John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."

This article was forst posted at www.newstatesman.com

From its birth more than 60 years ago, Israel has always presented itself as “an oasis of democracy in a sea of despotism,” an outpost of pluralism surrounded by tyranny. While that equality never fully applied to the country’s Arab citizens, Israel was, for the most part an open society. But today political rights are under siege by right-wing legislators, militant settlers, and a growing religious divide in the Israeli army, all of which threaten to silence internal opposition to the policies of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Since that may include a war with Iran—and the probable involvement of the U.S. in such a conflict—the move to stifle dissent should be a major concern for Americans.

The U.S. media has reported on growing tensions between Israeli women and the ultra-orthodox Haredim over the latter’s demand for sexual segregation of schools, public transport, and public life. But while orthodox Jews spitting on eight-year old girls for being “immodestly dressed” has garnered the headlines, the most serious threats to democratic rights have gone largely unreported, including a host of proposed or enacted laws. Some of these include:

*A law that allows Jewish communities to bar Arab families from living among them. Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population.

*A law that makes it illegal to advocate an academic, cultural or economic boycott of Israel, including settler communities.

*A law that would limit the power of the Supreme Court.

*A law that bars any state institutions, including schools and theaters—from commemorating the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the term Palestinians use to describe the loss of their lands in the 1948 war that established Israel.

*A law that prohibits Palestinians from living with their Israeli spouses within Israel proper and denies them citizenship.

*A law that drops Arabic as an official language.

*A law that requires anyone obtaining a driver’s license to swear loyalty to the state.

*A law that would limit the number of petitions non-governmental organizations, including peace and human rights groups, could file before the Supreme Court.

*A law that forces human rights and peace groups to limit the money they can receive from abroad, and forces them to go through burdensome registration requirements.

Tzipi Livni, former foreign secretary and head of the Kadima Party, told the Knesset that Arab states were “trying to become a democracy, while we—with these bills—are headed toward dictatorship.”

Most of these laws are being pushed by Israel’s rightwing Likud and Yisreal Beiteinu parties, but the proposal to drop Arabic comes from the Kadima Party. Ram-rodding many of these laws are Lukid’s so-called “fantastic four”: Danny Danon, Yariv Levin, Tzipi Hotovely, and Ofir Akunis.

“We are in the process of reducing freedom of speech and the freedom of association, and we are infringing on the right to equality, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli Arab,” Mordechai Kremnitizer, a professor of law and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute told the Financial Times.  “We are also weakening all the elements in society that have the function of criticizing the governments, including the courts.

Israeli society is filled with sharp divisions on everything from war with Iran to growing economic inequality. Israel has the highest poverty rate out of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and ranks twenty-fifth in health care investment. The poverty rate for Israeli Arabs is between 50 and 55 percent.

Starting in the 1980s, Israel began dismantling its social safety net, a trend that Netanyahu sharply accelerated when he served as finance minister in 2003. While slashing money for housing, education, and transport, he cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Most of all, however, Israeli governments poured the nation’s wealth into colonizing the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, where, according to Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center based in Jerusalem, Israel has spent about $100 billion. A vast network of bypass roads, security zones, and walled settlements siphoned off money that could have gone for housing, education and transportation in Israel. Special tax rebates and rent subsidies for settlers added to that bill. Some 15 percent of the Israeli housing budget is used to support four percent of its population in the Occupied Territories. Add to that the 20 percent the military budget sucks up, and it seems increasingly clear that the settlement endeavor is no longer sustainable.

Wealth disparity—a handful of families control 30 percent of Israel’s GDP—was partly behind last summer’s social explosion that at one point put some 450,000 people into the streets of Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem demanding reductions in rent and food prices. But so far, organizers of those massive demonstrations have avoided making the link between growing income inequality and Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories. Many of these new laws are aimed at organizations that have been trying to do precisely that.

There are other divisions as well. Israelis are split down the middle over whether to attack Iran—43 percent yes, 41 percent no—but 64 percent support the creation of a Middle East nuclear free zone, and 65 percent feel that neither Israel nor Iran should have nuclear weapons. Those are not exactly the home front sentiments that a government wants when it is contemplating going to war.

