Dr. Ismail Salami

The simmering tensions over the Malvinas Islands or Falkland Islands (off the coast of Argentina in the South Atlantic) as called by the British occupiers have become a matter of great concern as the UK decided to deploy destroyer HMS Dauntless to the islands.

The British Royal Navy is planning to send the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless, a state-of-the-art warship, to the region on her maiden mission in a few months, a move interpreted by some experts as a provocation of war. Also known as the Daring class, HMS Dauntless is often regarded the most powerful air-defense warship in the world. This warship is equipped with the SAMPSON Multi Function Radar with the capability to detect hundreds of targets out to a distance of 400 km as well as outer atmosphere objects such as ballistic missiles.

Argentine Vice-president Amado Boudou sees the escalating conflict as an excuse to “distract public opinion from serious domestic problems such as unemployment.”

“London is after issues of big media impact to hide the daily sufferings of Britain with its problems of unemployment, shrinking economy, social unrest by appealing to a very distant situation such is the South Atlantic Islands dispute.”

However, the British Royal Navy says the Portsmouth-based destroyer’s deployment is “not a reaction to heightened tensions over the Falklands.” Paradoxically, Britain has already deployed anti-aircraft installations, a tracker station and modern jet fighters on the archipelago.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says the UK harbors secret plans to plunder the natural resources such as oil and fish in the area of the territorial dispute and that Argentina insists on her legitimate claim to the islands.

“Don’t expect an outcry of xenophobia from us, we stand on the concept of sovereignty which is in agreement with the interests of the state, our people and protection of our natural resources.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron has recently slammed Argentina for trying to ‘colonize’ the Malvinas Islands while the UK has basically cast its specter of imperialistic domination and colonization of Argentina’s South Atlantic islands since 1833.

“What the Argentineans have been saying recently I would argue is actually far more like colonialism because these people want to remain British and the Argentineans want them to do something else,” Prime Minister Cameron said on Wednesday.

Mr. Cameron’s statement was, however, welcomed by a spate of criticism on the part of some Latin American leaders. For instance, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said Latin America and the Caribbean “back Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas and back the UN resolutions calling on the Argentine and British governments to hold talks on the issue.”

Although some pundits rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion of the islands on the 1982 lines, Michael Clarke, head of the Royal United Services Institute, believes that a similar invasion particularly supported by the construction of an airfield at Mount Pleasant is possible. “In the event of tension, the UK could quickly reinforce the island because of its control of the airfield. We simply don’t need the kind of naval taskforce we had in 1982.”

On Friday 2 April 1982, Argentine forces mounted an attack on the Malvinas Islands and South Georgia in order to redeem their long occupied territory. Britain sent a naval task force and retook the islands through amphibious assault. The war, which lasted 74 days, ended to the triumph of the British imperialist army, claiming the lives of over 600 Argentine troops, and 255 British soldiers.

Britain has a long-standing interest in the Malvinas’ oil which originally dates back to a couple of decades. In 1975, Britain conducted preliminary studies in this regard and in 1998-2009, two British exploratory missions succeeded in proving the oil potential of the area. It remains unclear how much oil there is in the Malvinas islands but initial estimations place the offshore petroleum potential at a minimum of 6.525 billion barrels of oil.

On March 22, 2011, British transnational Rockhopper announced it had discovered a commercially viable deposit of crude oil in the Malvinas. Rockhopper Exploration PLC reported a “significant reservoir package” at its Sea Lion prospect.

When the company gave an initial report on its oil find at Sea Lion, Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner’s administration issued a statement and said the oil-drilling operation runs counter to international laws and treaties as well as UN resolutions which urge both sides to not take steps which might exacerbate the situation.

With an established history of imperialism and colonization, Britain has long coveted the windswept Malvinas as a strategic shipping stopover and treasure-trove of natural resources such as oil and fish.

With economy declining terminally at home, Britain is exploring ways to save itself either by virtue of climbing on the shoulders of others i.e. digging its imperialistically colonialist claws into others i.e. the Malvinas Islands or by foisting its weapons off on nations with a turbulent status quo such as Bahrain.

That the British government is contemplating another imperialist adventure in the Malvinas Islands is an irrefutable assumption but it is painfully difficult to conjecture how Britain is going to achieve this nefarious objective.

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Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Uri Avnery: A Zionist warmonger masquerading as an activist for "peace."

by Jonathan Azaziah  -  Intifada-Palestine.com

Prelude: This is the first of a two-part series examining several critical positions of ‘Israeli’ “peace” activist Uri Avnery and how these positions relate to the overall rapidly-deteriorating status of the International Palestine Solidarity Movement. In this volume, Avnery himself is unabashedly slammed as an enemy of the Palestinian people and his piece “Shukran, Israel”, which is an attack on indigenous Islamic Resistance throughout the Middle East, is mercilessly skewered for the pack of Zionist lies that it is…

On January 2nd, 2012, Uri Avnery (real name: Helmut Ostermann), highly-touted ‘Israeli’ “peace” activist, released an article entitled “Shukran, Israel (1),” a fusion of colonial arrogance, Jewish supremacism and malicious Zionist propaganda that shocked me, infuriated me and made me chuckle after the rage simmered to a serenity at the thought of this diatribe even being composed to begin with. “Shukran, Israel” is the central focus of this paper but a few other key ‘gems’ from the wily old man will be mentioned for the sake of perspective. We will unforgivingly and devastatingly proceed with the review and deconstruction in just a moment.

Before the commencement however, something needs to be said that should have been said a long, long time ago. The reason why it hasn’t been said is a relatively simple, albeit terribly sad one: ‘activists’ within this ever-declining ‘movement’ do not have the courage to speak up because of fear; fear of being labeled “anti-Semitic” by the Zionist Power Configuration whose tentacles have deeply penetrated the solidarity network, as evidenced by the recent inexplicable expulsion of leading activist and thinker Dr. Francis Clark-Lowes from an important branch of the UK Palestinian Solidarity Movement (2). These ‘activists’ are intellectual, spiritual and political cripples posing as revolutionaries. Their cowardice has allowed the aforesaid supremacism to prosper under the guise of solidarity; another ‘mask of Zion.’ So here, let it be said; nay, let it be screamed so the skies tremble, and those activists with dignity never allow themselves to be silenced again.

Uri Avnery… you are not a peace activist. You do not represent solidarity. You are not a friend of Palestine. You are not a comrade of the oppressed anywhere and you never will be. You are an occupier, Uri Avnery. You are a land thief. You are a usurper. You are a colonist. You are a settler. You are an ethnic cleanser. You are an uprooter. You are a cold-blooded murderer. You are a planter of bombs. You are a butcher of men. You are a killer of women. You are a slaughterer of children (3). You are a terrorist. You have no right giving speeches. You have no right writing articles or books. You have no right to freedom. You deprived Palestinians of their very lives; you stole their lives, Uri Avnery. You stole their freedom and you stole their homeland. You, and every single other Zionist fanatic who served in the sadistic, bloodthirsty Irgun terror gang deserve perpetual imprisonment for the horrific crimes against humanity that you committed. You helped bring the Zionist entity into being and to this exact moment, you ‘fight’ to defend its criminal existence. That makes you a criminal. You are a Zionist, and Zionists have no place in holy Palestine. They never will and you never will. Ever.

It was tremendously vital for this to be stated in such unequivocal terms because Uri Avnery has been given a place in the discourse for Palestine’s liberation for far too long. Due to this, his supremacism has seeped through the cracks and infected the psyches of many; his analyses, some staunchly Zionist, some categorically and venomously false and others a mixture of both, are praised and looked upon as sources of sagacity. From this day forward, let this cease to be the case. Let the struggle of Palestine be spoken of by the dispossessed and those who wish to see them return to their homes, not those who carried out the dispossessing, like Uri Avnery.

“Shukran, Israel”: An Amalgamation of Supremacism, Orientalism and Zionist Lies

Uri Avnery would like the Resistance movements of the region to say "thank you" to 'Israel' for violating the humanity of their people. Preposterous.

From the onset of Uri Avnery’s atrocious smear of indigenous Islamic Resistance across the Muslim world, two specific narratives immediately emerge and intertwine with one another throughout. The first is the yarn of the Jewish supremacist and the second is the line of the colonialist. One may argue that the narrative could be reduced to one, that of the Zionist, which wouldn’t be an observation of inaccuracy but it would not be an observation of totality; hence the need for dichotomy. The latter, that of the colonialist, will be dealt with first. Essentially, the premise of “Shukran, Israel” is that Islamic Resistance groups should be thankful to the Zionist entity for their current positions of popularity and power. Without the Zionist regime, Avnery opines, these parties wouldn’t be where they are today. This, at its very core, is colonialist in nature: the indigenous should thank their colonizer for colonizing them, giving them purpose, providing them structure and freeing them from their previously pointless lives.

Avnery would quite literally like these parties to bow down before the illegitimate Zionist regime in gratitude. But gratitude for what exactly? What is this colonialist delusion actually suggesting? There is nothing benevolent about the Zionist entity; nothing pure, nothing decent and nothing even relatively redeemable on any kind of humanitarian level. The Zionist entity is a terror state; a usurping beast that has no ‘right to exist’ and was founded with an inspiration derived from the deepest, darkest caverns of criminality. It is an entity of baby murder, women slaughter and monstrous ethnic cleansing. Obviously, Avnery would like these Resistance groups to say “Shukran, Israel” for massacring, demolishing, uprooting, dispossessing, looting, bombing, raping, pillaging and plundering Palestine and its people. The reason why these groups exist to begin with is because ‘Israel’ was erected illegally and barbarically on Palestinian land; if the Zionist entity didn’t exist, Resistance to it wouldn’t exist either, because the peoples of the land, Muslim, Christian and Jew alike, would be living in peace, harmony and brotherhood, as they did prior to Zionist terror gangs carrying out Plan D and ethnically cleansing close to 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland. With this firmly in mind, it becomes exceptionally evident that Avnery’s suggestion is not only delusional and colonialist, but utterly insane.

'The good Rebbe' Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Uri Avnery are brothers in Jewish supremacism.

The Jewish supremacist angle to Avnery’s drivel isn’t even subtle. The very title of the piece betrays its blatancy. While he constantly attempts to portray himself as a secularist,  his tribal adherence to chosen-ness, and therefore, his Jewish supremacism, is as clear as day. The genocidal Chabad Lubavitch supremacist Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, spiritual guide to the Zionist policymakers who masterminded the dismemberment and butchering of Iraq (4), once declared, “Every Jew, men and even women and children, brings about the existence of the entire creation, they become masters over the world, and thus every single creation owes them recognition for this good (5).” Avnery’s piece represents a microcosm of Schneerson’s madness. ‘Israel’ is the Jewish ‘state’, comprised of Jews from the world over. In the mind of the Jewish supremacist, all creation flows from this living, ‘nation-state’ embodiment of Jewishness. There is no doubt that Avnery harbors this Judeocentric view or something closely resembling it, considering that he vehemently believes in the existence of the Zionist entity.

In his piece, Avnery pays homage to the Talmud, the most important book in supremacist Chabad Lubavitch’s ideology and in general, the holiest book of Judaism, as confirmed by the rabbinate’s highest-ranking ‘sages (6).’ He abhorrently writes, “Generations of Jews have been brought up on the Talmud, which is mainly a compilation of legal precedents, and their minds have been honed by legalistic arguments. Not for nothing are Jewish lawyers in demand the world over.” The Talmud is no such thing; it is a book written by megalomaniacal rabbis to train their Jewish supremacist devotees in the ways of subversion, murder, theft, circumvention, genocide, exceedingly vile anti-Gentile racism, pedophilia, disturbing rituals and denigration of prophets, including Jesus Christ the Messiah (‘Isa al-Masih in Arabic), who is designated by the Talmud as a black magic practitioner, sexual deviant and son of a whore who is rotting in his own excrement in the fires of hell (6). Of all irrelevant things to invoke in this piece, Avnery decided to invoke the Talmud; a transparent indication of his tribal need to acknowledge Jewish supremacy even when it isn’t pertinent to the matter at hand because, to the Zionist Jew, his supremacy always is the matter at hand, regardless of what the matter is.

Hamas According To Avnery: Creation Of Shin Bet

Hamas, the Islamic Resistance of illegally besieged Gaza and all of occupied Palestine, is NOT a creation of the Zionist entity.

It is odd that a person who vociferously prides himself on being an activist for ‘peace’ would repeat the most disgraceful hasbara in an attempt to get his point across. In light of everything written so far however, it isn’t so odd, is it? Avnery’s ‘peace’ activist persona is nothing but a ‘Mask of Zion’ and the point of his piece is the injection of more disinformation into the discourse on Palestine to malign real threats to Zionist hegemony. The first target of Avnery’s horrid hasbara is Hamas, the Islamic Resistance of illegally besieged Gaza. Prior to smearing Hamas though, he writes, “The General Security Service (known as Shin Bet or Shabak) had an active interest in the flourishing of the mosques. People who pray five times a day, they thought, have no time to build bombs.” What pathetic and egregious remarks. Maybe one should send a newsflash to Uri Avnery to remind him that the predominant religion wholeheartedly believed in by the majority of the Palestinian people is Islam. Yet again, the orientalism surfaces, by associating Islam, the religion of the indigenous, with primitiveness and passiveness, as if one who believes in it is incapable of engaging in Resistance to tyrannical occupation.

