Search

band annie's Weblog

I have a parallel blog in French at http://anniebannie.net

Open Search
Month

November 2012

The IDF hasbara

What would you do if rockets were striking your country? RT if you agree that has the right to self-defense. pic.twitter.com/mNfY0Smx

In response, journalist Lauren Booth, Tony Blair’s half-sister-in-law, tweeted: “yes Palestinians do have the right to defend themselves a good point well made”.

Another response – “How can it be self-defence if you started it?” – could easily have come from either side, summing up the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sides as the argue over the conflict across various forms of media.

1

Mazin Qumsiyeh on Gaza

ACT: 64 ways to act http://qumsiyeh.org/whatyoucando/

People are subjected to massive well-funded propaganda trying to sell a
“product” that “Israel is defending itself” by massacring civilians in Gaza
(again) and engaging in extrajudicial executions of resistance fighters.
The truth is hard to hide as are the statistics: Over the last four days,
16 Palestinian civilians were killed including several children (while 3
Israelis were killed), and over 170 Palestinian civilians were injured
(very few Israelis).

Over 140 military excursions by the most
sophisticated US supplied war planes and navy ships on 1.5 million people
in a large open-air prison.  Anyone can find the pictures on the internet
of burned Palestinian babies, mutilated children, devastated neighborhoods,
and destroyed power plants and infrastructure.

The Gaza strip is one of the
most densely populated areas on earth thanks to the Israeli ethnic
cleansing creating the largest post-WWII refugee population on earth.
2/3rd of the 1.6 million people in this arid strip are refugees.

All
Israeli human rights violations are done by US funded horrific weapons for
which native Palestinians have no defense.  Home-made native projectiles
fair poorly as a response to the massacre by advanced technologies. Yet,
the US administration still sides with apartheid colonial Israel against
the native Palestinians and so are the governments of Britain and France
that are trying to live-up to their colonial activities.

Israeli
authorities intensified their attacks tonight after home-made projectiles
fired by resistance forces in Gaza landed in Rishon Le Zion (first colonial
settlement here) and Tel Aviv (first time since the gulf war that sirens
were heard in Israel’s de facto capital).  People of all backgrounds are
speaking out against these Israeli initiated attacks.  Here in Palestine,
we had demonstrations including against the silly bickering that the
factions go through.

There are also demonstrations around the world
demanding Israel end its aggression against this impoverished strip of land
full of refugees.  But we must do more than demonstrate and hold vigils.

Pictures from Gaza under attack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIpBnbnraCY

Timeline of the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza
http://imeu.net/news/article0023227.shtml

There are names to these murdered civilians
“The Health Ministry in Gaza reported that among those killed on Wednesday
evening are Ahmad Misharawi, 11 months old; Ranan Arafat, 7 years old;
Issam Abu Izah, 23; and Mohamed Al Kasih, 19. ”
http://imemc.org/article/64557

Reports from AlJazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/2012111419500140191.html

Take action:
1) 64 ways to act http://qumsiyeh.org/whatyoucando/
2) 1.2 million signed petition and took other actions to give Palestinian a
state and give Palestinians our rights.  I signed as a prelude to the
inevitable and logical and only durable solution: one democratic secular
state for all its people.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/palestine_worlds_next_nation_b/?kPZnccb

Also come visit us in Palestine (including Gaza)

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
In Beit Sahour
Palestine

0

Gaza : Hypocrisy, As Usual

Qunfuz

Robin Yassin-Kassab

Omar al-Masharawi, son of a BBC cameraman in Gaza, murdered by Zionist bombs.

Israel has launched yet another attack against the Gaza Strip, striking the densely-populated and besieged territory from the air and the sea, and as usual the United States, Canada and Britain have lined up in support of Zionist terrorism.

Speaking from a system poisoned by the Israel lobby, State Department spokesman Mark Toner says: “There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately. We support Israel’s right to defend itself.” Confusing Zionist settlers for ‘the Jewish people’, confusing perpetrator with victim, and then parroting outmoded ‘war on terror’ propaganda, Canadian foreign minister John Baird vomits the following: “Far too often, the Jewish people find themselves on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism, the great struggle of our generation.” Then Britain’s foreign minister William Hague makes the following immoral and illogical comment: “I utterly condemn rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas and other armed groups. This creates an intolerable situation for Israeli civilians in southern Israel, who have the right to live without fear of attack from Gaza.”