Besides the avalanche of right-wing legislation coming out of the Knesset, Israel is increasingly at war with itself over the role of religion in daily life, a conflict that is playing out in one of Israel’s core institutions, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Two years ago, soldiers of the Kfir Brigade, a unit deployed in the West Bank, unveiled banners declaring they would refuse orders to remove settlers. By international law, all settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, but Israel claims that only unregistered “outposts” are against the law and subject to removal. The soldiers held signs that read, “We will not expel Jews.” Six of them were arrested and spent 30 days in the stockade.

The soldiers were graduates of army-sponsored “hesder yeshivas” that allow orthodox soldiers to divide their time between active service and Torah study. Settler rabbis rallied around the six and even provided money for some of the soldiers’ families.

Writing in the progressive Jewish weekly, the Forward, Columnist J.J. Goldberg says that a “secret report” in 2008 warned that such “yeshiva graduates comprise 30 percent of the junior officer corps and rising. In a decade they will be the military’s senior commanders. If a peace agreement is not reached in 15 years or so, Israel may no long have an army willing to carry out its side.”

A majority of Israelis support some kind of compromise to achieve a settlement with the Palestinians, but in the most recent set of talks, the Netanyahu government made it clear that Israel will not surrender any settlements, any part of Jerusalem, or the Jordan Valley. In essence, Palestinians would be forced to live in isolated enclaves surrounded by networks of restricted roads and over 120 settlements. The Netanyahu proposal not only violates numerous United Nations resolutions and international law, no Palestinian government that accepted such an offer would survive for long.

But Israelis who protest an offer that is widely seen as little more than a way to kill the possibility of serious negotiations may find themselves treated in much the same way as Israel has dealt with its Arab citizens.

Those who agitate against the current government may find themselves hit with the new libel law that no longer requires plaintiffs to prove they were damaged and increases awards six-fold. Bloggers, who lack institutional support, are particularly fearful of the new law. Organizations critical of the government that try to raise money from sources outside the country could face huge fines.

According to Hagai El-Ad, director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there is growing resistance within Israel to the attempt to silence critics, as well as pressure from abroad, including the American Jewish community. Even a pro-Netanyahu hawk like the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman warns “the very democratic character of the state is being eroded.” That resistance has delayed some of the more odious proposals, but the “fantastic four” and their allies are pushing hard to get them on the books.

Why should Americans care? Because if Netanyahu silences his domestic opponents, he will have carte blanche to do as he pleases. And if Tel Aviv attacks Iran, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to keep clear of it. For starters, the IDF will be firing U.S.-made cruise missiles, flying American-made F-15s, and dropping “made in the USA” bunker busters. With the exception of the monarchs from the Gulf states, no one in the Middle East—or most of the world—is going to give Washington a pass on this one.

Does America need another war? If it doesn’t protest the assault on democracy in Israel, it may get one, whether it likes it or not.

Conn M. Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, “A Think Tank Without Walls, and an independent journalist. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from theUniversity of California, Berkeley.  He was also a college provost at UCSC, and retired in 2004. He is a winner of a Project Censored “Real News Award,” and lives in Berkeley, California. www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

Before the United States goes to war with Iran, as many Americans seem anxious to do, we should first understand how Iran became our implacable enemy. U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Carter viewed Iran as our friend. The CIA didn't see this coming, and neither did our State Department.

An Islamic flag atop the White House in “The Third Jihad.”

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"The Third Jihad" says a covert jihad is under way in the West.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.

In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.

A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training.

During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots.

But members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims.

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.”

Tom Robbins, a former columnist with The Village Voice, first revealed that the police had screened the film. The Brennan Center then filed its request.

The 72-minute film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence Agency official and a deputy defense secretary for President Ronald Reagan. Its previous documentary attacking Muslims’ “war on the West” attracted support from the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major supporter of Israel who has helped reshape the Republican presidential primary by pouring millions of dollars into a so-called super PAC that backs Newt Gingrich.

