Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The War of Jesus and Allah
By Neal AbuNab
Every group commemorates the anniversary of September 11th with a notion reflecting its own angle of the world. Staunch Republicans are using the occasion to remind the world of the importance of waging war. Democrats point out the incompetence of Republicans in waging the wrong war in Iraq. Believers in Armageddon and the concept of the End Times paint a scenario of a fatalistic escalation of hostilities with Islam leading up to the end of this world.
A thoughtful friend of mine, also a devout Christian, offered his frank view of 9/11. He said to me: “as long as your God is not my God we will be at war.”
Naively, I’ve always thought that God is the God and that all of humanity must’ve come to this realization, which some of us take for granted, a long time ago. Apparently not. My friend who holds an advanced University degree said that his God was Jesus while my God was Allah. I tried to explain to him that Allah is not a name of a God and that Arab Christians also worship Allah. He did not believe it. In his view, the war on terrorism was a war to decide whose God is right, once and for all. Is it Jesus or is it Allah?
President Bush has defined the enemy we’re fighting as “Islamo-fascists” and his rhetoric seems to be directed to the Christian base that my friend belongs to. They want to hear that this war is between Jesus and Allah. Donald Rumsfeld gave a long speech this week and accused his critics that they were “morally confused.” He argued that the rise of fascism in Islam is just like the rise of Nazism in Germany in the late thirties. Many far right commentators have been pressing this argument for years but it seems like the administration is now ready to embrace it.
In the past, the enemy was defined as an isolated group of fanatics that did not represent Islam. But five years later this group seems to have swelled up and expanded instead of what people were led to believe this war would do, which is to make fanatics shrink and die. The administration has finally warmed up to broadening the definition so that Iran can fit neatly as the “head of the snake” of Islamo-fascism. The administration already knows that it has missed the boat on initiating any military action against Iran. This option is off the table and Iran has already called the bluff, but the administration is currently waging an election campaign and making its own base of voters believe that it still has a military option.
The Bush administration is desperate and wants to win the elections in November at almost any cost. The reality is that people are tired of war and not just in this country but all over the Middle East. The Democrats are poised to regain control of the US Congress which will turn Bush into a lame duck President for his remaining two years in office. The Democrats will end the war in Iraq in a hurry and will begin negotiations with the so-called “Islamo-fascists” who truly control the new rising Middle East.
The label itself is pure hate-speech because it offends every self-respecting Muslim on this earth. Some times I wonder about the actions of President Bush and how clueless he sounds when he talks about the Middle East. The more they repeat Islamo-fascism the bigger this group will grow. It is called the radicalization of Islam and they are causing it. There is no Islamo-Liberal or Islamo-Moderate. Muslims have too long and too rich of a history to accept the ignorant labels of others, especially when others are clueless about Islam. The administration is developing a new product under this brand name, and packaging it basically for domestic consumption. There are no adherents or followers of Islamo-fascism out there in the real world that exists beyond the bubble of the Rose Garden.
The war started out against the Afghani Taliban regime and less than 2,000 Arab fighters from Al-Qaida. Five years later, the enemy expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon to Iran to Syria to Sudan to Somalia and reached South American shores in Venezuela and Bolivia. Is Hugo Chavez an Islamo-fascist? The last time I checked he was still a Christian.
The truth of the matter is that this President is slowly uniting the entire world against America. An objective measurement of the success of this war should be in the form of quantifying the enemy. Five years ago it used to be 15 million people who lived in Afghanistan. Today, America’s Muslim enemies alone number 200 million people if we apply the lowest estimate, taking into account only the countries that the Bush administration had declared as “terrorist.”
Bush often cites the ultimate objective of Osama Bin Laden as creating a super Islamic state from Morocco to Indonesia. In historic terms no one has been able to unite all Arabs or Muslims except two men in the last fourteen centuries; the prophet Muhammad and Saladin. Iran’s President, Ahmadinejad, with all his fiery speeches can only ignite a fraction of the passion that President Bush inflames when he speaks. But it is anti-America passion that he inflames. Bush has an uncanny way of insulting people of the Middle East, Muslims and almost every person who does not agree with him. He has united Arabs and Muslims more than any leader in modern history.
Unintentionally, President Bush is doing what Bin Laden could only dream about. He has united the sentiments of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. He has served the cause of Islam very well. He will go down in the history books as the Chief Islamo-fascist Jihadist of the 21st century. He will wear his own label till the end of time.
Jesus and Allah called for peaceful means to resolve differences. Maybe that’s something all humanity can agree on instead of creating more labels to justify more killing of God’s creatures.
By Neal AbuNab
Every group commemorates the anniversary of September 11th with a notion reflecting its own angle of the world. Staunch Republicans are using the occasion to remind the world of the importance of waging war. Democrats point out the incompetence of Republicans in waging the wrong war in Iraq. Believers in Armageddon and the concept of the End Times paint a scenario of a fatalistic escalation of hostilities with Islam leading up to the end of this world.
A thoughtful friend of mine, also a devout Christian, offered his frank view of 9/11. He said to me: “as long as your God is not my God we will be at war.”
Naively, I’ve always thought that God is the God and that all of humanity must’ve come to this realization, which some of us take for granted, a long time ago. Apparently not. My friend who holds an advanced University degree said that his God was Jesus while my God was Allah. I tried to explain to him that Allah is not a name of a God and that Arab Christians also worship Allah. He did not believe it. In his view, the war on terrorism was a war to decide whose God is right, once and for all. Is it Jesus or is it Allah?
President Bush has defined the enemy we’re fighting as “Islamo-fascists” and his rhetoric seems to be directed to the Christian base that my friend belongs to. They want to hear that this war is between Jesus and Allah. Donald Rumsfeld gave a long speech this week and accused his critics that they were “morally confused.” He argued that the rise of fascism in Islam is just like the rise of Nazism in Germany in the late thirties. Many far right commentators have been pressing this argument for years but it seems like the administration is now ready to embrace it.
In the past, the enemy was defined as an isolated group of fanatics that did not represent Islam. But five years later this group seems to have swelled up and expanded instead of what people were led to believe this war would do, which is to make fanatics shrink and die. The administration has finally warmed up to broadening the definition so that Iran can fit neatly as the “head of the snake” of Islamo-fascism. The administration already knows that it has missed the boat on initiating any military action against Iran. This option is off the table and Iran has already called the bluff, but the administration is currently waging an election campaign and making its own base of voters believe that it still has a military option.
The Bush administration is desperate and wants to win the elections in November at almost any cost. The reality is that people are tired of war and not just in this country but all over the Middle East. The Democrats are poised to regain control of the US Congress which will turn Bush into a lame duck President for his remaining two years in office. The Democrats will end the war in Iraq in a hurry and will begin negotiations with the so-called “Islamo-fascists” who truly control the new rising Middle East.
The label itself is pure hate-speech because it offends every self-respecting Muslim on this earth. Some times I wonder about the actions of President Bush and how clueless he sounds when he talks about the Middle East. The more they repeat Islamo-fascism the bigger this group will grow. It is called the radicalization of Islam and they are causing it. There is no Islamo-Liberal or Islamo-Moderate. Muslims have too long and too rich of a history to accept the ignorant labels of others, especially when others are clueless about Islam. The administration is developing a new product under this brand name, and packaging it basically for domestic consumption. There are no adherents or followers of Islamo-fascism out there in the real world that exists beyond the bubble of the Rose Garden.
