Is Israel an apartheid state? Comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel have often been made, but not always clearly explained. Before we delve into the subject, let us try to understand what the term apartheid really means. The word originated in South Africa and is derived from Afrikaans meaning, literally, apartness or separateness. The term originated as a political slogan coined by Dr Daniel F. Malan, leader of the South African National Party, in 1944. The policy of apartheid was included in the party platform during the successful election campaign in 1948, forging a coalition of disunited Afrikaner (White) groups and classes, and would serve as the basis for the regime’s racial program until it was repealed in 1991-92.
The purpose of apartheid was separation of the races: not only of whites from nonwhites, but also of nonwhites from each other, and, among the Africans (called Bantu in South Africa), of one group from another. Initial emphasis was on restoring the separation of races within the urban areas. A large segment of the Asian and Colored (i.e., mixed races) populations was forced to relocate out of the so-called white areas, as were the native Africans whose townships were demolished and occupants forcibly removed.
The main architect of apartheid was Hendrik F. Verwoerd (1901-66), the leading intellectual and ideologue of the National Party. Under his prime ministership, apartheid developed into a policy known as “separate development,” whereby each of the nine Bantu groups was to become a nation with its own homeland, or Bantustan. An area totaling about 14% of the country’s land was set aside for these homelands, the remainder, including the major mineral areas and the cities, being reserved for the whites. The basic tenet of the separate development policy was to reserve within the confines of the African’s designated homeland rights and freedoms, but that outside it blacks were to be treated as aliens.
According to Ian Campbell, “Having been assigned a national homeland, or Bantustan, Africans settled and working in South Africa would lose their residence and other rights and became liable to deportation in the event of political unrest or large-scale unemployment. Under the guise of ‘trusteeship’, government policy was to confine the African majority to reserves that could not support them, thus ensuring the continuation of a cheap, compliant labor force.”
The African population, three-quarters of the total, was disenfranchised and subject to coercion backed by law. Non-whites were required to carry identification papers. Laws forbade most social contacts between those of European descent and others, authorized segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted each group to certain types of jobs, curtailed nonwhite labor unions, and denied nonwhite participation in the national government. Movement to and between other parts of the country was strictly regulated, the location of residence or employment (if permitted to work) was restricted, and the urban African workers were seen as transients. Only those holding the necessary labor permits, granted according to the labor market, were allowed to reside within urban areas without their spouses. None of the African reserves were viable nations. They were made up of broken tracts of poor-quality land, riddled with erosion and incapable of supporting their large designated populations. With no industry, opportunities for employment were few.
So, how realistic is the comparison of Israel’s policy towards the indigenous Palestinian people with those practiced by the White racists, segregationists in South Africa? None is probably better equipped to answer this question than Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the Nobel Prize for peace. Speaking about his visit to Israel in April, 2002, he said, “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”
The similarity does not end there. It is much deeper. Like White settlers who colonized South Africa, Israel has been a settler enterprise of the European Zionists to colonize Palestine inhabited by indigenous Palestinians. It was no accident that Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, had written about his plan to Cecil Rhodes, the most typical of British colonialists of his time: “How then, do I happen to turn to you, since this is an out of way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial … And what I want you to do is … to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes, have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable.”
Lies and Deceptions:
The Zionist plan was more hideous than that of the Afrikaners. In South Africa, the white settlers sought to dominate, rather than expel, the native population by incorporating them as inferior citizens in a polity under exclusively white control. Zionists, on the other hand, tried to take control of the entire Palestine by excluding its indigenous non-Jewish population, whose very existence they tried to deny before the Israeli state was born. With misleading slogans: “people without a land for a land without a people”, they tried to claim ownership of an “un-inhabited” Palestine, which by the time of partition had some 1.3 million Palestinians living.
Land-grabbing and Expulsion of Palestinians:
The expulsion of the Palestinian people and occupation of their land was a deliberate and systematic undertaking. Joseph Witz, head of the Jewish National Fund, responsible for land acquisition, wrote in 1940: “Between ourselves, it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country … The only solution is Eretz Israel, at least the Western Israel, without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from her to the neighboring countries; to transfer them all … Only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brethren.”
As one can see this devious program was formulated well before Israel was born. It was criminal and racist to the core. In 1980, Professor Israel Shahak of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem noted, “Basically, the State of Israel was founded on by people who were not conscious of the rights of non-western people … They had absolutely no sense of justice for people outside this group.” He noted that the dominant attitude of the Israeli state was “fundamentally racist.”
When the Partition Plan was announced on Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly made a non-binding recommendation (Resolution 181) for a three-way partition of Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone including the religiously significant towns Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Jews were allotted 56% of the Mandatory Palestine and Arabs 43%. The Jewish territory was to include some 0.47 million Arabs living with nearly half a million Jews.
The Arab League rejected the plan because of being too unfair to the majority Palestinians who comprised more than two-thirds of the overall population. Initially, most of the Zionist leaders, including those from the Jewish Agency and Ben Gurion, also criticized the Plan. Menachem Begin, the progenitor of today’s Likud, warned that the partition would not bring peace because the Arabs would attack the Jewish state and that “in the war ahead we’ll have to stand on our own, it will be a war on our existence and future.” Many extremist Zionist settlers simply wanted an Israel that would have no non-Jew inhabitant. To them, the important question was: how to create a Jewish majority in a country with majority indigenous Palestinian people? The answer was: expulsion of the indigenous population and promotion of Jewish immigration to the new colony.
On April 1, 1948, the Security Council adopted Resolution 44 “to consider further the question of the future government of Palestine.” However, the Zionist leaders did not want to wait too long and, being prepared militarily, declared independence of the state of Israel unilaterally on May 14, 1948. As expected when the war broke out with the Arabs, the Zionists sought to establish Jewish demographic dominance by expelling nearly 770,000 indigenous Palestinians. By the time the Armistice Agreement was signed in July of 1949, the Zionists ended up grabbing nearly 78% of the original territory, leaving a mere 22% of the land to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. Out of a total of 475 villages existing in 1948, 420 Palestinian villages were destroyed within the new state of Israel where Jews were settled. In 1950 Israel used the Absentee Property Law to expropriate property belonging to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes during the 1948-49 war. The Israeli law violates Article 46 of the Hague Convention, which prohibits confiscation of private property in occupied territory.
Denial of Citizenship:
The apartheid doctrine is officially professed by the Zionist state in its proclamation of special status for the Jewish people, the Law of Return for the Jews and the Law on Nationality. Under Israeli law, a Jew from Philadelphia or anywhere on earth becomes an Israeli citizen at the very moment he sets foot on Tel Aviv airport, whereas a Palestinian, born in Palestine of Palestinian parents, may be treated as stateless. He has no right of return to his ancestral home once he was forced out in the wars. Nor is his property rights honored if he is an absentee landlord, even though he may be residing inside the West Bank and Gaza. The same apartheid that applies to citizenship is in force where rights of residence and marriage are concerned. It was no fluke that when the UN General Assembly passed the Resolution 2279 in 1975 equating “Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination” it did so for the right reason.
Segregation and Discriminatory Laws:
During the 1948-67 period while no structured physical segregation of the Palestinian population from the usurping Israelis was attempted, the Israeli military administration controlled Israeli Arabs’ movements, imposed curfew on them, controlled where they lived and confiscated their land to favor Jewish occupation. It also prevented structural dependence on the Palestinian economy, particularly on its labor. Before 1948 less than a third of the workers in the Jewish sector were Palestinian. From 1948-67, the remaining Palestinian Arabs supplied no more than 15% of the labor force.
Following the pre-emptive strikes in June of 1967, Zionist settlers were able to consolidate their authority over the entire territory, while making sure that Palestinian grip of their own territories ever shrinks. The 1967-War brought some one million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli government resorts to forced eviction of the Palestinian people so as to lower their proportion in comparison to the settler Jews. It also encourages Jewish immigration from Russia and elsewhere to Israel giving them the right to citizenship to maintain an edge in population over the Palestinians. Conversely, it denies such rights of return, let alone citizenship, to all those Palestinians who fled the country.
As can be seen from the above analysis, South African apartheid wanted the land and the people, albeit with segregation; the Israeli leadership tried to take the land without the people. Since 1967, Israeli government developed a detailed policy of territorial integration and demographic separation. It encouraged encroachment of Zionist settlers into Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israeli law also allows Jewish settlers to carry arms.
Like the South African White settlers, within the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government enacted different laws and decrees to regulate lives of its Palestinian population. Like the Blacks in South Africa, the Palestinian people don’t have freedom of movement. Like South Africa, Israel’s highly discriminatory and strangulating economic decrees forces the indigenous people into not only providing cheap labor for the Israeli market but also selling their properties at a cheaper price to the settler Jews and Jewish agencies. Between 1967 and 1990, according to Dr. Leila Farsakh, a Palestinian political economist, who teaches at University of Massachusetts, “More than a third of the Palestinian labor force was employed in Israel and generated over a quarter of the territories’ GDP.” So horrible is the condition of Palestinians inside the Occupied Palestine that they are forced to reflect everyday if exodus is not a better option for them to live, raise their children and care for the elderly.
Expansionism, Settlements and Religious Myths:
Ben-Gurion said, “We have set up a dynamic state, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion.” Expansionism is at the heart of an apartheid state, which Israel has practiced since day one. In order to justify its aggression and annexation, like South Africa, Israel also draws motivation from the Bible. The settler state of Israel is depicted as a fulfillment of God’s promise to the Jewish people (Genesis 15:18). Forgotten there is the mere fact that the Ashkenazi Jews (the so-called thirteenth tribe) who form a majority of world Jewry today and govern the state of Israel have no blood connection with the “seed” of Abraham, while Arabs – the children of Ishmael – are a better claimant to that promise.
As an expansionist entity, Israel has never, in its past 60 years, defined its border. It was as if the Zionist leaders were applying the Biblical verse to the letter: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that I have given unto you, as I said unto Moses.” (Joshua 1:3) As has been duly recognized by experts like Roger Garaudy, this is the conception of Eretz (Greater) Israel, the permanent objective of political Zionism. Moshe Dayan declared in July 1968, “During the last hundred years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that are near the end of the road.” In 1972, Golda Meir, replied to a question on territorial needs for Israel’s security, “There must be changes in the border. We want changes in borders, on all our borders, for security’s sake.”
This notion of Israeli expansionism (Eretz Israel) has never left the Zionist leaders – from Ben-Gurion to today’s Netanyahu. Gen. (Reserve) Shlomo Gazit who was the President of the Ben-Gurion University explained this concept in 1982, “The first objective is to ensure that historic Eretz Israel is not partitioned again … The second objective is to ensure that historic Eretz Israel will remain entirely under Jewish control and, moreover, that it will remain a basically Jewish state. The third objective is a full solution to the problem of Arabs of historic Eretz Israel … The solution for them must be found outside historic Eretz Israel.” Nor should we be surprised to hear the same solution repeated some 27 years later from the same university campus by Netanyahu in his June 14, 2009 speech.
Settlements and outposts are means to solidify expansion. In 1948 there were 2,810 Jews that lived in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. After annexation of these territories, including the Golan Heights in 1967, the Jewish population grew to 10,608 in 1972. By 1993, Israel had constructed more than 145 settlements where some 196,000 Jews were settled by confiscating Arab land. Half of the settlers lived in ten settlements around East Jerusalem. By the end of the year 2000, Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza numbered 225,000. More than 2,500 houses and 52 settlement outposts were constructed just between September 2000 and January 2003. In January 2009, Israeli political activist group Peace Now stated that settlement construction rose by 60 percent from 2007 to 2008. According to Knesset Member Yaakov Katz, head of the National Union party, currently, there are some 650,000 settlers in the Occupied Territories of which some 300,000 live around East Jerusalem. As noted by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, a classified Israeli Government database, recorded that many West Bank Israeli settlements were built on land privately owned by Palestinian citizens without compensation. Through the enactment of the 1950 Absentee Property Law, Israel has given a legal basis for continued expropriation of land in East Jerusalem (annexed in 1967) owned by Palestinians who live elsewhere (usually in the West Bank) without compensation. The Palestinians owners cannot "transfer, sell or lease any real estate property".
As a settler state, situated in a semi-arid area, Israel has built most of its settlements over Palestinian aquifers so that it can have full control of its consumption for economic development, and meeting water needs of the settler Jews. After the occupation of the Golan Heights, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel began taking control of all water resources. According to Palestinian researcher Abu Kishek, as noted in the IMEMC news report (January 8, 2007), Israel controls 80 percent of Palestinian water resources threatening Arab water security. Since 1949, water has assumed top priority for Israel, which worked to gain control of the groundwater and surface water in the Jordan River basin, threatening the most fertile agricultural area. Israel has dug 500 water devices along the boundary of the West Bank, while along the northern edge of the Gaza Strip Israeli pumps operate 18 hours per day.
The Israeli government denies permits to Palestinians to dig new wells on their own land while inside Israeli settlements water drilling continues. The Israeli aim is to drive the Palestinians out of their territory, so water is used as an effective weapon of war against indigenous Palestinians. Once a well is dry and with no new permits to drill a new one, they are left with no option but to move away.
Settlements are built on less than three percent of the area of the West Bank. However, due to the extensive network of settler roads and restrictions on Palestinians accessing their own land, Israeli settlements dominate more than 40 percent of the West Bank. As former President Carter has observed from his trips to Israel, there is a zone with a radius of about four hundred meters around each settlement within which Palestinians cannot enter. In addition, there are other large areas that would have been taken or earmarked to be used exclusively by Israel, roadways that connect the settlements to one another and to Jerusalem, and “life arteries” that provide the settlers with water, sewage, electricity, and communications. These range in width from 500 to 4000 meters, and Palestinians cannot use or cross many of these connecting links. This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiply fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable, and control of the Jordan River valley denies Palestinians any direct access eastward into Jordan. About 100 military checkpoints completely surround the Occupied Palestinian Territories and block routes going into or between Palestinian communities, combined with an uncountable number of other roads that are permanently closed with larger concrete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks.
These settlements are, in essence, responsible for bantustanization of the Palestinian territories. President Carter observed, “There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life.” According to Dr. Farsakh, “By institutionalizing the societal separation and territorial integration that Israel created between 1967 and 1993, the Oslo process has prepared for the bantustanization of the WBGS (West Bank and Gaza Strip), transforming the Palestinian territories into fragmented population reserves, neither sustainable economically nor sovereign politically.”
