March 25, 2009
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A T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF soldier in the sniper unit reading 'I shot two kills.'
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Last update - 22:41 20/03/2009
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Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
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By Uri Blau
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Tags: Israel News, IDF, Gaza
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The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a
constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who
come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually
accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the
premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the
ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies,
fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the
workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over
the finished product.
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun
aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of
the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on
shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The
slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A
T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex,"
next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother
and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati
Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a
bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1
shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed
another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a
combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter
how it begins, we'll put an end to it."
There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For
example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a
soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you
got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the
army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a
bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is
dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
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In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the
unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over
what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of
soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously
banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere.
For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the
kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't
exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.
The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my
hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's
shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of
last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and
pants bearing this slogan.
"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next
to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful.
The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the
man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he
told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."
Does the design go to the commanders for approval?
The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process
by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of
platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were
really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on
average."
What do you think of the slogan that was printed?
"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."
Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers
courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006,
soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed
a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the
crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run
fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women
weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and
afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.]
Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and
the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."
G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course,
explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well
known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts
have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good
aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."
When are these shirts worn?
G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the
army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's
about."
Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said:
"There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but
it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna
go and shoot a pregnant woman."
What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?
"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."
Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing?
"Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."
These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids?
'We came, we saw'
"As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see
a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether
to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and
they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one
who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the
sniper."
Have you encountered a situation like that?
"Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes.
There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a
prohibited area and could have posed a threat."
What did you do?
"I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot).
You don't regret that, I imagine.
"No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot."
A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi
battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we
saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and
a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center.
A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890
of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under
attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed,
then believe it can be destroyed!"
Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take
whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the
commanders before printing," he explained.
What is the soldier holding in his hand?
Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings,
because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The
one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking
face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the
people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the
IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this
from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept
emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction
on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the
leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them
to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in
the drawing."
According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army
context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it
differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in
this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't
think people would like it."
Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the
end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol
of the Paratroops Corps.
Where does the fist come from?
"It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it
from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to
look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a
sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho."
Was the shirt printed?
"Yes. It was a company shirt. We printed about 100 like that."
This past January, the "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from
Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil
detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it
says, "Only God forgives."
One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean
much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A
friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt."
What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"?
The soldier: "It's just a saying."
No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture?
"I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're
going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as
though we hate Arabs."
After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a
T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister,
Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan. S., a
soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from
a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured
Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh.
"They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained.
What's the problem with this shirt?
S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint ..."
How did people who saw it respond?
"We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it
wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's
more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies,
because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us
it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base."
The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of
the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers
according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops,
Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains
hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons
and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that
outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful
reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity.
Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the
early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each
month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that
when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army.
"The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said.
"Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays
any course with 15 participants prints up shirts."
From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do
things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do
something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained.
"There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said,
'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with
shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private
company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I
like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some
less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts."
Race to be unique
Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International
Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF
publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a
product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example,
had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on
it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since
then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a
beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or
green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the
fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was
unique to it.
"These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable,"
Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very
acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect
for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in
every direction."
Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web
site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew
shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem
on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to
heaven, because we've already been through hell.'"
Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described
here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and
also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in
civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion
get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They
wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor
stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because
you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a
terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl,
and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but
it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I
said it wasn't appropriate."
The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military
regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts
produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs
are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian
shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the
values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in
poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and
excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate
eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to
commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take
discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts
of this sort."
Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer
specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on
charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free
time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the
army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges
of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general
clauses in judicial martial law.
Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of
"Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli
Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization
process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its
forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a
continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome -
the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.
"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who
encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There
is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness.
There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human
being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to
him."
Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression?
Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression
and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that
has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their
girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather
something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond
that, I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views,
as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism
and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It
establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and
Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude
and violent manner toward women and Arabs."
Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret
Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's
chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in
the 1980s.
Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50
years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically
speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their
anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things,
which I call 'below the belt.'"
Do you think this a good way to vent anger?
Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from
the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has
reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that
what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow." |
Posted on 03/25/2009 12:45 PM Comments (0)
March 2, 2009
Mohamed Hassan
INTERVIEW : Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Collon
For a lot of medias, the case seems clear: the Hamas is terrorist,
fundamentalist and fanatic. Though, this movement has won the last
elections and his popularity increases among the Palestinians. Why? We
raised the question to Mohamed Hassan, co-author of Iraq, Eye-to-eye with
the occupation, and one of the best Middle-East specialists.
