http://www.syriapath.com/forum/

We are calling random phone numbers in Gaza, and expressing our solidarity to those people, and letting them know that we are with them all the way ……

The people in Gaza respond by saying that they will remain strong and defiant, may God bless them all.

Now you can do the same, just call any of these numbers, and replace the xxxx with any 4 numbers. If you get through to a family in Gaza, just let them know that they are not alone, and never will be forgotten.

DO IT NOW, YOU HAVE NO REASON NOT TO. IT ONLY COSTS A COUPLE OF DOLLARS AND A FEW MINUTES.

The phone numbers, plus international and local codes are:

009708282XXXX
009708283XXXX
009708284XXXX
009708286XXXX

Spread the word, post these numbers on your profiles and blogs, send them to your email contacts. Make a difference NOW.

God bless you all.

 The Massacres are still going on ..…please pray for our children and to all those martyrs who were killed by the Israeli army

On Israel’s “Right to Exist”

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

Now that the Palestinian civil war long sought by Israel, the U.S. and the EU appears on the verge of breaking out, it may be timely to examine the justification put forward by Israel, the U.S. and the EU for their collective punishment of the Palestinian people in retaliation for their having made the “wrong” choice in last January’s democratic election — the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel” or to “recognize Israel’s existence” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist”.

These three verbal formulations have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.

“Recognizing Israel” or any other state is a formal legal/diplomatic act by a state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate — indeed, nonsensical — to talk about a political party or movement, even one in a sovereign state, extending diplomatic recognition to a state. To talk of Hamas “recognizing Israel” is simply sloppy, confusing and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made.

“Recognizing Israel’s existence” is not a logical nonsense and appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgement of a fact of life — like death and taxes. Yet there are serious practical problems with this formulation. What Israel, within what borders, is involved? The 55% of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as “Israel” or “Israel proper”?

The 100% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as “Israel” on maps in Israeli schoolbooks? Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would, necessarily, place limits on them. Still, if this were all that were being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for it to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a State of Israel exists today within some specified borders.

“Recognizing Israel’s right to exist”, the actual demand, is in an entirely different league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.

There is an enormous difference between “recognizing Israel’s existence” and “recognizing Israel’s right to exist”. From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to acknowledge that it was “right” that the Holocaust happened — that the Holocaust (or, in the Palestinian case, the Nakba) was morally justified.

To demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel’s right to exist” is to demand that a people who have for almost 60 years been treated, and continue to be treated, as sub-humans publicly proclaim that they ARE sub-humans — and, at least implicitly, that they deserve what has been done, and continues to be done, to them. Even 19th century U.S. governments did not require the surviving Native Americans to publicly proclaim the “rightness” of their ethnic cleansing by the Pale Faces as a condition precedent to even discussing what reservation might be set aside for them — under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.

Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. In fact, in his famous statement in Stockholm in late 1988, he accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security”. This formulation, significantly, addresses the /conditions/ of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the “rightness” of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad.

The original conception of the formulation “Israel’s right to exist” and of its utility as an excuse for not talking to any Palestinian leadership which still stood up for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people are attributed to Henry Kissinger, the grand master of diplomatic cynicism. There can be little doubt that those states which still employ this formulation do so in full consciousness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people and for the same cynical purpose — as a roadblock against any progress toward peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and as a way of helping to buy more time for Israel to create more “facts on the ground” while blaming the Palestinians for their own suffering.

However, many private citizens of good will and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words “Israel’s right to exist” (and even more easily by the other two shorthand formulations) into believing that they constitute a self-evidently reasonable demand and that refusing such a reasonable demand must represent perversity (or a “terrorist ideology”) rather than a need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings which is deeply felt and thoroughly understandable in the hearts and minds of a long-abused people who have been stripped of almost everything else that makes life worth living. That this is so is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population which approves of Hamas’ steadfastness in refusing to bow to this humiliating demand by their enemies, notwithstanding the intensity of the economic pain and suffering inflicted on them by the Israeli and Western siege, substantially exceeds the percentage of the population which voted for Hamas in January.

