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Why I’ll
vote for the Jewish candidate in US presidential election?
Jamal Kanj*
Let me start
with a confession: I didn’t get it right when I speculated the Republican Party
would not nominate Donald Trump for US president. I argued in an earlier column
that if they did, the narcissistic Trump would most likely run as an
independent candidate.
In such
scenario, I had posited, or hoped Bernie Sanders would do the same and run
against the nominated Democratic Party establishment. The Republican leadership
however, chose Party unity over what was best for America. And Sanders folded
under the Democratic Party for the same obvious reasons.
Four major
candidates could have signaled an end to the two-party dictatorship that had dominated
US election since 1792. The governing monopoly
of the two-party system has made American election process too lengthy, expensive
and stale. That is unlike the shorter and much more dynamic European elections.
Today, American
voters are left to choose between the lesser of two evils. The unpopularity
rating for Clinton and Trump hovers around 60%.
Meaning, most registered voters don’t support neither Clinton nor Trump
to be the next US presidents. Possibly for the first time in American election,
the new White House resident will be the least disliked of the two unfavorable
picks of the two-party system.
In 2000
elections, electorates faced the same quandary having to choose between George
W Bush/Dick Cheney and Al Gore/Joe Lieberman tickets. Or cast their votes for the
no evil alternative that had little chance of winning.
I chose the
greater good: the ticket led by the lifelong consumer advocate Ralph Nader. I
rejected some of my friends’ argument that voting for Nader was a vote for the “other
evil.”
Three years
later, it became very palpable that “evil” flock together: Democrats and
Republicans. To make the case for war, Bush most loyal asset in US Senate was
Gore’s running mate, Lieberman. The Democratic vice presidential candidate who
ran against the “evil” Bush, was the most faithful warrior in Bush’s “evil”
army in US Senate.
Hilary
Clinton wasn’t far behind Lieberman in supporting Bush’s war. She was an
opportunist and voted to the sentiment of the majority of Americans who
supported Bush’s adventure at the time. Leadership is to be in front of the
carriage, not behind it. She failed her biggest leadership test.
Experience
aside, Clinton and Trump are not much different: She’s wicked in politics, he’s evil in
business. She supported unjust wars. He exploited workers and bankrupted
businesses.
That’s why
in 2016, I refuse again to vote for the lesser evil. Just as I supported the
Jewish candidate, Sanders, in the Democratic primary I have decided to cast my
vote next November for the Jewish US presidential candidate.
Jill Stein
refuses to sell her soul to the “evil doers” who finance US election. She
speaks for millions of students who are overburdened by bank loans. Her Green
Party platform advocates living wages for hard working Americans. She stood up to
American Zionist financiers of the two-party system: Shedlon Adelson supporting
Trump and Haim Saban backing Clinton. Heads or tails, Zionist financiers can
count on a winner in the White House.
Stein is the
only candidate with the courage to tell Israeli leaders that US taxpayers’
money will be contingent on peace talk. Unlike current and previous presidents,
Stein promised to withhold U.S. financial aid if Israeli continues flaunting
American human rights values.
In an
interview with the Israeli Newspaper Haartz, Stein warned Israeli leaders that
“Home demolitions, occupation, assassination, apartheid…” against Palestinians
wouldn’t be tolerated in her administration.
Despite my
dissatisfaction with Barak Obama presidency especially when it comes to
Palestine question. The truth to be said however, Obama wasn’t your typical
party establishment candidate and he had succeeded in many other ways. He had
created more than 14 million jobs since February 2010 and 20 million new Americans
have gained health insurance coverage under his Affordable Care Act.
On the
International front, he ended most of Bush and the Zioncon’s wars. He ended America’s last cold war relic and
established relationship with Cuba. And to a lesser extent, he stood up to the
hubris Israeli rightwing prime minister and the powerful Israeli lobby in
Washington.
Optimistic
maybe, but I still hope that Obama will garner the audacity to establish an
enforceable framework for peace in Palestine before he leaves office.
If it wasn’t
for eight miserable years under Bush, Americans might have not taken a chance
on someone, like Obama who came from outside the Party establishment.
The worst that
could happen in November is electing the less experienced evil. Unfortunately, Americans
would likely suffer as a result. Short pain, but hopefully long term gain. The bigger
the evil in the White House, the better is the chance for no evil candidate
next election.
I shall not
vote for the lesser evil. That’s why I decided to vote for Jill Stein for US president.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Chilcot verdict: Tony B_liar
By Jamal Kanj
July 14, 2016
How many words does it take for the
British to say a liar? 2.6 million words to be exact.
The Chiclot report had also painted
Tony Blair as submissive to George W Bush, and lacked rudimentary judgment when
evaluating intelligence data.
According to the report, eight
months before the invasion of Iraq, Blair authored a six-page personal memo to
Bush. In the memo Blair posited deeply entrenched oxymoronic colonial view suggesting
that occupation would “free up the region.” He somehow believed he could free
the poor Iraqis by occupying them, just like his ancestors argued long ago that
colonialism was altruistic deed to help the colonized. And while he was in a
roll, he forgot to claim that torture in Abu Ghraib prison was a dividend of
the exported democracy.
The most revealing part of that
personal memo was however, Blair’s pledge to Bush: "I will be with you
whatever." I did a double take on it, for the statement sounded more like
a communication between two teenagers who were high on drugs rather than world
leaders committing to a war with incalculable consequences.
Blair attempted to rationalize deferring
to Bush the decision to take the UK to war so he can influence US policy after
the occupation of Iraq. In the life of me, I couldn’t understand how Blair would
be able to influence a cowboy after he had already committed “whatever” to him eight
months before the war.
I had argued myriad of times in
this column that the Iraq war was designed in the dens of US Pentagon by a team
of Israeli firsters―some of whom were investigated by the FBI for being Israel
spies―including Paul Wolfowitz, David Frum, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
Michael Ledeen to name just few.
Blair adopted the Israeli firsters’ view of the
contrived Iraqi threat and ignored his own UK joint intelligence committee which
had concluded that unlike Iran or N Korea, Iraq didn’t have immediate
capabilities to produce enough fissile material for a weapon. In fact now, Blair’s deputy at the time, John
Prescott who supported the war, had turned against his previous boss admitting
that the basis for going to war were “tittle-tattle”
American Zioncons had designed the blue print to
breakup Iraq several years before Bush’s election. The Israeli firsters envisioned
a war financed by US taxpayers and fueled by the blood of American soldiers.
They worked in Israeli think tanks in Washington and waited patiently for a
gullible megalomaniac president to come to the White House.
Their blue print design was manifested by the first
acts of the Zioncons’ appointed US administration in Iraq. It dismantled the Iraqi army, imposed a sectarian
political system and expanded the autonomous regional powers along sectarian
and ethnic lines. The US Zioncons’ deeds in Baghdad germinated the seeds of Al
Qaida and IS to grow in the new fertile sectarian environment.
Ruining Iraq wasn’t enough for Bush. The Washington
cowboy rewarded the ex UK prime minister with leading the so called Middle East
Peace Quartet. Under Blair’s leadership the Quartet had become a fig leaf allowing
the extremist Israeli rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu to violate
with impunity all of Israel’s previous commitments to peace.
Eight years under his leadership, the Quartet
achieved nothing but unfulfilled promises of economic crumps to Palestinians while
the “Jewish only” colonies on stolen land grew at a faster pace.
Starting almost a century ago, colonial political
chameleon Winston Churchill divided the Arab world with the French and transformed
Palestine from a multi-cultural majority country into a European imported ethnocentric
Jewish dominance.
In the post-colonial era, another political chameleon
with his trademark strained facial muscles confused for a smile, coalesced with
a Texan cowboy to implement the Israeli firsters’ vision of fragmenting the
sub-nations and gulping what remained of Palestine by messianic “Jewish only”
enclaves to end all hopes of peace in this region.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Mohamed Ali: An American tale
JAMAL KANJ
June 16 2016
It is fair to assume that most readers today can’t name the
current heavyweight boxing champion. The same people would most likely name of the
champion from fifty years ago.
That’s what makes Muhammad Ali unique. The champ or the
“Greatest” brought a special aura to the ring. It didn’t matter whether it was the
formidable US government in court, or fighting the unbeatable in the boxing
ring. He won.
I grew up with Mohammed Ali’s memories. In the 1960s, I lived
in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon where we had no electricity. My
father and his friends gathered around a battery powered radio listening live to
the broadcast of Muhammad Ali fights. He
was the subject of conversations at homes and among pupils at school.
