Causes

Finally, we come to the question, how did the war start? It is fair to say that the seeds for this war were planted in 1949, when the Arab armies trying to destroy the nascent Israel were routed, and that the Suez Crisis of 1956 raised tensions in the region even more. But to call those things causes of the Six Day War is like saying World War One caused World War Two; and since the Franco-Prussian War caused World War One, and the Napoleonic Wars caused the Franco Prussian War, we can say that the French Revolution caused World War Two. This is too much of a stretch. Without going back to far, the buildup to the Six Day War started three years earlier, in 1964.

In that year, Levi Eshkol, Israel’s prime minister, and Yitzhak Rabin, its chief of staff agreed on the aims of Israel’s defence policy for the first five year plan for the military. The plan said that the State of Israel did not wish for more territory. Israel would not initiate conflict with an Arab state but if war were imposed on it, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would move swiftly into the enemy’s territory and destroy its war infrastructure.

More significantly, it was the year border clashes with Syria got deadlier. There were three sources of tension on the border: the demilitarised zones, water and Palestinian guerrillas. Moshe Dayan, Defence Minister during the Six Day War, said that in at least 80% of the clashes with Syria, “We would send a tractor to plow someplace where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarised area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.” The Israelis were provoking the Syrians.

In addition, the water issue began in 1964. Israel began withdrawing water from the Jordan River. At a conference, the Arab League approved a $17.5m plan to divert the Jordan river at its sources, drastically reducing the quantity and quality of Israel’s water. Knowing that Israelis would not sit back while their country dried up, the same conference also created a United Arab Command to protect the project and prepare for an offensive campaign. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation, or PLO, was yet another outcome of the conference. The Arab League began construction on its diversion plan the next year. The IDF attacked the diversion works in Syria in 1965, exacerbating the border tensions that led to the war.

In February 1966, an extreme left wing, anti-Zionist Baath regime took power in Damascus. It called for a popular war to liberate Palestine and sponsored Palestinian guerrilla attacks on Israeli targets. These guerrilla attacks were not about to wipe Israel off the map, but they fanned the flames of mutual hostility between Israel and Syria.

Palestinian guerrillas, mainly Arafat’s Fatah, carried out 122 raids between January 1965 and June 1967. They were mostly staged from Lebanon and Jordan, but the guerrillas were largely armed, trained and run by Syrian general staff. In response to one such attack, the Israeli Defense Forces attacked the village of Samu on the West Bank. Dozens of Jordanian soldiers were killed. The attack shocked King Hussein and exposed his military weakness. On April 7, 1967, following a border skirmish, the Israeli Air Force shot down six Soviet-made Syrian MiGs in an air battle. The Syrian government was in a rage. The countdown to the Six Day War had begun.

Because the survival of the Baath regime was important to the USSR, the Soviets sent a report to Nasser that Israel was concentrating its forces on its northern front and was planning to attack Syria. The report was false. Some who were observing at the time said that, although the Soviet warning about Israel’s amassing troops on its northern border was wrong, the Israeli cabinet was planning to attack Syria and the Soviets had gotten wind. Nasser knew the report was untrue but he felt that, as the Arab world’s leadership was in question, he could not fail to act. Syria already had a defense pact with Egypt. There is general agreement among historians that Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel. What he did was brinkmanship: pushing Israel to the brink and hoping war would not be necessary.

He did so for several reasons. First, he could not afford to look weak in front of his restive public. A major share of his army was already in the Sinai, and it would have been humiliating to pull them back. Second, the other side of the coin, continuing the troop buildup would enhance his status at home and in the Arab world. Indeed, reactions to the move were, in Michael Oren’s words, “enthusiastic, even ecstatic”. Finally, if there was no imminent threat to Syria, Nasser could take credit for increasing Egypt’s troop presence in the Sinai without fear Israel would attack. After all, he had already been assured it would not.

Nasser sent a large number of troops into the Sinai, removing the UN troops already there, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The Straits were important because, although few Israeli vessels actually transversed the Straits, it was where Iranian oil tankers exporting to Israel sailed. But more importantly, according to Aharon Yariv, Israel’s chief of intelligence, failure to act to end the blockade of the Straits would make Israel lose its credibility and deterrent capacity. These tools have been essential for Israel ever since.

In all countries, the masses were whipped into a war frenzy. They heard about the hourly radio reports from Arab countries about Israel’s impending doom, and the general feeling was of a noose tightening around the nation’s neck. Israel’s Holocaust survivors were particularly scared when Israeli newspapers likened Nasser to Hitler. According to Charles Krauthammer, “It is hard to exaggerate what it was like for Israel in those three weeks [before the war]. Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco began sending forces to join the coming fight. With troops and armor massing on Israel’s every frontier, jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. ‘We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants,’ declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, ‘and as for the survivors–if there are any–the boats are ready to deport them.’”

Everyone predicted a war. Eshkol was expecting a war; Cairo Radio said “our forces are in a complete state of readiness for war”; Syria’s government said “The war of liberation will not end except by Israel’s abolition.” Israel’s preemptive strike on its enemies was justified to end the tension and the fear–to stop waiting to die and start fighting to survive.

On May 12, in a newspaper interview, Rabin said “the moment is coming when we will march on Damascus to overthrow the Syrian government”. On May 19, Rabin told his generals, “[t]he politicians are convinced they can solve the problems through diplomacy. We have to enable them to exhaust every alternative to war, even though I see no way of returning to things the way they were. If the Egyptians blockade the Straits, there will be no alternative to war.” Nonetheless, Rabin also did not think Nasser wanted war.

On May 30, King Hussein flew to Cairo to sign the mutual defense pact with Nasser. An Egyptian general was appointed commander of Jordan’s army. On June 3, two Egyptian commando battalions were flown to Jordan, and on the following morning an Iraqi mechanised brigade crossed into Jordan and moved to the Jordan River. Egypt and Iraq, traditional enemies, signed a mutual defense pact.

Israel attacked when it did because it obtained approval from the US. Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defence, gave Israel a green light to attack Egypt. However, Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, said he was outraged that Israel attacked at all.

What was the most important factor in starting the Six Day War? At a glance, it would appear to have been Nasser and Egypt’s amassing of troops in the Sinai and closing of the Straits of Tiran and Gulf of Eliat. The closing of the Straits was an act of war in itself. But historians disagree with this explanation. First, there is evidence that Nasser did not want war. His public was highly belligerent but he knew Egypt could not simply defeat and occupy Israel. He had learned from the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Second, there are alternative explanations. Avi Shlaim says that border skirmishes with Syria were the main cause of the war. “Israel’s strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June 1967″. Israel had been forced to abandon its plan to divert water from the Jordan in the central demilitarised zone to the Negev desert (southern Israel) in 1953. The Arab states, led by Syria, poked and prodded Israel by diverting the Jordan River. Israeli and Syrian troops clashed and Israel gained the upper hand. “Having been defeated in the water war,” says Shlaim, “the frustrated Syrians began to sponsor attacks on Israel from their territory by Palestinian guerrilla organisations.” The violence escalated.

Michael Oren believes that, because (arguably) water politics led to fighting on Israel’s northern border, more than anything else, “the war would revolve around water.” The Arab League’s plans to take most of Israel’s water was provocation bigger than its threats, and the dry noose was the catalyst for Israel’s decision to strike.

Diplomacy came to naught. Tempers were not defused, the noose was not given any slack, and the push to war continued. At 07:45 on June 5, Israel attacked Egypt, beginning the Six Day War and setting in motion all the conflicts and killings Israel has suffered or delivered since.

Bibliography

Oren, Michael: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Finkelstein, Norman: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Shlaim, Avi: The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Morris, Benny: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001
Charles Krauthammer: Prelude to the Six Days: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701976.html

The complete Short History of the Six Day War can be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/22787004/A-Short-History-of-the-Six-Day-War.

Conduct

Why did Israel win the Six Day War? There are a few reasons. First, it attacked preemptively. Israel’s attack may or may not have been justified (though, as I will explain in the third section, the historical record implies that it was) but it was a surprise. Surprise attack is a good strategy. Second, Israelis generally felt that their backs were against the wall. The prevailing feeling in Israel before the war had been one of fear (which, again, we will go into in the final section of this account), and when fear is translated into fight (as opposed to flight) it is deadly. The prevailing feeling among Arabs was hubris. Third, Israel had superior forces, and relied on air power at the beginning of its campaign. Fourth, the Arab armies had poor leadership and organisation, and were not as prepared, as numerous or as mighty as they had thought. This section will expatiate on the most important events of the war.

