Opinion Editorials, September 2014

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How Come There Is No International Alliance Against Nazi Israel?

By Khalid Amayreh

PIC, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 29, 2014

I am not particularly infatuated with the IS group. However, the pretension that its enemies represent virtue, civility and justice is beyond the pale.
 
True, the IS may have adopted some despicable tactics against its foes.
 
But the United States, which assumes the role of world leader, is definitely a million times more savage, more barbaric and more nefarious in comparison to the IS.
 
The same thing can also be said about Shiite thugs in Iraq and Syria, who have committed every imagined crime against innocent people, especially Sunni Muslims.
 
Does the world have any doubt about the diabolical nature of Bashar al-Assad? Doesn't the murder of 200,000 Syrian civilians at the hands of this thug carry any weight or influence on the decision-making process in America and Europe? It seems it doesn't.
 
"Civilized barbarianism" vs. "uncivilized barbarianism"
 
We are told that unlike al-Qaeda and IS, the U.S. and its spoiled child, Israel, murder people in a "civilized manner," e.g. by raining death on crowded neighborhoods and  apartment buildings packed with civilians, using deadly missiles and laser-guided bombs,  fired from high altitudes, or by using drones to kill people on the ground. But hundreds –if not thousands of innocent civilians- have been killed in such raids in Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.
 
But does this make America and its allies, especially Nazi Israel, any less barbarian than their thoroughly demonized foes?
 
Indeed, it is probably the ultimate oxymoron to call mass murder civilized or honorable.
 
We must be honest. The ongoing American-led campaign of bombing in Syria and Iraq is not about right and wrong or virtue and vice.
 
Under the rubric of fighting terror, the most terrorist state on earth, namely the United States of America, has killed millions of people from Hanoi to Gaza.
 
The US dropped on Vietnam more than 20 million bombs, more than were dropped during the two world wars combined. The United States dropped nuclear bombs on Japan killing countless men, women and children. The US invaded and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan, killing millions, leaving millions of orphans and refugees.
 
The US enabled Judeo-Nazi Israel to play the Nazi game rather relentlessly against the Palestinian people, whose only crime is their adamant refusal to succumb to Talmudic Nazism and ethnic cleansing.
 
Hence, the US is absolutely in no position to lecture the world, especially its victims, on what is right and what is wrong. In the final analysis, it is morally impossible to use the words "United States" and "moral rightness" in the same line or even the same page.
 
IS is "effect", not "cause"
 
I am absolutely convinced that the ongoing war against IS (It is actually against Islamic revivalism) will fail. Yes, many people will get killed, many will be maimed, and there will be a lot of havoc and destruction. But at the end of the day, IS and similar groups will emerge stronger and more popular.
 
The reason for that lies in the malicious American policy of imposing on the Muslim peoples of the region tyrannical vicious regimes that deny the masses the most elementary human rights and civil liberties.
 
Yes, it is oppression, tyranny, state-terror, rulers’ decadence and corruption that helped create IS and will help make it more popular amongst the people.
 
According to some public opinion surveys, sympathy with IS reaches 80% in some Arab countries.
 
If true, this should make Washington rethink its entire approach to the region. Ultimately, IS is an effect rather than a cause, and it is impossible to eliminate the effect without eradicating the cause first.
 
But I don't think Washington will ever change its approach. Washington has always been and continues to be overwhelmed with hypocrisy and evil as far as the way it relates to Muslims, especially in the Middle East. America doesn't really think correctly in this regard. It lets a small group of self-worshipping Jews to do the job on its behalf.
 
It is sad and lamentable that America's criminal hypocrisy is actually the enabler and sustainer of criminal tyranny and terrorist states in much of the world.
 
Indeed, were it not for America's greed, rapacity and imperialistic ambitions, the Hitler of Damascus wouldn't have continued to murder his own people en masse in order to stay in power a few more years.
 
The same can be said about the Sissi junta in Cairo, which murdered more innocent people in two hours than IS and like-minded groups have done ever since their appearance.
 
With a bluntly Machiavellian America reverting to its pre-Arab Spring modus operandi, there will be a prolonged internecine struggle throughout the Arab world for freedom and justice.
 
Yes, America and its contemptuous puppets won't raise the white flags, but neither will the IS.
 
But then, America will have incurred the wrath of hundreds of millions of people, who will be thoroughly convinced of America's evil role in depriving hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims of their right to human rights and liberties by way of backing bloody tyrants and military dictators.


Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist based in occupied Palestine

Palestinians need a holocaust memorial museum of their own

PIC, [ 19/09/2014 - 08:59 AM ]

By Khalid Amayreh

in Occupied Palestine

It is never a hyperbole to call the latest genocidal onslaught by Israel on the Gaza Strip a holocaust. The level of death and destruction inflicted by the Judeo-Nazi state, aka Israel, is more than shocking, to say the very least. It simply defies linguistic description.
 
Just imagine how Jewish and Zionist circles would have reacted if the equation was reversed and Israel, not Gaza, had suffered this huge magnitude of death and devastation.
 
I imagine the shipyard dogs of Zionism, from Sydney to California and from Occupied Palestine to London, would have deafened our ears with a never-abating crescendo of noise about the new Arab holocaust!!!…and claims that the Arabs are trying to complete the mission that the Nazis started. 
 
We are not claiming that six million Palestinians were murdered in the latest atrocities.
 
But then who says that atrocities can't be described as a holocaust unless the number of victims reaches the six-million figure?
 
Besides, Israel and Judeo-Nazi circles around the world are absolutely unfit to lecture their victims on the most appropriate epithets they should employ to describe Israel's genocidal barbarianism.
 
A holocaust or genocide is more than just murdering innocent civilians in large numbers and utterly destroying entire towns.
 
It is also about a nefarious mindset, an evil ideology and a diabolical value system, characteristics that are quite prominent in Israeli behavior over the years.
 
Yes, I am not accusing the Judeo-Nazi state of sending millions of Palestinians to Auschwitz. But I do accuse Nazi Israel of bringing Auschwitz to every Palestinian home, every Palestinian neighborhood and every Palestinian street. I am not of course talking about things that happened on a different plant. Everything is crystal clear and only malicious hair-splitters would deny the obvious.
 
A holocaust museum
 
In light, Palestinians must seriously study the idea of establishing a museum that would record and document Israeli atrocities and genocidal episodes against our people in Palestine and the Diaspora.
 
Initially, this contemplated museum can be established temporarily in the Diaspora for obvious reasons. Later, however, it would be relocated to Palestine, e.g. in Jerusalem.
 
A board of trustees comprising historians and people of knowledge and expertise would be entrusted to oversee the museum, which would contain every conceivable piece of information pertaining to the slow-motion holocaust, which began even before the evil birth of the Nazi state known as Israel.
 
The museum's central mission will be educational, namely conveying what Israel has been doing to our people to future Palestinian, Arab and Muslim generations. That is why; every Palestinian schoolboy and girl must be made to visit the museum. No college student, in all disciplines, would graduate from college without having passed a compulsory three-credit-hours-course on the Palestinian holocaust.
 
Similarly, every important visitor to Palestine will be asked to visit the Palestinian holocaust museum just as the Judeo-Nazi authorities ask visitors to visit the so-called "Yad Va-Shem" museum in occupied Jerusalem.
 
The establishment of a Palestinian holocaust museum won't be an act of incitement against the Judeo-Nazis. The ultimate aim of the museum is not to malign or demonize anyone, but rather to preserve outstanding historical facts from evaporation into oblivion.
 
Israel has transformed its holocaust-related mythology into a virtual reality, especially in the minds of gullible and guilt-ridden westerners.
 
The Palestinian holocaust is not a mythology. Palestinians don't have to lie about anything, as Israel has been doing. Israel's genocidal crimes against our people, even prior to Dir Yasin, are well-documented. Indeed, most of these crimes are preserved in video and audio formats. Again, only malicious hair-splitters would try to deny the undeniable.
 
The Judeo-Nazi state will try to do the impossible to thwart this Palestinian project as it would take the light away from the Zionist holocaust mantra which the Judeo-Nazi state uses to justify every crime under the sun.
 
But we the people of Palestine would have to reject any Zionist obstruction with utter contempt.
 
We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims of Jewish Zionist barbarianism, including thousands of innocent children, to do something worthwhile to keep their memories alive.
 
The lives of Jews who died or may have died in the course of WWII are not more precious than the lives of the countless Palestinians who were mercilessly murdered at the hands of the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the holocaust. I am not trying to downplay any people's pain and suffering. But we won't allow others to belittle our pain and suffering.
 
Finally, this is not a partisan or factional Palestinian issue. It transcends all Palestinian factions, political and ideological orientations, which should facilitate and expedite the implementation of this idea.
 
