@all the members..
please go through this eye-opener by late edward saed!...
"The price of Camp David


by Edward Said

One year ago, Bill Clinton convened a meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships at the presidential retreat in Camp David to finalise a peace agreement that he thought they were ready for. I emphasise Clinton's role in all this because it was characteristic of the man that Palestinians had placed their hopes in, had greeted in Ramallah and Gaza like a hero, had deferred to on every occasion, that he rushed together the two opponents, locked together for decades in a convoluted struggle, to be able to say for his own selfish purposes that he had engineered an historic achievement.

Yasser Arafat didn't want to go. Ehud Barak was there mainly to extract a promise from the Palestinians that would end the conflict and, more important, would end all Palestinian claims against Israel (including the right of return for refugees) once the Oslo process had been concluded. Clinton had always been an opportunist first and last, a Zionist second, and a clumsy politician third. The Palestinians were the weakest party; they were badly led and poorly prepared. Clinton surmised that because his (and Barak's) terms in office were ending, he could produce a peace ceremony based on Palestinian capitulation, a ceremony that would forever enshrine his presidency by erasing the memory of Monica Lewinsky and the developing scandal of Marc Rich's pardon.

This great plan, of course, failed completely. Even American sources recently made public supported the Palestinian argument that Barak's "generous offer" was neither an offer nor generous. Robert Malley, a member of Clinton's White House-based National Security Council, has published a report on what took place and, although it is critical of Palestinian tactics during the Camp David summit, it shows clearly that Israel wasn't even close to offering what the Palestinians' legitimate national aspirations required. But Malley spoke out in July 2001, a full year after the Camp David summit ended and well after Israel's well-oiled propaganda machine launched the by now standard chorus that Arafat had mischievously rejected the best imaginable Israeli offer. This chorus was abetted by Clinton's repeated claim that, whereas Barak was courageous, Arafat was only disappointing. And so the thesis has lodged in public discourse ever since, to Palestine's immense detriment. Unnoticed was the observation made by an Israeli information flunky that after Camp David and Taba, no Palestinians played a consistent role disseminating a Palestinian version of the debacle. Thus, Israel has had the field to itself, with results in exploitation and backlash that have been virtually incalculable.

I was well aware of the damage being done to the Intifada as a result of Israel's self-portrayal as a rejected peace-lover last autumn and winter. I made phone calls to members of Arafat's entourage urging them to convince their leader of how Israel was making use of Palestinian silence, which it quickly established was the verbal equivalent of Palestinian violence. Word reached me that Arafat was adamant, that he refused to address his people, the Israelis, or the world, no doubt hoping that fate or his own miraculous powers of non-communication would affect the Israeli disinformation campaign. In any event, my urging did absolutely no good. Arafat and his numerous lackeys remained ineffective, uncomprehending, and of course largely silent.

We must blame ourselves first of all. Neither our leadership nor our intellectuals seem to have grasped that even a brave anti-colonial uprising cannot on its own explain itself, and that what we (and the other Arabs) regard as our right of resistance can be made to seem by Israel like the most unprincipled terrorism or violence. In the meantime, Israel has persuaded the world to forget its own violent occupation and its terrorist collective punishment -- to say nothing of its unstoppable ethnic cleansing -- against the Palestinian people.

Indeed, we have made matters worse for ourselves by allowing the inadequate Arafat to come and go as he pleases on the question of violence. Every human rights document ever formulated entitles a people to resist military occupation, the destruction of homes and property, and the expropriation of land for the purpose of settlements. Arafat and his advisers seem not to have understood that when they blindly entered Israel's unilateral dialectic of violence and terror -- verbally speaking -- they had in essence given up their right of resistance. Instead of making clear that any relinquishing of resistance had to be accompanied by Israel's withdrawal and/or equal relinquishing of its occupation, the Palestinian people were made vulnerable by their leadership to charges of terror and violence. Everything Israel did became retaliation. Everything Palestinians did was either violence or terror or (usually) both. The resulting spectacle of a war criminal like Sharon denouncing Palestinian "violence" has been little short of disgusting.

