“I place an ear on the belly of
This moment
I hear wailing
I place it on another moment
-The same!”
Sinan Antoon, Iraki poet
Cairo, May-June 2003
I read a news headline on the Internet “The world is in uproar”, “Worldwide anger” over what’s happening in Gaza, Palestine and I can’t help wonder: What world?
It must be coming from the non-G7 world. An uproar and real anger from the heart can only come from the third world, from those peoples who themselves are still trying to get the rapacious and greedy West off their backs. They are the ones always there with their great shows of solidarity. Because if the uproar is not coming from the third world then that leaves the West, and a Western uproar leaves a lot to be desired.
It seems that that U.S.-West Europe propped up democratic apartheid enclave of settlers called Israel and built in Palestine on stolen land from the Palestinians is at it again. Actually, it has been at it, to protect Western oil interests and despite the strongest Western uproars, for the past 91 years. As for stolen Palestine, Moshe Dayan (the Israeli Defence Minister) addressing the Israeli institute of Technology, Haifa, quoted in Ha’aretz on April 4th, 1969, admits:
“Jewish villages were built in place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Now, I don’t know how to take that Western uproar anymore. Is it the same kind of uproar that the West expressed when the Taliban started destroying those two Bamiyan Buddhas statues in 2001 in Afghanistan? A stronger uproar than when the Afghan people themselves started being bombed by the U.S. I remember the West being shocked, even more than by what’s happening in Gaza, Palestine, that the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art even proposed to the Taliban to send a team to Afghanistan to remove the sculptures and airlift and transport them to safety (to New York?). I too kind of felt it was a pity to destroy them but my younger brother Daniel told me: “F… those stones! Why isn’t the West so quick to react and airlift to safety people being slaughtered like in Rwanda in 1994 where close to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were hacked to death by extremist Hutus? Not only the West did nothing to stop the genocide but, on the contrary, some of the Western countries, mainly France, kept arming the extremist Hutu regime!” It’s true that the West is not known for rapid reaction when it comes to people unless it’s profitable. Believe me, in Bosnia we learned to be patient thanks to the West. The 7000 or 8000 Bosnians slaughtered in Srebrenica in 1995 by Serb paramilitary are Zen now. The problem is that the people being slaughtered around the world and in need of urgent help are usually being killed by gangs or governments armed by the West to protect Western economic interests.
“Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’ at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame.”
Amnesty International, 1996 from “Human rights
and U.S.A. Security Assistance” (1998, pretty
much the same conclusion in a report called:
“United States of America-Rights for All”)
I remember a little Bosnian girl, Irma Hadzimuratovic was her name, 5 years old, who was badly wounded in Serb mortar attack in Sarajevo in 1993. She needed to be evacuated immediately for surgery, so Bosnia begged the West to airlift her and transport her to a hospital in Western Europe, the other Europe. Of course, everything had to go through the proper channels. Her trip was delayed by red tape and she was close to death before the British government arranged to fly her to the U.K. In those days three children a day were dying violent deaths in Sarajevo, in the other Europe. Anyway, Irma died in April 1995. I always thought Bosnia should have applied for E.U. membership to get quicker help before some of the worst massacres since WW2 took place in the other Europe. But then, I have to admit, Bosnia is no Kuwait. Now, had Irma been a little Jewish girl or white Anglo-Saxon Christian wounded in a terrorist attack carried out by a fanatic Palestinian cockroach or a cute little puppy chased around by a Mujahideen, I think the West would have reacted differently . If anything, Brigitte Bardot, the animal rights crusader, would have come out of retirement to condemn the Jihad against animals. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting this whole thing into a religious context, Christianity against Islam or West versus East….I am putting it into the context of capitalism, of who’s to be exploited by whom, who has what, who’s to be rich at any cost and who’s whose friend because of specific economic interests. Ireland, now Northern Ireland, for example, a Christian country, has been invaded, occupied and most brutally exploited for more than 700 years by England, a Christian country as well, and one of the most brutal colonialist powers in the world and now it’s in Irak again, as a lackey of Uncle Sam but still it’s there and I don’t think it’s for the Iraki sand. “Working class of Ireland… Join your voice with ours in protesting against the base assumption that we owe to this Empire any other debt than that of hatred of all its plundering institutions.” James Connolly, Irish socialist leader, referring to England, 1897.
