Zionism and Palestine
The views outlined by Kimberley James Roachelle (Write On, Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly #544) are a very clear-cut case of ignoring those aspects of Zionist history and its dispossession of the Palestinians that conflict with her idealistic illusions about Israel.
She would like the readers of GLW to accept her erroneous belief that "if only the Palestinian Arabs were committed to peace as well, the entire region could flourish".
Zionism, from its inception, disregarded the rights of the Palestinian people. This movement believed that they could establish a Jewish state in a territory where the composition of the population was 50,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs.
Rioting against the British Mandate and the Zionist concept of turning Palestine into a Jewish state commenced as early as 1921. Zionism is a bourgeois solution to the evil of anti-Semitism. By contrast, the Marxist solution is to proscribe all forms of racism.
After the massacre of Deir Yassin in April 1948, more than 800,000 Palestinians left Israel. They and their descendants have been refused the right to return to their country of origin, and yet any person of the Jewish faith or descent is welcomed, even if their forebears have not been there for 2000 years.
How can Palestinian refugees be committed to peace when they are refugees existing in appalling conditions of poverty and suffering and refused repatriation to their own country.
After 205 years, the High Court of Australia in the Mabo judgement declared that this continent was not terra nullius (unoccupied) before 1788. Palestine was not terra nullius at the time of the Balfour declaration of 1917.
Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization stated that by Jewish immigration, Palestine would ultimately become as Jewish "as England is English". This quotation is from Weizmann's autobiography, Trial and Error.
Kimberley would benefit from reading the GLW article, "Palestinian self-determination and Zionist colonialism", by Sean Malloy and Doug Lorimer (see ), and the articles and speeches by Rihab Charida, an outstanding advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield NSW
[Abridged.]
Eminem I
I agree with and Dave Riley (GLW #545) and Benjamen Standing (GLW #544) that the Eminem (Marshall Mathers) vehicle 8 Mile does a good social realist job of showing hip hop's origins in and connectedness to black and working-class cultures.
However, it should be added that the film and the character Rabbit, showing Mathers to be a sensitive and not really sexist and homophobic guy, as well as "from the block", is a conscious marketing strategy to broaden Mathers' appeal (yes, including to the liberal and leftist-minded), just as his nasty Slim Shady persona was a conscious marketing strategy to help him break ahead of the hip-hop pack in the late 1990s.
As for Dave's strange assertion that Mathers is "possibly the best thing contemporary rock music has on offer": he's got some sharp lyrics, and some dumb and offensive ones, set to the kind of very simplistic electronica that hip hop's vanguard had overdone by about 1982.
Do yourself a favour Dave, check out much more musically and politically interesting hip hop (not to mention other genres) such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Spearhead, Beastie Boys and Jurassic 5 from the US, England's Asian Dub Foundation, Fundamental and Roots Manuva, and Aussies Downsyde and the Herd.
Nick Fredman
Rosebank NSW
Eminem II
In response to Dave Riley's letter in GLW #545. I wanted to clarify that in my article (concerning Eminem and the movie 8 mile in GLW #544) I was not saying that we should support Eminem. I wrote that article primarily because I thought Kathy Newnam's article in GLW #524 was misleading and inaccurate.
On one hand, I hope that the next person who says that Eminem is just a white boy trying to be "black" spontaneously combusts. On the other hand, I think most of Eminem's colleagues and fans wouldn't brush off his language as a bit of fun if he was calling people "nigger" and "coon" instead of "bitch" and "faggot".
Also he constantly cries about having millions of fans, yet if he didn't want them, why does he create "radio edit" versions of his songs to be played on MTV? Particularly when he's constantly telling us "[He'd] yank [his] fuckin' teeth, before [he]'d ever bite [his] tongue".
I just think it's a pretty interesting phenomenon, neither good nor bad. He has had the ability to connect with many people, particularly poor working-class youth on a record scale.
And he did "execute" Dick Cheney on his TV show during the height of the post-9/11 pro-government hysteria in the US. If that was purely marketing it was one hell of a gamble.
Benjamen Standing
Adelaide
Three wishes
It is possible that George W Bush is unable to find the weapons of mass destruction because he is not looking for the "right arsenal". Perhaps George W could broaden his search to include magic wands and genies. A genie may be able to grant George W's three wishes:
1. finding WMDs; 2. links to al Qaeda; and 3. the whole "deck of cards" (including Saddam).
Just in case the genie is unable to grant George's wishes, then a magic wand may be used to bring the WMDs into existence.
Sarah Rubenach
Launceston Tas
Justice for Hicks and Habib
Different times, different circumstances, but there is a line to be drawn between what Gough Whitlam did about the killing of the Balibo Five in 1975, and what Howard has done about the cases of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib: just about nothing.
What do they have in common? The sucking up to a foreign regime at the expense of this country's own citizens. Take a bow, Gough Whitlam and John Howard. We demand justice, not complicity, in both cases.
