11 February 2009
A 'Golden Opportunity' wasted in Gaza...
Euphemistically called the 'security vote' but in fact consisting of a platform to pulverise the remaining Palestinian presence that threatens a 'wholly Jewish State', the Zionist entity and its Jewish 'citizens' remain utterly devoted to genocide against the Palestinian people. The majority of the Jewish 'citizens' of the Zionist entity believe that the Zionist military rampages in Gaza 'didn't go far enough'. They believe that 'a golden opportunity' to eradicate any Palestinian resistance against their ultimate obliteration was wasted.
Ibrahim Alloush and the voice of Resistance
My old comrade Ibrahim Alloush exhibits the combination of wit and fire that always characterised his interactions with hypocrites, cowards and collaborators.
12 January 2009
06 January 2009
Silent Night, Holy Night, but not for Palestine
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
****************************************************************************
****************************************
Once again, the Zionist Occupation of Palestine has demonstrated its total contempt of international law, humanitarian considerations and has bombed yet ANOTHER United Nations facility, murdering scores of civilians.
The Al Fakhoura School in Jabaliya Refugee Camp was targeted by Zionist missiles yesterday.
The school is operated by UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has been using its schools to house some of the 15,000 Gazans who have fled their homes due to Israel's ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, which began on Saturday.
UNRWA declared that it had GIVEN the GPS coordinates of all UN installations throughout the Gaza Strip to the Zionist military authorities. The school was clearly marked as a UN facility.
Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations confirmed that three refugees had been killed at 11.30 p.m. on Monday night when Israeli forces fired directly on a UNRWA school in Gaza City.
According to the UN, Another UNRWA school also came under fire in the city of Rafah. An UNRWA health clinic in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp was also damaged when a Zionist missile hit an adjacent building, injuring ten medics and patients.
'There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorised and traumatised,' said John Ging, the top UN official in Gaza. He also said that people in Gaza are 'entitled' to action by the international community to stop the Zionist invasion.
These blatant genocidal attacks come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Zionist philosophy and the strategies of the Occupation for more than half a century.
A WHOLLY JEWISH STATE IS PREDICATED UPON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL NON-JEWISH PERSONS IN PALESTINE.
The Zionist Entity is determined to create a wholly Jewish State. That was the mandate of Zionist 'pioneers' in the late 19th Century and it remains the same now in the first decade of the 21st century.
The massacres at refugee camps in Lebanon through the decades, from Sabra and Shatila to Qana demonstrated quite clearly that the Zionists do not believe in the value of Palestinian lives or the lives of any one who has an iota of humanitarian interest in the welfare of the Palestinian people.
It is Christmas Eve tonight in Palestine for all Orthodox Christians. For all other Christians, it is Twelfth Night, the night on which the Three Kings came to Bethlehem to bear witness to the birth of the Child and pay homage to him.
In Palestine tonight, where once a holy star shone over the Christ Child, the menace of the dark star of the Zionists threatens the lives of any one and anything that continues to stand in its path.
And the leaders of the world, who should pay homage to JUSTICE if not to any sacred traditions, allow themselves to be blinded to the truth by Zionist propaganda once more. Rather than putting an end to the Zionist programme of genocide, they tacitly support it.
09 November 2008
George Kirmiz and Music for Palestine in Exile
The cassettes are old but the songs inspire so many memories of a time when energy ran high with hopes for an end to the Zionist Occupation and the rebirth of Palestine. It has been impossible to find CDs of the music of George Kirmiz. As the cassettes become less and less viable, there has to be a way to preserve the songs. He was a very talented composer and musician and insh'allah, remains so.
Perhaps the draconian legislature of the U.S. government with respect to 'affiliations' in certain political groups has rendered freedom of expression for musicians as well as others a risky business. Perhaps the political bankruptcy of certain Palestinian political parties that have failed to maintain a steadfast stance with respect to the Zionist entity has diluted the impact of some of these songs.
