New Nazis

(3) Humiliation

The United States and Great Britain continue to operate even in the 21^st century as erstwhile imperialist powers. This is the more surprising, since Bush and Blair could be expected to be familiar with modern history. Yet, their policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict proves, that they continue to place their bets with Israel and those Arab states that are ruled by anti-democratic and corrupt royal cliques. These regimes function as full-time puppets of their western protectors in order to cash in for personal gain. These Arab traitors are selling out natural resources to their foreign masters, while all the people of these countries should benefit from the billions cashed in for oil and gas. Naturally, greedy petroleum tycoons prefer to maintain present favorable conditions. Washington and London continuously pressure their Arab partners to tolerate the state of Israel and refrain from covert support for Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Arab stool pigeons in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan treasure oil dollars or economic and military aid more than supporting their

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Muslim brothers in their endless struggle for an independent and free Palestine.

But 2002 is not 1948, when Israel became the international homeland for Jews, because at Yalta, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had so decided. Palestinians were told to get lost, since Hitler had gassed Jews. The allied powers created a convenient new colony for Jews in the middle of the Arab world because that is, what the old biblical texts were telling us they had come from. It's like telling Americans in 1948 they better vacate the US on the double, to enable Indians to return to their former hunting grounds. Of course, there are virtually no Indians left to live on their own lands, because the settlers of the new world literally killed them off one by one. Zionism and naked force, however, created Israel, hardly by a free plebiscite among the people who had been living there since times immemorial.

Today, all over the Arab region streets are seething with angry young men, often out of work, which fully realize what is going on both within their own countries as between Israel and Palestine. It does not need too much imagination to figure out where this contest will take the settlers eventually. Nor will renegade Arabs forever be in charge of the riches of the Middle East to Western oil companies. Sooner or later new generations will rise and throw the Quislings out. If one Arab domino falls into the hands of genuine freedom fighters, the others will follow as well. Even Bush, and his lapdog Blair must be realizing what goes on and what the long term prospects for the continuation of their dirty imperialist games are. Nevertheless, neither the US nor Great Britain seem to have any qualms about their continued head-on support for the Jewish invaders of the Muslim world. The present AngloAmerican siding with Ariel Sharon will prove to have been the most retrogressive foreign policy failure since the collective fall of European empires following World War II.

A United Nations survey estimates, that 22 Arab states with a population of 280 million will grow by the year 2020 - and this is very, very soon - to 410 or possibly even 459 million inhabitants. Perhaps Bush and Blair are assuming that for the time being they can safely side with the new Jewish Monaco on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. However, an average pupil of any elementary school can safely figure out what the result of continued aggressive behavior by Israel will lead to.

Ariel Sharon may have succeeded during six visits to the White House within 18 months to con Bush Jr. into believing that suicide bombers are indeed terrorists. That was an easy job anyway, because chasing terrorists has become, next to the golfcourse, Bush's favorite pastime. But either he or his successor is liable to discover what the realities of the Muslim world are. At the end of the day, at best, the Jewish mini state will be tolerated by all in the region once ‘the old soldiers’ will have faded away. Also, a new generation of Jews is liable to accept the view, that a

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Jewish state must consider itself rather as a guest instead of conqueror in the land of their illustrious forefathers. The existence of Israel must be viewed as a gesture of courtesy on behalf of half a billion Arabs that surround them. No doubt, the grandson of Osama bin Laden will some day enjoy spending a vacation at the beach near Haifa. Once, Israelis reach that state of mind, peace is assured. And why not?

At the heart of the present bloodbath lays the Palestine life and death struggle against the Jewish settler state. Unlike the Boers in South Africa, who were no longer supported by the West and America, and had to surrender power to the black majority, Bush and Blair are still siding strongly with Israel against the entire Arab world. In Algeria, Kenya, Southern Rhodesia, Angola and Mozambique, European settlers lost out after bloody battles between freedom fighters and the colonialists. When metropolitan France stopped protecting settlers in Algeria, the battle for the continued French presence in northern Africa was permanently lost. As professor Robert Tignor of Princeton University stressed (The New York Times, May 17, 2002), the road to freedom in African colonies hing-ed on Western support.

