Peace and Justice Post

By Gary Fennelly | Belfast Telegraph, Oct 27, 2008

Troops fire on hundreds of protesters in Indian Kashmir, killing 1

Staff
AP News

Oct 26, 2008 05:04 EST

Government troops in Indian Kashmir opened fire Sunday on hundreds of angry protesters demanding the release of several people arrested during a recent strike, killing one and wounding at least three others, a police official said.

The Muslim protesters in Baramullah town, 35 miles north of Srinagar, the main city in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, threw stones and clashed with police and paramilitary soldiers, who responded first with bamboo truncheons and tear gas and then with live ammunition, said Abdul Gani Mir, the area’s deputy inspector general.

The protesters chanted pro-freedom slogans as they clashed with the troops, Mir said.

Police will investigate the death and injuries, he said.

On Friday, a general strike was organized by the Jammu-Kashmir Coordination Committee, a coalition of Muslim separatists and local business leaders, during which local residents said at least 10 people were arrested by police.

Mir said police arrested only four people.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, where most people favor independence from mainly Hindu India or a merger with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

At least 45 people have died in unrest since August, most of them killed when Indian soldiers opened fire on Muslim demonstrators.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, which both claim the region and have fought two wars over it.

Militant separatist groups have been fighting since 1989 to end Indian rule. The uprising and subsequent Indian crackdown have killed about 68,000 people, most of them civilians.

Source: AP News

Antiwar.com,  October 26, 2008

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani publicly condemned the “intolerable” series of unilateral US drone strikes launched in North and South Waziristan in the past two months at a press conference today. He said the strike were an attack on Pakistan’s national sovereignty and were weakening the nation’s anti-terror efforts. He added that he had raised the issue at the latest Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit and they supported the Pakistani position.

The most recent strike came earlier today, when a US drone attacked a village in South Waziristan Agency, killing at least 20 people. The strike reportedly hit two houses in an area of South Waziristan known to be a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

This is the second reported US drone strike in the past few days, and the 12th in the past 10 weeks, with a strike on Thursday morning on a North Waziristan Agency religious school killing 10. The previous attack was publicly condemned by several Pakistani Senators as an attack on the sovereignty of Pakistan’s parliament, which had recently passed a 14-point resolution criticizing the strikes and urging Pakistan to “de-link” its security policy from the US war on terror.

Related Stories

• 20 Killed in US Drone Attack in South Waziristan
• Pakistani Senators Condemn US Drone Strike
• “Sweeping” Pakistan Resolution Either Repudiates or Reinforces Terror Policy
• US Training Program For Pakistani Forces Begins, But Distrust Remains

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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By Badri Raina | ZNet, Oct 24, 2008

Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

I

What lovely times those must have been when a rose was a rose by any name?

Many must have thought so, although I doubt that the man who wrote that line actually thought so, or why else would he have also asked “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo”?

Same with the rose. Ask the orchid lover, or the one who loves the cactus best.

In post-Freudian times, we know of the case of a young man who actually died from allergy to the rose.

Best be wary of the truths we are told; such as, for example that the stock market equals the fate of India. Exactly 3% Indians dabble in its fortunes and, now, salutary misfortunes. Or, the banking system: 70% or more Indians do not bank!

II

So what is “terrorism”?

Engaging in indiscriminate violence? You must be joking. That would make the American chief executive by far the prime terrorist of past, present, and—safe assumption—future times.

Killing innocent human beings? Same conclusion. Name me one event or all events taken together that killed more innocents than “little boy” in Hiroshima. And, not to forget Nagasaki.

Killing without cause, or in the name of some spurious cause? Like the invasion of Iraq in the pursuit of the non-existent WMD?

Killing in the name of religion? Don’t say it, unless you mean to refer to pretty much all of western history upto about the beginning of the 19C. And later as well in places like Ireland.

That which the puissant call “terrorism”? More to the point.

Think that crashes among currency notes on the stock market are designated “carnage” and “bloodbath”; and the millions who die from malnutrition, preventable infection and such-like—millions, that is, of human beings, not currency notes—mere inevitable victims to the “inexorable laws” of economics and Nature.

III

Thus, what were “terrorists” till yesterday in relation to the Godhra train burning in Gujarat, 2002, have today been kindly denotified as ordinary enough criminals who acted out of “sudden provocation.” If indeed they did.

This, thanks to the findings of a Review Panel on the subject of the 120 or so accused (muslims) who have been rotting in jail for six long years without trial or bail as per provisions of the since- repealed POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act).

