Saturday, January 10, 2009

A Satanic, Genocidal Israel

By Khalid Amayreh
in Occupied Palestine
PIC, [ 08/01/2009 - 01:32 AM ]

For years, I have been warning that Israel is psychologically and morally capable of carrying out a holocaust or a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Needless to say, the horrible events of the past two weeks in Gaza seem to have enforced and vindicated my convictions in this regard.
Israel, government and people, seem to possess the psychological propensity that would make her embark on such a monstrosity. Yes, there is a minority of Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews who say “No” to all the evils and crimes Israel is doing in their name.
However, let us be honest and realistic. These people are a small minority and have very little influence if any on the Israeli government and army.
Today, what many people had thought would be unthinkable or far-fetched in terms of the extent to which Israel would be willing to go in savaging the Palestinian people seems quite possible in light of the Jewish state’s Nazi-like behavior in the Gaza Strip.
Given the Israeli mindset, Israel may well be hoping the latest genocidal onslaught could have a certain desensitizing and de-mystifying effect on people’s perceptions and attitudes.
The logic is quite simple. If the world can be bullied or cajoled into silence and apathy when Gaza is ravaged and thousands of its inhabitants are slaughtered en mass in full view of humanity, the same world can likewise be manipulated in similar fashion to come to terms with a greater genocide.
On Tuesday, 6 January, one Israeli official, Eli Yeshai, called for the total extermination of Gaza . The leader of the ultra Orthodox Shas party argued that “extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah.”
Other Israeli political and religious leaders have lately spoken enthusiastically of the need for “wiping off Gaza from the face of earth” and “annihilating of every moving thing there.”
Interestingly, this is by no means a minority opinion in Israel. Indeed, one could safely argue that the “ideology of annihilation” now represents the mainstream in the Israeli society.
As we all know, Israel heavily employs mendacity, deception and disinformation to conceal, or at least blur, its criminality and barbarianism.
The Israeli hasbara machine’s main job has always been and continues to be to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a “truth” glorified by millions, especially in the west.
To effect these obscene lies and “virtual realities,” the Israeli government counts heavily on the Jewish-controlled or Jewish influenced media in the western world, especially in North America where telling the truth about Israel is the ultimate taboo.
In truth, what has been happening in Gaza is a huge massacre of genocidal proportions as many conscientious Jews have testified.
What else can be said of this wanton, deliberate and indiscriminate blanket bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods and refugee camps?
I believe terms such as “huge massacres” and “genocidal onslaught” used in reference to the Gaza nightmare cannot be dismissed by Israel and her supporters as merely overstatements or rhetorical exaggerations.
This is unless Israel views non-Jewish pain and suffering as disingenuous, probably because non-Jews or “goyem” are actually considered “human animals” by a large and growing class of fanatical rabbis, politicians and military leaders.
So far, more than 4000 Gazans have been mercilessly killed or badly mutilated or incinerated in less than two weeks of intensive indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombing targeting everyone and everything.
Mosques, homes, public buildings, shelters, schools, colleges, dormitories, factories, cultural institutions, businesses, even hospitals and drug stores as well as the entire civilian infrastructure have been bombed and reduced to rubble.
