One Step Closer to Freedom

This is an update on Hamas
I read today in Ara­bic news­pa­per that Saudi Ara­bia and Qatar will cover Hamas finan­cially for the com­ing months.

Next

This is a very fresh inter­view with Hamas (Thank you Keld Bach), very inter­est­ing to read:

By El Gato

They say that the world is a global vil­lage
..in this day and age that state­ment could not be more true, and yet, whose global vil­lage is it?
Who has access to this global tech­nol­ogy that instantly trans­mits news from one end of the world to the other? A bet­ter ques­tion, who con­trols this instru­ment
and does not the one who con­trols this great power called the media, get to mould and con­trol and fil­ter selected pieces of infor­ma­tion to the masses, whose minds and brains do no more than chew and swal­low, like cat­tle, like the Holy Cows of India that has chewed on every piece of green­ery, in the name of God, in the name of holi­ness, in the name of the people

And men wor­ship those cows. Men pros­trate to those cows and their destruc­tion
.just as the men in today’s very mod­ern, very sophis­ti­cated, highly intel­li­gi­ble world have placed their heads at the feet of that which destroys them, chew­ing and swal­low­ing, under­stand­ing nothing–or perhaps—not wish­ing to under­stand anything.

The Israeli Pales­tin­ian sit­u­a­tion is not brain surgery.
Any think­ing child over the age of nine could solve the ques­tion of Israel in 1 minute flat.
A South African child would be able to do it in (I’m guess­ing here) maybe 30 sec­onds.

Recently, democ­racy achieved it’s most spec­tac­u­lar fin­ish with Hamas win­ning the Pales­tin­ian elec­tion.
Hamas had no money really. They did not cam­paign in the usual sense of the word
.their cam­paign was based on their his­tory, their past, their move­ment, and a small­est glim­mer of a real hope… because hope is what Hamas rep­re­sents to the peo­ple of Pales­tine, Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian and Jews

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion in a des­per­ate attempt to keep Fatah in power gave over $2 mil­lion in aid to their cam­paign, but it was in vain.
Fatah did not win.
Hamas did bet­ter than any­one, includ­ing them­selves, ever expected.
Hamas, the U.S gov­ern­ment stated, must not win the elec­tions because they are the aggres­sors, the terrorists

Yet Hamas is a resis­tance move­ment of the peo­ple, for the peo­ple, by the peo­ple
Is this not democ­racy in the truest sense of the word?
Like the A.N.C in South Africa, Hamas is indeed on the ter­ror­ist list of coun­tries like the U.S
but only a few years ago, after the South Africa had become the Rain­bow Nation and every­one waxed lyri­cal about our great democ­racy, a promi­nent mem­ber of the South African gov­ern­ment was rejected a visa into the U.S because his name was STILL on the ter­ror­ist list.
Appar­ently they for­got to remove it. Colin Pow­ell, whom Harry Bela­fonte rightly called a good slave to his mas­ter, was present at one of the func­tions in which he spewed words of joy about the man he called a hero, the very man whose name was not removed from the list.

So per­haps Hamas does not sub­scribe to the form of democ­racy favoured by the West that is for some peo­ple only, a democ­racy that says $1 one vote.

The media has trum­peted on a tan­gent that the inca­pac­i­ta­tion of Sharon has placed a big obsta­cle in the peace process. Sharon, the man of peace.
Sharon, the man that was fined only 14c for the mas­sacres at Sabra and Shatila
and many oth­ers mas­sacres that we know of, and many many more that we will never know of.

14c is the value that the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity attached to the lives of 4000 Pales­tin­ian refugee’s, unarmed men, women and chil­dren, the Media of the Free World did not pub­li­cize the women whose preg­nant stom­ach was ripped open by a knife, the fetus which was stabbed to death, the babies that were buried alive, the women that were gang raped until they died.
When it rained soon after the mas­sacres, the camps and the streets were con­gested with the decay­ing flesh and blood of the dead.

