We in the West, we like to have the feeling that we have the Arab world under control. The states there are strategically important, full of oil, and the people strange, in what is for us a disturbing way. But they are hopefully largely under control by dictatorial regimes and the political or sometimes military interventions of the West. The Western discourse revolves around the question of whether Islam is at all compatible with democracy, and thus whether Arab Muslim immigrants can be integrated into European societies.
"It was the moral force of non-violence” stated President Obama in his first comment on the revolution in Egypt. Yet it is far from being clear who was the Egyptian Mandela, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King? I guess that in Cairo it was the people themselves who peacefully transformed their own reality.
Jerusalem, Zionists, and some elements within the Left have demonised Arabs, Muslims and Islam for decades. Yet the people of Egypt just proved how restrained and peace-seeking Islam is for real.
Ynet reported today that US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday that Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement was "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam."
Clapper, who heads the organization commanding 16 American intelligence and investigation agencies, told the committee that the Muslim Brotherhood "have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera….. There is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”
The following is an updated edition of a paper I published eighteen months ago. The current edition includes new references to the unfolding events in Egypt.
In front of our eyes, a gigantic regional Arab uprising is taking place. It is evident that until the last few days Western Left had very little to say about it all. It seems as if the Left has reached a rock bottom state of detachment. It has lost contact with the people, social reality, and humanity in general.
People keep talking of a new war. They tell you about their neighbors — they’re probably too shy to admit that its their family, not their neighbors — who already started stocking up on food items and candles in preparation for the upcoming war. “People are really scared,” they tell you, using “people” instead of “we.” Everyone — groundless news reports and loud rumors — is saying that they can hear the war drums, can’t you?!
Well, to me war has already started, and Israel is already chanting victory, given the very conversation the two of us are having. About two weeks ago I saw what looked to me like a confused Israeli pilot flying around in his F-16 jet, drawing circles in the sky. People immediately took it as a sign, a threat and a signal that war was coming. They even made up memories from back in 2008, and were convinced that on 27 December 2008, an Israeli jet, possibly even the same one, drew the same circles in the sky, and that was when war started.
In his novels “A Guide to the Perplexed” and “My One and Only Love”, his web site and his political commentaries, jazz musician Gilad Atzmon doesn’t fear mordant satire, aggressive provocations nor even brutal comparisons when it comes to stigmatizing the real apartheid reigning in Israel. He was born there and he is asking his country for a fundamental change.
The Orient House Ensemble: Eddi Hick, Yaron Stavi, Frank Harrison and Gilad Atzmon
FOR THE GHOSTS WITHIN, Robert Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen (Domino Recordings)
THE TIDE HAS CHANGED, Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble (World Village)
‘How come?’ you may ask; besides maybe avocado, oranges, and some Dead Sea beauty products, none of us has actually ever seen an Israeli product on the shelves. They don’t make cars; nor do they make electric or electronic appliances, and they hardly manufacture any consumer goods. Israel claims to be advanced in high-tech technologies but somehow, the only Israeli advanced software ever to settle within our computers have been their Sabra Trojan Horses. In the land they grabbed by force from the indigenous Palestinians, they are yet to find any lucrative minerals or oil.
So what is it? How is it that Israel is impervious to the global financial disaster? How can Israel be so rich?
Israel may be rich because, according to the Guardian, “out of the seven oligarchs who controlled 50% of Russia’s economy during the 1990s, six were Jewish.” During the last two decades, many Russian oligarchs have acquired Israeli citizenship. They also secured their dirty money by investing in the kosher financial haven; Wikileaks has revealed lately that “sources in the (Israeli) police estimate that Russian organised crime (Russian Mafia) has laundered as much as US $10 billion through Israeli holdings."[1]
It is difficult to overstate the potential for Egyptian citizens advancing universal aspirations for freedom, dignity and basic human rights now spreading from the determination of those who for more than a week have risked their lives while inspiring much of the World at Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square. Tahrir public plaza near central Cairo has been the traditional site for numerous major protests and demonstrations over the years, including during the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots and the March 2003 protests against the American war in Iraq. Washington DC and Tel Aviv are reportedly shocked by the rapidly unfolding and unpredictable revolution.
What makes one a philosopher? Probably, the capacity to aim at the essence of things, while celebrating the love of wisdom (philo-sophos). Though Bernard-Henri Lévy presents himself as a French philosopher, he seems to lack that elementary capacity. Unlike a true philosopher, Levy engages in an endless spin, typical to a Hasbara agent.
A few days ago the Huffington Post gave a platform to the alleged ‘philosopher’ Levy.