Two things must be said. First, this round of escalation, like the 2008/2009 slaughter, was started by Israel. It is totally mendacious to pretend otherwise. The Hamas government in Gaza refrained from stopping other groups from firing missiles as a result of Israel’s murder of a disabled man and of a twelve-year-old boy in Gaza. Here is a timeline of events. Second, the settlers of southern Israel do not have the right to live without fear of attack while the original inhabitants of ‘southern Israel’ are herded into refugee camps. Eighty percent of people in Gaza are descendants of refugees ethnically cleansed from their villages and towns by Zionist militias in 1947 and 1948.

No Western approach to the Middle East will be coherent or helpful so long as the West remains attached to apartheid Israel. America has granted some millions of dollars to support Syrian refugees and to provide a few revolutionary activists with satellite phones, but Obama refuses to recognise the Syrian National Coalition as representative of the Syrian people, and has made it clear that the US won’t be supplying weaponry to the Free Syrian Army. Indeed, the Obama administration has been preventing Qatar and Saudi Arabia from providing effective weaponry to the resistance. Fear of Islamism translates here into fear of anti-Zionism. No weapons can be supplied which might one day be turned against the occupiers of the Golan Heights and the tormentors of the Palestinians.

Oil and geostrategy also ensure that Western policy on the Middle East will continue to lack credibility. After visiting Syrian refugee camps in Jordan David Cameron seemed to incline to arming the Syrian resistance, but he arrived in Jordan after a tour of the Gulf in which he’d offered to arm several tyrannies, including the Bahraini tyranny which is killing, imprisoning and torturing its democratic opposition. Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet.

States and politicians are beholden to interests and lobbies. There is less excuse for individual activists and ‘anti-imperialists’ who are partial to one group’s freedom but make excuses for denying that of another. Many support the Bahraini revolution but not the Syrian, or vice versa, for sectarian reasons or out of blanket thinking (of course, sectarianism is a form of blanket thinking). And many of those who are quite correctly calling for demonstrations today against Zionist terror have not stirred in the last two years as forty thousand Syrians have been slaughtered, except perhaps to explain that the victims are enacting a dastardly plot against a resistance regime. A recent Facebook status from Sharif Nashashibi serves as an excellent rejoinder: “Sadly, there are people who condemn the slaughter of Palestinians but defend the slaughter of Syrians, and vice versa. As a Palestinian and a Syrian, I totally reject these hypocrites’ so-called support. The suffering of Palestine is the suffering of Syria, and vice versa. We are one and the same.”

This is absolutely correct. The slaughter of the people of bilad ash-Sham is as much of an abomination in Syria as it is in Palestine. American support for the frenzied Zionist bombing of Gaza is no more or less disgusting than Russian (and Iranian) support for Asadist barbarism. Furthermore, both Palestinians and Syrians have the right to self-defence. This is why I support providing anti-aircraft weaponry to both the Syrian and the Palestinian resistance.

Many analysts believe the timing of Israel’s attack has been determined by upcoming elections. Netanyahu needs to look tough for his rabid public, so he brings more trauma and death to Gaza. It is grotequely easy for Zionists to act out their impulses on the Palestinians, just as they used to find south Lebanon easy. In this revolutionary age, is no Arab power going to make the slaughter more expensive?

Saad el-Katatny of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood says, “The brutal aggression on Gaza proves that Israel has not yet learned that Egypt has changed.” So far, President Morsi has recalled the Egyptian ambassador from Tel Aviv, called a UN Security Council meeting, and opened the Rafah border for medical evacuations. This is far more than Mubarak would have done, but it’s still not nearly enough. The Qatari foreign minister says, “This filthy crime must not pass without a punishment.” Again, words are not enough. (By the by, I wonder if infantile leftists will decide that Palestinian resistance is a foreign plot now that the Qatari emir has visited Gaza and funded some projects there?)