And with this thought, on this par­tic­u­lar note, I would like to begin this inter­view so that it is fresh in your mind, so that you may under­stand what is it to be a Pales­tin­ian, though we will never really
but per­haps just for this second..you may ask your­self what does it mean to be human? To be just? What does peace truly mean
can it forced, imposed? Can it be a gun held to your head as you vote, as you live, and even as you breathe?
The Pales­tini­ans in the occu­pied West Bank and Gaza ter­ri­to­ries voted with the gun lit­er­ally to their head.
Yet the Hamas won. The trans­fer of power was done peace­fully. Fatah knew their time had come to an end
no longer would the Pales­tini­ans stand the machi­na­tions of gov­ern­ment that pro­claimed to rule the state of Palestine—what State???? the Pales­tini­ans would be right to ask, if all their land is under occupation

Surely, an Amer­i­can friend told me, the Pales­tini­ans have done them­selves in by vot­ing for a ter­ror­ist group.
In what way, I asked him.
Well, he replied, the entire world sees Hamas as a ter­ror­ist, now they will freely allow Israel to bomb the Pales­tini­ans.
I asked my friend whether he thought they were wrong in vot­ing for Hamas

He was quiet for so long that I thought no answer would ever come forth
until finally he said, They were not wrong..but now they are really in for it.
Indeed, they were not wrong.
But the Pales­tini­ans have been wronged for so long that they no longer care what hap­pens to them, only that their chil­dren, the future, may be given a chance.

I spoke to Dr Nashat Aqtash, the con­sul­tant for Hamas dur­ing the elec­tion process and asked him a few questions.

GATO: Lets talk about your book, The Ide­o­log­i­cal Ter­ror­ism of Mass Media Propaganda..because it seems to me that this war is very much a war of the media
cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments like the U.S need this ide­o­log­i­cal war, it’s a fun­da­men­tal part of their econ­omy, arms and oil..and so from the profit point of view keep­ing a Pro West mil­i­tary enclave like Israel in the Mid­dle East, in the heart of the Mus­lim world would be the fuel required to keep this war going
and the lan­guage, ie: call­ing the Hamas free­dom fight­ers ter­ror­ists, is it prof­itable? Is it the key? Does win­ning the media equal to win­ning the war, lan­guage as mis­nomers being the bullets?

NA: Yes, defi­nately, the media is being used a medium of war, besides diplo­macy and armies, the media of the U.S are able to con­vince the world they are doing a good job, that they are pro­tect­ing the world from rad­i­cal Mus­lims. The U.S is doing war because of oil and the media is being used.
The Inter­na­tional com­mu­nity are unable to name things with any ter­mi­nol­ogy other than that which is defined by the U.S.
Bin Laden is a ter­ror­ist now, but he was a good boy accord­ing to the U.S media when he was fight­ing the Rus­sians.
So my book was essen­tially talk­ing about the ter­mi­nol­ogy – the inac­cu­rate ter­mi­nol­ogy used by the media.

GATO: So what is the suc­cess rate of this kind of propaganda—is the truth sub­ject to what the intel­lec­tual community—those that have access to pub­lic platforms—is the truth sub­ju­gated to this–

NA: Yes. As you can see, it is very very suc­cess­ful. The U.S was able to con­vince the world of things that were not true.

GATO: There is a very vis­i­ble and bla­tant hypocrisy within the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, this is off topic per­haps, but you have many Mus­lim immi­grants that are treated like pris­on­ers in open air pris­ons, expected to abide by the laws of these coun­tries, to a degree that is mil­i­tant
.yet their rights are in a con­stant state—a very vague limbo

N.A: yes yes,

Now the world courts state that build­ing set­tle­ments on occu­pied land is an act of war, it is a crime, and the media has been call­ing these Israeli set­tle­ments vil­lages and towns–

NA: yes

GATO: But is Hamas not within their rights to say that Israel – and by this I mean the ide­o­log­i­cal core of Zion­ism, which is inher­ently racist and colo­nial, and the phys­i­cal occu­pa­tion of Israel, because essen­tially they exist only by the bul­let and the gun and the tanks, and they are sup­ported by a for­eign power, those are Amer­i­can F16’s
.so my ques­tion is are they not within their rights, as accorded to them by inter­na­tional law, to want the racist state of Israel to come to an end??

