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ISSN 1440-9828
May 2003
No 193
The fictitious war in Iraq started by a fictitious US president "However long it takes to achieve the objective ... that's all you need to know"
Fredrick Töben
Amman, Jordan, 30 March 2003
The above words, uttered by President Bush to a journalist who dared to ask for specifics, on the 11th day of the US-led war against Iraq, sound prophetic. It fits into the Hollywoodisation of this conflict in more ways than one. The president's words indicate that he firmly believes his own propaganda, and that reveals there is a problem between reality and ideology. Only naked might will make things happen in such situations. What we are witnessing in Iraq is a classic battle of the wills, objectified by two presidents: the European, George W Bush, controlled by Zionists, and the Semite, Saddam Hussein, 'controlled' by his people.
The rhetoric coming from both is now war rhetoric and that has little to do with what the ordinary people want, less with what is actually happening in the region.
Academy Award winner, Michael Moore, at the recent Oscar Awards, used the occasion to label both the US President and the US-Iraq war as fictitious, and that too, will prove to be prophetic. Later in an article published in the Los Angeles Times, Moore asked himself, "Was it appropriate? The inappropriate thing would have been to say nothing at all ... I made a movie about the Americans desire to use violence both at home and around the world (Bowling for Columbine) ... how silence, when you observe wrongs being committed, is the same as committing those wrongs yourself. And so I followed my conscience and my heart"... They are the American majority who are being asked to send their sons and daughters over to Iraq to possibly die so Bush's buddies can have the oil. Who will speak for them if I don't? That's what I do, or try to do, every day of my life, and March 23, 2003 ... was no different".
Most people of the world have an innate feeling that this war 'for freedom and democracy and against terrorism' is wrong, wrong, wrong. For one thing, the alleged weapons of mass destruction have not been found. That they will be found once Iraq is conquered is obvious to the critical thinkers - the framing of Saddam Hussein is well under way, all because he is blamed for the world's terrorism.
It will be interesting to see who will be the first to go into the Iraqi archives, there to either augment or destroy documents. When the Soviet Union disbanded, the first individuals into the archives were Jewish Zionists who combed them in the hope of finding 'Nazi war criminals'.
Those who have independently questioned and investigated the details of the recent horror happenings in Washington, New York and Bali, find that the official version of events does not accord with common sense nor with the laws of science. Just for example, we are led to believe that out of the ruins of the crashing WTC towers there emerges intact the passport of one of the terrorist pilots, Mohammed Atta!
Also, and I make no apology in stating this, anyone who knows how the Middle East functions, knows quite well what a precision operation the demolition of the towers was, something difficult to pull off for a rag-tag bunch of terrorists!
Likewise at Bali, where at the bomb site, again as at the WTC, was found the ID papers of the alleged terrorist. We are asked to believe in a terrorist conspiracy, yet we are ridiculed when we express our skepticism of it and dare to formulate that the terrorists reside in our own governments.
The hype that accompanied the beginnings of the war 'for freedom and democracy and against terrorism' began four days after the 9/11 tragedy. It seemed all too convenient. Four days earlier, before the TWC towers came crashing down, at the Durban, South Africa, UN-sponsored international conference on racism, the state of Israel had been rightly condemned for being a Zionist, apartheid, racist state. Even the USA had difficulty looking that "shitty little country" squarely in the eye.
Ironically, at that very conference Australia's leading Zionist, Jeremy Jones, attempted to deliver a paper about 'Hate on the Internet', wherein he was going to detail how the Revisionists are spreading hatred by insisting that the 'Holocaust' is a myth, a lie. Jones claims that anyone who questions the details of the 'Holocaust' is engaging in hate-speak, is antisemitic, etc. He had prepared a paper wherein I was to feature because of my German imprisonment and on account of Jones' legal action against me here in Australia, both cases involving the Internet which he aims to censor of undesirable material that critically focuses on Jewish/Zionist behaviour..