Findings now upheld by the highest court in the land which has pronounced that these denizens of the Indian Guantanamo cannot after all be tried under the said draconian Act since they are not “terrorists” in the first place.

All that should bring good and bad tidings, severally, to two honourable retired Justices of the Supreme Court.

Good tidings to Justice U.C.Bannerjee who headed a committee set up by the Railway Ministry, and pronounced pretty much as the Review Panel now has; and bad tidings to one Justice Nanavati who has been heading another Commission and has only some weeks ago furnished an Interim Report (an illegal procedure, since as per law governing Commissions of Enquiry, only complete findings can be submitted) concluding that the train burning was an act of “conspiracy”.

Since the Interim Report was all- too- obviously tailored to enhancing Modi’s political standing and prospects, Justice Nanavati went further forward to proffer just the conclusion to the still non-existent Part of the Report that will concern the Gujarat pogrom that followed the train burning, namely, that neither Modi nor any of his hench agencies bore any culpability in the matter. Hallelujah, we say; three cheers for brazen gumption and bold untruth.

This is the same Justice of whom it was heard in a sting operation recording of a conversation with a Modi satrap “he is our own man.” Provenly so.

But something after all does work in the state of Denmark, although despite the judgement now delivered by the Supreme Court, we may not put it past the Modi dispensation to go in appeal. It may thus still be a while before those that yet survive the Sabarmati jail are granted bail. But who said India is perfect, and then Gujarat.

And yet, what a tribute to the exertions of the tireless tribe that will not take fascism lying down. The vicious triumph, as has often been said, only because the well-meaning opt out.

IV

So, what is “terror”?

Just those clandestine bombs going off, killing anything from one to a hundred people?

Make a computation and you will find that the total victims of bomb-terror in recent decades in India is but a miniscule percentage of those butchered, burnt, and banished in the pogroms conducted in acts of mob-terror—and all invariably with the state watching in silent connivance.

Not to speak of the fact that mob-terror derives its howling, animal energies from ideologues who sit high among both the polity and government, and directs its depredations against chosen targets among the populace. And the further fact that it does not hide its face because it thinks it is working its murderous business in the interests of the nation, and because it knows that any number of worthies will promptly flood the tv channels to pronounce that same “patriotic” sentiment. And that the channels will find this distinction between “terrorism” and “patriotism” as compelling as the worthies aforesaid.

Even as the blood gushes and hacked limbs lie aground, the face of this terror exults in triumph and apes the famous blood-curdling victory call of Tarzan.

Sitting in their up-market homes, the successful Indian heaves grunts of satisfaction that some people there are who are thus boldly forth to cut down “evil”, and that the state has the sense to stand aside. Indeed, that, thank god, somebody will do what the state is too pusillanimous to do. How else is India, the new super-power, to be saved?

V

After all, throughout history, what is remembered is what the puissant dish out to us.

Everybody knows how many Stalin sent to the Gulag; how many remember that some 8 million Russian soldiers and 20 million civilians gave their lives to defeat Hitler and Nazism? Or, that had Hitler not opened the Eastern Front, Nazism may well have triumphed.

Interestingly, where German historians will tell you so, the Anglo-Saxons ones will not.

And, think about it, how many actually believe that Hiroshima was the single most unforgiveable, “evil” if you like, thing that modern men have done to other modern men?

Not to speak of the umpteen and countless wars unleashed upon all regions of the world by Imperialism in the pursuit of material ascendance?

Or, how many remember that the Taliban were “freedom fighters” when they were put up against the Russians and became “terrorists” when they turned the gun the other way?

Thus, India’s mob-terrorists may well come to be remembered and recorded as the heroes who saved India from “terrorism.” Very few may venture the truth that the two remain inseparable complementarities.

VI

For now, nonetheless, the happy development in relation to the Godhra accused brings hope to those who insist that a rose is never a rose just by any sort of name. And that, whatever the frustrations and the systemic collusions, there is good work to be done on behalf of democracy, justice, the rule of law, and equity. Even plain human decency.

