suck my dick
2006-09-11, 12:47
PA Government Spokesman Dr. Ghazi Hamad published, in the PA daily Al-Ayyam, a critique of current events in the Gaza Strip, including scathing criticism of the Hamas government itself and the Palestinian resistance.
The following are excerpts: [1]
The Reality in Gaza is Miserable, Wretched, and a Failure in Every Sense of the Word
"...I want to make a reckoning and own up to our mistakes. We are always afraid to speak honestly about our mistakes, as we have become accustomed to placing the blame on other factors. The anarchy, chaos, pointless murders, the plundering of lands, family feuds... what do all of these have to do with the occupation? We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others, and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us...
"We exhausted our people time after time with errors in which everyone played a role...
"The question is: Why did we not keep Gaza's freedom? In the past we said, time and again, that we are in favor of the liberation of every inch of land. Today we have thousands of inches - 365 square kilometers - and nonetheless we have not succeeded in keeping this great blessing, and we have begun to lose it...
"A simple statistical calculation shows that since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, 500 Palestinians have been killed and over 3,000 wounded. There are 200 handicapped, and more than 150 homes have been demolished - and this in addition to the destruction of the infrastructure, the bridges, and the electric power plants. The number of Israelis killed by [Palestinian] rockets is no more than three or four... Would it not have been possible to limit our losses and maximize our achievements, if we had only used our minds?...
"When you walk around in Gaza, you cannot help but avert your eyes from what you see: indescribable anarchy, policemen that nobody cares about, youth proudly carrying weapons, mourning tents set up in the middle of main streets, and from time to time you hear that so-and-so was murdered in the middle of the night, and the response comes quickly the next morning. Large families carry weapons in tribal wars against other families. Gaza has turned into a garbage dump, there is a stench, and sewage flows [in the streets].
"The government cannot do anything, the opposition [Fatah] looks on from the sidelines, engaged in internal bickering, and the president has no power... We are walking aimlessly in the streets. The reality in which we are living in Gaza can only be described as miserable and wretched, and as a failure in every sense of the word. We applauded the elections and the unique democratic experience, but in reality there has been a great step backwards. We spoke of national consensus, [but] it turned out to be like a leaf blowing in the wind..."
What Does the Resistance Gain if the Country is All Chaos, Replete With Corruption, Crime, and Futile Murder?
"With all my respect for the resistance and its courageous achievements, which we salute with admiration and appreciation, it too has made many mistakes, including gang-like and divisive [activities]. Everyone does what is right in his own eyes. In the absence of a political [goal] that complements the resistance, the resistance sometimes becomes a kind of competition between the factions in publicizing announcements, in taking responsibility [for operations], and competing in military parades. We have never acted or thought in a unified manner. Even when mistakes were made, we were afraid to talk about them, for fear that it would be said that so-and-so is opposed to the resistance. Therefore, everybody covered up these mistakes.
"It is strange that when a great effort was made to reopen the Rafah Crossing in order to make [life] easier for the residents, somebody fires a missile towards the crossing, or that when there is talk about the need for tahdiah ["calm"], somebody fires another missile...
"I have asked myself: What does the resistance gain if the country is all chaos, replete with corruption, crime, and futile murder? Isn't the building of the homeland part of resistance? Isn't cleanliness, order, and respect for the law part of resistance? Isn't strengthening social relations part of the policy of shortening the life of the occupation? We have lost the connection between the resistance and other aspects of life. There is an abyss between the resistance, politics and the people. That is why the people are scattered, with no unifying or organizing [hand].
"The kidnapping of foreign journalists has become a desirable trade for gaining minor, trivial profits, and it is no longer of importance that the Palestinian cause is being harmed, or that its image has been damaged in the eyes of the world, so long as a certain faction gains first place in the media, is in the spotlight of the cameras, and on the news.
"...Sometimes we laugh at ourselves when we see all these conferences and meetings and announcements, while there is no trace of any of that in reality. We talk unclearly, spin our wheels, steal our people's blood, and deprive it of even a moment of peace. So many families are tormented and slaughtered, and so many families are in distress because of their miserable lives. So many shout [in despair], but nobody hears.