Now that finally the Anglo-American-Zionist-Force (AAZF) has its way with the world and is engaged in imposing its will upon the Middle East region, the news reports we receive in Australia are ideologically blinkered. How can any decent human being consider the looming battle as a legal and just war? It simply is no match: AAZF vs. Iraq.
An Immoral and Unjust War - but US Hawks have their way!
What is happening in Iraq is immoral and unjust mainly because of three factors:
1. The fight is a no-match event. To have the only super power take on an insignificant Middle East country that was armed by the US and Britain, is an obscenity. More so because Israel has weapons of mass destruction, and is terrorizing the Palestinians. Yet, surprise, surprise, the Blair-Bush-Howard axis of evil refuses to deal with Israel. Why not?
2. Declaring Iraqi's President Saddam Hussein a dictator because he would not follow the dictates of the US anymore, is a deceptive shroud that hides the real string-pullers of this conflict: US-Zionist interests that seek to dominate the Middle East, thereby eliminating the Israel-Palestine problem by ethnic cleansing occupied Palestinian lands.
3. The huge oil reserves that currently belong to the Iraqi people will now be appropriated and re-directed to flow to Haifa into the Mediterranean Sea, so according to the latest speculations. Some time ago Australian television featured an American oil billionaire, with Bible in hand, standing somewhere in Israel, saying that he is ready to drill for oil anywhere in Israel. Greater Israel is a dream for millions of individuals, including Jews and fundamentalist Christians, especially of the Southern Baptist persuasion.
All this talk about removing a terrible dictator is sheer cant, hypocrisy and outright lies. I find it disturbing that it is mainly Whites/Europeans who are doing this physical fighting for a cause that Jewish Zionists have dreamt up. If we recall the 30-year civil war, World War One and World War Two, and ask who benefited from it, then it is again the Jewish Zionists at the expense of the best and brightest Europeans. Hence the war is also a European war against the Semitic peoples of the Middle East. It is the whites, Anglo-Americans, who are controlled by the mental racists, the Zionist Jews, against the Semites.
The Middle East Wars
The current war is the third in a series, and didn't someone say that one incident is a result of chance; two incidents may still be a chance happening, but definitely three incidents all dealing with the same topic is planed. The Middle East has seen three wars in as many decades:
1. The Iraq-Iran war of the 80s that can be described a religious war where Islamic fundamentalism confronted secular Islam: Shiite vs Suni.
2. The Iraq-Kuwait war of 1991 where nationalist boundaries firmed, and where the US influence rose in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise. During this second Gulf War, the US Senate heard a story from a little girl - the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA - about Iraqi soldiers disconnecting premature babies from their humidity-cribs. Two years later, it emerged that public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, had actually coached the child to say these things. But it was enough to sway the US into action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
3. The build-up for the current AAZF - Iraq war has been solid and sophisticated: 11 September 2001 activated the plan that was sold as a war for freedom and democracy and against terrorism. The race factor now predominates because the mental racists, the Jewish Zionists, are using the whites to do their bidding thereby killing two birds with one stone: They achieve their goal of establishing Greater Israel, and they further discredit the white race by engaging it in this unjust war and immoral war.
The Zionist-Israeli connection is beyond doubt because one need only ask: In whose interest is this war? Israel is the main beneficiary. That the continental Europeans are not participating is understandable. They need not because they are already legally enslaved by laws that outlaw a questioning of the 'Holocaust', thereby giving unlimited protection to the behaviour of Jewish Zionists.
Comments from individuals
Robin Cook, the British MP who resigned from his cabinet post in protest at his party leader's decision to join the AAZF invasion of Iraq says the war will "leave a long-term legacy of hatred for the West".
It is common knowledge in the Middle East that the US armed Iraq, and hence where the weapons of mass destruction, if any exist, are hidden is known by Britain and the US. "They know who has the invoice," says Ahmed a communications technician of Bahrain, "The present war may take a few weeks, 1-2 years, or three generations."
