The Zionist Strategy of Demonizing Islam
On August 4, 2010, Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine and chair of the Interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, published an article in Sabbah Report, entitled “Shame on ADL for Opposing Mosque 2Blocks from Ground Zero.”
Rabbi Lerner’s position on the ADL’s (Anti-Defamation League) objection to building an Islamic Community Center in Manhattan, near Ground Zero is praiseworthy. But his interpretation of ADL’s reasons for resisting such a project lacks insight. ADL leader Abe Foxman’s statement: “In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right,” spells out the real reasons behind the decision. That decision cunningly reinforces the notion that Muslim fundamentalists were behind the attacks of 9/11 – a position also perpetrated by the architects of those attacks.
Rabbi Lerner’s statement: “It was not ‘Muslims’ or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred,” echoes George W. Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, September 20, 2001, whereby the blame for 9/11 was put on “a fringe form of Islamic extremism … that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” Unfortunately, both positions – the first, explicitly, the second, apologetically – demonize Islam.
These days, when every aspect of Iranian society is under scrutiny, D. M. Murdock’s article in Freethought Examiner entitled “Inside Iran’s Sex Slave Industry” comes as no surprise. Yet, the timing of this paper makes one wonder: Who benefits from this article?
Certainly, religious fundamentalism needs no defense – it is reprehensible in all its different guises. But Islamic fundamentalism is no less oppressive and dangerous than religious fundamentalism in Israel. In his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Wight of Three Thousand Years, Israel Shahak explained the “destructive influence” of Jewish fundamentalism on “Israeli politics, the military and society.” Shahak demonstrated that “all forms of bigotry” are morally reprehensible: “Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it. … The support of democracy and human rights … is meaningless or even harmful and deceitful [for Israeli Jews], when it does not begin with self-critique and with support of human rights when they are violated by one’s own group. Any support of human rights for non-Jews whose rights are being violated by the ‘Jewish State’ is as deceitful as the support of human rights by a Stalinist …”
Kim Petersen, an editor at Dissident Voice, recently wrote an article criticizing me for alleged dishonesty and hypocrisy. To explain the background, Jeffrey Blankfort had written an article entitled “Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?”, published originally at Pulse and subsequently at Dissident Voice, in which he effectively tried to argue that Chomsky is a Zionist who supports Israeli oppression of Palestinians. I responded with an article of my own entitled “Criticism of Chomsky: Asset or Liability?” to point out how Blankfort systematically and willfully mischaracterized Chomsky’s views. Dissident Voice published my rejoinder (Pulse refused to do so, and Idrees, an editor there, called me an “ass” for pointing out Chomsky’s actual views).
That’s the back story, with which interested readers may choose to familiarize themselves (or not). Turning to Petersen’s own rejoinder of my rejoinder, curiously entitled “The Legitimacy of Boycotting as a Tactic” (curious because most of the article consists of attacks on my person, and only at the end of the piece does he tangentially discuss the issue of the title), he makes numerous arguments to support his contention that I was the one doing the willful mischaracterization.
An examination of Petersen’s evidence for this thesis is instructive as to the intellectual dishonesty that permeates not only the mainstream, but also, unfortunately, the alternative online media, including “progressive” sites like Dissident Voice that seek to “struggle for peace and social justice” — which will never be obtained by means of propagating falsehoods that serve only to distract attention from real and important issues (which was the whole point of my original rejoinder).
Daniel Pipes’ 2005 article on terrorism starts with the following statement “What do Islamist terrorists want? The answer should be obvious, but it is not.” After a tortuous description of so many cases of terrorism, Daniel Pipes finally pronounces the verdict: “In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari’a. … Their ‘real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate’ founded on Shari’a law’.”
Pipes’ conclusions draw on an earlier article on Jihad: “Jihad in the sense of territorial expansion has always been a central aspect of Muslim life. That’s how Muslims came to rule much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632. It’s how, a century later, Muslims had conquered a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred and justified Muslim conquests of such territories as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and the Balkans.” Vehemently dismissing the opposing authoritative opinions of three American professors of Islamic studies, Pipes concludes that “jihad is the world’s foremost source of terrorism” that inspires “a worldwide campaign of violence by self-proclaimed jihadist groups.”