While pointless adventurism would be criminally stupid at this moment of general Arab crisis, the new leaders of revolutionary Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, and old leaders seeking to adapt to the revolutionary wave, should remember that national dignity as expressed through a pro-Arab and anti-imperialist foreign policy is one of the key demands of Arab revolutionaries. This is a test for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in particular. The Palestinians must not be left alone indefinitely.

source

0

1

Two new resources: Timeline of Israeli escalation in Gaza and Israel’s history of breaking ceasefires

by on November 14, 2012 7

The Institute for Middle East Understanding has released two useful resources on the current Israeli attack on Gaza. The first presents a timeline of events and the second outlines Israel’s history of breaking ceasefires.

TIMELINE: ISRAEL’S LATEST ESCALATION IN GAZA

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8

Following a two-week lull in violence, Israeli soldiers invade Gaza. In the resulting exchange of gunfire with Palestinian fighters, a 12-year-old boy is killed by an Israeli bullet while he plays soccer.

Shortly afterwards, Palestinian fighters blow up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10

An anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters wounds four Israeli soldiers driving in a jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary.

An Israeli artillery shell lands in a soccer field in Gaza killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank fires a shell at a tent where mourners are gathered for a funeral, killing two more civilians, and wounding more than two dozen others.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11

One Palestinian civilian is killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks. Four Israeli civilians are also injured as a result of projectiles launched from Gaza, according to the Israeli government.

During an Israeli government cabinet meeting, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz urges the government to “cut off the head of the snake… take out the leadership of Hamas in Gaza.” He also calls for a cutting off of water, food, electricity, and fuel shipments to Gaza’s 1.7 million people.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12

Palestinian militant factions agree to a truce if Israel ends its attacks.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Israel breaks two days of calm by assassinating Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’ military wing. According to reports, at least eight other Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks, including at least two children. Palestinian militant groups vow to respond.

FACT SHEET – Self-Defense or Provocation?: Israel’s History of Breaking Ceasefires

Since Israel’s creation in 1948, Israeli political and military leaders have demonstrated a pattern of repeatedly violating ceasefires with their enemies in order to gain military advantage, for territorial aggrandizement, or to provoke their opponents into carrying out acts of violence that Israel can then exploit politically and/or use to justify military operations already planned.

The following fact sheet provides a brief overview of some of the most high profile and consequential ceasefire violations committed by the Israeli military over the past six decades.

2012 – On November 14, two days after Palestinian factions in Gaza agree to a truce following several days of violence, Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Jabari, threatening to escalate the violence once again after a week in which at least six Palestinian civilians are killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks.

2012 – On March 9, Israel violates an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and assassinates the head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, sparking another round of violence in which at least two-dozen Palestinians are killed, including at least four civilians, and scores more wounded. As usual, Israel claims it is acting in self-defense, against an imminent attack being planned by the PRC, while providing no evidence to substantiate the allegation.

Following the assassination, Israeli journalist Zvi Bar’el writes in Haaretz newspaper:

‘It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out?

‘In the absence of a clear answer to that question, one may assume that those who decided to assassinate al-Qaisi once again relied on the “measured response” strategy, in which an Israeli strike draws a reaction, which draws an Israeli counter-reaction.’

Just over two months prior, on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz tells Israel’s Army Radio that Israel will need to attack Gaza again soon to restore its power of “deterrence,” and that the assault must be “swift and painful,” concluding, “We will act when the conditions are right.”

2011 – On October 29, Israel breaks a truce that has maintained calm for two months, killing five Islamic Jihad members in Gaza, including a senior commander. The following day, Egypt brokers another truce that Israel proceeds to immediately violate, killing another four IJ members. In the violence, a total of nine Palestinians and one Israeli are killed.

2008 – In November, Israel violates a ceasefire with Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups that has been in place since June, launching an operation that kills six Hamas members. Militant groups respond by launching rockets into southern Israel, which Israel shortly thereafter uses to justify Operation Cast Lead, its devastating military assault on Gaza beginning on December 27. Over the next three weeks, the Israeli military kills approximately 1400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including more than 300 children. A UN Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone subsequently concludes that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the fighting, a judgment shared by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

2002 – On July 23, hours before a widely reported ceasefire declared by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is scheduled to come into effect, Israel bombs an apartment building in the middle of the night in the densely populated Gaza Strip in order to assassinate Hamas leader Salah Shehada. Fourteen civilians, including nine children, are also killed in the attack, and 50 others wounded, leading to a scuttling of the ceasefire and a continuation of violence.

