And watch and listen …
Our national politics, let alone our international political predilections are nearly too sickening at present for words anyway. While the rodent postures and preens over indigenous causes which he has patently ignored for 10 years, he is touting devious plans to allow forced entry to aboriginal communities – cornucopia for mining interests? He is preparing for the campaign of his miserable ratty existence, the outcome of which despite the woeful Liberal polling is by no means assured.
Little Johnny’s immoral counterparts and allies, the terrorist state of Israel and its bevy of international cowering zealot minions with their individual imperial ambitions, piously condemn the popular democratically elected so-called ‘terrorist’ government of the overly occupied terrorities in favour of their now allies of convenience, the terrorist Fatah brigades. Terminally blinkered Western proponents of democracy thus are seen to regard democratic governments as legitimate if they undemocratically support policies which their electors patently do not.
There is a reason the people threw out Abbas’ Fatah party in last year’s election. Palestinians see the leading Fatah politicians as unimaginative, self-serving and corrupt, satisfied with the emoluments of power. Worse yet, Palestinians came to realize that the so-called peace process championed by Abbas (and by Yasser Arafat before him) had led to the permanent institutionalization — rather than the termination — of Israel’s 4-decade-old military occupation of their land. Why should they feel otherwise? There are today twice as many settlers in the occupied territories as there were when Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat first shook hands in the White House Rose Garden. Israel has divided the West Bank into besieged cantons, worked diligently to increase the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem (while stripping Palestinian Jerusalemites of their residency rights in the city) and turned Gaza into a virtual prison.
Divide and conquer the good old colonialist way – again, for the umpteenth disastrous time since the Zionist invasion, when the Zionists first introduced terrorism to Palestine. Is As’ad from the Angry Arab News Service too optimistic when he declares:
The Palestinians need a new political organization: neither Fath nor Hamas. NOW.
A new poll among Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank reveals the obvious: that most Palestinians are neither for Fath nor for Hamas: more than 40% of Palestinians indicated that they are “independent”.
Yet even if there was an alternative political force, it would be nanoseconds before the Israeli government stereotyped them as terrorists in order to engineer the obligatory, traditional nobbling of peace initiatives, so their land thieving on the West Bank and breaches of international law could continue behind the usual smokescreen of convenient, manufactured ‘beleaguered’ victimhood.
For the past 10 years, the greatest practical barrier to peace has been Israel’s failure to carry out any true withdrawal to its 1967 borders, owing to the political weight of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank and the religious and secular communities that support them. This remains the crucial truth; the rest follows as tragedy. Even when the US or Israel have tabled peace offers, such as at Camp David in 2000, they have included convoluted ways to sustain the West Bank settlements and large settler populations, while denying an economically viable and contiguous Palestinian state.
Sachs fails to note that inevitably it is the enabling activities or lack thereof of the Israeli government which have bolstered the continued thievery and oppression. At all times, it has been within the power of that democratically elected government to restrain its extremists and to act within the ambit and intention of UN Res 242 in order to obtain peace.
However, a glance at the maps of Zionist encroachment illustrates the present deleterious outcome of Israeli government acquiescence and encouragement to illegal settlers which makes a two state solution a geographical absurdity, as Zionist settlements raddle and pockmark the West Bank. By deliberately hijacking peace iniatitives in order to provide cover behind which they can purloin more land, the Zionists have cooked their own goose – the enemies they have created with the servile assistance of the United Kooks and Stupids are now within and without. Within one state, the Zionists will be outnumbered and the true nature of the hideous bantustans wherein nearly four million people suffer under their pitiless, relentless rule will be plain for all the world to abhor.
Many Palestinian communities in the West Bank are already fenced in from all sides (and sometimes also cut in the middle) by a system of trenches, concrete walls and barbed-wire fences. Gaza too is sealed. Movement between the Palestinian pockets is extremely difficult. Access to healthcare, education, and work is limited and in some cases impossible. Poverty is everywhere (60 percent of the population is under the UN poverty line of two dollars of income a day). In a matter of months, the project will be successfully completed. It will lock the Palestinians in small ghettos, connected by subterranean roads that will be controlled by Israel. There will be no airport, seaport, and the passage by land to neighboring countries will be manned by Israeli soldiers. The end result — already in place in the Gaza Strip and several West Bank “strips” — is a system of crowded, open-air prisons. And if the inmates will get out of hand and revolt, the wardens will target them with air raids and artillery shells.
