Terrorists vs Criminals – Just An Opinion
Posted on February 18, 2012 by Marivel Guzman
Who are The Terrorists? – Who are the Criminals?
In small countries or third world countries the corruption is rampant, disproportionate and selective.
You find corruption in every level of society, but the more damaging is the Government Corruption.
The bribes are every day offered and accepted for the more minimal services and the big bribes are common in the upper levels of Government, being to acquire a good position in a bureaucratic job, tor get government juicy contracts, off course on that the Western rich countries champion the the little poor countries (Halliburton and Black water come to mind)
These can be considered small crimes, but the BIG Crimes are being committed between Countries, on the top executive levels of power.
These Criminal Enterprises are committing unspeakable terrorists acts to inflict fear, these shadow entities are deep nested inside the government apparatus, financed by powerful lobbyists firms that serve various branches of the International Cartel of Banksters and War Complex Machine, all under the umbrella of the government they serve.
Every one is using the term “terrorist” very loose, since Bush and Company started their “War in Terror”, the whole world have jumped into the terror wagon rhetoric speech, without realizing that every body have caught these infectious social diseases called “passive syndrome response and passive aggressive behavior”, where fear is used to generate a response to a premeditated event. The word TERROR, AND TERRORIST are the target words that generate the behavior expected by the planners of the program.
A criminal person is not precisely a terrorist, and a terrorist is not precisely a criminal person.
There is a significant distance between a person committing a simple crime and a terrorist committing a crime, even thought booth acts involving some amount of violence, not the two are the same.
A terror act is intended to inflict a psychological traumatic experience to the target individuals or group of individuals.
A criminal act is intended to terminate life, or to gain some personal or financial benefit from the act.
Now days the Governments are using this confusion to advance in the agendas set up by the entities that work under the secrecy and protected by the money they control.
Whole countries are being victims of their own government programs of control. In the US congress is in the dark of many operations carry out by the Department of Defense and its millitary private contractors which are mercenaries in every sense of the word.
The whole criminal code in many countries have been updated to fit their new mechanism of a global stage and to get rid of unwanted individuals, or to cripple their abilities to perform in society.
The cooperation between countries to “Fight Terrorism” is just a tool that have severed the sovereignty of many Nations.
The Globalists and its Agenda is moving to control the whole world, already divided like a pie in four regions; European Union, North American Union, African Union and Arab League of Nations.
Munich 72, 11 Israeli Olympic Players Sacrificed
Posted on May 17, 2012 by Akashma Online News
There are always 2 sides to the story, On September 6, 1972 in the quarters of the Israeli Olympic Team another story was being played out. In an attempt to pressure Israel to release 200 Palestinians prisoners held in Israel jails, Palestinian Resistance Movement known as Black September have planned to exchange the Olympic hostages for their Nationals in Israeli Jails.
The German Government felt that was their duty to resolve the kidnapping issue, there were two points that needs to be noted:
- First -For years Germany was being made feel guilty after a long “Guilty PR campaign”, the actions of Adolph Hitler have followed every German until now to feel guilty of what is known as the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War, where millions of European Civilians died, in one of the worse massacres that humanity know of.
- Second- Germany was the host country of the Munich Olympic Games 72.
After two days of negotiations, where the Palestinian Group have refused the offers of money or security for their persons, their only goal was the liberation of 200 Palestinians Resistance Fighters, and nothing else, finally on September 6 and after arduous negotiations, The German Government agreed to provide an airplane to take them to a friendly country and 3 helicopters to transport them to the air field of Furstenfeldbruck military airbase, and the Promise form the Israel Government to release the prisoners.
Now that the world knows, the way Israel operates, its deceitful practices, it’s lack of seriousness on negotiations, with unfulfilled promises and it’s complete neglect of Palestinians rights, we can get to the conclusion that Israel in Munich 72, never intended to liberate the prisoners, the fact that the German police start shooting at the Palestinians and hostages on Israel Orders tell us that the operation and negotiations to liberate the hostages, was a false flag operation of PR campaign from part of Israel to demonize more the Palestinian Resistance Movement in an attempt to steal more land with impunity and to kill Palestinians with the complete assurance that the world will hate the “Palestinians as terrorists”…
Witnesses at the airport said the shooting began when police snipers opened fire on the militants. You have to recreate in your mind the situation in the airport, the militants and hostages were in the same cabin of the helicopters, meaning that the police was not ensuring the lives of the hostages.
According to witnesses, the police started shooting at the helicopters as soon as they touch ground, and “the news were already circulating in the Press that the Terrorists have blown up the Helicopter with the hostages inside, which was dismissed later on.
News of the deaths was confirmed at 0310 pm German Time, contradicting an earlier announcement by a Munich police officer that all the hostages had been released and four of the kidnappers captured. All the Israeli PR machine was working full time, disseminating debunking information on the events.
German authorities agreed to demands by the Palestinians to supply them with an airplane, and provided three helicopters to take them to the airport.
The gun battle started almost immediately after the helicopters landed at the airport.
Bavarian Minister of the Interior Bruno Merk confirmed Munich’s police chief had given the order to open fire. BBC, September 6, Munich 72
After the events of September 1972, Golda Meir authorized the formation of Mossad directed covert action teams to find and assassinate those individuals responsible for the attack on the Israeli athletes in Munich.
Israel for more than 20 years used the events of Munich 72 as excuse, to assassinate Palestinians Political Adversaries, Potential Palestinians leaders, and/or Important Palestinians supporters around the world.
Since Israel creation, the use of terrorism against Palestinians to justify Israel forced existence in stolen lands, have became the worse nightmare for Palestinians in the occupied territories living in West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and Palestinians scattered around the world that live as refugees without any rights.
The the world also feels the insecurity with a Psychopath Pariah State that have used Apartheid System to segregate the native Palestinian Population to humiliate and maintain a position of subjugation and fear, and that with the support of other terrorists powerful allies from the West have financed Israel Nuclear programs and have stayed mouth shout on this issue pretending that Nuclear Israel does not exist. The middle east have become a tickling bomb.