2002 – On January 14, Israel assassinates Raed Karmi, a militant leader in the Fatah party, following a ceasefire agreed to by all Palestinian militant groups the previous month, leading to its cancellation. Later in January, the first suicide bombing by the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade takes place.

2001 – On November 23, Israel assassinates senior Hamas militant Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. At the time, Hamas was adhering to an agreement made with PLO head Yasser Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel. Following the killing, respected Israeli military correspondent of the right-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Alex Fishman, writes in a front-page story: “We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 border]… Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line…” A week later, Hamas responds with bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa.

2001 – On July 25, as Israeli and Palestinian Authority security officials meet to shore up a six-week-old ceasefire, Israel assassinates a senior Hamas member in Nablus. Nine days later, Hamas responds with a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria.

1988 – In April, Israel assassinates senior PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia, even as the Reagan administration is trying to organize an international conference to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The US State Department condemns the murder as an “act of political assassination.” In ensuing protests in the occupied territories, a further seven Palestinians are gunned down by Israeli forces.

1982 – Following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June, and after PLO fighters depart Beirut under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire, Israel violates the terms of the agreement and moves its armed forces into the western part of the city, where the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila are located. Shortly thereafter, Israeli soldiers surround the camps and send in their local Christian Phalangist allies – even though the long and bloody history between Palestinians and Phalangists in Lebanon is well known to the Israelis, and despite the fact that the Phalangists’ leader, Bashir Gemayel, has just been assassinated and Palestinians are rumored (incorrectly) to be responsible. Over the next three days, between 800 and 3500 Palestinian refugees, mostly women and children left behind by the PLO fighters, are butchered by the Phalangists as Israeli soldiers look on. In the wake of the massacre, an Israeli commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, deems that Israeli Defense Minister (and future Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon bears “personal responsibility” for the slaughter.

1981-2 – Under Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel repeatedly violates a nine-month-old UN-brokered ceasefire with the PLO in Lebanon in an effort to provoke a response that will justify a large-scale invasion of the country that Sharon has been long planning. When PLO restraint fails to provide Sharon with an adequate pretext, he uses the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to England to justify a massive invasion aimed at destroying the PLO – despite the fact that Israeli intelligence officials believe the PLO has nothing to do with the assassination attempt. In the ensuing invasion, more than 17,000 Lebanese are killed.

1973 – Following a ceasefire agreement arranged by the US and the Soviet Union to end the Yom Kippur War, Israel violates the agreement with a “green light” from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. According to declassified US documents, Kissinger tells the Israelis they can take a “slightly longer” time to adhere to the truce. As a result, Israel launches an attack and surrounds the Egyptian Third Army, causing a major diplomatic crisis between the US and Soviets that pushes the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, with the Soviets threatening to intervene to save their Egyptian allies and the US issuing a Defcon III nuclear alert.

1967 – Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement, launching a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria. Despite claims Israel is acting in self-defense against an impending attack from Egypt, Israeli leaders are well aware that Egypt poses no serious threat. Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli army during the war, says in a 1968 interview that “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” And former Prime Minister Menachem Begin later admits that “Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

1956 – Colluding with Britain and France, Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement by invading Egypt and occupying the Sinai Peninsula. Israel only agrees to withdraw following pressure from US President Dwight Eisenhower.

1949 – Immediately after the UN-brokered Armistice Agreement between Israel and its neighbors goes into effect, the armed forces of the newly-created Israeli state begin violating the truce with encroachments into designated demilitarized zones and military attacks that claim numerous civilian casualties.

About Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz is Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

1

Nous accusons: Mainstream media fails to report context and severity of Israeli atrocities against Gaza

by Noam Chomsky and the ‘Gaza Eight’ on November 14, 2012 4

CNN
CNN screenshot from August, 2011.