Commissioner Kelly is listed on the “Third Jihad” Web site as a “featured interviewee.” Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that filmmakers had lifted the clip from an old interview. The commissioner, Mr. Browne said, has not asked the filmmakers to remove him from its Web site, or to clarify that he had not cooperated with them.

None of the documents turned over to the Brennan Center make clear which police officials approved the showing of this film during training. Department lawyers blacked out large swaths of these internal memorandums.

Repeated calls over the past several days to the Clarion Fund, which is based in New York, were not answered. The nonprofit group shares officials with Aish HaTorah, an Israeli organization that opposes any territorial concessions on the West Bank. The producer of “The Third Jihad,” Raphael Shore, also works with Aish HaTorah.

Clarion’s financing is a puzzle. Its federal income tax forms show contributions, grants and revenues typically hover around $1 million annually — except in 2008, when it booked contributions of $18.3 million. That same year, Clarion produced “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” The Clarion Fund used its surge in contributions to pay to distribute tens of millions of copies of this DVD in swing electoral states across the country in September 2008.

“The Third Jihad” is quite similar, in style and content, to that earlier film. Narrated by Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim doctor and former American military officer in Arizona, “The Third Jihad” casts a broad shadow over American Muslims. Few Muslim leaders, it states, can be trusted.

 

“Americans are being told that many of the mainstream Muslim groups are also moderate,” Mr. Jasser states. “When in fact if you look a little closer, you’ll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception.”

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Footage of an interview with the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, is used in the movie.

 

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The film also includes scenes of violence by Muslims.

 

The film posits that there were three jihads: One at the time of Muhammad, a second in the Middle Ages and a third that is under way covertly throughout the West today.

This is, the film claims, “the 1,400-year war.”

How the film came to be used in police training, and even for how long, was not clear. An undated memorandum from the department’s commanding officer for specialized training noted that an employee of the federal Department of Homeland Security handed the DVD to the New York police in January 2010. Since then, this officer said, the video was shown continuously “during the sign-in, medical and administrative orientation process.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said it was never used in its curriculum, and might have come from a contractor.

As it turned out, it was police officers who blew the whistle after watching the film. Late in 2010, Mr. Robbins contacted an officer who spoke of his unease with the film; another officer, said Zead Ramadan, the New York president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, talked of seeing it during a training session the previous summer. “The officer was completely offended by it as a Muslim,” Mr. Ramadan said. “It defiled our faith and misrepresented everything we stood for.”

When the news broke about the movie last year, Mr. Browne called it a “wacky film” that had been shown “only a couple of times when officers were filling out paperwork before the actual course work began.”

He made no more public comments. Privately, two days later, he asked the Police Academy to determine whether aterrorism awareness training program had used the video, according to the documents.

The academy’s commander reported back on March 23, 2011, that the film had been viewed by 68 lieutenants, 159 sergeants, 31 detectives and 1,231 patrol officers. The department never made those findings public.

And just one week later, the Brennan Center officially requested the same information, starting what turned out to be a nine-month legal battle to obtain it.

“It suggests a broader problem that they refuse to divulge this information much less to discuss it,” Ms. Patel of the Brennan Center said. “The training of the world’s largest city police force is an important question.”

Mr. Browne said he had been unaware of the higher viewership of the film until asked about it by The New York Times last week.

There is the question of the officers who viewed the movie during training. Mr. Browne said the Police Department had no plans to correct any false impressions the movie might have left behind.

“There’s no plan to contact officers who saw it,” he said, or to “add other programming as a result.”

A report released last week by Middle East human rights groups presents extensive evidence of war crimes carried out in Libya by the United States, NATO and their proxy “rebel” forces during last year’s war, which brought down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The “Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-Finding Mission to Libya” presents findings of an investigation carried out last November by the Arab Organization for Human Rights, together with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium.

Based on interviews with victims of war crimes as well as with witnesses and Libyan officials in Tripoli, Zawiya, Sibrata, Khoms, Zliten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte, the report calls for the investigation of evidence that NATO targeted civilian sites, causing many deaths and injuries. Civilian facilities targeted by NATO bombs and missiles included schools, government buildings, at least one food warehouse, and private homes.