We followed his battle in US courts when he refused
induction in the army during the Vietnam War. He was stripped of his
championship and served time in prison. Years later, we also celebrated the US
Supreme Court unanimous knockout ruling (8-0) reversing his earlier verdict.
I remember, albeit with a tinge of jealousy his 1974 visit
to another Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon. He saw firsthand that
Israel wasn‘t the panacea of Jewish refugees. But it was the product of an ideology
that exploited Jewish suffering in Europe to justify the making of Palestinian
refugees in another part of the world.
After his visit to Ein el Hilwa camp, the Champ decried
Zionism influence on US politics and avowed “support for the Palestinian struggle
to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.”
Four years later, I attended college in Houston Texas and
worked a night shift, six to six, at a Gulf self-service petro station. The
night shift allowed me to go to school during the day and study inside the
kiosk during low traffic in the early morning hours.
On Friday September 15 1978, I had a conflict with my work
schedule. I wanted to watch Mohammad Ali’s fight against Leon Spinks in New
Orleans. My job paid the minimum $2.35 per hour and couldn’t afford taking the
night off. To watch the fight however, I risked my job and hid a small 12 inch
black and white TV under the counter inside the kiosk. The rented TV ended up
costing almost half of my wage for the night. But it was all worth it. For it
was Muhammad Ali’s third and last time in his career to regain the world
championship title.
Even while very sick, Muhammad didn’t coward from a fight. Last
December Republican candidate Ronald Trump called for a ban “on Muslims
entering the United States.” Muhammad
admonished him and called on political leaders “to use their position to bring
understanding” and “clarify these misguided murderers (IS) have perverted
people's views on what Islam really is."
In the same week, the now Republican presumptive nominee Trump
ridiculed US President Barak Obama for saying “Muslims are our sport hero.”
Trump tweeted back, “What sport is he (Obama) talking about, and who?”
Still, on June third Trump tweeted: “Muhammad Ali is dead at
74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. ”
It took Trump only six months to answer his own question.
Trump is an opportunist and Schadenfreude. He got “excited”
for the housing meltdown in 2008, and to vindicate his racist views, he
slobbered over the blood of the Orlando gay bar victims.
This is an American tale of two men: One who was inspired by
his belief to object an unjust war. And a rich kid who supported the war, but
his wealthy father bought him a medical exemption to escape it.
Today, we mourn the life of the consciousness objector turned
humanitarian activist. And dread the draft dodger morphed into an immature
politician vying to become US president with the power to send more poor kids
to new wars.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
What
cost Israel…
Jamal
Kanj*
May
15, 2016
Much
had been argued about the creation of Israel and the ensued 1948 ethnic
cleansing of non-Jewish Palestinians. Sadly however, most had become a desensitized
academic debate. A lifeless abstract portrayal failing to depict what it really
meant for one to be a refugee without a country.
On
this 68th commemoration of the Nakba or catastrophe, I wanted
to show what Nakba meant to one Palestinian refugee.
On
May 15, 1948 Zionist Jews danced and fire crackers burst over the streets of
New York celebrating the founding of Israel. About the same time, and on the
other side of the world, Zionist terrorist’s mortar exploded in the middle of Jebal
al Luz (mountains of almonds) burning homes and forcing civilians to flee their
village.
In
the middle of the night, Abu Musa carried his physically disabled blind mother on his shoulders. His wife, Um Musa picked up their infant baby
Musa and joined throng of refugees escaping for their lives. Abu Musa’s family
hid in a ditch at the outskirt of their village. The morning sun exposed the scattered
refugees hiding in nearby bushes and under trees.
Sorties
after sorties, Zionist planes strafed the area pushing the villagers further
north toward Lebanon. Chaotic and confusion under heavy gun fire, panicking civilians
ran in all directions. Abu Musa picked up his newborn son and ran for his life.
Um Musa followed on his footsteps.
Panting for air an hour later, Abu Musa realized
he had left his blind mother behind.
Zionist forces continued to bomb
from air and ground. Abu Musa attempted to go back, but all was in vain. The
next day and during a lull in the Zionist terrorist bombardment, Abu Musa went looking
for his mother. But she was nowhere to be found. He came across local villagers
who returned to check on their properties. They told him they had just buried
the remains of what had appeared to be an elderly woman. Her body ripped apart
by animals.
Was my mother eaten alive by
wild animals? Or had she been murdered by Zionists? Those questions haunted Abu
Musa all his life. The loss of his country and mother were just the start of his
lugubrious life until his death in the mid-1990s.
Abu Musa ended up settling in
the same camp as my parents. In addition to baby Musa, he had three more
children in the camp, two boys and a girl.
Musa who had left Palestine as
an infant, joined the revolution in the early 1970s and returned to Palestine.
He was murdered by the Israeli army and was buried in unmarked grave. Abu Musa, who did not see his mother’s corpse,
was unable to see or bury his eldest son either.
A short time after losing Musa,
Abu Musa became disabled. I made it a point to call on him whenever I visited
the camp. It broke my heart during the last visit before his death as I watched
him crawling out of the bathroom like a little baby. I kneeled down and kissed
him; he kissed me back and then asked, “Who are you, my son?”
Calamity was a continuum to this
one refugee. In the early 1990s his
youngest son Kamal was murdered while he was on his way to school in Tripoli,
Lebanon. He was butchered in the year he would have had graduated from high
school.
For Israel, Abu Musa and the
other Palestinian refugees like my parents were dispensable nuisances. In a 1948
foreign ministry study, Israel predicted the refugees “… will
waste away. Some will die but most will turn into human debris and social
outcasts … in the Arab countries.”
To Israel’s chagrin, the
grandchildren from Abu Musa’s surviving son and daughter did not turn to “human
debris.” 68 years later, Abu Musa’s progenies are more determined to find and
bury their great-grandmother’s remains, in their original village.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
American election:
the two death options
JAMAL KANJ
April 08,
2016
Donald Trump
could change American electoral history for the better. Before explaining how, let’s
first explore the politics and predicament of the 2016 Republican primary
election.
About six
weeks ago I projected that Trump would win the Republican nomination. That was
before traditional Republican leadership came out of hibernation to spoil Trump’s
chances. It was however, a little too late. It almost certain now that Trump will
end up with the most delegates at the summer convention. Although, it might not
be enough to give Trump a simple majority to become the outright Republican nominee
at the next November election.
Republican leadership
has no one else to blame for the Trumpmania frenzy. The Party had cultivated
the extreme rightwing of the American electorate for more than thirty years.
They had pandered to Jerry Farwell’s “Moral Majority,” Newt Gingrich’s Contract
with America and Michelle Buchman’s Tea Party.
Republican
leadership was content with the secured rightwing vote for their candidates. They
turned unsettled however, when the extremist’s base posited their own to challenge
traditional leadership.
This is
universally true in all cases of breeding self-righteous groups to serve a short
term interest of the more dominant party. Once they garner influence, the self-righteous
proponents become attracted to power like sharks are drawn to the smell of blood.
Ultimately, their illusionary perception of supremacy inspires them to impose
their agenda on others.
In the early
1980s, Ronald Reagan administration nurtured Islamists ideologues to fight the
Soviets in Afghanistan. For as long as those fighters were the fuel to serve
the US strategy, they were compared by Regan to the “founding fathers.” But
when Reagan’s adopted Islamists became powerful enough to implement their own
agenda, conflict ensued.
Israel encouraged
the development of alternative Islamists Palestinian leadership in the hope of
weakening the more secular PLO. Up until
then, the Israeli public didn’t know the meaning of the walking rockets
(suicide bombers) blowing themselves up in the middle of Tel Aviv.
In 1982, Israel
dislodged the PLO from Lebanon. It weakened the secular Lebanese National
Movement and created a vacuum that was soon filled by Hezbollah.
Today, Israel
is repeating the same stratagem by collaborating with Al Qaida affiliates in
the hope to break up Syria.
At one point,
the Zionist movement foresaw the rise of Nazism in Europe (they do today) as an
opportunity to induce Jewish immigration to Palestine. That is until the Nazi
experiment went out of control.
It was the
same results in all cases regardless of whether the self-righteousness groups
were Jewish, Christians or Muslims.
To answer my
earlier proposition on Trump, traditional Republicans had finally come face to
face with the juvenile they reared; and they have come to dislike their creation.