"Have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on it, [and save it] from your rule of the streets, from your chaos, from your futile weapons, and from your gangsters. Have mercy on it, [and save it] from your bitter quarrels and your verbal extremism... Have mercy on it by giving precedence to the homeland over a party or faction..."
Avoiding a Reckoning Will Add Pain Upon Our Pain and Wounds Upon Our Wounds
"Many will accept my words, and some will not accept them, or will not want to hear them. Some will look for flaws, and may find what they want, but Allah is my witness that I write these words only out of concern for Gaza and its citizens (out of concern for my homeland), and out of a persistent desire to give hope to our people, and to give it a strong sense that we [stand] alongside it.
"None of what I wrote refutes what has been said about the occupation... But this time I ask that we judge ourselves justly, appointing our people's conscience and interests as judges. Avoiding [the need for] a reckoning or so-called self-flagellation will add pain upon our pain and wounds upon our wounds. Let us have a little courage to say with honesty: Here we hit the target, and here we missed. This is the only way the countenance of Gaza and of the homeland will change."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Al-Ayyam (PA), August 27, 2006.
http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=1704
--------------------------------------------
ESCAPING ARAB FAILURE
By RALPH PETERS
April 23, 2004 -- WE shouldn't be discouraged by the recent round of violence in Iraq. It was predictable. But there were two disheartening signs:
* We should be troubled that, in this bloody month, none of the insurgents waved an alternative constitution - unless we count their perversion of the Koran. None of those violent men is fighting for freedom - they're fighting to strangle liberty in the cradle. They are, without exception, forces of reaction, not liberation, no matter how madly al-Jazeera twists the facts.
* Nor did the general Arab population or its leaders take a public stand against those who would renew their oppression. And those who will not defend their own freedom do not deserve to be defended by others.
Operation Iraqi Freedom has been, among other things, an attempt to give Arabs hope for a better future. The ultimate outcome won't be known for years, but we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that the Arabs are going to fail themselves again.
With sufficient troops, we can force Iraq's Arabs to behave. But we can't force them to succeed.
Ultimately, Iraq is not a test of the limits of American power. When necessary, we can do whatever must be done for our security and prosperity. Our use of force, in Iraq and elsewhere, has been remarkably - even foolishly - restrained.
If Iraq collapses into medieval fantasies and blood feuds, we still may be proud of having given this crippled civilization a last, great chance to heal itself. We've made mistakes, but their impact is minor compared to the unwillingness of Iraq's Arabs, Sunni or Shi'a, to build a free and civil society of their own.
In the United States, campus-generated political correctness was never more than a joke - capable of turning somber conservatives purple but unable to alter anything that matters. The far more dangerous form of political correctness is that which prevails in the dream-world of diplomacy: We pretend that all civilizations have equal merit.
But they don't. It's time to face up to the functional and moral collapse of the Arab world - if we can't describe the problem honestly, we shall never deal with it effectively.
Arab civilization has failed.
Disguised in part by the trappings of oil wealth, the Middle East has become humanity's sinkhole, less promising, if richer, than Africa. But no facade of garish hotels in the hollow states that line the Persian Gulf, and no amount of full-page advertisements funded by the Saudi government, can hide the truth any longer: The Arab Middle East has become the world's first entirely parasitical culture; all it does is to imitate poorly, consume voraciously, spit hatred, export death and create nothing.
Arab civilization offers its people no promising future, only rhetoric about a past whose achievements have been as exaggerated as they were impermanent. The present is a bloody, heartless muddle.
For all the oil wealth and expatriate university degrees, for all the hired-in expertise and Western "engagement," Arab civilization has degenerated to a point where it provides the rest of humanity nothing useful of its own design - while offering its own citizens only a culture of blame, corruption and lethargy.
It's a matter of culture, not race. In the free atmosphere of America, Arabs do as well as anyone else. All populations have their share of talent - but the oppressive environment of the Middle East enervates those individuals it does not crush entirely.