The war started out against the Afghani Taliban regime and less than 2,000 Arab fighters from Al-Qaida. Five years later, the enemy expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon to Iran to Syria to Sudan to Somalia and reached South American shores in Venezuela and Bolivia. Is Hugo Chavez an Islamo-fascist? The last time I checked he was still a Christian.
The truth of the matter is that this President is slowly uniting the entire world against America. An objective measurement of the success of this war should be in the form of quantifying the enemy. Five years ago it used to be 15 million people who lived in Afghanistan. Today, America’s Muslim enemies alone number 200 million people if we apply the lowest estimate, taking into account only the countries that the Bush administration had declared as “terrorist.”
Bush often cites the ultimate objective of Osama Bin Laden as creating a super Islamic state from Morocco to Indonesia. In historic terms no one has been able to unite all Arabs or Muslims except two men in the last fourteen centuries; the prophet Muhammad and Saladin. Iran’s President, Ahmadinejad, with all his fiery speeches can only ignite a fraction of the passion that President Bush inflames when he speaks. But it is anti-America passion that he inflames. Bush has an uncanny way of insulting people of the Middle East, Muslims and almost every person who does not agree with him. He has united Arabs and Muslims more than any leader in modern history.
Unintentionally, President Bush is doing what Bin Laden could only dream about. He has united the sentiments of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. He has served the cause of Islam very well. He will go down in the history books as the Chief Islamo-fascist Jihadist of the 21st century. He will wear his own label till the end of time.
Jesus and Allah called for peaceful means to resolve differences. Maybe that’s something all humanity can agree on instead of creating more labels to justify more killing of God’s creatures.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Hizbullah of Iraq
By Neal AbuNab
In 1799 Napoleon Ponaparte wrote to the Jews offering them the land of Palestine. His army was encamped outside Acre near Haifa. He assured the Jews that their new homeland would be protected by the French Empire. The interests of France in creating an Israel outweighed the interests of the Jews at that time. Napoleon figured to hit two birds with one stone; get rid of the Jews of Europe and plant them in a land that had a long history of resisting the domination of western Christians. He knew that the Jewish state will always be at war with Arabs and so he offered the backing of his powerful army. Napoleon’s primary aim was to inject a source of constant threat and instability in a region that never complied with western interests.
In that vein of thinking he was a visionary man well ahead of his time. His “Israel” project never got off the ground but the historic offer provided future European leaders with a new tool to combat Islam and make good use of the Jews. The idea was picked up by the British Empire in its Balfour Promise of 1917 and then later championed by the USA in 1948.
Today more than ever the interests of the Bush administration lie in destabilizing the Middle East and keeping it under the threat of war for the foreseeable future. This guarantees the flow of oil from divided Arab fiefdoms and ensures that the revenues from this oil never go to strengthen the overall political power of Muslims.
Peace in the Middle East is not good for America; that’s been the long-standing policy of President George Bush. In the nineties and in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Bill Clinton adopted the policy of negotiations to maintain America’s sole supremacy. Clinton was the embodiment of that policy as he met with Syria’s late Hafez Al-Assad, gave a speech to the Jordanian parliament and toured the refugee camps of Gaza. His ability to converse with almost everyone and the popularity of his personality promoted the values of America to the Muslim world. His relentless pursuit of peace in the Middle East gave birth to the idea of an “honest broker.”
The Republicans led by Bush changed the policy of negotiations to one of isolation. They argued that America can maintain its status of the “only superpower” by destroying opposition and dissention. They embarked on a project of demonizing enemies in preparation for waging war. The axis of evil was defined as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. China and Japan have experienced enough wars and destruction in the past century that they have lost the stomach for a confrontation with North Korea. So, the chances of having another war in the Korean peninsula were slim to none. This eliminated North Korea from being the first target.
The attacks of 9/11 provided Bush with a golden opportunity to begin his “isolate and destroy” approach to foreign policy. Osama Bin Laden may hate America but as a dumb strategist every action he has ever undertaken has helped Israel and the Republicans. Bush enjoyed the support of almost everyone in the world when he went to war in Afghanistan. But everyone was under the impression that this moron, Bin Laden, and his brigade of illiterate followers will all be wiped out and the world would move on. Instead, the Bush administration let him go in the mountains of Pakistan and allowed his network to live. It was a “convenient” blunder of incompetence which gave birth to the “war on terrorism”.
Iraq was attacked next because it was the weakest link in the axis of evil. Meanwhile, Sharon in Israel isolated the Palestinian Authority and then destroyed it. Iran was surrounded by US troops from both sides and it was next on the list. 2005 was the most suitable year to strike Iran but the US military feared the violent reaction of the Shi’a population in Iraq. Things in Iraq and domestically did not go Bush’s way in 2005 and his doctrine began wobbling as he talked about negotiations and diplomacy; an approach that is foreign to his isolationist personality.
In June 2005, Iran had an election and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became President. He had figured out the “isolate and destroy” approach which doesn’t need much brainpower to figure. He adopted the exact opposite approach of “connect and build”. He struck strategic alliances with most Muslim nations and re-started the nuclear energy program to confront Bush’s doctrine head on. This week Iran asked for serious negotiations regarding its nuclear program and the US refused opting to run to the United Nations to ask for a resolution to isolate Iran economically. The Palestinians asked for negotiations and Israel refused. And the Syrians asked for negotiations and the US and Israel refused.
Iraq today stands like Lebanon in 1983. Back then, Lebanon was occupied by Israeli forces and a civil war that took advantage of sectarian differences had been raging for about 7 years. Every major power in the world was fighting its own war on Lebanese soil. Hizbullah was born with a single aim to eject the Israeli occupier.
Iraq today is the focus of world powers and on its land shall be fought the battle for American supremacy. The “isolate and destroy” policy inside Iraq has been defeated. De-baathification has failed and turned into a Shi’a-based campaign to strip Sunnis of any remaining political power. The entire population of Iraq sees the American occupation as the main cause of Iraq’s insecurity. Most Iraqis blame America for fanning the flames of sectarian hatred and keeping the country unstable so that the forces of occupation remain in Iraq.
The conditions are ripe for the birth of a Hizbullah of Iraq. It is only a matter of time for the US to clash with the Shi’a of Iraq in a big way. We saw a preview of that clash a couple of years ago when Muqtada Al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia were almost wiped out by US forces. Today, the Mahdi militia has become a force of about 15,000 fighters and Al-Sadr is the most vocal Shi’a critic of the occupation. He is the most likely candidate to lead a Hizbullah of Iraq. A couple of weeks ago he mobilized almost 300,000 Iraqis who demonstrated in Baghdad waving the flag of Hizbullah and chanting against America and Israel. They will probably fight the US forces who will attempt to disarm all the militias in the upcoming months.
“My critics want to leave Iraq before the job is completed”, declared a defiant Bush in a press conference on August 21. He wants to kill the terrorists in Iraq so that “we don’t have to face them here.” This argument has become a domestic partisan issue and Bush is determined to “stay the course” and lead Republicans to another victory in this November’s elections. Rumsfeld’s beefing up of US forces in Iraq may indicate an imminent large-scale military operation in the works.
The confrontation between Iran and the Bush administration will remain military in nature till the end of Bush’s term. Israel let him down in Lebanon but it is asking for another round, and it is approaching the current cease-fire with an attitude of “run away today to fight another day.”
If Democrats win in November, the occupation of Iraq is over. Bush has one last chance to make his case and it will be in the form of an all-out military campaign in September. If he can create a perception that the US had won the battle for Baghdad the Republicans will win the elections. Otherwise, his war is over and everyone will negotiate with each other starting December of this year.