When they first were composed and sung, however, they quickened the pulse of their listeners. As part of the history of the Palestinian people in exile, they should be preserved. In any case, political parties come and go, mutate and divide. Ideas of liberation, identity and freedom never can be obsolete.
For Palestine, undivided and uncompromised!
Perhaps the draconian legislature of the U.S. government with respect to 'affiliations' in certain political groups has rendered freedom of expression for musicians as well as others a risky business. Perhaps the political bankruptcy of certain Palestinian political parties that have failed to maintain a steadfast stance with respect to the Zionist entity has diluted the impact of some of these songs.
When they first were composed and sung, however, they quickened the pulse of their listeners. As part of the history of the Palestinian people in exile, they should be preserved. In any case, political parties come and go, mutate and divide. Ideas of liberation, identity and freedom never can be obsolete.
For Palestine, undivided and uncompromised!
28 September 2008
'Give Peace a Chance'
The recent shameful appearance of 'Sir' Paul McCartney at a concert 'celebrating' the continuing existence of the Zionist entity is yet another example of how those who claim to represent some force acting in the name of 'peace' are willing to sweep the facts under the rug whenever Palestine is an issue.
'Give Peace a Chance' in these circumstances is tantamount to acquiescence in self-obliteration for the Palestinian people and their rightful claim to the land of Palestine. 60 years later, even while they continue to build a barrier that further diminishes Palestinian access to their own land, the Zionists cannot claim to have wiped the rightful owners from the map.
Resistance will continue, however brutal the occupation, however many international 'celebrity activists' side with the Zionists solely on the basis of 'having friends in Israel'.
Paul's own words: 'When I was told there was a concert in Tel Aviv I was looking forward to it. I've never been to Israel and the Beatles were banned originally, but I was conscious of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. So I said I would like to try to come to Palestine while I had a few days ... Rather than staying in England and saying 'oh yeah, too bad about that lot'. I've been here now and I'm getting a better understanding.'
Then: 'I enjoyed going into Palestine. Israel's a beautiful country, driving down to Jerusalem was a great drive. Being in Jerusalem was very special just because of the history. Then going through the wall was kind of quite special, but in an edgy way. You don't like to see things like that exist in the world – it reminded me of the Berlin Wall.'
He is an aging idealist who wants to wrap a bandage on all the ugliness of reality, to be LOVED by every one, irrespective of his moral cowardice in refusing to make a categorical statement that would have had some reality behind it. The Beatles were banned from the Zionist Entity in 1965. Instead of returning the favour by refusing to lend his weight to a celebration of a foreign Occupation of Palestine, McCartney chose to accept an 'official' apology by the Zionists and to pretend that his message would benefit 'both sides' in the 'conflict'.
Sixty years of Occupation has not effaced the Palestinian identity. When the 100th Anniversary of the Zionist entity is scheduled to occur, there no longer will be a Zionist Entity... Let's see if the Zionists will be willing to 'give Peace a chance' when they are forced to surrender their claims of being 'the chosen people' and must live as ordinary citizens in 'non-Jewish states' throughout the world.
Unfortunately, as much as 'Peace' sounds like a positive state of being, it only serves the Zionists, giving them the opportunity to continue to grab more land, imprison and kill more Palestinian activists and indeed more Palestinians of any age, creed or religion in order to further their hope creating an equation where the total percentage in terms of people ON THE LAND equals 100% Jews in Palestine.
Meanwhile, the brutal foreign invasion and Occupation of Iraq with its puppet government serving the interests of the alliance against the Arab Nation is described beatifically as a 'fledgling democracy' with no reference whatsoever to the facts.
As for the rest of the world, if multi-national corporations continue to have global economic domination throughout the globe, the Zionists always will continue to rule wherever they may be.
'Give Peace a Chance' in these circumstances is tantamount to acquiescence in self-obliteration for the Palestinian people and their rightful claim to the land of Palestine. 60 years later, even while they continue to build a barrier that further diminishes Palestinian access to their own land, the Zionists cannot claim to have wiped the rightful owners from the map.
