Opinion Editorials, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Mahathir Mohamad’s Finest Hour
Ghulam Muhammed
Al-Jazeerah, 10/28/03
Editorial Note: It would have been more accurate for Mahathir and for this author to use the political term "Zionists" instead of the religious term "Jews." There is a world of difference between them.
The historical speech that 78-year old outgoing Chief Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, gave at the opening session of the OIC summit meeting in Putrajaya, Malaysia, had created a furore in the West, for Mahathir’s strident criticism of the Jews who, as he said, ruled the world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them.’
Mahathir was referring to the Jewish clout in US President George W. Bush’s administration where key policy making is in the hands of Jewish Americans who do not mince any words about their own bias in favour of their homeland, Israel. Mahathir was further referring to the elaborate preparation that had gone into, by the Jewish think tank, in selling the Project for The New American Century, to key administration decision makers like Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld.
The whole new agenda for the US to use its defense superiority to attack Israel’s ‘potential’ enemies in the Middle East, was prepared by the neo-conservative cabal members, like William Kristol, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz. It called for US leadership to exercise ‘military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle’ for the ‘good of the US and the world’. Moral principal involved defining Israel as the ‘good guy’ as the Texas President would say, and all Muslims/Arabs, specially Iraq’s Saddam and Syria’s Asad, Iran’s Khatami as ‘bad guy’. The basic plans had been in the process of studies and strategizing, by Rumsfelds’s Defense Department and Pentagon for quite sometime and as soon as 9/11 happened, Bush has to just deliver a speech against Osama and Afghanistan and the first phase of the flexing of the new American power, was instantly! in business. However, Afghanistan was just like testing the waters to see world reaction to the blatant attack on a defenseless country, whose leader had the temerity of refusing to sign away a pipe-line project across his country to the US oil giant UNOCAL. But the real test of the neo-con cabal’s first victim was Iraq’s Saddam. Israel has been planning to topple Iraqi President and had even managed to attack the nuclear facilities of Saddam’s Iraq without a squeak from the world community. Invading and occupying a UN member country, without any legal justification, was supposedly the ‘commitment to moral principle’ that the Jewish cabal has so piously anointed.
Though all this is old history, the impact of Mahathir Mohamad’s few words on the Jewish conspiracy was most profound, spoken as it were in a world forum, where all 57 Muslim countries heads of states had gathered to take stock of Muslim world’s state of affair vis as vis the world’s only super-power in the aftermath of the American invasion of an Arab Muslim country, Iraq and its next threats against Syria and Iran.
The overwhelming support and acclaim Mahathir’s frank and direct targeting of Jews as the trouble makers of the world, was great shock to the world Zionist observers. As is typical with their responses, they called for revenge. In a front-page diatribe in Jerusalem Post, Amotz Asa-el warned: ‘Today, picking a fight with the Jews means what picking a fight with most people means: war. And wars, in their turn, involve bloodshed.
‘ Others went after individuals like Hamid Karzai – who praised the speech as ‘eye-opener’. ‘"It is great to hear Prime Minister Mahathir speak so eloquently on the problems of the Muslim world and ways to remedy them," he told reporters after the speech.
Thundered Zev Chafets in Jewish World Review: ‘How could Karzai, an American client of surpassing moderation, laud such a paranoid rant? The answer, I think, is that Karzai heard a different speech than the one reported in the press — a rather subversive speech camouflaged by the virulent anti-Jewish rhetoric that typifies all Islamic gatherings’. (However, Chafets did add: Indirectly, cautiously but unmistakably, Mahathir informed his guests that the Muslims are too weak to fight, that the jihad — from Palestine to Putrajaya — is a disaster and the Muslims have no one to blame but themselves. Given the low state of the Islamic world, this may seem self-evident. But saying it out loud at an Islamic summit is a rare act of intellectual honesty. He however, branded the speech as ‘Mahathir's Elders o! f Zion claptrap’, referring to the infamous ‘Mein Kampf’ of the Jews, detailing their strategies to conquer the world.
One of the most virulent responses came in from US President Bush’s own Jewish speechwriter, Irwin Graulich, who addresses the President as ‘George’ while submitting the draft of President’s UN speech. His dictation to George and a shade of ‘ruling by proxy’ can be imagined when he writes after the last sentence: ‘(Smile, George!)’.
