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| Palestine: Democracy Under Siege |
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| Monday, 22 May 2006 | |
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Since the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was elected by the Palestinian electorate earlier this year, this nascent democracy has ever since been beleaguered and besieged. It’s not Hamas, but rather the democracy which brought Hamas to rule, has been under siege. Almost entirely, without a single possible exception all the presumed ‘democratic’ states had ironically, opposed it. The very democracy that their very own observers, most notably former President Carter, testified to for rightfulness and cleanliness. Even the Palestinian ‘Brutuses’, let alone the Arab ‘Brutuses’ from within had sadly, joined the international disgraceful chorus. The ‘Western democracies’ of our human world have apparently, manipulated the Palestinian ‘Brutuses’. Hilariously enough the Arab ‘Brutus’, Jordan, the backyard of the Palestinian lands had shamefully, participated in stabbing the Palestinian democracy. All of a sudden apparently, under instructions of their ‘keepers’ went public and announced that, Hamas smuggled weapons into Jordan to destabilize the country! Had the for long manipulated regime in Jordan thought patriotically, would have realized that, they had attacked the very democracy (not the very Hamas), they themselves have been striving to install. Alas, the regime had slipped over the banana skin that, their ‘keepers’ of the ‘Banana Republic’ had put under their feet. This democracy has, undoubtedly, showed the World the real face of ‘Western democracies’. Features of this face can be summed up in one word, which is hypocrisy. Retrospectively, when Ariel Sharon won the Israeli vote by the end of 2000, the ‘Western democracies’ hailed his election. Though within Israel itself, Sharon is still notoriously perceived as the prime factor behind the Sabra and Shatila massacre of September 16, 1982. The haunted ‘Western democracies’ by Machiavellian deceits, nonetheless, turned a blind eye and dough ear to Sharon’s bloody history. Arab and Muslim masses, to whom the Bush, Blair and the E.U.’s administrations, have desperately been since 9/11 attempting to sell them their style of ‘democracy’, have been raising questions about the credibility of such ‘democracy marketing’. Professor, Dr. Ali Al-Hail, Professor of Mass Communication, Twice Fulbright Award Winner, International Fulbright Visiting Scholar, and Board Member of AUSACE ASC, IABD, NEBAA, BEA, IMDA and EAJMC pdaah90@hotmail.com
By Ali Al-Hail           Readers have left 4 comments.
Abdul Rahman:
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The Palestinians are free to choose their representatives and the other countries of the world are free to draw their own consequences.
Nobody suggests that every country must recognise, have relations with and support Israel just because it is a democracy. The more hardline and uncompromising the leadership that the Israelis vote for, the less sympathetic is the outside world. We should of course expect the same to apply to the Palestinians. The sad thing in the case of the Palestinians is that their choice was between the corrupt and the fanatical. Who can blame them for not voting for Fatah when Fatah were the first people to withhold funds from the Palestinians (and divert those funds into their own bank accounts)?
(1)
2006-05-23 08:46:50
SS:
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It exposes the hypocrisy of these "democratised" governments. But is more worrying is the in-fighting that is taking place, this is hugely destructive to the Palestinian cause.
(2)
2006-05-23 10:59:22
kal:
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Abdul
falls into the classic trap. He equates the viloence of the oppressed with that of the oppressor. They are not the same. Remember the words 'It is a right of oppressed peoples to decided the means of their liberation'? This concept is enshrined in international law and the UN constitution under the 'right to resist occupation'. The viciousness of the 'western govts' response is magnified because their policies have allowed israel to leave the palestinians with no viable state or apparatus. They are reliant on handouts because their livelihoods, land and liberty have been STOLEN with 'western' govt collusion, often in ignorance of their electorates. Therefore, the 'consequences' are disproportionately vicious, not because the Palestinians like handouts but because THESE govts' policies, in support of racist israel, have left them with nothing. This is what makes the hypocracy so rank and odious.
(3)
2006-05-23 15:05:31
abdul rahman:
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Kal - it's always so easy for the Ummah to paint itself as the oppressed and it's so terribly, terribly dangerous, because it distorts its world view and actions.
The Israelis also think they are victims - driven out of Europe and indeed the Muslim world (let's not pretend life for Jews has always been good under Islam - the Israeli Arab fare much better than Jews do under Sharia), the Arabs determined to wipe them out from day one, pogroms in Jerusalem and Hebron, and after the 1948 war, whilst tens of thousands of Arabs were left in Israel, every single Jew expelled from Arab held territory and Jews were totally denied access to their holiest shrines. It is not that I want to make the zionist case - I know that I will be heaped with opprobrium for doing so, and it is not necessarily my persepective - but if Muslims totally ignore the view of the other side, dismiss it and claim it is just some demonic fantasy, they will make demons of themselves. It was brought home neatly for me yesterday when my daughter brought home a school book showing the religions of the world by area. She simply could not believe that the Muslim world is so big and Israel so small you can hardly see it. If we're not careful she'll be persuading herself that the cartographers must be part of some zionist conspiracy! By all means Muslims should support the Palestinians, but doing it to the extent of losing sight of everything else, as seems to be the case with MPAC, with no sense of perspective and not the slightest insight into the other side, leads to a kind of sickness. There is a huge Islamic world out there with major, major issues, and if you get totally hung up on an area which represents 0.1% of the Middle East then you are never going to fix the problems.
(4)
2006-05-24 17:55:52
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