What is really the Hamas?
Hamas is a political movement coming from the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
one of the oldest political movements in Egypt. The word "hamas" means
awakening, erupting... It's an islamo nationalist movement, which we could
compare to the Irish catholic nationalist movement. In 1916, the Irish
Republican Army has developed against the colonial British occupation. As
the Irish were Catholics and the British settlers were Protestants, the
occupier tried to make it a religious conflict. Religion can be utilized to
mobilize people for a cause.
What is the historical context explaining the rise of the Hamas?
To understand that, we have to take a look to several events. The first one
is the six-day war which discredited the Nasserism in 1967. Nasser was an
Egyptian president who encouraged an Arabic revolution for independence and
development. As Israel inflicted him a severe defeat, his ideology ran out
of steam. After he died, Egypt and Israel were again engaged into a
conflict with the October war in 1973. Egypt and Syria wanted to take back
territories under Israeli occupation. Finally, Egypt and Israel signed an
agreement but it created a division in the Arab world between the countries
who wanted to accept the Israeli conditions and those who wanted to resist
like Syria, Algeria, Iraq... Of course, the Palestinian question was
crucial in those conflicts and the resistance to Israel drove to the
formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This organization
was created in order to gather the several movements of resistance to ally
their efforts in the struggle against Israel. Before negotiating with this
organization at the Oslo accords, Israel considered it as terrorist
organization and inflicted it several defeats that can explain the rise of
the Hamas.
The first important defeat is the Black September in 1970. The PLO had his
headquarter in Jordan where King Hussein made a deal with Israel to
brutally crash the Palestinian insurrection. So the PLO was forced to flee
to Beirut. The second important defeat comes in 1982. Israel attacked
Lebanon and most of the PLO combatants had to move far away from the
Palestinian areas and the headquarter of the organization was set in Tunis.
In this particular context, comes the first Intifada in 1987. A popular
uprising in reaction to the Israeli occupation which started in Gaza and
then touched the whole Palestine. As I said, the PLO was very far away. On
the contrary, the Hamas was inside Palestine and took part to the Intifada.
That event marks the coming of the Hamas which started in the prisons!
Prisons used to be considered as a place of punishment. But after that the
resistants of the Intifada were put in jail, things have changed... It's in
the prisons that the Hamas started to recruit and to develop as an
organization. With the Intifada, the Hamas was exposed to the Palestinian
opinion, to the Israeli opinion and to the international opinion.
How did the PLO react to the Intifada?
With the Intifada, the PLO was divided in two wings: the strongest one who
wanted to continue the resistance and was installed in Tunis and those who
wanted to work out a deal. Those ones were hiding and didn't have the
courage to defend their opinion until the Oslo Accords where they came up
and became stronger. Arafat was a tactician and after the end of the
Intifada, in order to bring the PLO in Palestine, he used the different
lines of the Palestinian reactions.
What were these lines?
First, you have those who wanted to continue the fight against Israel
without concession. Arafat had to marginalize them to obtain something. In
the other hand, you've got those who wanted to capitulate, and they lead
the Palestinian government today. Finally, you've got the little
bourgeoisie who wanted to negotiate for their own profits. Arafat used them
to get what he wanted and it drives us to the Oslo Accords (1993). They
allowed the PLO to come back in Palestine but except that, it was a great
defeat. The Palestinians accepted to get only 22% of their total land!
There is no agreement in history that confers to somebody only 22% of what
he was demanding! The PLO was no more considered as a terrorist
organization and won the recognition of Israel but didn't manage to really
improve the situation in Gaza and Cisjordania. Nothing in the agreement was
mentioned to stop the Israeli colonization. This fact discredited the
Palestinian authority to the population and also explains the success of
the Hamas as a movement of resistance. Another important point is that the
Palestinian authority, which was receiving money from the West, became
corrupted. On the contrary, the Hamas doesn't have this problem. The
organization receives money mainly from a charity system. And there is no
indication that they put this money in their pocket. As they critic the
authority for its corruption, they are very cautious to this problem.
How can you explain the success of the Hamas?
Three factors explain the success of the Hamas. First, the maintaining of
the resistance, refusing imposed solution, which correspond to the will of
the population. The second point is that the Hamas wants the refugees of
1948 and 1967 to come back. In 1948, after the creation of the Israel
state, a lot of Palestinians were pushed out of the territory. With the Six
Day War in 1967, around three hundred thousand refugees flew away to
Jordan. Today, there are more than six millions of refugees who don't have
the right to go back to their land! On the other hand, as a Jewish state,
Israel welcomes any Jew from everywhere: Spain, Russia, Ethiopia... People
who have never been seen in Palestine! The question of the refugees is an
important element of the Palestinian demands that the Hamas claim.
