NOT ANOTHER DAY
NOT ANOTHER DOLLAR
NOT ANOTHER LIFE
“I Was Sent To Another Country To Kill A Bunch Of People Who Did Nothing Against Americans”
“I Got The Impression The Iraqi People Don’t Want Us There”
Hank keeps watch as Jeff, Joe, and Garrett discuss the issues.
IVAW Tower Guard Nov 16-18, 2007: http://csaction.org/IVAW_TG/tg_04.html
For former Army Spc. Mark Wilkerson, it was the raids — barging into the homes of regular Iraqis in search of weapons and insurgents — that turned him against the war.
“Our mission was to win the hearts and minds of the people, and you don’t do that when you’re treating every single one like they’re an insurgent, like they’re a terrorist,” said Wilkerson, 23.
After a year in Iraq with a Fort Hood-based military police unit, the 2002 Widefield High School graduate felt strongly enough that he sought conscientious objector status and, when that was denied, went AWOL. He served five months in a military prison this year.
He is among a small group of Iraq veterans holding a three-day demonstration in Acacia Park in Colorado Springs that began Friday.
With a mock guard tower — to symbolize a guard tower in Iraq because “we all at one point in Iraq pulled tower guard,” Wilkerson said — they hope to draw attention to the fact that not everyone who served there supports the war.
“When I got there they waved flags, then they were giving us angry looks, and then they were throwing rocks and planting IEDs,” said Wilkerson, who got out of a military prison in Oklahoma in July.
“I got the impression the Iraqi people don’t want us there.”
The members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national group, have held demonstrations elsewhere in Colorado, but this weekend’s is their first in Colorado Springs, Wilkerson said.
“In this very all-American, all-military town, there are people who are against the war but support the troops and support the veterans,” said former Marine Capt. Rick Duncan of Colorado Springs.
He served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and went back last year. He now runs a veterans advocacy group, the Colorado Veterans Alliance.
Duncan said he came to oppose the war because of how it affected his fellow troops.
“I continuously saw people being sent back into a meat grinder again and again and again,” said Duncan, 30. “I saw people dying and leaving families and distraught loved ones.
“Seeing the degradation of the military, the degradation of the troops. There’s only so much you can take before you have to begin speaking up.”
Friday’s demonstration was politely received by passersby, with some earnest discussion but no shouts aimed at the veterans, Wilkerson said. The group planned to be back at the southwest corner of the park from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and Sunday.
They acknowledge theirs is a viewpoint rarely heard, at least publicly, from soldiers.
“I don’t think we’re a minority voice, but I think we’re a minority willing to speak up about it,” Duncan said.
Former Army Spc. Garrett Reppenhagen, sitting atop the tower, said he supported the war when he went to Iraq in February 2004.
“I thought I was going over there to look for weapons of mass destruction and try to get revenge on the people who attacked us on 9/11,” said Reppenhagen, 32, now a Pikes Peak Community College student.
“I really got disenchanted. I was sent to another country to kill a bunch of people who did nothing against Americans and never tried to attack us,” Reppenhagen said.
The Iraq Veterans Against the War advocates an immediate pullout from Iraq. Its members argue that violence occurs because people resent the U.S. troop presence, and say the country will stabilize on its own.
“The people will take some pride in their country when there is no one to hold their hand,” Wilkerson said.
www.ivaw.org
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.
The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.
HIDDEN WOUNDS: Marine didn't recognize signs of brain injury
The number of brain-injury cases were tabulated from records kept by the VA and four military bases that house units that have served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One base released its count of brain injuries at a medical conference. The others provided their records at the request of USA TODAY, in some cases only after a Freedom of Information Act filing was submitted.
The data came from:
• Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, where troops evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for injury, illness or wounds are brought before going home. Since May 2006, more than 2,300 soldiers screened positive for brain injury, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw says.
• Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 4th Infantry Division, which returned from a second Iraq combat tour late last year. At least 2,700 soldiers suffered a combat brain injury, Lt. Col. Steve Stover says.
• Fort Carson, Colo., where more than 2,100 soldiers screened were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to remarks by Army Col. Heidi Terrio before a brain injury association seminar.
• Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where 1,737 Marines were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to Navy Cmdr. Martin Holland, a neurosurgeon with the Naval Medical Center San Diego.
• VA hospitals, where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been screened for combat brain injuries since April. The VA found about 20% of 61,285 surveyed — or 11,804 veterans — with signs of brain injury, spokeswoman Alison Aikele says. VA doctors say more evaluation is necessary before a true diagnosis of brain injury can be confirmed in all these cases, Aikele says.
Soldiers and Marines whose wounds were discovered after they left Iraq are not added to the official casualty list, says Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and brain injury consultant for the Pentagon.
"We are working to do a better job of reflecting accurate data in the official casualty table," Labutta says.
Most of the new cases involve mild or moderate brain injuries, commonly from exposure to blasts.
More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat, says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.
"I am wary that the number of brain-injured troops far exceeds the total number reported injured," he says.
About 1.5 million troops have served in Iraq, where traumatic brain injury can occur despite heavy body armor worn by troops.
At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.
The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.
HIDDEN WOUNDS: Marine didn't recognize signs of brain injury
The number of brain-injury cases were tabulated from records kept by the VA and four military bases that house units that have served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One base released its count of brain injuries at a medical conference. The others provided their records at the request of USA TODAY, in some cases only after a Freedom of Information Act filing was submitted.
The data came from:
• Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, where troops evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for injury, illness or wounds are brought before going home. Since May 2006, more than 2,300 soldiers screened positive for brain injury, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw says.
• Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 4th Infantry Division, which returned from a second Iraq combat tour late last year. At least 2,700 soldiers suffered a combat brain injury, Lt. Col. Steve Stover says.
• Fort Carson, Colo., where more than 2,100 soldiers screened were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to remarks by Army Col. Heidi Terrio before a brain injury association seminar.
• Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where 1,737 Marines were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to Navy Cmdr. Martin Holland, a neurosurgeon with the Naval Medical Center San Diego.
• VA hospitals, where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been screened for combat brain injuries since April. The VA found about 20% of 61,285 surveyed — or 11,804 veterans — with signs of brain injury, spokeswoman Alison Aikele says. VA doctors say more evaluation is necessary before a true diagnosis of brain injury can be confirmed in all these cases, Aikele says.
Soldiers and Marines whose wounds were discovered after they left Iraq are not added to the official casualty list, says Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and brain injury consultant for the Pentagon.
"We are working to do a better job of reflecting accurate data in the official casualty table," Labutta says.
Most of the new cases involve mild or moderate brain injuries, commonly from exposure to blasts.
More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat, says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.
"I am wary that the number of brain-injured troops far exceeds the total number reported injured," he says.
About 1.5 million troops have served in Iraq, where traumatic brain injury can occur despite heavy body armor worn by troops.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Pentagon Cover Up:
15,000 or more US casualties in Iraq War
By Mike Whitney
11/17/07 "ICH" -- -- The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.
CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007--there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.
Baloney.
The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the “suicide epidemic”. Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone “THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR.”
That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.
If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the “official” 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.
That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.
CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”
Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.
It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.
The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.
Check it out the video at: CBS News “Suicide Epidemic among Veterans” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml
By Mike Whitney
11/17/07 "ICH" -- -- The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.
CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007--there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.
Baloney.
The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the “suicide epidemic”. Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone “THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR.”
That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.
If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the “official” 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.
That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.
CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”
Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.
It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.
The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.
Check it out the video at: CBS News “Suicide Epidemic among Veterans” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Book That Can't Be Published In America
By Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
11/14/07 "ICH" --- -- The question Americans asked in the immediate aftermath of the horror of 9/11 was “Why do they hate us?” And in many American minds the “they” of the question were not only the violent Islamic fundamentalists who, according to the official version of events, were solely responsible for bringing down the Twin Towers, but Arabs and Muslims everywhere - about a quarter of humankind.
Since that particular shocking and awesome event, I have often asked myself how different the world today might have been – how much less destruction and killing there would have been - if President Bush had said something like: “That’s a very good question. We must and will seek the answer to it before we decide how to respond.”
If an attempt had been made to answer the question, the first thing that would have been established is that the overwhelming majority of Arabs and other Muslims everywhere do not hate Americans or America. If they could, very many Arabs and other Muslims, perhaps even half of them, would live in America to enjoy the apparently good life there.
What they hate is American foreign policy. And the underlying prime cause of that hatred is Congressional and White House support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong. But Israel’s American-endorsed arrogance of power and contempt for international law is only one of two factors in the equation that, over the past 60 years, has seen Arab and other Muslim hurt, anger and humliation turn to hatred on account of the conflict in and over Palestine. The other is the impotence of the regimes of the existing mainly corrupt and repressive Arab Order, regimes which, genereally speaking, are perceived by their masses to be, in effect, American-and-Zionist stooges.
On 11 September 2001, I was well into the writing of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, so I didn’t start out with the idea of answering the “Why do they hate us?” question, but the book does provide for Americans a complete, comprehensive, detailed and fully documented answer to it.
With The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt have provided taboo-breaking insight into one aspect of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict. My book is concerned with the making and sustaining of the conflict in all of its aspects. My purpose is to enable readers to make sense - I dare to say for the first time ever in many cases - of the whole thing, by seeing how all the pieces of the most complicated and complex jig-saw puzzle fit together. And that’s why what happened behind closed doors in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow has its place in the story as I tell it as well as events in Palestine that became Israel and the capitals of the Arab world. My purpose is also to assist citizens to understand why a resolution of the conflict has remained, and seems set to remain, beyond the reach of politics and diplomacy, and who must do what and why for justice and peace. The alternative is catastrophe for all, and by all I don’t mean only the Arabs and Jews of the region. I mean all of us wherever we live. (In Volume One I recall an interview I did for the BBC’s Panorama programme with Mother Israel, Golda Meir. At a point I interrupted her to say: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you’re saying… You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, Golda replied, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Within an hour of that interview being transmitted, The Times of London changed its lead editorial. The new one quoted what Golda had said to me and added its own opinion - “We’d better believe her.”)