It may not be too late to focus decent minds around the world on the unreasonableness — indeed, the immorality — of this demand and of the verbal formulation on which it is based, whose use and abuse have already caused so much misery and threaten to cause more.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck“. He can be reached at: jvwhitbeck@awalnet.net.sa

By JOHNNY BARBER

Jesus is a terrorist, there ain’t no one can doubt it. Born in Bethlehem, what more need I say about it? Thirty foot concrete barriers, soldiers armed with guns, being born in Bethlehem just ain’t much fun. Jesus stands on the corner, throwin’ stones at tanks. Israeli soldiers don’t hold back, they ain’t shootin’ blanks. Jesus stands defiant, a David ‘gainst Goliath. Jesus is a terrorist, he ain’t allowed to pass. Being born in Bethlehem, life is over fast.

Jesus is a terrorist, he ain’t allowed to pass. You know what they’re teaching, in those Christian schools in town. He’s learning hate against the state, and what it means to martyr. Jesus is a terrorist, he don’t need Jimmy Carter. Jesus knows all ’bout them virgins. That ain’t no lie they tell ya, once you pass them pearly gates, it pays to be a fella!

Jesus is a carpenter, but he’s not allowed to work. He passes time carving trinkets for those Christian tourist folk. They come and kiss the ground where Jesus once lay swaddled. They bargain him down, then they just turn on back around. They close their eyes to the soldiers, they close their eyes to the wall. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, don’t stand any chance at all.

Jesus rode a donkey once, straight on through to Jerusalem. Today, Jesus ain’t got a prayer, he’s not allowed to pass. Jesus can’t stoop low enough to kiss the soldier’s ass.

The tourists come back home, blind as before. They go to church, and they sing their songs, and look up on the wall. Jesus still is hangin’ there, saving them from the fall. But just like Judas, they turn their backs, no one heeds his call.

Cause Jesus is a terrorist, but don’t you worry none. It’s just a name they give you when you’re Palestinian. A savior born in Bethlehem- it’s quite a story, but just not rightcause Jesus is a terrorist, don’t you worry ’bout his plight.

Today, the people of Bethlehem are imprisoned behind a thirty-foot high concrete wall, unable to move. The Christian community cannot travel to Jerusalem to pray at the church of the Holy Sepulchre- a short, twenty-minute drive from Bethlehem. The Israeli military occupation, nearing its 40th year, has strangled the economy as well as the people living in the Holy Land, and there is no end in sight. The people are constantly at risk, not even their homes are safe, no sanctuary available- anywhere. The checkpoints and the military incursions are constant reminders that the life of a Palestinian in Bethlehem is cheap. And the Christian community, as well as the world, looks on in silence. At this time of year, as we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus, may all Christians, and all people of faith, raise their voices and demand justice for the good people of Bethlehem and Palestine.

The occupation must end.

Seriously, this makes you think twice about the credibility of such organizations…

http://www.counterpunch.com/cook11302006.html

Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too?
Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance?

By JONATHAN COOK

in Nazareth

If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.

Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly: it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.

It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission: according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.

Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.

Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.

Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.

Yet Western observers, and the organisations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.

Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood — and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades — Human Rights Watch published its lastest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organisation, complacent Western societies and Fatma’s memory.

In its press release “Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks”, which was widely reported by the international media, HRW lambasts armed Palestinian groups for calling on civilians to surround homes that have been targeted for air strikes by the Israeli military.

Noting almost as an afterthought that more than 1,500 Palestinians have been made homeless from house demolitions in the past few months, and that 105 houses have been destroyed from the air, the press release denounces Palestinian attempts at non-violent and collective action to halt the Israel attacks. HRW refers in particular to three incidents.

On November 3, Hamas appealed to women to surround a mosque in Beit Hanoun where Palestinian men had sought shelter from the Israeli army. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the women, killing two and injuring at least 10.

And last week on two separate occasions, crowds of supporters gathered around the houses of men accused of being militants by Israel who had received phone messages from the Israeli security forces warning that their families’ homes were about to be bombed.

In language that would have made George Orwell shudder, one of the world’s leading organisations for the protection of human rights ignored the continuing violation of the Palestinians’ right to security and a roof over their heads and argued instead: “There is no excuse for calling [Palestinian] civilians to the scene of a planned [Israeli] attack. Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target, knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm’s way is unlawful.”

