Naked Terrorism
By Ghali Hassan
AxisofLogic.com
Posted by Bulatlat
‘Terrorism’ means activities
that - (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a
violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or
that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of
the United States or of any State;(B) appear to be intended - (i) to
intimidate or coerce a civilian population;(ii) to influence the policy of
a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct
of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. United
State Code Title 18, Section 2331.
Since its creation by Western
powers and Zionists in 1948, Israel has used terrorism to terrorise the
native population (the Palestinians) and expand. It uses terrorism to
threat, coerce and intimidate its neighbours. Under international law
Israel is a terrorist state and must be condemned.
According to Article 2(4) of
the UN Charter; “All members [of the UN] shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any
manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. The UN is
also very specific about the right of people’s resistance to aggression.
Here, the people of Lebanon (and the Palestinians) have ‘unalienable
rights’ to defend themselves and to resist Israeli aggression by all means
available to them.
Every Israeli act of
terrorism is financed and supported by Israel’s Western allies, the U.S.
and Britain in particular. Moreover, whatever Israel does, it does openly
in the name of all Jews, and it uses the crimes committed against Jews by
Europeans in the past to justify its acts of terrorism and vilify any
criticism as “anti-Semitism”. Jews around the world – with a few
honourable exceptions – have financed and supported Israel’s war crimes
against defenceless population.
For their part, European
leaders have vehemently supported Israeli action, because Israeli action
of playing victim covers-up the existence of European crimes against Jews.
In addition, any legitimate resistance to Israel’ acts of terrorism is
labeled “terrorism” to justify greater terrorism.
Furthermore, Israel can count
on its powerful Western allies, particularly the U.S and Britain, for
unconditional political, massive financial and military support. Hence, in
a short period of time, Israel built the strongest army in the region, if
not one of the strongest in the world. Israel’s arsenal of weapons
includes nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. With the support of its
Western allies, Israel is rarely condemned for its acts of terrorism and
war crimes, even when Israel kills UN peacekeepers from countries such as
Canada, Austria and Finland.
Israel also has an army of
Western intellectuals and scholars placed in higher positions in the U.S.
and Europe, who are ready to shield Israel and deflect the main
responsibility of Israel’s war crimes on the U.S. They alleged that Israel
is an “innocent bystander” and is simply a U.S. proxy force serving U.S.
imperialist interests. This is simply a falsehood. Although Israel is
close ally of the U.S. and the U.S. can impose punitive measures on
Israel, Israel can renounce violence and pursue a destiny of peaceful
coexistence.
Unmentioned is also Israel’s
militarised and extremely fanatic society. Most Israelis support Israel’s
aggression against defenceless Arab population regardless of the pretext.
Indeed, Israeli children are manipulated to the extent that they are often
taken on tours during war to view weapons and are encouraged to write hate
messages on the missiles and bombs that were destined to kill innocent
Lebanese and Palestinian children.
For nearly six decades,
Israel has violated every international law, every humanitarian law and
every UN Resolution. It does so with the tacit support of Western powers,
the U.S. and Britain in particular. For decades, Israel routinely
conducted terrorism attacks in Lebanon, including bombing and shelling of
refugee camps, terrorist raids and assassinations of Lebanese and
Palestinian politicians and activists in Beirut and elsewhere, invasion of
Lebanon in 1978, and the occupation of Lebanon in 1982.
To get away with terrorism,
Israel uses the crimes committed against Jews by West Europeans to justify
its acts of terrorism and vilify any criticism of its terror as
“anti-Semitism”. Europeans have vehemently supported Israeli action,
because Israeli action of playing victim remove the guilt and covers-up
the existence of European crimes against Jews. In addition, any legitimate
resistance to Israel’ terror is labeled “terrorism” in order to justify
greater terrorism.
In playing victim, Israel
manipulates and uses the mainstream (mass) media –inherently pro-Israel,
and anti-Arabs and Muslims – in very sophisticated and efficient way to
portray its acts of terrorism as “self-defence” and at the same time
demonise its victims as “Untermenschen” or subhumans – in the same way
Nazis demonised Jews – whose lives are cheaper than Jewish ones. The task
is made easy by the fact that most of the mainstream media are own by
either pro-Israel Jews or by pro-Israel Zionists concentrated mostly in
the U.S. and in Britain with a global audience.
When Lebanese (or
Palestinian) civilians are killed by Israel’s acts of terrorism, Israeli
propagandists and Western media immediately exonerate Israel by blaming
resistance fighters of using civilians as “human shields”. As it is happen
in the current Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Israeli and Western
media are deliberately distorting the facts and blaming the Hizbullah
resistance fighters of hiding among the civilian population. However,
reports from the ground in Lebanon consistently show that Israeli claims
are always false. Firstly, knowing that they risk being betrayed by
collaborators, Hizbullah’s fighters go to great length to avoid contacts
with civilians and stay as far away from civilians as possible. Secondly,
rockets and missiles are fired from open spaces and could not be fired
from built-up areas.
Furthermore, Israeli soldiers
are well-known and publicly use Palestinian children to shield them when
attacking Palestinian resistance. In fact the currents Israeli aggression
on Lebanon – a defenceless nation – is designed to coerce not only the
Lebanese people to rise up against Hizbullah, but also to blackmail other
nations and to use the war as a rehearsal for a region-wide war against
Iran or Syria.
