Showing posts with label history of Islamic Nation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history of Islamic Nation. Show all posts
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
7 indicators Muslims reached the Americas before Columbus
June 6, 2014
By: http://moorishharem.com/
Source: Muslim Village.com
Source: http://moorishharem.com/
It is an established, but not much publicized knowledge among historians that Muslims had very early contacts with the people of the lands now called Americas. There are plenty of records and evidences for the arrival of Muslims in America, not less than 600 years before Columbus.
Despite the plainly obvious argument that an empire/empires which ruled (directly or indirectly) more than half of the then known world for more than 800 years would have been the most probable to reach a land only 1500 nautical miles from its shores. (The distance between Freetown, Sierra Leoneand Natal, Brazil is 1822 miles/2933 km/1583 nautical miles, which is less than that between the ports of Aden and Colombo, a distance Muslim traders covered with much ease), history has been forced down the throats of the mankind that Columbus “discovered Americas” in 1492.
Historians have confirmed that during the golden days of the Muslim nation, Muslim ships were plying the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known as the Sea of Injustice, and they were heading west.
Years in which the parts of Americas were “discovered”. Piri Muhyid Din Re’is’s map (Below)showed them all in 1513.
Muslims reached the shores of the lands now known as the Americas in the following instances:
1. In the year 889 AD, Muslim sailor Khishkhash ibn Said ibn Aswad Al-Qurtuby (of Cordoba) set sail from the port of Palos in Muslim Spain and reached a certain land in the west. He returned home with huge treasures. He drew a world map calling these areas in the Atlantic Ocean “the unknown land”. The Muslim geo-historian Al-Masoudy records this in his book “Muruj-al-Dhahab wa Maadin Aljawhar”(956 AD);”Some people feel that this ocean is the source of all oceans and in it there have been many strange happenings. We have reported some of them in our book Akhbar az-Zaman. Adventurers have penetrated it on the risk of their lives, some returning safely, others perishing in the attempt. One such man was art inhabitant of Andalusia named Khashkhash. He was a young man of Cordoba who gathered a group of young men and went on a voyage on this ocean. After a long time he returned with a fabulous booty. Every Spaniard (Andalusian) knows his story.”
2. In Feb. 999 AD, Ibn Farukh from Granada in Muslim Spain landed in Gando (Great Canary), visited King Guanariga and continued his journey westwards till he found two islands, which he called Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in the month of May that year. Abu Bakr b. ‘Umar al Qutiyya relates the story of his voyage.
3. In twelfth century AD, a group of North African sailors: According to the famous Arab geographer Al Sharif al Idrisi (1097-1155);”A group of seafarers sailed into the sea of Darkness and Fog (the Atlantic Ocean) from Lisbon in order to discover what was in it and to what extent were its limit. They were a party of eight and they took a boat, which was loaded with supplies to last them for months. They sailed for eleven days till they reached turbulent waters with great waves and little light. They thought that they would perish so they turned their boat southward and travelled for twenty days. They finally reached an island that had people and cultivation but they were captured and chained for three days. On the fourth day a translator came speaking the Arabic language! He translated for the King and asked them about their mission. They informed him about themselves, then they were returned to their confinement. When the westerly wind began to blow, they were put in a canoe, blindfolded and brought to land after three days’ sailing. They were left on the shore with their hands tied behind their backs, when the next day came, another tribe appeared freeing them and informing them that between them and their lands war a journey of two months.” From “The Geography of Al Idrisi”.
4. In 1310 AD, Abu Bakari (Abu Bakar), King of the Malian Empire: The predecessor of the world-renowned ruler of the African Islamic Empire of Mali, Mansa Musa set off on a voyage to discover the limits of the neighbouring sea (Atlantic ocean). The emperor narrated this on his famous Hajj pilgrimage in 1324.(See his narration below). There are ample proof that African Muslims from Mali and other parts of West Africa (Mandinga) arrived in the Gulf of Mexico around 1312. They used the Mississippi River as their access route for exploring the interior.
5. In 1421, Cheng He – The legendary Chinese admiral: Cheng He (A Muslim)travelled around the world in the fifteenth century. British marine historian Gavin Manzies proves in his book ” 1421 – The year China discovered America” that Cheng He beat Columbus by 71 years. A Chinese historical document known as the Sung document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land called as Mu-Lan-Pi (America) in 1178. This document mentioned in another publication – the Khotan Amiers – published in 1933 after the Cheng He voyages.
6. The first map of Americas by Piri Muhyid Din Re’is in 1513. The famous Turkish admiral in charge of the Ottoman Red Sea and Indian Ocean fleets made this map and presented it to Sultan Selim I. Even though Columbus has been to the Caribbean by then, the areas accurately depicted in the map had not been “discovered”. Therefore it is logical that the Ottoman admiral was well aware of the areas. ( Refer figure).He was a famous navigator and mapmaker and wrote a handbook on the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas, known as Piri Re’is Bahriye. The map was discovered by chance in the library of Serallo, Istanbul in 1929 by Khalid Edhem Bey.
7. The “First” to see the Americas became Muslim. May be as a divine justice on a false historical claim, the first Christian to see the American land, Rodrigo de Triana or Rodrigo de Lepe, became a Muslim on his return to Spain, “because Columbus did not give him credit nor the King any recompense, for his having seen before any other man, light in the Indies.”
Link: http://muslimvillage.com/2014/06/06/54173/7-indicators-muslims-reached-the-americas-before-columbus/.
By: http://moorishharem.com/
Source: Muslim Village.com
Source: http://moorishharem.com/
It is an established, but not much publicized knowledge among historians that Muslims had very early contacts with the people of the lands now called Americas. There are plenty of records and evidences for the arrival of Muslims in America, not less than 600 years before Columbus.
Despite the plainly obvious argument that an empire/empires which ruled (directly or indirectly) more than half of the then known world for more than 800 years would have been the most probable to reach a land only 1500 nautical miles from its shores. (The distance between Freetown, Sierra Leoneand Natal, Brazil is 1822 miles/2933 km/1583 nautical miles, which is less than that between the ports of Aden and Colombo, a distance Muslim traders covered with much ease), history has been forced down the throats of the mankind that Columbus “discovered Americas” in 1492.
Historians have confirmed that during the golden days of the Muslim nation, Muslim ships were plying the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known as the Sea of Injustice, and they were heading west.
Years in which the parts of Americas were “discovered”. Piri Muhyid Din Re’is’s map (Below)showed them all in 1513.
Muslims reached the shores of the lands now known as the Americas in the following instances:
1. In the year 889 AD, Muslim sailor Khishkhash ibn Said ibn Aswad Al-Qurtuby (of Cordoba) set sail from the port of Palos in Muslim Spain and reached a certain land in the west. He returned home with huge treasures. He drew a world map calling these areas in the Atlantic Ocean “the unknown land”. The Muslim geo-historian Al-Masoudy records this in his book “Muruj-al-Dhahab wa Maadin Aljawhar”(956 AD);”Some people feel that this ocean is the source of all oceans and in it there have been many strange happenings. We have reported some of them in our book Akhbar az-Zaman. Adventurers have penetrated it on the risk of their lives, some returning safely, others perishing in the attempt. One such man was art inhabitant of Andalusia named Khashkhash. He was a young man of Cordoba who gathered a group of young men and went on a voyage on this ocean. After a long time he returned with a fabulous booty. Every Spaniard (Andalusian) knows his story.”
2. In Feb. 999 AD, Ibn Farukh from Granada in Muslim Spain landed in Gando (Great Canary), visited King Guanariga and continued his journey westwards till he found two islands, which he called Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in the month of May that year. Abu Bakr b. ‘Umar al Qutiyya relates the story of his voyage.
3. In twelfth century AD, a group of North African sailors: According to the famous Arab geographer Al Sharif al Idrisi (1097-1155);”A group of seafarers sailed into the sea of Darkness and Fog (the Atlantic Ocean) from Lisbon in order to discover what was in it and to what extent were its limit. They were a party of eight and they took a boat, which was loaded with supplies to last them for months. They sailed for eleven days till they reached turbulent waters with great waves and little light. They thought that they would perish so they turned their boat southward and travelled for twenty days. They finally reached an island that had people and cultivation but they were captured and chained for three days. On the fourth day a translator came speaking the Arabic language! He translated for the King and asked them about their mission. They informed him about themselves, then they were returned to their confinement. When the westerly wind began to blow, they were put in a canoe, blindfolded and brought to land after three days’ sailing. They were left on the shore with their hands tied behind their backs, when the next day came, another tribe appeared freeing them and informing them that between them and their lands war a journey of two months.” From “The Geography of Al Idrisi”.
4. In 1310 AD, Abu Bakari (Abu Bakar), King of the Malian Empire: The predecessor of the world-renowned ruler of the African Islamic Empire of Mali, Mansa Musa set off on a voyage to discover the limits of the neighbouring sea (Atlantic ocean). The emperor narrated this on his famous Hajj pilgrimage in 1324.(See his narration below). There are ample proof that African Muslims from Mali and other parts of West Africa (Mandinga) arrived in the Gulf of Mexico around 1312. They used the Mississippi River as their access route for exploring the interior.
5. In 1421, Cheng He – The legendary Chinese admiral: Cheng He (A Muslim)travelled around the world in the fifteenth century. British marine historian Gavin Manzies proves in his book ” 1421 – The year China discovered America” that Cheng He beat Columbus by 71 years. A Chinese historical document known as the Sung document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land called as Mu-Lan-Pi (America) in 1178. This document mentioned in another publication – the Khotan Amiers – published in 1933 after the Cheng He voyages.
6. The first map of Americas by Piri Muhyid Din Re’is in 1513. The famous Turkish admiral in charge of the Ottoman Red Sea and Indian Ocean fleets made this map and presented it to Sultan Selim I. Even though Columbus has been to the Caribbean by then, the areas accurately depicted in the map had not been “discovered”. Therefore it is logical that the Ottoman admiral was well aware of the areas. ( Refer figure).He was a famous navigator and mapmaker and wrote a handbook on the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas, known as Piri Re’is Bahriye. The map was discovered by chance in the library of Serallo, Istanbul in 1929 by Khalid Edhem Bey.