There is good reason to believe that this reading of international law is wrong, if not Kafkaesque. Popular and peaceful resistance to the oppressive policies of occupying powers and autocratic rulers, in India and South Africa for example, has always been, by its very nature, a risky venture in which civilians are liable to be killed or injured. Responsibility for those deaths must fall on those doing the oppressing, not those resisting, particularly when they are employing non-violent means. On HRW’s interpretation, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be war criminals.

HRW also applies a series of terrible double standards in this press release.

It refuses Palestinians the right to protect homes from attack, labelling these civilians “human shields”, even while admitting that most of the homes are not legitimate military targets, and yet it has not said a word about the common practice in Israel of building weapons factories and army bases inside or next to communities, thereby forcing Israeli civilians to become human shields for the army.

And HRW prefers to highlight a supposed violation of international law by the Palestinians — their choice to act as “human shields” — and to demand that the practice end immediately, while ignoring the very real and continuing violation of international law committed by Israel in undertaking punitive house demolitions against Palestinian families.

But let us ignore even these important issues and assume that HRW is technically correct that such Palestinian actions do violate international law. Nonetheless, HRW is still failing us and mocking its mandate, because it has lost sight of the three principles that must guide the vision of a human rights organisation: a sense of priorities, proper context and common sense.

Priorities: Every day HRW has to choose which of the many abuses of international law taking place around the world it highlights. It manages to record only a tiny fraction of them. The assumption of many outsiders may be that it focuses on only the most egregious examples. That would be wrong.

The simple truth is that the worse a state’s track record on human rights, the easier ride it gets, relatively speaking, from human rights organisations. That is both because, if abuses are repeated often enough, they become so commonplace as to go unremarked, and because, if the abuses are wide-ranging and systematic, only a small number of the offences will be noted.

Israel, unlike the Palestinians, benefits in both these respects. After four decades of reporting on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, HRW has covered all of Israel’s many human rights-abusing practices at least once before. The result is that after a while most violations get ignored. Why issue another report on house demolitions or “targeted assassinations”, even though they are occurring all the time? And, how to record the individual violations of tens of thousands of Palestinians’ rights every day at checkpoints? One report on the checkpoints once every few years has to suffice instead.

In Israel’s case, there is an added reluctance on the part of organisations like HRW to tackle the extent and nature of Israel’s trampling of Palestinian rights. Constant press releases denouncing Israel would provoke accusations, as they do already, that Israel is being singled out — and with it, the implication that anti-Semitism lies behind the special treatment.

So HRW chooses instead to equivocate. It ignores most Israeli violations and highlights every Palestinian infraction, however minor. This way it makes a pact with the devil: it achieves the balance that protects it from criticism but only by sacrificing the principles of equity and justice.

In its press release, for example, HRW treats the recent appeal to Palestinians to exercise their right to protect their neighbours, and to act in soldarity with non-violent resistance to occupation, as no different from the dozens of known violations committed by the Israeli army of abducting Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect its troops.

Women vounteering to surround a mosque become the equivalent of the notorious incident in January 2003 when 21-year-old Samer Sharif was handcuffed to the hood of an army Jeep and driven towards stone-throwing youngsters in Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired their guns from behind his head.

According to HRW’s approach to international law, the two incidents are comparable.

Context: The actions of Palestinians occur in a context in which all of their rights are already under the control of their occupier, Israel, and can be violated at its whim. This means that it is problematic, from a human rights perspective, to place the weight of culpability on the Palestinians without laying far greater weight at the same time on the situation to which the Palestinians are reacting.

Here is an example. HRW and other human rights organisations have taken the Palestinians to task for the extra-judicial killings of those suspected of collaborating with the Israeli security forces.

Although it is blindingly obvious that the lynching of an alleged collaborator is a violation of that person’s fundamental right to life, HRW’s position of simply blaming the Palestinians for this practice raises two critical problems.

First, it fudges the issue of accountability.

In the case of a “targeted assassination”, Israel’s version of extra-judicial killing, we have an address to hold accountable: the apparatus of a state in the forms of the Israeli army which carried out the murder and the Israeli politicians who approved it. (These officials are also responsible for the bystanders who are invariably killed along with the target.)

But unless it can be shown that the lynchings are planned and coordinated at a high level, a human rights organisation cannot apply the same standards by which it judges a state to a crowd of Palestinians, people gripped by anger and the thirst for revenge. The two are not equivalent and cannot be held to account in the same way. Palestinians carrying out a lynching are commiting a crime punishable under ordinary domestic law; while the Israeli army carrying out a “targeted assassination” is commiting state terrorism, which must be tried in the court of world opinion.