 
Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist based in occupied Palestine

US Guilty of War Crimes in Palestine

[ 21/09/2014 - 10:01 AM ]

By Sam Bahour

The U.S. is not a neutral mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it is an active participant and is guilty of the crimes being committed by Israel against Palestinians, most recently, the mass killings and destruction Israel wrought on the Gaza Strip during the summer. The reality that the U.S. is an active supporter of unimaginable suffering may very well be the motivating force behind the U.S.’s adamant attempts to block the Palestinians from using any of the internationally recognized tools of accountability to hold Israel responsible, such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. When an indigenous, stateless population is blocked access to opportunities for justice by superpowers like the U.S., something is wrong—deadly wrong.

While Israeli bombs were hammering Gaza, Alice Lynd with the assistance of Staughton Lynd, drafted a 32-page pamphlet which was published by the Palestine-Israel Working Group of Historians Against the War (HAW) titled, Violations by Israel and the Problem of Enforcement (August 2014). The policy paper places the U.S. in front of its own mirror and meticulously documents how one hand of the U.S. government systematically documents Israeli violations of U.S. law and international law, while the other hand unconditionally dishes out financial, military, and diplomatic support to Israel.

The study notes that “United States law states that no military assistance will be provided to a government that engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Yet the United States gives more military assistance to Israel than to any other country, currently in excess of $3.1 billion per year. The U.S. participates in joint military exercises, military research, and weapons development.”

This contradiction of its own policy would seem incriminating enough, but if all the other means of U.S. support to Israel are added—especially the U.S.’s unwavering role in the UN Security Council as a proxy for Israel’s interests by vetoing and thereby blocking international steps for justice—the evidence that the U.S. is an active player in Israel’s onslaught and continued military occupation becomes overwhelming.

It stands to reason that the U.S. very rightly fears that any step to hold Israel accountable for crimes against humanity would ultimately incriminate the U.S. as Israel’s funder, diplomatic cover, political handler, and arms supplier for decades.

While this new document was being researched, the Historians Against the War circulated a letter to President Obama and members of Congress that begins: “We deplore the ongoing attacks against civilians in Gaza and in Israel. We also recognize the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.” (July 31, 2014). The pamphlet’s contents strike this point home with incriminating details.

The pamphlet quotes historian Robin D. G. Kelley who recently said about the ongoing conflict, “Determining next steps requires that we go back many steps—before the siege, before the election of Hamas, before the withdrawal of Jewish settlements in Gaza, before the Oslo Accords, even before the strip came under Israeli occupation in 1967.” (“When the smoke clears in Gaza,” Aug. 8, 2014, Black Educator).

I had the honor of working with both authors of this pamphlet following the First Gulf War (1990-1991) when they suggested we co-edit an oral history of Palestine as a tool to understand the centrality of Palestine to the entire destabilization of the Middle East, a reality that is even more true today. Following several field visits to the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel, and the Golan Heights, that effort resulted in the publishing of Homeland: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians (1993). Their new effort revisits many familiar topics that we addressed in our book, with chapter headings such as International Agreements and U.S. Law, International Agreements on Human Rights, U.S. Law on Foreign Assistance, Violations of Internationally Recognized Human Rights, Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Arbitrary Arrest or Detention, Collective Punishment, among many more.

Perhaps the most important chapter in this brief pamphlet is “The Problem of Enforcement.” One need not be a historian or political scientist to understand that as long as global enforcement mechanisms of accountability are denied to Palestinians due to the political whims of a superpower, Israel has the green light to attack Gaza and the West Bank at any time with impunity.

Israel’s senseless military attack this summer (deceptively coined “Operation Protective Edge” in English, and more accurately “Solid Cliff” in Hebrew) left 2,168 Palestinians dead, more than 500 of them children. The Institute for Middle East Understanding compared the proportionate impact of these deaths to the population in the U.S. Gaza’s devastating human loss would be equivalent to 376,680 Americans killed in 51 days if such events were undertaken in the U.S. To put this in perspective, this number is slightly fewer than the 407,000 U.S. soldiers killed in World War II. It is not hyperbole to say that everyone in Gaza knows at least one person who died or was injured in this atrocity, with each person left wondering if he or she would be next.

If humanity is to be served, citizens who believe in equal access to international tools of justice must speak up and denounce the continued U.S. hegemony over Palestine. If you support nonviolent means for addressing crimes against humanity—especially if you are American or Israeli—act now by contacting your elected representative to demand a change in policy so that marginalized populations are not shut out of systems of justice when they are the victims of crimes against humanity. Holding individuals responsible for their crimes is a core American value; it’s a value we should not compromise for any country, especially our own.

- Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah and serves as a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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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