The rabid bombing from high altitudes has exterminated numerous whole families and destroyed entire neighborhoods. This is probably what Israeli leaders had in mind when they spoke earlier about a “shock and awe” campaign against Gaza .
On 6 January, Israeli tanks fired several artillery shells at a school at the Jabalya refugee camp, killing more than 40 civilians, mostly children and women, who had sought shelter at the UNRWA-run facility. Dozens others were injured, many critically.
Israeli army spokespersons, who are actually professional liars, claimed that Palestinian fighters were seen in the vicinity of the building and that some of these actually fired on Israeli troops from the school.
However, UN officials in Gaza strongly denied the Israeli account, with one UN official saying that he was “99.99%” that the Israeli army was lying.
Earlier, the Israeli air forces hit a mourning reception, killing 15 members of the same family.
The pornographic killing of civilians has no explanation other than the ostensible fact that Israel is adopting a no-holds-barred approach toward Gaza , which is still under effective Israeli occupation despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal enclave more than three years ago.
Well, if we are to accept this logic, namely that everything is fair in war, then Jews should stop complaining about what the armies of Hitler did to them during World War II.
It is just unacceptable to apply two standards of morality, one for Jews and another for non-Jews. For if what Israel is doing in Gaza is right, as Israel and her supporters maintain, then what the Nazis did in Europe several decades ago must have been right as well. And vice versa.
After all, crime doesn’t become kosher when committed by Jewish hands.
Colossal crime
The enormity of the present holocaustic assault is undoubtedly a colossal crime against humanity.
In proportion to the size of population, the murder and maiming of 4000 Gazans (the number keeps rising) is like the US having at least a million of its citizens killed or badly injured as a result of a foreign aggression.
As to the utter destruction of Gaza , it is equally shocking. Some American expatriates here in occupied Palestine have spoken of a double holocaust in Gaza , one targeting humans, and another targeting civilization.
Facing their crimes, pornographic and outrageous as they are, many Israelis, probably the majority, are simply so gleeful that they think Israel is doing the right thing and that God is standing on the side of Israel in this war and every war.
Some religious Israelis have become so euphoric, thanks to the Gaza blitz, that they think the Messiah’s coming imminent.
Other “religious” Israeli Jews, including rabbis, readily justify the wanton slaughter by quoting biblical verses justifying genocide.
One Israeli settler leader recently argued during a conversation with a visiting American peace activist that “if it was right to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can’t it be right to commit genocide now . Has God changed his mind,” the settler wondered sarcastically.
As to Israeli leaders and officials, they simply indulge in what they have always been indulging in, namely “denial” and “self-righteousness” or simply playing the role of victim.
Thus behaved Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, when he told al-Jazeera during a live interview on Monday, 5 January.
“ We don’t kill and we have not killed any children in Gaza . We are the victim of Hamas aggression,” said the pathological liar and certified war criminal rather shamelessly.
Peres’s pornographic lies don’t need any further comment. They speak for themselves.
Zionist Jews may very well think that might is right, and that morality is unneeded and unnecessary as long as they possess overwhelming material strength.
They may think that the rivers of blood the “only democracy in the Middle East ” has been shedding will strengthen Israel and terrorize its neighbors.
Well, it may in the short run. However, in the long run, Israeli criminality and evilness will make it sterile from within to the point of death.
Like evil people, evil states shall not prosper.