Levy doesn’t approve of the BDS (Boycott, Disinventment, Sanctions) campaign. He claims it is “anti democratic”. I was expecting Levy to eloquently advocate ‘freedom of speech’ and human rights, but the Zionist ‘intellectual’ failed miserably. Levy followed the well-trodden Judeo centric Zionist template and spread half-baked ideas that hardly form an argument. Pathetically, in most cases, Levy’s ranting proves counter effective to his cause.
Three days ago Jerusalem urged its ‘Western allies’ to support Mubarak. Yesterday war criminal Tony Blair complied submissively suggesting that “Mubarak is immensely courageous and a force for good.”
The former British PM, who lied to us all, launched an illegal war based on a false dossier and made all of us complicit in the murder of 1.5 million Iraqis, praised the Egyptian president over his role in ‘peace negotiations’. Blair seems to follow the Israeli instructions and warns “against a rush to elections that could bring Muslim Brotherhood to power.”
Blair argued that the west was right to back Mubarak despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel. In short, according to the former British PM, ‘democratic enthusiasm’ is better pushed aside for the sake of the Jewish State’s interests. No wonder Lord Levy and the Labour Friends of Israel spent so many sheckels keeping Blair and Labour in power.
Haaretz reported today that “Israel urges the world to curb criticism of Egypt's Mubarak.”
Apparently Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the ‘West's interest’ to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. In other words, Israel urges the ‘Goyim’ to ‘keep being subservient to Jerusalem’. Jerusalem was foolish enough to admit that Mubarak was there to serve Israeli and ‘Western’ interests.
Over the weekend Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to restrain their condemnation of President Hosni Mubarak to “preserve stability in the region.”
Let’s all be clear about it : as far as Israelis are concerned, ‘stability in the region’ means a few million Jews living in ‘safety’ on Palestinian land, at the expense of one billion Muslims. But I guess that this Zionist militant expansionist fantasy is crumbling in front of our eyes now.
Fox News and CNN are leading a vicious misinformation campaign in the U.S. Media against the popular uprising in Egypt. Both networks are exaggerating the issue of “instability” in some cities in Egypt, such as Cairo. The fact of the matter is that Egyptians not only don’t see this as “instability” but as a victorious journey to a secure democratic society. During the 7 days of powerful uprising in Egypt, people in massive numbers are insisting on bringing an end to the 30 years of Mubarak’s brutal and corrupt police state and the numbers are growing on a daily bases. In the early days of the uprising, Mubarak - first by unleashing his infamous police force - killed over 100 people and arrested a multitude of activists and protesters. Then by pulling back his police thugs from the streets and ordering the army forward to select locations as a symbol of intimation thus purposely CREATED A SECURITY VACUUM. This move by the government allowed an opportunity for some robbers and thieves to openly break into homes and places of business and by looting and vandalizing, they created an atmosphere of fear and chaos in some areas of Cairo. Soon, the youth started protecting their neighborhoods by any means necessary. This instant mass response was reminiscent of what happened during the 1979 Iranian uprising where the youth took control of their neighborhoods for security when the Monarch (Shah) was toppled and there was no government in place. In Cairo, the youth in a few short days contained the activities of these thugs and arrested some of the looters. According to some reports, the neighborhood protection committees found the official Egyptian POLICE ID cards among those hooligans.
The British ADL watchdog CIF Watch seems to be very unhappy with the Guardian circulating the work of the genius cartoonist Carlos Latuff
“How low will they (the Guardian )go? Asks the Zionist watchdog.
The Judeo-centric site defines Latuff as “one of the most prolific anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic cartoonists”. It is also outraged with Latuff depicting “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a sinister looking (gun wielding) Orthodox Jew.”
The Jewish site claims that much of Latuff’s work “expresses anti-Semitic themes. Some of his caricatures seem to suggest that Israel is a unique and immutable evil in the world.” I am afraid to disappoint the Zionist watchdog; the Jewish State is uniquely evil, and this fact has been exposed numerous times in the last years by UN fact finding missions.
The Zionist blog claims that Latuff’s work “includes imagery frequently suggesting a moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany – and he has explicitly acknowledged that this is indeed his political view.” Again this is far from being a revelation. We all see equivalence between the ‘Jews only State’ and Nazi Germany.
The Latuff cartoon above depicts Sharon kissing Hitler. Indeed this is an appropriate representation of the Sabra and Shatilla mass murderer
The above Latuff cartoon was published by Indymedia on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Indeed the most appropriate way to criticise the transformation of Palestine into a set of isolated concentration camps.
We in the West, we like to have the feeling that we have the Arab world under control. The states there are strategically important, full of oil, and the people strange, in what is for us a disturbing way. But they are hopefully largely under control by dictatorial regimes and the political or sometimes military interventions of the West. The Western discourse revolves around the question of whether Islam is at all compatible with democracy, and thus whether Arab Muslim immigrants can be integrated into European societies.