It is particularly nauseating that he would suggest Shin Bet would encourage Palestinians to turn to Islam. Palestinians need no such encouragement. Belief in Islam has been an integral element to their Resistance to 100 years of Jewish colonization and 64 years of Zionist occupation. Their faith in ALLAH (SWT) has granted them steadfastness, the likes of which the world has never seen, in the face of unrelenting ‘Israeli’ brutality. Palestinians view their survival on their land as a heavenly miracle; after a century of the Zionist entity’s mass murder campaigns, assassinations, home demolitions and acts of resource theft, the Palestinians remain. And the Palestinians will always remain, in their sincere opinion, because of ALLAH (SWT), because ALLAH (SWT) rewards those who are steadfast. Belittling the faith and dignity of a people under siege to justify a warped political thesis is revolting; just revolting. Avnery (baselessly) writes that Shin Bet initiated this policy of “turning the Palestinians towards Islam” to undermine the PLO and its chief component, Fatah, but this is massively false.

Yasser Arafat began selling Palestine down the river long before this horric, treasonous moment with Zionist war criminal Yitzhak Rabin.

The PLO began undermining itself when it turned away from its founding principles and began making backroom deals with the Zionist entity, culminating in the collaborationist disaster of the Oslo Accords. In September 1970, Fatah presented a revolutionary document to the Second World Congress on Palestine, laying out a strategy for the liberation of all Palestinian lands, those stolen by the Zionists during al-Nakba and al-Naksa. The document also made it clear that all peoples, Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, would be granted Palestinian citizenship upon liberation of the lands and expulsion of all colonizers and usurpers. These righteous and admirable ideas of restoration would vanish quickly unfortunately. To attain support from the Soviet Union, and as a means of internationalizing its representation of the Palestinian people, the PLO dropped these ideas in late 1973 and began secret contacts with the ‘Israelis’ as well as Zionist sympathizers in the West. The PLO leadership was prepared to give away all of the Palestinian people’s rights for a “mini-state”; for normalization with Zionism (7). Palestinians were quite aware of the PLO’s treachery and due to this, many found themselves supporting Hamas because the Islamic Resistance was unequivocally committed to liberating every inch of Palestine.

Which brings us to the origins of this rotten Avnery-repeated hasbara which surmises that Shin Bet directly created or indirectly facilitated the growth of Hamas: the ‘Israeli’ military-intelligence establishment, through and through, top to bottom, in a clear Zionist PSYOP to discredit the Resistance. There is no Arab source for this scandalous ‘bombshell’. Two pieces and two pieces only are incessantly quoted regarding the alleged ‘Israeli creation’ of Hamas; one piece is from the normally-reliable Global Research, entitled “Hamas is a creation of Mossad (8),” and the other is from the Zionist propaganda rag The Wall Street Journal, entitled “How Israel Helped To Spawn Hamas (9).”

The Global Research piece staggeringly quips that “Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length,” simply because Hamas rejected the treasonous Oslo Accords which legitimized the Zionist theft of Palestine. A brazen assertion if there ever was one, especially considering Hamas is resisting Zionist occupation and Sharon is one of the worst and most animalistic Zionist war criminals to ever set foot in Palestine. The source for the claims in the Global Research drivel is none other than ‘Israeli’ historian Ze’ev Sternhell, a professional hasbaranik for the usurping regime and a Zionist war criminal who served as a Golani Brigades commander in multiple ‘Israeli’ wars of expansion, including al-Naksa. Sternhell views ‘Israeli’ war crimes during al-Naksa as a “return to humanity” and al-Nakba as a “a miracle” and “a historic event informed by an almost metaphysical dimension.” Sternhell also unashamedly admits, “I am not only a Zionist, I am a super-Zionist. For me, Zionism was and remains the right of the Jews to control their fate and their future (10).” Even though that “future” is built on the bodies of murdered Palestinians, on top of ethnically cleansed land. Sternhell on Hamas is about as credible as Paul Wolfowitz on WMDs in now-annihilated Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal is a propaganda rag of ultra-Zionist media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Everything that it publishes benefits Zionism

It must be noted that the Wall Street Journal is an influential hasbara rag owned by notorious ultra-Zionist Rupert Murdoch, a multi-billionaire with Orthodox Jewish roots who is deeply concerned about the Jewish ‘state’, who is tremendously connected to the Zionist inner circle that carried out the 9/11 false flag attack and who is friends with a plethora of prominent ‘Israeli’ war criminals (11). Also, Murdoch’s Jewish mother makes it a point to routinely convene with a supremacist rabbi from the Melbourne branch of Chabad Lubavitch (12). The fact that a piece depicting Hamas as a creation of the Zionist regime would appear in a paper with a heavy pro-‘Israel’ bias is proof in and of itself that this information only benefits Zionism and only hurts the Resistance. “How Israel Helped To Spawn Hamas” is loaded with Zionist ‘perennial victim’ propaganda to a suffocating extent and its only sources are half a dozen officials from the Zionist occupation army, all of whom brag about their close contacts and interactions with Hamas at its very inception. This however, is the farthest thing from concrete evidence.The military of the Jewish ‘state’ is not a reliable source on any level; it is trained in the art of deception and this art is embedded in its protocol. Lying, cheating, subverting, distorting, all represent the actions of the ‘Israeli’ military in its attempts to defend the Zionist entity from criticism and there is no better example of this than the skullduggery on full display during the Operation Cast Lead genocide (13). The psychological warfare was global, with official Zionist occupation army spokespersons and unofficial Zionist fanatics engaging in an international media assault against anyone pointing out the Zionist entity’s crimes against humanity in illegally besieged Gaza (14).

The martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas. Murdered by the Zionist entity on March 22, 2004. Palestine still sheds tears for this giant; this hero.

Ironically, the lone Palestinian quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s piece of hasbara is a supporter of Hamas who vehemently denied that his group had any association with the Zionist regime. The piece also made numerous attempts to smear the righteous martyr Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, founder of Hamas, by depicting him as a Zionist collaborator and downplaying ‘Israeli’ aggression against him. Avnery echoes the downplaying in his piece, “Yet it took Shabak more than a year before it arrested Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the Hamas leader.” His insinuation is insulting. The Sheikh was known to all in the Arab world as a staunch force against Zionism and its illegal occupation of all of Palestine. There were countless threats on his life at the hands of Shin Bet, Mossad and elite units of IOF since 1987. His arrests, imprisonments and tortures that followed during his time in lock-up are also well-known; these ‘Israeli’ measures are particularly despised and decried because the Sheikh was a blind man and confined to a wheelchair, an example of his monumental courage as well as ‘Israel’s’ legendary cowardice.

Uri Avnery and the Zionist writer behind the putrid Wall Street Journal hasbara should be reminded of the ‘Israeli’ oppression of the Sheikh, as well as the two public assassination attempts against him, with the second one of course, being a ‘success’ for the Zionist regime. On March 22nd, 2004, an ‘Israeli’ helicopter gunships fired missiles into the Islamic Association Mosque in al-Sabra neighborhood of central Gaza City as Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and dozens of worshipers were leaving after the completion of Fajr, the Islamic dawn prayer. The savage Zionist attack not only murdered the 66-year old wheelchair-bound Sheikh, but at least 7 Palestinian civilians and gravely wounded 17 others, including the Sheikh’s two sons (15). This also serves as a destroyer of Avnery’s sheepish claim that the Zionist entity has some sort of affinity for mosques, as if the 34 mosques totally destroyed in Operation Cast Lead (16) and more than six decades of Zionist destruction, desecration and confiscation of Palestinian religious properties (17) weren’t proof enough.

Hezbollah According To Avnery: “Encouraged” By The Zionist Entity

Hezbollah, the righteous Islamic Resistance of Lebanon, was NOT created by 'Israel' or encouraged by it; Hezbollah has been a thorn in the side of Zionism from the very beginning of time.

The second target of Uri Avnery’s orientalist-supremacist assault on indigenous Islamic Resistance is Hezbollah, the righteous Islamic Resistance of Lebanon. Avnery elevates himself to another level in this section however as he transcends mere orientalism. To make it extraordinarily clear, what Avnery did with this piece vis-à-vis the oppressed people of Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah is a gross perversion of the historical record and a dastardly insult to any and every soul who fought and died in the struggle against the illegal 22-year Zionist occupation of Lebanese land.

Avnery writes, “The Israeli soldiers were received as liberators {in Southern Lebanon} — liberators from the PLO, which had turned this area into a state within a state.” What a monumentally detestable lie. The people of Southern Lebanon have been vigilantly opposed to Zionism even prior to the creation of ‘Israel,’ as they were quite aware of the original Zionist intention to colonize and ethnically cleanse Lebanese land up to the Litani River as part of ‘Greater Israel’. The people of Southern Lebanon did not forget the Salha Mosque Massacre of 1948, in which Zionist terrorists marched 105 Lebanese men, women and children into the mosque of the small village and didn’t stop shooting until everyone was dead. The people of Southern Lebanon did not forget the Houla Massacre, also of 1948, in which ‘Israeli’ occupation forces burned 85 Lebanese civilians alive and ethnically cleansed nearly 11,000 Lebanese from their lands (18). And during the 1978 Zionist invasion, Operation Litani, and the 1982 Zionist invasion, Operation Peace For Galilee, Palestinians and Lebanese fought together against ‘Israel’s’ aggression, with many Lebanese even comprising the ranks of Palestinian Resistance groups (19).

Sayyed Musa al-Sadr: the spiritual godfather of Lebanese Resistance who Uri Avnery completely ignored in his "analysis.

Avnery’s next lie, is this one, “It took the Shi’ites just a few weeks to realize that they {the Zionist invaders} had no intention of leaving. So, for the first time in their history, they rebelled.” Where to begin with this orientalist-supremacist inanity? The Zionist intent to spread division through sectarian rhetoric is obvious, deliberate and trashy. Shi’a are not the only religious group in Southern Lebanon and they, like the smaller communities of Sunni, Druze and Christians, were acutely aware of the Zionists’ machinations to steal and divide their lands, hence their Resistance to the occupation from genesis. Avnery’s history is off by about two decades; the uprising against the Zionist occupation was not the first uprising in the history of the Lebanese Shi’a. The righteous, charismatic and unifying Lebanese-Iranian cleric, Sayyed Musa al-Sadr, who disappeared in Libya in 1978, was an inspiration to the abjectly impoverished Shi’a of Southern Lebanon, as well as the other ethnic and religious communities, and as early as 1960, the Shi’a were protesting for equality and an end to the terrible discrimination that they had dealt with for decades.

Sayyed Musa al-Sadr is the missing link in Avnery’s hasbara festival. He founded the Amal Movement in 1975 in hopes of deterring ‘Israeli’ aggression against Lebanon, maximizing the struggle to liberate Palestine and reforming the Lebanese political system which was disgustingly set up on ethno-sectarian lines by French colonialism. When the Sayyed vanished in 1978, it threw Amal into chaos. A power struggle ensued and many members who wanted to maintain their dignity and righteousness and preserve the Sayyed’s teachings, broke away.

These breakaway members would join the growing number of revolutionary youth inspired by architect of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Khomeini, preeminent Lebanese religious authority Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah and revolutionary Lebanese cleric Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, who was later brutally assassinated by the Zionist regime along with his wife and son on February 16th, 1992. Hezbollah had a brotherly working relationship with the PLO while it clung to its righteous and revolutionary principles, with the two coordinating numerous retaliatory attacks against the Zionist occupation as early as 1973, 9 years before Hezbollah was officially founded with its trademark name. But as the PLO began its shift towards collaboration and increased its corrupt, abusive policies towards both the Palestinian refugees and the poverty-stricken Lebanese Shi’a, its relations with Hezbollah badly deteriorated (20).

Nabih Berri: head of Amal and current Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament; Berri and his thugs did the dirty work of 'Israel' during the Lebanese civil war by fighting Hezbollah and the Palestinian refugees.

Meanwhile, when the dust settled in the battle to control Amal, it was current Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri who emerged as the head. Under his command, and in collusion with the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad, Amal launched the ‘War of the Camps,’ besieging, shelling, assaulting and starving the Palestinians in Lebanon’s refugee camps for over three years and spilling the blood of thousands, including women and children (21). Women who attempted to escape the War of the Camps to attain supplies for their children were shot dead by Amal snipers (22). To this day, Berri strives to deprive the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon their basic human rights (23), and unlike the other war criminals of the Lebanese civil war, a conflict started and sustained by the Zionist entity (24), Berri refuses to apologize for the horrific crimes that his militiamen committed (25); he refuses to admit that Amal performed a great service for the Zionist entity and that it committed high treason against the cause of Arab liberation. If Sayyed Musa al-Sadr is alive and well, he is shaking his head in sheer disgust and if he has passed away, then he is spinning in his grave over what Amal became in the wake of his disappearance.