Most Arabic-speaking peoples see the invasion of Iraq as the AAZF playing God. The hypocrisy of it all is glaring to even Jordanian children playing in the streets of Amman. Saddam Hussein is becoming a hero the longer this war rages. The Americans are invading Iraq and they are using weapons of mass destruction to effect a regime change. Freedom and democracy, surely, is not brought to a country like that. Jordan is playing a delicate diplomatic game. A few days ago it expelled three Iraqi embassy officials because they acted inappropriately. They have now advised that Iraq may replace the expelled diplomats at any time.
A South African female journalist who was standing in a shop greeted a Jordanian woman entering with "Salam". The Jordanian smiled back and replied, "May God kill all of you". When it was explained to the Jordanian lady that the journalist was from South Africa and not from America, she still had hatred in her eyes.
Ulysses, the Indian restaurant manager at the Hilton Hotel, Bahrain, says he dislikes both President Bush and President Hussein. "It is no good, this fighting. It will not solve anything," he says. "Now everything in the world is up for grabs."
The banquet manager of the Ammon Hotel, Amman, Jordan, Eyad Al-Saifi, says: "The tourist industry is dead in the Middle East. This war is no good to anyone."
Abdul Karim Bar, Gulf Air's Manager in Singapore, is apologetic for the inconvenience that cancelled flights is causing to passengers. "This is no good for anyone, and the suffering is so unnecessary."
Mohammed Al-Mustafa, taxi driver in Dubai, UAE, said, "To liberate or to bomb out of existence, that is the question. Where is the local Iraqi uprising in Basra that we were promised? All we see is half a million suffering civilians."
Iraqi television, commenting on the first official suicide bombing, says about Ali Jaafar Musa Hammadi Al Nuaimi, the NCO who together with four US soldiers martyred himself at Najaf, that Al Nuaimi wished "to teach the invaders a lesson in the same manner of our Palestinian martyrdom fighters ... This is a blessed start. The enemies will face steadfastness, courage and martyrdom's souls ... after kissing the holy Quoran, Al Nuaimi drove a booby-trapped car towards enemy tanks and armoured personnel at the outskirts of Najaf. He turned himself, his car and the explosives he is carrying into a destructive missile by exploding himself."
Even in Iran where active neutrality is pursued in this conflict, Tehran saw one of its biggest marches against the AAZF invasion of Iraq.
While some human shields have left Baghdad before the expected siege and massacre of civilians takes place, Suhall Rokadia, a toy importer of Bombay and member of the Muslim Raza Academy social organisation is heading for Jordan, and from there to make his way by road to serve as a human shield in Baghdad until the war is over.
Other human shields, from South Africa for example, considered their two weeks in Baghdad "a personal journey of discovery". One busload that arrived from Baghdad in Amman on 28 March 2003 said the bus was stopped by Australian troops controlling the road about 160 km out of Baghdad. "The Australians were friendly and they respected our blue and white peace flag. At first they directed us to return to Baghdad but then let us go because we said we wouldn't return. Then they escorted us for about three ks and we were on our way to Jordan."
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul said he hoped the war would not set Christians and Muslims against each other. "War must never be allowed to divide world religions," he told visiting Roman Catholic bishops from Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz have expressed their confidence of a victory over the AAZF, but that is to be expected even if it is a fight against the odds.
The airwaves propaganda war is also in full swing. From transport planes the US takes over local radio stations with messages that Iraqi soldiers should give up the struggle and return home to their families. Six months ago SAWA ('working together') at 98.1 FM, began broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it targets youths with continuous music. SAWA has a strong signal because in isolated areas it is possible to pick up SAWA but not the usual NBC and BBC stations. Every fifteen minutes Radio SAWA broadcasts a brief propaganda newsbreak. The young are not fooled by this and switch off, then after the news ends they continue listening to the music. Broadcasting on satellite, the station is staffed by "traitors to the Muslim cause", so according to Dema Abdulah, a film director in Amman, who certainly enjoys listening to the station's music.
