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Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine' | |
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"Exploring The Powerful Issues & Emotions of The Middle East"
Reaching out to 51,228 Viewpoint readers around the globe
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Editor's Note:
Folks, here is a particularly idiotic reader comment that
I thought I would reprint with a brief answer:
-Why don't you just call this blog anti-Semite viewpoint?
Funny how the author never states Israel was decided by a
UN vote...Also, this author never states Israel was
attacked, not the attackers in '67. This is absolutely the
worst GopherCentral blog. This is moveon.org against the
Israelis. It must be sad to have that much hate in your
hearts as you do towards Israel.-
The author of the above does not live in the real world. He
lives with the mythology of a mistaken history. First, to
be against Zionism or a "Jewish State" is like being against
a "white state"...a black state, or any ethno-national
state. One is NTO a racist for opposing racist policies.
Viewpoint is steadfast against any national identity imbued
with race at its core.
Israel has race at its core, not religion. It does not
define being Jewish as a religious characteristic, but
a racial characteristic. That is why you can still be
considered a "Jew" in Israel and still be an atheist.
Israel defines "Jewishness" in ethnic, racial terms.
Therefore it stems from an ethno-national ideology like
fascism and Nazism.
Secondly, the author of the note COMPLETELY distorts
history when he says that Israel was ATTACKED in 1967.
This is a bald-faced lie. Even Israel admits it launched
a pre-emptive strike. For those that do not EXACTLY know
what a preemptive strike is, this means "striking BEFORE"
being attacked.
But the author uses a well worn Propaganda technique of
saying a lie, over and over again (see video clip) and
may eventually believe the lie. The author's entire
worldview might crumble if he would be able to absorb
true facts rather than historical mythology.
Now, back to our regular programming...
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Video Clip Of The Week
9-11 Used As Propaganda
One technique that people in power have used to further
their agendas is to repeat phrases over and over. It is
almost hypnotic and the technique is in full swing using
9-11, terror and Saddam Hussein for effect.
View: 9-11 Used As Propaganda
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Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine'
Published: 16 June 2007
How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First,
we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then
they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a
mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we
Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited
President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's
keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime
ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of
course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we
didn't like the democratically elected government of the
Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for
Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas,
which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally
discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas
was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel
of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and
goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only
on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of
"Palestine" still left to negotiate over?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful
policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and
Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote
a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word
"occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment"
rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because
he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all
the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas
because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how
Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because
they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and
the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".
I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA
official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli
tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-
plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations
of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians
wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world
- and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise,
all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them
and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we
should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be
gracious enough to vote for the right people?
All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid
Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and
drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really
are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are
killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand
province).
We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not
yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians
recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received
the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and
whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son,
Gamal.
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We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya
whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose
plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony
Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it
should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack
Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions -
and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because
he is on our side in the "war on terror".
Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy
in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf,
especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms
companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its
investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and
yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's
coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If
only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings
and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated
at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East"
would be to control.
For that is what it is about - control - and that is why
we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now
Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders
do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington
and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful
people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands)
or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of
Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring
the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?
It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their
houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East.
If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven
knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran
(even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear
missile from the other).
If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own
little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or
Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote
for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the
wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.
So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza
perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we
shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes
and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole
place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we
are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve
our sacrifice and our love.
How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?
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