While the leader of Amal seeks to maliciously hurt Palestinians, Hezbollah enjoys more than 90% support from the Palestinian refugees confined to camps (20). The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon offers the Palestinian refugees social services and carts water into the camps on a daily basis (26). Hezbollah has guarded the Palestinian people of the camps from any and every threat since its official birth in 1982, with its mujahideen giving their very lives for their brothers and sisters, and Palestinians humbly and triumphantly acknowledge this (27). While Amal and the Syrian regime starved the Palestinian refugees, Hezbollah smuggled food to those in need. While Amal sniped women and children, Hezbollah fought Zionism and its proxies, direct and indirect, including Amal. While Amal embarrassed the memory of Sayyed Musa al-Sadr, Hezbollah fought to honor it.

Avnery actually had the gall to pen this ‘nugget’: “To outflank Amal, Israel encouraged a small, more radical, rival: God’s Party, Hezbollah.” No further analysis is needed; the facts of history laid out above in meticulous detail lay waste to the former Irgun terrorist’s nonsense. Because Hezbollah is the only power to militarily defeat the usurping Zionist entity, not once, but twice, in 2000 and 2006, it shouldn’t be too strenuous to comprehend why Avnery would purposefully and horrendously distort history to smear this group of righteous men. Axiomatically, he was merely behaving like the Zionist he is and doing his utmost to defend the precious Talmudic enclave built upon the bodies of slaughtered Palestinians and Lebanese that he just so happens to call ‘home.’

Avnery On Egypt’s Ikhwan: Geopolitical Idiocy

The Muslim Brotherhood is not what it used to be and not, by any means, what it seems.

The frequent use of the term “Islamist” throughout “Shukran, Israel” is one of the largest indicators that the piece is written from a hyper-orientalist perspective. It is the ultimate sign of ignorance regarding all matters pertaining to Islam. Originating in the bigoted minds of French ‘scholars’ a little over 250 years ago, the term was popularized by the ‘war on terror’, an Orwellian, neo-‘Israeli’ declaration of global war on all nations resisting the hegemonic aspirations of the Zionist Power Configuration that was designed entirely by Zionist warmongers (28). It is a term that has been rejected by all scholars and clerics of note in the Islamic world, Sunni and Shi’a alike; anyone who uses this term, whether knowingly or unknowingly, has fallen into the Zionist trap. Avnery falls into the ‘knowingly’ category.

Avnery accurately points out that the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun; Ikhwan for short) was created in Egypt 20 years before al-Nakba and because of the fervent anti-Zionist stance of its founder, the great martyr, Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, it sent volunteers to fight against the creation of the usurping regime. Many Ikhwan members valiantly died fighting for the preservation and freedom of Palestine. He also accurately renders that with the expansion of ‘Israel’ during al-Naksa (and all of the brutality before it, which Avnery conveniently fails to mention), Ikhwan’s popularity soared.

But what Avnery left out is that with the martyrdom of al-Banna at the hands of the Egyptian monarchy, and the subsequent martyrdom of his spiritual successor, the highly-revered Syed Qutb, at the hands of the justifiably paranoid Nasser government, the moral fiber that held Ikhwan together plummeted. And while Ikhwan still provided vast social services to the people of Egypt, everything from housing to education, food to health care, its allegiances shifted away from Palestine and the oppressed peoples exploited by imperialism and colonialism, paying homage to them only in rhetoric. Ikhwan found a home with the devilish, reactionary House of Saud, which became its principal and habitual financier, as well as support from the CIA, which used it as a tool against Nasser and future endeavors in psychological warfare to mask aggression against Islamic countries (29).

The relationship between the usurping Zionist entity and the House of Saud has become so close, one cannot determine where 'Israel' begins and where Saudi Arabia ends.

Flush with Saudi funds and CIA protection, Ikhwan expanded, establishing branches throughout the Arab world. It is integral to understand that Saudi money… equals Zionist money. The House of Saud has been a dear ally of the Zionist entity since the earliest days of Saudi Arabia’s establishment, in which the kingship promised its British masters that it had “no objection” with Palestine being given to “the poor Jews (30).” Decades and decades of collaboration followed, with a Zionist-Saudi nexus being established to not only undermine Palestine and its fight for liberation at all costs, but all nationalist Arab-Islamic movements that sought freedom from Zionist domination. Since al-Nakba, Saudi princes and government officials have regularly met with Zionist entity leaders. The House of Saud applauded as the Zionist entity massacred more than 1,400 Lebanese in 2006, stood silent as it mass murdered 431 children in illegally besieged Gaza in 2008-09 and is now actively working with ‘Israeli’ intelligence to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran (31). Thus, unequivocally, Ikhwan, is a Zionist tool. Nothing remains of the original Ikhwan model set up by the great martyr Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, excluding Hamas; nothing at all.And it is here where the geopolitical idiocy of Avnery is exposed. He wrote his piece under the impression that Ikhwan hates ‘Israel’ but despite this, it should thank the Zionist entity for its meteoric rise to power. It is the exact opposite that is true. Ikhwan should thank the Zionist entity and shake the hands of its leaders because that is what friends do; that is what allies do. The Zionist entity and Ikhwan are partners in the repression of the Palestinian cause and Arab-Islamic Resistance in general.The multiple factions of Ikhwan across the region, now backed by GCC giant Qatar too, are ready, willing and able to kowtow to all demands of the Zionist entity and its Lobby-controlled surrogates in the United States (32). Egypt’s Ikhwan has already given guarantees to the Zionist-occupied United States government that it will respect the traitorous Camp David Accords (33). Ikhwan’s denials of this are overridden by the fact that Zionist-occupied Washington has pledged $150 million to the Ikhwan-controlled Egyptian Parliament (34). That kind of money simply wouldn’t be on the table without guarantees for the Zionist entity.While Tunisian youth parties move to criminalize normalization with the usurping Zionist regime (35), Ikhwan’s Tunisia branch, al-Nahda, opposes this revolutionary move and confirmed it during a recent trip to Washington D.C. at WINEP, the research wing of AIPAC (36). While in the American capital, al-Nahda also forged links with the US Congress’ top Zionists, including Joe Lieberman and Gary Ackerman (37). And there is no place where Ikhwan is dirtier or where its partnership with Zionism is more evident than in Syria, where the powerful Saudi-Qatari-funded branch has rigorously worked with Mossad and its American partners in the Zionist-founded, Zionist-controlled National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to destabilize Syria, overthrow the vastly-popular Assad government and replace it with an anti-Resistance regime totally subservient to the House of Saud and the Jewish supremacist entity (38). All of these acts of treason must be part of Ikhwan’s “luster,” as Avnery calls it.

The closeness between the Zionist entity and Ikhwan deepens in the shadows.

As the shadow relationship between ‘Israel’ and Ikhwan flourishes, the Zionist media continues its relentless campaign of incitement against Ikhwan, depicting it as an existential threat to the Zionist entity. This too is by design. While there indeed are revolutionary aspirations and anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and anti-Western sentiments amongst the Arab youth, the “Arab Spring”, a name originally conceived by Zionist warmonger Charles Krauthammer in 2005 (39), is an operation of mass Zionist subversion launched by the international intelligence directorate of ‘Israel’ and its global network of sayanim to erode the sovereignties of all neighboring Arab states under the guise of “democracy” and foster the illusion of an atmosphere of hostility against the Jewish ‘state’, setting the stage for another 1967-style war of Zionist expansion (40). ‘Israeli’ military measures are already underway in the Sinai to recapture the territory it abandoned under the false pretext of ‘peace (41).’ It isn’t expected that Avnery would reveal this kind of information, nor is it expected that Avnery should even be aware of it. What is expected is that Avnery, a Zionist living on stolen Palestinian land, keeps his immensely moronic opinions of Arab-Islamic history and Arab-Islamic Resistance to himself.

Avnery On The Islamic Republic Of Iran: Unadulterated Zionist Audacity

Proudly sporting his peace activist 'Mask of Zion,' Uri Avnery repeats the same warmongering Zionist lies against Iran.

The final target of “Shukran, Israel” is none other than the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. Strangely, Avnery fully admits in the piece that there was a treacherous and incestuous relationship between the US-UK-installed Shah and the Zionist entity. He notes the fortunes made by ‘Israeli’ arms dealers from selling guns to the brutal Shah regime. He notes that Shin Bet provided training to SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, including in the area of torture. He notes that the Shah built oil pipelines to the Zionist entity, plundering Iran’s natural resources to please his ‘Israeli’ bosses and went as far as allowing ‘Israeli’ generals to use Iran as a launchpad to train Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq to undermine the revolutionary government that toppled the monarchy in Baghdad. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, led by the aforementioned Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Khomeini, overthrew the Shah and vowed never to cooperate with the Zionist entity again. Not only for the sake of Iran but for the sake of humanity.Why then, should the Islamic Republic be thanking the entity that helped a demonic dictator oppress and torture its people for nearly three decades? According to Avnery, because the Revolution’s Resistance to Zionism has helped unify the nation and without it, the Islamic Revolution would have gone nowhere. More unadulterated Zionist audacity wrapped in orientalist-supremacist trash. The real reason for including Iran in “Shukran, Israel” is revealed with this statement, “It seems that all Iranian factions — including the opposition — now support the Iranian effort to obtain a nuclear bomb of their own, ostensibly to deter an Israeli nuclear attack.” Avnery is spreading Zionist warmongering propaganda while masquerading as a ‘peace’ activist. Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. And despite all of the bellicose rhetoric in the Zionist media to the contrary, there isn’t a lick of evidence to substantiate the claims. Period (42). And the “Iranian factions” mentioned by Avnery aren’t unified in their desire to acquire a non-existent nuclear weapon, they are unified in their commitment to defend Iran from Zionist aggression (43). Avnery has an ostensible problem with getting his facts straight, like all Zionists do.

Iran has been targeted by the Zionist entity since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979

After the overthrow of the Shah, still the Zionist entity has tormented the Islamic Republic of Iran. It backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, a disastrous act of aggression that left 400,000 Iraqis and over one million Iranians dead after 8 years of Western-fueled war. It launched an all-out hasbara assault in an attempt to malign the revolution, disseminating ‘Israeli’-intelligence-cooked lies about backroom weapons deals between Khomeini and the Zionist occupation. It has armed, funded and worked intimately with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an international terrorist outfit responsible for the deaths of more than 16,000 Iranians since 1979. It has instigated unrest on the streets of Tehran with the NED-engineered “Green Revolution.” It has attacked Iran with vicious cyber warfare; yes, the Stuxnet Virus was made in ‘Israel.’ And as of recent, its Mossad has infiltrated several levels of Iranian society to carry out acts of war (44).So should Iran thank ‘Israel’ for ordering its Mossad to assassinate 32-year old nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan (45)? Should Iran thank ‘Israel’ for ordering its Mossad to pose as CIA agents to recruit Jundallah terrorists to carry out acts of mass murder against Iranian civilians (46)? Should Iran thank ‘Israel’ for ordering its Mossad and its proxy, the MEK, to bomb an Iranian missile base and murder up to 40 soldiers in cold blood (47)? Should Iran thank ‘Israel’ for calling on the world to aerially and navally blockade Iran, even after its lobbies in Europe and America pressured those governments into passing crippling sanctions against the Islamic Republic (48)? The answer of course, is no; no, it absolutely, positively shouldn’t. And it is just downright repugnant for anyone to suggest that it should. “Shukran, Israel” is the embodiment of this repugnance. 

