Children pay the price as UNRWA operations in Gaza are grinding to a halt

A hungry child demonstrates (Ma'an)

Maan News

24 Aug 2006- Reliefweb / UNRWA

UNRWA warned on Thursday that the Agency's Gaza operation is grinding to a halt because of the lack of access in and out of Gaza. The principal goods terminal, Karni, remains closed for the seventh consecutive day. As a result, shortages of food, fuel and constructions supplies are jeopardizing every element of UNRWA's Gaza operation at the moment. John Ging, UNRWA's Director of Operations in Gaza said that "the food distribution to 830,000 people will not commence as planned next week, unless Karni opens and a solution is found to get the containers quickly through the port of Ashdod, where there are also massive delays because of the fallout from the conflict with Lebanon."

The Agency has just one week's fuel supply remaining. Since the Gaza Power Plant was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in late June, the operation of UNRWA health clinics is heavily dependant on generator power. "If we run out of fuel, this will be extremely serious in terms of the storage of medical supplies and the operation of medical equipment at UNRWA's 18 health centers throughout the Gaza Strip," John Ging said.

As for construction supplies, UNRWA highlighted that almost none have entered Gaza since late June, which is a particular problem as the Agency prepares for the return of its 194,000 students next week. "The work to repair the schools damaged in the military operations over the past two months is not finished as supplies have run out," John Ging said. The long-awaited extension to the UNRWA vocational training center in Gaza City is also half-finished and with no alternative accommodation available, UNRWA has been forced to postpone commencement of the seven technical courses involved until November. "Children are once again paying the price in this conflict," Ging stated.

Ging described the overall humanitarian living conditions in Gaza, as "miserable, frustrating and still deteriorating." He said that "the opportunities opened up by last year's disengagement by Israel from the settlements in Gaza are fading. The prospects are very worrying as Gaza is now cut off economically from the outside world and even keeping our humanitarian operations going is an expensive struggle".

UNRWA is now facing a bill of some 1 million dollars from its Israeli shipping agents in demurrage charges directly arising from the closures of Karni crossing. Source: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Hysteria Rules the Skies

Iman Kurdi, Arab News

This weekend I am taking a flight from the south of France back to London. Since I do not want to be taken off the flight — or even worse “removed” from the flight as the current terminology goes as if the passengers were some kind of stain or obstruction — for the new crime of traveling while Asian, or the related crimes of traveling while Arab or Muslim, I am wondering what precautions I should take.

British Airways has kindly sent me an e-mail detailing what I am and what I am not allowed to carry in my carry-on luggage. I shall follow their instructions to the letter. My handbag will be free of the new weapons of mass destruction: Bottles of water, tubs of hand cream or tubes of toothpaste for me. And I shall diligently present myself at the security points where no doubt I shall be picked for a “random” check, with both my physical self and my earthly goods thoroughly checked and cleared.

But obeying the law is not enough, for all it takes is to appear foreign to be guilty of this new crime. I must appear to be a regular holidaymaker, I must not stand out as different. So I think I may wear flip-flops on my feet, though given the weather conditions in London I fear for my health.

And perhaps I shall buy myself some shorts for the occasion. And I must not at any cost wear a jumper or a jacket: It may be sensible attire for the rather cool and wet weather in London but it is not what the typical British holidaymaker wears. Oh what the heck, perhaps I should get myself a copy of the Daily Mail and sit in the sun at noon on the day of my departure; perhaps then I can convince my fellow passengers that I am one of them.

I almost forgot, I must make sure I don’t look at my watch whilst I am waiting for my flight — apparently that is part of “behaving suspiciously” — nor must I speak Arabic or any other non-European language. Maybe I’ll leave my watch at home, save myself from the temptation of checking the time, and whilst I’m at it, maybe I’ll leave my mobile phone at home too, in case I should be tempted to fiddle with it during the flight and alarm my fellow passengers. Maybe that will be enough. Or will it?

We have recently witnessed a series of incidents where passengers have been asked to leave a flight or where flights have been diverted with fighter jets escorting them simply because Asian-looking passengers aroused suspicion. What is more, the grounds for this suspicion have been at best flimsy and at worse purely racial without even the pretence of anything more substantial. What is of even more concern is that the suspicions of fellow passengers have been enough to warrant airlines ordering passengers off a flight.

On Aug. 10, Amar Ashraf, a British citizen, was asked to leave a Continental Airlines flight from Manchester to Newark. An airline pilot with one of Continental’s partner airlines, Ashraf was traveling as a standby passenger.

He was issued with a boarding pass, had taken his seat in business class and the aircraft doors had closed when lo and behold, he was tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave.

The doors were reopened and he took the lonely walk of humiliation down the steps and onto the tarmac to be greeted by armed police. What was his crime? His Muslim name aroused suspicion. Continental told him that no stand-by passengers were allowed to fly that day and yet no other standby passengers were taken off the flight. Two days later Ashraf bought a ticket on Virgin Atlantic and flew back to the US without any trouble.

On Aug. 16, two Muslim men of Asian appearance were taken off a Monarch Airlines flight from Malaga to Manchester because other passengers were convinced the men were terrorists and refused to fly with them.

What was their crime? They wore heavy clothing when all the other passengers were dressed in flip-flops and shorts. They also looked at their watches a little too often and spoke a language that other passengers took to be Arabic. That was enough for Monarch Airlines to take them off the flight. They were questioning by police, released and traveled home a few days later.

Exactly a week later, a North-West airlines flight from Amsterdam bound for Bombay was diverted mid-flight and escorted back by two Dutch fighter jets because a group of passengers of Asian appearance had aroused the suspicion of the air marshal. What was their crime? They fiddled with their mobile phones. Twelve passengers were arrested on arrival. They have all been released without charge.

What strikes me the most about these incidents is the muted tone of the condemnation. The Monarch incident is disgraceful. The two Muslim passengers were subjected to an ordeal purely because they appeared different to the rest of the passengers. That is the textbook definition of discrimination. If other passengers didn’t feel safe to travel with them, they were free to make other arrangements.

By giving in to mob rule, Monarch Airlines has set a dangerous precedent.

If we let hysteria rule the skies, it is only a matter of time before we are segregated, with special lines and security checks for people who fit our racial profile, before we are seated separately on planes, grouped together where air marshals and crew can keep us under strict surveillance and out of sight of white-skinned passengers so that they may feel protected from our threat, before we are so traumatized by our criminalization that we avoid traveling altogether — for there is no doubt about it, that is where we are heading unless people come to their senses.