It also goes the other way around as long as it works for the capitalist West; take East Timor, a Christian country that was invaded in 1975 by Muslim Indonesia and most brutally occupied for more than 24 years with the full encouragement and military support from the West given to Suharto who wiped out 200.000 East Timorese out of a population of 750.000. And why did the Christian West allow a Muslim-majority nation to commit a genocide against a tiny Christian country? Well, maybe these words of wisdom expressed by Nixon might sum up the only reason: “With its 100 million people and 300-mile arc of islands containing the region’s richest hoard of natural resources, Indonesia is the greatest prize in South-East Asia.” Richard Nixon, “Asia after Vietnam”. Foreign affairs, October 1967, p.111. Isn’t it crystal clear? Anything goes if the capitalist West can make a profit. And for the past 150 years or so the colonial powers then are pretty much the same countries dominating and exploiting the rest of the world today, mainly Western Europe and the U.S.A. You can find these same countries in the G7, I.M.F., World Bank, E.U., UNSC, N.A.T.O., with a few different lackeys here and there but the criminals ruling our world today are the same ones who were raping it 150 years ago. Who’s killing the Irakis right now who are standing in the way of Western oil? Samuel Huntington, a U.S. writer and apologist for U.S.-Western imperialism, got it right for once when he said: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
Anyway, I often wonder what will happen to that Zionist democratic apartheid enclave when the Arab world runs out of (Western) oil. Maybe the Zionists will just pack up, airlift that little wall against which those curly men in Zorro hats bang their heads (I tend to do that when I’m drunk) and leave. I don’t think the West will continue paying them to keep the Arabs in line and make sure cheap oil flows unimpeded to the West because there won’t be any anymore. So the Zionists will just have to leave, I guess, and some might go back to Europe, others may go to Pennsylvania or Ohio to live with the Amish.
A few years ago I had a Palestinian friend here in Tokyo who one afternoon told me about two Westerners that he had overheard talking worryingly about the well-being of the white tiger of China, being an endangered species and all…I for one didn’t even know there were white tigers in China. He told me that he didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. There he was, an endangered species himself, taking second place to the white tiger of China. To get back to that worldwide uproar over Gaza, Palestine, I can assure you that you won’t find any here in Tokyo. The other day, in a paper called Asahi Weekly, I found this headline: A dog’s life is great in Japan. It says that fashion in Toyko has gone to the dogs and that the number of well-groomed, well-dressed dogs are on the verge of outnumbering those of people. It says also that some dogs’ happiness includes organic vegetarian dog food, weekly trimming and grooming sessions at a dog salon, stays in a dog hotel when the owner goes away on business, and the purchasing of dog designer garb, and I won’t even get into the trendiest which is the dog cafes. “We are helpless people. It is all out of our hands. Why cannot the world find a solution? The whole world is watching us die and is doing nothing to help us.” Iraki woman, after U.S. missiles killed civilians during 2003 war on Irak. Reuters, 3/29/2003. Here in Tokyo there are also long lines of people standing and waiting sometimes for more than one hour and a half in cold weather to buy a doughnut. So, believe me, there is no uproar over Gaza here in Tokyo. They don’t even care about their own countless homeless people who in winter sleep in the outside entrances of some of the most expensive capitalist buildings in the world, huge banks, multinationals and so on…I repeat, if there is anger, uproar, a genuine one, it must be coming from our third world.