7. The “First” to see the Americas became Muslim. May be as a divine justice on a false historical claim, the first Christian to see the American land, Rodrigo de Triana or Rodrigo de Lepe, became a Muslim on his return to Spain, “because Columbus did not give him credit nor the King any recompense, for his having seen before any other man, light in the Indies.”
Link: http://muslimvillage.com/2014/06/06/54173/7-indicators-muslims-reached-the-americas-before-columbus/.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Non-Muslim Rights in the Ottoman Empire
Dec. 21
Source: Lost Islamic History
Comments: It is clear, that under the Shariah both Christians and Jews have rights. Prophet Muhammad was the leader/ruler of the city-state of Medina. Under his leadership cases involving Muslims would be decided by The Qur'an-whereas, cases involving Jews was decided by The Torah. Obviously, the Ottoman empire followed the example of Prophet Muhammad-thereby implementing The Shariah/Islamic Law.Here is the article:
Much like previous Muslim Empires, the Ottomans showed great toleration and acceptance of non-Muslim communities in their empire. This is based on existing Muslim laws regarding the status of non-Muslims. They are protected, given religious freedoms, and free from persecution according to the Shariah. One of the first precedents of this was the Treaty of Umar ibn al-Khattab, in which he guaranteed the Christians of Jerusalem total religious freedom and safety.
Under this system, each religious group was organized into a millet. Millet comes from the Arabic word for “nation”, indicating that the Ottomans considered themselves the protectors of multiple nations. Each religious group was considered its own millet, with multiple millets existing in the empire. For example, all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire were considered as constituting a millet, while all Jews constituted another millet.
Each millet was allowed to elect its own religious figure to lead them. In the case of the Orthodox Church (the biggest Church in the Ottoman Empire), the Orthodox Patriarch (the Archbishop of Constantinople) was the elected leader of the millet. The leaders of the millets were allowed to enforce their own religion’s rules on their people. Islamic law (Shariah) had no jurisdiction over non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
In cases of crime, people would be punished according to the rules of their own religion, not Islamic rules or rules of other religions. For example, if a Christian were to steal, he would be punished according to the Christian laws regarding theft. If a Jew were to steal, he were to be punished according to Jewish laws, etc. The only time Islamic law would come into account was if the criminal was a Muslim, or when there was a case involving two people from different millets. In that case, a Muslim judge was to preside over the case and judge according to his best judgement and common law.
In addition to religious law, millets were given freedom to use their own language, develop their own institutions (churches, schools, etc), and collect taxes. The Ottoman sultan only exercised control over the millets through their leaders. The millet leaders ultimately reported to the sultan, and if there was a problem with a millet, the sultan would consult that millet leader. Theoretically, the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire also constituted a millet, with the Ottoman sultan as the millet leader.
The millet system did not last until the end of the Ottoman Empire. As the empire weakened in the 1700s and 1800s, European intervention in the empire expanded. When the liberal Tanzimat were passed in the 1800s, the millet system was abolished, in favor of a more European-style secularist government. The Ottomans were forced to guarantee vague “rights” to religious minorities, which in fact limited their freedoms. Instead of being allowed to rule themselves according to their own rules, all religious groups were forced to follow the same set of secular laws. This actually ended up causing more religious tension in the empire, which was one of the causes of the genocide of the Armenians during World War One in the Ottoman Empire’s dying days.
The millet system was a unique and creative solution to running a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. The rights and freedoms it gave to religious minorities were far ahead of their time. While Europe struggled with religious persecution into the 1900s, the Ottomans created a harmonious and stable religious pluralistic system that guaranteed religious freedom for hundreds of years.
Bibliography:
Itzkowitz, Norman. Ottoman Empire And Islamic Tradition. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1981. Print.
Ochsenwald, William, and Sydney Fisher. The Middle East: A History. 6th. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.
Source: Lost Islamic History
Comments: It is clear, that under the Shariah both Christians and Jews have rights. Prophet Muhammad was the leader/ruler of the city-state of Medina. Under his leadership cases involving Muslims would be decided by The Qur'an-whereas, cases involving Jews was decided by The Torah. Obviously, the Ottoman empire followed the example of Prophet Muhammad-thereby implementing The Shariah/Islamic Law.Here is the article:
Much like previous Muslim Empires, the Ottomans showed great toleration and acceptance of non-Muslim communities in their empire. This is based on existing Muslim laws regarding the status of non-Muslims. They are protected, given religious freedoms, and free from persecution according to the Shariah. One of the first precedents of this was the Treaty of Umar ibn al-Khattab, in which he guaranteed the Christians of Jerusalem total religious freedom and safety.
The Millet System
The first instance of the Ottomans having to rule a large number of Christians was after the conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. Constantinople had historically been the center of the Orthodox Christian world, and still had a large Christian population. As the empire grew into Europe, more and more non-Muslims came under Ottoman authority. For example, in the 1530s, over 80% of the population in Ottoman Europe was not Muslim. In order to deal with these new Ottoman subjects, Mehmed instituted a new system, later called the millet system.Under this system, each religious group was organized into a millet. Millet comes from the Arabic word for “nation”, indicating that the Ottomans considered themselves the protectors of multiple nations. Each religious group was considered its own millet, with multiple millets existing in the empire. For example, all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire were considered as constituting a millet, while all Jews constituted another millet.
Each millet was allowed to elect its own religious figure to lead them. In the case of the Orthodox Church (the biggest Church in the Ottoman Empire), the Orthodox Patriarch (the Archbishop of Constantinople) was the elected leader of the millet. The leaders of the millets were allowed to enforce their own religion’s rules on their people. Islamic law (Shariah) had no jurisdiction over non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
In cases of crime, people would be punished according to the rules of their own religion, not Islamic rules or rules of other religions. For example, if a Christian were to steal, he would be punished according to the Christian laws regarding theft. If a Jew were to steal, he were to be punished according to Jewish laws, etc. The only time Islamic law would come into account was if the criminal was a Muslim, or when there was a case involving two people from different millets. In that case, a Muslim judge was to preside over the case and judge according to his best judgement and common law.
In addition to religious law, millets were given freedom to use their own language, develop their own institutions (churches, schools, etc), and collect taxes. The Ottoman sultan only exercised control over the millets through their leaders. The millet leaders ultimately reported to the sultan, and if there was a problem with a millet, the sultan would consult that millet leader. Theoretically, the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire also constituted a millet, with the Ottoman sultan as the millet leader.
Legacy
The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1300 to 1922. Throughout most of this history, the millet system provided a system of religious harmony and belonging throughout the empire. As the empire expanded, more millets were organized. Separate millets existed for Armenian, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, for example, with each sect being divided further into more specific regional churches.The millet system did not last until the end of the Ottoman Empire. As the empire weakened in the 1700s and 1800s, European intervention in the empire expanded. When the liberal Tanzimat were passed in the 1800s, the millet system was abolished, in favor of a more European-style secularist government. The Ottomans were forced to guarantee vague “rights” to religious minorities, which in fact limited their freedoms. Instead of being allowed to rule themselves according to their own rules, all religious groups were forced to follow the same set of secular laws. This actually ended up causing more religious tension in the empire, which was one of the causes of the genocide of the Armenians during World War One in the Ottoman Empire’s dying days.
The millet system was a unique and creative solution to running a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. The rights and freedoms it gave to religious minorities were far ahead of their time. While Europe struggled with religious persecution into the 1900s, the Ottomans created a harmonious and stable religious pluralistic system that guaranteed religious freedom for hundreds of years.
Bibliography:
Itzkowitz, Norman. Ottoman Empire And Islamic Tradition. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1981. Print.
Ochsenwald, William, and Sydney Fisher. The Middle East: A History. 6th. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.
Link: http://lostislamichistory.com/non-muslim-rights-in-the-ottoman-empire/.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
US funded anti-Morsi protests last year: Documents
Apr 02, 2014
Source: Press TV
Newly revealed documents show senior Egyptian opposition leaders who called for the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, had the financial backing of the US.
US President Barack Obama had claimed that Washington did not take sides in the Egyptian political crisis that ousted Morsi in July last year.
According to Aljazeera TV channel, a review of dozens of US federal government documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley shows that Washington quietly funded opposition groups in Egypt that worked against the Morsi government.
Washington channeled the funding through a State Department program which is part of a wider effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-US secularists and defeat the Islamic movements in the Middle East.
The program was dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative.
The move is in contradiction to the US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers’ money to fund foreign politicians and activists that target democratically-elected governments.
The Egyptians launched a revolution against the pro-US regime of former President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011, which eventually ended the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak in February 2011.
In June 2012, Egyptians voted in the country's first free and fair presidential election, electing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi as their leader.
But about a year later, the Egyptian army toppled Morsi, suspended the constitution and launched a violent crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.
On December 25, 2013, the military-appointed government listed the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization over alleged involvement in a deadly bombing, without investigating or providing any evidence.
In January 2014, Amnesty International criticized Egyptian authorities for using an “unprecedented scale” of violence against protesters and dealing “a series of damaging blows to human rights.”
According to the UK-based rights group, at least 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, "most of them due to excessive force used by security forces."
GJH/GJH
Link: presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/30/356515/us-sponsored-coup-against-morsi-report/.
Source: Press TV
Newly revealed documents show senior Egyptian opposition leaders who called for the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, had the financial backing of the US.
US President Barack Obama had claimed that Washington did not take sides in the Egyptian political crisis that ousted Morsi in July last year.
According to Aljazeera TV channel, a review of dozens of US federal government documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley shows that Washington quietly funded opposition groups in Egypt that worked against the Morsi government.
Washington channeled the funding through a State Department program which is part of a wider effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-US secularists and defeat the Islamic movements in the Middle East.