Truck driver, Mohammed, who is crossing with his truck from Jordan to Iraq at the border post, Al Karama ('dignity'), is carrying medical supplies donated by the Medical Association of Egypt. He doesn't really support anyone, but he certainly opposes the Israeli push for getting Iraqi oil to flow through the Israeli port-city of Haifa.
Reporter from CTV Canada, who are now residents of Raweshed, waiting for the border to open again, know the problem created by instant reporting from a war zone because "every year it gets better and faster, and the problem is that we then don't report the facts."
If the war in the Middle East is about freedom and democracy, then the following advertisement from InstaBuys Credit Cards in Bahrain gives us a pre-view of a vision that awaits all:
I believe in the freedom to live my life.
Make your dream purchases by paying in installments at reduced interest rates.
We have no freedoms in the West, except the freedom to go shopping, and that disappears when our money supply dries up and our credit rating is taken from us.
The Middle East is still emotionally in-tact. Women still have many children and the male still has to look after wife and children because there is no actual welfare, something that makes life in this region rather harsh. But the extended family environment produces warmth and comfort for frayed nerves.
Counseling has as yet not developed into a major professional industry as it has in western society, in particular of the type propounded in New York. Why not? The extended family covers that area, and there is no need for an individual to seek out a stranger and hand over the cash. The extended family system guarantees that there is someone to reach out to when normal human problems arise, when relationships fracture. I think our western consumer society has massive problems that are merely hidden by such things as wars.
The economic problems generated by a consumer society are so great that only for a time will such be hidden from view by the Iraq tragedy.
The campaign for Israeli divestment and the charge of anti-Semitism
By Joseph Kay, 10 April 2003
In response to an escalation of Israeli aggression over the past year, a growing movement has emerged on American campuses opposing the oppression of the Palestinian population. Student groups have held numerous protests at universities throughout the country, and most recently a movement has gained force that calls for the divestment of university assets from Israeli corporations and US firms doing business with Israel.
These groups have faced a wave of denunciations, including baseless accusations of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism. University officials have joined hands with Zionist organizations and representatives of both political parties in slandering students and faculty who have joined the movement. The specter of anti-Semitism is raised as part of an effort to de-legitimize any opposition to the policies of the Israeli government and its principal supporter, the United States.
The role of university administrations in bolstering the charge of anti-Semitism against supporters of divestment is particularly noteworthy. It is an anti-democratic attempt to intimidate and silence the political views of a section of the student body. The ferocity of the denunciations indicates in its own way the validity of the criticisms: because the policies of the Israeli state cannot be seriously defended through political argument, its supporters attempt to stifle any discussion.
The campaign against "anti-Semitism" on campus
The divestment campaign was launched in 2000 in a speech given by University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle. He called for a similar movement to that which developed on university campuses against the South African apartheid system during the 1980s. Over the past two-and-a-half years, the campaign has grown to include campus groups around the country which have circulated petitions and held rallies.
Beginning in the fall of 2002, university administrators began a verbal assault on students and faculty supporting divestment. In September, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University and former treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, became the first major university official to come out in opposition when he labeled the campaigns "anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent." Summers linked the divestment campaign to "disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally," suggesting that those who supported divestment had a similar outlook to people burning synagogues, painting swastikas and assaulting Jews.
While claiming that his remarks reflected only his personal opinions, the intent was clear: to use his position as university president to brand opposition to Israeli polices-opposition that has been widely voiced at Harvard-as anti-Semitic, and therefore illegitimate. He offered absolutely no evidence for this charge, instead employing the tactic of the amalgam, lumping together instances of anti-Semitism with a movement critical of the policies of the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon.
Anti-Semitism, like all forms of bigotry and discrimination, must be opposed unconditionally. But Summers' attempt to place within this category the divestment movement amounts to political slander, smacking of McCarthyism.