Another consequence of Palestinian ineptitude was that it let the so-called Israeli peace activists off the hook, turning that sad collection of camp- followers into silent allies of Israel's lamentable Sharon-led government. A few brave and principled Israelis like some of the New Historians -- Jeff Halper, Michel Warschavsky, and their groups -- are an exception. How many times have we heard the official "peaceniks" rant on about their "disappointment" at Palestinian "ingratitude" and violence? How often does anyone tell them that their role is to pressure their governments to end the occupation and not (as they always have) to lecture a people under occupation about their magnanimity and disappointed hopes? Would any but the most reactionary French person in 1944 be tolerant of German pleas to be "reasonable" about Germany's occupation of France? No, of course not. But we tolerate the hectoring Israeli "peace" proponents to go on and on about how "generous" Barak has been, without reminding them that every one of their leaders has made his name as a killer or oppressor of Arabs, from 1948 to the present. Ben-Gurion presided over the Nakba; Eshkol over the conquests of 1967; Begin over Deir Yassin and Lebanon; Rabin over the bone-breaking of the first Intifada and, before that, over the evacuation of 60,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians from Ramleh and Lydda in 1948; Peres over the destruction of Qana; Barak personally took part in the assassination of Palestinian leaders; Sharon led the massacre of Qibya and was responsible for Sabra and Shatila. The real role of the Israeli peace camp is to do what it has never seriously done, which is to acknowledge all of that and to prevent further outrage by the Israeli army and air force against a dispossessed and stateless people, not to be free and easy with advice to Palestinians or to express hopes and disappointment to the people whom Israel has oppressed for over half a century.

But once the Palestinian leadership had forsaken its principles and pretended that it was a great power capable of playing the game of nations, it brought on itself the fate of a weak nation, with neither the sovereignty nor the power to reinforce its gestures or its tactics. So hypnotised is Mr Arafat with his supposed standing as a president, jumping from Paris to London to Beijing to Cairo on one pointless state visit after another, that he has forgotten that the weapons the weak and the stateless cannot ever give up are its principles and its people. To occupy and unendingly defend the high moral ground; to keep telling the truth and reminding the world of the full historical picture; to hold on to the lawful right of resistance and restitution; to mobilise people everywhere rather than to appear with the likes of Chirac and Blair; to depend neither on the media nor the Israelis but on oneself to tell the truth. These are what Palestinian leaders forgot first at Oslo and then again at Camp David. When will we as a people assume responsibility for what after all is ours and stop relying on leaders who no longer have any idea what they are doing?

Source:

by courtesy & © 2001 Al-Ahram Weekly & Edward Said

By the way, the murder of 100 people in Model Town/Garhi shaho and then 12 people in Jinnah Hospital in the same week and in our very own Lahore, Pakistan was also "merciless"
Lets have a look in our own "girayban" as well.

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/// Aur be ghum hain zamanay main muhabat kay siwa ///

1.If Iran would have attacked the aid ships massacring civilians, imagine the US response.
2. The important thing about the israeli history is that it keeps repeating itself.
3. OIC has simply become "O I SEE"

I personally think Pakistan, Turkey and Iran have fantastic chance to get muslim leadership status from Arabs. Turkey is already playing its role and Iran is also proactive. Pakistan must come forward and should condemn it in the strongest terms.

But state of pakistan was not involved in that. While attacking the freedom flotilla was the act of israeli govt. People attcking the innocent civilians in pakistan have same merciless agenda as the state of israel(though i dont accept it a legitimate state). Thats why world is condemning terrorism whether perpetrated by individuals or by states.

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Whatever mind can conceive,it can achieve - W.Clement Stone

I think Egypt and Turkey should detach themselves from relations with Israel. All muslim countries needs unity at this time. They should take collective stand in UN.

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Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability. Flower A. Newhouse

hello all! a new member i am to this css forum, however, the topic under discussion is not new or probably unknown to me or any of us; so i was really excited to join u all in this discussion! it is absolutely agreeable, zohaib, that none of our so called international organisations like that of oic can help muslims out of this tyranny. thats probably why america says oh i see and just kicks the matter off its desk! oic is DEAD; its no use at all to call yet another oic conference, bcuz it is merely a coffee shop where people gather, chatter, flutter and flatter and just disperse away like bees.... unless we dont gather our bones and stand up as a nation, put a ban to provincialism, racial prejudice, other nations would continue to oppress us.......

The OIC is based on religion . The new world is moving away from religious identity of people. OIC will be more ineffective in future . The world want to think of individuals not any religious group of either nature . Muslims should move forward and talk about the whole world because Islam is a universal religion .

Welcome to the forum........ yes u r right.we the muslim ummah are internaly weak n thats why we face such brutality from outside.we must do somthing to bring in internal stability only then would we be able to stand like a rock against all outside threats....