The democratic apartheid enclave called Israel has been rampaging through Palestine for the past 91 years from Der Yassin through Sabra and Chatila in Lebanon back to Jenin and Gaza again and all that’s between without ever having been punished for its crimes, at least some kind of economic sanctions or a slap on the wrist to force it to comply with international law and the more than 300 UNGA resolutions and more than 70 UNSC resolutions. We all know that economic sanctions work, right? They worked in the case of Irak. The U.S.-imposed and wrapped in the U.N. flag economic sanctions against Irak in the 90s for more than 10 years killed 1.6 million Irakis of which 600.000 children. So, they worked and according to Madleine Albright it was worth it. They softened Irak and only then did the mightiest country in the world dare attack little Irak. Bravo Amrika! And now on top of all the shame the U.S., the military superpower, is getting its fat ass kicked by Iraki resistance fighters wearing jeans, sneakers and T-shirts just like what happened with the Vietnamese who kicked Uncle Sam’s greedy ass back to Disneyland wearing sandals and little straw hats.
But, I’m not expecting much as long as international law, the U.N., the G7, the world bank and the guns of N.A.T.O. are in the hands of the same criminals. On the contrary, the Zionist democratic apartheid enclave keeps getting more and more money, more and more shiny new weapons mainly from Uncle Sam.
To criticize only the enlightened barbaric West would be unfair without also laying some of the blame on the Arab leaders. The Arab leaders are one embarrassing bunch of impotent, West propped up marionettes, especially the ones in the Gulf countries with their parasitic kings and princes. A bunch of parasites who waste oil revenues on new jets, villas, whores and whiskey in the West instead of spending it on improving the lives of their own people who live in misery, instead of doing more to help their Palestinian brothers and sisters. You, the Arab leaders, the pathetic bunch of dictators, the puppets of the West, aren’t you ashamed of kissing ass and prancing around with your testicles squeezed by Amrika and Western Europe?! Just cut off the flow of oil to the greedy West for which Palestinians and Irakis are being killed by the West. Cut it off for a couple of months, demand justice and see what happens. I can’t believe that Saudi Arabia is the guardian of Mecca. The House of Saud, those pathetic wimps, shouldn’t even be let in charge of a camel. Or in the words of Mohammad Ali, Iraki man from the city of Falluja who survived a three week U.S. attack:
“I tell the presidents of Arab and Muslim countries to wake up! Wake up please! We are being killed, we are refugees from our houses, our children have nothing—not even shoes to wear! Wake up! Wake up! Stop being traitors! Be human beings and not the dummies of the Americans!
Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches, 11/23/2004
To get back to Gaza, Palestine and the so-called worldwide uproar, anger…my dear Palestinians, Irakis, Chechens, Tibetans, Africans, Native Americans, Aborigines…and all the oppressed and exploited peoples around the world, there is no uproar here in the West (including Japan). Here in Tokyo, Wednesday, January 23, 2008, I actually went out and bought a toilet paper called The Daily Yomiuri, an English daily, and guess what’s on the front page? A huge picture of the recession leaving St. Mary’s Church in Auckland carrying the casket of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first (white) man to climb Mt. Everest. They call it one of the 20th century’s defining feats. And the other major headline is: Tokyo stocks continue to plunge. Gaza is on page 6 and the between 25 000 and 30 000 people, mostly children, who are forced to plunge daily into death due to starvation caused by Western capitalism are nowhere to be seen. So, my oppressed and exploited friends, there no uproar here and if there is one it’s the usual stuff, you know, some of us get into the street(s), protest, and go home. That’s it. And you know it. Sometimes when I take part in the peace walks organized by leftist groups here in Tokyo, I am afraid you might see us on T.V. over there in your war zones, in your ghettos, because our parades look like a circus, some kind of festival, but fortunately it usually lasts only a couple of hours and then most of us go for a beer. I guess some of us in the West, lots of us, have problems of our own but lots of us, maybe most of us, are just indifferent, depressed, lost in our societies of the spectacle… It’s true. We don’t really care that you over there are made to live in misery so that we over here can be gluttons. Some of us on the Left are still trying to do something because it has to be done, it’s the right thing, we believe in it, but I think we got lost somewhere along the road and got stuck into the never ending organizing of the masses, you know, educating, educating, educating….giving lectures on Palestine or some other oppressed place and people in the world to adults who by now should know what’s going on. I mean, it’s not like the problems in Palestine popped up last year out of nowhere. That’s pretty much it.