NA: The Hamas char­ter, they are chang­ing part of it, they are say­ing now that Israel is a real­ity. The Pales­tini­ans want peace—it is the other side, Israel that does not want peace. Accord­ing to U.N res­o­lu­tion 181, the (geo­graph­i­cal land of Pales­tine) would be divided into 2 states. Israel must pull­out (accord­ing to the U.N) from the Pales­tin­ian land. They have rejected all the res­o­lu­tions
Hamas is accept­ing of a Hudna, 10 or 20 or 30 years and dur­ing this time we can nego­ti­ate in peace. Two State solu­tion is very impor­tant, the Hudna must be used for reforms such as edu­ca­tion, ser­vices like water and elec­tric­ity.
We Pales­tini­ans want a Pales­tin­ian state, over 80% of us sup­port two state solu­tion. They (Israel) do not want the solu­tion. Let me tell you, in 2003 an Arab Sum­mit was held in Beirut, the pro­posal sup­ported by all the Arab States called for a full with­drawal from 1967 bor­ders and then Arab coun­tries agreed to have full nor­mal­iza­tion with Israel.
Do you know what 1967 bor­ders are?

He asks me, I say I do and he continues.

NA: These peo­ple are very arro­gant you see, the bor­ders are that 78% of land is for Israel and 22% for the Palestinians.

just shitty..shitty
shitty
.but I am mut­ter­ing now and I can­not tell whether he can hear me

NA: We want peace, we are pre­pared to set­tle for this, we have set­tled for this. But what did the Israeli and the Amer­i­cans say—they were not in favour of any solu­tion, they did not want any solu­tion.
This con­flict could be ended in 5 min­utes if the Israeli and the Pales­tini­ans were left alone
5 min­utes.
But the U.S has empir­i­cal inter­ests in the region and solu­tions are not in their inter­ests. The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity does not want the con­flict to end.

GATO: Again, to the media because you are a media spe­cial­ist
The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment has always said that the secu­rity of Israel is key to the secu­rity of Amer­ica
are they speak­ing in terms of the eco­nom­ics of Empire? Because they have man­aged to present the sit­u­a­tion as one of Mus­lims against Jews, instead of Pales­tini­ans, the Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Pales­tini­ans against the Zion­ist occu­pa­tion
but the sit­u­a­tion has many par­al­lels to the col­o­niza­tion of Africa, par­tic­u­larly South Africa, where it was the peo­ple, the major­ity of which were blacks and they fought against Apartheid not the whites, although it was the whites –the minor­ity that main­tained the Apartheid.

NA: You see, even now the Amer­i­can media are describ­ing the Iraqis as ter­ror­ists, but they are resist­ing the occu­pa­tion, this occu­pa­tion makes con­flicts, it is the prob­lem. This Pales­tin­ian sit­u­a­tion has noth­ing to do with reli­gion, Mus­lims have always been a very kind people—Do you know any Mus­lim his­tory, he asks me? He car­ries on, we have always pro­tected the minori­ties, it was Ger­many and Rus­sia that was killing the Jews, but in our Mus­lim lands the minori­ties, the Jews were always pro­tected. His­tory will state this. But Amer­i­can has con­vinced the world that the Mus­lims are out to get them and so this occu­pa­tion is meant to keep them weak. It was Euro­pean coun­tries that suf­fered the Jews, but we are the ones that this occu­pa­tion is being imposed on.

GATO: Now the Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion in Palestine—are they in sup­port of Hamas?

NA: Do you know
did you know that the Chris­tians, the Chris­tians voted for Hamas?

GATO: Hosam Al Taweel, a Pales­tin­ian Chris­t­ian, he said that his fore­fa­thers were right there along­side Salahud­din fight­ing the Cru­saders and he is a Chris­t­ian and rep­re­sents the Chris­tians Pales­tini­ans
now we know that the Chris­t­ian Pales­tin­ian population—especially in Bethele­hem and places, it has become like a ghost town..and the Church of Nativ­ity has also been sav­aged
.and that is obvi­ously a very holy place for the Chris­t­ian peo­ples.
What is the gen­eral feel­ing of Hamas towards the Chris­tians and impor­tently, of the Pales­tin­ian Chris­tians towards Hamas
because the U.S Chris­tians, at least 70 mil­lion of them are under the impres­sion that Jerusalem must be under the con­trol of the Jews before Jesus can come
so they have prop­a­gated this to be a reli­gious war, a Cru­sades as Bush called it. And they have fal­si­fied the rea­sons for going to war
.