At next summer’s convention, Party traditionalists are expected to abandon
Trump and unite behind the second least hated alternative: Ted Cruz. Or to
quote a Republican leader, to choose between "Death by being shot or poisoning"
It is very
plausible that Trump with an ego larger than the Republican Party, will end up
walking out of the convention. Trump has already hinted that he would recant
his pledge to support the Republican candidate if he wasn’t on the November ticket.
If and when
Trump decides to break away from the Republican Party, this is should be an
opportunity for Bernie Sanders to do the same at the Democratic side.
Riding
Trump’s ego is the best hope for Americans to end the two hundred year old Democratic
and Republican monopoly over US presidential election. The traditionalist
against the independent candidates to end the two Party reign.
Sanders has a
better chance in the general election to halt his Party’s retrograde and beat
the Democratic traditionalist who was rejected by Party voters eight years ago.
Then continue the march to defeat the “shot or poisoning” death option of the
Republican candidates.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Defeating Israel
Jamal Kanj
March 3, 2016
Last week Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq ended a record 94
days hunger strike protesting the so called administrative detention in Israeli
jail.
Administrative detention is a misnomer procedure used to hold
Palestinian activists in military confinement without charges or due-process.
The six months administrative order can be extended indefinitely without
informing the detainee of the charges or affording them or their counsel the
right to examine the evidence against them. It is just one Israeli oppressive occupation
instrument that drives the civil movement underground and transforms it to
violent resistance.
Under international law, administrative detention could be
permissible under exceptional circumstances. It comes however, with rigid
restrictions on its application. In the case of Israel, the exception is the
norm.
The
latest political prisoner al-Qiq was on the verge of death when Israel finally
agreed not to extend his detention beyond the current six months order.
According to the Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights, al-Qiq’s
hunger strike lasted longer than the 1981 hunger strikes by members of the
Irish Republican Army who were held by Britain in Northern Ireland.
Al-Qiq’s
lawyer Jawad Boulus’ earlier appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court to release his
client was rejected. The Court ruled that the military judge’s order to detain
him was legal. According to Boulus, the Supreme Court was "briefed on
classified material” that he was neither allowed to review nor challenge.
About eight years ago, Al-Qiq served 16 months in Israeli jails for
political activities on the elected student council at Birzeit University. At
the time of his detention, the 33-year-old father of two worked as a TV
correspondent for Saudi’s Almajd television.
Al-Qei was arrested during an Israeli military raid in the middle
of the night at his home in the city of Ramallah. The city, according to
agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is located in
Area A, ostensibly under the PA’s full civil and security control.
On
November 25, 2015 four days following his arrest, Al-Qiq started a hunger
strike to protest ill treatment and his detention without due process.
Henceforward, a battle of will ensued between the captive and his jailers. In
early January, he was strapped to his bed for four days and was forcibly fed
intravenously.
On February 1 al-Qiq's wife, Fayha Shalash told
reporters that her husband had requested not to receive any medical treatment,
even if he loses consciousness. “His decision is very clear: either free or
dead, not in between.”
Israeli jailers continued to monitor his
deteriorating health hoping the “self-torture” pain would eventually force him
to end his strike. Driven by pure devilish schadenfreude, Israeli authorities watched
him on closed circuit TV screaming of agony as his internal organs started to
fail. Gravely ill but not total collapse, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected
Al-Qiq’s petition on February 16 to transfer him to a Palestinian hospital. The
court sided with the military’s secret evidence that he would represent a
threat if he was released from Israeli custody.
In the last week of February, Al-Qiq lost the
ability to speak and was at risk of death. Realizing he would never surrender,
his jailers ultimately agreed not to extend his current six months
administrative detention order. Unfortunately,
it took Al-Qiq 94 days of extreme agony to show the world that Israel had no imperative
cause to detain him in the first place.
While
there were very few instances when Israeli Jews were held in administrative
detention, the law was applied disproportionally to Palestinian activists. Israel compares only to apartheid South Africa
who used administrative detention widely in an effort to crush the opposition
to Apartheid.
Israel
failed to break the will of another prisoner. And like apartheid South Africa,
it will not succeed in subjugating the will of a people longing for justice and
freedom from an imported ethnocentric occupation.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Israel’s
apartheid character
JAMAL KANJ*
February
28, 2016
Swedish
Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom made a maelstrom in Israel merely for
demanding a “… credible investigation into these (Palestinian) deaths in order
to clarify and bring about possible accountability.” Israel declared the
Swedish official persona non grata for daring to request what no Arab official,
least Palestinian, to investigate Israeli extrajudicial killing of Palestinian
kids.
Since
1948, Israel was empowered by the international community’s indifference to the
plight of Palestinian refugees and for its occupation of the West Bank since
1967. In the last four months alone, Israeli vigilante has murdered close to 170
Palestinians. It is undisputable that Palestinian defiance to Israeli
malevolent occupation has reached unprecedented levels. After nearly a quarter
century of negotiations, and more than quadrupling the number of illegal
settlers in Jewish only colonies, the Palestinian citizen has taken the
initiative into her hand.
Almost
50 per cent of the murdered Palestinians were under the age of 20, girls and
boys born after the Oslo agreement. If an illegal Jewish settler were to be
killed at the hand of a frustrated lone wolf Palestinian, the whole community
would be shut down after a summary execution of the accused perpetrator and the
house where she lived would be demolished.
The
same doesn’t apply if the terrorist was Jewish.
Israel
has succeeded, to a great extent, in neutralizing the tired traditional
Palestinian leadership. Hamas is content with its fictional empire in Gaza, and
members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are more concerned with preserving the
special VIP privileges granted by the occupation power.
While
the number of murdered Palestinians is edging closer to 200, the PA continues
its security coordination with the military occupation. Unfortunately, deeming
Palestinian life worthless and providing Israel with unofficial license to
continue the onslaught against those resisting occupation.
In
one case, a video shows a 13 year old Palestinian soaked in her blood and
bleeding to death on the sidewalk. She was murdered by a “Jewish hero” who
sacrificed another Palestinian soul, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1OAstsb57M).
There
were only two instances when a kill received media attention. The first was
when Israeli vigilante shot Eritrean immigrant Haftom Zarhum who was then lynched
to death by a Jewish mob; (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwVG5_78G7o).The second was the shooting of an
Israeli Jew. In both cases the victims were mistaken for Palestinians.
Yet,
and with help of the internationally controlled Zionist media, Israel is able
to portray the oppressed as the aggressor, and present the occupier as a
benevolent victim. This is especially true for the New York Times newspaper
(January 23, 2016) in its media hyperbole coverage providing vivid images when
referring to Israeli fatalities, “amid a wave of Palestinian stabbings and
attempted stabbings, car rammings and gun attacks.” In the following sentence
however, it applies linguistic euphemism to downplay Israeli murders, stating
simply: “About 150 Palestinians have been killed during the same period.”
In
the midst of all this, outgoing UN Chief has finally realized the evil of Israeli
occupation, telling the UN Security Council last month that Palestinians under
Israeli occupation behave "As oppressed peoples have demonstrated
throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation.”
Current
conditions are not likely to change under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. He came to office on a pledge that if he were to be reelected, a
Palestinian state would not be created.
Meanwhile,
leading US Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton kowtowed to her Zionist benefactors
promising to reward Netanyahu by inviting him “to the White House in my first
month in office.”
Eight
years under Hillary and Netanyahu will certainly gobble what left of land slated
for the future Palestinian state. On the bright side however, they would inadvertently
bring us one step closer to the one state solution or force Israel to own up to
its Jewish apartheid character.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Trump: A test of American democracy
American election is in full swing. For those who are unfamiliar
with what appears to be a perplexing democratic exercise. It is important to
remember that this is an internal Party election’s phase. Republicans and
Democrats hold their own state’s primaries (elections) to choose delegates for each
Party’s national convention, held usually in July or early August.
Primaries take place between February and June of the election
year. The national presidential election is conducted on Tuesday after the
first Monday in the following November.
In this cycle, the Democratic side has two well-known and long serving
politicians. On the Republicans side it is loud hodgepodge basket of candidates
led by copycats pandering for the hardcore extreme right wing of the Party. The
top three Republican candidates are: a businessman/reality TV show personality
Donald Trump, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Ruboi. Cruz’s father and Rubio’s
parents were Cuban immigrants. The scion of immigrant parents got into heated
exchange in Spanish in last Republican’s debate where each tried to outdo Trump
by promising to shut the door that granted refuge to their parents.
For better or worse, and absent of an alternative option, Trump is
poised to win the Republican nomination. Rubio and Cruz are miniature
ideological copy of Trump and vying for the same angry hordes.
