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December 9, 2005
“Why do they hate us?”
by Mohamed Khodr
I was a physician in training in Beirut in the summer of 1982 when Ariel Sharon (Bush’s Man of Peace) besieged the city from the air, land, and sea and indiscriminately bombed it daily killing innocent civilians and depriving them of food, water and medicine. The United States gave Sharon the green light to invade Lebanon while it joined the United Nations Security Council in passing several Resolutions “asking” Sharon to lift the siege and allow basic necessities to enter the city. Sharon also oversaw the massacre of about 2000 Palestinian men, women, and children in the Refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, while killing over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians during that summer while creating hundreds of thousands of refugees forced to leave their home in Southern Lebanon.
While working in the Emergency Room among the countless stream of the dead and injured of all ages, I was captive to the shouts and screams of Muslim and Christian parents hovering over their dead children yelling at the top of their lungs: “Why are they doing this to us; Why do they hate us, Where is the United Nations, Why are America and Europe allowing Israel to do this to us? Why, why, why? To God we belong, and to Him we shall return.” I had no answer then and I don’t have one today.
Little did I know then that nineteen years later I’d hear the same question reverberating throughout the western civilized world after 9/11: “Why do they hate us?” I recalled the grieving parents in Beirut in 1982 and realized that the west had its answer in front of its nose--ISRAEL-- but out of prejudice, ignorance, fear, financial power, powerful lobbies, and fifty three years of continuous media propaganda and indoctrination, that answer consciously or unconsciously eluded them. It was the civilized world, first Britain, then Christian Europe’s Holocaust, followed by America and its United Nations that forcibly implanted European Jews in Palestine solving Europe’s “Jewish Problem” at the expense of dispossessing and creating the “Palestinian Problem”. From European colonialism, to Zionism, to modern day American imperialism, Muslims and their lands lie as the doormat of their corrupt leaders and civilized “democratic occupation”. Muslims must be grateful for the concern of America, Denmark, and the “Coalition of the Killing” for giving them their freedoms---freedom from their faith, their lands, resources, culture and history.
"...Israel (is) the Middle East's only democracy and its purest manifestation of Western progress and freedom….Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West..." -- Benjamin Netanyahu in his September 20, 2001 remarks in the United States Congress
“Why do they hate us?” ---- ISRAEL
“Why do we hate them? ---- ISRAEL
Tragically, the western “civilized” world “CAN’T HANDLE THIS TRUTH”
“They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either”. -- President George W. Bush in a Prime Time Press Conference, April 13, 2004
For fifty seven years Israel has been the arsonist in the Middle East creating multiple crises to further its expansionist policies against the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. Neither the U.N., the U.S., Europe, or for that matter the entire world have been able to stop the raging fires of Israel’s occupation, ethnic cleansing, and land annexation whether it be Christian or Muslim land. Muslim East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth are under occupation, yet both faith worlds are silenced.
“ARABS MAY HAVE THE OIL, BUT WE HAVE THE MATCHES”.
--- Ariel Sharon; Mark Gaffney, “Dimona, The Third Temple: The Story Behind the Vanunu Revelation”, Brattleboro, VT, 1989, Amana Books, page 165
It is no coincidence that modern day Muslim antagonism and “terrorism” against the West only began after Israel’s founding. It took decades of daily and incessant brutality, murder, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing by Israel for Muslim “terrorism” to reach the shores of Europe and much later, the United States. While ignorance, peace, and prosperity were filling the western malls, Muslim blood was soaking the soil of the Holy Land.
“The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue," Carter said, adding that past U.S. administrations since Harry Truman's have maintained a "balanced position" in dealing with the rights of the Arab population within the Jewish nation. ….”The present administration has not done so at all. We have been exclusively committed to the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel, and have made no effort to try to have a balanced negotiating position between Israel and the Palestinians” -- James Pinkerton quoting President Jimmy Carter; “Former President Carter Takes President to Task”, Houston Chronicle, April 9, 2004
“We’re in bed, you might say with the Israelis and we won’t even talk to the leaders of the Palestinians,” ---President Jimmy Carter, Palestine Media Watch, “Carter: U.S. ‘in Bed’ with Israel”, October 15, 2002
“Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah and he's had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who's ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates”. -- Thomas Friedman, “A Rude Awakening”, New York Times, February 5, 2004
“Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with Israel. And America's injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people”. -- Robert Fisk, “America Slowly Confronts the Truth”, The Independent, Dec. 3, 2005
Mr. Mohamed Khodr is an American Muslim physician and a native from the Middle East. He has worked in Academic Medicine and Public health with national and international health experience. He is a freelance writer who often writes columns on the Palestinian cause, Islam and on America's Foreign Policy in the Middle East.