Russia: War could go beyond Gaza

Russia has warned Israel that the continuation of its military operation in the Gaza Strip could spread beyond the coastal sliver. In a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov said the large-scale offensive in Gaza threatens the security of other regions as well. The Israeli operation, launched on December 27, has caused a huge number of civilian casualties. Tel Aviv is also facing massive international outcries due to its camping in the densely-populated Gaza. Israeli forces have so far killed at least 783 Palestinians, while 3.300 others are reported wounded. Saltanov pressed Livni on the "need to stop military confrontation around Gaza that has already led to multiple deaths among civilians," ITAR-TASS news agency reported. Later on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected a UN Security Council resolution which calls for an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive in the strip. "Israel has never agreed for any outside influence to decide on its right to defend its citizens," read a statement released by Olmert's office.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=81395&sectionid=351020602

Monday, January 05, 2009

Reservations for Minorities and all Dalits

Misra Commission’s Recommendations WelcomedBy Iqbal A. Ansari, Retired Professor of AMU, Aligarh
1. We welcome the recommendations of the National Commission For Religious and Linguistic Minorities headed by Justice Ranganath Misra for reservation of ten per cent public services for Muslims and five per cent for other religious minorities under Article 16(4) of the Constitution, and for extending the benefits of reservation to all persons of Dalit social origin irrespective of faith.
2. With regard to Dalits, the Minorities Council has been raising the issue that exclusion of persons of Dalit origin professing Christianity or Islam and their reinclusion on ‘returning’ to Hindu fold is not only discriminatory under Articles 14, 15 and 16 but is violative of the right to freely profess and practise one’s religion under Article 25, as the restriction provides disincentive to those who want to convert to Christianity or Islam, and provides inducement to Christian and Muslim Dalits to return to the Hindu fold. Moreover by amending the original Hindu-specific Presidential order of 1950 to include Sikhism and Buddhism, which are doctrinally egalitarian religions, the only basis of exclusion of Christianity and Islam is the categorization of religions into ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ ones, which is the basis of Hindutva ideology of nationhood. Thus exclusion of Christian and Muslim Dalits from the statutory benefits is not only unjust to concerned citizens but is also indirectly supportive of the Hindutva divisive ideology.
2.1 The note of dissent by member-secretary Asha Das, is based on the plea that since Christianity and Islam do not recognize caste, the legal recognition of the Christian & Muslim Dalits will amount to changing the tenets of these egalitarian religions. Buddhism and Sikhism are doctrinally equally egalitarian religions, but law has rightly taken into account the social reality of existence of accumulated historical deprivation among sections and classes of the Sikh and Bodh communities. Even if Christian and Muslim communities in India were ideally practising social egalitarianism, the talents of a Dalit convertee to these faiths will not get an automatic sudden boost eradicating his historical deprivation enabling him to compete on equal terms with advanced castes.
2.2 The real reason behind the note of dissent is the Hindu fear of mass conversion of Dalits to Christianity and Islam, which should not be dismissed. It should be ensured under law as well as under agreed ethical norms that there is no inducement by missionaries and no distress selling of souls.
3. Justification for provision of reservation of posts and seats for Muslims is provided by the finding of the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney case that the entire Muslim community can be declared backward for the purposes of Article 16(4). Given further the recognition of the fact by Justice Sachar Committee that the Muslim community of India as a whole is more backward than the Hindu OBCs, there is no reason to deny them the benefit of reservation just because of the still continuing shadow of Partition.
3.1 On the Minorities Council’s representation on this issue to the National Commission To Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC), its Report has clarified that “the Commission, upon due consideration of the representations, felt that no special provision was necessary inasmuch as, under the existing provisions of articles 14, 15 and 16, it is open to the State to make reservation (in favour of minorities) if it is of the opinion that such reservation is necessary and justified.�
3.2 The opposition to such supposedly “religion-based� reservation by the Sangh Parivar is understandable, but the secular (including Marxist) classes need to reorient their thinking on the issue under the human rights perspective, which considers special measures for religious (and other) minorities as not violative of the citizen’s right to equality. It has been observed in the earlier Andhra Pradesh High Court judgment on reservation for Muslims that such reservation instead of being anti-secular, it is denial of benefit of reservation to a group just because it is Muslim, well be anti-secular. Secularism which is one of the basic features of the Constitution, requires equality of treatment of all citizens and groups, and effective substantive equality requires special measures for vulnerable minorities. It is this established principle of jurisprudence of equality expounded by the Permanent Court of International Justice in Albania School case in 1935, which forms part of India’s jurisprudence, on which basis preferential admission of minorities got validated under Article 30.
4. Reservation for Muslims is socially justified on the basis of their historical backwardness as well as for their post-1947 neglect and exclusion. It will not amount to privileging ‘Islam’, but will mean extending affirmative action to a community, which has been underrepresentated in public services as well as in elected bodies. The community has also been subjected to periodic violence and boycott for perceived wrongs of history. This vicious circle must be broken now.
4.1 However, what is considered as religion-based reservation, and which is opposed for fear of inducing conversion of Hindus to Islam needs to be taken care of by making a provision that now (post-legislation) convertees to Islam will be treated according to their social/caste status before conversion. Recent conversion to Islam alone will not entitle them to benefits meant for the existing community members.
5. Given that Muslims in general have been recognized by Sachar Committee as more backward than OBC Hindus, there is a need to evolve a formula of fair distribution of benefits of reservation for Muslims as a minority, among its more and most backward classes, which has been recognized by the Committee in terms of Ajlaf and Arzal. Instead of using these demeaning terms, secular law should classify Muslims as Backward, More Backward & Most Backward. Criteria for identification of these three socio-economic-educational and occupational Muslim groups and classes, let us hope, have been evolved by the Commission. In case it has not done so, an expert committee needs to be constituted for such classification among Muslims.
However policy decision on reservation for Dalits irrespective of faith and for Muslims and other minorities should not be further delayed for want of any such sub-classification.
We do not yet know the bases and modalities of provision of five per cent of reservation for other minorities by the Commission. We shall make our response known after getting full information on how to identify sections of other minorities for the purpose of reservation.
Minorities Council
Syeda Manzil, Muzammil Compound 4/1703, Dodhpur, Aligarh 202001
Tel: 0571-3298957 E-mail:iqbalansari2001@hotmail.com

