Ayoon Wa Azan (We Want Justice for All)

When this week started, I was preoccupied with two main issues: the formation of the new Lebanese cabinet, or the lack thereof to be precise, and the start of the process to select a new Director General for the UNESCO. As such, I read what should be read in relations to these issues, and kept a number of articles and news items for the end of the week, in addition to having contacted the newsmakers themselves.

Today, I will ignore the Israeli press articles in what I have, since it is mostly full of lies such as calling the Palestinians terrorists, while they are resisting terrorism, occupation and a fascistic government that is supported by the terrorists in the Israeli lobby in America. In any case, Israel will always remain a terrorist country, and an illegal outpost until an independent Palestinian state is established, because it is the Palestinians alone who can give Israel the legitimacy to exist on their own land.

In fact, I will single out today only the articles published on Tuesday and Wednesday, since it so happened that I found someone who responded to the arrogance of Israel’s supporters. This also means that there are others who have the same views as I do, and that the lying by Israel and its supports, which is often at the level of Goebbels’s, does not deceive all the people all the time:

Elliot Abrams wrote an article in the Washington post on Tuesday entitled “What Carter Missed in the Middle East” in which he said that the former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s claims that life among the Palestinians is unbearable and getting worse are contradicted by facts, and that his efforts to blame Israel for all the problems are unconvincing, especially in Gaza.

Abrams was indicted in the Iran/Contra scandal, and was then convicted but subsequently pardoned by George Bush Senior. He then worked in the National Security Council under Bush Junior representing Israel and not his own country, and is an extremist warmonger and an Israeli apologist.

The following day, Zahi Khouri wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “The West Bank’s deceptive growth”, in which he inadvertently responded to Abrams’s distortions. He quoted other sources of information including the World Bank itself, which reaffirmed in a report published in June that “the real G.D.P. in the occupied Palestinian territory has declined by a cumulative 34 percent since the year 2000”. Zahi Khouri then reminded us of the 600 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks still present in the West Bank, which Abrams would have claimed are designed to assist the Palestinian economy if he could. Khouri also said that the improvement of the Palestinian economy is the result of domestic Palestinian reforms, and so is the expected growth for 2009 which will be a one-off event that will not be repeated (as was growth in 2006). He then cited the IMF which said that unless Israel lifts the restrictions on the Palestinians, their economy will decline in the same trend that started after 2006.

Zahi Khouri is a Palestinian friend, and a prominent businessman who left his successful business in the United States following the Oslo accords and returned with his experience and everything he owned to invest in Palestine. He is a man of peace because he simply cannot work and succeed except in an atmosphere of peace. Abrams on the other hand, is championing a “remote-controlled” war because his policies effectively mean the continuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the death of many Arabs and Jews in a confrontation fuelled by extremists.

On a different note, I continue with an article entitled “Eight Years Later and Still No Revenge” written by Richard Cohen and published in the Washington Post also on Tuesday. In the article, he wrote about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how he left his office and rushed to lower Manhattan to see the devastation, and how he thought that the United States will avenge its victims and kill Osama bin Laden; however, it didn’t. Cohen did not forget to say that he was surprised by his own desire for revenge, a hardly fit matter for columns and columnists, and which reflects blood lust. However, he adds that revenge suggests a proper concern for the dead.

I do not want to be unfair to Cohen by comparing him to Abrams, who is a racist extremist. In fact, I have been reading the former’s writings since the eighties, and I used to find him to be quite moderate. However, he started changing his tone in recent years, which reminds me of Bernard Lewis, who started as a moderate and then became an Israeli and closer to being a Likudnik than to being a centrist.

There are certain things that Lewis and Cohen do not like to hear, and I choose from amongst these the following:

- Terrorism did not come out of nowhere, and as long as the Palestinian cause is not resolved, terrorism will endure and worsen until the day we see terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction.

- Israel is the party responsible for terrorism before and along with its perpetrators.

- Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, and Osama bin Laden must be either captured or killed. Personally, I do not accept any justifications he has for his terrorism, and instead I absolutely condemn his actions.

- I accuse the Bush/Cheney administration of deliberately not finishing its war in Afghanistan, because had it indeed destroyed al-Qaeda, there would be no need for its war on terrorism which is in fact a war on Islam and Muslims, including the invasion of Iraq based on falsified causes and with the complicity of the New York Times and the Washington Post, or their deliberate silence.

- What is required is justice and not revenge, and justice would not deserve its name if it is not a justice for all, including for the Palestinians like other victims. In fact, next to the 9/11 victims, there are thousands of Palestinian victims over an entire century.

Once again, we want justice for all. I continue tomorrow.