Resistance will continue, however brutal the occupation, however many international 'celebrity activists' side with the Zionists solely on the basis of 'having friends in Israel'.
Paul's own words: 'When I was told there was a concert in Tel Aviv I was looking forward to it. I've never been to Israel and the Beatles were banned originally, but I was conscious of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. So I said I would like to try to come to Palestine while I had a few days ... Rather than staying in England and saying 'oh yeah, too bad about that lot'. I've been here now and I'm getting a better understanding.'
Then: 'I enjoyed going into Palestine. Israel's a beautiful country, driving down to Jerusalem was a great drive. Being in Jerusalem was very special just because of the history. Then going through the wall was kind of quite special, but in an edgy way. You don't like to see things like that exist in the world – it reminded me of the Berlin Wall.'
He is an aging idealist who wants to wrap a bandage on all the ugliness of reality, to be LOVED by every one, irrespective of his moral cowardice in refusing to make a categorical statement that would have had some reality behind it. The Beatles were banned from the Zionist Entity in 1965. Instead of returning the favour by refusing to lend his weight to a celebration of a foreign Occupation of Palestine, McCartney chose to accept an 'official' apology by the Zionists and to pretend that his message would benefit 'both sides' in the 'conflict'.
Sixty years of Occupation has not effaced the Palestinian identity. When the 100th Anniversary of the Zionist entity is scheduled to occur, there no longer will be a Zionist Entity... Let's see if the Zionists will be willing to 'give Peace a chance' when they are forced to surrender their claims of being 'the chosen people' and must live as ordinary citizens in 'non-Jewish states' throughout the world.
Unfortunately, as much as 'Peace' sounds like a positive state of being, it only serves the Zionists, giving them the opportunity to continue to grab more land, imprison and kill more Palestinian activists and indeed more Palestinians of any age, creed or religion in order to further their hope creating an equation where the total percentage in terms of people ON THE LAND equals 100% Jews in Palestine.
Meanwhile, the brutal foreign invasion and Occupation of Iraq with its puppet government serving the interests of the alliance against the Arab Nation is described beatifically as a 'fledgling democracy' with no reference whatsoever to the facts.
As for the rest of the world, if multi-national corporations continue to have global economic domination throughout the globe, the Zionists always will continue to rule wherever they may be.
16 June 2007
The Value of Arab Lives
The New York Post, which can be accurately defined as a 'rag' in the most pejorative sense of the word, is having a field day describing the factional conflict in Gaza and Iraq. Jubilantly crowing about the Arab 'culture of violence and suicide', writers repeatedly speak in terms of 'having given the Arabs a chance' to govern themselves that has been squandered. They then declare it now to be time for civilised nations like the 'U.S.' and 'Israel' to intervene as if the U.S. and Zionist entity had not been involved in the destruction of the Arab Nation from the start!
What makes this sort of journalism dangerous is the fact that most Americans do not care about Iraq or Gaza enough to learn the facts that underline the factional conflicts. What makes it utterly outrageous is knowledge of the negligible value that the so-called 'civilised nations' determined for Arab lives in the first place.
An 'official' American assessment of the value of an Arab life is given in the following exchange.
In 1996, U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Leslie Stahl on '60 Minutes' on the subject of the U.S. sanctions against Iraq as follows:
Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.'
Remember that these deaths were caused solely by the economic sanctions against Iraq BEFORE the U.S. invasion. The death toll since the invasion has been far higher.
A Lancet study in 2006 estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, the bulk of which have been civilians.
As of November 2006, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries. 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. As of 2007, over 3.9 million Iraqis, have lost their homes and become refugees. This price evidently is well 'worth it' in the general scheme of U.S. foreign policy.
