GOODBYE (sort of, for now)

For well over half a century I have thrown myself, body and soul, into social and political work, including the struggle for my country’s independence, creation of Pakistan, organizing and unionizing workers and prostitutes, seeking justice for the exploited, the voiceless, the tyrannized, exposing government ministers, international smugglers, slum landlords, corrupt judges and police officers, and, preaching non-violence and the rule of law.

In the process I have completely neglected my personal affairs and not paid much attention to building up and maintaining family relationships. The result is that I now find myself rather alone and my personal affairs in shambles! Much work has to be done to tie up loose ends, bring some sort of order in my life and try to reconnect with family.

I came face to face with death at an early age when my mother passed away with me barley ten years old. Since then I lost my father two years later and, later my first born, my brother and recently my elder sister.

I have always known that our life in this world is fleeting and death can come quite unexpectedly at any moment. My mortality has stared at me for years.  So far I have ignored it. The recent death of my elder sister has brought home to me forcefully that my own death is not far away.

The need to tie up all loose ends and reconnect with family is pressing. Besides, I am really tired and need to rejuvenate myself.

 And so, most reluctantly and with a heavy heart, I am suspending indefinitely my participation in activism of any sort as also in any dialogue on Face Book.

I am indebted to my family, my real life friends, my Face Book and internet friends and all my activist friends and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for all the support, help and friendship extended by them to me.

If and when all that has to be attended to is done, God willing, I will return.

Till then, to all of you, a heangrtfelt GOODBYE (sort of, for now)

Note: Please note that starting May 27, I will NOT be visiting Face Book. I request my family and friends to e-mail me if there is anything I need to know or if there is any message they want to convey to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

BOSTON BOMBING, SELECTIVE COMPASSION AND THE “MUSLIM FACTOR”

By Gulamhusein Abba.

As I write this (morning of Tuesday, April 16) my thoughts, my heart, my sympathies, my condolences, my everything is with the people of Boston, especially those families who have lost a loved one and those who lie injured.

What a terrible tragedy. A day of rejoicing was reduced to a day of death and mourning. What could be more despicable than to launch an attack on such a day, a day designated as Patriots Day, and target those who were running to raise thousands if not millions of dollars for worthy causes, including those related to the recent Sandy Hook tragedy?

The noise of the explosions; the smoke billowing upwards; nails, pellets and shrapnel flying all over; those who had come to cheer others running, themselves running as they had never run in their lives before; dismembered limbs littering Boylston Street; blood all over; frightened people running helter-skelter trying to find escape routes, entering stores and exiting from backdoors into an adjoining street.

Family members attempting to contact those who had gone to the Marathon, to ascertain if they were safe, only to find that cell phones were dead.

First responders rushing in to tend to the injured. Medical workers treating patients with severed limbs and children with severe burns in a temporary medical tent at the road race.

Mayhem. Complete chaos. A bustling scene of cheers, hope, joyous victory, rejoicing suddenly turned into a war zone.

Imagine the fear of those on the scene. The anxiety of their loved ones. The desperation of those trying to contact them.

Two people, one of hem an eight year old boy, dead; 160 injured, 16 critically; several with a limb missing, at least 4 with their legs amputated in the hospital; nails sticking out of a girl’s body.
 

There was no need to imagine all this. Videos being projected round the clock on TV screens showed the unimaginable horror and tragedy in stark detail. Watching, I felt I was there. Having suffered tragedy and fear myself, the whole scene became very personal and palpable.

I was glued to the TV till well past midnight. Had a very disturbed sleep and was back watching TV as soon as I woke up the next morning.

A myriad thoughts and emotions ran through me.

One of the things I greatly appreciated was that President Barack Obama lost no time in going on the air and telling the nation that the authorities did not yet know who is behind the Boston Marathon bombing and urging caution in assigning blame. "We still do not know who did this, or why, and people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts," he said.

Another fact  that struck me was the contrast between what was happening here and what was happening in other parts of the world.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere around the world, such horror and tragedy did not occur once in a blue moon. They were a daily occurrence, routine. Drones buzzed  overhead in the skies 24 hours a day. The people  huddled in fear, not knowing when a bomb or a missile would swoop down on them, obliterating their home and killing or paralyzing them or their loved ones. When it did and all hell broke loose, no first responders rushed to tend to them.