The UN Security Council Resolution 465, unanimously adopted in 1980, made it clear that “Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants” in the Occupied Territories constitutes “a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”. The Security Council called upon Israel to “dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction or planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem”. The World Court and European Union have deemed both the official settlements and the outposts to be illegal under international laws, including the Geneva Conventions, which set out the basis for international humanitarian law. In September 2006, Olmert authorized construction bids for another 690 homes in the occupied West Bank. A total of 9,000 further housing units have been approved in East Jerusalem, and approximately 2,600 new housing units are being built east of the original Green Line, comprising 55% of all settlement construction activity. The current government of Netanyahu is committed to building more settlements.
As to the reality of settlements in the West Bank, former President Carter observes, “It is obvious that the Palestinians will be left with no territory to establish a viable state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River valley. The Palestinians will have a future impossible for them or any responsible portion of the international community to accept, and as Israel’s permanent status will be increasingly troubled and uncertain as deprived people fight oppression and the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically (compared to Arabs) both within Israel and Palestine.”
The Apartheid Wall (Segregation Fence):
When Sharon took power in 2001, to him, a worthy heir of David Ben-Gurion and Zeev Jabotinsky, the 1948 war of independence wasn’t finished. He spent the next two years by resuming complete control of the West Bank. But, as Dominique Vidal has pointed out elsewhere, that was not enough. He faced a major challenge – demographic, which said that Palestinian population would soon outnumber the Jewish population. He had two solutions – expel all the Palestinians or allow the creation of a Palestinian state. He rejected the second choice and recognized that the first one was impractical to carry out. So he came up with a third option that involved erection of a segregation wall that would allow Israel to annex the remaining half of the West Bank, in particular the blocs where 80% of the settlers live. The Wall, at least 3.5 times Israel’s international recognized border, not only separated Jews physically from Palestinians but also divided Palestinian villages separating them from each other, and separated Palestinian farmers from their own fields. The other major impacts on the indigenous people include loss of land, increased difficulty in accessing medical services in Israel, restricted access to water sources, and adverse economic effects.
The route of the Wall in the West Bank was set to take the Palestinian water supply into Israeli boundaries, in addition to what is already taken by the Israeli settlements inside the West Bank. Thus, as much as the Israeli government has managed to control the continuity of its landmass from those within the pre-1967 border to those settlements and outposts located deep inside the WBGS via the connecting roads, it is clear that it has also been able to control and connect all its water resources in the Occupied Territories.
On 20 July 2004, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the barrier with 150 countries voting for the resolution with only six countries opposing. Earlier, in July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice determined that the wall was illegal and called on Israel to cease construction of the wall, to dismantle what has already been built in areas beyond Israel’s international recognized border, and to compensate Palestinians who have suffered as a result of the wall’s construction.
Life within Palestinian Bantustans:
Israelis, irrespective of whether they are nominal civilians or military personnel, impose exodus upon the Palestinian population through harassment, whose ultimate goal is expulsion of the natives. As hinted earlier, access to water, e.g., remains a persistent issue. Each Israeli settler uses five times as much water as a Palestinian neighbor, who must pay four times as much per gallon. There are Israeli swimming pools adjacent to Palestinian villages where drinking water had to be hauled in on tanker trucks and dispensed by the bucketful. Most of the hilltop settlements are on small areas of land, so untreated sewage is discharged into the surrounding fields and villages. Palestinian researchers have accused Israel of destroying large parts of the water utilities, such as the demolition of wells and the destruction of irrigation systems, reservoirs and water lines in the West Bank. Such crimes result in a major deficit in the underground reservoir, and the increasing suffering of the population for access to drinking water on a daily basis. Israel's destruction of the water supply for many Palestinian cities added to the salt content of the well water in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has also led to a decline in agricultural production.
As noted by Dr. Farsakh in her book - Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, land and occupation, the West Bank aquifers and water from the Jordan River produced a total of 1.9 billion cubic meters of water per year, which is 70% of total water resources available in the pre-1967 Israel and the WBGS. The denial and limited supply of this water to the indigenous Palestinians is criminal to the core. It is reducing farmers to beggars and strangulating Palestinian economy forcing the emergence of a captive labor force for the Israeli colonial settler state. According to Farsakh, “The release of labor from the Palestinian economy is affected through four main channels: land expropriation, extraction and control of water resources, industrial and economic policy that handicaps the development of productive local employment; and transformation of the Palestinian into a captive market for Israeli goods.”
Palestinians are deprived of their most basic human rights. They have little freedom of movement or independent activity. Any demonstration against Israeli abuses results in mass arrests of Palestinians, including children throwing stones, bystanders who are not involved, families of protesters, and those known to make disparaging statements about the occupation. Once incarcerated, they have little hope for a fair trial and often have no access to their families or legal counsel. Most of these cases are tried in military tribunals, but 90% of the inmates are being held in civilian jails. One of the attorneys told former President Carter, “Here there is one system under civil judges and another under the military. Most of our cases, no matter what the subject might be, fall under the military. They are our accusers, judges, and juries, and they all seem the same to us.”
From September 2000 until March 2006, 3,982 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis were killed in the second Intifada and these numbers include many children: 708 Palestinians and 123 Israelis. During the Israel-Lebanon conflict of 2006, while world’s attention was in Lebanon, Israeli forces killed more than 200 Palestinians, 44 of them children, in Gaza. During its December 2008-January 2009 war on the Gaza Strip alone, Israel killed nearly 1,200 Palestinian non-combatants.
The Oslo Peace was supposed to let Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to control most of the West Bank by 1996. Instead, by July 2000 it had jurisdiction over only 19%, or less, of the West Bank.
In a recent article, dated June 10, 2009, Stephanie Westbrook of the U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice in Rome, Italy, wrote, “Not only are Palestinians restricted in their movement in and out of Gaza, but also within. In late May, Israel began dropping thousands of leaflets near the border areas warning the people of Gaza not to come within 300 meters of the border or they would be fired upon. Farmers are forced to risk their lives in order to work their fields that fate has placed too close to the border. The same restrictions are imposed on Palestinian fishermen. The sound of shots pierce the silence nightly, as Israeli gunboats fire on fishing boats that dare to venture far enough away from the shore in order to catch fish to sell and provide a living for their families. These are the absurdities that have become the norm in Gaza. But perhaps most absurd of all is how anyone can believe that Israel's severity in the closures, the destruction of the economy and social fabric of the Gaza Strip, will serve to convince Palestinians to place their trust in international law.”
John Pilger, the award-winning journalist and documentary film maker, writes, “At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable. Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way.” This happened just the day before Obama’s historic speech in Cairo.
Truly, in the 21st century, there is hardly a place more closely resembling Bantustan of the South African apartheid days than Gaza. In 1948 there were 90,000 natives in Gaza. The population more than tripled by 1967, and there are now more than 1.4 million – 4,118 people living per sq. km, making it one of the most densely populated places in our planet. There, before Sharon’s plan for disengagement in June 2004, 8,000 Israeli settlers (comprising 0.6% of the overall population) were controlling 40% of the arable land and more than one-half the water resources. These settlers were defended by 12,000 Israeli troops. Israel does not allow air and sea transportation from Gaza. In his fact finding mission there, President Carter observed that fishermen were not allowed to leave the harbor, workers were prevented form going to outside jobs, the import or export of food and other goods was severely restricted and often cut off completely and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers were deprived of salaries. Per capita income decreased 40% during 2004-06, and poverty rate reached 70%. This was the situation before reinvasion of Gaza in July 2006.
When asked, “Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?” Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, who is Jewish, replied, “I think not.”
Detention:
International human rights organizations estimate that since 1967 more than 630,000 Palestinians (about 20%) of the total population) in the occupied territories have been detained at some time by the Israelis. In addition to time in jail, the pre-trial periods can be quite lengthy. Palestinian detainees can be interrogated under special laws for a total of 180 days and denied lawyer visits for intervals of 90 days. Accused persons are usually in military courts in the West Bank, and incarcerated in prisons inside Israel, in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention.
Like South Africa, Israel has her version of Robben Island. It is Facility 1391. It is not marked on maps, it has been erased from aerial photographs and recently its numbered signpost was removed. Censors have excised all mention of its location from the Israeli media, with the government saying that secrecy is essential to “prevent harm to the country’s security”. As a newspaper described it, Facility 1391 is “Israel’s Guantanamo”. Outside a few senior Israeli government and security officials no one knows how many inmates there are in Facility 1391. Testimonies from former inmates suggest it is crowded with detainees, many of them Lebanese captured during Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon. What little information is available suggests that interrogation methods using torture are routine. A high-profile detainee, Mustafa Dirani of the now defunct Lebanese Shia militia Amal, has alleged that he was raped by his interrogators.
The Permit System:
Israel introduced the permit system and fragmented the WBGS territorially in order to control the al-Aqsa intifada. In April 2002 Israel declared that the WBGS would be cut into eight main areas, outside which Palestinians could not live without a permit. Dr. Farsakh finds that by institutionalizing the permit and closure system, Israel imposed on Palestinians similar conditions to those faced by blacks in South Africa under the pass laws. Although the pass system in South Africa was created to ensure the control and supply of cheap labor, while in the WBGS it was introduced for security reasons, the consequences were the same.
Conclusion:
Nearly half a century ago, a South African newspaper Die Transvaler that covered matters of apartheid had this to say: “Is there any real difference between the way that the people of Israel are trying to maintain themselves amid non-Jewish peoples and the way the Afrikaner is trying to remain what he is?” The then Prime Minister Verwoerd’s answer is quite revealing: “Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”
From the brief analysis above, it is obvious that despite their initial differences, the Zionist state of Israel and the apartheid South Africa have become similar since June 1967, and especially so with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. As a matter of fact, the Israeli apartheid state is more dangerous and more racist than the Apartheid regime ever was in South Africa. The Palestinian bantustans are of course neither as clearly defined nor as large as those of South Africa. Thanks to influx of some quarter million Jewish workers from outside, Israel has less need of the Palestinian labor force. As Dr. Farsakh has rightly recognized, if the current situation continues, the two-state solution is in peril. The disappearance of that option would definitely condemn Israel to being an apartheid and bi-national state, unless it embarks on a massive program of population transfer.
The Zionist settler leaders know it very well that they are running out of options. The settlements and segregation wall that they built to grab Palestinian land in the West Bank are illegal per international laws. There is no denying that Israel has always put confiscation of Palestinian land ahead of peace. Back in the Bush Sr. era, such land-grabbing provoked an official White House statement: “The United States has opposed, and will continue to oppose, settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967, which remain an obstacle to peace.” From the State Department, Secretary Baker added, “I don’t think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace.” The US government, in spite of being Israel’s most trusted ally, has consistently maintained that settlements are illegal. That position has not changed with the current Obama Administration either, which already has advised Netanyahu to stop all settlement activities in the Occupied Territories.
Given the kind of sympathy Israel enjoys amongst the Christians because of their collective guilt for causing the Jewish Holocaust, and afraid of being dumped as anti-Semites for speaking out against Zionist savagery that is responsible for on-going Palestinian Holocaust since 1948, it is going to be very difficult to dismantle the apartheid character of Israel. Nor should we forget that while the neocons were defeated in the 2008 election, they still wield enormous control in how American policy makers think and act. Many of the high-level advisers to the Obama Administration are pro-Israel Jewish hawks, whose unwavering allegiance to the pariah state in the past have only highlighted America’s hypocrisy and worsened her image abroad. The Amen Corner within the U.S. Congress is still willing to nod and dance with the Israeli tune and do bidding for the rogue state. Christian Zionism still raises much passion amongst intellectually disadvantaged Americans who are continuously mesmerized by radio junkies like Rush Limbaugh. And, then, as rightly pointed out by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, there is the all-powerful Jewish Lobby and let’s not kid about their influence in the USA. No politician in the USA today can afford to be viewed as anti-Israel.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that in his Fiscal Year 2010 budget, sent to the Congress in May, President Obama requested a near-record $2.2775 billion in military aid to Israel, which is an increase of $225 million in aid to Israel compared with this year’s budget. This increase in funding is quite interesting given the fact that the United States is currently in its gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Lest we forget, according to Congressional Research Service, the United States has provided Israel with more than $100 billion in direct military and economic aid since 1949.
In a recent article John Chuckman writes, “Israel, it is a nation which has attacked every neighbor that it has, at one time or another. In the last two years alone, it has killed more people in Lebanon and Gaza than the number who perished in 9/11. It is also a secret nuclear power, having broken every rule and international law to obtain and assist in proliferating nuclear weapons.”
Israel killed more than 3,000 innocent Palestinian civilians, which included more than 1,000 children, often with U.S. weapons, during the George W. Bush Administration. Yet the State Department did not notify Congress even once that Israel had violated these laws which are supposed to sanction countries that commit human rights abuses with U.S. weapons.
On July 1, Israel committed an act of piracy by kidnapping 21 human rights activists and journalists in international waters who were sailing on the Free Gaza Movement boat “Spirit of Humanity” and who had hoped to deliver badly-needed humanitarian supplies to the besieged and collectively-punished people of the Gaza Strip. These 21 people included former Representative Cynthia McKinney. Lest we forget, Israeli authorities have no jurisdiction to arrest them in international waters. As I write this essay, Ms. McKinney has still not been released by the Israeli government. I am not sure if Secretary Clinton or her staffs are doing anything to see the former Congresswoman released.
As I have noted many times, the Zionist state possesses no legitimacy whatsoever – Biblical, moral, historical and juridical – to have been established as a state in historical Palestine. Much in common to the wishes of its ideologue Theodor Herzl, Israel has remained a rampart of the West. Its behavior is that of a settler apartheid state that is continuously at war with its natives and is bent upon dehumanizing them. And its Zionist leaders know its evil character too well. Thus, it wants to force the robbed and maimed Palestinians into recognizing the rogue state of Israel unconditionally. For the Palestinian leadership that would be like writing its own suicide note with a gun pointed to the head!
Can a workable solution be still found that allows the Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians to live as equals in the same land? As common sense dictates even a bastard child born of gang rape does not deserve to be killed.
For too long the Zionists have said that it is impossible to share the territory with the Arabs who want to “drive them into the sea.” We know better. It is a filthy lie. If past behavior is any guide, we can safely conclude that it is these settler Zionists who are actually drowning the Palestinians. In a meeting with President Carter in 1990 Chairman Arafat said, “The PLO has never advocated the annihilation of Israel. The Zionists started the ‘drive the Jews into the sea’ slogan and attributed it to the PLO. In 1969 we said we wanted to establish a democratic state where Jews, Christians and Muslims can all live together. The Zionists said they do not choose to live with any people other than Jews… We said to the Zionist Jews, all right, if you do not want a secular, democratic state for all of us, then we will take another route. In 1974 I said we are ready to establish our independent state in any part from which Israel will withdraw.”
