What an awesome speech. I admire the courage that this man has. What this man says, very very few people in the west (or even in the Islamic world) have the courage to say.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Comments that can kill
Recently, John Howard and Peter Costello have made comments about the need for Muslims to learn the English Language and to learn the Australian culture. While Howard and Costello were making the comments and reaffirming them, many people, including muslim leaders, where warning about the risk of attacks against the muslim community.
A few days later, we hear about a targeted vandalism of the cars of the ICV ex-president and his wife [ref]. The ICV indicated that they have received the highest number of hate mail since the Sydney riots incident.
The issue here is not about learning English at all. Also, no body in their right mind would suggest that someone should live in a country oblivious to what is going on around him/her. The arguement that Muslims have about the comments made by John Howard are:
1- John Howard is singling out muslims for a not-so-clear agenda. I would like you to go to Springvale or Footscray in Melbourne and see if people speak english...No they speak all sorts of other Asian languages. Jews give their sermons in Hebrew etc Why single out Muslims??? The issue of english education is a national educational issue.
2- What drives the comments?? They seem to come out of the blue every now and then when it is politically convenient to do so.
3- Muslims fear that such comments only serve to fuel more cases of violence against Muslims. They happen daily and they don't get reported on main stream media. No body cares about violence to 1.5% of the population. John Howard surely does not either, given his comments.
4- Muslims who don't speak English fall in the same catagory as Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans etc etc who don't. Let us focus on solutions rather than problems. I expect a prime minister to come out with solutions in the form of policy. For example, if the Government decided to make it a condition of PR or citizen status to pass an English exam, no one would say a boo. We would support it.
Stay tuned for more consequnces of the Howard comments...
A few days later, we hear about a targeted vandalism of the cars of the ICV ex-president and his wife [ref]. The ICV indicated that they have received the highest number of hate mail since the Sydney riots incident.
The issue here is not about learning English at all. Also, no body in their right mind would suggest that someone should live in a country oblivious to what is going on around him/her. The arguement that Muslims have about the comments made by John Howard are:
1- John Howard is singling out muslims for a not-so-clear agenda. I would like you to go to Springvale or Footscray in Melbourne and see if people speak english...No they speak all sorts of other Asian languages. Jews give their sermons in Hebrew etc Why single out Muslims??? The issue of english education is a national educational issue.
2- What drives the comments?? They seem to come out of the blue every now and then when it is politically convenient to do so.
3- Muslims fear that such comments only serve to fuel more cases of violence against Muslims. They happen daily and they don't get reported on main stream media. No body cares about violence to 1.5% of the population. John Howard surely does not either, given his comments.
4- Muslims who don't speak English fall in the same catagory as Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans etc etc who don't. Let us focus on solutions rather than problems. I expect a prime minister to come out with solutions in the form of policy. For example, if the Government decided to make it a condition of PR or citizen status to pass an English exam, no one would say a boo. We would support it.
Stay tuned for more consequnces of the Howard comments...
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Galloway: Hizbullah's victory has transformed the Middle East
The defeat of the regional superpower could yet open the way to a wider settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict
by George Galloway in Beirut
The Guardian ½ 31 August 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1861527,00.html
As the smoke clears from the battlefield of the 34-day war in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to count the cost only in fallen masonry and fresh graves. All is changed, changed utterly, by the defeat that the whole of Israel is now debating, from the cabinet through the lively press to the embittered reservists at the falafel stall. Practically the only person in the world who claims Israel won the war is George Bush - and we all know his definition of the words "mission accomplished".
Reports that the Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, expressed regret this week at having underestimated Israel's reponse to the capture of two of its soldiers were misleading. In fact, Nasrallah thanked God that the attack came when the resistance movement was prepared, as he was convinced Israel would have otherwise invaded later in the year at a time of its choosing.
If the fierce thicket of the Iraqi resistance stopped the Bush war spreading to Syria then the extraordinary Hizbullah victory has surely made the world think again about an attack on Iran. But the main - and maybe the most welcome - shift in the 40-year-old paradigm of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the puncturing of the belief in a permanent and unchallengeable Israeli military superiority over its neighbours and the hubris this has induced in Israeli leaders - from the sleek Shimon Peres through the roughhouse of Binyamin Netanyahu to the stumbling Mr Magoo premiership of Ehud Olmert.
The myth of invincibility is a souffle that cannot rise twice. Over the past week I have picked my way through the rubble of Dahia in downtown Beirut, now resembling London's East End at the height of the blitz, and across the south of Lebanon in towns such as Bint Jbeil whose centres look as if they have been hit by an earthquake. Here the litter of banned weapons lies like a legal time bomb - evidence of war crimes alleged by the UN and Amnesty International that in a genuine system of international justice would put Israel in the dock at The Hague. This, together with the beating Israel has received in international public opinion, is the collateral damage suffered alongside military humiliation.
Israel announced the capture of Bint Jbeil several times, but in truth it never held the town - or anywhere else for that matter - throughout the war. Despite raining down thousands of tons of high explosive on homes, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, ambulances, UN posts, oil storage depots, electricity plants and virtually every petrol station south of Beirut (the bombers seemed to have a crazed thirst for petrol stations, while telling the world that they were kindly inviting the residents of south Lebanon to get into their cars and leave their homes for a little while), the Israelis were given a severe mauling by Hizbullah fighters when it came to boots on the ground.
Paradoxically, some believe that all this has blown open a window in which it is possible to glimpse the possibility of a comprehensive settlement of the near-century-old conflicts which lie behind the recent war. Now that the status quo ante has been swept away, we may even see an FW de Klerk moment emerge in Israel (and among its indispensable international backers).