 And not just two or twenty six died but hundreds did.

In fact, just a few days before the Boston bombing, a NATO air attack in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province, Afghanistan , killed at least 18 people, including as many as 11 innocent children. There was no ambiguity as to who had killed them and how. They were killed by a NATO air-strike.

Yet, though these tragic occurrences are far worse than what happened at Boston or Sandy hook, they receive hardly any coverage, if at all, unlike the round the clock coverage given by the media in the US to Sandy Hook shooting and Boston bombing. Consequently, neither those who suffer so grievously nor those who die so ingloriously receive any sympathy or condolences or support from any American. No American tears are shed for them.

Can compassion be selective? Should it be?

Very disturbing was that, ignoring the appeal made by none other than the President himself, the anti-Islamists in this great country immediately started trying to implicate Muslims!

For example, one of Fox News contributors, Eric Rush, in response to the Boston attack tweeted -- then deleted -- what he claimed was a joke about rounding up Saudis and killing them.

When one Bill Schmalfldt tweeted back, “Sweet God. Are you ALREADY BLAMING MUSLIMS??”, Eric replied “Yes they’re evil. Let’s kill them all”.

Though Eric deleted his original tweets, in later messages he called his critics "Islamic apologist worms" and "vermin."

The New York Post published a report, under a screaming headline “FBI grills Saudi man in Boston bombings”, claiming that a "Saudi National" had been taken "into custody" by police at a local Boston hospital. In Its initial stories the paper said that the person taken into custody was "identified as a suspect." In fact, nobody had been taken into custody and nobody had been identified as a suspect. 

Anti-Islamic blogger Pamela Geller was quick to jump on the New York Post's report, labeling the tragedy “jihad” on her blog, Atlas Shrugged.

Others, while not directly accusing Muslims of being somehow responsible for the bombing, asked the question that regularly pops up in such situations: Where is the Muslim condemnation? Implying that the silence of the Muslims itself proves that the Muslims in America are salivating at the massacre!

So where WAS, where IS the Muslim indignation, outrage, condemnation, expressions of sorrow, grief and sympathy in the Boston bombing?

 According to  Sound Vision, “There were many Muslims in the Marathon, both as victims, as well as doctors trying to save lives…..…. condemnation by Muslims was not reported by the national media … Radio Islam was on air reaching 60,000 plus listeners sympathizing with the victims within hours of this tragedy.

 

“The Muslim community in the United States and abroad began issuing their condolences and condemnations of the Boston incident within hours of receiving news reports about the attack. However, these statements of sincerity and sadness receive little to no attention in the majority of media outlets, specially the Radio and the TV.”

This is sad -- and dangerous. As pointed out in the said report: “Omitting Muslim statements of condemnation directly leads to Islamophobia, translating into deadly hate – attacks on Masjids and Islamic centers, Islamic schools, and anyone who ‘looks Muslim’.

”

As I was about to close this writing, the reassuring words of Obama were ringing in my ears: "We still do not know who did this, or why, and people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts," Obama said. "But make no mistake: we will get to the bottom of this, we will find out who did this, we'll find out why they did this. Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice."

This triggered a faint echo from the past. Bush, responding to the 9/11 attacks, speaking about flushing out the perpetrators, tracking them down, holding them accountable, bringing them to justice or taking justice to them.

Suddenly, out of nowhere frightening questions formed.

Did families and friends of innocent men, women, children and babies killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine ever say to themselves that they would track down the perpetrators, hold them accountable and bring them to justice or take justice to them?

Did any of their governments ever vow to do this?

What if all of them start doing it?

MAKING THE UNBEARABLE BEARABLE

Late Saturday evening I got a phone call informing me that my 92 years old sister, who lives in California, had passed away about two hours back.

This loss has been difficult for me to bear.

I lost my mother when I was 10 and my father when I was 12. After the death of my mother, my sister became my mother too and looked after me till my adulthood. She then turned into my friend in whom I could confide. This continued till she left to live in her husband’s house.