Iraq has been given a chance to break free of the thrall of a bankrupt culture, to establish a rule-of-law democratic government observant of human rights. But the chances are increasingly good that Iraq's Arabs will fail to achieve and maintain even minimal standards of good governance.
The time has not yet come, but, contrary to the sort of diplomatic wisdom that so long protected Saddam, we can walk away if Iraq's Arabs refuse to help themselves. And we can break up the country to protect the Kurds - a far better solution than turning Iraq over to the venal brokers of the United Nations.
The failure of Arab civilization in our time is the greatest such disaster in mankind's history. And, bitter though we find the proposition, the failure is so colossal that it cannot be neatly contained. Whether in Iraq today or elsewhere tomorrow, we cannot fully extract ourselves from this problem simply because our enemies won't let go.
If Iraq chooses failure, we can leave. But we'll be back, somewhere in the Middle East. Because, as we saw on 9/11, the Middle East will continue to come to us. Blame is the opium of the Arabs, and the sweetest blame for their failures is that directed at the United States (and, of course, Israel). It is our power itself, not its uses, that enrages Arabs trapped in their self-made weakness.
The oft-cited examples of the Arab world's problems, from a lack of interest in secular education and a poor work ethic to staggering corruption and the oppression of women, are symptoms, not root causes, of Arab failure. Past a certain analytical point, we come up against the wall of our own taboos - we cannot admit that the psychological premises of an entire civilization might be dysfunctional. Arab failure isn't about that which has been done to the Middle East, but that which the Middle East has done to itself.
Iraq still has a chance, if a slimmer one than we had hoped. But even if Iraq's Arabs disappoint our ambitions, our efforts will have been worthy and our losses not in vain. Intervention was unavoidable, whatever the critics say. Continued passivity in the face of the Middle East's implosion would only have made the price higher in the end.
We all would be better off were the Arabs to surprise us by building healthy, prosperous, modern societies. We would be foolish not to wish them well. But we would be equally foolish not to prepare ourselves for the consequences of their accelerating failure.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04232004/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19362.htm
The following are excerpts: [1]
The Reality in Gaza is Miserable, Wretched, and a Failure in Every Sense of the Word
"...I want to make a reckoning and own up to our mistakes. We are always afraid to speak honestly about our mistakes, as we have become accustomed to placing the blame on other factors. The anarchy, chaos, pointless murders, the plundering of lands, family feuds... what do all of these have to do with the occupation? We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others, and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us...
"We exhausted our people time after time with errors in which everyone played a role...
"The question is: Why did we not keep Gaza's freedom? In the past we said, time and again, that we are in favor of the liberation of every inch of land. Today we have thousands of inches - 365 square kilometers - and nonetheless we have not succeeded in keeping this great blessing, and we have begun to lose it...
"A simple statistical calculation shows that since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, 500 Palestinians have been killed and over 3,000 wounded. There are 200 handicapped, and more than 150 homes have been demolished - and this in addition to the destruction of the infrastructure, the bridges, and the electric power plants. The number of Israelis killed by [Palestinian] rockets is no more than three or four... Would it not have been possible to limit our losses and maximize our achievements, if we had only used our minds?...
"When you walk around in Gaza, you cannot help but avert your eyes from what you see: indescribable anarchy, policemen that nobody cares about, youth proudly carrying weapons, mourning tents set up in the middle of main streets, and from time to time you hear that so-and-so was murdered in the middle of the night, and the response comes quickly the next morning. Large families carry weapons in tribal wars against other families. Gaza has turned into a garbage dump, there is a stench, and sewage flows [in the streets].
"The government cannot do anything, the opposition [Fatah] looks on from the sidelines, engaged in internal bickering, and the president has no power... We are walking aimlessly in the streets. The reality in which we are living in Gaza can only be described as miserable and wretched, and as a failure in every sense of the word. We applauded the elections and the unique democratic experience, but in reality there has been a great step backwards. We spoke of national consensus, [but] it turned out to be like a leaf blowing in the wind..."