The report also presents evidence of systematic murder, torture, expulsion and abuse of suspected Gaddafi loyalists by the NATO-backed “rebel” forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC). It describes the forced expulsion of the mostly black-skinned inhabitants of Tawergha and the ongoing persecution of sub-Saharan migrant workers by forces allied to the NTC and its transitional government.

The investigators report savage and repeated beatings of prisoners held without trial or charges, the summary execution of pro-Gaddafi fighters, and witness reports of “indiscriminate and retaliatory murders, including the ‘slaughter’ (i.e., throat slitting) of former combatants.”

The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the United States, France, Britain and their NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial-style war of conquest. It makes clear that last March’s United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a “no-fly zone” and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Muammar Gaddafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in coordination with “rebel” forces on the ground.

The report suggests that soon after the outbreak of anti-Gaddafi protests in Benghazi and other cities, opposition forces were receiving training from Western armed forces as well as weapons from NATO powers and allied Arab states. Popular opposition to Gaddafi that erupted last February following the fall of Mubarak in Egypt was rapidly taken into hand by the US, France, Britain and their agents within Libya to launch a pro-imperialist civil war.

As the report states: “From first-hand information available to the Mission, and secondary sources, it appears that NATO participated in what could be classified as offensive actions undertaken by the opposition forces, including, for example, attacks on towns and cities held by Gaddafi forces. Equally, the choice of certain targets, such as a regional food warehouse, raises prima facie questions regarding the role of such attacks with respect to the protection of civilians.”

The report gives only the palest picture of a brutal onslaught whose purpose was to turn the clock back 43 years to the conditions that prevailed under the US-UK stooge King Idris, who turned the country’s oil resources over to American and British conglomerates and allowed the two powers to maintain large military bases on Libyan soil. The mass destruction and killing, which culminated in the leveling of Sirte and lynching of Gaddafi, make the UN-sanctioned claims of a war for “human rights” and the “protection of civilians” not only absurd, but obscene.

The rape of Libya was the response of US and European imperialism to the revolutionary uprisings that ousted long-time pro-Western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, two countries that border Libya. The aim of this imperialist war was to impose complete control on the country’s oil resources, divert and suppress the growth of working class struggles throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and deal a blow to China and Russia, which had established close economic relations with the Gaddafi regime.

The war devastated the country. The NTC—an unstable coalition of ex-Gaddafi regime officials, Islamists, including some with links to Al Qaeda, and Western intelligence assets—itself estimates that the war took 50,000 lives and injured another 50,000 people. Rising infighting between the NTC’s factions is opening the door to full-scale civil war between rival clan-based and regional militias.

Just this weekend, amid warnings from NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil of looming civil war, a crowd demanding the resignation of the transitional government forced its way into the NTC’s headquarters in Benghazi. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, the vice president of the NTC, promptly resigned.

The report on US-NATO war crimes is also a further indictment of the assortment of “left” parties, intellectuals and academics who parroted the human rights pretexts of Washington and NATO and thus gave open or backhanded support to the war in Libya. It underscores that these forces—from social democrats, Greens and ex-Stalinists such as the German Left Party to pseudo-radicals such as France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party and the International Socialist Organization in the US—have moved into the camp of imperialism.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – A Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi women and children pleaded guilty Monday to dereliction of duty in a deal that will mean a maximum of three months confinement and end the largest and longest-running criminal case against U.S. troops to emerge from the Iraq War.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn., led the Marine squad in 2005 that killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha after a roadside bomb exploded near a Marine convoy, killing one Marine and wounding two others.

It was a stunning and muted end to a case once described as the Iraq War's version of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Watch Wuterich's interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" in 2007 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2582353n

The incident in Iraq is considered among the war's defining moments, further tainting America's reputation when it was already at a low point after the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.

Eight Marines were charged with killing the Iraqis, with Wuterich facing the possibility of life behind bars. In the end, seven Marines were acquitted or had charges dropped, and Wuterich pleaded to the single, minor charge.

The killings still fuel anger in Iraq after becoming the primary reason behind demands that U.S. troops not be given immunity from their court system.

Wuterich's plea interrupted his trial at Camp Pendleton before a jury of combat Marines who served in Iraq.