The terrorists are winning. They are meeting their goals one by one: They have created fear and hysteria, they have succeeded in creating a chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims and they are slowly but surely chipping away at the values of liberty, fairness and equality which underpin Western culture.

Israel Loves Mel Gibson

 

Volunteers For Lebanon

 

Olmert Time to Go?

Israeli reservists call on Olmert to resign

August 25, 2006

Jerusalem - Ma'an - A group of Israeli reservists and bereaved families demonstrated in Jerusalem on Friday, calling for the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign.

According to an Israeli radio station, protesters headed from the district of Rehovot in Jerusalem to the Herzl cemetery where former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, is buried.

The demonstrators included people who lost family members during Israel's war on Hezbollah and a large number of reservists who voiced their dissatisfaction with the leadership, training and equipment they received during the war.

They called on Olmert to follow Golda Meir's example following the 1973 war and resign.

Link:

In postwar Israel, Olmert loses support

Olmert - the end?

Update:

Israeli gov’t teetering towards collapse

New Israeli weapon used against peaceful demonstrators in Bil'in: bullets that cause an electric shock

A previous Bil'in protest (Ma'an)

August 25, 2006

Ramallah - Ma'an - The Israeli army used a new weapon against peaceful anti-Wall demonstrators on Friday.

During the weekly demonstration at the West Bank village of Bil'in, west of Ramallah, our correspondent reported that the Israeli army fired bullets which resemble rubber bullets yet they cause an electric shock when they strike the human body.

International peace activists join Palestinian and Israeli activists every Friday in Bil'in to protest against the ongoing construction of the illegal Separation Wall inside the West Bank with disastrous consequences for the native population.

On Friday 25 August, a large number of foreigners were at the protest to show their solidarity. Our correspondent reported that 12 demonstrators were injured, including Palestinian Legislative Council member, Muhib Awwad.

The protesters waved Hezbollah flags and held posters urging further resistance.

Bring in the Clowns or Pass the Ammunition?

by Housewife4Palestine

When it comes to the Bush Administration it reminds me of two old comedian acts which is a across between the Keystone Cops, then you have Abbott and Costello.

I actually have to admit what may not seem humorous to some but what I have seen so far with anything associated with Bush, I can not help at times almost falling out of my chair with laughter and I have to put it kind of bluntly of how could a man such as this being in two terms of office other then he would have to had snuck in through the back door like children to a movie theatre; because I would hope the American voter’s wouldn’t be that silly to but a clown like him in office legally. Hence meet Bozo?

Then on the other side of the coin with his policies so far in office, the world cries because his administration is trying to do a blame good job of trying to force the hand of a World War 3. To a Great Depression that may very well surpass the last one in the 1930’s.

Then with bankrupting the United States for generations to come splitting the bill makes him as a financial brain more like a drunken sailor on a three day pass, with is pay for the month.

What Bush has done so far will reflect way into the future even long after he has rotted in his grave and I will assure the present populace will not forget him but future generations who may well read about him in school text books I am sure will think it if not say, how could anyone have put that idiot in office; especially two terms? Many in the world that is not American, already asks that very question.

Then with so much coming out of America these days with everything from the new Airline Policies for travelers, to even interviewing foreign dignitaries makes the United States not only look foolish but increases the problem of the growing hate towards the United States with foreign power’s, which is actually a shame because of so much wonderment in the world will surely close the doors to the American’s for many years to come because of the distrust and insults being shown to these foreign counties.

I express this because the American media is so quick and I am sure the American government is behind the fact of bring up pass policies of foreign governments what they consider failing’s of their predecessor’s in power, what is these people that is being bombarded with this kind of criticisms going to say about the United States policies, bring in the clowns or pass the ammunition?

What really makes this whole situation bad is it is getting worse by the day.

Keystone Cops


Abbott and Costello


Bozo the Clown


Link:

Italian FM: Harsh U.S. approach to Mideast failed

Inept Secret Service, Car Pool or No Car Pool that is the Question?

Report: Secret Service Tried to Close Car Pool Lanes to Get Bush to Fundraiser

A U.S. Secret Service agent watches as the Marine One helicopter carrying U.S. President George W. Bush takes off on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington August 22, 2006. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (UNITED STATES)

August 25, 2006

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Talk about the potential for political gridlock.

The Washington Post reported in Friday's editions that the Secret Service tried to get Virginia officials to close the car pool lanes Wednesday on a busy interstate used by commuters in suburban Washington, D.C., so that President Bush could easily get to and from a fundraiser for Sen. George Allen, R-Va.

"Certainly, closing down the (lanes) was one of the options that was being discussed," Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin told the Post.

Allen's fundraiser was held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at a house near Mount Vernon in Fairfax County, Va., about an hour's drive from the White House during rush hour. The request to close the high-occupancy vehicle lanes came Tuesday morning, but by that night the idea had stalled, the Post reported.

In an e-mail, state experts who monitor traffic predicted a commuting nightmare.

"There will be approximately 8,600 cars using the HOV lanes over a three-hour period (4 to 7 p.m.). This equates to approximately 20,000 to 22,000 people. If the HOV lanes are closed, according to the District's estimate the back up of traffic in the general purpose lanes will not be cleared until 10 p.m."

The original idea was to have the car pool lanes closed briefly for the president's trip to and from Mount Vernon, the Secret Service said. But it turned out that for logistical reasons, the lanes would have to stay closed from 1 to 7 p.m.

Officials decided the president would have to find another way to get to the fundraiser. So he turned to another option that is not available to ordinary commuters — a helicopter.

"You have to wonder, what were they thinking," said John Townsend, a spokesman for the auto club AAA Mid-Atlantic. "It makes you shake your head and say, 'Only in Washington."'

A Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman refused to comment Friday when reached by The Associated Press. The Secret Service did not return phone calls.

A spokesman for Allen, who gathered campaign money with Bush at the home of former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, said he had no idea the Secret Service had made such a request.

"We would not have supported such a proposal," campaign manager Dick Wadhams told the Post. "Oh my Lord. Wow. No. Not aware of any such proposal. Certainly grateful it didn't happen that way."

Remembering Lebanon

(Click on Photo) 

Freedom in a Cage: Consider the Uighurs

August 24, 2006

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

CounterPunch

He compensates for lack of brain with compassion. Consider Mr. Bush's treatment of the Uighurs.