What Does the Resistance Gain if the Country is All Chaos, Replete With Corruption, Crime, and Futile Murder?
"With all my respect for the resistance and its courageous achievements, which we salute with admiration and appreciation, it too has made many mistakes, including gang-like and divisive [activities]. Everyone does what is right in his own eyes. In the absence of a political [goal] that complements the resistance, the resistance sometimes becomes a kind of competition between the factions in publicizing announcements, in taking responsibility [for operations], and competing in military parades. We have never acted or thought in a unified manner. Even when mistakes were made, we were afraid to talk about them, for fear that it would be said that so-and-so is opposed to the resistance. Therefore, everybody covered up these mistakes.
"It is strange that when a great effort was made to reopen the Rafah Crossing in order to make [life] easier for the residents, somebody fires a missile towards the crossing, or that when there is talk about the need for tahdiah ["calm"], somebody fires another missile...
"I have asked myself: What does the resistance gain if the country is all chaos, replete with corruption, crime, and futile murder? Isn't the building of the homeland part of resistance? Isn't cleanliness, order, and respect for the law part of resistance? Isn't strengthening social relations part of the policy of shortening the life of the occupation? We have lost the connection between the resistance and other aspects of life. There is an abyss between the resistance, politics and the people. That is why the people are scattered, with no unifying or organizing [hand].
"The kidnapping of foreign journalists has become a desirable trade for gaining minor, trivial profits, and it is no longer of importance that the Palestinian cause is being harmed, or that its image has been damaged in the eyes of the world, so long as a certain faction gains first place in the media, is in the spotlight of the cameras, and on the news.
"...Sometimes we laugh at ourselves when we see all these conferences and meetings and announcements, while there is no trace of any of that in reality. We talk unclearly, spin our wheels, steal our people's blood, and deprive it of even a moment of peace. So many families are tormented and slaughtered, and so many families are in distress because of their miserable lives. So many shout [in despair], but nobody hears.
"Have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on it, [and save it] from your rule of the streets, from your chaos, from your futile weapons, and from your gangsters. Have mercy on it, [and save it] from your bitter quarrels and your verbal extremism... Have mercy on it by giving precedence to the homeland over a party or faction..."
Avoiding a Reckoning Will Add Pain Upon Our Pain and Wounds Upon Our Wounds
"Many will accept my words, and some will not accept them, or will not want to hear them. Some will look for flaws, and may find what they want, but Allah is my witness that I write these words only out of concern for Gaza and its citizens (out of concern for my homeland), and out of a persistent desire to give hope to our people, and to give it a strong sense that we [stand] alongside it.
"None of what I wrote refutes what has been said about the occupation... But this time I ask that we judge ourselves justly, appointing our people's conscience and interests as judges. Avoiding [the need for] a reckoning or so-called self-flagellation will add pain upon our pain and wounds upon our wounds. Let us have a little courage to say with honesty: Here we hit the target, and here we missed. This is the only way the countenance of Gaza and of the homeland will change."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Al-Ayyam (PA), August 27, 2006.
http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=1704
--------------------------------------------
ESCAPING ARAB FAILURE
By RALPH PETERS
April 23, 2004 -- WE shouldn't be discouraged by the recent round of violence in Iraq. It was predictable. But there were two disheartening signs:
* We should be troubled that, in this bloody month, none of the insurgents waved an alternative constitution - unless we count their perversion of the Koran. None of those violent men is fighting for freedom - they're fighting to strangle liberty in the cradle. They are, without exception, forces of reaction, not liberation, no matter how madly al-Jazeera twists the facts.
* Nor did the general Arab population or its leaders take a public stand against those who would renew their oppression. And those who will not defend their own freedom do not deserve to be defended by others.
Operation Iraqi Freedom has been, among other things, an attempt to give Arabs hope for a better future. The ultimate outcome won't be known for years, but we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that the Arabs are going to fail themselves again.