~ End Of Part I ~

 Next: Uri Avnery’s support for war criminal Barack Obama, the aggression against Libya and the ongoing destabilization of Syria are exposed, the current state of the International Palestine Solidarity Movement is picked apart in graphic detail and a call for revolution is issued…

 Sources:

(1) Shukran, Israel by Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com

(2) The Wandering Hugh by Gilad Atzmon, deLIBERATION

(3) Uri Avnery Interview by Jon Elmer, The Progressive

(4) Libya: The Zionist Dragon And The Drums Of War; Section – Conclusion: Purim And Occupation by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(5) “Jews Brought About The Existence Of The ENTIRE Creation” Says Rebbe Menachem Schneerson! by Nahida Izzat, Salem News

(6) The Truth About The Talmud: A Documented Exposé Of Supremacist Rabbinic Hate Literature by Michael A. Hoffman II, Independent History and Research

(7) The Hidden History Of Zionism; Chapter 13 – A Strategy For Revolution, Pages 126-129 by Ralph Schoenman, Veritas Press

(8) Hamas Is A Creation Of Mossad by Hassane Zerouky, Global Research

(9) How Israel Helped To Spawn Hamas by Andrew Higgins, The Wall Street Journal

(10) Amazing Grace: An Interview With Ze’ev Sternhell by Ari Shavit, Haaretz

(11) Murdoch’s Deeply Hidden Jewish Roots – A Biography by Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press(12) The Rabbi And The Dame by Henry Benjamin, J-Wire

(13) Israeli Lies by Dr. Elias Akleh, Counter Currents

(14) Lies And Israel’s War Crimes by Ben White, The Electronic Intifada

(15) Israel Assassinates Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by The Electronic Intifada/The Palestinian Center For Human Rights

(16) Cash Shortage Hampers Rebuilding Of Mosques Destroyed by Israel by Eva Bartlett, Inter Press Service

(17) Destruction Of Waqf: The Grave Offences Of The Israeli State by Mya Guarnieri, Al-Akhbar English

(18) Palestine; Chapter – Zionist Terror by Harun Yahya, Harun Yahya Books

(19) A War That Never Occurred by Professor As’ad Abu Khalil, The Angry Arab News Service

(20) Will Hezbollah Support Right To Work For Palestinian Refugees? by Dr. Franklin Lamb, The Palestine Chronicle

(21) 13 Years After Massacre, Beirut’s Palestinians Are Still Under Siege by Stephen J. Sosebee, Washington Report On Middle East Affairs

22) Waging War On The Camps, Once Again by Andrea Becker, The Electronic Intifada

(23) Living War: Palestinians Refugees In Lebanon by Stefan Christoff, The Electronic Intifada

(24) The Anniversary Of The Lebanese Civil War: The Wars That Never End by Professor As’ad Abu Khalil, The Angry Arab News Service

(25) Lebanon In The Eyes Of Palestinian Refugees by Qassem Qassem, Al-Akhbar English

(26) Interview With David Lewis: Negotiating With Hezbollah by PBS Frontline World

(27) Bourj El-Barajneh: Searching For Meaning In A Refugee Camp by Ramzy Baroud, the Palestine Chronicle

(28) September 11, 2001: Zionist Shock Therapy And The Birth Of The Lie by Martin Iqbal, Empire Strikes Black

(29) Washington’s Secret History With The Muslim Brotherhood by Ian Johnson, The New York Review Of Books

(30) Saudi Monarchy Founder Assured UK On Palestine by Press TV

(31) Saudi Arabia, Zionism, Peace And The Palestinian Cause by Haytham A. K. Radwan, Intifada Palestine

(32) The Ugly Face Of The Muslim Brotherhood by Professor As’ad Abu Khalil, Al-Akhbar English

(33) U.S.: Muslim Brotherhood Gave Assurances On Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty by Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz

(34) US Pledges $150 Million To Help Egypt’s Transition by Reuters Africa

(35) Tunisians To Launch Campaign Against Normalization With Israel by The Middle East Monitor

(36) Mr. Ghannouchi Goes To The Washington Institute by Maidhc Ó Cathail, The Passionate Attachment

(37) An-Nahda And US Zionists by Professor As’ad Abu Khalil, The Angry Arab News Service

(38) Syria Under Fire: Zionist Destabilization Hits Critical Mass by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(39) The Arab Spring Of 2005 by Charles Krauthammer, The Seattle Times

(40) TUT Podcast Jan 10, 2012: Sheikh Imran Hosein by The Ugly Truth

(41) PSYWAR: The Fake Fall Of Tripoli And The Zionist Dragon’s Butchery Across Palestine II by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(42) US, Israel Agree: Iran Not Building Nukes by Ray McGovern, Antiwar.com

(43) Iran Opposition Will Unite With Government Should Israel Attack by Haaretz

(44) Ofergate: The Latest Zionist Propaganda Blitz Against Iran by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(45) Sunday Times: Mossad Agents Behind Iran Scientist Assassination by Haaretz

(46) False Flag by Mark Perry, Foreign Policy Magazine

(47) Mossad-MEK May Have Bombed Iranian Missile Base, 40 Dead And Wounded by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam

(48) ‘Massive’ Blockade Needed To Stop Iran Threat, Steinitz Says by Flavia Krause-Jackson and Tal Barak Harif, Bloomberg Business Week

 Source of Article: Mask of Zion

*********

Jonathan Azaziah is an Iraqi-American Muslim poet, activist, analyst, writer and journalist from Brooklyn, New York, currently residing in Florida. His articles, poems and music predominantly deal with international Zionism and the cruel effect that it has on the world’s oppressed people. He is also a staff writer for Pakistan’s premier alternative media outlet, Opinion Maker, and a frequent guest and co-host of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement’s Ugly Truth radio broadcast.

by Stuart Littlewood

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in London recently.

Did anyone know? Did western media care?

No. Not until reports appeared that Jewish community leaders cancelled a meeting with him after intervention by Israeli PM Netanyahu’s office and Israel’s embassy in London, and Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi condemned the move as “seeking to suppress and manipulate Jewish public opinion”.

It was also typical of Netanyahu’s “persistent efforts” to prevent dialogue, she said, according to Ma’an News.

Even then, western media were much interested.

I put it to the Palestinian ambassador in London, Prof Manuel Hassassian, that such a blunder by Israel was a gift to any alert PR/Public Affairs team. Why didn’t the Palestinian Authority seize it?

Hassassian denied the Palestinians asked to meet with the Jewish community.

It seems odd that Ashrawi, a shrewd, well respected politician and close colleague of prime minister Salam Fayyad, could have got it wrong. Or indeed the normally reliable Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which reported that Hassassian himself, together with British diplomats, had pushed for Jewish leaders to meet with Abbas http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/british-jews-cancel-meeting-with-abbas-in-wake-of-pressure-from-netanyahu-1.408688.

Confused? Me too. Whatever the truth, the Palestinian administration is in the habit of missing open goals. It has dumbed right down. The London embassy’s smart new palestinianmissionuk.com website carries a selection of items from news agencies but nothing journalists can get their teeth into. It doesn’t introduce us to Palestinian chiefs and their ‘team’. It offers no strategic briefing material on current events. And, crucially, there is no attempt to set the news agenda.

Information the embassy sends direct to people like me is mostly notification of social events and similar ‘froth’.

After all these years, and with momentous opportunities and threats looming, Ramallah still fails to give a good account of itself. Is that by accident or design?

If it was never Abbas’s intention to meet Jewish community leaders, what exactly did he come to the UK for?

What passes for ‘success’

The embassy says his “successful visit” included meetings with Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister. President Abbas also met with opposition leader Ed Miliband and other parliamentarians. In addition, he met the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders to brief them on the ongoing violations of places of worship and the Judaization taking place in East Jerusalem.

Cameron told him: “Obviously, as a friend of Israel and a friend of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people, we want to see a strong, democratic, peaceful Israel alongside a strong, democratic and peaceful Palestine. We believe that is achievable, but we can’t achieve it without the two parties coming together and talking and discussing. In the end, this two-state solution can only come about from the two parties talking to each other. We cannot want it more than you want it.

“So, we wish you well… and we say that as a friend of Israel but also a very strong friend of the Palestinian people…”

To which I understand Abbas replied: “Of course, nothing can be achieved without negotiations… we hope that there will be something tangible as a result of these negotiations.

“Of course, time is of the essence; there must be speed, we must be fast in achieving those things because the settlements and the whole thing will go on – seeing the settlements going on, is going to help everything; it’s what stands in the face of everything at the same time. So, settlements have to stop. Settlements have to stop in order for us to be able to continue our negotiations; to come to some sort of solution and a solution which will encompass the vision of the Palestinian state to come in the future.

“I personally know very well that you have a very balanced relationship, be that towards Israel or the Palestinian Authority. This at the same time is of great importance because you could play a political role, so to speak, so that we can find the balance that we all want to seek. We always need your help, sir.”

Good grief, is that the best Ramallah’s speech-writers can do? And what was that about Britain’s Israel-firster government having “a very balanced relationship”…?

Where was Abbas’s concern for Gaza, or isn’t Gaza part of Palestine any more? Doesn’t the blockade of Gaza have to end before Palestinians even think about getting once again embroiled in futile negotiations?

The idea, voiced by Zionist Cameron and repeated by Abbas, that nothing can be achieved without negotiation is of course utterly false. There’s no mention – on either side – of international law enforcement and the essential role it must play before any negotiations can be considered fair or honourable.

Hague said after his meeting with Abbas: “I stressed the importance Britain attaches to a secure and universally recognised Israel living alongside a sovereign and viable Palestinian state, based on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem the future capital of both states, and a fair settlement for refugees.”

Only weeks earlier Hague, a fanatical Israel flag-waver, was preparing to betray the Palestinians by abstaining if their quest for statehood was pushed to a vote at the UN.

More pretty words devoid of meaning were paraded in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press release: “We continue to share the hopes of the Palestinian leadership for a lasting and just peace in the Holy Land, and we pray for the courage on all sides to break the current deadlock. Young people in Israel and in the Palestinian territories long for justice and stability and they must not be let down. We were deeply grateful to President Abbas for taking time to share with us his concerns and aspirations.”

The only genuine boost he received was a remark by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, referring to Israel’s illegal settlements: “Once you place physical facts on the ground which make it impossible to deliver what everyone has for years agreed is the ultimate destination, then you do immense damage.

“It’s an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise upon which negotiations have taken place for years and that is why we have expressed our concerns as a government in increasingly forceful terms.”

He prefaced his comments by saying there was “no stronger supporter of Israel than myself as a beacon of democracy in the region”. It’s a sad reflection on the Westminster scene when Clegg, a Liberal Democrat and supposedly possessed of certain principles, feels obliged to say such a silly thing when it’s tantamount to defending the indefensible.

Didn’t Abbas remind him about Israel’s abduction and imprisonment without trial of the 26 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council including its head, Dr Aziz Dweik? Dweik is reported to have been arrested by Israel three times since 2002 and twice held without formal charges. This wholesale kidnapping of democratically elected officials underlines yet again Israel’s disregard for international law and the absurdity of its claim to be the only beacon of democracy in the Middle East.

So, does Abbas seriously believe his visit was “successful”? This dreary ‘grey suit’ of a man might have done better to just meet ordinary people… people like the 40,000 or so displaced Palestinians living in the UK and longing to return, and the numerous activist organisations that devote much time and energy putting across the Palestinian case, slapping down Israel’s propaganda lies and generally doing the job that Abbas and his lacklustre Fatah outfit have failed to do.

That’s if he wanted their ongoing support. Maybe he’s not bothered.

Under orders not to rock the Israeli boat?

Some time ago Hamas complained that the Palestinian Authority was not getting its message across thanks to “poorly qualified or unqualified spokespersons with inadequate political and linguistic abilities”. Diplomacy had failed and Palestinians needed “professional spokespersons with excellent knowledge of the world and mastery of foreign languages, especially English, to tell the world in a straightforward manner that Israel is a murderer, liar and land thief…”

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, who ran rings round the Palestinians whilst ambassador in London, recently addressed the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East. He said: “And how many times have members of this Council – and many others – repeated: ‘settlements are the primary obstacle to peace’?… The primary obstacle to peace is not settlements. The primary obstacle to peace is the so-called ‘claim of return’. Let me repeat that: the major hurdle to peace is the Palestinian’s insistence on the so-called ‘claim of return’ [he means the ‘right of return’].”

Any press team worth its salt could make mincemeat of Prosor. A competent Palestinian administration would have had a news release in every activist’s inbox and on every mainstream editor’s desk within hours and made spokespersons (speaking perfect English) available to follow through with additional briefings and further comment. It would have gone worldwide via all embassies and missions. But Prosor broadcasts his toxic nonsense non-stop, knowing there will be no effective rebuke from the Palestinians.

It is six years since the Palestinian Authority/PLO was urged to have all their key people professionally trained in media skills. They haven’t done so. Consequently for the last six critical years the Palestinian people have continued to lose ground.

The Palestinian High Command behaves as if under strict orders not to rock the boat and not to make waves or even the slightest ripple. They continue to squander their chances and make little impact even though truth and justice are on their side. So Israel has been the undeserving winner in the propaganda war.

Will the Palestinians ever seize the opportunity and gear up properly for the communications struggle to win justice? If it’s left to the likes of Abbas the answer is no and the outcome will be disastrous.

As campaigner Robert Stiver commented a few days ago, we need “ideas and commitments on how we can finally get serious, via a mass uprising, to ‘out’ Zionism beyond the choir and bring an end to the Palestinians’ unbearable torment”.

But hopes of mobilizing the necessary numbers are thwarted by the continuing presence of Mahmoud Abbas. His presidential term ran out long ago and he’s clinging to power unlawfully. He needs to step down or be removed. Someone with unquestionable legitimacy and true leadership qualities must fill the void and deploy skilled resources.

On Abbas’s watch disunity has triumphed. He rides roughshod over the Basic Law and has a crime sheet as long as your arm. He’ll be remembered mostly for doing the Israeli Occupation Force’s dirty work.

Another problem is chief negotiator Saeb Erekat who has occupied that vitally important position for nearly 20 years and achieved… well, what? He must be the most unsuccessful negotiator on the planet. Why is he still there?

If Palestinians are to retain worldwide sympathy and support, build additional strength and galvanise the whole movement into action against the corrupt political

class, they will have to find leaders of a much higher calibre. And fast.

