Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Supreme Leader's Crocodile Tears for Gazza

As usual, the Supreme Leader in Iran is quick to exploit what happened on the IHH organised flotilla to Gazza for his own power hungry agenda and is already calling for another such event, but as I have always said, if you kill, imprison and rape your own citizens you will not liberate anyone else either. Fortunately not all the Palestinians are fooled by the Supreme Leader's crocodile tears either. Below is a statement I received from Palestinian Human Rights campaigner, Ahlam Akram, regarding the recent executions in Iran:

'As a peace and human rights campaigner of Palestinian origin .. I do not believe that the existing regime in Iran is a representative of the Iranian aspiration to play a positive role for global peace and harmony . The inflammatory language the regime uses, does not reflect the kindness and the wonderful ability of Iranians to express their views and reach others in peaceful ways to resolve any conflict.
Worst are the executions the regime is committing against his own citizens without proper trials for demanding their rights of freedom of expression.
Such a regime that is not using the right path to protect his peoples interest and rights in the global village, will not be able to help Palestinians or get international support to their rightful non violence struggle to end the occupation and put an end to the conflict ..

Ahlam AKram
'

Meanwhile the flotilla news overshadowed Iranian FM Mottaki's trip to the Europen parliament. Most Iranian opposition outside Iran seemed to have forgotten about Mottaki's trip and were concentrating on the Gazza related news!

15 comments:

Live News said...

Excellent blog.

Fancy the content I have seen so far and I am your regular reader of your blog.

I am very much interested in adding http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/ in my blog http://news-updations.blogspot.com/.

I am pleased to see my blog in your blog list.

I would like to know whether you are interested in adding my blog in your blog list.

Hope to see a positive reply.

Thanks for visiting my blog as well !

Waiting for your reply friend !!!!!

Unknown said...

I thought "Gazza" was a football player. Anyway:

راستی‌ گیره کوسه خطرناک هست

گاز سوسمار زورمندتر است

Waybec said...

My thoughts exactly! Like I've said before, you can't grandstand against the blatant wrongs of this world from a position of tyranny. Once again we get the Supreme Leader of cynical PR and abhorant hypocrisy! If there was a real proper mechanicism of objective justice in his world, then both Netanyahu and Khamanei would be standing in the dock together by now!

Jared Israel said...

Regarding Ahlam Akram's remarks, Israel does not occupy Gaza.

Israel pulled out of Gaza -- meaning, the few thousands Jews who lived there were expelled by Israel, and Israel removed its troops, who had been protecting them - five years ago. They left behind a fabulous array of small industries, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, especially the best greenhouses, which the liberation-minded mobs promptly destroyed.

The problem for Arabs living in Gaza is not occupation; it is politics and war. Immediately after the pullout, leaders of both factions started lobbing rockets into southern Israel. (As by the way I and others said would, obviously, happen.)

What would become of a small territory that sent THOUSANDS of rockets into any neighboring European state? Said territory would be obliterated. Despite THOUSANDS of rockets, Gaza is still there; Israel still supplies most of its electricity; still lets an immense line of trucks bring its residents aid (it is probably the most aided area on earth), after checking to prevent smuggling of weapons. And Israel still treats people from Gaza who have serious medical problems in its superb hospitals, despite reasonable fear that they will blow themselves up in order to wipe out some of those "occupiers."

I read a summary of Ahlam Akram's remarks at a WAF conference rhttp://www.ffipp-uk.org/foto_papers/waf.htm She refers to supposed Israeli occupation of Palestine, which she essentially blames for the oppression of women in Arab society! Which means, to put things in plain English: it's the Jews' fault.

What does it mean in the Arab world to speak of "the occupation of Palestine"? It means to bemoan "The Catastrophe" -- the existence of the Jewish state, in this recently mystified area. (I.e., the mystification of 'Palestine,' a Roman name and a League of Nations mandate for a Jewish home, is a modern phenomenon with demagogic goals.)

By bowing to this discourse, Akram surrenders before the fight. The reason the Islamists HATE Israel is precisely because Israel represents an oasis of modernity in a sea of monstrous oppression, particularly of women. The treatment of women - from verbal-psychological abuse (just as harmful as physical), to actual physical abuse, to control of actions, so that the more liberal mysoginists say they PERMIT women to do this or that -- is ILLEGAL in Israel. The elimination of Israel would herald an immense increase in the oppression of women, just as happened to women in gaza, after the Israelis pulled out.