With sufficient troops, we can force Iraq's Arabs to behave. But we can't force them to succeed.
Ultimately, Iraq is not a test of the limits of American power. When necessary, we can do whatever must be done for our security and prosperity. Our use of force, in Iraq and elsewhere, has been remarkably - even foolishly - restrained.
If Iraq collapses into medieval fantasies and blood feuds, we still may be proud of having given this crippled civilization a last, great chance to heal itself. We've made mistakes, but their impact is minor compared to the unwillingness of Iraq's Arabs, Sunni or Shi'a, to build a free and civil society of their own.
In the United States, campus-generated political correctness was never more than a joke - capable of turning somber conservatives purple but unable to alter anything that matters. The far more dangerous form of political correctness is that which prevails in the dream-world of diplomacy: We pretend that all civilizations have equal merit.
But they don't. It's time to face up to the functional and moral collapse of the Arab world - if we can't describe the problem honestly, we shall never deal with it effectively.
Arab civilization has failed.
Disguised in part by the trappings of oil wealth, the Middle East has become humanity's sinkhole, less promising, if richer, than Africa. But no facade of garish hotels in the hollow states that line the Persian Gulf, and no amount of full-page advertisements funded by the Saudi government, can hide the truth any longer: The Arab Middle East has become the world's first entirely parasitical culture; all it does is to imitate poorly, consume voraciously, spit hatred, export death and create nothing.
Arab civilization offers its people no promising future, only rhetoric about a past whose achievements have been as exaggerated as they were impermanent. The present is a bloody, heartless muddle.
For all the oil wealth and expatriate university degrees, for all the hired-in expertise and Western "engagement," Arab civilization has degenerated to a point where it provides the rest of humanity nothing useful of its own design - while offering its own citizens only a culture of blame, corruption and lethargy.
It's a matter of culture, not race. In the free atmosphere of America, Arabs do as well as anyone else. All populations have their share of talent - but the oppressive environment of the Middle East enervates those individuals it does not crush entirely.
Iraq has been given a chance to break free of the thrall of a bankrupt culture, to establish a rule-of-law democratic government observant of human rights. But the chances are increasingly good that Iraq's Arabs will fail to achieve and maintain even minimal standards of good governance.
The time has not yet come, but, contrary to the sort of diplomatic wisdom that so long protected Saddam, we can walk away if Iraq's Arabs refuse to help themselves. And we can break up the country to protect the Kurds - a far better solution than turning Iraq over to the venal brokers of the United Nations.
The failure of Arab civilization in our time is the greatest such disaster in mankind's history. And, bitter though we find the proposition, the failure is so colossal that it cannot be neatly contained. Whether in Iraq today or elsewhere tomorrow, we cannot fully extract ourselves from this problem simply because our enemies won't let go.
If Iraq chooses failure, we can leave. But we'll be back, somewhere in the Middle East. Because, as we saw on 9/11, the Middle East will continue to come to us. Blame is the opium of the Arabs, and the sweetest blame for their failures is that directed at the United States (and, of course, Israel). It is our power itself, not its uses, that enrages Arabs trapped in their self-made weakness.
The oft-cited examples of the Arab world's problems, from a lack of interest in secular education and a poor work ethic to staggering corruption and the oppression of women, are symptoms, not root causes, of Arab failure. Past a certain analytical point, we come up against the wall of our own taboos - we cannot admit that the psychological premises of an entire civilization might be dysfunctional. Arab failure isn't about that which has been done to the Middle East, but that which the Middle East has done to itself.
Iraq still has a chance, if a slimmer one than we had hoped. But even if Iraq's Arabs disappoint our ambitions, our efforts will have been worthy and our losses not in vain. Intervention was unavoidable, whatever the critics say. Continued passivity in the face of the Middle East's implosion would only have made the price higher in the end.
We all would be better off were the Arabs to surprise us by building healthy, prosperous, modern societies. We would be foolish not to wish them well. But we would be equally foolish not to prepare ourselves for the consequences of their accelerating failure.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04232004/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19362.htm