Media in the Middle East often present a totally different version of the future of Iraq than we get in the newspapers and news breaks in Australia and the United States. Considering the Iraq we were promised by NeoCons would come into being, post-war, the reality of Iraq and Iran becoming powerful allies against the US and Israel is somewhat shocking, though not unexpected :
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that a “powerful” Iraq will dash the hopes of the enemies who seek to dominate the Middle East.Excerpts from an editorial in the Tehran Times claim the dreams of freedom from the war machines of Israel and the US that so many in the region believe are worth dying for, are now edging closer to reality, after the civilian massacres in Gaza :
In a meeting with Iraq’s National Security Advisor Muwafaq al-Rubaie in Tehran on Thursday, Ahmadinejad also noted that a powerful Iraq will enable the Iraqi people to fulfill their “humanitarian and Islamic duties” in the region.
He hoped that Iraq would soon emerge as a progressive country, saying Iran will strongly support the neighboring country.
“We hope that the Iraqi government would soon take complete control (of its security),” Ahmadinejad said in a reference to Iran’s long-held position that U.S. forces must leave Iraq as soon as possible.
Although the U.S. power is “declining” and the regional countries including Iraq are getting stronger, those who control the U.S. policy behind the scenes seek to “completely dominate the Middle East”, the president pointed out.
Therefore it is essential to be aware of the enemies’ conspiracies, he added.
Ahmadinejad also stated that a powerful Iraq will strengthen the “anti-Zionist front in the region”.
Al-Rubaie thanked Iran for its efforts in helping rebuild Iraq and promoting security in the country.
He made a reference to Ahamadinejad’s trip to Iraq in March 2008, saying, “You (Ahmadinejad) were the first president in the region to visit Iraq” and this shows your “bravery and love” for the Iraqi people.
Zionism, an ideology of racial supremacy, extremism and hate, is a dying project, in retreat and failing to find new recruits. With enough pressure, and relatively quickly, Israelis too would likely produce their own de Klerk ready to negotiate a way out. Every new massacre makes it harder, but a de-zionized, decolonized, reintegrated Palestine affording equal rights to all who live in it, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and return for refugees is not a utopian dream.Read The Full Story Here
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Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and intimidate as it has for so long. Even the Nazi Holocaust, long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel's critics, is becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are now routinely heard. Jewish and Palestinian academics likened Israel's actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto.
A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as a “giant concentration camp.” UK Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of Commons, “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow, (Poland). A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.” Kaufman continued, “my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.” He denounced the Israeli military spokesperson's justifications as the words “of a Nazi.”
It wasn't only such statements, but the enormous demonstrations, the nonviolent direct actions, and the unprecedented expressions of support for boycott, divestment and sanctions from major trade unions in Italy, Canada and New Zealand. An all-party group of city councilors in Birmingham, Europe's second largest municipal government, urged the UK government to follow suit.
Israel, its true nature as failed, brutal colonial project laid bare in Gaza, is extremely vulnerable to such a campaign. Little noticed amidst the carnage in Gaza, Israel took another momentous step towards formal apartheid when the Knesset elections committee voted to ban Arab parties from participating in upcoming elections.
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The dehumanization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations -- in short everything that sustains civilized and orderly life -- and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.
Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist regime, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.
Israel's “war” was not about rockets -- they served the same role in its narrative as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction did as the pretext for the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Israel's real goals were to restore its “deterrence” fatally damaged after its 2006 defeat in Lebanon (translation: its ability to massacre and terrorize entire populations into submission) and to destroy any Palestinian resistance to total Israeli-Jewish control over historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
With Hamas and other resistance factions removed or fatally weakened, Israel hoped the way would be clear to sign a “peace” deal with chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on Israel's behalf until they could be forced out once and for all.
The U.S.-backed “moderate” dictatorships and absolute monarchies led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the Israeli plan hoping to demonstrate to their own people that resistance -- whether against Israel or their own bankrupt regimes -- was futile.
To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed. On the contrary, it galvanized and unified Palestinians like never before. All factions united and fought heroically for 23 days. According to well-informed and credible sources Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance. So instead Israel did what it does best: it massacred civilians in the hope that the population would turn against those fighting the occupier.
Israel not only unified the resistance factions in Gaza; its brutality rallied all Palestinians and Arabs.
If there was ever a moment when the peoples of the region would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst, that has passed forever.