Summers was not alone in denouncing the divestment movement. The president of Columbia and former president of the University of Michigan, Lee Bollinger, called comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa "grotesque and offensive" and dismissed without consideration well-documented evidence that the Israeli army has perpetrated human rights abuses against Palestinians. At the University of Michigan, President Mary Sue Coleman also came out in opposition to the divestment campaign.
In October 2002, over 300 university presidents signed an advertisement published in the New York Times and several other newspapers. "In the past few months," the advertisement declared, "students who are Jewish or supporters of Israel's right to exist-Zionists-have received death threats and threats of violence." It called for universities to end anti-Semitism and strive for "an intimidation-free campus." Given the context within which it was published, the advertisement implicitly supported those charging pro-Palestinian groups with anti-Semitism.
In the background of these developments was the promotion of a slander campaign organized by the Campus Watch web site, which is run by right-wing commentator Daniel Pipes. The stated aim of the web site is to expose "anti-Semitism" on college campuses. As part of its operations, the site has accumulated a list of "academics identified as apologists for suicide bombings and militant Islam," a list that includes virtually anyone critical of Israeli policy. [See "Latest attack on academic freedom: 'Campus Watch' web site witch-hunts Middle Eastern studies professors in the US"]
That university officials have spoken out so quickly and sharply against divestment is an indication of the degree of opposition within university administrations to legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy. The source of this opposition is multifaceted. On the one hand, there are undoubtedly financial issues involved, including direct pressure from Zionist groups and wealthy alumni as well as corporations linked to university endowments. To a large extent, major universities are subservient to such sources of funding.
On the other hand, there is the general right-wing and pro-Israel orientation of the entire political establishment, with which all the major university administrations have close ties. The administrators have had the backing of both the Democratic and Republican parties, which vie with each other in their unconditional support for the actions of the Israeli government. In response to the divestment campaign, Democratic California Governor Gray Davis stated during his reelection campaign last year, "As long as I am governor of this state, we will continue to stand side by side with our friends in Israel, both in business and in friendship."
Zionist organizations have been in the forefront of attempts to equate the divestment campaign with anti-Semitism and terrorism. These tactics were clearly in evidence at a national conference held at the University of Michigan by supporters of the divestment campaign. The conference was hosted by the Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) and held in October 2002. In the weeks preceding the conference, a slander campaign was waged that took on an extremely crude and provocative character.
Typical of the rhetoric used, Joan Lowenstein, president of the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County, warned at a rally held several days before the conference, "When a group of propagandists hijacks the University of Michigan and uses its good name to promote anti-Semitism, we are under attack.... Israel is under attack from terrorist groups that seek her destruction, and Jews are under attack even here."
Raymond Tanter, a University of Michigan political science professor, followed up Lowenstein's speech with one even more provocative. "It is also true," he said, "that the great military capacity of the Israeli defense forces cannot deter terrorists. So what do you do? You destroy [the terrorists' leaders]. You kill them."
The mass media also chimed in, including the Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley. In an opinion piece denouncing the Michigan conference, Finley indicated that it was not just anti-Zionist politics that he found objectionable. "The first [divestment] conference," he noted, "was held at Berkeley, which, with UM and Harvard, forms the ideological axis that incubates bankrupt, neo-Marxist leftism."
Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
The World Socialist Web Site is by no means an uncritical supporter of the divestment movement. The demand for divestment is legitimate, but it is inadequate to the task of elaborating a perspective for the Palestinian masses as well as the Jewish working population. It leaves unchallenged the imperialist set-up in the Middle East and is generally uncritical of the Palestinian national movement and, in particular, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The orientation that it advocates in the United States is the futile project of placing pressure on American corporations and the Israeli government.
Our attitude is one of socialist internationalism: only on the basis of an international movement of the working class is it possible to elaborate a viable perspective for the struggle against Zionism. [See "Socialist Equality Party public meeting in Britain: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dead-end of Zionism"] This implies a rejection of any attempt to reconcile the interests of the Palestinian population with the capitalist system and the nation-state framework to which it is wedded. In particular, we reject the "two-state solution," which is the implicit political perspective of the divestment campaign.