I have so many endearing memories of her. Now she is gone. So have my father, mother and elder brother.

The pain in losing my sister is specially sharp because, though we spoke on the phone, we did not spend any time with each other for the last 6 years or more. Worse, I was not able to fly out to California to see her one last time, pay my respects and take part in the burial rituals.

For the last few days I have been going about with a mask so as to spare my family and friends, already coping with their own burdens, having to put up with my pain too. But I hurt inside. 

Each message of sympathy or condolence received by me during this period, slight in itself, contributed towards lessening the burden of grief and pain crushing me, and, collectively they make the unbearable bearable.

Each and every message that I received has been a great help and is precious to me.

I take this opportunity to offer my sincere appreciation and heartfelt thanks to all those who sent them.

I also beg to be forgiven by those whom I may have missed thanking individually.

Gulamhusein Abba

 

THE DISTURBING CAE OF DR. AAFIA SIDDIQUI

 

Chris Towne, who has for years been in the struggle for justice, has been to Palestine in a journey of discovery and is a gifted artist and writer, has produced his second “comic book”, which is anything but comic. Done in Joe Sacco style, this brilliant and excellently crafted  book details, through drawings, the strange, disturbing and horrifying stranger-than-fiction true story about the plight of neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. In the telling of her story, light is thrown on the way Pakistani police and the US justice system works.  

Sentencing her, in what is widely viewed as a sham trial on trumped up charges, to 86 years in prison, the judge is reported to have remarked  that she would now be spending the rest of her lIfe in a federal prison.

                                              
 

 

 

 

 

As noted in the book, Siddiqui was sent to the “notorious Carswell Prison where abuse of female prisoners has been rampant, and, though she was never charged with terrorism,Dr. Siddiqui’s imprisonment includes ‘harsh terror enhancements’   

CIndy Sheehan has said, “I believe Dr.Aafia Siddiqui is a political prisoner and now the political bogey-woman for two US regimes. 

At present Dr. Siddiqui languishes in prison. However, an international movement has been growing to demand her freedom. Please read about her, and share with family and friends! 

ChrisTowne’s book: http://postubermensch.tumblr.com/aafia 

Please check out this video of Victoria Brittain on the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqu:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx6lgc_victoria-brittain-on-the-case-of-dr-aafia-siddiqui_news#.US0byjBJ72M

How  YOU can Help Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

On March 30, 2013, the 10^th. Anniversary of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s detention, the THE PEACE THRU JUSTICE FOUNDATION will afford supporters of Aafia in America with three opportunities to contribute to this very important campaign.

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2013, An Aafia Support Rally at The Embassy of Pakistan, 3517 International Court, Washington, DC 20008. Time: 3:00 to 5:00

 FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2013, A Protest Rally at US District Court, 501 W. 10th Street, Fort Worth, Texas (At the intersection of 10th & Lamar Streets, across from Burnette Park ). Time: 3:00 TO 5:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 2013, A Protest March & Rally at FMC CARSWELL Fort Worth, Texas Time: 12 NOON

Additionally, plans are afoot to hold a press conference on the morning of March 8th (International Women's Day) in Washington, DC, to bring attention to the impact that the so-called "war on terrorism" is having on woman in America - i.e. Mothers, Wives, Sisters, Daughters, along with nformational updates on the condition of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Attorney Lynne Stewart.

There will also be a special briefing on the ongoing quest for justice/accountability in the political murder of Rachel Corrie.

 

The official website of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's family: http://www.freeaafia.org/ 

Some articles about the case:  

The mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui | World news | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida 

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui Case – A Detailed Story of Lies And Deception

http://pakistankakhudahafiz.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/dr-aafia-siddiqui-case-a-detailed-story-of-lies-and-deception-by-the-americans/ 

Yvonne Ridley reviews the case of Aafia Siddiqu

http://www.cageprisoners.com/our-work/opinion-editorial/item/3841-dr-aafia-siddiqui-for-the-9th-anniversary

Some videos for Urdu knowing public:

 

Video, in Urdu, about Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, entitled  “Truth of Afia Siddiqi”. Uploaded on Apr 28, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwKgeYVE5uQ  