The program was dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative.
The move is in contradiction to the US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers’ money to fund foreign politicians and activists that target democratically-elected governments.
The Egyptians launched a revolution against the pro-US regime of former President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011, which eventually ended the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak in February 2011.
In June 2012, Egyptians voted in the country's first free and fair presidential election, electing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi as their leader.
But about a year later, the Egyptian army toppled Morsi, suspended the constitution and launched a violent crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.
On December 25, 2013, the military-appointed government listed the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization over alleged involvement in a deadly bombing, without investigating or providing any evidence.
In January 2014, Amnesty International criticized Egyptian authorities for using an “unprecedented scale” of violence against protesters and dealing “a series of damaging blows to human rights.”
According to the UK-based rights group, at least 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, "most of them due to excessive force used by security forces."
GJH/GJH
Link: presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/30/356515/us-sponsored-coup-against-morsi-report/.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Understanding the conflict between the Gulen Movement and the Turkish government
28 March 2014
Furkan Torlak
Source: Middle East Monitor
In the past week, the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center published a report titled, "Turkey's Local Election: Actors, Factors, and Implications" signed by Alan Makosky, Eric Edelman and Morton Abramowitz, all known for their poor judgment of Turkey's democratization process.
The report conducted an analysis of Turkey's upcoming local elections through reading basic conflict parameters and tried to explain the elections to American policymakers. The report set forth the following hypothesis: Between 2003 and 2010, the main division dominating Turkish politics was the struggle between the secular and conservative segments of the society. The conservative wing was represented by the Gülen Movement and the AK Party, both based along the lines of the National Vision Movement (MGH) founded by Necmettin Erbakan. The secular strata lost following the 2010 referendum, starting a brand new course in Turkish politics.
According to the report, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not fulfill his democratization promises and chose the path of authoritarianism instead. Tensions escalated as a direct result of his ambitions and transformed into a conflict between the Gülen Movement and the government. The local elections came along in this atmosphere and are thought to be the first response to the political turbulence that Turkey entered. The report declares Erdoğan will become more rigid following the local elections and will increase oversight over the system in an effort to protect his dominance.
In a strange kind of way, the report says the only way election results will be considered significant is if the AK Party loses. As it is clearly evident, the report is not patient inasmuch as waiting for the elections. With an explicit bias, the report argues that Erdoğan has become a burden on the conservative Islamic segment of the population.
Primarily, one of the remarkable aspects of the report is that it establishes the Gülen Movement as the main actor, that started the probe on Dec. 17 and revealed the corruption allegations "in accordance with procedures." This depiction on its own seems to verify the existence of a parallel structure within state institutions from an external viewpoint regardless of how "poor" the judgment may be.
However, the report's depiction of the existing political conflict is considerably far from reality. Reducing the struggle that occurred in Turkey between 2003 and 2010 to a conflict between the secularists and conservatives is an allegation that is difficult to defend. In fact, the conflict that took place was a struggle on a much larger scale against the Old Turkey's tutelage regime by a wide segment of conservatives acting in accord with reformist lines toward a New Turkey, along with the block comprised of liberals and Kurdish politicians previously marginalized by the state.
Yes, with the 2010 referendum Turkey reached a juncture whereby the tutelage regime unique to Old Turkey would be left behind. The historical juncture began with a new Constitution and brought into action the reconciliation process as a peace project to resolve the Kurdish issue. It would also bring into action the democratization packages in order to provide cohesion between the state and the nation. The prospect of these expectations increased with the AK Party's decisive victory in the 2011 general elections.
As a matter of fact, the AK Party took initiative to create a new Constitution. Despite having a majority in Parliament, the party adopted an approach that emphasized "reconciliation" and led the establishment of a constitutional commission where all parties would be represented equally. After long discussions, the AK Party proposed the approval of articles reaching an agreement in Parliament. It announced and promulgated the democratization package. Many of the steps that were taken by the party indicated Erdoğan did not diverge from the final destination of democratization.
However, during this new course, the Gülen Movement started to falter. The movement first made a u-turn with regard to the solution of the Kurdish issue, a task taken upon by Prime Minister Erdoğan, who undertook political risks. The movement tried to sabotage the process with the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) case. The ensuing National Intelligence Agency (MİT) crisis was interpreted as an attempt to hinder the reconciliation process and aimed to sending a warning message to Erdoğan, rather than a personal settlement with [MİT chief] Hakan Fidan, whom they have known since his position as president of TİKA [Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency].
The Gülen Movement also turned a blind eye to the AK Party's efforts regarding constitutional reforms and disdained the democratization packages. It attempted to manipulate through the use of a parallel structure within state institutions granting them significant control. The movement could not break away from the characteristics of the Old Turkey and became a pos- sessor of those characteristics in attempting to shape the new Constitution, determine the fate of politics and be- come a tutelage candidate.
These details stand out, especially when one goes beyond a neoconservative interpretation of the developments in Turkey. Without going beyond this analysis, it is not be possible to understand the reason why the movement did not receive support from conservative circles throughout the conflict with the government or the suspicions of the secular circles and the detached approach to Kurdish politics. So much so that during this process, even other branches of the Nur Movement - from which the Gülen Movement originated - took an opposing stance toward the movement!
The current state of affairs indicates the struggle has become one that brought the government and the movement against each other rather than the prime minister's personal efforts to protect his power. This is clearly evident by the fact that different segments of the society within the bureaucracy have explicitly expressed their support for the prime minister and the government through a notion of protecting the state. A senior bureaucrat who does not identify himself as an AK Party supporter said: "The prime minister of the Turkish Republic can only come to power through elections and leave through elections. All attempts apart from this will find themselves facing the state."
Accordingly, interpreting the current situation as the prime minister's attempts to increase his control over the system as claimed by the report does not seem realistic. In actuality, the current process is one of normalization within different ranks of state institutions and the bureaucracy.
In other words, this is a period to terminate the tutelage of a minority over state institutions, because reform in the bureaucracy is moving toward a resettlement inclusive of National Vision, Islamist, Nur Movement, nationalist, social democrat, liberal, left-wing and Alevi circles. Perhaps the current tensions are steps on the way to the New Turkey.
This article was first published by Daily Sabah
Link: www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/10584-understanding-the-conflict-between-the-gulen-movement-and-the-turkish-government.
Furkan Torlak
Source: Middle East Monitor
In the past week, the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center published a report titled, "Turkey's Local Election: Actors, Factors, and Implications" signed by Alan Makosky, Eric Edelman and Morton Abramowitz, all known for their poor judgment of Turkey's democratization process.
The report conducted an analysis of Turkey's upcoming local elections through reading basic conflict parameters and tried to explain the elections to American policymakers. The report set forth the following hypothesis: Between 2003 and 2010, the main division dominating Turkish politics was the struggle between the secular and conservative segments of the society. The conservative wing was represented by the Gülen Movement and the AK Party, both based along the lines of the National Vision Movement (MGH) founded by Necmettin Erbakan. The secular strata lost following the 2010 referendum, starting a brand new course in Turkish politics.
According to the report, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not fulfill his democratization promises and chose the path of authoritarianism instead. Tensions escalated as a direct result of his ambitions and transformed into a conflict between the Gülen Movement and the government. The local elections came along in this atmosphere and are thought to be the first response to the political turbulence that Turkey entered. The report declares Erdoğan will become more rigid following the local elections and will increase oversight over the system in an effort to protect his dominance.
In a strange kind of way, the report says the only way election results will be considered significant is if the AK Party loses. As it is clearly evident, the report is not patient inasmuch as waiting for the elections. With an explicit bias, the report argues that Erdoğan has become a burden on the conservative Islamic segment of the population.
Primarily, one of the remarkable aspects of the report is that it establishes the Gülen Movement as the main actor, that started the probe on Dec. 17 and revealed the corruption allegations "in accordance with procedures." This depiction on its own seems to verify the existence of a parallel structure within state institutions from an external viewpoint regardless of how "poor" the judgment may be.
However, the report's depiction of the existing political conflict is considerably far from reality. Reducing the struggle that occurred in Turkey between 2003 and 2010 to a conflict between the secularists and conservatives is an allegation that is difficult to defend. In fact, the conflict that took place was a struggle on a much larger scale against the Old Turkey's tutelage regime by a wide segment of conservatives acting in accord with reformist lines toward a New Turkey, along with the block comprised of liberals and Kurdish politicians previously marginalized by the state.
Yes, with the 2010 referendum Turkey reached a juncture whereby the tutelage regime unique to Old Turkey would be left behind. The historical juncture began with a new Constitution and brought into action the reconciliation process as a peace project to resolve the Kurdish issue. It would also bring into action the democratization packages in order to provide cohesion between the state and the nation. The prospect of these expectations increased with the AK Party's decisive victory in the 2011 general elections.
As a matter of fact, the AK Party took initiative to create a new Constitution. Despite having a majority in Parliament, the party adopted an approach that emphasized "reconciliation" and led the establishment of a constitutional commission where all parties would be represented equally. After long discussions, the AK Party proposed the approval of articles reaching an agreement in Parliament. It announced and promulgated the democratization package. Many of the steps that were taken by the party indicated Erdoğan did not diverge from the final destination of democratization.
However, during this new course, the Gülen Movement started to falter. The movement first made a u-turn with regard to the solution of the Kurdish issue, a task taken upon by Prime Minister Erdoğan, who undertook political risks. The movement tried to sabotage the process with the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) case. The ensuing National Intelligence Agency (MİT) crisis was interpreted as an attempt to hinder the reconciliation process and aimed to sending a warning message to Erdoğan, rather than a personal settlement with [MİT chief] Hakan Fidan, whom they have known since his position as president of TİKA [Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency].
The Gülen Movement also turned a blind eye to the AK Party's efforts regarding constitutional reforms and disdained the democratization packages. It attempted to manipulate through the use of a parallel structure within state institutions granting them significant control. The movement could not break away from the characteristics of the Old Turkey and became a pos- sessor of those characteristics in attempting to shape the new Constitution, determine the fate of politics and be- come a tutelage candidate.