Among the detainees at Guantánamo were five Uighurs captured in Afghanistan after 9/11. The men were natives of Xinjiang province of China. They had the misfortune to travel to Afghanistan before 9/11 for reasons having nothing to do with Osama bin Laden An even greater misfortune was their decision to go to Pakistan after 9/11where they were welcomed by villagers who invited them to dinner and then took them to a mosque where the men (who thought they were going to pray) were turned over to the Americans for an unspecified sum of money. The Americans sent them off to Guantánamo.

Once in Guantánamo the five men were subject to the mercy of the military tribunals that were set up by the Bush administration to help it decide whether the people it had imprisoned were enemy combatants. The military tribunal concluded they were not. Nonetheless, they were held at Guantánamo for an additional year because George Bush didn't know what to do with them. If returned to China they were threatened with imprisonment because Uighurs have had a long standing conflict with the Chinese government over its treatment of Uighurs, whom it considers terrorists. Although Mr. Bush has no problem calling people terrorists or enemy combatants and then summarily depriving them of any rights, the law does not permit the him to repatriate prisoners to countries where they may be subject to the kind of treatment they were subject to when being watched over by Mr. Bush.

The question, therefore, was where could the men go. The obvious answer for the Uighurs was they should go to the United States since they were only 90 miles away. Mr. Bush did not think they would make good neighbors and did not want them coming here.

A state department official claimed that the United States asked more than 100 countries to let the five men stay with them and all of the countries refused. Some were afraid of offending the Chinese and others may have logically concluded that if the United States didn't want them neither did they. One country was an exception-Canada.

The lawyers for the men were conducting negotiations with Canada to convince that country to grant them entry and resident status since that country has a large Uighur population and the men would have felt comfortable living there among their own people. Then a strange thing happened.

In addition to negotiating with Canada on behalf of their clients, the lawyers filed a lawsuit to compel the United States to let the men enter the United States. The case was heard in a federal district court and at its conclusion the judge said that the detention of the Uighurs was illegal and disgraceful but he lacked the power to force the government to admit the men to the U.S. The men appealed. The justice department did not want the appellate court to issue an opinion because (a) it did not want to be criticized by yet another court and (b) it feared that the court would enter a ruling requiring the government to deal fairly with those it had unfairly imprisoned by requiring it to admit them to the United States.

The appeal was scheduled to be heard on a Monday in May. Taking its cue from the criminal who, preferring freedom to conviction, gets out of town before he can be tried, the government got the Uighurs out of town before the court could enter an unfavorable ruling. The only country that was willing to accept the men in a big hurry was Albania. On the Friday before the Monday hearing the men were placed aboard an airplane surrounded by 20 armed guards, shackled to the floor of the plane in case they decided to become enemy combatants during the flight and shipped off to Albania.

With the men safely out of the country, the government rushed off to court and told the court the men were in Albania and, therefore, no longer subject to the court's jurisdiction. The court agreed and dismissed the case. The government was relieved since it no longer had to fear judicial chastisement for its inhumane treatment of detainees.

In his most recent news conference Mr. Bush said: "if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned." Thanks to Mr. Bush the Uighurs now live in freedom in a barbed wire enclosed refugee camp in Albania where no one speaks their language. They get free room and board and 40 Euros a month. In addition to his brain, it would appear that Mr. Bush has also lost his soul. That news will not surprise the Albanian Uhguirs. No one else will be surprised.

Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. Visit his website: http://hraos.com/

Hizbollah's reconstruction of Lebanon is winning the loyalty of disaffected Shia

By Robert Fisk

08/24/06 "The Independent" -- -- Hizbollah has trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars - most of it almost certainly from Iran - into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut's destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort - free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel's ferocious five-week assault on the country - has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon.

Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate".

But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join Unifil with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid.

In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds.

A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes.

Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company, clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors.

Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed.

In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside.

The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions.

Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete.

It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.

The Future of American Air Travel?

‘You Are Guilty of Looking Asian While Flying’

25, August, 2006

Lubna Hussain

“Is it true that two men had to leave a plane because they looked Asian?” asked my 11-year-old daughter.

“Yes,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“But that’s racist!” she declared with the sort of outdated idealism that is the exclusive ideological territory of children these days.

I tried explaining to her the reasons as to why this had happened without much success. Not because I myself was totally unconvinced by this latest round of blatant hypocrisy, but more due to the fact that she could see through the pathos of the so-called “justification” that has brought about such discrimination.

“You can’t judge a person because of the way they look,” was her closing remark. What she didn’t realize was that in the Western Hemisphere you can. And what’s more is you do.

The incident happened at Malaga airport where two men were not allowed to fly back to England because of their appearance (a euphemism for skin-color) and the fact that they were speaking a “strange language that could have been Arabic” (it could have been Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Guatemalan as far as their fellow complainants were concerned because they were obviously too ignorant to even tell the difference. And besides, how on earth can parlance in a foreign language be deemed as a breach of security?).

If anything, the poor passengers who were off-loaded seemed to have been found guilty as charged. They weren’t white and spoke a funny language. They were fully clothed (decency of attire may also be counted as a future criminal offense) as opposed to wearing shorts and flip-flops like their fellow travelers. They were also probably brazen enough to have names that were not Tom, Dick or Harry. Naturally they were seen as “suspicious” by some “tabloid-reading” elements (if the accusers had any literacy skills it would surprise me) who would not have had the common sense to understand that not everyone who wears trousers, is brown and speaks a plethora of other languages is necessarily inclined to blow up a plane.

The world really has become a sad place if you happen to have been cursed by being born into the wrong ethnic group. Had this taken place pre-Sept. 11, 2001, there would have been a public outcry, widespread condemnation and a declaration of a violation of human rights. But in the current climate of global paranoia it was seen as a perfectly measured response to an amorphous ill-defined and ubiquitous threat.

What amazed me was that the airline, in order to assuage the unfounded nonsensical fears of a couple of media junkies, ordered the gentlemen off the plane and marched them straight into the custody of Spanish police. It sounds more like a sketch from Monty Python than a scene from reality. I wonder what they would have been accused of.

“Is it true that you are guilty of looking Asian while flying?”

“Have you eaten chapattis and chicken curry within the past 24 hours?”

“Do you know anyone called Muhammad?”

“Are you guilty of watching Bollywood movies?”

Absolutely absurd! Completely ludicrous!