NA: Pales­tin­ian Chris­tians voted for Hamas..because Hamas rep­re­sents all the Pales­tini­ans, the Mus­lim, the Jews, the Chris­tians
They stand with Hamas..They are against the Zion­ist move­ment. What Hamas wants is Hudna between Israel and Pales­tine, this is the plat­form of Hamas. Reli­gion is of no mat­ter in this, Pales­tin­ian Jews under­stand this.
In the future, very soon, Hamas wants to pro­vide incen­tives to the Chris­t­ian Pales­tini­ans and all the Pales­tini­ans liv­ing abroad to come back to Pales­tine, their home, we will pro­tect them, they are apart of our nation, our his­tory, our people.

GATO: How fair has the media been really to the Pales­tin­ian cause? I mean, you had a man by the name of Bob Elkins who was a Zion­ist, in the very least a strong Zion­ist sym­pa­thizer, and he was hired by the BBC to report dur­ing the cru­cial 67 and Octo­ber wars, as well as just the every­day sit­u­a­tion, and he was very very mis­lead­ing
The BBC is labeled as one of the more just TV sta­tions, but always at some point they have had and they do have, Zion­ists con­trol­ling the pro­grammes and the dif­fer­ent points of views
there is a mas­sive imbal­ance. So has any sta­tion or coun­try or paper ever pre­sented the true Pales­tin­ian situation?

NA: In gen­eral, media’s are bias to the U.S and to Israel, so Pales­tini­ans are not able to tell the facts, they have failed also in deal­ing with the media, they were unable too. Israel has been very good in deal­ing with the media..and so we have been accused of things that are not true. Some of these news­pa­pers were able to present some of the truth, but the major­ity did not want to present the truth.
I was pre­sent­ing the Hamas point of view to the ex Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter in front of 100 observers..So I said, let us define ter­ror­ism
They have men­tioned sev­eral times that Hamas has bombed civil­ians, but these attacks were 60 in all, and only 300 Israeli died. The Israeli killed over 4000 civil­ians, and these are unarmed peo­ple. Why are they jus­ti­fied in killing us, demol­ish­ing our homes, build­ing roads and set­tle­ments, and when Pales­tini­ans fight the occu­pa­tion they are ter­ror­ists, but the Israeli jus­tify every­thing
.

GATO: Ehud Olmert has been pres­sur­iz­ing gov­ern­ments and offi­cials, actu­ally, the U.S and Israel alike have been doing this
to not rec­og­nize Hamas until Hamas rec­og­nizes Israel
but the very exis­tence of Israel sig­ni­fies the death of the Pales­tini­ans
the U.S man­ages to gun the world down under some dis­torted and twisted ver­sion of democ­racy, that could eas­ily pass once again for col­o­niza­tion or fas­cism
and when the Pales­tini­ans cor­nered them by demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elect­ing Hamas, democ­racy at its most hon­est, most real, was rejected
does this dis­play the hypocrisy of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity not only within coun­tries like Pales­tine, but also within their own coun­tries
.eg, the U.S elec­tion, the illu­sion of choice??

NA: Here we have a democ­racy, a peace­ful democ­racy which is against their inter­ests, democ­racy is only good when it is for their (pur­pose).
They cheat the world by way of democracy..

GATO: Bad democ­racy and good democracies

NA: Yes, you see what hap­pened in Alge­ria when they had their democ­racy, they were almost destroyed. Hamas got the major­ity, they are now in the P.L.O and under this umbrella, they rec­og­nize Israel. So who is in need of recog­ni­tion, the occu­pier or the occu­pied?
Israel is rec­og­nized by the inter­na­tional com­mu­ni­ties, the U.N. etc
This comes only from dou­ble stan­dards on the part of the inter­na­tional com­mu­ni­ties, and this is increas­ing the level of hate, anger and frus­tra­tion inside the Pales­tini­ans.
So when you see a sui­cide bomber, yes it is wrong but does the world not under­stand where it comes from? How unfair, the hatred comes from this feel­ing that every­thing is very unfair
.