As noted by experts like Roger Garaudy and others, the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem can come only from the international community. The solution must be as fair as possible given the level of injustice already inflicted upon the native Palestinian people in the last 62 years. Given the birth of the bastard state of Israel that the UN itself sanctioned, it would be unfair, although not unjust, today for the Palestinians to claim territorial rights over the entire Palestine. Its own leadership has duly recognized the complexity of the problem and has therefore compromised showing willingness to accept the truncated territories based on the pre-1967 border. The Arab proposal put forth in the last few decades has also echoed the same sentiment. The objection thus far has come only from the Zionist expansionists who still are locked in their unfounded myths. If they are wise and prudent, they must change that poisonous mindset, shun their violent means to subdue the native population and let the Palestinians live freely and securely without being violated. The world community, including the Arab League, will ensure the security of the Israeli state within the pre-1967 border.
As the most powerful nation on earth and Israel’s greatest benefactor, the United States has a very critical role to play in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis. America needs to take a bold stand that is moral, just and fair. She cannot afford to have her national interest mortgaged to Israel or to her pro-Israel lobby within. As Professors Mearsheimer and Walt had said, “Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion of the Lobby’s influence and a more open debate about US interests in this vital region. Israel’s well-being is one of those interests, but its continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel’s long-term interests as well.”
The Israeli leaders must answer this existential question now: what is better - the prevalent apartheid character of the Zionist state or a peaceful solution with the native Palestinians that allows them to live in peace with their neighbors within the pre-1967 border? Before answering this crucial question, they may like to reflect that the days of Bantustan are over. It did not work in South Africa and it won’t work in today’s Israel. Israel gains more from a viable and functioning Palestinian state than without, and surely not with its horrible apartheid apparatus intact.
The Israeli leaders may also like to listen to former President Carter who said, “Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law… It will be a tragedy – for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world – if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”
References: (see Media Monitors Network)
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Obama and his conservative critics in the media
Do you listen to conservative talk show hosts in America? I usually don’t. But once in a while, no matter how stupid, obscene and arrogant they sound, you simply can’t ignore them. They make news with their ludicrous discoveries and insulting, provocative and lop-sided comments. What endears them to their diehard audience is that they are also unapologetic with their many unfounded claims and accusations. Humility is not a word to be found in their dictionary!
Rush Limbaugh is one such talk show host who is much admired in the Republican side of the aisle in the Capitol Hill. Even former Vice President Cheney had no hesitation to pick him over retired four-star General Colin Powell as a grass-root Republican. One would have thought from last year’s massive Republican fallout with the American voters that days of Limbaugh’s brand of hard-core conservatism are over. But the fact that he still continues to amuse his conservative audience while bemusing his detractors with his radio program proves that his brand still resonates with the rank and file of the Republican Party.
In the absence of proven Republican leadership in the Congress, Rush is also trying to shepherd the defeated souls with issues which may look too ridiculous or non-issues to others but are sure to rally the conservative crowd. He is trying to resuscitate the almost moribund party.
Limbaugh’s recent discovery is that Obama is trying to lay a foundation for a third term to serve beyond 2016. Limbaugh told his national radio audience, “I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment.”
As pointed out by Rick Pedraza in a Newsmax report, Limbaugh has a point. After Obama was sworn in, Congressman Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation in the House to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms or 10 years in office. Serrano’s justification for the bill is that, until 1951, nothing prevented a president from serving more than two terms. Additionally, a Web site, End22.com, is dedicated to abolishing the 22nd Amendment. It appears that both the congressman and the website have points, too. There was nothing in the original Constitution of 1787 that barred a third or fourth term for presidents. But the question is: even if the 22nd Amendment is repealed will Obama seek the third term?
The “all-knowing expert” Limbaugh has his own doubts; although such doubts have not stopped him from making a big fuss on Obama’s third term (forget that Mr. Obama has not yet completed his first half of the first year in his office, let alone getting elected the second time). He said, “He may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his ‘cult-like’ followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is ‘loved’ and ‘adored’ has carte blanche once elected — just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it.”
To explain why Obama may run for the third term, Limbaugh said Obama has sympathy for dictators. He inherited that mindset, or should we say, gene, from his Kenyan father who arguably was a Marxist, explains Limbaugh. So Rush’s logic dictates, Obama must be a communist, too, if not, a communist sympathizer! All the commies are dictators when they grab the state power. That explains, why Obama is with “the bad guys on the world stage,” namely Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (who likened the former President Bush to the devil in his speech at the UN General Assembly in September of 2006) and Manuel Zelaya of Honduras! Otherwise, why would the Obama Administration condemn the coup in Honduras that recently unseated the democratically elected President Zelaya? Micheletti's interim government says the ouster was a constitutional transition carried out by the army and supported by the Supreme Court because Zelaya had illegally tried to organize a vote on changing presidential term limits. (The same accusation of changing the presidential term limits is made against Obama by Rush.)
Limbaugh was also upset with immigration. He says, “[If Obama] succeeds with amnesty, for example, and all the illegal aliens are instantly made citizens — he'll be too important. Just like right now — he's too big to fail as far as the drive-bys are concerned; he's too important to be replaced. No one else can lead the nation, they will say.”
During a news conference recently, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked whether Obama supports Serrano’s House Joint Resolution No. 5, which, if passed, could lead the way for an Obama run at a third term. He answered, “I think the president is firmly in support of an amendment that would limit his time in the presidency to eight years if he's given that awesome responsibility by the American people.”
Of course, we can’t expect Limbaugh to agree with such assertions now. He does not and wants to wait until 2016, or who knows even earlier, to find out the veracity of his own claims on Obama.
It appears that these Limbaugh Republicans are not the only ones now crying foul with President Obama. There are also guys like Dick Morris, ex-campaign manager for President Bill Clinton. Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign in late August of 1996. Since that fallout, he has been a very harsh critic of the Clintons. With his new book, Catastrophe, co-written with his wife Eileen McGann, it is obvious that he is mad as hell not only with his former boss but also with Obama, Pelosi, and the Washington Democrats whom he accuses of systematically sabotaging American values, the American economy and American way of life.
Dick and Eileen think that (1) Obama and his radical policies will destroy American healthcare system so that no one gets adequate care; (2) Obama designed his bank rescue plan to pave the way for nationalization of the banks and socialization of the economy; (3) Obama firmly believes in government control of our major industries; (4) Obama plans to reshape the political landscape to keep the left in power for decades by cooking the census, enfranchising illegal immigrants, muzzling talk radio, and coercing hardworking Americans into big labor unions against their will. If these are not enough reasons to rally the lost Republican souls together to unseat Obama in the next election, consider the following cockamamie theories of Dick and Eileen: Obama is attacking those who fight terrorism while letting the terrorists go free; Obama gives aid to Hamas while Shariah law threatens to take over America; Obama has all but repealed the Declaration of Independence and put Americans under a worldwide, European-dominated financial regulatory system.
Well, there is a name for such a behavior. It is called paranoia. Unfortunately, with names like Dick, Bill and Rush and a red skin, many red-necked Americans are willing to listen and buy their stuffs. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why, like Rush in the 1990s, Dick is currently in the best seller list with his latest fear-mongering discoveries about America!
Interestingly, Limbaugh was a drug addict and was charged with a felony for doctor-shopping in a bid to secure multiple prescriptions for powerful painkillers like OxyContin in a Florida court in 2006. He is also a Bible-thumping Christian who divorced his wife. You may also recall that Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign in late August of 1996 after reports surfaced that he had been involved with a prostitute. You may also remember that radio talk show host Bill Bennett, the conservative political pundit and former Secretary of Education, has gambling addiction. Let’s also not forget the other Bill of the O’Reilley Factor, who was charged with sexual harassment of his producer Andrea Mackris. It is no accident that the views of these addicts and perverts are so similar. They are war-mongering fundamentalist bigots who have a holier than thou notion of themselves and yet are unmindful of the so-called New Testament verse: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10)
With co-author Eileen McGann, Dick says: "IT'S TIME TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY." To them, “This is no time for apathy or alienation or hopelessness. It’s a time for action.”
With guys like these molding Americans’ opinions, America, for too long, has been known around the world more for its hypocrisy than anything just and fair in foreign policy making. Probably, Americans need to take back America from the clutches of these hypocritical conservative talk-show hosts before it is too late.
Endnotes:
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today." http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/09/20/chavez.un/index.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56424C20090707?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11569
https://www.newsmaxstore.com/nm_mag/catastrophe.cfm?promo_code=29F5-1
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/limbaughmug1.html
http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2004/06/rush_limbaugh_d.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bennett#Gambling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Reilly_(political_commentator)
Rush Limbaugh is one such talk show host who is much admired in the Republican side of the aisle in the Capitol Hill. Even former Vice President Cheney had no hesitation to pick him over retired four-star General Colin Powell as a grass-root Republican. One would have thought from last year’s massive Republican fallout with the American voters that days of Limbaugh’s brand of hard-core conservatism are over. But the fact that he still continues to amuse his conservative audience while bemusing his detractors with his radio program proves that his brand still resonates with the rank and file of the Republican Party.
In the absence of proven Republican leadership in the Congress, Rush is also trying to shepherd the defeated souls with issues which may look too ridiculous or non-issues to others but are sure to rally the conservative crowd. He is trying to resuscitate the almost moribund party.
Limbaugh’s recent discovery is that Obama is trying to lay a foundation for a third term to serve beyond 2016. Limbaugh told his national radio audience, “I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment.”
As pointed out by Rick Pedraza in a Newsmax report, Limbaugh has a point. After Obama was sworn in, Congressman Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation in the House to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms or 10 years in office. Serrano’s justification for the bill is that, until 1951, nothing prevented a president from serving more than two terms. Additionally, a Web site, End22.com, is dedicated to abolishing the 22nd Amendment. It appears that both the congressman and the website have points, too. There was nothing in the original Constitution of 1787 that barred a third or fourth term for presidents. But the question is: even if the 22nd Amendment is repealed will Obama seek the third term?
The “all-knowing expert” Limbaugh has his own doubts; although such doubts have not stopped him from making a big fuss on Obama’s third term (forget that Mr. Obama has not yet completed his first half of the first year in his office, let alone getting elected the second time). He said, “He may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his ‘cult-like’ followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is ‘loved’ and ‘adored’ has carte blanche once elected — just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it.”
To explain why Obama may run for the third term, Limbaugh said Obama has sympathy for dictators. He inherited that mindset, or should we say, gene, from his Kenyan father who arguably was a Marxist, explains Limbaugh. So Rush’s logic dictates, Obama must be a communist, too, if not, a communist sympathizer! All the commies are dictators when they grab the state power. That explains, why Obama is with “the bad guys on the world stage,” namely Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (who likened the former President Bush to the devil in his speech at the UN General Assembly in September of 2006) and Manuel Zelaya of Honduras! Otherwise, why would the Obama Administration condemn the coup in Honduras that recently unseated the democratically elected President Zelaya? Micheletti's interim government says the ouster was a constitutional transition carried out by the army and supported by the Supreme Court because Zelaya had illegally tried to organize a vote on changing presidential term limits. (The same accusation of changing the presidential term limits is made against Obama by Rush.)
Limbaugh was also upset with immigration. He says, “[If Obama] succeeds with amnesty, for example, and all the illegal aliens are instantly made citizens — he'll be too important. Just like right now — he's too big to fail as far as the drive-bys are concerned; he's too important to be replaced. No one else can lead the nation, they will say.”
During a news conference recently, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked whether Obama supports Serrano’s House Joint Resolution No. 5, which, if passed, could lead the way for an Obama run at a third term. He answered, “I think the president is firmly in support of an amendment that would limit his time in the presidency to eight years if he's given that awesome responsibility by the American people.”
Of course, we can’t expect Limbaugh to agree with such assertions now. He does not and wants to wait until 2016, or who knows even earlier, to find out the veracity of his own claims on Obama.
It appears that these Limbaugh Republicans are not the only ones now crying foul with President Obama. There are also guys like Dick Morris, ex-campaign manager for President Bill Clinton. Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign in late August of 1996. Since that fallout, he has been a very harsh critic of the Clintons. With his new book, Catastrophe, co-written with his wife Eileen McGann, it is obvious that he is mad as hell not only with his former boss but also with Obama, Pelosi, and the Washington Democrats whom he accuses of systematically sabotaging American values, the American economy and American way of life.
Dick and Eileen think that (1) Obama and his radical policies will destroy American healthcare system so that no one gets adequate care; (2) Obama designed his bank rescue plan to pave the way for nationalization of the banks and socialization of the economy; (3) Obama firmly believes in government control of our major industries; (4) Obama plans to reshape the political landscape to keep the left in power for decades by cooking the census, enfranchising illegal immigrants, muzzling talk radio, and coercing hardworking Americans into big labor unions against their will. If these are not enough reasons to rally the lost Republican souls together to unseat Obama in the next election, consider the following cockamamie theories of Dick and Eileen: Obama is attacking those who fight terrorism while letting the terrorists go free; Obama gives aid to Hamas while Shariah law threatens to take over America; Obama has all but repealed the Declaration of Independence and put Americans under a worldwide, European-dominated financial regulatory system.
Well, there is a name for such a behavior. It is called paranoia. Unfortunately, with names like Dick, Bill and Rush and a red skin, many red-necked Americans are willing to listen and buy their stuffs. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why, like Rush in the 1990s, Dick is currently in the best seller list with his latest fear-mongering discoveries about America!
Interestingly, Limbaugh was a drug addict and was charged with a felony for doctor-shopping in a bid to secure multiple prescriptions for powerful painkillers like OxyContin in a Florida court in 2006. He is also a Bible-thumping Christian who divorced his wife. You may also recall that Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign in late August of 1996 after reports surfaced that he had been involved with a prostitute. You may also remember that radio talk show host Bill Bennett, the conservative political pundit and former Secretary of Education, has gambling addiction. Let’s also not forget the other Bill of the O’Reilley Factor, who was charged with sexual harassment of his producer Andrea Mackris. It is no accident that the views of these addicts and perverts are so similar. They are war-mongering fundamentalist bigots who have a holier than thou notion of themselves and yet are unmindful of the so-called New Testament verse: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10)
With co-author Eileen McGann, Dick says: "IT'S TIME TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY." To them, “This is no time for apathy or alienation or hopelessness. It’s a time for action.”
