Cinnamon Zone: Arab World

If Palestinians were Penguins

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:27:00 GMT

So today I was watching that episode of Martha Stewart (No I don't watch this show, I hate it, it's just for work) and they were talking about African penguins, which are warm-weather, beach-living penguins who inhabit the coast of South Africa. And there was a woman who was some sort of an ambassador for Maryland zoo, and she was there to talk about the danger those poor little penguins were in.

She used the word "endangered" in relation to the fact that those penguins were being driven away from their "homes", or "removed from their homes" as she would describe it, their natural habitat on the south-western coast of Africa by sea gulls, seals, whales and other animals of this kind. She called on the viewers to be aware of this and write letters of support to these organizations that work to help those penguins.

It was hard not to smile at the irony. Not that I have anything against penguins, I actually find them charming and very interesting creatures, but if you come to think about it, I doubt that anyone in the world would stand against those penguins in their "struggle" for their land. In fact, I think anyone's heart would melt just at the sight of them stuttering away looking for a home after being displaced and removed form their land. Moreover, I doubt that anyone would defend the scary-looking seals or the hovering sea gulls, not to mention the giant whales. It may even be considered inhumane to do so. And what about their right of return? Do you think anyone would deny them that? I hardly think so.

Well, I think the analogy is so clear that it would be almost insulting to point it out. It might sound like a lame comparison, and it is really. For 2 reasons:

1- Palestinians are not as cute as penguins

2- Seals and sea gulls are incapable of crying wolf, distorting history and committing war crimes.

3- Palestinians are not as stupid as penguins. It's true. Do you know that African penguins are called Jackass penguins? They are incapable of putting on a proper fight for their right to a land, they don't talk back, they just march away. Well, no offence to African penguins but that is in deed stupid.

But again, maybe if Palestinians were as cute as penguins or stuttered like them and acted as helpless as they are, maybe someone somewhere would write a letter to some organization, but do you really think that would change anything?

...I Exist

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:37:00 GMT

I remember one Spanish class at college. Our Professor, Isabelle, was giving examples so she asked each one at class where they were from. The answers consisted mostly of two words: Jordano/a (Jordanian) and Palestino/a (Palestinian). However, the latter answer seemed to be puzzling for Isabelle, who found it strange for someone to introduce themself by the nationality of a country other than the one in which they were born. Well, Isabelle might be right when it comes to being from Malaga or Seville, but when it comes to being Palestinian; it seemed there’s something she wasn’t fully aware of.

The story begins a long time ago. Before 1948, there was a country called Palestine, and the living there, the majority of which were Arabs, were called Palestinians. On several levels, Palestine was a land of geographical, historical and ideological importance, hence an idea was born and nourished in the West that the people currently living in Palestine are a bunch of brutal uncivilized savages who couldn’t possibly run that land by on their own, and that they should be ruled over by a superior and more civilized people, i.e: the Jews.

Thus, the Jewish immigrants poured in, and the state of Israel came to existence, and the next thing you know: There was no such thing as Palestine, and the Palestinian people never existed. Or did they?

It goes without saying that in order to garner global support and gain some legitimacy, Israel had to wipe Palestine not only off the map, but also from history, and with that goes the existence of a Palestinian people. Otherwise the Zionist Jews will have to face the inevitable question: If what is now known as Israel was established on the same land of what was previously known as Palestine, and the population known as the Palestinians was replaced by what is now known as the Israeli people, then what happen to Palestine and where did the Palestinians go? In other words, they will have to answer for the fact that for each Jewish immigrant, one Palestinian, at least, was displaced.

Ever since 1948 and before, the Zionist propaganda has been at work to deny the existence of Palestine and the Palestinians, which was best expressed in the Zionist slogan describing Palestine as: “A land without people for a people without a land”. Thus, the Palestinians found themselves in a situation where their land was taken away from them and the world didn’t even acknowledge their existence, and hereby the only way to prove that existence was to resist, to struggle to fight to be recognized as a people.

The reasoning by which Palestine was occupied and turned into a Jewish state, and by which the Palestinians are facing discrimination and atrocities on daily basis, is the same reasoning by which the Red Indians were slaughtered and Black Africans were coerced into slavery. It’s because they are simply not regarded as “a people” , meaning they don’t have the ability to have a country or rule over a land, and that they should be run by a superior and more civilized power, regardless of what their wishes or desires could be for themselves.