Stephen Langford, Toni Pollard, John R Hallam, Jean Lopez, Gai Smith and Kathleen Rigg
Sydney
Information needed on ADI cancers
In 1995, GLW published the article, "Contamination fears at ADI St Marys". The writers were ConGouriotis and Nadya Stani. They mentioned Dr Helen Abrahams and David Pattmore.
Could these people please contact Mr Brent Robertson, of the Blacktown Greens on 9835-1882. If anyone knows these people please get them to contact me urgently. Also, if anyone knows of cancer stories about people working on or living near the Australian Defence Industries site at St Marys, Tregear, Lethbridge Park or Willmot, please contact me.
The NSW Greens are calling for a parliamentary inquiry into deaths and cancers at the site and the possibility of remaining serious contamination. We need your help!
Brent Robertson
Blacktown NSW
Canadian workers need support
When the anti-union British Columbia Liberal provincial government sold pulp producer Skeena Cellulose, the buyer closed the doors of the Carnaby mill in Hazelton. Over 100 workers were left without jobs.
That was two years ago, and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) Local 404 members have been trying to get the mill reopened ever since. The new owner cut timber and sold off raw logs. Then it attempted to sell the heavy movable equipment at the mill.
CEP members lobbied the District of Hazelton and the district placed a lien on the equipment for unpaid taxes. The employer then called for bids to sell the fixed equipment in the mill. The union began a blockade to stop the owner from dismantling and selling off the mill piece by piece.
All CEP members have run out of Employment Insurance benefits. Some have received welfare, but under the new Liberal government rules, many have not qualified. There are a few casual jobs around Hazelton, but most workers are desperate and they and their families are HUNGRY. They can't even put gas in their tanks to get to the blockade.
What can you do? Send Mo Azaz, president of Local 404, a message of solidarity by email at <mo@bulkley.net>. Send funds by cheque, bank draft or money order, made out to CEP Local 404: Save Carnaby, to the following address: PO Box 160, New Hazelton, BC, Canada, V0J 2J0.
For more information: email Joy Langan at <joy_langan@telus.net> or <mo@bulkley.net>
Please help!
Gordon Flett
New Hazelton Canada
Iraqis have no choice but to strike back!
The United States is determined to control Iraq for the foreseeable future. They have made it clear that they will not be handing over the reigns of power to an Iraqi administration until they have eradicated the resistance, and ensured that a government that is acceptable to them can be established.
The US and its allies — Britain and Australia — have embarked on a modern version of colonisation. They are not prepared to allow the Iraqi people to determine their own future or control the resources that is their birthright. They have decided to use whatever force is necessary to make Iraq like themselves — a puppet state of the West.
The US and its allies illegally invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein. As the victor, they believe they have the right to stay in Iraq and implement a Western-style government. Their difficulty is that their religion, culture and political beliefs are an anathema to the Iraqi people. Why would the Iraqi people want to accept the political dictates of a foreign occupying force that they have absolutely nothing in common with.
If the Iraqi people truly value their independence and sovereignty as a nation, they have no choice but to send the invaders packing. The US has two primary goals in Iraq. They are to further their own control over resources, particularly oil, and ensure US hegemony in the region. The needs and desires of the Iraqi people are secondary to these primary objectives. Hussein wasn't removed because he was a bad man, but because he threatened US strategic interests in the region.
The fight to remove the invaders from Iraq will not be an easy one. They have entrenched themselves, but they are still vulnerable. Their forces can be picked off sporadically. Ongoing casualties will undermine military morale and the tenuous domestic support that this unprovoked invasion and occupation has.
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
Third way to colonialism
A Reuters newsagency report published in Australian papers on July 15 has confirmed that Australian troops sent to occupy the Solomon Islands will be "immune" from local law. The arrangement, which is being formally passed in the Solomon Islands parliament before the troops arrive, is at the request of the Australian government.
The legal immunity is similar to demands from Washington that US troops occupying other countries should be immune from prosecution for human rights abuses before the newly established International Criminal Court.
The legal rubber-stamping of a more explicit colonialist relationship towards other countries since 9/11 is also reflected in circumstances in which rich countries are prepared to invade "failed states".
The new colonialist ethos is not just from right-wingers such as US President George Bush, but part of the now discredited "Third Way" approach of leading "centre-left" leaders such as British Labour PM Tony Blair. The Third Way approach was a very popular leftish intellectual fad within centre-left parties in the 1990s, culminating in Blair's "New Labour".
The movement was intellectually led by sociologist Anthony Giddens, later director of the London School of Economics and senior advisor to the Blair government. The new colonialism under a smiling mask has received approval at a July 11-13 meeting in London of representatives from leading "centre-left" parties, including Canadian PM Jean Chretien, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and New Zealand's Labour PM Helen Clark.
The circumstances which would justify invasion include, according to a draft document, "internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure". Such circumstances where the country concerned is unwilling or unable to stop the internal unrest allows "the principle of non-intervention [to] yield to the international responsibility to protect".
Dale Mills
Sydney
A Palestinian Holocaust in the making?
