Opinion Editorials, November 2013

On Arafat, Arab Secularists and Palestinian-Israeli Talks

By Khalid Amayreh

PIC, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, November 18, 2013

Today marks the passage of 9 years since the death of the iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It is widely believed that Arafat was poisoned by agents of the Israeli intelligence apparatus, the Mossad.

The radioactive lethal substance, polonium which killed Arafat, is possessed only by nuclear states, including Israel . As to how the deadly substance found its way to Arafat's body is a question the PLO must answer. Unfortunately, the PLO is yet to answer the question. It is unlikely though that it ever will.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been quoted as saying that the PLO will sooner or later discover the truth about Arafat's murder. Well. It is really hard to believe Mr. Abbas. Moreover, the Palestinian people are really fed up with this kind of rhetorical overindulgence which we have been hearing ad nauseam since Arafat's death.

I am not suggesting that we completely terminate efforts to expose Israel as a criminal state par excellance. However, it is probably more expedient for our enduring struggle for freedom and independence to direct our attention inward. Our Palestinian arena is most probably rife with Israeli agents.

I know it is embarrassing to say so publicly, but it is pointless to deny an open secret. The PA, as we all know, is an open and easily accessible arena. Any state or espionage agency can easily penetrate that arena. Moreover, our counter-espionage apparatus is too unsophisticated and probably too corrupt to do what it is supposed to do in an environment tightly controlled by Israel .

Moreover, we all know that the main function of our security agencies is not to fight Israel or Israeli espionage. It is rather to hound and liquidate any semblance of resistance against Israel .

Our leaders call the ignominious collaboration with the enemy " legitimate security coordination." But this is an insult to language and truth. We know and the world knows it is not coordination against the evil-doers, such as Jewish settler thugs who burn down our fields and orchards and olive groves, but is rather a disgraceful collaboration with the occupation army against the free men and women of Palestine who would even contemplate resisting our tormentors.

It is sad and lamentable that the very PLO that was created in the mid 1960s to liberate Palestine from the clutches of Zionist is now acting very much like the infamous Judenräte (the Jewish councils created and controlled by the Nazis). What is even more shocking is the fact that many Palestinians are cheering and defending this indelible disgrace.

Fascists par excellance or Pseudo-democrats

The past few years have exposed naked Arab secularism and secularists. In the United States , the word secularism has a generally positive connotation. It implies the protection of religion from government interference and encroachment. In return, clergymen would keep a certain distance between religion and politics.

But government wouldn't interfere with organized religion and wouldn't interfere with the appointment of heads of religious institutions.

In the Arab world, however, secularism implies first and foremost hostility to religion, especially Islam. You can not be truly secular in the Arab world unless you are inimical to Islam.

Arab secularists are also pseudo democrats. They accept democracy as long as democracy produces atheists, secularists, Communists, socialists Christians and what have you.

However, the moment Islamists win in any fair and transparent elections, these secularist morph immediately into full-fledged fascists and enemies of democracy.

Take Egyptian secularists as an example. When the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists won elections three times and the secularists lost three times since the 25-January revolution, the latter lost any pretension of democracy.

They stopped shortly of declaring their utter disbelief in the ballot box. They concocted all sorts of idiotic and mendacious arguments to justify their dark embrace with despotism, tyranny and fascism. They gave their full support and backing to the Nazi-like Junta, which overthrew the only democratically-elected president in Egypt history, massacred thousands in cold blood, detained as captives tens of thousands without charge and trial and decapitated freedom of speech and expression.

The secularists claimed to be in favor of fostering liberty and granting people the freedom t to choose the political system that is compatible with their value systems.

However, when these idiots were eventually selected by the murderous junta to write a new constitution in lieu of the legitimate one, passed by 70% of Egyptians, the first thing they did was to impose secularism as a new religion in lieu of Islam.

Secularism is part of Christianity, it is not part of Islam. You can not impose secularism, which is actually euphemism for atheism, on a predominantly Muslim society.

The secularists claim to respect freedom of religion and freedom of choice. However, this is a big lie because freedom of religion for Muslims also includes the chance to elect a political party that is compatible with their faith.

Indeed, when you force a religious Muslim society, like the Egyptian society, to "choose" a secular or atheistic political party (because political parties based on Islam are banned) you are effectively denying Muslims, (95% of the population) the right to practice their faith.

This is fascism, pure and simple.

Netanyah wants lebensraum, not peace

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials reportedly intimated of late that the ongoing peace talks with Israel , resumed under American pressure three months ago, have achieved "a fat zero."

Well, this revelation shouldn't really raise the eyebrows of any serious observer monitoring the so-called peace process between the Ramallah leadership and the Zionist regime.

Indeed, since the futile talks started more than 20 years ago, Israel tripled the number of Jewish colonizers in the West Bank , tripled the size of its colonies and nearly completed the process of de-Arabizing and de-Islamizing Arab East Jerusalem.

In short, Israel killed any remaining chance for establishing a viable Palestinian state.

This happened as Palestinian negotiators kept babbling about a peace process that has the face of a whore and the credibility of a pimp.

I really don't know when Palestinian leaders are going to realize that peace and Israel are an eternal oxymoron.

Some gullible Palestinian officials , whose tongues function much more swiftly than their brains do, keep thinking that the U.S. , Israel 's guardian-ally, will eventually force Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967.

Well, these idiots, who think they are smarter than anyone else, seem to be living in a world of their own, a world where these ignoramuses neither learn from other people's mistakes nor from their own mistakes. They are undoubtedly a disaster upon themselves and upon they people they are purported to serve.

I don't know when if ever these people will realize that the U.S. lacks the will and the inclination to pressure Israel .

In the final analysis, America is actually the proverbial monkey and Israel is the proverbial organ grinder. The monkey can not do anything, save play to the tune of the organ grinder.

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

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