the plane incident, as much as Lebanon's president attempted to show Lebanon's humanitarian face to the world, the Human Rights Watch group slammed Lebanon for its mistreatment of foreign labor and Palestinians. Ironically that was celebrated by Fascist Israel who never bothered to read the entire report, as well to read the reports on their own country.

The acts of racism towards the foreign proletariat proved yet again, amidst this disaster, that foreign labor needs to be protected. The proletariat across the world, like the Lebanese, need to be protected and treated as humans. Every week we hear a story about a foreign laborer being maltreated, specially those who are abused to work almost for free as maids in households. It comes as a surprise for some Lebanese (those whom I spit on their faces) that labor from Sri Lanka, Syria, Jordan, Palestinians, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Philippines, others are their own equal: simply humans. If Lebanese culture means superiority, for me, that equates to trash (Zionism is even more terrible by the way). It reminds me of France hailing itself as democratic while it was too busy demolishing Algerian proletariat back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, or Israeli "democracy" which rotates around only Judaism while trashing the rest of non-Jewish (and giving Jews of the world a bad name).

For those racist Lebanese, thing of it that Lebanese, Ethiopians, and others died equally as humans on that plane, equals also to the wife of the French Ambassador in Lebanon. May those who mourn find peace again in their hearts.

Again, we see that the whole world is governed by Class War under the banner of different logos: racism, reform, and political points

MFL

PS: The fact Berri is proposing all those reforms is still hard for me to digest

R.I.P. Howard Zinn

By Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff - Boston News

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."


Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement."
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and John Silber, former president of Boston University. Dr. Zinn, a leading critic of Silber, twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped.

In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film "Good Will Hunting." The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People’s History" and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

"Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life," Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon's co-star in "Good Will Hunting," said in a statement. "He taught me how valuable -- how necessary -- dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him -- and try to impart it to my own children -- in his memory."

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009, and he narrated a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful."

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he met Roslyn Shechter.

"She was working as a secretary," Dr. Zinn said in an interview with the Globe nearly two years ago. "We were both working in the same neighborhood, but we didn't know each other. A mutual friend asked me to deliver something to her. She opened the door, I saw her, and that was it."

He joined the Army Air Corps, and they courted through the mail before marrying in October 1944 while he was on his first furlough. She died in 2008.

During World War II, he served as a bombardier, was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill as a 27-year-old freshman. He worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at many rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, another leading antiwar activist, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966).

He also was the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus."

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.

"Howard was an old and very close friend," Chomsky said. "He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor. He was just a remarkable person."

Carroll called Dr. Zinn "simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced -- or soon forgotten. How we loved him back."

In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons.

Funeral plans were not available.


MFL Notes: For the Americans who don't know their own history of war crimes, I highly recommend to read A People's History of American Empire in Comics.

Some photos of the Comics is here

The Book can be found here

Case Point: Robert Weissman: Shed a Tear for Our (U.S.) Democracy

Taken from Corpwatch.org



Yesterday, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Now, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

In eviscerating longstanding rules prohibiting corporations from using their own monies to influence elections, the court invites giant corporations to open up their treasuries to buy election outcomes. Corporations are sure to accept the invitation.


The predictable result will be corporate money flooding the election process; huge targeted campaigns by corporations and their front groups attacking principled candidates who challenge parochial corporate interests; and a chilling effect on candidates and election officials, who will be deterred from advocating and implementing policies that advance the public interest but injure deep-pocket corporations.


Because the decision is made on First Amendment constitutional grounds, the impact will be felt not only at the federal level, but in the states and localities, including in state judicial elections.

In one sense, the decision was a long time in coming. Over the past 30 years, the Supreme Court has created and steadily expanded the First Amendment protections that it has afforded for-profit corporations.

But in another sense, the decision is a startling break from Supreme Court tradition. Even as it has mistakenly equated money with speech in the political context, the court has long upheld regulations on corporate spending in the electoral context. The Citizens United decision is also an astonishing overreach by the court. No one thought the issue of corporations' purported right to spend money to influence election outcomes was at stake in this case until the Supreme Court so decreed. The case had been argued in lower courts, and was originally argued before the Supreme Court, on narrow grounds related to application of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

The court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights to influence election outcomes out of whole cloth. There is surely no originalist interpretation to support this outcome, since the court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor can the outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real people. They do not have expressive interests like humans; and, unlike humans, they are uniquely motivated by a singular focus on their economic bottom line.

Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.

We, the People cannot allow this decision to go unchallenged. We, the People cannot allow corporations to take control of our democracy.

There are some things that can be done to mitigate the damage from today's decision.

First, we must have public financing of elections. Public financing will give independent candidates a base from which they may be able to compete against candidates benefiting from corporate expenditures. We will intensify our efforts to win rapid passage of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide congressional candidates with an alternative to corporate-funded campaigns before fundraising for the 2010 election is in full swing. Sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, and Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, the bill would encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals and provide candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate contributions or private contributions in amounts of more than $100. The proposal has broad support, including more than 126 co-sponsors in the House.

In the wake of the court's decision, it is also essential that the presidential public financing system be made viable again. Cities and states will also need to enact public financing of elections.

Congress must ensure that corporate CEOs do not use corporate funds for political purposes, against the wishes of shareholders, with legislation requiring an absolute majority of shares to be voted in favor, before any corporate political expenditure is permitted. There are other legislative approaches to limit today's damage, including a range of measures proposed by Representative Alan Grayson, D-Florida.

These mitigating measures will not be enough to offset today's decision, however. The decision itself must be overturned.

We need a constitutional amendment specifying that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment protections, except for freedom of the press. A constitutional amendment is not a thing to throw around lightly. But today's decision so imperils our democratic well-being, and so severely distorts the rightful purpose of the First Amendment, that a constitutional corrective is demanded.

Winning a constitutional amendment will be a long-term effort. The starting point is for the people to petition their government to demand action. Public Citizen with allies has launched such a petition effort. Got to to sign the petition.

The Supreme Court has lost its way. Democracy is rule of the people -- real, live humans, not artificial entity corporations. Now it's time for the people to reassert their rights.

Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen .

Hezbollah's New Political Platform by Fawwaz Traboulsi

Translated By Zmag and Taken from here

[Translator's Introduction: The following article by Fawwaz Traboulsi appeared in the Beirut daily as-Safir of December 2, 2009.

Traboulsi's article is an assessment and left critique of the main themes in Hezbollah's new political platform. The platform was released on November 30 at the conclusion of a general congress that had met intermittently over several months. It was published partially or entirely in several Arabic-language media outlets, inside and outside Lebanon, in early December 2009. The platform now becomes Hezbollah's political manifesto in place of its founding document, its so-called 1985 Open Letter.Hezbollah has undergone many changes since the mid-1980's. The most significant perhaps, seen from a Western perspective that tends to stress Hezbollah's narrow Islamist focus, is its gradual shift away from the call to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon. This call, as well as the allegiance to the Rule of the Jurisprudent (Wilayat al-Faqih), were explicit in the 1985 Open Letter. The new platform renounces the call for an Islamic state in Lebanon, accepts the diversity of Lebanese society, and makes no mention of the Rule of the Jurisprudent. This is of course a welcome development. But there are other aspects in the new platform that are far less praiseworthy, which Traboulsi addresses in his article. -- Assaf Kfoury]

What stands out in the political platform issued by Hezbollah at the conclusion of its recent general congress is how it assesses its own history and development since its founding in the mid 1980's. This document reviews a quarter of a century of multi-faceted experiences and sacrifices. It reflects a multiplicity of alliances and inspirations, if not splintered identities. At one and the same time, Hezbollah aspires to be a "national liberation" movement among other such movements in the world; a "resistance" movement at the regional level, with all the connotations the latter designation evokes among Arabs in relation to the Palestinian struggle; and increasingly a "force of national defense" for Lebanon. In this third designation, Hezbollah dispenses with any lingering doubt regarding its resolve to become a full partner in Lebanon's confessional system, if not its acceptance of the socio-economic conditions underlying such a system.

In its quest to position itself among national liberation movements worldwide, and to contribute to the regional struggle against colonial domination, Hezbollah's new political platform borrows many formulas and ideas elaborated by leftist traditions. Among these is its realization that imperialism's global reach today calls for a global mobilization in response to it. This becomes evident in the platform's insistence on the links between the struggles of Arab peoples and leftist movements in several countries of Latin America.

The platform offers a global view of the imperialist system led by the United States of which Israel is an integral part. It does not ignore the economic basis of imperialist domination, which it identifies as "savage capitalism" -- assuming it does not harbor any illusion that the alternative of "soft capitalism" will be any less cruel. Although its reference to the "military-industrial complex", rather than financial capitalism, is somewhat outdated as the determining factor shaping US policies, the platform rightly designates the latest stage of imperialism as the globalization of monopolies and military alliances. On this understanding, one would expect Hezbollah to reconsider its positions on the struggle between wealth and poverty and between oppressor and oppressed.

Apart from the rush to announce the imminent demise of the unipolar world and the Zionist project's inevitable downfall, Hezbollah's new platform does not include much that can be attributed to Ali Shariati's revolutionary ideas or to "revolutionary Islam", as some may contend. Instead, the platform reproduces some of the Islamic Republic's slogans under Ali Khamene'i, Iran's current supreme leader. These slogans are less about earlier republican values and revolutionary fervor than they are about the Iranian rulers' current need for security and ideological control.

On regional Arab affairs, the new platform abandons most of this earlier agenda [inspired by Ali Shariati's ideas], of which it mentions only the plundering by imperialism of the region's oil resources. Nonetheless, this emphasis on oil is important and cannot be overstated at a time when there is very little public discussion of it and its role in maintaining the region's despotic subservient regimes. These are a few welcome tokens to pry open a widely-ignored topic and raise important issues that have yet to be examined critically.

Turning to issues of resistance and negotiations in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Hezbollah's new platform completely evades the question of a Palestinian state and contents itself with a call for the total liberation of Palestine and the restoration of all Palestinian rights. Hezbollah reiterates its demand to Arab officialdom to desist from pursuing a negotiated settlement with Israel and offers its own experience of armed resistance as an example to follow and learn from.

On internal Lebanese matters, Hezbollah's new platform proclaims its unequivocal adherence to Lebanon's political system. It is reassuring to read this kind of proclamation from those who paid dearly in defense of the country. Equally satisfying is the platform's unambiguous respect of diversity, even though it extends the scope of this diversity to things other than political, cultural and ideological, to include Lebanon's entrenched confessional politics.

Although Hezbollah's new platform asserts that confessionalism is the bane of Lebanon's system of government and the chief obstacle to the realization of true democracy, it shies away from even issuing a call to supersede it. In the press conference on the day following the platform's publication, Hassan Nasrallah [Hezbollah's secretary general] limited himself to a call for the formation of a national council for the elimination of confessionalism, but quickly added that the formation of such a council does not necessarily mean adoption of its eventual directives. In the meantime, Hezbollah proclaims its respect of consociationalism* as reflecting best the spirit of the constitution. Of course, this ignores the fact that, whatever "spirit of the constitution" means, it cannot be a unilateral definition and must be reached by deliberation with other concerned citizens and groups.

Hezbollah's new platform does not stop at the enunciating of general principles of democracy and good governance, but goes on to spell out a specific blueprint for "building the state". On this issue, the platform contributes to a fraudulent consensus, common to all the branches of Lebanon's ruling establishment, by repeating a long inventory of desirable attributes for the future good state -- from the erection of modern institutions and the rule of law, down to the care of emigrants, and listing in between such things as fair parliamentary representation, end of corruption, independence of the judiciary, devolution of government administration, etc. -- as if the absence of such attributes is the root cause of a defective system rather than its effect.

What is said here about "building the state" is like what is said about "eliminating confessionalism". In both cases, they mix and conflate: the hoped for, the impossible, and the premature -- all in the same breath. It is incumbent on Hezbollah, as it is on all its partners in the ruling establishment, to break this riddle: How do they conceive "building the state" within the limits of a consociational/confessional system which they declare, at one and the same time, to be the fundamental obstacle to the realization of true democracy? How can this be done when the system is the chief stumbling block in the face of the aforementioned attributes of the good state [which Hezbollah and its partners in the government do not tire of mentioning]?