______________________________________________________________

badri.raina@gmail.com

William . Cook | uruknet.info,  October 26, 2008 “Now the opposite of Beatitude is misery … to be afflicted unwillingly with painful sufferings.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, 380 AD) “Hope” was scheduled to sail to Gaza on Thursday, September 25th, but could not because negotiations to buy a boat fell through repeatedly “due to outside pressure.” Regardless, whatever day “Hope” sails, and it will sail, is a day every Christian and every humane person, regardless of religion, should mark on his or her calendar as the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount live in our day as true believers in the Beatitudes give meaning and life to “Blessed are the merciful for they shall see God and Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God.” Five physicians from 4 countries, Human Rights lawyers and monitors, a member of the Israeli Knesset, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, a veritable Ship of Mercy, will confront the Goliath of Mercilessness that has besieged 1.5 million people in Gaza for almost two years now making their lives not a state of beatitude, but rather a state of misery – “afflicted unwillingly with painful sufferings.” How reprehensible that the nations of the world sit mute in General Assembly at the United Nations, made silent by the coercive veto of the United States prodded by the Satanic voice of Israel; how pathetic the obsequious behavior of our Congress that protects its wallet rather than respond to the starved and humiliated Palestinians suffering behind steel walls and locked gates; how repulsive to witness silk suited ministers of the cloth raise their collective voices in prophetic proclamations condemning those already condemned to misery for disagreeing with their interpretation of the beatitudes as words of war not peace, of arrogance not humility, of mercilessness not justice, of hate not love; how sad to live these past sixty years and watch the dissembling of Judaism as it abandons its thousands of years of moral, ethical and religious substance to the drive of Zionist fanatics bound by a “secular nationalistic concept completely devoid of ethics and morals” (Rabbi Aharon Cohen of Neturei Karta, 2006). The voyage of “Hope” to Gaza, like that of the “Free Gaza” and “Liberty” in August, symbolizes for the people of the world, as it does for the people of Gaza that people care even if their governments do not. Governments can be and more often than not are bought and sold, victims of abusive power from within and without; but the conscience of a people churns inside recognizing, indeed feeling passionately what others suffer, what they themselves would not tolerate should it be inflicted on them, and they know in their hearts, ay in their very souls, that all people have a right to life with dignity and no nation has a right to manufacture a pretense that denies “life with dignity.” Those who inflict such pain claiming they are the victims lie, and in their actions destroy not just sources of energy that make possible tolerable living conditions, jobs, businesses and homes, but the substance of meaning, the purpose of existing, the state of beatitude where nothing is absent that a good desire may want, in the words of St. Gregory, who knew what real Christian civilized people had as rights in 380 AD. Happily he didn’t live in this barbaric age of uncivilized humanity that can encircle its enemy with barbed wire and steel and electric surveillance and bulldozers and F-16 fighter jets and missile carrying helicopters and thousands of highly trained obedient troops made conscienceless by Pavlovian modification. How advanced we’ve become in removing empathy from the heart that the desires of our rulers be met. “The stranglehold on Gaza’s borders has made … the work of the UN and the other humanitarian agencies … virtually impossible. Only a trickle of medicine, food, fuel and other goods is being allowed in … making people highly dependent on food and aid and it has brought the health system and basic services, such as water and sanitation near to collapse” (Medecins du Monde UK). These are the conditions that Israel inflicts on the hapless people of Gaza. How can a nation be reduced to such barbaric behavior? How can a nation listed as the 16th wealthiest nation on the planet inflict such heinous acts on a neighbor? How can the United States support such cruelty? “40% of Gaza residents have been deprived of clean water. Children are living in the cold and dark. Gaza pumps 40 million litres of untreated sewage into the sea each day, because of a lack of electricity to run the treatment plant, and lack of pipes to replace old ones … where 80% are unemployed and 20% work for the UN and NGO’s, therefore 100% of Gazans rely on the benevolence of the outside world” (Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize winner). Where are those who would comfort the afflicted, where are those who hunger and thirst for justice, where are the merciful, the peacemakers? They are not in Israel’s government or in the Congress of the United States or in the mega-churches of the Christian Zionists; these are the perpetrators of evil who seek to destroy people they do not know nor care to know. These are people driven by ideologies of hate constructed on pillars of racism, superiority and mythologies interpreted by fools. How can such conditions exist in a country controlled in every way by the “advanced” state of Israel? Why is it that the Palestinian people are allowed to suffer such physical, emotional, and psychological torture, such absolute humiliation, at the hands of the occupiers while the world looks on oblivious to those who inflict such torment on their victims? How ironic that the victims of Nazi cruelty, the Jews of Israel, those who were brought to the land of Palestine out of sympathy for their suffering, should become in their turn the militaristic state that creates victims to further their own political ends. This horrific irony cuts two ways like a knife blade severing the heart, it destroys the victim even as it makes a murderer of the assailant, for the Jew is no longer the victim but the perpetrator of known evil. That act unveils the myth of the beleaguered Jew that wanders the face of the earth in constant torment and suffering, a constant victim of those who would impose their will on him. It strips naked the lie that fosters the innocence of the Jews that created the state in 1947-48, as Dr. Ilan Pappe attests in his penetrating book on The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, when in fact they, the Jews, orchestrated a systematic erasure of the indigenous people even as they cried to the outside world that they were the victims. It is that lie, the massacre at Deir Yassin and all the subsequent massacres that killed thousands and forced 700,000 into exile that cannot be admitted, anymore than the slow, calculated massacre taking place in Gaza can be admitted that is destroying Judaism turning it into a cold, secular, fanatical religion devoid of ethics and morals, driven by greed and power as the good Rabbi Cohen states. The voyage of the “Hope” may be more than a voyage of the merciful to a bleeding land that receives no mercy; it may be a voyage of virtue that teaches, in the words of St. Augustine, “Hope is the greatest of all virtues, even greater than love. For love only teaches what should be, while Hope teaches us what will be.” Should Augustine’s sage remark become prophetic, a day will come in Israel when it will confront its past, indeed, as Professor Pappe so cogently states, “… unless Israel acknowledges the cardinal role it has played, and continues to play, in the dispossession of the Palestinian nation, and accepts the consequences this recognition of the ethnic cleansing implies, all attempts to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict are bound to fail.” Beneath that statement festers an infectious disease that sucks out the marrow of Judaic morals cleansing it of its life sustaining force as it has cleansed the natives of Palestine from the land that gave them life. “… the Jewish religious propensity to seek atonement has been replaced by the arrogant disregard for world public opinion and the self-righteousness with which Israel routinely fends off criticism” (Pappe). How psychologically terrifying to know that the power that provides for the “Jewish State” is the power that destroys the Jewish soul. How spiritually appalling to sense the dissembling of the Jewish moral and ethical cohesiveness that spans the centuries in favor of a nation determined by exclusivity and apartheid separateness. How physically disturbing to contemplate the reality of day to day existence where the Jews walk through opulence indifferent to the suffering, deprivation, and destitution of their neighbors. When will the state of Israel demand of itself what it demanded of those that caused the holocaust in Europe? When will it recognize and acknowledge that in their teaching as in the teaching of the Beatitudes, mercy and justice, reconciliation and retribution pave the road to peace, not checkpoints and barriers and walls and unjust laws that protect the oppressor at the expense of the oppressed? When will the governments of the world rise against the injustice done to the Palestinians and join the ordinary people of their nations as they set sail on the voyage of Hope to Gaza?