In an unfinished denunciation of Mahathir’s speech ----(unfinished as he was called to a meeting with President Bush and had Donald Rumsfeld and Conde Rice on his cell phone asking advice about Afghanistan and Iraq. Sic.) --- Graulich felt,’ Criticism of Mahathir's deranged ideas was surprisingly mild throughout the Western world community. After all, this was not some little diplomat comparing Israel to "feces" at a classy dinner party. However, President Bush certainly missed a golden opportunity to virtually insure victory in the 2004 election.’ Graulin added: Had George W. Bush moseyed (embled) over to Prime Minister Mahathir in public instead of private, and given him a good Texas whuppin', Iran, Libya and Syria would have immediately destroyed their WMD plans. When will the decent world leaders stop repeating Chamberlain's mistakes of talking and negotiating? That cou! rse of action has no place at an evil table.
Grualin further commented on the APEC meeting, where Bush met face to face with Mahathir and was appalled at the support Mahathir received at the venue. Grualin wrote: Even worse than one dimwit prime minister, is an auditorium filled with 126 comparable heads of state who lead 57 other Muslim nations, all applauding the Malaysian diatribes. Watching respectfully from behind was Kofi Anan, whose silence was certainly deafening. Especially notable was Hamid Karzi, who called the speech "very correct." The American administration should end his Secret Service detail immediately. And we heard noises from the Pharaoh-like Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Maher who added his expert analysis of the speech as "a very, very wise assessment."
“Although Dr. Mahathir criticized the "damned militant (Muslim) violence in the Middles East as futile because it has not accomplished anything.... i.e. for well over half a century we have fought over Palestine...and achieved nothing," the implication is obvious. The militant violence was not wrong morally; it was wrong only because it failed to accomplish its ultimate goal.
As the Prime Minister's voice rose with excitement, he explained through a most brilliant insight that, "Of course the Jews rule the world. Look at America. They control all the companies. The politicians need their money, so they support Israel." How did Mahathir Mohamad find out about Bill Gates' Bar Mitzvah party and Warren Buffet's bris (Jewish circumcision/covenant)?”
From Malaysia’s neighbourhood, not unexpectedly strong reaction came from Australia --- an English colony, and a second Israel in the midst of an alien world of Easterners. In the aftermath of APEC conference, both US President and Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Australia and both addressed the joint session of Australian Parliament.
According to Tony Parkinson, writing in The Age, the atmosphere remained clouded with Mahathir factor. Parkinson wrote: For Australia, the main challenge in the war on terror is not Asia as such, but Muslim South-East Asia - and it is in the Javan and Malay heartlands where Mahathir's fiery anti-Western rhetoric is most likely to resonate. For the Americans, too, this represents a serious test. Although the Middle East remains Washington's primary focus, South-East Asia has established itself as an unexpectedly troubling second front in the war on terror.
Not surprisingly, the US President gave priority to ensuring the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, was on his itinerary during this week's trip through Asia.
Subsequently, when George Bush sat down for a 40-minute bilateral meeting with John Howard on Thursday, they discussed the politics of South-East Asia in detail. Neither mentioned explicitly the M-word.
But both spoke of the vital importance of continuing engagement with moderate Muslim leaders in an effort to check these anti-Western, anti-secular, anti-democratic undercurrents in the region. Bush made a point of meeting five of Indonesia's most prominent Muslim clerics.
Asia's rising world power regards Australia as an important element in regional security.
But at the very moment the US President was engaged in this inter-faith dialogue, Mahathir was in central Java, delivering another of his trademark farewell performances.
Unapologetic for his attacks on the Jewish people at last week's Islamic summit, and smarting from the international backlash, he launched another tirade, this time grasping for moral equivalence between the violent acts of extremists and the toll in civilian lives of US-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As for Australia, Mahathir remains unyielding, and resentful of the Howard Government's more muscular, interventionist approach to regional security: "We cannot have a partner who is also a policeman looking at us," he said.
However, Mahathir Mohammed’s singular contribution at the OIC summit, where heads of 57 Muslim countries as well as observers like Russia’s Vladimir Putin had gathered to take stock of the state of affair of the Muslim Umma, was his frank and forthright survey of the current plight of 1.3 billion. With his pragmatic and non-ideological approach to the problems facing Muslim countries, Mahathir is in a unique position to devote more time to the formation of an economic block, a Muslim currency, a central banking infrastructure, a political grouping, along the lines of European Council. With his 22 years experience as head of an agricultural country, his record of phenomenal success in bringing peace and stability to an ethnically divided nation and ushering it to a new era of economic progress and prosperity, Mahathir has unique credential to lead the disparate flock of 1.3 billion Muslims. His! strong words even for his own people are the measure of his sincere and heartfelt desire to lead the Umma to a new age of moderation and progress.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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