Israel has been able to hold out so far, in spite of the arrogant and outright criminal behavior of the fighting horse from another century, Ariel Sharon, and solely thanks to its overseas networks. Especially the US continues to finance, arm and support Tel Aviv, also politically in the United Nations with a series of lonely US vetoes. It is a quite mad assumption, extremely unwise, and a guaranteed losing strategy to think that lethal force with F16's, Apache helicopters, rockets, ancient US tanks and armored personnel carriers could ever be victorious over the determination of faithful Muslim warriors. The United States, Great Britain and Israel deploy their military power against what they call terrorists exactly the same way as Hitler, Goering and Goebbels terrorized and killed the freedom fighters of Europe who were battling against Nazism. Israelis assassinate freedom fighters in their cars shooting rockets from their helicopters. They wage an armed war of nerves on civilians; in short, they use state terrorism as Hitler did. In Afghanistan, the latest US Axis of Evil, (Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld) seems to specialize in preferably bombing Afghan wedding parties from stratospheric heights. Rumsfeld called it an unavoidable accident of war. The Afghan survivors told The Guardian (July 4, 2002): ‘It was like an abattoir - blood all around’. When Americans do it, nobody names it war crimes.

Even cursory knowledge of Islam would reassure the western world, that Muslims do not seek cutthroat rivalry abroad at all. Current tensions are solely the outcome of American and western support for repressive Arab regimes, with as an additional irritant the presence of Israel as a kind of 52^nd American state in the heart of the Muslim

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world. Yet, Arabs are nevertheless belatedly prepared to accept the existence of a Jewish state as an unavoidable new reality. Much the same way as when Hong Kong was returned to China, no one in Beijing thought of driving former inhabitants of the British Crown colony into the sea. The Chinese dealt with this last vestige of colonialism in pragmatic way. Consequently, thousands of British citizens and employees of companies stayed on their jobs to the advantage of China and the region itself.

Israel has in spite of all its troubles developed an advanced model of a modern society. Once all the present political confusion and religious hocus-pocus about the presumed impossibility to co-exist has been sorted out, Israel could and will most likely become the most important western outpost in the Middle East for the benefit of all and mostly for those millions and millions of young Arabs that need jobs and knowledge in order to build a decent life for themselves and their families. Future generations of Jews will find it much easier to work with new generations of Muslims.

I lived in South Africa (1986-1992) during the changeover from apartheid to political independence for blacks. It became soon crystal clear, that new generations of blacks, whites, coloureds and Indians had far less problems to live and work together than they ever thought possible in the years of near total separation of the races. However, it must be added, that in South Africa religious beliefs did not stand in the way of reconciliation as it does on other parts of the world. Hostile and implacable attitudes over who will control what in, for instance, Jerusalem, are still insurmountable controversies in the Middle East.

Nor can it be denied, as Osama bin Laden has so often complained, that over the past several hundred years, western civilization made deep and unwanted inroads into the Muslim world. Growing numbers of devout believers of Islam share his opinion. ‘Fourteen hundred years ago a new faith burst out of the Arabian deserts and exploded like forked lightening onto three continents. Under the oasis green banner of the Prophet Mohammed, the warriors of Islam converted whole civilizations to their holy book, their way of life and their world view,’ noted David Aikman and others in a Time essay on ‘The Sword of Islam’ (June 15, 1992). The resurrection of Muslim fundamentalism is a direct outcome of what is seen as beating back, an even more dangerous crusade, than when Christians openly marched in the 12^th century on Constantinople to slit as many throats of Muslims as could be found. The presence of thousands of male and female US soldiers on the soil of Saudi Arabia is interpreted by the bin Ladenites as a virus of a new western anarchistic, materealistic and at the same time an extremely destructive invasion for Islam. The Axis of Evil in the present White House lacks the brains, education and experience to take Muslim sensibilities seriously. Naturally, these men are seen from the Tora Bora Mountains as new barbarians.

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My Dutch forebears were born, lived or worked in the Dutch East Indies. Then and now, the Republic of Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world. When I worked as a young journalist in the 50's and 60's in Jakarta, being the 4^th generation of my family visiting there, I learned at an early age not to yoke about President Sukarno's funny hat, a black fez Indonesians call ‘pitji’. Many of my compatriots used to make fun of Muslim head wear. As long as western stand up comedians permit themselves to describe Yasser Arafat's head wear as a common dishcloth, and as long as our audiences find a cheap jab at the unknown still extremely funny, the time has not arrived for peaceful coexistence between civilizations.

‘There are many reasons why Muslims are critical of the West,’ said professor of Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Ibrahim Ibrahim. ‘It is not theological. It is a grievance of colonialism. We have been humiliated. The West defined the world for Muslims,’ adds Tunisian lawyer Abdelwahab Belwahi. ‘Colonialism tried to deform all the cultural traditions of Islam. I am not an Islamist; I don't think there is a conflict between religions. There is a conflict between civilizations. Islamic militancy is entirely political, since Muslims reject regimes founded on transplanted ideologies.’ The views of Osama bin Laden are widely shared throughout the Muslim world. Americans have but one Pavlovian reaction to what they don't understand: kill the bastards.