Video, in Urdu, about Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, entitled “Dr. Aafia Siddiqui New Tarana”. Uploaded on Sep 27, 2010. Contanins moving images and posters in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQEpmmy8YZ0

A strong video in Urdu, indicting Pakistani government regarding Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Entitled “Zaid Hamid - Reality of the Case of Dr. Aafia”. Uploaded on Sep 29, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qCCx_iFVc8 

Rare video of speech by Aafia Siddiqui in Houston 1991. Topic : "Women in Islam". Published on Jul 28, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skmj16h40wE

 

HOW US PUNISHES US MUSLIMS

Note: The following article was published in The Guardia. It was written by Glenn Greenwald under the heading “US Air Force veteran, finally allowed to fly into US, is now banned from flying back home” The original can be viewed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/09/saddiq-long-no-fly-list

“This …. is a means by which the FBI metes out extra-judicial punishment”

*********************

 US Air Force veteran, finally allowed to fly into US, is now banned from flying back home

Secret, unaccountable no-fly lists are one of many weapons the US government uses to extra-judicially punish American Muslims

o            Glenn Greenwald

o            guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 February 2013 07.40 EST

o             Jump to comments (381)

US Muslim Air Force veteran Saadiq Long is greeted at the Oklahoma City airport in November 2012 after finally being allowed to fly home to visit his ailing mother. Photograph: screegrab NewsOK

In early November, I wrote about the infuriating story of Saadiq Long, the 43-year-old African-American Muslim who - despite having never been charged with any crime - was secretly placed on a no-fly list and thus barred from flying to the US to visit his seriously ill mother. When I met with Long in early November in Doha, Qatar, where he has lived for several years with his wife and her two children while teaching English, he was in the middle of his futile months-long battle just to find out why he was placed on this list, let alone how he could be removed.

Two weeks after that article was published, Long - without explanation - was finally removed from the no-fly list and he flew from Doha to Oklahoma City to visit his mother and other family members. He took several flights to make the 20-hour journey, all without incident. He has remained in Oklahoma for the last ten weeks, visiting his family in the US for the first time in over a decade.

But now Long - unbeknownst to him - has once again apparently been secretly placed by some unknown National Security State bureaucrat on the no-fly list. On Wednesday night, as Associated Press first reported, he went to the Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City to fly back home to Qatar. In order to ensure there were no problems, his lawyer sent the FBI a letter ahead of time notifying them that Long would be flying home on that date (see the embedded letter below).

But without explanation, Long was denied a boarding pass at the airport by a Delta Airlines agent. Three local police officers then arrived on the scene, followed by a US Transportation Security Administration agent who "told Long he couldn't board a plane but did not give him a specific reason".

Long's lawyer, Adam Soltani of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was with him at the airport and repeatedly asked agents why this was happening and who they should contact. He got no answers, except was told to contact the FBI. But both the FBI and Delta refused to comment to AP, while TSA spokesman David Castelveter would only say this:

"It's my understanding this individual was denied a boarding pass by the airline because he was on a no-fly list. The TSA does not confirm whether someone is or is not on the no-fly list, as that list is maintained by the FBI."

Long and his CAIR lawyers have thus far been told nothing about why he is barred once again from flying.

The personal cost to this injustice is obvious and substantial. Long has a job he needs to return to in Doha from which he has been away for more than two months, and his family needs that income for its sustenance. "I was extremely disappointed when I was unable to board the flight this past Wednesday," Long told me through his lawyer. "My family in Qatar feels crushed that I will not be returning home as expected."

The sense of humiliation and outrage should not be hard to fathom. Just imagine being a US citizen, denied the right to travel home - first to your own country, then back to your family - by a government that has never charged you with any crime or indicated you have engaged in wrongdoing of any sort. Imagine going to the airport and having local and federal agents arrive to prevent you from boarding a plane, treating you like a criminal - a Terrorist - without any tangible accusations. "I don't understand how the government can take away my right to travel without even telling me," he told me back in November. "If the US government wanted me to question or arrest or prosecute me, they could have had me in a minute. But there are no charges, no accusations, nothing."