By 07:30 on June 5, 200 Israeli planes were aloft and heading to Egypt. A Jordanian radar officer noticed and radioed his commanding officer in Amman. The officer in Amman relayed the information to Cairo. However, the Egyptians had, just the day before, changed their codes and had not notified the Jordanians. The Israeli aircraft destroyed most of Egypt’s air force and antiaircraft weapons on the ground.

Now in control of the air, Israel sent tanks across the Sinai desert. They suffered many casualties but still did better than the Egyptians. Major General Ariel Sharon, prime minister during the Second Intifada, was commander of one of the most powerful of the armoured divisions that took the Sinai. Battles continued and Israeli tanks kept advancing. By day 4, there was no more doubt that the Egyptians were defeated and that Israel had taken the Sinai.

A few hours after the attack on Egypt, the US consul-general in Jerusalem mused that Jerusalem might have been spared the violence that was raging around the region. At first, things were calm. King Hussein of Jordan, which controlled East Jerusalem and the West Bank, received a phone call from Nasser saying that Israel had suffered great losses. The Iraqis told him their aircraft were already engaging with Israel’s. Hussein ordered the attack.

Bombs from planes and cannons shook Israel for a few hours but then Israel performed two lightning strikes that destroyed Jordan’s planes and airfields. They took other positions in Jordan, and over the next two days occupied much of the West Bank. This new territory included the Old City–East Jerusalem. Jews were ecstatic. This was a big cause of their feeling at the end of the war that God was truly on their side: not only had they triumphed over seemingly (but not actually) overwhelming odds, but they had taken back the holy lands of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the now united holy city of Jerusalem.

On day 2, Nasser declared, erroneously, that the US was actively aiding Israel in the fighting. He asked the USSR for equal assistance to ward off the Americans. Radio stations in Syria, Jordan and elsewhere claimed, also erroneously, that American or British planes and ships were causing all kinds of trouble. As a result, mobs attacked American embassies throughout the Middle East. Ten oil-producing Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Iraq limited or banned oil shipments to the US and Britain. This began the 1967 oil embargo and the use of the “oil weapon”.

The United States continued monitoring the conflict from a distance. The USS Liberty, breaking with the 6th Fleet, came close to the Sinai coast. Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli chief of staff (later prime minister), had warned that all unidentified vessels traveling at high speed would be sunk. The Liberty was not identified fast enough, and Israeli jets and boats attacked it. The ship was badly damaged and 34 American crewmen died. The US and Israeli governments both conducted inquiries and found that the attack was an accident. However, some US diplomats and officials say it was not. The Israeli government later paid nearly $13m in settlements. To this day, there are many unanswered questions about the USS Liberty incident.

Back to the front. Syria had also believed the reports that Israel was nearly defeated but nonetheless moved with some caution. When the Israeli Air Force was finished with the Egyptian Air Force, it turned its attention to the Syrian Air Force. In the evening of the first day of the war, the Israelis destroyed two thirds of Syria’s fighter jets. Several Syrian tanks were put to rest as well. Syria’s army began shelling positions in northern Israel but were soon pushed back again. By day 5, the battle for the Golan Heights was raging. The Golan Heights are a plateau bordering Israel, Syria and Lebanon. In two days, they became an occupied territory and in 1981 were annexed (like East Jerusalem but unlike Gaza and the West Bank) by Israel.

After the last gun had been fired over the Heights, the war was over. The ceasefire was signed the next day, on June 11th. Israelis proved to the world that it took more than some local bullies to bring it down. But its troubles were not over.

Yesterday, we saw the consequences of the Six Day War. Part 3 will show us how we got to June 5.

On June 5, 1967, Israel went to war with its neighbours. By June 10, Israel had more than tripled in size. In a decisive victory in six short days, Israel defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan, who in turn had help from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Sudan and Tunisia. Soon dubbed “the Six Day War”, this short, regional conflict would go on to have enormous implications for Israel, the Middle East and the peace and security of the world.

This series of posts will summarise, in three parts, the causes, conduct and consequences of the Six Day War. It attempts to give a simple but not simplistic account of the facts, inasmuch as the facts can be ascertained from noteworthy historical accounts of the war.

This account will begin with the consequences, followed by the conduct of the war in its most important events and finally, the war’s causes. We start with the consequences of the Six Day War in order to show the reader the enormous impact this small war has had, and why he or she should continue reading.

Consequences
The Six Day War’s consequences were numerous and far-reaching, and some of them plague the region to this day. The changes of perceptions of threats in the area, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and subsequent Egypt-Israel peace accord, the hostage massacre at the Munich Olympics and the increased importance of the Middle East as a Cold War hotspot are some of the war’s short term outcomes. I will attempt to outline the longer lasting ones here. They are the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the occupation the Palestinian territories and military and nonmilitary conflict.

First, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism, or jihadism, or whatever you want to call it, is an indirect consequence of the Six Day War. Before the Six Day War, Pan-Arabism was the motto of the day. Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, had become the leader of a kind of anti-colonial, anti-Israeli, socialist movement in the Arab world. This movement was a source of unity and the reason why Arab states combined their armed forces on the eve of the Six Day War. In a very unusual act as governments go, Egypt and Syria had even united under one state to form the United Arab Republic, though only for three years. Nasser was very charismatic and popular and, in the lead up to the Six Day War, was assured a win by those around him.

One year before the Six Day War, in 1966, Nasser ordered the execution of Sayyid Qutb, a leading intellectual member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb was not a terrorist (and the Brotherhood is not a terrorist organisation), but he played a big role in the rise of Islamic terrorism. When he was executed, he was made a martyr. His ideas spread and “jihadist” organisations like al-Qaeda followed them.

The transnational Islamist movement arose in a vacuum. After the Six Day War, the Arab leaders (the losers) bickered and fought. Each heaped culpability on the others and suddenly, unity was no longer a priority. Some leaders, such as Jordan’s King Hussein, wanted a peace accord with Israel, while Nasser engaged Israel in the pointless but deadly War of Attrition. Pan-Arabism thus discredited, Islamic fundamentalism became the new ideology of the Muslim world. While most Muslims do not fall under this banner, Islamism has attracted people from countries as diverse as Indonesia, Morocco, India, Iraq, Britain and Spain. And the main target of anger and terrorism in the name of Islam has been Israel.

In the second lasting consequence of the Six Day War, Israel acquired the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. It occupies the last four of these to this day. The return of the Sinai to Egypt was the major reason that Egypt and Israel were able to sign a peace agreement in 1978. Israel and Jordan signed a peace accord in 1994 but return of the West Bank was not part of the deal. It was believed that the Golan Heights could be returned to Syria and the West Bank to Jordan for peace accords, but they were not. The Heights were not of sufficient importance to Syria and peace with Syria not of sufficient interest to Israel to ever make the exchange. And no one wants the Gaza Strip. What problems these territories have caused.

The acquisition of territory by conquest and the settling of it with the conquering state’s citizens are both strictly prohibited by international law. With the exception of East Jerusalem, which the vast majority of Israelis refuse to give up, the government of Israel once hoped that the occupied territories could be returned for peace treaties (“Land for Peace”). At the same time, however, it was allowing Jewish settlers into all areas of the territories. Settlements began springing up everywhere. Settlements in the Sinai were uprooted to return the land to Egypt, and settlements in Gaza were removed in 2005 for reasons we will not go into here. But there are still half a million Jewish settlers in all the occupied territories. Going into all the trouble they have caused for both Israel and the Palestinians is the subject of the book “Lords of the Land” by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar; suffice it to say, the occupation and settlement are the primary reasons the Palestinians are angry.

Third and most important, and related to Israel’s territorial gains, it may be fair to say that all major violence against Israelis and Palestinians since June 1967 has been due to the consequences of the Six Day War. One consequence of the 1948 war, the first Arab-Israeli war, was the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem. The Six Day War exacerbated it. The Palestinians were pushed in greater numbers into refugee camps in places like Lebanon and Jordan. Palestinians were a big presence in western Jordan, and around 1970 had almost carved out an autonomous enclave on the East Bank of the Jordan River. The Palestinian organisation Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat, conducted border raids on Israel and fought with Jordanians as well.

In September of 1970 (“Black September”), Palestinians attempted to assassinate King Hussein. They also hijacked airplanes and, after removing the hostages, blew them up on television. The Jordanian army attacked and, after a year of fighting, drove them out of Jordan to Lebanon.

The Six Day War is also known as the third Arab-Israeli war; the fourth one was in 1973; and the fifth one was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, and after a short time staying out, Arafat’s guerrillas entered the fray. The Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, entered Lebanon in an attempt to shore up a friendly government and take out the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. For some time it occupied Beirut, but was forced to retreat to a small part of southern Lebanon that it held as a buffer. Israel’s invasion is generally held as the progenitor of Hizbullah, which prodded Israel into violence several times since, most evidently in the 2006 Lebanon War. In what many Israelis saw at the time as unprovoked and unnecessary violence, in 1982, the IDF killed several thousand Lebanese, enabled the massacre of more than 800 Palestinian refugees and suffered more than 600 casualties.