www.uruknet.info?p=48259

Link: www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/5537/1/

By Michael Schwartz | Asia Times, Oct 25, 2008

Even before the spectacular presidential election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing. National newspapers had long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple – usually front page – reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals of mostly summary stories buried inside the paper. On broadcast and cable TV channels, where violence in Iraq had once been the nightly lead, whole news cycles went by without a mention of the war.

The tone of the coverage also changed. The powerful reports of desperate battles and miserable Iraqis disappeared. There are still occasional stories about high-profile bombings or military campaigns in obscure places, but the bulk of the news is about quiescence in old hot spots, political maneuvering by Iraqi factions, and the newly emerging routines of ordinary life.

A typical “return to normal life” piece appeared October 11 in the New York Times under the headline, “Schools Open, and the First Test is Iraqi Safety.” Featured was a Baghdad schoolteacher welcoming her students by assuring them that “security has returned to Baghdad, city of peace”.

Even as his report began, though, Times reporter Sam Dagher hedged the “return to normal” theme. Here was his first paragraph in full:

On the first day of school, 10-year-old Basma Osama looked uneasy standing in formation under an already stifling morning sun. She and dozens of schoolmates listened to a teacher’s pep talk – probably a necessary one, given the barren and garbage-strewn playground.

This glimpse of the degraded conditions at one Baghdad public school, amplified in the body of Dagher’s article by other examples, is symptomatic of the larger reality in Iraq. In a sense, the (often exaggerated) decline in violence in that country has allowed foreign reporters to move around enough to report on the real conditions facing Iraqis, and so should have provided US readers with a far fuller picture of the devastation George Bush’s war wrought.

In reality, though, since there are far fewer foreign reporters moving around a quieter Iraq, far less news is coming out of that wrecked land. The major newspapers and networks have drastically reduced their staffs there and – with a relative trickle of exceptions like Dagher’s fine report – what’s left is often little more than a collection of pronouncements from the US military, or Iraqi and American political leaders in Baghdad and Washington, framing the American public’s image of the situation there.