With guys like these molding Americans’ opinions, America, for too long, has been known around the world more for its hypocrisy than anything just and fair in foreign policy making. Probably, Americans need to take back America from the clutches of these hypocritical conservative talk-show hosts before it is too late.
Endnotes:
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today." http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/09/20/chavez.un/index.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56424C20090707?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11569
https://www.newsmaxstore.com/nm_mag/catastrophe.cfm?promo_code=29F5-1
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/limbaughmug1.html
http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2004/06/rush_limbaugh_d.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bennett#Gambling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Reilly_(political_commentator)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tipaimukh – Another Deathtrap Like Farakka
Anyone who has visited a hydroelectric power facility knows that there is tremendous ecological impact felt on either side of the dam. One side gets flooded while the other side only sees trickling water flowing downstream, unless sluice gates are opened periodically to release and control water flow. If the flow of water is managed solely by a hostile government such can create a devastating effect on the surrounding territories, especially those living in the downstream of the river. Such a unilateral decision to construct a dam is criminal when the river is international with its water flowing through multiple countries, i.e., not limited to the country of origin.
In the 1940s and '50s many hydroelectric dams were built in the western world to produce cheap electricity. However, with time many developed countries have abandoned the process altogether and moved into more safer and environment-friendly alternatives. Nuclear technology has become one such alternative to address growing energy demand.
Unfortunately, as with almost any new technology these days, the western world has a monopoly in the nuclear technology also. Thus, while these countries know about the devastating effect of fossil fuels to our atmosphere and the grave ecological impact of hydroelectric power generation plants, they are not willing to transfer the much-needed environment-friendly nuclear technology to technologically weaker countries. Not only that as we have seen even when a developing country like Iran likes to pursue this technology to meet its growing energy needs, let alone ensuring a cleaner atmosphere, they are barred entry into the caste-ridden nuclear club.
Suspicion runs so deep among these paranoid nuclear-Brahmins that they think that one day the untouchable nomo-Sudras will take revenge upon them, let alone demand the same Brahmin status. And this they can't allow by hook or crook. As a result of this tug of war, there has not been much progress to either technology transfer or lowering of the green-house effect. Consequently, more vulnerable countries like Bangladesh are forced to deal with devastating effect of global climate change. To these low lying countries, natural calamites like the Sidr and the Aila are now becoming regular yearly features to deal with! Experts tell us that by the middle of this century, Bangladesh will have 30 million people that will be uprooted from their homes in the coastal areas requiring relocation elsewhere. They will add to the misery of the country.
In the last several years, populous countries like India and China that have already joined the nuclear club, and yet feel that they are looked down as the nomo-Sudras by the traditional blue-eyed, white nuclear-Brahmins, have tried to extract some advantage in the form of technology transfer by promising reduction in carbon emission; but not always successfully. And as far as the real untouchables are concerned - countries that have failed to join the nuclear-club yet - there is not much that they can bargain for. They are simply ignored. And worse yet, their worst nightmares are the former nomo-Sudras like India.
In recent days, Bangladesh seems to have woken up to the danger posed by construction of the Tipaimukh Dam in the neighboring Manipur state of India. In what follows before delving into the Tipaimukh project I would like to share some facts surrounding the Farakka Barrage. Although the construction of the Farakka Barrage was completed during the Mujib rule in 1974-5, the decision to build this dam can be traced back to 1951. In those days, hydroelectric dams were popular methods to generating electric power. India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan planned on building hundreds of hydropower dams from rivers that flowed down from the Himalayas. The Farakka dam was built to divert water from the Ganges River into the Hooghly River during the dry season (January to June), in order to flush out the accumulating silt which in the 1950s and 1960s was a problem at the major port of Kolkata on the Hooghly River. A series of negotiations between the Pakistani and Indian governments failed to persuade India into abandoning the Farakka project. The World Bank, the I.M.F and other international financial institutions financed the project.
After Bangladesh’s independence the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission met over 90 times to discuss the Farakka Barrage issue, but without any results. In April 1975, Bangladesh agreed to a trial operation of the Farakka Barrage for a period of 41 days from April 21 to May 31, 1975 to divert 11,000-16,000 cfs (cusecs) with the understanding that India will not operate feeder canal until a final agreement was reached between India and Bangladesh on the sharing of Ganges water. Bangladesh was assured of getting 40,000 cusecs during the dry season.
Unfortunately, soon after Sk. Mujib’s assassination in August 15, 1975, taking advantage of the political change in Bangladesh, India violated the agreement (MOU) by cheating and diverting the full capacity of 40,000 cusecs unilaterally. The matter was brought to the attention of U.N. General Assembly, which on November 26, 1976 adopted a consensus statement directing the parties to arrive at a fair and expeditious settlement. On November 5, 1977 the Ganges Waters Agreement was signed, assuring 34,500 cusecs for Bangladesh. The five-year treaty expired in 1982 and after several shorter extensions lapsed entirely in 1989. The JRC statistics shows very clearly that Bangladesh did not get her due share during all those years (1977-91). There was no improvement of the situation during the first Khaleda Zia Administration (1991-96) with average water share reduced to 10,000 to 12,000 cusecs, with one extreme event of only 9,000 cusecs, during the dry season.
After Sk. Hasina was elected Prime Minister, she visited India and signed a treaty with her counterpart Deve Gowda on Dec. 12, 1996. The Treaty addressed the heart of the conflict: water allocation (35,000 cusecs) during the five months of the dry season (January-May). During the rest of the year, there is sufficient water that India can operate the Farakka diversion without creating problems for Bangladesh. The treaty stipulated that below a certain flow rate, India and Bangladesh will each share half of the water. Above a certain limit, Bangladesh will be guaranteed a certain minimum level, and if the water flow exceeds a given limit, India will withdraw a given amount, and the balance will be received by Bangladesh (which will be more than 50%).
The statement of Mr. I.K. Gujral, External Affairs Minister in the Rajya Sabha on December 12, 1996 on the visit of Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh to India and the signing of the treaty on the sharing of Ganges water at Farakka reads: “[D]uring the critical period within the lean season, i.e. from March 1 to May 10, India and Bangladesh each shall receive a guaranteed flow of 35,000 cusecs of water in an alternating sequence of three 10-day periods each. This is aimed at meeting the fundamental requirements of both our countries through a just and reasonable sharing of the burden of shortage. The Treaty also has the merit of being a long-term arrangement combined with scope for reviews at shorter intervals to study the impact of the sharing formula and to make needed adjustments. While the Treaty will be for 30 years and renewable on mutual consent, there is a provision of mandatory reviews at the end of 5 years and even earlier after 2 years with provisions for adjustments as required. Pending a fresh understanding after the review stage, Bangladesh would continue to receive 90% of its share in accordance with the new formula. We would thus avoid a situation where there is no agreement on the sharing of the Ganga waters between India and Bangladesh… As the House would recall, we have already taken initiatives in the commercial sphere by extending tariff concessions to Bangladesh on a range of products of export interest to them. We propose to extend commercial credits of Rs. 1 billion to enhance trade relations further.”
In the light of the above facts, it is difficult to sustain accusations that the 1996 Treaty went against the interest of Bangladesh, becoming a fait accompli.
It is true though that India had not kept her side of the bargain since signing of the treaty. The Joint River Commission (JRC) statistics, as quoted by Syful Islam in the New Nation, March 9, 2009, shows that in 1999 Bangladesh got 1,033 cusecs of water at Teesta barrage point against its normal requirements of 10,000 cusecs of water. After JRC meeting in 2000 the water flow rose to 4,530 cusecs, in January 2001 it reduced to 1406 cusecs, in January 2002 to 1,000 cusecs, in January 2003 to 1,100 cusecs, in November 2006 to 950 cusecs, in January 2007 to 525 cusecs and in January 2008 to 1,500 cusecs.
There also seems to be some disagreement with India on the JRC cusec numbers on the flow of water received in Bangladesh. It is thus necessary that both the parties agree on how to expand and improve the flow measurement system for all rivers entering Bangladesh from outside so that there is absolutely no conflict on the numbers of cusecs on the flow of water. Bangladesh has also failed to hold India accountable for keeping her side of the already agreed upon treaties. India’s behavior mimics those of Israel in dishonoring every treaty that the rogue state had signed with the Palestinian Authority.
Let’s now look at the disastrous effect of the Farakka Barrage on Bangladesh. The immediate effects have been (1) reduction in agricultural products due to insufficient water for irrigation; (2) reduction in aquatic population; (3) river transportation problems during dry season; (4) increased salinity threatening crops, animal life drinking water, and industrial activities in southwest Bangladesh. The long term effects, which are already being felt, include: (a) one fourth of the fertile agricultural land will become wasteland due to a shortage of water; (b) thirty million lives are affected through environmental and economical ruin; (c) an estimated annual economic loss of over half a billion dollars in agricultural, fisheries, navigation and industries; (d) frequent flooding due to environmental imbalance and changes in the natural flow of the Ganges. A BSS report of 2004 stated that over 80 rivers of the country dried up during last three decades due to the construction of the Farakka barrage on the Indian side of the river Ganges.
Bridge and Husain, researchers in Kansas, USA, have identified Farakka as the root cause behind arsenic poisoning with groundwater in Bangladesh and West Bengal State of India.
As to its impact in India, the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), report (Nov. 1999) to the World Commission on Dams is quite revealing. It says, “Farakka Barrage Project taken up for the resuscitation of the navigational status of the Port of Calcutta has resulted in massive devastation in Malda on its upstream and Murshidabad on its downstream in West Bengal. Huge sedimentation, increasing flood intensity and increasing tendency of bank failure are some of its impacts. Erosion has swept away large areas of these two districts causing large scale population displacement, border disputes with Bihar and Bangladesh, pauperization and marginalisation of the rural communities living by the river and creation of neo-refugees on the chars.”
So, it is clear that even the supposed beneficiary - the state of West Bengal - did not benefit from the project. Farakka Barrage has rightly been termed by some environmentalists as the greatest man-made eco-disaster of our time. If we had imagined Farakka was the last of such criminal calamities imposed on Bangladesh, we are wrong.
Syful Islam mentions about a study conducted by the “International Rivers”, a U.S.-based NGO that protects rivers and defends the rights of communities, which revealed that India had already built 74 dams, Nepal 15, Pakistan 6 and Bhutan 5 in the Himalayan region in the recent years. It also found that 37 Indian, 7 Pakistani and 2 Nepalese dams were under construction in that area. The study also identified that India had planned to build 318 dams, Nepal 37, Pakistan 35 and Bhutan 16 to add over 1,50,000 MW of additional electricity capacity in the next 20 years. With 4,300 large dams already constructed and many more in the pipeline, India is one of the world's most prolific dam-builders. India is committed to building more than 100 dams in eight states of the north-east corner alone.
If these numbers are true, it is important that the current government issues a white paper disclosing actions taken, if any, by past and present governments to stop India from such projects that are going to be built on international rivers harming Bangladesh.
Let’s now look at Tipaimukh. Manipur needs about 140 MW of power to fulfill the unrestricted demand at the peak hours (1700 hrs to 2200 hrs). The total availability of power from all the Central Sector plants located in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura comes to around 105 MW. The Tipaimukh Dam plan, built on the river Barak, which bifurcates into two streams as it enters Bangladesh as the rivers Surma and Kushiara, has been on the drawing board for nearly 40 years. According to the implementing agency, North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO), this 390-meter-long, 163-meterhigh dam would have an installed capacity of 1,500 MW. As a multipurpose project, the dam also aims at flood moderation, improving navigation, irrigation and aquaculture in the region. Efforts were made in the past to get the World Bank or JBIC (a Japanese development bank) to back the project, but their involvement is still elusive. It is costing India Rs. 6,800 crore — an escalation from the earlier estimated expenditure of Rs 5,163 crore. The foundation stone of the Tipaimukh project was laid by India’s Union minister for industries and Cachar’s representative in the Lok Sabha, Sontosh Mohan Dev, along with other central ministers, on December 16, 2006. According to a NEEPCO source there, the work in January of 2007 mainly dealt with underground drilling at the reservoir site of the project. The Brahmaputra Board, a wing of the Union water resources ministry, drilled those sites in 1997.
The proposed dam is unpopular in the Manipur State where it is being constructed. Experts there have rightly termed it a geo-tectonic blunder of international dimensions. The Indian government's decision to construct the Tipaimukh Dam in the North-east India is not only arrogant it is criminal to the core. It will have lasting devastating impact in the entire region. It will adversely affect millions of Bangladeshis living down south in the north-east corner of the country, weakening their means of livelihood, forcing them to become internally displaced people, and thereby worsening Bangladesh's overall economy. It will harm bilateral relationship between the two neighboring countries. Bangladeshi people have already suffered miserably from the Farakka Barrage and cannot afford to see another one built to threaten them.
Again, in the national interest, it is important that a white paper be issued that details actions taken thus far by the Bangladesh government – past and present administrations - about the Tipaimukh project. Is there anything that conscientious human beings of our planet can do to stop India from building dams that kill people?
Our experience in the past fifty years has also taught us that humanity has brought more harm than good by challenging the natural course of rivers. Man-made systems like hydroelectric dams have failed to wipe out famine and hunger. More people have become poor than rich, which often time is concentrated amongst the very few that are involved with construction project. As Arundhati Roy has once said about dams, “They're a guaranteed way of taking a farmer's wisdom away from him. They're a brazen means of taking water, land and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to the rich. Their reservoirs displace huge populations of people, leaving them homeless and destitute. Ecologically, they're in the doghouse. They lay the earth to waste. They cause floods, water-logging, salinity, they spread disease. There is mounting evidence that links Big Dams to earthquakes.”
The Indian government decision to go ahead with hydroelectric dams to meet her electric demand is simply stupefying. Its decision for the Tipaimukh project seems equally short-sighted, too irresponsible, and can only antagonize people on either sides of the border. If India cares about meeting energy needs in the north-eastern corner she would better serve the interest of her people by choosing the nuclear alternative. India has several nuclear power plants that are operating in various parts of India. It is inconceivable that she cannot afford to build one extra plant in the north-east corner of the country to meet her energy demand.
• Can India be persuaded to abandon dam projects on international rivers in favor of alternative options for energy need?
• Given India’s long history of dishonoring her agreements on Farakka with Bangladesh, can she be trusted for keeping any new promise?
• Can Bangladesh invoke the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses and the 2004 Berlin Rules on Water Resources to ensure her rights?
• If treaties cannot be negotiated in a reasonable time, should Bangladesh issue her own claims on the water flows based on existing international law, register such claims with appropriate authorities and friendly countries, and follow up with regular systematic reports on water flows and water quality?
