Document 6561161

8
Gulf Daily News Sunday, 12th October 2014
Islamic State vs
Jewish State
By JAMAL KANJ
I
HAVE read or heard countless of analysts
in the last few weeks discussing the war on
Islamic State (IS).
Unquestionably, putting an end to IS is a
step in the right direction. But if anyone has
the delusion that defeating IS militarily is the
answer, I suggest they take a look at Afghanistan and Waziristan in Pakistan.
After more than a decade of war and bombardment, the “defeated” Taliban has expanded into Pakistan while Al Qaeda sprouted in
Iraq, Libya and now in Syria. The killing of Bin
Laden brought us Al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed new Muslim Caliph.
The powers that helped the Taliban and
Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets, and then used
Israeli lies to destroy Iraq, are unqualified to
put an end to IS.
Instead of air strikes, the international community must first consider drying the swamp
that allows IS to flourish.
IS is the product of regional politics and
foreign invasions combined with US and
Western powers’ unchecked diplomatic and
financial support for the “Jewish State” (JS). IS
flourishes thanks to Western pandering of JS
as an exceptionalist state beyond reproach,
defying UN resolutions with complete impunity.
For the majority of people in the Arab and
Muslim world, there is no difference between
a dagger held to the neck of innocent Westerners by an IS member or a blown-up brain
of a six-month-old baby by American-made
JS planes.
The JS slaughter of innocents, the continued starvation diet imposed on women and
children in Gaza, the appropriation of Muslim
and Christian properties in the holy city of
Jerusalem and land confiscation in the West
Bank to benefit “Jewish only” colonies are
lifelines for IS.
IS exploits peoples’ anger to recruit frustrated young men and women, aiming to
establish a utopian religious state, just as the
Zionists have done.
How could the West accept JS’s claim of
a special covenant with a god to displace
non-Jews from their homes, but deny IS the
right to claim the same with their god? IS and
JS are two states proclaiming monopoly over
the absolute truth to justify the most abhorrent acts in the name of God.
Western support for JS while it condemns
IS must stem from hypocrisy, racism or both.
While almost everyone knows about IS’s
crimes and self-righteous interpretation of
religion, JS’s crimes are sanitised and very few
are exposed to its pretentious monopoly on
God.
In the JS, the late chief rabbi Ovadi Yosef,
founder of a major Israeli party, proclaimed
once that Israel’s god created non-Jews for
the sole purpose of serving “the People of Israel”. He went further in a religious sermon to
explain that gentiles were like “one’s donkey”,
they live to work and plough so a Jew can “sit
like an effendi”.
About killing Palestinians, the Israeli chief
rabbi said: “It is forbidden to be merciful to
them. You must send missiles to them and
annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”
Explaining Hurricane Katrina in the US, Yosef blamed the disaster on African Americans’
lack of “enough Torah study”.
“Black people reside there... (God said) let’s
bring a tsunami and drown them,” he said.
This is the philosophy of a highly decorated
Jewish authority in JS, Talmudic scholar and
a spiritual leader for the closed club of the
“effendi” chosen race.
Muslim scholars have joined forces to unequivocally condemn IS acts. But where are
the Jewish and Western voices to condemn
JS excesses against Christian and Muslim
Palestinians?
War might force IS to retreat, but the
jihadists’ idea will grow for as long as the US
continues supplying oxygen to regenerate
bacteria in a cesspool replenished by Western
double standards.
IS and JS share the same philosophy, the
only difference is their point of reference.
Imperfect world
n Smoke rises after a US air strike on
Islamic State militants in the Syrian Kurdish
border town of Kobani yesterday
T
HERE is a common saying that “no man is
perfect”, so we slide below that standard
of worthiness into imperfection with seemingly popular consent.
Look around and see the results: a lack of
aspiration and falling standards, both externally and internally, because of imperfection
– because we have accepted that man can
possess all the vices, because we think them
to be the basic ingredient of human nature.
I believe with this we are now teetering
on the brink of personal and global collapse.
In scientific terms, perfection is accuracy
and precision. Everything is in its appropriate proportion and position as well in
human behaviour.
Perfection is the
Published letters are not
balance
between
necessarily the views of the
the various states of
Editor. Readers wishing to
consciousness. It is the
make a complaint through
balance that comes
the GDN should provide full when the thoughts
details of the complaint
and actions are totally
together with their contact harmonised in truth.
telephone numbers.
Perfection is understanding that every
action, every thought, every breath would
be geared towards a specific purpose and
direction – that of total positive self-realisation.
To realise ourself with clear vision and
accurate knowledge is to be perfect.
Ali Al Aradi
Down on Downton
HAT is it about Downton Abbey that
W
gets the pundits purring? I just don’t
get it.
Granted, the programme is well filmed
and the house is certainly the star of the
show.
But surely its success internationally only
strengthens the outdated stereotypical image
of Britain and its people that the rest of the
world has of it being a nation trapped in its
past.
It’s not as if the programme bears any
resemblance to the reality of life in the early
20th century and the gulf that existed between servant and master.
Jeeves
TODAY is Sunday, October 12, the
285th day of 2014. There are 80 days
left in the year. Highlights in history on
this date:
1492 – Christopher Columbus makes
his first landfall in the New World, in
present-day Bahamas.
1822 – Brazil becomes independent of
Portugal.
1908 – South Africa Constitutional
Convention meets in Durban.
1915 – English nurse Edith Cavell is
executed by the Germans in occupied
Belgium during First World War.
1925 – Uprising in Syria.
1934 – Peter II becomes King of Yugoslavia following the assassination of
his father, King Alexander.
1938 – Japanese troops seize Canton,
severing the railway to the temporary
Chinese capital in Wuhan.