Most Germans reject Merkel's position on blaming Hamas for Gaza conflict

Berlin, Jan 2, IRNA ,Nearly 70 percent of Germans reject Chancellor Angela Merkel's stance on blaming Hamas for sparking the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza, according to a survey released by the private sat 1 television network on Thursday.
Asked whether Merkel was right in holding Hamas responsible for the Gaza conflict, some 68.4 percent responded with 'no', while 30.7 percent replied with 'yes' and 0.9 percent said they were unsure about it.
A die-hard supporter of the murderous Zionist regime, Merkel has faced harsh criticism by several leading lawmakers for blaming Hamas in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
In other related news, a German-based human rights organization, The International League for Human Rights, slammed Merkel for "encouraging Israel to continue war crimes in the Gaza Strip" and demanded she pressure Israel into a ceasefire, according to dpa.
"If she does not, she will be guilty of increasing the spiral of violence," the group charged.
Critics of Merkel's staunch pro-Israel stance in the Gaza fighting and the Lebanon war argue that she has essentially given a "blank check" to the Jewish state to commit war crimes and other atrocities.
Germany's hardline refusal to criticize the Zionist regime is in stark contrast to other traditional allies of Israel like France and Britain as both countries joined the international condemnation of the Israeli air strikes in Gaza.

'Blasts have become part of our lives, we have to move on'

By Azera Rahman, IANS,
Guwahati : Even as people were greeting one another and praying for a more peaceful 2009, a string of three bomb blasts tore through Guwahati on New Year's day, killing six people and leaving more than 50 injured. The next day, a stoic population, benumbed by the endless explosions rocking their lives, went about their daily chores.
"How much can you discuss the bomb blasts, the explosions? How much can you be scared? After a certain point you just become numb, and sadly that is what is happening to us here," Rashid Ahmed, who works in a telecom company, told IANS.
Sitting with his friends and enjoying a cup of coffee at Brown Bean Café, a popular hangout joint, Ahmed echoed the sentiments of hundreds of others in the city.
"There is heavier army patrolling on the streets now, but unlike the stepped up security in the markets like in Delhi where there are metal detector door frames or CCTV cameras, there is nothing like that here. Even then people are going about their business... living through the blasts has almost become like a way of life," he added.
Ashima Baruah, a school teacher, put it poignantly: "Everytime there is a blast, my heart skips a beat. I pray that none of my family members or friends were at the blast site, I pray that I don't have to strike out any of my students' names the next day in the attendance roster."
"It's a dreaded feeling... but if you keep brooding over it, you will be a dead person walking. These blasts have become so much a part of our lives - we are learning to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on the very next moment," Baruah said.
For many it's a matter of their daily bread for which they have to resume their lives almost mechanically, even after such turbulences.
Anup Das, who owns a small cloth shop in the busy Panbazar area of the city, said: "A blast occurs here so often that if I have to pull down my shutters after each of them, I would be out of business. What am I going to feed my family then?"
Agreed Rahul Singha, manager at a restaurant. Citing the Oct 30 serial bomb blasts in the city in which 81 people were killed and more than 300 injured, Singha said: "After the serial blasts last year, it was utter mayhem. There was a curfew declared the next day, then a total shutdown. Business suffered a loss of 50 percent.
"No matter how insensitive we may seem, we just can't afford that every time. We have ourselves and our children to feed and no matter how much we may want to, we can't sit at home and mourn. We have to pull up our shutters and get back to work the next day," Singha told IANS.
(Azera Rahman can be contacted at azera.p@ians.in)