Pipes’ opinions cannot be justified by scholarly standards. A modicum of familiarity with history would have prevented such sweeping generalizations, let alone the assumption that imperial conquests spurred into existence with the advent of Islam – neither Alexander the Great, the Roman Emperors nor the British that conquered half the known world were Muslims. Pipes’ claims fit the Zionist program of demonizing Islam in the eyes of the West: “Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly,” Westerners refuse to hear them. It takes a Zionist psychic like Pipes to interpret this message and push it down the Western throat: “What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge.”
Zardari: The War Is Being Lost
Yesterday, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari dropped what Doug Mataconis describes as a verbal “hand grenade” into the debate about the Great War On Terror ™. In an interview with Le Monde, he said the war was already being lost.
“I believe that the international community, which Pakistan belongs to, is in the process of losing the war against the Taliban, and that is, above all, because we have lost the battle for hearts and minds,” Le Monde quoted him as saying.
The Spectator describes Zardari’s comment thusly: “Given his pivotal, front-seat role in proceedings, it’s got to go down as one of the most significant statements on the war so far.” However, that it’s Zardari saying this automatically tweaks my cynicism bone. I’ve a feeling that it will only be a matter of days before he says that the situation is rescuable if only the West sends even more military aid money to Pakistan. If so, he’ll have been right for the wrong reasons.
Doug links to a report that shows Obama’s press secretary is obviously lost:
“Well, I don’t think the (US) President would agree with President Zardari’s conclusion that the war is lost. I haven’t seen the interview. I don’t know why he’s come to that conclusion,” Gibbs told reporters.
I would’ve thought it was obvious. Nine years in, General Petraeus’ has had to issue a new set of rules for the occupying troops focussing (yet again) on the need to “secure and serve the population”, the need to provide good governance and to fight corruption or abuse of power. We’ve been hearing these refrains since at least the beginning of the second Bush term and we’re hearing them again now as if they’re somehow new.
The Obama administration’s only defence against the charge that Afghanistan is too FUBAR to fix is to put the PR machine into overdrive trying to convince us all that Afghan efforts are in continual “reset” – that the “real effort” has somehow ”just begun”. Tell it to the Taliban or the Afghan people! They know how long the war has lasted.
The July 6, 2010 meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu concentrated on the Peace Process, the Unconditional Bond between the Israeli and the U.S. governments and on Iran. Iran’s uranium enrichment program makes Israel nervous. However, “Nations’ right to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy has been expressly recognized in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” In a Communication dated March 26, 2008 received from the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Motaki, Iran’s Foreign Minister, clearly stated that the Security Council Resolutions, including Resolution 1803 “as well as the damages inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran as a result of malicious steps taken by few countries during the last five years” are in violation of “Inalienable and legal rights of the NPT States parties for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
“Given the ever-increasing needs of energy for its young and growing population, like any other State party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in accordance with Article IV of the Treaty on the inalienable rights of the States parties for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the Islamic Republic of Iran has planned and started activities in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy since 1957. In this context, the Islamic Republic of Iran has constantly complied with its obligation under the NPT and the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and has never had any prohibited activities; hence, its inalienable rights under the NPT should not be violated by any means.” The document clearly stated that the Islamic Republic of Iran had officially announced the “peaceful purposes” of its nuclear program and that there was “no ambiguity” in its nuclear activities. “By deciding on a policy of cooperation and interaction with the IAEA, and even going beyond its existing legal obligations in this cooperation, Iran has spared no efforts to display the maximum transparency in its activities.”
While Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities are fully transparent, since President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program remains deliberately ambiguous. Israel possesses the “largest and most sophisticated arsenal” outside of “the five declared nuclear powers” but has repeatedly denied its nuclear capability. The Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, initially built by France in the late 1950s and early 60s, was called a “manganese plant” among other subterfuges. In 1958, U-2 spy planes of U.S. intelligence took pictures of the project and identified Dimona as “a probable reactor complex.” France, under the leadership of General de Gaulle, reconsidered the project and suspended it for several months. An agreement, reached in November of 1960, “allowed the reactor to proceed if Israel promised not to make weapons and announced the project to the world.”
Gaza Diaries: The Phenomenon of Child Labor
It was a shining smile drawn on a kid’s face; a smile I still remember very well. An interesting power was aroused in me to know what the secret of that smile is and what lies behind it.