My only reservation about M&W’s excellent presentation is over their use of the term “Israel lobby”. Way back in 1980 when I used that term in private conversation with Shimon Peres, who was then the leader of Israel’s main opposition Labour Party and hoping to become prime minister and deny Menachem Begin a second term in office, he, Peres, said to me: “It’s not an Israel lobby. It’s a Likud lobby.” The point being made was that the lobby in America represented hardcore, uncompromising Zionism and pushed (at least sometimes) for policies that were not in Israel’s own long term best interests. For reasons that my book makes clear, the phenomenon W&M have exposed (supplementing Paul Findley’s They Dare To Speak Out) is best and most accurately described as the Zionist lobby.
In my view and also that of all real experts I know including, for example, the two leading Israeli “revisionist” (honest) historians of our time, Professors Ilan Pappe and Aviv Shlaim, the key to understanding is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. The mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world has been conditioned to believe that they are one and the same thing. They are not. They are total opposites.
Judaism is the religion of Jews (not “the Jews” because not all Jews are religious), and, like Christianity and Islam, it has at its core a set of ethical principles and moral values.
Zionism is a secular, colonialist ideology which, in 1948, and mainly by resorting to terrorism and ethnic cleansing, established a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland. (At the time of Zionism’s birth and first mission statement in 1897, its colonial ambition was supported by only a very small minority of the Jews of the world; and it can be said that without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust - a European crime for which, effectively, the Arabs of Palestine were punished - Israel would not have come into being). Simply stated, Zionism in action has made a mockery of, and actually has contempt for, the ethical principles and moral values of Judaism. Which is why those most often described as “ultra orthodox” religious Jews say that Zionism is destroying Judaism
For those who might wish to have a much deeper understanding of the difference between Zionism and Judaism than my book provides, I recommend another recently published book – A Threat From Within, A Century of Jewish Opposition To Zionism. Its author is a Canadian Jew, Yakov Rabkin, who is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. When Yakov was in London, I asked him on-the-record a very explicit question: “Is it reasonable to say that the Jews of the world now have a choice to make - either to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Judaism and renounce Zionism, or to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Zionism and renounce Judaism?” He replied with one word, “Yes!”
Knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism is the key to understanding why it is perfectly possible to be anti-Zionist (opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise either in whole or in part) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic. The significance of that statement is in the following.
The false charge of anti-Semitism is the blackmail card which the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust enables Zionism to play to silence criticism of its self-righteous and aggressive child, Israel, and to suppress informed and honest debate about who must do what and why for justice and peace. But when citizens know the difference between Zionism and Judaism (and the truth of history, of which more later) they do not have to be frightened into silence, as most Gentiles currently are, by the fear of being falsely charged with anti-Semitism for criticising the Zionist state of Israel.
There is, however, another reason why it is essential for the citizens of the Western nations, among whom most of the Jews of the world live, to be aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Knowledge of the difference is the explanation of why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the few (hardcore Zionists in Israel/Palestine).
Though I was aware that it would be very uncomfortable for many Jews, and though I knew that it would provoke the Zionist lobby into red flagging my book and doing its best ( I mean its worst) to cause the book to be suppressed to the maximum posssible extent, I insisted on Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews as the title because it reflects in seven words two related truths for our time.
The first is that the sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism has been re-awakened in the mainly Gentile nations of the Western world (where, to repeat, most of the Jews of the world live as integrated citizens). The second is that the prime cause of the re-awakening is the behaviour of the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel - as most of the best Jewish minds prior to the Nazi holocaust feared would be the case if Zionism was allowed by the big powers to have its way.
As background context to the statement above there is the warning (quoted opposite the title page of Volume Two of my book) of Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving and universally respected Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, first published in Hebrew in 1986, he wrote the following (emphasis added):
“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
It’s my view that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, “right or wrong”. (There is a case for saying that with British and American politicians as “friends”, the Jews of the world have not needed enemies).
What, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is seriously on the rise? The increase in the desecration of synagogues and Jewish graves (and the like), verbal abuse and assaults on Jews are a pointer. But there is something far more sinister. It’s what a growing number of Gentiles, middle to upper class people in particular, are thinking and now beginning to say behind closed doors and at dinner parties. What do they say? “These fucking Jews!” And it’s grown, this antipathy, in response to Israel’s arrogance of power and the correct perception of Israel as the oppressor. And the more it becomes apparent that Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims could accept, the more this antipathy will grow, with the real danger that it will break out, become unsuppressed, and manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism.
As things are, and look like going, Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against Jews, is a real possibility in a foreseeable future.
It’s also my view, which I know is shared in private by some eminent Jews, that if the monster of anti-Semitism goes on the rampage again, it might well start its journey in America.
Two summary reasons why:
* Many members of Congress (past and present) hate themselves for doing the bidding of the Zionist lobby. If the opportunity to let rip with their suppressed, guilt-driven anger arises, they will want revenge.
* The prime pushers for the invasion of Iraq were neo-cons who are also hardcore Zionists. While few want to admit this publicly, many know it to be so.
QUESTION: What can be done to eliminate the danger of the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again?
Short answer… The Gentiles of the Western nations must be informed and educated about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and thus why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the hardcore Zionist few. And that’s one of the reasons why I devoted more than five years of my life to researching and writing Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. I want to do my bit to stop the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again. And that’s the essential difference between the Gentile me and hardcore Zionists. They want, even need, anti-Semitism, to justify their crimes - past, present and future.
If and when I take to the public speaking and debating trail coast-to-coast across America (as I’ve done in the past), I will have the following message for American audiences:
DON’T blame the Jews who live among you for Zionism’s crimes.
DON’T even blame the Zionist lobby for buying influence on American foreign policy because it, the lobby, has only played the game according to the rules.
DO blame your corrupt, pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders.
My book has two central and related themes.
One is how Israel, the child of Zionism, became its own worst enemy and a threat not only to the peace of the region and the world, but also the best interests of Jews everywhere and the moral integrity of Judaism itself.
The other is why, really, the whole Arab and wider Muslim world is an explosion of frustration and despair waiting for its time to happen.
The book is epic in length (two volumes) as well as sweep and substance because it is a complete re-writing of the history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine, replacing the Zionist mythology upon which the first and still existing draft of Judeo-Christian history is constructed with the documented facts and truth of history. As I noted in an Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (published by Information Clearing House on 7 November), the first draft of history is mainly Zionist propaganda nonsense. At its core are two myths.
One is that the Zionist state of Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth of history is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger. Not in 19448/49. Not in 1956. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression as self-defence and itself as the victim when it was, and is, the oppressor.
The other is that Israel has not had a Palestinian partner for peace. The truth of history on this account is that the ground for peace on the Palestinian side was prepared by Yasser Arafat as far back as 1979 – more than a quarter of a century ago. In that year, 1979, Arafat persuaded the Palestine National Council, the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side, to back his policy of politics and, until then, unthinkable compromise with Israel. (Unthinkable for Palestinians because accepting Israel inside its pre-1967 borders required them to renounce their claim to 78% of their land).
As I recorded in my book Arafat (the title of the American edition, the original title was Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?), it took him six long years to persuade first his Fatah leadership colleagues and then other PNC members to accept the reality of Israel’s existence. When the vote was eventually taken, in 1979, it was 296 for his policy of politics and compromise and four against. Arafat, who had risked his life as well as his credibility to turn his people around, was then at the height of his powers; and from that moment on, and as President Carter knew, there could have been successful negotiations for a real and lasting peace based on a genuine two-state solution - Israel back behind its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem, preferably as an open city, the capital of two states.
The problem was that Arafat did not have a partner for peace on the Israeli side - because Zionism was not, and is not, interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere could accept. It’s true that in 1993, and thanks in part to President Clinton’s stage management and pulling power, Arafat did have a “perhaps” Israeli partner for peace in the shape of Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a gut-Zionist. And Rabin was succeeded by Israeli leaders whose prime objective was to re-demonise and destroy the Palestinian leader. Arafat the terrorist they could handle. Arafat the peacemaker they could not. (Didn’t Barak offer Arafat “95 percent” of everything he had said he wanted? No, he did not! That, too, was a propaganda lie. Was Arafat poisoned? Probably. Is his successor, President Abbas, effectively an Israeli-and-American puppet? Sadly yes, or so it seems. But even if he is, we can be certain of one thing. Stooge leadership or not, the Palestinian people will never accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans which they could call a state).
In my book and on public platforms I also take head-on the matter of Israel’s right or not to exist.
According to first and still existing draft of history, Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. This is nonsense.
In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
So the partition plan was vitiated, became invalid, and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine (after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away) was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionism terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless ….. Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.
Complete understanding of the true nature of Zionism’s colonial enterprise also requires knowledge of this fact. Most of the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The incoming Zionist Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands, descended from those who became Jewish by conversion to Judaism centuries after the fall of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel and what is called the “dispersal” into “oblivion” of its people. The notion that there were, are, two entire peoples with an equally valid claim to the same land is an historical nonsense. The relatively few Jews with a valid claim were the descendants of those who stayed IN Palestine through everything. They numbered only a few thousand at the time of Zionism’s birth; they regarded themselves as Palestinians; and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise - because they rightly feared that it would make them as well as the incoming, alien Zionist Jews enemies of the Arabs among whom they had lived in peace and security. (Though not even many of today’s Jews are aware of it, it is also a fact that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man - one possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism - was proscribed by Judaism).
The question that should be answered by President Bush and all who are demanding that Hamas recognise Israel is this: Which Israel is to be recognised… Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war and thus in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242, or a Greater Israel which, on a daily basis, is grabbing more land and expanding its settlements on the occupied West Bank?
There is, in fact, no mystery about what Hamas’s real position is. If tomorrow Israel said and meant that it was ready to negotiate a full and final peace on the basis of a genuine two-state solution - one that would see Israel back to its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states, Hamas would say, “Let’s do the business”.
Hamas’s leaders would say that, and mean it, because they are not stupid and know they would have no choice – because a genuine two-state solution is still what the vast majority of Palestinians are prepared to settle for. But they are never going to get it.
