PALESTINE
A Terrible Disease of the Mind
By Zaid Nabulsi
"My family and I long to return to the Gardens of Cordoba (Qurtuba). We agonize with every breath to re-inhabit the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah). In our veins, there runs an eternal longing to walk again in the footsteps of our forefathers in Zaragoza (Saraqusta). We yearn to once again cultivate the orchards of Valladolid (Balad Al Waleed). We shall strive, by military means if necessary, to see the blessed day when we can tread along the rose-scented pathways of the splendid palace of Al Hambra (Al Hamra’a) in Granada (Ghirnata). Every stone and every particle of sand in that Iberian holy land belongs to me and to my people, exclusively. No Spaniard terrorist has the right to obstruct the will of God and deny my family the legal title to the land of our ancestors. It is God who had given us Andalucía (Al Andalus), and it is God who promised us that we, the exiles, shall ingather in it once again. "
I would indeed have to be a certified lunatic if I had meant a word of the above. Yet, the only difference between my disease of the mind and that of the millions of Jews who claimed to have “returned” to Palestine, is that in my case, at least the monuments and Arab names I am referring to are real and do actually exist today, and it is not contestable that the direct ancestors of my people did actually build that great civilisation.
On the other hand, all Zionist archaeologists have failed – after digging up every conceivable corner of Palestine for the last 62 years – to come up with a single credible Jewish teapot or tablespoon, let alone excavate an alleged Jewish temple remotely matching the grandeur of any of the visible relics of Andalucía.
Not only that, but they needn’t have bothered digging. Two years ago, Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand argued, with meticulous scholarship in his earth-shattering book, The Invention of the Jewish People, that the claim that the Jews of today are the ethnic offspring of the biblical Jews is yet another Zionist myth, because all records tell us that the current Jews are the descendants of Khazar tribes who converted to Judaism, and have no genetic link whatsoever to the Jews who lived in Palestine during Roman times. The latter, he concludes, are, most ironically, none other than the Palestinians of today who converted to Islam (or Christianity), because the Romans apparently never exiled anybody. Moreover, Sand demolishes the myth of the kingdoms of David and Solomon by proving they are pure legends that never existed. What is astonishing is that, to date, no Israeli historian has been able to debate, let alone refute, any of Sand’s devastating findings.
Yet, not only would I need to be in a straitjacket if I was serious about reclaiming Spain for the Arabs – irrespective of our real history there – but the Spanish people would have the right to laugh at the sheer absurdity of my hallucinations, if not get gravely offended by their audacity.
I cannot, for example, visit the magnificent Hall of Abencerrajes (Ibn Sarraj) in Al Hambra and then, after explaining to my children that it was Muslim Arabs who constructed these wondrous architectural miracles, go on and indoctrinate them that this piece of real estate should belong to them. I cannot do that any more than an Italian tourist can visit Jerash in Jordan, and thereafter decide to build a settlement and live there because, he says, it really belongs to his great uncle, a certain Mr Julius Caesar.
This is the case simply because, in this modern world, we do not go around stealing other people’s land by attributing our crime to an ancient historical link to such land, or because we believe that we belong to the same race or religion of the people who once lived there.
But the Zionists get away with it the whole time, and have been doing so for far too long – despite the total lack of any real historical connection to the land of Palestine (not that it matters or makes it any more legitimate if they did have such pre-historic connection).
For who can, in their of heart of hearts, credibly deny the blatant repugnancy of the whole underlying premise of Zionism, the very madness upon which Israel was founded? Indeed, any person who happens to support the immorality of the theft of the land of Palestine under such religious or forged historical pretexts would in reality be making up excuses for blatant colonisation that are far more ridiculous than my demented ranting about returning to the gardens of Cordoba.
So why do these Zionists get away with such a ludicrous monstrosity?
We all know why. The hegemony over world media exercised by Jews is crucial so that no one can ever challenge the Zionist narrative or point out the naked, unadulterated lunacy of the whole Zionist enterprise. Coupled with a world conscience shrouded in a cloud of Holocaust guilt, an event that is forbidden to even debate, you get an oppressive atmosphere that has suffocated the ability of Western civilisation to deconstruct Zionism down to its most basic insanities.
For how is it conceivable for otherwise rational populations to even entertain, let alone accept and adopt, the twisted Zionist logic about the Jews “returning” to a promised land after so many thousands of years of supposed separation? And how can these same people acquiesce to Israeli politicians openly using such religious nonsense as a justification for the contemporary and ongoing catastrophe inflicted upon the millions of guiltless Palestinian inhabitants of that land?
Take for example, José María Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, who recently gave a solemn warning on the pages of the London Times:
“anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region … if Israel goes down, we all go down…”.
Well, Mr Aznar, we do not advocate for Israel to disappear or go down anywhere, because, despite the evil deeds accompanying its creation, Israel is a fact that we have to live with today. Likewise, the Israelis are fellow human beings upon whom I do not wish to impose the televised barbequing of the eyes and flesh of their children using white phosphorus, nor shall I ever tolerate such horrendous barbarity to be inflicted upon them.