Israel making use of its eternal victim hood and trying to perpetuate that image, recently requested to the International Olympic Committee in London to hold a minute of silence for the victims of the assault on Munich 72, trying to initiate an Olympic Tribute for Israel victims only, as if there are not other victims on violence on every spot on Earth and Israeli deaths are the only ones that matter. They themselves are the Number 1 suspects and perpetrators in numerous campaigns of terror in Occupy Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and in many places in the world, where they are known to create false flags operations, do not forget the King David Hotel Bombing, that for many years was blamed on Palestinian.
the International Olympic Committee will not hold a moment of silence to honor the victims, despite a request from Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The decision, handed down Thursday, left Israeli officials fuming.
Some Radical Jews groups in London have called for boycott on the the London Olympic Games 2012, while the conscience world has been asking to boycott Israel and ban it from participating in the Olympics.
Israel Administrative Detention Ilegal Practive
Posted On May 15, 2012 by Marivel Guzman
All the rights reserved for Addammer, article published only for information purpose, not intended for commercial use.
Administrative Detention
Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Although administrative detention is used almost exclusively to detain Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, Israeli citizens and foreign nationals can also be held as administrative detainees by Israel (over the years, only 9 Israeli settlers have been held in administrative detention). Israel uses three separate laws to hold individuals without trial:
- Article 285 of Military Order 1651, which is part of the military legislation applying in the West Bank;
- Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law (Unlawful Combatants Law), which has been used against residents of the Gaza Strip since 2005;
- Emergency Powers (Detentions) Law, which applies to Israeli citizens.
Palestinians have been subjected to administrative detention since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation in 1967 and before that time, under the British Mandate. The frequency of the use of administrative detention has fluctuated throughout Israel’s occupation, and has been steadily rising since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000.
On the eve of the second intifada, Israel held 12 Palestinians in administrative detention. Only two years later, in late 2002-early 2003, there were over one thousand Palestinians in administrative detention. Between 2005 and 2007, the average monthly number of Palestinian administrative detainees held by Israel remained stable at approximately 765. Since then, as the situation on the ground stabilized and violence tapered off, the number of administrative detaines has generally decreased every year. As of 1 April 2012, there were at least 322 Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem being detained in administrative detention, of which 24 were members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Although international human rights law permits some limited use of administrative detention in emergency situations, the authorities are required to follow basic rules for detention, including a fair hearing at which the detainee can challenge the reasons for his or her detention. Moreover, to use such detention, there must be a public emergency that threatens the life of the nation, and detention can only be ordered on an individual, case-by-case basis without discrimination of any kind. (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 9).
Administrative detention is the most extreme measure that international humanitarian law allows an occupying power to use against residents of occupied territory. As such, states are not allowed to use it in a sweeping manner. To the contrary, administrative detention may be used against protected persons in occupied territory only for “imperative reasons of security” (Fourth Geneva Convention, Art.78).
In practice, Israel routinely uses administrative detention in violation of the strict parameters established by international law. Tellingly, Israel has claimed to be under a continuous state of emergency sufficient to justify the use of administrative detention since its inception in 1948. In addition, administrative detention is frequently used – in direct contravention to international law – for collective and criminal punishment rather than for the prevention of future threat. For example, administrative detention orders are regularly issued against individuals suspected of committing an offense after an unsuccessful criminal investigation or a failure to obtain a confession in interrogation.
In practice, Israel’s administrative detention regime violates numerous other international standards as well. For example, administrative detainees from the West Bank are deported from the occupied territory and interned inside Israel, in direct violation of Fourth Geneva Convention prohibitions (Articles 49 and 76). Further, administrative detainees are often denied regular family visits in accordance with international law standards, and Israel regularly fails to separate administrative detainees from the regular prison population as required by law. Moreover, in the case of child detainees, Israel regularly fails to take into account the best interests of the child as required under international law.
In the occupied Palestinian West Bank, the Israeli army is authorized to issue administrative detention orders against Palestinian civilians on the basis of article 285 of Military Order 1651. This article empowers military commanders to detain an individual for up to six-month renewable periods if they have “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention”. No definition of “security of the area” or “public security” is given. On or just before the expiry date, the detention order is frequently renewed; there is no explicit limit to the maximum amount of time an individual may be administratively detained, leaving room for indefinite legal detention.
Administrative detention orders are issued either at the time of arrest or at some later date and are often based on “secret information” collected by the Israeli Security Agency (formerly known as the General Security Service). In the vast majority of administrative detention cases, neither the detainee nor his lawyer is ever informed of the reasons for the detention or given access to the “secret information”.
In practice, the Unlawful Combatants Law contains fewer protections for detainees than even the few that are granted under administrative detention orders in the West Bank. For example, judicial review is conducted less often; the legality of the detention does not require the existence of a state of emergency; and, the detention “is carried out pursuant to an order issued by the chief of staff or by an officer holding the rank of major general”. In addition, the law establishes two troubling presumptions that shift the burden of proof to the detainee: first, the release of an individual identified as an “unlawful combatant” will harm national security unless proven otherwise; second, the organization to which the detainee belongs carries out hostilities, if the Israeli Minister of Defense has made such a determination, unless proven otherwise. This practice patently violates the accused’s right to a presumption of innocence in any criminal proceeding, and results in a system of indefinite detention justified by mere speculation and stacked heavily against the detainee.
- The government of Israel should release all administrative detainees;
- In the meantime, administrative detainees must be granted their rights in accordance with international law;
- The government of Israel should immediately cease using the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law and take action to repeal it;
- EU member states should raise cases of administrative detainees with the Israeli government under the EU-Israel political dialogue.
More On Administrative Detention
Association’s (Addameer) legal activities. Addameer has also sought to expose the ways in which Israel’s use of administrative detention, as a
means of collective punishment and of exacting revenge on Palestinians in retaliation for exercising their political and civil rights, contravenes the permitted uses of administrative detention in international law. In March 2009, Addameer notably launched an international advocacy and lobbying campaign to stop administrative detention and highlight Israel’s illegal practices in this regard. Administrative Detention in The Occupied Palestine
Administrative Detainees
Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.