In addition, the devastation that is now Iraq is not of a kind that can always be easily explained in a short report, nor for that matter is it any longer easily repaired. In many cities, an American reliance on artillery and air power during the worst days of fighting helped devastate the Iraqi infrastructure. Political and economic changes imposed by the American occupation did damage of another kind, often depriving Iraqis not just of their livelihoods but of the very tools they would now need to launch a major reconstruction effort in their own country.

As a consequence, what was once the most advanced Middle Eastern society – economically, socially, and technologically – has become an economic basket case, rivaling the most desperate countries in the world. Only the (as yet unfulfilled) promise of oil riches, which probably cannot be effectively accessed or used until US forces withdraw from the country, provides a glimmer of hope that Iraq will someday lift itself out of the abyss into which the US invasion pushed it.

Consider only a small sampling of the devastation.

The Economy: Fundamental to the American occupation was the desire to annihilate Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athists state apparatus and the economic system it commanded. A key aspect of this was the closing down of the vast majority of state-owned economic enterprises (with the exception of those involved in oil extraction and electrical generation).

In all, 192 establishments, adding up to 35% of the Iraqi economy, were shuttered in the summer and fall of 2003. These included basic manufacturing processes like leather tanning and tractor assembly that supplied other sectors, transportation firms that dominated national commerce, and maintenance enterprises that housed virtually all the technicians and engineers qualified to service the electrical, water, oil, and other infrastructure systems in the country.

Justified as the way to bring a modern free-enterprise system to backward Iraq, this draconian program was put in place by the president’s proconsul in Baghdad, L Paul Bremer III. The result? An immediate depression that only deepened in the years to follow.

One measure of this policy’s impact can be found in the demise of the leather goods industry, a key pre-invasion sector of Iraq’s non-petroleum economy. When a government-owned tanning operation, which all by itself employed 30,000 workers and supplied leather to an entire industry, was shuttered in late 2003, it deprived shoe-makers and other leather goods establishments of their key resource. Within a year, employment in the industry had dropped from 200,000 workers to a mere 20,000.

By the time Bremer left Iraq in the spring of 2004, the inhabitants of many cities faced 60% unemployment. Meanwhile, the country’s agriculture, a key component of its economy, was also victimized by the dismantling of government establishments and services. The lush farming areas between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers suffered badly. The once-thriving date palm industry was a typical casualty. It suffered deadly infestations of pests when the occupation eliminated a government-run insecticide spraying program. Even oil refinery-based industrial towns like Baiji became cities of slums when plants devoted to non-petroleum activities were shuttered.

This economic devastation fueled the insurgency by generating desperation, anger, and willing recruits. The explosion of resistance, in turn, tended to obscure – at least for Western news services – the desperate circumstances under which ordinary Iraqis labored.

As violence has subsided in Baghdad and elsewhere, demands for relief have come to the fore. These are not easily answered by a still largely non-functional central government in Baghdad whose administrative and economic apparatus was long ago dismantled, and many of whose key technical personnel had fled into exile. Meanwhile, in early 2006, the American occupation declared that further reconstruction work would be the responsibility of Iraqis. It is not clear into what channels the growing discontent over an economy that remains largely in the tank and a government that still cannot deliver ordinary services will flow.

Electricity: A critical factor in Iraq’s collapse has been its decaying electrical grid. In areas where the insurgency raged, facilities involved in producing and transmitting electricity were targeted, both by the insurgents and US forces, each trying to deprive the other of needed resources. In addition, Bremer eliminated the government-owned maintenance and engineering enterprises that had been holding the electrical system together ever since the UN sanctions regime after the 1991Gulf War deprived Iraq of material needed to repair and upgrade its facilities. Maintenance and replacement contracts were given instead to multinational companies with little knowledge of the existing system and – due to cost-plus contracting – every incentive to replace facilities with their own proprietary technology. In the meantime, many Iraqi technicians left the country.

The successor Iraqi governments, deprived of the capacity to manage the system’s reconstruction, continued the US occupation policy of contracting with foreign companies. Even in areas of the country relatively unaffected by the fighting, those companies did the lucrative thing, replacing entire sections of the electric grid, often with inappropriate but exquisitely expensive equipment and technology.