unfortunately mostly writers produce confusion and hoplessness
about oic and muslims. here i represent real and hopeful face of
oic and muslims

first of all we look ancient history of world , in those period we
observed that between 632 to 1700 a.d muslims were the only super power
in world, the duration of muslims rule was above 1000 years
on that period mostly world such as asia ,africa, larege part
of europe was under control of muslims

after that british empire were became new world super poewr their actually duration was between 1800 to 1945 a.d (but on that time france was another power)
it means british ruled on world near 150 years

after world war2 two powers were in compitition that were u.s.a and russia

after the end of cold war u.s.a remained only singal world super power

in 2010 u.s.a is not super power because china and russia challange his Sovereignty
so it means now world is in search of new super power

when we look historical background of muslim world between 1925 to 1969
a confusable situation is looked, all muslims were under different powers
some with british, some with france, some with russia, some with u.s.a
some under dactatorship ,
no only one country was in this position that he lead muslims
sudia,iran,iraq, turky, pakistan, algeria, and all other prominent countries
were in their own crisis,
economically muslims countries were so weak
all muslims countries were without strongful army
muslim people had forgotten the slogen of jihad

after israeli attack on aqsa mosque muslims leaders gathered and make
oic in 1969

u.s.s.r gave m support to muslims and said we are with you, so muslims
leaders gathered and decided to use oil bomb but this act was without
planning, so king faisal was assassinated by u.s.a and muslims could not attain their goal.


but in current situation muslims are going to success and very soon they
achieve their goal and play ipmortant rule in new world order
following points prove above statement

1- turkey is changed from sickman to brave man , and look that
once again he is ready to commmand muslims
2- pakistan is an atomic power, this is reality that pakistan is facing a large
number of problems but these problems are not a road stone , insaallah
pakistan play very well roll in this battle, the hearts of pakistani are with
ummma
3- akhwan-ul- muslimeen is so strong in egypt , very soon egypt will
be side to side with muslims
4- iran is a brave muslim country, we appricate his efforts for muslims
5- malasia, indonesia , algeira, negira, sudan, and all other muslims countries
ready on this battle
6- sudia and u.e.a are on the way of change
7- young muslims are ready to give their every thing
8- 72% of muslims population consist young generation(15-35 years) which is prominent figure for muslims
9- muslims having pressure on usa ane european which is increasing day by day
10- all muslims countries develop their defence which is prominent thing
11- not only muslims but many non- muslims countries (such as venzuvela)are with muslims
12- a new block whose consist china+muslims+ anti usa will be established very soon

according to my point of view very soon israel and usa will be on the way
of request that muslim world compromise with them but that will not posssible

once again there will be not place for jews in world, a real hitler will appear
then another real holocast will be looked everywhere,

plz develop a situation of hope not produce hopelessness
the seat for next super power is reserved for muslims and pakistan will play
most important rule

iqbal says

piwasta- rahay shajar say umeed bahar rakh

insallah jad hi zulam ki siya ratt khatm ho jay gi

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The lambasting continued Friday, when PM Erdogan addressed fellow AK Party supporters.

"I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says 'thou shalt not kill'. Did you not understand?" Erdogan said, referring to Israel. "I'll say again. I say in English 'you shall not kill'. Did you still not understand?. So I'll say to you in your own language. I say in Hebrew 'Lo Tirtzakh'."

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The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.

watch this video !

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Sangdil Riwajoon ki ya Imart-e-Kohna Toot bhi Tou Skti hay
Yeh Aseer Sehzadi Choot bhi tou Skti hay

The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism
By Glenn Greenwald


One of the primary reasons the Turkish Government has been so angry in its denunciations of the Israeli attack on the flotilla is because many of the dead were Turkish citizens. That's what governments typically do: object vociferously when their citizens are killed by foreign nations under extremely questionable circumstances. Needless to say, that principle -- as all principles are -- will be completely discarded when it comes to the U.S. protection of Israel:


A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed when Israeli commandos attacked a Gaza-bound aid flotilla . . . An official from the Turkish Islamic charity that spearheaded the campaign to bust the blockade on Gaza identified the U.S. citizen as 19-year-old Furkan Dogan . . . . Dogan, who held a U.S. passport, had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest . . . .


Will the fact that one of the dead at Israel's hands was an American teenager with four bullet wounds to his head alter the Obama administration's full-scale defense of Israel? Does that question even need to be asked? Not even American interests can undermine reflexive U.S. support for anything Israel does; even the Chief of the Mossad acknowledged this week that "Israel is progressively becoming a burden on the United States." One dead 19-year-old American with 4 bullet holes in his head (especially one of Turkish origin with a Turkish-sounding name) surely won't have any impact.

Yesterday, newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest world leader to unequivocally condemn Israel, saying the attack was "completely unacceptable" and demanding an end to the blockade. But last night on Charlie Rose's show, Joe Biden defended Israel with as much vigor as any Netanyahu aide or Weekly Standard polemicist. Biden told what can only be described as a lie when, in order to justify his rhetorical question "what's the big deal here?," he claimed that the ships could have simply delivered their aid to Israel and Israel would then have generously sent it to Gaza ("They've said, 'Here you go. You're in the Mediterranean. This ship -- if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we'll get the stuff into Gaza'."). In fact, contrary to the Central Lie being told about the blockade, Israel prevents all sorts of humanitarian items having nothing whatsoever to do with weapons from entering Gaza, including many of the supplies carried by the flotilla.