Palestinians have been subjected to administrative detention since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation in 1967 and before that time, under the British Mandate. The frequency of the use of administrative detention has fluctuated throughout Israel’s occupation, and has been steadily rising since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000. Palestinians Administrative Detainees
Palestinians from the OPT are currently held in a total of 4 interrogation centers, 4 military detention centers, and approximately 17 prisons. While the 4 military interrogation centers are located inside the OPT, all the interrogation centers and prisons—except for one prison, Ofer—are located within the 1948 borders of Israel, in violation of international humanitarian law. The location of prisons within Israel and the transfer of detainees to locations within the occupying power’s territory are illegal under international law and constitute a war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that “Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein” (Article 76). Prison and Detention Center
| Relevant Addameer publications |
Munir’s Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila
Posted on May 09, 2012 by Marivel Guzman
Original Story Published on September 07, 2010
By Dr. Franklin Lamb –
The author seen with children at Shatila Refugee Camps, unaware that some of their relatives and families’ friends were among the hundreds butchered against 11 such “walls of death” 28 years ago, on September 16-18, 1982. Photo: Courtesy of the author, Dr. Franklin Lamb.
The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied.
Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.
Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the ever growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.
There are no average massacre testimonies.
Zeina, a handsome bronzed-faced middle-aged woman, an acquaintance of Munir Mohammad’s family, asked a foreigner the other day: “How can it be 28 years? I think it was just last fall that my husband Hussam and our two daughters, Maya, 8 years old, and Sirham, 9 years old, left our two room home to search for food because the Israeli army had sealed Shatila camp nearly two days before and few inside Shatila Camp had any. I still pray and wait for them to return.”
In Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and outside Abu Yassir’s shelter, the bullet marks still cover the lower half of the 11 “walls of death” where some of the dried blood is mixed and feathered in with the thin mortar. An elderly gentleman named Abu Samer still has some souvenirs of the event: three American automatic pistols fitted with silencers, a couple of knives and axes that were strapped to some of the killers belts as they quickly and silently shot, carved and chopped whoever they came upon starting at around 6 pm on Thursday September 16, 1982. Plus a couple of whisky bottles. These weapons were gifted to Israel by the US Congress and subsequently issued along with drugs and alcohol and other “policing equipment” to the killers in his “most moral army” by Ariel Sharon.
Earlier this year, one of the murderers from the Numour al-Ahrar (Tigers of the Liberals) militia, the armed wing of Lebanon’s right-wing National Liberal Party founded by former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, nonchalantly confessed, “we sometimes used these implements in order to advance silently through the alleys of Shatila so as not to cause unnecessary panic during our work.” The Tigers militia, one of five Christian killer units, was assisted inside Shatila by more than two dozen Israeli Mossad agents, and led in this blitz by none other than Dani Chamoun, son of the former President.
No plaque or sign notes what happened here.
The world learned of the slaughter at Sabra-Shatila on the morning of Sunday September 19, 1982. Photos, many now available on the Internet, taken by witnesses such as Ralph Shoneman, Mya Shone, Ryuichi Hirokawa, Ali Hasan Salman, Ramzi Hardar, Gunther Altenburg, and Gaza and Akka Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Hospital staff, preserve the gruesome images deeply etched in the survivors memory. The Israeli Kahan Commission, five months later in its February 7, 1983 Report, substantially whitewashed Israeli responsibility referring more than once to the massacre as “a war.”
Zeina ushered me down a narrow alley from her house arriving at the 3 by 8 meter wall outside her sister’s home, spraying here and there with an aerosol can as we walked. She apologized for the spray but insisted that she and her neighbors could even now smell the slaughter that happened there three decades earlier.
For readers unfamiliar with the location of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, this particular “wall of death” is located across from the PRCS Akka Hospital, such as it is, after years without adequate financial or NGO support. Locating the 11 “walls of death” requires help from the few older Palestinians who still live in this quarter. They are among those still living at the scene and who still vividly recall the details of the massacre. Some provide personal history of some of the butchered, seemingly urging the dead to return by making them seem so alive, often describing a personality trait and the name of their family village in Palestine.
“A sweet boy who adored his older brothers Mutid and Bilal.”
Zeina recalls that Munir Mohammad was 12 years old on September 16, 1982, a pupil at the Shatila camp school, named Jalil (Galilee). Virtually all of the 75 remaining UNRWA schools in Lebanon, like other Palestinian institutions, are named after villages, towns or cities in occupied Palestine. Often they are named after villages that no longer actually exist, being among the 531 villages the Zionists colonizers obliterated during and after the 1947-48 Nakba (Catastrophe).
Zeina recalls that it was late on a Thursday afternoon, September 16, that the Israeli shelling had grown intense. Designed to drive the camp residents into the shelters, almost all of which Israeli intelligence, arriving the previous day in three white vehicles and posing as “concerned NGO staff” had identified and noted the coordinates on their maps. Some residents, thinking aid workers had come to help the refugees, actually revealed their secret sanctuaries. Other refugees, based on their experience in the crowded shelters during the preceding 75 days of indiscriminate, “Peace for Galilee” Israeli bombing of Shatila, suggested to the “aid workers” that the shelters needed better ventilation and perhaps the visitors would help provide it.
According to Zeina the Israeli agents quickly sketched the shelter locations, marked them with a red circle and returned to their HQ which was located less than 70 meters on the raised terrain at the SE corner of Shatila camp still known as Turf Club Yards. Today, this sandy area still contains three death pits which according to the late American journalist Janet Stevens is where some of the hundreds of still missing bodies of the more than 3,000 slaughtered are likely buried. Janet had theorized that there was a second Sabra-Shatila Massacre that occurred on Sunday morning, September 19th, which piggybacked the first and was conducted on the west side of Shatila inside the second Israeli-Phalange HQ, known as the Cite Sportiff athletic complex. As the Israeli soldiers took custody from the Phalange militia of the surviving refugees, trucks entered Cite Sportiff loaded with hundreds of camp residents on the back to be taken to “holding centers”. Family members forced to wait outside heard volleys of gunfire and screams from inside the complex. Hours later the same flat beds drove away to unknown locations, tarps covering the unseen mounded cargo.