The truth of the present is that the two-state solution is already dead, if not yet buried….. killed by the settlement facts Israel has created, and is still creating, on the West Bank - in defiance of UN resolutions, in defiance of international law, and even in defiance once upon a time of the expressed wish of the Bush administration. At least on the matter of illegal settlement activity, it IS the Zionist tail that wags the American dog.
In the last chapter of Volume Two of my book, A Resurrection, a Crucifixion and a Road Map to Nowhere, I make the statement that Zionism’s own end-game strategy for a final solution to the Palestine problem now leaves nothing to the imagination. Zionism’s in-Israel leaders and their lobbyists in America still believe that by means of brute force and reducing them to abject poverty, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights. The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life in other countries. In my view the conviction that Zionism will one day succeed in breaking the Palestinian will to continue the struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice is the product of minds which are deluded to the point of clinical madness. (Some say that Israel is on its way to becoming a fascist state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic asylum).
The question that’s almost too awful to think about is something like this: What will the Zionists do when it becomes apparent even to them that they can’t destroy Palestinian nationalism with bombs and bullets and brutal repressive measures of all kinds?
My guess is that they, the Zionists, will go for a final round of ethnic cleansing - to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and beyond. That, I fear, will be Zionism’s final solution to the Palestine problem… If that happens, the West Bank will be turned red with blood, mostly Palestinian blood. And honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.
But that does not have to be the end of the story of Palestine. There still could be a new beginning.
Many years ago, in the Introduction to my first book, Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker? I said that, generally speaking, the Jews are the intellectual elite of the Western civilisation and the Palestinians the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What those two peoples could do together in peace and partnership was, I suggested, the stuff that real dreams are made of. They could change and develop the region for the better and, by so doing, give much needed hope and inspiration to the whole world. I still believe that dream could be made to come true, but only within the context of a ONE STATE solution to the Palestine problem. By definition it would be secular, democratic state in which all of its citizens, Arabs and Jews, would enjoy equal rights.Yes, that would mean the de-Zionisation of Palestine, but it would not mean the end (any kind of end) for the Jews now living in Israel/Palestine. Those who wished to stay as citizens of a de-Zionised Palestine would at last have peace with enduring security.
My book’s Epilogue is titled The Jews as the Light Unto Nations, and it ends with the following words, my words, which also have pride of place on the back jacket of Volume Two:
If the Jews of the world can summon up the will and the courage to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel before it is too late for us all, a very great prize awaits them. By demonstrating that right can triumph over might, and that there is a place for morality in politics, they would become the light unto nations. It is a prize available to no other people on earth because of the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jewish people. Perhaps that is the real point of the idea of the Jews as Chosen People… Chosen to endure unique suffering and, having endured it, to show the rest of us that creating a better and more just world is not a mission impossible.
Why do I think it is important for Americans to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine and who must do what and why for peace?
Short answer: Because of the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby (as documented by Mearshimer and Walt and before them former Congressman Paul Findley), no American President is ever going to summon up the political will to call and hold Zionism to account unless and until he or she is pushed to do so by informed public opinion - by a manifestation of real democracy in action. The problem in America, generally speaking, is that public opinion is too uninformed (and mis-informed) to do the pushing - to make democracy work for justice and peace.
Why can’t Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews be published in America?
Short answer: Because Zionism does not want it to be; and all American publishers, the minors as well as the majors, are, apparently, too frightened of offending Zionism as much as they would need to do by taking my book on.
It was, actually, the same story in the UK, despite the fact that my literary agent received letters and other messages of rare praise for my work from the CEO’s of some of the major publishing houses. One such letter, from which I quote in the first paragraph of Volume One of my book as published in its first edition hardback form, describes my manuscript as “awesome… driven by passion, commitment and profound learning.” This letter added, “There is no question it deserves to be published.” But when push came to shove, I had to set up my own publishing company. I was not supposed to get access to the retail trade. I did but… To sell well through the retail trade, books need publicity. The prime provider of it for the general reading public is the media, but not in the case of my book. Not one newspaper or magazine and not one radio or tv programme was prepared to give my book any attention, review or other. The media’s complicity in the suppression of the truth of history, and the betrayal of democracy, proved to be rock solid. That’s the situation here and in the UK (and throughout Western Europe), and I know it’s worse, much worse, in the “Land of the Free”.
In the Preface to Volume Two I say I have no doubt that publishers, editors and politicians who are complicit in the suppression of the truth of history honestly believe that they are serving the best interests of the Jews as well as their own short-term vested interests. And I go on to say to them all (publishers, editors and politicians) the following: “You are wrong. Dangerously wrong. By refusing to come to grips with the truth of history and, in particular, the difference between Judaism and Zinism and why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, you are helping to set up all Jews to be blamed for the crimes of the relative few.”
And I conclude with the following observation:
“It would also be helpful if more than a few of the Jews who live in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world could find the will and the courage to end their silence on the matter of Israel’s “misconduct” (Harkabi’s terminology), and come to grips with the fact that Zionism is, as the title of this book asserts and its substance demonstrates, their real enemy. Silence is not the way to refute and demolish a charge of complicity in Zionism’s crimes.”
The problem for Zionism with my book is its title. The prime source of Zionism’s power, blackmail and other, is its success to date in persuading the guilt-ridden Gentile world that Judiasm and Zionism are one and the same thing. The more people become aware that this is not so, and that it’s therefore perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, the more naked and vulnerable Zionism will become. Only then will stopping the countdown to catastrophe for all be a mission possible; and only then will peace have a chance – its very last chance.
In their Preface to The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt write that the United States will not be able to address vexing problems in the Middle East effectively “if Americans cannot have a civilised conversation about our interests in the region and the role of all the factors that shape U.S. foreign policy, including the Israel lobby. To encourage that continued conversation, we have written this book.”
I wrote my book to empower citizens to participate in informed and honest debate and play their necessary part in making democracy work for justice and peace in the Middle East. If there are Americans who want to step up to the plate and assist me to get my version of the truth of history to their fellow citizens - then it will be “game on”. And this ‘ain’t Little League.
Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
11/14/07 "ICH" --- -- The question Americans asked in the immediate aftermath of the horror of 9/11 was “Why do they hate us?” And in many American minds the “they” of the question were not only the violent Islamic fundamentalists who, according to the official version of events, were solely responsible for bringing down the Twin Towers, but Arabs and Muslims everywhere - about a quarter of humankind.
Since that particular shocking and awesome event, I have often asked myself how different the world today might have been – how much less destruction and killing there would have been - if President Bush had said something like: “That’s a very good question. We must and will seek the answer to it before we decide how to respond.”
If an attempt had been made to answer the question, the first thing that would have been established is that the overwhelming majority of Arabs and other Muslims everywhere do not hate Americans or America. If they could, very many Arabs and other Muslims, perhaps even half of them, would live in America to enjoy the apparently good life there.
What they hate is American foreign policy. And the underlying prime cause of that hatred is Congressional and White House support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong. But Israel’s American-endorsed arrogance of power and contempt for international law is only one of two factors in the equation that, over the past 60 years, has seen Arab and other Muslim hurt, anger and humliation turn to hatred on account of the conflict in and over Palestine. The other is the impotence of the regimes of the existing mainly corrupt and repressive Arab Order, regimes which, genereally speaking, are perceived by their masses to be, in effect, American-and-Zionist stooges.
On 11 September 2001, I was well into the writing of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, so I didn’t start out with the idea of answering the “Why do they hate us?” question, but the book does provide for Americans a complete, comprehensive, detailed and fully documented answer to it.
With The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt have provided taboo-breaking insight into one aspect of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict. My book is concerned with the making and sustaining of the conflict in all of its aspects. My purpose is to enable readers to make sense - I dare to say for the first time ever in many cases - of the whole thing, by seeing how all the pieces of the most complicated and complex jig-saw puzzle fit together. And that’s why what happened behind closed doors in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow has its place in the story as I tell it as well as events in Palestine that became Israel and the capitals of the Arab world. My purpose is also to assist citizens to understand why a resolution of the conflict has remained, and seems set to remain, beyond the reach of politics and diplomacy, and who must do what and why for justice and peace. The alternative is catastrophe for all, and by all I don’t mean only the Arabs and Jews of the region. I mean all of us wherever we live. (In Volume One I recall an interview I did for the BBC’s Panorama programme with Mother Israel, Golda Meir. At a point I interrupted her to say: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you’re saying… You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, Golda replied, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Within an hour of that interview being transmitted, The Times of London changed its lead editorial. The new one quoted what Golda had said to me and added its own opinion - “We’d better believe her.”)
My only reservation about M&W’s excellent presentation is over their use of the term “Israel lobby”. Way back in 1980 when I used that term in private conversation with Shimon Peres, who was then the leader of Israel’s main opposition Labour Party and hoping to become prime minister and deny Menachem Begin a second term in office, he, Peres, said to me: “It’s not an Israel lobby. It’s a Likud lobby.” The point being made was that the lobby in America represented hardcore, uncompromising Zionism and pushed (at least sometimes) for policies that were not in Israel’s own long term best interests. For reasons that my book makes clear, the phenomenon W&M have exposed (supplementing Paul Findley’s They Dare To Speak Out) is best and most accurately described as the Zionist lobby.
In my view and also that of all real experts I know including, for example, the two leading Israeli “revisionist” (honest) historians of our time, Professors Ilan Pappe and Aviv Shlaim, the key to understanding is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. The mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world has been conditioned to believe that they are one and the same thing. They are not. They are total opposites.
Judaism is the religion of Jews (not “the Jews” because not all Jews are religious), and, like Christianity and Islam, it has at its core a set of ethical principles and moral values.
Zionism is a secular, colonialist ideology which, in 1948, and mainly by resorting to terrorism and ethnic cleansing, established a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland. (At the time of Zionism’s birth and first mission statement in 1897, its colonial ambition was supported by only a very small minority of the Jews of the world; and it can be said that without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust - a European crime for which, effectively, the Arabs of Palestine were punished - Israel would not have come into being). Simply stated, Zionism in action has made a mockery of, and actually has contempt for, the ethical principles and moral values of Judaism. Which is why those most often described as “ultra orthodox” religious Jews say that Zionism is destroying Judaism
For those who might wish to have a much deeper understanding of the difference between Zionism and Judaism than my book provides, I recommend another recently published book – A Threat From Within, A Century of Jewish Opposition To Zionism. Its author is a Canadian Jew, Yakov Rabkin, who is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. When Yakov was in London, I asked him on-the-record a very explicit question: “Is it reasonable to say that the Jews of the world now have a choice to make - either to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Judaism and renounce Zionism, or to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Zionism and renounce Judaism?” He replied with one word, “Yes!”
Knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism is the key to understanding why it is perfectly possible to be anti-Zionist (opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise either in whole or in part) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic. The significance of that statement is in the following.
The false charge of anti-Semitism is the blackmail card which the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust enables Zionism to play to silence criticism of its self-righteous and aggressive child, Israel, and to suppress informed and honest debate about who must do what and why for justice and peace. But when citizens know the difference between Zionism and Judaism (and the truth of history, of which more later) they do not have to be frightened into silence, as most Gentiles currently are, by the fear of being falsely charged with anti-Semitism for criticising the Zionist state of Israel.
There is, however, another reason why it is essential for the citizens of the Western nations, among whom most of the Jews of the world live, to be aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Knowledge of the difference is the explanation of why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the few (hardcore Zionists in Israel/Palestine).
Though I was aware that it would be very uncomfortable for many Jews, and though I knew that it would provoke the Zionist lobby into red flagging my book and doing its best ( I mean its worst) to cause the book to be suppressed to the maximum posssible extent, I insisted on Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews as the title because it reflects in seven words two related truths for our time.
The first is that the sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism has been re-awakened in the mainly Gentile nations of the Western world (where, to repeat, most of the Jews of the world live as integrated citizens). The second is that the prime cause of the re-awakening is the behaviour of the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel - as most of the best Jewish minds prior to the Nazi holocaust feared would be the case if Zionism was allowed by the big powers to have its way.
As background context to the statement above there is the warning (quoted opposite the title page of Volume Two of my book) of Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving and universally respected Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, first published in Hebrew in 1986, he wrote the following (emphasis added):
“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
It’s my view that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, “right or wrong”. (There is a case for saying that with British and American politicians as “friends”, the Jews of the world have not needed enemies).
What, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is seriously on the rise? The increase in the desecration of synagogues and Jewish graves (and the like), verbal abuse and assaults on Jews are a pointer. But there is something far more sinister. It’s what a growing number of Gentiles, middle to upper class people in particular, are thinking and now beginning to say behind closed doors and at dinner parties. What do they say? “These fucking Jews!” And it’s grown, this antipathy, in response to Israel’s arrogance of power and the correct perception of Israel as the oppressor. And the more it becomes apparent that Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims could accept, the more this antipathy will grow, with the real danger that it will break out, become unsuppressed, and manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism.
As things are, and look like going, Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against Jews, is a real possibility in a foreseeable future.
It’s also my view, which I know is shared in private by some eminent Jews, that if the monster of anti-Semitism goes on the rampage again, it might well start its journey in America.
Two summary reasons why:
* Many members of Congress (past and present) hate themselves for doing the bidding of the Zionist lobby. If the opportunity to let rip with their suppressed, guilt-driven anger arises, they will want revenge.
* The prime pushers for the invasion of Iraq were neo-cons who are also hardcore Zionists. While few want to admit this publicly, many know it to be so.
QUESTION: What can be done to eliminate the danger of the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again?
Short answer… The Gentiles of the Western nations must be informed and educated about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and thus why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the hardcore Zionist few. And that’s one of the reasons why I devoted more than five years of my life to researching and writing Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. I want to do my bit to stop the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again. And that’s the essential difference between the Gentile me and hardcore Zionists. They want, even need, anti-Semitism, to justify their crimes - past, present and future.
If and when I take to the public speaking and debating trail coast-to-coast across America (as I’ve done in the past), I will have the following message for American audiences:
DON’T blame the Jews who live among you for Zionism’s crimes.
DON’T even blame the Zionist lobby for buying influence on American foreign policy because it, the lobby, has only played the game according to the rules.
DO blame your corrupt, pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders.
My book has two central and related themes.
One is how Israel, the child of Zionism, became its own worst enemy and a threat not only to the peace of the region and the world, but also the best interests of Jews everywhere and the moral integrity of Judaism itself.
The other is why, really, the whole Arab and wider Muslim world is an explosion of frustration and despair waiting for its time to happen.
The book is epic in length (two volumes) as well as sweep and substance because it is a complete re-writing of the history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine, replacing the Zionist mythology upon which the first and still existing draft of Judeo-Christian history is constructed with the documented facts and truth of history. As I noted in an Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (published by Information Clearing House on 7 November), the first draft of history is mainly Zionist propaganda nonsense. At its core are two myths.
One is that the Zionist state of Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth of history is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger. Not in 19448/49. Not in 1956. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression as self-defence and itself as the victim when it was, and is, the oppressor.
The other is that Israel has not had a Palestinian partner for peace. The truth of history on this account is that the ground for peace on the Palestinian side was prepared by Yasser Arafat as far back as 1979 – more than a quarter of a century ago. In that year, 1979, Arafat persuaded the Palestine National Council, the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side, to back his policy of politics and, until then, unthinkable compromise with Israel. (Unthinkable for Palestinians because accepting Israel inside its pre-1967 borders required them to renounce their claim to 78% of their land).
As I recorded in my book Arafat (the title of the American edition, the original title was Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?), it took him six long years to persuade first his Fatah leadership colleagues and then other PNC members to accept the reality of Israel’s existence. When the vote was eventually taken, in 1979, it was 296 for his policy of politics and compromise and four against. Arafat, who had risked his life as well as his credibility to turn his people around, was then at the height of his powers; and from that moment on, and as President Carter knew, there could have been successful negotiations for a real and lasting peace based on a genuine two-state solution - Israel back behind its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem, preferably as an open city, the capital of two states.
The problem was that Arafat did not have a partner for peace on the Israeli side - because Zionism was not, and is not, interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere could accept. It’s true that in 1993, and thanks in part to President Clinton’s stage management and pulling power, Arafat did have a “perhaps” Israeli partner for peace in the shape of Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a gut-Zionist. And Rabin was succeeded by Israeli leaders whose prime objective was to re-demonise and destroy the Palestinian leader. Arafat the terrorist they could handle. Arafat the peacemaker they could not. (Didn’t Barak offer Arafat “95 percent” of everything he had said he wanted? No, he did not! That, too, was a propaganda lie. Was Arafat poisoned? Probably. Is his successor, President Abbas, effectively an Israeli-and-American puppet? Sadly yes, or so it seems. But even if he is, we can be certain of one thing. Stooge leadership or not, the Palestinian people will never accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans which they could call a state).
In my book and on public platforms I also take head-on the matter of Israel’s right or not to exist.
According to first and still existing draft of history, Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. This is nonsense.
In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
So the partition plan was vitiated, became invalid, and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine (after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away) was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionism terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless ….. Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.
Complete understanding of the true nature of Zionism’s colonial enterprise also requires knowledge of this fact. Most of the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The incoming Zionist Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands, descended from those who became Jewish by conversion to Judaism centuries after the fall of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel and what is called the “dispersal” into “oblivion” of its people. The notion that there were, are, two entire peoples with an equally valid claim to the same land is an historical nonsense. The relatively few Jews with a valid claim were the descendants of those who stayed IN Palestine through everything. They numbered only a few thousand at the time of Zionism’s birth; they regarded themselves as Palestinians; and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise - because they rightly feared that it would make them as well as the incoming, alien Zionist Jews enemies of the Arabs among whom they had lived in peace and security. (Though not even many of today’s Jews are aware of it, it is also a fact that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man - one possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism - was proscribed by Judaism).
The question that should be answered by President Bush and all who are demanding that Hamas recognise Israel is this: Which Israel is to be recognised… Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war and thus in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242, or a Greater Israel which, on a daily basis, is grabbing more land and expanding its settlements on the occupied West Bank?
There is, in fact, no mystery about what Hamas’s real position is. If tomorrow Israel said and meant that it was ready to negotiate a full and final peace on the basis of a genuine two-state solution - one that would see Israel back to its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states, Hamas would say, “Let’s do the business”.
Hamas’s leaders would say that, and mean it, because they are not stupid and know they would have no choice – because a genuine two-state solution is still what the vast majority of Palestinians are prepared to settle for. But they are never going to get it.
The truth of the present is that the two-state solution is already dead, if not yet buried….. killed by the settlement facts Israel has created, and is still creating, on the West Bank - in defiance of UN resolutions, in defiance of international law, and even in defiance once upon a time of the expressed wish of the Bush administration. At least on the matter of illegal settlement activity, it IS the Zionist tail that wags the American dog.
In the last chapter of Volume Two of my book, A Resurrection, a Crucifixion and a Road Map to Nowhere, I make the statement that Zionism’s own end-game strategy for a final solution to the Palestine problem now leaves nothing to the imagination. Zionism’s in-Israel leaders and their lobbyists in America still believe that by means of brute force and reducing them to abject poverty, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights. The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life in other countries. In my view the conviction that Zionism will one day succeed in breaking the Palestinian will to continue the struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice is the product of minds which are deluded to the point of clinical madness. (Some say that Israel is on its way to becoming a fascist state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic asylum).
The question that’s almost too awful to think about is something like this: What will the Zionists do when it becomes apparent even to them that they can’t destroy Palestinian nationalism with bombs and bullets and brutal repressive measures of all kinds?
My guess is that they, the Zionists, will go for a final round of ethnic cleansing - to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and beyond. That, I fear, will be Zionism’s final solution to the Palestine problem… If that happens, the West Bank will be turned red with blood, mostly Palestinian blood. And honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.
But that does not have to be the end of the story of Palestine. There still could be a new beginning.