David Heap just sent us this statement from participants of a recent delegation to Gaza:

While countries across Europe and North America commemorated military casualties of past and present wars on November 11, Israel was targeting civilians. On November 12, waking up to a new week, readers at breakfast were flooded with heart rending accounts of past and current military casualties. There was, however, no or little mention of the fact that the majority of casualties of modern day wars are civilians. There was also hardly any mention on the morning of November 12 of military attacks on Gaza that continued throughout the weekend. A cursory scan confirms this for Canada’s CBC, the Globe and Mail, Montreal’s Gazette, and the Toronto Star. Equally, for the New York Times and for the BBC.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on Sunday November 11, five Palestinian civilians including three children had been killed in the Gaza strip in the previous 72 hours, in addition to two Palestinian security personnel. Four of the deaths occurred as a result of Israeli military firing artillery shells on youngsters playing soccer. Moreover, 52 civilians had been wounded, of which six were women and 12 were children. (Since we began composing this text, the Palestinian death toll has risen, and continues to rise.)

Articles that do report on the killings overwhelmingly focus on the killing of Palestinian security personnel. For example, an Associated Press article published in the CBC world news on November 13, entitled Israel mulls resuming targeted killings of Gaza militants, mentions absolutely nothing of civilian deaths and injuries. It portrays the killings as ‘targeted assassinations’. The fact that casualties have overwhelmingly been civilians indicates that Israel is not so much engaged in “targeted” killings, as in “collective” killings, thus once again committing the crime of collective punishment. Another AP item on CBC news from November 12 reads Gaza rocket fire raises pressure on Israel government. It features a photo of an Israeli woman gazing on a hole in her living room ceiling. Again, no images, nor mention of the numerous bleeding casualties or corpses in Gaza. Along the same lines, a BBC headline on November 12 reads Israel hit by fresh volley of rockets from Gaza. Similar trend can be illustrated for European mainstream papers.

News items overwhelmingly focus on the rockets that have been fired from Gaza, none of which have caused human casualties. What is not in focus are the shellings and bombardments on Gaza, which have resulted in numerous severe and fatal casualties. It doesn’t take an expert in media science to understand that what we are facing is at best shoddy and skewed reporting, and at worst willfully dishonest manipulation of the readership.

Furthermore, articles that do mention the Palestinian casualties in Gaza consistently report that Israeli operations are in response to rockets from Gaza and to the injuring of Israeli soldiers. However, the chronology of events of the recent flare-up began on November 5, when an innocent, apparently mentally unfit, 20-year old man, Ahmad al-Nabaheen, was shot when he wandered close to the border. Medics had to wait for six hours to be permitted to pick him up and they suspect that he may have died because of that delay. Then, on November 8, a 13-year old boy playing football in front of his house was killed by fire from the IOF that had moved into Gazan territory with tanks as well as helicopters. The wounding of four Israeli soldiers at the border on November 10 was therefore already part of a chain of events where Gazan civilians had been killed, and not the triggering event.

We, the signatories, have recently returned from a visit to the Gaza strip. Some among us are now connected to Palestinians living in Gaza through social media. For two nights in a row Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from sleeping through continued engagement of drones, F16s, and indiscriminate bombings of various targets inside the densely populated Gaza strip. The intent of this is clearly to terrorise the population, successfully so, as we can ascertain from our friends’ reports. If it was not for Facebook postings, we would not be aware of the degree of terror felt by ordinary Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This stands in stark contrast to the world’s awareness of terrorised and shock-treated Israeli citizens.

An extract of a report sent by a Canadian medic who happened to be in Gaza and helped out in Shifa hospital ER over the weekend says: “the wounded were all civilians with multiple puncture wounds from shrapnel: brain injuries, neck injuries, hemo-pneumo thorax, pericardial tamponade, splenic rupture, intestinal perforations, slatted limbs, traumatic amputations. All of this with no monitors, few stethoscopes, one ultrasound machine.  ….  Many people with serious but non life threatening injuries were sent home to be re-assessed in the morning due to the sheer volume of casualties.  The penetrating shrapnel injuries were spooky. Tiny wounds with massive internal injuries.  … There was very little morphine for analgesia.”

Apparently such scenes are not newsworthy for the New York Times, the CBC, or the BBC.

