No Way Through

No Way Through, a short film that asks the question what would happen if the British capital was filled with Israeli-style checkpoints. Thanks to Syria News Wire for posting this.

61 years and still going

Although the definition of the term 'revolution' does not imply a specific time-frame to accomplish a specific type of change in a drastic manner, however, one would assume that the term 'revolution' should be used when a drastic changes is happening in a short period of time.Many revolutions have occurred in the past that resulted in drastic changes in short periods of time. For example the French revolution (1789-1799), Spanish Revolution* (1936-1939), Cuban Revolution (1953-1959). Although to the start of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Palestinian Revolution, it was an unsuccessful one, even though it had the support and backing of many countries and people. Still it is not out of the ordinary that revolutions are unsuccessful since there has been examples of unsuccessful revolutions in the past. But for a revolution that amassed such support and still failed, only points out that there were issues within the Palestinian revolution that rendered it unsuccessful.

The following three factors are believed to contribute to the failure of the Palestinian revolution:

Ideology:
- The main factions that formed and lead the Palestinian revolution were leftist, secular movements that dependent on the ideologies of Arabism and Marxism.

- ideologies were incompatible to the people of the region due to complexity and the different backgrounds of people that live in the region and also due to the traditions and cultures that are deeply rooted in a specific religion.

- many were motivated by those ideologies; they still didn't provide the element that would have unified the people into one organization with one aim.

- lead to different number of factions being created with different ideologies, leaving the leaders of those factions competing against each other rather than against their enemy.

Corruption:
- Corruption of the leaders of the Palestinian revolution lead to many battles being lost.

- in some cases came from the ideologies themselves,

- lead to disastrous events in the history of the revolution, for example Black September, and the Lebanese Civil war. Another good example are the current events within the Fatah movement and the leaders of that movement.

Ineffectiveness:

- leaders of the revolution were not able to use the advantages they had and different tools and means to create a successful revolution.

In some cases the wrong means were used to increase the exposure of the the Palestinian revolution in the West including the hijacking of civilian aircrafts and conducting operations outside the conflict region.

- different Palestinian factions were unable to utilize the privileges they received from different countries such as Lebanon and Jordan where they abused those rights that they were given.

Adaptability:
- Palestinian factions unable to adapt to the different circumstances they found themselves in and were either too late in their response or had unclear vision of consequences to their actions.


Today the 'Palestinian revolution' has been replaced by the 'Palestinian Struggle' symbolizing that the Palestinian cause has gone from one that sought to restore full rights and sovereignty to the Palestinian people to one that seeks to maintain whatever rights and sovereignty that are left, if any.

* Spanish Civil war was during the period of 1936-1939. The Spanish Revolution was during 1936 and lead to the civil war. A better example would have been the 1868 revolution (which I just read about).

Dust in the Air

While Obama declares his countries' eternal support to the Zionists entity no matter what asking (begging) Zionists leaders in the White House to give him more time in order to accomplish his vision for peace in the middle east; news from the Zionist entity that soldiers were given orders Not to differentiate between civilian and militants during the massacres of Gaza in 2008 are reported. Leaves me wondering, how could a president of a nation with the principles of Freedom, Liberty and Justice for all ask from those who commit atrocities and have never shown the will to make peace for more time to achieve anything..? Will Obama promise the Palestinians a life with no persecution, injustice or racial apartheid..?

Summary of Netanyahus' Speech

Sources: Alquds Alarabi

Avi Shlaim: What Sane People Say

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe:

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions...

A Day to Remember

On the 27th of January the Holocaust Memorial Day takes place in the UK. It is always good to remind people what hatred and injustice looks like so that people can understand the pain of those who are being oppressed and persecuted throughout history and more importantly in the present day.
What I disagree on however is the ranking of suffering and giving a particular genocide more importance compared to other genocides as if the Jews of the Holocaust suffered more than the Native Americans, the Rwandans, the Bosnians or the Palestinians. If we are going to remember what oppression and persecution looks like than lets consider all those who were oppressed. Lets specifically consider the Palestinian case that has a direct relation to the Holocaust.