The perspective advanced by the World Socialist Web Site is that of mobilizing the broad masses throughout the Middle East-including Jewish workers-in a struggle for a genuinely democratic and egalitarian society. That means the dismantling of the Zionist state-a theistic state based on the dispossession of the native population-as well as the bourgeois national regimes of the Arab world. We call for the establishment of a United Socialist States of the Middle East.
In spite of these political differences, we unconditionally defend divestment supporters from the attacks that have been leveled against them. The basic charge-that the divestment movement is anti-Semitic-is entirely unfounded and dishonest. No real evidence is presented to back up this bald assertion, which is contradicted by the statements of the divestment supporters and the fact that many of the most prominent members of the movement are themselves Jews.
When reasons are actually given for the charge, they do not stand up to examination. They all rest on a false equation: opposition to Israeli policies equals anti-Semitism. One of the arguments is that the campaign is anti-Semitic because it singles out Israel while ignoring the abuses of other countries, particularly those in the Arab world. This is a red herring. Palestinian and other students have every right to "single out" a country that receives more aid from the American government than any other, and illegally occupies Palestinian land and oppresses the inhabitants.
Moreover, Israel has singled itself out through its flagrant breech of international law and its brutal and repressive policies. The Israeli state continually carries out incursions into Palestinian cities, killing civilians and often youth, demolishing homes and agriculture and crippling the Palestinian economy. The Israeli government discriminates against Arabs living within Israel, curtails political parties that support the Palestinians and denies non-Jews certain social services. Israel is in blatant violation of many United Nations resolutions and is among the most violent of governments-for example, in its open policy of political assassination.
The charge of anti-Semitism rests not on rational argument, but rather on the creation of a false identity between the actions of the Israeli state and the interests of the Jewish people as a whole. This attitude was made explicit by Summers when he argued, "Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities."
The idea that the Israeli state is identical to the interests and aspirations of the Jewish people, and therefore criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, is both historically and factually false. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews, both inside and outside of Israel, who oppose the policies being carried out by the Israeli state. The Sharon government does not represent the interests even of the majority of Jews living in Israel, let alone other regions of the world. Rather it represents a section of the Israeli elite, which, at the same time as it pursues an increasingly aggressive policy against Palestinians, promotes a domestic program of attacks on social programs and jobs. The conditions are emerging within Israel for a movement of Jewish workers against the Israeli government and the politics of Zionism.
One of the major factors fueling the ominous growth of anti-Semitism internationally is precisely the homicidal, colonialist policy carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. To recognize this irrefutable fact is not to in any way endorse anti-Semitic views or support those who hold them.
Those most vociferously attacking pro-Palestinian groups for alleged anti-Semitism are themselves unable to combat the spread of anti-Semitism. This is evident in the growing alliance between right-wing Zionists and the extreme-right Christian fundamentalists in the United States. The Zionist right has lined up-on the common basis of anti-Arab chauvinism and military aggression against Iraq-with groups in the US and Europe that have a long history of anti-Semitism.
It is just as false to blame Jews for the policies of Israel as it is to defend Israel as the expression of the Jewish people. The two perspectives are opposite sides of the same reactionary outlook, which views state actions in racial, ethnic or religious terms.
The historical origins of Zionism
The contemporary character of Israel confirms an analysis made by Marxists a century ago: that throughout its history Zionism has represented the interests of a small section of the Jewish population. It is not now and has never been a distillation of the interests of the Jewish people as a whole.
Until the Second World War, only a small minority of the Jewish population supported the creation of a separate Jewish state. Many more were supportive of socialist movements that were internationalist in their orientation. They saw their interests as bound up, not with Zionism, but with the fate of the international working class and the struggle for socialism.
For example, a disproportionately large percentage of those traveling from the US to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War were Jews. They were denounced by Zionists, who would have preferred they emigrate to Palestine rather than sacrifice themselves in the struggle against fascism in Spain, a struggle that was central to the fate of Europe and the world in the years preceding World War II.