• Are the UN and/or the International Court of Justice the only options Bangladesh has to redress her grievances on water with India?
As hinted earlier, the very people targeted for drawing the benefits of the Tipaimukh dam living in the Manipur State has long been fighting a losing battle to stop this project. It is highly unlikely that demonstrations and protests inside Bangladesh would push India to abandon the project now, esp. after spending hundreds of crores of Rupees in front end loading (FEL) activities.
While we are critical of Indian government’s decision to construct dams that produce devastating results affecting tens of millions of people, we have to be self-critical of our own failure to bring world attention to the gargantuan harm that India’s Farakka has already brought upon Bangladesh. If we had succeeded in that endeavor, India today wouldn’t be building the Tipaimukh dam. Whether we like it or not, we must realize that self-interest rules the day. In our world, there are no permanent friends or enemies. We are continuously reminded that what is permanent is self-interest and that has to be pursued vigorously. That says a lot about moral bankruptcy of a world that we live in and share with our neighbors in which might is increasingly becoming right, and the powerless has no effective means to fight against powerful enemies and nations that prey upon them.
There is no doubt that the proposed Tipaimukh project is another deathtrap for Bangladesh. It would be perfidious of any political party to turn this into a narrow partisan issue. A national unity is absolutely necessary on this issue. Our concerned intellectuals also need to explore ideas, actions and programs that may still be meaningful for Bangladesh to pursue.
In the 1940s and '50s many hydroelectric dams were built in the western world to produce cheap electricity. However, with time many developed countries have abandoned the process altogether and moved into more safer and environment-friendly alternatives. Nuclear technology has become one such alternative to address growing energy demand.
Unfortunately, as with almost any new technology these days, the western world has a monopoly in the nuclear technology also. Thus, while these countries know about the devastating effect of fossil fuels to our atmosphere and the grave ecological impact of hydroelectric power generation plants, they are not willing to transfer the much-needed environment-friendly nuclear technology to technologically weaker countries. Not only that as we have seen even when a developing country like Iran likes to pursue this technology to meet its growing energy needs, let alone ensuring a cleaner atmosphere, they are barred entry into the caste-ridden nuclear club.
Suspicion runs so deep among these paranoid nuclear-Brahmins that they think that one day the untouchable nomo-Sudras will take revenge upon them, let alone demand the same Brahmin status. And this they can't allow by hook or crook. As a result of this tug of war, there has not been much progress to either technology transfer or lowering of the green-house effect. Consequently, more vulnerable countries like Bangladesh are forced to deal with devastating effect of global climate change. To these low lying countries, natural calamites like the Sidr and the Aila are now becoming regular yearly features to deal with! Experts tell us that by the middle of this century, Bangladesh will have 30 million people that will be uprooted from their homes in the coastal areas requiring relocation elsewhere. They will add to the misery of the country.
In the last several years, populous countries like India and China that have already joined the nuclear club, and yet feel that they are looked down as the nomo-Sudras by the traditional blue-eyed, white nuclear-Brahmins, have tried to extract some advantage in the form of technology transfer by promising reduction in carbon emission; but not always successfully. And as far as the real untouchables are concerned - countries that have failed to join the nuclear-club yet - there is not much that they can bargain for. They are simply ignored. And worse yet, their worst nightmares are the former nomo-Sudras like India.
In recent days, Bangladesh seems to have woken up to the danger posed by construction of the Tipaimukh Dam in the neighboring Manipur state of India. In what follows before delving into the Tipaimukh project I would like to share some facts surrounding the Farakka Barrage. Although the construction of the Farakka Barrage was completed during the Mujib rule in 1974-5, the decision to build this dam can be traced back to 1951. In those days, hydroelectric dams were popular methods to generating electric power. India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan planned on building hundreds of hydropower dams from rivers that flowed down from the Himalayas. The Farakka dam was built to divert water from the Ganges River into the Hooghly River during the dry season (January to June), in order to flush out the accumulating silt which in the 1950s and 1960s was a problem at the major port of Kolkata on the Hooghly River. A series of negotiations between the Pakistani and Indian governments failed to persuade India into abandoning the Farakka project. The World Bank, the I.M.F and other international financial institutions financed the project.
After Bangladesh’s independence the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission met over 90 times to discuss the Farakka Barrage issue, but without any results. In April 1975, Bangladesh agreed to a trial operation of the Farakka Barrage for a period of 41 days from April 21 to May 31, 1975 to divert 11,000-16,000 cfs (cusecs) with the understanding that India will not operate feeder canal until a final agreement was reached between India and Bangladesh on the sharing of Ganges water. Bangladesh was assured of getting 40,000 cusecs during the dry season.
Unfortunately, soon after Sk. Mujib’s assassination in August 15, 1975, taking advantage of the political change in Bangladesh, India violated the agreement (MOU) by cheating and diverting the full capacity of 40,000 cusecs unilaterally. The matter was brought to the attention of U.N. General Assembly, which on November 26, 1976 adopted a consensus statement directing the parties to arrive at a fair and expeditious settlement. On November 5, 1977 the Ganges Waters Agreement was signed, assuring 34,500 cusecs for Bangladesh. The five-year treaty expired in 1982 and after several shorter extensions lapsed entirely in 1989. The JRC statistics shows very clearly that Bangladesh did not get her due share during all those years (1977-91). There was no improvement of the situation during the first Khaleda Zia Administration (1991-96) with average water share reduced to 10,000 to 12,000 cusecs, with one extreme event of only 9,000 cusecs, during the dry season.
After Sk. Hasina was elected Prime Minister, she visited India and signed a treaty with her counterpart Deve Gowda on Dec. 12, 1996. The Treaty addressed the heart of the conflict: water allocation (35,000 cusecs) during the five months of the dry season (January-May). During the rest of the year, there is sufficient water that India can operate the Farakka diversion without creating problems for Bangladesh. The treaty stipulated that below a certain flow rate, India and Bangladesh will each share half of the water. Above a certain limit, Bangladesh will be guaranteed a certain minimum level, and if the water flow exceeds a given limit, India will withdraw a given amount, and the balance will be received by Bangladesh (which will be more than 50%).
The statement of Mr. I.K. Gujral, External Affairs Minister in the Rajya Sabha on December 12, 1996 on the visit of Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh to India and the signing of the treaty on the sharing of Ganges water at Farakka reads: “[D]uring the critical period within the lean season, i.e. from March 1 to May 10, India and Bangladesh each shall receive a guaranteed flow of 35,000 cusecs of water in an alternating sequence of three 10-day periods each. This is aimed at meeting the fundamental requirements of both our countries through a just and reasonable sharing of the burden of shortage. The Treaty also has the merit of being a long-term arrangement combined with scope for reviews at shorter intervals to study the impact of the sharing formula and to make needed adjustments. While the Treaty will be for 30 years and renewable on mutual consent, there is a provision of mandatory reviews at the end of 5 years and even earlier after 2 years with provisions for adjustments as required. Pending a fresh understanding after the review stage, Bangladesh would continue to receive 90% of its share in accordance with the new formula. We would thus avoid a situation where there is no agreement on the sharing of the Ganga waters between India and Bangladesh… As the House would recall, we have already taken initiatives in the commercial sphere by extending tariff concessions to Bangladesh on a range of products of export interest to them. We propose to extend commercial credits of Rs. 1 billion to enhance trade relations further.”
In the light of the above facts, it is difficult to sustain accusations that the 1996 Treaty went against the interest of Bangladesh, becoming a fait accompli.
It is true though that India had not kept her side of the bargain since signing of the treaty. The Joint River Commission (JRC) statistics, as quoted by Syful Islam in the New Nation, March 9, 2009, shows that in 1999 Bangladesh got 1,033 cusecs of water at Teesta barrage point against its normal requirements of 10,000 cusecs of water. After JRC meeting in 2000 the water flow rose to 4,530 cusecs, in January 2001 it reduced to 1406 cusecs, in January 2002 to 1,000 cusecs, in January 2003 to 1,100 cusecs, in November 2006 to 950 cusecs, in January 2007 to 525 cusecs and in January 2008 to 1,500 cusecs.
There also seems to be some disagreement with India on the JRC cusec numbers on the flow of water received in Bangladesh. It is thus necessary that both the parties agree on how to expand and improve the flow measurement system for all rivers entering Bangladesh from outside so that there is absolutely no conflict on the numbers of cusecs on the flow of water. Bangladesh has also failed to hold India accountable for keeping her side of the already agreed upon treaties. India’s behavior mimics those of Israel in dishonoring every treaty that the rogue state had signed with the Palestinian Authority.
Let’s now look at the disastrous effect of the Farakka Barrage on Bangladesh. The immediate effects have been (1) reduction in agricultural products due to insufficient water for irrigation; (2) reduction in aquatic population; (3) river transportation problems during dry season; (4) increased salinity threatening crops, animal life drinking water, and industrial activities in southwest Bangladesh. The long term effects, which are already being felt, include: (a) one fourth of the fertile agricultural land will become wasteland due to a shortage of water; (b) thirty million lives are affected through environmental and economical ruin; (c) an estimated annual economic loss of over half a billion dollars in agricultural, fisheries, navigation and industries; (d) frequent flooding due to environmental imbalance and changes in the natural flow of the Ganges. A BSS report of 2004 stated that over 80 rivers of the country dried up during last three decades due to the construction of the Farakka barrage on the Indian side of the river Ganges.
Bridge and Husain, researchers in Kansas, USA, have identified Farakka as the root cause behind arsenic poisoning with groundwater in Bangladesh and West Bengal State of India.
As to its impact in India, the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), report (Nov. 1999) to the World Commission on Dams is quite revealing. It says, “Farakka Barrage Project taken up for the resuscitation of the navigational status of the Port of Calcutta has resulted in massive devastation in Malda on its upstream and Murshidabad on its downstream in West Bengal. Huge sedimentation, increasing flood intensity and increasing tendency of bank failure are some of its impacts. Erosion has swept away large areas of these two districts causing large scale population displacement, border disputes with Bihar and Bangladesh, pauperization and marginalisation of the rural communities living by the river and creation of neo-refugees on the chars.”
So, it is clear that even the supposed beneficiary - the state of West Bengal - did not benefit from the project. Farakka Barrage has rightly been termed by some environmentalists as the greatest man-made eco-disaster of our time. If we had imagined Farakka was the last of such criminal calamities imposed on Bangladesh, we are wrong.
Syful Islam mentions about a study conducted by the “International Rivers”, a U.S.-based NGO that protects rivers and defends the rights of communities, which revealed that India had already built 74 dams, Nepal 15, Pakistan 6 and Bhutan 5 in the Himalayan region in the recent years. It also found that 37 Indian, 7 Pakistani and 2 Nepalese dams were under construction in that area. The study also identified that India had planned to build 318 dams, Nepal 37, Pakistan 35 and Bhutan 16 to add over 1,50,000 MW of additional electricity capacity in the next 20 years. With 4,300 large dams already constructed and many more in the pipeline, India is one of the world's most prolific dam-builders. India is committed to building more than 100 dams in eight states of the north-east corner alone.
If these numbers are true, it is important that the current government issues a white paper disclosing actions taken, if any, by past and present governments to stop India from such projects that are going to be built on international rivers harming Bangladesh.
Let’s now look at Tipaimukh. Manipur needs about 140 MW of power to fulfill the unrestricted demand at the peak hours (1700 hrs to 2200 hrs). The total availability of power from all the Central Sector plants located in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura comes to around 105 MW. The Tipaimukh Dam plan, built on the river Barak, which bifurcates into two streams as it enters Bangladesh as the rivers Surma and Kushiara, has been on the drawing board for nearly 40 years. According to the implementing agency, North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO), this 390-meter-long, 163-meterhigh dam would have an installed capacity of 1,500 MW. As a multipurpose project, the dam also aims at flood moderation, improving navigation, irrigation and aquaculture in the region. Efforts were made in the past to get the World Bank or JBIC (a Japanese development bank) to back the project, but their involvement is still elusive. It is costing India Rs. 6,800 crore — an escalation from the earlier estimated expenditure of Rs 5,163 crore. The foundation stone of the Tipaimukh project was laid by India’s Union minister for industries and Cachar’s representative in the Lok Sabha, Sontosh Mohan Dev, along with other central ministers, on December 16, 2006. According to a NEEPCO source there, the work in January of 2007 mainly dealt with underground drilling at the reservoir site of the project. The Brahmaputra Board, a wing of the Union water resources ministry, drilled those sites in 1997.
The proposed dam is unpopular in the Manipur State where it is being constructed. Experts there have rightly termed it a geo-tectonic blunder of international dimensions. The Indian government's decision to construct the Tipaimukh Dam in the North-east India is not only arrogant it is criminal to the core. It will have lasting devastating impact in the entire region. It will adversely affect millions of Bangladeshis living down south in the north-east corner of the country, weakening their means of livelihood, forcing them to become internally displaced people, and thereby worsening Bangladesh's overall economy. It will harm bilateral relationship between the two neighboring countries. Bangladeshi people have already suffered miserably from the Farakka Barrage and cannot afford to see another one built to threaten them.
Again, in the national interest, it is important that a white paper be issued that details actions taken thus far by the Bangladesh government – past and present administrations - about the Tipaimukh project. Is there anything that conscientious human beings of our planet can do to stop India from building dams that kill people?
Our experience in the past fifty years has also taught us that humanity has brought more harm than good by challenging the natural course of rivers. Man-made systems like hydroelectric dams have failed to wipe out famine and hunger. More people have become poor than rich, which often time is concentrated amongst the very few that are involved with construction project. As Arundhati Roy has once said about dams, “They're a guaranteed way of taking a farmer's wisdom away from him. They're a brazen means of taking water, land and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to the rich. Their reservoirs displace huge populations of people, leaving them homeless and destitute. Ecologically, they're in the doghouse. They lay the earth to waste. They cause floods, water-logging, salinity, they spread disease. There is mounting evidence that links Big Dams to earthquakes.”
The Indian government decision to go ahead with hydroelectric dams to meet her electric demand is simply stupefying. Its decision for the Tipaimukh project seems equally short-sighted, too irresponsible, and can only antagonize people on either sides of the border. If India cares about meeting energy needs in the north-eastern corner she would better serve the interest of her people by choosing the nuclear alternative. India has several nuclear power plants that are operating in various parts of India. It is inconceivable that she cannot afford to build one extra plant in the north-east corner of the country to meet her energy demand.
• Can India be persuaded to abandon dam projects on international rivers in favor of alternative options for energy need?