'Legitimate targets' according both to the U.S. and Zionist military include 'dual use facilities'. A 'dual use facility' is defined as any structure that possibly could be used for 'military purposes' ranging from the storage of any inflammable substance to the temporary hiding place of a 'target', thus including every civilian home or place of business squarely within the definition. This is nothing new in war, however. Villages have been torched and razed to the ground by invading forces since the dawn of humanity. 'Civilised nations' evidently consider this practice to be justified even now, although bombs dropped by aircraft have taken the place of the hand-held wooden torch.
The low value placed on the lives of Arab children as well as the rest of the population has been demonstrated again and again in the continuing U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. 'Collateral damage' is the blanket term used to describe massacres of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military machine. The U.S. Defence Minister stressed the importance of remembering that it was 'nearly impossible to eliminate collateral damage.' He cited weapons systems malfunctions, human error and the 'fog of war' as the culprits. The government surely could not be held accountable in such circumstances.
When it's a matter of killing 'insurgents', the term is 'mopping up' as if Arab patriots were nothing more than filth spilled on the floor of 'democracy'.
The Zionist perspective of the value of Arab lives:
In his eulogy for the American Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 27 unarmed worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin declared: 'The lives of 1 million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.'
As usual, the U.S. supported this assessment. On the official site of the JDL in Florida, the following declaration was published:
'How does JDL feel about Dr. Baruch Goldstein?...We feel that Goldstein took a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack. We understand his motivation, his grief and his actions. We are not ashamed to say that Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League. We quote without comment the rabbi who conducted the services at Goldstein's funeral, "A MILLION ARABS ARE NOT WORTH ONE JEWISH FINGERNAIL."
These are the pronouncements of the 'civilised nations' so very superior in their 'values' to the Arab Nation, described as having 'dysfunctional values and antique social structures' that prevent them from governing 'themselves decently'.
Adding injury to insult, one reads views such as the following: 'We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel 'gave back' the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other.'
It is amazing that any one would take a pronoucement of this sort seriously but the abysmal degree of political ignorance combined with the incessant propaganda of the Zionists form an equation that almost guarantees that the circumstances that prevail both in Iraq and Gaza will continue.
The Arab government in Iraq BEFORE the U.S. and its allies imposed economic sanctions for over 13 years was a progressive and stable one. In terms of science, medicine, education, standard of living and rights for women, the government of Iraq could not be faulted.
The idea that the U.S. 'gave them a chance in Iraq' by destroying the entire infrastructure of the country first economically, then by military invasion, is absolutely outrageous.
As for the ludicrous statement that the Zionists 'gave back the Gaza strip to let the Palestinians build a model state', it is tragic that the degree of political ignorance in the States would allow any one to take this sort of nonsense seriously.
The generous act of 'giving back' the Gaza strip consists of the demolition of a few isolated illegal Zionist settlements that never should have been built in the first place. Illegal settlements in the West Bank have not only been sustained throughout but have been enlarged. Throughout the so-called Palestinian control of Gaza, the Zionists have continued to bomb and invade the area. Although many may not recognise the fact that the Zionist Occupation of the entire homeland of the Palestinian people is illicit, even the U.N. continues to maintain the illegality of the military Occupation of the lands seized in 1967. That territory includes not only Gaza, but the West Bank AND Jerusalem.
'Giving back' Gaza was a matter of the Zionists pulling down a few tiny settlements in Gaza while continuing to occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem and never ceasing to use military force in Gaza as well as throughout Palestine (and Lebanon when the mood takes them.) Of course, the Zionists have a god-given right to pre-emptively strike against any one or anything they may perceive to pose a possible threat to their interests at any point in time.
The only reason I quote the New York Post is that it represents an attitude that is far more widespread than the readership of that specific rag.
One therefore should take a moment to reflect upon the chances of the Palestinian people to create 'a model state' amidst the bombings by the Zionists, military incursions by the I.D.F. as well as economic and political interference and pressure by the U.S. and its European allies.