GATO: Ok, on the sui­cide bomb­ing sit­u­a­tion, now Hamas has been the only move­ment in Pales­tine to con­sis­tently fight for, and bring up issues such as edu­ca­tion, water and waste san­i­ta­tion, health care etc
and they have brought about many results even whilst under the occu­pa­tion.
But yet the media is still call­ing Hamas the sui­cide bomb­ing car­tel
as if Hamas has the patent on sui­cide bomb­ing
now cor­rect me if I’m wrong but what is meant by sui­cide bomb­ing? When they strap on bombs, this is not sui­cide, they sac­ri­fice their lives to kill the occu­pa­tion, not them­selves..
And by that fact, the great­est num­ber of sui­cide bomb­ings come from the Tamil Tigers, and they are an a-religious polit­i­cal group
It is also a very very effec­tive move as the civil­ians them­selves choose this death above occu­pa­tion, so this shows the level of deter­mi­na­tion and Iman (strength and trust in God) within the community..to not accept the occu­pa­tion…
Israel is an army, if every kid must join the army..that is cer­tainly what it is..Now this threat­ens them from the roots, because the peo­ple are the roots of any country..

NA: Yes, Israel uses all kinds of forces, all kinds of mil­i­tary equip­ment, the Pales­tini­ans have only their bod­ies to use. 60 bomb­ings only. Noth­ing else.
The Pales­tini­ans have only this
Hamas when they entered the Hudna one year ago
there is noth­ing since then. We are very seri­ous about peace.
In war, every­thing can and does hap­pen, you use all your power
Pales­tini­ans have only this, and they use this to kill the Israeli occu­pa­tion.
Israel uses F16 against totally unarmed civil­ians, air­crafts on Pales­tini­ans homes, and tanks in the streets and the mar­kets. When there is a war, you defend your­self and you fight by all means. This was a war, but we want peace now so we have kept our Hudna. They have not stopped. They want to con­tinue, by hook or by crook, right or wrong, they want to con­tinue to kill us.
They were meant to be out, (by Oslo and other terms) in 2000 from the West Bank and Gaza. By 2003, in the stage of the Road Map, they were meant to be out of the West Bank and Gaza. They have not done any of this. Noth­ing.
What they want is for us to accept the occupation.

GATO: The U.S has been threat­en­ing Hamas with the loss of $400 mil­lion dol­lars of Aid
unless Hamas agrees to
roll over
it doesn’t even make sense to say it
but it sounds like Israel wants Hamas to give in to all Israeli demands with state­ments like ‘’When the Israeli gets their secu­rity, they will with­draw
’’
Mua­ha­ha­hah
..it’s actu­ally funny.
Now this aid is very con­di­tional to the forced mil­i­tary ‘’peace’’ they want to impose on the Palestinians..as you said, the Pales­tini­ans must peace­fully accept the occu­pa­tion before Israel peace­fully con­tin­ues the occu­pa­tion..
Now is this aid not in the worst inter­ests of the Pales­tini­ans, being that the U.S is the bankroller of Israel and the occu­pa­tion and the weapons used to kill the Pales­tini­ans, why and how must Pales­tini­ans accept this aid?

NA: The issue of money, let me tell you, we don’t care a damn about the money. This money is oblig­ated to us because of what they have done. They are the one’s sup­port­ing Israel and imple­ment­ing Israel, we Pales­tini­ans had to vote under the U.S threat
Pales­tini­ans are not chang­ing money for dig­nity, or land for money. This money is an oblig­a­tion. We are not relat­ing it to Aid at all. I am an expert of the media, I advised Hamas on their cam­paign in Ramal­lah, we expected only 45% to vote for Hamas but 60% voted.
They voted because they wanted to vote against Israel, 15% did it only for that.
Now they have come to accept the polit­i­cal point of view of Hamas, all the Chris­tians , Mus­lims and Jews, and they dif­fer­en­ti­ate this from the ide­o­log­i­cal point of view. So if any Euro­pean or Amer­i­can does this, they must be very afraid to walk in Pales­tine. Very afraid.