• Given India’s long history of dishonoring her agreements on Farakka with Bangladesh, can she be trusted for keeping any new promise?
• Can Bangladesh invoke the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses and the 2004 Berlin Rules on Water Resources to ensure her rights?
• If treaties cannot be negotiated in a reasonable time, should Bangladesh issue her own claims on the water flows based on existing international law, register such claims with appropriate authorities and friendly countries, and follow up with regular systematic reports on water flows and water quality?
• Are the UN and/or the International Court of Justice the only options Bangladesh has to redress her grievances on water with India?
As hinted earlier, the very people targeted for drawing the benefits of the Tipaimukh dam living in the Manipur State has long been fighting a losing battle to stop this project. It is highly unlikely that demonstrations and protests inside Bangladesh would push India to abandon the project now, esp. after spending hundreds of crores of Rupees in front end loading (FEL) activities.
While we are critical of Indian government’s decision to construct dams that produce devastating results affecting tens of millions of people, we have to be self-critical of our own failure to bring world attention to the gargantuan harm that India’s Farakka has already brought upon Bangladesh. If we had succeeded in that endeavor, India today wouldn’t be building the Tipaimukh dam. Whether we like it or not, we must realize that self-interest rules the day. In our world, there are no permanent friends or enemies. We are continuously reminded that what is permanent is self-interest and that has to be pursued vigorously. That says a lot about moral bankruptcy of a world that we live in and share with our neighbors in which might is increasingly becoming right, and the powerless has no effective means to fight against powerful enemies and nations that prey upon them.
There is no doubt that the proposed Tipaimukh project is another deathtrap for Bangladesh. It would be perfidious of any political party to turn this into a narrow partisan issue. A national unity is absolutely necessary on this issue. Our concerned intellectuals also need to explore ideas, actions and programs that may still be meaningful for Bangladesh to pursue.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Discussion with a closet Missionary
In a recent posting a closet missionary raised some issues which we often see as part of missionary attacks against Islam. Fortunately, for Muslims our scholars and learned ulama have answered all such questions in the past 14 centuries. Nor we should we forget about the challenge of mubahala that our noble Prophet, Muhammad (S), the seal of the Prophets, offered to the Christian delegation from Najran. [Note: some Muslim websites that are responding to missionary polemics and challenges. Mentions can be made of http://www.answering-christianity.com/ac.htm, http://www.bismikaallahuma.org/ amongst many such sites that have good resources on such matters of comparative religion.]
From the closet missionary's line of argument below, I see some questions emerging: The first question: where does the Qur'an say that the previous scriptures were corrupted? The second question: is it Allah's justice that entire humanity lived without true knowledge of Allah for 600 years?
Here is my opinion: 1. The Qur'an could not be more specific when it says: ""But on account of their breaking their covenant We cursed them (Jews and Christians) and made their hearts hard; they altered the words from their places and they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of; and you shall always discover treachery in them excepting a few of them; so pardon them and turn away; surely Allah loves those who do good (to others)." (5:13) Muslims don't need anything extra to reject the Bible. Still, let me provide some references from the Bible to show that Bible has been corrupted. "`How can you say, "We [the Jews] are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?' (From the NIV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)" A few hundred years before prophet Jeremiah, Prophet Musa (AS) himself warned his community that corruption w ould engulf his community soon after his death. (Deut. 31;25-29). It was no accident that the Jewish people were worshiping idols and gods of the heathens later (Book of Kings). [See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible for a list of books now missing from the Bible.]
Thus, to the question: has the Bible retained textual purity? - the verdict to this question is: no, not just from the point of the original language in which the Scripture was revealed but also from the content itself. It's no accident that we see hundreds of contradictory verses and phrases inundating the Bible. Again, Mowlana Rahmatullah Kairanwi's Izharul Haq shows such verses in great details. If the Bible had retained purity, we would not have seen such major problems with the Bible - Jewish or Christian. The Qur'an on the other hand has retained purity not only in the original language in which it was revealed some 14 centuries ago to Muhammad (S) but also in the content itself. That is why, it is not difficult to understand Allah's promise in Qur'an 15:9 which says: "Verily, We, it is We who have sent down the Dhikr (the Qur'an) and surely We will guard it (from corruption)." There is no such verse in the Bible where Allah promises that He will preserve it from any corruption. Allah made it easy for millions of Muslims, since the time of Prophet Muhammad (S) and until now, to memorize the Qur’an by heart. These people were and are guardians for the message of the Qur’an, correcting any person who errs in one letter of it at any time. Even if today, all the copies of the Qur'an were to be destroyed, by the grace of Allah there are more than a hundred thousand huffaz (memorizers) of the Qur'an who can reproduce it without adding a single extra word.
Thus, when we talk about corruption of the Bible, we are neither making any un-Qur'anic statement, nor anything that cannot be supported from inner criticism of whatever is retained in the Bible.
2. When Allah revealed His words to His prophets and messengers, those words were nothing but the truth. It was however for people to uphold those Truths. They have also been given the aql to reject falsehood in favor of the truth. In this task, all the previous religious communities that came before Islam failed miserably. Thus, they were commanded by Allah, through the latest scripture - the Qur'an, to accept Islam and believe in the message of the Qur'an. The verses 5.15-6 say, "O people of the20Book! There hath come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary): There hath come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book. Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light,- guideth them to a path that is straight." In the next two verses, Allah chastises Christians as kafirs for their distorted beliefs in matters of Jesus and his mother Maryam. In 5:19 Allah warns the people of the previous Scriptures that they have no argument against Allah if they were to reject Muhammad (S), now that he had come and his Qur'an is there for their guidance. Thus, Allah said, "And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers." (3:85) By this, no one should doubt Allah's justice. And yet we know that such verses will not deter rejectors of the truth and the enemies of Allah to reject Islam and Muhammad (S). They will continue to dodge with silly arguments that show their abhorrence for the truth. They say: how was it possible that Allah left humanity without guidance for six centuries, while now that they have the Qu r'an to guide them, they continue to reject it. They cite Qur'anic verses 5.47 to suggest that it's okay to believe in the Gospel. But they forget the verse immediately following which says that the Qur'an is the Muhaiminan (trustworthy in highness and a witness) over all the old Scriptures. So, no matter how these missionaries try to twist words, a reading of the Qur'an is sufficient to dispel their arguments. With the Qur'an's emergence, old scriptures are like old rusted road signs that needed to be replaced by the new one that does not confuse people to find the right direction.
Allah has 99 attributes mentioned in the Qur'an. Of these, His being Just is one such attribute, as is His being Gracious to all creatures (irrespective of whether or not they worship Him) in this world, and His being Merciful to His rightful slaves in the Hereafter. And Allah will judge that befits His Majesty depending on the condition He has left humanity at any time - past, present and future. What is smart of a wise person is to ponder on his/her immediate condition and take actions that are beneficial.
From the closet missionary's line of argument below, I see some questions emerging: The first question: where does the Qur'an say that the previous scriptures were corrupted? The second question: is it Allah's justice that entire humanity lived without true knowledge of Allah for 600 years?
Here is my opinion: 1. The Qur'an could not be more specific when it says: ""But on account of their breaking their covenant We cursed them (Jews and Christians) and made their hearts hard; they altered the words from their places and they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of; and you shall always discover treachery in them excepting a few of them; so pardon them and turn away; surely Allah loves those who do good (to others)." (5:13) Muslims don't need anything extra to reject the Bible. Still, let me provide some references from the Bible to show that Bible has been corrupted. "`How can you say, "We [the Jews] are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?' (From the NIV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)" A few hundred years before prophet Jeremiah, Prophet Musa (AS) himself warned his community that corruption w ould engulf his community soon after his death. (Deut. 31;25-29). It was no accident that the Jewish people were worshiping idols and gods of the heathens later (Book of Kings). [See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible for a list of books now missing from the Bible.]
Thus, to the question: has the Bible retained textual purity? - the verdict to this question is: no, not just from the point of the original language in which the Scripture was revealed but also from the content itself. It's no accident that we see hundreds of contradictory verses and phrases inundating the Bible. Again, Mowlana Rahmatullah Kairanwi's Izharul Haq shows such verses in great details. If the Bible had retained purity, we would not have seen such major problems with the Bible - Jewish or Christian. The Qur'an on the other hand has retained purity not only in the original language in which it was revealed some 14 centuries ago to Muhammad (S) but also in the content itself. That is why, it is not difficult to understand Allah's promise in Qur'an 15:9 which says: "Verily, We, it is We who have sent down the Dhikr (the Qur'an) and surely We will guard it (from corruption)." There is no such verse in the Bible where Allah promises that He will preserve it from any corruption. Allah made it easy for millions of Muslims, since the time of Prophet Muhammad (S) and until now, to memorize the Qur’an by heart. These people were and are guardians for the message of the Qur’an, correcting any person who errs in one letter of it at any time. Even if today, all the copies of the Qur'an were to be destroyed, by the grace of Allah there are more than a hundred thousand huffaz (memorizers) of the Qur'an who can reproduce it without adding a single extra word.
Thus, when we talk about corruption of the Bible, we are neither making any un-Qur'anic statement, nor anything that cannot be supported from inner criticism of whatever is retained in the Bible.
2. When Allah revealed His words to His prophets and messengers, those words were nothing but the truth. It was however for people to uphold those Truths. They have also been given the aql to reject falsehood in favor of the truth. In this task, all the previous religious communities that came before Islam failed miserably. Thus, they were commanded by Allah, through the latest scripture - the Qur'an, to accept Islam and believe in the message of the Qur'an. The verses 5.15-6 say, "O people of the20Book! There hath come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary): There hath come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book. Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light,- guideth them to a path that is straight." In the next two verses, Allah chastises Christians as kafirs for their distorted beliefs in matters of Jesus and his mother Maryam. In 5:19 Allah warns the people of the previous Scriptures that they have no argument against Allah if they were to reject Muhammad (S), now that he had come and his Qur'an is there for their guidance. Thus, Allah said, "And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers." (3:85) By this, no one should doubt Allah's justice. And yet we know that such verses will not deter rejectors of the truth and the enemies of Allah to reject Islam and Muhammad (S). They will continue to dodge with silly arguments that show their abhorrence for the truth. They say: how was it possible that Allah left humanity without guidance for six centuries, while now that they have the Qu r'an to guide them, they continue to reject it. They cite Qur'anic verses 5.47 to suggest that it's okay to believe in the Gospel. But they forget the verse immediately following which says that the Qur'an is the Muhaiminan (trustworthy in highness and a witness) over all the old Scriptures. So, no matter how these missionaries try to twist words, a reading of the Qur'an is sufficient to dispel their arguments. With the Qur'an's emergence, old scriptures are like old rusted road signs that needed to be replaced by the new one that does not confuse people to find the right direction.
Allah has 99 attributes mentioned in the Qur'an. Of these, His being Just is one such attribute, as is His being Gracious to all creatures (irrespective of whether or not they worship Him) in this world, and His being Merciful to His rightful slaves in the Hereafter. And Allah will judge that befits His Majesty depending on the condition He has left humanity at any time - past, present and future. What is smart of a wise person is to ponder on his/her immediate condition and take actions that are beneficial.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson
This past week has been anything but jolly for America with the death of two stars – actress Farrah Fawcett and music icon Michael Jackson. Farrah’s death was not so sudden; she was suffering from cancer and it was a question of days when she would lose her battle. And she died on Wednesday.
But Michael’s was unbelievable! Simply earth-shattering, shocking! No one predicted that he was going to die this soon. He was only fifty years old with parents and siblings living. Well, he had his health problems and has been under physician’s care. But still he was healthy enough to rehearse for his upcoming July European concert “This Is It” tour just the night before. So, when I heard about his death in the evening news, June 25, I could not believe it. I listened for hours to understand how he had died and what people’s feelings were for him. If the reaction of the mourners is one way to measure how one has touched others emotionally, Michael definitely was immensely popular, in spite of the controversies that haunted him for the past two decades. He was not just a star that entertained and made money of his stardom. He was a megastar that touched so many through his superb entertainment since the tender age of five.
I remember when I had come for my studies to the United States, one of the first things I did was to buy his album – the Jackson Five. Later I bought few other albums with his more popular songs. He had by then established himself as a highly gifted singer and a successful stage performer. Listening Michael was not enough to understand his impact on the audience. You had to see him perform; see how he glided backward with effortless grace in a move that would forever after be known as the moonwalk and his movement on the stage like a robot.
As a student at the University of Southern California, I lived a few blocks north of the campus and just within 20 yards of the Shriner Auditorium where he occasionally performed. I could not buy those expensive tickets. The closest I came to watching any of the Jackson 5 was when I bought a ticket for a charitable show for the LAPD where his sister performed a dance routine. Janet was not a star then.
Fortunately, for many of us, we had the videos to see his electrifying performances. By 1982 his singles — ''Billie Jean,'' ''Beat It,'' ''Thriller,'' and so many more had become very popular. The Thriller became the world's best-selling album of all time. There were hardly enough hours in the day for the fledgling MTV network to show the iconic music videos he shot to promote what was quickly recognized as a masterpiece. The 24-year old kid had definitely by then become the King of the Pop. Those videos were simply sensational and wonderful to watch! No star, not even Madonna, could generate so much excitement as Michael was capable of. He was simply the best among all those entertainment stars.
Michael was a very soft spoken person. He had a soft and caring heart and used his extraordinary music talent to fight poverty and raise awareness for caring of children around the globe. He raised millions of dollars in 1985 to fight hunger in Africa through an album “We are the World.”
Although Michael was past his youthful years, he remained a child in his heart and exhibited child like qualities who loved children much. He raised millions of dollars in charity for them. He developed the Never Land Ranch in 1988 and, with its museum and amusement park, tried to entertain children. And yet, his love for them became his greatest nemesis. In 1993 and 2005, he would be falsely charged by some greedy parents of improper mixing or activities with children. He was acquitted of all such charges. However, those false charges ruined him financially and mentally, and adversely affected his music career. He failed to repeat his successes of the 1980s.
In spite of all the popularity he enjoyed, Michael remained a very shy and insecure person. His marriage with Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of another music sensation Elvis Presley, fell apart in 1996 after just two years. He kept a very low profile in the 1990s. But his was an indomitable character that would not be subdued by such mishaps in life. He joined with Pavarotti for a charity concert to raise millions of dollars for global refugees in 1999.
With all the troubles in love, life and failed marriages, he would still seek out talented young musicians and help them launch their career. Many of today’s young American musicians owe their success to him.