Bias and dishonesty with respect to the oppression of Palestinians is nothing new in Western media and has been widely documented. Nevertheless, Israel continues its crimes against humanity with full acquiescence and financial, military, and moral support from our governments, the U.S., Canada and the EU. Netanyahu is currently garnering Western diplomatic support for additional operations in Gaza, which makes us worry that another Cast Lead may be on the horizon. In fact, the very recent events are confirming such an escalation has already begun, as today’s death-count climbs. The lack of widespread public outrage at these crimes is a direct consequence of the systematic way in which the facts are withheld and/or of the skewed way these crimes are portrayed.

We wish to express our outrage at the reprehensible media coverage of these acts in the mainstream (corporate) media. We call on journalists around the world working for corporate media outlets to refuse to be instruments of this systematic policy of disguise. We call on citizens to inform themselves through independent media, and to voice their conscience by whichever means is accessible to them.

Hagit Borer, U.K.
Antoine Bustros, Canada
Noam Chomsky, US
David Heap, Canada
Stephanie Kelly, Canada
Máire Noonan, Canada
Philippe Prévost, France
Verena Stresing, France
Laurie Tuller, France

source

0

Speech by Sheik Moaz Al Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition

Sheik Moaz Al Khatib, head of the newly established Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces November 11, 2012, Qatar

The Syrian people are the product of 10,000 years of civilization. The great people of Syria are facing daily, a programmed war of extermination and savage destruction. It can be safely said that there is not a citizen that has not been harmed by this regime. Many parties have exerted much effort to pull this regime out of its primitiveness, its savagery and its stupidity but have been put off by its stubbornness and its arrogance. The regime has destroyed all aspects of normal life and turned Syria into ruins; it has worked for fifty years to negate the will of the people and to play on its contradictions using them to tear apart our people.

After a long struggle, numerous patriotic groups have now united as one to stop the massacre to which our people are being subjected to daily as the rest of world passively listens and watches.

Our primary task is to provide emergent humanitarian relief to our people and to stop the torrent of blood the runs day and night, as we unite our ranks to remove this tyrannical regime with all it symbols and build a righteous society based on justice and the dignity that is bestowed by god on every human being.

I would like to alert you to certain issues, even if I deviate a little from the norms of diplomatic protocol.

The first issue is that our revolution is a peaceful revolution from its beginning to its end and it is the regime alone that bears the moral and legal responsibility; for it is the regime that forced our people to resort to armed resistance to defend themselves, their families, their property and their religion.

In dozens of cities flowers were carried during demonstrations by thousands of young men and women. They carried flowers and cold water to give to members of the security forces to ask for their right, to simply express themselves. This monstrous regime responded with arrests, jail and torture and then proceeded to destroy the physical, social and economic structure of the country after destroying its intellectual and moral fabric for the past fifty years.

We salute the struggle of this great people, men, women and children and we salute their legendary courage in the face of oppression and destruction as we stand with respect in memory of the souls of our martyrs. We also salute with loyalty all of the fighters of the Free Syrian Army who defend the revolution in the face of tyranny.

The regime has destroyed our people, our country and our army that we honor and feel the pain at the sight of every coffin of a dead soldier. This is the army built by the people’s hard work, sweat and tears to defend the country only to be turned by the regime against the people.

Our people’s demands were very simple, brothers, all our people wanted is for every individual to be able to go to sleep without fear. This was the demand of our people, brothers, and the regime did not respond to this simple demand, and today there are no acceptable decisions short of the departure of the regime and the complete dismantling of its monstrous structure.

The second issue has to do with the Islamisation of the revolution and what is said, day and night, about the savagery of the Syrian people and its rebels.

Oh brothers, and I take full responsibility for what I say, every fighter is looking for freedom but some are driven to extremes by the savagery of the regime’s forces. Efforts are underway by legal councils to regulate the behavior of the rebel fighters even when it comes to their dealings with enemies.

This revolution uses “takbir”(the chanting of Allah is great) in all its corners, not to push anyone away for our brothers from all faiths are our partners. Many of our Christian brothers have joined us as we started demonstrating from within mosques and chanted “Allahu Akbar” in the face of the tyrant. The Islam that we carry with us is an Islam that builds civilizations and honors human beings, an Islam that embraces Christianity in the most sacred of lands, an Islam that unites people not divides them, an Islam that considers that strength is in diversity not in isolation.