Hezbollah's new platform elicits a similar questioning in matters regarding the economy. It enumerates a long list of wishes -- a balanced development between regions, an economy based on productive sectors, improved means of production and distribution, adequate services in education, health care, and housing, the provision of work opportunities, etc. -- as if they are all within reach and without a need for fundamental structural changes. The platform declares Hezbollah's intention to reduce poverty, for example, but how will this be achieved by abiding by the World Bank's neo-liberal policies [readily accepted by successive Lebanese governments] rather than by reducing income disparities between classes? And what plan is there to reduce emigration and provide employment while Lebanon's educational system has been largely privatized, mostly divorced from the country's local needs, and increasingly directed at supplying university graduates to external economies? This long wish list is compiled without due consideration to the enormous national debt and the need to reconsider the decision-making process necessary to promote investments, protect the productive sectors, and undertake an equitable re-distribution of public resources and services.

It is remarkable how far Hezbollah has moved away from its earlier image as the party of the poor in rural areas and neglected urban suburbs, though it was always within the confines of the Shiite community. Does this reflect the sweeping transformations that this community has witnessed in the last quarter of a century? In recent years, Lebanese Shiites have fueled large waves of emigrants, developed a confident middle-class, produced large numbers of university graduates, and accumulated considerable wealth in distant places of immigration. Or does this changed image correspond to the shifting allegiances that other confessional communities in the Lebanese system have also experienced in the past, whereby the bourgeois section in each community tends to throw its weight behind the dominant power within its own community? Hezbollah is now the unchallenged political party among Lebanese Shiites, and more so since the July-August 2006 war.

It is worth noting that, in anticipation of having to resist future pressures to disarm, Hezbollah's new platform calls for maintaining a popular militia (exemplified by Hezbollah's current guerilla force) alongside a national army, with both involved in the country's defense. It is possible to read Hezbollah's refusal to ever recognize Israel as a prior warning that it will not relinquish its arms, in case of a resumption of negotiations between Israel and Syria possibly leading to a peace agreement that will encompass both Lebanon and Syria.

Lastly, concerning Lebanese-Palestinian relations, Hezbollah's new platform does not share the anti-Palestinian racism of its ally, the Free Patriotic Movement led by General Michel Aoun. The platform insists instead on the respect of the Palestinians' civil rights. It does repeat the worn-out "refusal of a permanent settling" (of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon) -- a catchphrase of all the branches of the Lebanese ruling establishment -- but it couples it with the Palestinian right of return.

In a recent campaign to organize car traffic in the Dahiya (Beirut's sprawling southern suburbs where Shiites are the majority), Hezbollah displayed banners that read "order is from faith". Is this kind of order -- serving and controlled by bankers, traders, and contractors -- derived from faith or is it downright impiety?

Note

* Consociationalism (al-tawafuqiyyah or al tawafuqiyyah al-tawa'iffiyyah) is a current Lebanese euphemism for the more traditional but increasingly disparaged "confessionalism."


Fawwaz Traboulsi has written on history, Arab politics, social movements and popular culture and translated works by Karl Marx, John Reed, Antonio Gramsci, Isaac Deutscher, John Berger, Etel Adnan, Sa`di Yusuf and Edward Said. His most recent book in English is A History of Modern Lebanon (Pluto Press, 2007). The translator, Assaf Kfoury, is Professor of Computer Science at Boston University.

It's only human to rage at Israeli crimes

Taken from the Daily Star here

The upcoming trip by an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset to Auschwitz is the latest chapter in the saga of seeing accusations of anti-Semitism used to smear the Arab and Muslim world. Mohammad Barakeh of the influential party Hadash will make the trek as part of an Israeli parliamentary delegation, which has predictably angered hardline Zionists who reject the idea of an Arab being allowed to participate in an official ceremony at a place with such symbolic meaning for Jews.

When the issue of the Holocaust arises in Arab and Muslim countries, there’s a pretty good chance that misunderstanding will follow. Defenders of Zionism are always quick to point to Palestinian-German contacts during World War II, even though the record shows that the contacts, such as they were, had a miniscule impact of the scheme of things, and were outweighed by the contacts between Zionists and Nazis. Back then, both Palestinians and Zionists had the same enemy – the British Mandate – and were willing to work with anyone to achieve their political goals.

If we leave aside the minority of active Holocaust deniers, we can say Arabs and Muslims view the massacres of Jews with revulsion and horror. But let’s not forget the real world: the organized annihilation of a religious group in Europe has been clouded by the fact that the Jewish victims of a European crime committed in Europe were “rewarded” with a state in a land where this genocide didn’t take place, and at the expense of people who had nothing to do with it.



There’s nothing wrong with actions by Barakeh and others who commemorate the tragedy of the Holocaust. Naturally, they’re criticized in their own communities, for political reasons: why help the Israelis and Jews with such an issue when Palestinians and Arabs are being displaced and oppressed on a daily basis by the Israeli state?

This invariably leads to the difficult-to-handle idea, for some, that there is a difference between Jews, on the one hand, and Zionism and Israel on the other.

In fact, it’s perfectly logical to condemn the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, while relentlessly criticizing the policies of the Israeli state.

Israeli leaders themselves are to blame for the growing difficultly to make the distinction. They occupy land and bomb people, under the aegis of the Star of David. They insist on the Jewishness of the Israeli state. They complain about anti-Semitism being on the rise, but forget salient facts.

The Jews of the 1930s were victims. The Israelis of this decade alone have launched wars against the Palestinian Authority (2002, 2004), Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2008). And they’re popularly (and incorrectly) seen as being complicit in the 2003 war against Iraq.

People who are angered by this track record aren’t anti-Semites. They’re just reading the news.

To The Pro-Israeli Christians: Review Your Data

Israel's fanaticism is becoming more and more public. If you are not Jewish, you won't have any cultural rights to enjoy what is supposed to be your right by birth. Now, some groups are trying to cleanse Jerusalem, the capital of the three major sects, from anything non-Jewish, and they fought Christmas, to the bone. Christmas, is the season of giving and charity.