Many years ago, in the Introduction to my first book, Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker? I said that, generally speaking, the Jews are the intellectual elite of the Western civilisation and the Palestinians the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What those two peoples could do together in peace and partnership was, I suggested, the stuff that real dreams are made of. They could change and develop the region for the better and, by so doing, give much needed hope and inspiration to the whole world. I still believe that dream could be made to come true, but only within the context of a ONE STATE solution to the Palestine problem. By definition it would be secular, democratic state in which all of its citizens, Arabs and Jews, would enjoy equal rights.Yes, that would mean the de-Zionisation of Palestine, but it would not mean the end (any kind of end) for the Jews now living in Israel/Palestine. Those who wished to stay as citizens of a de-Zionised Palestine would at last have peace with enduring security.
My book’s Epilogue is titled The Jews as the Light Unto Nations, and it ends with the following words, my words, which also have pride of place on the back jacket of Volume Two:
If the Jews of the world can summon up the will and the courage to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel before it is too late for us all, a very great prize awaits them. By demonstrating that right can triumph over might, and that there is a place for morality in politics, they would become the light unto nations. It is a prize available to no other people on earth because of the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jewish people. Perhaps that is the real point of the idea of the Jews as Chosen People… Chosen to endure unique suffering and, having endured it, to show the rest of us that creating a better and more just world is not a mission impossible.
Why do I think it is important for Americans to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine and who must do what and why for peace?
Short answer: Because of the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby (as documented by Mearshimer and Walt and before them former Congressman Paul Findley), no American President is ever going to summon up the political will to call and hold Zionism to account unless and until he or she is pushed to do so by informed public opinion - by a manifestation of real democracy in action. The problem in America, generally speaking, is that public opinion is too uninformed (and mis-informed) to do the pushing - to make democracy work for justice and peace.
Why can’t Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews be published in America?
Short answer: Because Zionism does not want it to be; and all American publishers, the minors as well as the majors, are, apparently, too frightened of offending Zionism as much as they would need to do by taking my book on.
It was, actually, the same story in the UK, despite the fact that my literary agent received letters and other messages of rare praise for my work from the CEO’s of some of the major publishing houses. One such letter, from which I quote in the first paragraph of Volume One of my book as published in its first edition hardback form, describes my manuscript as “awesome… driven by passion, commitment and profound learning.” This letter added, “There is no question it deserves to be published.” But when push came to shove, I had to set up my own publishing company. I was not supposed to get access to the retail trade. I did but… To sell well through the retail trade, books need publicity. The prime provider of it for the general reading public is the media, but not in the case of my book. Not one newspaper or magazine and not one radio or tv programme was prepared to give my book any attention, review or other. The media’s complicity in the suppression of the truth of history, and the betrayal of democracy, proved to be rock solid. That’s the situation here and in the UK (and throughout Western Europe), and I know it’s worse, much worse, in the “Land of the Free”.
In the Preface to Volume Two I say I have no doubt that publishers, editors and politicians who are complicit in the suppression of the truth of history honestly believe that they are serving the best interests of the Jews as well as their own short-term vested interests. And I go on to say to them all (publishers, editors and politicians) the following: “You are wrong. Dangerously wrong. By refusing to come to grips with the truth of history and, in particular, the difference between Judaism and Zinism and why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, you are helping to set up all Jews to be blamed for the crimes of the relative few.”
And I conclude with the following observation:
“It would also be helpful if more than a few of the Jews who live in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world could find the will and the courage to end their silence on the matter of Israel’s “misconduct” (Harkabi’s terminology), and come to grips with the fact that Zionism is, as the title of this book asserts and its substance demonstrates, their real enemy. Silence is not the way to refute and demolish a charge of complicity in Zionism’s crimes.”
The problem for Zionism with my book is its title. The prime source of Zionism’s power, blackmail and other, is its success to date in persuading the guilt-ridden Gentile world that Judiasm and Zionism are one and the same thing. The more people become aware that this is not so, and that it’s therefore perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, the more naked and vulnerable Zionism will become. Only then will stopping the countdown to catastrophe for all be a mission possible; and only then will peace have a chance – its very last chance.
In their Preface to The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt write that the United States will not be able to address vexing problems in the Middle East effectively “if Americans cannot have a civilised conversation about our interests in the region and the role of all the factors that shape U.S. foreign policy, including the Israel lobby. To encourage that continued conversation, we have written this book.”
I wrote my book to empower citizens to participate in informed and honest debate and play their necessary part in making democracy work for justice and peace in the Middle East. If there are Americans who want to step up to the plate and assist me to get my version of the truth of history to their fellow citizens - then it will be “game on”. And this ‘ain’t Little League.
Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Veterans' Suicides: a Hidden Cost of Bush's Wars
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted November 11, 2007.
Americans have been effectively insulated from the human cost of our wars. That's not an accident; it's policy.
On November 6, the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill became law. The bill was named for a 22-year-old Iowa reservist who took his own life eleven months after coming home from Iraq. Though Josh is one of hundreds of combat veteran suicides since the wars began in 2001, it is his name that has become symbolic of the campaign to get the military to take the mental health of America's vets seriously.
With the exception of the unspeakable images of Abu Ghraib, which were e-mailed home by soldiers themselves, for six years Americans have been effectively insulated from the human cost of our wars. This insulation is not an accident; it is policy. Images from the Vietnam years, like the naked child trying to outrun her own burning skin, or the anguished women and children waiting their turn to be executed at My Lai, were catalysts that helped turn public opinion against that war. This time, the government wanted to ensure that would not happen. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Pentagon issued a directive to the media forbidding any coverage of returning American coffins. No coffins, no funerals, no wounds, no tears. No empathy.
Randy and Ellen Omvig's success in drawing long overdue attention to the issue of veteran suicide in an environment that has dismissed or derailed other worthy causes, can be explained, I believe, by their insistence on going public with the most intimate details of their tragedy. They complicated and humanized a debate that has been stalled for decades in a morass of misinformation, disinformation and other evasion tactics.
They described how his tour in Iraq had changed him, how he suffered all of the symptoms they now recognize as classic PTSD: the nightmares, the shaking, the dark moods and consuming fears. They admitted that they had failed to convince him to go for counseling, accepting his argument that the stigma would wreck his career plans. And then came the morning when Ellen discovered him locked in his pick up truck. He had a gun. As she tried frantically to reason with him, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It's a horrific image: she, banging on the window, terrified, pleading, while, on the other side of the glass, her son tells her he will always love her, but that now she must leave. "Go!" he says, and when she refuses, he raises his gun, angles his head so the bullet will not hit her, and fires. She was powerless to stop anything, the hand, the gun, the bullet, the blood. There must have been a lot of blood.
In spite of a suicide rate among solders that has now reached a 26-year record high, and contradicting the evidence of their own increasingly ominous studies, the Army continues to insist that they have yet to find a connection between combat stress injuries (PTSD) and suicide. They trot out self-serving anecdotes about "Dear John" letters, incompetent parents, and what they call "underdeveloped life coping skills" to blame active duty soldiers for their own deaths. As for veteran suicides, there has never been any official attempt to track or count them.
The virtual epidemic of veteran suicides that followed the war in Vietnam has remained largely beneath the radar of public awareness because there is still such irrational fear and shame attached to a self-inflicted death. Families, military and otherwise, have far too often tried to cover up the circumstances of such deaths, hoping to shield both the living and the dead from blame and condemnation. What has often been called the "most secret death" has afforded the military a convenient and virtually impenetrable cover for decades, allowing them to keep combat-related suicides a theoretical, statistical, deniable issue.
Josh Omvig was not able to keep his war theoretical. He and hundreds of other veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and thousands of Vietnam vets carried home memories friends lost, bodies blown apart, and lives touched by real horror. Their wars were up close and personal, and when their memories became too much to bear, they chose to die.
Both as a war widow and as the mother of a boy who, like Josh, is in his 20's, I heard the Omvigs' story, saw it and felt it, through the lens of my own experience. My husband Daniel returned from Vietnam with memories he could never bring himself to share. They haunted him and they haunted our relationship. Was his death an execution? Euthanasia? Or was it my fault? What did I do to that poor man? In the years since, unbidden memories of the swirling red lights, the sirens, the pumps, the drains, and the blood have infiltrated who I am. I rarely if ever talked about Daniel, but I learned to tiptoe around everyone I love, hoping not to do it again, hoping not to kill someone else by mistake.
So I am enormously grateful to Ellen and Randy Omvig. I do not find their story inappropriately intimate. I do not think it is in bad taste. Or exploitative. Or sensationalist, though those are all excuses that are proffered in defense of the bloodless numbers, the numbing statistics and the endless slogans. It is, in fact, a vital antidote to the guilt, the silence, and the isolation that is typically experienced by the families of suicides. It invites empathy, which is the corner stone of common cause activism. It makes the personal political.
The Omvigs let their grief feed their activism. They insisted that behind the statistics there are real human beings whose suffering is monumental, and monumental as well for the people who love them. For me, and I imagine for a host of others who have been moved to help push this legislation forward, the impetus came, at least in part, from the courage it took for them to share the raw emotional intimacies of a son's death. Thanks in no small measure to the advocacy of his parents, the Department of Veterans Affairs will soon be required to develop and implement a comprehensive suicide prevention program at each of its medical facilities, including mandatory staff training in suicide awareness and prevention, a designated suicide prevention counselor in each facility, and a 24-hour suicide hotline. The bill that bears Josh's name is perhaps a small victory, but it will make more of a difference to veterans than any parade.
Note: The bill, as currently written, no longer requires the VA to screen all its patients for suicide risk factors and make an effort to keep track of at-risk veterans, an important element that was dropped because otherwise one senator, Tom Coburn (OK-R), threatened to block its passage indefinitely. Coburn feared that such a database could also be used to deny veterans who have sought help at the VA for mental health issues the right to purchase a gun. Too bad, but even so, it's a start.
Americans have been effectively insulated from the human cost of our wars. That's not an accident; it's policy.
On November 6, the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill became law. The bill was named for a 22-year-old Iowa reservist who took his own life eleven months after coming home from Iraq. Though Josh is one of hundreds of combat veteran suicides since the wars began in 2001, it is his name that has become symbolic of the campaign to get the military to take the mental health of America's vets seriously.