What’s worse is that none of the other passengers complained about the total unfairness, downright humiliation and thorough embarrassment caused to these poor guys. I wonder why it was that in spite of holding up the flight for three hours, those who had been complaining were allowed to travel? Would it not have made more sense to put these individuals on another flight considering they were the ones refusing to cooperate with the crew? How is it that they didn’t face charges for false accusations or causing a delay of a scheduled flight? Probably because they were white, wore string vests and had English names. So much for equal opportunities and cultural sensitivity!

I read of another incident recently of a Continental Airlines pilot who, traveling as a passenger, was also asked to leave an aircraft after the doors had been sealed. (I wonder if he would have been given the shove had he been manning the cockpit?) And yet another of a European MP who was asked if he was seeking political asylum when a passport official failed to check his documents and relied solely on the color of his skin as a qualification for entry into the UK. Muslim women have been asked to remove their hijabs in order to fly. I can’t imagine nuns being asked to remove their habits somehow, but hey! What right do I have to ask such questions when I am as brown as brown can be?

I don’t remember witnessing the same sort of discrimination being meted out to people with an Irish accent at the height of the IRA’s terrorist activities or Catholics being forced to remove their crucifixes on planes. If anything this policy of stripping Asians and Muslims literally and figuratively of their basic dignity will serve to increase their already growing resentment and further alienate them from societies where they are an important factor in counteracting terrorism. Playing into the hands of the lynch mob and organizing and legitimizing witch-hunts does not bode well for countries that had erstwhile prided themselves in espousing values of racial equality and multiculturalism.

* * *

(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)

Ten questions to the Zionists

by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl ZT"L
Dean of Nitra Yeshiva


1. IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:

a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and

b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and

c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.

2. IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.

3. IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:

a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.

b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.

c) No ransom will be paid

4. IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.

5. IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.

6. IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).

7. IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.

8. IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"

9. IS IT TRUE that the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.

10. IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weitzman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weitzman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".

Continued

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

"One Cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland"

-Izaak Greenbaum

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

A Zionist Policy: “The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not.”

Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit:The hopes of Europe’s six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: “Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?” I replied, “No.” ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it.

Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937.

Jews for Palestine vs. Zionist

Jews for Palestine are confronted by an angry Zionist in New York.

Imagine a FREE PALESTINE where Jews, Christians, and Muslims can live in peace. -Jews Against Zionism

Video Link

Demolition of an Israeli Settlement

Demolition of an Israeli Settlement so Palestinians couldn’t live there.




(If you can not view video click here.)

Jaish Al Mujahedeen IED attack against US soldier and humvees

August 24, 2006

Video

The Jaish Al Mujahedeen group released an hour long documentary on an Islamic militant forum frequented by militants. The documentary included various footage of IED strikes on US soldiers and also featured skirmishes between the group and coalition soldiers.

This segment shows an US soldier investigating what appears to be an IED placed on the side of the road only to have it detonated by the group in the midst of investigating the device.

You Call Me “Terrorist”, I Call You Coward

Dear “Terrorist” Child

Imprisoned in the Vortex of the Pax Americana

By Manuel Valenzuela

08/24/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Growing up, young child, as you surely are, affected in some way, shape or form by the tentacles of America’s malevolent imperialism in the Middle East, whether by market colonialism, economic genocide or military occupation, surely bitterness, hatred, rage and a thirst for vengeance are slowly yet inevitably building inside your tiny body. Like a seed planted into the fertile soils of American hegemony, sprouting in anger with every downpour of American interference in your land, over time nurtured to become a tree bearing the blowback fruit America will be forced to reap, ready to ripen at maturity, your emotions against the Empire growing stronger with every year that passes, with every act of further humiliation and dehumanization, with every display of blatant hypocrisy or lost opportunity, with every new maiming and death upon your family and people.

Whether living in lands overrun by American-sponsored and supported despotic, undemocratic puppets depriving you of real “freedom and democracy,” whether living under the billions-of-dollars-a-year in financial and military assistance American subsidized brutal Israeli occupation and apartheid in the world’s largest concentration camps, Gaza and the West Bank, whether living in lands under constant American military threats, sanctions and embargoes imposed on their citizens, depriving you of healthcare, opportunity, full nourishment and a chance to grow up as a child should, simply because your people happen to resist the Empire’s gluttonous desire for your nation’s location and/or resources, or whether subjected to American styled “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, living amongst the violence-riddled, security-absent, depleted uranium-infested, radioactive-filled rubble and destroyed infrastructures of Iraq, Afghanistan and recently Lebanon, now but birth pangs of death and destruction, not life and freedom, the claws of America’s appetite for the lands of the Middle East are as omnipotent as they are malfeasant, an inescapable reality for millions of Arab and Muslim children such as yourself whose only crime is being born Arab in lands deemed strategic and vital to the continued expansion of the greed-mongering American Leviathan.

Over the last several decades children just like you have had to confront the all-encompassing grip of American domination in the region, some, thankfully, less than others who have not been so lucky. Directly or indirectly, your destiny has in large part been engineered by the claws of American intervention in your country, creating, in large sectors of the population, vicious cycles of endemic poverty, uneducation, misery, bitterness, resentment and a simmering longing to release, sometimes violently, boiling emotions of pent up anger, if not at America directly then at her stooges acting as leaders. It has been you, the children of the region, who have suffered the most at the hands of the Evil Empire, millions upon millions of vibrant human energies ranging in age from the recently born to those teenagers forced by circumstance and tragedy to grow old before youth disappears.

The curse upon your lands is that which they call the devil’s excrement, for millions of years sitting idly below your ground, unseen, unknown and undiscovered, enormous fields of primitive energy, remaining the untapped resource that would transform the modern world in the short term and condemn Earth, along with civilization, in the long term. For one-hundred years stolen and pillaged from where you live, it has become the energy that has created untold wealth, power, comfort and hegemony to the lands of the North, yet becoming but an oasis of misery and pain for the vast majority of those who inhabit the lands where the wells of sustenance and greed of the Pax Americana flow.

It is oil, little one, that has condemned you and your people to futures beholden to the arrogant Empire from America, for black gold has become like a heroin addiction to the world, making your lands the syringe feeding comfort and wealth and greed into the veins of billions. It is the devil’s excrement that makes deaf the ears of humanity to your plight; that spawns the greed that darkens and blinds the eyes of understanding; that makes your life an expendable happenstance to the powers in pursuit of securing as much control over the fields of oil that lie below your feet.