There used to be more serious people on the Left that meant business in the West in the 70s and 80s but unfortunately they are either dead, rotting in jail, went turncoats or hugging trees. My point is it’s up to you, the oppressed peoples around the world, it has always been up to you to liberate yourselves by any means necessary. Don’t count too much on us. Some may think I’m exaggerating but the fact is that for most of the oppressed peoples around the world it has gotten worse. Just take a look at Palestine. The Zionist democratic apartheid enclave has grown bigger, is expanding a bit almost everyday and Palestine has shrunk, there are more Palestinian refugees than before, about 7 million, which is almost equal to the number of settlers in the Zionist enclave built on land stolen from the Palestinians.
“Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab…”
Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe
Not to mention the Zionist’s latest recreational enterprise which is that segregation wall
they are building with the West’s tacit approval and money. The Berlin wall was bad.
The Zionist’s apartheid wall is good. Is that it? To add insult to injury, the Quartet was
appointed, actually they appointed themselves, to come to the rescue of the Palestinians. The Quartet, as we all know, is made up of the U.S., the E.U., Russia and the U.N. Could the West be more insulting? Is there no end to its shamelessness? A bunch of criminals in charge of finding a solution to the occupation of Palestine by their partners in crime from the Zionist democratic apartheid enclave. Most of the E.U. member countries, in different ways, have taken part in the supreme international crime which is the U.S.-U.K.-led unprovoked attack on Irak and the current criminal occupation, and all for oil. But I guess the U.S. is just exercising its right to protect its oil interests according to the Carter doctrine which says that any challenge to U.S. access to Middle East oil will be met by military force. The more than 500 000 killed Irakis so far by the U.S. liberators must have represented that challenge.
“They came here to drill oil. They ended up drilling blood.” Nigerian Delta resident, anonymous, referring to U.S. oil companies. Free Speech Radio News, July 2003.
The U.S. and the dogs that followed it into this dismembering of Irak are also known as the coalition of the willing. Some of the countries of this coalition that are at this very moment killing Irakis have decided to help the Palestinians. Another member of the Quartet is Russia with Putin the Terrible at its head and Time magazine’s man of the year. By the way, when was the last time anyone heard anything about poor little Chechnya in the coward mainstream media? You see, Russia, beside being one of the members of the Quartet, has also been busy butchering the Chechens and turning the capital Grozny into a parking lot since this little country tried to regain its independence and Chechnya has been suffering all the Putin’s wrath because, in Yeltsin the Drunkard’s words, Chechnya is a major hub in the oil infrastructure of the Russian Federation and hence its secession would hurt the country’s economy and control of oil resources. Ain’t that reassuring to the Palestinians? The last member of the Quartet is the U.N. The U.N. is that organization that let Bosnia burn, Rwanda bleed and Irak starve. So, leaving it to the Quartet to help the Palestinians is like leaving a pedophile to baby-sit your children. If the West were really serious about helping the Palestinians it could have just agreed to the 2002 Saudi Land for Peace plan and again endorsed in 2007.
I’m sorry I can’t enumerate all the people that were let down by the U.N. but they are into millions and millions.
I am not actually blaming the U.N. General Assembly which is made up of about 187 countries out of a total of 192 in the world, nor am I against the principles of the U.N. or what it stands for and what it set out to accomplish when it was established, but unfortunately the U.N. General Assembly was a still born baby from the start. So, we are left with the U.N. (in)Security Council, 5 countries, pretty much the same criminals found in the Quartet, in charge of dealing the cards to the rest of the world, deciding who’s to live and who’s to die according to their economic interests. It’s like the rest of the world is there just to bend over whenever those criminals have a hard on. On top of that, they permanent members with veto powers! Highly democratic, isn’t it? Permanent U.N.S.C. members, permanent G7, permanent I.M.F, permanent World Bank, permanent nuclear powers…always pretty much the same countries for the past 160 years or something. And for the rest of the world, permanent war, permanent, misery, permanent destruction, permanent exploitation, permanent plunder of natural resources…The Palestinians, not to mention the whole of Africa, are one of the peoples who might know best about this.
