August 5, 2006
by Gale Daggs
gdaggs5@charter.net
Li'l Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
-----
The present violence and destruction spreading through the "Middle East" -- particularly American armed and financed war by it's Israeli State on the peoples of Gaza and West Bank on the one hand, and the fresh invasion of Lebanon on the other, is part and parcel of the American armed and financed wars waged by American proxy regimes in Afganistan, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. Its one war, waged by the United States and American Quisling regimes.
The American variation of state-mititary-capitalism has "sustained" America's capitalism by a permanent arms economy .The US "warfare state" maintaining a constant demand for production of means of destruction: the "military -industrial complex" means the constant feeding of a permant arms economy. This required a bogeyman that is declared 'evil', and thus a permanent enemy -the Soviet Union in the 1940s to its collapse. The implosion of the state capitalist commodity production into private networks accompainied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A 'new' permanent war is needed to justify military spending and aid to Israel: the new bogeyman is the so-called "Arab world". Yet, the "Arab world" is more myth then reality; it is not one monolithic, idealogical _expression or ethnicity, for instance, Syrians, and Somalians are different enthnicities and encompass different expressions of Islam well as various other religions.
Ronald Reagan's declared his "Jihad" in Afghanistan, arming and funding the Taliban and Al Qaeda reactionaries in an unholy alliance of anti-communist Jihadists. The Soviet Union's collapse put an end to the politics of the manichean eschatological propaganda against the Soviet Union as the 'latter day' incarnation of evil. The post Soviet Russian government is now "democratic", and subordinate to American imperial policies. There are therefore no more pulpit ravings about the Soviet Union with reference to Ezekiel chapter 38-9, and Revelation 20; Russia is no longer targetted as the evil empire prophesied to descend upon Israel on horse back with drawn swords in the fiery eschatology to take place at "the battle of Armageddon".
The new "evil empire", to which has been assigned all the manicheist eschatological horrors, once heaped on the Soviet Union, a "threat to peace, freedom, God and the American way; and thereby as the very personifications of Satan as the "enemies of 'America'", are now targeting Arabs as an evil people, anti-Israel, anti-American religious fanatics. American imperialism and Israeli Zionism are placed at the center of cosmological providence, and those "evil Islamists" are posited as haters of "American democracy" and "Israel", and therefore enemies of God Himself!
The American religious Right, those who re-elected Bush as President of the US, are fanatically committed to American foreign policy, and blind unconditional support for Israeli terror in Middle Asia and North Africa. Thus their unconditional military, and financial support of Israel, including Israel's past, present and future wars on Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Lebanese peoples as "fulfillment of terrible eschatological prophecy" of the latter-day "battle of Armageddon".!
In American protestant political eschastology, the pulpit propagandists have adjusted to the post-Soviet Union world's new challenges. In place of the Soviet Union as the demonized "evil empire" it is no longer Moscow but Iraq, and in place of the "international communist conspiracy" is "international terrorism" of "political Islam.". "Islamists" have displaced "Communists" in American cultural manichism. Since the implosion of the Soviet Union , due in part to the Ronald Reagan declared "Jihad", Islamists are the personifications of Satan: are the "enemies of 'Christians, " freedom", "democracy", and God Himself! Rightist American Christians support Israel and Israel's wars in Middle Asia as "Bible prophecy fullfilment".
Our perspectives presented below are not religious, but of a secular analysis of US and Israeli policy, in particular their fresh invasions and bloody genocidal wars on Palestinians and the people of Lebanon.
We only mention the religious eschatological manechean world-view in America because it is political ideological manipulation of American Christians. The Zionist immigrants to Palestine are descendents of a Turkish people of Khazar, whose ruling classes converted to Judaism in about the 8th century CE.
The Khazars and their descendents in Eastern and Central Europe are a European people, separate and apart even from the Sophardim of Asia, who are an oppressed Semitic People in this European/American constructed State. They did suffer in Europe, but their sufferings were at the hand of European and American Christians, not by the hand of Semitic Arabs. Abraham was of the city of Ur, in the Tigris and Euphrates civilization of Mesopatomia which is present Iraq. The American and Israeli murder and brutal occupation in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon are Europeans killing Semites and not the reverse. This has notihing to do with "Bible prophesy" written 3,000 years ago concerning events at that time. The pulpit propagandists are either extremely ignorant of the history they preach, or they are out and out, flat out right liars!
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The present wars of the United States by it's armed and financed garrison state of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon was begun ostensibly in "response" to Israeli soldiers being taken prisoners of war by Palestinian liberation forces in Gaza to the south of Israel and resistence forces in Lebanon in the north of this Zionist state. We say "ostensibly" tongue in cheek.
It has been already exposed, from many sources, that the present Israeli attacks on Palestine coinciding with the American and European Union's economic sanctions along with Israeli sanctions, is collective punishment of the Palestinian people for their democratic political system, selecting a Hamas majority in Parliament, and consequently forming the government. These Western attacks on Palestinian voters for voting for Hamas puts the lie to the bright rhetoric of Olmert, Bush and Blair that the Israeli destruction of Lebanon is in the interest of Lebanon's "fragile democracy". Whensoever the American and British governments want to invade and occupy a country, they do so in the name of "democracy" and "freedom", though they mutilate and enslave the people's under the iron boot of international fascism of which they are. The present invasion of Lebanon was long planned.
The democratic principle of the" rights of nations" to "self determination," and of peoples of occupied country's to resist, applies equally to Palestinians and Lebaneses. Hamas is a legitimate response to occupation with the overwhelming support of the Palestinian people, as evident by Hamas victory over and displacement of Al Fatah in the government in the Palestinian government. Hezbollah is a resistence movement in southern Lebanon that arose as a reponse to the invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis in 1982 and since has become a political party with democratically elected members of Parliament.