Given all that and more, the issue of Palestine heralds itself as an issue of existence. That’s why the Israelis have been so firm in their stance against granting Palestinians the Right of Return, because to give them such a right is to admit that they were there, that they existed and that they still exist.

That’s what Isabelle probably didn’t fully understand. That’s why every Palestinian should cling to their legacy and their roots, because they don’t want the time to come when what the Zionist wished for becomes reality: “The old die and the young forget”.

The old might die, but the young, in sha'a Allah, will never forget.

كيف تجعل القضية جزءاً من حياتك

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:58:00 GMT

خلال الأسابيع الماضية تابعنا أخبار العدوان على غزة عن كثب، سواء كان ذلك عبر شاشات التلفاز أو الراديو او الإنترنت والجرائد وغيرها من وسائل الإعلام، محاولين إظهار تعاطفنا ومساندتنا لغزة بشتى الطرق الممكنة، من خلال التبرع بالدم والمال والمؤن والمشاركة في المظاهرات وكتابة وقراءة المقالات حول الوضع في غزة ومقاطعة المنتجات الداعمة لإسرائيل وغير ذلك من الوسائل.

إن هذه المشاعر الوطنية التي أثارتها الحرب على غزة في نفوس الكبار والصغار، وما أظهروه من رغبة حقيقية في فعل شيء لدعم غزة وأهل غزة يبعث الأمل من جديد في النفوس، فإن كان ذلك يعني شيئاً على الإطلاق، فهو أنه أياً كنت ومهما كانت مبادؤك، لكل شخص قضية أكبر يؤمن بها.

لكن ما أن تم إعلان وقف إطلاق النار حتى بدأت المشاعر بالفتور وأخذنا شيئاً فشيئاً نعود لحياتنا اليومية. لا أعني أن هذا خطأ، لكن ما أعنيه هو أن ما شعرنا به وفعلناه خلال الحرب على غزة يجب أن يكون جزءاً من حياتنا اليومية. لا يجب أن ننتظر وقوع كارثة كي نحاول فعل شيء لدعم القضية الفلسطينية وتذكر من يعيشون تحت نار الاحتلال. قد لا تكون هناك مظاهرات أو حملات جمع تبرعات كل يوم، لكن توجد بالتأكيد وسائل عدة يمكننا بها دعم قضيتنا والتمسك بها والبقاء على وعي واتصال بها، وفيما يلي بعض هذه الوسائل:

- ابق على اطلاع، تابع الأخبار والتطورات في فلسطين المحتلة من خلال أي وسيلة متوفرة لديك

- اعمل على نشر الحقيقة وإعلام الناس بما يحدث فعلاً في الأراضي المحتلة، خاصة إن كنت تعيش في الخارج حيث يعيش الناس في ظل الإعلام الموجه ولا يعرفون سوى ما تخبرهم به قنوات مثل فوكس وسي إن إن، ليعرف الناس من هم الإرهابيون الحقيقيون

- اقرا التاريخ، تعلم أكثر عن تاريخ فلسطين والنزاع الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي، فالتاريخ قوة وشرعية، ولهذا نجد الصهاينة يهتمون به ويزجون به في كل كبيرة وصغيرة

- واصل التبرع بكل ما تستطيع من خلال الهيئات والجمعيات الموثوقة، ولا تنس مخيمات اللاجئين الموجودة في كل مكان والتي يحتاج أهلها إلى الدعم المستمر

- ذكر من حولك بالقضية وتحدث إليهم عنها، وحاولوا توحيد جهودكم لفعل شيء من اجل القضية

- إن كنت كاتباً أو فناناً أو تمتلك أية موهبة، وظف تلك الموهبة في عمل شيء لدعم القضية، سواءً بكتابة المقالات أو إقامة المعارض او حفلات جمع التبرعات

- خذ موقفاً وقاطع المنتجات الداعمة لإسرائيل، لا تقل إنك وحدك لن تفعل شيئاً، فالقطرات القليلة تصنع جدولاً، فكن صاحب موقف ولا تكن جزءاً في دعم من يقتلون الأبرياء ويهدمون منازلهم.