The occupation of the territories turned the IDF from a defense force into a police force, setting up checkpoints, defending settlers and bulldozers, arresting and shooting Palestinians for violating curfews. This oppressive policing of Palestine led to the first Intifada. The typical image of the Intifada is the Palestinian boy throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. The first Intifada was an uprising against Israeli control of the Palestinian territories and lasted for six years. The second Intifada, characterised less by stones and more by suicide bombings, also lasted several years (when it ended is disputed) and a third one may be in the works.

Contrary to what many Israelis believe, the Intifadas were spontaneous, not planned. They were not the attempted destruction of the State of Israel by the Palestinians but may be likened more to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis: people were herded into terrible conditions and handled with violence. Only the most sheeplike people would not consider fighting back. Things have not gotten any better in the occupied territories and there is no solution in the works. The Palestinians were the real victims of the Six Day War, a war that, in the minds of too many people, has never been resolved.

Tomorrow, we will look at the conduct of the war itself.

Ich heiße Nasser El Khalfioui und wohne in Korbeek-lo, das ist 3 km entfernt vom Zentrum Leuven. Ich habe 1 Bruder und 1 Schwester, mein Bruder heißt Abdel und ist 13 Jahre alt und meine Schwester heißt Imane und ist 17 Jahre alt. Meine Eltern heißen Mohammed und Malika, mein Vater ist Arbeiter und meine Mutter ist Hausfrau. Ich spiele gern Fußball, aber in meiner Freizeit gehe ich zum Fitness. Ich trainiere 4 Mal der Woche, und ein Mal die Woche schwimme ich. Ich gehe zum Miniemeninstituut in der Klasse 4 HT und habe noch 2 Jahre vor mir. Meine gute Eigenschaft ist, dass ich hilfsbereit bin und freigebig aber meine schlechte Eigenschaft ist, dass ich faul bin. Ich stehe ganz vorne auf dem Foto neben Brahim und Mathieu mit einem lila Pullover. Meine Staatsangehörichkeit ist Marokkaner und ich habe schwarze Haare und braune Augen

A few days ago I was able to provide a look into our work through the full text of our weekly published reports. I was able to attend a lecture at the American University of Cairo featuring Jihan Sadat in which she talked about her husband’s legacy in striving for peace and women’s rights. It was a pleasant tale, though made somber by the fact of his assassination, though it has now been over twenty years since it took place.

 Today’s link to my report discusses a more controversial subject. In the West we can have a nose-in-the-air attitude toward human rights in the rest of world. We are rightly proud of our freedoms and principles, yet while we wish these to be generalized in the whole world, we usually assume that ours is the measuring stick by which other societies are to be judged.

 I do not mean to call this assumption into question, only to point it out. The reality in the rest of the world is complicated. Though independent analysis would likely confirm the greater freedoms found in the West, it would also state the longer heritage we have had in crafting and guaranteeing these freedoms. It would also mark our many missteps along the way.

 Hisham Kassem has spent his life involved in Egyptian journalism. He is uniquely placed to comment on the state of the Egyptian press, and granted access to his viewpoint in a lecture delivered to the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. If anything, I was surprised by how few people were there, especially given the importance of his remarks. In addition, most of the audience consisted of foreigners.

 Though his lecture was delivered before that of Jihan Sadat, we debated a little longer about publishing it. His comments are not inflammatory, but journalism is a sensitive subject here, even though, as he states, Egypt is one of the most open nations of the Middle East. In the end we thought to allow it, for they are his comments, not ours. Since he feared not to publish his views, neither should we. The text of the report follows below:

Prior to the revolution of 1952 Egypt had a strong tradition of journalism with independent newspapers driven by a market economy. President Nassar, however, institutionalized the press, giving newspaper licenses only to his close confidents. He also established an official position of state censor… (click here for link)

YVI SLAN

Yvi Slan sera en résidence du 10 au 30 novembre AMI (Marseille), du 5 janvier 2010 au 26 janvier AMI, du 22 au 29 février 2010 à la Distillerie (Aubagne).

YS mixe le 4 titres de the BIJS (Bg ij Japan). Cd promo pour début décembre 2009.

YS enregistrera & mixera l’album de Dissonant Nation 2010. Il intègre la formation en tant qu’ingé-son pour les concerts.

Les radios qui playlistent l’album “EVE” depuis la mi-août 2009:

• Plum FM (Serent / Morbihan)
• Alternantes FM (Nantes / Loire-Atlantique)
• Radio Zinzine (Limans /Alpes de Hautes Provences)
• Radio Saint-Affrique (Saint-Affrique / Aveyron, région Midi-Pyrénées)
• CFM Caussade / Rodez / Montauban (Tarn & Garonne)
• Radio Altitude (Clermont-FD / Puy-de-Dôme)
• Radio Primitive (Reims / la Marne)
• Radio Coloriage (Fain les Moutiers / Centre-Bourgogne)
• Radio Alpa (le Mans / De la Sarthe)
• Radio RPG 96,5 (Gueret / Creuse)
• Radio Campus – Bordeaux (Bordeaux / Gironde)
• Radio Campus -Angers (Angers / Maine et Loire)
• Radio Coteaux (St-Blancard / Gers)
• Radio Beaub FM (Limoges / Haute-Vienne)
• Radio Graf’Hit (Compiègnes /Oise)
• Agora Fm (Grasse / Alpes Maritimes)
• Radio Ballade (Espéraza / Aude)
• Radio Jordanne FM (Aurillac / Cantal)
• Radio RTF (Limoges / Haute-Vienne)
• Eko des Garrigues (Montpellier /Hérault)
• O2 radio (Cenon /Gironde)
• Radio Bip (Besançon /Doubs)
• Fréquence Mutine (Brest /Finistère)
• Radio 666 (Hérouville St Clai /Calvados)
• Radio Liberté (Riberac / Dordogne) …

Yvi Slan en concert à partir de février / mars 2010.

Album dans les bacs en février 2010.

www.yvislan.com

www.myspace.com/slanyvi

THE BIJS (BIG IN JAPAN)

The BIJS en concert les :

• - Mardi 10 novembre LCM (tv) 19h00
• - Vendredi 13 novembre au Poste à Galène (Marseille) avec Dondolo, PAF : 6 euros
• - Vendredi 04 décembre à La machine à coudre (Marseille) avec Nasser, PAF : 6 euros

Sortie du cd promo pour décembre.

Enregistrement au studio “le Garage” (Manosque),

mixage : Yvi Slan

Vidéo : Didier Illouz & Antoine Germain, remerciement à toutes les personnes qui ont participé au clip.

www.myspace.com/biginjapan1
www.didierillouz.com

DISSONANT NATION

Dissonant Nation sera en concertles :

• - Samedi 14 novembre à FILE 7 (Paris) avec Ladylike Dragon
• - Vendredi 04 décembre au Cargo de nuit (Arles) avec the Dodoz
• - Samedi 12 décembre pour les Sélections du Printemps de Bourges, Mjc Picaud (Cannes)
• - Samedi 21 janvier 2010 au Moods (Monaco)

Enregistrement de l’album en février 2010…

www.myspace.com/dissonantnation

BOOKING :

Dissonant nation : thierry.noygues@mjcaubagne.fr

the BIJS : boombop@yvislan.com

Yvi Slan : boombop@yvislan.com

Les Apéromix du Bouchon Marseillais : boombop@yvislan.com

Vente MP3S sur www.yvislan.com (système Paypal) : the Bijs, Les Couleurs du spectre, Ba Cissoko, Yvi Slan…

BOOMBOP REC

www.myspace.com/boomboprec

boombop@yvislan.com

Um die notwendige Hausarbeit psychisch zu überstehen, höre ich mir während des Putzens und Waschens Berichte und Reportagen aus dem Radio an, die ich vorher aufgenommen habe. Dieses Wochenende war es eine ältere Folge der „Sendung für politische Literatur“ Andruck im Deutschlandfunk (28.09.09). Die Sendung war geradezu der Prototyp dessen, was ich mir seit 40 Jahren tagtäglich anhören muß.

Hier die Eingangssätze:

Warum ist der Westen so verhaßt in der südlichen Hemisphäre? Warum setzen sich die Völker Asiens, Afrikas und Lateinamerikas so energisch zur Wehr, gegen den Imperialismus, gegen den alten und neuen Kolonialismus europäischer Mächte und der USA? (…)

Ich verweise auf die Kritik des deutschen Botschafters in Kamerun Volker Seitz: Ausbeutung? Der Westen hat gigantische Summen ins unabhängige Afrika gepumpt! Und im übrigen war der Kolonialismus ein Zusatzgeschäft.