It is your lands, sweet child, harsh environs of heat and desert, inhospitable and burdensome ecosystems to the human being, yet the birthplace of civilization, home to the Fertile Crescent and the crossroads of humanity, where history began and flourished, where so much of what made the Western world flourish was first studied and discovered, where the precursor to Judaism, Christianity and Islam rose, where yesterday was born and today began, that at present is but the pumping station for yesterday’s colonizers, the present’s superpower and tomorrow’s rising stars, where future wars will invariably be fought, over and over, for the last remaining vestiges of the black gold that has only caused you pain and suffering.

The Proconsuls of Empire
Since your birth America’s strangle on your life has been endemic, causing your family tremendous hardship as the indigence created by the stooges and despots ruling your land, all sponsored and supported by the Empire, has not been alleviated. Indeed, you have never known prosperity or a semblance of opportunity. You are but peasants in the lands of kings and princes, surviving on slave wages and slave work, having no choice but to receive the crumbs royalty throws your way. Meanwhile, lazy, corrupt and ignorant princes, born to wealth and prestige, living in gluttony and greed, are granted the spoils of your land’s oil, making goat and sheep herders of yesterday the billionaires of today. Given monthly royalties for the simple fact of having been born into the royal family, being called so-called princes, these elites of your nation build palatial estates endowed with the greatest luxuries in the world. They purchase the most expensive goods, they spend without regard or care, the world becomes their playground, with no empathy to spare.

While you live in poverty, scrapping to make a living, destined to never escape the caste you were born into, the elites of your nation sell your resources to the West’s energy conglomerates, selling out your future and your fate to those companies willing to exploit what rightfully belongs to you. For decades your oil has been stolen and pillaged from under your feet, with very few drops of the precious liquid allowed to trickle down to you. Meanwhile, pipelines saturated with oil are directed westward, with spigots tightly under the control of foreign multinationals. Your nation’s royalty has sold you out, leaving you in poverty, a future peasant forced to work for the energy companies or for self-aggrandized princes.

The elite of your land have made a pact with the Empire, making themselves wealthy and powerful beyond their wildest dreams in exchange for very favorable oil concessions to the West’s energy industrial complex, in exchange for the plundering and control of your resources. Artificially created kings, princes and emirs, mere stooges and puppets to the Empire, chosen proctors and proconsuls paid to guard Empire’s lifeblood, have been put in place to prevent you from claiming your land, your resources, your future. They have been selected because of their loyalty, not to the interests benefiting you or your fellow citizens, but to Empire’s wishes and goals. Every decision they make benefits the Empire; every edict they proclaim furthers the goals of America. They have been propped up by the West, protected and assisted if they obey, threatened and replaced if they deviate from script. Their role is to keep you under control, pacified and obedient, keeping you ignorant to the reality of your life and the intentions of the Empire. They are but puppets sitting on a throne of charades, kings and princes and emirs, preferring to subjugate their population, doing the bidding of the West, rather than return to days herding goats and sheep, becoming, once again, a mere peasant walking among dunes of sand.

In the inexperience and naïveté that youth naturally affords you may believe, in your desire for a better world, the bold statements and revolutionary pronouncements coming from the bully pulpit of the president of the United States who, in the proud tradition of historical hypocrisy prevalent in Washington, has announced his intention to bring “freedom and democracy” to the Middle East. Do not be fooled, little one, for this slogan is meant more for the consumption of the tens of millions of brain dead, brainwashed and xenophobic American citizens whose ignorance is only surpassed by their gluttony than at you and your people. This slogan is but the latest fascist propaganda used to justify the continued wars and carnage America has imported into the Middle East. You are no closer to having “freedom and democracy” than you are of getting rid of American interests in the region. Indeed, it is because of America’s presence in the region that you are denied the right to ever have “freedom and democracy.”

It is the dictators and kings of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, America’s best friends in the region, none of which was ever democratically elected by your people, that have never and will never allow freedom and democracy to reign free in their nations. For to do so would risk their long-standing reign of power, their long-standing control over the citizenry, their long-standing penchant for accumulating wealth at the expense of the population. Without freedom and democracy they are rulers; with freedom and democracy they would be overthrown rulers. It is in America’s best interests to deny you the same freedoms and democracy it claims exists for its own citizens, for to offer you a semblance of freedom and democracy would be to guarantee its expulsion from your lands.

Imagine, for one second, that authoritarian rule did not exist in your country, that democracy meant one person, one vote, that fraud was non-existent and that you were allowed to have freedom of the press and freedom of expression, without fear of retribution or of imprisonment. The current tyrants and kings would undoubtedly be defeated, thereby getting rid of America’s current crop of stooges and puppets. With them on the street America’s interests would be curtailed. With a press free to critique leaders, inform and report truth the population would become more educated to the reality of their lives and of the nation. If elections were fair and free the will of the people would trump the control of the Empire, giving way to positions at odds with American hegemony, possibly putting at risk the one-sided and overtly unfair petroleum contracts that ensure the complete pillage of a nation’s oil wealth.

Imagine, for a minute, how different your nation would be if the will of the people triumphed, succeeding in kicking out corrupt dictators and puppet kings. America is no fool; she knows perfectly well that without her chosen proconsuls her interests in the region would be compromised, quite possibly severely. America fears “freedom and democracy” in the Middle East; she fears the voice of the people and the energy of the masses. She fears Islam, and what it stands for. She cares not one ounce for the plight of women, or for the fact that they are oppressed, subjugated and robbed of opportunity in many of her client states, or for the malnourishment of children such as you, or for the fact that less nutrition invariably leads to less intelligence over time. She could care less if you ever learn to read a book or study math or learn history, for a dumbed down populace is easier to control and manipulate, easier to transform into obedient producers and consumers.

There is a reason why millions of Arabs are cemented to the bottom of the caste system, engineered to be poor, not for one generation or two, but for perpetuity. There is a reason poverty is allowed to prosper, why education is eviscerated and gutted, why government wishes to impoverish the masses and make ignorant the minds of millions. An unthinking populace, without education, forced to survive day to day, is a population that can readily be controlled and subjugated by its masters. The poor have no time to think about changing the nation; no time to act out in defiance. They are too busy surviving day to day, finding the food, medicine, shelter and clothing to subsist twenty-four more hours.

Living at the periphery of society, growing up on the streets, without education, with no chance at opportunity, no future job to take, many children like you become casualties of the American Leviathan and its puppet leaders, forced, due to your plight, to attend a madrassah, where you are indoctrinated in fundamentalist Islam, though at least they clothe and feed you, taking over where the state has failed you, offering you love and support. It is here where you might come to know who is responsible for your poverty and your inability to escape the chains placed at your feet from birth. It is here where many of your fellow students learn what the state refuses to teach.

