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A Crusader in King Abdullah’s Court
Bush: “God Bless Israel”
Arabs: “God Bless Bush”
Mohamed Khodr
"Past experience provides little basis for confidence that
reason can prevail in an atmosphere of mounting war fever. In a
contest between a hawk and dove the hawk has a great advantage,
not because it is a better bird but because it is a bigger bird
with lethal talons and a highly developed will to use them."
William Fulbright: “On the Arrogance of Power” (The Late
Senator and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations)
21/01/08 "ICH"
-- -- The Dying of Gaza As the World Turns Away: No
Light, Heat, or Bread
Barely weeks after the failure of the Annapolis meeting Bush
headed to the Middle East for his first visit in seven years.
His purpose: Enlisting Arab support, although never needed, to
attack Israel’s neo-existential threat---Iran, regardless of the
fact that Iran neither has nuclear weapons nor will it commit
suicide by attacking Israel or American interests in the Gulf.
When it comes to Israel’s or America’s preemptive wars and
occupations of Arab land, facts, international laws, and human
rights are irrelevant as expressed by George H. W. Bush, the
father of Bush Jr. who considers himself the divinely guided
crusader for Israel and MidEast peace: “I will never
apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what
the facts are”.
Arriving in Israel under the pretense of energizing the peace
“process” Bush and Olmert’s discussion concentrated on attacking
Iran, damn the Palestinians. Despite Bush’s feigned statements
that occupation must end and that “outposts” must be dismantled,
Ehud Olmert publicly dressed down the American President by
saying that settlements will continue to be built.
During Bush’s visit to Israel dozens of Palestinians were
murdered and injured by the Israeli military. Bush did not utter
a word on the loss of Palestinian lives. On the contrary, Bush
visited the Holocaust memorial and was moved by the persecution
of the Jews in Europe who today are the persecutors of the
Palestinians. He wrote in the guest book; “God bless Israel,
George Bush”. It’s hard to imagine that God blesses
Israel’s inhumanity against the Palestinians or Bush’s savagery
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Bush, thankfully you will leave
office in one year after inflaming the world for decades to
come. Your only contributions to this planet are Global Warming
and Global Warring.
With insensitivity and callousness to the daily harassment
Palestinians undergo as they navigate hundreds of military
checkpoints, Bush joked about his unimpeded drive through a
checkpoint in full sight of the “Apartheid Wall” by saying:
“You’ll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars
was able to make it through without being stopped. I’m not so
exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person”.
The man who touts freedom was blind to the lack of freedom of
movement of the occupied Palestinians on their own land.
Gaza has been under siege for over a year for daring to
democratically elect Hamas, a resistance movement founded with
Israel’s aid and blessing that legitimately fights to expel
Israel’s brutal occupation from their land. This overcrowded
strip of 1.5 million people has become the world’s largest
prison suffering from a massive humanitarian crisis courtesy of
Israel’s democracy.
Gaza today is under a total blockade of fuel, without
electricity, heat, bread, clean water, medicines, and
overflowing sewage in the streets. The only light that brightens
Gaza’s night sky is exploding Israeli bombs and shells. Israel
is also blocking all U.N. humanitarian goods from entering Gaza
which includes baby formula; such collective punishment of an
entire population is illegal under International Law; but thanks
to America, Israel has always been above the law, both divine
and human.
John Dugard, U.N. Human Rights rapporteur in the Occupied
Territories, called Israel’s military offensive in Gaza a “war
crime” and called for the punishment of the responsible parties.
John Holmes, undersecretary general of the U.N. for Humanitarian
Affairs condemned the "collective punishment of the people of
Gaza”. Holmes expressed his grave concern on Israel’s sealing of
border crossings because "they are the lifeline for the delivery
of humanitarian assistance and other goods to Gaza."
The World Bank, the International Red Cross, and many
international organizations and human rights groups are warning
of a humanitarian catastrophe.
While the world, the U.N., and the Arab leaders are expressing
“concern” and “condemnation”, Israel rests assured that as long
as it has American in its grip, the voices of the world cannot
save a single Palestinian child from an Israeli sniper’s bullet
Many Israelis and Jews around the world have made the analogy
that Israeli tactics against the Palestinians are akin to Nazi
tactics
Bush Arrives in the Gulf: Home to America’s Rulers, Oil
and Military Bases
After blessing Israel Bush headed to the awaiting arms, lavish
receptions, and extraordinarily expensive gifts from his aides,
the Gulf oil rulers who oversee and safeguard America’s oil and
military bases. From Kuwait, to Bahrain, the Emirates, and Saudi
Arabia, Bush was dined, praised, danced for, and toured the
crass wealth of a region awash in petrodollars. (Bush skipped
Qatar probably to avoid an interview with Aljazeera)
The oil rulers welcomed Bush with pandering honor, more
reflective of their inferiority complex as servants than as
rulers. They embraced the very man whose hands are soaked with
the blood of millions of Muslims, who described his war on
terror as a war against “Islamofascism”, who called the
genocidal Sharon a “man of peace”, who usurped all U.N.