The last point which contributed to the success of the Hamas is the
elimination within the Palestinian community of the elements used by
Israel, corrupted people, to bring information. A few ones were eliminated
physically but most of them - delinquent people, alcoholics or drug dealers
- were reintegrated by the social program of the Hamas. So the information
doesn't circulate anymore. This is very important. Israel had made a
corrupted society where everybody was against everybody and they exploited
that to build an information network and have a control over the
Palestinian resistance. This is a typical colonial mentality that the
British also had applied in Northern Ireland. Nothing new. But the Hamas
crushed that network and it's a big success against Israel.
Some people say Israel deliberately favored the rise of the Hamas. Is it true?
Absolutely not! There is no evidence on that. Israel tolerated Hamas,
hoping interpalestinian conflicts. They wanted to weaken the PLO and the
Fatah. But they didn't expect the quality, the ability and the organization
of the Hamas to develop in such a way. Every colonial power always
considers his subjects as naïve children.
How an Islamist movement went on so popular in Palestine?
Under the occupation of Gaza and the Palestinian areas, there is no
possibility for the Palestinian people to openly discuss or have a vision
about their future except in the mosque or in the university. Of course,
the Hamas was already active on the first place. But they also then
started, as any political group, to become dominant in student
organizations. The market is open for every party! So the Hamas recruited
brilliant young students who were well considered in the society because of
their dedication or their honesty. It was easy for the group to convince
them because they both want resistance. No big secret about it! Hamas spoke
what was in the heart of the population. With the most combative, the most
intelligent and the most highly educated elements of the society, Hamas
became a big organization.
How did the Palestinian authorities react to the evolution of the Hamas?
Authorities have been involved into corruption and a lot of scandals. Even
Palestinian journalists have condemned them for that. Arafat was a kind of
arbiter between the several factions and once he died, the contradiction
between Hamas and Fatah became antagonistic. Israel exploited those
disagreements and managed to use the Fatah to cut the popularity of the
Hamas in the political view. They were thinking that Hamas wouldn't accept
to participate to elections so they organized it quickly. Everybody was
surprised that the Hamas took part to those elections but nobody was really
worried as they were thinking that the Hamas would come with a very limited
dogmatic way of thinking and would be defeated by the major party. Against
all expectations, the Hamas made a coalition and presented a flexible
image, very far away from a fundamentalist organization. In fact, they wish
an Islamic state but the reality is different.
Will the Hamas put an Islamic regime in Palestine or not?
Well, an Islamic regime is the maximum program of the Hamas but they
couldn't apply it because on the ground, the organization is based on a
patriotic movement. We've got to consider the fact that after the brutal
Israeli war in Gaza, not only the Hamas was fighting but all the patriotic
forces on the ground, including Fatah. This aggression has unified
Palestinian people.
Can the Hamas change into a more progressive movement in alliance with
other movements? Yes, they can, because of the Israeli aggression. The idea
that the Hamas will create a society based on an Islamic pattern of
production is an illusion. It's impossible. In many ways, the Hamas looks
like the Hezbollah, which says: « Lebanon is a country with a big
diversity. We're just representing a fraction of it and our aim is to build
with all the Lebanese progressives a national independent economy. »
Finally, I would draw your attention over the fact that nobody asks the
question of Islamic state for some countries like Saudi Arabia for example!
What is the social economic program of the Hamas?
Their project is a capitalist economy with an important state intervention.
Let me notice than now, even the European conservatives want a state
intervention. If you look at Iran, it's an Islamic state where you've got
state intervention. But they refuse the domination from outside and want
the wealth from the oil to be distributed. About the Hamas, you've got to
know that it's not mostly his social program which had seduced the
Palestinians but the fact that this movement embodies the resistance. And
today, the resistance is the most important thing for the Palestinians.
What is the role of the woman according to the Hamas?
Their vision of the woman on paper and in the reality is different. Let me
explain. In Palestine, the situation is very difficult. The women have to
work to win their own bread and raise their children. Hamas could never
forbidden women to work and force them to go back home. Except a few rich
countries with oil, nobody thinks like that in the Arabic world. How could
Hamas put out of the society more than 50% of the most active elements of
the Palestinian community? In fact, some people in the West believe that
the women could be controlled as passive subjects and think they've got no
brain!
