Millions of people around the world marched in anti-war demonstrations,
all saying that war is not a solution, not in Iraq’s case. Yet somebody
in the US administration is beating the drums of war and refusing to hear
the voices of wisdom around the world, somebody who has dual loyalties and
a different plan all together, somebody who sees this war as act one in a
bigger play. The American administration has been trying to build a case
against the Iraqi regime highlighting its human rights record and its
violation of UN resolutions. But what is appalling about American policy
is that everything that they have accused the Iraqi regime of doing has
been the hallmark of all Israeli administrations since its foundation.
Occupation, killings, illegal detention, assassinations, civilian
transfers, annexation of land, destruction of land and property,
imprisonment without trial, torture, mass killings (Deir Yassin,
Subra-Shatila, Jenin and Qana are the known cases) economic terror, murder
of civilians, UN representatives and medical workers.
This impressive record has the blessing of the US government, which
supplies Israel with military, economic, political and intelligence aid.
US monetary aid to Israel totals $135 billion, an appalling figure
considering the number of Israeli citizens (6 million). What is to follow
is a grandiose plan to restructure the entire Middle East, its political
systems, values and geography.
These visions come from Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others who
put Israel’s interests above everything else.
People of this dubious caliber nonetheless go on blathering about
reforms, freedom, and liberalization in the Middle East. God knows that
the region needs it, as so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals as well as
ordinary people have been saying for so long. But who appointed these
characters as spokesmen for progress? And what gives them the right to
pontificate in so shameless a manner when there are already so many
injustices and abuses in their own country to be fixed?
Richard Perle is about as unqualified an individual as it is imaginable
to be on the subjects of freedom and democracy, having been an election
consultant to Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing administration from
1996-99, a time when he advised the extremist Israelis to cancel any and
all peace plans, to annex the West Bank and Gaza, and to exile as many
Palestinians as possible.
Now this man is talking about introducing democracy to the Middle East
and getting away with it, without the faintest objection from any of the
media folk who give him airtime on global television.
The Palestinian land today is witnessing mass famine; there is a health
crisis of unimaginable proportions; there are civilians dying at an
average of 20 people a week; the economy has been destroyed; hundreds of
thousands of innocent civilians are jobless, and cannot study or move
about as curfews and at least 300 barricades impede their regular lives.
Homes are blown up or bulldozed on a regular basis. And all of it is
done with US equipment, US political support and US financing.
Bush has declared that Sharon — a war criminal and a mass murderer by
any standard — is a man of peace. That is like spitting on the graves of
innocent Palestinians. If there is a moral argument for Saddam’s
removal, there is a stronger one for the removal of Ariel Sharon.