GATO: Out of curios­ity, how much aid does South Africa give Palestine?

NA: I am not famil­iar with this..I think some stu­dents from Pales­tine went to South Africa last year?…so this is support.

GATO: The P.L.O linked the Pales­tin­ian econ­omy to the Israeli econ­omy, offi­cially I think it was called the Paris agree­ment, and the Israeli’s over taxed the Pales­tini­ans by as much as 7 fold, they caused a short­age of many goods and gen­er­ally raped the Pales­tin­ian economy..now this death sen­tence was imposed on the peo­ple by the P.L.O, that’s like giv­ing the rob­ber the key to your house, and curs­ing him for then destroy­ing every­thing and steal­ing every­thing that is worth steal­ing
he comes with bad intent
Why did they do this? What were the effects?

NA: After how many, 40 years of occu­pa­tion in the West Bank and Gaza, every­thing in the Pales­tin­ian econ­omy is totally related to the Israeli econ­omy. The Pales­tini­ans do not have a sep­a­rate bor­der, this bor­der is con­trolled by Israel. Every­thing that passes through these bor­ders is under Israeli control.

GATO: Even air cargo?

NA: Yes, air cargo too. This occu­pa­tion sur­rounds the Pales­tin­ian econ­omy, it was imposed on us. 40 years of this and our econ­omy is very much related.
Ok, like you say this is not wise, many schol­ars are now speak­ing out about this, about the ways to sep­a­rate the economies, it is a big issue. It is a very big issue.

GATO: One of the con­di­tions of accept­ing Hamas into the world of em
into the world of offi­cials and planes and con­fer­ences and lies
is that Hamas must dis­arm. Is this not ridicu­lous con­sid­er­ing that every coun­try in the world has an army and many other forms of sup­port Will Hamas, this is a joke even to ask, will Hamas dis­arm? And will the Hamas fight­ers be incor­po­rated into the army?

NA: Hamas has no arms to dis­arm. They have only, I mean they have only hand made weapons, Kalash­nikovs, these weapons are not enough to do any­thing, cer­tainly not fight a war.
What has Hamas to dis­arm, let me ask? No air­crafts. No tanks. What is the rea­son for them to dis­arm? Who is the strong? Who is in con­trol of the power? They are try­ing to jus­tify their occu­pa­tion.
I never saw a revolver, you know what a revolver is? Well, I never saw one used as a weapon. 80% of Pales­tini­ans do not touch guns, do not know about guns in the first place. The West has suc­ceeded in show­ing the Pales­tini­ans as hold­ing rifles and Kalash­nikovs. Why don’t they accept the solution?

GATO: In 1948, a few days before Tru­man rec­og­nized the State of Israel..he wrote a con­fi­den­tial let­ter to the King of Saudi Ara­bia ask­ing him one sim­ple ques­tion
Would the Saudi’s turn off the oil taps, should the U.S rec­og­nize Israel
and the reply of the King, who was deeply mis­trust­ful of Britain but des­per­ately needed an ally, was No. The rea­sons he gave were the deep friend­ship and under­stand­ing between the Saudi’s and the Amer­i­cans
we saw that dur­ing the OPEC wars, the oil was reduced, the Saudi’s man­aged to con­vince the other coun­tries not to act rashly and to con­tinue oil exports..We also know that the hike in the oil prices pro­vided a great deal more of the petrodol­lars and that simul­ta­ne­ously, this money was poured into the U.S econ­omy when Nixon abol­ished the Cap­i­tal Con­trol law which restricted the flow of funds into the U.S
The Saudi’s then could eas­ily bring the U.S and the Israeli’s to a halt by turn­ing off the oil taps

Why don’t they?