But what's particularly infuriating here is that, if they had evidence that Long has done anything wrong, they easily could have arrested him at any point over the last ten weeks when he was in the US. The reality is that they could have arrested him at any time over the last decade because he has lived in three countries with highly US-loyal autocracies: Egypt, the UAE and Qatar. But he was never arrested, never charged with anything - just denied the basic right to travel.

Here is what CAIR's Gadeir Abbas told me about all of this on Thursday:

"It is not as if the FBI actually thinks Saadiq is a threat. If it did - and it had actual evidence - the FBI would simply arrest him. As they surely recall, they let him fly just a few months ago. It turns out, though, the only reason for doing so is because it is, in the FBI's view, slightly more indefensible to prevent an American citizen from flying home than it is to prevent him from flying abroad.

"And because we told the FBI ahead of time when Saadiq would be flying, hardly the behavior of a criminal, they could have stuck an air marshal right next to him. They could have subjected his person and luggage to extra scrutiny. But the FBI does not do these things because the No Fly List is not used to protect aircraft. This watchlist - and the many others like it - is a means by which the FBI metes out extra-judicial punishment."

How can anyone argue with that? Even leaving aside that he just flew into and around the US less than three months ago without incident, the very idea that he poses a threat to this flight is patently ludicrous given their advance knowledge that he was flying and the multiple precautions they could take if they really were concerned.

Plainly, air travel safety is not what any of this is about. It is about inventing ways to punish US Muslims and deprive them of the most basic rights without so much as providing any notice, let alone any due process that would enable the secret, unknown accusations to be discovered and rebutted. And it is a very common weapon.

Use of this repressive tactic has worsened significantly under the Obama administration. Last February, Associated Press learned that "the Obama administration has more than doubled, to about 21,000 names, its secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States, including about 500 Americans." Moreover, as I detailed last November based on that AP report:

"Worse, the Obama administration 'lowered the bar for being added to the list'. As a result, reported AP, 'now a person doesn't have to be considered only a threat to aviation to be placed on the no-fly list' but can be included if they 'are considered a broader threat to domestic or international security', a vague status determined in the sole and unchecked discretion of unseen DHS bureaucrats."

There should be no doubt of the FBI's desire to harass Long. Although they never charged him with any crime or arrested him while he was in Oklahoma, he was, along with his sister, Ava Anderson, handcuffed and put on the ground the day after Thanksgiving after they drove to their local police department in fear when they noticed they were being followed. It turns out that the FBI had falsely told local police that Long and his sister were "fleeing felons", but when the local police learned that was false, they never arrested Long or his sister. They were simply told to leave without explanation. Here's a video report on those incidents from a local Oklahoma television station back in December:

NOTE: In the original, there is a VIDEO here. To see it CLICK the LINK near the top of the article. Continue reading the article.

As Abbas told me after that incident occurred: "Our sense is that a particular FBI agent, or perhaps a small group of them, in Oklahoma City are looking to inflict some pain on Saadiq and his family - maybe in retaliation for the embarrassment he caused them or the thousands of emails that ended up getting sent to their field office there."

The worst part of all of this is the complete lack of remedy available to Long. Abbas told me: "unfortunately, because of arcane jurisdictional complications, we don't think seeking a preliminary injunction is necessarily an expeditious option for getting Saadiq on a plane." Even worse:

"We'll likely try again in a couple of weeks, but if there isn't some change by then, this puts Saadiq in the position of rolling the dice and trying to get to a country by land or sea that will actually let him fly. Even in these situations, however, we've seen detentions and interrogations by foreign authorities, such as here and here."

So now he's just in a no-man's land. He can't contest the accusations against him because there are none. After being blocked for months from visiting his own country and his terminally ill mother, he's now barred from returning to his home, his job, and his own family. All of this is done by his own government without a shred of due process, transparency or accountability.

When I wrote on Tuesday about the Obama DOJ's "white paper" justifying due-process-free presidential assassinations, I wrote that "the core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt" and that "if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such." This is exactly what I was talking about: I'm sure there will be no shortage of people justifying this by insisting that he must have done something wrong: even though the government has never said what that is, offered evidence for it, or provided any opportunity for the accusations to be independently examined.