One can express all sorts of outrage over the Obama administration's depressingly predictable defense of the Israelis, even at the cost of isolating ourselves from the rest of the world, but ultimately, on some level, wouldn't it have been even more indefensible -- or at least oozingly hypocritical -- if the U.S. had condemned Israel? After all, what did Israel do in this case that the U.S. hasn't routinely done and continues to do? As even our own military officials acknowledge, we're slaughtering an "amazing number" of innocent people at checkpoints in Afghanistan. We're routinely killing civilians in all sorts of imaginative ways in countless countries, including with drone strikes which a U.N. official just concluded are illegal. We're even targeting our own citizens for due-process-free assassination. We've been arming Israel and feeding them billions of dollars in aid and protecting them diplomatically as they (and we) have been doing things like this for decades. What's the Obama administration supposed to say about what Israel did: we condemn the killing of unarmed civilians? We decry these violations of international law? Even by typical standards of government hypocrisy, who in the U.S. Government could possibly say any of that with a straight face?


What this really underscores is that the mentality driving both Israel and the U.S. is quite similar, which is why those two countries find such common cause, even when the rest of the world recoils in revulsion. One of the more amazing developments in the flotilla aftermath is how a claim that initially appeared too self-evidently ludicrous to be invoked by anyone -- Israel was the victim here and was acting against the ship in self-defense --has actually become the central premise in Israeli and (especially) American discourse about the attack (and as always, there is far more criticism of Israeli actions in Israel than in the U.S.).

How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim that Israel and its Navy were the victims of a boat which Jon Stewart said last night looked like "P Diddy's St. Bart's vacation yacht"; or that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of "victim" and "aggressor" is blatantly reversed with such claims -- which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, U.S. foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky -- talking about America's post-9/11 policies -- described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force (and if you're one of those people who hear "Noam Chomsky" and shut your mind, pretend that this comes from "John Smith"):


In one of his many speeches, to U.S. troops in Vietnam, [Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, "There are three billion people in the world and we have only two hundred million of them. We are outnumbered fifteen to one. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want." That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you.

The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, "I'm a murderous monster." It has to be self-defense. "I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me." Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.

Thus, nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcomed as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this same "we-are-the-victim" mindset.


A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose world view is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by an extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!). Haaretz today reports that "Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel's raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla." Gee, whatever could account for that "rare demonstration of unity" between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it's such a mystery.

I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel. When it comes to Israel, we see the same mindset from otherwise admirable Jewish progressives such as Anthony Weiner, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Spitzer, Alan Grayson, and (after a brief stint of deviation) Barney Frank. On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.

It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves:


I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it's fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity which was pummeled into me from childhood -- rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis -- the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?


Doesn't the most minimal level of intellectual awareness -- indeed, the concept of adulthood itself -- require that re-analysis? And, of course, the "self-hating" epithet -- with which I've naturally been bombarded relentlessly over the last week -- is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one's "own group" rather than endeaveor to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true.

This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it's instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who "reason" the same way:


I was taught from childhood that America is right and thus, even in adulthood, defend America no matter what it does; my duty as an American is to defend and justify what America does and any American who criticizes the U.S. is "self-hating" and anti-American; the wrongs perpetrated by Us to Them pale in comparison to the wrongs perpetrated by Them on Us.

Or listen to Fox News fear-mongers declare how Christians in the U.S. and/or white males -- comprising the vast majority of the population and every power structure in the country -- are the Real Persecuted Victims, from the War on Christmas to affirmative action evils. Ronald Reagan even managed to convince much of the country that the true economic injustices in America were caused by rich black women driving their Cadillacs to collect their welfare checks. This kind of blinding, all-consuming tribalism leads members of even the most powerful group to convince themselves that they are deeply victimized by those who are far weaker, whose necks have been under the boots of the stronger group for decades, if not longer.

That's just the standard symptom of the disease of tribalism and it finds expression everywhere, in every group. It's just far more significant -- and far more destructive -- when the groups convincing themselves that they are the Weak and Bullied Victims are actually the strongest forces by far on the planet, with the greatest amount of weaponry and aggression, who have been finding justifications for so long for their slaughtering of civilians that, as Israeli Amos Oz suggested this week about his country, there are virtually no limits left on the naked aggression that will be justified. Thus, even when Israel attacks a ship full of civilians and wheelchairs in international waters and kills at least 9 human beings, this is depicted by its tribal loyalists as an act of justified self-defense against the Real Aggressors.

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Sangdil Riwajoon ki ya Imart-e-Kohna Toot bhi Tou Skti hay
Yeh Aseer Sehzadi Choot bhi tou Skti hay