Second, HRW’s position ignores the context in which the lynching takes place.

The Palestinian resistance to occupation has failed to realise its goals mainly because of Israel’s extensive network of collaborators, individuals who have usually been terrorised by threats to themselves or their family and/or by torture into “co-operating” with Israel’s occupation forces.

The great majority of planned attacks are foiled because one member of the team is collaborating with Israel. He or she not only sabotages the attack but often also gives Israel the information it needs to kill the leaders of the resistance (as well as bystanders). Collaborators, though common in the West Bank and Gaza, are much despised — and for good reason. They make the goal of national liberation impossible.

Palestinians have been struggling to find ways to make collaboration less appealing. When the Israeli army is threatening to jail your son, or refusing a permit for your wife to receive the hospital treatment she needs, you may agree to do terrible things. Armed groups and many ordinary Palestinians countenance the lynchings because they are seen as a counterweight to Israel’s own powerful techniques of intimidation — a deterrence, even if a largely unsuccessful one.

In issuing a report on the extra-judicial killing of Palestinian collaborators, therefore, groups like HRW have a duty to highlight first and with much greater emphasis the responsibility of Israel and its decades-long occupation for the lynchings, as the context in which Palestinians are forced to mimic the barbarity of those oppressing them to stand any chance of defeating them.

The press release denouncing the Palestinians for choosing collectively and peacefully to resist house demolitions, while not concentrating on the violations committed by Israel in destroying the houses and using military forms of intimidation and punishment against civilians, is a travesty for this very same reason.

Common sense: And finally human rights organisations must never abandon common sense, the connecting thread of our humanity, when making judgments about where their priorities lie.

In the past few months Gaza has sunk into a humanitarian disaster engineered by Israel and the international community. What has been HRW’s response? It is worth examining its most recent reports, those on the front page of the Mideast section of its website last week, when the latest press release was issued. Four stories relate to Israel and Palestine.

Three criticise Palestinian militants and the wider society in various ways: for encouraging the use of “human shields”, for firing home-made rockets into Israel, and for failing to protect women from domestic violence. One report mildly rebukes Israel, urging the government to ensure that the army properly investigates the reasons for the shelling that killed 19 Palestinian inhabitants of Beit Hanoun.

This shameful imbalance, both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights, has become the HRW’s standard procedure in Israel-Palestine.

But in its latest release, on human shields, HRW plumbs new depths, stripping Palestinians of the right to organise non-violent forms of resistance and seek new ways of showing solidarity in the face of illegal occupation. In short, HRW treats the people of Gaza as mere rats in a laboratory — the Israeli army’s view of them — to be experimented on at will.

HRW’s priorities in Israel-Palestine prove it has lost its moral bearings.

http://www.counterpunch.com/finkelstein11292006.html

Rush to Judgment
Human Rights Watch Must Retract Its Shameful Press Release

By NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN

Even by the grim standards of Gaza, the past five months have been cruel ones.

Some four hundred Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, have been killed during Israeli attacks. (Four Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed.) Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world while the international community has imposed brutal sanctions, ravaging Gaza’s already impoverished economy.

“Gaza is dying,” Patrick Cockburn reported in CounterPunch, “its people are on the edge of starvation.A whole society is being destroyed.The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal. “

“Gaza is in its worst condition ever,” Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz, “The Israeli army has been rampaging through Gaza–there’s no other word to describe it–killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling indiscriminately….This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment.”

Predictably Gaza teetered on the precipice of fratricidal civil war. “The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other,” Amira Hass wryly observed in Ha’aretz, “They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.’”

It is at times like this that we expect human rights organizations to speak out.

How has Human Rights Watch responded to the challenge? It criticized Israel for destroying Gaza’s only electrical plant, and also called on Israel to “investigate” why its forces were targeting Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza and to “investigate” the Beit Hanoun massacre.