It’s been going on for 91 years for them and they are supposed to put their fate, their lives and what’s left of their land into the hands of the criminal Quartet, they are asked to trust this gathering of leaches with their ever new empty plans, to trust Amrika that is right now butchering Irak, destroying beautiful Irak in the name of freedom in an attempt to rob its people of their oil so that Amrika could preserve the Amrikan way of life. The greedy way of life! What about the way of life of the rest of the world Uncle Sam?! Simon Bolivar once said: “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of Liberty.” Now could make just a little change and say that the United States, the West appears to be destined by Providence to plague the world with misery in the name of democracy, freedom and free market….Bolivar said this late 18th-early 19th century, in those days there was no threat of communism, Soviet Union, cold war, terrorism, Islamic terrorism, Al-Qaeda….
The Palestinians are asked to trust the Quartet, the scum of the Earth with the U.S. at its head with their road maps, roads that lead only to new camps, new fences, new walls, more agony, more misery, roads and maps to nowhere. Sinan Antoon once asked: “How much blood will suffice as ink for empire’s new maps?” Palestine is slowly being turned into a Guantanmo, a 21st century freak Disneyland a la U.S.A. sponsored by the greatest democracy in the world and run by Israhell. Can anyone really trust the U.S. to be a fair actor in forcing its bulldog of Zion to relinquish the land it has stolen from the Palestinians when, if anyone would care to recall, the U.S. is the country that in 1989 vetoed a U.N. resolution opposing the acquisition of territory by force?
So, my dear oppressed Palestinians, my dear oppressed peoples in the third world, you already know this but I want to tell you loud and clear: Do not put your faith in the bloody and greedy hands of the West. Do not trust the West. The West is the one who put you and keeps you in such a state of misery in the first place. The West has made itself filthy rich at your expense, by stealing from you and it will keep stealing from you unless YOU put an end to it.
“The Third World wasn’t an impoverished world then, in fact the reason it was colonialized is because it had the wealth…None of these countries were impoverished . Today they are called the poorer part of the world because the wealth has been drained out.” Vandana Shiva, Indian scientist. Interview, In Motion Magazine, 8/14/1998.
Peoples in the third world, your bellies, the bellies of your children are empty so that our supermarkets in the West, in Japan could be full. The West never gives anything for free and what it might give you, believe me, it will steal in return ten times more! My dear Palestinians, if you don’t want Moshe Dayan’s words of wisdom to come true when he said:
“There is no more Palestine. Finished.”, then fight, keep on fighting by any means necessary! To avoid any confusion as to who Moshe Dayan was, he was not, as some may think, one of the extras on the Flying Dutch in The Pirates of the Caribbean 3 but a Zionist land reformer who, among other things, liberated the land of Palestine from the Palestinians and redistributed it among various Jewish and Zionist tourists and real estate agents from Europe.
My dear oppressed peoples around the world, don’t ever stop fighting! Fight! Fight! Fight! Keep on fighting against the greedy West.
“The right to rebellion, to defy those who oppress us with various alibis (always the gods of Power and Money with different masks), is universal.” Subcomandante Marcos, 2003.
Don’t ever lay your weapons down while the fight is still on. I know, it’s easy for me to say this from my comfort zone over here, you’re the ones dying over there. But look at what happened to peoples who stopped fighting like the Native Americans or the Tibetans. Look at what happens to those who choose to follow the West’s advice and fight peacefully like Suu Kyi, that poor forgotten woman left to rot peacefully under house arrest in Myanmar or the Dalai Lama left in peace in exile in India to be photographed with Richard Geer and other Hollywood and Western show business stars with empty lives.