By Neal AbuNab
In 1799 Napoleon Ponaparte wrote to the Jews offering them the land of Palestine. His army was encamped outside Acre near Haifa. He assured the Jews that their new homeland would be protected by the French Empire. The interests of France in creating an Israel outweighed the interests of the Jews at that time. Napoleon figured to hit two birds with one stone; get rid of the Jews of Europe and plant them in a land that had a long history of resisting the domination of western Christians. He knew that the Jewish state will always be at war with Arabs and so he offered the backing of his powerful army. Napoleon’s primary aim was to inject a source of constant threat and instability in a region that never complied with western interests.
In that vein of thinking he was a visionary man well ahead of his time. His “Israel” project never got off the ground but the historic offer provided future European leaders with a new tool to combat Islam and make good use of the Jews. The idea was picked up by the British Empire in its Balfour Promise of 1917 and then later championed by the USA in 1948.
Today more than ever the interests of the Bush administration lie in destabilizing the Middle East and keeping it under the threat of war for the foreseeable future. This guarantees the flow of oil from divided Arab fiefdoms and ensures that the revenues from this oil never go to strengthen the overall political power of Muslims.
Peace in the Middle East is not good for America; that’s been the long-standing policy of President George Bush. In the nineties and in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Bill Clinton adopted the policy of negotiations to maintain America’s sole supremacy. Clinton was the embodiment of that policy as he met with Syria’s late Hafez Al-Assad, gave a speech to the Jordanian parliament and toured the refugee camps of Gaza. His ability to converse with almost everyone and the popularity of his personality promoted the values of America to the Muslim world. His relentless pursuit of peace in the Middle East gave birth to the idea of an “honest broker.”
The Republicans led by Bush changed the policy of negotiations to one of isolation. They argued that America can maintain its status of the “only superpower” by destroying opposition and dissention. They embarked on a project of demonizing enemies in preparation for waging war. The axis of evil was defined as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. China and Japan have experienced enough wars and destruction in the past century that they have lost the stomach for a confrontation with North Korea. So, the chances of having another war in the Korean peninsula were slim to none. This eliminated North Korea from being the first target.
The attacks of 9/11 provided Bush with a golden opportunity to begin his “isolate and destroy” approach to foreign policy. Osama Bin Laden may hate America but as a dumb strategist every action he has ever undertaken has helped Israel and the Republicans. Bush enjoyed the support of almost everyone in the world when he went to war in Afghanistan. But everyone was under the impression that this moron, Bin Laden, and his brigade of illiterate followers will all be wiped out and the world would move on. Instead, the Bush administration let him go in the mountains of Pakistan and allowed his network to live. It was a “convenient” blunder of incompetence which gave birth to the “war on terrorism”.
Iraq was attacked next because it was the weakest link in the axis of evil. Meanwhile, Sharon in Israel isolated the Palestinian Authority and then destroyed it. Iran was surrounded by US troops from both sides and it was next on the list. 2005 was the most suitable year to strike Iran but the US military feared the violent reaction of the Shi’a population in Iraq. Things in Iraq and domestically did not go Bush’s way in 2005 and his doctrine began wobbling as he talked about negotiations and diplomacy; an approach that is foreign to his isolationist personality.
In June 2005, Iran had an election and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became President. He had figured out the “isolate and destroy” approach which doesn’t need much brainpower to figure. He adopted the exact opposite approach of “connect and build”. He struck strategic alliances with most Muslim nations and re-started the nuclear energy program to confront Bush’s doctrine head on. This week Iran asked for serious negotiations regarding its nuclear program and the US refused opting to run to the United Nations to ask for a resolution to isolate Iran economically. The Palestinians asked for negotiations and Israel refused. And the Syrians asked for negotiations and the US and Israel refused.
Iraq today stands like Lebanon in 1983. Back then, Lebanon was occupied by Israeli forces and a civil war that took advantage of sectarian differences had been raging for about 7 years. Every major power in the world was fighting its own war on Lebanese soil. Hizbullah was born with a single aim to eject the Israeli occupier.
Iraq today is the focus of world powers and on its land shall be fought the battle for American supremacy. The “isolate and destroy” policy inside Iraq has been defeated. De-baathification has failed and turned into a Shi’a-based campaign to strip Sunnis of any remaining political power. The entire population of Iraq sees the American occupation as the main cause of Iraq’s insecurity. Most Iraqis blame America for fanning the flames of sectarian hatred and keeping the country unstable so that the forces of occupation remain in Iraq.
The conditions are ripe for the birth of a Hizbullah of Iraq. It is only a matter of time for the US to clash with the Shi’a of Iraq in a big way. We saw a preview of that clash a couple of years ago when Muqtada Al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia were almost wiped out by US forces. Today, the Mahdi militia has become a force of about 15,000 fighters and Al-Sadr is the most vocal Shi’a critic of the occupation. He is the most likely candidate to lead a Hizbullah of Iraq. A couple of weeks ago he mobilized almost 300,000 Iraqis who demonstrated in Baghdad waving the flag of Hizbullah and chanting against America and Israel. They will probably fight the US forces who will attempt to disarm all the militias in the upcoming months.
“My critics want to leave Iraq before the job is completed”, declared a defiant Bush in a press conference on August 21. He wants to kill the terrorists in Iraq so that “we don’t have to face them here.” This argument has become a domestic partisan issue and Bush is determined to “stay the course” and lead Republicans to another victory in this November’s elections. Rumsfeld’s beefing up of US forces in Iraq may indicate an imminent large-scale military operation in the works.
The confrontation between Iran and the Bush administration will remain military in nature till the end of Bush’s term. Israel let him down in Lebanon but it is asking for another round, and it is approaching the current cease-fire with an attitude of “run away today to fight another day.”
If Democrats win in November, the occupation of Iraq is over. Bush has one last chance to make his case and it will be in the form of an all-out military campaign in September. If he can create a perception that the US had won the battle for Baghdad the Republicans will win the elections. Otherwise, his war is over and everyone will negotiate with each other starting December of this year.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Israel’s historic defeat
By Neal AbuNab
This is not Israel’s first defeat and it won’t be its last one. But it will go down in the books of history as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hizbullah defeated Israel the first time on May 25, 2000. The current Lebanese government was so ashamed of that victory that it banned all celebrations this year. We still celebrated in Dearborn and the Lebanese Consul in Michigan joined us at the Bint Jebail club.
The significance of today’s victory is that the war was waged on all fronts and Hizbullah and Lebanon came out ahead. On the military front where Israel has always behaved like a wild beast that can not be tamed or deterred, it was dealt a severe blow. In the air campaign it conducted more than 10,000 sorties that delivered more bombs than the combined nations of NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999. Every bomb cost Israel about $40,000 while Hizbullah delivered approximately 4,000 Katyusha rockets that cost about $300 each.
It was an asymmetrical war conducted on the cheap but delivered the maximum effect for Hizbullah. Israeli missiles were striking fear in the heart of Lebanese civilians and the Katyusha’s were striking a similar fear in the hearts of Israelis. The Israeli air force with its state-of-the-art technology and weapons was neutralized by World War II-type rockets. Its precision-targeting systems killed hundreds of civilians while the antiquated technology of Katyusha’s killed only a handful of Israeli civilians.