This is the link
MFL

PS: Merry Christmas Jerusalem

Hmmm... if that is not Fanaticism, then what is?

Israel accuses its surroundings of being fanatics, nevertheless, this group of people are considered then what? Assigning supremecy to the Torah over the civil republic can be just a little bit insane. I am glad Haaretz is publishing the stories of those fundementalists. Article is taken from here.

Crazy Israeli police: Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel

Well the article is taken from here, I think she is lucky because Palestinians are usually taken aside, tortured to admit they are terrorists, then imprisoned.

What makes the story funny is the comments of Zionists saying that range from "an honor to visit Israel" to "No to Peace Makers" bla bla bla

Zionism, I swear it, is a disease that needs to be cured.

Tony Cliff: Why socialists must support gays (1978)

Article Taken from here, written in 1978.

IN CLASS-INFESTED society there is oppressor and oppressed in all walks of life. Employer oppresses employee; man oppresses woman; white oppresses black; old oppresses young; heterosexual oppresses homosexual.

The true socialist is able to overcome all these divisions. An engineering worker who can only identify with other engineering workers may be a good trade unionist but he has not proved himself to be a socialist. A socialist has to be able to identify with the struggles of all oppressed groups.

We are all the children of capitalism, so we tend to conceive of the future - even the socialist future - in an ordered and hierarchical way.

It is as though the socialist revolution will be led by the Father of the Chapel in the print union, the NGA working on Fleet Street. Second in command will be an AUEW Convenor Section 1 from the toolroom in a big car factory. The lieutenants of the revolution will all be forty-year-old white male shop stewards.

If there is enough space then we'll allow blacks and women and gays to take part - providing they stand quietly at the back!

A lot of socialists still have difficulty believing that gays will be taking part in the revolution at all.

On the contrary we should took forward now to the first leader of the London workers' council being a 19-year-old black gay woman!

The system rules by dividing us. This means there is no natural way by which one oppressed group identifies with another. The most racist extremists in the Southern States of America are the poor whites - not the rich whites.

In the same way blacks do not automatically support women and women do not automatically support blacks. Gays will not automatically support other oppressed groups.

The Nazis sent thousands of gays to concentration camps. In Chile gays were castrated and left bleeding on the street.

But it is not true that, even given these facts, gays automatically become anti-fascist.

Tens of thousands of gays supported Hitler. Many were in the Brownshirts. After Hitler took power he turned on the gay support and slaughtered them in the Night of the Long Knives.

How can we explain gays joining the Nazis?

If you are an oppressed gay putting on a Nazi leather jacket and leather boots gives you for the first time a sense of power. It makes it easy to put down Jews, women and anyone else.

For any oppressed group to fight back there is need for hope.

If you are on the way down you feel despair. You look for a victim to kick.

If you are on the way up you look for a back to pat.

That's why only by building a socialist movement can you unite workers with oppressed blacks, women and gays.

And that's why it is so important for gays to organise for demonstrations like at Brick Lane and to feel able to identify themselves proudly as gays and - where possible - as revolutionary socialist gays.

Karl Marx wrote that capitalism unites the forces of opposition. But it also divides us. We have to struggle consciously for that unity.

We are one - all of us together - but only when we fight together.

Arrest Warrant for Levni

Damn it, next time we will get that war criminal: article taken from here This is what I was talking about earlier.

A British court issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni on war crimes charges but withdrew it on finding she had cancelled a planned trip to Britain, the Guardian newspaper reported.

Westminster magistrates court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers acting for Palestinian victims of fighting in Gaza earlier this year, the paper said in an article published online on Monday.

The warrant was later dropped after it was realized that Livni -- who had been due to address a meeting in London last weekend -- was not in Britain.

Human rights groups and UN investigators accuse Israel of war crimes in the Gaza Strip during a 22-day offensive against Hamas-led Islamist militants in which Palestinians say more than 900 civilians died -- a figure Israel disputes.

Livni, who is head of the opposition Kadima Party, played a key role in launching the offensive.

The Foreign Office said it was "looking urgently at the implications of this case."

"The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner of Israel," a spokeswoman said. "To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government."

The justice ministry said it would not comment on individual cases and the interior ministry also declined to comment.

In September pro-Palestinian groups failed to persuade a London court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whom they also accuse of war crimes.

The court said Barak, who attended the ruling Labour party's annual conference and met Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had diplomatic immunity.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Peter Griffiths, editing by Tim Pearce)

The Step By Step Return of the "Palestinian"

Palestine may have been "temprarily" obliterated a by racist colonial movement that dates back to the 19th century, but the Palestinians needed at least 30 years to bring back the case of Palestine back.

One can never forget a lunatic speech delivered by Ben Gurion that traces the sufferings of the Jews to 2500 years ago. Ilian Pappe quotes him by saying: " We will establish a Christian State in Lebanon. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, an of Egupt will still continue to fight – we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis, and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical Times). " (I. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestine, 144).
Having heard such a statement, it is no surprise that Israel is a perverted state, carved out by a minority called Zionism that doesn't even represent the majority of the Jews in the world. As a matter of fact, Zionism was and still the greatest bad news for Jews across the world because it calls for their isolation and importing them to Israel under a crazier banner: "Unifying the Diaspora". Some Christian fanatics support Zionism based on the biblical logic of "Israel was occupied for 2000 years by Arabs." They never read on how Israel of 1948 is different from the Kingdom of Israel 2000 years ago. They never read how Israel ethnically cleansed anyone who was not a Jew: Christian or Muslim Palestinian. They never bother to know how there was an entity called Palestinian Jews who were subjected to harassments by Zionism and threats.

Palestine by 1948 was omitted, and the logic of Israel was: "The Palestinians freely left their lands hence they have no right to return." Israel omits to mention Plan D which aimed way before the riots of 1947, after the partition with the Jews themselves being a minority in the Jewish half of Palestine, to clean the Palestinians out of their historical homelands. Yosif Weitz was not a manager of a luxury pub, rather the Transfer Committee of the Palestinians out of Palestine, ie , a genocidal committee since international law regards transferring populations as "an act of genocide."