This is also a perfect example of what New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote last March that the US now has "what's essentially a separate justice system for Muslims". State punishment without charges and trials is now perfectly normal - for Muslims.

CAIR letter to FBI

Ltr to SAC Finch [1.29.13] by Glenn Greenwald

PILLAR OF DEFENSE – A Murderous Fraud!
Will the truce last?

By: Gulamhusein Abba

On Wednesday, November 14, Israel deliberately provoked Hamas by breaking a two day long truce, carrying out some 20 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the heaviest barrage on the Palestinian territory in four years, and, for good measure, to make sure the provocation worked, assassinating Gaza’s supreme military commander, Ahmed Jabari.

It killed him even though it was he that was mainly responsible for arranging the release of Shalit, even though his interest in entering into a long-term truce agreement had been communicated to Israeli authorities.

When Gaza expectedly responded with a fresh barrage of rockets, Israel used that as an excuse to continue its murderous attack on Gaza and launched its Operation Pillar of Defense.

It pummeled Gaza – again, barely four years after it infamous Operation Cast Lead – for eight straight days, day and night, launching well over 1500 deadly airstrikes, shelling targets from tanks and gunboats, killing 161 Palestinians, including a large number of innocent men, women, children and even babies, wiping out families, injuring at least 840, flattening residential buildings, Hamas leader’s headquarters, police stations, several other infrastructures, targeting and damaging dozens more, including a hospital and the international media center.

Then, on Wednesday , November 21, under intense international pressure, Israel signed with Hamas a truce agreement.

The agreement provides, for Hamas: an end to Israeli airstrikes and assassinations of Hamas militants wanted by Israel. For Israel the agreement provides a halt to rocket fire from Gaza and attempts at cross-border incursions into Israeli territory from Gaza and especially from the Sinai area.

However, the agreement left the door open to a possible ground incursion of Gaza at a later date.

People all over the world heaved a sigh of relief. Gazans celebrated by firing guns into the air, dancing in the streets, distributing sweets and waving Hamas flags.

It is to be hoped that the truce will last. Unfortunately all indications are that violence will flare up once again, perhaps sooner than what we wish.

To begin with, already there are differences as to what the agreement provides, especially with reference to the opening of checkpoints.

According an Associated Press report on November 22, the agreement provides for Israel “discussing easing an Israeli blockade constricting the Gaza Strip.” Khaled Mashal, Gazan leader in exile, insists that “the document provides for the opening of all crossings.”

According to a copy of the agreement obtained by AP, the agreement provides, after a 24 hour cooling off period, for “opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents’ free movement.”

Under the Israeli blockade, Israel continues to restrict the movement of certain goods through Israeli controlled crossings. There is a near complete ban on exports, limited movement of people leaving the territory and limits on construction materials that Israel says could be put to military use.

The agreement is vague on what restrictions Israel would lift.

There is also the question of Gaza’s southern passenger terminal on the Egyptian border, not to mention whether Israel will have the right to continue intercepting and seizing, in international waters, aid flotillas headed for Gaza or limiting Gazans from fishing in their own waters outside or even within the three mile water rights, as it now does.

On any of these points a difference can be interpreted as a rejection/violation of the truce agreement and violence can restart.

But these are details.

The main point to note is that, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, Operation Pillar of Defense was NOT a response to the recent escalation of rocket firing by Hamas. The rockets being fired from Gaza has very little to do with Israel’s repeated deadly military operations against Gaza.

Consider this. During the present conflict, Hamas rockets killed five Israelis, injured not more than a couple of dozen people and partially damaged two buildings. Hardly figures to invite a massive military operation that lasted eight days, killed 161 Palestinians and inflicted unimaginable misery and destruction on the Gazans.

The reasons for Israeli operations go beyond the rocket firing activities of Hamas. Israel’s reasons and objectives go much, much deeper.

Put simply, behind it all is Israel’s objective to have all of Palestine. It wants to establish Eretz Yisrael on all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, complete with biblical Judea and Samara.

Israeli leaders have long maintained that Jordan is the homeland of the Palestinians and Palestine, all of it, is the God given homeland of the Jews.