In a hearing to determine if the facts of the plea were accurate and that he agreed, Wuterich acknowledged he was negligent in his duties because he told his squad to shoot first and ask questions later, or words to that effect.

Honestly, I probably should have said nothing," Wuterich told the judge, Lt. Col. David Jones. "I think we all understood what we were doing so I probably just should have said nothing."

Later he added: "I shouldn't have done that and it resulted in tragic events, sir."

Wuterich acknowledged he had been trained in rules of engagement before going to Iraq and again when he was deployed.

He admitted he did not positively identify his targets, as he had learned to do in training. He said he ordered his troops to assault the homes based on the guidance of his platoon commander at the time.

Wuterich faces a maximum of three months confinement, two-thirds forfeiture of pay and a rank demotion to private when he's sentenced, likely on Tuesday. The plea agreement calls for manslaughter charges to be dropped.

"No one denies that the events … were tragic, most of all Frank Wuterich," defense attorney Neal Puckett told the North County Times. "But the fact of the matter is that he has now been totally exonerated of the homicide charges brought against him by the government and the media. For the last six years, he has had his name dragged through the mud. Today, we hope, is the beginning of his redemption."

Phone messages left by The Associated Press for Puckett and co-counsel Mark Zaid weren't immediately returned.

The issue at the court martial was whether Wuterich reacted appropriately as a Marine squad leader in protecting his troops in the midst of a chaotic war or disregarded combat rules and ordered his men to shoot and blast indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians.

Wuterich was charged with nine counts of manslaughter, among other charges.

Prosecutors said he lost control after seeing the body of his friend blown apart by the bomb and led his men on a rampage in which they stormed two nearby homes, blasting their way in with gunfire and grenades. Among the dead were women, children and elderly, including a man in a wheelchair.

Wuterich's former squad members testified that they did not take any gunfire during the 45-minute raid on the homes or find any weapons. Still, several squad members testified they do not believe they did anything wrong because they feared insurgents were inside hiding.

The prosecution was further hurt by the testimony of Wuterich's former platoon commander who said the squad was justified in its actions because the house was declared hostile, and from what he understood of the rules of combat at the time that meant any use of force could be used and Marines did not need to positively identify their targets.

Wuterich has said he regretted the loss of civilian lives but believed he was operating within military combat rules.

After Haditha, Marines commanders ordered troops to try and distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The trial was delayed for years by pre-trial wrangling between the defense and prosecution, including over whether the military could use unaired outtakes from an interview Wuterich gave in 2007 to "60 Minutes." Prosecutors eventually won the right to view the footage.

In case you missed it

Iraqi Girl tells of US Attack in Haditha

Ten-year-old Iman Walid witnessed  the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November. The interview with Iman was filmed exclusively for ITV News by Ali Hamdani,our Iraqi video diarist.

05/30/06 ITV

A group of 161 foreign nationals, who are in Sri Lanka to preach the virtues of Islam to Muslims, have been ordered to leave the country. “The group which arrived in different batches has violated their visa status,” Immigration and Emigration Controller Chulananda Perera told the Sunday Times. He said visas were granted to them to visit Sri Lanka as tourists.

“We have their contact details and they have already been informed about the Government’s position regarding their stay in the country”. These nationals mainly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and a few Arabs are described as members of the ‘Tabligh Jamat’ movement.

“It has been found that the group known as Tabligh Jamat had been propagating Islam in several parts of the country. Visit visas are provided to foreigners only for the purpose of tourism and nothing else,” he said.

They are reported to have visited several places in the country, mainly in the east with their headquarters at Kotahena, he said. A visit visa could be extended for two months after the payment of a fee, he said.
Western Province Governor Alavi Moulana told the Sunday Times he was aware of the group but said they were harmless and non-political.

He said the main purpose of this group was to visit underprivileged local Muslims and further propagate the Islamic faith. “They have been visiting Sri Lanka from time to time and their presence has been well known,” he added. Mr. Moulana said he was not aware of the reason for the cancellation of their visas but added that it might be for security reasons.