As long as those fighting Islamic extremism join in the scapegoating of Israel, they will NEVER beat the Islamists. Never. Might as well take up a relaxing hobby.

(continued)

Jared Israel said...

(Continuation)

As for current events, the IHH staged a provocation with three goals:

1) Strengthening Erdogan vs. the secular majority and the military in Turkey, trying to force them to join in attacking Israel, meaning, basically, to submit;

2) Smearing Israel worldwide, since everywhere the attack on Israel is used to promote terrible politics;

3) Providing a diverting counter-weight to the monstrous repression in Iran, and reasserting the notion that fighting for justice MEANS supporting Islamism, a notion the Iranian people have so splendidly trashed.

Hamas equals the IR leaders in the public mind. (And as Iranians know -- know better than they would like to know -- Hamas equals the IR leaders on the streets of Tehran.)

The idea is to create the impression that all sides are equally bad -- the IR Islamists may go overboard, but they are no worse than those Israelis, who monstrously defend themselves after finding that they have rappelled into an Islamist lynch mob.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI regarding the lynch mob

Also See http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=2323
-- an al Jazeera Arabic language clip to which English captions have been added. It shows organizers, prior to the incident, preparing passengers to lynch IDF sailors, by singing songs about killing Jews, while a woman passenger states, in the glazed-hysterical tones of a fanatic, "We are going to have one of two good outcomes: martyrdom or reaching Gaza." These were BASIJ.

Why was this incident staged June 1? Because the IHH -- who despite having 500 supporters on that boat still couldn't successfully lynch a dozen Israelis -- again, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI the images could not be more contradictory to the current anti-Israel hysteria -- the IHH was also not competent enough to make sure the flotilla reached Gaza waters on June 12.

Still, May 31 was pretty close. They, and all the Western leaders hysterically denouncing Israel, a thousand times harder than their feeble criticisms of the IR, hope to divert the public from Iran.

They want Iranian opposition activists to join in the attack on Israel, thus throwing in the towel.

Jared Israel said...

Two more points:

1) I understand that when Potkin writes "The Supreme Leader's Crocodile Tears for Gazza"" he means that Khamenei doesn't care one bit about ordinary Arabs.

True - but they are not crocodile tears. They are tears of gratitude to Hamas and the IHH for this splendid diversion. And truly, Khamenei is wise.

2) Regarding my point that the key purpose of this provocation is to divert attention, and provide a counter-weight to, IR repression -- note that, having gotten their arrival date wrong, the IHH is sending more ships. With sufficient attempts, even the IHH may achieve a direct on the 12th.

Hidden Author said...

Ahlam Akram aside, many if not most Palestinians embrace the Supreme Leader of Iran not in spite of his brutality but because of it. If he can be so cruel to his Iranian opponents, imagine how cruel he will be should his forces ever conquer the foreign, infidel Israelis! Surely he would fulfill the Palestinian hope that the Israelis be killed, men, women and children until they are "driven into the sea"!

And indeed if the European colonialists had cleared an Iranian province of its population and put in their own, then Iranians like yourself would hope that the extreme of brutality exhibited by the mullahs be applied to the colonials. After all, you already describe the army of the Islamic Republic as liberators with regard to their role in the Iran-Iraq War.

So to conclude the Palestinians know of the mullahs' brutality and embrace their support precisely for this reason!

Jared Israel said...

To hidden author: No need to hide from history.

1) Israeli independence was not a European project, as you imply. At the time of the UN vote on partition, the only major power strongly backing Israel's creation was the USSR. The most bitter major opponent was the UK, the creator of the Arab League. The Nation Magazine (now violently anti-Israel) published a slew of leaked intelligence documents proving that the UK was organizing massive Arab terror (assisting and coordinating Arab League forces that infiltrated from outside the Palestine Mandate Territory prior to the 1948 AL invasion) in an effort to demoralize and drive out the Jews.

2) The Jews didn't drive Arabs off the land. They bought land, mostly waste, from Arab landowners. Their famous industry improved the economy, allowing more Arabs to move into Palestine. The war to drive someone out was the British-condoned Arab League invasion of '48, whose declared goal was to kill the Jews, both those whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years, and those who had bought land as part of the Zionist project. During the war, the Arab invaders who did most of the fighting (local Arabs were ordered by the invaders to leave, to clear the field for slaughter) wiped out significant Jewish villages, built on former wasteland, in areas now deemed 100% Arab.