Republican debates have become TV entertainment episodes. Trump is
the lead chorus’ star and the cheerleader. The Party’s voters are attracted to
political entertainment. It is reminiscent of the time when John McCain
selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate in 2012.
Large enthusiastic crowd turned out to be entertained by her
cheeky criticism of Obama. In her footsteps, Trump is too having large turn outs
listening to his caustic attacks against Muslims, “Mexicans rapists” and to advocate
the return to torture. Like a professional comedian who gets his clue from
laughing audience, Trump gets his from ruckus cheers approving his racist rants.
Trump is extremely self-absorbed. For example he reckoned his latest
win in New Hampshire because "(voters) like me a lot." He lavishes
himself with attributes of greatness, even when addressing his failures. Explaining
his four corporate bankruptcies in 1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009 he said "I
used the law four times and made a tremendous thing. I did a very good
job."
He showers his entertainment seeking supporters with talks but
little substance. “You’re going to love it,” or that he would be “the greatest
jobs president that God ever created.”
He speaks adult gibberish to his boisterous crowd, like promising “phenomenal
— phenomenal,” health care system and “so many victories ... it’s gonna be
coming out of your ears.”
He pledged to build a free and "Far better, far higher" Mexican
paid wall to stop "killers" and "rapists" invaders coming across
the Southern borders. His example was the Israeli separation wall paid for by U.S.
taxpayers.
Trump has candy for every occasion. Even when a train chugged down
the tracks near where he was speaking in Iowa, he diverted from his speech
saying, “that train’s going to be moving a hell of a lot faster.”
Trump, the businessman is accustomed to saying and promising
anything to conclude a deal. But voters must realize that running for the
office of the president of the most powerful nation is not a business where
bankruptcy is an option.
It is highly unlikely that Trump could hold his feet against any
opposition candidate in national election. It would be, however, premature to
dismiss him. Empirical experience shows that democracy has a fatal flaw when
voters flock behind a charismatic demagogue who can skillfully exploit people’s
fear, insecurity and anger. By exploiting the same, the democratic experiment has
brought us in past and present the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, George W Bush
and Benjamin Netanyahu.
*Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
The most dangerous
Palestinian
By: Jamal Kanj
February 11,
2016
In last
week’s column I wrote on the banned love story from the Israeli high school
reading list. The Israeli Ministry of Education claimed that young Jewish
students might not comprehend “the significance of miscegenation” for
“maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the [Jewish] people.”
Oddly enough,
the Israeli argument to maintain the Jewish “ethnic identity” from dilution finds
similar root in long gone or irrelevant racist movements spanning from Nazi
Germany to the Ku Klux Klan in America.
From my own life
experience, and in the small circle of friends I had in California, I enjoyed
the company of several mixed couples. Out of those, I had known at least three
Jewish and Arab intermarriages.
The first involved
a Palestinian, the second a Lebanese woman and the third was a Saudi man.
In the early
80s my best friend met a young Jewish girl who lived next door. It was during
the peak of our student activism confronting Zionist Jewish students at the
University campus on daily basis. Yet, my best friend saw his new girlfriend only
as a human being who happened to be Jewish. Fortunately, she did the same.
In the late
80s I met a Lebanese woman while doing community outreach during the first
Palestinian Intifada. She was married to a Jewish man. Not surprisingly, their
love transcended the Zionist’s parochial race. We became best of friends and two
years later our first sons were born. We still cherish in our memory our two babies
pictured lying side by side on our bed when they we were only weeks old.
During the
same period, I met a friend from Saudi Arabia who was raising his children with
his ex-Jewish wife. While divorced, they both were dedicated to their half Arab
half Jewish American children.
In the three
cases, they all were blessed with well acculturated and naturally more tolerant
children who weren’t any less Jewish or any less Arabs. They did not threaten
the “identity of the (Jewish) people,” but rejected the premise of separation
advocated by the Zionist ideology. Zionism is an 18th century
European chauvinistic movement that exploited historical injustice against Jews
to justify inflicting the same against non-Jewish Palestinians.
Back to
Israel’s intimidating novel, a little over a year ago I was asked by American
Jewish bestselling author Michelle Cohen Corasanti to co-write a love story between
a Jew and a Palestinian who came from diametrically opposed backgrounds.
Michelle was the author of The Almond Tree, a book that was published in 19
languages. I wrote a review of it on the pages of this newspaper almost three
years ago.
In
preparation for her book, Michelle lived in Palestinian villages inside Israel
and mastered the Arabic language. The experience gave the writer the insight to
write about Palestinian life and social customs. Hence, the ability to
genuinely depict the life and struggle of Palestinians who remained in what
became Israel in 1948. In a rarely seen authentic display, she showed a people
who held tight to their Arab Palestinian identity despite Zionist attempts to
erase their national memory.
After
initial reluctance―I was in the midst of writing my own novel― here we are today
having completed two novels. I wrote from the point of view of the Palestinian
protagonists, while Michelle used her background and personal experiences to
step into the American Jewish character. Rich in history, the stories are about
breaking down stereotypes and discovering the human inside Jews and
Palestinians.
The novels will
present an antithesis character to the omnipresent Zionist painted image of the
demonized Palestinian; a hero the reader can truly route for and identify with.
Thus, introducing the most “dangerous” Palestinian, Israel doesn’t want the world
to meet.
*Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Forbidden love tales in Israel …
JAMAL KANJ*
February 5, 2016
How can a two year old
novel become a best seller? Censorship is the short answer. The important question
is however, why would the “Jewish democracy” censors a love fiction between a
Jew and non-Jew?
The banned book Borderlife,
was based on a love story between an Israeli woman and Palestinian man. According
to Haartez newspaper, the novel was recommended in 2015 for Hebrew high school
literature classes by “a professional committee of academics and educators, at
the request of a number of teachers.”
The Israeli Ministry of
Education rejected the fiction work for fear it could corrupt young Jewish
minds. In explaining its decision, the ministry wrote “Intimate relations
between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.” The Israeli Education
Ministry wrote that “Young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic
view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic
identity of the [Jewish] people and the significance of miscegenation.”
In layman terms, the educational
authorities in the only “democracy” in the Middle East wanted to protect fledgling
Jewish minds from the plague of assimilation and intermarriages between people
of different races. Wasn’t this what Adolph Hitler had advocated for the Aryan
race?
But in an Orwellian love is
hate doublethink, Dalia Fenzig, the head of the Israeli ministry committee that
decides the Hebrew Literature matriculation reading list, told Israel’s Army
Radio. “The (love fiction) book could
incite hatred…”
Fenzig further implied that Israelisocietal racism rendered the book unfit for
Israeli students. “Many parents in the state
school system would strongly object to having their children study the novel,”
she said.
Shlomo Herzig, the
ministry’s head of literature studies that recommended the book was more forthright
in addressing Israeli structural racism: “The acute problem of Israeli society today is the
terrible ignorance and racism that is spreading in it.”
In a
newspaper interview with the Telegraph, Israeli book author Dorit Rabinyan talked
about the real fundamental issue for banning her work, “My book’s only ‘harm’,
if you want to call it that, is that a young (Israeli) person may get another
perspective on Palestinians to the one they’re being exposed to by politicians
and the news… he’s (the Palestinian) a young guy who is cool and friendly and
you can identify with him,” she says. “I think that is what is most
intimidating for this nationalist government: he’s a Palestinian and a full
human. That is the power of the book and the reason for it to be banned.”
It is worth
noting that the book’s author is anything but an ardent Zionist. She espoused
the racist Zionist ideology that gave her Jewish parents the right to emigrate
from Iran to live on land stolen from native Palestinians. This is while, like
most Zionists, she rejects the right of those Palestinians to return to their
homes.
Not surprising, the whole
fiasco was very likely engineered by the ex-American, Israeli Minister of
Education Naftali Bennett who previously said such things as “when Palestinians
were climbing trees, we already had a Jewish state” and “I’ve killed lots of
(Palestinians) Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.” Bennett sees
his educational role, “in the only ethnocentric democracy” as the national custodian
to ensure Jewish blood remains pure and Palestinian-free, even in fiction
tales.
In
the face of blatant Israeli ethnocentric racism against non-Jews, the onus is on
Jewish civil right organizations, especially those advocating equality in the
US and Europe to speak up against Jewish racism in Israel.
Jewish
organizations cannot demand justice and equality when in the minority, while supporting
a government perpetuating inequality under a self-proclaimed Jewish state
majority.
*Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Rights of Palestinian
Israel citizens
JAMAL KANJ*
January 28, 2012
Palestinian civic
organizations inside Israel have declared January 30, 2016 the Day of Solidarity
with Palestinian Israeli citizens.
Israel was
established in 1948 on the ruins of more than 500 native towns and villages and
the forceful displacement of approximately 780,000 Palestinians. Only 153,000
Palestinians remained under what became Israel. Of which approximately 25 per
cent became refugees in their own country when their homes were destroyed and
their land was expropriated by the new state.
Palestinians
who continued to live in what became Israel were governed until 1966 by martial
laws under appointed Jewish military governor. Unlike Jews, Israeli citizen Palestinians couldn’t
travel inside Israel without special military permit, lived under the threat of
curfew, administrative detention and expulsions. Israel expropriated their land
allegedly for military use before they were turned over for the exclusive civilian
use of Jewish Israeli citizens.
No wonder in
1948 Palestinians owned 80 per cent of the land. Following the establishment of
Israel their land had shrunk to less than 3.5 per cent. The same laws were used
extensively in the West Bank to confiscate Palestinian land, which were later handed
to Israeli settlers to build “Jewish only” colonies.
Israel has
two systems: one for its Jewish citizens and another for Palestinian non-Jewish
citizens.
In
education, a 2001 report by Human Rights Watch described Israeli run
Palestinian schools “a world apart from government-run Jewish schools." A
Committee on Arab Education inside Israel found in 2005 that Israel spent an
average of $192 a year on Palestinian students compared to $1,100 for Jewish
students.
These discriminatory
policies translated to great economic disparity between Jews and non-Jews. As a
result, they are under-represented in civil service, high technology and
financial sectors while over-represented in meagerly paid low-skilled trades.
For example, out of 150,000 employees in the high-tech sector, only 460 are Palestinian
Israeli citizens.
Palestinians
Israeli citizen represent 20% of the population, they however account to more
than 50 percent of the impoverished families in Israel. In fact, out of the 40
Israel communities with the highest unemployment rates, 36 are Palestinian
towns.
Discrimination
in health care at an early age is equally striking. According to the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz in December 2014, infant mortality rate among Palestinian Israeli citizens is more than
double the rate of Jewish babies —2.5 for Jewish babies and 6.3 for
Palestinian.
On the
housing front, discrimination is more blatant. Since 1948, Israel has
established more than one thousand new Jewish cities and towns on the land
expropriated from it original Palestinian owners. On the other hand, Israel did
not build one single new (non-Jewish) Palestinian community despite the fact
that their population grew ten folds.
Israel building
policies choke Palestinian communities by restricting construction permits and demolishing
homes of Palestinian Israeli citizens as in the case of December 15, 2015 in
the town of Tamra. Currently there are active official orders to demolish
50,000 homes purportedly built without government permits.
Another salient
case of Israeli discrimination against non-Jewish Israeli citizens is the
Prawer-Begin plan to depopulate 35 unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin communities
in the Negev desert. In one instance, Israel demolished and Palestinian Israeli
citizens rebuilt the village of Al-Araqeeb 93 times in the last five years.
The
Prawer-Begin plan is part of a larger racist strategy aimed to increase the
sparse Jewish population in the Negev desert by building 22 new Jewish
communities. This is while eradicating Palestinian villages that predated the
establishment of the state Israel.
In the face
of the unmitigated wave of additional formalized discrimination by the current ultra-rightwing
Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinians inside Israel are bringing
their grievance to the attention of the international community. Israel can’t
continue to use the Jewish victims of the Holocaust to justify its racist and
malevolent policies against non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
*Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Deviated “war on terrorism” made us unsafe…
JAMAL KANJ
November 19, 2015
On a Thursday night, terrorists blew themselves up in the
streets of Beirut. The next day, coordinated terrorist attacks in des rues of
Paris. The same perpetrators targeted Muslims and Christians in the two
different capitals.
Just a month ago, it was a moving scene watching European
women and men holding signs welcoming refugees arriving at train stations. Thus,
the horrific attacks would become even more appalling if there was any truth to
the news these terrorists might have hid among refugees to reach France. Especially
since refugees found better reception in Europe than anywhere else, including many
of the Arab and Muslim countries. And for these terrorists to exploit that hospitality
is neither Arab nor a Muslim value.
There could be no rationalization to the terrorist attacks in
Paris or the atrocious murders in Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus or Nigeria. Putting
aside our virtuous indignation, however, we mustn’t forget the so called
Islamic State (IS) was the illegitimate child of George Bush’s “birth bangs of
democracy.” The misguided US led Western
interventionist policies created the environment that gave birth to the refugees
and terrorists.
A program designed for Israel by Zioncons’ appointees in the
dens of the US State Department and the Pentagon.
Lasting conflicts and fragmentations of the Arab world were
envisioned more than 30 years ago by former Israeli foreign minister official
Oded Yinon. In a 1982 treatise in Kivunim (Directions), the official Journal of
the World Zionist Organization, Yinon argued that the future priorities for the
“Jewish State” (JS) are “The dissolution of Syria and Iraq … into ethnically or
religiously unique areas.” Almost thirty years earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe
Sharett proposed the same for Lebanon.
IS and JS have a shared strategy: a perpetual conflict
between Islam and the West is critical for their respective survival.
“IS” gets its oxygen from US and Western powers' unchecked
diplomatic and financial support for “JS”. “IS” ideology flourishes on Western
pandering to “JS” as an exceptionalist state beyond reproach, defying UN
resolutions with complete impunity. Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit
to Washington, Israel is in line to be rewarded, again, for its intransigence
and attempts to derail the nuclear deal between the West and Iran.
Israeli planned and Western executed “dissolution of Syria
and Iraq,” Lebanon, Yemen and Libya into ethnic or religious entities have
become fertile grounds for dissention. Offering Islamist’s demagogues the perfect
recipe to manipulate feeble minded individuals to rally around “IS” believing
they were avenging their religion.
Alas, all of this was already predictable; a known
consequence and anticipated outcome by US intelligence agencies.
In August 2002, CIA analysts authored a study ‘The Perfect
Storm: Planning for the Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq.’ It predicted
the breakup of Iraq, regional instability, and surge of global terrorism.
In a pre-war briefing, the US Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence was presented with two intelligence assessments warning that the
Iraq invasion would lead to anarchy and rise of terrorism. In January 2003 the
National Intelligence Council think-tank issued an assessment forecasting that
“many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists.
Despite the red flags, the Bush administration opted to heed
the advice of Israeli advocates. Ideologues who were trained at the offices of America
Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israeli think tanks in Washington. After
election, large donors from the winning party recommend them to occupy policy
making positions in the Pentagon and the State Department.
The Zioncons redirected the war compass from Al Qaida to fight
Israel’s wars. According to a Bush administration insider’s book during a policy
discussion, Israeli firster Paul Wolfowitz advocated, “We don't have to deal
with al Qaeda … We have to talk about” Iraq.
Just one day before the Iraq invasion, US Vice President
Dick Cheney delivered a speech, which was likely prepared, or at least proofed
by Zioncon and Chief of Staff Scooter Libby where Cheney foolishly claimed “we
will … be greeted as liberators” in Iraq.
Today it’s not enough to mourn Paris or Beirut’s victims. We
must also remember the estimated 1.3 million people who banished directly and
indirectly by the deviated “war on terrorism.” For the Zioncons’ conceived war has
offered more than 1.3 million reasons to recruit terrorists.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Is Erdogan a great
leader?
By JAMAL KANJ
November 13, 2015
It is high time for Recep Tayyip Erdogan to step aside if Turkey
to continue progressing democratically, and flourish economically. Great
leaders know when and where to pass their torch.
Regardless of whether one believes Erdogan is an authoritarian
or an egalitarian leader, it can’t be disputed that Turkey before him is not
the same country after 13 years under his reign. While it is still to be seen, Erdogan’s
legacy might equal or even surpass that of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk.
For more than fifty years, Turkish democracy was frequently interrupted
by military coups. Even when not in direct control, the military played a central
role in governing Turkey. Since the demise of Ataturk, the military has appointed
itself as the custodian of the secular constitution changing governments at
their whim. One of Erdogan’s major achievements―overlooked by his critics― is his
success in removing the shadow of the military out of Turkey’s political
process.