Notwithstanding attempts by foreign media to portray it otherwise, the P.L.O always has been a democratic organisation, with members from every political movement with very diverse ideological backgrounds and aims. The Palestinian Authority actually is less democratic in nature only because it was created pursuant to the Oslo Accords, making the Zionists a partner in its creation without any true autonomy. As such, it cannot represent a 'democratic ideal'. (I do not subscribe to the propaganda that insists 'democracy' to be the ultimate form of government in any case.) In point of fact, it is not a 'government' in the true sense of the world, as the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination was not met by the creation of a mere 'Authority' existing under the ultimate jurisdiction of the foreign Zionist entity. The P.L.O. remains the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The organisation of the P.A. is based on the same model as that of the United States, with three separate branches, consisting of Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. Unfortunately, as the Zionists have not relinquished their Occupation and control of Palestine, the Judiciary has not been formalised. The President of the P.A. is supposed to be elected directly by the people, although historically, neither the U.S. nor the Zionists have recognised any result that did not correspond with their policy requirements. It is the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) that constitutes the parliament and the appointment of the Prime Minister by the President as well as any officials appointed by the Prime Minister must be approved by the Council.
The composition of the PLC is as follows: half of the 132 seats are filled pursuant to direct elections in 16 localities in which all political parties participate. (More than 15 different political parties and alliances were on the ballot in the 2006 elections.) The other half are elected in proportion to party votes from a national pool of candidates.
In 2006, Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority in the most recent election but, rather than accepting the 'democratic process' they so loudly extolled as the ideal, the U.S. and Europe withheld aid from the Palestinian people as a result.
The U.S. has provided arms and training for groups with the ambition to overthrow the government of Hamas and indeed urged Mahmoud Abbas to stage a coup against Hamas. Abbas now unilaterally has 'dismissed' the elected Hamas government and has seized control.
Meanwhile, under the spurious 'independence' of Gaza from Zionist control, taxes and customs duties owed to the Palestinians are collected by Israeli officials. The Zionist refusal to transfer tax receipts, coupled with the cessation of foreign aid, has brought a failing economy to the point of utter desperation. So much for U.S./Zionist claims that they created a situation in which Palestinian aspirations could flourish!
In Iraq, the 'democratic' values that purportedly comprised the aim of the foreign invasion, from the very start excluded any possibility of true independence or freedom. While urging elections upon the Iraqis, the U.S. and its allies categorically declared that certain forms of government would be unacceptable. 'Democratic election' evidently should be translated as an election in which only candidates approved by the U.S. are allowed to enter.
Both in Iraq and in Gaza, living conditions resemble those found in the worst refugee camps. Electricity and water are in short supply. Food is at a premium. Foreign military attack never has ceased.
As far as Hamas and its capacity to create a 'model state' or even to participate in the creation of ANY real Palestinian State is concerned, that possibility never was tested. The world never gave Hamas a chance. Abbas, the puppet leader who earned the U.S./Zionist stamp of approval, rather than working with Hamas, allowed himself to become even less of a true representative of the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations. It should be said here that Abbas and his cronies do not even represent Fatah. They represent a corrupt, foreign-influenced element of Fatah.
The factional conflicts that plague both Iraq and Gaza are a minor issue compared to the ongoing devastation caused by American/Zionist policies. When foreign invasion and occupation destroys the foundation of Arab civilisation and then proceeds to strangle the hope of any true independence, what is left but desperation?
Noam Chomsky on Lebanon and Gaza:
What makes this sort of journalism dangerous is the fact that most Americans do not care about Iraq or Gaza enough to learn the facts that underline the factional conflicts. What makes it utterly outrageous is knowledge of the negligible value that the so-called 'civilised nations' determined for Arab lives in the first place.
An 'official' American assessment of the value of an Arab life is given in the following exchange.
In 1996, U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Leslie Stahl on '60 Minutes' on the subject of the U.S. sanctions against Iraq as follows:
Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.'