Israelis claim that they had bombed Lebanon back to the Stone Age and that is victory. This is the logic of force that they deeply believe in. It’s like having a 20-year old beat up a 2-year old and calling it a victory. It is downright repulsive and criminal in nature. They are right when they say there is no moral equivalence with Hizbullah’s methods. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, challenged them to fight like men and to park their F-16’s and fight on the ground. After three weeks they answered the call and began their ground invasion. They pushed thousands of troops into southern Lebanon and every time they declared victory in a town they retreated from it the following day.
Over 100 Israeli Merkava tanks which cost $40 million dollars each were destroyed. When it became clear that the ground war was producing “diminishing returns” they agreed to a cease-fire. Wars are all about expectations and objectives. Israel has the fifth strongest military force in the world equipped and financed by billions of US taxpayers’ money. Israel was not only expected to crush Hizbullah easily but also to make an example of it in order to build a new Middle East that dares not question the right of Israel to exist.
Israel declared war on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah and to release its two captured soldiers. It failed in achieving both objectives. The US had taken it for granted that Israel would crush Hizbullah and so it began working on a UN Resolution that provided International legitimacy to Israel’s aggression. It assured its allies that Hizbullah had no chance in surviving the assault and that the resolution should just reflect the facts on the ground. Henry Kissinger is famous for saying that “war is just another instrument of diplomacy.” He gained notoriety when he negotiated with the Vietnamese while bombing them into submission.
And so the US in the person of its top diplomat, Condy Rice, focused its diplomacy to reflect the expected defeat of Hizbullah; a fait accompli in the eyes of the administration. She went to Beirut to check on the pulse of Hizbullah. It was still beating. French officials went to Beirut to check for themselves and they found the pulse to be very strong. They also found that 90% of the Lebanese people had become united behind Hizbullah. And by the fourth week all the Arab countries lined up behind Hizbullah and an Arab League delegation went to New York to negotiate.
This was the first time Arabs united on one position and they all stuck to it. It was truly a historic moment and it only came about because of Hizbullah’s inspired resolve to defend Lebanon. The US stalled while Israel promised victory in a matter of days. In 1982, it marched to the Litani River in 3 hours. After 4 weeks of fighting it was still stuck in Bint Jebail, barely 5 Km north of the border. Then, last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, gave an all-out ground invasion order pushing 30,000 soldiers into Lebanon. They met with resistance they had never seen before.
Hizbullah fighters began hunting Israeli tanks and bulldozers like a spider that invites flies to its deadly web. Israeli soldiers were reminded of the Lebanon “mud” they had left six years ago. A Hizbullah fighter talked to a CNN reporter after the war ended and described how one Israeli soldier was injured in the middle of one of these small border towns. His buddies would not come back for him and he laid there on the ground crying and begging Hizbullah fighters not to shoot him. They did not. But he died later of his wounds because Israeli soldiers waited too long before they came back to get him.
The myth of the Israeli soldier was shattered forever. It was replaced by a new reality on the ground. A reality that will be legendized and will become the new myth; that Hizbullah can not be defeated. Olmert realized this fact in less than 24 hours after giving his orders. On Thursday evening Israel declared that it was ready to accept a UN Resolution that declared a cease-fire. On Friday, UN Secretary General Kufi Anan, said: “war is the utter failure of diplomacy.” Then, they passed UN Resolution 1701 calling for the cessation of hostilities between the two parties.
Lebanese civilians were the greatest losers in this war. But their pain did not move the entire world to put a stop to the Israeli attack. It was Hizbullah’s fighters who proved that a military solution was impossible that put an end to the battle. Hizbullah proved that Israel can destroy the entire country of Lebanon and turn it into rubble but it can not defeat its fighting spirit. Nasrallah proclaimed that the Arabs had scored a “strategic historical victory against Israel.” On Monday night, fireworks lit up the skies of Beirut in celebration and a genuine sentiment of deep pride was evident on the faces of all Arabs. It was the first time in history that Israel was defeated militarily and diplomatically.
As for the Lebanese civilians Hizbullah began rebuilding their destroyed homes the next day. Many Lebanese investors lost their life savings in this war. This is a valuable lesson for them that unless their economic accomplishments are insured by political gains their efforts will always be at risk. It is the lesson that they refuse to learn even here in Dearborn. We’ve been telling them for years that all their money has no value and all their beautiful new buildings on Warren Avenue have no value unless city hall pays attention to their causes. Instead of having the mayor of Dearborn cut ribbons for new Arab businesses let’s see him march with us in our protests. He managed, as always, to keep his distance from the Arab pain. And so did every city councilman.
Arab money has no value without local politicians fighting to protect it by making our views mainstream to the American people. Unfortunately, this war has proved that most of our elected representatives are too afraid to champion Arab causes. The blind love for Israel is dragging America to hell and elected politicians must have the courage to face that reality.
This is the first time Arab pain has emerged triumphant. A handful of courageous politicians felt our pain and championed resolutions demanding an immediate cease-fire. But one of these politicians stands tall in our community. He was at every protest and he showed a deep commitment to social justice. He is Gary Woronchak, our elected commissioner in Wayne County. He proved to be a true friend of the Arab American community.
Our business leaders who are sobbing for their lost money must learn how to reward the politicians who stand with us and how to punish those who stood on the sidelines. President Bush has taught us that “you’re either with us or against us” and our business leaders must learn this fact if they hope to protect their investments in the future.
Hizbullah has released the Arab spirit and the genie is out of the bottle. The winds of liberty and freedom are blowing very hard in the Middle East and they are led by the two flags of Hizbullah and Hamas. America can choose to stand on the side of freedom or stay with the tyranny of Israel and the Kings of Arabia. The choice is simple and it will become clearer with every passing day.
By Neal AbuNab
This is not Israel’s first defeat and it won’t be its last one. But it will go down in the books of history as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hizbullah defeated Israel the first time on May 25, 2000. The current Lebanese government was so ashamed of that victory that it banned all celebrations this year. We still celebrated in Dearborn and the Lebanese Consul in Michigan joined us at the Bint Jebail club.
The significance of today’s victory is that the war was waged on all fronts and Hizbullah and Lebanon came out ahead. On the military front where Israel has always behaved like a wild beast that can not be tamed or deterred, it was dealt a severe blow. In the air campaign it conducted more than 10,000 sorties that delivered more bombs than the combined nations of NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999. Every bomb cost Israel about $40,000 while Hizbullah delivered approximately 4,000 Katyusha rockets that cost about $300 each.
It was an asymmetrical war conducted on the cheap but delivered the maximum effect for Hizbullah. Israeli missiles were striking fear in the heart of Lebanese civilians and the Katyusha’s were striking a similar fear in the hearts of Israelis. The Israeli air force with its state-of-the-art technology and weapons was neutralized by World War II-type rockets. Its precision-targeting systems killed hundreds of civilians while the antiquated technology of Katyusha’s killed only a handful of Israeli civilians.
Israelis claim that they had bombed Lebanon back to the Stone Age and that is victory. This is the logic of force that they deeply believe in. It’s like having a 20-year old beat up a 2-year old and calling it a victory. It is downright repulsive and criminal in nature. They are right when they say there is no moral equivalence with Hizbullah’s methods. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, challenged them to fight like men and to park their F-16’s and fight on the ground. After three weeks they answered the call and began their ground invasion. They pushed thousands of troops into southern Lebanon and every time they declared victory in a town they retreated from it the following day.