With the exception of the unspeakable images of Abu Ghraib, which were e-mailed home by soldiers themselves, for six years Americans have been effectively insulated from the human cost of our wars. This insulation is not an accident; it is policy. Images from the Vietnam years, like the naked child trying to outrun her own burning skin, or the anguished women and children waiting their turn to be executed at My Lai, were catalysts that helped turn public opinion against that war. This time, the government wanted to ensure that would not happen. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Pentagon issued a directive to the media forbidding any coverage of returning American coffins. No coffins, no funerals, no wounds, no tears. No empathy.
Randy and Ellen Omvig's success in drawing long overdue attention to the issue of veteran suicide in an environment that has dismissed or derailed other worthy causes, can be explained, I believe, by their insistence on going public with the most intimate details of their tragedy. They complicated and humanized a debate that has been stalled for decades in a morass of misinformation, disinformation and other evasion tactics.
They described how his tour in Iraq had changed him, how he suffered all of the symptoms they now recognize as classic PTSD: the nightmares, the shaking, the dark moods and consuming fears. They admitted that they had failed to convince him to go for counseling, accepting his argument that the stigma would wreck his career plans. And then came the morning when Ellen discovered him locked in his pick up truck. He had a gun. As she tried frantically to reason with him, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It's a horrific image: she, banging on the window, terrified, pleading, while, on the other side of the glass, her son tells her he will always love her, but that now she must leave. "Go!" he says, and when she refuses, he raises his gun, angles his head so the bullet will not hit her, and fires. She was powerless to stop anything, the hand, the gun, the bullet, the blood. There must have been a lot of blood.
In spite of a suicide rate among solders that has now reached a 26-year record high, and contradicting the evidence of their own increasingly ominous studies, the Army continues to insist that they have yet to find a connection between combat stress injuries (PTSD) and suicide. They trot out self-serving anecdotes about "Dear John" letters, incompetent parents, and what they call "underdeveloped life coping skills" to blame active duty soldiers for their own deaths. As for veteran suicides, there has never been any official attempt to track or count them.
The virtual epidemic of veteran suicides that followed the war in Vietnam has remained largely beneath the radar of public awareness because there is still such irrational fear and shame attached to a self-inflicted death. Families, military and otherwise, have far too often tried to cover up the circumstances of such deaths, hoping to shield both the living and the dead from blame and condemnation. What has often been called the "most secret death" has afforded the military a convenient and virtually impenetrable cover for decades, allowing them to keep combat-related suicides a theoretical, statistical, deniable issue.
Josh Omvig was not able to keep his war theoretical. He and hundreds of other veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and thousands of Vietnam vets carried home memories friends lost, bodies blown apart, and lives touched by real horror. Their wars were up close and personal, and when their memories became too much to bear, they chose to die.
Both as a war widow and as the mother of a boy who, like Josh, is in his 20's, I heard the Omvigs' story, saw it and felt it, through the lens of my own experience. My husband Daniel returned from Vietnam with memories he could never bring himself to share. They haunted him and they haunted our relationship. Was his death an execution? Euthanasia? Or was it my fault? What did I do to that poor man? In the years since, unbidden memories of the swirling red lights, the sirens, the pumps, the drains, and the blood have infiltrated who I am. I rarely if ever talked about Daniel, but I learned to tiptoe around everyone I love, hoping not to do it again, hoping not to kill someone else by mistake.
So I am enormously grateful to Ellen and Randy Omvig. I do not find their story inappropriately intimate. I do not think it is in bad taste. Or exploitative. Or sensationalist, though those are all excuses that are proffered in defense of the bloodless numbers, the numbing statistics and the endless slogans. It is, in fact, a vital antidote to the guilt, the silence, and the isolation that is typically experienced by the families of suicides. It invites empathy, which is the corner stone of common cause activism. It makes the personal political.
The Omvigs let their grief feed their activism. They insisted that behind the statistics there are real human beings whose suffering is monumental, and monumental as well for the people who love them. For me, and I imagine for a host of others who have been moved to help push this legislation forward, the impetus came, at least in part, from the courage it took for them to share the raw emotional intimacies of a son's death. Thanks in no small measure to the advocacy of his parents, the Department of Veterans Affairs will soon be required to develop and implement a comprehensive suicide prevention program at each of its medical facilities, including mandatory staff training in suicide awareness and prevention, a designated suicide prevention counselor in each facility, and a 24-hour suicide hotline. The bill that bears Josh's name is perhaps a small victory, but it will make more of a difference to veterans than any parade.
Note: The bill, as currently written, no longer requires the VA to screen all its patients for suicide risk factors and make an effort to keep track of at-risk veterans, an important element that was dropped because otherwise one senator, Tom Coburn (OK-R), threatened to block its passage indefinitely. Coburn feared that such a database could also be used to deny veterans who have sought help at the VA for mental health issues the right to purchase a gun. Too bad, but even so, it's a start.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Drink It.
By Layla Anwar
11/04/07 - -- -I read a piece of news that left me aghast.
Seems that H.M King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is currently on a visit in Terra Helvetica i.e Geneva, Switzerland.
The article states that H.M and his entourage/fleet spend an average of 800'000 Swiss Francs a day just for Hotel logdings (am not sure how much that is in $$$ but It must be over half a million Dollars a day). This sum does not include food and shopping, of course.
The article then says that Saudi Arabia produces aprox.10 million barrels of oil per day and the total daily revenue from such a production amounts to 980 million $ a day.
The biggest share of the oil is pumped from the "Ghawar" reserve which according to "experts" is nearly dry...
This leaves oil experts speculating on "peak oil" (whatever this means) and makes them wonder where the rest of the oil is produced from...
"Are the Saudis hiding something we don't know..." inquire the "experts."
Of course, this amount of dough poured in daily coupled with such an extravagant lifestyle by the "Royal Family," explain why the Saudis are not exactly the avant-gardists of Arab Nationalism or anti-Imperialist Arab Solidarity.
And that also explains the repugnant Saudi's (and other Gulf countries in particular the beduin monarchy of Kuwait) direct and indirect role in the tragic destruction of my beloved Iraq.
I have mentioned on numerous occasions and in nearly every single post I've written, Iran's nefarious role in the Iraqi tragedy. I have also touched upon the Gulf complicity in the total devastation of what was a sovereign country.
When the fascist, lunatic Khomeini came to power, his sole agenda was 1) regime change in Iraq and 2) export the "Revolution" to other Arab countries under the pretext of liberating Palestine.
For Khomeini and subsequent Iranian leaders, their "road to Jerusalem" passed through Baghdad, Kuwait City, Al Khobar, Manama, Beirut, Damascus...
Of course not one bullet was fired in the direction of Israel by our Persian"God's warriors." Iran had and has NO intention of liberating anything.
Iran's plan is and has been all along and will continue if not stopped by the Arabs, to spread its old dream of territorial expansion, thus reviving the secret wish of nearly every Iranian - Bring back Korosh out the ashes. Yes, the Persian Empire cloaked in political Shi'ism.
The Persian threat is not a threat of Shi'ism versus Sunnism. It's the threat of Persian aspirations versus Arab Independence. A big difference.
Iran has and will continue exploiting those sectarian differences with the sole aim of reviving its ancient dream...The Persian Empire,plus of course, all the benefits that a regional superpower entail...
It is with this correct understanding that Iraq deterred the Iranian threat through a bloody war, initially instigated by Iran through continuous attacks on Iraqi borders... An 8 year war that resulted in a million Iraqis dead and an economy in shambles.
The Persian empire's main enemy is not Israel as so many idiots believe, but a nationalist, patriotic, strong, independent, secular, progressive, anti imperialist, Arab country. And that was Iraq.
Iraq thwarted the Iranian ambitions to protect itself first and protect other Arab countries as a consequence.
Saddam Hussein intimately understood that Iraq is indeed the backbone of the Arab world. Protecting Iraq would mean protecting other Arab countries. One of these countries was Saudi Arabia.
He did not engage in a war to protect the Gulf monarchies as some like to repeat like moronic parrots. That is nonsense and denotes a faulty understanding of regional and international politics.
The war with Iran was not about safeguarding Monarchies. The war with Iran was about safeguarding ARAB Identity and Independence.
And yes, preserving Arab Identity is an absolute must, more so today than at any other time.
If you read the contemporary history of the Middle East/Arab World, you will understand how imperative keeping the Arab identity is.
If you force yourself to remember that even though Islam is a universal religion, it was nonetheless revealed in Arabic -- you will understand even more...
And if you remind yourself of another basic fact- that there are two major Semitic rival/bad cousins tribes, left around-- the Jews and the Arab Muslims, you will understand even further...
By neutralizing, nay, destroying Iraq, the model of an independent, sovereign, rich, educated, anti imperialistic, progressive, secular Arab country -- America, Iran and Israel are now able to realize their full political, economic and ideological ambitions.
And again, don't you ever forget that it was the American Zionists, who brought Iran right into the heart of Baghdad. And BOTH lynched Iraq's legitimate President, Martyr and HERO Saddam Hussein.
The proof? All the Arabs are running to the U.S for their protection from the "Iranian threat." Iraq was indeed the Buffer - the sacrificial Lamb.
Saudi Arabia, even went as far as to "offer Iran" enriched Uranium.(article here)
And this is exactly what America and the Zionist Jews wanted all along.
Bring Arabs, to their knees -- secularists, islamists, monarchs and paupers alike...
Arabs will have to be dominated -- ruled by an iron fist, especially that they are historically known to be the most unruly people around.
And Saudi Arabia being what it is -- can only but cower like the faithful dog that it is.
Neutralize Iraq and play along...
Don't you ever forget this basic truth. Iraq is the backbone of the Arab world. Now make your analysis based on that fact and you will be able to assess events more accurately and even predict what happens next...
Back to Saudi Arabia...
If what the oil "experts" say is true and that the major oil reserve "Ghawar" in Saudi Arabia is indeed drying up--and that the barrel of oil will be reaching 100$, then it makes total sense to destroy Iraq, who happens to be the second largest oil reserve in the world with the best quality of crude.
And it also makes perfect sense to use vicious Iran who played along -- to divide and fragment that second largest reserve in the world.
And just as it so happens, the North of Iraq, with its Kirkuk oil wells has fallen under the vile Zionist Kurds control. And the South of Iraq with its wealth of oil, has fallen under the equally vile sectarian Shia militias from Iran.