And at the wake of the first martyrs in Douma, it was made very clear that we are demanding freedom for every Sunni and Alawi, every Christian and Druzi, every Ismaili and Suriani. We feel the pain of every one of them, from the injustices perpetrated against our Arabism to the injustices perpetrated against the great Kurdish people and to the injustices dealt to every segment of our society. What is present in our country is not only coexistence but true compassion and love for the other. Our work will end, and I say this specifically to our brethrens inside Syria, as soon as free elections are held. Every legal and constitutional question is suspended until then so that the people will decide on their legal system and their constitution with free elections after the fall of the regime and in an atmosphere of total freedom and equality.

Thirdly, the revolution distances itself from the idea of revenge against anyone and there will be judiciary committees to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against innocent citizens. I also plea, knowing that many Syrian army officers and soldiers are honorable people suppressed by iron and fire as we all were, I plea with them to prepare to defect from this corrupt body and to help us build the Syria of the future. The majority has suffered and the minorities have suffered and the regime has turned us against each other; it is time to unite in love to face the long night.

Fourthly, we as individuals and communities, do not and will not pledge allegiance to any side or cause that is harmful to our people, our unity or our land and this blood is the signature of our commitment. We pledge in front of our people to protect their interests, their land, their religion, their morals, their freedom and the rule of law. The coming Syria will be for all its sons and daughters. I pledge personally in front of my brothers, to be at the service of my people, to unite them and that every decision made in their interest to regain their dignity.

Fifthly, we call on the international community, on its governments to honor pledges of help to our people. Our people, Oh brothers, are not a primitive or marginal people, they are the makers of a great civilization and when our people’s rights are returned they will rise again and create a great civilization after the fall of the regime.

We ask for all forms of humanitarian, political and economic support.

In the name of all of our absent brothers in Syria, I extend my thanks to the government of Qatar and its people, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I thank our partners in civilization and history, our Turkish brothers as well as our brothers in Libya, Jordan and Egypt. I hope we can work together to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people. I would also like to thank all of our brothers who worked tirelessly over many nights to put together this coalition. I would also like to thank the Syrian National Council for working with us as brothers, because in the end we are brothers. Finally I want to address our great people with reverence and kiss the hand of every mother and father. I also want to salute the steadfastness of our young men and women. I want to salute especially the Syrian woman, the greatest woman on this earth, who made the human beings who conquered iron and blood. I would also like to address our children with they have my unconditional love and tell them that we will shed our blood so that they can go to bed happy, with a smile on their lips and with love and peace in their dreams. I want to tell all Syrians that if you find good in what I do then keep me, but otherwise ask me to leave; I love you all and I ask god for success, praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

source : posted by N.Z. on Walls

0

Syria : finally, Leadership

Qunfuz

Robin Yassin-Kassab

with 2 comments

l-r: Saif, Atassi, Khatib (Reuters photo)

Following my previous comment on the astounding failures of Syrian political elites, I must report some optimism. The Syrian National Council has accepted its place within the new Syrian National Coalition (it makes up a third of the new body), and the Coalition has won recognition by the Arab League, France, Japan and others.

The Coalition’s choice of leaders is the most inspiring sign, one which suggests both that the Coalition is no foreign front, and that another, much more positive aspect of Syria is finally coming to the fore.

President Ahmad Muaz al-Khatib is a mosque imam, an engineer and a public intellectual. He is Islamist enough for the Islamists and less extreme Salafists of the armed resistance to give him a hearing, but not Islamist enough to scare secularists and minority groups. He has written books on the importance of minority religious rights and women’s rights in a just Islamic society. His speeches since assuming his position have reached out to minorities and to the soldiers in Asad’s army, who he described as victims of the regime.

Vice President Riyadh Saif is a businessman, former MP, and a liberal democrat.

And Vice President Suheir al-Atassi, daughter of foundational Ba’athist Jamal al-Atassi, is a human rights activist, a secular feminist, a founder of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, and a key activist of the grassroots Local Coordination Committees. She is the sort of person who should have been representing the Revolution at the highest level from the very start.