Camp resident, Mrs. Sana Mahmoud Sersawi, one of the 23 complainants in the Belgium case filed against Ariel Sharon on June 16, 2001, (currently but not fatally sidetracked) explained:
“The Israelis who were posted in front of the Kuwaiti embassy and at the Rihab benzene station at the entrance to Shatila demanded through loudspeakers that we come to them. That’s how we found ourselves in their hands. They took us to the Cite Sportiff, and the men were marched behind us. But they took the men’s shirts off and started blindfolding them. The Israelis interrogated the young people and the Phalange delivered about 200 more people to the Israelis. And that’s how neither my husband nor my sister’s husband ever came back.”
Journalist Robert Fisk and others who studied these events, concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 a.m. Saturday, the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing.
Eyewitness testimony also established that the “aid workers” described by Zeina passed the shelter descriptions and locations to Lebanese Forces operatives Elie Hobeika and Fadi Frem, and their ally, Major Saad Haddad of the Israeli-allied South Lebanese Army. Thursday evening, Hobeika, de facto commander since the assassination the week previously of Phalange leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel, led one of the death squads inside the killing field of the Horst Tabet area near Abu Yassir’s shelter.
It was in 8 of the 11 Israeli-located and marked shelters that the first of the massacre victims were quickly and methodically slaughtered. There being few perfect crimes, even in massacres, the killers failed to find 3 of the shelters. One of the overlooked shelters was just 25 meters from Abu Yassir’s shelter. Apart from these three undiscovered hiding places there were practically no Shatila shelter survivors.
American journalist David Lamb wrote about this first night of butchery and the “walls of death”:
“Entire families were slain. Groups consisting of 10-20 people were lined up against walls and sprayed with bullets. Mothers died while clutching their babies. All men appeared to be shot in the back. Five youths of fighting age were tied to a pickup truck and dragged through the streets before being shot.”
At around about 8 p.m. on September 18 Munir Mohammad entered the crowded Abu Yassir shelter with his mother Aida and his sisters and brothers Iman, Fadya, Mufid and Mu’in. Keeping the relatively few camp shelters for the woman and children while the men took their chances outside was a common practice as the massacre unfolded. But a few men did enter to help calm their young children.
“If any of you are injured, we’ll take you to the hospital.”
Munir later recalled events that night: “The killers arrived at the door of the shelter and yelled for everyone to come out. Men who they found were lined up against the wall outside. They were immediately machine gunned.” As Munir watched, the killers left to kill other groups and then suddenly returned and opened fire on everyone, and all fell to the ground. Munir lay quietly not knowing if his mother and sisters were dead. Then he heard the killers yelling: “If any of you are injured, we’ll take you to the hospital. Don’t worry. Get up and you’ll see.” A few did try to get up or moaned and they were instantly shot in the head.
Munir remembered: “Even though it was light out due to the Israeli flares over Shatila, the killers used bright flash lights to search the darkened corners. The killers were looking in the shadows”. Suddenly Munir’s mother’s body seemed to shift in the mound of corpses next to him. Munir thought she might be going to get up since the killers promised to take anyone still alive to the hospital. Munir whispered to her: “Don’t get up mother, they’re lying”. And Munir stayed motionless all night barely daring to breath, pretending to be dead.
Munir could not block out the killers words. Years later he would repeat to this interviewer as we passed the Shatila Burial ground known as Martyrs Square:
“After they shot us, we were all down on the ground, and they were going back and forth, and they were saying: ‘If any of you are still alive, we’ll have mercy and pity and take them to the hospital. Come on, you can tell us.’ If anyone moaned, or believed them and said they needed an ambulance, they would be rescued with shots and finished off there and then…What really disturbed me wasn’t just the death all around me. I…didn’t know whether my mother and sisters and brother had died. I knew most of the people around me had died. And it’s true I was afraid of dying myself. But what disturbed me so very much was that they were laughing, getting drunk and enjoying themselves all night long. They threw blankets on us and left us there till morning. All night long [Thursday the 16th) I could hear the voices of the girls crying and screaming, ‘For god’s sake, leave us alone.’ I mean…I can’t remember how many girls they raped. The girl’ voice, with their fear and pain, I can’t ever forget them.”
The same kind of dégagé is displayed by the half dozen confessed militia murderers featured in German director Monika Borgmann’s 2005 film Massaker, one of whom opined: “With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double,” explaining how he took an old Palestinian man and held him back against a wall, slicing him open in the shape of a cross. “You die twice since you also die from the fear,” he said nonchalantly describing white flesh and bone as if in a charcuterie waiting to be served.
The killers also explained how they began a frantic rush to dispose of as many bodies as possible before the media entered Shatila. One testified how the Israeli army gave them large plastic trash bags to dispose of bodies. Another confessed that they forced people into army trucks to ferry them to Cite Sportiff where they were killed. And that they used chemicals to destroy many of the corpses. Several mentioned that Israeli army officers conferred with the militia’s leaders in Beirut on the eve of the massacres.
The venomous hatred persists to this day.
To this day, the Hurras al-Arz (Guardians of the Cedars) boasts of its role in the carnage. Less than two weeks before the massacre the party issued a call for the confiscation of all Palestinian property in Lebanon, the outlawing of home ownership and the destruction of all refugee camps.
The party statement of September 1, 1982 declared: “Action must be taken to reduce the numbers of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, until the day comes when no single Palestinian remains on our soil.”
In 1982 certain political parties referred to Palestinians as “a bacillus which must be exterminated” and graffiti on walls read: “The duty of every Lebanese is to kill a Palestinian”–the same hatred commonly expressed today in occupied Palestine among colonists, extremist Rabbis and politicians.