With authoritarian rule and a strong police state, both prevalent among America’s Middle East allies, any random uprising can easily be squashed, any demonstration quieted. Through the use of intimidation activists are silenced. Through threat of death, torture or disappearance a movement can be made to vanish. With a controlled state media the masses never see or hear or are informed about the truth facing their lives. Through censorship and control over all forms of media the state maintains control and order. This is the reason “freedom and democracy” will never exist among the Empire’s client states, for both America and her puppets fear the power of the People, preferring to offer a charade of freedom and democracy, yet in reality forced to increase authoritarian rule as well as a police state mentality as the level of poverty increases, the bitterness of the citizenry against the state rises and the overall frustrations of the people expands.

It is authoritarian rule, and not “freedom and democracy,” that America and its corporatist Establishment wants to maintain in the Middle East. It is obedience to American hegemony that must be preserved. The will of the People is and will always be trumped by the pursuit of the Almighty dollar. In an area of such vital strategic and geopolitical significance to the interests of the Empire as is the Middle East, with the supply of petroleum dwindling, with the demand for oil increasing exponentially, with its lands vital for pipelines and energy infrastructure, with its global location of such importance, you can be assured, young one, that you will never see America pursue the “freedom and democracy” it so valiantly, and hypocritically, hails in its quest to introduce the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East.

Only after the oil and gas cease to flow, only after America is sure it has nothing left to exploit, only then might you free yourself of the massive tentacles of a most voracious and gluttonous Empire. Perhaps after the oil stops flowing from under your feet, when America has no more need for despots and royalty or for your inhospitable land, will you have the possibility of ridding yourself of dictators and kings, finally establishing the “freedom and democracy” you have heard so much about.

So feared is the introduction of fair, honest and just elections in the Middle East by America that in the case of Palestinian elections, where the population, under decades of brutal occupation and apartheid by Israel, elected Hamas to power in the hopes that it would succeed where others only failed, even after America and Israel gave the opposition party millions of dollars in funds to help it win the election. America and Israel immediately began a campaign of collective punishment on the Palestinian people for having the temerity to democratically elect a party not chosen or wanted by both nations. Tens of millions of dollars in funds that flow to Palestine from the American government were frozen, never to see Palestinian soil. Vital tax revenues from the occupied territories were kept by Israel, purposefully withheld due to Palestinian democracy. Israel, with American political, financial and military support, began a series of campaigns aimed at destroying, or at least severely damaging, key infrastructure in the Territories. Water was siphoned away form Gaza, sewer service was interrupted, electrical plants were bombed. Food and medicine became scarce in Gaza, leading to malnourishment and a plethora of medical problems.

Without water, electricity, tax revenues to pay government workers and the food and medicine needed for children to survive, the Palestinian people suffered horribly. To add insult to injury, dozens of democratically elected Palestinian officials were kidnapped and imprisoned, including high level Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament. The clear intent by Israel, and by consequence America, was to teach the Palestinian people a lesson in Middle East democracy. Collective punishment was imposed on the population of the occupied territories for the simple act of democratically voting and electing a party not of Tel Aviv’s or Washington’s choosing. Thus, Hamas, elected because it stood with the Palestinian people in their great cause for freedom from apartheid, occupation, imprisonment and tyranny, was hamstrung from the very beginning by two foreign powers, its hands cut off by actions detrimental to the interests of millions of Palestinians. “You will have democracy,” America and Israel seemed to say, “but only if you vote for whomever we tell you to vote for.” Thus through the Palestine example can we see the idea of “freedom and democracy,” American style.

Life inside Occupation, Violence and Destruction
In Iraq and, most recently in Lebanon, can we observe the devastating war America is waging against the Arab world, especially Arab children. Iraq has been transformed into a land ruled by violence and anarchy, creating a hornet’s nest of hatred and internecine fighting that did not previously exist. With no threat to the American people, incapable even of inflicting damage to its immediate neighbors, Iraq was invaded and subsequently occupied by American forces, creating the greatest strategic disaster in American history and sending Iraq spiraling down into the gates of Hades. The American occupation has created the birth pangs of sectarian civil war, with ethnic cleansing of entire neighborhoods now the rule, not the exception.

The occupation has succeeding in introducing a level of violence unheard of in Iraq and the Middle East. Every month, for example, more than 3,000 people lose their life in a country being torn apart at its western-imposed seams. Just in July 2006, a little bit more than 3,400 Iraqis lost their life. How many of these, are we to wonder, were children? How many more have been injured, maimed, or otherwise mentally and psychologically traumatized? How many children have been forced to confront a world their young, innocent minds simply cannot comprehend? Every month, the equivalent of one 9/11 is taking place in Iraq, all thanks to America’s arrogant blunder into Mesopotamia. After America’s 9/11, millions of children suffered nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder for weeks and even months, forced to experience and relive in their minds the devastating controlled demolition of the Twin Towers. How can Iraq’s children be expected to react to the level of violence and death and destruction currently afflicting their own nation?

Prior to the invasion of Iraq by America, it must be remembered, genocidal sanctions were supported, placed and enforced on Iraq by America, beginning in the early 1990’s, that lasted until George W. Bush’s disastrous foray into the Middle East. It is estimated that anywhere from 500,000 to one million children died in the decade long economic genocide of an entire generation of Iraqi children. Denied vital food and medicines, hundreds of thousands of innocent children died of malnutrition or from disease. As hospitals rotted from within, due to lack of supplies, all denied by sanctions, entire extended families perished, their children unable to withstand the lack of nutrition or the absence of vital medicines.

Untold thousands also died as a result of the weapon of mass destruction, also known as America’s version of the dirty bomb, depleted uranium munitions, used during Gulf War One in the early 1990’s. Hundreds of tons of bombs, artillery, shells, missiles and bullets coated with depleted uranium were released into Iraq’s environment, cities and atmosphere, each containing radioactive material embedded inside its coating. The results have been disastrous. Cancers, childhood leukemia and diseases once unheard of in Iraq began to spike in large numbers not long after the war ended, affecting tens of thousands of people, many of them children. Birth deformities and fetus mutations never before seen began to appear after the end of many pregnancies.

With an additional hundreds of tons of depleted uranium also dropped and dispersed on Iraq during George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, in much higher quantities than in the first Gulf War, Iraq has become a virtual radioactive desert, a land full of WMD, delivered by America onto the people of Iraq. For generations to come Iraqis will be forced to confront the premature death of their children due to cancers and disease, not to mention having to give birth to babies whose deformities and mutations the world has never been witness to. America’s dirty bomb had unleashed its invisible yet destructive forces aura upon the population of Iraq. Who would have believed that it would be America, and not Iraq, who possessed and even used WMD during the course of war?