Over 100 Israeli Merkava tanks which cost $40 million dollars each were destroyed. When it became clear that the ground war was producing “diminishing returns” they agreed to a cease-fire. Wars are all about expectations and objectives. Israel has the fifth strongest military force in the world equipped and financed by billions of US taxpayers’ money. Israel was not only expected to crush Hizbullah easily but also to make an example of it in order to build a new Middle East that dares not question the right of Israel to exist.
Israel declared war on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah and to release its two captured soldiers. It failed in achieving both objectives. The US had taken it for granted that Israel would crush Hizbullah and so it began working on a UN Resolution that provided International legitimacy to Israel’s aggression. It assured its allies that Hizbullah had no chance in surviving the assault and that the resolution should just reflect the facts on the ground. Henry Kissinger is famous for saying that “war is just another instrument of diplomacy.” He gained notoriety when he negotiated with the Vietnamese while bombing them into submission.
And so the US in the person of its top diplomat, Condy Rice, focused its diplomacy to reflect the expected defeat of Hizbullah; a fait accompli in the eyes of the administration. She went to Beirut to check on the pulse of Hizbullah. It was still beating. French officials went to Beirut to check for themselves and they found the pulse to be very strong. They also found that 90% of the Lebanese people had become united behind Hizbullah. And by the fourth week all the Arab countries lined up behind Hizbullah and an Arab League delegation went to New York to negotiate.
This was the first time Arabs united on one position and they all stuck to it. It was truly a historic moment and it only came about because of Hizbullah’s inspired resolve to defend Lebanon. The US stalled while Israel promised victory in a matter of days. In 1982, it marched to the Litani River in 3 hours. After 4 weeks of fighting it was still stuck in Bint Jebail, barely 5 Km north of the border. Then, last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, gave an all-out ground invasion order pushing 30,000 soldiers into Lebanon. They met with resistance they had never seen before.
Hizbullah fighters began hunting Israeli tanks and bulldozers like a spider that invites flies to its deadly web. Israeli soldiers were reminded of the Lebanon “mud” they had left six years ago. A Hizbullah fighter talked to a CNN reporter after the war ended and described how one Israeli soldier was injured in the middle of one of these small border towns. His buddies would not come back for him and he laid there on the ground crying and begging Hizbullah fighters not to shoot him. They did not. But he died later of his wounds because Israeli soldiers waited too long before they came back to get him.
The myth of the Israeli soldier was shattered forever. It was replaced by a new reality on the ground. A reality that will be legendized and will become the new myth; that Hizbullah can not be defeated. Olmert realized this fact in less than 24 hours after giving his orders. On Thursday evening Israel declared that it was ready to accept a UN Resolution that declared a cease-fire. On Friday, UN Secretary General Kufi Anan, said: “war is the utter failure of diplomacy.” Then, they passed UN Resolution 1701 calling for the cessation of hostilities between the two parties.
Lebanese civilians were the greatest losers in this war. But their pain did not move the entire world to put a stop to the Israeli attack. It was Hizbullah’s fighters who proved that a military solution was impossible that put an end to the battle. Hizbullah proved that Israel can destroy the entire country of Lebanon and turn it into rubble but it can not defeat its fighting spirit. Nasrallah proclaimed that the Arabs had scored a “strategic historical victory against Israel.” On Monday night, fireworks lit up the skies of Beirut in celebration and a genuine sentiment of deep pride was evident on the faces of all Arabs. It was the first time in history that Israel was defeated militarily and diplomatically.
As for the Lebanese civilians Hizbullah began rebuilding their destroyed homes the next day. Many Lebanese investors lost their life savings in this war. This is a valuable lesson for them that unless their economic accomplishments are insured by political gains their efforts will always be at risk. It is the lesson that they refuse to learn even here in Dearborn. We’ve been telling them for years that all their money has no value and all their beautiful new buildings on Warren Avenue have no value unless city hall pays attention to their causes. Instead of having the mayor of Dearborn cut ribbons for new Arab businesses let’s see him march with us in our protests. He managed, as always, to keep his distance from the Arab pain. And so did every city councilman.
Arab money has no value without local politicians fighting to protect it by making our views mainstream to the American people. Unfortunately, this war has proved that most of our elected representatives are too afraid to champion Arab causes. The blind love for Israel is dragging America to hell and elected politicians must have the courage to face that reality.
This is the first time Arab pain has emerged triumphant. A handful of courageous politicians felt our pain and championed resolutions demanding an immediate cease-fire. But one of these politicians stands tall in our community. He was at every protest and he showed a deep commitment to social justice. He is Gary Woronchak, our elected commissioner in Wayne County. He proved to be a true friend of the Arab American community.
Our business leaders who are sobbing for their lost money must learn how to reward the politicians who stand with us and how to punish those who stood on the sidelines. President Bush has taught us that “you’re either with us or against us” and our business leaders must learn this fact if they hope to protect their investments in the future.
Hizbullah has released the Arab spirit and the genie is out of the bottle. The winds of liberty and freedom are blowing very hard in the Middle East and they are led by the two flags of Hizbullah and Hamas. America can choose to stand on the side of freedom or stay with the tyranny of Israel and the Kings of Arabia. The choice is simple and it will become clearer with every passing day.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
The war of words and images
By Neal AbuNab
“I appeal to you from a wife to another wife to tell me if my husband is still alive”, Karnit Goldwasser, the wife of captured Israeli soldier, Ehud Goldwasser, made her appeal on live television from the studios of Fox News on August 6, 2006. Shlomo, the father of the soldier, appeared with his daughter-in-law and thanked the American Jewish community that helped bring them to America and organize their appearances. Karnit and Ehud had been married for only 9 months when Ehud was “kidnapped” on the last day of his military duty. Karnit told her story to the American people with wedding pictures intertwined with fond memories and longings to live a peaceful and happy life.
Peace and happiness were denied to this couple by the Hizbullah terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying Israel with their hateful ideology. It is a gut-wrenching human story conveyed with such strong emotions that garner the immediate sympathy of any peace-loving human being.
That is the story of Israel in the US media. It is the story of a human tragedy of epic proportions. The story of a persecuted people that escaped total annihilation in Europe and ran off to the land promised to them by God to live in peace and security.
Fox News is the champion of this story as it tells it with great care hosting military experts, terrorism experts, and guests that demand forcefully from the President to declare that “Islam is evil”. The rest of the TV media has somewhat cooled off on its “unconditional love for Israel” message and began focusing on the horrific images of death and destruction coming out of Lebanon. MSNBC is almost approaching the line of balanced reporting which infuriates the lovers of Israel. Pat Buchanan has become the leading contrarian voice answering to the compelling arguments made by seasoned neo-conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Mort Zuckerman, Fred Barnes and William Crystol.
The story of Israel as told to Americans has always been a human story. The labyrinth of politics in the Middle East poses a sort of a mental challenge to the collective mind of America. Since the early days of President Harry Truman there was a conscious decision made on the part of media handlers to reduce this story down to over-simplified human terms and to tell it from the eyes of the victimized Jew. Arabs rarely appeared in this story till the seventies and the eighties, when they began blowing up planes and taking hostages, and so the “terrorist” brand name coined by Israel began sticking.
Why did Arabs blow up planes? The answer offered was simply because they hated Jews. Why do they hate them? Because Arabs are like Hitler and the Nazis of Germany; they have an ideology of hate. Why did Arabs attack America on 9/11? Because they hate Americans. Why do they hate Americans? Because they have an ideology of hate. These simple answers formed the basis of the easy-to-follow logic of “terrorism for dummies”, which allowed savvy Republican strategists to win one election after the other in the past 5 years. This logic formed the basis of the war on terror. But the democrats may have signaled that they are not buying any more of this logic, as they nominated this past week in Connecticut a relatively unknown political entity; Ted Lamont, and rejected the trigger-happy longtime war cheerleader veteran Senator Joe Lieberman.