On the other hand, it accused Palestinians of committing a “war crime” after they captured an Israeli soldier and offered to exchange him for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. (Israel was holding 10,000 Palestinians prisoner.) It demanded that Palestinians “bring an immediate end to the lawlessness and vigilante violence” in Gaza. (Compare Amira Hass’s words.) It issued a 101-page report chastising the Palestinian Authority for failing to protect women and girls. It called on the Palestinian Authority to take “immediate steps to halt” Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

Were this record not shameful enough, HRW crossed a new threshold at the end of November.

After Palestinians spontaneously responded to that “unknown voice on a cell phone” by putting their own bare bodies in harm’s way, HRW rushed to issue a press release warning that Palestinians might be committing a “war crime” and might be guilty of “human shielding.” (”Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks”)

In what must surely be the most shocking statement ever issued by a human rights organization, HRW indicted Palestinian leaders for supporting this nonviolent civil disobedience:

Prime Minister Haniyeh and other Palestinian leaders should be renouncing, not embracing, the tactic of encouraging civilians to place themselves at risk.

The international community has for decades implored Palestinian leaders to forsake armed struggle in favor of nonviolent civil disobedience. Why is a human rights organization now attacking them for adopting this tactic?

Is it a war crime to protect one’s home from collective punishment?

Is it human shielding if a desperate and forsaken populace chooses to put itself at deadly risk in order to preserve the last shred of its existence?

Indeed, although Israeli soldiers have frequently used Palestinians as human shields in life-threatening situations, and although HRW has itself documented this egregious Israeli practice, HRW has never once called it a war crime.

It took weeks before HRW finally issued a report condemning Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. Although many reliable journalists were daily documenting these crimes, HRW said it first had to conduct an independent investigation of its own.

But HRW hastened to deplore the nonviolent protests in Gaza based on anonymous press reports which apparently got crucial facts wrong.

Why this headlong rush to judgment?

Was HRW seeking to appease pro-Israel critics after taking the heat for its report documenting Israeli war crimes in Lebanon?

After Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech in 1967 denouncing the war in Vietnam, mainstream Black leaders rebuked him for jeopardizing the financial support of liberal whites. “You might get yourself a foundation grant,” King retorted, “but you won’t get yourself into the Kingdom of Truth.”

HRW now also stands poised at a crossroads: foundation grants or the Kingdom of Truth?

A first step in the right direction would be for it to issue a retraction of its press release and an apology.

HRW executive director Kenneth Roth “commended” Israel during its last invasion for warning people in south Lebanon to flee–before turning it into a moonscape, slaughtering the old, infirm and poor left behind. It would seem that Palestinian leaders and people, too, merit some recognition for embracing the tactics of Gandhi and King in a last desperate bid to save themselves from annihilation.

Email HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson–whitsos@hrw.org – and HRW executive director Kenneth Roth–RothK@hrw.org.

As far as Americans are concerned, the rest of the world is either a big nuisance, or just plain hostile. That maybe true as far as they’re concerned but what are the reasons behind it?

Your average American actually believes the bull that his media and politicians spew out, and thinks the answer to the above question is simply “because they hate our freedom and values, or they’re jealous of our prosperity”. That, aside from being childish and naive, highlights the serious disparity between the American people, and their political system, and that my friends is the core of the issue.

Most American people, are just like any other people in any other country in the world, they abhor and detest the bad things in life….cruelty, injustice, torture, oppression, violence, intimidation, war, poverty…..you name it, they hate it….just like us, just like everyone else….It’s a crying shame therefore, that their country is responsible for a lot of the “bad things in life” on a global scale, and throughout modern history. But of course, any “patriotic” American will deny that won’t he? All the above is just a baseless and misinformed attack against his country which is just looking out for it’s own, and doing what’s in it’s best interest…..all the countless invasions, wars, sanction, coups, vetoes and arm twisting are just legitimate acts of statehood and sovereignty. Given the Machiavellian self serving nature of modern politics, can you really blame the average American for believing all that crap? I dunno, can you blame someone for not stopping a crime that’s taking place in front of them? can you blame someone for not speaking out about a crime? The term “murder accessory ” springs to mind, and that’s just how the American people are being used by their government, as accessories to murder. Murder taking place everyday in their name…..the murder of Afghanis, Iraqis and Palestinians, and the odd Lebanese every now and again. Murder taking place in the name of the American nation, founded on the basic human instinct to resist oppression and tyranny, and champion of the cause of freedom and human rights……well, maybe it was once, but no longer. That dreamy romantic image of the great American nation has long since vanished and is now confined to the pages of history books which speak of a glorious past and of founding fathers and constitution writing and independence.

