American editorial commentators, along with talk show pundits (who never cease to prove to us, week in, week out, that talk is cheap) have gone berserk berating Syrian President Bashar Assad, for making what they called “racist” remarks about Jews during the pope’s visit to Damascus last week.

President Assad, for starters, equated Zionism with Nazism, that is, he defined Zionism as a form of racism whose implementation was accompanied, like Nazism had been before it, by brutal massacres of civilians, expansionism by military force, violation of international law, and ethnic separatism.

Why is everybody getting on his high horse here? President Assad was not the first world leader — Arab or otherwise — to equate Zionism with racism.

For close to two decades, this notion was on the books, formalized in a UN resolution passed by an overwhelming majority of the member states at the General Assembly, and was revoked only after the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, when it was assumed that Arabs and Jews were now well on their way to becoming “peace partners.”

Arabs in particular, who have suffered grievously at the hands of Zionism over the last 80 years, and who know it first hand, have been reminding the world of that equation ever since 1948. Nothing new here in the Syrian leader’s remarks.

It is uncomfortable for Jews, and for supporters of Israel, to hear that, but there you have it, it is a fact — Zionism, like it or not, has embraced both the ideology and tactics of Zionism, and if there is a difference here between the two ideologies, the difference is in degree, not in kind.

Zionists have starved people, expropriated their land, robbed them of their resources, occupied them, demolished their homes, bombed them mercilessly, vindictively uprooted their trees, orchards and vineyards, inflicted collective punishment on them, put them under siege, expelled them en masse, pauperized them, and humiliated them. Equally egregious was how Zionists were able to transplant a racist ideology from Europe — at a time when racism in Europe was fashionable — to the very heartland of the Arab world, imposing it on native peoples by force of arms.

A major building block of Zionism, like that of Zionism, is what Germans used to call “lebensraum”, or territorial expansion. Yet another is the inherent superiority of Jews over non-Jews, again a notion not alien to Nazis, who believed that the “Aryan race” is to be exalted over others and is entitled to privileges not to be accorded lower species of men. For how would you explain the insistence of Zionism on the Jewish exclusivity of the entity they established in our part of the world, whereby Jews from Brooklyn, Moscow or Kiev, for example, who had never set foot in Palestine before, are entitled to settle there (and “settle” is indeed a suggestive term here) but Palestinian refugees who had been born in Palestine, whose culture, history and identity are anchored there, can not return?

If this is not nazism going by a different name, I don’t know what it is.

These American commentators also took the young Syrian president to task for saying that Jews betrayed Jesus and plotted to assassinate the Prophet. My knowledge of that time in history is sketchy, and I leave that to historians to untangle. Moreover, I don’t find that notion of great relevance to our modern era. But I can bear witness to what Zionists have done to me personally, that would attest to how racism is inherent to their movement and brutality is a function of their character.

Look at it this way: They expelled all members of my family from Haifa, their ancestral city, in 1948, and then gave their house to an East European Jewish family to move into.

I know who is living there now because I visited Haifa, several years ago — thanks to my American passport — and knocked on the front door of that very house, asking to be allowed to look around, just look around, but I was turned down and, in effect, told to “go away.” That incident to me was an embodiment of what Zionism is all about — they want those Palestinians, whom they had expelled, robbed and relegated to a world of destitution, to “go away.” Racism? Yes, with a snarl.

Truth be told, Palestinians are not fighting these people because they happen to be Jews. Arabs do not have a tradition of anti-Semitism, and that’s why where you find Arab anti-Semites (who are Israel’s own creation) you find them having to appropriate anti-Semitic literature from Europe because this kind of literature has never existed in Arab lands.

Palestinians, rather, are fighting these people because, very simply, they are brutal colonists, armed with a racist ideology, and hell-bent on conquest. It would not have mattered, in other words, if these people had been Dutch Catholic, Jehovah Witnesses, Southern Baptists, Scottish Anglicans or what have you. The fight against them would have been just as equally relentless. Their religion and ethnic identity are of no concern in this context.

Have the Israelis done all those horrendous things in Palestine, and elsewhere in the Arab world, because they were Jews? I doubt it very much indeed. They have done what they have done — most of it unpardonable and unspeakable — because they have opted to embrace a racist ideology that has brutalized them and, after all these years, debased their humanity.

No great religion, including Judaism, and no ethnic identity, including Jewishness, comes packaged with a book of instructions telling folk to go out there and kill and ravage weaker human communities. Zionism, however, like Nazism, does. And there’s the rub.

 

Why US was kicked out of rights body

Dr. Asem Hamdan

The United States is reaping the bitter harvest of the double standards it continues to follow in international relations, especially with regard to the Arab and Muslim world. The world ody delivered a painful blow to the White House by kicking America out of the UN Human Rights Commission — a seat held by Washington since the inception of the commission.

It must have been a great shock to President George Bush that the humiliating experience came from an organization more American in its identity and its sources of funding. The commission was never a body that functioned without fear or favor or with transparency while addressing the world’s flash points, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. Washington tried its best to make the commission distance itself from addressing this conflict

The Americans know, more than anybody else, the reasons behind this expulsion but are trying arrogantly to deflect world attention away from the real issues.

The US has sought to weaken the European role on world stage by opposing the new European currency, the euro. It applied pressure on its stronger ally in the continent — Britain — so that it refused to join the euro and retained own currency, the sterling pound. Although the British in the past used to hold referendums to decide matters concerning Europe, as was the case in the seventies with regard to joining the European Common Market, the two major political parties did not choose such an option in the case of the euro. Even if the ruling Labor Party of Tony Blair wins re-election it will not dare to raise the issue or include it in its main agenda for fear of inviting American anger.

US attempts to undermine the European role by seeking to drive a wedge among its member countries are ably assisted by such countries as Britain, Canada, Holland and New Zealand which share with Washington its repugnant colonial and imperialistic vision. France, on the other hand, has always adopted a tough position rejecting American hegemony, particularly in the area of culture. Despite France’s positive role and its awareness of the effect narrow-minded and selective American approach would have on international issues, the French position is yet to translate into a rejectionist front within the European Union that seeks to end American arrogance. 

Third World countries have suffered from the selective criteria applied by the United States which declares war against terrorism while sheltering the biggest racist, fascist, terrorist regime ever found on Earth —  Israel. The US not only continue to supply this barbaric entity lethal weapons that kill babies and innocent Palestinian men and women, but works to punish anyone who dares to point a finger or speak out against the fascist nature of this regime. See the storm that followed when Syrian President Bashar Assad raised his voice loud and clear telling the plain truth that Zionism has surpassed Nazism in its brutality.

The US creates fictitious enemies to justify building its missile defense system while throwing away agreements already signed with the former Soviet Union in the seventies including SALT 2 and insisting on violating the airspace of other countries as in the case of China. It is obvious that the Bush administration is committing blunders in almost every sphere of foreign policy — from Europe, through Russia and China and ending with Washington’s admiration for and acquiescence in the policies of Ariel Sharon, an international terrorist and butcher.