Michael was the greatest and most successful music entertainer of all time. He sold 750 million albums, something that is unbelievable for any singer, and would probably never be matched in our lifetime by any musician. He was also a smart investor. It is, therefore, quite puzzling to learn that in his death he owed some $400 million in debt.
Michael was a mega-star by any measure in the entertainment industry. Our world has not seen a singer, composer, producer, dancer and choreographer of his caliber combined in a single individual. He earned millions and gave away also in millions in charity. Although he hasn’t sung lately, he was immensely popular everywhere. He is more known globally than any individual in our planet. Through his music, he will live for ages. To label him as the “King of Pops” is lowering his greatness. He was simply the unrivalled Emperor of popular music.
And yet, Michael was a very lonely person. The bad publicity had hurt his tender soul and forced him to seek solace and find the meaning of life outside America in the Middle East where he lived for months before returning to the USA recently. The only person that he confided in and felt comfortable about sharing his inner pains and thoughts was his brother Jermaine. It was all too natural that when he died, it was Jermaine who told the world that his loving younger brother, the most talented of the Jackson siblings, Michael had died at 2:26 p.m. on Thursday, June 25 at the UCLA Medical Center. With Michael’s death, we lost not only a music icon, we lost a caring, charitable brother. Like Jermaine, let’s pray - May Allah be with you always, Michael.
But Michael’s was unbelievable! Simply earth-shattering, shocking! No one predicted that he was going to die this soon. He was only fifty years old with parents and siblings living. Well, he had his health problems and has been under physician’s care. But still he was healthy enough to rehearse for his upcoming July European concert “This Is It” tour just the night before. So, when I heard about his death in the evening news, June 25, I could not believe it. I listened for hours to understand how he had died and what people’s feelings were for him. If the reaction of the mourners is one way to measure how one has touched others emotionally, Michael definitely was immensely popular, in spite of the controversies that haunted him for the past two decades. He was not just a star that entertained and made money of his stardom. He was a megastar that touched so many through his superb entertainment since the tender age of five.
I remember when I had come for my studies to the United States, one of the first things I did was to buy his album – the Jackson Five. Later I bought few other albums with his more popular songs. He had by then established himself as a highly gifted singer and a successful stage performer. Listening Michael was not enough to understand his impact on the audience. You had to see him perform; see how he glided backward with effortless grace in a move that would forever after be known as the moonwalk and his movement on the stage like a robot.
As a student at the University of Southern California, I lived a few blocks north of the campus and just within 20 yards of the Shriner Auditorium where he occasionally performed. I could not buy those expensive tickets. The closest I came to watching any of the Jackson 5 was when I bought a ticket for a charitable show for the LAPD where his sister performed a dance routine. Janet was not a star then.
Fortunately, for many of us, we had the videos to see his electrifying performances. By 1982 his singles — ''Billie Jean,'' ''Beat It,'' ''Thriller,'' and so many more had become very popular. The Thriller became the world's best-selling album of all time. There were hardly enough hours in the day for the fledgling MTV network to show the iconic music videos he shot to promote what was quickly recognized as a masterpiece. The 24-year old kid had definitely by then become the King of the Pop. Those videos were simply sensational and wonderful to watch! No star, not even Madonna, could generate so much excitement as Michael was capable of. He was simply the best among all those entertainment stars.
Michael was a very soft spoken person. He had a soft and caring heart and used his extraordinary music talent to fight poverty and raise awareness for caring of children around the globe. He raised millions of dollars in 1985 to fight hunger in Africa through an album “We are the World.”
Although Michael was past his youthful years, he remained a child in his heart and exhibited child like qualities who loved children much. He raised millions of dollars in charity for them. He developed the Never Land Ranch in 1988 and, with its museum and amusement park, tried to entertain children. And yet, his love for them became his greatest nemesis. In 1993 and 2005, he would be falsely charged by some greedy parents of improper mixing or activities with children. He was acquitted of all such charges. However, those false charges ruined him financially and mentally, and adversely affected his music career. He failed to repeat his successes of the 1980s.
In spite of all the popularity he enjoyed, Michael remained a very shy and insecure person. His marriage with Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of another music sensation Elvis Presley, fell apart in 1996 after just two years. He kept a very low profile in the 1990s. But his was an indomitable character that would not be subdued by such mishaps in life. He joined with Pavarotti for a charity concert to raise millions of dollars for global refugees in 1999.
With all the troubles in love, life and failed marriages, he would still seek out talented young musicians and help them launch their career. Many of today’s young American musicians owe their success to him.
Michael was the greatest and most successful music entertainer of all time. He sold 750 million albums, something that is unbelievable for any singer, and would probably never be matched in our lifetime by any musician. He was also a smart investor. It is, therefore, quite puzzling to learn that in his death he owed some $400 million in debt.
Michael was a mega-star by any measure in the entertainment industry. Our world has not seen a singer, composer, producer, dancer and choreographer of his caliber combined in a single individual. He earned millions and gave away also in millions in charity. Although he hasn’t sung lately, he was immensely popular everywhere. He is more known globally than any individual in our planet. Through his music, he will live for ages. To label him as the “King of Pops” is lowering his greatness. He was simply the unrivalled Emperor of popular music.
And yet, Michael was a very lonely person. The bad publicity had hurt his tender soul and forced him to seek solace and find the meaning of life outside America in the Middle East where he lived for months before returning to the USA recently. The only person that he confided in and felt comfortable about sharing his inner pains and thoughts was his brother Jermaine. It was all too natural that when he died, it was Jermaine who told the world that his loving younger brother, the most talented of the Jackson siblings, Michael had died at 2:26 p.m. on Thursday, June 25 at the UCLA Medical Center. With Michael’s death, we lost not only a music icon, we lost a caring, charitable brother. Like Jermaine, let’s pray - May Allah be with you always, Michael.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Comments on NY Times Op/Ed on Iran's recent election - Koran and the Ballot Box
Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/opinion/21gerecht.html
I disagree with many assertions of the author, REUEL MARC GERECHT, an ex-CIA agent, who had his hands full one time trying to topple regimes in the Middle East that were deemed anti-USA. In his analysis of the current events in Iran, he says, "God’s will and the people’s wants were no longer compatible."
Gerecht forgets that Khatami was as much a product of Islamic learning as is Khamenei and so is Montazari and even Sistani. None of them ever questions whether God's will and people's wants are compatible. Wherever it is incompatible that is where people have deviated from God's will. Pure and simple! In His infinite Mercy, God did not intend anything harmful for human beings - but has given them a choice which can go either way depending on the nafs of the person. The greatest source of peace and saqinah is derived from following His ways. If today, Iranian masses or anyone for that matter anywhere around the world is questioning God's wisdom in what is good or bad, it is as much a product of failure of those who tried to govern by God's law as is the mere realization that we are living in the age of Kali when Satan's ways appear more attractive to mortals than God's way.
The writer claims that Iran's revolution "was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that “Islam has all the answers” — or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God." I don't think Gerecht understands the concept of vilayet-e-Faqih as articulated in Imam Khomeini's writings and speeches. Nowhere did the shi'ite Imam claim that he and any of those trying to act as trailblazers for the future Imam have all the answers how to govern perfectly. No, they don't. But that does not mean that a pious man is less qualified to rule than an impious one. What he was able to do was break that passivity that had dominated the shi'ite society too long with the ultimate result that until the hidden Imam comes there is nothing for them to do other than wait and see.
Was the Shah's rule better? Even today, if there is a vote on this issue - I am sure the answer may still be - NO, in spite of the fact that the current generation does not have as much zeal as their father and mother had. It is always difficult to sustain revolutionary zeal! As Khomeini had said, this government of ours will stay as long as our people are vigilant and caring about it to protect it by doing what is morally right. If the Iranian people feel differently today, then something in that equation has gone awfully wrong - from the governing to those governed.
It is also wrong to assert that common masses have not benefited from the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But like any revolution, it definitely has not befriended every John or Jane Doe. I am curious to learn from the author: what are the metrics for such an assertion?
The author's assertion that Moussavi is Obama's best hope shows his lack of understanding on a matter of national consensus. No Iranian, even the so-called pro-western Rafsanjani, let alone Moussavi, wants to see a halt to the nuclear program. There is absolute agreement all across Iran on the nuclear issue. And mind that I don't have any reason to doubt that the program is anything but for peaceful use for energy need. Many in the USA is simply parroting the Israeli position to throttle the program. They are foolishly hoping that with Moussavi the program will be shut down.
Bottom line: After the fall of the Shah, the West has been on a collision course with Islam - especially on its desire to see that Muslims don't have a model to go after other than westernization to mend their houses, demolished in hundreds of years of colonization. This they tried through several means, from holding Iranian assets to imposing crippling economic and trade embargo, let alone imposing a very costly war on Iran for nearly ten years. With the global economic control the West and esp. the USA have, it was difficult for any regime to survive and make their citizens happy. I am sure if the West was not so much into punishing Iran for its experiment with hukumat-i Islamiyah, things would have been much better for the common people. [There was a time when CIA tried to topple any regime that was perceived unfriendly to the USA. The same experiment to topple Sk. Mujib's regime was unleashed in the early 1970s (not for stopping Islam though but for the mere fact that the new country had emerged without the blessing of the USA in the cold-era, and was therefore deemed non-kosher per Kissinger), which succeeded just within 4 years.]
The hard fact is multi-national groups and organizations, let alone their backers from D.C., London, Paris and Munich, are too powerful players to be ignored any more. They can break any country's back into submission these days unless the people are still resistant to that change espoused by the foreign masters. If Iran has survived for the last three decades it shows the strength of its character, something that Bangladeshis did not have to protect theirs from foreign meddling.
I disagree with many assertions of the author, REUEL MARC GERECHT, an ex-CIA agent, who had his hands full one time trying to topple regimes in the Middle East that were deemed anti-USA. In his analysis of the current events in Iran, he says, "God’s will and the people’s wants were no longer compatible."
Gerecht forgets that Khatami was as much a product of Islamic learning as is Khamenei and so is Montazari and even Sistani. None of them ever questions whether God's will and people's wants are compatible. Wherever it is incompatible that is where people have deviated from God's will. Pure and simple! In His infinite Mercy, God did not intend anything harmful for human beings - but has given them a choice which can go either way depending on the nafs of the person. The greatest source of peace and saqinah is derived from following His ways. If today, Iranian masses or anyone for that matter anywhere around the world is questioning God's wisdom in what is good or bad, it is as much a product of failure of those who tried to govern by God's law as is the mere realization that we are living in the age of Kali when Satan's ways appear more attractive to mortals than God's way.
The writer claims that Iran's revolution "was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that “Islam has all the answers” — or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God." I don't think Gerecht understands the concept of vilayet-e-Faqih as articulated in Imam Khomeini's writings and speeches. Nowhere did the shi'ite Imam claim that he and any of those trying to act as trailblazers for the future Imam have all the answers how to govern perfectly. No, they don't. But that does not mean that a pious man is less qualified to rule than an impious one. What he was able to do was break that passivity that had dominated the shi'ite society too long with the ultimate result that until the hidden Imam comes there is nothing for them to do other than wait and see.
Was the Shah's rule better? Even today, if there is a vote on this issue - I am sure the answer may still be - NO, in spite of the fact that the current generation does not have as much zeal as their father and mother had. It is always difficult to sustain revolutionary zeal! As Khomeini had said, this government of ours will stay as long as our people are vigilant and caring about it to protect it by doing what is morally right. If the Iranian people feel differently today, then something in that equation has gone awfully wrong - from the governing to those governed.
It is also wrong to assert that common masses have not benefited from the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But like any revolution, it definitely has not befriended every John or Jane Doe. I am curious to learn from the author: what are the metrics for such an assertion?
The author's assertion that Moussavi is Obama's best hope shows his lack of understanding on a matter of national consensus. No Iranian, even the so-called pro-western Rafsanjani, let alone Moussavi, wants to see a halt to the nuclear program. There is absolute agreement all across Iran on the nuclear issue. And mind that I don't have any reason to doubt that the program is anything but for peaceful use for energy need. Many in the USA is simply parroting the Israeli position to throttle the program. They are foolishly hoping that with Moussavi the program will be shut down.
Bottom line: After the fall of the Shah, the West has been on a collision course with Islam - especially on its desire to see that Muslims don't have a model to go after other than westernization to mend their houses, demolished in hundreds of years of colonization. This they tried through several means, from holding Iranian assets to imposing crippling economic and trade embargo, let alone imposing a very costly war on Iran for nearly ten years. With the global economic control the West and esp. the USA have, it was difficult for any regime to survive and make their citizens happy. I am sure if the West was not so much into punishing Iran for its experiment with hukumat-i Islamiyah, things would have been much better for the common people. [There was a time when CIA tried to topple any regime that was perceived unfriendly to the USA. The same experiment to topple Sk. Mujib's regime was unleashed in the early 1970s (not for stopping Islam though but for the mere fact that the new country had emerged without the blessing of the USA in the cold-era, and was therefore deemed non-kosher per Kissinger), which succeeded just within 4 years.]
The hard fact is multi-national groups and organizations, let alone their backers from D.C., London, Paris and Munich, are too powerful players to be ignored any more. They can break any country's back into submission these days unless the people are still resistant to that change espoused by the foreign masters. If Iran has survived for the last three decades it shows the strength of its character, something that Bangladeshis did not have to protect theirs from foreign meddling.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Netanyahu’s Doublespeak: Can He Be Restrained?
After President Obama’s seminal speech in Cairo it was all too natural that Israel’s Netanyahu, the master spinner, would try his utmost to deflect world opinion to portray himself as a man of peace. He has learned the art of doublespeak quite well from his predecessors – all serial killers from Ben-Gurion to Olmert. On June 14 he decided to deliver his own speech. If we were expecting a change of heart from this narcissistic individual whose extremist views and actions have not only killed many unarmed Palestinians but also led to the assassination of Rabin, we were mistaken. The speech was not meant for Palestinians but for the western audience, especially Obama, to deceive them. It was a deceitful speech, true to his nature!
While the civilized world has rightly recognized that the root of the conflict lies in uprooting of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homes and continuous refusal of the Zionist state to withdraw from the Occupied Territories allowing the Palestinian people to live as free citizens, Netanyahu said that “root of the conflict has been and remains - the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish People to its own state in its historical homeland.” What did you expect from this smooth-talking winker? Six years ago he said, “A Palestinian state – NO!” because “Yes to a Palestinian state means No to the Jewish state.”