“There are several different Muslim sects in the country with different approaches to the Islamic faith and any one of these groups might have taken the matter up with the authorities,” Mr. Moulana added. Tabligh Jamat officials told the Sunday Times that the members of the group spent their personal money for their cause.

They said no reason was given for the cancellation of the visas although it appeard to be on security grounds. They said Senior Minister A. H. M. Fowzie would meet the Immigration Controller tomorrow in a bid to stop the expulsion of the group. Minister Fowzie, however, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Only little more than a year ago such uprisings were unimaginable in view of the extreme oppressive nature of the regimes throughout the region. The mere fact that people are sacrificing their lives to assert their rights and dignity which were denied to them for generations shows that dictators are, sooner or later, are bound to disappear and the political map of Middle East and North African, MENA, is likely to change. 

Already the uprisings have taken dictators and their Western guardians by surprise and shaken the region. The people’s movements have reached a stage where it cannot be held back and it is likely to continue despite the brutality unleashed. However there are powerful and ruthless forces trying to crush the uprisings. 

So far the uprisings, began in January last year in Tunisia, have toppled ruthless regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya while shaking the very foundations of  Syrian dictator Basher Al Assad and other dictators.  

Rulers in the region have been some of most oppressive and cruel dictators in this planet. They were installed in power by European colonial powers, especially Britain and France, in the aftermath of the World War 1. Following Turkey’s defeat in the World War 1, the MENA region which was under Turkey’s Ottoman Empire was brought under Britain and France.  Accordingly Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Yemen, Egypt and Sudan were brought under Britain while Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco came under France and Libya under Italy.

After dividing the region into small countries, Britain and France installed their stooges in power and continued their exploitation with no respect to the rights and feelings of the people. They ensured that the predominantly Muslim region remains volatile and Islam and Muslims never become powerful forces to challenge the West.   

In fact even before the World War 1, as early as second half of 19th century, British colonial power decided to plant an alien entity in the Middle East to create tension and turmoil to keep the Muslims occupied and backward.    

It was around the same time Zionist Jews decided to establish a Jewish state in Palestine after kicking out the indigenous Palestinians from their lands. This common   goal brought   Britain and the Zionist Jews together. They jointly worked towards this end and the result was the eviction of Palestinians from their homes and the establishment of Zionist Jewish racist state in Palestine in 1948.

In the aftermath of World War 11 one after the other Asian, African and Latin American countries became independent and started asserting their new found freedom and dignity. Colonial powers did withdraw from some Middle East countries. However their stooges remained in power in all Arab countries and served their masters’ interests sacrificing the interests of their own people. The result was the oppressive dictatorships.  

These short sighted dictators, often with military and tribal backgrounds, ruled their countries according to their whims and fancies .Without any exception they all adopted secular policies and distanced themselves from Islam and Islamic forces to please their colonial masters. They enjoyed unlimited power. They are the sources of justice and they are law unto themselves. Accountability was unheard of. They behaved as if the country was their family property and freely looted the nation’s wealth.

There was no opposition and dissent was mercilessly suppressed. Government controlled media fed the people with lies. Free media was unknown. Arbitrary arrests, torture and killings have been order of the day. They maintained numerous secret service units to spy on people. In Egypt alone there were more than 60 secret service apparatus spying on different groups of people. This is the same case with all Arab countries.

People had no say in decision making process .They were ignored and their needs, desires and aspirations were not even taken notice of. They compromised their countries’ sovereignty and dignity without any shame. For example they accorded red carpet welcome to Zionist, American, British and French leaders who openly butcher innocent Arabs. They aligned and facilitated the American war against Arab countries and the killing of innocent people. For example Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries not only aligned with America and NATO but also provided facilities to invade and destroy Afghanistan,Iraq,Libya and collaborated in the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Unable to speak for fear of being arrested, tortured and killed people throughout the region remained deeply frustrated and furious with their rulers. They also watched for decades their rulers abandoning the Palestinians and honey mooning with Zionists   who harass, humiliate and slaughter Palestinians on a daily basis, grab Palestinian lands and desecrate Masjid Al Aqsa-Islam’s third holiest Mosque.