When the American and Israeli politicians and pundits claim that Israel is the "only democracy" in the region, and that it is America's policy to bring democracy to the region, it is a falsehood. The British and US are doing everything in their power to cause the overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas led government, including both the present mass murder and massive destruction in Gaza, economic sanctions and so on. The so-called "support" by the Israelis and Americans of the "fragile government" of Lebanon by defeating and dismantling Hezbollah, is also false.
The rhetoric of aiding the Lebanese government by defeating and disarming Hezbollah is demagogic flowery rhetoric to put a positive face on the negative and destructive activities of Israel in the present savage attack. Hezballoh is not a "terrorist" group; it does not participate in random acts of violence and kill innocent civilians while hidden. But actively and visibily participate in the political life of Southern Lebanon, protecting the impovershed Palestian and Shia population from Israeli aggression and providing social services like health care, schools and home repairs.
The other lie, dripped in sugary language such as "sustainable" cease fire, and "enduring" peace between Israel and Lebanon is its quintessential intent of a savage policy of continuing Israel's barbaric attack on Lebanon as a country - mass murdering of innocent civilians including women and children, together with the destruction of the nation's infrastructure, homes, villages and entire neighborhoods in cities. The Israeli soldiers in Lebanon is no different thab the American soldiers in Iraq, butchering women and children in their homes, with the self-righteous self-justification of a Joshua massacring all the living in the ancient city of Jericho.
We reject the languague of the American and Israeli politicians, press and electronic media, such as referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as "terrorist" organizations on the one hand, and to Israeli aggressive forces as "defensive" forces on the other. On the contrary: Hamas is a national liberation power and Hezbollah is a resistance force. Israel is an agressive military state. It is the Israeli forces that are terrorizing the region by wanton destruction and icy cold blooded murders.It is Hamas and Hezbollah that are the defense forces in this war. Hamas is resisting Israeli aggression, and Hezbollah is resisting Israeli agression. There is no justification for firing rockets on civilian populations, but it is vilad for Hezbollah and Hamas, as resistance and liberation movements, respectively, to use whatever means available to fight soldiers, to check and reverse their advances.
From this perspective it is clear that it is nothing but Israeli and American ideological propaganda according to which Israeli soldiers raids in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon, and abduct Palestinians and Lebanese, that the Israeli soldiers kidnapings and abductions of Palestinians are called "an arrest", indicating authority and legitimacy on one hand, and the converse, when these propagandists refer to Hamas and Hezbollah capture of Israeli soldiers and holding them as prisoners of war are reduced to criminal 'kidnapping' and 'hostage taking' on the other.
Taking and exchanging prisoners of war is a legitimate practice. Hamas and Hezbollah were right to take Israeli soldiers as prisoners of war, and offering to exchange them for Israel's release of Palestinian and Lebanese women and children that had been abducted by Israeli troops and locked down in Israeli prisons. Israel has in its custody thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese abductees, civilians including women and children. The Israeli army only a few weeks ago abducted a dozen members of the elected Palestinian govrnment to hold as hostages to exchange for Israeli prisoners of war.
Much has been made of the speculation that Syria and Iran are active allies of Hamas and/or Hezbollah. What is amazing, is that whatever aid is given to Hamas and Hezbollah by Syria and/or Iran is dwarfed in comparason to the U.S. pouring tens of billions of dollars and billions of dollars worth of arms making Israel the world's 4th largest military, with tanks, fighter planes, missiles, and hubdreds of nuclear weapons. Israeli hostilities are America's hostilities, the root cause of the problem in the Middle East is Israeli's armed terrorism, and has been so in it's genocidal wars on the Palestinian people. The several Israeli invasions and occupations of Lebanon are directly related to this genocide.
The US is the war partner of Israel. Endorsing the Israeli destruction of Lebanon and mass murder of it's people, Bush claims that this Israeli genocide in Lebanon, is being done as a favor to the Lebanese government to 'free' Lebanon! The same Bush that demanded 'democratic elections' in Palestine but rejected the people's choice electing Hamas, is preaching the same rheteric regarding it's lackey government in Lebanon.
Oh well, what kind of 'thinking' does one expect from a man who claims that the invasion of Iraq is to 'free' it from its government; occupation is liberation. Bush claims that the root cause of violence in the Middle East is the Palestianian and Lebanese, based on 'hatred' for 'democracy', and the US foreign policy is based on 'liberty'. The man must be a fool to think the people of the world believe his flowery rheteric about 'freedom', 'liberty, and 'democracy' rather than the reality of Israeli's violence in the region since 1948.
International community humanitarian intervention and "peace keeper" forces must be rejected as syruppy rhetoric as well, because on the basis of the US forced UN resolutiom 1559 that multinational force is assigned to do what the Israeli army obviusly cannot do, defeat, disarm and disband Hezbollah. Indeed, the rhetoric of "sustainable" cease fire, "endurable" peace, and, to quote Bush "real" peace as distinct from a "fake" one, is meant in each euphemism continuation with the Israeli bombing campaigns in that what is meant by "sustainable", "enduring" and "real" is a pre-condiction defined as the defeat, disarming and disbanning of Hezbollah. Any military force placed in southern Lebanon to attempt such a project is objectively and deliberately an agency of US imperialism and Israeli Zionism.
What do you think the US and Israeli governments would do were the UN to assemble an international force comprised of Chinese, Vietnamese, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela with the mission of creating conditions for a sustainable cease fire and ebdurable peace by disarming the state of Israel and disbanning its army? Think not? Well, why should Hezbollah, which is the organized, disciplined, and armed dettachment defending the Lebanese people from Israel be disarmed and disbanded by the former colonial European powers on behalf of the United States and Israel?
------------------
LabourPartyPraxis discussion - subscribe