1942 – American forces defeat the
Japanese in Battle of Cape Esperance
on Guadalcanal in Second World War.
1945 – Allied Control Council in Germany orders dissolution of Nazi Party
after Second World War.
1951 – Under attack by French planes,
the Viet Minh rebels suffer one of their
worst defeats of the civil war with
1,200 dead and 5,000 captured, in an
attempt to take Nghialo.
1956 – Britain tells Israel the English
will assist Jordan if it is attacked.
1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev upsets the decorum of UN General Assembly by pounding the desk
with his shoe during a dispute.
1962 – India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru says Indian Army has been
ordered to remove Chinese forces from
Indian territory near Tibetan border.
1964 – US forces take control in South
Vietnam, toppling government of Maj
Gen Nguyen Khanh in bloodless coup.
1969 – Soviet Union launches Soyuz
VII spacecraft with three men aboard
to join two men in orbit in Soyuz VI.
UK wrong on rights
HE UK is quick to criticise other countries
Tcountry
on human rights, but this is the same
in which migrants claiming asylum
are being put up in hotels, even though many
of them arrived illegally.
When will the UK take the ‘kick me’ sign off
its backside? It must be the laughing stock
1973 – US President Richard Nixon
nominates House minority leader Gerald R Ford, to succeed Spiro T Agnew
as vice-president. Agnew resigned after the Justice Department revealed
he had taken kickbacks.
1975 – Pope Paul VI canonises an Irish
archbishop, Oliver Plunkett, who was
executed by the British in 1681.
1977 – Sweden agrees to cancel over
$200 million in debts owed by eight
Third World nations.
1984 – An Irish Republican Army
bomb explodes at a hotel in Brighton,
England, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is attending a conference,
killing five people.
1989 – Rejecting democratic reforms,
a high-ranking East German official
says socialism will continue to dominate society.
1990 – A federal district court judge in
Boston orders Eastman Kodak to pay
$909.5 million to Polaroid Corporation
for infringing patents for instant photography cameras and film.
1991 – Pope John Paul II makes his
second visit to Brazil in an effort to
renew interest in the Roman Catholic Church at a time when it’s losing
many Brazilian adherents to Protestant
groups and African mystical cults.
1992 – A strong earthquake near Cairo
kills 450 people and injures 4,000.
1993 – German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl pledges to move most of nation’s
government to Berlin from Bonn, the
current capital, by the end of the year
2000. The move will cost $18.5 million.
1994 – US spacecraft Magellan,
launched in 1989 on a mission to study
Venus, concludes its mission with a
final experiment, to make a suicidal
descent towards Venus’ surface, where
temperatures reached 482C.
1995 – Panama grants asylum to Haiti’s Raoul Cedras, who had taken power in a 1991 coup.
of Europe.
If migrants enter the UK illegally they
should be turned away immediately,
not left to have a holiday at the public’s
expense.
How many in Britain today have not had a
vacation for years owing to financial constraints?
The other insanity is hearing how Britain
1996 – Commander Ramona of the
Zapatista rebel movement marches into Mexico City at the head of a
demonstration by indigenous people
on the 504th anniversary of Columbus’
arrival in America.
1997 – Cuban President Fidel Castro
appoints his brother Raul as successor
and urges the party to be unified in
maintaining Communism.
1998 – Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic agrees to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, initiate peace negotiations with ethnic Albanians and allow
an international observers to ensure
UN demands are met.
1999 – A military coup throws Pakistan into political disarray as conflict
with India continues over the disputed Kashmir territory. Army chief Gen
Pervez Musharraf becomes the new
leader and promises to hold elections.
2000 – Seventeen sailors are killed in
a suicide bomb attack on the US destroyer Cole in Yemen.
2001 – The UN and its secretary general Kofi Annan win the Nobel Peace
Prize.
2002 - A bomb explodes in a resort
area on the Indonesian island of Bali,
destroying two nightclubs, killing
more than 180 people and wounding
nearly 300 others.
2004 - Nine bodies in Tokyo are found
in two parked cars with charcoal stoves
at their feet and the windows sealed
from inside in what is believed to be
Japan’s largest group suicide pact.
2005 - Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez threatens to kick some Christian missionaries out of the country,
as he presents property titles to indigenous groups who he said had been
robbed of their ancient homelands.
2006 - Britain and Ireland announce
they will present a plan to Northern
Ireland’s rival leaders spelling out how
to resurrect a Catholic-Protestant ad-
ministration as the province’s peace
deal intended.
2007 - Former US vice-president Al
Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change win the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize.
2008 - A Soyuz spacecraft with two
Americans and a Russian on board lifts
off from Kazakhstan for the international space station.
2009 - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows never to allow Israeli
leaders or soldiers to stand trial on war
crimes charges over their actions during last winter’s military offensive in
the Gaza Strip, furiously denouncing
a UN report in a keynote address to
parliament.
2010 - A US prosecutor tells a jury a
man accused of helping to build a
truck bomb used in a 1998 terror attack on a US embassy in Africa was a
member of an Al Qaeda cell that was
determined to kill Americans. Ahmed
Khalfan Ghailani is the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to face a civilian trial.
2012 - Thousands of supporters and
opponents of Egypt’s new Islamist
president clash in Cairo’s Tahrir Square
in the first such violence since Mohamed Mursi took office more than
three months ago, as liberal and secular activists erupt with anger accusing
the Muslim Brotherhood of trying to
take over the country.
2013 - Secretary of State John Kerry
says a partial agreement is reached
with Afghanistan on a security accord,
but the potentially deal-breaking issue
of jurisdiction for American forces remains unresolved.
THE wise man is astonished
by anything – Andre Gide,
French author and critic
(1869-1951).