Whenever someone mentioned Palestine since 1948, Israel and its lobbies attack the person as anti-Semite and brings back the memories of the Holocaust. Currently, in the Arab World, there is no longer the WWII Holocaust, it is the Gaza War of 2009. This became as the new Holocaust in the heads of every person who believes in Human Rights. For Gaza, it has been suffering from a blockade worse than that inflicted on Cuba, and living conditions couldn't have been more horrible as Israel remains to break international law and expand fake settlements on Gaza, West Bank, and attempt to take over East Jerusalem.

By 1951, things couldn't have been worse. The creator of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, visited Israel. When humanitarian activists were cheerful of her visit, and hoped she would check out the refugees in Gaza and the West Bank then, she simply said that she is only visiting some friends in Israel. That, sadly, puts the United States as a 'defender' of human rights in the bottom.

Most of the Palestinian figureheads were originally from the Palestinian Middle Class. And for them, life was horrible. Edward Said, in the opening of the book Joe Sacco's Palestine, argued how by the 1960s, the term Palestine or Palestinian was barred out from usage. Several academics couldn't defend, or revive what happened in Palestine 1948 without risking their own jobs. This goes with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's most racist statement on the behalf of the Palestinians: "Palestinians? What Palestinians? There was never a Palestine?". Apparently she never read President Woodrow Wilson's King-Crane Commission which proved that 92% of the people were Muslims and Christians, while only 8% are Jews.

Ironically, peaceful demands were never the solution. With the Arab defeat of 1967, the Palestinians found themselves in a position that only they should fight for their lands. This of course was accompanied with Arab treason. In 1948, when the Arab armies entered to protect the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq were still under the British Mandate. In 1967, they themselves sponsored the PLO but refused to assist them militarily, except in 1968's Battle of Dignity where Jordan along with the PLO blocked Israel's invasion.

Israel's plans of denying the existence of the Palestinians was part of the plan. There were several Palestinian authors, such as Sayyegh, and Hadawi, writing. It was Edward Said's Orientalism that shocked the foundation of the Zionist claims. Orientalism shed light on the treatment of Palestinians. This went hand in hand with the PLO bulldozing their way through military operations to the "Observant Status" in the UN. This was much to the disgust of Israel. When the Palestinians received such a status, it meant the Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, (and even Jewish), were recognized as an official nation. This nation, is dispersed, due to something, what was it? Oh yes, Israel's attempt to delete the existence of the Palestinians.

Till this day, Palestinians wonder: "How can the Zionists do to us what the Nazis did to them?" Rereading Ben Gurion's crazy statement in the beginning of the article answers this question: they are racists, and they do not care about human rights.
Israel's denial of Palestine/Palestinians falls in the category of blocking the return of the Palestinians. UN resolution 194 insists that every Palestinian has the right to return home, or at least compensated. The descendants of the Palestinians also have the right for such a claim. Some would argue that currently this is insane, bringing back Palestinians who were dispersed in 1948 and 1967 is out of reach. This is a false claim. Israel argued that it is bringing a state that existed 2500 years ago. If someone reads Shlomo Sands, most of these Jews that are "returning" to Palestine, are not originally part of the 2000 year old diasporas. They are people who converted into Judaism as a religious sect in Europe, Africa, or Europe. Nevertheless, the barring out of refugees returning to Palestine was the main goal of the Arab-Israeli peace process with Egypt and followed later by Jordan. Neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians (whose population is beyond 80% composed of Palestinian refugees) are satisfied with the peace treaties, with the on-going atrocities of civilians in Israel and beyond it.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 probably opened the gateways for knowing the Israeli army for the truth it is: a racist army. Israel, amidst mass media, invaded Lebanon. Its atrocities were covered by several journalists, and these same journalists complained that Israel tried to force them to write "its' version" of the war. With Sabra-Chatila massacres taking place, Israel, as a beacon of democracy in the image of the West, fell. This of course was a concrete reference on Israeli behavior. People wondered who was the real democracy: Israel that focuses on Judaism as an ethnicity trait, or Lebanon: the homeland of 18 sects co-existing with each other till the civil war broke out.

Currently, more and more scandals are published on Israel, past or present. The world's shrinkage through the mass communication and media revolutions means that if Israel slaps a Palestinian in its ground, the whole world knows. Israel may have held the upper hand in the media, but the other side of the coin is finding more and more space to highlight the reality of the region, and Israel's racist atrocities.
This was caused by the neo-Israeli historians who found the guts to speak. Benny Morris, a hard core Zionist, was condemned by different Israeli spheres for being a traitor, because he simply brought into light what happened in 1948. ILan Pappe had to flee Israel out of safety because he also accused Israel of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.

The biggest example was probably the Israeli offensive on Lebanon 3 years ago. Israel was bombarding also the Palestinians as well. The reactions of Israeli offensive to Lebanon was highly condemned by mass demonstrations (part of the reason is the large Lebanese diaspora across the world), while the Palestinians were covered second. This lies in the fact that not everyday Israel bombed Lebanon, while the repetition news of Israel torturing Palestinians is new. The suicide bombings of some Palestinians across the 1990s gave Israel the pretext to behave under the banner of fighting terrorism. 9/11 also gave it the flexibilities to commit atrocities and massacres on the remaining Palestinians. This is changing.

With the offensive on Gaza 2009, several Israeli figureheads are getting cornered. The voting on the Goldstone Report in the UN highlights to what extent the world is fed up from Israel's butcheries. They still as arrogant as possible. They accused the entire world as "immoral" while only few states were "moral". Why? Because the majority of the world was disgusted with Israel's atrocities on the Palestinians. Luckily for Israel, the veto power always saved them.

Now, in 2009, when you say Palestinian, it is no longer: "non-existent". (PS: Times Square in New York has a gigantic road called Golda Mair St.), or terrorist. It is the struggle for existence. Israel's campaign of equating the Palestinians to terrorists is failing. More Israelis are speaking out against their racist government, and more people are informed of what is going on globally. Those who hate the Palestinians or believe that Israel is the suffering state for 2500 years are under bombardment of criticism, and the center for mockery. Palestinian these days means the exact definition of the fight for Human Rights. The fact the world is seeing the fanatic religious Jewish settlers, with their angry beards and automatic machine guns, brings the question of who is really the religious fanatic? The Palestinian Muslims? (Israel always attempts to omit its atrocities and racism towards the Palestinian and Arab Christians to avoid losing support from the Christian fanatics in the West). The fact the International Courts are tightening the knot on Israeli warcriminals is a beginning.