They say that the Jews deserve a state of their own, so that they can have the right of self determination because they were persecuted in Europe and under the Nazi's they were massacred and persecuted. However today, the grandchildren of those that survived and managed to make it to the so called "state of Israel" are today persecuting, and massacring and destroying the lives of millions of indigenous people of that Land, who are also known as Palestinian. Since a picture speaks a thousand words I leave you with the following pictures that compares the injustice towards the Jews in Europe and the injustice towards the Palestinians in Palestine.

I am sure everyone has heard about the 225 people that have been massacred in the latest Zionist aggression on the Palestinian people. This is just unbelievable, and the anger cannot be described, the anger not from what the Zionists have done, but from the silence of the Arab and Islamic nations towards this massacre and from those betraying governments, especially that of Egypt whose president (the fascist dictator) sold an entire nation, their cause and their future in order to keep his damn seat under his fat butt.

I want here to clear up some idiotic Zionist claims that what has happened today was a response to the "constant rocket attacks" the Zionist entity has been under by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza, in order to clarify this misleading propaganda we have to look at who has been attacking who for the past year.

January 17: Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza.

February 27-March 3: More than 120 Palestinians killed in Israeli military's "Hot Winter" operation in Gaza.

March 6: Eight students killed in gun attack on a Jewish institute in west Jerusalem. Hamas claims responsibility.

June 19: A six-month truce negotiated by Egyptian mediators comes into force.

July 25: Five Hamas militants and a young girl killed in a bomb attack on the Gaza Strip.

November 5: Seven Palestinians are killed in an Israeli operation in Gaza, prompting the resumption of rocket attacks on Israel.

November 12: Four Palestinian militants are killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.

December 18: The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have escalates their military attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing a Palestinian and destroying houses and other civilian premises

December 19: Ceasefire between Hamas and Israel officially ends.

December 20: Israel targets and kills militant from Al-Aqsa brigade, the armed wing of Fateh.

December 27: Israel launches airstrikes on Gaza killing 205 and injuring around 700 people.


I think this point is clear.


Anyways the time of trying to prove who is right and who is wrong has already passed, if we are not able to act now and end the tyranny of such an entity that has oppressed, massacred, occupied, destroyed and tortured for the past 60 years then we might as well give up on everything and just live our empty lives with no dignity because that is what we really deserve, and to be honest that is what we have already been doing for the past 30 years.

If the Zionist entity believes that it can destroy Hamas (which was democratically elected by the Palestinians) by destroying their headquarters and security infrastructure then that is just utter stupidity. The Zionists tried that in 2006 when they tried to destroy Hizbullah, and what did that result in? A wider support for Hizbullah not only within Lebanon, but across the Arab and Islamic world. I really do think that the Zionists never learn from their mistakes, that you can never destroy or change an idea by force, that idea being Resistance. And if you try then it will just gain more support.

So when Olmert tries to explain to the people in Gaza that the Palestinians in Gaza are not the enemies of Isreal it is Hamas who are the enemies and that they are fighting Hamas who put them (the Palestinians in Gaza) in that position, then you fool its only going to make Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas even further, because believe it or not the Palestinians don't like you very much since you tried to starve them to death.

I pray to God to give our oppressed brothers and sisters in Palestine the strength to go through these tough times, and inshallah, God willing, one day we will ALL be martyrs in the cause of those who have been oppressed. If only we had leaders who were actually afraid of the day they will be questioned about their actions in this life.

Note: Anyone living in the UK demonstrations will be held in London infront of the Isreali Embassy at 2pm and in Manchester opposite the BBC on Oxford Road at 1pm.

The Golan

Last week the Syrian blogging community had this event where everyone was blogging about the occupied Syrian Golan and how we want our occupied lands back from the aggressors (Zionist Israel)who have been unjustly occupying the Golan since 1967. It is indeed very nice to see that people will still stand up for 'our' occupied land and still remember that the Golan is part of Syria with such passion and vehemence that in some cases I just had to stand up and applaud those emotionally disturbing posts with a tear in my left eye.... hhmmmm.. not really.. (I would just like to point out that I will be using sarcasm in this entry..)

The thing is, I found it to be really ridiculous that someone actually allocated A WEEK to blog about the occupied Golan, which really symbolizes our commitment, as Syrians towards our occupied lands. I believe that one week is more than enough to revive in the minds of Syrians that we actually have occupied territory, and inform those who don't know anything about "our struggle" to free the Golan that the Golan is actually part of Syria and we have a right to retrieve our occupied lands. That is one point.