These details stand out, especially when one goes beyond a neoconservative interpretation of the developments in Turkey. Without going beyond this analysis, it is not be possible to understand the reason why the movement did not receive support from conservative circles throughout the conflict with the government or the suspicions of the secular circles and the detached approach to Kurdish politics. So much so that during this process, even other branches of the Nur Movement - from which the Gülen Movement originated - took an opposing stance toward the movement!
The current state of affairs indicates the struggle has become one that brought the government and the movement against each other rather than the prime minister's personal efforts to protect his power. This is clearly evident by the fact that different segments of the society within the bureaucracy have explicitly expressed their support for the prime minister and the government through a notion of protecting the state. A senior bureaucrat who does not identify himself as an AK Party supporter said: "The prime minister of the Turkish Republic can only come to power through elections and leave through elections. All attempts apart from this will find themselves facing the state."
Accordingly, interpreting the current situation as the prime minister's attempts to increase his control over the system as claimed by the report does not seem realistic. In actuality, the current process is one of normalization within different ranks of state institutions and the bureaucracy.
In other words, this is a period to terminate the tutelage of a minority over state institutions, because reform in the bureaucracy is moving toward a resettlement inclusive of National Vision, Islamist, Nur Movement, nationalist, social democrat, liberal, left-wing and Alevi circles. Perhaps the current tensions are steps on the way to the New Turkey.
Bipartisan Policy Center report
On March 14, 2014, the Bipartisan Policy Center published a report titled, "Turkey's Local Elections: Actors, Factors and Implications." The Washington-based think tank previously published reports on Turkey. This particular report was compiled by Morton Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, former ambassadors of the United States to Turkey. The report mainly claims that the current political situation in Turkey is "highly worrisome" for American interests as the authors claim the country is becoming less reliable and stable, going as far as comparing it to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan simply based on the notion that these countries share Islamic values. The authors disregard the radically different political cultures and economic and social situation in these countries, reducing the judgment to a monolithic rhetoric. Bipartisan Policy Center describes itself as a think tank which "drives principled solutions through rigorous analysis, reasoned negotiation and respectful dialogue" charac- terized by "politically balanced policy making with strong, proactive advocacy and outreach." The Center was founded in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George J. Mitchell.This article was first published by Daily Sabah
Link: www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/10584-understanding-the-conflict-between-the-gulen-movement-and-the-turkish-government.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Land Key as Tatars discuss future plans
March 28,2014
Source: mail.com
Almost exactly 70 years ago, Tatars were expelled
from their homeland as a result of one of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's
merciless mass deportations of perceived enemies of the state. Decades
later, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, many returned and slowly
reclaimed their place.
Following a March referendum that ended with Crimea breaking away from Ukraine and being swallowed up by Russia, disquiet is stirring that the Tatars' hard-fought hold over their land could be lost once again.
On Saturday, 250 delegates are gathering in the southern Crimean town of Bakchysarai for a traditional Tatar Qurultay congress to decide whether to hold a referendum on yielding to absorption by Russia or clinging to their Ukrainian citizenship. The former choice might be easier, but few have any illusions.
"Russia is offering us all sorts of nice things. But we understand the essence of the Russian empire, because we are its victims," said Zevget Kutumerov, a Tatar with extensive experience of dealing with land issues. "If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin says a word, they'll pass any law tomorrow. That's what we're afraid of."
One of the Tatars' greatest problems is their legally tenuous control over the land on which they live.
Maushev, a neighborhood delegate to the kurultai, arrived penniless from Uzbekistan in 1989 and was forced to scrabble and find a home for himself.
Linking up with about 100 other homeless Tatars, he pitched a tent in a field on the outskirts of the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Each settler built a "vremyanka," or makeshift hut, which provided just enough shelter for squatters guarding the land overnight.
"About 30 or 40 people kept watch here at night so that nobody would trespass, nobody would come and break down the vremyankas," Maushev said. By the community's own estimates, Tatars on average own two-fifths as much land as ethnic Russians in Crimea. While Tatars account for only 12 percent of the peninsula's population, space still remains tight for younger generations raising large families.
After a decade-long moratorium in which no group settlements were founded, Crimean Tatars organized thousands of land seizures in 2006, as the children of the first wave of migrants grew up, made families, and felt cramped in the old settlements.
"I was living in an apartment with my mother, grandmother, everyone — female warfare, every day," said Sedomed Setumerov, who lives about a kilometer down the road from Maushev in a newer settlement. Yet regardless of how the kurultai dictates Tatars should determine their fealty, whatever victories the community has scored in securing land may yet be lost. Many Tatars worry that Russian laws will limit their ability to press for the government to recognized their land ownership.
In Russia, heavy fines are levied on those who participate in unsanctioned protests, which often end within minutes as demonstrators are swept brutally away. Setumerov moved here in 2010, and now lives in a self-built house with his wife and his three young children. The vast field around them, empty but for the identical but crumbling vremyanki on equal plots of land, gives it the air of a ghost town.
They have lived for three years without running water or electricity, using a generator that has enough gusto for a few lamps and a television but not for a washing machine. They are waiting for the government to recognize them as the owners of the land, which will allow them to use electricity and water from the public grid.
Setumerov acknowledges the wait may be long — especially now that Russia has annexed Crimea — but says it's worth it. "I'd still rather live in a vremyanka," he said. "At least it's quiet and the air is fresh."
Source: mail.com
SIMFEROPOL, Crimea (AP) — As armed pro-Russian forces
spread out across Crimea, Mustafa Maushev joined his Tatar neighbors on
a nightly vigil to keep intruders off their property.
Following a March referendum that ended with Crimea breaking away from Ukraine and being swallowed up by Russia, disquiet is stirring that the Tatars' hard-fought hold over their land could be lost once again.
On Saturday, 250 delegates are gathering in the southern Crimean town of Bakchysarai for a traditional Tatar Qurultay congress to decide whether to hold a referendum on yielding to absorption by Russia or clinging to their Ukrainian citizenship. The former choice might be easier, but few have any illusions.
"Russia is offering us all sorts of nice things. But we understand the essence of the Russian empire, because we are its victims," said Zevget Kutumerov, a Tatar with extensive experience of dealing with land issues. "If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin says a word, they'll pass any law tomorrow. That's what we're afraid of."
One of the Tatars' greatest problems is their legally tenuous control over the land on which they live.
Maushev, a neighborhood delegate to the kurultai, arrived penniless from Uzbekistan in 1989 and was forced to scrabble and find a home for himself.
Linking up with about 100 other homeless Tatars, he pitched a tent in a field on the outskirts of the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Each settler built a "vremyanka," or makeshift hut, which provided just enough shelter for squatters guarding the land overnight.
"About 30 or 40 people kept watch here at night so that nobody would trespass, nobody would come and break down the vremyankas," Maushev said. By the community's own estimates, Tatars on average own two-fifths as much land as ethnic Russians in Crimea. While Tatars account for only 12 percent of the peninsula's population, space still remains tight for younger generations raising large families.
After a decade-long moratorium in which no group settlements were founded, Crimean Tatars organized thousands of land seizures in 2006, as the children of the first wave of migrants grew up, made families, and felt cramped in the old settlements.
"I was living in an apartment with my mother, grandmother, everyone — female warfare, every day," said Sedomed Setumerov, who lives about a kilometer down the road from Maushev in a newer settlement. Yet regardless of how the kurultai dictates Tatars should determine their fealty, whatever victories the community has scored in securing land may yet be lost. Many Tatars worry that Russian laws will limit their ability to press for the government to recognized their land ownership.
In Russia, heavy fines are levied on those who participate in unsanctioned protests, which often end within minutes as demonstrators are swept brutally away. Setumerov moved here in 2010, and now lives in a self-built house with his wife and his three young children. The vast field around them, empty but for the identical but crumbling vremyanki on equal plots of land, gives it the air of a ghost town.
They have lived for three years without running water or electricity, using a generator that has enough gusto for a few lamps and a television but not for a washing machine. They are waiting for the government to recognize them as the owners of the land, which will allow them to use electricity and water from the public grid.
Setumerov acknowledges the wait may be long — especially now that Russia has annexed Crimea — but says it's worth it. "I'd still rather live in a vremyanka," he said. "At least it's quiet and the air is fresh."
Crimea's Tartars condemn annexation,seek autonomy
March 24,2014
Source: Mail.com
Tatars, an ethnically Turkic and mainly Muslim
group that was subjected to mass deportation from their native Crimea by
Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1944, gathered to forge a collective
response to Russia's absorption of their native region.
Decisions on whether to accept Russian citizenship and possible participation in a Moscow-loyal government were deferred as the community further contemplates its options. But the forum of about 250 delegates underscored difficulties Russia will face in integrating a community that resisted annexation and largely boycotted the March 16 referendum to join Russia.
According to the most recent Ukrainian national census, carried out in 2001, the 245,000-strong Tatar community accounted for 12 percent of Crimea's population. But anecdotal evidence of higher birth rates and a continued return of Tatars from exile in Central Asia suggest those figures may have grown markedly since then.
The Kremlin decision to annex this strategic Black Sea region, which has a large Russian majority, was backed by rhetoric of national self-determination, as Moscow argued that pro-Russian Crimeans had the right to break away from Ukraine.
"Recently, all decisions (by Russia) have been based on the presupposed right of every nation to self-determination," said Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Crimean Tatar governing body. "One must now conclude that the Crimean Tatar people also have that right."
Chubarov also appealed to the international community to recognize the Crimean Tatars as a "national territorial autonomy," but fell short of demanding a referendum on independence or allegiance to Ukraine.
Yet the vociferous tone of the delegates who spoke demonstrated the lingering rage within the Tatar community. "Russia turned us out three times," Aishe Setmetova, an elderly woman in a knit sweater, bellowed from the stage. "They think of us as worthless objects. I do not believe in Russia."