Stuart Littlewood

2 February 2012

********

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.

Franklin Lamb

Shatila Camp, Beirut

We all know it is not just American and Lebanese politicians who use Palestinian refugees as political footballs during electoral campaigns. But they are currently the two most egregious apart from most Zionist politicians in temporarily occupied Palestine.

In the US, it would not be a difficult task to find even more revolting and groveling intellectual “half-men” to borrow a phrase from Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar Assad than Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich during their recent “debate” in Jacksonville Florida.

While a high percentage of Republican Jewish voters will go to the polls in this winner take all primary, Mitt and Newt are also pondering their national fundraising networks as they gratuitously misrepresented history and betrayed their claimed religious and moral beliefs.

Romney repeated his screed that President Obama “threw Israel under the bus” by following international law, seven UN Security Council Resolution and World opinion by designating the pre-1967 borders as the starting point for peace talks. He also complained that America’s President “disrespected” Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when Obama spoke recently at the UN and mentioned in passing illegal Israeli settlement building but did not discuss retaliatory rockets being fired from Gaza into occupied Palestinian territory.

Genuflecting just as obsequiously to the Zionist lobby, Gingrich insisted to Florida voters once again that “Palestinians are an ‘invented people who historically were considered Jordanians and Syrians.”  No one in the audience was so impolite as to remind the claimed student of history that Jordan did not even exist until created by the pro-Zionist British occupiers of Palestine, well into the 20^th Century, while Palestinians have lived in Palestine for more than 3000 years.  While more than 95% of Zionist colonists have zero historical links to Palestine and their genealogical roots are in Europe, Russia and elsewhere, despite the fact that millions have invaded Palestine seeking free land and US government funded cash and housing handouts.  Morally and legally these colonists have no right to even one grain of sand in Palestine.

Newt again promised his audience that on his first day as President, he will for sure issue an Executive Order moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another violation of International law.

Florida’s nearly 640,000 Jews are just 3.4 percent of Florida’s population. But because they vote in extraordinarily high numbers, they are 6 to 8 percent of Florida’s general election turnout but not of course when it comes to Republican primaries.  Yet one recent poll estimates that 52% of the state’s registered Jewish voters would support a Republican presidential ticket such is their mistrust of Obama and what he might do in a second term with respect to occupied Palestine.

As with his rival Mitt, President Newt’s first foreign trip will be to Israel.   With these latter two pledges Newt joins 19 Presidential primary aspirants who since 1967 have made similar promises. Fortunately, for what is left of American Humanitarian values, not one has been elected President.

Lebanese style anti-Palestinian political speech is more sophisticated and subtle, like the Lebanese people themselves,  and nearly always devolves to the gut wrenching warning, delivered with a straight face,  that “if we allow Palestinian refugees the right to work or to own a home (as required by International Law and currently enjoyed by refugees in 192 other countries) it might encourage them to get lazy and become too comfortable in Lebanon and they might, God save us all, seek naturalization.  And this could interfere with the Palestinian refugees internationally guaranteed Right to Return to their homes in occupied Palestine which Lebanese strongly support for their brotherly and sisterly guests.

Lebanese politicians, including every party and religious grouping bar none, except the Druze and the National Syrian Socialist Party, use voter’s fear of naturalization (in America think immigration) to undercut growing human rights pressure for Lebanon to give Palestinians elementary human rights.

A rare exception for a Lebanese politician shocked many here when earlier this month, to his eternal credit and honor, Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour became the first Lebanese Cabinet member to make an official visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in six years when he toured south Beirut’s Burj al-Barajneh camp before signing a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). The agreement will enable UNRWA for the first time to work in coordination with the Social Affairs Ministry to provide some services to some of the most vulnerable people in the camps.

The lack of employment opportunities for Palestine refugee prolong and intensify their hardship and poverty.  In the five Southern Lebanon camps, according to a recent Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and UN International Labor Organization study, more than 81 per cent of all refugees are living in abject poverty. Young people are particularly affected, with unemployment for Palestinians between 15 and 24 reaching 60%. The employments figures are not must better in the northern camps.

Speaking at the event, Minister Faour, a Druze and member of Walid Jumblatt’s  Progressive Socialist Party,  called on his fellow politicians to follow his lead and experience firsthand conditions in Lebanon’s 12 Refugee camps.  “Whoever wants to rediscover his humanity has to see the living conditions in Palestinian camps in Lebanon” Minister Faour told Lebanon’s Parliament.  “We are used to bringing Palestinians to discussions in fancy hotels and then sending them back to the misery in the camps. We decided to invert these traditions by coming to the camps.”

Unfortunately Minister Abu Faour undercut some of the positive contribution of his visit by emphasizing to the media “the difficult relationship between Lebanon and the Palestinian population. The Lebanese government has consistently declined to grant rights to Palestinian refugees for fear that it would pave the way to naturalization, which it argues would diminish their right to return to Palestine.”

It would be difficult to find one Palestinian in Lebanon, or any advocate of human rights here, who truly believes the Lebanese politicians claimed notion of concern for the sanctity of the Palestinians Right of Return justifies keeping a quarter million human being in the most degrading squalor while outlawing even the right to work or to own a home out of an altruistic concern to keep hallow some of the refugees other international rights.  Palestinian refugees in Lebanon reject more than any of the politicians here any form of settlement, naturalization, implantation or tawtin.  They have a county just across the southern Lebanese border and their goal, now in its 64^th year, is to return without more delay.

Many Palestinians in Lebanon’s camp mention a new energy among their fellow refugees as a result of the continuing, broadening and deepening Arab and Islamic Awakening which erupted one year ago in Tunisia and whose spread continues.

The swelling bud of intifada! is also being observed by foreigners here and as Palestinian camp residents invite Pope Benedict to visit their camps in the Spring during his reported visit to Lebanon, one idea from kids at Ramallah school in Shatila Camp is for the Vicar of Christ to hold a Mass for tens of thousands in the new Cite Sportiff, on the edge this Camp.  For it was at this sports center 30 years ago  that part two of the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla was organized by Israeli and Phalange troops on September 18^th and   for which, like the other 43 hours of uninterrupted  slaughter, no one person has ever been held accountable.

It would be an enormously powerful historic event should Pope Benedict fill Cite Sportiff with people of good will, and there are many such people here like Minister Faour, from all the confessions and political parties, joined by all religious and civil society leaders in Lebanon, and with the Pope’s blessing and admonition for all of us to follow in the path of Mohammad and Jesus and their deciples, that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon might be granted even the most elementary human rights.

**********

Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign.  He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Part I – Two Democratic Elections

There have now been two democratic elections in the Middle East as a consequence of the Arab Spring. One was in Tunisia in October 2011, and the recent staggered elections of December 2011-January 2012 for a lower house of parliament in Egypt.

In both cases Islamist parties did the best. In Tunisia it was the Islamist al-Nahda (Renaissance) party that got 41% of the votes. In Egypt it was Hizb al-hurriya wa al-adala (Freedom and Justice Party), affiliated with country’s Muslim Brotherhood, that got 47% of the votes, while the hard-line Salafi group, the al-Nour (the Light) party got 29%.. In Tunisia the liberal parties came in a collective second with 34% of the votes, but in Egypt they did poorly. The liberal Egyptian Bloc Coalition only managed 8.9% of the vote.

Actually, the biggest surprise was the good showing of the liberals in Tunisia, and not the fact that relatively fair elections put the Islamists in positions of power. No one should be surprised at this result. Why? It has to do with history. While what I describe below is simplified for the sake of brevity, it gives a basically accurate picture of how the past has given us the present we now witness.

Part II – A Very Brief History Lesson

The Middle East has been the home of an evolving Islamic civilization since the 7^th century. Civilization means more than just religion and religious practice–it means values, outlooks, mannerisms, habits of thought and behavior. The dynamic nature of this way of life was such that up to, roughly, the 16^th century every outside invader that pushed its way into the Middle East ended up being “Islamized.” That is, whether they were Turks, Mongols, Crusaders, etc. most ended up adopting an Islamic way of life. But this changed sometime in the late 1500s.

It was about then that the military and economic balance of power between the Islamic world and Christian Europe shifted. From that point on European power allowed incursions into the Middle East by Western invaders who saw Islam and its civilization as inferior. These invaders proved not to be susceptible to “Islamization.”

In fact it was at this point that Western ways began to draw at least a certain class of Middle Easterners away from their traditional lifestyle. Those who became Westernized were largely the people who politically, economically, militarily and educationally interacted with the increasingly powerful Europeans. Many of them became secular in their outlook and some developed principled positions supporting liberal, open societies. Some sought to meld Western technology and educational techniques with Islamic tradition. Others, however, obtained leadership positions in which they behaved (and still behave) in corrupt and dictatorial ways.

It is a mistake to think that this process penetrated deeply within Middle Eastern society. One way to think of the result is in terms of a volcanic landscape. Here you have a thin crust of surface material beneath which is a deep pool of magna under building pressure. When the pressure gets high enough the magna breaks through. The thin crust represents Westernized elites, the magna is the great mass of Middle Easterners who have always identified with Islamic civilization and increasingly resent the penetration of Western culture into their lands. Historically, the resulting occasional volcanic eruptions, if you will, have occurred in the form of revolution–a modern example of which is Iran in 1979.

Of course Tunisia and Egypt had their own brief revolutions which led to democratic elections. You can think of these elections as controlled breakthroughs of the Islamic magna. Given the state of society in the Middle East, the results were predictable.

Part III – The Price of Historical Ignorance

On 22 January 2012 Juan Cole wrote a revealing piece on his blog Informed Comment. It was entitled “South Carolina & Gingrich, Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood.” What Cole notes is that you can get a large number of religious fundamentalists swaying the primary election in South Carolina and the media hardly considers it an event to be looked into. But let religious fundamentalists do well in elections in the Middle East and it automatically generates stereotyping and shallow, inaccurate analyses. Thus, Cole notes:

1. “…it is implicitly deemed illegitimate for Egyptians to be religious or vote for a religious party. But it is legitimate for South Carolinians to be religious, to vote on a religious basis, to seek to impose their religious laws on all Americans.”

2. What if Egyptians voted for religious parties for reasons other than just religion? Given the shallowness of U.S. media coverage how would we ever know? Yet, polls in Egypt indicate that many Egyptian voters chose the Freedom and Justice Party because the Muslim Brotherhood has a reputation for honesty and a commitment to social justice.

3. And finally, “almost no Egyptians think that the revolution against [the military dictatorship of] Mubarak was made to establish a religious state.”

None of this makes much difference to U.S. politicians who usually know little or no relevant history and are therefore oblivious to reality in the Middle East. They are, however, deeply committed to ideologically driven stereotypes and conventions. And there are plenty of special interests out there pushing an Islamophobic message.

How can one ever create reasonable and workable foreign policy under these conditions? The answer is, you can’t. You end up thrashing around this way and that, running scared and talking yourself into war-like scenarios. This is utterly crazy and utterly typical.

Let’s end with a quote from a religious leader who does have a penetrating sense of history, the current Dalai Lama: “Where ignorance is our master there is no possibility of real peace.” Alas, that is reality!

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses

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About the Author

Dr. Lawrence  Davidson has done extensive research and published in the areas of American perceptions of the Middle East, and Islamic Fundamentalism. His two latest publications are Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 1998) and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood  (University Press of Florida, 2001). He has published thirteen articles on various aspects of American perceptions of the Middle East. Dr. Davidson holds a BA from Rutgers, an MA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta.

Supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gather during a rally at al-sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus

by Shamus Cooke

After meeting again to decide Syria’s fate, the Arab League again decided to extend its “monitoring mission” in Syria. However, some Arab League nations under U.S. diplomatic control are clamoring for blood. These countries — virtual sock puppets of U.S. foreign policy — want to declare the Arab League monitoring mission “a failure,” so that military intervention — in the form of a no fly zone — can be used for regime change.

The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the local population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown — including terrorist bombings — and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries “genocide” or “mass murder,” while calling for foreign military intervention.

This is the strategy that the U.S. is using to channel the Arab Spring into the bloody dead end of foreign military intervention.

For example, the U.S. media and government are fanatically giving the impression that, in Syria, the local population would like foreign militarily intervention to overthrow their authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. But facts are stubborn things.

After spinning these lies, The New York Times was forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the Syrian government. These rallies are larger than any pro-government demonstration that the U.S. government could hope to organize for itself. The New York Times reports:

“The turnout [at least tens of thousands — see picture in link] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, the [Syrian] capital, once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest.” (January 13, 2012).

The New York Times is forced to admit that the two largest cities — in a small country — support the government (or at least oppose foreign military intervention).

This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Syrian Qatar Foundation, preformed by the Doha Debates:

“According to the latest opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates, Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign.” (January 2, 2012).

If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations — what about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which the United States has given immense credibility to and which claims to speak for the Syrian people?

The Free Syrian Army — like its Libyan counterpart — appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by route of its ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs:

“Why does the Syrian [government] military not rocket their [Free Syrian Army] position or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire.”