Several Israeli leaders have openly stated that their aim is to make life so miserable for the Palestinians that they will eventually flee to neighboring countries.

To ensure that Palestinians never have the ability to stand up against or challenge Israel, Israel is committed to preventing any arms coming into Gaza (even as shiploads of arms keep flowing into Israel from the USA and other countries!), preventing Gazans from manufacturing any such arms, even primitive rockets, and destroying from time to time any rocket making facility that Gazans may put up, as also destroying periodically all stockpile of such arms that Gazans may accumulate.

Another goal of Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza is to cow the Gazans and beat them into submission.

None of Israel’s military operations has succeeded in weakening Hamas. After every Israeli military operation, the Gazans, though suffering huge human and material loss, have emerged stronger.

Operation Pillar of Defense has made them stronger than ever. Arab leaders, taking a lesson from the Arab Spring, and sensitive to the sentiments of their people about Israel and Palestine, for the first time came together to try and save Gaza from further death and destruction. World leaders, including UN chief Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, Turkey’s foreign minister, a delegation of Arab foreign ministers, Khaled Mashaal, the top Hamas leader in exile – all of them converged on the region.

The UN Security Council held closed door consultations at the request of Russia. A resolution would have emerged but for the feet dragging by one of the members.

In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, is now in power in Egypt and Tunisia and Hamas is also getting support from Quatar and Turkey.

The political situation has changed dramatically.

As to the spirit of Gazans, it is best illustrated by a message given by a 13 year old girl from Gaza who sustained shrapnel injuries throughout her upper body, with some pieces still embedded in her chest. Here is her message: “I say, we are children. There is nothing that is our fault to have to face this. They (the Israelis) are occupying us and I will say, as Abu Omar said, ‘If you’re a mountain, the wind won’t shake you.’ We’re not afraid. We’ll stay strong.”

Trying to beat the Gazans into submission apart, the Israeli attacks on Gaza are, as pointed out by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, a continuation of Israel’s “policies of war, illegal occupation of Palestine, siege of Gaza, carrying on building illegal settlements and confiscating Palestinian land”, not to mention transferring a large number of its citizens onto occupied West Bank, bulldozing Palestinian homes and razing Palestinian villages.

This is a legacy of Israel’s policy of dispossession that precedes the creation of Israel.

With Hamas having become stronger than ever, more defiant than ever, instead of docilely submitting to Israel, and with Israel’s goal of eliminating all rocket manufacturing facilities and stockpiles of rockets in Gaza not having been accomplished, and with the truce eliminating any further attempts by Israel to strike Gaza again, the indications are, given Israel’s history in this regard, that Israel will, as soon as it can, create another incident to provoke Hamas once more into retaliating and use that retaliation as an excuse, once more, to mount a better planned and more massive attack that will inflict massive destruction in a short time, before the world starts putting pressure on Israel once again to agree to a ceasefire.

The words of Israeli President in a recent CNN interview are ominous. He let it slip that “You don’t negotiate with terrorists. You strike’” Perhaps even more ominous is what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “I know there are citizens that expected a wider military operation and it could be that it will be needed. But at this time, the right thing for the state of Israel is to take this opportunity to reach a lasting cease fire.” (emphasis added)

 

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Here's a Poem to remind us today that War is only to be entered into after all means of diplomacy have been exhausted. That the horrors of War are just that, not the glory and guts we read in storybooks.

 

WILFRED OWEN 

 

recognized as the greatest

English poet of the First World War. 

First World War
(with notes)

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge. 

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) 
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.

Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . . 

Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12) 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) 
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

 

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

 

Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est

1.  DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.

2.  Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.) 

3.  Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer 

4.  Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air 

5.  Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle  

 6.  Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells 

7.  Gas! -  poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8.  Helmets -  the early name for gas masks 

9.  Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue 

10.  Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks 

11.  Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling 

12.  Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth 

13.  High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea 

14.  ardent - keen 

15.  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above. The pronunciation of Dulce is DULKAY. The letter C in Latin was pronounced like the C in "car". The word is often given an Italian pronunciation pronouncing the C like the C in cello, but this is wrong. Try checking this out in a Latin dictionary.  -  David Roberts.