Crimea's Tatars began to return to their native peninsula in the late 1980s with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The population is growing fast compared to the ageing Russian population and presents the Kremlin with a long-term problem of integration.
Russia and the local Crimean government have assured Tatars that their rights will be fully respected on the peninsula. Tatar is to be elevated to one of the three state languages and the community has been given loose assurances it will be guaranteed a prominent political status.
But Tatars, who ruled the peninsula from the 15th century until the Russian Empire took it over in the 18th century, remain deeply skeptical of Moscow's intentions. "We, as the native people of this land, shouldn't collaborate with an occupying power," congress delegate Ilver Ametov said.
"Ukraine, too, wasn't our home, but at least it was a democracy," he said. "There's a story we have about the dog who ran to Moscow because things were better over there, but ran back to Ukraine because at least here he's allowed to bark."
Source: Mail.com
BAKCHYSARAI, Crimea (AP) — Leaders of Crimea's Tatar
minority gathered Saturday to condemn Russia's annexation of the
peninsula and appealed to international bodies for recognition as an
autonomous group.
Decisions on whether to accept Russian citizenship and possible participation in a Moscow-loyal government were deferred as the community further contemplates its options. But the forum of about 250 delegates underscored difficulties Russia will face in integrating a community that resisted annexation and largely boycotted the March 16 referendum to join Russia.
According to the most recent Ukrainian national census, carried out in 2001, the 245,000-strong Tatar community accounted for 12 percent of Crimea's population. But anecdotal evidence of higher birth rates and a continued return of Tatars from exile in Central Asia suggest those figures may have grown markedly since then.
The Kremlin decision to annex this strategic Black Sea region, which has a large Russian majority, was backed by rhetoric of national self-determination, as Moscow argued that pro-Russian Crimeans had the right to break away from Ukraine.
"Recently, all decisions (by Russia) have been based on the presupposed right of every nation to self-determination," said Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Crimean Tatar governing body. "One must now conclude that the Crimean Tatar people also have that right."
Chubarov also appealed to the international community to recognize the Crimean Tatars as a "national territorial autonomy," but fell short of demanding a referendum on independence or allegiance to Ukraine.
Yet the vociferous tone of the delegates who spoke demonstrated the lingering rage within the Tatar community. "Russia turned us out three times," Aishe Setmetova, an elderly woman in a knit sweater, bellowed from the stage. "They think of us as worthless objects. I do not believe in Russia."
Crimea's Tatars began to return to their native peninsula in the late 1980s with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The population is growing fast compared to the ageing Russian population and presents the Kremlin with a long-term problem of integration.
Russia and the local Crimean government have assured Tatars that their rights will be fully respected on the peninsula. Tatar is to be elevated to one of the three state languages and the community has been given loose assurances it will be guaranteed a prominent political status.
But Tatars, who ruled the peninsula from the 15th century until the Russian Empire took it over in the 18th century, remain deeply skeptical of Moscow's intentions. "We, as the native people of this land, shouldn't collaborate with an occupying power," congress delegate Ilver Ametov said.
"Ukraine, too, wasn't our home, but at least it was a democracy," he said. "There's a story we have about the dog who ran to Moscow because things were better over there, but ran back to Ukraine because at least here he's allowed to bark."
Monday, February 3, 2014
Unconditional Muslim Support
by Latheef Farook
source: latheeffarook.com
“Let
me assure my Sinhalese countrymen that I am one among them in demanding
complete freedom for our country. They can count on me as one of the
most ardent admirers of their legitimate national and cultural
aspirations. In me and in my community, let them know that they find the
most trusted friends and kind neighbors in this island. They would
never find wanting in me or in my community that unflinching loyalty and
patriotism that this little island would demand one day from its sons
and daughters to carve out a niche of fame for itself as a self-
respecting unit in a world federation. Let me also assure my Sinhalese
friends that the brave community to which I belong shall never considerany
sacrifice too great to make Lanka a happy, prosperous and glorious
country in the world where not one section of its population but every son and daughter of her soil shall legitimately take pride in her glorious destiny”.
source: latheeffarook.com
Crucial
Muslim support facilitated the process of Sri Lanka gaining
independence from British in 1948 and help end almost four and half
centuries of European colonial rule in the island. Many
still remember the leading role played by Muslims leaders such as Dr
T.B.Jayah, Sir Razik Fareed, Dr M.C.M.Kaleel and Dr Badiduddin Mahmud in
the constitutional reforms of this country and their enthusiastic
support for the demand of the Dominion Status and independence. They
never obstructed the political progress of the country.
For
example when the demand for independence began gathering momentum World
War 11 broke out in Europe. The British government urged all its
colonies to support them assuring that they would be given independence
after the war.
In
the aftermath of the World War 11, agitation for political reforms and
independence began to gather momentum. However the British government
insisted that three quarters of the population should support the demand
for independence to ensure the rights of minorities were protected.
With the Sinhalese community as a whole constituting less than three
quarters of the population this was an impossible demand to fulfill
unless the minorities supported.
Tamil
Congress leader G.G.Ponnambalam demanded equal representation, better
known as fifty –fifty. However the Muslims stood fully behind the
majority community and help to meet the British demand for the support
of two third of the population despite past sufferings and
disadvantages.
Addressing
a gathering at Zahra College grounds under the chairmanship of Sir
Mohamed Macan Markar to protest against the inadequate representation of
Muslims in the Legislative Council Dr. Badiduddin Mahmoud, the
Secretary of the All Ceylon Muslim Political Conference said on 5 March
1939;
In
keeping with this policy the three Muslim representatives in the State
Council extended their whole- hearted support for the “Dominion Status
Bill” – a Sri Lankan bill sponsored by the late Mr.S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike
when it came for the vote on 9 November 1945. T.B.Jayah and Dr M.C.M
Kaleel spoke in favour of the bill while Sir Razik Fareed and Dr Kaleel
voted in favour as Jayah was not present during the time of voting.
During
his speech Razik Fareed said” “the All Ceylon Moors Association
pledge their support to the resolution of the Hon Leader under
discussion today. Nothing else would at the moment give me great
pleasure to do so, and to express my whole hearted support to the Hon
leader’s proposal. As my community and I have always stood by them, I
must say that in the hour of his triumph we join hands with him in the
forward march to the goal of the proposal to which he aspires”…
Supporting
the Sri Lankan Bill despite its disadvantages to Muslims and defining
the attitude of Muslims towards the bill Mr.T.B. Jayah said:” I am glad,
Sir, that it has been stated that this is not the moment for jubilation
or exultation or even for mutual recrimination. I certainly think that
this is not the occasion to speak of the discomfiture of the minority
communities’ or of the victory of the majority community”.
“As
far as I am concerned, I speak with the full support of members of the
Muslim community. I saw to it that the Ceylon Muslim League,
representing the Muslim community of Ceylon, consulted Muslim
representatives in different parts of the country on the important
issues before the house and I am in a position to say that the Muslim
members of this Council have the fullest backing of the Muslim community
in this island”.
“When
the Muslims of the Council decided to take a definite stand at the time
the Sri Lanka –Bill was introduced, they did so for one and one reason
only. The reason was that where the political freedom of this country
was involved, they were prepared to go to any length, even to the point
of sacrificing advantages and benefit as a result of such action”. As
far as I am concerned, Sir, I do not consider any right greater than the
right of political freedom and therefore, although I am fully conscious
of those disadvantages of the Bill, looking at it from a narrow point
of view, yet I am prepared to support this Bill”.
Expressing
his gratitude to the Muslim members on behalf of the Sinhalese
community, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike assured that he would consider any
reasonable request by the Muslim community. Bandaranaike said:” I say
that if any member has brought closer the achievement of agreement among
the various sections of the people of the country by an attitude of
generosity where even those with whom he is concerned to differ, I say
the fullest credit must go more than anyone else among us to the
Honorable nominated Member, Mr. T.B. Jayah. He has made a speech today
that will have a great effect in bringing unity among the people of this
country in bringing some sense of reality to this struggle, however it
may shape, that we are going to undertake to obtain a satisfactory
measure of freedom”..
“
What have the three members,T.B.Jayah,Dr M.C.M.Kaleel and Razik Fareed,
have done? There is provided in the Bill a Scheme of Representation
under which the Muslim community in this country might suffer in the
form in which it appears, but yet, he himself so sincerely determined to
work for the main idea of freedom that he was prepared to vote for the
principle embodied in the Bill”.
“But
I can give the Hon Nominated member, Mr T.B.Jayah, this assurance on
behalf of, I think, the vast majority, at least the Community that I
represent, that in the struggle for freedom whatever may or may not be
the recommendation of the Soulbury Commission on our representation, he
may be rest assured that we will be quite prepared to consider any
reasonable point of view that, might be put forward.
Thus
the Muslim support provided the required support of two third majority
of the population paving the way for the island’s independence on 4
February 1948 when Mr. D.S.Senanayake lowered the British flag and
hoisted the Sri Lankan National Flag and declared the island’s
independence.
Muslims
have lived in harmony and peace with the Sinhalese and Tamils for
centuries and they wanted to continue to do so. As stated by former
Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva rightly that “Muslims have been a
peaceful ethnic group interacting with other religious and ethnic
groups, cordially interlinking those cultures with their own culture.
They never organized themselves for armed insurrection or destruction”.
They were not party to the ethnic conflict. However their sufferings were immense.
What
many conveniently forget is the crucial role played by the Muslims in
preserving the territorial integrity of the island. For example, during
the early days, Tamil militants' call for a separate state had the full
backing of India and the island's armed forces were not equipped or
trained, as they are today, to deal with them.
From
the very inception, Muslims throughout the country vehemently opposed
calls for the division of the country and firmly stood for territorial
integrity and unity. Nevertheless, they were entangled into this
unfortunate and unwanted ethnic conflict only to face death,
devastation, loss of properties and livelihood and displacement with no
appreciation. Around 130,000 Muslims driven out from Jaffna have been
still languishing in refugee camps in appalling conditions and their
plight is nobody’s business for more than 20 years.