The article also quotes a Free Syrian Army member who states: “Every [Free Syrian Army] group in Turkey has its own job,” Sayeed said. “[The Turks] gave us our freedom to move.” (December 8, 2011).

The article also mentions that the Free Syrian Army is calling for a “no fly zone” over certain regions of Syria, which would destroy the Syrian government military; the possible starting locations of this no fly zone are on the Syrian borders of either Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq — all three are either strong U.S. allies or client states.

A “no fly zone” is the new euphemism that means the U.S. and its European military junior partners in NATO will intervene to use their advanced fighter jets to destroy the Syrian military, as happened in Libya. In Libya the no fly zone evolved into a “no drive zone” and eventually a “no survival” zone for anything resembling the Syrian military — or anybody who armed himself in defense of the Libyan government.

As in Syria, Libya’s largest city, Tripoli, never had large anti-government demonstrations. The anti-Libyan government/pro-U.S. paramilitary group that attacked Libyan forces was so tiny that it took months to take power after 10,000 NATO bombing sorties (bombing missions) that destroyed large portions of Libya’s infrastructure, as documented by the independent Human Rights Investigations.

It’s totally unimaginable that any large section of Syrian society would invite a NATO-backed no fly zone, i.e. war, into Syria. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are too glaring for any Middle Eastern nation not to notice. For the Free Syrian Army to demand a NATO invasion of Syria is enough to label the FSA a U.S. puppet group striving for political power, deserving to be condemned.

This strategy of using a proxy army to undermine an anti-U.S. government has a grisly past. This strategy is celebrated in the book Charlie Wilson’s War, which tells the true story of the U.S. government sending weapons and cash to Islamic extremists to wage a terrorist campaign against the Afghan government, which was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. The attacks eventually led to the Afghan government asking for Soviet military re-enforcements, whose presence in Afghanistan created a degree of popular support for the extremists who eventually became known as the Taliban.

The same scenario also played itself out in Kosovo, where the tiny, U.S.-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began a terrorist campaign against the government of Yugoslavia, intending to separate Kosovo into an independent nation. When the Yugoslav government attempted to defend itself from the KLA — while imitating its violent tactics — the U.S. and other western governments labeled it genocide, and invaded Yugoslavia, calling it a “humanitarian invasion.” To this day the U.S. is one of few nations that recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation while Kosovo faithfully serves the interests of the United States.

The same proxy war strategy — by the U.S. and other European powers — played a crucial role in numerous wars throughout Africa, which culminated in the massive Congo War that killed over five million people, as French journalist Gerard Prunier describes in his book, Africa’s World War.

In Syria history is repeating itself, and some non-U.S. allies are very aware of it. The New York Times reports:

“[Russia's Foreign Minister] said that foreign governments [the U.S., Turkey, etc.] were arming ‘militants and extremists’ in Syria.”

The Foreign minister also gave an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran:

“Mr. Lavrov offered a similarly grave message about the possibility of a military strike against Iran, which he said would be a “catastrophe.” He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran were “intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent.” (January 19, 2012).

Most ominously, the Russian Foreign Minister said that U.S. foreign policy in Syria and Iran could lead to a “very big war,” i.e., a war that becomes regional or even international in scope, as other powers intervene to uphold their interests in the region.

Russia has offered a way to avoid war in Syria and is pursuing it through the UN Security Council; it is the same path being pursued by the pro-U.S. government in Yemen: maintaining the current government in power until elections are called. Unfortunately, Yemen is an ally of the U.S. and Syria is not — the U.S. and its allies are blocking the same approach in Syria in order to pursue war.

The Syrian government opposition bloc inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee, opposes foreign military intervention. A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who wisely states;

“We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country,” (January 19, 2012).

This is very likely the prevailing opinion inside of Syria, since the threat of no fly zones will result in the same mass bombings experienced by the citizens of Tripoli in Libya. The fake Syrian opposition outside of the country, The Syrian National Council, is yet another U.S. puppet — now allied with the Free Syrian Army — begging for a military invasion of Syria in order to “liberate” it. Of course the western media tells only the perspective of the pro-U.S. Syrian National Council.

The U.S. has proven on multiple occasions that military solutions solve nothing, having torn asunder the social fabric of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The working people of Syria and Iran do not desire “help” from the U.S. government and its allies to prevent bloodshed. The working people of these countries could liberate themselves from their authoritarian governments, as did the Tunisians and Egyptians, which is precisely the point: the U.S. is intervening militarily to re-gain control over a region that slipped out of its hands during the Arab Spring. This military approach serves to push the working people of the targeted country into the hands of their government while creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the invaded nation. The working people of the United States have no interest in aggressive war and have a responsibility to learn about U.S. government propaganda so that they can demand its end in the streets.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org  )

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/world/middleeast/syrians-rally-in-support-of-assad.html
http://www.thedohadebates.com/news/item/index.asp?n=14312
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/syria_free_army_rebels?page=0,3
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/tag/nato-bombing/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/russia-warns-west-it-risks-war-over-syria-iran-20120119-1q8ei.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/russia-warns-against-support-for-arab-uprisings.html?_r=3&ref=world
http://rt.com/news/syria-protests-russia-dialogue-149/

Source: Research Global

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Shamus Cooke is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Shamus Cooke

And then do the same to all your neighbours?

Salim and Arabiya in front of their home

by Stuart Littlewood

There can be few things more despicable than robbing a family of their home then destroying it in front of their eyes. But this is Israeli policy.

And when the following news item arrived in my inbox I was more than usually interested. ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) took me to see Beit Arabiya, the much demolished and rebuilt Bedouin home, nearly six years ago. Of course, it has been bulldozed and rebuilt a few times since then.

I’m reproducing the whole thing so that you get the full flavour of Israel’s evil. And it’s from an impeccable Israeli source too.

You can also read it at http://www.icahd.org/?p=8107 .

ICAHD Peace Center ‘Beit Arabiya’ Demolished for the Fifth Time

02:15 , 24-01-12

Israeli authorities demolished Beit Arabiya (“Arabiya’s House”) last night (Monday, January 23rd) for the fifth time, along with structures in the East Anata Bedouin compound. Beit Arabiya, Located in the West Bank town of Anata (Area C) just to the northeast of Jerusalem, is a living symbol of resistance to Occupation and the desire for justice and peace.As its name suggests, Beit Arabiya is a home belonging to Arabiya Shawamreh, her husband Salim and their seven children, a Palestinian family whose home has been demolished four times by the Israeli authorities and rebuilt each time by ICAHD’s Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, before being demolished again last night. At around 11p.m. Monday, a bulldozer accompanied by a contingent of heavily armed Israeli soldiers appeared on the Anata hills, to promptly demolish Beit Arabiya, along with residential and agricultural structures in the nearby Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin compound. 3 family homes were demolished along with numerous animal pans, and 20 people including young children were displaced, left exposed to the harsh desert environment. While standing in solidarity with Palestinians, ICAHD staff and activists were repeatedly threatened by Israeli soldieries. ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain was beaten and sustained minor injuries. Beit Arabiya was issued a demolition order by Israeli authorities back in 1994, following their failure to grant a building permit. It has since been demolished four times, to be rebuilt by ICAHD activists. Following a reissue of the demolition order last Thursday, came last night’s fifth demolition. ICAHD Director, Dr. Jeff Halper, standing astride the ruins, vowed to support Salim and Arabiya in rebuilding their home. “We shall rebuild, we must rebuild forthwith, as an act of political defiance of the occupation and protracted oppression of Palestinians” said Halper. Ruins of Beit Arabiya the morning after demolition Beit Arabiya has become a symbol of resistance to the Judaization of the Occupied West Bank and Israeli demolition policy. “ICAHD is as determined as always to rebuild the home, and endure in its struggle to bring about justice and peace” added Halper. Salim and Arabiya, along with their neighbors and friends stood last night and watched as this tragedy unfold once again. Arabiya and Salim have dedicated their home as a center for peace in the memories of Rachel Corrie and Nuha Sweidan, two women (an American and a Palestinian) who died resisting home demolitions in Gaza. In the past decade ICAHD has hosted numerous visitors at Beit Arabiya, and based its annul rebuilding camp at the house, rebuilding 185 demolished Palestinian homes. Only earlier this month, ICAHD extended an invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to visit Beit Arabiya during her country visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territory scheduled for later in the month. “It is our hope, that while we cannot extend the same hospitality to the Special Raporteur Raquel Rolnik will visit the ruins of Beit Arabiya, and report on the utter cruelty, and illegality of Israeli policies and practices, and that members of the international community will follow in her footsteps”. ” said ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain.   For more information and coordination of visits to Beit Arabiya, kindly contact Itay Epshtain at itay@icahd.org or +972-54-2623306 Additional Information House demolitions and forced evictions are among Israel’s most heinous practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In 2011, a record year of displacement, a total of 622 Palestinian structures were demolished by Israeli authorities, of which 36% (or 222) were family homes; the remainder were livelihood-related (including water storage and agricultural structures), resulting in 1,094 people displaced, almost double the number for 2010. The Jordan Valley sustained the largest number of demolitions (32% of total structures demolished, 40% of residential structures demolished, 37% of people displaced), with 199 structures demolished and 401 people displaced. Israel now controls 40% of the West Bank through 149 settlements and 102 outposts, housing more than 500,000 Jewish Israelis, as well as through closed military zones and declared nature reserves. In addition, house demolitions, forced evictions, and land expropriation, exacerbated by settler violence and the economic effects of movement restrictions, have left Palestinian communities struggling to make a living. Palestinians live in constant fear of displacement and dispersion, while Israel secures its domination and control. The demolition of Palestinian homes is politically motivated and strategically informed. The goal is to confine the 4 million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza to small enclaves, thus effectively foreclosing any viable Palestinian state and ensuring Israeli control, and to allow for the expropriation of land, the ethnic displacement of Palestinians, and the Judaization of the Occupied West Bank. The recent ICAHD report ‘The Judaization of Palestine: 2011 Displacement Trends’ provides a political analysis of the root causes and consequences of Israel’s house demolition policy, focusing on the demolition of Palestinian homes and other structures in the Occupied West Bank. Click here to read the report…

Back in 2006 I arranged to go on one of ICAHD’s tours of house demolition sites, a programme for journalists and students then run by one of Jeff Halper’s colleagues, another amiable American known to everyone as “JJ”. I wrote it up for my book as follows…

The tour with JJ took us to Anata… If you thought Jenin was bad, you should see Anata. This is a blighted and doomed Palestinian township, not shell-blasted like Jenin but strangulated, poverty-stricken, earmarked for destruction and on its last legs. There were umpteen demolition orders on Palestinian homes, some newly built.

Not content with persecuting the Palestinians, the Israelis are driving the Bedouin out of the Negev desert. “They are destroying our homes and stealing our land and trying to concentrate us in small reservations in order to take our land and give it to Jewish settlers. Some of these so-called unrecognised villages predated the state of Israel. I wonder who needs recognition from whom,” said Talab al Sani’e, a Bedouin and a member of Israel’s Knesset. “Israel has created 140 Jewish towns and villages in the Negev. And now they want to destroy Bedouin villages.”

Mural on the gable end: the hated Caterpillar, weapon of mass destruction

Israel stands accused of illegally confiscating more than 98% of Bedouin land and committing “ugly acts of racism” against Bedouins. Israeli aircraft sprayed herbicides over large areas of crops belonging to Bedouin tribes in the Negev for over 10 years. This was stopped after Bedouin leaders and human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court, citing the herbicides’ harmful effect on humans and animals. After the court ruling the Israeli Land Authority turned to using tractors to destroy the crops just before harvest time, according to Bedouin leaders. “They refuse to connect our villages with the national power grid, they refuse to connect us with the national water carrier, they refuse to allow us to open streets. Our children are denied schooling.”

Meeting and shaking hands with peace campaigner Jeff Halper, a professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University and director of ICAHD, was for me a high point of my visit to the Holy Land. An American Jew, Jeff went to live in Israel in 1973 after attending rabbinical school. He had been a Vietnam war resister, and when he became an Israeli citizen he refused to bear arms during his military service and refused to serve in the Occupied Territories.

ICAHD works with other Israeli groups such as Bat Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Tayyush and Gush Shalom, and with Palestinian organisations. ICAHD resists the demolition of Palestinian homes, with Jeff himself frequently confronting the bulldozers and Israeli soldiers. He and ICAHD organise Palestinians, Israelis and internationals in rebuilding some of the demolished homes to underline their political resistance to the Occupation. Their deep knowledge and research has successfully exposed the injustice.

He and his Palestinian counterpart Ghassan Andoni, a physics professor at Birzeit University and co-founder of the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People, were both nominated for the 2006 Nobel peace prize. In response to the nomination Professor Halper said:

Anata kids: but they had nothing to smile about really - the fine homes in the background were all scheduled for demolition by Israel

“I am chilled by the prospect of my country imposing a new apartheid regime on another people, by the prospect of my people, the Jews (of all people), becoming the new Afrikaners. I must also be concerned over the rising frustration and fury in the Arab and Muslim worlds, fueled in large measure by American and European support for Israel’s occupation policies that both deny the Palestinians their right of self-determination and turn my country into a pariah state.”