Remember that these deaths were caused solely by the economic sanctions against Iraq BEFORE the U.S. invasion. The death toll since the invasion has been far higher.
A Lancet study in 2006 estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, the bulk of which have been civilians.
As of November 2006, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries. 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. As of 2007, over 3.9 million Iraqis, have lost their homes and become refugees. This price evidently is well 'worth it' in the general scheme of U.S. foreign policy.
'Legitimate targets' according both to the U.S. and Zionist military include 'dual use facilities'. A 'dual use facility' is defined as any structure that possibly could be used for 'military purposes' ranging from the storage of any inflammable substance to the temporary hiding place of a 'target', thus including every civilian home or place of business squarely within the definition. This is nothing new in war, however. Villages have been torched and razed to the ground by invading forces since the dawn of humanity. 'Civilised nations' evidently consider this practice to be justified even now, although bombs dropped by aircraft have taken the place of the hand-held wooden torch.
The low value placed on the lives of Arab children as well as the rest of the population has been demonstrated again and again in the continuing U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. 'Collateral damage' is the blanket term used to describe massacres of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military machine. The U.S. Defence Minister stressed the importance of remembering that it was 'nearly impossible to eliminate collateral damage.' He cited weapons systems malfunctions, human error and the 'fog of war' as the culprits. The government surely could not be held accountable in such circumstances.
When it's a matter of killing 'insurgents', the term is 'mopping up' as if Arab patriots were nothing more than filth spilled on the floor of 'democracy'.
The Zionist perspective of the value of Arab lives:
In his eulogy for the American Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 27 unarmed worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin declared: 'The lives of 1 million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.'
As usual, the U.S. supported this assessment. On the official site of the JDL in Florida, the following declaration was published:
'How does JDL feel about Dr. Baruch Goldstein?...We feel that Goldstein took a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack. We understand his motivation, his grief and his actions. We are not ashamed to say that Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League. We quote without comment the rabbi who conducted the services at Goldstein's funeral, "A MILLION ARABS ARE NOT WORTH ONE JEWISH FINGERNAIL."
These are the pronouncements of the 'civilised nations' so very superior in their 'values' to the Arab Nation, described as having 'dysfunctional values and antique social structures' that prevent them from governing 'themselves decently'.
Adding injury to insult, one reads views such as the following: 'We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel 'gave back' the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other.'
It is amazing that any one would take a pronoucement of this sort seriously but the abysmal degree of political ignorance combined with the incessant propaganda of the Zionists form an equation that almost guarantees that the circumstances that prevail both in Iraq and Gaza will continue.
The Arab government in Iraq BEFORE the U.S. and its allies imposed economic sanctions for over 13 years was a progressive and stable one. In terms of science, medicine, education, standard of living and rights for women, the government of Iraq could not be faulted.
The idea that the U.S. 'gave them a chance in Iraq' by destroying the entire infrastructure of the country first economically, then by military invasion, is absolutely outrageous.
As for the ludicrous statement that the Zionists 'gave back the Gaza strip to let the Palestinians build a model state', it is tragic that the degree of political ignorance in the States would allow any one to take this sort of nonsense seriously.
The generous act of 'giving back' the Gaza strip consists of the demolition of a few isolated illegal Zionist settlements that never should have been built in the first place. Illegal settlements in the West Bank have not only been sustained throughout but have been enlarged. Throughout the so-called Palestinian control of Gaza, the Zionists have continued to bomb and invade the area. Although many may not recognise the fact that the Zionist Occupation of the entire homeland of the Palestinian people is illicit, even the U.N. continues to maintain the illegality of the military Occupation of the lands seized in 1967. That territory includes not only Gaza, but the West Bank AND Jerusalem.
'Giving back' Gaza was a matter of the Zionists pulling down a few tiny settlements in Gaza while continuing to occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem and never ceasing to use military force in Gaza as well as throughout Palestine (and Lebanon when the mood takes them.) Of course, the Zionists have a god-given right to pre-emptively strike against any one or anything they may perceive to pose a possible threat to their interests at any point in time.