Last week, a report by UN Special Investigator Jean Ziegler offered tangible proof that the politics of the "Road Map" should take a back seat to an immediate stoppage of the atrocities visited upon Palestine by Israel.
The human rights abuses are producing what may well become a Palestinian Holocaust. According to Ziegler, the humanitarian situation in the Palestine territories is catastrophic. Severe malnutrition in the West Bank and Gaza is rampant. World Bank statistics report that more than 60% of the Palestinian population lives on less than US$2 a day and more than half of Palestinian families eat only once a day.
"The Palestinian people are reduced to begging, and most are dependent on international assistance for survival", he commented, ticking off additional crises involving breakdowns in farming and food supplies, the inability of people to get to hospital and schools.
"The Palestinians are humiliated in a very, very shocking way", he added. "Israel is violating international law by failing to provide much needed aid to the Palestinians."
Genevieve Cora Fraser
Orange Massachusetts, USA
Old US friends in trouble
The ending process of the former bipolar world system which was considerably accelerated by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and completed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, produced different results.
Some countries that received huge economic and military aid as well as remarkable political support from Washington for being on the frontline of fight against the Soviet's expansionism, lost immediately their prominence in the eyes of American policy-makers.
For example, Saudi Arabia, which was generally considered as an economic stronghold for political and ideological anti-Soviet campaign in the region, has obviously become a target of the US disregard and indirect criticism in recent years.
No-one can ignore how important role Saudi Arabia did play either in igniting religious sentiments and fanaticism against leftist views or in sponsoring the organisation of different extremist religious groups as an alternative for left parties in Muslim-populated countries.
For many years, thousands of boxes packed with various religious books in different sizes and forms, along with many other propaganda products, flowed from the largest oil-exporting country in the world into the regional countries. Apart from this, tens of religious schools, seminaries, libraries and other similar institutions were constantly established in different areas by some benevolent Saudi princes. All these generous actions were of course rendered to foil the dangerous Soviet influence in these societies!
Turkey is another example of the US disregard toward its old friends. This Asian-European country, as a NATO member, played a significant role in the US military campaign against the former Soviet Union after the Second World War. Of course, it had also taken an important part in the security belt created by the UK around the newly established Soviet Union after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.
As mentioned above, after the Second World War, Turkey as a strategic point in the Soviet Union's neighbourhood, occupied an important place in US regional military plans.
In addition, the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran in 1979 on the one hand, and Turkey's reliance on the US economic aids to shore its shaky economy up on the other hand, pushed Ankara more and more into the USA's political and military games in the region.
Perhaps, Afghanistan is the clearest evidence of the Americans' oblivious policies toward its old allies. It is really one of the worst victims of the post-bipolar era. This war-damaged poor country, which was called "the champion of fight against the Soviet occupation" by the Americans at the time of the former Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, was suddenly forgotten and left out after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
All of the arms granted by Washington to the Afghan fighters were mainly used in the long and devastating civil war that broke out between the rival Mujaheddin groups just after the fall of the Soviet-supported regime in Kabul.
Extremist religious groups such as al Qaeda, which had been supported by Washington as an ideological barrier against Soviet influence in the region, began to reorganise and realise their own ultra-religious dogmas after the fall of the Soviet Union. All these developments led ultimately to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
No need to say the Taliban, as a fundamentalist religious group, was created by Pakistan's ideological and organisational inspiration, Saudi Arabia's financial support and US encouragement. It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan without the US green light.
Of course, it should not be forgotten that Pakistan, America's traditional nuclear-powered ally, played a key role whether in arming the Afghan Mujaheddin against the former Soviet Union or in training and helping the Taliban to subdue the other rivals.
In the meantime, it would be useful to mention that the antagonism between Pakistan and India was often been ignited and misused by US politicians in order to put pressure on India, known as a Soviet ally during the cold war.
Today, everything is changed and the hard time has come for Washington's old friends; Saudi Arabia as a strong bastion of religious traditionalism is surprisingly under growing US pressure to reform its closed and old-fashioned political and economic institutions for a future US-controlled economic free zone.
The Taliban and al Qaeda are completely isolated and involved in desperate terrorist attacks on US targets, but there is no doubt they serve the interests of the regional reactionary circles in reality.
Pakistan had to undergo an overnight change in its policy toward the Taliban during the US military action in Afghanistan and stop supporting it. It is facing many fanatical religious groups as well as Taliban sympathisers' opposition on one hand, and the US strong pressure for dismantling them on the other hand.
No doubt, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf should be extremely cautious about these groups, because he may face what happened to Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in the past.
As for Turkey, it is indeed at loggerheads with the US for two main reasons. First, Turkish politicians are often complaining about the huge losses the Turkish people have suffered during the two US-led wars on Iraq; second, Turkey is somewhat dissatisfied with US support towards Iraqi Kurds.
At present, Turkish officials are worriedly watching Iraqi Kurds' every move, because they strongly believe their achievement of independence will immediately push Turkey's Kurds into action.
Nasser Frounchi
Journalism instructor
Torbat-e-Jaam University Iran
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 30, 2003.
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