- أخيراً وهو الأهم، ابق موصولاً بالله تعالى، فمن يقرا التاريخ يجد أنه متى ما كان الناس موصولين بالله كانت القدس حرة ومتى ما كانوا بعيدين عن الله كانت القدس تحت الاحتلال. هكذاحر ر صلاح الدين الأقصى، بالإيمان، ولهذا ابتسم وهو يحتضر وقال: الآن أقول لرسول الله، صلى الله عليه وسلم، أنا من حررت لك المسرى... متى ما كان الإيمان عالياً في الأرض وعامراً في القلوب، كانت الإيمان بالقضية أقوى وأرسخ في النفوس، وكان الحلم بدولة فلسطينية حرة أقرب إلى الحقيقة.

How Not to Be "Indifferent"

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:11:00 GMT

During the few last weeks, everyone was following the updates of the war on Gaza closely, following the news, writing and reading articles on the net and in the different newspapers, donating blood, collecting donations, boycotting, demonstrating, signing petitions and trying to show solidarity in any possible way for the people in Gaza.

All in all, it was impressive to see how strongly everyone felt about this, and how that aggrevating situation brought out the best in many people. It proved that everyone has something to give, and most importantly, it showed that no matter who they are, what they think or how they look; everyone has a bigger cause that they believe in and care about.

But, once a ceasefire was announced, we found ourselves slowing down and going back to our normal lives. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, what I’m saying is that this sense of duty and commitment to a bigger cause should actually be a part of our normal life. We shouldn’t wait for a catastrophe to drive us to action. It should be a part of our daily routine to think of those people who struggle with siege and security threats every day, not only when their homes are demolished and kids are killed or orphaned.

They may not be demonstrations or charity drives every day, but certainly there are many possible ways through which you can stay connected to the Cause and reminded of it every day, and here are a few suggestions:

- Stay informed and up-to-date, follow the news on TV, radio, on the net or any other means you have to keep you aware of what’s going on.

- Spread the truth, let the world know what’s actually happening and who’s terrorist and who’s not, especially those of you who live abroad where people are sheltered by a CNN-kind-of-mdia.

- Read history, learn more about the history of Palestine and the conflict, because history is power, history is legitimacy, which is why the Zionists have been known to forge it and throw it in the world’s face, crying wolf whenever they get the chance.

- Keep donating whenever and whatever you could through trusted organizations and committees, and don’t forget that there are thousands of refugees in refugee camps everywhere, not only in Palestine, who could use this help that we owe to them.

- Be a constant reminder for the people around you, and find ways to work together to support the Cause.

- If you’re a writer, and artist or have any other talent that you could use to shed light on the Cause and introduce it to more people then, by all means, do! Be that by writing articles, holding themed art exhibitions, fund raisers, making movies and what not.

-Take a stand and boycott any companies and organizations known to support Israel. Don’t say it will not affect them because even if that’s true, you can still take a stand and not take part in supporting those who are killing your people.

- Finally and most importantly, keep the faith. That may mean different things to different people. In general, it means believe in your Cause, don’t fall for any propaganda trying to convince you that Palestine was sold by its people or any such blatant lies. On the other hand, as a Muslim, I believe that the most important thing first and foremost is for us to stay connected to God, and I don’t mean only Muslims but all people, because that’s our source of power, that’s what made the people in Gaza survive all the losses and all the agony. Read history and you’ll find that whenever people were connected to God, Palestine and its people were free, and whenever they drifted away from their faith, Palestine was under some gruesome occupation. That’s how Saladdin claimed Jerusalem back to its people, by faith, he was not blood thirsty, he didn’t act on fanaticism, he didn’t massacre his enemies, but he was a man who believed he had a fair cause, and was connected to God at all times.

Why Israel Won't Survive

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:38:39 GMT

Why Israel won't survive

By Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
19 January 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10215.shtml

The merciless Israeli bombardment of Gaza has stopped --
for now -- but the death toll keeps rising as more bodies
are pulled from carpet- bombed neighborhoods.

What Israel perpetrated in Gaza, starting at 11:30am on 27
December 2008, will remain forever engraved in history and
memory. Tel al-Hawa, Hayy al-Zeitoun, Khuzaa and other
sites of Israeli massacres will join a long mournful list
that includes Deir Yasin, Qibya, Kufr Qasim, Sabra and
Shatila, Qana, and Jenin.

