Millions of people around the world marched in anti-war demonstrations, all saying that war is not a solution, not in Iraq’s case. Yet somebody in the US administration is beating the drums of war and refusing to hear the voices of wisdom around the world, somebody who has dual loyalties and a different plan all together, somebody who sees this war as act one in a bigger play. The American administration has been trying to build a case against the Iraqi regime highlighting its human rights record and its violation of UN resolutions. But what is appalling about American policy is that everything that they have accused the Iraqi regime of doing has been the hallmark of all Israeli administrations since its foundation. Occupation, killings, illegal detention, assassinations, civilian transfers, annexation of land, destruction of land and property, imprisonment without trial, torture, mass killings (Deir Yassin, Subra-Shatila, Jenin and Qana are the known cases) economic terror, murder of civilians, UN representatives and medical workers.
This impressive record has the blessing of the US government, which supplies Israel with military, economic, political and intelligence aid.
US monetary aid to Israel totals $135 billion, an appalling figure considering the number of Israeli citizens (6 million). What is to follow is a grandiose plan to restructure the entire Middle East, its political systems, values and geography.
These visions come from Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others who put Israel’s interests above everything else.
People of this dubious caliber nonetheless go on blathering about reforms, freedom, and liberalization in the Middle East. God knows that the region needs it, as so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals as well as ordinary people have been saying for so long. But who appointed these characters as spokesmen for progress? And what gives them the right to pontificate in so shameless a manner when there are already so many injustices and abuses in their own country to be fixed?
Richard Perle is about as unqualified an individual as it is imaginable to be on the subjects of freedom and democracy, having been an election consultant to Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing administration from 1996-99, a time when he advised the extremist Israelis to cancel any and all peace plans, to annex the West Bank and Gaza, and to exile as many Palestinians as possible.
Now this man is talking about introducing democracy to the Middle East and getting away with it, without the faintest objection from any of the media folk who give him airtime on global television.
The Palestinian land today is witnessing mass famine; there is a health crisis of unimaginable proportions; there are civilians dying at an average of 20 people a week; the economy has been destroyed; hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are jobless, and cannot study or move about as curfews and at least 300 barricades impede their regular lives.
Homes are blown up or bulldozed on a regular basis. And all of it is done with US equipment, US political support and US financing.
Bush has declared that Sharon — a war criminal and a mass murderer by any standard — is a man of peace. That is like spitting on the graves of innocent Palestinians. If there is a moral argument for Saddam’s removal, there is a stronger one for the removal of Ariel Sharon.
Opinion 26 February 2003