3) Regarding how Arabs feel about the IR (Islamic Regime) obviously there are terrible problems of Nazi-type indoctrination of the population by all the major Arab factions in the West Bank and Gaza. Stuff straight out of Der Stuermer's Nazi hate sheet flows like BP oil. This has a terrible effect, of course. The question is: what would these people be like absent this indoctrination, not to mention the small detail that whenever an Arab implies he would like to live in peace with Jews, he is murdered as a collaborator.

We know that many of the recent IR murderer-enforcers have been Arab terrorists imported from the territories and Lebanon. Their monstrous brutality tells us something about how they deal with their own people. Food for thought.

barmakid said...

Jared,

This event is more important than Israel and Palestine.

This is about international law and its violation. Israel is eschewing hundreds of years of established international maritime law for the sake of its own interest. (which, in this case, it wasn't even really in their own interest to do so).

Now, I am aware of the futility of international law, but to blatantly disregard it without being in a state of conventional warfare is disastrous to the international precedent set this far.

Which is why nearly every single head of state decried the actions of the Israeli state.

Again, this is not simply about the IHH and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I wholly disagree with Jared's statement that, "They want Iranian opposition activists to join in the attack on Israel, thus throwing in the towel."

Far from it. If expat opposition groups cede this issue to the IRI they are losing an opportunity to take away one of the most potent issues the IRI uses to its advantage. And many Palestinians know this, yet they are alone so they still look to the IRI for moral support. Let's make them look elsewhere while at the same time taking away one the IRI's most influential levers of power.

We would not be "throwing in the towel" but stealing "the towel" from them!

This Palestinian-Israeli conflict is important to many non-Arabs and non-Jews; it's an opportunity to mobilize them as well - while at the same time launching a PR campaign to undercut the IRI's influence by exposing them as expedient actors as opposed to benign caretakers of the oppressed Palestinians.

And Jared, you speak of this as it was a conspiracy by the IRI to distract opposition expats. You couldn't be speaking about the Iranian population in Iran itself being distracted because the hoi polloi in Iran could give two-shits about the Palestinian-Israeli affair.

If anything could distract them it's the nuclear issue - not Palestine.

This is not an IRI conspiracy man. This is a calculated attempt by the IHH to bring public attention to the blockade - and it worked.

Now you have multiple heads of state calling for an end to the blockade.

I don't understand why people constantly want to take the focus off of oppressed people. Your comments, Jared, show utter disregard for the plight and squalor in which these people in Gaza live in.

It goes both ways: If you scream about the plight of Palestinians and not that of Iranians struggling to overcome their own oppressors, you are hypocritical. If you hoot and holler about IRI aggression and oppression and not that of Israeli aggression and oppression, you are hypocritical.

So please, don't act like you care about my people in Iran if you can't even bring yourself to sympathize with another group of oppressed people. I will not stay quiet when you are seemingly using my people as a means to achieve a political end that has nothing to do with bettering their lives, but to depose a government that you find to be a threat to Israel or otherwise.

If you can't sympathize with the people of Gaza, then you can't even come close to sympathizing with my people.

continued...

barmakid said...

continuation...

As to the points you enumerated:

1. This is an outcome, not a deliberate calculation - and secondly, it's the secular opposition groups that want to muffle the freedom of expression in Turkey by muffling Islamic expression. It's not Erdogan who is trying to make Turkey more Islamist - Turks would never have that. They, along with Erdogan, worship Ataturk and his founding principles.

And please remember, Erdogan was democratically elected.

2. Israel smears itself with its own actions just as Hamas does when they launch rockets. They could have entirely avoided this situation - so it wasn't so much IHH brilliance as it was Israeli negligence and disregard. (because no one would ever be so foolish as to think the IHH could out-wit Israel)

3. This event had nothing to do with Iran at its inception - only it's aftermath presented opportunities for political expediency. And as for the notion that they wanted to create the perception that fighting for justice must be done via Islam - well, the only reason they would even be able to attain such an outcome is because NO ONE ELSE IS OFFERING THEM SUPPORT.

A former Israeli minister wrote an editorial in the NYT yesterday saying you can't fight an idea with force. You have to fight an idea with an even better idea.

And the better idea is not to cede this issue (that many non-Semitic people hold dear to their hearts) to oppressors like Khamenei and radical mullahs - it's to take it away from them and let the world (as well as Palestinians) know that the oppressed shouldn't depend on other oppressors to help them.