Aber weiter mit dem Deutschlandfunk:

Keine Frage, der Westen steht am Pranger der Dritten Welt. Es waren Männer wie Gammel Abdel Nasser, Pandit Nehru, Achmed Sukarno und Fidel Castro, die ihn auf die Anklagebank setzten, die Imperialismus und Kolonialismus gnadenlos geißelten und das Signal zur Erhebung der jahrhundertelang unterdrückten Völker der südlichen Hemisphäre gaben. (…)

Gehen wir doch einmal diese Heroen der Linken durch:

Nasser war ein „Nationalsozialist“, der viele Nazis ins Land holte, um ihn im Kampf gegen die Juden zu unterstützen.

Nehru und Sukarno vertraten ebenfalls eine Art „Nationalsozialismus“, der diese Länder nachhaltig wirtschaftlich ruiniert hat und in Indonesien schließlich in antichinesischen Massakern mündete. Dazu muß man wissen, daß in Südostasien das „Händlervolk“ der Chinesen traditionell ähnlich betrachtet wurde, wie die Juden in Europa.

Wenn man die Sache prozentual betrachtet hat Castro mehr Bürger des eigenen Landes interniert als Stalin. Ganz zu schweigen davon, daß er ein Land, das bei seiner Machtübernahme einen europäischen Lebensstandard hatte, wahrscheinlich für immer zugrundegerichtet hat.

Das also sind die Helden des „profilierten Globalisierungskritikers“ Jean Ziegler, dessen Buch Der Hass auf den Westen vorgestellt wird. Der Titel sagt wahrscheinlich mehr über den modern liberal Ziegler als über die Menschen in der Dritten Welt!

Als zweiter Beitrag wird ein neues Buch über Karl Marx vorgestellt. Daß diese Besprechung nichts anderes als eine Werbesendung für den Marxismus ist, wird allein schon daran ersichtlich, daß selbst die leichte Kritik des Buchautors an Marx, er habe ein „weltfrommes“ eschatologisches Programm vertreten, vom Rezensenten zurückgewiesen wird

Im übrigen ist das Zitat von Marx, das in diesem Zusammenhang gesendet wird, schon interessant:

Das jetzige Geschlecht gleicht den Juden, die Moses durch die Wüste führt: „Es hat nicht nur eine neue Welt zu erobern, es muß untergehen, um den Menschen Platz zu machen, die einer neuen Welt gewachsen sind.“

Ich muß dabei an die 100 000 000 Opfer des Kommunismus denken, die Platz machen mußten für die neue Welt.

Aber wir haben ja schon gesehen: unsere ach so humanistischen (Pseudo-) Intellektuellen denken nie an die Opfer!

In den beiden anschließenden Rezensionen geht es um die deutsche Geschichte.

Da ist erstmal ein Radioessay über ein 1961 erstmals erschienenes Buch zum Ersten Weltkrieg und der daran anschließende Historikerstreit, der sich daran entbrannte, daß in dem Buch der Versailler Vertrag gerechtfertigt wurde: Deutschland sei Schuld am Krieg gewesen, der von Anfang an eine imperialistische Ausrichtung hatte.

Prophetisch ist der vom Rezensenten zu Anfang zitierte Beitrag von Gerhard Ritter zur damaligen Diskussion:

In diesem Werk wird ein erster Gipfel erreicht in der politisch-historischen Modeströmung unserer Tage: In der Selbstverdunkelung deutschen Geschichtsbewußtseins, das seit der Katastrophe von 1945 die frühere Selbstvergötterung verdrängt hat und nun immer einseitiger sich durchzusetzen scheint. Nach meiner Überzeugung wird sich das nicht weniger verhängnisvoll auswirken als der Überpatriotismus von ehedem. So vermag ich das Buch nicht ohne tiefe Traurigkeit aus der Hand zu legen: Traurigkeit und Sorge im Blick auf die kommende Generation.

Man denke nur an Joschka Fischer, aus der besagten Generation, der offen bekannt hat, Deutschland müsse man von außen eindämmen und von innen völkisch ausdünnen. Mit anderen Worten: das deutsche Volk muß vernichtet werden!

In der Besprechung eines neu erschienenen Buches zum 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, wird die deutsche Fehlentwicklung darauf zurückgeführt, daß Deutschland nie so zentralisiert und „aufklärerisch“ war wie Frankreich, d.h. nie so war, wie es im Inneren des modern liberal aussieht: die Zentrale, „das Gehirn“, bestimmt alles.

Die Fehlentwicklung habe im 18. Jahrhundert begonnen:

Man verwies Politik und Gesellschaft ins zweite oder dritte Glied und erwärmte sich an Literatur und Musik. Das Verhängnis einer solchen Verhaltensweise bestand darin, daß es immer wieder zu Durchbrüchen ins Politische kam, bei denen ein ressentimentdurchtränktes Volk auch machtpolitisch die Spitzenposition für sich beanspruchte, die es in Kunst und Kultur innehatte.

Immerhin beschließt die Sendung eine neutrale Rezension über ein Buch, das die Anfänge des Roten Kreuzes vor 150 Jahren zum Thema hat.

Derartige Sendungen sind die Norm! Diese Gehirnwäsche Woche für Woche, ja Tag für Tag, seit mindestens vier Jahrzehnten! Die Hegemonie der linken „Intellektuellen“ ist erdrückend. Dies ist nur wegen der Panzerung der überwältigen Mehrzahl der Bevölkerung möglich, denn das linke Gesindel ist selbst saublöd und hätte im freien Austausch der Ideen keinerlei Überlebenschance. Saublöd, weil sie ihr Gehirn nicht zum Denken benutzen, sondern umgekehrt bei ihnen das Denken der Abwehr der bioenergetischen Impulse dient. Diese zutiefst sexualfeindliche („bioenergie-feindliche“) Charakterstruktur erklärt, warum sie dem Westen im allgemeinen und dem eigenen Volk im besonderen so viel Mißtrauen, Haß und Verachtung entgegenbringen und warum sie die faschistischen Unterdrücker der lebendigen Impulse in dieser Welt so sehr lieben.

Der Prototyp dieses ekelerregenden Journaillegewürms war die stalinistische Journalistin, die Reich ins Gefängnis gebracht hat:

Law of silence: CIA; (Oct. 28, 2009)

            On September 18, seven ex-CIA chiefs exhorted President Barak Obama to emulate former Presidents and cover up the serious infringements to laws and regulations. The CIA and FBI during Bush Junior two Adminstrations committed excesses by the operators in anti-terrorist interrogations; the CIA chiefs claim that opening public investigation may jeopardize State security. 

            Brigadier General John Magruder has stated the objective of the CIA by 1947: “Clandestine operations constantly implicate infringement of internal laws and regulations. The Pentagon and the State Department cannot take risks for covering such operations.  A new service for clandestine actions has to take charge for covering up the official institutions.”  This statement is fundamentally the main reason for establishing the CIA: it was meant to execute unlawful orders and decisions taken by the Executive Administrations.

            Allen Dulles, chief of the “Agency” from 1953 to 61, confirm the doctrine that the “CIA is to execute what the President authorizes it in the wide gamut of political assassinations and destabilization of countries. The CIA main job is to cover for the President; all plausible denials should be extended to cover the involvement of the President in the decision process.  Thus, the President can securely admit that he ignored any failed operations overseas.”

            John Prados noted: “Thirty years ago the public perception of the CIA was of a lone and solitary elephant that escaped all kinds of control; that the CIA was running amuck with clandestine operations all over the world.  It is now clear that the Agency and its phalanges were just following presidential orders.  It is the Presidency that is the lone elephant because the Agency was not doing its publicly declared mission of providing intelligence to the President.  All the revealed documents show that Presidents had no intelligence of the imminent coming to power of Khomeini in Iran in 1979, the potential disintegration of the Soviet Union, or the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.”

            Gordon Thomas said: “The Agency never managed to implant a spy in the higher circles of the Soviet Union decision makers. Bill Casey just took the risk of misinforming Ronald Reagan and systematically overestimated whatever intelligence he had”

            At every new Presidency the CIA got worse in control and management; it was overwhelmed by paramilitary operations than doing intelligence gathering; intelligence was thus relegated to non-human operators of remote control data from satellites and computer processing of images.

            The newly sacked CIA chief Porter Goss pronounced an allocution at Tiffin University and gave a sound counsel to new recruits “Never admit, deny everything, and take the best strategy of launching counter accusations when targeted within the CIA and the political circles.”