Such is the case on Sunday 30
July 2006. When Israeli war planes (U.S.-made F-16s) bombed a shelter
housing refugees in the village of Qana – the site of a 1996 massacre of
more than 100 Lebanese civilians by Israeli forces – killing more than 60
innocent civilians, including at least 40 children, a war crimes by any
standard, Israeli propagandists and Western media tried to exonerate
Israel by claiming that Hizbullah were firing rocket from the site.
Also ignored by the media are
Israel’s indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructure and population
centres, using banned weapons such as Cluster bombs and incendiary white
phosphorous bombs against defenceless population in contravention of
international humanitarian laws. According to conservative estimate, the
current Israeli act of terrorism on Lebanon killed at least 800 innocent
Lebanese civilians, although journalists on the ground put the figure much
higher, injured more than 4000 and caused the displacement of a million
people. As always, more than a third of the victims are innocent children.
Be Lebanese or Palestinians, Israel dose not discriminate between
civilians and combatants, a flagrant violation of the Geneva and The Hague
Conventions.
Like Israel’s previous acts
of terrorism, the pretext to justify the current terrorism attacks against
Lebanon is that Israel was allegedly provoked by the Lebanese resistance
crossing into Israel and capturing two Israel soldiers. However, contrary
to Israel’s propaganda which is becoming a global propaganda, the Israeli
soldiers were captured and taken prisoners on Lebanese side of the border
in purely heroic operation. The other Israeli soldiers were not killed by
Hizbullah’s fighters, but rather because their tank rolled over a landmine
– planted by Israel – while pursuing Hizbullah’s fighters. In sharp
contrast from earlier Israel’s response to previous tit for tat skirmish
between Hizbullah and the Israeli army, Israel held the Government of
Lebanon responsible and instigated a total war against the entire state of
Lebanon.
The current Israeli
aggression against Lebanon is a U.S.-Israel engineered war planned long
time ago. It is a premeditated U.S.-Israel aggression aimed at imposing a
“New Middle East", where Lebanon, like Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and today’s Iraq would be under U.S.-Israeli domination or
hegemony. To use Antonio Gramsci’s conception of hegemony, where an
oppressive power structure, in which the domination is concealed through
an Arab façade and the consent of the oppressed, is not coerced; rather it
is consensual and the oppressed are complicit in their oppression. The
dominant ways have become naturalised and normalised. The same form of
power was tried during Fascism’s occupation of Europe.
The U.S. refusal to condemn
or at least allows the UN to condemn Israel’s “disproportionate” use of
violence against civilians is evident that the U.S. is complicit in
Israel’s war crimes. Israel’s “disproportionate” use of violence violates
the basic tenets of the laws of war. Indeed, the Geneva and The Hague
Conventions prohibit the use of military force that causes “collateral
damage” to civilian infrastructure that is disproportionate to the
military value of the objective.
As mentioned earlier, Israel
uses violence to coerce and threat the population in order “to attain” its
goals. However, the Lebanese people (regardless of their affiliation) seem
to be undeterred by Israel’s acts of terrorism. According to a recent
opinion poll conducted by the Centre for Research and Information in
Beirut, 87 % of all Lebanese support Hizbullah's resistance against
Israel. The poll includes some 80% of all Christian respondents, 80 % of
all Druze respondents, and 89% of all “Sunni” Lebanese. The poll also
shows that 89.5 % of respondents believe the U.S. was not an “honest
broker”. This is far more than George Bush and Tony Blair can master
together in their countries. As revealed by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a
professor at the American University in Beirut, only 8% of Lebanese see
the U.S. playing an honest role. Most Lebanese see the U.S. as being
complicit in Israel’s terror against Lebanon and want to join the
Hizbullah resistance to defend their nation against Israel’s aggression.
Finally, while Israel and its
allies (U.S. and Britain) demanding that Lebanon implement UN Resolution
1559 to disarm Hizbullah, Israel refuses to implement countless UN
Resolutions passed against it, including Resolution 638, which is calling
for the “immediate safe release of all hostages and abducted persons
[including 10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese among them are hundreds of
women and children] wherever and by whomever they are being held”, the
well-known Resolution 242, which is demanding Israel to withdraw from all
Arab lands – including Palestinian land, Lebanese land (the Shebaa farms),
and the Syrian Golan Height, seized in Israel’s pre-emptive aggression
(a.k.a. terrorism) in 1967 –, and Resolution 194 calling for the ‘right of
return’ for all Palestinian refugees to their land, to mention just three.
In fact UN Resolution 1559 was an illegitimate Resolution because it
infringes on the sovereignty of Lebanon by requesting the disarmament of a
legitimate resistance movement. Why the UN is unable to force Israel to
accept an immediate cease-fire? Regardless of what Britain, U.S. and
Israel think of the Lebanese people, a cease-fire is a paramount starting
point to peace and to save innocent civilian lives.
Terrorism must be treated as
terrorism, regardless who is the perpetrator. Westerners can not pretend
to fight terrorism while at the same time remain complicit in Israel’s
ongoing acts of terrorism.
As long as Westerners
continue to play double standard and ignore their complicity in terrorism,
Israel and its leaders will remain an obstacle to world peace.
Ghali
Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
Aug 1,
2006
Posted by
Bulatlat
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