Ever since the eruption of the latest war in the Middle East, Americans have showed that they have a renewed appetite for more information. This race was championed by cutting-edge journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper with his famous “AC360” 2-hour News program. In his search for the story he went to Beirut, Cyprus and Israel. But the time he spent outside of Israel pales in comparison.
In the past two weeks, I would say he’d gone totally “native” and joined his emotions with the Israelis. He is depicting the glory of the Israeli army as it confronts a coward enemy that hides behind human shields. He is faithfully broadcasting the story of immense sacrifice and pain which shows clearly on the faces of Israeli soldiers going into battle. He “embedded” for a weekend with an army unit that went into Lebanon and the report he filed was similar to media “embeds” with the US army in Iraq. The idea is to depict Israel’s fight as America’s war. His reports succeeded in painting a human image of the Israeli army with strong connotations that they are fighting for God and country, and that they are confronting the enemies of America and the enemies of western civilization. The intended conclusion for every viewer is that they are doing us a favor, and so they deserve our wholehearted unconditional support.
The written word echoes more in the mind of man and so the colossal newspaper industry has pretty much stuck to the logic of “terrorism for dummies.” Its unilateral approach has starved intellectuals out of the market and inhibited the political evolution of American society. The same columnists and editors keep hammering the same message over and over again. But too much medicine can kill the patient. The love of Israel has been shoved down the throat of Americans for so long that some are throwing up involuntarily.
The war of words and images to capture the hearts and minds of Americans is the bedrock of public policy and diplomacy. This media war that shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict for the past 60 years has always been unfair and unbalanced. A non-profit organization by the name of www.IfAmericansKnew.org has been making this case for years. Its numerous studies prove how biased the US media coverage is towards Israel. One of its typical studies shows that reporting Israeli children’s death takes place routinely at a rate almost 7 times greater than reporting the death of Palestinian children, as a result of the violent conflict. This deliberate policy is aimed at making the humanity of Israelis more precious than the humanity of Arabs. If people only hear about Israelis being killed their innate sympathy will gravitate towards the victim.
The US will never have a balanced foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American interests till we have a balanced coverage of this conflict on the TV screens.
The Arab story as told often to America consists of abstract statistics and quick images while the Israeli story has a human face. Israeli pain is more valuable than Arab pain. This is evident in the statistics of casualties; 100 dead Israelis so far compared with 1,000 dead Lebanese. Almost every Israeli casualty is reported with a human story showing the unjust nature of the death, family members crying and a whole community grieving and burying its precious members. The time allocated to tell the story of one Israeli death is about ten times that of the Lebanese death. This keeps the balance of emotions always shifted on the side of the Israeli victim whose life has been magnified to bond with the viewer’s life.
No one in America hears about the Lebanese prisoner Samir Al-Qintar imprisoned by Israel since 1979, and sentenced to 453 years. No one in America hears about the 70 elected Palestinian legislators kidnapped over a month ago and thrown in Israeli jails. No one in America hears the story of the Palestinian Parliament Speaker, Aziz Duwiek; abducted from his house in Ramallah last week and tortured by Israeli interrogators in jail. No one in America hears about the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Each has a gut-wrenching human story to tell. Their mothers went on a hunger strike last April to get the attention of the world but no one took notice. No one takes notice of the Arab pain unless it is translated to violence that causes Israeli pain.
In the US media, Israelis always appear through personal stories with kids and names. Their pain and anguish moves us to tears while Arabs are nameless, faceless and their death is a deserved punishment. Arabs die because of their hate and anger while Israelis die because of their love for humanity. The systematic de-humanization of Arabs makes it easier to strip them of morality. This is a deliberate policy to de-humanize, demoralize and demonize a whole people. This way, selling the idea that they simply hate us becomes easier.
Hate-mongering is very important for a group of policymakers as it leads to fear-mongering which keeps war-mongering alive. All this adds up to a whole bunch of money that the defense industry is making, and the idea of Israel is a vital factor in its profitability equation.
By Neal AbuNab
“I appeal to you from a wife to another wife to tell me if my husband is still alive”, Karnit Goldwasser, the wife of captured Israeli soldier, Ehud Goldwasser, made her appeal on live television from the studios of Fox News on August 6, 2006. Shlomo, the father of the soldier, appeared with his daughter-in-law and thanked the American Jewish community that helped bring them to America and organize their appearances. Karnit and Ehud had been married for only 9 months when Ehud was “kidnapped” on the last day of his military duty. Karnit told her story to the American people with wedding pictures intertwined with fond memories and longings to live a peaceful and happy life.
Peace and happiness were denied to this couple by the Hizbullah terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying Israel with their hateful ideology. It is a gut-wrenching human story conveyed with such strong emotions that garner the immediate sympathy of any peace-loving human being.
That is the story of Israel in the US media. It is the story of a human tragedy of epic proportions. The story of a persecuted people that escaped total annihilation in Europe and ran off to the land promised to them by God to live in peace and security.
Fox News is the champion of this story as it tells it with great care hosting military experts, terrorism experts, and guests that demand forcefully from the President to declare that “Islam is evil”. The rest of the TV media has somewhat cooled off on its “unconditional love for Israel” message and began focusing on the horrific images of death and destruction coming out of Lebanon. MSNBC is almost approaching the line of balanced reporting which infuriates the lovers of Israel. Pat Buchanan has become the leading contrarian voice answering to the compelling arguments made by seasoned neo-conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Mort Zuckerman, Fred Barnes and William Crystol.
The story of Israel as told to Americans has always been a human story. The labyrinth of politics in the Middle East poses a sort of a mental challenge to the collective mind of America. Since the early days of President Harry Truman there was a conscious decision made on the part of media handlers to reduce this story down to over-simplified human terms and to tell it from the eyes of the victimized Jew. Arabs rarely appeared in this story till the seventies and the eighties, when they began blowing up planes and taking hostages, and so the “terrorist” brand name coined by Israel began sticking.
Why did Arabs blow up planes? The answer offered was simply because they hated Jews. Why do they hate them? Because Arabs are like Hitler and the Nazis of Germany; they have an ideology of hate. Why did Arabs attack America on 9/11? Because they hate Americans. Why do they hate Americans? Because they have an ideology of hate. These simple answers formed the basis of the easy-to-follow logic of “terrorism for dummies”, which allowed savvy Republican strategists to win one election after the other in the past 5 years. This logic formed the basis of the war on terror. But the democrats may have signaled that they are not buying any more of this logic, as they nominated this past week in Connecticut a relatively unknown political entity; Ted Lamont, and rejected the trigger-happy longtime war cheerleader veteran Senator Joe Lieberman.
Ever since the eruption of the latest war in the Middle East, Americans have showed that they have a renewed appetite for more information. This race was championed by cutting-edge journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper with his famous “AC360” 2-hour News program. In his search for the story he went to Beirut, Cyprus and Israel. But the time he spent outside of Israel pales in comparison.