NA: Arab regimes took power not through the elec­tions. The Saudi Ara­bian inter­est lies more in the U.S than in the Arab coun­tries that neigh­bour them. These type of gov­ern­ments are dic­ta­tors, fam­ily dom­i­nated gov­ern­ments and they have to accept the rule of the U.S if they want to stay in power. This is where the prob­lem comes in.
This is not a democ­racy where you have a Pres­i­dent and the peo­ple have a chance to vote. This is fam­ily dominant.

GATO: So the power lust­ing of these few fam­i­lies are destroy­ing mil­lions of lives..

NA: Yes, that is it, you can say that.

GATO: Has the Mus­lim world, I mean there one bil­lion Mus­lims, and Pales­tine does not actu­ally belong to any­one, it is the Waqf, so what have these Mus­lims done to pro­tect or assist the Pales­tini­ans who are defend­ing this Waqf?

NA: In 1948, the Arab coun­tries were all mostly occu­pied. The peo­ple were all try­ing to hope. Syria was under French occu­pa­tion, Jor­dan was inde­pen­dent but the Gen­eral Com­man­der was a British and so was also under British man­date, Egypt was under British occu­pa­tion. These Arab peo­ple could do noth­ing, they had noth­ing of their own.
In 1967, when the war erupted, these coun­tries were newly inde­pen­dent from the 1930, 1940 and 1950’s
but there were many inter­nal prob­lems, the influ­ence of the occu­piers was still very strong and the rulers did not come to power through elec­tions.
So there was no power in the Mid­dle East to fight this occu­pa­tion from Israel.
When Iraq was strong, they used Iraq to fight Iran for ten years, to fight Kuwait, later they destroyed Iraq. We see Iraq is destroyed again and very much iso­lated. Egypt is con­trolled with the treaty. The P.L.O took the ini­tia­tive to be respon­si­ble for the lib­er­a­tion of the Pales­tini­ans, they took it to the Arab Sum­mits, Oslo, Madrid but the Amer­i­cans manip­u­lated all of this, they called Sharon the man of peace
.
GATO: Has the Arab world pro­vided a lot of aid for the Palestinians?

NA: Yes, we received a lot of aid from the Gulf coun­tries, and Iraq when Iraq had some­thing to give. Now Iraq is destroyed. We received aid from Saudi Ara­bia too.

GATO: I am try­ing to imag­ine what would have hap­pened if peo­ple in South Africa sup­ported or had imposed on them a two state solu­tion, obvi­ously the stronger state, the apartheid state would have in effect, crip­pled and con­trolled the weaker state
Two State solu­tions are a death sen­tence
.there is no way that this could be a just term for the Pales­tini­ans to accept, although that it has been accepted is a major step in the right direc­tion.
Do you see this as permanent?

NA: Many Pales­tini­ans want and have called for a One State demo­c­ra­tic solution

GATO: So Israel is bla­tantly oppos­ing democ­racy in the face of everyone—even though they call them­selves the only democ­racy in the East?

NA: Yes, this is right, Israel does not even want two states, you see, they are oppos­ing even the Two State Solu­tion, they do not want to end the occu­pa­tion or have the estab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state come about. I do believe myself in a demo­c­ra­tic one state solu­tion, and I do not believe that two states can work in the long run, but in the short run it is very impor­tant, and hope­fully this Hudna will give us time for peo­ple to talk.
The future gen­er­a­tion, I hope, will be wiser and do things intel­li­gently to find a solution.

GATO: Now within Israel itself, on the sub­ject of Israeli democ­racy, the Euro­pean Jews have dis­crim­i­nated against the Mid­dle East­ern Jews

NA: Yes, there has always been a unity between the Jews, they came to Israel to live here but there is a great deal of
.. the Israeli’s dis­crim­i­nate against the non-white Israeli’s
they rel­e­gate them to the role of 2nd and 3rd class citizens..

GATO: So in the end, it is once again white col­o­niz­ers com­ing into a coun­try, occu­py­ing the coun­try under the guise of reli­gion, sup­ported by a super power for their interests.