Had
the Muslims joined the Tamil militancy during its early stage the
island's fate would have been sealed and the history would have
projected a new political landscape. It is unfortunate that these
sufferings and sacrifices have never been highlighted in its proper
perspective. I am sure the Muslim community is prepared to take ten
steps if the authorities take one-step to take them into confidence to
pave the way for cordiality and communal harmony.
Link: //latheeffarook.com/index.php/srilanka-muslims/657-unconditional-muslim-support.
Link: //latheeffarook.com/index.php/srilanka-muslims/657-unconditional-muslim-support.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
The Silent Massacre of Rohingya
January 26,2014
By Harun Yahya, Istanbul
Burma Times
The
Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine province of Myanmar are going through a
brutal ethnic slaughter campaign of an unimaginable size. The scale of
the killings, persecution, torture and savagery are beyond
comprehension.
The systematic slaughter policy waged
towards Muslims since 1942 left only 70,000 out of the initial four
million owing to mass murder and displacement. To date, three million
Muslims have been forced to migrate to neighboring countries, hundreds
of thousands of Muslims have been martyred, tens of thousands of
settlement units have been burned and destroyed, tens of thousands of
women have been raped, and hundreds of mosques and madrassas have been
destroyed. Thousands of Muslims are known to have been imprisoned and
tortured, though their fates are unknown.
Muslims living in Rakhine region have
been burned alive in their homes in more than 330 attacks, which have
worsened since June of last year, in which Muslim villages, including
mosques and madrassas were burned. According to independent human rights
organizations, in June 2012 alone 1,000 Muslims in the region were
ruthlessly martyred and 125,000 people were forced from their homes and
villages and left to survive in the jungle.
Just recently, another wave of attack
has begun towards Rohingya people and we have heard at least 40 people
died, a village of 340 houses and 4000 inhabitants emptied with many
Rohingya tied up, taken as slaves, dumped, women who were raped and
breasts cut off before they were killed, dead bodies taken by trucks,
and arrests of men, women and children. The events that led to this
violence began with another violence, the killing of eight Rohingya
people by the village administrator, after which a police sergeant was
also killed amid the growing clashes.
Human Rights Watch has published a
153-page report concerning the crimes against humanity perpetrated
against the Rakhine Muslims in recent months: The report accuses Myanmar
authorities of engaging in ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in
Rakhine. According to a UN statement, the Rakhine Muslims are the most
persecuted social group in the world.
The state plays a part in these
atrocities by either turning a blind eye or preventing humanitarian aid
reaching Muslims. Furthermore, the policies and sanctions imposed on
Muslims by the state are completely inhuman.
The Rohingya Muslims enjoy no
citizenship rights and have no access to any state benefits. They cannot
obtain passports and are not admitted to state hospitals. They are
forced to work for nothing for the state or in private institutions.
They have no rights to enter the civil service or even study beyond high
school.
Muslims have to pay taxes simply to go
from one village to another. They are not allowed out after 9:00 in the
evening, even to visit relatives or neighbors, without police
permission.
They have no right to a defense when a
crime is committed, and are imprisoned straight away. The police or
military can raid their homes on no grounds. They can be arrested
arbitrarily for no reason.
The elimination of Muslims in Myanmar,
ruled by a military junta between 1962 and 2011, has literally become a
policy of state. Power passed to a supposedly democratic administration,
still under the control of the communist military junta, in the wake of
elections in which wide-ranging fraud took place: As a result, the same
military junta is continuing with the same policy through a puppet
government. The aim is to eliminate the Muslim population by
annihilating it or forcing it into exile.
In recent years, since the Bangladeshi
government has closed its borders to the refugees, hundreds of Muslims
seeking to flee to that country have drowned in the seas and rivers on
the frontier; and this plays into the hands of the Myanmar
administration that wishes to entirely purge the country of Muslims.
There are about 150,000 Rohingya
displaced from their homes, and recent attacks forces more and more
every day. Myanmar government has put together these Internally
Displaced Persons (IDP) into camps that are surrounded by checkpoints
and wire. Clean water and food are hard to find in these camps and the
inhabitants of the camps are starving. The residents are not allowed to
go out and work, and no working means no money and no food.
Nine out of ten of Burma’s 53 million
people are Buddhists, yet Buddhists and Muslims lived in peace for many
years in the past. This is because both religions espouse peace and
tolerance towards other religions and condemn killing. Yet, the ethnic
conflict of the recent years has been attributed to fanatical Buddhists.
The fact is, however, the violence perpetrated against Muslims is
executed by mobs and terror organizations clothed as Buddhist monks.
Now the world should hear the silent
cries of Rakhine Muslims. International media should be granted access
to the region. Otherwise, if the countries continue to watch the
oppression, violence and slaughter inflicted on Rakhine Muslims, the
ethnic Muslim communities of Myanmar may just vanish off the earth.
Those who watch the persecution and
slaughter of Muslims all around the world with weary eyes and are
reluctant to see Muslims act as a single body, or who regard it as
unnecessary and remain passive and timid, will have to bear the
conscientious responsibility for this suffering, pain and shedding of
Muslim blood.
Monday, January 13, 2014
The truth about Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon that you won't hear from Obama, Cameron or the BBC
11 January 2014
By Max Blumenthal
Source: Stop The War Coalition
An accused war criminal who presided over the killing of thousands of civilians, his foes referred to him as “The Bulldozer.” To those who revered him as a strong-armed protector and patron saint of the settlements, he was “The King of Israel.” In a life acted out in three parts, Sharon destroyed entire cities, wasted countless lives and sabotaged careers to shape the reality on the ground.
The first act of Sharon’s career began after the 1948 war that established Israel at the expense of 750,000 Palestinians who were driven away in a campaign of mass expulsion. Badly wounded in the battle of Latrun, where the Israeli army suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of the Royal Jordanian Army, Sharon momentarily retired from army life. He looked back in anger at the failure to take Latrun, a strategic swath of land containing three Palestinian towns seemingly obstructing the new Jewish state’s demographic continuity. Spineless politicians and feckless commanders had tied the hands of Israel’s troops, he claimed, leaving the Jewish state exposed from within. Sharon yearned to finish 1948—to complete the expulsion project he viewed as deficient.
In 1953, Sharon was plucked out of retirement by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and appointed the head of a secret commando unit tasked with carrying out brutal acts of reprisal and sabotage. Following a lethal Palestinian assault on an Israeli kibbutz, Sharon led his men into the West Bank town of Qibya with orders from Ben Gurion’s Central Command to “carry out destruction and cause maximum damage.” By the time they were done, sixty-nine civilians—mostly Palestinian women and children—lay dead.
In the years after that scandal, Sharon carried out bloody raids on Egyptian and Syrian territory that inflamed relations with Israel’s neighbors and led them to seek urgent military assistance from the Soviet Union.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Sharon was accused by one of his commanders, Arye Biro, of overseeing the massacre of forty-nine Egyptian quarry workers who had been taken prisoner and had no role in the fighting (official censorship kept the details from the public for decades).
In the 1967 Six Day War, Sharon ran up the body count on encircled Egyptian tank units, converting unprecedented kill ratios into national fame. With the Gaza Strip now under Israeli control, Sharon orchestrated the razing of Palestinian citrus orchards to make way for Jewish colonization.
During the 1973 war, Sharon waged his own parallel war for personal glory. Determined to be the first Israeli commander to cross the Suez Canal, he sent his soldiers rushing into the teeth of the Egyptian army without sufficient artillery or air support. Scores of his men died in the blind thrust while entire brigades were left exposed. But Sharon salvaged his quest for fame when his tank brigades encircled the Egyptian Third Army. After the battle, photos of the general standing proudly in the Egyptian desert, bandaged from a superficial wound and surrounded by soldiers hailing him as “The King of Israel,” circulated in the Israeli and international media. The high-flying political career he had sought was now guaranteed. In short order, Sharon helped found the Likud Party, opening the second act of his storied career.
Though set on a rightward political trajectory, Sharon owed his fortunes to the icons of Labor Zionism. His original patron, Ben Gurion, and the younger warrior-politician Moshe Dayan, constantly shuffled him up the ranks of the military hierarchy, despite a clear pattern of scandalously insubordinate behavior. His first cabinet-level post was an abbreviated stint in the 1970s government of Yitzhak Rabin, the quintessential Laborite, who imagined Sharon leading a reorganization of the army following the disaster of the 1973 war. But it was in the Likud-led 1977 coalition of Menachem Begin that Sharon was finally able to translate his influence into history-altering policies.
Appointed minister of agriculture, Sharon exploited his seemingly insignificant position to bring the messianic project of Greater Israel to fruition. With unbridled vigor, he expanded the settlement enterprise across the West Bank, boasting that he personally established sixty-four settlements during his first four years in government. He revealed his strategy in a private chat with Winston Churchill’s grandson: “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
Having established himself as the visionary behind the settlements, Sharon set his sights on the Ministry of Defense, actively intimidating Begin to fulfill his ambition. When Begin finally capitulated before Sharon’s bullying, he declared only half-jokingly that Sharon might have staged a military coup if he hadn’t been offered his desired sinecure.
Sharon entered the Defense Ministry consumed with dreams of an Israeli-friendly Christian puppet government in Beirut—the bulwark of a regional Israeli empire. Clamoring for an invasion of Lebanon, Sharon withheld his true intentions from everyone except perhaps Begin, claiming he merely aimed to drive the PLO out of southern Lebanon, where it had staged periodic raids on Israeli territory. When Begin green-lighted Operation Peace for Galilee in June 1982, Sharon sent Israeli tanks rumbling towards Beirut without the approval of the rest of the cabinet, whom Sharon had deliberately deceived. Many of them were outraged, but it was too late to turn back.