In his speech, Netanyahu invoked the myth of historic rights by saying, “The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3500 years. Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.” He continues, “Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish People.” There is no denying that like the indigenous Palestinian people, the Hebrews – the Jewish people - once lived in Palestine. They were not the first settlers to the land though. Before the modern-day birth of Israel, in her 3500 year old history, Jews had even ruled the territory for approximately 400 years, while Muslims had ruled the territory for nearly 1200 years (638-1918 CE). More importantly, there was continuous presence of the Palestinian people for nearly five millennia, while Jews cannot claim such continuity. Not only were the Jews exiled and evicted from the territory in the Roman era (after the failed revolt of Bar Kokhba in 135 CE) before the conquest of the territory by Muslim Caliph Umar ibn Khattab (RA) in 638 CE, they suffered similar fate in the pre-Roman era in the hands of Assyrian and Babylonian rulers. If religion was to be used as a valid criterion for justifying real estate claim, Palestinian Muslims, who revere the same prophets – from Abraham to Jesus, have more rights to Palestine.
Netanyahu said, “In 1947 when the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the proposal...” It is not difficult to understand why the Arab world rejected the UN proposal. What the UN did was not only illegal going against its own charter, but also criminal to the core. It gave 56% of the territory to the Jewish state when the Jews only possessed 6.5% of territory before the partition was declared. When the Balfour Declaration was made, promising a Jewish homeland, they possessed only 2.5% of the land. The Balfour Declaration in itself was another travesty when, as Arthur Koestler rightly concluded, “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third nation.” And thanks to Zionist terrorists of Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang, the territory originally allotted to the Zionists by the UN was enlarged to include four-fifths of Palestine.
Instead of land, if we are to look at population, in 1880 there were only 30,000 Jews in Palestine, scattered among 600,000 Muslims and Christian Arabs. By 1930 their numbers had grown to more than 150,000. When Britain conducted a census in Palestine in 1922, there were about 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christians. By the time the area was partitioned by the UN, these numbers had grown to about 600,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arabs, 10 percent of whom were Christians. Thus, the Jews comprised less than a third of the entire population, and yet, they were allotted 56 percent of Palestine. Is it difficult to understand why Arabs did not welcome the partition plan, which was illegal and unfair?
Netanyahu said he was ready to conduct negotiations with the Palestinian community “without preconditions.” And then, he put several preconditions! Netanyahu said, “Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel… And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.” This pre-condition is disingenuous given the fact that by his use of the phrases “nation-state” of the “Jewish people”, Netanyahu is proposing to de-legitimize and uproot some 1.5 million non-Jews (i.e., Palestinian Muslims and Christians -- the so-called Israeli Arabs) who live within the pre-1967 Israeli proper.
We should recall that in September 1993, Arafat sent a letter to the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in which he stated unequivocally that the PLO recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace and security, accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338, committed itself to a peaceful negotiated resolution of the conflict, renounced the use of terrorism and other acts of violence, affirmed that those articles of the PLO covenant that deny Israel’s right to exist were not longer valid. Even Hamas, the much maligned Palestinian organization in Netanyahu’s speech, is ready to accept the two-state solution with a Palestinian state living side by side Israel in the territories occupied in 1967. On June 16, 2009 Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, made that announcement at a joint news conference in Gaza City with visiting former US president Jimmy Carter. Carter told reporters that solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict according to the two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the joint capital of the two states, was the best method of achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace.
Like all Zionists, obviously, Netanyahu is against sharing Jerusalem. His position on Jerusalem is unacceptable to all Muslims, and not just Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s call for demilitarization of the future state of Palestine is also criminal. If past and present records of war crimes are a sure way to decide who should be demilitarized, it is Israel that deserves demilitarization more than the Palestinian side to protect unarmed civilians. He wants to turn the proposed Palestinian state into another Gaza by having full control over air and sea. If Gaza is not enough of an eye-opener for all to see what such control will do to the new state, what will? He also talks about “defensible borders” which, as rightly noted by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, is a code-word for “no return to the pre-1967 borders”. This is an untenable position and violates several UN resolutions.
Netanyahu said, “The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel's continued existence as the state of the Jewish people.” What he means is that he is against return of millions of Palestinian refugees. This is at odds with the U.N. Resolutions. One may recall during and after the 1948 war, about 420 Palestinian villages in the territory that became part of the State of Israel were destroyed and some 700,000 Palestinian residents were driven out. By 1964 when the PLO was formally organized, there were, according to the UN estimate, 1.3 million Palestinian refugees, with one-fourth in Jordan, about 150,000 each in Lebanon and Syria, and most of others in West Bank and Gaza refugee camps. Nor should we forget that when Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on June 5, 1967 and within six days occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza, the Sinai, Jerusalem, and the West Bank another 320,000 Arabs were forced to leave the additional areas in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine that were occupied by Israel. A number of UN resolutions were adopted with U.S. support and Israeli approval, reemphasizing the inadmissibility of acquisition of land by force, calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and urging that the more needy and deserving refugees be repatriated to their former homes.
As to the settlements, Netanyahu said Israel has no intention of building new settlements. However, building construction inside the settlements will continue to “enable the residents to live normal lives.” It is obvious that like his predecessors, Netanyahu will continue to ignore pleas from the international community including those of President Obama in Cairo to halt settlement expansion. While Israeli settlements are illegal per international law, he said, “The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace. Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.” We should have known that the Zionist state was a colonial settler enterprise much like what South Africa once was before the apartheid wall fell!
The USA has a strong role in any peace effort involving the Middle East. Former President Carter has said in this book - Palestine Peace and Not Apartheid, “The U.S.’s constant policy had been predicated on a few key UN Security Council resolutions, notably 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973. Approved unanimously and still applicable, their basic premise is that Israel’s acquisition of territory by force is illegal and Israel must withdraw from occupied territories. More specifically, U.S. policy was that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were “illegal and obstacles to peace.””
It is high time that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress take immediate steps to support the President's statement that "the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of further settlements" and support a solution to the conflict based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 and General Assembly Resolution 194, the foundation of the Arab Peace Initiative. Let not a sly voice coming out of Israel choke the euphoria generated in the civilized world with a prospect of a real peace in the Middle East.
References:
See Uri Avnery on explanation on this term “winking” in the Israeli context: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63324
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2009/Address_PM_Netanyahu_Bar-Ilan_University_14-Jun-2009.htm
See this author’s article – The Case of Jerusalem: The Holy City Between Zionist Claims and Justification of Apartheid, http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=3&id=806.
Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfillment, London, 1949, p. 4.
Roger Garaudy, The Case of Israel, Shorouk International, London (1983), p. 51.
Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace and not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster, New York (2006), p. 65.
Ibid., p. 58.
This view is also shared by Israeli scholar Uri Avnery: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63565
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1483936.php/Hamas_leader_says_ready_to_accept_state_on_1967_borders__Roundup__
Netanyahu said, “I told President Obama in Washington, if we get a guarantee of demilitarization, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state. Whenever we discuss a permanent arrangement, Israel needs defensible borders with Jerusalem remaining the united capital of Israel.”
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63565
Carter, op. cit., p. 58.
Ibid., p. 59.
Op. cit., pp.38-39.
While the civilized world has rightly recognized that the root of the conflict lies in uprooting of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homes and continuous refusal of the Zionist state to withdraw from the Occupied Territories allowing the Palestinian people to live as free citizens, Netanyahu said that “root of the conflict has been and remains - the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish People to its own state in its historical homeland.” What did you expect from this smooth-talking winker? Six years ago he said, “A Palestinian state – NO!” because “Yes to a Palestinian state means No to the Jewish state.”
In his speech, Netanyahu invoked the myth of historic rights by saying, “The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3500 years. Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.” He continues, “Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish People.” There is no denying that like the indigenous Palestinian people, the Hebrews – the Jewish people - once lived in Palestine. They were not the first settlers to the land though. Before the modern-day birth of Israel, in her 3500 year old history, Jews had even ruled the territory for approximately 400 years, while Muslims had ruled the territory for nearly 1200 years (638-1918 CE). More importantly, there was continuous presence of the Palestinian people for nearly five millennia, while Jews cannot claim such continuity. Not only were the Jews exiled and evicted from the territory in the Roman era (after the failed revolt of Bar Kokhba in 135 CE) before the conquest of the territory by Muslim Caliph Umar ibn Khattab (RA) in 638 CE, they suffered similar fate in the pre-Roman era in the hands of Assyrian and Babylonian rulers. If religion was to be used as a valid criterion for justifying real estate claim, Palestinian Muslims, who revere the same prophets – from Abraham to Jesus, have more rights to Palestine.
Netanyahu said, “In 1947 when the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the proposal...” It is not difficult to understand why the Arab world rejected the UN proposal. What the UN did was not only illegal going against its own charter, but also criminal to the core. It gave 56% of the territory to the Jewish state when the Jews only possessed 6.5% of territory before the partition was declared. When the Balfour Declaration was made, promising a Jewish homeland, they possessed only 2.5% of the land. The Balfour Declaration in itself was another travesty when, as Arthur Koestler rightly concluded, “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third nation.” And thanks to Zionist terrorists of Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang, the territory originally allotted to the Zionists by the UN was enlarged to include four-fifths of Palestine.
Instead of land, if we are to look at population, in 1880 there were only 30,000 Jews in Palestine, scattered among 600,000 Muslims and Christian Arabs. By 1930 their numbers had grown to more than 150,000. When Britain conducted a census in Palestine in 1922, there were about 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christians. By the time the area was partitioned by the UN, these numbers had grown to about 600,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arabs, 10 percent of whom were Christians. Thus, the Jews comprised less than a third of the entire population, and yet, they were allotted 56 percent of Palestine. Is it difficult to understand why Arabs did not welcome the partition plan, which was illegal and unfair?
Netanyahu said he was ready to conduct negotiations with the Palestinian community “without preconditions.” And then, he put several preconditions! Netanyahu said, “Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel… And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.” This pre-condition is disingenuous given the fact that by his use of the phrases “nation-state” of the “Jewish people”, Netanyahu is proposing to de-legitimize and uproot some 1.5 million non-Jews (i.e., Palestinian Muslims and Christians -- the so-called Israeli Arabs) who live within the pre-1967 Israeli proper.
We should recall that in September 1993, Arafat sent a letter to the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in which he stated unequivocally that the PLO recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace and security, accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338, committed itself to a peaceful negotiated resolution of the conflict, renounced the use of terrorism and other acts of violence, affirmed that those articles of the PLO covenant that deny Israel’s right to exist were not longer valid. Even Hamas, the much maligned Palestinian organization in Netanyahu’s speech, is ready to accept the two-state solution with a Palestinian state living side by side Israel in the territories occupied in 1967. On June 16, 2009 Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, made that announcement at a joint news conference in Gaza City with visiting former US president Jimmy Carter. Carter told reporters that solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict according to the two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the joint capital of the two states, was the best method of achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace.
Like all Zionists, obviously, Netanyahu is against sharing Jerusalem. His position on Jerusalem is unacceptable to all Muslims, and not just Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s call for demilitarization of the future state of Palestine is also criminal. If past and present records of war crimes are a sure way to decide who should be demilitarized, it is Israel that deserves demilitarization more than the Palestinian side to protect unarmed civilians. He wants to turn the proposed Palestinian state into another Gaza by having full control over air and sea. If Gaza is not enough of an eye-opener for all to see what such control will do to the new state, what will? He also talks about “defensible borders” which, as rightly noted by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, is a code-word for “no return to the pre-1967 borders”. This is an untenable position and violates several UN resolutions.
Netanyahu said, “The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel's continued existence as the state of the Jewish people.” What he means is that he is against return of millions of Palestinian refugees. This is at odds with the U.N. Resolutions. One may recall during and after the 1948 war, about 420 Palestinian villages in the territory that became part of the State of Israel were destroyed and some 700,000 Palestinian residents were driven out. By 1964 when the PLO was formally organized, there were, according to the UN estimate, 1.3 million Palestinian refugees, with one-fourth in Jordan, about 150,000 each in Lebanon and Syria, and most of others in West Bank and Gaza refugee camps. Nor should we forget that when Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on June 5, 1967 and within six days occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza, the Sinai, Jerusalem, and the West Bank another 320,000 Arabs were forced to leave the additional areas in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine that were occupied by Israel. A number of UN resolutions were adopted with U.S. support and Israeli approval, reemphasizing the inadmissibility of acquisition of land by force, calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and urging that the more needy and deserving refugees be repatriated to their former homes.
As to the settlements, Netanyahu said Israel has no intention of building new settlements. However, building construction inside the settlements will continue to “enable the residents to live normal lives.” It is obvious that like his predecessors, Netanyahu will continue to ignore pleas from the international community including those of President Obama in Cairo to halt settlement expansion. While Israeli settlements are illegal per international law, he said, “The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace. Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.” We should have known that the Zionist state was a colonial settler enterprise much like what South Africa once was before the apartheid wall fell!
The USA has a strong role in any peace effort involving the Middle East. Former President Carter has said in this book - Palestine Peace and Not Apartheid, “The U.S.’s constant policy had been predicated on a few key UN Security Council resolutions, notably 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973. Approved unanimously and still applicable, their basic premise is that Israel’s acquisition of territory by force is illegal and Israel must withdraw from occupied territories. More specifically, U.S. policy was that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were “illegal and obstacles to peace.””
It is high time that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress take immediate steps to support the President's statement that "the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of further settlements" and support a solution to the conflict based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 and General Assembly Resolution 194, the foundation of the Arab Peace Initiative. Let not a sly voice coming out of Israel choke the euphoria generated in the civilized world with a prospect of a real peace in the Middle East.
References:
See Uri Avnery on explanation on this term “winking” in the Israeli context: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63324
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2009/Address_PM_Netanyahu_Bar-Ilan_University_14-Jun-2009.htm
See this author’s article – The Case of Jerusalem: The Holy City Between Zionist Claims and Justification of Apartheid, http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=3&id=806.
Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfillment, London, 1949, p. 4.
Roger Garaudy, The Case of Israel, Shorouk International, London (1983), p. 51.
Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace and not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster, New York (2006), p. 65.
Ibid., p. 58.
This view is also shared by Israeli scholar Uri Avnery: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63565
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1483936.php/Hamas_leader_says_ready_to_accept_state_on_1967_borders__Roundup__
Netanyahu said, “I told President Obama in Washington, if we get a guarantee of demilitarization, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state. Whenever we discuss a permanent arrangement, Israel needs defensible borders with Jerusalem remaining the united capital of Israel.”
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63565
Carter, op. cit., p. 58.
Ibid., p. 59.
Op. cit., pp.38-39.
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