            The engraved motto of the CIA at Langley is St. John pronouncement “And you will know truth and truth will set you free”.  Apparently, to setting you free to assassinate and get away with it; to lie on State interests and get away with it; to cover up Evil Presidents and Administrations who follow orders from lobbying powerful interest groups.

            The US had agreed to finance the Nile dam during Nasser but reneged on the deal; it was learned later that the lobby of the cotton producers in the US South put the squeeze on the ground that Egypt would later compete with US cotton.  The Soviet Union was invited to Egypt and many other regions.        

      The CIA and FBI think that they can get away with a lot of crimes on the premise that the US citizen believes that intelligence gathering cannot be performed without breaking a couple of eggs in a democratic society in order to preserve citizen from further hardship and secure him more liberty.  It is becoming evident that the more power you let a government gets the less liberty you should expect.  If the last eight years did not exhibit this fact then do not blame anyone for further slavery and totalitarianism.

      It is a good thing to have more than two superpowers: extreme fundamentalism (i.e., religious and liberal capitalism) would be checked, cultural life would rejuvenate and people would enjoy more opportunities and choices instead of a gigantic financial crisis and global mass ignorance floating all over our planet.

      For further declassified evidences read my post “The critical decade of Islamic extremism”

Ich heiße Nasser El Khalfioui und wohne in Korbeek-lo, das ist 3 km entfernt von Zentrum Leuven. Ich habe 1 Bruder und 1 Schwester, mein Bruder heißt Abdel und ist 13 Jahre alt und meine Schwester heißt Imane und ist 17 Jahre alt. Meine Eltern heißen Mohammed und Malika, mein Vater ist Arbeiter und meine Mutter ist Hausfrau. Ich spiele gern Fußball, aber in meiner Freizeit gehe ich zum Fitness. Ich trainiere 4 Mal der Woche, und ein Mal die Woche schwimme ich. Ich gehe zum Miniemeninstituut in der Klasse 4 HT und habe noch 2 Jahre vor mir. Meine gute Eigenschaft ist, dass ich hilfsbereit bin und freigebig abder meine schlechte Eigenschaft ist, dass ich faul bin. Ich stehe ganz vorne auf dem Foto neben Brahim und Mathieu mit einem lila Pullover. Meine Staatsangehorichgeit ist Marokkaner und ich habe schwarze Haare und braune Augen

Bueno, no termina de gustarme, pero el vídeo vale la pena, así que adelante…. Nasser son unos marselleses que vienen a ser una mezcla de Primal Scream o Kasabian pero en malo salvando las distancias, y que este pasado 12 de octubre sacaron su primer Ep llamado “#1″ y contenía mezclas de Munk, Think Twice y Meisterfackt así como el tema que presentan con este espectacular vídeo. Yo les recomendaría que la atención que le han dedicado al vídeo,  también la usaran para una buena producción, porqué seguramente les mejoraba el sonido.

President Nasser’s naïve approach to world politics was the main cause of the Suez Crisis. His premature nationalization of the Suez Canal alarmed Britain and France. Egypt and Britain had an agreement that Britain would leave the canal in 1968. If Nasser had waited until that time, Britain may have revoked the agreement, but Nasser would have a solid justification for wanting Britain to leave. This would have attracted more support for the Egyptian cause. By nationalizing the canal twelve years early, Nasser gave Britain justification for taking it back. If the United States had not interceded, Britain would also have cause to keep the canal past what was agreed with the Egyptians previously. Nasser’s decision to prevent goods from sailing to Israel was another display of his naivety. Barring Israel bound ships from the canal provided Israel with a reason to go to war. Nasser was clearly thinking of Egypt when he nationalized the Suez, but he did not take other factors, namely Britain, into account. At that time, Britain was still a superpower. Egypt had no chance of winning against them. Nasser should have waited until 1968 or, at the very least, kept his promise and allowed all ships to sail through the canal. The United Nations would have more reason to stand with the Egyptians on the nationalization of the canal if Nasser had taken one of the two actions above instead of doing the opposite and angering Britain and France. Nasser’s naivety was the primary cause of the 1956 Suez Crisis.

A few days ago I brought up the Zabaleen, and pointed out that the majority of them are Copts. Afterwards, I realized I needed to do a little more research befitting the insomniac I am and better inform the folks back home holding up the fort. That, and I felt like I was being unduly harsh on my Orthodox brothers (even if a monk once called me a heretic).

Briefly: in contemporary usage, “Copt” usually refers to an ethnic group of Egyptians that claims non-Arab ancestry (i.e., they are descended from the ancient Egyptians, not from the Arabs), and have been traditionally members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria– by some accounts the oldest sect of Christianity in existence (founded 42 AD in Egypt by St. Mark of Gospel fame). The word Copt is also linked to the classical fus-ha Arabic word for “Egyptian.”

Following Nasser’s rise to power in the 1950’s, the Copts experienced a twilight; prior to the pan-Arabist and socialist philosophies that the great Gamal espoused, the Copts were prominent members of occupational government. leaders of industry, while still remaining a large minority (15-20%, depending on who you ask). Here, I wonder if a favoritism of native Christian sects during the British occupation was employed; a la the French bolstering of Maronite Christian factions in Lebanon.

During the reign of King Farouk (the last reigning king of Egypt) they controlled over 50% of the country’s wealth. Nasser’s socialization of industries and massive reforms brought the Copts under fire and they were seen much as the “mimic men” of the colonialist — representative of the old era under the British. They were ousted from their positions, and industry wrenched from them. Remarkably, however, there is the persistent rumor (and popular myth) that under Nasser no mosque could be built in Egypt without an Orthodox counterpart (something about equal rights and secularization). I’m not sure how true this is, but popular legend is a powerful thing.

These days, however, Copts seem to think differently. I redirect you to The Free Copts, a not-quite-so-underground “liberation newspaper,” that fights oppression using journalism. The main issues seem to be the forced Islamicizing (?) of Coptic Christian girl — resulting from kidnappings and forced conversions. No less believable are the claims of fatwas issued against priests in the countryside, calling for execution of proselytizing enthusiasts of the Orthodox persuasion. Where it gets kind of fuzzy is when they start making claims for an international Saudi conspiracy of Islamicization, with 7000 LE paid out (to who, I ask?) for each convert girl, or the accusations of idleness (completely believable) toward the Egyptian security forces, only to have their role downplayed in articles such as this one, in which they arrest a woman that entered a church with the intent to kill two Christian children. That doesn’t change things like the 2005 Muharrem Bey Coptic Church Riot or the conviction of Abdulkareem Nabil Suleiman; these things actually happened and received widespread media coverage.

Speaking as a student of religious history, many of these accusations (on both sides) echo events from Andalusia, c. 14-15th centuries. Majority communities fear infiltration by the minority; minority communities fear dying out. Forced conversions, attempted murder…it’s a shame that things sometimes don’t change.

But wow.

By: Alan Hart

With Israel’s leaders considering what more must be done to destroy Palestinian nationalism, and with President Obama’s effort to kick-start a peace process obviously going nowhere, Palestinian friends are asking me what I think the Palestinians could and should now do to improve their prospects for obtaining an acceptable amount of justice.

My view is that the Palestinians would be well advised to wind-up (close down) the discredited Palestine National Authority (PNA), and put policy making and implementation into the hands of a reconstructed Palestine National Council (PNC). The latter, which used to be called the “Palestinian parliament in exile”, would be re-constructed, refreshed and re-invigorated by elections in every place where there are Palestinians - the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza concentration camp and the diaspora. This, it seems to me, would provide the Palestinians with what they most desperately need now – UNITY.

When it came into being in May 1964, the PNC (as I explained in my book Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?) was intended to be nothing more than a puppet of the frontline Arab states, with Eygpt’s President Nasser the puppet master.

The documented truth about Nasser and Israel – one of many truths denied by supporters of Israel right or wrong – can be simply stated. From the moment he came to power in a bloodless coup in 1951, Nasser wanted, and in secret seriously explored the prospects for, an accommodation with Israel. On the matter of how to deal with the Zionist state, he was, in fact, a pragmatist. Despite some stupid Arab rhetoric to the contrary, rhetoric which enabled Zionist and imperial Western spin doctors to paint him as the “Hitler of the Nile”, Nasser had no intention, ever, of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. And the major Western powers knew that. (So why did he take arms from the Soviet Union? He wanted Eygpt to be strong enough to prevent Israel imposing its will on him by brute force, and the Americans refused to supply him. When, after much hesitation and still with great reluctance, Nasser turned to the Soviet Union for arms, his message to Israel was, in effect, “I want you to know that attacking Eygpt and other Arab states  will not be a cost free option.”)