However, the rise and consolidation of power in the Soviet Union of a bureaucratic caste presided over by Joseph Stalin, and its suppression and ultimate annihilation of the genuine Marxists who had led the Russian Revolution, had catastrophic consequences for the socialist movement. The policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy-which claimed to defend the principles of the Russian Revolution but, in reality, repudiated them-disarmed the working class in the face of the growing menace of fascism. This led to a series of defeats in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the most monumental defeat of the working class: the victory of the Nazis in Germany in 1933.
The crisis of the workers movement was the decisive factor that made the Second World War inevitable and allowed Hitler to carry out his genocidal policy against the Jews. The Zionists did not and could not offer any serious resistance to the fascists. Indeed, during the 1930s a certain section of the Zionist leadership in Germany collaborated with the Nazi regime in encouraging Jews to emigrate to what was then the British mandate of Palestine.
The horror of the Holocaust, however, and the apparent absence of a viable alternative, seemed to vindicate the notion that a national homeland in Palestine was the only way out for the remnants of European Jewry. This of necessity involved the expulsion of those who inhabited the land.
It is only within the context of the crisis of the working class movement that one can understand the ability of Zionism to attract significant support for its cause. Many Jews in Europe-including Russian Jews who faced a growing wave of anti-Semitism promoted by the Stalinist regime-saw no other choice. Moreover the Holocaust generated an outpouring of sympathy for the Jewish people internationally, which was successfully channeled by the Zionists into support for the establishment of a Jewish state.
During the postwar period, the Zionists won the support of the US government, which began to see Israel as an important means of advancing American interests in the Middle East. Since that time, Zionism has served as a political ally of American imperialism in the region, while at the same time advancing the interests of the Israeli bourgeois elite.
The conception that Israel represents the interests of the Jewish people is a false conception, the acceptance of which has required a sustained campaign on the part of definite social interests. It is these same interests that now employ this conception to attack the divestment movement and other critics of Israeli policy.
See Also:
Israel: Sharon government steps up attacks on Palestinians [8 April 2003]
Latest attack on academic freedom"Campus Watch" web site witch-hunts Middle Eastern studies professors in the US [30 December 2002]
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dead-end of Zionism [16 May 2002]
Adelaide Institute asked Dr Serge Thion briefly to comment on the following
2 April 2003
AI: How long can a non-existent state exist, a la Palestine?
ST: As long as it may impose itself through the use of force.
AI: Is the impossibility of a two-state solution a result of Jewish racism and brutality?
ST: The basic reason is that you cannot convince people you've evicted by force to willingly concede your are the rightful owner. Palestine belongs to Palestinians. Fullstop. Not to any Russian, Pole, Yemeni, or native of Brooklyn.
AI: So, co-existence is thus an injustice because it would justify Jewish theft of land not their own? Did Balfour promised something that did not belong to him?
ST: Not only Balfour and the successive English governments. Balfour had also promised to the Arabs that the Jewish National Home would not harm their interests. When it did they revolted. And the hypocrite Britons repressed them. The United Nations had no right to give the land to foreigners. It gave Namibia to the Namibians, not to the Danes or the Kamtchatkaians...
AI: Since when does a court of justice sanction someone stealing land with raw brutality?
ST: This theft was done by force. The only redress is to abolish the theft and return the stolen good to its legitimate possessors, the Palestinian people.
AI: Are you saying then, that the only just solution is that the Jews leave the land, just as 900 years ago the Crusaders left Palestine?
ST: Yes; of course. The West will oblige by taking them back. The destruction if Israel will be done by the Jews themselves, as they will progressively realize they just cannot live in an area where they managed to have everybody hate them. Life will slowly become unbearable for them there and the drift has already started towards the US and Europe.
[NB: AI: Europe already has extensive so-called 'Holocaust' laws that extends special protection to Jews.]
AI: Would a presence of the Jewish State in Palestine mean a condoning the crimes upon which this presence rests?