The battle for existence continues, and Israel is failing to do anything about it. If anything, they only have their superior airforce bombardment of innocent civilians and the veto power. At this slow rate, the way I see it, Israel is going to enter dark times. Other than the United States, we seriously do not see any media blackouts on what is happening there. And even in the United States, the alternate media of the truth is gradually breaching Israeli barriers.

MFL

Chibli Mallat: Is Israel a democracy? It's conditional

Article taken from Daily Star

(MFL notes: I wanted to take a section out of it, but since articles usually disappear the next day, so I posted the whole thing)

On December 6, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI, website www.acri.org.il) released a 73-page report on democracy and human rights in Israel, entitled on “Human Rights – On Condition, Democracy – On Condition.” The chapters of the report develop the characteristic list of an authoritarian state: “Freedom of Expression – as long as you have nice things to say;

Harassment of Human Rights Organizations and Activists: Freedom of Expression and Activity – as long as you don’t criticize;

Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel: Rights – as long as you’re loyal,

Bedouin Rights – as long as you live where we tell you;

Criminal Justice Rights – as long as you’re not suspected of a security offense;

Hatred and Racism: Rights – as long as you’re one of us;

Rights of the Elderly – as long as you’re young;

The Right to Education – as long as you fit in;

The Right to Housing – as long as you’re one of us;

The Right to Social Security – as long as you’re gainfully employed; The Right to Health Care – as long as you pay;

The Occupied Territories: Rights – as long as you’re Israeli;” and a conclusion entitled “Undermining the Foundations of Democracy.”

As The Daily Star law page presents excerpts of the report, it is time for a serious discussion among jurists and human rights advocates on one basic premise which remains the received mantra in the West: can Israel be considered a democracy, in the same way we consider the US, France or India democracies?

I have argued in my “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” published two years ago, that Israel does not qualify as a de­mocracy by standards a universal jury recognizes. This is not only on account of history, where patterns of ethnic cleansing and of legal discrimination are hardly in dispute. The argument of Israel not qualifying as a democracy rests on the persistence of these patterns as structural traits of Israel to date, six decades after its foundation.

The evidence is plain in the treatment of all the people living under Israeli control, by which I mean those whose lives have been and continue to be determined by Israel’s legal structure and its political treatment of their daily existence. Next to 7 million Jewish Israelis who enjoy by-and-large a Western-style democracy, over a million so-called Israeli Arabs have no place in governmental representation and are subject to a large array of rights breaches; 4 million “occupied Palestinians” in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem suffer from open legal exclusion in a system of Israeli decisions that have governed their lives for over a generation. West Bankers, Gazans and Jeru­salemites are respectively the victims of land settlement and expropriation, siege and daily physical harassment of their right to live and move freely; and 4-6 million Palestinians are denied their universal right to return to the place from which they fled or were evicted in successive waves in 1948, 1949 and 1967. To this should be added over 100,000 Syrians in the Go­lan, not to mention the 22-year occupation of south Leba­non and the victims of repeat massacres, from Deir Yasin to Sabra and Shatila, Qana and Jenin.

This is a serious discussion to be undertaken on a world level on the type of system that Israel is, as serious indeed as the legal investigation carried out in the mid-1960s on the legal nature of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the early 1960s, Yale Law Journal published a long, two-part article by Elizabeth Landis entitled “South African Apartheid legislation,” part one, “Fundamental structures,” part two “Extension, enforcement and perpetuation.” It was no longer possible for white Afrikaners and their US supporters to argue that apartheid, a neutral term until then in world politics, was an intolerable system of discrimination.

We need a similar study for Israel. While insufficient, the present ACRI report is a step toward a correction of the mantra of democracy for Israel’s legal and political system.


Chibli Mallat is a lawyer and law professor at the Universities of Utah and Saint Joseph in Lebanon. His books include “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” Oxford paperback 2009, and “The Middle East into the 21st Century,” at Ithaca press in 1996. He edits the weekly law page of The Daily Star.

Responding to Tony Blair

In Response to Blair's "Removing Saddam Was Right"

Nobody likes Saddam, Mr. Blair.

Nevertheless, the problem is pulling such a crazy operation and by-passing the entire UN forums,

Attempting to re-invent the causes of war after the WMDs were not located, specially the invasion couldn't wait any longer due to Saddam's 'nuclear threat'.

There was no Qa'eda in Iraq till the US-UK invasion took place, thank you "democracy" for bringing terrorism to that region.

Thank you for demolishing a state entity called Iraq. If this war is war of democracy, then how come in the first two years of the Iraqi invasion, more Iraqis died than lunatic Saddam's entire rule era?

Wasn't the United States that funded Saddam in the Iranian-Iraqi war and made him a super dictator over his people? We know democracy, and fight for it, it is the United States that funds most of the dictators in the Arab World (Egypt's Moubarak, Morocco's Sultan dynasty, The Saudi Dynasty, ... etc).


Of all the Iraqi officials, whose legitimacy is severely under check, they couldn't find but this minister? BBC can do better.

Accelerating the operation without a Plan B to Iraq which led to the swift breakdown of the regime and the presence of terrorist groups and ethnic wars?

Does Blair know that every Iraqi that died and still dies blame him and Bush Jr. due to the swift breakdown of the state?

Finally, I love it how several people underscore the Iraqi lives by simply calling the war on Iraq as 'policy changing' and conflict management. People's lives from that corner can be so cheap for such men from this corner of the world.

MFL

Memoirs of a Defeatist - Too Many Slaps in the Face!

Couple of years ago, I started blogging, and I decided to blog for change. I decided I needed change from face to face politics. I was writing extensively, almost on daily basis, but then... I lacked the time, there is no time to write. Eventually, I started running out of motivation and stamina. Even on the blogosphere I was losing it.