The truth about the stance of the rest of the Arab regimes prior to the creation of the PNC in 1964 can also be simply stated. None of them had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. The Palestine file had been closed, mainly by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in 1948/49 and, in their minds if not their hearts, the Arab regimes shared Zionism’s hope that it would remain closed. Put another way, the Arab regimes, more by default than design, were requiring the Palestinians to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. If the Palestine file was ever re-opened – if there was a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism – a confrontation with the Zionist state and its Western backers would one day be inevitable. And that was to be avoided at any and all costs.

As it actually happened, the PNC was brought into being not so much to prevent a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism – that process was already underway, but to prevent it resorting to armed struggle which would give Israel, in the name of fighting “terrorism”, the pretext it wanted to strike at the frontline Arab states and take more Arab land. (Arab leaders didn’t have to be mind readers. Zionism’s ambition, the creation of a Jewish state from the Litani River in Southern Lebanon to the Jordan River, was a matter of record).

In other words, the PNC as conceived by Nasser was to be a mechanism for giving the Palestinians hope while preventing resurgent Palestinian nationalism becoming the tail that wagged the Arab dog and provoked an unwinnable war with Israel.

Nasser’s containment policy failed for two related reasons.

The first was that Yasser Arafat and other leaders of the embryonic Fatah movement were fully aware that the Egyptian President had no intention of allowing the Palestinians to take matters into their own hands and initiate pin-prick attacks on Israel (hit-and-run missions) of their own.

The second was that Israel’s massively disproportionate reprisal attacks on the frontline Arab states – reprisals for Palestinian pin-prick attacks – were totally counter-productive because they gave the embryo Palestine liberation movement (the authentic one) the oxygen of publicity Nasser was seeking to deny it. Without Israel’s reprisal attacks, the Arab street would never have known that there was a real Palestine liberation movement in-the-making. Abu Jihad, the co-founder with Arafat of the first Fatah cell, told me the IDF was their “best recruiting sergeant”, and that without Israel’s reprisal attacks the frontline Arab states most probably would have succeeded in their efforts to strangle the organisation that became Fatah at birth.

It was actually the security services of Eygpt, Jordan and Lebanon, not those of Israel, which made the first attempts to liquidate Arafat and his organisation. Fatah and all it represented would have been destroyed if Syria had not given Arafat and his military colleagues a safe haven. Syria’s motives were far from noble. In their rivalry with Nasser, its leaders wanted to possess and play the Palestinian card for their own ends, but they, too, had no intention of letting the Palestinians drag them into an unwinnable war with Israel.

Apart from the fact that Israel’s political and military hawks had been waiting for a pretext to complete the unfinished business of 1948/49, the 1967 war happened in large part because of the naivety of Arafat and Abu Jihad, the two men who did most to give life to Fatah. They presumed that if only they could provoke a confrontation with Israel, make the Arab armies fight, the Zionist state was bound to be defeated. So for Arafat and Abu Jihad in particular, the humiliating defeat of the Arabs in six days was a revelation like no other. For Arafat especially it was also the beginning of a journey into the reality of Israel’s existence as the military superpower of the region.

When subsequently Arafat and his fighters gave that superpower a bloody nose at the battle of Karameh, a fleeting moment of victory that made Fatah and its fighters heroes in the hearts of the humiliated Arab masses, Nasser decided that he needed Arafat as much as the Fatah leader needed him. That opened the way to an honest dialogue between the two of them.

Nasser told Arafat that before the 1967 war it had been his hope that he could negotiate Israel back to the 1948 Armistice borders. After the 1967 war, Nasser said, the best he could hope to do was prevail upon the international community to oblige Israel to withdraw from the newly occupied Arab territories in accordance with the letter and the spirit of 242, the Security Council’s land-for-peace resolution. Nasser was also explicit about what was required from Arafat and his leadership colleagues if they wished to be taken seriously by the international community. They had to be realistic. What did that mean? They would have to come up with a policy for an accommodation with Israel inside more or less its pre-1967 borders, in accordance with 242. If they did that, and in the event of an Israeli withdrawal, Nasser promised he would do his best to persuade King Hussein to let the Palestinians have the West Bank, with the Gaza Strip, for a mini state of their own.

To make sure that Arafat got the message about the need for the Palestinians to come to grips with the reality of Israel’s existence, Nasser arranged for him to be part of an Egyptian delegation to Moscow under an assumed name. Nasser knew precisely what he would hear from the lips of Soviet leaders – that they, like their American counterparts, were committed to Israel’s existence and security inside its pre-1967 borders. Those were the words Arafat did hear and they marked the end of his journey into reality.

In February 1969 Arafat became the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which was dominated by Fatah, and, with Nasser’s blessing, an authentic PNC (not the puppet of the Egyptian leader’s creation) became its supreme organ.

It was subsequently to take Arafat ten long years to persuade first his Fatah leadership colleagues and then the PNC to back his policy of politics and unthinkable compromise with Israel. (The compromise was unthinkable at the outset because it required the Palestinians to legitimize Israel’s existence and make peace with it in return for only 22% of the land they are claiming with right, legal and moral, on their side).

Arafat’s task of convincing his Fatah leadership colleagues that they had to compromise and be prepared to settle for a mini state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza was assisted by the 1973 war. It created the scenario for Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, who launched his “war for peace” in collusion with U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, to be sucked and suckered by American diplomacy into making a separate peace with Israel. When it became clear that Kissinger had Sadat under control and that Eygpt would make peace with Israel, Arafat’s leadership colleagues had no difficulty in concluding that the PLO would be abandoned by even the Arab states if it did not come up with a political programme the Arab regimes could support without putting their relationship with America in complete jeopardy.

But the task of getting the PNC to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel required Arafat to perform a miracle of leadership. He performed it over five years, from 1974 to 1979.

There were two overtures to the main performance.

The first, in October 1974, was the decision of an Arab summit meeting in Rabat to recognize the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. (In advance of that summit, Kissinger, who wanted the PLO to be marginalized and destroyed, tried and failed to persuade key Arab leaders to use their influence to prevent any recognition of it).

The second, a month later, was Arafat’s dramatic appearance at the UN in New York. His “gun and olive branch” speech to the world body was a coded but clear signal that he was ready for peace with Israel on the basis of a two-state solution. This was, in fact, the message Arafat had been sending to Israel’s leaders for months through secret emissaries. (Kissinger tried to prevent Arafat’s appearance at the UN, but in this particular game of chess he was checkmated by Saudi Arabia’s King Feisal, the only Arab leader who was not afraid, in his own way, to tell Kissinger to go to hell. Which is no doubt why Feisal was assassinated).

If Arafat had been asked by Israel then, November 1974, to deliver the compromise he was signalling, he could not have done so. The PNC still had to be persuaded and probably an easy majority of its available 300 members from all over the world were strongly opposed to the compromise. (PNC members in the occupied territories were not available because Israel refused to allow them to travel).

One by one, and when circumstances allowed, Arafat summoned each and every available member of the PNC to Beirut for a private conversation behind closed doors. Some told him to his face that he was a traitor to the cause and would be assassinated if he proceeded with his policy of unthinkable compromise. When he failed in a first conversation to persuade rejectionists to give him a commitment to vote for compromise when the time came, he asked them to go back their diaspora homes, to think over what he had said, and return when he called them again for another conversation.

It’s worth noting that for nearly two of those five years of the Great Conversation between Arafat and individual PNC members from all over the world, the PLO was caught up in the first round of the civil war in the Lebanon in which, unknown to Western reporters, Arafat was playing the role of mediator as well as fighting for his own survival. For much of the rest of the period Arafat was organizing the PLO’s defenses as the Israelis escalated their attacks on Lebanon. (Israel’s message to the Lebanese was: “If you were not giving shelter to Palestinian terrorists, we would not be attacking Lebanon. In your own best interests, you should turn against the Palestinians and kick them out.”) And still Arafat found the time to receive and lobby each and every available member of the PNC.

After the PNC’s critical debate and vote on his policy of politics and compromise, I had the first of many meetings with Arafat. “I kept a record of the time I devoted to those conversations,” he told me. “It was a total of 550 hours over the five-year period.” As he came to the end of the story of his struggle to sell compromise, he extracted a notebook from his hip pocket. “It’s all here,” he said with triumph. “Let me tell you the figures… 296 votes FOR the mini-state formula, ONLY FOUR AGAINST. Imagine that! We have turned our people around. No more this silly talk of driving the Jews into the sea. Now we are prepared to live alongside them in a little state of of our own. It is a miracle.”