The ‘Guardians’ call for outlawing Palestinian refugee property ownership was indeed achieved in 2001 by a law drafted by current Minister of Labor, who pledged on September 1, 2010 that “Parliament will never allow Palestinian refugees the right to own property.”
The mentality that allowed the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila 1982 is largely unchanged in 2010, as Lebanon still resists the call of the international community to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila massacre basic civil rights. Some who have studied the Arabic websites and observed gatherings of the political parties represented at the 1982 massacre, claim the hate language is actually worse today and is being used to stir up Parliamentary opposition Palestinian civil rights.
During the month following the 1982 Massacre, British Dr. Paul Morris treated Munir at Gaza Hospital approximately one kilometer north of Abu Yassir’s shelter, and kept the youngster under observation. Dr. Morris reported to researcher Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout (Sabra and Shatila: September 1982, Pluto Press, London, 2004) that Munir “Will smile once in a while, but he doesn’t react spontaneously like others of this age, except just occasionally.” Then the doctor banged on the table, and said: ‘The lad has to be saved. He has to leave the camp, if only for a while, to recover himself.”
When Munir was asked by al Hout if one day when he grew up and would be able to carry a weapon would he consider revenge. The pre-teen replied, replied: “No, No. I’d never think of revenge by killing children. The way they killed us. What did the children do wrong?”
Munir’s 15 year old brother Mufid was among the first to enter Abu Yassir’s shelter, but he left and later appeared at Akka Hoppital with a gunshot wound. After being bandaged he left the hospital to seek safety and his family. No one has seen him since and for a long time Munir could not even mention him.
According to camp residents, Munir’s older brother, Nabil, then 19 years old, being of fighting age would have been shot on sight by the killers. Aware of this, Nabil’s cousin and his cousin’s wife fled with him as the Israeli shelling increased and camp residents reported indiscriminate killing. The trio dodged sniper bullets to seek refuge in a nursing home where his aunt worked. Like Munir, Nabil soon learned that his mother and siblings were all dead.
Now in America, both Munir and Nabil are leading relatively ‘normal lives’ considering the horror and lost family they experienced while escaping death at Sabra-Shatila. Munir and Nabil have become a credit to Shatila camp, to Palestine and to their adopted country. Residing in the Washington DC area, Munir is married and busy with his career. Nabil is devoting his life to advocacy for peace and justice in the Middle East, working with an NGO. Both brothers return to Shatila camp regularly.
Also apparently living ‘normal lives’ are the six “Christian” militia killers featured in Borgmann’s film Massaker. “They are all living ordinary lives. One of them is a taxi driver,” Borgmann explains.
As is well known, the massacres at Sabra-Shatila were undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Each killing was a violation of international laws enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, International Customary Law and jus cogens. Similar massive crimes have seen charges brought against Rwandan officials, Chile’s ex-president, General Augusto Pinochet, Chad’s former president, Hissein Habre, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia’s Taylor and Sudan’s Bachir.
No one has been punished or even investigated for the Sabra-Shatila massacre. On March 28, 1991 Lebanon’s Parliament retroactively exempted the killers from criminal responsibility. However, this law has no standing in international law and the international community remains legally obligated to punish those responsible. The victims and their families of the Sabra-Shatila massacre as well as virtually all human rights organizations including but not limited to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Humanitarian Law Project, strenuously oppose blanket amnesty for the killers. They argue that the 1991 violates Lebanon’s constitution, as well as international law and promotes impunity for heinous crimes.
It was precisely to achieve justice for the victims of crimes such as Sabra-Shatila that the International Criminal Court was established. The ICC must begin its work without further delay and all people of goodwill must encourage Lebanon to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre basic civil rights.
Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com
Also see:
A Letter To Janet About Sabra-Shatilla By Franklin Lamb
A Shred of Truth that Vilify The Real Truth
The Out of Context Line That Can Sacrifice A whole Nation and Discredit A Legitimate Movement of Resistance.
“Abu Marzouk: Hamas won’t be bound by PA-Israel treaty”
DIME weapons were first used against Gaza by Israeli drones in the summer of 2006, when Palestinian medical personnel reported that it significantly increased the fatality rate among victims. Shortly after the DIME weapons were also trialled during the first week of the war in Lebanon in July 2006.
Fighting against misinformation it have been one of the biggest Fights For Palestine.
The first excerpts of an Interview published on Thursday 19 of April have sparked a whole new controversy on the position of Hamas regarding Israel and PA previous agreements.
To the informed readers comes to no surprise Hamas Position on Israel Illegal Existence on Palestine Lands, and vilifying the words of Abu Marzook taken out of context is irresponsible by writers, journalists and bloggers that add their “Side” of the story when their twisted, misinterpreted and purposely published Shreds of the Truth, that by the end of the day have become a whole new “Truth” and a story moving by the armies of bloggers and News Big and small around the world.
Hamas is an acronym of Harakat al Mawqawama al Islamiyya meaning “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The word Hamas also means “zeal.”
Since the article of Abu Marzook interview was first published more than 4000 News and bloggers published their version of the interview and more than 2 millions web sites have talk about it, and they have made their own interpretation of the interview and across the Headlines of the Editorials you can read with Bold Letters:
Hamas leader to Jewish paper: No peace with Israel
This remind me of the experiment done to a group of students that are given a “story” and they are suppose to pass the verbal story to a new student entering the room, by the time the last student is given the “Raw Story”, there is not a Shred of Truth on the story but only the idea of the original story, and the interpretation that every student have given to the story given to them, I mention you this little story/experiment because most probably you were part of this experiment sometimes in your life while in school. The same distortion of the truth is being passed over and over regarding Palestine, its leaders and its people.
The sole mention on an article of the world “Islamic” brings up bad taste of mouth and negative reaction from the well trained audience of the world that have developed a new social disease:
Islamophobia:
Phobia Intentional created, nurtured and spoiled as brat child. Once this brat is release in our society that has been already weakened with pain, wars and propaganda, is able to create the worse of the chaos, and the worst of the crimes, which is the acceptance of the crimes because the subconscious mind have already condoned it.