Second point. Since we are so eager to liberate our occupied "Land" that we lost in the 1967 war, and since that "Land" means so much to us, then we should also remember that the Land occupied by Turkey known today as Hatay (Liwa'a Al-Iskandaron) is also part of the Syrian Territory before it was given to the Turks in 1939 by the French. Why are we discriminating between the two areas? Given that most people in Syria have not been to the occupied Golan, and have no direct relation to it, why are we so eager to have the Golan back, but not 'Hatay'? If our fight is for the land then both areas should be treated in the same way and we should be blogging about Liwa'a Iskandaron as much as we are for the Golan.

But the reason why we have so much feelings towards the Golan is not because we love that land, I bet that even when we get the Golan back the majority of Syrians will not even go there, but our feelings for the Golan are created from the anger and abhorrence towards the occupiers of that land since 1967, and the fact that the indigenous population, the PEOPLE of the Golan are discriminated and treated unfairly and unjustly by those occupiers (or at least that is what I hope we are fighting for, to give justice to those people). As long as we are fighting for land we are no better than the Zionists who are doing exactly that, fighting for land that is not theirs in the first place. I think it is important to point out the difference between fighting to free land and fighting to free people from oppression.

So if you agree with what I said, that we should be fighting to free the oppressed rather than freeing occupied land, then we are in a dilemma. In a post written by Maysaloon (Arabic), and to some extent in Tajreeds' post which happens to be more diplomatic compared to Maysaloons' post, both of which raise this point. If we are fighting for the oppressed then why are we not supporting and fighting with the Palestinians who are also being oppressed by the Zionists? If we are going to remove oppression from the people of the Golan, what about the Palestinians? Don't they also deserve A WEEK from us to blog about the injustice and cruelty they live under?

Gaza has been under siege by the Zionists (and the Egyptian Government) for more than a year and the world is watching (that is including Arab and Muslim states). People in Gaza are dying in Hospitals not because of a lack in doctors and medical care, but because there is no medicine at all, no electricity to power life support equipment, how would you feel if you had to manually pump air into your childs' chest because the breathing support equipment is not working!!? People are starving in Gaza, while we, their brothers supposedly in both islam and for the more nationalistic of you, in being of Arab origin, are sitting here and blogging about how much we miss our occupied Golan!!

I'm just saying, that if we are going to be standing up, Finally, for our people then we should do it properly, we should stand up for the oppressed people in Palestine in the same manner as we are doing for the People in the Golan. We also need to set our priorities straight, people are more important than land.

Egypt and the Gaza Siege

During the Arab league meeting at the foreign ministers level, Waleed Al Muallem, the Syrian Foreign Minister urged Egypt (Although he was generalizing and didn't say Egypt specifically but it's obvious that he meant Egypt since they are the mediators between Hamas and Fateh)to be neutral and not to take any sides. Amazingly enough this comment was faced with a very defensive stance from both the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Elgait,and other official sources in the Egyptian government.

Abu Elgait simply refused those 'allegations' whereas the other official source said AlMuallems comments are 'Non-sense and overbidding' and said that 'those comments should be directed towards Syria instead'.

But this is nothing compared to the following. In response to Waled AlMuallems comment "Arab states have a greater responsibility in stopping Israel from practicing its oppression on the Palestinian people as well as breaking the Siege on Gaza and opening up the crossings into the Gaza Strip" Abu Elgait said "the topic about the crossings into Gaza is governed by the 'Agreement on Crossings (European Union Border Assistance Mission Rafah)' which states that the crossings are to be managed internationally between the EU, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority (Fateh) and that Egypt has no responsibilities in regards to allowing or not allowing Palestinians from going into Gaza through the Rafah crossing."

Here I wonder. If Israel is no longer in Gaza after their 2005 unilateral disengagement plan, and if the Palestinian Authority is no longer in control of Gaza or the crossing, and if the EU monitoring of the Rafah boarder crossing is also not present after they decided that the agreement is void since both Israel and the PA are no longer present in Gaza, who is in control of the Rafah crossing?.. No one except for Egypt, which makes the Egyptian Government Equally Responsible along with Israel for the Suffering of 1.5 million Humans in Gaza.

How Milk is Being Sent To Gaza..??!!