Thus the time was ripe for an uprising .It was a burning volcano awaiting eruption.  All what was needed was a spark which came in January last year when the 26-year-old unemployed graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself and committed suicide in a public square in Tunis when the police prevented him from selling fruits and vegetables on the  street without permission for mere survival  .

The result was the spontaneous nationwide uprising which forced the corrupt and oppressive dictator Zine El Abdeen Ben Ali   to flee the country on Friday 14 January 2011 -after killing around hundred people in trying to crush the uprising. Ben Ali first tried to flee to Malta where his flight was refused permission to land. Then he turned to Libya’ ousted leader  Muammar Gaddafi and his close friend President Nicolas Sarkozy .He was refused asylum and finally, perhaps, under pressure from United States, Ben Ali was given refuge in Saudi Arabia –the land of Islam turned by Saudi dictators into a  haven for disgraced tyrants known for their hostility towards Islam. Before going to Saudi Arabia Ben Ali’s wife Leila Trabelsi took 1.4 tons of gold bars worth 45 million Euros to Dubai.

This dramatic development   encouraged suppressed people in the region to rise up for their rights.

Then came the Egyptian uprising described as one of the most peaceful freedom struggles in the known human history. Millions of people came out to streets and forced American-Israeli puppet Hosni Mubarak, modern pharaoh who looted around $62 billion while most Egyptians lived on a dollar a day income, to leave after killing more than 850 peaceful demonstrators.

Though the dictator was kicked out his brutal armed forces, carefully screened, selected and trained with American and Zionist supervision remain intact. Under Mubarak the Egyptian armed forces controlled almost every sector of the economy and functioned like a corporate conglomerate. Bulk of the American annual aid of $ 1.5 billion was spent on the armed forces. On the other hand Israel’s dreaded secret arm Mossad had very close relations with the Egypt’s armed forces and Cairo was its main centre of activities in the Middle East. 

Today the  affairs of the country is run by  the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF),comprising of this very same corrupt armed forces  led by aging commanders and security apparatus which indiscriminately arrested, tortured, killed and brutalized the people. Egypt has been a police state with more than a million informers. And this will not change easily.  Thus the road ahead for Egyptian uprising is going to be long and tough one.

Then came the fierce uprising in Yemen where after almost ten months of peaceful demonstrations, indiscriminate killings and destruction Abdullah Saleh who ruled for more than three decades was forced out   though he still   tries to manipulate. Saudi Arabia tried its best to protect Saleh to serve as buffer only to realize that people’s power is more powerful than the weapons and armed forces.

Inspired by the Arab uprising oppressed Libyans rose up against the 42 year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. They only asked for freedom and basic rights. Instead of talking ,describing them as rats and cockroaches, Gaddafi  unleashed a campaign of unprecedented killing spree providing the opportunity for American, British, French and Israeli war mongers to enter Libya to   bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of  people and destroy the infrastructure .The so called UN authorized humanitarian intervention  has pushed Libya to stone age.

Once prosperous Libya today is a wasteland and the US, British, French and  Israeli plunderers are already there to loot Libyan wealth. Western media, integral part of   war machine, never reports the carnage.

In Syria it is sheer barbarity. Here too the oppressed people rose up demanding political freedom.  Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad started killing peaceful demonstrators to crush the freedom movement as his father did. So far Bashar has killed more than 5000 peaceful demonstrators and continue to torture hundreds of thousands.   

Killing their own people has been an established tradition for Bashar and his father Hafiz Al Assad who captured power in a military coup in November 1970. Assads belong to ruling minority Alwaites who are only around six per percent of the Syrian population and whom the Sunnis consider as heretical .Since 1970 Syria has been under Alawite tyranny and the repeated uprisings for political rights by more than 75 percent Sunnis were crushed under Hafiz’s scorched earth policy.

In February 1982 in the city of Hama, Assad’s troops committed one of the worst massacres   in the region. He destroyed mosques, churches, hospitals, schools and houses, centers of heritage of the city followed by similar massacres in other cities of Syria. Around 40.000 people in Hama and 70.000 people across Syria were massacred though up to date no one knows how many perished .In addition 15,000 missing have not been found to this day and 100,000 expelled."The Syrian regime also committed several other massacres in places such as Jisr Alshaghoor on the morning of Eid Al-Adha, and Al-Raqah where tens of citizens who were held captive in a secondary school and burnt to death alive. Most of them killed were women, children and elderly. 

