By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I am not a supporter of Hamas but the bias in the US media’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza is incredible. I should remind the reader though that Hamas came to govern Gaza through an election that was considered to be very democratic by many world figures including former US president, Jimmy Carter and not all nations consider Hamas terrorists. Bolivia's Morales for instance has just declared Israel a terrorist state.
I am not a supporter of Hamas but the bias in the US media’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza is incredible. I should remind the reader though that Hamas came to govern Gaza through an election that was considered to be very democratic by many world figures including former US president, Jimmy Carter and not all nations consider Hamas terrorists. Bolivia's Morales for instance has just declared Israel a terrorist state.
I get the Wall Street Journal every morning and it is rare
that you see any pictures or any front/center page feature that would include
Hamas or show the devastation caused by the Israeli’s superior weaponry. But this weekend the WSJ has a front page
picture of Hamas military figures, heads covered to protect their identity from
being targeted by Israeli fire or future assassination and they are standing
over hooded figures on their knees about to be executed for being informers.
The caption beneath the image points out that these Hamas “militants”, they are never given a title
that indicates they are military personal because the US and its allies apply
the “terrorist” label to the Gaza
government. The caption explains that
Hamas executed 18 suspected informants Friday in public, in “crowded streets” the captions
reads. I assume these are the same “crowded streets” that the Israeli’s
fire their guided missiles into and drive their tanks through.
It’s a horrible thing to have to think about over morning
coffee but there is a war going on. albeit it a very one sided war, just do a body count---the US and Israel against occupants of a camp. But which military is it that doesn’t execute what they would call ”traitors” in wartime? All
militaries do it. But we are not
supposed to think of Hamas as having an army as they are simply a bunch of
terrorists. Americans would have no idea
of the extent to which Hamas has
provided social services and other important functions in the Zionists' largest outdoor
prison or that they were elected in part as a rejection of the Palestinian
Authority known to be a corrupt organization far too willing to make deals with
the US and Zionism.
It reminds me of the coverage given to the necklacing of
snitches by the freedom fighters under the South African Apartheid regime. This involved putting a tire soaked in
gasoline around the collaborators neck and then setting fire to it. There is violence from all sides during this
type of conflict but there are generally differences between the sides. One the
oppressor and aggressor, the other the victim of this aggression in all its
forms.
So we can’t look at violence without looking at who is
committing it and why; all are not equal. All military's execute traitors in
time of conflict.
In the movie, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the
Irish civil war, those resisting British occupation were forced to execute a
young guy that worked for a British landlord and was an informer. It was someone they all knew and
some they had grown up with, but the consequences of informants actions in times
like these are dire. I can’t imagine doing it but I have never been in the
position to have to consider it.
I just watched the movie Omar. It is about life in the
Occupied Territories, not Gaza, but it gives a real look into how informants
are cultivated; what the Zionist regime does to find informants. They arrest
hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinian men and young boys in the Occupied
Territories. They have loved ones and girlfriends and it is through the
occupiers’ ability to harm your children and those you love that they can turn
you in to an informant. I strongly recommend this film.
So we should not be fooled by the Wall Street Journal and the
US mass media trying to portray Hamas as any more brutal than any other
military organization and government in times of conflict and Gazans and all
Palestinians are the victims we need to remember.
Another little nugget of information in this weekend’s
Journal informs us that the US is considering air strikes in Syria against
ISIS, the most recent organization that Americans have to fear. Communists have
gone, Somali warlords are nowhere to be found, the nebulous al Qaeda has lost
favor, the Iranian Mullahs are on the back burner as they are on the same side
as the US re, the Sunni religious fanatics, the Taliban, whose officials were all
on the payroll of the US government until 1999 and the murderous African Bees
that were about to invade us have all been relieved of their duty and so ISIS is
now the greatest threat to the American way of life.
Ben Rhodes, who is Barack Obama’s deputy national security
adviser explains why we need to spend a few hundred billion dollars rooting out
ISIS in Syria: “If we see plotting against Americans, we see a threat to the US
emanating from anywhere, we stand ready to take action against that threat.” And this will be done even if national
sovereignty is breached. US imperialism has no respect for borders and national
sovereignty. I am just grateful our
government eliminated the threat from Grenada some years ago and Panama, and
the Congo and Chile and Somalia and Afghanistan and……..
So a journalist has been beheaded, an unpleasant thing for
sure. And religious fanatics are gaining
ground in Iraq and have done so in Syria.
Of course, the Baath Party to which Assad and Hussein belonged, was a
primarily a secular party. When I was in Iraq in 1971, the Iraqi's were kind to me. I saw women without facemasks and women were even in government. Hussein, with the
CIA’s help, maintained power through violence, much less violence I might add
than the US invasion has brought to the nation, and he rid the country of
communists, leftists, those fighting for democratic rights etc. with help from
the Pentagon. Some time later. the imbecile Bush calls for the Islamists to “bring ‘em on” and
bring em on they did. Tough talk from a
draft dodger.