Mohammed, a twelve year old boy was smiling, because his mother was going to buy a new T-shirt for him. That interest was back dropped when I knew that Mohammed is the one who earned that money through street selling businesses. The mother continued talking about her “hard working” kid and how he made $10 a day by selling cornbread on the Gaza beach.
After few days, I went to Gaza beach with my family to have some fun and escape from the increased temperatures, while other children come without their families to make their own fortune. Ayman, a 10 year old child, was moving between the families offering them to buy from him some balloons for their children; he says with an angel smile, “Would you like to buy some balloons from me?”
This issue doesn’t end by Mohammed and Ayamn, there are many like them, who I meet during my way from south to north of Gaza.
Osamah, a 14 year old boy, and his young sister Ahlam, 9 years old. In their search for shekels, Osamah and his younger sister spend their time running between cars and people, begging some, and convincing others to buy something from them.
Osamah said: “I left school to help my father and my mother … there is no one to provide for us at home and I have eight siblings … they chose this job for me … and I like it.”
It is unbelievable to know that young children in Gaza are working to provide themselves with their own simple needs.
About 72% of the Palestinian children work because of the difficult and harsh economic situation of their families. You will find many like Osamah and Mohammed work in blacksmith workshops, streets, factories and tunnels in the south of Gaza on the border between Rafah and Egypt where many of them were killed or buried alive under tunnels.
Children leave their education and are being forced to take on the role of earners for their struggling families; they work because of the economic crisis the working class go through and the hope to achieve some of their shattered dreams of having toy or simple clothes like other children who have better life.
There is no doubt that the Palestinian children live in a quite different life from that other children all over the world live in, since the they live in peace and safety while the Palestinian children suffer under occupation, and siege which is one of the major causes of children labor and a main reason that force them to get involved in the labor markets in an early ages.
Distinct social specialists indicate the status of children who are engaged in a labor and who stripped from their childhoods and left with heavy burdens and responsibilities thrown on their shoulders they could hardly bear to left. The prevalence among children may harm them because children working in early age not growing body properly especially children engaged in forced labor affecting their health since they work for long hours without taking a break to eat or drink something.
It is known that children not living a certain age and moving to other age stage may suffer psychological illnesses such as depression or anxiety.
In addition to the psychological effects, a child feels severely limited in their emotional development, because children acquire their passion and conscience of the family through the attention and the caring they have from being all the time with their family, so keeping the child in the workplace deprives them of that.
So, serious steps should be taken from the Palestinian society and the whole world to rescue these children from labor nightmares which caught them up in the hardship of life and stripped their childhoods off.
The Government and other institutions in the Palestinian society should take their responsibilities in creating jobs and supporting families in need, so that children are no longer forced to work. Discussion aboutthe many causes and motivations of the phenomenon, and psychological, social and emotional effects and the consequences on the future of children, could lead to real advocacy for the rights of the child, and the means used to protect our children against the loss, and result in appropriate solutions.
I hope that this phenomenon will come to an end by seeing the shining smiles of the children while enjoying their time in the places they should be in with their families and their friends.
God bless and save the Palestinian children.
America Is Easy to Push Around*
Despite the joint press conference and multiple photo shots appearing in major newspapers, the July 6, 2010 meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reinforced an earlier comment, attributed to Israel’s ambassador in Washington – “a ‘tectonic rift’ in U.S.-Israel ties.” The Peace Process, the Unconditional Bond between the Israeli and the U.S. governments were at the top of the agenda. But according to Morton A. Klein, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, the meeting is an opportunity for Obama to guarantee the support of pro-Israel Jews and Christians in mid-term congressional elections in November. As for Netanyahu, he wants to assure his public that even though the relations with the current U.S. administration are very difficult – Mr. Klein called Obama “the most hostile president Israel [has] ever experienced” – they haven’t cooled off completely.
Mr. Klein openly accused Obama for supporting Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and complained about the fact that the Palestinians have received double the amount of money President George W. Bush ever gave to the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Klein obviously suffers from severe memory loss. He doesn’t remember that President Obama requested $2.775 billion in FMF (Foreign Military Financing) to Israel for the Fiscal Year 2010. Similarly, the President of the Zionist Organization of America has forgotten that Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II and that “since 1985 the United States has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel.”