Once again, Israel demonstrated that it possesses the
power and the lack of moral restraint necessary to commit
atrocities against a population of destitute refugees it
has caged and starved.

The dehumanization and demonization of Palestinians, Arabs
and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can
with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of
worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats,
police stations -- in short everything that sustains
civilized and orderly life -- and claim it is conducting a
war against terrorism.

Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist state, not
Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive
this attempted genocide.

Israel's "war" was not about rockets -- they served the
same role in its narrative as the non-existent weapons of
mass destruction did as the pretext for the American-led
invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Israel's real goals were to restore its "deterrence"
fatally damaged after its 2006 defeat in Lebanon
(translation: its ability to massacre and terrorize entire
populations into submission) and to destroy any
Palestinian resistance to total Israeli-Jewish control
over historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea.

With Hamas and other resistance factions removed or
fatally weakened, Israel hoped the way would be clear to
sign a "peace" deal with chief Palestinian collaborator
Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on Israel's behalf
until they could be forced out once and for all.

The US-backed "moderate" dictatorships and absolute
monarchies led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the
Israeli plan hoping to demonstrate to their own people
that resistance -- whether against Israel or their own
bankrupt regimes -- was futile.

To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It
failed. On the contrary, it galvanized and unified
Palestinians like never before. All factions united and
fought heroically for 23 days. According to well-informed
and credible sources Israel did little harm to the modest
but determined military capacity of the resistance. So
instead Israel did what it does best: it massacred
civilians in the hope that the population would turn
against those fighting the occupier.

Israel not only unified the resistance factions in Gaza;
its brutality rallied all Palestinians and Arabs.

It is often claimed that Arab regimes whip up anti-Israel
anger to distract their populations from their own
failings. Actually, Israel, the US and subservient Arab
regimes tried everything -- especially demonizing Iran and
inciting sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims
-- to distract their populations from Palestine.

All this failed as millions of people across the region
marched in support of Palestinian resistance, and the Arab
regimes who hoped to benefit from the slaughter in Gaza
have been exposed as partners in the Israeli atrocities.
In popular esteem, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance
factions earned their place alongside Hizballah as
effective bulwarks against Israeli and Western
colonialism.

If there was ever a moment when the peoples of the region
would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst,
that has passed forever.

But anyone surveying the catastrophe in Gaza -- the mass
destruction, the death toll of more than 100 Palestinians
for every Israeli, the thousands of sadistic injuries --
would surely conclude that Palestinians could never
overcome Israel and resistance is a delusion at best.

True, in terms of ability to murder and destroy, Israel is
unmatched. But Israel's problem is not, as its propaganda
insists, "terrorism" to be defeated by sufficient
application of high explosives. Its problem is legitimacy,
or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it. Israel
simply cannot bomb its way to legitimacy.

Israel was founded as a "Jewish state" through the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish majority Arab
population. It has been maintained in existence only
through Western support and constant use of violence to
prevent the surviving indigenous population from
exercising political rights within the country, or
returning from forced exile.

Despite this, today, 50 percent of the people living under
Israeli rule in historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank
and Gaza Strip) are Palestinians, not Jews. And their
numbers are growing rapidly. Like Nationalists in Northern
Ireland or non-whites in South Africa, Palestinians will
never recognize the "right" of a settler-colonial society
to maintain an ethnocractic state at their expense through
violence, repression and racism.

For years, the goal of the so-called peace process was to
normalize Israel as a "Jewish state" and gain
Palestinians' blessing for their own dispossession and
subjugation. When this failed, Israel tried
"disengagement" in Gaza -- essentially a ruse to convince
the rest of the world that the 1.5 million Palestinians
caged in there should no longer be counted as part of the
population. They were in Israel's definition a "hostile
entity."

In his notorious May 2004 interview with The Jerusalem
Post, Arnon Soffer, an architect of the 2005 disengagement
explained that the approach "doesn't guarantee 'peace,' it
guarantees a Jewish- Zionist state with an overwhelming
majority of Jews." Soffer predicted that in the future
"when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's
going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become
even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of
an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border
will be awful."