What must it be like to have your home searched, rummaged and eventually destroyed? What must occupation be like for the young, who are forced to confront death, destruction and violence on a daily basis? What must it be like to have your family humiliated, dehumanized, robbed of its few possessions and amounts of money, your room ransacked in the middle of the night by American patrols designed to intimidate and scare more than anything else? To be an Iraqi child during this most criminal and malevolent act of premeditated aggression is to be condemned to live life in hell on Earth, with destruction and death all around, bullets whizzing by and improvised explosive devices booming in the distance, with buildings you once recognized now turned to rubble and a normal life you once knew suddenly turned upside down, an unrecognizable nightmare that you cannot wake from, no matter how hard you try to escape the reality of what you are witness to.

Friends you once knew and loved are either dead or missing, ethnically cleansed from your neighborhood because they are Sunni or Shia, forced to leave rather than die at the hands of death squads. You visit cousins in the hospital, their limbs shredded and/or torn off thanks to American ordnance or cannon fire, their eyes having become a vacuum of darkness, a vastness of nothingness inside their pupils, unable to comprehend how a game of football could lead to broken arms and amputated feet. The empty void of rage you must feel inside knowing that your older sister has been raped by American soldiers, humiliated in front of her parents, now castigated and banished from what was once a normal life, her life apparently over.

You see the valiant resistance waging guerilla war against the Americans, they with tanks and fighter jets, the resistance with IEDs and mortar fire. You most likely know members of the resistance, some might be friends of the family, others might be relatives, still others your father or older brothers. They are waging a relentless battle with the weapons they have, slowly bleeding the American military, knowing the city better than anyone, blending into buildings, hiding amongst shadows, becoming experts at guerilla warfare and at placing IED’s throughout the city streets.

They are fighting for your freedom and for Iraqi independence, freedom fighters destined to proclaim victory, if not soon then after patient determination, for morality and justice are with them, as is the population and the parameters of guerilla warfare. They fight occupation and the pillaging of Iraq’s resources by the Empire; they fight to expel the American military from your land, knowing full well that if not forced to leave by the resistance the armies of the Empire will never depart; they fight both to make right and bring a sense of justice to the myriad American war crimes, torture, murder, dehumanization, false imprisonment, destruction and the taunts the American military, ignorant of history or of alien cultures, has imported into Iraq. They fight for vengeance, for honor, for Iraq, becoming a valid resistance against illegal occupation.

They are called terrorists by the American military and its propaganda machine, the corporate media. You know better. Anything and anyone against the American government and its imperial ambitions gets labeled a terrorist. Any group that does not bow down to honor the Empire and lick its stained boots becomes an evildoer. Any entity that fights the injustice and the devastating policies of America is smeared as an insurgent. Terrorist is the term used to frighten and manipulate the gullible and brain dead American citizenry, making millions believe that if the government labels a group a terrorist organization, then that group or entity is evil and wicked and fighting America because they hate America for her freedoms and democracy and her way of life, and therefore must be defeated and fought in battle, in this charade called the “war on terror.” With such an unthinking, ignorant population, willing to believe anything and everything told them, manipulation and propaganda serves to hide truths better left unknown.

No, you don’t fall for the bull manure of lies and propaganda and manipulations, you are smarter than that, with a mind that thinks on its own. You know your friends and neighbors and relatives and fathers are freedom fighters, interlocked in a war of resistance, much like those in Vietnam and in the American War for Independence. You are proud of the resistance, for they fight in your name, for your land and your resources, fighting to remain free of American hegemony, with its vast arsenal of plundering policies and pillaging techniques. You know very well Bush does not care for the Iraqi people, or for bringing freedom and democracy to your country. He wants your oil, your slave labor, your wallets and your strategic location. You know that your people must fight the Americans, for if not then you will become an American colony, occupied into perpetuity, a nation oppressed inside its own borders, a people robbed of their freedom.

And so you imitate your elders, brave freedom fighters that they have become, abandoning jobs as taxi drivers, teachers, construction workers and managers, forced into armed conflict by the brutal oppression and occupation of Iraqis by the American military. You have no AK-47, no IED’s or mortars, and so you and your remaining friends imitate the poor Palestinian children, reaching down and around the rubble of destroyed buildings, creating the rocks thrown at American tanks and Humvees. The tanks have become the symbol of occupation, of the hatred and the rage you feel against America, for what it has done to you and your land. You throw and throw rocks at these mighty iron beasts, knowing that you can do them no harm, that your rocks don’t even dent the iron. Yet you throw until your arm is dead, for such is the bitterness and the rage inside your tiny body, wishing your rocks were bombs, wishing the American scourge could finally be expelled from Mesopotamia.

The damage done to Iraq and its people has been horrendous; the vicious cycle of violence is unending; chaos and anarchy fill the streets; civil war has erupted; the peace and tranquility you once knew is but a distant memory; your school has not been open for years; your country is imploding, its seams coming unglued; cancer and disease fill the hospitals; having electricity and water are distant dreams; sewer and garbage service are non-existent; simply walking to the grocery store down the street is risking your life; more than 3,000 of your fellow citizens are dying each month, the equivalent of a 9/11 each and every month. Yes, you think, I cannot wait to grow up and join the resistance, finally having a chance to fight and defeat an army, and a nation, that has brought nothing but misery to my once beautiful and peaceful country. “I am a child today,” you think to yourself, “but tomorrow I will be an adult. I will be mujahadeen.”

You Call Me “Terrorist”, I Call You Coward
For fighting against America, even though the war is being waged in Iraq, in a legitimate war against an illegal and immoral occupation, you will be labeled as a terrorist. Every Arab and Muslim these days, it seems, is seen as nothing more than a terrorist, a dreaded boogey man sent from hell to scare the ever-frightened American populace. Yet it is your land, whether in Iraq or Lebanon, Palestine or Iran, that is being terrorized either by threats of war or by an actual blitzkrieg of state sponsored terrorism. You cannot understand why, when your nation is being destroyed from the air and from the ground by the latest American weapons of war and destruction and death, it is your people, and not America herself, that are branded as terrorists. Your land has been filled with radioactive pollution from America’s dirty bomb, depleted uranium munitions, causing entire clusters of cancer, leukemia, disease and birth deformities, yet you are the terrorist. There was not one act of terrorism before the illegal invasion and occupation of your land, yet when you rise to resist, you are the terrorist.