In the past two weeks, I would say he’d gone totally “native” and joined his emotions with the Israelis. He is depicting the glory of the Israeli army as it confronts a coward enemy that hides behind human shields. He is faithfully broadcasting the story of immense sacrifice and pain which shows clearly on the faces of Israeli soldiers going into battle. He “embedded” for a weekend with an army unit that went into Lebanon and the report he filed was similar to media “embeds” with the US army in Iraq. The idea is to depict Israel’s fight as America’s war. His reports succeeded in painting a human image of the Israeli army with strong connotations that they are fighting for God and country, and that they are confronting the enemies of America and the enemies of western civilization. The intended conclusion for every viewer is that they are doing us a favor, and so they deserve our wholehearted unconditional support.
The written word echoes more in the mind of man and so the colossal newspaper industry has pretty much stuck to the logic of “terrorism for dummies.” Its unilateral approach has starved intellectuals out of the market and inhibited the political evolution of American society. The same columnists and editors keep hammering the same message over and over again. But too much medicine can kill the patient. The love of Israel has been shoved down the throat of Americans for so long that some are throwing up involuntarily.
The war of words and images to capture the hearts and minds of Americans is the bedrock of public policy and diplomacy. This media war that shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict for the past 60 years has always been unfair and unbalanced. A non-profit organization by the name of www.IfAmericansKnew.org has been making this case for years. Its numerous studies prove how biased the US media coverage is towards Israel. One of its typical studies shows that reporting Israeli children’s death takes place routinely at a rate almost 7 times greater than reporting the death of Palestinian children, as a result of the violent conflict. This deliberate policy is aimed at making the humanity of Israelis more precious than the humanity of Arabs. If people only hear about Israelis being killed their innate sympathy will gravitate towards the victim.
The US will never have a balanced foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American interests till we have a balanced coverage of this conflict on the TV screens.
The Arab story as told often to America consists of abstract statistics and quick images while the Israeli story has a human face. Israeli pain is more valuable than Arab pain. This is evident in the statistics of casualties; 100 dead Israelis so far compared with 1,000 dead Lebanese. Almost every Israeli casualty is reported with a human story showing the unjust nature of the death, family members crying and a whole community grieving and burying its precious members. The time allocated to tell the story of one Israeli death is about ten times that of the Lebanese death. This keeps the balance of emotions always shifted on the side of the Israeli victim whose life has been magnified to bond with the viewer’s life.
No one in America hears about the Lebanese prisoner Samir Al-Qintar imprisoned by Israel since 1979, and sentenced to 453 years. No one in America hears about the 70 elected Palestinian legislators kidnapped over a month ago and thrown in Israeli jails. No one in America hears the story of the Palestinian Parliament Speaker, Aziz Duwiek; abducted from his house in Ramallah last week and tortured by Israeli interrogators in jail. No one in America hears about the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Each has a gut-wrenching human story to tell. Their mothers went on a hunger strike last April to get the attention of the world but no one took notice. No one takes notice of the Arab pain unless it is translated to violence that causes Israeli pain.
In the US media, Israelis always appear through personal stories with kids and names. Their pain and anguish moves us to tears while Arabs are nameless, faceless and their death is a deserved punishment. Arabs die because of their hate and anger while Israelis die because of their love for humanity. The systematic de-humanization of Arabs makes it easier to strip them of morality. This is a deliberate policy to de-humanize, demoralize and demonize a whole people. This way, selling the idea that they simply hate us becomes easier.
Hate-mongering is very important for a group of policymakers as it leads to fear-mongering which keeps war-mongering alive. All this adds up to a whole bunch of money that the defense industry is making, and the idea of Israel is a vital factor in its profitability equation.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Israel loses first round
By Neal AbuNab
Israel has lost the first round of this grueling match with Lebanon. Most observers agree that the current war will not be decided by a “knock-out” punch from either side. The two-day lull in the air campaign, last week, allowed both sides and the world to tally the points scored so far. Israel suffered its greatest loss in the humanitarian argument which gave Hizbullah the deciding points for this round.
When this war started there was so much temptation for escalation and Israel just could not resist. Its disproportionate response has passed the line of immorality to criminality. Lebanon today is the Kosovo of the Middle East. The massacre in Qana, this past week, reminded us of the massacre of 41 civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak by Serbian forces in January 1999. When the world saw that massacre there was a turning point in public opinion and Qana did that last week. The world just can not stand by idle watching the mangled bodies of innocent women and children.
By the end of March 1999 Nato forces were pummeling Serbia and cornering its criminal regime headed by Slobodan Milosovicz. The population of Kosovo was terrorized by the brutal Serbian forces, much the same way as Israel is terrorizing the Lebanese today, and millions left their homes and ran for the mountains of Albania. If we replay the images of that dispossessed population fleeing Kosovo in April 1999 it will almost replicate what happened in southern Lebanon last week. There is good and evil. But back then, the United States led by President Bill Clinton stood on the side of good and rallied the entire world against evil. Back then, Serbia stood alone with Russia against the world. Today, the United States stands alone with Israel against the world.
Israeli officials stress that there is no “moral equivalence” between their fight and Hizbullah’s. They are right. They are on the side of evil and Hizbullah is on the side of good. Hizbullah is defending its own civilian population from the merciless destruction of Israeli firepower. Israel has unleashed the flames of hell against defenseless civilians and even declared bridges as its enemy. Hizbullah is defending its own land and the right of Lebanese people to live in that land in peace and security.
Israel apologizes to the American people, who paid for its bombs, for killing Lebanese civilians in cold blood. But in the same breath it defiles the memory of these victims by blaming them for their own death. It sends leaflets to Lebanese civilians ordering them to leave their homes or else be killed. Israel believes that by warning these civilians it has obtained a moral justification to kill them.
Let’s turn this “moral equivalence” around and suppose that Hizbullah sent leaflets to all Haifa residents to evacuate or be killed. The world will react “disproportionately” in its outrage and condemnation of Hizbullah. Jews all over the world will accuse Hizbullah of trying to commit a “holocaust”; an idea monopolized by Jews and therefore Lebanese and Palestinians can never be the victims.
Israelis claim that all they want is to “live in peace” and live a normal life like Americans do. Isn’t that what the Lebanese and the Palestinians want also? But Israel’s concept of morality is discriminating and she sees that only Jews deserve such a basic human aspiration. How could they live in peace on a land they had stolen from Palestinians? Hizbullah sends its rockets to northern Israel to tell them that the land does not belong to them. Hizbullah is defending the rights of Palestinians who own Haifa, but instead had been forced to live in wretched refugee camps in Lebanon since 1948. Don’t they have a right to live in peace and live a normal life like Americans do?
When Hizbullah arrested two Israeli soldiers occupying its land the US called it a “kidnapping”. But when Israeli commandoes kidnapped five Lebanese civilians from a hospital 70 Km’s away from Israel, in Baalbeck, the media called it a “daring arrest”. But the US media has been playing this game of criminalizing any legitimate activity against Israel for the past 60 years. They twist the meaning of words so that Israel’s actions are shrouded in a cloak of legitimacy while the actions of Arabs are always suspect in nature.
However, the US media has not served American interests and has rendered the majority of Americans ignorant about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The truth is as bright as sunshine and it will burn through the spin provided by the Bill O’Reilly’s of this world. Americans see hundreds of thousands of peace-loving defenseless people fleeing their homes, cities turned into rubble and atrocious massacres. What is the world doing about that? They ask and their President, George Bush, tells them: we’re sending humanitarian aid to the Lebanese and bombs to the Israelis.
Israel is fighting on the side of evil. Hizbullah is fighting on the side of good. God is on the side of good and so I don’t have a shred of doubt that Hizbullah will prevail in the end. The Qur’an says: “Anyone who pledges his allegiance to God; to His messenger and to the believers will have joined the Party of God that is destined for victory.” (Chapter 5, Verse 56). Of course, Hizbullah means the Party of God and its name was inspired by the Qur’an as its moral legitimacy.