All three leaders have been active participants in the revolution inside Syria, and all three have suffered imprisonment. All three are known and respected by Syrians inside the country.

The Local Coordination Committees have joined the Coalition, and noises of optimism are bubbling up from revolutionaries inside and outside. As a minor anecdote, I notice that a pro-revolution Alawi friend of mine is expressing optimism about the future for the first time in a long while.

But in some quarters the bickering and sniping continues unabated. Rim Turkmani of the Building the Syrian State group complained to the Guardian that the Coalition was formed in response to outside pressure. This is partially true, and it’s a great shame, a stain on Syrian political elites, that it took threats, promises and cajolements from Qatar, France, Britain and America to achieve this compromise. Yet urgency – the suffering of the people – demands that all strands of Syrian opposition support the Coalition. Though there is still a very long way to go, Asad is losing on the battlefield. By force of arms, areas of the country have been liberated (or partially liberated, as they still suffer terrible bombing). To allow the splintered military leadership to rule in these areas without any central coordination and advice, without any common system of law, would open the way to a warlord-riven and sectarian future (Asad opened this door initially; there’s no need for political elites to push it further open).

Seemingly insistent on Syrian self-reliance, it is a contradiction for Rim to also say that the ‘international community’ should first agree on Syria, +36and that Syrians should then take their lead from this foreign consensus.

The real unity which matters right now is not that of the political opposition, but that of the international community. Once an international consensus is agreed it is going to be much easier to unite the opposition, and more importantly, end the regime. Russia and China are going to view this group as hostile to them. They are key players in this conflict, and you simply can’t solve a conflict if you do not involve all the players.

This strikes me as totally unrealistic. There is never going to be international consensus on Syria, no more than there’s ever going to be consensus on Palestine. In the one case Russia backs an unworkable regime; in the other America backs its unreasonable ally. When coupled with the notion of negotiations with the regime, which Building the Syrian State also subscribes to, Rim’s stance becomes almost criminally unrealistic. It has been obvious for over a year that the regime has decided (as its shabeeha scawl on the walls) “al-Asad or we’ll burn the country.” The ceasefire plans of the Arab League, Kofi Annan and al-Akhdar Ibrahimi have come and gone, and Asad’s campaign of torture, shooting, shelling, and aerial bombardment has escalated steadily. After two years of burning, staring into the abyss of Somalisation, Syria does not need to wait for further proof of the regime’s inability to compromise. There should be negotiations with representatives of people and communities who are scared by the revolution (and this will be facilitated by the fall of the regime, when such people will finally be able to represent themselves), but not with criminals who don’t want and aren’t capable of negotiations, who use talk of negotiations to buy more killing time. The only subject for negotiations with the regime is the terms of its surrender, and negotiations can only be held after it has stopped its violence and released the prisoners.

I met Rim Turkmani in London (and she’s intelligent, principled and highly educated as well as friendly and civilised – I hope she’ll forgive me for disagreeing with her in public) and heard her make this analogy: “We have to negotiate with the regime just as the parent of a kidnapped child has to negotiate with the hostage taker, because the child’s survival is of paramount importance.” If I can twist the metaphor somewhat, I would respond that the regime has kidnapped ten children and has already killed eight while negotiations continue. It’s killed eight in gales of laughter, and given interviews to the newspapers about how good the killing felt. It’s time not for a negotiator, but for a marksman.

Rim also says the Coalition doesn’t represent all of the fighters or people on the ground. Of course this is true. That’s why the Coalition has a great deal of work to do. It may be too late (after nearly two years of elite bickering) for a political leadership to assert control over many of the fighters, particularly the Salafis, but someone has to try. Efficiently coordinating funds and weapons deliveries would be a great start, and would stop the rise in importance in Gulf-funded al-Qa’ida types. As for the unarmed revolutionaries, many don’t wish to be ‘represented’ by any body. What they want is for the regime to be neutralised, and then to be able to express themselves in democratic elections. It’s the Coalition’s job to achieve these two aims. With forty thousand dead and the country in ruins, there is no more time to waste.

source

0

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