Arafat himself was the miracle worker. No other Palestinian leader could have done it. With his policy of politics and compromise then endorsed by the PNC, the highest decision-making authority on the Palestinian side, Arafat was at the height of his powers. He could have delivered the compromise necessary from his side for peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief. The problem was that Arafat did not have a partner for peace on the Israeli side. The most successful terrorist leader of modern times, Menachem Begin, was in power in the Zionist state; and he was stuffing the occupied West Bank with settlers to make it impossible for any future Israeli government to withdraw for peace. And that was a manifestation of an underlying truth – Zionism is not interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept. (The essence of Zionism’s philosophy of doom was once put into words by its one-eyed warlord, General Moshe Dayan. “It’s them or us”, he said).

Let us now fast-forward to the present day.

As I have previously written and often say (it bears repeating), Zionism’s own end-game strategy for a solution to the Palestine problem now leaves nothing to the imagination. Israel’s leaders still believe that by means of brute force and reducing the Palestinians to abject poverty, they can destroy Hamas and break the will of the Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights. The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life in other countries.

In my view the conviction that Zionism will one day succeed in breaking the Palestinian will to continue the struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice is the product of minds which are deluded close to the point of clinical madness. Some say that nuclear-armed Israel is on its way to becoming a fascist state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic asylum.

The question that’s almost too awful to think about is something like this: What will the Zionists do when it becomes apparent even to them that they can’t destroy Palestinian nationalism with bombs and bullets and brutal repressive measures of all kinds?

My fear is that they, the Zionists, will go for a final round of ethnic cleansing - to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and beyond. That, I fear, could very well be Zionism’s final solution to the Palestine problem. If that happens, the West Bank will be turned red with blood, mostly Palestinian blood. And honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.

That’s what I mean by “Annihilation” as in the headline over this article.

I know that my Gentile fear on this account is shared by some eminent Jewish critics of Zionism and, for example, I’ll name two of those I am privileged to have as dear friends and allies in common cause, it being to tell in the truth of history.

Dr. Hajo G. Meyer is an Auschwitz survivor. His latest book is An Ethical Tradition Betrayed, The End of Judaism. In it Hajo expresses his dismay at what he sees as the “moral collapse of contemporary Israeli society and the worldwide Jewish community as a whole.”  He compares Israel’s current policies with the early stages of the Nazi persecution of Germany’s Jews. He stresses that he is not seeking to draw a parallel between Israel’s current policies and the Nazis’ “endgame” – the slaughter of six million European Jews. He is merely trying to point out, he says, “the slippery slope” that eventually led to this catastrophe, and the necessity of “forseeing the possible consequences” of a policy that oppresses and marginalizes the Palestinians in their own homeland.

Professor Ilan Pappe is Israel’s leading “new” or “revisionist” (honest) historian and the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Ilan has described Israel’s policies for oppressing and suppressing the Palestinians as “genocide in slow motion.” In conversations and on public platforms he has shared with me, he has also stated that it’s by no means impossible that what I describe as a Zionist holocaust could happen. But that was yesterday. In conversation today (an hour ago), Ilan indicated the extent to which he has updated his own analysis. He said (having just returned from Israel) that he is now in no doubt that if Israel’s mad men are allowed to have their way, the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs will be the curtain-up to Zionism’s Final Solution to its Palestinian problem.

As things are, and unless they are pushed to do so by informed public opinion (by manifestations of real democracy in action), I think it is unrealistic to expect the governments of the major powers either to use the leverage they do have to call and hold the Zionist state to account for its past crimes, or to intervene to prevent the crimes it will commit in a foreseeable and, in Ilan’s words, “very bloody” future.

It follows, or so it seems to me, that the Palestinians of the world must now become united and fully engaged in the political struggle not only to improve their prospects for some justice, but also to play their necessary part in stopping the probability of a final round of Zionist ethnic cleansing.

The obstacle to Palestinian unity on the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip concentration camp is not Hamas. There is no mystery about its real position. If at any time in the last year or two Israel had said and meant that it was ready in good faith to negotiate a full and final peace on the basis of a genuine and viable two-state solution – one that would see Israel back to more or less its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem (preferably as an open, undivided city) the capital of two states, Hamas’s leaders would say, “Let’s do the business”. And they would have meant it because they had no choice – because, as they knew, a genuine and viable two-state solution was still what the vast majority of Palestinians in the conflict zone were prepared to settle for. (Though for how much longer this will remain the case is a very good question).

• The right of return for the refugees – those Palestinians and their descendants who were dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights in 1948/49 and again in 1967 – did not have to be the obstacle to peace Israel asserts it to be. When Arafat and his senior leadership colleagues came to grips with the need to make peace with Israel on the basis of a genuine and viable two-state solution, they accepted but could not say in public that the right of return would have to be confined to the Palestinian mini-state - i.e. not to Israel inside more it less its pre-1967 borders. That would have meant, they knew, that probably not more than 100,000 refugees would be able to return to their homeland. The rest would have to be compensated… The information in this paragraph is essential for understanding, but the point being made here is academic because, as things are today, the idea of a two-state solution is dead, killed by Israel’s still on-going colonisation of the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.

The obstacle to Palestinian unity on the West Bank and in the Gaza concentration camp is not difficult to identify. It’s in the fact that under the leadership of “President” Abbas and his Fatah colleagues, the PNA became, more by default than design, an instrument of Israeli-and-American (and Western European) policy. Israeli-and-American (and Western European) policy required Hamas to be marginalized and destroyed and the PNA was content to go along with this policy. (Why did Hamas take on and defeat Fatah in Gaza? Fatah was planning, with American encouragement and Israeli assistance as required, to crush Hamas. It moved first with what the Israelis, if they had been initiating an attack, would have described as a pre-emptive strike).

Whether Abbas remains in power or not, the PNA, like Fatah (and the regimes of the existing Arab Order), will continue to be regarded as impotent and discredited by many if not most Palestinians everywhere. That alone is a good enough reason for the PNA to be put out of its misery and for Palestinian policy making and implementation to be put into the hands of a reconstructed PNC.

But there’s more to it. In their claim for justice, the Palestinians have 100% of right, legal and moral, on their side. If this claim was properly presented and pressed by a credible

Palestinian leadership, by definition a democratically elected leadership duly authorized to act on behalf of ALL Palestinians EVERYWHERE, it would be much more difficult for the governments of the major powers, the one in Washington DC especially, to go on supporting Israel right or wrong. (Unconditional support which is not in anybody’s best interests including those of America and the Jews of the world).

I hate clichés but some of them are expressions of great wisdom. United the Palestinians will stand. Divided they will fall and, in the conflict zone, might be annihilated.

Source: Intifada

Alan Hart with the Yasser Arafat

Alan Hart is an author, former Middle East Chief Correspondent for Independent Television News[1], and former BBC Panorama presenter specialising in the Middle East. For more information: www.alanhart.net

Quick Gun Murugan was multi lingual comedy movie starring Rajendra Prasad in lead role. Nasser played negative role as Rice Plate Reddy. This funny story with different back drops entertained the audience who loves Hollywood comedy movies. Shashank Ghosh has directed this comedy flick.

Rice Plate Reddy (Nasser) is restaurant owner in Kerala, he want to change every vegetarian hotel into non-veg hotel. Murugan (Rajendra Prasad) tries stop Rice Plate Reddy, but dies in that fight. Then Murugan goes to heaven, there he requests Yamraj to give some time to do his job.

Murugan returns back to earth after 25 years and notices that he is in Mumbai not in Kerala. He also comes to know about Rice Plate Reddy who became a millionaire and built a chain restaurants in Mumbai city. How Murugan defeats Rice Plate Reddy is the remaining story.

Rambha and Anu Menon were appeared like Murugan’s girl friends. Vinay Phatak has starred as Chitragupta and Ranvir Shorey did a guest roles.

Quick Gun Murugan is comedy movie starring Rajendra Prasad and Ramba in lead roles. It is going to release in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and English at a time. Mostly South Indian actors like Raju Sundaram , Nasser and Sandya Mridul were played the lead roles in this movie.

Rajendra Prasad is one of the star hero in Tollywood. Present he is doing only selected movies. Quick Gun Murugan trailers looking like typical Hollywood comedy movies. Ramba is going to appear in the role Mango Dolly. She is expecting that, this movie brings her some good offers.

Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Phathak are going to appear in guest roles. With strong publicity, movie makers raised hypes about this movie. Hero Rajendra Prasad’s get up and photography in the trailers attracting many audience.

A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East–from the Cold War to the War on Terror
Author: Patrick Tyler

Originally Published on Asia Chronicle News.com

Tyler argues first that America’s policy in the Middle East reflects the worldview of the president and, generally, nobody else. He shatters the political canards about America’s foreign policy being determined by the “Israel lobby” (or any other lobby) or by the oil companies. Instead, Tyler goes to great lengths to establish that each president’s worldview and subsequent general foreign policy goals ultimately set the tone for their respective Middle East policies, such as Jimmy Carter’s general belief in human rights and Richard Nixon’s stark anti-communism.