For hundreds of years, Turkey and Europe had enjoyed a love hate
relationship. Ever since the aging Ottoman Empire, successive Turkish leaders
sought to integrate their country into the European continent. In recent
history, the European Union (EU) has tantalized the allure of membership to
succeeding Turkish governments, but never good enough to join.
Unlike other Turkish leaders, and without abandoning that goal, Erdogan
didn’t place “all of his eggs” in the European basket. Under his leadership,
Turkey had finally overcome its religious and cultural identity crises and turned
eastward to expand its economic power and leadership.
In his first challenge as the mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdogan
surprised the more than 74% of the electorates who voted to other candidates. He
approached his job as a pragmatic politician rather than a religious ideologue.
He rolled his sleeves not just for ablution, but to deal with his city’s
chronic problems. Despite his profound religious background, Erdogan realized
something most religious parties fail to understand: the running of government requires
much more than relying on supernatural power.
He tackled Istanbul’s water shortage, traffic chaos, air
pollution, garbage and entrenched civil service corruption. He invested in
building pipelines, bridges, trash recycling facilities and instituted
financial accountability in managing municipal funds. He spent over four
billion dollars on improving the city’s infrastructure and paid off most of Istanbul’s
municipality debt.
Climbing the ladder to national leadership in 2002, Turkey owed $23.5
billion to the International Monetary Funds (IMF). After a little more than a
decade under his leadership, Turkey was declared debt free by the IMF.
In the years under the Justice and Development party, Turkish
public debt as a percentage of annual GDP was reduced by more than 40%. In fact,
Turkey today has a better ratio of public debt to GDP and lower budget deficit
to GDP ratio than the vast majority of EU members.
In the last 13 years, minimum wage in Turkey has grown by almost
300% with another 30% increase planned for next January. The increase in
minimum wage didn’t cripple Turkey’s competiveness, but to the contrary it was
credited in part for 64% growth in real GDP and a 43% increase in GDP per
capita. According to S&P credit analyst Aarti Sakhuja, the current proposed
minimum wage hike, is expected to “boost domestic demand” and contribute to the
growth of Turkish economy.
Unlike what typically takes place in the West during tough economic
times where governments resort to austerity measures by reducing public
services. Erdogan’s government doubled the number of free universities and
offered healthcare to all.
Debunking the perceived image of Islam, in 2003 the Turkish government
joined with UNICEF in a campaign called "Come on girls, let's go to
school." The objective was to close the gender-gap in education between
boys and girls.
Why should he step aside then?
Erdogan has a fatal human weakness. Much like Mahathir Mohamed
of Malaysia, he has a gargantuan ego. While that could be the driver behind his
success, however, leaders must realize also that greatness of country overarches
all egos.
The coming years will tell which is far more important for
Erdogan: his eternal legacy, or temporal greatness disposed to slide into
dictatorship. History has plenty examples.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Blair and the other sucker…
By JAMAL
KANJ
November 4, 2015
“I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received
was wrong,” Tony Blair told Fareed Zakaria during a CNN interview. The TV interview
came ahead of the much delayed British Chilcot―expected now by next summer―report
investigating Iraq war.
He also apologized “for some of the mistakes in
planning” the war. It didn’t however come clear from the interview what were
“some of” the correct decisions made in planning for the war.
The war was neither a mistake, nor “wrong” intelligence. It
was well thought of by those who cooked the intelligence book and sold it to
two suckers named: George W Bush and Tony Blair.
The plan intended to break up Iraq, destroy the knowhow by
assassinating Iraqi scientists and to dismantle the Iraqi army. Not because
Iraq was a threat to America, but it was an Israeli agenda.
On February 21, 2003, Jeffrey Steinberg wrote in the
Executive Intelligence Review that Blair’s infamous dossier on Iraq’s WMD included
11 pages copied “verbatim, from an Israeli journal Middle East Review of
International Affairs.” According to
Steinberg, Blair dossier was “cooked-in-Israel propaganda” to drive the US to
invade Iraq.
Complementing Blair’s hoax, US Zioncons waged a misleading
campaign to influence American public opinion and to deceive officials on the
cost of war and its aftermath.
On July 11, 2002, Richard Perle a Pentagon official, who was
on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s payroll in mid-90s, professed that the war
will end “after the first whiff of gunpowder.”
His ex-boss, Netanyahu, gave a Congressional testimony two
months later where he promised America, “If you take out Saddam regime, I
guarantee it will have enormous positive reverberation on the region.”
He then added another fallacy, "there is no question whatsoever that
Saddam is … working and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons
-- no question whatsoever."
About a month before the war, Israeli firster and American
official Kenneth Adelman published an Op-ed in the Washington Post, positing
that the war “would be a cakewalk.”
In briefing the Armed Services Committee on February 25,
2003, General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army warned that “several
hundred thousand soldiers” would be needed to secure postwar Iraq. Days later civilian
Zioncon Paul Wolfowitz countered: “The notion that it will take several hundred
thousand troops … are wildly off the mark.”
In his book “Plan of Attack" Bob Woodward wrote that
Secretary of State Colin Powell used to refer to the Office of Special
Plans—war bureau—as “a separate government.” The Office was led by Zioncos:
Lewis Libby, Wolfowitz and according to Powell, it was run from Douglas Feith's
"Gestapo" office.
Soon following the invasion, Wolfowitz assured the House
Appropriations Committee, and American taxpayers that the war cost and
rebuilding “doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money.” We have “a country that
can really finance its own reconstruction.”
Wolfowitz’s statement cost the taxpayers between two to six trillion
dollars.
After the Zioncons WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) was
exposed, Wolfowitz offered a new fallacious assessment. He claimed that
removing Saddam will help in the peace between Israel and the
Palestinians.
The Zioncons undue influence came under Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). There were public reports in July 2004 of a probe by the
FBI into potential Israeli spies in the Pentagon who might have influenced US
decision on the war. The FBI suspected the Israeli mole was a senior analyst
closely associated with two senior officials: Zioncons Wolfowitz and Feith. The
FBI believed that “highly sensitive information” was passed to Israel via “the
pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”
The FBI inquiry was quashed and Americans never discovered
the Israeli spies who blundered America and Britain’s human and financial resources
on a made for Israel war.
Hence, Chilcot has an opportunity now to bisect the Israeli “sacred
cow” and identify the source of the “wrong” intelligence. It should start by
deciphering the palpable link between US Zioncons’ ideologue and Israel.
Undeniably, Saddam was a brutal dictator. But the war, the preceding
economic blockade and Netanyahu’s promised “enormous … reverberation on the
region” is causing more human death than Saddam ever did.
The world might be better with one less Arab dictator. Though,
it would have been a much better place without Bush and his British toady.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Israeli self-inflicted hate…
Jamal Kanj*
October 25,
2015
Haftom Zarhum, a 29-year-old Eritrean was lynched by Jewish
Israelis simply because he looked different. After being shot in the legs, a
mob circled him like hyenas over a bleeding prey, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwVG5_78G7o)
throwing a bench over his head and chanting the unofficial Zionist’s anthem of
hate: “Death to Arabs”, “Arabs out!” and “Am Israel Hai”.
Disowning culpability and playing the traditional victim,
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon blamed the incident on the
“terrible situation we are in.”
At a similar scene, a week earlier a video showed a
despondent Palestinian child lying in a pool of blood. A puzzled appearance engulfed
the child’s face as he gazed at a Jewish racist who was screaming “Die, you son
of a whore, die.”
Had Mr. Zahrum been an innocent Palestinian bystander, it
would have been a different story. Of the approximately fifty Palestinians who
were murdered by the Israeli army, police, or Jewish vigilante in the last three
weeks, at least twenty were allegedly threatening Israeli life.
Resisting occupation, by all available means, is a right
guaranteed by international conventions. Hence, there were instances when
desperate Palestinians using basic home tools confronted occupying Israeli
soldiers or armed Jewish settlers. But certainly, it wasn’t in all twenty
cases.
It was definitely not in the case of the slain Jew that Israeli
soldiers suspected for a Palestinian. According to Yehuda Meshi-Zahav the
chairman of Zaka emergency response organization, at first it appeared he was
like all others, “When I was asked to deal with the body, I realized that he
was a Jew, and that he was mistaken for a terrorist (Palestinian)."
That is why Mr. Zahrum’s life had no value. The murderers
rightly assumed their actions were “like all others,” had no consequences. It was
proven more than twenty times in the preceding three weeks when Jewish killers
walked free as heroes.