In Lebanon, your county has been sent back in time twenty years, its infrastructure decimated, its beaches made toxic with petroleum, entire neighborhoods flattened, cluster bombs littered throughout cities, villages and fields, killing long after the Israeli state terror machine has left, yet your resistance fighters are the so-called terrorists. One thousand three-hundred of your fellow Lebanese are dead, many more still buried under rubble, one-third of them children like you, yet your fathers and brothers and grandfathers are the terrorists? Somehow, you cannot understand the logic behind the propaganda, nor the blind trust and belief the American people place on such lies and distortions.

For the last six years it seems that America has declared a Crusade against the Arab and Muslim world, invading two nations and giving Israel the green light to destroy two more, using American made weapons and technology. Yet her appetite does not seem to be quenched. On the horizon you can see Syria and Iran in the American crosshairs, two nations whose reputation is being marketed to strike fear into the most coward-laced population on Earth, the American people. You cannot help but wonder why such cowardice exists in the land of the free and the home of the brave. You fail to see the logic behind 300 million people willingly giving up their freedoms and rights in exchange for protection and security from a boogeyman that is more a figment of Bush’s imagination than a threat to the sovereignty of the most powerful nation on Earth. Have they been manipulated so thoroughly, brainwashed so profoundly, that they fear an enemy that has been concocted from the minds of the real terrorists, namely the Bush cabal or corporatists and neoconartists?

America has not experienced one one-millionth the amount of terrorism that has afflicted your land, you realize, yet it fears one million times more. It was subjected to one monstrous act of state terror, something that happens to your country on a daily basis, yet it is America that now runs to hide and scapegoat at the first sign, real or concocted, of imminent danger? Did the demolition of the World Trade Center have such a deep effect on the psyche of the population, enough to transform a once brave and great citizenry into one filled with cowardice and fear? It sure looks that way, you say to yourself.

Even as a child you realize that Arabs and Muslims have been selected to become the latest incarnation of America’s enemy, the boogeyman needed to advance the interests of imperial hegemony, the perfect excuse to launch wars for geopolitical expediency and resource control. You see Arab and Muslim men and women slowly becoming the object of hate throughout the western world, much like the Jews in Nazi Germany, slowly becoming the scapegoats needed to pursue the interests of the powerful. To those Arabs and Muslims living in England or America, you wonder if soon they will be forced to wear a small yet noticeable red or green Crescent Moon on their sleeve. You wonder if soon they will be so marginalized, so hated by the ignorant masses, that they will not be allowed to fly or travel or stay at a hotel. You wonder if the day is coming when, after one more attack, they will be deported back to the Middle East or worse, sent to detention centers, their neighborhoods turned to ghettos, their rights and freedoms taken and destroyed.
This madness cannot continue, you think to yourself. You are but a child, yet have seen so much suffering already. You live in indigence, while your masters live in gluttonous luxury. You see desperation all around you, poverty, disease, frustration and deep resentment growing on a daily basis, your neighborhoods becoming the epicenters of growing anger, both at America and at its puppets. You have no future in the Middle East, no destiny worth pursuing. Few if any jobs await you once you become an adult. Your education by the state is designed to make you an ignorant primate, obedient, complacent and acquiescent to the dictates of the state. Your family has been devastated by the bombs, missiles and munitions dropped down by state sponsored terrorism. You see no future and no hope, only desperation, frustration and resentment.

The western world calls you terrorist, evildoer and boogeyman, a dark-skinned enemy of freedom and democracy, a wicked criminal lurking in every closet, underneath every bed, waiting to inflict fear and terror upon the populace. You have become a convenient patsy, a walking advertisement of fear, an alien walking in unwelcome land, a cave dweller with the capacity to implode the monoliths of capitalism’s might. Your appearance and color strike fear on the street, in a mall, on a bus and inside an airplane, your ethnicity and religion condemning you to profiling, harassment, stares and guilt by association. You are guilty until proven innocent, an evildoer terrorist who must be deported or imprisoned, to be tortured and sent to rot in Guantanamo.

The ignorant hate and despise you while the educated simply avoid you like the plague. You are no longer welcome in America or England, you have become the new “nigger,” the new leper, an unwanted human being made evil and malevolent by the public relations and marketing machines of the Zionists and the Americans, becoming, in the span of half a decade, the terrorist engineered to devastate the psyche of your average American and British citizen, sending them crying at night in fright, begging that their rights and freedoms be taken away in exchange for security and protection from their masters and their government.

In the end, you wonder where all this is headed, if this vicious cycle of hate and violence can sustain itself. You wonder how long you will be called terrorist and how many more Middle East nations will be invaded and destroyed. You wonder how long it will be until America finds a new evildoer, a new enemy to exploit and devastate. You hope that day comes soon, for you fear what is to happen to your cousins living in Michigan, or your friends residing in London, if this madness continues and its unstoppable momentum can no longer be stopped.

The lunacy that is the so-called “war on terror” has taken us into a bizarre and alternate world, one that is as dangerous to the human race as any time in our brief history. We are on the verge of disaster, of immersing ourselves into the self-fulfilling prophesy of our most archaic myths. If we do not put a stop to this madness, then surely it will put a stop to us. What we do in the next few years might well determine our future as a civilization, and it might very well decide what future historians will write about humanity at the dawn of the 21st century. Have we learned nothing from the errors and mistakes of our descendants? Have we yet to grasp the kind of future we are invariably leading ourselves into?

We must let go of the primitive tendencies of our human nature before their demons once more take possession of our minds. We must understand our animal selves, as well as control the emotions and passions and instincts we naturally possess. It is time to move forward into enlightenment, not backwards into dark ages. It is time for a new human renaissance, not another human catastrophe. Let humankind turn against the wickedness of our leaders and the evils of our ways, transforming ourselves into caretakers both of ourselves and the planet, not destroyers of all that is innocent and beautiful. The cowardice now prevalent must be made extinct, to be replaced by the bravery that once permeated through our pores. We must conquer fear and hatred, we must quench our desire for vengeance. We must conquer our appetite for war and violence, turning instead to peace and understanding. Only then can we move on. Only then will humanity be saved. Only then can we honestly call ourselves human and not primates.

Let us give all children, regardless of creed, color or religion, a chance to live a life in peace and enlightenment, free of war, hatred, fear, ignorance and vengeance. The Middle East, as well as the planet, awaits our call to action.

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.