In the end, this isn't about Israelis, Iranians, or Palestinains - it's about the condition in which some human beings live.

And every oppressed people deserve the lime-light every now and again - this time the Palestinians in Gaza found their best chance to get rid of this inhumane blockade that has lasted for 4yrs without any positive result to Israeli security.

Israel knows it, Tony Blair knows it, David Cameron knows it, Burlesconi knows it, Erdogan knows it, Sarkozy knows it, - I mean, how many other politicians of different stripes and colors do you need to tell you that what is happening in Gaza is critical.

And that they deserve attention just like Iranians do - and that their livelihoods don't fall victim to ideological political quarrels.

To take sides on this issue is to exacerbate the issue.

And you, my friend, are not only exacerbating the issue you are exaggerating it to conform to your own presuppositions of Islamist calculation - just like anti-Israelis do with every action Israel takes.

PEace,
barmakid

Hidden Author said...

JI: To hidden author: No need to hide from history.

HA: To Jared Israel: Let me explain myself--I hope it doesn't give a brain hemorrhage the size of Israel!

JI: 1) Israeli independence was not a European project, as you imply. At the time of the UN vote on partition, the only major power strongly backing Israel's creation was the USSR. The most bitter major opponent was the UK, the creator of the Arab League. The Nation Magazine (now violently anti-Israel) published a slew of leaked intelligence documents proving that the UK was organizing massive Arab terror (assisting and coordinating Arab League forces that infiltrated from outside the Palestine Mandate Territory prior to the 1948 AL invasion) in an effort to demoralize and drive out the Jews.

HA: Regardless of whether they had sponsorship from an European empire, many of the Zionists came from Europe. Thus--and I am explaining the matter from the standpoint of the Palestinians--the Zionists were Europeans.

Hidden Author said...

JI: 2) The Jews didn't drive Arabs off the land. They bought land, mostly waste, from Arab landowners. Their famous industry improved the economy, allowing more Arabs to move into Palestine. The war to drive someone out was the British-condoned Arab League invasion of '48, whose declared goal was to kill the Jews, both those whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years, and those who had bought land as part of the Zionist project. During the war, the Arab invaders who did most of the fighting (local Arabs were ordered by the invaders to leave, to clear the field for slaughter) wiped out significant Jewish villages, built on former wasteland, in areas now deemed 100% Arab.

HA: The history of the region is incredibly complicated. You heard of the Crusades, right? Well, the Crusader settlers did not displace the native population--they ruled it. They ruled out of the towns (which obviously had some people) which lived off the farm produce of an even larger rural population. So there was always a population of sorts, even if not the largest in the world, in the Holy Land.

What happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that the Palestinians descended from the hilltops into the valleys and coastal lowlands. There the existing malarial swamps and desert wastes were transformed by development. Some was led by Jews, some by the Turks and British, and some by the Arabs themselves in order to integrate themselves into the world market.

The role of the Jews was contradictory. The Jews of the First Aliyah set themselves up as landlords and did indeed employ Arab labor for their development projects. But the Jews of the Second Aliyah advocated avoda ivrit (Jewish labor) as an important principle of Zionism and led campaigns to have Jewish employers (such as farmers) fire their Arab laborers and hire Jews. And there were of course some Arabs that came into the mix from outside the Holy Land.

Hidden Author said...

JI: 3) Regarding how Arabs feel about the IR (Islamic Regime) obviously there are terrible problems of Nazi-type indoctrination of the population by all the major Arab factions in the West Bank and Gaza. Stuff straight out of Der Stuermer's Nazi hate sheet flows like BP oil. This has a terrible effect, of course. The question is: what would these people be like absent this indoctrination, not to mention the small detail that whenever an Arab implies he would like to live in peace with Jews, he is murdered as a collaborator.

We know that many of the recent IR murderer-enforcers have been Arab terrorists imported from the territories and Lebanon. Their monstrous brutality tells us something about how they deal with their own people. Food for thought.

HA: It's funny how naive the Socialist Zionists are. They think that Arab opposition is created by propaganda and can therefore be countered by hasbara and better living conditions.

But the right-wing Zionists knew better. Jabotinsky warned that no people will yield their home to a conqueror no matter how benevolent the conqueror until they are thoroughly defeated. Kahane noted that the Arabs in the Holy Land will not renounce their desire for self-determination just because Zionist rule allowed them ownership of indoor toilets! Kahane also noted that when European imperialists justified their colonialism by noting the transformation of deserts into gardens, the natives would say, "But it was our desert and now it is your garden!"