To be honest, ever since 1997 I have been active on the ground. I used to participate in a lot of demonstrations: freedom of speech, civil marriage, and against Israeli atrocities (to name few). I have been active since then, and in those days, me and the fellow "comrades" dreamt of a left-wing Lebanon free of all those corrupt political parties. We had a dream to demolish sectarianism, free ourselves from Syrian chains of thought control, and proceed to continue struggle against Israeli ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians and Lebanese. We had dreams to shatter the borders between Lebanon and Syria, get rid of the Baathi brutal regime, and establish people's republics away from tyranny. We already were dedicated leftists then: each one of us had the experience to be beaten by political party hooligans, the armies (Syrian or Lebanese), and had the guts to go to South Lebanon and stick up our middle fingers in the face of Israeli cowardly soldiers who occupied Lebanon (and still occupy Palestine). Some friends were even more bold, they were students, and they went in a demonstration and throw those chicken Israeli soldiers from Arnon for 24 hours (Israel brutally returned and almost committed a massacre against those brave university students). We were stalked by Syrian second bureau into our houses, and we demanded social justice. In a nutshell, what our non-political activists used to call us: crazy and insane.

One of our aspirations was to dismantle the Lebanese Communist Party and get rid of the Stalinist features. Of course, some broke out and triggered a chain reaction briefly. These people were saluted for their courageous move; nevertheless, they ended up as the founders of another reactionary movement (even though that movement barely has 150 people in it): the Democratic Leftist Movement (as in the Neo-con "Leftists").

We never knew religion, we thought that religion is an invention, and one day we will bury that feature of Lebanon in the graveyard without return. We used to meet up with all types of university students, go and talk to farmers, the proletariat, and anyone. We used to convert party members into free lancing leftists. We thought the whole world was ours. In 1998-1999, we thought that the revolution will begin. Civil marriage was close to be implemented, yet we were far to get that part alive. We retreated with more heat and excitement to change Lebanon, the Middle East, and even the whole blasted entire world. Breaking ethnicity and uniting the workers of the world was easy then. We did believe it, no matter how much the Syrian army tried to shut us up or demoralize us. We were seculars and against Zionism: how could they get their loyalists to accuse us of treason? Beat us instead. Yet, we stayed active. Heck, we had the chance to go to the Lebanese border, after the Israeli army withdrew like cowards, and we had the chance to stick up our middle fingers straight from the borders, with Palestinian grounds for the first time, appeared before our eyes. Yes! As one comrade said in excitement: We are one step closer to our zillion billion goals. Sadly, nothing good lasts for ever.

Then, slap after slap took place. Our different groups of lefties started to crumble down, one after the other. Part of the reason was power struggle and lust for power. Between the Democratic Leftists' bullshit of scaring people away from the left and the Lebanese Communist Party's crappy salutations to "Comrade" Stalin, we were losing grounds. The main reason of our failures were plenty. I demonstrated for Palestine for unaccountable times, yet nothing was done. It was the capitalist powers that decided everything over there. We demonstrated for Iraq in peace demonstrations that aimed against US Imperialism and the dictator Saddam, and the US – UK coalition by-passed the UN and shattered Iraq into a three way ethnic groups. Suddenly, to a lot of people: what is the use to go into demonstrations? We always had those rotten dinosaurs like Elias Atallah or a free lancing leftist suddenly jumping in front a demonstration and then pause to the cameras in order to appear they were demonstrating. Who invited those dorks (prior to the foundation of Democratic Left Movement)?

Then there were the anti-Syrian demonstrations, we took pride in those demonstrations. We succeeded in transforming several demonstrations from Christian versus Syrian to Lebanese versus Syrian hegemony. Walid Junblatt then was defending Syria for the sake of the "Arab Cause" against Israel. We emphasized that solidarity to our brothers and sisters of the Syrian proletariat is a must! That we should together get rid of all our leaderships. Of course, Syria responded with brutality, or get their allies to gather more of their supporters whereby rallies of praising: "Mother Syria". Yet, we stayed active despite the fact our jobs were threatened and everything. We wanted Syria out, but we demonstrated against Aoun's "Syrian Accountability Act" that was launched in DC. Yet, we were little people. The only time anti-Syrian hegemony kicked off in Lebanon is when the late Prime Minister Harriri was assassinated. Hence, mobilization was sectarian in basis, even though Bahiya el Harriri and the late Samir Qassir (the only decent figurehead in the DLM) tried their best to keep it secular (Elias Attallah by then was more Junblatti or Harriri than Junblatt or Harriri themselves, trust me, I know him in person).

Then afterwards, sectarianism entered our private lives. Several comrades started to argue that "we shall demonstrate for civil marriage, but we shall get married in a religious marriage" or "we shall not marry a person non-Christian or non-Muslim". Heck, I was told by several comrades: "if only you were of sect X or Y". Now, tell me dear reader, how does that make you feel?! Nevertheless, I thought we can get it through.

People were involved with jobs, they preferred to stay away from activism instead risking their jobs.

Each 10 lefties built a group, they proclaimed themselves: the real and only leftists fit to "rule" or "guide" other leftists.

Of course, that doesn't exclude other factors as well: the sudden birthrate of NGOs. Those took out a lot of activists from the arena, and suddenly they believe that "lobbying" is the only way to reform the Lebanese government. That is a different topic on its own, as I collected about 90 statements from fellow comrades who were active in NGOs. Nevertheless, these NGOs are business traders, get a part of whatever funding this or that NGO receives. The fact that Ziad Baroud made it as Minister on the behalf of the NGOs, gives them some sense to celebrate; however, Ziad Baroud, is not the NGOs, and Baroud is not involved in the power struggle of these NGOs that scavenge for funds and try to recruit people as "volunteers" (or the NGO term: free labor). Yet so far, these freaks of new capitalism had done better results than others (as much as I hate to admit it), even though at a very very slow pace whereby several top NGOs had scandals being leaked out.