Phobia: A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger.
If you follow the stories that were generated after the interview that was first published on the 19 of April, you can not help but get outraged by the malicious intent and effort to discredit and to twist the words of Moussa Abu Marzouk, this type of lies and dirty games play by the Major News Organizations is what have help create this social disease that have been so handy for the War Complex Machine, that have helped to desensitized the people hearts. It has come to the point in the physique of the people that if dozens, hundreds or even thousands get killed don’t matter because their lives are not important because they are Muslim, and what they have done to deserve this?.
In Palestine they can not accept the theft of their lands, they can not sit idle when the residents of Gaza are sprayed. with white phosphorus, they react with anger when their children are bombed in the schools or sonar bombed when they sleep.
In other parts of the world where Muslims are being vilified after Bush invaded Iraq, and thereafter the situation got worse for Muslims around the world.
Notice when the News bothers to mention Israel crimes in Occupied Palestine, they make sure that they use the words “Militant Islamist Wings of Hamas”, or “radical Islamic Palestinian terrorist group”, with this denominations the victims are already being vilified and their murder are con·done by the public opinion.
Why will Hamas as an political organization and as an Official Government in Place in Gaza, will accept anything less than the rights for its people?. Why will Hamas be blame and branded a terrorist organization, when they only defend the population from the attacks of Israel?
Does it make sense to you? …The robbers came in the middle of the night and killed your parents, and in the morning you are force to accept a paper that says that those robbers not only will not be punish for the murder of your parents but they will take your home also, and you will go to live in a tent under the auspice of the UNRWA charity? ..how many times the story have to be repeated before someone feel in its heart, that it is inhuman, unfair and illegal under all international standards laws?
This simple story happened in thousands of Palestinians homes, entire villages were razed after their residents were murdered, some other were forced into exile, thru intimidation and terrorist practices. Now they asking Palestinians to accept their destiny without fighting, without feeling the pain. They are asking to give up the fight, they are being ask to lower their gaze and do not complain.
Well some people have already accepted that the plight of the Palestinians is irremediable and unchangeable fact. The PA did when their leaders signed peace treaty with Israel, when they decided to settle the deaths of hundred of thousands of Palestinians deaths in exchange for a Chair in Ramalah, but Hamas and other groups were never agreed with those deals, because they were rotten deals for Palestinians and until now they have not change their mind. They still defend the population and express their outrage on the Press.
Every conflict in history that is ever being written has always been only one side of the story, but that has changed, now we have thousands sides of the story, but with every story there is a twist of the truth, and that have been used against legitimate resistance movements. Hamas is just one example, its leaders have been labeled as Islamist Radicals , the organization itself has been officially labeled terrorist organization in many western countries thanks to AIPAC long tentacles and other Radical Jews groups around the world.
The common notion is that Palestinians living in Gaza are Islamist terrorists, why is this? Israel acquire thousands of weapons “legally”, they signed Weapons Deals with US its major arms supplier.
U.S. press coverage of Israeli attacks on the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian towns on the West Bank often treat the U.S. government as either an innocent bystander or an honest broker in the current conflict, often without giving a full sense of the importance of the United States role as a supplier of arms, aid, and military technology to Israel. In its role as Israel’s primary arms supplier, the United States could exert significant potential leverage over Israeli behavior in the conflict, if it chooses to do so.
Military and Economic Aid
Since 1976, Israel had been the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance. According to a November 2001 Congressional Research Service report, Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, U.S. aid to Israel in the last half century has totaled a whopping $81.3 billion.
In recent years, Israel remains the top recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance. The most commonly cited figure is $3 billion a year, with about $1.8 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants from the Department of Defense and an additional $1.2 billion a year in Economic Support Funds (ESF) from the Department of State. In the last decade FMF grants to Israel have totaled $18.2 billion. In fact, 17% of all U.S. foreign aid is earmarked for Israel. World Policy Institute
The weapons that Israel buys “legally” from the US arm dealers are killer machines, they kill and destroy people and property, and they are more terrorizing devices than Palestinians Home Made Rockets, rockets that have to be bought “Illegally”, smuggle thru the tunnels, because Israel have sweet deals with the West and the west have taken the right for Palestine to defend their population.
What does it make a person a terrorist?
If you are Palestinian and kill a settler, without jury or trial you are branded terrorist, but when you are Israeli, and you kill 1400 innocents civilians, you simply are defending Israel. That it is the Mantra repeated, That is the difference now days in hundreds of News Outlets that are legitimating this distinction, when they irresponsibly publish News and articles simply branding Palestinians as Islamist Terrorists.
Most of the weapons that Israel uses comes from US weapons factories, the profits are astronomical, so the conflict needs to be kept alive. What will it be of the US Weapon Manufactures if there is a Peace Agreement in Palestine? Peace is the enemy # 1 of Profits .
We are talking of billions of dollars a year in Profits, pure profits because the money that goes to Israel for “Defense”
is free, and some of it comes back as Profit for the US Corporations that live out of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sure. Almost all of the weapons used by Israel are from the United States. There might be a couple French fighter planes that they’re using, but its F-16s made in Fort Worth, Texas; its Apache helicopters; its Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles; it’s all from the United States. So you have this real disconnect between an overemphasis on the supply by Iran and Syria of Hezbollah’s weapons and no discussion of the fact that all of the Israeli arsenal is from the United States, and that that is in contravention to U.S. law. to the Arms Export Control Act, which says that U.S.-origin weapons are only to be used for self-defense and for internal security. Frida Barrigan from World Policy Institute
Published April 19, 2012 originally
Hamas Wouldn’t Honor a Treaty, Top Leader Says
Abu Marzook Says He’s Open to a New Israel Relationship
Any agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be subject to far-reaching changes if Hamas comes to power in a democratic Palestinian state, a top Hamas leader told the Forward in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, said that his group would view an agreement between Israel and the P.A. — even one ratified by a referendum of all Palestinians — as a hudna, or cease-fire, rather than as a peace treaty. In power, he said, Hamas would feel free to shift away from those provisions of the agreement that define it as a peace treaty and move instead toward a relationship of armed truce.