His second major point is that presidents strive to be unique in their approach to foreign policy and, often, they spend a great deal of time second guessing and undoing their predecessor’s policies, best exemplified by Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to reverse Harry Truman’s position and overthrow Iran’s Mohammad Mossadeq at the behest of the Anglo-Iranian oil company. In this way, he essentially proposes that U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East is a function of presidential worldview and the policies of a president’s predecessor.

According to Tyler, each president approached the Middle East the same as they would any other foreign policy issue. For the most part, the decisions made by each president reflect their respective management styles and commitment to beliefs about foreign policy rather than an immediate sense of urgency for America’s direct national interests. Readers that are accustomed to a particular version of history might find Tyler’s analysis shocking because it challenges the popular mythology surrounding several presidents. His basic argument relative to each president follows:

Dwight Eisenhower, who sought to preserve the status quo on nearly every domestic issue, attempted to do the same in the Middle East but faced significant challenges with the rise of Nasser in Egypt and Mossadeq in Iran, along with the Lebanon and Suez Crises. Eisenhower generally succeeded and the post World War II local and regional systems continued in the Middle East until the 1960’s.

Lyndon Johnson’s support for Israel in the 1967 war was at least partially a function of his reliance on the American Jewish community to maintain his progress on civil rights and to quell criticism of the Vietnam War. Johnson also had a personal sympathy for the Jewish people that stemmed directly from his personal connections to wealthy Jewish donors.

Richard Nixon, who owed little to the Jewish electorate, backed Israel in the 1973 war because he saw the Soviet Union expanding into the Middle East through its deployment of missiles in Syria and its arms shipment to Egypt. However, while Nixon flooded the region with military equipment to counter the Soviet Union, he charged Secretary of State Kissinger with the task of trying to make peace between the Arabs and Israelis following the war. His initiatives failed, however, because of his pre-occupation with Watergate (the Saturday Night Massacres occurred during the war) and his subsequent resignation shattered the confidence of Arab and Israeli leaders towards Nixon.

Jimmy Carter, filled with Christian idealism, managed to bring the Egyptians and Israelis to the negotiating table over the return of the Sinai Peninsula, but failed to develop a pragmatic response to the fall of Iran’s Shah and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan because the two countries were outside of his spiritual and intellectual comfort zones.

Ronald Reagan allowed himself to be duped by both the Israeli government and members of his own staff during the 1982 Lebanon War and the Iran-Contra scandal, respectively. Tyler writes that because of his aloof management style, Reagan was probably the most disastrous president vis-à-vis the Middle East because of his failure to want to understand the complexities of the Lebanon War, which led to the Sabra and Shatilla massacres as well as the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks when he decided to volunteer American troops as peacekeepers. Reagan and his administration also fueled the Iran-Iraq war through arms shipments to both countries, contributing to the loss of millions of lives in both countries.

George H.W. Bush, in his attempts to maintain the peace following the collapse of the Soviet Union, organized a successful coalition against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. In the process, he deployed American troops to Saudi Arabia and set the pre-text for the beginning of Osama bin Laden’s first attacks against the United States. Additionally, Bush solidified his reputation for being a weak leader through his clash with Israel over the development of West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements, which he admittedly lost because of involvement by activists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Bush’s failure to hold his ground marked the first time that the “Israel lobby” truly influenced a presidential policy.

Bill Clinton, who came closer than anyone else to brokering a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was too distracted by his personal scandals to focus his attention on the impending growth of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations bent on attacking the United States. Indeed, Clinton’s responses to the Khobar towers, USS Cole, and African embassy bombings were weak and did not focus on combating al Qaeda; they merely retaliated in a manner that did not convey the level of serious attention required by the issue because of Clinton’s personal problems and domestic distractions.

In all of these cases, each president set out to have a different policy agenda than his predecessor and all, in some way, changed the landscape of the Middle East.

Despite a publication date of late 2008, Tyler does not devote much of his book to analyzing George W. Bush and his approaches to the Middle East. This is an unfortunate omission. The events of 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, failures with the Israelis and Palestinians, Bush’s personal associations, and the allegations of torture Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay reflect just a sample of Bush administration policy toward the region during his two terms. If Tyler writes a second edition of his book, he would do well to consider including an analysis of Bush’s Middle East policies. A failure to do so will put readers attempting to gain a broad historical perspective of American policies in the region at a serious disadvantage.

Tyler also seems to limit his conceptual geography of the Middle East to the land between Egypt and Iran, excluding Turkey in the north. This is significant because the Middle East is not just a geographic area; it is an identity shared by people across North and East Africa and into Central Asia. Arab and Islamic political organizations include members from these regions, and America’s relations with geographically outlying countries affect relations with countries inside of the geographic Middle East, as loosely defined by Tyler.

As the United States continues to face challenges in countries on the periphery of the Middle East, it is important that Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan be included in our general conception of the Middle East because, in the minds of their citizens, they are a part of the broader Middle East culturally, historically, religiously, and, often, politically.

The final failure of omission in A World of Trouble is its nearly total oversight of Harry Truman’s Middle East policies. Truman created two major policies that shaped America’s actions throughout the Cold War and impact its current foreign policy: containment of communism and a strong relationship with Israel. Truman’s communist containment doctrine for Greece and Turkey (both on the periphery of the Middle East) provided the intellectual and practical roots for Nixon’s activist Cold War policies, which sought to counter communist expansion in the region. Truman should not be regarded as a footnote in America’s history in the region; in many ways, he was the originator of American Middle East policy and America is still living with the consequences of his decisions–particularly the decision to create an Israeli state.

Overall, Tyler’s book is a significant work of history and worthy of both scholars and casual readers alike. It is one of the few books that offer a balanced account of America’s relations with the Middle East. A World of Trouble also manages to posit a presidential theory of American foreign policy formulation, if only implicitly. This book provides historical context for anyone with a slight curiosity about why the Middle East is the way it is and why America acts the way it acts when confronted with a crisis. This book provides the benefit of hindsight, contained in 554 enjoyable and easy to read pages. Given Obama’s recent speech in Cairo

, it appears that he and his team are very familiar with the book and its messages.

Quick Gun Murugan was one of the more endearing contributions of Channel V. Created by Shashanka Ghosh, Velu Shankar and Rajesh Devraj, the skit with the impossibly dressed Tamil cowboy is now a full-length feature film due for release two weeks from now.

Daler Mehndi’s brother Mika, better known for the m0uth-to-mouth resuscitation he gave Rakhi Sawant in the full glare of the cameras some years ago, has done a bhangra for the film, which stars the Telugu actor Rajendra Prasad along with the Telugu actress Rambha as “Mango Dolly”.

In the film, QGM is the unlikely hero whose duty is to protect the world against restaurant owner, “Rice Plate” Reddy, played by Nasser, who wants to create the ultimate non-veg dosa.

Nasser Eddine FETAIMIA may have been banned from entering the United Kingdom.

FETAIMIA is associated Link Aviation, 5a Albert Court, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BE, England, +44 788 568 4131, +44 207 692 4784.

Alias: M Nacer Eddine FETAIMIA

Libnanews

La polémique entre les autorités égyptiennes et le député druze Walid Joumblatt s’est envenimée après que le porte-parole du ministère des affaires étrangères égyptien Houssam Zaki eut rappelé le soutien du Caire à la coalition du 14 mars, avant de poursuivre en rejetant « toute spéculation sur les positions égyptiennes ou sur l’histoire de l’Égypte ».

Houssam Zaki a poursuivi, dans les colonnes du quotidien panarabe Al Hayat, accusant le député libanais d’avoir des objectifs cachés dans ses propos.

Pour rappel, Walid Joumblatt s’en était pris aux autorités égyptiennes suite à l’invitation de dirigeants Israéliens dont le président de l’État hébreu Shimon Peres et le premier ministre Benjamin Nétanyahou pour les cérémonies de la fête nationale du 23 juillet, date anniversaire de la révolution.

Le premier ministre israélien Benjamin Netanyahou avait, à l’occasion, prononcé un discours sur le portrait de l’ancien président égyptien Gamal Nasser dans les jardins de l’ambassade égyptienne à Tel-Aviv, provoquant de vifs remous au Liban.

Selon des sources proches du Caire citées par le quotidien Al Hayat, les autorités égyptiennes ne seraient pas surprises par les déclarations de Walid Joumblatt, dues selon elle, à son repositionnement politique vis-à-vis du Hezbollah et de Damas. Ces mêmes sources accusent le député libanais d’être un dirigeant sectaire sans réelle convictions politiques.