So no matter how benevolent occupation can be, the Palestinians will resist. Also the refugees want to return to the land of their forefathers just like the early Zionists did! True, most Palestinians would emigrate if they had the chance just like most Jews chose America over Eretz Yisrael when fleeing the pogroms of Tsarist Russia. But those Palestinians who choose to fight will inevitably fight for return to the land of their forefathers and self-determination. Just like any other people.

Note though that I am not 100% pro-Arab. I understand that the Zionists no matter how much they frame the conflict as between foreign Arabs and themselves still bar the return of the refugees. Because in their hearts they knew that their biggest threat came from said refugees. And since I would not approve of being slaughtered with my family, I can understand how the Zionists operating from the same premise continue to bar the return of the refugees. I know that in fact Israel has been willing to negotiate away anything but the integrity of itself as a Jewish state! Because they want a sanctuary in which they can live!

So I understand the merit of the Zionist position. Genocide is bad especially when you and yours are the victim! But I also understand the position of the Palestinians. It's a position that the right-wing Zionists predicted. And so far the right-wing Zionists have right!

Waybec said...

P.s. Well are digesting all the diverse and considered posts on this subject Potkin, I guess the only thing you can say is that "Religion is Satan's greatest success!"

Jared Israel said...

That Jabotinsky said something rarely makes it true. He and Kahane, both of whom almost surely worked for one or more Western secret services (the more the better), often said things intended to undermine decent people who wanted to forge united struggle against establishment enemies, something we see frequently on the Internet.

The *creation* of the supposedly 'intractable' Arab-Jewish conflict was in fact a European project, particularly a UK project, following the UK colonialists' methods everywhere, and, as elsewhere, they fomented Islamic extremism to keep down progressive nationalism, with "keep down" often meaning kill. As has been the case, by the way in Iran.

An eyewitness to the creation of Arab fascism in Palestine by the UK is quoted here

http://emperor.vwh.net/history/br.htm#vayo

I am not a socialist Zionist. I am a left wing socialist, but not a Zionist at all, except in the current ridiculous sense that anyone who now says Israel has a right to exist, and refutes lies about it, is called a Zionist. (For years I was anti-Israel, until I learned the facts, so changed my mind.)

If I am a Zionist, I am also an Iranian nationalist. Not to mention a conservative Venezuelan. With all the hats "Hidden Author" would force me to wear, I fear I won't get finished in time for dinner.

In fact, in the Arab attack on Israel in 1948, the fascist attackers NEVER claimed that Jews had stolen land. They said Jews had no right to live, period.

The British organized the attack on the Jews because a) it was convenient, since modern fascism is based on whacky anti-Jewish racist theories, and they wanted a fascist movement among Arabs, so that they could maintain power, even if indirectly -- hence the British put Hajj Amin Al Husseini, the Arab fascist in power and b) because Jews carry the terrible virus of MODERN IDEAS, which end up in PROGRESSIVE nationalism, which is what the British wanted to defeat.

Contrary to the views "Hidden Author" imputes to me, I do not think Arab fascism can be eliminated by kindness and good living (which indeed Israel has provided Arabs, better than anywhere else in the Middle East.) These are ALWAYS proper because they define what one is. (That is, when one act frivolously cruel, one turns oneself into a monster. Thus, when Israeli hospitals treat 70 Gazans a day, they are doing the right thing.)

I believe in combining kind treatment, when possible, which expresses my desire to be a decent human, with destroying fascism, *physically.* Get my drift?

I think Israel should go into Gaza, and DESTROY the Hamas apparatus, and long ago should have destroyed the PLO, instead of paying their 'policemen's' salaries, as they have done. My theory is: if you are kind to the vicious, sooner or later you will be vicious to the kind. Though I have never read a page of the Talmud, I am told, remarkably, that it agrees with my theory. :-)

I oppose EVER making racist statements or believing racist beliefs or acting on racism, (as right wing Israelis have been known to do), and I also oppose fighting fascism with half measures, as left wing Israelis almost always do, when they are not trying to soothe fascists out of their fascism.

My model is that greatest man of the modern world, Abe Lincoln, in his conduct of the US Civil War, which Iranians would do well to study, because the IR is not so different from the slave power structure, and because in order to win, the Iranian people must do to the IR power structure what Lincoln did to the confederate power structure.

If you are gentle to the brutal, sooner or later you will be brutal to the gentle.