Hafiz al Assad dispatched troops to Lebanon in 1976  supposed to protect Palestinian refugees from Israeli backed Christian Falangists.Instead of protecting, under a de facto alliance with Israel, Hafiz   allowed Falangists to besiege Palestinian camps of Karantina and Tel al Zaatar where an estimated 30,000 Palestinians were killed and an equal number injured.

Encouraged by the Arab uprisings once again the oppressed Syrians rose up and Bashar, in the footsteps of his father, started slaughtering peaceful demonstrators while committing medieval style barbarity in his house to house search, arbitrary arrest, torture and killings of Sunni Muslims. Both Russia and China threw their weight behind Bashar who knows that so called champions of human rights in Washington, London and Paris would do nothing other than hoodwinking the world with statements as Alawites have been great asset to Israel unlike Sunnis who would question and resist Israeli atrocities.

In Syria it is the  people determined to overthrow Bashar  at any cost versus and Bashar backed by Russia and China while US, UK and France turning blind eye .It appears river of blood is continue to flow  before  Bashar is ousted.

In Jordan already the repeated people’s demonstrations have sent a clear message to the American installed King Abdulla who, it appears, refuses to understand the mood of the people perhaps under US-Israeli pressure.

There were also simultaneous  uprisings in the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council which were all ,directly or indirectly ,brought under American, and thereby Israeli, security umbrella. In Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes surviving under American protection, people did rise against the regime only to be crushed brutally. There were many Shiites uprisings during the past year and the government established policy has been to crush them while offering financial incentives to placate Sunnis. However the situation remains tense and the oppressed people raise their grievances against the family rule, their crime, corruption and collaboration with enemies of Islam and Muslims in their crime against Muslims worldwide.

Saudi Arabia is a burning volcano awaiting eruption.

Meanwhile Shiites who constitute around 75 to 80 percent of the population of Bahrain came out in peaceful protests demanding restoration of their basic human rights .These peaceful marches were   mercilessly crushed by the minority Sunni regime under whom prostitution remains an industry and liquor flows like river. Saudi Arabia ,never known to have fought a war though spend billions on  sophisticated weapons only to make Western weapons industry flourish, dispatched troops to help Bahrain crush the Shiite uprising. Television footages speak volume for the senseless atrocities and cruelties unleashed on peaceful demonstrations .The situation remains volatile.

Meanwhile other GCC countries, ruled by tribal sheikhs and sultans, also provided financial incentives   placate their citizens   and prevent potential uprisings. A year after the Arab uprising today people who taste the hard won freedom realize that, together and peacefully, they can overthrow tyrants, end tyranny and gain their long deprived rights and privileges. Therefore the Arab uprising is likely to intensify and spread. Meanwhile dictators who enjoyed power and comforts will certainly try their best to remain power-   with the backing of America, UK, Europe and Israel.

People in the MENA are very well aware the American, British and French claim of democracy, freedom and human rights are nothing but farce. They remember how the democratic forces in Algeria were crushed when the Islamic party, FIS, won the free and fair elections. They also remember how more than  1.5 million Palestinians who voted for Hamas in a free and fair elections ,supervised by former United States President Jimmy Carter,  have been subjected to an economic blockade described by many as genocide .

In 1953, the   CIA led by one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s grandsons, initiated a coup in Iran,   removed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a dictator, in power. Shah was supported by the CIA in creating the Iranian SAVAK, a vicious secret police for the Shah’s dictatorial government.

Thus the road ahead for the peaceful demonstrators seeking political change is going to be long, turbulent and violent one. However Middle East will never be the same as it was a year ago.

Latheef Farook is a senior journalist who, after working for almost ten years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led s group of Sri Lankan journalists to Dubai in 1979 to re launch Gulf News. He returned home after a quarter century working in the Gulf and now based in Colombo .His e mail is sanagency@yahoo.com