December 9, 2005
On freedom of press and freedom of speech
by Mohamed Khodr
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” -- George Orwell
There is no such thing as total freedoms, least of all “freedom of speech” anywhere in the world. Governments and the mass media decide what is and isn’t freedom of speech. . It depends on their ideology, agenda, campaign donors, advertisers, fear and intimidation from special interest groups, and keeping their jobs. Would the New York Times publish an article by David Irving questioning the extant of the Holocaust? Would you publish a near naked photo of a Danish political figure especially of a right wing extremist as was a photo of Saddam Hussein splashed around the world? Many media outlets reject publishing advertisements opposed to their ideology or out of fear of a backlash. Recently FOXNEWS in the U.S. refused an ad against the appointment of the nominated Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito. CNN just fired a switchboard operator who told an irate caller complaining about a large “X” placed on the face of V.P. Dick Cheney because she told the caller that placing the “X” was “freedom of speech”. Zionist groups in America headed by Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz and others have launched a national campaign to silence any academic or political criticism of Israel as well as decry liberals. [1]
I’m sure you’ve read the reported story of Bush wanting to bomb the Arabic channel Aljazeera? Or of the U.S. military bombing the Aljazeera stations in both Kabul and Baghdad killing a reporter. Or of the U.S. paying Iraqi journalists to run favorable stories. Or the Bush administration paying American columnists (with tax monies) to write stories supportive of its domestic agenda such as paying Armstrong Williams $240,000 to support Bush’s educational initiative “No Child Left Behind”. Or of Bush’s Department of Education showing prepackaged videos promoting the same program as regular news stories. Or of the murder of over 56 international journalists in Iraq? Or of the bombing of the Serbian television station during the Kosovo war? There is a national governmental campaign in the U.S. to silence any dissidents against the Iraq war. Bush even refused the media to publish photographs of soldiers coming home in coffins. No American who is opposed to U.S. policy or to Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians is ever invited to a television or radio news show. Mainstream publishing companies refuse to publish books with opinions opposing Israel’s occupation leaving authors to go abroad to publish their books or get interviewed. Such dissidence is deemed unpatriotic by the few major corporations left who own the majority of the media in the U.S., while only nine such corporations own the majority of all media around the world. If you research the owners, CEO’s, Board of Directors, editors etc. of such corporations you’ll understand why there is no “freedom of speech”.
Many studies on the media in the U.K. and U.S. have been done that factually show the enormity of bias toward Israel’s viewpoint.
In a scientific study of how the British broadcasters, BBC and ITV, cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Professor Greg Philo and Dr Mike Berry of the Glasgow University Media Group, have detailed in their book, “Bad News From Israel”, that news coverage tends to promote a strong Pro-Israel perspective while ensuring that viewers remain ignorant of the root causes of the conflict.
Truth, Mr. Juste, has always been the enemy of empires and the sacrificial lamb of campaign contributions and powerful special interests.
So, please spare us your prejudice against Islam under the “freedom of speech” cover.
Ironically, while Denmark and Europe fear the “Islamization” of the continent, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League’s (J.D.L. in U.S.A.) Director, Abraham Foxman, recently declared his fear that fundamentalist Christian groups will “Christianize” America. "Today," said Foxman, "we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To save us!" [2]
Sound Familiar? “The Islamic Fundamentalists want to impose an Islamic Caliphate worldwide”
"The West, whether Christian or de-christianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind”. -- Roger Du Pasquier, “Unveiling Islam”, pages 5-7
The western MEDIA is truly the greatest “weapon of mass destruction”. It has the power to launch wars, create or destroy careers, especially political careers, demonize and stereotype ethnic groups, influence political policies, create comfort, distrust, or hate; inflame passions; but above all its relationship with governments, corporate interests, and the military-industrial complex makes it the most powerful institution worldwide, no where more so than in the West.
“Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture." -- Allen Ginsberg
“The nation's immediate problem is that while the common man fights America's wars, the intellectual elite sets its agenda. Today, whether the West lives or dies is in the hands of its new power elite: those who set the terms of public debate, who manipulate the symbols, who decide whether nations or leaders will be depicted on 100 million television sets as 'good' or 'bad.' This power elite sets the limits of the possible for Presidents and Congress. It molds the impressions that move the nation, or that mire it.” -- Richard Nixon, 1980, in “The Real War”
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years....It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." -- David Rockefeller - Bilderberg Meeting - June 1991 Baden, Germany (See Also: Jon Ronson, “Who Pulls the Strings”, Guardian Unlimited, March 10, 2001
“The mass media does not reveal reality, its masks it. It doesn’t help bring about change; it helps avoid change. It doesn’t encourage democratic participation; it induces passivity, resignation and selfishness. It doesn’t generate creativity, it creates consumers.” -- Eduardo Galeano, “We the Media”, Ed. Don Hazen and Julie Winokur, (inside cover)
“In the world according to the U.S. Media, the high moral ground in the Middle East belongs to Israel’s government—even when it slaughters Lebanese civilians as a matter of policy. In news coverage, Israeli casualties are apt to have names, faces, and bereaved relatives, while Arab victims are likely to be fleeting images; nameless, faceless, distant….Israel’s most crucial allies include the mass media of the United States. Together with top officials in Washington, news outlets keep reinforcing the assumption that the Israeli government can do little wrong." --- Solomon, Norman; Cohen, Jeff; “Wizards of Media Oz”, Common Courage Press, 1997, Page 243
“One phrase -- "security zone" -- sums up an entire era of media spin about Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The dismal American news coverage of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon is an apt metaphor for the overall reporting on conflicts that involve Israel. Harmonizing with the tenor of Washington's official policies toward the Middle East, the U.S. press corps winks and nods as Israel -- annually receiving a few billion dollars in aid from Uncle Sam -- continues to suppress the human rights of Palestinians. On some issues, it is possible to argue for wider debate in America's mainstream news media. But on the subject of Israel, how does one widen a debate that doesn't really even exist?" [3] -- Norman Solomon: “U.S. news media: “A security zone for Israel”, May 25, 2000, Author of “The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media”
”That the U.S. media are anti-Israel is so absurd as to suggest hysteria. Are American Jews in such deep denial about the brutality of Israel's recent actions that they would damn those who report the truth?..Certainly the American media are far more sympathetic to Israel than publishers and journalists in the rest of the world. However, the traditional absence of acknowledgement in U.S. news reporting of the ongoing victimization of the Palestinians, powerless from the beginning of their displacement half a century ago, is callously immoral…or to treat Palestinian civilian deaths as a necessary evil made legitimate because they are caused by U.S.-supplied tanks and choppers." -- Robert Scheer, “The Palestinian Side Must Be Told”, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2002
“Israel is losing its military struggle against Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon - but winning its propaganda war on the conflict in the outside world. Although its aircraft bombed three Lebanese power stations last week after guerrillas killed six occupation soldiers, Western press and television reports almost unanimously portrayed the latest violence in Lebanon as a war by Israel in defense of its civilians on the other side of the frontier. In fact, no Israeli civilians were attacked, let alone hurt, and all the Israeli soldiers who died were inside their occupation zone in Lebanon. -- Robert Fisk, “How America Swallows the Israelis’ Lies”, Feb. 14, 2000
“In no US newspaper or broadcast that I have seen has the French position on Iraq been accurately presented…. It sometimes seemed that the press had become "embedded" not only in the fighting forces but in Washington officialdom itself”. -- Professor Stanley Hoffman, “America Goes Backward”, The New York Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 10 · June 12, 2003
“On May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States…So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it's no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. Journalists, meanwhile, are often loath to write about the influence of organized Jewry.In the end, though, the main obstacle to covering these groups is fear” -- Michael Massing, “The Israel Lobby”, The Nation, June 10, 2002
“If you want to know the truth about Iraq, join the millions who have given up on the silences of the mainstream media” --- John Pilger [4]
FROM NAZI TO NEO-CON PROPAGANDA: A CASE FOR HATE AND WAR
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger”. -- Hermann Goering
Western “democratic, civilized” leaders lied to their peoples, to the world, and violated international laws and the United Nations Charter, that their nations helped formulate, to invade a non-threatening sovereign nation, Iraq, already decimated by a war, a decade of severe economic sanctions that killed 1.5 million people and 500,000 children---something Madeleine Albright deemed “worth it”. These democratic leaders all knew prior to their illegal war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had no ties to Al-Qaeda, did not threaten its neighbors much less the west or Israel.
REFERENCES:
[1]. Daniel Pipes’ site: http://www.campus-watch.org and:
David Horowitz’s site: http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/
[2]. http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=16036&intcategoryid=5
[3]. http://www.freepress.org/DefaultMain.ASP?Page=Content&
Category=1&Name=3&File=2000%5C05%5C25%2Ehtml
[4]. http://www.newstatesman.com/200511280013(On Media Spin of Iraq War in U.K.)
Mr. Mohamed Khodr is an American Muslim physician and a native from the Middle East. He has worked in Academic Medicine and Public health with national and international health experience. He is a freelance writer who often writes columns on the Palestinian cause, Islam and on America's Foreign Policy in the Middle East.
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