NA: Yes, there are many peo­ple that believe that Israel is used to pro­tect the empir­i­cal inter­ests, espe­cially the oil inter­ests, and this is the only rea­son why the world is sup­port­ing Israel. Left alone, we could have solved the prob­lem long ago

But they don’t want the con­flict ended, so that each Arab coun­try can decide what is good for them.
The for­eign pow­ers want to inter­rupt this to take the oil. In Pales­tine the prob­lem has become com­pli­cated, because peace­fully Hamas took the elec­tions. This has greatly empow­ered the Arab peo­ples and threat­ened the Arab regimes.
Either they accept all of the U.S related con­di­tions, or there will be an exchange of power.
These are fam­ily dom­i­nated regimes, and so they must accept the U.S or lose their power.

GATO: Lets talk about the basis for Israel, first they claimed it was a reli­gious right to return, now they base this on the Old Tes­ta­ment, and if we give them for one sec­ond the ben­e­fit of the doubt, we see that the Old Tes­ta­ment itself is the refu­ta­tion of Zion­ism. The peo­ple and the land of Canaan are men­tioned sev­eral times over, so clearly the bible states that there were a peo­ple liv­ing here before this. It is not their land in any sense other than a reli­gious sense, and Zion­ism again, is not a reli­gious move­ment but a polit­i­cal one.
Even the city of Jerusalem was name built in 3000 BC I think by the Canaan­ites, for their chief, and they called it Ur Salem, house of the chief.
Now the anti semitic black mail which they con­sis­tently use on people..this too is a lie, because the U.S has the largest pop­u­la­tion of Jews in the world, and they have no desire to move to Israel because they are very afflu­ent
they hold I think, some 5% of the 20% most desir­able posi­tions, and this is from a very small pop­u­la­tion.
Again, with­out the Holo­caust, and the Zion­ists actu­ally encour­aged and exploited this by sign­ing treaties with the Nazi’s like Ha’raafah, there would have been no excuse, even though Zion­ism came about at least 50 years before the Holocaust.

NA: I have never heard of God that dis­crim­i­nates against peo­ple. If the Jews say it is their land, they are cho­sen peo­ple– and the Chris­tians say it is our land and the Mus­lims, we believe it is the Waqf, to pro­tect, if every­one say this
.we will never have peace. But it is the land of every­one, and so I am in sup­port of who­ever will rule it fairly and demo­c­ra­t­i­cally. Let us do it in a way that is more prac­ti­cal, like Hamas right now is being sup­ported for it’s polit­i­cal views, every­one believes in Hamas polit­i­cal views. There will be big trou­ble if it is done any other way.

It was dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion that he men­tioned to me this story about a sheep, ask­ing me whether I knew what a sheep was first, and a lion, and a river, and the story of Pales­tine within it, like the River Jor­dan, and sheep ends up ask­ing, if you want to eat me, why don’t you just eat me..Why do you keep mak­ing all of these excuses

And he smiled while say­ing it, but I couldn’t because there was too much of a his­tory
each and every word held too much of a mean­ing
..Like the land itself, and Hamas the defend­ers of the Land and of it’s heart, Jerusalem, Al-Quds, the Sacred­ness..
The roots of Hamas are so inti­mately entwined with the roots of Salahud­din, that is almost seems to be one and the same, those that give instead of tak­ing, those that stand instead of crawl­ing and beg­ging on their knees

It is the fear­less­ness of Hamas that the U.S gov­ern­ment is afraid of, that these peo­ple can­not be sub­ju­gated or enslaved or oppressed even as the U.S has tried it’s utmost to break them
It is the Islam within them, the Sha­hadah that pro­claims there is no God but One, no Real­ity but One, no Pro­tec­tor but One..that keeps them with the feet on their ground, and their faces for­ward, not look­ing down…They fear only the One

This is true fear­less­ness.
This is Islam.
This is Hamas.
One step closer to freedom.

AllahuAk­bar.

[Gato note: The term U.S does not nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sent the Amer­i­can peo­ple, just as it does not exclude them. To a cer­tain extent, the com­plic­ity of the peo­ple serves to cre­ate these monsters…when a nation lacks will, thought, inde­pen­dence etc when they are inter­ested and have taught to con­form to the inter­ests only of them­selves, this self­ish­ness is what destroys worlds within and with­out humanity.]