A combination of factors – including pressure from the insurgency, the soaring costs of security, and an almost unparalleled record of endemic waste and corruption – led to costs well beyond those originally offered for the already overpriced projects. Many were then abandoned before completion as funding ran out. Completed projects were often shabbily done and just as often proved incompatible with existing facilities, introducing new inefficiencies.
In one altogether-too-typical case, Bechtel installed 26 natural gas turbines in areas where no natural gas was available. The turbines were then converted to oil, which reduced their capacity by 50% and led to a rapid sludge build-up in the equipment requiring expensive maintenance no Iraqi technicians had been trained to perform. In location after location, the turbines became inoperative.

Even before the invasion, the decrepit electrical system could not meet national demand. No province had uninterrupted service and certain areas had far less than 12 hours of service per day. The vast investments by the occupation and its successor regimes have increased electrical capacity since the invasion of 2003, but these gains have not come close to keeping up with skyrocketing demand created by the presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, private security personnel, and occupation officials, as well as by the introduction of all manner of electronic devices and products in the post-invasion period.

Continued . . .

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari said Saturday it is a disgrace that the international community has not managed to resolve the conflict in the Middle East, blaming the failure on a lack of political will. “How can we, year after year, seriously say that we are trying to reach a solution when we aren’t?” he asked. “I’m ashamed, I have to admit that.”

In the interview, Ahtisaari criticized the Western boycott of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and said it may soon be time to admit that, “we have to speak with the Taliban” in Afghanistan instead of just sending troops to the country. (AP)

Tariq Al-Maeena |Arab News, Oct 25, 2008

At an international conference in London dubbed “Terrorism: Alternative global perspectives”, Alan Hart, the author of “Zionism: the Real Enemy of the Jews”, stated, “The United States is supporting Israeli-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East.”

Speaking at the conference organized by the Center for the Study of Terrorism (CFSOT) in London to explore the comprehensive effects of the US “global war on terror”, he added that the Israeli regime, with blanket approval of Washington “simply ignores the United Nations resolutions concerning the violation of Palestinians’ rights”.

Hart, a noted British expert on Middle East affairs and a former television executive who once held the post of controller of BBC One, expressed alarm at the pro-Israeli bias in the Western media when it comes to reporting on the developments in the Middle East.

“The world is falling apart. There is only one way to confront with the double standards of the West and that is informing people about the realities of the history,” he said.

He noted that for the past six decades after the creation of the State of Israel, the United States had blocked most anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council, in spite of the Jewish state’s gross and often barbaric violations against the Palestinians. The injustice against Palestinians had no parallels in history.

Referring to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he described it as analogous to the long drawn-out British-Irish conflict whereby the British government moved the Scottish people in Northern Ireland to occupy it gradually. “A similar situation exists in Palestine where the Jews are occupying Muslim lands,” he said, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of then British Premier Tony Blair’s foreign policy and his close alliance with the US President George W. Bush for spreading terrorism and extremism across the world.

Urging Muslims to stand against Islamophobia “which is currently spreading across the world”, Hart expressed his concern that Iran was becoming a victim of collusion among the policymakers in Washington, London and Tel Aviv. “It is constantly targeted by the propaganda war of the US media,” he said.

In his latest book, “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews”, Hart expands on how such a collusion is leading to a clash between civilizations and how it could be prevented. He is a firm believer of the notion that what peacemaking needs above all else is some truth, “about many things but, especially, the difference between Zionist mythology and real history, and, the difference between Judaism and Zionism and thus why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic.”

Hart’s words should be seriously studied by those who would like to get to the truth behind Middle East politics and understand how the US has gradually fallen from grace among the Arab masses. Of course what he says comes as no surprise to most of us in the region.

A fiercely independent thinker, Hart has held many private conversations with key players on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict including Golda Meir, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. During Carter’s presidency, Alan Hart established covert diplomatic channels to initiate an exploratory dialogue between Arafat and Peres as the US administration found it difficult to advance the peace process by institutional diplomacy because of the Zionist lobby’s awesome influence on American politics and politicians.

When asked if the Israeli lobby would not seek to discredit him as they had done with many scholars before him, Hart’s answer was: “I have three children and, when the world falls apart, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, ‘Don’t blame me. I tried.’”

Hell, he says, “is when you know that the end of your life is approaching and that you have not used your talents and resources as well as you could have done to make a difference — i.e. when you realize upon reflection that you have wasted your life. Heaven is contemplation of the approach of death without fear because you know that, on balance, you’ve done your best to make a difference.”

It is statement that admits of no equivocation, one that should be carefully considered by the two politicians currently vying for the US presidency.