But, hey José, if you see nothing wrong with what Israel is, and regard its Goldstone-documented war crimes as a mere “distraction”, while ignoring that it is the source of all the “turbulence” of the region you mentioned, then you might as well give us back Malaga and Marbella. After all, in Andalucía, no Christian or Jew was ever persecuted or burnt at the stake, nor had his bone marrow fried by any other means.
Yet, the travesty continues unabated. Take this most recent manifestation of the mental illness enveloping the racist state of Israel (branded by Jewish US Media Inc. as “the only democracy in the Middle East”). Hillary Rubin is a US Jew from Detroit who decided to move to Israel in 2006, something millions of Palestinian refugees can only dream of. But that is not the story. Rubin happens to also be the niece of Zionist leader, Nahum Sokolow, so you would’ve supposed that she is a Jewish notable, revered in Israel for her noble lineage. Last month, she fell in love and wanted to get married to a nice Jewish boy from Herzliya. According to Ha’aretz newspaper, after filing for a wedding licence, she was refused and was told that she needed to prove the Jewishness of her maternal lineage for – listen to this – four entire generations. This is not 1933 Germany, but modern day Israel. So she got letters from four Conservative rabbis and one Chabad rabbi attesting to her Jewishness. But the Herzliya Rabbinate still wouldn’t have it. To allow her to marry her sweetheart, these men of God stipulated she comes up with the birth or death certificates of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, something she of course failed to do. This is not an isolated incident, but the official applicable Israeli law on the books. Oh yes, Adolf Hitler is turning in his grave at this news. “And they dared crucify me for the Nuremberg laws?”, the Führer is muttering to himself.
Well, there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen. Didn’t I tell you that Zionism is nothing but a terrible, incurable disease of the mind?
Israel has imposed tough restrictions on entry to al-aqsa mosque(Jerusalem)27.Aug.2010
Israel has imposed tough restrictions on entry to al-Quds (Jerusalem), preventing many Palestinians from attending Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque. Hundreds of Israeli troops were deployed and further checkpoints were installed in and around al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday to restrict the entry of Palestinian worshipers for the third Friday prayers of holy month of Ramadan. Women under the age of 45 and men under 50 are barred from entering the holy city. The move has angered many Palestinians, who believe Israel is illegally restricting access to the mosque. Palestinians say Israel, which occupied east al-Quds during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community, has no right to deny them access to the mosque. Restricting access to al-Quds is only one of various limitations imposed by the Israeli army on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank. The mosque compound, which is called Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), contains the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the third holiest site in Islam after Saudi Arabia's Mecca and Medina. HM/SAR/MMN http://www.presstv.com/detail/140248.html
two recent comments by Asad Abukhalil - The Angry Arab
Balfour Declaration
"According to Schneer, the Arabs were as invisible to the early Zionists as Africans had been to Boers in South Africa, or Indians to the French and English colonists in North America. But in fact, some of the first Zionists were well aware of the Arabs’ vehement objection to their national aspirations. As early as 1899, Theodore Herzl himself, the father of political Zionism, corresponded with the Arab mayor of Jerusalem, Yusuf Dia al-Khalidi, who urged him to find a national home for the Jews somewhere else in the world. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to have had its origins at the very beginning of Zionism." Posted by As'adhttp://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Plus: George Will"Asad Abukhalil has already nailed Will for getting the date of the Peel Commission report wrong. It was 1937, not 1936. And the Arab Revolt broke out in Palestine before the Peel Commission introduced its findings. I would also add that David Ben Gurion privately accepted the Peel Commission’s recommendations because he saw them as the basis for a later partition that would gift the Zionist settler minority with major port cities like Jaffa and Haifa and throw the Palestinian Arabs back to the hinterlands." Max is right. Ben Gurion only grudgingly accepted the Peel in the hope of later change. And as he wrote to his son (see Shabtai Teveth, Ben Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs) he talked about population exchange when he talked about whole-sale expulsion of Arabs (the trade off was between more than 100,00 in Jewish designated areas in return for no more than 3000 Jews in Arab designated areas). http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Kristol, Father and SonBy Maidhc Ó Cathailhttp://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2009/12/17/kristol-clear-the-source-of-americas-wars/
'One reason neocons have been able to sow so much mischief is that they feed into deeply embedded American beliefs about democratism and 'chosenness.'" -- Paul Gottfried.
Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars. For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.” But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?” Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool. In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.” “Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States ... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly. “The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes.” In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein. In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation ... is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.
Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric – which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months – was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.” The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.” The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception. In “Irving Kristol RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.” Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.
- Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Foreign Policy Journal, Khaleej Times, Palestine Chronicle and many other publications. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
Photo:Irving Kristol, the father of Neo Cons (neo-conservatism), his son William "FOX 'news'" Kristol, and PNAC signers Robert Kagan and Charles Krauthammer