Resolutions and previous U..S policy by adopting Israel’s
demands that its borders are not the pre-1967 borders, that the
illegal settlements are fait accompli, and that Palestinians
have no right of return, the man who supported with money, arms,
and fuel, Israel’s all out devastation of Lebanon in 2006, yet,
King Abdullah, the Protector of the Two Holy Mosques, presented
Bush with the highest order of the Kingdom, the Order of the
King Abdul Aziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia.
Bush reminded his oil managers that extremists "hate freedom and
they hate democracy" ignoring the reality that extremists and
the majority of Muslims object to his global warring policies,
not to the freedom they desperately seek. Using Bush’s logic
that extremists hate freedom and democracy it must logically
follow that such extremists actually love, not oppose, the
undemocratic Arab regimes who deprive their people of basic
freedoms. With Chutzpah, Bush told the Arab leaders that Israel,
the killer of Gaza, should serve as a role model for their
democracy.
Bush left the Gulf after witnessing the expenditure of
Petrodollars at work including massive construction projects in
the desert that includes building new islands, extravagant
hotels, palaces, theme parks, lavish malls, golf courses, even
entire cities named after the egotistical dictators; all the
while Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir
and elsewhere are being killed, ethnically cleansed, hungry,
cold, thirsty, without shelter or medicines, or living as
refugees by the millions due to American and Israeli weapons of
mass destruction. To Arab leaders these Muslims are not as
worthy as American treasury bonds.
How shockingly ironic that Arab Gulf nations are awash in oil
while Palestinians in Gaza can’t find any oil to heat their
homes and prevent hypothermia deaths in the young, elderly, and
ill patients.
In heartless fashion Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the
new Arab peace partner, commenting on Gaza’s deprivation oil,
fuel, and electricity said: "As far as I'm concerned, all the
residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel for their cars”. (Ha’aretz,
Jan. 21, 2008)
Is it any wonder that because Arabs have no sense of self
respect, honor, or dignity, that the entire world disrespects
their faith, lives, and culture. To the world they are barbaric
and primitive, hence the trillions of Petrodollars spent on
“modernizing” buildings as a substitute for building the
intellect. Like everything else they purchase at will these Gulf
rulers are attempting to buy their way into western acceptance,
not realizing how the west mocks their very existence and
wealth. The west was built by intellectual rigor, science, hard
work, education, training, and skills. None of these factors
exist in the Arab world. If only these sheiks could spend their
wealth on developing their people along similar lines rather
than facing the daunting decision of where to spend a billion
dollars a day.
According to the Institute of International Finance, a global
association of banks based in Washington D.C., the Persian Gulf
countries earned $1.5 trillion ($100 for every
Muslim man, woman and child) in oil revenue from 2002 to 2006.
This overwhelming wealth due to rising oil prices is so vast for
these countries to absorb that they’re investing hundreds of
billions of dollars in creative construction projects at home
(such as the $500 Billion Saudi project to build new cities), or
investing abroad to save American banks, like Citigroup and
Merrill Lynch, as well as investing in American real estate,
movie and computer companies, hotel corporations like the MGM
Mirage and the Four Seasons, or in the purchase of personal toys
such as Prince Walid bin Talal’s new super jumbo jet, the Airbus
380, which will be the first and largest private jet in the
world fully equipped with all the luxurious amenities. The
cost--a staggering $300 million for the unfurnished plane.
If only they could invest such wealth in American media
companies, the most powerful institution that influences public
opinion and foreign policy. Such investments would contribute
more to the freedom of Palestinians, Iraqis, and other Muslims
than any potential army. Media is king, not Casinos and hotels.
Arab leaders have long ignored, neglected, and oppressed their
own people thereby allowing the perfect storm of Islamic
ignorance, poverty, frustration, and anger against them and
their foreign handlers. In such a vacuum sectarianism between
the rulers and the ruled, the haves and have nots, extremism,
and terrorism arose. Ignorant clerics manipulated these wayward
youth to believe that only violence can restore Islamic glory
and the Caliphate. That is an impossibility in a Muslim world
devoid of true Islam, where tribalism has replaced allegiance to
God, where unity is non-existent, and where education and
intellectual development barely exist. Islam began with the
intellectual command “READ”, today the word is ‘GREED”.
Ironically through their abandonment of true Islamic principles
and the general welfare of Muslims, Arab and Muslim leaders are
committing their own violence against Islam.
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