ICAHD, as Israelis, block the destructive bulldozers, chain themselves in the houses, conduct campaigns to mobilize opposition to the policy in Israel and abroad, turn to the courts and, when demolitions finally occur, join the Palestinians in rebuilding demolished homes to show solidarity and resistance. “We have come to see house demolitions as the very essence of the conflict between our two peoples: Israel’s exclusive claim to the entire country in the name of the Jewish people at the expense of another people living in the country… this is what gives the policy of house demolitions its special significance.

“When, as Israelis, we resist home demolitions and rebuild demolished homes as acts of civil disobedience, we are acknowledging the rights of both people to share the country. We are affirming our recognition that Palestinian claims carry equal authority to our own. And we are proclaiming loudly: We refuse to be enemies!”

God bless Jeff and ICAHD. If in Jerusalem be sure to visit this remarkable man and his organisation.

What it’s like to be on the receiving end of an Israeli demolition order

Here’s a further note from that visit to ICAHD… “Palestinians do not have the luxury of home-delivered mail (even in East Jerusalem), so demolition orders are distributed haphazardly. A building inspector may knock on the door and hand the order to anyone who answers, including small children. More often the order is slipped into the doorframe or left under a stone near the house. Palestinians frequently complain that they never received the order before the bulldozers moved in, and thus were denied recourse to the courts. In Jerusalem a favourite practice is to “deliver” an order at night by placing it somewhere near the targeted home, then arrive early in the morning with the Caterpillar.”

America and the rest of the West should understand clearly why Caterpillar has become the hated symbol of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and oppression, and has been the target of disinvestment campaigns.

Stuart Littlewood

26 January 2012

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Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.

European Union foreign ministers have formally adopted an oil embargo against Iran over its nuclear program

By Ismail Salami   Intifada-Palestine.com

Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well.

Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

In a recent stance, Iran has threatened that it would never let a situation prevail where regional states could sell their oil while Iran couldn’t. Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has said, “When there is an absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will soar up dramatically and the western countries are well aware of this fact; However, Iran will never allow itself to land in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can.”

It hardly needs saying that such a firm stance on the part of Iran has been given considerable thought and that the European Union should be prepared to face the consequences of their irrationality and blind servitude to Washington.

Earlier Iran had warned that it would close the Strait of Hormuz, a move which, as the IMF has said, “could trigger a much larger price spike including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region.”

The sanctions on Iran oil, which will be effective in July, will surely have drastic repercussions for the European Union as Iran is mulling banning the sale of oil to Europe, a proactive move which will salvage the country’s economy on the one hand and will also lead to a drastic hike in oil prices on the other.

Undoubtedly, the EU decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports is, as Velayati has said, “a political maneuver,” and that “Iran doesn’t need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there.”

In the long run, Western oil firms and consumers may “emerge the biggest losers.” The IMF has predicted that crude oil prices could rise up to 30 percent namely to over USD 140 per barrel if Iran ever decided to retaliate by halting its oil exports altogether. Saudi Arabia has vowed to fill the gap.

But what if Saudi Arabia is bluffing? What if she cannot make up for the supply deficiency?

At all events, oil is fungible and Iran will easily find its own customers in Asian markets.

Europe has seen better days and now is not surely the best time for the imposition of sanctions on Iran’s oil as they will suffer most. For some European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, it will not be really easy to participate in the ban on Iran oil as they largely rely on Iran imports. As for Greece which is receiving oil from Iran on credit, it will be an utterly wrong decision to join other European countries which have secret plans to disintegrate the country.

Much to the chagrin of Washington and the Zionist regime, a number of countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea have already refused to abide by the new measures. Russia has slammed the new package of sanctions and in a tough-worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the EU move as “deeply erroneous.”

“Under such kind of pressure Iran will make no concessions and no correction of its policy,” it said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that there was nothing to prove that Iran was trying to build an atomic weapon.

Russia has also warned the West against a US-led invasion of Iran, saying that this would incur a chain reaction and that the catastrophic consequences will affect the entire region.

It is manifest that Iran will do without the EU and will find its customers elsewhere in Asian markets. In other words, Iran will not lose in the passive war of sanctions engineered by Washington.

Indeed, sanctions are to be seen as part of Washington’s policy of coercion to break the back of the Iranian government and bring the nation to its knees. However, it should be noted that Iran has been mercilessly under severe sanctions for over 30 years and that it has turned the sanctions into opportunities to attain self-sufficiency and stand on its feet again. The entire gamut of the sanctions designed and spurred by the US and now followed by the EU is also tailored to suit the interests of Israel, the archenemy of Iran and thus the bosom buddy of Washington.

Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been the target of Washington’s inveterate animosity.

In his book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (1993), Alan Friedman reveals how the US government aided the regime of the executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran. Ironically, the once good pal of the United States suddenly turned into a parasite to be eliminated from the face of the earth. According to Friedman, Washington generously doled out its assistance in various forms to Iraq including billions of dollars worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-US arms, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and active participation in war against Iran. An Atlanta branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro funneled over USD 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. This piece of information had been concealed by the CIA.

An appalling report revealed that the US government provided Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons. Released on May 25, 1994 by the US Senate Banking Committee, the report detailed the export of pathogenic (‘disease producing’), toxigenic (‘poisonous’), and other biological materials to Iraq after licensing by the US Department of Commerce. The report revealed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the US to Iraq over a span of three years.

The Iraqi regime used the chemical weapons provided by the US against the Iranian combatants and civilians, thus leaving them in a life-in-death situation. Around 100,000 Iranians were affected by nerve and mustard gases, and around one in 10 died before receiving any medical treatment. About five to six thousand are still under medical treatment, of whom around a thousand are critically ill.

The Iranian chemical victims are still dying on a daily basis.

So, Washington’s enmity towards the Islamic Republic goes far beyond its peaceful nuclear program which has constantly been used as a political leverage to stunt the economic and political growth of an anti-imperialism state and prevent the emergence of a Muslim superpower.

The depiction of Iran as a nuclear nightmare and as a global threat is only a saga manufactured by Washington in order to smother a voice so overpoweringly critical of the myriad morbid policies of a government whose American dream is dead and gone.

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Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

October 2011: Egyptians in Talat Harb square, Cairo, protest against military rule; October 1956: Egyptians demonstrate in the same square against British-French invasion. Photograph: Getty/Associated Press

by Seumas Milne

There’s a real sense in which, more than any other part of the former colonial world, the Middle East has never been fully decolonised. Sitting on top of the bulk of the globe’s oil reserves, the Arab world has been the target of continual interference and intervention ever since it became formally independent.

Carved into artificial states after the first world war, it’s been bombed and occupied – by the US, Israel, Britain and France – and locked down with US bases and western-backed tyrannies. As the Palestinian blogger Lina Al-Sharif tweeted on Armistice Day this year, the “reason World War One isn’t over yet is because we in the Middle East are still living the consequences”.

The Arab uprisings that erupted in Tunisia a year ago have focused on corruption, poverty and lack of freedom, rather than western domination or Israeli occupation. But the fact that they kicked off against western-backed dictatorships meant they posed an immediate threat to the strategic order.

Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions. And they’ve got a deep well of experience to draw on: every centre of the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Yemen, has lived through decades of imperial domination. All the main NATO states that bombed Libya, for example – the US, Britain, France and Italy – have had troops occupying the country well within living memory.

If the Arab revolutions are going to take control of their future, then, they’ll need to have to keep an eye on their recent past. So here are seven lessons from the history of western Middle East meddling, courtesy of the archive of Pathé News, colonial-era voice of Perfidious Albion itself.

1. The west never gives up its drive to control the Middle East, whatever the setbacks

Take the last time Arab states started dropping out of the western orbit – in the 1950s, under the influence of Nasser’s pan-Arabism. In July 1958, radical Iraqi nationalist army officers overthrew a corrupt and repressive western-backed regime (sounds familiar?), garrisoned by British forces.

The 1958 revolution in Iraq. Link to this video

The ousting of the reliably pliant Iraqi monarchy threw Pathé into a panic. Oil-rich Iraq had become the “number one danger spot”, it warned in its first despatch on the events. Despite the “Harrow-educated” King Faisal’s “patriotism” – which “no one can question”, the voiceover assures us – events had moved too fast, “unfortunately for western policy”.

But within a few days – compared with the couple of months it took them to intervene in Libya this year – Britain and the US had moved thousands of troops into Jordan and Lebanon to protect two other client regimes from Nasserite revolt. Or, as Pathé News put it in its next report, to “stop the rot in the Middle East”.

British troops fly out to Jordan, 1958. Link to this video

Nor did they have any intention of leaving revolutionary Iraq to its own devices. Less than five years later, in February 1963, US and British intelligence backed the bloody coup that first brought Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athists to power.

Fast forward to 2003, and the US and Britain had invaded and occupied the entire country. Iraq was finally back under full western control – at the cost of savage bloodletting and destruction. It was the strength of the Iraqi resistance that ultimately led to this week’s American withdrawal – but even after the pullout, 16,000 security contractors, trainers and others will remain under US command. In Iraq, as in the rest of the region, they never leave unless they’re forced to.

2. Imperial powers can usually be relied on to delude themselves about what Arabs actually think

Mussolini visits Libya, 1937. Link to this video

Could the Pathé News presenter – and the colonial occupiers of the day – really have believed that the “thousands of Arabs” showering petrified praise on the fascist dictator Mussolini as he drove through the streets of Tripoli in the Italian colony of Libya in 1937 actually meant it? You wouldn’t guess so to look at their cowed faces.

No hint from the newsreel that a third of the population of Libya had died under the brutality of Italian colonial rule, or of the heroic Libyan resistance movement led by Omar Mukhtar, hanged in an Italian concentration camp. But then the “mask of imperialism” the voice over describes Mussolini as wearing fitted British politicians of the time just as well.

The Queen visits Aden, 1954. Link to this video

And Pathé’s report on the Queen’s visit to the British colony of Aden (now part of Yemen) a few years later was eerily similar, with “thousands of “cheering loyal subjects” shown supposedly welcoming “their own Queen” to what she blithely describes as an “outstanding example of colonial development”.

So outstanding in fact that barely a decade later the South Yemeni liberation movements forced British troops to evacuate the last outpost of empire after they had beaten, tortured and murdered their way through Aden’s Crater district: one ex-squaddie explained in a 2004 BBC documentaryon Aden that he couldn’t go into details because of the risk of war crimes prosecutions.

A British soldier seizes a demonstrator in Aden's Crater district in 1967. Photograph: Terry Fincher/Getty

But then it’s far easier to see through the propaganda of other times and places than your own – especially when delivered by preposterous 1950s-style Harry Enfield/Cholmondley-Warner characters.

The Neocons famously expected a cakewalk in Iraq and early US and British coverage of the invasion still had Iraqis throwing flowers at invading troops when armed resistance was already in full flow. And UK TV reports of British troops “protecting the local population” from the Taliban in Afghanistan can be strikingly reminiscent of 1950s newsreels from Aden and Suez.

Even during this year’s uprisings in Egypt and Libya, western media have often seen what they wanted to see in the crowds in Tahrir Square or Benghazi – only to be surprised, say, when Islamists end up calling the shots or winning elections. Whatever happens next, they’re likely not to get it.

3. The Big Powers are old hands at prettifying client regimes to keep the oil flowing

When it comes to the reactionary Gulf autocracies, to be fair, they don’t really bother. But before the anti-imperialist wave of the 1950s did for a slew of them, the British, French and Americans worked hard to dress up the stooge regimes of the time as forward-looking constitutional democracies.

Sometimes that effort came rapidly unstuck, as this breezy report on Libya’s “first major test of democracy” under the US-British puppet king Idris makes no effort to conceal.

Rioting in Libya, 1952. Link to this video

The brazen rigging of the 1952 elections against the Islamic opposition sparked rioting and all political parties were banned. Idris was later overthrown by Gaddafi, oil nationalised and the US Wheelus base closed – though today the king’s flag is flying again in Tripoli with Nato’s assistance, while western oil companies wait to collect their winnings.

Elections were also rigged and thousands of political prisoners tortured in 1950s Iraq. But so far as British officialdom – entrenched as “advisers” in Baghdad and their military base at Habbaniya – and the newsreels shown in British cinemas at the time were concerned, Faisal’s Iraq was a benign and “go-ahead” democracy.

The oilfields of Basra, 1952. Link to this video

Under the watchful eyes of the US and British ambassadors and “Mr Gibson” of the British Iraq Petroleum Company, we see the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Said, opening the Zubair oilfield near Basra in 1952 to bring “schools and hospitals” through the “joint labour of east and west”.

In fact that would only happen when oil was nationalised – and six years later Said was killed on the streets of Baghdad as he tried to escape dressed as a woman. Half a century on and the British were back in control of Basra, while today Iraqis are battling to prevent a new takeover of their oil in a devastated country US and British politicians again like to insist is a democracy.