He was unambiguous about what Israel would have to do to
maintain this status quo: "If we want to remain alive, we
will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
Soffer hoped that eventually, Palestinians would give up
and leave Gaza altogether.

Through their resistance, steadfastness and sacrifice,
Palestinians in Gaza have defeated this policy and
reasserted that they are an inseparable part of Palestine,
its people, its history and its future.

Israel is not the first settler-colonial entity to find
itself in this position. When F.W. de Klerk, South
Africa's last apartheid president, came to office in 1989,
his generals calculated that solely with the overwhelming
military force at their disposal, they could keep the
regime in power for at least a decade. The casualties,
however, would have run into hundreds of thousands, and
South Africa would face ever greater isolation. Confronted
with this reality, de Klerk took the decision to began an
orderly dismantling of apartheid.

What choice will Israel make? In the absence of any
political and moral legitimacy the only arguments it has
left are bullets and bombs. Left to its own devices Israel
will certainly keep trying -- as it has for sixty years --
to massacre Palestinians into submission. Israel's
achievement has been to make South Africa's apartheid
leaders look wise, restrained and humane by comparison.

But what prevented South Africa's white supremacist
government from escalating their own violence to Israeli
levels of cruelty and audacity was not that they had
greater scruples than the Zionist regime. It was
recognition that they alone could not stand against a
global anti-apartheid movement that was in solidarity with
the internal resistance.

Israel's "military deterrent" has now been repeatedly
discredited as a means to force Palestinians and other
Arabs to accept Zionist supremacy as inevitable and
permanent. Now, the other pillar of Israeli power --
Western support and complicity -- is starting to crack. We
must do all we can to push it over.

Israel began its massacres with full support from its
Western "friends." Then something amazing happened.
Despite the official statements of support, despite the
media censorship, despite the slick Israeli hasbara
(propaganda) campaign, there was a massive, unprecedented
public mobilization in Europe and even in North America
expressing outrage and disgust.

Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli
propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and
intimidate as it has for so long. Even the Nazi Holocaust,
long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel's critics, is
becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are
now routinely heard. Jewish and Palestinian academics
likened Israel's actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in
the Warsaw Ghetto. A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as
a "giant concentration camp." UK Member of Parliament
Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of
Commons, "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis
came to her home town of Staszow, [Poland]. A German
soldier shot her dead in her bed." Kaufman continued, "my
grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli
soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza." He
denounced the Israeli military spokesperson's
justifications as the words "of a Nazi."

It wasn't only such statements, but the enormous
demonstrations, the nonviolent direct actions, and the
unprecedented expressions of support for boycott,
divestment and sanctions from major trade unions in Italy,
Canada and New Zealand. An all-party group of city
councillors in Birmingham, Europe's second largest
municipal government, urged the UK government to follow
suit. Salma Yaqoub of the RESPECT Party explained that
"One of the factors that helped bring an end to the brutal
apartheid regime in South Africa was international
pressure for economic, sporting and cultural boycotts. It
is time that Israel started to feel similar pressure from
world opinion."

Israel, its true nature as failed, brutal colonial project
laid bare in Gaza, is extremely vulnerable to such a
campaign. Little noticed amidst the carnage in Gaza,
Israel took another momentous step towards formal
apartheid when the Knesset elections committee voted to
ban Arab parties from participating in upcoming elections.
Zionism, an ideology of racial supremacy, extremism and
hate, is a dying project, in retreat and failing to find
new recruits. With enough pressure, and relatively
quickly, Israelis too would likely produce their own de
Klerk ready to negotiate a way out. Every new massacre
makes it harder, but a de-zionized, decolonized,
reintegrated Palestine affording equal rights to all who
live in it, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and
return for refugees is not a utopian dream.

It is within reach, in our lifetimes. But it is far from
inevitable. We can be sure that Western and Arab
governments will continue to support Israeli apartheid and
Palestinian collaboration under the guise of the "peace
process" unless decisively challenged. Israeli massacres
will continue and escalate until the nightmare of an
Israeli- style "peace" -- apartheid and further ethnic
cleansing -- is fulfilled.

The mobilizations of the past three weeks showed that a
different world is possible and within our grasp if we
support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Although they will never get to see it, that world would
be a fitting memorial for all of Israel's victims.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).