Israel has two systems of justice. It demolishes homes and
revoke “Israeli” citizenship of Palestinians accused of violence. While Jewish
terrorists arrested for burning alive a Palestinian child last year, are
celebrated as heroes and continue to own government subsidized homes in Jewish
only colonies.
Even after it was discovered that Mr. Zahrum—who looked more
African than a typical Palestinian—was from Eritrea when someone found his
Israeli issued Visa and shouted “he’s Eritrean, he’s not a terrorist
(Palestinian).” It was already too late to stop the hyenas’ insatiable thirst
for blood.
Life in Israel is either Jewish or goyim. It’s been
established that taking a non-Jewish life is inconsequential. The Israel
newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported in 2013 that Economy and trade minister
Naftali Bennett boasted, “I have killed lots of Arabs (Palestinians) in my life
– and there is no problem with that.”
As for black immigrants, two years ago current Israeli
Culture Minister Miri Regev called Africans a "cancer in Israel's body."
She was not alone.
Following a wave of anti-African demonstrations in Tel Aviv,
a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in 2013 found that 52% of
Jews agree with Regev that blacks living in Israel are “a cancer.”
As to excuse something like Zahrum’s murder, one third of
Israelis in that poll agreed, “that unlawful, vigilante violence against
non-Jewish African immigrants is fine with them.” A whopping majority of Jewish Israelis, 83%
supported the anti-African protests.
Screaming at an injured Palestinian child soaked in blood, a
racist mob lynching Zarhum, or killing a Jew who was mistaken for a Palestinian
were further manifestations of Israel’s culture of hate. It was espoused by no
less than the Israeli Minister of Culture, and supported by the majority of
Israelis.
The hate crimes against the African immigrant by a Jewish
mob or the Jew, who was thought to be a Palestinian, were not the exception.
The only exception, they were not just numbers to be added to the more than fifty
murdered Palestinians.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Israel’s haunted
Temple
Jamal Kanj
October 08,
2015
Tension in
Jerusalem has escalated to dangerous levels in response to deliberate Israeli provocations
at Haram Al Sharif or Noble Sanctuary. The fragile situation was further
deteriorated by new Israeli government decrees to blow up Palestinian homes and
to grant its army a free rein to deal with protestors.
Since then,
at least eight Palestinians were murdered and hundreds injured by live
ammunitions and rubber plated bullets. In the West, the violence became news headlines
only after the killing of two armed illegal Jewish colonists in the occupied
West Bank.
Missed from
the Zionist’s controlled media, ten days earlier and while Palestinians were
preparing to celebrate the Eid—The Sacrifice of Abraham—an Israeli soldier
murdered a young Palestinian woman in Hebron. The unchecked Israeli hasbora, media
deceit, claimed the 18 year old Hadeel Hashlamun was a threat to the Israeli
soldier.
The claim
was belied by a video tape showing the young girl being shot at close range in
cold blood.
Fawaz Abu
Eisheh, who witnessed the slaying, told AP, "One of the soldiers shot
directly at her left leg, she fell down and didn't move. After 10 to 15 seconds
later, he shot another bullet at her right leg, after 10 seconds, he shot four,
five bullets at her abdomen and chest area, and then after five, 10 seconds he
shot another bullet from one metre away."
According to
news reports and UN sources more than 35 Palestinians have been killed at the
hands of Israeli forces and or armed Jewish hooligans since January 2015.
For years, fundamentalist
Jewish incursions at the Noble Sanctuary, escorted by heavy military guard, had
invariably provoked friction between the Israeli army and Palestinians. While access
to the site is normally unimpeded to non-Muslim visitors through Bab al
Maghariba Gate, clashes occur only when Jewish fanatics barge into the Muslim holy
site disturbing prayers and demanding right to perform Jewish rituals.
Just imagine
if Muslims or even worse, if Palestinian Christians raised the Cross and tried
to hold their mass at the Jewish weeping wall during Easter. Mind you, according
to UN witnesses Palestinian Christians from the West Bank weren’t even allowed
to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Easter.
Al Aqsa,
Muslim’s third holiest mosque has stood as a historic testimonial at the Noble
Sanctuary since the dawn of Islam. Built over a vacant hilltop during the life
of Prophet Mohamed and several years before the second Muslim Khalifa, Omar ibn
Al Khattab liberated Palestine from the Byzantine Empire in 637 CE.
The Khalifa’s
first act—known as the Omariyya Covenant—was to guarantee civil and religious freedom
for Palestinian Christians. He also allowed Palestinian Jews to live in
Jerusalem after they were barred under the Roman’s occupation.
The first
recorded history of a specific Jewish claim for a place of worship near the
Noble Sanctuary was made almost 1000 years after the Muslim leader allowed Jews
back in Jerusalem.
Now under
occupation for nearly fifty years, Israeli archeologists have turned the old
city into craters’ land and the Noble Sanctuary hovered over a cavity as they
desperately scoured for evidence of the alleged Temple of Solomon.
History and
archeology hitherto continue to debunk the Zionist myth. According to a report in
the Jerusalem Post by Israel’s foremost archeologist and university Professor
Israel Finkelstein, after all the digging, “There is no historical or
archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative on … Joshua's conquest
of Canaan,” or “Temple of Solomon” to have ever existed in the city.
To fulfill
its delusional prophecy, Israel has a better chance collaborating with the
misnomer Islamic State and doomsday Christians to breed the unblemished bovine
red heifer before finding the haunted mirage under the Noble Sanctuary.
While
Christian and Muslim Palestinians clutch physically to time immemorial heritage
symbols in Jerusalem, European Zionist’s Khazar Jewish converts are chasing a
phantom.
US Muslim presidential candidate
JAMAL KANJ
October 01, 2015
Lagging in the polls, Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump came from behind ranting Mexican migrants.
Trump exploited a real topical complex issue to mobilize the White Republican base
and rode to the top of the ticket deriding Mexicans.
Ben Carson was however more
inventive. He created a fictitious candidate to rally the same delusional
crowd. Carson declared that the Muslim faith could disqualify a person from
being a US president.
Within days, Carson crowded Trump to
the top of the Republican ticket by bashing the imaginary Muslim candidate.
Even though there was none, Carson made the “Muslim candidate” the hottest
topic for US news and talk shows outdoing Trump’s sordid attacks against
Mexican immigrants.
In one of his tirades, Carson claimed
that "Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public
life and what you do as a public official," and warned against the
creeping Muslim “Sharia.”
Never mind that Carson must not
understand that Islamic jurisprudence even in Muslim majority countries clearly
states that “non-Muslims are not required by law to follow Islamic religious or
social standards (Sharia).”
Academically speaking, the
Republican candidate’s baseless concerns over the Sharia are hogwash and cheap
electioneering demagoguery; unless Carson plans to become a Muslim and move to
a place governed by the Sharia.
But even then, he will have
difficulties. There are at least fifty Muslim majority countries around the
world where the vast majority are not governed by Sharia.
Instead of arguing a very unlikely
fictional scenario, Carson should be most troubled by his support to American polices,
like the invasion of Iraq when the US replaced a very secular constitution with
a new dominated by religious authorities.
Carson should also know that the
only secular democracy in the Middle East is a Muslim country: Turkey. The
other widely acclaimed democracy, Israel, is a Jewish and not a secular democracy.
In propagating fear mongering to
indulge the ignoble Republican Evangelist base, Carson brings up unintentionally
an important issue: Religion and the Constitution.
It is indisputable that religions
across the board are not compatible with many aspects of the US constitution.
But it is not the imaginary Muslim candidate who is a threat to the
constitution. It is the Republican contestants who have made religion an
important part of their candidacy and are attempting to subjugate the US
constitution to their belief.
Recently, Carson along with most
Republican candidates rallied behind Kim Davis who preached her own definition
of “God’s authority” to subjugate the law of the land and refused to issue same
sex marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky.
Carson explained on September 8 to
Fox news that Davis was right to defy the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the
US constitution. “This is a Judeo-Christian nation in the sense that a lot of
our values and principles are based on our Judeo-Christian faith,” he said.
Translating to how faith should guide “a public official” in conducting their
life.
Putting aside Carson’s xenophobic
demagoguery and his pandering to the extreme rightwing Republican base, it
would be worth noting that women were elected to head two of the world’s most
populous Muslim countries. An ambitious reality, women in the US are still
struggling to achieve more than a decade later.
When John F Kennedy’s (JFK) faith
was questioned in 1960, he eloquently said “… it may be a Catholic against whom
the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday
be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist … Today I may be the
victim, but tomorrow it may be you —.”