Israel kills innocent civilians, apologizes and then blocks the United Nations from condemning its actions. A UN resolution passed last week called the Qana massacre “regretful” and it “deplored the violence”. Israel has lost the war for the hearts and minds of people and whoever loses the media war usually loses the morality war, the diplomatic war and eventually the military campaign.
A recent poll showed that almost 90% of the Lebanese people support Hizbullah and most Arab Americans reflect that sentiment. Its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, declared on Thursday that all of its military actions are a direct reaction to Israel’s aggression. If Israel stops attacking then Hizbullah will stop reacting just like it did in those two days. World public opinion has reached a critical mass and has become united in asking for an immediate cease-fire. Israel and the US stand alone bare and naked in their warmongering intentions. They are still convinced that they can smash Hizbullah and extract it from its roots.
Last Wednesday marked the 22nd day of this war and Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, rang the bell for round two of this match. He said that Israel will push its ground forces deep into Lebanon and will only give up the territory to an international force. Shortly afterwards, the highly anticipated massive ground invasion commenced and fierce battles raged with black smoke rising from towns all along the border.
I expect round two to bring an escalation in destruction and casualties on both sides and it may entice Syria to jump into the fray. This round will be longer than the first one and more gruesome in nature, as the stakes have been raised even higher. All this sits well with the embattled Republicans who will enter the upcoming election season united with Israel in a global war against “Islamo-fascism” and “terrorism.” May God save the American people from the ignorance perpetrated upon them by their own leaders.
By Neal AbuNab
Israel has lost the first round of this grueling match with Lebanon. Most observers agree that the current war will not be decided by a “knock-out” punch from either side. The two-day lull in the air campaign, last week, allowed both sides and the world to tally the points scored so far. Israel suffered its greatest loss in the humanitarian argument which gave Hizbullah the deciding points for this round.
When this war started there was so much temptation for escalation and Israel just could not resist. Its disproportionate response has passed the line of immorality to criminality. Lebanon today is the Kosovo of the Middle East. The massacre in Qana, this past week, reminded us of the massacre of 41 civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak by Serbian forces in January 1999. When the world saw that massacre there was a turning point in public opinion and Qana did that last week. The world just can not stand by idle watching the mangled bodies of innocent women and children.
By the end of March 1999 Nato forces were pummeling Serbia and cornering its criminal regime headed by Slobodan Milosovicz. The population of Kosovo was terrorized by the brutal Serbian forces, much the same way as Israel is terrorizing the Lebanese today, and millions left their homes and ran for the mountains of Albania. If we replay the images of that dispossessed population fleeing Kosovo in April 1999 it will almost replicate what happened in southern Lebanon last week. There is good and evil. But back then, the United States led by President Bill Clinton stood on the side of good and rallied the entire world against evil. Back then, Serbia stood alone with Russia against the world. Today, the United States stands alone with Israel against the world.
Israeli officials stress that there is no “moral equivalence” between their fight and Hizbullah’s. They are right. They are on the side of evil and Hizbullah is on the side of good. Hizbullah is defending its own civilian population from the merciless destruction of Israeli firepower. Israel has unleashed the flames of hell against defenseless civilians and even declared bridges as its enemy. Hizbullah is defending its own land and the right of Lebanese people to live in that land in peace and security.
Israel apologizes to the American people, who paid for its bombs, for killing Lebanese civilians in cold blood. But in the same breath it defiles the memory of these victims by blaming them for their own death. It sends leaflets to Lebanese civilians ordering them to leave their homes or else be killed. Israel believes that by warning these civilians it has obtained a moral justification to kill them.
Let’s turn this “moral equivalence” around and suppose that Hizbullah sent leaflets to all Haifa residents to evacuate or be killed. The world will react “disproportionately” in its outrage and condemnation of Hizbullah. Jews all over the world will accuse Hizbullah of trying to commit a “holocaust”; an idea monopolized by Jews and therefore Lebanese and Palestinians can never be the victims.
Israelis claim that all they want is to “live in peace” and live a normal life like Americans do. Isn’t that what the Lebanese and the Palestinians want also? But Israel’s concept of morality is discriminating and she sees that only Jews deserve such a basic human aspiration. How could they live in peace on a land they had stolen from Palestinians? Hizbullah sends its rockets to northern Israel to tell them that the land does not belong to them. Hizbullah is defending the rights of Palestinians who own Haifa, but instead had been forced to live in wretched refugee camps in Lebanon since 1948. Don’t they have a right to live in peace and live a normal life like Americans do?
When Hizbullah arrested two Israeli soldiers occupying its land the US called it a “kidnapping”. But when Israeli commandoes kidnapped five Lebanese civilians from a hospital 70 Km’s away from Israel, in Baalbeck, the media called it a “daring arrest”. But the US media has been playing this game of criminalizing any legitimate activity against Israel for the past 60 years. They twist the meaning of words so that Israel’s actions are shrouded in a cloak of legitimacy while the actions of Arabs are always suspect in nature.
However, the US media has not served American interests and has rendered the majority of Americans ignorant about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The truth is as bright as sunshine and it will burn through the spin provided by the Bill O’Reilly’s of this world. Americans see hundreds of thousands of peace-loving defenseless people fleeing their homes, cities turned into rubble and atrocious massacres. What is the world doing about that? They ask and their President, George Bush, tells them: we’re sending humanitarian aid to the Lebanese and bombs to the Israelis.
Israel is fighting on the side of evil. Hizbullah is fighting on the side of good. God is on the side of good and so I don’t have a shred of doubt that Hizbullah will prevail in the end. The Qur’an says: “Anyone who pledges his allegiance to God; to His messenger and to the believers will have joined the Party of God that is destined for victory.” (Chapter 5, Verse 56). Of course, Hizbullah means the Party of God and its name was inspired by the Qur’an as its moral legitimacy.
Israel kills innocent civilians, apologizes and then blocks the United Nations from condemning its actions. A UN resolution passed last week called the Qana massacre “regretful” and it “deplored the violence”. Israel has lost the war for the hearts and minds of people and whoever loses the media war usually loses the morality war, the diplomatic war and eventually the military campaign.
A recent poll showed that almost 90% of the Lebanese people support Hizbullah and most Arab Americans reflect that sentiment. Its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, declared on Thursday that all of its military actions are a direct reaction to Israel’s aggression. If Israel stops attacking then Hizbullah will stop reacting just like it did in those two days. World public opinion has reached a critical mass and has become united in asking for an immediate cease-fire. Israel and the US stand alone bare and naked in their warmongering intentions. They are still convinced that they can smash Hizbullah and extract it from its roots.
Last Wednesday marked the 22nd day of this war and Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, rang the bell for round two of this match. He said that Israel will push its ground forces deep into Lebanon and will only give up the territory to an international force. Shortly afterwards, the highly anticipated massive ground invasion commenced and fierce battles raged with black smoke rising from towns all along the border.
I expect round two to bring an escalation in destruction and casualties on both sides and it may entice Syria to jump into the fray. This round will be longer than the first one and more gruesome in nature, as the stakes have been raised even higher. All this sits well with the embattled Republicans who will enter the upcoming election season united with Israel in a global war against “Islamo-fascism” and “terrorism.” May God save the American people from the ignorance perpetrated upon them by their own leaders.
Neal AbuNab
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