Of course, there are cultural differences between the Arabic world and the
West. These differences are not well understood because of some clichés.
Let me give you an example. In western bookshops, there are hundred of
magazines with naked women, blondes with big breast... Nobody says it is
disgusting and that the women on the covers should not been considered this
way. But when someone sees a woman wearing a headscarf, he speaks about
oppression! There is a kind of hypocrisy in the West. For example, in
Indonesia, the regime is installed since 1965 after a putsch marked by the
massacre of a million of communists. Most of the women now wear a
headscarf. But nobody speaks about them because this country produces oil
and is aligned with the West.
Why is the Hamas rejected in Europe?
Islam is not well received in Europe, which identifies itself to the
Christianity. There is a real rejection of the Islam contribution to the
development of the western civilization. So, as an Islamic group, the Hamas
is not well considered. But why does someone who's against the Zionism have
a problem with the Hamas? And why does the same person, who supports the
Irish cause, have no problem with a catholic organization? The cultural
difference explains that and we can observe that phenomenon. I'm just
coming back from Egypt and I could observe that when you cross the
Mediterranean Sea, you change of world, you change of way of thinking. I
don't blame the Europeans. They are marked by their education and the
mediatic propaganda. We are in a system where we always have to identify
some enemies to justify our existence. I think we must put things in
perspective.
For me, as a Marxist living in a western country, I have of course some
contradictions with the Hamas and the Hezbollah. I regret that the
resistance is led by a movement taking an inspiration in Islam, but that is
so. And for the moment, those contradictions are secondary. On the other
hand, I'm totally opposed with people like Abbas or Moubarak, who are laics
but who serve the United State. I'm reading the news in Arab, I know the
situation over there and I see the contradictions from a different point of
view than the European left.
Why does the European left not (openly) support the Palestinian resistance?
The problem with the European left is that she refuses to make a big
alliance against the imperialism, because of the Hamas, the women with
headscarf and all sorts of pretexts. In fact, they accept to get involved
in the big alliance of the Christians against the Islam. They go into the
"civilization war" set in motion by American ideologists. They are more
influenced than they believe. Why did the European left not get worked up
when the Christian Phalangists slaughtered in Lebanon? For my part, as a
laic, I've supported the Irish resistance against the British occupation
and if those Irish are Catholics, it doesn't disturb me. In fact, the
problem with the Europeans is that they have been educated in a
civilization that has prejudices against the Jews and the Muslims.
Why is the Palestinian question so crucial for the USA ?
Palestine is a very small place and became yet one of the biggest stakes in
the world for two reasons. First, the settler state created has to be
defended by imperialism powers, US and Great Britain, to be the most
dominant element the Middle East. This is a way to crush the revolutionary
democratic movement in the region. If you crush the Palestinian issue, you
prevent an alliance of the Arab world with all the lines of resistance in
Iraq, Lebanon, ... At the time of the Shah, Iran was doing the police in
the region. The United States had installed a military dictatorship to
serve their interests in the region. After Iran, it is Israel. One of the
most demonstrative examples of this practice is the revolution in northern
Yemen in the 60's. Some officials, helped by Egypt to install a democratic
republic in northern Yemen, led a coup. The cheick who was ruling Yemen ran
away in Saudi Arabia. The Britains organized troops against the republic to
crush the Arab nationalist movement and soldiers, trained by Israel, were
involved to fight against the liberation forces. Israel was or is also
participating as militias in Salvador, Sri-Lanka, Colombia,... In fact,
wherever United State is involved, Israel is involved.
The second reason is the importance of Jerusalem as a holy city. It's the
second important place for Islam. So this point mobilized all the Muslims
in the world. Jerusalem is also important for the Christian Palestinians.
Israel won't leave it. It would be considered as a victory for the
Palestinian and the Islam. And of course, Jerusalem is a strategic place,
on the border between Israel and the Cisjordania. So the question of that
city is an important element considering the perpetual expansion of Israel.
In fact, that state has no define border. They even don't have a
constitution so they've got the possibility to go on with the expansion.
By butchering Gaza, what is the message that Israel wants to send ?
The message is "Israel will be there forever, even with the nuclear weapon.
We can impose you what we want".
Will it work?
No because on the other side, there are combatants with an ability to
sacrifice, something that the Israelis have lost. With this attack, Israel
didn't obtain something on the feature. And the Hamas will get out
reinforced. Even in Cisjordania, people are saying that if they were
elections, they would vote for that party. In fact, those who resist always
win.
10th of February 2009
Posted on 03/02/2009 2:50 AM Comments (0)
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