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www.rondavid.net (© Ron David) ARABSONG: Celebrations of Life A journal of truth, humor and occasional beauty dedicated to the principle that every human life --black, white, arab, jew, american, non-american-- is equally valuable. SHORT TAKES: Middle East Truth Watch |
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ITEM Have you seen the TV commercials for the new video game -- "Conflict: Desert Storm"? It shows American soldiers chasing escaping Iraqi soldiers. I wonder if the new video game includes the part where young -- "17, 18 maybe 20 years old" -- Iraqis trying desperately to surrender or escape were slaughtered by American soldiers driving bulldozers? The bulldozers buried them alive. I wonder if the new video game has taken the photographs of Iraqi body parts -- arms, legs, parts of heads -- sticking up out of the dirt and turned them into animated motion pictures? I wonder if the thing is like Madden Football Videos? Do they have a guy with a telestrater to draw circles around the Iraqi body parts sticking out of the dirt? Do the American soldiers run like Marshall Faulk, all spins and cut backs, faking the inept Iraqis out of their jockstraps? Do they have a huge scoreboard so everyone can see the results of the Big Game: 148 Americans and over 200,000 Iraqis, dead? If that is a war, my dick is Jimminy Cricket. (I have a lot more to say about that video game but I don't want to piss people off too much on the first page of these Short Takes.)
ITEM Hajar Abdul Ghani, a young Iraqi student who loved America and planned to become a writer, was interviewed by Laura Flanders shortly after the war: “I was crying,” she said in great aching pauses, “in the car … with my family. I see people … around me. I see soldiers…they stand ... in trucks, waiting ... to be taken to Kuwait … so … oooh … oh, when you look at them … the faces … just young men … and you don’t see smiles … young men, 17 or 18 or 20 years old…so frightened … so frightened. I started to laugh … and I cry at the same time…” Laura
Flanders, “CrossCurrents” -- WBAI-FM, NY
ITEM Barbara Nimri Aziz interviewed Hajar’s father, Muhammad Abdul Ghani, Iraq’s preeminent sculptor: “I was in America last year. I went to Washington for the International Conference of Sculpture. I was very happy … very happy. I wished to come back again. But now I am very sad about what happened to us from the Americans. All Iraqis are very sad. If Bush and Saddam Hussein have trouble over politics, they should settle it in a political way — not bomb innocent people. Shame for America. Shame.” B. N. Aziz, “TAHRIR: Voices of the Arab World” -- WBAI-FM, NY
ITEM Let me repeat, we have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed
we have only friendship for the people there.
U.S. President
George Bush, Nov. 15, 1990
ITEM It
should be said at once that nothing we had seen or read had quite
prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now
befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought
near-apocalyptic results upon the infrastructure of what had been until
January 1991. a highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now most
means of modern life have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Under
Secretary General Martti Ahtissari
ITEM Q: What is the history of America's conflict with Iraq? A: There is no history of an American conflict with Iraq. We never had one. On July [I.O.U. the day] 1990, America & Iraq were allies --- the next day they weren't. Q: But President Bush says that we are "in imminent danger" of being nuked by Iraq? Is the president mistaken? A: No, he's not mistaken -- he's a liar. Q: How can you be so sure of that? A: In the first place, Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons. In the second, Iraq has never attacked -- or even threatened to attack -- America. Q: Then why are we talking about going to war with Iraq? A: Exactly!
ITEM What is the only country in the world that has ever dropped atomic bombs on another country? Then where do we get the arrogance to think that we have the right to police this world?
ITEM After we blew the living hell out of Afghanistan ... Osama bin Laden is still alive?
ITEM On June 7, 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear plant. Every civilized country in the world objected that Israel had no right to bomb another country without provocation. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin “explained” that he was preventing another Holocaust, but nobody was buy. The United States, the Soviet Union and every other moderately civilized country in the world (including France, which sold the nuclear reactor to Iraq) condemned Israel’s attack as a flagrant violation of international law.
ITEM The issue of oil is much overrated as a primary cause of America’s troubles in the Middle East. Oil is a convenient surrogate motive (if there’s anything Americans can understand it’s greed) for our highhand treatment of Middle Eastern countries. If we pretend that oil is the ultimate motive it allows us to maintain the illusion that Israel protects American interests.
ITEM You can shoot me later for my egotism, but for your own good, please hear me out now. If I could loan everyone in America only three books on the Arab-Israeli conflict, I would give you Noam Chomsky’s The Fateful Triangle, my own book Arabs & Israel for Beginners and Stephen Green’s astonishing book, Taking Sides. By now most well-educated people are familiar with Chomsky. He’s brilliant, amazingly thorough, scrupulously fair, pretty damned dull—and his books are everywhere. Stephen Green’s book, like mine, is insulted, ignored, often out of print and generally pretended out of existence. Despite all of my research and my passionate intention to tell the truth in plain ol’ Detroit English, I had one hell of a hard time figuring out why Israel did what it did. Stephen Green’s book taught me the astonishing truth that Israel, from the 1948 War to Rob Palestine from the Palestinians, had a larger army than all of the Arab nations combined. And Israel's vision of its future is that it must always have a larger army than all of the Arab nations combined. That's why Israel attacked Egypt and Syria in 1967. Their armies were getting a bit too formidable, so the Israelis attacked them where they stood. What's so special about Stephen Green's Taking Sides? Stephen Green went to the State Department and read all of the recently declassified documents. All of Green's evidence is supported by U. S. State Department records. (IF the "Israel-Firsters" haven't burned them yet.) So when you ask yourself why America would want to start a war with Iraq... (nobody in America gives a damn about Iraq; it's like starting a war with Sri Lanka) the only plausible answer is that Israel wants squashed. I will defend that charge a bit later, believe me. For now remember two things: 1. In 1981 Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin defended bombing of another nation without provocation as a "preemptive strike." Nobody fell for Begin's baloney. Israel was censured by the entire civilized world, including the U. S. (that was before we allowed the Tail to wag the Dog). 2. There is no such thing as a "preemptive strike." That is "Israel-Speak" for a Sucker Punch. Blast the other guy when he's not looking. Try using that line of reasoning in a courtroom: "Why did you shoot that man in his sleep, Menachem? He didn't attack you?" "He didn't do it YET, but it's possible that he might do it in the future. I was defending myself against what he might do in the future?"
By the way -- how is President Bush justifying yet another war against Iraq, a country who has never hurt us in any way? He says it's a Preemptive Strike.
ITEM No fancy talk, no nitpicking, no digressive details, no red herrings can change the fact that the present inhabitants of Israel stole Palestine from the Palestinians. Stole their land, stole or bulldozed their homes…then called the Palestinians “terrorists” for trying to reclaim their homes and the land they had lived on for centuries.
ITEM (I love this one) Ariel Sharon, believe it or not, is Palestinian by birth ... a fact that is certain to piss off everyone on both sides.
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PS: There is great deal more to come on this web page. Ron D
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