The leader of the white tribes of apartheid South Africa waited until the critical mass of opposition threatened to overwhelm the position of the previously invincible minority, and sold the transfer of power on the basis that a settlement later, under more severe duress, would be less favourable. Israel's trajectory is now heading towards such a moment.
A comprehensive settlement now would of course look much like it has for decades: Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967; respect for the legal rights of Palestinian refugees to return; the emergence of a real Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital - a contiguous state with an Arab border, with no Zionist settlements and military roads, and with internationally guaranteed Palestinian control over its land, air, sea and water. In exchange there would be Arab recognition, normalisation and, in time, acceptance of Israel into the Middle East as something other than a settler garrison of the imperial west.
Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, a settlement can't be a little bit comprehensive. Attempts - like the one more than a decade ago in Oslo - to obfuscate, shave and sculpt such a package to the point of unrecognisability will founder on the new reality.
The Arab world is waking up to its potential power. It has seen the Iraqis confound Anglo-American efforts to recolonise their country, the unbreakability, whatever the cost, of the Palestinian resistance, and now the success of Hizbullah. If there is no settlement there can only be war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads. Nor is it only Israel that will pay the price for continued conflict: the enduring injustice of Palestinian dispossession has already poisoned western-Muslim relations and helped spill violence and hatred on to our own streets. There is still time to choose peace. But make no mistake, with the victory of Hizbullah, a terrible beauty is born.
George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow www.georgegalloway.com
by George Galloway in Beirut
The Guardian ½ 31 August 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1861527,00.html
As the smoke clears from the battlefield of the 34-day war in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to count the cost only in fallen masonry and fresh graves. All is changed, changed utterly, by the defeat that the whole of Israel is now debating, from the cabinet through the lively press to the embittered reservists at the falafel stall. Practically the only person in the world who claims Israel won the war is George Bush - and we all know his definition of the words "mission accomplished".
Reports that the Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, expressed regret this week at having underestimated Israel's reponse to the capture of two of its soldiers were misleading. In fact, Nasrallah thanked God that the attack came when the resistance movement was prepared, as he was convinced Israel would have otherwise invaded later in the year at a time of its choosing.
If the fierce thicket of the Iraqi resistance stopped the Bush war spreading to Syria then the extraordinary Hizbullah victory has surely made the world think again about an attack on Iran. But the main - and maybe the most welcome - shift in the 40-year-old paradigm of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the puncturing of the belief in a permanent and unchallengeable Israeli military superiority over its neighbours and the hubris this has induced in Israeli leaders - from the sleek Shimon Peres through the roughhouse of Binyamin Netanyahu to the stumbling Mr Magoo premiership of Ehud Olmert.
The myth of invincibility is a souffle that cannot rise twice. Over the past week I have picked my way through the rubble of Dahia in downtown Beirut, now resembling London's East End at the height of the blitz, and across the south of Lebanon in towns such as Bint Jbeil whose centres look as if they have been hit by an earthquake. Here the litter of banned weapons lies like a legal time bomb - evidence of war crimes alleged by the UN and Amnesty International that in a genuine system of international justice would put Israel in the dock at The Hague. This, together with the beating Israel has received in international public opinion, is the collateral damage suffered alongside military humiliation.
Israel announced the capture of Bint Jbeil several times, but in truth it never held the town - or anywhere else for that matter - throughout the war. Despite raining down thousands of tons of high explosive on homes, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, ambulances, UN posts, oil storage depots, electricity plants and virtually every petrol station south of Beirut (the bombers seemed to have a crazed thirst for petrol stations, while telling the world that they were kindly inviting the residents of south Lebanon to get into their cars and leave their homes for a little while), the Israelis were given a severe mauling by Hizbullah fighters when it came to boots on the ground.
Paradoxically, some believe that all this has blown open a window in which it is possible to glimpse the possibility of a comprehensive settlement of the near-century-old conflicts which lie behind the recent war. Now that the status quo ante has been swept away, we may even see an FW de Klerk moment emerge in Israel (and among its indispensable international backers).
The leader of the white tribes of apartheid South Africa waited until the critical mass of opposition threatened to overwhelm the position of the previously invincible minority, and sold the transfer of power on the basis that a settlement later, under more severe duress, would be less favourable. Israel's trajectory is now heading towards such a moment.
A comprehensive settlement now would of course look much like it has for decades: Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967; respect for the legal rights of Palestinian refugees to return; the emergence of a real Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital - a contiguous state with an Arab border, with no Zionist settlements and military roads, and with internationally guaranteed Palestinian control over its land, air, sea and water. In exchange there would be Arab recognition, normalisation and, in time, acceptance of Israel into the Middle East as something other than a settler garrison of the imperial west.
Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, a settlement can't be a little bit comprehensive. Attempts - like the one more than a decade ago in Oslo - to obfuscate, shave and sculpt such a package to the point of unrecognisability will founder on the new reality.
The Arab world is waking up to its potential power. It has seen the Iraqis confound Anglo-American efforts to recolonise their country, the unbreakability, whatever the cost, of the Palestinian resistance, and now the success of Hizbullah. If there is no settlement there can only be war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads. Nor is it only Israel that will pay the price for continued conflict: the enduring injustice of Palestinian dispossession has already poisoned western-Muslim relations and helped spill violence and hatred on to our own streets. There is still time to choose peace. But make no mistake, with the victory of Hizbullah, a terrible beauty is born.
George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow www.georgegalloway.com
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