Neither faith nor race is an indicative
of a good leader. JFK was a good example. An anti-abolitionist with the “right
faith” could have succeeded in mobilizing Carson’s reactionary crowd a century
ago. Ironically, Carson, the black man wouldn’t have been allowed to vote in
that election.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
UK Labor Party revolution
Jamal Kanj
September 20, 2015
The election of veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn to lead the
Labor Party in the UK is a revolution by all means. In a Party grassroots
election, the 66 years old outsider defeated a lineup of traditional Labor
candidates.
Corbyn’s victory was a rejection of Tony Blair’s wing as much
as it was a swing to the left. Blair who came back from hibernation to campaign
against Corbyn was rebuffed by the file and rank of the Labor Party. Party
membership didn’t forgive Blair’s disgraceful servitude role to George Bush and
his Israeli fabricated “dossier” to sell the invasion of Iraq.
Additionally, the outcome of the Labor Party vote must be
seen in consort with the wave of anti-austerity sentiment sweeping throughout
Europe. During the last economic crises, European and US taxpayers bailed large
financial institutions and endured cuts in public services. With the improved
economic conditions, bankers were back receiving huge salaries and large bonuses
while average wages stalled and pension cuts became modus operandi for governments’
austerity programs.
Greek voters led the European Spring by rejecting the Central
Bank’s conditions for bailout and elected the anti-austerity Syriza Party to
power. To the north, the Scottish
overwhelmingly rejected Labor, as an alternative to the Tories and casted their
votes for the Scottish National Party (SNP). In Spain, the emergence of Podemos
is shaking the Spaniards political system. Even in the US, the presumed traditional
Democratic frontrunner, Hilary Clinton is facing serious challenge from presidential
candidate and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders.
Approximately 60 % of the more than 400,000 registered Labor
Party members who supported Corbyn—even those believing he was unlikely to win
a national election—sent a strong message to Britain’s pompous traditional
political class and hammered the last nail in the Blairites coffin.
Euphoria aside, Corbyn must now learn from previous progressive
victory lessons. In 1980, the anti-austerity candidate Michael Foot defeated James
Callaghans and the old Labor guards’ choice to unseat Margaret Thatcher. However
soon after his election, Foot faced a rebellion when four senior officials,
known as the gang of four, walked out and formed the new Social Democratic
Party (SDP).
The SDP became the darling of corporate media overnight and
was posited as an alternative to the Labor. In June 1981, SDP joined in an
alliance with the Liberal Party forming a new centrist party, the Liberal
Democrats.
The Labor Party swung further to the left and ran on what
the media described then as “suicide manifesto”. Shortly thereafter, the
substantial lead Foot enjoyed over the conservative government milted faster
than an ice cube under August desert sun.
Despite Corbyn’s large grassroots mandate, it is not
surprising that traditional Labor autocrats have joined hands with the corporate
media to undermine the new Party leader. Soon following his election, Stephen
Pollard editor of the Jewish Chronicle wrote that Corbyn “barely fit to be an
MP,” and accused him as someone who “doesn’t just hate America,” but “hate
Britain itself.” Pollard had literally
plagiarized the tired US Republicans and FOX news chorus’ name calling and aspersion
strategy used against Barak Obama.
It is worth noting here that when Foot ascended to the Labor
leadership, he enjoyed a double digit lead over Thatcher; Corbyn is starting
with a double digit deficit to David Cameron.
The new Labor leader has already proven special ability to
run from behind. According to BBC and other news reports, Corbyn was a 200-1
outsider when he ran for the Party’s leadership three months ago.
Today, Corbyn has five years to bridge the deficit gap and
defeat the conservative government of Cameron. He has a unique opportunity to make
the Labor Party more inclusive by reaching out to the large reservoir of marginalized
British voters and to work with SNP supporters to make Britain more of a United
Kingdom.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Jamal Kanj
September
10, 2015
Five years
ago at a stop during my book signing tour in San Diego, I met an adorable
toddler named Farah. She was being treated in the US from severe burns she
received at the age of two. Farah was one of thousands of civilians who were
either injured or killed when Israel rained white phosphorus bombs on Gaza in
2008/2009.
The
insidious phosphorus bomb that burned through Farah’s angelic flesh was
American made and paid for by US taxpayers. Ironically, so was Farah’s
treatment.
Last Sunday
Reham Dewabsha a mother of two took her last breath from burn injuries. On July
31st, Reham, her 18 months old Ali, his four year old brother Ahmed and their father cuddled on a floor mattress
in their small room. Outside, the stars were glistering in the clear sky of a
warm summer night in the village of Duma, Palestine.
Ahmad
complained it was hot. Saad his 32 years old father decided to open the window to
allow in the cool breeze blowing in the fields of their peaceful village. The
18 months old Ali spread his tiny legs and was first to fall asleep followed by
Ahmed. Reham kissed her babies goodnight and covered them to keep the mosquitos
away before she and Saad dozed in after a hard day working in the farm.
In the
middle of that Friday night, Reham was startled from her sleep by Ali’s loud
wail. Her vision was blinded by the bright blaze engulfing her baby’s small
body. She jumped over Ahmad to reach Ali when another firebomb landed between
them, setting Reham, Saad and Ahmad on fire.
Ali, the 18
month old baby was burned to death. Saad succumbed to his fate a week later.
Reham joined them after more than a month in coma. Four years old Ahmad is
still fighting for his life.
The
perpetrators celebrated their feat by spraying their signature and symbol of
pride, start of David on nearby walls. Israeli police arrested known extremist
from a nearby illegal Jewish only colony. Most were released later and no one
was charged.
This is in a
country that brags about its superior security service.
Had this
been the plight of an illegal Jewish settler family, no doubt their faces would
have been paraded on TV screens and newspapers. Their names engraved in our
brains and we would be reminded of the Holocaust memories. But in this case, I
dare to say, most haven’t heard of Reham or her family.
Meanwhile, Israeli
subsidized Jewish settler Moshe Orbach wrote “Kingdom of Evil”, an instruction
manual on how to set fire to mosques, churches and Palestinian homes.
I always
wondered about Jewish terrorists’ fascination with burning. Last year, they
kidnapped Mohamed Abu Khdeir, a 16 year old Palestinian teenager from the
streets of Jerusalem and took him to a nearby forest area. Mohamed was forced
to swallow petrol before they burned him alive.
This is not
just an Israeli fringe.
Since July,
Israeli army and its terrorist settler’s branch murdered more than ten
Palestinians, ordered the building of thousands of Jewish only homes in illegal
colonies, and marked 14,000 Palestinian homes for demolishing.
Matan
Vilnai, a high level Israeli government official once threatened Palestinians
in Gaza with "shoah," a Hebrew term used to mean Holocaust. Former Israeli
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu pontificated that Judaism doesn’t
prohibit “the indiscriminate killing of civilians.”
The world
can’t continue to turn a blind eye on Israel’s ethnic cleansing and its direct
responsibility for crimes committed by its subsidized terrorist settler
population. While Holocaust deniers are jailed in Europe, in Israel, “Jewish”
proponents of “new shoah,” and those who burned Ali, Reham, Saad and Ahmed roam
free.
Human incinerators,
whether delivered efficiently by a gas chamber, military means, injected into
the mouth, or by a torch through a window, all have one thing in common:
Burning is how racists manifest hate.
* Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column
and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of
“Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.
Europe
refugees’ threat
Jamal Kanj
August 30,
2015
Many years ago I read “Men in the Sun,” a novel by
late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani― he, along with his young niece, Lamis
were blown up by Israel in 1972. In the story, Kanafani told the tale of three
desperate Palestinian refugees from Lebanon who hid in an empty water tanker trying
to reach Kuwait and find work.
The truck was delayed at the borders and the three travelers
suffocated quietly inside the empty tank. The tormented driver tried desperately
to understand why they didn’t try to escape their fate. The parable: daring death
rather than facing the look in the eyes of their starving children waiting in the
camps.
I always believed Kanafani was a brilliant writer and a great
illustrator. But I never thought his novel was to portend the extent of desperate
measures, desperate people were willing to take. Today, you can see Kanafani’s
prophecy all over the faces of Arab refugees jumping from unsafe boats trying
to reach European shores or waiting in camps under rain or sun seeking sanctuary
in a strange land.
And those are the lucky ones; for thousands of their
compatriots were either swallowed in deep sea water, decomposed in truck
containers or left behind to choose between a dictatorship regime and the crueler
alternative.
It is a shame, when non-Arab countries are more hospit |