Posted by
Jamaal Long on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 2:01:09 PM
Deciphering The Media’s Disinfo On The Middle East
By Jamaal Long
It is unforgivable. It is unconscionable. But, because it is the United Nations—it wasn’t unforeseeable.
So, it was not surprising that after a UN investigation into the attacks on Gaza, which started on Dec. 27, 2008, and ended Jan. 18, will yield no prosecutions of war crimes.
BBC news reported that Israeli military says that their internal investigation showed that a few errors occurred, but they acted lawfully.
These errors included shooting an elderly woman who came within a 100 yards of a commandeered house.
“What’s great about Gaza?” an Israeli squad commander said when asked by the New York Times, “You see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman . . . the order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her.”
Three teenage brothers of the al-Attar family told The Guardian, a British newspaper, that they were used as human shields to clear buildings. They were made to go into areas before the Israeli soldiers did in order for the bullets to hit the young boys first.
Nothing was off limits for the soldiers attacking Gaza.
And the Israeli weaponry was gruesome. 16 Medics and ambulance drivers were killed as they tried to attend to the wounded. One of the tanks that was used against the paramedics had a shell filled with 8,000 metal darts.
BBC News reported that there was "indisputable evidence of the widespread use of white phosphorus." And according to the Guardian, the use of white phosphorus was indiscriminate over a civilian population which is a violation of international law.
The effects from White phosphorus are devastating. The Guardian stated that White phosphorus burns on contact with oxygen and causes deep burns when it touches human skin, sometimes reaching to the bone.
Yet, in spite of evidence that war crimes were committed, the UN will do nothing. And the world looks away. There will be no shirts across college campuses in America adorning a “free Gaza” message like the other heavily promoted, celebrity driving campaigns.
Gaza isn’t that popular.
In America, the people get their cue from their misleaders on whom to feel sympathy for. When politicians and journalist take aim at the subject of Gaza or Muslims, they are completely off target.
Quite often in political speeches and editorials when the Muslim-Israel conflict is discussed Muslims are depicted as anti-Semitic. It is a fallacious statement considering Arabic is a Semitic language; therefore, Muslims cannot be anti-Semitic. That is equivalent to an American saying they hate England then being accused of being anti-English.
One of the most outrageous statements, which was recently said in Obama’s Cairo and AIPAC speech, was Palestine doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. This is misleading on two fronts. First: Palestine is made up of predominantly Sunni Muslims that follow Islam which teaches that Jews are the “people of the book.” Second: What goes largely unreported in the media is that the State of Israel is a young country. It is even younger than the United States. Israel didn’t come into existence until May 14, 1948.
Palestinians on the other hand, are the descendants of the Canaanites. The historic region of Palestine covered over 10,000 square miles. The word Palestine came from the Greek word “Philistia” to recognize the land of the Philistines who occupied modern day Tel Aviv-Yafo and Gaza during 12th century BC.
Around 2nd century BC, Palestine came under Roman Rule when Pompey the Great conquered the land for the Roman Empire. During this time Judea was named Syria Palaestinia.
At the conclusion of the Byzantine-Ottoman wars, Ottoman came out the victor and ruled over the Palestinians until the summer of 1918 when Palestine came under the rule of the British Empire.
To Britain, it was crucial to maintain an alliance with the Ottoman Empire because peace with them ensured their trade routes from India across the Ottoman land. But when the Ottoman Empire started collapsing during the World War I, the Ottomans sided with the Germans. The British countered by promising the indigenous Arabs independence if they aligned themselves with British against the Ottomans.
As early as 1915, the British had entered into three separate agreements that would ultimately decide the fate of Palestine. One of the agreements was with the French; one was with the Sharif Hussein leader of the Arab Revolt, and the other was with Lord Rothschild leader of the Zionist movement in Britain.
The Zionist, believing they had more sway, began urging United States Congress to recognized the British mandate over Palestine, which ensured the Zionist right to the land.
After being pressured into a response, the British released a “white paper” that became the official explanation of the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was named after Lord Balfour British foreign secretary to Lord Rothschild.
The white paper proclaimed that the Jewish people and the Palestinians had a claim to Palestine and the Jewish people did not need permission to occupy the land in that region. But that was not enough for the Zionist who wanted more.
In 1942, at the Bitlmore Hotel a conference was held that pushed the Zionist agenda onto the international scene. Their plan now was for establishing a Jewish homeland.
Less than two years later, United States Congress passed a joint resolution backing the Bitlmore program. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 which resembled the Zionist plan crafted at the Biltmore Hotel conference.
A year later on May 14, Al-Nakbah, Palestine’s catastrophic destruction was complete. Palestinians become the “other section of the population.” Palestinians became the new Native Americans and Gaza became their trail of tears. They became the new African slave on a 360-square-mile plantation. They became the new—Jew—at the mercy of their occupiers.
Palestinians—people in modern day society where no attention is paid, no truth of their struggle spoken—and still—no justice rendered.