A few years ago the worldwide solidarity movement with the Palestinian people was relatively small. Recently more than three organizations simultaneously sought to break the siege of Palestine as Israel, Egypt and other nations sought to give the Palestinian Solidarity activists a hard time, the run around, arrest and virtual house arrest, beatings and so on and so forth.
The way Jordan, Israel, and Egypt have frustrated the humanitarian and human rights efforts by thousands of Palestine solidarity activists is documented every day by half a dozen or more organizations such as Viva Palestina, the Gaza Freedom March and Code Pink.
Of course some insist that no one complain about Egyptian sabotage of humanitarian efforts. Such fools also insist that human rights activists assent to Egypt building an impenetrable underground wall in order to prevent the flow of necessities that Egypt and
Israel both block under the steely eyed gaze of their masters in Washington. The PLO's reluctant leader has endorsed Egyptian and Israeli actions, seeking to overthrow Hamas by starving 1.2 million Palestinians and turning away as 1300 were murdered a year ago during Hanukkah of all things.
Of course the Zionists have not noticed the way that the Palestinians are now something akin to the slaves of Egypt in the story of Moses. Yes, the Palestinians have been crying out without a Moses for Israel and the United States to let them be free!
You can cut the cynicism and hypocrisy of the imperialists and Zionists with a chain saw.
To be fair, I think it can be said that American police have been more repressive than the Egyptians have been. This was true in Seattle, the recent political conventions of the twin ruling parties, and the recent g20 meeting. In all of these cases the streets of America have looked more and more like Palestine. We truly are all Palestinians.
Palestinian solidarity activists have discovered to their great dismay that the Egyptian police appear to have a "big brother" presence throughout Egypt.
It is, after all, a military dictatorship. They didn't kill any of the solidarity activists despite what appeared to be a false report by Iranian news services. Almost everyone has been shocked and dismayed to find the Egyptian attitude towards the Palestinians to be so harsh and in alignment with Israeli desires. Many have also discovered that the PLO also seeks to strangle Hamas by putting the rope of siege around the necks of 1.2 million Palestinians.
Zionism and imperialism see in the post-Arafat PLO an appropriate partner, to police the devastation and refugee camp that gets labeled a nation but more like an American reservation for Native Americans.
It does appear that Mubarak wants everyone to know he is a dictator and especially to not let the Egyptian people get any idea that they too should determine their own future by engaging in democratic nonviolent action. At the end of the day all of the tyrants of the Middle East agree that the Palestinians must be condemned lest the populations of such places as Saudi or the Gulf emirates demand democracy themselves and overthrow their Washington blessed dictatorships.
And who can forget that the so-called Islamist revolutionaries grew up in the aftermath of the United States and Israel exterminating virtually all secular progressives in the Arab Middle East. Then Washington dreamed up a jihad that was the whole ideological pretense for the war against the USSR in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was created out of many of these assets but now with Islam used as the reason to attack not the USSR but the USA.
This war by AQ is a peculiar thing and I don't want to comment on that now but does it really add up? Yes, AQ makes war on the United States and others but why? I am quite
skeptical that religious belief is the only thing behind AQ and other "Islamist" groups. They sort of remind me of those revolutions that threw Spain out of South America even though they obviously have an extremely intolerant fundamentalist point of view which is quite strange to most of us in the United States.
Anyway the so called "war on terrorism" has created an atmosphere where it is especially necessary to be resolute and clear thinking
when standing in solidarity with the Palestinians who have been labeled as "terrorists" by Israel and the United States for decades.
Of course the irate citizens of Iran, who have the courage to cry out "death to the tyrant", are encouraged by the United States and the UK to make a revolution in the name of democracy. But the democratic rights of the Palestinians are to be denied for sixty years and they are labeled terrorists if they after decades of quite lobbying and activism finally fight for their national liberation!
Well who are the nuclear terrorists? Certainly not the Palestinians. Only those with nuclear weapons terrorize the rest of us with them? Who is that in the Middle East?
Israel and the United States are the main ones. Somehow that is not a problem! Of course an Arab nuclear weapon would suddenly be cause for the destruction of at least one nation, eh?
Egypt and Israel have great armies but the Palestians are an insignificant military force.
Israel is a strategic nuclear power. They are also persecuting the Palestinians because they can get away with it.
It is especially disconcerting to see the entire world consent to the destruction of the Palestinians.
Still, we must distinguish between the peoples of the world and the governments that rule over them. The peoples of the world want the Palestinians to have full human rights, including the right to return, the right to full compensation and either a place as a citizen in a binational secular state or a truly sovereign contiguous state unhampered and unsupervised by the Israeli apartheid master state.
Whatever the future crimes of Israel or the United States the worldwide anti-apartheid movement is growing at such a rate that Israel is likely to become a secular state in the near future with equal rights for all citizens.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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