Against fierce Palestinian resistance, one of the Middle East’s most vital and cosmopolitan cities was laid to ruin. Sharon’s forces flattened West Beirut with indiscriminate shelling, leaving streets strewn with unburied corpses. With each passing day, disease and famine spread at epidemic levels. In August, the day after the Israeli cabinet accepted US special envoy Philip Habib’s proposal for the evacuation of the PLO, Sharon’s forces bombarded Beirut for seven hours straight, leaving 300 dead, most of them civilians. The Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling wrote that the raid “resembled the attack on Dresden by the Allies toward the end of World War II.” Sharon even requested an additional paratrooper brigade to obliterate the PLO forces besieged in the city, earning a rare rebuke from Begin, who worried that his defense minister would completely destroy Habib’s efforts to resolve the crisis.
PLO forces withdrew from Lebanon, according to Habib’s guidelines, but the worst was yet to come. Sharon had stymied a proposal for the introduction of multinational peacekeepers capable of preventing reprisals against the defenseless Palestinian refugees who had been left behind. Thus the stage was set for the most heinous massacre of the war. Following the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Christian warlord who was supposed to serve as Sharon’s handpicked puppet president, Israeli forces helped usher Christian Phalangist militias into the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila, then surrounded by the Israeli military, providing them with intelligence and operational support. Sharon and many of his officers were well aware of the Phalangists’ intention to murder as many women and children as they could. After days of slaughter, as many as 2,000 civilians were dead, with countless others raped and brutalized.
In February 1983, Israel’s Kahan Commission found Sharon “indirectly responsible” for the massacre, urging his dismissal as defense minister. With the Israeli body count was piling up in Lebanon, city squares in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were thronged with outraged mothers and a growing movement of service refuseniks. The antiwar demonstrations shook the confidence of the army’s high command. At the prime minister’s office, Sharon berated Begin and his ministers, warning them, “If we adopt this [Kahan] report, all our ill-wishers and naysayers will that what happened in the camp was genocide.” Calling the findings “a mark of Cain on all of us for generations,” Sharon adamantly refused to step down.
During the meeting, a right-wing Jewish terrorist lobbed a live grenade into a crowd of antiwar protesters right outside the prime minister’s office, killing the teacher and antiwar activist Emil Grunzweig. The incident was Sharon’s coup de grâce, prompting his resignation. Though he remained in government as a minister without portfolio, his dreams of serving as prime minister appeared to be dashed.
Sharon’s fear of prosecution did not end with his resignation. In July 2001, a Belgian court opened an inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre when a group of survivors filed a complaint under the country’s “universal jurisdiction” guidelines. Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist commander directly responsible for the killings, was assassinated months later, after informing Belgian politicians that he would testify against Sharon. “Israel doesn’t want witnesses against it in this historic case in Belgium which will certainly convict Ariel Sharon,” the Lebanese Minister of Displaced People Marwan Hamadeh remarked at the time, echoing widespread speculation about Sharon’s involvement. In September 2003, with Belgian relations with Israel at an all-time low, the Belgian court threw out the case, citing Sharon’s diplomatic immunity.
By this time, Sharon had resuscitated his political career in dramatic fashion. On September 28, 2000, following the collapse of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at Camp David that summer, Sharon toured the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, site of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, accompanied by 1,000 armed police and security agents. It was a provocative stunt, staged to inflame rising tensions in the occupied territories. As expected, the appearance sparked widespread Palestinian rioting the next day, which was met with a draconian Israeli crackdown—Israeli forces fired 1.3 million bullets at mostly unarmed demonstrators in October 2000 alone—fueling what became known as the Al Aqsa Intifada. The following year Sharon was elected prime minister and Palestinian suicide bombings were battering the cafes and nightclubs of Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. Channeling the mood of Israel’s “peace camp,” which had called for Sharon’s ouster during the invasion of Lebanon, the liberal newspaper Haaretz demanded “a war about the morning’s coffee and croissant.”
The beleaguered peace camp was shocked at the intifada, but also cynically misled by Sharon’s predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Barak, who declared after the collapse of the Camp David negotiations that there was “no Palestinian partner” for peace. Sapped of confidence, they became quiescent while the mainstream united behind Sharon, their vengeful protector. With a free hand to deploy tanks and combat jets against Palestinian population centers, Sharon oversaw a campaign of carefully calculated brutality, culminating, in 2002, in the comprehensive demolition of the Jenin refugee camp. Baruch Kimmerling termed Sharon’s strategy “politicide,” a “gradual but systematic attempt to cause [Palestine’s] annihilation as an independent political and social entity.” As in the beginning, Sharon’s unspoken goal was to finish the war of 1948.
While Israeli bulldozers trundled across Gaza and the West Bank, Sharon announced his intention to “make separation across the land.” Though initially resistant to the idea, he resolved to fulfill a plan first introduced in the 1990’s under Yitzhak Rabin: the construction of a vast wall that would drive a nail into the coffin of the Palestinian national movement. Cutting into the West Bank and Jordan Valley, the wall would effectively annex 80 percent of settlements into Israel proper, consolidating the country’s Jewish demographic majority while relegating Palestinians to a permanent regime of ghettoized exclusion.
Next, Sharon planned to pull Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, setting the stage for a high-tech siege of that occupied coastal territory. Unlike in the past, Sharon sold his plans to the public with carefully calibrated, subtle rhetorical touches. Stunned by a new movement of mass refusal—a group of former and active Israeli air force pilots had issued a letter declaring their refusal to participate in operations in occupied territory—and by the furious opposition of the settlement movement to his plan, Sharon uncharacteristically proclaimed that the occupation was a “bad thing for Israel.” Next, he bolted from Likud, cobbling together a random assortment of politicians including his former aide, the telegenic, PR-friendly Tzipi Livni, to drive the separation plan forward under the banner of Kadima.
Sharon’s maneuvers earned him the political space he needed to fulfill his goals. Haaretz, the voice of Israeli liberalism, supported the vast separation wall as a “revolutionary” step towards two states. Endorsing the withdrawal of settlers from Gaza, The New York Times editorial board declared that Sharon “should be cheered.” Back in Tel Aviv, the anti-settlement group Peace Now and the Labor Party organized a mass demonstration in support of the Gaza disengagement plan. Winning liberals to his side was Sharon’s final political coup, and probably his most consequential.
The true goal of Sharon’s separation regime was never to end the occupation but to reinforce it under new parameters that would prevent the collapse of Israel’s international image. A top aide to Sharon, Dov Weissglass, revealed the real logic behind Sharon’s plans: “The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Another close adviser, Arnon Sofer, was even more frank:
Now that Sharon’s unilateral vision appears to have been consolidated, Israel’s government must perpetually manage an occupation it has no intention of ending. It has no clear strategy to achieve international legitimacy and no endgame. Its direct line to Washington has become a life-support system for the status quo. Like Sharon, who spent his last years in a comatose state without any hope of regaining consciousness, Israel is only buying time.
Source: The Nation
Link: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/the-truth-about-israeli-war-criminal-ariel-sharon-that-you-won-t-hear-from-obama-cameron-or-the-bbc?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr#.UtPVBPsqdRx.
By Max Blumenthal
Source: Stop The War Coalition
An accused war criminal who presided over the killing of thousands of civilians, Sharon destroyed entire cities, wasted countless lives and sabotaged careers to shape the reality on the ground.
A central player in Israeli affairs since the state’s inception, Ariel Sharon molded history according to his own stark vision. He won consent for his plans through ruthlessness and guile, and resorted to force when he could not find any.An accused war criminal who presided over the killing of thousands of civilians, his foes referred to him as “The Bulldozer.” To those who revered him as a strong-armed protector and patron saint of the settlements, he was “The King of Israel.” In a life acted out in three parts, Sharon destroyed entire cities, wasted countless lives and sabotaged careers to shape the reality on the ground.
The first act of Sharon’s career began after the 1948 war that established Israel at the expense of 750,000 Palestinians who were driven away in a campaign of mass expulsion. Badly wounded in the battle of Latrun, where the Israeli army suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of the Royal Jordanian Army, Sharon momentarily retired from army life. He looked back in anger at the failure to take Latrun, a strategic swath of land containing three Palestinian towns seemingly obstructing the new Jewish state’s demographic continuity. Spineless politicians and feckless commanders had tied the hands of Israel’s troops, he claimed, leaving the Jewish state exposed from within. Sharon yearned to finish 1948—to complete the expulsion project he viewed as deficient.
In 1953, Sharon was plucked out of retirement by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and appointed the head of a secret commando unit tasked with carrying out brutal acts of reprisal and sabotage. Following a lethal Palestinian assault on an Israeli kibbutz, Sharon led his men into the West Bank town of Qibya with orders from Ben Gurion’s Central Command to “carry out destruction and cause maximum damage.” By the time they were done, sixty-nine civilians—mostly Palestinian women and children—lay dead.
In the years after that scandal, Sharon carried out bloody raids on Egyptian and Syrian territory that inflamed relations with Israel’s neighbors and led them to seek urgent military assistance from the Soviet Union.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Sharon was accused by one of his commanders, Arye Biro, of overseeing the massacre of forty-nine Egyptian quarry workers who had been taken prisoner and had no role in the fighting (official censorship kept the details from the public for decades).
In the 1967 Six Day War, Sharon ran up the body count on encircled Egyptian tank units, converting unprecedented kill ratios into national fame. With the Gaza Strip now under Israeli control, Sharon orchestrated the razing of Palestinian citrus orchards to make way for Jewish colonization.
During the 1973 war, Sharon waged his own parallel war for personal glory. Determined to be the first Israeli commander to cross the Suez Canal, he sent his soldiers rushing into the teeth of the Egyptian army without sufficient artillery or air support. Scores of his men died in the blind thrust while entire brigades were left exposed. But Sharon salvaged his quest for fame when his tank brigades encircled the Egyptian Third Army. After the battle, photos of the general standing proudly in the Egyptian desert, bandaged from a superficial wound and surrounded by soldiers hailing him as “The King of Israel,” circulated in the Israeli and international media. The high-flying political career he had sought was now guaranteed. In short order, Sharon helped found the Likud Party, opening the second act of his storied career.