“There is not a single example of people in the Third World being able to achieve qualitative economic and social change by peaceful means. Not in Chile, not in India, not in the Congo, not in South Africa, not in Palestine. Nowhere. Imperialism has too much of a stake in the current economic order and is willing to use force and violence wherever needed.” David Gilbert, writer, U.S. political prisoner. No Surrender, 2004.
Remember how the West helped Nelson Mandela? First they called him a terrorist, a black South African man fighting to liberate his people from one of the most vicious white supremacist apartheid regimes in the world that was allowed and encouraged by the West to last (with very, very few exceptions) up to almost the mid-90s, 20th century, while the West kept doing profitable business with the South African apartheid regime and let Mandela rot in prison for almost 30 years! The South African apartheid regime got its strongest support from the Reagan administration. But, as Madleine Albright stated once in 1999, it is not a good idea to link human rights and trade issues, I guess. Mandela could have been free earlier back in the 80s, but in the 1980s he again rejected P.W. Botha’s offer of freedom if he renounced violence. Mandela’s real friends were as usual the third world countries with Lybia and Cuba at the head. Never stop fighting. Whatever negotiations you enter into, you the oppressed peoples, the victims of Western greed, you will always be asked to lay down your weapons first. It’s always the victims, the oppressed who are asked to give up their weapons before negotiations start with a criminal armed to his teeth, while the Western murderer, rapist, plunderer gets to keep his deadly arsenal. The West throughout history has never relinquished anything that it had stolen out of change of heart. It always had to be hit hard on the nose in order to stop it in its drive for more and more plunder. Isn’t there a limit to its greed? How much is enough? And before leaving, it always left behind millions of ghosts, oceans of tears, mountains of ashes and skeletons….Vietnam, Algeria, Africa, Latin America…that’s what the enlightened West does in its quest for always more wealth. And today our beloved Irak is the latest victim of the greedy enlightened West with Amrika at its head.
“You speak of ‘duty’, ‘humanity’ and ‘civilization!’ What is this duty?... It is markets, competition, interests, privileges. Trade and finance are things which express your ‘humanity’. Taxes, forced labour, excessive exploitation, that is the summing up of your civilization!” Ho Chi Minh, 1923
Oppressed peoples around the world; keep on fighting! You should even extend your resistance to Western countries themselves, on their territories. There would be nothing wrong with that. The West has been going over there anytime it wanted to steal something for ages, and it still does it if it can’t do it through its I.M.F. or World Bank or its multinationals. It goes over there and bombs the hell out of you, destroy your homes, kills your children, steals your natural resources, steals yours and your children’s future! So, what’s wrong with your coming over here to defend yourselves? Nothing. On the contrary, in your case actually it would be totally justified. That’s what the U.S. is doing in Irak, right? According to that degenerate Bush, the U.S. went over there, Irak and Afghanistan, to fight the terrorists so that they wouldn’t come over here. Now, speaking of terrorists, remember:
“Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder” Nidal Sakr
To end this ranting of mine and get back to Gaza, I just remembered what my boss, who is Jewish, told me one day a little prior to the U.S.-U.K-led war of aggression and plunder on Irak. He said that, beside being pro-war on Irak, sometimes force was the only way that Arabs understood and that there would be peace in the Middle East if only the Palestinians would stop their terrorism. I told him that implementing UNGA resolution 194 and UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 might work, too. If they are not already as dead as little Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah. As for how I feel about our beloved Irak, here is something that Fred Hampton, Black Panther leader who was assassinated by Chicago police in December 1969, said about Vietnam:
“And you motherfuckers that’s for peace in Vietnam, the Black Panther Party is for victory in Vietnam…The U.S. is a bunch of Wall Street warmongers. And they need to be driven out of there.” Just put Irak instead of Vietnam and I instead of the Black Panther Party.
Write down!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of
My ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks…
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!
Therefore!
Write down on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!
From the poem Identity Card by Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet.
Brkic Sulejman
3/02/2008