Then 14th of March and 8th of March came out. The remainder of my friends were scattered between those two blocks. My "comrades" of each side accused me of treason for the Lebanese cause because I refused to join them. They accused me of treason for betraying the Palestinian cause. As far as I remembered: Being revolutionary Marxist doesn't mean I was a die-hard nationalist like the latter two. Each of the comrades of each block cut their connections with the other, after they had their blood mixed on the floor from beatings during demonstrations. Of course, they both boycotted the "non-nationalist camp" like me on a social level. By die hard nationalism, this is what I mean: half of the Lebanese are racists to the other half and vice versa (at least party affiliated people). Hence, at a one point, there was no difference between the stands of the Lebanese Communist Party and crazy Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement or the Democratic Left and Saad el Harriri (ultimate symbol of capitalism). That bogged me down.

Then the July war broke out, and I was involved extensively with relief activities in the war. There, I forgot all those lefty bureaucracies, treacheries, and other things. I poured my heart out in activity. I was convinced my activities were breaking the media black-out imposed by Israel on the world. I did great even. I saw the war join some friends, but the great divide remained between the comrades. Heck, some comrades enjoyed how Israel bombed Dahhieh with the hope that Hezbollah learnt a "valuable lesson". Others turned relief work into business (Does Lebanon Aid ring a bell to anyone?). As for our group of relief activists and media warriors, the movement became short-lived as the power-struggle came into existence. At that point, I lost hope, I was shattered.

It was around early 2006 that I started to blog, I decided to start reconstructing the history of Lebanon, Palestine, or anywhere as they happened. I thought that was the way. Then I started to meet other bloggers, some of them to this day do not know who I am. Others were wonderful, and blogging became a means to express my frustration. Yet, even blogging, what can it do on day to day basis except fuel the anger, and feel helpless against everything. I no longer crave for a demonstration. When Nahr el Bared bombardment took place, I spent it quarreling with other friends who were bravely active there (although to do a mini-save, I did announce their campaign). The quarrels were based on the fact I wasn’t participating. To be honest, the 2006 war took out my energy, and the disappointments kept slapping me on the face; work wise or activism wise. I couldn't tolerate another crap from anyone. I was totally drained. By then 11 years of activism was too much for me. We used to take one step forward, and three back.

Then I started to look elsewhere, where in the world the left is doing great? The man we hailed as a hero ended up turning as a dickhead, yes I am referring to Hugo Chavez. Of course, I love it every time he threw the Israeli ambassador out and cut ties with Israel; yet his blind support to anyone that opposes the United States got me punched in the stomach. How could he support Iran then while a lot of comrades were rotting in prison, our feminist sisters' lives are under threat. That didn't click in my head (and not to forget the more recently renewal of his mandate). The Trotskyites of Great Britain are fighting each other, and the only articles I enjoyed to read are the www.marxist.com. To be more exact, I adored their theoretical articles.

Hence, every time I believed we can do change, I was slapped. The unity of the Christians, Muslims, and Jews of Palestine/Israel was shattered as more Jews are becoming zealot fanatics and actually believe that God has chosen them and the great divide is growing as Hamas is gaining more popularity (because Fatah are bunch of sell-outs and leave the Palestinian proletariat with no option).

The Lebanese politicians are still there, and corrupt as ever. Heck we have new ones (in addition to the old) after the Syrians withdrew. Nothing can be done so far, and last year's mini-civil war became part of the amnesia within the people: a new "history" that will be distorted to suit the needs of the Politicians.

Zionist monopoly of the media keeps the US citizens away from knowing the truth in the middle east. Heck, alienation there is worse than here. To my laughter though, a lot of US citizens that I chatted with (or met) actually believe that the BBC is "Pro-Islam" because it reports all events (now how can that be?!)

What ought to be done? I am experiencing what Marx exactly warned... alienation from the cause due to the brutality of capitalism and its offspring (actually this part of the sentence is Lenin's): nationalism/sectarianism.

I still believe in the class struggle and the Marxist doctrines, but currently, the upper class are standing victorious over the divided alienated proletariat.

MFL

PS: Did you know that several "comrades" thing China is the real People's forthcoming Union? (Shoot me please!)

America, stop sucking up to Israel - Gideon Levy

Taken from Haaretz

Barack Obama has been busy - offering the Jewish People blessings for Rosh Hashanah, and recording a flattering video for the President's Conference in Jerusalem and another for Yitzhak Rabin's memorial rally. Only Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah surpasses him in terms of sheer output of recorded remarks.

In all the videos, Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything - even just a temporary freeze on settlement building - to advance the peace process.

The president's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has also been busy, shuttling between a funeral (for IDF soldier Asaf Ramon, the son of Israel's first astronaut Ilan Ramon) and a memorial (for Rabin, though it was postponed until next week due to rain), in order to find favor with Israelis. Polls have shown that Obama is increasingly unpopular here, with an approval rating of only 6 to 10 percent

He decided to address Israelis by video, but a persuasive speech won't persuade anyone to end the occupation. He simply should have told the Israeli people the truth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived here last night, will certainly express similar sentiments: "commitment to Israel's security," "strategic alliance," "the need for peace," and so on .

Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?

But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.

Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don't change the tone, nothing will change. As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket, and that America's automatic veto will save it from condemnations and sanctions, that it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world's policeman making a sound, it will continue in its ways.

Illegal acts like the occupation and settlement expansion, and offensives that may have involved war crimes, as in Gaza, deserve a different approach. If America and the world had issued condemnations after Operation Summer Rains in 2006 - which left 400 Palestinians dead and severe infrastructure damage in the first major operation in Gaza since the disengagement - then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.

It is true that unlike all the world's other troublemakers, Israel is viewed as a Western democracy, but Israel of 2009 is a country whose language is force. Anwar Sadat may have been the last leader to win our hearts with optimistic, hope-igniting speeches. If he were to visit Israel today, he would be jeered off the stage. The Syrian president pleads for peace and Israel callously dismisses him, the United States begs for a settlement free ze and Israel turns up its nose. This is what happens when there are no consequences for Israel's inaction.

When Clinton returns to Washington, she should advocate a sharp policy change toward Israel. Israeli hearts can no longer be won with hope, promises of a better future or sweet talk, for this is no longer Israel's language. For something to change, Israel must understand that perpetuating the status quo will exact a painful price.

Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world. The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year - Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no.