Though set on a rightward political trajectory, Sharon owed his fortunes to the icons of Labor Zionism. His original patron, Ben Gurion, and the younger warrior-politician Moshe Dayan, constantly shuffled him up the ranks of the military hierarchy, despite a clear pattern of scandalously insubordinate behavior. His first cabinet-level post was an abbreviated stint in the 1970s government of Yitzhak Rabin, the quintessential Laborite, who imagined Sharon leading a reorganization of the army following the disaster of the 1973 war. But it was in the Likud-led 1977 coalition of Menachem Begin that Sharon was finally able to translate his influence into history-altering policies.
Appointed minister of agriculture, Sharon exploited his seemingly insignificant position to bring the messianic project of Greater Israel to fruition. With unbridled vigor, he expanded the settlement enterprise across the West Bank, boasting that he personally established sixty-four settlements during his first four years in government. He revealed his strategy in a private chat with Winston Churchill’s grandson: “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
Having established himself as the visionary behind the settlements, Sharon set his sights on the Ministry of Defense, actively intimidating Begin to fulfill his ambition. When Begin finally capitulated before Sharon’s bullying, he declared only half-jokingly that Sharon might have staged a military coup if he hadn’t been offered his desired sinecure.
Sharon entered the Defense Ministry consumed with dreams of an Israeli-friendly Christian puppet government in Beirut—the bulwark of a regional Israeli empire. Clamoring for an invasion of Lebanon, Sharon withheld his true intentions from everyone except perhaps Begin, claiming he merely aimed to drive the PLO out of southern Lebanon, where it had staged periodic raids on Israeli territory. When Begin green-lighted Operation Peace for Galilee in June 1982, Sharon sent Israeli tanks rumbling towards Beirut without the approval of the rest of the cabinet, whom Sharon had deliberately deceived. Many of them were outraged, but it was too late to turn back.
Against fierce Palestinian resistance, one of the Middle East’s most vital and cosmopolitan cities was laid to ruin. Sharon’s forces flattened West Beirut with indiscriminate shelling, leaving streets strewn with unburied corpses. With each passing day, disease and famine spread at epidemic levels. In August, the day after the Israeli cabinet accepted US special envoy Philip Habib’s proposal for the evacuation of the PLO, Sharon’s forces bombarded Beirut for seven hours straight, leaving 300 dead, most of them civilians. The Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling wrote that the raid “resembled the attack on Dresden by the Allies toward the end of World War II.” Sharon even requested an additional paratrooper brigade to obliterate the PLO forces besieged in the city, earning a rare rebuke from Begin, who worried that his defense minister would completely destroy Habib’s efforts to resolve the crisis.
PLO forces withdrew from Lebanon, according to Habib’s guidelines, but the worst was yet to come. Sharon had stymied a proposal for the introduction of multinational peacekeepers capable of preventing reprisals against the defenseless Palestinian refugees who had been left behind. Thus the stage was set for the most heinous massacre of the war. Following the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Christian warlord who was supposed to serve as Sharon’s handpicked puppet president, Israeli forces helped usher Christian Phalangist militias into the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila, then surrounded by the Israeli military, providing them with intelligence and operational support. Sharon and many of his officers were well aware of the Phalangists’ intention to murder as many women and children as they could. After days of slaughter, as many as 2,000 civilians were dead, with countless others raped and brutalized.
In February 1983, Israel’s Kahan Commission found Sharon “indirectly responsible” for the massacre, urging his dismissal as defense minister. With the Israeli body count was piling up in Lebanon, city squares in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were thronged with outraged mothers and a growing movement of service refuseniks. The antiwar demonstrations shook the confidence of the army’s high command. At the prime minister’s office, Sharon berated Begin and his ministers, warning them, “If we adopt this [Kahan] report, all our ill-wishers and naysayers will that what happened in the camp was genocide.” Calling the findings “a mark of Cain on all of us for generations,” Sharon adamantly refused to step down.
During the meeting, a right-wing Jewish terrorist lobbed a live grenade into a crowd of antiwar protesters right outside the prime minister’s office, killing the teacher and antiwar activist Emil Grunzweig. The incident was Sharon’s coup de grâce, prompting his resignation. Though he remained in government as a minister without portfolio, his dreams of serving as prime minister appeared to be dashed.
Sharon’s fear of prosecution did not end with his resignation. In July 2001, a Belgian court opened an inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre when a group of survivors filed a complaint under the country’s “universal jurisdiction” guidelines. Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist commander directly responsible for the killings, was assassinated months later, after informing Belgian politicians that he would testify against Sharon. “Israel doesn’t want witnesses against it in this historic case in Belgium which will certainly convict Ariel Sharon,” the Lebanese Minister of Displaced People Marwan Hamadeh remarked at the time, echoing widespread speculation about Sharon’s involvement. In September 2003, with Belgian relations with Israel at an all-time low, the Belgian court threw out the case, citing Sharon’s diplomatic immunity.
By this time, Sharon had resuscitated his political career in dramatic fashion. On September 28, 2000, following the collapse of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at Camp David that summer, Sharon toured the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, site of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, accompanied by 1,000 armed police and security agents. It was a provocative stunt, staged to inflame rising tensions in the occupied territories. As expected, the appearance sparked widespread Palestinian rioting the next day, which was met with a draconian Israeli crackdown—Israeli forces fired 1.3 million bullets at mostly unarmed demonstrators in October 2000 alone—fueling what became known as the Al Aqsa Intifada. The following year Sharon was elected prime minister and Palestinian suicide bombings were battering the cafes and nightclubs of Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. Channeling the mood of Israel’s “peace camp,” which had called for Sharon’s ouster during the invasion of Lebanon, the liberal newspaper Haaretz demanded “a war about the morning’s coffee and croissant.”
The beleaguered peace camp was shocked at the intifada, but also cynically misled by Sharon’s predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Barak, who declared after the collapse of the Camp David negotiations that there was “no Palestinian partner” for peace. Sapped of confidence, they became quiescent while the mainstream united behind Sharon, their vengeful protector. With a free hand to deploy tanks and combat jets against Palestinian population centers, Sharon oversaw a campaign of carefully calculated brutality, culminating, in 2002, in the comprehensive demolition of the Jenin refugee camp. Baruch Kimmerling termed Sharon’s strategy “politicide,” a “gradual but systematic attempt to cause [Palestine’s] annihilation as an independent political and social entity.” As in the beginning, Sharon’s unspoken goal was to finish the war of 1948.
While Israeli bulldozers trundled across Gaza and the West Bank, Sharon announced his intention to “make separation across the land.” Though initially resistant to the idea, he resolved to fulfill a plan first introduced in the 1990’s under Yitzhak Rabin: the construction of a vast wall that would drive a nail into the coffin of the Palestinian national movement. Cutting into the West Bank and Jordan Valley, the wall would effectively annex 80 percent of settlements into Israel proper, consolidating the country’s Jewish demographic majority while relegating Palestinians to a permanent regime of ghettoized exclusion.
Next, Sharon planned to pull Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, setting the stage for a high-tech siege of that occupied coastal territory. Unlike in the past, Sharon sold his plans to the public with carefully calibrated, subtle rhetorical touches. Stunned by a new movement of mass refusal—a group of former and active Israeli air force pilots had issued a letter declaring their refusal to participate in operations in occupied territory—and by the furious opposition of the settlement movement to his plan, Sharon uncharacteristically proclaimed that the occupation was a “bad thing for Israel.” Next, he bolted from Likud, cobbling together a random assortment of politicians including his former aide, the telegenic, PR-friendly Tzipi Livni, to drive the separation plan forward under the banner of Kadima.
Sharon’s maneuvers earned him the political space he needed to fulfill his goals. Haaretz, the voice of Israeli liberalism, supported the vast separation wall as a “revolutionary” step towards two states. Endorsing the withdrawal of settlers from Gaza, The New York Times editorial board declared that Sharon “should be cheered.” Back in Tel Aviv, the anti-settlement group Peace Now and the Labor Party organized a mass demonstration in support of the Gaza disengagement plan. Winning liberals to his side was Sharon’s final political coup, and probably his most consequential.
The true goal of Sharon’s separation regime was never to end the occupation but to reinforce it under new parameters that would prevent the collapse of Israel’s international image. A top aide to Sharon, Dov Weissglass, revealed the real logic behind Sharon’s plans: “The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Another close adviser, Arnon Sofer, was even more frank:
…when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.Eight years after Sharon slipped into a coma, the real implications of separation stand exposed. Gaza suffers under a joint Israeli-Egyptian siege, while Israel shrugs off any responsibility for its inhabitants. Though Israel controls the entrances, exits, airspace and coast of Gaza, and effectively regulates the caloric intake of each resident of the coastal territory, the occupation is over as far as its government is concerned. Israeli settlements are firmly entrenched in the West Bank and encircle East Jerusalem, reducing Palestinian areas to the “pastrami sandwich” of non-contiguous bantustans that Sharon had originally envisioned. With the peace process effectively embalmed in political “formaldehyde,” right-wing elements have achieved unfettered dominance over the Jewish state’s key institutions. Typical of the new generation of Israeli rightists is Sharon’s corruption-stained son, Gilad, who has called Palestinian society a “predator,” an “animal” and “stabbers of babies.”
Now that Sharon’s unilateral vision appears to have been consolidated, Israel’s government must perpetually manage an occupation it has no intention of ending. It has no clear strategy to achieve international legitimacy and no endgame. Its direct line to Washington has become a life-support system for the status quo. Like Sharon, who spent his last years in a comatose state without any hope of regaining consciousness, Israel is only buying time.
Source: The Nation
Link: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/the-truth-about-israeli-war-criminal-ariel-sharon-that-you-won-t-hear-from-obama-cameron-or-the-bbc?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr#.UtPVBPsqdRx.
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