Any “Arab spring” state that ditches self-determination for the west’s embrace can of course expect a similar makeover – just as client regimes that never left its orbit, such as the corrupt police state of Jordan, have always been hailed as islands of good government and “moderation”.

4. People in the Middle East don’t forget their history – even when the US and Europe does

The gap could hardly be wider. When Nasser’s former information minister and veteran journalist Mohamed Heikal recently warned that the Arab uprisings were being used to impose a new
“Sykes-Picot agreement” – the first world war carve-up of the Arab east between Britain and France – Arabs and others in the Middle East naturally knew exactly what he was talking about.

It has shaped the entire region and its relations with the west ever since. But to most non-specialists in Britain and France, Sykes-Picot might as well be an obscure brand of electric cheese-grater.

The same goes for more than a century of Anglo-American interference, occupation and anti-democratic subversion against Iran. British media expressed bafflement at popular Iranian hostility to Britain when the embassy in Tehran was trashed by demonstrators last month. But if you know the historical record, what could be less surprising?

The overthrow of Mossadegh, 1953. Link to this video

The Orwellian cynicism of Britain’s role is neatly captured in Pathé’s take on the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh after he nationalised Iran’s oil.

Pro-Mossadegh demonstrators are portrayed as violent and destructive, while the violent CIA-MI6 organised coup that ousted him in favour of the Shah is welcomed as a popular and “dramatic turn of events”. The newsreel damns as a “virtual dictator” the elected Mossadegh, who at his subsequent treason trial expressed the hope that his fate would serve as an example in “breaking the chains of colonial servitude”. The real dictator, the western-backed Shah whose brutal autocracy paved the way for the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic 26 years later, is hailed as the people’s sovereign.

Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's ousted prime minister, during his trial in the wake of the CIA-MI6 orchestrated coup that overthrew his elected government in 1953. Photograph: AFP

Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s ousted prime minister, during his trial in the wake of the CIA-MI6 orchestrated coup that overthrew his elected government in 1953. Photograph: AFP

So when western politicians rail against Iranian authoritarianism or claim to champion democratic rights while continuing to prop up a string of Gulf dictatorships, there won’t be many in the Middle East who take them too seriously.

5. The west has always presented Arabs who insist on running their own affairs as fanatics

The revolutionary upheaval that began last December in Sidi Bouzid is far from being the first popular uprising against oppressive rule in Tunisia. In the 1950s the movement against French colonial rule was naturally denounced by colonial governments and their supporters as “extremist” and “terrorist”.

Pathé News certainly had no truck with their campaign for independence. In 1952, it blamed an attack on a police station on a “burst of nationalist agitation” across North Africa. And as colonial police conduct a “vigorous search for terrorists” – though the bewildered men being dragged from their homes at gunpoint look more like Captain Renault’s “usual suspects” in Casablanca – the presenter complains that “once again fanatics intervene and make matters worse”.

Tunisian nationalist riots, 1952. Link to this video

He meant the Tunisian nationalists, of course, rather than the French occupation regime. Arab nationalism has since been eclipsed by the rise of Islamist movements, who have in turn been dismissed as “fanatics”, both by the west and some former nationalists. As elections bring one Islamist party after another to power in the Arab world, the US and allies are trying to tame them – on foreign and economic policy, rather than interpretations of sharia. Those that succumb will become “moderates” – the rest will remain “fanatics”.

6. Foreign military intervention in the Middle East brings death, destruction and divide and rule

It’s scarcely necessary to dig into the archives to work that out. The experience of the last decade is clear enough. Whether it’s a full-scale invasion and occupation, such as Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have been killed, or aerial bombardment for regime change under the banner of “protecting civilians” in Libya, where tens of thousands have died, the human and social costs have been catastrophic.

And that’s been true throughout the baleful history of western involvement in the Middle East. Pathé’s silent film of the devastation of Damascus by French colonial forces during the Syrian revolt of 1925 might as well be of Falluja in 2004 or Sirte this autumn – if you ignore the fezzes and pith helmets.

The defence of Damascus, 1925. Link to this video

Thirty years later and Port Said looked pretty similar during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 that marked the replacement of the former European colonial states by the US as the dominant power in the region.

Anglo-French operation on the Suez canal, 1956. Link to this video

This newsreel clip of British troops attacking Suez, invading troops occupying and destroying yet another Arab city, could be Basra or Beirut – it’s become such a regular feature of the contemporary world, and a seamless link with the colonial era.

British troops surround hungry crowds in front of the ruins of Port Said, destroyed during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. Photograph: Getty

British troops surround hungry crowds in front of the ruins of Port Said, destroyed during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. Photograph: Getty

So has the classic imperial tactic of using religious and ethnic divisions to enforce foreign occupation: whether by the Americans in Iraq, the French in colonial Syria and Lebanon or the British more or less wherever they went. The Pathé archive is full of newsreels acclaiming British troops for “keeping the peace” between hostile populations, from Cyprus to Palestine – all the better to keep control.

And now the religious sectarianism and ethnic divisions fostered under the US-British occupation of Iraq have been mobilised by the west’s Gulf allies to head off or divert the challenge of the Arab awakening: in the crushing of the Bahrain uprising, the isolation of Shia unrest in Saudi Arabia and the increasingly sectarian conflict in Syria – where foreign intervention could only escalate the killing and deny Syrians control of their own country.

7. Western sponsorship of Palestine’s colonisation is a permanent block on normal relations with the Arab world

Israel could not have been created without Britain’s 30-year imperial rule in Palestine and its sponsorship of large-scale European Jewish colonisation under the banner of the Balfour declaration of 1917. An independent Palestine, with an overwhelming Palestinian Arab majority, would clearly never have accepted it.

That reality is driven home in this Pathé News clip from the time of the Arab revolt against the British mandate in the late 1930s, showing British soldiers rounding up Palestinian “terrorists” in the occupied West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarm – just as their Israeli successors do today.

British troops in Nablus, 1939. Link to this video

The reason for the security of Jewish settlers, the presenter declares in the clipped, breathless tones of the 1930s voiceover, are “the British troops, ever watchful, ever protective”. That relationship broke down after Britain restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the second world war.

Britain’s colonial reflex, in Palestine as elsewhere, was always to present itself as “guardian of law and order” against the “threat of rebellion” and “master of the situation” – as in this delusional 1938 newsreel from Jerusalem.

British troops in Jerusalem, 1938. Link to this video

But the original crucial link between western imperial power and the Zionist project became a permanent strategic alliance after the establishment of Israel – throughout the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians, multiple wars, 44 years of military occupation and the continuing illegal colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The unconditional nature of that alliance, which remains the pivot of US policy in the Middle East, is one reason why democratically elected Arab governments are likely to find it harder to play patsy to US power than the dictatorial Mubaraks and Gulf monarchs. The Palestinian cause is embedded in Arab and Islamic political culture. Like Britain before it, the US may struggle to remain “master of the situation” in the Middle East.

Source: The Guardian

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Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. He was the Guardian’s comment editor from 2001-7 after working for the paper as a general reporter and labour editor. He has reported for the Guardian from the Middle East, eastern Europe, Russia, south Asia and Latin America. He previously worked for the Economist and is the author of The Enemy Within and co-author of Beyond the Casino Economy

Doctored photo showing event that didn’t happen, which was used in an experiment designed to illustrate how easily memories can be manipulated. Source: William Saletan

 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The New York Times made it public that the Obama Administration had sent an important letter to the leadership of Iran on January 12, 2012. [1] On January 15, 2012, the spokesperson of the Iranian Foreign Ministry would acknowledge that the letter was delivered to Tehran by way of three diplomatic channels:
(1) one copy of the letter was handed to the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Khazaee, by his U.S. counterpart, Susan Rice, in New York City;
(2) a second copy of the letter was delivered in Tehran by the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, Livia Leu Agosti; and
(3) a third copy went to Iran by way of Jalal Talabani of Iraq. [2]

In the letter, the White House spelled out the position of the United States, while Iranian officials said it was a sign of things as they really are: the U.S. cannot afford to wage a war against Iran.

Within the letter written by President Barak Hussein Obama was a U.S. request for the start of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end Iranian-U.S. hostilities. “In the letter, Obama announced readiness for negotiations and the resolution of mutual disagreements,” Ali Motahari, an Iranian parliamentarian, has said to the Mehr News Agency.] [3] According to another Iranian parliamentarian, this time the Deputy Chairperson of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Hussein Ebrahimi (Ibrahimi), the letter went on to ask for Iranian-U.S. cooperation and negotiations based on the mutual interests of both Tehran and Washington. [4]

Obama’s letter also tried to assure Tehran that the United States would not engage in any hostile action against Iran. [5] In fact, in the same timeframe, the Pentagon cancelled or delayed major joint drills with Israel. [6] To the Iranians, however, the gestures are meaningless, because the Obama Administration’s actions with Iran have always contradicted its words. Moreover, Iran believes that the U.S. will not attack, because it knows that the costs of a war with an opponent like Iran are too high and its consequences far too risky.

This, however, does not mean that an Iranian-U.S. showdown has been avoided or will not eventually happen. The currents can go either way, so to speak. Nor does this mean that the Obama Administration is not currently waging a war against the Iranians and their allies. In fact, Washington’s bloc and Iran’s bloc have been fighting a shadow war from the digital arena and television airwaves to the valleys of Afghanistan and the bustling streets of Beirut and Baghdad.

The War Against Iran Started Years Ago

The war in Iran did not start in 2012 or even 2011. Newsweek Magazine even stated the following on a cover title in 2010: “Assassinations, cyberattacks, sabotage – has the war against Tehran already begun?” The actual war may have started in 2006.

Instead of attacking Iran directly, the U.S. has started a covert and proxy war. The covert dimensions of the war are being fought by intelligence assets, cyber attacks, computer viruses, secretive military units, spies, assassins, agent provocateurs, and saboteurs. The kidnapping and assassination of Iranian scientists and military commanders, which started several years ago is a part of this covert war. In this shadow war, Iranian diplomats in Iraq have been abducted and Iranians visiting Georgia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been detained or kidnapped. Syrian officials, various Palestinian figures, and Hezbollah’s Imad Fayez Mughniyeh have also all been assassinated in this shadow war.

The proxy wars started in 2006 when Israel attacked Lebanon with the intention of expanding the war against Syria. The road to Damascus goes through Beirut, while Damascus is on the way to Tehran. After their failure in 2006, realizing that Syria was the lynchpin of the Resistance Bloc, which Iran dominated, the U.S. and its allies spent the next five to six years trying to de-link Syria from Iran.

The U.S. is also fighting Iran and its allies on the diplomatic and economic fronts through the manipulation of international bodies and proxy states. In the 2011 to 2012 context, the crisis in Syria on a geo-political level is a front in the war against Iran. Even the Israeli-U.S. drill Austere Challenge 2012 and the U.S. deployment of troops were primarily aimed at Syria as a means of combating Iran.

Syria in the Eye of the Storm

What Washington is doing is exerting psychological pressure on Iran as a means of distancing it from Syria, so that the United States and its cohorts can go for the kill. Up until the start of January 2012, the Israelis have continuously been preparing to launch an invasion of Syria in a rematch of 2006, while U.S. and E.U. officials have continously tried negotiating with Damascus for a deal to de-link from Iran and the Resistance Bloc. The Syrians, however, have always refused.

Foreign Policy, the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article in August 2011 stating what was on the Saudi King’s mind about Syria in context of attacking Iran: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.” [7] Whether the above statement genuinely came from Abdul Aziz Al-Saud or not, this strategic outlook is representative of the reasons for the targeting of Syria. Obama’s own security advisor has also said the same thing, just a few months after the piece by Foreign Policy was released, in November 2011. National Security Advisor Donilon gave a speech saying that the “end of the Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.” [8]

The Kremlin has also made statements that corroborate that Washington wants to de-link Syria from its Iranian ally. One of Russia’s highest security officials has announced that Syria is being punished, because of its strategic alliance with Iran. The Secretary of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai (Nikolay) Platonovich Patrushev, has publicly stated that Syria is the subject of Washington’s pressure due to geo-political interests tied to cutting Syria’s ties with Iran and not due to any humanitarian concerns.] [9]

Iran has also given signals that should the Syrians be attacked, it will not hesitate to intervene militarily to come to Syria’s aid. Washington does not want this. The Pentagon would much rather swallow Syria first, before turning its full and undivided attention to Iran. The Pentagon’s objectives are to fight its targets piecemeal. Despite the U.S. military doctrine of fighting simultaneous wars in multiple theatres and all the Pentagon literature about it, the U.S. is not ready yet to wage a conventional regional war against both Iran and Syria or risk an expanded war with Iran’s Russian and Chinese allies yet. The march to war, however, is far from over. For now the U.S. government will have to continue the shadow war against Iran and intensify the media, diplomatic, and economic war.

Source: Voltairenet.org

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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Canadian-based sociologist and scholar. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), specializing in geopolitical and strategic issues.