Political Entries

Nearly seventy ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.

It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.

“ISRAEL MUST defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas spokesmen declared.

IMAGINE this scenario for a moment. The Soviet Union never died, the Cold War never ended. The Russians invaded and occupied both Canada and Mexico, then in both countries installed "puppet" governments of their own.

As Americans, wouldn't we feel that it was within our rights to harass and undermine these hostile new regimes?

That, more or less, is where Iran finds itself today. The United States is Iran's sworn enemy. And yet American forces overthrew the governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran's eastern and western neighbors, and then installed new regimes.

 


IF ARAFAT were alive…" one hears this phrase increasingly often in conversations
with Palestinians, and also with Israelis and foreigners.


"If Arafat were alive, what's happening now in Gaza wouldn't be
happening…" - "If Arafat were alive, we would have somebody to talk
with…" - "If Arafat were alive, Islamic fundamentalism would not have
won among the Palestinians and would have lost some force in the neighboring
countries!"

In the meantime, the unanswered questions come up again: How did Yasser Arafat
die? Was he murdered? If so, who murdered him?