And Saddam Hussein, the visionary said it all along,
"The country that will have the greatest influence in the region through the Arab Gulf and its oil will maintain its superiority as a superpower without an equal to compete with it. This means that if the Gulf people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arab Gulf region will be governed by the United States’ will. If the Arabs are not alerted and the weakness persists, the situation could develop to the extent desired by the United States; that is, it would fix the amount of oil and gas produced in each country and sold to this or that country in the world."
(full article here)
I have news for you and hear it from an Iraqi, Arab Woman.
The Arab world will NEVER recover from this one.
And you Saudi Arabia, will follow in our footsteps shortly...
And if the Arab world does recover, it will ONLY be through the healing touch that will emanate from Iraq again...
Until then, no amounts of cash, fleet of servants or banks accounts will save you.
And while you are drinking the revenues of your oil away or spending it on Moroccan and Russian hookers, or on Casino tables in Monte Carlo...
Or entertaining jet set models with diamond rings, or decorating your private jets and bathrooms in solid gold handles and taps...
Remember you have sold us for the cheapest of prices and that you are indeed drinking our blood mixed with your fine Chivas Regal.
And while you fill your suite's bathtub at the London Ritz with champagne and invite a two cent worth, warty English hooker to soak in it...
And while you are purchasing the latest 24 carat Rolex or Cartier watch from Geneva's finest boutiques...
Remember...
Remember that you are holding on to dear Life, being the impotent, degenerate, decadent country that you are...Keep holding on tight for it shall not last.
The rope is breaking fast.
You can run left and right with your robes pulled up in between your teeth, it will not change a thing.
You can make offers to Israel, Iran or the Devil himself...
You can stone all you like but this will never change the fact that your days are counted and that you will be ending up stoned yourself --stoned to death.
Not that you really cared in the first place, but do not be surprised to see the Jews and the Persians circling around the Kaa'ba in the name of their forefathers instead of the name of Allah.
And while you keep indulging in the opulent luxury, drowning in black gold...
Remember that the second largest reserve in the world, Iraq, is importing its fuel from Iran.
And when we turn the taps on, we see no Oil.
And when we turn the taps on, we see no Water either...
And while you scratch your balls, eyeing the next hooker, filling your empty heads and bellies with first class Brut Champagne or some dark vintage Bordeaux...
We turn the taps and see nothing but dark red...nothing but dark red Blood- Ours.
So drink it...
Drink your oil, drink your champagne, wine and whiskey...
Drink it, till you satiate, bulge even more and explode.
Drink it, for you shall not be drinking for long.
P.S: I need to be "fair" here.
Am sure other tycoons and heads of state spend as much, when touring...Except they do it more discreetly.
And in all fairness, I also have to say that the West is obsessed with Arab's fortune and wealth. Even though they are not the only billionaires around and definitely do not make it to the top 5 of the Forbes list. Bill Gates still comes out first...
But the West, so typical of the West, hates Arabs and yet when it comes to their wealth, they are like sniveling dogs -- with no dignity and no principles.
And so typical of the West, they believe, only they, are entitled to anything...
So when you read the above text, do not forget, that "civilized" (hahahaha) Westerners are not spared either...
Layla Anwar, Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner, an Arab Woman - into my 40's and old enough to know better. I have no homeland per se. I live in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously ... All the rest is icing on the cake. http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com
Copyrights reserved, 2006-2007
11/04/07 - -- -I read a piece of news that left me aghast.
Seems that H.M King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is currently on a visit in Terra Helvetica i.e Geneva, Switzerland.
The article states that H.M and his entourage/fleet spend an average of 800'000 Swiss Francs a day just for Hotel logdings (am not sure how much that is in $$$ but It must be over half a million Dollars a day). This sum does not include food and shopping, of course.
The article then says that Saudi Arabia produces aprox.10 million barrels of oil per day and the total daily revenue from such a production amounts to 980 million $ a day.
The biggest share of the oil is pumped from the "Ghawar" reserve which according to "experts" is nearly dry...
This leaves oil experts speculating on "peak oil" (whatever this means) and makes them wonder where the rest of the oil is produced from...
"Are the Saudis hiding something we don't know..." inquire the "experts."
Of course, this amount of dough poured in daily coupled with such an extravagant lifestyle by the "Royal Family," explain why the Saudis are not exactly the avant-gardists of Arab Nationalism or anti-Imperialist Arab Solidarity.
And that also explains the repugnant Saudi's (and other Gulf countries in particular the beduin monarchy of Kuwait) direct and indirect role in the tragic destruction of my beloved Iraq.
I have mentioned on numerous occasions and in nearly every single post I've written, Iran's nefarious role in the Iraqi tragedy. I have also touched upon the Gulf complicity in the total devastation of what was a sovereign country.
When the fascist, lunatic Khomeini came to power, his sole agenda was 1) regime change in Iraq and 2) export the "Revolution" to other Arab countries under the pretext of liberating Palestine.
For Khomeini and subsequent Iranian leaders, their "road to Jerusalem" passed through Baghdad, Kuwait City, Al Khobar, Manama, Beirut, Damascus...
Of course not one bullet was fired in the direction of Israel by our Persian"God's warriors." Iran had and has NO intention of liberating anything.
Iran's plan is and has been all along and will continue if not stopped by the Arabs, to spread its old dream of territorial expansion, thus reviving the secret wish of nearly every Iranian - Bring back Korosh out the ashes. Yes, the Persian Empire cloaked in political Shi'ism.
The Persian threat is not a threat of Shi'ism versus Sunnism. It's the threat of Persian aspirations versus Arab Independence. A big difference.
Iran has and will continue exploiting those sectarian differences with the sole aim of reviving its ancient dream...The Persian Empire,plus of course, all the benefits that a regional superpower entail...
It is with this correct understanding that Iraq deterred the Iranian threat through a bloody war, initially instigated by Iran through continuous attacks on Iraqi borders... An 8 year war that resulted in a million Iraqis dead and an economy in shambles.
The Persian empire's main enemy is not Israel as so many idiots believe, but a nationalist, patriotic, strong, independent, secular, progressive, anti imperialist, Arab country. And that was Iraq.
Iraq thwarted the Iranian ambitions to protect itself first and protect other Arab countries as a consequence.
Saddam Hussein intimately understood that Iraq is indeed the backbone of the Arab world. Protecting Iraq would mean protecting other Arab countries. One of these countries was Saudi Arabia.
He did not engage in a war to protect the Gulf monarchies as some like to repeat like moronic parrots. That is nonsense and denotes a faulty understanding of regional and international politics.
The war with Iran was not about safeguarding Monarchies. The war with Iran was about safeguarding ARAB Identity and Independence.
And yes, preserving Arab Identity is an absolute must, more so today than at any other time.
If you read the contemporary history of the Middle East/Arab World, you will understand how imperative keeping the Arab identity is.
If you force yourself to remember that even though Islam is a universal religion, it was nonetheless revealed in Arabic -- you will understand even more...
And if you remind yourself of another basic fact- that there are two major Semitic rival/bad cousins tribes, left around-- the Jews and the Arab Muslims, you will understand even further...
By neutralizing, nay, destroying Iraq, the model of an independent, sovereign, rich, educated, anti imperialistic, progressive, secular Arab country -- America, Iran and Israel are now able to realize their full political, economic and ideological ambitions.
And again, don't you ever forget that it was the American Zionists, who brought Iran right into the heart of Baghdad. And BOTH lynched Iraq's legitimate President, Martyr and HERO Saddam Hussein.
The proof? All the Arabs are running to the U.S for their protection from the "Iranian threat." Iraq was indeed the Buffer - the sacrificial Lamb.
Saudi Arabia, even went as far as to "offer Iran" enriched Uranium.(article here)
And this is exactly what America and the Zionist Jews wanted all along.
Bring Arabs, to their knees -- secularists, islamists, monarchs and paupers alike...
Arabs will have to be dominated -- ruled by an iron fist, especially that they are historically known to be the most unruly people around.
And Saudi Arabia being what it is -- can only but cower like the faithful dog that it is.
Neutralize Iraq and play along...
Don't you ever forget this basic truth. Iraq is the backbone of the Arab world. Now make your analysis based on that fact and you will be able to assess events more accurately and even predict what happens next...
Back to Saudi Arabia...
If what the oil "experts" say is true and that the major oil reserve "Ghawar" in Saudi Arabia is indeed drying up--and that the barrel of oil will be reaching 100$, then it makes total sense to destroy Iraq, who happens to be the second largest oil reserve in the world with the best quality of crude.
And it also makes perfect sense to use vicious Iran who played along -- to divide and fragment that second largest reserve in the world.
And just as it so happens, the North of Iraq, with its Kirkuk oil wells has fallen under the vile Zionist Kurds control. And the South of Iraq with its wealth of oil, has fallen under the equally vile sectarian Shia militias from Iran.
And Saddam Hussein, the visionary said it all along,
"The country that will have the greatest influence in the region through the Arab Gulf and its oil will maintain its superiority as a superpower without an equal to compete with it. This means that if the Gulf people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arab Gulf region will be governed by the United States’ will. If the Arabs are not alerted and the weakness persists, the situation could develop to the extent desired by the United States; that is, it would fix the amount of oil and gas produced in each country and sold to this or that country in the world."
(full article here)
I have news for you and hear it from an Iraqi, Arab Woman.
The Arab world will NEVER recover from this one.
And you Saudi Arabia, will follow in our footsteps shortly...
And if the Arab world does recover, it will ONLY be through the healing touch that will emanate from Iraq again...
Until then, no amounts of cash, fleet of servants or banks accounts will save you.
And while you are drinking the revenues of your oil away or spending it on Moroccan and Russian hookers, or on Casino tables in Monte Carlo...
Or entertaining jet set models with diamond rings, or decorating your private jets and bathrooms in solid gold handles and taps...
Remember you have sold us for the cheapest of prices and that you are indeed drinking our blood mixed with your fine Chivas Regal.
And while you fill your suite's bathtub at the London Ritz with champagne and invite a two cent worth, warty English hooker to soak in it...
And while you are purchasing the latest 24 carat Rolex or Cartier watch from Geneva's finest boutiques...