Arabs of course, have born the brunt of this Jekyll-Hyde transformation. We’ve always been on the wrong end of the stick. True, it wasn’t always the Americans holding it, but they did a nice job taking it over from the imperial English and French. They also did a nice job adopting Europe’s illegitimate child, born of centuries of guilt and given birth to by a bloody labor on the doorsteps of Palestine. Never again will the mistresses’ child want for anything, the stick is to be used solely for the whipping of the “old” children.

This whip has been brandished so often, that it’s really lost its sting. The Arabs are no longer fearful of the pain it inflicts, no longer intimidated by all the shouting and threats. They are resisting, they are rising up and speaking out…..hence 9/11 hence all the bombings hence all the “terrorism”…..Oh, of course not sorry I forgot, “terrorists” are just mad people who like to kill themselves for the joy of it and in order to go to heaven and get all the women there, they hate freedom and democracy and our way of life, and they want to destroy us because they hate us….they have absolutely no cause, and no legitimate struggle or concerns…..the fact that we are occupying their countries and killing their families has nothing to do with all those bombings, they’re just plain crazy irrational people……

And that my friends is the answer to the question “why do they hate us”……..they don’t really hate us, they just hate the way we’ve been whipping em around every now and again…..

]]> http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/11/12/why-do-they-hate-us-part-1/feed/ 0 http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/24/water-war-iii/ http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/24/water-war-iii/#comments Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:40:00 +0000 ilpadrino http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/24/water-war-iii/ We’ve all suspected and assumed this, in different variations. This blog post very eloquently and academically puts the pieces together. Its long but well worth the read (some of the comments are also interesting).

It refers to Israel’s real motives and intentions behind what happened.. and being one step closer to achieving the Grand Zionist scheme and controlling the Furat (Euphrates).
Read it here:
http://anthropik.com/2006/08/israels-water-wars/

Apparently, it wasn’t enough that we set them up at our homes and schools, provided them with food, clothing, shelter even toys, raised funds for them, and devoted the entire red cross and red crescent volunteers to tend to their every need, and suffered and are still suffering from hours of blackouts because were giving away electricity to Lebanon.

Some people I know, even quit their work, traveled to Damascus to rent as many apartments as they could find, then went to the border to pick up any stranded families and take them to those apartments.

When the ceasefire came into effect last week, most Lebanese refugees went home….and then promptly started the verbal abuse and slander against Syria and Syrians. Saying things like “Syria is full of donkeys”, or “Syria is filthy and uncivilized”. Well that’s all just very super, it’s like having a guest leave your house, then as soon as he gets out, he pisses all over your porch and sets fire to your dog. Thank you Lebanon for all the P!

But to be fair, the majority of Lebanese, especially those hardest hit in the south, and who also happen to be the poorest and most downtrodden, actually appreciate Syria and all it’s done for them throughout the years. Those people, unfortunately, are the most marginalized, and least heard in Lebanese society. All we hear are the disgusting rantings of the absurdly “in bed with Israel” cedar-future cowards. That bumbling imbecile Hariri, who barley knows how to speak Arabic, let alone form a coherent sentence, or that old git Junblat who looks like he just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

We here in Syria still support, and will always support the free peoples of Lebanon, and the freedom fighters of Hezbollah…..those who have not sold their dignity, honor, ideals and beliefs for scraps, and bonds of servitude to their American and Israeli masters.

]]> http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/20/syria-lebanon-relations/feed/ 9 http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/20/scandal-at-marj-ayoon/ http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/20/scandal-at-marj-ayoon/#comments Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:59:57 +0000 Syriapath http://www.syriapath.com/blog/2006/08/20/scandal-at-marj-ayoon/ So whats all this about Israeli soldiers having a cup of tea at a Lebanese army barracks at the height of the war? While the bombs were dropping on top of children, the lebanese army was having a social get together and quiet chit chat with the enemy?

And when the Lebanese soldiers evacuated the base, the Israelis just went ahead and bombed them!!!! Bloody hell, that’s what I call a classic case of “serves you right”…
Aren’t we Arabs just soooooooooo proud of our armies…..

watch the story HERE 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

Enjoy.. you gotta love it.