So ISIS in Syria is a threat to America as is the beheading
of a journalist. We know this is the
case because Obama’s spokesperson says so.
With the beheading in mind Rhodes adds that, “We’ve made very clear time and time again that if you come after
Americans were going to come wherever you are, and that’s what’s going to guide
our planning in the days to come.” Any Muslim kills an American, we’ll bomb the
place no matter what your national origin or whose country you might be in at
the time.
This is not quite true of course as the number of people
on the planes that downed the World Trade Center buildings were Saudi’s. I
don’t think there was one Iraqi among them. No matter, a half million Iraqi’s
must die, their country bombed in to the stone-age and, most importantly, their
oil industry privatized. The Saudis, the
regime that has religious police, beheads people, flogs women in public for
going outside unaccompanied? Good guys
those Saudi’s.
But wait a damn minute here.
Isn’t the shooting of unarmed black men and youth almost on a daily
basis a “threat to America”? It's certainly a serious threat to the millions of young black American men. Isn’t
2.4 million incarcerated in prisons a threat to America? And what about the thousands that die each
year simply through lack of access to health care? Isn’t that a threat to the
social fabric of our society? The murder
of youth by the police, the slums, the crumbling infrastructure. Is this not a
threat to America?
Chase Madar commented on the militarization of the police in
his article on Tom Dispatch last December,
“…..campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, a $500,000,
18-ton, mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the
Afghan War and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to withstand ‘ballistic arms
fire, mine fields, IEDs, and nuclear, biological, and chemical environments.’”
Madar, The Criminalization of Everyday
Life 12-8-13
Just what we need, more armored vehicles in our neighborhoods.
Obama portrayed himself as the anti-war president. After all, these predatory wars are not
popular with the American people. The brunt of these wars in terms of personal
loss is born by a small section of US society.
But now the Wall Street Journal tells us, “Support for expanding US military strikes against the militants in
Syria is growing outside the administration.” Apparently Zalmay Khalilzad former US
ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan (plum jobs eh.) under Bush, Retired Marine
Corps general John Allen and Ryan Crocker (wonder if he’s related to the
banking family) US ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan under Obama are all “urging attacks”.
So “outside the
administration” doesn’t mean American workers and the middle class that
have been under assault for some time. This rather populous group of
Americans has not been so supportive of these corporate wars the US government
wages. The threat from ISIS is not that they will harm us on our way to work, it is that if these religious fanatics come to power
in one or more of the Middle East countries or even re-shapes the geographical
map as the British and League of Nations did, western capitalism will lose its
lucrative position with regards to oil as well as important political allies. Losing a journalist is of little consequence
to the likes of Dick Cheney or the US ruling class. Safeguarding profits, access to raw materials
and political power is what matters and the struggle for global dominance in this realm
will only intensify especially with regards to Russia and China.
The US ruling class, while the fanatics in ISIS are a bit
over the top, has no problem dealing with such extremists. The Saudi’s are notorious killers. The ruling class of Bahrain, a feudal
absolute monarchy really just staved off a movement for more democracy and an
end to religious discrimination in the presence of 30,000 US troops. I don’t have to remind readers of all the
murderous killers Washington has financed and armed. The Zionist assault on
Gaza and the theft and destruction of Palestinian land, homes and farms is made possible through US taxpayer support.
It’s up to us though.
The 1% is arming the police for an intensified war at home as they drive
our living standards further downward. The struggle of US imperialism to
preserve its global dominance will have to be paid for by US workers and the
middle class, the poor cannot sink much further in to poverty so prison is
always waiting for them. We can bet that
all urban centers have these huge, beefed up armories around them. If the cops in some tiny town in New
Hampshire have military style equipment we know the NYPD does.
These comments in the WSJ show very clearly what
spokespersons like Obama mean when they talk of a shift in position from forces
“outside of the administration”. They
mean sections of their class, of the 1%. If it was down to the vast majority of
Americans, we’d support a decent transportation system, an education system
free to all that works, health care, jobs and housing as opposed to another
military venture. We'd support real peace between workers of different nations, but only capitalists of different nations negotiate with each other, workers have no state and no independent global organizations; we have no voice.
US foreign policy is a disaster and a threat to world peace. US capitalism’s claim that ISIS is a threat to the American
way of life is phony. The 1% are concerned these religious fanatics will
threaten corporate profits and their plunder of the region. If ISIS, like the Saudi ruling class is
willing to share the loot, Washington will find a way to make friends.
2 comments:
A brilliant article Richard. Thank you. Sean.
A brilliant article Richard. Thank you. Sean.
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