The only reason I quote the New York Post is that it represents an attitude that is far more widespread than the readership of that specific rag.
One therefore should take a moment to reflect upon the chances of the Palestinian people to create 'a model state' amidst the bombings by the Zionists, military incursions by the I.D.F. as well as economic and political interference and pressure by the U.S. and its European allies.
Notwithstanding attempts by foreign media to portray it otherwise, the P.L.O always has been a democratic organisation, with members from every political movement with very diverse ideological backgrounds and aims. The Palestinian Authority actually is less democratic in nature only because it was created pursuant to the Oslo Accords, making the Zionists a partner in its creation without any true autonomy. As such, it cannot represent a 'democratic ideal'. (I do not subscribe to the propaganda that insists 'democracy' to be the ultimate form of government in any case.) In point of fact, it is not a 'government' in the true sense of the world, as the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination was not met by the creation of a mere 'Authority' existing under the ultimate jurisdiction of the foreign Zionist entity. The P.L.O. remains the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The organisation of the P.A. is based on the same model as that of the United States, with three separate branches, consisting of Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. Unfortunately, as the Zionists have not relinquished their Occupation and control of Palestine, the Judiciary has not been formalised. The President of the P.A. is supposed to be elected directly by the people, although historically, neither the U.S. nor the Zionists have recognised any result that did not correspond with their policy requirements. It is the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) that constitutes the parliament and the appointment of the Prime Minister by the President as well as any officials appointed by the Prime Minister must be approved by the Council.
The composition of the PLC is as follows: half of the 132 seats are filled pursuant to direct elections in 16 localities in which all political parties participate. (More than 15 different political parties and alliances were on the ballot in the 2006 elections.) The other half are elected in proportion to party votes from a national pool of candidates.
In 2006, Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority in the most recent election but, rather than accepting the 'democratic process' they so loudly extolled as the ideal, the U.S. and Europe withheld aid from the Palestinian people as a result.
The U.S. has provided arms and training for groups with the ambition to overthrow the government of Hamas and indeed urged Mahmoud Abbas to stage a coup against Hamas. Abbas now unilaterally has 'dismissed' the elected Hamas government and has seized control.
Meanwhile, under the spurious 'independence' of Gaza from Zionist control, taxes and customs duties owed to the Palestinians are collected by Israeli officials. The Zionist refusal to transfer tax receipts, coupled with the cessation of foreign aid, has brought a failing economy to the point of utter desperation. So much for U.S./Zionist claims that they created a situation in which Palestinian aspirations could flourish!
In Iraq, the 'democratic' values that purportedly comprised the aim of the foreign invasion, from the very start excluded any possibility of true independence or freedom. While urging elections upon the Iraqis, the U.S. and its allies categorically declared that certain forms of government would be unacceptable. 'Democratic election' evidently should be translated as an election in which only candidates approved by the U.S. are allowed to enter.
Both in Iraq and in Gaza, living conditions resemble those found in the worst refugee camps. Electricity and water are in short supply. Food is at a premium. Foreign military attack never has ceased.
As far as Hamas and its capacity to create a 'model state' or even to participate in the creation of ANY real Palestinian State is concerned, that possibility never was tested. The world never gave Hamas a chance. Abbas, the puppet leader who earned the U.S./Zionist stamp of approval, rather than working with Hamas, allowed himself to become even less of a true representative of the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations. It should be said here that Abbas and his cronies do not even represent Fatah. They represent a corrupt, foreign-influenced element of Fatah.
The factional conflicts that plague both Iraq and Gaza are a minor issue compared to the ongoing devastation caused by American/Zionist policies. When foreign invasion and occupation destroys the foundation of Arab civilisation and then proceeds to strangle the hope of any true independence, what is left but desperation?
Noam Chomsky on Lebanon and Gaza:
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