“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.”
The exchange was but one part of an unprecedented five-and-a-half-hour discussion conducted over two days between Abu Marzook and the Forward, the first-ever in-depth exchange between a senior Hamas leader and a Jewish publication.Larry Cohler-Esses from Forward
The Situation in Gaza is different, here we talk about resistance as a strategic option, about the right of all the resistance factions to obtain all the means needed to conduct resistance, about the legitimacy of the weapons of the resistance, and about the national consensus on managing the resistance in a way that does not harm the principle.
We Talk about operating in accordance with the conditions we talked about:
Taking people’s circumstances into consideration, and even the conditions in Gaza, which has become..Today.” Ismail Haniya during an interview on Al-Quds TV in Lebanon March 5, 2012
Germans Forced to Keep Silent, for a Guilty Past? Günter Grass Speaks The Truth
Posted on April 19, 2012 by Marivel Guzman
By Henryk M. Broder, Original Article published on April 04, 2012 by Welt Online
Günter Grass has always had a problem with Jews, but as clearly as in a new “poem” entitled “What must be said” about Israel and Iran, he has never said it.
Günter Grass has written a poem. That apparently It will appear next Wednesday in two major daily newspapers at the same time. The “La Repubblica” and the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”.
The poem reads: “What must be said,” and begins with these words:
“Why I am silent, conceal too long …”
The impartial reader might get the idea that Grass would finally explain why he has concealed his stint with the Waffen-SS as long. But this is not the case. Over this period of his life, the poetic moralist is also long. This time, he is concerned more about the very survival:
“Why I am silent, silent about too long, what is obvious and practiced in simulation games, was at the end as survivors, we are footnotes at best.”
The “alleged in the first strike”
© dpa Picture-central nuclear potential vs. nuclear facilities: Guenter Grass
Grass will no longer remain silent. What is the cause of the explosion logorrhoeischen? The “alleged in the first strike,” an unnamed country that is threatening Iran, which in turn is governed by a “bullies”.
“But why do I say to myself to call that other country by name, in the years since – though secret – a growing nuclear capabilities available but is out of control and access to any scrutiny”
Grass has prescribed silence, because he does not want to risk being called “anti-Semite” branded.
“This general concealment of facts, which my silence subordinate, I find incriminating lie, as well as coercion, punishment is promised if he is flouted, the verdict, anti-Semitism is” familiar. “
Verbal foreplay to a taboo
So it is the usual prelude to a verbal taboo, which is justified by the responsibility of the poet, to prevent a catastrophe. For Grass, sounds like this:
“But now, because in my country of innate crimes that are without comparison, time caught up to time and will be asked to explain, again and purely commercial basis, if declared with nimble lip as reparation, another U-boat to Israel to be delivered, whose specialty is to destructive warheads can control everything there, where the existence of a single atomic bomb is unproven, but wants to be a legend of evidence, I say what needs to be said. “
Grass has always been prone to delusions of grandeur, but now he is nuts completely. Quite activities composing verses fragile busy, he has not noticed many of the speeches of the Iranian president in which he speaks of the need for the “cancer” that has occupied Palestine, to remove from the region. Because that is just “Maulheldentum” which one is “unproven” must not be taken seriously, as the existence of a single bomb until it is used. In the case of Grass would mourn for the victims and donate to the survivors consolation, because he feels the land of Israel “connected”.
Has always been a problem with Jews
“But why I kept quiet until now? As I said, my background, which is never subject to stigma tilgendem forbid, that fact will marked as truth the land of Israel, whom I am connected and remain unreasonable.”
Grass breaks his silence, because he would not again be guilty because he was “tired of the hypocrisy of the West” and hopes that one should free themselves from the enforced silence, the cause of danger to renounce violence, encourage and insist that a unhindered and permanent control of the Israeli nuclear potential and the Iranian nuclear facilities by an international authority of the governments of both countries will be allowed.
While Israel a “nuclear potential” function, the Iranians have only “nuclear facilities” which are probably the generation of electricity. The cause of the “obvious danger” is Israel that is outside the control, while Iran is doing nothing better, than to open its “nuclear facilities” international supervision.
Grass has always had a problem with Jews, but as clear as in this “poem” he has never articulated it. In an interview with “Spiegel Online” in October 2001, he said, as he imagines the solution of the Palestine question. “Israel must acknowledge not only occupied areas also the seizure of Palestinian land and its Israeli occupation is a crime, the need. not only stop, but be undone. versa Otherwise there is no one peace. “
Tel Aviv and Haifa are giving up
This was neither more nor less than an invitation to Israel, not only Nablus and Hebron, Tel Aviv and Haifa as well give up. Just as Hamas and Hezbollah makes no distinction between the Grass in 1948 and the 1967 “occupied territories”, for it is “the occupation of Palestinian land and its Israeli settlement of a criminal act.” This is also the Iranian president.
Ten years later, in summer 2011, received the Grass Israeli journalist Tom Segev for an interview. Segev is fluent in German, so we chatted light-hearted and without a translator and a half hours about everything, even the reactions to his novel “Peeling the Onion”. The debate was for him “very painful” was that they had placed under his command, he had volunteered for the Waffen-SS. “The truth is that I was drafted, as thousands of young people my age.”
Wanted as a knowledge-Segev, why the Holocaust is found in the “onion” only in passing, said Grass: “The madness and crime expressed not only in the Holocaust and did not stop with the end of the war of eight million German soldiers of the Russians have been arrested, have survived two million. The remainder was liquidated. “
Haunted by guilt and shame
You had no qualified mathematician to count on Grass’ numbers game to end: Six million German soldiers were liquidated by the Russians. That actually came about three million German soldiers in Soviet captivity, many of whom about 1.1 million survived, does not matter. Because grass is not about numbers, but a number six million. That’s the number to which it always. The Lucky Number German. Six million dead Jews on the one hand, six million dead German prisoners on the other hand, the bottom line is a clean zero.