ST: Of course, as in the past centuries, Jews may live in Palestine, as long as they respect the local population. The question is purely one of political power. But Jews have spilled too much blood to be welcomed to stay.
View from Jordan
As far as I am concerned, I was held in solitary confinement for a week where I was disconnected from the world completely. I was not allowed any
access to papers or news of any kind, or allowed to speak to other
prisoners. I was part of about two dozen activists held around the same
time I was too. Hundreds more were soon to follow as we learned from
trustworthy sources. This was to be part of the campaign to silence the
Jordanian street. The steadfastedness of Iraq and the near-uprising of the
Jordanian street just turned the tables upside down and got us released as
well as put an end to the arrest campaign.
Jordanian Revisionist Ibrahim Alloush, after his release from a week in prison.
Dear Friends,
Anti-war activist Shadi Mdanat was arrested in front of his house in the southern city of Karak, Jordan, around eight on Tuesday night of April 1, 2003, by a group of Jordanian intelligence officers who are keeping him incommunicado until this moment.
The arrest of Shadi Mdanat for his anti-war activities comes at a time when dozens of Jordanian activists who were arrested in the last few weeks are being released, including Naser Biqaeen, another activist from Karak who spent eleven days in solitary confinement in jail cell number 67 in the prison of the Jordanian Intelligence Division, and many others, like activists Tayseer Shrouf and Naser Sarisi.
Nevertheless, Mdanat's arrest is a move that runs contrary to the turnabout that the regime has been performing in the last few days in the direction of:
1) Halting the waves of arbitrary and unconstitutional arrests that were going to affect hundreds of activists whose names were compiled in a list that the Jordanian Intelligence Division has compiled for this purpose, according to a senior officer who said something to that effect during the interrogation of an activist
2) Releasing most of the first batch of those to be arrested which included about thirty activists who were picked up in the last few weeks, and who would have been incarcerated much longer had Iraq not held steadfast, and had there not been local and international campaigns for their release
3) Partially loosening the heavy hand of the authorities over the Jordanian street which is infinitely opposed to aggression on Iraq. This is being done to release the pent-up anger in preparation for absorbing the street completely. Yet that does not mean that transgressions on the constitutional rights of Jordanians will cease, as happened for example when dozens of students were arrested following pro-Iraq protests in the University of Mou'ta, when tear gas canisters were fired during protests on the campus of the Jordanian University, and finally, when Shadi Mdanat was arrested while hanging out in front of his home in the evening.
Still, the limited conciliatory moves are accompanied by a partial shift in the rhetoric of the Jordanian regime in the direction of displaying concern for Iraq, while American and British forces continue to languish on Jordanian soil. But even that partial shift is constrained a great deal, as for example when TV anchor Assaf Shoubaki was recently prevented from reading the news because he said: "Seventy Iraqis martyred during a coalition raid..", instead of what the script said, which was: "Seventy Iraqis died during a coalition raid.."!
Nevertheless, the partial turnabout from the usual repressive measures and in the rhetoric of the regime can be attributed primarily to two factors:
1) the steadfastness of Iraqi resistance, which left the regime quite embarrassed before Iraq and the Jordanian street after hosting American and British troops on Jordanian soil
2) the rude awakening of the Arab street in general, and the Jordanian street in particular, after a very long nap.
Thus, the release of many arrested activists in the last few days comes in this particular political context, which does not imply at all that oppression will be abandoned as a matter of principle as we can see from the arrest of Shadi Mdanat.
That is why we need to raise our voices high: NO to the conniving of Arab regimes against Iraq!
NO to the violation of the constitutional rights of Arab citizens!
Freedom to activist Shadi Mdanat!
Later
Ibrahim Alloush
Amman, Jordan
April 2, 2003
Pinocchio Bush
and Monica Howard.
The first is a liar,
the second a coward.
The first spreads deception
wherever he's able;
while the second squats under
the president's table..
J.B
©-free 2003 Adelaide Institute