The real issue, it seems, is the disagreement between the two leaders’ approach towards Palestinian Authority – “the Obama administration believes Abbas is for real, and the Netanyahu prime ministership does not.” Given the recent video “The Real AND Deceitful Face of Binyamin Netanyahu,” broadcast three days after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, supporters of the “Illegal Settler State” would do well to stop questioning the integrity of Palestinian Authority, focusing instead, on the trustworthiness of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel today simultaneously published reporting based upon the largest leak of Pentagon secret files ever, more than 92,000 documents from the war in Afghanistan made available to them by Wikileaks. Of the three, the Guardian’s coverage is far and away the best and most in-depth.
The newspapers admit they kept some secrets too sensitive for publication buried and the details in the document dump seem to be of the kind well known already to wonks who have followed Afghanistan reporting over the years, but the manner and volume of the War Log’s release will doubtless crystallize the opinions of many who were only casual readers of news from the West’s occupation there. With public opinion against that occupation running at some 60% in the U.S. and over 70% in the UK and Germany, these leaks will put further pressure on Western governments to find an exit sooner rather than later.
Bush Era CIA Boss Stumps For Iran War
Michael Hayden, nowadays principal of the security contractor founded by Michael Chertoff, has some old-fashioned neocon crazy for us today.
Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was “way down the list” of options. But he tells CNN’s “State of the Union” that such action now “seems inexorable.”
“In my personal thinking,” Hayden said, “I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.”
The former CIA chief predicted Iran would build its program to the point where it’s just below having an actual weapon, saying his view was “that Iran left to its own devices will get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community.”
Hayden said that reaching even that level would be “as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon.”
Hayden admits, in other words, that Iran is pursuing the “Japan Option” – the ability to build a weapon but no actual weapon-in-being – which is a non-aggressive option and is entirely legal under the terms of the Non-proliferation Treaty. Then he says that Iran will need to be attacked anyway.
That there would be no legal basis for such an attack doesn’t seem to bother Hayden one whit. That attacking Iran only because we ‘have to’ attack before they have the capacity to retaliate is a straight-up Nuremberg level crime of aggression doesn’t even seem to register.
None of this seems to have occured to House Republicans either. They’re putting forward a House resolution assuring Israel of a US “green light” if it decides to attack Iran.
The introduction of the measure coincides with a pattern of renewed calls for military strikes that have escalated since President Obama signed “crippling” Congressional Iran sanctions into law. Neoconservatives who were instrumental in orchestrating the Iraq War, such as Bill Kristol, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, have led the stepped up calls for military action.
Hawkish former Bush Administration official John Bolton recently laid out the game plan to prod Israel into attacking Iran, arguing that outsiders can “create broad support” for a strike by framing it as an issue of Israel’s right to self defense. Supporters for military strikes, Bolton says, should “defend the specific tactic of pre-emptive attacks” against Iran. He urges that Congress can “make it clear” that it supports such strikes and that “having visible congressional support in place at the outset will reassure the Israeli government, which is legitimately concerned about Mr. Obama’s likely negative reaction to such an attack.”
The measure, House Res. 1553, states:
Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.
And as to what would be most “destabilizing to the region”…Daniel Larison succinctly covered that yesterday.
That aggression is directed against a regional power that could inflict significant damage on U.S. forces, bases and allies, including Israel, in any retaliatory strikes it would launch in response to an unprovoked attack against its nuclear facilities. That doesn’t begin to cover the harm such a conflict could cause to the global economy and the stability of the broader region. There is obviously no understanding among the resolution’s supporters of what an Israeli attack on Iran would do to American interests in the Near East, and there is apparently no awareness of the escalation by Hizbullah to which Israel would be exposed as a result.
What may be worse still is that Israel has less of a chance of successfully destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities than U.S. forces would have, and it is unlikely that a U.S. attack would do anything more than briefly delay Iran’s nuclear program. Even if we granted that Iran posed a “nuclear threat” to Israel, Israel could not eliminate it if it tried, so the resolution is little more than an invitation to senseless warfare that has no hope of accomplishing its objective.
Republicans, and more than a few hawkish Democrats, are engaged in an open conspiracy to engage the US and Israel in an illegal and destabilizing war of aggression against Iran. The Nuremberg Principles say that such conspiracy is itself a war crime. Every single congresscritter who votes for House Resolution 1553 should be arrested and charged under international and domestic law, but unfortunately they won’t be.
One law for some, another law for the rest.