Remember...
Remember that you are holding on to dear Life, being the impotent, degenerate, decadent country that you are...Keep holding on tight for it shall not last.
The rope is breaking fast.
You can run left and right with your robes pulled up in between your teeth, it will not change a thing.
You can make offers to Israel, Iran or the Devil himself...
You can stone all you like but this will never change the fact that your days are counted and that you will be ending up stoned yourself --stoned to death.
Not that you really cared in the first place, but do not be surprised to see the Jews and the Persians circling around the Kaa'ba in the name of their forefathers instead of the name of Allah.
And while you keep indulging in the opulent luxury, drowning in black gold...
Remember that the second largest reserve in the world, Iraq, is importing its fuel from Iran.
And when we turn the taps on, we see no Oil.
And when we turn the taps on, we see no Water either...
And while you scratch your balls, eyeing the next hooker, filling your empty heads and bellies with first class Brut Champagne or some dark vintage Bordeaux...
We turn the taps and see nothing but dark red...nothing but dark red Blood- Ours.
So drink it...
Drink your oil, drink your champagne, wine and whiskey...
Drink it, till you satiate, bulge even more and explode.
Drink it, for you shall not be drinking for long.
P.S: I need to be "fair" here.
Am sure other tycoons and heads of state spend as much, when touring...Except they do it more discreetly.
And in all fairness, I also have to say that the West is obsessed with Arab's fortune and wealth. Even though they are not the only billionaires around and definitely do not make it to the top 5 of the Forbes list. Bill Gates still comes out first...
But the West, so typical of the West, hates Arabs and yet when it comes to their wealth, they are like sniveling dogs -- with no dignity and no principles.
And so typical of the West, they believe, only they, are entitled to anything...
So when you read the above text, do not forget, that "civilized" (hahahaha) Westerners are not spared either...
Layla Anwar, Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner, an Arab Woman - into my 40's and old enough to know better. I have no homeland per se. I live in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously ... All the rest is icing on the cake. http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com
Copyrights reserved, 2006-2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Criminal business as usual in Iraq
By The Arab Baath Socialist Party
One Arab Nation, with an eternal mission - Unity, Freedom, Socialism
In the name of God the Most Beneficent the Most Merciful
About the day light killing of our people' sons and daughters on the hands of the US,
British and Australian so called "Security civil contractors" companies
Our Resisting sons and daughters!
10/30/07 -- - -While you resist the US occupiers and their collaborators, inflict the US occupation and its forces horrendous losses, and you teach them the lessons of bitterest defeat, you confront mass murder on identity, compulsory displacement and suffer from the deprivation of any requirements for a dignified livelihood and services such as running water, electricity, fuel and you name it.. while the US, British, Australian etc.. so called security companies, shed with impunity your innocent and pure blood.. This is what ugly Blackwater gangsters have undertaken when murdering thirteen Iraqi martyrs and wounding 25 others in the al Nessur square in Baghdad's al Mansur neighborhood, for no reason and restarted their criminal business as usual in Iraq, four days only after the US puppet Maliki government fake announcement "to withdraw their permit to work in Iraq!" Everyone knows that this government has no authority whatsoever to withdraw anything, due to "Bremer' bills" who imposed these governments and all the other precedent puppet governments.
For propaganda purposes entered the US declarations by Bush, Rice and their puppets about an unlikely investigation..This criminal Contractors Company and its likes go on with their criminal acts shedding with impunity the Iraqis blood with no distinction.. Yes! The Australian contractors company 'Unity' has opened fire on purpose in the Al Masbah Neighborhood and murdered two Iraqi women and wounded a third lady and all her children.. What was their crime? They happened to cross at that time an Iraqi street.. nothing else! Also the British so called security company "Erens" opened fire on Iraqi citizens in Kirkuk wounding gravely three without the slightest reaction from the Occupying forces and their puppet government..and at the same time the US intensifies its air strikes murdering the sons and daughters of our people in every Iraq districts, cities, and villages in Baghdad, Nineveh, Diyala, Al Anbar, Diwanya, Basrah.. The world over witnessed on the TV screens the US perpetrated butchery in al Tharthar region north of Baghdad in current October in which 15 women and children plus nine civilian men were murdered, when the US leveled their homes to the ground. This didn't incite the puppets, Maliki and Talabani and their cohort to utter a word..
Our dignified people' sons and daughters!
The slaughter of the Iraqi people has been going on and intensifying also on the hands of the sectarian criminal militias connected to Iran, in Diwanya, Karbala, and Basra.. The security has been deteriorating and the killing has been going on unabated in Baghdad, Diyala, Al Anbar, Nineveh, Najaf etc..undertaken by the criminal gangs and death squads linked to the US Occupation forces and to Iran represented by the so called "Al Quds division" and the Iranian intelligence etc, targeting Iraqi academics, heroic Iraqi army' officers and pilots belonging to every religion and every community in order to enforce and widen the forcible displacement of people.. which gave room to more than one and a half million refugee inside Iraq and to more than four million Iraqis outside Iraq. In the meanwhile the US, their collaborators and Iran continue to murder Iraqi journalists in a horrible pace ..The US and Iran have murdered so far at least 250 Iraqi journalists.. Ten journalists were murdered in only three days last week.. This situation has pushed more journalists and writers to flee Iraq.. while the US occupiers still drum and howl about what they call the "Democracy of the new Iraq!" and about" the opinion and the other's opinion.. Translate: the democracy to slaughter individually and collectively and to expel the others from their homes..!
Iraq, Arab and world freedom lovers!
Rise your voices, intensify your resistance to stop the hemorrhage of the Iraqi blood and the flow of the Iraqi refugees.. Do whatever you can to help intellectually, politically, and through the Media! Giving material and moral support to the heroic Iraqi Resistance is the only choice to free Iraq and to see Iraq, sovereign, Arab, human and reborn anew.
God is the greatest..
victory is the redeemers' Mujahideen' ally.
Iraq Leadership
Iraq Culture and Information Bureau
The Arab Baath Socialist Party Baghdad,
Iraq, In triumphant Baghdad by the will of the Lord
October 2007
Translated by Abu Assur. http://www.al-moharer.net
One Arab Nation, with an eternal mission - Unity, Freedom, Socialism
In the name of God the Most Beneficent the Most Merciful
About the day light killing of our people' sons and daughters on the hands of the US,
British and Australian so called "Security civil contractors" companies
Our Resisting sons and daughters!
10/30/07 -- - -While you resist the US occupiers and their collaborators, inflict the US occupation and its forces horrendous losses, and you teach them the lessons of bitterest defeat, you confront mass murder on identity, compulsory displacement and suffer from the deprivation of any requirements for a dignified livelihood and services such as running water, electricity, fuel and you name it.. while the US, British, Australian etc.. so called security companies, shed with impunity your innocent and pure blood.. This is what ugly Blackwater gangsters have undertaken when murdering thirteen Iraqi martyrs and wounding 25 others in the al Nessur square in Baghdad's al Mansur neighborhood, for no reason and restarted their criminal business as usual in Iraq, four days only after the US puppet Maliki government fake announcement "to withdraw their permit to work in Iraq!" Everyone knows that this government has no authority whatsoever to withdraw anything, due to "Bremer' bills" who imposed these governments and all the other precedent puppet governments.
For propaganda purposes entered the US declarations by Bush, Rice and their puppets about an unlikely investigation..This criminal Contractors Company and its likes go on with their criminal acts shedding with impunity the Iraqis blood with no distinction.. Yes! The Australian contractors company 'Unity' has opened fire on purpose in the Al Masbah Neighborhood and murdered two Iraqi women and wounded a third lady and all her children.. What was their crime? They happened to cross at that time an Iraqi street.. nothing else! Also the British so called security company "Erens" opened fire on Iraqi citizens in Kirkuk wounding gravely three without the slightest reaction from the Occupying forces and their puppet government..and at the same time the US intensifies its air strikes murdering the sons and daughters of our people in every Iraq districts, cities, and villages in Baghdad, Nineveh, Diyala, Al Anbar, Diwanya, Basrah.. The world over witnessed on the TV screens the US perpetrated butchery in al Tharthar region north of Baghdad in current October in which 15 women and children plus nine civilian men were murdered, when the US leveled their homes to the ground. This didn't incite the puppets, Maliki and Talabani and their cohort to utter a word..
Our dignified people' sons and daughters!
The slaughter of the Iraqi people has been going on and intensifying also on the hands of the sectarian criminal militias connected to Iran, in Diwanya, Karbala, and Basra.. The security has been deteriorating and the killing has been going on unabated in Baghdad, Diyala, Al Anbar, Nineveh, Najaf etc..undertaken by the criminal gangs and death squads linked to the US Occupation forces and to Iran represented by the so called "Al Quds division" and the Iranian intelligence etc, targeting Iraqi academics, heroic Iraqi army' officers and pilots belonging to every religion and every community in order to enforce and widen the forcible displacement of people.. which gave room to more than one and a half million refugee inside Iraq and to more than four million Iraqis outside Iraq. In the meanwhile the US, their collaborators and Iran continue to murder Iraqi journalists in a horrible pace ..The US and Iran have murdered so far at least 250 Iraqi journalists.. Ten journalists were murdered in only three days last week.. This situation has pushed more journalists and writers to flee Iraq.. while the US occupiers still drum and howl about what they call the "Democracy of the new Iraq!" and about" the opinion and the other's opinion.. Translate: the democracy to slaughter individually and collectively and to expel the others from their homes..!
Iraq, Arab and world freedom lovers!
Rise your voices, intensify your resistance to stop the hemorrhage of the Iraqi blood and the flow of the Iraqi refugees.. Do whatever you can to help intellectually, politically, and through the Media! Giving material and moral support to the heroic Iraqi Resistance is the only choice to free Iraq and to see Iraq, sovereign, Arab, human and reborn anew.
God is the greatest..
victory is the redeemers' Mujahideen' ally.
Iraq Leadership
Iraq Culture and Information Bureau
The Arab Baath Socialist Party Baghdad,
Iraq, In triumphant Baghdad by the will of the Lord
October 2007
Translated by Abu Assur. http://www.al-moharer.net
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