The ongoing Zionisation of the microcosm of Jerusalem reflects the overall ghastly, criminal injustice being perpetrated upon Palestinians:
The Israeli government also has recently allocated $90 million over eight years until 2013 for maintaining the Israelization of the Old City, $79 million to attract non-profit groups and NGOs into the city and $50 million for the Jewish municipality to help bring in more settlers, whose numbers rocketed from zero to more than 210.000 since 1967, while indigenous Arab citizens are completely cut off western Jerusalem and left with only 9% of the municipal area to accommodate the natural growth of those of them who so far survived what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe termed as Israel’s “ethnic cleansing”.
According to the Israeli activist Jeff Halper and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, Israel’s Jerusalem metropolis covers 10% of the West Bank, 440 sq. km., where 75% of the West Bank settlers live in colonial settlements extending from the Latron (Beit Shemesh) in the West, through Kiriat Sefer to Ramallah in the North then Southeast through Maale Adumim almost to the Jordan River; thence, southwest, the metropolis is due to include the Palestinian cities of Bait Sahour, Bethlehem and the settlements blocks of Efrat and Gush Etzion, thence Westwards to Beitar Ilit, Tzur Hadassa and Beit Shemesh.
The possibility of peace is currently more remote than ever. The Lebanese army and civilian thugs blow up Palestinian refugees and their homes, the monumental, tragic results of Israeli intransigent historical land grabs and nose-thumbing at social justice in the past. It’s Sabra and Shatila all over again, with the real instigators posing behind a smarmy mask of contempt and secret delight as their hypocritical, hatred-producing expansionism surreptitiously and inexorably continues unconstrained, now with the additional support of increased decade long military aid from the United Stupids.
Israel asked for a gradual increase in the aid over a 10-year period at the tune of $50 million per year. At the end of the 10 years, Israel will receive $2.9 billion annually in military assistance from the U.S.
So Israel is enabled by the UStupids to slaughter wantonly a lot more of those it oppresses whilst clinging to that which it has stolen and continues to steal. Is another Israeli attack on Lebanon imminent once the Stupids’ bullets arrive and the Lebanese sufficiently weakened by internal strife?
When will the people of America realise *why* it is they, as traitors to the cause of democracy they tunelessly trumpet and collaborators with the worst terrorists of the region, are so hated, and why their thoughtless support of the local rampaging elephant is the best advertising Al Qaeda could hope for?
Time to revisit some salient statements from the past.
Despite the deceptive remonstrations of Israeli government officials and propagandists over the years since 9/11, amongst other declarations and missives, Bin Laden’s Letter to America of November 2002 makes it crystal clear he regards the issue of Palestine of paramount import:
“While seeking Allah’s help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:
(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:
(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.
(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.
When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) – and we make no distinction between them.
(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.
…
(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.
(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.
…
(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.”
Unfortunately, no modern day, merciful Saladin is Bin Laden. He continues:
“(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:
(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.
(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.
c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us.
(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.
(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.
(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.
The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question:
Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?
If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands. ”
In accepting, promoting and utilising mass violence as a means of satisfying disputes, Bin Laden is Bush’s mirror image. Yet during the past few years, of the two, it is Bush who has been proved time and again to have shamelessly deceived his people and the world.
Amusingly, Bin Laden’s chastisement of Clinton is reminiscent of certain Repubican septic loons:
“Who can forget your President Clinton’s immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he ‘made a mistake’, after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?”
Some commentators claim that by targeting Israel Bin Laden is cunningly playing to and inciting his audience with popularism. From an examination of his texts, this does not seem to be his primary intent – his words appear sincere and from the hip. And regardless, it is a certainty that continued oppression and slaughter of the Palestinian people by Israel with the connivance of the US will not lead to security and peace.
(Bear in mind that the November 22 Letter to America received very little coverage in the major US media – and was swiftly overshadowed the next week by a Bin Laden audiotape noisily declared to be a fake.)