Grass is the prototype of the resulting anti-Semite who is kind to the Jews. Of guilt and shame and pursued simultaneously driven by the desire to charge history, he now takes to disarm the “cause of the apparent risk.”
The Germans will never forgive the Jews, what they have done to them. Thus in the Middle East peace comes at last, and even Grass is his peace of mind, Israel is “history”. So says the Iranian president, and which the poet dreams of onion skinning.
Welt’s Editor’s note: An earlier version of the article it had said that the “New York Times” would print the poem. This was not the case.
Akashma News Editor: The article expresses the solely opinion of the Author. This article was first published in Welt Online in German Language. Was translated using google translate.
Henryk M. Broder is the classic Israeli propagandist and protector of Israel crimes. Gunter Grass a writer that have exposed without reserve Israel impunity have risked his career. Anybody that dare to write against Israel it is branded as Anti Semitic, the term used trying to silence anybody that speaks against Israel Crimes.
In Europe it is illegal to speaks against the Holocaust, so for a writer to come into the open with a poem of this nature it is willing to risk his liberty or his life.
There is nothing more honorable than speak the Truth. For long the Editorials of the Main Media Outlets have been complicit with Israel, not because there was no Truth to tell, but because the money paid to the Big Newspapers have been always more important than the Truth, but lately many writers have come clean in their opinions on Israel daring to tell the truth, risking their jobs and their reputation. The money it has been always an obstacle for the truth.
If you can contribute to a better translation please email akashmanews@iifreepress.org
Original German Article Found here Günter Grass – Nicht ganz dicht, aber ein Dichter
More on Gunter Grass……….Gunter Grass is my hero……….by John Irving…………….More
The Wolf with ‘The Red Hood’ | Victims of The War Empire
The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case
Tarek Mehanna is seen in this image from video footage taken in Boston in 2009. (Credit: Reuters/WHDH-TV)
By Glenn Greenwald
In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists’ documents into English and expressing “sympathetic views” to the group) as well as conspiring to “murder” U.S. soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an aggressive attack on a Muslim nation). I’m still traveling and don’t have much time today to write about the case itself — Adam Serwer several months ago wrote an excellent summary of why the prosecution of Mehanna is such an odious threat to free speech and more background on the case is here, and I’ve written before about the growing criminalization of free speech under the Bush and Obama DOJs, whereby Muslims are prosecuted for their plainly protected political views — but I urge everyone to read something quite amazing: Mehanna’s incredibly eloquent, thoughtful statement at his sentencing hearing, before being given a 17-year prison term.
At some point in the future, I believe history will be quite clear about who the actual criminals are in this case: not Mehanna, but rather the architects of the policies he felt compelled to battle and the entities that have conspired to consign him to a cage for two decades:
________________________
TAREK’S SENTENCING STATEMENT
APRIL 12, 2012Read to Judge O’Toole during his sentencing, April 12th 2012.
In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a
local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy ” way, as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I
am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down
for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard-and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahideen fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to call them, “terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no different. So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ehical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as the American revolutionary war. As a kid I even went on school field trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King,
and the civil rights struggle.I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend them -regardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed be many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “X” by Spike Lee, it’s over three and a half hours long, and the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the Hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolm’s life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; it’s not a culture or ethnicity. It’s a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised.
This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about, the question that drives the rich & famous to depression and suicide from being unable to answer: what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how we’re supposed to exist. And since there’s no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Qur’an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world; and the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia. I learned what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya. I learned what Israel had done in Lebanon – and what it continues to do in Palestine – with the full backing of the United States. And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf War, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq.
I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and how – according to the United Nations – over half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a ’60 Minutes‘ interview of Madeline Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were “worth it.” I watched on September 11th as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of ’Shock & Awe’ in the opening day of the invasion – the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking but of their foreheads (of course, none of this was shown on CNN).
I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslims – including a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlers – were shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as the slept by US Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don’t even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims – mostly mothers and their kids – shot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses.
These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of
brotherhood – that each Muslim woman is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. In other words, I couldn’t see these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Revere – when he went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minuteman. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minuteman waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. There’s an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about.
All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don’t have to agree with my beliefs – no. Anyone with commonsense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.
But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed ”terrorism” and the people defending themselves against those who come to kill them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are ”killing Americans.” The mentality that America was victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets 2 ½ centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. It’s the mentality of colonialism.
When Sgt. Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, all of the focus in the media was on him-his life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his home-as if he was the victim. Very little sympathy was expressed for the people he actually killed, as if they’re not real, they’re not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether or not they realize it. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining, and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that they’re my “impartial peers,” I mean, come on. I wasn’t tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me – not because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities – practices that were even protected by the law – only to look back later and ask: ’what were we thinking?’ Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War II – each was widely accepted by American society, each was defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked ’What were we thinking?’ Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were, that it was not he who was the terrorist, and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjective - even this whole business of “terrorism” and who is a “terrorist.” It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a ”terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with ”killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.
-Tarek Mehanna
Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, is an indictment of America’s two-tiered system of justice, which vests political and financial elites with immunity even for egregious crimes while subjecting ordinary Americans to the world’s largest and most merciless penal state. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.
4/12/12More on Tarek Mehanna …………
“Mehanna‘s case is a classic example of the so-called anti-terrorism paradigm at work, which is prevent the terrorist act from occurring,” said professor Boston College Law School professor George Brown, who teaches national security law. AP
Juror says Mehanna deserved mercy, She had hoped for chance to appeal to judge.
She and her fellow jurors in the terrorism trial of Tarek Mehanna had no choice but to find him guilty. And she cannot fault the government for charging the Sudbury man in the first place, she said.
But still, she struggles to sleep at night.
If she had the opportunity, Beverly A. Richards said she would have asked US District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. to show mercy before sentencing 29-year-old Mehanna to 17 1/2 years in prison Thursday, because she saw too many things wrong with the case. The Boston Globe
